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Bout is alleged to have fueled multiple conflicts across the globe through arms dealing, sometimes to both sides ... A senior defense official is concerned that convicted Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, the "Merchant of Death" .. could go back to illegally trafficking weapons, thereby fueling deadly conflicts around the world. "I think there is a concern that he would return to doing the same kind of work that he's done in the past.. Bout was in the middle of serving a 25-year prison sentence in a U.S. prison for several offenses, including conspiring to kill Americans ... Bout, a...

BREITBART BIDENFLATIONUKRAINE WAROPEN BORDERDEM-CITY CRIME WAVETRANSANITYMASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE David Plouffe: Trump Will Not Run for President in 2024 PAM KEY18 Apr 20220 1:26 Former campaign manager for the 2008 Barack Obama campaign David Plouffe said Monday onMSNBC’s “The Beat” that he believed former President Donald Trump will not run for president in 2024. When asked about Trump, Plouffe said, “I said for some time, and I may end up eating these words, I doubt he ends up running. Because I think, at end of the day, you can see the trend lines. In some focus groups that have been...

Markets are superb at turning what participants believe to be facts into prices. An intriguing new National Bureau of Economic Research study on market expectations about climate change looks at the price trends of Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) weather futures contracts. "The evidence shows that financial markets fully incorporate climate model projections," conclude Columbia University's agricultural and resource economist Wolfram Schlenker and sustainable development researcher Charles Taylor. "We find that the market has been accurately pricing in climate change, largely in line with global climate models, and that this began occurring at least since the early 2000s when the weather...

A meeting between George W. Bush and the Rev. Jesse Jackson after the president addressed the National Urban League in Pittsburgh on Monday has black Republicans roiling with anger and incomprehension. "We are outraged that the people around the president would do such a thing," said Niger Innis, spokesman for the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE). "This amounts to aiding and abetting a hustler who has been exposed and is a total repudiation of people like my father, Roy Innis, who have been fighting for a positive cause for years." The 15-minute closed-door meeting also was attended by Rep. Elijah...

Preacher says GOP delaying 2nd coming Monday, October 09, 2006 Becky Gaylord Plain Dealer Reporter Voters should oust congressional Republican leaders because U.S. foreign policy is delaying the second coming of Jesus Christ, according to a evangelical preacher trying to influence closely contested political races. K.A. Paul railed against the war in Iraq on Sunday before a crowd of 1,000 at the New Spirit Revival Center in Cleveland Heights, his first stop on what he hopes is a 30-city campaign. The Houston-based preacher said he believes that the Bush administration has delayed the second coming because U.S. foreign policy has...

A South African company in the spotlight for paying $100,000 in speaking fees to White House adviser David Plouffe is also in business with a Liberian official under U.N. sanctions for his ties to convicted war criminal and former Liberian dictator Charles Taylor. That's among the latest details to emerge on the connections involving MTN Group, a subsidiary of which paid President Obama's former campaign manager for engagements in late 2010, shortly before he joined the White House. The ties to Liberia's bloody Taylor era center on Benoni Urey, who was commissioner of maritime affairs in Liberia during Taylor's reign....

Islamic SocialismFrom the CIA factbook: Following a 1969 military coup, Col. Muammar Abu Minyar al-QADHAFI began to espouse his own political system, the Third Universal Theory. The system was a combination of socialism and Islam derived in part from tribal practices and was supposed to be implemented by the Libyan people themselves in a unique form of "direct democracy.[1] The "Green Book" - Arabism, Islam & socialism, with Islam the main line Author John L. Esposito: Under Qaddafi three interrelated ideas were woven into Libya's ideological identity: Pan-Arabism, socialism, and Islam. Qaddafi's appeals to Islam were influenced by his...

Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi is well known now for the abuses he has inflicted on his own people during more than four decades of brutal rule in Libya, but few remember the vast campaign of carnage and terrorism he orchestrated across West Africa and Europe when he was at the height of his powers. Nor are his more recent alliance with Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and his long-standing relationship with Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua -- both of whom are busy trampling their constitutions and moving toward dictatorship -- well understood. And the fact that all three governments support the Revolutionary Armed...

Prosecutors trying former Liberian president Charles Taylor for war crimes are asking judges to subpoena supermodel Naomi Campbell as a witness in the U.N. case against the exiled leader. Prosecutors filed a motion asking for Campbell’s testimony about uncut “blood diamonds” given to Campbell by Taylor while the two attended a dinner at the home of South African president Nelson Mandela in 1997.

Note: Photo included. SNIPPET: "Bout and American-born pal Richard Chichakli were accused of creating a new business, Samar Airlines, which they thought was clean of any connection to their own bloody dealings. Starting in the summer of 2007, Samar Airlines started making deals for airplanes and crews to ferry contraband between the United States and Tajikistan, the indictment said." SNIPPET: "The Russian-born Bout is accused of wiring $1.7 million from bank accounts in Kazakhstan, Cyprus, Russia through banks in New York City and Salt Lake City to finance the scheme." SNIPPET: "Bout, who is accused of supplying weapons to real...

LIBERIA'S former president Charles Taylor denied that he had ever eaten human flesh or ordered his fighters to do so as he answered allegations of cannibalism at his war crimes trial. "It is sickening. You must be sick to believe it,'' the one-time warlord testified in the Special Court for Sierra Leone, sitting in The Hague. "It makes you feel like throwing up.'' Mr Taylor, 61, said he could not dispute that there were cannibals in certain parts of Liberia, but claims that he was among them were "total nonsense''. A witness had testified at the trial that he ate...

BANGKOK, Thailand - A Russian dubbed the "Merchant of Death" for allegedly supplying weapons to Africa's bloody conflicts over power and diamonds was arrested Thursday in Thailand on suspicion of conspiring to smuggle guns to Colombia's leftist rebels. Viktor Bout, 41, whose dealings reportedly inspired a 2005 movie about the illicit arms trade, was arrested at U.S. request in his hotel room in Bangkok, said police Lt. Gen. Pongpat Chayapan. Bout had eluded arrest for years and was finally seized after a four-month sting organized by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. In New York, federal authorities unsealed a criminal complaint...

The Russian parliament and media refer to him merely as a “Russian businessman.” But to much of the rest of the world, Viktor Bout is known as the “Merchant of Death,” the most notorious member of the dark fraternity of global weapons traffickers who arm terrorist organizations, as well as the tyrannical regimes and brutal warlords and militias responsible for horrendous genocidal slaughters over the past two decades. Since his March 2008 arrest in Bangkok, Thailand, in an elaborate U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration sting, Viktor Bout has been in Bangkok’s Klong Prem Special Prison awaiting trial. The U.S. Department of...

"Chuckie" Taylor, the son of former Liberian President Charles Taylor has been sentenced by a US court to 97 years in prison for torture.

Taylor 'had billions' in US banks Liberia's ex-President Charles Taylor had transactions of about $5bn in two US bank accounts during his presidency, his prosecutor has told the BBC. Mr Taylor is being tried by a UN-backed war crimes court for backing rebels in Sierra Leone while in office. He denies trading arms for diamonds and challenged the international community when he stood down in 2003 to trace and seize any monies they alleged he had. If any was found he would "turn them over to the Liberian people". During Sierra Leone's decade-long civil war, which officially ended in...

John Armor is a student of history. He knows where the country has been and where he would like to take it in the future. As a Republican candidate for the 11th Congressional District, Armor has the chance to make an impact. Armor is running against Asheville City Councilman Carl Mumpower and former Henderson County Republican Party Chairman Spence Campbell in the Republican primary. Raised in the Baltimore area, Armor attended Yale University, where he earned degrees in political science and English. He took a job at an advertising agency shortly after graduation but wanted a new challenge. He enrolled...

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) -- Grim tales of cannibalism highlighting the brutality of West Africa's civil wars emerged in testimony Thursday at the war crimes trial of former Liberian President Charles Taylor. Joseph "Zigzag" Marzah, who described himself as Taylor's chief of operations and head of the death squad before Taylor became president, said African peacekeepers and even United Nations personnel were killed and eaten on the battlefield by Taylor's militiamen. Prosecutors described Marzah as a key witness with inside knowledge of the former Liberian president's operations in Liberia and neighboring Sierra Leone, where he is accused of responsibility for the...

Video footage of mutilated victims of Sierra Leone rebels has been shown at the war crimes trial of Liberia's former President Charles Taylor. Mr Taylor - who is accused of trading weapons for diamonds - showed no emotion as the first witness, an expert on "blood diamonds", gave evidence. The delayed trial has resumed at The Hague after a six-month delay. Mr Taylor is the first African former head of state to face an international war crimes court and faces 11 charges. He denies responsibility for atrocities committed by rebels during the civil war in neighbouring Sierra Leone. Video of...

You’d think that what happens in western Carolina, in the 11th Congressional District, isn’t very important to the powers-that-be in Washington. That’s usually so. But not now. And two extraordinary events that have occurred a year and a half before the 2008 election for that seat, prove the point. Some of you are aware of the TV ads now being run by AFSCME that paint freshman Congressman Heath Shuler, NC 11th, as a good guy. The ad sponsor’s full name is American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. This union is committed to steady expansion of government at all...

That title is not a misprint. This is about the 2008 election in the 11th District of North Carolina. First, the big picture now. The Democrats have taken control in the House, contrary to my prediction (I was nearly alone in that). The Democrats have gained in the Senate, but pending results yet to come after midnight EST, it looks like the Republicans will hold a vary narrow margin in the Senate. In my own District, NC 11th, 16-year incumbent Republican, Charles Taylor, has been defeated by Heath Shuler, a neophyte Democrat who billed himself as “a conservative” and a...