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sarahbalick

Rwanda genocide suspect arrested after 21 years - CNN.com - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

rwanda genocide suspect

shared by sarahbalick on 14 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • One of the most wanted fugitives sought in connection with atrocities committed during the 1994 Rwandan genocide has been arrested after 21 years on the run, the United Nations has announced
  • Ntaganzwa was indicted by the ICTR for genocide, crimes against humanity and other serious violations of international humanitarian law.
  • Ntaganzwa was among nine fugitives -- along with Felicien Kabuga, Augustin Bizimana, Protais Mpiranya, Fulgence Kayishema, Pheneas Munyarugarama, Aloys Ndimbati, Ryandikayo, and Charles Sikubwabo -- for which a $5 million reward is offered for information leading to their capture. The rest of the fugitives remain at large.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • In 1994, nearly 800,000 people lost their lives in the three-month killing spree. An estimated 300,000 of the genocide's victims were children. In addition, 95,000 children were orphaned.
  • The violence erupted after a plane carrying then-President Juvenal Habyarimana, an ethnic Hutu, was shot down on April 6, 1994.
katyshannon

Saudi Arabian women vote for first time in local elections | Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...election-idUSKBN0TV0E520151213

saudi women first time vote local elections reuters arabia middle east women's rights feminism history Politics culture

shared by katyshannon on 14 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • Saudi Arabian women voted for the first time on Saturday in local council elections and also stood as candidates, a step hailed by some activists in the Islamic patriarchy as a historic change, but by others as merely symbolic.
  • "As a first step it is a great achievement. Now we feel we are part of society, that we contribute," said Sara Ahmed, 30, a physiotherapist entering a polling station in north Riyadh. "We talk a lot about it, it's a historic day for us."
  • This incremental expansion of voting rights has spurred some Saudis to hope the Al Saud ruling family, which appoints the national government, will eventually carry out further reforms to open up the political system.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Saudi Arabia is the only country in which women cannot drive and a woman's male "guardian", usually a father, husband, brother or son, can stop her traveling overseas, marrying, working, studying or having some forms of elective surgery.
  • Under King Abdullah, who died in January and who announced in 2011 that women would be able to vote in this election, steps were taken for women to have a bigger public role, sending more of them to university and encouraging female employment.
  • However, while women's suffrage has in many other countries been a transformative moment in the quest for gender equality, its impact in Saudi Arabia is likely to be more limited due to a wider lack of democracy and continued social conservatism.
  • For now, according to some of the women voting on Saturday, apart from the symbolic nature of casting a ballot, their hopes for change resulting from their votes are limited to purely local issues.
  • The pace of social reform in Saudi Arabia, while ultimately dictated by the Al Saud, is also strongly influenced by a tussle between conservatives and progressives over how the country should marry its religious tradition with modernity.
  • Only 1.48 million Saudis from a population of 20 million registered to vote in the election, including 131,000 women, the widespread apathy partly the product of a poll with no political parties, strict laws on campaigning, and in which only local issues are at play.
  • At the King Salman Social Centre in north Riyadh, where men and women went into different parts of the building to cast their ballots, voters of both sexes were greatly outnumbered by both election officials and journalists.
  • Before Abdullah announced women would take part in this year's elections, the country's Grand Mufti, its most senior religious figure, described women's involvement in politics as "opening the door to evil".
  • "I believe women want more parks, libraries for their children, health and fitness facilities for women. And just to be part of the decision," said Ahmed, the physiotherapist.As she spoke, a military transport plane flew low overhead from the nearby airbase, a reminder of the momentous policies from war in Yemen to management of plunging oil prices on which Saudi citizens - men and women - still have no formal say.
redavistinnell

Putin vows to 'immediately destroy' any target threatening Russia in Syria | World news | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...arget-threatening-russia-syria

putin target russia syria world

shared by redavistinnell on 11 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • Putin vows to 'immediately destroy' any target threatening Russia in Syria
  • Speaking at a meeting with senior commanders in Moscow, Putin said the military should respond with full force to any “further provocations”, adding that additional aircraft and air defence weapons have been sent to the Russian base near Latakia.
  • In continuing violence, Islamic State claimed responsibility for a triple suicide truck bombing that killed 50 to 60 Kurds in Tell Tamer in the Hasaka area of northern Syria, while the UN said it was sending its senior relief official, Stephen O’Brien, to Damascus to examine the deteriorating humanitarian situation.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Russia has insisted the plane remained in Syrian airspace. Putin denounced the Turkish action as a “treacherous stab in the back”.
  • The campaign took advantage of western disarray and galvanised efforts to end the four-and-a-half-year war.
  • He said Russia was also helping some units of the opposition Free Syrian Army, which were fighting “terrorists” in Syria, providing air cover and supplying them with weapons.
  • The US and Britain have meanwhile welcomed agreement by Syrian opposition groups to hold talks with Assad in the new year. But the Syrians are still insisting he stands down at once – in the face of strong resistance from Russia and Iran, the president’s closest allies.
  • John Kerry, the US secretary of state, welcomed the Riyadh agreement by what he called “an extremely diverse group of Syrians” who created a negotiating body to represent them. The last talks between the Syrian government and opposition groups were in Geneva in January 2014 and got nowhere. Kerry admitted, however, that there were still some “kinks” to be ironed out.
  • The talks excluded Isis and Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian affiliate of al-Qaida and an important fighting force, as well as representatives of Syrian Kurdish groups.
  • Philip Hammond, the British foreign secretary, called the Riyadh agreement an important step ahead of new international talks on Syria in New York next week, following up on what diplomats call the Vienna process. The Syrian negotiations are due to be held in the first half of January.
redavistinnell

ISIS's Capital Still Hasn't Been Cut Off - The Daily Beast - 0 views

www.thedailybeast.com/...still-hasn-t-been-cut-off.html

capital daily beast

shared by redavistinnell on 09 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • ISIS’s Capital Still Hasn’t Been Cut Off
  • The distance from the Syrian city of Raqqa to Iraq’s Mosul is about 230 miles as the crow flies, and closer to 280 miles if one drives between the two “capitals” controlled by the self-declared Islamic State
  • As The Guardian reported in mid-November: “Although heavily targeted throughout the campaign, ISIS has kept a supply line between Raqqa and Mosul largely open. The highway, in particular, has been a major conduit for trade and the flow of fighters.”
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • Hisham Abed (not his real name, for security reasons) says he and his 1980s-era Mercedes truck used to take the circuitous route described above. It took him just about six or seven hours to make the journey to Raqqa, and he liked the road because it was paved and relatively safe.
  • Mosul merchant Hassan Thanon (again, a pseudonym) complains that he can no longer communicate with the drivers of trucks carrying his stocks.
  • The new route out of Mosul heads south rather than west. Truckers drive on real roads to Tal Abtah, then take a dirt road for nearly 40 miles until they get to the Qayrawan (also known as Balij) subdistrict southwest of Mosul. There’s a paved road here, not far from the Sinjar Mountains, and from there the trucks cross into Syria.
  • And there are other adaptations: One driver has outfitted his truck like a mobile mechanic’s workshop, carrying tools and spare wheels so he can make repairs if they break down in the desert. He’s charging his colleagues high prices for his services.
  • “My truck was one of the first to travel this new route,” Abed said proudly, soon after he arrived back in Mosul after another tiring journey.
  • Transport costs have also increased by about 25 percent, Thanon said. “But we were only able to increase the prices of our goods a little bit because people living in Mosul can barely afford to buy anything anyway.”
  • Abed says he saw the results of one airstrike. Planes had hit a convoy of trucks carrying vegetables from Raqqa to Mosul; three trucks on the Syrian side of the border were burned out.
  • However, as Abed notes, there are no guarantees that this road will continue to be drivable.
Megan Flanagan

War on ISIS: Why Arab states aren't doing more - CNN.com - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by Megan Flanagan on 10 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • sending Special Forces. British jets have joined French warplanes over the skies of Syria. Even Germany, whose post-World War II constitution puts restrictions on fighting battles on foreign soil, is becoming increasingly involved.
  • Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are down to about one mission against ISIS targets each month, a U.S. official told CNN on Monday. Bahrain stopped in the autumn, the official says, and Jordan stopped in August.
  • Yemen -- not ISIS -- is the priority for most Arab countries
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • Yemen is at the center of a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the region's biggest powers.
  • Iran is majority Shia Muslim and non-Arab. Most of the other countries in the region -- including, and led by, Saudi Arabia -- are majority Sunni Arab, and are suspicious of Iran's motives.
  • ou're talking about a major 24/7 war. The Saudis and the Emiratis -- the two countries with the most capacity in terms of air power -- are flying fighter jets over the skies of Yemen,
  • "The Arab states, including Jordan -- after the incident with the pilot [burned to death by ISIS when his plane crashed in Syria] -- are laying low,"
  • "ISIS doesn't just exist in Syria and Iraq -- it has major constituency supporters in almost all Arab countries, including Saudi, Kuwait, Lebanon and Jordan.
  • They're not just fighters, they play leadership roles -- and ISIS has carried out major attacks in Saudi, both against Shiite mosques and against (other) Saudi targets.
  • They say Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies are also less inclined to carry out strikes against ISIS targets if doing so helps Iran's allies in Damascus and Baghdad.
  • "It is important for any intervening army to have the backing of the central government, or at least the army in the country," Sary says, "(including) the army of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who everyone will see as impossible to work with."
  • Even Germany, whose post-World War II constitution puts restrictions on fighting battles on foreign soil, is becoming increasingly involved.
  • appears that the involvement of the U.S.-led coalition's Arab members -- all of them much closer geographically to the terror group than their Western partners -- is drawing down.
  • Analysts say Yemen is at the center of a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the region's biggest powers.
  • Religion and ethnicity are at the heart of the longstanding hostility
  • The critical shift was the coalition in Yemen,
  • ISIS doesn't just exist in Syria and Iraq -- it has major constituency supporters in almost all Arab countries, including Saudi, Kuwait, Lebanon and Jordan
  • Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies are also less inclined to carry out strikes against ISIS targets if doing so helps Iran's allies in Damascus and Baghda
  • There's been the idea that ISIS is a bigger challenge for Iran and its allies than it is for the Arab states, even though this feeling is changing now."
  • no individual country is likely to risk it, and no nation has a mandate to act on behalf of everyone else.
  • the over-involvement by the army in the internal affairs of the state has become acceptable, but when it comes to foreign intervention, it becomes problematic
Javier E

Who Won the Republican Presidential Debate in Las Vegas? - The Atlantic - 0 views

origin.theatlantic.com/...420657

GOP debate election

shared by Javier E on 16 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • What unified the nine candidates on stage was their insistence that the Obama administration had failed to keep Americans safe, falling short in its efforts both stateside and abroad.
  • The main takeaways from the evening were that political correctness is bad and that most of the field, except perhaps Trump and Paul, are eager to deploy American troops to Syria and Iraq.
  • None of the candidates were asked about the Paris climate talks, the agreement that came from it, and whether or not they would defy it if elected. Given the role that President George W. Bush played in torpedoing the Kyoto Protocol and the candidates' reticence towards Obama's climate-change policy, it's an important one with potentially global ramifications.
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  • The only times that global warming has surfaced in this debate, held directly after the Paris climate talks, is when GOP candidates have mocked the Obama administration’s efforts to deal with the problem.
  • Fiorina: “If we want China’s support, we have to push back on China.”
  • If only Marco Rubio were as cautious as getting one war of choice wrong as he seems to be about getting one refugee wrong—last time around, the wrong call on a war of choice cost more than 5,000 lives and trillions of dollars, far more costly than even the most devastating terrorist attack in US history.
  • The immigration debate illustrated the perceived difference between Rubio and Cruz: Rubio is seen by some as incapable of winning the Republican primary because of his support for legislation backed by Obama and congressional Democrats in 2013, while Cruz is seen as unelectable in a general election because of his hard-right positions, including immigration.
  • Marco Rubio gets Ted Cruz to utter a line on immigration that Democrats will love if he is a general election candidate: “I have never supported legalization, and I don't intend to support legalization.”
  • Chris Christie would shoot down a Russian plane in Syria. If it started World War III, well, a no-fly zone means a no-fly zone.
  • Kasich, with a bold plea for World War III: "Frankly, it's time we punched the Russians in the nose."
Javier E

Review: Charlie Savage's 'Power Wars' Dissects Obama's Evolution on National Security - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...tion-on-national-security.html

Obama counterterrorism civil rights civil liberties policy history

shared by Javier E on 30 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • In the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama repeatedly criticized President George W. Bush for his “war on terror,” including the use of torture, indefinite detention, warrantless surveillance, secrecy and expansive presidential power. Yet after nearly seven years of the Obama administration, many (though not all) of these Bush-era policies remain in effect.
  • the political fallout from this incident, arguably including the Democrats’ loss of a Senate seat with Scott Brown’s upset victory in Massachusetts, effectively spooked the Obama team. It “profoundly hardened the Obama administration’s attitude towards counterterrorism,” he writes.
  • Charlie Savage addresses that question exhaustively, describing how President Obama, his top aides and, above all, his lawyers grappled again and again with the many questions about counterterrorism they inherited when they took office.
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  • in its 700-plus pages, the author catalogs virtually all the legal disputes over counterterrorism in the Obama era, all the justifications, procedural steps and bureaucratic battles, to the point where at times his book seems more like a compendium than a narrative
  • With the exception of torture, which President Obama prohibited on his first day in office, his administration managed mostly to provide new legal underpinnings for many of the national-security policies (including warrantless surveillance, indefinite detention at Guantánamo Bay and drone strikes) that were first adopted under Mr. Bush
  • President Obama will some day be seen “as less a transformative post-9/11 president than a transitional one.”
  • in some areas like surveillance, the Obama team never planned to outlaw the policies, despite what some of his supporters on the left may have thought
  • He has led a “lawyerly” administration, Mr. Savage writes, one that has added “an additional layer of rules, standards and procedures” to “the unsettling premise that the United States was still at war and would, of necessity, remain so with no end in sight.”
  • Power Wars” opens with an incident that Mr. Savage considers a fundamental turning point for the Obama administration: the attempt by the so-called underwear bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, to detonate explosives aboard a plane heading for Detroit on Christmas Day in 2009.
  • Why was there no greater change?
  • there are alternative ways of interpreting the Obama administration’s policy steps on national security in its early years. One is that well before that time, the administration was already spooked: It had retreated on counterterrorism issues throughout the president’s first year in office.
  • Gregory Craig, President Obama’s first White House counsel, who had pushed for quicker and more vigorous changes in counterterrorism policies, had already left the administration after a series of battles with other White House officials who were reluctant to take actions that might anger the C.I.A.
  • In short, the Obama White House was from the outset under pressure from the military and intelligence communities not to veer too sharply from the policies and decisions of the Bush era
  • during the Bush years, the Democrats mounted two strands of attack on the post-9/11 policies. The first was from the civil liberties perspective, to assert that policies like warrantless surveillance were inherently wrong. The second line of attack was to say that the Bush administration’s policies violated the rule of law because President Bush adopted them on his own without congressional or other legal authority.
  • President Obama’s “specific complaints” about the Bush programs and his promises “were heavily tilted towards fixing the legal process.”
  • the death of Osama bin Laden in a 2011 raid by Navy SEALs in Pakistan, a subject of renewed controversy
  • He concludes that the lawyers’ activities and the memos they wrote fit with the Obama administration’s account of the raid and not with the revisionist theories about it.
  • Mr. Savage writes that there is no simple judgment to be made on President Obama’s legacy on counterterrorism issues: His administration deeply disappointed defenders of civil liberties critics on the left but was also regularly attacked by hawks on the right.
  • “Obama’s record was irreducibly messy and complex, not unlike the world in which he tried to govern,”
cjlee29

Turkey Shoots Down Russian Warplane Near Syrian Border - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ria-russia-military-plane.html

shared by cjlee29 on 24 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • feared
  • a long-feared escalation that will further strain relations between the NATO member country and Russia.
  • NATO announced that it would hold an emergency meeting on Tuesday in Brussels to discuss the episode
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • rebels possibly wielding TOW antitank missiles and other weapons had shot down a Russian helicopter sent to the scene of the crash to look for survivors.
  • called the incident a “stab in the back” by those who “abet” terrorism and warned it would have “serious consequences for Russian-Turkish relations.”
  • Mr. Putin did not specify what those consequences might b
  • a large Russian tour operator, Natalie Tours, announced it was suspending sales to Turkey, where Russians account for about 12 percent of all tourists last year.
  • “Russia-Turkey relations will drop below zero,”
  • The two countries are also significant trade partners.
  • The shoot down occurred as Russia and the West were slowly edging toward some manner of understanding to unite forces to confront the Islamic State in the wake of the bloody terrorist attacks in Paris and the downing of a Russian charter flight over Egypt that combined killed 354 people.
  • The warplane incident also underscores the uneasy relations between Turkey and other members of the NATO alliance
  • , who fear being dragged into a larger conflict through an impetuous act by the Turkish leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
  • Russia’s entry into the heavily trafficked skies around Syria in September had raised immediate concerns about mishaps
  • The Russian military said that the plane’s two pilots had ejected
  • Shadi al-Ouwayni, an activist in rural Latakia Province, where the pilot’s body was recovered, said one pilot was shot as he drifted to the ground in his parachute while the other was captured by a local militia called the 10th Brigade. The pilots landed in different, but rebel controlled, locations, he said.
  • “One of the Russian pilots was shot as he was trying to land,” he said. “The other was injured and captured.”
aqconces

Adrian Carton de Wiart: The unkillable soldier - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...magazine-30685433

adrian carton soldier

shared by aqconces on 26 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart was a one-eyed, one-handed war hero who fought in three major conflicts across six decades, surviving plane crashes and PoW camps.
  • Carton de Wiart served in the Boer War, World War One and World War Two.
  • In the process he was shot in the face, losing his left eye, and was also shot through the skull, hip, leg, ankle and ear.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • "Frankly, I had enjoyed the war."
  • "His story serves to remind us that not all British generals of WW1 were 'Chateau Generals' as portrayed in Blackadder. He exhibited heroism of the highest order.
  • In WW1 he was severely wounded on eight occasions and mentioned in despatches six times.
  • "I honestly believe that he regarded the loss of an eye as a blessing as it allowed him to get out of Somaliland to Europe where he thought the real action was."
qkirkpatrick

Opinion: How a century-old war affects you - CNN.com - 1 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

war culture history economics today

shared by qkirkpatrick on 25 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • World War I began a hundred years ago this summer, but for many of us it might as well be a thousand. We know it, if we know it at all, as a dimly remembered chapter in high school history, or as scenes from old black-and-white movies of soldiers hunkered in trenches doing battle with Germans in pointy helmets
  • Gas masks evolved quickly, though, and by the end of the war even some horses and dogs at the front had their own.
  • The weapons it introduced -- submarines, machine guns, poison gas, grenades, tanks -- are all still part of our arsenals. And it was World War I that made airpower and strategic bombing central to the success of any future war.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • At home and on the battlefield, World War I put new objects and words into circulation: "cooties" are something no kid wants to get, but for GIs in the trenches, they were real and they were lice; and sanitary napkins developed from the handy alternative use nurses found for cellulose bandage material produced for the war. The war popularized Kleenex and tea bags and zippers.
  • Empires fell, and new nations--Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia and Poland among them-- were born in the ashes. Leaders of the still-powerful French and British empires used the conflict to redraw borders in ways that set the stage for future conflicts that stretch on today, in the Middle East, for example.
  • All told, more than 9 million died in the conflict, and 21 million were wounded, psychologically scarring a generation. Soldiers were at pains to explain this new human experience of battle to those back home.
  • Women gained new visibility in society, moving into the jobs vacated by enlisted men.
  • They drove streetcars, smelted iron, built bombs and then, after a long day at the factory, scrounged for food for their families. Civilians working for the war effort meant that anyone could be a target: German Fokker planes attacked at the front, but Zeppelin airships bombed London and Paris. "Total war" made the home front a dangerous place.
  • All parties thought the war would be a short one; none imagined the speed with which the conflict would degenerate into a series of local atrocities (the Belgians became the conflict's first group of refugees, as they fled German rape and plunder) and mass slaughter across many fronts.
drewmangan1

U.S. diverts aircraft to avoid Russian fighter - CNNPolitics.com - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by drewmangan1 on 22 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • The U.S. military diverted two aircraft over Syria to ensure they could maintain a safe flying distance from a Russian fighter aircraft in the same area, according to Captain Jeff Davis, Pentagon spokesman.
  • Since the Russians began operating in Syrian airspace, U.S. pilots have been under orders to change their flight path if there is a Russian plane within 20 nautical miles, according to the official.
sarahbalick

Iran accuses Saudis of hitting Yemen embassy - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-middle-east-35251917

iran yemen embassy

shared by sarahbalick on 07 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • Iran has accused Saudi-led coalition warplanes of damaging its embassy and injuring staff in an air strike on Yemen's capital, Sanaa.
  • State media quoted a foreign ministry spokesman as saying planes had deliberately targeted the site.
  • Residents quoted by Reuters said missiles had struck 700m (2,300 feet) from the embassy, causing shrapnel and rocks to land near the building.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • A coalition spokesman said the strikes had targeted rebel missile launchers, and that the rebels had used abandoned embassies for operations.
  • On Thursday, a statement read on Iranian state TV said the country had banned the import of all Saudi goods.
alexdeltufo

Republicans ignore the lessons of World War II - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...5-bce4-708fe33e3288_story.html

shared by alexdeltufo on 14 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • President Obama addressed the nation Sunday night from the Oval Office, a rare use of the sacred symbols of the presidency to reassure Americans about their security while steeling them for a long and complex struggle against the Islamic State.
  • Donald Trump answered Obama’s call for tolerance by declaring that no Muslims should be permitted to enter the United States:
  • “Repackaged half measures . . . Tone deaf . . . sales pitch for the status quo . . . President Obama is riding the bench at T-ball today.
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • But the only thing this reflexive complaining does is divide the country further and make a coherent response to Islamic State more difficult.
  • There, I met Dale “Red” Robinson, a Pearl Harbor survivor and a staff sergeant in the infantry who was later part of the Normandy landing. He recalled the national unity of that war
  • “Nothing like this, these days. It’s sad, kind of sad, my friend.”
  • Robinson said he feels “sorry for all of the soldiers” serving today, let down by their political leaders.
  • That’s what Monday afternoon’s ceremony was about. A sailor rang a bell at 1:57 p.m. Eastern time, the moment 74 years earlier when Japanese planes struck
  • ater, while the band played “America the Beautiful,” the veterans, some wheeled, some walking with support, made a slow procession around the memorial’s pool to place wreaths
  • We live all of us today with the prosperity and the security built on the shoulders of these heroes,”
  • That’s our challenge — and we’re failing.
  • “The difference is the uncertainty of today, and it’s a big difference,”
  • “I thought they were more loyal, more concerned about the nation than their position,” he said.
  • Mays complained about the sharp partisan divisions in Congress. “How can we bring unity when you have that?”
  • Now, our representatives can’t even manage to come up with a resolution authorizing the use of military force against the Islamic State — and they’ve been at it for a year.
  • “just a half-hearted attempt to defend and distract from a failing policy.” Ryan said we are “one step behind our enemy.”
  • and the constant sniping at each other does nothing to defeat the Islamic State. As those old soldiers on the Mall taught us, victory comes from unity.
  • alexdeltufo on 14 Jan 16
     
    Dana Milbank
maddieireland334

The American Prisoners Just Left Iran. But Kerry Almost Got Them Out Months Ago. - 0 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...hange_569b799fe4b0b4eb759eaa09

US Prisoners Crisis Iran Kerry

shared by maddieireland334 on 17 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • A Swiss plane carrying American citizens, including a Washington Post reporter, who were released from Iranian prison on Saturday departed Tehran early Sunday morning. The prisoners were freed as part of a prisoner release deal -- the result of 14 months of high-stakes secret negotiations between the U.S. and Iran.
  • Last July, just before the U.S., Iran and five world powers announced they had reached an agreement on Iran's nuclear program, Kerry had a conversation about the prisoners with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, and President Hassan Rouhani's brother, Hossein Fereydoun, in Vienna.
  • Afterward, they went to Zarif's hotel room and spoke again about the prisoners. “We actually shook hands, thinking we had an agreement,” Kerry said. “I thought it was done.”
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Zarif and Kerry continued to meet, while Brett McGurk, head of the State Department's counter-Islamic State coalition, ran a separate diplomatic track with different Iranian officials as part of the effort to keep the prisoner negotiations separate from the then-ongoing nuclear talks.
  • Ultimately, the two countries agreed on seven Iranians: three who were serving prison time and four who were awaiting trial. All seven were facing charges related to violations of nuclear sanctions -- which were lifted on Saturday. “So there was a symmetry here,” Kerry said.
  • Kerry credits the nuclear deal with showing that Iran and the U.S., despite having no formal diplomatic ties, can work together to resolve issues peacefully.
  • The deal leaves American citizen Siamak Namazi, who was arrested in October, in prison. And it doesn’t provide answers about Robert Levinson, the American CIA contractor who disappeared in 2007.
  • Kerry sees the prisoner deal as a positive precedent for Levinson's and Namazi's cases.
  • Critics of the prisoner agreement, namely Republican lawmakers and presidential candidates, argue that any type of swap or exchange is unjust.
  • According to Kerry, Zarif suggested that there was room for the two countries to work cooperatively on other issues, including in Yemen and Syria, where the U.S. and Iran are effectively fighting on opposite sides of proxy wars.
qkirkpatrick

Find Germans Are Making Forbidden Planes, Operating Shops in Sweden and Switzerland - Article - NYTimes.com - 0 views

query.nytimes.com/...abstract.html

versaille politics history economics

shared by qkirkpatrick on 17 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • At a moment when France, in cooperatin with Britain, is negotiating with Germany with a view to lessening the restrictions which the treaty of Versailles placed upon her aviation-activities. French officials are concerned to learn of a further effort on the part of the Reich to build up just outside the borders of the country a formidable chain of German aviation factories.
  • qkirkpatrick on 17 Jan 16
     
    Article written in 1926 talks of politics following Versaille Treaty
johnsonma23

U.S. Imposes New Sanctions Over Iran Missile Tests - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-remains-us-officials-say.html

iran new york times US

shared by johnsonma23 on 17 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • U.S. Imposes New Sanctions Over Iran Missile Tests
  • he Obama administration announced Sunday that it was imposing new, more limited sanctions on some Iranian citizens and companies for violating United Nations resolutions against ballistic missile tests.
  • after a Swiss plane carrying Americans freed by the Iranian authorities departed Tehran.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • new sanctions on those involved with Iran’s recent ballistic missile tests conducted in violation of United Nations restrictions, but he did not elaborate or dwell on that dispute.
  • “We have a rare chance to pursue a new path, a different, better future that delivers progress for both our peoples and the wider world,” said Mr. Obama,
  • But Mr. Obama vowed to continue monitoring Iran’s nuclear program to ensure it does not cheat and said he would work to restrain any aggressive behavior by Iran, including terrorist activity and human rights abuses.
  • The release of the Americans came a day after Iran and the United States concluded delicate negotiations on a prisoner exchange tied indirectly to the completion of a nuclear agreement.
  • optics of the back-to-back sanctions announcements might seem to suggest that Washington was imposing new measures to make up for those that were lifted Saturday, they are actually nowhere near comparable.
  • The action taken Saturday allowed Iran to re-enter the world’s oil markets;
  • The new sanctions are mostly aimed at individuals and some small companies accused of shipping crucial technologies to Iran,
  • in addition to the completion of the nuclear deal and the prisoner swap, the United States and Iran had resolved a three-decade-old financial dispute.
  • Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, did not address the prisoner swap on Sunday. At a news conference, he said that since the sanctions were lifted, the door had opened for foreign investments in the country, even by American companies.
jongardner04

Americans in Iran prisoner swap arrive in Switzerland - CNN.com - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

iran americans swap

shared by jongardner04 on 17 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • A plane carrying at least three of the four Americans freed by Iran as part of a prisoner swap has taken off
  • statement from a senior White House official did not name specific prisoners and provided only sparse details
  • Washington Post confirmed its journalist, Jason Rezaian, was released in the prisoner swap and had left the country with his wife
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • We can confirm that our detained U.S. citizens have been released and that those who wished to depart Iran have left
  • The nuclear agreement "accelerated" the prisoner swap
  • were released, along with four other Iranians held in other parts of the U.S., Mechanich's attorney
  • concluded Tehran was in compliance with the deal governing its nuclear program.
  • U.S. federal officials said they will not comment on the names of anyone who is part of the agreement until after the four Americans are in U.S. custody
  • seven Iranian men walked free from detention in the United States after being pardoned and released
  • he freed prisoners are expected to be transported to a U.S. military hospital in Germany for medical evaluation
  • Iranian officials to "continue cooperating with the United States to determine the whereabouts of Robert Levinson,
  • FBI agent and CIA contractor, went missing in Iran in 2007.
  • men had been involved in exporting products and services to Iran in violation of trade sanctions against the country.
  • agreed to drop charges against 14 other Iranians whose extradition to the United States seemed unlikely
  • Three Americans freed in a prisoner swap with Iran arrived in Germany on Sunday evening after a brief stop in Switzerland, two White House officials said.
  • The fourth prisoner released in the swap, identified by U.S. officials as Nosratollah Khosravi-Roodsari, decided not to leave Iran, senior White House officials said. "It's his free determination" whether he wants to stay in Iran, one official said. "We don't make that judgment."
johnsonma23

ISIS steps up attacks far from its 'caliphate' - CNN.com - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

cnn Crisis attacks

shared by johnsonma23 on 18 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • ISIS steps up attacks far from its 'caliphate'
  • Istanbul, Jakarta, Philadelphia, multiple locations in Libya, the Russian republic of Dagestan: within the past two weeks all have been the target of attacks by ISIS supporters or affiliates, killing and wounding dozens of people.
  • Islamic State in Iraq and Syria is spreading its wings as it comes under greater pressure in its Iraqi-Syrian heartland
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • Abu Bakr al Baghdad
  • rusader" countries and beyond.
  • indiscriminate attacks on civilian targets
  • , symbols of Western power or decadence
  • Beyond ISIS "branded" attacks -- those launched by affiliates and members -- ISIS also seeks to make political capital out of individuals who claim to be "inspired" by it, such as those in San Bernardino, California, in December and last week in Philadelphia.
  • stage of the investigation, there is no evidence accused gunman Edward Archer was part of an organized cell or that other attacks were in the works.
  • here is no doubting ISIS' lure to a fringe of extremist Muslims and Muslim converts
  • A year ago, ISIS was focused almost exclusively on carving out its self-declared caliphate. Overseas terror attacks in the style of al Qaeda did not appear high on the agenda
  • An early indication that ISIS' leadership favored overseas attacks came when the Belgian jihadist Abdelhamid Abaaoud -- a high-profile member of the group, if only a lieutenant -- plotted a series of gun and bomb attacks against police stations
  • "Know that we want Paris -- by Allah's permission -- before Rome and before Spain, after we blacken your lives and destroy the White House, Big Ben and the Eiffel Tower."
  • the "caliph" himself, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, suggested ISIS will look for further opportunities to export its war to the "far abroad."
  • Throughout 2015, there was a steady stream of terror attacks that could be linked firmly to ISIS-associated groups, even if the relationship between them and the group's central leadership was often opaque
  • What, if any, role the central ISIS leadership had in the bombing of the Metrojet plane is still unknown. Its Sinai affiliate claimed the attack, and it was some time before the ISIS online publication Dabiq referred to it.
  • The suicide bomb attacks in Ankara were likely ordered by ISIS itself
  • The Paris attacks in November were a landmark: the first clearly organized and claimed by ISIS itself from Syria rather than the autonomous actions of affiliates or individuals.
  • t has a growing network of wilayat, or provinces -- places where it has an established presence such as Libya, Yemen and Afghanistan -- where government is weak and conflict endemic. In some instances it has sent fighters from Syria and Iraq to expand its presence in these places, most notably in Libya.
  • It also has a pool of experienced foreign fighters
  • The disappearance of one of the Paris attackers, Salah Abdeslam, and several alleged co-conspirators suggests ISIS may have a network of safe houses and travel facilitators in Europe
Javier E

'The OA' Season 2: TV's Oddest Show Is Back - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...585208

video effect social impact creativity sincerity irony culture

shared by Javier E on 20 Mar 19 - No Cached
  • When The OA debuted in a surprise drop at the end of 2016, it quickly became one of Netflix’s coveted word-of-mouth hits, as viewers furiously debated its meaning, its mythology, its magniloquence
  • The OA’s metaphysical elements, its ideas about parallel universes and supernatural dreams, cast the show into a new wave of speculative storytelling on television. It followed Netflix’s Stranger Things, an ’80s-steeped sci-fi series about psychokinesis and monsters from other dimensions, and NBC’s The Good Place, an office comedy of sorts about life after death and the meaning of morality. More recently, Russian Doll on Netflix presented a scenario in which a woman dies over and over again, using it to explore the question of what people can mean to one another in this complicated, heartbreaking plane of existence.
  • This trend, Batmanglij theorized, is part of a reaction to the fact that reality feels more and more fractured, with its online portals to different worlds, and its varying versions of the truth
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  • they’re also wondering what it means to try to tell empathic, sincere stories to audiences much more accustomed to cynicism and irony. Because, when it comes down to it, which side is more likely to give first?
  • The movie cost $130,000 to make, and took three months to film. Last minute, they submitted it to the Sundance Film Festival, and it happened to be accepted, as was Another Earth. Almost instantly, Marling went from being a total unknown to someone who had two films debuting at arguably the most prestigious film festival in the world at the same time.
  • Netflix wasn’t only changing the way television was commissioned and produced. It was also upending the whole system for how shows were consumed.
  • Previously, when debuting their work, Batmanglij and Marling had been at film festivals, buffeted by small audiences of professional critics and cinephiles. The OA was different. Overnight, it landed on a platform where it was accessible to hundreds of millions of people. There was no soft opening, no way to ease their series into the world. The OA dropped, and people began to watch it, and to respond to watching it in real time, broadcasting their thoughts to their social-media feeds, and there was no way back.
  • If there was one factor that seemed to unnerve some people about The OA, it was its sincerity
  • When everything seems so terrible, irony is a protective shroud, offering a way to acknowledge reality without being affected by it
  • Irony, Edward St. Aubyn writes in the last of his Patrick Melrose novels, about an Englishman processing horrendous childhood abuse, “is the hardest addiction of all … Forget heroin. Just try giving up irony, that deep-down need to mean two things at once, to be in two places at once, not to be there for the catastrophe of a fixed meaning.
  • he and Marling felt adamant that their sincerity was one of their most significant qualities as writers. They made a pact that they weren’t going to let anything or anyone drum their sincerity out of them. “If you do, you’re sort of dead in the water as an artist,” Marling said. “Then it’s like you’ve decided that what matters most is everybody getting it.
  • One of the most dysfunctional qualities about the world right now, she thinks, is that people aren’t able to just sit with complicated emotions, or truly listen, or be open about what they’re feeling. “Those things are out of fashion, and the fact that they’ve fallen out of fashion is why we’re living in the world we’re living in.”
  • In the end, though, as Marling said, it’s okay if not everyone gets it. Something she thinks about a lot is the paradox of trying to make something original these days, something that’s informed by the truth of the human condition but unfettered by criticism or praise. “You have to somehow have the heart of a baby and the hide of a rhinoceros. And that is a crazy juxtaposition. How do you maintain it?”
  • You do it, maybe, by being sincere, by keeping the hope, always, that the work you make might not be able to change the whole world, but it might reach a tiny part of it
  • Marling describes one of the responses to The OA that moved her the most, a video that a young man sent her. “Can I set it up for a second?” Batmanglij asked. “He’s visiting his grandma for the weekend, and he goes and he finds her to say goodbye.” Marling picked up the story. “She’s standing in the backyard, she’s 80 years old, and she’s standing in the sun, the late sun coming at the end of the day, and she’s doing this. [She mimics the movements from the show.] And he’s like, ‘Grandma, grandma, what are you doing?’ And she’s like, ‘I’m going somewhere.’” Marling smiles. Things like that can daze you, she said. When you think about it, it’s miraculous. “You can touch strangers, and they can touch you back.”
malonema1

Puerto Ricans Are Struggling To Flee The Island With Their Pets | HuffPost - 0 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...es_us_59ef6efde4b04917c5938f55

PuertoRico Crisis

shared by malonema1 on 25 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • Thousands of people are fleeing Puerto Rico as the island remains without power and the death toll continues to climb more than a month after Hurricane Maria. Even for those who can afford plane tickets and get to the airport, there’s another hurdle: evacuating with pets.  Leaving the island with animals in tow has become a huge challenge, said Sarah Barnett of the Humane Society of the United States, which has workers on the ground in Puerto Rico. The pet owners Barnett has spoken with have been “hysterical” with worry, she said.
  • Some pet owners stayed, remaining in dire conditions to care for animals. Others had to make gut-wrenching decisions. Claudia, a single mother who left for North Carolina with her baby and two dogs, left her other three dogs with a friend. She’s now desperately trying to bring those dogs to the mainland, too.
  • “They’re inundated with people wanting to fly their animals out in cargo,” Barnett said. American Airlines is accepting a limited number of pets per flight as checked baggage, and United is transporting animals through its PetSafe program.  Delta did not reply to a query about whether it is flying pets in cargo, though it previously waived fees for pets flying in the cabin from Puerto Rico. JetBlue and Southwest never transport pets in the cargo hold, though they both fly a limited number of small pets in the main cabin. A JetBlue spokesperson told HuffPost the airline has waived all in-cabin pet fees for flights out of Puerto Rico through Nov. 15, and doubled the number of pets per flight from four to eight.
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  • Mostly, animal transport efforts are focused on bringing Puerto Rico shelter animals to mainland cities where they can be adopted. The Humane Society of the United States, in some cases working with volunteer pilots from the nonprofit Wings of Rescue, has evacuated more than 1,500 cats and dogs, as well as a few pigs.
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