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Shortly before Christmas, a highly controversial deal was struck in Khartoum between President Omar al-Bashir and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Turkey was given exclusive rights to rehabilitate the port island of Suakin in northeastern Sudan, with docking rights for Turkish civilian and military vessels on the west coast of the Red Sea.

The former Ottoman port once served as a transit destination for Muslim pilgrims crossing the Red Sea to Mecca, a role that Erdogan hopes to restore under the direct supervision of the Turkish Army.

At first glance, this seems like yet another attempt by Erdogan to reach out to former Ottoman colonies, given his obsession with Turkeys Ottoman past. For the last 15 years, Erdogan has spared no effort at peddling what was often described as neo-Ottomanism, a revival of the intellectual, political, economic and military influence of the former Ottoman Empire throughout the Muslim world.

Aerial view of Suakin Island in 1930 with Condensor Island in the foreground and El Gerf with its enclosing defenses behind. Photo: http://www.thearchitecturestore.co.uk

The now abandoned Sudanese island was once the military headquarters of Ottoman Sultan Selim I, back in 1517. The Ottomans were forced to relinquish it to British colonialists, who set up their own base in 1883-1885. It suffered a long march into history after Port Sudan was established in 1922, and by 1939 Suakin had been all but deserted left to crumble and rot until Erdogan came along in 2017 promising to put it into use once again.

The agreement to revamp Suakin is part of a broader deal between Erdogan and Bashir, estimated at US$650 million, which involves building a new airport at Khartoum and investing in Sudanese cotton production, electricity generation, and grain silos.

Saudi Arabia is furious about the deal, and with good reason. First, it brings Turkish troops dangerously close to Saudi territory, given the Sudanese islands proximity to theport city of Jeddah. Second, Riyadh believes that Erdogan doesnt have the money to pursue such an ambitious program in Sudan, arguing that he will use Qatari funds to expand into Arab territories.

In other words, they believe Suakin is actually being handed over to the Qataris, rather than the Turks. Qatar and Saudi Arabia have been at daggers-end since last June, over Dohas alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood and its open support of Iran.

Seven years ago, Saudi Arabia and Turkey found themselves on the same side of the Syrian conflict, both committed to regime change in Damascus, but more recently they parted ways over Turkeys blatant support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, after they were ejected from power via Abdel Fattah Sisis coup in the summer of 2013.The Saudis were already furious with Turkeys warming relations with Tehran, and expected Erdogan to support their standoff with Qatar, especially after setting a long list of demands that Doha was asked to accept. They included changing editorial policy of the Doha-based Al-Jazeera TV and expelling the Muslim Brotherhood from Qatar.

But rather than apply pressure on Doha, Erdogan chose to back the Emir of Qatar Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani in his feud with King Salman, breaking the Saudi-imposed embargo by allowing Qatari flights into Ankara and sending 5,000 Turkish troops to Doha in order to deter any Saudi adventurism in regard to its gas-rich tiny neighbor.

The Halaib Triangle is seen on the Egypt/Sudan border with Port Sudan and Suakin below. Graphic: Wikipedia/Asia Times

Egypt is equally upset with Turkeys new base on the Red Sea. Cairo feels that Erdogans port in Sudan might awaken Khartoums ambitions over the Halaib Triangle on the Red Sea. For more than 60 years, Egypt and Sudan have quarreled over the disputed territory, which both claim to have sovereignty over. In the 1990s, Egypt deployed troops to the Halaib Triangle, hoping this would put an end to Sudanese claims.

But with Turkish military support, Omar al-Bashir might reconsider his dtente with Cairo over the Triangle. That, of course, follows the souring of ties between Cairo and Ankara over Erdogans support for former Egyptian President Mohammad Morsi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, now in an Egyptian jail.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan kisses a little girl on the cheek as he walks with the President of Sudan Omar Al-Bashir during his visit in Port Sudan on December 25, 2017. Erdogan toured Suakin Island on the second day of his visit. Photo: AFP/ Anadolu/ Kayhan Ozer

Other countries are watching Erdogans ambitious undertakings with alarm. In the three years since the start of the Saudi-led war on Houthi militants in Yemen a race has been underway for security bases and pockets of economic and political influence along the Red Sea, especially after Iran took the port of Al Hudaydah in Yemen, via the Houthis, which spread terror throughout the Gulf. From there, they threaten to meddle further in the affairs of the Gulf states, namely Saudi Arabia.

Last February, the Emirates set up their own base in the port of Berbera in the breakaway republic of Somaliland, two years after building a naval base in Eritrea. Both have been vital for the Saudi war on the Houthis. In October, Erdogan erected his own base in Somalia, after China established one for its navy in Djibouti.

Elsewhere along the Red Sea, Jordan still controls the Gulf of Aqaba, Egypt still manages the Gulf of Suez, while the Riyadh-backed Yemeni President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi remains in control of Bab al-Mandab and Aden, all aimed at blocking further Iranian advances.

This wide assortment of overseas bases is a novelty in international affairs.Throughout the Cold War, only the US and Russia had this sort of military influence outside their geographic boundaries. Countries like China and the UAE never thought of expanding militarily in such a manner.

Turkey and Iran, however, always had that ambition and were constantly in search of re-entering former colonies or satellite states. Interestingly, while Iran, Turkey, China and the UAE are all trying to cement their influence on the Red Sea, the Russians have no permanent presence there, and the Americans whose ships sail through the sea on a daily basis have a base just south in Djibouti. They are not anchored in the Red Sea the Fifth Fleet is based in the Gulf and the SixthFleet is in Naples in the Mediterranean, leaving that stretch of territory open for other countries to covet and occupy if they dare.

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CIA Funding and Manipulation of the U.S. News MediaOperation Mockingbird was a secret Central Intelligence Agency campaign to influence domestic and foreign media beginning in the 1950s.According to the Congress report published in 1976:

"The CIA currently maintains a network of several hundred foreign individuals around the world who provide intelligence for the CIA and at times attempt to influence opinion through the use of covert propaganda. These individuals provide the CIA with direct access to a large number of newspapers and periodicals, scores of press services and news agencies, radio and television stations, commercial book publishers, and other foreign media outlets."

Senator Frank Church argued that misinforming the world cost American taxpayers an estimated $265 million a year.

In 1948, Frank Wisner was appointed director of the Office of Special Projects (OSP). Soon afterwards OSP was renamed the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC). This became the espionage and counter-intelligence branch of the Central Intelligence Agency. Wisner was told to create an organization that concentrated on "propaganda, economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states, including assistance to underground resistance groups, and support of indigenous anti-Communist elements in threatened countries of the free world."

Later that year Wisner established Mockingbird, a program to influence the domestic and foreign media. Wisner recruited Philip Graham from The Washington Post to run the project within the industry. According to Deborah Davis in Katharine the Great; "By the early 1950s, Wisner 'owned' respected members of The New York Times, Newsweek, CBS and other communications vehicles."

In 1951, Allen W. Dulles persuaded Cord Meyer to join the CIA. However, there is evidence that he was recruited several years earlier and had been spying on the liberal organizations he had been a member of in the later 1940s. According to Deborah Davis, Meyer became Mockingbird's "principal operative."

In 1977, Rolling Stone alleged that one of the most important journalists under the control of Operation Mockingbird was Joseph Alsop, whose articles appeared in over 300 different newspapers. Other journalists alleged by Rolling Stone Magazine to have been willing to promote the views of the CIA included Stewart Alsop (New York Herald Tribune), Ben Bradlee (Newsweek), James Reston (New York Times), Charles Douglas Jackson (Time Magazine), Walter Pincus (Washington Post), William C. Baggs (The Miami News), Herb Gold (The Miami News) and Charles Bartlett (Chattanooga Times). According to Nina Burleigh (A Very Private Woman), these journalists sometimes wrote articles that were commissioned by Frank Wisner. The CIA also provided them with classified information to help them with their work.

After 1953, the network was overseen by Allen W. Dulles, director of the Central Intelligence Agency. By this time Operation Mockingbird had a major influence over 25 newspapers and wire agencies. These organizations were run by people with well-known right-wing views such as William Paley (CBS), Henry Luce (Time and Life Magazine), Arthur Hays Sulzberger (New York Times), Alfred Friendly (managing editor of the Washington Post), Jerry O'Leary (Washington Star), Hal Hendrix (Miami News), Barry Bingham, Sr., (Louisville Courier-Journal), James Copley (Copley News Services) and Joseph Harrison (Christian Science Monitor).

The Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) was funded by siphoning of funds intended for the Marshall Plan. Some of this money was used to bribe journalists and publishers. Frank Wisner was constantly looking for ways to help convince the public of the dangers of communism. In 1954, Wisner arranged for the funding of the Hollywood production of Animal Farm, the animated allegory based on the book written by George Orwell.

According to Alex Constantine (Mockingbird: The Subversion Of The Free Press By The CIA), in the 1950s, "some 3,000 salaried and contract CIA employees were eventually engaged in propaganda efforts". Wisner was also able to restrict newspapers from reporting about certain events. For example, the CIA plots to overthrow the governments of Iran (See: Operation Ajax) and Guatemala (See: Operation PBSUCCESS).

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Operation Mockingbird, CIA Media Control Program - YouTube

Colin Flaherty discusses and reviews news coverage of police officer deaths.[link to the most recent one Cmdr. Paul Bauer which happened today Feb 13, 2018 in a downtown building, the Thompson Center in Chicago]http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/lo...Chicago Tribune staffContact ReporterA high-ranking Chicago police officer was shot to death at the Thompson Center on Tuesday afternoon while assisting a tactical team that was chasing a person who was acting suspiciously, police said.

Cmdr. Paul Bauer of the Near North District was shot several times a little before 2 p.m., according to police Superintendent Eddie Johnson. He said a suspect was taken into custody and a gun recovered.

Its a difficult day for us, but well get through it, Johnson told reporters outside Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where Bauer had been taken.

Bauer, 53, joined the department in 1986 and worked all across the city over his career from the South Side to the specialized mounted patrol unit to his current position as commander of the busy and high-profile Near North District.

Bauer was shot after a man started running from tactical officers who had tried to stop him for questioning, according to Johnson. The officers radioed a description that the commander heard, he said. Bauer, in the area of the Thompson Center after a training session, confronted the suspect, who opened fire.

Police radio traffic caught the moments before the shooting, including a warning from one of the pursuing officers, Dont anybody get hurt. We just wanted to do a street stop on him.

At the beginning of the chase, an officer is heard saying over the radio that he had tried to stop the suspect but he took off running. "He took off, he was running from me, we just had a shooting the other day," the officer radioed.

He described the suspect as wearing a long black coat with a fur collar and last seen running south on Dearborn Street. Within a minute, another officer said he saw the man. He told a dispatcher he was near Clark and Lake streets, State of Illinois building towards City Hall.

It was the last thing heard from the officer. The dispatcher asked, repeatedly, over the course of more than three minutes for the officer to come back on the air. There was no response.

The first officer came back on the air and said, Dont anybody get hurt. We just wanted to do a street stop on him and he took off on me. But he was in the area where weve had a lot of narcotics sales and a shooting on Saturday.

The dispatcher replied, "I understand, but somebody else is following him and we want to make sure we get him help.

A different officer came on the air and said police found the suspect and had him in handcuffs. They said the suspect had a gun on him.

An officer came on the air reporting a person had been shot. We have a person shot in the stairwell. Possibly related to the guy we were chasing at the State of Illinois building.

The dispatcher said, OK, is that an off-duty PO (police officer)?

The first officer got back on the air and said, Theres a radio laying (sic) next to him. Oh s---. Squad, I need somebody over here ASAP. It is.

Dispatcher: We have a 10-1, we have an off-duty shot. We have units on the scene.

Guglielmi later clarified that Bauer was actually on duty at the time of the shooting.

Noreen Janko said she was walking back to her office building across the street from the Thompson Center when she heard shots.

I heard the gunshots go off, about five shots, and then the stairs there to the Pedway, I think they have the guy cornered because they lock those doors down there, Janko said. So they took him with shackles and then they put him in the squad. Then the ambulance came, about five minutes (later) they brought out a guy who was shot. He was on the stretcher, there was blood and they were doing (CPR).

I was walking down the street and I heard pop pop pop pop pop, Janko said. And I said to the girl next to me, Is that what I think it is? And she said, Yep. I said, Aw geez. And everybody is scurrying all over and I see the police head to the stairs there. Theres a stairwell there. And it goes downstairs. I heard that the door is locked there. It used to be a Pedway, but now, for security reasons they have it locked.

Anyway, so they had him cornered, and eventually they brought him up the stairs and put him in the squad, Janko said.

During his tenure in the Near North District, Bauer spoke publicly about trying to rebuild trust in the community but also the frustration he felt about the high bar to prosecution when it came to career offenders.

Were not talking about the guy who stole a loaf of bread from the store to feed his family, he told the Loop North News in November 2017. Were talking about career robbers, burglars, drug dealers. These are all crimes against the community. They need to be off the street.

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Colin Flaherty: Police Shootings/Deaths - YouTube

Afghanistan: Latest MSF Updates

This information is excerpted from MSFs 2016 International Activity Report.

Amid intensifying conflict, MSF cared for an increasing number of patients and responded to growing medical needs. MSF focused on improving access to emergency, pediatric, and maternal health care in Afghanistan, which has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world. A quarter of all the births assisted by MSF worldwide were in Afghanistan, and teams helped deliver more than 66,000 babies in 2016.

MSF pursued negotiations with all parties to the conflict regarding the need to ensure a safe humanitarian space. After US military airstrikes destroyed its trauma center in Kunduz in October 2015, killing 42 people, MSF engaged in intensive advocacy to call for the protection of medical facilities from attack. At the end of 2016, MSF obtained commitments that its staff and patients would be respected, and care could be provided to everyone in need, regardless of their ethnicity, political beliefs, or allegiances. MSF was evaluating the possibility of resuming trauma care activities in Kunduz in 2017.

As the capital, Kabul, has experienced massive population growth, the citys public health services have been overwhelmed. At Ahmad Shah Baba district hospital in eastern Kabul, which serves more than 1.2 million people, MSF supported the Ministry of Public Health to deliver outpatient and inpatient care, with a focus on maternal health and emergency services. MSF increased the capacity of the hospital and started to rehabilitate the buildings. Staff conducted 100,000 consultations and assisted 18,966 deliveries, almost 20 percent more than in 2015.

MSF collaborated with the Ministry of Public Health to provide around-the-clock care at Kabuls Dasht-e-Barchi hospital, the only facility for emergency and complicated deliveries in the district. Teams assisted 15,627 deliveries, almost 27 percent of which were complicated cases.

MSFs maternity hospital in Khost, in eastern Afghanistan, has helped reduce maternal mortality by offering a safe environment for women to deliver their babies in the care of predominantly female medical staff, free of charge. The number of deliveries reached 21,335 in 2016, a 40 percent increase over two years. In 2016, MSF began supporting three health centers in outlying districts in Khost province to increase their capacity to assist normal deliveries.

Since 2009, MSF has supported Boost provincial hospital in Lashkar Gah, Helmand province, one of only three referral hospitals in southern Afghanistan. In 2016, the team completed the rehabilitation of the original hospital building and extended the maternity department. Staff assisted 10,572 deliveries in 2016. The hospital has a neonatology unit and pediatric department where 2,431 children were treated for malnutrition in 2016.

MSF started supporting the diagnosis and treatment of drug-resistant TB (DR-TB) in Kandahar province. MSF provided additional staff at Mirwais hospital and organized training for other facilities to improve case detection.

At least 42 people, including 14 MSF staff and 24 patients (three of which were children), were killed in sustained airstrikes on the MSF hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, on Saturday, October 3, 2015. Dozens more were injured.

We demand a full transparent and independent international investigation by the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission (IHFFC.org) into the attacks.

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Afghanistan | MSF USA

Serving under President Barack Obama, Eric Holder was the first African-American attorney general of the United States.

Eric Holder was born on January 21, 1951 in New York City. He attended Columbia Law School. Holder was an associate judge of the D.C. Superior Court under President Reagan; U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., then deputy attorney general under Clinton; and for Obama, Holder was senior legal advisor to his presidential campaign, later becoming the first African-American Attorney General in history. He announced his forthcoming resignation in September of 2014, succeeded in 2015 by Loretta Lynch.

Judge, lawyer, political advisor. Born Eric Himpton Holder, Jr. on January 2, 1951, to parents Eric and Miriam Holder in New York City. His mother was a telephone operator and his father was a real estate broker. His parents both held strong ties to Barbados; previously his father had emigrated from Saint Joseph, and his mother's family emigrated from Saint Philip. The eldest of two brothers, Holder grew up in the predominantly black neighborhood of East Elmhurst, Queens.

Holder attended a public school in his neighborhood until the fourth grade, when he was selected to participate in a program for intellectually gifted children. The school consisted of predominantly white students, which Holder says forced him to keep his "foot in both worlds." This only became more apparent when it came time to attend high school. While his friends at home chose to attend public schools in Queens, Holder's white schoolmates were taking an exam to enter the city's most elite institutions. Holder got into the prestigious Stuyvesant High School, an hour-and-a-half commute from his home, which pulled him even farther away from his neighborhood friends and community.

Holder says he concentrated mainly on his studies in high school, and felt overwhelmed by the rigorous academic demands placed on him at Stuyvesant. But the young man stayed well rounded; he was selected as the captain of the basketball team, and in 1969 he earned his high school diploma, as well as a Regents Scholarship.

That same year, Holder entered college at Columbia University. He played freshman basketball, attended shows at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, spent Saturdays mentoring local kids, and became active in civil rights. He received his bachelor's degree in American history from Columbia University in 1973. In 1974, he began attending Columbia Law School while also clerking for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the Department of Justice's Criminal Division.

In 1976, Holder earned his law degree, and the Department of Justice gave him a job as part of the attorney general's honors program. He was assigned to the newly formed Public Integrity Section, which investigated and prosecuted official corruption on the local, state and federal levels.

In 1988, Holder was nominated by former President Ronald Reagan to become an associate judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. During this time he presided over hundreds of civil and criminal trials. Holder was then nominated by President Bill Clinton to serve as the U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C. in 1993. He was the first African American to hold the position. During his four-year term, he created a domestic violence unit, a community prosecution project and a program for restricting gun laws.

In 1997, Holder made history yet again when President Clinton nominated him to be the deputy attorney general. Holder was quickly confirmed several months later by a unanimous vote in the Senate. He was the first African American elected to the position as well as the highest-ranking black person in law enforcement in the history of the United States at that time.

As deputy attorney general, Holder developed and issued the "Holder Memorandum," which spelled out the guidelines for the criminal prosecution of corporations. He also developed rules for the regulation of health care, and assembled a task force that determined how to investigate criminal investigations of high-ranking federal employees.

At the president's request, Holder created the organization, Lawyers for One America. The group was designed to bring greater diversity to the law profession and increase pro bono work among the nation's lawyers. Holder also briefly served under President George W. Bush as Acting Attorney General, during the pending confirmation of Attorney General John Ashcroft.

After serving in this position for four years, Holder joined the private sector to work at the law firm Covington and Burling LLC, in 2001. He represented clients such as the National Football League during its investigation of quarterback Michael Vick, and the negotiation of an agreement with the Justice Department for Chiquita Brands International.

In addition to his normal workload, Holder serves on a number of philanthropic boards, including the Columbia University board, the Save the Children Foundation, and Concerned Black Men, a group that seeks to help troubled youth in D.C. He has also been nationally recognized for his work in law; he was featured in the 2007 edition of The Best Lawyers in America, and in 2008 he was named by The National Law Journal as one of "The Most 50 Influential Minority Lawyers in America" as well as by Legal Times for being one of the "Greatest Washington Lawyers of the Past 30 Years."

In late 2007, Holder joined Senator Barack Obama's presidential campaign as a senior legal advisor, and later served as one of three members on Obama's vice-presidential selection committee. Holder was appointed and confirmed as the 82nd U.S. attorney general in 2009, making him the first African-American attorney general in history.

With a tenure marked by civil rights work and calls to speak more openly about racial discrimination in the U.S., Holder also faced major controversy over the case of missing documents in relation to Operation Fast and Furious, which focused on tracking the sales of arms among Mexican drug cartels.

In August of 2014, Holder visited Ferguson, Missouri in the wake of the shooting death of an unarmed African-American male by police officer Darren Wilson, with differing accounts of the incident. With waves of protests and both a police and national guard presence, Holder launched a Justice Department inquiry into the killing, ultimatelycorroborating Wilson's account of what happenedruling and declaring that he had not committed any civil rights violations. However, after reviewingFerguson's overall policing practices,the Justice Department found rampant constitutional violations that included unwarranted use of force and arrests of a population under duress, with racist slurs and images found in official governmental emails as well.

On September 25, 2014, the Justice Dept. announced that Holder would be resigning from his position, with an exit from his post having been in the works. Loretta Lynch succeeded Holder as attorney general in spring of the following year.

Holder is married to obstetrician Sharon Malone. The couple has three children: Maya, Brooke and Eric. They reside in Washington, D.C.

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Eric Holder - Legal Professional - Biography