Kiev is abuzz with creative reforms in governance, major anti-corruption initiatives and budgetary clawbacks against rent-seeking oligarchs. Civic activism is on the upsurge, and a new government team — populated with many foreign-born and Western-educated ministers — is largely free from the control of the country’s super-rich, who dictated policy in the past.
In recent months, Ukraine’s defenses have strengthened since the Russian takeover of Crimea and the eastern industrial Donbas region. Ukraine’s security service, formerly riddled with corruption and Russian infiltration, has rebuilt its leadership. Combat readiness has improved and weapons production is on the rise, as are the refurbishment and modernization of tanks, artillery and armored personnel carriers. With winter in full swing, the danger of a major Russian offensive has faded.
In many ways, Ukraine is intelligently addressing its key challenges: restructuring the national budget to avoid default and meeting the military threat posed by Russia. Despite such important progress, however, a new threat is emerging: independently operating warlords and armed groups.
After the collapse of the Yanukovych regime in February and subsequent Russian aggression, Ukraine’s new government was saddled with an ill-prepared military and required the help of thousands of volunteers. These volunteer fighters were motivated by a patriotic desire to protect their homeland. Many were veterans of the Maidan civic protests. The fighters were mainly supported by grass-roots financing from civic initiatives and small and mid-size businesses. Complete article at the link
[The Pickering Post] Australia has woken to the devastating news that two hostages died in the Lindt Café last night. Like all Australians, my thoughts and prayers are with the families of those now grieving.
But I am not going to join in with the mob in perpetuating the myths that are already being circulated as a result of this completely preventable tragedy. And it was completely preventable. It was the entirely predictable outcome of the decision to allow a violent culture with a superiority complex and an itchy trigger finger to take root in Australia.
So expect to see more Islamic flags and more grieving families.
This war has only just started and it’s not going well.
And here are five things the mainstream media is spinning wrong about the Islamic addition to Christmas festivities in Australia over the last 24 hours....... Gaynor's blog site. Bernard Gaynor has a background in military intelligence, Arabic language and culture and has returned from three Iraq deployments.
A righteous rant. Written three weeks ago, immediately following the Lindt Cafe hostage situation -- the one where he wanted a proper IS flag to replace the home-made mock-up he'd brought with him -- but timeless in the points the writer makes.
[Dawn] A NEW narrative is in the making, that the fight against terrorism has been compromised because of civilian failures. That it has been lost so far is seared into our consciousness with the blood of 140 children. It is said that massive trauma can lead to partial or full amnesia. The emerging narrative seems to be counting on that.
While the army support for the Afghan mujahideen in the 1980s and the Kashmire mujahideen in the 1990s and their mutating into local Taliban is often lamented, the pallbearers of that era are now relevant only as prime-time TV fodder. What needs more scrutiny is what happened in the early years of this round, the initial days of the ‘war on terror’ from 2002 to 2006. This was the time span when the problem of Taliban terrorism was nascent, manageable and not so widespread. Since then, it’s become terminal.
We are now told we need military courts because civilian courts have freed terrorists. The conviction rate of terrorism cases has been abysmally low and prosecution lax — no arguing with that — but the TTP top hierarchy has never been brought to court.
Continued on Page 49
[Frontpage] ISIS keeps finding new ways to be nastier. Beheadings. Child beheadings. Sex slaves. Sex slave markets. Now it got tired of Ebola stealing all the headlines and may have
decided that, like peanut butter and jelly, ISIS and Ebola would be good together.
...ISIS has been very interested in WMDs. Ebola seems like a good candidate because there were thousands of corpses, poorly attended, making it seem like a no-brainer. Such a plot would be stupid for a number of reasons, trying to use a highly infectious disease in a single country without it backfiring would be a terrible idea, and so would trying to get samples of it over to Iraq. But we already know that they're not particularly bright.
The Soviets, who were professionals, messed up their WMD program in frightening ways, including releasing weaponized smallpox, anthrax and a number of others into populated areas. The attempts by Soviet agents to smuggle samples of diseases out of the United States also ended with them getting infected. The same thing may have happened here.
The Iraqi government has already denied the report, but it’s about as reliable as the media outlets reporting on this, which is not very.
#4
Most likely they just have a nasty case of goat-crotch.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
01/03/2015 11:59 Comments ||
Top||
#5
Weaponizing Ebola is not that hard, all you need to do is find a jihadi testing positive for the antibodies and buy him a plane ticket to Washington DC.
Or Los Angeles or Chicago or San Francisco.
Posted by: Bill Clinton ||
01/03/2015 14:06 Comments ||
Top||
#6
Bill Clinton. Counterattacking is still simpler: take a few people testing positive and drop it at Mecca during the Hadj. Then both them and us will ahve it but the difference is that we have the technology for developping a treatment and all they have is camels for producing camel piss.
#7
OG, it's more likely due to the location of the infected people. If they're trying to weaponize it, they'd be finding those people here, not over there. There's no reason to bring infected people to your own territory unless you mean to play with it in a lab, which isn't really needed with Ebola. You have a limited time window to get infected people to the target area, taking a sidetrip to crapolastan doesn't help.
[IsraelTimes] Top Gazoo official Ghazi Hamad breaks two taboos in a most unusual op-ed: he admits unity with Fatah is a sham, and criticizes Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason,?s sole reliance on ?armed resistance.? But there is no softening on Israel
Breaking ranks with his Islamist political movement, Hamas?s deputy foreign minister Ghazi Hamad has penned a rare op-ed of self-criticism, blaming both Hamas and Fatah?s shortsightedness for ?losing Paleostine.?
It is not often that a Hamas big turban, a former chairman of the movement?s border crossings authority, bitterly accuses his group of ?clapping with one hand at its festivals, singing of its heroism, listening to itself and describing the other as faltering.? It is even rarer for such a leader to allow his words, published in recent days in Arab media, to be translated for a wider, non-Paleostinian audience.
Hamad?s op-ed, ?Now I understand how and why the Paleostinians lost Paleostine,? published here, is iconoclastic in two meaningful ways. Firstly, it tears the mask off the political deal reached last June between Fatah and Hamas in the form of a unity technocrat government, exposing it as no more than a charade for public consumption.
?Rather than focusing the struggle against the occupation, the struggle has become exclusively intra-Paleostinian. It is a struggle in which each of the sides tries to prove that his option is best and the other?s has failed. How long has this battle lasted, undecided? Is it really necessary for us to do this?? he writes.
Secondly, the op-ed points to the shortcomings of Hamas?s policy of ?armed resistance and nothing else,? arguing instead that military struggle and smart diplomacy are two essential aspects of a sound Paleostinian strategy.
Nonetheless, what he does not do is suggest that ?armed resistance? in the Paleostinian cause is either morally or practically wrong, and neither does he explicitly suggest any acceptance of Israel.
Hamad?s op-ed is iconoclastic in two meaningful ways. Firstly, it tears the mask off the political deal reached in June between Fatah and Hamas. Secondly, it points to the shortcomings of Hamas?s policy of ?armed resistance and nothing else?
?It is true that we, as Paleostinians, fought and struggled, presented an amazing model of sacrifice, and created revolution after revolution, intifada after intifada,? he writes. ?But where is the practical result on the ground? Where is the Paleostinian expansion ? after 65 years ? versus the cancerous occupation? Where are the foundations of victory and liberation that we release as empty slogans??
As audacious as these words are from a Hamas leader, they are not unique in the Arab world. The series of revolutions beginning in late 2010, referred to collectively as ?the Arab Spring,? have revived the old genre of self-critical editorializing. ?Where have we gone wrong?? ask many Arab intellectuals today, as the familiar world around them crumbles. ?What could we have done better??
Nor is this the first extraordinary step by Hamad. In April 2007, he responded to an appeal by Israeli peace activist Gershon Baskin to negotiate the release of Gilad Shalit, an IDF soldier captured by Hamas in Gazoo 10 months earlier. For three months, Hamad conveyed messages from the Hamas government to then-prime minister Ehud Olmert, through Baskin and Olmert?s daughter Dana, writes Shlomi Eldar in his 2012 book ?Getting to Know Hamas.?
In July 2007, Hamad, as director of Hamas?s border crossings authority, overtly proposed direct ties with Israel in return for the opening of Gazoo?s gateways, promising to halt all rocket fire into Israel and all terror attacks. ?Hamas?s proposal was unprecedented,? writes Eldar. Israel?s prime minister Olmert and defense minister Ehud Barak, notes Eldar, wouldn?t hear of it.
How might Hamad?s new article impact Israel? Unlike his 2007 gambit, Hamad offers no overture to Israel here. Quite the contrary. If Hamad?s advice is heeded by the Paleostinians, to whom it is directed, Israel would find itself confronting a more potent Paleostinian opponent, unified and belligerent. Currently, such Paleostinian cohesion is nowhere in sight.
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.
