[NYP] To announce charges in three cases against foreign operatives working in the United States, Justice Department officials held a press conference last week that recalled the Red Scare days of the 1950s. This time, the alleged Communist evil doers are Chinese, not Russians.
Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI director Christopher Wray and others adopted a striking anti-China tone in describing a level of venality.
They are willing to "lie, cheat and steal their way to dominance," Wray said, pointing to criminal cases involving agriculture, academia, green technology and governments.
Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, citing evidence that bribes were offered to obtain inside information about Justice’s investigation of Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant, said the case "shows the interconnection between . . . intelligence officers and Chinese companies."
After the officials talked in this hostile manner for nearly 30 minutes, reporters asked questions about details. But there were no questions or any comments from officials about the elephant in the room.
Said elephant being the fact that the family of the president of the United States had deals with a Chinese bank and a Chinese energy firm that were nearly identical to the pattern the officials had just called a national security threat. Yet no one dared to mention the obvious similarity.
The see-no-evil moment underscores the lack of seriousness in much of Washington about the near certainty that President Biden is compromised by his family’s lucrative relationship with agents of the Chinese government.
#1
They are willing to "lie, cheat and steal their way to dominance," Wray said, pointing to criminal cases involving agriculture, academia, green technology and governments.
[Barely a Blog] Pleasurable excitement ripples through the usual boredom of Washington, and the resident curiosities enjoy exquisite frissons, over the possibility of nuclear war over the Ukraine. Some official of the EU, or maybe it was the mediocrity in the White House with the truculence problem, but anyway one of the geniuses ruling the planet’s fate has said that if Russia used nukes, the Russian army would be destroyed, grrr, bowwow, woof. Exactly how it would be destroyed, the sayer didn’t say. Anyway, the threats and counterthreats swirl around the idea that a nuke war between Russia and the West might occur. Maybe, with tactical nukes in the Ukraine, about which nobody gives a rat’s nether region. The world is full of damned fools.
But:
The general staffs of both Russia and China are, whatever else you may think of them, sane. They know of America’s massive nuclear forces. They are not going to launch an atomic war. Sane behavior cannot be relied on with Washington’s second-rate lawyers, but the generals in the Pentagon are not crazy. They like hobbyist wars and big budgets, but if Biden ordered a nuclear strike, they would be likely to suddenly remember that Congress has to declare war and, seeing that their radar screens were empty of incoming missiles, and say, "Mr. President, we are not authorized to do that." And recommend a committee.
What would such a war be like? Let’s guess.
America is fragile. We don’t notice because it works smoothly and because when a local catastrophe occurs—earthquake, hurricane, tornado—the rest of the country steps in to remedy things. The country can handle normal and regional catastrophes. But nuclear war is neither normal nor regional. Very few warheads would serve to wreck the United States beyond recovery for decades. This should be clear to anyone who actually thinks about it.
Defense is impossible. Missile defenses are meaningless except as money funnels to the arms industry. This is not the place to go into decoys, hypersonics, Poseidon, maneuvering glide vehicles, bastion stationing, MIRV, just plain boring old cruise missiles, and so on. Coastal cities are particularly easy targets, being vulnerable to submarine-launched sea-skimming missiles. Washington, New York, Boston, San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle for starters, all gone.
A modern country is a system of systems of systems, interdependent and interconnected—water, electricity, manufacturing, energy, telecommunications, transportation, pipelines, and complex supply chains. These are interconnected, interdependent, and rely on large numbers of trained people showing up for work. Modern warheads are not the popgun squibs of Hiroshima. Talking of repair any time soon after the nuclear bombing of a conurbation is foolish because the city would have many hundreds of thousand of dead, housing destroyed, massive fires, horrendously burned people with no hope of medical care, and, in general, populations too focused on staying alive to worry about abstractions like supply chains.
The elimination of transportation might cause more death than the bombs. Cities, suburbs, and towns cannot feed themselves. They rely on a constant, heavy influx of food grown in remote regions. This food is shipped by rail or truck to distribution centers, as for example Chicago, whence it is transshipped to cities like New York. Heavy megatonnage on Chicago would disrupt rail lines and trucking firms. Trains and trucks need gasoline and diesel which come from somewhere, presumably in pipelines. These, broken by the blast, burning furiously, would take time to repair. Time is what cities would not have.
What would happen in, say, New York City even if, improbably, it were not bombed? Here we will ignore the likelihood of sheer, boiling panic and resultant chaos on learning that much of the country had been flattened. In the first few days there would be panic buying with shelves at supermarkets being emptied. Hunger would soon become serious. By day four, people would be hunting each other with knives to get their food. By the end of the second week, people would be eating each other. Literally. This happens in famines.
#1
By day four, people would be hunting each other with knives to get their food. By the end of the second week, people would be eating each other. Literally. This happens in famines.
#2
This WILL happen sometime, maybe not here but somewhere. To be honest I'm a little surprised it hasn't happened already. It won't be Russia, China, (probably not) Iran, NK, but some crazy (Islamic) group.
Posted by: Sonny Black ||
10/30/2022 8:28 Comments ||
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#3
Remember when the DC deep state were absolutely terrified that Trump was going to start a nuclear war? And this was the biggest danger to civilization that we had ever faced?
Now they're salivating at the thought of starting a nuclear war. And being against nuclear holocaust and the destruction of the world means you must be on Putin's payroll. It's grounds to censor you.
#4
Missile defenses are meaningless except as money funnels to the arms industry.
Untrue. They are great at stopping one to a few missiles like from North Korea or a long range cruise missile attack on Guam from China.
They are not meant to stop 5,000 ballistic warheads converging on the US. There are simply to few of them and they aren't designed to track and go after that many targets.
#5
Safeguard was designed to hose incoming MIRVs. Congress de-activated it the day it became operational.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
10/30/2022 9:29 Comments ||
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#6
The error in this article is a lack of understanding of the power of a nuclear weapon
ONE 1.0 megaton nuke on Chicago would erase downtown and all the suburbs for 10 miles in all directions
#8
Elie's will or have developed human meat gourmet delights. Tastes like chicken. Aborted babies ,fine dining. Home delivery within 30 minuets. Stranded Japanese lacking supplies simply went to prisoners to carve out parts as needed. No refrigeration so you removed what you could to allow prisoner to live.
[American Thinker] The United States began with our Founders having wealth similar to the gentry in Europe. However, the ordinary people comparable to ourselves were essentially paupers. We built our homes with wood and mud (log homes and adobe), same as people before us for thousands of years. Famous Dane County farmers market, Madison, WI.
But by 1914, we were the wealthiest people on Earth. Why? The answer is capitalism — capitalism with no government cost or interference. We didn’t even have an income tax until 1913.
By 1914, unfettered capitalism had brought prices down so low that one person, earning the average wage of only 32 cents per hour, could support a sizable family with no additional income.
Our incomes and standard of living continued to grow throughout the Roaring Twenties. The recently imposed low income tax was innocuous and there were almost no regulations to slow the rise in standard of living. Prices of food, clothing, autos, housing, and other usable goods were declining.
The quality of goods was increasing rapidly and became better than one might imagine. The average home was built on raised-wood decking with hand-laid and hand-finished floors, lath-and-plaster walls and ceilings, and more plumb wood structure than today’s oft-called cracker boxes. Many appliances lasted a lifetime. Women wore hand-embroidered silk blouses, fine hats, and men with average wages often wore tailored wool suits, real leather shoes, and wing-collar shirts.
By 1926, the average monthly wage had increased to $1.24 per hour, an 11 percent annual growth rate from $0.32 per hour in 1914.
One person, earning the average wage of $1.24 per hour, could pay off their home in five years, purchase a vacation home, pay that off, and support a family of five all the way through college. Note that our vacation-home boom in resort towns occurred at that time.
Why is our standard of living so much lower today? One might aver that it is not, because we have more products and technology today.
That is true; however, had those inventions occurred during the Roaring Twenties, they most certainly would have been produced at a lower price and a more long-lasting quality. Our rising wage-to-price standard of living peaked in the Roaring Twenties and has since been declining because of socialism.
First, we must define socialism properly.
Socialism is the Robin Hood theory, take from the rich and give to the poor. They take from the rich by taxing them. Taxation is the sword and tool of socialism. The current definition is completely inaccurate.
After Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini destroyed the revered name of socialism, socialist historians and journalists changed the definition of socialism in an effort to dissimulate socialist activities. They eliminated the old Marxist definition of: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need," and settled upon a new definition, "The government’s takeover of the means of production."
#1
You allow monopolies to be established which happens under 'unfettered capitalism', you pay the price the monopoly sets. You get what the monopoly has to offer. There is no perfect. It's all trade offs. There are those old enough to remember the state sanctioned telephone monopoly when the 'greatest' innovation was the Princess phone.
#2
The Talosian master in Star Trek TOS "The Cage." "We offer him the chance to live out his days unfettered by his physical body..."
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
10/30/2022 7:30 Comments ||
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#3
I'll take Capitalism over the alternatives. That telephone monopoly you are foaming about actually worked. What has come along since was built on what that monopoly built.
I'm not saying monopolies are good or necessary, but saying they are all bad is a simplistic outlook.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
10/30/2022 7:33 Comments ||
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#4
Say the US got a "monopoly" on never fail missile defense. Would that be a bad thing?
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
10/30/2022 7:34 Comments ||
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#5
Your government is a monopoly. It's bloated, inefficient, duplicative, self interested, insular, and certainly not 'customer' oriented. Happens in the market place as well. What you want is unfettered open competitive market while protecting the players from unscrupulous and non-competitive behaviors of others.
#7
Government is not a consumer good. Free people do not "consume" gummint, they govern themselves. It's cute to make the specious argument, but in the end, it has to be a thing unto itself, or you just have cafeteria anarchy. Saying the current gummint is a "monopoly" is like saying Capitalism does not work because the distorted and mis-regulated thing we have right now is capitalism. You are blaming a good idea for the current bad implementation. Please try harder.
See: Parliamentarian gummint.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
10/30/2022 8:19 Comments ||
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#8
Now. For the linsux fanbois: UNIX was created by Ken Thompson at Bell Labs (a monopoly) along with his fellow beneficiaries of monopolist capitalism Dennis Ritchie and Brian Kernigan. Then, a professor named Andrew Tenanbaum working at a gummint monopoly university wrote a book around an idea called "MINIX" which was based on the eeeeeevil monopolist UNIX. Then a kid named Linus Torvalds started monopolistically tinkering on a project at home based on the results of all the aforementioned monopolistic detritus. Evil, evil, evil.
But at least, today, people who really don't like themselves much have an alternative to the Eeeeeevil monopoly (95+% of the market) called Windows.
Oh, yeah. MacOS is based on Mach, a flavor of UNIX made at another gummint monopoly university, CMU, in Pissburgh.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
10/30/2022 8:28 Comments ||
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#9
I grew up on UNIX and have a great love for it. I run FreeBSD and SuSe Linux as processes on my Windows 11 machine. I love that Dave Cutler (father of Windows NT, with an excellent team behind him) did not like UNIX and decided to go in a different direction.
Yes, monopolism has crushed all the life out of human endeavors.
Thank God there aren't 200 different kinds of incompatible light bulbs and you never know what the wall outlet is delivering.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
10/30/2022 8:38 Comments ||
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#10
Government is not a consumer good.
It's a service, another form of market. Business and government both are composed of people, thus have the same foibles and corrupt nature that all people are susceptible to.
#12
No. Wrong. It's in a class all its own. Gummint "services" are a thing that came along later. Gummint originally was supposed to deliver the mail and mediate the people's relationships with other countries. Nothing. Else.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
10/30/2022 9:24 Comments ||
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#13
Governing ourselves is only a service in the sense that we will be worse off if we don't do it or let someone else do it (not for us, but to us). Any elaboration upon that is nonsense.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
10/30/2022 9:26 Comments ||
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#14
Even if we agree to call government a "service", it is not subject to market forces (e.g., USPS, Amtrak, Veterans Administration). How's the FBI been treating folks lately?
#16
Toilet paper is a product. Is wiping your a$$ a "service" because the gummint makes toilet paper manufacturing possible?
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
10/30/2022 9:31 Comments ||
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#17
I'm speaking about US Constitutional gummint, #15.
Nice but lame effort a deflection, though.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
10/30/2022 9:32 Comments ||
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#18
"We should base our gummint on ancient Egyptian standards." Sort of like "The Founders didn't envision M-16s!"
Junk, nay, crap argument.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
10/30/2022 9:34 Comments ||
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#19
Guys, most of you are confusing the difference between natural monopolies (which are manageable) and man-made monopolies. Natural ones are things like currency (it's better for all to have one currency within a country than a currency for each State (think pre-civil war in 1860) ).
Also natural is to have one navy (rather than one for each State). Also one set of laws. Man-made monopolies such as just one on-line marketer (e.g: Amazon) are not better for all of us. Competition is what makes capitalism great, but there is zero justification for competition in natural monopolies. Now.... for the kicker concept here..... Government should ONLY be involved in managing Natural monopolies!
Man-made monopolies are best left to the wild market forces of competition. That is what made the USA great in its early 2 centuries. The growth in wealth of individuals was 95% in areas where each person grew in value. The Government didn't grow in size or its budget in the first 200 years BECAUSE it was geographically distant from others. ONLY by 1914 did it have to come into direct contact with Europe (WWI). And only then did its show its net ability to overwhelm the established productive wealth of Europe.
By 1914 US's production of just steel was far greater than all of Europe's steel. WWI was won based on production capability. This played out yet again in WWII. Think of "Liberty ships" rolling down into the harbor waters.....
Not a yuge issue. Adhoc paras added on the fly. Just hit the space bar.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
10/30/2022 9:44 Comments ||
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#23
You are making inferences where there is none.
The Egyptians organized because of a perceived need to do something that could not be effectively done by singular individuals. Our Constitution is based upon that same principle. The institution of the national government was to provide the enunciated functions, aka services.
#24
Government should not be involved in: Interstate commerce. That is NOT a Natural monopoly . A Natural monopoly is a market interaction that is MOST EFFICIENT when there is just ONE player. It should not be involved in electricity generation. NOT involved in regulating education. NOT involved in helping poor individuals ( called Welfare). It should be Charity, where individuals give to individuals. Each gift is a decision based upon merit. NOT be involved in information such as broadcasting, NPR, deciding what is mis, mal, or dis-information. NOT involved in energy. NOT involved in job creation.
#25
Government manage monopolies? LOL, like they manage USPS, Amtrak, the VA, and I'll just throw in the withdrawal from Afghanistan, just to pile on.
You also have a United States Patent Office (USPO) that is arguably a restraint of trade. You want free market capitalism, dump patents and intellectual property (IP) nonsense.
#26
M. Murcek, if an expressed idea becomes less relevant because there is no paragraphs, then the problem lies with you. I don't know how to insert paragraphs into this comments section. Does this make my idea worthless. According to you post, it does. That is silly. Please focus on the idea and not the method of transmission. Thanks.
#27
Patents are NOT a restraint of trade. Exactly how does a patent restrict trade. IT re-direct where the profit flows. It doesn't change the number of objects bought or sold. Patents change who collects the profit margin from each object created and sold.
#29
Without Patents other Countries can produce your idea without you in the States receiving compensation for having invested the profitable idea. Patents force competitor to acknowledge where the profitable idea originated from....and for a limited period of time. 17 years is common. Patents are not a monopoly concept here. Its a distraction form the idea between natural monopolies and man-made monopolies.
#35
I did not patent being a wisea$$, but I play one in Rantburg comments...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
10/30/2022 10:05 Comments ||
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#36
Thanks to the person who inserted paragraphs into my above long post. So I just press the space bar? Really. Doesn't appear to work.... I'll keep trying....
#37
What platform are you using? Is sending your comment rather than being treated as a character within the comment? It's an issue on phone platforms.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
10/30/2022 10:08 Comments ||
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#38
Is "ENTER" sending your comment rather than being treated as a character within the comment?
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
10/30/2022 10:10 Comments ||
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#39
M. Murcek, There is a time and place for childish comments. The key is to know when to insert them into a conversation. Some comments here attempt to move ideas ahead for all. When comments are viewed as being simply wiseass, (when it's clear to all reading it here that the comments were not) then saying they were wiseass becomes simply frustration at not being able to add anything to the adult segment of the conversation. There is a time and place for child like comments. Knowing WHEN to insert them is the difference between a child's mentality and an adult's.
#41
As I said, pressing enter seems to be a send command on phones. As other commenters here have said, some platforms treat a double spacebar hit as a paragraph break (I've never seen that.) You can go to ATL+013 to get a paragraph break but that also is not absolute.
Lots of variations out there.
BTW. Not belittling your patents. I don't have any. Glad you have ones that probably make my life better.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
10/30/2022 10:22 Comments ||
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#42
I was in Saudi for 38 years. I'd rather not state too many facts about me as that allows identification too easily For those who know energy. Think..... OSPAS, 7th floor issues back in the States, Ain Dar, Peak oil, Yergin, MSC, 911, PDB and so on......
#43
Thank you Murcek..... Its appreciated. I'm using a laptop. Phone's are not a great way to post. It lack the ability to review beforehand. Golden rule of posting..... Don't use a phone, and never drink while posting. Wait !.... hold my beer, while I just......
#45
My my! Such spirited ado over nothing. The government is what the mandarins of the day wish it to be, gentlemen.
But all this fondling of the yuge elephant by y'all does leave me better educated, so thanks 🙃. About trade, patents, and Unix. Those uppity apple bastitches! MacOS is really Unix?! I'll show my fag neighbour now! Thanks, Murcek.
#48
No. Bear was primarily a desk man, but not entirely, but "Shiny pants" is the term used when one has sat so long at the desk your khaki bottoms turns "shiny". Sorry but to earn his keep he would have to have been a NOC. He wasn't. The first page of "Sleeping with the Devil" is about Abqaiq and him learning how it was so vital. Years later the opposing side also became aware of this. May I point out, there are plenty of folks who are able to differentiate between those who did, from those who discuss what was done. Eisenhower barracks produced many of those who did....and still do. Granddad is buried on the The Plain.
#50
Correct. I presume you have good memories of those frequent Consulate parties situated around the pool. Local businessman love to parade their trophy wives. Makes for good gossip and with many libations. Connections are made and business begins....
#52
What?.... Me worry? Recall that page of the MAD mag where you'd fold the page into thirds and a different picture would be revealed. I was young.... you were too. Small pleasures. Spy vs Spy. was a slightly more creative than most of today's mind numbing dribble.
#53
Ref #50: You may recall Valerie Plame "blown cover" fiasco. Married to a diplomat, black passport, in-and-out of the embassy. Movies, books, talk shows.
Such "blown cover" bullshi*, start to finish. Made my head hurt, I can feel it coming on right now in fact. You go in-and-out of any embassy (ours, theirs, anybody's) you are assumed to be in the business of collection. HTF could it be otherwise.
#57
MAD! It was more than a cartoony magazine. It was an education in cynicism which we only later realised was all true! The smartest ones dud, really.
The fold-ins by Al Jaffee. Sergio Aragones, Don Martin's One Fine Evening , Spy vs Spy, the 'four degrees of separation between', and the spoofs! Who can forget the ludicrous, stomachache inducing spoofs? As OspasDhahran said, it's all pretty much gone now. It's all politically loaded püssyfooting, black pawah and liberal faggotry now. No great humor or satire will be written that's not loaded or leftist/rightist anymore.
It's the Bee
Greetings, The Babylon Bee readers. You may or may not be aware of the case of Novak v. City of Parma, Ohio. A quick rundown for the layperson: Mr. Anthony Novak was temporarily jailed for creating a parody Facebook page of his local police department. He has thus far been unsuccessful in suing for damages, as the courts have ruled the police have qualified immunity, and so is asking SCOTUS to review the case.
While the knockoff The Babylon Bee site The Onion filed a petition in support of Mr. Novak, we reject Mr. Novak's claim that parody is protected free speech, as parody is dangerous to those with cultural and political power. And it can hurt people's feelings.
On October 28, 2022, we at The Babylon Bee filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court of the United States in this case to support the government, as nobody should be made fun of in this country.
Read the rest at the link, including a link to the brief
[MiddleEastEye] Earlier this week, Taliban ...the Pashtun equivalent of men... government front man Zabihullah Mujahid tweeted a picture of him meeting with Hamas, a contraction of the Arabic words for "frothing at the mouth", leaders in Istanbul. In the tweet, Mujahid said that he discussed issues of Afghanistan and Paleostine, including the status of al-Aqsa Mosque, with a delegation that included Ismail Haniyeh ...became Prime Minister of Gaza after the legislative elections of 2006 which Hamas won. President Mahmoud Abbas dismissed Haniyeh from office on 14 June 2007 at the height of the Fatah-Hamas festivities, but Haniyeh did not acknowledge the decree and continues as the PM of Gazoo while Abbas maintains a separate PM in the West Bank... , Hamas's political chief.
Mujahid has been in The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the decaying remnant of the Ottoman Empire... for more than one week now, where he has been attending a conference of Islamic scholars and meeting with Afghan business owners, whom he hopes to convince to invest back in their cash-strapped home country.
Though Ankara does not yet officially recognise the Taliban's Islamic Emirate as the government of Afghanistan, Turkey has maintained ties with the Taliban that date back to when they were an armed opposition movement fighting the former western-backed Islamic Theocratic Republic administration.
However, Caliphornia hasn't yet slid into the ocean, no matter how hard it's tried... the news of Mujahid's meeting with Haniyeh has caught experts in Afghanistan and the Middle East by surprise.
Still, Haniyeh has expressed his apparent support of the Taliban in the past. Shortly after the group returned to power in August 2021, the Hamas leader shared details of a phone call he had with senior Taliban official Abdul Ghani Baradar.
In his congratulatory phone call, Haniyeh said that the end of the western occupation of Afghanistan was "a prelude to the demise of all occupation forces, foremost of which is the Israeli occupation of Paleostine".
The following October, Haniyeh had a similar phone call with the Taliban's acting foreign minister, Amir Muttaqi. In that conversation, Haniyeh urged the Islamic Emirate to keep "Paleostine present in the speeches of the Afghan foreign ministry, especially Jerusalem and the ongoing [Israeli] violations there".
Haroun Rahimi, an Afghan academic and author currently based in the US, said the most recent in-person meeting could be a part of the Taliban's efforts to secure some sort of international recognition, and that standing with Paleostine would send a very specific message.
"The Taliban is trying to tap into the anti-imperialist and anti-western sentiment amongst [some] Moslems as a way to put pressure on other Moslem leaders," Rahimi told Middle East Eye.
Rahimi said Mujahid's face-to-face meeting with Haniyeh is also important for its symbolism: "Being associated with the Paleostinian cause, and gaining the endorsement and support of Paleostinian leaders, could help improve the Taliban's standing in the Moslem world."
The Taliban may also be seeking to link Afghanistan and Paleostine as two occupied countries, as Haniyeh had done.
"The Taliban also saw Afghanistan as being occupied by western powers, and would like to portray themselves as the freedom fighters who have freed the country from American imperialism," Rahimi said, an idea he believes the Taliban could use in an effort to bolster support among other Moslem communities.
Ultimately, though, Rahimi said the Taliban is still very much driven by its desire to be seen as the legitimate government of Afghanistan, which was also likely a factor in Mujahid's decision to meet with the Hamas leaders.
"The Taliban wants to have as much diplomatic activities as possible and having interactions with Paleostine also makes ideological sense for [the group]," Rahimi said.
'WHAT PROBLEM DO WE HAVE WITH ISRAEL?'
Authorities in Afghanistan have repeatedly expressed support for the Paleostinian cause over the past 20 years.
In 2019, Afghanistan's then ambassador to Turkey donated $1m in aid to Paleostinian refugees, following on from $500,000 given to the people of Gazoo ...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with an iron fist by Hamaswith about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... five years earlier.
The Afghan senate denounced Israel's war on Gaza in 2014, and the western-backed government also criticised the 2021 Israeli attacks on worshippers and civilians at al-Aqsa Mosque.
The Taliban, meanwhile, has even had to distance itself from Israel.
In August, Taliban front man Muhammad Naeem came under criticism when he refused to rule out ties with Israel during an appearance on Al Jazeera Arabic. When asked if the Islamic Emirate would be willing to engage with Israel, Naeem said the Taliban was open to relations with anyone who was receptive to the idea.
"What problem do we have with Israel? Next thing someone will ask whether we are willing to have a dialogue with Mars," he said during the appearance. However, Caliphornia hasn't yet slid into the ocean, no matter how hard it's tried... Naeem soon retracted his statement, saying his words had been misinterpreted.
Earlier this month, Mujahid criticised an Afghan media report claiming the Islamic Emirate was looking to establish ties with Israel as "fake news".
[BenarNews] The Chittagong Hill Tracts is a sparsely populated but volatile region in southeastern Bangladesh that borders India and Myanmar. The heavily militarized hilly region consists of three districts — Rangamati, Khagrachari, and Bandarban — and is generally dominated by ethnic tribal communities who say they are indigenous to the region.
After Bangladesh’s independence in the early 1970s, Manabendra Narayan (M.N.) Larma, the only politician from Hill Tracts at the time, demanded greater self-control for the local ethnic communities, but his passionate calls were rebuffed by the country’s founding president, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
When Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and most of his family members were killed in a military coup d’etat in 1975, Larma reportedly fled to neighboring India. In the years that followed, his party, Parbatya Chattagram Jana Samhati Samiti (PCJSS), launched an armed wing and waged an insurgency against the Bangladesh government.
The military rulers responded by deploying a massive army contingent and sending a sizable number of Bengali settlers to the Hill Tracts in a bid to alter the region’s demography.
The protracted insurgency claimed hundreds, if not thousands, of lives and displaced a large number of ethnic people, with both sides — mostly the army — accused of rampant human rights When they're defined by the state or an NGO they don't mean much... abuses.
The insurgency formally ended in December 1997, not long after Mujibur’s daughter, the loathesome Sheikh Hasina ...Bangla dynastic politician and current Prime Minister of Bangladesh. She has been the President of the Bangla Awami League since the Lower Paleolithic. She is the eldest of five children of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding father of Bangla. Her party defeated the BNP-led Four-Party Alliance in the 2008 parliamentary elections. She has once before held the office, from 1996 to 2001, when she was defeated in a landslide. She and the head of the BNP, Khaleda Zia show such blind animosity toward each other that they are known as the Battling Begums... , came to power as prime minister for the first time. Hasina’s government struck a peace treaty with the rebels, now led by Larma’s brother, Shantu Larma.
Ever since, the younger Larma has been the ceremonial head of the Regional Council, the supposedly all-powerful board with significant executive powers, but the central government has never formally vested it with such powers.
Today, the 1997 treaty is seen as a travesty by ethnic communities because the government hasn’t implemented its key provisions. But at that time, it was the military establishment that viewed the treaty with intense skepticism and allegedly helped create a new rival ethnic group to undermine it.
The United People’s Democratic Front (UPDF) appealed that the peace treaty did not sufficiently address the concerns of the indigenous communities and called for greater autonomy instead. Its cadres engaged violent mostly peacefully with PCJSS, leading to numerous casualties on both sides.
In 2007, when a military-backed interim government ruled Bangladesh, the PCJSS saw itself divided again.
Several of its bigwigs left the party and formed a new faction they called "PCJSS (M.N. Larma)" — as opposed to Shantu Larma’s PCJSS — and that was actively supported by the UPDF.
M.N. Larma, who was killed by a fellow rebel in 1983, is still a revered figure, and the new faction sought to capitalize on his image.
Spasms of inter-communal violence have also gripped the Hill Tracts region in more recent years, such as deadly rioting that took place between ethnic Jumma Buddhists and Bengali Moslems in 2010.
More lately, a faction has been carved out of UPDF, too. That led the organization to reconcile with its former nemesis, PCJSS, holding to a fragile non-aggression pact.
At the same time, their respective breakaway factions have also forged an alliance of convenience and routinely attack — or defend themselves from — the original PCJSS and UPDF.
None of these formal ethnic parties publicly acknowledge maintaining an armed branch. Authorities often make arrests but never target their political heads, such as Larma, a move which might threaten overall peace.
Larma’s PCJSS has also been stuck in a rivalry with the local branches of the ruling Awami League party since its candidate in Rangamati defeated Awami’s incumbent in the 2014 general election.
That was an embarrassment for the Awami League because the party otherwise "won" the general election mostly unopposed due to a boycott by mainstream opposition parties.
THE ENIGMA OF BANDARBAN
While Rangamati and Khagrachari have always been turbulent due to the insurgency and recent factional violence, Bandarban district remained somewhat unscathed.
The Marma community is the largest in the district, which also boasts a diverse group of smaller ethnic populations.
In contrast, in Khagrachari and Rangamati, the largest ethnic communities would be Chakma and Tripura, who also dominate the two major ethnic organizations, PCJSS and UPDF, both of which originated in Khagrachari, and their breakaway factions. Some observers credited Bandarban’s somewhat different ethnic demographic characters for its relative peacefulness.
That all began to change in recent years when PCJSS attempted to assert its control in Bandarban, an Awami League stronghold. Bir Bahadur Ushwe Sing, an influential Awami League leader of Marma origin, has retained the district’s sole parliamentary seat since 1996 and commands strong support even among the non-ethnic Bengali population. He currently serves as the Minister of Chittagong Hill Tracts Affairs.
But as PCJSS made inroads in Bandarban, new gangs with narrow ethnic undertones began to pop up.
For example, one of these recently formed groups was known as the Mogh Party, as if to represent the Mogh people, which mostly inhabit Bandarban, against the supposedly Chakma-dominated PCJSS.
The Kuki-Chin National Front (KNF), against which the Bangladeshi security forces have launched a crackdown in recent weeks, is known as the "Bawm Party," as if they represent the Bawm people, also indigenous to Bandarban.
With alleged support from security elements and local ruling party politicians, these groups have essentially acted as a shield against PCJSS’s advances.
But what’s unique about KNF is that they also reportedly collaborated with an alleged Islamic krazed killer group. While reports that Moslem krazed killer groups used the CHT as a sanctuary aren’t new, they were understood to be acting alone.
That was why a group with strong ethnic non-Moslem connotations aligning itself with an Islamist group came as a surprise to most observers.
#1
Bandarban borders Myanmar (Burma) Chin state which has been notoriously volatile. This is an excellent synopsis -- less the role that expatriate Burmese (Arakanese) are playing in the region.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited by Platon Besedin
[REGNUM] The enemy will answer for attempts to disturb Sevastopol and Crimea. Already answers.
"At least don’t go to bed," a neighbor told me when Sevastopol was shaken by the events of the morning. You probably already know about them. In the early morning of October 29, the Kyiv regime launched what was probably the most massive attack on the hero city. In particular, we are talking about the fact that nine unmanned aerial vehicles and seven autonomous marine drones were involved. This disgrace was coordinated by Western structures. First of all, the British. We are talking about the fact that drones were aimed at objects with the help of Global Hawk.
It is important to understand here that everyone, in fact, in this situation solves his own problems. The Kyiv regime wants to harm Russia. And Western structures are testing their weapons. They want to understand what effect such attacks can have. And can they, in principle, because the Kyiv regime requires more and more investments from Western forces. But how justified is this?
The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation reported that the attacks of enemy drones were repulsed - mainly from the ships of the Black Sea Fleet. It is further stated that "the sea minesweeper Ivan Golubets, as well as the bonnet barrier in Yuzhnaya Bay, received minor damage."
At the same time, the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation openly stated that British specialists were responsible for the attacks: they were preparing. All this, of course, is a direct escalation of the conflict.
The hero of Viktor Sukhorukov in the film "Brother-2", finishing off the Bandera, said: "You will answer me for Sevastopol!" As the events of 2014, the events of the Russian Spring, showed in the future, the enemy really had to answer. Now, after the attack on the Crimean bridge, after the invasion of drones, the Kyiv regime must be punished as severely as possible. So that he would not even think of disturbing the Sevastopol and Crimeans.
By the way, about the latter. Last night, October 28, walking around the center of Sevastopol, we discussed that, yes, they say, we live in a front-line city, but this is not particularly felt. Sometimes glass breaks, sometimes air defense works, but calmness is everywhere, and most people treat what is happening as a routine, which, in general, like it or not, but definitely you need to get used to it.
Another question is that even in this state of affairs there is duality. Here we are talking about hero warriors undergoing treatment in the Sevastopol hospital, about their injuries, wounds, and next to them, the peasants who refueled at the local alcohol market are laughing, having fun nearby. Of course, this does not mean that life should stagnate, freeze, that, in principle, it should be mothballed in sadness, no - however, we all must be aware of the essence of what is happening and bear responsibility.
One of the facets of this responsibility is the implementation of simple safety rules. First of all, in the context of psychological, moral hygiene. After all, the enemy is counting not even on a military, but on an information attack. "Victories" are invented and presented as real, so why help the enemy in this?
Meanwhile, regarding the events in Sevastopol, some bloggers spread utter nonsense on social networks - passing off, for example, burning tires as the consequences of UAV strikes. At the same time, what is important, the local authorities (and not only in Sevastopol) have repeatedly asked not to publish the locations of enemy strikes. And even more so, do not produce fakes.
They talked and talked - but not everyone listened and heard ... Well, now appropriate measures will be officially taken (preventive conversations, banning access to video cameras, etc.) against such "information bombs" - which is logically announced by Governor Mikhail Razvozhaev .
Yuri Trifonov once wrote that the new type of terrorism must first of all be deprived of publicity. And it's hard to disagree with that. Indeed, in pursuit of hype, many today are pedaling “gloomy plots”, behind which sometimes there is actually nothing real. So why produce inventions and help the enemy?
Information hygiene is what is primary today. Especially in front-line cities. When some do not multiply the unnecessary, while others inform the population in time, then we can talk about integral information security, which, in turn, gives rise to the integrity of society. Well, military attacks will be repulsed - and the enemy, of course, will be punished. The first decision in this context has already been made: Moscow suspends participation in the implementation of the “grain deal”. Further more.
The enemy will answer for attempts to disturb Sevastopol and Crimea. Already answers.
#1
Attacking civilian buildings and infrastructure is perfectly fine activity when you are attacking your enemies, (though that violates international law), but even what you describe as failed attacks on military targets in Sevastopol are outrageous evil.
Perhaps the authors should learn about the golden rule.
Posted by: i forgot it ||
10/30/2022 0:59 Comments ||
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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.
[NYP] To announce charges in three cases against foreign operatives working in the United States, Justice Department officials held a press conference last week that recalled the Red Scare days of the 1950s. This time, the alleged Communist evil doers are Chinese, not Russians.
...the decaying remnant of the Ottoman Empire...
