“Rather than falsely accusing Israel,” the letter continued, “one might have expected that as the executive head of the UN, you would have admitted responsibility of the UN for such abuse of its facilities, and instituted a thorough inquiry as to how and why UNRWA facilities were placed at the disposal of the Hamas terror organization, how and why the UN officials responsible for such facilities permitted this situation to occur, and why those rockets and other weapons that were discovered in such facilities were transferred to Hamas, for their continued use against Israel’s citizens.
“In permitting the storage of weapons, and in transferring such weapons into the hands of Hamas,” the letter asserted, “the UN has in fact permitted itself to become accessory to the commission of war crimes.”
The above passage has been added to the piece on this blog titled “United Nazis Workers Relief Agency (UNRWA)”, which appears to have been abused by Hamafia and Associates, and that to allowing its budget and facilities to abet the terrorist organization with its assaults against Israelis and, in essence by way of its tactic of putting noncombatants and civilian assets directly in the line of fire, Gazans as well.
Scrolling news for Donetsk at ostro.org, 8/30/2014/1833 ET.
“The mindset of war must change,” Mr Bush said on Wednesday. “It is a different type of battlefield. It is a different type of war.” The battles, he said, “will be fought visibly sometimes, and sometimes we’ll never see what may be taking place”.
Thirteen years and less than 11 months later, it is turning out that the full suite of contemporary wars are “a different type of war”.
Syria’s frustrated revolt cum civil war has turned out a battle between autocratic personalities, or a frankly whacked out dictator against equally savage Islamists, in large part, and the country and its people be damned, which they have been.
Ukraine’s revolt against Russomafia don Yanukovych played to the script but — this as infant governments often do — invited obvious nibbling by the colonel president emperor chief in Moscow, who also appears to have programmatically returned the once modern RT to old Pravda days (while also creating an FSB internal security service more populated per Russian than the old KGB), and today we’re almost back to “conventional war”, except that learning about the Severtsky Donets River, which first entailed learning about its existence, I have well out in the provinces outside of Washington, D.C., broadband, Google Maps, some kind of translator, and instant access to Russian language publications online.
This “different type of war” has created a different type of war tourism, also commentary, and reportage.
Where are we going?
More toward the despotic than democratic, I would say given that there are simply more governments internally operating along feudal rather than modern democratic lines, and these may have recognized in one another — as with the dictator Putin-Assad-Khamenei, an axis in conflict if ever there was — mutual interest in the defense of political absolutism.
Last week, in what strikes me as an echo of Putin-Medvedev, former Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan became President Erdogan in the presence of a cooperating Prime Minister Davutoglu. Such personalities would seem other than get-along, compromise, facilitate, and cooperate kind of guys. They’re more “or else!” in the way of malignant narcissists elsewhere and, unfortunately, everywhere.
The shades and shadows of the former Soviet Union may be living on in Russia’s assault on Ukraine. The deception and lying on the part of the Kremlin, which denied a military presence in Ukraine up to the moment (and beyond) in which the same became implausible, and since I have read that “Novosvitlivka”, about an hour west of the Severtsky Donets River that serves as a border between Russia and Ukraine, has been flattened by tanks — every house shot at — I should hope the “implausible denial” stage has been passed and Russia’s Putin may admit plainly, but with his customary charm, to playing at war — and not just war as usual, but his own “different kind of war”.
While that different kind of war takes shape, this perhaps different kind of writer will be watching it with you . . . on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ (perhaps), the World Wide Web (where else?), and across numerous foreign publications either in English or roughly translated to it.
We’re getting close to real-time reportage too, i.e., from battlefield to me to you inside of 30 minutes. The big guys get to do that. We little guys still get to figure it out.
Colonel President Emperor Putin has placed self-propelled artillery in several locations around Ukraine’s border, and with paratroopers, among other methods, he has probed Ukraine’s and NATO’s defense reflexes. Probably, he has found the knees weak in response to and by comparison with his ambitions.
Although most world leaders have not actually come out and said so, Ukraine is being invaded. That’s according to Ukrainian politicians and military officials, NATO representatives, and, privately, officials in Washington.
Mr Putin does the big lies, while his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, trudges on a treadmill of deception that never stops. He was labouring along as usual yesterday, dismissing reports that Russian regular troops were fighting in Ukraine as “conjectures”. Not once, he continued in his po-faced way, “have any facts been presented to us”. Why Europe and America have to some extent gone along with this chicanery is not that mysterious.
The presence of Russian military personnel in Ukraine is now beyond dispute, everywhere except in Russia. On Thursday, NATO released satellite imagery of Russian combat troops operating inside Ukraine’s borders, prompting mild international expressions of concern about the deteriorating situation. Russian paratroopers have been filmed discussing their operations in Ukraine. In a press conference on Wednesday, captured Russian soldiers said they entered Ukrainian territory “in convoys. Not on the roads but through the fields.”
I may suggest this: the dictators Putin, Putin-Assad-Khamenei, Putin (Yanukovich yesterday, perhaps Orban tomorrow) do not come equipped with off switches or reverse gears: they will run their interior programs and scripts forward until impeded, stopped, reversed, and destroyed while their enterprises are transformed.
If enabled forward, their programs will end in the control and subjugation of others and that too, as with ISIS, will end in the destruction of humanity with unbridled sadism.
It may not look so bad at first, but cast a glance at Syria with Sochi by its side: tell me what you see.
(Russia pledged $10 million for Syrian humanitarian relief during the run up to the Olympic Games; Putin then spent $51 billion on the games).
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday said that Crimea is “indispensable to Russia,” reminding listeners that “Russia is one of the most powerful nuclear nations.”
Ukraine’s president today declared that a “Russian invasion” of his country was underway and the United Nations’ Security Council called an emergency session to discuss the latest crisis involving allegations of Russia’s overt support for Ukrainian rebels.
“There is no doubt that this is not a homegrown, indigenous uprising in eastern Ukraine. The separatists are backed, trained, armed, financed by Russia,” Obama said.
Russian actions will be a main topic for the summit of NATO leaders next week in Wales, Obama said.
“Russia doesn’t make anything,” Mr. Obama went on. “Immigrants aren’t rushing to Moscow for opportunities. The life expectancy of the Russian male is around 60 years old. The population is shrinking.”
Levada polls conducted in the second week of March show just how effective the state propaganda machine has been: A majority of Russians believe that Ukraine has no legitimate government, that Russian speakers in Ukraine are in danger and that blame for the crisis in Crimea lies squarely with Ukrainian nationalists. Only 6 percent of Russians are “definitely opposed” to a military invasion of Ukraine.
Despite the fact that 70% of respondents admit that they do not understand, do not understand the essence of the processes taking place in Ukraine, the majority (63%) believe that “the federal Russian media as a whole or for the most part objective coverage of events taking place in Ukraine or the Crimea.
It turns out that last night the representatives of the Palestinian Authority were putting forth a patently untrue story as to what Israeli and Hamas had agreed, when neither had. Unfortunately, all of the press (both Israeli and worldwide) reported the story as true.
. . . even if the obstacles erected by those who revolve in the Zionist orbit, aiming at obstructing the road before the Jihad fighters, have rendered the pursuance of Jihad impossible; nevertheless, the Hamas has been looking forward to implement Allah’s promise whatever time it might take.
Hear, oh Israel (and all others): with Hamas and what drives it — that deeply malignant narcissism that lends to each his own indulged and grandiose center of the universe — there is nothing to negotiate.
So Hamas does not negotiate in good faith, neither for peace and prosperity to be shared by Gazans nor for considerations having much to do, after all, with The All.
Why should Hamas or any other Jihad Joe group come equipped with an “off button”?
The enterprise clearly cons the public, makes a lot of money (which with “terror tunnels” and all would seem not to reach intended deserving recipients), and harms the principles not at all (although, perhaps, after all, Allah knows what they do — and, for now, has them getting away with it).
Citing as models Singapore, China, India, Turkey and Russia, Mr. Orban added: “We have to abandon liberal methods and principles of organizing a society, as well as the liberal way to look at the world.”
The Hungarian leader traced his extraordinary conclusion to the global financial crisis, which he said had exposed the weakness of Western societies and mandated “a race to invent a state that is most capable of making a nation successful.” He was particularly scathing about the United States, claiming that “the strength of American soft power is deteriorating, because liberal values today incorporate corruption, sex and violence.”
3. Call German Prime Minister Angela Merkel
to discuss a) Greek political and economic
conditions, as well as the need for Troika
policies to blunt the suffering caused by
austerity and to defuse the appeal of
extremism; and b) coordinating policies on
Hungary.
4. Instruct the Director of National Intelligence
to investigate allegations of Russian and
Iranian financial or other support of
European far-right parties and present a
classified assessment of whether the
Kremlin is attempting to use such parties to
undermine the European Union or thwart
further NATO expansion. Release an
unclassified version to Congress and the
public.
5. At the North Atlantic Council meeting at the
2014 NATO Summit, express concern
about the rise of neo-fascist parties in
Europe and its impact on security and good
governance in NATO member countries and
the strength of the Alliance. Instruct the U.S.
Ambassador to NATO and senior military
officials to raise these concerns—especially
with regard to Hungary and Greece—with
their European counterparts.
Off-the-cuff and fast blogging brought “canaries in the cave’ to mind, but in actuality the editorial board of The Washington Post and the downtown think-tank Human Rights First have voices far greater than metaphorical canaries in coal mines. However, as with the lesser birds, they are both sending a warning and should be heard loud and clear.
When referencing “the dictator Putin-Assad-Khamenei”, I had for a while to note the other axis of power that was Putin-Yanukovych. Yanukovych’s now long gone from Ukraine (online, we are all living dog years [more animals, egads]) but the principle remains: the despots know how to gang up on the democratic among souls, and in league, they are force with which to be reckoned.
I wonder if in Syria, Bashar the Butcher al-Assad didn’t give al-Nusra and the young ISIS a break in order to clear the field of the moderate and ensure his war would leave one despot, preferably himself, or another standing, which would suit defending the indefensible principle that is “political absolutism”.
Regarding Iranian and Russian sabotage, potential or real, of NATO, a review of Turkey’s position in relation to fascist Islamism and the Islamic State, which is using for its headquarters Turkey’s embassy in Mosul, Iraq, would seem also in order.
One friend who has pursued her own course in conflict and Islamic studies suggests that al-Qaeda represents the authentic Islam and all else are trying to wriggle through it or reform and revolutionize its cultural technology. In that the Ummah is as broad and varied as one might expect a natural human system to be, Muslims on many paths have become the first victims of “those” Muslims, and, indeed, out of themselves must come the army that defeats the past.
While it surprises me that Baghdaddi has gotten as large as he has — he has the basics: an ample treasury and believing or compliant troops — what is coming for him and his followers may surprise him.
Regarding the psychological character of the tropes of Jew hate, I use the term “paranoid delusional narcissistic REFLECTION of motivation”. Their language is their sheet of music, and no attack on any physical body amounts to anything without effort to get in the way of that poetic programming.
One hopes the “radical” (conservative) mosque message finds repudiation among the believers of a more modern cast, but the conservative kafir-side endorses a rightfully cautious paranoia: the speech presages a well-known, well-witnessed fascist evil.
The political program works probably works about the same way for the modern political and religious authority as it may have for Muhammad himself: it deeply manipulates and exploits the believing. While Hamas, for example, places noncombatants as shields against Israeli strikes at its war making facilities, Khaled Mashaal works the levers from his billionaire’s safety in Doha, his wealth having come out of treating the residents of Gaza as a business enterprise.
One could travel from one Botherhood-promoting Muslim autocrat to another and find pretty much the same canards and abetting political and social structures in place.
Ethnic self-determination has been theme in conflict and general politics throughout the ages as no child is born without legacy, and it seems no legacy goes uncontested in the wilds of history.
The Declaration comprises four sections. The first section declares the Independent State of the United Tribes of New Zealand. The second proclaims all sovereign power to reside in the hereditary chiefs and heads of tribes and states that no other legislative power will be allowed to exist. The third section outlines the Chiefs’ intentions to meet every year to make laws for the peace and good order of the country. The final section requests the King of England to be the parent of their infant state and its protector from all attempts upon its independence.
God bless the Queen, for the history of empire has not only its twists but its revelations too. The Crown System has turned out politically progressive, protective of minority interests, and able to accommodate and respond to contemporary indigenous and minority complaint.
Over coffee and on the other side of the global fence, the morning horror . . .
“Khaled Sharrouf reportedly posted the picture of his son with the decapitated head on Twitter with the comment: “That’s my boy!” The image was reportedly taken in the northern Syrian city of Raqqa, which fell to the Islamist fighters earlier this year and shows Sharrouf’s seven-year old son, who was raised in Sydney, dressed in blue-checked trousers, a blue shirt and a baseball cap, while struggling to hold up the severed head of a slain Syrian soldier.”
There is some horrible news out of Kurdistan today. Ekurd.net reports that Mawloud Afand, editor of an Israel-Kurdish magazine called Israel Kurd “disappeared ten days ago in [the] Kurdistan region of Iraq.” Israeli news sources say he was kidnapped by Iranian intelligence in the city of Sulaimaniyah. Ekurd.net claims that Iran had told the Kurdish government to shut Israel Kurd down and it refused.
ERBIL-Hewlêr, Kurdistan region ‘Iraq’, — A number of Israeli political experts say Israel will be among the countries that would support Iraqi Kurdistan if it declared independence. They also suggest that Kurdistan not make the decision hastily and ensure the grounds are properly prepared first, Rudaw reported
Furthermore, with their initial sale last week of a tanker full of oil, to Israel no less, the Kurds have shown that they are willing not just to cleave themselves from Baghdad but to stand as a magnanimous force for stability in the region.
According to numerous reports by Reuters, Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal, the tanker SCF Altai transferred a cargo of Kurdish oil from another tanker United Emblem, which had been plying the Mediterranean for two weeks after loading at the Turkish port of Ceyhan. The SCF Altai then docked at the Israeli city of Ashkelon and off-loaded its crude.
In 1966, Iraqi defense minister Abd al-Aziz al-Uqayli blamed the Kurds of Iraq for seeking to establish “a second Israel” in the Middle East. He also claimed that “the West and the East are supporting the rebels to create [khalq] a new Israeli state in the north of the homeland as they had done in 1948 when they created Israel. It is as if history is repeating itself.”
What attracts me to a story like this one is the possibility of encouraging and securing ethnic self-determination for a true ethnic minority. In that regard, Kurds and Israelis may understand one another. The above scholarly piece by Ofra Bengio goes into detail on the history of the Kurdish-Israeli relationship, and that in turn informs just a little bit how it has turned out that members of the Kurdish community seeing an Israeli group in Lafayette Park (in front of the White House) would (naturally) join them in solidarity.
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