Category Archives: News

Pakistan denounces U.S. strike believed to have killed Afghan Taliban chief

Express Tribune reports: Pakistan on Sunday denounced the US drone strike believed to have killed the Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Mansour as a violation of its air space and said only negotiations could bring a lasting peace to Afghanistan.

The statement, issued by the Foreign Office late Sunday, said one of the victims of the attack was a driver named Muhammad Azam while the identity of the second “is being verified”.

“On late Saturday 21st May, 2016, the United States shared information that a drone strike was carried out in Pakistan near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border area,” in which Mansour was targeted, it said.

“This information was shared with the Prime Minister and the Chief of Army Staff after the drone strike.”

The statement denounced the drone attack as a “violation of [Pakistan’s] sovereignty, an issue which has been raised with the United States in the past as well.”

It said that a four-country group comprising the United States, China, Afghanistan and Pakistan last met on Wednesday to discuss ways to restart stalled peace talks between Kabul and the Taliban and that the group had collectively decided “a politically negotiated settlement was the only viable option for lasting peace in Afghanistan”. [Continue reading…]

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Many of GOP’s wealthiest donors don’t like Trump

The New York Times reports: A powerful array of the Republican Party’s largest financial backers remains deeply resistant to Donald J. Trump’s presidential candidacy, forming a wall of opposition that could make it exceedingly difficult for him to meet his goal of raising $1 billion before the November election.

Interviews and emails with more than 50 of the Republican Party’s largest donors, or their representatives, revealed a measure of contempt and distrust toward their own party’s nominee that is unheard of in modern presidential politics.

More than a dozen of the party’s most reliable individual contributors and wealthy families indicated that they would not give to or raise money for Mr. Trump. This group has contributed a combined $90 million to conservative candidates and causes in the last three federal elections, mainly to “super PACs” dedicated to electing Republican candidates.

Up to this point, Mr. Trump has embraced the hostility of the Republican establishment, goading the party’s angry base with diatribes against wealthy donors who he claimed controlled politicians. And he has succeeded while defying conventions of presidential campaigning, relying on media attention and large rallies to fire up supporters, and funding his operation with a mix of his own money and small-dollar contributions.

But that formula will be tested as he presents himself to a far larger audience of voters. Mr. Trump has turned to the task of winning over elites he once attacked, with some initial success. And he has said he hopes to raise $1 billion, an enormous task given that he named a finance chairman and started scheduling fund-raisers only this month. [Continue reading…]

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Following reports that Hezbollah might reduce its forces in Syria, Nasrallah promises to boost support for Assad

Middle East Eye reports: Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Friday said his Lebanese Shia movement would boost its support for Syria’s government after one of its top commanders was killed there last week.

“We will increase and bolster our presence in Syria,” Nasrallah said in a speech during a ceremony to mark a week since Mustafa Badreddine, the head of Hezbollah’s military wing, was killed near Damascus.

“More commanders than before will go to Syria. We will be present in different ways and we will continue the fight,” he said.

Hezbollah’s intervention in Syria was considered vital in shoring up Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government earlier in the more than five-year war against opposition rebels backed by Gulf Arab states and Western countries.

Its fighters secured most of the Lebanese border region, cutting vital rebel supply lines, and reasserted government control in most of the southern suburbs of Damascus, including the Sayyida Zeinab Shia shrine district.

Hezbollah said last week that Badreddine had been killed by rebel artillery fire, with Nasrallah on Friday vowing to avenge his death by inflicting a “great and final defeat” on those responsible.

But the circumstances of Badreddine’s death remain unclear with earlier media reports citing Israeli security sources that he may have been killed by Syrian pro-government or Iranian forces in a dispute over Hezbollah’s role in the conflict.

According to those reports, Badreddine had been planning to withdraw many of Hezbollah’s forces back to Lebanon after suffering heavy losses, possibly a third of his fighters. The area where he was killed is technically under the control of the Syrian army and is also believed to host Iranian fighters. [Continue reading…]

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In Sweden, Syrian refugees give new life to struggling city of Malmö

The Guardian reports: When Fisal Abo Karaa stepped off the train in Malmö’s central station this time last year, exhausted after a long journey by train and boat, he looked like any other victim of Syria’s terrible civil war.

It wasn’t until April, when Malmö’s main shopping street was filled with the sound of Syrian bagpipes, drums and dancing that he made his presence felt. The opening of Jasmin Alsham, his new restaurant, was the most visible sign yet of an unexpected injection of Syrian money hitting Sweden’s third city.

Abo Karaa and his partners have invested a rumoured five million Swedish kronor (£400,000) converting what was once a Pizza Hut into a replica Damascene house. It is one of five Syrian restaurants to have opened in less than a year. “There are people saying that the Syrians have come and want to buy up everything,” says Ibrahim, a hairdresser and member of the Nahawand shisha smoking club, a meeting place for the city’s established Arab businessmen.

“There’s many, many Syrian people who want to move money to Sweden,” says Maher Alkhatib, from Damascus, who opened a restaurant last year. “I know people in the Emirates, they are asking me, ‘Find a good project so we can invest money’.”

Abo Karaa’s family owned four factories in Homs exporting paper tissues all over the Arab world. “We have lost in Syria millions of dollars, and many assets,” his nephew Mohammed says. [Continue reading…]

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Kerry helps Egypt’s dictator avoid being asked awkward questions

David Sanger writes: The contrast between Myanmar, once one of the world’s most closed societies, and Egypt made me revisit my recent travels with Mr. Kerry in terms of what restrictions were placed on us journalists.

In November, Mr. Kerry zipped through Central Asia on a tour of some of the world’s most repressive states, including Turkmenistan, whose leadership shares Mr. Sisi’s approach to anyone who utters a thought the government finds distasteful. Still, President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov allowed international reporters to record his encounters with Mr. Kerry, though local Turkmen journalists were kept at a far remove.

The King of Bahrain, who knows a thing or two about clearing the streets of critics, invited reporters in for the start of his meeting with Mr. Kerry last month, and, with a deep understanding of how to keep them docile, fed them at the palace before they were packed off.

Even China’s leaders routinely let the news media pool in, though they do their best to ignore them.

Egypt used to do the same — in what now looks, by comparison, like the days of openness when Hosni Mubarak was still president. [Continue reading…]

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What are Moqtada al-Sadr’s ambitions in Iraq?

After thousands of protesters, most of whom are loyal to Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, once again stormed the Green Zone in Baghdad, Michael Weiss reports: Thirteen years of lawlessness, sectarian bloodletting and terrorism following a deeply unpopular military occupation have conspired with successive waves of Iraqi leaders who are increasingly seen as little more than factotums of interfering outside powers, namely the United States or Iran. U.S. policy has been single-mindedly wedded to backing individual actors, be it al-Abadi or the man he replaced, Nouri al-Maliki. The second, who was greeted at the White House by President Obama as a partner in making Iraq “sovereign, secure, and self-reliant,” governed with authoritarian excess, manipulated an election in 2010, and then proceeded to alienate Sunnis by means of legal persecution on trumped-up “terrorism” charges or acts of state violence. The first, while a seeming improvement on his predecessor, is simply too weak and ineffectual to deliver on his promised reforms. That al-Abadi’s office has now been raided twice by an angry mob has underscored that stark reality more persuasively than any State Department talking point.

But is al-Sadr looking to make Iraq great again, or is he just a cynical machiavellian looking to exploit failed statehood for his own outsize political ambitions? “I don’t think he gives a damn about reforms,” a U.S. military official told The Daily Beast. “Sadrists are as corrupt as hell, too. The popular anger is for reform across the country and beyond this movement. The Sadrists will follow what Moqtada says. If he says: ‘We need a dictator who’s very corrupt. They will say, ‘Allahu Akhbar, we need a dictator who is corrupt.’”

Khedery, however, welcomes the protests as a natural corrective on top-down political sclerosis. “I’m very pleased by these events because I believe Iraq needs regime change to end the systemic sectarianism and the endemic corruption that’s baked into the DNA of the post-2003 order. Not the foolish, ill-informed, hubristic foreign-backed regime change of 2003, but regime change from within, which will, one way or another, install leaders of the country that represent the Iraqi people. If they fail in meeting expectations, they’ll likely face the same untimely demise as their predecessors. Revolution is a time-honored tradition in Baghdad.” Most of today’s Iraqi elites, Khedery added, lack the qualifications to “run anything much bigger than a household.” They’re also inveterate crooks presiding over a national economy that can no longer compensate for runaway graft with unusually high global oil prices.

In this context, al-Sadr has positioned himself as one of the few true Iraqi nationalists with enough authentic grassroots support to take on a Western superpower and an interfering regional theocracy. [Continue reading…]

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Clinton vs Sanders: Peace is still possible

John Cassidy writes: In many hard-fought political races, there comes a time when tempers fray and emotion takes over. Right now, the Democratic Presidential primary appears to have reached such a point, with people on both sides going at each other with gusto, and some of the media getting swept up, too.

The front page of Thursday’s Times featured this headline: “Sanders Willing to Harm Hillary in Home Stretch.” Did Sanders really say that? No, he didn’t. The only quote in the Times story from anyone in the Sanders campaign came from his senior adviser, Tad Devine, who said that he didn’t think his boss’s criticisms of Clinton on the stump would hurt her in a general-election campaign against Donald Trump. The senator’s team, Devine said, was “not thinking about” the possibility that they might prevent Clinton from becoming the first woman to be elected President. Then came a long statement by Devine to the Times:

The only thing that matters is what happens between now and June 14th … We have to put the blinders on and focus on the best case to make in the upcoming states. If we do that, we can be in a strong position to make the best closing argument before the convention. If not, everyone will know in mid-June, and we’ll have to take a hard look at the way things stand.

One way to interpret this story comes from the headline, which implies that Sanders is callously ignoring the danger that he will damage Clinton’s chances in the fall and hand the Oval Office keys to Trump. Paul Krugman tweeted a photo showing a Web version of the headline, “Sanders Willing to Harm Clinton in Homestretch.” To that, he added, “Of course he is. Fwiw, I don’t think Sanders has gone off the rails; I think this is who he always was.” Linking to the Times story on her Facebook feed, the writer and editor Anna Holmes wrote, “Seriously. Fuck this guy.”

Another possible interpretation is that the headline was inflammatory, and the story contained little that was new. After all, Sanders has been saying for weeks that he intends to campaign aggressively until the end of the primaries, in mid-June, and that he is hoping to defeat Clinton in California, on June 7th. To this end, he has continued to depict his opponent as the candidate of élites and big money, as he has been doing for many months.

Devine’s focus on the here and now was what you would expect from a campaign operative. If you read his statement carefully, it actually contradicts the notion that Sanders’s campaign is conducting a battle to the death, oblivious to the implications for the general election. [Continue reading…]

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Three killed in protests in Baghdad’s Green Zone

Rudaw reports: Security forces opened fire on protesters storming Baghdad’s Green Zone on Friday, killing three and wounding 20.

Thousands of demonstrators had gathered on Friday in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square. A number of them tried to enter the fortified Green Zone, which houses government institutions and foreign consulates.

A Rudaw reporter on the scene reported that security forces opened fire on the protesters, using tear gas and live rounds. “Security forces fired tear gas to disperse demonstrators who stormed the Green Zone.”

Three protesters were killed and another twenty have been wounded, including five journalists, our reporter said.

Supporters of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr tore down Green Zone barriers and took over the Iraqi parliament on April 30, demanding political reform and an end to corruption. [Continue reading…]

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IMF agrees $5.4bn Iraq bailout to tackle ISIS and budget deficit

Financial Times reports: The International Monetary Fund has agreed to give Iraq a three-year $5.4bn bailout to help it manage the economic fallout of its war against Isis and low oil prices that have left a gaping hole in its budget.

The new rescue package, which the IMF said should be accompanied by assistance from other members of the international community, will require the government in Baghdad to implement unpopular cuts in public spending and other reforms at a time when the economy is already reeling.

“Iraq has been hit hard by the conflict with Isis and the precipitous fall in oil prices,” said Christian Josz, IMF mission chief for Iraq.

He added that the conflict with Isis had left more than 4m Iraqis internally displaced and was straining resources, while the steep fall in oil prices was “causing a large external shock to the balance of payments and budget revenue, which depend predominantly on oil export receipts”.

UN diplomats in Baghdad and officials in Washington say Iraq’s foreign backers are determined to get support to Iraq at a time when both the central government and the semi-autonomous Kurdistan administration in the north — both critical in the fight against Isis — look on the verge of economic collapse. With no money for repairs, several cities recaptured from Isis still lie in ruins.

However, Iraqi politicians privately said last week that the government may not be able to meet the terms of the IMF deal — which include fighting corruption and money laundering, as well as cutting subsidies and raising taxes. [Continue reading…]

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U.S. warns ISIS capital: Get out now

The Daily Beast reports: The American military is warning residents of ISIS’s Syrian capital to leave the city—suggesting that an offensive on Raqqa was imminent, two Pentagon officials told the Daily Beast.

In the past day, residents of Raqqa have posted photos of the warnings on Twitter, saying they were airdropped on leaflets by the U.S.-led coalition. The defense officials were the first to confirm that the coalition had indeed issued the warnings.

“The time….has arrived. It’s time to leave Raqqa,” one of the ominous leaflets read. Images portray residents fleeing the black and white world of ISIS for the color of freedom, urging citizens to flee toward colors.


There is just one problem: There is no imminent ground or air attack, at least by the U.S.-led coalition. Rather the coalition appears to be the midst of a psychological offensive.

“It’s part of our mess-with-them campaign,” a Pentagon official explained to The Daily Beast.

The leaflets come amid what appears to be something of a panic within ISIS about how long it can maintain its grip on Raqqa. In recent weeks, there were reports that ISIS had declared a state of emergency in Raqqa. And earlier this week, the terror group’s leadership reportedly would not let fighters leave for holiday as ISIS dug trenches around Raqqa, moved headquarters underground, and put coverings over homes in an effort to deflect drone attacks. [Continue reading…]

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Lieberman’s appointment as defense minister makes Israel’s government ‘the most right-wing ever’

John Lloyd writes: Israel is about to have “its most right-wing government, ever.”

Avigdor Lieberman, head of the far-right party Yisrael Beitenu (Israel is Our Home) has accepted Benjamin Netanyahu’s offer of the defense ministry. The Israeli prime minister’s offer returns to the cabinet a man who is a past foreign minister and whose vision for the future strains the right-wing limits of Israel’s wildly divided political spectrum.

Israeli politicians are mostly horrified by the appointment. Benny Begin, son of former Prime Minister Menachem Begin and a longstanding member of Netanyahu’s own Likud Party, said that Netanyahu had acted irresponsibly and “dangerously.” Isaac Herzog, leader of the Zionist Union (a joint party composed of Herzog’s Labor Party and former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni’s Hatnuah) and who had actively sought his own place in the cabinet, said the policies now pursued would “verge on insanity.”[Continue reading…]

The Washington Post reports: In a press conference Friday, [Moshe] Yaalon [who resigned as defense minister today], a fellow member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, warned that Israel was drifting dangerously toward extremism.

“I fought with all my might against manifestations of extremism, violence and racism in Israeli society, which are threatening its sturdiness and trickling into the armed forces, hurting it already,” he said.

Yaalon appeared to be referring to widespread support by Israeli leaders for a combat medic who shot to death a wounded Palestinian attacker as he lay on a street in Hebron in the occupied West Bank.

Thousands of Israelis rallied in Tel Aviv and proclaimed the soldier a hero. Israeli human rights activists called it a cold-blooded execution. The killing was captured on video. [Continue reading…]

Reuters reports: A former chief of Israel’s armed forces, Yaalon had shored up relations with the Pentagon that provided a counter-weight to Netanyahu’s policy feuds with U.S. President Barack Obama over peace talks with the Palestinians and Iran’s nuclear program.

By contrast, Lieberman – whose appointment has not yet been confirmed – is inexperienced militarily and famed for his past hawkish talk against Palestinians, Israel’s Arab minority and Egypt – an important regional security partner for Israel.

An Egyptian official told Reuters on Thursday that Cairo was “shocked” at the prospect of Lieberman as Israeli defense minister.

Washington struck a more optimistic note on Friday. While praising Yaalon, U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby said Washington looked forward to working with his successor.

“Our bonds of friendship are unbreakable and our commitment to the security of Israel remains absolute,” he added. [Continue reading…]

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Agreement that could lead to U.S. troops in Libya could be reached ‘any day’

The Washington Post reports: The U.S. military’s top general said Thursday that the Libyan government is in a “period of intense dialogue” that could soon lead to an agreement in which U.S. military advisers will be deployed there to assist in the fight against the Islamic State.

“There’s a lot of activity going on underneath the surface,” said Marine Gen. Joseph F. Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “We’re just not ready to deploy capabilities yet because there hasn’t been an agreement. And frankly, any day that could happen.”

Dunford spoke to a handful of journalists while returning to the United States from Brussels, where he met with military chiefs this week from numerous NATO nations. There is interest among some NATO nations in participating in the mission, Dunford said, but the specifics of who and what would be involved remain unclear. The operation will likely focus on training and equipping militias that pledge loyalty to Prime Minister Fayez Sarraj, the leader of the new Libyan Government of National Accord (GNA), which is backed by the United Nations. [Continue reading…]

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Humans damaging the environment faster than it can recover, UN finds

The Guardian reports: Degradation of the world’s natural resources by humans is rapidly outpacing the planet’s ability to absorb the damage, meaning the rate of deterioration is increasing globally, the most comprehensive environmental study ever undertaken by the UN has found.

The study, which involved 1,203 scientists, hundreds of scientific institutions and more than 160 governments brought together by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), concludes that without radical action the level of prosperity that millions of people in the developed world count on will be impossible to maintain or extend to poorer countries.

Water scarcity is the scourge of some of the poorest regions on Earth, the study found, leaving developing countries increasingly unable to feed themselves, and causing hardship for millions of people. There appears little prospect of this dire situation being remedied, according to the UN, without radical action being taken. [Continue reading…]

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Chinese officials ‘create 488 million bogus social media posts a year’

The Guardian reports: The Chinese government is fabricating almost 490m social media posts a year in order to distract the public from criticising or questioning its rule, according to a study.

China’s “Fifty Cent Party” – a legion of freelance online trolls so-named because they are believed to be paid 50 cents a post – has long been blamed for flooding the Chinese internet with pro-regime messages designed to defend and promote the ruling Communist party.

However, the study by Harvard University researchers (pdf) claims many of those comments are not posted by ordinary citizens, as previously thought, but by civil servants who double as online stooges.

An analysis of nearly 43,800 posts found that 99.3% were the work of government employees working for more than 200 agencies, including tax and social security and human resources bureaux. [Continue reading…]

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Austria’s election is a warning to the West

Sylvie Kauffmann writes: On Monday, the Western world may well wake up to the news that, for the first time since the defeat of Nazism, a European country has democratically elected a far-right head of state. Norbert Hofer, of the Austrian Freedom Party, claimed 35 percent of the vote in the first round of the presidential election on April 24. Now he is heading into the second round on Sunday with the two mainstream parties having been eliminated from the runoff and the Social Democratic chancellor, Werner Faymann, having resigned.

One month later, Europeans may wake up to the news that British voters have decided, in their June 23 referendum, that their country should become the first member state to leave the European Union. Many observers fear that would be fatal to the European project itself.

And on April 24, 2017, exactly a year after Mr. Hofer’s first-round victory, the French may well wake up to the news that Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Front, has come out on top in the first round of France’s presidential election. That is what polls say we could expect if the election were held today.

In the meantime, it is not impossible that Donald J. Trump, however low his odds seem now, will have moved into the White House.

These are not Orwellian scenarios. Signs of defiance toward the old democratic order are so numerous that the news of Mr. Hofer’s first-round victory hardly reached the front pages of European newspapers. Remember when the election of President Kurt Waldheim in the 1980s, or the antics by the Freedom Party leader Jörg Haider in the 1990s were considered deeply disturbing? That was last century. Today, Austria’s weird politics are no longer isolated. They are part of a solid trend across Europe.

And not just Europe. The trend reaches across the Atlantic, too, with Trumpism threatening to split or take over the Republican Party. [Continue reading…]

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Dying GOP senator apologizes to Muslims for Donald Trump

The Daily Beast reports: Former GOP senator Bob Bennett lay partially paralyzed in his bed on the fourth floor of the George Washington University Hospital. He was dying.

Not 48 hours had passed since a stroke had complicated his yearlong fight against pancreatic cancer. The cancer had begun to spread again, necessitating further chemotherapy. The stroke had dealt a further blow that threatened to finish him off.

Between the hectic helter-skelter of nurses, doctors, and well wishes from a long-cultivated community of friends and former aides, Bennett faced a quiet moment with his son Jim and his wife Joyce.
It was not a moment for self-pity.

Instead, with a slight slurring in his words, Bennett drew them close to express a dying wish: “Are there any Muslims in the hospital?” he asked.

“I’d love to go up to every single one of them to thank them for being in this country, and apologize to them on behalf of the Republican Party for Donald Trump,” Bennett told his wife and son, both of whom relayed this story to The Daily Beast. [Continue reading…]

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Chinese, Germans and Britons most welcoming to refugees, says report

The Guardian reports: The people of China, Germany and the UK are the most welcoming to refugees in the world, according to an Amnesty International survey on attitudes towards those fleeing war and persecution.

In a global survey of 27,000 people across 27 countries, nearly 70% said their governments should being doing more to help refugees, while 80% said they would accept refugees living in their country, city, or neighbourhood.

One in 10 would welcome a refugee to live in their own home, with the figure rising to 46% in China and 29% in the UK.

China and the UK were first and third respectively on Amnesty’s Refugees Welcome Index, with Germany in second place. [Continue reading…]

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Britain: Syrian airdrops begin next month if more aid blocked

USA Today reports: The United Kingdom said Tuesday the World Food Program will begin airdrops to besieged areas of Syria on June 1, if humanitarian access is not provided.

Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime continues to remove medical aid from humanitarian convoys and to prevent convoys from reaching Syrians in need, said British Ambassador to the United States Kim Darroch. If the practice continues, the World Food Program will create an airdrop program starting June 1, Darroch said.

British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond made the announcement after meeting with the International Syria Support Group in Vienna to discuss ways to save a shaky partial cease-fire.

The airdrops will be conducted by United Nations airplanes with security guaranteed by Russia.

Syrian government forces last week removed medical supplies from an aid convoy to the town of Moadamiya, according to the World Health Organization. Similar incidents have been reported since. [Continue reading…]

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