Monday, 16 May 2016

The European Union Times

EU brokers secret deal with Sudan to limit refugees

Posted: 16 May 2016 04:08 AM PDT

The European Union has reportedly brokered a controversial deal with Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir in an effort to limit refugees entering the continent from Africa.
The ambassadors of the 28-member-state bloc held a meeting on March 23, during which they agreed to work together with Bashir to stop the refugees’ flow to Europe, German newspaper Spiegel reported.
Under the deal, the bloc will provide eight African countries, including Sudan, with £40 million over three years to secure their borders, the daily has found.
The European Commission warned that “under no circumstances” should the public learn about the agreement.
Classified documents obtained by Spiegel indicate that Europe also will provide cameras, scanners and servers to the Sudanese government to register refugees.
Under the project, led by Germany, Sudanese border police will be trained and Germany will construct camps and detention rooms for Sudan.
According to Sudanese authorities, several people from Germany visited the African country in recent weeks to discuss the construction of closed camps.
Sudan, Africa’s third largest country, is a key route for refugees from Eritrea, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic, who make their way via Khartoum to Libya, where they take boats to Europe.
The EU deal with the Sudanese president has concerned rights groups since Bashir faces International Criminal Court (ICC) charges of genocide and war crimes in the 2003 conflict in the western region of Darfur.
Sudan’s cooperation to stop the refugees, however, is questioned within the EU since the Sudanese government is accused of working with criminal networks in illegal crossing of refugees. According to a report by the human rights group, the Sudanese police and military have been selling refugees to human smugglers.
Europe is struggling with the biggest refugee crisis since the World War II. Refugees are fleeing conflict-ridden zones in Africa and the Middle East, particularly Syria, to reach Europe.
The EU has already come under fire for brokering a deal with Turkey to return back all the asylum seekers and refugees who had used the Aegean Sea to illegally reach Greece.
The bloc, however, is in a stand-off with Turkey on the future of the agreement since Ankara refuses to make changes to its anti-terror laws as required by the EU.
On Friday, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) denounced the deal as a “historic abdication” of Europe’s moral and legal responsibilities.
In an open letter to EU member states and institutions, MSF chief Joanne Liu said the agreement “effectively outsources caring for these people to Turkey.”
Over a million refugees entered Europe through Turkey and Greece last year and then made their way through the Balkans to Germany and other northern member states of the bloc.
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Trump says UK Brexit would Not affect Relations with US if he is President

Posted: 16 May 2016 03:56 AM PDT

US Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said if the United Kingdom votes to leave the European Union, it will not affect a possible trade deal with Washington if the billionaire becomes president, according to the UK broadcaster ITV while Obama threatened the UK with sanctions. Hillary Clinton, being an Obama 3rd term, alsowarned the UK against a possible Brexit.
“I am going to treat everybody fairly, but it wouldn’t make any difference to me whether they were in the EU or not,” Trump said in an interview with Piers Morgan, due to be aired in full on ITV on Monday, as cited by Reuters. “You would certainly not be back of the queue, that I can tell you.”
Trump has been supportive in his calls for a ‘Brexit’ saying that the UK would be “better off without” the EU, while he also believes that the bloc pushed the migrant crisis on Europe.
“I would say the UK are better off without [the EU] personally, but I’m not making that as a recommendation, just my feeling,” he told Fox News last week.
The comments from Trump, who is likely to win the Republican nomination to run for the presidency, come in stark contrast to statements made by outgoing US President Barack Obama last month.
During a visit to London, Obama threatened the UK with sanctions right in front of coward David Cameron who made a fool of himself for not giving a fierce reply to Obama after he said that the UK would be “the back of the queue” for any potential trade deals with the US if they voted to leave the EU in a referendum scheduled to take place on June 23.
In the event of a Brexit, the UK would lose much of the influence it has as America’s closest EU ally, he said. “It could be five years from now, 10 years from now before we were able to actually get something done,” Obama told the BBC.
However, the outgoing US president’s comments angered many in the ‘Out’ campaign in Britain, which believes the UK could strike deals just as effectively outside the European bloc as it could within. Leading Brexit campaigners London Mayor Boris Johnson and UKIP chief Nigel Farage weighed in with criticism of Obama’s intervention.
Johnson called Obama’s comments “hypocritical,” issuing the following comment earlier: “We haven’t had a trade deal with America for 43 years. Why not? Do you know why not? Because we’re in the European Union.”
NATO and US defense chiefs have also urged Britain not to leave the EU, saying that its exit would “give succor” to the West’s enemies.
“While the decision is one for the British people, Brexit would undoubtedly lead to a loss of British influence, undermine NATO and give succor to the West’s enemies just when we need to stand shoulder-to-shoulder,” they wrote in a letter to the Daily Telegraph.
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Leak: Turkey ignores known ISIS border crossings

Posted: 16 May 2016 03:26 AM PDT

Turkish MP Erem Erdem

Leaked phone recordings allegedly show that the Turkish government has permitted over a thousand members of the ISIS terrorist group to cross its borders with Syria.
Turkish Opposition MP Erem Erdem who leaked 422 pages of transcriptions of the conversations to media outlets has accused Ankara of covering up the cross border activities.
The detailed phone conversations, mostly between a known ISIS member, Ilhami Bali, and his associates inside Turkish borders, were obtained from Turkish security forces, RT reported on Saturday.
Bali is a major suspect in a series of bombing attacks in Ankara and the southern Turkish town of Suruc, an ethnically Kurdish town located close to the border with Syria.
During the press conference where he presented the transcribed conversations, Erdem said that “these entries recorded comprehensive information such as which hotel the terrorists are going to stay in, where they will wait for their car, which gas station they will use … how many people and who exactly would be responsible for the preparation of a terrorist attack.”
“Despite the fact that all this information was in the hands of the authorities, the security forces had not carried out any operations to detain terrorists,” he added.
In one of the conversations, Bali asks one of his counterparts how many terrorists have crossed into Turkey, to which his associate replies”1,128.”
In another conversation, Bali vents his dissatisfaction with another Turkish associate.
“What? Are you the one who is responsible that they got arrested? Don’t lie to me! Don’t lie to me. Eighteen people crossed the border last night. Fifteen of them got arrested when you tried to help them,” he said.

A frame grab of Syrian intelligence forces inspecting a captured ISIS-bound lorry full of medicine in Aleppo.

On Friday, Syrian intelligence forces captured a haul of medical supplies near Aleppo, which came from Turkey and was destined for ISIS terrorists in the Iraqi city of Mosul.
Turkey has time and again been accused of aiding and abetting militant groups operating in Syria with reports saying that Ankara actively trains and arms the Takfiri militants there, and facilitates their safe passage into the Arab country. Ankara has also been accused of buying smuggled oil from ISIS.
Syria has been gripped by foreign-backed militancy since March 2011. The United Nations Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura estimates that over 400,000 people have been killed in the conflict, which has also displaced over half of the Arab country’s pre-war population of about 23 million.
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Clinton Ex-Lover: Hillary a "Terrorist, Sex Addict" Bill Told Me He Had 2000 Women

Posted: 16 May 2016 03:17 AM PDT

Hillary Clinton is not only an “enabler,” she is a “terrorist” who “terrorizes” her husband’s alleged lovers and women who accuse him of sexual assault, says Dallas lawyer Dolly Kyle, who says she had a long-running affair with Bill Clinton.
In an interview, Kyle claimed that “Billy” Clinton, as she called him, once boasted to her that he had had sex with about 2,000 women. She described Clinton as a “sex addict” who has some “sick, sick need” to “control women.”
“Aaron, Hillary is an enabler is about the nicest thing you can say about her,” stated Kyle when asked about a statement last Friday from Donald Trump, who slammed Hillary Clinton as an “unbelievably nasty, mean enabler” who “destroyed” the lives of her husband’s mistresses and alleged victims.
Continued Kyle: “The fact of the matter is Hillary is a terrorist. I invite you to look up the definition of terrorism. It is the use of violence, threats, or intimidation to achieve a political aim. … That’s what terrorism is. It changes people’s lives by changing their decisions about what they would otherwise do. And these women who might otherwise speak up are so afraid that they won’t say anything.”
Kyle alleged that there are many other Clinton lovers and purported assault victims who would likely speak out, but who instead “are cowering in fear because of the terrorism.”
Kyle was speaking in an interview set to air Sunday night on this reporter’s weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio,” broadcast on New York’s AM 970 The Answer and NewsTalk 990 AM in Philadelphia.
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Facebook's Zuckerberg to Meet with Anti-Trump "Conservatives" This Week

Posted: 16 May 2016 03:04 AM PDT

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is meeting with several conservatives this week to address the alleged suppression of conservative news stories on Facebook.
The list of attendees is a who’s who of Trump bashers: Glenn Beck, Dana Perino, S. E. Cupp, Arthur Brooks from American Enterprise Institute and Zac Moffatt, Mitt Romney’s former digital director.
This is how Drudge Report put it:
Glenn Beck to Grovel at Zuckerberg’s feet…
CNN reported:
Mark Zuckerberg invited prominent conservative media figures, including Glenn Beck and Dana Perino, to a meeting at Facebook’s headquarters this week.
The meeting, scheduled for Wednesday, is aimed at addressing the alleged suppression of conservative news stories in Facebook’s “trending” stories section.
Along with Perino and Beck, other confirmed attendees include Arthur Brooks of the American Enterprise Institute, CNN conservative commentator SE Cupp, and Zac Moffatt, co-founder of tech firm Targeted Victory. Moffatt was previously Mitt Romney’s digital director.
“I’m going in with an open mind and an eagerness to learn more,” Cupp said. “Conservatives and Silicon Valley actually come down on the same side of many issues and share some common concerns. I’m sure we’ll find plenty to talk about, and I’m honored to have been included.”
The tech blog Gizmodo published the anonymously sourced claims on Monday. Facebook (FB, Tech30) has said that it is investigating and that it has found no evidence to back up the claims.
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