Buzzfeed, “Here’s How Breitbart And Milo Smuggled Nazi and White Nationalist Ideas Into The Mainstream”, 5 Oct 2017:

Milo Yiannopoulos at the One Nostalgia Tavern in Dallas, belting out a karaoke rendition of “America the Beautiful” in front of a crowd of “sieg heil”-ing admirers, including Richard Spencer.

A cache of documents obtained by BuzzFeed News reveals the truth about Steve Bannon’s alt-right “killing machine.”

In August, after a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville ended in murder, Steve Bannon insisted that “there’s no room in American society” for neo-Nazis, neo-Confederates, and the KKK.

But an explosive cache of documents obtained by BuzzFeed News proves that there was plenty of room for those voices on his website.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, under Bannon’s leadership, Breitbart courted the alt-right — the insurgent, racist right-wing movement that helped sweep Donald Trump to power. The former White House chief strategist famously remarked that he wanted Breitbart to be “the platform for the alt-right.”

The Breitbart employee closest to the alt-right was Milo Yiannopoulos, the site’s former tech editor known best for his outrageous public provocations, such as last year’s Dangerous Faggot speaking tour and September’s canceled Free Speech Week in Berkeley. For more than a year, Yiannopoulos led the site in a coy dance around the movement’s nastier edges, writing stories that minimized the role of neo-Nazis and white nationalists while giving its politer voices “a fair hearing.” In March, Breitbart editor Alex Marlow insisted “we’re not a hate site.” Breitbart’s media relations staff repeatedly threatened to sue outlets that described Yiannopoulos as racist. And after the violent white supremacist protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August, Breitbart published an article explaining that when Bannon said the site welcomed the alt-right, he was merely referring to “computer gamers and blue-collar voters who hated the GOP brand.”

These new emails and documents, however, clearly show that Breitbart does more than tolerate the most hate-filled, racist voices of the alt-right. It thrives on them, fueling and being fueled by some of the most toxic beliefs on the political spectrum — and clearing the way for them to enter the American mainstream.

It’s a relationship illustrated most starkly by a previously unreleased April 2016 video in which Yiannopoulos sings “America the Beautiful” in a Dallas karaoke bar as admirers, including the white nationalist Richard Spencer, raise their arms in Nazi salutes.

These documents chart the Breitbart alt-right universe. They reveal how the website — and, in particular, Yiannopoulos — links the Mercer family, the billionaires who fund Breitbart, to underpaid trolls who fill it with provocative content, and to extremists striving to create a white ethnostate.

They capture what Bannon calls his “killing machine” in action, as it dredges up the resentments of people around the world, sifts through these grievances for ideas and content, and propels them from the unsavory parts of the internet up to TrumpWorld, collecting advertisers’ checks all along the way.

And the cache of emails — some of the most newsworthy of which BuzzFeed News is now making public — expose the extent to which this machine depended on Yiannopoulos, who channeled voices both inside and outside the establishment into a clear narrative about the threat liberal discourse posed to America. The emails tell the story of Steve Bannon’s grand plan for Yiannopoulos, whom the Breitbart executive chairman transformed from a charismatic young editor into a conservative media star capable of magnetizing a new generation of reactionary anger. Often, the documents reveal, this anger came from a legion of secret sympathizers in Silicon Valley, Hollywood, academia, suburbia, and everywhere in between.

“I have said in the past that I find humor in breaking taboos and laughing at things that people tell me are forbidden to joke about,” Yiannopoulos wrote in a statement to BuzzFeed News. “But everyone who knows me also knows I’m not a racist. As someone of Jewish ancestry, I of course condemn racism in the strongest possible terms. I have stopped making jokes on these matters because I do not want any confusion on this subject. I disavow Richard Spencer and his entire sorry band of idiots. I have been and am a steadfast supporter of Jews and Israel. I disavow white nationalism and I disavow racism and I always have.”

He added that during his karaoke performance, his “severe myopia” made it impossible for him to see the Hitler salutes a few feet away.

Steve Bannon, the other Breitbart employees named in the story, and the Mercer family did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Like all the new media success stories, Breitbart’s alt-right platform depends on the participation of its audience. It combusts the often secret fury of those who reject liberal norms into news, and it doesn’t burn clean.

Now Bannon is back at the controls of the machine, which he has said he is “revving up.” The Mercers have funded Yiannopoulos’s post-Breitbart venture. And these documents present the clearest look at what these people may have in store for America.

A year and a half ago, Milo Yiannopoulos set himself a difficult task: to define the alt-right. It was five months before Hillary Clinton named the alt-right in a campaign speech, 10 months before the alt-right’s great hope became president, and 17 months before Charlottesville clinched the alt-right as a stalking horse for violent white nationalism. The movement had just begun its explosive emergence into the country’s politics and culture.

At the time, Yiannopoulos, who would later describe himself as a “fellow traveler” of the alt-right, was the tech editor of Breitbart. In summer 2015, after spending a year gathering momentum through GamerGate — the opening salvo of the new culture wars — he convinced Breitbart upper management to give him his own section. And for four months, he helped Bannon wage what the Breitbart boss called in emails to staff “#war.” It was a war, fought story by story, against the perceived forces of liberal activism on every conceivable battleground in American life.

Yiannopoulos was a useful soldier whose very public identity as a gay man (one who has now married a black man) helped defend him, his anti-political correctness crusade, and his employer from charges of bigotry.

But now Yiannopoulos had a more complicated fight on his hands. The left — and worse, some on the right — had started to condemn the new conservative energy as reactionary and racist. Yiannopoulos had to take back “alt-right,” to redefine for Breitbart’s audience a poorly understood, leaderless movement, parts of which had already started to resist the term itself.

So he reached out to key constituents, who included a neo-Nazi and a white nationalist.

“Finally doing my big feature on the alt right,” Yiannopoulos wrote in a March 9, 2016, email to Andrew “Weev” Auernheimer, a hacker who is the system administrator of the neo-Nazi hub the Daily Stormer, and who would later ask his followers to disrupt the funeral of Charlottesville victim Heather Heyer. “Fancy braindumping some thoughts for me.”

“It’s time for me to do my big definitive guide to the alt right,” Yiannopoulos wrote four hours later to Curtis Yarvin, a software engineer who under the nom de plume Mencius Moldbug helped create the “neoreactionary” movement, which holds that Enlightenment democracy has failed and that a return to feudalism and authoritarian rule is in order. “Which is my whorish way of asking if you have anything you’d like to make sure I include.”

“Alt r feature, figured you’d have some thoughts,” Yiannopoulos wrote the same day to Devin Saucier, who helps edit the online white nationalist magazine American Renaissance under the pseudonym Henry Wolff, and who wrote a story in June 2017 called “Why I Am (Among Other Things) a White Nationalist.”

The three responded at length: Weev about the Daily Stormer and a podcast called The Daily Shoah, Yarvin in characteristically sweeping world-historical assertions (“It’s no secret that North America contains many distinct cultural/ethnic communities. This is not optimal, but with a competent king it’s not a huge problem either”), and Saucier with a list of thinkers, politicians, journalists, films (Dune, Mad Max, The Dark Knight), and musical genres (folk metal, martial industrial, ’80s synthpop) important to the movement. Yiannopoulos forwarded it all, along with the Wikipedia entries for “Alternative Right” and the esoteric far-right Italian philosopher Julius Evola — a major influence on 20th-century Italian fascists and Richard Spencer alike — to Allum Bokhari, his deputy and frequent ghostwriter, whom he had met during GamerGate. “Include a bit of everything,” he instructed Bokhari.

“Bannon, as you probably know, is sympathetic to much of it.”

“I think you’ll like what I’m cooking up,” Yiannopoulos wrote to Saucier, the American Renaissance editor.

“I look forward to it,” Saucier replied. “Bannon, as you probably know, is sympathetic to much of it.”

Five days later Bokhari returned a 3,000-word draft, a taxonomy of the movement titled “ALT-RIGHT BEHEMOTH.” It included a little bit of everything: the brains and their influences (Yarvin and Evola, etc.), the “natural conservatives” (people who think different ethnic groups should stay separate for scientific reasons), the “Meme team” (4chan and 8chan), and the actual hatemongers. Of the last group, Bokhari wrote: “There’s just not very many of them, no-one really likes them, and they’re unlikely to achieve anything significant in the alt-right.”

“Magnificent start,” Yiannopoulos responded.

Over the next three days, Yiannopoulos passed the article back to Yarvin and the white nationalist Saucier, the latter of whom gave line-by-line annotations. He also sent it to Vox Day, a writer who was expelled from the board of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America for calling a black writer an “ignorant savage,” and to Alex Marlow, the editor of Breitbart.

“Solid, fair, and fairly comprehensive,” Vox Day responded, with a few suggestions.

“Most of it is great but I don’t want to rush a major long form piece like this,” Marlow wrote back. “A few people will need to weigh in since it deals heavily with race.”

Also, there was another sensitive issue to be raised: credit. “Allum did most of the work on this and wants joint [byline] but I want the glory here,” Yiannopoulos wrote back to Marlow. “I am telling him you said it’s sensitive and want my byline alone on it.”

Minutes later, Yiannopoulos emailed Bokhari. “I was going to have Marlow collude with me … about the byline on the alt right thing because I want to take it solo. Will you hate me too much if I do that? … Truthfully management is very edgy on this one (They love it but it’s racially charged) and they would prefer it.”

“Will management definitely say no if it’s both of us?” Bokhari responded. “I think it actually lowers the risk if someone with a brown-sounding name shares the BL.”

Five days later, March 22nd, Marlow returned with comments. He suggested that the story should show in more detail how Yiannopoulos and most of the alt-right rejected the actual neo-Nazis in the movement. And he added that Taki’s Magazine and VDare, two publications Yiannopoulos and Bokhari identified as part of the alt-right, “are both racist. … We should disclaimer that or strike that part of the history from the article.” (The published story added, in the passive voice, “All of these websites have been accused of racism.”) Again the story went back to Bokhari, who on the 24th sent Yiannopoulos still another draft, with the subject head “ALT RIGHT, MEIN FUHRER.”

On the 27th, now co-bylined, the story was ready for upper management: Bannon and Larry Solov, Breitbart’s press-shy CEO. It was also ready, on a separate email chain, for another read and round of comments from the white nationalist Saucier, the feudalist Yarvin, the neo-Nazi Weev, and Vox Day.

“I need to go thru this tomorrow in depth…although I do appreciate any piece that mentions evola,” Bannon wrote. On the 29th, in an email titled “steve wants you to read this,” Marlow sent Yiannopoulos a list of edits and notes Bannon had solicited from James Pinkerton, a former Reagan and George H.W. Bush staffer and a contributing editor of the American Conservative. The 59-year-old Pinkerton was put off by a cartoon of Pepe the Frog conducting the Trump Train.

“I love art,” he wrote inline. “I think [Breitbart News Network] needs a lot more of it, but I don’t get the above. Frogs? Kermit? Am I missing something here?”

Later that day, Breitbart published “An Establishment Conservative’s Guide to the Alt-Right.” It quickly became a touchstone, cited in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the New Yorker, CNN, and New York Magazine, among others. And its influence is still being felt. This past July, in a speech in Warsaw that was celebrated by the alt-right, President Trump echoed a line from the story — a story written by a “brown-sounding” amanuensis, all but line-edited by a white nationalist, laundered for racism by Breitbart’s editors, and supervised by the man who would in short order become the president’s chief strategist.

The machine had worked well.

It hadn’t always been so easy.

The previous November, Yiannopoulos emailed Bannon with a bone to pick. Breitbart London reported that a London college student behind a popular social justice hashtag had threatened the anti-Islam activist Pamela Geller.

“The story is horseshit and we should never have published it,” Yiannopoulos wrote. “Reckless and stupid. … Strongly recommend we pull. it’s insanely defamatory. I spoke to pamela geller and even she said it was rubbish. We’re outright lying about this girl and surely we’re better than that. We can and should win by telling the truth.”

Six minutes later, Bannon wrote back to his tech editor in a fury. “Your [sic] full of shit. When I need your advice on anything I will ask. ... The tech site is a total clusterfuck—-meaningless stories written by juveniles. You don’t have a clue how to build a company or what real content is. And you don’t have long to figure it out or your [sic] gone. … You are magenalia [sic].”

(Geller clarified to BuzzFeed News in a statement that she believed it was “rubbish” that the London university characterized the threats against her as “fake.”)
“Dude—we r in a global existentialist war where our enemy EXISTS in social media and u r jerking yourself off w/ marginalia!!!!”

On December 8, the New York Times published a major story about the radicalization of American Muslims on Facebook. Yiannopoulos published a story called “Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy.”

That afternoon, Bannon emailed Yiannopoulos and Marlow.

“Dude—-we r in a global existentialist war where our enemy EXISTS in social media and u r jerking yourself off w/ marginalia!!!! U should be OWNING this conversation because u r everything they hate!!! Drop your toys, pick up your tools and go help save western civilization.”

“Message received,” Yiannopoulos wrote back. “I will do a Week of Islam next week.”

“U don’t need that,” Bannon responded. “Just get in the fight—-ur Social Media and they have made it a powerful weapon of war. … There is no war correspondent in the west yet dude and u can own it and be remember for 3 generations—or sit around wasting your God-given talents jerking off to your fan base.”

Over the next several months, Yiannopoulos began to find the right targets. First it was a continued attack on Shaun King, the writer and Black Lives Matter activist whose ethnicity Yiannopoulos had called into question. Next it was then–Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, who Bannon called in an email to Yiannopoulos the “poster child for the narcissistic ecosystem.”

And increasingly it was enemies of Donald Trump. In response to a Yiannopoulos pitch accusing a prominent Republican opponent of Trump of being a pill-popper, Bannon wrote: “Dude!!! LMAO! … Epic.” And Bannon signed off on an April story by Yiannopoulos imploring #NeverTrumpers to get on board with “Trump and the alt-right.” (Bannon did, however, veto making it the lead story on the site, writing to Yiannopoulos and Marlow, “Looks like we have our thumb on the scale.”)

Why was Bannon so concerned with the focus of his tech editor’s energies? In a February email exchange before Yiannopoulos appeared on Greg Gutfeld’s Sunday Fox News show, Bannon wrote, “Gutfeld should become an object lesson for u. Brilliant cultural commentator who really got pop culture, the hipster scene and advant [sic] garde….got on fox and tried to become a political pundit…lost all credibility. … You r one of the potential heirs to his cultural leadership so act according.” Bannon was grooming the younger man for something greater.

In May, Bannon invited Yiannopoulos to Cannes for a week for the film festival. “Want to discuss tv and film with u,” he wrote in an email. “U get to meet my partners, hang on the boat and discuss business.”

The boat was the Sea Owl, a 200-foot yacht owned by the hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, who is a major funder of Breitbart and various other far-right enterprises. That week, Yiannopoulos shuttled back and forth from the Cannes Palace Hotel to the pier next to the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès and the green-sterned, “fantasy-inspired” vessel complete with a Dale Chihuly chandelier. The Mercers were in town to promote Clinton Cash, a film produced by Bannon and their production studio, Glittering Steel. On board, Yiannopoulos drank, mingled, and interviewed Phil Robertson, the lavishly bearded patriarch of Duck Dynasty, for his podcast.

“I know how lucky I am,” Yiannopoulos wrote to Bannon on May 20. “I’m going to work hard to make you some money—and win the war! Thanks for having me this week and for the faith you’re placing in me chief. The left won’t know what hit them.”

“U just focus on being who u are—we will put a top level team around u,” Bannon wrote back. “#war.”

On July 22, 2016, Rebekah Mercer — Robert’s powerful daughter — emailed Steve Bannon from her Stanford alumni account. She wanted the Breitbart executive chairman, whom she introduced as “one of the greatest living defenders of Liberty,” to meet an app developer she knew. Apple had rejected the man’s game (Capitol HillAwry, in which players delete emails à la Hillary Clinton) from the App Store, and the younger Mercer wondered “if we could put an article up detailing his 1st amendment political persecution.”

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Scotland’s ban on fracking poses something of a dilemma for nationalists. While it is indisputable that fracking is environmentally destructive, it is also the case that the destruction can be mitigated some in that the process can be turned off such that it is not an endless source of pollution; and it can be turned on when, for example, Russia threatens to withhold oil supply for not yielding to its political pressure as an oil supplier; which it aspires to do and that’s why Russian Active Measures has a certifiable presence in anti-fracking movements, including that of Scotland.

BBC, “Scottish government backs ban on fracking”, 3 Oct 2017:

The Scottish government has announced an “effective ban” on fracking.

Energy Minister Paul Wheelhouse told MSPs that the practice “cannot and will not take place in Scotland”.

He said an existing moratorium on the technique, which has been in place since 2015, would continue “indefinitely” after a consultation showed “overwhelming” opposition.

The government will seek Holyrood’s endorsement for the ban in a vote following the October recess.

But with only the Conservatives now opposed to a ban, the vote is likely to be a formality.

The move was welcomed by environmental groups but has been slammed by Ineos, operators of the huge Grangemouth petrochemical plant, which holds fracking exploration licences across 700 square miles of the country.

  Scotland and fracking: how did we get here?

The Scottish government has previously imposed a similar block on underground coal gasification (UCG) - a separate technique used to extract gas from coal seams deep underground - on environmental grounds.

It followed the introduction of a moratorium on both fracking and UCG in 2015, which saw a series of expert reports published on the potential health, environmental and economic impact of the controversial techniques, as well as a public consultation being carried out.

Mr Wheelhouse said the consultation came back with “overwhelming” opposition to fracking, with 99% of the 60,000 respondents supporting a ban. He said this showed that “there is no social licence for unconventional oil and gas to be taken forward at this time”.

The move comes almost exactly a year on from the UK government giving the go-ahead to horizontal fracking in Lancashire.

Shale gas is currently processed in Scotland at a site in Grangemouth, having been shipped in from abroad, but cannot be extracted from beneath Scottish soil under the current moratorium, which is enforced through planning regulations.

Mr Wheelhouse said local authorities would be instructed to continue this moratorium “indefinitely” - calling this “action sufficient to effectively ban the development of unconventional oil and gas extraction in Scotland”.

He said: “The decision I am announcing today means that fracking cannot and will not take place in Scotland.”

Mr Wheelhouse’s announcement was welcomed by environmental groups, with Friends of the Earth Scotland and WWF Scotland both hailing a victory for campaigners.

WWF Scotland official Sam Gardner said it was “excellent news”, saying “the climate science is clear” that fossil fuels should be “left in the ground”.

Mary Church from Friends of the Earth Scotland said it was a “huge win for the anti-fracking movement” which would be “warmly welcomed across the country and around the world”.
‘Poor decision’

However Ineos said the move could see “large numbers of Scottish workers leaving the country to find work”.

Tom Pickering, operations director of Ineos Shale, said: “It is a sad day for those of us who believe in evidence-led decision making. The Scottish government has turned its back on a potential manufacturing and jobs renaissance and lessened Scottish academia’s place in the world by ignoring its findings.”

Ken Cronin of UK Onshore Oil and Gas also said it was a “poor decision”, which ignored “extensive independent research” and was “based on dogma not evidence or geopolitical reality”.

And the GMB Scotland trade union said the move was “mired in dishonesty” and “an abandonment of the national interest”, saying Scotland would now be dependent on gas shipped in from “the likes of Qatar and Russia”.

The Scottish Conservatives also said Scotland would miss out on a “much needed economic boost” and high-skilled jobs as a result of the decision.

Tory MSP Dean Lockhart said ministers had ignored scientific and economic evidence to take a “short-sighted and economically damaging decision which is nothing more than a bid to appease the green elements of the pro-independence movement”.

However Labour MSP Claudia Beamish said the move did not go far enough, arguing that ministers were merely extending the existing moratorium which “could be overturned at any point at the whim of a minister”.
‘Legally shaky’

Ms Beamish has a member’s bill tabled at Holyrood calling for a “full legal ban”, but Mr Wheelhouse said this would not be needed until his proposals.

The Scottish Greens said the announcement was “a step in the right direction”. However, they also wanted a more permanent ban, with MSP Mark Ruskell saying the moratorium was “legally shaky” and open to challenge.

This was also echoed by Friends of the Earth Scotland, with Ms Church saying ministers should “go further than relying on planning powers” and “instead commit to passing a law to ban the fracking industry for good”.

Scottish Lib Dem MSP Liam McArthur welcomed the decision, saying that ministers had taken the “scenic route” but had ultimately decided “effectively to ban fracking”.

MSPs have previously voted to support a ban on fracking, but SNP members abstained from that vote.
What is fracking and why is it controversial?

- Fracking is the process of drilling down into the earth before a high-pressure water mixture is directed at the rock to release the gas inside.
- The extensive use of fracking in the US, where it has revolutionised the energy industry, has prompted environmental concerns.
- The first is that fracking uses huge amounts of water that must be transported to the fracking site, at significant environmental cost.
- The second is the worry that potentially carcinogenic chemicals used may escape and contaminate groundwater around the fracking site.
- But the industry suggests fracking of shale gas could contribute significantly to the UK’s future energy needs

  find out more…

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Hayley Geftman-Gold, Twitter

NY Post, “CBS exec fired for unsympathetic Vegas massacre post”, 2 Oct 2017:

A CBS legal executive who said she had no sympathy for the victims killed in Las Vegas because they were “country music fans” — and therefore likely Republican — has been fired.

Hayley Geftman-Gold posted the ugly comments on social media about Sunday’s massacre in a conversation over gun control.

“If they wouldn’t do anything when children were murdered I have no hope that Repugs will ever do the right thing,” she wrote on Facebook. “I’m actually not even sympathetic bc country music fans often are Republican gun toters.”

CBS promptly canned her.

“This individual, who was with us for approximately one year, violated the standards of our company and is no longer an employee of CBS,” the network told The Post in a statement.

“Her views as expressed on social media are deeply unacceptable to all of us at CBS. Our hearts go out to the victims in Las Vegas and their families.”

Middle East Eye, “Turkey threatens further sanctions, as Iraqi Kurds announce November poll”, 3 Oct 2017:

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Iraqi Kurds should ‘come to their senses’ following last week’s independence referendum.

Turkey has upped its threats against the Iraqi Kurdistan region as the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) announced parliamentary and presidential elections for 1 November.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened to impose new sanctions on Iraq’s Kurdish regions if they don’t “come to their senses” following last Monday’s referendum vote to secede from Iraq.

Erdogan threatens further sanctions against Iraqi Kurds.

“We are managing with some embargoes in northern Iraq for now, but if they don’t come to their senses this will continue increasingly,” Erdogan said at a parliamentary meeting in Ankara on Tuesday.

“Any incident taking place in Syria and Iraq is not independent from us, they are linked directly to our domestic affairs.”

He added that the referendum was “a new attempt to strike the heart of our region with a dagger”.

Despite formerly good relations with the KRG, Turkey has been highly critical of the independence referendum over fears it could enflame

Iraqi Kurds gave a resounding 92.7 percent “yes” vote for independence in last Monday’s non-binding referendum, which has also sent regional tensions soaring.

KRG President Massoud Barzani originally announced the referendum in June, which provoked repeated calls from the US, EU and others for a cancellation or delay.

On Tuesday it was announced that presidential and parliamentary elections for the Kurdistan region would be held on 1 November.
Clinging to power?

The referendum in Kurdistan was seen by analysts as a means for Barzani to cling on to power by shoring up nationalist sentiment ahead of the elections.

The heir of a dynasty which has led the Kurdish struggle for independence for over a century, Barzani has held the KRG presidency since its establishment in 2005, two years after the US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

His tenure was extended beyond his second term in 2013, as fresh turmoil engulfed the region and Islamic State overran about a third of Iraq in 2014, threatening the Kurdish region.

Despite this, it was unclear whether Barzani would or could stand in the November poll as Kurdish law says a president cannot stay in office for more than two terms.

Gorran, the second-largest party in the Kurdish parliament, announced it would be putting forward Mohammad Tofiq Rahim, the party’s foreign relations director, as its presidential candidate.

The party has been highly critical of the Kurdish independence referendum, which it denounced as “illegal” in June, and has accused Barzani of seeking to cling on to power and marginalise democratic opposition in the Kurdish region.

Barzani placing his vote in the independence referendum last week (AFP) further sanctions, as Iraqi Kurds announce November poll.

Barzani placing his vote in the independence referendum last week (AFP)

Neither Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) nor the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) had declared candidates by time of publication, despite the declaration period being due to expire on Tuesday.

Although Kurdistan has been largely autonomous since 2005, the prospect of full independence - and, in particular, the disuputed future of areas like Kirkuk and Sinjar - has provoked a fierce backlash in Baghdad.

There was controversy on Tuesday as Kurdish media reported that Kurdish MPs in Baghdad had been prevented from attending parliament.

According to some media reports, Arab MPs had demanded that Kurdish MPs swear an oath to support a unified Iraq in order to attend the parliamentary session, which the mostly independence-supporting Kurds refused.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi ordered the suspension of international flights to and from Iraqi Kurdistan from Friday in retaliation for the Kurds voting for independence.

The Kurdish push for independence is meant to capitalise on their key contribution to the war on Islamic State after the group overwhelmed Iraqi forces in 2014.

The US administration, which had strengthened its alliance with Iraq’s Kurds during the anti-IS campaign, is taking the side of Baghdad in the crisis in refusing to recognise the outcome of the referendum.

“Miss Grand Myanmar”, Shwe Eain Si, has been stripped of her title just days before she was due to compete in a leading international beauty pageant by organizers Miss Grand International. The nineteen year old had released a video statement in which she basically told the truth about the cause of the crisis in Rakhine State - Mancinblack

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMF3OF7NbNk

The Local, “Marseille attacker released by police day before stabbing rampage”, 2 Oct 2017:

Tragic: The two victims of the Marseille knife attack were identified by their first names as cousins and best friends Mauranne (left) and Laura (right), both 20

The man who stabbed two young women to death in Marseille in an attack claimed by the Islamic State group used seven different identities and had been arrested just days earlier, French prosecutors said Monday.

The man who stabbed two young women to death in Marseille in an attack claimed by the Islamic State group used seven different identities and had been arrested just days earlier, French prosecutors said Monday.

Authorities said the man, who was shot dead by anti-terror troops after Sunday’s attack outside the southern city’s main train station, had previously used a Tunisian passport under the name Ahmed H., 29.

But investigators are seeking to confirm his identity as the attacker—who had a history of petty crime but was not on a jihadist watch list—used seven aliases, anti-terror prosecutor Francois Molins told reporters.

“The method of the attacker, a knife attack at a train station, responded to a permanent call from the terrorist group Daesh,” Molins said, using another name for IS.

The jihadist group’s propaganda agency Amaq claimed the killer was one of its “soldiers”, while a source close to the investigation told AFP no solid evidence linked him to IS.

The attack in France’s second biggest city followed a string of stabbings around Europe claimed by or blamed on Islamist radicals.

The man killed two 20-year-old cousins from the eastern city of Lyon. One was studying in Marseille and the other was visiting her for the weekend.

Molins confirmed that witnesses heard the attacker shout “Allahu Akbar” (God is Greatest) as he lunged at the women with a 20-centimetre (eight-inch) knife before threatening soldiers, who shot him dead.

The attacker’s fingerprints showed he had had seven brushes with the law since 2005—most recently when he was arrested last week in Lyon.

He presented the Tunisian passport to police, saying he was divorced, used “hard drugs”, and had no fixed address.

The shoplifting charges were dropped for lack of evidence, and local authorities “were not able to take a decision to deport him,” Molins added. He was released on Saturday.

‘Barbaric act’

Police evacuated Marseille’s ornate Saint Charles station after the attack, temporarily halting all train traffic on some of France’s busiest lines.

“I was on the esplanade just in front of the station,” Melanie Petit, an 18-year-old student, told AFP. “I heard someone shout ‘Allahu Akbar’ and I saw a man who seemed to be dressed all in black.”

French President Emmanuel Macron tweeted Sunday that he was “deeply angered by this barbaric act”.

The attack comes as parliament prepares Tuesday to vote on a controversial anti-terror bill that transfers some of the exceptional powers granted to police under a 22-month-old state of emergency into national law.

France has been under a state of emergency since the IS gun and bomb attacks in Paris in November 2015—part of a string of jihadist assaults that have left more than 240 people dead over the past two years.

But rights groups warn that making parts of the state of emergency permanent would give police too much free rein in handling terrorism suspects.

Knives have been the weapon of choice in a string of smaller-scale attacks, in recent months, mainly targeting troops from the 7,000-strong Sentinelle anti-terror force set up to patrol the streets and vulnerable sites such as stations and tourist attractions.

In most cases, the attackers were shot dead at the start of their rampage, before they could kill others.

The Marseille attack came only days after IS released a recording of what it said was its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi urging his followers to strike their enemies in the West.

The French government has deployed troops and its air force to the Middle East and is a leading partner in the US-led international coalition fighting IS in Iraq and Syria.

DM: The man, who was aged between 30 and 35, has not been formally identified.

On Friday the attacker – who was a North African of either Algerian or Tunisian origin – was arrested in Lyon for shoplifting.

He had no papers on him and was in ‘an irregular situation in Europe’, so giving the authorities a chance to place him under judicial control.

NBC, BREAKING: “Death toll in Las Vegas mass shooting has risen to at least 58. 515 also injured, sheriff says”, 2 Oct 2017.

Update: CNN, “Catalonia referendum result plunges Spain into political crisis”, 2 Oct 2017:

Barcelona (CNN)Spain is facing a political and constitutional crisis after Catalans voted in favor of independence in a contested referendum that descended into chaos when police launched a widespread and violent crackdown.

The Catalan government said it had earned the right to split from Spain after results showed 90% of those who voted were in favor of a split.

But amid an unexpectedly harsh response from Spanish police, turnout was only around 42%. The Catalan health ministry said 893 people were injured in the clashes Sunday as riot police raided polling stations, dragged away voters and fired rubber bullets.

The Catalan President Carles Puigdemont denounced the police crackdown as the worst violence Catalonia had seen since the military dictatorship of Francisco Franco, and demanded the withdrawal of Spanish national forces from the region.

Majority votes for split

Of 2.2 million ballots counted, about 90% were in favor of independence, Catalan government spokesman Jordi Turull told a news conference shortly after midnight. Turnout was about 42% of the 5.3 million eligible voters, authorities said later Monday.

Turull said more people would have voted had it not been for the Spanish police suppression. Up to 770,000 votes were lost as a result of the crackdowns at polling stations, the Catalan government estimated.

Spain’s national government in Madrid has ardently resisted separation. In the runup to the vote, national authorities seized ballot papers, voter lists and campaign material. Thousands of extra national police were sent to the region and high-ranking Catalan officials involved in organizing the referendum were arrested.

CNN, “Catalan referendum, explained: What’s behind the push to break from Spain?”, 27 Sept 2017:

(CNN)Catalonia’s separatist government is adamant it will go ahead with a referendum on October 1 to decide if the region should split from Spain, despite the country’s highest court banning the vote.

Spain’s Constitutional Court has outlawed the plebiscite, and the national administration in Madrid asserts that any such vote would be unconstitutional.

The dispute between the regional government in Barcelona and the Spanish government has become increasingly bitter in recent weeks, with several high-ranking Catalan officials involved in organizing the referendum arrested, and mass protests in the region’s capital of Barcelona and other towns.

On Tuesday, US President Donald Trump weighed in on the debate, casting doubt on recent polling suggesting a “Yes” vote will win and saying that he is for “a united Spain.”
“I really think the people of Catalonia would stay with Spain. I think it would be foolish not to.”

The vote risks plunging the country into one of its worst political crises since the end of Gen. Francisco Franco’s dictatorship four decades ago.

Hundreds of thousands have attended rallies to demand their region break from Spain in recent weeks.

The basics…

Catalonia is a wealthy region in Spain’s northeast. One of 17 autonomous provinces, it has its own regional government—or Generalitat—which already has considerable powers over healthcare, education and tax collection.

But it pays tax to Madrid, and pro-independence politicians argue that complex mechanisms for redistributing tax revenue are unfair on wealthier areas.

Catalonia has long complained that its revenues subsidize other parts of Spain. The region hosts some 16% of the Spanish population and much of the country’s manufacturing and finance sectors.

Catalan nationalists argue that they are a separate nation with their own history, culture and language and that they should have increased fiscal independence.

How did we get here?

The long-running dispute goes back to the brutal years under Franco, whose dictatorial regime repressed Catalonia’s earlier limited autonomy. It wasn’t until four years after his death in 1979 that the region gained full autonomy.

In 2006, the Spanish government backed Catalonia’s calls for greater powers granting “nation” status and financial control to the region.

But it was one step forward and two steps back four years later, when that status was rescinded by the Constitutional Court, which ruled that while Catalan is a “nationality,” Catalonia is not a nation itself.

Separatist supporters demonstrate in front of the Catalan high court building on Thursday in Barcelona.

Catalonia’s campaign to break away has been gaining momentum since 2010, when Spain’s economy plunged during the financial crisis. It was further galvanized by the Scottish referendum for independence in 2014, which ultimately saw voters opt to remain part of the United Kingdom.

Catalonia held a symbolic poll in 2014, in which 80% of voters backed complete succession—but only 32% of the electorate turned out.

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