The recent battles in Tikrit in Iraq have received a lot of press this week. In an interview yesterday, U.S. General Martin Dempsey said the reasons the Iraqi forces and Shiite militias have been doing so well is because the militias are armed and trained by Iran, which is also providing the militias with intelligence. He said Tikrit will eventually be recaptured because ISIS is so outnumbered in Tikrit. There are hundreds of ISIS fighters and an estimated 23,000 Iraqi and militia fighters.

Dempsey said the U.S. airstrikes around the Baji oil refinery over the past several months "paved the way" for the Iraqi forces and Shiite militias to advance to Tikrit, but the U.S. has had no involvement with the militias or the recent fights in Tikrit. [More...]

Don't forget to turn your clocks ahead one hour tonight. (Spring forward, Fall back.)

Our last open thread is about full, here's another one, all topics welcome.

President Obama spoke at today's Selma March , commemorating the 50th anniversary of the historic event, also known as "Bloody Sunday." I read a lot of articles but chose this link from the Daily Mail because of the great photos (no auto video play) and it also has the full text of President Obama's speech, which I think was very inspiring.

At one point in his speech, the President said of the notion that racism is no longer an issue in America: 'We don't need the Ferguson report to know that's not true', referring to the Justice Department document, which found that seven racist emails had been sent by officials in the St Louis suburb.

'We just need to open our eyes, and ears, and hearts, to know that this nation's racial history still casts its long shadow upon us,' he continued. 'We know the march is not yet over, the race is not yet won, and that reaching that blessed destination where we are judged by the content of our character - requires admitting as much.' But he noted that race relations in the US had come a long way - referring to progress in gender and marriage equality. [More...]

The more I look at photos of Mohammed Emwazi from his childhood and in Kuwait, the less he seems to resemble the black clad executioner in the beheading videos. Doesn't anyone have a photo of Emwazi before Syria that shows his very sloped shoulders? Aside from one eyelid being larger than the other, his shoulders are his most prominent feature. His stance is also somewhat unique, (He seems bow-legged in some videos.)

There are a lot of ISIS fighters who look like him when masked. Some fighter photos the media identifies as being Emwazi/Jihadi John are not him. There's this photo which is not Jihadi John, but a Dutch fighter named Soufiane Zerguit, who went by the name A Fighting Journalist (@fightingjmedia, account now closed.). It seems he posted the selfie as a joke, pretending to be Jihadi John, and the media fell for it. Soufiane was reported killed in Kobane in January. (Dutch prosecutors say they have no proof of his death and refuse to dismiss a terror case against him, wanting to prosecute him in absentia.) [More...]

Every day there are more and more irrelevant minor details published about Mohammed Emwazi, aka Jihadi John and unconfirmed reports about his so-called early terror connections. What I haven't seen is anything explaining why he would want to go live in Kuwait, when he wasn't a Kuwaiti citizen and could not become one, due to his Bidoon heritage, and given that the Bidoons are treated like an underclass in Kuwait.

I'd also like to know when his father moved from Iraq to Kuwait, and why. Did he want to take advantage of the increased business opportunities there in the 80's, or was he fleeing Saddam? Where in Iraq was he from? I've seen tweets Emwazi was a member of the Zuhairi tribe from Nasiriyah in southern Iraq, but no confirmation by a reliable source. If he was from that tribe, would he more likely be a Shi'a than a Sunni? If he was Shi'a, he must have renounced his faith and heritage in order to join ISIS, since ISIS doesn't view Shi'a as Muslims but apostates. [More...]

Syria killed the top leaders of Jabhat al-Nusra today in a drone attack in Idlib. Among those killed: Military commander Abu Humam al-Shami. Reports say others killed include Abu Musab al-Palestinian, Abu Omar al-Kurdi, and Abu Bara al-Ansari. While locals said the U.S. launched the strikes, the U.S. said it hasn't struck Idlib in the past 24 hours. The attacks may be retaliation for yesterday's bombing of the Syrian Air Defense intelligence headquarters. But Al Nusrah says leader al-Shami was killed in Idlib on Feb. 27, so the U.S. denials about today don't matter.

Here's a new open thread, all topics welcome.

The headline of an article in Australia's The Independent today reads:

Welcome to 'Execution Island' – the Indonesian holiday resort where foreigners are sent to die

I can't remember another case when the media around the world, in news articles, not just commentary, used such strong words in reporting on an upcoming execution, as it has with Bali Nine duo Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran. [More...]

Here's the police chief of Densepar, Indonesia, Djoko Hari Utomoposing, posing for his "happy snap" with Andrew Chan, on the Wings Air plane en route to the death island where Chan, Myuran and 8 others will be killed.

The photos were released to the media by the police. The Chief, who appears to be staring right into the camera, says:

The House has subpoenaed Hillary Clinton's emails.

Use of a private email system wasn't against the law. There was no prohibition on using a private email account for official business, as long as the emails are preserved. There's no indication she reviewed classified information via email. There's no indication (unlike with Dick Cheney, Gov. Scott Walker, Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, and George W. Bush) any emails are missing, hidden or intentionally destroyed. During the Bush Administration, 22 million emails went missing.[More...]

Here are some quotes from reporters in the courtroom who listened to Judy Clarke's opening statement in Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's trial: Catherine Parrotta, Fox News and Jim Armstrong of WBZ (CBS):

"We meet in the most tragic of circumstances."

The circumstances that bring us here today still are difficult to grasp, are incomprehensible, are inexcusable.

For the next several weeks we are all going to come face to face with unbearable grief. We're going to see it, feel it, and agonize with every witness

"We will not sidestep Tsarnaev's responsibility for his actions" [More...]

The jury has been selected and opening arguments begin tomorrow in the death penalty trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, charged with the Boston Marathon bombings. According to media reports, all of the 18 jurors and alternates are white. (More than 1,300 people were initially summoned for potential jury service in the case.)

The defense filed a motion a few weeks ago challenging the jury pool, saying the juror groups had been reordered by the court resulting in a statistically lower pool of minority jurors. [More...]

DOJ's report on its six month investigation into police practices in Ferguson, MO will be released today. Here's what it finds, according to the New York Times.

The Ferguson Police Department was routinely violating the constitutional rights of its black residents.

Ferguson's population is one-third white.

85 percent of traffic stops, 90 percent of tickets and 93 percent of arrests. In cases like jaywalking, which often hinge on police discretion, blacks accounted for 95 percent of all arrests.

This is not just a Ferguson problem, but a national problem. You see it every day in courtrooms across America. [More...]