Category Archives: News

French prime minister defends security forces after ISIS-linked murders

The Guardian reports: France’s prime minister, Manuel Valls, has defended the country’s intelligence services after criticism that they should have prevented the gruesome double murder of a police commander and his partner by a man with a previous conviction for jihadism who had recently been under surveillance.

Larossi Abballa, 25, who claimed allegiance to Islamic State (Isis), stabbed police commander Jean-Baptiste Salvaing to death outside his home in Magnanville near Paris. He then entered the house and took Salvaing’s partner, Jessica Schneider, and their three-year-old son hostage. Abballa slit Schneider’s throat and streamed a live video of the fatal attack on Facebook. He was killed when police stormed the house and the boy was rescued alive.

French authorities have admitted that Abballa, who was convicted of taking part in a jihadi recruitment network to Pakistan and Afghanistan in 2013 and sentenced to three years in prison, had been under phone surveillance this year in connection to an inquiry about another man leaving for Syria. The state prosecutor said nothing had been found during that phone tapping to indicate he was preparing to carry out a violent act. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Post-ISIS Iraq should be split in three: top Kurdish official

Reuters reports: Once Islamic State is defeated, Iraq should be divided into three separate entities to prevent further sectarian bloodshed, with a state each given to Shi’ite Muslims, Sunnis and Kurds, a top Kurdish official said on Thursday.

Iraqi troops have expelled Islamic State from some cities the militants seized in 2014, and are advancing on Mosul, the largest city under IS control. Its fall would likely mean the end of the group’s self-proclaimed caliphate.

But even if Islamic State was eliminated, Iraq would still be deeply divided. Sectarian violence has continued for years and a power-sharing agreement has only led to discontent, deadlock and corruption.

Masrour Barzani, head of the Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) Security Council and son of KRG President Massoud Barzani, said the level of mistrust was such that they should not remain “under one roof”.

“Federation hasn’t worked, so it has to be either confederation or full separation,” Barzani told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday in the Kurdish capital Erbil. “If we have three confederated states, we will have equal three capitals, so one is not above the other.” [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

U.S. officials say American Muslims repeatedly report extremist threats

Reuters reports: Muslim-Americans have repeatedly informed authorities of fellow Muslims they fear might be turning to extremism, law enforcement officials say, contrary to a claim by presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump this week.

“They don’t report them,” Trump said in a CNN interview on Monday, in the wake of the mass shooting at an Orlando nightclub of 49 people by an American Muslim who claimed allegiance to Islamic State. “For some reason, the Muslim community does not report people like this.”

But FBI director James Comey said, “They do not want people committing violence, either in their community or in the name of their faith, and so some of our most productive relationships are with people who see things and tell us things who happen to be Muslim.

“It’s at the heart of the FBI’s effectiveness to have good relationships with these folks,” Comey said at a press conference following the Orlando shootings. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Donald Trump accused of using his charity as a political slush fund

The Daily Beast reports: The Trump Foundation, Donald Trump’s nonprofit organization, is under fire for allegedly operating as more of a political slush fund than a charity. The foundation is accused of violating rules prohibiting it from engaging in politics — prompting ethics watchdogs to call for public investigations.

On numerous occasions this year, Trump’s campaign work and his foundation work have overlapped — putting himself at risk for penalties and his charity at risk of being shut down.

It’s the latest example of Trump courting controversy: not merely through inflammatory rhetoric, but also through private dealings that raise serious legal questions — all of which indicate how he might govern if elected president of the United States. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Armitage to back Clinton over Trump

Politico reports: Richard Armitage, the deputy secretary of state under George W. Bush, says he will vote for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump, in one of the most dramatic signs yet that Republican national security elites are rejecting their party’s presumptive nominee.

Armitage, a retired Navy officer who also served as an assistant secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan, is thought by Clinton aides to be the highest ranking former GOP national security official to openly support Clinton over Trump.

“If Donald Trump is the nominee, I would vote for Hillary Clinton,” Armitage told POLITICO in a brief interview. “He doesn’t appear to be to be a Republican, he doesn’t appear to want to learn about issues. So I’m going to vote for Mrs. Clinton.” [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Second gravitational wave detected from ancient black hole collision

The Guardian reports: Physicists have detected ripples in the fabric of spacetime that were set in motion by the collision of two black holes far across the universe more than a billion years ago.

The event marks only the second time that scientists have spotted gravitational waves, the tenuous stretching and squeezing of spacetime predicted by Einstein more a century ago.

The faint signal received by the twin instruments of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) in the US revealed two black holes circling one another 27 times before finally smashing together at half the speed of light. [Continue reading…]

 

Facebooktwittermail

If Omar Mateen was gay, it makes his LGBT nightclub attack more homophobic

Jay Michaelson writes: If Mateen turns out to have been repressing his sexuality, that makes the attack more about homophobia, not less. Now what we have is not a gay-hating radical Islamist but a self-hating gay man who found in Islamist ideology a way to express his animus at everyone and everything.

Nor is this unique to Islam. When Christian fundamentalist Ted Haggard preached vitriolic sermons against homosexuality, it was because of — not despite — his furtive sex dates with a drug-dealing gay masseur. When former senator Larry Craig inveighed against the evils of equality, it was because of — not despite — his own shame around soliciting men for sex in public restrooms.

That is why study after study has shown that the more homophobic one is, the more likely one is to have repressed homosexual desires. If you’re battling your demons in private, you’re going to battle them in public too.

It is also why repressed gay people seek out fundamentalist religion in the first place. Religious fundamentalism sublimates the repressed sexual urge into religious zeal. In its Christian, Muslim, and Jewish forms, it insists that we are all struggling with evil urges that must be assiduously repressed. And its restrictions on sexual expression, coupled with often single sex male environments, work just fine for those who couldn’t express their sexuality in an “acceptable” way anyway.

Once again, that is as true for “celibate” Catholic priests as it is for ultra-Orthodox Jews as it is for born-again evangelicals as it is for newly radicalized Muslims. The logic of fundamentalist religion is the logic of repression and sublimation, of projecting one’s own inner struggles onto the screen of the theological.

I know this from personal experience. For 10 years, I lived my life as a closeted, Orthodox Jew. I wasn’t closeted because I was Orthodox; I was Orthodox because I was closeted. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

After Orlando, gay rights moves off diplomatic back burner

The New York Times reports: For years, diplomats were more comfortable talking about nuclear warheads than sexual orientation.

Sexual orientation was one of those subjects burdened with too many cultural sensitivities. American officials, even if they wanted to advance it on the diplomatic agenda, were wary of offending their allies, not least in the Islamic world.

The attack on a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., moved the needle.

In its aftermath, the United States corralled an unlikely group of countries to support a United Nations Security Council statement that condemned the attack for “targeting persons as a result of their sexual orientation.” Even Egypt and Russia — not known for embracing their gay and lesbian citizens — signed on, after what diplomats called intense consultations.

Earlier in the day, the United States delivered a pointed rebuke to countries that block gay rights at the United Nations, urging them to “contribute more than condolences and condemnations” after the Orlando attack.

And American embassies in several countries, including India, which still has an anti-sodomy law on the books, draped themselves in the colors of the rainbow flag that signifies gay pride.

The Security Council statement, which was drafted by the United States and issued Monday, carries no legal weight. But it is the first time that the powerful institution, with the capacity to authorize wars, weighed in on sexual orientation.

Homosexuality is still a crime in 73 of the world’s 193 countries, according to the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association; in 13, the death penalty can be applied. In some countries, like Egypt, laws against “debauchery” are used to target gays. Russian law prohibits what it calls “propaganda on nontraditional sexual relationships,” which critics call a thinly veiled measure to harass gay men and lesbians.

“We’re hopefully moving into an era when gross acts of violence are condemned by global leaders rather than when violence motivated by sexual orientation or gender identity” is “dismissed as irrelevant or unworthy,” said Jessica Stern, the executive director of OutRight Action International, an advocacy group.

Still, she said, the United States will be able to sway others only if it can protect its own citizens. “The more we demonstrate respect for Muslim Americans and the more violence we prevent domestically by passing meaningful gun control, the more credible we are likely to be as a global leader,” she said. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

The Orlando shooter may have been gay? The gay community isn’t surprised

Dave Cullen writes: My mantra after every mass-shooting tragedy is and always will be: don’t jump to conclusions too quickly, especially on motive. It’s healthy to discuss possibilities, particularly as the evidence piles up, but remember that early facts often turn out to point in the wrong direction. The media and even the president lunged way too quickly to assume that the Orlando massacre was an act of international terrorism, which it may or may not have been. Today we’re all asking a different question: Was the shooter gay? A rapidly accumulating set of evidence — including reports that he had been to Pulse in the years prior to the shooting — suggests that he was, or that he was still struggling with gay urges. But he might also just have been casing the place.

The idea that the killer, Omar Mateen, was gay himself may sound baffling, and much of the national media has treated it that way in the day or so since news of his bar-hopping habits surfaced. But it’s no surprise to most gay people. Many of my gay friends assumed as much from the beginning, and predicted this before the first scraps of evidence surfaced. It sounds as if he was a self-loathing gay — which is almost the same as saying he was just coming to terms with being gay. Has anyone ever discovered his gayness and not wanted to tear it out of himself?

Most of us haven’t just known that guy, we’ve been that guy. I never touched a man, or admitted how badly I wanted to, until I was 28. That initiated a seven-year bi phase, which I called “experimenting” for the first half, even after a friend said, “Experimenting? How many times do you need to rerun the experiment?” I had slept with at least a hundred men by then. Still not convinced. Hmmm.[Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Global markets are trembling at the prospect of Britain leaving the EU

Politico reports: Voters in the United Kingdom could deliver a sharp jolt to the global economy and the 2016 U.S. presidential race next week.

Recent polls show strong momentum in Great Britain in favor of abandoning membership in the European Union when the nation votes in a referendum next Thursday, an event that could send global markets plunging, damage the fragile U.S. economy, presage the demise of the EU itself and present a fresh headache for Hillary Clinton in her effort to keep the White House in Democratic hands.

“If the U.K. chooses to leave next week there will be a lot of immediate volatility in markets,” said Megan E. Greene, chief economist at Manulife in Boston. “But you could also end up having an existential threat to the European Union and then the impact on the United States would be even bigger and the market dislocations that follows would be much larger.”

None of this would be welcome news for the Hillary Clinton campaign, which is already facing one destabilizing event in the Orlando massacre and could soon be faced with a second shock.

Clinton is counting on a strengthening U.S. economy to help her defeat presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump in the fall. But a vote in favor of the U.K. leaving the EU, especially if it’s followed by similar movements in Italy, France and other EU nations, could damage a U.S. economy that grew at just a 0.8 percent rate in the first quarter by driving stock prices lower, pushing the dollar higher, sapping investor and consumer confidence and damaging critical U.S. trading partners.

“The big question here is to what extent this fuels a much bigger phenomenon in anti-establishment movements across Europe, that’s where the real uncertainty is,” said Mohamed A. El-Erian, chief economic adviser at Allianz. “Brexit itself could knock a little bit off of U.S. GDP. For a bigger impact, you would need big recessions all across Europe.”

Global markets are already trembling at the prospect of Britain leaving the EU. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

The torturers taking on ISIS in Fallujah

The Daily Beast reports: Twenty-three days after the Iraqi security forces started a major operation aiming to retake besieged Fallujah, the forces are still fighting to control the first neighborhood of the Anbar city.

Much of the murkiness surrounding the battle to expel ISIS from Fallujah, which lies 64 kilometers to the west of Baghdad and has long been a cynosure of the Sunni insurgency, has to do with who, exactly, is doing the fighting. And that’s a question that touches on Iraq’s ever-parlous sectarianism.

The United States insists that Shia militias, many of whom are avowedly Islamist and fighting for their own version of holy war, must not enter Fallujah and should instead confine their activities to the outskirts or suburbs of the city. The Pentagon has been providing air cover only on the south and western fronts where professional counterterrorism forces, the Iraqi army units, Sunni tribal forces and local police have operated. The northern front, where the militias and Iraq’s Federal Police are located, have seen no U.S. air strikes.

Perhaps for that reason, the south has seen more progress. Al-Shuhada, a neighborhood at the southern doorstep of Fallujah, is still contested with fierce clashes between Iraqi Security Forces and ISIS jihadists. Although earlier statements by Iraqi commanders were claiming they have completely controlled al-Shuhada neighborhood, Sabah Numan, spokesperson of elite Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS), told The Daily Beast, “We are currently in the first al-Shuhada neighborhood and we have been able to liberate 90 percent of it.”

Yet recent violations against Sunni civilians fleeing ISIS’s captivity in the north have complicated efforts to press on.

According to an official investigation carried out by the Anbar governorate, at least 49 people have been killed by Shia militias in two towns: Saqlawiyah, 8 kilometers northwest of Fallujah, and Al-Karmah, 16 kilometers northeast of the city. Additionally, 643 men have been declared missing between June 3 and June 5. The investigation records that have been signed by Sohaib al-Rawi, the governor of Anbar province, also state that “all detainees have been subject to severe collective torture.” Iraq’s Defense Minister Khalid al-Obeidi tweeted, “Harassment of IDPs is a betrayal of the sacrifices of our brave forces’ liberation operations to expel Daesh [ISIS] from Iraq.” [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Orlando shooter Omar Mateen was gay, former classmate says

Palm Beach Post reports: A former classmate of Omar Mateen’s 2006 police academy class said he believed Mateen was gay, saying Mateen once asked him out.

Officials say Mateen shot and killed 49 people and injured 53 others at an Orlando nightclub early Sunday morning.

The classmate said that he, Mateen and other classmates would hang out, sometimes going to gay nightclubs, after classes at the Indian River Community College police academy. He said Mateen asked him out romantically.

“We went to a few gay bars with him, and I was not out at the time, so I declined his offer,” the former classmate said. He asked that his name not be used.

He believed Mateen was gay, but not open about it. Mateen was awkward, and for a while the classmate and the rest in the group of friends felt sorry for him. [Continue reading…]

Reuters reports: Two U.S. officials, both of whom have been briefed regularly on the investigation and requested anonymity to discuss it, said that if it emerged that Mateen led a secret double life or had gay impulses that conflicted with his religious beliefs, it might have been a factor in explaining his motive.

“It’s far too early to be definitive, and some leads inevitably don’t pan out, but we have to consider at least the possibility that he might have sought martyrdom partly to gain absolution for what he believed were his grave sins,” one of the officials said. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Newt Gingrich suggests reforming House Un-American Committee in wake of Orlando shooting

Huffington Post reports: Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) on Monday suggested taking broader federal action to investigate and prosecute U.S. citizens with ties to terrorism in the wake of the nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, that left 49 people dead and 53 others injured.

Gingrich, who has been mentioned as a possible vice presidential running mate to presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, told Fox News that the United States ought to investigate possible “Islamic supremacists” the same way it sought to ferret out Nazi sympathizers during the 20th century.

Let me go a step further, because remember, San Bernardino, Fort Hood, and Orlando involve American citizens. We’re going to ultimately declare a war on Islamic supremacists and we’re going to say, if you pledge allegiance to ISIS, you are a traitor and you have lost your citizenship. And we’re going take much tougher positions. In the late 1930s, President Franklin Roosevelt was faced with Nazi penetration in the United States. We originally created the House Un-American Activities Committee to go after Nazis. We passed several laws in 1938 and 1939 to go after Nazis and we made it illegal to help the Nazis. We’re going to presently have to go take the similar steps here.

The Special Committee on Un-American Activities was formed in 1934 to investigate Nazi propaganda and organizations spreading propaganda inside the U.S. It later shifted its focus, investigating disloyalty and subversive activities by U.S. citizens. By 1945, however, the panel was largely focused on investigating purported communist ties — using its power to subpoena and blacklist Hollywood actors, screenwriters and directors. It is commonly associated with Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis.), whose notorious witch hunts against purported communist agents earned him censure by the U.S. Senate. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Brexit supporters have unleashed furies even they can’t control

Polly Toynbee writes: The clutch of England fans in Marseille were unequivocal. “Fuck off Europe, we’re all voting out,” they chanted. I’ve spent the week listening to much the same, politer, but just as fingers-in-the-ears adamant. No fact, no persuader penetrates their certainty – and these were Labour voters. Will Labour’s campaign week, kicked off by Gordon Brown in the face of a dire new Guardian poll, shift many outers?

Inside Labour’s London HQ, I joined young volunteers manning the “Labour In” phones with every fact at the ready. We had sheets of Labour-supporting names to call in Nottinghamshire – and the results were grim. “Out”, “Out” and “Out” in call after call, only a couple for remain. “I’ve been Labour all my life, but I’m for leave,” they said. Why? Always the same – immigrants first; that mythical £350m saving on money sent to Brussels second; “I want my country back” third. And then there is, “I don’t know ANYONE voting in.”

Try arguing with facts and you get nowhere. Warn these Labour people what a Johnson/Gove government would do and they don’t care. Warn about the loss of workers’ rights and they don’t listen – maybe that’s already irrelevant to millions in crap jobs such as at Uber or Sports Direct. “We’re full up. Sorry, there’s no room for more. Can’t get GP appointments, can’t get into our schools, no housing.” If you tell these Labour voters that’s because of Tory austerity cuts, still they blame “immigrants getting everything first”. Warn about a Brexit recession leading to far worse cuts and they just say, “Stop them coming, make room for our own first.” [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Al-Qaeda wants to establish an emirate in Syria, but not now

Haid Haid writes: There have recently been reports warning that the Nusra Front, an al-Qaeda affiliated group in Syria, is determined to declare its own Islamic emirate in Syria in the near future, but these warnings are likely jumping the gun. The argument goes that Nusra’s long term objective is establishing an Islamic emirate in Syria, but unlike the Islamic State (ISIS), they want to do so by winning the hearts and minds of the people. Two main obstacles prevent the Nusra from doing so: Nusra’s affiliation with al-Qaeda, many of whose members do not support the establishment of a caliphate, and most Syrians’ objection to the idea.

Supporting these predictions is the recent arrival of senior al-Qaeda figures to Syria, which is seen as the group’s attempt to secure enough support for the emirate by convincing other groups to join. Analysts have also interpreted al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri’s recent audio message as public approval for Nusra to dissociate itself from its parent organization in order to establish an emirate. Although these arguments are valuable, the Nusra Front is still facing many internal and external challenges, which prevent it from announcing its emirate. Moreover, these developments can also be understood as merely an attempt to help Nusra overcome the increased threats and the lack of support it is facing.

The Nusra Front was established in Syria in late 2011 and it gained a high profile among Syrians due to its valuable military contribution. The group made a name for itself fighting corruption and providing services, while avoiding politics and intervening in people’s lives, the combination of which gained it the support of local communities. However, in 2014, the group started to change its soft power strategy and began attacking some of the opposition groups, including those that receive US support, to eliminate any potential threat and to impose it unilateral control over the areas that will be part of its future emirate. This shift in the group’s strategy damaged Nusra’s public support and created tension with other rebel groups. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Donald Trump seems to connect President Obama to Orlando shooting

The Washington Post reports: “Look, we’re led by a man that either is not tough, not smart, or he’s got something else in mind,” Trump said in a lengthy interview on Fox News early Monday morning. “And the something else in mind — you know, people can’t believe it. People cannot, they cannot believe that President Obama is acting the way he acts and can’t even mention the words ‘radical Islamic terrorism.’ There’s something going on. It’s inconceivable. There’s something going on.”

In that same interview, Trump was asked to explain why he called for Obama to resign in light of the shooting and he answered, in part: “He doesn’t get it or he gets it better than anybody understands — it’s one or the other and either one is unacceptable.”

For months, Trump has slyly suggested that the president is not Christian and has questioned his compassion toward Muslims. Years ago, Trump was a major force in calls for the president to release his birth certificate and prove that he was born in the United States. On the campaign trail, Trump has repeatedly stated as fact conspiracy theories about the president, his rivals and Muslims, often refusing to back down from his assertions even when they are proven to be false. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Trump ally: Clinton aide could be ‘terrorist agent’

Politico reports: In the wake of Sunday’s deadly terrorist shooting in Orlando, Donald Trump’s longtime friend and informal adviser wants the presumptive Republican nominee to hit Hillary Clinton even harder, suggesting the former secretary of state’s top aide Huma Abedin could be a “Saudi spy” or a “terrorist agent.”

Only Trump, Roger Stone said on Sirius XM’s “Breitbart News Daily,” will be able to draw the necessary amount of attention to the theories, which have drawn significant blowback from Democrats and Republicans alike.

“I also think that now that Islamic terrorism is going to be front and center, there’s going to be a new focus on whether this administration, the administration of Hillary Clinton at State was permeated at the highest levels by Saudi intelligence and others who are not loyal Americans,” Stone said. “I speak specifically of Huma Abedin, the right-hand woman, now vice-chairman or co-chairman of vice—of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.” [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Investors are dumping shares of G4S, the security firm that employed the Orlando shooter

Quartz reports: G4S employs 610,000 people in 100 countries, and sources many of its recruits from police and military backgrounds. It has faced criticism (paywall) in the past for breaches of security such as prison escapes. Since 2012, it’s been trying to rebuild its reputation after it failed to provide enough security guards to the London Olympics, and the army had to step into the breach.

The company was one of the US government’s biggest federal contractors after the September 11 terrorist attacks, and employs 57,000 people in North America. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail