The Launch of Russian Cruise Missiles from the Caspian into Syria Stunned the Pentagon and US Intelligence Agencies - Someone Launched a Response that Four of the Missiles Crashed in Iran - Do You Believe Them, Whoever They Are?
An amateur does what the US Media does not. He questions sources.
Defense Secretary Ash Carter confirms the U.S. has indications that four Russian cruise missiles crashed in Iran rather than Syria, suggesting there were malfunctions.
It's the first public comment by a U.S. official on the cruise missile failures.
Carter is speaking at a press conference in London with British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon. The British are part of the coalition striking Islamic State fighters in Iraq, but are not conducting strikes in Syria.
As many as four of the 26 long-range cruise missiles that Russia said it fired at Syrian targets landed instead in Iran
HOW MANY MISSILES WERE LAUNCED?Russia displayed its long-range cruise missile capability for the first time on 7 October, when it announced that warships on the Caspian Sea hit militant targets in Syria using Kalibr missiles.
The attack was first announced by Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu in a televised conversation with President Vladimir Putin. "This morning, ships from the Caspian Flotilla were brought in. Four destroyers launched 26 Kalibr cruise missiles at 11 targets," he said. "The results of the strikes confirmed the high effectiveness of the missiles at long range, almost 1,500 km."
The Russian Ministry of Defence (MoD) then released a video showing a Gepard-class frigate and at least one Buyan-M-class corvette launching several missiles in sequence at night. -Janes.com
HOW MANY EXPLOSIONS ON THE GROUND?
01:40 p.m.
Activists have reported more than 20 explosions in the northern Syrian city of Raqqa held by the Islamic State group.
A Raqqa-based collective called Raqqa is Being Silently Slaughtered said 22 blasts shook the city late Thursday.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the 20 explosions killed 14 IS fighters and wounded more than 20.
The group said it was not clear if the explosions were the result of air raids by the U.S.-led coalition or Russian warplanes.
The Observatory's chief Rami Abdurrahman and Raqqa is Being Silently Slaughtered say a training facility, known as Vanguards Camp, was hit on the southern edge of the city.
France's Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said French warplanes bombed a training camp in Raqqa.
20 or 22 reports of explosions in Raqa. We don’t know the exact time lines or the 11 reported targets, but releases of Russian photos showed multiple and simultaneous launches. It would make sense that certain targets due to size and importance would dictate more than one missile per target. Obviously, two impacts close together, could be reported as one as well as secondary explosions could be reported as two or more.
So far, I cannot find conclusive evidence on either side. Based on past experience from Viet Nam, though and including every US fought war, each was preceded by government released lies and disinformation.
remain very skeptical of the crash reports.Overall accuracy and reliability of similar US systems is classified. In operation Enduring Freedom there was criticism of why expensive high value missiles were hitting absurdly low value targets. CYA for missing a target?
I wouldn't be surprised if some of the Russian missiles crashed in Iran. The US had the same problems early on with our cruise missiles, and this is a new missile for Russia. Likewise, if Iran and Russia are coordinating their efforts, they might try to hush it up.
On the other hand, these things fly at only 150-160 ft. It's probably hard tracking them. I don't know where the US got their info. I can't see why the US would lie. I don't see the point But there's a lot of things I don't understand about US actions in Iraq/Syria.
If pushed for a yes or no answer, I would probably guess that they crashed though I'm not sure how much difference it makes.
It could be an intentional grounding. A few years ago, the Iranians hacked a US predator drone and landed it in Iran. The US could have returned the favor just to show them we can or the Russians may have brought them down in friendly territory for security reasons.
Islamic State captures most territory in months, nears Aleppo
October 10, 2015 10:39 am By Robert Spencer 34 Comments
Time for Obama to tell us again about how they’re falling back and nearing defeat. Meanwhile, in real life no one is even fighting the Islamic State. The Russians are fighting other jihadis who are trying to topple Assad, and the Americans are restricting their activities to cosmetic airstrikes.
Mideast Syria
“ISIS captures most territory in months amid Russian strikes,” Associated Press, October 9, 2015:
BEIRUT — Islamic State militants captured a string of villages near Aleppo on Friday in a lightning attack that brought them closer to the prized city in northern Syria, despite a major increase in Russian airstrikes that Moscow insists are targeting the extremists.
The surprise advance that brought the ISIS group to within a few miles of Aleppo was the most significant in months, following what has largely been a summer of stalemate in the war against the extremists.
It comes amid a wave of intense Russian airstrikes that have targeted insurgents fighting to topple President Bashar Assad, and a ground offensive by the Syrian army in the country’s central region.
Moscow says it is targeting mainly Islamic State militants, but US officials and Syrian rebels have said the strikes have hit mainstream rebels for the most part and are aimed at shoring up Assad’s embattled government and troops. Many of the rebel groups hit by the Russian strikes are also at war with the ISIS group.
“Everyone who wants to fight the rebels says that they are coming to fight Daesh while in fact they want to fight the rebels,” said Bahaa al-Halaby, an activist based in the city of Aleppo, using an Arabic acronym for the group.
He said the Russians have not carried out attacks against ISIS in Aleppo, which is split between government forces and various insurgent groups. “They are trying to finish off the rebels,” he said.
Other activists wondered where the Americans were.
“Why didn’t America attack Daesh fighters during their attack?” asked Rami Abdurrahman, director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights….
France imam: “When Allah speaks of music in the Qur’an he reminds us that music is the devil’s language”
October 10, 2015 4:10 pm By Robert Spencer 46 Comments
Hadith Qudsi 19:5: “The Prophet said that Allah commanded him to destroy all the musical instruments, idols, crosses and all the trappings of ignorance.” (The Hadith Qudsi, or holy Hadith, are those in which Muhammad transmits the words of Allah, although those words are not in the Qur’an.)
Muhammad also said:
(1) “Allah Mighty and Majestic sent me as a guidance and mercy to believers and commanded me to do away with musical instruments, flutes, strings, crucifixes, and the affair of the pre-Islamic period of ignorance.”
(2) “On the Day of Resurrection, Allah will pour molten lead into the ears of whoever sits listening to a songstress.”
(3) “Song makes hypocrisy grow in the heart as water does herbage.”
(4) “This community will experience the swallowing up of some people by the earth, metamorphosis of some into animals, and being rained upon with stones.” Someone asked, “When will this be, O Messenger of Allah?” and he said, “When songstresses and musical instruments appear and wine is held to be lawful.”
(5) “There will be peoples of my Community who will hold fornication, silk, wine, and musical instruments to be lawful ….” — ‘Umdat al-Salik r40.0
“WATCH: Islamist ‘Music Lesson’ in France Brainwashes Children,” by Sam Prince, Heavy, October 8, 2015:
A video allegedly leaked from a Muslim center in France shows an extremist imam preaching that all music is of the devil and those that listen to music are “kafir”, or infidels who will be “swallowed up by the earth” and “transformed into apes and pigs.” He then tells the impressionable children that all music, no matter what the language, is “haram”, meaning blasphemous to Islam. A transcript of his sermon reads:
When Allah speaks of music in the Koran he reminds us that music is the devil’s language. When did he remind us of this? So those who love music and listen to music, who are they listening to? The devil. They listen to the devil. There are people who disobeyed Allah and will listen to the devil. What did the prophet say about these people? He said, “They will be swallowed up by the earth.” And they will be transformed into apes and into pigs. So he risks being swallowed up by the earth. Second point: Allah will transform them into apes and pigs. Those who love music would love to be transformed into apes and pigs, you agree. No matter what the language of the music: Arabic, French, Turkish… never mind. If there is song and there are musical instruments, when you hear a violin, a drum, a synthesizer, or violin. If you hear instruments it is haram. And the one who likes haram will be with the devil. And he who likes music, is he loved by the devil or Allah? The devil! So choose your side. Empty your mp3 and transform it and replace it with the best words that exist: the Koran. If one says that musical instruments are haram and music is haram and that who listens or loves music risks being transformed by Allah into a pig, or will look like who? The devil….
Self-driving buses will be arriving in California in 2016. Well, in a very limited fashion anyways — a suburban office park in San Ramon, California, will be playing host to a pilot project that aims to further the deployment of the technology.
The pilot project will see the French company EasyMile — a joint venture between Robosoft and the Ligier Group — provide autonomous buses to the Contra Costa Transportation Authority. These will be put to use at . . . . .
Proterra’s Diesel-Killing Electric Buses Are Killing It (CleanTechnica Exclusive Interview)
October 5th, 2015 by Tina Casey
After a somewhat slow start, the US electric bus market is catching fire, judging by the news coming from US manufacturer Proterra. The company recently announced plans for a new West Coast factory to complement its first plant in South Carolina, and just today it opened its new California headquarters in Silicon Valley while introducing a new addition to its production line.
Proterra CEO and President Ryan Popple graciously lent CleanTechnica some time to talk about the company’s electric bus strategy over the phone last week, so along with giving you the scoop on the new HQ, we’re going to provide some insider-y perspective on the US electric . . . . . .
Ah galopin2, you old debil you, so befuddled, try Revolutionary France and the Goddess Reason, and Maximilien Robespierre, and Monsewer Guillotine, and the boys.......try Revolutionary Russian, and dialectical materialism, and the dictatorship of the proletariat.....they were running out of bullets they killed so many......try the anti-Christian Nazis.......try Mao......try the muzz, and 80,000,000 Hindu dead, only a portion of the muzzy dead over 14 centuries....
This little historical review of the wonders of violence, including that perpetuated by the atheists and those that worshiped the 'Goddess Reason', hopefully might give a little perspective to Deuce as well, who is always hammering on the sins of the Christians and Jews......
Finally, a glimmer of light from the darkness of the Mordor that is Idaho.
The subject has actually been studied. The Encyclopedia of War, a three-volume set that studies all the major wars from 3500 B.C. to present written by Philip and Axelrod reviews the contexts and causes of about 1,700 - 1,800 different wars in that time span.
Their conclusion? About 7% of all the wars they studied had a religious basis with about half of that 7% caused by Muslims.
As for the atheists, they usually base their statements on simplistic assumptions, such as the Crusades or the Inquisition, or in false definitions of religion. For instance, Chris Hitchens in his book on religion charges the deaths caused under Stalin were caused by a 'religious impulse'. Old Chris wasn't always the sharpest tool in the box.
As for the Inquisition, of the tens of thousands of people tried under the Inquisition researchers have only been able to document 2000 or less deaths. Lamentable, but within the context of the millions killed within the history of war, statistically it is a nit.
Palestinian Terror Wave: Brutal Attacks Escalate Why is the Obama administration silent in the face of Palestinian incitement and depravity? October 8, 2015 Ari Lieberman
The wave of terror attacks that Israel has experienced in recent days can be directly attributed to the leaders of the Palestinian Authority, Israel’s supposed peace partner. They are no more a peace partner than the Nazis were “peace partners” to the British Labour government, circa 1938. The person who bears chief responsibility for the sudden surge of violence is self-styled “president” Mahmoud Abbas, the autocrat whose term of office as president of the PA expired six years ago. His banal and vitriolic rhetoric before world leaders at the UN General Assembly on September 26 amounted to nothing more than the acerbic rantings of an old, washed up has-been filled with deep-seated, anti-Semitic hate and bile. What more can one expect from an avowed Holocaust denier.
Abbas’s malevolent UN address was also aimed at the Palestinian street and represented a continuation of the rabid incitement so prevalent within the echelons of the Palestinian Authority and its media stooges. While the incitement – which often crosses over to blatant anti-Semitism – is disturbing, more disturbing is the fact that the Obama administration and the EU, who are responsible for subsidizing the Palestinian Authority, remain silent in the face of the most despicable anti-Semitic calumnies, reminiscent of speeches made by Joseph Goebbels. It is almost as if the West views the Palestinians as small-minded infants, incapable of distinguishing right from wrong, good from bad.
Taking cue from its leaders, Palestinian terrorists began their orgy of violence with the brutal slaying of Eitam and Na'ama Henkin, an accomplished young couple in their 30s who were guilty of driving while Jewish. They were brutally gunned down by a Hamas cell of five at close range, right in front of their hysterical four young children who were seated in the back of the couple’s car. The State Department confirmed that Eitam Henkin was a United States citizen.
In a most fortunate twist of fate, one of the gunmen accidentally shot and wounded his murderous colleague terminating the rampage prematurely. Security officials believe that but for the accidental shooting, all of the car’s occupants would have been slaughtered. The handgun dropped at the scene enabled Israel’s security forces to track down and arrest all five suspects including the ringleader as well as the wounded terrorist, who was recuperating in a PA hospital located in the Arab occupied city of Shechem (Nablus). Eitam and Na’ama gave life to four children. The Palestinians responsible for the cowardly attack – Abbas included – created four orphans.
On October 3, Palestinian terrorists struck again, this time in Jerusalem’s Old City near the Lion’s Gate. A crazed Palestinian, incited by the Palestinian leadership went on a stabbing rampage, killing two civilians and wounding two others, including a woman and infant before being neutralized. The traumatized wounded female related how she had asked Arab passersby for assistance and they in turn responded by spitting at her, laughing at her plight and wishing her death. One even slapped her. Her version of events was corroborated by video recorded on closed circuit TV and security officials have announced that they have already identified the passersby and intend to arrest them.
This post-stabbing aspect of the Lion’s Gate attack is perhaps just as shocking as the murders themselves, as it demonstrates an appalling level of depraved indifference so prevalent in Palestinian society. On the other hand, we should expect no less from a society imbibed with hate and xenophobia, one that celebrates murder and suicide (or “martyrdom operations” in Palestinian lexicon) and names streets and public places after people who in the West would be locked up in institutions housing the criminally insane.
Today marked a new level of Palestinian violence, registering at least six attempted acts of terror. Near the Arab occupied settlement of Bet Sahour, Palestinian terrorists ambushed an Israeli female motorist on her way to work in Jerusalem, subjecting her vehicle to a barrage of stones. They then attempted to drag the disoriented motorist from her car in an effort to lynch her. She succeeded in fighting them off and managed to miraculously escape with only minor injuries.
In Kiryat Gat, Petach Tikvah and Jerusalem, terrorists carried out non-fatal stabbing attacks and near Ma’ale Adumin, a terrorist tried to murder soldiers who were manning a checkpoint by ramming his car into them. The perpetrators in the aforementioned cases were all quickly neutralized thanks to the rapid reaction of the security forces and Israeli civilian passersby, but the spike in violence merely underscores the fact that the two-state paradigm, repeated ad-nauseam by the Obama administration and other terror apologists in the EU, is dead. The very notion of ceding land to an entity so entrenched in mindless hatred is not only pointless, it represents the zenith of national suicide.
The Obama administration appears utterly blind to this axiom. Some might argue, with some justification, that the administration is cognizant of the inherent danger involved in the creation of a Palestinian state jutting into Israel’s heartland like a bone in the throat and is deliberately scheming to weaken Israel. Either way, Israel must act resolutely in the face of pure evil by stating unequivocally that it will never yield to terror, will never negotiate with those who support terror and will never yield to political blackmail imposed upon it by the Obama administration.
Now that Obama has empowered Iran, expect much worse to come.....how soon until the rockets begin falling in Israel again from Gaza, and from Lebanon, too ?
Garry Kasparov: "Putin Will Win... Chaos... Total Destruction Of The World Order" Posted on October 11, 2015
A discussion between a Fox News panel and Garry Kasparov, former world chess champion and domestic critic/challenger of Russian president Vladimir Putin, got heated on Sunday morning.
"Russian planes are there and America is in retreat!" said Kasparov. "Putin in one week, kicked America out of [Syria], Iraq and the Middle East."
"We've already seen renewed violence between Israelis and Palestinians, it is almost natural, when you see Obama snubbing Netanyahu and cozying up with Hezbollah bosses."
"The region is so explosive that [Putin] will win. Imagine something happens with Israel? Putin will win."
"What's he going to win? What's Putin going to win?" asks FNC's Alan Colmes.
"Chaos!" shouts Kasparov. "That's all he needs, total destruction of the world order... and Obama walks away."
"Do we need friends? How many years will it take for a new president to repair relations?" asks Kasparov. "It is very easy to destroy relations and lose trust."
"Thank goodness we have relations with Iran now!" says Colmes.
At this point, the discussion falls apart............
Garry Kasparov has failed in his efforts to take on Putin in Russia. He is driven by his hatred of Putin and his own past failures.
On some issues, he is correct, Putin in Syria, Obama's lack of a strategy, but here he merely states the obvious that is discernible to anyone who has followed the progress of the Iraq/Syria war. As such his testimony is merely repetition. In other areas, the causes for the current Israeli/Palestinian conflict, he is nutz that or just pumping up the crowd.
Listening to Garry Kasparov is as much a waste of time as listening to John Bolton or Lindsay Graham.
Could it be that the people who call themselves "palestinians" is a total scam by the Arab nations to continue strife in the middle east in an attempt to do what the arabs collectively have wished to do (which was to destroy Israel)?
the fact is simple.
The arabs of Palestine, with their brother arabs refused to accept yes in 1948, and since then?
The Losers of the war they started, the arabs continue to try to destroy Israel and each time their hand weakens.
and of course Palestinians trying to murder jews..
But wait!!!
The Jews are fighting back....
and the attacking palestinians? Are dying....
As more palestinians attack and stab, shoot missiles and tunnel into Israel more will die...
The "zionists" have held Palestinians hostage since 1967"? Now that's rich....
Maybe Jack your history is weak...
the PLO tried to blow up the Israel water carrier in an attempt of mass murder against the Jews BEFORE 1967, before Jerusalem was liberated, before one INCH of the disputed lands of the west bank were liberated....
No Jack, the Palestinians (or whatever name you wish to call them) have been waging war on the jews for decades before 1967.
Here is some history for you to distort....
The Hebron massacre refers to the killing of sixty-seven or sixty-nine Jews (including 46 yeshiva students and teachers) on 24 August 1929 in Hebron, by local Arabs. The event also left scores seriously wounded or maimed. Jewish homes were pillaged and synagogues were ransacked. Soon after, all Hebron's Jews were evacuated by the British authorities. Many returned in 1931, but almost all were evacuated at the outbreak of the 1936–39 Arab revolt in Palestine. The massacre formed part of the 1929 Palestine riots, in which a total of 133 Jews were killed, and brought the centuries-old Jewish presence in Hebron to an end.
-------
Actually, it was longer than centuries, it was thousands of years.
October 11, 2015 Killing Christians and Jews By Ben Voth
The gunman in Oregon performed a powerfully bigoted and hateful argument as a statement against Christians and Jews. The steadfast refusal of our intellectual culture to take seriously the global and American agenda of violence against Christians and Jews is important and immoral. Our society accepts violence against Christians and Jews as being a comprehensible response to overzealous and “privileged” communities both here at home and abroad. We need to take clear stock of social markers taking us down a path of intimidation that must be confronted and stopped.
Our society arguably crossed a political Rubicon on December 12, 2008. Less than one month after losing the presidential election, the much maligned governor Sarah Palin’s Christian church was burned around the entire perimeter with women and children trapped inside. Plainly sexist verbal assaults from feminist comedians that asked for Palin to be raped and brutalized were realized in a hate crime that earned no federal investigation, no serious social commentary from the media, and no prosecutions to date. No one has been arrested for the crime in Alaska against Palin’s church. The deliberate silence that would not have been practiced if Biden or Obama’s (if he had one) church had been burned with women and children inside, is part of a socialized stigma toward Christians deemed by our elite as socially and politically regressive.
In 2010, a Christian man in St. Louis from Iraq who had converted from Islam was pulled from his car and had a Star of David carved into his back by his attackers. His attackers deemed his poetry defending the dignity of Jews in the Middle East to be too offensive for their tastes. Our intellectual elite conflate their antisemitic and anti-Christian views by arguing that the conservative Christian defense of Israel is an attempt to force a nihilistic theological Armageddon on unbelieving adversaries.
Those antisemitic dispositions were on vivid display as the prime minister of Israel stated in stark and obvious terms how the international community has turned a blind eye toward Iran’s genocidal goals regarding the one Jewish state in the world. The American delegation of Samantha Power and John Kerry would not sit for the speech from Israel demanding greater accountability for these genocidal ambitions— even though Power has made a career castigating political bodies for inaction on these types of questions. Netanyahu stared down the United Nations for 45 eerie seconds of silence that mocked the international bodies protracted silence regarding violence against Jews and Christians globally.
In 2011, a gay activist gunman created a list of conservative Christian targets from the Southern Poverty Law Center website. He began his killing spree at the Family Research Council in Washington DC. He carried with him a backpack full of Chick-fil-A sandwiches. His plan was to shoot FRC employees, and as they lay dying, he would compel them to eat the sandwiches as a final communion for their deep dark sins of homophobia.
The recent Charleston shooting was committed in a Christian church and the gunman listened to an hour of Christian fellowship before killing those kindly gathered to love one another in the name of God. Our Facebook pages overflow with seething hate-filled rage against Kim Davis. The sources are invariably the Jacobin Pharisees of American life who constitute themselves as supremely tolerant. In reality, our culture has become shockingly intolerant toward Christians and Jews. Their elite diatribes were strangely silent when American civil clerks broke the law in favor of gay couples before the Supreme Court case in 2015 but now the jacobins loudly demand the Christian clerks “do their jobs!”
Though he is hardly a paragon of Christian theology, Donald Trump earns the growing ire and hate-filled contempt of our Jacobin elite who use the term of “equality” to rally for the destruction of individual liberty. South Park comedians delighted recently in offering the rape and killing of Donald Trump in the latest installment of fantasizing violence against American conservatives. The internet in 2012 took special delight in slandering Christian conservatives Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann.
It is socially acceptable among our intellectual elite to be contemptuous and hateful to individuals deemed inconveniently Christian. Law professor Stephen Carter complained of a “Culture of Disbelief” in the 1990s and now we have evolved into a culture of contempt with regard to Christian and Jewish belief. Our popular sports media is a convenient social marker. Craig James was removed from broadcast for political speech criticizing gay marriage. ESPN cut off a Clemson coach when he waxed too theological in his praise for football success. ESPN chose gender-bending Bruce Jenner for public honors over Christian hero Lauren Hill who struggled to play women’s collegiate basketball while raising awareness for a serious form of brain cancer. Whether removing Christians who do not see how much Jesus appreciates gay marriage and Planned Parenthood or remaining silent with regard to hate crimes committed against these groups, Christians need to watch their public steps according to this intellectual elite. Our punditry offer silence when they should condemn violence against Christians and Jews while demanding silence among the advocates within those same targeted communities who defend orthodoxy. The idea that the constitutionally established free exercise of religion protects speech against the ideological mascots of our elite is now deemed absurd and offensive.
Christians who continue to turn the other cheek toward this hatred are unwitting accomplices to the increasingly popular fantasy of killing Christians and Jews. Our silence conveys an acceptance of what is unacceptable— the killing of the innocent in order to reify the powers of the intolerant. It is painfully obvious from comedic outlets, to college classrooms, to popular sports broadcast, to international political forms, that it is ok to speak of Christians and Jews in ways we would not speak of other groups. It is equally acceptable to silence and shun those who speak in defense of these groups. Now is the time to end silence surrounding this new American habit adapted to please our secular pharisees.
Our society arguably crossed a political Rubicon on December 12, 2008. Less than one month after losing the presidential election, the much maligned governor Sarah Palin’s Christian church was burned around the entire perimeter with women and children trapped inside. Plainly sexist verbal assaults from feminist comedians that asked for Palin to be raped and brutalized were realized in a hate crime that earned no federal investigation, no serious social commentary from the media, and no prosecutions to date.
You had all, WiO excepted, forgotten, hadn't you...
You won't find Garry Kasparov arguing that the nearly simultaneous rise of ISIS in Iraq and the withdrawal of our troops from Iraq was just a 'coincidence'.
Anyone up for a 'frog march' for “Sid Vicious” Blumenthal ? -
October 11, 2015 'Frog march' for Sid Blumenthal? By Thomas Lifson
During the Bush Derangement Syndrome era, a common fantasy on the left was that Karl Rove would be “frog marched out of the White House in handcuffs” for his alleged crime of revealing the name of CIA desk jockey Valerie Plame. Plame, and her husband Joe Wilson IV (author of the frog march fantasy) became glamorous icons of progs across America for their role in emphasizing the severity of punishment for violations of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act.
(From Vanity Fair)
Ten years later, what goes around has come around. Alana Goodman reports in the Free Beacon:
An email forwarded by Hillary Clinton to a colleague that identified a top CIA informant in Libya could trigger an intelligence investigation and add to concerns that she mishandled classified information, according to intelligence sources.
Clinton received an email in March 2011 from her longtime adviser Sidney Blumenthal that identified a covert Libyan source who was reportedly working with the CIA. Blumenthal said his business partner, the late former CIA agent Tyler Drumheller, had given the information to him.
Clinton forwarded the email over her personal server to a colleague, according to emails published on Thursday by Rep. Trey Gowdy (R., S.C.), chairman of the House select committee on Benghazi.
An intelligence source said that the email could trigger an investigation into whether any of the parties violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, calling the apparent disclosure “a couple steps above Valerie Plame.”
“Once you compromise the cover, there’s a whole section of law called the Intelligence Identities Protection Act,” said the source. “It’s against federal law to disclose the identities or the real names of anybody who works for the CIA or any other part of the intelligence community.”
The Intelligence Identities Protection Act prohibits individuals who have access to the identities of covert agents—including CIA intelligence sources—from intentionally disclosing this information to individuals who are not cleared to receive it.
In Trey Gowdy’s remarkable letter to Elijah Cummings, the former prosecutor called Blumenthal’s naming of the CIA source “some of the most protected information in our intelligence community.”
Recall that there is no love lost between Blumenthal and the Obama administration, which explicitly prohibited his employment at the State Department. So any Justice Department moves to prosecute the man widely known as “Sid Vicious” would not necessarily encounter political obstacles.
Even Hillary Clinton’s fans don’t believe a thing she says
By Jonah Goldberg
October 9, 2015 | 7:28pm Modal Trigger Even Hillary Clinton’s fans don’t believe a thing she says Hillary Clinton Photo: AP
Hillary Clinton revealed on Wednesday that she opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, providing just the latest evidence that she is little more than political ambition wrapped in a pantsuit.
Pay attention to the press coverage, because it’s fascinating: Nobody takes Clinton at her word. I’m not just referring to her conservative critics.
Slate’s Jim Newell asks, “Will anyone find Clinton’s position convincing?” The question is purely rhetorical.
The article is headlined “Hillary Clinton Comes Out Against TPP, at Least Until the Democratic Convention.”
In “First Read,” a newsletter put out by “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd and his colleagues, the lead item on Thursday was titled “Why Clinton’s Trade Flip-Flop Is So Unbelievable.” They write:
“Yes, Hillary Clinton’s new opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade accord cleans up something she needed to do before next week’s first Democratic debate. And, yes, it puts pressure on Vice President Joe Biden getting into the race (because he’d be on the only major candidate in support of TPP). But make no mistake: This flip-flop isn’t believable at all.”
Clinton had long touted TPP as “the gold standard” of trade deals. A tally by CNN in June found at least 45 instances where she had plumped, praised, pushed or otherwise promoted the agreement. That, of course, would make sense given that she was secretary of state when it was being crafted and had a big role in selling it.
After she left the administration, Clinton said she wouldn’t take a position on TPP until it was done. She couldn’t put it off any longer, so she’s finally taking a stand. Well, maybe not a stand. It’s more like a modified crouch. Here’s how she explained her position on PBS: “As of today, I am not in favor of what I have learned about it.”
Clinton went on to explain that she was “worried that the pharmaceutical companies may have gotten more benefits, and patients and consumers fewer.” She also said she was deeply worried about safeguards against “currency manipulation” not being part of the deal.
But as even the reliably liberal writers at Vox.com note, this makes no sense. The provisions — or lack thereof — on currency manipulation are no different than when then-Secretary Clinton was calling TPP the “gold standard.”
Meanwhile, the provisions on pharmaceutical companies are tougher than what the administration asked for.
As Vox’s Timothy Lee notes, Clinton is either making up reasons to oppose TPP now, or she was utterly ineffectual then — i.e., when she could have made a difference inside the administration.
I think this is a false choice; both things are probably true.
In fact, finding evidence that Clinton operates this way is like looking for evidence that fire is hot. In 2008, when it was in her interest, Clinton was against federal “blanket rules” on guns; now she’s making extra-constitutional gun-grabbing the centerpiece of her campaign (at least this week, while a recent mass murder is still fresh in our memories).
She long opposed same-sex marriage on principle, until the times required a new position. She initially thought the undercover videos of Planned Parenthood were “disturbing.” But within 48 hours, she was a stalwart defender of Planned Parenthood. As more — and more disturbing — videos emerged, she grew more adamant that the outrage wasn’t the fetal organ harvesting, but the videos exposing them.
And so on: the driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants, the Iraq War, NAFTA, taking credit for regime change in Libya, her ever-shifting stories about her e-mail server. Hillary Clinton is like a lava lamp. Don’t like what you’re seeing at the moment? Wait a minute. Just don’t expect anything to last.
But all of this misses what I find so fascinating. With most of these examples, it’s almost impossible to find someone who takes what Clinton says or does at face value. If you’re not on her payroll, or auditioning to get on it one day, or just painfully naive, you simply start from the assumption that Clinton is unencumbered by any principles that might prove inconvenient to her political ambitions.
Putin at a meeting of the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights in Moscow last week. (Yuri Kochetkov/AP) By Jackson Diehl Deputy editorial page editor October 11 at 6:57 PM
Western officials who pronounce themselves puzzled about Vladimir Putin’s intentions in Syria are missing some big clues. There is a clear model for the campaign Russia is pursuing on behalf of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, a legacy that is Putin’s pride: Chechnya.
The Muslim republic in the North Caucasus and the decade-long war that Putin launched there in September 1999 have mostly been forgotten by the outside world since the dictator installed there by Putin, Ramzan Kadyrov, consolidated control in the late 2000s. But the Kremlin regards it as a “good, unique example in history of [the] combat of terrorism,” as Dmitry Medvedev, Putin’s prime minister, put it. Chechnya, Medvedev said last year, is “one of the business cards of Russia.” Jackson Diehl is deputy editorial page editor of The Post. He is an editorial writer specializing in foreign affairs and writes a biweekly column that appears on Mondays.
What are the components of this winning formula? First, define all opposition to the prevailing regime as terrorist, indistinguishable from the most extreme jihadists. That enables a fundamental political aim: to eliminate alternatives. In Syria today, moderate and secular opposition forces arguably are getting harder to find. That wasn’t the case in Chechnya in 1999. The country’s nationalist president, Aslan Maskhadov, had won a democratic election, defeating an Islamist opponent by 59 to 23 percent. His predecessor, Dzhokhar Dudayev, was so secularized that he was unaware how many times a day Muslims pray.
Russia killed them both, along with every other moderate Chechen leader it could find, both at home and abroad. One was murdered in Vienna; another in Dubai. When Western leaders pressed Putin to negotiate with Maskhadov and other secular moderates, he invariably responded angrily. “Would you invite Osama bin Laden to the White House . . . and let him dictate what he wants?” he demanded of one group of Western visitors.
It should be no surprise that Russia’s first Syria bombings have been aimed at the remnants of the moderate opposition. It’s not just that they are backed by the United States; they represent a viable alternative to the Assad regime, and so, under Chechnya rules, must be eliminated. “He doesn’t distinguish between [the Islamic State] and a moderate Sunni opposition that wants to see Mr. Assad go,” President Obama said after meeting Putin at the United Nations. “From their perspective, they’re all terrorists.”
The first stages of the Russian military campaign in northern Syria have followed a familiar pattern. Heavy bombing and shelling of civilian areas preceded scorched-earth sweeps, just as in Chechnya. According to a report on Chechnya by the International Crisis Group, “war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by [Russian] troops” included “indiscriminate shelling and bombing, secret prisons, enforced disappearances, mass graves and death squads.” One common tactic, the report said, was “taking insurgents’ relatives as hostages, subjecting them to torture or summary execution and burning their homes.”
In short, Assad’s forces and their Lebanese and Iranian allies may have to step up their already-notorious brutality to match Putin’s tactics in Chechnya. But they may have expert help: Kadyrov has asked Putin to send his 20,000-member personal army, known as the “kadyrovtsy,” to Syria. The state propaganda outlet Russia Today quoted him as saying he wanted “to go there and participate in special operations.”
Kadyrov and his relationship with Putin offer another lesson to those wondering whether Putin is prepared to dispose of Assad — a prospect that Obama has repeatedly bet on. The Chechen strongman is, if anything, more sinister than the soft-spoken Assad; Kadyrov is known to do his own killing and torturing on occasion. He has solidified a cult of personality in Chechnya, extorts tribute from every business and citizen, and brazenly orders hits on his critics, from journalists and human rights activists to Russian politicians. Many believe him responsible for the murder of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, gunned down near Red Square last winter.
Putin’s response has been to offer Kadyrov not just tolerance but full protection. The Crisis Group reports that senior Russian security officials tried to undermine the Chechen by arresting his gunmen for the Nemtsov murder. Putin rebuffed them, awarding Kadyrov a medal immediately after the hit. “Unless President Putin’s reputation is seriously damaged by his protégé, the rules of the game are unlikely to change,” concluded the report. The same rules will apply to Assad.
Obama’s principal response to Putin’s new offensive has been to predict that the result will be “a quagmire.” But Putin has heard that before. For years Western leaders warned him that the war in Chechnya was unwinnable, that the only solution was political. Putin nevertheless persisted through a decade and more of bloody fighting that cost Russia at least 6,000 military casualties and Chechnya uncounted tens of thousands. The result was the pacification he now trumpets as a “calling card.” Don’t expect him to give up anytime soon on a similar result in Syria.
In short, Assad’s forces and their Lebanese and Iranian allies may have to step up their already-notorious brutality to match Putin’s tactics in Chechnya.
And so Putin has once again "won", or as the administration would prefer to spin it, "has hung himself."
Incidentally, this is just the beginning. Now that the U.S. has begun its pivot out of the middle-east, handing it over to Putin as Russia's latest sphere of influence on a silver platter, there will be staggering consequences for middle-east geopolitics. In out preview of things to come last week, we concluded by laying these out; we will do the same again:
The US, in conjunction with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, attempted to train and support Sunni extremists to overthrow the Assad regime. Some of those Sunni extremists ended up going crazy and declaring a Medeival caliphate putting the Pentagon and Langley in the hilarious position of being forced to classify al-Qaeda as "moderate." The situation spun out of control leading to hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths and when Washington finally decided to try and find real "moderates" to help contain the Frankenstein monster the CIA had created in ISIS (there were of course numerous other CIA efforts to arm and train anti-Assad fighters, see below for the fate of the most "successful" of those groups), the effort ended up being a complete embarrassment that culminated with the admission that only "four or five" remained and just days after that admission, those "four or five" were car jacked by al-Qaeda in what was perhaps the most under-reported piece of foreign policy comedy in history.
Meanwhile, Iran sensed an epic opportunity to capitalize on Washington's incompetence. Tehran then sent its most powerful general to Russia where a pitch was made to upend the Mid-East balance of power. The Kremlin loved the idea because after all, Moscow is stinging from Western economic sanctions and Vladimir Putin is keen on showing the West that, in the wake of the controversy surrounding the annexation of Crimea and the conflict in eastern Ukraine, Russia isn't set to back down. Thanks to the fact that the US chose extremists as its weapon of choice in Syria, Russia gets to frame its involvement as a "war on terror" and thanks to Russia's involvement, Iran gets to safely broadcast its military support for Assad just weeks after the nuclear deal was struck. Now, Russian airstrikes have debilitated the only group of CIA-backed fighters that had actually proven to be somewhat effective and Iran and Hezbollah are preparing a massive ground invasion under cover of Russian air support. Worse still, the entire on-the-ground effort is being coordinated by the Iranian general who is public enemy number one in Western intelligence circles and he's effectively operating at the behest of Putin, the man that Western media paints as the most dangerous person on the planet.
As incompetent as the US has proven to be throughout the entire debacle, it's still difficult to imagine that Washington, Riyadh, London, Doha, and Jerusalem are going to take this laying down and on that note, we close with our assessment from Thursday: "If Russia ends up bolstering Iran's position in Syria (by expanding Hezbollah's influence and capabilities) and if the Russian air force effectively takes control of Iraq thus allowing Iran to exert a greater influence over the government in Baghdad, the fragile balance of power that has existed in the region will be turned on its head and in the event this plays out, one should not expect Washington, Riyadh, Jerusalem, and London to simply go gentle into that good night."
LETS TAKE A LOOK - JUST FOR FUN
ReplyDeleteSOD Ashton (ASS) Carter
02:15 p.m.
Defense Secretary Ash Carter confirms the U.S. has indications that four Russian cruise missiles crashed in Iran rather than Syria, suggesting there were malfunctions.
It's the first public comment by a U.S. official on the cruise missile failures.
Carter is speaking at a press conference in London with British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon. The British are part of the coalition striking Islamic State fighters in Iraq, but are not conducting strikes in Syria.
As many as four of the 26 long-range cruise missiles that Russia said it fired at Syrian targets landed instead in Iran
HOW MANY MISSILES WERE LAUNCED?Russia displayed its long-range cruise missile capability for the first time on 7 October, when it announced that warships on the Caspian Sea hit militant targets in Syria using Kalibr missiles.
The attack was first announced by Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu in a televised conversation with President Vladimir Putin. "This morning, ships from the Caspian Flotilla were brought in. Four destroyers launched 26 Kalibr cruise missiles at 11 targets," he said. "The results of the strikes confirmed the high effectiveness of the missiles at long range, almost 1,500 km."
The Russian Ministry of Defence (MoD) then released a video showing a Gepard-class frigate and at least one Buyan-M-class corvette launching several missiles in sequence at night. -Janes.com
HOW MANY EXPLOSIONS ON THE GROUND?
01:40 p.m.
Activists have reported more than 20 explosions in the northern Syrian city of Raqqa held by the Islamic State group.
A Raqqa-based collective called Raqqa is Being Silently Slaughtered said 22 blasts shook the city late Thursday.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the 20 explosions killed 14 IS fighters and wounded more than 20.
The group said it was not clear if the explosions were the result of air raids by the U.S.-led coalition or Russian warplanes.
The Observatory's chief Rami Abdurrahman and Raqqa is Being Silently Slaughtered say a training facility, known as Vanguards Camp, was hit on the southern edge of the city.
France's Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said French warplanes bombed a training camp in Raqqa.
http://www.wboc.com/story/30222792/the-latest-us-confirms-russia-missiles-crashed-in-iran
20 or 22 reports of explosions in Raqa. We don’t know the exact time lines or the 11 reported targets, but releases of Russian photos showed multiple and simultaneous launches. It would make sense that certain targets due to size and importance would dictate more than one missile per target. Obviously, two impacts close together, could be reported as one as well as secondary explosions could be reported as two or more.
ReplyDeleteSo far, I cannot find conclusive evidence on either side. Based on past experience from Viet Nam, though and including every US fought war, each was preceded by government released lies and disinformation.
ReplyDeleteremain very skeptical of the crash reports.Overall accuracy and reliability of similar US systems is classified. In operation Enduring Freedom there was criticism of why expensive high value missiles were hitting absurdly low value targets. CYA for missing a target?
ReplyDeleteVerify before Trust.
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ReplyDeleteI wouldn't be surprised if some of the Russian missiles crashed in Iran. The US had the same problems early on with our cruise missiles, and this is a new missile for Russia. Likewise, if Iran and Russia are coordinating their efforts, they might try to hush it up.
On the other hand, these things fly at only 150-160 ft. It's probably hard tracking them. I don't know where the US got their info. I can't see why the US would lie. I don't see the point But there's a lot of things I don't understand about US actions in Iraq/Syria.
If pushed for a yes or no answer, I would probably guess that they crashed though I'm not sure how much difference it makes.
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It could be an intentional grounding. A few years ago, the Iranians hacked a US predator drone and landed it in Iran. The US could have returned the favor just to show them we can or the Russians may have brought them down in friendly territory for security reasons.
DeleteIslamic State captures most territory in months, nears Aleppo
ReplyDeleteOctober 10, 2015 10:39 am By Robert Spencer 34 Comments
Time for Obama to tell us again about how they’re falling back and nearing defeat. Meanwhile, in real life no one is even fighting the Islamic State. The Russians are fighting other jihadis who are trying to topple Assad, and the Americans are restricting their activities to cosmetic airstrikes.
Mideast Syria
“ISIS captures most territory in months amid Russian strikes,” Associated Press, October 9, 2015:
BEIRUT — Islamic State militants captured a string of villages near Aleppo on Friday in a lightning attack that brought them closer to the prized city in northern Syria, despite a major increase in Russian airstrikes that Moscow insists are targeting the extremists.
The surprise advance that brought the ISIS group to within a few miles of Aleppo was the most significant in months, following what has largely been a summer of stalemate in the war against the extremists.
It comes amid a wave of intense Russian airstrikes that have targeted insurgents fighting to topple President Bashar Assad, and a ground offensive by the Syrian army in the country’s central region.
Moscow says it is targeting mainly Islamic State militants, but US officials and Syrian rebels have said the strikes have hit mainstream rebels for the most part and are aimed at shoring up Assad’s embattled government and troops. Many of the rebel groups hit by the Russian strikes are also at war with the ISIS group.
“Everyone who wants to fight the rebels says that they are coming to fight Daesh while in fact they want to fight the rebels,” said Bahaa al-Halaby, an activist based in the city of Aleppo, using an Arabic acronym for the group.
He said the Russians have not carried out attacks against ISIS in Aleppo, which is split between government forces and various insurgent groups. “They are trying to finish off the rebels,” he said.
Other activists wondered where the Americans were.
“Why didn’t America attack Daesh fighters during their attack?” asked Rami Abdurrahman, director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights….
Why indeed?
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2015/10/islamic-state-captures-most-territory-in-months-nears-aleppo
France imam: “When Allah speaks of music in the Qur’an he reminds us that music is the devil’s language”
ReplyDeleteOctober 10, 2015 4:10 pm By Robert Spencer 46 Comments
Hadith Qudsi 19:5: “The Prophet said that Allah commanded him to destroy all the musical instruments, idols, crosses and all the trappings of ignorance.” (The Hadith Qudsi, or holy Hadith, are those in which Muhammad transmits the words of Allah, although those words are not in the Qur’an.)
Muhammad also said:
(1) “Allah Mighty and Majestic sent me as a guidance and mercy to believers and commanded me to do away with musical instruments, flutes, strings, crucifixes, and the affair of the pre-Islamic period of ignorance.”
(2) “On the Day of Resurrection, Allah will pour molten lead into the ears of whoever sits listening to a songstress.”
(3) “Song makes hypocrisy grow in the heart as water does herbage.”
(4) “This community will experience the swallowing up of some people by the earth, metamorphosis of some into animals, and being rained upon with stones.” Someone asked, “When will this be, O Messenger of Allah?” and he said, “When songstresses and musical instruments appear and wine is held to be lawful.”
(5) “There will be peoples of my Community who will hold fornication, silk, wine, and musical instruments to be lawful ….” — ‘Umdat al-Salik r40.0
“WATCH: Islamist ‘Music Lesson’ in France Brainwashes Children,” by Sam Prince, Heavy, October 8, 2015:
A video allegedly leaked from a Muslim center in France shows an extremist imam preaching that all music is of the devil and those that listen to music are “kafir”, or infidels who will be “swallowed up by the earth” and “transformed into apes and pigs.” He then tells the impressionable children that all music, no matter what the language, is “haram”, meaning blasphemous to Islam. A transcript of his sermon reads:
When Allah speaks of music in the Koran he reminds us that music is the devil’s language. When did he remind us of this? So those who love music and listen to music, who are they listening to? The devil. They listen to the devil. There are people who disobeyed Allah and will listen to the devil. What did the prophet say about these people? He said, “They will be swallowed up by the earth.” And they will be transformed into apes and into pigs. So he risks being swallowed up by the earth. Second point: Allah will transform them into apes and pigs. Those who love music would love to be transformed into apes and pigs, you agree. No matter what the language of the music: Arabic, French, Turkish… never mind. If there is song and there are musical instruments, when you hear a violin, a drum, a synthesizer, or violin. If you hear instruments it is haram. And the one who likes haram will be with the devil. And he who likes music, is he loved by the devil or Allah? The devil! So choose your side. Empty your mp3 and transform it and replace it with the best words that exist: the Koran. If one says that musical instruments are haram and music is haram and that who listens or loves music risks being transformed by Allah into a pig, or will look like who? The devil….
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2015/10/france-imam-when-allah-speaks-of-music-in-the-quran-he-reminds-us-that-music-is-the-devils-language
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgpJVI3tDbY
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdneKLhsWOQ
Evolution is de debil, talking. Music is de debil singin'.
ReplyDeleteIf there is a debil, it had to be him that invented religion.
Of course, it was the "Good Lord" that gave us the Inquisition.
DeleteAnd, heavens knows, the Crusades were "God's Work."
DeleteThe Inquisition would have hated this:
ReplyDeleteSelf-Driving Buses Arriving In California In 2016
October 8th, 2015 by James Ayre
Self-driving buses will be arriving in California in 2016. Well, in a very limited fashion anyways — a suburban office park in San Ramon, California, will be playing host to a pilot project that aims to further the deployment of the technology.
The pilot project will see the French company EasyMile — a joint venture between Robosoft and the Ligier Group — provide autonomous buses to the Contra Costa Transportation Authority. These will be put to use at . . . . .
Don't Tell the Pope
And, you sure don't want to tell him about this:
DeleteProterra’s Diesel-Killing Electric Buses Are Killing It (CleanTechnica Exclusive Interview)
October 5th, 2015 by Tina Casey
After a somewhat slow start, the US electric bus market is catching fire, judging by the news coming from US manufacturer Proterra. The company recently announced plans for a new West Coast factory to complement its first plant in South Carolina, and just today it opened its new California headquarters in Silicon Valley while introducing a new addition to its production line.
Proterra CEO and President Ryan Popple graciously lent CleanTechnica some time to talk about the company’s electric bus strategy over the phone last week, so along with giving you the scoop on the new HQ, we’re going to provide some insider-y perspective on the US electric . . . . . .
The Inquisition is Getting Pissed
The Inquisition ?
ReplyDeleteAh galopin2, you old debil you, so befuddled, try Revolutionary France and the Goddess Reason, and Maximilien Robespierre, and Monsewer Guillotine, and the boys.......try Revolutionary Russian, and dialectical materialism, and the dictatorship of the proletariat.....they were running out of bullets they killed so many......try the anti-Christian Nazis.......try Mao......try the muzz, and 80,000,000 Hindu dead, only a portion of the muzzy dead over 14 centuries....
The Inquisition was small Idaho potatoes......
This little historical review of the wonders of violence, including that perpetuated by the atheists and those that worshiped the 'Goddess Reason', hopefully might give a little perspective to Deuce as well, who is always hammering on the sins of the Christians and Jews......
Delete.
DeleteFinally, a glimmer of light from the darkness of the Mordor that is Idaho.
The subject has actually been studied. The Encyclopedia of War, a three-volume set that studies all the major wars from 3500 B.C. to present written by Philip and Axelrod reviews the contexts and causes of about 1,700 - 1,800 different wars in that time span.
Their conclusion? About 7% of all the wars they studied had a religious basis with about half of that 7% caused by Muslims.
As for the atheists, they usually base their statements on simplistic assumptions, such as the Crusades or the Inquisition, or in false definitions of religion. For instance, Chris Hitchens in his book on religion charges the deaths caused under Stalin were caused by a 'religious impulse'. Old Chris wasn't always the sharpest tool in the box.
As for the Inquisition, of the tens of thousands of people tried under the Inquisition researchers have only been able to document 2000 or less deaths. Lamentable, but within the context of the millions killed within the history of war, statistically it is a nit.
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Palestinian Terror Wave: Brutal Attacks Escalate
ReplyDeleteWhy is the Obama administration silent in the face of Palestinian incitement and depravity?
October 8, 2015
Ari Lieberman
The wave of terror attacks that Israel has experienced in recent days can be directly attributed to the leaders of the Palestinian Authority, Israel’s supposed peace partner. They are no more a peace partner than the Nazis were “peace partners” to the British Labour government, circa 1938. The person who bears chief responsibility for the sudden surge of violence is self-styled “president” Mahmoud Abbas, the autocrat whose term of office as president of the PA expired six years ago. His banal and vitriolic rhetoric before world leaders at the UN General Assembly on September 26 amounted to nothing more than the acerbic rantings of an old, washed up has-been filled with deep-seated, anti-Semitic hate and bile. What more can one expect from an avowed Holocaust denier.
Abbas’s malevolent UN address was also aimed at the Palestinian street and represented a continuation of the rabid incitement so prevalent within the echelons of the Palestinian Authority and its media stooges. While the incitement – which often crosses over to blatant anti-Semitism – is disturbing, more disturbing is the fact that the Obama administration and the EU, who are responsible for subsidizing the Palestinian Authority, remain silent in the face of the most despicable anti-Semitic calumnies, reminiscent of speeches made by Joseph Goebbels. It is almost as if the West views the Palestinians as small-minded infants, incapable of distinguishing right from wrong, good from bad.
Taking cue from its leaders, Palestinian terrorists began their orgy of violence with the brutal slaying of Eitam and Na'ama Henkin, an accomplished young couple in their 30s who were guilty of driving while Jewish. They were brutally gunned down by a Hamas cell of five at close range, right in front of their hysterical four young children who were seated in the back of the couple’s car. The State Department confirmed that Eitam Henkin was a United States citizen.
In a most fortunate twist of fate, one of the gunmen accidentally shot and wounded his murderous colleague terminating the rampage prematurely. Security officials believe that but for the accidental shooting, all of the car’s occupants would have been slaughtered. The handgun dropped at the scene enabled Israel’s security forces to track down and arrest all five suspects including the ringleader as well as the wounded terrorist, who was recuperating in a PA hospital located in the Arab occupied city of Shechem (Nablus). Eitam and Na’ama gave life to four children. The Palestinians responsible for the cowardly attack – Abbas included – created four orphans.
On October 3, Palestinian terrorists struck again, this time in Jerusalem’s Old City near the Lion’s Gate. A crazed Palestinian, incited by the Palestinian leadership went on a stabbing rampage, killing two civilians and wounding two others, including a woman and infant before being neutralized. The traumatized wounded female related how she had asked Arab passersby for assistance and they in turn responded by spitting at her, laughing at her plight and wishing her death. One even slapped her. Her version of events was corroborated by video recorded on closed circuit TV and security officials have announced that they have already identified the passersby and intend to arrest them.
This post-stabbing aspect of the Lion’s Gate attack is perhaps just as shocking as the murders themselves, as it demonstrates an appalling level of depraved indifference so prevalent in Palestinian society. On the other hand, we should expect no less from a society imbibed with hate and xenophobia, one that celebrates murder and suicide (or “martyrdom operations” in Palestinian lexicon) and names streets and public places after people who in the West would be locked up in institutions housing the criminally insane.
DeleteToday marked a new level of Palestinian violence, registering at least six attempted acts of terror. Near the Arab occupied settlement of Bet Sahour, Palestinian terrorists ambushed an Israeli female motorist on her way to work in Jerusalem, subjecting her vehicle to a barrage of stones. They then attempted to drag the disoriented motorist from her car in an effort to lynch her. She succeeded in fighting them off and managed to miraculously escape with only minor injuries.
In Kiryat Gat, Petach Tikvah and Jerusalem, terrorists carried out non-fatal stabbing attacks and near Ma’ale Adumin, a terrorist tried to murder soldiers who were manning a checkpoint by ramming his car into them. The perpetrators in the aforementioned cases were all quickly neutralized thanks to the rapid reaction of the security forces and Israeli civilian passersby, but the spike in violence merely underscores the fact that the two-state paradigm, repeated ad-nauseam by the Obama administration and other terror apologists in the EU, is dead. The very notion of ceding land to an entity so entrenched in mindless hatred is not only pointless, it represents the zenith of national suicide.
The Obama administration appears utterly blind to this axiom. Some might argue, with some justification, that the administration is cognizant of the inherent danger involved in the creation of a Palestinian state jutting into Israel’s heartland like a bone in the throat and is deliberately scheming to weaken Israel. Either way, Israel must act resolutely in the face of pure evil by stating unequivocally that it will never yield to terror, will never negotiate with those who support terror and will never yield to political blackmail imposed upon it by the Obama administration.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/260387/palestinian-terror-wave-brutal-attacks-escalate%C2%A0-ari-lieberman
Now that Obama has empowered Iran, expect much worse to come.....how soon until the rockets begin falling in Israel again from Gaza, and from Lebanon, too ?
****************
Seattle SeaHawks are on the aire...
Take a lesson from the chess master -
DeleteGarry Kasparov: "Putin Will Win... Chaos... Total Destruction Of The World Order"
Posted on October 11, 2015
A discussion between a Fox News panel and Garry Kasparov, former world chess champion and domestic critic/challenger of Russian president Vladimir Putin, got heated on Sunday morning.
"Russian planes are there and America is in retreat!" said Kasparov. "Putin in one week, kicked America out of [Syria], Iraq and the Middle East."
"We've already seen renewed violence between Israelis and Palestinians, it is almost natural, when you see Obama snubbing Netanyahu and cozying up with Hezbollah bosses."
"The region is so explosive that [Putin] will win. Imagine something happens with Israel? Putin will win."
"What's he going to win? What's Putin going to win?" asks FNC's Alan Colmes.
"Chaos!" shouts Kasparov. "That's all he needs, total destruction of the world order... and Obama walks away."
"Do we need friends? How many years will it take for a new president to repair relations?" asks Kasparov. "It is very easy to destroy relations and lose trust."
"Thank goodness we have relations with Iran now!" says Colmes.
At this point, the discussion falls apart............
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2015/10/11/garry_kasparov_putin_will_win_choas_total_destruction_of_the_world_order.html
Cheers !
The Zionists have held the Palestinians hostage, by force of arms, since 1967.
DeleteWhy doesn't Obama speak to that reality?
Could it be that it is because it was a US Zionist that made him a millionaire, and helped to propelled him to political the heights he has obtained?
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DeleteThey are no more a peace partner than the Nazis were “peace partners” to the British Labour government, circa 1938.
You lose, Mr. Lieberman, based on the Godwin Rule.
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DeleteGarry Kasparov has failed in his efforts to take on Putin in Russia. He is driven by his hatred of Putin and his own past failures.
On some issues, he is correct, Putin in Syria, Obama's lack of a strategy, but here he merely states the obvious that is discernible to anyone who has followed the progress of the Iraq/Syria war. As such his testimony is merely repetition. In other areas, the causes for the current Israeli/Palestinian conflict, he is nutz that or just pumping up the crowd.
Listening to Garry Kasparov is as much a waste of time as listening to John Bolton or Lindsay Graham.
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Could it be that the people who call themselves "palestinians" is a total scam by the Arab nations to continue strife in the middle east in an attempt to do what the arabs collectively have wished to do (which was to destroy Israel)?
Deletethe fact is simple.
The arabs of Palestine, with their brother arabs refused to accept yes in 1948, and since then?
The Losers of the war they started, the arabs continue to try to destroy Israel and each time their hand weakens.
Now let's look at the region.
Arabs murdering Arabs, Palestinians murdering Egyptians, Syrians murdering Palestinians, Iraqis and Iranians murdering everyone....
and of course Palestinians trying to murder jews..
But wait!!!
The Jews are fighting back....
and the attacking palestinians? Are dying....
As more palestinians attack and stab, shoot missiles and tunnel into Israel more will die...
The "zionists" have held Palestinians hostage since 1967"? Now that's rich....
Maybe Jack your history is weak...
the PLO tried to blow up the Israel water carrier in an attempt of mass murder against the Jews BEFORE 1967, before Jerusalem was liberated, before one INCH of the disputed lands of the west bank were liberated....
No Jack, the Palestinians (or whatever name you wish to call them) have been waging war on the jews for decades before 1967.
Here is some history for you to distort....
The Hebron massacre refers to the killing of sixty-seven or sixty-nine Jews (including 46 yeshiva students and teachers) on 24 August 1929 in Hebron, by local Arabs. The event also left scores seriously wounded or maimed. Jewish homes were pillaged and synagogues were ransacked. Soon after, all Hebron's Jews were evacuated by the British authorities. Many returned in 1931, but almost all were evacuated at the outbreak of the 1936–39 Arab revolt in Palestine. The massacre formed part of the 1929 Palestine riots, in which a total of 133 Jews were killed, and brought the centuries-old Jewish presence in Hebron to an end.
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Actually, it was longer than centuries, it was thousands of years.
Or could it be that the Ashkenazi, who have taken Judaism hostage. refuse to acknowledge history and genetics?
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteDefine Ashkenazi
DeleteDefine Judaism
WiO,
DeleteCould you please explain how then the UN has voted the Palestinians observer status?
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ReplyDeleteThe NYTreports...
U.N. Says Afghan Taliban’s Reach Is Widest Since 2001
By ROD NORDLAND and JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN 1:27 PM ET
The data appears at odds with the assessment by Gen. John F. Campbell, the coalition’s American commander, in his testimony to Congress last week...
Yet, the Obama administration and some here argue we need to keep troops there.
Why?
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https://hallsofkarma.wordpress.com/2015/10/10/meet-captain-balislava-russian-fighter-pilot-who-bombed-the-hell-out-of-isis-yesterday/
ReplyDeleteGood looking pilot, who is bombing ISIS in Syria
Do you objectify all females?
Delete
ReplyDeleteSeaHawks squawk.
Lose by 3 in overtime.
I see Quart seems to favor Pooty over Kasparov.
Urban values, I guess....
But then Quart would favor Hillary over Sarah Palin, so what can one say ?
DeleteUrban brain death........
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DeleteYou, sir, are a moron.
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Idaho Bob,
DeleteCan you tell us why?
October 11, 2015
ReplyDeleteKilling Christians and Jews
By Ben Voth
The gunman in Oregon performed a powerfully bigoted and hateful argument as a statement against Christians and Jews. The steadfast refusal of our intellectual culture to take seriously the global and American agenda of violence against Christians and Jews is important and immoral. Our society accepts violence against Christians and Jews as being a comprehensible response to overzealous and “privileged” communities both here at home and abroad. We need to take clear stock of social markers taking us down a path of intimidation that must be confronted and stopped.
Our society arguably crossed a political Rubicon on December 12, 2008. Less than one month after losing the presidential election, the much maligned governor Sarah Palin’s Christian church was burned around the entire perimeter with women and children trapped inside. Plainly sexist verbal assaults from feminist comedians that asked for Palin to be raped and brutalized were realized in a hate crime that earned no federal investigation, no serious social commentary from the media, and no prosecutions to date. No one has been arrested for the crime in Alaska against Palin’s church. The deliberate silence that would not have been practiced if Biden or Obama’s (if he had one) church had been burned with women and children inside, is part of a socialized stigma toward Christians deemed by our elite as socially and politically regressive.
In 2010, a Christian man in St. Louis from Iraq who had converted from Islam was pulled from his car and had a Star of David carved into his back by his attackers. His attackers deemed his poetry defending the dignity of Jews in the Middle East to be too offensive for their tastes. Our intellectual elite conflate their antisemitic and anti-Christian views by arguing that the conservative Christian defense of Israel is an attempt to force a nihilistic theological Armageddon on unbelieving adversaries.
Those antisemitic dispositions were on vivid display as the prime minister of Israel stated in stark and obvious terms how the international community has turned a blind eye toward Iran’s genocidal goals regarding the one Jewish state in the world. The American delegation of Samantha Power and John Kerry would not sit for the speech from Israel demanding greater accountability for these genocidal ambitions— even though Power has made a career castigating political bodies for inaction on these types of questions. Netanyahu stared down the United Nations for 45 eerie seconds of silence that mocked the international bodies protracted silence regarding violence against Jews and Christians globally.
In 2011, a gay activist gunman created a list of conservative Christian targets from the Southern Poverty Law Center website. He began his killing spree at the Family Research Council in Washington DC. He carried with him a backpack full of Chick-fil-A sandwiches. His plan was to shoot FRC employees, and as they lay dying, he would compel them to eat the sandwiches as a final communion for their deep dark sins of homophobia.
DeleteThe recent Charleston shooting was committed in a Christian church and the gunman listened to an hour of Christian fellowship before killing those kindly gathered to love one another in the name of God. Our Facebook pages overflow with seething hate-filled rage against Kim Davis. The sources are invariably the Jacobin Pharisees of American life who constitute themselves as supremely tolerant. In reality, our culture has become shockingly intolerant toward Christians and Jews. Their elite diatribes were strangely silent when American civil clerks broke the law in favor of gay couples before the Supreme Court case in 2015 but now the jacobins loudly demand the Christian clerks “do their jobs!”
Though he is hardly a paragon of Christian theology, Donald Trump earns the growing ire and hate-filled contempt of our Jacobin elite who use the term of “equality” to rally for the destruction of individual liberty. South Park comedians delighted recently in offering the rape and killing of Donald Trump in the latest installment of fantasizing violence against American conservatives. The internet in 2012 took special delight in slandering Christian conservatives Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann.
It is socially acceptable among our intellectual elite to be contemptuous and hateful to individuals deemed inconveniently Christian. Law professor Stephen Carter complained of a “Culture of Disbelief” in the 1990s and now we have evolved into a culture of contempt with regard to Christian and Jewish belief. Our popular sports media is a convenient social marker. Craig James was removed from broadcast for political speech criticizing gay marriage. ESPN cut off a Clemson coach when he waxed too theological in his praise for football success. ESPN chose gender-bending Bruce Jenner for public honors over Christian hero Lauren Hill who struggled to play women’s collegiate basketball while raising awareness for a serious form of brain cancer. Whether removing Christians who do not see how much Jesus appreciates gay marriage and Planned Parenthood or remaining silent with regard to hate crimes committed against these groups, Christians need to watch their public steps according to this intellectual elite. Our punditry offer silence when they should condemn violence against Christians and Jews while demanding silence among the advocates within those same targeted communities who defend orthodoxy. The idea that the constitutionally established free exercise of religion protects speech against the ideological mascots of our elite is now deemed absurd and offensive.
Christians who continue to turn the other cheek toward this hatred are unwitting accomplices to the increasingly popular fantasy of killing Christians and Jews. Our silence conveys an acceptance of what is unacceptable— the killing of the innocent in order to reify the powers of the intolerant. It is painfully obvious from comedic outlets, to college classrooms, to popular sports broadcast, to international political forms, that it is ok to speak of Christians and Jews in ways we would not speak of other groups. It is equally acceptable to silence and shun those who speak in defense of these groups. Now is the time to end silence surrounding this new American habit adapted to please our secular pharisees.
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/10/killing_christians_and_jews.html#ixzz3oIHMntEu
Anybody but Uncle Bob recall this incident ? -
DeleteOur society arguably crossed a political Rubicon on December 12, 2008. Less than one month after losing the presidential election, the much maligned governor Sarah Palin’s Christian church was burned around the entire perimeter with women and children trapped inside. Plainly sexist verbal assaults from feminist comedians that asked for Palin to be raped and brutalized were realized in a hate crime that earned no federal investigation, no serious social commentary from the media, and no prosecutions to date.
You had all, WiO excepted, forgotten, hadn't you...
Quart, I know Garry Kasparov. Garry Kasparov is a friend of mine. Quart, you're no Garry Kasparov.
ReplyDelete.
DeleteThank you.
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DeleteAnd that brief flicker of light briefly struggling to grow in Idaho has been brutally extinguished.
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Can you elaborate?
Delete.
DeleteNo.
If you are going to comment, try and keep up.
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Don't pay Quart no mind, Miss Ride.
DeleteHe's always grumpy and impolite when he's taking a beating.
Garry Kasparov is not a dumb shit.
ReplyDeleteYou won't find Garry Kasparov arguing that the nearly simultaneous rise of ISIS in Iraq and the withdrawal of our troops from Iraq was just a 'coincidence'.
Garry Kasparov has a brain.
He sees the causal connection.
Only the brain dead do not.
Anyone up for a 'frog march' for “Sid Vicious” Blumenthal ? -
ReplyDeleteOctober 11, 2015
'Frog march' for Sid Blumenthal?
By Thomas Lifson
During the Bush Derangement Syndrome era, a common fantasy on the left was that Karl Rove would be “frog marched out of the White House in handcuffs” for his alleged crime of revealing the name of CIA desk jockey Valerie Plame. Plame, and her husband Joe Wilson IV (author of the frog march fantasy) became glamorous icons of progs across America for their role in emphasizing the severity of punishment for violations of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act.
(From Vanity Fair)
Ten years later, what goes around has come around. Alana Goodman reports in the Free Beacon:
An email forwarded by Hillary Clinton to a colleague that identified a top CIA informant in Libya could trigger an intelligence investigation and add to concerns that she mishandled classified information, according to intelligence sources.
Clinton received an email in March 2011 from her longtime adviser Sidney Blumenthal that identified a covert Libyan source who was reportedly working with the CIA. Blumenthal said his business partner, the late former CIA agent Tyler Drumheller, had given the information to him.
Clinton forwarded the email over her personal server to a colleague, according to emails published on Thursday by Rep. Trey Gowdy (R., S.C.), chairman of the House select committee on Benghazi.
An intelligence source said that the email could trigger an investigation into whether any of the parties violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, calling the apparent disclosure “a couple steps above Valerie Plame.”
“Once you compromise the cover, there’s a whole section of law called the Intelligence Identities Protection Act,” said the source. “It’s against federal law to disclose the identities or the real names of anybody who works for the CIA or any other part of the intelligence community.”
The Intelligence Identities Protection Act prohibits individuals who have access to the identities of covert agents—including CIA intelligence sources—from intentionally disclosing this information to individuals who are not cleared to receive it.
In Trey Gowdy’s remarkable letter to Elijah Cummings, the former prosecutor called Blumenthal’s naming of the CIA source “some of the most protected information in our intelligence community.”
Recall that there is no love lost between Blumenthal and the Obama administration, which explicitly prohibited his employment at the State Department. So any Justice Department moves to prosecute the man widely known as “Sid Vicious” would not necessarily encounter political obstacles.
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2015/10/frog_march_for_sid_blumenthal.html#ixzz3oIri3MLD
- Me, me, me roars the crowd......
Oh, oh.......more trouble in the Democratic Clown Car -
ReplyDelete2015: GENNIFER FLOWERS DOWNLOADS ON HILLARY..........Drudge
from The Democratic Clown Car News -
DeleteEven Hillary Clinton’s fans don’t believe a thing she says
By Jonah Goldberg
October 9, 2015 | 7:28pm
Modal Trigger
Even Hillary Clinton’s fans don’t believe a thing she says
Hillary Clinton Photo: AP
Hillary Clinton revealed on Wednesday that she opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, providing just the latest evidence that she is little more than political ambition wrapped in a pantsuit.
Pay attention to the press coverage, because it’s fascinating: Nobody takes Clinton at her word. I’m not just referring to her conservative critics.
Slate’s Jim Newell asks, “Will anyone find Clinton’s position convincing?” The question is purely rhetorical.
The article is headlined “Hillary Clinton Comes Out Against TPP, at Least Until the Democratic Convention.”
In “First Read,” a newsletter put out by “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd and his colleagues, the lead item on Thursday was titled “Why Clinton’s Trade Flip-Flop Is So Unbelievable.” They write:
“Yes, Hillary Clinton’s new opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade accord cleans up something she needed to do before next week’s first Democratic debate. And, yes, it puts pressure on Vice President Joe Biden getting into the race (because he’d be on the only major candidate in support of TPP). But make no mistake: This flip-flop isn’t believable at all.”
Clinton had long touted TPP as “the gold standard” of trade deals. A tally by CNN in June found at least 45 instances where she had plumped, praised, pushed or otherwise promoted the agreement. That, of course, would make sense given that she was secretary of state when it was being crafted and had a big role in selling it.
After she left the administration, Clinton said she wouldn’t take a position on TPP until it was done. She couldn’t put it off any longer, so she’s finally taking a stand. Well, maybe not a stand. It’s more like a modified crouch. Here’s how she explained her position on PBS: “As of today, I am not in favor of what I have learned about it.”
Clinton went on to explain that she was “worried that the pharmaceutical companies may have gotten more benefits, and patients and consumers fewer.” She also said she was deeply worried about safeguards against “currency manipulation” not being part of the deal.
DeleteBut as even the reliably liberal writers at Vox.com note, this makes no sense. The provisions — or lack thereof — on currency manipulation are no different than when then-Secretary Clinton was calling TPP the “gold standard.”
Meanwhile, the provisions on pharmaceutical companies are tougher than what the administration asked for.
As Vox’s Timothy Lee notes, Clinton is either making up reasons to oppose TPP now, or she was utterly ineffectual then — i.e., when she could have made a difference inside the administration.
I think this is a false choice; both things are probably true.
In fact, finding evidence that Clinton operates this way is like looking for evidence that fire is hot. In 2008, when it was in her interest, Clinton was against federal “blanket rules” on guns; now she’s making extra-constitutional gun-grabbing the centerpiece of her campaign (at least this week, while a recent mass murder is still fresh in our memories).
She long opposed same-sex marriage on principle, until the times required a new position. She initially thought the undercover videos of Planned Parenthood were “disturbing.” But within 48 hours, she was a stalwart defender of Planned Parenthood. As more — and more disturbing — videos emerged, she grew more adamant that the outrage wasn’t the fetal organ harvesting, but the videos exposing them.
And so on: the driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants, the Iraq War, NAFTA, taking credit for regime change in Libya, her ever-shifting stories about her e-mail server. Hillary Clinton is like a lava lamp. Don’t like what you’re seeing at the moment? Wait a minute. Just don’t expect anything to last.
But all of this misses what I find so fascinating. With most of these examples, it’s almost impossible to find someone who takes what Clinton says or does at face value. If you’re not on her payroll, or auditioning to get on it one day, or just painfully naive, you simply start from the assumption that Clinton is unencumbered by any principles that might prove inconvenient to her political ambitions.
No wonder she’s running scared from a socialist.
http://nypost.com/2015/10/09/even-hillary-clintons-fans-dont-believe-a-thing-she-says/
Question time on Judge Jeanine on Fox -
ReplyDeleteViewer writes in a question for Hillary -
"Hillary, would you prefer a 6 x 8 or a 5 x 6 cell ?"
Putin’s model of success
ReplyDeletePutin at a meeting of the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights in Moscow last week. (Yuri Kochetkov/AP)
By Jackson Diehl Deputy editorial page editor October 11 at 6:57 PM
Western officials who pronounce themselves puzzled about Vladimir Putin’s intentions in Syria are missing some big clues. There is a clear model for the campaign Russia is pursuing on behalf of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, a legacy that is Putin’s pride: Chechnya.
The Muslim republic in the North Caucasus and the decade-long war that Putin launched there in September 1999 have mostly been forgotten by the outside world since the dictator installed there by Putin, Ramzan Kadyrov, consolidated control in the late 2000s. But the Kremlin regards it as a “good, unique example in history of [the] combat of terrorism,” as Dmitry Medvedev, Putin’s prime minister, put it. Chechnya, Medvedev said last year, is “one of the business cards of Russia.”
Jackson Diehl is deputy editorial page editor of The Post. He is an editorial writer specializing in foreign affairs and writes a biweekly column that appears on Mondays.
What are the components of this winning formula? First, define all opposition to the prevailing regime as terrorist, indistinguishable from the most extreme jihadists. That enables a fundamental political aim: to eliminate alternatives. In Syria today, moderate and secular opposition forces arguably are getting harder to find. That wasn’t the case in Chechnya in 1999. The country’s nationalist president, Aslan Maskhadov, had won a democratic election, defeating an Islamist opponent by 59 to 23 percent. His predecessor, Dzhokhar Dudayev, was so secularized that he was unaware how many times a day Muslims pray.
Russia killed them both, along with every other moderate Chechen leader it could find, both at home and abroad. One was murdered in Vienna; another in Dubai. When Western leaders pressed Putin to negotiate with Maskhadov and other secular moderates, he invariably responded angrily. “Would you invite Osama bin Laden to the White House . . . and let him dictate what he wants?” he demanded of one group of Western visitors.
It should be no surprise that Russia’s first Syria bombings have been aimed at the remnants of the moderate opposition. It’s not just that they are backed by the United States; they represent a viable alternative to the Assad regime, and so, under Chechnya rules, must be eliminated. “He doesn’t distinguish between [the Islamic State] and a moderate Sunni opposition that wants to see Mr. Assad go,” President Obama said after meeting Putin at the United Nations. “From their perspective, they’re all terrorists.”
The first stages of the Russian military campaign in northern Syria have followed a familiar pattern. Heavy bombing and shelling of civilian areas preceded scorched-earth sweeps, just as in Chechnya. According to a report on Chechnya by the International Crisis Group, “war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by [Russian] troops” included “indiscriminate shelling and bombing, secret prisons, enforced disappearances, mass graves and death squads.” One common tactic, the report said, was “taking insurgents’ relatives as hostages, subjecting them to torture or summary execution and burning their homes.”
In short, Assad’s forces and their Lebanese and Iranian allies may have to step up their already-notorious brutality to match Putin’s tactics in Chechnya. But they may have expert help: Kadyrov has asked Putin to send his 20,000-member personal army, known as the “kadyrovtsy,” to Syria. The state propaganda outlet Russia Today quoted him as saying he wanted “to go there and participate in special operations.”
DeleteKadyrov and his relationship with Putin offer another lesson to those wondering whether Putin is prepared to dispose of Assad — a prospect that Obama has repeatedly bet on. The Chechen strongman is, if anything, more sinister than the soft-spoken Assad; Kadyrov is known to do his own killing and torturing on occasion. He has solidified a cult of personality in Chechnya, extorts tribute from every business and citizen, and brazenly orders hits on his critics, from journalists and human rights activists to Russian politicians. Many believe him responsible for the murder of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, gunned down near Red Square last winter.
Putin’s response has been to offer Kadyrov not just tolerance but full protection. The Crisis Group reports that senior Russian security officials tried to undermine the Chechen by arresting his gunmen for the Nemtsov murder. Putin rebuffed them, awarding Kadyrov a medal immediately after the hit. “Unless President Putin’s reputation is seriously damaged by his protégé, the rules of the game are unlikely to change,” concluded the report. The same rules will apply to Assad.
Obama’s principal response to Putin’s new offensive has been to predict that the result will be “a quagmire.” But Putin has heard that before. For years Western leaders warned him that the war in Chechnya was unwinnable, that the only solution was political. Putin nevertheless persisted through a decade and more of bloody fighting that cost Russia at least 6,000 military casualties and Chechnya uncounted tens of thousands. The result was the pacification he now trumpets as a “calling card.” Don’t expect him to give up anytime soon on a similar result in Syria.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/putins-model-of-success/2015/10/11/4cb3a592-6dcd-11e5-aa5b-f78a98956699_story.html
Pooty has 'taken the Cross' - which means he intends to crucify all those around him who oppose him....
In short, Assad’s forces and their Lebanese and Iranian allies may have to step up their already-notorious brutality to match Putin’s tactics in Chechnya.
DeleteHmmm......
And so Putin has once again "won", or as the administration would prefer to spin it, "has hung himself."
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, this is just the beginning. Now that the U.S. has begun its pivot out of the middle-east, handing it over to Putin as Russia's latest sphere of influence on a silver platter, there will be staggering consequences for middle-east geopolitics. In out preview of things to come last week, we concluded by laying these out; we will do the same again:
The US, in conjunction with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, attempted to train and support Sunni extremists to overthrow the Assad regime. Some of those Sunni extremists ended up going crazy and declaring a Medeival caliphate putting the Pentagon and Langley in the hilarious position of being forced to classify al-Qaeda as "moderate." The situation spun out of control leading to hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths and when Washington finally decided to try and find real "moderates" to help contain the Frankenstein monster the CIA had created in ISIS (there were of course numerous other CIA efforts to arm and train anti-Assad fighters, see below for the fate of the most "successful" of those groups), the effort ended up being a complete embarrassment that culminated with the admission that only "four or five" remained and just days after that admission, those "four or five" were car jacked by al-Qaeda in what was perhaps the most under-reported piece of foreign policy comedy in history.
Meanwhile, Iran sensed an epic opportunity to capitalize on Washington's incompetence. Tehran then sent its most powerful general to Russia where a pitch was made to upend the Mid-East balance of power. The Kremlin loved the idea because after all, Moscow is stinging from Western economic sanctions and Vladimir Putin is keen on showing the West that, in the wake of the controversy surrounding the annexation of Crimea and the conflict in eastern Ukraine, Russia isn't set to back down. Thanks to the fact that the US chose extremists as its weapon of choice in Syria, Russia gets to frame its involvement as a "war on terror" and thanks to Russia's involvement, Iran gets to safely broadcast its military support for Assad just weeks after the nuclear deal was struck. Now, Russian airstrikes have debilitated the only group of CIA-backed fighters that had actually proven to be somewhat effective and Iran and Hezbollah are preparing a massive ground invasion under cover of Russian air support. Worse still, the entire on-the-ground effort is being coordinated by the Iranian general who is public enemy number one in Western intelligence circles and he's effectively operating at the behest of Putin, the man that Western media paints as the most dangerous person on the planet.
As incompetent as the US has proven to be throughout the entire debacle, it's still difficult to imagine that Washington, Riyadh, London, Doha, and Jerusalem are going to take this laying down and on that note, we close with our assessment from Thursday: "If Russia ends up bolstering Iran's position in Syria (by expanding Hezbollah's influence and capabilities) and if the Russian air force effectively takes control of Iraq thus allowing Iran to exert a greater influence over the government in Baghdad, the fragile balance of power that has existed in the region will be turned on its head and in the event this plays out, one should not expect Washington, Riyadh, Jerusalem, and London to simply go gentle into that good night."
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-10-10/damascus-debacle-how-cia-handed-over-syria-putin-silver-platter
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ReplyDeleteGarry Kasparov is not a dumb shit.,/i>
Yea, he kinda is. However, at least his is not quite as dumb as the Idaho Farmer
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ReplyDeleteWooden Ships
Had a documentary on Woodstock playing in the background.
Great music.
Good times.
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DeleteLyin' Eyes
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Old men, dreaming about Woodstock, about the glory days........remembering......
Deletethose were the days!