ANTI8ETHFWNH

New Year, but the same old shocking scenes: Mayhem in streets across Britain as drunken revellers lose their senses (and in some cases their trousers) Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3380899/Where-streets-no-shame-New-Year-revellers-spill-pubs-clubs-night-drunken-excess-Britain.

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 2 Jan 2016 00:24:00 +0200

It has been a night of wild celebrations and drunken mayhem across Britain as New Year revellers welcomed 2016 by hugging police cars, rolling around in the street and, in some cases, losing their trousers.

Millions of party-goers packed out pubs and clubs, with some braving freezing temperatures, while in the Welsh town of Aberystwyth one woman was seen lying in the road as she and a friend waved goodbye to 2015.

Another was pictured wrapping her arms and legs around a police car.

Revellers were also seen looking a little worse for wear in Swansea, vomiting outside takeaways, being helped off the pavement and having to be carried away as their trousers fell down.

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One man was also seen with his jeans part way down as he was detained by police.

In London, a reveller was taken away on a stretcher while dozens more were tended to by the emergency services and temporary treatment centres. Some were handed blankets after braving temperatures below 0C in parts of the country.

There were a total of 48 arrests in the capital overnight, including four for drug possession, three for carrying offensive or bladed weapons and five for assaults on police officers.

Six people were also detained for public order offences, 11 for assault and one for sexual assault, the Met said.

West Midlands Ambulance Service, which put a record number of crews on duty, dealt with 1,629 emergency call-outs between 8pm on New Year's Eve and 4am on New Year's Day.

A spokesman said a man aged in his late teens was successfully resuscitated using a defibrillator after suffering a cardiac arrest outside a nightclub in Broad Street, Birmingham, shortly after 1am.

Thousands of people had gathered on the banks of the River Thames for a stunning midnight display featuring around 12,000 fireworks.

But it was what they left behind that was just as eye-opening, as the clean-up operation began in earnest to rid the streets of rubbish.

As revellers made their way home, one woman was seen carrying an inflatable Zimmer frame, while others had to help up friends who had fallen down.

The scenes were similar to that witnessed on 'Black Eye Friday', known as Britain's booziest night of the year. The final Friday before Christmas, it saw Britain's towns and cities descend into chaos as binge-drinkers hit the streets in their droves.

Police cells in Plymouth were full by midnight as officers dealt with incidents of violence, drunkenness and disorder on their busiest night of the year. And medics in Wales were forced to open a makeshift Accident and Emergency ward in the streets of Cardiff to deal with the fall out.

On New Year's Eve, those in the capital were watched over by every available officer at the Metropolitan Police's disposal, including hundreds of firearms personnel, as European cities tightened security over fears of a Paris-style terror attack.

The Met Police confirmed the occasion was one of two events, along with Notting Hill Carnival, in which there was no holiday entitlement.

Force spokesman Superintendent Jo Edwards said the extra officers were for reassurance and the event was 'successful'.

She said: 'Our officers worked alongside stewards to support their operation and help people to get in and out of the event area safely and efficiently.

'Although the celebrations have drawn to a close, officers continue to work through the night to facilitate the clean up operation and bring the area back to normality in time for the New Year's Day parade.'

Today, more than 8,500 performers representing 20 countries will take part in the annual New Year's Day parade through London, again amid a large security operation.

The event, which includes marching bands, cheerleaders, clowns and acrobats, kicks off in Piccadilly and finishes in Parliament Square, taking in Lower Regent Street, Pall Mall, Trafalgar Square and Whitehall.

In Munich, German authorities declared a major terror alert over fears of an ISIS terror attack.

A foreign intelligence service had warned that between five and seven suicide bombers from the terror group had been planning on attacking the southern German city.

Two railway stations - Munich's main station and the Pasing station - were evacuated after indications of a planned attack which would target party-goers in the city.

A police spokesperson said that they had ‘reliable information’ that a group was planning to act as festivities were well under way on New Year’s Eve.

‘Actual lead that in #Munich a terror attack is planned. Please avoid crowd gatherings as well as the central train station and the Pasing train station,’ read the tweet.

Another tweet from the police read: ‘We note explicitly once again that we take the threat very seriously. Please remain alert.’

Across Europe, capital cities were on high security alert, with Brussels and Paris both scrapping fireworks for New Year's celebrations.

In Berlin, the police presence was stepped up at the Brandenburg Gate, where hundreds of thousands of people gathered for festivities. All large bags and backpacks were banned from the site of the huge street party.

Major security operations involving thousands of police were in place in other cities, including Sydney, Bangkok, Delhi and New York.

Belgian police held a further six people suspected of plotting a New Year's Eve attack in Brussels. One was also charged with offences linked to the attacks on the French capital.

Soldiers open fire on car as it tried to ram mosque TWICE in France with bullets wounding driver and a nearby worshipper Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3381263/Soldiers-open-fire-car-tried-ram-mosque-France-bullets-wounding-driver-passenger-nearby-worshipper.

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 2 Jan 2016 00:06:00 +0200

Soldiers opened fire on a car which tried to ram them twice as they stood guard at a mosque in the south eastern French town of Valence.

The bullets seriously wounded the car's driver in the leg and arm, while a stray shot struck an innocent worshipper, injuring the 72-year-old man in the calf.

A soldier was also slightly injured in the incident, when the car struck his legs.

A photo posted on social media showed one of them being treated at the scene.

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The attacker had twice rammed his car - which was registered in Savoie, a department to the east - into the four soldiers guarding the mosque.

The mosque's spokesman Abdallah Imam Dliouah said the driver, who was 'unknown to the mosque', tried to deliberately slam into the four soldiers who were 'responsible for protecting' it.

Mayor Nicolas Daragon told the iTELE news channel that the soldiers, some whom had been thrown to the ground, fired warning shots and one then fired to disable the driver.

'Even if this happened near a mosque, the target was the soldiers,' the mayor added.

Daragon said the attacker's identity, motives and psychiatric state were not yet known.

iTele reported he was not known to the security services or police.

However, journalist Thomas Zimmerman reported that the man was 30, and was originally from Lyon, an hour's drive north.

Photos showed the red Peugeot, whose windows were smashed by bullets, lying in a ditch, its front bonnet crumpled from the collision.

In another photo shared on Twitter, paramedics surround a man who appears to have wounds on his chest.

It is not known whether the man being treated was the driver, the passenger, the soldier or the worshipper, all of whom were injured in the incident.

In a Facebook statement, Dliouah added: 'They [the soldiers] had to use their firearms, injuring the individual.

'A faithful of the mosque was slightly wounded in the leg by a stray bullet and was rescued by one of the soldiers.

'The officials and the faithful of the mosque of Valencia are deeply shocked by this act.

The car and the soldiers responsible for the protection of the mosque are appreciated by the worshippers.

'We condemn in the strongest terms this aggression against those whose mission is to ensure our safety.

'Despite its gravity, the act will not dampen our resolve to promote the live together, as we have always done.'

The soldiers are among thousands protecting sensitive sites around France after the deadly terror attacks which left 130 dead in Paris last month.

Investigators have been unable to identify the driver because he had no documents on him, Le Parisien reported.

Police put a cordon around the area as armed, camouflaged soldiers continued to guard the scene.

Munich suicide bomb plot: police hunt Isis suspects behind New Year's Eve threat

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 1 Jan 2016 23:52:00 +0200

Police in Munich are hunting Islamic State suspects after a foreign intelligence agency warned of a “concrete” plan to send suicide bombers to the city’s train stations during New Year’s Eve celebrations.
Five to seven people were reportedly planning suicide bomb attacks on the main Hauptbahnhof station and Pasing station at the western end of the city centre, in what German authorities said was a “serious, imminent threat”, prompting them to evacuate the sites and warn people to stay away.

Munich police president Hubertus Andrä told a news conference on Friday that German officials had received a “very concrete” tip that suicide attacks were planned at train stations in the southern city at midnight.
“We received names. We can’t say if they are in Munich or in fact in Germany,” Andrä said.
About 550 officers have been deployed to secure the city and no arrests had yet been made, he said.
The Bavarian interior minister, Joachim Herrmann, told a media conference on Thursday night: “The threat was very concretely centred on midnight and at these two places.” He added that all necessary security measures were being taken.
Citing anonymous security sources, Bavarian state broadcaster BR reported that Germany had received warnings from both US and French intelligence agencies earlier in the day. According to the intelligence, seven Iraqis living in Munich were named as the potential attackers, and they were planning to enter the stations in pairs and blow themselves up simultaneously.
Munich police spokeswoman Elizabeth Matzinger could not confirm the nationalities or the suspected residence of the suspects, or whether a manhunt for identified individuals was underway.

“Investigations are happening, but I cannot give out any details, that is a tactical information,” she told the Guardian. “I can’t confirm whether they are Iraqis, but it was apparently a group of five to seven people affiliated to IS [Isis].”
The two stations were shut down and evacuated around midnight, while special unit police officers armed with automatic weapons were stationed at entrances.
Munich police issued a statement saying that an attack was expected in the city during the night, and warned people to avoid the two stations and large crowds in general. But by 4 am, the situation appeared to have calmed significantly, and the two stations were re-opened.

“The closures at the main station and the Pasing station have been lifted, but there selective controls are being carried out there,” Matzinger said. “The situation after midnight is more relaxed than it was before midnight, but notwithstanding that we cannot give the all clear. We had a terrorist warning from the French secret service and we are still taking it seriously, because we can’t rule out that it is not serious – and as long as there is still the danger of a grain of truth to it, we will continue our measures.”
At the media conference, Herrmann said the intelligence had not been 100% reliable, but serious enough that it could not be ignored.
He compared the assessment of the danger to that in Hanover on 17 November, when an international friendly football was called off and the stadium evacuated at short notice. There too, a foreign intelligence tip-off had led to the alert, but no arrests were made and no explosives found in the stadium.

“The concrete tip-off came from one source,” Andrä said, before adding that there was no indication yet the threats could be confirmed or that any suspects had been arrested.
However, a spokesman for the police also said there would be a reinforced police presence in Munich city centre in the coming days. The police force was also bolstered in and around the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, where huge New Year’s celebrations were being happening. All large bags and backpacks were banned from the site of the huge street party.
Despite the Munich police warnings to stay away from big crowds, thousands of people were on the streets of Munich at midnight to welcome the new year with fireworks.
DPA reported massive delays in the city’s public transportation system after both train stations were quickly evacuated and trains no longer stopped there.
The latest development comes amid ongoing security operations across Europe. Police in Belgium detained six people during house searches in Brussels on Thursday in an investigation into an alleged plot to carry out an attack in the city.

Earlier in the week, two other people were arrested on suspicion of preparing attacks on “emblematic sites” in Brussels during the celebrations. Another man was questioned over links to last month’s Paris attacks.
Authorities in the Belgian capital said a fireworks display and festivities that attracted 100,000 people in 2014 would not go ahead after revealing the alleged jihadi plot.
“Unfortunately we have been forced to cancel the fireworks and all that was planned for tomorrow [Thursday] evening,” the mayor, Yvan Mayeur, told Belgian broadcaster RTBF. “It’s better not to take any risks.”
In Paris, where 130 people were killed in December, the annual fireworks display on the Champs Élysées was called off and 11,000 police, soldiers and firefighters patrolled the French capital. More than 100,000 police were deployed across the country, according to the interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve.
Red Square in Moscow, traditionally a place where people gather to ring in the new year, was closed. “It’s no secret that Moscow is one of the choice targets for terrorists,” the city’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, said recently.
New York City said it had its tightest ever New Year’s Eve security to protect an estimated 1 million revellers.

Μπρουνέι: «Στοπ» στον εορτασμό των Χριστουγέννων - ποινή φυλάκισης έως και 5 χρόνια

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 21 Dec 2015 22:53:00 +0200

Τα μικρό βασίλειο του Μπρουνέι αποφάσισε ότι τα χριστουγεννιάτικα δέντρα, τα κάλαντα αλλά και ο Άγιος Βασίλης, θεωρούνται πλέον ως έγκλημα.
Το Μπρουνέι αποφάσισε όχι μόνο να απαγορεύσει δια παντός τα Χριστούγεννα αλλά και να τιμωρεί με τουλάχιστον πέντε χρόνια φυλάκιση όποιον πάει κόντρα στην συγκεκριμένη απόφαση. Το μικρό μουσουλμανικό κράτος, το οποίο διοικείται από τον Σουλτάνο Hassanal Bolkiah, αποφάσισε ότι δεν είναι σωστό για τους πιστούς του Αλάχ να γιορτάζουν τα Χριστούγεννα, και ότι αν το κάνουν θα τους επηρεάσει στην πίστη τους.
Όσοι ωστόσο δεν είναι μουσουλμάνοι, επιτρέπεται να γιορτάσουν τα Χριστούγεννα, μόνο μέσα στις κοινότητές τους και κάτω από αυστηρά πλαίσια. Παρά το γεγονός ότι οι μουσουλμάνοι στη χώρα είναι το 65% και υπάρχουν σημαντικές κοινότητες χριστιανών και βουδιστών, η κυριαρχία των πρώτων σε όλα τα επίπεδα της εξουσίας και της κρατικής μηχανής τους καθιστά κυρίαρχους.
Παράλληλα, γίνεται ισχυρή προπαγάνδα υπέρ της θρησκείας τους, με αποτέλεσμα την απαγόρευση του εορτασμού των Χριστουγέννων, η οποία εκτός των άλλων περιλαμβάνει το στόλισμα των χριστουγεννιάτικων δέντρων σε δημόσιο χώρο, τα χριστουγεννιάτικα τραγούδια αλλά και την αποστολή χριστουγεννιάτικων ευχετήριων καρτών!
Ο Ισλαμικός Νόμος (Σαρία) στο πλούσιο από πετρέλαιο κράτος έχει αρχίσει από την Πρωτομαγιά του 2014 να εφαρμόζεται αυστηρά μετά την απόφαση του 68χρονου Σουλτάνου Hassanal Bolkiah. Ο νόμος έγινε δεκτός από τους μουσουλμάνους παρά τις αντιδράσεις (εγχώριες και μη.

Aretha Franklin is a worse person than you thought

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 21 Dec 2015 22:37:00 +0200

Aretha Franklin showed little r-e-s-p-e-c-t for fellow theatergoers at a performance of “The Color Purple” last week. But when fans realized it was the Queen of Soul who was breaking the rules, they apologized to her.
According to a witness, Franklin showed up late to a performance at the Jacobs Theatre, took up six seats around her and began holding her phone in the air to snap photos of the show — and that was all before intermission!
“She arrived a few minutes late with four bodyguards. One to sit in front, one behind, and one on either side. The prime orchestra seat in front of her was empty,” entertainment writer Brandon Voss posted to Facebook friends.
Then, “During the opening number she began taking photos on her phone, lifting it high and proud, much to the murmuring disgust of those around us,” Voss reported. Then an “older white lady” in the audience began “gesturing wildly for her to put down the phone, letting her bodyguard know it wasn’t allowed.”

That’s when an usher arrived, and “It took her an eternity, but she finally shut it down.”
But at intermission, the woman who’d complained “realized it wasn’t a human being but was in fact THE Aretha Franklin, she APOLOGIZED,” Voss posted. “Because it’s Aretha f - - king Franklin, and she can take pictures whenever and wherever she wants.”
But “Then shortly before the second act starts, after being approached by many fans, she accuses me of not being in the right seat and wants to check my ticket,” Voss wrote. “She doesn’t recognize me . . . [m]aybe because I was on time? I didn’t think my mouth could open that wide.”
And “finally, after the show was over, her bodyguards asked our whole row to file out the other side because Aretha was just going to sit and chill.” But Voss figured, “I have no problem with any of this, quite frankly. #RESPECT.”
Page Six reported that after the show, Franklin met Jennifer Hudson and the cast backstage. A rep for the show said: “Aretha attended the show with a party of six . . . I don’t have any knowledge of her taking photos during the show.”

Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini Are Barred From Soccer for 8 Years

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 21 Dec 2015 22:30:00 +0200

With white whiskers sprouting from his chin, a bandage across one cheek and his tie slightly askew, Sepp Blatter, the longtime president of FIFA, appeared slightly unkempt on Monday morning. When he spoke at a news conference in Zurich, however, Mr. Blatter was simply unbowed.

Ranting against his lengthy suspension from the sport by FIFA’s ethics committee — a committee he helped create and routinely endorsed — Mr. Blatter, 79, wove widely in his rhetoric, variously invoking his humanitarianism, his loyalty, his passion, his moral compass and his faith. He spoke in English, Spanish, French and German — and declared in all of them that his four-decade career should not end in disgrace.

“I want to talk about betrayal,” he said. “Today, first of all, I was very sad. But not anymore. Now I am fighting.”

His battle figures to be especially difficult. Mr. Blatter and Michel Platini, two of the most powerful figures in global soccer, were barred from the sport for eight years on Monday after being found guilty of ethics violations.

For Mr. Blatter, who has been FIFA’s president since 1998, as well as Mr. Platini, who is the president of UEFA, which oversees soccer in Europe, the bans prohibit any involvement in soccer-related activities — a sanction that, in Mr. Platini’s case, seemingly ends any chance that he will be able to run in February’s special election to fill the post Mr. Blatter has said he will vacate.

Mr. Blatter’s suspension means that he will not be able to step away from soccer on his own terms, a reality that appeared to infuriate him.

“Of course, I should have stopped after the 2014 World Cup,” Mr. Blatter said, referencing his decision not to retire last year but instead to pursue a fifth term as president. “That would have been perhaps the wise thing to do. Now we are in a situation we don’t deserve to be in.”

Mr. Blatter and Mr. Platini, 60, had been provisionally suspended since October while the investigative chamber of the ethics committee scrutinized their actions, in particular a payment of about $2 million that Mr. Blatter approved for Mr. Platini in 2011. The judiciary chamber of the committee ruled on Monday that there was no legal basis for the payment, and it also said that both men were guilty of a conflict of interest in agreeing to it. “Neither in his written statement nor in his personal hearing was Mr. Blatter able to demonstrate another legal basis for this payment,” the committee said. “His assertion of an oral agreement was determined as not convincing and was rejected by the chamber.”

The committee said Mr. Platini’s actions “did not show commitment to an ethical attitude,” adding that he had abused his position as a vice president for the soccer body and as a member of its executive committee.

In a statement sent to the French press agency, Mr. Platini denied the charges and said the entire situation was a “true mockery.” He also labeled the disciplinary process “pathetic” and said the decision against him went against “all legitimacy and credibility.”

Mr. Blatter, who at one point questioned whether the ethics committee even had the authority to discipline the FIFA president, struck a similar tone. “I am ashamed that the committee goes against the evidence presented,” he said. “I have never cheated with money.”

Mr. Blatter, who was fined 50,000 Swiss francs, or about $50,370, and Mr. Platini, who was fined 80,000 Swiss francs, will appeal the verdicts to FIFA and then to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which is based in Switzerland and frequently arbitrates matters involving sports governance. Both men are also likely to seek an expedited process. Mr. Blatter wants desperately to have his name cleared so that he can host the special FIFA Congress in which his successor will be chosen. Mr. Platini, who had long been seen as the front-runner in the election, will hope to salvage a last-ditch entry into the race.

At this point, however, the suspensions are likely to leave Mr. Blatter and Mr. Platini on the outside of the sport they have led for decades. The two men remain under investigation by Swiss prosecutors, and while UEFA released a statement of support for Mr. Platini, that backing was not unanimous.

“Eight years are not enough for me,” Javier Tebas, the Spanish league president, said, according to The Associated Press. “The penalty should be that they can never again form part of a sports institution.”

In his news conference, held somewhat bizarrely at FIFA’s former headquarters in Zurich, Mr. Blatter, who has worked for FIFA since 1975, was at times bold and defiant. But he also rambled frequently, stopping at one point to congratulate F.C. Barcelona on its recent victory in FIFA’s Club World Cup. At another, he lamented the effect the investigation has had on his family, telling reporters that his granddaughter recently changed schools because she had been subjected to taunting.

Mr. Blatter declined to speak at length about his health — he was hospitalized last month for what a spokesman said was fatigue — but wore a bandage on his face after the recent removal of a mole. Sitting alongside his daughter, Corrine, Mr. Blatter described himself as a “punching ball” of world soccer.

Mr. Blatter became FIFA’s president in 1998, and Mr. Platini worked for him as a special consultant from 1999 until 2002. The $2 million payment approved by Mr. Blatter in 2011 was, he said, simply a delayed salary payment.

“Suspended eight years for what?” he said, claiming that the payment to Mr. Platini was not recorded in FIFA’s records because of an administrative error.

There was no written contract detailing the basis for the payment, however, and Mr. Platini has said in interviews that there was simply a “gentleman’s agreement” between him and Mr. Blatter to cover the deferred money.

Investigators found the late payment suspicious in part because of its timing — a few months before Mr. Blatter began campaigning for re-election to a fourth term as FIFA president. UEFA, led by Mr. Platini, supported Mr. Blatter, who subsequently won the vote after the only other candidate in the race withdrew. On Friday, Mr. Blatter denied any link between the payment and the election.

“I’m a man of principles,” he said. “I will fight for me and I will fight for FIFA.”

Amid the continuing criminal investigations of FIFA in the United States, Switzerland and other countries, FIFA’s ethics committee has been more public in its discipline recently, and Monday’s bans were not out of context with previous decisions. Chung Mong-joon, an honorary FIFA vice president, recently received a six-year ban for ethics violations, and Harold Mayne-Nicholls, a Chilean who was involved in the evaluation of the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bids, received a seven-year ban.

Now, it is Mr. Blatter and Mr. Platini who have received similar suspensions, though Mr. Blatter vowed that this would not be the end to his career in soccer. At the conclusion of his news conference, which lasted nearly and an hour, he departed with a promise.

“I’ll be back,” he said.

Σκηνικό άγριου πολέμου στο Κουρδιστάν: Οι αντάρτες αντιστέκονται στον τουρκικό στρατό

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 21 Dec 2015 22:23:00 +0200

Σφοδρές συγκρούσεις μεταξύ των τουρκικών ενόπλων δυνάμεων και των ανταρτών του Εργατικού Κόμματος του Κουρδιστάν (PKK) σημειώθηκαν σήμερα στη νοτιοανατολική Τουρκία, όπου ο τουρκικός στρατός διεξάγει από την περασμένη εβδομάδα τη μεγαλύτερη επιχείρησή του των τελευταίων ετών.
Αλλεπάλληλοι πυροβολισμοί που συνοδεύονταν από εκρήξεις ακούστηκαν στις πόλεις Τσιζρέ και Σιλόπη της επαρχίας Σιρνάκ, όπου έχει επιβληθεί απαγόρευση της κυκλοφορίας. Στο Τσιζρέ ένα ελικόπτερο του τουρκικού στρατού υποχρεώθηκε να προσγειωθεί καθώς μπήκε στο στόχαστρο των μαχητών του PKK, ανέφερε η εφημερίδα Hürriyet.
Σύμφωνα με τον τελευταίο απολογισμό που έδωσε σήμερα στη δημοσιότητα το γενικό επιτελείο των τουρκικών ενόπλων δυνάμεων “89 τρομοκράτες εξουδετερώθηκαν” στο Τσιζρέ, εννέα στη Σιλόπη και άλλοι επτά στο Σουρ, στην επαρχία Ντιγιάρμπακιρ αφότου ξεκίνησε η επιχείρηση. Το πρακτορείο Ανατολή μετέδωσε εξάλλου ότι δέκα μέλη του PKK σκοτώθηκαν στο Νταργκετζίτ, στη γειτονική επαρχία Μαρντίν.
Το πρακτορείο ανέφερε επίσης ότι δύο στρατιώτες σκοτώθηκαν και έξι τραυματίστηκαν από έκρηξη βόμβας κοντά στην πόλη Μπιτλίς.
Στο Νουσάιμπιν, επίσης στην επαρχία Μαρντίν, η απαγόρευση της κυκλοφορίας που είχε επιβληθεί σε τρεις συνοικίες επεκτάθηκαν σήμερα σε άλλες έντεκα.
Η σύγκρουση “έχει μπει σε μια νέα φάση”, εκτίμησε ο Μουράτ Καραγιλάν, ο ασκών την ηγεσία του PKK. “Η σύρραξη εξελίσσεται σε εμφύλιο πόλεμο”, είπε, σε συνέντευξη που παραχώρησε στΟ κουρδικό πρακτορείο ειδήσεων Firat.
Τουρκικός ισχυρισμός: Περισσότεροι από 100 Κούρδοι μαχητές σκοτώθηκαν σε μια ευρεία επιχείρηση εναντίον του PKK

Περισσότεροι από 100 μαχητές του Εργατικού Κόμματος του Κουρδιστάν (PKK) σκοτώθηκαν τις τελευταίες πέντε ημέρες κατά τη διάρκεια μιας πρωτοφανούς σε εύρος στρατιωτικής επιχείρησης που συνεχίζεται στο νοτιοανατολικό τμήμα της Τουρκίας.
Η επιχείρηση, που πραγματοποιούν από κοινού οι ένοπλες δυνάμεις και οι ειδικές δυνάμεις της αστυνομίας, έχει στοιχίσει την ζωή σε 102 ανθρώπους στις τάξεις του PKK, σύμφωνα με έναν νέο απολογισμό που δόθηκε σήμερα στη δημοσιότητα από μια πηγή των υπηρεσιών ασφαλείας.
Επιπλέον, τουλάχιστον δύο στρατιώτες και πέντε πολίτες έχουν χάσει την ζωή τους στις συγκρούσεις, διευκρίνισε η ίδια πηγή.
Συνολικά, 10.000 άνδρες με την υποστήριξη αρμάτων μάχης έχουν κινητοποιηθεί και συμμετέχουν σε αυτήν την επιχείρηση που στοχεύει στο να εκδιώξει τους Κούρδους μαχητές από τα αστικά κέντρα, ενώ επικεντρώνεται σε δύο πόλεις κοντά στα σύνορα Συρίας και Ιράκ, το Τζιζρέ και τη Σιλόπι. Σε αυτές τις δύο περιοχές της επαρχίας Σιρνάκ έχει επιβληθεί απαγόρευση κυκλοφορίας εδώ και ημέρες.
Ένας προηγούμενος απολογισμός που ανακοίνωσε χθες ο τουρκικός στρατός έκανε λόγο για 70 Κούρδους μαχητές νεκρούς.
Ο αρχηγός του γενικού επιτελείου εθνικής άμυνας της Τουρκίας, στρατηγός Χουλουσί Ακάρ επισκέφθηκε χθες τα τουρκικά στρατεύματα στην περιοχή και ενημερώθηκε σχετικά με την πρόοδο των επιχειρήσεων.
«Οι επιχειρήσεις στην περιοχή (…) θα συνεχιστούν με αποφασιστικότητα μέχρι να αποκατασταθεί η δημόσια τάξη» επισημαίνεται σε ένα δελτίο τύπου των τουρκικών ενόπλων δυνάμεων με αφορμή την επίσκεψη Ακάρ.
ΓΑΛΛΙΚΟ ΠΡΑΚΤΟΡΕΙΟ, ΑΠΕ-ΜΠΕ, Αγκυρα-Ντιγιάρμπακιρ, Turkey

Phoenix Capital: Ο «κακός» αποπληθωρισμός… επέστρεψε – Θα οδηγήσει σε μια νέα κρίση;

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 21 Dec 2015 22:18:00 +0200

Το μεγάλο «πείραμα της αναθέρμανσης της οικονομίας» έχει αποτύχει, αναφέρει χαρακτηριστικά η Phoenix Capital

Τον κώδωνα του κινδύνου κρούει η Phoenix Capital, σημειώνοντας ότι ο αποπληθωρισμός έχει επιστρέψει, την ώρα που οι κεντρικοί τραπεζίτες έχουν σαστίσει και δεν ξέρουν πώς να αντιδράσουν.
Ειδικότερα επισημαίνει πως οι κεντρικές τράπεζες έχουν μειώσει τα επιτόκια συνολικά 600 φορές από 2009 και έπειτα και έχουν τυπώσει πάνω από 15 τρισ. δολάρια, χωρίς να καταφέρουν να δημιουργήσουν την αναμενόμενη οικονομική ανάπτυξη.
Παρά την αποτυχία, τόσο η ΕΚΤ, όσο και η Τράπεζα της Ιαπωνίας διεξάγουν μεγάλα προγράμματα ποσοτικής χαλάρωσης, ενώ η Fed είναι η μόνη μεγάλη κεντρική τράπεζα που δεν αναπτύσσει με ταχύ ρυθμό τον ισολογισμό της.
«Γιατί έπειτα από έξι χρόνια οι τράπεζες εξακολουθούν τέτοιες επιθετικές πολιτικές;», διερωτάται η Phoenix Capital, απαντώντας ότι αυτές οι πολιτικές συνεχίζονται λόγω των αποπληθωριστικών τάσεων που εμμένουν.
Στη συνέχεια αναφέρει πως είναι γνωστό σε όλους ότι ο αποπληθωρισμός είναι ένα καλό πράγμα.
Ειδικότερα, σχολιάζει πως κανείς δεν θα παραπονεθεί επειδή πρέπει να πληρώσει λιγότερα χρήματα για να αγοράσει κάτι, όπως για παράδειγμα ένα σπίτι, βενζίνη ή έναν υπολογιστή.
Ωστόσο, ο αποπληθωρισμός του χρέους είναι μια διαφορετική ιστορία, επισημαίνει η Phoenix Capital.
Και αυτό διότι ο αποπληθωρισμός του χρέους μεταφράζεται σε αύξηση των μελλοντικών αποπληρωμών.
Πιο συγκεκριμένα, αυτό μεταφράζεται σε επιδείνωση της εξυπηρέτησης του χρέους, οδηγώντας τελικά σε χρεοκοπία και αναδιάρθρωσή του.
Ο αποπληθωρισμός του χρέους είναι αυτός που παραμένει στο επίκεντρο της νομισματικής πολιτικής που ασκούν οι κεντρικές τράπεζες.
Πράγματι, αν σκεφτεί κανείς την απειλή του αποπληθωρισμού του χρέους, κάθε κίνηση των κεντρικών τραπεζών έχει νόημα, σημειώνει χαρακτηριστικά η Phoenix Capital, καθώς έχουν όλες στόχο να μειώσουν τα επιτόκια και να ωθήσουν σε άνοδο τα ομόλογα.
Με αυτό κατά νου, λέει η Phoenix Capital, ακόμα και μια οριακή επιδείνωση του αποπληθωρισμού του χρέους θα ήταν αρκετή να δώσει εφιάλτες στους κεντρικούς τραπεζίτες.
Είναι επίσης ο λόγος που εμφανίζονται λάτρεις του πληθωρισμού μέσω της υποτίμησης του νομίσματος, καθώς τους επιτρέπει να καταστήσουν πιο εξυπηρετούμενο το τεράστιο φορτίο χρέους.
Δυστυχώς, το μεγάλο «πείραμα της αναθέρμανσης της οικονομίας» έχει αποτύχει, προσθέτει χαρακτηριστικά η Phoenix Capital.
Πράγματι, όπως η Societe Generale έχει σημειώσει, φαίνεται ότιο ανεπτυγμένος κόσμος μπορεί να «μετατρέπεται σε Ιαπωνία», δηλαδή να κινείται προς ένα μακροπρόθεσμο αποπληθωριστικό κύκλο παρόμοιο με εκείνο που μαστίζει την Ιαπωνία τα τελευταία 20 χρόνια.

www.bankingnews.gr

Dog's life saved by policeman who rescues him from raging house fire

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 21 Dec 2015 22:08:00 +0200

This dramatic footage captures the moment a dog trapped by a dangerous house fire is rescued by a policeman.
As the clip starts the officer comes into view and is trying to corner the animal.
The scared pooch eventually gives in and the large mutt is scooped up in the arms of the officer.
The hazard then becomes clear as the pair race past a huge building fire.
They make it through the danger zone and out on to the road to safety.

Youtube The clip was uploaded to Facebook and has been viewed more than 72,000 times and the officer has been praised for his actions.

Youtube Last month another pooch managed to start a house fire while looking for food.

Youtube

Behind the Black Flag: The Recruitment of an ISIS Killer

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 21 Dec 2015 21:17:00 +0200

Hassan Aboud’s practiced baritone belied the malevolence in his words.

“Oh Darraji!” he sang. “Our state provided us ammunition and sent us to assassinate you.”

That state is the self-proclaimed Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, the terrorist group that controls territory in Syria and Iraq and has recently projected violence to Ankara, Beirut, Paris and San Bernardino, Calif. A soft-spoken double-amputee sometimes carried to meetings by fellow gunmen, Mr. Aboud is an Islamic State commander who also directs a network of assassins, including those who killed Darraji, a former subordinate, with bullets and flame.

The recording of his singing circulated among past associates this year. A taunting dark requiem, it serves as evidence and confession. Mr. Aboud, who defected from Syria’s rebels to the terrorist group in 2014, was admitting to previously unsolved killings of former friends.

“We plucked Adeeb Abbas’s head,” he continued, naming another of his one-time deputies, blasted from a motorcycle by a roadside bomb. “We spilled his filthy blood.”

He then vowed to kill more, as a male chorus chanted to those marked to die: “We will liquidate every traitor.”

Since rising to prominence as an international menace, the Islamic State has tried to glorify its members, describing them as religious warriors who raised arms to protect fellow Sunni Muslims and serve their understanding of God. But the journey of Mr. Aboud, and his recruitment by ISIS, including with cash, departs from scripts emphasizing piety or civil defense.

It is the chronicle of an underground fighter maimed and darkened by his long fight, the biography — replete with rivalries and fratricide — of a proven and once popular Islamist commander whose actions turned more violent and vengeful as he moved into the Islamic State’s orbit.

Mr. Aboud, his former neighbors and associates say, abandoned the defense of his hometown for money, power and the license for viciousness that came with joining the Islamic State. His path resembled not the airbrushed arcs laid out in jihadist propaganda mills but a Middle Eastern mafia tale set against the corrupting effects of war.

The journey from jihadist rank-and-file to feared underground figure was shaped by multiple forces. These include the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the oppression of a border-straddling Sunni Muslim population by governments in Damascus and Baghdad. It was further stoked by the indiscriminate killing of civilians by Syrian security forces since 2011, then channeled by the patient plotting of a jihadist organization, once shattered, that revived itself to eclipse Al Qaeda.

Ultimately, his courtship by ISIS offers an unusually detailed look at how the group has selected commanders from a region that has produced uncountable militants since 2003. These chosen men, seduced by gifts and the Islamic State’s gloomy prestige, hold the terrain it needs to support its claim of being a caliphate.

Journalists for The New York Times met Mr. Aboud in Syria in 2013, as he led sieges around isolated army positions that were shelling the civilian population nearby; it was a fight he and the several hundred rebels he led, known as the Dawood Brigade, eventually won.

Sarmin, the town in the lowlands of Idlib Province where he headquartered his brigade, was itself under frequent shelling, and he was moving and accepting meetings with much more caution than many rebel commanders.

The interview was arranged by the son-in-law of his boss, but Mr. Aboud’s supporters had everyone wait in the basement of a mosque for part of the afternoon before leading the group to an abandoned building in the partially evacuated, battle-scarred town.

Mr. Aboud was rushed in from the outside by those who carried him. He had lost fighters in battle the previous day and seemed weary and suspicious of guests. His gray pants had been folded to hide his lower-leg stumps, which he crossed in front of himself as he sat on a cushion. He opened the conversation in a quiet voice, and threatened to kill the journalists if he were misquoted.

Abu Ayman, a bomb-maker who helped carry him into the room, spoke more than Mr. Aboud, who chose his words with care, even when repeating Islamist boilerplate.

He complained about the activities of many secular rebels, describing them as opportunists and profiteers. “There are Free Syrian Army brigades,” Mr. Aboud said, that get weapons and “sell them in trade.” He asserted, again speaking softly, that Syria was being plunged into sectarian war by Iran and those it underwrites, including the Syrian government and Hezbollah. “Iran is seeking to re-establish the Persian empire, to get control over the whole Middle East,” he said.

Immediately after the conversation, he was picked up, carried swiftly outside and set on the front passenger seat of a muddy S.U.V., which sped away.

The Times returned to the Turkish-Syrian border after his defection and vendetta killings to interview those who worked with him closely.

Today Mr. Aboud, in his mid-30s, is an exile from Sarmin, where he had lived most of his adult life. Past associates refer to him as either an ISIS wali or emir, titles conveying authority or military power that the Islamic State bestows on governors and its middle rank.

They note that he did not simply drift to ISIS; he has had a relationship with the original underground Sunni insurgents in Iraq’s Anbar Province, part of the crucible where ISIS formed, reaching back more than a decade.

Mr. Aboud and one of his brothers fought American forces there in 2004 and 2005, several townspeople said. Some suggested that the pair returned to Syria as a sleeper cell tied to Al Qaeda in Iraq, which was founded by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and after his death in 2006 eventually became ISIS.

In the nearly year and a half since Mr. Aboud publicly joined the Islamic State, taking with him most of his fighters and many powerful weapons, he has been credited with, or blamed for, a sprawling mix of battlefield action and crime. Those who know him contend he led the capture of Palmyra, the town and ancient heritage site that ISIS defiled.

For all of Mr. Aboud’s activity, however, his story suggests limits to advancement within the group, which analysts say to a large degree remains led by Iraqis, including many connected to the dismantled Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein.

Hassan al-Dugheim, a rebel cleric who said he had observed Mr. Aboud since 2011, said his tactical skill and ruthlessness were beyond question. He bluntly added, however, that he considered Mr. Aboud stupid, and that the Islamic State had found in him a man who could be flattered, bought, then used.

“Syrians are for fighting,” he said, and those who had joined ISIS recently faced a glass ceiling inside. “They are like animals to be ridden, like a horse or a mule.”

Crucible of Sunni Militancy

Hassan Aboud was among the earliest of his townspeople to experience war on what would become the Islamic State’s turf.

In 2004, he and a brother, known as Abu Shadi, traveled to Iraq to join the fight against the American military around Falluja and Ramadi, according to residents of Sarmin. Mr. Aboud, a stoneworker, was in his 20s, entering freshly colonized turf in a militant underworld.

Accounts of his Iraq time vary. Some confusion, his townspeople say, is because Mr. Aboud was circumspect about his activities — an unsurprising behavior considering concerns in Syria’s Alawite-led government that those aligned with Sunni militants in Iraq could rekindle unrest in the Sunni population at home.

Mr. Aboud’s associates said he returned in 2005. A relative, who asked for anonymity so as not to draw his wrath, said that while away Mr. Aboud swore allegiance, or bayat, to his militant leaders. “It was known Hassan Aboud was Al Qaeda,” he said.

Another man, an activist from Sarmin who worked with the Dawood Brigade, said he had seen a video from 2005 of Mr. Aboud with Mr. Zarqawi.

A proponent of terrorism, deliberate savagery and management by fear, Mr. Zarqawi helped push Iraq into sectarian war, inspired a generation of jihadists and became one of the world’s most wanted men before American bombs killed him in 2006. His group later rebuffed top Qaeda leaders to form ISIS.

Mr. Dugheim, the cleric, said he doubted Mr. Aboud was a Qaeda member, noting that he concerned himself solely with local battles and was opposed to the Nusra Front, Syria’s official Qaeda franchise, as it gathered strength. “I exclude the possibility that he really gave bayat,” he said.

Others noted, however, that the Nusra Front and the Islamic State were competitors who became foes, and Mr. Aboud’s connections were not with the central Qaeda leadership that gave the Nusra Front its jihadist authority but with the Iraq wing. Opposition to the Nusra Front, by this view, did not exclude allegiance to the faction that became ISIS.

Whatever the inner loyalties, Mr. Aboud’s life as a fighter once appeared to end. His return home was noteworthy. The activist who worked with him said he knew five men from Sarmin who fought in Iraq. Two died as suicide bombers.

Mr. Aboud dodged that fate, and resumed an unassuming life: He owned a Kia truck and earned wages delivering cement and rebar.

By 2007 he and his brothers owned a workshop, made cinder blocks, sold decorative and patio stone and hired out for contracts. “I used to see him at a lot of houses under construction, and he had laborers working for him, five or six at a time,” the activist said.

Roughly two years before the uprising, Syrian security forces raided Sarmin, cracking down on Sunni networks. One of Mr. Aboud’s brothers was caught.

“Abu Shadi was detained in the street, and taken to Sednaya prison,” the activist said, referring to the infamous jail near Damascus where the government warehoused those it considered Sunni extremists.

In the interview with The Times in 2013, Mr. Aboud confirmed the arrest, but gave a minimal explanation, suggesting his brother had been punished for his faith. “My brother was sent to jail because of his beard,” he said.

He described Syria’s government as an oppressive weight. “They can fight you for an idea you carry in your mind, because of your beard, the way you pray or you dress,” he said. “It is like a siege on your emotions and your beliefs.”

Mr. Aboud seemed to elude the attention of intelligence services. Neighbors said he was conservative and religious, but not overtly so. He wore a beard, but kept it trimmed. Sometimes he smoked, although descriptions of him tend to center on his clean living.

He and his wife were raising a family. His night life consisted of staying up late, drinking tea. “He had a good reputation, nothing bad,” said a doctor in Sarmin who said he often met Mr. Aboud, but asked not to be named for his safety.

Return to War

In early 2011, after popular uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, protests erupted in Syria against President Bashar al-Assad. Mr. Aboud went underground, beginning his long campaign.

“When it started in Tunisia, we were optimistic,” he told The Times. “We started to arrange and coordinate with people we trusted.”

The government fired on protesters in Dara’a that March, killing at least three. Mr. Aboud said bloodshed triggered action. “A day later we joined the revolution, beginning with demonstrations out of the mosques,” he said.

Syria was on a path to war. Mr. Aboud’s former allies recall his clear sense of the steps to take at each stage — skills they suspect he learned in Iraq.

Protest organizers left their homes to sleep in fields and among the trees, dodging security forces. Sarmin’s quiet stoneworker, they learned, was more ready than most. “Hassan Aboud would bring us bread and canned food,” said Ahmed al-Aasi, an activist with Ahrar al-Sham, a large Islamist fighting group.

He was quick to violence. As Syria deployed its army, Mr. Aboud was among the first armed rebels in a landscape that would eventually be awash in them.

In June 2011, while Syrian protesters appealed for international support, Mr. Aboud participated in the ambush of an army convoy near Jisr al-Shoughour, four associates said. The little band in which he fought with a friend, Dawood al-Sheikh, had only seven or eight rifles.

It was a quixotic clash. Mr. Sheikh was killed. The road remained open. Crackdowns continued apace. It also provided a glimpse of the future: Mr. Aboud soon formed a fighting group, named it the Dawood Brigade and left protests behind.

His brigade started small. But it set up a guerrilla base among olive groves and caves, where it trained, manufactured weapons and extended its fight. By late 2011, it joined Suqour al-Sham, or Sham Falcons brigade, an Islamist group founded by Ahmed Abu Issa, a former prisoner in Sednaya.

Many early rebel groups lacked experience, money, training and cohesion. The Dawood Brigade was different, Mr. Aboud’s townspeople said. It tended to details necessary to become a fighting force.

Mr. Aboud’s brother, released from Sednaya, organized logistics, including medical care and convalescence in Turkey for wounded fighters. Mr. Aboud established training regimens that even his critics say produced results.

“Hassan Aboud has a mean heart, and he is fierce, and he tells his fighters to be hard and fierce in battle,” said the activist who used to work with him. “No other group in Idlib had this ferocity, and he made them like this because of his training.”

“They had constant and continuous training,” the doctor said, in tactics, weapons and sports.

Mr. Aboud gained access to funders from the Persian Gulf, and more support from Abu Issa. “Sham Falcons gave them a big share of the money and resources because they had results,” said Abu Ameen, another activist who worked with rebel commanders.

In 2012, the brigade had drawn in hundreds of local men, amassed weapons and paid salaries of $140 a month. “This was at a time when other rebel groups could not offer their fighters lunch,” said another activist, Mohyeddin Abdulrazzaq, who otherwise spoke harshly of Mr. Aboud.

The brigade also mastered a staple of militant war: the use of improvised bombs, with which it punished Syrian forces and controlled roads. “They had sophisticated bombing operations in the beginning, when no one else did it,” Abu Ameen said.

Other rebel units caught up to this tactic, and together shifted the nature of the war, forcing the Syrian Army to withdraw to outposts and bases.

One result was the creation of marginally governed territory into which foreign fighters flowed, and where ISIS would eventually assert a place. In the short term, Mr. Aboud achieved a degree of local popularity. “Hassan Aboud was sacred among his fighters,” Mr. Abdulrazzaq said. “When you mouthed bad words among his fighters, it was as if you mouthed bad words against God.”

As Mr. Aboud gained power his activities sometimes turned sinister. Mr. Aasi said he became involved in the abductions of Alawites, and sought ransoms for their release. Other rebel leaders once intervened to stop the Dawood Brigade from executing civilians near Fuoa, a government-controlled town, Mr. Aasi said; among the detainees were women and a child. “He had a criminal tendency,” he said. “He became a dictator even before we had an ISIS.”

His affinity for irregular war almost led to his death.

From its bases, the army increased the shelling of Sunni towns, setting in motion waves of refugees. The brigade’s arms-makers started producing rockets, which they fired at the soldiers concentrated at government positions. “We targeted their camps with lots of rockets,” Mr. Aboud told The Times in 2013. “It was good, accepted.”

In late 2012, the brigade was filming a video for a Qatari funder, an activist said, when a rocket exploded prematurely, gravely wounding several rebels, including Mr. Aboud, whose lower legs were mangled.

Mr. Aboud survived the ride to a clinic, where both his feet were amputated. The doctor recalled being surprised by his demeanor. “For someone who had just had his feet removed, he had high morale,” he said. “He was joking.”

When Mr. Aboud was interviewed months later by The Times, he mentioned the mishap only when asked. “One time we were launching a rocket and it exploded and that’s how I lost my legs,” he said, and changed the subject. “Now we have improved rockets,” he added. “More safe. More effective. Bigger.”

Frustration and Recruitment

By 2013 the Dawood Brigade had established more bases, expanded training, participated in prominent battles and captured many more weapons. By some counts Mr. Aboud possessed nine tanks, four B.M.P. fighting vehicles and a fleet of trucks carrying 14.5-millimeter machine guns.

A tactical powerhouse, he was in demand on Arabic-language news stations. With rebel prestige came rivalries, the office politics of war. Mr. Aboud, those who know him said, believed his successes had not been adequately rewarded or gained him autonomy.

“Dawood Brigade is the one who participated in the battles and made the gains, but all the support and money went to Abu Issa and the Sham Falcons,” his relative said.

Mr. Dugheim said that in 2013, as Islamist rebel groups discussed merging into a united front, Mr. Aboud wanted equal billing with the Falcons. Abu Issa rejected the proposal. Mr. Aboud seethed.

Distance from rebel leadership grew. “His funds went down with the loss of support, and he was in trouble,” Mr. Dugheim said.

It was then that ISIS made its move. A shadowy presence compared to now, it sought to lure him into its ranks.

People who know Mr. Aboud describe a series of meetings with Islamic State leaders from Iraq, including with Abu Ali al-Anbari, a former Iraqi military officer who moved outside the city of Aleppo with a security contingent and a mission to recruit local commanders.

Abu Ameen described a “secret operational phase” by ISIS in 2013 that targeted rebel and activist networks. Its timing aligned with Mr. Aboud’s disputes, he said, “and Dawood Brigade is one of the groups that was infiltrated.”

At one point, activists said, Abu Ali called a meeting of rebel leaders in Idlib Province to discuss relationships with ISIS. He also sent ISIS agents to Sarmin to woo Mr. Aboud, who had begun to noticeably fall under the Islamic State’s sway.

Mr. Dugheim said he mediated between Abu Issa and Mr. Aboud at the time. ISIS, he said, was flattering the brigade with attention and gifts.

“ISIS offered Hassan Aboud a big amount of money — $2 million — when Hassan Aboud actually had nothing in hand,” Mr. Dugheim said. “They gave him weapons and money and food.”

This sum could not be independently confirmed.

Abu Ameen said Abu Ali’s calculated strategy won over many fighters. “Some joined ISIS publicly, but some joined ISIS but remained within the same group they were part of,” he said. “With money and promises, ISIS got control of hearts and minds.”

Even before the public defection, hints of extremist influence appeared in his brigade.

Through 2013, associates said, the brigade had not been linked to suicide bombings. Mr. Aboud, they said, did not use his fighters, mostly local men, that way.

But a video of brigade training, posted online in October 2013, shows recruits being lectured in suicide tactics by a middle-aged man with closely cropped hair and a long beard. The Dawood logo is superimposed on the scene.

An American military official who analyzes ISIS said the recruitment and changes fit a pattern. “It was a successful intelligence operation,” she said. “They were able to go in, find people who were vulnerable and could be flipped, flip them, and turn it into what they perceive as a state.”

Mr. Dugheim said by then Mr. Aboud parroted the Islamic State’s style, sometimes behaving like a takfiri, one who labels other Muslims as insufficiently religious, and thus impure.

The change in persona, Mr. Dugheim said, indicated a man out of his depth. “One of the problems in human nature is when you have a hero who is stupid,” he said. “And Hassan Aboud is a hero who is stupid.”

“He misread the situation,” he added.

Defection and Fratricide

The killings began before the Dawood Brigade drove out of Sarmin. Mr. Aboud was turning on his own.

Among the first victims were Darraji and Bassim Abdulrazzaq, brothers who had joined the brigade in 2012.

The pair had formed a smaller rebel group that occasionally collaborated with its old boss. In December 2013, they joined the brigade in a battle against a Syrian checkpoint, according to Mohyeddin Abdulrazzaq, a second cousin of the men.

The checkpoint fell. But one brother was wounded, several fighters were killed and a heavy machine gun they relied on was destroyed. Shaken, they asked Mr. Aboud for a 14.5-millimeter machine gun to cover their loss. He refused.

In January 2014, Mohyeddin Abdulrazzaq said, the brothers asked again. They visited Mr. Aboud, were cheered when he consented and drove off with their new weapon. They did not make it far.

“A few hours later came news to the town of a vehicle burned on the road,” he said. “It held Darraji and his brother. Aboud gave them the machine gun, and then had them killed.”

It was not just that Mr. Aboud did not like being asked twice. Darraji had publicly spoken against ISIS in the fall, when it had kidnapped workers from the International Committee of the Red Cross near Sarmin.

Mr. Aboud appeared for the funeral and paid respects.

Not long after, Mr. Aboud announced he was joining a new group, Jaish al-Sham. Throughout early 2014 the group seemed a symbol of infighting and dysfunction, repeatedly clashing with other rebels. Mr. Aboud’s associates said that sometimes he expressed allegiance to the Islamic State, and that other times he renounced it.

Abu Ameen said, in hindsight, that Mr. Aboud was following new masters. “Getting instructions from ISIS,” he said.

Residents said they suspected Mr. Aboud of organizing hits, including on a Dawood commander, nicknamed Hyena, and Abu Abbas, the brigade’s Shariah instructor. But there was no clear proof, and the brigade’s brooding presence created disincentives to inquiry.

Mr. Aboud’s affiliation finally became explicit in July, when he formed his brigade into a convoy, ostensibly bound for Aleppo and yet another fight. “Only those close to him knew the real plan,” his relative said.

Short of Aleppo, Mr. Aboud stopped and announced that he was a servant of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Islamic State’s leader, and was heading to Raqqa, its operational hub, to join the caliphate.

“Hassan told them that he had given bayat to Abu Bakr, and those who wanted to stay with him could stay and those who wanted to go were free,” the activist who worked with him said.

How many members were present is a matter of dispute. Several former associates said a few hundred. (News reports claimed as many as 1,000; an exaggeration, residents of Sarmin say.)

About 100 fighters declined, and returned home with the news.

The brigade’s departure deepened the troubles of an already beleaguered town. Its defenses were weakened, residents said, because Mr. Aboud took a large fraction of the area’s weapons, forsaking those he had vowed to protect.

Behind the Black Banner

Since Mr. Aboud arrived in Raqqa, his associates said, they have had only occasional insight into his militant life. ISIS, they note, is a such a closed system that little is known even of Mr. Baghdadi and the nature of his power. Mr. Aboud and his brigade, once he defected, dialed back their social media presence and interviews. His activities, they said, have been assembled piecemeal.

Mr. Dugheim was among the last to speak with him before his defection. ISIS had just swept across part of Iraq, capturing Mosul and Tikrit. Mr. Aboud appeared smitten, as if it were 2004 again.

“I said to him, ‘Why do you like ISIS?’” Mr. Dugheim said. The reply had little to do with Syria’s revolution: “Because ISIS is being fought by the U.S.A.”

The American military analyst said that today Mr. Aboud appeared to be “of midlevel stature,” and that “ISIL-core will exploit his quote-unquote ‘talents’” while seeing him as “disposable, expendable.”

This matched what his townspeople described — the Dawood Brigade’s movement across the Islamic State’s Syrian territory on a range of shifting missions. Based on where his fighters have been killed, they said, Mr. Aboud has fought in Kobani, Aleppo, near Raqqa, near Homs and for the Shaer gas field and the capture of Palmyra.

The brigade has also been accused, without public evidence, of assassinating the leadership of Ahrar al-Sham, and of holding the abducted journalist James Foley before turning him over to ISIS. (ISIS beheaded Mr. Foley in 2014. Claims of a Dawood Brigade role in his detention, made in news reports and echoed on social media, do not align with facts known of his case.)

One sighting of Mr. Aboud occurred in June in Palmyra. Khaled al-Homsi, an activist, said he was briefly imprisoned there, and Mr. Aboud toured the jail on crutches. “He met me privately in a room,” he said, “to convince me to pledge allegiance.”

After the Islamic State consolidated control in Palmyra, he added, some of the staff in the courts were from the Dawood Brigade, suggesting Mr. Aboud was trying to govern.

Efforts to reach Mr. Aboud this fall were unsuccessful. But former associates said they expected he would fail at such aspirations.

Mr. Aasi said Mr. Aboud’s role was obvious — as an enforcer, an instrument of purposeful violence to help ISIS gain territory and rule by fear. “With ISIS there are no limits, and you can abduct and kill whomever you like,” he said. “Hassan Aboud does not have a problem with killing. He likes it.”

The rebels’ former ally, he said, “is sick in his mind.”

Mr. Dugheim, the cleric, said Mr. Aboud left Sham Falcons for an even more complicated game, and had peaked. “Regardless of his title, he cannot make a decision,” he said, because ISIS limits the authority of its Syrian commanders.

Another American military official who analyzes ISIS said that under the pressure of airstrikes and internal strife, members with titles like emir and wali now gain rank through attrition, not design. “We watch the deck shuffle constantly, as they attempt to determine who will fit a role that has been vacated,” he said, “vacated” being a euphemism for “killed.”

Whatever Mr. Aboud’s eventual fate, his relative said, much of the legacy was already known. The recording of Mr. Aboud singing — coolly in tune as he described killing old friends — was a marker of a man lost to crime, a revolution soured and a people betrayed.

“His violence, his assassinations, his killing people — he is really behind this,” he said. “It is a mess now. Everything we have is a mess.”

Spanish election: national newcomers end era of two-party dominance

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 21 Dec 2015 21:02:00 +0200

Spanish politicians are gearing up for what could be weeks of complicated negotiations after the general election resulted in a deeply fragmented parliament, with the conservative People’s party losing ground to national newcomers Podemos and Ciudadanos.
The PP won 123 seats in Sunday’s election, with 29% of the vote, leaving it far from a majority in the 350-seat legislature. Led by Mariano Rajoy, the current prime minister, the party has limited possibilities when it comes to the alliances it now needs to form a stable government majority.
The Socialists, who asserted their place as the traditional rival of the conservatives throughout the campaign, came second, with 90 seats and 22% of the vote. With many in Spain still suffering the lingering effects of an economic crisis that sent unemployment rates soaring and triggered painful austerity measures, millions of voters turned away from the PP and Socialists, who have alternated in power for decades, and instead looked to emerging parties.
Anti-austerity Podemos, barely two years old and born from the Indignado protests that saw thousands rally against a political establishment felt to be out of sync with the people, finished in third place with 69 seats and 21% of the vote, while the centre-right Ciudadanos won 40 seats and 14% of the vote. “Spain is not going to be the same anymore and we are very happy,” the Podemos leader, Pablo Iglesias, said on Sunday. “The bipartisan political system is over.” The PP and Socialists won a combined vote share of about 50%, compared with the 70-80% of past general elections.

Podemos did remarkably well across the country, coming first in Catalonia – where it ran in a coalition with Barcelona en Comú – and the Basque country, a result that suggested widespread support for its campaign promise to hold a referendum on Catalan independence. “Today is a historic day for Spain,” Iglesias told supporters on Sunday night. “Every time there is an election, the forces of change advance.”
Ciudadanos, launched in 2006 as a regional party to counter Catalan separatism and which expanded nationally last year, also celebrated its result on Sunday. “Today begins a new phase of hope and excitement,” said its leader, Albert Rivera. “Millions in Spain have decided that things are going to change.”
The results leave open the possibility for Rajoy to become one of the first leaders in Europe to be re-elected after imposing harsh austerity measures, but he faces a tremendous uphill battle to take power. “I’m going to try and form a government,” Rajoy told cheering supporters on Sunday as the results came in. “But it won’t be easy.”

In order to be able to govern for the next four years, the PP will have to rely on other parties, suggesting that a protracted process of negotiations lies ahead for Spain’s political leaders.
Several scenarios are possible. In the run-up to the election, many analysts had predicted that the new government would be made up of the PP and supported in some way by Ciudadanos. But now the two parties together are still short of a majority.

Any such alliance would require a third partner, a scenario that shifts some of the balance of power to regional parties from Catalonia and the Basque country and will be complicated by both parties’ vehement opposition to Catalan independence and Ciudadanos’ insistence on eradicating longstanding Basque tax benefits.

If the PP can manage to find enough support or abstentions to survive a vote of confidence, the conservatives could attempt to rule with a minority government. The option is fraught with instability, as the party will be forced to negotiate demands, ranging from constitutional reform to a referendum in Catalonia, that run counter to their electoral platform.
Many analysts pointed to a pact between the PP and Socialists – a move roundly rejected by the Socialist party on Monday, who said it would vote against having acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy form a new government. Such a pact would have been unprecedented for Spain and likely crippled the Socialists’ prospects in future elections.
Another alternative, echoing developments in Portugal, would be a coalition of the Socialists, Podemos and Ciudadanos. However, Rivera said this week his party would not support what he called a “grouping of losers”, diminishing the likelihood of this option. Such a coalition would clash over issues such as Catalan independence – with Ciudadanos opposed to any talk of a referendum and Podemos promising it would allow Catalans a vote on the issue – and contradict Podemos’ promises to do away with the regime that has governed Spain since the return to democracy.

Sunday’s results could allow the Socialists to govern with the support of Podemos and several smaller parties, such as the Republican Left of Catalonia, which won nine seats, or Artur Mas’s Convergence party, which won eight.
If the Socialists are able to amass enough votes to gain control of the lower house of parliament, their government’s attempts to push forward initiatives such as constitutional reform would likely be quashed by the country’s senate, where the election left the PP with an absolute majority.
On Sunday evening the Socialist leader, Pedro Sánchez, congratulated Rajoy and said he would allow the conservative leader to take the first crack at forming a government: “It’s up to the first place political force to try and form a government.” But he noted that the election results had ushered in a new chapter of Spanish politics, saying: “We’re beginning a new process of dialogue and agreement.”

The election results will prompt what could be months of negotiations, said Pablo Simón, a political science professor at Madrid’s Carlos III University. “They need to talk, they need to negotiate. Anything is possible.” He pointed to the 1996 election, won by the PP and resulting in a government propped up by Catalan and Basque nationalists. “The first time PP came into power, it took two months to reach an agreement.”
Despite a result that ranks as their worst in the party’s modern history, the Socialists are now key to the question of what comes next, said Emilio Sáenz-Francés, a professor of history and international relations at Madrid’s Comillas Pontifical University. “The question is whether Sánchez will allow Rajoy to lead the government or whether Sánchez will try to build a coalition of several parties in order to take power,” said Sáenz-Francés.
He pointed to Spain’s King Felipe VI, who by mid-January will have to name the party that will have the chance to try and form a government. The candidate must then obtain an absolute majority in a vote of confidence and if they fail to do so, a simple majority vote will be held 48 hours later. If the candidate again fails to win the vote, the king must put forward a new candidate. If no government is formed within two months, new elections must be held.
Most likely the king will give Rajoy and the PP the first chance to form a government, given that it won the election, said Sáenz-Francés. “But for the first time in the history of democracy in Spain, it’s not clear how the most-voted party will be able to govern.”

Navy SEALs, a Beating Death and Claims of a Cover-Up

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 17 Dec 2015 15:47:00 +0200

The three Navy SEALs stomped on the bound Afghan detainees and dropped heavy stones on their chests, the witnesses recalled. They stood on the prisoners’ heads and poured bottles of water on some of their faces in what, to a pair of Army soldiers, appeared to be an improvised form of waterboarding.

A few hours earlier, shortly after dawn on May 31, 2012, a bomb had exploded at a checkpoint manned by an Afghan Local Police unit that the SEALs were training. Angered by the death of one of their comrades in the blast, the police militiamen had rounded up half a dozen or more suspects from a market in the village of Kalach and forced them to a nearby American outpost. Along the way, they beat them with rifle butts and car antennas.

A United States Army medic standing guard at the base, Specialist David Walker, had expected the men from SEAL Team 2 to put a stop to the abuse. Instead, he said, one of them “jump-kicked this guy kneeling on the ground.” Two others joined in, Specialist Walker and several other soldiers recounted, and along with the Afghan militiamen, they beat the detainees so badly that by dusk, one would die.

The four American soldiers working with the SEALs reported the episode, which has not previously been disclosed. In a Navy criminal investigation, two Navy support personnel said they had witnessed some abuse by the SEALs, as did a local police officer. Separately, an Afghan detained with the man who died provided a detailed account of mistreatment by American troops and Afghan militiamen in an interview with The New York Times.

The SEAL command, though, cleared the Team 2 members of wrongdoing in a closed disciplinary process that is typically used only for minor infractions, disregarding a Navy lawyer’s recommendation that the troops face assault charges and choosing not to seek a court-martial. Two of the SEALs and their lieutenant have since been promoted, even though their commander in Afghanistan recommended that they be forced out of the elite SEAL teams.

“It just comes down to what’s wrong and what’s right,” Specialist Walker said in a recent interview. “You can’t squint hard enough to make this gray.”

Even before the beatings, some of the SEALs had exhibited troubling behavior. According to the soldiers and Afghan villagers, they had amused themselves by tossing grenades over the walls of their base, firing high-caliber weapons at passing vehicles and even aiming slingshots at children, striking them in the face with hard candy.

Abuse of detainees is among the most serious offenses an American service member can commit. Several military justice experts, who reviewed a Naval Criminal Investigative Service report on the case at the request of The Times, said that it had been inappropriate for the SEAL command to treat such allegations as an internal disciplinary matter and that it should have referred the case for an Article 32 review, the equivalent of a grand jury, to consider a court-martial.

“It’s unfathomable,” said Donald J. Guter, a retired rear admiral and former judge advocate general of the Navy, in charge of all its lawyers. “It really does look like this was intended just to bury this.”

Navy officials defended the handling of the case, saying the SEAL captain who oversaw it had had full authority to decide it as he saw fit. The captain, Robert E. Smith, who was then in charge of SEALs based on the East Coast and is now a military assistant to the secretary of the Navy, said in a recent statement that the Team 2 members had denied abusing the detainees.

Captain Smith said that he had found inconsistencies in the soldiers’ accounts when they were questioned five months later, and that conflicting statements from the Army and Navy witnesses “did not give me enough confidence in their overall accuracy to hold the accused accountable for assaults or abuse, or warrant Article 32 proceedings.”

While he said it was “evident” that the Afghan militiamen had mistreated the detainees and that the SEALs had not reported it, he dismissed charges for failing to make such a report.

What happened in Kalach involved just one death in a conflict that has taken thousands of lives, but it had broader consequences. Instead of winning over the local population, the goal of the mission, the reported abuse further alienated villagers. It drove some previously cooperative Afghans to leave for Taliban-controlled areas, residents said.

The SEALs’ failure to restrain the Afghan Local Police, who were supposed to protect villages but instead often terrorized them, helped erode confidence in the American and Afghan governments, whose forces have repeatedly been accused of abusing or killing civilians.

During the United States’ engagement in Afghanistan, now stretching into its 15th year, the American military has expanded the mandate for SEALs, sometimes assigning them roles for which they are neither suited nor trained.

Brushing away serious charges, military justice experts said, reflects a breakdown of accountability that feeds the perception that SEALs and other elite Special Operations units get undue leeway when it comes to discipline. In murky wars with unclear battle lines, they warned, that can corrode ethical clarity and undermine morale.

“What’s the message for the 10,000 guys that were in the same moment and said, ‘No, we’re not crossing this line’?” asked Geoffrey S. Corn, a former military lawyer who was the Army’s senior expert adviser on the law of war. “It diminishes the immense courage it takes to maintain that line between legitimate and illegitimate violence.”

This account of the events at Kalach, in southern Afghanistan’s Oruzgan Province, and how the Navy handled them is based on interviews with dozens of current and former military personnel. Reporters located victims and other villagers in Afghanistan and tracked down the four American soldiers who made the abuse allegations, who are now scattered across the United States. Most were initially reluctant to speak.

Πως «πετάμε» 300 εκατ. ευρώ στα… «σκουπίδια»

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 17 Dec 2015 15:37:00 +0200

Με πρόσχημα... την ολοκλήρωση του νέου Εθνικού Σχεδίου Διαχείρισης Αποβλήτων (ΕΣΔΑ) και τη δημιουργία ενός βιώσιμου, κατά την κυβερνητική πάντα φιλοσοφία, μοντέλου διαχείρισης των απορριμμάτων, η χώρα «πετάει» μπίζνες 300 εκατ. ευρώ και κοινοτικές επιδοτήσεις 200 εκατ. ευρώ στα... «σκουπίδια».

Η εν κρυπτώ, «μουλωχτή» και ολίγον... «πραξικοπηματική», όπως τουλάχιστον την χαρακτηρίζουν στελέχη του χώρου, απόφαση της κυβέρνησης να επανεξετάσει άμεσα το κατά πόσον ο σχεδιασμός όλων των έργων ΣΔΙΤ Απορριμμάτων (Πελοποννήσου, Ηπείρου, Σερρών, Ηλείας) είναι σύμφωνος με την Κοινοτική και Εθνική Νομοθεσία (ΕΣΔΑ 2015) και να μην υπογράψει εκείνα που δεν συνάδουν με τις αρχές και τους στόχους του Εθνικού Σχεδίου, ξεσήκωσε μεγάλες αντιδράσεις στην αγορά και σε ομίλους όπως
Υπενθυμίζεται ότι προχτές, στο νομοσχέδιο που ήρθε και ψηφίστηκε στη Βουλή για τα προαπαιτούμενα, «πέρασε» άρθρο που επί της ουσίας οδηγούσε στην ακύρωση 4 projects σχεδόν 300 εκατ. ευρώ. Ο λόγος για τα έργα σε Πελοπόννησο (ύψους 160 εκατ.), Ήπειρο (50 εκατ.), Ηλεία (40 εκατ.) και Σέρρες (40 εκατ.) τα οποία βρίσκονται σε προχωρημένο στάδιο και τουλάχιστον για τα πρώτα δύο θα μπορούσαν να μπουν άμεσα υπογραφές. Μάλιστα, ήδη το Ελεγκτικό Συνέδριο είχε δώσει το τελικό «οκ» για την Πελοπόννησο, κόντρα στις διεργασίες του υπ. Περιβάλλοντος, Γιάννη Τσιρώνη, αυτό της Ηλείας ελέγχεται προσυμβατικά από το Ε.Σ., το ΣΔΙΤ Σερρών βρίσκεται στην οριστικοποίηση του χρηματοδοτικού σχήματος.

Αν και όλες οι άλλες πλευρές, επιχειρηματίες, στελέχη του χώρου και μκοινοτικοί φορείς ισχυρίζονται ότι πρέπει να προχωρήσουν τα έργα και να λύσουν τα προβλήματα, η κυβέρνηση έχει άλλη γνώμη. Και με κοινή απόφαση των κ.κ.Σταθάκη (υπ. Οικονομίας), Τσιρώνη και Κουρουμπλή (υπ. Εσωτερικών) ακυρώνει τις εξελίξεις. Έτσι, έργα 300 εκατ. ευρώ είναι στον αέρα, ενώ ορατός είναι ο κίνδυνος απώλειας εγκεκριμένων κονδυλίων της τάξης των 200 εκατ. ευρώ.
Εύλογα τίθενται ζητήματα για το σκοπό αυτής της απόφασης, για το κατά πόσο υπάρχει κάποιο σαφές και ώριμο σχέδιο της κυβέρνησης για τη διαχείριση απορριμμάτων στην χώρα, για το αν έχει γίνει κάποια προεργασία στο επίπεδο των ΜΠΕ (περιβαλλοντικές μελέτες), αν Ε.Ε. και Κομισιόν είναι ενήμεροι, και κυρίως σύμφωνοι με τέτοιου είδους διεργασίες, αν τελικά μπορούν να χρηματοδοτηθούν τα «νέα» έργα, όπως και όταν γίνουν, από το νέο ΕΣΠΑ.
Και όλα αυτά συμβαίνουν την ώρα που η Κομισιόν «κουνάει απειλητικά το δάχτυλο», προειδοποιεί σαφώς την Ελλάδα για καθυστερήσεις σε εγκρίσεις και προώθηση σχεδίων, «απειλεί» με νέα πρόστιμα και περικοπές πόρων, τη στιγμή που η Ελλάδα θα πρέπει να πληρώνει εξαμηνιαία ποινή 14,52 εκατ. ευρώ. Σε όλη την Ελλάδα, σύμφωνα με τα τελευταία διαθέσιμα στοιχεία, υπάρχουν 49 ενεργοί ΧΑΔΑ και 161, προς αποκατάσταση, ανενεργοί ΧΑΔΑ.

Πηγή: reporter.gr

ΣΟΚ στη Δανία: Κατάσχονται τα πολύτιμα αντικείμενα των προσφύγων

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 17 Dec 2015 15:34:00 +0200

Η κυβέρνηση της Δανίας ψήφισε την Κυριακή έναν νόμο με βάση τον οποίο η κυβέρνηση θα προχωρά στην κατάσχεση κάθε αντικειμένου αξίας που έχουν μαζί τους οι πρόσφυγες που εισέρχονται στη χώρα, ώστε να «καλυφθεί μέρος των εξόδων» της υποδοχής τους, μετέδωσε το κρατικό τηλεοπτικό δίκτυο της Σουηδίας STV.

Βάσει της νέας νομοθεσίας, η αστυνομία της Δανίας θα έχει δικαίωμα να προχωρά σε ελέγχους στα προσωπικά είδη που έχουν μαζί τους οι πρόσφυγες και να προβαίνει σε κατασχέσεις.
Οι πρόσφυγες θα επιτρέπεται να φέρουν μαζί τους περίπου 440 δολάρια σε μετρητά, ένα κινητό τηλέφωνο, ένα φορητό υπολογιστή, ένα ρολόι και άλλα «προσωπικά είδη», ανάμεσα τους και τυχόν δαχτυλίδια γάμου. Όλα τα υπόλοιπα τιμαλφή ή τυχόν αντικείμενα υψηλής αξίας των προσφύγων θα κατάσχονται, όπως μετέδωσε το ρωσικό πρακτορείο ειδήσεων Sputnik.
Σύμφωνα με δημοσίευμα της εφημερίδας Politiken, ο νόμος αυτός –που θα επιτρέπει στους πρόσφυγες να εισέρχονται στο εξής στη χώρα έχοντας μαζί τους μόνο τα απολύτως αναγκαία προσωπικά τους είδη– υποστηρίχθηκε από αρκετά κόμματα της κυβέρνησης συνεργασίας.
«Είναι απαράδεκτο για τους Δανούς φορολογούμενους να πληρώνουν για αιτούντες άσυλο που μεταφέρουν μαζί τους πλούτο», δήλωσε ο Νάσερ Κάντερ, επίτροπος μετανάστευσης του Συντηρητικού Κόμματος.

Πηγή: reporter.gr

Star Wars: The Force Awakens review - J J Abrams enhances iconic film series but Daisy Ridley disappoints

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 16 Dec 2015 10:52:00 +0200

Has ever so much ridden on a casting decision? In 2012, George Lucas sold Lucasfilm, along with the rights to make more Star Wars films, in succession to both his original trilogy (1977-1983) and the subsequent, less adored three prequels, (1999-2005), to Disney for $4.05 billion.
Disney appointed the wizard fanboy J.J. Abrams (Star Trek Into Darkness, Mission Impossible: III) to direct this first sequel, the seventh iteration of the franchise, and although the movie is trademarked Lucasfilm, it's his baby.
You have to admire the shamelessness and proficiency with which he has not just maintained the product continuity but actually enhanced its quality.
Abrams doesn't so much make free-wheeling additions to the canons of the movies he admires as the most loving and attentive revisions of them, improving where he can.

The Force Awakens completely recapitulates the plot of Return of the Jedi.
An evil empire, this time called the First Order, commanded by a shadowy evil giant, Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis plus effects, looking like Voldemort writ large), and his Darth Vader-like lieutenant, Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) are out to destroy the freedom-loving Resistance, blasting their planets to bits from a new Death Star, a whole planet this time the Starkiller Base.
But the baddies are still worried as to where in the galaxy Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) might still be.

Abrams has brought back as much of the original Star Wars cast as the passage of nearly 40 years since its first production allows: grizzled, lined, but effortlessly charismatic Harrison Ford re-appears as Hans Solo, once more at the controls of the Millennium Falcon, emerging as still functional junk from under a tarpaulin.
Carrie Fisher, having lost a lot of weight and those awful bobs of hair, returns not as Princess Leia but now General Leia Organa in charge of the Resistance.
John Williams provides the awful blasting score again - and, of course, there's no problem bringing back Chewie, that much fur hiding any number of wrinkles, more endearing than ever, or the droids, including C3-PO, adding to them a new one, a cutie, with a rollerball body and an expressive head.

All the technology is there too: glistening white plastic stormtroopers a-plenty with remarkably poor aim, and those H (evil) and X (good) fighters, whizzing round the sky, blasting away at each other indecipherably, even doing that thing of chasing through ever narrower canyons of vast installations.
But what Abrams has also done is completely re-juvenated his heroes, as he must at this distance in time (it's vaguely 30 years after Return of the Jedi).

So a whole middle-aged generation has been passed over, to make this a film with appeal to teenagers.
Our juvenile leads are, as luck will have it, in this galaxy far, far away, both young Londoners.
John Boyega from Peckham, 23, (Attack the Block) plays Finn, brought up as a Stormtrooper but rebelling and turning to the good, as the trailers hinted, easily holds his own: big-jawed, big-hearted, busking it in a new world for him: a proper guy.

But Daisy Ridley, also 23, from Westminster, is the total heroine of the film, beginning as an obscure "scavenger" on a remote planet, dressed in stylishly beige sackcloth and bandaging, but then becoming the one in whom the Force awakens, called upon to take a role she had never dreamed of, ultimately fighting a gigantic light-saber duel with the new streamlined Darth Vader lookalike, Kylo Ren.
Abrams is a more dynamic, kinetic film-maker than George Lucas ever was - and The Force Awakens is a much more involving, dramatic proposition than the originals when re-seen now.

He's done a good job.
But the movie has a major problem in this central character.
Ridley, previously little known, seems a genuinely sweet girl and is quite pretty - but can barely act at all.
Her facial expressions are limited and repetitive, her interactions with her fellow stars unconvincing, her physical repertoire - running, fighting, shooting - awkward.
You start thinking: give her time, she'll loosen up, it'll get better. It never does. And she's the heroine, the very heart of the film.
So that doesn't work. How different the ride would have been with Alicia Vikander, say, or Saoirse Ronan, or even, whisper it, Jennifer Lawrence, in the part.

BA passenger 'hospitalised after bag falls on head from overhead locker' at Heathrow

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 16 Dec 2015 10:48:00 +0200

A plane passenger had to be rushed to hospital after being hit on the head by a bag which fell from an overhead locker.
The man reportedly fell to the floor after the freak accident on a British Airways plane which was waiting to take off at Heathrow Airport.
A witness said there was a “terrible sound” as a heavy bag landed on the man’s head, before he collapsed.
Paramedics were called to the jet and took the man to nearby Hillingdon Hospital.
A source told the Sun: "The passenger was getting ready for the flight when suddenly the overhead locker burst open and a heavy-duty bag landed on his head.

“There was a terrible sound on impact and he collapsed. It was a freak accident.”
The plane had been due to take off for Thailand capital Bangkok.
London Ambulance Service said it treated a man for a head injury and took him to hospital as a priority patient.
A spokesman for BA said: “Our crew cared for a customer who was injured after boarding the aircraft.
“We take the health and safety of our customers very seriously and our cabin crew receive extensive training to deal with incidents on board.
“He was taken to a local hospital and we wish him a speedy recovery.”

Missing Wood Green girls: Police step up search for trio of teenagers

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 16 Dec 2015 10:45:00 +0200

Police have stepped up the hunt for a group of teenage girls who have been missing from north London for more than a week.
Fardowsa Hassan, 13, and Abir Salah, 16, were last seen on December 6, while Abir’s sister Ahlam, 15, went missing on Saturday.
They are all from Wood Green.
They are not thought to have left the country and police are not expecting them to try, a Scotland Yard spokesman confirmed.
They “may be sleeping on buses or elsewhere on the transport network,” he added.
Fardowsa, the youngest girl, is described as being of Arabic appearance, 5ft 5ins tall and of medium build.
Abir is described as black and of Somali decent. She is 5ft 10ins tall and of medium build.
Ahlam is also black and of Somali decent. She is described as 5ft 5ins tall and of medium build.
“All the girls’ families are concerned for their welfare and urge them to contact them, or the police, to let them know they are safe and well,” said the spokesman.

Women 'kicked Muslim off London bus and shouted this isn't bloody Africa' in racist attack

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 16 Dec 2015 10:41:00 +0200

Two women launched a violent Islamophobic attack against a woman in a hijab before throwing her off a London bus, police said.
The victim, in her 40s, was subjected to a racist and anti-Muslim tirade by two women on a number 63 bus, who then punched her in the head and kicked her into the street.
The attackers, thought to be in their 20s, allegedly filmed themselves on their mobile phones while abusing the woman on the double-decker in London Road, Elephant and Castle.
Witnesses said the distressed victim tried to get off the bus but was followed to the doors by one of the attackers who then “violently kicked her on to the curb [sic]”.

Police have now released an image of two women they want to speak to about the incident on October 28. They are treating the attack as a hate crime.
Several eye-witnesses took to social media to express their shock at the time.
Antonia Bance, head of campaigns at the Trades Union Congress, said: “Just witnessed a hate crime at the Elephant [and Castle].

“Muslim woman in hijab kicked backwards off a bus to the floor. ’This isn’t bloody Africa,’ they said.
“Others heard anti-Muslim abuse. Some tried to hold them but they ran.”
Another passenger said: “The girl and her friend recorded video of themselves shouting Islamophobic hate speech at the woman and physically intimidating her.
“After bringing the lady to tears, I heard them screaming at her ‘stop crying and shut the f*** up’.
“As she tried to get off the bus, they followed her to the doors where the girl violently kicked the woman on to the curb [sic].”
The victim was left badly shaken and had to be taken to hospital for treatment to injuries, police said.
Officers are appealing for anyone who recognises the women pictured to get in touch.
They are also asking any passengers who filmed the attack or took photographs to contact them.
It happened at about 8.10pm on October 28, on a 63 bus travelling in the direction of Peckham.

Fifth Republican Debate: Analysis

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 16 Dec 2015 10:11:00 +0200

Donald J. Trump finally told Republicans what they have long wanted to hear — that he would not run for president as an independent if he did not get the Republican nomination.

Apparently because he has said that before, and then appeared to back off the pledge, and the language appeared somewhat short of unequivocal. No matter: Republicans in the audience, and the person who asked him the question — Hugh Hewitt, the conservative radio host — burst into applause as Mr. Trump, looking uncommonly humble, gave his answer.

Mr. Hewitt asked the question noting that Republicans were worried that they would lose to Hillary Clinton if she got the Democratic nomination and Mr. Trump ran as an independent candidate. “I am totally committed to the Republican Party,” Mr. Trump said. “I am very honored to be the front-runner. I think I’ll do very well if I’m chosen.”

Alan Rappeport

And that is a wrap.

Alan Rappeport

Trump goes to his stump speech and says that everything is a disaster in America. "Nothing works in our country," he says. "If I am president, we will win again. We will win a lot."

Maggie Haberman

"We have to change our whole way," Trump says.

Alan Rappeport

Carson starts off noting that he has traveled to 58 countries and loves America. Making a case for American exeptionalism, he says that we should not give up American values for the sake of political correctness.

Alan Rappeport

Cruz: "Judgment. Strength. Clarity and Trust." The Texas senator says he will unleash small business and defeat radical Islamist terrorism.

Maggie Haberman

Really? Barack Obama said he doesn't believe in American leadership, as Cruz says?

Alan Rappeport

Rubio makes a generational argument and claims that he is the one to expand prosperity and secure the nation. "Together we will usher in a new American century."

Alan Rappeport

Bush says his record and plan show that he can make America safer than anyone else on the stage.

Alan Rappeport

Fiorina says she recalls 9/11 too and that the first step to keeping America safe is beating Hillary Clinton. "We will take our country back."

Alan Rappeport

Christie goes back to his roots as a prosecutor and a 9/11 story. "Radical jihadism is not theoretical to me, it's real."

Nicholas Confessore

Paul is opening and closing this debate by doubling down on his core views, libertarian inflected. He began with an attack on unnecessary foreign entanglements and ends with saying our greatest threat is debt.

Alan Rappeport

Kasich, of Ohio, comes next, saying that he knows how to win Ohio.

Alan Rappeport

Paul begins, blaming both parties for America's debt problem.

Alan Rappeport

We return with closing statements.

Donald Trump on Ted Cruz

I’ve gotten to know him over the last three or four days. He has a wonderful temperament. He’s just fine. Don’t worry about it.

— Donald J. Trump, on a question about his opinion of Senator Ted Cruz.

Alan Rappeport

Ted Cruz said earlier tonight that George W. Bush deported 10 million illegal aliens. Is that so? We did the math,

Ted Cruz

"Do you know how many illegal aliens George W. Bush deported? 10 million."

Maggie Haberman

And then Carson with an answer I couldn't follow

Alan Rappeport

"I am very committed to the Republican party. I feel very honored to be the frontrunner," Trump says. "I will do everything in my power to beat Hillary Clinton."

Alan Rappeport

The independent run question. Trump again says he will not make a third-party run. "I have gained great respect for the Republican leadership."

Nicholas Confessore

Dana Bash is doing a great job here, and Ted Cruz is just refusing to answer the question, which is: Do you think Donald Trump has the judgment to be president.

Alan Rappeport

"That is a judgment for every voter to make," Cruz says when pressed if Trump has the judgment to be president. He says that any of them would be better than Obama or Clinton.

Maggie Haberman

Cruz, however, asked about our story from last week about what he said to donors at a fundraiser, is crushing this question

Alan Rappeport

Cruz also plays nice, saying it is up to the voters to decide who is best suited to be president.

Maggie Haberman

Wow. So Trump had a chance to attack Cruz and he decided not to

Alan Rappeport

Earlier tonight, Christie said that he would rebuild America's relationship with King Hussein of Jordan. Is that possible? It would take some imagination.

Chris Christie

"When I stand across from King Hussein of Jordan, I say to him, 'You have a friend again, sir, who will stand with you to fight this fight,' he'll change his mind."

Alan Rappeport

"Nuclear, the power and the devastation is very important to me," Trump says, when pressed on the most important parts of the nuclear triad.

Alan Rappeport

Trump gets a specific question about upgrading America's nuclear arsenal. He says that he is proud of his call not to go into Iraq in 2004.

Alan Rappeport

Bush agrees with Christie on the need for tougher action against China.

Alan Rappeport

Christie says that the Chinese "need to be fought back on" and that the US should release information showing how corrupt China's government is so that their people know what is being kept form them.

Alan Rappeport

Carson, the neurosurgeon, also thinks that Kim Jong Un, is unstable. He says that the US should use its economic power to strangle North Korea, which is already allowing its people to starve.

Alan Rappeport

We are back and North Korea, which recently announced it has a hydrogen bomb, is the topic. What would Fiorina do? "We must continue to isolate him," she said, arguing that the US must push China to help with this.

Alan Rappeport

Carly Fiorina likes to mention that she knows Russian President Vladimir Putin. Did the ever really meet? One time, a while ago.

Carly Fiorina

Mrs. Fiorina said she met President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

It is not as if the Republican debate stage is not already crowded. Donald J. Trump, after looking bored for much of this debate, riled himself up to get into a fight with CNN, the host of this debate, and, in particular, one of the questioners, the conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt.

Mr. Trump objected that, again and again, the CNN moderators at this debate, and at an earlier one involving second-tier candidates, were prefacing questions with, as he put it, “Mr. Trump said this,” or “Mr. Trump said that.” All of this led to the striking moment of Mr. Trump seeming to complain that he was getting too much publicity.

“I thought it was very unfair virtually the entire portion of the debate was Trump this, Trump that — in order to get ratings,” he said. “I think it’s very unprofessional.”

Alan Rappeport

TV timeout.

Republican debate: Las Vegas fight night was rollicking from start to finish

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 16 Dec 2015 10:03:00 +0200

The fifth Republican presidential debate of the 2016 cycle is in the can. Here’s what we learned:

It was long on substance. Candidates were asked about national security issues, immigration policy, government surveillance and naughty things the candidates have said about each other on the campaign trail.
Florida senator Marco Rubio and Texas senator Ted Cruz locked horns over Rubio’s support for immigration reform and Cruz’s support for reining in NSA surveillance. Both fought expertly. No clear winner declared.
Donald Trump said he had no plan to run as a third-party candidate. “I am totally committed to the Republican party,” Trump said.
Former Florida governor Jeb Bush repeatedly attacked Donald Trump, calling him the “chaos candidate” and saying “You’re not going to insult your way to president of the United States.”
Was it such a fight-y night? Not really – neither Cruz nor Rubio, nor New Jersey governor Chris Christie, opted to tangle with Trump, who himself passed on an invitation to hit Cruz.
Christie did, however, call president Obama a “feckless weakling.”
Did Trump botch a question about the country’s triad of nuclear defenses, sub-plan-silo? He didn’t answer a Q about which needed updating most urgently.
Rubio left the door open on a path to citizenship for some undocumented migrants, a heresy in some corners of the party. “I personally am open to people having the possibility of applying for a green card,” he said – after 10 years’ probation and strict tests.
Rand Paul, the Kentucky senator, did go after Trump, who he said wanted to shred the constitution. Trump pretty much ignored him.
A substantive big-picture debate broke out over whether it’s better for the US national security to have dictators in the Middle East. Also unresolved.
Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina quoted Thatcher: “Margaret Thatcher once said, if you want something talked about, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman.”

A Mansion, a Shell Company and Resentment in Bel Air

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 16 Dec 2015 00:25:00 +0200

LOS ANGELES — The most notorious new house in Los Angeles hangs from a Bel Air hillside, high above the sprawl and smog, unfinished and unloved.

Outraged neighbors call it “the Starship Enterprise,” and in truth it looks like nothing so much as an earthbound space station of curved glass and steel, draped in scaffolding and tarpaulin, roughly 30,000 square feet and nearly 70 feet high.

That height, about twice the legal limit, is among a litany of violations that have stalled construction at 901 Strada Vecchia for more than a year. Without the city’s permission, workers tore down the original house and leveled the hillside. Though the site is in an “earthquake-induced landslide area,” subsequent inspections found “unsecured open excavations” and other perils. Inspectors also uncovered a host of features, unapproved though befitting a house with an aspirational price tag of $100 million, among them underground bedrooms and an IMAX theater.

As unapologetically extravagant as the project is its impresario — Mohamed Hadid, father of the celebrity models Gigi and Bella Hadid, sometime guest on “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” and one of the city’s leading luxury developers. For years, Mr. Hadid’s Instagram account has featured photos of himself amid the rebar at the Bel Air site. He calls it his “office” and labels the photos with the hashtag #themodernhouseofhadid.

Yet for all that, over four years of violation notices, inspections and hearings, efforts to hold someone accountable for the mess at 901 Strada Vecchia have repeatedly hit a legal wall. It is, as a judge said during an October session where once again nothing got done, “an extremely complicated case.”

That is because “themodernhouseofhadid” belongs not to Mr. Hadid but to an entity that keeps the actual owner at a legal remove — a shell company named 901 Strada L.L.C.

Fueled largely by the vast streams of wealth crossing the globe as never before, a new generation of hyper-luxury homes with stratospheric price tags is colonizing the most gilded hillsides and canyons of Los Angeles. In some areas, every third or fourth home has been torn down, leaving gashes of dirt and debris where new mansions will rise.

And more often than not, the people behind the purchases are hidden by shell companies.

Here, as in other roosting places of the superrich, the recent influx of foreign money has gone hand in hand with the rising use of shell companies — generally limited liability companies. Shell companies were used in three-quarters of purchases of over $5 million in Los Angeles over the last three years, a higher rate even than the roughly 55 percent in New York, according to a New York Times analysis of data from PropertyShark. What is more, in Los Angeles, where so many of the new palaces are spec houses — luxury magnets for global wealth — not only are the buyers shielded by shell companies, but the developers are, too.

L.L.C.s were created to protect individuals from legal liability, and they have a range of legitimate uses. In an interview, Mr. Hadid said he used L.L.C.s for liability reasons, adding, “One hundred percent of the time that people build, they create an L.L.C.”

Today in Los Angeles, as at 901 Strada Vecchia, L.L.C.s have provided insulation — some would say impunity — amid a gathering anti-development backlash.

“That’s my — that’s the property I’m developing,” Mr. Hadid explained. “I’m the developer. I develop for other people.”

Law enforcement officials and anticorruption groups worry that while many foreign buyers are simply seeking to safeguard their wealth in United States real estate, some are using shell companies to hide illicit gains, despite banking laws designed to flag the movement of large sums of money by foreign government figures, their families and close associates.

This year, articles in The Times pierced the secrecy of shell companies owning units in one archetypal condominium complex in Manhattan — the Time Warner Center. Among the owners were a growing proportion of wealthy foreigners, including a number of government officials and people close to them. At least 16 owners had been the subject of government inquiries around the world, either personally or as heads of companies.

Here in several neighborhoods of the Platinum Triangle — Beverly Hills, Bel Air and Holmby Hills — a search for who is behind shell companies, based on property and incorporation records, as well as interviews, found a predictable mix of celebrities, lawyers, media executives and the like. But it also turned up owners from a diverse collection of countries, including some involved in current or past law enforcement inquiries.

Head up North Alpine Drive in Beverly Hills, for example, and on the right is a $14.7 million home owned by a shell company tied to Kola Aluko, a Nigerian businessman who is a figure in an investigation of that country’s former oil minister.

A block away is one of several local properties that have been owned by shell companies tied to a son of Suharto, the corrupt and brutal former president of Indonesia.

And back down the hill is Le Palais, a faux chateau — with a swan pond and a Turkish bath with hand-carved Egyptian limestone columns — that a shell company tied to Mr. Hadid sold to a shell company tied to Lola Karimova-Tillyaeva, a daughter of the president of Uzbekistan. The Karimov family faces corruption investigations in several countries, according to two people who have worked in law enforcement and have knowledge of the inquiries.

It is in Bel Air, though, that an army of resistance has risen, a coalition of influential neighbors with their own considerable resources. Call it the haves vs. the have-even-mores, or perhaps the old (for Los Angeles) money vs. the new. And while their bill of grievances extends to suspicions about shell companies hiding corrupt foreign money, what they talk about most is unethical and dangerous development — about dirt trucks run amok, the inevitability of mudslides and the waste of water in a time of drought. One of the Strada Vecchia neighbors, Nancy Walton Laurie, a Walmart heir, accused Mr. Hadid of encroaching on her land and harming her eucalyptus tree, damage she says will cost her $75,000.

The property at 901 Strada Vecchia is the crystallization of all this — in its grandiosity, its 60 pages of violations and other notices, and the ire it has provoked.

And for the maddening elusiveness of its provenance.

Continue readi

“The person who is in control of the property has every interest in remaining invisible,” said James Spertus, a lawyer for the lawyer who is listed as 901 Strada L.L.C.’s manager and who became a co-defendant when the city took the highly unusual step of filing a criminal case. “They’re not charged, and they want to stay that way, so there is no public record of that person.”

‘Let’s Make a Deal’

Silver-maned at 67, Mr. Hadid, like many of his clients, is an immigrant. Born in Israel, he moved to Virginia as a teenager with his Palestinian family and spent his early business career in the Washington, D.C., area, developing office buildings and Ritz-Carlton hotels. Central to his success even then was his ability to woo foreign financiers — French and German backers, and in particular the SAAR Foundation, a group of Saudi investors.

In the 1990s, Mr. Hadid was involved with a number of small companies. Several ran into problems, and he filed for personal bankruptcy.

By the early 2000s, Mr. Hadid had moved to Los Angeles and begun his next act, as homebuilder to the stars. He built the estate where Michael Jackson died, as well as Palazzo di Amore, a Beverly Hills estate now listed for resale for $149 million. His clients were not always happy — among those who sued him and later settled was Sylvester Stallone — but new buyers kept coming.

Among his big-ticket sales was a Beverly Hills house, with a glowing pyramid in a reflecting pool, that was acquired in 2010 by a shell company tied to the stepson of the prime minister of Malaysia. (The prime minister is now a target of corruption investigations at home and abroad.)

When Mr. Hadid bought the 1950s ranch house on 1.2 acres at 901 Strada Vecchia for $1.93 million in 2011, the building boom was starting to pick up steam. Bel Air and Beverly Hills are among the areas most popular with foreign buyers in Los Angeles County, where more than 1,400 homes have sold for more than $5 million each since the start of 2013, according to PropertyShark.

While the prices are high — $20 million, $50 million, $100 million — people in real estate say that in terms of square footage, Los Angeles is actually a deal.

“L.A., it’s the cheapest real estate in the world,” Mr. Hadid said, sipping tea during the interview at Le Belvédère, the 48,000-square-foot mansion where he lives in Bel Air. “London is more, New York is more.”

Los Angeles has another important advantage, according to a leading high-end real estate executive, Aaron Kirman of the John Aaroe Group: Buyers do not have to worry about being vetted by co-op or condominium boards. (In fact, as The Times reported in February, New York condo boards, at least, almost never investigate the identity of the individual behind a shell company or the source of a buyer’s money. Nor are real estate brokers legally bound to ask such questions.)

“That’s the beauty of L.A.,” said Mr. Kirman, who says most of his buyers are foreign. “If somebody has the money to pay, let’s make a deal.”

Allan Alexander, a former Beverly Hills mayor who now practices real estate law, said he, too, had seen a steep increase in foreign buyers, especially from China.

“A lot of them are buying because of the safety of the investment here, and they don’t care about the price so much because, candidly, they want to get their funds in a safe place,” he said.

Some of those seeking a safe and secret harbor for their money are not buyers but investors, several real estate executives said. Developers pitch the projects with predictions of high returns, and the money flows in from shell companies with little scrutiny.

As for the new homes themselves, even the designation “mega-mansion” seems insufficient, so Angelenos have derisively labeled them “giga-mansions.”

“It’s another one of these — you walk in, and you’re at the Forum or something,” John Kelly, the lead investigator for the city’s building department, said of the Strada Vecchia house.

Water features are popular — man-made streams and waterfall walls and manicured lawns that go on and on — even as poorer areas turn brown complying with drought restrictions.

To compensate for the city’s strict height restrictions, a huge selling point is the “daylight basement,” an expanse of subterranean luxury built into a hillside so that a wall of windows opens out to the view. But such vast basements require removing dirt, vast quantities of it. Last year, an out-of-control dump truck collided with a police car in Beverly Hills, killing an officer. Two months later, a concrete truck killed another officer.

“The trucks will come and fill up the whole road,” said Maureen Levinson, a Bel Air resident who closely monitors the special hauling routes the city set up to manage the dirt-truck traffic. “I have feared for my daughters’ lives.”

Impunity is a word that comes up a lot these days. It was big news here when a car belonging to a Qatari prince was caught on video racing through a residential neighborhood of Beverly Hills in September; the prince then left the country, claiming diplomatic immunity. According to Steve Soboroff, vice president of the Los Angeles Police Commission, some motorists have taken to installing license plates that, with the touch of a button, flip around to display fake plates at the approach of the police.

“Ask a cop and they’ll tell you that 50 percent of their day dealing with the privileged is miserable,” Mr. Soboroff said.

Web of Political Connections

One of Mr. Kirman’s top listings is a home perched on a promontory in the Trousdale Estates section of Beverly Hills, with seven bedrooms, 10 baths and $2.5 million worth of Baccarat chandeliers. It is listed for $135 million.

“It’s the single best view in all of Los Angeles,” said Stephen Shapiro of Westside Estate Agency. “I think most people would consider tearing it down.”

The house is owned by a shell company, Inch & Meter Ltd., whose corporate filings trace to the family of Gilbert R. Chagoury, a Lebanese-Nigerian businessman who was a close associate of Sani Abacha, the general who ruled Nigeria with a fierce grip in the 1990s. Mr. Abacha is believed to have stolen $4 billion from public coffers, which is the focus of a long-running international recovery effort.

In 2000, Mr. Chagoury was convicted of money laundering in Switzerland in connection with the Abacha family, court records show. He paid a fine, and in 2010 the PBS program “Frontline” reported that his record was expunged. Mr. Chagoury’s lawyer acknowledged that Mr. Chagoury had helped Mr. Abacha’s sons open bank accounts at Credit Suisse.

In recent years, the Justice Department has been searching in the United States for Abacha money to return to Nigeria. Mr. Chagoury has never been accused of wrongdoing in this country.

At the estate, the house manager confirmed Mr. Chagoury’s ownership and agreed to forward an email to Mr. Chagoury’s deputy. The Times did not receive a response.

To the west of Trousdale is Beverly Park, a heavily guarded gated community of roughly 80 homes that is considered a classic redoubt of the celebrity class. The likes of Mark Wahlberg, Rod Stewart and the Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone have lived there.

Beverly Park also has a complement of homes that The Times traced to current or former political families from around the world.

Some owners’ names could be found in corporate records, while others were in a 2007 lawsuit that pitted homeowners on the south side of the community against those on the north. (At issue was driving access for nannies, maids and other household employees.)

Just inside the gates, at No. 10, is a home owned by the Dastel Corporation. That company traces to the family of Mikhail Lesin, a former top aide to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and an architect of the government’s media and technology apparatus. Mr. Lesin purchased the home for $13.8 million in 2011, and then bought others in the area.

Last year, Senator Roger Wicker, Republican of Mississippi, asked the Justice Department to investigate the Lesin homes, questioning how a longtime public official could afford such expensive real estate. It is unclear if an investigation was begun.

Mr. Lesin was found dead in a Washington hotel in November. A family spokesman called him a “very successful media executive in Europe” who had purchased the homes legally and said the family knew of no Justice Department inquiry.

At No. 73 is a home owned by TBN Holdings Inc., which traces to a Saudi prince, Turki bin Nasser. As a high-ranking military official during the 1980s and ’90s, Prince Turki was involved in arms deals with the aerospace company BAE that led to allegations of bribery and large fines in Britain and the United States. According to reports by The Guardian, the BBC and “Frontline,” Prince Turki was a bribe recipient, but, as had long been their practice, American and British authorities prosecuted only the company.

Prince Turki did not respond to requests for comment.

At No. 58 is a home bought in 2004 by a shell company tied to another Russian politician, a former senator named Alexander Sabadash. Last spring, Mr. Sabadash was sentenced in Russia to six years in prison for attempted embezzlement of public funds, according to Russian news reports. A man who answered at the phone number listed for the shell company said the Sabadashes might be renting the house.

Finally, at No. 27, is a home owned by a shell company that has ties to the family of Bambang Trihatmodjo, long a contentious figure in Indonesia because his businesses amassed great wealth during the reign of his father, Mr. Suharto. Though Mr. Suharto died in 2008, his family’s fortune remains a focus of questions and legal action. Last summer, the Indonesian Supreme Court ordered the Suharto family to return $324 million that was embezzled from a foundation established with public money, according to news reports.

The money was to have paid for education for the poor.

A man who answered at the number listed for the shell company that owns the Beverly Park house acknowledged knowing Mr. Trihatmodjo, but hung up after learning the call was from The Times. Mr. Trihatmodjo did not respond to other messages seeking comment.

The home, with a fountain out front, is being marketed online for $36 million.

A Neighborhood Battle

On Strada Vecchia, the neighbors tend to frame their cause as a campaign against the forces of greed.

It is not that they have not done well for themselves. Joseph Horacek III is a Hollywood lawyer; his wife, Beatriz, is a former bank compliance officer. Mr. Horacek likes to recall watching his client Michael Douglas film the famous Gordon Gekko “greed is good” speech in “Wall Street.”

The Horaceks have made documenting the violations at No. 901 almost a part-time job. The battle over the property, Mr. Horacek said, “started out as a matter of principle, then it got to the point that, ‘Oh, my gosh, this is unsafe.’” They live directly down the hill, and they showed a reporter photos that appeared to show landslides.

The Horaceks are hardly the only upset neighbors. There is the Walmart heir, Ms. Laurie, with her damaged eucalyptus. Carole Cramer, who sang with Tommy Dorsey, says Mr. Hadid encroached on part of her property. Another critic is Fredric D. Rosen, well known for his tough tactics in building Ticketmaster into a powerhouse.

“We all want to know how that house got to be the size it did,” Mr. Rosen wrote in an email to city officials in February, adding, “We all feel that we are being gamed.”

In the interview, Mr. Hadid said he did not want to discuss accusations about his construction practices. But he did want to discuss neighborly etiquette. His own neighbor, he said, has been doing construction for 11 years. Still, he said, “I never complain because I understand these complexities.” They come with the business, he said.

“I seek the highest end of the smallest percentage of the market,” Mr. Hadid explained. “There’s a lot of need for the high end here.”

Without naming names, Mr. Hadid said that the Strada Vecchia neighbors were “extortionists” and that they were the ones motivated by greed. Mr. Horacek, for one, dismissed that, saying Mr. Hadid had offered him $2.5 million to drop his complaints but he had turned down the offer. It is not about money, he said.

Whatever the neighbors’ intentions, city officials say the project is in extensive violation of the building code.

The list of violations, in summary, goes like this: After the unapproved teardown and leveling of the hillside, the construction team did ask permission to grade the hill but used a survey that made it appear that workers had not already removed significant loads of dirt. Then they joined two buildings that were supposed to be separate and built so high that they drastically violated the city’s height limit.

“The house is nearly 70 feet high, and it’s only approved for 36 feet,” said Mr. Kelly, the building department investigator.

In July 2014, the city said it intended to revoke the project’s work permits. That week, Mr. Hadid posted on Instagram, “The construction must go on.” It did, even after the permits were pulled. Neighbors documented workers on the site that Thanksgiving.

In the spring, after repeated reports from neighbors about continuing construction, city inspectors found that parts of the project had been hidden with tarpaulins, plants and taped-over doors. That was when they found the underground bedrooms and theater — an entire unapproved basement below the basement, in fact.

“As you’ve seen in evidence of pictures, during all these years after stop-work orders, that work continued,” Larry Galstian, the chief of inspections at the city’s buildings department, said at the hearing on the violations last summer, according to a recording.

Indeed, a lawyer who works with Mr. Hadid said at the hearing, “We’re not challenging the fact that work that’s unapproved appears on this site.”

City officials said their offices had been utterly drained.

“We have no trust,” Mr. Galstian said. “As a manager of this bureau, I have allocated multiple hundreds of hours of my staff to monitor this project. This is unfair.” He added: “Every time you come to the project, gates are closed. Every time we knock on the door, they have to take 15 minutes to open the door.” His belief, he said, was that workers were being hidden.

“There is no cooperation from 901 Strada Vecchia L.L.C.,” he concluded.

Oil, Water and Accountability

Mr. Hadid is not the only developer flirting with nine-figure price tags. His main competitor is Nile Niami, a former film producer building a Bel Air home he has said he hopes to sell for $500 million.

One of Mr. Niami’s past projects was a boxy, modern house at 755 Sarbonne Road. In April 2012, a shell company tied to Mr. Niami sold it to a shell company traced to Kola Aluko, the Nigerian businessman.

What followed was a tangle of events spanning two continents, involving oil and water, a host of shell companies and lessons in the difficulty of tracing responsibility.

Mr. Aluko, it turned out, was on a buying spree. In addition to purchasing the Sarbonne Road house for $24 million, shell companies tied to him soon bought another Beverly Hills house for $14.7 million and two others in Santa Barbara for $33 million.

At the time, Mr. Aluko was a beneficiary of an agreement with Nigeria’s state oil company; in the first four months of 2012, the company he co-owned, Atlantic Energy, shipped $49 million in crude to the United States. But that deal came under fire back home amid growing questions about Mr. Aluko’s friendship with the oil minister at the time, Diezani Alison-Madueke.

In 2013, the governor of Nigeria’s Central Bank said billions of dollars were missing from the nation’s oil revenue. Among the troubling matters was the Atlantic deal, which looked as if it “was structured in such a way that it would just rip off the country,” Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, the bank governor at the time, said in a recent interview.

The deal allowed Atlantic to sell oil in exchange for paying some production costs. But subsequent investigations indicated that while Atlantic was selling oil, it was not paying its full share, according to a document read to The Times, as well as Nigerian news reports.

It did not help that Nigerians saw Mr. Aluko in news reports partying with celebrities overseas, driving racecars and buying luxury real estate. “People in the sector started wondering,” said Aaron Sayne, who recently co-wrote a report on the industry for the Natural Resource Governance Institute, a nonprofit in New York. “Has the government given this company a sweetheart deal, and if so, for whose ultimate benefit?”

In California, the problem was water.

First, water from the Sarbonne Road property began running into the street, according to a neighbor who provided photos to The Times, Chantal Burnison. The water seeped under her driveway. It ruined her koi pond. And when it reached her house, she installed retaining walls to hold back the hillside. Ms. Burnison recalled commiserating with Mrs. Levinson, the neighborhood watchdog, about how, with all the L.L.C.s involved, it would be hard to figure out whom to sue.

Then the Sarbonne Road house became a flooding victim itself, when part of a hillside above collapsed, creating a cascade of “water, muddy soil and debris,” according to a lawsuit filed by Mr. Aluko’s shell company.

That flood came from the new house up the hill, at 864 Stradella Road, on the market for $49.9 million, which has become infamous in the neighborhood as a water waster because of another leak into the street. Beginning last fall, Mrs. Levinson said, she began trying to contact the owners, but signs at the site listed only untraceable L.L.C.s. After the construction manager told her he could not remember the owner’s name, she said, she photographed the leak and wrote to her city councilman. “You couldn’t find out who was responsible,” she said.

The leak has ebbed somewhat, she said, but in October a reporter observed water still flowing.

Mark J. Rosenbaum, a lawyer for the shell company that owns 864 Stradella, said that the flooding onto the Sarbonne property was due to rain, and that the legal dispute had been resolved. Any water flowing into the street, he said, would be minimal and within normal limits.

Neighbors, sensitized perhaps by news reports that Bel Air harbors four of California’s top five residential water users, were unmollified.

“A little? Excuse me, it’s a river down the street,” said Helen Erickson, who owns the house across the street. “It goes down at all hours, midnight, morning, afternoon.”

Recently, construction vehicles have been heading back to 755 Sarbonne. Mr. Aluko’s shell company had sued the developer, Mr. Niami, alleging building defects. But with the case settled, a new round of construction has begun. (Mr. Niami declined to comment.)

Mr. Aluko’s broader legal entanglements continue.

Law enforcement officials in Nigeria, Britain and the United States are examining whether the former oil minister improperly acquired funds. Among the issues being studied are the Atlantic deal and whether Mr. Aluko helped enrich the former minister, according to three people with direct knowledge of the matter.

How many of the California properties are actually Mr. Aluko’s is a mystery, since shell companies are not required to identify their actual owners. Mr. Aluko is listed in their incorporation papers, and the purchase agreement for 755 Sarbonne says the home was for Mr. Aluko or his “assignee.” Mr. Aluko and his lawyer did not reply to requests for comment; a lawyer for Ms. Alison-Madueke said she was receiving medical treatment and was unable to answer questions.

Mr. Sayne, the oil industry researcher, said it would be difficult to connect any properties to Ms. Alison-Madueke.

Any “ties between the former minister and U.S. property,” he said, “are almost sure to lead partly offshore, to the opaque world of tax havens and shell companies.”

Shifting Ownership

The ambiguities surrounding Mr. Hadid and the ownership of 901 Strada Vecchia came to a head over the summer, as the neighbors pressed their case for legal action. At a hearing about the violations in June, several speakers pronounced themselves totally confused.

Documents trace a shifting trail of ownership over time.

When Mr. Hadid purchased the property in early 2011, he put it in his own name and took out a loan through an L.L.C., with himself as “sole member/manager.” Early violation notices were addressed directly to Mr. Hadid.

But by the next year, the city was addressing notices to another shell company, Syntra Wva L.L.C. Mr. Hadid had sold the property at a below-market price to that L.L.C., which in turn resold it to another shell company, 901 Strada L.L.C.

As recently as spring 2014, Mr. Hadid signed a bank loan as “sole managing member” of 901 Strada L.L.C. And then there was the inspection this past spring, when Mr. Hadid “introduced himself as owner of the property,” according to Mr. Galstian, the buildings department official.

As the legal process ground on, Mr. Hadid was, increasingly, steps removed from 901 Strada L.L.C.

At the hearing, a lawyer for the L.L.C. made a point of saying, “Our client is not Mr. Hadid, who has been mentioned by name. Our client is an entity. It’s an L.L.C. Its managing member is here. He’s from Washington D.C.” That was a Virginia lawyer, James Zelloe, who is listed as 901 Strada L.L.C.’s manager in its incorporation documents. The L.L.C.’s phone number in city lobbying records is a recently disconnected cellphone for Mr. Zelloe.

When the city filed a criminal case in July, alleging a range of misdemeanor construction violations, Mr. Zelloe was listed as a co-defendant, along with the L.L.C.

Suddenly, the explanations began changing again.

Mr. Zelloe’s lawyer told The Times that his client was a mere functionary. “He has incorporated this property, as hundreds of attorneys do, but he doesn’t have any control or oversight of the property,” the lawyer, Mr. Spertus, said.

Calls to the L.L.C. seeking comment were not returned.

As for Mr. Hadid, he would not say if the L.L.C. was in fact his.

The opacity of Mr. Hadid’s financing is one aspect of the project that the neighbors, the Horaceks, have emphasized in urging the city attorney to add Mr. Hadid to the criminal case. (Though the Horaceks’ home and several of their neighbors’ are owned by trusts, the trusts are in their own names.)

Until a few years ago, Mrs. Horacek worked as a bank compliance officer, investigating clients for possible money laundering. Several aspects of Mr. Hadid’s background, she said in a letter to the city attorney, would raise flags in a compliance review.

A case in point, she wrote, is his own residence, Le Belvédère. According to public records, his shell company sold the property for $50 million in June 2010 to an individual who quickly transferred it to an L.L.C. that in turn gave it to another shell company. But Mr. Hadid still lives there.

The letter also cited the transfers involving 901 Strada Vecchia.

“Changing the property title multiple times among his L.L.C.s from 2011 to 2015 may also be deemed as ‘layering,’ which is the process used to obscure the audit trail and sever a direct link to the beneficial owner,” Mrs. Horacek wrote.

Mrs. Horacek also pointed the city attorney to Mr. Hadid’s sale of Le Palais to the daughter of the president of Uzbekistan. “Spec houses,” she wrote, “are a perfect vehicle for money-laundering and tax fraud, especially if the property is purchased in cash or by an entity used to obscure the beneficial owner, or even more so by foreign buyers from ‘High Risk Countries.’ I am not saying that Mr. Hadid is engaged in money laundering or tax evasion but there are certainly many red flags.”

Ms. Karimova-Tillyaeva of Uzbekistan, who is tied to three other multimillion-dollar homes in the area, has not been charged with any wrongdoing. Her lawyer said she and her husband had “always conducted themselves lawfully” and had not “benefited from her family connections.”

Mr. Hadid said he knew nothing about the sources of his client’s money, but added, “All of my transactions involve United States-licensed banks, title companies and real estate companies.”

For the Horaceks, the entire business has become a bit overwhelming. In November, they decamped to the desert for the winter.

Last Wednesday, at a hearing on the misdemeanor case, the judge noted that there was a new defendant — Mohamed Hadid.

Still, the central question remains: What will become of the unfinished behemoth up on the hill?

For all the criticism, Mr. Hadid said, “We are diligently working to finish this project under the supervision and approval of all necessary government agencies.”

The Horaceks, though, believe that the only way to bring the house into compliance is to tear it down.

Whether the city might eventually order that — and given the ambiguities of ownership, precisely whom it might order to do it — remains unclear.

But even with all of the case’s tentacles and mysteries, Mr. Horacek has hope.

“I think there is a chance we’ve opened up a piercing of the corporate veil,” he said.

Σε αργία ο Μπέος - Εκλέγεται νέος Δήμαρχος Βόλου την Παρασκευή

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 14 Dec 2015 21:38:00 +0200

Σε αργία τέθηκε από σήμερα ο Δήμαρχος Βόλου Αχιλλέας Μπέος ο οποίος παρέλαβε προσωπικά στις 10.30 το πρωί την διαπιστωτική πράξη της αργίας του δημάρχου, που στάλθηκε με συστημένη
επιστολή από την Αποκεντρωμένη Διοίκηση Θεσσαλίας-Στερεάς Ελλάδας.
Η επιστολή παραδόθηκε από υπάλληλο των ΕΛΤΑ και παραλήφθηκε από τον ίδιο τον Αχιλλέα Μπέο, που εκείνη την ώρα βρισκόταν στο γραφείο του.
Η διαπιστωτική πράξη, με την οποία τίθεται σε αργία ο δήμαρχος Βόλου, ο οποίος παραπέμπεται με βούλευμα του Συμβουλίου Εφετών σε δίκη για το σκάνδαλο των στημένων αγώνων ποδοσφαίρου του 2011, είχε υπογραφεί από τον γ.γ. Αποκεντρωμένης Διοίκησης Θεσσαλίας Ηλία Τσέλιγκα στις 2 Δεκεμβρίου.
Την περασμένη Πέμπτη και Παρασκευή έγινε προσπάθεια επίδοσης του εγγράφου, αλλά η απάντηση ήταν ότι απουσίαζε η υπάλληλος που παραλαμβάνει την αλληλογραφία.
Τον Αχιλλέα Μπέο βαρύνουν κατηγορίες σε βαθμό κακουργήματος, όπως σύσταση και διεύθυνση εγκληματικής οργάνωσης και η δίκη έχει οριστεί για τις 15 Απριλίου 2016.
Πληροφορίες από το στενό περιβάλλον του Αχιλλέα Μπέου αναφέρουν ότι ο παυθείς δήμαρχος του Βόλου θα προσφύγει, αύριο κιόλας, στο Συμβούλιο της Επικρατείας για το συγκεκριμένο θέμα, ενώ νομικοί κύκλοι μιλούν για μεγάλες πιθανότητες αναστολής και άρση της αργίας.
Παράλληλα, όπως, ορίζει ο Κώδικας Δήμων της Ελλάδας, αν ο δήμαρχος έχει τεθεί σε αργία, τα καθήκοντά του ασκεί αντιδήμαρχος, ο οποίος ορίζεται με απόφαση του Δημοτικού Συμβουλίου, που καλείται να συνεδριάσει σε διάστημα πέντε ημερών, δηλαδή την προσεχή Παρασκευή.
Αν το Δημοτικό Συμβούλιο δεν εκδώσει την ανωτέρω απόφαση μέσα σε προθεσμία πέντε ημερών αφότου ο δήμαρχος τέθηκε σε αργία, ή αν εκείνοι που ορίστηκαν αρνούνται να ασκήσουν τα καθήκοντα τους, τα καθήκοντα του δημάρχου ασκεί ο πρώτος σε σταυρούς προτίμησης σύμβουλος του επιτυχόντος συνδυασμού, που στην περίπτωση του Δήμου Βόλου είναι ο πρόεδρος του Δημοτικού Συμβουλίου Γιώργος Μουλάς.
Για τη θέση του δημάρχου φέρεται να ενδιαφέρεται, με υψηλές πιθανότητες εκλογής, και ο αντιδήμαρχος Κοινωνικής Μέριμνας Τάσος Μπαζιάκας, από τους πλέον στενούς φίλους και συνεργάτες του Αχιλλέα Μπέου.

Αποκάλυψη-βόμβα: Από την Τουρκία προμηθεύεται το ISIS υλικά για σαρίν

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 14 Dec 2015 21:35:00 +0200

Ολα τα απαραίτητα υλικά για την παραγωγή αερίου σαρίν έχουν στην κατοχή τους οι τζιχαντιστές του ISIS και τα προμηθεύτηκαν από την Τουρκία με
την ανοχή του υπουργού Δικαιοσύνης της χώρας. Την αποκάλυψη-βόμβα έκανε μιλώντας στο Russia Today, ο βουλευτής της τουρκικής αντιπολίτευσης Ερέν 'Ερντεμ επικαλούμενος μάλιστα αποδεικτικά στοιχεία, μεταξύ αυτών ηχογραφημένες συνομιλίες τούρκων με μέλη του ISIS.

Ο Έρντεμ βουλευτής του Ρεπουμπλικανικού Λαϊκού Κόμματος (CHP) ισχυρίζεται ότι οι τρομοκράτες του ISIS στη Συρία έχουν προμηθευτεί όλα τα απαραίτητα υλικά για την παραγωγή αερίου σαρίν, μέσω Τουρκίας. Ο 'Ερντεμ έκανε μάλιστα λόγο για συγκάλυψη κατηγορώντας την Άγκυρα ότι δεν διερευνά τις τουρκικές «οδούς» προμήθειας που χρησιμοποιούνται ώστε να αποκτήσουν οι τρομοκράτες αέρια σαρίν.

Το συγκεκριμένο νευροπαραλυτικό αέριο χρησιμοποιήθηκε στην φονική επίθεση στην πόλη Γκούτα και αρκετές άλλες περιοχές κοντά στην Δαμασκό, τον Δεκέμβριο του 2013, με τη Δύση να κατηγορεί το καθεστώς του Μπασάρ αλ-Άσαντ και την Ρωσία να υποστηρίζει ότι ήταν προβοκάτσια. Ο Ερντέμ παρουσίασε ένα αντίγραφο εγκληματικής υπόθεσης με αρ.2013/120 που είχε ανοίξει ο γενικός εισαγγελέας στα Άδανα. Οι έρευνες αποκάλυψαν ότι ένας αριθμός τούρκων πολιτών συμμετείχαν στις διαπραγματεύσεις με «αντιπροσωπεία» του ISIS για την αγοραπωλησία των υλικών ενώ σύμφωνα με τηλεφωνικές συνομιλίες ένας μαχητής της αλ Κάιντα, ο Χαγιάμ Κασάπ, αγόρασε σαρίν.

«Yπάρχουν στοιχεία. Υλικά που χρησιμοποιούνται για χημικά όπλα μεταφέρονται στην Τουρκία και συναρμολογούνται στην Συρία στα στρατόπεδα του ISIS που ήταν τότε γνωστός ως αλ Κάιντα του Ιράκ. Αυτά έχουν όλα καταγραφεί. Υπάρχουν ηχογραφημένες συνομιλίες για το φορτίο που κατέγραψαν συνομιλίες του τύπου: «μην ανησυχείς για τα σύνορα, θα το φροντίσουμε εμείς, όπως και για την γραφειοκρατία». Με βάση τα στοιχεία οι αρχές στα Άδανα έκαναν τότε επιδρομές και συνέλαβαν 13 υπόπτους, αλλά για κάποιον ανεξήγητο λόγο η υπόθεση μια εβδομάδα αργότερα έκλεισε, και όλοι οι ύποπτοι πέρασαν τα τουρκο-συριακά σύνορα. «Τα φορτία πέρασαν. Γιατί κανείς δεν τους σταμάτησε. Γι’ αυτό ίσως χρησιμοποιήθηκε σαρίν, ως αποτέλεσμα » λέει ο 'Ερντεμ. υπογραμμίζοντας ότι όλα δείχνουν ανάμιξη της τουρκικής βιομηχανίας χημικών και συγκάλυψης, με την εμπλοκή του υπουργού Δικαιοσύνης, Μπεκίρ Μποζντάγκ.

ΘΕΜΑ: Κανένα θέμα δεν βλέπει το υπ. Δημόσιας Τάξης στο «ντου» επτά αστυνομικών στον καστανά

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 14 Dec 2015 21:31:00 +0200

Λαϊκή απαίτηση να γίνει έρευνα για το πρωτοφανές περιστατικό - Κακοποιοί μπαίνουν σε σπίτια, ρημάζουν περιουσίες αλλά στήθηκε επιχείρηση με επτά αστυνομικούς για

έναν... καστανά χωρίς άδεια
«Κανένα θέμα, καμιά παρατυπία» με τους αστυνομικούς που έστησαν ολόκληρη επιχείρηση για να κατασχέσουν το καροτσάκι του καστανά της Θεσσαλονίκης στην πλατεία Αριστοτέλους απαντά το υπουργείο στο λαϊκό ξέσπασμα και την απαίτηση να γίνει ΕΔΕ προκειμένου να διαπιστωθούν οι συνθήκες κάτω από τις οποίες συνέβη το περιστατικό.

Επισήμως, το υπουργείο Προστασίας του Πολίτη, αρνείται να σχολιάσει το συμβάν, ανεπίσημα, ωστόσο, λένε πως δεν υπήρξε κανένα πειθαρχικό παράπτωμα και οι αστυνομικοί ενήργησαν ως όφειλαν.

Το απόγευμα της Παρασκευής, υπήρχε σε εξέλιξη εκδήλωση στο κέντρο της Θεσσαλονίκης για τη φωταγώγηση του χριστουγεννιάτικου δέντρου και για το λόγο αυτό δεκάδες αστυνομικοί της Τροχαίας, των ομάδων ΔΙ.ΑΣ και «Ζ» αλλά και της Δίωξης Παρεμπορίου ελάμβαναν μέρος στα μέτρα. Μάλιστα, λέει ανεπίσημα το υπουργείο, υπήρξε καταγγελία πολίτη ότι δεν είχε άδεια ο καστανάς και όφειλαν να ελέγξουν αν όλα ήταν νόμιμα. Πρόσθέτουν δε, ότι ήταν η πέμπτη φορά που είχε γίνει καταγγελία για τον συγκεκριμένο άνθρωπο. Βέβαια, αυτά δεν δικαιολογούν σε καμία περίπτωση το ζήλο που επέδειξαν οι επτά κρανοφόροι των ομάδων ΔΙ.ΑΣ και Ζ, στη σύλληψη ενός ηλικιωμένου άνδρα με προβλήματα υγείας και την κατάσχεση του καροτσιού με τα κάστανα που είχε για να βγάζει το μεροκάματο του, στο όνομα της πάταξης της φοροδιαφυγής και του παρεμπορίου.

Αυτό που οφείλει το υπουργείο να κάνει είναι να διερευνήσει το πώς είναι δυνατόν να ασχολούνται με μια τέτοια υπόθεση επτά αστυνομικοί οι οποίοι είναι επιφορτισμένοι με την πάταξη της εγκληματικότητας την ίδια ώρα που ληστές μπαίνουν σε σπίτια, κακοποιούν και δολοφονούν τα θύματα τους για να τους αρπάξουν μια χούφτα ευρώ.

Εκτός αν πλέον στη νέα Αστυνομία οι μάχιμες ομάδες «Ζ» και ΔΙ.ΑΣ άλλαξαν καθήκοντα και ασχολούνται με το κυνήγι του καστανά και την κατάσχεση της φουφούς.

Φυσικά, η Αστυνομία δεν εξετάζει ούτε ποιος είναι ο αξιωματικός που έδωσε την εντολή στους επτά να εξαντλήσουν την αυστηρότητα τους πάνω σε έναν δυστυχισμένο ηλικιωμένο με προβλήματα υγείας.

Οι Ρώσοι εξευτελίζουν τους Τούρκους: Δείτε τί έκαναν στο Τούρκο ακόλουθο! (PHOTOS)

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 14 Dec 2015 20:05:00 +0200

Τον κάθiσε απέναντί του και με αυστηρό ύφος του επεσήμανε ότι οι απερίσκεπτες ενέργειες της Άγκυρας προς τις Ένοπλες Δυνάμεις της Ρωσίας δεν μπορεί να μένουν αναπάντητες. Ο Ρώσος υφυπουργός Άμυνας Ανατόλι Αντόνοφ είχε απέναντί του σαν …μαθητούδι τον Τούρκο υποναύαρχο Αχμέτ Γκιουνές, ο οποίος άκουσε την “κατσάδα” και υποσχέθηκε ότι θα μεταφέρει την ρωσική δυσαρέσκεια και οργή στην Άγκυρα αμέσως. Όλα αυτά μετά από τις προειδοποιητικές βολές κατά τουρκικού αλιευτικού από ρωσικό αντιτορπιλικό στο Αιγαίο. Όπως είπε ο Αντόνοφο στον Τούρκο οι ψαράδες γλίτωσαν από τύχη. Δεν το είπε τυχαία προφανώς.Οι φωτογραφίες είναι από την επίσημη ιστοσελίδα του ρωσικού υπουργείου Άμυνας.

Και είναι πολύ χρήσιμες για πολλούς δικούς μας πολιτικούς και άλλους. Χρήσιμες για να αντιμετωπίσουν την τουρκολαγνεία τους και την τουρκοφοβία τους.

Είναι βέβαιο ότι η τουρκική κυβέρνηση και ο πρόεδρος Ερντογάν θα απαντήσουν στις ρωσικές ανακοινώσεις με ορυμαγδό ψευδών! Το είδαμε και με την εισβολή στο Ιράκ όπου βγαίνουν ξεδιάντροπα και υποστηρίζουν ότι μπήκαν στο Ιράκ με …πρόσκληση!

ANTI8ETHFWNH

New Year, but the same old shocking scenes: Mayhem in streets across Britain as drunken revellers lose their senses (and in some cases their trousers) Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3380899/Where-streets-no-shame-New-Year-revellers-spill-pubs-clubs-night-drunken-excess-Britain.

Soldiers open fire on car as it tried to ram mosque TWICE in France with bullets wounding driver and a nearby worshipper Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3381263/Soldiers-open-fire-car-tried-ram-mosque-France-bullets-wounding-driver-passenger-nearby-worshipper.

Munich suicide bomb plot: police hunt Isis suspects behind New Year's Eve threat

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Πως «πετάμε» 300 εκατ. ευρώ στα… «σκουπίδια»

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Star Wars: The Force Awakens review - J J Abrams enhances iconic film series but Daisy Ridley disappoints

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Σε αργία ο Μπέος - Εκλέγεται νέος Δήμαρχος Βόλου την Παρασκευή

Αποκάλυψη-βόμβα: Από την Τουρκία προμηθεύεται το ISIS υλικά για σαρίν

ΘΕΜΑ: Κανένα θέμα δεν βλέπει το υπ. Δημόσιας Τάξης στο «ντου» επτά αστυνομικών στον καστανά

Οι Ρώσοι εξευτελίζουν τους Τούρκους: Δείτε τί έκαναν στο Τούρκο ακόλουθο! (PHOTOS)