Three European powers party to a nuclear deal with Iran expressed "concern" with US President Donald Trump's speech on the agreement on Friday, in which he threatened to "terminate" the accord unilaterally.
The three US allies‐ Britain, France and Germany‐ cautioned Trump and the US Congress from walking down a dangerous path by "taking any steps that might undermine the JCPOA, such as re-imposing sanctions on Iran lifted under the agreement." The rule is: don't attribute to malice that can be explained by stupidity - but, there are limits.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru ||
10/14/2017 05:11 ||
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#1
Dear Congress,
The idea is that we make as much money as possible from these mooks until they nuke us. Is that SO hard to understand? Jeez....
The EU
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
10/14/2017 6:57 Comments ||
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[DW] Some 600 senior-ranked Ottoman Turkish officials have sought asylum in Germany since last year’s coup attempt in The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... , according to a Berlin newspaper. The number highlights the growing uncertainty in the country.
Germany's Funke media group, which includes the Berliner Morgenpost, reported Saturday that the more than 600 asylum applicants comprised 250 persons with Ottoman Turkish diplomatic passports and 380 with identity papers showing them to be senior Ottoman Turkish public servants.
Last year's coup attempt, blamed by Ottoman Turkish President Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdogan the First ... Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him... on US-based holy manFethullah Gulen ... a Turkish preacher living in Pennsylvania whom the current govt of Turkey considers responsible for all the ills afflicting Turkey and possibly the entire world... , was followed by the arrests of 50,000 people in Turkey and 150,000 sackings and suspensions in the military, public and private sectors.
The Berliner Morgenpost said it had obtained the figures from Germany's Interior Ministry, which last month said 196 Turks with diplomatic passports had been granted asylum in Germany.
That count did not include members of Turkey's military, including NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A single organization with differing goals, equipment, language, doctrine, and structure.... attaches, who have also sought asylum.
Judicial independence at risk
Strains have emerged in the traditional good relations between Ankara and Berlin over the German government's refusal to extradite asylum seekers, outrage over Turkey's prosecution of dozens of detained German citizens, including journalists, and Erdogan's April referendum to expand his powers.
The Berliner Morgenpost quoted the executive director of the German Association of Judges, Sven Rebehn, as saying that hardly any judicial independence remained in Turkey to exercise controls over Erdogan.
"Thousands of judges and state attorneys have been dismissed and some taken into detention. They have been replaced by government-allied jurists, who are appointed after crash courses," he said.
"As a result, an effective, constitutional legal control of the Erdogan regime through an independent judiciary is largely inconceivable. It's to be feared that the Ottoman Turkish president will continue to dismantle Turkey's civil society unperturbed.
Erdogan: EU must make up its mind
In a speech to his Justice and Development Party (AKP) on Friday, Erdogan demanded that the EU at its Brussels summit next week make a decision on Ankara's longstanding bid for accession to the 28-nation bloc.
"Still they string us along. But we will be patient. We say: It will be not us, but you who leaves the ring," Erdogan told his AKP executive.
Germany is home to some 3 million people of Ottoman Turkish descent and has been a major trading partner and tourist destination for Germans.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
10/14/2017 00:59 ||
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#1
There are indications that Turkish spies who work for the German government as e.g. translators or security personnel are leaking confidential information on these asylum seekers to the Turkish government / ruling party.
Some asylum seekers have reported that immediately after they contacted German government authorities to apply for asylum their names and whereabouts in Germany were published by Turkish media close to Erdogan.
[IsraelTimes] Abdelkader Merah denies helping Mohammed Merah shoot dead 7 people, including 3 Jewish schoolchildren, in 2012
The older brother of a French jihadi who killed Jewish schoolchildren and soldiers in 2012 says he had no idea what his sibling was plotting.
Abdelkader Merah testified Friday for the first time in his trial for alleged complicity with his brother Mohammed’s three attacks in and near Toulouse ...lies on the banks of the River Garonne, half-way between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. The Toulouse metropolitan area is the fourth-largest in La Belle France... Merah is the chief surviving suspect because Mohammed died in a shootout with police.
He said he was with his brother the day he stole the motor scooter used in the killings, but didn’t report the theft to police because he didn’t want to be a snitch.
...the Algerian-French "lone wolf" who trained with Al Qaeda in Pakistan and quite possibly was a French informant before going on the killing spree that ended with his dramatic death in a shootout with French police...
I am Abdelkader Merah. There is a big difference," he insisted to the court.
True. Elder brother is merely a known wolf with a habit of supporting real jihadis -- a number of them relatives -- in their endeavours, though such things are felonies earning serious jail time. Mohammed was an actual jihadi.
The attacks, which he carried out in the name of al-Qaeda, were the first in a wave of jihadist assaults in La Belle France that resumed in 2015 with the shootings at satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo ...A lefty French satirical magazine, home of what may well be the majority if the active testicles left in Europe... and a massacre at a Gay Paree concert hall.
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.... terror group claimed the attack as the work of one of its "soldiers," though a source close to the investigation said there was as yet no solid evidence linking the man to the group.
Abdelkader Merah, 35, is the first person to be tried over the spate of killings.
Reacting to his brother’s actions in 2012 Abdelkader Merah had declared himself "proud," saying that "every Moslem would like to give his life to kill his enemy."
He is accused of helping to facilitate his brother’s attacks, in particular by helping him steal the scooter used in three separate shootings.
He is being tried alongside 34-year-old Fettah Malki, accused of giving Mohammed Merah a bulletproof jacket, an Uzi submachine gun and ammunition.
Neither of the accused denies helping Merah obtain materials but claimed they were unaware of his intentions.
Abdelkader Merah faces a possible life sentence while Malki could get 20 years in prison.
Nicknamed "Bin Laden" in his neighborhood, Abdelkader Merah was known to intelligence services for his ties to radical Islamists in Toulouse.
Prosecutors claim he shared his brother’s ideology, and that the siblings were repeatedly in contact in the days before the killings.
[IsraelTimes] A French political activists says Zoulikha Merah was favored despite allegations that her son aided his brother in 2012 murder of 4 Jewish civilians and 3 soldiers.
Municipal officials gave preferential treatment to the mother of an Islamist terrorist who killed Jews in Toulouse ...lies on the banks of the River Garonne, half-way between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. The Toulouse metropolitan area is the fourth-largest in La Belle France... , allegedly with help from his brother, a French political activist said.
Gilbert Collard, a supporter of the far-right politician Marine Le Pen of the National Front party, wrote to French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe last week to complain that Zoulikha Merah was prioritized over other applicants for public housing based on a request in which she cited the need to be near the trial of her eldest son. He is accused of helping his younger brother, Mohammed, kill four Jews and three soldiers in 2012.
"This lady effectively received absolute priority for public housing in Tremblay," Collard wrote. He did not provide any evidence of the preferential treatment he said Zoulikha Merah had received.
The western municipality that Collard named is located 195 miles from Gay Paree, where last month the trial of 35-year-old Abdelkader Merah opened five years after his initial arrest for allegedly helping his brother carry out deadly shootings in Toulouse. But it is much closer to Gay Paree than Zoulikha Merah’s home in Toulouse, which is located 410 miles south of the capital.
Before his trial began, Abdelkader Merah was held in Vivonne, which is located 233 miles from Toulouse. But his mother’s request to be near him was filed when he was still being held in Villepinte near Gay Paree, Collard also wrote.
In addition to Abdelkader Merah, another suspected Islamist, 34-year-old Fettah Malki, also is facing charges of assisting Mohammed Merah carry out terrorist attacks in March 2012. Mohammed Merah bumped off three children and a rabbi at the school. He was killed in a shootout with police at an apartment three days after the school killings.
Both the older brother and Malki have denied having any prior knowledge of Mohammed Merah’s planned attacks, but police say they have evidence suggesting both were involved in preparations. Abdelkader Merah also supported his brother spiritually and psychologically in his becoming a terrorist, the prosecution said.
Born to a family of four children, Mohammed Merah was "raised to be an anti-Semite because anti-Semitism was part of the atmosphere at home," his youngest brother, Abdelghani, said in 2013.
Abdelghani Merah has denounced his family publicly, calling their denials and claims of innocence part of their belief in taqqiyah ‐ an Islamic term meaning "subterfuge" in the service of jihad.
The Merahs’ sister, Souad, fled La Belle France after authorities there questioned her for saying she was proud of her brother. She and her four children were seen three years ago in the Ottoman Turkish city of Gazyantep, where they are believed to have crossed into Syria to join 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.... terrorist group, according to the TF1 television series.
This isn't setting well with Bosnians and Serb, nor with the Russian who see this as a man being acquitted based on his ethnic background.
[RFERL] A court in Bosnia-Herzegovina has acquitted Naser Oric, the commander of Bosnian Muslim troops in the Srebrenica area during Bosnia's 1990s conflict, of war crimes charges.
The state war crimes court in Sarajevo acquitted Oric, 50, of the charge of killing three ethnic Serb prisoners of war in the Srebrenica area in 1992.
Another Bosnian Army soldier, Sabahudin Muhic, was also found not guilty.
"The accused Naser Oric and Sabahudin Muhic have been acquitted of charges of violating provisions of the Geneva Conventions," Judge Saban Maksumic told the court.
The judge said that the testimony of a protected witness, which was crucial to the indictment, lacked credibility.
Relatives of the victims walked out the courtroom in protest against the verdict, which also sparked outrage from the leader of Bosnian Serbs and Belgrade.
"I have nothing to say, the court said what it had to say," Oric said after leaving the tribunal as he was welcomed by supporters.
Oric is seen as a hero by many Bosniaks for his role in defending Muslims during the 1992-95 Bosnian war, in which more than 100,000 people were killed.
Srebrenica fell in 1995 to Bosnian Serb troops who killed more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys there in what is considered Europe's worst atrocity since World War II.
In 1995, the U.S.-brokered Dayton accords mostly ended the violence, with Bosnia being split into two entities -- the Muslim-Croat Federation of Bosnian Muslims and Croats and the ethnic Serb-dominated Republika Srpska.
Republika Srpska's nationalist leader, President Milorad Dodik, said the verdict was "proof that in Bosnia there is no punishment for criminals [committing crimes] against Serbs."
He suggested that the ruling will likely "revive the idea of holding a referendum" on ethnic Serbs' participation in Bosnia's judicial bodies.
Vinko Lale, the head of an association of Serbian prisoners of war, told AFP news agency that Oric's acquittal will "radicalize the situation on the political field."
Meanwhile, the chairman of Bosnia's three-man presidency, Dragan Covic, a Bosnian Croat, said negative rhetoric over the case could be a setback for the country's progress.
In neighboring Serbia, Justice Minister Nela Kuburovic called the ruling "shameful," while Defense Minister Vulin accused the Sarajevo court of "jeopardizing peace, security, trust, reconciliation in the whole Balkans."
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague (ICTY) sentenced Oric to two years in prison in 2006 for failing to prevent the murder and inhumane treatment of Serbian prisoners, but he was immediately released because he had already served the time.
In 2008, the UN court's appeals chamber overturned the verdict and cleared Oric.
Unhappy with the ex-commander’s acquittal, Belgrade in 2014 launched an international warrant over the killing of nine Serb civilians near Srebrenica in 1992.
Switzerland arrested Oric in 2015 on the warrant issued by Serbia but extradited him to Bosnia to face charges, a decision that caused anger in Belgrade. His trial started in Sarajevo in January 2016. With reporting by AFP, Reuters, and BalkanInsight
That's one of our two people, but even so it is just a formality on the way to what the Turks intend to be a preordained conclusion.
[Ynet] A US consulate worker detained by Ottoman Turkish authorities last week saw his lawyer on Friday.
"We had the necessary meeting with my client," lawyer Halit Akalp told Ottoman Turkish television channels as he left a jail complex at Silivri, west of Istanbul. "There were no restrictions on our meeting."
Metin Topuz was enjugged Drop the gat, Rocky, or you're a dead 'un! over alleged links to the network of US-based holy manFethullah Gulen ... a Turkish preacher living in Pennsylvania whom the current govt of Turkey considers responsible for all the ills afflicting Turkey and possibly the entire world... , accused by Ankara of orchestrating last year's coup attempt. His arrest sparked a dispute between the NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A collection of multinational and multilingual and multicultural armed forces, all of differing capabilities, working toward a common goal by pulling in different directions... allies and suspension of visa services.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
10/14/2017 00:00 ||
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[DailyMail] Upon arriving back in Canada late Friday Joshua Boyle said, 'The stupidity and evil of the Haqqani network's kidnapping of a pilgrim
...an interesting word, especially for a Canadian...
and his heavily pregnant wife engaged in helping ordinary villagers in Taliban ...the Pashtun equivalent of men... -controlled regions of Afghanistan was eclipsed only by the stupidity and evil of authorizing the murder of my infant daughter.'
Boyle said his wife was raped by a guard who was assisted by his superiors. He asked for the Afghan government to bring them to justice.
He said he was in Afghanistan to help villagers 'who live deep inside Taliban-controlled Afghanistan where no NGO, no aid worker and no government has ever successfully been able to bring the necessary help.'
#1
When I read the word "pilgrim," I heard it the way The Duke would have said it: Someone who is out of place in a place where ignorance and naiveté have harsh consequences. The guy has every right to be very angry, but for him to believe he made no bad choices himself, that's a bridge too far, IMHO...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
10/14/2017 10:18 Comments ||
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#2
"pilgrim" a person who journeys to a sacred place for religious reasons...
The stupid azz canadian government will probably give this American hating, Khadr loving terrorist a couple million dollar settlement as well...but, maybe not - he didn't kill any US Soldiers as far as we know...
#8
I'm not sure Pakistan DID give Trump something. It sounds like they just gave us the trash off the floor. I'm not entirely sure they were "Hostages" in the traditional sense, or if anything this guy has been describing happened.
The wife seems alarmingly submissive to me. Until intel comes in backing his story up, or the wife actually confirms, I just don't think I can really believe this POS.
Posted by: Charles ||
10/14/2017 15:46 Comments ||
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#9
I'm not sure Pakistan DID give Trump something
They didn't, really. More like they gave the Canadians something.
Note that the Paks broadcast to all and sundry about the 'wonderful' thing they did, however. Either their pet Haqqanis either were the ones who went rogue, or the Pak IC screwed up. Possibly the Canadians paid something. Ironic in any case.
[IsraelTimes] President sets out series of measures short of canceling the 2015 accord, but warns that if no solution found 'with Congress and our allies, then the agreement will be terminated'.
The speech transcript can be read at the link.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
10/14/2017 00:00 ||
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[AnNahar] Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines will begin coordinated air patrols off the strife-torn southern Philippines next month to combat the growing threat posed by Islamist hard boys, an official said Friday.
The neighbors had already launched joint sea patrols four months ago in the same area, the Sulu Sea.
Fears have been growing that 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 is trying to establish a Southeast Asian outpost in the southern Philippines after button men waving the jihadists' black flag occupied the Moslem city of Marawi in May.
They have fought off a U.S.-backed military assault for almost five months and the conflict has left hundreds dead.
There have also been a spate of kidnappings in the Sulu Sea by the Abu Sayyaf ...also known as al-Harakat al-Islamiyya, an Islamist terror group based in Jolo, Basilan and Zamboanga. Since its inception in the early 1990s, the group has carried out bombings, kidnappings, murders, head choppings, and extortion in their uniquely Islamic attempt to set up an independent Moslem province in the Philippines. Abu Sayyaf forces probably number less than 300 cadres. The group is closely allied with remnants of Indonesia's Jemaah Islamiya and has loose ties with MILF and MNLF who sometimes provide cannon fodder... , a Philippine Islamist hard boy group.
A ceremony to announce the patrols was held Thursday at Subang air force base outside Kuala Lumpur and was attended by defense ministers from the three countries.
A Malaysian defense ministry spokeswoman said the patrols were aimed at combating the threat from "ISIS (IS), piracy and sea robberies."
The countries will take turns to lead the patrols, with Malaysia starting in November, followed by the Philippines in December and Indonesia in January.
In a speech at the ceremony, Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said that some $40 billion in trade passed through the Sulu Sea every year and no single country could police the waters alone.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
10/14/2017 00:59 ||
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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.
[IsraelTimes] Abdelkader Merah denies helping Mohammed Merah shoot dead 7 people, including 3 Jewish schoolchildren, in 2012
A lefty French satirical magazine, home of what may well be the majority if the active testicles left in Europe...
