ISIS jihadis have executed 19 Yazidi girls in Iraq by locking them in iron cages and then burning them to death in front of hundreds of people.
The victims were taken hostage by the terror group to be used as sex slaves, but were put to death in Mosul for refusing to have sex with the militants.
ISIS took over the Yazidi region in northern Iraq in August 2014 causing the displacement of nearly 40,000 people.
The terror group also slaughtered many of the Yazidi people and took women and kept women and young girls as sex slaves.
And local media activist Abdullah al-Malla told the Kurdish-run ARA News: 'They were punished for refusing to have sex with ISIS militants.'
A witness told the agency: 'The 19 girls were burned to death, while hundreds of people were watching.
'Nobody could do anything to save them from the brutal punishment.'
It is estimated more than 3,000 Yazidi girls have been taken as sex slaves by ISIS after they took over northern Iraq.
Thousands of them remain trapped on Mount Sinjar and according to local and military sources, they have suffered mass killings, rape and kidnappings.
In territories occupied by ISIS anybody who opposes their religion can be turned into slave, and they are often considered as 'devil worshippers' by the terror group.
And Human Rights Watch has said that the treatment of the Yazidis by ISIS amounts to genocide.
They said in a report: 'Many of the abuses, including torture, sexual slavery, and arbitrary detention, would be war crimes if committed in the context of the armed conflict, or crimes against humanity if they were part of ISIS policy during a systematic or widespread attack on the civilian population.
'The abuses against Yezidi women and girls documented by Human Rights Watch, including the practice of abducting women and girls and forcibly converting them to Islam and/or forcibly marrying them to ISIS members, may be part of a genocide against Yezidis.'
- The National Front party has accused Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo of putting the concerns of migrants ahead of those of French citizens. In a statement, the party said that the number of homeless people in Paris had increased by 84% between 2002 and 2012, but that Hidalgo has shown little interest in alleviating the problem.
- Although the EU-Turkey migrant deal has temporarily stemmed the flow of illegal migration to Greece through Turkey, hundreds of thousands of migrants are still making their way into Europe.
- According to the International Organization for Migration, more than 204,000 migrants arrived in Europe (mostly Greece and Italy) during the first five months of 2016, more than twice as many as arrived during the same period in 2015.
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has announced plans to build a "humanitarian camp" next to one of the busiest train stations in the city, so that thousands of illegal migrants bound for Britain can "live with dignity."
Hidalgo, who has often sparred with French President François Hollande for his refusal to accept more migrants, says her plan to help illegal migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East is a "duty of humanism."
Critics counter that Hidalgo's plan is a cynical ploy aimed at positioning herself to the left of the current president, as part of a political strategy to wrest leadership of the Socialist Party from Hollande, whose approval ratings are at record lows.
At a press conference on May 31, Hidalgo said the camp would be built in northern Paris "near the arrival points for migrants." She was referring to Gare du Nord — one of the busiest railway stations in Europe — from where high-speed Eurostar trains travel to and arrive from London.
Thousands of illegal migrants, many from Afghanistan, Eritrea and Sudan, have gathered at a nearby public park, the Jardins d'Eole, and turned the area into a massive squatter camp where conditions are squalid. The area, which is so dangerous that the government has classified it as a no-go zone (Zone de sécurité prioritaires, ZSP), has become a magnet for human traffickers who charge migrants thousands of euros for fake travel documents, for passage to London.
Hidalgo said her new camp, which will be built within six weeks, would be modelled on Grande-Synthe, a massive migrant camp near the French port city of Dunkirk.
Grande-Synthe, which is home to more than 2,500 illegal migrants hoping to reach Britain, was opened in February 2016 after French authorities destroyed a makeshift camp in nearby Calais known as the "Jungle," from where thousands of migrants tried to break into the Channel Tunnel in a bid to reach London.
The upkeep of Grande-Synthe will cost French taxpayers €4 million ($4.5 million) this year, in addition to a stipend of €10 euros a day for every migrant at the camp. French taxpayers presumably will also be paying for Hidalgo's camp in Paris.
Hidalgo, who has threatened to file a lawsuit against the American media outlet Fox News for reporting about Muslim no-go zones in Paris, seems to have no qualms about turning parts of northern Paris into ghettos for illegal migrants. "Paris will not avoid taking responsibility while the Mediterranean becomes a graveyard for refugees," she said. "I do not want to look at myself in the mirror in 10 or 15 years and say: 'You were mayor of Paris and you are guilty of not helping people in danger.'"
The largest war game in eastern Europe since the end of the cold war has started in Poland, as Nato and partner countries seek to mount a display of strength as a response to concerns about Russia’s assertiveness and actions.
The 10-day military exercise, involving 31,000 troops and thousands of vehicles from 24 countries, has been welcomed among Nato’s allies in the region, though defence experts warn that any mishap could prompt an offensive reaction from Moscow.
A defence attache at a European embassy in Warsaw said the “nightmare scenario” of the exercise, named Anaconda-2016, would be “a mishap, a miscalculation which the Russians construe, or choose to construe, as an offensive action”.
Russian jets routinely breach Nordic countries’ airspace and in April they spectacularly “buzzed” the USS Donald Cook in the Baltic Sea.
The exercise, which US and Polish officials formally launched near Warsaw, is billed as a test of cooperation between allied commands and troops in responding to military, chemical and cyber threats.
It represents the biggest movement of foreign allied troops in Poland in peace time. For the first time since the Nazi invasion of Soviet-occupied Poland began on 22 June 1941, German tanks will cross the country from west to east.
The United States is dispatching an envoy to Paris and Berlin on June 7 and 8 to try to convince European allies «of the importance of maintaining sanctions pressure on Russia», the US Treasury said on June 3.
The Treasury's Acting Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Adam J. Szubin is to meet with senior government officials from European foreign, financial, and economic ministries, as well as private European banks and financial institutions.
Evidently, the visit is nothing else but a rapid response on the part of the United States to the recent events in Europe with the EU split over anti-Russian sanctions before the bloc’s summit on June 28-29. Any decision must be unanimous while there is no unity on automatic prolongation of the economic sanctions that are due to expire on July 31 this year. In 2016 the sanctions regime on Russia has been coming under pressure as never before.
There are growing opposition rumbles being heard across the continent. Some member countries feel that the EU got suckered by US pressure for sanctions while the United States bears only 10% of the lost business. EU exports of agricultural products were off 29% in the past year, equivalent to 4.4 billion Euros and an estimated 130,000 lost jobs.
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said on May 31 that Germany would consider easing sanctions on Russia gradually if there is «substantial» progress on the issue of Ukraine.
A day earlier, German weekly Der Spiegel published a story indicating that German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government is considering lifting some initial sanctions, such as travel restrictions, in return for Moscow’s cooperation on local elections in eastern Ukraine.
And as a further sign that EU-Russia ties were warming, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said he would attend the St. Petersburg Economic Forum in Russia (June 16-18) making him the first head of a EU institution to visit Russia since fighting broke out in Ukraine in 2014.
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras condemned the sanctions during a joint press conference held with Russia President Vladimir Putin in Athens on May 27.
Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó promised after a meeting with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov in Budapest that sanctions would not be extended automatically.
Similar signals are coming from Cyprus and Slovakia. In the European Parliament, the matter of sanctions policy against Russia has risen above political divisions. The supporters of staying on track against Russia can be found among all political camps – the Christian Democrats, Socialists, Liberals and Greens.
France’s lower house of parliament adopted a resolution in April, calling for the European Union to lift its economic sanctions against Russia.
France’s Senate will launch debates on a draft resolution calling for the easing and gradual lifting of anti-Russia sanctions on June 8.
The draft resolution has already been supported by the body’s Committee on European Affairs.
It all goes to show that the prolongation of the punitive measures against Russia at the EU forum will not be a slam dunk decision. «The wavering is pretty clear in Europe,» said Philip Hanson, an expert on the Russian economy and Russia-EU relations at Chatham House think tank in London.
Now the United States has urgently sent an envoy to make the EU dance to its tune. Perhaps, this time the US administration will influence the EU decision making process and make the summit comply with its whims. But it gets harder as time goes by. Opposition to sanctions is mounting across Europe. It will achieve a critical mass pretty soon to make the punitive measures unsustainable. The differences between the US and the EU are exacerbating as their interests clearly diverge and goals differ. The pressure may not work the next time the bloc votes on the sanctions.
What is clear is that the US-European installed regime in Kiev has intentionally destroyed several prominent industrial centers of Ukraine’s economy, setting back, not benefiting Russia who had maintained strong ties with and depended on Ukrainian industry. What is also clear is that Ukraine and Russia weren’t the only interdependencies disrupted by Ukraine’s unraveling or the US-led sanctions leveled against Russia in its wake.
US-led sanctions and geopolitical maneuvers by Washington to breakup EU-Russian cooperation have been costly. Pipeline deals have been repeatedly disrupted, delayed or cancelled. A lucrative French-Russian deal involving the sale of Mistral Class ships to Moscow has cost the French government hundreds of millions of dollars.
Perhaps the most ironic structure to be threatened as this wrecking ball swings back West, is the US dependence on Russian RD-180 rocket engines used to launch, among other things, US Department of Defense satellites into orbit.
Even in the US, special interests are not united behind the notion of continued economic pressure on Russia. While those pushing for the continued sanctions against Russia claim the United States can find replacements, so far those replacements look particularly bleak, if not comical.
In the end, it seems that those in the United States lobbying heavily to keep sanctions in place have more than just Moscow to worry about. They have a growing chorus of leaders in industry who may silently seek domination over Russian industry in the long-term, but failing that, needs cooperation with Russian industry in the short-term. It is clear that those behind the sanctions are unable to deliver on either.
The Associated Press is reporting this afternoon that the Obama Administration has requested that the Russians cease and desist from bombing al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front in Syria because Washington’s “moderate” rebels are fighting together with al-Qaeda in Syria and any attack on al-Qaeda could kill Washington’s “moderates.”
The Obama Administration thus continues with the fiction that there are completely separate, vetted, moderate rebels who are dedicated to creating an inclusive, multi-cultural and multi-confessional, secular, and democratic Syria as soon as both ISIS and the Assad government are defeated.
The fiction is repeated constantly, in the manner of all state propaganda, by straight-faced US White House and State Department spokespersons. “Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?” is the order of the day.
Washington admits that its moderates are training with, integrated with, sharing weapons with, and fighting alongside affiliates of those who attacked the US on 9/11 and no one had better dare to attack al-Qaeda lest they harm these moderates.
The Russians are unlikely to heed the State Department's pleas not to bomb Jabhat al-Nusra lest Moscow's ordinance kill and destroy other terror groups that have allied with JaN on the Syrian battlefield including Ahrar-al-Sham. RogueMoney readers recall that two weeks ago McClatchy reported, and we commented on, the visit by a spokesman for the Qatari-funded terror group to Washington D.C. Speaking on the Alex Jones show, veteran independent investigative journalist and former Navy/NSA analyst Wayne Madsen highlighted the visit as an example of Washington's hypocrisy and tacit if not stated support for jihadist terrorism.
Recently Barack Obama urged citizens to be prepared. He broke this new ground in a May 31st speech to the FEMA National Response Coordination Center in Washington.
He explained that it was up to each citizen to be prepared for disasters. This preparation should extend to “having an evacuation plan” and “having a fully stocked disaster supply kit.”
One of the things that we have learned over the course of the last seven and a half years is that government plays a vital role, but it is every citizen’s responsibility to be prepared for a disaster. -Barack Obama
Ignore the propaganda where he says the government has played a vital role. Yes, it has played a role along with the Federal Reserve, but only in causing the current sorry state of affairs.
Obama promoting prepping is certainly a change. Both the FBI and Homeland Security have seen “prepping” as a sign of incipient terrorism – as a matter of policy. In fact, you can get investigated if the federal government notices signs of unusual prepping in your house.
But now Obama appears to be warning people to prepare… for something.
When the US fedgov – responsible for so much ruin in the world – begins warning of disasters, it is probably advisable to pay attention. Governments love disasters of any kind and often encourage them because of the opportunity to extend control, raise taxes and expand bureaucracy.
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