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Peshmerga force in Mosul dam in Northern Iraq News / Kurdistan Germany Starts Training Kurdish Peshmerga Forces 14.09.2014 Mewan Dolamari BasNews, Erbil    Germany has announced the deployment of 40 military advisors to the Kurdistan Region in order to train Peshmerga forces on recently sent German weapons.   In a statement, the German Defense Ministry confirmed that the German government has sent 40 military experts and consultants to the Kurdistan Region to train Peshmerga forces in their ongoing conflict with IS insurgents.   The statement also mentions that the military advisors have extensive experience of training and exercising troops....

Last night, Barack Obama promised America that he would take the fight to ISIS/ISIL, using a four-pronged strategy that he laid out in his much-anticipated war speech. In each phase of this strategy, Obama insisted, we would be “joined by a broad coalition of partners,” emphases mine: First, we will conduct a systematic campaign of airstrikes against these terrorists. Working with the Iraqi government, we will expand our efforts beyond protecting our own people and humanitarian missions, so that we’re hitting ISIL targets as Iraqi forces go on offense. Moreover, I have made it clear that we will hunt...

On the Monday morning in question in mid-August, we were sitting together when one of the doctors told us that the child's stepmother had come during the night to take over for the father of the sick boy. A Father's Lies The doctor started growing nervous because what the woman shared with him didn't sound good. Melvin-Vincent's grandmother had just died of Ebola. The boy had been living with the elderly lady and his fever broke out after her burial. His father had lied to us. At that moment, it became clear to all of us that it wasn't just...

German infantry at the Vistula River, 1916We are accustomed to thinking that such real-world physical experiences as war, defeat, and economic ruin produce such psychological, cultural, artistic, and social responses as disillusionment, frenzy (including frenzied enjoyments), and despair in the collective mind. The First World War — which, exactly 100 years later, we are now remembering, and whose lessons we are still pondering — seems to confirm and illustrate this belief. It was an event whose magnitude and impact we find hard to grasp even today. Though it began in the Balkans, it spread across the world to all continents...

Conservative members of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition put forward a united front at the weekend against recent developments in the city of Wuppertal. Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière said civilians wearing uniforms bearing the logo “Shariah police” could not simply start patrolling German streets. The groups reportedly hovered around sites like discotheques and gambling houses, telling passers-by to refrain from gambling and alcohol. Wuppertal’s police have begun pressing charges. “Sharia law is not tolerated on German soil,” de Maizière told mass-circulation daily Bild on Saturday. “Nobody can take it upon themselves to abuse the good name of the German police.”...

Residents of the German city of Wuppertal have expressed concern after a group of young radical Islamists started taking to the streets late at night, trying to deter revellers from drinking and gambling. The self-styled "Sharia Police" have been patrolling an area around the city's main train station, declaring the popular nightlife area to be a "Sharia Controlled Zone". Deutshe Welle reports that witnesses have seen them handing out leaflets urging people not to drink alcohol, attend concerts, gamble, watch pornography or visit prostitutes. The men are believed to be from the Salafi sect of Islam, which is closely related...

During today’s NATO summit, the alliance agreed to create a rapid reaction force to respond to threats to member states. That force is being formed specifically to deal with threats in eastern Europe. It is a direct response to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. The Russians responded swiftly. The Foreign Ministry suggests a larger NATO conspiracy is at work. The summit adopted a line towards NATO’s eastward expansion and build-up of its presence near Russia’s borders. These plans were nurtured for a long time and the Ukrainian crisis became merely an excuse for the start of their implementation. Russia also accused...

The debate over Germany’s insistence on eurozone austerity has flared anew as an ailing France continues to demand economic stimulus. The European Central Bank may now be siding with Paris, leaving Merkel looking increasingly alone. […] Berlin is particularly alarmed by the stance taken by ECB head Mario Draghi. At the annual conference of top central bankers from around the world at Jackson Hole, Wyoming in August, Draghi surprised those present by saying “there is leeway to achieve a more growth-friendly composition of fiscal policies.” It was a comment that came close to the kind of debt-fueled growth stimulus measures...

MAINZ, Germany - Small groups of hardline Salafist Muslims have been patrolling the streets of a German city hoping to "influence and recruit young people," police said. The groups were seen in the western city of Wuppertal wearing bright orange reflective vests with "Shariah Police" on the back. "This was seen as a violation against Germany’s public assembly law and charges were filed,” police spokesman Andre Schwanicke told NBC News. Officials say they have increased the police presence in the city. Meanwhile, a YouTube propaganda video from the German Salafist scene was posted online showing a poster with the English...

HAVANA: Cuban ex-president Fidel Castro lashed out at the United States and Europe on Monday (Sep 1), accusing them of war-mongering and comparing the NATO military alliance's representatives to the Nazi SS. In a tortuous column published in Cuban state media, the father of the island's communist revolution also attacked US Senator John McCain over United States policy in the Middle East, calling him "Israel's most unconditional ally." "The world has seen no respite in recent years, particularly since the European Economic Community, under the strict and unconditional leadership of the United States, decided the time had come to settle...

<p>Imagine this line in a German accent: “[T]he driver has to play by the German rules.” Shudder.</p> <p>The online car-sharing service Uber has vowed to continue operating across Germany after its mobile app was banned by a Frankfurt regional court.</p>

Are American Troops Already Fighting on the Front Lines in Iraq? The Pentagon is denying that U.S. troops are fighting ISIS on the ground in Iraq—but eyewitness accounts and Kurdish officials tell a different story. ZUMAR, Iraq — The role of American Special Operations Forces in Iraq has remained hidden even while the U.S. air war expands. As momentum against ISIS picks up, they may be emerging from the shadows. In a pitched battle on Monday, Kurdish Peshmerga, backed by American airpower and what appeared to be U.S. troops, struck at ISIS positions in the strategic crossroads of Zumar.Scenes from...

BERLIN — The German government says it will send high-end rifles, tank-busting weapons and armored vehicles to aid Kurdish fighters battling Islamic extremists in Iraq. .... Three shipments will be made starting at the end of September, including 8,000 German-made G36 assault rifles and ammunition, 30 MILAN anti-tank systems, and five heavily armored Dingo infantry vehicles.

A friendly soccer match against Israel marking 50 years of diplomatic ties has been called off amid security concerns and the escalation of the Middle East conflict, the German Football Federation (DFB) said on Friday. The game had been scheduled for March 25 but was canceled at the request of Israel, the DFB announced on its website. The move resulted from “postponements in the calendar arising from the recent developments of the conflict in the Middle East and resulting security conditions.” …

BRUSSELS, Belgium - Amid significant gains being made by pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine and denies by Russia of a military intervention in the country, the European Union has issued a one week ultimatum for Moscow to remove its alleged forces from the country. European Council President Herman Van Rompuy said that Russia had a week to withdraw its soldiers from eastern Ukraine or face further severe sanctions, while Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said his country was "close to a point of no return - full scale-war" with Russia. The Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite went one step further, calling Russia's...

An appeals court in Germany has ruled that a family court's decision to keep legal custody of four children away from their parents, Dirk and Petra Wunderlich, was wrong, and ordered that complete custody be returned to the family. However, the court maintained that homeschooling endangers children and they should go to school. "We have won custody and we are glad about that," Dirk said in a statement released by Virginia-based Home School Legal Defense Association, which has been assisting the Wunderlich family since their children were taken on Aug. 29, 2013. The court said taking the children away was...

After World War I the third rate minds who brought us the conflict to begin with came up with another stupid idea: They decided to divide up former German, Austrian and Turkish empires into separate countries, like Czechoslovakia, and create makeshifts, like the Danzig Corridor. Germany lost territory to Poland to create a land corridor to Danzig that gave Poland access to the sea.Never mind that it cleaved a country in two. It was these territorial wedges-- wedges that diced up ethnicity-- that Hitler used to gain legitimacy in the eyes of Germans. By cutting up countries in defiance of...

At a time when many U.S. defense programs are facing the budget ax, Tucson-based Raytheon Missile Systems is looking forward to an important stream of new international business from a ship-defense missile system co-developed with Germany. On Wednesday, Raytheon commemorated the first delivery of a new version of the Rolling Airframe Missile (RAM) to the U.S. Navy with a ceremony at its sprawling airport-area missile plant. RAM — which gets its name from its spinning action in flight — is a 30-year-old, cooperative program between the U.S. and German governments with industry support from Raytheon and RAMsys of Germany. Deployed...

A report in Spiegel magazine says German air force is weaker than previously thought and a funding crisis means scores of aircraft are not operational The German air force is facing such a severe funding shortage that many of its aircraft are unable to fly, mechanics are forced to cannibalise parts from existing planes and only eight of the country's 109 Eurofighters are fully operational, according to a report in Spiegel magazine. German defence sources have rubbished the article, saying it is inaccurate and does not match up to official air force logs. But the claim that Germany's air force...

An ICM poll on behalf of the Russian state news agency Rossiya Segodnya tested the public attitude towards the group ISIS (formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant or ISIL, and now calling itself Islamic State or IS) in 3 European countries: Great Britain, France and Germany. The news agency commissioning the poll may be Putin-friendly, but the polling firm ICM is as reputable as any. The survey asked people whether they had a favourable or unfavourable view of ISIS. In France, 16% say they have a favourable view. In the UK, 7% say they have...