A former senior manager at Boeing said he repeatedly warned company executives about production issues at the factory where the 737 Max jets were being built, but his recommendations to shut down production were rebuffed.
Edward Pierson, who was a senior manager at Boeing’s Renton, Wash., factory, said a push to increase production of the 737 Max from 47 a month to 52, created a “factory in chaos.”
Employees were working seven days. Overtime had more than doubled and in some cases, Pierson said, employees were doing jobs for which they had no training.
“The factory did not have enough skilled employees, specifically mechanics, electricians and technicians to keep up with the backlog of work,” Pierson said in remarks prepared for a hearing Wednesday before the House Transportation Committee. “I witnessed numerous instances where manufacturing employees failed to communicate effectively between shifts, often leaving crews to wonder what work was properly completed.”
APACHE JUNCTION AZ (IFS) -- The coward General John Kelly keeps hiding behind Donald Trump's dress as he comes out of the darkness to express his warning to Trump before he left his office that he would be "impeached".
Kelly is so brave, yet he can not find the time or the courage to face one little Congresswoman Frederica Wilson from Florida and tell her that he is sorry for lying to the American people about her.
It's so easy to become a real hero in America, by simply saying that you made a terrible mistake and lied about Congresswoman Wilson's position. But you will not, and you will die a bastard and a liar and your stars will be forever tarnished with shame and your legacy will be remembered as an "empty barrel" who bullied women, and I'm sure that you beat your wife several times a month with unkind words and threats.
General Kelly, you and the empty barrels' comments will never go away. They are still here and will be waiting for you until hell freezes over. You will not be remembered as a great person, only a liar, and a bully.
Go save your lying ass president with your "after-the-fact" words that fall on deaf ears, and no one cares about your "warnings". Retired generals are worthless as tits on a boar hog.
The Guardian: Fighting continues on Syria-Turkey border despite ceasefire.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/18/fighting-continues-on-syria-turkey-border-despite-ceasefire
APACHE JUNCTION AZ (IFS) -- This picture will go down in history as the most powerful representation of real power and how Speaker Nancy Pelosi uses an iron fist in a velvet glove to minimize the child's play of President Trump. However, the real story here is the Generals with their heads bowed in shame to his actions.
President Donald Trump went on a Twitter tirade late Wednesday, tweeting photos of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that were taken during a contentious White House meeting that saw top Democrats eventually walk out on the president.
Trump also reportedly called Gen. James Mattis, his former defense secretary, “the world’s most overrated general” and said he wasn’t “tough enough.”
“It was obvious that the meeting was going to get angrier and more defensive. And we felt that the meeting was no longer a meeting in which we thought we would get useful discussion and results. And so we left,” Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., told reporters.
Pelosi told reporters outside the White House that Trump’s behavior was “very sad.” Soon after that, Trump posted a series of photos from the meeting, mockingly asking in one, “Do you think they like me?” and accusing Pelosi herself of having an “unhinged meltdown” in another.
APACHE JUNCTION AZ (IFS) -- Another gutless white racist police officer of Texas proves once again that they are very incapable of doing their jobs, and they are scared of their own shadows. It's the same old song from these punk-ass bitches, "I was in fear of my life". It's the next best justification next to "He's got a gun." It's all about black genocide, and these racist cops prove it day after day. They need to get another job if they are so scared to get out on patrol.
Even a small mouse that you back into a corner is going to fight back. Black American when are you going to get these killings of our citizens under control? The law is the problem. They are the antagonist.
They are killers with guns, and they use any and every excuse to draw their guns and kill us. The law is not on our side. Everyone knows that this case is going to be like every other case --the cops go free or given a slap on the wrist, and they get another job in another town in the state. This is a cancer, and it is killing us.
They murder our kids, our unarmed sons, and daughters and we do nothing. We are not to take the law into our hands -- this is the rope around our necks as they use the law, a badge and a gun to kill innocence persons, who have done nothing.
As it stands now, a person of color can not leave their lights on, they can't leave their doors open, they can't enjoy their own homes without the police making fatal decisions because -- they are in fear of their lives. - KHS
“They murdered this woman”: Texans outraged after an officer shoots a black woman in her own home P.R. Lockhart 3 hrs ago
A black woman was fatally shot in her home Saturday after a Fort Worth, Texas police officer fired into a bedroom window while performing a welfare check at her residence, sparking outrage and calls for police accountability in a community whose trust in law enforcement had already been shaken by other police shootings and the death of Botham Jean in nearby Dallas.
At around 2 am local time on October 12, a neighbor of 28-year-old Atatiana Koquice Jefferson called a non-emergency hotline, saying that he was concerned about an open door at the woman’s residence and wanted to make sure she was okay. According to a statement released by the Fort Worth Police Department, officers arrived at the home at around 2:25 am, and after seeing the open door, walked around the perimeter of the residence.
The department said that while doing so, officers saw a person inside standing near a window. “Perceiving a threat the officer drew his duty weapon and fired one shot striking the person inside the residence,” police said.
That person was Jefferson, who was shot while standing in a bedroom. After firing, officers entered the home and began providing emergency aid, but the woman was pronounced dead at the scene. The department released body camera footage of the shooting on Saturday, showing what happened outside of Jefferson’s home, as well as the residence itself, which had a door open and the lights on inside.
The video shows two officers walking around the outside of Jefferson’s home, looking into screen doors before walking into the backyard. Moving towards a closed window on the first floor, one of the officers quickly points a flashlight at it before drawing his weapon. He then yells, “Put your hands up! Show me your hands!” before firing a shot less than a second later.
At no point in the released video do the men clearly identify themselves as police officers.In addition to the statement and the body camera video, the police department also released edited footage of a firearm officers said they found at the residence, but did not offer any additional information about where Jefferson was in relation to it or if the weapon was ever visible to the officers.
Texas is an open carry state, and state residents are allowed to possess and carry firearms with few exceptions.The officer who shot Jefferson was not named by the police statement. The agency did say that he is a “white male who has been with the department since April of 2018.” The unnamed officer has been placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of an investigation.
Body camera footage and the results of the investigation will be handed over to the Tarrant County District Attorney’s office, which will decide if the officer will face any charges.The shooting has left Fort-Worth’s black residents devastatedJefferson’s shooting, which is the seventh local police shooting involving a civilian since June 1 according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, has left the area’s black residents angered and confused.
Community members say that the shooting proves that they cannot call the police for assistance.“The Fort Worth police murdered this woman. They murdered this woman in her own house,” said Rev. Michael Bell, a local pastor who joined a group of community leaders for a Saturday press conference. “And now, African Americans, we have no recourse.
If we call the police, they will come and kill us. And we know that.”A similar fear was echoed by James Smith, the neighbor of Jefferson’s who called police after noticing the open door and lights at her home, saying that he was concerned about Jefferson and her 8-year old nephew, who also lived at the residence.
“I’m shaken. I’m mad. I’m upset. And I feel it’s partly my fault,” he told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram on Saturday. “If I had never dialed the police department, she’d still be alive.”“I don’t know what went on in the house, but I know that she wasn’t a threat,” he added.
Jack Howland✔@JHowl04 · Oct 12, 2019Replying to @JHowl04Smith was standing outside of the East Allen Avenue home a little after 9 a.m. Saturday along with Pastor @KyevTatum, a community activist. He admitted he was wrestling with his feelings, saying, "If I had never dialed the police department, she'd still be alive."
Jack Howland✔@JHowl04Here's Smith describing why he decided to call a non-emergency police number around 2 a.m. Saturday: 7,8119:37 AM - Oct 12, 2019
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The shooting of Jefferson, who was born in Dallas and graduated from Xavier University in Louisiana according to her Facebook page, has quickly drawn comparisons to the 2018 shooting of Botham Jean, a 26-year old black man fatally shot by former off-duty Dallas officer Amber Guyger as he ate ice cream in his apartment.
For all the concern about military confrontation in the South China Sea, economic leverage might be the most powerful weapon in Beijing’s arsenal. It is deployed more effectively, or at least more often, than all the missiles, tanks, and artillery in the People’s Liberation Army. If power is the ability to force others to do what you want them to do, then China exerts its power with yuan more than with bullets. And its capacity to make one of the world’s most celebrated sports leagues beseech forgiveness of a noncrime is a case study in how it’s done.
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On October 4, Daryl Morey, the general manager of the National Basketball Association’s Houston Rockets, posted a rather anodyne tweet reading, “Fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong.” In short order, nearly every Chinese entity that is in any way involved with American professional basketball suspended its ties to the Rockets: the Chinese Basketball Association, the national television network, the company that holds the $1.5 billion exclusive rights to stream all NBA games in the country, and sponsors ranging from sportswear manufacturers to a bank in Shanghai. Just as speedily, the Rockets’ owner tweeted that Morey “does NOT speak for the @HoustonRockets.” Before the weekend was out, the NBA itself had issued a statement of contrition (though the league’s commissioner has since said, perhaps confusingly, that he supports its staff’s right to free speech).
APACHE JUNCTION AZ (IFS) -- As the bombing of the Kurds positions continue in Northern Syria, Turkey jets and ground artillery is fallon on US Troops and location nearby. If you don't know, the Kurdish Fighters wear the United States Flag upon their uniforms also. It's only a matter of time, that a shell is going to fall upon United States Troops, and they are not going to just sit back and take it like a bunch of flowers in the field. These guys will fight back and discharge their weapons in self-defense.
U.S. Special Forces has been caught up in Turkish shelling against U.S.-backed Kurdish positions in northern Syria, days after #TraitorTrump told his Turkish counterpart he would withdraw U.S. troops from certain positions in the area. WTH?
Knives out
The Islamic State group lost its last foothold of territory in March, when the Syrian Kurdish forces captured the eastern village of Baghouz with U.S. support.
But inside the overcrowded and squalid al-Hol camp, the group’s violent ideology is alive and well, and a new generation is being indoctrinated. The International Committee of the Red Cross says the more than 40,000 children in the camp “have experienced more violence, trauma and displacement in their short life than any of us can imagine.”
Female IS members have turned one of their tents into a court administering the group’s harsh interpretation of Islamic law. Last month, they found a 16-year-old girl guilty of apostasy. After the verdict was announced, women pulled knives from their all-enveloping black robes and stabbed her repeatedly. Kurdish guards evacuated her to a clinic where she later died, according to Abdul-Qader al-Ofeidly, commander of the Kurdish police force known as Asayish, which guards the camps. It was not clear what her nationality was.
He said she was one of several people attacked or killed by fellow detainees. A Syrian man with an amputated leg who moved about on crutches was also stabbed to death by female detainees after being accused of apostasy, the commander said.
Al-Hol is home to some 71,400 people, mostly wives, widows and children of IS fighters. They were swept up in the long and grueling military campaign that eventually dismantled the extremists’ self-styled caliphate, which at its height in 2014 stretched across a third of Syria and Iraq. The SDF was a key U.S. ally in that effort and lost more than 11,000 fighters in battles with the extremists.
Most of the detainees at al-Hol are Syrian and Iraqi women and children. The stabbings took place in a highly-secured area known as the Annex that is home to some 10,000 hard-line IS supporters from other countries.
“Foreign women are trying to impose religious classes on all women in the camp,” al-Ofeidly said.
On Oct. 1, police stormed a tent and rescued two women who had been sentenced to die and were about to be stabbed to death, he said, adding that IS supporters fought back with knives and pistols. He said another raid in September uncovered hand grenades and the body of a woman who was killed by other detainees and has yet to be identified. He said the foreign women are the main threat in the camp and echoed calls by Kurdish leaders for the detainees’ home countries to take them back.
Western countries, including the United States, have refused to repatriate citizens who traveled to the Middle East to join IS, fearing they may not have enough evidence to convict them in criminal courts. The Kurds have long warned that they cannot hold the prisoners indefinitely, and now say their forces are stretched thin as they send reinforcements to the north. They have also halted operations against IS, which continues to stage attacks in Syria and Iraq.
‘Deplorable’ conditions
Azadeh Moaveni, an analyst for the Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank, visited the camp in late June. She said hard-line detainees were trying to maintain the cruel strictures of the caliphate inside the camp, including by whipping women who were caught smoking and encouraging their own children to beat up the children of those deemed unbelievers.
“The foreigner annex of al-Hol has been steadily violent much of the year, partly because it seems to hold a small core of organized and extremely militant women who plot and prey upon others, but also because conditions inside are so deplorable and tense,” said Moaveni, who is also the author of a book about young women who traveled to the region to join IS.
Like many other detention camps in Syria and Iraq, al-Hol is overcrowded and reliant on international aid. Sewage runs through the muddy alleys, food is sometimes scarce and the water used for drinking and cleaning is contaminated.
Robert Onus, the emergency manager in Syria for Doctors Without Borders, known by its French acronym MSF, said the Oct. 1 shooting occurred after guards forcefully dispersed a protest over camp conditions held by women and children. He said MSF treated four women with gunshot wounds in the clinic it runs in the Annex, and that medics and patients took shelter from the gunfire.
“We are extremely worried about the well-being of the people held in the camp,” Onus said. He said MSF was forced to temporarily reduce its activities and that other aid groups were struggling to deliver much-needed assistance to a “very vulnerable population.”
Aid groups have warned that conditions in the camps could get even worse with the Turkish offensive, which has already caused tens of thousands of people to flee, including many who were displaced by earlier rounds of fighting.
Abdul-Karim Omar, who acts as foreign minister in northeastern Syria’s Kurdish-led administration, says al-Hol is a “ticking bomb.”
Apache Junction AZ (IFS) -- By the time you read this, our allies, the Kurds will be facing an all out military assault from Turkey that will be a mass genocide. This will set the date of the United States forever, no one will ever believe in us or even want to help us. What happens to the ten thousand prisoners of the war?
As bad as it is, I hope the Kurds open the doors and free them, it will be hell on Earth for the Turks. Instant payback for betrayal of a friend.
APACHE JUNCTION AZ (IFS) -- As a proud retired member of the United States Armed Services, I find myself with doubled mixed emotions, as yet again we desert our friends and the fighters who laid down their lives and bled on the battlefields of Syria to help beat back the ISIS fighters over the many years.
The United States Pentagon is going to let this president to completely remove the protection of the Kurds and let the Turks invade and declare war on the ones that did the job.
What about all of the prisoners of war that is under the Kurds, that Turkey let pass from their country onto the battlefields? Turkey is just going to release them back into the Europe theatre and they are going to spread disaster and chaos on the streets just for Trump to satisfy the love of Putin.
What a terrible mistake that will cost thousands of lives for many years to generations to come. I am so disappointed in our military leadership that we will let this bad decision place their grandchildren on the battlefields of this curse for the next one hundred years. Shame on them for not having the guts to stop a bloodshed event just for the politics of it all. - KHS
American troops began withdrawing Monday from their positions along Turkey's border in northeastern Syria, in a major shift in U.S. policy harshly criticized by its Kurdish allies, which came despite Pentagon officials' support for maintaining American presence in the region.
The partial pullout comes ahead of an anticipated Turkish invasion, which U.S. President Donald Trump endorsed in a Sunday phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and that U.S.-backed Kurdish-led forces say will overturn five years of achievements in the battle against the Islamic State group.
APACHE JUNCTION AZ (IFS) -- What a disgusting person that we have for the presidency. Trump has given his military power over the Saudia Prince to determine when the United States Military will attack and defend their honor.
These are the same guys that killed Saudi journalist and Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi, and Trump did nothing. These are the same guys who citizens hijacked three airliners and flew them into two buildings and a field that killed over 3,500 Americans and citizens from over 150 countries, and Trump helps them like he owes them a large sum of money, by kissing their asses, licking their boots and swords on his knees. - KHS
Trump's deference to Saudi Arabia infuriates much of D.C.
By NAHAL TOOSI 09/16/2019 04:16 PM EDT
Saudi Arabia is once again a radioactive political football in the U.S., and President Donald Trump can’t resist grabbing it.
In a series of tweets this weekend, Trump indicated that Iran is behind the recent attack on Saudi oil facilities and that the United States will respond after hearing from the Saudi government “under what terms we would proceed.”
His implication — that the royal family in Riyadh will dictate U.S. actions — prompted fury in Washington, where the Saudis have faced an increasingly hostile climate in recent years, especially in Congress and even among some of Trump’s fellow Republicans.
“Trump awaits instructions from his Saudi masters. Having our country act as Saudi Arabia's bitch is not ‘America First,’” Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, who is running for the Democratic nomination for president, tweeted on Sunday night.
Ronald Reagan wore tan suits during his presidency. So did Dwight D. Eisenhower, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
But on Aug. 28, 2014, when President Barack Obama showed up for a White House news conference dressed in beige, the light-colored suit became a matter of national import. Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.) fumed that the suit pointed to a “lack of seriousness” on the president’s part, cable news shows held roundtable discussions, fashion critics and image consultants weighed in, and TV news reporters conducted man-on-the-street interviews to find out what the people of Northeast Ohio thought of the controversial look.
The world’s northernmost town in Svalbard is struggling to cope with rapid climate change, which is leaving residents fearful of what they consider “unnatural” disasters.
One of the most powerful Atlantic hurricanes on record has been pounding the Bahamas for days, leaving a deadly mark and a “historic tragedy” in its wake.
A mayday call documents the terror aboard a scuba diving boat which caught fire off the southern coast of California, killing dozens of people who were sleeping below deck.
Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam says she has never asked Beijing to let her quit her post to end months of protest, responding to a Reuters-obtained recording saying she would step down if she could.
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