Reader’s links for Aug. 22 – 2015

Daily Links Post graphic

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

44 Replies to “Reader’s links for Aug. 22 – 2015”

  1. Migrants crisis: Up to 3,000 people being rescued near Libya coast (BBC, Aug 22, 2015)
    http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34028487

    “Italy’s coastguard says a major operation is under way to rescue up to 3,000 migrants off the coast of Libya. The coastguard received SOS calls from 18 vessels – four boats and 14 rubber dinghies, Italy’s state news agency Ansa said.

    Seven boats are involved in the rescue, having already helped many others in trouble this weekend. The route from Libya to Italy is one of the busiest for migrants trying to enter Europe.

    Of the 264,500 migrants the United Nations says have crossed the Mediterranean so far this year, close to 104,000 have landed in Italy. Another 160,000 arrived in Greece.

    Norway’s Aftenposten newspaper said that the Norwegian military ship Siem Pilot is involved in the rescue….”

  2. Kabul explosion: Deadly blast rocks Afghanistan capital (BBC, Aug 22, 2015)
    http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-34027065

    “An explosion has rocked the diplomatic area of the Afghan capital, Kabul, police have said, with at least 10 people killed and 60 injured. Police say it was a suicide attack on a foreign military convoy which was travelling through the area. A health ministry official said nine Afghans and one foreigner were killed.

    A senior Nato official said that three of its contractors had been killed in the attack in the Macrorayan district, but gave no further details. No group has said it carried out the attack, although in recent months Kabul has been regularly targeted by the Taliban in a series of bombings….”

  3. Macedonia migrants: Thousands break through at Greek border (BBC, Aug 22, 2015)
    http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34026114

    “Thousands of migrants have broken through police lines into Macedonia at the country’s border with Greece. Macedonian police are reported to have fired stun grenades in response. A huge number of migrants – many of them refugees from the war in Syria – has built up in recent days, after Macedonia sealed its southern border and declared a state of emergency.

    Most wish to travel through Macedonia and Serbia to reach northern Europe, via Hungary. Macedonian security forces had been expected to let several hundred migrants in at a time on Saturday to coincide with train departures north towards Serbia and the rest of Europe.

    But some migrants broke through police lines when authorities tried to let a small group with young children through, the Associated Press reported. Some people were injured as police tried to block their path, the agency said….”

  4. Syria Activists: 20 Killed in Airstrikes on Damascus Suburb (abcnews, Aug 22, 2015)
    http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/syria-opposition-group-opposed-envoys-peace-plan-33245980

    “Syrian activists say at least 20 people have been killed and dozens wounded in government airstrikes on the Damascus suburb of Douma.

    President Bashar Assad’s forces have been pounding Douma from the skies for over a week. The sprawling suburb is home to the Jaysh al-Islam rebel group, also known as Islam Army.

    The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 20 people were killed in the latest airstrikes Saturday. Other groups including the Local Coordination Committees and the Douma Revolution Facebook page put the death toll at 50. Such discrepancies are normal in the aftermath of chaotic strikes in Syria.

    More than 100 people were killed in Douma last Sunday when airstrikes struck a vegetable market and other residential areas.

    U.N. officials have condemned the strikes.”

  5. Yemen Officials Say Al-Qaida Seizes Key Areas of Aden (abcnews, Aug 22, 2015)
    http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/yemen-officials-al-qaida-seizes-key-areas-aden-33247412

    “High-ranking officials in Yemen’s port city of Aden say al-Qaida militants have taken control of key areas of the city.

    They said Saturday the fighters have seized the Tawahi district entirely and were patrolling the streets. The area is home to a presidential palace and a port.

    The officials, who hail from the military, security forces and police, spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak to journalists.

    Al-Qaida’s Yemen branch is considered by Washington to be the most dangerous offshoot of the terror network.

    Yemen’s conflict pits the Iran-allied Houthis and troops loyal to the former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, against an array of forces including southern separatists, local and tribal militias, Sunni Islamic militants as well as troops loyal to President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi.”

  6. British IT expert ‘ran Bangladeshi terrorist group from London’

    A British computer engineer who allegedly helped to fund and direct a group that hacked to death secular bloggers in Bangladesh worked in an east London school, officials have claimed.

    Touhidur Rahman, 58, who is of Bangladeshi origin but lived in London for more then 20 years until 2013, has been charged with orchestrating the murders of Avijit Roy and Ananta Bijoy Das after he joined a group in his homeland affiliated to al-Qaeda

    http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/asia/article4534467.ece

    ‘Briton’ arrested in Bangladesh over murders of bloggers

    http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/asia/article4530865.ece

  7. Afghan suicide car bombing kills American contractors

    KABUL, Afghanistan — A suicide car bomber attacked a NATO convoy traveling through a crowded neighborhood in Afghanistan’s capital Saturday, killing at least 12 people, including three American contractors for the international military force, authorities said.

    NATO said that the slain civilian contractors were Americans. One died instantly in the attack and two later died of their wounds.

    The Taliban quickly denied it was behind in the attack in Kabul’s Macrorayan neighborhood, though the militants increasingly have been targeting Kabul in recent weeks and often don’t claim attacks that maim large numbers of civilians.

    The attack struck near the private Shinozada hospital, the sound of the powerful blast roaring throughout the capital. Ambulances and Afghan security forces quickly surrounded the blast site, blocking access off from about half a mile away.

    U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Monica Cummings told CBS News’ Ahmad Mukhtar that the blast was believed to be about a mile away from the embassy.

    The bombing wounded 66 Afghan civilians, said Wahidullah Mayar, a Health Ministry spokesman.

    http://www.cbsnews.com/news/afghanistan-explosion-kabul-us-embassy/

  8. Refugees tear through police lines at Macedonian border

    GEVGELIJA, Macedonia (Reuters) – Thousands of migrants stormed across Macedonia’s border on Saturday, overwhelming security forces who threw stun grenades and lashed out with batons before apparently abandoning a bid to stem their flow through the Balkans to western Europe.

    Some had spent days in the open with little or no food or water after Macedonia on Thursday declared a state of emergency and sealed its borders to migrants, many of them refugees from war in Syria and other conflicts in the Middle East.

    But by nightfall on Saturday, thousands had crossed the frontier, milling around the border town of Gevgelija where busses had converged from all over the country and trains left in quick succession to take them north to the next leg of their journey through Serbia.

    There was no official word from the government, but the level of organization suggested authorities had opted to move the migrants on as quickly as possibly, having tried and failed to keep them out with razor wire, teargas and stun grenades.

    “The government is organizing additional trains. I don’t know who is organizing the busses,” said Alexandra Krause, a senior protection officer with the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR.

    No-man’s land, where men, women and children had slept in squalor under open skies appeared largely empty, though more people are certain make their way from Greece.

    “In this Europe, animals are sleeping in beds and we sleep in the rain,” said 23-year-old Syrian woman Fatima Hamido on entering Macedonia. “I was freezing for four days in the rain, with nothing to eat.”

    Thirty-two-year-old Saeed from Syria said of the blocked border: “We know this was not Macedonia and the Macedonian police. This was the European Union. Please tell Brussels we are coming, no matter what.”

    Migrants had been pouring across the border into Macedonia at a rate of some 2,000 per day, en route to Serbia then Hungary and Europe’s borderless Schengen zone. Some 50,000 arrived on Greek shores in July alone by boat from Turkey.

    POOR RELATIONS WITH GREECE

    The surge in numbers had overwhelmed Gevgelija, testing the patience of a conservative government that faces an election in April and has for years been thwarted in its efforts to join the European Union and NATO by a dispute with Greece over Macedonia’s name.

    The government criticized Greece, as an EU member, for letting the migrants through and in some cases aiding their passage by chartering ships to take them from inundated Greek islands to the mainland.

    On Friday, riot police fired teargas and stun grenades to drive back angry crowds, in the latest flare-up in a migration crisis that has brought ripples from the conflicts of the Middle East to Europe’s shores.

    Some 600 were allowed through overnight, squeezing onto a dawn train north to the Serbian border. But more kept arriving on the Greek side, converging on a filthy, chaotic strip of frontier with little sign of an organized aid effort.

    Some Greeks sold sandwiches and drinks to those prepared to pay. A man with a generator charged 1.5 euros to charge mobile phones.

    Tired, angry and wet, one part of the crowd pushed through police lines, while others ran through open fields several kilometers from the bulk of police. Some small children were separated from their parents; people collapsed or staggered across with bloodied faces.

    For many Macedonians, the crisis has echoes of 1999, when hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians took shelter in refugee camps on Macedonia’s northern border during a war in neighboring Kosovo, then a province of Serbia.

    http://news.yahoo.com/refugee-crowds-build-macedonia-border-night-spent-open-073620518.html

    • Mazedonien – Traumatisierte Flüchtlinge: “Wir wollen keinen Fraß vom roten KREUZ!”

      Asylforderer an der mazedonischen Grenze, die derzeit recht stark abgeriegelt ist, verweigern Hilfspakete, die ihnen angeboten werden.

      Der Grund: Die vom Roten Kreuz stammenden Pakete sind offenbar nicht gut genug und nicht halal.

  9. At least some good news for some, not so much for the others! 😉

    Middle East conflict drastically ‘improves air quality’ (BBC, Aug 22, 2015)
    http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34002865

    “Political disturbance and armed conflict in the Middle East since 2010 have had the unintended consequence of making the air cleaner.

    Researchers say that in countries like Syria and Iraq, levels of air pollutants have fallen dramatically.

    The amount of nitrogen dioxide in the air over Damascus has fallen by up to 50% since start of the civil war.

    The authors believe their work has important lessons for projections of global emissions.

    Since 2004, scientists have been able to monitor atmospheric pollutants with high levels of precision thanks to the deployment of the Ozone Monitoring Instrument onboard the Nasa Aura satellite.

    This new study used data from the spacecraft to see how economic, political and military activity has impacted levels of pollutants in and around the Middle East over the past decade.

    Looking at levels of nitrogen oxides (NOx) that are generated from the burning of fossil fuels especially in transport, the team found a complex and unpredictable picture.

    In countries like Syria, where millions of people have attempted to flee the fighting since 2011, levels of nitrogen dioxide plummeted over Damascus and Aleppo.

    But in nearby Lebanon, there was a “drastic” rise of up to 30% of the same pollutant, thanks to the influx of refugees. The scientists say that this was very unusual as economic growth in Lebanon declined significantly at the same time.

    “It’s quite remarkable,” lead author Dr Jos Lelieveld from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry told BBC News.

    “You can see where the people from Syria are going; you can identify the camps in northern Jordan but they are also moving to cities like Tripoli and Beirut.

    “The energy consumption has increased; the traffic, more cars, make up a large proportion of the increase,” he said.

    In countries like Greece, global recession and new environmental laws have had a significant role. Similarly in Saudi Arabia and Israel.

    But in Iraq, the rise of so-called Islamic State can also be clearly seen in the air quality data.

    “In Karbala, to the south of Baghdad, a mostly Shiite area, the increase in pollutants continues,” said Dr Lelieveld.

    “But if you look to the area northwest of Baghdad, where Islamic State is in charge, there you see that things are going in another direction – there are very specific stories in each country.”

    The researchers say that the varying impacts on air pollutants seen across the Middle East have lessons for global projections of emissions.

    The authors point to one climate change scenario that includes increases of NOx in the region every year between 2005 and 2030, which they say “deviates from the reality”.

    “For many countries for which we have little information, the emissions scenarios make very simple assumptions – these definitely do not work in the Middle East as they go in all directions,” said Dr Lelieveld.

    “For example, in Iran the energy consumption and CO2 have continued to grow but NOx and sulphur dioxide have declined. There isn’t a general rule that you can apply in emissions scenarios.”

    The researchers say that it is difficult to use the technology to get a definitive picture. There may be less NOx in the air but people may have resorted to dirtier and cheaper fuels for heating.

    Other scientists welcomed the study, saying that it followed on from previous research carried out during the Iraq war. They say that it highlights the critical role of accurate satellite information. It also highlights the scale of destruction across the Middle East and the huge impact on people.

    “It is very sad that we have on the borders of Europe this huge conflict,” said Prof John Burrows from the University of Bremen, Germany.

    “But perhaps scientific information like this helps our understanding. It’s proportional to people, so if emissions have gone down in Syria by 50%, I’d expect that 50% of the people might have been displaced, as indeed they have.”

    The research has been published in the journal, Science Advances.”

  10. More evidence, questions arise about existence of second, private Clinton email server

    The tens of thousands of emails on Hillary Clinton’s private server from when she was secretary of state could also be on a second device or server, according to news reports.

    The FBI now has the only confirmed private server, as part of a Justice Department probe to determine whether it sent of received classified information for Clinton when she was the country’s top diplomat from 2009 to 2013.

    Platte River Networks, which managed Clinton’s server and private email network after she left the State Department, has indicated it transfer – or “migrated” – emails from the original server in 2013, according to The Washington Examiner.

    However, Clinton, the front-running Democratic presidential candidate, has suggested that she gave the department 55,000 pages of official emails and deleted roughly 30,000 personal ones in January, which raises the possibility they were culled from a second device.

    Neither a Clinton spokesman nor an attorney for the Colorado-based Platte River Networks returned an Examiner’s request for comment, the news–gathering agency reported Saturday.

    The DailyMail.com on Aug. 14 was among the first to report the possibility of a second server.

    http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/08/22/more-evidence-questions-arise-about-existence-second-private-clinton-email