[Tolo] Abdul Rashid Dostum, the former vice president and founder of the National Islamic Movement of Afghanistan party, in a ceremony on Wednesday was officially promoted to the rank of marshal at a ceremony in Jawzjan province.
Hundreds of people came to the event, including Abdullah Abdullah, head of the High Council for National Reconciliation.
On July 3, a decree by President Ashraf Ghani promoting Dostum to marshal rank was leaked to the media. The decree was signed on June 10.
Meanwhile, Dostum in his speech during the ceremony called on the Afghan political leaders to unite, to help the country pass through a sensitive situation and to defeat the Taliban.
"GIVE ME SIX MONTHS TO ELIMINATE THE TALIBAN"
In his remarks, Dostum talked about the Taliban's ongoing insurgency and said that if the Afghan government gives him six months, he will eliminate the Taliban. However, he called on the Taliban to avoid making excuses and enter the peace process.
"The Taliban will be defeated, I want to say it to General Miller, to NATO---there is no need for your bombardment and ground forces, just trust and give us a chance to prove whether we deserve the rank of a marshal or not," said Dostum, warning the Taliban.
Dostum called on the Afghan political leaders to unite against the Taliban.
"We are in a sensitive stage of history, if we are not united, if we do not trust each other, if we are not together, if we do not bear trust for each other, if one of us go towards the Stability and Convergence team (Abdullah's election campaign) and they (Ghani's team) go towards State Building Team…in that scenario, who wins the battlefield? Of course the Taliban, who are waiting there to bring their emirate," said Dostum.
In the meantime, Abdullah Abdullah, head of the High Council for National Reconciliation also criticized the Taliban for increasing attacks in various parts of the country.
"Now that the ground has been paved for the talks, I am confident that the issue of the prisoner release will be completed, so there should be no more excuses for the start of intra-Afghan talks," said Abdullah.
"If they (the Taliban) want to prolong the war or try to re-establish an emirate in Afghanistan, the era of the establishment of an emirate in Afghanistan has passed," added Dostum.
Dostum's promotion is part of the political agreement signed between President Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah, head of the High Council for National Reconciliation, on May 17.
Dostum thanked Abdullah for recommending the rank of marshal for him in the political agreement with President Ashraf Ghani. He also thanked Ghani for considering the recommendation.
Dostum said that he is the marshal for all the people of Afghanistan.
He added that his military calculations are "different from others when it comes to crushing the insurgents."
Dostum also said the US should not hurry in withdrawing its troops from Afghanistan but should wait to see what the Taliban will do with the process. He says he supports the peace process and that it should be moved forward by the government.
Marshal Dostum served as Vice President of Afghanistan from 2014 to 2020.
He has married three times and has four sons and six daughters.
He is also the chairman of National Islamic Movement of Afghanistan party.
In the 2014 presidential elections, Dostum supported President Ashraf Ghani.
In 2016, former Jawzjan governor and ex-member of the National Islamic Movement of Afghanistan, Ahmad Eshchi, claimed that he was also sexually assaulted by Dostum and his bodyguards – while in Dostum's ‘custody.'
After the allegations by Eshchi, Dostum was sidelined from his post as first vice president.
Eshchi claimed he was in Dostum's custody for five days and then spent 11 days in a National Directorate of Security (NDS) detention center.
He claimed that Dostum beat him up, threatened to kill him and sexually assaulted him. "He turned me into a newt!"
[Al Ahram] Tunisia's caretaker Prime Minister Elyes al-Fakhfakh dismissed all ministers of the Islamist Ennahda Party Thursday, one day after he submitted his resignation to President Kais Saied.
According to the official Facebook page of the Tunisian government, the ministers who lost their posts include Minister of Youth and Sports Ahmed Gaaloul, Minister of Public Works, Housing and Spatial Planning Moncef Sliti, Minister of State for Local Affairs Lotfi Zitoun, Minister of Transportation and Logistics Anwar Marouf, Minister of Health Abdel Latif Mekky, and Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research Selim al-Shoura.
Ghazi al-Shouashi, Asmaa al-Sehery, Shoukry Belhasan, Fadel Karem, al-Habib al-Kasho and Lobna al-Gerebi were appointed as ministers of housing, youth and sports, local affairs, transportation, health and higher education respectively.
One day earlier, Wednesday, al-Fakhfakh was still the North African country's head of government, voted for by parliament five months ago. But he earned caretaker status after he submitted his resignation to Saied in light of a political crisis with Ennahda.
The process of finalising the lineup of al-Fakhfakh's coalition took roughly four months after Tunisia held parliamentary elections in October 2019. al-Fakhfakh's Thursday move means that as long as no new head of government and list of ministers is agreed upon by Tunisia's political forces, and approved by parliament, Ennahda will continue to lack representation in the ruling coalition government.
Ironically, no other party has more seats than Ennahda (52 seats) in the 217-seat Tunisian parliament.
On Tuesday, Ennahda said it will push for a vote of no confidence against al-Fakhfakh after he decided to reshuffle the cabinet. Ennahda, which both al-Fakhfakh and Saied opposed, wanted consultations over selecting a new head of government and including new political forces in the coalition government, such as Qalb Tounes Party.
The Islamist party argued that Tunisia needs a better balance between its government and parliament.
But the change that Ennahda wanted in the structure of the coalition government would eventually mean less cabinet representation for anti-Islamist forces. Moreover, opposition parties did not welcome including Qalb Tounes in government as its leader and former presidential candidate Nabil Karoui has corruption allegations against him.
As a result, Ennahda announced it will seek a vote of no confidence against al-Fakhfakh. The motion against him has reportedly secured the 109 votes required for parliament to pass it. Political sources told Rooters that Saied asked al-Fakhfakh, who is also currently facing accusations of conflict of interest, to leave office.
[Al Ahram] Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi said on Thursday he will request parliament's approval in case of intervention in Libya.
El-Sisi's statement came during his meeting with Libyan tribal chieftains who arrived in Cairo on Wednesday to discuss the crisis in conflict-torn Libya.
"Egypt is capable of changing the military scene in Libya and it has got the strongest army in the Arab world and Africa," he said.
"In case Egyptian forces enter Libya, you (the chiefs of tribes) will be on the head of the troops with the Libyan flag," he added.
Egypt's announcement came following the forces of the Government of National Accord (GNA), which are backed by The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the decaying remnant of the Ottoman Empire... , carried several attacks against the Libyan National Army (LNA), backed by Egypt, Russia and United Arab Emirates, and announced that its troops will move forward towards establishing control over Sirte and Jufra, which hosts Libya's largest air base.
During the meeting, El-Sisi said that the red lines which he spoke about in his speech at Sidi Barani military base last month were an invitation for peace and an end of the conflict. The Egyptian president stressed during that speech that Sirte and al-Jufra are red lines for Egyptian national security.
He added that Egypt will not stand still in the face of actions that pose a direct and strong threat not only for the Egyptian and Libyan national security but also for the Arab, regional and international national security.
"The main objective of the Egyptian efforts towards Libya on all levels is to support the free will of the Libyan people to achieve a better future for the country and its future generations," El-Sisi told the Libyan tibes leaders.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/17/2020 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Sublime Porte
[AA.TR] A British court ruled on Thursday that Shamima Begum, a woman who joined ISIS/ISIS as a teenager, should be allowed to return to the UK to challenge the government’s decision to revoke her British citizenship.Begum, now 20, was one of three London schoolgirls to leave the UK in February 2015 to join the terror group in Syria.
After spending three years in ISIS-controlled areas, she was found in February 2019 in a refugee camp in Syria.
She was nine months pregnant at the time and her child subsequently died in the camp.
Begum was stripped of her British citizenship later that month.
She launched an appeal against the decision, claiming it was illegal because it made her stateless and exposed her to a real risk of death or degrading treatment.
The Special Immigration Appeals Commission ruled that the decision was legal as Begum was a "citizen of Bangladesh by descent" and was not stateless.
Her request to come to the UK to pursue her appeal was rejected.
On Thursday, the British Court of Appeal ruled that "the only way in which she can have a fair and effective appeal is to be permitted to come into the United Kingdom to pursue her appeal."
"Fairness and justice must, on the facts of this case, outweigh the national security concerns, so that the leave to enter appeals should be allowed," read the decision.
It said the "national security concerns about her could be addressed and managed" if she returned to the UK.
[American Military News] She's a terrorist enabler/camp follower. She should be tried as terrorist and UK citizenship revoked
A court in the United Kingdom ruled Thursday that a woman who left London as a teenager to join the ISIS terror group may return to the U.K. to challenge the loss of her citizenship status.
A U.K. Divisional Court ruled Shamima Begum should be permitted to return to the U.K. to make her case for renewed citizenship before a special immigration panel, according to a court summary released Thursday.
February of 2015, when she was 15-years-old. Begum, along with two friends Amira Abase and Kadiza Sultana joined the Islamic State in Syria. Within 10 days of her arrival in Syira, Begum had reportedly been married off to an ISIS fighter, Yago Riedijk. Together they had three children.
Begum later turned up in a prison camp for ISIS members after the fall of the terror group’s last major territorial stronghold in Baghuz. Since 2019, Begum has been held captive in an Syrian prison camp housing other ISIS fighters and supporters. Begum has had her British citizenship suspended since February 19 of 2019.
"We accept that, in her current circumstances, [Ms Begum] cannot play any meaningful part in her appeal, and that, to that extent, the appeal will not be fair and effective," the court said of its decision, noting challenges Begum faces in presenting her appeal for citizenship from Syria.
Begum renounced her ties to the terror group in October as part of an earlier appeal to return to the U.K. "I'm a stupid whore who left to betray my citizenship and adopted culture. I'll surely lie now to get back and get benefits"
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/17/2020 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Islamic State
#1
Of shameless Shamima, mom, begum,
Sing, three little seeds in a legume!
"She dropped out of school..."
"Cuz we thought it wuz cool..."
"To chase terrorist bastards and shag 'em!"
"And after a long, treacherous voyage of self-discovery, she finally got back to blighty." "And the pavements ran and smoked with-- er, she lived happily ever after." "Ulululululu!"
Federalist via Instapundit
When social justice activist and lawyer Derecka Purnell was just 12 years old, she and her sister watched a police officer shoot a young boy in a city recreation center because he had ignored the basketball sign-in sheet. This jarring, emotional, and deeply unsettling story was published July 6 at The Atlantic, in the section reserved for ideas, under the bold, attention-grabbing headline, "How I Became a Police Abolitionist."
Purnell’s deeply personal story of shattered innocence and shattered bones at the end of a policeman’s gun was shared widely among top journalists and activists. "I started her article thinking abolition was impossible and ending thinking it must happen," the president of a social justice think tank at Harvard wrote on Twitter, quoting his mother. "This is a beautifully written piece," the Atlantic’s constitutional law editor agreed. "Derecka is the future," an activist journalism executive declared.
There’s a major problem with Purnell’s story, however. Based on a Federalist investigation of newspaper archives and the police department records, and questions to The Atlantic, the police union, and the office of the mayor, it does not appear to have ever happened.
#7
Here's a five-year chart of the NYT's stock price. It was on the verge of being a single-digit midget in 2016 and now sells for $44. That's not because its investigative curiosity improved. It's because management developed a single-minded focus on providing content that it's core audience wanted to read, i.e., Orange Man Bad. Screw accuracy.
Posted by: Matt ||
07/17/2020 10:52 Comments ||
Top||
#8
Carlos Slim, Mexican owner of Bimbo Bakery (not a joke name) figures in the decision to sell the propaganda to the intellectual elites and get even richer. The Acela corridor laps it up because it feeds their smug worldview of how things ought to be.
#9
As the story notes, anyone who has spent any time in St. Louis at all couldn't reconcile the basic geography of what she describes. You would think she would be a bit more careful or less obvious with the fabrications. But if the theme is PC, I guess you can dispense with the most basic of ordinary and easily checkable facts.
See William James' excellent book "The Will to Believe."
Posted by: Tom ||
07/17/2020 13:09 Comments ||
Top||
#10
Just how naive and credulous is The Atlantic? Now we know.
Posted by: Tom ||
07/17/2020 13:11 Comments ||
Top||
#14
A poster. Riposte, one that lingers
To poke at "progressive" left-wingers:
That V's gotta go.
In its place, scrawled just so, is--
A peace sign? No. Fist, or crossed fingers.
[JPost] Didn't they deny it?
Acknowledgment follows denial he passed information before defecting. Why yes, yes they did
After denying such reports, Hamas has now confirmed that one of its naval commanders fled to Israel after providing it with intelligence.
Abu Mohammed, a Hamas military spokesman, told The Media Line that the defector was a junior officer in the organization's highly regarded naval unit.
The daring escape was first reported on Saturday by the Saudi news channel Al Arabiya, which said the officer and his brother escaped with a laptop and surveillance equipment as part of a 72-hour operation led by Israel's Mossad spy agency.
Hamas immediately issued a statement calling the report "fake news" benefitting Israel, and harshly criticized the news outlet.
"The aim [of the report] is to harm the Palestinian people and [damage] their confidence in the resistance and liberation project," Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qassem said at the time. "Al Arabiya is promoting rumors that serve the occupation by destabilizing the home front in Gaza."
#3
Both Buda and Pest Admiral Horthy
Commanded, all shipshape and sporty:
The bridge he would waltz
To the smell of, well, schmaltz,
And the roar of his poor pianoforte.
#4
Not a navy as such, I believe, but definitely a frogman unit that from time to time swims around the barrier between Gaza and Israeli shoreline in order to access attackable Jewish civilians.
[JPost] After disappearing from the UAE anchorage, there it was, off Hormuz Island near Iran, several hundred kilometers from its last known location on July 5, where it had been for months.
Last year Samir Madani, co-founder of TankerTrackers.com, noticed a mysterious ship off the coast of Lavan Island near Iran, appearing to take on cargo from another ship.
It had turned off its transponder, making it harder to track. However, Madani, who runs an independent online service that tracks and reports shipments and storage of crude oil, found the ship through satellite photos on December 6, 2019.
The same ship once again pulled a disappearing act, although this time at least 28 crew disappeared with it for ten days, only for the ship to show up off the coast of Iran and for the crew to appear back in India simultaneously.
The ship in question is called "Gulf Sky" and it has been at the center of an international quest by the US government to stop Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from laundering money and breaking sanctions by using front companies to acquire ships and smuggle weapons, oil and other cargo.
The story is so complex and convoluted that it spans continents, involves human rights groups that sought to help the crew stranded on the ship, and now involves an alleged "hijacking" that took the ship from detention off the coast of the United Arab Emirates to an anchorage several kilometers off Iran’s Bandar Abbas.
To understand how we got here I spoke at length with Madani who helped piece together missing details of this tanker’s movements.
Last year, the Gulf Sky was named the MT Nautic and had recently been sold. The beneficiary owner was supposed to be a company in Oman. It had a crew of 28 and a captain from India who was ostensibly operating it for a company in India. We know this from details later released by the human rights group that was involved.
[Wired] IBM's X-Force security team obtained five hours of APT35 hacking operations, showing exactly how the group steals data from email accounts—and who it's targeting.
When security researchers piece together the blow-by-blow of a state-sponsored hacking operation, they're usually following a thin trail of malicious code samples, network logs, and connections to faraway servers. That detective work gets significantly easier when hackers record what they’re doing and then upload the video to an unprotected server on the open internet. Which is precisely what researchers at IBM say a group of Iranian hackers did.
Researchers at IBM's X-Force security team revealed today that they've obtained roughly five hours of video footage that appears to have been recorded directly from the screens of hackers working for a group IBM calls ITG18, and which other security firms refer to as APT35 or Charming Kitten. It's one of the most active state-sponsored espionage teams linked to the government of Iran. The leaked videos were found among 40 gigabytes of data that the hackers had apparently stolen from victim accounts, including US and Greek military personnel. Other clues in the data suggest that the hackers targeted US State Department staff and an unnamed Iranian-American philanthropist.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
07/17/2020 00:00 ||
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[Rudaw] Syrian jihadists said they released on Wednesday a self-described aid worker stripped of his British nationality, three weeks after he was detained in the country's last major rebel bastion.
Tauqir Sharif,
...the Pakistani-Brit from east London, also known as Tox, who was stripped of British citizenship after admitting to fighting for an Al Qaeda-linked group...
33, was captured on June 22 by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, formerly al-Nusra, before that it was called something else ...al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, from which sprang the Islamic State... (HTS), which is dominated by Syria's former al-Qaeda affiliate.
The group's propaganda arm Ebaa said on its website that Sharif would be brought before a local court in two weeks.
Sharif "has been released from prison," his relatives wrote on Facebook, welcoming the "great news".
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britannia-based war monitor, said after his detention that Sharif was held over his alleged ties with rival jihadists.
HTS has accused him of using humanitarian aid funds to sow division in the Idlib region.
Sharif first arrived in Syria in 2012, according to the Live Updates From Syria organization he founded with his wife.
Britannia stripped him of his British nationality in 2017, accusing him of links to an al-Qaeda-aligned group it did not specify, the British press has said, but Sharif has denied the allegation.
The Idlib region is home to some three million people, a large proportion of whom have been displaced from their homes by Syria's nine-year-old war and are dependent on humanitarian aid.
[GatestoneInstitute] "Nasrallah has taken Lebanon hostage and accused the US of Lebanon's economic collapse," says a video clip posted on social media platforms. "Hezbollah is a major partner of the network that looted the Lebanese treasury and banks. Hezbollah is a terrorist organization running an entire country."
Several Lebanese politicians have blamed Hezbollah for the country's severe financial crisis.
Posted by: lord garth ||
07/17/2020 00:00 ||
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Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
07/17/2020 18:17 Comments ||
Top||
#10
#UNModel - Tersely worded letter to follow?
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/17/2020 18:19 Comments ||
Top||
#11
Stop! Please! It's the Pacifist Police!
We insist you desist! Yes, and cease!
"To serve and look pensive
(if that's not offensive),
Smoke peacepipe, and catch-and-release."
[FoxNews] The National Museum for African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) has removed its controversial chart on whiteness from one of its webpages, telling people on Thursday that it didn't contribute to a "productive conversation" about racial issues.
"Since yesterday, certain content in the 'Talking About Race' portal has been the subject of questions that we have taken seriously. We have listened to public sentiment and have removed a chart that does not contribute to the productive discussion we had intended," the museum said in a statement.
Fox News reported yesterday that some described the chart as racist since it categorized things like "decision-making" and "delayed gratification" as part of whiteness.
The museum's graphic broke the "aspects and assumptions of whiteness" into categories such as "rugged individualism" and "history." For example, under "future orientation," the graphic listed "delayed gratification" and planning for the future as ideas spread by white culture.
Posted by: Sonny Black ||
07/17/2020 7:17 Comments ||
Top||
#3
Sailer hit another homer yesterday: "Imagine writing 'How to Get to the Moon by 1969' at the top of the chart and posting it in a school hallway..."
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
07/17/2020 7:28 Comments ||
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[SEATTLETIMES] First came the warning: A police officer in the small city of Selah told a group of young people that if they continued drawing "Black Lives Matter" chalk art on the sidewalk in front of City Hall, they would be charged with a crime.Then came the pressure washer.
As the 10 protesters covered parts of their artwork with their bodies, a city worker walked between them, spraying away the exposed parts of their messages and sending tubs of chalk tumbling into the street. The young activists, wet from the washing, watched in silence and held up signs that were outside the reach of the pressure washer.
"Hate has no home in Selah," one of them said.
The standoff last week was just one of a growing series of conflicts between conservative leaders of Selah, a community with only a few dozen Black residents, and young people from a wide range of backgrounds who believe the city is long overdue for a conversation about race.
As Black Lives Matter events spread from urban centers to thousands of smaller communities around the country, town officials who saw little reason to explore percolating racial prejudices are finding themselves confronted by residents who have decided it is time to step forward.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/17/2020 00:00 ||
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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.
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.
[Tolo] Abdul Rashid Dostum, the former vice president and founder of the National Islamic Movement of Afghanistan party, in a ceremony on Wednesday was officially promoted to the rank of marshal at a ceremony in Jawzjan province.
...the decaying remnant of the Ottoman Empire...
[JPost] 
...al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, from which sprang the Islamic State...
