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Houthi Yemen coup moves Iran’s Middle East hegemonic ambitions forward – upheld by Washington

February 9, 2015

Houthi Yemen coup moves Iran’s Middle East hegemonic ambitions forward – upheld by Washington, DEBKAfile, February 8, 2015

Houthi_fighters_downtown_Sanaa_5.2.15Victorious Houthi fighters in downtown Sanaa

It is hard for those governments to make up their minds where to look for the most acute menace to their national security – the US-Iranian nuclear deal taking shape, or the give-and-take between Washington and Tehran in Yemen and Iraq. 

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The strings of the pro-Iranian Houthi rebels’ coup which toppled the Yemeni government in Sanaa were pulled from Tehran and Washington. US intelligence and shared US-Iranian support helped the Houthis reach their goal, which is confined for now to parts of central Yemen and all of the North.

Friday, Feb. 6, the rebels dissolved parliament and seized power in the country of 24 million. They propose to rule by a revolutionary council. President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi and his cabinet who were forced to resign last month are under house arrest.

DEBKAfile’s Saudi intelligence sources reveal that the dominant figure of the uprising was none other than Ali Abdullah Saleh, president of Yemen from 1990 until he was ousted in 2012.

A member of the Zaydi branch of Shiite Islam like the Houthis, he led them to power with the same enthusiasm with which he fought their insurgency during his years in power. By rallying his supporters in the army, intelligence and security services, he enabled the rebels to take over these departments of government and overpower the Hadi regime with only minimal resistance.

They were also able to commandeer $400 million worth of modern American munitions.

The Houthis secretly call themselves “Ansar Allah” and have adopted the “Death to America, Death to Israel” slogans routinely heard in government-sponsored parades and demonstrations on the streets and squares of revolutionary Tehran.

Amid the political turmoil in Sanaa, the US Sunday resumed drone strikes against AQAP.

The six Arab countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council, led by Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, issued a statement Saturday, Feb. 7, calling for the UN Security Council to “put an end to this coup, an escalation that cannot be accepted under any circumstances.”

The Iranian-US gambit has resulted in different parts of Yemen falling under the sway of two anti-American radical forces – the pro-Tehran Houthis and Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

The new Saudi King Salman starts his reign with a double-barreled threat facing the kingdom from its southern neighbor, Yemen – posed by an Iranian pawn and a proactive branch of Al Qaeda.

Ten days ago, when US President Barack Obama visited Riyadh, the Saudi monarch voiced his concern about the alarming situation developing Yemen. However, Obama replied noncommittally with general remarks.

In Washington, administration spokesmen Saturday tried pouring oil on the troubled waters roiled by US support for the Iranian maneuver in Sanaa and the return of Abdullah Saleh to the Yemeni scene.

“We’re talking with everybody,” one US official said, explaining that the United States was ready to talk to any Yemeni factions willing to fight Al Qaeda.

His colleagues tried to downplay Tehran’s hand in the Houthi coup. “The Houthis get support from Iran, but they’re not controlled by Iran,” said another official in Washington.

Our military and intelligence sources report that Yemen is not the only Middle East platform of the joint US-Iranian military, intelligence and strategic performance. The second act is unfolding in Iraq.

Saudi Arabia, the Gulf emirates, Jordan and Israel are therefore watching the evolving US-Iranian cooperation in fighting al Qaeda’s various affiliates in the region with deep forebodings, lest it is merely a façade for the Obama administration’s espousal of Tehran’s regional ambitions.

It is hard for those governments to make up their minds where to look for the most acute menace to their national security – the US-Iranian nuclear deal taking shape, or the give-and-take between Washington and Tehran in Yemen and Iraq.

Categories: Al Qaeda, Foreign policy, Funding terrorism, Houthi, Iran, Iran scam, Iraq, Obama, Terrorism, Yemen
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Obama’s conciliatory approach

February 8, 2015

Obama’s conciliatory approach, Israel Hayom, Omer Dostri, February 8, 2015

Instead of taking a determined, aggressive stance against Islamic extremism and openly condemning the religion that gives it moral, spiritual, and material support, Obama is opting for more concessions and far-reaching conciliation. And absurd as it might seem, this is seen by Islam as weakness and provides an incentive for its operatives to attempt to undermine the principles of the West: liberalism and democracy.

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On Thursday, in an almost unprecedented declaration, U.S. President Barack Obama, speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast, attacked claims that the vicious terrorist acts we are witnessing today are “unique to some other place” (meaning, to the Middle East and Islamic regimes), while comparing the acts of Christians during the Crusades to the acts of the Islamic State group today.

When you first hear these remarks, the sheer amazement makes it seem like you need to listen to them again. But the more one delves into Obama’s foreign policy and the more his conduct since being elected president is analyzed, the sense of shock subsides, and the picture becomes clearer and more comprehensible. From the start, Obama has stood for progressive policy, seen in some circles as “enlightened.” In practice, this means that Obama has steadfastly refused to discuss the problem of “extremist Islam” and “world terrorism.” Likewise, in September 2014, Obama declared that “the Islamic State does not reflect Islam.” These remarks join the famous Cairo speech in which Obama tried to make a new start with the Muslim world and brand the U.S., a superpower, as on the same level while presenting an accepting, conciliatory policy without any misgivings about or criticism of the sickness in the Islamic religion.

This policy is indicative of Obama’s ideology, which includes universalism, postcolonialism, and hints of Marxism and highlights the supposedly weakened “victims of imperialism.” This ideology drops the U.S. from its position as the greatest superpower in the world to that of an equal to non-Western nations that are the result of “oppressive” cultures, all in the name of optimistic equality. This is also one of the main reasons for the absence of American leadership in the world and why anti-democracies like China and Russia and countries that provide a haven for terrorism — such as Iran and Qatar — are trying to take control of the void.

But it’s clear that Obama’s behavior reached an apex with his recent declaration, when U.S. citizens found themselves witnessing the leader of the free world, who stands at the head of a liberal-democratic superpower, standing there trying to find justifications for the barbaric, murderous terrorist acts from the House of Islam. The fact that Obama needed events that took place nearly 1,000 years ago to compare with things that are happening in our time, in the cultured, democratic world, didn’t faze him for an instant. Nor did the facts that the Crusades were launched in opposition to aggression by the same murderous Islam operating today; or that they focused on Jerusalem and not conquering the world, like Islam.

For centuries, some Christians toiled brutally and murdered a not inconsequential number of people — including many Jews, of course. But while Christianity progressed and expressed remorse and the Catholic Church (that same violent, corrupt entity that was responsible for so many wars) weakened as Protestantism grew stronger, Islam has remained in the same darkness, loyal to its utopian and intolerant approach that sees every non-Muslim as a heretic. It’s us or them — the original version.

The very fact that Obama is digging around in history and looking for moral justifications for the Islamic State’s deeds highlights the danger of his policy, which is reflected in his pursuit of a bad deal with Iran, in his ignoring that same Iran’s terrorist activity throughout the world, in his attempts to join forces with the Muslim Brotherhood throughout the Middle East and in his soft policy toward extremist Islam, which he sees as part of a general cultural problem and not as a specific one.

Instead of taking a determined, aggressive stance against Islamic extremism and openly condemning the religion that gives it moral, spiritual, and material support, Obama is opting for more concessions and far-reaching conciliation. And absurd as it might seem, this is seen by Islam as weakness and provides an incentive for its operatives to attempt to undermine the principles of the West: liberalism and democracy.

Categories: Caliphate, Christians, Foreign policy, Iran scam, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Nukes, Obama
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Humor: Brian Williams should replace Secretary Kerry

February 7, 2015

Brian Williams should replace Secretary Kerry, Dan Miller’s Blog, February 6, 2015

(The views expressed in this article are not necessarily mine or those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)

Although it would be hypocritical for NBC to fire Mr. Williams for mis- speaking  lying, it would enhance his chances of becoming our next Secretary of State. Like Hillary Clinton, Williams sorta told some truth when he admitted to lying for a dozen years. Hillary became Obama’s Secretary of State in 2009. Williams, also a very good liar, deserves no less this year. After that? Perhaps “our” next President.

brian_williams_airwolf_2-5-15-1

Here is a timeline of the progression of Williams’ tall tales, based on a Stars and Stripes article:

In late March 2003, the New York Daily News reported that “the one (helicopter) carrying Williams and (Retired General and current NBC consultant Wayne) Downing landed” after another chopper ahead of them had been hit by “a rocket-fired grenade.” Even this early report appears to have been exaggerated. Larry O’Connor at Truth Revolt, reacting to Williams’ on-air statement Wednesday night, noted that Williams was really “in an aircraft that followed the one hit by RPG fire by an entire hour.”

Several days later, USA Today reported that Williams “was stranded in the Iraqi desert for three days.” That hardly appears to be the case. In a comment at an NBC Facebook page, a clearly frustrated Lance Reynolds, the flight engineer on the helicopter that was hit, wrote: “I remember you guys taking back off in a different flight of Chinooks from another unit and heading to Kuwait to report your ‘war story’ to the Nightly News.”

By 2007, the helicopter that was hit was, according to a Williams blog entry, “the chopper flying in front of ours.” A University of Notre Dame press release in 2010, the year he gave the commencement address there, referred to how “the lead helicopter was shot down.”

In March 2013, Williams told Alec Baldwin of “being in a helicopter I had no business being in in Iraq with rounds coming into the airframe,” and, after prompting, said that he “briefly” thought he would die.

Later that month, Williams crossed the fairy-tale Rubicon, telling David Letterman that “two of the four helicopters were hit by ground fire, including the one I was in,” and that after that, the problem was how “we figure out how to land.” We?

Finally, on January 30, Williams, applying even more mustard, told the nation on Nightly News that “the helicopter we were travelling in was forced down after being hit by an RPG.”

The indispensable Kristinn Taylor at Gateway Pundit has found that “speech promotional bios touted Williams’ bravery in returning to Iraq after he claimed being under fire.”

Here’s a video of Williams’ 2013 love feast with David Letterman. His Iraq narrative begins at 2:50.

According to Sharyl Attkisson, Presidential Candidate Clinton [like Brian Williams],

never fully explained how she could have made such a mistake as saying she had ducked sniper fire when there hadn’t been a sniper in sight. Initially, she stated “I was sleep deprived and I misspoke.”

But as my report below (“Clinton Doubles Down”) shows, Clinton told varieties of the embellishment over a long period of time, not just when she was sleep deprived.

Had Clinton somehow convinced herself that it had all really happened? Or did she knowingly advance a false story?

“So I made a mistake,” Clinton also stated at one point. “It proves I’m human, which you know, for some people, is a revelation.”

Whoops.

Clinton1web_2831249b

In the next video, Mr. Williams and a guest from NBC discuss Clinton’s Bosnia adventures, Senator Obama’s candidacy and their anticipated consequences for her 2008 Democrat presidential nomination. Note the apparent puzzlement about why Clinton confessed to having “misspoken.”

Clinton didn’t get the Democrat presidential nomination in 2008 but was confirmed as Obama’s Secretary of State in 2009. Doesn’t Williams deserve a promotion comparable to what Clinton got (from failed Presidential Candidate to SecState)? Shouldn’t he be held to the same standard?

Williams had seen what happened to Clinton just weeks earlier, yet kept telling his own fish tale. To paraphrase one of his own NBC colleagues, this isn’t Little League, it’s a nightly news anchor with an audience of millions. Will he be held to the same standards to which NBC and the rest of the media held Clinton?

What standards were those then and, of more importance, what have they been since? She still “deserves” to become “our” next President.

Tom Brokaw, also of NBC, contends that Williams should go. Perhaps, however, NBC will forgive and forget.

The Los Angeles Times, quoting anonymous NBC News execs, reported that Williams’s on-air apology has been accepted internally and that he’s expected to face no disciplinary action for his serious journalistic lapse, which included showing video of a combat-damaged helicopter and representing it wrongly as the Chinook on which Williams had been a passenger.

As noted by Howard Kurtz at Fox News,

When it comes to the NBC franchise, Brian Williams is too big to fail. He’s the face of the network, he hosts the top-rated network newscast, he guest-hosts “Saturday Night Live.” He’s a bankable asset. And in fairness, Williams has a pretty unblemished track record.

Oh well.

Reality is often unpleasant and hard to deal with, so we need a creative Secretary of State who will continue to reject reality, base policy on fantasy and do so with impunity for a decade or more.

Clinton, a likely Presidential Candidate for 2016, did her “best.”

Obama does what Obama does and gets away with it. According to an article at Breitbart, the seven Muslims at a recent White House meeting on domestic and foreign policy issues have been named.

According to a White House statement on the President’s meeting, the domestic issues discussed were the “Affordable Care Act, anti-Muslim violence and discrimination, the 21st Century Policing Task Force, and the upcoming White House Summit on Countering Violence Extremism.” On the foreign policy front, “the President discussed the need to continue countering ISIL and other groups that commit horrific acts of violence, purportedly in the name of Islam,” while also congratulating Muslims on their “remarkable contributions” to America. [Emphasis added.]

. . . .

Comedian and left-wing pundit Dean Obeidallah revealed that he was one of the fifteen Muslim-American “leaders” brought to the White House on Wednesday afternoon.

“The No.1 issue raised: The alarming rise in anti-Muslim bigotry in America,” Obeidallah said of the meeting with the President. Their chief collective concern was not the rise of the Sunni Islamic State, nor the expansion of the Caliphatist Shiite Iranian regime and its messianic drive towards nuclear weapons, but instead, “anti-Muslim bigotry in America.” [Emphasis added.]

. . . .

The Detroit Free Press also revealed that senior Obama advisers Valerie Jarrett and Ben Rhodes were present in the Muslim leaders’ meeting. [Emphasis added.]

Dean Obeidallah also revealed that Farhana Khera, executive director of Muslim Advocates, was behind the effort to get Muslim leaders to the White House.

Muslim Advocates reveals on its website that its three main objectives are to “end profiling,” “strengthen [Muslim] charities,” and “counter hate.” Its Press Center section is filled with posts demanding intelligence organizations, such as the New York Police Department and federal agencies, end their “Muslim Suspicionless Spying Program,” while also dictating to the media that it should “Report Accurately on Muslims.” Another post reads, “What You Need to Know About the New Federal Racial Profiling Policy.” Review of Muslim Advocates’ press releases reveals that the only foreign policy issue with which the group has concerned itself over the past year was urging Sec. of State John Kerry to ensureMuslim “Americans are able to safely perform the annual religious Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia.” [Emphasis added.]

Keep up the good work, Big Guy, Insha’Allah.

Fantasy Island Obama

Kerry has bravely continued the march.

Williams, who should be rehabilitated as quickly as was Senator Clinton, could not be worse and might even be better than Kerry. Then, his path to the presidency should be clear even if he (unlike Obama) is candid in public on rare occasions.

Hey, Grandpa! I need some of that stuff.

Categories: Appeasement, Benghazi, Foreign policy, Humor, Iran, Iran scam, Iraq, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamism, Israel, Kerry, Media, Nukes, Obama
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Iran president cheers nuclear talks, says deal is getting closer

February 4, 2015

Iran president cheers nuclear talks, says deal is getting closer, Hot Air, Ed Morrossey, February 4, 2015

This deal is a surrender, not just in Iran but throughout the entire region. The only thing missing is the little piece of paper and the declaration of peace in our time.

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Hassan Rouhani has plenty of reasons to feel cheerful, as the US attempts to deal its way out of a four-decade standoff with Iran. Secretary of State John Kerry has loosened up billions of dollars to rescue the Iranian economy in exchange for nothing but talk, for one thing. Now, though, it appears that Kerry will cut a deal that not only allows Iran to keep all of its centrifuges, but also grants them de facto hegemony over the Middle East and Afghanistan to boot — and does so behind the backs of our European Union allies.

Smart power:

With time for negotiations running short, the U.S and Iran are discussing a compromise that would let Iran keep much of its uranium-enriching technology but reduce its potential to make nuclear weapons, two diplomats tell The Associated Press.

Such a compromise could break the decade-long deadlock on attempts to limit Iranian activities that could be used to make such arms: Tehran refuses to meet U.S.-led demands for deep cuts in the number of centrifuges it uses to enrich uranium, a process that can create material for anything from chemotherapy to the core of an atomic bomb.

So what’s the solution that Kerry’s offering? A pledge from Iran to, er, not spin the centrifuges really fast. No, that’s actually what this compromise is:

The possible compromise under consideration, according to the AP, would see most of the 10,000 centrifuges in operation left in place but reconfigured so that they would be less productive. One way of doing that would be to spin the centrifuges more slowly. Other measures would be agreed upon to reassure the west that Iran could not make a warhead quickly, such as reducing its stockpile of uranium hexafluoride gas – the form in which uranium can be enriched by centrifuge.

Both the Guardian and the AP note that any change in either centrifuge speed or stocking of uranium hexafluoride gas would be immediately reported by the IAEA to the rest of the world. That, however, ignores the fact that Iran kept its nuclear-weapons program hidden successfully from the IAEA for most of a decade. Pardon us for not exactly considering that a fail-safe.

It also assumes that such a violation would return us to the status quo ante. It wouldn’t, on two levels. First, such a violation would occur when Iran builds its bomb, so by the time word got out, the bomb would almost certainly exists. Second, the current coalition would be very unlikely to reform to oppose Iran’s nuclear-weapons ambitions. It’s fraying at the edges already, or was until oil prices collapsed, and pressures in Ukraine have all but severed Russia from any interest in assisting the West. Cutting a bad deal now would end the effective opposition to Iranian nukes, and Iran knows it.

And what does Iran get for this fig leaf of a concession? Regional domination (via Jeff Dunetz):

According to EU officials, US Secretary of State John Kerry and his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif, have discussed increasing the number of centrifuges which Iran would be permitted to keep. In exchange, the Iranians would undertake an obligation to bring their influence to bear in order to ensure quiet in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria.

European diplomats are quoted by Israeli officials as saying that the US in recent weeks has made significant concessions in its talks with Iran, so much so that it is willing to permit Tehran to operate 6,500 centrifuges while lifting sanctions that have hurt its economy this past decade.

The Europeans have told the Israelis that these concessions were offered in exchange for Iranian promises to maintain regional stability. According to Army Radio, the EU is opposed to the proposed linkage between the nuclear issue and other geopolitical matters. In fact, the Europeans suspect that Washington is operating behind Brussels’ back and that Kerry has not bothered to keep them in the loop in his talks with Zarif.

In other words, the US is about to rubber-stamp Tehran’s domination in Syria, less than two years after Barack Obama wanted to bomb their ally Bashar al-Assad for fighting against the Sunni uprising there. While we’re trying to woo Sunni tribes away from ISIS in Iraq — and working with a coalition of Sunni Arab states to fight them, instead of going there ourselves — Kerry wants to hand off Iraq to Iranian domination. And suddenly we’re ceding our authority in Afghanistan to the mullahs in Tehran, to boot.

Jeff pulls out the Chamberlain umbrella to explain the inexplicable:

A nuclear Iran is not only a threat to Israel but thanks to a missile deal with Russia, a threat to  Europe and the US mainland.  Beyond the threat from Iran directly, as one of the largest supporter of terrorism in the world Iran may very well share a nuclear weapon with Hezbollah, ISIS,  its on -again buddy Hamas, or one of the other terrorist groups it supports.

President Obama is willing to sacrifice our safety and the safety of much of the world to give him a legacy of being a peacemaker, but it is more likely that like Neville Chamberlain before him, this President’s legacy will be as an appeaser who created many more deaths than he tried to save.

This deal is a surrender, not just in Iran but throughout the entire region. The only thing missing is the little piece of paper and the declaration of peace in our time.

Categories: Foreign policy, Funding terrorism, Iran, Iran scam, Iranian nukes, Kerry, Nukes, Obama, P5+1, Sanctions
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ISIS Purifies Islam Through Fire

February 4, 2015

ISIS Purifies Islam Through Fire, Front Page Magazine, , February 4, 2015

(The “non-Islamic” Islamic State is not the only Islamic entity that “purifies” by fire. That’s how many “honor killings” are done. When The Islamic Republic of Iran uses nukes against its enemies, it will “purify” them wholesale.– DM)

Islamic purification

Fire is symbolic of the destruction of evil. Symbolically people who are burned alive are human sacrifices that are expiating evil from the community. Tainted victims are purified through fire.

Filming and disseminating the ritual killing strikes fear into the hearts of enemies and attracts new recruits. Similar to an arsonist that is fascinated with fire, disaffected young people will be attracted to this ritual burning. Like moths to a flame.

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On Tuesday February 3, 2015 the Islamic State released a video showing Jordanian pilot, Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh, 26 being burned alive while locked in a metal cage. The 22 minute video includes footage of Jordan’s King Abdullah II declaring his support for the anti-ISIS coalition. It shows Lt. Al-Kaseasbeh, who was captured by the Islamic State in December after his aircraft crashed over Syria, being interrogated, paraded in front of heavily armed men, walking towards the cage, and then standing inside the cage wearing an orange jumpsuit that is doused in flammable liquid. The executioner uses a torch to light a trail of gasoline that leads to his feet. Lt. Al-Kasasbeh is engulfed in flames and remains alive for over 1 minute and half and collapses to the floor. Militants pour broken masonry and other debris over the cage which is then flattened with a bulldozer with the body still inside. Despite the surprise and shock of seeing a young man burned alive, this is not a new tactic. In fact it is a common method of ritual murder in Iraq and other countries particularly in honor killings and the murder of Christians. The significant difference is that the Islamic State media films the execution using sophisticated editing and highly choreographed techniques turning the killing into a scripted reality show.

Hundreds of women in the Muslim world have been murdered by fire in honor killings. The murders were often disguised as suicides or accidents. In the first six months of 2007, in Iraqi Kurdistan, 255 women were killed, three-quarters of them by burning. An earlier report cited 366 cases of women who were the victims of so called fire accidents in Dohuk in 2006, up from 289 the year before. In Irbil, there were 576 burn cases since 2003, resulting in 358 deaths. In 2006 in Sulaimaniyah, Iraq there were 400 cases of women burned. In Tunisia in May 2014 a father burned his 13 year old daughter to death for walking home with a boy. In October 2013 a 15 year old Yemeni girl was burned to death by her father for communicating with her fiancé. In March 2009, a sixteen year old Muslim girl suspected of having a relationship with a boy was burned to death by four male neighbors in her village in Ghaziabad, North India. They came to the girl’s house and demanded to know why the young man frequently visited her, and then the men beat her, doused her with kerosene and set her on fire. There are numerous more examples of women burned alive. This form of punishment is not just reserved for women. In April 2011 three men were set on fire in Iraq for being gay. A video of that incident is easily accessible online. In June 2008, the Taliban burned three truck drivers of the Turi tribe alive for supplying the Pakistan Armed Forces. There have been numerous reports of Christians burned alive by Islamist jihadists. In November 2014 a Christian couple in Pakistan Sajjad Maseeh, 27, and his wife Shama Bibi, 24, were burned alive in a brick furnace after it was rumored that they had burned verses from the Quran.”Bibi, a mother of four who was four months pregnant, was wearing an outfit that initially didn’t burn…… The mob removed her from over the kiln and wrapped her up in cotton to make sure the garments would be set alight.” These incidents are rarely reported by the mainstream media and were difficult for most people to comprehend as real until ISIS started filming documentaries of their ritual murders.

Fire is symbolic of the destruction of evil. Symbolically people who are burned alive are human sacrifices that are expiating evil from the community. Tainted victims are purified through fire. Fire is considered a powerful transformer of the negative to the positive. Because of such properties, fire is commonly found in purification rites throughout the world. In other cultures polluted persons may be required to walk around, jump over, or jump through fire. Historically, burning a person to death was reserved for the most threating evil, such as heresy or witchcraft and considered an extreme form of purification. In the context of honor killing the use of fire is not only symbolic but practical. Practical in Iraq because most of the homes do not have electricity so every house has a large supply of oil which makes it easier to conceal honor killings under the guise of suicide or kitchen accidents. In the context of the murder of Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh fire is an Islamic purification ritual that serves vengeance and restores honor and purity to the community of believers.

Islamist jihadists from different movements, countries, sects, and factions all emphasize the need to cleanse Islam of its impurities. Al Qaeda’s ideological belief is the purification of Islam through violent struggle. Bin Laden and Al-Zawahiri have continually called on supporters to purify Muslim holy lands of infidels, un-Islamic beliefs, and practices. The Islamic State cleanses Islam of its impurities while protecting its territory in the same manner as Mexican cartels, using brutal tactics that are justified as vengeance.

The title of the video, Healing the Believers’ Chests, is a quote from the Quran: “Fight them, and Allah will punish them by your hands, cover them with shame, help you over them, heal the breasts of Believers.” (Qur’an 9:14). It was reported to mean ‘giving them pleasure’ – interpreted as a reference to achieving revenge. That is one interpretation, however healing is symbolic of purification, the title Healing the Believers’ Chests can be understood as cleansing the community of the contamination of impurity. Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh’s alleged crimes symbolically unleashed an epidemic of contagious evil. The function of the burning ritual is a communal act of expiation, expelling the contagious evil of an infidel enemy through fire. Having ISIS fighters participate and watch makes it a communal sacrificial ritual. Ritualizing the violence justifies it and makes it sacred. Once the transgressor is ritually killed the impurity is removed, the evil has been expelled, taboo has been ameliorated and justice is served. The body is immediately buried under the earth, another purifying element, restoring honor and purity.

Filming and disseminating the ritual killing strikes fear into the hearts of enemies and attracts new recruits. Similar to an arsonist that is fascinated with fire, disaffected young people will be attracted to this ritual burning. Like moths to a flame.

Categories: Caliphate, Foreign policy, Freedom, Honor killings, Hostages, Human rights, Iran scam, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamism, Jordanian pilot, Obama, P5+1, Purification by fire, Terrorism, Torture
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Expert: North Korea Could Hand Nukes Over To Iran

January 31, 2015

Expert: North Korea Could Hand Nukes Over To Iran, CNN via You Tube, January 29, 2015

 

Categories: Foreign policy, Iran, Iran scam, North Korea, Nukes, Obama
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How to lose friends and empower radicals: the peace prize president’s more dangerous world

January 29, 2015

How to lose friends and empower radicals: the peace prize president’s more dangerous world, Breitbart,  Dr. Sebastian Gorka, January 29, 2015

(Please see the video at the link. — DM)

obama-binoculars-AP-640x480AP Photo/Susan Walsh

Since 2008, the world has become a significantly more dangerous place. In every region, new threats have emerged or old ones have reasserted them. The scorecard is clear: the bad guys are winning and America’s interests are being undermined daily.

As a nation, America has yet to recover from the experience of September 11th, 2001. Public opinion on our national response to the attacks against the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and Flight 93 is today divided. On one side we have the “Bush lied, People Died!” crowd who portray President George W. Bush’s response in terms of a conspiracy, despite the fact that we now know Saddam Hussein indeed possessed thousands of WMD warheads (and had used them in the past).

On the other, we have conservatives who are themselves split between the unsophisticated isolationists/non-interventionists who believe that an American withdrawal from the world will make us safe, and the quietly resurgent neoconservatives who see in the rise of ISIS/The Islamic State a justification for more foreign engagements.

For a moment, let us put Operations Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan), and Operations Iraqi Freedom (OIF), to one side. Instead, let us take an unemotional snap-shot of the global geostrategic situation to see whether the administration whose head was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize during his first year in office has indeed make the world a safer and more peaceful place.

Europe: During most of the last century, American security was tied directly to the continent of Europe. Whether is was the generational genocide of World War One, the racial genocide of WWII, or the class-based totalitarianism of the Cold War, Europe was the source of strategic, and at times existential, threats to America.

During the first Obama Administration, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton declared a “Pivot to Asia” which would deemphasize Europe’s importance and see Washington focus more on our Pacific partners than on old Atlantic Allies.

Since that announcement, an emboldened Vladimir Putin has seen fit to break an almost 70-year-old international taboo by using force to redraw national borders with his annexation of Crimea. This includes, incredibly, the shooting down of a civilian jet-liner by forces armed by Moscow.

At the same time, we have seen the European Union become evermore centralizing and undemocratic as untenable economic and fiscal policies are propped up by a Brussels bureaucracy in the name of “broader and deeper union.” This has naturally led to two types of responses: the unprecedented success of a paleo-conservative backlash,f best typified by the insurgent victories of UKIP in Great Britain, as well the reverse: Utopian socialist populists such as the victorious Syriza party of Greece.

Then there are Europe’s ties to the Global Jihadist Movement. The recent slaughter in Paris, the beheading of a British serviceman on the streets of the UK, and Spanish and Belgian terror-related arrests all attest to the failure of the current international campaign against Islamist terrorism.

The flawed immigration policies of many EU nations have also facilitated the establishment of literally hundreds of ethnic and religious enclaves across the continent where integration is seen as a bad thing and where radical talent spotters for groups such as Al Qaeda and ISIS/IS identify, indoctrinate and recruit murderers such as the Charlie Hebdo killers, as well as thousands of fighters for The Islamic State.

This has led to a grass-roots response from Europeans afraid of the future survival of their countries embodied in the ever-broadening PEGIDA movement that Breitbart London has covered in great detail. The failure of multiculturalist immigration policies has not only encouraged the enclave phenomenon, but is also clearly linked to the disturbing rise of anti-Semitism on the continent which has led to unprecedented numbers of European jews deciding to leave the nations of their birth for good.

If we include Turkey in our European snapshot, the situation is even worse, as we have seen the one viable example of a secular Muslim state slip even deeper into the corruption-ridden maelstrom of Islamic fundamentalism under the Erdogan government which is either incapable or unwilling to prevent Turkey becoming a pre-deployment site for jihadist fighters traveling into Syria and Iraq. All this from a formal NATO ally of the US.

Asia: The much-vaunted Pivot to Asia has clearly not worked. China has, over the last several years, openly challenged the post-Cold War peace in the region with a commitment to its own military build-up coupled with a concerted campaign of intimidation against its smaller and weaker neighbors.

While challenging and intimidating our regional partners, China has continued to grow economically at such a rate that the nation which was once universally ridiculed as the maker of plastic toys for McDonalds Happy Meals has now surpassed the US economy in terms of gross output.  At the same time, China is waging a covert war against America in the cyber domain, stealing not only state secrets for use in developing its new weapons systems, but also billions of dollars worth of intellectual property and commercial secrets from American businesses. See the remarkable report from Mandiant on scale of the threat.

North Korea has also used the internet to assault American interests as the Sony hacking attack attests, while Washington has proven totally ineffective in undermining the world’s last truly fully-fledged Stalinist regime, or its regionally destabilizing nuclear weapons capabilities.

Africa: A giant continent, with threats as bad as they were in 2008, or in several cases much worse. The Global Jihadist Movement continues to consolidate its control in Nigeria through the horrific attacks of Boko Haram, the group made famous for the kidnapping of the girls from Chibok, an attack which is just one part of a vast campaign targeting Christians and anyone who does not want to live under a theocratically run system based upon sharia and 7th century interpretation of the Koran.

In addition to the insurgent-like threat of Boko Haram, we have also witnessed horrific hit and run terrorist tactics used by other African jihadists, as in the Westgate Mall attack in Nairobi by Al Shabaab. At the same time, China proceeds to build its vast network of economic interests in the continent in ways that far outstrip American geostrategic investment in Africa.

Australasia: Of course, the Pivot to Asia should have pleased our Antipodean allies. But the concrete consequences of the declarations and speeches by Secretary Clinton and the White House have amounted to little more than the deployment of a handful of US Marines from Camp Pendleton to Australia. Instead of the security situation improving, Australia faced its own Jihadist attack just before Christmas last year as a self-styled imam took hostages and brought the violent jihad so familiar to New York, London, Madrid, and Paris, to the streets of Sydney.

The Americas: Canada likewise became a direct victim of the Global Jihadist Movement after a spate of attacks against its armed forces and even its parliament which was only stopped when a brave sergeant-at-arms applied deadly force in the face of a rampaging jihadi.

Those who like illicit quality cigars may be celebrating the White House’s “normalization” of relations with Communist Cuba, but if statements by the Castro regime are to be credited as expressing Havana’s true intentions, then the deal was good for the dictatorship and bad for America. And despite the US government’s historic decision, conditions inside Cuba have remained the same, or in many case deteriorated, with last year seeing record-breaking numbers of political arrests on the island nation. And Cuba’s anti-democratic influence is a problem for the region, not just its wretched population, with Raul Castro’s secret police providing aid and expertise in the oppression of dissidentsto the government of Venezuela.

The Middle East and North Africa: Leaving the worst for last we have, of course, the Middle East, and North Africa. The highs hopes for the Arab Spring turned very rapidly into a “Christian Winter” and a victory for the fundamentalist and anti-Democratic forces of the Muslim Brotherhood. One after another, one-man authoritarian regimes fell to Islamist MB governments, or collapsed into deadly civil wars which are still being fought in places like Syria and Libya. Throughout the region, proto-democrats and vulnerable minorities, especially ancient Christian communities, have been targeted for death or persecution, or have been forced to flee.

The one ray of hope, the people’s revolt in Egypt against the Brotherhood government of Mohammad Morsi, which led to his being ousted by a secular military, was rejected by the US administration as a coup, despite the fact that General, now President, Sisi, has been fighting his own war against Jihadi fundamentalists since he was the Chief of the Egyptian Armed Forces.

And now Yemen, which was lauded just a few months ago by President Obama as the poster-child of his successful counterterrorism strategy, has collapsed under insurgent attacks and the resignation of the government in Sanaa.

Then there is Iran, which, much like Cuba, has squeezed concession after concession out of the administration without either stopping its acquisition of nuclear weapons capability, or curtailing its support of Shiite terrorist fighters in either Iraq or Syria.

I said I would leave Afghanistan and Iraq of our the equation, but nevertheless, it is important to recognize that this is a new jihadist threat that is even more dangerous than Al Qaeda. ISIS, the Islamic State, is today a full-fledged insurgency, one that in four dimensions is much more of a threat that [Sic] Al Qaeda ever was.

The Islamic State is more than a terrorist group, it now functions as a quasi-state and controls territory equivalent to the size of the UK. It is the richest non-state threat group in human history. It has an incredibly sophisticated understanding of information warfare and how to use social media as a propaganda platform, and lastly – and relatedly – it has recruited ten of thousands of young Muslim men from around the world, including Europe and the US, to fight for the new Caliphate of Abu Bakr al Baghdadi. Bin Laden dreamt of being this powerful. The Islamic State has turned his dream into a horrific reality.

There is not one area of the world of import to America in which we have either not lost friends, or failed to help our allies to defend themselves against the common enemies that threaten us all. Whatever your politics, or whomever you favor for the next Commander-in-Chief of the United States, one thing is certain: without resolute American leadership the world can become, and now is, a much more dangerous place.

Categories: Caliphate, Europe, European Union, Foreign policy, Free world, Freedom, Human rights, International Community, Iran scam, Islam, Islamic State, Nukes, Obama, P5+1, Sisi, Turkey
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Obama targets Netanyahu, Iran targets Israel

January 29, 2015

Obama targets Netanyahu, Iran targets Israel, Israel Hayom, Richard Baehr, January 29, 2015

Obama will tell himself and anyone who wants to ‎hear that he has brought Iran back into the community of nations. ‎Obama, after all, is a rare man. How many others can make 118 ‎self-referential mentions in a half hour talk, as Obama did in India ‎this week?

Is it any wonder ‎why someone who stands for something, say a country’s security, ‎as Netanyahu does, gets under the skin of a man who is primarily ‎concerned with little more than his own greatness, and whose ‎presidency, in a word, has been a “selfie”?‎

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There is a bit of difference between Iran and U.S. President Barack Obama when it comes to ‎Israel. Iran has never been reticent that its goal is to eliminate the State of Israel, ‎and Israelis too while they are it. Iran’s proxy terror army of Hezbollah ‎contributed their part on Wednesday, killing two Israeli soldiers and wounding seven with anti-tank ‎fire from southern Lebanon directed at an Israeli convoy. Obama seems more ‎interested, at least in the next two months, in eliminating one Israeli — namely, Prime ‎Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. ‎

It has been a remarkable two weeks in U.S.-Israel relations. The president ‎delivered his State of the Union address, in which he argued for staying the course ‎with negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, overselling what has already ‎been achieved, as well as what might be achieved. He also threatened to veto new ‎sanctions legislation that might be passed by Congress, where some have called for ‎tougher sanctions to be applied to Iran if a satisfactory deal were not struck ‎between the P5+1 and the Iranians by June 30. Obama argued that passing such a ‎measure now would be a sign of bad faith and drive the Iranians from the ‎negotiating table. It was, of course, an odd prediction, since one area in which the ‎Iranians have shown remarkable consistency has been in negotiating with ‎European powers, or the now expanded negotiating group for over 10 years, ‎always without a satisfactory outcome. The Iranians seem to like being seen as ‎negotiating while their nuclear program advances.‎

Fact checkers awarded Obama a bunch of “pinocchios” for his latest effort, suggesting he was all ‎but lying on the matter. No, the Iranians have not dismantled any centrifuges (they ‎have more running than before), they have not removed any fissile material from ‎the country for safekeeping, they have not allowed inspections on demand, they ‎have not disabled their Arak heavy-water reactor, they have not agreed to end any ‎missile program they are working on for delivery of a nuclear bomb. ‎

‎”Our diplomacy is at work with respect to Iran,” Obama said, ‎‎”where, for the first time in a decade, we’ve halted the progress of ‎its nuclear program and reduced its stockpile of nuclear material.”

James Robbins, a senior fellow in national security affairs at the ‎American Foreign Policy Council, begged to disagree:‎

‎”But has Iran’s stockpile shrunk? Under a deal concluded last ‎November, Iran halted work on the most dangerous material, 20 ‎percent refined uranium. However, Iran is still making lower-grade ‎uranium. According to a report from the International Atomic ‎Energy Agency last November, Iran’s stockpiles of low-enriched ‎uranium gas and 5 percent enriched uranium were both growing. ‎Also, the agency cautioned that their figures only covered ‎‎’declared sites,’ the nuclear facilities Iran has publicly ‎acknowledged and allowed to be inspected.”‎

In the days after his address to Congress, the president repeated ‎his threats about vetoing new sanctions legislation, when meeting ‎with Democratic senators, several of whom, along with a few ‎Republican colleagues, had been lobbied on the matter by Britain’s ‎visiting Prime Minister David Cameron. The president upped the ‎ante, accusing Democratic Senator Robert Menendez of New ‎Jersey, a leader in the attempt to pass new sanctions, of not ‎thinking long-term, but just trying to make his donors (could ‎Obama have meant Jewish donors?) happy.

The idea of a foreign leader directly lobbying members of ‎Congress on an issue like the Iranian sanctions bill took on a new ‎life when House Speaker John Boehner invited Netanyahu to ‎address a joint session of Congress on the Iranian issue on ‎February 11. The White House predictably blew its lid, accusing ‎Boehner of breaking established protocol for such an invitation. (It ‎should have been coordinated with the White House.) The usual ‎Obama water carriers like Jeffrey Goldberg were quick to lambaste ‎Netanyahu for stage managing the invitation so as to embarrass ‎Obama, and in the process threaten U.S.-Israel relations. As Joel ‎Pollak describes Goldberg’s argument:‎

‎”In his most recent Atlantic column, he claims, for example, ‎that Obama worked ‘in tandem’ with Netanyahu to promote ‎sanctions on Iran: ‘Netanyahu traveled the world arguing for ‎stringent sanctions, and Obama did much the same.’‎

“That is simply factually untrue. Obama resisted Iran sanctions ‎for months, defying even a unanimous vote in the Democrat-‎controlled Senate. Not only was Israel frustrated, and ‎Congress, but Europe as well, which accused Obama of re-‎inventing the wheel, resetting diplomacy that had started ‎under (gasp) George W. Bush.‎

“In fact, Obama pushed the world towards a more lenient ‎position on Iran, allowing nuclear enrichment in defiance of ‎U.N. Security Council resolutions.”

And then there is this doozy:‎

‎”It is Netanyahu’s job, Goldberg says, as ‘the junior partner in ‎the Israel-U.S. relationship,’ to make concessions.”‎

When it comes to negotiating with Iran, Netanyahu does not ‎sit at the table with the Iranians, but Obama’s representatives ‎do. And it is U.S. negotiators who have been making ‎concessions month after month since the talks began, in what ‎appears to be a desperate attempt to salvage some deal they ‎can broadcast as having achieved a minimal set of objectives. ‎That objective has now been reduced to providing some ‎minimum breakout time for Iran to achieve nuclear weapons ‎capability if they ditch the deal. What will the West do in that ‎time if Iran moves towards the bomb? It is pretty clear, any ‎military response from Obama is out of the question.‎

The administration has further demonstrated its unhappiness ‎about Netanyahu’s impudence in scheming with ‎Boehner, by announcing that neither the president nor his secretary of state will meet with Netanyahu when he visits ‎Washington, a date now moved back three weeks to overlap ‎his visit to the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee policy conference. The excuse, ‎couched in a diplomatic smokescreen, is that it would be ‎improper for the president to meet with a candidate for office ‎abroad so close to the time of that country’s election. That ‎would be equivalent to electioneering and interference in the ‎other country’s race. Presumably when President Bill Clinton ‎met with Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres just weeks ‎before his election contest with Netanyahu in 1996, at a time ‎when Israeli prime ministers were elected in a head-to-head ‎battle, electioneering was the furthest thing from Clinton’s ‎mind. ‎

The Obama team may not meet with Netanyahu when he ‎visits, but an experienced Obama campaign team from 2012 ‎is now in Israel working to defeat Netanyahu. That, in and ‎of itself, is nothing new for Israeli elections. Experienced ‎American campaign teams have aided Israeli candidates from ‎the Left and Right in recent decades. What is new is that the ‎current anti-Netanyahu campaign includes a State ‎Department funded group:‎

‎”U.S.-based activist group OneVoice International has partnered ‎with V15, an ‘independent grass-roots movement’ in Israel that is ‎actively opposing Netanyahu’s party in the upcoming elections, ‎Haaretz reported on Monday. Former national field director for Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign Jeremy Bird is also ‎reportedly involved in the effort.‎

“OneVoice development and grants officer Christina Taler said the ‎group would be working with V15 on voter registration and get-out-‎the-vote efforts but would not engage in overtly partisan activities. ‎She said OneVoice and V15 are still formalizing the partnership.”‎

Obama’s team has gone further to poison the waters for ‎Netanyahu, planting a story in Haaretz that the Mossad was ‎opposed to new sanctions legislation, a charge they publicly ‎rebutted.‎

The Goldberg article was designed to deliver a message that Israel ‎has two important objectives now — to keep Iran from going nuclear ‎‎(for which their best hope of course is to count on Obama to do the ‎job for them in negotiations), and second, to keep American close ‎and happy with Israel’s behavior. Netanyahu, according to Goldberg, is ‎killing the good vibes that presumably must have existed during the ‎Obama years by his recent behavior.‎

There is an alternative interpretation for what is going on. Obama is ‎really not terribly bothered by a nuclear Iran. A bad deal that looks ‎like it delays Iran’s entry to the nuclear club is therefore not a bad ‎option. It also allows Obama to check off one more box on his ‎achievements list before his formal request to have his likeness ‎carved into Mount Rushmore. Pakistan has a bomb. Israel has the ‎bomb. Why not Iran, the leading Shiite nation? Iran, after all, is now ‎our strategic partner, fighting with us to battle ISIS in Iraq. ‎

The latest evidence that Obama is now on the Iranian team is the ‎New York Times editorial calling for accepting that having Assad ‎hang on in Syria is the least bad result, so backing a non-ISIS ‎Syrian rebel team is a bad idea. The New York Times editorial ‎page is little more than a conveyance tool for White House ‎messaging at this point, and so this is now clearly Obama’s ‎posture. How can we fight alongside Iran in Iraq, but support a side ‎that is fighting Iran’s ally Assad in Syria?

Meanwhile, Hezbollah is stepping up its activities in the Golan. The ‎Iranian goal appears to be to establish a base in Syria where Israel ‎can be targeted by the Lebanese group, without getting an Israeli ‎response in Lebanon itself. What is clear is that Hezbollah and Iran ‎have Israel in their sights. If Iran gets the bomb, the retaliation ‎options for Israel when Hezbollah pressure is applied, will be much ‎more limited. There is no certainty that Iran subscribes to the ‎mutually assured destruction deterrence club.‎

But not to worry. Obama will tell himself and anyone who wants to ‎hear that he has brought Iran back into the community of nations. ‎Obama, after all, is a rare man. How many others can make 118 ‎self-referential mentions in a half hour talk, as Obama did in India ‎this week?

Is it any wonder ‎why someone who stands for something, say a country’s security, ‎as Netanyahu does, gets under the skin of a man who is primarily ‎concerned with little more than his own greatness, and whose ‎presidency, in a word, has been a “selfie”?‎

Categories: Foreign policy, Iran, Iran scam, Iranian nukes, Israel, Israeli elections, Netanyahu, Obama, P5+1, Sanctions, U.S. Congress
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The Imaginary Islamic Radical

January 28, 2015

The Imaginary Islamic Radical, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, January 28,2015

(Ask Secretary Kerry.

Please see also Muslim Brotherhood-Aligned Leaders Hosted at State Department. — DM)

iraqstill-450x281

Our problem is not the Islamic radical, but the inherent radicalism of Islam. Islam is a radical religion. It radicalizes those who follow it. Every atrocity we associate with Islamic radicals is already in Islam. The Koran is not the solution to Islamic radicalism, it is the cause.

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The debate over Islamic terrorism has shifted so far from reality that it has now become an argument between the administration, which insists that there is nothing Islamic about ISIS, and critics who contend that a minority of Islamic extremists are the ones causing all the problems.

But what makes an Islamic radical, extremist? Where is the line between ordinary Muslim practice and its extremist dark side?

It can’t be beheading people in public.

Saudi Arabia just did that and was praised for its progressiveness by the UN Secretary General, had flags flown at half-staff in the honor of its deceased tyrant in the UK and that same tyrant was honored by Obama, in preference to such minor events as the Paris Unity March and the Auschwitz commemoration.

It can’t be terrorism either. Not when the US funds the PLO and three successive administrations invested massive amounts of political capital into turning the terrorist group into a state. While the US and the EU fund the Palestinian Authority’s homicidal kleptocracy; its media urges stabbing Jews.

Clearly that’s not Islamic extremism either. At least it’s not too extreme for Obama.

If blowing up civilians in Allah’s name isn’t extreme, what do our radicals have to do to get really radical?

Sex slavery? The Saudis only abolished it in 1962; officially. Unofficially it continues. Every few years a Saudi bigwig gets busted for it abroad. The third in line for the Saudi throne was the son of a “slave girl”.

Ethnic cleansing? Genocide? The “moderate” Islamists we backed in Syria, Libya and Egypt have been busy doing it with the weapons and support that we gave them. So that can’t be extreme either.

If terrorism, ethnic cleansing, sex slavery and beheading are just the behavior of moderate Muslims, what does a Jihadist have to do to be officially extreme? What is it that makes ISIS extreme?

Our government’s definition of moderate often hinges on a willingness to negotiate regardless of the results. The moderate Taliban were the ones willing to talk us. They just weren’t willing to make a deal. Iran’s new government is moderate because it engages in aimless negotiations while pushing its nuclear program forward and issuing violent threats, instead of just pushing and threatening without the negotiations. Nothing has come of the negotiations, but the very willingness to negotiate is moderate.

The Saudis would talk to us all day long while they continued sponsoring terrorists and setting up terror mosques in the West. That made them moderates. Qatar keeps talking to us while arming terrorists and propping up the Muslim Brotherhood. So they too are moderate. The Muslim Brotherhood talked to us even while its thugs burned churches, tortured protesters and worked with terrorist groups in the Sinai.

A radical terrorist will kill you. A moderate terrorist will talk to you and then kill someone else. And you’ll ignore it because the conversation is a sign that they’re willing to pretend to be reasonable.

From a Muslim perspective, ISIS is radical because it declared a Caliphate and is casual about declaring other Muslims infidels. That’s a serious issue for Muslims and when we distinguish between radicals and moderates based not on their treatment of people, but their treatment of Muslims, we define radicalism from the perspective of Islamic supremacism, rather than our own American values.

The position that the Muslim Brotherhood is moderate and Al Qaeda is extreme because the Brotherhood kills Christians and Jews while Al Qaeda kills Muslims is Islamic Supremacism. The idea of the moderate Muslim places the lives of Muslims over those of every other human being on earth.

Our Countering Violent Extremism program emphasizes the centrality of Islamic legal authority as the best means of fighting Islamic terrorists. Our ideological warfare slams terrorists for not accepting the proper Islamic chain of command. Our solution to Islamic terrorism is a call for Sharia submission.

That’s not an American position. It’s an Islamic position and it puts us in the strange position of arguing Islamic legalism with Islamic terrorists. Our politicians, generals and cops insist that the Islamic terrorists we’re dealing with know nothing about Islam because that is what their Saudi liaisons told them to say.

It’s as if we were fighting Marxist terrorist groups by reproving them for not accepting the authority of the USSR or the Fourth International. It’s not only stupid of us to nitpick another ideology’s fine points, especially when our leaders don’t know what they’re talking about, but our path to victory involves uniting our enemies behind one central theocracy. That’s even worse than arming and training them, which we’re also doing (but only for the moderate genocidal terrorists, not the extremists).

Secretary of State Kerry insists that ISIS are nihilists and anarchists. Nihilism is the exact opposite of the highly structured Islamic system of the Caliphate. It might be a more accurate description of Kerry. But the Saudis and the Muslim Brotherhood successfully sold the Western security establishment on the idea that the only way to defeat Islamic terrorism was by denying any Islamic links to its actions.

This was like an arsonist convincing the fire department that the best way to fight fires was to pretend that they happened randomly on their own through spontaneous combustion.

Victory through denial demands that we pretend that Islamic terrorism has nothing to do with Islam. It’s a wholly irrational position, but the alternative of a tiny minority of extremists is nearly as irrational.

If ISIS is extreme and Islam is moderate, what did ISIS do that Mohammed did not?

The answers usually have a whole lot to do with the internal structures of Islam and very little to do with such pragmatic things as not raping women or not killing non-Muslims.

Early on we decided to take sides between Islamic tyrants and Islamic terrorists, deeming the former moderate and the latter extremists. But the tyrants were backing their own terrorists. And when it came to human rights and their view of us, there wasn’t all that much of a difference between the two.

It made sense for us to put down Islamic terrorists because they often represented a more direct threat, but allowing the Islamic tyrants to convince us that they and the terrorists followed two different brands of Islam and that the only solution to Islamic terrorism lay in their theocracy was foolish of us.

We can’t win the War on Terror through their theocracy. That way lies a real Caliphate.

Our problem is not the Islamic radical, but the inherent radicalism of Islam. Islam is a radical religion. It radicalizes those who follow it. Every atrocity we associate with Islamic radicals is already in Islam. The Koran is not the solution to Islamic radicalism, it is the cause.

Our enemy is not radicalism, but a hostile civilization bearing grudges and ambitions.

We aren’t fighting nihilists or radicals. We are at war with the inheritors of an old empire seeking to reestablish its supremacy not only in the hinterlands of the east, but in the megalopolises of the west.

Categories: Al Qaeda, Caliphate, Charlie Hedbo, Cognitive dissonance, Foreign policy, Freedom, Funding terrorism, Gaza, Hamas, Hezbollah, Human rights, Ideology, Iran, Iran scam, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Israel, Kerry, Koran, Middle East, Moderate rebels, Muslim Brotherhood, Obama, P5+1, Palestinian Authority, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sharia law, Terrorism, Turkey
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Iran-Syria-North Korea Nuclear Nexus

January 28, 2015

Iran-Syria-North Korea Nuclear Nexus, Front Page Magazine, , January 28, 2015

Hassan

As Iranian and American chief diplomats continue to meet to find ways to speed up nuclear negotiations and strike a final nuclear deal that would lead to the removal of all international sanctions on the ruling clerics, the Obama administration persists in ignoring the recent revelations about the Islamic Republic and its covert operations in the region.

A new Western intelligence assessment points to efforts by the Syrian government to renew its operations in an underground and clandestine nuclear facility near Qusair, close to the border of Lebanon, in order to produce nuclear weapons. Citing the Western intelligence assessment, the German weekly Der Spiegel pointed out that the reconstruction of the nuclear facility is being conducted with the assistance of the Islamic Republic, North Korea, and Hezbollah.

The intelligence report indicates that dialogue between Ibrahim Othman, head of the Syrian Atomic Energy Commission of Iranian, and North Korean and Hezbollah affiliates were “intercepted.” In addition, according Abu Muhammad al-Bitar, the Free Syrian Army has also noticed the “unprecedented” presence of Iranian and Hezbollah security members in the town of Qusair on the suburbs of Homs.

If Iran is engaged in such operations assisting Syrian President Bashar al Assad, it is breaching the protocols of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), as well as posing a great threat to security in the region.

If, even before obtaining nuclear weapons, the ruling clerics of Iran are assisting their allies to become nuclear states, how can we trust the Islamic Republic in nuclear negotiations and how can one rely on their claim that they are not seeking to build a nuclear bomb?

Iran-Syria and North Korean-Syria military and nuclear cooperation has been going on for a long time. When it comes to the issues of ballistic missiles, Syria has previously cooperated with both Iran and North Korea.

Syria possess approximately 50 tons of uranium which could be adequate enough to create 5 nuclear bombs. For developing nuclear weapons either highly enriched uranium or an adequate amount of plutonium is required.

Some might make the argument that Syria developed the uranium by itself without the assistance of other countries or other non-state actors. Nevertheless, technically, pragmatically and realistically speaking, Syria does not possess the capability of developing an estimated 50 tons of natural uranium. This suggests that the role of other states and non-state actors have definitely played a significant role. Some of the only allies that the Syrian government has still kept are Iran, North Korea and Hezbollah.

It is crucial to point out that, without a doubt, becoming a nuclear state for the Syrian and Iranian government would be a formidable tool in to suppress opposition, maintain power, and deter foreign intervention in case of crimes against humanity.

There are two major nuclear site in Syria. The first one is the Al Kibar reactor in the northeast of the city of Deir Ezzour and the second one is Marj Sultan in the outskirt of Damascus where the fuel is reportedly stored.

News with respects to the Syrian government renewing its nuclear program were previously reported in 2013. There had been reports that some activities were being carried out at an alleged Syrian nuclear facility close to an eastern suburbs of Damascus, Marj Sultan.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported previously that Damascus was building a nuclear reactor in Deir Ezzour. Reportedly tons of enriched uranium in Damascus are being protected by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps and Hezbollah.

According to Der Spiegel, “Syria’s dictator has not given up his dream of an atomic weapon and has apparently built a new nuclear facility at a secret location…..It is an extremely unsettling piece of news.”

In addition to the aforementioned concerns about the undeclared Syrian nuclear site and nuclear proliferation, one of the crucial issues is that the nuclear material might fall in the hands of multiple other players and Islamist groups. In other words, if these nuclear sites are seized by some radical groups or Al Qaeda-linked affiliates, they might be capable of utilizing the highly enriched uranium and produce nuclear weapons.

Iran’s other indisputable and multi-layered activities and engagements in Syria — including the military, financial, intelligence, and advisory assistance to the Syrian government which have further radicalized and militarized the ongoing Syrian war — persist. In addition, the recent intelligence report and satellite images of secretly renewing nuclear activities with the assistance of the Iranian and North Korean governments poses a grave threat to stability and security in the region. Unfortunately, despite the seriousness of this issue, the Obama administration continues to ignore these issues and persists on trusting the Islamic Republic in the nuclear negotiations.

Categories: Assad, Foreign policy, Hezbollah, Iran, Iran scam, Israel, North Korea, Nukes, Obama, P5+1, Supreme Leader, Syria, Terrorism
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