[Free Beacon] State Department spokesman John Kirby had trouble Wednesday defending the lobbying of John Podesta's sister-in-law, Heather Podesta, and the arms deals that she benefitted from while John Podesta worked as a State Department counselor during Hillary Clinton’s tenure there.
Heather Podesta is a well known Democratic lobbyist and bundler for Clinton's presidential campaigns, as are the other two lobbyists with whom she worked on the arms deals. Three contracts for Qatar that Podesta and her associates worked on were valued at $19 billion, Fox News correspondent James Rosen noted during the State Department daily press briefing.
Rosen asked Kirby about the lobbying and if it was a conflict of interest of any kind. Kirby replied that there is a "standard procedure" for such contracts before the United States government approves foreign military sales per law. Kirby said the process involves multiple bureaus in both the State and Defense Departments.
"Statutorily, one official here at the Department of State is entrusted with final approval over these transfers. Am I correct about that?" Rosen asked.
#2
4/2014, Politico: "According to the divorce filing obtained from the D.C. Superior Court, from powerful D.C. lobbyist Tony Podesta and the counterclaim of his wife, lobbyist Heather Podesta, the couple is fighting over who owns much of the art in question and whether Tony Podesta has been in the right to try to donate or distribute some of it during the past few years."
Heather is not so dumb. She kept the Podesta name. It's money in the bank.
[Khaama (Afghanistan)] The Afghan Ambassador to Pakistain Omar Zakilwal has slammed the Pak officials for the irresponsible remarks following a deadly attack on a police academy in Quetta city.
Zakhilwal has said the Pak authorities should not offer irresponsible remarks regarding the recent Quetta incidetn as he strongly condemned the attack.
"The Afghan people who witness similar terrorist attacks on our people and soil on daily basis can fully identify with the horror of such crimes against innocent people carried out by terrorist networks such as the AlQaeda affiliated Lashkar e Jhangvi that grabbed credit for last night’s senseless massacre," Zakhilwal said.
According to the local media reports, the Pak Prime Nawaz Sharif ... served two non-consecutive terms as prime minister, heads the Pakistain Moslem League (Nawaz). Noted for his spectacular corruption, the 1998 Pak nuclear test, border war with India, and for being tossed by General Musharraf... was informed that the assailants had come from Afghanistan and were in contact with their handlers in the neighbouring country.
The reports further added that the prime minister said the issue would be taken up with Afghanistan.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/27/2016 00:00 ||
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Al Shabaab has called on Djibouti government to swiftly withdraw its soldiers serving with African Union Mission (AMISOM) from Somalia after a deadly truck bomb attack in Beledweyne city on Tuesday. Speaking at a press conference, Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rageh, the spokesman of Al Shabaab said the militants will continue targeting on Djibouti forces until they are being completely pulled out of Somalia.
At least four Djiboutian soldiers were killed when a suicide truck bomber targeted an African Union base in Beledweyne in central Somalia on Tuesday noon, the deadliest attack on the AU troops since 2015.
Sheikh Ali Dheer said Tuesday’s car bomb attack on the AMISOM base in Beledweyne town was a retaliation for “immorality” committing by Djiboutian soldiers in Hiiraan region in central Somalia.
Djibouti has deployed two battalion of soldiers to Somalia to take part an AU mission to help the UN-backed weak federal government in the fight against Al Shabaab, a militants linked with Al Qaeda.
Posted by: Steve White ||
10/27/2016 00:00 ||
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[Dhaka Tribune] DMP’s Counter-Terrorism and Transnational Crime Unit and police’s elite force Rapid Action Battalion are making contradictory statements over bad boy leader Sarwar Jahan’s position in New JMB.
RAB on October 21 claimed that Sarwar alias Abdur Rahman, who died on October 8, was the ameer and key financier of New JMB, a deadly outfit responsible for a series of assassination'>assassinations including the Holey Artisan Bakery gun attack on July 1.
But CTTC unit chief Monirul Islam yesterday rubbished the claim and suggested that he was a third-tier leader of the outfit.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
10/27/2016 00:00 ||
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North Korea's two failed missile tests earlier this month could have involved the KN-08 intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the continental U.S., not the shorter-range Musudan missile identified by the U.S. and South Korean militaries, an American expert was quoted as saying.
Jeffrey Lewis, a nonproliferation expert and director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS), raised the possibility, citing satellite photos of the launch site, which was enhanced with a near infrared band of light.
The U.S. Strategic Command said that the two missile tests, which took place on Oct. 15 and Oct. 20, are presumed to have involved the Musudan intermediate-range ballistic missiles. South Korea's military gave the same assessment. The two countries said the North's missile exploded after take-off in both tests.
"We're not fully persuaded that it was a Musudan," Lewis told the Washington Post. "We still think people are being too quick to jump to the conclusion that this was a Musudan. Even if it's only 50/50, being shocked half of the time is still bad."
Lewis said that the satellite imagery shows burn scars left on the pavement and grass at the launch site in the North's northwest after the missile tests, and the scars are much bigger than what had been seen after the previous Musudan tests.
He also said that one of the scars was "really big," noting that it was possible that the explosion damaged the launch vehicle on which it was mounted. The second scar was smaller, suggesting that the missile flew some distance before whatever went wrong, he was quoted as saying.
The KN-08 missile has been considered a key concern for the U.S. due to its potential capability to reach the U.S. Referring to the missile, U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said Tuesday that the communist nation is capable of launching "a missile that has a weapon on it that potentially could reach parts of the United States."
Posted by: Steve White ||
10/27/2016 00:00 ||
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[TimesofMalta] As the dust settles on Monday’s plane crash, the names of the five French victims remain conspicuous by their absence.
It is standard procedure for the names of passengers who perish in aviation disasters to be released by authorities, once their next-of-kin have been notified and given time to digest the terrible news. This did not happen following Monday's crash: why?
The answer to that question lies in the crew members' ties to French spy agency DGSE. Three of the dear departed were directly employed by the agency, the French defence ministry confirmed in the hours following the crash; the other two were employed by CAE Aviation, the firm that leased the plane to the French government.
French military tradition demands absolute secrecy when it comes to the nation’s intelligence operatives, even after their death.
In part, the reticence to name names is down to the secretive nature of DGSE missions. But safety concerns also play a part, said a former French defence official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
"DGSE missions often involve high-level targets, and revealing agents’ identities, even after their death, exposes their relatives to unnecessary risk," they said. "They could easily become targets for retaliatory attacks."
The absolute silence surrounding the victims’ identities mirrors what happened last July, when three DGSE agents were killed after their helicopter was shot down over Benghazi in eastern Libya.
Turkey’s Supreme Court of Appeals has upheld a decision to acquit 357 people who were tried in the controversial military espionage case, believed to have been pursued by prosecutors linked to the U.S.-based Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen.
In February, a court in İzmir eventually acquitted 357 suspects, including active-duty soldiers, in the trial of a military espionage case in which defendants were accused of “keeping confidential military information and documents.”
The case refers to the 2011 prosecution of 56 members of the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) on charges of military espionage and blackmailing, including illegal wiretapping, founding a criminal organization, and espionage. The indictment alleged that the accused intended to share information with third parties in return for financial gain.
One of the lawyers of the acquitted defendants, Aykanat Kaçmaz, said the decision of the court of appeals meant the path was now clear for the promotion of commissioned and non-commissioned officers who were under arrest during their trials.
After the initial acquittal of the suspects, an investigation was launched into a number of police officials, including former İzmir Police Chief Ail Bilkay, for organizing a plot against the soldiers embroiled in the case.
Police officers and prosecutors behind the case are thought to be linked to the Gülen movement, a former ally of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) who is now accused by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of attempting to overthrow the government.
Posted by: Steve White ||
10/27/2016 00:00 ||
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Police in the Seyhan district of the southern province of Adana carried out an operation at an apartment after it received a tip-off that two alleged Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants were residing there, detaining seven people.
Two of the militants who were suspected of being potential ISIL suicide bombers were captured in the house in the Yeşilyurt neighborhood of the district, which is also known as “İbo Osman,” while five other suspects were caught in operations at other addresses in the same operation.
In one recent ISIL operation, three police officers were killed and eight others were wounded on Oct. 16 in an explosion that occurred when an ISIL militant detonated himself during a raid on a house in the Şahinbey district of the southeastern province of Gaziantep, while another suspect also detonated himself during a separate operation in the province.
The raid came after Gaziantep police received information about a cell that was suspected of plotting a suicide bomb attack on an Alevi cultural association center in the city.
Posted by: Steve White ||
10/27/2016 00:00 ||
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[AnNahar] A Southeast Asian terror criminal mastermind who has been accused over a series of high-profile attacks will stay in detention at Guantanamo Bay after U.S. officials rejected his bid for release.
A U.S. government body tasked with reducing the number of inmates at Guantanamo said that Indonesian krazed killer Riduan Isamuddin, better known by his nom de guerre Hambali ...real name Riduan Isamuddin, close personal friend of Osama bin Laden, one of the founders of Jemaah Islamiyah and the planner of the 2002 Bali bombings. He was captured with the help of a mid-Eastern intel service, shipped to Guantanamo to rot but he'll likely be released eventually because that was a long time ago and we were all so much younger then... , still represented a "significant threat to the security of the United States."
The decision is likely to be welcomed by governments in Southeast Asia as signs indicate that the influence 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.... (IS) group has sparked a resurgency in militancy.
Hambali, who was captured in 2003 and sent to Guantanamo three years later, was believed to be al-Qaeda's top representative in Southeast Asia and operational chief of regional krazed killer group Jemaah Ismaliyah (JI).
He was accused of helping criminal mastermind the 2002 bombings on the Indonesian holiday island of Bali that left 202 people dead, and plotting other attacks in Indonesia, as well as on U.S. airliners.
Hambali appeared before the Periodic Review Board at Guantanamo in August seeking his release after 10 years in detention without charge.
However the board said in a statement rejecting his request that Hambali had a "lengthy history as a jihadist" and had played a "significant role in major terrorist attacks and plotting".
After US President Barack Obama teachable moment... unveiled a roadmap to close Guantanamo in February, the Indonesian government expressed opposition to the potential return of Hambali to the country.
The number of prisoners at Guantanamo, set up on Cuba after the attacks on the US on September 11, 2001, is down to 60 as Obama seeks to fulfil a pledge to shutter the facility before leaving office.
Indonesia, the world's most populous Moslem-majority country, had succeeded in weakening dangerous networks, including JI, with a tough crackdown following the Bali bombings. However IS has inspired a string of attacks and plots in the past year in Indonesia and other parts of the region, including a deadly gun and suicide kaboom assault in Jakarta in January claimed by the jihadists.
Two women who U.S. prosecutors say led an online group in raising money to support the Somali insurgent group al-Shabab were convicted by a federal judge Tuesday following a trial in U.S. District Court in Virginia.
RamonaMuna Osman Jama, 36, and Harriett Hinda Osman Dhirane, 46,
...dear Hinda is the group's poetess. Her Ode to Al Shabaab was read into the court record, there to sit for all eternity...
were found guilty of organizing the so-called Group of Fifteen women from eight countries that helped finance al-Shabab military operations and safehouses in Somalia and Kenya, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Eastern Virginia.
“These women funneled money to a terrorist organization which was conducting a violent insurgency campaign in Somalia,” U.S. Attorney Dana Boente said in a written statement.
“National security is the top priority in this office and we will continue to work closely with our law enforcement partners to investigate and prosecute those who provide material support to terrorists,” Boente said.
It was not clear who represented the two women in the proceedings.
"Go away."
Prosecutors said Jama and Dhirane sent the money they raised through the chat room to financiers of al-Shabab in Somalia and Kenya, referred to as the “Hargeisa side” and the “Nairobi side,” respectively.
Jama, of Reston, Virginia, and Dhirane, of Kent, Washington, were arrested in July 2014, along with a third woman, Francine Farhia Hassan, who was taken into custody in the Netherlands.
At the time of those arrests, two other women accused of being involved in the operation, Fiona Fardowsa Jama Mohamed and Beatrice Barira Hassan Abdullahi, were named as fugitives.
The Group of Fifteen included women from Somalia, Kenya, Egypt, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom and Canada, as well as Minneapolis, according to evidence at trial.
Prosecutors said recorded calls between the Group of Fifteen showed that they had close contacts with al-Shabab leadership and that its members were heard laughing about 2013 attacks on the Westgate Shopping Mall in Nairobi and the Boston Marathon.
Jama and Dhirane were each convicted of conspiracy and providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization and face a maximum of 15 years in prison when they are sentenced in January.
Posted by: Steve White ||
10/27/2016 00:00 ||
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[DAWN] Pakistain on Wednesday conveyed to the United States that India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW ... India's Research and Analysis Wing, Pakistain's equivalent of the Boogie Man... ) and Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security ...the Afghan national intel agency... (NDS) are patronising turbans groups to attack soft targets in the country.
National Security Adviser Lt Gen (retd) Nasser Khan Janjua conveyed the message to US ambassador David Hale in a meeting today, said the statement released by the office of the NSA.
The meeting was held to discuss the terrorist attack on Police Training College Quetta, counter-terrorism operations and cross-border attacks.
Janjua also emphasised on the need to break the nexus between turbans groups operation under the supervision of NDS and RAW.
Pakistain has asked for US assistance to tackle the situation.
The NSA informed the ambassador that the turbans who attacked the police training college were constantly in contact with their leadership and handlers in Afghanistan.
The American ambassador was also briefed by the NSA on Pakistain’s efforts to improve the current security situation in the country through implementation of the National Action Plan.
Hale, on the occasion, condemned the attack in Quetta and offered his regrets. He also offered American support for the same.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/27/2016 00:00 ||
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[Khaama (Afghanistan)] The authorities in Pakistain have reportedly jugged Drop the heater, Studs, or you're hist'try! a famous Afghan girl who gained fame after one of her photographs appeared in National Geographic magazine in 1985.
Local media quoting the Pakistain authorities reported Wednesday that Sharbat Gula was arrested on Tuesday and is in jug for further investigation regarding the alleged forgery in producing the Pak identty card.
Gula who is believed to be in her 40s was arrested from her home for forgery of a Computerised National Identity Card (CNIC), the FIA sources said. Bibi had Pak and Afghan ID cards in her possession, and both ID cards have been recovered from her, the FIA sources said. Gula has been charged under Section 419, 420 of the Pakistain Penal Code and Section 5(2) of Prohibition of Corruption Act.
She gained global recognition when her photograph was featured on National Geographic Magazine’s cover in 1985 and was linked with Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona.
Gula been residing together with her sons in Nasir Bagh camp established for Afghan refugees since she moved to 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. in 1984.
A short documentary was made by the magazine where she was dubbed the ’Mona Lisa of Afghan war’. Sharbat remained anonymous for years after her first photo made it to the cover until she was rediscovered by National Geographic in 2002.
The documentary was followed by her global recongition when her photograph was featured on National Geographic Magazine’s cover in 1985 and was linked with Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona.
Her story is, tragically, shared by many outside of Afghanistan as well ‐ the most current being the desperate refugees fleeing Syria.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/27/2016 00:00 ||
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#1
The years and Afghan life have not been easy on her. Pics at link
Posted by: Frank G ||
10/27/2016 12:07 Comments ||
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[IsraelTimes] In secret ballot, cultural body’s World Heritage Committee approves text using only the site’s Moslem name; 10 states vote in favor, 2 oppose, 8 abstain.
This year’s member countries of the committee made things particularly difficult for Israeli diplomats battling the resolution. Germany, Colombia and Japan, all sympathetic nations to Israel, are no longer involved, and in their place are Tunisia, Kuwait, Leb and Indonesia, bringing to nine the total number of Moslem countries. Those nine and Vietnam were all assumed to have voted for the resolution. Poland, Finland, Croatia, Portugal, the four European countries, had indicated they would abstain.
The 21 nations with voting rights on the World Heritage Committee were: Finland, Poland, Portugal, Croatia, The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... , Azerbaijan, South Korea, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Kazakhstan, Tunisia, Kuwait, Leb, Peru, Cuba, Jamaica, Burkina Faso ...The country in west Africa that they put where Upper Volta used to be. Its capital is Oogadooga, or something like that. Its president is currently Blaise Compaoré, who took office in 1987 and will leave office feet first, one way or the other... , Zim-bob-we, Angola and Tanzania.
The resolution, which accuses Israel of various violations, echoed last week’s decision in referring to the Temple Mount compound solely by its Moslem names, "Al-Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram al-Sharif," and defined it only as "a Moslem holy site of worship." As the site of the two Biblical temples, the mount is the holiest place in Judaism. But unlike last week’s resolution, the draft did not mention the importance of Jerusalem’s Old City for "the three monotheistic religions."
[IsraelTimes] Reference to consignment of wineskins ’to Jerusalem’ appears on 2,700-year-old First Temple-era scrap believed plundered from Judean Desert cave
A 10-year-old Russian boy..., recently made an extraordinary discovery in Jerusalem. Working..., in the Temple Mount Sifting Project, he found a 3,000-year-old seal—engraved limestone about the size of a thimble, with a hole at one end so it could be hung from a string—from the time of King David.
The artifact was nestled in the hundreds of tons of earth and rock that had been illegally excavated from below the Temple Mount in the late 1990s by the Muslim Waqf, a trust that retains authority over the contested site. The Temple Mount is sacred ground for Jews, Muslims and Christians, but Jewish historical claims are denied by many Muslims.
Turkey is considering deploying more troops to the Bashiqa military camp in northern Iraq due to the increasing threat posed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), if the Ankara-Baghdad talks on the status of the camp fail, sources have told the Hürriyet Daily News.
A visiting Turkish delegation presented a draft to Iraqi officials in Baghdad on Oct. 17 where the parties amended some of the articles following proposals by the Iraqi side, Turkish officials said.
It's for the children...
The agreement will identify the current status and future of the Turkish troops, with Turkey insisting the soldiers remain stationed in Bashiqa until the end of the Mosul offensive. A formula that would bring the status of the Bashiqa camp under the mandate of the coalition forces has long been proposed by Turkey.
The next round of talks between Ankara and Baghdad will be held upon a reply from the Iraqi side.
Posted by: Steve White ||
10/27/2016 00:00 ||
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#1
I think this camp is only a few miles from the Turkish border but it is actually inside Iraq. Unless Iraq approved (and I think they did not), this is an illegal act. The justification that it is needed to defend against ISIS is transparently phony as this territory is controlled by the Kurds.
If the President were doing his job he would say this.
Posted by: lord garth ||
10/27/2016 6:37 Comments ||
Top||
Shh! Don't tell IS that it's really because we have a few informants named Mohamhead in key areas that they wouldn't expect.
[LATimes] U.S. military officers watched grainy video feeds at a small operations center in Baghdad on Tuesday as Predator drones tracked and killed three reputed Islamic State leaders -- one after another -- in the offensive on Mosul.
The targeted air strikes were due in large part to intelligence extracted from cellphones, computer hard drives, memory cards and hand-written ledgers recovered from battlefields and towns taken from Islamic State fighters.
Recently captured intelligence also has proved useful in providing clues to detecting potential terrorist plots, tracking foreign fighters and identifying Islamic State supporters around the globe, U.S. officials said.
The largest data trove was recovered when U.S.-backed Syrian rebel forces recaptured Manbij, an Islamic State stronghold in northern Syria, in mid-August. Intelligence agencies recovered more than 120,000 documents, nearly 1,200 devices and more than 20 terabytes of digital information, officials said.
Brett McGurk, the special presidential envoy for the coalition fighting Islamic State, said the Manbij data trove has been especially invaluable.
In particular, the intelligence from Manbij and other sources has led to arrests or broken up plots in 15 countries in Europe, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Africa, Latin America and in Canada, McGurk told a news conference on Oct. 7.
"If we get a phone off of a dead ISIL fighter in Manbij and it has a number of telephone numbers into a particular capital or city around the world, we share that information with the coalition members so that they can conduct their own investigation," McGurk said, using an acronym for Islamic State.
Intelligence specialists are still combing through the data, but it has led to new details on how fighters are organized within the group's hierarchy. That has helped military planners prepare the ground assault on Mosul that began last week.
The Pentagon recently sent about 100 additional special operations analysts, linguists and technicians to exploit information taken from towns around Mosul as Iraqi and Kurdish ground forces advance through concentric belts of booby traps, snipers and suicide bombers.
The goal is to "make sure we take advantage of the captured enemy material that is coming off of places like Manbij and will come out of Mosul," said Gen. Joseph Votel, commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, who was in Baghdad on Tuesday with McGurk.
The intelligence has allowed U.S. commanders to "understand what [Islamic State is] doing, what it might mean for foreign fighters that have been through there, what it might mean for future plans," he said. "It's a lesson we learned the hard way the last time we were in Iraq."
U.S. forces were slow to break into militants' communications and electronic devices during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, when Votel commanded the 75th Ranger Regiment, the Army's premier light infantry and special operations unit.
He indicated they may have missed opportunities to find clues about the fierce Sunni insurgency that erupted after the invasion and ultimately gave rise to Islamic State.
Now U.S. special operations commanders may forbid launching an airstrike at houses or compounds -- even if known militant leaders are inside -- for fear of destroying a useful cache of information and electronics.
Islamic State leadership includes former Iraqi military officers and others who served under ousted ruler Saddam Hussein. They tend to keep detailed records, officials say, which has helped analysts understand the group's structure and map its hierarchy with tiers and rows.
"The expertise and senior leader cadre sets the pace of sustaining the organization," a U.S. defense official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal assessments. "They fashion themselves as a pseudo-governmental structure where you have financiers and ministers and all these other components. You need to take that all away from them."
Targeting by Joint Special Operations Command has killed 39 Islamic State leaders in and around Mosul since July 1, U.S. officials said.
No one is yet sure how Islamic State will fight once Iraqi Security Forces and the Kurdish fighters known as peshmerga break through the group's defensive perimeter around Mosul, or how they will leave the city.
Before they abandoned Ramadi earlier this year, militants planted booby traps in "baby cribs and closets" so people could not return to their homes, McGurk said Tuesday.
The coalition campaign to wipe out the group's leadership has taken a growing toll on the group's ability to control territory and to conduct sustained offensives, according to U.S. officials.
Small groups of militants launched surprise attacks last week in Kirkuk and Rutba, but coalition forces quickly fought back. Kirkuk was recaptured, and Iraqi ground troops, backed by a U.S. B-52 bomber, were pushing them back in Rutba, officials said.
"There's no more leadership for them," said Iraqi Brig. Gen. Tahseen Ibrahim Khafaji. "Who do they have to follow? It's chaos."
During the advance on Mosul, for example, Iraqi forces had to retake Sharqat, a rural town less than a hour's drive to the south.
Islamic State's local leader was killed in an airstrike. When a replacement was dispatched to govern the town and direct fighters, his vehicle also was hit with an airstrike.
Iraqi forces recaptured the town in just two days.
[Iran Press TV] Syria has dismissed as baseless recent allegations brought against the Damascus government by Western countries in connection with chemical attacks in the war-torn Arab country.
"The Syrian Arab Republic has repeatedly denied all allegations circulated by some Western circles and their agents about the use of chemical poisonous materials by Syrian sides, like chlorine gas," during military operations against terrorists, Syria’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by the official SANA news agency on Wednesday.
The statement came four days after an international inquiry blamed Syrian government forces for a toxic gas attack in Qminas in northwestern Idlib province on March 16, 2015.
The accusation was made in the fourth report from the 13-month-long probe by the United Nations ...an idea whose time has gone... and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
However, the difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits... the Syrian Foreign Ministry statement said that there was no "tangible evidence" for the inquiry's findings.
"Syria has repeatedly warned against repercussions of politicizing this issue regarding the credibility of the work of international relevant sides," the ministry added.
It also stressed that the Syrian government remains committed to all its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention, a multilateral treaty that bans chemical weapons and requires their destruction.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/27/2016 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.
North Korea's two failed missile tests earlier this month could have involved the KN-08 intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the continental U.S., not the shorter-range Musudan missile identified by the U.S. and South Korean militaries, an American expert was quoted as saying.
Two women who U.S. prosecutors say led an online group in raising money to support the Somali insurgent group al-Shabab were convicted by a federal judge Tuesday following a trial in U.S. District Court in Virginia.
[DAWN] Pakistain on Wednesday conveyed to the United States that India’s Research and Analysis Wing (
