Local officials in Paktia province on Monday expressed outrage over what they described as years of domination by the Taliban insurgents of the chromium mine in the Janikhail district.
Powerful local elements are coordinating with the Taliban in the illegal extraction of Chromite, they said.
"Those who extract chromite for the state are doing so in the national interest and that is to be welcomed. Anyone doing so illegally are criminals,” said Zalmai Wesa, the provincial governor.
While the Taliban controls the chromium mine in the district, illegal extraction continues, said Sharifullah Sarhadi, Janikhail's district governor. The province borders Pakistan.
“The mine is located in the Khadan area and valuable stones are under Taliban control,” said Sarhadi.
Local residents in Paktia have said that after extracting chromium from the mine, the Taliban sends it to Pakistan to finance their war machine.
“Taliban are dominant on those areas and with the help of some people, the Taliban control those mines,” said Eid Mohammad a resident.
“The chromium is extracted by the Taliban and exported to Pakistan,” said Sardar Khan, a tribal elder.
Paktia officials say the Taliban have signed a contract for extraction of chromite with a Pakistani company.
I'll believe it when they parade the 1,000 or so Ansar Bayt al Maqdisniks to the line of waiting prison transport busses and drive them straight to the prison courthouse for their show trials.
[AlAhram] Major General Mamdouh Shahin, the Egyptian defence minister's deputy for legislative and constitutional affairs, told MPs on Tuesday that the army is on the brink of eliminating terrorism in North Sinai.
In a meeting held by parliament's agriculture committee and attended by governor of Ismailia Yassin Taher, Shahin said that "the elimination of terrorism in North Sinai, which is very near, will pave the way for revoking the emergency measures that have been in effect there since 2013."
The army has been battling an intensified Islamist insurgency in North Sinai since the ouster of Islamist president Mohammed Morsi in 2013.
Shahin told MPs that the government and the army are keen on seeing Sinai become an attractive environment for investment.
"Sinai will see a lot of progress very soon in terms of economic development after all terrorist elements in this integral part of Egypt are obliterated," said Shahin.
Shahin said that "emergency measures, including long curfew hours, were imposed in Sinai in order to safeguard its citizens against terrorism and help prevent it from infiltrating all of Egypt."
However, death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate... Shahin said "the army has always been of the mind that emergency measures in Sinai are to be implemented on a very limited scale so that the citizens of Sinai can move easily and live a normal life."
MPs complained that most of the roads leading to North Sinai are in bad condition and that it is very difficult for farmers there to use fertilisers necessary to grow their crops.
Hesham El-Shini, head of parliament's agriculture committee, said that the poor road conditions have led to hundreds of citizens losing their lives in car accidents.
"It is hard for the citizens of North Sinai to suffer from both terrorism and bad roads," said El-Shini.
El-Shini said the committee will send Minister of Defence Sedki Sobhi a memorandum requesting that the army's engineering authority take charge of renovating roads leading to Sinai.
MP Fathi Qandeel complained that farmers in both Sinai and Ismailia have suffered much in recent years because they have not been allowed to use "nitrate and urea fertilizers, which are necessary to grow their crops.
In response, Shahin said the army decided three years ago that "nitrate and urea fertilisers be banned from use in Sinai and Ismailia after it had found that they were used in manufacturing explosives."
Ismailia governor Yassin Taher said "it is highly dangerous that Death Eaters get the material they need to manufacture explosives and use them near the Suez Canal area ‐ which is highly strategic to the Egyptian and the world economy."
Taher said that "farmers in Sinai and the Suez Canal area can use other kinds of fertilisers for the time being and terrorism is completely obliterated."
Taher proposed that the Ministry of Agriculture set up a fertiliser production factory in Ismailia to help provide farmers in Sinai with the quantities they need and after making sure that they will not be used in any terrorist activities.
The senior North Korea diplomat who defected to the South from Pyongyang's Embassy in London said Kim Jong Un's nuclear ambitions could bring about state collapse. Thae Yong-ho, who recently compared Kim to the Roman emperor Nero, said North Korea is headed down a dangerous path as it seeks recognition as a nuclear weapons state like "India or Pakistan," Voice of America reported Tuesday.
"The Kim Jong Un regime will never give up nuclear weapons," Thae said.
The high-profile defector added North Korea could "fall apart" if the regime decides to conduct a major nuclear test at its Punggye-ri nuclear site, where Pyongyang conducts tests of weapons of mass destruction.
Recent satellite images show tunnel digging continues at the site, which lies below the 800-meter Mount Mantap. According to 38 North, the activity indicates North Korea may be prepared to conduct additional underground nuclear tests.
Thae said Tuesday the site is located on a road that connects Pyongyang to Hamgyong Province, and that "roads and railways that go up north pass by the nuclear test site."
"If a large explosion takes place and the area becomes contaminated with radiation while Pyongyang loses control of the border region of North Hamgyong Province, mass defections could take place," Thae said.
The tests are done underground for a reason. I suppose the Norks (or the Pakistanis) could be stupid enough to do an underground test in a way that contaminates the country-side but the odds do seem to be against such a thing...
A nuclear failure in a "small country like North Korea" could lead to disaster, the defector said, adding China and the international community must be aware of the danger.
Thae also said Kim Jong Un is trying to achieve parity with South Korea's relatively more powerful military with his nuclear weapons program. In an annual ranking of militaries around the world, South Korea troops ranked the 11th most powerful in 2016, while North Korea's military strength ranked 25th in the survey by website Global Firepower.
There's a numerical disparity, yes. The issue is, if the two tangled, who'd fight and who wouldn't?
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/15/2017 00:00 ||
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#1
After Saddam and Gaddafi, one lesson dictators learnt was that they need a bomb.
Welcome to our rolling coverage of the Dutch election, with the latest news, views and reactions to the divisive race.
Prime Minister Mark Rutte's center-right VVD party is attempting to fend off populist leader Geert Wilders in parliamentary elections that have garnered international attention.
In a diplomatic spat Turkey has accused Netherlands of Nazi practices and of being responsible for the 1995 Srebrenica genocide, reportedly playing into the popularity of VVD.
Six main parties are predicted to enter parliament: the ruling VVD, Wilder's Party for Freedom, the centrist D66, Green-Left, the Socialist Party and the social democrat Labor Party ((PvdA)
Voting closed at 9pm local time (2000 UTC/GMT), with pollsters Ipsos set to publish the first exit poll results immediately after.
Some key posts as of 4:35 p.m. EDT. Go to the link to see the latest:
21.15 Gert Wilders' anti-Islam PVV tied with two other parties in second place, taking just over 12 percent of the vote and 19 seats.
21.10 Exit polls show Prime Minister Mark Rutte's liberal VVD party leading the Dutch parliamentary elections, taking a projected 31 seats. It looks like a victory for the incumbent, but the party will have to reckon with 10 fewer seats in the 150-member lower house.
20.10 Ipsos reported just before 8pm that the turnout rate was 73 percent - that's considerably higher than at the same time in 2012 (60 percent) but slightly lower than in 2006 (70 percent).
18.00 Turnout hits the 55 percent mark, Dutch public broadcaster NOS reports. The high turnout has forced the city of Amsterdam to print 25,000 additional ballots.
15.30 DW's Rebecca Staudenmaier reporting from Venlo noted that no-one she had talked to would admit to supporting Wilders, but that immigration was an issue for many of them.
12.16 Rutte says the elections can send a message to the world. "We have the upcoming French and German elections. And this is a chance for a big democracy like the Netherlands to make a point - to stop this toppling over of the domino stones of the wrong sort of populism," he said.
11.24 Many voters are complaining about the sheer size of the ballot papers - about 900 names from 28 parties are on the paper, the Telegraaf reported.
In a rare move, polling stations in Rotterdam and The Hague were allowed to stay open beyond the 2000 GMT closing time in order to allow all those in line to cast their ballots.
In The Hague's city center where many residents are from Turkish, Moroccan or Surinamese backgrounds, a steady flow of voters -‐ many of them women wearing headscarves ‐- came and went at polling stations.
One Moslem voter told AFP she was afraid of Wilders' fiery ...a single two-syllable word carrying connotations of both incoherence and viciousness. A fiery delivery implies an audience of rubes and yokels, preferably forming up into a mob... anti-Islam rhetoric.
"If you have one person who criticizes, it's OK. But every time another person comes and then another one... then it's really hard to defend yourself," student Khadiga Kallouh, 22 said.
"My mother has never voted before, but now she has and encouraged the whole family to do so because the situation is serious," said another headscarf-wearing woman.
[AlAhram] Employers may bar staff from wearing visible religious symbols, the European Union ...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing... 's top court ruled on Tuesday in its first decision on the issue of women wearing Islamic headscarves at work.
On the eve of a Dutch election in which Moslem immigration has been a key issue and a bellwether for attitudes to migration and refugee policies across Europe, the Court of Justice (ECJ) gave a joined judgment in the cases of two women, in La Belle France and Belgium, who were dismissed for refusing to remove headscarves.
"An internal rule of an undertaking which prohibits the visible wearing of any political, philosophical or religious sign does not constitute direct discrimination," the Court said in a statement.
"However, Caliphornia hasn't yet slid into the ocean, no matter how hard it's tried... in the absence of such a rule, the willingness of an employer to take account of the wishes of a customer no longer to have the employer's services provided by a worker wearing an Islamic headscarf cannot be considered an occupational requirement that could rule out discrimination."
#1
"an undertaking which prohibits the visible wearing of any political, philosophical or religious sign does not constitute direct discrimination," the Court said in a statement."
I've got a feeling that Muslims will ignore this ruling; instead Sharia Law will be the law they obey--particularly in those areas where police do not go.
Does this court have any teeth to enforce such a law? What penalties arise from such a ruling for someone who ignores the decision?
#3
How will Khallid Shabazz handle “the spiritual affairs of 14,000 mostly Christian soldiers”?
Well, there is that question begging an answer. I would suppose there are other Christian chaplains who can be sought out in the army for spiritual needs.
[IsraelTimes] The mayor of Rotterdam says that specialized armed security forces he sent to a standoff with a Turkish minister on Saturday night had permission to open fire if necessary.
Speaking late Monday night on a television talk show, Mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb says he sent the special armed intervention unit to the Turkish consulate amid fears that a 12-man security detail that had driven to the Netherlands from Germany with Turkish Family Affairs Minister Fatma Betul Sayan Kaya could be armed.
Aboutaleb says on the Nieuwsuur show that it was important to “be sure that if it came to a confrontation that we would be the boss” and that the unit had been given “permission to shoot.”
The Turkish minister was eventually escorted out of the Netherlands in the early hours of Sunday. Earlier, the Dutch also had refused Turkey’s foreign minister permission to visit. Both ministers wanted to address rallies about next month’s constitutional reform referendum on giving President Recep Tayyip Erdogan more power.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte repeats Tuesday, on the last day of campaigning for Dutch elections that have been overshadowed by the diplomatic crisis, that Dutch authorities are working to de-escalate tensions with Ankara.
[IsraelTimes] The governor of a German state says that she wants to prevent Turkish government officials from holding political rallies there before Turkey’s constitutional referendum. The western state of Saarland says it would use “all opportunities” to prevent such rallies. Governor Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer says in a statement that “Turkish domestic conflicts have no place in Germany. Campaign appearances that threaten the domestic peace in our country should be banned.”
The move would mirror a similar move by the Netherlands that has stoked tensions between Turkey and Western Europe.
So far, Germany’s federal government has said that it won’t impose a blanket ban on members of the Turkish government holding political rallies in the country.
Kramp-Karrenbauer, who faces a state election on March 26, is a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right Christian Democratic Union. It’s unclear whether Turkish officials had any plans to campaign in Saarland, a small state on the French border.
[Ynet] The Netherlands' Prime Minister Mark Rutte on Tuesday said that Turkish sanctions against the Dutch government in the wake of a diplomatic clash were "not too bad" but were inappropriate as the Dutch have more to be angry about.
The sanctions include freezing all diplomatic communication but no economic measures.
"On the other hand, I continue to find it bizarre that in Turkey they're talking about sanctions when you see that we have reasons to be very angy about what happened this weekend."
Uninteresting verbal nonsense emanating from Turkey can be read at the link if you're curious, dear Reader, but also Deutsche Welle reports:
The German Foreign Ministry meanwhile updated its travel advisory on Turkey, saying that Germans there should be worried about "heightened political tensions and protests that could be directed at Germans."
The revision also recommends that German visitors to Turkey "stay away from political gatherings and from larger groups of people in general."
The Netherlands followed suit and also revised their travel advice for Turkey, urging Dutch citizens visiting Turkey to exercise caution.
"There have been diplomatic tensions between Turkey and the Netherlands," the ministry wrote."Be alert and avoid large crowds."
[AnNahar] German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere on Tuesday said Ankara was playing the role of the victim with its broadsides against NATO allies, as it seeks to galvanize support ahead of a key referendum.
Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu had sparked consternation when he made an ultra-nationalist hand-sign known as the "Wolf's Greeting" during a campaign appearance in Hamburg.
While stopping short of pronouncing an all-out ban on future rallies by Turkish politicians in Germany, De Maiziere signaled that he has had enough of Ankara's provocations.
"There are clear limits beyond which my tolerance ends, this includes when the limits of what is punishable are crossed -- when foreign ministers make the Wolf's Greeting on German soil, or discredit our country with disrespectful Nazi comparisons," he said.
He also voiced displeasure that Turkish domestic political tensions are being increasingly imported to Germany.
Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu has hinted that if the European Union does not grant a visa exemption to Turkish citizens, the migration agreement struck last year between Turkey and the EU could be abolished.
The Turks are pressing really hard for something that the EU governments, having been burned badly by the border problems (as in having no borders) and migrant crisis, really don't want to do. Politics is supposed to be the art of the possible, and this isn't possible right now. So why do the Turks keep pushing?
“We see that the European Union has been stalling us. But our patience is not unlimited. Our citizens also have expectations. If visa liberation does not come, we will take steps regarding the migration deal,” Çavuşoğlu told reporters on March 14.
He said Turkey has so far met the requirements of the migrant deal, calling on the EU to “not stall,” otherwise Ankara “will take necessary measures.”
Çavuşoğlu also suggested that the EU was on the “verge of falling apart.”
“The situation that Europe has fallen into is really driving us to worry. Gradually they are going off a cliff, like the period before the Second World War. The European Union is falling apart,” he said.
On March 13, Turkish EU Affairs Minister Ömer Çelik also said Ankara “should re-evaluate” a key part of a 2016 deal to stem the flow of migrants to the EU.
Çelik said Turkey should look at its policy on preventing migrant flows across land borders, although it would keep halting the illegal and dangerous sea crossings as a matter of human responsibility, state media reported.
“Turkey has no obligation at this stage to continue the agreement as the EU has failed to comply with it,” he added.
Turkey agreed last year to work to keep migrants from crossing into the EU in return for funds to help it deal with some 3 million refugees. The deal included a 6 billion euro ($6.8 billion) aid package to help Turkey care for millions of refugees hosted in the country. However, Turkey has so far received only 677 million euros ($716 million), with Brussels citing demands that Ankara loosen its tough anti-terror legislation. The agreement also allowed for the acceleration of Turkey’s EU membership bid and visa-free travel for Turkish nationals within the Schengen area.
So in other words, the EU welched on a good part of this, and the Turks are angry. After these several centuries, do they not know the Europeans?
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/15/2017 00:00 ||
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Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim spoke with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi over the phone on Tuesday about the fight against the Daesh terror group, Anadolu reported citing the Prime Ministry's press office in Ankara.
Yildirim said Turkey's contribution to the international coalition in the fight against Daesh would continue. He also expressed Turkey's position and expectations in the fight against terror, particularly against the PKK/PYD.
Abadi also said Iraq would not let any threat reach Turkey from Iraqi territory.
Define "Iraqi territory"...
In mid-February, Iraqi forces -- backed by a U.S.-led air coalition -- began new operations aimed at dislodging Daesh terrorists from western Mosul. The offensive came as part of a wider campaign launched last October to retake the entire city, which Daesh overran in mid-2014.
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#3
I'm curious why this particular nomination seemed like a good idea.
Yeah, and in a post 9/11 United States I'm deeply concerned that roughly half of our congress and roughly the same portion of our population feel that national security is a "touchy issue" rather than Job 1.
[IsraelTimes] Jordanian woman charged in connection with 2001 terror attack on Jerusalem pizzeria that killed 15; sought by Justice Department over deaths of US citizens.
The US has charged a Jordanian woman in connection with a 2001 bombing of a Jerusalem pizza restaurant that killed 15 people and injured dozens of others.
The case against Ahlam Aref Ahmad al-Tamimi was filed under seal in 2013 but announced publicly by the Justice Department on Tuesday.
Al-Tamimi pleaded guilty to terrorism charges in an Israeli court in 2003 and was sentenced to life in prison. But eight years in to her sentence, she was released as part of a prisoner exchange with Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, for IDF soldier Gilad Shalit, and returned to Jordan in 2011.
US officials are seeking to take her into custody, though it was not clear Tuesday that she would ever be brought to the US to stand trial.
The charge against al-Tamimi stems from an August 9, 2001 bombing at a Sbarro restaurant that, in addition to killing 15 people, also injured roughly 122 others. Two of those killed were US nationals.
The criminal complaint unsealed Tuesday charged al-Tamimi with conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction outside the US against US nationals.
It accuses her of having agreed in the summer of 2001 to carry out attacks on behalf of the military wing of Hamas and having traveled with the restaurant jacket wallah to Jerusalem. Prosecutors say she instructed the bomber to detonate the bomb, which was hidden in a guitar, in the area.
It wasn’t immediately clear if she had a lawyer.
Mary McCord, the acting head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, called al-Tamimi an "unrepentant terrorist."
"The charges unsealed today serve as a reminder that when Death Eaters target Americans anywhere in the world, we will never forget ‐ and we will continue to seek to ensure that they are held accountable."
The FBI has added al-Tamimi to its list of Most Wanted Terrorists.
[FoxNews] Red flags about the program have been raised for years. In 2004, seven top officials of the Holy Land Foundation – then the largest Muslim charity in the country – were indicted for providing material and upward of $12 million in financial support to the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas. The indictment stated that several of the religious leaders established the now-defunct charity by submitting false R visa applications on behalf of more than 200 immigrants from the Middle East.
A United Nations probe announced on Tuesday that the regime in Syria intentionally bombed the Ain al-Fijeh spring in December, leaving more than five million people in Damascus without access to water.
“The information examined by the Commission confirms that the bombing of (the Ain al-Fijeh) spring was carried out by the Syrian regime,” the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria said in a report that branded the strike a “war crime.”
The report meanwhile dismissed regime allegations that rebels had contaminated the water.
Around 5.5 million people in Damascus and its suburbs were cut off from water when fighting intensified in Wadi Barada near Damascus in late December.
The regime accused the rebels of poisoning water resources and cutting off the mains, while the armed opposition said regime bombardment had destroyed the infrastructure.
The UN experts, who have never been granted access to Syria and who base their reports on interviews and documents, said they had found no “indications that the water was contaminated” before the spring was bombed on December 23.
“On the contrary, interviewees say that Wadi Barada residents used water up until the bombing of 23 December and no one experienced any symptoms of contamination,” the report said.
Following the bombing, the water was contaminated after shrapnel damaged fuel and chlorine storage facilities, it said. The bombing itself indicated that the “spring was purposely targeted,” the report found.
“While the presence of armed group fighters at (the Ain al-Fijeh) spring constituted a military target, … the damage caused … was grossly disproportionate to the military advantage anticipated or achieved,” it said.
“The attack amounts to the war crime of attacking objects indispensable for the survival of the civilian population, and further violated the principle of proportionality in attacks,” the report concluded.
At the end of January, Syria’s army regained control of Wadi Barada, which rebels first seized in 2012.
Earlier on Tuesday, the top UN human rights official called for tens of thousands of detainees to be released from Syria’s prisons and for torturers to be brought to court as part of a lasting peace.
Former Syrian detainees also testified before the UN Human Rights Council about their suffering and concern for men, women and children still in custody of the regime or of extremist groups including al-Nusra Front and ISIS.
“Today in a sense the entire country has become a torture-chamber; a place of savage horror and absolute injustice,” said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein.
“Ensuring accountability, establishing the truth and providing reparations must happen if the Syrian people are ever to find reconciliation and peace,” he told the Geneva forum.
Zeid urged the warring sides to halt torture and executions and to free detainees or at least provide basic information to their families.
The Syrian regime delegation did not attend but has denied allegations of systematic torture. The envoy from Russia, its main ally, called the event a “waste of valuable time”.
Noura Al-Ameer, a former detainee and activist, cited the case of Ranya, a woman detained in 2012 with six of her children and still missing.
“Many other women are detained with their children, detained in places not even fit for animals, let alone fit for children,” al-Ameer told the council.
Paulo Pinheiro, chairman of the UN Commission of Inquiry, noted that its 2014 report found that the scale of deaths in prisons indicated that the Assad regime was responsible for “extermination as a crime against humanity”.
Zeid and Pinheiro pledged support to a new UN mechanism which will collect evidence and prepare criminal files for prosecution by national authorities or an international court.
The regime detains 87 percent of those in custody, said Fadel Abdul Ghani, executive director of the Syrian Network for Human Rights.
“The regime is trumping everyone else with nearly 92,000 individuals that are still inside its detention centers,” said Abdul Ghani. Many suffer “horrendous acts of torture”, he said.
Mazen Darwish, a lawyer freed in 2015 after three years in jail, voiced outrage at the lack of international action.
“We are speaking of a daily massacre going on for six years. Why are we here? Today there are women, men, children, innocent people who are being killed under torture…It is strange that in front of all this evidence we do not see a real movement.”
Posted by: badanov ||
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UN experts, who have never been granted access to Syria and who base their reports on interviews and documents
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.
The senior North Korea diplomat who defected to the South from Pyongyang's Embassy in London said Kim Jong Un's nuclear ambitions could bring about state collapse. Thae Yong-ho, who recently compared Kim to the Roman emperor Nero, said North Korea is headed down a dangerous path as it seeks recognition as a nuclear weapons state like "India or Pakistan," Voice of America reported Tuesday.
