Reader’s links for March 30 2017

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About Eeyore

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

103 Replies to “Reader’s links for March 30 2017”

  1. Belgium: Three Kurds stabbed outside Turkish Embassy in Brussels – reports

    Dozens of demonstrators gathered outside the Turkish Embassy in Brussels, Thursday, after reports emerged that three ethnic Kurds had been stabbed outside the building.

  2. UK – Men charged with sexual offences after police raids in Banbury and Birmingham

    Ten men have been charged with rape and other offences following police raids and arrests in Banbury and Birmingham on Tuesday and yesterday, Wednesday.

    The arrests were carried out as part of Operation Nautical – an investigation into non-recent child sexual exploitation in Oxfordshire. A total of 56 charges have been brought.

    The following men were all charged yesterday and remanded in custody to appear at Oxford Magistrates’ Court this morning, Thursday.

    The charges are as follows:

    > Leon Cole, 19, of Alma Road, Banbury was charged with two counts of rape of a girl aged 13 to 15, one count of rape of a woman 16 years or over, two counts of aiding and abetting to procure the rape of a girl aged 13 to 15, one count of false imprisonment, one count of intimidating a witness, one count of sexual assault and one count of an offender under 18 inciting a girl aged 13 to 15 to engage in sexual activity.

    > Ateeq Hussain, 23, Avenue Road, Banbury, was charged with five counts of rape of a girl aged 13 to 15 and one count of an offender under 18 inciting a girl aged 13 to 15 to engage in sexual activity.

    > Qamran Hafiz, 24, of Danesmoor, Banbury was charged with 11 counts of rape of a girl aged 13 to 15 and one count of an offender under 18 inciting a girl aged 13 to 15 to engage in sexual activity.

    > Ahsan Raza, 19, of Churchill Road, Birmingham, was charged with four counts of rape of a girl aged 13 to 15, one count of false imprisonment and one count of an offender under 18 inciting a girl aged 13 to 15 to engage in sexual activity.

    > Abdul Safraz, 31, of Deacon Way, Banbury was charged with three counts of rape of a girl aged 13 to 15.

    > Nasser Younis, 37, of Sandford Green, Banbury, was charged with six counts of rape of a girl aged 13 to 15 and one count of taking an indecent photograph of a child.

    > Tafail Mohammed, 24, of East Close, Banbury was charged with one count of rape of a girl aged 13 to 15.

    > Marcelo Suarez, 20, of Hillside Close, Banbury, was charged with one count of rape of a woman 16 years of age or over.

    Two men were also charged yesterday in connection with the investigation and will appear at Oxford Magistrates’ Court on May 2. They are:

    > Amir Arfi, 23, of no fixed abode, was charged with six counts of rape of a girl aged 13 to 15 and one count of an offender under 18 causing/inciting a girl aged 13 to 15 to engage in sexual activity.

    > Atique Akhtar, 23, of no fixed abode, was charged with four counts of rape of a girl aged 13 to 15.

    http://www.banburyguardian.co.uk/news/men-charged-with-sexual-offences-after-police-raids-in-banbury-and-birmingham-1-7891773

  3. New York Times Reveals Names of Officials Who Helped Nunes Obtain Intelligence Reports

    WaPo – Things just went from bad to worse for Devin Nunes and the White House

    Devin Nunes has some explaining to do.

    The New York Times just reported that two White House officials helped provide Nunes with information that President Trump and his associates had been swept up in legal surveillance, just before Nunes briefed Trump himself and then disclosed some of the information to the media and to the House Intelligence Committee that he chairs.

    The Times’ sources identified the officials as Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the senior director for intelligence at the National Security Council, and Michael Ellis, national security lawyer in the Office of White House Counsel:

    The officials said that earlier this month, shortly after Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter about being wiretapped on the orders of President Barack Obama, Mr. Cohen-Watnick began reviewing highly classified reports detailing the intercepted communications of foreign officials.

    Officials said the reports consisted primarily of ambassadors and other foreign officials talking about how they were trying to develop contacts within Mr. Trump’s family and inner circle in advance of his inauguration.

    But there’s a problem: This conflicts with what Nunes has apparently said about his source or sources. He has declined to name them, but he and a spokesman have reportedly said and/or strongly suggested it wasn’t White House staff.

    Nunes reportedly told Bloomberg’s Eli Lake in an interview Monday “that his source was not a White House staffer and was an intelligence official,” Lake wrote.

    A Nunes spokesman, Jack Langer, also told the Los Angeles Times that it wasn’t a White House staffer, the Times reported.

    And Nunes again appeared to deny meeting with any White House aides in a Monday afternoon interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer:

    BLITZER: In addition going to that secure room to look over these documents, do you have other meetings at the White House? Did you meet with the president or any of his aides while you were there that night?

    NUNES: No. And in fact, I’m quite sure that people in the West Wing had no idea I was there.

    It wasn’t just Nunes’s team. White House press secretary Sean Spicer, who hasn’t detailed Nunes’s visit to the White House last week, cited Nunes’s comments to Bloomberg on Monday. “He has said, from my understanding on the record, that he did not meet with White House staff,” Spicer said.

    And Spicer last week suggested strongly that he doubted it was the White House that provided the information. “I don’t know why he would brief the speaker, then come down here to brief us on something that we would’ve briefed him on,” Spicer said. “It doesn’t really seem to make a ton of sense. So, I’m not aware of it. But it doesn’t really pass the smell test.”

    Nunes hasn’t said much about his sourcing, but he has certainly suggested the only reason that he was on the White House grounds is because the information happened to be there and that it wasn’t something that was fed to him by parties interested in confirming Trump’s evidence-free claim that he was under surveillance during the 2016 election. The Times’ report seriously calls that into question.

    We can perhaps expect Nunes to quibble with the definition of a “White House staffer” or what constitutes “any of [Trump’s] aides.” Maybe he’ll argue that the National Security Council is a separate entity. But Ellis works in the White House counsel’s office, so he’s clearly a White House staffer and an aide to the president. His official title is “special assistant to the president.”

    And if he and/or Cohen-Watnick played any role in providing information to Nunes, the denials above would be highly misleading, at best.

    Spicer declined to comment on the Times report Thursday afternoon, saying he didn’t want to lend credence to any of its details.

    Langer took the same line in response to my questions to him: “As he’s stated many times, Chairman Nunes will not confirm or deny speculation about his source’s identity, and he will not respond to speculation from anonymous sources.”

    The Times’ report will make that line much more difficult to hold.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/03/30/things-just-went-from-bad-to-worse-for-devin-nunes-and-the-white-house/

    NYT – 2 White House Officials Helped Give Nunes Intelligence Reports

    WASHINGTON — A pair of White House officials played a role in providing Representative Devin Nunes of California, a Republican and the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, with the intelligence reports that showed that President Trump and his associates were incidentally swept up in foreign surveillance by American spy agencies.

    The revelation that White House officials assisted in the disclosure of the intelligence reports — which Mr. Nunes then discussed with President Trump — is likely to fuel criticism that the intelligence chairman has been too eager to do the bidding of the Trump administration while his committee is supposed to be conducting an independent investigation of Russia’s meddling in the last presidential election.

    Mr. Nunes has also been faulted by his congressional colleagues for sharing the information with President Trump before consulting with other members of the intelligence committee.

    The congressman has refused to identify his sources, saying he needed to protect them so others would feel safe coming to the committee with sensitive information. He disclosed the existence of the intelligence reports on March 22, and in his public comments he has described his sources as whistle-blowers trying to expose wrongdoing at great risk to themselves.

    Several current American officials identified the White House officials as Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the senior director for intelligence at the National Security Council, and Michael Ellis, a lawyer who works on national security issues at the White House Counsel’s Office and formerly worked on the staff of the House Intelligence Committee.

    A White House spokesperson declined to comment.

    Mr. Cohen-Watnick is a former Defense Intelligence Agency official who was originally brought to the White House by Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser. The officials said that this month, shortly after Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter about being wiretapped on the orders of President Barack Obama, Mr. Cohen-Watnick began reviewing highly classified reports detailing the intercepted communications of foreign officials.

    Officials said the reports consisted primarily of ambassadors and other foreign officials talking about how they were trying to develop contacts within Mr. Trump’s family and inner circle in advance of his inauguration.

    The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the intelligence and to avoid angering Mr. Cohen-Watnick and Mr. Ellis. Officials say Mr. Cohen-Watnick has been reviewing the reports from his fourth-floor office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, where the National Security Council is based.

    But the officials’ description of the intelligence is in line with Mr. Nunes’s own characterization of the material, which he has said was not related to the Russia investigations when he disclosed its existence in a hastily arranged news conference.

    According to Mr. Nunes, he received a phone call from a source the night before, and then rushed to meet the person on the grounds of the White House. He has explained the choice of location by saying he needed access to a secure place where people with security clearances could legally view classified information, though such facilities can also be found in the Capitol building and at other locations across Washington.

    The next day, Mr. Nunes gave a news briefing at the Capitol and then returned to the White House to brief President Trump on the information.

    Mr. Nunes and Representative Adam Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the committee, have held dueling news conferences in the days since Mr. Nunes’s revelations, fueling criticism that the committee is unable to conduct a serious, bipartisan investigation.

    The chaotic situation prompted the leaders of the Senate intelligence committee, which is running its own investigation, to state bluntly on Wednesday that their work had nothing to do with the House inquiry. And television news programs have been dominated by arguments about whether the incidental intelligence gathering of Mr. Trump and his associates was the real issue, or simply a distraction from the Russia investigations.

    Mr. Nunes has acknowledged that the incidental intelligence gathering on Trump associates last year was not necessarily unlawful. American intelligence agencies typically monitor foreign officials of allied and hostile countries, and they routinely sweep up communications linked to Americans who may be taking part in the conversation or are being spoken about.

    The real issue, Mr. Nunes has said, was that he could figure out the identities of Trump associates from reading reports about intercepted communications that were shared among Obama administration officials with top security clearances. He said some Trump associates were also identified by name in the reports. Normally, intelligence agencies mask the identities of American citizens who are incidentally present in intercepted communications.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/30/us/politics/devin-nunes-intelligence-reports.html

    • zero hedge – NY Times Outs White House Sources Who Provided Intel Reports To Nunes

      In the latest development surrounding last week’s announcement by Devin Nunes, according to which President Trump and his associates were incidentally swept up in foreign surveillance by American spy agencies, the NYT reports that the pair of White House officials who played a role in providing Nunes with the intelligence reports behind his claim, have been identified.

      The NYT has outed the Nunes sources, who it claims are Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the senior director for intelligence at the National Security Council, and Michael Ellis, a lawyer who works on national security issues at the White House Counsel’s Office and formerly worked on the staff of the House Intelligence Committee.

      As reported previously, Nunes had refused to identify his sources, saying he needed to protect them so others would feel safe coming to the committee with sensitive information. He first disclosed the existence of the intelligence reports on March 22, and in his public comments he has described his sources as whistle-blowers trying to expose wrongdoing at great risk to themselves.

      Amusingly, the NYT adds that “the officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the intelligence, and to avoid angering Mr. Cohen-Watnick and Mr. Ellis.”

      In other words, the US has devolved to the point where one set of anonymous sources is doxxing another set of anonymous sources in the pursuit of a political agenda.

      Cohen-Watnick is a former Defense Intelligence Agency official who was originally brought to the White House by Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser. The officials said that earlier this month, shortly after Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter about being wiretapped on the orders of President Barack Obama, Mr. Cohen-Watnick began reviewing highly classified reports detailing the intercepted communications of foreign officials.

      Some further background on Cohen-Watnick from forward.com:

      President Donald Trump reportedly overruled a decision by National Security Adviser Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster in order to keep a Jewish National Security Council aide in his current position. Trump overruled the decision on Sunday after Cohen-Watnick, 30, appealed to White House advisers Stephen Bannon and Jared Kushner, Trump’s Jewish son-in-law, Politico reported

      McMaster had told Ezra Cohen-Watnick, senior director for intelligence programs at the NSC, that he would be moved to a different position at the NSC after CIA officials had pushed for his ouster, according to Politico.

      A Washington consultant told Politico that Cohen-Watnick and Flynn “saw eye to eye about the failings of the CIA human intelligence operations,” and that the “CIA saw him as a threat, so they tried to unseat him and replace him with an agency loyalist.

      Additionally, the NYT adds, that the intel reports consisted primarily of ambassadors and other foreign officials talking about how they were trying to develop contacts within Mr. Trump’s family and inner circle in advance of his inauguration.

      Cohen-Watnick has allegedly been reviewing the reports from his fourth-floor office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, where the National Security Counsel is based.

      Perhaps more importantly, the NYT sources say the description of the intelligence is in line with Mr. Nunes’s own characterization of the material, which he has said was not related to the Russia investigations when he first disclosed its existence in a hastily arranged news conference on March 22.

      It was not immediately clear if now that the identity of the Nunes sources has been revealed, whether Nunes will make the contents of the confidential documents public.

      http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-03-30/ny-times-outs-white-house-sources-who-provided-intel-reports-nunes

    • bloomberg -White House Invites Lawmakers to View Surveillance Documents

      The Trump administration invited leaders of congressional intelligence panels to review documents it said raise questions about whether government spy agencies improperly identified President Donald Trump’s campaign officials and associates in the course of routine foreign surveillance.

      In a letter signed by White House Counsel Donald McGahn, the administration said Thursday it was responding to a March 15 request from intelligence committees for “documents necessary to determine whether information collected on U.S. persons was mishandled and leaked.” It asks the committees to probe whether the intelligence was properly gathered, whether names were improperly revealed and “to the extent that U.S. citizens were subject to such surveillance, were civil liberties violated?”

      White House press secretary Sean Spicer announced the invitation during a briefing with reporters in Washington Thursday, shortly after the New York Times reported that two White House officials had provided House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes with reports showing that Trump and his associates were named incidentally by U.S. spy agencies monitoring foreign officials.

      The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Adam Schiff, said he’s willing to review the material but questioned the administration’s motives, saying officials may be trying to disseminate information that helps Trump’s case. “I hope they’ll have some kind of explanation for why they chose this path,” Schiff told reporters at the Capitol.

      Deflecting Questions

      The administration has been deflecting questions about Russian meddling in the presidential election by focusing on leaks of classified materials and, more recently, Trump’s allegations that his predecessor may have spied on him and his aides before and after the election. The spying claims and the leaks have become prominent sidelights to a broader investigation by the FBI and congressional intelligence committees into Russia’s campaign to disrupt U.S. politics and whether anyone close to Trump colluded with Russia.

      At a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Thursday, several experts testified that Russia’s efforts began as early as 2008 and peaked during last year’s election. The moves included propagation of false news stories and the hacking of Democratic Party computer systems followed by the release of emails. Clint Watts, former FBI agent who is now a national security expert at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, said other targets were prominent Republicans, including House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senator Marco Rubio, a member of the intelligence panel.

      Rubio of Florida said Thursday that staff members on his presidential campaign were unsuccessfully targeted in July 2016 by hackers using an address in Russia and that former campaign aides were again targeted on Wednesday.

      Inquiry in Turmoil

      The House Intelligence Committee’s inquiry was thrown into turmoil when Nunes, a California Republican, last week held a news conference to outline material he said suggested some names of Trump associates were incidentally revealed during legal surveillance of foreign sources. He then went to the White House to brief Trump while refusing to share the information with other members of the committee. After repeated questions about how he got the material, Nunes said on March 27 that he met a source on the White House grounds.

      Democrat Schiff, also of California, has called for Nunes to step aside from the investigation and accused him of doing the president’s bidding. Schiff said Thursday he is “more than willing” to go to the White House to review the material being offered but that the committee’s broader investigation must continue.

      “This is not going to distract us from doing our Russia investigation,” Schiff said, adding that the White House action “raises profound questions.”

      He said he didn’t know whether the material being offered is the same as the documents that were viewed by Nunes.

      Nunes has refused to say who showed him the material, and Spicer has said he didn’t know the identity of Nunes’ source. The New York Times, citing unnamed U.S. officials, reported Thursday that Nunes was shown the material by Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the senior director for intelligence at the National Security Council, and Michael Ellis, who works at the White House Counsel’s Office and previously worked on the House Intelligence Committee staff.

      Cohen-Watnick was an aide brought into the White House by Michael Flynn, who was fired as national security adviser in February after Trump concluded Flynn had given misleading information about contacts with Russian officials.

      ‘Smart Move’

      “Our view was that the smart move was to make all the materials available to the chairman and the ranking member of the relevant committees,” Spicer said Thursday. “We want them to look into this, as we have maintained all along — that I think there’s a belief that the president has maintained — that there was surveillance that occurred during the 2016 election that was improper.”

      Nunes has said, and the Times said it confirmed, that the material isn’t related to the investigation into Russian attempts to influence the election, nor did it necessarily show any illegal surveillance of U.S. citizens.

      While the House investigation has been stymied by the dispute over the material shown to Nunes, the Senate Intelligence Committee is proceeding with its own investigation. Panel Chairman Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican, vowed that the probe won’t be politicized.

      “The public deserves to hear the truth about possible Russian involvement in our elections,” Burr said.

      Virginia Senator Mark Warner, the committee’s top Democrat, echoed that sentiment, but also expressed concern about what he called Trump’s “wild and uncorroborated accusations” that then-President Barack Obama ordered Trump Tower wiretapped and about Trumps intermittent attacks on intelligence agencies.

      https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-03-30/white-house-says-intelligence-panels-can-see-surveillance-data

  4. CNN – Witness’ blistering words about Trump

    Clint Watts, senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, says President Trump used active Russian measures against his opponents during the 2016 election.

  5. “The 42 Christians who were accused of lynching two Muslims in Pakistan have reportedly been told they will be acquitted if they convert to Islam.

    The group have been charged with murdering two men after suicide blasts targeted two churches in the heavily Christian area of Youhanabad, Lahore, in March 2015.

    They were allegedly told their acquittal was ‘guaranteed’ if they renounced Christianity – despite one of the accused insisting he would rather be hanged that convert.”
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4363714/42-Christians-accused-murder-told-convert-Islam.html

    Two Muslims got to have houri
    For the justice of taking a life.
    Christians of two and forty
    Must revert or submit to the knife.

    • Youhanabad lynching: Christian suspects asked to convert in return for release (tribune, Mar 30, 2017)
      https://tribune.com.pk/story/1369066/youhanabad-lynching-christian-suspects-asked-convert-return-release/

      “A prosecutor has reportedly asked members of a minority community facing trial in an anti-terrorism court over lynching of two men that he ‘can guarantee their acquittal’ if they renounce their faith and embrace Islam, rights activists claim.

      Some 42 Christians have been charged with lynching the two men after twin suicide blasts targeting a Sunday Mass in two churches in the Christian neighbourhood of Youhanabad in Lahore on March 15, 2015.

      14 dead, 75 injured in attack on Lahore’s Christian community

      Violent protests erupted after the blasts, with a mob lynching the two men, suspecting them of involvement in the blasts.

      “Taking advantage of their presence at ATC-1 Lahore, Deputy District Public Prosecutor Syed Anees Shah gathers the accused outside the courtroom and asks them to embrace Islam,” said Joseph Franci, a rights activist who was involved in providing legal assistance to the accused in the case. “He asks them if they embrace Islam, he can guarantee them their acquittal in this case,” Joseph said.

      The activist said they [the accused] remained silent and were dumbfounded and added that one, Irfan Masih, had spoken out and said that he was ready to be hanged if he embraced Islam.

      8 Youhanabad lynching suspects arrested

      Naseeb Anjum Advocate, counsel for some of the accused, told The Express Tribune said that the public prosecutor’s offer was not new and added that he had also given this offer to some of the accused about six months back but they simply ignored it.

      “They [lawyers] believe in independence of the court, but why is the DDPP blackmailing them?”

      “The government should get rid of such elements that bring bad name to the state by such acts.”

      Syed Anees Shah, when contacted, at first said that he did not ask them to embrace Islam, but conceded that he offered them a choice when he was told that the accused have video recording of what he said. Later, he disconnected the call in an attempt to avoid discussing the issue.”

  6. Austria warns Turkish minority of crackdown risk in Turkey (thelocal, Mar 30, 2017)
    https://www.thelocal.at/20170330/austria-warns-turkish-minority-of-crackdown-risk-if-travelling-to-turkey

    “Austria has warned its large Turkish minority about travelling to Turkey after a number were apparently caught up in a crackdown against suspected opponents of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

    “Recently there have been sporadic cases of Austrian citizens being temporarily arrested, held up as well as rejected on arrival (in Turkey),” according to the warning on the Austrian foreign ministry website.

    It said that this happened “without there being any known concrete accusations being made by the Turkish authorities. In some cases Turkish authorities analysed mobile phones”.

    The travel advice, updated on Wednesday, does not explicitly mention Austria’s 360,000-strong Turkish minority, most of whom have Austrian citizenship.

    However it follows a purge in Turkey of suspected opponents of Erdogan in the wake of last July’s failed coup attempt.

    According to prominent opposition Austrian lawmaker Peter Pilz, there are at least 10 recent cases of Austrian passport-holders being held on arrival in Turkey for up to 72 hours…”

  7. Parliamentary system ‘cannot keep pace’ with Turkey’s growth: PM Y?ld?r?m (hurriyetdailynews, Mar 30, 2017)
    http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/parliamentary-system-cannot-keep-pace-with-turkeys-growth-pm-yildirim.aspx?pageID=238&nID=111439&NewsCatID=338

    “Prime Minister Binali Y?ld?r?m on March 30 said the current parliamentary system “cannot keep pace with Turkey’s economic growth,” necessitating the shift to an executive presidential system.

    “Why are we doing those [constitutional amendments]? Because this dual-headedness is making us lose time and delaying the resolution of problems. Our development is slowing down and our achievements are unfortunately slipping away from our hands one by one. The current system cannot keep pace with Turkey’s economic growth. It causes the country to waste its time and energy,” Y?ld?r?m told a rally in the northwestern province of Edirne ahead of the April 16 referendum on constitutional amendments to shift to an executive presidency.

    “If one party cannot reach power in a single-party government, the government cannot be formed in any way other than discussions, discussions, discussions. The work of the country is left half-finished and we lose time,” he added.

    Y?ld?r?m also stated that “powerful and stable governance” would bring security and economic growth, slamming previous coalition governments for creating “political and economic crises.”

    “If we want to raise Turkey to a more stable, predictable and investible position, we have to pass this amendment,” he added….”

  8. Terrorists to have no relief: President Erdo?an (hurriyetdailynews, Mar 30, 2017)

    “Members of terrorist organizations will no longer have any relief in Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an said March 30 during an opening ceremony in the southeastern province of Mardin which has suffered through months of curfews amid battles between the government and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

    “From now on, no matter which organization they are affiliated with, no terrorist will have relief. They will either retreat from this wrong path that they embarked upon and surrender, or they will leave this country. Otherwise, we will throw them out of our country with our police, soldiers and village guards,” Erdo?an said in Mardin on March 30…”

  9. Boko Haram faction seeks grassroots support in NE Nigeria (gulfnews, Mar 30, 2017)
    http://gulfnews.com/news/africa/nigeria/boko-haram-faction-seeks-grassroots-support-in-ne-nigeria-1.2003049

    “A Boko Haram faction led by the son of the group’s founder is trying to win over civilians by shunning the indiscriminate violence of its longtime figurehead that has alienated locals.

    Eyewitnesses to a spate of recent raids attributed to Islamist fighters loyal to Abu Musab Al-Barnawi in northeast Nigeria have said they repeatedly told villagers they would not be harmed.

    Others say mass violence has been reduced in parts of the northern Borno state around Lake Chad now controlled by Barnawi and Mamman Nur, his right-hand man who is seen by some as the real leader.

    But experts tracking the eight-year conflict said it might be a calculated tactic purely to win support…”

  10. Belgian region’s plan to ban ritual slaughter upsets religious minorities (gulfnews, Mar 30, 2017)
    http://gulfnews.com/news/europe/belgian-region-s-plan-to-ban-ritual-slaughter-upsets-religious-minorities-1.2003320

    “The Muslim and Jewish communities in Flanders have criticised a proposal by the Belgian region to ban the unstunned slaughter of small animals, which they say would contravene their rules for ritual killing.

    Under the draft law, animals like sheep and poultry will have to be stunned electrically before being killed, which most animal rights campaigners say is more humane than the Islamic halal and Jewish kosher rituals. Both require that butchers swiftly slaughter the animal by slitting its throat and draining the blood.

    “Unstunned slaughter is outdated,” Ben Weyts, regional minister of animal welfare, said in a statement. “In a civilised society, it is our duty to avoid animal suffering where possible.” The bill has broad support in the predominantly Catholic region, and the opposition from Flanders’ religious minorities illustrates the difficulties facing some European countries as they struggle to integrate immigrant populations…”

  11. Germany deporting more ‘potential attackers’ after Berlin attack (gulfnews, Mar 30, 2017)
    http://gulfnews.com/news/europe/germany/germany-deporting-more-potential-attackers-after-berlin-attack-1.2003315

    “Germany has deported 10 potential attackers since January as part of a tougher approach towards failed asylum seekers and other foreigners it deems dangerous after one of them killed 12 people at a Berlin market, security sources said on Thursday.

    Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere and other top officials have been pushing for quicker deportations of those denied asylum, while working with Morocco, Tunisia and other countries to speed up the repatriation process…”

  12. Russian military team gets rare glimpse into North Waziristan (tribune, Mar 30, 2017)
    https://tribune.com.pk/story/1369949/first-russian-military-delegation-shown-around-north-waziristan/

    “In an unprecedented development, Pakistan Army on Thursday took a Russian military delegation – headed by Deputy Chief of General Staff Colonel General Israkov Sergi Yuryevich – to Miramshah, the administrative headquarters of North Waziristan Agency, in order to give them the firsthand account of the country’s anti-terror gains.

    This is the first time a Russian military delegation has been flown to the region, which used to be considered a magnet for local and foreign militants before they were routed in a massive military operation, codenamed Zarb-e-Azb, in 2014. The development suggests warming up of ties between the two countries, which had remained bitter rivals during the Cold War…”

  13. Germany: Turkish spy list may be deliberate provocation (abcnews, Mar 30, 2017)
    http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/germany-turkish-spy-list-deliberate-provocation-46467135

    “Germany’s interior minister said Thursday that Turkey’s intelligence agency may have given its German counterpart a list of suspected supporters of a U.S.-based cleric to “provoke us in some way.”

    Last month, Turkey’s MIT agency handed German intelligence a list of some 300 alleged supporters of Fethullah Gulen thought to be living in Germany, among them reportedly a German lawmaker.

    Officials have said Turkey asked the Germans to put those people under surveillance.

    Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere told ZDF television that he suspected the move may have been intended to weigh on Turkish-German relations, “to provoke us in some way.” He said he didn’t believe it was meant as a contribution to anti-terrorist reconnaissance…”

  14. UK: Watch moment Saudi General gives the FINGER to protesters

    Saudi military spokesperson Brigadier General Ahmed Asiri gave the middle finger to activists led by Quaker activist Sam Walton. The protester had attempted to place him under citizen’s arrest for his role in the Saudi-led airstrikes on Yemen, ahead of an appearance at a think-tank forum in London on Thursday.

    Footage from the attempt shows Walton trying to get a hold of General Asiri, before the spokesperson enters the building and the activist is forced away by General Asiri’s bodyguards. As he enters, Asiri is seen being hit with an egg, after which he turns and raises his middle finger.

    Saudi Arabia began the airstrike campaign in March 2015 to support the ousted President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi and to combat groups who oppose Hadi’s rule. Casualty figures have exceeded 10,200 people since the beginning of the conflict, with a reported 40,000 injured and more than three million people displaced.

    • Under the law ins several of the states the protester who grabbed the man by the coat could have been arrested for common assault. Too bad that the Brit Police didn’t do that.