[Al Ahram] Egypt's liberal Constitution Party issued a statement on Saturday voicing its concern over the situation in Sinai following unconfirmed leaks of Israeli-Egyptian coordination during an attack against jihadists in the Sinai Peninsula on Friday.
In its statement, the party affirmed its full support for the armed forces "in their quest to impose Egyptian sovereignty on Sinai".
The party, however, also called on the armed forces to explain the Sinai situation to the media and the Egyptian people with more "honesty and transparency" as long as it doesn't put national security at stake.
On Friday, a loud explosion coming from the area of Ajraa in Egypt's North Sinai was heard at 4:15pm by residents of south Rafah, according to armed forces spokesman Ahmed Ali. Egypt's official MENA news agency reported that the explosion destroyed a rocket launcher set up near the border to launch attacks on Israel, and at least five Islamic militants were killed.
The attack was followed by conflicting media reports, some claiming the attack was launched by Israeli forces in coordination with Egyptian authorities. In response, Ali vehemently denied the claims, asking that media verify its information before publishing, especially on issues of national security.
For their part, the Salafist Al-Nour party stressed that "a security solution" to the situation in Sinai is not the answer.
"The security solution on its own will make matters more complicated," said Galal Murra, the secretary general of Al-Nour party who warned of negative consequences if violent tactics were used against the people of Sinai.
Murra further called on the need for dialogue with the people of Sinai "in order to create a complete vision for a means of getting out of this crisis."
Posted by: Fred ||
08/11/2013 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in Sinai Peninsula
[Al Ahram] Egyptian security forces stood guard at checkpoints as more than 100 cars, some carrying dozens of jihadists, took part in a funeral procession for four slain fighters in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula on Saturday. A little-known Death Eater group, Ansar Beith al-Maqdis , said its men were the target of a reported Israeli drone strike in Egyptian territory that killed the four Death Eaters.
The strike was a rare operation that could indicate increased cooperation between Egypt and Israel against Death Eaters in northern Sinai after the ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi from power last month. Egyptian security officials confirmed the men were killed in an Arclight airstrike.
Hundreds of people, including armed jihadists, rustics carrying weapons and family members of the dead took part in the funeral, where the bodies were displayed in the back of pick-up trucks draped by black flags inscribed with Islamic verses. The flags are often used by al-Qaeda Death Eaters, but also by Islamists. Some in the procession rolled their eyes, jumped up and down, and hollered poorly rhymed slogans real loud against Israel and Egypt's army, currently battling gunnies in the area.
The procession passed through checkpoints peacefully, though it is believed that many who were present are wanted by police for carrying out near daily attacks on security forces in Sinai.
Security officials said the nature of the attack, possibly from an Israeli drone, made it difficult to try and stop the procession for fear of enflaming an already volatile situation.
The officials also said that since only some 50 fighters are known to them in Sinai --while others remain unidentified -- it was not immediately possible to distinguish between Death Eaters and others during the procession. They also said that checkpoints leading to the cemetery where the men were buried were manned by just a handful of personnel ill-equipped to take on such a large group of possibly well-armed fighters.
Ansar Beit al-Maqdis said in a statement posted on a Death Eater website that a drone crossed into Egyptian airspace Friday and killed four fighters as they were preparing a cross-border rocket strike into Israel. It said the dead were members of Egyptian Sinai tribes and that the rocket squad's leader escaped.
It denounced the Egyptian military for allegedly having allowed the attack. "What is greater treason than the Egyptian army allowing the Zionist drones to violate Egyptian airspace now and then?" it said.
The statement's authenticity could not be confirmed, but it was posted on an Internet website commonly used by Death Eater groups.
The strike is likely to increase tensions in the border region. Insurgents, who have close ties to Paleostinian Death Eaters in the neighboring Gazoo Strip, have stepped up attacks on police and military targets since the July 3 coup that toppled Morsi. Some residents of Sinai have alleged that Morsi did not clamp down hard enough on Death Eaters during his year in office out of concerns it would anger some of his supporters.
Egyptian security officials, speaking anonymously on Friday, said that a drone firing from the Israeli side of the border had killed five suspected Death Eaters. The conflicting accounts could not be reconciled. Both said the site of the strike was about five kilometers (three miles) inside Egypt.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/11/2013 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[3 views]
Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in Sinai Peninsula
#1
why not do a stop-and-ID/search-and-confiscate on each and every car in the procession?
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/11/2013 11:28 Comments ||
Top||
[Washington Post] Defense attorneys say freedom is imminent for a second member of the trio of Mexican drug kingpins responsible for the 1985 slaying of a Drug Enforcement Administration agent, one of the capo's attorneys said Saturday. In the United States, outrage grew over the surprise decision to overturn Mexican drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero's conviction in the notorious killing.
Caro Quintero walked free Friday after a federal court overturned his 40-year sentence for agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena's kidnapping, torture and murder. The three-judge appeals court in the western state of Jalisco ordered Caro Quintero's immediate release on procedural grounds after 28 years behind bars, saying he should have originally been prosecuted in state instead of federal court.
Also imprisoned in the Camarena case are Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo and Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, whose cartel based in the northwestern state of Sinaloa later split into some of Mexico's largest drug organizations.
Fonseca Carrillo's attorney, Jose Luis Guizar, said his team had filed an appeal based on the same procedural grounds used by Caro Quintero and expected him to be freed within 15 days by a different court in Jalisco.
"At its base, the issue is the same as Rafael's," Guizar said.
Mexican officials did not respond to calls seeking comment Saturday.
The U.S. Justice Department said that it found the Mexican court's decision to free Caro Quintero "deeply troubling," but former DEA agents said they were pessimistic that the B.O. regime would bring similar pressure to bear.
Nearly 20 years after the enactment of the North American Free Trade Agreement, U.S.-Mexico trade exceeds $1 billion a day. The two countries have worked closely against narco mobs over the past seven years, with the U.S. sending billions of dollars in equipment and training in exchange for access to Mexican law-enforcement agencies and intelligence.
The administration said little last year after Mexican federal police opened fire on a U.S. Embassy vehicle, wounding two CIA officers in one of the most serious attacks on U.S. personnel since the Camarena slaying. Twelve coppers were tossed in the calaboose Drop the rosco, Muggsy, or you're one with the ages! , but there is no public evidence that the United States or Mexico pursued suspicions that the shooting was a deliberate attack by corrupt police working on behalf of organized crime.
"I'm sure there's going to be a lot of complaints about it, but do we have a Department of Justice that's going to stand up for this right now? I don't think so," said Edward Heath, who ran the DEA's Mexico office during the Camarena killing, referring to last week's ruling. "Everybody's happy, businesswise."
Posted by: Fred ||
08/11/2013 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[7 views]
Top|| File under: Narcos
#1
Quintero will have a Fast-and-Furious gun in about 10 minutes after leaving prison courtesy of Atty General Holder
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/11/2013 11:29 Comments ||
Top||
This hits on my favorite sitting down activities, military shooters. I knew the army was using them to recruit, and to a lesser extent training, but now they have apparently intensified use of video games. Perhaps the US government could get into the act and use video game technology on how to get a job, and to use credit wisely, or how not to have children out of wedlock. You never see those video games.
From TFA:
This summer, the US Army's research & development command, RDECOM, has kicked off an experiment to try infusing the latest commercial video game technology into the Army's most important combat simulator. The new tech brings real potential for better military training -- but also a very real danger.
Famous for powering games like 2012's Borderlands 2 and XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Epic Games, Inc.'s award-winning Unreal Engine is already used for military software ranging from medical simulators to the free game/recruiting tool America's Army. But what the Army wants to do this time is much more ambitious. It wants to use the latest version of the software, Unreal Engine 3, to improve the revolutionary but still somewhat stilted Dismounted Soldier Training System. Unlike earlier simulators that trained aircraft pilots in mock cockpits or tank crews in dummy vehicles, DSTS is the Army's first attempt at immersive virtual reality for ordinary infantrymen -- who after all suffer the vast majority of casualties in war.
If you can put a game in 128Gs, that's a small chip these days. Install on a decent flat screen TV, which requires you to run a 10-20 minute game scenario to teach basic lessons of life, for 6 to 8 hours of operating time before it shuts itself off requiring a restart. Then hand them out as ObamaTVs, you know they'll grab them, free, free, free. Probably one of the few 'moral' teachings experiences they'll get in their environment. Probably a lot cheaper in the short and long run than all the graft being handed out under the guise of community organizing.
I'm the most libertarian here, but I think there's a case for licensing users of interest bearing loans. Have a test proving you can use credit wisely, calculate the interest and show you can work out the full cost before contracts with interest bearing credit are legal.
[Ynet] President of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region threatened to militarily intervene in the Syrian civil war in order to protect the Kurdish population living under the Assad regime.
"If the reports about innocent Kurdish citizens being slaughtered beyond our borders are true, we will use our military force to protect them," said Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani.
Syrians might want to be careful -- the Iraqi Peshmurga is a pretty decent light infantry force.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
08/11/2013 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[2 views]
Top|| File under: Arab Spring
#1
Now is their time, a window has opened, call up the turko types, make it happen. This is where a ground truth (and a port) can kick histories ass.
#3
Kurds aren't Muslim and/or Anti-American. Obama and his Dept of State don't care about them
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/11/2013 17:09 Comments ||
Top||
#4
#2 AFAIK the US = Obama Admin is NOT arming the anti-Assad Syrian Rebs despite the MSM-Net rhetoric, which is why the Syrian Rebs are angry + critical of the US + Obama.
The Bammer is NOT enforcing his own "red lines" agz anyone e.g. Syria + Iran - APPLY THIS TO CHINA OVER IN EAST ASIA [East China Sea + South China Sea, ASEAN, etc.].
IMO all the Bammer is accomplishing is getting everybody p.o'ed at the US - Allies, Enemies, Frenemies, Moderates, + Non-Aligned.
HOW BAD IS IT WHEN EVEN HIS OWN DEMS/DEMOLEFT ARE CONFUSED ABOUT WHAT HE'S DOING!?
Not that it matters, because The Two Smartest Men In The Room couldn't be less interested. But at least it's on record.
[Ynet] Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent a letter to US Secretary of State John F. I was in Vietnam, you know Kerry Former Senator-for-Life from Massachussetts, self-defined war hero, speaker of French, owner of a lucky hat, conqueror of Cambodia, and current Secretary of State... , in which he accused Paleostinian President the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas ... a graduate of the prestigious unaccredited Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow with a doctorate in Holocaust Denial... of incitement against Israel.
PMO sources said that the letter mentioned quotes in which Abbas speaks against Israeli presence in the future Paleostinian state, and additional quotes from the official Paleostinian television broadcasts. "Incitement and peace cannot go hand in hand," Netanyahu wrote in the letter.
#1
iiuc, the us-israel agreement that catalyzed the current 'negotiations' has a clause which requires the US to explicitly call out any substantial PA incitement
of course like most diplo stuff, the actual wording has various terms of art which allow parties to disagree on what they are required to do, and, or course, well obama's team is capable of kinds of machinations on top of that
Posted by: lord garth ||
08/11/2013 11:57 Comments ||
Top||
#2
kinds of machinations on top of that
Gee, my Lord, your are a master at understated euphemisms.
I would have said that they are lying back-stabbers.
[Rooters] Inquiries into the bloody assault on an Algerian gas plant are uncovering increasing evidence of contacts between the assailants and the jihadis involved in killing the U.S. ambassador to Libya nearly a year ago.
The extent of the contacts between the Death Eaters is still unclear and nobody is sure there was a direct link between the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and the carnage at In Amenas, where 39 foreign hostages were killed in January.
But the findings, according to three sources with separate knowledge of U.S. investigations, shed some light on the connections between Al Qaeda affiliates stretching ever further across North and West Africa.
At the center of the web is Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), which has expanded far from its Algerian birthplace and now has links to other jihadi groups in Maghreb countries, including Tunisia and Libya. Their shared ideology combines with other, often financial, interests.
Despite being driven from large parts of the West African state of Mali by a French-led military operation early this year, AQIM Death Eaters are strengthening their presence elsewhere.
Four months after the In Amenas raid, the attack's criminal mastermind, Mokhtar Belmokhtar - who has strained but functioning relations with AQIM's leadership - grabbed credit for an attack on a uranium mine run by La Belle France's Areva in Niger far to the south.
Belmokhtar has also launched attacks in the past in Mauritania, while AQIM uses the centuries-old Mauritanian tradition of Islamic scholarship to give religious justification to its actions - as well as increasing its regional appeal.
With tension growing in Tunisia between opposition secularists and the Islamist government, hardline Salafists ...Salafists are ostentatiously devout Moslems who figure the ostentation of their piety gives them the right to tell others how to do it and to kill those who don't listen to them... are an increasingly important part of the equation there.
AQIM is believed to be involved in fighting with the Tunisian army on the Tunisian-Algerian border, according to an Algerian security source.
At the same time, AQIM is building links with groups such as the Ansar al-Sharia ...a Yemeni Islamist militia which claims it is not part of al-Qaeda, even though it works about the same and for the same ends... Tunisia, which seeks to expand its followers through Salafist missionary work or "dawa" rather than violent jihad.
AQIM's links to Libyan groups have grown stronger during the chaos that ensued after the 2011 overthrow of Muammar Qadaffy ... who had more funny outfits than Louis XIV... , who had kept all Islamists in check.
Some of the men involved in the Algerian raid took part in the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi on September 11, 2012, when Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans died, one source with knowledge of the inquiry said.
A second source said there had definitely been some kind of contact between the Benghazi and In Amenas attackers but could not say to what extent.
A third source said some of the jihadis at In Amenas had bought weapons and stayed for months in the Libyan city of El Aouinet near the Algerian border, where they met some of the men behind the Benghazi attack.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
08/11/2013 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[2 views]
Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in North Africa
#1
It's the partially-deflated balloon concept. The ideal would be to reinforce the 'deflated' areas, before squeezing the 'inflated' ones.
#3
"... Kept all Islamists in check" > as did Mubarak as now Assad, thus of course the US = Bammer Admin has to get rid of him widout need of imposing any conditions on the opposition.
ALL THE US IS DOING IS INDIRECTLY HELPING TO PROMOTE + EXPAND RADICAL ISLAM'S GLOBAL JIHAD + FUTURE OWG ISLAMIST-JIHADIST [Nuclear?] CALIPHATE.
Shia Iran desires to be the world's Islamic/
Islamist Global Nuclear Superpower - IFF THE KSA, ETAL. = SUNNIS DON'T OR WON'T DO IT, IRAN WILL.
Shia or Sunni, IMO wid the OWG Caliphate will also come NUKE-WMD ARMED RADICAL ISLAM = MILTERRS, + regardless iff State(s)-sponsored, autonomous, or independent???
[WashingtonPost] Al-Qaeda's branch in Yemen is focusing on expanding its presence in a remote eastern province that is the ancestral homeland of Osama bin Laden, even as the group remains the target of U.S. drone strikes and Yemeni military assaults, according to Yemeni officials.
Last year, a U.S.-backed Yemeni military offensive drove the militants from the southern province of Abyan, which the fighters had seized during the Arab Spring revolt in the country and controlled for more than a year as they sought to create an Islamic emirate from which to attack the Yemeni government and Western targets.
But in recent months, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, as the affiliate is known, has bolstered its presence in Hadramaut, the country's largest province. Hadramaut -- which some scholars say roughly translates as "Death is among us" -- abuts Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. ally.
Two pages of story at the link.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
08/11/2013 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in Arabia
#1
For a second I thought they were talking about New Haven, Connecticut and home to Yale University. Somehow that seemed logical.
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.
[
[WashingtonPost] Al-Qaeda's branch in Yemen is focusing on expanding its presence in a remote eastern province that is the ancestral homeland of Osama bin Laden, even as the group remains the target of U.S. drone strikes and Yemeni military assaults, according to Yemeni officials.
