An obscure website states the name Farooq Saeed was picked up from a police scanner.

By Reagan Wilson for Controversial Times (click here)

According to police radio traffic, one possible suspect has been identified as Farooq Saeed. This is an unconfirmed report and comes from police radio chatter in regards to the shooting.

UPDATE 5:15PM Eastern: Police say suspects came prepared and on a mission.
UPDATE 5:01PM Eastern: FBI has not yet ruled this a terrorist incident yet according to press conference.
UPDATE 5:00PM Eastern: Police confirm suspects likely fled scene in dark SUV.
UPDATE 4:57PM Eastern: Police press conference: preliminary numbers – 14 dead, 14 wounded.
UPDATE 4:47PM Eastern: Local news is confirming twelve fatalities.
UPDATE 4:20PM Eastern: Law enforcement source tells CNN that they believe they are looking for three suspects armed with AK-47 style rifles.

The killing in San Bernadino, California has been transpiring from about 3:20 pm today. Almost six hours.

The FBI is checking in. Right? This is a very big deal.

BUT, six hours after the killing was recognized as having happened by emergency services there is many, many answers to questions that are, "We don't know."

Let's think about that for a minute.

The intelligence agencies of the USA have demanded citizens give up their privacy to end any danger to our country. 

What good does it do? 

Planned Parenthood in Colorado and a public facility in San Bernadino in California have had massive use of gunfire to simply kill people at random.

The next time USA intelligence wants more CONTROL over activities of Americans kindly remember we have been dying in large numbers year after year to the purchase and use of military style weapons. 

There is no situation whereby authorities have come out and stated they knew more than I did about the events that lead to American deaths.

REMEMBER THAT.

Moving to other issues.

December 2, 2015
By Adam Lidgett

Houston’s police chief Charles McClelland (click here) will release video footage showing last year's fatal shooting of an unarmed man by a city police officer, Mayor Annise Parker said Wednesday, local media reported Wednesday. Jordan Baker, a 26-year-old black man, was shot in January 2014 by off-duty police officer Juventino Castro, who was cleared of any wrongdoing in the incident in December 2014.
A lawsuit filed Wednesday alleged Baker was fatally shot without “lawful jurisdiction,” the Houston Chronicle reported. The suit also alleges Castro thought Baker was a suspect in a robbery because Baker was black and wearing hoodie....

On days like today, it is important to remember the issues facing young African American men. There is no doubt the police of the USA face dangerous circumstances, but, that does not mean the entire time of a police officer's work is sanctioned to militarization.

When the shooting death of Jordan Baker occurred I thought Cenk Uygur of the "Young Turks" did an exceptionally good analysis.

TYT Network (click here) is a Multi-Channel Network of online video talk shows, consisting mostly of TYT owned-and-operated shows and a select group of outside partners.
The network generates over 150 million views per month. The flagship program in the network is The Young Turks, hosted by Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian, with over 2 billion views and 60 million views per month by itself.
The Young Turks is the largest online news show in the world, covering politics, economics, pop culture, social trends and lifestyle.

YTY Network (click here)

If the police are uncertain about any more shooters in the van send is drone or robot. If there is ever a reason to use a robot or drone it is in these circumstances.
................
This level of preparedness of any attack is not completely estranged from this area. A few years ago there were two people that robbed a bank (?) and were dressed in body armor from head to toe. It took the same type of effort to bring the robbers down. I think one of the robbers survived the police response.

This event is strange for the number of people involved in the crime and the number of people shot and killed, but, there have been the occasional extreme event.

Statistically, this is an outlier to the body of information regarding police research.

Just the same, there are many people carrying guns and many people currently dead and hospitalized. From what I hear all victims if not dead are hospitalized. There were no minor injuries and there is also one police officer with a non-lethal injury due to the police response.

August 17, 2015
By Joseph Serna

...The Police Foundation, (click here) a research group based in Washington, D.C., released a detailed report Monday on how Stockton police responded to the July 16, 2014, armed robbery of a Bank of the West branch, where three gunmen took three women hostage and fired at officers from a speeding SUV.

The group found that 32 officers unloaded more than 600 rounds during the hour-long rolling gun battle, which spanned three counties, 63 miles of highway and reached speeds of 120 mph. One of the hostages, Misty Holt-Singh, was killed when she was struck by 10 police bullets, authorities said. The two other hostages jumped or were thrown from the vehicle during the chase and survived.

Police officials said they fired on the vehicle to potentially save lives because the men in the car were shooting indiscriminately. The gunmen disabled 14 police cars with gunshots, the report stated....

This event is domestic violence that have become all to familiar to the American landscape. That is not to say criminals such as this haven't learned their skills by observing the success of other killers. They most certainly didn't dream up their techniques alone.

There are assessments stating this could be work place violence. Wow.

How special, the poor are now targets of small militas.

December 2, 2015
By Veronica Rocha and Joseph Serna

Los Angeles - At least one person (click here) opened fire in the Southern California city of San Bernardino on Wednesday and as many as 20 people were wounded, authorities said.
The San Bernardino Police Department said on Twitter that it had "confirmed 1 to 3 possible suspects" and multiple victims in the shooting. The agency called it an "active shooter" incident....

Amazing, only in America. Only in the USA. The Republicans should be so proud of the danger they permit in the USA.

I'd bet real money the NSA knew nothing about this. How many children were in the office when gun men or women decided they were better to determine their fate than society?

Social services will have to begin conducting more business with clients through mail and/or across computers. This cannot be tolerated. In person interviews can be carried out through internet connections where at all possible. Possibly even telephone. When I speak to companies about services, including my health care insurance company, they validate my participation over the telephone. So, there are options rather than in person applications and interviews. Bulletproof glass for offices, security guards and surveillance.

This is interesting. All this time, the social services offices across the USA have never been the focus of violence. It has to say something about the impoverished in the USA to realize this is the first ever attack of a social services office.

If I were a legislator I would consider extending those courtesies that promote personal safety from violence to any federal, state or local office. It would recognize the country's resolve to take care of people in the face of idiocy.

Excuse me. Who is purchasing oil from Daesh?

NRHA - National Rural Health Association

One of the complaints today in the USA Senate was that the ACA does not deliver better health care to the rural Americans. That may be the case, but, that doesn't mean the service to rural America was any better than before the ACA.

The article is here - click here.

One aspect of rural life is the fact there are distances, physical distances, to health care.

Rural activities often are more dangerous by the simple nature of those activities, such as plowing, harvesting, milking cows and making hay and forages for storage in silos. The very nature of living in a rural lifestyle and income is accompanied by characteristics impossible to mitigate.  

So, while the complaint about the ACA may be accurate, that doesn't mean the ACA is failing the rural community. It means the lifestyle and incomes of rural lifestyles have not provided for trained medical personnel within physical limits and helicopters, training and licensure to bring statistics to match that of cities.

Then there is this:

Objectives. We analyzed urban–rural differences in intentional firearm death. (click here)

Methods. We analyzed 584629 deaths from 1989 to 1999 assigned to 3141 US counties, using negative binomial regressions and an 11-category urban–rural variable.

I hope there is an update ongoing in the USA, especially for the years of 2000-2009.

Results. The most urban counties had 1.03 (95% confidence interval [CI]=0.87, 1.20) times the adjusted firearm death rate of the most rural counties. The most rural counties experienced 1.54 (95% CI=1.29, 1.83) times the adjusted firearm suicide rate of the most urban. The most urban counties experienced 1.90 (95% CI=1.50, 2.40) times the adjusted firearm homicide rate of the most rural. Similar opposing trends were not found for nonfirearm suicide or homicide.

Conclusions. Firearm suicide in rural counties is as important a public health problem as firearm homicide in urban counties. Policymakers should become aware that intentional firearm deaths affect all types of communities in the United States.

Most Americans are covered by employer based health care insurance.

Those plans have experienced low percentages of increase. The costs are still very manageable for employers. The oppositional Republicans never reflect on this reality. 

After plan design changes (click here) and vendor negotiations, the average health care rate increase for mid-size and large companies was 3.2 percent in 2015, marking the lowest rate increase since 1996, according to a new analysis by Aon.

Aon projects average premium increases will jump to 4.1 percent in 2016...

In this study of Aon Health Care reflects the very promise of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The ACA stated in time the cost of health care premiums would decrease. That is exactly what the Aon study of Employer based health care plans reflect. The reduction in the increase is across the board in any type of health care plan, too.

The increases in employer sponsored health care in 2011 far exceeds that of the increases in 2015 and expected in 2016. It cuts the increase in half. 

Sentimental ideation is not a reason to defeat the Medicaid expansion in a state.

...In states (click here) that do not implement the expansion (such as Oklahoma), Medicaid eligibility for adults will remain quite limited, as shown by the dark blue shading in Figure 1. As of January 2014, in Oklahoma, Medicaid eligibility for non-disabled adults is limited to parents with incomes below 48% of poverty, or about $11,300 a year for a family of four, and adults without dependent children remain ineligible regardless of their income. All states previously expanded eligibility for children to higher levels than adults through Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and in Oklahoma, children with family incomes up to 210% of poverty (about $49,500 for a family of four) are eligible for Medicaid or CHIP. As was the case before the ACA, undocumented immigrants remain ineligible to enroll in Medicaid, and recent lawfully residing immigrants are subject to certain Medicaid eligibility restrictions.'

The uninsured in Oklahoma can be found here as of 2014 (click here). Kindly recall from the graph above those in Oklahoma insured by Medicaid is grossly reduced compared to states with Medicaid expansion. The report of the uninsured as of 2014 in Oklahoma also states the majority is within its minority populations of African Americans and Hispanic.

African Americans or as per the report, The Blacks are 24.5 percent uninsured and the Hispanics are 45.1 percent of the uninsured. 

Under the ACA, people with incomes between 100% and 400% of poverty may be eligible for premium tax credits when they purchase coverage in a Marketplace, as indicated by the bright blue shading in Figure 1. The amount of the tax credit is based on income and the cost of insurance, and tax credits are only available to people who are not eligible for other coverage, such as Medicaid/CHIP, Medicare, or employer coverage, and who are citizens or lawfully-present immigrants. Citizens and lawfully-present immigrants with incomes above 400% of poverty can purchase unsubsidized coverage through the Marketplace. Because the ACA envisioned low-income people receiving coverage through Medicaid, people below poverty are not eligible for Marketplace subsidies. Thus, some adults in Oklahoma fall into a “coverage gap” of earning too much to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to qualify for premium tax credits, as shown by the orange shading in Figure 1. People in the coverage gap are ineligible for financial assistance under the ACA, while people with higher incomes are eligible for tax credits to purchase coverage....

June 20, 2012
 
Affordable Care Act Promises Relief (click here) from Tragedy of Premature Deaths; Loss of Reform Would Mean Continuing Nightmare for Many American Families Stakes in Debate over "Obamacare" for Too Many Americans: Life or Death....

...The number of deaths nationally and in every state are detailed in a report released today by the consumer advocacy organization Families USA, which found that, in 2010, more than 26,000 Americans between the ages of 25 and 64 died prematurely because they did not have health coverage. For Oklahoma, those national figures translate to 452, or approximately nine Oklahomans every week....

Considering the statistics related to the Medicaid Expansion for Oklahoma, that means 6 to 7 of the weekly uninsured dead are minority Americans. The refusal of the Medicaid Expansion in Oklahoma is definitely racist. That reality probably is reflected in most of the states declining the Medicaid Expansion. The denial of any state of the Medicaid Expansion can be litigated when realizing how very racist the state is in respect to healthcare for all their citizens and it's fatal reality.

Does the USA want treatments and cures for disease? Do they want their federal health care dollars spent efficiently?

The use of fetal tissue increases the likelihood of finding treatment and cures. The use of fetal tissue provides EFFICIENT use of taxpayer dollars used to find treatment and cures.

How do Republicans justify deaths that occur that can be averted with fetal tissue research? Tell living Americans they can die because the vital research needed to find treatments and cures for their disease didn't occur or didn't occur fast enough. Say that from Republican platforms. I want to hear it. I want to hear how Republicans are going to say to Americans their diseases will not be cured or treated IN TIME to save their lives. Go ahead. Victimize all those involved in saving American lives. Go ahead. But, be sure the TRUTH is told and not Republican talking points that isolate facts for their rhetoric. Go ahead.

August 11, 2015
By Collin Brinkley

Boston — The furor on Capitol Hill (click here) over Planned Parenthood has stoked a debate about the use of tissue from aborted fetuses in medical research, but U.S. scientists have been using such cells for decades to develop vaccines and seek treatments for a host of ailments, from vision loss and neurological disorders to cancer and AIDS.

Anti-abortion activists set off the uproar by releasing undercover videos of Planned Parenthood officials that raised questions of whether the organization was profiting from the sale of fetal tissue. Planned Parenthood has denied making any profit and said it charges fees solely to cover its costs.

University laboratories that buy such cells strongly defend their research, saying tissue that would otherwise be thrown out has played a vital role in lifesaving medical advances and holds great potential for further breakthroughs.

Fetal cells are considered ideal because they divide rapidly, adapt to new environments easily and are less susceptible to rejection than adult cells when transplanted.

“If researchers are unable to work with fetal tissue, there is a huge list of diseases for which researchers would move much more slowly, rather than quickly, to find their cause and how they can be cured,” Stanford University spokeswoman Lisa Lapin said in an email....

US Veterans' lives are at risk due to the lack of Congressional will to control costs of vital drugs. Wall Street wins and US Veterans lose.

Statistics to the left are in the report found with in a study - click here.

The majority of Americans contracting Hepatitis C are our veterans.





December 1, 2015
By Chip Reid

On Tuesday, (click here) a Senate report found Gilead Sciences, which makes a cure for a fatal form of hepatitis, is more interested in profits than patients. The cure was invented under the leadership of a celebrated doctor in the Department of Veterans Affairs, but at $1,000 a pill, even the VA can't afford to save the lives of veterans who need it.

In 2013, Vietnam veteran Zion Yisrael was told he had five years to live. He has stage 4 liver disease, caused by hepatitis C -- which has infected as many as 230,000 veterans. Most veterans contracted it in Vietnam where it was spread by battlefield blood transfusions and vaccinations.
"The longer it goes, the harder it is to treat," he said....

Planned Parenthood requires security guards, not funding cuts.

The US Senate is once again voting on repealing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act which includes a defunding bill for Planned Parenthood. I doubt there will be an amendment that spends funding for armed guards to Planned Parenthood sites.

December 1, 2015
By Alex M. Johnson and Vivian Glover

The man charged with killing (click here) three people at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado, has targeted the agency before, his ex-wife said Tuesday.
Robert Lewis Dear, 57, could face the death penalty if he's convicted in Friday's attack, in which a police officer and two civilians were killed during a siege lasting five hours. Law enforcement officials told NBC News that after he was arrested, Dear talked about "no more baby parts" in reference to Planned Parenthood....

The Kentucky economy is expected to average about 138,000 job openings annually between 2012 and 2022. (click here)

...One-third of new jobs created between 2012 and 2022 will be in one of three very large occupational groups. 
Employment in three major occupational groups — Healthcare Practitioners and Technical Occupations, Office and Administrative Support Occupations and Sales and Related Occupations — will grow 22.5, 10.1, and 8.5 percent respectively between 2012 and 2022, and will add the most new jobs over the ten-year period.  (See page 6, Table 1.)  These three major groups are expected to provide about 33.6 percent of total job growth from 2012 to 2022....

According to this table in the same report the jobs added in the healthcare fields carry the majority of jobs created in Kentucky through 2022. When Majority Leader Mitch McConnell states there are no jobs generated from the ACA, he is grossly lying. Not just a little white lie, but, a huge lie that will cause enormous contraction of the Kentucky economy.  Should the political grandstanding taking place in the US Senate today actually become law, there would be a recession across the USA that would fall third to the Great Depression and second to the 2008 Global economic collapse.

Healthcare Practitioners and Technical Occupations is 22.5 percent job growth in Kentucky through 2022. Healthcare Support Occupations comprise 23.0 percent of the Kentucky economic growth. Personal care and Service Occupations provides 15.7 percent of the job growth in Kentucky to 2022.

If the Obamacare bills were passed  into law by the majority Republican House and Senate two thirds of the jobs in Kentucky to 2022 would be impacted and the state would fall into economic depression.

If any US House Representative or US Senator were to examine the same factual evidence in their state, the same outcomes would mirror that or Kentucky. The US Congress cannot afford to allow the ACA to be repealed. They are once again using the power of the Congress to carry out political objectives. They are in ethical violations of the Congress. EVERYONE of the Congressmen or women stating there is negative impact of the ACA are unethical due to their lies AND are practicing politics at the cost of taxpayer dollars.

The USA does penance for it's carbon sins.

December 1, 2015
By Nick Perry Kelly P. Kissel

Majuro Atoll, Marshall Islands - Valentino Keimbar (click here) hides from the intense heat in the shade of a breadfruit tree, waiting for his basketball game to begin. It was supposed to start a couple of hours ago, maybe three, but time matters little here on the Marshall Islands.

Keimbar would love to stay on this tiny string of atolls in the vast Pacific Ocean, which he considers a precious gift from his ancestors. But he fears hotter weather and rising seas may soon force everyone to go, and that many will choose an unlikely place nearly 10,000 kilometres away: Springdale, Arkansas.

For more than three decades, Marshallese have moved in the thousands to the landlocked Ozark Mountains for better education, jobs and health care, thanks to an agreement that lets them live and work in the U.S. This historical connection makes it an obvious destination for those facing a new threat: global warming....

At a time when the word immigration is a bad word in the USA, the residence of the Marshall Islands have no choice but to relocate in the USA as they no longer have a livable home country. 

December 2, 2015
 By Coral Davenport

...Mr. deBrum’s (click here) focus is squarely on the West’s wallets — recouping “loss and damage,” in negotiators’ parlance, for the destruction wrought by the rich nations’ industrial might on the global environment. Many other low-lying nations are just as threatened by rising seas. In Bangladesh, some 17 percent of the land could be inundated by 2050, displacing about 18 million people. But the Marshall Islands holds an important card: Under a 1986 compact, the roughly 70,000 residents of the Marshalls, because of their long military ties to Washington, are free to emigrate to the United States, a pass that will become more enticing as the water rises on the islands’ shores....

I am quite surprised the Republican majorities haven't passed a bill to alter the accord that President Obama would have to veto. But, I don't know why I am surprised nothing has been done about the people of the Marshall Islands; the Republicans only pass legislation that is politically motivated and known to be an issue on FOX News. The islanders are safe in Arkansas though, FOX News won't carry their problem to a national audience because it would bring the climate crisis to reality. FOX News would be undone if they hinted human induced global warming is real. No audience, no ratings, no power mongering and no adrenaline rush. It just won't be the same.

Haider al-Abadi is Maliki's replacement and is now saying "Yankee go home."

2 December 2015
  
Iraq has said that any deployment (click here) of foreign troops on its soil cannot happen without approval of its government.
The Iraqi prime minister's comments came in response to the earlier announcement by the United States Defense Secretary Ashton Carter that the US will deploy "specialised" troops to Iraq to help fight the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group.
"We do not need foreign ground combat forces on Iraqi land," Haider al-Abbadi said in a statement on Tuesday.
"The Iraqi government stresses that any military operation or the deployment of any foreign forces - special or not - in any place in Iraq cannot happen without its approval and coordination and full respect of Iraqi sovereignty."...

We don't belong in Iraq.

We never did.

9 September 2014
By Mohamed Madi

Iraq's deputy speaker (click here) Haider al-Abadi is the country's new prime minister.

One of Iraq's most senior politicians, he has held several high-profile posts since returning to Iraq from exile in 2003.
He succeeded in deposing incumbent Nouri Maliki as the preferred candidate of the Shia State of Law parliamentary coalition, although Mr Maliki initially bitterly disputed the appointment.
But Mr Maliki later announced he would step aside and back Mr Abadi.
Mr Abadi faces the task of rebuilding trust between the Iraqi government and the country's Kurds and Sunnis, who felt increasingly alienated under Mr Maliki.
He takes over at a time of deep national crisis, as Islamic State militants have taken over large swathes of northern Iraq....
 

December 1, 2015
By Rose Troup Buchanan

Four suspected jihadists (click here) have been arrested after they were believed to have been part of a terror cell that made threats against the Pope.

The four Kosovan men, three of whom were arrested in Italy and one in Kosovo, are suspected of “condoning terrorism” and “inciting racial hatred”, according to Italian police officials.

While none of the four appeared to have been active in any specific threat, authorities said they had been active online in promoting their ideology and described them as “highly dangerous”.

Those seeking to promote hate think they have found a successful way of organizing people to carry it out. This has nothing to do with Iraq or Syria or Daesh. It is a mimic. That is the danger of Daesh. Fighting a war is only escalating the ideology with people that want to promote hate so they can also have a war, too.

Among the alleged threats found online, prosecutors said the most disturbing messages were aimed at Pope Francis.

"Remember there won't be any pope after this one. This is the last. Don't forget what I am telling you," chief prosecutor Tommaso Buonanno told the Associated Press.

"They were threatening the Pope, celebrating the recent attacks in Paris and threatening the former US ambassador to Kosovo," Carmine Esposito, Brescia’s police chief, at the centre of the investigation, told Rai Tre.

Italy has increased its security in the wake of the Paris attacks that killed 130 people. Four Moroccans were expelled from the country last week.

2 December 2015
By Rodolfo C. Estimo, Jr.

Riyadh: Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al-Asheikh (click here) has called on preachers in the Kingdom to fight deviant thoughts and values that are not Islamic.
“This is in keeping with the significant role you play in contemporary Saudi society in view of various attempts to destabilize security and Islamic teachings and values,” Al-Asheikh said. He made the call during a meeting with preachers and workers in Badiah district.
Al-Asheikh said that guiding Muslims along the right path in accordance with correct teachings and values is part and parcel of their Islamic duties and responsibilities.
However, he said: “While you go about your task in disseminating Islamic thoughts, you’re at the same time expected to exercise tolerance to achieve the desired goals.” He urged preachers to be focused and exercise patience in the pursuit of what is right and proper, and to keep their links and associations with scholars.

I sincerely believe the Arab nations have to fight for the return of peaceful Islam after the illegal USA invasion into Iraq. The USA cannot do anything about this except stay out of Iraq and Syria.

2 December 2015
By the Arab News
 
Jeddah: Saudi Arabia has invited 65 leading members of the Syrian opposition to attend a meeting in Riyadh from Dec. 11 to 14 to discuss developing a united front against the Bashar Assad regime ahead of possible peace negotiations, according to media reports Tuesday.

Ahmed Ramadan, a member of the Syrian National Coalition (SNC), confirmed the Saudi Foreign Ministry had “invited 65 figures to attend the conference in Riyadh,” one report stated.
He said no names were listed but it is expected participants would include 20 members from the SNC, seven from the National Coordination Body, 10 to 15 military leaders from various groups, and 20 to 25 independents. There would reportedly also be business leaders and religious figures attending.
Ramadan said the SNC would soon name those who would attend. He said the SNC had hoped that it would have more representatives because it represents several “large” groups, including the Kurdish National Council and parties that signed the Damascus Declaration in 2005.

 September 28, 2013
 By Stephen Lendman 

The Western-sponsored (click here) Syrian National Coalition (SNC) lacks legitimacy. It’s an artificial construct. It operates extrajudicially.
It’s a rogue outlaw gang. It supports war. It abhors peaceful conflict resolution. It wants Assad toppled. It wants governance subservient to Western interests replacing him.
It’s anti-democratic. It wants diktat rule. It wants Syrian sovereignty destroyed. It wants Syrians having no say over who’ll lead them. It represents what the great majority of Syrians oppose.
It doesn’t matter. Obama wants another imperial trophy. He intends war to get it.
On September 22, Russia Today (RT) headlined “Syrian National Coalition to attend Geneva 2 if transitional government on table.”
On July 6, Ahmad Jarba became SNC’s new president. He replaced acting head George Sabra. He succeeded Mouaz al-Khatib.
He resigned over lack of enough international support, internal divisions, and disarray among “rebel” factions.
According to the Economist, “there is little reason to believe (Jarba) will wield more influence than his successor(s).”...
...Moscow’s prepared to set a date. “The (SNC) vocally opposed the Russian-American plan to destroy Syrian chemical weapons.” said Lavrov....

We are dealing with tribes again. Pakistan has been dealing with tribes for it's entire existence. Why does the USA believe there can be a governing authority any different than that of Pakistan in Syria?

8 July 2013

...Mr Jarba has played a vital role in bridging (click here) the gap between tribes in eastern Syria and the opposition.
He is close to the faction of Syrian secular dissident Michel Kilo, who has sought to gain the support of minority groups in the face of a possible Islamist takeover.
Mr Jarba was a member of the opposition Syrian National Council (SNC), before joining the coalition.
He suspended his membership of the National Coalition in March 2013, following its appointment of Ghassan Hitto as prime minister of the organisation's interim government. Mr Jarba went on to help administer rebel-held areas.
According to the National Coalition's Facebook page, Mr Jarba "has been supporting the Syrian revolution, providing medical and military aid, since the beginning of the revolution". He has also been a "key figure in establishing political diplomacy", it says.
In recent months, Mr Jarba has been a leading advocate of providing arms to the opposition forces.
Although he often wears a Western-style suit and tie, some of Mr Jarba's official photographs show him wearing the traditional robe worn by Arab tribesmen.

December 1, 2015
By John Seewer

A white Cleveland patrolman (click here) shot a 12-year-old black boy carrying a pellet gun told investigators that he and his partner continuously yelled "show me your hands" before he fired the fatal shots, according to the officer's statement released by prosecutors Tuesday.
The rookie officer said of the estimated two-second encounter that Tamir Rice didn't obey his commands and that he saw the boy pulling a weapon out of his waist band.
"I knew it was a gun and I knew it was coming out," officer Timothy Loehmann said in the statement given to investigators.
It turned out Tamir was carrying a nonlethal, Airsoft-type gun that shoots plastic pellets when Loehmann shot him twice outside a recreation center on Nov. 22, 2014. He died a day later.
A grand jury will decide if Loehmann or his field training officer should be charged criminally for Tamir's death....

There was absolutely no MEANINGFUL warning. The police are lying. They shot before they thought yet alone warn a 12 year old to put his toy on the ground and put his hands up.

Chicago has been knee deep in corruption for a long time.

December 1, 2015

By Bill Ruthhart, Hal Dardick and John Byrne

Chicago Tribune

Mayor Rahm Emanuel (click here) on Tuesday announced he has dismissed Chicago police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, citing a lack of public trust in the police leadership in the wake of the high-profile shooting that eventually led to a white officer being charged with first-degree murder in the death of a black teen shot 16 times in a Southwest Side street last year."Superintendent McCarthy knows that a police officer is only as effective as when he has the trust of those he serves," Emanuel said at a City Hall news conference where he appointed a task force to look at police accountability.
Emanuel said he and McCarthy on Sunday began discussing the future of the Police Department and "the undeniable fact that the public trust in the leadership of the department has been shaken and eroded."
"This morning, I formally asked for his resignation," said Emanuel, who said McCarthy can be proud of his record. "Now is the time for fresh eyes and new leadership to confront the challenges the department and our community and our city are facing as we go forward."...

Deep seated corruption has a life of it's own. It is safe to say  Chicago has a problem that needs to be addressed. Some times a leader of such a city has to find the time and incident to bring about scrutiny and change. I think Mayor Emanuel has to lead Chicago to a renewal of law enforcement. He has had some terrible problems with police problems, including the manipulation of police statistics. It is time Mayor Emanuel clean house and find people worthy of their salary.

...On October 28, a pathologist ruled (click here) the death of Tiara Groves a homicide by “unspecified means.” This rare ruling means yes, somebody had killed Groves, but the pathologist couldn’t pinpoint the exact cause of death.

Given the finding of homicide—and the corroborating evidence at the crime scene—the Chicago Police Department should have counted Groves’s death as a murder. And it did. Until December 18. On that day, the police report indicates, a lieutenant overseeing the Groves case reclassified the homicide investigation as a noncriminal death investigation. In his writeup, he cited the medical examiner’s “inability to determine a cause of death.”

That lieutenant was Denis Walsh—the same cop who had played a crucial role in the alleged cover-up in the 2004 killing of David Koschman, the 21-year-old who died after being punched by a nephew of former mayor Richard M. Daley. Walsh allegedly took the Koschman file home. For years, police officials said that it was lost. After the Sun-Times reported it missing, the file mysteriously reappeared....

The cover-ups need to stop with better law enforcement for the city. Firing the Chicago police commissioner is just the beginning and not the end.

Sometimes it seems as though there are only Republicans in the USA. "W"rong.

Saturday, December 19, 2015 (click here)
ABC News Democratic Debate
8pm ET (7pm CT, 5pm PT) 
Aired On: ABC (Live Stream)  
Location: Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire  
Sponsors: ABC News, WMUR  
Moderators: David Muir and Martha Raddatz  
Candidates: Clinton, Sanders, O'Malley

Sea ice increases does not prove there is a cooling Earth, quite the contrary.

Sea ice increases in Antarctica is due to glacier melt water runoff. It has nothing to do with cooling oceans. More sea ice in Antarctica is bad news. It means the glaciers and terraces are melting. It is spring in the southern hemisphere. The "Melt Water" run off is creating more sea ice. That is all it is.

February 10, 2015
Sea ice increases in Antarctica (click here) do not make up for the accelerated Arctic sea ice loss of the last decades, a new NASA study finds. As a whole, the planet has been shedding sea ice at an average annual rate of 13,500 square miles (35,000 square kilometers) since 1979, the equivalent of losing an area of sea ice larger than the state of Maryland every year.

“Even though Antarctic sea ice reached a new record maximum this past September, global sea ice is still decreasing,” said Claire Parkinson, author of the study and climate scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “That’s because the decreases in Arctic sea ice far exceed the increases in Antarctic sea ice.”...

The scientific community has seen this before when the UK expedition measured marked increases in sea ice around Antarctica a few years ago.

What is new about this report is the global picture. Antarctica's sea ice increase is accompanied by a global picture of decreasing sea ice. That is new. But, it all fits the picture when realizing we are losing our ice fields and glaciers. It wasn't long ago politicians would get their hands on a report about advancing glaciers, but, they never bothered to see the global picture and why those advances occurred. This report does the hard work to bring global issues to focus when reporting ONE MEASURE of what may seem like relief to Earth's warming. It is inaccurate to speak in pieces of a global phenomena.

In 2004 the Taku Glacier was reported as having advances to it's width, height and length. The Taku Glacier is at the top of the Juneau Icefields.  The Juneau icefields spans Alaska, USA and Canada. They are considered temperate glaciers because they react quickly to climate change. They are located near the Pacific Ocean and the temperature of that ocean.

In the very same time frame in 2004, the lowest glacier in elevation in the Juneau Icefields, the Mendenhall Glacier was in profound retreat. 

Those two realities brought an understanding that warming was having different effects on different glaciers, but, why? 

The picture to the left is the Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau, Alaska. It's terminus (front edge) at one time existed all the way to the falls to the right, the falls were ice and not water and the height of the glacier was not easily climbed. All the exposed ground in this picture was once buried under the Mendenhall Glacier.

Why was it the Mendenhall Glacier was retreating and losing ice and receiving no recharge (recharge is the snow that falls on top of the glacier. Eventually, that snow will compact under the weight of more snow and become the famous blue ice) while the Taku Glacier was advancing due to receiving recharge?

The DEW POINT. 

The dewpoint is the temperature to which a given parcel of air must be cooled, at constant barometric pressure, for water vapor to condense into water. The condensed water is called dew. The dewpoint is a saturation point.

The water vapor of Juneau icefields that provided recharge to all the glaciers was no longer on ground level. The dew point had moved up in elevation. The air near the lowest glacier no longer was saturated with water to provide the snow for recharge. The Taku glacier was to benefit from the hotter troposphere. 

So, in relation to sea ice, the global picture shows a decrease, while Antarctica actually showed an increase in sea ice. There is only one Antarctica. The loss of ice on the Antarctica continent resulted in a colder circumpolar temperature as the melted ice ranoff in that circulation. The colder temperature of that water flow resulted in larger amounts of sea ice.

The reason politicians are successful in the USA to divert the truth about Earth's warming is because the planet is different in every corner of the world. There is different geography is also different effects on climate. The best example of such microclimates occurs in Africa. 

...Casey was taking part in a September 2012 research expedition (click here) to Kilimanjaro to study the ice at the summit. For scale, bright tents that were part of the scientists' base camp are visible in the lower left of the northern ice field image.

Despite Mount Kilimanjaro’s location in the tropics, the dry and cold air at the top of the mountain has sustained large quantities of ice for more than 10,000 years. At points, ice has completely surrounded the crater. Studies of ice core samples show that Kilimanjaro’s ice has persisted through multiple warm spells, droughts, and periods of abrupt climate change.

But trends beginning more than a century ago suggest Kilimanjaro’s peaks may soon be ice-free. Between 1912 and 2011, the mass of ice on the summit decreased by more than 85 percent. Researchers say it’s no longer a question of whether the ice will disappear but when. Estimates vary, but several scientists predict it will be gone by 2060....
 
Mount Kilimanjaro clearly states when elevation exists in tropical rainforests, there are glaciers. However, in the case of Kilimanjaro, it was the forest at lower elevations that protected the ice from disappearing due to warming at higher elevations. 

The rainforests were degraded by human activity and that lush green place in the foothills of Kilimanjaro provided water vapor to allow recharge at the top of the mountain. 

When the rainforest disappeared so did the snow and Mount Kilimanjaro lost it's ice. In that reality know the negative feedback loop. As the forest supported the ice cap, the ice cap also cooled the foothills. The foothills rainforests would not return without considerable effort to begin THE BALANCE of the mountain all over again.

Global systems are balanced. When balance is lot there is unrelenting negative feedback loops that are difficult to bring about to restore, but, it is vital they are restored.

No individual event defines a global climate crisis. The entire picture is where the truth lies.