BILAWAL BHUTTO CONDEMNS MURDER OF A KOHAT JOURNALIST HAFEEZUR REHMAN

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, Chairman Pakistan Peoples Party has condemned murder of a Kohat journalist Hafeezur Rehman in village Kalo Khan Banda by armed men in an ambush.
In a press statement, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari expressed concern over the growing attacks on journalist community in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and urged the provincial government and the law enforcing agencies to provide protection to the newsmen.

He said that killing of the journalist in Kohat was a various security issue and sympathized with the bereaved family and demanded KPK Government to provide adequate compensation to the family besides taking stern action against the killers.

https://ppppunjab.wordpress.com/2015/11/23/bilawal-bhutto-condemns-murder-of-a-kohat-journalist-hafeezur-rehman/

#PPP BALOCHISTAN LEADER MIR CHANGEZ JAMALI CALLS ON CHAIRMAN PPP BILAWAL BHUTTO

Former Federal Minsiter and PPP Balochistan Leader Mir Changez Khan Jamali called on Chairman Pakistan Peoples Party Bilawal Bhutto Zardari today at Bilawal House.

Former Federal Minsiter discussed the overall political and especially Balochistan Situation with Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari.

Mir Changez Khan Jamali apprised the Chairman about Provincial organizational matters and invited him to visit Balochistan as the peoples of Balochistan and Party workers are awaiting to welcome their Chairman.

Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari assured him that he will visit Balochistan soon and asked him to keep contact with common peoples and workers as Pakistan Peoples Party always worked for the common, oppressed and down trodden people of Pakistan.

Pakistan - CPEC for all?

The small controversy over dualisation of the eastern and western routes should have been enough to make the government realise that it cannot easily fiddle with the framework agreed with the Chinese. PML-N motorway/highway projects have run into such issues before, with the leadership often agreeing to bend the route here and there to favour a few favourites. But the magnitude of CPEC, the players involved, and the promises made to the grass-root will not allow such adventures. In fact, just rumours of changing the west route had KP politicians up in arms, and tremors were felt all the way to the Chinese leadership.

The ruling party needs to realise two important things about the Corridor. One, it is a government-to-government deal; not a Chinese project with the PML-N. Ruling party leaders, especially the Sharif brothers, have of late tried to sell CPEC as a personal achievement, which is more than a slight distortion of facts. And two, the party has a habit of keeping secrets, especially regarding important energy matters, and keeping the public largely in the dark. This bad habit, too, will have to be shed.

CPEC is important, but ultimately it is one component of China’s greater Silk Route initiative. And Beijing is relentless in its perusal of this plan. All deadlines and deliverables are clearly defined. Therefore the Pakistani side will only hurt itself if it diverts mid-way or keeps important plans to itself. Already section of the Chinese press has begun expressing concern about Pakistan missing initial deadlines. Official comment back home never budges from the rhetorical ‘higher than mountains, deeper than oceans’ slogans about Pak-China friendship. But sooner or later more quantifiable elements will come into play. Pakistan must ensure all contractual obligations are met, and the project is free of controversy from beginning to end.

Pakistan's Ahmedi Muslim community - State of fear

Another alleged blasphemy related incident involving the Ahmedi community in Jehlum has once again highlighted the parlous state of affairs regarding the blasphemy issue and especially the state of fear in which minorities generally, and the Ahmedi community in particular, live in our country. The incident began on Friday, November 20, when a supervisor in a factory owned by Ahmedis allegedly burnt copies of the Holy Quran as part of the scrap used to fire the factory’s boiler. Workers at the factory reacted to the alleged blasphemy and filed a complaint with the local police. The local mosques then got into the act as they tend to do and instigated people against the alleged blasphemy. An enraged mob forcibly entered the factory, set it on fire along with workers’ homes on the premises and vehicles parked inside the compound. Around 14 people living in the factory, including eight women and four children, fled to safety with the help of the administration. Mercifully, there was no human toll in the attack. The police arrested four people initially but released three of them later. This further enraged local people and, egged on by the anti-Ahmedi diatribe from the mosques, they torched an Ahmedi place of worship in Kala Gujran. The local administration and police had failed to anticipate such an eventuality and provide security to all such obvious targets in the area. Only after the Kala Gujran incident in which an inadequate police force deployed failed to hold back the agitated mob were army troops deployed to control the situation, reportedly on the orders of Federal Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar. The vigilantes then blocked the GT Road between Jehlum and Islamabad and it took the deployment of army troops and Rangers to get the highway cleared after about seven hours. Ahmedi spokesmen refuted the version of the incident being put out by local people and the police. The factory in question was a chipboard manufacturing unit that burns scrap as fuel for its boiler. The question of intent remains unanswered, although that has never stopped vigilante mobs taking the law into their own hands, an aberration Chaudhry Nisar found unacceptable after the event. The same spokesmen revealed that Ahmedi families residing in the area have fled for their lives, leaving their homes at the mercy of the mobs. A climate of fear has gripped the community, which is apprehensive of more attacks against their persons and properties. Chief Minister Punjab Shahbaz Sharif responded to these events by convening a high level meeting, ordered an investigation, and directed the Cabinet Committee on Law and Order to visit Jehlum and review the situation.

The incident reflects the usual pattern of such events. A rumour is sufficient to agitate some people, the mosque throws fuel on the fire, and the rest unfolds in familiar manner through a vigilante mob. Despite the repetition of this pattern from time to time, the government has not stirred a finger to prevent and pre-empt such happenings. Chaudhry Nisar’s umbrage at people taking the law into their own hands, while correct in principle, did not and could not prevent precisely such an outcome nor will his statement make any difference to future similar incidents. Time and again, either a misplaced notion or some vested interest can rely on the mosque to blow things out of control. Some restraint must be placed on the ability of the mosque mullahs to instigate such madness. There is little need to point to the repeated incidents of accusations of blasphemy, usually false, which lead to violence, to persuade those with any sense that this affliction has gone on long enough and something needs urgently to be done to prevent such chilling happenings. At the heart of the problem lies a blasphemy law with the maximum punishment of death but with no remedy against false accusation. As far as the besieged Ahmedi community cowering in a state of fear in our society is concerned, we must all express our solidarity and sympathy with them as human beings and citizens, irrespective of our faith or views on their set of beliefs. And while we are at it, is it not time to revisit the 1974 Second Amendment in which parliament relegated to itself the right and power to determine religious questions, thereby violating the spirit of founder Quaid-e-Azam’s view of a tolerant and inclusive Pakistan, and condemning in perpetuity the Ahmedi community to its present state of fear of unremitting persecution? 

#PEACEFORAHMADIS - Pakistan and its hate crimes

By Yasser Latif Hamdani

It seems there is an organised campaign to target the Ahmedi community's economic well being by destroying their businesses, harassing their youth and ransacking their communal properties.

The burning down of a factory owned by an Ahmedi family followed by the ransacking of an Ahmedi place of worship in Jhelum has once again showed how precarious the situation is for that community in Pakistan and how easily they can become victims of mob outrage and hatred, which has been cultivated slowly and steadily over the years. Against their will, they were cast out of the fold of Islam by the National Assembly (NA) in 1974. Then, in 1984, horrendous sanctions were placed on their freedom of religion and speech in the form of Ordinance XX of 1984, a law that mirrors, in its ruthlessness, the Nazi regime’s laws in Germany in the 1930s. Since the mid-1980s, the rest of us have been forced to abuse them and the founder of their sect in order to get a passport as Muslims in Pakistan. It seems there is an organised campaign to target the community’s economic well being by destroying their businesses, harassing their youth and ransacking their communal properties.

This did not happen overnight; it is a result of the state’s tolerance of hate speech against this particular community, and other sects and religions in general, which has become the norm since the late 1970s. The state has allowed hate mongers and bigots to flourish in small towns and qasbahs especially those in upper Punjab, lining the famous GT Road and on the Seraiki belt. These towns and qasbahs have now become hotbeds of extremism and religious and sectarian exclusivism.

Take, for example, Ishtiaq Ahmed, the so-called detective storywriter, who passed away a few days ago. Since the 1970s, Ishtiaq Ahmed has written over 800 novels in the Inspector Jamshaid, Inspector Kamran and Shoki Brothers series all of which contain messages — subliminal, implicit and explicit — against the Ahmedis, Shias, Christians and Jews. In his novels, these groups were portrayed as perpetually scheming against Islam (obviously Sunni Islam) and Pakistan. The irony that Pakistan’s founder was a Shia and its first foreign minister was an Ahmedi was completely lost on the late author. Or perhaps it was by design. In the two children’s magazines Ishtiaq Ahmed edited, numerous issues were dedicated to Ahrari leaders like Ataullah Shah Bokhari, Mazhar Ali Azhar and Shorish Kashmiri who were presented as the real heroes of Pakistan and Islam. These Ahrari leaders, for those who are not familiar with history, were the ones who had called Pakistan Kafiristan and Jinnah Kafir-e-Azam.

Christians, in Ishtiaq Ahmed’s mind, were the perpetual enemies of Muslims, a misinterpretation of the Quranic verse about forbidding Muslims to take Christians and Jews as their friends. What is missing is the context for the Quran, in other places, encourages Muslims to look at Christians and Jews as ahlal kitaab or the people of the book, permitting even intermarriage with them. Ishtiaq Ahmed never bothered to explain to his young readers that the Christians and Jews being referred to were Christians and Jews the nascent Muslim community was in conflict with in the early period of Islam. He whitewashed over the fact that the holy Prophet (PBUH) had even opened up Masjid-e-Nabvi to Christian messengers or that the Mesaq-e-Medina or Medina Pact described Jews and Muslims as one ummah or community. Christian Warqah Bin Nofil’s contributions to the life of the holy Prophet (PBUH) form no part of this narrative. Islam’s exhortations of tolerance and acceptance of other creeds are dismissed by the likes of Ishtiaq Ahmed as mere expediency of the time. People like him are an Islamophobe’s dream come true.

For decades — right up till his death — Ishtiaq Ahmed was allowed willfully by the state to poison young minds with his hateful propaganda against minorities as well as against the state itself. In Wadi-e-Marjan, a novel Ishtiaq Ahmed wrote at the height of his popularity, the entire state is shown to be in the clutches of Ahmedis who have supposedly ensconced themselves in high places and are planning a takeover of the state. Behind the Ahmedis are supposed to be Jews and Christians plotting from afar to destroy Islam in Pakistan. It is this mindset that the nation is now at war against. It is this mindset that creates the support base for al Qaeda, the Taliban and more recently Islamic State (IS) or Daesh. Mark these words, dear reader, Pakistan will not win this war so long as hate material such as Ishtiaq Ahmed’s novels are allowed to circulate with impunity. Already, as many as two generations have been tainted with this mentality and it is this mentality that we see at work when certain sections of our society garland murderers of sitting governors.

Answers to our predicament are easy enough. Clamp down on hate speech and materials. Will the National Action Plan (NAP) be implemented in true letter and spirit or will it become a No Action Plan as many fear it has become? In the case of Ahmedis it must be recognised by the state that by bestowing upon them a minority status against their will, they are eligible for the treatment that minorities are promised by the Constitution in general and the Objectives Resolution in particular. Extra effort must be made to protect them from the onslaught of a hostile and radicalised majority that has developed an unsavoury bloodlust for them. The foremost responsibility of the state, as was repeatedly emphasised by the father of the nation, is to ensure that the life, liberty and property of every person living in this state of Pakistan is fully protected. Unless the state protects this community and other minorities against the fruits of its own actions, the state of Pakistan has no right to claim itself a civilised democracy and a responsible nation amongst the comity of nations. If the Prime Minister (PM) is serious about what he promised in his Diwali speech recently, one hopes that he will begin by taking real and stern measures to combat the proliferation of hate materials in society. Pakistan must ensure that the life and liberty of each Pakistani, whether Muslim or non-Muslim, is equally protected and safeguarded by the state. A Pakistan that fails to do so is a Pakistan not worth having.

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Will Turkey get tougher on ISIL?

By Joseph Dana

Turkey is slowly starting to reveal how it intends to fight ISIL, both inside the country and beyond. Last weekend, Turkish security forces arrested three suspected ISIL fighters including one Belgian national of Moroccan origin with alleged ties to last week’s attacks in Paris.

While the European Union is moving quickly to tighten border controls and the United States and its anti-ISIL coalition allies are devising new military plans to bomb ISIL positions in Syria and Iraq, Turkey’s response to the crisis has been slow and scattered. Considering the outsize role Turkey continues to play in the ISIL saga as a primary transit country into and out of Syria, this is disconcerting.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister-turned-president, spent the last decade crafting a foreign policy propelled by the notion that Turkey was an emerging regional superpower. In 2011, Mr Erdogan threw Turkey’s weight firmly behind the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, betting on former Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi’s ability to lead a post-Arab Spring Middle East. Concurrently, Mr Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) developed a verbose anti-Bashar Al Assad stance regarding the civil war in Syria. As such, Turkey became the leading proponent for regime change in Damascus and engendered a close relationship with the rebels fighting Mr Assad’s forces.

Many in the Turkish opposition and a growing number of Western analysts have argued that Turkey has turned a blind eye to ISIL as a result of its regional foreign policy decisions, thus allowing the group to consolidate strength in Syria through a steady flow of fighters, weapons and stolen oil across the Turkish border.

During 2013 and 2014, one could walk around southern Turkish cities such as Gaziantep among ISIL and Al Qaeda fighters. Fighters would regularly travel to Turkey to receive medical treatment and supplies. The presence of extremist fighters wasn’t confined to the border areas. I reported on a clothing store in Istanbul’s Bagcilar neighbourhood in 2014 that was selling ISIL T-shirts and other paraphernalia to eager Turkish and foreign customers.

The end of the peace process with the Kurds this summer has left many questioning what Turkey’s priorities are in Syria, because the Kurds have proven to be an extremely useful fighting force confronting ISIL on the ground. For Ankara, the US relationship with the Kurds in particular seemed to suggest a shift towards what the Turkish government sees as a hostile enemy carving out its own territorial foothold in Syria.

Turkey has the ability to close its borders with northern Syria to deprive ISIL of critical resupply routes for fighters and goods. Turkish officials have placed travel bans on more than 26,000 people, half from Arab countries and a quarter from western countries, suspected of transiting the country to join ISIL. In sporadic raids on ISIL safe houses throughout Turkey over the past two years, hundreds of suspected militants have been arrested by security forces. Ankara also has the ability to downgrade its war effort against Kurdish forces in Turkey, Syria and Iraq.

Why is action slow to materialise? For one, Mr Erdogan’s political ambitions appear to have got in the way. As part of Mr Erdogan’s long-term power plan, he bet that his party would win a super majority in June’s parliamentary election. With such a victory, his party would have been able to rewrite the constitution towards a presidential system and grant Mr Erdogan sweeping new powers. Years of increasingly authoritarian leadership, the dismal situation in Syria and a sluggish Turkish economy foiled those plans.

The pro-Kurdish HDP party received a surprisingly high 13 per cent of the vote, which not only dented the AKP’s ambitions for a supermajority but also left the governing party without a majority mandate for the first time in its history. After a facile attempt at forming a coalition, snap elections were called and Mr Erdogan went to work. He called off the peace process after an attack by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been waging a bloody war against Turkey for nearly 30 years.

Turkey’s focus on the Kurds is all the more astonishing considering that ISIL carried out two suicide bombings inside Turkey this year, including one at a leftist rally in Ankara that was the country’s worst terrorist attack to date. Bizarrely, Mr Erdogan blamed a number of competing elements for the Ankara bombing as opposed to singling out ISIL. “The Ankara bombing totally is a collective terrorist act, in which ISIL, the PKK, the Mukabarat [Syrian military intelligence] and the [Kurdish] PYD in northern Syria each played a role,” Mr Erdogan said during a rally with a right-wing trade union on October 22.

This type of delusional thinking, in which groups at war with one another are accused of coming together to attack Turkey, represents the desperation of Turkey’s leadership to rationalise its actions and make a case for a war against the Kurds. The Kurds are hardly free of blame in the current round of violence, having carried out many attacks on Turkish civilians and security forces, but that doesn’t diminish the much greater threat that ISIL presents.

The recent arrests of suspected ISIL militants is proof that Ankara has the ability to clamp down on ISIL. The movement of fighters between Syria and Turkey remains one of the most serious challenges in the fight against the militants.

The question is whether the political will exists in the country to stop the flow. Turkey is facing a choice: continue its war with the Kurds while isolating allies in the fight against ISIL or actively commit to international efforts to defeat the extremists. If Ankara chooses the latter and joins the coalition, Mr Erdogan will be forced to refine his dreams to lead a new regional order, at least for the time being. One thing is for sure, any solution to the ISIL problem is going to require Turkey’s cooperation, which, thus far, has been slow in coming.

http://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/will-turkey-get-tougher-on-isil#full

Human Rights Watch report says Bahrain is torturing detainees

By Ian Black 

Britain’s close Gulf ally Bahrain has been torturing detainees during interrogation, a leading human rights watchdog says, undermining UK government claims that the island state has reformed its security forces and improved accountability.

A report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) reveals the same sort of abuses by Bahraini personnel that were documented by an official commission of inquiry set up after popular protests against the Sunni-dominated government in 2011.

Accounts of the mistreatment of prisoners will bolster claims by Bahraini opposition figures that Britain is turning a blind eye to unacceptable practices, three weeks after the foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, inaugurated acontroversial new British naval base near the capital, Manama.

HRW interviewed 10 detainees who said they had experienced coercive interrogations at the interior ministry’s criminal investigations directorate (CID) and in police stations since 2012, and four former inmates of Jaw prison, who said they had been tortured as recently as March. 

Mohamed Bader, who was arrested on his return from Syria in 2014, told HRW he was punched, kicked, stripped naked and blindfolded and handcuffed throughout his questioning. He signed a confession under torture.

Others described being subjected to electric shocks; suspension in painful positions, including by their wrists; forced standing; extreme cold and sexual abuse. Six said CID interrogators boasted of their reputation for inflicting pain on detainees.

Interviews were conducted by telephone and Skype because researchers were not granted visas to visit the country.

Activists say Hammond cancelled a planned meeting with opposition figures before meeting his Bahraini counterpart. Criticism has also mounted over the case of Sheikh Ali Salman, the leader of al-Wefaq, the country’s predominantly Shia opposition movement, who was sentenced to four years in prison in June and has been adopted by Amnesty International as a prisoner of conscience.

Nabeel Rajab, another high-profile democratic opposition figure and human rights activist, is subject to a travel ban.

“I’ll show you why Wefaq calls Bahrain the capital of torture,” one former detainee quoted an interrogator as telling him. Another said a CID officer held something to his nose and told him it was “the blood of people who don’t cooperate”.

Britain’s argument is that Bahrain is not perfect but is following the recommendations of the Bahrain independent investigation commission (Bici) in taking steps to reform its police force, judicial system and prison service. UK policy is “to support Bahrain in its return to a stable and reformist state with a good human rights record,” the Foreign Office says.

Joe Stork, the deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, said: “The claims of Bahrain and its allies that authorities have ended torture in detention are simply not credible. All the available evidence supports the conclusion that these new institutions have not effectively tackled what the Bici report described as a ‘culture of impunity’ among security forces.”

Britain has taken the lead internationally in arguing that Bahrainhas reformed its security forces and accountability mechanisms, but HRW calls the operation of those mechanisms “seriously flawed”. It recommends that the UK government suspend funding for security service reform.

The UK insists strong trade and investment ties and close security and intelligence cooperation are helping reform and promoting stability in the Gulf. Its close relations with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have also come under close scrutiny in recent months, in part because of the Saudi-led campaign in Yemen and increasing awareness of human rights abuses.

King Hamad was on a private visit to the UK last week.

In 2012 and 2013, Bahrain postponed indefinitely the scheduled visit to the country of the UN special rapporteur on torture. Britain has not publicly called for it to take place. Bahrain often describes opposition activists as terrorists and claims they are working in the service of Iran.

Belgian police arrest 16, fail to find Paris attacks key suspect

German opposition slam hypocritical dealings Saudi Arabia

The co-chair of Germany's opposition Green Party, Cem Ozdemir, slams Germany and its allies for “hypocrisy and duplicity” in their dealings with Saudi Arabia.

Germany and its allies must re-examine their relationship with Saudi Arabia where arms are sent and oil returns, said Ozdemir at the party’s annual congress on Friday.

He noted that as long as this hypocrisy remains, success is unattainable in the battle against the Daesh Takfiri terrorists.

"Saudi Wahhabism is not part of the problem," he said, stressing that, "It is the source of the problem."

Takfirism is largely influenced by Wahhabism, the radical ideology dominating Saudi Arabia and freely preached by Saudi clerics.

The Daesh terrorists, who were initially trained by the CIA in Jordan in 2012 to destabilize the Syrian government, now control parts of Syria and Iraq. They have been engaged in crimes against humanity in the areas under their control.

Ozdemir made the remarks at a time that the monarchy’s forces were engaed in a deadly war on the impoverished Yemen, which has failed to prevent the West from selling arms to Saudis.

Just earlier this month, the Pentagon said that the US State Department has approved a $1.29 billion sale of smart bombs to Riyadh. 

http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2015/11/22/438636/Germany-Saudi-Arabia-Green-party-hypocrisy-

Video - Salman Rushdie: Words are his weapon

Video - Ban Ki Moon: I count on leadership of Russia in fighting against ISIS

Russian premier: fight against terrorism possible only through coordination of all forces

An effective fight against terrorism is possible only by coordinating the efforts of all forces with reliance on the UN authority, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said at the 10th East Asia summit on Sunday.

"It is clear today as never before that an effective struggle with this evil is possible only by coordinating all forces and with reliance primarily on the existing international institutions, including the UN," Medvedev said.

Over the past month alone, Russia has lived through two major terrorist acts, Medvedev said, referring to the airliner blown up by terrorists over the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt and the death of Russian nationals in a terror attack on a hotel in the capital of Mali.

"The threat coming from the Islamic State is felt today actually by all countries. These are Europe and America, Central and South East Asia," the Russian premier said.

"We have just lived through several horrible tragedies: the terrorists blew up a Russian airliner over the Sinai Peninsula and staged a deadly massacre in the very center of Europe, in Paris. The world has shuddered from these inhuman terrorist acts," Medvedev said.

"The latest tragedy occurred in Mali where people were also killed, including six our pilots. This extended the mournful list of the latest events," the Russian premier said, adding that Russia and the world had to defend themselves.

It is exceptionally important to secure "a consolidated anti-terror position of the countries with large Islamic communities," to which Russia also belongs, Medvedev said.

The Russian premier said he hoped a statement, which the summit was adopting on information security, would also contribute to this effort.

"The use of technologies for terrorist purposes and criminalization of the information environment are poisoning the international atmosphere and simply bringing to naught the advantages of the global information world," the Russian premier said.

Architecture of equal security should become imperative for entire world - Medvedev

Measures to develop the architecture of equal and indivisible security should become an imperative for the entire world, including the Asia-Pacific region, Medvedev said.

"The elaboration of common and binding rules of the game, the development of the reliable architecture of equal and indivisible security should become an imperative for all of us, including the Asia-Pacific region," Medvedev said.

The challenges confronted by the international community today "are becoming ever more dramatic and multidimensional," the Russian premier said.

"A crisis of ‘the culture of compromises’ is felt ever more acutely in the world," he added.

"The risks of inter-confessional and inter-civilization rifts are intensifying," Medvedev said.

According to the Russian premier, "stability and sustainable development are seriously threatened by regional conflicts, terrorism and extremism, cross-border crimes, the shortage of food, epidemics and the problems of climate change."

"The analysis of conflicts and crises shows that unilateral actions, no matter how effective they may be, do not produce the required result. Collective fundamentals should be the main factors for the world to become more secure," Medvedev said.

Russia’s proposals on this score are well-known. Other states are also promoting their approaches for strengthening security in the region, the Russian premier said.

"I’m confident that we can reach substantive practical decisions by uniting our efforts. The success of our dialog on framework security principles would be the best confirmation of the authority of our summit, an example for other regions where similar mechanisms are absent or require them to become actualized," the Russian premier sad.

"Otherwise, there would be no support in the struggle against such security challenges as international terrorism and extremism," Medvedev said.

Police Making Arrests in Belgium’s Anti-Terror Operation

One suspect was detained during an anti-terrorist police operation in the city of Charleroi south of Brussels, local media reported.

Another police operation is currently conducted in the eastern Belgian city of Liege, according to the RTBF television.

The channel did not report any details of the operations after the Belgian Federal Police asked local media and social networks’ users not to disclose the exact locations in which anti-terror operations are conducted.

Local media also reported that Belgian Police detained six suspects during the searches in the center of Brussels, related to a terrorist threat. According to the Derniere Heure newspaper, one of the suspects was injured during the arrest.

Salah Abdeslam, believed to be the only extremist to survive the Paris attacks, was not among those detained, the media reported.

Belgian police is conducting an unprecedented anti-terrorist operation across several districts of Brussels, searching homes and arresting a number of suspects, local media reported.

According to previous reports, the operation was being conducted in the central district of Brussels, with officers blocking streets and asking local residents to stay away from windows.

According to the RTBF television, the police have now expanded their operations to the Molenbeek and the Etterbeek districts. The whole area of the immigrant Molebeek district was cordoned off, the media said.

On Saturday, the authorities raised the terror alert level in Brussels to level 4, the highest possible, in the wake of attacks in Paris earlier this month.

The Belgian police carried out a series of anti-terrorist operations detaining a number of people in Brussels, after it was revealed one of the Paris attackers had lived there. At least 16 suspects have been arrested, according to media reports.

Read more: http://sputniknews.com/europe/20151123/1030557129/belgium-charleroi-terror-suspect-detained.html#ixzz3sGWopAHE

‘Pray for Paris’: Touching video tribute pays respect to terror attack victims

A touching video tribute to Paris has been posted online by a Russian filmmaker, showing an outpouring of love and support for those lost in the terror attacks. The creator told RT he opted for a video tribute because “too many words were already said.” The ‘Pray for Paris’ video, posted on Vimeo by filmmaker Alex Soloviev, features residents paying their respects at Place de la République, which has been transformed into a memorial for the victims.

https://www.rt.com/news/323010-paris-attacks-tribute-video/

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Paris attacks 'exploited' by immigration critics, claims Juncker

By Matthew Holehouse

Opponent of immigration are “exploiting” the Paris terrorist atrocity, Jean-Claude Juncker claimed today, amid mounting evidence that the refugee crisis is being used by Isis to traffic terrorists into Europe.

Days after France announced an indefinite reintroduction of border controls, the president of the European Commission vowed to “fight” to keep the Schengen zone alive and lashed out at “cynics” who had linked the migration crisis to the Paris attacks.At least two of the Paris suicide bombers, as well as the plots’ mastermind Abdelhamid Abaaoud, are believed to have taken the migrant trail from Syria via Greece to Belgium and Paris. Intelligence officials fear “dozens if not hundreds” have slipped through, it was claimed yesterday.

However, writing in a Maltese newspaper, Mr Juncker said he did not accept any connection between the refugee crisis and the risk of terrorism.“I cannot bear and will not accept an amalgamation of the topics of refugees and terrorism in the wake of the atrocious attacks in Paris. The cynics who exploit the suffering of Paris have not understood that those who perpetrated the attacks are precisely those whom the refugees are trying to flee.” “We will only save Schengen by applying Schengen. I will fight for this. I could not bear that my generation be the one to put up walls again in Europe – we have only just taken them down,” Mr Juncker added.

Member states backed France’s demand on Friday for every person entering Europe, including irregular migrants and EU-passport holders, to be subject to a full background check on the Schengen counter-terrorism database. The plan had been resisted by the European Commission, which is now tasked with revising the bloc’s border code. The Sunday Telegraph revealed yesterday how the European Commission had appeared to ignore warnings from Frontex, the EU borders agency, that the crisis which has seen hundreds of thousands of migrants cross into Europe was ripe for exploitation by Isil.

On Saturday Malta announced it could retain the suspension of Schengen indefinitely, following a temporary suspension for a summit of the Queen and Commonwealth leaders on the island at the end of this month. Joseph Muscat, the Prime Minister, said the decision would be made on security grounds, following the discovery of a passport forgery ring.

That Malta, a small island nation which is already patrolled by a navy, could threaten to suspend Schengen is a sign of the gravity of the crisis affecting the passport-free travel zone. A string of countries imposed border controls to manage the refugee crisis, and Paris said it would retain border checks for as long as is necessary following the Paris atrocity.In a rare admission, Mr Juncker said that measures to crackdown on illegal people smuggling and speed up the registration of migrants should have happened “years ago”.

“As always in life, we cannot go back but we can do better in the future,” he conceded.On Friday Heinz-Christian Strache, the Austrian far-right leader, called for convicted militants to be jailed for life on an EU island prison."Maybe the Greeks will help us, or maybe the Italians with Lampedusa,” he said.

Carson and Trump's refugee rhetoric is a whole new breed of dog-whistle politics

Dan Roberts

What used to be called “dog whistle” politics became a shrill blast heard around the world this week as American politicians reacted to the Paris terrorist attacks with an anti-refugee backlash that sounded ferocious even by the standards of the 2016 presidential race.

Where once immigration rhetoric came coded in a different frequency – designed to stir the conservative base while remaining inaudible to most – now the tone is unmistakeable, employing language that could scarcely be more offensive, to Muslim ears in particular.

“If there is a rabid dog running around your neighbourhood, you are probably not going to assume something good about that dog and you are probably going to put your children away,” said presidential candidate Ben Carson as he called for a US ban on all Syrian refugees, “rabid” or otherwise.

“By the same token we have to have [better] screening processes in place to determine who the mad dogs are,” added the retired neurosurgeon, who currently lies second in opinion polls for the Republican nomination.

Others went further still. In recent days, Republican frontrunner Donald Trumphas called for all Syrians to be deported, endorsed the surveillance and closure of mosques and even appeared to agree with suggestions that all US Muslims be placed on a government database.

“I would certainly implement that. Absolutely,” Trump said. “There should be a lot of systems, beyond databases,” he added when asked how such a religious watch-list might work. “Right now, we have to have a border, we have to have strength, we have to have a wall.”

Ted Cruz, a Texas senator once seen as a conservative outlier but now lying third in the presidential polls behind Trump and Carson, has introduced legislation that would bar refugees from Iraq and Libya too.

A similar bill passed through the House of Representatives on Thursday, with the support of 47 Democrats giving it potentially enough momentum to override a threatened White House veto.

Both Cruz and Jeb Bush, a candidate once seen as the face of the Republican party establishment, have proposed limiting the US refugee programme in the Middle East to Christians only – discussing how religious tests might separate out Muslim applicants. Bush did criticise Trump’s comments, though, saying: “You talk about internment, you talk about closing mosques, you talk about registering people. That’s just wrong.”

Barack Obama has been swift to condemn the new tone in American politics as “offensive and hysterical”, as he pinned his hopes on Democrats in the Senate to stem what the White House views as a disturbing xenophobic tide.

“When I hear political leaders suggesting that there would be a religious test for which person who’s fleeing from a war-torn country is admitted, when some of those folks themselves come from families who benefited from protection when they were fleeing political persecution, that’s shameful,” said Obama during a trip to Asia. “That’s not American. That’s not who we are. We don’t have religious tests to our compassion.”

But the mood has spread far beyond the Republican presidential field. Both Democratic and Republican state governors have joined the bipartisan calls in the House for refugee reform. “We are at war whether people like to admit it or not and we want to keep Mississippi out of that war here on the home front,” said that state’s governor, Phil Bryant, in a typical response this week.

Others have suggested US politicians are only mirroring the mood in the media, where CNN suspended a reporter who criticised the House refugee bill on Twitter but allowed another to urge Obama to “take out the bastards” with more robust military attacks on Syria. Fox News lambasted the president’s spokesman for a White House response to Paris that it characterised as “aloof, apathetic and cavalier”.

“When you have a major terrorist incident you are about as likely to have good politics as you are good journalism,” says Anthony Cordesman, a former government security and intelligence analyst now based at the Center for Strategic and Intelligence Studies. “You have a posturing contest … everyone wants instant progress in complex areas where you can’t achieve it.”

And the mood is not restricted to discussion of refugee policy or the appropriate number of bombs and troops to drop on Syria.

Intelligence officials have used the Paris attack to mount a concerted pushback against recent surveillance reforms, demanding the death penalty for NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden with little evidence or questioning of their claims. “I would prefer to see him hanged by the neck until he’s dead, rather than merely electrocuted,” the former CIA director James Woolsey told CNN. “I think the blood of a lot of these French young people is on his hands.”

For some, like Obama, or the suspended CNN reporter who suggested the Statue of Liberty would be “bowing its head in shame” at the refugee bill, the new mood is distinctly un-American.

But for now, the far louder response from those on the right suggests some US attitudes toward immigration and civil liberties have come a long way.

“The Statue of Liberty says bring us your tired and your weary, it didn’t say bring us your terrorists and let them come in here and bomb neighbourhoods, cafes and concert halls,” concluded Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee. “It’s illogical and irrational to take people out of their culture, their language, their religion, even their climate, and put them in a place where they are going to be completely disoriented.”

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Hillary Clinton to propose $6,000 tax credit for caregiving costs

U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton will on Sunday propose a $6,000 tax credit for costs associated with caring for elderly and disabled family members, and allowing caregivers to accrue Social Security retirement benefits for such work.

The caregiving credit will be the latest in a "range of tax cuts aimed a boosting the take-home pay for middle-class families" that Clinton will announce over the coming weeks, according to a campaign aide.

Clinton, who will appear in Iowa Sunday, has previously announced a tax credit of $2,500 for an individual or $5,000 for a family to cover high healthcare costs and another credit that would cover some of the expense of attending college.

There are about 12 million people in the United States who need long-term care and that number is expected to grow to 27 million by 2050 as the population ages. Clinton's campaign estimates that the economic value of the unpaid work provided by family caregivers of the aging and disabled was $470 billion in 2013.

Assisting adults caring for their aging parents - often while also raising their own children or helping with grandchildren - has become a theme at Clinton's campaign stops.

Clinton met New Hampshire resident Keith Thompson before a September appearance. Thompson told the former secretary of state and U.S. senator he sometimes takes his elderly mother with him to his part-time job because they cannot otherwise afford reliable care.

"You know your story is so incredibly moving and it's also a story for so many people, that's what I keep finding, everywhere I go," Clinton told Thompson in a video of the exchange provided by the campaign.

Clinton has cited Thompson's story frequently since.

Taxes are shaping up to be a differentiator between Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, and her challengers, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley.

Clinton's campaign says she is committed to not raising but cutting taxes for the middle class and criticized some of Sanders' proposals, such as his healthcare plan, saying it would necessitate raising taxes on moderate wage earners.

Clinton Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri told reporters "the most important moment" for the campaign during last week's second Democratic debate was when the three discussed taxing the middle class and to expect Clinton to discuss it more fully in the coming days. 

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