Egypt’s Leader Urges America to Reinstate Military Aid for Fight Against Terror

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

Egypt’s de facto ruler urged President Obama to restore the military aid suspended last year after Egypt’s armed forces ousted the country’s president and warned that America’s unwillingness to combat Islamic extremists in strife–ridden Arab states was endangering the U.S. and its European and Arab allies.

Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the military commander behind the ouster of ex-President Mohamed Morsi, and who holds the title of field marshal, is widely expected to win the country’s presidential elections scheduled for late May. He said that U.S. military aid was badly needed to help Egypt combat Islamist terrorism in the Sinai peninsula and jihadi training camps in Libya near Egypt’s border. America’s unwillingness to help Egypt battle what some have called the largest militant Islamist insurgency in Egypt’s history and to help contain ongoing civil strife in Iraq, Libya and Syria, he said, had created “fertile ground for religious extremism” that would be “disastrous” for both the U.S. and the Arabs.

“The only thing they know is destruction,” he said, speaking of the militant jihadis now battling for power in Syria and other Arab states. “Usama bin Laden was only the first.”

By refusing to deploy western forces to help stabilize Libya after the North Atlantic Treaty Organization overthrew longstanding dictator Muammar Qaddafi in late 2011, he said, the U.S. and other NATO members had created a political vacuum that had left Libya at the mercy of “extremists, assassins, and murderers.” “History will judge you severely,” he declared.

Yet during most of this rare, two-hour meeting with a small group of American national security specialists and journalists in Cairo last week, Sisi repeatedly stressed Egypt’s desire for strong ties with, and support from Washington. America and its allies, he said, had an interest in avoiding further chaos in Egypt and in helping restore political stability and economic growth in the Arabs’ most populous nation. Egypt, whose population totaled 94 million people in March and which adds one million new Egyptians to its ranks every nine months, needs “substantial” economic support to overcome “monumental’ challenges, he said.

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US Troops Arrive in Poland for Exercises Across Eastern Europe Amid Ukraine Crisis

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Photo Credit: REUTERS

Photo Credit: REUTERS

U.S. Army paratroopers are arriving in Poland to begin a series of military exercises in four countries across Eastern Europe to bolster allies in the wake of Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula last month.

Pentagon press secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby said Tuesday that the exercises will last about a month, and initially involve about 600 troops.

An Army company of about 150 soldiers from the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team based in Vicenza, Italy, will start the exercises Wednesday in Poland. Additional Army companies will head to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and are expected to arrive by Monday for similar land-based exercises in those countries.

Under the current plan, U.S. troops would rotate in and out of the four countries for additional exercises on a recurring basis.

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U.S. Says Has Indications Toxic Chemical Used in Syria this Month

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Photo Credit: REUTERS / STRINGER

Photo Credit: REUTERS / STRINGER

The United States has indications that a toxic chemical, probably chlorine, was used in Syria this month and is examining whether the Syrian government was responsible, the U.S. State Department said on Monday.

“We have indications of the use of a toxic industrial chemical” in the town of Kfar Zeita, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said, referring to a rebel-held area.

“We are examining allegations that the government was responsible,” she told a regular news briefing. “Obviously there needs to be an investigation of what’s happened here.”

Syrian opposition activists reported that helicopters dropped chlorine gas on Kfar Zeita on April 11 and 12. The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, told ABC television’s “This Week” on April 13 that the attack was “unsubstantiated.”

Psaki said chlorine was not one of the priority one or two chemicals Syria declared to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) under a Russian-U.S. agreement for the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile.

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China On Course to Become ‘World’s Most Christian Nation’ Within 15 Years

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Photo Credit: ALAMY

Photo Credit: ALAMY

It is said to be China’s biggest church and on Easter Sunday thousands of worshippers will flock to this Asian mega-temple to pledge their allegiance – not to the Communist Party, but to the Cross.

The 5,000-capacity Liushi church, which boasts more than twice as many seats as Westminster Abbey and a 206ft crucifix that can be seen for miles around, opened last year with one theologian declaring it a “miracle that such a small town was able to build such a grand church”.

The £8 million building is also one of the most visible symbols of Communist China’s breakneck conversion as it evolves into one of the largest Christian congregations on earth.

“It is a wonderful thing to be a follower of Jesus Christ. It gives us great confidence,” beamed Jin Hongxin, a 40-year-old visitor who was admiring the golden cross above Liushi’s altar in the lead up to Holy Week.
“If everyone in China believed in Jesus then we would have no more need for police stations. There would be no more bad people and therefore no more crime,” she added.

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Boko Haram Leader Claims Abuja Bombing, Tells Obama to Go ‘To Hell’ (+video)

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

The leader of Nigeria’s Boko Haram terrorist group in a weekend video claimed responsibility for a deadly bomb attack in Abuja last week, taunting the government for its failure to defeat the Islamist group and telling President Obama and other world leaders to go “to hell.”

“To hell with Obama!” Abubakar Shekau said during the rant. “To hell with [U.N. secretary-general] Ban ki Moon! To hell with [French president] Francois Hollande! To hell with [Russian president] Vladimir Putin!”

Although Shekau claimed responsibility for last Monday’s bomb blast in Abuja, which cost at least 75 lives and was the deadliest terrorist attack ever in the capital, he did not refer to the abduction hours later of more than 100 schoolgirls in the country’s far north-east. A Borno state’s top education official said in a statement Friday 85 of the girls remain missing.

Shekau, one of three Boko Haram leaders designated by the State Department in 2012 under an executive order designed to disrupt funding to terrorists, said his group carried out the bombing in Abuja because of the killing of Muslims in Nigeria and elsewhere. His remarks in the local Hausa language were translated by Premium Times, an Abuja-based media group.

“We carried out the attack because you kill Muslims in Plateau,” he said in comments directed at Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, and referring to the Nigerian state that lies roughly on the divide between the country’s Muslim north and Christian south.

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South Korean Ferry Captain Arrested; Divers Find Bodies Inside Sunken Ship

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

The captain of a South Korean ferry carrying 475 passengers that sank on Wednesday, killing 28 and leaving 270 missing, was arrested early Saturday on suspicion of negligence and abandoning people in need — three of whom were found lifeless in the sunken ship by a diver.

Senior prosecutor Yang Jung-jin Yonhap said 68-year-old Lee Joon-seok and the crew members were detained early Saturday, the Associated Press reported.

The captain was arrested amid reports that an inexperienced crew member may have been at the ship’s control when it overturned, and survivors’ claims that the crew did not act swiftly enough to evacuate its mostly high school-student passengers.

Lee faces five charges including negligence of duty and violation of maritime law, according to the Yonhap news agency.

Prosecutors and police said Friday they had asked a court to issue arrest warrants for the captain and two other crewmembers.

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Anti-Semitic Fliers in Eastern Ukraine Denounced

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Photo Credit: CNN

Photo Credit: CNN

U.S. officials Thursday denounced what one called a “grotesque” leaflet ordering Jews in one eastern Ukrainian city to register with a government office, but the Jewish community there dismissed it as a “provocation.”

The fliers were handed out by masked men in front the main synagogue in Donetsk, where pro-Russian protesters have declared a “People’s Republic,” Jewish leaders there said. The document warned the city’s Jews to register and document their property or face deportation, according to a CNN translation of one of the leaflets.

Geoffrey Pyatt, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, told CNN’s “The Lead with Jake Tapper” that a respected Jewish leader in Ukraine showed him a photograph of one of the leaflets. He called the document “chilling.”
And in Geneva, where diplomats held emergency talks on the Ukrainian crisis, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called the leaflets “grotesque” and “beyond unacceptable.”

But the Jewish community statement said relations between the Jews of Donetsk and their neighbors were amicable, and the self-proclaimed head of the “People’s Republic,” Denis Pushilin, denied any connection to the fliers.

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Leaflet Tells Jews to ‘Register’ in East Ukraine

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Photo Credit: The Coordination Forum for Countering Antisemitism

Photo Credit: The Coordination Forum for Countering Antisemitism

By Oren Dorell.

World leaders and Jewish groups condemned a leaflet handed out in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk in which Jews were told to “register” with the pro-Russian militants who have taken over a government office in an attempt to make Ukraine part of Russia, according to Ukrainian and Israeli media.

Jews emerging from a synagogue say they were handed leaflets that ordered the city’s Jews to provide a list of property they own and pay a registration fee “or else have their citizenship revoked, face deportation and see their assets confiscated,” reported Ynet News, Israel’s largest news website, and Ukraine’s Donbass news agency.

Secretary of State John Kerry said the language of the leaflets “is beyond unacceptable” and condemned whomever is responsible.

“In the year 2014, after all of the miles traveled and all of the journey of history, this is not just intolerable — it’s grotesque,” he said. “And any of the people who engage in these kinds of activities — from whatever party or whatever ideology or whatever place they crawl out of — there is no place for that.”

U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt called the leaflets “the real deal.” But the man whose name appears on the leaflets, Denis Pushilin, identified as chairman of “Donetsk’s temporary government,” said he was not responsible.

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Anti-Semitic Fliers in Eastern Ukraine Denounced

By Jake Tapper, Nick Paton Walsh and Sherisse Pham.

Photo Credit: CNN

Photo Credit: CNN

U.S. officials Thursday denounced what one called a “grotesque” leaflet ordering Jews in one eastern Ukrainian city to register with a government office, but the Jewish community there dismissed it as a “provocation.”

The fliers were handed out by masked men in front the main synagogue in Donetsk, where pro-Russian protesters have declared a “People’s Republic,” Jewish leaders there said. The document warned the city’s Jews to register and document their property or face deportation, according to a CNN translation of one of the leaflets.

Geoffrey Pyatt, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, told CNN’s “The Lead with Jake Tapper” that a respected Jewish leader in Ukraine showed him a photograph of one of the leaflets. He called the document “chilling.”
And in Geneva, where diplomats held emergency talks on the Ukrainian crisis, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called the leaflets “grotesque” and “beyond unacceptable.”

But the Jewish community statement said relations between the Jews of Donetsk and their neighbors were amicable, and the self-proclaimed head of the “People’s Republic,” Denis Pushilin, denied any connection to the fliers.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Diplomatic deal struck on Ukraine

By Justin Sink.

Secretary of State John Kerry said the framework hashed out by foreign ministers meeting in Geneva would disarm separatist militants in eastern Ukraine and have them vacate the government buildings, streets and squares they have occupied.

In return, the Ukrainian government has offered amnesty to all pro-Russian militants who lay down their arms, with the exception of those who committed capital crimes.

The Ukrainian government has also “committed to going as far as they can to reach out to opponents” as part of a “comprehensive, inclusive process” ahead of next month’s elections.

That will include consideration of constitutional amendments that could give Ukraine’s Eastern regions greater autonomy.

President Obama expressed optimism that the framework was a positive step, but he acknowledged it was unclear whether separatists on the ground would follow through.

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The Next Rwanda? Power Rips ‘Industrial-Style Slaughter’ in Syria Civil War

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Power_080113America’s ambassador to the United Nations raised the specter of genocide in Syria, after officials this week sounded the alarm about spiraling violence in that country’s civil war.

Gruesome photos of purported civil war victims were shown earlier this week to the U.N. Security Council, depicting corpses with bones protruding and eyes gouged out. It was a haunting and grisly reminder that, as Ukraine and other trouble spots grab international attention, Syria is crumbling under the weight of a vicious war.

Speaking at a U.N. Security Council briefing on genocide, U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power on Wednesday compared the fighting in Syria to the genocide in Rwanda 20 years ago.

She described the photos of Syrian prisoners as showing “systematic, industrial-style slaughter and forced starvation killings” – photos which, she noted, were from just three of the 50 Syrian-run detention centers.

“And to that we can add the Syrian victims of chemical weapons attacks, the children felled by barrel bombs and those being starved to death in besieged towns and villages, or those executed by terrorist groups,” said Power, who has written extensively on genocide. “Twenty years from now, how will we reflect on this Council’s failure to help those people? How will we explain Council disunity on Syria twenty years after Rwanda?”

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Putin’s New Kind of War

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

In the Western imagination, the words “war” and “invasion” carry clear connotations. From books, movies, and television, we know that such events involve tanks, airplanes, and artillery, as well as soldiers in uniform, advanced weaponry, and sophisticated communications. They look like the invasion of Iraq or, to go back in time, D-Day.

So far, the Russian invasion of eastern Ukraine looks nothing like these battles. This war involves not soldiers but local thugs and volunteers, some linked to the ex-president, Viktor Yanukovych, some from criminal gangs, and some who mistakenly think they are fighting for some form of benign local autonomy.

They are being led not by officers in uniform but by men from Russian military intelligence and special operations forces, some wearing camouflage without insignia, some communicating with “activists” by telephone. They are supplied with Russian logistics and a few Russian automatic weapons, but not tanks or planes. There is no “shock and awe” bombing campaign, just systematic, organized attacks on police stations, city councils, airports.

Unlike the planners of D-Day or Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Russians organizing the invasion of Ukraine also have flexible goals. They are prepared to adjust their strategy, depending on how much resistance they encounter. In the long term, Russia clearly hopes to annex eastern and southern Ukraine; maps to that effect have begun to circulate.

But in the meantime, the Kremlin may settle for disrupting Ukraine’s presidential elections, scheduled for May 25, or for destabilizing Ukraine’s shaky provisional government, perhaps forcing an economic crash. The Russians may hope to provoke a civil war, or something that appears to be a civil war, which would then require a Russian “peacekeeping mission.”

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