[ARABNEWS] I write this week safely from New York, where the focus of many meetings this year at the United Nations ...where theory meets practice and practice loses... is on fighting terrorism, in particular how to defeat the so-called Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... (IS). One of the main topics is how much IS is being nourished by the support it receives from the citizens of the same countries involved in the coalition to defeat it.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
09/24/2014 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Islamic State
#1
The U.S. went after two terrorist groups, ISIS and a new terrorist group called Khorasan. What is concerning is what is not known rather than what is known. What is largely unknown are the following:
1. Who is the group Khorasan who recently just showed up as an immediate threat to the U.S. and European countries? Just the other day, the Director of Homeland Security assured the American people that there were no immediate threats to the homeland.
2. News indicates there is a coalition of some 50 countries allied against terrorism in Syria and Iraq. Who are these 50 countries? Little has been mentioned about who these countries are.
3. Aircraft and Tomahawk missiles struck targets in Syria with the apparent blessing of Assad. This is understandable since the terrorists are also enemies of Assad. Recently, in the not too distant past, Obama wanted to bomb Assad's forces.
4. The coalition of Arab countries are Sunni: SA, UAE, Jordan, Bahrain, and Qatar. Turkey will be coming into this coalition according to Kerry. A large problem is that some of these coalition members have funded and supported the terrorists. Did these Arab members of the coalition actually participate in the air raids on terrorists? It seems that being able to mention there are Arab coalition members is more political gingerbread than anything else.
5. ISIS continues without much of a crimp in its murderous ways. They number ~ 30,000. If we really wanted to wipe out this group of terrorists, it would seem that we would be hitting them in Iraq as well as Syria. Nearly all former ranking military have said boots on the ground will be required to wipe out Isis.
6. Before and after photos were shown at a recent public briefing. “After” photos of struck targets show very minimal damage to buildings, structures. No photos were shown of destroyed equipment. It also seems that efforts were made to avoid targeting terrorists during these strikes. This can’t be a serious effort to wipe out ISIS.
7. It strikes me as more election year politics than a war on terror.
[DAWN] IT should have been just another Sunday service at the All Saints Church in Beautiful Downtown Peshawar ...capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly known as the North-West Frontier Province), administrative and economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Peshawar is situated near the eastern end of the Khyber Pass, convenient to the Pak-Afghan border. Peshawar has evolved into one of Pakistan's most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities, which means lots of gunfire. a year ago. As it turned out, it was the prelude to a massacre, the worst attack against the Christian community in Pakistain, when twin suicide kabooms at the end of the service claimed around 90 lives and injured over 100 people. The carnage sparked a wave of revulsion among Paks, and expressions of solidarity with the community were swift in coming. Although attacks on such scale along religious lines have not occurred since then, the war on minorities in this country grinds on relentlessly.
In fact, it could be said that it is expanding, claiming yet more victims and also from communities hitherto left comparatively unscathed by religious extremism. In Peshawar itself, the small Sikh community has been repeatedly targeted this year. Five Sikhs have been killed in as many months, with two fatalities in the first week of September alone. In a remote corner of Balochistan ...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it... , gunnies attacked a group of Zikris in their place of worship, killing six and injuring several others. Although persecution of the Zikris -- a little-known Islamic sect -- had surfaced during Gen Zia's time, when religious extremism was actively harnessed and patronised to further strategic objectives, this was the first direct attack in more than two decades on their lives. Meanwhile, ...back at the secret hideout, Scarface Al sneeringly put his proposition to little Nell... a reprehensible conspiracy of silence by the state surrounds the murder of Ahmadis -- whose persecution is institutionalised in Pakistain -- even when a woman and two girls from that community were killed in a ghastly mob attack in July. The crux of the problem is the state's refusal to take proactive steps to control the menace of religious extremism: banned/extremist organizations extend their influence to areas so far untouched by communal strife; hate speech is freely disseminated; the blasphemy law is used as a tool of persecution; school curricula contain derogatory references to minority communities. While the government continues in a state of torpor, this fire has begun to consume the very foundations of the country.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/24/2014 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
California is run from a sort of Pacific Versailles [1], an isolated coastal compound of elite rulers physically cut off from its interior peasantry.
To understand how California works -- or rather does not work -- drive over the I-5 Grapevine [2] and gaze down at the brilliantly engineered artificial Pyramid Lake. Thanks to California water project deliveries, even in a third year of drought its level still fluctuates between 90 to 100% full -- ensuring, along with its companion reservoirs, plentiful water for the Los Angeles-area municipalities for the next two years. The far distant watersheds and reservoirs that feed Pyramid Lake are about bone dry.
The same disconnect is true of Crystal Springs Reservoir along the I-280 near San Francisco. The Sierra watershed that supplies the now 90%+full lake is drying up. But San Francisco will have an assured water supply from its manmade reservoirs for some time, even if the drought persists.
Yet most of the policies of the state that have led to cancellations of additional water projects over the last thirty years -- or those that have resulted in vast diversions of diminished reservoir water from contracted agricultural use to fish replenishment -- are made by Los Angeles and San Francisco area legislators, judges, and public officials.
#2
I always thought it was the smart people who live on the coast. I still do. Sorry, but I like jogging on the beach, surfing and sailing. I like that cool, moist feeling when the fog creeps over my house from the ocean. I don't like it when the weather gets too hot or too cold. Seventy degrees is just find, thank you very much. I don't need an air conditioner, I just open the windows and feel the ocean breeze. I paid the price. I struggled for years to get a toehold in that community. It was my ambition. I didn't care what kind of work I did as long as it was close enough to the ocean. It's not my fault that crooked politicians and developers over built the place. I always voted against them. Hey, once I got mine it was time to shut down all the rest of the housing developments. So we created this huge demand for all kinds of things; water, freeways, schools, hospitals, sewers and electricity just to name the most obvious. You ever been to Bakersfield? Delano? Hemet? San Bernadino? Salinas? They're not all that nice. Why anyone would want to live there is beyond me. I think if I had to live that far inland I'd just as soon be in Kansas.
#3
California, and what it is descending into, is the clear product of the one-party rule that the Democrat party is seeking for all of the US. Everything about the immigration policy of this administration, and the treason they commit in non-enforcement of laws they swore to enforce, is about importing people to vote for them in return for stuff and money. Our birthright and the bounty our forefathers created for us is being stolen right in front of our eyes. And the current generation has no idea what is being lost forever for them and their children.
#4
You ever been to Bakersfield? Delano? Hemet? San Bernadino? Salinas?
These people cannot afford CPAs or Tax Atrnys -They work their asses off as farmers, field hands, firemen, cops, teachers, small buisness owners. And as opposed to the coastal elite they pay their fair of taxes, be whatever the rate might be. Most of these folks are second, third, fourth generation in these towns and it is their home. No they are not all illegal aliens. You should thank god these people exist so you can eat. Sorry but we all do not get a Pacific Ocean view. You are a typical NIMBY coastal elite. Got a gardener (illegal), twice a week maid (illegal), kids go to private school? Move to Kansas - we move to Kansas you starve, cause you cannot live on the three MJ medical plants you have growing on the condo's Pacific view balcony.
#5
Chater, my comment was designed to provoke you exactly that way. The point is, the money and the numbers and the political power are all in San Francisco and coastal southern California. The elites are there for precisely the reasons I mentioned. They don't care about you. They'll eat something, believe me. Lobster will do and they drink Evian or Perrier when they're not drinking wine so they won't get thirsty either.
I myself am not an elite. Maybe I sounded like it but I'm not. Yes, I like the coast. But I am a lowly computer programmer. It ain't physical like farming but that doesn't mean it isn't hard. I work my ass off too, the commute is a nightmare and then they tax the hell out of me. Our maid is legal and I mow my own yard (at least in back, the HOA takes care of the front, sorry about that but I have no control over it). Hell, I stopped eating at Jack in the Box because none of the employees speak English. The illegals you mention are very disturbing to me too. They are a huge part of the problem. But you hire them to work on the farm, don't you?
I never voted for any of the creeps that run this place. I remember when it was a lot nicer than it is now. From my perspective they have ruined it. It is way too crowded. They knew there would be droughts but they were too busy making money on all the stick and stucco housing tracts they built to care. Now the chickens are coming home to roost. The lawns are going Brown, the crops are dying and the fields are dust. But if the boys in the hood get thirsty they'll riot and that would be inconvenient.
h/t Instapundit
On Friday, the White House announced its "It's On Us" initiative aimed at combating sexual assaults on college campuses. I'm all in favor of combating sexual assault, but the first priority in combating a problem is understanding it.
That's not the White House's first priority. Roughly six weeks before election day, its chief concern is to translate an exciting social media campaign into a get-out-the-vote operation.
Accurate statistics are of limited use in that regard because rape and sexual assault have been declining for decades. So the Obama administration and its allied activist groups trot out the claim that there is a rape epidemic victimizing 1 in 5 women on college campuses. This conveniently horrifying number is a classic example of being too terrible to check. If it were true, it would mean that rape would be more prevalent on elite campuses than in many of the most impoverished and crime-ridden communities.
It comes from tendentious Department of Justice surveys that count "attempted forced kissing" and other potentially caddish acts that even the DOJ admits "are not criminal."
#1
On college campuses, feminist and gender studies departments depend almost entirely on a constant drumbeat of crisis-mongering to keep their increasingly irrelevant courses alive.
The gender studies departments are only following long-running funding and sustainment campaigns undertaken by other entitlement groups. There should be no surprise here.
#2
IMO, it's more than this. The ultimate outcome (which will never be reached because USA will collapse on the way) is to bar all white collar professions to men.
Keep it up. SJW, like the AIDS virus, destroys the body's ability to resist the diseases of history and will die with it. It's called nihilism for a reason.
#6
This also a coordinated Fed attack on due process rights. The Fed is dictating the rules, and the consequences for not adhering.The universities then run with that, adding to the effort their own societal reorganization agendas.
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
09/24/2014 17:10 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
