[Rudaw] Twenty-five migrants colonists from the Kurdistan Region have been rescued in Libya and are expected to return home "soon," Iraq’s actingl ambassador to the north African country told Rudaw on Sunday.
Ahmed al-Sahhaf, the Chargé d'Affaires at the Iraqi embassy in Libya, told Rudaw that the embassy "had searched and located the 25 Kurdish migrants colonists from the Kurdistan Region, and they are safe with us." He added, "Soon, the procedures for their return to the Kurdistan Region will be completed."
The Iraqi diplomat added that the Iraqi embassy, in coordination with eastern Tripoli ...a confusing city, one end of which is located in Lebanon and the other end of which is the capital of Libya. Its chief distinction is being mentioned in the Marine Hymn... ’s Directorate of Illegal Immigration, was able to secure their release.
"All 25 individuals are from the city of Ranya," located in the Raparin Independent Administration of the Kurdistan Region’s eastern Sulaimani province, Sahhaf confirmed.
In early July, Rudaw reported on the rising number of young people from the Raparin area using the Libya-Italia sea route to reach Europe. The dangerous path has become increasingly popular due to tighter border restrictions and longer wait times along the traditional The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the decaying remnant of the Ottoman Empire... -Greece route.
"Most migrants colonists now go through Libya," said Ranj Pishdari, a Europe-based migrant rights activist. "From there, they head across the Mediterranean to Italia. It’s become the preferred route despite the risks."
Ranj Pishdari, a Europe-based migrant rights activist, then-stated that "most migrants colonists are going through Libya," and "from there, they head across the Mediterranean to Italia. It’s become the preferred route despite the risks."
Meanwhile,
...back at the barn, Bossy's udder had begun to ache... Bakr Ali, head of the Association of Returned Refugees (ARR), explained that the Libya-Italia crossing is much shorter - taking around eight hours compared to up to 72 hours from Greece. "Smugglers charge nearly $17,000 per person," he told Rudaw, "and a significant portion of that money is paid to Libyan militias who control the coast."
According to Rudaw’s sources, one of the most influential smugglers in Libya is a Kurd from Raparin, known by the initials H.K. Although based in Europe, he has temporarily relocated to Libya to personally oversee the smuggling operations.
For his part, Sahhaf reaffirmed on Sunday the embassy’s commitment to locating and assisting all migrants colonists in Libya. "From time to time, we find these migrants colonists who come to Libya illegally," he said.
Looking ahead, the rescued individuals "will contact their families, obtain passports and will return to the Kurdistan Region as coordination is currently under way" with the local authorities, Sahhafo
Just last week, six other Kurdish migrants colonists were also repatriated from Libya to the Kurdistan Region, which has witnessed repeated waves of youth migration over the past decade, largely driven by economic hardship and the pursuit of better opportunities abroad.
[ShabelleMedia] The rebel group March 23 Movement (M23)
…sometimes referred to as the Congolese Revolutionary Army. Founded in 2012 as a Rwandan Tutsi sock puppet, which no doubt seemed a good idea at the time, in less than a year the Congolese army defeated them, and then Rwanda publicly stepped back in response to international pressure. M23 started acting up again in late 2022, again at Rwandan instigation...
confirmed Friday that it has dispatched a delegation to Doha, Qatar ...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates. Home of nutbag holy manYusuf al-Qaradawi... ’s capital, for talks with the government 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... (DRC).
Speaking at a presser in Goma, the capital of North Kivu Province, which has been under M23 control since late January, M23 political leader Bertrand Bisimwa stressed that the two-member team was tasked "only with discussing the mechanisms for a ceasefire and the release of prisoners."
Talks between the DRC government and the M23 resumed this week in Doha under Qatari mediation, following missed earlier deadlines, according to Radio Okapi, a United Nations ...a lucrative dumping ground for the relatives of dictators and party hacks... -backed outlet in the DRC.
The Declaration of Principles signed by both sides on July 19 in Doha called for negotiations toward a peace deal to begin by Aug. 8 and conclude by Aug. 18. Though the timetable lapsed, Qatar circulated a draft agreement last week to both parties.
"When we finish this stage, we can move on to something else," Bisimwa said, acknowledging "blockages" in the Doha process. The M23 had earlier insisted that provisions of the declaration, particularly the release of its members detained by the DRC government, be implemented before broader peace talks could advance.
The DRC government has yet to respond to the M23’s latest remarks but has reiterated its "firm commitment" to constructive dialogue while underscoring its determination to defend national illusory sovereignty and restore lasting peace in the east. Both sides have accused each other of violating the ceasefire agreed in Doha.
Since January, the security situation has tanked sharply, with the M23 seizing several strategic towns, including Goma and Bukavu, exacerbating an already dire humanitarian crisis.
According to the United Nations, more than 27.8 million people in the DRC face food insecurity, with over seven million internally displaced, many of them multiple times.
[IsraelTimes] Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) confirms in a statement that the seemingly emaciated Gazan child featured on the front page of yesterday’s Daily Mirror is 3-year-old Kareem Muammar, who suffers from Fanconi syndrome, a hereditary disease that causes muscle and urinary tract weakness and has also affected other family members.
Pre-war medical documents published alongside the statement appear to confirm Muammar’s diagnosis, with the agency stressing that his illness predates the war.
The Mirror cover, published under the headline “Stop Starving Gaza’s Kids,” echoes Hamas’s forced starvation narrative, COGAT asserts.
In the statement, COGAT accuses Hamas of spreading false narratives as part of a propaganda campaign and criticizes international media for amplifying those claims without proper verification.
In recent weeks, similar cases have surfaced in which images of Gazan children with chronic illnesses appeared to show severe malnutrition. While their pre-existing conditions may explain their emaciated appearances, experts caution that food shortages can worsen underlying illnesses and hasten decline.
[ConservativeWoman] THIS week the High Court granted Epping Forest District Council a temporary injunction to remove approximately 140 asylum seekers from the Bell Hotel. Let’s be clear about the justification. The court ruled in favour of due process, not in favour of public safety or against immigration. Nevertheless, due process is a necessary step towards public safety and controlled immigration.
Epping got a hearing following a month of protests against accommodation of asylum-seekers in the Essex market town after one was accused of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl. Epping’s legal strategy cited a planning regulation from the 1980s, rather than any policy for immigration or policing. The council successfully argued that the hotel is no longer functioning as a hotel but as an asylum accommodation centre, a change of use which breaches planning permission. The judge agreed that the hotel operators had circumvented proper planning and public consultation processes.
The ruling favours due process over secrecy, and favours local authority over national authoritarianism.
The Home Office attempted to delay the proceedings with the argument that the injunction ’runs the risk of acting as an impetus for further violent mostly peaceful protests’. The High Court rejected the government’s bid.
Other councils will use the court ruling as a precedent for exclusion of illegal migrants colonists. First out of the blocks could be Nuneaton and Bedworth borough council. Last month two Afghan asylum seekers from a local hotel were charged with raping a 12-year-old girl. Warwickshire Police advised local councillors and officials not to reveal the background of the two suspects for fear of ’inflaming community tensions’.
Another 11 councils are reportedly ready to follow suit. Conservative-led Broxbourne (in Hertfordshire, not far from Epping) was first to declare. Some Labour-run authorities, including Wirral and Tamworth, are exploring their own challenges. Reform UK’s deputy leader Richard Tice has confirmed that all 12 Reform-controlled councils will act.
The government claims it has reduced the number of asylum hotels from ’about’ 400 in summer 2023 to ’about’ 210 currently. But it refuses to say where these hotels are (nominally for the safety of the migrants colonists, not the locals). I bet most counties can find one to complain about.
What could national government do? It could appeal against the Epping injunction, which is an interim measure, or it could wait for the full trial in October. However,
there's more than one way to skin a cat... I don’t think the government will bank on a legal reversal. For a start, it will look like mere legalistic avoidance of the problem. Second, Epping will have implemented the practical solution before the full trial. The injunction gives the hotel until September 12 to comply. Not only would the government be reversing a court ruling, it would be reversing a local authority’s enforcement of proper zoning.
True, the government could pressure judges not to follow precedent. Courts have discretion, which means partisan judges can give different rulings on the same evidence. Indeed, three years earlier Ipswich and Hull failed to get orders against asylum hotels. However the case against asylum hotels is stronger now than then. Epping was successful because it presented evidence that the Bell Hotel had defied the council’s reminders about due process (by planning further contracts for migrants colonists), that the hotel is a base for crime, that local commons are curbed, and that protests would continue. Many councils can present equally good evidence.
Reform UK’s call for peaceful protests outside every asylum hotel is helping councils to make the case that protest would continue. The government is making the case easier for councils by failing to curb illegal immigration and failing to vet migrants colonists.
Therefore I don’t think national government will rely on the courts to protect asylum hotels. Rather, it is signalling sympathy with locals. The Minister for Border Security, Dame Angela Eagle, said the government will ’continue working with local authorities and communities to address legitimate concerns’. Minister of State for Security Dan Jarvis told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that hotels are not ’the right way to accommodate people... We’ve made the pledge to drive down the use of hotels’.
In effect Jarvis has set a public expectation for the end of asylum hotels, although he has not explained how, except to say that government is ’looking’ for ’suitably appropriate alternative accommodation’.
Previous attempts at alternative accommodation have failed. The government has not renewed the Bibby Stockholm barge contract following a suspected suicide. A non-statutory inquiry continues into alleged mistreatment at the Manston processing centre. The latest agreement with La Belle France on migrants colonists merely commits La Belle France to accept one back in return for one it sends to Britannia.
So what should we expect realistically? The government surely will prioritise the suspension of asylum hotels in constituencies where Reform UK is competitive with Labour as a matter of political expediency, although it will admit no such expediency. Additionally, I sense that the government realises that it can no longer spin the protesters as a far-right minority without looking erroneous if not manipulative.
Immigration continues to rank as top priority for voters across the political spectrum. If it is to achieve a second term, this government must close the asylum hotels before 2029. However,
there's more than one way to skin a cat... unless the government gets an offshore processing centre running in abnormal time (as quickly as the Trump administration gets a detention centre running in the alligator-infested swamps of Florida) illegal migrants colonists will have to be shifted from hotels into buildings of other use-categories, primarily rented homes.
Already about 68,000 asylum-seekers are in rented homes. Another 32,345 are in hotels. Where on earth would they go if all the asylum hotels are made subject to injunctions in the next few months? Probably most would be put on the floors of airports and unfinished construction projects and even streets, as has happened in New York City, reliably Democrat Chicago, aka The Windy City or Mobtown ...home of Al Capone, the Chicago Black Sox, a succession of Daleys, Barak Obama, and Rahm Emmanuel... , and other ’sanctuary’ cities in America.
So public safety won’t improve until local councils find another legal strategy to expel illegal migrants colonists from public spaces too.
[IsraelTimes] Rappers claim ‘Zionists’ tried to interrupt start of performance with whistles; US envoy to France pens letter to Macron decrying ‘lack of sufficient action’ against antisemitism
The Irish rap group Kneecap, one of whose members faces a British terror charge for allegedly supporting Hezbollah, repeated its criticism of Israel’s war in 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 a rusty iron fist by Hamas with 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... during a performance outside Gay Paree on Sunday, despite objections from French Jewish groups and government officials.
The concert, which began shortly before 6:30 p.m. (1630 GMT), in front of several thousand people, in the Gay Paree suburb of Saint-Cloud, went ahead in the face of complaints from the Belfast trio’s critics.
The band claimed a group of "Zionists" tried to interrupt the beginning of their performance with whistles. The individuals were taken away by security.
"Free, free Paleostine!" the trio shouted at the start of their show, rallying an enthusiastic crowd where keffiyehs and Irish jerseys were visible.
After organizers kept the politically outspoken band on the program, local authorities withdrew their subsidies for the music festival where the gig took place — the annual Rock en Seine festival.
The group from Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK, has made a habit of using their concerts to canvas for the Paleostinian cause, strongly backing the Paleostinian cause and bitterly criticizing Israel.
Liam O’Hanna, 27, who performs under the stage name Mo Chara, was charged in England in May, accused of displaying a flag of the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah during a London concert in November.
They played a closely scrutinized concert at the Glastonbury Festival in June, where Chara declared: "Israel are war criminals."
The group later missed playing at the Sziget Festival in Budapest after being barred from entering the country by the Hungarian authorities, a close ally of Israel.
Kneecap, which also supports Irish republicanism and criticizes British imperialism, has sparked widespread debate in the UK and Ireland, more than two-and-a-half decades after the peace agreement that aimed to end the conflict over the status of Northern Ireland.
The group takes its name from the deliberate shooting of the limbs, known as "kneecapping," carried out by Irish republicans as punishment attacks during the decades of unrest.
’CONFIDENT’
"We are confident that the group will perform in the correct manner," Matthieu Ducos, director of Rock en Seine, told AFP ahead of the festival.
The municipality of Saint-Cloud, for the first time, withdrew its 40,000-euro ($47,000) subsidy from Rock en Seine.
The wider Ile-de-La Belle France region, which includes Gay Paree, also canceled its funding for the 2025 edition.
However,
there's no worse danger than telling a mother her baby is ugly... such moves do not jeopardize the viability of the festival, whose budget was between 16 million and 17 million euros this year.
The group has already played twice in La Belle France this summer — at the Eurockeennes festival in Belfort and the Cabaret Vert in Charleville-Mézières — both times without incident.
But Sunday’s concert came against a backdrop of concerns about alleged high levels of antisemitism in La Belle France in the wake of the Hamas ..a regional Iranian catspaw,... -led massacre on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, that triggered the war in Gaza, and Israel’s devastating retaliatory assault on the Hamas-ruled territory.
"They are desecrating the memory of the 50 French victims of Hamas on October 7, as well as all the French victims of Hezbollah," said Yonathan Arfi, president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of La Belle France (CRIF), who had called for the concert to be canceled.
French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau said vigilance would be required against "any comments of an antisemitic nature, apology for terrorism or incitement to hatred" at the event.
Ahead of the Kneecap performance, AFP obtained a letter from US Ambassador to La Belle France Charles Kushner to French President Emmanuel Macron in which he denounced his government’s action against antisemitism as insufficient, days after similar remarks from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Kushner’s letter to Macron was dated August 25, which he noted was "the 81st anniversary of the Allied Liberation of Gay Paree, which ended the deportation of Jews from French soil" under Nazi German occupation.
[IsraelTimes] Aircraft from Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Germany, and Indonesia airdropped 111 pallets of humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip today, the IDF says.
Each pallet contains several hundred kilograms of food, according to the military.
Indonesia, the country with the largest Muslim population in the world, does not have relations with Israel.
Israel re-adopted a policy of allowing aid airdrops on July 26, amid mounting international criticism over the hunger crisis in Gaza. But airdrops are only able to deliver a small fraction of what can come into Gaza by land. They also pose safety risks for the civilians who can be hit by the packages from above.
Since then, over 415 tons of aid have been airdropped in Gaza, according to the Coordinator of Government Activities in the territories.
[IsraelTime] The Telegraph reports that Iran has signaled it would be willing to scale back its uranium enrichment program in a bid to prevent Britain from reinstating United Nations sanctions.
The report cites unnamed Iranian officials who say Tehran is prepared to ease its hardline position to head off the threat of further strikes from Israel or the US.
It further says that Ali Larijani, a senior adviser to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and newly appointed secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, is pushing leaders to agree to curb uranium enrichment from 60% to 20% purity.
European nations have warned that without tangible progress on the nuclear issue by the end of the month, they are prepared to enact “snapback” sanctions on Iran removed as part of the 2015 nuclear deal.
[IsraelTimes] Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei calls for a united national front to confront what he describes as US efforts to subjugate the Islamic Republic.
The remarks, delivered at a mosque in the capital Tehran and published on Khamenei’s official website, come two months after fighting halted between Iran and Israel in a war that the United States briefly joined, and as Tehran is engaged in talks with world powers about its nuclear program.
The rare Israeli and US attacks in June, which targeted key nuclear sites and prompted Iranian retaliation, were designed to destabilize the nation, Khamenei argues.
He says that a day after “Iran was attacked” by Israel at the start of the war, “American agents” met in Europe “to discuss what government should rule Iran after the Islamic Republic.”
Khamenei claims that the United States ultimately seeks to make Iran “obedient to it.”
“The Iranian nation will stand with all of its power against those who have such erroneous expectations,” he says.
“The Iranian nation, by standing firm alongside the armed forces, the government and the system, delivered a strong blow” to its enemies, Khamenei says.
He warns against internal divisions he claims foreign powers are fomenting.
“The way forward for the enemy is to create discord” in Iran, he says, blaming “agents of America and the Zionist regime” for seeking to sow division.
“Today, thanks to God, the country is united. There are differences of opinion, but when it comes to defending the system, defending the country, and standing up against the enemy, the people are united,” Khamenei adds.
Apparently not solvable diplomatically, but that’s ok. We and Israel have other approaches in our toolkit.
[IsraelTimes] Some officials in Tehran said to show flexibility on talks with European powers, as Iran broadcasts bellicose rhetoric toward Israel
Iran’s supreme leader said the current situation with the United States was "unsolvable" and that Tehran would never bow to pressure to obey Washington, amid a standoff with Western powers over its nuclear program, state media reported on Sunday.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ...the very aged actual dictator of Iran, successor to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini...> made the remarks days after Iranian officials threatened Israel with renewed fighting, two months after the countries fought a 12-day air war. The comments also come after 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 the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate JewsZionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol... and three European powers agreed on Friday to resume talks to try to restart full negotiations on curbing Tehran’s nuclear enrichment work.
"They want Iran to be obedient to America. The Iranian nation will stand with all of its power against those who have such erroneous expectations," Khamenei was reported as saying.
"People who ask us not to issue slogans against the US... to have direct negotiations with the US, only see appearances... This issue is unsolvable," he added.
The Islamic Theocratic Republic suspended nuclear negotiations with the United States after the US and Israel bombed its nuclear sites during the 12-day war in June. Israel said the sweeping assault on Iran’s top military leaders, nuclear scientists, uranium enrichment sites and ballistic missile program was necessary to prevent Tehran from realizing its avowed plan to destroy the Jewish state.
Iran retaliated to Israel’s strikes by launching over 500 ballistic missiles and around 1,100 drones at Israel. The attacks killed 31 people and maimed over 3,000 in Israel, according to health officials and hospitals.
Following that war, La Belle France, Britannia and Germany have said if Tehran does not return to the table, they could reactivate United Nations ...boodling on the grand scale... sanctions under a "snapback" mechanism agreed to in a 2015 deal between Iran, the United States and several world powers.
To avoid those sanctions, some Iranian officials are reportedly willing to accept limits on the country’s nuclear program. The Telegraph reported on Sunday that reformers in Tehran are pushing the regime to agree to cap uranium enrichment at 20 percent, short of the 90% that would make it suitable for nuclear weapons.
The new leader of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Ali Larijani, is leading that effort, the British outlet reported, adding that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps opposes the idea. The report said Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, who appointed Larijani, has drawn backlash from hardliners in the regime.
"Larijani is trying to convince the system to reduce the level of enrichment to avoid another war," a senior Iranian official said, according to The Telegraph. "He’s concerned that without lowering it or meeting some of the West’s demands, the system will face another major challenge."
Iran’s rhetoric toward Israel, meanwhile, has been more bellicose. It has threatened Jerusalem with another round of conflict, warning that it was prepared for any new Israeli attack and announcing it had developed missiles with greater capabilities than those used during the recent war.
"The missiles used in the 12-day war were manufactured... a few years ago," Defense Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh said last week, quoted by the official IRNA news agency.
"Today, we have manufactured and possess missiles with far greater capabilities than previous missiles, and if the Zionist enemy embarks on the adventure again, we will undoubtedly use them."
Nasirzadeh’s comments came after a bigwig in the IRGC said another war with Israel or the United States could begin at any time.
"We are not in a ceasefire, we are in a stage of war," Yahya Rahim Safavi, a senior military adviser to Khamenei, told Iranian media last week. "I think another war may happen, and after that, there may be no more wars."
Nasirzadeh also recently claimed that the Islamic Theocratic Republic has established infrastructure to manufacture weapons in "several countries." And on Saturday, state media reported that Iranian forces killed six murderous Moslems in a raid in the restive southeast, saying they were members of a "terrorist" group linked to Israel.
Iran has consistently denied seeking to acquire nuclear weapons. However,
today is that tomorrow you were thinking about yesterday... it enriched uranium to levels that have no peaceful application, obstructed international inspectors from checking its nuclear facilities, and expanded its ballistic missile capabilities. Israel said that ahead of the war, Iran had taken steps toward weaponization.
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...
...formerly the Congo Free State, Belgian Congo, Zaire, and who knows what else, not to be confused with the Brazzaville Congo aka 
...home of Al Capone, the Chicago Black Sox, a succession of Daleys, Barak Obama, and Rahm Emmanuel...
..a regional Iranian catspaw,...
...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 
