[PUNCHNG] The Taliban has warned President Donald Trump ...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States... to reverse US policy on Afghanistan or face a "historically shameful defeat", a US-based monitoring group reported Sunday.
An article, which the SITE Intelligence Group said appeared on the Taliban’s website and social media, described the freshly inaugurated leader of the free world as "an enigma both to the Americans and the billions of people around the world".
The article said that Afghans hoped Trump and his cabinet would not follow in the footsteps of previous White House administrations.
Afghanistan, which the US invaded on October 7, 2001 in a bid to topple al-Qaeda hosts the Taliban, has become Washington’s longest military intervention since Vietnam.
It has also been the most costly, with more than $100 billion (93 billion euros) spent.
But the country remains wracked by insecurity as the resurgent Taliban dealt Afghan forces serious blows in 2015, the first year they led security operations in Afghanistan, taking over from NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A collection of multinational and multilingual and multicultural armed forces, all of differing capabilities, working toward a common goal by pulling in different directions...
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01/23/2017 00:00 ||
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[AlAhram] The National Defence Council meeting was headed by President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi.
Egypt's National Defence Council agreed in a Sunday meeting to extend the deployment of Egyptian Armed Forces units in the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandab strait, MENA reported.
A statement by the Egyptian presidency said that the meeting approved extending the mission of the Egyptian Armed Force units on a foreign assignment to defend the country's national security in the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandab strait.
The statement did not put a timeframe on the duration of the extension, according to MENA.
The meeting was headed by President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi and attended by the ministers of defence, finance, foreign affairs and interior, as well as commanders of Egypt's Armed Force along with the chiefs of intelligence agencies.
Egypt’s has been participating in the Saudi-led military operation in Yemen ...an area of the Arabian Peninsula sometimes mistaken for a country. It is populated by more antagonistic tribes and factions than you can keep track of. Except for a tiny handfull of Jews everthing there is very Islamic... against Iranian-backed Houthi ...a Zaidi Shia insurgent group operating in Yemen. They have also been referred to as the Believing Youth. Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi is said to be the spiritual leader of the group and most of the military leaders are his relatives. The Yemeni government has accused the Houthis of having ties to the Iranian government, which wouldn't suprise most of us. The group has managed to gain control over all of Saada Governorate and parts of Amran, Al Jawf and Hajjah Governorates. Its slogan is God is Great, Death to America™, Death to Israel, a curse on the Jews ... rebels since March 2015.
Riyadh- The Yemeni government accused on Saturday Houthi and former president Ali Abdullah Saleh militias of recruiting 10,000 child soldiers in a blatant violation of human rights.
Undersecretary of the Yemeni Human Rights Ministry Nabil Abdel Hafiz told Asharq Al-Awsat in a telephone interview from Aden that the ministry had estimated the number of child soldiers recruited by rebel militias at about 10,000.
“Those rebel forces deal with children by the concept of gangs and armed groups,” Abdel Hafiz said.
The minister said that the numbers discovered by the Yemeni government apparatus were quickly expanding and that those numbers only reveal a small part of the rebels’ inhuman practices. “The rebel forces are conducting some practices, which are very difficult to track, particularly in the rebel-controlled areas,” Abdel Hafiz said.
The ministry also tracked rebel forces while planning harassments in the simplest areas of social life.
The Yemeni Coalition to Monitor Human Rights Violations issued a report detailing the missions of the recruited children, who are tasked to fight, monitor baggage, alternate on checkpoints, and distribute food, drinks and ammunitions to fighters combatting on the frontlines across the Yemeni directorates.
The report also documented that child soldiers were recruited for inhuman purposes, by force or under economic pressures exerted on their families.
“Some families accept that their children be recruited as child soldiers due to poverty and the urgent need for food. Those cases are mainly witnessed among refugees, who are promised by Houthi leaders that their children would not be sent to the frontline battles, but will only work as security guards,” the report said.
It added that Houthi militias had also sent those children to military training camps located in several Yemeni directorates, including Sana’a and Omran. Those children would then be taken to fight on the frontlines.
The Yemeni Army also found several with the children guidelines including misleading statements that promoted terrorist and taqfiri ideas, in addition to photos of former founder of the Iranian Revolution Khomeini and Secretary General of the Lebanese terrorist so-called Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah.
ADEN: Houthi militias have turned prisons into hellholes for Yemeni citizens who defy their illegal seizure of power, a recent report said.
The report revealed torture methods used by the rebels and how Yemeni citizens are kidnapped and bargained over for hefty ransoms.
The abductees, according to the report, are categorized and distributed to jails and detention centers according to how “dangerous” they are. That's how the US does it.
The shocking phenomenon is seen in the city of Dhamar, which has been transformed into a large prison for those who oppose the Houthi fighters and troops loyal to deposed president Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Several government buildings have been turned into detention centers to meet the growing number of prisoners. Now there are over 55 prisons and centers in Dhamar that contain more than 2,000 abducted prisoners from different provinces who receive brutal physical and psychological torture, according to Dhamar Media Center. Oh, no. Anything but "psychological torture..."
Meanwhile, tens of the released prisoners came forward to reveal that they were severely tortured on daily basis. They added that the Houthis established tens of road checkpoints to kidnap opponents and disseminated lists of most-wanted people. Typical behavior of every regime in this region. Someone must have gotten a hefty check out of this report.
A former prisoner recounted that investigations with prisoners always start after midnight and last until morning.
“Detained people are violently beaten, lashed, waterboarded, tortured with electricity and forced to confess incidents they did not commit,” the prisoner recounted.
“In Al-Shouna prison, the most notorious one, drinking water is not good even for animals! Prisoners are forced to sleep at the same spot where they urinate or excrete. Every 20-30 persons are confined to a single room or basement,” the former anonymous prisoner said.
Local sources elaborated that the rebels consider the journalists and military commanders and Ma’reb fighters loyal to President Hadi Mansoor the most dangerous category, so when any of them is kidnapped, he is held in the political security prison in Dhamar for two days before being moved to the new national security prison, and then to the big prisons in Sanaa. Such people are not released even if huge ransoms are offered.
The second category includes the leaders of the Al-Islah Party and the influential, non-military figures, who are usually jailed in Al-Gharbia prison in Dhamar.
Next comes the category of the ordinary citizens who express their opposing stance on social media platforms, those who tore down Houthi slogans or insulted their leaders. Such prisoners can be liberated for hefty sums of money. The fourth category includes the so-called “deceived people,” who are not proven to support legitimacy, so they are held for at least two months before being released after huge ransoms are paid.
More than nine abductees have died of brutal torture in Dhamar prisons since Houthi rebels seized them in October 2014.
[BREITBART] Less than a week after one of the Queen’s Chaplains spoke out against an Islamic Prayer denying the divinity of Jesus Christ being read out in a Scottish Cathedral, the senior churchman has tendered his resignation from that office.
Former Chaplain to Her Majesty the Reverend Gavin Ashenden announced his resignation on his personal blog on Saturday night, anticipating that a BBC Radio 4 segment on him and the controversy surrounding the Koranic readings in a Scottish Cathedral to be broadcast on Sunday morning would reveal his resignation despite his requests to the contrary. Remarking that the decision to step down was "the most honourable course of action" and had come after years of "attempts to silence or defenestrate me", Rev. Ashenden said he had spoken out in the past on controversial matters as a "matter of integrity and responsibility".
Earlier this week Rev. Ashenden called the decision to allow sung prayers from the Koran in a Scottish Cathedral service that demands Allah is worshipped and denies the divinity of Jesus Christ, "blasphemy", and said the Cathedral should apologise to persecuted Christians worldwide.
In a letter published in The Times, the Rev. said: "Quite apart from the wide distress (some would say blasphemy) caused by denigrating Jesus in Christian worship, apologies may be due to the Christians suffering dreadful persecution at the hands of Moslems in the Middle East and elsewhere.
"To have the core of a faith for which they have suffered deeply treated so casually by senior Western clergy such as the Provost of Glasgow is unlikely to have a positive outcome". In an article for the Jersey Evening Post titled ’The Choice is Between Jesus and Mohammed’ penned shortly afterwards, the priest called the decision to choose that particular Koran reading to be read on the Feast of the Epiphany a "glowing cherry of offence to the iced cake of incompetence".
Now his opposition to the Moslem prayer in a British Cathedral has brought the churchman’s tenure as a chaplain to the Queen to a premature end.
Rev. Ashenden said he’d had a conversation "instigated by officials at Buckingham Palace", and it had been made clear that he could not continue to speak out on faith issues of the day, as his position as one of 32 Queen’s chaplains could compromise the political neutrality of the Monarch.
The Monarch is not and indeed cannot be neutral: the Monarch is by title and by law the leader of the Church of England.
While he had defended himself from such charges in the past by asking "in what way is a priest defending the faith on behalf of a monarch who was Defender of the Faith, incongruous or improper?", the clear choice between silence while enjoying a "public honour" and speaking the truth had to be made. He told BBC Radio 4:
"I think it’s clear to me that accepting the role as a chaplain to the Queen does not give one a platform where one can speak controversially in the public space. So, in those circumstances one has to choose between whether one wants to accept an important honour or whether ones chooses to continue a debate in the public space.
"I am fairly clear in my own mind that my duty to my conscience, to my orders, to my understanding of Christianity and my vocation, is that I’m supposed to be speaking out in the public space on behalf of the Christ I serve".
Posted by: Fred ||
01/23/2017 00:00 ||
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#6
This is what happens when Christianity is watered down.
First of all, anyone who claims to be concerned that Christianity may offend someone is a liar. What is really going on is the person saying that is a non-believer and is themselves offended.
Secondly, you don't battle non-belief with righteous opinion. You battle it with actual scripture. That is the rock the argument stands on. Anything else is sand and will collapse.
These clergy are the last line of defense against darkness and pure evil and they are loosing.
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militant who appeared in a propaganda video by the jihadist group threatening Turkey has previously been detained twice in Turkey and released, according to information gathered by the Doğan News Agency.
The recently identified militant, Hasan Aydın from ISIL’s “Yaşar Group,” was detained by police in 2012 and 2015.
Aydın was detained in 2012 in an operation targeting al-Qaeda in the southern province of Adana but was later released. He was again detained in 2015 while attempting to cross the border into Syria from the southern province of Hatay.
Military equipment and a drone were found in the minibus that Aydın was using and he was referred to court. He was later released on condition of judicial control.
He was then given five thousand lira, five hundred dollars, a passport and stripper clips for his rifle...
It has emerged that Aydın’s family moved to Adana’s Yüreğir district 40 years ago from the Çermik district of the southeastern province of Diyarbakır.
His brother’s reported him as missing, with his wife and two children, on May. 8, 2015. Aydın called his family four months later and told them he had joined ISIL.
“We have arrived in Syria. We are in Manbij, we are doing fine, don’t worry about us,” he reportedly told his family.
Aydın’s two older brothers Remzi and Recep Aydın were detained in an operation in Adana on Dec. 31, 2016 and were later arrested. Davut Aydın, the ISIL militant’s third older brother who was detained in the same operation, was referred to court and was released on condition of judicial control. Saying that his brother should have been arrested, Davut Aydın said the family is suffering.
“I wish they had arrested him at that time rather than releasing him. If that had been the case, Hasan Aydın would be in jail and my nieces would be with me. At least then he [Hasan Aydın] wouldn’t be able to serve such a cruel group. Now I don’t even know if my nieces are alive,” he told the Doğan News Agency.
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01/23/2017 00:00 ||
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Apparently having a secure smartphone is a crime in Turkey. You're automatically a member of the insidious FETO and a Gulen supporter.
More than 215,000 people have been using ByLock smartphone app, an encrypted messaging application that is said to have been used by members of the Fethullahist Terrorist Organization (FETÖ) of the U.S.-based Islamic preacher Fethullah Gülen, according to an indictment prepared as a part of the FETÖ investigation.
An indictment was prepared for a total of 26 Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency (BDDK) employees, of whom 21 are currently arrested, who were detained over ByLock. The indictment, in which the prosecutor seeks up to 15 years in prison for the suspects, featured the most extensive numbers and analysis regarding ByLock usage.
Prepared by the Terror and Organized Crime Bureau of the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office, the indictment said the number of people registered as using ByLock is 215,092. The authorities have deciphered the passwords of some 184,298 users.
"What is the password to your phone?"
"I'll never tell!"
"Mustafa, bring me the number seven truncheon."
"Okay, okay, the password is..."
"Never mind, I'm going to beat it out of you anyway!"
The number of groups formed in the application is determined to be 31,886 and the total number of the contents of the messages is 17,169,632, of which 15,520,552 were deciphered.
Some 60,473 users have received or sent messages at least once, while 78,165 people were determined to have used the voice call service. The number of people who used the application only for voice calls is 46,799. According to the indictment, the total number of content of emails is 3,158,388, of which 2,293,518 were deciphered.
The FBI should be this good...
The indictment, which said the suspects downloaded and started using ByLock in August 2014, was sent to the Istanbul 25th Heavy Penal Court. The suspects received orders from the same source and acted as a part of an illegal organization, the indictment also said.
In addition, the indictment said the users did not buy the phone lines by giving their own names, changed their phones frequently, and used programs like Skype, Tango, ByLock, Line, Karaotlak and Whatsapp for their encryption feature. Moreover, the indictment also stated that Gülen ordered the FETÖ members to use ByLock, saying those who do not would be betraying the movement.
He also allegedly ordered the FETÖ members to delete ByLock from their phones after the July 2016 foiled coup, widely believed to have been masterminded by soldiers loyal to Gülen.
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01/23/2017 00:00 ||
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Turkish businessman Tekin Acar had contracts to open branches of his leading cosmetics chain in ten new shopping malls this year. A few days ago he canceled nine of them after sharp falls in the lira meant he would struggle to afford the rents.
Turkey's currency has lost around a quarter of its value since the middle of last year, causing havoc for retailers selling imported goods or paying rent pegged to the U.S. dollar. Many were already suffering from a sharp economic slowdown and dwindling tourism numbers after a spate of deadly bombings.
Foreign brands in Turkey are also suffering. Dutch clothing chain C&A, Britain's Topshop, German cosmetics firm Douglas and U.S.-based dietary supplement retailer GNC (GNC.N) have disappeared from shopping centers in recent months.
Continued on Page 49
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[BREITBART] Despite President Donald Trump ...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States... ’s call to end any further refugee resettlement from foreign countries with widespread Islamic terrorism, the federal government continued its influx of refugees just days before the new president’s Inaugural ceremony.
In the final days of the Obama Administration, 23 refugees came through Slovakia’s Emergency Transit Centre from countries including Somalia, Afghanistan, Æthiopia, Iraq and Eritrea ...is run by the People's Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ), with about the amounts of democracy and justice you'd expect from a party with that name. National elections have been periodically scheduled and cancelled; none have ever been held in the country. The president, Isaias Afewerki, has been in office since independence in 1993 and will probably die there of old age... , all of which have struggled with terrorism, according to the International Organization for Migration.
Slovakia has been sending refugees into the U.S. since 2009, with now 978 refugees already resettled into the country.
But, the latest group of refugees could be some of the last to enter the country for a while. The Trump administration has promised to halt the refugee resettlement program, at least from countries where the majority of refugees currently migrate from.
Where the newest refugees have migrated to in the U.S. remains unknown, but regions like Knoxville, Tennessee, have seen their fair-share of refugees entering their neighborhoods at record pace, as Breitbart Texas reported.
Like the refugees coming to the U.S. from Slovakia, the majority of refugees entering Knoxville are from Iraq, a country that has been torn apart by Islamic terrorism. Other refugees in Knoxville are from similar third-world areas, like the Democratic Republic of the Congo ...formerly the Congo Free State, Belgian Congo, Zaire, and who knows what else, not to be confused with the Brazzaville Congo aka Republic of Congo, which is much smaller and much more (for Africa) stable. DRC gave the world Patrice Lumumba and Joseph Mobutu, followed by years of tedious civil war. Its principle industry seems to be the production of corpses. With a population of about 74 million it has lots of raw material... and Somalia.
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01/23/2017 00:00 ||
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#1
i'm waiting for that ban... ban sharia, ban mulim migration, do it quick
[DAWN] "Terrorists will fail in their attempt to regain lost relevance," Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa said on Saturday after a blast at a vegetable market in Kurram Agency ...home of an intricately interconnected web of poverty, ignorance, and religious fanaticism, where the laws of cause and effect are assumed to be suspended, conveniently located adjacent to Tora Bora... 's Parachinar area killed 25 people.
According to a statement issued by Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the army chief said murderous Moslems will fail at all fronts.
At least 25 people were killed and 87 others were maimed in the blast at the Sabzi Mandi, a spokesperson for the health directorate of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas said in a statement issued in Beautiful Downtown Peshawar ...capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly known as the North-West Frontier Province), administrative and economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Peshawar is situated near the eastern end of the Khyber Pass, convenient to the Pak-Afghan border. Peshawar has evolved into one of Pakistan's most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities, which means lots of gunfire. Ikramullah Khan, a senior government official in Parachinar, said that the blast was caused by an improvised bomb (IED) which was hidden in a vegetable box. The kaboom was remote-controlled, a bomb disposal squad official said.
In a text message sent to journalists, the proscribed Lashkar-e-Jhangvi ... a 'more violent' offshoot of Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistain. LeJ's purpose in life is to murder anyone who's not of utmost religious purity, starting with Shiites but including Brelvis, Ahmadis, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Rosicrucians, and just about anyone else you can think of. They are currently a wholly-owned subsidiary of al-Qaeda ... al-Alami claimed that it, along with Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistain (TTP) splinter Shehryar Mehsud group carried out the attack. However, a lie repeated often enough remains a lie... the Shehryar Mehsud group did not independently claim the bombing.
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01/23/2017 00:00 ||
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[YNETNEWS] The IDF is adapting its tactics to counter Hezbollah's tunnel systems and projected strategy of rapidly invading Israeli territory at the onset of hostilities to project a picture of victory by taking a community or IDF outpost.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/23/2017 00:00 ||
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#1
The IDF is adapting its tactics
Yeah, didn't we see something about giving border control over to the Egyptians? Must be pulling the troops back home for the Embassy move.
[MALAYA.PH] ARMED Forces chief Gen. Eduardo Año told ground commanders in Sulu to display their "highest degree of commandership" as he relayed his new timeline of six months within which to defeat the lawless Abu Sayyaf ...also known as al-Harakat al-Islamiyya, an Islamist terror group based in Jolo, Basilan and Zamboanga. Since its inception in the early 1990s, the group has carried out bombings, kidnappings, murders, head choppings, and extortion in their uniquely Islamic attempt to set up an independent Moslem province in the Philippines. Abu Sayyaf forces probably number less than 300 cadres. The group is closely allied with remnants of Indonesia's Jemaah Islamiya and has loose ties with MILF and MNLF who sometimes provide cannon fodder... group.
Año issued the call during a visit of military units in Sulu, an Abu Sayyaf bailiwick, on Wednesday last week, Col. Edgard Arevalo, chief of the AFP’s public affairs office, said yesterday.
Arevalo said Año also vowed to put the "best officers, enlisted personnel, and equipment" on the ground to accomplish the mission. Año’s predecessor, now retired Gen. Ricardo Visaya, also aimed to defeat the Abu Sayyaf during his term but failed.
Asked if additional forces will be deployed to Sulu, Arevalo said there is no need because there are enough soldiers on the ground. There are about 7,500 soldiers operating in Sulu. There are some 300 to 400 Abu Sayyaf men operating in Sulu and Basilan ...Basilan is a rugged, jungle-covered island in the southern Philippines. It is a known stronghold of the Abu Sayyaf, bandidos, and maybe even orcs. Most people with any sense travel with armed escorts... , according to the military.
Año set the new deadline last January 6. He also wants the other lawless groups ‐ the Maute Group and the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters ...a MILF splinter group aligned with the Islamic State... -- ended in six months.
Arevalo said Año gave "inputs" on how to end the Abu Sayyaf to Brig. Gen. Jesus Mananquil, commander of the Joint Task Force Sulu. He declined to elaborate as he said these are operational in nature.
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01/23/2017 00:00 ||
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[JAKARTAGLOBE.BERITASATU] Soddy Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face... 's intelligence agency, the General Intelligence Directorate or GID, has worked with Indonesia's National Counterterrorism Agency, or BNPT, to help the latter in its effort to prevent radicalization of Indonesian youths and rehabilitating former terrorists.
BNPT Chief Comr. Gen. Suhardi Alius visited Saudi Arabia on Jan. 11-16 to strengthen relations between the two agencies and get top tips from the GID's deradicalization program.
"The visit should help up set up a counterterrorism program which includes deradicalization, from top to bottom," Suhardi said in Jakarta on Saturday (21/01).
Suhardi and other high-ranking BNPT officials also went to the Muhammad bin Naif Consultation and Guidance Center in Saudi Arabia to study rehabilitation of former faceless myrmidons and to learn from their experience of preventing Moslem groups from being radicalized.
"We exchanged various information and knowledge. We also saw how deradicalization is done by the Saudi government," Suhardi said.
The general added that the Indonesian government has been focusing on preventing the spread of radical ideologies in Indonesia as it poses great risks to the country's security and may damage the peaceful image of Islam -- the majority religion in Indonesia.
The head of the intelligence directorate at Saudi Arabia’s Home Affairs Ministry, Abdul Aziz Alhwairny, said BNPT's visit is proof of the good relations between it and GID.
Alhwairny said Saudi Arabia has nothing but praise for BNPT’s effort to fight terrorism in Indonesia.
To honor members of Indonesia's elite counterterror unit Densus 88 who died in the field of battle, the kingdom will offer free hajj pilgrimages to their families.
The Muhammad bin Naif Center will also offer deradicalization training for BNPT officers, Alhwairny added.
A deradicalization program typically involves rehabilitating former faceless myrmidons and radicalized youths before returning them to their communities.
Currently more than 240 convicted faceless myrmidons in 72 prisons all around Indonesia and 478 freed former terror convicts in 17 provinces have undergone rehabilitation programs.
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01/23/2017 00:00 ||
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#4
ahhahaahahaa The enemy is Sharia. Saudi Arabia is the chief spreader of Sharia. Indonesia is benefiting from Saudi spreading around the money already hence 150,000 rioting Muslims demanding a Governor be tried for blasphemy since he is Christian and no christian should be allowed to rule Muslims under sharia
Danish troops fighting in Iraq will now be able to cross into Syria as part of the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the Danish Defense Ministry said in a statement on Jan. 20. Denmark’s parliament authorized special operations soldiers “to perform their tasks in the Iraqi-Syrian border area,” the statement said.
“The fight against ISIL is an important foreign and security policy priority for the government,” Danish Foreign Minister Anders Samuelsen told the Ritzau news agency after parliamentary discussions in Copenhagen.
Samuelsen said the coalition had asked Denmark, a NATO member, to send troops to Syria, but he did not reveal how many or where they would be deployed in the war-torn country, nor when.
“The government has, therefore, based on a specific request from the coalition, decided to expand the functions of special operations forces in Iraq and Syria,” Samuelsen said in remarks quoted by public broadcaster TV2.
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01/23/2017 00:00 ||
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#1
I'll have a slice of Havarti dill to celebrate. And some Danish ham.
The crucial Syria summit, which will bring Syria’s government and rebel fighters to a negotiating table for the first time after nearly six years of war, following 23 days of cease-fire, is set to start in Kazakhstan’s capital on Jan. 23.
Hosted in Astana, the talks will bring together an opposition delegation composed of rebel groups, which will be supported by political advisers, negotiating with the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in an initiative sponsored by rebel-backing Turkey and regime allies Russia and Iran.
Though the talks have been welcomed by all parties in the conflict, delegates from both sides headed to Kazakhstan with apparently opposing ideas about the goals, with al-Assad on Jan. 19 insisting that rebels lay down their arms in exchange for an amnesty deal.
Although al-Assad said the talks would prioritize reaching a cease-fire, Damascus has insisted it will seek a “comprehensive” political solution to the conflict that has killed more than 300,000 and displaced over half of the country’s population.
The rebels, meanwhile, say they will focus solely on reinforcing a frail nationwide truce brokered by Moscow and Ankara last month, the release of captives held by the al-Assad regime, and an end to regime sieges on opposition-held areas, according to Mohamed Alloush of Jaish al-Islam (Army of Islam), who will head the Syrian opposition’s delegation at the talks.
Moscow said this week that the objective was to “consolidate” the cease-fire and involve rebel field commanders in the “political process” to end the bloodshed, creating a basis for a new round of U.N.-hosted negotiations in Geneva next month.
The Kazakh Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Jan. 22 that the talks would start at 1:00 p.m. (7:00 a.m. GMT) on Jan. 23 in Astana and that they were scheduled to end in the afternoon of Jan. 24, just one day after its initiation.
While the talks will be held in the city’s luxury Rixos President Hotel, where staff members are setting up a single large table in a conference room under blue banners bearing the hashtag #AstanaProcess, according to AFP, rebels and regime figures are expected to sit in the same room, along with U.N. Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura and representatives of Russia, Turkey and Iran.
Syria’s UN Ambassador Bashar al-Jaafari, an experienced negotiator involved in past failed talks in Geneva, will head the regime delegation in Astana.
The Turkish delegation will be chaired by Deputy Undersecretary of the Turkish Foreign Ministry Sedat Önal, according to the state-run Anadolu Agency, which also reported that Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MİT) and General Staff officials would also be present at the talks.
While the same report said that Russia’s Special Envoy on Syria Alexander Lavrentiev and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov were the figures to represent Russia at the talks, Doğan News Agency quoted Kazakhstan Foreign Ministry as saying that the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Middle East and North Africa Department head Vershinin Sergey Vasilievich would represent the country.
Iran, the talks’ third sponsor, would be represented by Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Jaber Ansari, the country’s Isna news agency reported.
Kazakhstan will be represented by its Foreign Minister Kairat Abdrakhmanov.
Alloush, who was accompanied by around a dozen rebel figures, including Fares Buyush of the Idlib Army, Hassan Ibrahim of the Southern Front and Mamoun Hajj Moussa of Suqur al-Sham, when he landed in Astana, will lead a “military delegation” of around 14 people, in addition to 21 legal and political advisers from the opposition High Negotiations Committee (HNC) umbrella group, according to AFP.
But key rebel group Ahrar al-Sham said it would snub the Astana talks over cease-fire violations and ongoing Russian air strikes on the country. Ahrar al-Sham nonetheless said it would support decisions taken by other rebel groups represented at the talks if they were “in the interest of the nation.”
The U.S. under new President Donald Trump will also be represented - with the U.S. Ambassador to Astana George Krol taking part, while not sending a delegation from Washington.
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The U.S. State Department says it will not send a delegation from Washington to attend Syria peace talks due to start in Astana on January 23, but the United States will be represented by the U.S. ambassador to Kazakhstan.
The statement from Washington on January 21 came a day after U.S. President Donald Trump took a formal oath of office.
The current U.S. ambassador to Kazakhstan, George Krol, was appointed to that post by former President Barack Obama in early 2015. Krol previously served as the U.S. ambassador to Uzbekistan and to Belarus.
Krol also formerly worked as the director of the State Department's Office of Russian Affairs, and held diplomatic posts in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kyiv, Minsk, Warsaw, and New Delhi.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on January 20 that Moscow hoped Trump would send a Middle East expert to the Astana talks, which are sponsored by Russia, Iran, and Turkey.
The United Nations Security Council on January 20 expressed support for the peace talks in Astana, but stressed that the effort must not serve to sideline UN-led negotiations. The UN is sending its Syria envoy, Staffan de Mistura, to the talks.
UN Security Council Council president Olof Skoog, a diplomat from Sweden, said on January 20 that the Astana talks could help shore up a cease-fire and "represent an important stepping stone coming back to UN-led talks in Geneva thereafter."
Western powers have for weeks questioned the purpose of the Astana talks and raised concerns that they could complicate ongoing processes aimed at ending the nearly six-year war in Syria.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[PUNCHNG] The Taliban has warned President 
[BREITBART] Less than a week after one of the Queen’s Chaplains spoke out against an Islamic Prayer denying the divinity of Jesus Christ being read out in a Scottish Cathedral, the senior churchman has tendered his resignation from that office.
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militant who appeared in a propaganda video by the jihadist group threatening Turkey has previously been detained twice in Turkey and released, according to information gathered by the Doğan News Agency. 
Kurram Agency
