[Khaama (Afghanistan)] President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani ...former chancellor of Kabul University, now president of Afghanistan. Before returning to Afghanistan in 2002 he was a scholar of political science and anthropology. He worked at the World Bank working on international development assistance. As Finance Minister of Afghanistan between July 2002 and December 2004, he led Afghanistan's attempted economic recovery until the Karzais stole all the money. .. has said negotiations with Pakistain would be more effective than sitting-in for peace talks with the Taliban group.
President Ghani told news hounds in Kabul ...the capital of Afghanistan. Home to continuous fighting from 1992 to 1996 between the forces of would-be strongman and Pak ISI/Jamaat-e-Islami sock puppet Gulbuddin Hekmayar and the Northern Alliance, a period which won Hek the title Most Evil Man in the World and didn't do much for the reputations of the Northern Alliance guys either.... this afternoon that policy of the Afghan government is clear and reiterated his last year's remarks, saying that Afghanistan is engaged in an undeclared war with Pakistain during the past 14 years.
In regards to his upcoming visit to Pakistain to attend the Heart of Asia summit and share the issue of Afghan peace talks, President Ghani said "We have right to defend from our fundamental rights in every summits or place."
He also added that the government of Afghanistan will welcome all the Afghans waging war against the country, provided that they accept the national constitution and rights of their fellow countrymen.
President Ghani delivered a similar statement late in the month of May this year, insisting on reconciliation process with Pakistain as the first step to bring peace and stability in the country.
He also added that the ongoing violence has been enforced on Afghanistan and the Afghan people and reiterated that Afghanistan does not favor war.
Pakistain facilitated the first round of direct peace talks between the Afghan government and Taliban group in Islamabad this year but the second round of the talks scheduled in July failed with the disclosure of the death of Taliban founder and supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.
Tensions between Kabul and Islamabad also escalated following a series of deadly attacks across the country and capital Kabul as Taliban launched their summer offensive this year, with Afghan officials slamming Islamabad for sheltering the anti-government armed snuffies in their soil from where they coordinate and execute attacks in Afghanistan.
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12/08/2015 00:00 ||
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[Khaama (Afghanistan)] The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Abdullah Abdullah ... the former foreign minister of the Northern Alliance government, advisor to Masood, and candidate for president against Karzai. Dr. Abdullah was born in Kabul and is half Tadjik and half Pashtun... has said that the supreme leader of the Taliban group Mullah Akhtar Mansoor has likely sustained injuries in an internal clash in Pakistain.
In his speech during the Weekly Council of Ministers meeting, Abdullah confirmed that the government was aware of an internal clash among the Taliban leaders with conflicting reports suggesting Mullah Mansoor has been killed or maimed.
However, some people cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go... he said the location of the incident reveals another aspect of the movements against the Afghan people, apparently gesturing towards the provision of shelter to anti-government armed Death Eater groups in Pakistain.
Abdullah further added that the government of Afghanistan expects that those who are thinking about Afghanistan, the Afghan people and Islam should also think about their own people and never become victims of conspiracies against Afghanistan.
The latest remarks by Abdullah is believed to add more to the ambiguities surround the fate of Mullah Akhtar Mansoor who has been declared dead by certain Afghan government officials and Taliban sources.
Although the Taliban group has rejected reports suggesting that Mullah Mansoor has been maimed or killed in an internal clash, a number of senior Taliban leaders said Sunday that Mullah Mansoor has likely been killed or departed this vale of tears following the clash.
Taliban on Saturday night released an audio recording -- five days after reports circulated regarding the death of Mullah Akhtar Mansoor.
A man purporting to Mullah Mansoor dismissed the reports as propaganda and an attempt to further to spread the propaganda regarding growing difference among the Taliban ranks which led to infighting.
Another Taliban official has also confirmed to Rooters that Mullah Mansoor has been killed and has been replaced by deputy Taliban chief Sheikh Hebatullah Akhundzada.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/08/2015 00:00 ||
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[ARABNEWS] Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi is prepared to call a cease-fire on Dec. 15 to coincide with the start of UN-led peace talks in Switzerland ...home of the Helvetians, famous for cheese, watches, yodeling, and William Tell... , the UN mediator said on Monday.
Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, speaking to news hounds in Geneva said: "They (the coalition) are certainly on board regarding our discussion on the cease-fire but they made it very clear that the cease-fire request has to come from President Hadi. I went to Aden to meet President Hadi -- as you know, I was in Aden two days ago -- and President Hadi has given me his commitment that he is ready now to call for this cease-fire starting on Dec. 15."
Ahmed said three delegations had agreed to come to the talks, likely to be held outside of Geneva. They include representatives Hadi's government, a delegation of the Iran-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, and officials from the General People's Congress, who are loyalists of deposed President President-for-Life Ali Abdullah Saleh ... Saleh initially took power as a strongman of North Yemen in 1977, when disco was in flower, but he didn't invite Donna Summer to the inauguration and Blondie couldn't make it... Ahmed said there was no timeline for the negotiations, vowing they would last "as long as it takes."
Yemeni president meanwhile named a new governor for Aden on Monday following the killing of Jaafar Saad in a boom-mobile claimed by Daesh [Islamic State].
Hadi appointed Aidarus Al-Zubaidi, the leader of the pro-government Popular Resistance militia in Daleh province, according to a presidential decree.
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12/08/2015 00:00 ||
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[ARABNEWS] The Cabinet at its weekly meeting on Monday condemned the liquidation of the governor of Aden, the terror attacks in Chad and Caliphornia, an impregnable bastion of the Democratic Party,, US.
The Cabinet, chaired by King of the Arabians, Sheikh of the Burning Sands, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman ...either the largest species of Pacific salmon or the current Sheikh of the Burnin' Sands, Cutodian of the Two Holy Mosquesand Lord of Most of the Arabians.... , at Al-Yamamah Palace, appreciated the Kingdom's keenness to solve the Syrian crisis politically and to host all categories of moderate Syrian opposition to participate in an expanded meeting of the Syrian opposition in Riyadh, scheduled for Dec. 8- 10, in consultation with all parties concerned and the UN envoy in Syria.
The meeting renewed call on members of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to implement the Chemical Weapons Convention and boost global cooperation in this regard.
The Cabinet also welcomed the UN Security Council Resolution No 2235, 2015, for the formation of a joint committee from the UN and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to investigate the use of chemical weapons in Syria.
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12/08/2015 00:00 ||
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A new report warns that Western governments have been unable to stem the flow in either direction. Barack Hussein Obama, please pick up the white courtesy phone for an important update.
The number of fighters from Western Europe pouring into Syria has more than doubled since last year, swelling the ranks of the Islamic State and other extremist groups by more than 30,000 despite efforts by the U.S. and other Western countries to cut off the flow, according to a new report by an international security firm.
There is also mounting evidence that significant numbers of these fighters -- an average of between 20 percent and 30 percent -- are starting to return to their home countries, posing threats that became a grisly reality in the November 13 attacks in Paris, which were coordinated by an ISIS recruit who returned to France, the authors of the report warn.
"All of our assumptions about our ability to monitor these people have been proven faulty," said Patrick Skinner, a former CIA counterterrorism officer and one of the authors of the report prepared by the Soufan Group. I hope a key member of the current administration has picked up the ability to learn by example since they were elected seven years ago. But I won't hold my breath. Even if he has covertly picked up that skill, it will take it a while to beat down his ego. If not his middle name.
"When you look at France or Belgium -- they have a massive problem," Skinner added. "It's clear they haven't been able to stop people from going -- and it's painfully clear they haven't stopped people from coming back. It's the round-trip nature of this that is really worrisome."
The report also suggests that the motivation for those joining the fight is often more personal than political, and may well be immune to the "countering radical extremism" messaging that U.S. and other officials have touted as a potential solution to the problem.
"A search for belonging, purpose, adventure and friendship appear to remain the main reasons for people to join the Islamic State, just as they remain the least-addressed issues in the international fight against terrorism," the report states.
The report -- with detailed, country-by-country breakdowns on the flow of foreign fighters -- offers a sobering and in some cases more downbeat perspective on the state of the war against ISIS than the one President Obama offered the country in a nationally televised speech Sunday night.
Before U.S. officials began calling attention to the problem, the Soufan Group was among the first to highlight the threat posed by foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq in a major report it released in June 2014. Basing its figures on open-source reporting, official government estimates and private interviews with U.S. and allied intelligence officials, the consulting firm estimated at the time that about 12,000 foreign fighters from 81 countries had flocked to Syria and Iraq.
The new report puts the figure at between 27,000 and 31,000 from at least 86 countries. That is consistent with current U.S. intelligence estimates, updated in just the last few weeks, of about 30,000.
The Soufan Group accepts official U.S. estimates that about 250 of these have come, or attempted to come, from the United States, up from about 120 last year. (A U.S. intelligence official told Yahoo News that about two dozen Americans are also now believed to have died after traveling to Syria to join the conflict.)
The numbers from Western Europe, Russia and the former Soviet Republics are far more pronounced -- and rapidly accelerating. It estimates, for example, that about 5,000 fighters from European Union countries have flocked to the conflict, up from 2,500 in June 2014, with more than two- thirds of them coming from just four countries. The number from France is estimated at 1,700 (up from 700 last year); from the U.K. 760 (up from 400 last year); from Germany, 760 (up from 270 last year; and from Belgium, 470 (up from 250 last year.)
One huge source of the flow has been Russia -- a major reason cited by Russian President Vladimir Putin's recent decision to begin military strikes in Syria. The report estimates that about 2,400 fighters have come from Russia, up from 800 last year. The largest sources, however, remains Tunisia -- about 6,000 (twice the estimate from last year); Turkey, between 2,000 and 2,200 (up from 400 last year); and 2,500 from Saudi Arabia (the same number as last year.)
In his talk from the Oval Office Sunday night, President Obama promised an intensification of air strikes and special operations forces against the ISIS. But he offered no major change in U.S. strategy and again vowed to avoid sending a large influx of U.S. ground troops to dislodge ISIS from the territory it now holds.
But Skinner of the Soufan Group said it is increasingly clear that the flow of fighters will not stop until the ISIS suffers a decisive defeat on the ground. "Until the Islamic State is demonstrably defeated, militarily -- until they get toppled from Mosul and Raqqa, they will continue to be a magnet," he said. "They need to have an undeniable loss."
[AA.TR] Germany's highest court is to open a case seeking to ban the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD), the court announced Monday.
The Federal Constitutional Court said proceedings would begin on March 1 to examine whether the activities of the NPD violate the constitution and threaten democracy.
The Karlsruhe-based court made the announcement after two years of deliberations on banning the party, the largest far-right party in the country with around 5,000 members. Its supporters have been active in recent months in organizing anti-immigration demonstrations across the country.
The application for a ban was filed by the Bundesrat, the legislative body representing Germany's 16 federal states.
The move has been controversial. In 2003, the Constitutional Court turned down a similar application on the grounds that there had been informants and undercover agents of the domestic intelligence agency in key positions in the NPD.
As the agency, the BND, refused to name the informants, the Constitutional Court could not evaluate if any anti-constitutional activity originated from informants or genuine party members.
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[Tolo News] Greece transported busloads of immigrants away from the flashpoint Greece-Macedonian border Saturday in an effort to keep violence from erupting between Syrian, Iraqi and Afghan refugees permitted to move into Macedonia.
Immigrants who refused to be bussed out said that they were stranded, had nowhere to go and would stand their ground to the bitter end.
For refugees and immigrants on the Greek border with Macedonia, a tremendous amount of time was spent on "waiting."
They waited to see if, maybe, even though they can't get into Macedonia because they are Bangladeshi or Iranian and not from Afghanistan, Syria or Iraq, the policy may change.
Days earlier asylum-seeking immigrants protested what they said was an unfair bias.
"We have just two options: we go inside or die here. If we die here it is response to UN and UN nations - Europe nation. Why, we are not human?" said Waeed, a refugee from Pakistain.
Wanting to avoid a repeat protest, Greek authorities moved around five hundred "non-refugees" to Athens on Saturday.
NGO representatives said that a sweep to clear out thousands remaining may be imminent.
In response, some asylum seekers said that they will resist.
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Immigrants who refused to be bussed out said that they were stranded, had nowhere to go and would stand their ground to the bitter end.
[BBC] The triumphant leader of the far-right National Front (FN), Marine Le Pen, says French voters rejected the "old political class" in regional elections that put her party top.
Nearly one-third of voters backed the anti-immigration FN, which won in six out of La Belle France's 13 regions.
Despite the FN surge, a second round on 13 December will be the decider.
It was the first electoral test since last month's Gay Paree attacks, in which jihadist gunnies killed 130 people.
The nationalist FN got about 28%, ahead of the centre-right Republicans party led by former President Nicolas Sarkozy ...23rd President of the French Republic. Sarkozy is married to singer-songwriter Carla Bruni, who has a really nice birthday suit... , which polled just under 27%, and the governing Socialist Party (PS), trailing with 23.5%.
The PS said it was withdrawing from the second round in two regions, in the north and south, to try to block a run-off victory for the FN.
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[WASHINGTONPOST] Soon after the terror attacks in Gay Paree last month, Gay Pareeians wanted to demonstrate their unity: They donated blood, defiantly went out to bars and overlaid their Facebook profile pictures with the French flag.
But on Sunday, the country's far-right and anti-immigration National Front made huge gains in regional elections, emerging as the strongest party with 28 percent of the votes. Some were quick to link the fear that followed the attacks to the party's success. But the results were expected even before 130 people were killed in the terrorist attacks last month. And the reasons aren't just about security. The second round next Sunday could prove that the country is in a deeper political crisis than many in La Belle France would want to admit.
"Many French are fed up with politicians. They are now fed up with endless controversies," said Patrice Dabos, a researcher at the Institut de Recherche Supérieur de l'Ecole Militaire in Gay Paree. In other words: There isn't just one reason for rise of xenophobic politics in La Belle France.
Young people might be among those fed up: With sky-high youth unemployment, more young people voted for the National Front than for any other party Sunday.
The success of La Belle France's far right is the result of years of political and economic stagnation in a country that still perceives itself as a heavyweight in international politics. The country's military may have prevented a genocide in the Central African Republic fairly recently -- but closer to home, competing with economic world power Germany has proven to be a much harder challenge for Socialist President Francois Hollande ...the Socialist president of La Belle France, an economic bad joke for la Belle France but seemingly a foreign policy realist... .
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12/08/2015 00:00 ||
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"Many French are fed up with politicians. They are now fed up with endless controversies". In other words: There isn't just one reason for rise of xenophobic politics in La Belle France.
[REUTERS] The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... on Monday warned the Russian ambassador that there should be no repeat of an incident last week, when a Russian sailor allegedly brandished a rocket launcher on the deck of a naval ship passing through Istanbul, foreign ministry sources said.
The incident, which was captured in photographs, has further ramped up tension between the two countries, after Turkey last month shot down a Russian plane over Syria. Moscow has retaliated with a raft of sanctions and accused Ankara of treachery.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/08/2015 00:00 ||
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#1
Why do I keep having nightmares about 1914?
Is Zero's legacy going to be another "war to end all war"?
#4
Single guy on deck in a very visible position with a MANPAD. Sounds like a Beware of Dog sign. I'm guessing the Turks are pissed because they planned to buzz the ship, just because.
#5
Turkey is getting close to sounding like north korea and their rhetoric.
Posted by: chris ||
12/08/2015 13:06 Comments ||
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#6
Or else what???
Vladimir Putin wants to know!
At last check/read, the more serious issue is the alleged or repor DETAINMENT OF RUSSIAN MERCHANT SHIPS = AKA INTERVENTION BY TURKEY WID RUSSIAN TRADE.
Big No-No in Tsarist, Soviet, + now Russian Maha-Rushian histoire'.
[ABCNEWS.GO] Syrian refugees are scheduled to arrive in Texas on Monday after the state eased up in its legal fight against resettlement agencies and the federal government.
Twelve Syrians, including six children, are expected to arrive in Dallas and Houston on Monday, joining relatives already settled in Texas. Another nine refugees are scheduled to arrive in Houston Thursday.
State officials fought for weeks to stop them, saying Syrian refugees posed an unacceptable security risk after the deadly Nov. 13 Gay Paree attacks.
But two days after suing one resettlement agency, the International Rescue Committee, and federal officials, the state on Friday withdrew its request for an order immediately stopping the refugees from entering Texas. The lawsuit remains pending, and a judge could hear arguments in the case this week.
Texas took in nearly 250 Syrians before the Gay Paree attacks. Federal officials said in court filings that they plan to resettle as many as 250 Syrians in Texas during the current fiscal year.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/08/2015 00:00 ||
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Disburse them among the overall population in general communities of less than 20,000. Don't allow the development of ghettos/'towns' in the big cities.
HT AOSHQ. BLUF - The Obama Regime and Hillary Clinton LIED about not having mil resources available
A new email made public Tuesday indicates the Pentagon had military forces at the ready when the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi was under siege, a claim the State Department has repeatedly disputed.
Jeremy Bash, then the Defense Department's chief of staff, wrote in an email to top aides to Hillary Clinton the night of Sept. 11, 2012 that Gen. Martin Dempsey and the Joint Chiefs of Staff had "identified the forces that could move to Benghazi."
"They are spinning as we speak," Bash wrote within hours of the start of the attack.
While parts of the email were redacted, the message indicates the Pentagon was waiting for approval from the State Department to send the forces in. That help never arrived for the Americans under siege at the Benghazi compound.
A spokesman for the House Select Committee on Benghazi said investigators had received the unredacted version of the email, which was obtained by Judicial Watch through the Freedom of Information Act, last year but had declined to make it public before this point.
"The Select Committee has obtained and reviewed tens of thousands of documents in the course of its thorough, fact-centered investigation into the Benghazi terrorist attacks, and this information will be detailed in the final report the Committee hopes to release within the next few months," said Matt Wolking, committee spokesman.
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12/08/2015 18:41 ||
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Gee... Hillary and Obumble lied about letting those people die.
How many traitors are involved in this story?
The Pentagon insists that trading an American captive for five Taliban fighters was the "best deal we could get." An unreleased Congressional report says that's nonsense.
A new congressional report is critical of the Obama administration's decision to trade five Taliban prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. And the report ascribes a political motivation to the prisoner swap, according to two sources familiar with the document's contents.
Administration officials have long said that the exchange of Taliban prisoners for Bergdahl, who disappeared from his base in eastern Afghanistan in 2009 and was held for five years by a Taliban affiliate, was conducted under a long-standing tradition of trading prisoners at the end of military hostilities.
"We have an unwavering commitment and patriotic duty to leave no man or woman in uniform behind on the battlefield," a senior administration official told The Daily Beast, without commenting directly on the report, which was written by the Republican staff of the House Armed Services Committee. (The Democrats were reviewing the document Monday evening.)
"We had a near-term opportunity to save Sergeant Bergdahl's life, and we were committed to using every tool at our disposal to secure his safe return," the official said.
But before the Bergdahl trade, senior U.S. intelligence officials had also told members of Congress that the Taliban fighters were likely to return to hostilities against the United States if they were released. The fighters were placed under house arrest in Qatar for one year, but that did little to dampen criticism that the administration had taken a risk releasing the men.
The new report is likely to reignite the controversy around the administration's decision and Bergdahl's case, which has figured in a vitriolic presidential election season. The sources said that it raises the question of whether the administration was motivated to release the five prisoners as a way of reducing the prisoner population at Guantanamo. The Obama administration has been searching for a place to house the remaining prisoners outside the island prison, and the issue has become a political albatross for the president, who promised from his first days in office to close the facility.
The leading Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump, has repeatedly called Bergdahl a traitor who abandoned his post and endangered other troops who tried to rescue him. Trump has even suggested Bergdahl should have been shot in the head.
The swap has also been roundly criticized by Republican lawmakers, including Sen. John McCain, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who said recently that Bergdahl was "clearly a deserter" and promised hearings if the Army chose to follow the advice of one of its lawyers that Bergdahl should serve no jail time and shouldn't face disciplinary actions.
In March, the Army charged Bergdahl, 29, with desertion and misbehaving before the enemy. He's currently serving at Ft. Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas.
The full scope of the House Armed Services Committee report, which hasn't been previously reported, was unclear. But sources said it examines the U.S. government's efforts to win Bergdahl's release. Those efforts have also been criticized by current and former officials for not ensuring that the various agencies of government that play a role in hostage rescue were working in concert.
Two Defense Department officials confirmed to The Daily Beast that the Pentagon has been providing information to the committee for its report. However, they said they hadn't seen the document, which is expected to be released Tuesday.
However, those officials denied any suggestion that the Defense Department's goal was anything but Bergdahl's safe return. The five-for-one prisoner swap "was the best deal we could get for Bergdahl," a senior defense official said.
But there were efforts underway at the time to bring Bergdahl home as well as other Americans held by the same group that had imprisoned him, the Taliban-aligned Haqqani network.
"The five-for-one swap was the starting point for what's become the administration's backdoor effort to thin out the inmate population at Gitmo," Joe Kasper, a spokesperson for Rep. Duncan Hunter, told The Daily Beast. Hunter, a member of the Armed Services Committee, has been a leading critic of the administration's hostage recovery efforts and is particularly critical of the Bergdahl exchange.
"What we've always known--and hopefully this report provides the right validation--is that the five-for-one swap was a less than half-baked idea that was favored by the State Department and the rest of the administration to the detriment of other, more acceptable and viable options," Kasper said, referring to attempts to rescue Bergdahl as well as other American hostages held along the border with Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Some Defense officials conceded that the release of the five Taliban prisoners did help reduce the population at Guantanamo Bay by bypassing the approval of often reluctant defense secretaries who have refused to release detainees to other countries. But the officials stressed that emptying the prison was never a primary goal.
The Government Accountability Office has already determined that the swap broke federal law because the administration didn't provide adequate notice to Congress.
According to one source familiar with the committee's work, the report's authors examined other efforts to rescue Bergdahl, including a failed operation by a non-Defense Department agency. Two sources familiar with the operation said that agency was the FBI. In February 2014, the Bureau sent personnel to the Pakistan side of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border to wait for Bergdahl, who they erroneously believed was about to be freed.
Bergdahl's lawyer, Eugene Fidell, declined to comment about the House Armed Services Committee report, saying he was not familiar with it. A spokesperson for the committee also declined to comment.
While lawmakers have objected to the trade, it wasn't exactly a surprise at the time. U.S. intelligence officials briefed members of Congress on a potential swap at least two years earlier, said a former senior intelligence official who was directly involved in the talks.
The official and a colleague told lawmakers that the five Taliban prisoners were likely to return to hostilities if they were freed.
But at the time, the administration also sought to portray the swap as part of a broader effort to bring hostilities with the Taliban to a close, and not just a one-time prisoner exchange, the former official said. A trade was worth the potential controversy, the logic went, if it helped bring peace to Afghanistan.
"We were really talking about getting into negotiations with the Taliban over ending the war. This was briefed [to Congress] in the context of a confidence-building measure," the former official said.
But that plan got derailed, he noted, when Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai, became enraged over U.S. attempts to negotiate with the Taliban.
The plan to ultimately do the trade for Bergdahl was drawn up by a working group of deputy-level officials, led by then-White House deputy national security adviser Denis McDonough, the former official said. Principal-level officials were "heavily involved" in the process and eventually signed off on the swap, he said.
McDonough is now Obama's chief of staff.
Privately, officials told The Daily Beast that the deal for Bergdahl was fraught with politics. Some thought that without Bergdahl's release, the U.S. couldn't withdraw all troops from Afghanistan, which was the administration's plan around the time of the deal. Obama has since decided to keep a residual military force of about 9,800 personnel in Afghanistan through much of 2016, in light of the rapid gains made by jihadist militants from ISIS after the U.S. withdrew combat forces from Iraq.
The military's efforts to rescue Bergdahl at the time of his disappearance, amid suspicions he walked off base, made his capture divisive from the beginning. Some of Bergdahl's fellow soldiers have said that the Army risked lives trying to rescue a potential deserter. President Obama announced the trade and Bergdahl's release in a May 2014 Rose Garden address, flanked by Bergdahl's parents.
Other efforts were underway to bring Bergdahl home as part of a broader effort to rescue Americans held hostage by Islamic militants in the region along the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. It's not clear to what extent the House Armed Services Committee report examines them, but they have figured prominently in congressional testimony.
In June, Lt. Col. Jason Amerine, a decorated combat veteran and Green Beret, testified at a Senate hearing that while serving in the Pentagon, he and his colleagues had designed a plan to trade Bashir Noorzai, an Afghan drug dealer serving a prison sentence in California, for American and Canadian hostages, including Caitlin Coleman and her husband, Canadian Joshua Boyle, who were kidnapped while hiking in Afghanistan in 2012. Coleman gave birth to a child while in captivity.
Warren Weinstein, an American contractor, was also part of the planned trade.
But the State Department intervened and stopped the deal, Amerine testified. Instead, the administration traded the five Taliban prisoners only for Bergdahl.
Weinstein was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan this year.
The Daily Beast reported this month that at least one more American is being held by the Haqqani network.
Amerine said that the FBI accused him of misconduct for sharing what it claimed was classified information about the possible multi-prisoner deal with Hunter, the congressman and hostage-rescue critic. Amerine was eventually cleared of all accusations of wrongdoing and given the Legion of Merit before retiring from the Army last month.
The release of Bergdahl may have opened a kind of Pandora's Box, signaling to hostage takers that the United States was willing to trade a disproportionate amount of its own prisoners for American citizens.
For instance, before he was released from a U.S. maximum-security prison this year, Ali Saleh Al-Marri, a confessed al Qaeda sleeper agent, was offered up in a potential prisoner swap that would have freed two Americans held abroad.
The Daily Beast previously reported that the proposal was floated in July 2014 to the then-U.S. ambassador in Qatar by an individual acting on behalf of that country's attorney general. According to two individuals with direct knowledge of the case, the proposition was made shortly after the Obama administration traded the five Taliban fighters for Bergdahl.
A U.S. official said at the time that Al-Marri's release was part of an agreement with Qatar and that no exchange ever occurred.
#1
Berdahl is a traitor whose case was rationalized, er investigated by an incompetent political two star rather than a CID Agent. MG Dahl should be indicted for incompetence for coming up with that cockamamie finding in his investigation. For this traitor we traded Fazl, a genuine war criminal responsible for the deaths of thousands in Afghanistan. BTW Fazl is also responsible for the death of Mike Spann, a great American. Mr. Spann's father and family will never get the justice they deserve, neither will the thousands of Afghan victim's families. This is criminal.
#2
I followed the Amerine story. The attempt at Gov't (FBI & DoJ) retribution and silencing of LTC Jason Amerine was shamefully disgusting and dishonorable. The Bureau has no use for the military, it never has.
#4
The Government Accountability Office has already determined that the swap broke federal law because the administration didn't provide adequate notice to Congress.
Let's be clear. It wasn't "the administration" that broke federal law. It was President Barak Obama.
[ARABNEWS] Eyewitnesses, crime-scene evidence and helicopter footage of demise of Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik demise aren't enough to convince the family's attorneys of their guilt.
Attorneys representing the Farook family, David S. Chesley and Muhammad Abuershaid, have hinted at a possible conspiracy surrounding the husband and wife team of faceless myrmidons who killed 14 and maimed 21 in San Bernardino, Caliphornia, an impregnable bastion of the Democratic Party,, according to CNN.
"There's a lot of things that, quite frankly, don't add up or seem implausible," Chesley said. "She was never involved in shooting. She's probably about 90 pounds, so it's unlikely she could even carry a weapon or wear some type of a vest or do any of this ... It just doesn't make sense for these two to be able to act like some kind of Bonnie and Clyde or something. It's just ridiculous. It doesn't add up. It doesn't add up, the military skills to carry out something like this, really. I'm just telling you straight out -- it doesn't make sense."
David Bowdich, from the FBI's Los Angeles office, said the agency designated its investigation into couple as terrorism-related.
"There was nothing to show that (Tashfeen) was extreme at all, and (Farook) was a normal guy, in every sense of the word," Abuershaid said.
Both attorneys said the families of Farook and Malik have "come to terms" with the evidence shown to them "through the media."
Abuershaid said he needed to receive more information before reaching a definitive conclusion regarding the terrorists' guilt.
"I don't know what can come in, but there's more information we haven't received yet," Abuershaid said.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/08/2015 00:00 ||
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Well I suppose we could strap a pipe bomb to his head and attempt to set it off.
[FOXNEWS] The investigation into the jihadist couple who massacred 14 people in San Bernardino last week is pointing to Pakistain as the likely source of the pair's radicalization, a development that threatens to expose once again the tenuous relations between the U.S. and the country accused of once harboring Al Qaeda founder and 9/11 criminal mastermindthe late Osama bin Laden ... who doesn't live anywhere anymore... Investigators are focusing on Tashfeen Malik, who married Syed Rizwan Farook after meeting him online and coming to the U.S. on a fiancee visa, and are particularly interested in a period from roughly 2007 to 2014 that she spent in her native Pakistain. It is during that time when she may have become radicalized, adopting the murderous Moslem ideology that she may have spread to her American-born husband. U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said that Sherlocks have interviewed more than 300 people and are working with Pakistain and other foreign governments as part of the far-reaching probe. Pakistain's interior minister also announced the country had launched its own investigation.
Despite being allies in the war on terror, the relationship between the U.S. and Pakistain has been plagued by mistrust, and the current probe could expose further cracks in cooperation. Osama bin Laden is believed to have lived for years in his Abbottabad ... A pleasant city located only 30 convenient miles from Islamabad. The city is noted for its nice weather and good schools. It is the site of Pakistain's military academy, which was within comfortable walking distance of the residence of the late Osama bin Laden.... compound, possibly with the knowledge of government authorities, prior to the May 2011 Navy SEAL raid in which he was killed. Now, the U.S. is believed to be putting heavy pressure on Pakistain to cooperate on its end of the investigation into the deadliest terror attack on American soil since 9/11.
"It's time that Pakistain matures up and accepts some responsibility," a source with knowledge of discussions between U.S. and Pak officials told FoxNews.com. "At this stage, Tashfeen's training is all leading back to Pakistain."
Posted by: Fred ||
12/08/2015 00:00 ||
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[CHANNELNEWSASIA] MULTAN, Pakistain: Security officials have been closely monitoring a university in east Pakistain attended by Tashfeen Malik, the woman involved in last's week's mass shooting in Caliphornia, an impregnable bastion of the Democratic Party,, because of concerns that Islamist militancy was taking hold there.
Malik, a Pak, attended the sprawling Bahauddin Zakariya University to study pharmacy between 2007 and 2012, after she had lived most of her life 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... Police and security officials on campus in the Punjabi city of Multan said intelligence officers had been stationed there to monitor militancy among 35,000 students studying in red-brick buildings set amid neatly kept grounds.
The enhanced security and monitoring was in response to the massacre of 134 pupils at an army-run school in the northwestern city of 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. a year ago that was blamed on the myrmidon Pak Taliban movement.
Malik had finished her studies by then, and officials said there was no evidence so far that she was radicalised at the university or had links to any particular myrmidon group.
But the tight security raises questions about Bahauddin Zakariya University itself and the potential for extremism being promoted in higher education in Pakistain more broadly.
"Our intelligence officials are now based in the university, working around the clock, gathering clues," said a policeman inside the university, who did not want to be named because he was not authorised to speak to the press.
"This is unusual for us, to put intelligence and police inside a university, but we have no choice."
WEAPONS AND THREATS
Behind him, a group of young men played guitar by a fountain, while women in full face veils sat chatting with male students at a nearby table.
"The university is under 24-hour surveillance. We have installed security cameras around the university, including in all dorms," said the officer.
Last month, police retrieved weapons from the men's dorms on campus, enjugged Don't shoot, coppers! I'm comin' out! three students and confiscated mobile phones and laptops from others, he added.
Tariq Masood, regional police officer for Multan, confirmed police had "taken action" after university authorities requested that they intervened, but he declined to give more details.
A second security official on campus, a police superintendent who also declined to be named, said that a few months ago the university received a letter claiming to be from a banned sectarian group threatening to massacre students.
"This kind of radical thinking exists in this area (southern Punjab) in general, and so of course there will be some reflection of it at the university," the second official said.
University front man Babar Khaqaan said the university was involved in the "promotion of good values", and he condemned Malik's actions.
Shortly after he spoke, four carloads of police escorted a Rooters reporting team off campus, citing security threats.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/08/2015 00:00 ||
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[BREITBART] A north Texas mosque, near the home of "Clock Boy" Ahmed, was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorism financing trial in United States history. The judge found there was ample evidence that the mosque, the Islamic Association of North Texas, assisted the Holy Land Foundation in funding millions of dollars to a Paleostinian military terrorist organization that has killed Israeli children.
The Richardson, Texas, mosque, also known as the Dallas Central Mosque, was set up largely for the purpose of funding Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, and terrorist activities by funding the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF). The foundation was based in the same city as the Islamic Association of North America -- Richardson, Texas.
The HLF was designated as a terrorist organization by the federal government in 2001. The organization was shut down and its assets were seized because the charity's primary purpose was found to fund Hamas. Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. and other governments.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/08/2015 00:00 ||
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#1
On September 5, 2001, less than a week before the World Trade Center attack, federal anti-terrorism agents raided InfoCom Corporation, the company that ran the Holy Land Foundation of Richardson, Texas, website. The InfoCom connection is crucial in understanding relations between the various components of the Muslim Brotherhood conspiracy in the USA. According to defectors from Hamas, the HLF web server was also used by CAIR, Muslim Student Assn., ISNA, the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), etc. They shared a single admin and technical contact for the maintenance of the server. In effect, they were the tentacles emmanating from the Hamas octopus, which was represented by HLF itself. The Holy Land was charged and closed down, but its influence remains, expecially at the Dallas Central Mosque.
[FREEBEACON] Retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Ralph Peters called President B.O. "a total pussy" during a live interview Monday for what he views as his impotent response to the threat of Islamic holy warrior terrorism.
Peters, a Fox News military analyst, appeared on Stuart Varney's Fox Business program to respond to Obama's Sunday night Oval Office address on the threat of terrorism, a speech that was widely panned. Peters, a fierce critic of Obama's national security policies, was visibly angry as he blasted the speech.
Peters said he was taken aback by Obama's continued references to Americans not giving into their fears.
"Mr. President, we're not afraid! We're angry! We're pissed off! We're furious!" Peters said. "We want you to react. We want you to do something. You're afraid! I mean, this guy is such a total pussy, it's stunning! We, the American people, who he does not know in any intimate sort of manner, we want action. We want action against 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.... Peters went on to say that Obama had done more damage to American police departments than to the Islamic State and had restrained the U.S. military.
"This is a president who doesn't want to hurt our enemies," Peters said. "This is a president who cares more about thugs in Guantanamo or thugs in Ferguson, Missouri, than he does about law-abiding American citizens and their right to live in safety and peace."
Posted by: Fred ||
12/08/2015 00:00 ||
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#1
Fox gave Peters a two week time out for his comments.
I dunno about you but if I were Peters, I'd say it was worth it to get that thought out.
Of course he is speaking for millions of Americans.
#4
Notice, it's freedom of speech not freedom of truth and facts. Jeez, peeple, no more micro-aggressions, my feelings are already too, too tender!
/sarc
#10
Wehell, lets just be frank about it, LTC. Peters!
Again, the Bammer is doing what he was born-n-raised to do - THE US-N-ONLY-THE-US IS THE PROVERBIAL "TIP OF THE SPEAR" IN SETTING UP US-LED ANTI-US OWG-NWO + GLOBALISM, WHICH APPARENTLY ALSO INCLUDES US-WORLD/GLOBAL MARXIST-COMMIE-SOCIALIST ORDER.
* FUBAR/SNAFU = AS OF TURKEY-DAY + XMAS 2015, THE BAMMER + ALIGNED OWG GLOBALISTS HAVE S-T-I-L-L NOT EXPLAINED "HOW MUCH IS TOO MUCH", OR "HOW FAR IS TOO FAR", ...@ETC. FOR THE [Unilateral = Self]WEAK/DECLINING "SOLE" SUPERPOWER US TO GIVE UP OR FALL BACK ACROSS THE WORLD IN THE NAME OF RIGHTEOUS, SAIDSAME US-LED ANTI-US OWG-NWO + GLOBALISM,"CO-SUPERPOWER" HOOD PAR WID RUSSIA, + CHINA + IRAN, OTHER?, ETC. ... ...
AND FOR THE US TO SAFELY DO WIDOUT BEING EXISTENTIALLY THREATENED OR DESTROYED IN THE PROCESS BY ASSORTED RIVALS + WANNABES???
DITTO AS PER THE ENTIRE WESTERN + JUDEO-CHRISTIAN = NON-MUSLIM WORLD.
E.G. CAN OR IS THE US-N-ONLY-THE-US STILL A SUPERPOWER OR CO-SUPERPOWER, + GEOPOL OR MILPOL "SAFE", IFF IT UNILATERALLY PCORRECTLY-DENIABLY GIVES UP 1/2 OF THE PACIFIC TO CHINA, + 1/2 OR MOST OF THE ATLANTIC TO RUSSIA, CHINA, + IRAN, OTHER?
* OWG Globalist "PARITY" WID THE NEW CO-SUPERPOWER US, NOT "INFERIORITY" TO SAME = OWG CO-SUPERPOWERS RUSSIA, CHINA, + IRAN, OTHER? [NGOS = Al-Qaeda, ISIS/ISIL?] WILL THE SAME OR LIKELY SLIGHLY LESS ADVANCED MILTECHS + MIL CAPABILITIES, ETC. LIKE THE US.
E.G. RANTBURG ARTIC = ISIS/ISIL ALLEGEDLY SNEAKING IN BIOWAR, CHEMWAR WMDS [Nukes?] INTO EUROPE.
#11
See CHINESE MILITARY FORUM > [CATO.org Repost = 11/2013] SHOULD THE US USE [formal = diplomatic]TREATIES TO MAKE THE WORLD "MORE LIKE US".
Methinks Obama + OWG Globies intend or are attempting to do this already, SAVE PERHAPS IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION.
Instead of making the World more like the US, the above end up making the US more like the World, + NOT in the good sense, E.G. INSTEAD OF THE US EVOL INTO A EURO-STYLE, SECULAR DEMOCRATIC SOCIALIST NATION, OR EVEN "EURO-SOVIET/COMMUNIST", THE ISLAMIST-JIHADIST HARD BOYZ CONQUER MOST OR ALL OF THE WORLD INCLUDING THE US, TURNING THE US-WEST = NON-MUSLIM WORLD INTO DE FACTO "MUSLIM/ISLAMIC".
Thanks mainly to OWG Globie, Lefty,+ aligned Special Interests miscalculation, corruption or gross incompetence.
BY THE TIME AMERIKA FORMALLY ADOPTS SHARIA LAW + COURTS + ENCLAVES, THE SECULAR LEFTIES HAD ALREADY EMPLACED IN US LAW MOST OR ALL OF THE [violent]THINGS MUSLIMS ACCEPT OR LIKE TO DO, IN THE NAME OF THE SOCIALIST ANDOR ELECTION-YEAR "POWER GRAB".
Did it for political power, but failed to control it.
#12
He should not have done that. We on the right are supposed to be better than name calling lefttards. He needs to stay above the name calling. Regardless of how he or we feel about him..
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
12/08/2015 21:20 Comments ||
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Rafia Farook, the mother of San Bernardino terrorist Syed Rizwan Farook, is an active member of the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), a Muslim organization that promotes the establishment of a caliphate and has ties to a radical Pakistani political group called Jamaat-e-Islami.
See how it all fits together? Sonny boy didn't fall far from the tree. We'll hear about daddy-kins by tomorrow, I expect.
Farook’s affiliation with ICNA was revealed on Friday when MSNBC and other new outlets scoured the Farooks’ apartment in Redlands, Cal. An MSNBC reporter found a certificate of appreciation presented to Safia Farook last summer by ICNA’s sisters’ wing.
Wonder how the FBI missed that. Or if they didn't, why it wasn't mentioned...
Though ICNA has not been named as a target in the ongoing investigation into Wednesday’s attack, the group has been associated with many others who have engaged in terrorism or plotted to do so.
Enough that you'd think every single member of ICNA would be monitored quietly, and that their kin would be monitored, and their business associates...
Al-Qaeda recruiter Anwar al-Awlaki has spoken at the group’s events. He spoke at an ICNA event in Baltimore in 2002, though the group has said that al-Awlaki was not radicalized at that time. Al-Awlaki exchanged emails with Nidal Hasan, the Army major who killed 13 people in a terrorist attack at Fort Hood in Nov. 2009. Al-Awlaki was killed by a U.S. drone strike in 2011 in Yemen.
Another ICNA member was indicted in April on federal terrorism charges. Noelle Valentzas and another woman were charged with plotting an attack on New York City similar to the attacks at the Boston Marathon.
As The Daily Caller uncovered at the time, Velentzas gave presentations at at least two ICNA events in recent years. One of those, ICNA’s 2012 annual convention, was also attended by Indiana Rep. Andre Carson, one of two Muslims in the House of Representatives.
And in 2009, five American students who knew each other from an ICNA mosque in Alexandria, Va. were arrested in Pakistan and charged with plotting to attack American troops in Afghanistan.
Founded in 1968 and is based in Jamaica, N.Y., ICNA is considered one of the more conservative Islamic umbrella organizations operating in the U.S. Unlike other groups like the Islamic Society of North America or the Council on American-Islamic Relations, ICNA segregates men and women at its events, a practice endorsed in the Farook household.
An attorney for the Farooks said on Friday that the family was “very traditional” and that Tashfeen Malik sat with the women at family events. The attorney also said that men in the family had never seen Malik’s face because she wore a burqa.
ICNA is heavily reliant on the teachings of Abul A’la Maududi, the controversial Islamist founder of Jamaat-e-Islami, a political party operating in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh whose goal is to establish an Islamic state, according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).
As the ADL notes, an article in ICNA’s “The Message” stated that “using the organizational development methodology of Maulana Mawdudi and the Jamaat Al-Islami of Pakistan, which lays special emphasis on spiritual development, ICNA has developed a strong foundation.”
Maududi “is a jihadi ideologue,” according to the ADL. “He has written that ‘the nation of Jews will be exterminated’ in the end of days.”
In one of his numerous books, Maududi wrote that devout Muslims “would be under an obligation to do their utmost to dislodge [non-Muslims] from political power and to make them live in subservience to the Islamic way of life.”
Maududi’s Islamic supremacy and Jamaat-e-Islami’s alleged involvement in genocide against unarmed Bengalis in 1971 led the Bengali government to outlaw Maududi’s books in 2010.
And to hang a few folks who were in obvious sympathy with the J-e-I...
Though ICNA appears to have distanced itself from Maududi and Jamaat-e-Islami — at least in public — the group still espouses Islamic supremacism with a goal of establishing Islam across the world.
So they've really not distanced themselves. It's just a re-branding...
A 2010 handbook given to members of ICNA’s sisters’ wing touts “a united Islamic state, governed by an elected khalifah (caliph) in accordance with the laws of shari’ah (sharia).”
The handbook also states that “leadership of al-Jama’ah (or an Islamic state) has the authority to enforce Sharia’s political, educational, criminal Justice System etc that is beyond the jurisdiction of a jama’ah.”
And according to the Clarion Project, another group which tracks organizations with potential terror ties, ICNA’s literature is full of positive references and citations of Muslim Brotherhood. In one training guide obtained by the Clarion Project, ICNA favorably quoted Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna and Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian leader of the Muslim Brotherhood whose writings had influence on al-Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden.
For its part, ICNA has said it is “appalled” by Wednesday’s attacks.
“As the investigations are still ongoing, we remind the American Muslim community to be extra vigilant and to immediately report any suspicious activity to the law enforcement agencies,” the group said in a statement.
As if...
Posted by: Steve White ||
12/08/2015 16:09 ||
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#3
“As the investigations are still ongoing, we remind the American Muslim community to be extra vigilant and to immediately report any suspicious activity to the law enforcement agencies,” the group said in a statement.
Our Law Enforcement operators are standing by. Make your call now and be the first.....
[DAWN] The Supreme Court on Monday stayed the execution of two convicts who were awarded death sentence by military courts.
A two-member bench headed by Justice Gulzar Ahmed sought complete record of the case and forwarded a request to the chief justice for constituting larger bench to hear the appeals of the death-row convicts.
According to Asma Jahangir, the counsel for the appellants, military court did not allow her clients named Haider Ali and Qari Gull to have a counsel and did not provide copy of the verdict.
The bench adjourned the hearing till 16th December.
Earlier in October, the 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. High Court had upheld the convictions and death sentences awarded to the two 'militants' after it had stayed the execution of both the convicts in August.
The Inter-Service Public Relations (ISPR), the media wing of Pakistain Army, had on Apr 2 announced that the army chief had confirmed convictions and sentences of death awarded to six terrorists.
Laiqa, mother of the convict, Haider Ali had moved the Peshawar High Court in August requesting to declare the "so-called trial" by the military court as illegal and void on different grounds claiming he was a juvenile and remained in illegal detention for six years.
She maintained in the petition that her son was placed in durance vile Drop the rosco, Muggsy, or you're one with the ages! by security forces in 2009 on charges of terrorism, but they did not have any information about him after the arrest.
The convicts mother, filed a writ petition in the high court stating that her son was regular student of 10th grade at Malakand High School, Sarsenai, Kabal tehsil in Swat. She claims that Haider Ali appeared in ninth grade board examination under Roll No.13170 and had obtained 388 out of 525 marks.
The petitioner has also attached attendance sheet of her son stating the he attended his school regularly and had no nexus with any of the murderous Moslem outfits. According to his school record and birth certificate, the convict was born on Dec 1, 1994, which meant at the time of his alleged arrest in 2009 he was around 15.
It was only recently, six years after Ali's arrest, that she and her husband found out through media reports their son was imprisoned in a jail in Timergara, in Lower Dir district, and was sentenced to death by a military court, the parents said in the application.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/08/2015 00:00 ||
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[CHANNELNEWSASIA] Pak security forces appeared to be trying to dampen down reporting this weekend on the background of Tashfeen Malik, who mounted an attack alongside her husband that killed 14 people in Caliphornia, an impregnable bastion of the Democratic Party,.
Three professors at Malik's university said they had been advised not to talk to the media, while men claiming to be from Pakistain's security agencies told news hounds to drop their investigations into her background on pain of arrest.
An official at the interior ministry later said this was due to a "misunderstanding".
U.S. authorities are treating last Wednesday's mass shooting in San Bernardino as an "act of terrorism". Malik, 29, and husband Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, were killed two hours later in a shootout with police.
The Iraq- and Syria-based 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.... jihadist group has claimed the couple as its followers, although it has not said it was in contact with them or that it directed the attack.
Malik was born in Pakistain but spent most of her life 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... before she came to the United States to marry her husband, a U.S. citizen. She had a degree in pharmacy from a university in Pakistain's central city of Multan.
On Sunday, three professors at Bahauddin Zakariya University, which Malik attended, said they had been instructed by security agencies not to speak to news hounds.
One, who asked not to be named, said security officials visited the university on Saturday and removed records and pictures of Tashfeen.
"She was a very reserved person, a very quiet girl, she kept to herself," the professor said. "I could have never imagined she was capable of something like this. And there was nothing on the surface to suggest she had such myrmidon tendencies."
"I think this change in her mind, whenever it happened, must be very recent. The girl I remember ... she could not have the guts to do this."
Another former professor said he did not remember her at all. "She was probably not someone who stood out, academically or otherwise," he said.
UNSPECIFIED OFFENCES
Men claiming to be from security agencies, but who refused to provide identification, also sought to discourage Rooters from further reporting on Malik's background, threatening journalists with arrest for unspecified offences.
"Whether you consider this a request or a dictation (order), I would advise you not to pursue this story," one said.
Tim Craig, a news hound from the Washington Post, tweeted that police had prevented him from leaving his hotel in Multan.
"I've lost track of how many different security/intel officials I've had to talk to, copy my passport, etc in past 17 hours - think 12 to 16," he tweeted.
Rooters was eventually allowed to continue reporting with a police escort provided for security reasons.
An interior ministry official later told Rooters the situation had been the result of a misunderstanding by over-enthusiastic local police.
"This is not our policy. We have nothing to hide, and we want to facilitate journalists," the official, who did not wish to be named, said.
Several security officials said the restrictions on the press were partly due to Pak fears that the country would be blamed for Malik's actions.
"Pakistain has nothing to do with this but it will be used to malign Pakistain. So of course we have to care about how this is being seen and reported," one official said.
On Sunday, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar said Pakistain was willing to give any assistance that the United States required to investigate Malik, and highlighted that she spent most of her life in Saudi Arabia.
"Such acts of terrorism which take place across the world bring a bad name to Islam," he said. "You cannot blame the religion and the nation due to the personal actions of one person."
Posted by: Fred ||
12/08/2015 00:00 ||
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The smarter they are, the faster they get to criminally stupid.
[AnNahar] The International Committee of the Red Thingy has said it is trying to establish relations with 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 in hopes of delivering aid to the 10 million people living under its control.
"Yes, we are of course looking at building a relationship" with IS, ICRC Director-General Yves Daccord told Agence La Belle France Presse in an interview. "We have a very clear humanitarian vision. First, what we see is 10 million people. Ten million people under the control of the Islamic State group (in Iraq and Syria).
"We are interested in these 10 million people. What happens to them? What are their problems? This is what will guide us," he said.
The comments were made ahead of an agency conference in Geneva, held every four years, which gathers some 2,000 ICRC employees and national Red Thingy/Red Islamic Thingy staffers for talks on the challenges facing humanitarian workers in increasingly complex environments.
The emergence of gangs which at times disregard the need for life-saving aid is one of the threats facing the ICRC and groups like it, Daccord said. Organisations seeking to help civilians engulfed by conflict will increasingly need to connect with such groups, regardless of their ideology, he told AFP.
"My sense is, most of the international organizations will have to possibly rethink about how they operate in these areas, otherwise they won't be in a position to (work)," he said.
- Building trust 'takes time' -
The ultimate goal is "to work in close proximity" with those who need help, and to do that, you have to "talk to everybody," he explained. "You cannot just come from Geneva" and expect gangs to let you operate.
"You don't build acceptance from Boko Haram ... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. The Nigerian version of al-Qaeda and the Taliban rolled together and flavored with a smigeon of distinctly Subsaharan ignorance and brutality... or any gang in Syria in one day. It takes a lot of time and you have to have the right people."
Daccord said it took several years of outreach to Boko Haram before the ICRC was able to work in the myrmidon group's northeast Nigeria ... a particularly crimson stretch of Islam's bloody border... strongholds. Though perhaps less high-profile than IS, Boko Haram's atrocities are unrivalled, including the repeated use of children as jacket wallahs and multiple massacres and abductions targeting students.
"An actor like the ICRC, what we have to do is we really have to be absolutely, deeply humanitarian. No social agenda, no change agenda...You might have an opinion, but that's not the problem," Daccord further said.
To operate in Boko Haram or IS areas, an organization must be seen as totally "non-partisan," he said.
- Aid workers increasingly threatened -
From air strikes on hospitals, to kidnappings targeting aid workers, the ICRC has warned of the shrinking space for relief agencies in conflict. Senior humanitarian leaders have also decried the waning respect for international humanitarian law, including the Geneva Conventions. Wars have become "more atrocious in the human suffering they create," ICRC President Peter Maurer said in a statement ahead of the conference.
Daccord told AFP it was difficult to compare the current era to past periods in terms of threats facing aid workers. But he said that in Syria, devastated by a four-year civil war, the Red Thingy has suffered unprecedented losses, with 49 volunteers from the Syrian Red Islamic Thingy killed.
"We've never seen that in our recent history," Daccord said.
Red Thingy workers are also being held hostage in Syria and Yemen, where several other members of the organization have also been killed. Daccord also pointed to what he termed a clear rise in the number of health workers and health facilities targeted in conflict as further evidence of the narrowing humanitarian space in war.
"Imagine the world in which we will operate if we have no space for people to be treated," Daccord said, listing attacks on healthcare as a key subject for next week's conference.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
12/08/2015 00:00 ||
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#1
let the Red Thingy work there and not the Red Cross. The cross would mean that we would need to rescue their ass every 10 mins.
#4
What? Is ISIS having a problem transporting weapons such that they need international Red Cross Ambulances to move them around and collect them from dying Jihaldists?
[DAWN] Countries rejecting Syrian refugees because they are Muslims are fuelling 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.... and other bully boy groups, United Nations ...an organization originally established to war on dictatorships which was promptly infiltrated by dictatorships and is now held in thrall to dictatorships... (UN) refugee chief Antonio Guterres said on Monday.
"When people say they cannot receive Syrian refugees because they are Muslims, those that say it are supporting terrorist organizations and allowing them to be much more effective in recruitment of people," he told a news conference.
At least one of the men who carried out suicide kabooms in Gay Paree last month came through the Balkans to western Europe posing as a Syrian refugee, counter-intelligence and police sources have said.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/08/2015 00:00 ||
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#8
Well, the US was founded on the premise of freedom of religion, so we can't ban any religious group, per se.
Unless, of course, the Constitution is meant to be interpreted in the light of current events, as some progressives would have us believe. Buncha old, dead white males, doncha know.
So, let us ban all immigrants from any country between Vienna and New Delhi. Or they could all be accorded the same courtesy we afforded Germans and Japanese immigrants in 1944.
Maybe I should work for Trump's campaign?
Posted by: Bobby ||
12/08/2015 13:06 Comments ||
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#9
Praticing Islam is unconstitutional. Islam does not allow seperation of church and state. Islam forbids the individual to practice other religions without subjugation or death. Islam does not recognize women as being above any other item of posession. Islam is not purely religion it is a theocracy with the rulers being the religious leaders, like what caused the influx of pilgrims trying to get away from the Church of England.
Posted by: Unelet Protector of the Sith2424 ||
12/08/2015 14:08 Comments ||
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#10
(cont.) therefore it America must be reminded that the wording of the US Constitution was meant to prevent Islam from ever being allowed to enter and set roots into the soil of this nation by the Founders.
Posted by: Unelet Protector of the Sith2424 ||
12/08/2015 14:26 Comments ||
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[ALMANAR.LB] Hezbollah Deputy Secretary General wondered whether 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... is weak to the extent that it fears the voice of Al-Manar TV channel and the resistance.
"Is the Saudi reality shameful to the degree that it cannot tolerate the image reflected by al-Manar and the resistance," his eminence asked.
In a statement posted on his office's Facebook account in the context of supporting Al-Manar against Arabsat action, Sheikh Qassem said, "We wish that Saudi Arabia would support the Paleostinians against 'Israel' and stop killing the Yemenis as well as the Bahrainis and funding the terrorist groups, including Qaeda, ISIL, Al-Nusra, etc."
Sheikh Qassem greeted Al-Manar for winning the battle of freedom and truth, adding that it rejected to be subject to blackmail and fraud and glittered in support of the popular resistance against aggression and occupation.
"Al-Manar will keep the flame of resistance and right."
Sheikh Qassem concluded by greeting Al-Mayadeen channel "which was also punished by for conveying reality."
Posted by: Fred ||
12/08/2015 00:00 ||
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[WASHINGTONPOST] The U.S. military alleged Monday that Russian warplanes were responsible for an attack on a Syrian army position in eastern Syria, an Arclight airstrike that Syria blamed on the U.S.-led coalition battling 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.... hard boy group in the country.
The Syrian government issued an angry statement earlier in the day accusing coalition aircraft of carrying out the overnight attack in the eastern province of Deir al-Zour. The government said three Syrian soldiers were killed and 13 others injured in the strike.
It was the first such allegation by Syria since the U.S.-led air campaign against the Islamic State began in Syria 14 months ago, and it sent tensions soaring in Syria's crowded skies.
A U.S. military official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, later said the Pentagon is "certain" that a Russian warplane was responsible for the attack. There was no immediate response to the charge from either Syria or Russia.
The finger-pointing illustrated the danger that a misunderstanding, mistake or misinformation could trigger a wider conflict as Russia and the United States lead separate, rival air campaigns to combat the Islamic State.
U.S. warplanes did conduct overnight strikes in the province of Deir al-Zour on Sunday, but the targets were oil wells at least 34 miles from Ayyash, the location the Syrian government said was hit, according to Col. Steve Warren, a U.S. military front man in Baghdad.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/08/2015 00:00 ||
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[ARABNEWS] The Daesh [Islamic State] group is pulling in some $80 million a month, mainly from levies and confiscations, but is struggling financially as strikes hit its oil infrastructure, analysis firm IHS said Monday.
In a new report, IHS Conflict Monitor said that Daesh [Islamic State], unlike other terror groups such as Al-Qaeda, does not need to rely on foreign funding as it can count on revenues from the large parts of Syria and Iraq under its control.
Using open source intelligence including social media and sources inside the countries, IHS said it estimates the group's overall monthly income to be around $80 million (75 million euros) as of late 2015.
About half the revenues come from levies and confiscations, with Daesh [Islamic State] slapping a 20 percent charge on all services, IHS said. Some 43 percent comes from oil sales and the rest from drug smuggling, electricity sales and donations.
"Daesh [Islamic State] controls the state so they tax the population, confiscate property, can produce income from state-run businesses and from oil and gas. Other terrorist groups don't have that," said Columb Strack, senior analyst at the London-based IHS.
But other groups also do not have significant territory to rule, so "it's not like they are making $80 million and spending all of that on weapons and building bombs," he told AFP.
The group has not followed its sweeping offensive of 2014 with other major gains and IHS said it is now having trouble making ends meet.
"There are early indications that the group is struggling to balance its budget, with reports of cuts to fighters' salaries, price hikes on electricity and other basic services, and the introduction of new agricultural taxes," IHS said.
It said the increasing targeting of oil infrastructure, including wells and tanker trucks, by US-led coalition and Russian warplanes was starting to have effect.
"Airstrikes have significantly degraded the group's refining capacity and ability to transport oil via tanker convoys," IHS said.
Strack said Daesh [Islamic State] was already starting to systematically charge residents for leaving its territory and, as it faces continued pressure, will be looking for other ways to raise funds.
"They can also try to raise the price of electricity, mobile phone networks, Internet and all kind of public services they are expected to provide," he said.
"But people are already struggling to pay. It's going to be a lot harder on the populations living within Daesh [Islamic State] territories."
Posted by: Fred ||
12/08/2015 00:00 ||
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#1
At last check, in-between their battles the ISIS/ISIL is trying to set up a FUNCTIONING, OPERATING, DE FACTO ISLAMIST CALIPHATE IN SYRIA-IRAQ = ISIS-CONTROLLED TERRITORIES.
A Polity or Entity which apparently now has alleged access to BioWar + CHemWar WMDS.
As a general rule, "ANY GOVT. OR NATION-STATE THAT HAD NUKES CAN'T BE ATTACKED" BY ANYONE, widout inviting risk of retaliatory nuclear attack + ultimately National or Mutual Destruction - DITTO FOR NUKE-WMD ARMED NGOS???
[CNN] While President Barack Obama Jedi mind meld... addressed the nation on ISIS and terrorism Sunday night, a new CNN/ORC Poll finds Americans increasingly displeased with the President's handling of terrorism and more willing to send U.S. ground troops into the fight against ISIS.
For the first time in CNN/ORC polling, a majority of Americans (53%) say the U.S. should send ground troops to Iraq or Syria to fight ISIS. At the same time, 6-in-10 disapprove of the President's handling of terrorism and 68% say America's military response to the terrorist group thus far has not been aggressive enough. The public's opinion is more sensible than the govt's. The qualifier would have to lie in the planning and in the ROE. Plan individual operations with fixed objectives, for instance taking Raqqa or Mosul (not both). Have the thing put together by a real general and his own staff, not the NSC or the White House glee club, a Schwartzkopf not a Westmoreland. Use sufficient force, probably two divisions, not Special Forces or some sort of other false economies. Execute the mission, which would be to cut all supply lines to Raqqa, then bomb/shell it to rubble, then send troops in to kill anybody wearing a turban, a beard, or an RPG.
Then leave. Let the Kurds worry about "nation building" if they want to be bothered. If they need money and arms provide them; they're the only real friends we've got in the area.
Rinse. Repeat if necessary. Eventually it won't be and the civilian casualties will be lower than they would be using the sanctimonious approach.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/08/2015 00:00 ||
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#1
Fred's comments make sense but I think everybody knows it isn't going to happen that way.
#3
It's easy to say one 'did' a poll. For the first time in CNN/ORC polling, a majority of Americans (53%) say 1) the U.S. should send ground troops to Iraq or Syria to fight ISIS. At the same time, 6-in-10 2) disapprove of the President's handling of terrorism and 68% say 3) America's military response to the terrorist group thus far has not been aggressive enough.
1) NO
2) Yes
3) Yes
There's my poll. Don't send men people when you can send machines.
#4
Re. ROE - we delude ourselves when we attempt to eliminate all collateral damage; a quicker, more brutal war actually benefits most, as the total casualties on both sides end up lower. Example 1) Sherman's Georgia campaign broke the South. Example 2) Nuclear bombs ended WW II without invasion of the home islands. The path we are following just leads to low grade war, forever.
#7
Because people believe in one liners rather than analysis. We were at war for nearly a hundred years on the frontier with spurts and spasms to accentuate the experience.
#8
Defend the Kurds, help them retake their lands in Iraq but let the other powers (France, UK, and Russia) take the lead for a change while we complain about different mistakes and decisions.
#9
> Both the Qaeda + ISIS Boyz have made multiple direct threats to attack CONUS andor US interests.
> Better "over there" than "over here" - I don't care who youse are, + neither does mainstream America.
> Best way historically to make certain of de facto Enemy defeat, subornment or destruction, is via one's own Army = Armed Forces, as opposed to relying on that Allies or Neutrals.
As things stand, the Bammer doesn't even seem to be interested in forming a new US or UNSC-led Military Coalition to end the AQ = Al-Nusra + ISIS, ETAL. THREATS ONCE-N-FOREVAR!
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.
A new report warns that Western governments have been unable to stem the flow in either direction.
[BBC] The triumphant leader of the far-right National Front (FN), Marine Le Pen, says French voters rejected the "old political class" in regional elections that put her party top.
[FREEBEACON] Retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Ralph Peters called 
