Despite further appeals for a ceasefire in Sabratha from local officials as well as from Libyan human rights organisations clashes in the town continued for a third day today.
However, it is reported that there has been no repeat of yesterday’s intense fighting in which tanks and heavy weapons were deployed, with random firing into residential areas.
There was a truce today during which families caught up in the conflict could be evacuated. However while the Red Crescent was undertaking the operation, the Amu Brigade is to have launched a fresh attack in which one person was killed and six people injured.
Indeed the town’s municipal council has blamed the continuing violence on Ahmed Dabbashi’s Amu brigade: “The efforts of the wise and honest people of Sabratha to deal with this problem have not stopped since this morning” it said in a statement today. “The good people agreed on the need to stop the clashes…but the parties involved did not commit to stopping the fighting”.
The council also made the point that the fighting between Amu and a militia supporting the Libyan National Army (LNA) was “an internal” affair which in no way permitted the involvement of outside forces. Yet at the same time the council also demanded “the competent authorities, foremost the Presidency Council and the ministry of defence, intervene and address the problem”.
The council was clearly reacting to reports that the LNA’s Zintan-based western commander Colonel Idris Madi had ordered local units to mobilise. In July a force of some 500 LNA supporters from the Watiya airbase and surrounding towns came into Sabratha and forced the Islamists out of the town.
The fighting began on Saturday following the killing of an Amu member who refused to stop at a checkpoint run by the LNA-linked militia. The checkpoint was then attacked by Amu people causing two further deaths.
Much of the firing appears to have random by people perhaps unfamiliar with the weapons. It is reported that at least one shell landed in the ancient ruins of Sabratha damaging the theatre. Until now the archaeological site, which is arguably the finest-preserved in Libya, had largely escaped damage in the conflict.
Posted by: badanov ||
09/19/2017 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11126 views]
Top|| File under: Arab Spring
[AlAhram] The Egyptian state gazette on Monday published a court order by a Cairo criminal court which added 215 people who are facing trial for membership of the Helwan Brigades bad boy group to the country’s terror list.
The Helwan Brigades group first appeared in a video in August 2014, vowing to target all police facilities in Helwan, a southern suburb of Cairo. Their attacks have been linked to both ISIS and the Muslim Brotherhood...
The defendants can appeal the new decision.
In April, the Court of Cassation overturned a previous lower court order placing the defendants on the terror list, citing insufficient reasoning, and sent the case back to the lower court.
The defendants are facing trial on a range of charges connected with the bad boy group’s activities, including calling for the violation of the constitution and the law, preventing the state from exercising its role, assaulting personal freedoms of citizens, and harming national unity and social peace, as well as forming bad boy groups in the period between August 2013 and February 2015.
They have also been accused of committing other crimes, including the murder of a number of police members.
The trials have yet to reach a verdict.
Journalist Alyaa Awad, who was tossed in the slammer Don't shoot, coppers! I'm comin' out! in September 2014 and worked for the pro-Moslem Brüderbund news website Rassd, is the only female defendant in the case. She is accused of shooting one of the Helwan Brigades' videos,
Inclusion on the country's terror list means a ban on travel and a freeze on assets.
The current terror list includes more than 2,000 individuals, among them former president Mohammed Morsi, and former Moslem Brüderbund supreme guide Mohammed Badie.
Also listed are businessman Safwan Thabet, the founder of the Juhayna dairy company, and football star Mohammed Abou-Treika.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
09/19/2017 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11127 views]
Top|| File under: Muslim Brotherhood
[DAWN] A United Kingdom (UK) Labour Party spokesperson said the party had turned down an application from the Saudi embassy to attend the party's annual conference in Brighton, HuffPost reported on Monday.
"Following evidence of war crimes committed by Soddy Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face... in its bombing campaign in 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. Except for a tiny handfull of Jews everthing there is very Islamic... and other large scale human rights ...which are usually open to widely divergent definitions... abuses, the NEC agreed that the embassy’s application to attend the Labour Party conference would not be accepted," the spokesperson said.
Representatives from Sudan were also apparently barred from attending the conference, according to a letter to all MPs written by the League of Arab States in London, which announced the cancellation of a reception and dinner event that was to be held by Arab ambassadors.
"Our Council has decided to refrain from attending the Labour Party Conference this year due to the rejection of both the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's and the Republic of Sudan's applications to attend the conference," the letter said.
The conference will begin next Sunday on Sept 24.
The Labour Party is a vocal opponent of the arms assistance the UK provides to Saudi Arabia in the ongoing war in Yemen.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/19/2017 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11123 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Saudi Arabia
[DailyMail] A teenage suspect in the Parsons Green bombing was reported to the counter terrorism strategy Prevent months before the attack, it was claimed last night.
The 18-year-old Iraqi refugee, who was fostered by a couple in Sunbury-on-Thames, Surrey, was said to have been in frequent trouble with the police and authorities.
His desperate foster parents were alleged to have been struggling to cope.
Sources yesterday said that his behaviour had become so bad that he had been referred to Prevent, the Government's de-radicalisation programme, which aims to turn potential extremists away from terror.
The referral was apparently made several months ago through Surrey County Council, which was responsible for placing the orphan with Penny and Ronald Jones, who have fostered hundreds of children.
It is unclear what – if anything – was done before Friday morning when the 18-year-old is suspected of planting a bomb on a Tube train at London's Parsons Green station.
The revelation will raise new questions about what the police and security services knew about the suspect. Donald Trump sparked a row on the day of the attack by suggesting that police had had him 'in their sights'.
Yesterday it also emerged that the Joneses, who took in the 18-year-old and another suspect, 21-year-old Yahya Faroukh, are so devastated that they have decided never to foster again.
Police are looking at other foster children for possible links to the two suspects. Experts are also examining a shed in the couple's back garden for traces of bomb-making chemicals.
It is understood [the18 year old Iraqi] had come to Britain aged 15 after he had spent months attempting to smuggle himself into the UK, while living in the notorious makeshift Calais refugee camp known as The Jungle.
A refugee charity is believed to have helped his passage into Britain in 2014 and placed him in foster care with at least two families in Kent, before he moved in with another family in South West London in the last few weeks.
The suspect, who is being held in custody on suspicion of planting the homemade bucket bomb on the London Underground, is said to have had a furious bust-up with his foster parents two weeks ago after he was brought back to the house in leafy Sunbury-upon-Thames in a marked police car.
#2
Brit coppers said earlier this year that the Muslim community was about zero help in deterring terrorism.
Presuming that's true--and who would believe Brit officialdom on terrorism?--it doesn't make any practical difference.
Posted by: Richard Aubrey ||
09/19/2017 7:11 Comments ||
Top||
#3
Seems like the government really isn't trying to stop these attacks... does it?
#4
the government really isn't trying to stop these attacks
In order to start fixing the problem, the first step is to admit there is one. I doubt any of the pols want to go there. Maybe London's mayor, Sadiq Khan, will step up. No, don't hold your breath.
[RT] A Liberal Democratic Party MP has proposed making false reports of terrorist attacks equal with providing assistance to terrorists. The move came soon after a wave of bomb threats caused mass evacuations all over Russia.
Presently assisting terrorist activities, including sponsorship of terrorist organizations, is punishable by up to 20 years in prison, but suspects can evade it completely if they voluntarily report the plans of attack and help to effectively prevent it.
Earlier in the week, a wave of anonymous phone calls across Russia caused evacuations of over 130,000 people from over 420 sites. Not a single threat has proved to be true, but still the estimated combined damage from the disrupted work of various organizations and transport amounted to about 1 billion rubles ($17.2 million), according to deputy chair of the State Duma Committee for Defense, Yury Shvytkin (United Russia).
Sources in law enforcement agencies have told RIA Novosti that investigators did not rule out that the people who made the false calls were connected with the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS). They also added that the calls were made from outside Russia but nevertheless some actual perpetrators were established and will soon be put on international wanted lists.
On Friday afternoon, Kommersant daily reported that several people had been detained in Russia for making false reports of planned terrorist attacks via telephones or on social networks.
However, Kommersant’s sources said that all of the detained were teenagers who apparently were provoked into such actions by earlier false calls from abroad.
[DAWN] A German nationalist party called on Monday for tighter security measures aimed primarily at immigrants colonists, while again insisting that Islam is incompatible with democracy, as Germany's election campaign entered its final stretch.
Alternative for Germany's co-leader Alexander Gauland told news hounds that "Islam is also a political doctrine" and as such "is incompatible with a free democratic order."
"In this respect, it is not a part of Germany," he said.
Alternative for Germany, known by its German acronym AfD, is on its way to enter parliament for the first time in Sunday's national election with about 10 per cent support in recent polls. Gauland says it wants to prevent the "Islamisation of Germany".
Among other proposals, he said AfD wants a ban on minarets and public calls to prayer from mosques, a ban on headscarves for teachers and students, and for imams to lead prayers only in German.
At the same news conference in Berlin, Gauland's co-leader, Alice Weidel, presented a broad range of proposals she said would make Germany safer, including the reintroduction of conscription to enhance border security, imprisoning foreigners who commit crimes in facilities in other countries, and making it tougher to get citizenship and easier to lose it.
Gauland and Weidel were short on specifics about how their proposals could be put into practice, but will likely never have to provide details since any measures would have to be approved first by parliament as well as overcome constitutional challenges. Other parties say they won't include AfD in a new government.
[DW] One week before the German election, the latest voter poll has put the far-right AfD barely ahead of the other "small parties." But Germany's Green party and the liberal FDP haven't given up in the race for third place.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/19/2017 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11128 views]
Top|| File under: Moslem Colonists
#1
Islam 'incompatible with democracy'
Proven correct.
I'd go further
Islam is incompatible with civilisation
BP that was my immediate thought too, but, it really depends on what definition of civilization you're using. All to many "civilizations" are counter to any idea of civility.
[DW] Ankara has summoned Germany's ambassador after more than 10,000 Kurds rallied in Cologne. The rally was in support of Kurdish independence as well as the jailed leader of the banned PKK.
The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... summoned the German ambassador to Ankara in response to a large rally held by Kurds in Cologne ...a lovely city in Germany. They invented perfume there... on Saturday.
More than 10,000 people rallied in the west German city in support of an independence referendum in Iraq.
Ankara summoned ambassador Martin Erdmann to voice concern over what it called a bully boy rally, the Ottoman Turkish foreign ministry said in a statement.
"We condemn the organization of a rally in the German city of Cologne by the extensions of the PKK terrorist organizations, and the allowing of terror propaganda. We have voiced our reaction in a strong manner to Germany's ambassador to Ankara, who was called to the ministry," it said.
On Saturday, Kurdish demonstrators called for freedom for Abdullah Ocalan, the tossed in the slammer Youse'll never take me alive coppers!... [BANG!]... Ow!... I quit! leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), independence for Kurdistan, and democracy for the Middle East, local paper Kölner Stadt Anzeiger reported.
They had gathered at what was ostensibly a cultural festival organized by the Democratic Social Center for Kurds in Germany.
"We are protesting and celebrating at the same time - that is our culture," attendee Rifat Arslan told the paper, after traveling there from Frankfurt with his family. "We demand a recognized and free Kurdistan and want the release of our leader Ocalan," he was quoted as saying.
The PKK is classified as a terrorist organization by Turkey, Germany and the European Union ...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing... Turkey accused Germany of not doing enough to stop PKK activities.
"The double standard approach Germany has been following with regards to the global fight against terrorism is worrying. We call on Germany to show a principled stance against all kinds of terror," the ministry said in the statement.
On September 3, about 25,000 Kurdish supporters demonstrated in Cologne against Ottoman Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, where they also carried posters of Ocalan.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
09/19/2017 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11127 views]
Top|| File under: Sublime Porte
[AnNahar] Thirty-one former employees of a now shuttered Ottoman Turkish newspaper that had backed the US-based Islamic preacher Fethullah Gulen ... a Turkish preacher living in Pennsylvania whom the current govt of Turkey considers responsible for all the ills afflicting Turkey and possibly the entire world... went on trial Monday charged with links to the failed 2016 coup.
Those on trial include writers and executives from the Zaman daily and its English-language sister publication Today's Zaman, which were taken over by the state in March 2016 and shut down in July that year.
The trial is the latest to get underway for journalists in The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... under the state of emergency imposed after the botched putsch, fuelling growing concerns over press freedoms in the country.
Both publications were closely aligned with Gulen, whom Turkey accuses of orchestrating the July 15, 2016, coup attempt against President Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdogan the First ... Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him... . Gulen has strongly denied No, no! Certainly not! the charge.
Twenty-two suspects in the case are being held in detention, with the remainder free under judicial supervision or on the run, the state-run Anadolu news agency said.
The trial is being held at a special courthouse next to the Silivri prison complex on the outskirts of Istanbul.
Those being held in jail include the prominent academic and former Zaman columnist Mumtazer Turkone and the writer Sahin Alpay.
They are charged with seeking to overthrow the Ottoman Turkish government and with membership in an armed terror group. If found guilty, they face multiple life sentences.
According to the P24 press freedom website, there are 171 journalists behind bars in Turkey, most detained under the state of emergency.
Dozens are currently on trial, with the most prominent and controversial case being pursued against staff at the anti-Erdogan Cumhuriyet daily.
Seventeen suspects are on trial in that case, including writers, executives and even cartoonists, and five of them are being detained during the proceedings.
The Cumhuriyet employees say they vigorously opposed the coup and have long been critical of Gulen. One of the paper's writers on trial, Ahmet Sik, even wrote a book exposing Gulen's role in Ottoman Turkish politics.
Once an ally of Erdogan and his Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party, Gulen amassed huge influence through supporters in the media, the judiciary, police and education.
But in the last half decade he fell out with the government, which accused the Pennsylvania-based preacher of seeking to build a "parallel state" aimed at usurping Erdogan.
Zaman and Today's Zaman used to be supportive of Erdogan but became hugely critical as tensions rose between him and Gulen.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
09/19/2017 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11128 views]
Top|| File under: Sublime Porte
[AnNahar] The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... launched a military drill featuring tanks close to the Iraqi border on Monday, the army said, a week before Iraq's Kurdish region will hold an independence referendum.
Despite opposition from Turkey, Iran and the United States, the Kurdistan Regional Government's leaders have said they will hold the non-binding independence vote on September 25.
Ankara has previously warned against the poll, saying it could risk "civil war" and will "have a cost" if it goes ahead.
Despite forging strong ties with the KRG in northern Iraq in recent years, Turkey fears the vote could stoke separatist aspirations among its own sizeable Kurdish minority.
Ankara's national security council will meet on September 22 to discuss the country's official position on the poll but President Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdogan the First ... Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him... on Sunday said it was a "mistake".
He was speaking before leaving for the United Nations ...an idea whose time has gone... General Assembly, where he will meet Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi -- whose Baghdad government is also fiercely against the KRG's move.
Jan Kubis, the top UN envoy in Iraq, last week offered international backing for immediate negotiations between the country's federal government and the autonomous region in a bid to get Iraqi Kurdish leader Massud Barzani to drop the plans.
The Ottoman Turkish military exercise began in the Silopi-Habur region in the country's south, close to northern Iraq, the armed forces said.
"Simultaneously with this exercise, counter-terrorism operations in the border region continue," a statement added.
Witnesses in the region said they saw around 100 military vehicles deployed, including tanks, in the early hours of Monday, an AFP correspondent said.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
09/19/2017 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11126 views]
Top|| File under: Sublime Porte
[Al Jazeera] India's government said on Monday it has evidence showing some Rohingya in the country have ties to "terror organizations" and pose a security threat that justifies a mass deportation of the ethnic group.
India's home ministry said it would confidentially share intelligence information with the Supreme Court showing Rohingya links with Pakistain-based gangs, in a bid to get legal clearance for plans to deport 40,000 Rohingya.
The Supreme Court is hearing an appeal lodged on behalf of Rohingya against the deportation plan proposed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist government.
India's home ministry submitted an affidavit to the court arguing the hardline stance was justified by the security threat posed by illegal immigrants colonists from the majority-Moslem Rohingya ethnic group, hundreds of thousands of whom have fled from Myanmar to Bangladesh, from where many have crossed into India.
"The court has no business to interfere in such matters of what they call illegal immigrants colonists or illegal migrants colonists," the government said in the affidavit.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/19/2017 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11125 views]
Top|| File under: Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army
#1
Palestinians. Kosovars. Rohingia. I wonder, when Muslims in Europe will war openly on the natives - which name the mass media coin for them.
[DAWN] Several Bloody Karachi ...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous... Central Jail officials, including a jail superintendent, have been booked on charges of aiding the escape of two high-profile Lahskar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) bad boys, Additional Inspector General (AIG) Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) Dr Sanaullah Abbasi said on Monday.
According to the first information report (FIR), a copy of which is available with Dawn.com, the case has been lodged on the basis of a search operation carried out in June by Rangers and Frontier Corps ...a provincial paramilitary force. Total manpower is about 80,000. They are tasked to help local law enforcement in the maintenance of law and order, and to carry out border patrol and a..the Antwerp-based Salafist organization that had campaigned to introduce Sharia law to Belgium before single-handedly making Belgium the highest per capita supplier of jihadis to Syria in Europe. There was a big trial in Antwerp in 2015, but most of those convicted were in absentia...nti-smuggling operations.... (FC) personnel in the jail following the escape of Sheikh Muhammad Mumtaz ─ aka Firoon aka Sher Khan aka Shahzad aka Rahi ─ and Muhammad Ahmed Khan aka Munna.
Mobile phones, air coolers, knife-cutters, freezers, stoves, DVD players, LED TVs, other contraband items and Rs3.5 million in cash were recovered from the jail during the operation, while 12 staff members, including Central Prison Superintendent Ghulam Murtaza Sheikh, were suspended after the jailbreak.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/19/2017 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11128 views]
Top|| File under: Lashkar e-Jhangvi
[DAWN] Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif on Sunday said the US President Donald Trump ...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States... administration's "militaristic approach" in Afghanistan represented a failed policy, and called for talks with the Taliban ...Arabic for students... to bring peace to the war-torn country.
Asif, who is heading to New York to participate in the 72nd session of the United Nations ...an idea whose time has gone... General Assembly (UNGA) session, told The Wall Street Journal newspaper in Islamabad that he could not understand how the American military could succeed now in Afghanistan when it had not during the "surge" under the B.O. regime with a force eight times as large as the one now planned.
The foreign minister instead called for peace talks with the Taliban, which, he said, could be arranged if Washington worked with countries in the region that have influence over the Taliban myrmidon group.
"They are pursuing a folly, a strategy that has already failed," the foreign minister said in an interview with the Journal. "Force will not solve any problem, it has not solved problems in the past."
Asif said he would tell the UN members that "peace should return to this area and force is not the solution."
On Wednesday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also said that there could be no military solution to the Afghan conflict and called for efforts towards creating a political solution.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/19/2017 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11125 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
[DAWN] United States (US) President Donald Trump ...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States... made his debut at the United Nations ...a formerly good idea gone bad... on Monday, using his first moments at the world body to urge the 193-nation organization to reduce bureaucracy and costs while more clearly defining its mission around the world.
But while Trump chastised the United Nations, an organization he sharply criticised as a presidential candidate for its spiralling costs, he said the United States would "pledge to be partners in your work" in order to make the UN "a more effective force" for peace across the globe.
"In recent years, the United Nations has not reached its full potential due to bureaucracy and mismanagement," said Trump, who rebuked the United Nations for a ballooning budget. "We are not seeing the results in line with this investment."
The president pushed the UN to focus "more on people and less on bureaucracy" and to change "business as usual and not be beholden to ways of the past which were not working."
He also suggested that the US was paying more than its fair share to keep the New York-based world body operational.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/19/2017 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11125 views]
Top|| File under:
#2
President Trump is, in a friendly and cooperative way, saying that the UN needs to reform itself, or it will go out of existence. He is playing good cop right now, but laying the groundwork to put the monkey on the back of member nations to get their act together or face the consequences of their inaction. Everything is calculated.
Just like how he approached NATO. Take on your responsibilities because the US will not save you from yourselves. Played the bad cop role there.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
09/19/2017 20:39 Comments ||
Top||
[AnNahar] Iraq moved 500 wives of Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're 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 the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... group jihadists to a detention center in preparation to deport them after they were captured along with 800 children, a councilor said Monday.
The women and kiddies were detained in Iraq's second city djinn-infested Mosul ... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn... , capital of Nineveh province and IS' main stronghold in the country until Iraqi forces retook it in July.
"They are in a holding center in Tal Kayf under the control of Iraqi security forces, so their cases can be examined before they are eventually expelled from the country," the Nineveh province councilor told AFP.
The spouses and their children were moved Sunday from a camp run by international aid agencies 60 kilometers (40 miles) south of Mosul, said the official, who asked to remain anonymous.
A senior Iraqi security official said the 509 women and 813 children held 13 different nationalities from Europe, Asia and the Americas.
A government official said around 300 of them were Ottoman Turkish.
"They are foreigners who entered the country illegally," a minister told AFP.
"Legal measures must be taken against them because, when they were detained, they were in an area controlled by terrorists."
The Norwegian Refugee Council said they group were mostly from The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... , Azerbaijan, Russia and Tajikistan.
The Nineveh councilor said Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi had ordered their transfer to the detention center and "could be part of preparations for their departure to their countries of origin".
Some of the families were among a group transferred to the Iraqi authorities a week after they surrendered to Kurdish forces deployed in the north of the country.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
09/19/2017 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11125 views]
Top|| File under: Islamic State
[IsraelTimes] The United States is establishing its first ever official, permanent military base in Israel: an air defense base in the heart of the Negev desert, Brig. Gen. Tzvika Haimovitch, head of the IAF’s Aerial Defense Command, announces.
Dozens of US Air Force soldiers will be based at the new site, located inside the Israeli Air Force’s Mashabim Air Base, west of the towns of Dimona and Yerucham.
"It’s nothing less than historic," Haimovitch says. It demonstrates the "years-old alliance between the United States and the State of Israel."
The Israeli brigadier general tells news hounds that the establishment of a permanent US base in Israel "allows us to improve our defense, in discovery and in interception and in preparedness."
Haimovitch denies that the timing of the base opening was tied to any specific current event, and noted that the process of establishing it had been in the works for some two years.
The "base within a base" will be run by the US military’s European Command (EUCOM). It includes barracks, offices and support services.
In his speech, Maj. Gen. John Gronski, deputy commander of US Army National Guard in Europe, said the base "symbolizes the strong bond that exists between the United States and Israel."
It is located not far from a US military radar installation east of Dimona that tracks ballistic missiles once they are launched and provides details on their flight paths to defense systems.
US military forces are routinely based in Israel, both for joint exercises and for routine cooperation with the IDF, but Haimovitch described the new base as a meaningful change.
Going through the motions to placate President Trump and President al Sisi. But how long will this hudna last?
[IsraelTimes] Rami Hamdallah to travel to Strip to reassert Paleostinian Authority control over ministries, adviser to Abbas says
Paleostinian Authority Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah is poised to visit Gazoo for talks, a bigwig said Monday, after the Hamas, the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood, terror group agreed to steps toward resolving a decade-long split with its West Bank-based rival Fatah.
Hamas announced Sunday it had agreed to demands by PA President the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas ... a graduate of the prestigious unaccredited Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow with a doctorate in Holocaust Denial... ’s Fatah party to dissolve what is seen as a rival administration in Gazoo, while saying it was ready for elections and negotiations toward forming a unity government.
Hamdallah plans to travel to Gazoo City to meet Hamas leaders and assert the PA government’s control over ministries, Nabil Shaath, a senior adviser to Abbas, told journalists in the West Bank city of Ramallah, as a first step toward implementing a larger agreement.
"We await the first steps on the ground. We want to see Mr. Hamdallah received by Hamas, the door to all the ministries open," he said. "That really could happen in the next 24 hours."
Abbas’s internationally recognized PA’s seat of power is in the West Bank, but it has had no control in Gazoo for a decade ‐ after Hamas seized the Strip following bloody festivities with Fatah in 2007.
Hamdallah has not visited Gazoo since 2015, and a previous attempt at a unity government fell apart that year, with the two sides exchanging blame.
In recent months Abbas has sought to squeeze Hamas by reducing power supply to the Strip, with the two million residents receiving only three or four hours of mains electricity per day as a result.
He has also reduced the salaries of some employees in Gazoo, while the number of Gazooks receiving PA permits to travel for medical care has declined.
The Independent Commission for Human Rights, based in the West Bank, called Tuesday for such measures to be reversed after Hamas dissolved the so-called administrative committee, seen as a rival government and created in March.
Shaath said Abbas wanted to reverse the punitive measures, but he did not give a timetable.
"When the president supported these economic measures (against Gazoo) he said they will stop immediately once the self-rule governance of Hamas ends and the consensus government takes place. He didn’t put any other conditions whatsoever."
Abbas is due to address world leaders at the United Nations ...boodling on the grand scale... General Assembly in New York on Wednesday, after meeting with US President Donald Trump ...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States... .
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.
