Fugitive monkey goes on the run because he was being bullied

www.telegraph.co.uk

File photo: Tamil, the missing lion-tailed macaque from Howletts Animal Park, Kent Photo: SWNS

A monkey on the run in Kent has been missing for two days because he was bullied by other primates.

The lion-tailed macaque is still on the loose despite keepers setting traps and searching the fields and countryside around the animal park.

Keepers from Howletts Animal Park, Kent, are continuing the search for Tamil, the six-year-old macaque who ran away from the zoo on Tuesday night.

It is thought that in-fighting with other macaques in his enclosure prompted Tamil to run away.

Adrian Harland, Animal Director said: "It is common for young male primates to fight as they become more dominant.

“If you’re at the bottom of the hierarchy, it’s likely your position will be made very clear. To run away from aggression is the reasonable response of any primate.” Kit Opie

Man Wearing Tin Foil Hat Faces Firearm Raps

www.thesmokinggun.com

DECEMBER 17--An “agitated” Internal Revenue Service employee was wearing a tin foil hat last week when Massachusetts cops confronted him for illegally possessing several firearms, according to a police report.

Acting on information provided by a Department of Homeland Security investigator, Tewksbury cops Tuesday afternoon pulled over a car driven by Roland Moore, a 46-year-old IRS customer service worker.

The federal agent had told police that he was investigating Moore, who had recently been “evaluated for possible mental health issues.” During conversations with IRS inspectors, Moore reportedly admitted to having guns in his Tewksbury home. A records check, however, showed that Moore’s firearms license had been suspended nearly six years earlier following an assault arrest.

As detailed in a Tewksbury Police Department report, when cops contacted Moore, he was “wearing a piece of tinfoil on his head under his cap” and he was “agitated” by the presence of law enforcement officers.

Moore, who admitted having four firearms in his home, denied a police request to enter the residence and retrieve the weapons. “Moore laughed and stated that it was his natural right to have guns to protect him home,” noted DetectiveAndrew Richardson.

As first reported by The Lowell Sun, police subsequently secured a search warrant for Moore’s home and seized the four guns, two of which were loaded. They also removed a “large amount of ammunition and supplies to manufacture ammunition” from the property.

Moore was charged with four weapons possession counts, as well as failure to surrender firearms as ordered following his assault bust. Moore, who has pleaded not guilty to the charges, is free on his own recognizance.

A District Court judge has barred Moore from possessing dangerous weapons and ammo and has directed him to comply with any current mental health treatment. Moore is next due in court on January 26. 

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'I started the Arab Spring. Now death is everywhere, and extremism blooming'

www.telegraph.co.uk

Tunisian municipal officer Faida Hamdy Photo: AFP

It is hardly surprising that when Faida Hamdy wonders whether she is responsible for everything that happened after her moment of fame she is overwhelmed.

Mrs Hamdy was the council inspector who, five years ago today confiscated the vegetable stall of a street vendor in her dusty town in central Tunisia.

In despair, that young man set himself on fire in a protest outside the council offices. Within weeks, he was dead, dozens of young Arab men had copied him, riots had overthrown his president, and the Arab Spring was under way.

As the world marks the anniversary, Syriaand Iraq are in flames, Libya has broken down, and the twin evils of militant terror and repression stalk the region.

Demonstrators face Egyptian police forces in the streets leading to Tahrir Square  Photo: Julian Simmonds?The Telegraph

“Sometimes I wish I’d never done it,” Mrs Hamdy told The Telegraph, in her only interview to mark the occasion.

Hers is a voice that has been rarely heard: the family of the young man, Mohammed Bouazizi, became unwilling celebrities in the weeks after his lingering death, but a nervous regime arrested Mrs Hamdy when the protests began.

By the time she was acquitted of all charges and released, President Zine el-Abedine Ben Ali had fallen, and media attention was focused on Egypt, Libya and Syria.

“I feel responsible for everything,” she went on. Her voice was shaky as she spoke of the traumatic consequences, five years that have transformed the Middle East but seemingly changed very little in poor, provincial towns like Sidi Bouzeid.

“Sometimes, I blame myself and say it is all because of me. I made history since I was the one who was there and my action contributed to it but look at us now. Meanwhile, Tunisians are suffering as always.”

Mohammed Bouazizi’s death triggered some deep nerve in the Arab world. Many myths were told about his own story and that of Mrs Hamdy, as there were about the nature of subsequent uprisings and downfalls, but there remains a basic truth underlying his experience and that of many others.

Demonstrators turn over a burned out car after reclaiming the side streets near Tahrir Square  Photo: Julian Simmonds/The Telegraph

Corruption, stifling bureaucracy, and repressive police states were holding back a largely youthful population across the region, and their victims had little way to make their frustrations felt other than extreme actions.

Subsequent studies found that self-immolation had already become a common act in Tunisia, accounting already for 15 per cent of all burns cases in Tunis hospitals. Within six months, more than 100 Tunisians had followed suit, and scores more around the Arab world, from Morocco to Saudi Arabia and Iraq, had also set themselves on fire.

Still, not many observers could have imagined the chaos that would ensue, even when Mr Ben Ali gave way to weeks of protest and boarded a plane for Saudi Arabia with his wife and a large chunk of the country’s gold reserves.

Next Hosni Mubarak of Egypt went, after 18 days of telegenic demonstrations in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. Then Col Muammar Gaddafi was forced out, after protests turned into civil war and then international war, with the West’s air forces joining in.

By the time he was bayoneted and shot in October 2011, Syria was in flames, and the West was starting to vacillate about its role, with effects that can still be seen today. Libya, Syria and much of Iraq remain failed states. Egypt is on the brink.

In the process a social uprising had turned into a conflict between Islamism, part peaceful, part violent, and secular governments and politicians; and then between religious sects, as Sunni and Shia turned on each other.

Despite Mrs Hamdy’s despair at the poverty that remains in Tunisia, the country is still seen as the sole success. It has had two general elections in the years since, with a moderate Islamist party, Ennahda, winning the first, before stepping into opposition in the face of an alliance between secular parties that included members of the former regime last year.

"When I look at the region and my country, I regret it all. Death everywhere and extremism blooming, and killing beautiful souls" Faida Hamdy

AMERICA FIRST – OR WORLD WAR III

THE WAR PARTY

Pat Buchanan: GOP hawks shouldn't assume President Putin is a coward

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“If you’re in favor of World War III, you have your candidate.”

So said Rand Paul, looking directly at Gov. Chris Christie, who had just responded to a question from CNN’s Wolf Blitzer as to whether he would shoot down a Russian plane that violated his no-fly zone in Syria.

“Not only would I be prepared to do it, I would do it,” blurted Christie: “I would talk to Vladimir Putin … I’d say to him, ‘Listen, Mr. President, there’s a no-fly zone in Syria; you fly in, it applies to you.’

“Yes, we would shoot down the planes of Russian pilots if in fact they were stupid enough to think that this president was the same feckless weakling … we have in the Oval Office … right now.”

Ex-Gov. George Pataki and ex-Sen. Rick Santorum would also impose a no-fly zone and shoot down Russian planes that violated it. Said Gov. John Kasich, “It’s time we punched the Russians in the nose.”

Carly Fiorina would impose a no-fly zone and not even talk to Putin until we’ve conducted “military exercises in the Baltic States” on Russia’s border. Jeb Bush, too, would impose a no-fly zone.

These warhawks apparently assume that President Putin is a coward who, if you shoot down his warplanes, will back away from a fight.

Are we sure? After the Turks shot down that Sukhoi SU-24, Moscow sent fighter planes to Syria to escort its bombers and has reportedly deployed its lethal S-300 antiaircraft system there.

A U.S. Marine Corps aviator describes the S-300: “A complete game changer for all fourth-gen aircraft [like the F-15, F-16 and F/A-18]. That thing is a beast and you don’t want to get near it.”

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Is Putin bluffing? Are we prepared to ride the up-escalator, at the top of which is nuclear war, if Putin, who has been boasting of his modernized nuclear forces, is also willing to ride it rather than back down?

Uber-hawk Lindsey Graham wants to send tens of thousands of American troops to fight ISIS, and refuses to work with Iran, Russia, or Syria’s Bashar Assad to crush our common enemy ISIS.

Graham prefers “allies,” like the Saudis and Gulf Arabs.

But both have bailed out of the air war on ISIS and sent troops and bombers instead to attack the Houthi rebels in Yemen. Result: The Houthis have been in retreat, and al-Qaida and ISIS are moving into the vacated territory.

Another Mideast base camp for terrorists is being created – by us.

“I miss George W. Bush!” wailed Graham in the undercard debate.

How many other Americans are, like Graham, pining for the return of a Bush foreign policy that gave us Barack Obama?

Yet, now, a rival school is taking center stage in the Republican presidential campaign, rejecting the knee-jerk hostility to working with Putin. Not only does Rand Paul belong to this school, so, apparently, do Donald Trump and his strongest challenger, Sen. Ted Cruz.

Order Pat Buchanan’s brilliant and prescient books at WND’s Superstore.

Cruz had previously disparaged the legacy of the “neocons” who prodded Bush into war in Iraq and championed a democracy crusade in the Middle East. In Las Vegas, he spoke of a new national-interest-based foreign policy, a policy that puts “America first.”

“If we topple Assad … ISIS will take over Syria, and it will worsen national security interests. And the approach – instead of being … a democracy promoter, we ought to hunt down our enemies and kill ISIS rather than creating opportunities for ISIS to control new countries.”

Cruz rejects the Manichaean worldview of the neocons and their reflexive hostility to Russia and appears willing to work with a Russian autocrat to crush a monstrous evil like ISIS, as U.S. presidents did in working with anti-Communist dictators to win the Cold War.

Midway through the debate, Trump cut loose with a sweeping indictment of mindless American interventionism in the Middle East:

“We’ve spent $4 trillion trying to topple various people that, frankly, if they were there and if we could have spent that $4 trillion in the United States to fix our roads, our bridges, and all of the other problems – our airports and all the other problems we have – we would have been a lot better off. …

“We have done a tremendous disservice not only to the Middle East – we’ve done a tremendous disservice to humanity. The people that have been killed, the people that have been wiped away – and for what? It’s not like we had victory. It’s a mess. The Middle East is totally destabilized, a total and complete mess. I wish we had the 4 trillion dollars or 5 trillion dollars. I wish it were spent right here in the United States on schools, hospitals, roads, airports and everything else that are all falling apart!”

If we do not want Syria in 2016 to become what Sarajevo became in 1914, the powder keg that explodes into a world war, the War Party Republicans, who have learned nothing from the past, should be relegated to the past.

Read more at http://mobile.wnd.com/2015/12/america-first-or-world-war-iii/#14XLt8uegbiRQ3ps.99

GOP Sells America Down the River - The Rush Limbaugh Show

RushLimbaugh

RUSH: The country was just sold down the river again by your very Republican Party. 

I have a headline here from the Washington Times:  "White House Declares Total Victory Over GOP in Budget Battle." That headline's a misnomer.  There was never a battle.  None of this was opposed.  The Republican Party didn't stand up to any of it, and the die has been cast for a long time on this.  I know many of you are dispirited, depressed, angry, combination of all of that. But, folks, there was no other way this could go. Because two years ago when the Republican Party declared they would never do anything that would shut down the government and they would not impeach Obama, there were no obstacles in Obama's way and there were no obstacles in the way of the Democrat Party. 

When you surrender the power of the purse -- and that's the primary power the House of Representatives has.  Not a penny of money can be spent in this country by this government without the House of Representatives authorizing it.  Obama can spend all he wants, but if the House doesn't give him the mechanism, he can't spend any of it.  But the Republicans squandered that.  They gave up the power of the purse.  The reason they did that is because for some inexplicable reason, they are literally paranoid and scared to death of even being accused of doing something that would shut down the government. 

So to avoid even the accusation that they were going to or would ever even think of shutting down the government, they signaled that whatever Obama wanted to spend, he would get, because they figured that had less damage to them politically than the allegation that they were shutting down the government.  So, very simply, ever since the Republican Party became the party of keeping the government open at all costs, we get bills like this.  There's simply no stopping the Democrats.  There's no mechanism.  Every constitutional mechanism found in the power of the purse, Separation of Powers, the Republican Party years ago gave it away, in total fear of the media. 

Now, there's also a factor that needs to be mentioned, too, and that is that many Republican donors want every bit of this money spent, and they have donated voluminously to key Republicans in order to get the money spent. So it's not all Republican fears. It's not all Republican caving.  A lot of it is Republican fealty and loyalty to some of their donors.  Some people today looking at this, and this is 2,009 pages.  It's said to be a spending bill.  Among the things that it does, it fully funds Obamacare. 

It fully funds Planned Parenthood.  That, to me, is unforgivable, with everything now known about what goes on behind closed doors at Planned Parenthood, and that the federal government, led by a Republican Party, sees fit to pay for it.  It is beyond comprehension, and it is a total squandering of moral authority to fully fund the butchery at Planned Parenthood.  This spending bill fully pays for Obama's refugee plans, fully.  This spending bill, this budget bill quadruples the number of visas Obama wants for foreign workers.  This is even a slap at American union workers.  Not the leaders.  The union leaders seem to be in favor of it, but blue-collar people, known as working people, have been sold down the river along with everybody else here. 

This spending bill even fully pays for every dime asked for by Obama on all of this idiocy that's tied up into climate change.  Everything Obama wanted, everything he asked for, he got.  You go down the list of things, it's there. 

And this is causing some people to wonder if they just dreamed all that stuff about Boehner resigning.  And then other people are wondering if they even dreamed all that stuff about the Republicans winning the largest number of seats they've had in Congress since the Civil War.  We had two midterm elections in 2010 and 2014, which were landslide victories for the Republican Party.  The Democrat Party lost over a thousand seats nationwide in just those two elections.  People went to the polls in droves wanting exactly what was rubber-stamped last night (or what will be) stopped. 

And instead they showed up in record numbers and they it turned out and they just defeated Democrats down the ballot. In the process, they elected Republicans to stop this.  And now the Republicans have the largest number of seats in the House they've had in Congress since the Civil War.  And it hasn't made any difference at all.  It is as though Nancy Pelosi is still running the House and Harry Reid is still running the Senate.  "Betrayed" is not even the word here.  What has happened here is worse than betrayal. Betrayal is pretty bad, but it's worse than that. 

CONGRESS APPROVES $1.6B TERRORIST RESETTLEMENT IN USA

Congress Provides $1.6B to Resettle Illegal Immigrants Arriving at Border Through 2018

freebeacon.com

A group of illegal immigrants listen to a Border Patrol agent while being deported to Mexico at the Nogales Port of Entry in Nogales, Ariz. / AP

BY: Morgan Chalfant Follow @mchalfant16 December 17, 2015 12:11 pm

A massive appropriations bill expected to be approved by Congress would provide more than $1.6 billion to resettle illegal immigrants arriving at the U.S. border through 2018.

Congress would award the massive check to the government just as the U.S. isexperiencing a surge in arrivals of immigrant children at the southern border. Last week, federal agencies said they were opening two temporary shelters with 1,000 beds in South Texas to cope with the surge. A 400-bed shelter is also to be opened in Southern California.

“Out of an abundance of caution, the Office of Refugee Resettlement at the Department of Health and Human Services has begun a process to expand its temporary capacity to house unaccompanied children,” the Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement last Monday.

The so-called omnibus spending bill would give $1,645,201,000 through fiscal year 2018 “for necessary expenses for refugee and entrant assistance activities authorized by section 414 of the Immigration and Nationality Act and section 501 of the Refugee Education Assistance Act of 1980, and for carrying out section 462 of the Homeland Security Act of 2002, section 235 of the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (‘‘TVPA’’), section 203 of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2005, and the Torture Victims Relief Act of 1998,” according to its text released Tuesday.

In October and November, U.S. government data showed that over 10,500 unaccompanied immigrant children crossed the southern border with Mexico, according to the Washington Post. That number is more than double the count of unaccompanied minors that arrived at the border during the same time period last year.

In the event that the new temporary shelters in Texas and California are not enough to account for the surge in migrants, HHS asked the Department of Defense last week to make plans for 5,000 more shelter beds to be made available. Those additional beds are not yet needed, an agency spokesperson said

PAUL GIVES IT ALL AWAY TO COMMUNIST

Ryan and Pelosi corral votes as $1.1T funding bill speeds to floor

thehill.com

The House is poised to pass a bipartisan $1.1 trillion bill to fund the government, with GOP and Democratic whip teams going into overdrive to boost their numbers before the Friday morning vote.

Democratic leaders have voiced numerous objections to the package, particularly the inclusion of an end to a ban on crude oil exports and the failure to address Puerto Rico’s debt crisis. But with the White House urging support — and dozens of conservatives expected to buck GOP leaders and vote no — the Democrats are also scrambling to convince wary rank-and-file members that the current package is the best they can get.

Senior Obama administration officials and Cabinet secretaries began reaching out to congressional Democrats, urging them to back the spending deal, a source said. 

And Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), who both endorsed the massive omnibus bill, were personally pressing undecided members and “working it,” according to a whip team member.

Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and his top lieutenants appeared much more relaxed than their Democratic counterparts. Still, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) and other leaders were making calls, sending text messages and button-holing colleagues on the floor to drive up their vote total, lawmakers and aides said.

Ryan huddled in his office Thursday afternoon with members of the Western Caucus, who griped that he didn’t do enough during the negotiations to fight against environmental regulations, an attendee said. 

But by the end of the meeting, Ryan had flipped a couple “no” votes to “yes.”

“It will pass,” a senior GOP lawmaker close to leadership said without hesitation.

Providing the omnibus some momentum, the House on Thursday passed legislation extending a series of expired tax breaks — many of them permanently — with an overwhelming bipartisan vote of 318 to 109. The spending bill, if it passes Friday, will be combined with the tax proposal and delivered to the Senate as one package.

Leaders from both parties stayed in close contact Wednesday and Thursday as they swapped their respective vote tallies, even as those numbers remained fluid. Senior lawmakers familiar with the whip operations said Republicans would likely need to deliver 120 votes and Democrats 100 votes to ship the bill over to the Senate before leaving for the holidays.

Ryan is hoping for a big GOP vote — a majority of the majority, or roughly 124 Republicans — to signal that the conference has turned a corner from the days of his predecessor, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), who faced a conservative revolt every time he tried to bring a bipartisan spending bill to the floor. 

Earlier Thursday, members of the Democratic whip team said they had only locked up about 80 supporters on their side. But by late afternoon, all of the arm-twisting by leaders and vote-counters was beginning to pay off.

“I think everything is back on track and the votes will be there tomorrow morning,” said a member of the Democratic whip team.

Pelosi, who negotiated the omnibus with Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), said the provision lifting the 40-year ban on crude oil exports is "the biggest obstacle” as she pitches the compromise to wary Democrats.

But the oil provision, she added, allowed the Democrats to win major concessions from the Republicans on a long list of other issues, from the environment and labor protections to banking reforms and the Syrian refugee program.

"Republicans’ desperate thirst for lifting the oil export ban empowered Democrats to win significant concessions throughout the Omnibus, including ridding the bill of scores of deeply destructive poison pill riders," Pelosi wrote in a letter to Democratic colleagues Thursday night.

Pelosi on Wednesday had huddled separately with members of the Progressive Caucus and Tri-Caucus, which consists of black, Hispanic and Asian American Democrats. In both meetings, she got an earful, according to a number of attendees, and the criticisms continued at a Democratic Caucus meeting on Thursday morning.

Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) said he's opposing the omnibus because Republicans stripped out a Democratic proposal to help Puerto Rican leaders manage their debt crisis. He suggested Democratic negotiators didn't fight hard enough, and urged a reopening of the talks.

"I don't know if we negotiated from a position of power in this," he said. "And I, for one, am not going to go to Florida, and talk to 1 million Puerto Ricans in Florida, and tell them to vote Democrat if the Democrats can't stand up for the Puerto Ricans today."

Still, other top liberals are lining up behind the measure, providing cover to Democrats who had been reluctant to support it.

Reps. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and David Price (D-N.C.), two top appropriators, both announced Thursday on the House floor that they'll grudgingly back the deal. And Hoyer, the Democratic whip, also threw his weight behind the measure.

"I believe we can do better, especially when it comes to making investments in areas that grow our economy, such as infrastructure, research, innovation, higher education, and workforce development," Hoyer said.

"But I will support this omnibus, and I urge my colleagues to support this omnibus, because we must not let the perfect stand in the way of the practical and the appropriate."

Ryan, meanwhile, has sought to mollify the Democratic criticisms over the Puerto Rico debt crisis by vowing to tackle the issue, through regular order, early next year. That promise has won some praise from Democrats, who nonetheless say the delay is both harmful and unnecessary.

Complicating the debate, a number of heavyweight groups are split on the issue and have ramped up their lobbying ahead of Friday's vote. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and the Business Round Table are all urging support for the omnibus, while Heritage Action and the Club for Growth are drumming up opposition. 

One thing lawmakers agree on is a desire to put 2015 behind them. Many were anxious to vote quickly and begin their long holiday recess, where Christmas dinners, vacations to Machu Picchu and CODELs await them.

And there are other pressing matters to tend to this weekend: Several lawmakers said after Friday’s vote they were flying directly to Dayton, Ohio, where GOP Rep. Mike Turner is tying the knot on Saturday with his fiancée Majida Mourad