Recent Appearances...

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Recent Appearances...

International-UN-NGOs

Davos elite nod along as Trump delivers ultimatum

2025-01-25

[BBC] World leaders, the bosses of the world's biggest companies and a sprinkling of celebrities gathered in the small Swiss mountain town of Davos for the annual World Economic Forum this week.

On the other side of the Atlantic, President Donald Trump was starting his political comeback as the new US president.

"Nothing will stand in our way", he declared, as he vowed to end America's "decline".

Towards the end of the gathering, President Trump was beamed in straight from the White House webcam to deliver his message of world domination directly to the global elite.

While he charmed, almost seduced the audience with a credible picture of a booming US economy about to scale new technological heights, he simultaneously menaced with threats of tariffs to those who did not choose to shift their factories into the US.

Trillions of dollars of tariffs for the US Treasury for those businesses exporting into the US market from foreign factories.

"Your prerogative" he said, with a smile not out of place in a Godfather movie. And then for one of his own, the Bank of America chief Brian Moynihan, a remarkable public lashing accusing the lending giant of "debanking" many of his conservative supporters.

He awkwardly mumbled about sponsoring the World Cup.

In this first week of his second term, most people at Davos were nodding along, as they cannot think what else to do, just yet.

Two worlds colliding, as the 'America First' President was beamed in like a 30-foot interplanetary emperor, into the beating heart of the rules-based international economic order.

It is one thing suggesting that trade deficits are a problem with your domestic electorate. It is quite another to suggest at an internationalist forum that a G7 ally, Canada, become a state of your nation, eliciting gasps in the audience, and not just from Canadians.

The address was, by design, charming and offensive. There was carrot and stick for the rest of the world.

As delegates absorbed the mix of threats, invites and on occasion, praise, many appeared to be trying to decide just how much Trump might damage the global trading system, whilst assessing just how far ahead his America is getting in this tech driven AI boom.

Davos has been for this first week the alternative pole of the Trump second term.

There was a coherence to his agenda to use every means to drive down energy prices including by pressurising the Saudis on oil.

This he said would not just help to lower inflation, but also drain Russia's war coffers of oil dollars to help end the Ukraine war, by economic means. The ceasefire in the Middle East has already bought Trump some geopolitical credibility in these circles.

Christine Lagarde, David Miliband, and John Kerry shuffled into the hall. Various bank chiefs assembled on stage to praise and then lightly question the President.

The bottom line was this: Is president Trump serious about what sounded like campaign trail threats to the world economic system? The answer will reverberate for the next four years and beyond.

The answer sounded like a most definitely, yes. However, this does not mean it is going to work.

Some leading US CEOs told me that they were preparing for tit-for-tat retaliatory tariffs to be applied to their exports. Their assumption was that the President's love of a rising stock market would restrict his deployment of tariffs.

But no one really knows. In any event, much is up for grabs. He has already withdrawn from the World Health Organisation.

In the promenades the whisper was of his Project 2025 allies suggesting US withdrawal from the IMF and the World Bank too.

The rest of the world does have some counter leverage, once it decides to get back up after the Trump whirlwind.

The Canadians are now briefing on their retaliatory tariffs. In conversations with both the British business secretary and EU trade minister, Jonathan Reynolds and European Union trade chief, Maros Sefcovic, I detected a desire for calm dialogue.

Both are making similar arguments to try to dissuade Trump from wider tariffs.

Mr Reynolds told me that as the US does not have a goods trade deficit with the UK, there is no need for tariffs.

Mr Sefcovic said that the US should really think about its services surplus too.

But do they not consider the threats to G7 and Nato allies Canada and Denmark (over Greenland) to be straightforwardly unacceptable and as absurd as France claiming back Louisiana? Sefcovic did not want to whip anything up.

Diplomats are making lists of US goods that Europe can now purchase to demonstrate "wins" for President Trump, from arms to gas to the magnets in wind turbines.

It might make some sense for the rest of the G7 to work in unison on retaliation against the tariffs, in order to concentrate the minds of Congress, and the competing factions inside the court of Trump.

There is no sign of that happening.

The US tech supremacy story epitomised by the broligarchy – including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg, Apple leader Tim Cook, and Google chief Sundar Pichar - had top seats at the inauguration this week.

While the US is streets ahead of Europe, its standing against China is more uncertain.

One of the talks of Davos was DeepSeek's high performing, much cheaper AI model, made in China. The prediction that the tech bros would be tearing strips out of each other in the court of Trump began to come true within hours, rather than months.

Meanwhile, while most, though not all, here in Davos sounded rather seduced by Trump's tech-fuelled optimism, some in Europe also see a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to attract top researchers who may be rather less than enamoured with the direction of US politics. It was openly suggested by the European Central Bank chief Christine Lagarde.

Others sought solace in the fact that Europe no longer has to face Biden's massive green subsidies, creating a more level playing field again for Europe.

President Trump is changing the terms of world trade. The response of the rest of the world to this is as important as what the Trump administration itself decides.

Link

Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Trump says ‘would be nice’ to solve Iranian nuclear crisis without Israeli strikes

2025-01-25

I agree — it would be very nice. Not likely, I suspect, which is that whole reality thingy intruding, but nice if it were to happen that way.

[IsraelTimes] US president reportedly set to tap Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff as Iran point man, signaling turn away from ‘maximum pressure’ policy of 1st term: ‘Certainly somebody I would use’

US President Donald Trump
...dictatorial for repealing some (but not all) of the diktats of his predecessor, misogynistic because he likes pretty girls, homophobic because he doesn't think gender bending should be mandatory, truly a man for all seasons...
on Thursday said he hopes the Iranian nuclear crisis can be solved without Israel having to carry out a military strike against the Islamic Theocratic RepublicThe remarks came after it was reported that Trump is planning to name his Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff as his point man on Iran, signaling the new administration’s resolve to address Tehran’s nuclear program diplomatically rather than militarily.

"I’m not going to answer that," Trump first replied when asked by news hounds in the Oval Office whether he would support an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, adding that he would be holding meetings with various bigwigs on the matter shortly.

"Hopefully that can be worked out without having to worry about it. It would really be nice if that could be worked out without having to go that further step," Trump continued.

"Iran
...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate ~~Jews~~ ~~Zionists~~ Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol...
will hopefully make a deal, and if they don’t make a deal that’s okay too," he said.

Offering two possibilities. The second one is likely to be uncomfortable.

His administration has signaled in recent days that it wants to try and reach a diplomatic agreement with Iran to curb its nuclear program, rather than carrying out a military strike.

There had been some in Israel who assumed that Trump’s return to the White House would lead to the US backing an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear sites or even carrying out such an attack itself.

Trump had criticized his predecessor Joe The Big Guy Biden
...46th president of the U.S. You're a lyin' dog-faced pony soldier...
for publicly telling Israel not to strike Iranian oil and nuclear sites in retaliation for Tehran’s ballistic missile attack last year. Trump had argued that Biden shouldn’t be publicly telegraphing Israel’s next move.

Senior Trump officials were earlier quoted by Channel 12 news as saying the new US president "doesn’t want to kick off his term with a war," is interested in a "firm deal" to prevent Iran from attaining nuclear arms, and assesses that "the Iranians will run to the negotiating table under his leadership."

WITKOFF ’CERTAINLY SOMEBODY I WOULD USE’
Trump on Thursday also addressed the Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response...
hostage release and ceasefire deal he helped finalize, saying it "should hold."

The comments appeared to soften ones he made earlier in the week, when he said he was not confident that the agreement would hold.

Asked to elaborate on those comments, Trump told news hounds, "It’s a very tricky place."

Trump credited his envoy Witkoff for securing the agreement that had been elusive for months. Noting that "both sides" liked Witkoff, Trump said, "That deal would have never been made without Steve."

"The deal should hold, but if it doesn’t there will be a lot of problems," Trump warned.

Trump was also asked whether he’ll want Witkoff to be negotiating directly with Iran, amid the reports that he was planning to have him handle US diplomacy with Tehran.

"No, but he’s certainly somebody I would use," Trump said.

The Financial Times had reported that Witkoff, known for his central role bringing the Gaza ceasefire deal to a conclusion, will oversee efforts to tackle Iran’s nuclear ambitions as part of a broader attempt to curb conflicts in the region, adding that the ceasefire agreement will remain Witkoff’s main focus.

News of Witkoff’s tentative appointment came as Trump revoked the security detail of two prominent Iran hawks from his previous administration: former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former Iran envoy Brian Hook, both of whom were considered under threat by Iran.

Pompeo and Hook were the public faces of the US "maximum pressure" sanctions campaign against Iran after Trump in 2018 withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal. The deal, signed in 2015, offered relief on sanctions in exchange for Iran’s drastically limiting its nuclear program.

In response to Trump’s withdrawal, Tehran, which is sworn to destroy Israel, has breached the deal in several ways, including by accelerating its uranium enrichment to levels that are unfeasible for civilian use.

Mohammad Javad Zarif
...former Persian foreign minister, Mouthpiece of Mullahs, good friend of John Kerry and similar exemplars of Merkin values...
, a top Iranian official who was Tehran’s lead negotiator on the 2015 deal, said Wednesday that he hopes "this time around, a ’Trump 2’ will be more serious, more focused, more realistic."

Though Trump has publicly vowed to resume "maximum pressure" on Iran, the Financial Times said that the US president and his aides have indicated in meetings that they want to keep the door open to diplomacy with the Islamic Theocratic RepublicAccording to the newspaper, some Trump officials have told foreign counterparts that they expect Witkoff to check whether diplomacy with Iran was possible.

However,
by candlelight every wench is handsome...
US officials cited by the newspaper said that Trump’s approach to Iran in his second term, and Witkoff’s mandate vis-a-vis the Islamic Theocratic Republic, were not yet settled.

A senior Republican staffer in the US Congress, quoted by the Financial Times, expressed frustration at Witkoff’s appointment, saying the new Iran point man was not hawkish enough.

"He’s already lifting pressure on Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, and in the process abandoning American hostages and endangering Israel," said the aide — though the White House on Thursday re-designated the Houthis as a terror group.

"He keeps saying he knows what Trump wants, but he doesn’t understand what Trump believes," the aide added.

The Financial Times noted that two of Trump’s appointments — Michael DiMino, the Pentagon’s new top Middle East official, and Elbridge Colby, nominated for under-secretary of defense for policy — have expressed skepticism over the use of military force to thwart Iran’s nuclear program.

A more robust approach, meanwhile, has been advocated by Trump’s designated national security adviser, Michael Waltz, and new US Secretary of State Marco Rubio
...The diminutive 13-year-old Republican U.S. Senator from Florida, Secretary of State in the second Trump administration...
The top diplomat, who was confirmed on Wednesday, said in a phone call with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later in the day that "he looks forward to addressing the threats posed by Iran and pursuing opportunities for peace," according to a State Department readout.

IRAN HAWKS POMPEO AND HOOK LOSE SECURITY DETAIL
A congressional staffer and a person familiar with the matter, speaking on condition of anonymity
... for fear of being murdered...
to discuss personal security details, confirmed Thursday that Trump had revoked Pompeo and Hook’s security details.

Neither source could offer an explanation. They said Pompeo and Hook were told of the loss of protection on Wednesday and that it took effect at 11 p.m. that night.

A day earlier, Trump had revoked the security clearance and Secret Service protection from John Bolton, another Iran hawk who was fired as Trump’s national security adviser during his first term.

Bolton, who has been targeted for liquidation for Iran, later wrote a book whose publication the White House unsuccessfully sought to block on grounds that it disclosed national security information.

Trump had soured on Pompeo some months ago, saying publicly that he would play no role in his new administration. In a social media post this week, Trump also fired Hook from his presidentially appointed position on the board of the Wilson Center, a think tank.

A representative for Pompeo did not immediately reply to a request for comment, and Hook has not responded to multiple voice and text messages from the AP since Bolton was stripped of his protection on Tuesday.

The New York Times

...which still proudly claims Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize...
first reported on the loss of protections.

The Biden administration’s State Department had provided and then systematically renewed round-the-clock protection by the Diplomatic Security Service for Pompeo and Hook since January 21, 2021, when they left office along with Trump. The last such authorization was on October 21.

Iran has blamed both for the killing of Iran Revolutionary Guard commander Qassem Soleimani

on January 3, 2020.

According to a March 2022 report to Congress, the State Department said it was paying more than $2 million per month to provide 24-hour security to Pompeo and Hook. But later determinations did not give a dollar amount.

In those notifications, the State Department told politicians that threats against Pompeo and Hook remain "serious and credible" and continue to warrant government-provided security details.

Biden administration officials briefed Trump officials earlier this month about the ongoing threat posed by Iran to Pompeo, Hook, Bolton and others and why the administration had extended the security details for them, according to a former senior Biden administration official familiar with the matter.

The official, who requested anonymity to discuss the private briefing, said Trump administration officials are "well aware" of the "active threats" against the former government officials and called the move "highly irresponsible."

Link

Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Senior Iranian official accuses Israel of placing explosives in centrifuge equipment

2025-01-15

How very clever of Israel — well done, guys!

[IsraelTimes] Zarif claims Tehran ‘managed to detect’ bombs, doesn’t specify when incident occurred or mention Natanz; Blinken hints at opposition to Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities

Mohammad Javad Zarif
...former Persian foreign minister, Mouthpiece of Mullahs, good friend of John Kerry and similar exemplars of Merkin values...
, who was foreign minister when Iran
...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate ~~Jews~~ ~~Zionists~~ Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol...
and world powers agreed to the 2015 nuclear deal and is now vice president for strategic affairs, alleged in a recent interview that Israel once planted explosives in Iranian centrifuge equipment, according to a translation of his remarks by Iran International.

"Our colleagues had purchased a centrifuge platform for the Atomic Energy Organization, and it was discovered that explosives had been embedded inside it, which they managed to detect," the opposition outlet on Tuesday quoted Zarif as telling the Hozour program.

Zarif also decried sanctions on Iran, blaming them for forcing Tehran to turn to intermediaries — opening up vulnerabilities in the supply chain that Israel can take advantage of.

"Instead of being able to order equipment directly from the manufacturer, sanctions force you to rely on multiple intermediaries for such purchases," he said. "If the Zionist regime infiltrates even one of the intermediaries, they can do anything and embed anything they want, which is exactly what happened."

"The issue with the pagers in Leb
...The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. Only one of those statements is an exaggeration....
turned out to be a multi-year process, meticulously orchestrated by the Zionists," he noted, referring to the blasts in September directed against the Iran-backed Hezbollah terror group.

Zarif did not specify in the interview when or where the alleged incident with the centrifuges occurred.

An interesting point…

In 2021, former Mosssd
Mosssd

......
chief Yossi Cohen intimated that Israel blew up an underground Iranian centrifuge facility at Natanz, in a kaboom that was allegedly caused by bombs planted within equipment there.

"It doesn’t look like it used to look," Cohen said in an interview at the time regarding the subterranean "cellar" at Natanz, where "the centrifuges used to spin."

Investigative news hound Ilana Dayan, who interviewed Cohen for Channel 12’s "Uvda" program, noted that two major blasts at Natanz were attributed in foreign reports to the Mossad during that past year, saying "a huge quantity of explosives" were built into a marble platform used to balance the centrifuges.

"The man who was responsible for these explosions, it becomes clear, made sure to supply to the Iranians the marble foundation on which the centrifuges are placed," Dayan said. "As they install this foundation within the Natanz facility, they have no idea that it already includes a huge quantity of explosives."

WILL IRAN ’SIMPLY REBUILD’ NUCLEAR PROGRAM IF ATTACKED?
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken
...71st United States secretary of state and a leading light of the corrupt and inept Biden administration. He previously served as deputy national security advisor from 2013 to 2015 and deputy secretary of state from 2015 to 2017 under the corrupt and inept Obama administration. He advocated for the 2003 invasion of Iraq while serving as the Democratic staff director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 2002 to 2008. He was a foreign policy advisor for the Biden 2008 presidential campaign. During his tenure in the Obama administration, Blinken helped craft B.O.'s policy on Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the nuclear program of Iran. We all saw how well each of those worked. After leaving government service, Blinken moved into the private sector, co-founding WestExec Advisors, a lobbying firm...
meanwhile publicly hinted at his opposition to an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities, when pressed during an interview Monday with MSNBC why Israel should not take out Iran’s nuclear program once and for all now that Tehran has been significantly weakened.

"You have to look at what would be enduring and what would make sure that the program doesn’t come back. So one of the things you have to assess is: If that were to happen, would Iran simply rebuild and rebuild even deeper underground in a place that would be even harder to get to?" Blinken responded.

Blinken repeated his recent acknowledgement that Iran has accumulated enough fissile material necessary for a nuclear weapon and could upgrade material to bomb-grade quality within a week or so. However,
the way to a man's heart remains through his stomach...
actually developing a weapon would take far longer, he stressed.

"Iran is going to be faced with decisions of its own of how it wants to move forward, but I think the incoming administration would have an opportunity precisely because Iran’s on its back feet — the — it’s suffering economically in a terrible way," he said. "Its people are disputing so much of what the regime has done, particularly in meddling in the affairs of other countries throughout the region."

"This is a moment of opportunity, and maybe a moment of opportunity to resolve in an enduring way the nuclear challenge posed by Iran, but also the actions that Iran takes throughout the region," Blinken added.

Blinken’s comments came as White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said again on Tuesday that Iran was at its weakest point since the country’s 1979 revolution and its weakness was a concern as it may push the country to rethink its nuclear weapons posture, a concern that US President Joe The Big Guy Biden
...46th president of the U.S. The very model of probity....
has also voiced.

Link

Home Front: Politix

Biden Awards Presidential Freedom Medals to Hillary, Soros and others

2025-01-05

More names added to this story from yesterday. The logic of most of these escapes me. Last year President Biden presented one of these to Representative Nancy Pelosi, no longer Speaker of the House. I imagine Dr. Jill regrets that now, on behalf of her husband.

[MSN] WASHINGTON ― President Joe Biden on Saturday named former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and billionaire political activist and philanthropist George Soros recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, part of a group of 19 people selected for the nation's highest civilian honor.

Also, U2 frontman Bono, actor Michael J. Fox, actor Denzel Washington, chef José Andrés and William Sanford Nye, better known as television's "Bill Nye the Science Guy.", soccer player Lionel Messi of Argentina, NBA legend Earvin "Magic" Johnson and a few others.
---------------
In previous years he awarded, among others, Al Gore, former Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards, John Kerry, soccer player and activist Megan Rapinoe and UMW President Richard Trumpka.

Link

Fifth Column

With the West excusing terrorism, who needs Islamists?

2025-01-03

[IsraelNationalNews] Europe and America gave many terrorists everything: educational and job opportunities, entertainment and sexual freedom, salaries and social assistance and religious freedom. The terrorists below have never seen a day of poverty in their lives.

With Westerners excusing terrorism, who needs Islamists?

July 14, 2016, Nice. During the fireworks festival, an Islamic terrorist kills 87 people, adults and children, under a truck that claimed to be carrying ice cream to the celebration of the French Revolution.

Four days later, the famous philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, disciple and friend of Jacques Derrida, publishes an article in Libération entitled "A truck launched". Despite having gone almost unnoticed, the article has lost none of its interest:

"A truck launched to run over children - among others - gives an unbearable image of nihilism. Nihilism itself names an end: that of our history and our civilization (...) It is not enough to declare war on it. We must attack ourselves, climb aboard and dismantle the mad trucks of our supposed progress, our fantasies of domination and our commercial obesity".

Clear? Terrorists and Westerners are the same, for our little masters of thought.

The terrorist who killed 15 people with a pickup truck in New Orleans on New Year’s Day (what better way to start the year than with another Islamic massacre?) was named Shamsud-Din Jabbar.

The Wall Street Journal has a pretty good portrait: a native Texan, an Army veteran (he also served in Afghanistan), a state university graduate, and a father of three, he had worked his way up the corporate ladder. Jabbar was an attentive neighbor who regularly asked a retiree if she needed anything and had given her a vacuum cleaner, washer, and dryer when he moved in. A model citizen. The New York Times reveals that he had converted to Islam.

This time, no taqiya, like there was in the case of the attacker who drove the car into the Christmas market in Magdeburg (by the way, the security of the German market was contracted to a company called "Mecca Security" !! some stories are so absurd that they can’t be invented).

But according to the official media, a "vehicle" killed 15 people in New Orleans.

Worse than the media is the legion of Western idiots who say that Islamic terrorism is a consequence of capitalism, colonialism, Israel, white and Jewish supremacy, in short, it is our fault, the West.

The Islamic terrorist who killed the British MP David Amess in the church is the son of a former advisor to the prime minister of Somalia.

Poverty and deprivation are not, as the fatuous John Kerry said, "the main cause of terrorism." Islam is.

Syed Rizwan Farook, a thirty-year-old Muslim of Pakistani origin, and his Saudi wife Tashfeen Malik, unloaded their semi-automatic rifles on the employees of a center for the disabled in California, killing 14 people during a Christmas party, the favorite season for massacres. Farook was an American citizen and worked as an inspector at the county health department. He earned seventy thousand dollars a year.

A graduate in engineering, his father a public works employee, his sister an elementary school teacher, Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez killed four marines in a recruitment center in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Michael Adebowale, the terrorist who slaughtered British soldier Lee Regby in the heart of London, had a bright future ahead of him. At school, his teachers had chosen him as a "model student".

Take Aafia Siddiqui, one of Al Qaeda’s Amazons, she is a neurologist who graduated from MIT and was sentenced to 86 years in prison.

And don't forget the psychiatrist who, shouting "Allahu Akbar", massacred his comrades at Fort Hood. Thirteen dead. Dr. Nidal Hassan.

The son of a wealthy banker who studied at one of the most prestigious universities in the world, University College London (in terms of academic results, it is the fourth university in the world) and lived in the chic heart of the English capital - that was Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the attacker of the Christmas flight Amsterdam-Detroit. He lived on the fifth floor of a building on Mansfield Street. Neoclassical columns, an Art Nouveau door with a large basket of wrought iron roses, a few blocks from Oxford Street, where an apartment costs around two million euro.

And there is Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, one of the terrorists who killed Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal journalist beheaded because he was Jewish. Sheikh is the son of a wealthy carpet merchant and had graduated from the London School of Economics.

Aqsa Mahmood, one of the most high-profile women in ISIS, lived in Pollokshields, one of the rich neighborhoods of Glasgow. Her father is the first Pakistani cricketer in Scotland. All their children went to private school.

Omar Khan Sharif, who blew himself up in a Tel Aviv cafe, attended one of the UK’s most elite schools, Foremarke Hall in Repton, founded in 1557 and whose alumni included writers such as Roald Dahl, Christopher Isherwood and the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Ramsey.

Yet, from the intellectual left to Pope Francis, it is repeated that these Islamic fanatics are being recruited from among the world’s oppressed, from those who, in the words of Karl Marx, have "only their chains to lose." No, my friends, they are religious fanatics intent on overthrowing the Western society that spawned them.

Faisal Shahzad, the terrorist behind the failed Times Square attack, had a $273,000 house and a father who is a high-ranking officer in the Pakistani army. And what about Abdelkarim Mejjati, the mastermind behind the Madrid massacres, who grew up in the exclusive Gauthier neighborhood of Casablanca to a very rich father and a mother who ran a chain of beauty salons?

Europe and America gave these terrorists everything: educational and job opportunities, entertainment and sexual freedom, salaries and social assistance and religious freedom. These terrorists have never seen a day of poverty in their lives.

The Paris terrorists rejected liberté, egalité and fraternité; the British jihadists rejected the sweet British multicultural lullabies; the Islamist who killed Theo van Gogh repudiated Dutch relativism and Palestinian Arab terrorists want to cleanse the earth of the Jewish presence.

But for those who think that the West deserves it in part and are now in the top echelons of politics, the media, and universities, it is much easier and more seductive to embrace the common belief that we are the guilty ones. Self-hatred, oikophobia, will end up killing us.

With Westerners like that, who needs Islamic terrorism?

Link

Home Front: Politix

The Evaporation of the Obama Mystique

2024-12-13

[AMGREATNESS] Barack Obama
I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody...
had long been rumored as the catalyst for the 2020 Biden nomination—and thereafter played the whispering puppeteer behind the subsequent lost Biden administration years.

As such he and his coterie proved the virtual architects of the Biden administration, one of the most unpopular and failed presidencies in American history.

Recall earlier that after a flailing candidate Joe The Big Guy Biden
...46th president of the U.S. Sleazy Dem machine politician, paterfamilias of the Biden Crime Family...
lost the first three 2020 primaries and caucuses, his inert campaign was headed nowhere.

Barack Obama and fellow Democratic insiders abruptly engineered the withdrawal of his rival 2020 presidential candidates: hard left but likely sure-loser candidates, including Bernie Sanders

...The ~~only~~ first openly Socialist member of the U.S. Senate. Sanders was Representative-for-Life from Vermont until moving to the Senate for the rest of his life in 2006, assuming the seat vacated by Jim Jeffords. He ran for the 2016 nomination for president, to be cheated out of it by Hillary Clinton, then went back to being an Independent socialist, waiting for 2020 to roll around...
, Elizabeth Being Native American has been part of my story since the day I was born Warren
...The Great White Squaw, Lizzie is the Dem Senatrix from Massachussetts. She traces her noble lineage all the way back to Big Chief Spouting Bull. She has high cheekbones that stretch all the way to the top of her head. It has been alleged that she speaks with forked tongue but she denies that. She had a DNA test to prove her lineage and it turns out she's colorless...
, and Pete Buttigieg

...the testicleless former mayor of South Bend, Indiana. Buttigieg graduated from Harvard College and, on a Rhodes Scholarship, from Pembroke College, Oxford. From 2007 to 2010, he worked at McKinsey and Company, a consulting firm. From 2009 to 2017 Buttigieg served as an intelligence officer in the United States Navy Reserve, attaining the rank of lieutenant and deploying to Afghanistan in 2014. Buttigieg was first elected mayor of South Bend in 2011 and was reelected in 2015. During his second term, he announced he was gay, which surprised no one. Buttigieg also campaigned for Indiana state treasurer in 2010 and for chair of the Democratic National Committee in 2017, losing both elections. He ran for the Dem nomination in 2020 on the theory that being mayor of a nondescript medium sized city is qualification to run the country. He lost that one too. Biden appointed him Secretary of Transportation, which he turned into shambles...
The Obamas ignored or withheld from the public their own firsthand knowledge that Biden was suffering from signs of dementia.

Instead, they found Biden's cognitive decline and his former concocted reputation as workingman's Joe useful as a veneer for a veritable Obama third-term, ''phone it in'' administration. Or as wistful Obama once conditioned his dream of a third term—''If I could make an arrangement where I had a stand-in, a front man or front woman, and they had an earpiece in.''

The Obamaites then got their wish for four years of enacted hard-left directives that they could only have dreamed of while in actual power.

But their radical menu since 2021 had divided and nearly wrecked the nation—hyperinflation, 12 million illegal aliens, a ruined border, spiraling crime, a shattered foreign policy of appeasement, the popular backlash against DEI/Woke/trans chauvinism, partisan lawfare, and weaponization of the government.

And the ruling radicalism beneath the Biden facade eventually cost the Democrats
...every time you hear the phrase white people, white supremacy, white anything but paint, you're listening to a Democrat. Ask him/her/it to reimagine something for you; they do that a lot, though not well. They can hear a dog whistle a mile or two away. They invented the spoils system and Tammany Hall, and inspired the addition of the word (Thomas) Nasty to the English language. They want to stop continental drift and repeal the law of unintended side effects...
nearly everything—the presidency, the House, and the Senate.

An inert Biden is departing office with a 36 percent favorability rating in a recent Emerson poll. His Democratic nominee replacement, losing presidential candidate Vice President Harris, also has virtually vacated her office with 40 days left of her tenure.

Failed candidate Harris has been roundly faulted by staffers and donors for blowing through some $2 billion in assorted 2024 campaign money.

She ended up doing worse against Trump than Biden himself had in 2020.

Many Democrats believe that they might have done just as well had Biden stayed on the ticket even in his vastly diminished state.

The Obamas were further blasted for nullifying the wishes of 14 million primary voters by forcing Biden off the ticket—ironically in the same backroom, anti-democratic manner they had cleared the way for him in 2020.

Obama emerged from his comfortable retirement to hit the 2024 campaign trail, schooling the country that President-emeritus Donald Trump
...They hit him with slander, they impeached him twice. Nancy Pelosi tore up his State of the Union address on national TV. They stole an election and put his adherents in jail. They vilified him. They couldn't crucify him, so they shot him. Still, they can't keep him down...
was a dictator, a fascist
...anybody you disagree with, damn them...
, a tyrant, and, of course, a ''racist.''

The more Trump polled even with, or ahead of, Kamala Harris
former senatrix from California, 2020 Dem presidential hopeful and ultimately Joe Biden's intended successor
, the more an exasperated and ignored Obama talked down to supposedly low-information voters.

But by the time Harris lost the election, voters had tuned out a nagging and patronizing Obama—and his stale, now-dated hope-and-changey boilerplate speeches.

What Obama did not mention, but what the voters knew, was that the border was more secure under Trump than during either the Obama or Biden tenure.

Vladimir Putin
...President-for-Life of Russia. He gets along well with other presidents for life. He is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substance. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to him. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substances...
invaded countries during the Obama and Biden administrations but stayed put on Trump's watch.

Barack Obama's bizarre vision of a new Middle East had sought to empower Iran
...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate ~~Jews~~ ~~Zionists~~ Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol...
as a supposed counterweight against moderate Arab nations and our ally Israel.

Years ago, Obama invited the Russians into Syria, empowered dictatorial Syria, berated Israel nonstop, and all but ignored the terrorist violence of Iran's surrogate Death Eaters of Hamas
Hamas

..the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood,...
, Hezbollah, and the Iran's Houthi sock puppets
...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 legitimate Yemeni government has accused the them of having ties to the Iranian government. Honest they did. 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 They like shooting off... ummm... missiles that they would have us believe they make at home in their basements. On the plus side, they did murder Ali Abdullah Saleh, which was the only way the country was ever going to be rid of him...
s.

But after October 7, Israel retaliated to the mass slaughter of Jewish civilians with all-out war against Hamas and Hezbollah—rendering these once feared Death Eaters nearly impotent.

In an exchange of air attacks with Iran, Israel showed the world that Iran was as militarily weak as its chanting and threats were tiresome and shrill.

Iran is now tottering on the brink, as its terrorist appendages—including most recently the Assad dynasty—are melting away.

Israel and the moderate Arab regimes are in ascendance, as the entire crazy Obama-envisioned Middle East agenda melts away.

The 2024 anemic Democratic campaign and the Trump electoral college and popular vote victories—combined with record defections of Hispanic and African-American voters from the Democratic Party to Trump—proved a resounding rejection of the Obama legacy and his surrogates' left-wing visions.

Yet after the people spoke in the election, the more Obama whined that democracy itself had failed him. Voters, he remonstrated, who disagreed with him were written off as racist and sexist.

Obama again harped that constituents did not know what was good for them.

And then, the disappointed former community organizer suddenly disappeared—pondering to which of his own four mansions his private jet would fly him home to commiserate.

Link

Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Terrorists liberate terrorists from other terrorists

2024-12-13

Writer Daniel Greenfield has a wickedly sly sense of humour.

[IsraelNationalNews] In a stunning win for freedom, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a Sunni terrorist organization defeated the Assad regime and its Shiite terrorist groups to take over Syria. HTS is led by Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani, a Saudi former associate of the caliph of ISIS who has a $10 million reward on his head from the U.S. while Assad was supported by Hezbollah, whose leaders had multi-million dollar rewards on their heads until Israel killed them (but didn’t collect the money.)

Assad was backed by the Shiite terror state of Iran while HTS is backed by the Sunni terror state of Turkey. Geopolitical experts say that Sunni Islamists defeating Shiite Islamists to rule the pile of rubble that’s left of Syria is the biggest win for human freedom since the Muslim Brotherhood took over Egypt and parts of North Africa (before being ousted from Egypt and some other parts of the region) in the freedom phenomenon known as the Arab Spring.

The media broadcast scenes of Jihadists praising Allah for helping them defeat the other Jihadists who also praise Allah (but not in the right way)

*Snicker*

and liberating political prisoners to shortly replace them with other political prisoners (assuming that they even bother taking political prisoners or any kind of prisoners.) Talks are underway between the terrorists of the former regime with the terrorists of the current regime to see if they can work it out.

And maybe just focus on killing Christians, Jews and other infidels.

Some might suspect that a former ISIS associate tied to Al Qaeda (who admittedly turned on his former group to lead another Jihadist organization) taking over a country would be bad news. But they’re clearly bad people who don’t realize that Al-Jawlani is a changed man, an austere religious scholar

…oh dear. That’s never good…

who underwent a makeover courtesy of Queer Eye for the Syrian Guy and now, in the words of the BBC, wears a "more western style wardrobe". At least if you count rocking Zelensky’s military fatigue hand-me-downs as looking like a regular western warlord.

The Biden administration has already made contact with the terrorist organization led by a man on whose head is a $10 million reward to offer to rebuild Syria just in time for the next civil war. Publicly, the administration has already taken credit for helping defeat Assad by insisting that the Israelis must stop attacking Hezbollah at once. Had the Israelis listened, Assad would still be in power. But the Biden administration was surely using reverse psychology and by threatening Israel with an arms embargo was really getting the Israelis to fight even harder.

Or at least that’s the story that National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan is going with.

While the world (or at least the parts of it that completely forgot about the Arab Spring) rejoices, the Israeli government which (for all its failings) has more sense than the State Department or a headless chicken, has begun bombing what’s left of Syria’s rocket factories and chemical warfare plants that Secretary of State John Kerry (despite promising Obama) somehow never got around to making sure that Vladimir Putin would dismantle and put away in cold storage.

The Israelis are also expanding their presence in Mt. Hermon and building their own security zone because they trust Syria’s new terrorist masters as much as they trusted the old.

What Jerusalem knows and Foggy Bottom has yet to learn is that the Middle East is a bunch of tribal factions, warlords and gangs pretending to be countries, but despite the flags, anthems, UN memberships, World Bank positions and invites to climate change summits, are all some version of Al-Jawlani bouncing between ISIS, Al Qaeda and a new governing coalition.

Over a thousand years of Islam comes down to some guy with a beard uniting a few key families with whose backing he then seizes a bunch of cities that used to belong to long lost great civilizations, and then his men settle down to some murdering, looting and raping while thanking Allah for the privilege of a mission to kill, loot and rape the world. Or die trying.

The stationary bandit theory isn’t some abstraction in the Middle East: it’s everyday reality.

As we all should have learned in the last generation, every Arab Muslim country is one inflationary spiral away from some guy with a ’nom de guerre’ or ’kunya’ riding into town on a pickup truck with 300 fellow bandits and becoming the new government in Allah’s name.

Georgetown idiots with PhDs then cheer as statues of the old dictator are toppled as if Damascus, Cairo, Baghdad, Tripoli or Tunis were Prague, Berlin or any city where democracy means more than ’my tribe has more guns than your tribe’. The old Pharaohs (not to mention Caesars) would tear down each other’s monuments too. That didn’t make old Tutankhamen a liberator or a democrat. At least not the kind who is acceptable outside Chicago.

Assad heading off to shop at Moscow’s GUM for more luxury handbags is no great loss and his replacement by other terrorists is no great gain. At least not for us. Or likely for Syria’s Christians. Or Israel. Or really anyone else except members of the new regime.

Link

Afghanistan

Netanyahu Testifies: John Kerry Boasted About U.S.-Trained Forces in Afghanistan

2024-12-12

[Breitbart] Former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry boasted to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the strength of U.S.-trained forces in Afghanistan and their ability to resist the Taliban, Netanyahu testified in court on Tuesday.

Netanyahu was taking the stand in his own defense in a criminal trial that critics have called politically motivated.

He defended his actions in seeking to diversify the Israeli media — and entertained the court with political anecdotes.

Among them, he said, was the story of Kerry’s invitation to visit Afghanistan to see how well the U.S. was training its Afghan allies. Kerry’s purpose was to persuade Netanyahu to allow the U.S. to train and arm Palestinian police forces, as the Obama administration pressured Israel to leave Judea and Samaria (otherwise known as the West Bank).

Netanyahu was skeptical, he said. The Times of Israel reported on his testimony:

“John Kerry also offered that I go on a secret visit to Afghanistan to see how the Americans are doing the same thing for local Afghan forces,” the prime minister continued.

But Netanyahu said he told Kerry that the whole scheme was a bad idea.

“I said, John, I want to tell you something — the moment you leave Afghanistan, the forces you are training will collapse under the [pressure] of the Islamists,” Netanyahu told the court.

Netanyahu noted that he had received negative coverage in the Israeli media for refusing to agree to Kerry’s plans or to President Barack Obama’s “appeasement.”

Link

Home Front: Politix

Trump prepares to withdraw from Paris climate agreement: NYT

2024-11-09

Virtuous Cycle, here we come!

[GEO.TV] US President-elect Donald Trump's transition team has prepared executive orders and proclamations on withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement and shrinking the size of some national monuments to allow more drilling and mining, the New York Times reported on Friday.

Trump is also expected to end the pause on permitting new liquefied natural gas exports to big markets in Asia and Europe and revoke a waiver that allows California and other states to have tighter pollution standards, according to the report.

Trump promised during his campaign to take many of the actions listed in the report. Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for the Trump transition team, said in a response to a Reuters request that the results of Tuesday's election gave him a "mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail. He will deliver."

The administration of President Joe Biden paused approvals of new LNG exports in January in order to complete a study on the environmental and economic impact of the exports. The US Energy Department will have a draft updated analysis out for a 60-day public comment period before the end of the year, a department official said.

Some people on the transition team are discussing moving the headquarters of the Environmental Protection Agency out of Washington, the report said, citing unnamed people involved in the discussions.

Link

Israel-Palestine-Jordan

The West's status quo strategy is collapsing

2024-10-04

Scathing.

[Ynet] Given the rapid acceleration of military events, the date of 16 September has now receded into the distant background, even though barely two weeks have passed. Yet, that day remains vitally important for understanding the nature of contemporary Western strategy, and marks the beginning of its collapse.

THE STRATEGY OF DOING NOTHING
On that mid-September day, the Biden administration’s envoy Amos Hochstein visited Israel to reiterate some simple, and rather tired, ideas. Specifically, hitting Hezbollah harder would not help Israel, and it would increase the danger of a large war, so the administration sought a diplomatic solution. All of that was declared on what was then the 345 day since Hezbollah began firing on Israel on 8 October last year.

What Hochstein conveyed to Israel is the essence of what passes for the West’s strategy in autumn 2024. A strategy of not rocking the boat, not making the situation worse than it already is, by doing very little, preferably nothing at all. The goal is to preserve the status quo, the still fairly comfortable and safe present enjoyed by the West, if not by Israel, Ukraine and other countries.

The concomitant, unavoidable, obsession is that with diplomacy. If the task at hand is to maintain safety in the immediate term by eliminating almost all risk, it inevitably becomes grossly inappropriate to contemplate war. After all, even a fool knows that wars are not risk-free. Therefore, the fool reaches for that magic wand, diplomacy.

DIPLOMACY AS A DELUSION
What the fool knows not, being a fool, is that the achievements of Western diplomacy over the past many decades are prominent by their absence. In my previous article on this sad topic, I discussed the catastrophe that has overtaken the Korean peninsula as a result of decades of American-led diplomacy. The Stalinist Kim regime is in power, equipped with intercontinental missiles and nuclear weapons, and under no effective pressure.

Everywhere else in the world, diplomacy has been similarly distant from triumph. Take the case of Iran. More than 22 years ago, on 14 August 2002, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), an opposition group, accused Iran of developing nuclear weapons in secret, including by building a uranium enrichment plant at Natanz. It was later suggested that U.S. intelligence had discovered this some months earlier, but in either case it took another 16 months for the first of several failed diplomatic arrangements with Iran.

On 21 October 2003, not by coincidence a mere six months after the fall of Baghdad to coalition forces, Iran agreed with Britain, France and Germany that it would answer outstanding questions about its nuclear program and suspend uranium enrichment. This supposed diplomatic achievement lasted slightly longer than two years, after which Iran resumed enrichment at Natanz in January 2006.

This is the general pattern of Western diplomacy with hostile states. Even to initiate diplomacy, a combination of difficult intelligence work and military pressure, at least of the indirect kind, is needed. Then, once negotiations begin, the hostile state eventually agrees to unenforceable concessions, in order to renege on them at the appropriate time. The West, determined to avoid that unpleasant outcome, war, sidles gradually towards the worst possible outcome, a larger war at a later date.

In substance, the West’s diplomacy only gives its enemies the time and peace of mind needed to become more dangerous. So it has been with Iran. After wasting another eight years, the West was led by the utterly irresponsible Obama administration into a vile nuclear agreement with Iran. This was the Joint Plan of Action of 24 November 2013, which enabled Iran to continue to enrich uranium, and to test more advanced centrifuges for enriching uranium in the future.

President Obama and his Secretary of State, John Kerry, possessed the necessary combination of immorality and stupidity to persist until, on 20 July 2015, they turned the awful 2013 deal into the catastrophic Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). This formally permitted Iran to operate 5,060 enrichment centrifuges, and conduct research with uranium on more advanced centrifuges. On the day when the deal was signed, then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter shamelessly promised Israel that "we will be watching Iran very closely."

All the interminable years of diplomacy, all the long-winded promises were shown to be worth nothing in April 2018. Then, Israel, and not the United States or any other signatory of the repugnant Iran deal, made public that its intelligence service had extracted from a secret archive in Tehran the plans of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, Project Amad. The administration of President Trump explicitly referred to the concealment of these plans by Iran as proof of Iran’s bad faith in signing the deal and failure to keep its terms, and so the U.S. withdrew from the deal on 8 May 2018.

Neither Trump, nor his successor President Biden, nor any other leader of any other Western signatory of the catastrophic 2015 agreement, ever found the strength to draw the conclusion that must be drawn. Diplomacy with hostile states in general, and with Iran in particular, is a road to disaster.

If Iran’s nuclear program is to be dismantled, war is the only way. Yet, since the very purpose of Western strategy is to preserve the status quo and avoid war, futile and repulsive attempts to pursue diplomacy with Iran continue to this day. As they go on, Donald Trump nonsensically compares Iran’s attack on Israel to "two kids fighting in the schoolyard," while his election opponent Kamala Harris speaks of continuing to "work with our allies... to disrupt Iran’s aggressive behavior." Neither of the two non-entities understands how irrelevant their talk has become.

THE WEST HAS LOST CONTROL OF EVENTS
Western rhetoric became inconsequential in February 2022, when Russia, one of the two non-Western signatories of the deal with Iran along with China, invaded all of Ukraine. Russia has been openly engaging in nuclear blackmail of the West ever since.

Already in June of that year, China and Russia jointly opposed the West’s feeble criticism of Iran’s insufficient cooperation with nuclear inspectors. Almost 20 years after the diplomacy around Iran’s nuclear program began, it publicly imploded. Over those two decades, the West had comprehensively lost control of events, while Iran came within reach of nuclear warheads.

Meanwhile, the catastrophic 2015 agreement continues to bear poisoned fruit. On 18 October 2023, eleven days after Hamas massacred Israeli civilians, United Nations restrictions on Iran’s missile and drone programs expired. Iran, which was already supplying drones to Russia in breach of those restrictions, can now do so in the knowledge that there are few if any restraints on its actions, and that it is free to use the proceeds of its sales to Russia to further develop its own arsenal.

The only virtue of the 2015 deal, the West’s ability to ’snapback’ all sanctions previously imposed on Iran, has naturally proved a hollow one. Busy attempting to ’de-escalate tensions,’ a miserable euphemism for pretending that the collapsing status quo can still be upheld, Western European states remain parties to the deal and refuse to contemplate ’snapping back’ sanctions. Nothing remains of Western diplomacy but desperation.

SIXTEEN DAYS OF DESPERATION
Desperation, mixed with complete moral bankruptcy, was the guiding star of what passed for Western diplomacy between Hochstein’s visit on 16 September, and Iran’s missile attack on Israel on 1 October.

Hochstein’s predictably worthless visit to Israel was rapidly followed by various successful Israeli offensive actions against Hezbollah, up to and including the killing of the commander of its rocket branch, Ibrahim Qubaisi, on the afternoon of 24 September. Instead of prompting some sobriety in Western thought and action, this led to a grotesque demonstration of desperation, faintly disguised as diplomacy.

The joint statement of 25 September issued by 38 countries, including the 27 members of the European Union and also the United States, is one of the most obscene documents in the many centuries of international diplomacy. As Israel was inflicting substantial damage on Hezbollah, this statement called for "an immediate 21 day ceasefire," which would have given the terrorists in Lebanon vital relief from Israeli pressure.

This same text did not even mention the word ’terrorism,’ or any derivative thereof. It also omitted all mention of Hezbollah. It did call for a "diplomatic settlement" in Lebanon, and also a ceasefire in Gaza. It was nothing less than an attempt to force Israel to capitulate, to allow the terrorists on its borders to survive, to reorganize, and to prepare to murder Israelis more effectively on an even greater scale.

Precisely.

The Biden administration was sufficiently desperate to force this on America’s closest ally that it anonymously briefed multiple members of the press that "we’re expecting the deal in the coming hours." Benjamin Netanyahu and his cabinet deserve the utmost credit for treating these histrionics with contempt, and standing up to a form of diplomatic extortion which is not less than criminal, because of the threat that it poses to Israel’s survival.

Two days after the statement, on Friday 27 September, State Department Counselor Tom Sullivan was still attempting to press on with a ’diplomatic solution,’ and insistently failing to acknowledge that no such solution is in fact possible now, or was possible in the past. It was most appropriate that Israel closed out that day by killing Hassan Nasrallah.

Nasrallah’s killing was not only an important success against terrorism, it also forced the Biden administration further into a self-created corner. On 29 September, National Security Spokesman John Kirby had to concede that the deaths of Nasrallah and others were "good for the region, good for the world." Kirby did not elaborate that this meant that the administration had desperately attempted to prevent these good developments by imposing a ceasefire on Israel.

The administration is not alone in its desperation. The spokesman of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer called "on all sides to show restraint, to step back from the brink and avoid any further escalation" the day after Kirby’s television appearance. Even after Iran’s missile attack on 1 October, the same spokesman was still calling for ’de-escalation’, while issuing a routine condemnation of Iran. Israel is meant to stop fighting for its survival, simply because Britain does not know, and does not want to know, how to stop Iran.

The West’s practical response to Iran’s attack has been of very limited value. Two U.S. Navy destroyers, the USS Bulkeley (DDG-84) and USS Cole (DDG-67), did fire a dozen interceptors, but this was a fraction of the overall effort needed to defeat an attack in which approximately 200 Iranian missiles were launched. A Navy which has 237 combat ships in service, including dozens of destroyers, could have done much more, but was neither organized nor ordered to do so.

The rest of the West did not intercept a single ballistic missile, and Britain contributed nothing more than two Typhoon fighters which are ludicrously claimed to have provided deterrence, without attacking any targets. British and other Allied aircraft cannot in fact attack any ballistic targets, because what was called the Air-Launched Hit-to-Kill (ALHTK) initiative, involving the launch of Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) missiles from aircraft against ballistic missiles, which was advertised in 2007, never came to anything. A natural consequence of the West’s inability to seriously contemplate, and to prepare for, war.

With their direct military contribution to Israel’s defense minimal, the leading nations of the West are stuck in a loop, in which they continue to highlight their own irrelevance and impotence. On 24 September, the G7 called "for a stop to the current destructive cycle." On 2 October, it was still insisting, with no evidence and no attempt at original thought, that a non-specific "diplomatic solution is still possible." The message is clear. Israel’s survival is Israel’s problem, and the West has no answer to anything, no desire other than to keep rolling forward in neutral gear. This cannot and will not continue for long.

Link

Home Front: Politix

John Kerry comes out strongly AGAINST the 1st Amendment

2024-09-29

[X]

WATCH:

In a shocking MASK OFF moment, John Kerry, who served as US Secretary of State under @BarackObama, complained that the First Amendment makes it hard to have consensus in a “Democracy”’ and that social media and free speech are posing the biggest road blocks to those who… pic.twitter.com/VWkstLgcV5
— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) September 29, 2024

Link

Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Final probe reveals ''bad weather'' as reason of Raisi copter crash

2024-09-02

[GEOTV] A final investigation into the May helicopter crash that killed former Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi has found that the accident was caused by bad weather, the body probing the case said Sunday.

The helicopter carrying 63-year-old Raisi and his entourage came down on a fog-shrouded mountainside in northern Iran, killing the president and seven others, and triggering snap elections.

The main cause of the helicopter crash was the "complex climatic and atmospheric conditions of the region in the spring", the special board investigating the dimensions and causes of the helicopter accident said, according to state broadcaster IRIB.

The report added that "the sudden emergence of a thick mass of dense and rising fog" caused the helicopter's collision into the mountain.

Iran's army in May similarly said it had found no evidence of criminal activity in the crash that also killed Raisi's foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian.

In August, Fars News Agency cited the main causes of the May 19 crash as bad weather conditions and the helicopter's inability to ascend with two extra passengers against security protocols.

But the Iranian armed forces were quick to reject the finding saying, "what is mentioned on Fars news about the presence of two people in the helicopter against the security protocols [...] is completely false".

Link

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