[KhaamaPress] Following reports of ill-treatment, torture, and "civilian killings" by the Taliban ...Arabic for students... in Panjshir, local Taliban officials denied the allegations. No, no! Certainly not! calling them "unfounded".
Clashes between the Taliban and the Resistance® Front in Panjshir province’s Dara and Abshar districts are alleged to have resulted in numerous losses for the Taliban, and Ghulam Farooq Halim, a resident of Dara district, posted a photo on his Facebook page writing that Innocent people have been transported to an unknown location by the Taliban.
According to Mr. Halim’s Facebook post, around 200 people of AbdullahKhel Valley and the village of Tankhoo have been detained by the Taliban since the start of the Taliban hostilities on the valley, and their fate is unclear.
Mr. Halim shared a photo of Taliban forces arresting people with their hands tied behind their backs.
Ghulam Farooq Halim continued by stating that the Taliban’s raid on the district, which has killed more than 40 people since the conflict began, may have resulted in even more casualties.
According to this AbdullahKhel local, the corpses are lying around and nobody could approach the bodies of the mourning and sorrowful people of AbdullahKhel and Tankhoo.
Meanwhile, ...back at the bunker, his Excellency called the chief of staff and complained that the artillery was keeping him awake... the Resistance® Front claims the Taliban perpetrated "genocide" in Panjshir, Andarab, and Takhar.
"Massacring civilians will not demoralize us but will strengthen our resolve to liberate our country from these criminals." the Resistance® Front’s Foreign Relations Head, Ali Maisam Nazari, tweeted on Wednesday.
Both the EU Ambassador to Afghanistan, Von Brand, and Afghanistan’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Naseer Ahmad Faiq, have expressed concern regarding reports from Panjshir province, and both have appealed for a halt.
#1
After 9/11, the Taliban issued a statement that there are no "civilians" in its war against America. How can it be any different for them anywhere else?
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
05/12/2022 6:53 Comments ||
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[IsraelTimes] Mixed verdict returned in trial of Alexei Saab who had been accused of researching and photographing US landmarks for possible attacks from 2000 to 2005
A Manhattan federal court jury returned a mixed verdict Wednesday in the trial of a New Jersey software developer who authorities say researched and photographed US landmarks for possible attacks.
The jury was unable to reach a verdict on one terrorism charge — providing material support for a terrorist group — but found Alexei Saab,
... also known as Ali Hassan Saab, Alex Saab, and Rachid. Until his 2019 arrest he worked as director of information technology for a Morristown, New Jersey energy company, supplementing his income as an adjunct lecturer at Baruch College. He joined Hezbollah in 1996, soaked up all sorts of advanced spy & sabotage training, and by 2003 was collecting information about potential targets in the US, which proved no barrier to his naturalization in the fateful year of 2008. There is also the small matter of marriage fraud because he married a fellow agent...
44,
had received military-type training from Hezbollah’s Islamic Jihad ...created after many members of the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood decided the organization was becoming too moderate. Operations were conducted out of Egypt until 1981 when the group was exiled after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat. They worked out of Gaza until they were exiled to Lebanon in 1987, where they clove tightly to Hezbollah. In 1989 they moved to Damascus, where they remain a subsidiary of Hezbollah... Organization, which is based in Lebanon Hezbollahstan ...The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years. It produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. That's three statements. Only the first is subjective.... Saab was also found guilty of conspiring to commit marriage fraud and making false statements. The Morristown, New Jersey, resident was exonerated on three other charges after a two-week trial.
Saab’s lawyer, Marlon Kirton, said much of the evidence came from what Saab himself told FBI ...Formerly one of the world's premier criminal investigation organizations, something for a nation to be proud of. Now it's a political arm of the Deep State oligarchy that is willing to trump up charges, suppress evidence, or take out insurance policies come election time... Sherlocks that was "un-credible, crazy, unsubstantiated information," and which can’t be considered reliable.
Saab spoke with the FBI in 11 sessions over several weeks prior to his 2019 arrest, but was never read his rights, Kirton said in an email after the verdict.
US Attorney Damian Williams highlighted the jury’s unanimous verdict that Saab was trained by a terrorist organization.
"The evidence at trial showed that Saab surveilled some of New York’s most iconic and highly trafficked locations," Williams said in a statement, "in order to provide critical intelligence on how they could be most effectively attacked."
Judge Paul G. Gardephe questioned whether the terrorism count conviction will stand based on rules about how the statute of limitations pertains to terrorism charges. He asked lawyers on both sides to submit written arguments within weeks about the charge, which has a potential maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.
Gardephe said he wanted to know if it was the intent of Congress that there would be no limit to how long the government could wait to bring charges against someone who received military-type training from a terrorist organization.
Prosecutors were also given a week to decide whether to seek a retrial on the material support charge, which carries a potential penalty of up to 20 years in prison.
The other two convictions for conspiring to commit marriage fraud and making false statements each carry a potential penalty of up to five years in prison.
Prosecutors say that, according to Saab, he joined Hezbollah in 1996 and once tried to kill a man he later understood to be a suspected Israeli spy by pointing a weapon at the individual at close range, but the firearm jammed. They said he surveilled potential targets for terrorism attacks from 2000 to 2005 while working by day as a technology software engineer.
[IsraelTimes] Marrakesh meeting to address ’stabilization efforts in areas previously impacted by ISIS’; bigwigs reunite three years after caliphate was crushed in Iraq
The global coalition against the 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.... group gathered Wednesday in Morocco to coordinate efforts to prevent the jihadists staging a revival in the Middle East and North Africa.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was to co-host the meeting with Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita, but Washington’s top diplomat tested positive for COVID-19 and was replaced by senior diplomat Victoria Nuland.
Senior officials from dozens of other countries are also attending the meeting, under high security at a discreet luxury hotel in Marrakesh.
The discussions were to cover "stabilization efforts in areas previously impacted by ISIS," strategic communication against the group’s "radicalization propaganda" and the battle against imported muscle, the Moroccan foreign ministry said.
The meeting comes three years after the coalition helped Syrian fighters to crush the "caliphate" IS had proclaimed in Iraq and Syria and as the jihadists step up their efforts to bolster their presence in the Sahel region ... North Africa's answer to the Pak tribal areas... and West Africa.
The Global Coalition against ISIS (an Arabic acronym for IS) was formed in 2014 after the gunnies seized huge swathes of Iraq and Syria and now included 84 states and international organizations.
Officials have long warned that IS continues to pose a worldwide threat despite its loss of a territorial base.
IS has vowed to take vengeance for its elusive leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, killed in a US raid in northern Syria in late 2019.
It has also urged its supporters to take advantage of the war in Ukraine to carry out attacks in Europe.
The Iraqi foreign minister landed in Morocco to participate in the Ministerial Meeting of the Global Coalition to Defeat the 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.... (ISIS) being held in Marrakech on Wednesday.
Fuad Hussein arrived in Morocco to attend the meeting where more than 50 ministers from across the world will be in attendance.
Co-chaired by Morocco and the United States, the meeting is held in Africa for the first time. It aims to address the growing threat of ISIS in the Middle East, Africa, and Afghanistan.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
05/12/2022 01:26 ||
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The United Nations ...where theory meets practice and practice loses... was seeking $144 million on Wednesday needed to fund the salvage operation of a decaying tanker full of oil moored off the coast of 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... , a ship whose demise could cause an environmental disaster.
The amount includes $80 million to transfer the more than 1 million barrels of crude oil the FSO Safer is carrying to storage, said David Gressly, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Yemen.
The pledging conference, co-hosed by the U.N. and the Netherlands, comes more than two months after the U.N. and Yemen's Iran's Houthi sock puppets ...a Zaidi Shia insurgent group operating in Yemen. They have also been referred to as the Believing Youth. Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi is said to be the spiritual leader of the group and most of the military leaders are his relatives. The legitimate Yemeni government has accused the them of having ties to the Iranian government. Honest they did. The group has managed to gain control over all of Saada Governorate and parts of Amran, Al Jawf and Hajjah Governorates. Its slogan is God is Great, Death to America™, Death to Israel, a curse on the Jews They like shooting off... ummm... missiles that they would have us believe they make at home in their basements. On the plus side, they did murder Ali Abdullah Saleh, which was the only way the country was ever going to be rid of him... rebels reached an agreement to transfer the tanker's contents to another vessel. The agreement also includes a U.N. commitment to provide within 18 months a "replacement equivalent to the FSO Safer suitable for export."
The Iranian-backed Houthis control Yemen's western Red Sea ports — including Ras Issa, just 6 kilometers (about 4 miles) from where the FSO Safer has been moored since the 1980s.
The Houthis on Tuesday criticized the U.N. for allegedly "not presenting an operational plan" to maintain the tanker, more than two months since they signed the memorandum of understanding, a statement that could complicate U.N. efforts to raise funds.
There was no immediate comment from the U.N. on the Houthi statement but the organization previously accused the rebels of delaying its maintenance plans.
Gressly said the vessel is slowly rusting and going into significant decay, and could explode, causing massive environmental damage to Red Sea marine life, desalination factories and international shipping routes.
"Every day that passes, every month that passes, every year that passes, increases the chance that the vessel will break up and spill its contents," he told news hounds earlier this week.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/12/2022 00:00 ||
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#1
I've got a flooded, 2" gas trash pump if that will help.
That’ll change the world geopolitical situation... or possibly not.
[Rudaw] The Iraqi parliament on Wednesday gave the first reading to a bill seeking to ban the normalization or establishment of relations with Israel. The legislation would also apply to the Kurdistan Region.
The Iraqi parliament convened on Wednesday and elected the members of the legal committee. As its first work, the committee examined the "Banning Normalization and Establishment of Relations with the Zionist Entity" bill, which was later sent to the MPs to discuss.
The legislature gave the first reading to the bill, it said in a statement on Wednesday.
The bill requires almost all officials, including those in Kurdistan Region, government institutions and media to refrain from establishing relations with Israel.
The main part of the bill criminalizes the normalization of relations with the "Zionist entity," a reference to Israel, in addition to "banning of the establishment of diplomatic, political, military, economic, and cultural relations and any other sort of relations with the invading Zionist entity."
This comes weeks after prominent Shiite holy manMoqtada Tater al-Sadr ...hereditary Iraqi holy man and leader of a political movement in Iraq. He had his hereditary rival, al-Khoei, assassinated only a few hours after the holy rival's appearance out of exile in 2003. Formerly an Iranian catspaw, lately he's gagged over some of their more outlandish antics, then went back to catspawry... , a top winner of the country’s October parliamentary elections, called on members of his Sadrist bloc to introduce such a bill.
Sadr said that the "issue of normalization and Israeli ambitions to dominate our beloved Iraq" was one of the core reasons for the Sadrist Movement’s involvement with the electoral process again.
The normalization of ties with Israel as part of the Abraham Accords is a US-led joint Middle East peace initiative. Four countries - the United Arab Emirates, Sudan, Bahrain, and Morocco - have announced normalization agreements with Israel, with America's support.
A conference advocating for Iraq to join the Abraham Accords was held in the Kurdistan Region's capital of Erbil in September and was attended by more than 300 Sunnis and Shiites from across the country.
Widespread condemnation from Baghdad and Erbil struck the conference, with Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi calling it "illegal" and saying that the concept of normalization with Israel is illegal as per the Iraqi constitution.
Sadr also expressed his staunch rejection of the conference. He said Erbil "must forbid such terrorist Zionist meetings" and called on the Iraqi government to arrest all who attended, threatening to take action himself.
Days after, an Iraqi court issued arrest warrants for three people accused of participating in the conference.
The bill comes nearly two months after Iran ...Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979... fired a dozen ballistic missiles targeting the residence of the CEO and founder of the Iraqi-Kurdish oil company KAR Group Baz Karim Barzinji, who built the Kurdistan independent pipeline to The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire... . The attack was carried out under the pretext of striking an Israeli base.
However, facts are stubborn; statistics are more pliable... a report by the Iraqi parliament’s fact-finding committee later said that it found no evidence to support the Iranian accusations, adding that Barzinji’s residence was neither an Israeli base nor was he involved in any form of political activity or movement.
The Kurdistan Region and Israel do not have diplomatic relations, but have enjoyed friendly ties. Israel has purchased Kurdish oil and backed the 2017 independence referendum.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
05/12/2022 02:21 ||
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[IsraelTimes] IAEA head Rafael Grossi says Tehran has refused to clarify evidence of illicit uranium enrichment, as EU’s Mora heads back to 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... in bid to get nuke talks back on track
The UN atomic energy watchdog chief said Tuesday that he was "extremely concerned" about Iran’s lack of cooperation as the EU seeks to unblock talks to revive the 2015 nuclear deal.
Talks between world powers and Iran have stalled since mid-March as negotiators seek to return to the landmark accord that curtailed the Islamic republic’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.
The ineffective International Atomic Energy Agency is "trying to clarify a number of still open matters with Iran," IAEA head Rafael Grossi told a European Parliament committee.
"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," he said.
"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," he said.
EU diplomat Enrique Mora, who chairs the negotiations, said he was on his way to Tehran Tuesday as the United States — which is seeking to come back to the deal it unilaterally left in 2018 — voiced hope for progress.
Mora tweeted he would hold talks with Ali Bagheri, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, and other officials.
"Work on closing the remaining gaps of this negotiation continues," he said.
The IAEA and Iran announced in March that they had agreed an approach for resolving issues crucial to reviving the 2015 nuclear accord.
At the time, Grossi said the UN agency and Iran had "decided to try a practical, pragmatic approach" to overcome "a number of important matters".
Some documents are to be exchanged between the two sides by May 22.
The aim is to settle outstanding questions that the IAEA has about the past presence of nuclear material at undeclared sites in Iran.
Iran "should be at the top of our preoccupations in spite of the drama that is unfolding in the Ukraine," Grossi said Tuesday, referring to Russia’s invasion of its neighbor.
He said talks to revive the nuclear deal were "at a sort of pause" but the Vienna-based IAEA was "of course still hopeful that some agreement is going to be reached within a reasonable timeframe."
"Although we have to recognize that the window of opportunity could be closed anytime," he added.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
05/12/2022 00:00 ||
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#1
My thanks to whoever upgraded that headline — nicely done!
The Norwegian Council has suspended its activities in Hawl Camp in #NE_Syria following storming its center by unidentified attckers. https://t.co/2PXfXwBVuN
— NORTH PRESS AGENCY - ENGLISH (@NPA_English) May 11, 2022
The Norwegian Council will withdraw completely from Hawl Camp, east of Hasakah, in the coming weeks, after closing its educational and legal centers, a special source told North Press on Wednesday.
The Norwegian Refugee Council has suspended all its work and activities in Hawl Camp, except for essential services such as water.
Two days ago, unidentified attackers stormed the legal department of the NRC in the fifth sector, took cellphones and laptops form all the people who were in the department, and kidnapped an employee as well, an exclusive source told North Press.
"We are currently asking all the employees in Hawl Camp not to come to work until further notice," the council said.
"We will only continue to deliver water to the trucks during the suspension period, as the Norwegian Refugee Council gives time to reassess the situation in the camp and review the security and safety measures," it added.
"We take this matter very seriously, and will do our best to protect our employees and beneficiaries from security risks," the council said.
The Hawl Camp, 40 kilometers east of Hasakah, is a house for 56.773 individuals numbering 15.431 families, 2.423 of which are families of the dead and detainees of the 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.... Organization (ISIS) foreign descendant and detainees from over 60 countries, according to the recent obtained statistics
[An Nahar] Leb ...an Iranian colony situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozeen flavors of Christians. It is the home of Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers... 's elections Sunday won't yield a seismic shift despite widespread discontent with a graft-tainted political class blamed for a painful economic crisis and a deadly disaster, experts say.
Given Lebanon's sectarian-based politics, it will likely "reproduce the political class and give it internal and international legitimacy," said Rima Majed of the American University of Beirut.
"Maybe candidates from the opposition will clinch some seats, but I don't think that there will be a change in the political scene," said Majed, an expert in sectarianism and social movements.
Beirut voter Issam Ayyad, 70, put it more simply: "We will not be able to change."
The small country's political system has long distributed power among its religious communities, entrenching a ruling elite that has treated politics as a family business.
By convention, the Lebanese president is a Maronite Christian, the prime minister a Sunni Moslem, and the speaker of parliament a Shiite.
In the current parliament, the Shiite Hizbullah ...Party of God, a Leb militia inspired, founded, funded and directed by Iran. Hizbullah refers to itself as The Resistance and purports to defend Leb against Israel, with whom it has started and lost one disastrous war to date, though it did claim victory... party and its allies, including the Christian Free Patriotic Movement Despite its name a Christian party allied with Hizbullah, neither free nor particularly patriotic... , command a majority.
The system has held back the emergence of non-sectarian political parties and civil society representatives.
The elections will be the first since a youth-led protest movement broke out in October 2019 against a political class seen as inept, corrupt and responsible for a litany of woes, from power blackouts to piles of uncollected garbage.
The anger went kaboom! into months of street rallies but lost momentum as the Covid-19 pandemic hit, together with a financial crash that the World Bank has labelled one of the world's worst in modern times.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/12/2022 00:00 ||
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[NAHARNET] Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi has called on Lebanon’s Sunni community to turn out heavily in the May 15 parliamentary elections, warning that “reluctance from practicing the right of voting would deepen the country’s crises.”
“You actively took part in founding the country and enshrining its National Pact. You did not take part in civil war and you did not take up arms. Today you are invited to participate heavily in pulling Lebanon out of a war that is of another nature – the war of poverty, deprivation and employment, which has entered into the homes of all Lebanese,” Mawlawi said in an interview with the Saudi al-Bilad newspaper.
“You are asked to be loyal to your Arabism and keen on the legitimacy of your state,” the minister added.
Ex-PM Saad Hariri, the leader of the biggest Sunni party in the country, had recently announced that his al-Mustaqbal Movement would not take part in the elections.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/12/2022 00:00 ||
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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.
...Arabic for 
Hezbollah
...The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years. It produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. That's three statements. Only the first is subjective....
...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 
...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 Zaidi Shia insurgent group operating in Yemen. They have also been referred to as the 
...Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979...
...The nation is noted for 
...an Iranian colony situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozeen flavors of Christians. It is the home of Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers...
