And if he doesn’t win, he can always go back to living off terrorism, so that’s ok. But in the meantime people will be happy to just hand him money to help the cause — what could be better than that?
[KhaamaPress] The leader of Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin Hekmatyar ... who used to be known in intelligence circles as The Most Evil Man in the World but who now seems merely run-of-the-mill evil... will run for president during the July 20th presidential elections.
Hekmatyar registered his name for the elections in the Independent Election Commission of Afghanistan (IEC) along with Fazal Hadi Wazin and Qazi Hafiz Ur Rehman Naqi who are going to run for First and Second Vice President in the elections.
Speaking to news hounds after registering his name as presidential runner, Hekmatyar said he will run for president from an independent address emphasizing that he is not favoring to form alliances with the other parties.
He also rejected the establishment of a federal government as well as a semi-presidential system.
In other parts of his speech, Hekmatyar slammed the government regarding the existing situation in the country and claimed that the government leadership was to blame for the ongoing violence.
So far nine candidates have registered their names for the presidential elections including Hakim Torsan, Latif Pedram, Faramuz Tamana, Enayatullah Hafiz, Mohammad Hanif Atmar, Zalmai Rasool, Noor Ul Haq Ulomi, Gulbudddin Hekmatyar and Syed Noorullah Jalili.
[PULSE.NG] Thousands demonstrated Saturday in The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...Qatar's colony in Asia Minor.... 's Kurdish-majority southeast to support a detained politician from a pro-Kurdish party who launched a hunger strike in November.
Waving flags of the pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party (HDP), they danced and flashed victory signs in Diyabakir, the main city in the region, to express solidarity with Leyla Guven.
The HDP describes Guven's condition as "life threatening."
The 55-year-old began a hunger strike on November 8 in protest at the prison conditions for Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan.
"It is our duty to add our voices to that of Leyla's," HDP's co-president Pervin Buldan told the gathering.
Ocalan is one of the founders of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) which has waged a bloody insurgency against the Ottoman Turkish state since 1984, and which is blacklisted as a terror group by Ankara and its Western allies.
He has been serving a life sentence for treason in an island prison near Istanbul since his capture in 1999.
Guven's action is aimed at pressuring the government into allowing lawyers and family members to visit Ocalan, whose brother was finally allowed to meet him in jail a week ago.
She was jugged Into the paddy wagon wit' yez! for her opposition to Turkey's military operation against a Syrian Kurdish militia that Ankara considers an offshoot of the PKK and has been in jail since January last year.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/20/2019 00:00 ||
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[IsraelTimes] Emirati paper says bigwigs were aboard plane on direct flight that flew over Saudi airspace lare last week.
The plane was transporting Israeli officials back to Tel Aviv after a secret visit to Abu Dhabi to prepare for a supposed "surprise visit" by UAE foreign minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan to Israel, the report said, citing high-level Emirati sources. The trip is set to reportedly precede a visit by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the UAE.
According to the report, the Emirati foreign minister and the head of UAE intelligence Tahnoun bin Zayed were aboard the flight to Tel Aviv.
The report further noted that Riyadh gave Abu Dhabi the "green light" for the flight, which journeyed directly from Abu Dhabi to Tel Aviv over Soddy Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face... , without stopping in Amman, Jordan as is usually the case. Jordan and Israel have a peace treaty and run direct flights between Amman and Tel Aviv.
In October 2018, a more direct sign of warming relations emerged after Netanyahu paid an official state visit to Oman to meet with Sultan Qaboos bin Said. It was the first visit by an Israeli leader in over two decades. The previous trip by an Israeli leader to Oman took place in 1996, when Shimon Peres visited.
That same month, Israel’s Culture and Sports Minister Miri Regev paid a state visit to the UAE to watch the Israeli delegation compete at the Abu Dhabi Grand Slam, which it did for the first time ever in an Arabian Gulf state under its national flag, after the UAE succumbed to pressure from international sports officials.
Her trip marked the first time a minister from Israel attended a sports event in the Gulf.
As part of the trip, Regev visited Abu Dhabi’s Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque accompanied by officials from the UAE, touring the Moslem world’s third largest house of worship, after mosques in Mecca and Medina.
The UAE and Israel do not have official diplomatic ties.
But there are still plenty clinging to the traditions of the past two generations
[IsraelTimes] Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said that it was the country’s "right" to deny entry to Israeli nationals and that it was "unfair to label him as anti-Semitic" for previous anti-Semitic remarks while criticizing the Israeli government.
Speaking on Friday evening before Oxford University’s prestigious debating chamber, the Oxford Union, Mohamad said that "a country has the right to keep its borders closed to certain people, that’s why borders are there."
His speech was met with applause from the audience.
Malaysia has banned Israeli athletes from an upcoming Paralympic swimming tournament, a move harshly criticized by Israel "shameful." Israel further called for the International Paralympic Committee to help reverse the decision or change the venue of the Kuching tournament, scheduled for July and August on the island of Borneo, a qualifying event for the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics.
"Prime Minister Mohamad is an open and unrepentant anti-Semite, accusing Jews of ’Nazi cruelty’ and seeking to wipe out all Moslems, has said ’Anti-Semitic’ is ’an invented term to prevent criticizing Jews for doing wrong’, as well as indulging in Holocaust denial. Given an opportunity to reframe his comments on a recent edition of BBC’s ’Hardtalk’, he instead chose to refer to Jews as ’hook-nosed,'" read a statement by Oxford Jewish Society President Nicole Jacobus, to Facebook.
Other Jewish groups also expressed concern over Mohamad’s invitation.
ISRAELI ATHLETES IN THE ARAB WORLD
Israeli athletes are regularly banned from competing at international sporting events in Arab and Moslem countries, or forced to compete without displaying their national symbols. A number of incidents have led to reprimands from international governing bodies and promises to reform.
Malaysia has stopped Israeli athletes from competing in a sporting event before. Two Israeli windsurfers had to pull out of a competition on the island of Langkawi after they were refused visas in 2015.
Malaysia also refused to host a conference for world soccer’s governing body FIFA in 2017 as an Israeli delegation was due to attend.
Mahathir, now 93 and in his second stint as prime minister, has in the past attracted criticism for his verbal attacks on Jews, including calling them "hook-nosed."
The previous government allowed a high-level Israeli delegation to attend a UN conference in Kuala Lumpur in 2018, sparking public anger.
[The Hill] President Trump traveled to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware on Saturday to meet with the families of four Americans who were killed in an explosion Wednesday in Syria.
Trump announced the trip early Saturday, tweeting that he would be meeting with the families of four "very special people" who died "in service" to the U.S., but offering no further details on the trip.
"Will be leaving for Dover to be with the families of 4 very special people who lost their lives in service to our Country!" Trump tweeted.
Posted by: Besoeker ||
01/20/2019 00:00 ||
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#1
The casualties:
Posted by: Neville Dark Lord of the Wee Folk7365 ||
01/20/2019 8:48 Comments ||
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#2
Gotta be the toughest part of being the president.
[Rudaw] ERBIL, Kurdistan Region ‐ A Yezidi family of four returned home and was reunited with relatives in the Kurdistan Region after nearly five years under ISIS. Eleven Yezidis have been rescued this month so far. Families and officials are pleading for international help as the battle for the last territory held by the holy warriors enters its final stage.
The family of four who were recently rescued are a mother, two daughters, and a son. They agreed to speak to media, but asked to remain anonymous as they fear for the safety of another two sons who are still held by ISIS.
"We were initially taken to djinn-infested Mosul ... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn... . They later took us to Tal Afar and from there to Syria. We were placed in Syria for four years and thankfully we are finally back in Kurdistan," said the mother.
She and her children burst into tears when they were reunited with relatives and close friends at Sharia camp in Duhok.
"We suffered a lot under ISIS. May God help others return safely," she said, using an Arabic acronym for ISIS.
Ghazal Khalaf, an elderly Yezidi woman living in the camp, urged the international community to help rescue others still held by ISIS.
"There are still thousands under them, under the enemy. We are urging all countries to give us a helping hand," Khalaf pleaded.
When ISIS attacked Shingal, it took more than 6,000 Yezidis captive ‐ mainly women and kiddies. So far, 3,342 have been freed. Another 3,117 are known to still be missing, said Hussein Qasim, of the KRG’s committee for the recognition of the genocide.
Since the beginning of January, 11 Yezidis have been rescued from ISIS and efforts are ongoing to find the rest and bring them back home safely.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have pushed ISIS into a pocket of territory on the Euphrates River valley in Syria’s Deir ez-Zor on the border with Iraq.
A Canadian member of ISIS recently captured by the SDF said that the towns still held by ISIS are very crowded as the group gets pushed into an ever smaller area.
Estimates of between 11,000 and 20,000 people have fled ISIS control since early December ‐ this includes civilians and ISIS fighters with their families.
It is not known how many Yezidis may be among the population in the battle zone. ISIS murderous Moslems were known to have brought their captives with them as they moved. Some may also be in camps among the displaced Syrians and captured ISIS.
The KRG is continuing its efforts to find the missing.
"There are plans set out and efforts underway to rescue the remaining Yezidis and our people," Hassan Qaid, in charge of the Yezidi rescue office, told Rudaw.
"Search operations are ongoing to locate others," he said.
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01/20/2019 00:00 ||
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[TheAtlantic] A two-year investigation identifies one of the very few Americans in the Islamic State’s upper ranks‐and sheds light on the dynamics of radicalization.
The clues are out there, if you know where to look. Scattered across far-flung corners of the internet, there is evidence that Zulfi Hoxha, the son of an Albanian-American pizza-shop owner from New Jersey, had sinister plans.
First there’s the defunct Twitter profile, which at one point engaged in a conversation with a State Department counter-propaganda account about the Islamic State
Continued on Page 49
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar
