[An Nahar] The resignation of Sudan's prime minister leaves the military in full command and threatens a return to the repressive policies of the regime of ousted strongman Omar al-Bashir ...Former President-for-Life of Sudan He came to power in 1989 when he, as a brigadier in the Sudanese army, led a group of officers in a bloodless military coup that ousted the government of Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi and eventually appointed himself head cheese. He fell out with his Islamic mentor, Hasan al-Turabi, tried to impose shariah on the Christian and animist south, resulting in its secessesion, and attempted to Arabize Darfur by unleashing the barbaric Janjaweed on it. Sudan's potential prosperity has been pissed away in warfare that has left as many as 400,000 people dead and 2.5 million displaced. Hee was overthrown by popular consent in 2019. Omar has been indicted for genocide by the International Criminal Court but nothing is expected to come of it... , analysts say.After months of street protests and violent mostly peaceful crackdowns that have claimed at least 57 lives, observers fear more bloodshed ahead after premier Abdalla Hamdok stepped down late on Sunday.
In his farewell address on national TV, Hamdok said he had tried to prevent Sudan "from sliding toward disaster" but that it was now at a "dangerous crossroads threatening its very survival".
"Hamdok's resignation has left the military in sole command of the country," said Magdi al-Gizouli of think-tank the Rift Valley Institute. "Protesters will take to the streets again and will be left to face more violence."
Since its independence from Britannia and Egypt in 1956, Sudan, now one of the world's poorest countries, has been mostly under military rule with only rare democratic interludes.
It has been navigating a fragile transition toward full civilian rule since the April 2019 ouster of veteran president Bashir following an unprecedented wave of youth-led protests.
Bashir, who is wanted for war crimes in the Darfur region by the International Criminal Court, was tossed in the slammer Please don't kill me! as Sudan took steps to rejoin the international community and obtain debt relief, foreign aid and investment.
But the already rocky transition was derailed on October 25 when Sudan's new de facto ruler, top general Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, launched a coup, detaining Hamdok and his cabinet ministers.
The power grab sparked international condemnation and a new wave of street protests, with 57 people killed, hundreds maimed and at least 13 women raped during renewed street unrest.
- 'FACADE REMOVED' -
Burhan reversed Hamdok's ouster and reinstated him on November 21, also promising elections in mid-2023 -- but the protest movement had lost all faith in both leaders and kept up their demonstrations.
They accused the civilian leader Hamdok, a former international economist, of "betrayal" and "legitimizing the coup regime."
In the weeks since, Hamdok had failed to form a new government, and local media reported in recent days that he had not shown up at his office.
Gizouli said the parties to Sudan's November deal had hoped it would "reduce the agitation on the streets" and allow them to find a way "to rework the constitutional arrangements".
"But all this did not happen," he said.
Instead, Hamdok had found himself "paralyzed" and "not able to get anything done, neither politically nor administratively."
Some observers now fear that Hamdok's resignation signals a reversion to the kind of rule Sudan saw under the Islamist-backed regime of Bashir.
Sudanese analyst Kholood Khair wrote on Twitter that Hamdok's resignation "removes any facade the #SudanCoup generals can enjoy and present this coup as anything other than a reversion to the Islamo-military politics of Bashir.
"Though Sudan's future is uncertain, the clarity helps all to see this coup for what it is."
Posted by: Fred ||
01/04/2022 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[13 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Sudan
[AlAhram] Egypt’s Court of Cassation commuted the death penalty against six defendants charged with being involved in a terrorist attack on the Three Pyramids Hotel in Giza in 2016.
The top appeals court commuted the death sentence ...the barbaric practice of sentencing a murderer to be punished for as long as his/her/its victim is dead... against the six defendants to 10-year and life imprisonment sentences and five-year sentences against eight others.
It also acquitted 12 other defendants after overturning their sentence in the same case.
The verdict comes nearly two years after a Giza Criminal Court sentenced the six defendants in 2019 to death.
The attack in question was orchestrated on a tourist bus outside the hotel that did not result in any casualties. The attempt, however, was claimed by Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really 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 western pols talk they're not really Moslems.... affiliate Ansar Beit al-Maqdes nonetheless.
The Ministry of Interior said the attack, which involved a group of people hurling fireworks, was aimed at security forces guarding the hotel.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
01/04/2022 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[10 views]
Top|| File under: Islamic State
[AlAhram] Egypt has released Paleostinian-Egyptian activist Ramy Shaath, after he spent two-and-a-half years in prison, and will deport him within hours, member of Egypt's Human Rights Council Mohammed Anwar El-Sadat said on Monday Night.
Shaath, the son of former Paleostinian foreign minister Nabil Shaath, were tossed into the calaboose since 2019 over charges of assisting a terrorist group in the case known as the "Hope Cell."
Shaath, along with 12 other defendants in the case, also faced charges of disseminating false news about the political and economic conditions in the country in order to destabilise public peace and undermine trust in state institutions.
Shaath is a co-founder of Egypt's pro-Paleostinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
In November, the state security misdemeanour court sentenced lawyer and former MP Ziad El-Eleimy, another defendant in the case, to five years in prison.
El-Eleimy served as an MP representing the Egyptian Social Democratic Party in the 2012 parliament.
The court also sentenced journalists Hossam Mones and Hisham Fouad to four years in prison in the same case.
Activists Mohammed Bahnasy and Hossam Nasser received three years in the same case, and labour activist Fatma Abul-Maaty received a three-year sentence in absentia.
The ruling is final and cannot be appealed.
In July of this year, the Court of Cassation upheld a ruling placing the 13 defendants in the case on the country's terrorism list for five years.
[An Nahar] The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the occupiers of Greek Asia Minor... 's annual inflation rate surged to its highest level since 2002 in December, official data showed Monday, after a currency crisis sparked by President His Enormity, 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. In Anatolia did Recep Bey a stately Presidential Palace decree, that has 1100 rooms. That's 968 more than there are in the White House, 400 more than in Versailles, and 325 more than Buckingham Palace, so you know who's really most important... 's unconventional economic policies.Consumer prices jumped by 36.1 percent last month from the same period in 2020, up from a 21.3 percent increase in November, according to the Ottoman Turkish statistics office.
The figure is the highest since October 2002 when inflation reached 33.45 percent, before the party of Erdogan came to power.
It is also more than seven times the official government target.
Erdogan's enduring success has often been attributed to the development and prosperity his government enabled after a financial crisis in 2001.
His Islamic-rooted party rose to power the following year, and he has dominated Ottoman Turkish politics for the past two decades as both prime minister and president.
But he faces an increasingly difficult path to re-election in polls due to be held by mid-2023.
Opinion polls show him losing in a second-round runoff against most major rivals, and his ruling alliance ceding control of parliament to an increasingly popular group of opposition parties.
- LIRA COLLAPSE -
But Erdogan has stuck fast to his policies, opposing interest rate hikes -- which he calls "the mother and father of all evil" -- to combat inflation.
High interest rates are a drag on activity and slow down economic growth.
But central banks raise their policy rates out of necessity when inflation gets out of hand.
Erdogan on Monday accused "the elites" of profiting from "unearned interest income", sticking by his pledge not to raise borrowing costs.
The Ottoman Turkish lira lost 44 percent of its value against the dollar in 2021, with the losses accelerating at the end of last year, when Erdogan orchestrated a series of sharp interest rate reductions.
The dollar soared to a historic high of nearly 18.4 liras by the time Erdogan announced new currency support measures last month that were backed by reportedly heavy indirect interest rate interventions.
The exchange rate has since slipped back down to around 13 liras to the dollar, although the Ottoman Turkish currency lost a further two percent after the latest inflation reading was announced before recouping most of the day's losses before 1300 GMT.
A dollar was worth 7.4 liras at the start of 2021.
Emerging markets economist Timothy Ash of BlueBay Asset Management described the economic policies pursued by Erdogan as "simply disastrous".
Posted by: Fred ||
01/04/2022 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[6 views]
Top|| File under: Sublime Porte
#1
Is Erdogan going after our inflation rate? He's almost there!
[An Nahar] "False intelligence" and a family dispute were the causes behind an Iraqi security operation last week that killed 20 people from the same family, the judiciary said Monday.The intelligence was provided by an informant who had "family disputes" with one of the victims, the Iraqi Supreme Judicial Council said in a statement reported by the state-owned Iraq News Agency.
The informant, "nine officers and three agents" are being investigated over the incident that took place on Thursday in al-Rashayed village in the central Iraqi province of Babylon.
An investigating judge heard the statements of the 13 men, the news agency added.
On Thursday, rapid intervention units and intelligence forces stormed a house in al-Rashayed to pursue "two individuals accused of terrorism."
The state news agency said later that 20 members of the same family were killed and that the owner of the property "opened fire" and "refused to surrender."
"The questioning revealed that the cause of the tragedy was false intelligence provided by the nephew and son-in-law of one of the victims, because of family disputes," the judicial council's statement said.
The informant gave "false information to the security services indicating the presence of two wanted murderous Moslems in the victims' house," it said.
Investigations are ongoing and four arrest warrants have been issued, the statement said.
On Friday, Interior Minister Othman al-Ghanemi travelled to al-Rashayed where he sacked the Babylon police chief and announced the formation of a commission to investigate "the unit that carried out the operation."
Security forces said on Friday that a "number of officers and individuals" had been called in for questioning, without providing details on their identities.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/04/2022 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iraq
[An Nahar] Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi vowed Dire Revenge against Donald Trump ...His ancestors didn't own any slaves... if the former U.S. president is not tried over the killing of Qassem Soleimani , as Tehran marked two years since the commander's death."The aggressor and the main assassin, the then president of the United States, must face justice and retribution," Raisi said.
"It would be ok if the trial of Mr. Trump, (former secretary of State Mike) Pompeo and other criminals was held in a fair court where their horrible crimes were addressed and they faced justice for their actions," he added.
"Otherwise, I will tell all US leaders that without a doubt the hand of Dire Revenge will emerge from the sleeve of the Moslem nation."
Raisi was addressing thousands at Tehran's biggest prayer hall, at Iran's main event to mark Soleimani's death anniversary during a week of commemorations.
Participants held national flags and portraits of the slain commander, state TV showed.
Raisi called Soleimani a symbol of the Iranian revolution and of "bravery and rationality."
Soleimani, former commander of the Quds' force, the foreign operations' arm of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, was killed along with his Iraqi lieutenant Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, in a US dronezap near Bagdad's airport on January 3, 2020.
Five days later, Iran ...Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979... retaliated by firing missiles at a U.S. airbase in Ain al-Assad housing American troops in Iraq, and another near Arbil in the north.
No U.S. troops were killed in those strikes but Washington said dozens suffered traumatic brain injuries from the blasts.
Trump said at the time he had ordered the dronezap in response to a number of attacks on U.S. interests in Iraq, and with more expected.
Iran's foreign ministry said in a Twitter post on Friday that "the current U.S. government bears definitive international responsibility for this crime."
Posted by: Fred ||
01/04/2022 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[32 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
#1
I'm sure the Dems (Schiff, Pelosi, Schumer, et al) would go for it, but realize it would set a bad precedent
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/04/2022 8:38 Comments ||
Top||
[An Nahar] The political aide to Parliament Speaker Nabih Knobby Berri ...Speaker of the Lebanese parliament, head of the Amal Shiite party aligned with Hezbollah, a not very subtle sock puppet of the Medes and Persians... , MP Ali Hassan Khalil, said Monday in response to Free Patriotic Movement Despite its name a Christian party allied with Hizbullah, neither free nor particularly patriotic... chief Jebran Bassil’s "rude accusations" that the Shiite Duo cannot be "blackmailed" by any "words of incitement."
The alliance between "the patriotic duo" is based on transparency and respect, Khalil said.
The politician went on to accuse the FPM of disrupting Cabinet sessions in the past, of corruption at the Ministry of Energy, of shelving draft laws, of covering up for thefts and of causing half of the Christians to emigrate.
"There is diffusion in responsibility, when two presidents are elected at the same time," Khalil said.
He added that Bassil is not defending the Christian rights, that were "wasted" by the FPM, but rather "his clan’s rights."
"The Lebanese have lived years of disruption for the son-in-law’s sake," Khalil said.
He added that Bassil is speaking of financial decentralization "to cover up the catastrophic failure and waste at the Ministry of Energy," and accused Bassil and President Michel Aoun ...president of Leb, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hizbullah... of shelving and delaying many draft laws.
Concerning the Tayyouneh festivities, Khalil asked "how the right to expression and demonstration became a conspiracy and how Bassil considered it an illegal act."
Hizbullah ...Party of God, a Leb militia inspired, founded, funded and directed by Iran. Hizbullah refers to itself as The Resistance and purports to defend Leb against Israel, with whom it has started and lost one disastrous war to date, though it did claim victory... and Amal have been widely critical of the investigation into last year’s Beirut Port investigation, accusing the judge of being biased and asking for his dismissal — a position at odds with Bassil's party.
The dispute triggered October deadly festivities, further straining relations with Bassil’s party, which accused Amal of the violence.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/04/2022 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[9 views]
Top|| File under: Hezbollah
[An Nahar] Hizbullah ...Party of God, a Leb militia inspired, founded, funded and directed by Iran. Hizbullah refers to itself as The Resistance and purports to defend Leb against Israel, with whom it has started and lost one disastrous war to date, though it did claim victory... Secretary-General Sayyed His Eminence Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah ...The satrap of the Medes and the Persians in Leb... announced Monday that his party is ready to "improve" its 2006 memorandum of understanding with the Free Patriotic Movement Despite its name a Christian party allied with Hizbullah, neither free nor particularly patriotic... , its main Christian ally, a day after FPM chief Jebran Bassil criticized Hizbullah over its alignment with Speaker Nabih Knobby Berri ...Speaker of the Lebanese parliament, head of the Amal Shiite party aligned with Hezbollah, a not very subtle sock puppet of the Medes and Persians... in several key issues."We stress the importance of dialogue among the Lebanese and the importance of any invitation for dialogue among the Lebanese," Nasrallah said in a televised speech commemorating slain Iranian general Qassem Soleimani , in response to President Michel Aoun ...president of Leb, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hizbullah... ’s latest call for national dialogue.
"As for everything that has been mentioned and written about Hizbullah's relation with the FPM, I note that we are very keen on our allies and relation," Nasrallah added.
"We're keen on the understanding (with the FPM) and we're ready to improve it in a manner that achieves the national interest," Nasrallah emphasized.
He also noted that what was said by Aoun and Bassil over the past days are "issues that require frankness and clarifications."
Hizbullah’s leader also said that he will extensively address the domestic situations in another televised address in the coming days.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/04/2022 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[17 views]
Top|| File under: Hezbollah
[An Nahar] Yemen ...an area of the Arabian Peninsula sometimes mistaken for a country. It is populated by more antagonistic tribes and factions than you can keep track of... 's Iran's Houthi sock puppets ...a Zaidi Shia insurgent group operating in Yemen. They have also been referred to as the Believing Youth. Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi is said to be the spiritual leader of the group and most of the military leaders are his relatives. The legitimate Yemeni government has accused the them of having ties to the Iranian government. Honest they did. The group has managed to gain control over all of Saada Governorate and parts of Amran, Al Jawf and Hajjah Governorates. Its slogan is God is Great, Death to America™, Death to Israel, a curse on the Jews They like shooting off... ummm... missiles that they would have us believe they make at home in their basements. On the plus side, they did murder Ali Abdullah Saleh, which was the only way the country was ever going to be rid of him... rebels seized a ship in the Red Sea, armed drones targeted Baghdad's international airport, and hackers hit a major Israeli newspaper Monday - a string of assaults that showed the reach of Iran-allied militias on the second anniversary of America's killing of a top Iranian general.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
01/04/2022 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[14 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran Proxies
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.
...Former President-for-Life of Sudan He came to power in 1989 when he, as a brigadier in the Sudanese army, led a group of officers in a bloodless military coup that ousted the government of Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi and eventually appointed himself head cheese. He fell out with his Islamic mentor, Hasan al-Turabi, tried to impose shariah on the Christian and animist south, resulting in its secessesion, and attempted to 
[AlAhram] Egypt has released Paleostinian-Egyptian activist 
...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. In Anatolia did Recep Bey a stately Presidential Palace decree, that has 1100 rooms. That's 968 more than there are in the White House, 400 more than in Versailles, and 325 more than Buckingham Palace, so you know who's really most important...
...Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979...
...Speaker of the Lebanese parliament, head of the Amal Shiite party aligned with Hezbollah, a not very subtle sock puppet of the Medes and Persians...
