Pew Study Finds Global Support for US in IS Fight
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Pew Study Finds Global Support for US in IS Fightby webdesk@voanews.com (Arash Arabasadi)
The Pew Research Center says its polling shows there is global support for much of U.S. foreign policy, including the fight against the Islamic State group. But there is also criticism of what many consider torture that took place after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. VOA's Arash Arabasadi reports.
Freedom House says democracy is unraveling in parts of Europe and Eurasia. In a new report, the nonprofit watchdog group says worsening corruption, abuses of power, and the rise of extremist parties are leaving many countries vulnerable to interference from outside actors. VOA's Arash Arabasadi reports.
Originally published at - http://www.voanews.com/media/video/freedom-house-democracy-under-fire-europe-eurasia/2834421.html
The U.S. and China are hoping to bridge gaps on tough issues such as maritime security, cyber security and human rights during the ongoing Strategic and Economic Dialogue in Washington. Also, the two countries – which are among the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitters – hope to expand cooperation on climate change initiatives. VOA State Department correspondent Pam Dockins has the story.
Originally published at - http://www.voanews.com/media/video/2834985.html
The debate over the radicalization of young Muslims has been ignited in Britain, following several high profile cases of British citizens traveling to fight with Islamist militants. It follows the revelation earlier this year that ‘Jihadi John’, the masked Islamic State fighter seen in many propaganda videos, is a British citizen. Henry Ridgwell reports on the heated debate over how to counter such extremism.
Russia has been showing off its new tank design – the Armata T-14. Designers claim it is 20 years ahead of current Western designs - and driving it feels like playing a computer game. But military analysts question those assertions, and warn the cost could be too heavy a burden for Russia’s struggling economy. Henry Ridgwell reports.
Originally published at - http://www.voanews.com/media/video/military-russia-tanks-/2835729.html
During certain maneuvers, jet fighter pilots sometimes experience loss of vision and even loss of consciousness. Although short, these so-called ‘blackouts’ may have tragic consequences. An Israeli company says it has developed a device that could save pilots’ lives at such moments. VOA’s George Putic reports.
Originally published at - http://www.voanews.com/media/video/new-device-may-prevent-pilot-blackout/2835816.html
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BEIRUT — A Syrian official says the Islamic State group has destroyed two mausoleums in the historic central town of Palmyra.
Maamoun Abdulkarim, the head of the Antiquities and Museums Department in Damascus, tells The Associated Press that one of the tombs belongs to Mohammad Bin Ali, a descendant of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad’s cousin Imam Ali.
Abdulkarim said Wednesday that the tomb was just north of Palmyra.
He said the second tomb was of a Sufi scholar known as Nizar Abu Bahaa Eddine, who was in the town 500 years ago. The tomb is close to the town’s famed archaeological site.
Since the Islamic State group captured Palmyra last month, there have been fears that the extremists would blow up archaeological sites as they have in Iraq.
With the clock ticking towards the June 30 deadline for a comprehensive international agreement on Iran’s nuclear program, the country’s Supreme Leader has come up with a set of red lines that potentially undermine the prospects of a deal.
The conditions set out by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a speech to senior officials on Tuesday night appeared to be at odds with an interim agreement secured in Lausanne in April with the so-called P5+1 — the United States, France, Britain, Russia, China, and Germany.
The international community is seeking a formula that would ensure Iran’s peaceful nuclear program is not diverted towards making a bomb. Tehran insists it has no such ambition. An agreement would set out the scope of Iran’s nuclear program, codify an inspection regime and deal with a timetable for lifting economic sanctions.
Khamenei’s key demand was that international sanctions against Iran, which Western negotiators credit with having forced the leadership to the negotiating table, must be lifted as soon as an agreement is signed.
Iran wants to get its hands on up to $150 billion in frozen assets as soon as possible, while the West wants to hold back to ensure Tehran is abiding by the deal. It might prove difficult to reinstitute international sanctions, which would require agreement among governments, once they had been lifted.
Khamenei said Iran should not have to await until the International Atomic Energy Authority had verified that it was meeting its side of the deal. Tehran was skeptical about whether the IAEA was either independent or fair, he said.
“Lifting of sanctions should not be tied to Iran’s execution of its commitments,” he said. “It should not be said that you carry out the commitments, then the IAEA verifies so that the sanctions will be lifted. We will never agree with it.”
That could be a deal-breaker for the P5+1 where distrust of the Iranians is on a par with Tehran’s distrust of the West.
On a more positive note, Khamenei said Iran had always been willing to give something in return for a lifting of sanctions, “provided the nuclear industry is not stopped and not damaged.”
Khamenei pitched his red lines in familiar anti-American terms, insisting that Washington’s principle objective was to destroy Iran’s peaceful nuclear industry while keeping sanctions in place.
Elsewhere, he referred to Iran’s past readiness to compromise. Iran had been ready to pay the price if America kept its word. “However, they started making excessive demands and breaking their word.”
In a positive note for international negotiators looking for a final agreement next week, Khamenei did not step back from his commitment to supporting the talks, stressing that Iran viewed a fair deal as a good one. As the man with the final say on the issue, he also took pains to praise the work of the country’s nuclear negotiators.
The other “red lines”, which the P5+1 are also likely to baulk at, were Khamenei’s rejection of a 10-12 years freeze on nuclear research and development, and his refusal to accept foreign inspections of the country’s military sites, something he already publicly rejected a month ago.
The Supreme Leader’s address may have been pitched as much at domestic hardliners as at the outside world. Opponents of the government’s negotiating strategy continue to pay lip-service to the desirability of a deal, but have lost no opportunity to accuse Iranian negotiators of being ready to offer too many concessions.
Khamenei said he was not against criticism, which could be helpful. “However, it is a fact that it is easier to criticize than to take action.”
His “red lines” clearly have support in parliament, whose members on Tuesday overwhelmingly supported near-identical conditions. With parliament pressing for a final say on any nuclear deal, the government was quick to respond that members of parliament were acting outside their competence.
The Supreme Leader’s intervention may be part of a classic Iranian pre-talks gambit, designed to up the pressure on its fellow negotiators. It came well short of closing the door on a comprehensive deal. He even hinted that “red lines” might be moveable.
“Every Iranian official,” he said, “while stressing the red lines, is after a sound agreement – namely a fair deal in accordance with Iran’s interests.”
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A social media campaign from Syria’s state news agency asking people to share pictures of their summer has backfired as users instead share photos of the country’s bloody conflict.
The English-language wing of the agency asked users to “snap us your moments of summer” using the hashtag #SummerInSyria. But many users have been using the same hashtag to share photos of bomb-site wreckage and injured civilians from the country’s four-year-old civil war:
Now that #summer is upon us, snap us your moments of summer in #Syria using the hashtag #SummerInSyria pic.twitter.com/sutvUuZUoj— SANA English (@SANA_English) June 22, 2015
— Official Jargon (@OfficialJargon) June 22, 2015
.@SANA_English Just having some tea enjoying the view from my balcony. #Homs#SummerInSyria pic.twitter.com/ok6bobCbMp— Abdul (@al_7aleem) June 23, 2015
#SummerInSyria in Khan al-Sheeh today. @SANA_English https://t.co/Z0YHGoIZqHpic.twitter.com/JZBZYrjiP8— Rami (@RamiSafadi93) June 23, 2015
Even the U.S. Embassy in Syria got in on the action, posting a picture of a bombing to Twitter.
Asad regime barrel bombs Al Bayan hospital in #Aleppo, kills 5 nurses + injures 1 doctor.#SummerInSyria #Syria pic.twitter.com/iqlRPhhEk3— U.S. Embassy Syria (@USEmbassySyria) June 23, 2015
The conflict, which began in 2011 as President Bashar al-Assad brutally cracked down against pro-democracy demonstrations, has killed more than 210,000 people and displaced half the country’s population, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
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(PARIS) — Embarrassed by leaked conversations of three successive French presidents and angered by new evidence of uninhibited American spying, France demanded answers Wednesday from the Obama administration and called for an intelligence “code of conduct” between allies.
France’s foreign minister summoned the U.S. ambassador to respond to the WikiLeaks revelations, as French eyes fixed on the top floor of the U.S. Embassy after reports that a nest of NSA surveillance equipment was concealed behind elaborately painted windows there, just down the block from the presidential Elysee Palace.
“Commitments were made by our American allies. They must be firmly recalled and strictly respected,” Prime Minister Manuel Valls said. “Being loyal doesn’t mean falling into line.”
President Barack Obama told French President Francois Hollande
in a phone conversation Wednesday that the U.S. wasn’t targeting his communications. The
White House said
in a phone conversation Wednesday that the U.S. wasn’t targeting his communications. The
White House said
The White House
said Obama also pledged to continue close cooperation with France on matters of intelligence and security.
said Obama also pledged to continue close cooperation with France on matters of intelligence and security.
If not a surprise, the latest revelations put both countries in something of a quandary.
France’s counter-espionage capabilities were called into question at the highest level. The United States, meanwhile, was shown not only to be eavesdropping on private conversations of its closest allies but also to be unable to keep its own secrets.
“The rule in espionage — even between allies — is that everything is allowed, as long as it’s not discovered,” Arnaud Danjean, a former analyst for France’s spy agency and currently a lawmaker in the European Parliament, told France-Info radio. “The Americans have been caught with their hand in the jam jar a little too often, and this discredits them.”
The French aren’t denying the need for good intelligence — they have long relied on U.S. intel cooperation to fight terrorism for example, and are trying to beef up their own capabilities, too.
The release of the spying revelations appeared to be timed to coincide with a final vote Wednesday in the French Parliament on a bill allowing broad new surveillance powers, in particular to counter threats of French extremists linked to foreign jihad.
Hollande, calling the U.S. spying an “unacceptable” security breach, convened two emergency meetings as a result of the disclosures about the NSA’s spying.
The documents appear to capture top French officials in Paris between 2006 and 2012 talking candidly about Greece’s economy, relations with Germany, and American spying on allies.
The top floor of the U.S. Embassy, visible from France’s Elysee Palace, reportedly was filled with spying equipment hidden behind tromp l’oeil windows, according to the Liberation newspaper, which partnered with WikiLeaks and the website Mediapart on the documents.
U.S. Ambassador Jane Hartley was summoned to the French Foreign Ministry, where she promised to provide quick responses to French concerns, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said. He said he understood eavesdropping for counterterrorist reasons, “but this has nothing to do with that.”
Hollande was sending his top intelligence coordinator to the U.S. to ensure that promises made after earlier NSA spying revelations in 2013 and 2014 have been kept.
Valls said the U.S. must do everything it can, and quickly, to “repair the damage” to U.S.-French relations from the revelations.
“If the fact of the revelations today does not constitute a real surprise for anyone, that in no way lessens the emotion and the anger. They are legitimate. France will not tolerate any action threatening its security and fundamental interests,” he said.
Government spokesman Stephane Le Foll told reporters, “France does not listen in on its allies.” He added, “we reminded all (government) ministers to be vigilant in their conversations.”
Two of the cables — dealing with then-President Nicolas Sarkozy and Jacques Chirac, his predecessor — were marked “USA, AUS, CAN, GBR, NZL” suggesting that the material was meant to be shared with Britain, Canada and other members of the so-called Five Eyes intelligence alliance.
The disclosures, which emerged late Tuesday, mean that France has joined Germany on the list of U.S. allies targeted by the NSA.
An aide to Sarkozy told The Associated Press that the former president considers these methods unacceptable. There was no immediate comment from Chirac.
As the lower house of parliament prepared to vote Wednesday on the new surveillance measures, the French government again denied accusations that it wants massive NSA-style powers.
“I will not let it be said that this law could call into question our liberties and that our practices will be those that we condemn today,” Valls said.
And while the French rhetoric was lively Wednesday, the high-level U.S.-French meetings showed that the countries remain important allies, and suggested they were ready to paper over their differences.
In Germany, revelations that the NSA was listening to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cell phone weighed on relations with the U.S. for a while but it has very much receded from the top of the political leaders’ agenda.
Le Foll, the French government spokesman, who was heading Wednesday to Washington on a previously scheduled trip, said it wasn’t a diplomatic rupture, riffing that France was sending not an aircraft carrier to the U.S. but a replica of the Hermione, the ship that carried General Marquis de Lafayette from France to America in 1780 to offer help in the Revolution.
But, he added, “when you see this between allied countries it’s unacceptable and, I would add, incomprehensible.”
___
Philippe Sotto and Jamey Keaten in Paris contributed to this report.
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A Syrian official confirmed on June 24 that the Islamic State (IS) group has destroyed two mausoleums near the historic central town of Palmyra.
Consumer-Rights Advocate Calls Putin 'Paranoid' After 'Foreign-Agent' Slur by noreply@rferl.org (Tom Balmforth)
A Russian consumer-protection group lambasted by President Vladimir Putin as a "foreign agent" over cautionary advice to Russians traveling to annexed Crimea has accused Putin of "paranoia" and called him "badly informed."
A message posted online claims that Islamist militants in four regions of Russia's Caucasus have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) group.
Turns out there’s a heck of a lot of support for Texas secession. Not so much in Texas — where, despite all Rick Perry’s talk of skedaddling, only about 18 percent of residents wanted to secede in 2009 — but in Russia, where there’s at least a lot of rhetorical support for Texas’s becoming America’s first Breakaway Republic. You sort of have to read Casey Michel’s wonderfully weird piece in Politico Magazine to believe it.
Nathan Smith, the self-appointed “foreign minister” of the Texas Nationalist Movement, was warmly received at a recent gathering of European wingnuts in St. Petersburg, where he wowed a Russian newspaper with his insistence that his movement has 250,000 members, including every single Texan in the U.S. Army. He’s pretty sure Texas secession is on the way any day now, since U.S. America is “not a democracy, but a dictatorship.”
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Not that Russia is likely to rid us of this turbulent state; most of the Russian fascination with a “Free Texas” seems to be revenge fantasy for America’s perceived role in the breakup of the USSR and the loss of the country’s prestige. Plus, if Texas wants out of America, that makes a good case for arming the brave lads who want chunks of Ukraine to be reunited with Mother Russia, or something. As Michel puts it:
[Over] the past 15 months there has been a sudden, bizarro uptick of Russian interest in and around the American Southwest, most notably Texas, where secessionist sentiment never seems to entirely die out[.]
Russia has been bullish on independence movements that don’t involve Chechnya or other Russian regions; Russian media has been an enthusiastic booster of separatist movements in Venice, Scotland, and Catalonia. Now Texas appears, to fans of Western breakups, like it could be the best candidate to start the disuniting of the USA, and Texas secessionists are happy to hear they’ve got supporters, especially from a country with a real manly leader like Shirtless Vlad.
One of the weirder episodes Michel recounts is a speech by Dukuvakha Abdurakhmanov, the speaker of Chechnya’s parliament, who promised that if the U.S. keeps arming the Ukrainian government, maybe Russia ought to “begin delivery of new weapons to Mexico” and “resume debate on the legal status of the territories annexed by the United States, which are now the U.S. states of California, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Colorado and Wyoming.” Take that, Mr. James K. Polk! Abdurakhmanov explained that Russia could deliver its armaments to “guerillas” somewhere in either Mexico or the southwest states — maybe the ones hiding out in the secret ISIS bases in New Mexico.
Even Putin has brought up Texas, decrying the USA for “grabbing Texas from Mexico” back in the 19th century, which means that Russia’s president is likely to do about as well as the average American high school student on a U.S. history exam. (If you want to be all technical about it, Texans broke away from Mexico so’s they could have slaves, then petitioned to become part of the then-slavery-friendly USA.) But that has a lot more to do with justifying Russia’s generous annexation of Crimea than it does with actually making a case for Texas secession. Even so, if it means the occasional Texan Nationalist can take a trip to a fancy get-together of neo-Nazis and conspiracy theorists, the secessionists are delighted for any support they can get.
Now if we can just find a way to convince Louie Gohmert to take up the post of Texan Ambassador to Moscow …
[Politico]
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Link Exposed Between Charleston Killer And Haters' Convention In Russia by noreply@rferl.org (Deana Kjuka)
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