Ex-soldier convicted of violating Swiss neutrality by fighting ISIS

A former Swiss soldier was found guilty of violating Swiss neutrality by fighting against the Islamic State in Syria.

Hanna Johannes Cosar was convicted Friday of breaking Switzerland’s law against fighting for another country without permission from the government, Reuters reported. He faced up to three years in prison, but was fined 500 Swiss francs for joining the Syriac Military Council.

The Syriac Military Council is a private army that sought to defend the Syriacs, one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, from ISIS.

Cosar previously served as a sergeant in the Swiss Army. His family moved to the European country from Syria three generations ago.

Cosar fought against ISIS for two years, then returned to Switzerland and was arrested in 2015.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/ex-soldier-convicted-of-violating-swiss-neutrality-by-fighting-isis

Kim Jong-un impersonator deported from Vietnam ahead of summit

https://www.euronews.com/2019/02/25/kim-jong-un-impersonator-deported-from-vietnam-ahead-of-summit

https://twitter.com/RealJamesWoods/status/1100080320940990464

New poll finds "dramatic shift" on abortion attitudes

By the numbers: The poll found Americans are now as likely to identify as pro-life (47%) as they are pro-choice (47%). Last month, a similar Marist survey found that Americans were more likely to identify as pro-choice than pro-life 55% to 38%, a 17-point gap.

Between the lines: Marist has been polling Americans' attitudes on abortion for over a decade, and Carvalho told Axios this is the first time since 2009 that as many or more Americans have identified as pro-life as have identified as pro-choice.

https://www.axios.com/abortion-rights-marist-poll-pro-life-pro-choice-7170b431-eb2f-4292-b801-8ed56cf2d056.html

How Britain forcefully depopulated a whole archipelago

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the British government of Harold Wilson expelled the population of the Chagos Islands, a British colony in the Indian Ocean, to make way for an American military base on Diego Garcia, the largest island. In high secrecy, the Americans offered the British payment for the islands in the form of a discount on the Polaris nuclear submarine system.

The truth of this conspiracy did not emerge for another 20 years when secret official files were unearthed at the Public Record Office in London by lawyers acting for the former inhabitants of the coral archipelago. Historian Mark Curtis described the enforced depopulation in Web of Deceit, his 2003 book about Britain's post-war foreign policy.

The British media all but ignored it; the Washington Post called it a "mass kidnapping".

https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/britain-forcefully-depopulated-archipelago-190225082624527.html

https://twitter.com/RealJamesWoods/status/1100083225513275392