Reader’s links for November 28 – 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

74 Replies to “Reader’s links for November 28 – 2016”

  1. Crime last weekend in Mexico: http://www.sfgate.com/news/crime/article/Mexico-arrests-alleged-cartel-assassin-leader-in-10625457.php In spite of a high security presence, killings are up 5 percent this year over a very bloody 2015 in Acapulco. Authorities say 790 homicides were recorded from January through October. Witnesses told police that about 30 armed men kidnapped the [12 -14] victims, which included some minors, [from the township of Ajuchitlan del Progreso], Alvarez said. Relatives reported already receiving calls demanding ransom for their release. Local residents blamed a group called Los Tequileros, http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2016/11/unstoppable-violence-in-guerrero-8.html The bodies of eight men were found decapitated and tortured in the municipality of Tixtla, Guerrero, located in the center region of the state. Meanwhile in the port of Acapulco, 10 people were found executed in different events, among them two members of the Mexican Navy (SEMAR).

  2. Fears mount of multiple bank failures if Renzi loses referendum

    Up to eight lenders risk being wound up if No vote triggers prolonged market mayhem

    Up to eight of Italy’s troubled banks risk failing if prime minister Matteo Renzi loses a constitutional referendum next weekend and ensuing market turbulence deters investors from recapitalising them, officials and senior bankers say.

    Mr Renzi, who says he will quit if he loses the referendum, had championed a market solution to solve the problems of Italy’s €4tn banking system and avoid a vote-losing “resolution” of Italian banks under new EU rules.

    Resolution, a new regulatory mechanism, restructures and, if necessary, winds up a bank by imposing losses on both equity and debt investors, particularly controversial in Italy, where millions of individual investors have bought bank bonds.

    https://www.ft.com/content/e588ea6a-b49f-11e6-961e-a1acd97f622d

  3. François Fillon: now the favourite to be France’s next president

    The Republican candidate will face a strong challenge from Marine Le Pen

    If conventional wisdom is right, François Fillon’s thumping victory in France’s centre-right presidential primaries on Sunday as good as hands him the keys to the Elysée Palace.

    But conventional wisdom was turned upside down in the UK’s referendum on EU membership and the US presidential election. Mr Fillon is the favourite now, but there is nothing inevitable about his path to the presidency.

    If he is to achieve his ambition, two premises must hold.

    First, he and Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Front party, must be the two candidates who make it through the first round of elections on April 23 to square up against each other in the May 7 run-off.

    https://www.ft.com/content/879eeb24-b4dc-11e6-ba85-95d1533d9a62

    • Everybody please make sure and watch carefully at video time point 20:13 when author Jerome Corsi takes American media out to the woodshed. While the Clinton’s behavior is insanely outrageous, little of it could have happened with such astonishing facility had not the press turned a consistent and collective blind eye to their obvious wrongdoing.

      Thank you, Richard, for posting this. It is the most concise summary of why Hillary (and Bill) Clinton belong in jail, convicted of multiple felony charges.

      • And one of the reasons Congress is still investigating both of them, I still have hopes some prosecutor will find enough evidence to send them to the pen for the rest of their lives.

  4. Exclusive: Chinese government money backs buyout firm’s deal for U.S. chip maker

    SAN FRANCISCO/NEW YORK/HONG KONG (Reuters) – Canyon Bridge Capital Partners, a buyout fund that agreed to acquire U.S.-based chip maker Lattice Semiconductor Corp for $1.3 billion earlier this month, is funded partly by cash originating from China’s central government and also has indirect links to its space program, Chinese corporate filings show.

    Reuters, in a review of about a dozen filings from China’s state-run corporate register, has established that the financial investment in Canyon Bridge originates from China’s State Council, the top decision-making body of the government. This link could draw more U.S. regulatory scrutiny over the Lattice deal on concerns that technology gained through the purchase could be used by China’s military, according to analysts who follow the chip industry and monitor foreign investment review decisions by the U.S. government.

    “It is a red flag,” James Lewis, a researcher at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said of Canyon Bridge’s links to the Chinese state. “It’s not a deal killer, but deals like this sometimes run into roadblocks.”

    Portland, Oregon-based Lattice makes programmable chips known as “field programmable gate arrays” that allow companies to put their own software on silicon chips for different uses. It does not sell chips to the U.S. military, but its two biggest rivals – Xilinx and Intel Corp’s Altera – make chips that are used in military technology.

    http://www.oann.com/exclusive-chinese-government-money-backs-buyout-firms-deal-for-u-s-chip-maker/

    • Field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are, effectively, “generic” integrated circuits (or “chips”). They contain a wide variety of logic gates and associated components (e.g., multiplexers & demultiplexers, I/O line drivers, noise filters, analog-digital converters & digital-analog converters, or isolation diodes) that can be electrically connected via remotely programmable internal conductive links which can just as easily be disconnected at another time.

      These connections and disconnections can be performed via transmitted commands and, thereby, do not require equipment to be returned for factory “in-house” rework. They also can “rewired” in the case of damage or other unexpected performance issues. Essentially, they are very small-scale, remotely re-configurable circuit boards.

      As an example, you could set one up to operate as a regular time clock. If a military customer wanted clocks that displayed the 24 hour-style time readout, small changes could be made without any need to completely rewire the circuit or add any new components. Adding stopwatch or 1/100ths of a second display features would be a relatively simple matter. All of this could be done while the parts were out in the field or stored in a warehouse with minimal rework facilities.

      This same notion applies to far more complex designs such as digitized (video) image processors, digital signal synthesizers, data encryption or decryption, and a host of other applications where frequent advances in state-of-the-art requires that associated circuitry be updated, preferably in the field, and without removing the device from its motherboard.

      Absolutely no good can come from Lattice Semiconductor Corporation being placed in Communist Chinese hands. As in: let the commie bastards learn how to fabricate these challenging designs without any assistance from the West. FPGAs are some of the more advanced (and difficult to fabricate) solid-state integrated circuits that there are. Their use in military equipment and strategic applications should be of major concern.

      We really need to STOP teaching our enemies how to manufacture truly sensitive technology. America spent an easy TRILLION DOLLARS perfecting the silicon microprocessor and, yet, we are teaching the Communist Chinese how to build them solely in order to reduce our own prices by however many percent. How the feck that makes any sense is beyond me. Let them spend their own trillion dollars coming up that technological hill.

      • The left has spent close to a trillion dollars to make a lot of people think that all cultures and governments are alike and that our opposition to China is racism rather then being based on wanting to survive as a free nation. The younger generation (the vast majority anyway) think the people in China, North Korea nad the Sharia controlled nations have the same freedoms we do. People who think this way see nothing wrong with selling all of our secrets to the enemies of freedom.

  5. Police smash terror cell ‘smuggling ISIS jihadis to Europe posing as migrants’ (express, Nov 28, 2016)
    http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/737290/Spain-terror-arrests-four-detained-smuggling-jihadis-Europe-disguised-migrants

    “SPANISH police have arrested four suspected people traffickers accused of helping to smuggle Islamic State jihadis into Europe.

    Spain’s interior ministry said ISIS was using the group to sneak fanatics into Europe via Turkey among migrants fleeing Syria’s civil war.

    Officials also said they may have links to the Paris terror attacks last November.

    The four are under investigation for links to two people detained in Austria last year with suspected connections to the Paris attackers.

    Few details of the detainees have been released although officials said two are residents of the north-west Spanish region of Galicia while the other two operated in the southern province of Andalucia…”

  6. Fury over BBC’s Muslim Big Brother as Anjem Choudary’s pal given TV platform (express, Nov 28, 2016)
    http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/737325/BBC-Muslim-Big-Brother-Anjem-Choudary-TV-platform-Fury

    “A FRAUDSTER and friend of hate preacher Anjem Choudary is at the centre of a fresh BBC row after the corporation was blasted for offering him air time.

    The Beeb has come under fire after it was revealed Anthony Small, an ex-boxing champion in Choudary’s inner circle, was to appear on the show Muslims Like Us – dubbed as a Big Brother for Muslims – a spin on the famous reality TV show.

    Small, also known as Abdul Haqq, has previously expressed support for Islamic State but was cleared last year of plotting to join the terror group.

    The show behind the controversy will see 10 British Muslims with contrasting world views entering a house together.

    According to producers it will highlight the range of views held by British Muslims.

    A leaked summary of the show made by Love Productions warns of “charged exchanges” between them during filming.

    But security experts have heavily criticised the BBC for giving Haqq, 35, the chance to air his views.

    Haqq is associated with Choudary who was jailed in September for drumming up support for IS.

    The leaked documents have angered those fighting terror in the UK…”

  7. Kerry makes ‘unbelievable effort’ to save Syrian rebels from Trump, Russia confirms (RT, Nov 28, 2016)
    https://www.rt.com/news/368425-kerry-syrian-rebels-trump/

    “US Secretary of State John Kerry has significantly intensified contacts with Russia on Syria, the Kremlin confirmed, substantiating a report that Kerry wants to seal a deal with Moscow before Donald Trump assumes the US presidency in January.

    The report, by Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin, says Kerry is taking a last-ditch effort to stop the Syrian operation in eastern Aleppo, because the Trump administration may “squarely on the side of dictator [Syrian President] Bashar al-Assad.”

    Russian presidential aide Yury Ushakov confirmed that Kerry has lately intensified contacts with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov on Syria.

    “This [effort] could be called unbelievable, in terms that there have never been so many phone calls between the Secretary of State and Russia’s FM which were focused on discussing a single issue – Syria,” he told journalists. Ushakov refrained from commenting on whether there was any progress on it…”

  8. Students get 100 lashes for sex outside marriage in Indonesia (RT, Nov 28, 2016)
    https://www.rt.com/news/368442-indonesia-woman-flogged-man/

    “Nineteen-year-old Indonesian students who received 100 lashes were among a group of people flogged in the conservative province of Aceh, which adheres to Sharia law.

    A total of five people, including two women and three men, were caned outside a mosque in the provincial capital Banda Aceh on Monday, according to AFP.

    The 34-year-old woman was flogged with a rattan cane at least seven times for being in close proximity to a man. The 32-year-old male who was with her was also flogged seven times.

    “It hurts so bad,” the woman said, as cited by AFP, raising her arms into the air.

    Among the others who were flogged on Monday were two university students, both 19, who confessed to having sex outside marriage. They received 100 lashes.

    A man found guilty of sex outside marriage was also flogged at least 22 times by the person delivering the punishment, who was dressed in long robes and a hood. His partner, who is two-months pregnant, is still waiting for her fate to be decided.

    In such situations, officials in the province usually order the flogging of women after they give birth…”

  9. Reince Priebus: Hillary Camp Reneged From Deal Made Between Two Campaigns

    Reince Priebus told FOX News Sunday the two campaigns had “cut a deal” specifying that once The Associated Press called the race in favor of one candidate, the other would call within 15 minutes to concede.

    Priebus now says the Clinton Campaign has reneged on the deal by joining in the bogus recount efforts with Jill Stein.
    The AP reported:

    Donald Trump’s incoming chief of staff suggests Hillary Clinton is backing away from a deal worked out between the two presidential campaigns on how the loser would concede to the winner.

    Reince Priebus tells “Fox News Sunday” that Clinton’s team “cut a deal” with Trump’s team specifying that once The Associated Press called the race in favor of one candidate, the other would call within 15 minutes to concede.

    Priebus says that’s just what happened election night.

    http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/11/reince-priebus-hillary-camp-reneged-deal-made-two-campaigns/

    • The high ranking libs are like communists and Moslems, they think no agreement is sacred and will break any and all agreements when they think it will help their cause.

  10. This small town has organized a petion for a referendum. They are trying to prevent the mayor from signing contracts that would give migrants housing.

  11. <strong<Italy: Soldiers deployed in central Milan to deal with high crime rate

    Operation ‘Safe Roads’ (Strade Sicure) began in Milan’s Piazzale Loreto, Monday, when the first group of 100 soldiers was deployed in and around areas of the city with a high crime rate. The operation is to be conducted in the Via Padova, Corvetto and San Siro districts as well as Piazzale Loreto.

    Reportedly 50 more soldiers are set to arrive in the city over the coming days as part of the security plan announced by Italian Interior Minister, Angelino Alfano, and the mayor of Milan, Beppe Sala.

      • The Dems have driven all of the non Moslems whites away and are now working on driving out the non Moslems people of color.

  12. New Wikileaks – Yemen:
    https://wikileaks.org/yemen-files/
    25 November 2016

    Today, Friday 25 November, WikiLeaks releases the Yemen Files. .

    The Yemen Files are a collection of more than 500 documents from the United States embassy in Sana’a, Yemen. Comprising more than 200 emails and 300 PDFs, the collection details official documents and correspondence pertaining to the Office for Military Cooperation (OMC) located at the US embassy. The collection spans the period from 2009 until just before the war in Yemen broke out in earnest during March 2015. This time period covers both Hillary Clinton’s term as Secretary of State (20092013) and the first two years of Secretary John Kerry’s tenure.

    Julian Assange said: “The war in Yemen has produced 3.15 million internally displaced persons. Although the United States government has provided most of the bombs and is deeply involved in the conduct of the war itself reportage on the war in English is conspicuously rare.”

  13. To Disarm North Korea, Wage Trade War On China

    Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the White House told the Trump transition team that North Korea was, in the words of the paper, the “top national security priority” for the incoming administration.

    Virtually every American analyst agrees on what Trump should do to meet the No. 1 threat: drop his plans of confronting China on trade to obtain its assistance on “denuclearizing” the Kim regime.

    This line of thinking is not new and ignores 13 years of American foreign policy failure. In fact, it’s possible the opposite is true, that waging a trade war on China may be the only way to obtain Beijing’s cooperation on North Korea.

    It’s not hard to see why the outgoing administration thinks the North is such a danger. At this time, Kim Jong Un, the regime’s unstable ruler, can press a button and send three types of missiles to the lower 48 states, the Taepodong-2; the road-mobile KN-08; and the KN-08 variant, the KN-14. Richard Fisher of the International Assessment and Strategy Center thinks the KN-14 might be able to reach Washington, D.C.

    The consensus is that North Korea cannot mate a nuclear warhead to these launchers, but in, say, four years, it will have that capability as well. The North already possesses a nuke that fits atop its Nodong intermediate-range missile, which can travel a little under a thousand miles.

    How did North Korea, one of the world’s most destitute states, develop its nukes and missiles in the face of opposition of virtually all the international community? The simple answer is that Presidents Obama and Bush relentlessly pursued ineffective policies.

    [more at the link]

  14. WikiLeaks releases more than half a million US diplomatic cables from the momentous year of 1979

    By Julian Assange

    Today, 28 November 2016, marking the six-year anniversary of “Cablegate”, WikiLeaks expands its Public Library of US Diplomacy (PLUSD) with more than half a million (531,525) diplomatic cables from 1979.

    If any year could be said to be the “year zero” of our modern era, 1979 is it.

    In the Middle East, the Iranian revolution, the Saudi Islamic uprising and the Egypt-Israel Camp David Accords led not only to the present regional power dynamic but decisively changed the relationship between oil, militant Islam and the world.

    The uprising at Mecca permanently shifted Saudi Arabia towards Wahhabism, leading to the transnational spread of Islamic fundamentalism and the US-Saudi destabilisation of Afghanistan.

    Osama bin Laden would leave his native Saudi Arabia for Pakistan to support the Afghan Mujahideen.

    The invasion of Afghanistan by the USSR would see Saudi Arabia and the CIA push billions of dollars to Mujahideen fighters as part of Operation Cyclone, fomenting the rise of al-Qaeda and the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union.

    The 1979 current of Islamification spread to Pakistan where the US embassy was burned to the ground and Pakistan Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was executed.

    https://wikileaks.org/plusd/pressrelease/?c8

  15. Good Riddance Fidel
    The last of the Cold War Soviet stooges goes the way of his masters.

    To paraphrase the old VE jump-rope rhyme, “A-tisket, a-tasket, Castro’s in his casket.” The last of the Cold War Soviet stooges has gone the way of his communist masters.

    Encomia from the usual useful idiots are lighting up the internet, but don’t mind them. Like tantrum-throwing college students and George Soros rent-a-protestors, they are a machine for producing Republican voters. The Dem-wits, on the other hand, should pay attention to the Cuban immigrants and expatriates celebrating in Miami. They might find there a clue to how they lost Florida and the whole government. Opening up trade, as their messiah Obama did, with a regime that pockets all the profits while it jails protestors, that gives workers eight cents of every starry-eyed tourist’s dollar, makes for bad optics. Canoodling with a brutal dictator who crushes dissent, persecutes homosexuals, excludes blacks from the government, abuses the church, monopolizes wealth, and tortures dissidents in his gulag is not the way to win American votes.

    And discount the extravagant praise for Castro’s political genius. For all his Marxist-Leninist rhetoric and international fan-boys, Castro was a typical, but savvier, Latin American dictator––a cacique, caudillo, jefe, El Señor Presidente, El Gran Chingon, a glorified version of the General Mapache from The Wild Bunch. If not for the Cold War, he would long ago have met the same gruesome fate as those other strutting, bombastic oppressors. Only with billions of dollars in Soviet support and cash for overpriced sugar––and John Kennedy’s foreign policy bungling–– was he able to leverage being 90 miles from the U.S into a geopolitical significance far beyond his deserts, along the way almost igniting a nuclear war. He paid the Soviets back by letting them use his soldiers as imperialist mercenaries in Angola, Ethiopia, and Mozambique. After the USSR vanished like Trotsky from a May Day photo, oil and $18 billion in loans and grants from his fellow dictator Húgo Chavez, along with foreign investment from running-dog capitalists, kept Cuba from collapse. Castro repaid Húgo by skimming thousands of his doctors and other skilled professionals needed at home, and sending them to Venezuela.

    http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/264973/good-riddance-fidel-bruce-thornton

  16. The Corruption Of Hillary Clinton
    An all-star panel examines whether Hillary is really “too big to jail” at Restoration Weekend.
    November 28, 2016
    Frontpagemag.com
    18

    Dinesh D’Souza: Hello, everyone. The experience of elation that I felt on Tuesday with Trump’s election has not in any way subsided. No. And let us pause to reflect on the momentousness of that accomplishment. No man has gone to the White House not coming from elected office since Eisenhower, and Eisenhower was the Supreme Commander of World War II. So what Trump has done on Tuesday is unprecedented. And in some ways no one else could have pulled that off. I’m trying to describe the feeling that I had in seeing those election results, and I think the best analogy I can think of is it was kind of a prison break feeling, kind of the experience that we saw in the Shawshank Redemption of breaking out of captivity. And while this has forced a kind of rethinking on the Left, I think it also compels us to do a little bit of rethinking on the Right because how did Trump win Pennsylvania, Michigan it seems, and Wisconsin? He did it by appealing to a group of people that we have been trying to court for 30 years with only moderate success. These are the blue collar, working class guys. These are the so-called Reagan Democrats. And of course, Reagan got them, but Republicans couldn’t win them ever since Reagan. The Republican strategy for winning the blue collar vote was essentially to appeal to social issues and hope that the social issues and the kind of social conservatism of working class America would, you may say, trump its economic concerns.

    http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/264968/corruption-hillary-clinton-frontpagemagcom

    46 minute video at site.

  17. ADL Lies About Keith Ellison’s Anti-Semitic Nation of Islam Past
    November 28, 2016
    Daniel Greenfield

    The ADL has chosen to defend Keith Ellison, the Islamist who wants to be the DNC chief, despite his own ugly history with anti-Semitism.

    Jonathan Greenblatt, the ADL’s new left-wing boss, has made a point of defending Keith Ellison and has repeated Ellison’s same old lies about his past with the Nation of Islam. He writes that,

    http://www.frontpagemag.com/point/264969/adl-lies-about-keith-ellisons-anti-semitic-nation-daniel-greenfield

  18. Sweden: Firefighters battle to extinguish car fires in Stockholm suburb

    Cars parked in a car park in the Stockholm suburb of Norsborg were engulfed in flames on Monday evening. When the firefighters arrived at the scene, two cars were completely burned out and another one sustained burn damage.

  19. Canada’s Trudeau to skip Castro’s funeral (france24, Nov 28, 2016)
    http://www.france24.com/en/20161128-canadas-trudeau-skip-fidel-castro-funeral

    “Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will not attend the funeral of Fidel Castro, his office said on Monday, days after Trudeau’s praise of the late Cuban leader sparked a backlash.

    Governor General David Johnston, Queen Elizabeth II’s representative in Canada, will attend a commemoration in honor of Castro on Tuesday, at the request of Trudeau.

    Trudeau sparked fury and online mockery after he referred to Castro as a “remarkable leader” and expressed his sorrow at the death of “Cuba’s longest serving president”.

    On Sunday he defended his comments, saying that he simply meant “to recognise the passing of a former head of state” of a country that Canada had longstanding ties with, and not to gloss over unflattering history.

    “The fact is Fidel Castro had a deep and lasting impact on the Cuban people,” Trudeau told reporters in a televised news conference at a Madagascar Francophonie summit.

    “He certainly was a polarising figure and there certainly were significant concerns around human rights, that’s something I’m open about and that I’ve highlighted.”

    Trudeau said he had raised the issue of human rights during an official visit to Cuba earlier this month.

    Asked whether he thought Castro was a dictator, Trudeau said: “Yes.”

    Castro was an honorary pallbearer at the 2000 funeral of Trudeau’s father, former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau, who was the first NATO leader to visit Cuba back in 1976.

    Trudeau’s initial statement, which was markedly more positive than most Western leaders, sparked a backlash on Saturday, especially among some US Republicans and Cuban exiles in the United States.

    Canada has long been one of Cuba’s closest western allies, maintaining ties after its 1959 revolution.

    During his November visit, Trudeau said that Canada would maintain its relationship with Cuba even if that put it at odds with US President-elect Donald Trump, who has threatened to reverse the US-Cuban detente.”

  20. Half of returning jihadists still devoted to cause: report (thelocal, Nov 28, 2016)
    http://www.thelocal.de/20161128/one-in-four-jihadists-cooperated-with-authorities-upon-return-to-germany

    “A new government report shows that a quarter of those who return to Germany from fighting in Syria or Iraq cooperate with German authorities, while half remain loyal to their cause.

    One in four jihadists who returned to Germany after going to fight with terror groups in Syria or northern Iraq cooperate with authorities, according to a new government report seen by Die Welt and reported on Monday.

    The report was conducted by the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), domestic security agency the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), and the Hessian Information and Competence Centre against Extremism (HKE).

    The 61-page report showed that in recent years, around 850 people have left Germany to fight in Syria and Iraq. The study reviewed the actions of 784 people between the ages of 13 and 62 who had joined Isis, Jabhat al-Nusra or Junud al-Sham.

    More than one-third (274) of those analyzed had returned to Germany, and about half (48 percent) of those who had returned were still devoted to their extremist cause.

    The authorities further believe that 8 percent of returnees had made a “tactically-motivated return to recover to procure new equipment or money”. Another 10 percent are believed to have returned after they became disillusioned or frustrated.

    The report further looked into the various factors that had led to fighters becoming radicalized in Germany, listing multiple reasons for each person evaluated. More than half (54 percent) had been at least partially radicalized through friend groups, 48 percent through radical mosques, 44 percent through internet propaganda, 27 percent through attending seminars and 24 percent through the “Lies!” Koran distribution programme, banned earlier this month alongside countrywide police raids.

    “Radicalization happens predominantly in concrete social spheres,” the study states.

    Hesse state interior minister Peter Beuth told Die Welt that he and his colleagues feel heightened pressure to prevent more radicalization.

    “We want to prevent people from drifting towards extremism,” Beuth said.

    This is why in 2013, his state founded the HKE, which falls under Beuth’s interior ministry. The state of Hesse was also where the largest number of raids took place on the Lies! programme run by the banned group The True Religion on November 15th.

    Around 200 addresses across ten states were raided in connection to the group, which was also newly categorized as a banned group at the time. The Lies! programme distributes copies of the Koran in German, which experts say are translations with particularly strict versions of the original Arabic texts. The Interior Ministry said at the time that around 140 people influenced by the group had gone to fight in Syria and Iraq.

    Decrease in Islamists heading to war zones

    The new government study showed that of Islamists who travelled to Syria and Iraq, one third are still reportedly in the conflict zones. Another third have by now returned, 12 percent of whom have been imprisoned.

    The remain third of them are most likely either in another country or their statuses are unknown.

    The report noted that there has been a significant drop in the number of people recorded as heading to conflict zones. Between July 2015 and June 2016, 49 people were registered by authorities as leaving. In 2014, as many as 100 people per month were leaving.

    This decrease may have to do with the “seriously waning appeal of Isis”, but also with Isis’ call for supporters to attempt attacks in their own homelands, the report notes.

    “The work of authorities, as well as the monitoring and arrests of those departing or entering has had an impact,” said Bavarian interior minister Joachim Herrmann to Die Welt.

    Still, he added that one must see in a year whether the trend will hold.

    The report found that 21 percent of the jihadists analyzed were women, and this proportion was growing, along with the number of minors (7 percent). Most (61 percent) were born in Germany while the rest were mostly from Turkey, Syria, Russia, or Lebanon.

    Most had German citizenship and 27 percent had double citizenship, mostly German-Turkish, German-Moroccan, or German-Tunisian.”

  21. Police mull helicopters, CCTV to fight New Year sex crimes (thelocal, Nov 28, 2016)
    http://www.thelocal.de/20161128/police-mull-heightened-security-plans-after-last-nye

    “As Cologne prepares for New Year’s Eve a year after a spate of sexual assaults, officials are considering ramping up security with helicopters, video surveillance and restricted entry to certain places, according to a media report.

    A group of experts from state and federal police have been analyzing the events of New Year’s Eve last year under a project called “Silvester” – meaning New Year’s Eve in German. Their final report is set to be discussed at a conference of interior ministries starting on Tuesday, and Cologne’s Express newspaper obtained a copy of the police recommendations, the newspaper reported on Monday.

    More than 1,000 women came forward after New Year’s Eve to report robberies or sexual assaults in Cologne, while other cities had similar reports of groups of men surrounding and harassing women that night.

    The attackers were normally described as being of North African appearance and the BKA reported that most suspects came from either Algeria, Morocco, or Iraq.

    The new report offers numerous concrete recommendations as to how that New Year’s Eve night could have been prevented, including limiting the number of people in certain areas during large events, as well as the use of helicopters and horse-mounted police.

    The report also suggests deploying specially-trained officers for sexual assault victims, in particular women, “in order to carry out qualified questioning and secure objective evidence”. There should also be special security points for victims or those seeking protection.

    One of the problems for investigating the crimes in Cologne was that the security cameras around the train station where most crimes were reported were poor quality, therefore making it hard to identify suspects. Thus the report further recommends having video surveillance and better light sources.

    The report also recommends a better review and registration of refugees upon their arrival in the country as well as an improved exchange of information among states and with Europol.

    Furthermore, the report argues that there must be more work done to integrate immigrants and “improve the basic conditions which result in social-structure disadvantages and frustrations as a result of lack of personal exchange, financial participation, recognition and barriers to getting to know women.”

    The large number of crimes committed last New Year’s Eve night raised questions about the competence of police, who were accused of covering up the refugee background of attackers and the details of the attacks, as well as not providing sufficient security…”

  22. Suicide attack vests explosion leaves 8 Taliban militants dead (khaama, Nov 28, 2016)
    http://www.khaama.com/suicide-attack-vest-explosion-leaves-8-taliban-militants-dead-02384

    “At least eight Taliban insurgents were killed in a premature explosion triggered by suicide attack vests in eastern Nangarhar province of Afghanistan.

    The Ministry of Defense of Afghanistan (MoD) said the incident took place in Ghani Khel district as the militants were busy preparing the suicide attack vests.

    MoD further added that another Taliban insurgent was also wounded in the explosion.

    The anti-government armed militant groups including the Taliban insurgents have not commented regarding the report so far.

    This is not the first time the anti-government armed militants have been killed by their own explosives.

    At least two militants were killed in an explosion triggered by own explosives in eastern Nangarhar province of Afghanistan last week.

    The anti-government armed militants including the Taliban insurgents frequently use Improvised Explosive Device (IED) as the weapon of their choice to target the security forces and government officials.

    However, in majority of such incidents the ordinary civilians are targeted besides incurring casualties to the security forces.

    Earlier, a Taliban group commander was killed in an explosion triggered by an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) planted by the group’s own fighters in northern Kunduz province of Afghanistan.”

  23. Muslim leader, 80, attacked in mosque as tensions rise between old and ‘young radicals’ (express, Nov 28, 2016)
    http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/737594/muslim-leader-attacked-in-mosque-tensions-old-young-radicals

    “AN ELDERLY Muslim leader has been attacked in a mosque amid rising tensions between older sections of the community and “young radicals”.

    The shocking CCTV footage from the Al-Ummah mosque in Amsterdam shows the 80-year-old muezzin – the person who calls the faithful to prayer five times a day – being thrown to the ground by a younger man, believed to be part of a radical Muslim group.

    According to local media, the violent attack was carried out by the son of a radical Imam whose faction tried to take over the mosque.

    A spokesman for the City of Amsterdam confirmed the incident took place on November 10.

    The muezzin has since filed a criminal complaint regarding the assault despite the alleged perpetrator believed to have fled to Morocco…”

  24. Europe on ‘BRINK OF WAR’ as Turkey gathers boats to ship migrants to Greece over EU anger (express, Nov 28, 2016)
    http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/737480/Europe-war-Turkey-migrants-Greece-EU-Erdogan

    “EUROPE is on the brink of war as Turkey gathers fleets of boats to ship 3,000 migrants a day to Greece in retaliation over the European Union’s (EU) vote to freeze accession talks.

    Greek intelligence officers have discovered the Turkish plans which they say involve thousands of dinghies and motorboats already being gathered along Turkey’s western coast.

    The analysts said Syrian migrants are preparing to board the vessels and wash up on Greek shores “within a matter of weeks”.

    National intelligence officials estimate at least 3,000 undocumented migrants could enter Greece each day under the plan…”

  25. Refugees REFUSE to live in eastern Europe: EU relocation programme branded a FARCE (express, Nov 28, 2016)
    http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/737356/eu-migrant-relocation-refugees-refuse-live-eastern-europe-lithuania

    “MIGRANTS who have settled in Lithuania under the European Union relocation plan are fleeing over claims they will starve to death in the Baltic.

    Since August 2015, more than one million migrants and refugees have entered the EU, many fleeing conflicts in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq.

    Thousands entered Italy or Greece hoping to carry on to wealthy western Europe where most want to settle and build a new life.

    But instead of making their way to Britain, Germany or Scandinavia, hundreds of refugees from the Middle East were sent to Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, among the EU’s poorest countries, under bloc rules.

    The failure of the EU relocation programme has been laid bare as it emerges 72 out of 90 Iraqis and Syrians sent to Lithuania and granted refugee status have left.

    More than half of the 63 refugees given asylum in Latvia under its EU quota have also fled, according to an estimate by the Latvian Red Cross.

    Mohamed Kamel Haj Ali, 52, once a shopkeeper in Syria, currently lives in Rukla in Lithuania.

    He said: “When we left from Turkey to Greece, our final goal was Germany or Holland.

    “But the land route from Greece was already closed, so we had no choice but to enter the relocation programme, which brought us here.”

    Under EU rules, refugees are forbidden to work or claim refuge in other member states.

    Some destroy their identity documents after leaving the Baltics, in the hope of claiming refugee status anew in richer countries like Germany.

    Refugees have left Lithuania by bus for Germany and claim living in a refugee centre is better than leaving in the Baltic state.

    Mr Haj Ali said: “The ones who left for Germany said they left Syria out of fear of death from bombs, but here they feared they would die from hunger.

    “So they took the risk and left.

    “They are satisfied living in a German refugee centre, and are receiving everything they are entitled to.”

    In the Baltic states, benefits are limited. Lithuania pays a refugee family of two parents and two children 450 euros a month for the first six months. After that payments are halved.

    Mr Ali, who has only just won refugee status, said he too planned to leave for Germany with his wife and two adult children unless he could find work and affordable housing in Lithuania before the six-month deadline when his benefits will be halved.

    By contrast, neighbouring Estonia provides free accommodation for two years in addition to financial benefits.

    Not one of its allocated 77 refugees is missing, according to Estonia’s interior ministry.

    The European Union is struggling to implement its 2015 agreement to share 160,000 refugees across 28 member states.

    Only about 7,500 have been resettled so far. Poland has refused to accept its quota of 7,000 and Slovakia has called for the scheme to be scrapped.

    Hungary has also rejected the EU plans.

    Rihards Kozlovskis, interior minister of Latvia, said: “We can’t hold them here by force.”

    Ilmars Latkovskis, head of the Latvian parliament’s Citizenship, Migration and Social Cohesion Committee, said that to make it attractive to stay, benefits would have to be boosted “to a level which would be very unpleasant for our own population, which is not that well-off”.

    Qassem, 37, a Syrian working as a translator at Latvia’s Mucenieki refugee reception centre, questioned why the EU scheme sent refugees to eastern Europe.

    The translator, who did not want to give a surname, said he knew only one other refugee with job.

    He said: “Why do you take us for relocation if you don’t have a place for us?”

    But as refugees continue attempts to reach western Europe, the European Commission sees the relocation scheme as a success and stressed there are safeguards to stop refugees from leaving their new states.

    Giedrius Sudikas, spokesman for the commission’s office in Lithuania, said: “If they move to another country, they cannot apply for work, they cannot reside there, they cannot receive benefits.

    “And if they are apprehended in another member state, they will have to be returned to the state of relocation. These are important safeguards.””