Reader’s links for Feb. 24 – 2016

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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

119 Replies to “Reader’s links for Feb. 24 – 2016”

  1. BREITBART – Committee Presses Obama Admin. to Designate Muslim Brotherhood a Terrorist Group

    The House Judiciary Committee approved legislation Wednesday calling on the State Department to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization.

    “The Muslim Brotherhood’s embrace of terrorism and the very real threat it poses to American lives and the national security of the United States make it long overdue for designation,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) said in a statement.

    “The bill passed by the House Judiciary Committee today calls the State Department to do the right thing and designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization.” he added, noting that the designation will help to keep members of the group out of the United States.

    The bill was approved on a 17-10 vote.

    According to the committee, the Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act of 2015 (H.R. 3892), sponsored by Representative Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL), the terrorist designation would require the administration prevent foreign-nationals with ties to the group from coming to the U.S. It would also meant that the Muslim Brotherhood would be subject to federal criminal prosecution and would freeze the group’s assets.

    “The Muslim Brotherhood continues to pose a global threat,” Diaz-Balart said. “The jihadist movement actively supports and finances terrorist networks around the world, including al-Qaeda and Hamas. The United States must recognize and sanction the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization as part of our national security strategy.”

    The Obama administration has been hesitant to call the Muslim Brotherhood a terror group, even as its allies have determined the group to be a threat.

    As the committee highlights, the Muslim Brotherhood’s goal “in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”

    http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/02/24/committee-presses-obama-admin-to-designate-muslim-brotherhood-as-a-terrorist-group/

  2. Taxpayers face bill of millions to tackle EU migrant crisis: Demand for refugee fund after arrivals soar to 102,000
    Italian PM Matteo Renzi wants EU member states to fund a refugee bailout
    So far in 2016 more than 100,000 refugees have crossed the Mediterranean
    PM David Cameron secured agreement over future EU currency bailouts
    However, the refugee bailout fund would require significant UK cash

    Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3461272/Taxpayers-face-bill-millions-tackle-EU-migrant-crisis-Demand-refugee-fund-arrivals-soar-102-000.html#ixzz416mwl8Vj
    Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

  3. BREITBART – Germany’s Family Minister Wants €100 Million To Fight ‘Right Wing Extremism’

    Germany’s Minister of Family Affairs is asking for the sum of €100 million from the German government to tackle right wing extremism in the wake of the incidents in Clausnitz, Saxony that have made headlines across Germany. The request would double the current annual budget for dealing with so called “right wing” incidents and those who espouse anti-migrant beliefs.

    Federal Minister of Family Affairs, Manuela Schwesig (pictured), a member of the centre-left Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), wants to increase the funding for a specific program called “Living Democracy – Active against right violence and enmity”. It is described on its website as a program to encourage diversity and democratic coexistence. The program, scheduled to last from 2015 to 2019, works with regional and local governments and schools to educate children and adults about right wing ideas and how to stop them.

    Much of the funding goes directly to governments but national scale non-governmental organisations (NGOs) will each be given €200,000 to develop what they call a “nationwide infrastructure” of education.

    The about section of the program website lays out it’s purpose saying: “Attacks on democracy, freedom and rule of law and ideologies of inequality are permanent challenges for society.” It targets “right-wing extremism, racism and antisemitism, the challenges posed by Islamophobia, anti-Gypsyism, ultra-nationalism, homophobia” and says “to counter them forcefully, it will take a concerted effort by government and civil society.”

    One of the more interesting parts of the website is the so called “diversity library”. Under a broad range of topics from nationalism and anti-migrant attitudes, to Islamophobia and trans/homophobia, it contains various .pdf format books and brochures designed to educate Germans on how to be more tolerant and diverse.

    Some of the texts range from rather ordinary, like how to tell if right-wing people are leasing space in your restaurant to “Living and Working in the Migration society” which is designed to make Germans recognise that their country will be house migrants for the foreseeable future and that they must learn to adapt to it.

    While the SPD is asking for more funds to fight against anti-migrant sentiment, the Green Party has taken it a step further. Leader Anton Hofreiter wants to see more legal cases being brought about against anyone deemed to be “xenophobic” agitators. “We can’t have no-go areas in Germany, and no one should be made to feel inhuman by threats or attacks,” he told German paper Neue Osnabrueker Zeitung. He also said that without action against right wing supporters the government will have failed to uphold its responsibility.

    Breitbart London reported that media in Austria had already labelled the Clausnitz protesters as “xenophobic” and said that the popular “We are the People” slogan should be classified as hate speech. Media in Germany has been outraged by the protest though there were no reports of violence by protesters or by police during or after the incident.

    http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/02/24/germany-family-minister-wants-e100-million-to-fight-right-wing-extremism/

  4. Two Cheers for Capitalism
    The misguided leftist hatred of the free market.

    If you want a monument to the failure of American schools, just look around a Bernie Sanders rally. It will be full of millennials, the 83 million people born between the early 1980s and 2000s. Most of them have been educated in schools that abandoned basic skills and knowledge, and put in their place curricula designed to “improve” human nature in order to conform to progressive utopian ideals. So instead of informed citizens, we have today’s “tolerant,” “sensitive,” and “diverse” narcissists whose heads are uniformly filled with intolerant leftwing dogma and unexamined political orthodoxy.

    Exhibit one is the enthusiasm for socialism on the part of many millennials. This affection for a failed ideology in turn explains their attraction to an antique hippie and self-proclaimed socialist whose only jobs his whole life have been on the public payroll in a state with fewer people than Fresno County. So no surprise that in New Hampshire 83% of the under-30 vote went for Sanders, in Iowa 84%, and in Nevada 82%. That electoral approval, of course, is predicated on massive ignorance of socialism’s historical reality. In a 2010 New York Times/CBS poll, only 16% of millennials knew that socialism means some degree of government ownership of the economy. But it’s not just millennials: 43% of Democrats––and 56% of Democratic primary voters–– also view socialism favorably. That’s why Hillary Clinton is furiously tacking left in the primaries.

    http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/261927/two-cheers-capitalism-bruce-thornton

      • I know the world is on the brink of another economic meltdown brought about by their socialist programs and crony capitalism and the leftist media keep attack the free market as the problem. This is one reason I say WWIII will last 100 years or more.

  5. Those Trump KKK Supporters were #BlackLivesMatter Activists
    February 24, 2016
    Daniel Greenfield

    Media outlets quickly picked up a story about two Klansmen in full robes and caps standing outside a Nevada caucus site to “support” Donald Trump. While Trump certainly has a very active Neo-Nazi Alt-Right base, it mostly spends its time on Twitter calling conservatives “cuckservatives” and retweeting anime and Taylor Swift memes to make themselves seem younger than they are. (That doesn’t mean he’s responsible for them.)

    There was one obvious problem with these two KKK Trump supporters. They were black.

    The media found time to do an interview with a man who “confronted” them, but not with the actual black Klansmen for Trump. The results of such an interview would have been most inconvenient.

    Senator Aaron Ford, who helped spread the story, essentially admitted they were black, but claimed that it didn’t matter.

    http://www.frontpagemag.com/point/261947/those-trump-kkk-supporters-were-blacklivesmatter-daniel-greenfield

  6. Male Sexual Nature and the Left’s Culture of Denial

    On New Year’s Eve in Cologne, Germany, more than 400 German women were sexually attacked and at least three raped by gangs of male immigrants, most of them from Arab countries.

    There are two truths that need to be confronted, but because we live in the Age of Denial of Unpleasant Truths, they won’t be. One is the denial of the low view of women in the Arab Middle East and many other parts of the Muslim world. This denial is the product of multiculturalist moral relativism, which posits that no culture or value system is morally superior to any other.

    The other denial concerns the sexual nature of men.

    All previous generations of human beings of which we are aware knew that male sexual nature is predatory. Without strong moral values working to inhibit their sexual nature, men will follow their natural impulse to grab women to whom they are attracted and use them sexually — just as males in the animal world grab the females of their species for sex. Ironically, the people who most insist that human beings are just another animal are the ones most likely to deny this animal aspect of male nature. Instead they argue that men are “socially conditioned” to see women as sex objects — by our “Playboy culture,” by sexist ads, by pornography or some other elements of “patriarchy.”

    http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/261928/male-sexual-nature-and-lefts-culture-denial-dennis-prager

  7. ESTONIA – LIVE: Soldiers of Odin’ to hold torch-lit march in Tallinn

    The Estonian branch of the Finnish ‘Soldiers of Odin’ are due to hold a torch-lit march in Tallinn on Wednesday, February 24.

    The Soldiers of Odin are an anti-immigrant group that began patrolling in Finland in January 2016, claiming to protect residents from refugees and migrants.

    • Estonia: Anti-EU protesters march against refugee quotas in Tallinn

      Hundreds of protesters marched through central Tallinn to demonstrate against quotas proposed by the European Union for Estonia to accept a minimum number of asylum seekers, Wednesday.

      Participants began their demonstration with a rally at Tammsaare Park before moving along a route through the city centre of the Estonian capital. Protesters shouted slogans and carried Estonian flags and banners reading “Estonia – out of the EU” and “we demand the closure of the border.”

      Several members of the Estonian chapter of the anti-refugee ‘Soldiers of Odin’ group were among the protesters, together with nationalists and other anti-immigration groups. The protest was organised by the ‘Party of People’s Unity,’ which seeks an end to EU quotas that would see 1,317 refugees from North Africa and the Middle East arrive in the Baltic state this year.

  8. FBI seeking access to a dozen iPhones, not just one

    Apple has challenged the White House’s claims that its use of a controversial law to access the iPhone of San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook is limited in scope.

    The Department of Justice has sought access to iPhones, including the company’s very latest models, under the All Writs Act at least 11 times since September, according to a letter from Apple counsel Marc Zwillinger to federal magistrate judge James Orenstein dated Monday.

    The 227-year-old All Writs Act compels third parties to assist authorities in their investigation and is usually a measure of last resort. Apple contends the FBI is misusing the legislation.

    Zwillinger’s letter appears to contradict the position articulated by White House spokesman Josh Earnest last week that the order sought by the DoJ in the case of Farook is limited in scope. “They are not asking Apple to redesign its product or to create a new backdoor to one of their products,” Earnest said. “They’re simply asking for something that would have an impact on this one device.”

    FBI director James Comey said the court battle “isn’t about trying to set a precedent” in an editorial posted to influential legal blog Lawfare on Sunday. “The relief we seek is limited and its value increasingly obsolete because the technology continues to evolve,” Comey wrote.

    http://www.gopusa.com/?p=6082?omhide=true

    • Well, this 227 y/o “Act” is apparently just a statute on the books. Maybe Sen. Rand Paul could get the ball rolling and demand it’s repeal. After all, the communists in America also claimed that the Second Amendment is outdated and have been safely ignoring it for decades because their judiciary upholds it their illegal statutes. In 1934, they passed the National Firearms Act that put a $200 tax on machineguns, because they believed they couldn’t outright ban them. In 1934 $495 would get you a Ford. To the government, it’s okay for a rich person to buy an MG, not so good for a blue-collar worker. In 1985, Reagan signed the McClure-Volkmer Act which banned new MGs to civilians. All these illegal statutes upheld by US courts.

      Maybe it’s time to modernize our laws, and poke the White House in the eye by attacking the very statute they are using to attack us. I believe there are enough government skeptics in the body politic to put a scare into the FBI/DOJ. I say let’s do it.

      Burn their laws to the ground.

  9. JAPAN – Tokyo cops arrest 2 Turks seeking refugee status in gang rape of woman

    TOKYO (TR) – Tokyo Metropolitan Police have arrested two Turkish nationals currently applying for refugee status for allegedly raping a woman in Kita Ward, reports the Sankei Shimbun (Feb. 22).

    At approximately 12:30 a.m. on December 27 of last year, Onder Pinarbasi, 22, and a 16-year-old boy allegedly took the woman, aged in her 30s, to a public toilet near JR Akabane Station and sexually assaulted her. The suspects also stole 9,000 yen in cash from the victim.

    Pinarbasi, who has been charged with rape and robbery, claims the boy committed both crimes. The boy admits to only the robbery charge. “I did not force myself upon her,” he is quoted by police in denying the rape accusation, according to the Yomiuri Shimbun (Feb. 22).

    The incident occurred after the suspects called out the woman, who was visibly drunk at the time, as she was walking home.

    The suspects arrived in Japan last year. They applied for refugee status in August and October, telling the Immigration Bureau of Japan that they did not want to return to Turkey due to “problems that exist between relatives.”

    While their applications were being examined, the suspects received a visa status granting “special permission to stay in Japan.”

    The suspects became people of interest for the police after an examination of surveillance camera footage taken in the area.

    http://www.tokyoreporter.com/2016/02/22/tokyo-cops-arrest-turkish-asylum-seekers-in-gang-rape-of-woman/

  10. Georgia business owner now requires all employees to be armed

    GRIFFIN, Ga. —

    A local business owner with several offices in Georgia is now requiring all of his employees to get a concealed carry license and be armed.

    After each employee at Lance Toland Associates gets their license, Toland presents them with a gun known as the judge. He says it is one of the most effective self-defense weapons and all his aviation insurance agencies carry them openly in the office.
    – See more at: http://www.wsbtv.com/news/news/local/business-owner-requiring-all-employees-be-armed/nqWHn/#sthash.q6yUz0Ez.dpuf

  11. Britain’s New Mainstream Racists?
    Does the Rot Start from the Top

    The British Labour party is currently led by a man, Jeremy Corbyn, who has described Hamas and Hezbollah as “friends” and has spent his years in the political wilderness with Holocaust deniers, anti-Semites, terrorist-sympathisers and all manner of other undesirables. Now that he is the Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition, he has tried to present himself as a more moderate force by stressing that he has spent his life fighting racism and anti-Semitism. In fact, he appears to have spent his life being remarkably content with exponents of both.

    His Shadow Chancellor spent the same period in similar company, but with an even more fervent devotion to the terrorists of the Irish Republican Army.

    The communications chief of this whole disastrous enterprise is one Seamus Milne, who devoted his career at The Guardian to keeping the scent around Joseph Stalin rosier than it ever ought to have been. If a fish, as the saying goes, rots from the top, who can be surprised if there is rot also from the tail up?

    Last week it was the turn of the Oxford University Labour Club (OULC) to throw their wares open for public view. Thanks to the unusually principled resignation of the co-chair of the organization, Alex Chalmers, we now know that apparently a large proportion of the youth branch of the party also has “problems with Jews.” Indeed, it appears that anti-Semitism has moved from the margins to the very centre of University Labour life.

    According to Chalmers, among the delights of the organization from which he resigned was that the OULC decided to endorse Israel Apartheid Week. This is the annual anti-Semitic hate-fest that takes place across university campuses in the West. Racist students build fake security walls, stage “die-ins” and pretend that murderers who carry out terrorist attacks against Israelis are instead the suffering victims of gratuitous aggression.

    It was not, however, just a desire to endorse such bigoted campaign

    http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/7472/oxford-university-labour-club

  12. YEMEN – UAE pulls out ground troops from Yemen: Reports

    The UAE is a key partner in the Saudi-led coalition which has been bombing Houthi positions in Yemen since March last year

    The UAE has pulled its troops out of Yemen, Yemeni sources said on Wednesday.

    According to the reports in AP, the Emirates have withdrawn its soldiers out of the airport in Yemen’s second city Aden and pulled out all of its fighters in one day. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media.

    The UAE is a key partner in the Saudi-led coalition which has been bombing Houthi positions in Yemen since March last year. It has been on of the largest and most active coalition partners on the ground and has also reportedly brought in some 450 Columbian mercenaries to help in the war against the Houthis and their supporters.

    Since the ground operation began, dozens of Emirati soldiers have been killed.

    While coalition forces and their allies pushed the Houthis out of Aden last year, clashes have continued in the city with both the Islamic State group and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsular trying to expand their presence.

    On Monday, a gunman killed a senior Yemeni army officer in Aden in the latest high-profile assassination attempt to rock the city.

    The gunman, who was on the back of a motorcycle, killed General Abedrabbo Hussein as he was leaving his home in the Sheikh Othman district of the city, Yemeni sources told AFP.

    Hussein was commander of the 15th Infantry Brigade which operates in Abyan province, west of Aden, where Al-Qaeda has seized several large towns in recent weeks.

    Last week, a suicide bomber killed at least 14 soldiers in Aden on Wednesday, in an attack claimed by jihadists of the Islamic State group.

    A man, dressed as a solider, reportedly detonated his explosive vest in the midst of a training session run by Sudanese forces of the Saudi-led coalition, which has been helping to train and advise Yemeni troops fighting the Houthis.

    More than 6,100 people had been killed in the fighting since last March, when the Saudi-led coalition began its intervention.

    The UN said another 3,000 people had been wounded and 2.5 million people forced to flee their homes.

    http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/uae-pulls-out-ground-troops-yemen-reports-98821815

    Yemen officials: UAE troops pull out, Aden airport is shut

    SANAA, Yemen – Yemeni officials say troops from the United Arab Emirates pulled out of the airport in the southern city of Aden, a day after it was stormed by disgruntled pro-government fighters from the country’s south.

    The officials say the Emiratis pulled out on Wednesday.

    The authorities then shut the airport, the country’s main air hub for the internationally recognized government and the Saudi-led coalition, which is helping the government forces fight Shiite rebels in the north. The UAE forces are part of the anti-rebel coalition.

    The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media.

    Yemen’s nearly year-long conflict has killed at least 6,000 people. The fighting is pitting the government, backed by the Saudi-led coalition, against Shiite rebels known as Houthis.

    http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/02/24/yemen-officials-uae-troops-pull-out-aden-airport-is-shut.html

  13. UK – Ex-Luton trainee police officer Mohammed Arshad admits in court to asking teenage girl for oral sex

    AN EX-LUTON policeman accused of ‘trawling’ social media for teenage girls to have sex with told a jury today (February 24) he had no interest in underage girls.

    Mohammad Arshad, 35, admitted he asked one girl for oral sex when they chatted on BB Messenger.

    He told the jury at St Albans Crown Court the girl had texted him saying: “Do you want sex for £100?”

    Arshad, who wore a grey suit and a Muslim skull cap in the witness box, said the girl cancelled and the meeting never took place.

    The prosecution alleges he groomed numerous underage girls over the Internet, cruised around Luton with them in his black Mercedes and persuaded them to have sexual activity with him.

    He is said to have persistently pestered them for sex and raped one 14 year old on the back seat of car.

    Arshad, who called himself Waz, is said to have contacted schoolgirls over Facebook, Blackberry Messenger, WhatsApp or mobile phones and texts.

    Prosecutor James Newton-Price told a jury of 6 men and 6 women: “He was more aware of the letter of the law than most people because he had a responsible position in the community.

    “At the time he was seeking sexual contact with underage teenage girls he was also a Police Constable with Bedfordshire police.”

    Mr Newton-Price said Arshad applied to join the force in 2013 and was interviewed in April 2014, becoming a probationer.

    “He didn’t last long because these matters came to the attention of other police officers by October 2014. ”

    The court was told that when his home was searched, images of teenage girls were found on his Blackberry phone. 188 more images of teenage girls were also on his computers.

    “We say the images are clear evidence of an obsessive interest in teenage girls,” said Mr Newton-Price.

    Asked about the images on his computer, Arshad said they were simply the contacts from his phone that he had backed up.

    He said all the girls he contacted were aged 16 upwards to “25, 30 or 31”.

    He denied telling one girl she did not look 15.

    He said he had no sexual interest in her and said he never offered her £200 for sex.

    Arshad said that some of the girls he knew smoked cannabis in his presence, but he added: “Once I became a police officer I asked them to stop and they did stop.”

    He denied rubbing the legs and touching the breasts of a 15 year old, saying: “It is 100 per cent untrue. It never happened.”

    Arshad said he liked her only as a friend.

    Another girl from a Bedfordshire village never met Arshad, but during social media chats he said she told him she was 16 and he admitted asking her for oral sex.

    He went on: “Some time she texted me and said ‘do you want sex for £100?’ She said we could do it tomorrow, but the meeting never took place.”

    Arshad said when he was training to be an officer he would meet girls while wearing black police trousers and a black T shirt with the words ‘police’ on the arms.

    12 of the 13 girls are said to be aged under 16 and too young to consent to sexual activity with an adult.

    Arshad, of Ferndale Road, Luton, denies 22 charges.

    11 are causing a child to engage in sexual activity, 3 of sexual activity with a child, 4 of meeting a child following sexual grooming, one of rape, supplying cannabis, causing a child to watch a sexual act and paying for the sexual services of a child.

    The charges relate to 13 alleged victims who were aged between 13 and 16 at the time.

    The charges cover a period between October 2012 until December 2014.

    When questioned by the police he gave a prepared statement saying he thought all the girls were aged 16 or over.

    http://www.luton-dunstable.co.uk/Ex-Luton-trainee-police-officer-Mohammed-Arshad/story-28800579-detail/story.html

  14. Turkish air force hits PKK targets in the southeast, Iraq; kill 12

    Turkish military helicopters killed 12 Kurdish militants in strikes near the southeastern border with Syria on Wednesday, security sources said, in a conflict becoming increasingly intertwined with developments in Turkey’s war-torn neighbour.

    The Cobra attack helicopters launched the assault at around 6 a.m. (0400 GMT) as a group of Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) fighters travelled through a mountainous area near the Idil district of Turkey’s Sirnak province, the sources said.

    Parts of Idil were placed under 24-hour curfew last week as the security forces carried out an operation against the militants. That was part of a wider military campaign which began last December in towns in the mostly Kurdish southeast following the collapse in July of a ceasefire with the PKK.

    Late on Wednesday, Turkish warplanes carried out an air bombardment on PKK camps in Qandil, the group’s centre in northern Iraq, sources said, hitting ammunition depots, shelters and logistical centres.

    The violence in Turkey’s southeast is at its worst since the 1990s, turning parts of the region into a war zone. PKK militants have dug trenches and erected barricades in towns and cities, and the death toll has climbed into the hundreds as the security forces try to flush them out.

    It has also complicated international efforts to end the war in Syria. Ankara sees the PKK as closely linked to the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, which has enjoyed U.S. support in the fight against Islamic State insurgents but which Ankara sees as a hostile force bent on seizing Syrian territory abutting Turkey.

    Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has blamed a member of the YPG, working with Kurdish militants inside Turkey, for a suicide bombing that killed 29 people in the capital Ankara last week, most of them soldiers.

    The Turkish armed forces shelled YPG positions in northern Syria in the days after the attack and bombed PKK camps in northern Iraq, as the government vowed that those responsible would pay the price. Clashes inside Turkey have also continued.

    On Tuesday, security forces killed six PKK militants in Idil and two others in the Sur district of the region’s largest city Diyarbakir, the armed forces said in a statement. One soldier died of his wounds after coming under attack from PKK fighters in Sur on Wednesday, it said. Another was lightly wounded.

    The statement also said security forces had detained four members of the PKK and PYD, the political arm of the Syrian YPG, on Tuesday in the Akcakale district of Sanliurfa province, two of whom had sought to cross the border from Syria illegally.

    The PKK is deemed a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and European Union. It launched its insurgency in 1984.

    http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-turkey-kurds-idUKKCN0VX0VP

  15. DAILY MAIL – LEBANON -Stinking ‘river of rubbish’ snakes for miles through the centre of Beirut

    Huge mountains of waste bags line the streets of Jdeideh, north west of Beirut, Lebanon as rubbish crisis continues
    Problems began in July when authorities closed the main landfill site in the city but failed to provide an alternative
    Waste started to be dumped near harbour but rubbish has now spread to residential streets throughout the capital
    Plans were in place to export the mountain of waste to Russia but they fell through due to hold up with paperwork

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3462614/Stinking-river-rubbish-snakes-miles-centre-Beirut-city-cancels-plan-send-Russia.html

  16. A vote for Trump is a vote for bigotry (CNN, Feb 24, 2016)
    http://edition.cnn.com/2016/02/24/opinions/support-trump-support-bigotry-obeidallah/index.html

    “Let’s take a page from Donald Trump’s book and ignore political correctness for a moment: If you support Trump, you support his sexist, bigoted and racist views.

    There are no ifs, ands or buts about it. And this is especially true for GOP party leaders, elected officials and even community leaders………….”

  17. DAILY MAIL – Police in Cologne launch new sex attack investigation… into who was leaking information to the Press about cover ups

    Police in Cologne have faced embarrassment over leaks about the attacks
    Leaks included secret internal document detailing the extent of the crimes
    Officials probing 73 people suspected of involvement in New Year attacks

    Police in Cologne have launched a new sex attack investigation – into who was leaking information to the Press about cover-ups.

    The Cologne force has repeatedly faced embarrassment over the leaks amid claims senior officers played down the role of immigrants in the wave of New Year sex attacks in the city.

    Leaks included a secret internal document detailing the extent of the crimes, as well as an interview with a senior officer who revealed how they were receiving hundreds of requests for help on the night but were powerless to do anything.

    The official added they were dealing with a level of disrespect for the law which they had never seen before.

    Prosecutors in Cologne have confirmed that police are gathering material which will then be examined for evidence as to the source of the leaks that resulted in complaints from the region’s interior minister Ralf Jager.

    It also led to the previous Cologne police president Wolfgang Albers going into retirement after his statements were proven to be incorrect by the leaks that then followed.

    A public enquiry is now being carried out in North Rhine-Westphalia into the incidents.[…]

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3460560/Police-Cologne-launch-new-sex-attack-investigation-leaking-information-Press-cover-ups.html

    ========================================

    RT-Witch-hunt for whistleblowers? German police ‘probing cops’ who leaked Cologne sex assaults

    Cologne police have reportedly launched an investigation into the cops who leaked internal reports of mass harassment and sex assaults on New Year’s Eve to the media. The press only learned about the outrageous attacks four days after the incidents.

    According to Süddeutsche Zeitung, police recently launched an investigation to find those who had spread the “secret” information without permission. The authorities are determined to find out how internal police reports became public.

    “A collection of materials is currently under way, the police are conducting an internal investigation,” a spokesman for the Cologne prosecutor’s office told Süddeutsche Zeitung.

    The Cologne police tried to deceive the public until the information from insiders leaked to the media, the Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten (DWN) daily reported. Describing the investigation into the case as an “absurd measure,” the newspaper added that the authorities probably have nothing more important to do than search for the whistleblowers. “Without the leaks from the police, the extent of the orgy would not have become known,” it stressed.

    According to DWN, the police officer who revealed the real state of affairs during the New Year’s Eve celebrations in Cologne has not hurt the police. “The [real] damage has been caused by those who told tales out of opportunistic motives and presented the reality in pictured reality a distorted way. They not only caused the damage to the police, but to the public as well,” the article said, adding that the whistleblower who exposed the Cologne attacks is actually a real “hero.”[…]

    https://www.rt.com/news/333442-whistleblowers-cologne-assaults-investigation/

  18. Afghan intelligence arrest 13 involved in major terror activities in Takhar (khaama, Feb 24, 2016)
    http://www.khaama.com/afghan-intelligence-arrest-13-involved-in-major-terror-activities-in-takhar-00156

    “The Afghan intelligence operatives arrested a group of thirteen militants involved in major terror related activities in northeastern Takhar province of Afghanistan.

    The National Directorate of Security (NDS) said the detained individuals were involved in terrorist activities, including assassination of religious clerics, tribal elders and kidnappings.

    NDS said the intelligence operatives have also confiscated some weapons and explosives including an Ak-47 rifle, a pistol and hand grenades from the detained individuals.

    The anti-government armed militant groups have not commented regarding the detention of the suspected militants so far.

    Takhar is among the relatively volatile provinces in northeastern Afghanistan where anti-government armed militants are actively operating in a number of its remote districts…”

  19. EU, UN criticize Balkan police crackdown on Afghan migrants (khaama, Feb 24, 2016)
    http://www.khaama.com/eu-un-criticize-balkan-police-crackdown-on-afghan-migrants-4598

    “The European Union and United Nations on Tuesday criticized new police restrictions imposed on those traveling along the main migrant route through the Balkans, where hundreds of Afghans have been blocked from crossing into Macedonia, Associated Press reports.

    Police chiefs from EU nations Austria, Croatia and Slovenia plus non-members Serbia and Macedonia agreed last week to only allow in people “arriving from war-torn areas.”

    They decided migrants must carry identity documents, be fleeing a conflict zone and have a “registration form issued by Greek authorities.” The new rules block entry for people wanting to reunite with families, avoid military recruitment or escape “personal disputes.”

    “(We) have concerns about this approach, and will raise the matter with the relevant countries,” the EU’s executive arm said in a statement.

    The move has stranded thousands of Afghans and others in Greece, where an average of 4,000 asylum-seekers land each day, even though some of the Afghans could potentially qualify for asylum.

    The UN’s refugee agency said the new police orders are “resulting in increased protection risks for refugees and asylum-seekers, particularly those with specific needs, such as unaccompanied and separated children.”…”

  20. Finland to deport Afghan refugees not approved for asylum (khaama, Feb 24, 2016)
    http://www.khaama.com/finland-deporting-afghan-asylum-seekers-4596

    “Finland is deporting Afghan nationals whose asylums are rejected saying that not everyone who comes to Finland is entitled to protection under the Refugee Convention.

    A statement released by the country’s embassy in Kabul on Tuesday states that Under-Secretary of State Pirkko Hämäläinen visited Kabul on 21–23 February to discuss the Memorandum of Understanding between Afghanistan and Finland regarding the return of Afghans who are not granted asylum in Finland.

    The statement further states that the negotiations with Afghanistan will continue in the spring and Finland hopes that an agreement on the returns will be concluded as soon as possible.

    Including 5,200 Afghans over 32,000 asylum seekers of different nationalities entered Finland last year. The country’s government says vast majority of them will not receive a permission to stay in Finland and they will be deported.

    An unprecedented number of them have also cancelled their applications and returned to their countries of origin before their cases have been reviewed.

    Finland’s President Sauli Niinistö in his speech at the opening of Parliament on 3 February said: “we must help those who are in distress or being persecuted. At the moment, however, we cannot help those who are merely seeking a better life or feel that their circumstances and future are difficult in their home countries”.”

  21. Foreigners among 41 Daesh fighters killed in military operation Nangarhar’s Achin District (khaama, Feb 24, 2016)
    http://www.khaama.com/foreigners-among-41-daesh-fighters-killed-in-nangarhars-achin-district-4583

    “41 fighters of the terrorist group of the Islamic State (IS) which also goes by its Arabic name Daesh have been killed in Achin District of eastern Nangarhar province.

    Officials say the militants were killed in ground operation and air strikes in Abdulkhil, Pikhi, Nargasi and Mazdaki areas on Tuesday.

    Governor’s office says a local commander of the group by the name of Mawlawi Adil and some foreigners were among those killed.

    A hideout of the militants was also destroyed in the airstrikes.

    Operation Shaheen 18 launched in Achin District last week and Ministry of Defense says all villages of this district have been cleared of Daesh militants.

    The operation was later extended to neighboring Nazyan District.”

  22. 125 Afghan citizens arrive to Afghanistan from Germany (khaama, Feb 24, 2016)
    http://www.khaama.com/125-afghan-citizens-arrive-to-afghanistan-from-germany-0158

    “A group of 125 Afghan citizens arrived to Afghanistan this morning from Germany with the support of the Afghan and German governments.

    “Today, 125 Afghan citizens return to Afghanistan: After a difficult way to Germany in the hands of people smugglers they realized that their future is in Afghanistan and that they are needed in their home country,” according to an official statement.

    The statement further added that the cost of the return of the Afghan citizens has been covered by the government of Germany.

    The returnees will also receive a small reitegration support in cooperation with the International Organization for Migrant (IOM), the statement said, adding that Germany and Afghanistan continue to jointly fight people smuggling.

    This comes as reports emerged in mid December last year suggesting over 320 Afghan migrants based in Germany have applied for voluntary repatriation to Afghanistan.

    The Afghan Ambassador based in Berlin Hamid Sediqi quoted in a report by state-run Deutsche Welle international broadcaster said the number of Afghan migrants applying for voluntary repatriation is on the rise.

    He said over 320 Afghan migrants have applied to Afghan consulates in Munich and Bonn as well as in the Afghan Embassy in Berlin to obtain passports so that they can travel back to Afghanistan.

    Sediq further added that the Afghan Embassy and Consulates will charge Euro 120 against each passport by ascertaining their identity first; however he said they will issue the passports free of charge if they applicants did not have enough funds.

    According to Sediq, majority of the applicants applying for voluntary repatriation are between 15 to 25 years of age and majority of them are keen to return to Afghanistan since they find living in Germany in contrast to their expectations and what they had heard before travelling to Germany.”

  23. Top court blasted as ‘Islamic’ after mosque law quashed (ansa, Feb 24, 2016)
    http://www.ansa.it/english/news/2016/02/24/top-court-blasted-as-islamic-after-mosque-law-quashed_9ba0f771-9994-4398-b072-f70ede25e4c8.html

    ” Rome, February 24 – Italy’s top court was blasted as “Islamic” Wednesday after it quashed a Lombardy regional law restricting the construction of mosques.

    Lombardy Governor Roberto Maroni, of the rightwing populist anti-immigrant and anti-euro Northern League, said that the left were hailing “Allah” after Italy’s Constitutional Court overturned the regional regulation limiting the development of new mosques. “The Constitutional Court has rejected our law regulating the construction of new mosques,” Maroni said on his Twitter account. “The left celebrates: Allah(u) Akbar”. Premier Matteo Renzi’s government appealed to the Constitutional Court last year after Maroni’s centre-right administration for the region around Milan approved strict new planning laws for places of worship. Central government said the regulation breached the principle of equality between citizens and religions.

    The Constitutional Court struck down the regulation on Tuesday and will release the explanation of its ruling in the coming weeks.

    Northern League leader Matteo Salvini blasted the Constitutional Court as “Islamic, not Italian”. “It is an accomplice in illegal immigration,” he added.

    In contrast Davide Piccardo, the coordinator of the CAIM umbrella group for Islamic associations in Milan, Monza and Brianza, expressed “great satisfaction” at the ruling. “Now the city of Milan no longer has excuses to not complete the allocation of areas for the construction of mosques,” Piccardo said. “The law was a legal disgrace and a case of unacceptable incivility and intolerance in Lombardy, where over 400,000 Muslims live and were considered second-class citizens. “It’s serious that the public institutions were used to deny the rights of a part of the community”. Piccardo praised central government for opposing the regional regulation and called for a national law to prevent similar situations in other parts of Italy.

    Paolo Grossi, the new president of Italy’s Constitutional Court, hailed the ruling. “Our concern is to be custodians of fundamental rights: the essential nucleus of the sentence is based on avoiding discriminations, as the Court adjudged were present in the law,” he said. The formerly secessionist Northern League, which has expanded from its northern Italian power base to become the biggest rightwing party in Italy, has long been against the construction of new mosques on its home turf in northern Italy.

    In 2009 the League demonstrated against plans to build a mosque in Genoa with a ‘salami protest’. In 2007 a Northern League heavyweight, former minister Roberto Calderoli, called for a ‘pig day’ battle against mosque building on Italian soil.

    Calderoli, who was reform minister under the previous, Silvio Berlusconi-led government and was now deputy Senate speaker, said pigs should be brought in to thwart plans for the construction of a major mosque in Bologna.

    He said he had used the same tactic with success in another northern city, Lodi.

    In February 2006, Calderoli was forced to quit as reform minister after he sported a T-shirt emblazoned with the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad which at the time were causing a wave of international Muslim protests.

    Calderoli’s act was followed by violent demonstrations in Libya in which the Italian consulate in Benghazi was attacked. Some 15 people were killed after local police opened fire on a crowd trying to storm the consulate.

    The League has frequently caused rows with intolerant stances against Muslims and immigrants in general.

    In the wake of the September 2001 terror attacks on the US, the party demanded that mosques and Islamic centres be shut down and Italy’s frontiers closed to Muslims.

    More recently, a League member called for the expulsion of Muslim immigrants who could not be ‘vouched for’ by an Italian citizen. The party has also spearheaded campaigns to ban burqas and veils in public.”

  24. Gang of British Muslims face jail for planning to raise their children under evil ISIS (express, Feb 24, 2016)
    http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/647214/Walsall-Muslim-gang-ISIS

    “A MUSLIM gang is facing jail after planning to raise their children under ISIS.

    Islamic convert Lorna Moore, 33, was accused of planning to take her three young children – including an 11-month-old baby – to the war zone.

    Moore, of Walsall, West Midlands, was today found guilty of failing to tell the authorities that her husband Sajid Aslam was heading off to Syria at the Old Bailey.

    Ayman Shaukat, 27, was also found guilty of preparing terrorist acts by helping Aslam and Muslim convert Alex Nash, 22, to head to the Middle East.

    The pair will be sentenced on a date to be fixed alongside Nash and Kerry Thomason, 24, who was pregnant when she was stopped from flying out with her two children to join her husband in Syria.

    At the time of Aslam’s departure in August 2014, Moore had taken the rest of the family on a Butlins holiday in Skegness.

    The day after dropping him off at the airport, Shaukat sent a photograph of himself on his mobile phone posing with the IS flag, the court heard.

    As Aslam crossed into Syria, he sent a triumphant coded message back to Shaukat in the form of a video link to a song called I Made It by Cash Money Heroes.

    Within months, Moore had booked flights to Palma, Majorca – but the prosecution said her final destination was given away in a text from Nash’s pregnant wife in Turkey saying “see you there”.

    But giving evidence, Moore said she would “never” put her children’s lives in danger, adding: “They mean the world to me.”

    She insisted she had been planning to take them back to her family’s farm in Omagh, Northern Ireland, after finishing her teacher training – a claim backed up by her mother……”

  25. Syrians suffer as ‘anti-terror laws squeeze charities’ (saudigazette, Feb 25, 2016)
    http://saudigazette.com.sa/world/mena/syrians-suffer-as-anti-terror-laws-squeeze-charities/

    “Western anti-terror laws are forcing aid agencies in Syria to avoid communities controlled by extremist groups, making it harder to deliver vital supplies and leaving people vulnerable to radicalization, a Thomson Reuters Foundation investigation found.

    A survey of 21 international and national non-governmental organizations (NGOs) found government donors and banks were also demanding more in-depth audits in the two years since militant group Daesh (so-called IS)took root, sending costs spiraling.

    Successive terror attacks in the United States and Europe have put governments under pressure to enact laws and impose controls to track the financing of extremist groups, including through SWIFT, the most widely used platform for bank transactions.

    While acknowledging the need for tougher laws, NGOs surveyed said operating in jihadi-run areas in Syria made them vulnerable to being blacklisted in the United States and European Union countries where the groups are branded “terrorists”….”

  26. Saudi envoy: Lebanon must retain its ‘Arabness’ (saudigazette, Feb 25, 2016)
    http://saudigazette.com.sa/world/mena/saudi-envoy-lebanon-must-retain-its-arabness/

    “Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Lebanon urged Beirut on Tuesday to hold on its “Arabness” after Riyadh cut $4 billion in military aid to the Mediterranean country.

    The ambassador Ali Awad Assiri, who was receiving several delegations in the capital Beirut, urged Lebanon to “return to its Arabness,” the local Daily Star quoted him as saying in a news conference at the embassy…”

  27. U.S. Air Force Policy Paper Describes Wearing Hijab as “Passive Terrorism” (moroccoworldnews, Feb 24, 2016)
    http://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2016/02/180518/u-s-air-force-policy-paper-describes-wearing-hijab-as-passive-terrorism/

    “Rabat – The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) released a policy paper in January describing women wearing hijabs in radicalized communities as practicing “passive terrorism”.

    According to The Intercept, the AFRL posted a revised version of its white paper titled “Countering Violent Extremism: Scientific Methods & Strategies” citing a summit convened by Obama on extremism last February as a reason for reintroducing the subject.

    One chapter titled “A Strategic Plan to Defeat Radical Islam” is written by Dr. Tawfik Hamid, a fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies and a self-described former Islamic extremist. Hamid’s ideas include weakening, what he calls, the “hijab phenomenon.” According to his claims, this occurs when increasing numbers of women start wearing the hijab as a “response to the propagation of “Salafi jihadist” ideologies in the their area.”

    “The proliferation of militant Salafism and the hijab contribute to the idea of passive terrorism, which occurs when moderate segments of the population decline to speak against or actively resist terrorism,” Hamid claimed in the paper.

    Later on, Hamid writes that sexual deprivation in young Muslims plays a role in pushing them into the hands of terrorist organizations, which promise them that Muslims who die as martyrs “will be able to have multiple beautiful women in paradise.”

    Though he does not directly link the “hijab phenomenon” to sexual deprivation, he adds: “In Sunni Muslim areas such as Kurdistan in Iraq, most women did not wear the hijab; these areas experienced fewer acts of terrorism than areas where the hijab was common, such as Al-Anbar Province.”

    Hamid states in a footnote that he observed these trends during his time with the Egyptian Islamist group Gama’a Al-Islamiyah and “his efforts to reform Islam for more than 30 years”, but declines to describe how he came to his conclusions.

    A string of experts in Islam and counter-terrorism have condemned Hamid’s analysis on sexual deprivation and the hijab phenomenon, according to The Intercept.

    “This characterization of the hijab demonizes millions of women whose reasons for covering have nothing to do with the advocacy of political violence,” said Arun Kundnani, a lecturer on terrorism studies at New York University.

    “It appears the purpose of this chapter by Hamid is not a genuine investigation of the roots of violence, but rather an attempt to supply national security agencies with bogus surveillance rubrics,” he added.”