[NoPasaran] The New York Times seems to be deliriously in favor of the movie Oppenheimer, with Kai Bird assuring us in his New York Times piece that opposition to the Red Scare was good and principled, that he hopes that "Christopher Nolan’s stunning new film on Oppenheimer’s complicated legacy will initiate a national conversation", and that we can rest assured that even TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) — our words, not his — manages to be part of the equation.
Kai Bird is the director of the Leon Levy Center for Biography, the New York Times tells us, as well as, more importantly, co-author with the late Martin J. Sherwin of “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer”, the book behind Christopher Nolan's "brilliant achievement in formal and conceptual terms".
Hmm, might there be something that the Times is not telling us about Kai Bird in the intro to this column of his? We shall find out soon enough (below the color picture below, if you are pressed for time)… Update:Thanks for the Instalink, Ed…
In any case, Bird writes:
Celebrated in 1945 as the “father of the atomic bomb,” nine years later he would become the chief celebrity victim of the McCarthyite maelstrom.
And he’s off! A useful summation of historical facts generally known and considerably less known — or in my case forgotten if I ever knew — but well worth reviewing to put conversations about the film in proper perspective. Nothing to do with the War on Terror, but that’s ok, too.
#2
^ To be fair, wine mom's haven't had much fun since they clogged around in pink knit hats. Of course, some will think Barbie is a fierce political platform, but mostly it's all for the "wooooooooooooooooo!".
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
07/30/2023 9:25 Comments ||
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#3
I learned all about the Manhattan Project stuff long ago from a book called "No High Ground" Other than a narrower look at some details I never saw anything to change in my view point.
#4
"McCarthyite maelstrom" - instant clue since the what was alleged had to be slandered and ridiculed endlessly, especially since it was overwhelmingly true!
#5
I have not been to NO PASARAN in a while. I used to go all the time. I think I will stick around and go thru their archives a bit.
Posted by: R. U. Terwilliger ||
07/30/2023 13:16 Comments ||
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#6
How could McCarthy have been any worse than Schiff?
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
07/30/2023 15:12 Comments ||
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#7
The blacklist is always adducible; The Black Book?
"Oh noes!"
"Inexcusable!"
For Tail Gunner Joe
Was the Devil, you know,
So each useless school teaches... The Crucible.
#8
Saw the film yesterday. Very peculiar and very well acted. Not what I expected. Sort of random and linear. Einstein came off well. A lot of well known actors buried themselves in the parts. Joe Bob says check it out.
[PJ] Lately, I’ve been revisiting the collected works of my favorite poet, the Irish laureate W.B. Yeats, and as always find myself mesmerized by his mastery of order and form and his meditative profundity. The American poet and critic Randall Jarrell once said that "A good poet is someone who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times; a dozen or two dozen times and he is great." Yeats has been luminously charred by poetic lightning more times than I can count.
One poem that has stayed with me over the years and continues to resonate is "The Municipal Gallery Revisited," a masterpiece composed in a style known as ottava rima, a form catering to reminiscence and reflection with a long history in Italian and English verse. Yeats is studying the portraits of his friends that hang in the Gallery and recalling the qualities that made each one memorable, even extraordinary. Three in particular stand out: Kevin O’Higgins, Ireland’s first minister of justice, assassinated by an IRA bullet; Yeats’ benefactress and collaborator Lady Augusta Gregory; and John Synge, the most famous and controversial playwright of the Irish literary renaissance of the early 20th century.
We might say that O’Higgins personified courage and patriotism; Lady Gregory, generosity of spirit; and Synge, the fearless creative temperament — in Yeats’ words, a triumvirate representing "Irish history in their lineaments." All three, for Yeats, were exemplars of moral heroism and high intelligence, truly splendid people, of whom he writes:
And I am in despair that time may bring
Approved patterns of women or of men
But not that selfsame excellence again.
These were the qualities that Yeats felt made life bearable, that gave hope and sustenance to the troubled and dispossessed mind of contemporary man living in an increasingly desolate and broken world. Friendship with good and intelligent people, people of courage, generosity, and creative spirit, was the perfume of existence in a malodorous era.
This is something I can well understand since my own friends — those steadfast souls who struggle for clarity of insight and are concerned for the health of the wider community — are few but cherished. They are better than I am but make me better than I was. I ask myself what this handful of admirable people have in common and conclude that the attributes they share are easy to identify and enumerate.
They try not to commit harm. Although they may not be doctors, they have internalized the Hippocratic Oath. They will put themselves in harm’s way to counter and mitigate harm to others. They eschew violence. In matters of public policy — for example, considerations of public health, economic realities, political questions, and environmental factors — they do not act or pronounce without first analyzing the relevant issues dispassionately. They are capable of arriving at resolutions that may thwart or neutralize their wishes or emotional bent by going where the evidence appears to lead, not where their desires may take them. They are capable of change. They are influenced by derivable facts, not by theories and myths.
This is another way of saying that they believe in the existence of truth — not your truth or my truth, not group truth or ideological truth, but discernible truth — unlike that first postmodernist Pontius Pilate who washed his hands of the whole matter. At the same time, they know that no human being enjoys a divine lien on truth, but that by the honest exertion of their efforts, they can arrive at what we may call credible verisimilitude.
I admire these people because they think as individuals, because they seek objective evidence that can confirm or disconfirm the positions they adopt, because they are committed to upholding, in the words of John Locke, "life, liberty, and estate," which informed the American Declaration of Independence, and because they are trustworthy and do not betray their friends — or their principles. They are the remnant of better times. I do not name them, but they know who they are.
#1
They are the remnant of better times. I do not name them, but they know who they are.
You my friends, are 'they.' We do not mourn the passing of tyrants. We mourn the passing of good and honest men. With every one that passes, a small piece of us goes with them. Our eternal hope is that one day, we will see them again, and we will be made whole.
#2
"One poem that has stayed with me over the years and continues to resonate..."
I met a seer.
He held in his hands
The book of wisdom.
"Sir," I addressed him,
"Let me read."
"Child -- " he began.
"Sir," I said,
"Think not that I am a child,
For already I know much
Of that which you hold.
Aye, much."
He smiled.
Then he opened the book
And held it before me. --
Strange that I should have grown so suddenly blind.
[AmericanThinker] Barack Obama was “heartbroken” over the drowning of his chef Tafari Campbell, but has said nary a word about him since he drowned on Sunday. Sasha and Malia Obama flew off to California on Tuesday and Michelle, appropriately dressed in black, played tennis on Wednesday “but only for an hour.”
Surely the Obamas would want a fine funeral for their employee of many years. But apparently, the issue is closed. The post-mortem was finished on Monday and the toxicology reports will take several weeks. So where is Tafari now?
There has been no obituary for Tafari in any paper, no notification of a funeral -- not even in his hometown paper of Dumfries, VA. Perhaps it is too soon for him to be listed on Legacy.com, but others who died after he did are listed, and in Edgartown, MA there is nothing in the Vineyard Gazette, the local newspaper. It claims to list obituaries for anyone who lives on the island or vacations there regularly. Apparently, hired help doesn’t count, even one who returns year after year.
Update at 1:05 p.m. EDT courtesy of The Walking Unvaxxed:
[GatewayPundit] Just a week following the unexpected and rather tragic death of their personal chef and friend, Tafari Campbell, the Obamas were spotted out and about, seemingly unscathed and unaffected.
Barack and Michelle Obama were spotted at the Vineyard Golf Club and Farm Neck Country Club, respectively, according to exclusive photos obtained by Daily Mail. The pictures are the first public glimpse of the Obamas since the loss of their dear friend and personal chef.
Dressed in a green polo shirt and white shorts, Barack Obama was seen engaged in a round of golf at the exclusive Vineyard Golf Club. The former president, noticeably bearing bandaged fingers, which causes speculations online.
Citizen journalist Travis of Flint, Michigan wrote, "just days after his personal chef and friend died in a very mysterious paddle boarding accident, Barack Obama appears to have injured fingers and a black eye. We still don’t know who the other person was and Obama loves paddle boarding. I think we can all guess what happened at this point!"
Adding to the mystery, the call’s origin was marked as Wilson’s Landing, a popular paddle board launch site roughly two miles from the Obama residence on Turkeyland Cove. This information contradicts the Massachusetts State Police records, stating that the first call originated from the Obamas’ residence.
Some dispute the significance of the bandages, insisting that they are sports bandages meant to prevent blisters from playing golf. Perhaps that explains it. But other details are being noticed as well. For example, some have called out the media for reporting that Campbell could not swim as an explanation for the drowning — when his own social media posts prove he most certainly could.
#14
Perhaps Tafari was putting the moves on one of the daughters and went a bit too far (or maybe one of the daughters were putting the moves on him and he took advantage of it).
If so, I might suffer a black eye and busted fingers to mitigate the problem too, although it would just be nonleathal but still quite violent. He's still the dad.
Although the girls are of age, perhaps Mr Campbell didn't get the message and Mootch got involved.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
07/30/2023 12:42 Comments ||
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[AmThinker] The current heat wave is being relentlessly blamed on increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but there is a much more plausible explanation, one that is virtually endorsed by two of the world’s leading scientific organizations. It turns out that levels of water vapor in the atmosphere have dramatically increased over the last year-and-a-half, and water vapor is well recognized as a greenhouse gas, whose heightened presence leads to higher temperatures, a mechanism that dwarfs any effect CO2 may have.
So, why has atmospheric water vapor increased so dramatically? Because of a historic, gigantic volcanic eruption last year that I — probably along with you -- had never heard of. The mass media ignored it because it took place 490 feet underwater in the South Pacific. Don’t take it from me, take it from NASA (and please do follow the link to see time lapse satellite imagery of the underwater eruption and subsequent plume of gasses and water injected into the atmosphere):
NoMoreBS submitted the same article, titling it Convenient Lie-Current Heat Wave As Climate Change Proof-Another MSM Baloney Sandwich-Water Vapor from Massive Volcano Last Year-NASA Confirms
Posted by: The Walking Unvaxed ||
07/30/2023 08:10 ||
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[ObserverResearchFoundation] BLUF: Having failed to retain Afghanistan as a Communist client state, even before the NATO withdrawal Russia has been working quietly with measured pragmatism to influence the Taliban, and subsequently Talib Afghanistan, toward closer association.
[RFERL] THE KEY ISSUE
The Taliban ...Arabic for students... created a special commission last year to help convince exiled former officials from the deposed Western-backed Afghan government to return to their homeland.
A front man for the commission this month claimed that more than 600 political figures, ex-officials, and other prominent Afghans who were promised amnesty had returned to Afghanistan since March 2022.
But dozens of returnees told RFE/RL's Radio Azadi that they left Afghanistan again over their disillusionment with the Taliban and fears for their safety. and they are right to be skeptical
Janat Fahim Chakari, the head of the private Karwan University in Kabul, said he left the country after receiving "many threats." "Unfortunately, we were not treated well" by the Taliban, he said.
Meanwhile, ...back at the shootout, Butch shot Ike through the elbow. Take that, Ike! he yelled...... Lal Mohammad Gharibzadeh, a local anti-Taliban leader in northern Afghanistan who had returned to the country, was killed by unidentified button men last month. Gharibzadeh's relatives, speaking on condition of anonymity ... for fear of being murdered... for fear of retribution, suspect that he was targeted by the Taliban.
Why It's Important: The Taliban appears to be using the return of former Afghan officials for propaganda purposes. Many of the homecomings have been heavily publicized, with Taliban officials meeting the returnees at the airport and taking photos with them.
Observers have said the holy warrior group wants to boost its internal legitimacy and show that it is inclusive.
Yet, the krazed killer group has monopolized power, sidelining many ethnic and political groups as well as women since forcibly seizing control of Afghanistan in 2021. The Taliban's theocratic government remains unrecognized and appears to have little support among Afghans.
The Taliban has shown no signs that it is willing to form an inclusive government or accept any political opposition to its rule.
What's Next: More prominent Afghans who have returned to their homeland are likely to leave the country again amid concerns over their safety and mounting Taliban repression.
Assuming they live long enough to leave, of course. Many of them don’t.
Zarifa Ghafari, a former mayor, is the only prominent Afghan female political figure who has returned to the country since the Taliban takeover. But she left Afghanistan soon after arriving and has since criticized the Taliban.
WHAT TO KEEP AN EYE ON
Authorities in Iran's western province of Kermanshah have imposed new restrictions on Afghan migrants colonists.
Hamzeh Soleimani, a local official, was quoted as saying that Afghans would no longer be allowed to live or work in the province as of August 10. He said any Iranian employers who violated the order would be punished.
It is unclear how many Afghans will be affected by the order in Kermanshah. Iranian officials have not specified the reasons for the move.
Why It's Important: The new rules in Kermanshah are the latest restrictions imposed on members of Iran's large Afghan community, many of whom have complained of widespread discrimination and abuse.
An estimated 3 million Afghans, many of them undocumented refugees and migrants colonists, live in Iran. Over 1 million Afghan have arrived in Iran ...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate JewsZionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol... following the Taliban takeover, although Tehran is believed to have deported more than half of the recent arrivals.
Afghans in the Islamic republic say they have come under growing pressure from the authorities amid rising tensions between Iran and the Taliban over cross-border water resources.
In May, authorities in Iran's southwestern province of Fars banned retail stores and grocery shops from employing foreigners, including Afghans, as salespeople and shop assistants.
Juma Gul, an Afghan migrant who lived and worked in Fars, said he was arrested by police at his workplace and deported from Iran. "They beat us and said, 'your government does not give us water,'" he told Radio Azadi. "They treated us with cruelty and disrespect."
#1
The Afghans are legitimate refugees that have moved to a contiguous state. They will remain a low priority for the UN and human rights groups because their situation is irrelevant or contrary to globalist goals.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
07/30/2023 10:20 Comments ||
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[Eurasian Times] Ukraine’s relentless plea to make it a member of NATO resembles that of Georgia, whose accession to the transatlantic and arguably the most powerful military alliance of the world has remained an issue since 2008.
And as in the case of Georgia, Ukraine is being encouraged to keep its hope alive, something that was evident during the latest NATO summit at the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius.
However, in concrete terms, the United States, or for that matter, its European partners such as Germany and France, will not do anything that makes them fight Russia on the actual battlefields.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
07/30/2023 00:00 ||
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#1
I don’t know that there can be an armistice until we sort out the motivation of the morons like Lindsey Graham who are fetishizing the slaughter. They will sabotage peace until we expose who is paying them. Lindsey’s staff ought to be targeted for undercover work.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
07/30/2023 10:13 Comments ||
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#2
Putin has always made it his goal to recreate the USSR, through intimidation or force.
NATO might have given him a good excuse, but he was always going to try to retake the Ukraine.
Posted by: Javiter Dark Lord of the Faith7963 ||
07/30/2023 13:27 Comments ||
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#3
The globalists turned his dream into a necessity. Well done. We can add these senseless deaths that the cabal have newly created as the caboose on the train that Karl Marx fired up 200 years ago.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
07/30/2023 13:59 Comments ||
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[Breitbart] Expert witnesses told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Thursday that North Korea, despite being an impoverished rogue state where citizens struggle to access electricity, is “in the top tier of global cyber threats” due to communist dictator Kim Jong-un’s obsessive focus on cybercrimes as a form of financing.
The hearing, titled “Illicit IT: Bankrolling Kim Jong-un,” focused on the use of hacking to steal money from banks, the penetration of online financial systems to steal cryptocurrency, and the use of the profits raked in to develop advanced nuclear weapons contrary to international law. Multiple witnesses testified to North Korea using its scientists by sending them to work abroad and forcing them to engage in cybercrime. Suzanne K. Scholte, the president of the Defense Forum Foundation, told Congress Pyongyang continues to succeed in its schemes in part because sanctions on the regime remain largely unenforced.
“One of the best ways to fight North Korea’s cyberattacks continues to be to dry up Pyongyang’s ability to profit from it, and to deny it safe haven in China or Russia,” Scholte noted. “Unfortunately, the Biden Administration is not enforcing our sanctions laws aggressively.”
Citing United Nations estimates, Bruce Klingner, top researcher at the Heritage Foundation Asian Studies Center, told lawmakers that North Korea is believed to have earned somewhere around $4.4 billion from cybercrime between 2019 and 2022.
“In 2019, the U.N. Panel of Experts estimated that North Korea had cumulatively gained $2 billion from cybercrime to fund its weapons of mass destruction programs,” Klingner explained. “During 2020, 2021, and 2022, North Korea is estimated to have stolen at least $316 million,15 $400 million,16 and $1.7 billion worth of cryptocurrency, respectively.”
Klingner noted thatt North Korea’s legal GDP in 2019 was $29 billion, significantly less than its estimated profits from cybertheft.
“North Korea is in the top tier of global cyber threats and could inflict devastating damage during a crisis by simultaneously targeting an array of critical sectors,” he warned.
Scholte, citing the testimony of a North Korean defector, noted that the IT employees behind these hacks are often essentially slaves, flooding Kim Jong-un’s personal bank account with ill-gotten gains. Scholte quoted a defector identified only as Lee who explained, “Kim Jong Un often utilizes his personal slush fund to purchase luxurious commodities, maintain the system, and develop a nuclear missile program. These North Korean IT workers overseas wire their earnings to the bank accounts of North Korean government officials in China who deal with the regime’s financials.”
“And these officials,” Lee explained, “smuggle the earnings of IT workers into North Korea through the North Korea-China border.”
Klingner estimated that 90 percent of the wages of North Korea IT workers abroad go directly to the Kim regime.
Jenny Jun, a cybersecurity expert with Georgetown University, said at the hearing that North Korea often distinguishes itself from other cybercriminals through disinterest in masking where its attacks come from.
“North Korea is different from other state-sponsored Advanced Persistent Threats (APT) marked by their tolerance of more operational risk and a willingness to trade off secrecy for expediency,” Jun explained. “North Korea’s illicit financing through cyber means is a management problem, not a deterrence problem. U.S. and its like-minded partners will not be able to persuade North Korea to cease activity in this space altogether through threats of punishment.”
Jun described a variety of criminal online behavior by North Korea that eexperts have documented, “fraudulent SWIFT transactions targeting banks, fraudulent ATM cash withdrawals, ransomware, protection rackets, credit card skimming, cryptocurrency mining and cryptojacking, fraudulent Initial Coing Offerings (ICO), offering services as foreign IT workers, and most notably large scale cryptocurrency thefts.”
Jean Lee, a veteran journalist who worked for years in Pyongyang, offered an explanation for why North Korea became such a prodigious digital threat: Kim Jong-un, a “millennial,” needed to command respect and authority from the veteran communists surrounding him when he took power at the age of 27.
“Science and technology became the platform for building loyalty,” she explained, recalling, “My North Korean staff, like my South Korean staff, loved all tech gadgets. Cellphones, Bluetooth headsets and laptops became status symbols as the regime doled out electronics as political prizes.”
[News With Views] "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." —H.P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror in Literature (1945)
"I am fearful when I see people substituting fear for reason." — Klaatu, The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
"It is when power is wedded to chronic fear that it becomes formidable." —Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind (1955)
"Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac." —Henry Kissinger, quoted in The New York Times, October 28, 1973
"Imagine North Korea in 2030, when every citizen has to wear a biometric bracelet 24 hours a day. If you listen to a speech by the Great Leader and the bracelet picks up the tell-tale signs of anger, you are done for." —Klaus Schwab, COVID-19: The Great Reset (2020)
"Time’s up." —David Levinson, Independence Day (1996)
At first glance, the idea sounds totally left field: bonkers, nuts, loony, completely out to lunch. But could the globalists fake an invasion by aliens — not the illegal kind but the extraterrestrial kind?
#3
Given all the Lies and Main Stream Media Deflection news we are fed every day to protect their controllers.
I am sure IF such an invasion happened.
We'd 1st have a well established 5th column of human traitors holding key Political Offices and Media positions. Steering us at having us at each other's throats, to keep humanity from uniting.
Paranoia runs deep in that part of the world. Long.
[Shafaq News] After months of relative calm, Iraq has been buffeted by a slew of controversies and crises that have taken on an international dimension. Their arrival all at once is not a coincidence, and there is a plan to destabilise the country ahead of December's provincial elections, Iraqi officials and politicians say.
Since last week, security forces have been on high alert, with attacks on diplomatic missions and foreign interests expected in the coming weeks, security officials told Middle East Eye.
MEE is a Middle East news portal based in London, edited by a former foreign news writer from the Guardian, and claims to be owned by a former manager of Al Jazeera and the Hamas-affiliated Al Quds TV in Lebanon. MEE is said to be funded by Qatar and biased toward the Muslim Brotherhood.
Most prominent among the recent controversies has been the expulsion of Sweden's ambassador and the storming of the Swedish embassy by followers of influential Shia holy manMoqtada Tater al-Sadr ...hereditary Iraqi holy man and leader of a political movement in Iraq. He had his hereditary rival al-Khoei assassinated shortly after the holy rival's appearance out of exile in 2003. Formerly an Iranian catspaw, lately he's gagged over some of their more outlandish antics, then went back to catspawry... . The Sadrists attacked the embassy on Saturday night in response to Swedish authorities giving their permission to allow someone to burn a copy of the Koran for the second time in three weeks.
Also in the Sadrists' sights that night was the Green Zone, the fortified Baghdad neighbourhood that hosts most governmental offices and embassies.
Sadr's followers tried to storm the Green Zone - where they held a months-long sit-in last year - and target the Danish embassy after a far-right group burnt the Koran and Iraq's flag outside the Iraqi mission in Copenhagen hours earlier.
Ever since, larger numbers of Iraqi security forces have been deployed in the surrounding areas and other measures tightened, security sources told MEE.
The noise coming from Iraqi officials indicate that they believe that the provocative incidents in Scandinavia are part of efforts to target their country.
President Abdel Latif Rashid described it as a "sedition plot" carried out by people living abroad and exploiting free speech laws "to implement suspicious aims against Iraq and Iraqis".
All that excitement far away would have no impact on Iraq, not to mention the rest of the Ummah, if y’all weren’t so eager to throw temper tqntrums about it.
On Saturday, Rashid said "the sequence of events indicates that there is an intentional aim to provoke the Iraqis exclusively to show our country as an unsafe country for foreign missions".
And so it is. But wasn’t it the Dey of Algiers who kidnapped Americans, following his habit of kidnapping Englishmen and Europeans, which led President Madison to send in the Marines to teach him better manners? This is not something new in the Ummah, nor unique to Iraq.
He accused those responsible of seeking "to tarnish the image of a stable and secure Iraq, damage its international reputation and deprive it of cooperation with other countries".
Since then, the far-right group Danish Patriots has set fire to another Koran outside the Iraqi embassy and trampled on Iraq's flag, the fourth such incident in Denmark and Sweden within a month.
Security officials told MEE that their intelligence indicates that "something is cooking against Iraq specifically", and that this explains why the Iraqi flag is being destroyed alongside the holy text outside Iraq's embassies.
"The scenario is clear and it targets Iraq exclusively," a military commander serving in the Baghdad Operations Command told MEE.
The commander noted that all the incidents take place abroad, but the response is always felt domestically.
"We do not yet know whether it was a state or just personalities behind this scheme, but the goals are clear to us. Disturbing the security situation, paralysing the government and turning it into a goalkeeper who is concerned only with repelling attacks is the main objective," he said.
"We believe that the demonstrations will continue for one reason or another, and will be accompanied by fiercer attempts to enter the Green Zone. If the demonstrators enter this time, things will not return to their previous state."
Notably the Swedish government has also said external actors are trying to stoke the flames, indirectly accusing Russia and linking it to its recent bid to join NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It's headquartered in Belgium. That sez it all.... 'EXPLOITED AND EMPLOYED'
The man who ignited this rolling crisis by first burning a copy of the Koran in Stockholm in late June is Salwan Sabah Momika, a 37-year-old Iraqi Christian from the predominantly Syriac town of Hamdaniya, 15km southeast of djinn-infested Mosul ... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn... He left his hometown in 2012, fleeing a three-year sentence for wrongful death, handed to him by a court after causing someone to die in a traffic accident, Iraqi security sources told MEE.
Following that, Momika disappeared for almost two years before he showed up suddenly in a video broadcast in January 2015 by the Imam Ali Brigades, an Iranian-backed Shia armed faction.
The video, which was shot in Taji military base north of Baghdad, shows a group of young Christians who joined the Brigades to fight the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems.... group, which invaded their territory in the Nineveh Plains in the summer of 2014.
Momika is seen introducing himself as the commander of the group, which he called Kataeb Ruhallah Isa Ibn Mariam.
...a Christian Assyrian militia under the Iraqi Shiite militia Kataib al-Imam Ali for the purpose of driving out ISIS.
"With our Shia brothers, we are now ready to liberate our regions and our lands that were stolen from us," Momika says. "Either we live with our dignity or we die with our courage."
It is not clear how Momika was able to reemerge following his conviction, but the Islamic State group's takeover of northeastern Iraq appears to have made it moot.
Momika's military and political progress rocketed subsequently, but for vague reasons.
In less than two years, he became the commander of a regiment that called itself Suqur al-Suryan, which was linked to the Popular Mobilisation Authority (PMA) paramilitary umbrella organization but not officially recognised, and founded another shadowy outfit called the Syriac Democratic Union Party.
His former commanders told MEE that Momika never stood out, and that the "only" reason he rose to senior positions was because of the relationship between his older brother Wissam and Rayan al-Kaldani, the commander of the Babylon Brigades, a Christian armed faction affiliated with the PMA.
Wissam oversaw the education ministry's Syriac and Christian storage facilities, and was a founder of the Babylon Movement, Kildani's political wing, commanders said.
Wissam ran on the Babylon Movement's electoral list in the 2014 parliamentary elections, but did not win.
In February 2017, Momika was arrested by the Popular Mobilisation's security directorate on charges of "immoral activities and extortion", a PMA official told MEE. After three days, he was released on condition that he leave Mosul and pledge never to cite the PMA in any of his dealings, the official added.
Momika left for Erbil, then headed to Sweden, where he obtained temporary residency after claiming that his life was in danger.
In Stockholm, Momika was involved in numerous offences, one of which was a criminal one, where he assaulted his roommate and threatened him with a knife, Iraqi lawyers preparing to sue him in Sweden over the Koran burning ...One of the basic tenets of Islam is that once a Koran has been printed it is expected to last for all time, no matter how old, ratty, and smelly other, lesser holy books may become. Should it actually become necessary to put a Koran out of its misery there is a ritual that includes extensive charivari, featuring long drawn-wailing and head bonking, ritual wife beating, and the sacrifice of dozens of women's noses and pubic lips. When the actual disposal has been completed there is a prescribed period of celebratory gun sex with the expectation of a minimum of two hundred casualties. Should actual infidels dispose of a Koran, Islamic custom calls for three weeks of rioting and a minimum of three dozen dead, which is a holdover from the days of Moloch worship.... told MEE.
When Momika burned a copy of the Koran in June in front of Stockholm's central mosque, "he was seeking to provoke Moslems and lure them into threatening him, preventing the Swedish authorities from sending him back to Iraq", an Iraqi security official following up on the case told MEE.
"This is the logical explanation for the first attempt, but in the second it was different."
The next time Momika pulled such a stunt, on 21 July, he tore up a copy of the Koran and wiped his shoes with it. This time, he did it in front of the Iraqi embassy, and desecrated an Iraqi flag and an image of Sadr too.
Iraqi security officials told MEE that the initial information they received from their sources in Sweden suggested that Momika had been "exploited and employed" to do this.
Officials said they are now almost certain that there is a link between Momika and the group that burned the Koran in Copenhagen, and that they believe that the instigator was the same in both cases.
"In the second time around, Momika was executing a scenario drawn for him. It was not an angry or spontaneous reaction,'' a security bigshot told MEE.
CHAOS A GREAT DISTRACTION
Security officials and politicians told MEE that whomever is behind this alleged plot must know about Iraqi leaders and the best ways to rouse them.
Sadr was the first to be provoked.
The Shia holy man has been a dominant figure in Iraqi politics, winning the 2021 parliamentary elections. But in June last year he declared his retirement from political activity and made his MPs resign after being blocked from forming a government. Since then, he has faced huge pressure from his followers and opponents alike to reenter politics.
Sadrists have since watched their Iranian-backed Shia rivals take control of the government and the international community lend its support to Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, much to their chagrin.
Many have begun to question Sadr's decision to boycott politics, and some have even joined his rivals.
They may have finally convinced their leader. Last month, Sadr began studying the feasibility of participating in December's provincial elections, sources told MEE.
Sadr often uses issues such as defending Islam, combatting corruption and criticising homosexuality to rally his base.
"Burning copies of the Koran in front of Iraqi embassies would provide a perfect argument for Sadr to mobilise his followers," a prominent Sadrist leader told MEE.
And the fierce reaction of Sadr and his followers went like clockwork.
Since the Sadrists first stormed the Swedish embassy in late June, they have been mobilising, particularly in Baghdad and Basra where they and their Iranian-backed rivals have the largest presence, in a "blatant challenge" to the security services and Shia armed factions linked to the government.
Sadr's followers did not wait for Momika to carry out his threat the second time, and stormed the embassy the night before the Koran was burnt.
Sadr's opponents accused him of "exploiting" the event to position himself as the "defender" of the Koran and Islam.
But Sadrist leaders claimed that the storming (twice) of the Swedish embassy building, the recent attack on the headquarters of Sadr's opponents in the central and southern governorates, and the attempt to get into the Green Zone to reach the Danish embassy are all "unplanned and spontaneous reactions" carried out by Sadr's followers without his direction.
"Why don't you believe that he does not issue such orders? We know how he thinks and we read between the lines of what he publishes," a commander of Saraya al-Salam, Sadr's armed wing, told MEE.
"Usually, we move to do something. If he remains silent and does not comment, we proceed with what we do. If he asked us to stop, we would stop."
Two prominent Sadrist leaders did not deny that Sadr had exploited the event "to distract his followers and disturb his opponents", as they put it.
"Let's first admit that he is very smart" and good at utilising such moments, one of the leaders said.
"Yes, he took advantage of the event to [allow] our youth [the opportunity] to vent the tensions they have been suffering from since last June and to divert their attention away from the provincial councils elections," the leader said.
"Our youth are frustrated and feel that they have been marginalised and that Sadr was forced to withdraw from the political process, so they are looking for any opportunity for Dire Revenge. Sadr provided them with the opportunity to vent these feelings and at the same time [reminded] his opponents that he is [still] here and that he still has the final word in the Iraqi arena."
INTERNATIONAL DISSATISFACTION
There's no doubt that Sadr has the manpower and resources to create chaos in Iraq. But he's not the only person capable of this, nor is he believed to be the main figure driving these events, according to one of Sudani's advisers.
The adviser pointed to several recent issues that have brought international pressure on Iraq, including the disappearance of Israeli-Russian researcher Elizabeth Tsurkov, a row over the Patriarch of the Chaldean Church Cardinal Daniel Raphael Sako, and the looming elections.
"We don't yet know whether what is happening is related to the case of the kidnapped Israeli or the case of Patriarch Sako, or the provincial councils elections," the adviser told MEE.
"We are currently investigating all of these possibilities and have not ruled out any of them."
The adviser said that the international community has begun dialling pressure up on Iraq following the latest developments, and is losing confidence in Sudani's government.
He added that the government will need time to seriously tackle each issue to regain the international community's confidence.
Tsurkov, who entered Iraq with her Russian passport last year, was kidnapped in Baghdad in March.
Israeli authorities accused Kataeib Hezbollah, the Shia armed faction most involved in intelligence issues. The Iraqi government initially distanced itself from the issue and "chose not to interfere", Sudani's advisor said, although it promised to investigate the matter last month.
Meanwhile, ...back at the cheese factory, all the pieces finally fell together in Fluffy's mind... western countries have been dragged into another drama: the crisis over the Chaldean Church.
In early July, the president stripped its patriarch, Cardinal Sako, of executive powers to manage the church's property. This, a western diplomat told MEE, represents another serious challenge to Sudani.
Rashid said the withdrawal of his presidential decree was aimed at "correcting a constitutional situation".
However, Caliphornia hasn't yet slid into the ocean, no matter how hard it's tried... most Iraqi Christians at home and abroad saw the decision as an attack on them and their symbols, and that it represented an unjustified "interference" by Rashid into their private affairs.
Several European ambassadors in Baghdad expressed their dismay over the decision in private.
The Apostolic Nunciature to Iraq, which represents the Vatican in Baghdad, issued a statement calling it inappropriate and the result of "biased and misleading" reports. The Chaldean Church is affiliated with the Catholic Church and its patriarchs are made cardinals.
Meanwhile, ...back at the cheese factory, all the pieces finally fell together in Fluffy's mind... the US State Department described the decision as a "blow to religious freedom".
"We are concerned that the cardinal's position as a respected leader of the Church is under attack from a number of quarters, particularly a militia leader who is sanctioned under the Global Magnitsky Act," a State Department spokesperson said.
In a mass he held in Erbil on Sunday, Sako said that the president's decision was "insidious, political, and moody" and issued "under the influence of the Babylon militia".
The militia leader alluded to by the State Department and Sako is none other than Kildani, leader of the Babylon Brigades, who has been subject to US sanctions since 2019 for his involvement in "gross violations of human rights When they're defined by the state or an NGO they don't mean much... " in the Nineveh Plains during the fight against IS.
Sako has previously publicly accused Kildani of seizing the property of displaced Christians in Christian towns in the Nineveh Plains and in Baghdad. He has also accused Kildani of seizing church property and assuming governmental offices reserved for Chaldeans, with the help of his allies in the Iranian-backed armed factions.
"The chaos at this time, the person responsible for it and the targeting of diplomatic missions, all serve as excellent distractions for the international community and government" from the controversy over Sako, Sudani's adviser said.
"Regardless of the president's motives for withdrawing Sako's decree, it was an ill-conceived decision that put the Sudani government in a tough position," he added.
"Revocation of the decree in the first place was a mistake, it embarrassed us. And retracting it now will embarrass the president and call into question all his previous and subsequent decisions."
POSTPONING THE ELECTIONS
December's provincial council elections are set to shake up Iraqi politics and redraw the map of influence in Baghdad and other provinces.
Many Shia and Sunni political forces are expected to lose their influence in favour of others that have recently been ascendant.
Provincial councils haven't been functioning since 2019, when they were abolished in response to the Tishreen protest movement. But resuming their work would allow political parties to secure access to hundreds of millions of dollars and millions of electoral votes.
Whoever wins the largest number of seats will play a pivotal role in formulating the upcoming political and parliamentary alliances.
If the polls are held on schedule, Sadr and Parliament Speaker Muhammad al-Halbousi are set to be the biggest losers. By urging his followers not to participate in the elections, Sadr will naturally lose ground. Sunni leader Halbousi, meanwhile, is vulnerable after a shifting of alliances in Iraqi politics.
Qais Khazali, leader of the Iranian-backed armed faction Asaib Ahl al-Haq, is expected to do well.
The other Shia and Sunni traditional political forces "do not seem enthusiastic" about holding the elections on time, said a leader in the Coordination Framework, the pro-Iran ...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate JewsZionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol... Shia political alliance that now dominates the Iraqi government.
Since getting in power, a degree of disunity has been seen among Framework parties, rivalry which will see them run on three separate electoral lists.
The first will include Asaib Ahl al-Haq, the Badr Organization led by Hadi al-Amiri and Ammar al-Hakim's Hikma Movement. The State of Law and the Islamic Fadhila Party will participate in another list, while the Sanad bloc led by Labour Minister Ahmad al-Asadi and the Supreme Islamic Council, led by Hammam Hamoudiwill, will run on a third.
It is not yet clear what the Sunni parties' alliances will look like. As for the Kurdish parties, their impact will be limited to the situation within the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region, and various disputes between them are still being worked through, so their electoral lists are yet to be solidified.
Sudani and Kataeb Hezbollah will not participate in these elections, sources said.
"Everyone knows that the biggest winner in these elections will be Khazali, so they are not enthusiastic about holding them on time," a Shia leader told MEE.
"There is a real fear of his encroachment in the absence of the Sadrists. There is an unspoken desire to postpone the elections in the hope that the situation will change in the future, but no one dares to speak about it publicly."
However, Caliphornia hasn't yet slid into the ocean, no matter how hard it's tried... Sudani's adviser said that "the Iraqi scene, as usual, is full of many complications and dozens of players, local and international", and that they "would not be surprised" if they found that "one of these players was behind the game of burning copies of the Koran in front of the Iraqi embassies".
"The goal is to pressure and manipulate the Iraqi government and some key politicians. So far the target was achieved," he added.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
07/30/2023 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Govt of Iraq
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.
[PJ] Lately, I’ve been revisiting the collected works of my favorite poet, the Irish laureate W.B. Yeats, and as always find myself mesmerized by his mastery of order and form and his meditative profundity. The American poet and critic Randall Jarrell once said that "A good poet is someone who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times; a dozen or two dozen times and he is great." Yeats has been luminously charred by poetic lightning more times than I can count.
...Arabic for 
...hereditary Iraqi holy man and leader of a political movement in Iraq. He had his hereditary rival al-Khoei assassinated shortly after the holy rival's appearance out of exile in 2003. Formerly an Iranian catspaw, lately he's gagged over some of their more outlandish antics, then went back to catspawry...
