[ToloNews] Gen. Murad Ali Murad, the deputy chief of staff for the Afghan National Army (ANA), said on Sunday that the ongoing operation in Kunduz province is paying dividends and in addition to pushing back the Taliban to remote areas, troops have also retaken military hardware seized by murderous Moslems in the past few weeks.
Murad said: "We assure all the Kunduz residents that the government and security forces are with you. Allah is with you. You [Kunduz residents] should pay attention to mosques, madrassas and other places where gunnies want to hide and not allow this to happen."
"No group has the ability to re-enter Kunduz city," he assured residents.
According to security officials, Taliban fighters have started recruiting teenagers and children to fight against security forces.
One teenager who was tossed in the slammer You have the right to remain silent... in the Kunduz battle, said: "First they gave me a gun but I was not familiar with it. I had no idea at the beginning how to use it."
Meanwhile, ...back at the dirigible, Jack stuck the cigar in his mouth, stepped onto the gantry, and asked Got a light, Mac?
Von Schtinken stopped short, lowering the dagger and trying to control his features.
If you light that thing, Herr Armschtröng, he pointed out, his voice tense, we all die!... Tariq Majidi, TOLOnews correspondent who is in Kunduz, says residents are however afraid that some Taliban fighters are hiding in residential homes. But security officials say residents are cooperating with them in their efforts to find suspects and prevent them from carrying out attacks in the northern city.
[ToloNews] Sunday the Taliban are trying to take control of provinces that are rich in minerals in a bid to bolster their finances.
Insurgents are fighting to take control of the areas that are rich in gold and other minerals, NRMN said in a statement. The organization warned it was a dangerous move by the Taliban to seek control of the country's national wealth.
NRMN also warned if government does not take action, the country's mines could become a major funding source for Lion of Islam groups.
"Insurgents have been trying to destabilize many areas in order to help their fighters continue extracting [mines] in the country," NRMN member Ibrahim Jaffari said.
"This is a serious issue and the government must take action otherwise the situation will further deteriorate," he said.
According to NRMN, the Taliban recently "formed a high council" which it said is responsible for identifying the areas that are rich in natural resources, in a bid to bolster their finances.
Over the past few months, the Taliban has been fighting in southern Helmand ...an Afghan province populated mostly by Pashtuns, adjacent to Injun country in Pak Balochistan... , northeastern Badakhshan, eastern Kunar and Nuristan provinces.
Helmand is rich in chromite and also the largest opium producing province, which is believed to be the major source of income for the Taliban. Badakhshan is famous for its gold and azure mines, while Nuristan and Kunar have large deposits of precious stones that are being extracted by the Lion of Islams.
Meanwhile, ...back at the wine tasting, Vince was about to start on his third quart... a tribal elder in Raghistan district in Badakhshan, Hashim Hamidi, told TOLOnews that snuffies extract gold from different areas in the province.
"The Taliban has 31 excavators and are extracting several kilograms of gold on a daily basis. The area has been under control of the Taliban for almost a year," he said.
"We are deeply concerned about the problem. The ministry of mines and petroleum has prepared a security plan to secure the mines, but now it is up to security institutions to ensure the security of the mines and pave the way for our workers and staff to travel in areas where natural resources can be identified," Muhaiuddin Noori, a front man for the ministry of mines and petroleum said.
Security has drastically deteriorated in mineral rich provinces in Afghanistan over recent months and many believe snuffies are now eyeing natural resources to fund their armed struggle against government.
The bodies of at least 43 people thought to be migrants washed up on Libyan beaches east of the capital Tripoli at the weekend, the Red Moon-Shaped Thingy Crescent said on Sunday.
Twenty-nine bodies were found on Saturday on beaches around the port of Zliten, while another 14 were discovered on Sunday on a beach near the port of Khoms.
"Residents told us about bodies on the beaches around Zliten," Red Moon-Shaped Thingy Crescent spokesman Mohamed Al Misrati said. "We discovered 25 bodies, then another four."
Misrati did not give any further details about the nationality of the deceased, but the Tripoli authorities' official news agency reported that they were from Africa.
The Red Moon-Shaped Thingy Crescent expected to recover several more bodies, the news agency cited Misrati as saying.
Later on Sunday another Red Moon-Shaped Thingy Crescent spokesman, Fawzi Abdel Aal, said 14 bodies were on the Siline beach near Khoms, 120 kilometres east of the capital. The would-be migrants were all from Africa, he said.
The victims were apparently on a boat that capsized near Zliten, 160 kilometres east of Tripoli.
Posted by: Steve White ||
10/26/2015 00:00 ||
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#1
I wonder how many people died trying to illegally enter emigrate to the colonies, back at the time of the Mayflower?
Just for the sake of comparison, I mean.
Posted by: Bobby ||
10/26/2015 13:25 Comments ||
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#2
well, the pilgrims did not lose any in the water, but half died of disease in the first Winter.
SEOUL -- South Korea has fired machine gun rounds at a North Korean patrol boat that crossed into its waters in the Yellow Sea, the South's military said Sunday, threatening the conciliatory mood created by the second round of family reunions taking place in the North.
The South Korean Navy fired five warning shots at the vessel around 3:30 p.m. Saturday after it crossed the de-facto western maritime border between the two Koreas known as the Northern Limit Line (NLL) by hundreds of meters.
The boat was supposedly cracking down on dozens of illegal Chinese fishing boats in waters near South Korea's Yeonpyeong Island, the site of a deadly bombardment by the North in 2010, the military said. The boat retreated about 18 minutes after the shots were fired, with no injuries being reported.
"There was no violent clash during the warning process," a South Korean military official said, asking not to be named.
The North, however, condemned the firing as a "military provocation."
"South Korean belligerents carried out a military provocation against our patrol boat, which was carrying out its duties in our waters," a spokesman for the North's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea told Pyongyang's state media.
This isn't the first time a North Korean boat has crossed the NLL, with the communist country claiming a line further down south as the maritime border. The most recent transgression took place on Aug. 31, only six days after a landmark deal was reached between the Koreas to diffuse tension. Two more crossings took place earlier in June, with South Korea firing warning shots in all of the incidents.
Posted by: Steve White ||
10/26/2015 00:00 ||
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#1
Mines come to mind.
Posted by: Sven the pelter ||
10/26/2015 23:07 Comments ||
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Much EU politician hand-wringing in this article. Not for the faint of heart...
Migrants crossing the Balkans will begin freezing to death as winter approaches, the head of European Union has said, as leaders warned the continent was "falling apart" trying to deal with the biggest humanitarian crisis since the Second World War.
Unfortunate. People should not be allowed to freeze to death. Best thing to do is to turn the show around and move the refugees to somewhere warm. Latakia would work, as would Tobruk. And there's always Mauritania...
As leaders of eastern European countries turned on each other at a foul-tempered emergency summit in Brussels, they said the Schengen visa-free zone and even the European Union itself could be pulled apart as states threw up borders to halt the influx.
Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, said a solution was urgently needed or thousands of refugee families facing winter temperature on the hillsides and freezing river-banks of Eastern Europe, would die.
#4
Any politicians that call them refugees is a scoundrel. They are migrating for economic reasons.
The parable of the Ant and Grasshopper is coming true day by day except the queen ant wants to give away the stores to the grasshopper so the grasshopper can enjoy his leisure year round.
#5
I guess leading from behind in Libya and Syria, withdrawing from Iraq, and practically withdrawing from Afghanistan has had some consequences: much of the citizenry in these places now sees no hope for their countries and is off to Europe.
Well, cheer up. If Obama's protege Morsi was still in power in Egypt, there would be a massive emigration to Europe from it as well. Our president can take pride in managing to avoid that, despite all his efforts to favor Morsi.
[Hurriyet] The story of how 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.... of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) recruited bully boyz in The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... who then went on to kill hundreds of people around the country began in an ordinary teahouse in the country's east.
A teahouse in Adiyaman province, called "Islam" and operated by Yunus Emre Alagöz, soon began to function as a meeting place and prayer room for radical Islamists. The tea house became the center for ISIL to recruit young people in the area. Alagöz was identified as one of the two jacket wallahs to attack a peace rally in Ankara that killed 100 protesters on Oct. 10.
The story was much the same for other young men who frequented the tea house in Adiyaman, as they underwent a transformation to become more radical. Many families lost contact with their children for months at a time while they trained at ISIL camps in Syria before returning to Turkey, with some having married foreign women that are also members of ISIL in the meantime.
Many families reported their children to police, fearing that they might be involved in terrorism, only for the police to take no action.
Orhan Gönder, a suicide bomber who attacked a rally of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) in the southeastern province of Diyarbakir a few days before the June 7 general elections, frequented the Islam tea house. Other people who were recruited in the same place were later identified as suicide bombers.
Seyh Abdurrahman Alagöz, a 20-year-old university student registered in Adiyaman province, was identified as the suicide bomber who carried out the deadly July 20 attack at a municipal cultural center in Sanliurfa's Suruc district, which killed 33 activists planning to cross the border to help rebuild the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobane. Seyh Abdurrahman Alagöz was the brother of Yunus Emre Alagöz, who was reported missing by his family.
Their father said he reported his sons to the police, saying he feared they might commit attacks. Police, however, took no action. Four months later, Yunus Emre Alagöz was identified as one of the two ISIL bombers in the Oct. 10 Ankara attack.
In the wake of the attacks, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said the government had a list of potential suicide bombers, but could do take no action until they detonate themselves.
Police are continuing to search for Ömer Deniz Dundar and his twin brother, Mahmut Gazi Dundar, who are also thought to be planning new attacks and were initially radicalized in Adiyaman. The second bomber in Ankara attack was initially reported in the media to be Ömer Deniz Dundar, only for the possibility to be ruled out by DNA tests.
In 2013, Ömer Deniz Dundar's clothing and lifestyle changed, and he told his father, Mehmet Dundar, that his family did not understand true Islam, which he said was being practiced in Syria under ISIL rule.
The men subsequently went missing in Syria for 10 days, after which they notified their father of their location. Desperate to retrieve his sons, Mehmet Dundar set off for Syria, traveling from camp to camp until he found their location near Aleppo. An ISIL commander, told him the men were preparing for jihad before demanding that the father leave or face execution.
The Dundar twins eventually returned briefly to Turkey along with their foreign wives.
The father said he believed they had not returned to Syria, although Turkish police continue to search for them in Turkey.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
10/26/2015 00:00:00 ||
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#1
In the town where I grew up,there was a place called "The Modern Tearoom." Drinkable tea was not their forte...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
10/26/2015 9:31 Comments ||
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Posted by: Steve White ||
10/26/2015 00:00 ||
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#1
Perhaps not a popular opinion but I've said it before myself and I think he's right. Guys like Qdaffy, Saddam, Mubarak and Assad are the best those people can do. The way I see it there are two alternatives to the strongmen we have overthrown and currently seek to overthrow: the chaos that we see in those countries now; or else Americans and Europeans re-colonize that whole region which means we send military forces to occupy those countries indefinitely.
#2
I felt that W gave the optimistic Democracy politics a chance and the Middle East was found wanting. To continue similar policies when it came to Quadaffi was stupid.
Realpolitik. They will have democracy when they are ready to claim it themselves (the way South Korea, Tawian, and others did). To force it upon a nation takes decades (Germany and Japan) and we clearly aren't willing to put in the time for these folks.
#3
The problem with Ws plan was the same one the EUSSR has. Namely Europe has different peoples so no possibility of a demos to base a democracy on.
PLUS
Inferior tribal cultures cannot achieve the level of reciprocation needed for wealth creation.
We should f**ked turkey and made a kurdistan, a sunnistan and a shiastan, and told the strongman that he joins syria, iran etc he gets a Ceucescu moment.
#7
We sort of have one now (at least Shi vs Sunni), except the front lines are all over the place instead of neatly along the border between Iran and Iraq.
#10
The Middle East was a better place without Saddam until 0bean turned it into a clusterf**k. 0bean owns Iraq.
0bean owns Syria all on his own.
Posted by: Sven the pelter ||
10/26/2015 18:07 Comments ||
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#11
Ever wonder what Germany would look like if we withdrew in 1948? Or Korea in 1955. We already had the example of withdrawal from Indochina in 1973.
[IsraelTimes] Officials say Muhanad Alukabi planned attack well in advance, had pictures of Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, operatives on phone
The man who carried out a deadly shooting terror attack at the Beersheba central bus station a week ago was in contact with Paleostinian terror group Hamas for an extended period, and prepared for his attack ahead of time, police said Sunday.
The terrorist, Muhanad Alukabi, 21, from an unrecognized Bedouin village in the Negev, had photos of Hamas operatives, guns and other weapons saved on his phone, police said in a statement.
On October 18, Alukabi opened fire in the bus station of the southern city, killing a soldier, stealing his gun and wounding 11 others. He was killed in a shootout with police after holing up in a bathroom.
The attack was seen as out of the ordinary both because it was carried out with a gun and because the attacker had Israeli citizenship.
Most attacks during the current round of violence have been carried out by so-called "lone wolf" attackers not acting as part of a larger terror group. But the Alukabi link shows Hamas may have been linked to the shooting.
Southern District Police Commander Yoram Halevi said after a gag order on the investigation was lifted that one could say "without a doubt and in contradiction of the rumors and conspiracy theories on social networks that Muhanad Alukabi is not innocent."
"It has been proven unequivocally that he was the terrorist who murdered IDF soldier Omri Levy, may his memory be blessed, and was involved in the shooting and harming of coppers who courageously disarmed the terrorist and prevented the continuation of his murderous journey," Halevy said.
He said that evidence showed that Alukabi "planned his action carefully over a long period of time."
Police also released security camera footage showing Alukabi following Levy for an extended period before killing him, and the police shootout with him.
According to the Shin Bet security service, Alukabi's mother was originally from the Gazoo Strip and was granted citizenship because she was married to an Israeli Arab. The attacker had no previous criminal record.
Police said Sunday that Alukabi's brother had failed to prevent a crime when he knew that Alukabi purchased a gun. The police alleged that the brother was aware of the Alukabi's process of radicalizing.
The brother, police claimed, was obligated to report Alukabi's activities to the police.
Bedouin leaders condemned the attack less than 24 hours after it took place.
"Following [Sunday's] terrorist attack at the Beersheba central bus station in which two innocent people bit the dust, we utterly and unreservedly condemn this despicable act and reject violence of any sort," Hura Mayor Mohammed Alnabari said in a statement as community leaders gathered for an urgent meeting.
During the attack, an Eritrea ...is run by the People's Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ), with about the amounts of democracy and justice you'd expect from a party with that name. National elections have been periodically scheduled and cancelled; none have ever been held in the country. The president, Isaias Afewerki, has been in office since independence in 1993 and will probably die there of old age... n man was also accidentally shot by responding forces who mistook him for a terrorist. A crowd then beat Haftom Zarhum, who died after being taken to a hospital. Four people have been incarcerated Don't shoot, coppers! I'm comin' out! in connection with the beating.
Syria's President Bashar Al Assad is willing to eventually hold parliamentary and presidential elections and is ready to run himself for president, a Russian lawmaker told AFP from Damascus on Sunday.
And if you can't believe a Rooshun politician about elections, just who can you believe?
"He is ready to conduct elections with the participation of all political forces who want Syria to prosper," Russian lawmaker Alexander Yushchenko said by phone after meeting Assad in the Syrian capital as part of a delegation.
Assad said he was ready to take part in the polls "if the people are not against it," Yushchenko added, speaking after the 1.5-hour meeting that included other Russian lawmakers and various other figures.
"He is absolutely sure of himself."
Of that we have no doubt...
Yushchenko, who is a member of the Communist Party, stressed that Assad was ready to discuss constitutional reform and eventual elections only after Syria is "liberated" from Islamic State jihadists.
And once again firmly under his thumb...
The announcement is expected to anger Western-backed moderate rebels as well as Washington and its allies who say there is no future for Assad in post-conflict Syria. Some of his opponents say he should step down during a transition, while others insist on his immediate resignation.
Someone could always shoot him. Keep in mind Stalin's advice: when a man is giving you a problem, remember, no man, no problem.
Russia, which is one of the main backers of the Assad regime, says it is up to the Syrian people to decide his fate.
On Saturday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said it was time to start preparing for elections in Syria and also said Moscow was ready to provide air support for Western-backed "patriotic" rebels battling both jihadists and Assad.
The offer of help apparently represented a marked shift in Moscow's position.
Not that you or any other sentient life-form should believe that sentence...
Russia had previously only used the word "patriotic" to describe groups backing Assad.
Representatives of Syria's Western-backed opposition rejected Russia's offer, saying Moscow should first stop bombing moderate rebels.
The Russian delegation's meeting with Assad in Damascus caps a week of intense diplomacy which also saw President Vladimir Putin host Assad at the Kremlin for a surprise summit on Tuesday, the Syrian leader's first known foreign trip since the outbreak of unrest in 2011.
After the unannounced talks, Lavrov and US Secretary of State John Kerry agreed in Vienna on Friday to explore new ways of trying to reach a political settlement.
At which time Lavrov, while only holding a pair of fives, will bluff Kerry into making more concessions...
Syria last held presidential elections in June 2014, with Assad re-elected for a seven-year term with 88.7 per cent of the vote. The election was dismissed by the opposition and condemned internationally.
The country last held parliamentary elections in May 2012, and it is in theory due to hold its next legislative vote in 2016.
Posted by: Steve White ||
10/26/2015 00:00 ||
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[Rudaw] Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... hard boyz are gaining $40 million-$50 million per month through selling crude oil from oil fields the turban group controls in Iraq and Syria, Ibrahim Bahr al-Oloum, a member of Iraq's parliamentary energy committee and a former oil minister, told the News Agency that Dare Not be Named on Friday.
ISIS is producing about 30,000 barrels per day (bpd) from occupied oil fields in Syria and around 10,000-20,000 bpd from Iraq, Oloum told the AP.
The AP reported "oil sales are the main source of income of the terrorist organization and the main key to maintain their rule over their self-declared caliphate in both Iraq and Syria."
It is believed that ISIS hard boyz sell crude oil to smugglers at a discounted price, sometimes $35 per barrel, and in some cases as low as $10 per barrel, compared to just under $50 a barrel on international markets, Iraqi intelligence officials told the AP in separate interviews.
The oil used to be smuggled in fleets of giant tanker trucks, but due to coalition Arclight airstrikes, smaller tankers are being used now, the Iraqi officials, speaking on condition of anonymity ... for fear of being murdered... because they were not authorized to brief the press, said.
According to a UN report released in November 2014, ISIS made $1.6 million producing and exporting oil each day.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
10/26/2015 00:00 ||
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#1
And if they'd greased a few palms, none of it would've been mentioned.
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 bodies of at least 43 people thought to be migrants washed up on Libyan beaches east of the capital Tripoli at the weekend, the Red 
Syria's President Bashar Al Assad is willing to eventually hold parliamentary and presidential elections and is ready to run himself for president, a Russian lawmaker told AFP from Damascus on Sunday.
