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Today: 83 articles and 335 comments as of 15:51.
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Area: WoT Operations    Non-WoT    Opinion        Politix   
SpaceX SN-4 BLOWS up at 1:49 PM Local time in Boca Chica Tx
Today's Headlines
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Page 2: WoT Background
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Page 1: WoT Operations
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Page 4: Opinion
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Page 6: Politix
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Africa Horn
SCoP backs SPLM-N calls to address secular state in Sudan peace process
[Sudan Tribune] The Sudanese Congress Party (SCoP) has voiced its support to the position of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement led by Abdel Aziz al-Hilu (SPLM-N al-Hilu) calling to include the secular state in the stalled grinding of the peace processor in Juba.

The talks between the two sides for peace in the Blue Nile and South Kordofan states are deadlocked because the government refuses to discuss the matter at the peace venue saying the decision on this fundamental issues should be endorsed by a comprehensive constitutional conference not at the negotiating table with one group.

The SCoP which is part of the Forces for Freedom and Change supporting the transitional government however issued a position paper last week about the "Current Political Situation in Sudan" where it publicly backed the position of the SPLM-N al-Hilu.

"We affirm the fairness and soundness of the position put forward by the SPLM-N about the need to address the relationship between religion and the state in a way that clearly differentiates between them," said the centre-left party before to stress that it is a "necessity of building the citizenship- state"

The left-centre party nonetheless stressed that this measure should be adopted within a package that includes emphasizing the unity of Sudan.

The SPLM-N al-Hilu calls in its position paper to include the secular state and the right to self-determination for the Blue Nile and South Kordofan while the whole political forces reject this option.

For its part, the SPLM-N on Wednesday welcomed the position of the SCoP and called on its leadership to work together to promote this idea.

"While we commend this courageous and patriotic stance, we call on the Sudanese Congress Party to establish a joint work to consolidate and promote these values and guiding principles as a basis for achieving unity in diversity and political stability," said Amar Daldoum SPLM-N al-Hilu Secretary-General.

He also called on the political forces to take advantage of the opportunity created by December Revolution to address the root cause of the Sudanese crisis and build a secular, democratic, decentralized state based on "freedom, justice, and equality".

The Sudanese government and the SPLM-N Agar are finalizing peace talks and expected to sign an initial peace agreement on 20 June in Juba.

The SPLM-N Agar calls for self-rule for the Two Areas.
Posted by: Fred || 05/29/2020 00:00 || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under: Govt of Sudan


Africa North
Head of Libya’s HSC Khalid Al-Mishri denied the existence of mercenaries in Libyan capital Tripoli
[PUBLISH.TWITTER]
Posted by: Fred || 05/29/2020 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under: Sublime Porte


Former Egyptian Assistant Foreign Minister Jamal Bayoumi accused Turkey, ISIS, and other militias of draining Libya's resources
[PUBLISH.TWITTER]
Posted by: Fred || 05/29/2020 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under: Sublime Porte


Caribbean-Latin America
Fourth Iranian fuel tanker enters Venezuela
[Jpost] The Venezuela
...a country in Central America that sits on an enormous pool of oil. Formerly the most prospereous country in the region, it became infested with Commies sniffing almost unlimited wealth. It turned out the wealth wasn't unlimited, the economy collapsed under the clownish Hugo Chavez, the murder rate exceeded places like Honduras and El Salvador. A significant proportion of the populace refugeed to Colombia and points south...
n navy said it escorted a fourth fuel tanker from 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 Jews Zionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol...
through its waters on Thursday, while the United States called the shipments to the gasoline-starved country a distraction from problems facing President Nicolás Maduro
...Commie el presidente para la vida of Venezuela, successor to Hugo Chavez. Nick is his country's attempt at producing a Muammar Qadaffy, except that even though his country's sitting on an enormous puddle of oil, he can't manage to get it out of the ground. Unlike Qadaffy and Hugo Chavez, he's not dead yet...
The oil industries of Iran and Venezuela are both under US sanctions. Iran is providing its fellow OPEC member up to 1.53 million barrels of gasoline and refining components to help ease an acute shortage, the result of the near-complete breakdown in its refining network as well as the sanctions.

Washington has said it is weighing a response to the shipments.

Venezuela's military has escorted each tanker through its exclusive economic zone. The navy on Thursday posted images of its ships alongside the fourth ship, the Faxon.

Refinitiv Eikon data showed the Faxon passing north of eastern Venezuela's Sucre state at 11:49 p.m. (0349 GMT) Wednesday. It has not transmitted its location since then. The third tanker to arrive, the Petunia, entered El Palito port on Thursday, the data showed.

The first two were still discharging, and a fifth, the Clavel, was crossing the Atlantic Ocean toward the Caribbean.

A front man for the US State Department's Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs said it would continue to "press for the restoration of Venezuelan democracy." Washington, along with dozens of other countries, say Maduro rigged his 2018 re-election.

Maduro accuses the United States of seeking to oust him to control Venezuela's oil resources.

But this week he also pledged to reform the fuel distribution system, stating that citizens would have to start paying for fuel after decades of heavy subsidies.
Posted by: trailing wife || 05/29/2020 05:01 || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under: Govt of Iran

#1  Uh huh - US disrupts Iranian fuel deliveries to Venezuela, official says
The Trump administration halted scheduled Iranian fuel deliveries to Venezuela Wednesday by threatening sanctions on the ships carrying the cargo, according to U.S. officials.

Iran and Venezuela attempted to outmaneuver American sanctions by establishing a new oil partnership.

Two Liberian-flagged, Greek-owned ships that "were en route to Venezuela carrying Iranian fuel, scrapped their deliveries after the U.S. threatened sanctions," a senior U.S. official told Fox News.

First reported by The Wall Street Journal, the ships were expected to arrive in Venezuela as the final delivery in a previously planned five-oil-tanker shipment, an effort that the Venezuelan regime has said is a partnership to thwart the American sanctions.


"The Iranian oil tankers arriving in Venezuela are nothing but a distraction from the real problems facing Maduro," a spokesperson from the State Department told Fox News. "These shipments will do nothing to help Venezuelans, they will only help prop up the former Maduro regime for a little while longer."

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro said in a televised address: "We are two rebel revolutionary peoples that are never going to kneel before North American imperialism.”

But the Greek-owned ships would have been unable to access international banking and maritime insurance had they carried out the shipment.
Posted by: Frank G || 05/29/2020 8:21 Comments || Top||

#2  Persians playing backgammon, Trump plays Kriegsspiel.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 05/29/2020 8:30 Comments || Top||

#3  Hit the commercial carrier's pocketbook. Just smart and hard diplomacy.
Posted by: DarthVader || 05/29/2020 13:03 Comments || Top||

#4  IIRC didn't the Iranians have a major problem with their refineries being unable (2007) to produce sufficient diesel / gasoline for their internal transportation sector? They were having to import diesel / gasoline: [Reuters in 2018] Iran inches closer to dream of gasoline independence
Did they fix it or is this kabuki?
Posted by: magpie || 05/29/2020 17:04 Comments || Top||

#5  ^Noh
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 05/29/2020 17:10 Comments || Top||


Cyber
As Twitter checks Trump, Khamenei account left alone, despite plea from Israel
[IsraelTimes] Iranian leader’s tweets calling Israel ’cancerous growth’ to be ’uprooted and destroyed’ left unchecked as social media firm festivities with US president over labeling his posts.
As ‘tis said, if they didn’t have double standards, they’d have no standards at all.
Posted by: trailing wife || 05/29/2020 04:38 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under: Govt of Iran

#1  Were I of a Trumpian nature, I'd have my little honey badger of a press secretary doing a compare and contrast of tweets that Twitter allows and what it censors.
Posted by: SteveS || 05/29/2020 21:48 Comments || Top||


India-Pakistan
NOTAM: All of Pakistan
[Twitter]
Posted by: 3dc || 05/29/2020 10:41 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Outbound flights only.
Posted by: Skidmark || 05/29/2020 10:56 Comments || Top||

#2  Can't have all those madrassa trained "lone wolves" just sitting around on their hands, can they now?
Posted by: M. Murcek || 05/29/2020 11:15 Comments || Top||

#3  Who would want to go into Pakistain?
Posted by: Abu Uluque || 05/29/2020 11:43 Comments || Top||

#4  paging Joseph Mendiola...
Posted by: European Conservative || 05/29/2020 11:48 Comments || Top||

#5  Who would want to go into Pakistain?

Well, if you're an IT guy for Democratic congressperson...
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 05/29/2020 11:54 Comments || Top||

#6  Are they afraid that the Indians are going to sneak a commando raid in (like the Osama bin Laden raid)? Or are they just stupid and paranoid?
Posted by: magpie || 05/29/2020 16:54 Comments || Top||

#7  Cookie reset
Posted by: Frank G || 05/29/2020 17:55 Comments || Top||


Not far from the LAC, satellite picks up Chinese armour, artillery
[Indian Express] Highly placed sources told The Indian Express that a detailed analysis of satellite images has shown extensive deployment of towed artillery and mechanised elements on the Chinese side, bringing Indian deployments within striking distance.

As Delhi and Beijing turn to their working mechanism at the level of diplomats to reduce military tensions along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh, there’s evidence of the Chinese having deployed towed artillery and mechanised elements on their side of the LAC opposite the Galwan valley.

Highly placed sources told The Indian Express that a detailed analysis of satellite images has shown extensive deployment of towed artillery and mechanised elements on the Chinese side, bringing Indian deployments within striking distance.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred || 05/29/2020 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under: Commies

#1  Just creating an external threat for the rubes and rubettes back home. It’s what dictators do.
Posted by: Alaska Paul || 05/29/2020 0:37 Comments || Top||

#2  What is going on?
Posted by: Thorong Grundy1520 || 05/29/2020 1:19 Comments || Top||

#3  News and media diversion. Events in Hong Kong are the real news.
Posted by: Besoeker || 05/29/2020 1:26 Comments || Top||

#4  Maybe. I wouldn't be surprised is a 2 front war was in the works.

Weaken the world with a virus attack then strike.
Posted by: Woodrow || 05/29/2020 3:49 Comments || Top||

#5  In the spring of 1914 nobody in Europe wanted or expected a war.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 05/29/2020 4:04 Comments || Top||

#6  Always need to be worried when you have a wounded pig in the underbrush.
Posted by: Mercutio || 05/29/2020 5:24 Comments || Top||

#7  I assume that our observational assets can see anything that there is to see.

Our analytical assets on the other hand.........


Sounds like the opening of Clancy's "Bean and Dragon".
Posted by: AlanC || 05/29/2020 6:44 Comments || Top||

#8  Always need to be worried when you have a wounded pig in the underbrush.

...and have a handy large-bore sidearm.
Posted by: Skidmark || 05/29/2020 10:39 Comments || Top||


Iraq
ISIS vows to exploit US drawdown in Iraq and Syria
[Rudaw] 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) forces of Evil will take advantage of the recent US drawdown in Iraq and Syria to increase attacks on "the crusaders", ISIS front man Abu Hamza al-Qurashi said in an audio statement published Thursday.

In the 33-minute recording released on messaging app Telegram, titled "The Crusaders Will Know Who Will Win in the End", Qurashi claimed the recent wave of attacks is only the start of a much broader campaign to come.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: trailing wife || 05/29/2020 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under: Islamic State

#1  They're just being obtuse.
Posted by: jpal || 05/29/2020 19:54 Comments || Top||


Kadhmi praises intelligence, security services for killing ISIS terrorist
[THEBAGHDADPOST] Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhmi praised the efforts of the intelligence and counter-terrorism services that led to the killing of the terrorist Moataz al-Jubouri.

The front man for the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, Brigadier Yahya Rasoul, said in a statement received by the Iraqi News Agency (INA): "The Prime Minister, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, Mustafa al-Kadhmi, thanks and appreciates the efforts of the National Intelligence Service and the Counter-Terrorism Service for their high coordination in exchanging the information that led To the killing of the terrorist Moataz Noman Abdul Naif Najm al-Jubouri al-Makani (Haji Tayseer), who is the so-called governor of Iraq and the assistant leader of ISIS gangs for all states affairs and responsible for planning and coordinating external terrorist operations.

He added, "He was targeted by an air strike by the international coalition aircraft, according to Iraqi intelligence, and by the follow-up of members of the security services of this terrorist for a period of not long."
Posted by: Fred || 05/29/2020 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under: Islamic State


Israel-Palestine-Jordan
Netanyahu: Palestinians in Israeli-annexed Jordan Valley won’t get citizenship
That takes care of one frequently voiced concern...
[IsraelTimes] In interviews, PM also rebuffs settler complaints, saying his annexation plan won’t mention Paleostinian state, any settlement freeze will also apply to Paleostinians in Area C.
Posted by: trailing wife || 05/29/2020 04:38 || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under:

#1  He should have offered it and waited. They probably would have refused indignantly, allowing him to reply with astern, 'OK'.
Posted by: Cesare || 05/29/2020 11:33 Comments || Top||

#2  ^They wouldn't refuse. For them cheating enemies into giving them staff is a form of counting coup. Haven't you (USA) learned it in Iraq?
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 05/29/2020 11:47 Comments || Top||


Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Hezbollah's Golan operations headed by "Hajj Hashem." Hezbollah operational unit, led by Abu Hussein Sajed
[PUBLISH.TWITTER]
Posted by: Fred || 05/29/2020 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under: Hezbollah

#1  Abu Hussein Sajed

Remember this name, the Ruritanians - or possibly Mercians, are going to wack him next week.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 05/29/2020 7:36 Comments || Top||

#2  /\ Until I read it in Fred's muzi obits, it's all just speculation.
Posted by: Besoeker || 05/29/2020 7:38 Comments || Top||



Who's in the News
49[untagged]
5Commies
5Sublime Porte
3Antifa
3Islamic State
2Govt of Sudan
2Govt of Syria
2al-Qaeda
2al-Shabaab (AQ)
2Arab Spring
2Govt of Iran
1Human Trafficking
1Houthis
1Narcos
1Palestinian Authority
1Hezbollah
1Taliban

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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.
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Two weeks of WOT
Fri 2020-05-29
  SpaceX SN-4 BLOWS up at 1:49 PM Local time in Boca Chica Tx
Thu 2020-05-28
  Afghan Nation Calls for Continued
Ceasefire, Violence Down 80 Percent
Wed 2020-05-27
  Palestinian teen dies while working with explosive in Gaza Strip
Tue 2020-05-26
  Three-day ceasefire in Afghanistan to continue for another week
Mon 2020-05-25
  Kurdish policeman found beheaded in Kirkuk
Sun 2020-05-24
  UN committee urges France to prevent execution of convicted jihadists in Iraq
Sat 2020-05-23
  Large cyber attack against Israel conducted from Gaza, Turkey, North Africa
Fri 2020-05-22
  PA refuses UAE aid sent via Israel, won’t be ‘tool for normalization’ – report
Thu 2020-05-21
  Iraq security forces arrest the new ISIS leader
Wed 2020-05-20
  Abbas says the PA sees itself free of all agreements with Israel and the U.S. - including on security matters
Tue 2020-05-19
  GNA captures al-Watiyah Airbase from the LNA
Mon 2020-05-18
  Afghan president inks power-sharing deal with rival
Sun 2020-05-17
  Pak Doctor on H-1B Visa Wanted to Attack U.S. for ISIS
Sat 2020-05-16
  Tomb of Mordechai and Esther in Iran reportedly set ablaze
Fri 2020-05-15
  France: Pro-Refugee Activist Murdered by Migrant He Was Sleeping With

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