The Ukrainian military is showing signs of planning a second attack to regain control over its breakaway states, Lugansk and Donetsk, despite suffering tremendous losses against pro Russian militia in August.
No one knows when the attack will begin.
Rantburg.com foreign military issues writer Chris Covert helps provide a summary of opposing forces in the area and possible plans of the Ukrainian military.
#2
Rumors are at the moment that the Ukrainian military will end the ceasefire on Sunday or Monday. My personal theory is that the Ukrainians will wait until after the October 26th parliament elections. The pro Russian militias are too weak to provoke a break in the truce and the optics in the event of the upcoming Ukrainian counteroffensive, for Ukraina's Maidan movement could negatively affect their chances.
An amusing indictment from an Iranian government mouthpiece.
[Iran Press TV] Think of this as the year that democracy of, by, and for the billionaires shall not perish from the Earth -- not when we're on a new electoral playing field in a political world in which distinctions are no longer made between unlimited money and unlimited speech. In other words, these days, if you have billions of dollars, you can shout from the skies and the rest of us have to listen. If, as Steve Fraser points out today, we've been witnessing the return of "family capitalism on steroids," nowhere has it been bigger than in American politics, aided and abetted by that ultimate family institution, the Supremes (and I'm not, of course, talking about the classic Motown group).
We're still almost two months from the midterm elections in which the Republicans already have the House of Representatives essentially wrapped up and ads for Senate races are zipping onto TV screens in "battleground states" at a dizzying pace. To fund those ads and other campaign initiatives, dollars by the millions are pouring into the coffers of "dark money" outfits in a way guaranteed to leave the record for spending on midterm elections in a ditch at the side of the road. We now have our first estimates of what election 2014 is going to look like as a billionaire's playground; and count on it, you're going to hear the words "record," "billionaire," and "ads" a lot more until November.
"Outside groups" have already spent $120 million on TV ads alone, more than half that sum coming from those dark-money groups that don't have to let anyone know who their contributors are. At the top of that shadowy list are six outfits linked to David and Charles Koch, the billionaire brothers from Wichita. Together, those groups have already sent a mind-spinning 44,000 ads into the politico-sphere in those battleground states, and the Kochs' Americans for Prosperity (AFP) leads the pack with 27,000 of them. In the end, AFP alone is expected to put $125 million into this year's midterm elections, a figure that should take your breath away and yet that's only a start.
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Posted by: Fred ||
09/13/2014 00:00 ||
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#1
Isn't Rafsanjani a billionaire from his pistachio concession?
Long piece from Foreign Affairs that everyone else is quoting, so you should pro'ly read it. Remember that the usual FA reader is a "moderate Democrat", whatever that is, and so they go as lightly on Champ as they can. That makes the piece even more damning.
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/13/2014 00:00 ||
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#6
I thought his foriegn policy was, " Don't bother me untill the turnaround."
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
09/13/2014 8:23 Comments ||
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#7
He made his lies, now live with them.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
09/13/2014 14:01 Comments ||
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#8
He's never had a foreign policy. Can't save something that never existed.
Posted by: Mike N. ||
09/13/2014 15:29 Comments ||
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#9
I wet myself laughing at the part where the Russians sent a deligation to de-escilate and swift action by Kerry made it happen.
I can't seem to find the quote, strange, though kids.
John Kerry's off-the-cuff remarks about Assad handing over his chemical weapons have triggered a potential resolution to the Syrian crisis. Kerry's gaffe-from-the-gods led to furious diplomatic maneuvering that averted an immediate U.S. air strike against Syria.
The Atlantic
#10
Champ and Kerry are uniquely adept at reinforcing failure. Near daily demonstrations have become their hallmark. I see no reason to expect anything more from either of them.
[NATION.PK] Every second cop shoppe in Lahore is literally sold out. Most of the station house officers (SHOs) are collecting 'monthly' from brothels, guesthouses and gambling dens operating in different parts of the quiet provincial capital.
As per investigations conducted by TheNation, the monthly income of the sold-out cop shoppes varies from Rs200,000 to Rs500,000 -- depending upon the numbers of brothels, drug pushers and gambling dens in the area.
Mostly sub-inspectors (SIs) are posted as SHOs in sheer violation of the Police Orders 2002. An SI paid Rs150,000 to the brother of a police brass hat to get posting as an SHO in Lahore's downtown several months ago. He was transferred just after three months from the position but he is contented since he collected a reasonable amount from various sources during his posting.
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Posted by: Fred ||
09/13/2014 00:00 ||
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[NATION.PK] What happened to the great Karachi Operation which was launched amidst promises to rid the mega city of the many ills that have plagued it for far too long now? Is it still going on? Or has it been officially halted? We can't really tell, and that tells us everything, doesn't it?
Is there a progress report? If so, where is it and what does it say? How many people have so far been arrested? And how many of those arrests have lead to successful convictions? How many target killers have been nabbed? What do the authorities know about their affiliations?
Have the Taliban-dominated areas such as Mangho Pir been cleared? Why not? What action has been taken against seminaries infamous for their role in fanning extremism? What about notorious sectarian parties? Do they remain autonomous and immune to scrutiny?
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Posted by: Fred ||
09/13/2014 00:00 ||
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[NATION.PK] After his landslide victory in last year's elections, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif ... served two non-consecutive terms as prime minister, heads the Pakistain Moslem League (Nawaz). Noted for his spectacular corruption, the 1998 Pak nuclear test, border war with India, and for being tossed by General Musharraf... unsuccessfully tried to emulate Turkey's Recep Erdogan in countering the Army's political might, and he now risks sharing the fate of Egyptian President Muhammad Morsi, who was ousted by the Army after the 2013 protests, a report in a major US paper said on Wednesday.
"Sharif is finding out the hard way that the success of Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan
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Posted by: Fred ||
09/13/2014 00:00 ||
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Jamal Doumani
[ARABNEWS] IS the Islamic State (IS), that brutal group of caliphniks whose recruits seem possessed of a philistine's sense of where Islamic values and Arab culture intersect, about to get beheaded? I certainly hope so.
President B.O. did not have to try hard in order to convince Americans to back a new, expanded campaign of Arclight airstrikes against IS in Iraq and Syria by giving a speech to the nation about the issue last Wednesday, three hours before the 13th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Americans appear to overwhelmingly view the terrorist group now rampaging in the Levant as a serious threat to US interests, and support for military action has widened dramatically in just the past few weeks, certainly since the gruesome beheading of two American journalists.
#2
Anyone who thinks Obama has a "strategy" doesn't know what a strategy actually is. Obama is a mouth. He mistakes words for reality and he is essentially a worthless coward incapable of doing DOING. He won't DO anything. He will talk about it.
It isn't a matter of changing his mind....he can't change his nature.
ISIL is safe as long as Obama is President. America doesn't HAVE a Leader. Besides the American people are wearing earrings when it comes to character. They don't believe in much except their own free ride on their new shiny gluteus.
Most Americans actually are Punks. Obama for a father and Nancy Pelosi as your mother.
Posted by: Big Thromoth3646 ||
09/13/2014 7:18 Comments ||
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#4
"A cause of that instability is failed international policy in Iraq and Syria."
NO. Islam is the sole cause of that instability. Unfortunately, other nations have their own agendas & therefore have failed to grasp what's going own.
The Hatfield-McCoy feud lasted about 30 years, killed about 30 people, and started over the ownership of a pig. The pan-Islamic outbreak started with a desire to rule the world, degenerated into centuries of inter-tribal feuds, has probably killed or enslaved millions, and they don't even believe in owning pigs.
#5
As long as the "strategy" is limited air strikes on vehicles ISIS/ISIL will continue. What will happen is ISIS/ISIL will control the cities because there is too much risk of collateral "civilian" damage.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
09/13/2014 8:29 Comments ||
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#6
What the hell does this moron mean by "equitable political solutions".
That smacks of the old "if we can get them to like us they will stop" BS.
It has nothing to do with equitable political solutions or kumbayah, it is an ideological issue.
Islam is a totalitarian government cloaked in a religion.
Since the current spokesmen for the "religion" advocate death and destruction for the US and all of our allies and everyone who does not follow their religion, I would say we better mean business.
there is nothing we can do to change their mindset. Since they kill each other when they can't find a Jew or a Christian to kill, I would say there is a huge pathology in their thinking.
This guy doesn't get it.
The liberal media will never get it because good intentions and nice words don't do it in a world wide death struggle/war between two completely polar opposite mindsets.
Posted by: Bill Clinton ||
09/13/2014 10:54 Comments ||
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#7
But, when it comes to promises, Obama has a very short memory.
#4
You would like to think that they recognize the need but then more likely it is the new pot laws in Colorado have them all in a highly sedated state.
Posted by: Bill Clinton ||
09/13/2014 10:47 Comments ||
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#5
There is no such thing as anti war crowd, they just present themselves that way when convenient.
[NationalReview] Its differences with other Islamic-supremacist groups are irrelevant.
Key paragraphs:
What is going on among the Islamic State, al-Qaeda, the Moslem Brüderbund (including Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason,), and other factions is a power struggle for leadership of the Sunni side of the global Islamic-supremacist movement. Because of the audience to which these actors play, some of their differences are framed as sharia-based. Moslem Brüderbund and al-Qaeda leaders (who are allied against Assad in Syria and were allied with the Islamic State until fairly recently) contend, for example, that the Islamic State's unilateral declaration of a caliphate transgresses Islamic principles that call for consultation and consensus among sharia-adherent Moslems. They argue that Islamic-supremacist groups should work cooperatively in the formation of local or regional emirates, with an eye toward eventually assembling the global caliphate.
From our perspective, so what? Both sides regard the West as the enemy to be conquered. Their differences are germane only to the extent that sharia fidelity, in addition to sheer brute force, will determine who comes out on top in their intramural warfare. As we have been observing here for years with respect to al-Qaeda and the Brotherhood, their disputes are mostly tactical; their splits on the finer points of Islamic-supremacist ideology bear only on how they regard each other. When it comes to the West, both see us as the enemy -- and they put aside their differences to attack us.
The same has also always been true of the ideological/doctrinal divide between Sunni and Shiite jihadists. For example, al-Qaeda has had cooperative and operational relations with Iran since the early 1990s. Iran collaborated with al-Qaeda in the 1996 Khobar Towers attack that killed 19 U.S. airmen; probably in the 9/11 attacks; certainly in the aftermath of 9/11; and in the Iraq and Afghan insurgencies. Al-Qaeda would not be what it is today without state sponsorship, particularly from Iran. The Islamic State might not exist at all.
The point is that al-Qaeda has never been anything close to the totality of the jihadist threat. Nor, now, is the Islamic State. The challenge has always been Islamic supremacism: the ideology, the jihadists that are the point of the spear, and the state sponsors that enable jihadists to project power. The challenge cannot be met effectively by focusing on one element to the exclusion of others.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
09/13/2014 00:00 ||
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#1
global Islamic-supremacist movement.
Half the damn problem is getting the west to take the concept seriously. I remind such that rats have for ages now been understood to be a menace to life.
To this end I am fond of rat terriers and clay mores.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Iran Press TV] Think of this as the year that democracy of, by, and for the billionaires shall not perish from the Earth -- not when we're on a new electoral playing field in a political world in which distinctions are no longer made between unlimited money and unlimited speech. In other words, these days, if you have billions of dollars, you can shout from the skies and the rest of us have to listen. If, as Steve Fraser points out today, we've been witnessing the return of "family capitalism on steroids," nowhere has it been bigger than in American politics, aided and abetted by that ultimate family institution, the Supremes (and I'm not, of course, talking about the classic Motown group).
[NATION.PK] Every second 
[NATION.PK] What happened to the great Karachi Operation which was launched amidst promises to rid the mega city of the many ills that have plagued it for far too long now? Is it still going on? Or has it been officially halted? We can't really tell, and that tells us everything, doesn't it? 
[NATION.PK] After his landslide victory in last year's elections, Prime Minister 
[NationalReview] Its differences with other Islamic-supremacist groups are irrelevant. 
