Author Archives: News Sources

Britain smites ISIS with Brimstone

The Guardian reports: The Royal Air Force has used Brimstone missiles against Isis in Syria for the first time, Downing Street has confirmed.

Four Brimstone missiles were deployed on two missions on Sunday. One missile was used against enemy positions near Raqqa, including targeting an Isis vehicle. Three Brimstone missiles were also used in an attack on the Omar oilfield on the same day. There were also three other RAF missions in Syria on Sunday that did not use Brimstone missiles, including striking enemy tunnels near Raqqa.

The prime minister’s spokeswoman declined to say whether the strikes had resulted in casualties, saying: “These will all have been focused on either targeting Daesh [Isis]’s resources or targeting Daesh terrorists who are seeking to destabilise Iraq, Syria and threatening other countries.” [Continue reading…]

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How Rolling Stone handled Sean Penn’s exclusive interview with El Chapo

The New York Times reports: Several months ago, Jann Wenner, a founder of Rolling Stone magazine, received a call from the actor Sean Penn.

Mr. Penn, Mr. Wenner said in an interview on Sunday, wanted to discuss something important. But he did not want to speak openly over the phone, so the two began to speak elliptically about a potential project.

That vague conversation was the beginning of what eventually became an article, written by Mr. Penn, that rocked both Mexico and the United States when it was published Saturday night. It was an exclusive interview with Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the notorious drug kingpin known as El Chapo, that was conducted while Mr. Guzmán was on the run from the authorities after an audacious escape from a Mexican prison last year.

The 10,000-word article includes accusations of cooperation between the military and Mr. Guzmán’s Sinaloa cartel, as well as Mr. Guzmán’s acknowledgment of his status as a drug dealer and his thoughts about the ethical implications of his business. Mr. Guzmán, whose escape from prison — his second — made him one of the most wanted fugitives in the world, was caught on Friday, before the article was published.

But after its publication, questions have been raised about the ethics for the magazine in dealing with Mr. Guzmán, a criminal being sought on charges of drug trafficking and murder, and in allowing him to approve what would ultimately be published about him. The Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio, speaking Sunday on “This Week,” on ABC News, acknowledged Mr. Penn’s “constitutional right” to meet with Mr. Guzmán, but called the interview “grotesque.”

Steve Coll, the dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, said he was concerned by the editorial approval offered to Mr. Guzmán. But ultimately, he said, “scoring an exclusive interview with a wanted criminal is legitimate journalism no matter who the reporter is.” [Continue reading…]

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The Islamization of radicalism

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Olivier Roy writes: France is at war! Perhaps. But against whom or what?

Last November, when the Islamic State staged the shootings that killed 130 in Paris, it did not send Syrians. A year ago, when al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula purportedly ordered the deadly attack on the office of Charlie Hebdo, it did not send gunmen from Yemen. Rather, both groups drew from a reservoir of radicalized French youth who, no matter what happens in the Middle East, are already disaffected and are seeking a cause, a label, a grand narrative to which they can add the bloody signature of their personal revolt.

The rallying cry of these youth is opportunistic: Today it is the Islamic State; yesterday, they were with al Qaeda; before that, in 1995, they were subcontractors for the Algerian Armed Islamic Group, or they practiced the nomadism of personal jihad, from Bosnia to Afghanistan, by way of Chechnya. Tomorrow they will fight under another banner, so long as combat death, age, or disillusion do not empty their ranks.

There is no third, fourth, or nth generation of jihadis. Since 1996, we have been confronted with a very stable phenomenon: the radicalization of two categories of French youth — second-generation Muslims and native converts. The essential problem for France, therefore, is not the caliphate in the Syrian desert, which will disappear sooner or later, like an old mirage that has become a nightmare. The problem is the revolt of these youth. And the real challenge is to understand what these youth represent: whether they are the vanguard of an approaching war or, on the contrary, are just a rumbling of history.

* * *

Two readings of the situation dominate at the moment and are shaping the debates on television and in the opinion pages of newspapers: These are, basically, the cultural explanation and the Third World explanation.

The first puts forth that recurring and nagging “war of civilizations” theory: The revolt of young Muslims demonstrates the extent to which Islam cannot be integrated into the West, at least not so long as theological reform has not struck the call of jihad from the Quran. The second interpretation evokes post-colonial suffering, the identification of these youth with the Palestinian cause, their rejection of Western intervention in the Middle East, and their exclusion from a French society that is racist and Islamophobic. In short, the old song: So long as we haven’t resolved the Israel-Palestine conflict, there will be a revolt.

But the two explanations run up against the same problem: If the causes of radicalization are structural, then why do they affect only a tiny fraction of those in France who call themselves Muslims? Only a few thousand, among several million.

But these young radicals have been identified! All the terrorists who have actually taken action were, notoriously, in the “S File” — that is, on the government’s watch list. I don’t wish to get into a discussion here of prevention — I simply note that the information about them is there, and it is accessible. So let us look at who they are and try to draw some conclusions.

Nearly all the French jihadis belong to two very precise categories: They are either “second-generation” French — that is, born or raised from a very young age in France — or they are “native” French converts (whose numbers have increased with time, but who already constituted 25 percent of radicals at the end of the 1990s). This means that, among the radicals, there are practically no “first-generation” jihadis (including recent arrivals), but especially no “third-generation” jihadis.

The third-generation category in France is growing: The Moroccan immigrants of the 1970s are now grandparents. But one does not find their grandchildren among the terrorists. And why do converts, who never suffered from racism, wish to brutally avenge the humiliation experienced by Muslims? Especially since many of these converts — like Maxime Hauchard, the Normandy-born man who appeared in the Islamic State’s beheading videos — come from rural France and have little reason to identify with a Muslim community that for them exists only in theory. In short, this is not a “revolt of Islam” or one of Muslims, but a specific problem concerning two categories of youth, the majority of whom are of immigrant origin. This is not, then, the radicalization of Islam, but the Islamization of radicalism.

What is the common ground between the second generation and the converts? It is, first of all, a question of a generational revolt: Both have ruptured with their parents or, more precisely, with what their parents represent in terms of culture and religion. [Continue reading…]

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Sexism is not an imported product

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Silke Stöckle and Marion Wegscheider, whose original article in German appeared in marx21, write: The NYE festivities in Cologne, Hamburg and other cities witnessed a high number of sexual attacks on women, and in at least one case, a rape. It is disturbing that this could happen, and outrageous that the authorities in the first instance failed to take victims’ reports seriously.

Sexual violence against women in Germany is in general a large and indeed a long-existing problem: women are commonly and frequently sexually harassed at large festivals, at the Oktoberfest in Munich or during the Carnival in Cologne and other cities. According to a new study commissioned by the Federal Ministry of Family Affairs, one in seven women in Germany experiences sexual violence. One in four women – irrespective of education level or socio-economic status – is exposed to domestic violence. The perpetrators are almost always men, among whom no significant distinction according to religion, background, educational level or social status exists.

In other words, every day there are more than enough reasons for a society-wide outcry over sexism and sexualised violence in Germany. Both phenomena are closely connected to the dominant image of women. Accordingly, sexual assaults on women are all too often not taken seriously, and are at first marginalised – as in Cologne, where victims have had the pleasure of being schooled by local politicians about “rules of behaviour for mass gatherings”, as though the victims, in the face of their determined assaulters, had the possibility to negotiate their way out of harm.

Women are continually portrayed as sexual objects in films, advertising and mass media. But more than this, women’s oppression is structurally anchored in our society, evidenced by differences in pay, employment opportunities or dominant role models. There is no equality here, despite frequent public proclamations to the contrary.

Rather than connecting the events in Cologne and Hamburg to the everyday sexist violence faced by women in Germany, politicians and the media establishment have, from the moment the events occurred, focused above all on the background of the alleged perpetrators, and on questions of public security. Where sexual molestation is acknowledged as a structural manifestation at all, it is only ever in relation to the “culture” in the supposed countries of origin of the perpetrators. In this way, the debate about the attacks has been instrumentalised from the get-go and, in line with a classic racist line of argument, Muslims or refugees have been stereotyped en masse. [Continue reading…]

Deutsche Welle reports: A few kilometers away [from the main station in Cologne], in the “Multi Kulti” center in the neighborhood of Mülheim, several women have gathered in an attempt to work out what measures should be taken to make the streets of Cologne safe again.

“No one is talking about the fact that this is happening to women every day,” Tanja, an activist and one of the initiators of the event told DW.

“People are insisting on making this a political story, trying to shift the focus on pro- or anti-refugees. But in fact, no one is listening to what we have to say – the women who have been suffering from this violence in the streets on a daily basis long before refugees even came here,” she says.

The violence on New Year’s Eve was not different from that during any other big-scale celebration in the city, according to Tanja. “Because refugees are now a burning topic, the media all of a sudden report about these events, but what nobody wants to admit is that these things happen all the time. I’m sorry to break this to you, but German-born men also harass and rape.” [Continue reading…]

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Germany’s welcome for refugees has to survive the Cologne attacks

Doris Akrap writes: Too often in the past few days I have heard the Willkommenskultur-Germans saying they feel “exploited”, “abused”, “cheated”. We know this behaviour. It’s like angry parents whose children have got into trouble: “I did everything for you and what do you do?” As every parent, every German, has to learn: just like every child, every refugee is an individual. Not every refugee will study hard and become a doctor. No, some refugees will get drunk on New Year’s Eve and make a whole lot of mess.

I don’t want to trivialise sexual attacks. And I don’t want to deny the possibility that some people from the Middle East may have greater problems with women and alcohol than others. Nobody ever said that the refugees, even when they were wrapped in insulation blankets after arriving over the Mediterranean, were all angels. You’re sure to find bigots, antisemites and criminal gangs among them, just as you’ll find racists, rapists and arsonists among the German population (there were more than 200 arson attacks on refugee accommodation in Germany last year).

But my fear is that Willkommenskultur could end up as nothing more than a slogan. The people who always wanted it to fail, who believe in a Germans-only state, are abusing the fears and insecurities we all have over the background of the new arrivals. And more than that, they are abusing the dozens of women who were victims of assault on New Year’s Eve. [Continue reading…]

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Amnesty: Famine in Syrian city of Madaya ‘the tip of an iceberg’

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CNN reports: Evidence of an unfolding famine in the Syrian city of Madaya continues to mount, with the international rights group Amnesty International publishing accounts of people trying to survive on boiled water and leaves.

Except that now that it’s winter, the leaves are gone.

Even more chilling is the idea that Madaya may not be the exception in Syria today, after nearly five years of civil war: It might be representative of an ongoing catastrophe of larger proportions.

“These harrowing accounts of hunger represent the tip of an iceberg,” said Philip Luther, the Middle East and North Africa director for Amnesty International. “Syrians are suffering and dying across the country because starvation is being used as a weapon of war by both the Syrian government and armed groups.”

Luther accused both sides of “toying with the lives of hundreds of thousands of people,” and noted that starving civilians as a tactic in warfare is a war crime. [Continue reading…]

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Iran won’t surrender militias that conduct Assad’s war

Hassan Hassan writes: Not long before the Riyadh-Tehran diplomatic row that followed the execution of Saudi Shia cleric Nimr Al Nimr, a showdown between the two countries unfolded in New York. While it is difficult to draw a direct correlation between the two events, the incident can help us understand the depth of the continuing crisis.

On December 18, heated debate ensued between representatives of the two countries at a meeting in New York over the listing of armed groups operating in Syria for possible determination as terrorist organisations. The list, which Jordan was asked to develop, would name extremist groups that must be defeated as part of the UN-sponsored political process for Syria.

A month earlier in Vienna, Saudi Arabia had insisted on including in the list foreign Shia militias fighting on the side of president Bashar Al Assad. Riyadh argued that all foreign fighters must leave Syria, regardless of which side they supported. In New York, Iran, joined by Russia, strongly objected to the demand and the standoff caused a deeper rift between the two countries.

For now, the designation of terror groups in Syria has been referred to a committee comprising several European and regional countries. They first determined indicators and criteria of what constitutes a terrorist organisation, then named armed groups currently fighting in Syria. There is a preliminary list of more than 160 Sunni and Shia organisations.

Iran categorically rejects including any Shia groups in the list. For Tehran, the fate of the Assad regime it supports is critically tied to the presence of those Shia militias. It is a fact that adds to the many issues that compound the conflict in Syria – issues that the international community would seemingly rather sweep under the carpet instead of deal with head on. [Continue reading…]

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Ten ways on how not to think about the Iran/Saudi conflict

Omid Safi writes: In order to understand this conflict, do not start with Sunni/Shi‘a seventh century succession disputes to Prophet. This is a modern dispute, not one whose answers you are going to find in pre-modern books of religious history and theology. Think about how absurd it would be if we were discussing a political conflict between the U.S. and Russia, and instead of having political scientists we brought on people to talk about the historical genesis of the Greek Orthodox Church.

Probably the most succinct elaboration of this point came from Marc Lynch:

“The idea of an unending, primordial conflict between Sunnis and Shiites explains little about the ebbs and flows of regional politics. This is not a resurgence of a 1,400-year-old conflict.”

The attempt to explain the Iranian/Saudi conflict, or for that matter every Middle Eastern conflict, in purely religious terms is part of an ongoing Orientalist imagination that depicts these societies as ancient, unchanging, un-modern societies where religion is the sole determining factor (allegedly unlike an imagined “us,” who have managed to become modern and secular.) Watch this four-part series by the late, great Edward Said on how Orientalism operates (skip the introduction):

There is no disputing that religion is a factor in understanding the Middle East. In some conflicts, it might even be a primary factor. But it is never, ever the only factor. Most often it is the other factors (history, economics, ideology, demographics) that are much more important.

Religion, religious traditions, and human societies never stay static and unchanging. There is no such thing as an eternal, unchanging human tradition. [Continue reading…]

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Iraq faces take-over by Iran-backed militias if ISIS is defeated, coalition commanders fear

The Telegraph reports: Coalition commanders in Iraq fear that Iran-backed Shia militias may stage an armed takeover of the country if Isil is defeated, a new report has warned.

Senior figures in the US-led mission believe there is a high likelihood of a “war after the war” because of the Iraqi government’s reliance on Shia militias in its fight against Isil.

The move has hugely boosted the strength of such militias, to the point where they are now in a position to challenge the elected government for control of the country.

The warnings are revealed in research compiled by one Britain’s foremost experts on Iraq, Professor Toby Dodge, who served as an adviser to General David Petraeus, America’s former top commander in Baghdad.

Prof Dodge’s findings are based on meetings with high-level coalition commanders and Iraqi politicians conducted during a recent study trip to Iraq for the Middle East Centre at the London School of Economics.

They told him that recent defeats against Isil in Ramadi and Sinjar had shifted “the balance of power” to the Shia militias, who lead around 70 per cent of all military operations.

“Against a background of positive military news, there was near unanimity amongst the senior Iraqi political figures and the military commanders of the American-led, multilateral coalition that that the military defeat of (Isil) in Iraq would trigger another military conflict, which would in effect, mark the country’s return to civil war,” said the report. [Continue reading…]

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French proposal to strip citizenship over terrorism sets off alarms

The New York Times reports: The French police have carried out thousands of heavy-handed searches since the Nov. 13 Paris attacks, and a raft of new laws is poised to permanently concentrate even more power in the hands of the Interior Ministry.

Yet among civil libertarians, no government proposal has raised as much alarm as a recent one to strip citizenship from French-born dual nationals convicted of terrorism.

The idea, promoted by Prime Minister Manuel Valls, a Socialist with a conservative twitch, has struck at the core of France’s ideals of the rights of citizens, while underscoring the quandary the government faces as it confronts a widening threat from terrorists born and raised in France.

While the proposal to strip them of citizenship — known here as “déchéance,” or “forfeiture” — is backed by the right and much of the public, it has provoked furious debate and outraged the left, including many of Mr. Valls’s colleagues in the Socialist Party.

Mr. Valls has described the measure as “highly symbolic.” But critics fear that it would deepen fissures in French society by creating two classes of citizens.

Socialists are usually extremely reluctant to distinguish between French citizens, said Patrick Weil, the country’s leading historian on immigration. “The principle of equality is one of the pillars of French identity,” he said. “That he wants to distinguish between French citizens is creating a tsunami. It’s a terrible break with the fundamental principles of the French republic.”

At the same time, opponents of the plan point out that such a change in the law would hardly deter would-be terrorists. No one has been able to envision a situation in which a binational French suicide bomber might not press the button for fear of losing citizenship. [Continue reading…]

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‘I went to join ISIS in Syria, taking my four-year-old. It was a journey into hell’

The Observer reports: Sophie Kasiki stared at the photograph of a young English-speaking boy in a camouflage uniform and black bandana covered in Arabic calling for unbelievers to be killed in the latest Islamic State propaganda.

Her eyes welled and she swallowed hard. “That could have been my son,” she said, her firm voice wavering. “That’s hard for me to say and makes me want to cry. I would have killed us both rather than let him become a killer, rather than let him fall into the claws of those monsters.”

The “monsters” she is referring to are Islamic State, and Kasiki weighs her words; she knows her four-year-old son was only ever at risk of falling into the jihadis’ lair because she had taken him there.

Kasiki is one of the few western women who have been to the capital of the Isis-declared caliphate at Raqqa in Syria and returned to recount the tale. It was, she said in her first interview with a British newspaper, like a journey into a hell from which there seemed no return. [Continue reading…]

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Egypt’s president turns to religion to bolster his authority

The New York Times reports: When President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi opened a much-heralded extension to the Suez Canal in August, the official Friday Prayer sermon that week hailed it as a “gift from God.”

When Egyptian voters elected a new Parliament in December, a preacher on state TV urged its members to “obey those in authority, specifically the highest authority,” and referred indirectly to Mr. Sisi as “God’s shadow on earth.”

And when a Russian airplane leaving the Sharm el Sheik resort crashed in the Sinai Desert in October, killing 224 people and crippling Egyptian tourism, the Ministry of Religious Endowments encouraged clerics to vacation at the deserted resort — notable because many observant Muslims here view it as a sinful fleshpot.

Fears of Islamist rule helped propel Mr. Sisi, then a military general, to power in 2013 following giant protests that led to the ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood government. But as Mr. Sisi wrestles with militant attacks and a struggling economy, he has increasingly turned to religion to bolster his authority and justify a crackdown on his rivals. [Continue reading…]

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Scientists move one step closer to turning water into hydrogen fuel, affordably

Christian Science Monitor reports: Scientists have cleared one hurdle on the path to deriving hydrogen fuel from water affordably, a breakthrough that could drastically change the way we power vehicles.

Hydrogen has the potential to fuel incredibly environmentally clean cars. But making that fuel hasn’t been so efficient or economical. Pure hydrogen gas does not occur naturally on Earth, so scientists must devise ways to separate hydrogen from naturally occurring compounds, like H2 O.

Until now, cars that run on water have been out of reach. Electrolysis, the process of breaking H2 O into hydrogen and oxygen gases by passing an electric current through water, and other possible methods have been prohibitively expensive or difficult.

But a team of scientists have come up with a different mechanism to produce hydrogen fuel from water. These researchers have created a biomaterial that catalyzes the splitting of the water elements, which they describe in a paper published in the journal Nature Chemistry. [Continue reading…]

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Why we can’t stay silent on Germany’s mass sex assaults

Maajid Nawaz writes: Recent mass migration patterns across Europe have meant that misogyny has finally come head to head with anti-racism, multiculturalism is facing off against feminism, and progressive values are wrestling with cultural tolerance.

Yes, it is racist to suspect that all brown men who look like me are rapists. It is bigoted to presume that all Muslim men who share my faith advocate religiously justified rape. It is xenophobic to assume that all male refugees are sexual predators awaiting their chance to rape. But let me be absolutely clear: What will feed this racism, bigotry, and xenophobia even more is deliberately failing to report the facts as they stand. Doing so only encourages the populist right’s rallying cry against “the establishment.”

If liberals do not address such issues swiftly, with complete candor and courage, the far-right and anti-Muslim populist groups will get there first. They have been doing so for a while now.

The far-right street protest group Hogesa, or Hooligans Against Salafism, continues to cause consternation on the streets of Cologne, while the populist-right Pegida has already responded to the New Year’s Eve attacks by announcing a protest in Cologne on Jan. 9.

No, my fellow liberals, these issues cannot be brushed under the carpet or simply willed away. They are not going anywhere, anytime soon. So how can we address this sensibly, without bursting a blood vessel in our Right eye, or missing the blind spot in our Left? [Continue reading…]

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Europe should steer clear of anti-refugee sentiment and take sexual assault seriously

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Natasha Lennard and Lukas Hermsmeier write: Treating rape as a problem imported from the Middle East and North Africa that can be deported along with refugees grossly ignores and normalizes an already ubiquitous rape culture. Swiss newspaper Neue Zuercher Zeitung warned this week of an “imported macho culture” arriving on German soil with the refugees. The insinuation that Europe does not already have a well-worn macho culture or macho cultures of its own is nothing short of an offense to feminism. Most assaults, after all, take place in German homes: Marital rape was still legal in Germany until 1997.

This is not to say the attacks on New Year’s Eve are not deadly serious. A large number of contemporaneous assaults demand an investigation into whether and how each attack is connected; if there is a connection rooted in certain cultural or societal mores, it should not be dismissed. Currently, details about the attacks remain scarce. We know that at least 18 asylum seekers are suspects and that victims described the perpetrators as looking North African or Arabic — which are broad strokes. And needless to say, most people in Germany of that description are not seeking asylum.

In opposing the right’s racism, we must be able to countenance that a group of refugees could be responsible for the assaults and that these individuals should not be defended. We engage in our own subtle racism if, in defending the rights of refugees in general, we collapse them all into a homogeneous category, because all racism is predicated on treated an entire group of people as an undifferentiated mass. The key is to take these assaults seriously on their own terms and as part of a generalized scourge of sexual harassment and assault, which is not fought by picking out specific ethnic groups. What’s more, we should be suspicious of any people so keen to point out the links between Islamic culture and misogyny if they are not equally concerned with the prevailing violent misogynies in the cultural West. [Continue reading…]

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Polarized views on refugees in Germany obstruct serious conversation about integration

Anna Sauerbrey writes: precisely when the country needs a coolheaded conversation about the impact of Germany’s new refugee population, we’re playing musical chairs: Everybody runs for a seat to the left and to the right, afraid to remain in the middle, apparently undecided.

The irony is that the Cologne attacks, by highlighting the issue of refugees and their culture, raise an incredibly important question and at the same time make it almost impossible to have a reasonable conversation about it.

Integration will fail if Germany cannot resolve the tension between its secular, liberal laws and culture and the patriarchal and religiously conservative worldviews that some refugees bring with them. We cannot avoid that question out of fear of feeding the far right. But integration will also fail if a full generation of refugees is demonized on arrival.

The left has long ignored the established correlations between crime and the poverty and poor education that plague refugee communities; the right has long overestimated the link between the refugees’ culture and criminal activity, even when studies show no such link exists (excepting so-called crimes of honor, which are extremely rare).

The real question we should be asking is not whether there is something inherently wrong with the refugees, but whether Germany is doing an effective job of integrating them — and if not, whether something can be done to change that. [Continue reading…]

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Victim of Cologne attacks says ‘we were systematically sexually harassed’

Der Spiegel reports: The stories of Lara, Jeanette and Paul, three university students from Bonn, paint a vivid picture of what so many women experienced on New Year’s Eve. The trio had traveled to Cologne with two other female friends because the parties there are simply better than they are in Bonn. They arrived at the square in front of the train station just as the police were clearing it. They didn’t know what was going on — all they saw was police officers in helmets pushing people back. They continued on to the banks of the Rhine River, a vantage point from which they could view the fireworks, when Jeanette realized that her money, ID and entry ticket for that night’s club had been stolen.

At midnight, they shared a bottle of cheap champagne out of plastic cups and then headed back to the central train station. In front of the stairs leading from the cathedral down to the train station, they had to squeeze past a large group of men. They locked hands, letting Jeanette take the lead because she knew judo. Paul tried to provide some cover for the girls. At one point, Lara cried out: “Someone just grabbed my crotch!” That was just the beginning.

Hands seemed to come from every direction to grab the women’s bodies. They always went for between the legs. Paul’s attempts to protect the women were futile. Providing cover for one left another to fend for herself. “It was one hand after another,” Jeanette says. She was able to throw one attacker “really violently to the side” with a judo grip.

None of the three students can say for sure who attacked them. They are, however, all in agreement that all of the men surrounding them were speaking the same language, and that it sounded a lot like Arabic.

What Lara, Jeanette and Paul experienced in Cologne wasn’t unique to that city. Police reports indicate that a large group of men also gathered along the famous street in Hamburg’s St. Pauli district known as Grosse Freiheit, most of whom were probably of North African descent. These men committed a series of “property thefts with sexual components.”

In Stuttgart, a 20-year-old Iraqi has been in custody since the morning of Jan. 1 for allegedly groping two women at the city’s Schlossplatz square. Police in Frankfurt am Main have reported similar incidents.

Jeanette and Lara, the two students from Bonn, went to the police six days after New Year’s to file complaints for sexual assault. “We want this to be documented,” Lara says. It makes them furious to read in the newspaper that what happened in Cologne came from the pickpocket milieu. The way Lara sees it: “We were systematically sexually harassed.”

By the time Jeanette, Lara and Paul boarded the delayed train that would take them back to Bonn on New Year’s, it was 2 a.m. During the ride, they met a young Syrian who told them about his flight from Damascus through Lebanon and Turkey and eventually by boat to Greece. From there, he continued on foot through the Balkans and on to Germany. Afterwards, they told him about their night in Cologne. He was horrified, they say. [Continue reading…]

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In pursuit of a nuclear deal, Obama shunned Iran’s democracy movement

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The Wall Street Journal reports: Iranian opposition leaders secretly reached out to the White House in the summer of 2009 to gauge Mr. Obama’s support for their “green revolution,” which drew millions of people to protest the allegedly fraudulent re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The demonstrations caught the White House off guard, said current and former U.S. officials who worked on Iran in the Obama administration.

Some U.S. officials pressed Mr. Obama to publicly back the fledgling Green Movement, arguing in Oval Office meetings that it marked the most important democratic opening since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Mr. Obama wasn’t convinced. “‘Let’s give it a few days,’ was the answer,” said a senior U.S. official present at some of the White House meetings. “It was made clear: ‘We should monitor, but do nothing.’ ”

The president was invested heavily in developing a secret diplomatic outreach to Mr. Khamenei that year, sending two letters to the supreme leader in the months before the disputed election of Mr. Ahmadinejad, said current and former U.S. officials.

Obama administration officials at the time were working behind the scenes with the Sultan of Oman to open a channel to Tehran. The potential for talks with Iran — and with Mr. Khamenei as the ultimate arbiter of any nuclear agreement — influenced Mr. Obama’s thinking, current and former U.S. officials said.

U.S. officials said the White House also was getting conflicting messages from Green Movement leaders. Some wanted Mr. Obama to publicly warn Mr. Khamenei against using force. Others said such a declaration would give Iran’s supreme leader an excuse to paint the opposition as American lackeys.

Mr. Obama and his advisers decided to maintain silence in the early days of the 2009 uprising. The Central Intelligence Agency was ordered away from any covert work to support the Green Movement either inside Iran or overseas, said current and former U.S. officials involved in the discussions.

“If you were working on the nuclear deal, you were saying, ‘Don’t do too much,’ ” said Michael McFaul, who served as a senior National Security Council official at the White House before becoming ambassador to Russia in 2012.

After a week of demonstrations, Iran’s security forces went on to kill as many as 150 people and jail thousands of others over the following months, according to opposition and human rights groups. Mr. Khamenei accused the U.S. of instigating the uprising. Iran denied killing protesters.

Some of Mr. Obama’s closest advisers, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, said in retrospect the U.S. should have backed the Green Movement. “If we could do it again, I would give different counsel,” said Dennis Ross, Mr. Obama’s top Mideast adviser during his first term. At the time, he said, he argued against embracing the protests.

A senior U.S. official said this week that the Obama administration argued against covert support for the Green Movement because it risked undermining its credibility domestically, not out of fear of Mr. Khamenei’s reaction. “We did not want to tar the movement,” the official said. [Continue reading…]

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