Tunisian authorities Thursday decided to endow the country with its own security and intelligence national agency to help in preventing and warding off terrorist threats and acts.
A country taking responsibility for its security? Or planning to use the agency to suppress its own people? The choice is not exclusive...
A concerted meeting between the Tunisian Head of State Beji Caid Essebsi, Prime Minister Habib Essid, Speaker of the Parliament Mohamed Ennaceur along with several government officials and security authorities was held to discuss the project.
The future national agency will deal with internal security issues and participate in regional security programs with neighbouring countries. The idea has been in the pipeline for a long time. Back last year in November, Tunisian minister of defence Ghazi Jeribi announced the creation of the agency which he said received approval from the whole cabinet, but the project was not materialized.
The country was hit by two deadliest terrorist attacks this year. In March two gunmen stormed the Bardo Museum in Tunisia killing 21 people mostly foreign tourists. Another attack late June perpetrated by a lone Tunisian claimed the lives of 38 people among whom 30 British tourists. Both attacks have been claimed by IS.
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GENEVA: The UN World Food Programme on Friday appealed for safe access to the Yemeni city of Taiz, saying that fighting between warring factions had blocked food supplies and left thousands of people in extreme hunger.
This calls for more apparatchiks and a new order of white Land Cruisers...
The last UN food aid to reach Taiz, Yemen’s third city, was more than five weeks ago when food was distributed to nearly 240,000 people, it said. A solution, once again identified as a problem.
“We plead for safe and immediate access to the city of Taiz to prevent a humanitarian tragedy as supplies dwindle, threatening the lives of thousands – including women, children and the elderly,” WFP regional director Muhannad Hadi said in a statement. “These people have already suffered extreme hunger, and if this situation continues the damage from hunger will be irreversible.”
On Wednesday, warplanes from the Saudi-led coalition that backs Yemen’s government bombed the Iran-allied Houthi movement across Yemen and dropped weapons to Islamist militias in Taiz, situated in the southwest.
Ten of Yemen’s 22 governorates were assessed as being in an emergency food situation in June, one step below famine on a five-point scale. The assessment has not been updated since then, partly because experts have not managed to get sufficient access to survey the situation. About a third of the country’s population, or 7.6 million people urgently require food aid, the WFP said.
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[IsraelTimes] 18-year application by Muslim group ends with local government decision to build 1,100 homes, retail and office space at site
British authorities have rejected a nearly two-decade application and appeal process for the construction of a massive new mosque in east London.
The proposed 9,000-capacity Riverine Centre mosque, planned by the Muslim missionary group Tablighi Jamaat A group of itinerant Deobandi preachers who form one of al-Qaeda's recruiting arms... , would have been built on a 17-acre site near the Olympic Park in Stratford, and would have included a massive dining hall and library, The Guardian reports.
The Muslim group's final appeal against the local Newham council's refusal to grant it planning permission was rejected last week by the Department for Communities and Local Government.
"The decision was based on concerns that include local housing provision and conflict with the council's local plan for the borough," the department said.
The mosque's construction clashed with local government plans to develop over 1,100 homes and 15,000 square meters (161,000 square feet) of retail, office and community space, according to the Guardian.
"The [Muslim] trust now has three months to cease the use of the site as a place of worship and clear the site they have been unlawfully using for two decades," a statement from the Newham council said in response to the decision.
Authorities said the mosque's planners could not justify the scale of the complex based on local need or attendance figures.
But the mosque's construction also attracted resistance from many locals concerned about a growing Muslim population in the area.
A 2007 petition against the mosque that said it represented "the Christian population of this great country England" drew 250,000 signatures.
Tablighi Jamaat has used temporary buildings at the site for prayers while it sought permission over the past 18 years to build the permanent building. That use of the site, which the Newham council deemed "unlawful," must end within three months, the department decision said.
#1
The usual suspects get their panties in a huge twist over a story like this, but I would ask them: replace "giant mosque" with "rent a machine gun by the hour" shooting range. How would they feel then?
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
11/01/2015 12:23 Comments ||
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#2
"The armory would've been spectacular!"
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/01/2015 13:08 Comments ||
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#3
any churches in the gulf?
Posted by: paul ||
11/01/2015 13:54 Comments ||
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replace "giant mosque" with "rent a machine gun by the hour"
[AnNahar] The last British resident detained in Guantanamo Bay is reportedly planning to seek compensation from the British government, following his release after more than 13 years in the top-security U.S. military jail.
Saudi national Shaker Aamer was beginning his first full day back in Britannia on Saturday after flying back to London from the prison on Cuba.
The 46-year-old father of four thanked his supporters, "so strongly devoted to the truth," for helping him through the ordeal.
"If I was the fire to be lit to tell the truth, it was the people who protected the fire from the wind," he said in a statement issued through his lawyers.
"Without knowing of their fight I might have given up more than once... and without their devotion to justice I would not be here in Britannia now."
British newspapers reported he plans to claim for damages from the British government.
Members of his legal team told The Guardian newspaper they expect the government to settle the claim as quickly as possible to avoid allegations of Britannia's involvement in human rights When they're defined by the state or an NGO they don't mean much... abuses aired in court.
The nine British nationals and six British residents released from Guantanamo are each thought to have received around £1 million ($1.55 million, 1.4 million euros) from the government.
London settled civil damages claims rather than contest in court allegations that Britannia's security services were complicit in what happened to them.
Lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, who spent years campaigning for Aamer's release, told AFP he would now be given medical tests before being reunited with his family.
He is thought to be suffering from a string of health issues, including post-traumatic stress disorder.
"I think he'll want to hear the word 'Daddy' instead of number 239," said Smith, referring to Aamer's prisoner number at Guantanamo.
The United States had accused Aamer of acting as a recruiter, financier and fighter for Al-Qaeda, as well as being a close associate of the late Osama bin Laden ... who is now neither a strong horse nor a weak horse, but a dead horse... , but never charged him.
Twice cleared for release from Guantanamo in 2007 and 2009, he has always denied the allegations. No, no! Certainly not! and said he was in Afghanistan working for a charity when he was captured by bounty hunters.
Cameron had pressed U.S. President Barack Obama Because I won... for his release and his spokeswoman said there were no plans for the British authorities to detain him or charge him.
The Daily Telegraph newspaper said it understood that high-level discussions had taken place between London and Washington on how Britannia's security services would "monitor potential threats" posed by Aamer.
Aamer was born in 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... in December 1968 and lived in the U.S. before settling in Britannia, where he married a British woman and, in 1996, became a resident.
In 2001, he took his family to Afghanistan, but sent them to Pakistain after the September 11 attacks. He said he was about to join them when he was detained.
He was transferred to Guantanamo Bay in 2002, where he said he faced mistreatment, leading him to become an advocate for prisoners' rights and an organizer of hunger strikes.
Aamer fasted even after his release was announced last month in protest in protest at alleged mistreatment.
Obama signed an order six years ago to close the facility, which was opened to hold terror suspects following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
But he has struggled to do so in the face of opposition in Congress and with other countries reluctant to take in one-time terror suspects.
Following the release of Mauritanian detainee Ahmed Ould Abdel Aziz from Guantanamo this week, the U.S. defense ministry said there were 113 detainees left.
#1
I'm sure actual damage can be arranged if he really wants. Heck, I'm sure the UK has a few actual torture devices left lying about. A few hours on the rack will do wonders for his back.
Heavily edited to remove the WND paranoia. The basic news story here is useful.
Where oh where have the Muslim migrants gone?
That is the question German authorities are asking themselves after some troubling reports of disappearances.
According to German press reports, keeping track of all the Muhammads and Alis pouring across borders is proving ever so tricky for European countries being flooded with people on the move from the Middle East and Africa.
As author-blogger Pamela Geller noted this week, citing German press reports, more than one in two refugees from one camp went missing and are now unaccounted for and considered “on the run.”
At least 580 refugees initially were reported to have disappeared from Camp Shelterschlefe. Now, in a “terrible new twist,” the disappearances are spreading.
“It’s become an epidemic,” Geller said. “7,000 migrants have left the Brandenburg shelters. Where are they going? Who is sheltering these illegals, many with ties to ISIS?”
Such a high number of people hiding is “completely unacceptable,” according to the German authorities.
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#1
John Koskinen, John Koskinen to the courtesy phone please....
#2
Leading memnbers of the CSU have already spoken out that Bavaria will close its borders - with or without Merkel.
Posted by: European Conservative ||
11/01/2015 1:09 Comments ||
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#3
It is too bad WND embraces so much bullshit. I can't send them on anymore.
But some of this certainly is true. In fact, it is worse.
F'ING Germany still has not put up a red light. They are destroying Europe with their sponsored foreign invasion. Germany needs to be trounced and flogged.
That piece of shit country has done enough damage to the world.
A cease and desist order is in order.
#4
Heavily edited to remove the WND paranoia. The basic news story here is useful.
There really is a thin line btwn paranoia and common sense survival instincts. I routinely wobble back and forth across the thin line. I blame old age and a healthy long-term memory.
#9
Such a high number of people hiding is “completely unacceptable,” according to the German authorities.
Well, that oughtta stop 'em.
F'ING Germany still has not put up a red light. They are destroying Europe with their sponsored foreign invasion. Germany needs to be trounced and flogged.
They're outsourcing their penance for the Shoah to the rest of Europe.
BUDAPEST: The mandatory quota system for distributing asylum seekers among EU member states was decided without respect for public opinion and this could cause a “democracy crisis” in Europe, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Friday. The right-wing conservative Orban has sealed off Hungary’s southern borders and cited a threat to European culture and Christian values from an influx of hundreds of thousands of mostly Muslim migrants into the European Union this year.
As Germany prepares to take in most of a million or so migrants by the end this year, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s push for a permanent relocation mechanism setting binding national quotas has met fierce resistance, notably from smaller, less affluent eastern states like Hungary in the 28-nation EU.
“Who authorized Europe’s leaders, or some of its leaders, to conduct this kind of policy? This is a democratic continent,” Orban told Hungarian public radio in an interview. “When and who voted for admitting millions of people who entered illegally, and distributing them among EU member states? What’s happening lacks democratic foundations.”
That's actually the best question so far: who voted for this? Who voted to admit millions of refugees, in either the EU or the US? That's the biggest question the elites don't want anyone to ask.
Orban said the proposed quota system was unreasonable, unlawful and unfair.
Hungary also refused to receive any migrants expelled from western Europe since those migrants - who come mainly from war- and poverty-stricken parts of the Middle East, Asia and Africa - had first entered the EU via Greece.
“And now ... there is an even bigger threat that the quotas could become a permanent legal measure, with those arriving automatically distributed, and we do not accept that.”
Orban, one of the most outspoken opponents of immigration in Europe, said that imposing quotas challenged the very foundations of Europe built on nation states. When it built fences along its borders with Serbia and Croatia, drawing sharp criticism from western EU countries, Hungary argued it was meeting its obligations to protect the outer frontier of the EU’s Schengen zone of passport-free travel. Orban said the EU should stick to its rules as otherwise Europe could slide into “anarchy”.
The fence has cut the number of migrants entering Hungary to a trickle, shifting the flow to Croatia and Slovenia as tens of thousands continue to trek towards preferred destinations in wealthy western Europe despite descending winter cold.
The unrelenting influx has become Europe’s biggest migration crisis since World War Two.
“When the EU veers off the path of legality then it could sink into anarchy very quickly ... and now we are falling off the cliff,” Orban said.
There's a history of that happening in Europe...
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[AnNahar] Some 50 people at a German shelter for asylum seekers engaged in a violent brawl overnight, hurling chairs and beating each other with table legs, leaving six people injured, police said Saturday.
The punch-up, which took place in the northern town of Itzehoe, was the latest illustration of the rising tensions between refugees at the country's overstretched reception centers.
The dispute broke out during the evening meal on Friday when an Arabic-speaking refugee insulted a group of Kurds, a police statement said. The confrontation quickly escalated, drawing in around 50 people who threw tables, chairs and benches and beat each other with table legs.
Security guards tried to break up by fight by using pepper spray and around 50 police and six dogs were called in as backup. Four asylum seekers were treated for head injuries and two security guards sustained light injuries, the statement said.
Two young Kurds -- one Syrian and one Iraqi -- as well as a Syrian were locked away Don't shoot, coppers! I'm comin' out! after being singled out as the main instigators, with police saying they would be transferred to "other centers around the country".
...where no doubt they will be unable to resist organizing similar excitements. Why on earth were they not immediately deported? Such people do not make good Germans.
Such incidents have multiplied at refugee centers across Germany, which is expecting to receive up to a million asylum requests by the end of the year and is struggling to accommodate everyone.
Ay-Pee. Well....shit
Turkey's Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has declared victory for his ruling party after preliminary election results showed it restoring its majority in parliament.
State-run TRT television reports that with more than 97 percent of the votes counted, the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, has won just above 49 percent, which would comfortably restore its ruling majority.
"Today is the day of victory but it is also a day for humility," Davutoglu said, addressing supporters in his hometown of Konya, where he voted.
The preliminary results suggest that the ruling party's gamble to hold new elections has paid off. Supporters at the party's Ankara and Istanbul headquarters were already waving flags in rapturous celebrations. Crowds outside President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's home in Istanbul were shouting "Turkey is proud of you."
The vote is a rerun of a June election in which AKP surprisingly lost its one-party rule due to a strong showing by a Kurdish party. Most analysts had expected AKP to fall short again, but the preliminary results suggest it picked up millions of votes at the expense of the nationalist MHP and pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party, or HDP. AKP's vote tally jumped nearly nine percentage points. The secularist CHP was hovering around the same result as in June.
Following the June vote, renewed fighting between Turkey's security forces and Kurdish rebels left hundreds of people dead and shattered an already-fragile peace process. Two recent massive suicide bombings at pro-Kurdish gatherings that killed some 130 people, apparently carried out by an Islamic State group cell, also increased tensions. Following the vote Sunday, small clashes broke out in Diyarbakir in the Kurdish southeast between protesters and police.
Turkey is a key U.S. pseudo ally in the fight against IS and, since it hosts more Syrian refugees than any other nation in the world, a crucial player in efforts to end the war in Syria and resolve Europe's massive immigration crisis.
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ISTANBUL: In almost half a century as a reporter, columnist and editor of two national newspapers, Hasan Cemal has seen coups, military rule and government crises shake Turkish democracy. But never, he says, have press freedoms been so curtailed as under President Tayyip Erdogan.
Broadly-defined anti-terrorism laws have been used to prosecute dozens of journalists in recent years. Several more face legal action for referring to a corruption scandal around Erdogan’s inner circle in December 2013. Some opposition journalists who have avoided court have instead been fired by what they say are pliant media bosses seeking to avoid Erdogan’s ire, or say they have been shut out of official events.
So it's sorta like the MSM in the United States...
Almost all have made the same mistake: criticizing government policy or offending Hillary Erdogan, who has dominated Turkish politics for more than a decade and whose leadership, critics say, has become increasingly authoritarian.
“The free space of journalists is being limited in an unprecedented way because there is an order from a sultan who hates independence,” Cemal told Reuters. “Freedoms, rule of law, the right to live democratically are swiftly being eliminated.”
Erdogan rejects the notion that Turkey has anything but a free media, declaring in January that Turkish journalists were freer than any in Europe.
Tensions have risen anew in the run-up to a general election on Sunday, the second in five months and a vote critical to Erdogan’s political future. He wants the AK Party he founded to win back the majority it lost in June, enabling it to change the constitution and grant him stronger executive powers.
Police forced their way into the offices of an opposition media company on Wednesday, days ahead of the election, forcing two television stations already taken off the air to stop broadcasting over the internet. The move, the authorities said, was backed by a court order and part of an investigation into the network of Fethullah Gulen, a US-based cleric accused by Erdogan of trying to topple him.
For the hundreds of protesters outside the building, whose shouts of “you can’t silence the free media” were met with pepper spray and water cannon, and for Erdogan’s opponents, it was yet another example of blatant disregard for free speech.
“(The raids) are a particularly disturbing illustration of the dangerous path Turkey has undertaken in recent months as regards its stance on media freedom,” Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Nils Muiznieks said.
The raids sent a “chilling message”, he said, ahead of Sunday’s vote in a nation aspiring to join the European Union.
Aydin Unal, an AK Party lawmaker and former Erdogan adviser, said on Tuesday more opposition papers may face legal action, including the nationalist and secular Sozcu, raising the prospect of a deeper “settling of scores” after the election.
Most polls suggest the AKP will struggle to win a majority on Sunday and be forced into coalition, potentially with the main opposition CHP, although one survey on Thursday indicated it would be able to govern alone. “Whether or not there will be more oxygen in the system for journalists will depend on the result of Sunday’s elections,” said Asli Aydintasbas, a journalist for around 20 years. “If there is a decline in AKP votes and if they fail to form a single-party government then they’ll have to be more compromising, more democratic,” she said.
Aydintasbas was fired from the Milliyet newspaper for what she said were columns critical of Erdogan and the government.
Government officials have repeatedly denied putting pressure on bosses of media companies, many of which are owned by parent companies that hold lucrative government contracts in other areas of industry. The government also says no journalists are detained in Turkey for their work alone, but for other offences such as spreading terrorist propaganda. It has declined to comment on individual cases, saying they are a matter for the judiciary.
There were seven journalists in prison in Turkey as of last December, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, although there have been more arrests since then. Erdogan’s sympathizers reject the notion that press freedom is deteriorating.
“There was a time when more than 100 journalists were in jail and we were competing with China in terms of imprisoned reporters,” said Hilal Kaplan, columnist at the Sabah daily. “Today I would say the media is more pluralistic; there are pro-PKK (Kurdish militant) media, anti-Erdogan media, pro-AKP media, some of which couldn’t have existed 15 years ago.”
Cemal disagrees. He was editor of the Cumhuriyet newspaper during the presidency of Kenan Evren - a former army chief who led a 1980 coup and came to symbolize the military’s decades-long dominance over politics - and of his successor Turgut Ozal. In the years after Evren’s coup, fifty people were executed and half a million arrested, hundreds died in jail, and many more subsequently disappeared - the sort of instability that Turkey has long since left behind. But even in the turbulence of those times, Cemal said, there was greater access to information. He resigned as a columnist from Milliyet in 2013 after the newspaper suspended him when one of his columns drew criticism from Erdogan. “Erdogan has to date never held a real press conference, because he never wished to take and answer questions from those opposing him ... Even the coup leaders including Evren held press conferences,” Cemal said.
“I harshly criticized Turgut Ozal. He still allowed me on his plane for trips, invited us to his press conferences and engaged in fiery debates with me and other opposition journalists. Even the second-class democracy of those times was better than today.”
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[AnNahar] Turkish politicians hold their final campaign rallies Saturday for a vote many fear is unlikely to bring an end to months of instability as the country confronts bloody jihadist attacks and a renewed Kurdish conflict.
Opinion polls are predicting a replay Sunday of the shock June election which stripped the Justice and Development Party (AKP) of its majority after 13 years of single-party rule, leaving the country without a government after coalition talks failed.
The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... goes into the election more polarized than ever on ethnic and sectarian lines, and deeply on edge after the October 10 bombings in Ankara that killed 102 people, the worst in the country's modern history.
The AKP of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ... Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him... is tipped to win between 40 and 43 percent of the vote, paving the way either for a shaky coalition that many analysts say will not last long -- or yet another election.
"Sunday's vote will have existential importance on the future of Turkey," said Yusuf Kanli, a commentator at Hurriyet Daily News.
Another inconclusive result could trigger further turmoil in the Muslim-majority country, with fears of a return to all-out war between Turkish security forces and Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) rebels after renewed violence shattered a truce in July.
Alarm bells are also ringing about the state of democracy in the country of 78 million following a string of high-profile police raids and prosecutions against media groups and journalists considered critical of Erdogan and his government.
The June result put paid to Erdogan's hopes of expanding his role into a powerful U.S.-style executive presidency that opponents fear would mean fewer checks and balances on a man seen as increasingly autocratic.
"Sunday's parliamentary elections will really be about curbing or enhancing Erdogan's power," said Asli Aydintasbas of the European Council on Foreign Relations.
A total of 54 million Turks are registered to vote, but observers say fatigue has set in, and the run-up to the election has been much more low-key than the frenzied campaigning ahead of the June poll.
Security remains the paramount concern after the bloody attack on a peace rally in Ankara that prosecutors say was carried out by a sleeper cell on the orders of the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... group to disrupt Sunday's election.
Police have rounded up scores of IS suspects in raids across the country amid media reports that a jihadist cell could be planning a spectacular attack such as a hijacking.
"We need a strong government to guarantee stability," Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, a close Erdogan ally, said on Friday.
The Ankara atrocity followed a similar bombing on Kurdish activists in a town on the Syrian border in July that thrust the NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Originally it was a mutual defense pact directed against an expansionist Soviet Union. In later years it evolved into a mechanism for picking the American pocket while criticizing the cut of the American pants... ally into a "war on terrorism" against IS bully boyz and PKK rebels in Turkey and Iraq.
Ankara, which is already struggling with more than two million Syrian refugees, found itself drawn directly into the quagmire across the border this summer.
It joined the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State fighters in July, after initially helping some Islamic rebel groups opposed to the Damascus regime.
But concerns about Turkey's domestic and foreign policies have seen it more isolated on the international stage, as relations with the EU and U.S. cool and it loses friends in the Middle East.
Turkey's faltering economy is also at risk, with growth slowing sharply from the dizzy heights of five years ago and the Turkish lira plunging around 26 percent so far in 2015.
All eyes will again be on the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), which made history in June when it became the first pro-Kurdish movement in parliament and gained enough seats to block an AKP majority.
Analysts expect the AKP to try to form a coalition with at least one other party in the event of another hung parliament, probably the secular Republican People's Party (CHP) which came second in June.
But the outcome could leave Turkey without a government as it hosts world leaders, including U.S. President Barack Obama Ready to Rule from Day One... for the G20 summit in the Mediterranean resort of Antalya on November 15 and 16.
Davutoglu, who could be fighting for his political life if the AKP fails again to win at least 276 of the 550 seats in parliament, insisted another election was not on the cards for fatigued voters.
"Turkey would not tolerate another rerun," he said this week.
[McClatchyDC] "She's too big to jail," [emphasis added]
said national security attorney Edward MacMahon Jr., who represented former CIA employee Jeffrey Sterling in 2011 in a leak case that led to an espionage prosecution and 3½-year prison term. And that's when I realized our Republic was doomed.
[Daily Caller] Michael Morell, former deputy director and acting director of the CIA, disputes former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's assertion that bad intelligence led her to blame the attack on the diplomatic facilities in Benghazi was a result of a You Tube video that ridiculed Islam. Glad I read it here, buying Morell's book would have simply been a bridge too far.
[PJmedia] Here, via the Select Committee on Benghazi, is the full email with appropriate redactions:
"Colleagues, I mentioned to [redacted] this morning, and want to share with all of you, our view at Embassy Tripoli that we must be cautious in our local messaging with regard to the inflammatory film trailer, adapting it to Libyan conditions.
Our monitoring of the Libyan media and conversations with Libyans suggest that the films not as explosive of an issue here as it appears to be in other countries in the region. The overwhelming majority of the FB comments and tweets we've received from Libyans since the Ambassador's death have expressed deep sympathy, sorrow, and regret. They have expressed anger at the attackers, and emphasized that this attack does not represent Libyans or Islam. Relatively few have even mentioned the inflammatory video.
So if we post messaging about the video specifically, we may draw unwanted attention to it. And it is becoming increasingly clear that the series of events in Benghazi was much more terrorist attack than a protest which escalated into violence. It is our opinion that in our messaging, we want to distinguish, not conflate, the events in other countries with this well-planned attack by militant extremists. I have discussed this with [redacted] and he shares PAS's view."
Select committee spokesman Matt Wolking said the email was referenced in the hearing last week and was released publicly for the first time on Saturday.
#1
If not written by the chargé d'affaires in Tripoli, released by the chargé or the Regional Security Offier (RSO), neither of which we've heard much from.
"They have expressed anger at the attackers, and emphasized that this attack does not represent Libyans or Islam."
Not Libyans or Islam? The events could very easily represent Iranian or Russian interests, but perhaps we should not go there with the upcoming election, DoS and Dmitri Medvedev diplo-reset, etc.
Someone, please hurry. Come up with a plausible offset, a diversion. Have Susan Rice call me asap.
#2
Come on. The Left lies to itself. It has to. It would otherwise have to confront its constant and repeat failures from following its cherished fantasies rather then reality. (And yet these hip, modern, urbanists, look down their nose at people who believe in a divine entity. No real self awareness when one becomes one's own god.)
#3
So the left is satisfied with a liar for a candidate and possible president? They have a willingness to accept being lied to? Inveterate lying seems to be de rigueur for the office with the Donks. Of course, they tend to be naive and are willing to accept such tripe as the global warming, a schlocky video causing Benghazi, and other such nonsense. Nothing so easy as fleecing the sheep when they don't know they are being fleece or don't care about being fleeced. What was that saying about "a fool and his money/ [liberty] are soon parted?"
KUALA LUMPUR: Five Maldives residents, including a suspect police believe was involved in the attempted assassination of President Abdulla Yameen last month, were deported from Malaysia on Friday, police said. The suspect worked as the country’s investment ambassador.
The five were arrested on Sept. 28, the day of a speedboat explosion targeting Yameen, the statement said without naming them. Maldives Vice President Ahmed Adheeb was arrested on Saturday in connection with the explosion.
Yameen has been criticized for a crackdown on political dissent, including the arrest of Maldives’ first democratically elected president, Mohamed Nasheed. Nasheed was sentenced to 13 years’ jail this year on terrorism charges. Yameen, 59, was unhurt in the blast as his presidential boat approached the capital Male while he was returning from Saudi Arabia after the Haj pilgrimage, but his wife and two aides were injured.
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Iran signaled on Friday it backed a six-month transition period in Syria followed by elections to decide Bashar al-Assad's fate, a proposal floated at peace talks as a concession but which the president's foes rejected as a trick to keep him in power. Sources who described the Iranian proposal said it amounted to Assad's closest ally dropping its insistence on him remaining in office.
But Assad's enemies say a new election would keep him in power unless other steps were taken to remove him. His government held an election as recently as last year, which he easily won. His opponents have always rejected any proposal for a transition unless he is removed.
Iranian officials attended international peace talks on Syria for the first time on Friday in Vienna, a month after the balance of power in the 4-year-old civil war shifted in Assad's favor with Russia launching air strikes against his foes. Iran appears to be adjusting its stance in ways that could create more ground for compromise with Western countries that are coming to accept Assad cannot be driven from power by force.
The Iranians are as serious in dumping Assad as they are in complying with the Obama accord...
"Iran does not insist on keeping Assad in power forever," Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Amir Abdollahian, a member of Tehran's delegation at the Syria talks on Friday, was quoted by Iranian media as saying.
A senior official from the Middle East familiar with the Iranian position said that could go as far as ending support for Assad after the transition period.
"Talks are all about compromises and Iran is ready to make a compromise by accepting Assad remaining for six months," the official told Reuters. "Of course, it will be up to the Syrian people to decide about the country's fate."
Syrian opposition figures, already bristling from having been excluded from Friday's talks about the fate of their country, correctly dismissed the reported Iranian proposal as a ruse.
"Who is mad enough to believe that under these circumstances in Syria, anybody can hold elections?" said George Sabra, a member of the Western-backed political opposition, the exiled Syrian National Coalition, told Reuters. "Bashar al-Assad and his regime is the root of the terrorism in Syria."
They say any fair vote is impossible in wartime conditions in which nearly half of the country is displaced.
"In the shadow of this anarchy there will not be real elections, therefore we reject them absolutely," said Ahmed al-Seoud, a fighter in the rebel 13th Division which has been fighting in the western Hama province.
Abu Ghaith al-Shami, a spokesman for the rebel Alwiyat Seif al-Sham group which is fighting in the south, said Assad's participation in an election was unthinkable: "The fate of Assad and all criminals should be in court following the massacres committed by him and those with him, towards the Syrian people."
Nevertheless, a commitment from Iran to a defined time limit for a transition could be viewed as a significant new undertaking, potentially forming a basis for future diplomacy at a time when Assad's position has been strengthened by Russia's decision to join the war on his side.
A gullible senior US official and other delegates said a new round of Syria peace talks could be held as soon as next week.
All previous efforts to find a diplomatic solution to Syria's civil war have collapsed over the insistence of the United States, European powers, Arab states and Turkey that Assad agree to leave power. In the past, Iranian delegations were excluded for refusing to sign up to U.N.-backed proposals that called for a transition of power in Damascus. Tehran has long said it was not committed to Assad as an individual, but that it was up to Syrians to decide his fate, a position that amounted to an endorsement of election results that confirmed him in office.
Russia's participation in the conflict on Assad's behalf creates a new incentive for a diplomatic push to end a war that has killed more than 250,000 people and driven more than 10 million people from their homes. Western countries that have called for Assad's removal from power appear to have accepted that he cannot be forced out on the battlefield.
The United States has said it is looking for signs of compromise from Tehran and Moscow at Friday's conference, defending its decision to talk directly to Iran about the Syrian conflict for the first time. The conference will also be attended by European powers, Turkey and Iran's arch enemy in the region, Saudi Arabia.
"I am hopeful that we can find a way forward," US Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters shortly before the meeting began on Friday morning. "It is very difficult."
It's very difficult. No kidding. Thanks for that Jahwn...
Iranian and Russian officials have repeatedly said the priority for Syria should be the defeat of Islamic State militants, who have seized large areas of Syria and Iraq.
The divide between Assad's allies and Western and Arab nations seeking his ouster has deepened since Moscow began air strikes against opposition forces in Syria a month ago. Russia lies when it says it is bombing Islamic State, but most of its air strikes have hit other groups opposed to Assad, including many that are supported by Washington's allies.
The United States is leading its own bombing campaign against Islamic State, the world's most violent jihadist group, but says Assad's presence makes the situation worse. Washington has said it could tolerate Assad during a short transition period, but that he would then have to exit the political stage.
To where -- Mauritania? The day he leaves power he's a dead man and he knows it...
Assad's latest seven-year presidential term runs until 2021.
He was elected the way Saddam was "elected", the way Stalin was "elected". Anyone who believes Assad was elected is a gullible fool.
He is believed to control a quarter or less of Syrian territory, but that includes the main cities of Western Syria which are home to the bulk of people still inside the country.
Assad's office said on Tuesday political initiatives could not work in Syria before his enemies terrorism had been wiped out, his long-held position.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/01/2015 00:00 ||
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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.
[McClatchyDC] "She's too big to jail," 
