[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] Æthiopia and 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... have agreed to reopen embassies and borders, Æthiopia’s prime minister said during a visit to Asmara on Sunday, signaling an end to two decades of conflict between the neighbors.
"We agreed that the airlines will start operating, the ports will be accessible, people can move between the two countries and the embassies will be opened," Abiy Ahmed said at a dinner attended by Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki following talks earlier in the day.
Æthiopia and Eritrea broke off relations at the start of a 1998-2000 border conflict that claimed 80,000 lives.
Æthiopia then refused to honor a 2002 ruling by a United Nations ...a lucrative dumping ground for the relatives of dictators and party hacks... -backed boundary commission meant to settle the frontier dispute, leading to years of cold war between the two neighbors.
In office since April, Abiy announced last month that Æthiopia would cede territory to Eritrea including the flashpoint town of Badme that it is occupying in violation of the border ruling.
Africa’s second most populous country, Æthiopia was rendered landlocked in 1993 when Eritrea, then a province, voted for independence after years of bloodshed.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/09/2018 00:00 ||
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[Breitbart] The Catholic church is being used as a pawn in a well-orchestrated plan to radically alter the Christian identity of European nations through mass migration, said Bishop Athanasius Schneider in a bombshell interview last week.
Schneider, who serves as auxiliary bishop of Astana, Kazakhstan, told the Italian daily Il Giornale that the current migrant crisis "represents a plan orchestrated and prepared for a long time by international powers to radically alter the Christian and national identity of the peoples of Europe."
To achieve their objectives, these powers abuse "the true concept of humanism and even the Christian commandment of charity," Schneider said, exploiting the moral authority of the church for anti-Christian purposes.
The powers in question "use the enormous moral potential of the church and their own structures to achieve their anti-Christian and anti-European goal more effectively," he said. If not 'orchestrated by international powers' certainly enabled.
#2
A timid little Schneider from Odessa
Grows up to be a mighty fancy dresser
Who tells the Romans how to worship besser
From Shishi to West Texas. Que sorpresa!
[IsraelTimes] 'Come on, really?' exasperated lawyer says as Ebru Ozkan indicted for aiding Hamas, a contraction of the Arabic words for "frothing at the mouth", on trips to Israel, including money laundering scheme involving expensive fragrances
An Israeli military court on Sunday charged a Ottoman Turkish woman accused of passing hundreds of dollars to the Hamas terrorist organization, security sources said.
Ebru Ozkan, 27, was detained at Israel’s Ben-Gurion airport on June 11 as she was leaving the country to return to her homeland.
The indictment read out Sunday accused Ozkan of smuggling objects, including perfume and a phone charger, as well as $500 into Israel and then the West Bank in the service of Hamas members. She was charged on four separate counts.
Israel’s Shin Bet security service said Ozkan was locked away Drop the heater, Studs, or you're hist'try! last month "on suspicion of posing a threat to national security and for having links to a terrorist organization."
In the indictment, Ozkan was accused of smuggling five bottles of expensive perfume with the intention of selling them and transferring the proceeds to Hamas as part of a money laundering scheme.
Her lawyer Omar Khamaisi reacted with incredulity to the charge.
"Come on, really?" he told the Rooters news agency. "I think that in this the case the decision will ultimately be a brave one ‐ to release her, I hope."
She was also charged with bringing a cell phone charger into the country for Hamas and giving a Hamas member $500.
According to the indictment, Ozkan never met up with the Hamas member to give him the phone charger.
On the money transfer charge, Khamaisi said that Ozkan was simply shuttling the $500 from a friend to a Paleostinian relative and couldn’t have known that the relative was a Hamas operative, according to Haaretz.
However, some people are alive only because it's illegal to kill them... the indictment noted that Ozkan had been paid $100 for her service and that the friend had paid for her flight.
Khamaisi also said that interrogations were conducted in Arabic, a language Ozkan doesn’t speak well, and that she has said the Hebrew translation read out in court "distorted" her words.
The Shin Bet frequently justify withholding information on charges from defense teams of security suspects, saying that releasing it would endanger sources and put national security at risk.
Özkan hasn’t been permitted to speak with her family members, who have held several media conferences in The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...just another cheapjack Moslem dictatorship, brought to you by the Moslem Brüderbund.... to decry her fate.
"It is a completely arbitrary arrest," her sister, Elif, told the Anadolu news agency last month. "They accuse her of [having links] to a terror organization but they are not saying which terrorist organization. They are all groundless claims."
Khamaisi claimed that a good friend from Istanbul had asked Ozkan to deliver $500 to his Paleostinian relative, adding that she couldn’t have known that the relative was a Hamas operative, according to the report. In a previous visit, the friend had requested that Özkan transfer a cellphone charger to a different person who was also a Hamas member, but he never showed up to receive it, the lawyer said.
The case against Ozkan comes as tensions have spiked between Turkey and Israel after Ankara ordered out the Jewish state’s ambassador in May over the killing of protesters along the border with the Gazoo Strip.
Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu on Friday said his officials were in contact with the Israelis over Ozkan’s case and called for an end to its "pitiless persecutions."
"We will retaliate against this. Our relations will normalize when Israel stops its inhumane policies," he said Friday.
On Saturday, Hadashot TV reported that Israel was considering restricting the activities of Turkey’s international aid agency in Jerusalem and the Paleostinian territories in an effort to counter reported efforts by Erdogan to extend his influence in East Jerusalem.
Ynet adds a good many details about the lady’s Hamas-supporting colleagues back in Turkey.
[Times of Israel] Palestinian leader says PA will not allow anyone to 'interfere' with who it disburses money to; claims Arab states oppose Trump peace plan.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said Sunday that he will continue paying stipends to Palestinian attackers and their families despite the Israeli parliament’s decision last week to withhold hundreds of millions in funds from taxes collected on the Palestinian Authority’s behalf.
Abbas defiantly told a meeting of Fatah party leaders that the Palestinian government would pay "our martyrs and prisoners and wounded people" as it had since 1965.
"We will not allow anyone to interfere with the money that Israel is against us paying to the families of martyrs and prisoners," he said, according to an official transcript released by state-run news agency Wafa.
[AlAhram] Almost all displaced Syrians at the Nassib-Jaber crossing have left the Jordanian border and returned to Syria, Anders Pedersen, the U.N. resident and humanitarian coordinator in Jordan, said on Sunday.
Several thousand people fleeing an army offensive against rebels in southwest Syria had congregated in a free zone near the crossing.
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07/09/2018 02:24 ||
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In a newspaper interview US ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell has encouraged the German government to intervene and stop this delivery.
"German government circles" consider this issue to be "politically sensitive."
"Government circles" suspect the cause for this plan being revealed to the press was "political interest." I.e. they suspect that this was leaked to the press by the US or Israel.
[Rudaw] On Friday, the remaining signatories of the 2015 nuclear deal held a ministerial meeting in Vienna, repeating their commitment to the Joint Coordinated Plan of Action (JCPOA), yet they failed to find practical mechanisms to bypass US sanctions.
Iranian officials praised receiving a package from the European Union ...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing... to keep trade with Iran alive, although, both Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Javad Zarif have expressed dissatisfaction with a lack of "actionable commitments."
CMA CGM joins a list of several multinational firms which have announced they are leaving the Iranian market since the US withdrawal from the Iran deal on May 9, despite European governments wanting to keep the deal intact.
French petroleum company Total, US-based Shell Oil Company, Russia’s Lukoil, and BCP, Banque de Commerce et de Placements (BCP), the world's largest shipping container line Maersk, and multinational airplane producers Airbus and Boeing are among companies decided to suspend trade with Iran.
South Korea also has halted crude exports from Iran for July, Rooters reported on Friday.
"There was pressure from the South Korean government to halt purchases," a source familiar with Iranian shipping told the agency. "South Korea overall is lifting zero oil (from Iran) for July loading."
"More than 50 international firms have already announced their intent to leave the Iranian market, particularly in the energy and financial sectors," senior policy adviser of US Department of State Brain Hook said on July 2.
Over the past two months, the US government has launched a campaign of maximum diplomatic and economic pressure against Iran, targeting its economy.
La Belle France and Germany have been the most outspoken signatories in favor of the Iran deal, while British, Russian and Chinese signatories have been more mooted.
A complete list of sanctions is expected to be announced by the United States on November 4. Until then, the EU’s economy and banking system has the opportunity to offer an alternative to the US system.
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07/09/2018 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Breitbart] The Catholic church is being used as a pawn in a well-orchestrated plan to radically alter the Christian identity of European nations through mass migration, said Bishop Athanasius Schneider in a bombshell interview last week.
[Times of Israel] Palestinian leader says PA will not allow anyone to 'interfere' with who it disburses money to; claims Arab states oppose Trump peace plan.
