Taliban Mocks Shutdown: Lawmakers ‘Sucking The Blood Of Their Own People’

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Photo Credit: SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty ImagesEven the Taliban is mocking the U.S. government over the shutdown.

In a statement released to AFP, the terrorist group accused American lawmakers of “sucking the blood of their own people.”

“The American people should realize that their politicians play with their destinies as well as the destinies of other oppressed nations for the sake of their personal vested interests,” the Taliban said in a statement.

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GCHQ Leaks have ‘Gifted’ Terrorists Ability to Attack ‘At Will’, Warns Spy Chief

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Photo Credit: MI5/PAAndrew Parker, the director general of the Security Service, said the exposing of intelligence techniques, by the Guardian newspaper, had given fanatics the ability to evade the spy agencies.

It comes at a time when the UK is facing its gravest terror threat, including from “several thousand” Islamist extremists who are living here and want to attack the country, Mr Parker said.

He used his first public outing since taking over at MI5 to launch a scathing attack on the Snowden leaks.

It is feared around Whitehall that the revelations have resulted in a “guidebook for terrorists” while there is frustration that the American is being heralded as some kind of heroic whistleblower.

Sources find it incomprehensible that exposing spy agency techniques for tracking terrorists has been argued to be in the public interest.

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Pan-African Magazine: Africa has 55 Billionaires

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Photo Credit: APA pan-African magazine says Africa has many more billionaires than previously reported, 55 of them worth more than $143 billion including a Nigerian said to be the richest black woman in the world.

“Move over, Oprah!” Ventures Africa says in its latest edition published this week.

Editor-in-chief Uzodinma Iweala said Tuesday the magazine’s estimates are “on the conservative side.”

The report predictably identifies Nigerian manufacturer Aliko Dangote as the richest African worth $20.2 billion, among 20 Nigerians listed.

Africa Ventures put the average net worth of Africa’s billionaires at $2.6 billion and their average age at 65. The oldest billionaires are Kenyan industrialist Manu Chandaria and Egyptian property tycoon Mohammed Al-Fayed, both aged 84. The youngest billionaires are Mohammed Dewji of Tanzania and Nigerian oil trader Igho Sanomi, both 38 years old.

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Get your Fiscal House in Order: China Warns US as Superpower Expresses Concern for $1.3tn of Investments

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Photo Credit: Glyn Lowe PhotoworksChina, the biggest foreign creditor of the United States, has waded into the American budget crisis, warning Congress that it must resolve the political impasse over the debt ceiling without further delay.

The Chinese Vice Foreign Minister, Zhu Guangyao, told America’s deadlocked politicians on Monday that “the clock is ticking” and called on them to approve an extension of the national borrowing limit before the federal government is projected to run out of cash on 17 October.

“We ask that the United States earnestly takes steps to resolve in a timely way the political issues around the debt ceiling and prevent a US debt default to ensure the safety of Chinese investments in the United States,” Mr Zhu told reporters in Beijing. “This is the United States’ responsibility,” he added.

The American government entered its seventh day of shutdown on Monday, following the failure of Congress to approve the national budget a week ago. And there was little sign of progress on the still more crucial issue of the fast-approaching “debt ceiling” deadline. Yet rather than indicating a willingness to negotiate, the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, John Boehner, stated on Sunday that it was “time for us to stand and fight” over the budget. He added that a default was “the path we’re on”. American stock markets opened down in response to the belligerent comments yesterday, with the S&P 500 Index of leading shares shedding 0.5 per cent.

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Libya Demands Explanation for ‘Kidnapping’ of Citizen by US Forces

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Photo Credit: US Navy/AlamyLibya has demanded an explanation for the “kidnapping” of one of its citizens by American special forces, hours after a separate US military raid on a terrorist target in Somalia ended in apparent failure and retreat.

In Tripoli the US Army’s Delta force seized alleged al-Qaida leader Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai, known by his alias Abu Anas al-Liby and wanted for the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed more than 220 people.

The New York Times reported that Liby was being held in military custody and interrogated on board a navy ship, the USS Antonio, in the Mediterranean.

But US Navy Seals suffered a major setback when they launched an amphibious assault to capture an Islamist militant leader said to be Ahmed Godane, described as Africa’s most wanted man and the architect of last month’s attack on the Westgate shopping mall in Kenya. The elite Seals were beaten back by heavy fire and apparently abandoned equipment that the Somali militants photographed and posted on the internet.

As dramatic details of Saturday’s twin operations emerged, US Secretary of State John Kerry insisted that terrorists “can run but they can’t hide” , but faced growing questions about America’s military reach in Africa and the consequences of unilateral aggression.

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‘The Taliban Have Never Come for a Small Girl’: What Brave Pakistani Schoolgirl Malala Told Friend Before She was Shot in the Head (+video)

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Photo Credit: Getty Images Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai told her friend not to worry because the Taliban ‘have never come for a small girl’, shortly before she was shot in the head by a militant.

The 16-year-old was gunned down last year on her school bus after angering the Taliban with her brave and outspoken pleas for girls to be educated.

In her autobiography, I am Malala, she describes the moment she was shot on her way home from school in the valley of Swat in north-west Pakistan on October 9, 2012.

Malala was travelling with about 20 other girls when a masked man approached their school bus and said: ‘Who is Malala?’

Although no one said a word, some girls looked at Malala and she as the only one with her face uncovered.

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U.S. Raids in Libya and Somalia Strike Terror Targets

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Photo Credit: New York Times By David D. Kirkpatrick, Nicholas Kulish and Eric Schmitt.

American commandos carried out raids on Saturday in two far-flung African countries in a powerful flex of military muscle aimed at capturing fugitive terrorist suspects. American troops assisted by F.B.I. and C.I.A. agents seized a suspected leader of Al Qaeda on the streets of Tripoli, Libya, while Navy SEALs raided the seaside villa of a militant leader in a predawn firefight on the coast of Somalia.

In Tripoli, American forces captured a Libyan militant who had been indicted in 2000 for his role in the 1998 bombings of the United States embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The militant, born Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai and known by his nom de guerre, Abu Anas el-Liby, had a $5 million bounty on his head; his capture at dawn ended a 15-year manhunt.

In Somalia, the Navy SEAL team emerged before sunrise from the Indian Ocean and exchanged gunfire with militants at the home of a senior leader of the Shabab, the Somali militant group. The raid was planned more than a week ago, officials said, after a massacre by the Shabab at a Nairobi shopping mall that killed more than 60 people two weeks ago.

The SEAL team was forced to withdraw before it could confirm that it had killed the Shabab leader, a senior American security official said. Officials declined to identify the target.

Officials said the timing of the two raids was coincidental. But occurring on the same day, they underscored the rise of northern Africa as a haven for international terrorists. Libya has collapsed into the control of a patchwork of militias since the ouster of the Qaddafi government in 2011. Somalia, the birthplace of the Shabab, has lacked an effective central government for more than two decades.

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Photo Credit: Fox NewsUS military forces conduct 2 major terror raids, seize Al Qaeda leader behind 1998 embassy bombings

The Pentagon confirmed Saturday night that U.S. special forces had captured an Al Qaeda terrorist wanted in connection with the 1998 bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

The secret operation occurred in Tripoli, Libya, where an elite team of Special Operators swooped in and captured alive Abu Anas Al Liby.

Pentagon spokesman George Little said in a statement that Abu Anas Al Liby “is currently lawfully detained by the U.S. military in a secure location outside of Libya.” Sources told Fox News that he will be read his rights by an elite FBI unit that was sent out for that purpose. US officials say that the Justice Department plans to prosecute him in a U.S. court.

Al Liby is on the FBI’s most-wanted list with a $5 million bounty on his head. He was indicted by a federal court in the Southern District of New York, for his alleged role in the bombings of the United States Embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, on August 7, 1998, that killed more than 220 people.

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Christians Under Threat in Syria as Islamist Extremists Gain Influence

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Photo Credit: Youssef Badawi/EPA

Photo Credit: Youssef Badawi/EPA

When radical Islamists tore down a cross and hoisted a black flag above a church in the northern Syrian city of Raqqah last week, their action underscored the increasingly hostile environment for the country’s Christians.

Although Syria is majority Sunni Muslim, it is one of the most religiously and ethnically diverse countries in the Middle East, home to Christians, Druze, and Shiite-offshoot Alawites and Ismailis. But the country’s conflict, now in its third year, is threatening that tapestry.

While the primary front in the war has pitted Sunni against Shiite, Christians are increasingly caught in the line of fire. The perception that they support the government — which is in many cases true — has long made them a target of rebel groups. Now, Christians say radical Islamist groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), an affiliate of al-Qaeda, are determined to drive them from their homes.

“The Christian community in Syria is stuck between two fires,” said Nadim Nassar, a Syrian from Latakia who is director of the Awareness Foundation, an interfaith charity based in Britain. “One fire is a corrupt regime, and everybody agrees there needs to be a change. And on the other hand, there’s a fragmented and diverse opposition on the ground who can’t control jihadist forces coming from outside the country.”

Syria is not the only place in the wider region where Christians are being targeted. Coptic churches in Egypt have been attacked, and Pakistan last week experienced the deadliest church bombing in the country’s history. The militants who attacked a mall in Nairobi last month singled out non-Muslims.

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Iran Named to UN’s Disarmament and International Security Committee

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Photo Credit: FrontPageMag

Photo Credit: FrontPageMag

Like an abomination from Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory, the United Nations seems to exist mainly as an argument for why it shouldn’t exist.

Iran is the world’s top sponsor of international terrorism, it’s currently involved in conflicts in at least three countries and it’s pursuing a nuclear weapons program.

So in the United Nations, where every day is Backwards Day, it’s time to reward it with a spot on the Disarmament and International Security Committee.

Because when you think of disarmament and international security, you think of Iran, in the same way that when you think of genocide prevention, you think of Nazi Germany. If the Third Reich had only held out long enough, Hitler Jr. could have been sitting on the Genocide Prevention Committee.

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Iran Military Official: Obama has Surrendered

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

President Obama’s statement to the United Nations last week that America is not seeking regime change in Iran is not merely a kind remark, but a recognition of U.S. inability to bring change to Iran, the head of Iran’s Quds Forces, Gen. Qasem Soleimani, said.

Joining in that view, an outlet of the Quds cyber forces officers posted an image of a surrendering Obama in military uniform under the title “In a not too distant future.”

The image has Soleimani on top overlooking the defeat of America with a note at the bottom: “One Qasem Soleimani is enough for all the enemies of this country (Iran).”

That claim was underscored this week by Seyed Hossein Naqavi Hosseini, a member of Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, who said that while “Iran complies with the Non-Proliferation Treaty rules and regulations and cooperates within that framework, it will never accept the Additional Protocol.”

That protocol allows the IAEA to verify whether countries are complying with nuclear regulations.

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