Reader’s links June 26, 2017

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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

113 Replies to “Reader’s links June 26, 2017”

  1. “BLACK TRUMP SUPPORTER: I LOST MY JOB BECAUSE I DON’T SPEAK SPANISH IN AMERICA.”
    grindall61 – June 25, 2017

  2. Smuggler Bill’s Canada Blues

    Wild Bill was arrested in Canada for “smuggling hate speech” on his IPAD….here is Bill’s video report on what happened.

  3. Associated Press- WHITE HOUSE SAYS ASSAD MAY BE PREPARING CHEMICAL ATTACK

    WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House says it has found “potential” evidence that Syria is preparing for another chemical weapons attack.

    Press Secretary Sean Spicer issued an ominous statement Monday evening that says the U.S. “has identified potential preparations” for another chemical attack by the Assad government that it says “would likely result in the mass murder of civilians, including innocent children.”

    He says the activities are similar to those made before an April chemical attack. The Trump administration launched missile strikes in retaliation for that attack, which it blamed on Assad.

    Spicer warns that “if Assad conducts another mass murder attack using chemical weapons, he and his military will pay a heavy price.”

    The White House has provided no immediate evidence to back up its claims.

    http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_UNITED_STATES_SYRIA?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2017-06-26-22-03-04

    • zero hedge – U.S. Military Officials: There Was NO Chemical Weapons Attack In Syria … Trump Bombed Syria DESPITE Advice From Military

      A top U.S. missile and chemical weapons expert has documented for months that the Syrian government did not carry out a chemical weapons attack against civilians, and that contrary claims by the Trump White House, French intelligence services, the New York Times, CNN and other “mainstream” sources are wrong … and worthless propaganda.

      Former top military and intelligence officials – including many who warned against the faulty Iraq intelligence in advance of the Iraq war – have long said that the claims that Assad carried out the chemical weapons attacks was bunkum.

      Pulitzer-prize winning investigative reporter Seymour Hersh – who broke the stories of the Mai Lai massacre in Vietnam and the Iraq prison torture scandals, which rightfully disgraced the Nixon and Bush administrations’ war-fighting tactics – reported yesterday in the large German publication Weld that U.S. military officials tried to tell Trump that a chemical weapons attack never occurred at all:

      On April 6, United States President Donald Trump authorized an early morning Tomahawk missile strike on Shayrat Air Base in central Syria in retaliation for what he said was a deadly nerve agent attack carried out by the Syrian government two days earlier in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun. Trump issued the order despite having been warned by the U.S. intelligence community that it had found no evidence that the Syrians had used a chemical weapon.

      The available intelligence made clear that the Syrians had targeted a jihadist meeting site on April 4 using a Russian-supplied guided bomb equipped with conventional explosives. Details of the attack, including information on its so-called high-value targets, had been provided by the Russians days in advance to American and allied military officials in Doha, whose mission is to coordinate all U.S., allied, Syrian and Russian Air Force operations in the region.

      Some American military and intelligence officials were especially distressed by the president’s determination to ignore the evidence. “None of this makes any sense,” one officer told colleagues upon learning of the decision to bomb. “We KNOW that there was no chemical attack … the Russians are furious. Claiming we have the real intel and know the truth … I guess it didn’t matter whether we elected Clinton or Trump.“

      ***

      In a series of interviews, I learned of the total disconnect between the president and many of his military advisers and intelligence officials, as well as officers on the ground in the region who had an entirely different understanding of the nature of Syria’s attack on Khan Sheikhoun. I was provided with evidence of that disconnect, in the form of transcripts of real-time communications, immediately following the Syrian attack on April 4 [Here’s one of the transcripts]. In an important pre-strike process known as deconfliction, U.S. and Russian officers routinely supply one another with advance details of planned flight paths and target coordinates, to ensure that there is no risk of collision or accidental encounter (the Russians speak on behalf of the Syrian military). This information is supplied daily to the American AWACS surveillance planes that monitor the flights once airborne. Deconfliction’s success and importance can be measured by the fact that there has yet to be one collision, or even a near miss, among the high-powered supersonic American, Allied, Russian and Syrian fighter bombers.
      Russian and Syrian Air Force officers gave details of the carefully planned flight path to and from Khan Shiekhoun on April 4 directly, in English, to the deconfliction monitors aboard the AWACS plane, which was on patrol near the Turkish border, 60 miles or more to the north.

      ***

      A high-level meeting of jihadist leaders was to take place in the building …. Russian intelligence depicted the cinder-block building as a command and control center ….

      ***

      A senior adviser to the American intelligence community, who has served in senior positions in the Defense Department and Central Intelligence Agency, told me [that] the basement was used as storage for rockets, weapons and ammunition, as well as … chlorine-based decontaminants for cleansing the bodies of the dead before burial. The meeting place – a regional headquarters – was on the floor above.

      ***

      One reason for the Russian message to Washington about the intended target was to ensure that any CIA asset or informant who had managed to work his way into the jihadist leadership was forewarned not to attend the meeting. I was told that the Russians passed the warning directly to the CIA. “They were playing the game right,” the senior adviser said. The Russian guidance noted that the jihadist meeting was coming at a time of acute pressure for the insurgents: Presumably Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham were desperately seeking a path forward in the new political climate.

      ***

      Russian and Syrian intelligence officials, who coordinate operations closely with the American command posts, made it clear that the planned strike on Khan Sheikhoun was special because of the high-value target. “It was a red-hot change. The mission was out of the ordinary – scrub the sked,” the senior adviser told me. “Every operations officer in the region” – in the Army, Marine Corps, Air Force, CIA and NSA – “had to know there was something going on. The Russians gave the Syrian Air Force a guided bomb and that was a rarity. They’re skimpy with their guided bombs and rarely share them with the Syrian Air Force. And the Syrians assigned their best pilot to the mission, with the best wingman.” The advance intelligence on the target, as supplied by the Russians, was given the highest possible score inside the American community.

      ***

      “This was not a chemical weapons strike,” the adviser said. “That’s a fairy tale. If so, everyone involved in transferring, loading and arming the weapon – you’ve got to make it appear like a regular 500-pound conventional bomb – would be wearing Hazmat protective clothing in case of a leak. There would be very little chance of survival without such gear. Military grade sarin includes additives designed to increase toxicity and lethality. Every batch that comes out is maximized for death. That is why it is made. It is odorless and invisible and death can come within a minute. No cloud. Why produce a weapon that people can run away from?”

    • The target was struck at 6:55 a.m. on April 4, just before midnight in Washington. A Bomb Damage Assessment (BDA) by the U.S. military later determined that the heat and force of the 500-pound Syrian bomb triggered a series of secondary explosions that could have generated a huge toxic cloud that began to spread over the town, formed by the release of the fertilizers, disinfectants and other goods stored in the basement, its effect magnified by the dense morning air, which trapped the fumes close to the ground. According to intelligence estimates, the senior adviser said, the strike itself killed up to four jihadist leaders, and an unknown number of drivers and security aides. There is no confirmed count of the number of civilians killed by the poisonous gases that were released by the secondary explosions, although opposition activists reported that there were more than 80 dead, and outlets such as CNN have put the figure as high as 92. A team from Médecins Sans Frontières, treating victims from Khan Sheikhoun at a clinic 60 miles to the north, reported that “eight patients showed symptoms – including constricted pupils, muscle spasms and involuntary defecation – which are consistent with exposure to a neurotoxic agent such as sarin gas or similar compounds.” MSF also visited other hospitals that had received victims and found that patients there “smelled of bleach, suggesting that they had been exposed to chlorine.” In other words, evidence suggested that there was more than one chemical responsible for the symptoms observed, which would not have been the case if the Syrian Air Force – as opposition activists insisted – had dropped a sarin bomb, which has no percussive or ignition power to trigger secondary explosions. The range of symptoms is, however, consistent with the release of a mixture of chemicals, including chlorine and the organophosphates used in many fertilizers, which can cause neurotoxic effects similar to those of sarin.

      ***

      The adviser said … “Did the Syrians plan the attack on Khan Sheikhoun? Absolutely. Do we have intercepts to prove it? Absolutely. Did they plan to use sarin? No. But the president did not say: ‘We have a problem and let’s look into it.’ He wanted to bomb the shit out of Syria.”

      ***

      “What doesn’t occur to most Americans” the adviser said, “is if there had been a Syrian nerve gas attack authorized by Bashar, the Russians would be 10 times as upset as anyone in the West. Russia’s strategy against ISIS, which involves getting American cooperation, would have been destroyed and Bashar would be responsible for pissing off Russia, with unknown consequences for him. Bashar would do that? When he’s on the verge of winning the war? Are you kidding me?”

      ***

      Within hours of viewing the photos, the adviser said, Trump instructed the national defense apparatus to plan for retaliation against Syria. “He did this before he talked to anybody about it. The planners then asked the CIA and DIA if there was any evidence that Syria had sarin stored at a nearby airport or somewhere in the area. Their military had to have it somewhere in the area in order to bomb with it.” “The answer was, ‘We have no evidence that Syria had sarin or used it,’” the adviser said. “The CIA also told them that there was no residual delivery for sarin at Sheyrat [the airfield from which the Syrian SU-24 bombers had taken off on April 4] and Assad had no motive to commit political suicide.” Everyone involved, except perhaps the president, also understood that a highly skilled United Nations team had spent more than a year in the aftermath of an alleged sarin attack in 2013 by Syria, removing what was said to be all chemical weapons from a dozen Syrian chemical weapons depots.

      At this point, the adviser said, the president’s national security planners were more than a little rattled: “No one knew the provenance of the photographs. We didn’t know who the children were or how they got hurt. Sarin actually is very easy to detect because it penetrates paint, and all one would have to do is get a paint sample. We knew there was a cloud and we knew it hurt people. But you cannot jump from there to certainty that Assad had hidden sarin from the UN because he wanted to use it in Khan Sheikhoun.” The intelligence made clear that a Syrian Air Force SU-24 fighter bomber had used a conventional weapon to hit its target: There had been no chemical warhead.
      Hersh than notes that Trump was determined to bomb Syria in retaliation for a chemical weapons attack that never occurred. America’s top military and intelligence officials steered into him a less destructive bombing run.

      Former CIA officer Philip Giraldi confirms that American intelligence community insiders are furious that the Trump administration has twisted the intelligence so as to claim that the Syrian government carried out a chemical weapons attack. And see this.

      Unfortunately, none of this is new …

      The 2013 sarin attack in Syria, was also blamed by the U.S. on the Syrian government.

      However, the United Nations’ report on the attack did NOT blame the government, and the U.N.’s human rights investigator accused the rebels – rather than the Syrian government – of carrying out the attack.

      Moreover, high-level American and Turkish officials say that Turkey supplied Sarin gas to Syrian rebels in 2013 in order to frame the Syrian government … to provide an excuse for regime change.

      And Seymour Hersh reported that high-level American sources tell him that the Turkish government carried out the chemical weapons attacks blamed on the Syrian government.

      As Hersh noted:

      ‘We knew there were some in the Turkish government,’ a former senior US intelligence official, who has access to current intelligence, told me, ‘who believed they could get Assad’s nuts in a vice by dabbling with a sarin attack inside Syria – and forcing Obama to make good on his red line threat.’
      Indeed, it’s long been known that sarin was coming through Turkey.

      And a tape recording of top Turkish officials planning a false flag attack to be blamed on Syria as a justification for war was leaked … and confirmed by Turkey as being authentic.

      http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-26/us-military-officials-there-was-no-chemical-weapons-attack-syria-%E2%80%A6-trump-bombed-syr

      • I have always questioned the how accurate Hersh’s reports are, I can’t remember any that weren’t accurate but something about him raises the hackles on the back of my neck.

        Having said that the regular readers know that at the time of the supposed chemical attacks I questioned the claims that Assad carried them out. Which means President Trump was given band intel, or was the report leaked to Hersh the bad intel? We are living in a time when we must all play the game of second guessing the reporters and questioning if their sources are accurate or with some reporters even exist.

  4. Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism

    Today, Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube are announcing the formation of the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, which will help us continue to make our hosted consumer services hostile to terrorists and violent extremists.

    The spread of terrorism and violent extremism is a pressing global problem and a critical challenge for us all. We take these issues very seriously, and each of our companies have developed policies and removal practices that enable us to take a hard line against terrorist or violent extremist content on our hosted consumer services. We believe that by working together, sharing the best technological and operational elements of our individual efforts, we can have a greater impact on the threat of terrorist content online.

    The new forum builds on initiatives including the EU Internet Forum and the Shared Industry Hash Database; discussions with the UK government; and the conclusions of the recent G7 and European Council meetings. It will formalise and structure existing and future areas of collaboration between our companies and foster cooperation with smaller tech companies, civil society groups and academics, governments and supra-national bodies such as the EU and the UN.

    The scope of our work will evolve over time as we will need to be responsive to the ever-evolving terrorist and extremist tactics. Initially, however, our work will focus on:

    Technological solutions: our companies will work together to refine and improve existing joint technical work, such as the Shared Industry Hash Database; exchange best practices as we develop and implement new content detection and classification techniques using machine learning; and define standard transparency reporting methods for terrorist content removals.

    Research: we will commission research to inform our counter-speech efforts and guide future technical and policy decisions around the removal of terrorist content.

    Knowledge-sharing: we will work with counter-terrorism experts including governments, civil society groups, academics and other companies to engage in shared learning about terrorism. And through a joint partnership with the UN Security Council Counter-Terrorism Executive Directorate (UN CTED) and the ICT4Peace Initiative, we are establishing a broad knowledge-sharing network to:

    Engage with smaller companies: we will help them develop the technology and processes necessary to tackle terrorist and extremist content online.
    Develop best practices: we already partner with organizations such as the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Anti-Defamation League and Global Network Initiative to identify how best to counter extremism and online hate, while respecting freedom of expression and privacy. We can socialise these best practices, and develop additional shared learnings on topics such as community guideline development, and policy enforcement.
    Counterspeech: each of us already has robust counterspeech initiatives in place (e.g., YouTube’s Creators for Change, Jigsaw’s Redirect method, Facebook’s P2P and OCCI, Microsoft’s partnership with the Institute for Strategic Dialogue for counter-narratives on Bing, Twitter’s global NGO training programme). The forum we have established allows us to learn from and contribute to one another’s counterspeech efforts, and discuss how to further empower and train civil society organisations and individuals who may be engaged in similar work and support ongoing efforts such as the Civil society empowerment project (CSEP).

    We will be hosting a series of learning workshops in partnership with UN CTED/ICT4Peace in Silicon Valley and around the world to drive these areas of collaboration.

    Further information on all of the above initiatives will be shared in due course.

    https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/topics/company/2017/Global-Internet-Forum-to-Counter-Terrorism.html

    • CNN -Four of the biggest companies in tech are boosting efforts to fight extremism on their platforms.

      Twitter (TWTR, Tech30), Facebook (FB, Tech30), YouTube and Microsoft (MSFT, Tech30) have formed the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, which was announced on Monday.

      The group will share technical tools for combating extremist content, such as violent imagery and terrorist propaganda, and commission research to guide future resources. It’ll also work with academic and policy experts to learn more about terrorism.

      “It will formalize and structure existing and future areas of collaboration between our companies and foster cooperation with smaller tech companies, civil society groups and academics, governments and supra-national bodies such as the EU and the UN,” according to a statement released by Twitter (TWTR, Tech30).

      The companies previously worked together to establish the Shared Industry Hash Database, an effort that launched last year to share. The initiative looks at the unique digital fingerprints (called hashes) on terrorist photos and videos to help keep them off platforms. The new working group builds on that effort.

      Tech companies are increasingly pressed by the U.S. and European governments to do more to fight hate speech, extremism, and content that promotes terrorism.

      Following a deadly terrorist attack in London earlier this month, UK Prime Minister Theresa May said, “We cannot allow this ideology the safe space it needs to breed. Yet that is precisely what the internet and the big companies that provide internet-based services provide.”

      Facebook (FB, Tech30) recently bolstered its anti-terrorism efforts, like staffing up its counter-terrorism teams. It now has more than 150 employees dedicated to fighting terrorism, alongside automated efforts to detect extremist content.

      The group says it plans to host workshops in Silicon Valley and around the world to facilitate their new efforts.

      http://money.cnn.com/2017/06/26/technology/business/global-internet-forum-to-counter-terrorism/index.html

      yahoo news – Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, and YouTube team up to fight terrorism online

      In a move that was foreshadowed last week in a public message from YouTube, several internet giants, including Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, and YouTube, have announced the formation of the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism.

      “The spread of terrorism and violent extremism is a pressing global problem and a critical challenge for us all,” reads part of a statement posted on Twitter policy blog. “We believe that by working together, sharing the best technological and operational elements of our individual efforts, we can have a greater impact on the threat of terrorist content online.”

      Identical messages were posted on the official blogs of Facebook, Microsoft, and YouTube.

      Based on the framing of the effort, the group appears to be designed to create formal guidelines of cooperation between the online services with regard to resisting the increasingly sophisticated ways terrorists harness social media and the internet to spread their messages and recruit new followers.

      Among the specific areas of collaborative focus, the companies will work together on research (policy decisions and ways to counter terrorist speech) and technological solutions, such as the Shared Industry Hash Database, which serves as a “digital fingerprinting” system for tracking terrorist videos and images.

      The group has also pledged to work closer with governmental anti-terror agencies and highlighted a partnership with the UN Security Council Counter-Terrorism Executive Directorate (UN CTED) as well as the ICT4Peace Initiative that will result in a series of workshops in Silicon Valley.

      This new focus on self-policing comes at a particularly important moment, just weeks after a string of terrorists incidents in the UK led Prime Minister Theresa May to call for stronger internet regulation.

      By sending the signal to governments that they’re being aggressive about working together on anti-terror campaigns online, it’s likely that this new tech consortium is hoping to avoid being regulated in way that may have detrimental effects to the companies’ operations… and profits.

      The scope of our work will evolve over time as we will need to be responsive to the ever-evolving terrorist and extremist tactics,” the statement continues. “Further information on all of the above initiatives will be shared in due course.”

      https://sg.news.yahoo.com/tech/facebook-twitter-microsoft-youtube-team-182141491.html

  5. French court orders Calais officials to provide migrants with water (france24, Jun 26, 2017)
    http://www.france24.com/en/20170626-france-calais-court-orders-officials-provide-migrants-aid-water-toilets

    “An administrative court in northern France on Monday rejected a request to set up a new emergency centre to shelter migrants in the port city of Calais, but also ruled they should receive humanitarian aid.

    The court in Lille partially ruled in favour of 11 non-government organisations that lodged a legal complaint last week against local authorities who have “prevented” the distributing of food to hundreds of migrants sleeping rough in Calais.

    Judges ordered officials, within 10 days, to establish several drinking fountains, toilets and showers for migrants who are “exposed to inhuman and degrading conditions” in the area…”

  6. ‘You’re not welcome in Sweden’: row between Sweden Democrat and Moderate politician (thelocal, Jun 26, 2017)
    https://www.thelocal.se/20170626/you-are-not-welcome-in-sweden-row-between-sweden-democrat-and-moderate-politicians

    “A row erupted after a senior Swedish Democrat tweeted that politician Kahin Ahmed, who wrote that the party’s anti-immigration ideology had no place in the suburbs, was “not welcome in Sweden”.

    Ahmed, a representative of the Moderate party in the Rinkeby/Kista suburb north of Stockholm, criticized organizers of the Järva politics festival in the area for inviting Jimmie Åkesson, the leader of the Sweden Democrat party, as one of the speakers along with Sweden’s other party leaders.

    “It would have been better had they applied our suburb’s anti-racist ideology which is based on the fact that racist parties do not belong in the suburbs,” he wrote in an opinion piece on Nyheter24.

    Referring to a series of previous statements by high-profile Sweden Democrats, including that Sami people and Jews can’t be considered true Swedes if they don’t “assimilate”, Ahmed continued: “This is racism which does not belong in a democratic society, and therefore does not belong in Järva either.”

    The opinion piece carried the headline “You are not welcome in the suburbs, Jimmie Åkesson!”

    “And you are not welcome in Sweden, Kahin Ahmed!” tweeted Sweden Democrat party secretary Richard Jomshof on Friday, sparking a debate which lasted throughout the weekend in Sweden.

    Ahmed said he had received threats after Jomshof’s tweet.

    “I have lived here for 26 years. I have a master’s in sociology and I have worked and paid taxes for 18 years. It is a scandal that a party secretary of a party in parliament attacks a citizen like this. That I should not be able to express my opinions without being confronted with this hatred is frightening,” he told the Aftonbladet tabloid.

    Jomshof defended his comments in an interview with the Dagens Nyheter newspaper.

    “He clearly does not understand how Swedish democracy works and writes an opinion piece that contains errors. It is rather provocative, includes insults and lies. I think it is rather cheeky that a person who comes to Sweden tries to tell Swedes how to live their lives,” he said.

    “I think it is quite provocative that an individual tries to stop a parliamentary party to convey its message on various issues. If you don’t understand how Swedish democracy works, perhaps you should think about what you are doing in Sweden at all.”

    “It is provocative when someone who isn’t Swedish comes to Sweden and tries to restrict Swedish freedom of expression,” he added. Asked if he did not consider someone who has lived in the country for 26 years Swedish, he said: “No, I don’t think he is Swedish.”

    “I’m trying to show how unreasonable his writing is by using the same choice of words.”

    The row between a Sweden Democrat and a Moderate politician put further pressure on Moderate party leader Anna Kinberg Batra, who earlier this year appeared to open the door to increased cooperation with the other party, and several called for her to strongly denounce Jomshof’s comments about her colleague.

    “In Sweden there’s freedom of expression for everyone, even when you disagree. Wanting to throw somebody out for their opinion on the other hand, does not belong here,” she tweeted on Sunday.

    Many criticized both representatives, arguing that both Jomshof and Ahmed were wrong…”

  7. SVP calls for a vote on ending Swiss-EU freedom of movement (thelocal, Jun 26, 2017)
    https://www.thelocal.ch/20170626/svp-calls-for-an-end-to-free-movement-of-people-deal-with-eu

    “The right-wing Swiss People’s Party (SVP) has called for a vote on ending the Swiss-EU agreement for free movement of people.

    Delegates from the party on Saturday gave the green light for a referendum on overturning the agreement.

    The initiative will be launched by the end of 2017, the party said in a statement, though there are two possible variants of the vote.

    Either it will call simply for the termination of Switzerland’s agreement of free movement with the EU, or it will call for immigration to be a national matter – effectively putting an end to any future agreements as well as the current one.

    SVP National Councillor Marco Chiesa said party members should “not to afraid to be categorized as ‘populist'” and added: “They will try to portray us in a bad light, to scare the population.”

    He said that his native region, Italian-speaking Ticino, had suffered from an “emergency in the ruined labour market” due to free movement of people. Tensions have risen in the region between locals and cross-border workers, and in September 2016 an SVP initiative called for companies to give Swiss workers preference over foreigners.

    The vote will be planned by the SVP together with anti-immigration body, the Association for an Independent and Neutral Switzerland (AUNS), whose members voted unanimously in May to develop an initiative aimed at ending Swiss-EU free movement…”

  8. 8 Chad soldiers killed in clashes with Boko Haram (ahram, Jun 26, 2017)
    http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/2/9/271618/World/International/-Chad-soldiers-killed-in-clashes-with-Boko-Haram.aspx

    “Eight Chadian soldiers were killed in fierce fighting with Boko Haram insurgents at the weekend on islands on Lake Chad, the army said Monday.

    “Our forces attacked Boko Haram elements on five islands near Nigeria on June 24 and 25,” said Chad army spokesman Colonel Azem, indicating eight soldiers had died and another 18 were wounded.

    He also claimed troops had killed 162 jihadists from the Nigeria-based group, and destroyed six vehicles along with many of the motorcycles often favoured by Boko Haram fighters in their raids.

    Chad is part of a five-nation regional force — also comprising Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger and Benin — fighting Boko Haram, which is blamed for killing at least 20,000 people and leaving another 2.6 million homeless.

    Chad’s President Idriss Deby threatened on Sunday to pull the country’s troops out of peacekeeping operations in Africa because of a lack of foreign financial support.

    Chad has contributed the third-largest contingent to MINUSMA, the UN peacekeeping mission deployed in Mali in response to Islamist insurgency, with 1,390 soldiers…”

  9. Turkey rails against ‘Islamophobic’ videogames (ansamed, Jun 26, 2017)
    http://www.ansamed.info/ansamed/en/news/nations/turkey/2017/06/26/turkey-rails-against-islamophobic-videogames_0acbc993-63e9-4d7e-8a47-8f44d4d8fc95.html

    “A black list of allegedly Islamophobic games has been released by the Youth and Sports Ministry, which has set up a website to denounce the ”harmful” videogames and urge users to report others.

    Some of the games mentioned are Call of Duty, Tekken, Guitar Hero and Resident Evil.

    ”Foreign games that include Islamophobia, sexuality and violence are part of the harmful material in the sector. We are trying to raise awareness on the issue among families, the young, teachers and students,” director of the ministry’s research commission on the matter Huzeyfe Yilmaz said in Parliament, according to Milliyet.

    PacMan is on the list as well, which had previously been accused of being based on the idea of ”collecting veiled Muslim women”. Ministry data show that the sector has a turnover of about 600 million dollars in Turkey, with 25 million users spending a combined 39 million hours per day on videogames.”

  10. The Fault Lines of Europe Run Through London

    William Holland

    It is becoming clear to anyone with even a modicum of political insight that London remains the epicenter when considering the mounting challenges enveloping the continent. Every night for over a week, Islamists continue their nightly rampage through Jewish towns in London’s Stamford Hill-Golders Green section. The government does nothing. May’s Premiership is dysfunctional and the neoliberal model that characterized so much of England’s economic success is no longer. We’re in terra incognita; an edge vaunting toward collapse that aggravates polities. By any measure, we’re in for a long hard slog.

    While London burns, it remains deeply divided over how best to address its self inflicted wounds. British socialists throughout either chamber cannot acknowledge Thatchers achievements, for they never believed in market based solutions or privatization, deregulation or tax reduction. The fatal conceit continues all the same. Not even having London remain the center of globalization provides relief. Who will emerge to master England’s terra incognita? Theresa May?

    http://affluentinvestor.com/2017/06/fault-lines-europe-run-london/