TBR News May 6, 2017

The Voice of the White House

Washington, D.C. May 6, 2017: ” “It is interesting to see in the coming election in France, a duplicate of the patterns we saw in the last American election.

The Establishment candidate, in this case Ma cron, got a great deal of positive assurance that he was a sure victor, just as Hillary Clinton got the same press assurance.

Ms. LePen, a very right-wing candidate, and anathema to the left wing, got almost no publicity other than a drumfire of negativity. And almost at the last moment, WIkiLeaks released, in both cases damning email intercepts.

Macron is pure establishment, as was Clinton, and Macron has gotten full support from  establishment media.

This failed with Clinton and the French elections are tomorrow but the results will be interesting.”

Table of Contents

• Waiter and Bartender jobs surge in the Land of the Free
• Russian-German trade sees robust growth despite sanctions
• The Deadly Mediterranean Route: EU Seeks to Ward Off New Refugee Crisis
• French candidate Macron claims massive hack as emails leaked
• France officials warn media not to publish #MacronLeaks
• US company denies security risks, prostitution at Iraq base
• Death toll in Mexico border drug violence rises to 120
• The left’s deafening silence
• Iraqi forces gain foothold in northwest Mosul after surprise new push
• Ancient meteor strike triggered massive volcanic eruptions lasting millennia – study
• What is Islam? Who was Mohammad?

 Waiter and Bartender jobs surge in the Land of the Free

May 5, 2017

by Simon Black

SovereignMan.com

New York City-The headline in the New York Times today read “U.S. Job Growth Bounces Back; Unemployment at 10-Year Low”.

That’s certainly one way of looking at it.

The US Department of Labor released its regular jobs report this morning showing the official unemployment rate is just 4.4% in the Land of the Free.

That’s certainly a strong number; I’m sure plenty of people in Venezuela and Turkey would love to have an unemployment rate at even twice that figure.

But when you actually dive into the statistics, the optimism starts to fade a bit.

It turns out that the #1 driver of job growth in the United States is “Leisure and Hospitality”, which is how the Department of Labor categorizes food service jobs.

That basically means waiters and bartenders.

In April, for example, more waiting and bartending jobs were created than any other sector.

And in case you’re curious, the #2 driver of jobs in the Land of the Free is in the health care industry, which, is a little bit sad when you think about it.

There are so many sick people in the US… so many millions in pitiful health… that caring for these people has become the second-fastest job growth industry.

And rounding out the top 3? You guessed it– government jobs.

So basically all the grand optimism for job growth in the Land of the Free comes down to waiters and bartenders, people who take care of all the millions of sick people, and government bureaucracy.

In fact, those three sectors alone account for more new job creation than EVERY OTHER SECTOR PUT TOGETHER.

Meanwhile, crucial private sector jobs in, say, information and technology, actually lost ground last month, and has consistently been losing jobs since July 2016.

Then there’s the small issue of wages.

The Labor Department’s report shows that average wages in the US rose by about 2.5% over the last year.

That sounds pretty good too, until you consider that the Labor Department’s most recent inflation report shows that inflation increased by almost the exact same amount.

If you factor taxes into the equation, then inflation clearly exceeded any wage increase over the last year, meaning that the average American worker is worse off today than 12-months ago.

This isn’t meant to be a downer.

Again, 4.4% unemployment and a bunch of waiter and bartending jobs is certainly a nicer alternative to what our friends in Venezuela are dealing with right now.

That said, it seemed important to shine some light on the details given that there are so many ignorantly optimistic headlines about this jobs report.

Strong economies aren’t built on serving drinks. Or having to take care of so many sick people. Or government bureaucracy.

Strong economies are built on savings and production. And that growth trend is sorely lacking.

Russian-German trade sees robust growth despite sanctions

May 5, 2017

RT

Trade between Russia and Germany saw a multi-billion euro surge in January and February, German newspaper Die Zeit reports. With the Russian economy recovering from the recession, German businesses are bullish on trade.

The newspaper quotes both Russian and German statistics offices, and both are seeing robust growth in trade between the countries.

The Moscow-based German-Russian Foreign Trade Chamber announced a 43 percent rise to €6.7 billion in the first two months of the year. The German Federal Statistical Office posted a 37.3 percent growth to €9.5 billion in the same period.

According to a survey conducted by the chamber, 63 percent of German companies actively working in Russia expect sales to rise this year.

Trade between Russia and Germany took a hit after the European Union and the United States imposed sanctions against Russia in March 2014 over Crimea reunification and the war in eastern Ukraine. German companies feared that due to the sanctions, they could permanently lose market share to competition, particularly China.

Since 2012, German exports to Russia have almost halved from €38 billion to around €21.5 billion last year.

German politicians, including the former Minister of Economic Affairs, Sigmar Gabriel, have also called for a gradual end to the sanctions.

In April, German energy giant Wintershall called for the cancellation of anti-Russian sanctions. According to the CEO Mario Mehren, the punitive measures injured both the Russian economy and trade between Russia and Europe, but no steps have been made toward solving the political crisis.

The Deadly Mediterranean Route: EU Seeks to Ward Off New Refugee Crisis

The number of migrants crossing the dangerous Mediterranean route has risen significantly since the beginning of the year. European officials fear the situation could further deteriorate. So far, though, Brussels hasn’t been able to agree on a solution.

May 4, 2017

by Christiane Hoffmann, Walter Mayr, Peter Müller, Christoph Schult and Wolf Wiedmann-Schmidt

Spiegel

During a meeting with senior security officials in the Reichstag, Germany’s parliament building, a week ago, Angela Merkel didn’t mince words. While praising the Schengen zone for the border-free travel it has granted Europeans, the German chancellor also said that it could only work if the European Union’s external borders were adequately protected. Schengen, she said, means that Germany’s neighbors are no longer Austria or Poland, but Russia, Turkey and Libya.

The 2015 refugee crisis, Merkel said, taught us “fundamental lessons,” such as the fact that EU external border protection wasn’t good enough. The situation has since improved dramatically, Merkel said, “but we haven’t yet achieved everything that we need.”

The chancellor, unfortunately, is correct. Merkel has promised that the refugee crisis seen two years ago will not be repeated: Never again will Europe see an uncontrolled inflow of millions of people. The refugee deal with Turkey is working, we are repeatedly told, and the crisis is over. That, though, could turn out to be wrong.

With German voters set to go to the polls on Sept. 24, Merkel’s re-election campaign hinges on there not being a repeat of the refugee crisis, even if it’s not as substantial as the 2015 influx. But west of the closed Balkan route, a new migrant stream has been growing since the beginning of the year. From Jan. 1 to April 23, 36,851 migrants have followed the central Mediterranean route from North Africa to Italy. That represents a 45 percent increase over the same period last year, when a record 181,000 people crossed the Mediterranean on the route. “The situation is worrisome,” says Izabella Cooper, spokeswoman for the European border control agency Frontex.

Even more concerning is the fact that summer hasn’t even begun. Experience has shown that most migrants only climb into the boats once the Mediterranean grows calmer. Italian authorities estimate that a quarter million people will arrive on its shores this year. “There are challenges ahead,” says a senior German security official.

Berlin is particularly concerned because it’s not just Africans who are taking the Mediterranean route to Italy. An increasing number of South Asians are as well, which could mean that the route across the sea to Italy is now seen as a viable alternative to the defunct Balkan route. People from Bangladesh now represent the second largest group of migrants that have crossed over from Libya this year. From January to March 2016, by contrast, exactly one Bangladeshi was picked up on the route. Pakistanis have also chosen the Mediterranean route more often in recent months.

Officials in Berlin and Brussels have thus far sought to play down the numbers. “We can’t yet say if it is a temporary upward tick or if it is a trend,” says one EU diplomat.

Thus far, the majority of newcomers have remained in Italy. But German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière, of Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU), nevertheless applied with the European Commission for permission to extend German border controls on its border with Austria beyond the May expiration date. On Tuesday, that permission was granted, with the Commission saying that the controls must be lifted by the end of the year. German conservatives are likewise demanding that controls be established on the country’s border with Switzerland.

Restrictive Interpretation

The EU is currently working on an emergency plan in case a “serious crisis situation” develops. The discussions are focusing on a scenario under which more than 200,000 refugees would have to be redistributed each year.

An unpublished report by Malta, which currently holds the rotating European Council presidency, calls for a more restrictive interpretation of asylum rights in such a case. In other words, should too many migrants begin arriving, the EU will increase efforts at deterrence. Controversial proposals for reception camps to be established in North Africa also remain under discussion.

Most of those currently fleeing from countries like Nigeria, Guinea and the Ivory Coast are doing so to escape grinding poverty and in the hopes of finding better opportunities in Europe. Very few of them have much chance of being granted asylum. That reality has made redistribution within the EU even more difficult. According to current law, those with no chance at asylum are supposed to be sent back home as quickly as possible and not sent to other European countries.

The key to Merkel’s solution for the 2015/2016 refugee crisis was the EU-Turkey deal. The agreement called for Turkey to improve monitoring of its Aegean Sea coastline, which was the jumping-off point for the Balkan route via the Greek islands. At the same time, a more rigorous deportation policy, which meant that refugees who reached Greece would be sent back to Turkey, discouraged many from making the journey in the first place. That deal, in combination with border closures, has meant that the route has largely been abandoned.

That strategy, however, won’t work for the Mediterranean route to Italy — neither the increased coastal monitoring nor the rapid deportations. There is no country, after all, to which the migrants could be deported. Almost all of them depart from what was once Libya, today a failed state where the government, clans and other power-hungry groups are engaged in constant combat.

The country is widely viewed as a basket case with little prospect for a stable government in the foreseeable future. One German government official says that “no positive trends” can be observed. The problem, though, is that there can be no solution to the current refugee influx without Libya. Fully 90 percent of the migrants who have set off across the Mediterranean for Italy started their journeys from the Libyan coast.

Low Risk, High Earnings

Without a functioning state in Libya, however, there can be no effective border controls. The situation is completely chaotic, notes a late-January internal report from the EU Border Assistance Mission in Libya (EUBAM), which is currently working out of Tunis. Migrant smuggling, the report notes, is an income source for organized crime organizations “with extremely low risks and high earnings.”

Nevertheless, the Libyan government has presented the EU with a list of needs for the upgrading of its coast guard, including 130 vessels, some of them armed, along with additional equipment. The EU border control agency Frontex is skeptical, saying that before any equipment is delivered, measures must be in place to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands.

Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni reached an agreement in February with Fayez Serraj, the prime minister of Libya’s unity government, for millions in aid to strengthen the country’s coast guard. But Serraj doesn’t even have control of the entire capital, Tripolis. And the coast guard that Italy is supporting sometimes works together with migrant smugglers.

Because protecting the coast is unfeasible, the focus has shifted to returning migrants to North Africa. Months ago, the German government discussed the establishment of reception camps not in Libya, but in its neighboring countries of Tunisia and Egypt. But Tunis and Cairo demurred.

Might such camps, then, be built in Libya after all?

On a recent Monday afternoon, the Home Affairs Committee in European Parliament met to review the situation in Libya, a country that has become so dangerous that many government officials, NGO workers and politicians no longer feel safe traveling there. The committee had invited Annemarie Loof, operations manager for the aid organization Doctors without Borders, and the pictures she brought along to show to the parliamentarians were difficult to look at.

Left in the Lurch

They showed overcrowded internment camps, children sleeping on bare concrete and undernourished migrants with skin diseases and signs of having been tortured. “Refugees are big business in Libya,” Loof says. “If you pump more money in, things will only get worse.”

That, however, is exactly what the Italians are planning to do. The country feels as though it has been left in the lurch by Brussels and on the eve of the EU summit in Malta in early February, Rome reached an agreement with Libya on the establishment of “temporary reception camps” to which refugees can be deported. Initially, they are to be financed by Italy, but Libyan officials will be solely responsible for operating them. Loof’s report focused on the conditions that might develop in such camps.

“It would be crucial for the Europeans to inspect the camps to guarantee humane conditions,” says Martin Kobler, head of the United Nations Support Mission in Libya. But nobody is willing to do so. It is simply too dangerous.

An alternative to improving Libya’s coast guard would be that of monitoring the country’s southern border to prevent migrants from entering Libya in the first place. Recent media reports have indicated that some in Brussels have begun mooting the establishment of a mission to do so. But the idea has not found widespread favor in the EU capital and Berlin, too, is opposed. “I don’t think a European police mission is realistic at the present time,” says one German official.

One reason, to be sure, are the challenges associated with doing so. Libya’s southern border runs for 1,500 kilometers through an extremely hot desert controlled largely by local clans. But Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn believes that, despite the difficulties, exactly that strategy should be pursued. “Europe has to help Libya control its southern border,” he says. “That is the gate for migration to Europe. It isn’t just when the refugees head out to sea.”

“The refugees must be stopped before they reach the Sahara,” agrees Monika Hohlmeier, a member of European Parliament from the Christian Social Union, the Bavarian sister party to Merkel’s CDU. “It’s all a vicious circle: The more people we save in the Mediterranean, the more refugees end up in the migrant smuggling apparatus or die on the way.” A strategy paper produced by the European Political Strategy Centre, a think tank under the authority of Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, reaches the same conclusion. By limiting itself to merely saving migrants in maritime distress, Europe has “unintentionally encouraged smugglers to adopt new strategies enabling them to reap more benefits, while placing migrants even more at risk,” the paper, published in early February, reads.

Brutal Treatment

Frontex has noted that migrant smugglers have recently become even more unscrupulous. They have, for example, begun packing up to 170 people onto inflatable rafts that can only safely transport 15 passengers at most. It isn’t possible for such an overloaded vessel to make the entire trip across to Italy, nor is that the intention. The engines generally only have enough fuel to make it out of Libyan waters, with smugglers relying on the migrants being picked up by a passing ship. If not, well that’s just bad luck. More than 1,000 migrants have already lost their lives trying to reach Italy this year.

Migrants who have been saved have told Frontex officials about the brutal treatment meted out by the smugglers. Those who refuse to board the overflowing boats in Libya are often forced to do so at gunpoint. Some are even shot or murdered. Frontex spokeswoman Cooper says that the border agency has repeatedly discovered migrants with gunshot wounds among those who have been saved from the Mediterranean.

It is a dilemma: The Europeans cannot simply stand by as increasing numbers of people drown in the Mediterranean. But the more active NGOs are in pulling people out of the water, the more cynically the smugglers take advantage of the help they provide. It has become something of a “taxi service to Europe” that has increased the incentive to risk the journey, complain high ranking German officials.

The Italian judiciary has gone a step further and accused some aid organizations of abetting human smuggling. “We have proof that individual NGOs maintain direct contact with migrant smugglers in Libya,” claims Public Prosecutor Carmelo Zuccaro, based in Catania in Sicily. “Telephone calls from Libya are made directly to these NGOs. The direction of travel to their ships are illuminated with spotlights.”

For years, Italy has been among the European countries most affected by the refugee influx. The government in Rome, led by Paolo Gentiloni, is under extreme pressure. The hostels are overcrowded and there have been violent protests against newcomers in some Italian communities — and populist politicians have been highlighting the issue ahead of upcoming mayoral elections. The head of the right-wing populist party Lega Nord says that “the invaders must be stopped and the illegals should be sent away.” His party currently stands at around 13 percent in nationwide polls. Meanwhile, Senate Vice President Luigi di Maio, of the Five Star Movement, the strongest political party in the country, has been blasting away at the NGOs who save drowning refugees at sea.

Solidarity in Name Only

The Italian government has launched a variety of measures in an effort to regain control over the situation, but the number of new arrivals continues to climb. Shortly before Easter, Rome quickly issued a decree allowing for the more rapid deportation of asylum seekers whose applications have been rejected. In addition, Prime Minister Gentiloni and Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano are seeking to sign agreements with the most important countries of origin and transit countries in Africa. The president of Niger, for example, was recently promised 50 million euros during a visit to the Italian capital in exchange for tighter controls on the country’s border with Libya.

The Italians do not believe that there will be a rapid breakthrough on the distribution of refugees throughout Europe. Recent years have shown repeatedly that solidarity exists in name only. In 2015, other EU members promised to take 160,000 refugees from Italy and Greece. Thus far, however, only 16,000 have been resettled.

During a breakfast meeting a week ago Wednesday, EU ambassadors from the 28 member states studied a six-page compromise paper presented by the Maltese council presidency: “The Solidarity Component of the Dublin System Reform.” The paper envisions a system whereby Europe will classify immigration levels into three categories: normal refugee flows, strong increases and massive inflows in a crisis. Talks have focused primarily on the second category, with the third being classified as a “serious crisis situation.”

Germany is insisting that as many European countries as possible accept refugees. To encourage countries like Hungary and Poland to accept such a plan, a compensation mechanism is under discussion which would include financial incentives for accepting refugees. Countries that accept more than their quota would receive 60,000 euros per refugee within five years, whereas those who don’t meet their quota would have to pay the same amount.

As a further concession, the proposal envisions the suspension of the distribution mechanism when more than a certain number of refugees per year need to be distributed — the number 200,000 is currently under discussion. The measure, though, remains bracketed in the paper, which is EU diplomats’ way of indicating that the debate has not yet been settled.

No Solution in Sight

In the case of a “serious crisis situation,” the paper calls for “simplified legal procedures,” which likely means that only the minimum standards laid out in the Geneva Refugee Convention would apply.

The proposals in the paper will not provide relief in the immediate future, which is why the Commission is urging EU member states to speed up deportations. Officials estimate that around 1 million people who sought asylum in 2015 and 2016 saw their applications rejected, meaning they were required to be sent home. But since 2015, not even half that number have been deported. Repatriations to African countries are often unfeasible, says one EU diplomat. “Either the countries refuse to take their citizens back or the refugees who are to be deported have long since disappeared.”

Meanwhile, demands are growing in Berlin for more intense monitoring of the German-Swiss border. Germany’s federal police force recorded 1,880 illegal entries through the border during the first three months of this year. It’s not a huge number, but it has more than tripled relative to the same period in 2016 despite the lack of stationary border controls of the kind seen on the German-Austrian border. In other words, the true number of illegal entries is likely much higher.

“If the number of migrants coming across the Mediterranean continues to rise, we won’t be able to avoid controls on the German-Swiss border,” says Armin Schuster, a German parliamentarian with the CDU. Fellow conservative Stephan Mayer is demanding that the border be “tightly controlled, unilaterally if necessary, without EU permission.”

Rigorous repatriations to source countries, border controls, measures to fight the causes of flight: Berlin and Brussels are deploying a broad variety of steps to prevent a new refugee crisis. The deepest crisis of Merkel’s tenure taught the chancellor an important lesson: When a large influx of migrants begins pressuring Europe’s external borders, Germany cannot look away. “We Germans,” Merkel said in late August 2016, “ignored the problem for too long.”

Today, government officials speak of the crisis as a “time when we weren’t sufficiently aware of the problem.” They say, however, that “we have learned our lesson.” That seems to be the case. There is no lack of awareness for the problem this time around. But there is nevertheless no solution in sight.

French candidate Macron claims massive hack as emails leaked

May 6, 2017

by Eric Auchard and Bate Felix

Reuters

FRANKFURT/PARIS-Leading French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron’s campaign said on Friday it had been the target of a “massive” computer hack that dumped its campaign emails online 1-1/2 days before voters choose between the centrist and his far-right rival, Marine Le Pen.

Macron, who is seen as the frontrunner in an election billed as the most important in France in decades, extended his lead over Le Pen in polls on Friday.

As much as 9 gigabytes of data were posted on a profile called EMLEAKS to Pastebin, a site that allows anonymous document sharing. It was not immediately clear who was responsible for posting the data or if any of it was genuine.

In a statement, Macron’s political movement En Marche! (Onwards!) confirmed that it had been hacked.

“The En Marche! Movement has been the victim of a massive and co-ordinated hack this evening which has given rise to the diffusion on social media of various internal information,” the statement said.

An interior ministry official declined to comment, citing French rules that forbid any commentary liable to influence an election, which took effect at midnight on Friday (2200 GMT).

The presidential election commission said in statement that it would hold a meeting later on Saturday after Macron’s campaign informed it about the hack and publishing of the data.

It urged the media to be cautious about publishing details of the emails given that campaigning had ended, and publication could lead to criminal charges.

Comments about the email dump began to appear on Friday evening just hours before the official ban on campaigning began. The ban is due to stay in place until the last polling stations close Sunday at 8 p.m. (1800 GMT).

Opinion polls show independent centrist Macron is set to beat National Front candidate Le Pen in Sunday’s second round of voting, in what is seen to be France’s most important election in decades. The latest surveys show him winning with about 62 percent of the vote.

RUSSIAN HAND SEEN

Former economy minister Macron’s campaign has previously complained about attempts to hack its emails, blaming Russian interests in part for the cyber attacks.

On April 26, the team said it had been the target of a attempts to steal email credentials dating back to January, but that the perpetrators had failed to compromise any campaign data.

The Kremlin has denied it was behind any such attacks, even though Macron’s camp renewed complaints against Russian media and a hackers’ group operating in Ukraine.

Vitali Kremez, director of research with New York-based cyber intelligence firm Flashpoint, told Reuters his review indicates that APT 28, a group tied to the GRU, the Russian military intelligence directorate, was behind the leak. He cited similarities with U.S. election hacks that have been previously attributed to that group.

APT28 last month registered decoy internet addresses to mimic the name of En Marche, which it likely used send tainted emails to hack into the campaign’s computers, Kremez said. Those domains include onedrive-en-marche.fr and mail-en-marche.fr.

“If indeed driven by Moscow, this leak appears to be a significant escalation over the previous Russian operations aimed at the U.S. presidential election, expanding the approach and scope of effort from simple espionage efforts towards more direct attempts to sway the outcome,” Kremez said.

France is the latest nation to see a major election overshadowed by accusations of manipulation through cyber hacking.

U.S. intelligence agencies said in January that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered hacking of parties tied to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to influence the election on behalf of Republican rival Donald Trump.

On Friday night as the #Macronleaks hashtag buzzed around social media, Florian Philippot, deputy leader of the National Front, tweeted “Will Macronleaks teach us something that investigative journalism has deliberately killed?”

Macron spokesman Sylvain Fort, in a response on Twitter, called Philippot’s tweet “vile”.

En Marche! said the documents only showed the normal functioning of a presidential campaign, but that authentic documents had been mixed on social media with fake ones to sow “doubt and misinformation”.

Ben Nimmo, a UK-based security researcher with the Digital Forensic Research Lab of the Atlantic Council think tank, said initial analysis indicated that a group of U.S. far-right online activists were behind early efforts to spread the documents via social media. They were later picked up and promoted by core social media supporters of Le Pen in France, Nimmo said.

The leaks emerged on 4chan, a discussion forum popular with far right activists in the United States. An anonymous poster provided links to the documents on Pastebin, saying, “This was passed on to me today so now I am giving it to you, the people.”

The hashtag #MacronLeaks was then spread by Jack Posobiec, a pro-Trump activist whose Twitter profile identifies him as Washington D.C. bureau chief of the far-right activist site Rebel TV, according to Nimmo and other analysts tracking the election. Contacted by Reuters, Posobiec said he had simply reposted what he saw on 4chan.

“You have a hashtag drive that started with the alt-right in the United States that has been picked up by some of Le Pen’s most dedicated and aggressive followers online,” Nimmo told Reuters.

Alt-right refers to a loose-knit group of far-right activists known for their advocacy of extremist ideas, rejection of mainstream conservatism and disruptive social media tactics.

(Reporting by Eric Auchard in Frankfurt, Michel Rose and Bate Felix in Paris, Jim Finkle in Toronto; Writing by Andrew Callus; Editing by Sandra Maler/Nick Macfie/Alexander Smith)

 France officials warn media not to publish #MacronLeaks

French officials have warned media not to republish emails hacked from Emmanuel Macron’s campaign. The embarrassing correspondence began circulating on Friday night, a day and a half before France goes to the polls.

May 6, 2017

DW

French officials warned that media could break the law by publishing a presidential candidate’s hacked emails. On Friday, Emmanuel Macron’s En Marche (Forward) campaign claimed that cybersnoops had dumped embarrassing emails online just before before the French choose between the neoliberal former economy minister and his farther-right rival, Marine Le Pen, in Sunday’s presidential runoff.

By Saturday, election officials were asking media to “show a spirit of responsibility and not to relay these contents, in order to not alter the integrity of the vote.” If the appeal doesn’t work, they have a warning, too: “The dissemination or republishing of such content, obtained fraudulently and in all likelihood possibly altered, could be subject to punishment.”

The whistleblowing website WikiLeaks posted a link to the documents on Twitter early Saturday, saying they included many tens of thousands of emails, photos and attachments. France’s extreme right has had a field day with the documents, which have circulated widely on Twitter under the hashtag #MacronLeaks.

‘Doubt and misinformation’

In a statement released late Friday, ahead of a midnight deadline to conclude campaigning, Macron’s team claimed that hackers intended to “seed doubt and misinformation” before Sunday’s runoff vote for the presidency. The campaign also claimed that false documents had been mixed with the leaked files. It did not specify which files are false, and the claim is impossible to independently verify.

“Throughout the campaign, En Marche has constantly been the party the most targeted by such attempts, in an intense and repeated fashion,” the campaign claimed in its statement. “The aim of those behind this leak is, all evidence suggests, to hurt the En Marche party several hours before the second round of the French presidential election.”

In the final preelection polls – released after Macron scored what many believed to be a knockout blow in Wednesday’s debate but ahead of the hacking scandal – he led the anti-immigrant Le Pen by about 25 points. Macron has benefited from broad distaste for the far-right Le Pen, at whom protesters hurled eggs during a recent campaign stop. Nevertheless, the 48-year-old Le Pen has brought her far-right National Front party, once a pariah for its racism and anti-Semitism, closer than ever to the French presidency through a racist and xenophobic campaign.

Many French centrists worry that the published emails could kill any remaining enthusiasm for the 39-year-old Macron, who endorsed “reforms” to gut labor protections during his tenure as economy minister. Only about two-thirds of eligible voters plan to turn out on Sunday. Fifty thousand police officers, gendarmes and soldiers will be deployed to keep the election day peace across France.

 

                                   Macron                                      Le Pen

 

European Union    More integration                      ‘Frexit’ referendum

 

Currency              Strengthen the euro                 Return to the franc

 

Economy              Liberal economic system           Protectionism

 

Job market           Flexibility in employment         “French first”

 

Migration              Speed up asylum procedures    Stop immigration

 

Terrorism             Increase protection at EUs        Lock up potential offenders

external borders                        Close borders

 

Foreign Policy       Closer cooperation with            Exit from NATO, Closer

NATO                                          cooperation with  Trump                                                                                             and Putin

 

US company denies security risks, prostitution at Iraq base

May 6, 2017

by Desmnd Butler and Michael Biesecker

Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — An embattled U.S. contractor, accused of failing to promptly disclose sex trafficking, alcohol smuggling and security violations on a nearly $700 million contract to secure an Iraqi air base, is denying many of the charges. An attorney for investigators, who were fired by the company, says the explanations don’t stand up.

Revelations of the allegations, published Wednesday by The Associated Press, were based on documents and interviews with the investigators, whom the company dismissed in March, and multiple other former employees.

The company, Sallyport Global, is responsible for securing the F-16 fighter jets at Balad Air Base that are used by the Iraqi air force in efforts to uproot the Islamic State group.

The company first called allegations that managers had shut down sex trafficking investigations “absurd” but later acknowledged that senior management had opened a second probe months later.

They say the late push to determine whether employees were involved in prostitution, was the initiative of new managers, including a new corporate ethics and compliance officer.

“The new company management would never shut down an internal investigation into serious allegations like prostitution,” Chief Operating Officer Matt Stuckart wrote in a statement.

The company contends the second probe found all the allegations of prostitution on the base were unfounded. But the fired investigators and an attorney representing them, Debra Katz, said their attempts to interview key suspects involved in the first case were again blocked by managers.

According to the investigators’ original report in February 2016, four Ethiopian women who were suspected of working at a hotel in Baghdad as prostitutes moved to the base after customers at the hotel complained about contracting sexually transmitted diseases. Those customers included Sallyport employees, the investigators said

The original report also listed the first names of the women and the going price for four hours of sex: $200 for the women and $300 for their pimp.

The company also denies allegations by the investigators that its lawyers ordered them to keep two sets of files in order to hide some of the investigators’ information from the U.S. government, which was footing the bill for the company’s contract.

“The investigators were specifically told to continue keeping a log, available to the U.S. government, of every investigation but not to include any attorney-client privilege information on that log – a standard practice,” Stuckert said.

But attorney Katz disagreed.

“They were explicitly told to keep double books,” she said. “There is no argument of attorney-client privilege that could justify the orders.”

Based in Reston, Virginia, Sallyport was founded in 2003 to work in Iraq on reconstruction, and has since expanded its operations globally. Some of Sallyport’s top managers joined the company after stints with other military contractors active in Iraq.

Sallyport president and CEO Victor Esposito previously worked at Blackwater Worldwide, a private military company. He then became the chief operating officer of Xe, as Blackwater renamed itself after its employees shot scores of unarmed Iraq civilians in 2007 at a Baghdad traffic circle. Jeff Morin, who worked as a Sallyport director until this week, also previously worked for Blackwater.

Twice in 2013 the company was sued by former employees.

In 2013, a U.S. Air Force veteran sued the company for negligence in federal court in Virginia, alleging he was severely beaten by his supervisor during a drunken card game at an air base in Iraq. Sallyport’s lawyers successfully argued that the veteran had no standing in U.S. court for events that occurred in Iraq. The lawsuit was dismissed.

Also that year, another ex-Sallyport employee sued the company alleging she was racially discriminated against and wrongfully terminated over drinking alcohol at a base in Qatar. While she denied she drank on the job, in her lawsuit Eboney Mayfield alleged that other Sallyport employees routinely drank on duty and weren’t punished.

After a judge denied the company’s request to dismiss the case, Mayfield’s lawyers agreed to voluntarily drop it prior to trial, indicating the parties likely reached a settlement.

Death toll in Mexico border drug violence rises to 120

May 5, 2017

Associated Press

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Gunbattles between rival drug gangs in the Mexican border city of Reynosa have left 120 people dead, authorities say.

The office of the security spokesman for the northern state of Tamaulipas said via Twitter that twenty-five people were killed in two gunbattles Thursday. Another ninty five people were killed earlier in the violence that began Tuesday.

The disputes between rival factions of the Gulf cartel follow the killing of leader Julian Loisa Salinas, known as “Comandante Toro,” by military personnel in late April.

The cartel gunmen have burned vehicles, blocked roads, attacked military patrols and fought gunbattles on city streets.

The administration of President Enrique Pena Nieto has long faced security problems in Tamauilpas, as in many other border areas, but in the last year violence has spread to other parts of Mexico that had previously been relatively peaceful.

On Wednesday, gunmen believed to be linked to fuel-theft gangs opened fire on military patrols in the central state of Puebla, killing four soldiers. The ensuing confrontation left six assailants dead.

The gunmen used local residents as human shields to attack the army, and townspeople blocked roads to demand the army be withdrawn.

On Friday, during a speech commemorating the Cinco de Mayo festivities, Pena Nieto acknowledged that the thieves, who drill into government pipelines to steal fuel, have recruited local residents in some parts of Mexico.

“The organized crime groups use, and deceive, the people to commit crimes,” Pena Nieto said. He called on prosecutors and state-owned oil company Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, to come up with a strategy to combat pipeline thefts.

Puebla Gov. Antonio Gali said that he would not ask for the army to pull out of the area and, on the contrary, that about 2,000 more soldiers were being deployed to enforce security.

“We have to put a stop to this theft of fuel from the pipeline,” Gali said in an interview on the Televisa network.

Pemex has announced plans to step up security in the past, but has apparently failed to implement them. The company no longer even releases figures on the number of illegal pipeline taps, but 5,574 were found in 2015 alone.

In a separate incident involving drug traffickers, Mexican federal police announced Friday they caught four suspects who allegedly used hidden compartments on buses and trucks to smuggle narcotics to the United States.

The suspects were caught on Mexico City’s outskirts with about 400 pounds (185 kilograms) of cocaine and 13 pounds (5.8 kilograms) of heroin.

Also Friday, five people were killed in the Mexico City suburb of Nezahualcoyotl at a building where a political party was holding a morning training session ahead of upcoming elections in the State of Mexico.

State prosecutors said in a report that three police officers, a security guard and an unidentified civilian were slain in what was an apparent robbery attempt by at least four assailants that erupted into gunfire.

 

The left’s deafening silence

First Brexit, then Donald Trump and now Marine Le Pen? A weak political left could mean a boost for right-wing populists in France’s runoff presidential election on Sunday.

May 5, 2017

by Astrid Prange

DW

Unsuccessful in the first round of voting, France’s socialist presidential candidate, Jean-Luc Melenchon (pictured), stopped short of endorsing the centrist Emmanuel Macron, though he warned his followers not to turn to the right-winger, Marine Le Pen. A vote for her party, the National Front, would be a “terrible mistake,” he told French broadcaster TF1.

The political situation in France is not unique. In many countries, the right wing is on the rise while the entire left side of the political spectrum – from socialists to social democrats – languishes in existential crisis. The US election is but one example, with Democrats too preoccupied with internal matters that they underestimated the danger of a Trump victory over Hillary Clinton.

Jeremy Corbyn and his Labour Party in the UK were too weak to confront the Brexit campaign’s Leave camp. Labour is trailing in polls ahead of early elections scheduled for June 8. Citing both UK’s Labour and US Democrats as examples, Peter Grottian, a political science professor at Berlin’s Free University, sees weak opposition and internal struggle as a boon for right-wing populists.

Out of touch

“The left has a problem,” wrote Simone Rosa Miller in “Die Zeit,” a German weekly. “Since Donald Trump’s victory in the US, there has been a diagnosis for its failure and own contribution to the rise of the new right in the West.” By associating itself too closely with issues important to social minorities, the left lost touch with wider society, she added.

Left’s slogans, right’s conviction

In many countries, the right has co-opted many left-wing issues. Populists like Le Pen, Trump and Germany’s Alternative for Germany party (AfD) are using the old left’s anti-establishment playbook from the ’68 Movement.

In France, both the National Front and the socialists share a common cause to “dethrone the powerful,” Grottian said. “Many voters in France are ready to swing from the left to the right because they want to kick the ruling class in the knees.” A similar readiness to change sides is present in Germany, he added, reason enough for left-wing politicians like Sahra Wagenknecht to worry.

While the left in France has dwindled in the political scene, the threat posed by Le Pen has grown with her ability to combine left- and right-wing criticisms of European and German economics. Either way, “she appears anti-establishment.”

Across Europe, left disappoints

In Spain, Ireland, Poland, the Netherlands and Greece, the left has its back to the wall. Ireland’s Labour Party dropped from 19.4 percent to 6.6 percent in 2016 general elections. Spain’s social democrats have been in the uncomfortable position of supporting a conservative minority government since October 2016. Poland’s left didn’t survive general elections in October 2015. In Greece, the austerity measures Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has had to agree to have left his leftist party, Syriza, trailing in opinion polls.

A glimmer of hope

The downfall of socialist and social democratic parties does not automatically spell victory for the far right. In Dutch elections earlier this year, the social democrats suffered a major defeat, however the pro-EU Greens took 14 percent of the vote. The liberal party remained firmly ahead of far-right populist, Geert Wilders, giving Mark Rutte another term as prime minister.

“The demystification of far-right populists has already begun,” Grottian said. The AfD’s best days are behind it because refugees are no longer a leading campaign issue. “People are more afraid of Trump than some refugee,” he added.

 

Iraqi forces gain foothold in northwest Mosul after surprise new push

May 5, 2017

by Isabel Coles

Reuters

Hulayla, Iraq-Iraqi forces pushed further into Mosul from the north on the second day of a new push to speed up the nearly seven-month attempt to dislodge Islamic State, commanders said on Friday.

Islamic State tried to block the troops’ northerly advance into their de facto Iraqi capital with suicide car bombs and sniper fire, Brigadier General Walid Khalifa, deputy commander of the 9th brigade, told Reuters in Hulayla, west of Musherfa.

His troops had killed about 30 militants, destroyed five car bombs before they could be used against them, he said.

U.S. air support has proved vital for spotting suicide car bombs and for avoiding targets where civilians are trapped.

Brigadier General Yahya Rasool, a spokesman for the joint operations command, told Reuters the militants “didn’t have time to make barriers, the advance since yesterday has been good”.

An army statement said the Second Musherfa district as well as the Church and Mikhail’s Monastery area had been retaken.

The U.S.-backed Iraqi forces’ new foothold aims to open escape routes for the hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped behind Islamic State lines and, in turn, help troops’ progress.

Rasool said Iraqi forces rescued 1,000 families on Thursday.

Footage taken by a drone operated by the Iraqi 9th Armoured Division over the northwestern suburb of Musherfa and seen by Reuters, showed the militants had scant defenses there, unlike in other parts of Mosul where streets are blocked by anti-tank barriers and vehicles.

U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel James Browning, the partnered adviser to the 9th, said the militants had tried to keep some streets open in order to use suicide car bombs.

Islamic State was probably expecting the attack, he said, “but they can’t defend everywhere”.

Only two months ago, the militants would be firing 200 rockets or mortars at Iraqi forces in Mosul on any given day, Browning said, but in the past two days it dropped to about 30.

“When you open up more fronts it becomes harder for (Islamic State) to be able to defend. There are certainly some challenges. There are defenses in place,” he told Reuters.

WHITE FLAG

Islamic State had taken up positions in the homes of civilians in Musherfa, said one man who came out of Mosul carrying his handicapped son.

“They knocked on our door but we did not open it. When the army came we raised the white flag,” he said.

He was among several dozen people walking out of Musherfa with the full beard that Islamic State makes men grow in places where it holds power.

The 9th Armoured Division and the Interior Ministry’s Rapid Response units are aiming for the Tigris river bank to complete their encirclement of the Islamic State-held Old City center.

Their progression should help the elite Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS) and Interior Ministry Federal Police troops who are painstakingly advancing from the south.

The militants are now besieged in the northwestern corner of Mosul which includes the historic Old City, the medieval Grand al-Nuri Mosque, and its landmark leaning minaret where their black flag has been flying since June 2014.

Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared a “caliphate” spanning parts of Syria and vast swathes of Iraqi territory from the pulpit of the Grand al-Nuri Mosque nearly three years ago.

The Iraqi army said on April 30 that it aimed to complete the battle for Mosul, the largest city to have fallen under Islamic State control, in both Iraq and Syria, this month.

However, even defeat in Mosul would not be the end of the hardline Sunni group, which still controls parts of Syria and large amounts of Iraqi territory near the Syrian border.

(Reporting by Isabel Coles; Writing by Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by Louise Ireland)

 Ancient meteor strike triggered massive volcanic eruptions lasting millennia – study

May 6, 2017

RT

A chain reaction of volcanic eruptions which shaped the landscape of North America was triggered by a meteor strike nearly two billion years ago, according to a new study

In a geological study of Canada’s Sudbury Basin, the second largest meteor impact zone on the planet, scientists claim to have found evidence of “long-lived and explosive” eruptions that lasted for hundreds of thousands of years after the meteor struck the Earth.

Published in ‘Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets’, the research suggests that by plowing into the Earth’s surface, the meteor created disruptions under the crust that “progressively fed” volcanic eruptions.

“In the crater, these took place for a long period of time after the impact, when the basin was flooded with seawater,” a statement on the study read.

Found in Ontario, the Sudbury Basin is one of the oldest examples of an impact crater. It was formed by a large meteor that exploded in the atmosphere around 1.8 billion years ago. Exploding meteors are known as ‘bolides.’

The 10km-wide (6 miles) impact site is surrounded by landmark geological formations such as the Ottawa Bonnechere Graben fault line. Rock deriving from the collision has been found scattered throughout the US.

Now, an international team of scientists believe the basin was in a continuous state of flux after the ancient collision, with a series of violent volcanic eruptions causing lava to mix with seawater.

The eruptions may have lasted for as long as one million years, reports Live Science.

Balz Kamber, Professor of Geology and Mineralogy at Trinity College Dublin, who was involved in the analysis of rocks at the basin said: “[The] intense bombardment of the early Earth had destructive effects on the planet’s surface but it may also have brought up material from the planet’s interior, which shaped the overall structure of the planet.”

“This is an important finding,” Kamber added. “It means that the magma sourcing the volcanoes was changing with time. The reason for the excitement is that the effect of large impacts on the early Earth could be more serious than previously considered.”

 

What is Islam? Who was Mohammad?

May 6, 2017

by Harry von Johnston PhD

Islam is a strictly monotheistic religion, articulated by the Qur’an, a text considered by its adherents to be the verbatim word of God and by the Prophet of Islam Muhammad’s teachings.

Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable and that the purpose of life is to worship God They regard their religion as the completed and universal version of a primordial, monotheistic faith revealed at many times and places before, including, notably, to the prophets Abraham, Moses and Jesus. Islamic tradition holds that previous messages and revelations have been changed and distorted over time. Religious practices include the Five Pillars of Islam, which are five obligatory acts of worship. Islamic law touches on virtually every aspect of life and society, encompassing everything from banking and warfare to welfare and the environment.

The majority of Muslims belong to one of two denominations, the Sunni and the Shi’a. About 13% of Muslims live in Indonesia, the largest Muslim country.31% in the Indian Subcontinent, 20% in the Middle Eastand 15% in Sub-saharan Africa. Sizable communities are also found in China and Russia, and parts of the Caribbean. Converts and immigrant communities are found in almost every part of the world. With about 1.57 billion Muslims comprising about 23% of the world’s population (see Islam by country), Islam is the second-largest religion in the world and arguably the fastest-growing religion in the world.

Islam’s fundamental theological concept is the belief that there is only one god. The Arabic term for God is Allah. Other non-Arabic nations might use different names, for instance in Turkey, the Turkish word for God, “Tanrı” is used as much as Allah. The first of the Five Pillars of Islam, declares that there is no god but God, and that Muhammad is God’s messenger. In traditional Islamic theology, God is beyond all comprehension; Muslims are not expected to visualize God but to worship and adore Him as the Protector. Muslims believe the purpose of life is to worship God. Although Muslims believe that Jesus was a prophet, they reject the Christian doctrine of the Trinity and divinity of Jesus, comparing it to polytheism. In Islamic theology, Jesus was just a man and not the son of God;

Muhammad (c. 570 – June 8, 632) was a trader and camel-breeder and who later became  a religious, political, and military leader. Muslims now view him, not as the creator of a new religion, but as the restorer of the original, uncorrupted monotheistic faith of Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and others. In Muslim tradition, Muhammad is viewed as the last and the greatest in a series of prophets—as the man closest to perfection, the possessor of all virtues. For the last 22 years of his life, in 610, beginning at age 40, Muhammad started receiving what he claimed were “revelations from God.” It now also appears that Muhammed suffered from some form of Alzheimer’s Disease and that his final days were given to long and senseless utterances that his supporters claimed were ‘revelations.’ The content of these revelations, known as the Qur’an, was memorized and recorded by his companions.

During this time, Muhammad preached to the people of Mecca, imploring them to abandon polytheism. Although some converted to Islam, Muhammad and his followers were persecuted by the leading Meccan authorities. After 12 years of preaching, Muhammad and the Muslims performed the Hijra (“emigration”) to the city of Medina in 622. There, with the Medinan converts and the Meccan migrants Muhammad established his political and religious authority. Within years, two battles had been fought against Meccan forces: the Battle of Badr in 624, which was a Muslim victory, and the Battle of Uhud in 625, which ended inconclusively. Conflict with Medinan Jewish clans who opposed the Muslims led to their exile, enslavement or death, and the Jewish enclave of Khaybar was subdued. At the same time, Meccan trade routes were cut off as Muhammad brought surrounding desert tribes under his control. By 629 Muhammad was victorious in the nearly bloodless Conquest of Mecca, and by the time of his death in 632 (at the age of 62) he and his followers ruled over the Arabian peninsula.

In 630 A.D. Mecca was re-taken followed by the battle of Hunain wherein the army under command of the Prophet, the non-Muslim tribes were defeated , and a large number of the enemy were killed but, under the Prophet’s order, no child was harmed. Often, after such a murderous battle, Muhammad had young children, both boys and girls, brought before him, had them stripped naked and then chose ones he wished “to lie with.”

One day after battle, Muhammad came back home and said to his daughter Fatima, “Wash the blood from this sword and I swear in the name of Allah this sword was obeying me all the time.” .

The number of military campaigns Muhammad led in person during the last ten years of his life is twenty-seven, in nine of which there was hard fighting.  The number of expeditions which he planned and sent out under other leaders is thirty-eight

Muhammad’s last speech to his followers on Mt Arafat:

…..”I descended by Allah with the sword in my hand, and my wealth will come from the shadow of my sword.  And the one who will disagree with me will be humiliated and persecuted.”

Muhammad told Abu Sufyan: “Woe to you! Accept Islam and testify that Muhammad is the apostle of God before your neck is cut off by the sword.” Thus he professed the faith of Islam and became a Muslim. This man, Abu Sufyan, was not a believer at first, but he quickly “believed” after he was threatened by death.’

So, even before Muhammad pagans were worshipping this black stone in the Kaba.  Are we surprised that although Muhammad  proclaimed only one God, he continued to participate in idol worship at this pagan shrine (Kaba); and Muslims still do idol worship there today.  The black stone of Ka’aba is nothing but a holdover within Islam, from pre-Islamic paganism.

There is evidence that black stones were commonly worshipped in the Arab world.  In 190 A.D. Clement of Alexandria mentioned that “the Arabs worship stone”.  He was alluding to the black stone of Dusares at Petra.  In the 2nd century, Maximus Tyrius wrote; “The Arabians pay homage to I know not what god, which they represent by a quadrangular stone”.  Maximus was speaking of the Kaaba (Ka’ba) that contains the Black Stone.

Muhammad led 27 military campaigns against innocent villages and caravans and planned 38 others

“I am the prophet that laughs when killing my enemies.”

Muhammad posed as an apostle of God, yet his life was filled with lustfulness (12 marriages and sex with many children, both male and female, slaves and concubines), rapes, warfare, conquests, and unmerciful butcheries.  The infinitely good, just and all holy God preached by Muhammad simply cannot tolerate anything in the least unjust or sinful.  What Muhammad produced in the Qur’an is simply a book of gibberish consisting of later evil verses superseding earlier peaceful verses. These verses in Arabic poetically “tickle” the ears of Arab listeners.

Modern Islam is a caustic blend of paganism and twisted Bible stories.      Muhammad, its lone “prophet”, who made no prophecies, conceived his religion to satiate his lust for power, sex, and money. He was a terrorist. And if you think these conclusions are shocking, additional research will easily uncover the evidence mostly from Islamic historians 70% of what is here is from Muslim and ex-Muslim historians – back to the 8th century.

Accordingly, after a degenerative disease of which the main symptom were headache, loss of memory, increasing skin eruptions and incontinence, he died in the arms of his favorite wife, Aysha, on Radiulawwal 11 A.H.—633 A.D.

After an objective and lengthy study of the life of Muhammad, the only rational conclusion is that Islam’s lone prophet was a ruthless terrorist, a mass-murderer, a thief, slave trader, rapist and aggressive pedophile.

In his personal life, Muhammad had two great weaknesses. The first was greed. By looting caravans and Jewish settlements he had amassed fabulous wealth for himself, his family, and his tribe

When we turn and look at the life of Muhammad we find that he clearly killed and robbed people in the name of Allah according to the Quran. He taught his disciples by example, command, and precept that they could and should kill and rob in Allah’s name and force people to submit to Islam.

His next greatest weakness was women and young boys. Although in the Quran he would limit his followers to having four wives, he himself took more than four wives, numerous concubines and young boys and girls into his bed.

The question of the number of women with whom Muhammad was sexually involved either as wives, concubines or devotees was made a point of contention by the Jews in Muhammad’s day.

“All the commentaries agree that verse 57 of Sura 4 (on-Nesa) was sent down after the Jews criticized Mohammad’s appetite for women, alleging that he had nothing to do except to take wives”

Since polygamy was practiced in the Old Testament by such patriarchs as Abraham, the mere fact that Muhammad had more than one wife is not sufficient in and of itself to discount his claim to prophethood. But this does negate the fact that the issue has historical in terms of trying to understand Muhammad as a man.

It also poses a logical problem for Muslims. Because the Quran in Sura 4:3 forbids the taking of more than four wives, to have taken any more would have been sinful for Muhammad. He not only exceeded this fiat many times but also added young boys and girls to his harem in direct contravention of his own pronouncements.

While in Islamic countries an eight or nine-year old girl can be given in marriage to an adult male, in the West, most people would shudder to think of an eight or nine-year old girl being given in marriage to anyone

This aspect of Muhammad’s personal life is something that many scholars pass over because they do not want to hurt the feelings of Muslims, or, more pragmatically, they do not want to experience a knife in the dark. Yet, history cannot be rewritten to avoid confronting the facts that Muhammad had unnatural desires for little girls and, even more reprehensible, little boys.

The documentation for all the women in Muhammad’s harem is so vast and has been presented so many times by able scholars that only those who use circular reasoning can object to it.

Though a forbidden subject, pedophilia and homosexual practices were an active part of Muhammad’s life. Today, homosexuality and pedophilia is a very strong part of Muslim life. Adherents of Islam believe that these activities are fully approved, not only by the writings in the Quran but also by the examples set during his lifetime by the Prophet Muhammad himself. His harem did indeed have many women but many of them were as young as nine and there were also a significant number of pre-pubescent boys among them

In brief summation, the Prophet of the Muslim faith does not come off as a spiritual leader. He lied; he cheated; he lusted; he failed to keep his word, He was neither perfect nor sinless. By Western standards of the present time, Muhammad was a fraud, a common murderer, a lecher and a pedophile.

Homosexuality and Islam

For centuries, Muslim men have taken boys, roughly 9 to 15 years old, as lovers. Some research suggests that half the Muslim Afghanistani Pashtun tribal members in Kandahar and other southern Afghanistan  towns are bacha baz, the term for an older man with a boy lover. Literally it means “boy player.” The men like to boast about it.

The Pashtun are Afghanistan’s most important tribe. For centuries, the nation’s leaders have been Pashtun.

As for Karzai, an American who worked in and around his palace in an official capacity for many months told me that homosexual behavior “was rampant” among “soldiers and personnel on the security detail. They talked about boys all the time.”

In Kandahar, population about 500,000, and other towns, dance parties are a popular, often weekly, pastime. Young boys dress up as girls, wearing makeup and bells on their feet, and dance for a dozen or more leering middle-aged men who throw money at them and then take them home. A recent State Department report called “dancing boys” a “widespread, culturally sanctioned form of male rape.”

A recent (July 2010) Department of State analysis, heavily classified,not only discusses rampant homosexual pedophilia among Muslims, not only in Afghanistan but also in Iraq, Iran and, especially, in Saudi Arabia. The thesis that American and NATO forces fighting and dying to defend tens of thousands of proud, aggressive pedophiles, is a subject that has been forbidden of discussion by orders from the White House itself. Fear of “energizing’ the Muslim world and creating more active terrorists is the maini motive for this concern.

Sociologists and anthropologists say the problem results from interpretation of Islamic law. Even after marriage, many men keep their boys, suggesting a loveless life at home. A favored Muslim expression goes: “Women are for children, boys are for pleasure.” Fundamentalist Muslim imams, exaggerating a biblical passage on menstruation, teach that women are “unclean” and therefore distasteful. That helps explain why women are hidden away – and stoned to death if they are perceived to have misbehaved. Islamic law also forbids homosexuality. But the pedophiles explain that away. ‘It’s not homosexuality, they aver, because they aren’t in love with their boys’.They only sodomize them because they view women as unclean and the Prophet approved of pedophelia .

Islamic revival and Islamist movements

The 20th century saw the Islamic world increasingly exposed to outside cultural influences, bringing potential changes to Muslim societies. In response, new Islamic “revivalist” movements were initiated as a counter movement to non-Islamic ideas. Groups such as Jamaat-e-Islami in Pakistan and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt advocate a totalistic and theocratic alternative to secular political ideologies. Sometimes called Islamist, they see Western cultural values as a threat, and promote Islam as a comprehensive solution to every public and private question of importance.

In countries like Iran, revolutionary movements replaced secular regime with an Islamic state, while transnational groups like Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda engage in terrorism to further their goals.

Modern criticism of Islam includes accusations that Islam is intolerant of criticism and that Islamic law is too hard on apostates from Islam. Critics like Ibn Warraq question the morality of the Qu’ran, saying that its contents justify the mistreatment of women, homosexuality and encourage antisemitic remarks by Muslim theologians.

Daniel Pipes and Martin Kramer focus more on criticizing the spread of Islamic fundamentalism, a danger they feel has been ignored

Jihad

Jihad means “to strive or struggle” (in the way of God) and is considered the “Sixth Pillar of Islam” by a minority of Sunni Muslim authorities. Jihad, in its broadest sense, is classically defined as “exerting one’s utmost power, efforts, endeavors, or ability in contending with an object of disapprobation.

Within Islamic jurisprudence, jihad is usually taken to mean military exertion against non-Muslim combatants in the defense or expansion of the Ummah. The ultimate purpose of military jihad is the goal of global conquest. Jihad is the only form of warfare permissible in Islamic law and may be declared against apostates, rebels, highway robbers, violent groups, and non-Muslim leaders or states who oppress Muslims or hamper its aggressive proselytizing efforts.

Under most circumstances and for most Muslims, jihad is a collective duty

Sub-Cults of Islam

Sunni

Sunni Muslims are the largest group in Islam, comprising the vast bulk of the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims, The Qur’an and the Sunnah (the example of Muhammad’s life) as recorded in hadith are the primary foundations of Sunni doctrine. Sunnis believe that the first four caliphs were the rightful successors to Muhammad; since God did not specify any particular leaders to succeed him, those leaders had to be elected. Sunnis believe that a caliph should be chosen by the whole community.

Shi’a

The Shi’a constitute 10–13% of Islam and are its second-largest branch. They believe in the political and religious leadership of Imams from the progeny of Ali ibn Abi Talib, who according to most Shi’a are in a state of ismah, meaning infallibility. They believe that Ali ibn Abi Talib, as the cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad, was his rightful successor, and they call him the first Imam (leader), rejecting the legitimacy of the previous Muslim caliphs. To most Shi’a, an Imam rules by right of divine appointment and holds “absolute spiritual authority” among Muslims, having final say in matters of doctrine and revelation. Shias regard Ali as the prophet’s true successor and believe that a caliph is appointed by divine will. Shi’a Islam has several branches, the largest of which is the Twelvers which the label Shi’a generally refers to.

Sufism

Sufism is a mystical-ascetic approach to Islam that seeks to find divine love and knowledge through direct personal experience of God. By focusing on the more spiritual aspects of religion, Sufis strive to obtain direct experience of God by making use of “intuitive and emotional faculties” that one must be trained to use. Sufism and Islamic law are usually considered to be complementary, although Sufism has been criticized by salafi for what they see as an unjustified religious innovation. Many Sufi orders, or tariqas, can be classified as either Sunni or Shi’a, but others classify themselves simply as ‘Sufi’. Some Sufi groups can be described as non-Islamic when their teachings are very distinct from Islam