#1
Russia says only 23 of the 59 missiles hit their targets. Sounds unlikely to me, unless a lot of equipment degradation occurred during Obama's tenure, or they define the targets as a few square meters. Besides, how would Russia know what the targets were? (Oh, Trump told them - part of the election assistance deal... /s)
#1
Gee, we kill all sort of people in war by various means, for some reason most 'civilized' nations have concluded wantonly using gas is a big no-no. Get it?
A Russian warship entered the eastern Mediterranean Friday and was heading toward the area where two U.S. Navy destroyers launched missile strikes into Syria, Fox News has learned. The Russian frigate, Admiral Grigorovich RFS-494, crossed through the Bosphorus Strait “a few hours ago” from the Black Sea, according to a U.S. defense official.
The Russian warship is now in the eastern Mediterranean steaming in the direction of the U.S. warships. The Admiral Grigorovich is armed with advanced Kalibr cruise missiles.
It's going to have a very short, exciting life if it launches any of those at our destroyers...
The frigate was bound for the Syrian port of Tartus on a routine voyage, the Russian news agency TASS reported Friday, citing a military-diplomatic source.
"The Russian ship armed with cruise missiles Kalibr will visit the logistics base in Tartus, Syria," the source said, according to TASS.
The ship was currently near the Black Sea straits, Tass reported. The ship left on a voyage after stopping at Novorossiisk for supplies and taking part in a joint exercise with Turkish ships in the Black Sea.
So it may all be just a coincidence, if you believe in that sort of thing...
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/07/2017
12:16 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[10 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
And the two US destroyers will pull along on either side and make a Russian Waitress Sandwich.
Posted by: Marilyn Snath8125 ||
04/07/2017 16:21
Comments ||
Top||
#2
What? No mention of the Tug Boats deployed with Russian warship?
Posted by: Penguin of the Desert ||
04/07/2017 17:34
Comments ||
Top||
#5
Media heavy-breathing aside, it's not steaming toward US destroyers - it's steaming towards the Mediterranean from the Black Sea, a round trip Russian ships have done many, many times because that's what big power navies do - operate in different regions of the world just so they're ready if they need to deploy there during a wartime situation.
[RT] A British DJ has been sentenced to a year in jail by a Tunisian court after he played a dance remix of the Muslim call to prayer. Berlin-based DJ Dax J, whose real name is Dax Heddon, played the song in a Tunisian nightclub last week during the Orbit Festival in Tunisia’s northeastern town of Nabeul.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/07/2017
11:53 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[10 views]
Top|| File under: Salafists
#1
See, not even Muslims want to hear that shit.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
04/07/2017 12:21
Comments ||
Top||
#2
Only a stone-stupid fool would play a remix of the call to prayer in a Muslim country.
I hope he survives his sentence to learn his lesson...
[Metro] At least three dead and shots fired as truck crashes into crowds in Stockholm
The article is already updating at 10:30 EDT:
Five people have reportedly been killed after a truck was driven into crowds in central Stockholm.
The incident unfolded in Drottninggatan, a shopping district in the centre of the Swedish capital.
Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven has said everything indicates that the Stockholm truck crash is ‘a terror attack’.
One person has been arrested following the incident, the Swedish PM confirmed.
Police also said a number of people had been hurt in the incident, which comes after vehicles were used in terror attacks in Nice and Berlin last year and in London just two weeks ago.
The vehicle crashed into a busy department store in central Stockholm, with dramatic pictures from the scene showing fire and smoke billowing out of the cab of the truck.
People nearby were seen fleeing for their lives as the vehicle careered towards them.
10:32 a.m. EDT: Bright Pebbles submitted a link to the Ha'aretz article on the same story. Both are updating as information comes in, so check both to see the latest.
Update at 11:00 a.m. EDT: Beavis submitted a link to the BBC article on the story shortly before the above was published, which adds:
The firm that owns the lorry said it had been hijacked earlier in the day.
The crash happened at the Ahlens department store just before 15:00 local time (13:00 GMT).
Swedish brewery Spendrups said its lorry had been stolen on its way to a restaurant delivery.
Shots have also reportedly been fired in another part of the city, says BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner, citing security sources.
It is not clear whether the two incidents are connected.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
04/07/2017
09:50 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[9 views]
Top|| File under: Moslem Colonists
#1
"we'll probably never know the true motivation" in 5...4...3..
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/07/2017 10:37
Comments ||
Top||
#2
An exciting day, and it isn't even noon in America. I look forward to discovering whether the miscreant is a native convert, a long-settled immigrant from the Ummah, or a recent colonizer; how well connected the lone wolf will turn out to be; and, whether or not he is either a long term petty criminal or has psychiatric problems.
#10
I look forward to the day when Americans are no longer afraid to give the stink eye to Islamics within our borders--they belong elsewhere. Islam is incompatible with our beliefs.
Protests have mostly shutdown French Guyana including the huge European Spaceport there. This is having a major impact on the EU space effort.
Poster Chasm gave this response:
The last days brought a few articles in the press. From those articles, an unchecked.
French Guyana is part of France, part of the EU and NATO. It not part of the Schengen zone. Being an EU border makes local imports more difficult and expensive as it would be otherwise.
EU citizens can move to and work in French Guyana without restrictions. The reverse is of course also true. Doing this in reality is much harder because of things like:
40% of the pupils don't graduate school. At all.
15% of the population has access to potable water.
The official unemployment number is ~22%, and has been that high for decades. (France ~10%)
For those under 25 years the official unemployment number is 46.5%. (France ~24%)
Half the GDP of France, 45% higher food prices.
Arianespace is the biggest part of the economy. Tourism is next and growing. Forestry, tropical hardwoods, is also big. There is some agriculture at the coast for local consumption and crab fishing mostly for export. Gold mining closes the list.
Illegal gold mining is a major and long lasting cross border issue. Crime and serve pollution of the environment.
250k people in French Guyana. It is not the poorest oversea department but has the highest murder rate in France, averaging to once a week.
26k live in Kourou. Neighborhoods with Arianespace employees are easy to find at night, they are the ones with streetlights.
The main demands are: Higher wages, more workplaces, money for social infrastructure [schools, clinics], more support for the farmers, better protection of small local businesses.
Additional demands include: more police, deporting illegal immigrants.
One of the overarching complaints is that the government did not act on its past promises.
This is not the first conflict, just the most visible and longest. The upcoming presidential election adds visibility, the fear that the protests spread into other poor departments adds urgency for the politicians.
The clinic and medical situation is one of the old promises, the demand is for something more local than a ticket on the next plane to France for even slightly complicated issues.
One observation: When the guys with the balaclavas who are enforcing the strike are the ones demanding more police there is something odd here.
Again, sourced via this weeks news and magazine articles and not fact checked. (Turns out that is hard if you don't speak French.)
#3
The main demands are: Higher wages, more workplaces, money for social infrastructure [schools, clinics], more support for the farmers, better protection of small local businesses.
The EU splashes large sums on these things in poor peripheral areas. I assume a lot of it is getting stolen.
[Modern War Institute] Most of you reading this essay, I speculate, have a dim regard for failure. To you, failure is like that "friend of a friend" who showed up at your party, brought bad beer, made inappropriate jokes, and vomited in your bathroom. He’s not particularly welcome, but you did not have much choice in letting him in, and the extent of his exasperating conduct was not completely foreseeable.
Your dim regard is not surprising. That, of course, is what the military wants and expects from you. You have learned (or been indoctrinated) to expect success from yourselves. Failure is not listed among the Army’s doctrinally designated attributes or competencies of effective leadership. I will argue, however, in knowing distortion of Clausewitz’s famous theory: failure is the mere continuation of success by other means. Failure, thus respected, should be an open and explicit component to those same doctrinal ideals. Do not 'fail' to read on.
[Daily Caller] Russians are fighting on both sides of the civil war ripping Syria apart, possibly even against each other.
A small group of former Russian paratroopers are operating in northern Syria, fighting against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s Russian-backed forces. The group was featured in a video segment hosted by Bilal Abdul Kareem, an American journalist operating in Syria who has been criticized for being overly sympathetic to Islamist groups.
"We came here to protect the weak women and children," a masked Russian veteran told Kareem. "And to help the people which made their choice and did rise against the tyrant [Assad]."
The video showed the Russian veterans practicing military maneuvers including marksmanship, area clearing, and first aid skills. Donned with matching camouflage uniforms and carrying Russian weapons, the veterans are now using the skills they learned in Russia against the Kremlin’s allies in Syria.
#1
I need a grain of salt please. This feels like a puff piece. Special forces Vets has a nice ring to it, OK lets use that. In today's media I have very little confidence in the veracity of their works. However should this be true a mere tempest in a teapot. Its got no legs.
[Gulf News] Oil jumped as the US cruise missile attack against Syria roiled global financial markets.
Futures in New York and London surged more than 2 percent, hitting the highest in a month. The strike early Friday targeted hangars, planes and fuel tanks at one Syrian military airfield, a U.S. official said. Syria borders Iraq, the second-biggest producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. The news rippled across financial markets, with the yen and gold rising as stocks fell.
"Syria is not a big oil producer but it does potentially increase the risk of escalation in the whole region," said Ric Spooner, chief market analyst at CMC Markets in Sydney.
"We're seeing a risk response to the airstrike. Given rising supply, the size of inventories and the extent of the pick up in shale output, it does seem likely that price gains will be capped," Spooner said.
#1
Google decided not to wait for NASA to send up OldSpook's many little satellites -- or even just a few more big satellites? Good for them, even if it does mean they are creating a captive market where previously there was no market at all... not to mention efficiently, effectively, and with no graft, all of which are beyond the ability of the locals below.
Will it be as much as ten years before they are denounced in the UN as bloody-handed plutocrat imperialists?
[Wash Times] Arnold Schwarzenegger said Wednesday that he "fell in love" with the Republican Party decades ago but couldn’t bring himself to support President Trump because of his support for the coal industry.
"I am a Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan Republican," the former California governor told Van Jones on the CNN town hall series "The Messy Truth."
"Those are the kinds of Republicans that I can identify with," he said. "I’m not a Trump Republican. That’s why I didn’t vote for him."
#2
Neither are 'Republicans'. Then again, after spending 6 years bitching and moaning (and showboating) about Obamacare and repeal, neither is the GOPe.
#6
Let the market decide the fate of coal. Not Arnold, Trump, Hillary or Obama...and least of all Al Gore. The market is smarter than any of them or all of them put together. Besides, if we don't burn it the Chinese will and we burn it cleaner.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
04/07/2017 12:15
Comments ||
Top||
#7
Arnold would prefer tens of thousand be unemployed in exchange for an insignificant different in particulate matter in the air.
[Breitbart] WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Former U.S. Army Ranger and Benghazi survivor Kris "Tanto" Paronto told Breitbart News that he believes former President Barack Obama National Security adviser Susan Rice "needs to be in jail" for her decision to willfully unmask the identities of United States citizens connected to President Donald Trump’s transition team.
Paronto added, "The Trump administration has been given the perfect opportunity to set an example, or make an example, out of the type of politician that she is and show these other politicians that they are no longer untouchable."
"I thought Hillary Clinton was bad," Paronto said. "This woman [Susan Rice] surpasses her as far as her evilness and willingness to subvert America with this administration and to continually lie." He added, "This woman broke the law. She put lives in danger. She put officers in danger. She put American citizens in danger by doing that. She has no value for human life unless it benefits her politics or benefits her friendship with the crooked administration that was in power for the previous eight years. That woman, at the very least, needs to be in jail. She has no value of human life."
#3
Russia was already saying that some acts are unacceptable, whoch they've never done before, and they were given notice before the Tomahawks flew.
Interestingly, there was concern voiced yesterday in an interview on NPR about the fact that there has not been peer-to-peer direct communication between our guys and Russia for a number of years, i.e. going back to President Obama's time in office. So this may be articulation of a pre-existing condition.
[DailyMail] Romanian architect Andreea Cristea was pushed over a barrier into the River Thames when Muslim convert Khalid Masood carried out his murderous rampage.
IMO, Sensing makes a lot of sense
The United States attacked Syria directly Thursday night with dozens of cruise missiles.
...As is the imperial habit of US presidents these days, there was no authority from the Congress asked for or received before initiating a new war with a country that has not attacked the United States, nor poses an imminent threat to US lives.
On TV news reporting, President Trump stated that the strikes were "in vital national interests" of the United States. I would very much like him to explain in full just how. After all, in 2013 when President Obama was leaning toward the same action, Trump tweeted:
...What, exactly, changed on the ground when Assad used chemical weapons this week? The casualty count hardly budged - hundreds of thousands of people have already been killed. Chemical weapons are indiscriminate and cruel, but are they more so than barrel bombs, area shelling and area bombing?
I find it hard to conclude other than this cruise-missile attack was mainly a signaling operation aimed mainly at Chinese President Xi Jinping, whose first face-to-face meeting with Trump was tonight and will continue tomorrow. Trump has said repeatedly that he wants China to rein in Kim Jong Un's nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles programs. The signaling was also undoubtedly directed at Teheran as well.
These fok's have been slaughtering one another and 'skull piling' since the dawn of civilization. If Assad expired this morning, another thug was rise up to take his place. Where does it end. Please let these people exterminate each other and stay clear of it. Have we leaned absolutely nothing from the history of this region.
How do you keep these foks slaughtering contained to their own sandbox?
Remember that this s#it got started for us big time when they brought their murdering ways here. Will ignoring them be possible? Is it better to fight them here or there?
#4
Whack-a-mole and drone zapping does not work, far, far too many targets. Dresden, Nagasaki, Hiroshima ...works/worked, the kak stopped! Migration of the problem (permitting them to come here or to Europe) only spreads and exacerbates the problem. If you are not prepared to eradicate them, at least contain them and whack the 'squirters' (those who escape the effected area and are intent on doing you harm).
We can talk it to death, but eradication or containment (or some combination of the two) certainly appear to be the options.
By the way, we've had troops working with the Kurds now for quite a while, we're already at war in Syria. The media just refused to cover the fact while Obean was prez.
...As is the imperial habit of US presidents these days
That was part of the original rationale against a large standing Army, reducing the Executive's hand in engaging in military adventures. Something the post-WWII best and brightest threw out the window.
#8
President Obama declared use of chemical weapons in Syria to be a red line. His response to that red line was to agree to a treaty under which the Government of Russia was to remove and destroy as such weapons in Syria. This action or lack of it caused most of the governments in the world to believe that guarantees made by our government can be ignored.
According to reports from our intelligence as well as Israeli intelligence and that of several European countries, a chemical attack was made a few days ago by Syrian planes. This was probably meant as a test of the Trump administration, aimed at determining whether that administration would roll over and play dead or respond to this violation of the previous treaty.
To do nothing would have renewed the irrelevance of the United States in international affairs previously propagated by the Obama administration under the direction of Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Kerry.
It would have encouraged North Korea, and Iran and their allies to continue their efforts toward nuclear and rocket proliferation which represent threats to the entire world.
The Syrian and Iranian governments will now attempt to convince Putin to escalate his reaction to their current mortification; his verbal comments so far seem appropriate to mollifying their chagrin without such escalation. One hopes that Putin has no intention of starting a world war.
The reaction of North Korea to this unexpected willingness by the United States to take military action will be the most significant.
#9
If you are not prepared to eradicate them, at least contain them and whack the 'squirters' (those who escape the effected area and are intent on doing you harm).
Yep. Isolate and disengage. Check back in a thousand years to see if they have become a bit more reasonable.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
04/07/2017 12:34
Comments ||
Top||
#10
I find it hard to conclude other than this cruise-missile attack was mainly a signaling operation aimed mainly at Chinese President Xi Jinping...
Yes and I've heard the theory that Truman nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki to send a message to Stalin.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
04/07/2017 12:36
Comments ||
Top||
#11
..and those running Japan, who till after the second bomb were the military (who knew they probably would 'swing' if and when they capitulated).
h/t Instapundit
Of course I loathe Assad. And of course I despise the Obamans for that phony red line and the subsequent retreat-and-bogus-Russian-deal. But just carrying out vengeance against Assad isn’t good enough. It fails to address the central problem of our time: the global anti-American alliance.
There is no Syria any more, and the enemy forces on the Middle Eastern battlefield come from various jihadi groups, and three regimes: Moscow, Tehran, and Damascus. We have to defeat them all, and other members of the enemy alliance, including Cuba and North Korea. Nikki Haley has it right: "The truth is that Assad, Russia and Iran have no interest in peace."
Indeed, they are waging war, and the principal force driving that war is not Assad, but Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Khamenei’s killers have been alongside Assad’s from the very beginning, as the survival of the Syrian dictator is crucial to Iranian ambitions and quite likely also the survival of the Islamic Republic itself.
Listen to Defense Secretary James Mattis a few days ago (from Reuters): Asked about comments Mattis made in 2012 that the three primary threats the United States faced were "Iran, Iran, Iran," Mattis told reporters that Iran’s behavior had not changed in the years since.
"At the time when I spoke about Iran I was a commander of US central command and that (Iran) was the primary exporter of terrorism, frankly, it was the primary state sponsor of terrorism and it continues that kind of behavior today," Mattis said.
True, and Mattis’ characteristically strong language points the way to the best American action in the region, namely bringing down the Tehran regime. Lashing out at Assad isn’t nearly good enough. After all, what strategic objective would we accomplish by smashing, even removing, Assad? The Iranian and Russian fighters would still be there, as would the Islamist forces. The demands on our military would dramatically expand. We do not want to occupy a significant land mass in what used to be called Syria, nor do we seem to have sorted out what we want to do with the Turks and the Kurds.
Regime change in Iran would be devastating to Assad and Putin, and its positive effects would be felt in North Africa and our own hemisphere, striking at the Revolutionary Guards and Hezbollah in Latin America. And it would remind the tyrants that America’s greatest weapon is political. We are the most revolutionary country in the world, and we should act like it.
#4
Of course Mattis was correct that Iran was the major threat in 2012 and the years immediately prior. We just finished fighting a proxy war against Iranian trained, equipped, and directed forces in southern Iraq...where we suffered serious loss. Iran did not. That was then.
Now. All of this is moot at this point since the Caliphate established itself in 2013 and all above are united in their focus on confronting this clear and present danger. A danger that is supported by the Wahhabist Sunni Saud regime.
Leave the Iranians alone to check the Saudis...let them grind it out and fight their proxy wars in Yemen or wherever and focus on eliminating the Caliphate please. That is one strategic interest that the Iranians, Russians, Americans, Syrians, and Iraqis share. Lets focus on finishing one thing in a row.
#5
Iran ay be the number one threat but you can't just go after them without provocation. Like it or not currently tea are at peace with them thanks to Obama. If Trump just dumps that without provocation the world will freak.
h/t Instapundit
It’s something many suspected already ‐ that students demanding safe spaces and protection on campus are, in fact, pretty privileged.
And now new data has confirmed that protesters who march against controversial campus speakers are overwhelmingly scions of extreme wealth.
Data assembled by The Economist showed that the institutions most affected by the waves of campus activism sweeping America are also the ones where all the rich kids go:
h/t Instapundit
[WSJ] Benjamin Netanyahu will never be popular in America’s major newsrooms. Or among most of the think-tankers who set the tone and parameters of foreign-policy debate. His name is a curse on college campuses. So it’s worth asking whose vision of the Middle East has held up better under the press of recent events.
Human Rights Watch on Thursday condemned Hamas, after the terrorist group executed three men in Gaza who were accused of "collaborating" with Israel.
In a statement quoted by AFP, the organization urged Hamas to stop the "barbaric" practice. As Pappy says, "Is the contributions' drive time is upon us again?"
[Asharq al-Aswat] Terror group ISIS shot down an Iraqi helicopter operating over djinn-infested Mosul ... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn... Thursday, as security forces announced they recaptured another neighborhood in their nearly six-month-old offensive against the terrorists’ stronghold.
The operation to retake west Mosul -- which the helicopter was supporting when it was downed -- has become a slow, grinding battle that has taken a heavy toll on civilians and pushed more than 200,000 to flee.
"The helicopter was supporting federal police forces in (west Mosul) and was hit by fire and crashed in the Mohandiseen neighborhood in east Mosul," Brigadier General Yahya Rasool, the front man for Iraq’s Joint Operations Command, told AFP.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/07/2017
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[4 views]
Top|| File under: Islamic State
A thank you to multiple Rantburg citizens who posted similar reports.
The Pentagon launched more than 50 Tomahawk cruise missiles at a Syrian air base late Thursday in retaliation for a gruesome poison gas attack this week that U.S. officials said was carried out by President Bashar Assad’s forces.
Trump authorized the attack after he was briefed by Defense Secretary James N. Mattis in Palm Beach, Fla., where the president is hosting visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Two Navy destroyers patrolling in the eastern Mediterranean Sea fired lethal salvos of Tomahawk cruise missiles into eastern Syria from hundreds of miles offshore, well out of range of Syrian air defenses, according to U.S. officials.
The target was Shayrat airfield, with two runways in western Syria that were used by Assad's warplanes to launch a chemical attack Tuesday against civilians in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikoun, the officials said.
The airfield is just southeast of Homs.
Targets included aircraft, fuel and weapons depots, and command and control facilities in Assad's stronghold, officials said. Pentagon officials said they were assessing the results of the strikes, adding that there were no plans for additional strikes Thursday.
The attack marks the first time the U.S. has deliberately targeted Assad's military in Syria's multi-sided civil war, now in its seventh year. Until now, the U.S. has focused only on targeting Islamic State militants.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/07/2017
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[15 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Syria
#1
Congress never acted on Resolution 21 which was the 2013 action that would have authorized Obama to hit Syria (but would have also prohibited boots on the ground). Of course the reason the Resolution was never voted on was that Syria 'agreed' to remove all chem weapons.
Its a tricky legal situation. Also a tricky strategic situation.
Hope this works.
Posted by: lord garth ||
04/07/2017 0:18
Comments ||
Top||
#2
Everything in this worked Perfect.
The Law, Weather, Date, timing, statements, discovery, tracing, precision, - Perfect.
The Russians should have nothing to say.
Good Onlay with the OPORD too - every step if he gasses people like bugs again. More FP Leway.
Phaselines are now set against Assad, and other Nations will now understand they are laid for them Too.
#5
Well, I don't know if Alawis (there is no such thing as Syria anymore) really behind the gassing - but, they're all vermin. Too bad POTUS can casually kill them in their own countries, but is powerless to prevent their entry to USA.
Posted by: European Conservative ||
04/07/2017 5:43
Comments ||
Top||
#10
He campaigned on staying out of other people's business.
Yes, these people are butchers, but how does this get us out of foreign entanglements and the feckless Klingon and DoS strategy of 'regime change' and policing the world ?
Where is our strategic interest in all of this? Someone please inform me.
#11
Even as the warheads were exploding in Syria it seemed that these missiles were aimed at North Korea. That this was as much about restoring our credibility as it was anything else.
BTW, were any of our subsonic, non-stealthy Tomahawks intercepted by the vaunted S-300s?
I'm kinda sorta OK with that as a national posture, though I can see how opinions might differ.
Gotta say I didn't see this coming. One upside is it's going to be hard to sell the "Trump is a Russian stooge" meme. Can we assume SecDef Mattis thought this was a good idea?
#20
Except, Bes, McCain wants us supporting ISIS to remove Assad. Neutralizing his chemical weapons isn't removing him.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
04/07/2017 7:27
Comments ||
Top||
#21
Millions of refugees are pouring into the West because of murderous ME factions and welcomed by open arms leftists, bringing their Islamic disease with them, breaking government budgets, destabilizing communities. Knocking these butchers on their ass as step 1 to stop a global crisis is ...
#26
#10 He campaigned on staying out of other people's business. Yes, these people of butchers, but how does this get us out of foreign entanglements and the feckless Klingon and DoS strategy of 'regime change' and policing the world ? Where is our strategic interest in all of this? Someone please inform me. Posted by Besoeker
#27
All links in this thread are now clickable -- my small contribution after y'all did the heavy lifting on this very imteresting morning. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
As a message, may I suggest Do not do bad things -- we now punish. President Trump was talking about the dead babies before he gave the order.
...Though on second thought, for once caught before I clicked Submit, I can see how to the world that would look like a variant of We're crazy, don't mess with us. And that message is indeed doing double duty aimed at China -- whose tyrant (and his lovely wife) was perhaps changing for dinner with President and Mrs. Trump when the order was given, a thought-provoking realization -- and North Korea among others. President Trump did say America can act alone if the UN does not act... On the third hand, this will bring more urgency to future negotiations, and this president is all about negotiations.
#28
Even as the warheads were exploding in Syria it seemed that these missiles were aimed at North Korea. That this was as much about restoring our credibility as it was anything else.
I somehow missed that in my first reading of the discussion. You reached deeper into that thought than I, O peanut gallery.
#29
The strategic purpose is, "Don't Fuck with US".
Obumble squandered any respect or fear of the US and countries are willing to ignore or attack us at will. All that changes when we use our power to smack a country that does bad things. Chemical weapons have been a no go since WWI and after the moving red line Syria has told us to go fuck ourselves. NKorea is watching and is doing the same thing and expecting the Obumble response.
Well, all those countries that want to do us harm have been put on notice with this strike. Do not use WMD. Do not fuck with US.
#31
1. Somewhere I missed where Syria messed with the US.
2. Defeating the Caliphate is THE US strategic objective in Syria.
3. The Caliphate is responsible for true genocide and lead all competitors in the ME in the conduct of "bad things."
4. The hunter that chases two rabbits catches nether proverb should be applied liberally. Fight and finish one war in a row...
#37
As much as I am against interfering in the middle east there is a large ugly mess that Obastard left.
The Iranian issue starts but doesn't end with the nuclear "deal". There is also the development of Iran's Shia crescent through Iraq and Syria. Disabling that if not dismantling it completely is very important to a bigger picture than ISIS.
ISIS needs to be crushed but in this case the enemy of my enemy is definitely NOT my friend.
#41
Where is our strategic interest in all of this?
There is no single straight path anyone can take to put the world back where things needs to be, but this seems to be a reasonable place to start, if you're ever going to start at all, and we'll make course corrections along the way as need be.
This seems to use an emotional event as a catalyst to send several messages that needed to be sent. Now people have to either put their money where their mouths have been, or to get real and shut up. It's been a long time since reality has had much of an influence on rhetoric.
Consider what eight years of not responding to these kinds of actions has gotten the world.
#43
I noticed the pink/reddened cheeks of the victims shown as well, but chalked it up to flawed memory on my part. It was striking. They looked otherwise healthy, not at all what I remember from sarin reactions.
And getting themselves aerated/aspirated with some gas masks at the treatment station? So, false flag feels likely.
I think Bes has the right of it.
Posted by: Whiskey Mike ||
04/07/2017 13:18
Comments ||
Top||
#44
Strategic interest is all very well, but I'm tired of ideology based excuses. How the f*ck is it different from what Muslims do, or what communists did? Because your ideology is better - guess what they believed/believe?
#46
The Pentagon statement said that Russia chose to be willfully blind to the chem attack. That abrogated agreements in place and it came while the US and Russia were allegedly discussing a peach plan to divide Syria into cantons. On that reading, Assad used the chem to break up an agreement that would have reduced the Alawites to power only in areas where they are a majority.
That explains the gassing. The response was measured - Russian and Syrian troops were not attacked, Russia was given advance warning, the airfield and planes from that location were destroyed but no attempt was made to destroy likely chem weapon stockpiles elsewhere.
What interests me is the clear message to Beijing about Pyongyang: deal with them or we will.
#47
Funny you should make mention of it g(r)om, was the first thing I thought of. The level of activity was off. He can't be everywhere can he, but the mentality in the area abounds; he has relatives.
Posted by: Whiskey Mike ||
04/07/2017 13:34
Comments ||
Top||
#48
>Whiskey Mike, anybody spot green helmet guy in the background?
#50
Just getting the following into the record. It was published at The Times of Israel at 2:09 a.m. local time, which I believe was last night at 8:09 p.m. EDT:
UNITED NATIONS – Seeking to avert a clash between Russia and the West, 10 Security Council countries on Thursday circulated a compromise resolution demanding a full investigation of the suspected chemical attack in Syria, diplomats said.
The new text — the third now before the council on investigating the apparent gas attack — was presented ahead of a closed-door meeting of the 15-member council on Syria at 6:30 pm (2230 GMT).
It remained unclear if Russia or the other four permanent council members would back the compromise presented as the United States was weighing military options in Syria.
Britain, France and the United States are pushing for a vote later Thursday on their draft text in response to the strike Tuesday on a rebel-held town in Idlib province that shocked the world.
Their compromise text would drop demands that Syria hand over information on its military operations on the day of the strike, replacing them with language from a previous resolution urging cooperation on chemical weapons investigations, diplomats said.
Russia has rejected the proposed Western-backed resolution as “categorically unacceptable” and put forward a rival draft that does not include specific demands that the Syrian government cooperate with an investigation.
The Russian text calls for an investigation but requests that the council approve the makeup of the team from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) dispatched to Idlib, according to the draft seen by AFP.
#53
Do I get this right? Daily Caller reports unemployed Russian vets have been hired as mercenaries by assorted Islamist groups in Syria. Missiles circled, Russian radar knew, then we precisely took out the airbase and fixed wing aircraft but not the chemicals out of concern for civilians. Since ISIS took over Mosul university and apparently have manufactured more, since Obama removed them all from Syria (wink,wink) and are delivering them via drones, not with aircraft. So I hope this is a ploy to jointly remove the weapons together so everyone can keep their heads. If not done jointly with Russia and Assad, we don't want to sacrifice the boots on ground and get mired in Syria and piss off all Trump's supporters. Jihadis have been breathing venomous threats to export terror to the US in retaliation & shouldn't be allowed access to the spared weapons. When Dems are applauding along with Deep State, I hope the President hasn't been suckered into this. I assume special forces are going to verify on the ground? Planning to take control of the remaining stockpiles is in the works I hope. Russians enroute?
Posted by: Sonny Darling of the Platypi5488 ||
04/07/2017 15:56
Comments ||
Top||
#54
We struck a deal where we got 100 percent of the chemical weapons out,” then Secretary of State John Kerry said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” in July 2014. Kerry was referring to a deal the U.S. and Russia struck in September 2013 in which the Russians agreed to help confiscate and then destroy Syria’s entire chemical weapons stockpile.
An article was published on April 6, 2017 that basically said: "PolitiFact retracts 'mostly true' ruling that US removed '100 percent' of Syria's chemical weapons."
WTF? The Russians didn't do their job whether intentionally or unintentionally? Obama and Kerry did not tell the truth? That could never be (sarc).
#55
The strategic purpose is don't use CBW again or the other five airbases get the same treatment. Letting evil people get away with using CBW sets a bad precedent. Pencilneck and all those dead babies can thank 'Bamer and Rice for setting that bad precedent.
#56
Good old Obumble. Clarion of chaos. And by the word 'good', I mean the exact opposite.
Posted by: Whiskey Mike ||
04/07/2017 20:50
Comments ||
Top||
#57
‘Low efficiency’: Only 23 Tomahawk missiles out of 59 reached Syrian airfield, Russian MoD says
The Russian Defense Ministry says the US missile strike on a Syrian airfield wasn't very effective, with only 23 out of 59 Tomahawk missiles reaching their target. The locations of the remaining 36 missiles’ impact is now unknown, the ministry added.
Did we really miss our targets? It seems the other 36 cruise missiles hit their targets, it's just that those target is not at the one airfield.
#58
October 23, 1983, in Beirut, 241 unarmed Marines dead.
There's a difference between unarmed and disarmed. The CO and ambassador saw to that with the ROE. Talk at the time the CO was going to face courts martial till Ronnie went on TV and took the blame.
[The Hill] The U.S. intelligence community is in the midst of a severe crisis. It has been used, or perhaps allowed itself to be used, as a tool of political destruction, against some of the same U.S. citizens it was created to protect.
What I am talking about is the continuing "Wiretapgate" debacle. We are seeing the widespread abuse of intelligence by an incumbent administration to target political opposition. Long a technique in the developing world -- a tactic I often witnessed as a CIA station chief working abroad -- the Third World has come to roost in the United States. It is a tragedy of the first order.
The danger of politicization is widely accepted throughout the intelligence community as the greatest hazard, in theory, to the intelligence profession. If an intel service cannot be accepted as an unbiased arbiter, it loses the trust of its people, and risks becoming irrelevant and unheeded. History is littered with intel failures; one need only look to the invasion of Iraq to see how politicization can lead to costly failure and a "trust gap" that can take years to bridge and resolve.
Truth, despite the naysayers, is objective and absolute. The intelligence community has a responsibility to provide the most informed truth to the president. The truth, warts and all, will always be the soundest basis for any foreign policy. This is what our multibillion-dollar intel leviathan owes the American people and its government.
[Libya Observer] Four human smugglers were killed in an exchange of fire with Libyan navy off the western shores on Thursday, a navy official has declared.
Spokesman of the Libyan Navy, Brigadier-General Ayoub Qasim, said Coast Guard patrol boats clashed with heavily armed gunnies escorting an illegal immigrants colonists’ boat after they refused to obey orders to stop.
"The gunnies opened heavy fire at Coast Guard patrols and we had to respond to their fire," he said, adding that two smugglers were tossed in the clink Youse'll never take me alive coppers!... [BANG!]... Ow!... I quit! and another is still missing.
Qasim also declared that a foreign journalist accompanying Coast Guard patrols was injured in the exchange of fire.
Human smuggling has become a flourishing business in Libya due to the political and security chaos ongoing in the country
Last month, 15 illegal immigrants colonists were brutally killed by human smugglers after disagreement over payment.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/07/2017
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[9 views]
Top|| File under: Moslem Colonists
[Libya Herald] The National Tebu Assembly (NTA) has rejected the Tebu-Tuareg-Awlad Sulieman peace deal signed in Rome at the end of last month, criticising what it said was blatant intervention Italia in Libyan internal affairs.
One of those who helped draw up the NTA statement said that those Tebus who had signed the Rome deal did not represent the Tebu community. They were from Qatrun, he said, while the festivities from 2011 to 2015 between Tuareg and Tebus and between Tebus and the Awlad Suleiman occurred in Obari, Sebha and Murzuk.
Last month’s peace deal was the second to be brokered in Rome involving the Tebus and the Tuareg. An initial peace deal was sponsored by the Italian Sant’Egidio community in April 2016. Last month’s deal bringing in the Awlad Suleiman and mentored by Presidency Council member Abdelsalam is said to have been fully backed by the Italian Foreign Ministry.
Saying that it understood Italia’s need to control the growing tide of migrants colonists coming from Libya, the NTA added that this did not give Rome the right to intervene in Libyan internal affairs or disregard the official channels where the Italian government could lend a help.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/07/2017
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[9 views]
Top|| File under: Arab Spring
[Libya Herald] Two aircraft thought to belong to Misratan forces are reported to have bombed Brak al-Shatti airbase this afternoon in reprisal for the Arclight airstrikes on Tamenhint airbase this morning. It is not known if there are any casualties. Attempts to contact the authorities in Brak have been unsuccessful so far.
It is believed the LNA aircraft involved in the Tamenhint strikes flew from the Brak airbase, itself taken over in early December by LNA units under General Mohammed Ben Nayel after Misrata’s Third Force had to pull out.
The general’s forces are now besieging Tamenhint.
There, it has emerged, there were no casualties in this morning’s attacks. These, according to a local resident, hit only the perimeter area. The Third Force were still in control, the confirmed.
It has also emerged that yesterday evening LNA aircraft once again attacked Jufra airbase, some 350 kilometres northeast of Tamenhint. It is held by Misratan forces as well as being a operating base for the Bengahzi Defence Brigades. The LNA Arclight airstrikes targeted weapons storage.
A large force comprising mainly the Benghazi-based Zawiya Martyrs Brigade led by Brigadier Jamal al-Zahawi is meanwhile reported to have set out today from Benghazi to attack the Jufra base.
Last week, Zahawi was appointed by the LNA general command as head of its Jufra operations room.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/07/2017
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[2 views]
Top|| File under: Arab Spring
[Asharq al-Aswat] United States Republicans swatted away decades of tradition Thursday by changing Senate rules to ensure Neil Gorsuch’s confirmation to the Supreme Court, bypassing the first-ever successful opposition block on a high-court nominee.
President Donald Trump ...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States... ’s pick, embraced by conservatives but opposed by most Democrats, failed to receive the 60 votes necessary to end debate on his nomination and move to a simple majority confirmation vote in the 100-seat Senate.
In response, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell moved to change the rules to ensure that a simple majority suffices to advance Gorsuch -- and all subsequent Supreme Court nominees -- from the debate to a confirmation vote.
The rule change -- known as the "nuclear option" -- was approved along party lines in the Republican-controlled Senate, landing like a political earthquake in a chamber already straining to adhere to its traditions of consensus and bipartisanship.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/07/2017
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[4 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
I wonder if Syria tomahawking was McCain's price for voting aye?
#2
Dunno, maybe. Trump probably was also sending a message to the Fat Boy and Norks that basically said "Straighten up and don't mess with us or our allies."
[An Nahar] A dronezap killed a suspected al-Qaeda Lion of Islam in southern Yemen, a security official said on Thursday, as the US steps up its air war against the jihadists.
The missile hit al-Qaeda provincial official Ahmed Ali Saana as he was riding a cycle of violence late on Wednesday in the town of Khabar al-Muraqasha in Abyan ...a governorate of Yemen. The region was a base to the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army terrorist group until it dropped the name and joined al-Qaeda. Its capital is Zinjibar. In March 2011, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula declared the governate an Islamic Emirate after seizing control of the region. The New York Times fastidiously reported that those in control, while Islamic hard boyz, are not in fact al-Qaeda, but something else that looks, tastes, smells, and acts the same. Yemeni government forces launched an effort to re-establish control of the region when President-for-Life Saleh was tossed and the carnage continues... province, a major target of recent dronezaps, the official said on condition of anonymity.
The Pentagon has confirmed more than 70 air strikes on al-Qaeda targets in Yemen ...an area of the Arabian Peninsula sometimes mistaken for a country. It is populated by more antagonistic tribes and factions than you can keep track of. Except for a tiny handfull of Jews everthing there is very Islamic... since February 28.
Yemeni security officials have reported dozens of suspected jihadist fighters killed in the strikes on Abyan and the neighbouring provinces of Shabwa and Baida.
More than two years of civil war in Yemen between government forces and Iranian catspaws who control the capital have created a power vacuum which al-Qaeda has exploited to consolidate its presence.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/07/2017
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[9 views]
Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula
[An Nahar] An initial analysis of victims of the suspected chemical attack in Syria brought to The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... for treatment suggests they were exposed to the deadly nerve agent sarin, the Turkish health ministry said on Thursday.
"According to the results of the initial analysis, the findings suggest the injured were exposed to a chemical substance (sarin)," the health ministry said in a statement.
It confirmed that 31 people were being treated in southern Turkey and three had died in hospital.
The statement said according to the initial findings victims has suffered "pulmonary edema (accumulation of fluid), increase in the lung weight and blood in the lungs."
"These findings suggest there was a link between these injuries and the use of chemical weapons."
It said that the autopsies in the southern city of Adana were conducted in the presence of officials from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations ...the Oyster Bay money pit... Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
It said further investigations were underway at a laboratory in Ankara on samples taken from the victims. Meanwhile the OPCW was also taking samples for examination at its headquarters in The Hague, it added.
The WHO and Doctors Without Borders (MSF) had previously said victims showed symptoms consistent with the possible use of a nerve agent, such as sarin.
But the statement from the health ministry was the first time the Turkish government had indicated it believed sarin was to blame.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/07/2017
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[5 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Syria
#1
Sarin doesn't tend to cause pulmonary edema. Other gas agents do.
[An Nahar] A member of the jihadist group al-Nusra ...formally Jabhat an-Nusrah li-Ahli al-Sham (Support Front for the People of the Levant), also known as al-Qaeda in the Levant. They aim to establish a pan-Arab caliphate. Not the same one as the Islamic State, though .. ... Front was killed and another was maimed in a kaboom in the outskirts of the eastern Lebanese border town of Arsal on Thursday, state-run National News Agency reported.
It said the bomb was planted by jihadist rivals from the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're 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 the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... group in the Wadi Ajram area in the town's outskirts.
Members of the two groups are entrenched in rugged areas along Leb's eastern border with Syria.
The Lebanese army regularly shells their positions while Hizbullah ...Party of God, a Leb militia inspired, founded, funded and directed by Iran. Hizbullah refers to itself as The Resistance and purports to defend Leb against Israel, with whom it has started and lost one disastrous war to date, though it did claim victory... and the Syrian army have engaged in festivities with them on the Syrian side of the border.
The two jihadist groups briefly overran the town of Arsal in 2014 before being ousted by the Lebanese army after days of deadly battles.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/07/2017
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[8 views]
Top|| File under: al-Nusra
[An Nahar] Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said Thursday he has ordered troops to deploy on unoccupied South China Sea islands, boosting the military presence on remote reefs claimed by Manila in a move that could provoke rival claimants including Beijing.
"It looks like everybody is making a grab for the islands there, so we better live on those that are still vacant," he told news hounds during a televised visit to a military camp on the western island of Palawan, near the disputed Spratly group.
China asserts illusory sovereignty over almost all of the resource-rich South China Sea despite rival claims from Southeast Asian neighbours and has rapidly built reefs into artificial islands capable of hosting military planes.
Duterte has previously sought to improve his nation's relations with Beijing by adopting a non-confrontational approach over their competing claims in the strategically vital waters.
But the president appeared to alter his tone with his announcement Thursday, saying it was time to "erect structures there and raise the Philippine flag".
"I have ordered the armed forces to occupy all," Duterte said.
"At least, let us get what is ours now and make a strong point there that it is ours," he said, adding Manila was claiming "nine or 10" Spratly islands, reefs and cays.
The defence department later said that nine outcrops "are already in our possession" and occupied by marines, including Thitu island where the Philippine military maintains an airstrip.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/07/2017
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[9 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
... Between that little message during dinner with the President yesterday and this, the Chinese aren't having a good couple days. Wonder if their check to Duterte bounced.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
04/07/2017 12:20
Comments ||
Top||
#2
Okay, the Philippine soldiers now sit (awash) on some reefs. How do they get fed, etc?
Logistics, as I recall, was never exactly the strong point of the Philippine military.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/07/2017 16:57
Comments ||
Top||
#3
Okay, the Philippine soldiers now sit (awash) on some reefs. How do they get fed, etc?
[Khaama (Afghanistan)] At least twenty forces of Evil were killed and a vehicle packed with explosives was destroyed in an Arclight airstrike conducted in southern Uruzgan province of Afghanistan.
The Ministry of Defense (MoD) said the Arclight airstrike was conducted in the vicinity of Tarinkot city, the lovely provincial capital of Uruzgan province.
Uruzgan is among the relatively volatile provinces in southern Afghanistan where the Taliban forces of Evil and turbans belonging to the other bad boy groups are actively operating in its various districts.
In the meantime, MoD said at least ten forces of Evil were killed and seven more were maimed during a separate operation conducted in the vicinity of Shindand district in Herat ...a venerable old Persian-speaking city in western Afghanistan, populated mostly by Tadjiks, which is why it's not as blood-soaked as areas controlled by Pashtuns... province.
MoD also added that six turbans were killed during an operation conducted in Greshk district of Helmand ...an Afghan province populated mostly by Pashtuns, adjacent to Injun country in Pak Balochistan... province.
In another operation conducted in the vicinity of the central city of Paktika ...which coincidentally borders South Wazoo... , at least six turbans were killed and seven more were maimed.
According to MoD, at least one bad boy was killed and two more were maimed during an operation in Shajoi district of Zabul.
The anti-government armed bad boy groups including the Taliban forces of Evil have not commented regarding the reports so far.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/07/2017
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[7 views]
Top|| File under: Taliban
[AnNahar] Germany is investigating 20 people for allegedly spying on followers of an exiled preacher targeted by Turkish President Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdogan the First ... Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him... 's government.
"At the moment, a total of 20 accused and persons unknown are under investigation over suspicions that they worked as secret service agents on the orders of the Turkish government, and spied on followers of the Gulen movement," said Germany's interior ministry in a written reply to a query by an opposition Left party politician.
Erdogan blames U.S.-based holy manFethullah Gulen ... a Turkish preacher living in Pennsylvania whom the current govt of Turkey considers responsible for all the ills afflicting Turkey and possibly the entire world... for a failed coup last July, and has launched a sweeping crackdown against his followers.
Gulen has denied all accusations, but more than 41,000 people in The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... have been tossed in the calaboose Book 'im, Mahmoud! over suspected links to his movement.
German prosecutors last month announced a probe into claims that Turkish agents have been spying on Gulen's followers in Germany.
They have also launched an investigation into the actions of Turkish imams suspected of acting as spies under Ankara's orders.
The interior ministry did not specify in its parliamentary reply if the 20 under probe included the imams.
But the investigation of the Moslem preachers had followed raids in February on the homes of four Turkish imams who are believed to have passed on information about Gulen followers to the Turkish consulate.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
04/07/2017
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[5 views]
Top|| File under: Sublime Porte
[Political Insider] A stunning report from Fox News indicates that the Obama administration granted former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and six of her top aides access to top secret and classified information ‐ even after she left the State Department in 2013, even after she announced a run for the White House in April of 2015, and even after FBI Director James Comey declared that Clinton and her staff had been "extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information."
Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley made the startling revelation in a letter to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, noting that Clinton asked for access to the classified information because she was writing her memoir, Hard Choices.
That’s right ‐ The woman who had a home brew server installed in her bathroom and whose emails somehow ended up on laptops owned by serial snapchatter Anthony Weiner, was granted access to sensitive material so she could write a book.
Via Fox News:
When Hillary Clinton resigned as Secretary of State in 2013, she negotiated continuing access to classified and top-secret documents for herself and six staffers under the designation "research assistants," according to a powerful senator who notes that Clinton was later deemed "extremely careless" with such information.
The staff apparently retained access even after Clinton announced her run for president in April 2015, according to Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa. The access was ostensibly granted to facilitate work on Clinton’s memoir, but Grassley said he was only able to verify it after the Obama administration left the White House.
President Obama’s administration repeatedly stonewalled Grassley’s requests for information on the classified information access.
#5
Considering the type of elitist pile of dog poop HRC is, she wouldn't be writing the book but some ghost writer did. So, some clown got access to TS material.
#6
#2 Does the President have authority to do this or is this considered a criminal leak?
The law is a little fuzzy when it comes to the President giving access or releasing info.
If HRC had her clearance still, the president can legally giver her all the access he wants to anything. He really is the end point for access and release.
The president can also release classified material as wall as he can designate it as approved for release.
If she didn't have a clearance... that is when things get fuzzy. The president can release classified info, but to one citizen that doesn't have clearances... would be an interesting legal argument.
#7
Zero granted HRC access to highly classified info and Donna Brazile also fed Hillary debate questions to the "Beest" and she still lost. Bad candidate.
#8
Giving one candidate for president what was apparently unlimited access to classified information when that candidate is a member of your own party would appear to be a political act, and one of a kind inappropriate even for a president.
Since ghostwriters actually write the memoirs, the issue is: were Ms. Clinton's ghostwriters cleared for access to sensitive highly classified information? If not, it would be a felony for her to divulge any of such information found by her to them, rendering it useless for her memoirs.
By the way the broadening of government access to clandestinely obtained information by President Obama days before leaving office seems a strange and inexplicable act. Can we somehow find out the claimed motivation for it?
#9
Little by little that business about Trump and Putin colluding to hack the election is beginning to fade away as Democrat "resistance" goes on defense.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
04/07/2017 12:23
Comments ||
Top||
#10
Little by little that business about Trump and Putin colluding to hack the election is beginning to fade away as Democrat "resistance" goes on defense.
Posted by: Abu Uluque
#11
Come on people, you know she was on Susan Rice's JWICs sharepoint, pulling down all that unmasked campaign talk to include in the upcoming chapter of her book, How to Cheat an Election and Blame the Russians.
[Free Beacon] The top officer of the U.S. Army reprimanded Congress on Wednesday for its repeated failure to pass a budget that fully funds the military, rejecting remarks from a Democratic lawmaker that the military should adapt to stop-gap spending bills as the new reality in Washington.
Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley warned that Congress's inability to pass a budget by the end of the month would "ultimately result in dead Americans on a future battlefield" and pose a threat to national security.
"Failure to pass the budget, in my view as an American citizen and the chief of staff of the United States Army, constitutes professional malpractice," Milley testified before the House Armed Services Committee.
The heads of the Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps joined Milley in warning lawmakers that the services will face significant challenges in protecting the homeland and sustaining ongoing missions if Congress again fails to pass a federal budget.
Congress has turned to stop-gap spending bills over the past eight years to avert government shutdowns amid toxic partisan strife. The temporary budgets freeze defense funding, forcing the Defense Department to shuffle funds from modernization and hiring to support current missions.
Milley rejected a suggestion by Rep. Susan Davis (D., Calif.) that the military adjust to operating under short-term spending bills as a "new normal."
"I don't think we should accept it as the new normal," Milley said. "The world is a dangerous place and is becoming more dangerous by the day. Pass the budget."
#2
"I don't think we should accept it as the new normal," Milley said. "The world is a dangerous place and is becoming more dangerous by the day. Pass the budget."
Say there, Class-VI store manager, what brand of whiskey does this man drink?
#3
Gee, I remember several years in the mid to late 70s the Army was late getting a budget. One year, after two delays and two 30 temps, Congress just passed a continuing resolution for funding the year.
The top officer of the U.S. Army reprimanded Congress on Wednesday for its repeated failure to pass a budget that fully funds the military,
Let's not get too ballsy. A lot of procurement malfeasance and gold plating out there, not to mention paying for more General officers than we had in WWII when we had millions of men under arms, not less than 500,000.
#4
Mrs. Ret. made a omment the other day that furloughs are now b eing discussed, and unlike previous ones legislation is in place to prevent backpay for non work. While i support that i do recognize the potetial hit on the vast Ret Financial Empire. Her take is that those loathsome convresscritters, especially Pubs should not be paid since they are not doing their job either (passing the budget).
other than the partisan dig i think she may be on to something.
This story is no longer about antisemitic threats, nor even about Israel -- and with each revelation it has become stranger and stranger.
[IsraelTimes] After finding his bitcoin account, Sherlocks believe Israeli-American teen sold counterfeit IDs on dark net for cryptocurrency.
The Israeli-American teenager behind hundreds of hoax bomb threats against Jewish institutions in the US reportedly earned millions of shekels’ worth of digital currency by selling counterfeit documents over the internet.
Police suspect the 18-year-old -- whose name is sealed under gag order in Israel -- sold forged identity cards, passports and driver’s licenses over both the internet and the dark net in exchange for bitcoins, a cryptocurrency often used in illicit transactions online, according to a Channel 2 report Thursday.
Continued on Page 49
A solid point, Skidmark. But even if he only made US $500,000, that's an awful lot of money for an autistic 18 year old who can't hope to work at McDonalds. No wonder his parents didn't know what he was doing -- they never got the bills.
A military source announced that control was established over Telal Hakema ( Hakema hills) in the western direction of Deir Ezzor after destroying the fortifications of ISIL terrorists in it.
The source told SANA that army units, in cooperation with the backing forces, over the past few hours, carried out special operations against gatherings of ISISL terrorists in the western direction of Deir Ezzor, establishing control over the hills of Hilal, al-Dusham (the barricades) and Milad after destroying the last ISIS gatherings in them.
The source added that army units carried out intensive bombardments in the surrounding of al-Maqaber “cemeteries” area, al-Masane’ (the factories) and the water plant on the southern outskirts of Deir Ezzor, killing 48 terrorists and destroying a tank and 6 machinegun-equipped vehicles.
Lattakia
Army units operating in Lattakia countryside thwarted an attack launched by al-Nusra Front terrorists on the axes of Kabani/Kensabba in the northeastern countryside of Lattakia province.
SANA reporter in Lattakia said the army units, in cooperation with the supporting forces, destroyed 3 vehicles rigged with explosives for terrorist organizations before they could reach the area surrounding a number of military points and safety villages on the axes of Kabani/Kensabba.
The reporter added that army units and terrorist groups engaged in heavy clashes when terrorists tried to advance toward the safety areas after the destruction of the vehicles. A large number of terrorists, most of them are members of al-Nusra, were killed, before others fled away towards areas near the Turkish-Syrian border.
Daraa
Army units killed a number of al-Nusra terrorists in Daraa al-Balad and al-Lajat areas, and foiled their attacks on one of the military posts in the northwestern countryside.
A military source told SANA that an army unit foiled an attempt by al-Nusra terrorist groups to infiltrate to one of the military posts in Jadieh village, 65 km northwest of Daraa city, after killing most of the terrorists while the others fled away.
The source added that an army unit killed, in special operation, all members of the terrorist group which was moving from al-Lajat area toward the northern countryside of Sweida.
In Daraa al-Balad, the military source said that the army carried out intensive strikes against gatherings and movements of al-Nusra terrorists in al-Karak neighborhood and on the left of al-Jomrok al-Qadeem (Old Custom) road, killing 8 terrorists and destroying two cannons and two heavy machineguns.
Source: SANA
Posted by: badanov ||
04/07/2017
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[7 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Syria
Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) One civilian was killed and eight others were wounded on Thursday when bomb blast rocked areas east and west of Baghdad, according to security sources.
Alghad Press quoted sources saying that an explosive device exploded near a cattle market in MAdaen, southeast of the capital, killing one and wounding three others.
Another bomb, also planted near a cattle market, exploded in al-Haswa district, leaving five wounded, according to Al-maalomah website.
The United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI) has said that violence in the country lef 1115 casualties, excluding security members, during March. Baghdad was the second most affected province with 84 deaths and 246 injuries, according to the organization’s monthly casualty count.
While several blasts are not followed by a claim of responsibility, Islamic State militants said they had been behind some bloody explosions and attacks that hit the capital in the past months, leaving casualties among civilians and security troops.
[ARA News] The Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) on Thursday said that the Turkish army and Turkey-backed rebels have stepped up their attacks on the Kurdish positions near Kobane and Efrin, in northern Syria.
“The invading Turkish army has attacked the Girêsor village to the east of Kobanê, and Çarıklı, Siftek and Boban villages to the west of Kobanê with heavy weaponry. Also, the Turkish aircraft carried several raids on the mentioned villages,” the YPG said in a statement.
“meanwhile, gang groups acting under the command of the Turkish army attacked Martyr Şîlan hill in Efrîn’s Cindirêsê sub-district,” the YPG added.
The YPG’s leadership reported that the the Turkish army and allied Syrian rebels continued to attack Kurdish ares near Efrin over the last few days.
“On April 2, the invading Turkish army and affiliated gangs launched an attack on Ayn Deqnê, Vîla Qadî, Belûnê and Til Silor areas with mortars and heavy weapons,” the YPG said.
“On April 3, Turkish troops attacked Efrîn’s Maranez and Şêwarxa villages with howitzer fire,” it added.
“On April 4, gangs affiliated with the Turkish army attacked Maranez village again, and the YPG positions in Ayn Deqnê, Maranez and Belûnê villages at night. On April 5, Turkish army-affiliated gangs attacked Efrîn’s Malikiye and Maranez villages with howitzer fire,” the YPG said.
Moreover, the Kurdish People’s Protection Units said that Turkish UAVs carried out reconnaissance activity over Maranez, Malikiye, Vila Qadi, Ayn Deqnê and Belûnîyê villages, which was followed a bombardment on these areas with howitzer fire.
Clashes and tensions have continued between the Turkish-backed rebels and the YPG even after Turkey announced the end of the Euphrates Shield operation in northern Syria in late March.
Furthermore, days after Turkey said it had ended the seven-month Euphrates Shield operation in northern Syria, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that Turkey is planning new offensives against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in Iraq, and the People’s Protection Units (YPG) in Syria.
Erdogan suggested that Ankara has “very good surprises for all terrorist groups, including the PKK, YPG, Daesh [Arabic acronym for Islamic State, formerly ISIS/ISIL] and FETO [Gulenist organization].”
The pro-Turkish government newspaper Yeni Safak on Thursday suggested that Turkey is planning to launch a ‘Tigris Shield’ campaign on 9 PKK positions in Sinjar, Zakho, and Duhok at the end of April. However, analysts suggest it is unlikely for Turkey to militarily intervene in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Posted by: badanov ||
04/07/2017
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[8 views]
Top|| File under: Sublime Porte
[An Nahar] Turkish President Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdogan the First ... Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him... has said he hopes U.S. President Donald Trump ...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States... will take military action in Syria after this week's chemical attack.
The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... 's state-run Anadolu Agency quoted Erdogan as reacting to news reports Thursday that Trump was mulling military action after the assault in the northern Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun, which killed more than 80 people.
It quoted Erdogan as saying Turkey would be prepared to do "whatever falls on us" to support possible military action. Turkey is a leading supporter of the rebels fighting to overthrow Syrian Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Terror of Aleppo ...
Posted by: Fred ||
04/07/2017
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[9 views]
Top|| File under: Sublime Porte
#1
Golly. The Turks seem to have the balls it takes to stand up to indomitable Russia. Why is everyone in the world's only superpower quaking in their boots about this?
#2
It quoted Erdogan as saying Turkey would be prepared to do "whatever falls on us" to support possible military action.
...restore the Ottoman Empire! FIFY.
[DAWN] ISLAM, with about 1.6 billion followers all over the globe, is currently the second largest religion in the world. Despite its prominent presence on the world map, its followers are performing poorly on the global indices of education and literacy, scientific advancements and innovation, and social development.
The poor performance on these global indices highlights serious challenges for Moslems in coping with the modern world and moving along with progressive societies. While this needs immediate attention and a comprehensive evaluation of the causes for the poor performance as well as corrective action, Moslem masses in general do not take it as a serious matter. Poor performance on those indices appears to be of least concern to them.
This attitude seems to be rooted in a strong sense of belonging to religion; this is further augmented by the belief that questioning is forbidden in religion and one must accept whatever is conveyed. Consequently, any misery, humiliation or decline faced by Moslems, individually or collectively, is blamed on their lack of adherence to the framework conveyed by religion.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
04/07/2017
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[6 views]
Top|| File under:
ISTANBUL: Turkey is planning in the next weeks to launch a new cross border military incursion to oust the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) from the Sinjar region of northern Iraq, a report said on Thursday.
The report in the pro-government Yeni Safak daily was not immediately confirmed by Turkish officials but President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has over the last days indicated an operation in northern Iraq could be in the offing.
Turkey last week announced it had completed its half-year Euphrates Shield operation in northern Syria against militants and Kurdish militia, although it is keeping a presence to maintain security in towns now under control of pro-Ankara Syrian fighters.
But Erdogan this week said Euphrates Shield was only a “first stage” and new military operations were being planned, including for Sinjar.
Yeni Safak said the new operation would begin in late April or May, after Turkey’s crucial April 16 referendum on expanding Erdogan’s powers.
It will be called Tigris Shield after the other great river in Mesopotamia, it added, and involve thousands of tanks, vehicles and artillery pieces used in the Syria operation.
Yeni Safak claimed the PKK had built up nine camps in the Sinjar region after moving in from 2014 to oust Daesh militants who have massacred the area’s Yazidi residents.
It said the aim of the operation would be to cut off any contact between Sinjar and the Qandil mountain area in Iraq to the further north, where the PKK has its main rear bases.
The incursion would also prevent cooperation between the PKK in Iraq and Kurdish militia in Syria that Ankara accuses of being the Syrian wing of the PKK.
A key base would be Bashiqa, outside the city of Mosul, where Turkey has maintained a military presence much to the annoyance of the Baghdad government.
Such an operation would risk raising tensions with Baghdad and also the US, which has kept a wary eye on Turkey’s unilateral incursion into northern Syria.
After a cease-fire and peace process collapsed in 2015, the Turkish government has vowed to destroy the PKK, which has waged a bloody insurgency since 1984.
From 2015, the Turkish air force has bombed PKK camps in Qandil mountain but this would be the first major ground operation in Turkey’s neighbor.
Posted by: badanov ||
04/07/2017
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[7 views]
Top|| File under: Sublime Porte
Baiji (IraqiNews.com) Security and paramilitary forces in Salahuddin province killed six suicide bombers on Thursday, while a seventh blew himself up, killing a child north of the province, according to security sources.
Alsumaria News quoted the sources saying the attackers, clad in military uniforms, sneaked into al-Hajjaj village, south of Baiji. Troops killed two before blowing themselves, but third hid inside a house, blew himself up and killed a child.
Meanwhile, the media service of the pro-Iraqi government troops paramilitary forces, al-Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Units) said four suicide bombers were also shot dead trying to enter Baiji’s Harariyat region. Google Map at the link Iraqi militia unit repels ISIS attack, 14 Bad Guys die
Baiji (IraqiNews.com) Kata’ib Jund al-Imam movement announced, on Thursday, killing 14 members of the Islamic State group, after repulsing the group’s attack on west of Baiji District, in Salahuddin Province.
The movement’s Official Abu Karar al-Asadi said in a press statement that Kata’ib Jund al-Imam managed to repulse a violent attack launched by the Islamic State group on al-Sineya-Haditha defense line, west of Baiji.
“Our security forces also inflicted heavy human and material losses on the attackers,” Asadi explained.
Furthermore, Asadi added that 14 members of the terrorist group were killed during the clashes and two others were wounded, while security forces burned three booby-trapped vehicles during the attack that lasted for more than three hours.
“Unfortunately, two of our soldiers were killed and four others were wounded during the attack,” Asadi stated.
Earlie today, al-Hashd al-Shaabi media office also announced repulsing another attack by the Islamic State group on al-Harariyat area in Baiji District.
Kata’ib Jund al-Imam is a Shi’a militia operating in Iraq, and is considered as part of al-Hashd al-Shaabi militias (Popular Mobilization Units).
Posted by: badanov ||
04/07/2017
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[3 views]
Top|| File under: Islamic State
Don Rickles, the acidic stand-up comic who became world-famous not by telling jokes but by insulting his audience, died on Thursday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 90.
The cause was kidney failure, said a spokesman, Paul Shefrin.
For more than half a century, on nightclub stages, in concert halls and on television, Mr. Rickles made outrageously derisive comments about people’s looks, their ethnicity, their spouses, their sexual orientation, their jobs or anything else he could think of. He didn’t discriminate: His incendiary unpleasantries were aimed at the biggest stars in show business (Frank Sinatra was a favorite target) and at ordinary paying customers.
His rise to national prominence in the late 1960s and early 1970s roughly coincided with the success of “All in the Family,” the groundbreaking situation comedy whose protagonist, Archie Bunker, was an outspoken bigot. Mr. Rickles’s humor was similarly transgressive. But he went further than Archie Bunker, and while Carroll O’Connor, who played Archie, was speaking words someone else had written — and was invariably the butt of the joke — Mr. Rickles, whose targets included his fellow Jews, never needed a script and was always in charge.
#8
...roughly coincided with the success of “All in the Family,” the groundbreaking situation comedy whose protagonist, Archie Bunker, was an outspoken bigot.
The hunt for our lone wolf's connections continues...
[RT] Eight suspects have been detained as part of the St. Petersburg terrorist attack investigation, according to the Russian Investigative Committee, which is leading the inquiry.
"As a result of investigative actions taken by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) and the Interior Ministry, six suspects allegedly involved in the terrorist attack were detained in St. Petersburg and two more were arrested in Moscow," Investigative Committee spokeswoman Svetlana Petrenko told journalists on Thursday.
She also said that an improvised explosive device (IED) was found in the detained suspects’ apartments during a police raid, along with firearms and ammunition. The IED found by the police is similar to the one that the St. Petersburg Metro bomber is believed to have planted at Ploshchad Vosstaniya station, the spokeswoman added.
Earlier, six suspected Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) and Al-Nusra Front recruiters, who reportedly originate from Central Asian countries, were detained in St. Petersburg.
On April 3, a terrorist attack believed to be a suicide bombing claimed the lives of 14 people, mostly students, and left about 50 people injured. The Russian Investigative Committee has identified 22-year-old Akbarzhon Dzhalilov, a Kyrgyz-born Russian citizen, as the bomber behind the attack.
He set off an explosive device inside a metro train and planted a second bomb at the Ploshchad Vosstaniya station which was found and defused.
[Ynet] A US-Syrian Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're 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 the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... murderous Moslem who helped run an online media campaign disseminating jihadist material to sympathisers around the world from its self-declared caliphate has been killed in Syria, the group said.
Ahmad Abousamra was killed in early January when a missile struck a house where he was staying north of the Syrian city of Tabqa, according to Islamic State publications including the English language online magazine Rumiyah which he helped set up.
In early January? Still, he isn't any less settled in Hell now than he was on the day he suddenly found himself there.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
04/07/2017
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[12 views]
Top|| File under: Islamic State
#1
Which of the networks was he with?
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
04/07/2017 8:28
Comments ||
Top||
[Khaama (Afghanistan)] One of the most big shots of the loyalist of Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're 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 the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) terrorist group was killed during the operations in eastern Nangarhar The unfortunate Afghan province located adjacent to Mohmand, Kurram, and Khyber Agencies. The capital is Jalalabad. The province was the fief of Younus Khalis after the Soviets departed and one of his sons is the current provincial Taliban commander. Nangarhar is Haqqani country.. province of Afghanistan.
The Ministry of Defense (MoD) said the ISIS leader killed during the operation has been identified as Syed Omar Bajawari who was also famous as Khetab.
According to a statement by MoD, Bajawari was killed along with at least 24 faceless myrmidons during the counter-terrorism operations conducted in Achin district.
The statement further added that four ISIS commanders including Bajawari were killed along with 21 other bully boyz during the operations.
Nangarhar is among the relatively calm provinces in eastern Afghanistan but the anti-government armed faceless myrmidons have recently increased their insurgency activities in some parts of the province during the recent years.
Both the Afghan and US forces based in Afghanistan are conducting regular operations to suppress the insurgency led by ISIS faceless myrmidons and other bully boy groups including Taliban.
The local security officials said Tuesday that nine faceless myrmidons of the ISIS terrorist group were killed during the counter-terrorism operations conducted by the Special Forces of the Afghan National Police Pekha area of Achin district in the past 24 hours.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/07/2017
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[2 views]
Top|| File under: Islamic State
[IsraelTimes] A series of kabooms were heard at a military compound belonging to Lebanese terror group Hezbollah near the Syrian capital of Damascus, local media reported in the early morning hours of Thursday.
According to local media, an "unidentified attack" was also reported against Hezbollah forces and Syrian government troops in a suburb of Daraa in southern Syria, in the Syrian Golan Heights. Reports in the Hebrew-language media said the attack was a battle between rebel fighters and Syrian and Hezbollah forces.
The incidents were first reported by Sky News Arabic.
The kabooms near the Syrian capital, according to the reports, took place in the mountainous Qalamoun area.
[An Nahar] Syria's armed forces "did not and will not" use chemical weapons, even against jihadist groups, Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said on Thursday.
"I stress to you once again: the Syrian army has not, did not and will not use this kind of weapons -- not just against our own people, but even against the forces of Evil that attack our civilians with their mortar rounds," he said.
Muallem spoke at a presser in Damascus two days after a suspected chemical attack left at least 86 people dead in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhun in northwestern Syria.
The deaths have sparked international outrage with many pointing the finger at the government of Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Terror of Aleppo ... , but Muallem cast doubt on the evidence.
"The first air raid conducted by the Syrian army was at 11:30 am (0830 GMT) on that day (Tuesday) and it attacked an arms depot belonging to al-Nusra ...formally Jabhat an-Nusrah li-Ahli al-Sham (Support Front for the People of the Levant), also known as al-Qaeda in the Levant. They aim to establish a pan-Arab caliphate. Not the same one as the Islamic State, though .. ... Front that contained chemical weapons," he said.
Al-Nusra -- now known as Fateh al-Sham ...formerly al-Nusra, the current false nose and mustache of al-Qaeda in the Levant... Front -- was once al-Qaeda's Syria affiliate and is the main jihadist rival of the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're 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 the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... group.
"Al-Nusra Front and ISIS (IS) and other organizations continue to store chemical weapons in urban and residential areas," Muallem added.
The Syrian army denied on Tuesday that it had used chemical weapons against Khan Sheikhun, and Damascus ally Moscow said "toxic substances" may have been released when the army struck a "terrorist warehouse".
Posted by: Fred ||
04/07/2017
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[6 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Syria
#1
It wouldn't surprise me if the Turks were behind this.
#5
Remember the starving children in Somalia, that lead to Blackhawk Down (and a retreat after we had taken out most of the warlord's manpower). Never let the press set the agenda.
#7
Al Nusra & ISIL funded by U S State Dept under Hill & Kerry so Muallem is probably telling to truth.
Posted by: Sonny Darling of the Platypi5488 ||
04/07/2017 16:37
Comments ||
Top||
#8
The false flag possibility is the one that really bugs me. I haven't particularly trusted civilian casualty reports since the Kuwaiti's admitted they lied about the Iraqis' tossing babies out of incubators and admitting later they would have said anything to get the US involved.
I just have to hope the US has better sources these days and Matthis wouldn't have gone off half-cocked without stronger evidence than media reports and the rebel's word for it.
I just wish I trusted our overly-politicized Intelligence services a bit more these days.
[Asharq al-Aswat] The quiet kingdom on the Arabian Gulf has experienced a tough crisis over six years of chaos, kabooms and sabotage. Bahrain has been shouting loud for six years: This is not a revolution nor a peaceful protest, but a riot supported by Iran.
The West, however, only sees what it wants to see. Even worse, the administration of former US President Barack Obama If you like your coverage you can keep it... abandoned its closest ally and the Fifth Fleet of the United States Navy ‐ it also blinded itself to the facts.
But the facts are finally being revealed to the western governments‐ they themselves are admitting, for the first time, that there are criminal acts by which Iran is endeavoring to form militias in Bahrain.
The Washington Post has published documents and interviews with former and current intelligence officials on a detailed training program by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to train its Bahraini members on building advanced bombs and waging guerrilla warfare.
European and American analysts now see a mounting threat since Iranian-funded and -armed cells are emerging. The Washington Post intelligence report also revealed that over the past three years, a huge quantity of modern weapons and military grade bombs have been discovered in Bahrain, all of which have most certainly been made by Iran.
At any rate, what the western intelligence considers as a newly-discovered major surprise has been known and backed with evidence since the eruption of the riots in February 2011. The Iranian exploitation of these acts to picture them as another form of the "Arab Spring" has also been known.
In fact, the Iranian regime had itself made this admission when in March 2016, Senior IRGC Saeed Qassimi openly declared "Bahrain an Iranian province that had broken away from our country due to colonization." He added that Iran is now a base to support "the revolution in Bahrain".
The belated western confession that the developments in Bahrain are neither a revolution nor an "Arab Spring" is a new western failure in analyzing, reading and taking decisions in the region.
It is true that the Trump administration is keen on setting things right through imposing sanctions on two Bahraini individuals who have been designated as Death Eaters on the US terrorism list. The US Department of State pointed out clearly that the designation came after the "escalation of rebel attacks in Bahrain, where Iran provided arms, funds and training for the rebels."
The Bahraini kingdom has however witnessed serious losses and has been suffering for six years from organizations, associations and western parliaments that depended on the wrong stances of their governments. This led to the acquittal of the criminals and the indictment of the victims and caused unjustified international pressure. This complicated the Bahraini crisis, which was not a revolution, but a riot backed by the Iranian regime’s money and arms.
The West’s confession, although very late, is an opportunity for Bahrain to face all these rights and humanitarian organizations that overlooked all the human rights When they're defined by the state or an NGO they don't mean much... violations in all the conflict zones around the world and focused only on Bahrain.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/07/2017
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[8 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
[Rooters] Dozens of Dutch citizens of Turkish descent, many linked to the opposition Gulen movement, are being prevented from leaving The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... , a Dutch foreign ministry spokeswoman said on Thursday, confirming an earlier television report.
Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan has led a crackdown on people suspected of involvement with the movement led by exiled holy manFethullah Gulen ... a Turkish preacher living in Pennsylvania whom the current govt of Turkey considers responsible for all the ills afflicting Turkey and possibly the entire world... , which he blames for last year's failed military coup.
Public broadcaster NOS said as many as 100 Dutch citizens were unable to leave the country, but the spokeswoman said precise numbers were difficult to obtain since the ministry knew only of those who had sought consular help.
"The reasons why they have been detained are very diverse, but it looks like some of them may be connected to the Gulen movement," the spokeswoman said, adding that all those they were aware of were Turkish-Dutch dual citizens.
"We are prepared to help people who actively seek assistance," the Dutch foreign ministry said in a statement, adding that Turkish authorities had been informed. "It appears that other countries' citizens are having similar problems in Turkey."
Other European countries, including Austria and Switzerland ...home of the Helvetians, famous for cheese, watches, yodeling, and William Tell... , have also seen citizens of Turkish descent prevented from leaving the country
Posted by: trailing wife ||
04/07/2017
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[5 views]
Top|| File under: Sublime Porte
[Libya Herald] Abdulrahmen Sewehli has been re-elected as president of the State Council, with 66 votes compared to 23 for his competitor Abdulsalem Gwailah.
Via Twitter, Sewehli thanked those who voted for him, saying "democracy will prevail."
The State Council set itself up a year ago.
He was "proud of the renewed trust by HCS (State Council) and determined to continue an inclusive national reconciliation process. A good day for democracy," he added.
Mohammed Bagi was elected as First Deputy President with 58 votes, beating Saleh Makhzoum, while Mohammed Mzaib was chosen to remain in his post as the Second Deputy President.
The State Council set itself up a year ago. That's worked well since, too. I think I'll begin my papacy this June.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/07/2017
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[2 views]
Top|| File under: Arab Spring
Iraqi government forces, backed by paramilitary troops and a U.S.-led coalition, recaptured eastern Mosul from IS in January after three months of fighting, and launched another offensive mid February to retake the western region.
Dozens of Islamic State senior leaders died in airstrikes and ground offensives over the past few days.
Troops have been struggling to fully retake central Mosul’s Old City, a densely-populated and structured area which generals view as vital for victory over IS.
Maj. Gen. Najm al-Jubouri, head of the Joint Operations Command’s Mosul operations, said in statements on Wednesday that his troops have become in control over 90 percent of the “western axis”, and continue to advance in central Mosul.
Iraqi and coalition generals, though admitting the difficulty of the battle for the western region, said IS powers were waning, and that its members had no choice but to fight to death.
The conflict in Mosul has displaced at least 430.000 since operations launched in October, with more than 200.000 having fled the western region alone. Google Map at the link
Mosul (IraqiNews.com) U.S.-led coalition fighter jets killed more foreign members of the Islamic State in western Mosul on Thursday, according to Iraqi military intelligence services.
Strikes by the coalition killed 17 members, including 4 foreigners, in 17 Tamuz (July 17th) district in western Mosul, according to a statement by the intelligence service.
The members belonged to the “Soqour al-Khilafa” (Falcons of the Caliphate), an IS subdivision.
Those included Mohsen (Abu Rimas) Awad, a Saudi in charge of the battalion’s suicide bombers, Abdel-Razek (Abu Hesham) Hamdoun, the battalion’s military official, whose nationality was not identified, Khaled Abu Sharaf, an Australian and Abdullah (Abu Aesha) Khaled, a French leading the battalion’s commandos.
Iraqi government forces, backed by paramilitary troops and a U.S.-led coalition, recaptured eastern Mosul from IS in January after three months of fighting, and launched another offensive mid February to retake the western region.
Dozens of Islamic State senior leaders died in airstrikes and ground offensives over the past few days.
Troops have been struggling to fully retake central Mosul’s Old City, a densely-populated and structured area which generals view as vital for victory over IS.
Maj. Gen. Najm al-Jubouri, head of the Joint Operations Command’s Mosul operations, said in statements on Wednesday that his troops have become in control over 90 percent of the “western axis”, and continue to advance in central Mosul. Google Map at the link
Mosul (IraqiNews.com) Parliamentary troops of al-Hashd al-Shaabi (Public Mobilization Units) troops have killed thirty Islamic State members and exploded three vehicles after confronting an attack launched by fighters, west of Mosul.
“The eighth brigade confronted on Thursday an attack by IS militants in al-Hadar area, west of Mosul, using six motorbikes” the media service said.
The service added that the troops encountered the attack, killing 30 IS members and destroying three booby-trapped motorbikes with weapons on them
Meanwhile, the troops also exploded a booby-trapped vehicle that targeted the supply roads in the southwest of Mosul.
“The 33rd brigade exploded a booby trapped vehicle before its arrival as it was targeting the supply roads southwestern Mosul,” the media service said.
The troops confronted several attacks by IS earlier on Thursday.
The PMUs, which consist of 66 militia groups, are considered one of the largest militias in Iraq. It was established in 2014 by a fatwa (religious edict) to fight the Islamic State.
In late 2016, the Iraqi parliament recognized the militia as a national armed force.
Iraqi troops took over east of Mosul in January and launched a new offensive to take the western region in February.
Mosul (IraqiNews.com) An officer in Nineveh Police revealed, on Thursday, that an Iraqi combat helicopter crashed in al-Mohandessen area, in eastern Mosul.
Major Mahgoub Abdel Samad said in a press statement that the helicopter is believed to have been shot down by the Islamic State’s militants in al-Mohandeseen area, in eastern Mosul.
The helicopter crew, which consists of two pilots, were killed in the crash, Abdel Samad added.
Meanwhile, Federal Police Captain Ali Mohsen stated that the international coalition aircraft resumed their air strikes on the hideouts and headquarters of the Islamic State, in western Mosul.
An air strike was carried out on the General Hospital in western Mosul, killing the IS Mufti Abu Ayoub, Mohsen further added.
US-led coalition, Iraqi Air Force and Army Aviation continue conducting air strikes on the Islamic State’s headquarters and hideouts, to help security forces drive out the terrorist group of Mosul, and recapture the remaining areas in the western side of the city.
Posted by: badanov ||
04/07/2017
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[7 views]
Top|| File under: Islamic State
[Ynet] The three men were hanged in a Hamas cop shoppe in Gazoo after being sentenced to death for undisclosed acts of 'collaboration' with Israel; executions are not connected to Mazan Fukha liquidation.
Hamas, a contraction of the Arabic words for "frothing at the mouth", hanged three Paleostinians accused of collaborating with Israel Thursday morning.
The three were sentenced to death before the liquidation of Mazan Fukha and have no connection to Hamas's pursuit of those responsible.
The three executed prisoners were identified as a 55-year-old man from Khan Yunis, a 30-year-old man from Gazoo City and a 42-year-old man whose place of residence was not disclosed.
The executions come a day after Hamas's attorney general announced that executions of collaborators would be carried out, trying to instill fear of cooperation with Israel among the strip's residents.
At the end of last week, the Interior Ministry in Gazoo announced that the security services were facing a major operation against collaborators in the investigation of the liquidation of Fukha.
Such operations often do not come with prior warnings, and it seems that Hamas was trying to shake things up to identify potential avenues for the escape of the assassin(s), despite the slight chance that they could still be found inside the strip.
The terrorist organization apparently has no leads as to the identity of the perpetrators or their collaborators.
One day after the announcement of an operation against the collaborators, the Interior Ministry issued a statement saying that it was opening a kind of system of pardons for the collaborators with Israel, and called on them to surrender within a week and receive security and legal protection.
It is quite possible that Hamas will place the blame on innocents who will have to confess to things they have not done, only to broadcast victory, even if it is a false one.
[An Nahar] Human Rights Watch condemned Thursday's executions of three men in the Gazoo Strip who were accused by Hamas, a contraction of the Arabic words for "frothing at the mouth", of collaborating with Israel, calling on the Islamist group to stop the "barbaric" practice.
"The abhorrent executions by Hamas authorities of three men in Gazoo deemed to be collaborators project weakness, not strength," Human Rights Watch said in a statement.
"Hamas authorities will never achieve true security or stability through firing squads or by the gallows, but rather through respect for international norms and the rule of law."
It cited data from the Gazoo-based Paleostinian Centre for Human Rights as saying that the Islamist group had now executed a total of 25 Paleostinians since seizing power in the Gazoo Strip in 2007.
[Libya Observer] The Operations Room of the Presidential Council's air force has disclosed that their warplanes responded to the air attacks of Dignity Operation on the Third Force locations and the air force personnel in Timnahent air base.
The operation room said in a televised statement that upon instructions of the UN-proposed government's defense minister-designate, Mahdi al-Barghathi, the air force's fighter aircraft conducted Wednesday two Arclight airstrikes targeting the warplanes of the Haftar-led Dignity Operation that are positioned in Barak al-Sahtea airbase.
"This is a message for all those who cherish messing with the fortunes of the Libyans or acting away from the legitimate Government of National Accord." The statement states.
"The die is cast. Our air force will no longer tolerate such actions by Dignity Operation command and our personnel and warplanes will target any illegal movements across the entire country." The statement adds.
The statement also stressed that the air force personnel are always on alert to defend the security and illusory sovereignty of Libya, and to protect February revolution against any coup attempts.
Early Wednesday morning, Dignity Operation fighter aircraft started bombing locations around Tamnihint airbase in the southern city of Sabha, according to Jamal al-Treki, the Third Force's commander, who also confirmed that the force's fighters engaged in heavy festivities with Pro-Haftar gangs led by Mohammed Ben Nayel - a staunch follower of Khalifa Haftar ... served in the Libyan army under Muammar Qadaffy, and took part in the coup that brought Qadaffy to power in 1969. He became a prisoner of war in Chad in 1987. While held prisoner, he and his fellow officers formed a group hoping to overthrow Qadaffy. He was released around 1990 in a deal with the United States government and spent nearly two decades in the United States, gaining US citizenship. In 1993, while living in the United States, he was convicted in absentia of crimes against the Jamahiriya and sentenced to death. Haftar held a senior position in the anti-Qadaffy forces in the 2011 Libyan Civil War. In 2014 he was commander of the Libyan Army when the General National Congress (GNC) refused to give up power in accordance with its term of office. Haftar launched a campaign against the GNC and its Islamic fundamentalist allies. His campaign allowed elections to take place to replace the GNC, but then developed into a civil war. Guess you can't win them all...
Posted by: Fred ||
04/07/2017
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[6 views]
Top|| File under: Arab Spring
[An Nahar] Philippine authorities said Thursday they had foiled a possible terror attack after arresting a Kuwaiti man and his Syrian wife, both alleged members of the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're 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 the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... (IS) group.
Police nabbed Husayn al-Dhafiri and Rahaf Zina at an upscale district of Manila following a tip-off from the Kuwaiti authorities late last month, but the arrests were kept secret while Filipino authorities investigated further, officials said.
The pair had entered the country repeatedly in recent months as part of plans for "a bombing operation" either in the Philippines or Kuwait, Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre told news hounds.
Aguirre said al-Dhafiri was an active IS member in the Middle East and said the United States authorities believed he could "pose a threat to the national security of the Philippines."
"He is alleged to have been involved in explosives manufacturing and possibly operational planning against Kuwait," Aguirre added.
He said Zina and Al Dhafiri married after her husband, a high-ranking IS commander, was killed in Syria.
The Filipino official said al-Dhafiri would be deported to Kuwait while Zina would be sent back to Qatar ...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates... from where she entered the Philippines.
"Both of them will be properly received by the security forces of those countries," he added.
The Kuwaiti embassy in Manila could not be contacted for comment.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has previously warned that IS members might make their way into the Southeast Asian nation by infiltrating its Moslem communities, concentrated in the south of the largely Catholic country.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/07/2017
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[9 views]
Top|| File under: Islamic State
[IsraelTimes] IDF soldiers placed in durance vile Youse'll never take me alive coppers!... [BANG!]... Ow!... I quit! a Paleostinian on Thursday man after finding a pistol in his car in the northern West Bank, the army said.
The troops were searching the man’s vehicle at a roadblock near Tapuah Junction, when they found the gun. However, the man who has no enemies isn't anybody and has never done anything... there was no ammunition in the car.
"The weapon has been confiscated and the armed man was taken for interrogation," the army said.
Earlier in the day an Israeli soldier was killed and another lightly maimed in an car-ramming attack in the central West Bank on Thursday morning, officials said.
The Paleostinian driver of the car was captured by the Israel Defense Forces, an army spokesperson said.
The victim was named as Sgt. Elhai Teharlev, 20, from the settlement of Talmon. The other victim was also a soldier, also listed as in his 20s.
The two victims were standing on the sidewalk near a bus stop when the silver Audi struck them at the Ofra Junction on the Route 60 highway, northeast of Ramallah, according to the Magen David Adom ambulance service.
The Palestinian driver of the car was captured by the Israel Defense Forces, an army spokesperson said. He was identified by Palestinian media as Malek Ahmad Mousa Hamed, 21, from the nearby town of Silwad.
Hamed had driven back and forth along the road looking for soldiers to target, the officials said.
Hamed served four months in jail for attempting an attack at the settlement of Adam last year, military officials said. They said his attack Thursday was the ninth in the past two years to be carried out by residents of Silwad.
Over the course of the day, the Times of Israel liveblog recorded that the car rammer had stolen his father's car, that his home was raided, his family interrogated, their Israel entry permits frozen, and movement out of the town of Silwad restricted for all residents. Ynet adds:
The terrorist was identified as Malak Hamed, a 21-year-old resident of Silwad whose family is closely tied to Hamas. Hamed had been arrested two years previously for attempting to enter the nearby settlement of Geva Binyamin.
[Asharq al-Aswat] The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... has asked Germany to hand over a group of people who are suspected of belonging to terrorist organizations as Ankara accuses Berlin of providing support for terrorists.
Kurds and Gulenists? Those are the only groups President Erdogan truly considers to be terrorists. He isn't quite ready to openly describe Zionists in those terms, whatever he might think privately.
Turkish President Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdogan the First ... Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him... and Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu accused Berlin of not responding to 4,500 dossiers sent by Turkey on suspects.
Turkish officials provided additional information ‐ to a German delegation visiting Turkey ‐ about people they believe to have links to terrorist groups, Interior Ministry sources said on Tuesday.
The material has been sent to the Federal Crime Office and the BfV domestic intelligence agency for further investigation, the sources said.
It was not immediately clear if the material included additional individuals or provided further information about suspected terrorist activities.
Germany last week opened a second investigation into suspected spying by Turkey, following media reports that Turkish intelligence had given German officials a list of more than 300 supposed supporters of Fethullah Gulen ... a Turkish preacher living in Pennsylvania whom the current govt of Turkey considers responsible for all the ills afflicting Turkey and possibly the entire world... , whom Ankara accused of criminal masterminding a failed July 15 coup.
The list included telephone numbers and photographs, including some that may have been taken by hidden surveillance cameras.
Erdogan said that he proposed the issue to German Chancellor Angela Merkel ...current chancellor of Germany and the impetus behind Germany's remarkably ill-starred immigration program. Merkel used to be referred to by Germans as Mom... during her visit to Ankara in February, noting that Turkey handed over some gunnies to Germany. Yet when Turkey asks Berlin to deport suspects, the authorities do not reply and based on that Turkey will act likewise.
Tensions are running high between the two NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A single organization with differing goals, equipment, language, doctrine, and structure.... allies ahead of an April 16 referendum in Turkey that proposes expanding the powers of Erdogan.
Berlin infuriated Ankara by cancelling several campaign rallies by Turkish ministers on German soil, drawing accusations from Turkey of "Nazi" tactics.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/07/2017
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[2 views]
Top|| File under: Sublime Porte
Kirkuk (IraqiNews.com) Islamic State fighters have killed several civilians over collaboration with security troops, southwest of Kirkuk, a security source in the province said Thursday.
“The so-called head of the legislative court in al-Hawija district (55 KM southwest of Kirkuk) ordered hanging some civilians, who were detained by the militants few days ago over spying for the troops,” an anonymous source told BasNews on Thursday without giving details on the number of the victims.
“The execution took place today at one of IS camps near Hawija,” the source said, adding that the bodies of the victims were not handed to their relatives.
On 13 March, another source in Kirkuk said the militants executed three civilians southwest of the province over spying for the troops.
Islamic State has executed hundreds of civilians and security members since it took over large areas in Iraq to proclaim a self-styled “Islamic Caliphate” in 2014. The group carried out the executions of its victims, which it proudly posted through its media, over accusations of collaboration with the Iraqi security authorities or for attempting to flee areas under its control.
Hawija is a strategic town which has fallen into the hands of IS since mid-2014. Iraqi authorities postponed an operation to liberate the town last year, instead they moved onto central Mosul.
The Iraqi government is expected to launch an offensive to retake IS-occupied areas in Kirkuk once it is done with eradicating IS from Mosul, the group’s biggest bastion in Iraq.
Mosul (IraqiNews.com) Iraqi people have spoken of the tragic situation they endure at Western Mosul, which is still controlled by Islamic State, saying they resort to cats and grass as food to survive. Deaths due to starvation were reported among children and the elderly.
Around 300,000 besieged civilians live at IS-held regions in Mosul, where battles between the militants and Iraqi troops backed by the U.S.-led coalition are ongoing.
“The residents here began to eat cats, grass and tree leaves as hunger strikes the districts controlled by IS,” Sufian Ahmed, one of the residents at al-Najjar district, told the London-based The New Arab website in a phone call. “We had hopes that the Iraqi jets throw bread for us instead of distributing the flyers.”
“The flyers are gathered and burnt for warming. Grass and tree leaves are boiled to be eaten. Many people died of hunger. We don’t know what destiny awaits us; either to die due to starvation or by shelling or be shot to death by IS,” he added.
Meanwhile, Abu Jaber, another Iraqi who shares the house with Sufian, said “the bodies of victims attract the cats toward destroyed houses, so we can hunt them there before slaughtering to eat them. Women and children have the priority to eat without making them watch the slaughtering of cats.” More at the link
Raqqa (IraqiNews.com) The self-proclaimed Islamic State group, on Thursday, executed 7 civilians in one of the northern rural villages in Raqqa, for trying to flee the IS-held areas, while abducted others to use them as human shields.
Sources told Bas News that the Islamic State militants, who are stationed in Manzl village (25 km north of Raqqa) executed, today, seven civilians for trying to flee the IS-held areas.
The Islamic State group also abducted dozens of the village’s residents, in order to use them as human shields, while withdrawing from the village to avoid the coalition air strikes, they added.
Meanwhile, reports revealed that many wounded were found inside the village, after the exit of the Islamic State militants from the village, and they were transferred to the hospitals of Girê sipî (Tel Abiad).
Posted by: badanov ||
04/07/2017
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[8 views]
Top|| File under: Islamic State
[An Nahar] After repeated troubles between the United Nations ...a formerly good idea gone bad... International Forces in Leb (UNIFIL) and citizens in south Leb over the forces' military vehicles patrols in some towns, UNIFIL Commander Michael Beary said on Thursday that the forces would use its military vehicles to evacuate the citizens shall a crisis erupt in the area, al-Akhbar daily reported on Thursday.
Our forces "will evacuate the citizens, women and kiddies using these very military vehicle when a crisis occurs in the south," he said during chitchats with news hounds at the headquarters in Naqoura.
Giving an example on how their vehicles are used, Beary said: "Not many know the use of these vehicle which I would like to mention here."
A few days ago, the UNFIL carried out a live exercise to evacuate its soldiers, employees and their families in the event of an incident. Although the training was a regular procedures carried out at all United Nations missions around the world, but the added measures to the recent training were striking, said the daily.
Reports said that residents of some towns in south Leb have been protesting the UNIFIL's village patrols.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/07/2017
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[8 views]
Top|| File under:
Russia's deputy U.N. envoy, Vladimir Safronkov, warned on Thursday of "negative consequences" if the United States carries out military strikes on Syria over a deadly toxic gas attack.
"We have to think about negative consequences, negative consequences, and all the responsibility if military action occurred will be on shoulders of those who initiated such doubtful and tragic enterprise," Safronkov told reporters when asked about possible U.S. strikes.
When asked what those negative consequences could be, he said: "Look at Iraq, look at Libya."
That's not a negative consequence, that's a request that Trump not be as incompetent as Obama...
And shortly thereafter, President Trump ordered the Tomahawks loosed. So much for the tool of Putin narrative.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/07/2017
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[7 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Syria
#1
I don't expect any real response from Russia. If anything it brings a weak coastal Allawitastan closer. Dependent on Russia for protection, and Russia gets the nice Med base it wants.
[An Nahar] French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said Thursday that "a day will come when international justice will give its verdict on Bashir al-Assad who is massacring his people."
Speaking to news channel CNEWS, he added: "These crimes must not go unpunished. In any case, there are investigations, United Nations ...an organization conceived in the belief that we're just one big happy world, with the sort of results you'd expect from such nonsense... commissions... there will be a war crimes trial."
At least 86 people were killed on Tuesday in rebel-held Khan Sheikhun in northern Syria in a suspected chemical attack that left people choking and foaming at the mouth.
La Belle France is again pushing for a resolution at the United Nations to condemn the attack blamed by the West on Assad's regime, but Ayrault did not sound optimistic after the first discussions on Wednesday at the international body.
"It's difficult because up to now every time we have presented a resolution, there has been a veto by Russia and sometimes by China ... but we must cooperate because we need to stop this massacre," he added.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/07/2017
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[5 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Syria
#5
Jailing won't get the necessary public support - fines, on the other hand...
Jailing is a cost center, fines are a revenue center...big diff. Add something to the fines that impact the managers / owners of said business directly and personally.
#6
Link Western Union money transfers to Mexico with IRS tax returns. No verification of tax filed for previous year, no transfer of funds. Money transfer application and foto forwarded to the IRS.
#10
Walls aren't worth much without a willingness to use them - they just slow the border-crossers down a bit so they can be apprehended or killed. Once the crosser community believes they will be apprehended or killed they will stop trying to cross. Interestingly, the number of crossers seems to have dropped drastically in the last few months, without the wall being built at all. Sounds like people down south believe Trump's talk and choose not to risk their life savings and huge chunks of future earnings.
#12
One of these from San Diego to Brownsville would be more effective and provide a lot of employment opportunities (for decades). Makes tunneling a bit of a challenge.
[AlAhram] Russian law enforcement officers on Thursday killed four suspects accused of gunning down two traffic cops this week in an Islamist-linked attack in the southern city of Astrakhan, officials said.
The interior ministry said in a statement that one suspect was rubbed out after opening fire and injuring three officers who stopped the car in which he was travelling.
Three other suspects were then "liquidated" in a security operation in the southern town, the statement said.
Officials said the suspects were being hunted over the killing on Tuesday of two traffic coppers in what local authorities called a "brazen attack" by "radical Islamists".
The murders came with Russia on high alert following a bombing on the Saint Petersburg metro on Monday that killed 13 people. There is no apparent link between the two attacks.
Astrakhan lies several hundred kilometres northeast of the volatile North Caucasus, where Moscow is fighting a lingering Islamist insurgency.
While attacks against police regularly occur in Russia's Caucasus, they are much rarer in other regions.
[AlAhram] The Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're 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 the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... (IS) turban group on Thursday claimed the killing of two traffic police in southern Russia this week, as security agencies said they had rubbed out four suspects.
The Amaq propaganda agency linked to IS reported the killing of "two Russian coppers" in the southern city of Astrakhan, citing a "security source".
It also claimed an attack that maimed three National Guard officers on Thursday in an incident Russian authorities said saw one assailant suspected of involvement in the death of the traffic coppersrubbed out.
Three more suspects were later "liquidated" during a security operation in the city, the ministry said.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
04/07/2017
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[9 views]
Top|| File under: Islamic State
[Khaama (Afghanistan)] The Afghan cops have foiled a suicide kaboom plot on a Non-governmental Organization in capital Kabul ...the capital of Afghanistan. Home to continuous fighting from 1992 to 1996 between the forces of would-be strongman and Pak ISI/Jamaat-e-Islami sock puppet Gulbuddin Hekmayar and the Northern Alliance, a period which won Hek the title Most Evil Man in the World and didn't do much for the reputations of the Northern Alliance guys either.... The Afghan Intelligence, National Directorate of Security ...the Afghan national intel agency... (NDS), said the attack was plotted by the notorious Haqqani terrorist network to target an NGO in Kabul city.
According to a statement by NDS, the Afghan intelligence operatives managed to discover the explosives and materials prepared for the attack from the house of Qasim son of Abdul Malik who is a member of the network.
The statement further added that the cache was hidden in Dehsabz district of Kabul and included a suicide kaboom vest, 21 kg of explosives, 15 hand grenades, and some other technical equipments needed for the attack.
The intelligence operatives also confiscated two fake vehicle registration number plates from the house of the suspect.
Haqqani network was formed in the late 1970s by Jalaluddin Haqqani ...founder and still titular head of the Haqqani Network. Jalaluddin is old and tough and very crafty, one of the few Pashtun warlords who was worth spit... . The group is allied with al-Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban and cooperates with other terrorist organizations in the region.
The US Department of State designated the HQN as a Foreign Terrorist Organization on September 7, 2012.
This come as local officials in Paktika ...which coincidentally borders South Wazoo... said at least twenty nine Lions of Islam of the Taliban group including two big shots of the group were killed in a US dronezap in the same district last month.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/07/2017
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[5 views]
Top|| File under: Taliban
[Asharq al-Aswat] The number of captives in prisons of Saleh and Houthi ...a Zaidi Shia insurgent group operating in Yemen. They have also been referred to as the Believing Youth. Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi is said to be the spiritual leader of the group and most of the military leaders are his relatives. The Yemeni government has accused the Houthis of having ties to the Iranian government, which wouldn't suprise most of us. The group has managed to gain control over all of Saada Governorate and parts of Amran, Al Jawf and Hajjah Governorates. Its slogan is God is Great, Death to America™, Death to Israel, a curse on the Jews ... militias has exceeded 14, 000 since the coup that began two years ago and the invasion of a series of Yemeni provinces.
In a statement, Yemen’s Ministry of Human Rights stated that around 3,000 were kidnapped including: Defense Minister Mahmoud al-Subaihi, Nasser Hadi and Mohammad Qahtan. Other political, media and rights figures were also kidnapped.
According to the statement, Saleh and Houthi militias adopted the gag policy, locked away Maw! They're comin' to get me, Maw! opposing parties- or suspected opposers- and transformed more than 400 public facilities into detention and torture sites.
Up to 73 individuals were killed after being tortured by the militias that have used all possible means of torture and humiliation.
The statement added that: "While the world national, regional and international institutions demand the halt of criminal acts and the prompt release of detainees, those continue with their criminal acts, arrests, torture and humiliation. "
The ministry, through its report submitted to the United Nations ...an organization originally established to war on dictatorships which was promptly infiltrated by dictatorships and is now held in thrall to dictatorships... Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in its 34th session, clarified the number of detainees and discussed with several international authorities the necessity of taking action to release the captives and reveal their fate.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/07/2017
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[9 views]
Top|| File under: Houthis
[An Nahar] The Kremlin on Thursday said US allegations that Syrian forces carried out a deadly chemical attack are not based on "objective" information.
"Any data that the American side or our colleagues in other countries could have cannot be based on objective materials or evidence," Kremlin front man Dmitry Peskov told news hounds, adding that the incident in rebel-held Khan Sheikhun was a "monstruous crime."
Posted by: Fred ||
04/07/2017
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[5 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Syria
#1
It was idiotic for Alawis to use Sarin - but they're idiots.
#3
Moscow Says US Has No Objective Data on 'Monstrous Crime' in Syria
So Russia takes Step One towards walking back their reaction to us bombing the crap out of one of Syria's air bases. They opened a path to agreement that what the US did is not bad if it can be proven that Assad gassed his people.
[Kit Up] MKS Supply, LLC is offering Inland Manufacturing’s new modern Liberator .45 caliber derringer pistol.
The Inland Liberator Derringer bears little resemblance to the crude, single-shot Liberator pistol made for resistance fighters in World War II by the Inland Division of General Motors in Dayton Ohio.
In an agreement with Bond Arms, this super-quality Derringer pistol is fashioned from stainless steel with a bead blasted anti-glare finish. It holds two .45 ACP rounds.
It has handsome wood grips featuring the Inland cartouche. It weighs 18 ounces and features a 3-inch over-and-under style barrel.
"Built solid like a tank ... it is a potent and very reliable concealed carry firearm," according to a recent press release.
[Ynet] Australia said on Thursday it had received information that snuffies may be planning to attack a World War One commemoration service at Gallipoli in The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... later in the month.
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said in a statement that Turkish authorities were aware of the information "and traditionally provide a high level of protective security around Anzac Day commemorations on the peninsula."
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.
[Metro] At least three dead and shots fired as truck crashes into crowds in Stockholm
[Daily Caller] Russians are fighting on both sides of the civil war ripping Syria apart, possibly even against each other.
Little by little that business about Trump and Putin colluding to hack the election is beginning to fade away as Democrat "resistance" goes on defense.
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir 
[Khaama (Afghanistan)] One of the most 
[An Nahar] Syria's armed forces "did not and will not" use chemical weapons, even against jihadist groups, Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said on Thursday. 
[Asharq al-Aswat] 
[Asharq al-Aswat] The number of captives in prisons of Saleh and 
