[AnNahar] Greek authorities say they are planning a major extension of a wall along the country's border with The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the occupiers of Greek Asia Minor... and are seeking European Union ...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing... financial support for the additional construction.
Notis Mitarachi, the migration affairs minister, said the steel wall would be extended from 40 to 120 kilometers (25 to 75 miles), with construction work due to start later this year.
"It is a government decision to extend the border wall further and we have requested European funding," Mitarachi said, speaking in an interview Sunday with a radio station near Athens. The minister posted the audio of the interview on social media Monday. He gave no details on the projected cost of the project.
Greece has accused neighbor and fellow-NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A collection of multinational and multilingual and multicultural armed forces, all of differing capabilities, working toward a common goal by pulling in different directions... ally Turkey of "instrumentalizing" migration as a means of exerting pressure on EU countries. That is an assertion rejected by Ankara, which says it has shouldered a disproportionately heavy burden, hosting some 4 million refugees, most of whom fled the civil war in neighboring Syria.
Last year, twelve countries including Greece requested EU funding for border walls which are currently financed by national budgets. The EU Commission does not currently pay for wall construction at its external borders, arguing that it would drain funds from other migration-related activities, including financing the EU border protection agency, Frontex.
#1
Greece has a well earned dislike for Turkey. Island is split because of Turkish invasion. Turkey being in NATO will scuttle anything that favors Greece.
[IsraelTimes] Telephoned alerts come after National Security Council publishes dire travel advisory, as Israel braces for Tehran’s retaliation to liquidation of senior IRGC officer
Israeli security officials called and directly warned more than 100 Israeli citizens in The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...just another cheapjack Moslem dictatorship, brought to you by the Moslem Brüderbund... that they are in Iran’s crosshairs, and asked them to return, according to a television report Monday.
Earlier in the day, Israel’s National Security Council issued a public travel warning for Turkey, saying there was a concrete threat to Israelis by "Iranian terrorist operatives" there and in nearby countries.
According to the unsourced report on Channel 12 news, the threat of Iran ...The nation is noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence... attacking Israelis in Turkey is "concrete and immediate... Evidently, there is [an Iranian] infrastructure that has planned to act right now."
The Mossad has thwarted recent Iranian efforts to target senior Israeli figures and Israeli businesspeople around the world, the report said, and, after those failures, Iran is now widening its target to ordinary Israelis in Turkey. A Kan TV report also said Israel fears that Iran is about to target ordinary Israeli tourists there.
The alleged Iranian plot is apparently a response to the liquidation of a senior officer in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps last week, which Iran attributed to Israel.
"For several weeks now, and even more so since Iran blamed Israel for the death of the Revolutionary Guards officer last week, there has been growing concern in the defense establishment about Iranian attempts to harm Israeli targets around the world," a statement from the National Security Council said Monday.
Despite the highly irregular recent warnings, the travel advisory for Turkey has remained at its same level, three of four, a "moderate threat," with recommendations to avoid visiting the country for nonessential reasons. At level four, "high threat," Israelis are explicitly told not to visit the country and to leave if they are already there. Countries with this warning include Iraq, Yemen ...an area of the Arabian Peninsula sometimes mistaken for a country. It is populated by more antagonistic tribes and factions than you can keep track of... , Afghanistan, and Iran.
According to the NSC, in recent weeks there have been "a number of attempts" by Iranian operatives to attack Israeli businessmen and consular staff, but they were thwarted.
Since the Iranians did not succeed with those efforts, they were widening the target to ordinary Israelis in Turkey, Channel 12 reported.
Israel’s irregular travel warnings against Turkey have apparently rankled Ankara, but Ottoman Turkish authorities hope that the public outing of Iran’s intentions along with increased efforts to thwart the attacks would allow the threat to pass more quickly.
Former national security adviser Giora Eiland told Channel 12 news earlier in the day that the repeated public warnings likely indicated that Israeli security services were aware of a specific Iranian plot, rather than acting out of more general assessments.
The National Security Council recommended that all Israelis who are in Turkey avoid contact with strangers; refrain from giving out personal details, particularly about military service; make sure they have the phone numbers of Israeli legations and emergency services; and not publicly display signs that they are Israeli.
"Israeli citizens must remain vigilant and adhere to the necessary precautions when traveling to one of these countries," it said.
Iranian authorities have yet to pin down any suspects in Col. Hassan Sayyad Khodaei’s killing, even though the incident took place in the heart of one of the most secure areas in Tehran — Mohahedin-e Eslam Street, home to other bigwigs in the IRGC and its elite Quds Force.
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05/31/2022 01:42 ||
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[IsraelTimes] Delegation prompts fierce outcry in Islamabad, with one participant getting fired from his job; Herzog says trip shows possibility of growing ties between Israel and Moslem world
A Pak-American woman who came under fire in the Islamic nation for leading a delegation to Israel defended the trip Monday, saying she traveled to Jerusalem with a small group of Moslems and non-Moslems to promote interfaith harmony.
Anila Ali, a Pak-born US citizen living in Washington, DC, responded to growing criticism from Paks, some of whom questioned who was actually behind the visit. She said the goal of the visit was to seek truth and to reconcile Moslems and Jews.
"(The president) of Israel received us warmly, and the people of Israel opened up their hearts and homes to us and they knew that we were Moslems and they knew that we were Paks," she said, adding that Israelis knew that members of her delegation included Sikhs and Christians, and they were still welcomed.
Pakistain is among the countries that have no diplomatic relations with Israel because of the lingering issue of Paleostinian statehood, and Pakistain says no delegation from Pakistain visited Israel.
Ali said she led a 15-member delegation made of Pak expatriates to Israel earlier this month. She told The News Agency that Dare Not be Named that neither Pakistain’s government nor the US was behind the trip.
The state-run Pakistain Television took to Twitter on Monday to say it fired news anchor Ahmed Qureshi, who visited Israel in a "personal capacity." Qureshi was part of the delegation that visited Israel with Ali, it said.
The visit was confirmed by Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who said he received the Pak expatriates. He spoke about the visit at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Thursday, saying it "showed me the great change" taking place in the aftermath of the Abraham Accords.
The Abraham Accords refers to a series of diplomatic pacts brokered by the Trump administration in 2020 that normalized relations between Israel and four Arab countries — the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco. Israel already had peace deals with Jordan and Egypt, with which it fought several wars.
"This was an amazing experience because we haven’t had a group of Pak leaders in Israel ever in such scope, and that all stemmed from the Abraham Accords, meaning Jew and Moslem can dwell together in the region," he said.
Ali told the AP that there was no truth to remarks by Pak opposition leader Imran Khan ...aka The Great Khan, who who convinced himself that playing cricket qualified him to lead a nuclear-armed nation with severe personality disorders... in a speech at a rally Sunday, in which he said a Pak delegation had gone to Israel. Khan also alleged, without providing evidence, that the current rulers in Pakistain "are going to recognize Israel."
"We have no intentions of speaking for the Pak government, whether to normalize relations with Israel or not," Ali said. "The matter is between the Israeli government and Pakistain."
For Israel, while the delegation was small and did not involve Pak officials, it marked somewhat of a milestone in its relations with Pakistain, coming after other Moslem states have changed course and agreed to normalize ties with Israel. That’s despite Israel’s continuing occupation of lands the Paleostinians want for a future state.
For decades, the Paleostinians counted on a wall of support from Arab and Moslem states for its cause, as a way to exert leverage on Israel so that it might make concessions to the Paleostinians in exchange for recognition by those Moslem allies.
But after the Abraham Accords, that wall of support crumbled, perhaps paving the way in the future for other countries to take the same step.
Israel and Pakistain have made overtures to each other in the past, most notably when the country’s foreign ministers met in Istanbul in 2005 following Israel’s withdrawal from the Gazoo ...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with an iron fist by Hamaswith about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... Strip. Though the two countries have participated in joint military exercises sponsored by their shared ally, the United States, including one earlier this year. But there hasn’t been any major public push to bring the countries closer, even as Israel has tightened ties in recent years with India.
Herzog’s office did not release an official statement about the meeting, but rather retweeted one of the participants. The visit appeared to go under the radar in Israel, with few media covering it and those that did doing so belatedly.
[Garowe] African Union ...a union consisting of 53 African states, most run by dictators of one flavor or another. The only all-African state not in the AU is Morocco. Established in 2002, the AU is the successor to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which was even less successful... member states have agreed to fully operationalize the African Standby Force (ASF) to strengthen the fight against terrorism in the continent and end Africa’s dependence on foreign forces to fight terrorism.
The agreement was announced by the AU’s director of conflict management Sarjoh Bah following an extraordinary summit of African Heads of State and Government in Malabo on Saturday.
"Member States condemned terrorism, agreed to fully operationalize the African Standby Force, share intelligence and jointly fight terrorism and transnational organized crime, improve natural resource governance, secure sustainable/predictable financing and support conflict victims," Bah said in a statement on Sunday.
During the summit, AU Commission chairperson Moussa Faki Mahamat noted that terrorism had increased on the continent from 2011 with the Libyan crisis which resulted from the NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A cautionary tale of cost-benefit analysis.... -backed ouster of longtime Libyan leader Muammar Qadaffy ...The late megalomaniac dictator of Libya, admired everywhere for his garish costumes, funny hats, harem of cutie bodyguards, and incoherent ravings. As far as is known, he is the only person who's ever declared jihad on Switzerland... According to Mahamat, the crisis "opened the way for the arrival of foreign mercenaries in the Sahel and an influx of terrorist organizations defeated in the Middle East."
Terrorism, he noted, had now spread to other parts of Africa, including Mozambique, Mali, the Gulf of Guinea in West Africa, Somalia, the Sahel, the Lake Chad Basin, and the eastern parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo ...formerly the Congo Free State, Belgian Congo, Zaire, and who knows what else, not to be confused with the Brazzaville Congo aka Republic of Congo, which is much smaller and much more (for Africa) stable. DRC gave the world Patrice Lumumba and Joseph Mobutu, followed by years of tedious civil war. Its principle industry seems to be the production of corpses. With a population of about 74 million it has lots of raw material... Mahamat blamed a lack of inter-African solidarity between countries fighting terrorism and a failure by African countries to honor their commitments as some of the major reasons behind the spread of terrorism on the continent.
He also noted there were double standards applied by the international community in tackling the challenges of terrorism in Africa compared to other parts of the world.
Some of the established joint forces to fight terrorism, include the AU Transition Mission in Somalia (ATMIS) in Somalia, the Joint Multinational Force in the Lake Chad Basin, the G5 Sahel Joint Force, and the SADC mission in Mozambique (SAMIM).
According to the 2022 Global Terrorism Index (GTI), Sub-Saharan Africa accounted for 48 percent of global terrorism deaths with four of the ten countries with the largest increases in deaths from terrorism coming from the region (Burkina Faso ...The country in west Africa that they put where Upper Volta used to be. Its capital is Oogadooga, or something like that. Its president is currently Blaise Compaoré, who took office in 1987 and will leave office feet first, one way or the other... , DR Congo, Mali, and Niger).
The report further noted that terrorism was becoming increasingly concentrated and contracting into countries already suffering from violent mostly peaceful conflict.
The Sahel region ... North Africa's answer to the Pak tribal areas... , which contains such countries, had become home to the world’s fastest-growing and most-deadly terrorist groups especially with Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems.... shifting its attention thereafter military defeats in Syria and Iraq.
The Head of Kidnapped Yazidi Rescue Office, Hussein Kuro, said today that 2867 Yazidis are still kidnapped by ISIS.
Kuro added that 6417 Yazidis have been freed from the grip of ISIS, including men, women and children who have been kidnapped when the terrorist organization invaded Sinjar district in 2014.
Back in 2014, ISIS invaded Sinjar, killed thousands of them, and forced more than 300,000 others to leave their homes.
Posted by: badanov ||
05/31/2022 00:00 ||
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[IsraelTimes] Visiting Surinamese FM Albert Camdin informs FM Lapid of development during talks in capital; Israel to offer humanitarian aid to flood-stricken South American nation
[IsraelTimes] 40% of those polled are opposed, while the rest are unsure; survey comes as record numbers of Jews ascended to the esplanade on Jerusalem Day.
[IsraelTimes] Tehran has amassed more than 3,800 kilos of material, IAEA reports, after detecting radioactivity at potential undeclared nuclear sites
The UN nuclear watchdog said Monday that it estimated Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium had grown to more than 18 times the limit laid down in Tehran’s 2015 deal with world powers.
The ineffective International Atomic Energy Agency said in its latest report on Iran’s nuclear program that it "estimated that, as of May 15, 2022, Iran’s total enriched stockpile was 3,809.3 kilograms."
The limit in the 2015 deal was set at 300 kilograms (660 pounds) of a specific compound, the equivalent of 202.8 kilograms of uranium. The report also said that Iran ...Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979... is continuing its enrichment of uranium to levels higher than the 3.67 percent limit in the deal.
The stockpile of uranium enriched up to 20% is now estimated to be 238.4 kilograms, up 56.3 kilograms since the last report in March, while the amount enriched to 60% stands at 43.1 kilograms, an increase of 9.9 kilograms.
Enrichment levels of around 90% are required for use in a nuclear weapon.
Earlier in May, the IAEA announced that it was "extremely concerned" by Iranian silence on potential undeclared nuclear sites.
"I am referring to the fact that we, in the last few months, were able to identify traces of enriched uranium in places that had never been declared by Iran as places where any activity was taking place," IAEA head Rafael Grossi told a European Parliament Committee.
"The situation does not look very good. Iran, for the time being, has not been forthcoming in the kind of information we need from them... We are extremely concerned about this," Grossi said.
Iran has always insisted that its nuclear program is peaceful. Israel views a nuclear-threshold Iran as an unacceptable threat, as Tehran is avowedly committed to the destruction of the Jewish state.
Both American and Israeli officials have assessed that Iran now needs only a few weeks to amass enough fissile material for a bomb, should it choose to make one, though it would need additional time to assemble the device’s other components.
"[Iran] stands just a few weeks away from accumulating fissile material that will be sufficient for a first bomb, holds 60 kilograms of enriched material at 60%, produces metallic uranium at the enrichment level of 20%, and prevents the IAEA from accessing its facilities," Defense Minister Benny Gantz said on May 17.
Officials in the current US administration, led by President Joe The Big Guy Biden ...46th president of the U.S. You're a lyin' dog-faced pony soldier. Of course Corn Pop is a real person.... , blame the drop in Iran’s breakout time on former president Donald Trump ...Perhaps no man has ever had as much fun being president of the US... ’s decision to withdraw from the nuclear agreement in 2018.
"Their breakout period is down from about a year, which is what we knew it was during the deal, to just a few weeks or less," White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki ...a valley girl who woke up one morning and found she was spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of State under Obama. A new American success story, under Biden she became spokeswoman for the whole administration, and she was even able to get her sister a job... said at a presser in February.
The latest report comes as talks to revive the landmark 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers remain deadlocked after stalling in March.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
05/31/2022 01:57 ||
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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.
...the occupiers of Greek Asia Minor...
...The nation is noted for 
...The late megalomaniac dictator of Libya, admired everywhere for his garish costumes, funny hats, harem of cutie 
...formerly the Congo Free State, Belgian Congo, Zaire, and who knows what else, not to be confused with the Brazzaville Congo aka 
...Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979...
