Tag: war

Who are the terrorists?

How is this militarily necessary or anything but disastrous PR?

“Many were wounded in the attack, local tribesman Kaleemullah Dawar said, but rescuers delayed for fear of falling victim to a second attack, a common tactic with drone strikes.“

That tactic is known as the “double tap,” which bombs multiple targets in relatively quick succession — meaning that the second strike often hits first responders. In 2007 the FBI said the tactic as commonly used by terrorist organizations such as Hamas.

Last year a study by the NYU School of Law and Stanford Law School detailed the U.S. use of the double tap, providing first-hand accounts of its devastating effect on rescuers and humanitarian workers.

In other words, the USG is using a terror tactic against non-terrorists in the War on Terror.  Brilliant.  Even Rumsfeld understood that the key to winning this sort of amorphous war was to avoid making more terrorists than were killed.  Which is impossible if you’re going to make your own soldiers into terrorists.

The side the USG won’t take

Ron Paul points out that no matter who wins in Egypt, Americans will be the losers:

Looking at the banners in the massive Egyptian protests last week, we saw many anti-American slogans. Likewise, the Muslim Brotherhood-led government that was deposed by the military last week was very critical of what it saw as US support for the coup. Why is it that all sides in this Egyptian civil war seem so angry with the United States? Because the United States has at one point or another supported each side, which means also that at some point the US has also opposed each side. It is the constant meddling in Egyptian affairs that has turned Egyptians against us, as we would resent foreign intervention in our own affairs.

For more than 30 years, since the US-brokered Camp David Accord between Israel and Egypt, the US supported Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak. Over that period the US sent more than $60 billion to prop up Mubarak and, importantly, to train and seek control over the Egyptian military. Those who opposed Mubarak’s unelected reign became more and more resentful of the US, which they rightly saw as aiding and abetting a dictator and denying them their political aspirations.

Then the US began providing assistance to groups seeking to overthrow Mubarak, which they did in 2011. The US continued funding the Egyptian military at that time, arguing that US aid was more critical than ever if we are to maintain influence. The US Administration demanded an election in Egypt after Mubarak’s overthrow and an election was held. Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood won a narrow victory. The US supported Morsi but kept funding the Egyptian military.

After a year of Morsi’s rule, Egyptians who did not approve of his government took to the streets to demand his removal from power. The US signaled to the Egyptian military that it would not oppose the removal of Morsi from power, and he was removed on July 3rd. With the overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood-led government came the arrest of many politicians and the closure of many media outlets sympathetic to them. Then the US government warned the same Egyptian military that undermined democracy that it needed to restore democracy! Is it any wonder why Egyptians from all walks of life are united in their irritation with the United States?

Despite the Egyptian government being overthrown by a military coup, the Obama Administration will not utter the word “coup” because acknowledging reality would mean an end to US assistance to the Egyptian government and military. That cannot be allowed…. So, successive US administrations over the decades have supported all sides in Egypt, from dictator to demonstrator to military. There is only one side that the US government has never supported: our side. The American side. It has never supported the side of the US taxpayers who resent being forced to fund a foreign dictatorship, a foreign military, and foreign protestors.

And remember, this is the man that Republicans refused to nominate because they claimed that his foreign policy was crazy….

Military coup in Egypt

Egyptian Military Ousts Morsi, Suspends Constitution

On Wednesday, Gen. Abdel Fatah Said Al-Sisi announced a military coup in Egypt. He said that the Constitution had been suspended, that early elections would take place, and that there would be a “code of ethics” for the media. He stated that the chief of the Constitutional court would be taking charge during a transitional period before another election. He said the new government would be “diverse and include all the people,” and that the constitution would be revised to reverse changes made by ousted Muslim Brotherhood President Mohammed Morsi.

As some of you may recall, I predicted that the Arab Spring wasn’t going to go well.  I don’t know why people continue to believe that democracy is equally functional no matter how the electorate is comprised.  It’s simply a form of government, it’s not magic.

Of course, given the state of our own democratic leadership, one wonders if military rule could possibly be any worse.

A mysterious sinking

MOL Comfort Suffers Broken Back, Sinks Off Yemen Remains Adrift Off Yemen
26 crewmembers of an MOL container ship were forced to abandon ship
Monday off Yemen after the ship suffered from catastrophic hull failure
and
reportedly sankbroke in two. The MV MOL Comfort, an 8,000 TEU-type container ship cracked in half
about 200 miles from the Yemeni coast at about 12’30″N 60′E while
enroute from Singapore to Jeddah with a load of 7,041 TEUs. All 26 crew –
made up 11 Russians, 1 Ukrainian and 14 Filipinos – escaped the sinking
ship on two life rafts and a lifeboat.

So, do the Russians have an attack sub called “Yet Unclear Reasons“? Or, as appears more likely, did one of those Russian crew members take a creative approach to ship’s maintenance? If it is true that the MOL Comfort was carrying arms intended for the Syrian rebels, it would appear that Mr. Putin has called Mr. Obama’s decision to raise the ante.

Presenting this summer’s distraction

If there were any doubts about the wisdom of the US getting militarily involved in Syria, the combination of the Benghazi, IRS, and NSA scandals appears to have resolved them:

The Obama administration has concluded that Syrian President Bashar
Assad’s government used chemical weapons against the rebels seeking to
overthrow him and, in a major policy shift, President Obama has decided
to supply military support to the rebels, the White House announced
Thursday. “The president has made a decision about providing more
support to the opposition that will involve providing direct support to
the [Supreme Military Council]. That includes military support,” Deputy
National Security Adviser for Strategic Communication Ben Rhodes told
reporters.

Well, it’s better than a false flag event.  It’s probably preferable to give the administration the easy foreign policy distraction they are seeking than force them to generate one.  And as an added bonus, the country will receive about 800,000 Syrian immigrants, which will help replace the now-declining native white population.

The Obama administration is considering resettling thousands of refugees who left Syria during the country’s ongoing civil war to multiple towns and cities across the United States, the L.A. Times reports. A resettlement plan under discussion in Washington and other capitals is aimed at relieving pressure on Middle Eastern countries straining to support 1.6 million refugees, as well as assisting hard-hit Syrian families…. The United States usually accepts about half the refugees that the U.N. agency proposes for resettlement.

More diversity = more better, right?

The new Dawn rising

Golden Dawn and Movimento 5 Stelle look to be the first Nationalist parties to take back control of their countries from governments under the control of the global fascists:

It wasn’t just that their symbols looked like swastikas. Or that thousands of Greek flags filled the marble square beneath the Acropolis. Or that they were marking the 560th anniversary of the fall of Constantinople.

It was that there were so many of them. Angry men and angry women furiously screaming “Greece belongs to Greeks” in the heart of ancient Athens, as tourists – some befuddled, some shocked – looked on or fled at the sight of neo-Nazis coming to town.

“Now we are in the thousands,” thundered Nikos Michaloliakos, the bespectacled mathematician who leads Greece’s far-right Golden Dawn party. “Long live victory!”

Like the soldiers on whom they model themselves, the Greeks who subscribe to the ultra-nationalist, neo-fascist dogma of Golden Dawn are the first to say they are at war. This week, as Antonis Samaras’s coalition government struggled to contain an escalating crisis over efforts to curb the extremists, it was they who appeared to be winning that war.

There is going to be war.  In Europe, it will be the European nationalists against the globalists and their African and Muslim jannisaries.  In the USA, it is going to be a confusing affair, with shifting alliances between the Black, Brown, Red, and White Americas, with Black, Brown, and Red America serving the interests of the globalists.

Of course, to say “there is going to be war” is somewhat misleading.  The war actually began in 1965; the first invasion soon after.  This nationalist response is a belated one, and is the result of the various nations finding themselves backed into a corner from which there is no other escape.

The globalists are going to try to crack down and keep the nationalists out of power, but the resulting exposure of what has always been their anti-democratic nature is going to completely eliminate their ability to claim any moral superiority over the nationalists.

This doesn’t mean Golden Dawn or the other nationalist parties are full of well-meaning angels.  Make no mistake about it, they are simply the lesser evil of the two options on offer.

Wait, they’re the GOOD guys?

I don’t think the Obama administration was particularly keen in following the neocon cheerleading for yet another American invasion in the Middle East, this time in Syria.  But this sort of thing will pretty much eliminate any public enthusiasm for one, especially in light of the disastrous “Arab Spring” that, as I correctly predicted, led to rule by the Muslim Brotherhood rather than the much-ballyhooed secular democratic liberalization that was supposedly in the works:

The unverified clip, posted by a pro-government campaign group shows Khalid al Hamad-  who also goes by the name Abu Sakkar – the well-known founder of Homs’ Farouq Brigade – standing over the uniformed corpse in a ditch while ranting against President Bashar al Assad.

Using a knife, the man hacks open the torso and removes two organs before holding them up to the camera and declaring: ‘I swear to God we will eat your hearts and your livers, you soldiers of Bashar the dog.’

He then raises one to his mouth and takes a bite.

Of course, even if the US military doesn’t invade in order to put men like this in power and import a few hundred thousand of them as the usual consequence of a modern military invasion, the devotees of the Diversity Gospel shouldn’t despair.  They can still hope for men like this to acquire green cards and marry their daughters. Nothing says tolerance like a pagan cannibal from Canaan for a son-in-law.

Don’t you have bigger problems, Taiwan?

I’m not sure that attempting to pick a fight with the Phillipines is the right strategic move for the Republic of China.  Especially given the way larger wars tend to start from smaller ones, what on Earth do the Taiwanese think to gain from this?  Is this the geopolitical equivalent of the physically hapless geek rolling his eyes and saying “see, you don’t want to mess with me, man, I’m KRAZY!”

While most consider the Middle-East a hot-bed of geopolitical risk (prone to flare at any moment), it seems hot money flows and territorial disputes are rapidly turning the South China Sea into a powder-keg. As Japan vs China is off the front pages for a moment (and US and South Korea engage in joint naval exercises) it seems Taiwan and the Philippines are escalating rapidly following the death of a Taiwanese fisherman last week after Filipino military fired on his vessel in supposedly disputed territory between Taipei and Manila. The situation is evolving rapidly as the Philippines’ un-apology (though they sent their condolences) may prompt Taiwan to send F-16 fighters, Kidd-class destroyers, and three or more warships, according to The Liberty Times. The threat of escalation is premised on a formal apology coming within 72 hours. As Stratfor notes, Taiwan’s territorial ‘claims’ are “outrageously ambitious” but the various island nations all appear set on rattling sabres as mainland China stiffens its resolve against Japan over the Senkakus.

This is akin to brandishing a fist against the squirrel in your backyard as you steadfastly ignore the very large and hungry tiger sprawled out on your porch.  It’s the sort of thing you read about in the history books and think: “nah, no one these days could possibly be THAT stupid.”

Speaking of war

We can hardly have expected Japan’s post-WWII peacenik attitude to long survive the resurgence of Chinese military power.  The question is whether grass eater culture and demographic decline could potentially compete with the bushido tradition and the fear of an expansionary China.  From Zerohedge:

Reuters reports:  The draft [of the revised Constitution] deletes a guarantee of basic human rights and prescribes duties, such as submission to an undefined “public interest and public order.” The military would be empowered to maintain that “public order.”

This article will blow your mind.  Some key excerpts:

Shinzo Abe makes no secret of wanting to revise Japan’s constitution, which was drafted by the United States after World War Two, to formalize the country’s right to have a military – but critics say his plans go deeper and could return Japan to its socially conservative, authoritarian past.  Abe, 58, returned to office in December for a second term as prime minister and is enjoying sky-high support on the back of his “Abenomics” recipe for reviving the economy through hyper-easy monetary policy, big spending and structural reform. 

However, sweeping changes proposed by Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in a draft constitution would strike at the heart of the charter with an assault on basic civil rights that could muzzle the media, undermine gender equality and generally open the door to an authoritarian state, activists and scholars say.

The Japanese are distrustful of military authoritarianism, given what happened in the first half of the 20th century, but they are even more distrustful of China.  If they are faced with a choice between the two, they will choose authoritarianism every single time.  And if the LDP is openly attacking civil rights and muzzling the media, you can be certain there will soon be some sort of birthrate-boosting program in the works.
    

Israel bombs Syria

This news out of the Middle East doesn’t appear to bode terribly well for the supposedly nascent economic recovery, now in its fourth year:

The airstrike that Israeli warplanes carried out in Syria was directed at a shipment of advanced surface-to-surface missiles from Iran that Israel believed was intended for Hezbollah, the militant Lebanese organization, American officials said Saturday.

It was the second time in four months that Israel had carried out an
attack in foreign territory intended to disrupt the pipeline of weapons
from Iran to Hezbollah, and the raid was a vivid example of how regional
adversaries are looking after their own interests as Syria becomes more
chaotic.

Apparently the Israelis share some of my skepticism about the so-called “Arab Spring”.  The problem with democracies is that although they do tend to wage less war, the wars they wage tend to be of the “total” variety.  Given that there are now democracies on both sides of the Arab-Israeli conflict, any war would be more likely to continue to unconditional surrender than in the bad old days of the Middle East strongmen.