Reader’s supplied links for Aug. 8 – 2015

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In order to preserve the flow of conversation about various posted items, and also in order to make it easier for visitors to find the list of related links being shared by other readers, regulars and interested parties in one place, each day a post is automatically created at a minute past midnight ET.

This way, under the various posts of the day, conversation can take place without as much ‘noise’ on the various links and articles and ideas in the main posts and all the news links being submitted can be seen under these auto-posts by clicking on the comments-link right below these ones.

Thank you all for those that take the effort to assist this site in keeping the public informed. Below, typically people can find the latest enemy propaganda, news items of related materials from multiple countries and languages, op-eds from many excellent sites who write on our topics, geopolitics and immigration issues and so on.

About Eeyore

Canadian artist and counter-jihad and freedom of speech activist as well as devout Schrödinger's catholic

39 Replies to “Reader’s supplied links for Aug. 8 – 2015”

  1. ‘Soviet Taliban’ convicted in US over Afghan attack (BBC, Aug 8, 2015)
    http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-33832480

    “A former Soviet army officer has been convicted by a US jury of planning and leading a Taliban attack on American forces in Afghanistan in 2009.

    The jury found Irek Hamidullin guilty on 15 counts, including supporting terrorists and conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction.

    The 55-year-old is the first military prisoner from Afghanistan to be tried in a US federal court.
    Some of the charges carry a mandatory life sentence.

    About 30 insurgents died in the attack, with Hamidullin the only survivor, while no American or Afghan soldiers were killed.

    Hamidullin, who did not testify during the trial, is expected to be sentenced on 6 November.
    Lawyers say it is unusual for someone captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan to be transferred to the United States for trial in a federal court.

    Hamidullin’s defence lawyers had tried unsuccessfully to have the charges dismissed, saying their client was a prisoner of war and ineligible for trial in civilian court.

    Prosecutors argued federal law protected US soldiers no matter where they were.

    The jury in Richmond. Virginia, reached its verdict after five days of testimony and eight hours of deliberations.

    Hamidullin, a former Soviet army tank commander who stayed in Afghanistan in the 1980s and later joined the Taliban, was seized in 2009 after the attack on Afghan border police and US forces.

    He was held for five years at Bagram air base before being sent to the US.

    During the trial, prosecutors said he had commanded three groups of insurgents that attacked Camp Leyza, Khost province.

    They said he had directed insurgents armed with anti-aircraft machine guns to fire at US military helicopters responding to the initial attack. The defendant had also reportedly used a machine gun to shoot at US troops.”

  2. Turkey: Syrian child injured in stun grenade attack near Istanbul police station

    Two stun grenades exploded near Bayrampasa district police department in Istanbul, Friday, causing minor injuries to a Syrian 12-year-old.
    Police set up a cordon around the site of the blast, which exploded some 50 metres (164 ft) from the police station.
    Following the explosion, the child was taken to Bayrampasa State Hospital by police and is stable.
    An investigation has been launched into the incident.

    http://www.zie.nl/profile/Ruptly/algemeen/Turkey-Syrian-child-injured-in-stun-grenade-attack-near-Istanbul-police-station/ebqzq8xfvrdq

  3. Mali hotel siege: Twelve killed in Sevare, four UN workers saved (BBC, Aug 8, 2015)
    http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-33833363

    “At least 12 people are thought to have been killed, including gunmen and Malian soldiers, after suspected Islamist insurgents battled the army in the central Malian town of Sevare.

    Four United Nations workers survived the siege, but at least four other foreign nationals are feared to have died at and around Hotel Byblos.

    One South African has been confirmed dead by officials.

    The gunmen had retreated to the hotel after attacking a nearby army base.
    No-one has claimed responsibility for the attack.

    At least three gunmen are dead and seven have been arrested, while five Malian soldiers were said to have been killed in the attack.

    The South African who was killed in the attack worked for an aviation company used by the UN in Mali, a South African foreign ministry spokesman tweeted.

    Another two South Africans, one Russian and one Ukrainian walked out alive from the hotel, after a pre-dawn raid by Malian paramilitaries.

    The men are pilots and engineers contracted by Minusma, the United Nations mission in Mali.
    A UN spokeswoman said the survivors had not been held hostage. They had managed to hide in the hotel during the siege…”

  4. Germany: Human chain made to demand border security against Muslims

    Hundreds of citizens made a human chain in Zinnwald at the German-Czech border to demand the reintroduction of border controls, in order to stop undocumented migrants and “border criminality,” Saturday.

  5. Rise of Islamic State was ‘a willful decision’: Former DIA Chief Michal Flynn

    The White House decided to support armed rebels in Syria despite intelligence warnings forecasting the rise of the Islamic State.

    In Al Jazeera’s latest Head to Head episode, former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency Michael Flynn confirms to Mehdi Hasan that not only had he studied the DIA memo predicting the West’s backing of an Islamic State in Syria when it came across his desk in 2012, but even asserts that the White House’s sponsoring of radical jihadists (that would emerge as ISIL and Nusra) against the Syrian regime was “a willful decision.” [Lengthy discussion of the DIA memo begins at the 8:50 mark.]

    Amazingly, Flynn actually took issue with the way interviewer Mehdi Hasan posed the question—Flynn seemed to want to make it clear that the policies that led to the rise of ISIL were not merely the result of ignorance or looking the other way, but the result of conscious decision making:

    on this page :

    http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2015/08/07/rise-of-islamic-state-was-a-willful-decision-former-dia-chief-michal-flynn/

    • I don’t like any of the news reported in this article, if ISIS is transitioning from lone wolf attacks to mass causality attacks things are going to get very interesting in all Western Nations.

      The collapse of the fighters wwe have been training to fight ISIS was a given, I had hoped that they would do better before they collapsed but we can’t ask for much when we aren’t willing to provide the leadership of backing to make then efficient.

  6. @Martin@11:48…re media bias towards protecting Hillary…there’s more as it relates to the first Republican primary’s torpedo attempt against Donald Trump:

    RUPERT MURDOCH TWEETS “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED” TO MEGYN KELLY

    *****
    About those Iran negotiations…
    Senior Iranian Official Reveals Details About Secret Talks between Ahmadinejad and The Obama’Admin’ …this recent update reminds us that Obama opened communications with the ayatollahs BEFORE he was elected in 2008…Michael Ledeen at PJMedia broke the story in 2008

    “” During his first presidential campaign in 2008, Mr. Obama used a secret back channel to Tehran to assure the mullahs that he was a friend of the Islamic Republic, and that they would be very happy with his policies. The secret channel was Ambassador William G. Miller, who served in Iran during the shah’s rule, as chief of staff for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and as ambassador to Ukraine. Ambassador Miller has confirmed to me his conversations with Iranian leaders during the 2008 campaign.”

    Note: The AIC (American Iranian Council) website was scrubbed so the ambassador’s identity above is linked to the wayback machine for screen caps validating claim three times (4/29/2005, 10/26/2007, 10/6/2008)
    Curiously, wiki entry for William Green Miller makes no mention of his AIC affiliation

    • I remembered that Ledeen thing and it’s bothered me ever since. It seemed buried along with the “neocons”.

      • Remember the open mike that caught him telling the Russian to tell Putin that after reelection he would have more leeway to give things to Russia.

  7. PRAGUE – Police removed right-wing speaker Marian Magat as he gave a speech to around 30 anti-refugee demonstrators in Prague on Saturday. Local media reported he was detained on the suspicion of inciting hatred.

    Marian Magat, chairman of the far-right Slovak Vzdor movement, was giving a speech against multiculturalism and the hosting of refugees to the handful of supporters in Prague’s Old Town Hall centre when police told him to stop. When the crowd started shouting and moving towards the police, Magat was removed from the square and a small contingent of riot police kept the demonstrators back.

  8. Germany: Thousands express fury against Erdogan on Cologne’s streets

    Between 6,000 and 15,000 protesters – according the police and the organisers, respectively – gathered in the centre of Cologne to demonstrate against the Turkish airstrikes on Kurdish fighters in Iraq, Saturday.

  9. Excerpt from Michael Singh’s testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Aug. 5, 2015:

    Implications of the Iran Agreement for U.S. Policy in the Middle East
    The agreement will permit Iran to retain the option to build a nuclear weapon in the future. Indeed, the agreement could be seen as a means by which Iran buys time to perfect, in some cases with international assistance, advanced centrifuges, weaponization, and long-range ballistic missiles. Iran’s “redlines” seem to have been designed to shape this outcome, implying that Iran’s purpose in the talks has been to obtain sanctions relief while retaining or even improving its nuclear weapons capability.

    The strength of the agreement must rest on our ability to detect and deter any such weapons-development effort, whether covert or overt. Unfortunately, the inspection mechanism in the accord does not appear up to this task. While robust monitoring will be in place at declared sites, the U.S. intelligence community assessed in 2007 that Iran “probably would use covert facilities – rather than its declared nuclear sites – for the production of highly-enriched uranium for a weapon.” The agreement does not, however, permit inspectors anything approaching unfettered access to suspect sites.

    http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/implications-of-the-jcpoa-for-u.s.-policy-in-the-middle-east

  10. Arabs are not happy. Hisham Melhem:
    A nuclear bargain and a bleaker Middle East

    Most people in the Levant, Mesopotamia and the Arabian Peninsula will not read the full text of the Iran nuclear deal, technically known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). And even if it is implemented without major violations it will not alter in any meaningful ways the fact that already millions of them, in the words of Henry David Thoreau ‘lead lives of quiet desperation’. Long before the deal was signed and sealed, some of these brittle societies were being brutalized by their governments and the modern equivalent of marauding barbarians, waving flags claiming divine mandates and calling themselves inter alia ‘Islamic State’ (ISIS), Jabhat al-Nusra, Hezbollah and The Badr Organization. Iran and its proxies are at the heart of these bloody upheavals. And long before the nuclear deal, and long before the ill winds of the Arab uprisings, the Levant Arabs have long chafed under their status of living in the shadows of their more assertive neighbors; the Israelis, the Turks and the Iranians. In recent years however, Iran’s shadow loomed largest.

    http://english.alarabiya.net/en/views/news/middle-east/2015/08/01/-A-nuclear-bargain-and-a-bleaker-Middle-East.html

  11. Maj. Gen. (res.) Yaakov Amidror takes it apart.
    The Vienna Accord Only Postpones Confrontation with Iran

    EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The Vienna agreement has made the situation more complex and dangerous, not less so. Even if Iran completely abides by the terms of the agreement, when restrictions and sanctions come to an end fifteen years hence, it will emerge much stronger, militarily and economically. This situation will almost assuredly lead to the use of force against Iran, because Iran undoubtedly will try to produce nuclear weapons; be much better able to withstand foreign pressures; and hold significant sway across the Middle East. The conflict that will ensue will take place in conditions far worse (from a Western perspective) than before the agreement, pitting the West (and/or Israel) against a much-stronger Iran.

    http://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/after-vienna-three-scenarios-for-likely-confrontation-with-iran/

    • I don’t see Iran waiting 15 years, events are moving towards a major confrontation between Islam and the West, one that will make the world tremble in fear and will change the political landscape for generations. The left has gained so much of a hold on the western nations that many of them will fall even deeper into tyranny, and those who don’t will be faced with living in a hostile world where the tyrants and their subjects outnumber the free people of the world. Our major concern is the way the wanna be dictators in the west have gained so much political power and control of both the news industry and the educational industry. Freedom isn’t fee and our descendants are going to have to fight long and hard to conserve the freedom we are fighting to give to them.

  12. Yemen crisis: Heavy fighting for Zinjibar (BBC, Aug 8, 2015)
    http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-33839735

    “Pro-government forces in Yemen have launched an offensive on the rebel-held capital of southern Abyan province, military sources say. They say the troops, using tanks and other military equipment supplied by a Saudi-led coalition, were attacking Zinjibar from the north and south. The fall of the city would deal another blow to the Houthi rebels, who have suffered a number of recent defeats. They were driven out of a key airbase this week, following the loss of Aden.

    Heavy casualties were reported during the fighting for al-Anad airbase, north of Aden. Separately, the United Arab Emirates’ official WAM agency said on Saturday that three Emirati soldiers were killed while taking part in the Saudi-led campaign to defeat the rebels who still control much of Yemen, including the capital Sanaa. The Houthis advanced south in March, forcing President Abdrabbo Mansour Hadi to flee to Saudi Arabia….”

  13. Activists: Hundreds of Syrian Christians Flee Islamic State (abcnews, Aug 8, 2015)
    http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/activists-hundreds-syrian-christians-flee-islamic-state-32964320

    “Hundreds of Christian families have fled a central Syrian town as Islamic State fighters advance toward it, activists said Saturday, the anniversary of the U.S. beginning airstrikes against the extremists in Iraq.

    A U.S.-led coalition has conducted nearly 6,000 airstrikes against the Islamic State group, expanding its operations to target the extremists in Syria as well. But a year later, the Islamic State group remains able to launch attacks across its self-declared “caliphate” in both countries, despite some gains by Kurdish fighters and allied Iraqi forces.

    Meanwhile, searches continued in Egypt for a missing Croatian hostage that an Islamic State affiliate had threatened to kill.

    On Saturday, Osama Edward, the director of the Christian Assyrian Network for Human Rights in Syria, said “hundreds of families” have fled the Christian town of Sadad toward the government-held central city of Homs and the capital, Damascus.

    Syria-based activist Bebars al-Talawy said intense clashes took place Saturday near the central town of Qaryatain, which the Islamic State group captured on Thursday. Qaryatain is about 25 kilometers (15 miles) southeast of Sadad….”