[AlAhram] Despite seeing its hegemonic dreams fall in tatters following the ouster of the Moslem Brüderbund in Egypt, The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... under Erdogan continues to prop up Islamist militias where it can.
Last week, Libyan customs authorities in the Khums seaport seized another cargo of illicit arms and military hardware from Turkey. In a statement released 5 February, the customs authorities said the shipment included nine Toyota Sierra Leone 4X4 armoured assault vehicles and Ottoman Turkish-made combat tanks.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: trailing wife ||
02/17/2019 00:00 ||
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[AlAhram] Islamist faceless myrmidons are increasing their activity in West Africa despite the establishment of a regional force to combat them in the Sahel region ... North Africa's answer to the Pak tribal areas... , and they are now threatening coastal countries, 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... 's foreign minister said on Saturday.
Speaking at the Munich Security Conference, Minister Alpha Barry gave a bleak outlook of the situation more than six years after French troops intervened in Mali to stop Islamist faceless myrmidons advancing on the capital Bamako.
The Sahel region has since suffered violence from krazed killer groups linked to al Qaeda and 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.... , trafficking and the emergence of gangs in one of the world's poorest regions.
The northern region of Burkina Faso, bordering Mali and Niger, has over the last 12 months been especially hard hit, leaving the government struggling to assert its authority since President Blaise Compaore was ousted in 2014 in a popular uprising.
"This threat is gaining ground. Yesterday four customs' officers were killed in south Burkina Faso on the border with Togo," Barry said.
A Spanish priest was also killed in the incident, which Burkinabe authorities blamed on Islamist krazed killers.
"We've also seen attacks on the border with Benin, Ivory Coast and Ghana. It's no longer just the Sahel, it's coastal West Africa and the risk of spreading regionally."
La Belle France, the former colonial power in the region, has kept about 4,500 troops in the region and pushed for the creation of a force made up of soldiers from Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mauritania to combat jihadists.
But the so-called G5 force has been hobbled by delays in disbursing money and poor coordination between the five countries while insecurity has escalated.
Barry said just a fraction of more than 415 million euros ($468 million) promised for the force a year ago had been disbursed, meaning that it had only been able to carry out sporadic operations.
While there have been some operational successes with the help of French troops especially in central Mali, instability has also spread to Niger and Chad, which Gay Paree considers as its most crucial ally in tackling Islamist krazed killers.
This month La Belle France sent warplanes to support Chadian President Idriss Deby against a group of rebels, saying it was preventing a coup d'etat.
"The glass is half full," French Defence Minister Florence Parly said. "It's complex and we have a lot to do, but I'm convinced we are on the right track."
[WSJ] Relocation seeks to disband group of some 1,400 Central American asylum seekers.
Hundreds of Central American migrants colonists encamped in Mexico’s border city of Piedras Negras, across from Eagle Pass, Texas, are being relocated to other cities after a group of migrants colonists rioted earlier this week and attempted to leave an abandoned factory where they were being held.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
02/17/2019 00:00 ||
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h/t Gates of Vienna
[VoiceOfEurope] The German newspaper Hannoversche Allgemeine recently raised the question if violent crime statistics are tweaked in the country.
A state police officer is quoted saying: "There is no lying, nothing is hushed, but things are deliberately left out."
"There are orders to use our latitude of interpretation to preserve civil peace."
The journalist Dieter Wonka met with the police officer, and now he knows specifically how the statistics are tweaked.
In a short video clip he states the following: "There is no written instruction to falsify the statistics. There are certain terms, for instance honour killings or sexual offenses, that if possible should not appear in reports."
"In the case these terms do appear in police reports, from what I have understood, the police chief will make a written note on the report which says: ’Please review this’."
This is a signal to alert the police officer who wrote the report to remove certain terms which are provocative and could have a negative influence on the statistics.
In these statistics you will find the term assault instead of sexual assault without any further specification.
This means that the statistical accumulations are differently weighed and presented differently as what the clear insights in detail would reveal."
#2
I’ve complained of exactly this, though it absolutely is not unique to Germany. Scandinavia, Britain, the U.S. to a lesser extent about Blacks and Hispanics... It is compounded by more of the same by the news media.
[IsraelTmes] Robert-Willem van Norren mocked by pro-Israel activists for holding anti-Israel protests while sitting on a scooter assembled on a kibbutz.
Regardless of where one stands on the Israeli-Paleostinian conflict, there’s no denying the devotion of some of the activists involved in the cause.
Take Robert-Willem van Norren: He’s a middle-aged Dutch supporter of the boycott against Israel movement, and he regularly braves all kinds of weather, as well as his own disability, to promote his cause. He sits for hours on end in his mobility scooter on Amsterdam’s Dam Square, waving Paleostinian flags and anti-Israel posters three times a week.
There’s just one problem with that picture, though: His scooter was made in Israel.
More precisely, it is the Breeze S3 model of the Kalnoit brand, designed and assembled in Kibbutz Afikim in Israel’s Jordan Valley, which began its existence as a military base during Israel’s war of independence in 1948.
Van Norren, who is one of the Netherlands’ best-known anti-Israel activists and who enjoys displaying a poster of the Israeli flag with a cockroach or a swastika over the Star of David symbol, was pictured in July using a different scooter with a retro design resembling a Harley Davidson. But he has since switched to the slicker Israel-made scooter, which he has decorated with Paleostinian flags and a sticker reading "free Paleostine, boycott Israel."
He did not reply to questions on the issue.
Michael Jacobs, a pro-Israel activist who regularly faces off with van Norren and other anti-Israel activists on the Dam, was the one to make the discovery. He said his claim was confirmed by the importer of the Kalnoit mobility scooters to the Netherlands.
Pro-Israel activists in Holland have rejoiced over the origin of the scooter.
Hidde J. van Koningsveld, who heads the CiJo pro-Israel group, called it a "fun fact" and a "#BDSFail" on Twitter.
He also noted that van Norren’s fellow anti-Israel activist, Simon Vrouwe, was recently photographed taking a break from his own Israel protesting to grab a bite at the Maoz falafel shop near the Dam, which is part of a chain started by the Israel-born Dutch businessman Dov Melo.
Vrouwe was wearing a vest reading "boycott Israel" while piling on the Israel-made pickles that Maoz is known for.
"Van Norren is in good company: his fellow professional demonstrator Simon Vrouwe was recently spotted in the Israeli falafel tent Maoz," van Koningsveld said.
#4
But they write their philippics on a laptop full of chips created by Intel Israel.
And talk on cell phones made possible by technology developed at a Motorola R&D center in Israel. That's right, Swampy! Your cell phone has Juice cooties.
[AlAhram] 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. It's a sin, a shame, and a felony to insult the president of Turkey... on Saturday suggested the mosque in Athens should open with minarets if the Greek premier wants to reopen a seminary in Istanbul.
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras was in The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... this month and visited the disputed landmarks of Hagia Sophia and the now-closed Greek Orthodox Halki seminary.
Tsipras said during the visit to the seminary located on Heybeli island off Istanbul on February 6 he hoped to reopen the school next time with Erdogan.
Future priests of the Constantinople diocese had been trained at the seminary, which was closed in 1971 after tensions between Ankara and Athens over Cyprus.
Erdogan on Saturday complained that the Fethiye Mosque in Athens had no minarets despite Greek insistence that it would open.
The mosque was built in 1458 during the Ottoman occupation of Greece but has not been used as a mosque since 1821.
"Look you want something from us, you want the Halki seminary. And I tell you (Greece), come, let's open the Fethiye Mosque," Erdogan said during a rally in the northwestern province of Edirne ahead of local elections on March 31.
"They said, 'we are opening the mosque' but I said, why isn't there a minaret? Can a church be a church without a bell tower?" he said, describing his talks with Tsipras.
"We say, you want to build a bell tower? Come and do it... But what is an essential part of our mosques? The minarets," the Ottoman Turkish president added.
Erdogan said Tsipras told him he was wary of criticism from the Greek opposition.
After the independence war against Ottomans began in 1821, the minaret is believed by some to have been destroyed because it was a symbol of the Ottoman occupation.
Ankara had returned land taken from the seminary in 1943 but there is still international pressure on Turkey to reopen it.
Erdogan has previously said that its reopening is dependent on reciprocal steps from Greece to enhance the rights of the Ottoman Turkish minority.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
02/17/2019 02:20 ||
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Looks like we may need a new acting U.S. Defense Secretary
ABOARD A U.S. MILITARY AIRCRAFT (Reuters) - Acting U.S. Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan said on Saturday he had not yet determined whether a border wall with Mexico was a military necessity or how much Pentagon money would be used.
President Donald Trump on Friday declared a national emergency in a bid to fund his promised wall at the U.S.-Mexico border without congressional approval.
A U.S. defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that Shanahan was likely to approve the $3.6 billion being redirected from the military construction budget.
By declaring a national emergency, Trump can use certain Department of Defense funding to build the wall.
According to the law, the defense secretary has to decide whether the wall is militarily necessary before money from the military construction budget can be used.
"We always anticipated that this would create a lot of attention and since moneys potentially could be redirected, you can imagine the concern this generates," Shanahan told reporters traveling back with him from his trip to Afghanistan, the Middle East and Europe.
#4
Acting U.S. Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan said on Saturday he had not yet determined whether a border wall with Mexico was a military necessity or how much Pentagon money would be used.
#7
Yes - the next quote is: “Very deliberately, we have not made any decisions, we have identified the steps we would take to make those decisions,” Shanahan said.
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/17/2019 12:26 Comments ||
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[AlJazeera] Pakistain-based gang headed by Masood Azhar has been implicated in a series of suicide kabooms in Kashmire.
Formed in 2000, Jaish-e-Muhammad (JEM or Army of Muhammad) is a Pakistain-based gang that aims to undermine and overthrow Indian control over Indian-administered Kashmire through attacks on security and government targets.
The group was founded by Masood Azhar, who previously fought under the banner of Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and has been linked to al-Qaeda.
Azhar founded JeM after he was released from Indian custody in 1999, in exchange for more than 150 hostages held on an Indian Airlines flight that had been hijacked and diverted to Kandahar in Afghanistan.
Azhar is said to have formed JeM with the support of then-al-Qaeda chief the late Osama bin Laden ... who used to be alive but now he's not... and the Afghan Taliban ...mindless ferocity in a turban... , according to the United Nations ...a formerly good idea gone bad... The group is said to have actively supported the Afghan Taliban's fight against US-led NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It's headquartered in Belgium. That sez it all.... forces since 2001.
JeM has carried out several high-profile suicide and other attacks against Indian targets since its formation.
Notably, in 2001 it was implicated in attacks on the legislative assembly building in Indian-administered Kashmire and on the Indian parliament in New Delhi. More than 50 people were killed in the two attacks.
JEM OUTLAWED IN PAKISTAIN
Azhar was tossed in the clink Drop the gat, Rocky, or you're a dead 'un! by Pak authorities for his alleged involvement in the parliament attack, but was released a year later after a court ruled authorities had presented inadequate evidence against him.
Pakistain outlawed the JeM as a "terrorist organization" in 2002, prompting the group to target Pakistain, twice unsuccessfully attempting to assassinate then-Pak President Pervez Perv Musharraf ... former dictator of Pakistain, who was less dictatorial and corrupt than any Pak civilian government to date ... in 2003.
In 2016, Pakistain once again detained Azhar, after India alleged JeM was responsible for an attack on an Indian airbase in the town of Pathankot, killing at least six people.
Later that year, JeM was linked to an attack on an Indian security forces base at Uri, killing 19 people.
On Thursday, JeM grabbed credit for a suicide attack that killed at least 42 Indian soldiers in the Indian-administered Kashmire town of Pulwama, the worst such attack on Kashmiri soil.
A senior police officer, who works with counterinsurgency department of India-administered Kashmire, said that in the last two years, the gang has suffered a setback in south Kashmire such as Pulwama and Tral due to the counterinsurgency operations.
"JeM is not only on a revival mode by carrying out such high-value attacks, but it also nurtures pan India Islamist goals," he said on condition of anonymity.
Azhar's current whereabouts remain unknown having not been formally charged by Pakistain with a crime nor making public appearances since his detention.
China, a key Pak ally, continues to block his listing on a United Nations sanctions list, a long-standing Indian request.
[Ynet] The leader of Leb's hard boy Hezbollah group has denied U.S. assertions that it has cells in Venezuela saying the Latin American nation "does not need them."
Hassan Nasrallah said in a speech Saturday that his Iran-backed group is in "solidarity with the politicianship and state of Venezuela against the American aggression."
Nasrallah added that his group does not have influence in Venezuela nor does it have cells operating there.
[IsraelTimes] Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif confirmed that Tehran attempted a second satellite launch earlier this month despite US criticism that its space program is helping to develop ballistic missiles.
In an interview with NBC news screened Friday, Zarif said it was "quite possible" the United States was sabotaging the Iranian space program.
"We don’t know yet," he said. "We need to look into it very carefully."
Zarif said Tehran was already investigating the failed satellite launches in January and February, but was now "looking into the specifics" of a sabotage campaign following a report in The New York Times
...which still proudly displays Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize... this week.
Current and former US officials told the Times the Trump administration had accelerated a George W. Bush-era program to sabotage Iran’s development of rockets and missiles.
Last week, images released by Colorado-based company DigitalGlobe showed that rockets previously spotted at the Imam Khomeini Space Center were gone, with what appeared to be burn marks on its launch pad.
The US alleges such launches defy a UN Security Council resolution prohibiting Iran from engaging in activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads.
Iran maintains its satellite launches and rocket tests do not have a military component. Tehran also says they don’t violate a United Nations ...a formerly good idea gone bad... resolution that only "called upon" it not to conduct such tests.
Over the past decade, Iran has sent several short-lived satellites into orbit and in 2013 launched a monkey into space.
Iran usually displays space achievements in February during the anniversary of its 1979 Islamic Revolution. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the revolution amid Iran facing increasing pressure from the administration of US President Donald Trump ...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States... , which has adopted a hawkish policy toward the Islamic republic.
This week, US Vice President Mike Pence demanded America’s European 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 drop the nuclear deal with Iran and join it in seeking to cripple the regime. The EU rejected the demand on Friday.
At a US-led conference on the Middle East hosted by Poland, Pence accused Iran of plotting a "new Holocaust" with its opposition to Israel and regional ambitions in Syria, Leb, Iraq and Yemen.
In the interview aired Friday, Zarif said the "same gang" that was behind the 2003 Iraq War were "at it again" by pushing for war with Iran.
“I’m not saying President Trump’s administration, I’m saying people in President Trump’s administration are trying to create the same eventuality and I believe they will fail,” Zarif told NBC.
Though Zarif expressed hope that “some sense will prevail,” he warned that “people will find out that it’s suicidal to engage in a war with Iran.”
Posted by: trailing wife ||
02/17/2019 00:00 ||
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#1
At this point, I DON'T tink it would be wise for them to try to stick a nuke on one of those things yet...
Posted by: Neville Dark Lord of the Wee Folk7365 ||
02/17/2019 1:17 Comments ||
Top||
#4
Iran maintains its satellite launches and rocket tests do not have a military component.
Nah, we bolt that stuff on later... if we can ever get the accursed things to work right. Hey, you don't think there is anything to this sabotage story, do ya?
[Rudaw] The imminent fall 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.... ’s caliphate in Iraq and Syria has left many countries grappling with what to do with jihadists who want to return.
Several hundred foreign jihadists are being detained by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the main fighters on the ground combating the Islamic State. Added to them are women who have not taken part in the fighting and children.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: trailing wife ||
02/17/2019 00:00 ||
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#1
These disgusting pieces of shit
I thought I told you to kill them all on the battlefield after they burned everyone alive in cages and raped everyone. Someone find out what to do with these thousands of devils before I make an F-35 training mission out of these worthless and evil people.
Do you want to make an example out of them? I clearly have no focus on them but Prayer and Vengeance. So step in before I call for creativity.
Do not make the Kurds keep them. You know what these pieces of shit did to the Kurds.
#7
The issue is how many of these guys will wind up in Congress.
Posted by: Matt ||
02/17/2019 14:20 Comments ||
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#8
Re #1: You said "Do not make the Kurds keep them. You know what these pieces of shit did to the Kurds."
I say "Let the Kurds keep them. The Kurds remember what was done to them"
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
02/17/2019 14:29 Comments ||
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#9
^ AMEN
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/17/2019 15:22 Comments ||
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[Washington Examiner] President Trump's national emergency declaration to build hundreds more miles of wall along the U.S.-Mexico border was short on specifics about where the steel structures would go.
Trump's emergency order faces opposition in Congress. And even the president, in announcing the emergency declaration Friday, admitted it could bogged down in court fights for some time to come.
In the meantime, though, Trump administration officials are looking to Homeland Security experts for guidance about where along the nearly 2,000-mile southern border it makes sense to add steel wall structures.
"So it actually ends up being a complicated question," one official said Friday. "The men and women of the Border Patrol each year put together a border security improvement plan, which looks at all of the areas on the 2,000-mile border by risk. It takes into consideration smuggling routes, violent gangs, humanitarian issues, different types of terrain, and figures out where we need physical barriers the most. Based on that list, that is what we build against."
The Department of Homeland Security is working on projects from money they were given in 2017 and 2018 appropriations. They will decide on where to spend Trump's $8 billion after Customs and Border Protection's annual report on the 2018 fiscal year, which ended on Sept. 30, 2018, is released.
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.
... Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him. It's a sin, a shame, and a felony to insult the president of Turkey...
Pervez 
