[Libya Observer] The New Arab newspaper reported that a Russian Air Force jet had transported Russian mercenaries from a private military firm in Russia, just like Wagner Group, from Syria to Libya as per coordination between Moscow and Khalifa Haftar ...Self-proclaimed Field Marshal, served in the Libyan army under Muammar Qadaffy, and took part in the coup that brought Qadaffy to power in 1969. He became a prisoner of war in Chad in 1987. While held prisoner, he and his fellow officers formed a group hoping to overthrow Qadaffy, so it's kind of hard to describe him as a Qadaffy holdover. He was released around 1990 in a deal with the United States government and spent nearly two decades in the United States, gaining US citizenship. In 1993, while living in the United States, he was convicted in absentia of crimes against the Jamahiriya and sentenced to death. Haftar held a senior position in the anti-Qadaffy forces in the 2011 Libyan Civil War. In 2014 he was commander of the Libyan Army when the General National Congress (GNC) refused to give up power in accordance with its term of office. Haftar launched a campaign against the GNC and its Islamic fundamentalist allies. His campaign allowed elections to take place to replace the GNC, but then developed into a civil war. Guess you can't win them all... under the supervision of UAE and Egypt.
The newspaper said two Russian aircraft landed in Benghazi airport over the last three days coming from Syria with Russian mercenaries from two private firms (Moran and Schit Security Groups) on board in addition to Syrian contractors who work for the Russian forms in Syria.
According to the newspaper, the expansion of mercenary presence in Libya for Haftar's support by Russia is an attempt by Moscow to have a say in the Libyan conflict in order to be a strong negotiator with The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the decaying remnant of the Ottoman Empire... , which is supporting the Presidential Council's government, just like what happened in Syria, where both Russia and Turkey sat on the table after Ankara entered North Syria.
Meanwhile, ...back at the alley, Slats Chumbaloni was staring into a hole that was just .45 inch in diameter and was less than three feet from his heavily sweating face ... Itamilradar website said a Russian aircraft landed Monday in Benghazi after two similar landings in the last two days, adding that it arrived from Moscow after making a landing in Latakia, Syria for some hours.
Two similar landings of Russian aircraft took place in Benghazi over the last two days, according to Itamilradar website.
#5
#3 Maybe Turkey is Russia's current Rent-An-Enemy. Paying them to be their Enemy's ally-thats-worse-than-an-actual enemy. Especially since we went ahead and killed off Daesh.
Libyan political commentator Mohamed Buisier, a defected adviser to warlord Haftar, says the Turkish military power can not be compared with any other force in the region, and it can compel Haftar to lay down arms and stop his war on #Tripolipic.twitter.com/6TYClDzTbX
Posted by: Fred ||
01/07/2020 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under: Sublime Porte
#1
Israel? the United States of America? and I'd throw in Egypt since Libya is sitting on their border and the logistics from Ankara to Tripoli is much harder to execute and maintain.
#Algeria regards #Tripoli a red line and hopes that no one will cross it, the Algerian Presidency said in a statement today following a meeting between Chairman of Presidential Council Fayez Al-Sarraj and Algerian President Abdelmajid Tebboune. pic.twitter.com/Q9ziRwyUkL
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his Iraqi counterpart Adil Abdul Mahdi agree in a phone call on the need to deescalate tensions in the region following the death of Iranian commander Qassem #Soleimani, according to a statement from Downing Street.https://t.co/6SiiUijEkPpic.twitter.com/7isEtfO8xk
[Jpost] Mexicans seeking asylum in the United States could be sent to Guatemala under a bilateral agreement signed by the Central American nation last year, according to documents sent to U.S. asylum officers in recent days and seen by Rooters.
In a Jan. 4 email, field office staff at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) were told Mexican nationals will be included in the populations "amenable" to the agreement with Guatemala.
The agreement, brokered last July between the administration of Republican President Donald Trump ...Oh, noze! Not him!... and the outgoing Guatemalan government, allows U.S. immigration officials to force migrants colonists requesting asylum at the U.S.-Mexican border to apply for protection there.
Trump has made clamping down on unlawful migration a top priority of his presidency and a major theme of his 2020 re-election campaign. His administration penned similar deals with Honduras and El Salvador last year.
Democrats and pro-migrant groups have opposed the move and contend asylum seekers will face danger in Guatemala, where the murder rate is five times that of the United States, according to 2017 data compiled by the World Bank. The country's asylum office is tiny and thinly staffed and critics have argued it does not have the capacity to properly vet a significant increase in cases.
Guatemalan President-elect Alejandro Giammattei, who takes office this month, has said he will review the agreement.
Acting Deputy U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Ken Cuccinelli said in a tweet in September that Mexicans were being considered for inclusion under the agreement.
USCIS referred to Cuccinelli's tweet, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Mexico's foreign ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Unaccompanied minors cannot be sent to Guatemala under the agreement, which currently applies only to migrants colonists from Honduras, El Salvador and Mexico who entered the United States after Nov. 19, 2019, according to the guidance documents. Exceptions are made only if the migrants colonists can establish that they are "more likely than not" to be persecuted or tortured in Guatemala based on their race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion.
Numbers of Central American migrants colonists apprehended at the border fell sharply in the second part of 2019 after Mexico deployed National Guard troops to stem the flow, under pressure from Trump.
Overall, border arrests are expected to drop again in December for the seventh straight month, a Homeland Security official told Rooters last week, citing preliminary data.
The U.S. government says another reason for the reduction in border crossings is a separate program, known as the Migrant Protection Protocols, that has forced more than 56,000 non-Mexican migrants colonists to wait in Mexico for their U.S. immigration court hearings.
With fewer Central Americans at the border, U.S. attention has turned to Mexicans crossing illegally or requesting asylum. Around 150,000 Mexican single adults were apprehended at the border in fiscal 2019, down sharply from previous decades but still enough to bother U.S. immigration hawks.
[Jpost] A French-Jewish man who was critically injured in a 2016 stabbing attack by a man who shouted about Allah departed this vale of tears and died, his lawyer said.
Chalom Levy died on Dec. 29 in an airplane that took him to La Belle France from Israel, where he had just celebrated his daughter’s wedding, Actualite Juive reported Thursday. He was 65.
"He had never recovered from the attack, not physically or psychologically," Levy’s lawyer, Raphael Nisand, said.
Continued on Page 49
Canada's military temporarily relocating some troops from Iraq to Kuwait in wake of Soleimani killing
Chief of the defence staff Gen. Jonathan Vance says the Canadian military is temporarily relocating some soldiers from Iraq to Kuwait.
The move, which Vance announced in a letter to the families of Canadian soldiers in Iraq and the surrounding region that was posted to Twitter on Tuesday, follows the lead of Germany and several other allies who have withdrawn some of their troops.
Western troops in Iraq have been on high alert since the weekend killing of a top Iranian military general by a U.S. drone.
Iranian Maj.-Gen. Qassem Soleimani's death has raised fears of Iranian reprisals while Iraq's parliament and outgoing prime minister have called for the forced withdrawal of all western troops from the country.
Vance says the decision to withdraw an unspecified number of troops was made alongside NATO and Canada's allies to ensure their safety and security. Canada has about 500 soldiers in Iraq, most of whom are there to help train local forces to fight the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
Canada has an army?
Posted by: Woodrow ||
01/07/2020 18:32 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[2 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran Proxies
#1
Yes, Canada has an army . . . . . and any day now we're going to allow them to have guns. Maybe. But probably not. Ever.
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] The United States accused Russia and China on Monday of blocking a United Nations ...an organization conceived in the belief that we're just one big happy world, with the sort of results you'd expect from such nonsense... Security Council statement "underscoring the inviolability of diplomatic and consular premises" after a December 31 attack on the US embassy in Baghdad.
Such statements by the 15-member Security Council have to be agreed by consensus.
The US mission to the United Nations said 27 countries spoke out against the attack on the Baghdad embassy "in stark contrast to the United Nations Security Council’s silence due to two permanent members - Russia and China - not allowing a statement to proceed."
Posted by: Fred ||
01/07/2020 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[3 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
[AlAhram] The United States has no plans to pull out militarily from Iraq, Defense Secretary Mark Esper told Pentagon news hounds on Monday, following reports by Rooters and other media of a U.S. military letter about a withdrawal.
"There's been no decision whatsoever to leave Iraq," Esper said, when asked about the letter, adding there had also been no plans issued to prepare to leave.
"I don't know what that letter is ... We're trying to find out where that's coming from, what that is. But there's been no decision made to leave Iraq. Period."
Esper added the United States was still committed to countering 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.... in Iraq, alongside America's allies and partners.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
01/07/2020 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iraq
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] The leader of the Paleostinian murderous Moslem group Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, attended the funeral of slain Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani in Tehran on Monday.
Ismail Haniyeh ...became Prime Minister of Gaza after the legislative elections of 2006 which Hamas won. President Mahmoud Abbas dismissed Haniyeh from office on 14 June 2007 at the height of the Fatah-Hamas festivities, but Haniyeh did not acknowledge the decree and continues as the PM of Gazoo while Abbas maintains a separate PM in the West Bank... addressed Iranian mourners and described Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) who was killed in a US Arclight airstrike ...KABOOM!... in Iraq on Friday, as "the martyr of Jerusalem."
Haniyeh vowed that Paleostinian murderous Moslem groups including Hamas, which currently controls 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... , will walk Soleimani’s way "to confront the Zionist project and the American influence."
Haniyeh’s visit to 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... was surprising. In December, Egypt allowed him to travel for his first regional tour since his 2017 election into the Hamas leadership on the condition that he not visit Iran, according to Arab and Israel media reports.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ...the actual dictator of Iran, successor to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini... attended the funeral, praying and weeping over Soleimani’s casket.
Israel approves the construction of 1,936 new settler homes on occupied Palestinian territories, according to watchdog Peace Now.https://t.co/t1T5zDCeJf
[Arutz 7] - Dozens of mourners were killed and dozens more injured as stampedes broke out during the funeral of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani on Tuesday.
Hundreds of thousands of Iranians gathered in Soleimani’s hometown of Kerman in southeastern Iran Tuesday for the burial of the slain commander of the Revolutionary Guards Corps’ Quds Force, who was killed in an American drone strike last Thursday.
Local media outlets have reported at least 35 deaths in the stampedes, with another 50 injured.
[Ynet] Britannia has reduced staff at its embassies in 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 Iraq to a minimum level following the U.S. killing of Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani , Sky News reported on Monday, citing diplomatic sources.
The withdrawal of the diplomats is a precautionary step rather than based on specific intelligence of a threat, according to the report.
Ambassadors Rob Macaire in Tehran and Stephen Hickey in Baghdad will remain in place, Sky News said.
The Foreign Office said its embassies in Baghdad and Tehran remained open but declined to comment on operational detail.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
01/07/2020 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[7 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani says nobody should threaten his nation, responding to a tweet from US President Donald Trump in which he threatened to strike 52 sites in Iran.https://t.co/GG3RmpvEPN
Posted by: Fred ||
01/07/2020 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[5 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
#1
Coward.
You've spread mayhem and death and anarchy across every one of your neighbors. And now you cry because for once America struck back at the monster that was the tip of your spear. F--- off, vermin.
#3
Cockroaches that never scurry in the open seldom get stepped on...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
01/07/2020 7:09 Comments ||
Top||
#4
But it was perfectly fine to threaten us for four decades? Fuck you and the camel you rode in on. I can't wait to see all your stupid little shit speedboats blown outta the water, at an absolute bare minimum.
The Trump administration is denying Iranian FM Mohammad Javad Zarif a visa to enter the US ahead of a UN Security Council session, blocking him from speaking about the US killing of Iran’s Qassem #Soleimani, Foreign Policy reports citing three sources.https://t.co/LECZtEoSGY
#2
Perhaps some other nation will build a new UN headquarters so that the nastiest folks in the world will always be welcome. Perhaps China can pay for it to show they are a Great Nation now and Zimbabwae can supply the location to keep the UN delegates concentrated on the real problems they need to be dealing with.
h/t Instapundit
[Washington Free Beacon] - New York Times reporter Helene Cooper said Monday during a discussion of the death of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani that the U.S. Department of Defense was "quite tragically" good at killing people.
"This is something that the American Defense Department, quite tragically almost, is very good at doing. We know how to kill people," she said during an appearance on "The Daily" podcast. "And we had been tracking for more than a decade, almost two decades, Qassem Soleimani." Finally, Herb's secret identity revealed!
Posted by: g(r)omgoru ||
01/07/2020 02:33 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[7 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
#1
DoD kills, NYT lies. It's what each does best, darling.
Herb Derangement Syndrome. I never thought I'd see the day... :D
Posted by: Herb McCoy ||
01/07/2020 5:22 Comments ||
Top||
#4
A hip propagandist of Ripon
So polished his pyramid (a pippin!),
It shone cherry red;
As he peeled it, he said,
"Yup, I promise to just put the tip in!"
Posted by: Harry Lover of the Gepids1344 ||
01/07/2020 6:18 Comments ||
Top||
#5
Wiki: Helene Cooper currently aged 53 was born on 22nd April 1966 in Monrovia, Liberia. Her parents had to face several crimes and injuries to get the family to security. They entered the United States on a tourist[visa] before getting a green card [during] Ronald Reagan's Amnesty.
#8
"This is something that the American Defense Department, quite tragically almost, is very good at doing. We know how to kill people," she said...
It was called the War Department for most of its institutional existence, Oh Ignorant One!, and it's their job!!
#13
"Those who ‘abjure’ violence can do so only because others are committing violence on their behalf." - George Orwell; 'Notes on Nationalism'
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
01/07/2020 17:18 Comments ||
Top||
#14
"The purpose of a military force is to kill people and break things."
I first heard this from Rush Limbaugh many years ago. His point was that the military is not supposed to be a social experiment, or welfare agency.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
01/07/2020 18:56 Comments ||
Top||
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 decaying remnant of the Ottoman Empire...
...Oh, noze! Not him!...
[Jpost] A French-Jewish man who was critically injured in a 2016 stabbing attack by a man who shouted about Allah 
Canada's military temporarily relocating some troops from Iraq to Kuwait in wake of Soleimani killing
...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 
...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 
