"Safeguarding seeds that may feed the future" by Somini Sengupta New York Times October 14, 2017
TERBOL, Lebanon — Searching for seeds that can endure the perils of a hotter planet has not been easy.
At least they are getting a grip on the fires.
The International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas, though it received no state funding, was once known as a darling of the Syrian government. Based in Aleppo, its research had helped to make Syria enviably self-sufficient in wheat production, but a drive to produce thirsty crops also drained Syria’s underground water over the years, and it was followed by a crippling drought that helped to fuel the protests that erupted into armed revolt against the government in 2011.
OMG, now the NYT tells us it was a drought that was responsible for the CIA-backed insurrection.
Btw, the self-sufficiency part is another reason among many as to why Syria must be destroyed.
The center, in turn, became a casualty of the war and the center’s most vital project — a seed bank containing 155,000 varieties of the region’s main crops, a sort of agricultural archive of the Fertile Crescent — faced extinction, but researchers there had a backup copy.
This is bordering on gross.
Beginning in 2008, long before the war, the center had begun to send seed samples — “accessions” as they are called — to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, the “doomsday vault,” burrowed into the side of a mountain on a Norwegian island above the Arctic Circle. It was standard procedure, in case anything happened.
I know about that. Saw it on some History TV "conspiracy" show.
So what do the evil minions running this planet have planned for the NYT and BG to plant this story on Sunday?
War happened.
Yup, just happened. Spontaneously combusted and appeared out of nowhere.
At least this pile of scitte should help something grow.
Seed banks have always served as important repositories of biodiversity. But they’re even more crucial, said Tim Benton, a food security expert at the University of Leeds, at a time when the world needs crops that can adapt to the rapid onset of climate change.....
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"Deal reached to evacuate civilians from Islamic State-held Raqqa" by Louisa Loveluck Washington Post October 14, 2017
BEIRUT — Preparations are underway to evacuate civilians from the Islamic State’s Syrian stronghold of Raqqa under the terms of a deal that could also see local militants boarding the buses.
Foreign fighters, however, have ‘‘purportedly’’ been excluded from the deal, according to the US-led coalition, which has the city under siege.
In a statement, the coalition said the deal is ‘‘designed to minimize civilian casualties’’ and that the convoy of evacuation buses would be searched and screened by a US-backed ground force. But it also tried to distance itself from the arrangement brokered by a local civilian council and Arab tribal elders.
‘‘We do not condone any arrangement that allows Daesh terrorists to escape Raqqa without facing justice, only to resurface somewhere else,’’ said Brigadier General Jonathan Braga, using an alternate acronym for the Islamic State. ‘‘We remain concerned about the thousands of civilians in Raqqa who remain subject to Daesh cruelty.’’
Three years after Raqqa became the de facto capital of a self-proclaimed caliphate spanning Syria and Iraq, the Islamic State is now clinging onto its last foothold there.
The battle for the city began in June, with a US-backed militia known as the Syrian Democratic Forces leading heavy street-by-street fighting amid intense coalition airstrikes and shelling.
In comments to the Associated Press, Omar Alloush, an official from the Local Raqqa Council, confirmed said that local fighters have been included in the evacuation agreement. The apparent exclusion of foreign fighters, who stand the least chance of slipping away unnoticed, suggested that they would now be left alone to defend their final sliver of territory.
It was unclear Saturday whether the evacuation buses would leave for SDF-controlled territory or for that still held by the Islamic State.
In September, US warplanes temporarily blocked a convoy carrying hundreds of the group’s fighters and their families after Hezbollah and the Syrian government permitted them to withdraw from a besieged enclave on the Lebanon-Syria border.
On Saturday, Colonel Ryan Dillon, a spokesman for the US-led coalition, said it was now important that the actions of those evacuated were ‘‘monitored and tracked,’’ and that Syrian militants were not able to reenter the conflict.
Hundreds of Raqqa fighters are believed to have surrendered in recent days, leaving a bombed-out ghost city in their wake. But thousands of civilians remain trapped in the middle of the remaining dogfight, acting as human shields for the Islamic State’s militants and forcing the SDF to slow its final advance.
US-led coalition airstrikes in the province have also killed hundreds of civilians, according to monitoring groups and a United Nations war crimes inquiry.
Raqqa’s strategic significance has diminished as international forces rolled back Islamic State territory across Syria and Iraq, with senior leaders moving east to the border regions between the two.
But the loss of the city would mark a symbolic blow.
Honestly, I'm tired of the symbolism, imagery, and illusion of the propaganda narrative.
On Saturday, the Syrian defense ministry said it had captured the eastern city of al-Mayadeen, a key Islamic State holdout to which western officials believe the group’s top officials have moved in recent months.
The pro-Syrian government Al-Ikhbariya TV quoted an unnamed military official as saying that the militant group’s defenses in Mayadeen collapsed Saturday, with troops chasing last Islamic State fighters out of town as engineers cleared land mines.
Video footage from the area showed military vehicles rolling through empty streets, with soldiers flashing victory signs for the camera.
With the fall of Mayadeen and retaking of Raqqa, Islamic State fighters are losing two of their last strongholds in Syria as their caliphate crumbles.
The militants are besieged in the city of Deir el-Zour, leaving them with one last major urban bastion in Syria, the strategic town of Boukamal, on the border with Syria and Iraq.
Oh, the poor terrorists are under siege -- much like the people of Gaza!
Over the past months, Mayadeen had become a refuge for Islamic State leaders as they faced an intense crackdown in Syria and Iraq.
Mayadeen, on the western bank of the Euphrates River, was also a major node in the race for control of the oil-producing eastern province of Deir el-Zour, which straddles the border with Iraq.
Washington fears advances by Syrian troops and allied fighters could help Iran expand its influence across the region and establish a ‘‘Shi’ite corridor’’ of land links from Iraq to Lebanon, and all the way to Israel. Iran backs militias fighting alongside the Syrian military....
That's what all this is about: the failure of the Zionist/neocon war plan for world domination.
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"Islamic State mounts final stand in Syria’s Raqqa" by Louisa Loveluck Washington Post October 16, 2017
BEIRUT — The last of the few dozen Islamic State holdouts inside the militant group’s de facto capital in Syria were mounting a final stand on Sunday, after a stream of militants surrendered under a deal brokered by local officials.
The US-backed opposition alliance known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, said that 275 militants had left Raqqa’s city center, along with their families. It said that they would be interrogated and sent to court if they were suspected to have participated in killings.
The battle for the Islamic State’s most famous stronghold began in June, and SDF forces have advanced with the support of heavy US-led coalition airstrikes as the city has been turned into a virtual ghost town.
The Islamic State has lost all but a sliver of territory in Raqqa. At least 90 percent of the city is believed to be under SDF control, with de-mining squads combing the streets for explosives laid to deter advancing forces.
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There was so much more in the print version.
Also see: Iraqi forces launch operation for Kurdish-held oil fields
Didn't make print.
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It's all about "a geopolitical battleground for forces trying to support or thwart Iranian attempts to secure supply routes stretching from Beirut to Tehran."
"Trump’s speech sparks a new war of words between US, Iran" by Nasser Karimi Associated Press October 14, 2017
Related: 21st-Century John Wayne
TEHRAN — President Trump’s refusal to certify the Iran nuclear deal has sparked a new war of words between the Islamic Republic and America, fueling growing mistrust and a sense of nationalism among Iranians.
AS LONG AS THAT IS ALL IT IS!
The speech has served to unite Iranians across the political spectrum.
Nice!
In addition to undercutting moderates in Iran’s clerically-controlled government who worked for the nuclear agreement, Trump declined to call the Persian Gulf — the waterway through which a third of all oil traded by sea passes — by its recognized name.
Iranian officials and media outlets on Saturday uniformly condemned Trump’s comments, in which he angrily accused Iran of violating the spirit of the 2015 accord and demanded Congress toughen the law governing US participation.
Trump said he was not ready to pull out of the deal but warned he would do so if it were not improved.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani also offered a list of moments that showed the United States could not be trusted by the average Iranian, dating back to the 1953 CIA-backed coup that cemented US-backed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s power.
They called it "Operation Ajax." They paid off a bunch of students and other groups to protests and foment the conditions for a coup. Playbook doesn't change much, either.
Like many others in Iran, Rouhani focused on the fact that Trump used the term ‘‘Arabian Gulf’’ to refer to the Persian Gulf. Some traded online video clips of past American presidents calling it the Persian Gulf, while one semiofficial news agency published a photo gallery with the title ‘‘Persian Gulf forever.’’
Posts with the hashtag PersianGulf and the Iranian flag circulated on social media.
The name of the body of water has become an emotive issue for Iranians who embrace their country’s long history as the Persian Empire, especially as US Gulf Arab allies and the American military now call it the ‘‘Arabian Gulf.’’
The same as the US flag and football nonsense over here?
Hard to believe people would get emotional when they have been insulted. Must be an Iranian flaw. Thankfully, the US president is above that.
Iran’s Education Minister Mohammad Bathai suggested in a tweet that American teachers allocate more time toward teaching ‘‘history and geography.’’
That's not their job; their job is to train little automatons for labor and social justice work using politically-correct dogma. It's indoctrination and inculcation is our $y$tem of ejewkhazion.
Recent surveys have shown an increasing majority of Iranians are skeptical that the United States will live up to its obligations in the nuclear deal.
Who can blame them? This government never lives up to its word.
Meanwhile, most have yet to see the benefits of the deal itself as Iran’s economy still struggles to overcome rampant inflation and add jobs.
Still being squeezed, 'eh?
General Masoud Jazayeri, a Revolutionary Guard commander and spokesman for Iran’s joint armed forces staff, said the country’s military will continue boosting its power and influence.
Now will you please stand for our national anthem!
‘‘We tell the corrupt and evil government of the US that we will continue promoting defensive power of the country, more determined, and with more motive than before,’’ Jazayeri was quoted as saying by the Guard’s news website.....
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Related: Israeli experts defend the Iran nuclear deal
Found 9 of them, he did.
"Clinton, in an interview recorded Wednesday and aired Sunday on CNN, said Iran is engaging in other dangerous behavior. For now, Trump is tossing the issue to Congress. Clinton also denounced Trump’s bellicose language toward North Korea....."
That's the top story on the front-page today, and the regurgitation of that garbage is so laughable makes you want to slink away to a dark corner and cry.
Also see:
"The UNESCO executive board has voted to make a former French government minister the UN cultural agency’s next chief. The board’s selection of Audrey Azoulay came Friday, a day after the United States announced that it intends to pull out of United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization because of its alleged anti-Israel bias. If confirmed by the group’s general assembly, Azoulay will succeed Irina Bokova of Bulgaria, whose term was marred by financial woes and criticism over Palestine’s inclusion as a member state."
It should be called the JU. N.
"Why a New York court case has rattled Turkey’s president" by Patrick Kingsley New York Times October 14, 2017
NEW YORK — The conversations caught on wiretaps planted by the Turkish police are alleged to show a conspiracy to help Iran skirt US sanctions by trading gold for gas.
The recordings also suggest that the plotters aimed to please one man: Recep Tayyip Erdogan, then the prime minister of Turkey, now the president.
The Erdogan government has dismissed the telephone recordings as fabrications concocted in 2013 by treasonous adversaries who had infiltrated the Turkish police and judiciary. But US prosecutors have taken a different view.
Wasn't that about the time documents that Edward Snowden released showed the U.S. government spying on all sorts of world leaders, from Brazil to Germany?
They have cited the 2013 Turkish investigation in court papers filed in New York where nine men — including a senior Turkish bank official — have been charged with conspiring to evade US sanctions on Iran.
The sanctions case has strained relations between the United States and Turkey, and drawn repeated condemnation from Erdogan. He has often raised it with American officials, including in a telephone call with President Trump on Sept. 9, and in recent days, as tensions between the countries grew worse amid a diplomatic dispute over Turkey’s detention of a US Embassy employee, Turkish officials justified their actions by equating them to the embargo charges in New York.
“You will arrest my bank’s deputy general manager for no reason, and will try another citizen of mine for two years, and want to use him as an informant,” Erdogan said in a speech Thursday in which he defended the US employee’s arrest.
A close reading, however, of a lengthy summary of the Turkish investigation, which prosecutors have filed in US District Court in Manhattan and which includes excerpts from transcripts of the wiretap recordings, suggests Erdogan’s objections may involve more than just patriotism.
In several of the conversations, the records show, three of the men now charged discuss meeting with Erdogan and acting, as one puts it, on “the prime minister’s order” to increase Turkish trade.
The excerpts, a copy of which has been translated independently by The New York Times, do not suggest Erdogan was aware of any illegal activity, and he is neither named nor referred to in a US indictment filed last month. But they offer evidence that Erdogan, back in 2013, was meeting regularly with several of the men at the height of their suspected sanctions busting.
The NYT once again cementing its position as the lead propagandist for the USraeli Empire.
One question now is whether one or more of the defendants — two of whom are jailed in New York and scheduled for trial on Nov. 27 — might still plead guilty and cooperate with US authorities in the hope of winning leniency in sentencing.
“I’m sure Erdogan worries about that, and I’m sure he worries about what could come out at trial,” said Eric S. Edelman, a former US ambassador to Turkey. “Either one could be very damaging to him.”
The case centers on three men, all of whom knew Erdogan personally. Reza Zarrab, a Turkish-Iranian gold trader, is suspected of having helped the Turkish government bypass US sanctions on Iranian trade by using gold and other nonmonetary goods to pay for Iranian gas. US prosecutors say he was helped by Zafer Caglayan, then Turkey’s economy minister, and Suleyman Aslan, at the time the chief executive of a state-owned Turkish bank.
Caglayan and Aslan are not in custody of either the United States or Turkey; Zarrab has been jailed in the United States since March 2016, after being arrested during a family trip to Disney World.
The case has been largely ignored by the American public. But it has been widely reported and discussed in the Turkish capital, Ankara, where many of the government’s supporters see it as a continuation of a December 2013 attempt by parts of the Turkish judiciary to unseat Erdogan’s administration.....
It's the first I've heard of it!
It's hard to ignore something you are not even aware of!
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Looks like a problem at the border:
"Canadian says Taliban-linked captors killed newborn daughter, allowed attack on wife" bvy Antonio Olivo Washington Post October 14, 2017
KABUL — Joshua Boyle’s revelation, which authorities have not confirmed, added another layer to a story with nearly as many questions as answers. He spoke with a mostly calm voice and declined to elaborate.
PFFFT!
Pakistani officials would not comment on the allegations, and a US State Department official had no immediate response Saturday. A Taliban spokesman in Afghanistan did not respond to messages seeking comment, but the Haqqani group, which operates as a criminal network and helps lead the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, is known for its cruelty toward its captives, analysts say.
‘‘Generally, they don’t treat prisoners humanely,’’ said Hamed Daqeeq, a former Afghan government official who is now a political analyst in Kabul. In the past, freed prisoners ‘‘spoke of being tortured and beaten badly by the group,’’ he said.
Like at Gitmo?
What do you mean he is one of ours?
In a video released by Pakistan’s military that was filmed before he left the country, Boyle recounted a harrowing firefight during a raid by Pakistani security forces that freed the family, the Associated Press reported.
Boyle was previously married to the sister of Omar Khadr, once the youngest detainee at the US military detention center at Guantanamo Bay after he pleaded guilty to killing a US Special Forces medic.
Red flag! This is all either a fictional production or this guy was an intelligence asset.
He said he was in Afghanistan with Coleman to help villagers ‘‘who live deep inside Taliban-controlled Afghanistan where no NGO, no aid worker, and no government has ever successfully been able to bring the necessary help.’’
Uh-huh.
At the time, Coleman was pregnant. She gave birth to all of her children while in captivity. Before the new allegations, the couple was believed to have three children, who were all rescued with their parents in a Pakistani raid that was based on a tip by US intelligence officials.
The bin Laden thing was all bull, and this has that same feel.
US officials in recent months had suspected that Boyle, Coleman, and their children were being held inside Afghanistan, though there was never enough information to locate them, said a former US official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence.
The couple and their children were being spirited across the border into Pakistan when US officials appear to have learned about their whereabouts and passed on the intelligence to Pakistani officials, who carried out the rescue.
The operation appeared to have unfolded quickly and ended with what some described as a dangerous raid, a shootout, and a captor’s final, terrifying threat to ‘‘kill the hostage.’’
Boyle told his parents that he, his wife, and their children were intercepted by Pakistani forces while being transported in the back or trunk of their captors’ car and that some of his captors were killed. He suffered only a shrapnel wound, his family said.
US officials did not confirm those details.
In Islamabad on Saturday, Major General Asif Ghafoor, spokesman of the Pakistani army, said the rescue effort began after a US diplomat informed Pakistani officials that the family was being moved.
‘‘Our first priority was that the captives are brought out safely, we wanted to isolate the terrorists and captives, and we wanted to come between the terrorists and hostages, which we did, so that the captives remain safe,’’ Ghafoor said.
He did not address Boyle’s murder and rape allegations.
A US military official said a military hostage team did a preliminary health assessment on the family and was prepared to fly it to Baghram Air Base in Afghanistan but sometime after daybreak Thursday, Boyle said he wanted the family taken to Toronto.
Boyle called on the Afghan government to bring the Haqqani network to justice.
‘‘God willing, this litany of stupidity will be the epitaph of the Haqqani network,’’ Boyle said.....
Sorry, I'm no longer laughing.
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He says he ‘‘did see the truth, and the truth was proof enough to me the Pakistanis are doing everything to their utmost.’’ -- meaning it's a likely pile of scitte PR stunt for Trump and Pakistan.
Related: Taliban deny fighters attacked American hostage family
Time to throw dirt on it all.
NDU:
US-backed Syrian force expects Raqqa victory in ‘a few days’
