Paris attackers 'named in IS files'
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The names of three men who carried out the Paris attacks in November appear in files leaked from the Islamic State militant group, according to German media.
Under the planned deal, Turkey would take back Syrian refugees who land in Greece in exchange for €6bn in aid
Examiner Gazette |
United States accuses Apple of 'false,' 'corrosive' rhetoric in Federal Bureau of Investigation dispute
Examiner Gazette In its filing, the federal government again insisted that the order in this case is limited and applies to a single iPhone, though FBI Director James B. Comey acknowledged earlier this month that if the government prevails here it could establish a ... and more » |
Fox News |
Ex-CIA Director: Does Donald Trump understand the role of ...
Fox News Recently I had a chance to comment on some policy proposals put forward by Donald Trump. I really didn't think I was making news. It was more like an ... and more » |
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations says Iran's recent ballistic missile launches are "provocative and destabilizing."
Samantha Power, in a statement Friday, condemned Iranian military leaders' reported claims that the missiles are designed to be a direct threat to Israel.
Power's statement comes a day ...
Daily Beast |
Obama weighs in on Apple v. FBI: “You can't take an absolutist view”
Ars Technica AUSTIN, Texas—In his keynote address at the 2016 South By Southwest conference, President Barack Obama responded directly to a question about cybersecurity in light of the ongoing Apple v. FBI case with answers that favored the American government's ... Obama Addresses Apple vs. FBI at SXSW: Dont Fetishize Your PhoneDaily Beast President Obama Urges Americans Not to Be 'Absolutist' in FBI, Apple DebateABC News Watch: Obama Talks About Encryption and Edward Snowden—but Not Apple-FBIBattleNewsweek Adweek -The Next Web -International Business Times all 744 news articles » |
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IDLIB, Syria/DAMASCUS (Reuters) - As peace talks are set to get under way in Geneva next week, residents in Syria from nurses to street vendors voice little optimism over the United Nations-backed negotiations’ chance of success.
The Brazilian President, Dilma Rousseff, insists she will not resign over her alleged mishandling of the economy after moves to impeach her.
Wall Street Journal |
EU Agrees to Framework With Cuba on Closer Ties
Wall Street Journal BRUSSELS—The European Union reached agreement with Cuba on Friday on a new framework allowing closer economic and political ties, the biggest upgrade of relations in years and the latest move by the Communist-ruled Caribbean island to thaw ties ... Cuba and Europe sign deal normalizing relationsWashington Post EU, Cuba normalize ties in 'historic step'Yahoo News Obama Invites Lawmakers On Cuba Trip Voice of America (blog) Liberation -Thegardenisland.com all 139 news articles » |
CNN |
FDA says GMO mosquito likely OK to fight Zika in Florida
CNN (CNN) The U.S. came one step closer today to getting its first genetically modified mosquito to fight the Zika virus. The Food and Drug Administration has released a draft of its environmental impact study of OX513A, a male Aedes aegypti mosquito ... FDA: No Significant Impact From Test of Modified MosquitoesABC News Genetically modified mosquitoes clear key hurdle for Key West testMiami Herald FDA Wants to Know If You Think Mutant Mosquitos Will Destroy Our PlanetGizmodo all 233 news articles » |
West Hawaii Today |
US: No significant impact from field test of genetically modified mosquitoes
West Hawaii Today MIAMI (AP) — A field trial releasing genetically modified mosquitoes in Florida would not harm humans or the environment, according to documents released Friday by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The agency's Center for Veterinary Medicine ... and more » |
Cuba and the European Union have signed a deal normalizing their relations after years of tensions spawned by disagreement over human rights on the island.
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Almost 70 years to the day since Winston Churchill immortalized the term in his historic ‘Sinews of Peace’ address, the “special relationship” between the U.K. and U.S. is looking strained once again.
President Barack Obama threw the diplomatic equivalent of shade at British Prime Minister David Cameron in an interview in The Atlantic published this week. In his conversation with Jeffrey Goldberg, Obama laid the blame for the collapse of Libya in the aftermath of dictator Muammar Gaddafi’s downfall primarily at Europe’s door, saying he had expected his allies to do more to stabilize the situation. Cameron, he said, was “distracted by a range of other things.”
The White House hastily put out a statement pronouncing the U.S-U.K. relationship just as special as it had ever been, but the damage was done. The British chattering classes wailed and gnashed their teeth, as they are wont to do whenever the transatlantic bond is called into question.
In truth, the concept of the “special relationship” is axiomatic only in Britain, where it has long propped up the country’s self-identity as one of the world’s great powers, well after the sun had set on its empire. In the U.S., the phrase has been in question in since at least 1970, when TIME said it “does not come even close to carrying the significance that it did in 1946.” In the scathing words of one interviewee in an article marking then-U.K. Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s visit to Washington, Britain by then had become a “butterfly content to flutter pathetically on the periphery of the world.”
Of course any chaos theoretician worth her salt could tell you that a butterfly flapping its wings in one part of the world can still cause rain to fall in another. Which is another way of saying that, even as a diminished power, Britain has been a useful partner to the U.S. when it comes to raining bombs on the enemies of the West. Whenever the world’s sheriff needs a deputy, the British armed forces are usually first to answer the call.
But when the world’s sheriff wants to talk business, it calls the Germans —and then only when it’s not hanging out with its new friends in the Asia-Pacific region. In fact, the U.S. has been building special relationships all around the world under Obama, from the Middle East to the Americas.
And so, with the oxygen of power becoming ever thinner, the Brits have become increasingly hypersensitive to any perceived snub from the New World. Not long after Obama took office, his then-Press Secretary Robert Gates sparked an outbreak of grumbling by referring to the “special partnership” between the countries — making the U.S.-U.K relationship sound less like an unshakeable diplomatic union than a marketing tie-in. Obama’s level of commitment to the U.K. has been an open question ever since.
This latest affront would seem to provide an answer, of sorts. But it’s worth remembering that the term has become shorthand not for the relationship between the countries themselves, but for the kinship shared by their leaders. It may not be a surprise then that Obama would not feel a great connection with Cameron, a son of Etonian privilege whose ideas about government and the economy are significantly more conservative than the American President’s. And it’s become clear, more than seven years into his time in office, that Obama rarely feels the need to build personal relationships with foreign leaders at all—his new bro Justin Trudeau notwithstanding.
The special relationship may then flourish again under future leaders. It’s not too much of a stretch, for example, to imagine that a President Donald Trump would find a kindred spirit in another large-haired, verbose former television star — London Mayor Boris Johnson, who is currently favored to be Cameron’s successor.
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Venezuela’s U.N. ambassador has read out a statement from a group of 120 developing countries rejecting President Barack Obama’s decision to renew sanctions on several of his country’s top officials.
Russian officials criticise a lack of communication by the US authorities over the death of Mikhail Lesin, a former aide to President Putin.
HAFR AL-BATIN, Saudi Arabia (AP) - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry landed Friday at a sprawling military facility in northeastern Saudi Arabia where the kingdom just finished a three-week-long counter-terrorism drill that included 20 nations and which observers say was a show of force against its foes.
Kerry touched ...
A criminal probe by the Justice Department has concluded that Iran was behind a cyberattack on a dam outside of New York City in 2013.
According to the Associated Press, a U.S. official with knowledge of the investigation said Thursday that an indictment is expected to be made soon.
Hackers gained access to the control system at the Bowman Avenue Dam, which is located approximately 30 miles north of New York City in the suburb of Rye Brook, in 2013. The cyberattack prompted a federal investigation.
According to the anonymous U.S. official, investigators concluded that Iran was to blame for the cyberattack and an indictment is expected to come down from the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan. The AP reported that a formal announcement in the case could come as soon as April. According to CNN, which also cited U.S. officials, the announcement could be made in the next week.
“I would say broadly that we obviously take all, seriously all such malicious activity in cyberspace. We’re going to continue to use all the tools at our disposal to deter, detect, counter, and mitigate that kind of activity,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner said at a press briefing Thursday.
Toner did not comment on the likelihood of Iran being charged in the case.
A group of Iranian hackers, called SOBH Cyber Jihad, claimed responsibility for the cyberattack last December following a report in the Wall Street Journal about the breach. Officials in Rye said then that they had received notice of the “unauthorized access” from the Department of Homeland Security.
The post Iran to Be Blamed for Cyberattack on New York Dam, U.S. Official Says appeared first onWashington Free Beacon.
The Pentagon said Friday that it will not hold captured ISIS operatives beyond 30 days, after which they will be turned over to the Iraqi government.
“Fourteen to 30 days is a ballpark figure, but even that is not really completely nailed down,” U.S. military spokesman Col. Steve Warren, who is based in Baghdad, told reporters Friday, according to Fox News, adding that there isn’t a “hard definition of short-term.”
Warren also said that U.S. military members operating in Iraq are “not equipped for long-term detention.”
“As we take people off the battlefield we’re just going to have to make the decisions as we go,” the spokesman stated.
Republican lawmakers have expressed concern about the Pentagon’s handling of captured ISIS operatives, particularly in light of President Obama’s push to shutter the military prison at Guantanamo Bay.
On Thursday, a group of 15 senators introduced a resolution that would express the sense that the United States should detain captured ISIS fighters at Guantanamo Bay. In his push to close the prison, Obama has refused to send newly-captured terrorist suspects to Guantanamo. Sen. Cory Gardner (R., Colo.), one of the cosponsors, said that the resolution would “pave the way” for the Obama administration to transfer ISIS detainees to Guantanamo Bay.
Additionally, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R., Calif.), a former Marine, expressed concern to Defense Secretary Ash Carter in January that the president’s policy toward Guantanamo could be forcing the Pentagon to release new-captured suspected terrorists back to the battlefield to resume terrorist activities.
Warren’s comments Friday echoed those of Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook, who said Thursday that the policy for detaining captured ISIS operatives is developing and that they would be handled on a “case-by-case” basis for a “short-term” period.
Earlier this week, reports indicated that U.S. special forces in Iraq had recently captured the head of the ISIS chemical weapons unit, who Cook said Thursday has been handed over to the Iraqi government. Information gleaned from the operative’s capture in Iraq resulted in two air strikes targeting ISIS chemical weapons facilities over the past week.
Warren said that the policy toward ISIS captives is “not a catch-and-release program” and that the military could go back and talk to operatives handed over to the Iraqi government if necessary.
“We are confident [the Iraqis] can hold them. If some escape, then we’ll just go catch them again or kill ‘em,” he further stated.
Warren said that the Pentagon is not considering building detention centers to house captured ISIS fighters.
The post Pentagon Won’t Hold Captured ISIS Fighters Beyond 30 Days appeared first onWashington Free Beacon.
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For years, Poland was considered a model of democratic transformation, with Lech Walesa's peaceful revolution heralding a new era based on the rule of law.
A man posing as a banker in the United States admitted Friday he was actually a Russian spy helping run a conspiracy that could have been ripped from the headlines of the Cold War era, prosecutors said.
On February 19, the governor of North Ossetia–Alania, Tamerlan Aguzarov, suddenly died at a Moscow hospital from complications of pneumonia. The 52-year-old governor was in office for a little more than eight months and, according to some reports, was fighting cancer. Aguzarov was also known for having been the judge who presided over the notorious trial of Nurpashi Kulaev, who was among the Beslan school hostage takers in 2004 (Lenta.ru, February 19).
The regional governor’s sudden death apparently took Moscow by surprise because its reaction was marked by confusion. When the Kremlin decides on the candidacy of the future governor, the candidate is appointed with the status of “temporarily acting” governor. Later, the “temporarily acting” governor is formally confirmed as the head of the republic by the regional parliament. In North Ossetia, the head of the republican government, the prime minister, becomes the acting republican governor when the incumbent governor cannot carry out his duties. However, Moscow apparently had some reservations about the prime minister of North Ossetia—Vyacheslav Bitarov, a successful local businessman. The Russian president abstained from confirming Bitarov as the “temporarily acting” governor of the republic, which would have practically guaranteed his “election” by the regional parliament (Abon-news.ru, February 28). Hence, rumors abounded about who would become the republic’s next governor. Some analysts pointed to North Ossetian officials, while others said the Kremlin was likely to appoint a Moscow-based Ossetian (Kommersant, February 24).
In the past several years, Moscow appointed people from outside the republics as their governors. The two most recent appointments were of the governors in Dagestan and Kabardino-Balkaria, in 2013. A Moscow-based politician, Ramazan Abdulatipov, was dispatched to lead Dagestan, while a security services officer, Yuri Kokov, was appointed governor of Kabardino-Balkaria. The same logic is likely to apply in the North Ossetian case. Yet, simple as it may seem, appointing people from Moscow to lead the North Caucasian republics is becoming increasingly hard, because of a deficit of suitable candidates.
Ongoing ethnic and religious tensions, economic woes, armed conflict and separatist sentiments require appointing highly qualified candidates to lead the North Caucasian republics. The Russian government has indicated its preference for candidates who are disconnected from the regional elites and integrated into the Russian elites in Moscow. While finding figures disconnected from the regional elites is easy, it is much harder to find those who are integrated into the Russian elites at the federal level and are qualified to be governors. For example, Moscow appointed a well-known Russian constitutional scholar of Karachay origin, Boris Ebzeyev, to lead Karachaevo-Cherkessia in 2008. However, by 2011, Ebzeyev was completely sidelined and so isolated in the republic that he had to step down before the end of his first term and urgently leave the republic (Expert.ru, February 28, 2011).
For a long time, the unspoken consensus in Russia was that Moscow controlled the entire central government while regional elites in the North Caucasus controlled their respective republics. As a result of such a consensus, few if any North Caucasians received important government positions in the government of the Russian Federation. During the Soviet period, every large nationality had to be represented at the union level to ensure that the principle of representation was observed. Even if this representation was empty, the public appearance of representation was important. In contemporary Russia, North Caucasians do not receive similar representation at the federal level, and it is unclear whether the Russian majority would tolerate such representation, given the rise of Russian nationalism over the past few decades. Until recently, the local North Caucasian elites were largely confined to their own republics and it worked to some extent. However, now it appears that Moscow wants to increase its level of control over political life at the republican level as well, without giving the local elites the corresponding “compensation” at the federal level. This change naturally creates multiple problems for both the republics and Moscow.
First of all, the republican elites resist Moscow’s attempts to take away their regional domains without giving them something in return. Secondly, since Moscow has excluded the North Caucasians from federal level government jobs, it is short of candidates to fill government posts at the regional level.
Moscow’s model of regional governance is affected by other, more technical issues. One is that Moscow is increasingly short of cash to support current living standards in the heavily subsidized regions in the North Caucasus. The other is that due to Russia’s collision course with the Western powers and several gambles abroad, President Vladimir Putin has little time for the North Caucasus, which he apparently “micro-manages”; and this is sensed in the region. Apart from the disarray in Moscow’s signaling about the next governor of North Ossetia, it also affects other republics. The first term of the governor of Karachaevo-Cherkessia, Rashid Temrezov, is to expire on March 1, and Putin signed a decree confirming Temrezov as the republic’s “temporarily acting” governor on February 27 (Kremlin.ru, February 27). Ramzan Kadyrov’s term is running out on March 5 and, as of February 28, it was still unclear whether he will remain in power or step down. Kadyrov’s frantic interviews for the Russian media and pledges to Russia and Putin indicate that he cannot get through to Putin and is unsure about his political future (Meduza.io, February 27).
In 2004, Putin may have thought that abolishing direct gubernatorial elections was a good idea that would allow him to establish tighter control over Russia’s regions. However, several systemic trends indicate that the system of appointing governors is in crisis. That system probably solved the issue of control for Putin in the short run, but it also created problems that are increasingly hard to solve, especially since the Russian president is engaged in several ongoing foreign policy gambles.
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Chechen militants in Syria have been going through organizational changes since last summer. The position of the Chechen militants in the Middle East was especially damaged by a conflict within the Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar group and the difficult situation inside the Junud al-Sham group. Those militant organizations have been led, respectively, by Salahudin Shishani (Paizulla Margoshvili) and Muslim Shishani (Murad Margoshvili). Both men are ethnic Chechens from Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge.
In the summer of 2015, Amir Salahudin left Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar, one of the best known groups comprised of citizens of countries of the former Soviet Union (Infochechen.com, June 6, 2015), and formed another group, Jaish al-Usrah. The new group again tried to recruit members from the Caucasus. The former Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar brigade, which no longer had Chechens or Amir Salahudin, allied itself with the al-Nusra Front and lost the high status it had enjoyed in Syria when it was led by Chechen commanders (Justpaste.it, June 2015).
Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar once had 1,500 to 2,000 militants, while Amir Salahudin’s current group has only of about 200 members—those militants who decided to stay with him to the end. Many of Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar’s militants left the group after Amir Salahudin was removed as its commander and joined the so-called Islamic State. The rest of the group became an al-Nusra Front affiliate, which Salahudin had not agreed with (Kavkazsky Uzel, October 3, 2015).
Amir Salahudin still wears the Caucasus Emirate’s logo on his clothes, which means he remains faithful to the organization. He still considers himself to be the Caucasus Emirate’s representative in Syria. Even though the Caucasus Emirate has been significantly transformed in the North Caucasus, Amir Salahudin can claim partial credit for the fact that it still exists. Salahudin’s group in Syria is bigger than all the militants in the underground movement of the North Caucasus put together.
Salahudin’s group is currently fighting in the region north of Aleppo, including areas along the Syrian-Turkish border populated by Syrian Turkmen. The presence of Salahudin’s forces in the area may explain why it has been heavily bombed by Russian warplanes. It is also the area where the Turkish Air Force downed a Russian military jet last November (Onkavkaz.com, November 26, 2015). If this presumption is true, it means that the Russian military in Syria is deliberately going after forces associated with the Caucasus militants, including in areas where amirs Salahudin, Muslim, Abu Jihad, Abu Bakr, Abdulkhakim and others operate (Eadaily.com, January 28).
The Russian military does not care whether the militants are allied with the Islamic State, al-Nusra Front or the Free Syrian Army: Moscow’s primary objective appears to be to strike the Chechens and the North Caucasians in general. Russian forces have carried out strikes in Latakia, where there are no Islamic State forces, but where Chechen groups operate. The Chechens are not strategic allies for the Syrian Turkmen, who are prepared to ally with anyone who helps them fight Bashar al-Assad and the Kurdish groups. Thus, Russia’s attempt to efface the small Turkmen minority in Syria simply because some Chechen groups are in the area is unjustified.
The dire situation of the Chechen militants in Syria can be seen in a video address by the well-known Chechen amir, Muslim Shishani, posted to the Internet in early January. In the Russian-language address, Muslim Shishani appealed to Sham’s mujahedeen for help (YouTube, January 13). The fact that he chose to deliver the appeal in Russian signaled that his primary audience was citizens of former Soviet states. He reprimanded those who had not helped him for several months, saying that the militants under his command had suffered significantly. Many people apparently left his group. Although Muslim Shishani claimed that he could not sustain his group and hence had sent them away, many Chechens from his group in fact joined the Islamic State. His address had many interesting details, but its primary message was that he urgently needed assistance.
The main problem of the Chechen commanders in Syria is that the North Caucasian militants in their groups have been defecting to the Islamic State. The groups led by these Chechen commanders’ no longer have thousands of militants, as they did back in 2014. Today, the Chechen groups operating in Syria rarely have even several hundred members, and half of the members are not North Caucasians, but rather members of local tribes. Apart from the ordinary militants who have switched their allegiances to Islamic State commander Umar Shishani (Tarkhan Batirashvili, from the Pankisi Gorge, in Georgia), some militant commanders who were allied with Salahudin and Muslim Abdulkhakim have also pledged loyalty to the Islamic State. For example, Amir Al Bara, the commander of a small Chechen group, is now fighting together with his men under the command of the Islamic State (Chechensinsyria.com, February 10).
Thus, it appears that the Chechen groups in Syria are currently in a period of crisis and transition. First of all, they need more potent allies who can finance them. The Chechen groups’ attempts to stay independent of larger groups like the Free Syrian Army, al-Nusra Front and Islamic State have put the independent Chechen militants on the verge of going out of business. This means the Chechen groups will likely soon align themselves with the larger groups, which have the resources to support them.
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Ramzan Kadyrov has repeatedly voiced discontent with the actions of Chechens who reside in Europe. During the first years of his rule in Chechnya, he managed to convince many of the former leaders of Ichkeria to switch sides and move back to Grozny. This guaranteed that they would not work against him in the future (Lenta.ru, August 15, 2008). Those who did not return to Chechnya soon learned that the republic’s pro-Moscow ruler could reach them even in Europe: Kadyrov’s own former commander, Umar Israilov, was assassinated in Vienna in 2008 (Novayagazeta.ru, June 3, 2011). Kadyrov even managed to open Chechen Republic representative offices to various European countries (Gazeta.ru, September 11, 2009).
However, the Chechen authorities did not succeed in enticing all the supporters of Chechen independence back to the republic. For example, Ahmed Zakaev, the former minister of culture in the government of Aslan Maskhadov, is one of the most active pro-independence Chechen politicians in Europe. Zakaev’s activities caused a recent rise in tensions between Kadyrov and the Chechen diaspora in Europe. Kadyrov has been trying to lure Zakaev back to Chechnya for the past ten years. Last month, Chechnya’s governor paid an unexpected visit to Ahmed Zakaev’s brothers and sisters in the Chechen town of Urus-Martan (Onkavkaz.com, February 6). The intention of the visit was to show that members of Zakaev’s family live in Chechnya and no one persecutes them. Zakaev’s relatives themselves spoke before cameras about their life in Chechnya and invited him back to the republic. Zakaev, however, rejected the offer and called the televised appeal of his relatives a piece of propaganda. Zakaev said the government had put pressure on his family to condemn his political views (Regnum, February 8).
In response to Zakaev’s refusal to return, Chechen TV prepared and broadcast a 47-minute-long program that featured the members of his Chinkhoi clan. The clan members read excerpts from Zakaev’s statements at a mosque and expressed their “indignation” over his behavior and attitude toward Kadyrov’s policies in Chechnya. The clan members practically cursed him and expressed regret that he is a member of their community (YouTube, February 8).
Zakaev’s activities were not the only cause of contention between the Chechen diaspora in Europe and Kadyrov. Last December, Chechens in multiple European countries unexpectedly staged small-scale protests against Kadyrov’s policies in Chechnya. The protests were unusually critical of Chechnya’s governor: in particular, the protesters condemned Kadyrov’s practice of humiliating individuals who criticize the republican government via social media (Kavkazsky Uzel, December 23, 2015). The Chechen protesters in Europe did not hide their faces out of fear of retribution by the Chechen authorities, but criticized Kadyrov openly.
This was a new development for the Chechen diaspora in Europe. Demonstrations were held in Austria, Norway, and Finland. The authorities in Grozny found no better response to the critics than to threaten their relatives who live in Chechnya. Kadyrov personally spoke on Chechen TV, asking the republican Ministry of Interior to find all the relatives of those who protested in Vienna, Oslo and Helsinki (Kavkazsky Uzel, January 2). Kadyrov’s threats produced another wave of protests, which strongly condemned his actions (Openrussia.org, January 25). Some Chechen protesters even published their own personal messages criticizing Kadyrov (YouTube, February 25).
In response to the protests in Europe, Kadyrov said he would not allow the European Chechens who fled Chechnya to disrupt peace in the republic. Kadyrov asserted that Chechens in Europe were trying to conduct subversive activities against their homeland (Rg.ru, March 1). On March 1, Kadyrov held a meeting with the Chechen police and explained his position regarding the Chechen diaspora in Europe more extensively. According to Kadyrov, “they fled in the first days of the war, and now, sitting in Vienna, Paris or London, are trying to please their masters, expressing some kind of threats against Chechnya, shouting at rallies with their miserable donkey voices something about Chechnya and its people. There will be no return to Ichkerian lawlessness. Chechnya has begun a new life in union with Russia. And we will not allow anyone, especially those buffoons, to interfere with this life” (Grozny-inform.ru, March 1).
The level of influence of the Chechen pro-independence politicians in Europe is negligible in Chechnya, yet Grozny is quite sensitive to what they say because the Chechen authorities cannot become accustomed to the fact that Chechens somewhere could say something publicly against Ramzan Kadyrov. The outflow of migrants from Chechnya and Russia to Europe shows that the situation in the republic is far from acceptable, and people continue to leave. The Chechen Republic was the only territory of the Russian Federation that issued more Russian foreign travel passports in 2015 than in the previous year: the Chechen authorities issued 18 percent more passports than in 2014, while the issuance of passports in the rest of the country fell by 50–70 percent (Rbc.ru, February 26).
It appears that a new generation of young pro-independence Chechen activists is forming in Europe, and evidently they are prepared to engage in public protests despite pressure by Kadyrov’s government in Chechnya and his henchmen in Europe. This means that the idea of Ichkeria has been revived and there will be fresh standoffs between Grozny and the Chechens in Europe.
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Many analysts say the two wars in Chechnya in the 1990s were caused by the republic’s oil. These analysts, however, have tended to overlook the fact that Chechnya no longer had prospects as an oil extracting region by the time the wars started. Chechnya’s oil deposits have practically been exhausted and comprise less than one percent of Russia’s total known oil reserves (Polit.ru, November 29, 2007). Waging war for one percent of the country’s oil reserves would cost more than the oil is worth, which makes it unlikely oil was the cause of these wars. In reality, Chechnya has only enough oil to allow a local elite to feel financially independent from Moscow. Moreover, the geography of Chechnya is such that the transportation and sale of its oil requires cooperation with Moscow.
Chechen authorities have tried to at least partially restore the oil infrastructure in the republic that was destroyed. The ambitions of the Chechen government did not go as far as restoring to full capacity the republic’s oil refineries, which at one time could process up to 20 million tons of oil per year. Indeed, the Chechen authorities hoped to rebuild only one refinery that could process the oil extracted in Chechnya and in some of the neighboring republics. In Dagestan, for example, 200,000 tons of oil are extracted every year (Riadagestan.ru, March 18, 2014).
Today, Chechnya’s oil is extracted by Rosneft, Russia’s main state-owned oil company, which is headed by Igor Sechin. The regional Chechen company Grozneftegaz does not have any property rights (Novaya Gazeta, January 30, 2009). Sechin, who is a close associate of President Vladimir Putin, is fighting with Chechen ruler Ramzan Kadyrov over ownership of Chechnya’s oil. For the past ten years, Kadyrov has unsuccessfully tried to force Rosneft to build an oil refinery in Chechnya. Sechin remained ambivalent about his intentions, neither refusing nor agreeing to start construction. Alternatively, Sechin considered building an oil refinery in neighboring Kabardino-Balkaria’s Tersky district (Regnum, March 12, 2008).
Sechin’s primary motivation is not money, but rather rivalry for power, and he is, therefore, unwilling to make deals with Kadyrov and appear subordinate to him. However, with Grozny pressuring Putin, a Rosneft representative visiting Chechnya in 2010 promised that an oil refinery would be built the following year using Grozneft’s existing infrastructure (Kavkazsky Uzel, February 3, 2010). However, the refinery was not built. In 2013, Rosneft again announced the start of work to build the refinery in Chechnya but, once again, nothing was built. Its declarations did not materialize in actual construction works. In 2014, after Kadyrov publicly shamed Rosneft for contributing nothing to the republican budget, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak visited Grozny and confirmed that plans to build an oil refinery in Grozny were still under consideration (Stavropolye.tv, July 2, 2014). Moreover, he said that the refinery might be built by the end of 2014. That, however, did not happen. An area on the outskirts of Grozny where one of the republic’s seven large oil refineries was once located has long been ready for the laying of the planned refinery’s foundation stone.
In 2015, Putin must have realized that Sechin, his closest associate, had done everything in his power to avoid building the oil refinery in Chechnya. The Russian president decided to hand over the oil-related infrastructure in the republic that was in the Russian government’s hands to the Chechen government, including Chechenneftekhimprom, which had previously been given to Rosneft (Kommersant, December 23, 2015). This was a significant concession, which will also lead to Moscow handing ownership of Grozneftegaz to the Chechen government. The assets turned over to the Chechen government primarily consist of land parcels, which makes Rosneft dependent on the republican authorities. Eventually, it will force Sechin to hand over all of Rosneft’s assets in Chechnya to the republican authorities. It appears that the authorities in Moscow decided to allow Kadyrov to build the oil refinery he wanted while avoiding directly hurting Sechin. The oil refinery issue came to the fore again in the region when Dagestan proposed building its own oil refinery just as Rosneft dropped plans to build an oil plant in Kabardino-Balkaria (Izvestia, January 22). The Dagestanis plan to build their refinery in 2017, which means the Chechen authorities must have their oil refinery up and running before that, otherwise the Dagestani oil will bypass Chechnya.
Accordingly, Ramzan Kadyrov used his contacts in the Middle East to acquire a serious investor willing to invest in his enterprise within a short period of time, and on March 4, a delegation from Qatar arrived in Chechnya. According to the deputy head of the government of Chechnya, Khasan Khakimov, the investors from Qatar are interested in investing in large projects in Chechnya, including building the oil refinery, an airport and a cement-manufacturing plant (Regnum, March 4).
Since many facilities are built much faster in Chechnya than elsewhere in Russia, Kadyrov will likely have his own oil refinery up and running before his neighbors construct theirs. This will give Kadyrov a victory over Rosneft and provide him with a new source of revenue for the republican budget. The new investments will not come from Moscow, and this will make the republic more independent of Russian money and finance. However, the amount of oil being extracted in Chechnya now is nothing compared to the amount that was extracted in Chechnya in the 20th century. The current amounts of oil extracted in the republic make it more dependent on Moscow rather than less, and this will continue to play into the hands of the Kremlin despite Kadyrov’s efforts.
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The Register |
FBI channels Kafka with new rules on slurping Americans' private ...
The Register Comment The murky world of surveillance turned a little more Kafkaesque this week. The FBI has quietly changed the rules on how it uses data collected by the ... and more » |
Georgia’s newly appointed Foreign Minister Mikheil Janelidze recently visited the headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), where he held talks with NATO Deputy Secretary General Alexander Vershbow. The Georgian minister also took part in a meeting of the NATO-Georgia Commission, with the participation of the permanent representatives of NATO member states in Brussels (Civil Georgia, March 2).
Both Vershbow and the member representatives of the NATO-Georgia Commission reassured Janelidze that they supported Georgia’s military reforms. NATO leaders confirmed their readiness to continue working with their Georgian partners on implementing the substantial package of cooperation that the North Atlantic Alliance offered to Georgia at the Wales summit in 2014 (Civil Georgia, March 2). Once again, Alliance members emphasized the prominent role Georgia plays in NATO operations in Afghanistan, where about 700 Georgian servicemen are still stationed today. In 2015, Georgia had 1,750 men deployed to Afghanistan—the most of any non-NATO country (Apsny.ge, May 19, 2015).
It has been over 16 years since modern Georgia’s second president, the former minister of foreign affairs of the Soviet Union Eduard Shevardnadze, stated that his country would soon “knock at NATO’s door” (Lenta.ru, October 25, 1999). Georgia has closely cooperated with the Alliance since 1994, when the South Caucasus country joined the Partnership for Peace (PfP) program. In April 2008, at its summit in Bucharest, NATO confirmed that Georgia and Ukraine would become members of the alliance if they complied with membership requirements (Sputnik-georgia.ru, July 6, 2015). However, NATO officials often emphasize that Georgia needs to first receive a Membership Action Plan (MAP) (Civil Georgia, March 2), even though the process of acquiring MAP remains stalled due to internal disagreements among Alliance members.
NATO’s sluggishness, despite Georgia’s years of conscientious effort to do its “homework” in pursuit of MAP, has resulted in mounting discontent among Georgian leaders. Minister of Defense Tinatin Khidasheli has been among the most impatient politicians in this regard. Khidasheli, who comes from the Republican Party of Georgia, is widely considered one of the country’s most radically pro-Western politicians. With the upcoming NATO summit in Warsaw in July 2016 fast approaching, she has made a number of alarmist statements about the negative consequences to Georgia if it is denied the “road map to joining the alliance” in the nearest future.
“If Georgia does not receive a Membership Action Plan (MAP) during the next summit, it will disappoint the [Georgian] population. This is especially true since, as the referendum results of 2008 indicated, three quarters of the population supported joining NATO,” Defense Minister Khidasheli said in an interview with the Spanish news agency EFE last summer (Sputnik-georgia.ru, July 6, 2015). And after one of her meetings with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, she declared, “Prior to the summit in Warsaw, we do not have any other proposals on the table for our partners apart from MAP” (Svoboda.org, August 4, 2015).
With time, Khidasheli’s statements have become increasingly dismal. “We are losing our patience. If Georgia does not receive MAP in Warsaw, it will become a tragedy for our country,” she remarked in a July 2015 interview with the German-language newspaper Kurier (Timer.ge, July 30, 2015). “If the Russian aggression continues and Georgia does not become a NATO member, after ten years our country may not have enough resources to fight for membership in the alliance,” the minister warned, in September. She further implied that the number of Georgian citizens who support closer ties to Moscow and the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union have gradually increased. “When we talk about NATO, we mean saving the country [Georgia] whose territory keeps shrinking. No one knows what will remain of Georgia after two, five or ten years if everything goes as it is now. Perhaps, what I am saying sounds very dramatic, but that is how it is, and I cannot make jokes about that. The aggression that our northern neighbor uses against us is a question of life or death for Georgia” the minister said (Kommersant, September 8, 2015). Finally, in a September 18 interview with the BBC, the defense ministry head emotionally proclaimed that if Russia again attacks Georgia, “we [Georgians] will all die as heroes” (BBC News, September 18, 2015).
Such sharp rhetoric could not escape the attention of officials in Brussels and Washington. The United States’ ambassador to Tbilisi, Ian C. Kelly, felt that Minister Khidasheli’s remarks necessitated a direct response. In particular, Ambassador Kelly said that sooner or later Georgia would become a NATO and European Union member, but at this time, “Georgia’s friends” have refrained from accepting the country into the North Atlantic Alliance so as to avoid putting the small post-Soviet country under additional risk, as in 2008. “Georgia has a most serious problem—the occupation of 20 percent of its territory. NATO reaches its decisions via consensus, and the organization has not reached a consensus yet on accepting Georgia into the Alliance. Georgia will become a member of NATO only when NATO is prepared for that. You [Georgia] must respect the reality, and the reality is that you have a common border with Russia. True friends of Georgia do not want to put you at risk,” Ambassador Kelly emphasized (Kommersant, February 25, 2016).
Immediately after the US diplomat’s statements appeared in the Georgian media, Minister Khidasheli softened her tone and walked back from her previous explicit demands that Georgia be granted a MAP at the Warsaw summit. “Our aim is not to get MAP, but to become a NATO member state. MAP hangs over us like a ‘Sword of Damocles,’ but Georgia has multiple other instruments and formats for close cooperation with the alliance,” she stated (Tabula.ge, February 18).
One such non-MAP framework for cooperation is the NATO-Georgian Joint Training and Evaluation Center, which was opened last August just outside of Tbilisi. NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg participated in the inauguration ceremony (Civil Georgia, August 15, 2015). It appears that Georgia will have to be content with this situation for the next few years, which may not be as negative as some members of the government bemoan. Indeed, Georgia has achieved a degree of closeness with the North Atlantic Alliance that is unmatched by any of the other post-Soviet republics that are still claimed by Russia to be within its “sphere of privileged interests.”
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As anticipated (see EDM, February 26), the “Normandy” meeting on March 3–4, in Paris, cornered Ukraine to extract its acceptance of “elections” in the Russian-occupied territory. German Minister of Foreign Affairs Frank-Walter Steinmeier did almost all the hectoring; his French counterpart, Jean-Marie Ayrault, provided the echo, while Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, seemed content to watch almost aloof, with minimal comments.
According to Lavrov’s account, “Steinmeier and Ayrault proposed that ‘the sides’ [Kyiv and Donetsk-Luhansk] agree with each other on holding local elections by June or July. We were ready to support this proposal, but the Ukrainian side asked them not to insist, so there was no progress on the main issue, namely preparing those elections” (Interfax, March 4). Lavrov showed flexibility in his own way, giving Ukraine until July to yield. Steinmeier and Ayrault set their deadline for “June at the latest.”
Lavrov’s summary reflects the success of Moscow’s tactics thus far: exonerating Russia of the aggressor’s responsibility, forcing Kyiv to deal with Donetsk-Luhansk, and using Western hands to pressure Kyiv into conferring democratic legitimacy on Russia’s proxies in Ukraine’s east.
Steinmeier acknowledged in his concluding briefing that “elections are impossible without security” in Donetsk-Luhansk. But he admonished Ukraine that it is “unacceptable to postpone the elections ad calendas graecas,” because such “elections” are themselves a prerequisite to the political solution, i.e. changing Ukraine’s constitution by negotiation with Donetsk-Lukansk (themselves fronting for Moscow).
To hold those “elections” by June this year, Steinmeier asked “the parties” (Kyiv and Donetsk-Luhansk) to agree on providing the necessary security “in the next few weeks.” The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE, under German chairmanship this year) shall draft, by March 31, a concept of providing security for those “elections,” albeit with the acceptance of the “parties to the conflict.” Apparently, deploying an OSCE civilian contingent for these elections’ duration is envisaged. The unspoken implication is that Russia would enjoy double veto powers on any “election security concept” or such a contingent: Moscow’s own veto in the OSCE, and Donetsk-Luhansk’s veto in the Minsk negotiations among the “parties to the conflict.”
As part of the same process, Steinmeier and Ayrault called for a full ceasefire and withdrawal of heavy weaponry (understood to be Russia’s) from the area, to be verified by the OSCE’s Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) with full and unimpeded access. Irrespective of this—and because this call will probably remain as unheeded as the many previous calls—Kyiv is being asked to negotiate with Donetsk-Luhansk about the modalities of “elections” and a special law applying to those “elections.” That would evidently operate outside Ukraine’s existing legal and electoral system, notwithstanding Berlin’s and Paris’s claim that Donetsk-Luhansk election procedures would conform to Ukraine’s laws (see EDM, February 19, 23, 25).
Summing up on Moscow’s, Berlin’s and Paris’s collective behalf, Ayrault reported with an undertone of satisfaction: “We have avoided retracing the history [of this conflict], we are proceeding from the Minsk agreements”—implying: there was no aggression, there is no aggressor (Auswaertiges-amt.de, Diplomatie.gouv.fr, March 4).
Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Pavlo Klimkin argued that any pre-election security arrangement would be illusory without blocking the cross-border flow of weaponry and personnel from Russia into Ukraine’s occupied territory. Klimkin called for a deployment of OSCE civilian observers on what is legally the Ukrainian side of that border, now controlled by Donetsk-Luhansk forces. Ukraine had aired this proposal in previous “Normandy” meetings. This time it added technical specifics about observation posts and monitoring equipment to be operated by OSCE observers along that 400-kilometer border section. Lavrov declined to consider such proposals in the Normandy format, but would consider referring the matter to Minsk Contact Group’s working group on security issues (Ukrinform, March 4). The reason behind such a referral is that Donetsk and Luhansk are represented in the Minsk Group and can block such proposals there, while Russia would disclaim the direct responsibility for such blocking actions.
The Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics” first held “elections” on November 2, 2014. No Western government or organization agreed to send observers, let alone validate those elections. Russia did validate them by announcing that it “respected” the outcome, mentoring and arming those “elected” leaders, and chaperoning them in the Minsk Group. Now, Russia is using the “Normandy” process and the OSCE for a repeat performance. In Paris, Klimkin said Ukraine would not accept “another November 2, 2014–like farce.”
Ukraine’s representative in the Minsk working group on political issues, Roman Bessmertnyy, remarked after the “Normandy” meeting in Paris: “Berlin and Paris must decide what role they want to play in this process. We would like to see them in the role of arbiters, not of lobbyists for Russian interests” (Ukrinform, March 4).
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On March 5, in the fighting for the city of al-Shaddadi in eastern Syria, one of the most influential commanders of the so-called Islamic State (IS), Tarkhan Batirashvili, a.k.a. Umar al-Shishani, was reportedly killed. Batirashvili, was an ethnic Chechen from Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge (Rbc.ru, March 8). It should be noted, however, that after the initial reports that Batirashvili had been killed, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on March 10 that he had only been seriously wounded in the attack, but was still alive (Al Arabiya, March 10).
Batirashvili had already been reported killed several times over the past three years, but the source of those reports were almost always Kurdish militants, who are known for exaggerating their military victories (Kavkazsky Uzel, December 28, 2015). Hence, few analysts paid attention to the information provided by the Kurdish groups. Russian media sources have also been quite unreliable, especially as they used photographs they said were of Batirashvili but were of other people, and made unsubstantiated claims (Lenta.ru, February 12, 2015).
This time, however, it was unnamed Pentagon officials who were quoted as saying that Batirashvili had likely been killed in a US drone strike in that part of Syria. That operation must have specifically targeted certain individuals. Tarkhan Batirashvili was on the United States’ list of wanted individuals, and the US government announced a $5 million bounty for information that would lead to him being killed or captured. The Pentagon was perfectly aware of Batirashvili’s importance in the Islamic State, given that he was not only a top IS official but also a close associate of IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. In the past, Batirashvili even held the position of a “military minister in the caliphate’s government,” and he was personally responsible for the northern front. Several thousand Chechens, other North Caucasians, and citizens of former Soviet states were under Batirashvili’s command (Svoboda.org, March 9).
While this latest report that Batirashvili was likely killed is much more trustworthy than the previous reports, the Chechen militant’s death can be confirmed only after his father in Pankisi confirms it and, as of March 9, Batirashvili’s father had not announced mourning for his son; hence, he may still be alive.
A former serviceman in the Georgian special forces, Umar al-Shishani rose to prominence in Syria in 2012, when he led a group of militants who fought the forces of Bashar al-Assad. At first, Umar al-Shishani’s group, Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar (Army of Emigrants and Helpers), was made up of Chechens (Newsru.com, November 21, 2013). Later, other North Caucasians, including Dagestanis, Ingush and Kabardins, also joined him. Umar al-Shishani soon became so well-known that all the insurgents from former Soviet states sought to join his group. However, things changed after he joined the IS’s self-declared “caliph,” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. When Umar al-Shishani decided to join the IS, few other militants from his group followed him. However, as the IS strengthened in Syria and in Iraq, his former subordinates began leaving their respective groups, including those of Amir Muslim al-Shishani (Murad/Muslim Margoshvili) and of Amir Salahudin al-Shishani (Faizulla Margoshvili), among others, to join the IS. The outflow was so significant that Amir Muslim, who led the group Junud al Sham, was forced to ask for help publicly (Videoonlinehd.su, January 10).
Another group, which was under the command of Amir Salahudin al-Shishani, joined al-Nusra, thereby becoming part of al-Qaeda. Amir Salahudin currently is the commander of the group Caucasus Emirate in Syria. The militants under the command of Muslim al-Shishani, Salahudin al-Shishani, Abdul-Malik al-Shishani, and some others are still neither part of al-Nusra nor the IS. These Chechen commanders’ units have kept their distance from the larger groups, which cut them off from the general financing of the forces fighting the Assad regime.
The death of Umar al-Shishani, however, might change the situation among the Chechens fighting in Syria. There will most likely be an outflow of Chechens from the IS back to the groups of Amir Muslim al-Shishani and Amir Salahudin al-Shishani. The weakening of the Chechen leadership in the IS and the appointment of Arab commanders for the Chechen fighters will likely cause conflicts among the militants, since the Chechens do not normally consider the Arabs to be authoritative military leaders. Recruits who once would have gone to Syria in hopes of joining Umar al-Shishani’s forces will now seek groups headed by other well-known Chechen commanders. If Umar al-Shishani was indeed killed, it is unlikely that his closest associate, Amir Abdulkhakim al-Shishani (Rustam Azhiev, of the “Caliphate” group) will replace him. Azhiev’s authority among the militants is not high enough to permit him to claim overall leadership automatically.
Many of the Chechens who went to fight in Syria associated the war with commanders like Umar al-Shishani and tried to serve under his command. One reason for this is that few of the Chechens who go to Syria to fight speak Arabic; and thus, when they first arrive there, they prefer to be among their own compatriots. According to the Chechen Ministry of Interior, 405 people left the republic for Syria between 2013 and the summer of 2015, of whom 104 have been killed and 44 have returned home (Kavkazsky Uzel, October 3). It is unlikely these figures are accurate: the Chechen interior ministry apparently did not take into account those Chechen militants who were already in Syria at the time the war started, or moved to Syria from Europe, Turkey or other Middle Eastern countries.
If Umar al-Shishani’s death is confirmed, it may radically change the situation for the Chechens fighting in Syria. While some will leave one militant group to join another, other Chechens may give up the fighting altogether and return to Turkey.
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Norway plans to complete the definition phase for procurement of submarines in the first half of this year and may consider a joint purchase with another country.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker have discussed ways to increase joint work to counter hybrid threats in several areas, including early warning, supporting critical infrastructure and cyber warfare.
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March 11, 2016, 10:26 PM (IDT)
A Palestinian drive-by vehicle opened fire on an Israeli car driving on Rte 443 near the Beit Horon checkpoint Friday night. Two young men in the car were injured. Security forces are searching for the vehicle.
March 11, 2016, 10:38 PM (IDT)
Palestinian rocket fire sets off red alert in Israeli locations around the Gaza Strip Friday night, according to first reports.
9 to 5 Mac |
Ex-CIA director: Apple 'generally in the right' on encryption, FBI not 'very good telephone designers'
9 to 5 Mac Speaking with CNBC's Squawk Box, former CIA director James Woolsey gave his personal thoughts on the FBI's request to have Apple unlock an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino killers. Telling CNBC that the last time he looked into the situation ... and more » |
Speaking with CNBC's Squawk Box, former CIA director James Woolsey gave his personal thoughts on the FBI's request to have Apple unlock an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino killers. Telling CNBC that the last ...
USA TODAY |
Russia seeks US documents in millionaire's death
USA TODAY Russia's prosecutor general has asked U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch for documents regarding the mysterious death of prominent Russian millionaire and former press minister Mikhail Lesin, who was found dead four months ago in a Washington hotel ... How Russia Saw the 'Red Line' CrisisThe Atlantic Death of former Putin aide: conspiracy theories abound back home in RussiaThe Guardian Russia Presses for Details in Ex-Putin Aide's Death Voice of America RT all 739 news articles » |
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RT |
Russia to disarm world's largest nuclear ballistic missile submarine
RT Working in accordance with the New START treaty between Russia and US, the country's leading Zvezdochka shipyard in the northern Russian city of Severodvinsk will disarm the missile system of the Arkhangelsk submarine, the shipyard's press service told ... |
An autopsy found Mikhail Lesin suffered head injuries
Evgeny Buryakov faces a decade in prison after admitting working for the Russian secret service
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Mystery Of Lesin's Death Deepens As Russia Asks US For More Informationby support@pangea-cms.com (Mike Eckel, Carl Schreck)
The mystery surrounding Mikhail Lesin, the former Russian press minister who died in Washington after suffering blunt force trauma to the head, deepened as news reports said police were investigating whether Lesin had been assaulted outside his hotel.
A cache of leaked documents containing the names of recruits into the Islamic State group includes references to several of the men who carried out the November attacks in Paris, a German broadcaster reported Friday. Security officials and counterterrorism analysts said the cache could provide valuable clues into how the group lures followers and how vast its global recruiting networks are.
New York Daily News |
Russian Spy Pleads Guilty, Walked Into FBI 'Trap'
ABC News A Russian spy, who posed as a banker in New York City, today pleaded guilty to espionage-related charges after court documents revealed Russia's top intelligence service waltzed into an FBI "trap". In a case that U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said sounds ... Russian accused by US of spy ring role pleads guiltyReuters Russian Banker Buryakov Pleads Guilty to Spy ChargesWall Street Journal Russian National Pleads Guilty to Spying in USVoice of America Boston Herald -Courthouse News Service all 191 news articles » |
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The Arab League declares the Lebanese Shia Muslim movement Hezbollah a terrorist organisation, following a move by Arab Gulf states a week ago.
Зика продолжает наступление by golosamerikius
Эпидемию лихорадки Зика пока остановить не удается, но определенный прогресс уже заметен – во всяком случае, в лабораториях.
Death of former Putin aide: conspiracy theories abound back home in Russiaby Shaun Walker in Moscow and David Smith in Washington
Some bloggers suggest Mikhail Lesin could be in US witness protection and faked his own death while others say it could have happened as a result of a fight
The announcement that a former aide to Vladimir Putin found dead in his Washington hotel room appeared to have been bludgeoned to death has led to a squall of hypotheses and conspiracy theories about how he might have met his end.
When Mikhail Lesin died in November, Russian media said he died of a heart attack. But authorities in Washington said on Thursday that an autopsy of Putin’s former press minister revealed blunt force injuries to the head, neck, torso, arms and legs. The manner of death remained “undetermined”, the office’s statement said, and the incident is still under police investigation.
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HAFR AL-BATIN, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Saudi Arabia on Friday and was due to hold talks with King Salman and other senior Saudi officials, according to a U.S. pool reporter accompanying Kerry.
WILKINSBURG, Pa. (AP) -- Police on Friday sought to identify the two men who ambushed a backyard cookout and methodically shot and killed six people, including a pregnant woman and her fetus....
Puerto Rico reports 201 confirmed Zika casesby Associated Press
Puerto Rico’s Health Department is reporting 201 confirmed Zika cases amid warnings the U.S. territory could face an epidemic of the mosquito-borne virus.
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U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has landed at a sprawling military facility on northeastern Saudi Arabia where the kingdom just finished a three-week-long counter-terrorism drill in a show of force against its foes.
Egypt's state news agency says the Arab League has formally branded Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group a terrorist organization.
The U.S. State Department has until March 17 to decide whether the terror being waged by the Islamic State against Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East meets the requirements of being labeled genocide.
Russia's military is looking for a few good dolphins to join its navy — five, to be exact, with perfect teeth, average length and a willingness to "display motor activity."
Learning to Fight Like an Israeli by Stephen Gutowski
On December 27, 1985, gunfire and explosions erupted at the El Al ticket counter inside the Leonardo da Vinci-Fiumicino Airport in Rome. Four gunmen from the Palestinian terrorist group Abu Nidal entered the terminal at 9:10 am and opened fire. By 9:11 a.m. three of them were dead and one survivor was in custody.
This was thanks to a single Israeli agent named Moshe.
The carnage wrought by the Islamic radicals was mercifully cut short by the agent’s quick action and sophisticated training—exactly the same training that the Israeli Tactical School attempts to disseminate to the military, law enforcement, and private citizens in America.
Recently, I was able to receive a portion of the group’s training. After 17 hours of the most intense shooting drills of my life, I have a new appreciation for the tactics and, more importantly, the mentality employed by Israelis to combat the ever-present threat of terrorism.
Aggression is the key. Take the initiative. Surprise the attacker while you have the upper hand. Once you hear those gunshots you sprint to the scene, ready to do anything it takes to stop the attacker. You must be able to flip the switch in your mind and go from zero to 100 in an instant. When responding to an active shooter situation, whether as a concealed carrier or a law enforcement officer, you don’t need to rely on a checklist or follow a progression of force to decide how to respond. When somebody is using deadly force against innocent people, you can and must counter with whatever force is necessary to stop them as quickly as possible.
At first, this training seemed like stark contrast to the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund training I received not long ago, but I think they’re actually complementary. Police often rely on a continuum to make decisions about what force is appropriate to use in any given situation. This is necessary for the myriad everyday interactions police have with suspects, but in an active shooter situation it is largely irrelevant. The question in an active shooter event isn’t whether deadly force is appropriate—it clearly is—but how the threat can be stopped with as little injury and loss of life to innocents as possible.
According to Tomer Israeli, the owner of Israeli Tactical School, that’s where his program comes in. The school offers a variety of classes across the country and around the globe. I took four tactical classes at a training facility just outside the Beltway in southern Maryland.
Tomer was knowledgeable and charismatic, patient when the occasion called for it but authoritative when it was necessary, even with your humble correspondent. Even though he was only average height and weight—both smaller and older than me and most of the other students—I couldn’t help shake the feeling that he was easily the most deadly guy in the building.
Given Tomer’s background, that feeling made a great deal of sense. Tomer started his career in the Sayeret Matkal, which is basically Israel’s Delta Force. That unit is specially trained in operations behind enemy lines and hostage rescue—skills that the Israeli Tactical School also teach. Later, he became a Chief Security Officer in the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service. He served as the team leader at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C. for years before leaving to found the school in 2013. It was his training in counterterrorism and diplomatic security during that time that informed the training I went through.
And that training was informed by Israel’s own unique experience. An FBI report concluded that there have been 160 active shooter incidents in the United States between 2000 and 2013—an average of 11.4 per year. Most of those weren’t terror related, and some resulted in zero casualties. A recentFree Beacon analysis found that there have been six successful terrorist attacks on American soil since September 11, 2001.
The Israeli Security Agency, on the other hand, reports that there were 169 terrorist attacks on Israeli soil in the month of January alone.
That’s actually down significantly from October, when there were 620 attacks across the country. In that month 11 people were killed and 80 injured by attacks with knives, guns, rockets, and firebombs. This daily threat is practically unimaginable in the United States, and it occurs in a nation the size of New Jersey.
The frequency with which Israel has had to deal with active shooter situations and terrorist attacks has pushed its security forces to develop their tactics so far. Israel has developed the best tactics for dealing with threats through extensive trial and error.
“I’m nothing special,” Tomer said. “The tactic is simply very mature. It’s not like we know something you don’t know. We simply experienced all the mistakes already. We did all the mistakes that you didn’t do. We’ve already done it. You see that through the training. There really is an answer to everything. We really crossed all the roads.”
Tomer imparts his lessons through a combination of live fire and dry fire drills in constantly changing scenarios. They are centered around what he calls the individual warrior concept. While the class does incorporate training with a second responder, it inculcates in its students the mentality that they are not reliant on anyone else.
One drill features Tomer sprinting at students as they reload a gun to show exactly how much distance between you and an attacker is necessary to complete a reload—it’s a lot more than you might expect. Another drill teaches how to properly clear a room by quickly but methodically moving around a corner to see what’s inside the room without exposing more of your body than is necessary. Still another has students shoot a terrorist until he falls to the ground, then sprint toward him to ensure, either through gunfire or Krav Maga, that he’s unable to continue fighting.
Once the basic tools are in place, they’re combined in a series of high-octane scenarios. Tomer created a myriad of different scenarios using moveable walls and targets. We had to complete each scenario correctly and quickly to earn praise. If not, you’d do it again until you got it right.
Running through the scenarios sounded something like this: “Contact!” Fire fire fire fire. “Down!” Finger outside the trigger guard, flip the gun slightly toward the sky and look at the slide to check for malfunctions. Sprint to the attacker. Ensure that he’s out of the fight. “Neutralized!”
If there was more than one attacker, you didn’t wait around after neutralizing the first one.
“Contact!” Fire fire fire fire. “Down!” Finger out, check the gun. Sprint to the attacker. Shoot again if necessary. “Neutralized!” Sprint toward the sound of further gunfire.
Communication becomes especially important when doing the drill with a second student. It is vital that each participant know where the other is and what he is doing. Usually that involves yelling out information; sometimes it involves physical contact to avoid crossing the other participant’s firing line.
Once each student has learned all of this during dry fire exercises, the whole operation is moved to the range for live fire drills. The scenarios are changed again. Sometimes they even require students to smash through targets they have just engaged.
Of course, since many terrorist attacks occur at night, the whole thing is then repeated again in the dark—a kind of training that is hard to find elsewhere.
This training isn’t cheap—the first four tactical classes taught over the course of a weekend costs $1,200—but it is a remarkable value. Not only do you get world-class training from a top-flight operator, you get very personalized training. This isn’t a class of 30 people with a single instructor like you might see at an average pistol course. During my time at the school, there was an instructor for every two students. The instructors were able to provide a great deal of personalized attention so each student could work on their own weaknesses.
This is training that can be adopted and employed by a wide variety of potential first responders to attacks. Police, military, and civilians can all benefit from knowing how to properly handle an active shooter situation. If the closest good guy, regardless of who they are or whether they have a badge, doesn’t hesitate to engage, more innocent lives can be saved.
The post Learning to Fight Like an Israeli appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.
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Президент США Барак Обама в интервью журналу "Атлантик", посвященном вопросам внешней политики, дал оценку российскому президенту Владимиру Путину.
По словам Обамы, Россия заплатила за внешнеполитические действия Путина большую цену.
В беседе с президентом США журналист Джеффри Голдберг поделился сложившимся у него ощущением, что Обама считает Владимира Путина "неприятным и грубоватым". Обама ответил, что не может назвать Путина неприятным:
"На самом деле, Путин на всех наших встречах был исключительно вежлив, очень откровенен. Наши встречи были очень деловыми. Он никогда не заставлял меня ждать два часа, как он это делал со многими другими", - сказал президент США.
Как отношения руководителей государств влияют на взаимоотношения их стран и международную политику, справедливы ли оценки дают друг другу мировые лидеры? - обсуждают журналист-международник Борис Туманов, политологи-американисты Владислав Зубок (Брайтон, Великобритания), Владимир Согрин.
Ведущий - Владимир Кара - Мурза - старший.
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РБК |
Обама поменял командующего силами НАТО в Европе
РБК На посту командующего Объединенными силами НАТО в Европе, по традиции также руководящего Европейским командованием вооруженных сил США, Скапарротти сменит генерала Филипа Бридлава, сообщает пресс-служба Североатлантического альянса. Ожидается, что ... Совет НАТО одобрил назначение нового главкома ОВС альянса в ЕвропеРИА Новости Обама выдвинул генерала Скапаротти на пост главкома НАТО в ЕвропеГазета.Ru Назначен новый главком НАТО в ЕвропеРосбалт.RU Независимая газета -Взгляд -Радиостанция ЭХО МОСКВЫ Все похожие статьи: 99 » |
March 11, 2016
Russia in Review: a digest of useful news from U.S.-Russia Initiative to Prevent Nuclear Terrorism for March 4 – March 11, 2016
Slick English-language channel at forefront of efforts by President Erdogan to alter perceptions
Reports: North Korean Leader Orders More Nuclear Testsby webdesk@voanews.com (Amanda Scott)
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered the country to improve its nuclear attack capability after watching a recent ballistic missile launch test, the country's state media reports. North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) quoted Kim saying he wanted "more nuclear explosion tests to estimate the destructive power of the newly produced nuclear warheads and other tests to bolster up the nuclear attack capability." It says Kim declared that the DPRK would make its enemies "regret their misjudgment" and "reckless action." On Thursday, North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles that traveled about 500 kilometers before falling into the water off the country's east coast. The missile tests were likely in response to massive military drills by South Korea and the United States, which Pyongyang has called a preparation for invasion. Following the tests, Pyongyang said it will "liquidate" all remaining South Korean assets on its territory, referring to two abandoned joint projects: the Kaesong industrial complex and the Mount Kumgang tourism resort, both inside North Korean borders. The North's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea also said it is nullifying all agreements with South Korea on economic cooperation and exchange programs, and threatened military and economic actions against the South Korean government.
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Plan Approved to Shift Control of Internet From USby webdesk@voanews.com (Doug Bernard)
Members of ICANN, the U.S.-based non-profit agency that has managed oversight of the international Internet since its creation, agreed upon a final framework agreement that would shift oversight to a global body. Meeting in Morocco this week, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, approved a plan to transfer technical oversight of the web to an international team of stakeholders. The plan now goes before the U.S. Department of Commerce for final approval. The controversial plan has been a priority for the Obama Administration, and has earned support from a number of high-tech firms, such as Google, Facebook, Verizon and others. Critics worry that ceding control of the Internet to an international group that could include nations such as China, Russia, Iran and others would lead to less freedom and more surveillance online. Non-profit Under the proposal, ICANN would remain a private, not-for-profit firm that would remain involved in Internet governance. Any proposed major changes would be voted on by an advisory group comprised of representatives from various nations, businesses, and researchers. “The global Internet community has validated the multi-stakeholder model, by coming together to build a comprehensive transition package that we believe meets the requirements set out by the NTIA (National Telecommunications and Information Administration), and we are confident that the United States Government will agree,” said ICANN President and CEO Fadi Chehadé. ICANN was founded in 1998 as an independent agency to maintain the technical foundations and structure of the then-rapidly expanding Internet. It was founded in the U.S. largely because the web was first developed there, and still remains the global leader in Internet development. Snowden revelations However, the 2013 revelations by Edward Snowden of comprehensive U.S. surveillance of the web created friction in the international community and spurred a more global approach to the web’s governance. The Commerce Department has until later this fall to either agree to the proposal, or submit another plan.
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President Obama is right to lament the Anglo-French failure to follow through
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Business Insider |
Russia's military wants to buy five dolphins for $25000 and no, they don't want to disclose why
Business Insider The Russian Ministry of Defense has announced plans that it is seeking to buy five young and healthy dolphins, Russian news sources reported this week. According to the Russian media company TASS, the defense ministry is willing to pay upwards of ... Russia Is Shopping For Dolphins To Turn Into Undersea CommandosJalopnik The Russian military is looking for a few good dolphinsThe Verge Russia looks to buy five dolphins with perfect teeth and killer instinctThe Guardian Sky News Australia -TASS all 63 news articles » |
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