Reader’s links for April 22 – 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

91 Replies to “Reader’s links for April 22 – 2016”

  1. Russian forces in Syria have fired at least twice on Israeli military aircraft, prompting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to seek improved operational coordination with Moscow, Israel’s top-selling newspaper said on Friday.

    The unsourced report in Yedioth Ahronoth gave no dates or locations for the incidents nor any indication Israeli planes were hit.

    Separately, Israel’s Channel 10 TV said a Russian warplane approached an Israeli warplane off the Mediterranean coast of Syria last week but that there was no contact between them.

    An Israeli military spokesman declined comment. Netanyahu’s office and the Russian embassy in Israel did not immediately respond.

    http://www.dailysabah.com/syrian-crisis/2016/04/22/russian-forces-fired-on-israeli-military-aircraft-in-syria

    • The entire ecosystem is more resilient then the eco warriors want us to know. This has been proven by the natural clean up of many so called ecological disasters.

  2. Islamic State fighters have captured the pilot of a Syrian warplane which crashed southeast of Damascus on Friday, a news agency affiliated to the militant group said.

    “The pilot, called Azzam Eid, from Hama was captured after he fell by parachute near the site where his plane crashed east of Damascus,” the news agency Amaq said.

    Citing a Syrian military source, Russian news agency Interfax said the plane belonged to the Syrian Air Force and crashed because of a technical fault.

    “The plane had recently undergone repairs… there was no attack from the ground. It crashed because of a technical fault. The pilot ejected,” Interfax quoted the source as saying.

    Interfax said the plane was a Mig-23.

    http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-warplane-idUSKCN0XJ2CK

  3. AGARTALA:

    Spiritual leader says his effort for a peace dialogue with ISIS has ended
    ISIS doesn’t want peace, they should be dealt with militarily: Sri Sri

    The Art of Living founder is on a 3-day visit to Tripura

    Spiritual leader Sri Sri Ravi Shankar said on Thursday that he tried to open a dialogue with ISIS, but the terror group rejected it by sending him a photograph of a beheaded man.

    “I tried to initiate peace talks with the ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) recently but they sent me a photograph of a beheaded body of a man. Thus, my effort for a peace dialogue with the ISIS ended,” Sri Sri Ravi Shankar said.

    “I think the ISIS does not want any peace talks,” he told reporters in Agartala. “Hence, they should be dealt with militarily.”

    http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/sri-sri-ravi-shankar-sent-peace-message-to-isis-received-photo-of-beheaded-man-1398207

    In related news….

    Sri Sri Ravi Shankar Gets Death Threats in Malaysia From Islamic State

    KUALA LUMPUR: A close aide of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar today claimed that the founder of the ‘Art of Living’ has received death threats in Malaysia from the Islamic State terror group.

    “Sri Sri Ravi Shankar is touring some countries in the far east and he landed in Malaysia yesterday and few days ago while he was in Cambodia, we received threat letters from ISIS, one was received by the hotel manager, one was received by the director of Art of Living and one by senior faculty and the content of the letter is very threatening saying if you go ahead with the programme there will be consequences,” said Nakul Dhawan, spokesperson of ‘Art of Living’.

    “The authorities have immediately notified the local authorities. We also contacted the Indian Embassy and we also conducted an investigation to find the source of the letter. We are going ahead,” he said.

    http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/sri-sri-ravi-shankar-gets-death-threats-in-malaysia-from-islamic-state-750395

  4. India issues visa to Uyghur ‘terrorist’ Dolkun Isa; China angry

    New Delhi/Beijing: India’s move to grant visa to World Uyghur Congress (WUC) leader Dolkun Isa for a visit to the country has irked China.

    China, which considers WUC leaders as supporters of terrorism in its volatile Muslim-dominated Xinjiang province, has stated that Dolkun is a “terrorist” on Interpol’s Red Corner.

    It is the obligation of all countries to bring him to justice, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told India’s PTI news agency.

    http://zeenews.india.com/news/india/india-issues-visa-to-uyghur-terrorist-dolkun-isa-china-angry_1878674.html

  5. Saudi Arabia announced steps this week to rein in its religious police, which is responsible for ensuring morality, piety and adherence with Islamic law but has become the target of mounting criticism in recent years.

    The most significant change states that members of the religious police are to work only during office hours, and that they do not have the right to pursue, arrest or detain members of the public. They are, instead, directed to report violations of Islamic law to the civil police.

    In addition, the government directed the religious police to be “gentle and kind” in its conduct, following the example of the Prophet Muhammad — a repudiation of the heavy-handed (and, critics say, occasionally hypocritical) approach that the religious police, most of them young men, have often taken.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/16/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-moves-to-curb-its-feared-religious-police.html?_r=0

  6. PARIS — Najim Laachraoui, one of the two suicide bombers who attacked Brussels Airport last month, has been identified by former Islamic State hostages as one of their captors in Syria, a lawyer for several of the hostages said on Friday.

    Marie-Laure Ingouf, a lawyer for Nicolas Hénin and Pierre Torres, two of the four French journalists who were first detained in 2013 by the Islamic State in Syria, said that the former hostages had identified one of their captors as Mr. Laachraoui, who used the name Abu Idris at the time.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/23/world/europe/isis-ex-hostages-identify-brussels-suicide-bomber-as-captor.html?ref=world&_r=0

  7. France has seen a massive drop in the number of anti-Islam acts, according to the National Observatory against Islamophobia, although Muslim leaders sounded a note of caution.

    The number of anti-Islam acts in France has finally fallen after having rocketed in recent years.

    New figures from the National Observatory against Islamophobia revealed that in the first three months of 2016, the number of reported anti-Islam acts dropped by 83 percent compared to the first three months of last year.

    That drop bucked a recent trend that has saw a huge spike in Islamophobic acts last year.

    http://www.thelocal.fr/20160422/france-sees-huge-drop-in-islamophobic-acts

  8. RIYADH (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama met Saudi Arabia’s King Salman on Wednesday to seek joint action on security threats including Iran and Islamic State – and to talk through tensions between the two allies that have been laid bare in recent weeks.

    Obama’s fourth and likely last visit to the world’s top oil exporter has been overshadowed by Gulf Arab exasperation with his approach to the region, and doubts about Washington’s commitment to their security.

    Most of the Gulf Arab monarchies have in private been sorely disappointed by Obama’s presidency, regarding it as a period in which the United States has pulled back from the region, giving more space to their arch rival Iran to expand its influence.

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/president-obama-arrives-saudi-capital-riyadh-summit-103551702.html

    • And they always make him wait before he gets to see the King. Any rational head of state would walk away and leave Saudi because of that insult.

  9. The Kremlin has denounced reports of Russian jets firing on Israeli planes in Syria, the RBC news website reported Friday.

    President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the claims were “far from reality.”

    Earlier on Friday, Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reported that Russian fighters in Syria had fired on Israeli warplanes on two occasions. The paper didn’t specify when or where in Syria the incidents allegedly took place.

    The alleged shooting incidents were discussed by Israeli and Russian leaders during the visit of Israeli President Reuven Rivlin to Moscow on March 15, the RBC newspaper reported, citing the original Israeli reports. At that time, Putin told Rivlin that he wasn’t aware of the incident, the report said.

    http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/reports-of-russia-firing-at-israeli-planes-far-from-reality—kremlin/566939.html

  10. The United States will buy heavy water from Iran’s nuclear program and expects it to be delivered within weeks, U.S. officials said on Friday, a move that Republican lawmakers quickly criticized.

    The U.S. Department of Energy, or DOE, will buy 32 metric tonnes of heavy water from Iran worth $8.6 million, a department spokeswoman said. Heavy water is a component of making nuclear weapons and nuclear energy, that is not radioactive.

    Under last year’s landmark nuclear deal between Iran, the United States and five other world powers, Tehran is responsible for reducing its stock of heavy water, which it can sell, dilute or dispose of, under conditions.

    http://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-nuclear-usa-idUSKCN0XJ25G

    • This is an open move to help Iran, how can even the most leftist media whore not get worried and report on this stupidity?

  11. Canadian authorities said Wednesday that a budding high school basketball star is actually a 29-year-old refugee from South Sudan.

    The Canadian Border Services Agency said that Jonathan Nicola was arrested earlier this week for contravening the country’s Immigration Refugee Protection Act.

    The agency said Nicola “misrepresented material facts” on his application for a study permit to Canada, submitting an application with a date of birth of Nov. 25, 1998 — which would make him 17. The agency says when Nicola recently applied for a U.S. visitor visa, a fingerprint match determined he was an individual who had made a previous application to the U.S. using a date of birth of Nov. 1, 1986 — making him 29.

    http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/04/22/canadian-high-school-basketball-star-is-29-year-old-man-authorities-say.html?intcmp=trending

  12. TWO MEN INSPIRED by the Islamic State (IS) group who plotted drive-by shootings in London targeting soldiers and police have received life sentences at a British court.

    Ringleader Tarik Hassane, 22, will serve a minimum of 21 years after pleading guilty to conspiracy to murder and preparation of terrorist acts.

    Suhaib Majeed, a 22-year-old physics student, will be in jail for at least 20 years after conviction on the same charges last month.

    http://www.thejournal.ie/men-plotted-isis-shootings-uk-jailed-2731162-Apr2016/

  13. Leading jihadis ‘twice as likely to be students of science as of Sharia’

    Prominent jihadists are twice as likely to have studied science at university than subjects related to Islam, according to a new survey, while British fighters appear to know the least about their religion.

    The report, which analysed the histories of 100 of the most prominent jihadist leaders of the last three decades, said that despite claiming to be the sole interpreters of Islamic theology, they often had little or no training in the subject.

    Osama bin Laden himself went to a secular school and studied economics and business at university, and had little formal Islamic training.

    http://pkgala.com/leading-jihadis-twice-likely-students-science-sharia/

  14. MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Athens will not tolerate the actions of Ankara violating country’s sovereignty in the Aegean Sea, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said Friday.
    NATO ships have been deployed to the Aegean Sea for months to monitor migrant flows between Turkey and Greece. Athens claim that Ankara refuses NATO ships to enter the maritime zone near some of the Greek islands, as Turkey considers them as its own territory.

    “Greece will not tolerate any actions that challenge our sovereignty,” Tsipras said at a meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, as quoted by the Proto Thema newspaper.

    http://sputniknews.com/europe/20160422/1038439871/greece-turkey-nato-sovereignity.html

  15. FYI – from the very beginning, I said that aligning with PKK means aligning with terrorists…

    I hate being right!

    Thousands of Turkmens and Arabs who escaped from the PKK Syrian affiliate Democratic Union Party’s (PYD) armed People’s Protection Units (YPG) in the northern Syrian town of Tal Abyad accused the organization of committing brutal offenses, including forcing people to migrate after confiscating their property and ethnic cleansing. Speaking to the Sabah daily after taking shelter in Turkey among nearly 60,000 refugees in the aftermath of the YPG capturing the town, Arab refugees claimed the YPG perpetrates atrocities with the pretext of fighting DAESH.

    Youssef al-Mohammed, 43, and Ahmad al-Hassan, 50, who currently live in the Akçakale district of southeastern ?anl?urfa province, said they previously never faced problems with Kurds living in the area from Rasulayn to Tal Abyad before Kurds from different regions came to the town with the YPG and tried to erect a PYD flag there. “First, the PYD started to fight with us. DAESH had followed them. The PYD wanted to remove those who fight against the organization. Then DAESH took Tal Abyad from us [Free Syrian Army]. After a certain time, pretending to fight against the PYD, DAESH sold Tal Abyad to the group without firing a single bullet.”

    Saying that the PYD demolished houses of Arabs and Turkmens in Tal Abyad with the pretext of dismantling DAESH explosives, refugees say that the organization attempted to destroy houses with bulldozers while they were inside and they had to escape to Turkey.

    http://www.aina.org/news/20160420191123.htm

  16. More and more Syrians made vulnerable by war are becoming victims of sexual exploitation
    The iron-gated doors and blacked-out windows keep the room dark at all hours of the day. Lingerie is splayed across the floor and a whip hangs over the bed.

    This nightmarish setting north of the Lebanese capital is where Soha, a 26-year-old Syrian woman, was trapped for eight years with dozens of other Syrian victims of sex trafficking.

    In an interview with AFP in southern Lebanon, Soha — a pseudonym for the soft-spoken brunette with black-polished nails — recounts her traumatic experience.

    “We had to sleep with 15 to 20 men every day, sometimes 40 if we had a lot of ‘work’,” she says, taking deep breaths to steady her shaking voice.

    “We weren’t allowed to leave. The guards would bring us clothes, makeup and food.”

    http://www.i24news.tv/en/news/international/middle-east/110275-160419-trauma-torture-for-sex-trafficked-syrians-in-lebanon

  17. After burning people to death, the Takfiri terrorist group ISIS executed 45 of its members by freezing them to death.

    Sources said that the 45 members were put alive in morgue freezers in Mosul and were left for 24 hours where they were left to die slowly. This is not the first time that an act of terror has been carried out by terrorists against their fellow-fighters.

    In the details, sources reported that “ISIS executed 45 of its members who had fled the confrontations that wre taking place with Iraqi forces in Heet district by putting them in morgue fridges for 24 hours, to later take out the frozen bodies and put it at the entrances of the city.”

    http://ahtribune.com/world/north-africa-south-west-asia/843-isis-freezes-people.html

  18. ISTANBUL — A Turkish court on Friday ordered the release of four academics accused of spreading “terrorist” propaganda at the opening hearing of one of several trials that have raised concern over Turkey’s continuing crackdown on dissenting voices.

    The four academics were among a group of more than 1,000 scholars who in January signed a declaration critical of the government’s military operations against Kurdish rebels. The declaration angered President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and led to legal proceedings against some.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/4-scholars-on-trial-for-criticizing-turkeys-war-with-rebels/2016/04/22/c6dc014c-085b-11e6-bfed-ef65dff5970d_story.html

  19. Russian combat engineers, clearing the Syrian city of Palmyra of explosives left behind by Islamic State jihadists, have discovered and defused “one of the largest jihadist arsenals” of more than 12,000 explosive devices.
    “The warehouse was well-disguised and discovered through the use of special equipment, brought by Russian engineers to Syria,” General Igor Konashenkov, Defense Ministry spokesman, told reporters. “They have removed more than 12,000 explosive objects, including large-caliber mortar mines, artillery shells, as well as anti-tank mines and anti-personnel landmines, from the terrorists’ cache.”

    He stressed that this is “one of the largest ammunition depots from which improvised explosive devices and bombs were used by Islamic State [IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL] for terrorist attacks not only in the province of Homs but in other areas of Syria just as well.”

    https://www.rt.com/news/340640-explosive-devises-cache-palmyra/