F-17 every three months, like clockwork. There are those who complain this is no different than it was under Hosni Mubarak, but it seems to me the current dictator is doing a better job — finances are better and President Sisi grasps economics as well as war in an area where the Islamists will always fight to establish one or another variant of the Muslim Brotherhood caliphate.
[AlAhram] President Abdel Fattah El Sisi has issued a decree extending the state of emergency nationwide for three months as of 1 AM Monday , January 27.
The decree was published in the gazette on Sunday.
According to the decree, the Egyptian Armed Forces and the police shall take the necessary measures to counter terrorism, maintain security and protect citizens and properties.
Egypt's House of Representatives approved by two third of its members on the President's decree to extend the state of emergency nationwide on 14 January
The state of emergency was first declared in April 2017 following two suicide kabooms in churches in Alexandria and Gharbiya on Palm Sunday that killed 47 worshipers, and has been constantly renewed ever since.
The position of Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Russia have contributed to uniting Europe’s stance on Libya, German Chancellor Angela Merkel says after the conclusion of the peace summit in Berlin.https://t.co/SHvLvoKdRg
Participants at the Berlin peace summit on Libya are pledging not to interfere in Libya’s internal affairs, according to the conference’s final communique, adding that the country has become “fertile ground for armed and terrorist groups.”https://t.co/SHvLvoKdRg
[IsraelTimes] US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo "expressed outrage" to Egypt’s president at the death of an American citizen who insisted he had been wrongfully held in Egyptian prison, according to a State Department spokeswoman.
Pompeo’s sharp remarks signal the US government intended to place the death of Mustafa Kassem, 54, following his protracted hunger strike last week,
...also spelt Mostafa Kassem, he’s the one arrested at a Muslim Brotherhood sit-in in 2013. Possibly he only went to see what the excitement was about...
high on the diplomatic agenda.
Pompeo raises his concerns to Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi about Kassem’s "pointless and tragic death" on the sidelines of an international peace summit in Berlin that aims to end Libya’s civil war.
The death of the auto parts dealer from Long Island, New York, prompted an outcry from human rights ...which often include carefully measured allowances of freedom at the convenience of the state... groups, as well as accusations of medical negligence in Egypt’s prisons.
The case also touched a nerve in Washington, which has cultivated close security and diplomatic ties with Egypt despite growing unease over its human rights violations under general-turned-president Sissi.
Activists and foreign affairs experts have called for the Trump administration to penalize its staunch Middle Eastern ally by slashing millions of dollars in security assistance. The US grants $1.2 billion in annual military aid to Egypt.
Kassem was detained by Egypt in 2013 in what his lawyers described as a vast dragnet during the violent dispersal of an Islamist sit-in that killed hundreds of people. He was later sentenced to 15 years under a contentious anti-protest law that the government often uses to silence dissent. He maintained his innocence throughout his detention and started a hunger strike last year in protest.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
01/20/2020 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11126 views]
Top|| File under: Muslim Brotherhood
[The Hill] Defense Secretary Mark Esper's plan to draw down U.S. forces in Africa is facing increased pushback on Capitol Hill.
The top Democrat and Republican on the House Armed Services Committee have joined numerous lawmakers calling on Esper to stop a planned reduction of the 6,000 to 7,000 troops fighting militant terrorist groups on the continent and instead keep the forces in an effort to better counter Russian and Chinese aggression.
"A decrease in our investment now may result in the need for the United States to reinvest at many more times the cost down the road," Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith (D-Wash.) and ranking member Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) wrote in letter to Esper last week.
The letter is a response to a New York Times report in December that found Esper was mulling greatly reducing or completely withdrawing U.S. troops from West Africa in a plan that would focus on several hundred American troops deployed in Niger, Chad and Mali.
This is some grade A bullshit. 100% globalism. We have nothing to do with these countries and our troops have no business being there. Out, out, out I say.
Posted by: Herb McCoy ||
01/20/2020 3:45 Comments ||
Top||
#5
#4 Damn straight, Herb! Russia, or China, (or anybody outside USA and Israel) are totally incapable of aggression!
#ICYMI: Kuwaiti TV Host Fajer Alsaeed: I Used to Think Iran Was Strong Until I Saw How It Retaliated against U.S. for Soleimani’s Killing; Iran Is All Talk pic.twitter.com/3ccV2hzr8N
#2
That critique sounds a little disappointment driven...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
01/20/2020 5:41 Comments ||
Top||
#3
If the US had retaliated after the Iranian missile salvo the international political & journalistical elite would unanimously blame Trump for the Ukranian plane shoot down.
#4
Well, Suleimani got away with a lot. And they said (I heard it on CNN!) that the guy was like James Bond-- and a former bodybuilder, to boot! So maybe the Kuwaiti anchorette was hot for her departed heartthrob.
The United Nations says that a missile attack on a government military camp in central Yemen which killed dozens of people could derail a fragile political process that aims to calm the almost five-year-old war. https://t.co/0j96p7jbs5
[Jpost] IDC identifies Hamas, the braying voice of Islamic Resistance®, bitcoin front with 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... links - report.
A website called "cash4ps" enables Hamas to send and receive money out of Gazoo
Continued on Page 49
[IsraelTimes] Cyprus denounces The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire... as a "pirate state" that flouts international law as Turkey’s bid to drill for natural gas in waters where Cyprus has economic rights rekindled tensions over energy reserves in the eastern Mediterranean.
Cyprus says Turkey is now attempting to drill inside an exploration area, or block, south of the ethnically split Mediterranean island nation that’s already licensed to energy companies Eni of Italia and Total of La Belle France.
This would be Turkey’s fourth such drilling effort since last July when it dispatched a pair or warship-escorted drill ships to the island’s west and east. It would also mark the second time a Ottoman Turkish ship was drilling in a block licensed to Eni and Total.
Overall, the two energy companies hold licenses to carry out a hydrocarbons search in seven of Cyprus’ 13 blocks off its south coast. Other companies holding such licenses include ExxonMobil and partner 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... Petroleum, as well as Texas-based Noble Energy and Israeli partner Delek.
Cyprus says despite emerging energy-based partnerships among the countries in the eastern Mediterranean, Turkey has opted to "go down a path of international illegality" of its own accord. It says Turkey has "provocatively ignored" repeated Europe ...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum... an Union calls to stop its illegal activities.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
01/20/2020 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11132 views]
Top|| File under: Sublime Porte
#1
I would suggest Cyprus start buying SAM's and ATGM's because it looks like they are about to be annexed.
Cyprus accuses Turkey of turning into a “pirate state” in its attack of Ankara’s exploratory oil and gas drilling off its coastal waters a day after the EU issued its own warning.https://t.co/Nt8Fk8FJ1j
[Jpost] The action comes after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned that the US would impose travel bans on prominent Iranian leaders as part of sanctions.
The US Department of State has designated Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Brig.-Gen. Hassan Shahvarpour, Khuzestan Province’s Vali Asr Commander, for his involvement in gross violations of human rights ...which are often intentionally defined so widely as to be meaningless... against protesters during the November protests in Mahshahr, Iran.
The action makes both Shahvarpour and his immediate family ineligible for entry into the US.
In December, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced a range of new sanctions against the Iranian regime, which included the threat to ban Iranian officials and their families from travelling to the US.
"Thugs killing people’s children will not be allowed to send their own children to study in the United States of America," Pompeo said at the time.
Pompeo also announced during the same speech that the US was gathering evidence of human rights violations by the Iranian authorities directly from the Iranian people, after the regime tried to stifle them from speaking out by shutting down the internet.
In a blurb, the State Department announced on Saturday that it had gathered information via the Rewards for Justice tip-line and from multiple media reports that IRGC units under the command of Shahvarpour had killed as many as 148 Iranians.
During the November 2019 protests by Iranians against the regime, "they [the units] encircled fleeing protesters in armored vehicles, firing machine guns into the crowd and lighting fire to the marsh in which the protesters took cover," the statement read.
Consequently, the US was taking the action against Shahvarpour.
Doing so "demonstrates the United States’ continued commitment to the Iranian people to support their demands for accountability from Iranian officials who committed serious human rights abuses against protesters in November 2019," the State Department said.
They added: "The United States has heard the Iranian people, collected information submitted by ordinary Iranians through the Rewards for Justice tip-line, followed the evidence and has taken action against this abusive official whose actions are only one example of the many reported human rights violations which were perpetrated during the country-wide protests of November 2019 in Iran.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
01/20/2020 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11131 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
#1
Anyone file for a restraining order yet on the basis that TrumpHitler(tm) is banning Muslims again?
[JPost] - The Palestinian Authority’s daily newspaper Al-Hayat al-Jadida (The New Life) printed an opinion piece on Saturday calling on readers to carry out murders in Jerusalem to halt the upcoming diplomatic event marking the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) reported in a press release on Sunday.
Noted world leaders such as Russian President Vladimir Putin and Prince Charles of the UK are expected to attend. Unpeople
#ICYMI: Iranian Ayatollah Ahmad Alamolhoda: U.K. Ambassador Should Be Chopped into Pieces; Hundreds of Thousands of U.S. Soldiers Were Killed in Our Missile Attack; Iranians Who Refused to Step on Flags of Israel, U.S. Should Be Court-Martialed, Executed pic.twitter.com/QZiPtlVF9I
Posted by: Fred ||
01/20/2020 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11132 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
...He should throttle back on the Red Bull just a tetch...
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
01/20/2020 4:08 Comments ||
Top||
#2
While chopping poor Rob would probably be simply 'condemned' by London, the admission to killing hundreds of thousands of Americans invites the US to actually 'avenge their dead'.
#6
I suppose on the positive side he wasn't reduced to throwing his hat on the floor, speech in the air and slapping himself even further into imbecility.
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 Hill] Defense Secretary Mark Esper's plan to draw down U.S. forces in Africa is facing increased pushback on Capitol Hill.
"Russian and Chinese aggression"
...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 
...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire...
