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WEDNESDAY, JULY 15, 2015
Rights groups press Barack Obama to meet activists on Kenya, Ethiopia trip
US President Barack Obama walks from Marine One after arriving on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC, on April 15, 2015. More than 50 African and global human rights groups on Tuesday called on Obama to publicly meet democracy activists when he visits Ethiopia and Kenya. AFP PHOTO | SAUL LOEB
In Summary
- Signatories included a host of African non-governmental groups as well as Human Rights Watch, Freedom House, the Open Society Foundation and the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Center.
- Obama's willingness to meet activists, they said, would afford the groups protection and send a message that Washington stands with them.
- Obama is due to visit Ethiopia later this month as well as Kenya, where his father was born.
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WASHINGTON, DC
More than 50 African and global human rights groups on Tuesday called on US President Barack Obama to publicly meet democracy activists when he visits Ethiopia and Kenya later this month.
In a letter delivered to the White House, groups welcomed Obama's planned visit but voiced concerns about "grave and worsening human rights challenges" in his host countries.
Signatories included a host of African non-governmental groups as well as Human Rights Watch, Freedom House, the Open Society Foundation and the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Center.
"We believe it imperative that you take the opportunity of your visits to meet publicly with pro-democracy and human rights activists," the letter said.
Citing the arrest of six bloggers in Ethiopia — five of whom have recently been released — and sanctions against two Kenyan human rights groups, the signatories described a "shrinking civic space" in both countries.
GROUPS PROTECTION
Obama's willingness to meet activists, they said, would afford the groups protection and send a message that Washington stands with them.
Obama is due to visit Ethiopia later this month as well as Kenya, where his father was born.
A presidential visit to Kenya had been put on ice while President Uhuru Kenyatta faced charges of crimes against humanity for his role in 2007-2008 post-election violence.
The International Criminal Court has since suspended that prosecution, citing a lack of evidence and Kenya's failure to cooperate.
Human rights groups have criticised the Kenya trip, but have also questioned why Obama is visiting Ethiopia so soon after a contested election, which saw the ruling party win all parliamentary seats.
The White House stressed that it frequently addresses issues of democracy and political rights with countries in the regio
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UN Aims to Trace the Transfer of All Guns and Ammo
Board of “government experts” approved report on UN plan to implement group’s “Programme of Action on Small Arms and Light Weapons in All its Aspects (PoA)”
Source: Joe Wolverton, II, J.D., | The New American
The United Nations is waging a multi-pronged attack on the right to keep and bear arms and the forces of disarmament are marching to America.
Recently, a board of “government experts” approved a report on the United Nations Office of Disarmament Affairs (UNODA) to implement the group’s “Programme of Action on Small Arms and Light Weapons in All its Aspects (PoA).”
They certainly weren’t exaggerating when they gave that title to the scheme. It certainly does cover “all aspects” of gun ownership.
To get an idea of the trajectory the program will take, one needs only look at the list of the speakers called upon to discuss the disarmament deal’s progress. From the record of the meeting published on June 19:
“Statements were made by the representatives of Costa Rica, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Colombia, the United States of America, the Republic of Korea, the Sudan, New Zealand, Kenya, Mali, Iraq, Kuwait, Sierra Leone, Japan, Nigeria and Pakistan.”
That reads like a roster of who’s who of dictators and socialists.
Apart from the ongoing effort to abolish the Second Amendment through a multitude of multi-lateral international agreements, there was one item on the UNODA agenda that should bolster the resolve of all those who want to protect the right to keep and bear arms.
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Categories:Gun Control, UNTags:UN Aims to Trace the Transfer of All Guns and Ammo
NATO to hold biggest military drills in decade, Russia welcome to observe
Veiled threat against Russia
Source: RT
NATO will be conducting its biggest military exercises in over 10 years starting in October, with a specific focus on battling Islamic State, allied commanders say.
Forces will be deployed across the Mediterranean, and even Russia is invited to observe.
NATO commanders described the Commonwealth Trident Juncture-2015 as one of its most difficult training plans yet. They will include an “artificial threat scenario” on land and sea, as well as in the air.
“We cannot choose between the eastern threat and the southern threat, we have to train for both,”Reuters quoted commander of the NATO military command in Brunssum, Netherlands General Hans-Lothar Domrose, who is organizing the exercise.
Around 36,000 personnel from more than 30 countries will be participating, including non-NATO nations such as Sweden and Austria. The drills will take place in Italy, Spain, Portugal and in the Mediterranean Sea, and will run from October 3 to November 6.
“Distance is a new factor. We will be working in a huge training area,” Domrose said. “We will focus on speed, on multiple threats, simultaneously.”
NATO is also developing a rapid reaction force that will consist of several thousand soldiers who could be quickly deployed to any hotspot.
The last time NATO held an exercise of such scale was in 2002, when 15 members of the alliance, along with 12 other partner nations, participated in drills that took place in Norway and Poland.
Moreover, the alliance’s commanders revealed that naval forces will aid in dealing with the migrant boat crisis in the Mediterranean Sea during the exercises, as there is an increasing number of people fleeing conflicts in Syria and North Africa.
“If there is a crisis in the vicinity of one of our ships … we will stop the exercise and give humanitarian help,” Domrose said. “We will not let people die.”
Shift from the east?
It is a first time in a while that NATO has taken its eye off Russia and focused on the serious terrorist threat posed by Islamic State (IS, previously ISIS/ISIL) further south.
“We invite international observers. [We have] no secrets, the secret is, what decisions I take, but everything else is transparent. And my decisions during the exercise would be transparent, as soon as I take them. The Russian Federation and all others who have expressed interest will be invited,” Domrose stated.
The general argued that the increased threat from IS in Iraq and Syria is forcing NATO to turn away from the east and face the growing instability coming from the terror group. Domrose added that the new type of threats coming from IS defy geographical boundaries, as the group uses social media as a propaganda tool to inspire attacks across the globe.
In light of the Ukrainian conflict, for which the alliance blames Moscow, relations between Russia and NATO have soured to a Cold-War low.
Since Russia’s reunification with Crimea and the outbreak of the military conflict in eastern Ukraine last spring, NATO has stepped up its military presence along the Russian border, including in the Baltic States and Eastern Europe.
The latest round of NATO military trainings close to Russia was named “Agile Spirit 2015,” which began in Georgia on July 8, uniting military personnel from six countries.
One of the biggest series of drills this summer involved at least 49 vessels from 17 countries, with 5,600 troops taking part in the US-led BALTOPS exercises in the Baltic Sea in June. The training operation kicked off from the Polish port of Gdynia on June 5 and ran until June 20.
The Russian Foreign Ministry has continuously criticized NATO’s military buildup in the neighboring states, which it said is taking place “under the false pretext of alleged ‘aggressive behavior’ by our country” and is accompanied by “unfriendly and malicious” rhetoric.
“We are not threatening anyone and we seek to resolve all conflict situations through political means, with respect toward international law and other nations’ interests,” President Putin stressed in June.
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The Soviet Union’s Insane Plan to Crush NATO in Battle
Source: Zachary Keck
World War II was the most destructive war in human history. Consider that, a conservative estimate of World War II fatalities is 60 million people, or roughly 3 percent of the world’s population at the time.
Yet, to an even greater extent than World War I, the outcome of World War II seemed to merely plant the seeds for another great power conflict. The battlelines were drawn when the Soviet Union created an Iron Curtain stretching across most of Central and Eastern Europe, while the United States led an alliance system throughout the western half of the continent.
For the next four and a half decades, military officers in the United States and the Soviet Union would create and tinker with plans to fight a NATO-Warsaw Pact war. For the United States, this meant seeking in vain to offset the Soviet Union’s numerical advantages without resorting to nuclear weapons early in a conflict.
Although successive U.S. administrations came into office vowing to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in America’s military doctrine, this proved impossible before the Reagan administration, when the revolution in precision-guided weaponry offered Washington a way to defeat the Soviet military juggernaut.
Although the Soviet Union’s specific war plans, like America’s, remains classified, historians have been able to more or less ascertain how the Soviet army would have fought by using archives released by former Warsaw Pact member states like Poland and Czechoslovakia.
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Categories:NATO, RussiaTags:The Soviet Union's Insane Plan to Crush NATO in Battle
Russian Air Force Receives New Su-34 Bombers, Su-35S Fighters As Military Expansion Continues
Sukhoi Su-34 Fullback tactical bombers fly in formation over Red Square during the Victory Day parade in Moscow May 9, 2015. Reuters
Source:
The Russian Air Force received new orders of upgraded Su-34 bombers and Su-35S fighters on Thursday, state-owned manufacturer Sukhoi confirmed Thursday. The aircraft shipments were a direct result of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s plan to overhaul the Russian military by the end of the decade.
Sukhoi’s plant in the central Russian city Novosibirsk will continue to produce Su-34 bombers through 2020, Sukhoi told Russian news agency Tass. Su-35S fighter production will proceed over the same time period, though it’s unclear how many of each aircraft ultimately will be built. The Russian Air Force reportedly will receive a total of 126 new aircraft in 2015.
“The airplanes were manufactured under the state orders on the delivery of combat aviation equipment to the Russian Air Force envisaged by the State Armament Program for 2011-2020. Their implementation will make it possible to deeply modernize the country’s armed forces and guarantee the Sukhoi company and its subcontracting enterprises the workload for the long-term perspective,” the manufacturer said in a statement to Tass.
Upgrades were made to the Su-34’s top speed and flight range. Russia also claimed the SU-35S fighter was “heavily upgraded” with “better flight characteristics,” but did not provide specifics.
Russia’s armed forces have undergone widespread expansion and conducted military exercises around the world in recent months, even as Western leaders have expressed concern about Moscow’s increased activity in Eastern Europe. Both the European Union and the United States enacted economic sanctions against Russia for its purported support of pro-Russian separatists in the eastern Ukraine conflict.
Despite the international criticism, Putin vowed last March to dedicate more than 21 trillion rubles, or $340 billion, to the modernization of the country’s military, Reuters reported. By early July, that number had increased to approximately $600 billion, Russia’s Deputy Defense Minister Yuri Borisov said. The expansion of Russia’s air force and the development of the next-generation Armata T-14 tank were considered major aspects of Putin’s program.
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የኦባማ ጉብኝት በኢትዮጵያ - ለጥያቄዎ መልስ ጥያቄዎችዎን ይላኩ
ማስታወቂያ፤ ጥያቄዎችዎን ይላኩ - ለጥያቄዎ መልስ ተጨማሪ
አፍሪቃ በጋዜጦች
የፕረዚዳንት ኦባማ የኢትዮጵያ ጉብኘት የተሳሳት መልእክት ያስተላልፋል ሲል የዋሽንግተን ፖስትጋዜጣ ርእሰ-አንቀጽ ቦርድ ያወጣው ጽሁፍ፣ የኢትዮጳያ አምባሳደር ከሞስኮ ጋር ግንኙነት የማጠናከር እቅድ እንዳላቸው የገለጹበት ዘገባ እንዲሁም ደቡብ አፍሪቃ ከአለም አቀፍ የወንጀል ችሎት አባልነት ለመውጣት እያሰላሰለች መሆነዋን የሚገልጹ ዘገባዎችን እናቀርባለን። ተጨማሪ
አፍሪቃ በጋዜጦች
የፕረዚዳንት ኦባማ የኢትዮጵያ ጉብኘት የተሳሳት መልእክት ያስተላልፋል ሲል የዋሽንግተን ፖስትጋዜጣ ርእሰ-አንቀጽ ቦርድ ያወጣው ጽሁፍ፣ የኢትዮጳያ አምባሳደር ከሞስኮ ጋር ግንኙነት የማጠናከር እቅድ እንዳላቸው የገለጹበት ዘገባ እንዲሁም ደቡብ አፍሪቃ ከአለም አቀፍ የወንጀል ችሎት አባልነት ለመውጣት እያሰላሰለች መሆነዋን የሚገልጹ ዘገባዎችን እናቀርባለን። ተጨማሪ
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