[KhaamaPress] There are thirty-two thousand prisoners in Afghanistan, 10,000 of whom are ‘awaiting trial’, said Afghanistan Attorneys Network on Wednesday.
Afghanistan Attorneys Network organized a conference on Professional Litigation and Coordination with the Afghan juridical authorities for the purpose of reducing detentions and financial costs.
A statement published by the Afghan Legal Aid Network and Lawyers said the pre-trial detentions are one of the biggest challenges in Afghanistan wherein the rights of suspects and accused are not respected.
The conference members said that pre-trial litigation is practiced in the region and worldwide, but there are serious problems with the justice institutions in Afghanistan.
This comes as President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani has recently signed a decree saying the prisons and custody centers must be operated and managed by an independent authority.
According to the lawyers’ network, the costs of the detainees are over one billion Afghani per year which is a heavy burden on the country’s economy.
[ToloNews] The US Department of Defense approved a plan released on December 2019 entitled Enhancing Security and Stability in Afghanistan. Among other things, the plan allocates aircraft to be supplied to Afghan forces over the next several years. There were some changes in the current report from earlier commitments, specifically with the reduction of UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters and the addition of Chinook helicopters.
Originally the US military had pledged to provide Afghan forces 159 Black Hawks, but in the recent report, that number is now 53.
According to the report, the US military also cut the number of armed fixed-wing AC-208 attack and reconnaissance aircraft from 32 down to 10. AC-208 Eliminator gunships ‐ which made their debut in Kabul in February 2019 ‐are armed with the Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System, or APKWS rockets.
"These reductions were made on the basis of a review of future operational requirements," the report reads.
On the other hand, the report also mentioned that an unspecified number of CH-47 Chinooks would be added to the Afghan force, specifically to aid the Afghan Special Mission Wing (SMW) and to fully replace its Mi-17 fleet by the end of 2023. UH-60 Black Hawks were also intended to release the Mi-17, according to the report.
However, some people are alive only because it's illegal to kill them... the report noted that "SMW misuse" remains a concern, defining misuse as: "Tasking the SMW to conduct operations...tasked from influential figures outside of the established tasking process."
"The war is a guerrilla war, if there is a powerful helicopter unit where there would be 40 to 44 helicopters, believe me, it will cover all of Afghanistan," said military analyst Atiqullah Amarkhel.
"We will have US-made aircraft very soon, there is work going on for this purpose," said Assadullah Khalid, the acting Minister of Defense.
#1
Stop sending this expensive stuff to nominal enemies.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
01/31/2020 12:12 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Why not get out, save lives and money and let Afghans be Afghans? Only thing I can think of is they have precious metals in them thar hills. And the opium of course there's always that.
[IsraelTimes] ’There are some serious physical concerns about potential victims being tracked,’ FireEye’s head of intelligence John Hultquist tells cybersecurity conference in Tel Aviv.
Iranian intelligence services and other organizations they are backing are monitoring hotels, the travel industry and phone calls to carry out surveillance on individuals through the data they collect, with the aim to possibly cause physical harm to these individuals, a cybersecurity expert warned a gathering of officials and entrepreneurs in Tel Aviv on Thursday.
"Iranians are gaining access to data on a lot of individuals," said John Hultquist, head of the intelligence analysis team at the US-based cybersecurity firm FireEye. "We think they are surveilling individuals through this data so we see targeting of the hospitality industry, targeting the travel industry, the telecom industry ‐ we think they are literally tracking people ‐ and obviously there are some serious physical concerns about potential victims being tracked by the Iranian intelligence services or the organizations that are backing these hackers,"
Talking about the global Iranian threat at the Cybertech 2020 conference held in Tel Aviv, Hultquist said that Iranian hackers or Iranian sponsored hackers are getting better at the game, are "resourceful," and what they lack in technical prowess they make up with "creativity and some really fantastic social engineering," he said.
There is no concern that Iranian actors through their actions will be able to bring down whole economies, he said, but there is a definite worry that a cyber attack could cause "major damage" to single players within the economy.
And whereas the US and Israeli cybersecurity capabilities "are the most advanced" in the world, economic cyber-attacks perpetuated by Iranian actors won’t target well protected military intelligence services, rather the private sector, where the hackers will find un-hardened or less hardened targets, he said.
"Despite our advancements, we still have to worry about these other targets they are going to focus on," he said.
Hultquist added that his firm tracked as many as 10 different "destructive" hacking attacks by Iranian actors in the Gulf last year.
"They have been working in the Gulf, they have been carrying a lot of destructive attacks there," he said, with the targets being Gulf companies such as oil and gas firms and "other equivalent companies in the region."
The hackers rarely take credit for their actions, he said, though FireEye, which has been tracking the perpetrators for several years and "watching them improve" has the ability to know who is behind these attacks.
"The good news is we know their tricks, we know their behavior, and we can take a look at our defenses and see if our controls are prepared," he said.
At the conference, in which attendees were warned about the threat posed by the use of tools based on artificial intelligence, Hudi Zack, Chief Executive Director, Israel National Cyber Directorate, who is in charge of protecting the nation from cyber-attacks, said that hackers are using AI tools to create new "attack surfaces" and causing "new threats."
"Today AI allows to attack on many areas in the same time and on a very large scale. In the near future, the world will change from human-to-human mind games to machine-to-machine battles," he said.
[Ynet] A count by French maritime authorities shows that the number of migrants colonists who attempted to cross the English Channel in small boats went kaboom! last year, when more than 2,700 people were rescued at sea or stopped while trying to reach Britannia from La Belle France.
Maritime officials said the 2019 figure is more than four times larger than the previous years' count of cross-Channel migration. The French officials could not say whether the increase in attempts to reach Britannia was linked to migrants colonists fearing that Brexit might bring tighter borders.
It was not known how many migrants colonists successfully made the crossing.
The passage, while a short distance, is fraught with risks, Last year brought four deaths, the first ones since migrants colonists started using small vessels to go across the Channel in 2016, the maritime prefecture for the English Channel and North Sea region said Wednesday.
[JPOST] The online payment service GoFundMe terminated its account with al-Awda, a Paleostinian organization that seeks to return all refugees to Israel and promotes the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign targeting the Jewish state.
According to screen shots of the social media posts from GoFundMe and Abbas Hamideh, the head of al-Awda, the crowdsourcing platform closed the account in January.
"We’ve reviewed your GoFundMe account and confirmed we are unable to process donations for it," wrote a representative for GoFundMe.
"Your GoFundMe account and any associated campaigns will remain closed. We also aren’t able to share the reasons for this action."
GoFundMe is a Caliphornia, an impregnable bastion of the Democratic Party,-based crowdfunding platform that permits people to raise money for celebrations and causes.
"Apparently GoFundMe doesn’t want to do business with al-Awda ‐ Right of Return," Abbas Hamideh wrote.
"We are an American nonprofit (501c3) organization advocating for Paleostinian refugees. They refuse requests to disclose reasons why they shut down a legitimate fund raiser after using them successfully for the past four years. Why did they shut us down? Could it be because we are advocates of the BDS movement and one of its founders?"
The Jerusalem Post ‐ as part of its ongoing investigative series into banks and online payment services that provide accounts to BDS organizations ‐ has reported over the years on the closure of over 30 accounts due to antisemitism related to BDS and Paleostinian terrorism. Post exposes have led to account closures in the US and Europe ...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum... . The German Bundestag classified BDS as antisemitic in May.
Abbas Hamideh has repeatedly tweeted a slogan that antisemitism experts argue is a form of genocidal antisemitism. Hamideh has written "From the river to the sea, Paleostine will be free!," suggesting the elimination of the Jewish state.
Hamideh told the Post that the aforementioned phrase is a Paleostinian slogan that precedes what he terms Israeli colonization of Paleostine and was first popularly used during the Arab revolt against the British colonization of Paleostine.
"We are talking many years before the existence of the Israeli occupation of Paleostine that followed suit," he said.
"Paleostinians cannot be antisemitic towards non-semites occupying Paleostine. We are proudly anti-Zionist, anti-injustice and anti-occupation. This goes for every single Paleostinian on Earth that is in the struggle for the freedom and liberation of our ancestral homeland, Paleostine. [US President Donald] Trump's [peace] plan is actually advocating apartheid and genocide, which is quite the opposite."
According to al-Awda, the group is seeking to raise funds this year to protest against the pro-Israel organization AIPAC. They wrote that "The major portion of our expenses is for al-Awda’s upcoming National Rally to Support Paleostine and Protest AIPAC on Sunday, March 1, 2020, in Washington."
Al-Awda says it "is the only Paleostinian led organization in the North America whose main focus is on the Paleostinian refugees' Right to Return to their ancestral homeland."
[DAWN] Terror attacks in Pakistain plummeted by more than 85 per cent over the last decade. It's a welcome statistic for the country, but one that risks being overshadowed by international concern over its efforts to curb terror funding and lingering murderous Moslem activity that could test any future peace agreement in neighbouring Afghanistan.
The tally, put together by Pak think tanks, found terror attacks dropped from nearly 2,000 in 2009 to fewer than 250 in 2019, a steady decline that underscores the long-haul nature of fighting terror.
But Gay Paree-based international watchdog Financial Action Task Force (FATF) said in October that Pakistain was not doing enough to stop terror financing. The group meets next month to decide whether the country should be downgraded from a grey status to black, alongside Iran ...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today 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. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan, the abbreviation IRGC is a cognate form of Stürmabteilung (or SA), the term Supreme Guide is a cognate form of either Shah or Führer or maybe both, and they hate JewsZionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol... and North Korea ...hereditary Communist monarchy distinguished by its truculence and periodic acts of violence. Distinguishing features include Songun (Army First) policy, which involves feeding the army before anyone but the Dear Leadership, and Juche, which is Kim Jong Il's personal interpretation of Marxism-Leninism, which he told everybody was brilliant. In 1950 the industrialized North invaded agrarian South Korea. Twenty-one countries of the United Nations eventually contributed to the UN force opposing the invasion, with the United States providing around 90% of the military personnel. Seventy years later the economic results are in and it doesn't look good for Juche... , a step that could pose a challenge to the country's economy.
Pakistain's murderous Moslem groups are often interlinked with those across the border in Afghanistan, so its progress at reining in terror is critical, particularly as Washington seeks to secure a deal with the Afghan Taliban ...Arabic for students... to bring an end to the 18-year war, America's longest military engagement.
"The sharp decrease in terrorist violence, which we began to see in 2014, is nothing short of remarkable," said Michael Kugelman, Asia Program Deputy Director at the Washington-based Wilson Center. But, he cautioned, Pakistain is certainly "not out of the woods" yet.
Last year, FATF, the watchdog that monitors terror financing, said Pakistain had fully implemented only one item from a list of 40 measures to curb terror financing and money laundering. The other 39 measures were either partially implemented or, in some cases, overlooked entirely.
Pakistain, however, has insisted time and again that it has made significant progress in most of the areas highlighted by the FATF. Earlier this week, State Bank of Pakistain (SBP) Governor Dr Reza Baqir said that the last two reviews in May and September showed that Pakistain had made significant progress in most of the 27 points raised by the FATF.
If Pakistain is blacklisted, every financial transaction would be closely scrutinised, and doing business with the country would become costly and cumbersome. Pak officials say they are working to meet the task force's demands and expect to avoid a blacklisting at the crucial meeting in Gay Paree in February.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/31/2020 00:00 ||
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[Ynet] Trump peace plan singles out 10 Arab communities that it says could be part of future Paleostine 'subject to agreement of the parties'; 'There will not be another Nakba,' says Taibeh mayor, while MK from Umm al-Fahm calls for Jews and Arabs to unite against the move
Israeli Arabs in what is commonly known as the Triangle of Arab communities have slammed U.S. President Donald Trump ...Oh, noze! Not him!... 's newly unveiled Mideast peace plan, under which their communities face being transferred to a future Paleostinian state.
Continued on Page 49
[IsraelTimes] US secretary of state warns that Trump proposal could be last opportunity for Paleostinian state, says critics are same people ’who have failed for 70 years’.
#4
Don't think they'd go for "those areas not marked for Israel return back to Jordan and Egypt respectively", but I'm good with it as a 'counter offer'.
#7
I'm not seeing too much difference between Palestinians and our own Democrats - any theories? This vodka hangover's really messing with my cognitive abilities now (I celebrated Brexit one day early!); maybe the 2nd cup of coffee fixes things...
[Jpost] The Trump administration on Thursday said it will allow Russian, Chinese and Europe ...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum... an companies to continue their work at Iranian nuclear sites, arguing that their presence makes it harder for Tehran to develop nuclear weapons.
But the United States also imposed sanctions on Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation (AEOI) and its chief, a move the Iranian entity's front man described as a sign of Washington's "despair."
The Trump administration, which in 2018 pulled out of the 2015 Iran ...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today 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. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan, the abbreviation IRGC is a cognate form of Stürmabteilung (or SA), the term Supreme Guide is a cognate form of either Shah or Führer or maybe both, and they hate JewsZionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol... nuclear deal and reimposed sanctions on Iran, will let the work go forward by issuing waivers to sanctions that bar non-US firms from dealing with the AEOI.
The waivers’ renewal for 60 days will allow nonproliferation work to continue at the Arak heavy-water research reactor, the Bushehr nuclear power plant, the Tehran Research Reactor and other nuclear cooperation initiatives.
Tehran has rejected Western assertions that it has sought to develop nuclear weapons, and on Thursday AEOI front man Behrouz Kamalvandi reaffirmed that Iran's civilian nuclear program will continue "full force."
"Imposing sanctions ... is a political game played by Washington. These sanctions have no value and are childish measures," Kamalvandi told Iran's Fars news agency.
Leading Republican senators and other Iran hawks had lobbied intensively to stop the latest waivers as US President Donald Trump ...The tack in the backside of the Democratic Party... seeks to exert more pressure on Iran after the two longtime foes came toward the brink of war earlier this month.
Washington in November terminated the sanctions waiver related to Iran’s Fordow nuclear plant after Tehran resumed uranium enrichment at the underground site.
"There was a difference of opinion between the US Treasury and State Department. The Treasury won," a Western diplomat said. "There is an appetite for more sanctions, so this was a surprise; but others argue that these waivers are vital to ensure nonproliferation."
MORE SANCTIONS
The United States on Thursday placed Ali Akbar Salehi, head of the AEOI, and the organization itself under US sanctions, Hook said.
The decision to sanction Salehi and the AEOI would have an impact on Iran's civilian nuclear program because it has operational control over the program, including purchasing parts for nuclear facilities.
Last week three Republican senators known to be close to Trump - Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Ted Cruz of Texas and Lindsey Graham ...soft-spoken senator from South Carolina, former best buddy of John Maverick McCain. Since McCain's demise, Graham has become more outspoken, more Republican and more of a supporter of President Trump. The speech he gave in support of Brett Kavanaugh was downright manly and really cheesed off the Dems... of South Carolina - had called for the remaining civil nuclear waivers to be rescinded.
"Enough is enough," the senators and Republican US congresswoman Liz Cheney said in a joint statement.
The diplomat said the United States had likely opted to extend the Bushehr waiver because the Russian company targeted also provides nuclear fuel to US facilities, causing a potential sanctions headache for the administration.
Separately, Treasury announced that a new financial channel for humanitarian goods has been created with Switzerland to benefit medical patients in Iran. Hook said four shipments of cancer and transplant drugs have already been delivered to Iran.
“Iranian cancer and transplant patients are receiving treatments through this channel, which is subject to strict due diligence measures to avoid misuse by the Iranian regime,” Treasury said in a statement.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
01/31/2020 07:08 ||
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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.
[Ynet] A count by French maritime authorities shows that the number of 
[JPOST] The online payment service GoFundMe terminated its account with al-Awda, a Paleostinian organization that seeks to return all refugees to Israel and promotes the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign targeting the Jewish state.
...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum...
...Arabic for 
...Oh, noze! Not him!...
...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for 
