Random Politics & Religion #07

Why? His people want him.

hen Turkey entered the NATO defense alliance in 1952, it was a major coup for Europe and for America. Turkey had control of the strategically important Bosphorus Strait and the Dardanelles. The NATO alliance could therefore exercise a preemptively tight grip on the Soviet Union's only direct access to Western warm-water ports. Furthermore, Turkey was a secular doorway into the resource-rich Middle East.

But it's now 2015. The Soviet Union has been dead and gone for a quarter of a century. The Middle East is an absolute mess. And 63 years after joining the alliance, Turkey has turned into one of NATO's and America's biggest liabilities in the region. Indeed, there seems to be no hope of re-balancing this alliance to make it a positive one for the West.

The presumption of shared values between Turkey and the West is disappearing. Ataturk's secular state in Turkey is long gone, and Recep Erdogan is slowly putting together a more Islamic state in its place. Press freedoms are being destroyed, clear evidence that Turkey is no longer part of the free world.
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Turkey accuses US of being behind the coup

And also Erdogan said he has to talk to Putin urgently.

Turkey accuses US of being behind the coup

And also Erdogan said he has to talk to Putin urgently.

There's another shooting going on in the states.

Oddly enough there are suggestions that Erdogan himself is behind the coup in order to get Gules out of the Pococonos.

It kind of makes sense though, the fact the coup didn't arrest him off the bat, the way the soldiers surrendered, the impossible feat of compiling a list of 2000 judges to purge etc.

There's another shooting going on in the states.

A man with a gun opened fire on police officers in Baton Rouge on Sunday, injuring at least seven -- including three who are feared dead, an official said.
Police received a call of "suspicious person walking down Airline Highway with an assault rifle," a source with knowledge of the investigation told CNN. When police arrived, the man opened fire.

The remaining officers are hospitalized in critical condition, the source said.
The victims were from Baton Rouge Police Department as well as East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff's Office, another official said.
Since the shooting death of Alton Sterling by Baton Rouge police earlier this month, the department has worried about credible threats against officers.
It's been an emotionally charged few days across the country because of the protests stemming from the Alton Brown shooting, and the ambush on Dallas police officers where a sniper killed five officers.
"We can't take anything for granted any more," East Baton Rouge Sheriff Sid Gautreaux said last week.

ATF is on the scene in #BatonRouge, Louisiana https://t.co/LyKgkW1pLi https://t.co/K9YhMLLaP5
— CNN (@CNN) July 17, 2016

Kip Holden, the mayor-president of East Baton Rouge Parish, said Sunday authorities were still trying to get a handle on the situation, but added, "The count is three officers dead possibly."
"There is still an active scene. They are investigating," he said. "Right now we are trying to get our arms around everything."
Earlier, Holden had said the shooter is believed to be down as well. But a source told CNN it's an "active working scene."
"Everything is moving fast and I have not been able to verify everything," Holden said.

CNN's Don Lemon and Nick Valencia contributed to this report.

Oddly enough there are suggestions that Erdogan himself is behind the coup in order to get Gules out of the Pococonos.

It kind of makes sense though, the fact the coup didn't arrest him off the bat, the way the soldiers surrendered, the impossible feat of compiling a list of 2000 judges to purge etc.

Nice, France (CNN)A picture is slowly starting to form of what led Nice, France, attacker Mohamed Bouhlel to carry out the deadly terror attack in the Mediterranean resort city.
French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Saturday there were indications the attacker had been "radicalized very rapidly."

CNN learned Sunday that Bouhlel sent a text message shortly before Thursday's attack to an unknown recipient saying, "Bring more weapons 5 to C," according to a representative for the Paris prosecutor's office.
It appears Bouhlel also had serious mental health challenges. His father said he suffered from nervous breakdowns in which he "broke everything," and that he believed his son's mental health deteriorated after his separation from his wife.
By all accounts Bouhlel had a volatile personality. In March he was given a six-month suspended prison sentence after throwing a wooden pallet at a driver following a traffic accident. According to reports in the French media, a neighbor said that Bouhlel was so angered when his wife left him that he "defecated all over the place" and shredded his daughter's teddy bear.

But Bouhlel does not appear to have launched the attack in a sudden fit of anger. The fact he rented the truck three days beforehand suggests it was premeditated, as does the symbolic date chosen: July 14, the French national day, when thousands gather on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice to witness the fireworks.
A source close to the investigation told CNN that local associates of the Nice attacker detained for questioning have told interrogators that Bouhlel started speaking supportively of ISIS days before the attack. Four of his associates were arrested late Friday and early Saturday in Nice.

The Nice attacker appears to fit a pattern. In the last two years, multiple terrorist attacks in the West have involved a blend of radicalization and mental health factors, a category of terrorist some analysts such as Max Abrahms have termed "loon-wolves."
Terrorism analysts are grappling with the reasons behind the spate of such attacks, but there is some consensus that psychological disorders can narrow the pathway between radical thought and action.

One such case was Man Haron Monis, who carried out a hostage attack in Sydney in December 2014 after pledging allegiance to ISIS. At the inquest into the attacks, he was described as unpredictable and a "dangerous psychopath" suffering from narcissistic personality disorder.
Another case in point was Mohammad Abdulazeez, a naturalized American who shot dead four U.S. Marines and a sailor in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in July 2015. Investigators established Abdulazeez was radicalized online, but according to his family he also suffered from bipolar disorder and depression, which were aggravated three months before the attack with his arrest for a DUI.

Orlando shooter Omar Mateen, who claimed his attack was on behalf of ISIS, was described by his ex-wife as "mentally unstable and mentally ill."

It is not clear the degree to which the Nice attacker Bouhlel moved in radical circles. Acquaintances have suggested that in the past he had been contemptuous of religion and was not known to go to mosques. Authorities have not said why four of his associates were arrested.
Cazeneuve, the French interior minister, on Saturday reiterated that Bouhlel was not on the radar of French counterterrorism agencies.
But after the attack, investigators ascertained that Bouhlel's phone number had cropped up in a previous counterterrorism investigation, a source close to the investigation told CNN. That investigation focused on a radical associate of Omar Diaby, a 41-year-old Senegalese jihadi who lived in Nice before traveling to Syria.
Diaby, who calls himself Omar Omsen, commands a French jihadi battalion in Syria affiliated with al Nusra Front, al Qaeda's branch in Syria. The source said investigators made the link after cross-referencing case files after the attack. Investigators are looking into the nature of the links between Bouhlel and Diaby's associate and have not discounted they were simply part of same social circle.
While the phone linkages may raise questions about why Bouhlel was not on the radar of counterterrorism services, analysts said it is not uncommon for the target of such investigations to be in touch with dozens or even hundreds of people by phone, many of whom may just be friends or casual acquaintances. Not everybody that a suspect was in touch with can be thoroughly investigated because of resource constraints.
French counterterrorism officials have established that a series of YouTube videos Diaby recorded in Nice in 2012 before he departed for Syria helped motivate a number of French extremists to travel to fight in Syria. In May, Diaby revealed in a Skype interview with a French journalist that he had faked his death in August to get medical treatment outside Syria.



The Nice attack has highlighted concerns about radicalization in the south of France, a region with a high concentration of first-, second-, and third-generation North African immigrants. Away from the glitz of Cannes and Nice on the seashore, many live in gritty housing projects where unemployment and feelings of alienation run high, making young men and women vulnerable to jihadi preachers such as Diaby.
In its study of ISIS registration documents, the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point discovered about a fifth of French ISIS recruits whose registration documents have been found hail from the southeast coastal region of France.
In early 2014, one of them, Ibrahim Boudina, returned and was arrested in the Cannes area as he prepared a bomb attack that would have potentially targeted the Nice Carnival.
With ISIS claiming credit for inspiring the Nice attack, the worry is more attacks are inevitable.

During Friday and Saturday night, police in Uppsala were alerted to the unrest in the districts Gottsunda and Valsätra. They were met by stone-throwing, car fires and a bus has had a Molotov cocktail thrown against it. Around ten cars have been set on fire. No person has been injured but the unrest may have resulted in a man not getting help in time to be saved.

He died on Saturday night after a fire in an apartment in an apartment block.

The fire had nothing to do with the other incidents, however there was a slight delay for the ambulance and emergency services. Whether it had a decisive influence on his death is unclear, says Christer Nordström, police spokesperson in Uppsala.


How long were they delayed?


- I do not want to speculate on that. We will look into it, right now we're waiting on the results of the forensic examination, says Christer Nordström.

He can not say who called about the fire. The log files from the SOS will be examined. Police received a number of patrols to escort both ambulance and fire up to the apartment. Police even had to go with raised shields around the firemen, as reported Aftonbladet.

Whether the delay led to the death in this incident should be investigated by the police and emergency services, which Uppsala Nya Tidning (newspaper) talked about first.

- It is of course extremely serious, if someone calls an ambulance, and it alerts the fire department and you then throw stones, or whatever you do, that complicates their work to get to an address - it can have huge consequences for the injured person.

Unrest in Gottsunda and Valsätra began on Friday evening. There has been unrest in the areas even earlier. The origin this time may be that the police arrested a man on a stolen dirt bike in Valsätra on Friday.

- We do not exclude that it may be related in some way. Some we talked to claim that the police would be a reason for this. In case we made the arrests, it's about crime, says Christer Nordström.

Police discovered the man on a dirt bike and followed him, whereupon he skidded, crashed and hurt himself. He had no serious injuries. But the event itself can, like the earlier incidents, creating a rumor spread in the districts that the police acted unfairly.

- We hear some shouts. So we know that it spread rumors that the police did something. We have some up there who do not want the police in the district in general. And we will ignore it because of course we will be there.


Now the police have reinforced their presence in the districts. During Saturday night riot police equipped with shields and helmets patrolled in the streets. And during the night to Monday was another car on fire - on the same street as the apartment fire.

Police have found strategically placed bags of rocks in the area. Christer Nordström says that several of the people who attacked emergency services personnel do not live in Valsätra or Gottsunda but have made their way there from other places in town.

- I've talked to many people who have called me who live in these neighborhoods, they are upset about what is happening. The anger and the anger they feel that we have full understanding. These are serious incidents where innocent people get their cars burned, it means big losses for those affected, he says.

There's another shooting going on in the states.

The Nice attack has highlighted concerns about radicalization in the south of France, a region with a high concentration of first-, second-, and third-generation North African immigrants. Away from the glitz of Cannes and Nice on the seashore, many live in gritty housing projects where unemployment and feelings of alienation run high, making young men and women vulnerable to jihadi preachers such as Diaby.

It is very telling that radicalization hot spots in France are in the south, south east and the German/Belgian borders. Nationalists will use this as evidence to close borders and leave the European Union in an attempt to stem immigration. It's becoming increasingly apparent that radicalization and immigration have a correlation.

GOD BLESS the Constitutional Republic of the United States of America it shall be restored.