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Area: WoT Operations    WoT Background    Non-WoT        Politix   
Iran invites American investigators to take part in the probe into PS752 plane incident that killed 176 people on board
Today's Headlines
Headline Comments [Views]
Page 4: Opinion
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Page 6: Politix
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-Lurid Crime Tales-
Coulter: Our Broken Border, Not Iran, Kills 30,000 Americans Every Year
[Breitbart] "Iranians are no threat to America in this country," said Ann Coulter during a Wednesday interview on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight with host Rebecca Mansour and special guest host John Hayward, adding a warning of "30,000 Americans dying on American soil every year because of our neighbor to the south."

Mansour invited Coulter’s ranking of national security threats in the context of recent developments in Iran and Iraq, asking which country poses the greatest danger to America.

Thirty thousand Americans die every year as a result of border insecurity, stated Coulter, pointing to drug overdoses via substances smuggled across the southern border, fatal drunk driving accidents caused by illegal immigrants who entered the U.S. via Mexico, and Mexican drug cartel gang killings.

Coulter said, "I’m thinking national security must have something to do with keeping Americans alive, and yeah, that award would go to Mexico. On my very, very, very conservative estimate of heroin deaths, fentanyl deaths, methamphetamine deaths ‐ of the heroin, fentanyl, and methamphetamine coming [and] being brought to us by our neighbor on the south, Mexico ‐ drunk driving accidents ‐ again, very, very conservative estimate of how many deaths are attributable to drunk driving by Hispanics, either Mexicans themselves or those who have had safe passage through Mexico to our southern border and into our country ‐ and throw in the handful of gang killings, of Los Zetas, of the cartel killings, the occasional mass murder by Mexicans, and you get to 30,000 Americans dying on American soil every year because of our neighbor to the south."

LISTEN:
Posted by: Besoeker || 01/10/2020 05:52 || Comments || Link || [9 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Unfortunately, whack jobs like coulter just give the gimmiegration scam legitimacy in the eyes of many.
Posted by: M. Murcek || 01/10/2020 10:11 Comments || Top||

#2  I support what Trump is doing in Iran; my only concern will be if all his bandwith gets sucked up by foreign affairs, and the Aztlanization of America isn't stopped and reversed.
Posted by: charger || 01/10/2020 18:03 Comments || Top||


Fifth Column
Iran and the American Left Compared
[Mild snark from Glenn Beaton]
[AspenBeat] Purported leaders of American culture such as leftish Hollywood types candidly hope for death to Trump. Sadly, I can write that sentence without the metaphor-marking quotation marks around the two operative words. They are not being metaphorical.

They even fantasize about the mechanism of death to Trump. There’s beheading, shooting, burning alive, burying alive, exploding his head and, well, you get the idea.

Until they can effectuate their fatal fetish, the left name-calls Trump’s son "autistic" (even if he were, is that something to ridicule him and his parents about?), name-calls his wife a "whore" and name-calls citizens who vote for him "deplorables."

Even the Iranians don’t delightfully specify the mechanism for "death to" their enemies. In fact, Iranians now contend that their many "death to" slogans were not intended literally. And even the Iranians don’t generally name-call the wife and son of their opponents.
Posted by: Mercutio || 01/10/2020 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  They're deluded. Deranged. Mentally deficient.

Normal people don't obsess about politicians. If so-and-so is a Bad Person, say so. But don't call him Genghis Mussolini Beelzebub. Don't try to convince normal people of good sense that one individual has the power to make mountains fall, to turn back the tides, to get inside our heads and mind-meld and mesmerize and hack our paper-based balloting system.

Don't be so f---ing stupid.

And shut your mouth, for once. Listen. Learn.
Posted by: Lex || 01/10/2020 1:03 Comments || Top||

#2  Well they share goals
Posted by: g(r)omgoru PB || 01/10/2020 4:40 Comments || Top||

#3  I can understand why the Greek city states exiled their idiots.
Posted by: Gomez Ominter3435 || 01/10/2020 7:59 Comments || Top||

#4  They're not try to persuade anyone. They are announcing, aka signaling, their insanity to their peers.
Posted by: AlanC || 01/10/2020 9:04 Comments || Top||

#5  Virtue, AlanC - signalling virtue!

In their deluded minds.
Posted by: Bobby || 01/10/2020 12:07 Comments || Top||


Home Front: Politix
Is Fauxcahontas Sane?
[Red State] Elizabeth Warren (shaking my head). She has earned a lot of pejorative names in recent years, but my favorite is "Fauxcahontas." How is it possible that the woman is apparently a serious Democrat presidential candidate after a lifetime of falsely passing herself off as someone of "Native American descent"? How does anybody take what she says seriously? Are rank-and-file Democrats that far gone? Why haven’t they demanded that she give her accumulated wealth away to the "poor" since it was gained under false pretenses?

Whenever I hear her screech in a public appearance, she reminds me of the caricature of the evil mother-in-law. I think of Endora from the ’60s/’70s sitcom "Bewitched" ‐ always meddling in stuff about which she knows nothing. Her strident and falsely earnest pronouncements about this and that are transparently politically-motivated and nonsensical. Let’s look at some of her recent public statements and activities:

She is all-in on the Green New Deal; it perfectly aligns with her socialist economics (an oxymoron if there ever was one). We witnessed 50 years of false claims by climate alarmists, and she and the GND crazies want to turn the US and world economies upside-down:
Posted by: Besoeker || 01/10/2020 13:41 || Comments || Link || [12 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Someone needs to overlay this video clip with an audio track from Frank Zappa's disco classic, Dancin' Fool:


Posted by: Lex || 01/10/2020 14:17 Comments || Top||

#2  She's sane but unethical.

Her indian ethnicity was a train she boarded at the start of her career path and that she left at her destination.
Posted by: Elmerert Hupens2660 || 01/10/2020 14:30 Comments || Top||

#3  One of my major complaints against Trump was he called her Pocahontas instead of Fauxcahontas.
Posted by: rjschwarz || 01/10/2020 14:57 Comments || Top||

#4  "How is it possible that the woman is apparently a serious Democrat presidential candidate after a lifetime of falsely passing herself off as someone of 'Native American descent'"?

Beta: How is it possible that the man is apparently a serious Democratic presidential candidate after years of falsely passing himself off as someone of Mexican descent?

Fartacus: How is it possible that the man is apparently a serious Democratic presidential candidate after recounting fictional conversations with an imaginary friend called "TBone" and characterizing himself as a Roman slave uprising leader?

KamalHo: How is it possible that this person is apparently a serious "progressive" Democratic presidential candidate after she fucked her way into political office, job investment for years as a Pacific Heights socialite, and then abused her prosecutorial power to jail innocent people and override clear evidence exonerating a man falsely convicted of murder?

Castro: How is it possible that the man is apparently a serious Democratic presidential candidate after calling for open borders and demanding access to abortion - for MEN?

Biden: How is it possible that the man is apparently a serious Democratic presidential candidate after years of blatant, obvious, self-admitted corrupt interference in Ukraine, of all places?

Sanders: How is it possible that the man is apparently a serious Democratic presidential candidate after FIFTY YEARS of achieving nothing - absolutely nothing - as a backbencher socialist and mayor of a shitty little town in Vermont?

Buttfug: How is it possible that the man is apparently a serious Democratic presidential candidate after zero experience on the national stage?
Posted by: Lex || 01/10/2020 15:13 Comments || Top||

#5  Starting to look like Steyer and Bloomberg are going to pull enough votes to make for a brokered dem convention. And that means...
Posted by: M. Murcek || 01/10/2020 15:17 Comments || Top||

#6  she's BAAAACK!!
Posted by: Lex || 01/10/2020 15:21 Comments || Top||

#7  As sane as Hillary.
Posted by: Procopius2k || 01/10/2020 17:08 Comments || Top||


'The View' Audience Applauds Hitler After Revelation He Never Voted For Trump
[Babylon Bee] A gleeful Joy Behar reported to the audience of The View the startling revelation that Adolf Hitler never voted for Trump, causing the crowd to cheer wildly.

"This just in: it seems that Adolf Hitler never voted for Donald Trump!" Behar cried in ecstasy, causing the crowd to begin screaming in rapturous joy. "Shove that in your pipe and smoke it, bad orange man! Ha! You can't even get an evil Nazi dictator to fall for your shenanigans."

The studio audience chanted enthusiastically: "Adolf! Adolf! Adolf!" and held up signs with swastikas on them, overjoyed to discover that Adolf Hitler never once announced his public support for Trump's campaign.

"If it means owning Donald Trump, sure, I'll side with the Nazis," Behar said later.

RELATED: Trump's Approval Rating Among Terrorists Hits All-Time Low

Not the Bee: White Nationalist Richard Spencer: 'I Deeply Regret Voting for Donald Trump'
Posted by: Frank G || 01/10/2020 06:43 || Comments || Link || [3 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Just because it didn't happen doesn't mean it's not true.
Posted by: SteveS || 01/10/2020 12:07 Comments || Top||


Majority of Americans favor wealth tax on very rich: Reuters/Ipsos poll
WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - The idea of imposing a wealth tax on the richest Americans has elicited sharply divergent views across a spectrum of politicians, with President Donald Trump branding it socialist and progressive Democratic presidential contenders Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders prominently endorsing it.

But it may have broad public support, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll that found nearly two-thirds of respondents agree that the very rich should pay more.

Among the 4,441 respondents to the poll, 64% strongly or somewhat agreed that "the very rich should contribute an extra share of their total wealth each year to support public programs" - the essence of a wealth tax. Results were similar across gender, race and household income. While support among Democrats was stronger, at 77%, a majority of Republicans, 53%, also agreed with the idea.

A wealth tax is levied on an individual’s net worth, such as stocks, bonds and real estate, as well as cash holdings, similar in concept to property taxes. It is separate from an income tax, which applies to wages, interest and dividends, among other sources.

Asked in the poll if "the very rich should be allowed to keep the money they have, even if that means increasing inequality," 54% of respondents disagreed.
Posted by: Besoeker || 01/10/2020 06:39 || Comments || Link || [9 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Thou shall not covet -

You already have the top 10% paying over 70% of the taxes.

It's always easy to spend other people's money. How's that working in CA and NY? The more you seek to steal, the more they'll seek to keep as both of you corrupt the system to do so.
Posted by: Procopius2k || 01/10/2020 6:50 Comments || Top||

#2  Disdain for the accomplished among us. Fairness, equality, redistribution of wealth, typical communist tactics.
Posted by: Besoeker || 01/10/2020 6:54 Comments || Top||

#3  Personally, I favour capitalist taxes .i.e. Paying for government product at the market rate. Government's product is called title and it's mostly given away at far below value. To the establishment's great accumulation.
Posted by: Bright Pebbles || 01/10/2020 7:00 Comments || Top||

#4  how about wealth tax on the assholes in congress since they inexplicably become multi-millionaires with a relatively upper middle class salary.

turn 'serving' the people back into a hardship that was undertaken by those who were already accomplished in other areas of life, instead hollywood for ugly people
Posted by: Bob Grorong1136 || 01/10/2020 7:36 Comments || Top||

#5  lessee - Bloomberg, Steyer, Bezos, Soros.... I could perhaps be persuaded.....
Posted by: Mercutio || 01/10/2020 7:46 Comments || Top||

#6  oops...Little Billy Gates still hates me...add him to the list.
Posted by: Mercutio || 01/10/2020 7:48 Comments || Top||

#7  How about importing billionaires instead of welfare immigrants? Anyone (within reason) with a billion $ to invest in America automatically gets automatic citizenship. Let their dollars compete for American workers instead of American workers competing with 1+ million new immigrants every year for limited investment dollars.
Posted by: Gomez Ominter3435 || 01/10/2020 8:04 Comments || Top||

#8  Lemme see - we have a top marginal Federal tax rate of 37% which is levied on taxable incomes over $510,000 to which additional taxes may / will be assessed, like the Alternative Minimum Tax (which enforces a 26% effective tax rate), the Net Investment Income Tax (3.8% additional tax on certain incomes) and the Additional Medicare Tax (.9% additional tax on certain incomes). This, of course, leaves out state and local income tax levies.

Reuters - in what manner do we not already have a 'wealth tax', albeit an indirect one?
Posted by: Raj || 01/10/2020 9:59 Comments || Top||

#9  The problem I've got with this is that it creates a whole new taxing mechanism. And once you turn that tiger loose there's no particular reason to assume that it will only eat what I think of as "the richest." It's not hard to imagine a future Dem Congress defining "the richest" to mean "Republican with $2 in his pocket."

If you take it a step further and require stocks and other assets to be marked-to-market annually for tax purposes, there lies madness.
Posted by: Matt || 01/10/2020 11:28 Comments || Top||

#10  Fools. The French tried this recently and it was such a failure that the French scrapped it altogether.

We are led by morons.
Posted by: Lex || 01/10/2020 11:36 Comments || Top||

#11  require stocks and other assets to be marked-to-market annually for tax purposes

I'm afraid that may exercise happen sooner rather than later.
Posted by: Mullah Richard || 01/10/2020 11:38 Comments || Top||

#12  Along with 'nationalization' of 401Ks and other personal retirement plans.
Posted by: Mullah Richard || 01/10/2020 11:39 Comments || Top||

#13  Thou shall not covet

You wouldn't have the Democrat Party without covetousness and all the larceny that comes with it.
Posted by: Abu Uluque || 01/10/2020 12:04 Comments || Top||

#14  I wonder how many would been in favor if they were told, "Oh, by the way, in five years there's a 67% chance you will be considered 'very rich'?"
Posted by: Bobby || 01/10/2020 12:05 Comments || Top||

#15  #12 - spot on!

"Your retirement savings/pension/severance? You didn't build that! We need those 'investments' so you can have a reduced happy secure retirement under the New Social Security™"
Posted by: Frank G || 01/10/2020 12:18 Comments || Top||

#16  The French tried this recently and it was such a failure that the French scrapped it altogether.

What do you expect from people who gave you the phrase "Real Socialism was never tried"?
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 01/10/2020 12:21 Comments || Top||

#17  "Real Socialism" requires complete suspension of normal human behavior. Power has a tendency to corrupt. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Posted by: Procopius2k || 01/10/2020 13:03 Comments || Top||

#18  I wouldn't mind paying a bit more....if I knew the money was going to a worthy cause, not just pi**ed away like most of what we've already sent our Washington masters.
Posted by: Besoeker || 01/10/2020 13:48 Comments || Top||

#19  ^ Me neither, but this is not theoretical... we have real experience now, derived from California's ruinously high taxes. The result: the formerly world-class higher educational system in the state has gone downhill, the energy infrastructure is a joke, the roads aren't maintained, and the state has either failed utterly to move forward with new, large-scale infrastructure projects (e.g. de-salinization plants) or else thrown away billions on idiotic projects such as the Train to Nowhere.

We have seen the future of wealth tax / super-high income tax America.

It's Mexifornia, and it sucks.
Posted by: Lex || 01/10/2020 13:53 Comments || Top||

#20  Sooo stupid.
Raj, tell us about incorporating ourselves.
Posted by: Skidmark || 01/10/2020 17:45 Comments || Top||

#21  Skid (or anyone else) - if you're self-employed, you go to your state's Secretary of State's office and file Articles of Organization (fee in MA is $200) with some unique corporate name. Then go to the IRS and get an EIN (Employer's ID number) using the corporation's information (name & address). Take all that paperwork to your bank and open up a corporate checking account (in the corporation's name, of course). That's it.

Annual reports are then filed, well, annually. in MA the fee is $109 per annum.

Next step - file IRS Form 2553 with the IRS as soon as you can. This is a request for the corporation's shareholders to be taxed at the individual level, where (in general) tax rates are lower, and the individual's income is only subject to regular income tax, not the self-employment tax which is an additional (approx.) 14.2% of tax on that income. I saved one client $20K doing that.

Send an e-mail if you need anything else, or just ask on this / some other thread.
Posted by: Raj || 01/10/2020 19:44 Comments || Top||

#22  Sorry, that’s just nuts. Expect a letter from the IRS at some point.
Posted by: KBK || 01/10/2020 23:28 Comments || Top||


Home Front: WoT
Susan Rice Lies Again -- Obama and Soleimani
[American Thinker] Susan Rice was a little less ubiquitous this time around than during her infamous five-talk-show world tour repeating the lie that the Benghazi terrorist attack was the fault of an inflammatory video and not due to the criminal negligence of President Barack Hussein Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. But there she was again on MSNBC's "Rachel Maddow Comedy Hour" defending her former boss, this time against charges that President Trump cleaned up more of Obama’s Iran mess by terminating the life and reign of terror of Iranian Gen. and Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani:

The Obama administration wasn't presented with the opportunity to take out Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was killed by a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad early Friday, former national security adviser Susan Rice said Friday night.
"Had we been presented such an opportunity, what we would have done is weigh very carefully and very deliberately the risks versus the potential rewards," Rice told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow....

Rice questioned whether Trump made the right decision.

"So, if in fact the administration can be believed that there was indeed strong intelligence of an imminent threat against the United States that's being carried out by Soleimani and related militia then the question becomes [was] there more than one way to address that threat?" she told Maddow. "Was the only way to deal with it to kill Soleimani? Certainly, given his history and track record, he deserves his just rewards but the question is does that serve our interests? Does that make us more secure?"

Uh, yes it does, Susan. The Trump administration is certainly more believable than you and the Obama administration was in explaining why four Americans were abandoned to die in Benghazi, including Amb. Christopher Stevens. Because Trump killed Soleimani, the American embassy did not turn into another Obama-Clinton-Rice Benghazi tragedy.

The "reward" is that Soleimani can no longer ply his murderous trade and the families of the 600-plus Americans killed by his explosively-formed-penetrators can take some solace in his occupation of a special place in Hell. Those maimed by this butcher can take heart in that not enough pieces of him were found to have an open casket. And what were the risks? That those shouting "Death to America!" might try to kill us?

According to a 2018 report in the Daily Beast, Obama launched 186 drone strikes in Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan during just his first two years in office. If he wanted to, he could have found and killed him. He killed Osama bin Laden, and took credit for it, even though the legwork was done by the preceding Bush administration. Osama bin Laden was killed while Obama was president, not because he was president

Obama didn't want to kill Soleimani. He wanted the nuclear deal sellout with Iran, and killing Iran's Quds Force commanding general would not have advance the deal. Better for Obama to release $150 billion to the Iranians and fly in some $1.8 billion in cash and drop it on an Iranian tarmac in the middle of the night. Quid pro quo, anyone? Obama not only didn’t pursue Soleimani as a matter of policy, he provided Soleimani and Iran with a terrorist-and-weapons slush fund to play with.

The Obama administration actually killed a chance to get Soleimani in a move unbelievably callous and self-serving. As TownHall reports:


According to a January 2018 report from the Israel newspaper Haaretz, leaders in Israel were prepared to kill Soleimani back in 2015 but the Obama administration put an end to the plan. Just as Israel was "on the verge" of killing Soleimani, the Obama administration alerted Iranian officials about Israel's plans and their close tracking of the military leader....

It really isn't that surprising to learn that the Obama administration intervened to keep Soleimani alive. President Barack Obama never stood by Israel even though the country is considered the United States' greatest ally in the Middle East.

Tyler O'Neil at PJ Media noted an important tidbit about the revelation: "Yet the news that the Obama's administration prevented Israel from assassinating the Quds Force leader seems particularly significant, since the Obama administration also kept a list of approximately 500 American soldiers who were murdered by Iranian IEDs. Since the Quds Force spearheads Iran's operations outside the Islamic Republic, Soleimani would arguably be responsible for all of those deaths."
Posted by: Frank G || 01/10/2020 07:09 || Comments || Link || [6 views] Top|| File under: Govt of Iran Proxies

#1  Surreal. The people who helped bankroll Suleimani criticizing DJT for "making us less secure" - by taking out Suleimani.

Is there any more evidence needed that Zero and his crew were determined to aid and abet Iran?
Posted by: Lex || 01/10/2020 11:10 Comments || Top||

#2  These people need to just be honest: they hated Netanyahu and Israel, and they downplayed the threat posed to our interests by an imperialist Iran.

Their sympathies were obviously with Israel's antagonists, and their strategic calculus was that Islamic Iran was a useful counterweight to Israel in the region. What foolishness.

Their stupidity and incompetence are mind-boggling. They should STFU and exit the public square now.
Posted by: Lex || 01/10/2020 11:16 Comments || Top||

#3  They won't, Lex.

They won't.
Posted by: Mullah Richard || 01/10/2020 11:40 Comments || Top||

#4  They should STFU and exit the public square now.

They'll never quit while there is that much money and power at stake.
Posted by: Abu Uluque || 01/10/2020 12:39 Comments || Top||

#5  Thanks to whomever posted my all-time favorite Susan Rice graphic.
Posted by: Besoeker || 01/10/2020 13:46 Comments || Top||

#6  "Does that make us more secure?"

Doesn't getting rid of a mass murderer automatically make people more secure?
Posted by: Tom || 01/10/2020 13:49 Comments || Top||

#7  #4 They'll never quit while there is that much money and power at stake.

Right - foolishness doesn't completely explain this. There's likely significant graft involved.

We really need to see the offshore money flows related to the billions these fools sent to Iran.

I want to know which Swiss bank accounts are owned by the Iranian Foreign Minister and his crew, -- as well as any that Kerry, Rice and their family members own - and how much has flowed into them during the last 5-6 years.
Posted by: Lex || 01/10/2020 14:07 Comments || Top||

#8  Lying BITCH!
(Watched 13 hours)

Never had to channel c2 thru REMF!
Posted by: Skidmark || 01/10/2020 17:18 Comments || Top||


Olde Tyme Religion
Chillier Relations between the Vatican and Iran
[L’Espresso]
Posted by: Sheasing Ebbeaque5046 || 01/10/2020 00:00 || Comments || Link || [3 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Too late now for Pope Francis to kiss Suleimani's ring.

Snark O'The Day
Posted by: Gomez Ominter3435 || 01/10/2020 9:06 Comments || Top||

#2  Snark of the day?
Posted by: g(r)omgoru PB || 01/10/2020 9:50 Comments || Top||

#3  Yes, grom. That is a good one.
Posted by: Abu Uluque || 01/10/2020 12:39 Comments || Top||

#4  It isn't his ring he would kiss.
Posted by: Sgt.D.T. || 01/10/2020 13:29 Comments || Top||

#5  #1 Another vote for Snark o' the Day. Et cum spirii, tu tuo, bitch!
Posted by: Lex || 01/10/2020 13:56 Comments || Top||

#6  Why kiss a ring when you can kiss an icon of Karl Marx instead? Still, I vote for #1 for Snark Of The Day,
Posted by: magpie || 01/10/2020 17:40 Comments || Top||


Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Kindergarten lesson is unlikely to work for Iran, Israel in the long run
[JPost] - The United States learned the "kindergarten lesson" this week, something Israel has sharpened and perfected over the years in the way it formulates policy.

It goes something like this: if Hamas fires a rocket but it doesn’t hurt anyone then there is no reason to retaliate aggressively.

What’s the "kindergarten lesson?" Since everyone knows that if a rocket were to hit a kindergarten in Sderot, Kfar Aza or somewhere else along the southern border and cause extensive casualties, Israel would have no choice but to launch a large-scale military offensive. As long as that doesn’t happen though, Israel doesn’t have to.

The problem is that this is no way to formulate policy. If rocket fire is a threat, then it needs to be dealt with whether the rockets hit and hurt someone or don’t. A government shouldn’t wait for people to be killed before dealing with a threat. That is not a strategy.

A variation of this played out on Wednesday morning, when Iran fired more than a dozen ballistic missiles at bases that house US soldiers in Iraq.

While satellite footage showed damage at the al-Assad airbase, no US military personnel were injured or killed. Donald Trump made a point of stressing this in his speech at the White House the following afternoon, explaining why he was holding his fire, for now.

What that means though, is that if a barracks had been hit, and a number of soldiers had been killed, the response would have had to be different.

Is this a way to formulate strategy? Probably not.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 01/10/2020 06:42 || Comments || Link || [7 views] Top|| File under: Govt of Iran

#1  Is this a way to formulate strategy?

Old as the bible - an eye for eye, a tooth for a tooth, a brother for a brother. (adding the NYC descriptive "in spades")
Posted by: Procopius2k || 01/10/2020 8:32 Comments || Top||

#2  Iran is being dealt with thru diplomatic and economic measures as well as cyber activity and espionage.

If results can be achieved that way, why not?
Posted by: lord garth || 01/10/2020 10:54 Comments || Top||

#3  Sometimes letting the opponent save face and back down is a better option than continued escalation. Only time will tell if this was one of those times.
Posted by: rjschwarz || 01/10/2020 14:56 Comments || Top||


Ukrainian 752 Shoot-Down Mirrors Fate of TWA 800
[American Thinker] Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau is saying out loud what others have been thinking since the news broke that Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 crashed soon after taking off from the airport in Tehran ‐ namely, that "the plane was shot down by an Iranian surface-to-air missile," likely unintentionally.

According to the New York Times, American officials also had a "high level of confidence" that the Iranians destroyed the airliner by mistake. One official specifically cited two SA-15 missiles fired from an Iranian air defense system.

If Trudeau proves right, this will not be the first time an anxious military accidentally shot down a non-threatening commercial aircraft. On July 17, 1996, a comparable missile strike destroyed TWA 800 off the coast of Long Island shortly after the Boeing 747 took off from JFK.

We know why the Iranians were antsy earlier this week. Their military fired off multiple missiles late Tuesday night at American targets and were likely expecting retaliation. On July 17, 1996, the American military had reason to be on edge as well.

Two days before the start of the Atlanta Olympics, the Clinton administration had the U.S. Navy on the highest state of alert since the Cuban Missile crisis. In this hair-trigger environment, accidents could happen.

Accidents had happened before in such an environment. On July 3, 1988, at the tail end of the Iran-Iraq War, an Aegis cruiser in the Persian Gulf, the USS Vincennes, fired two Standard Missiles at a commercial Iranian Airbus, IR 655.

IR 655 had reached 13,500 feet, a final altitude almost identical to TWA 800's, when Capt. Will Rogers III gave the order to fire. Rogers and his crew had mistaken the ascending passenger jet with 290 people on board for a descending Iranian F-14, a fighter plane.

With the media's help, the truth about the Vincennes ultimately surfaced. With the media's help, the truth about TWA 800 was successfully buried, but here is what we have been able to dig up.
Posted by: Besoeker || 01/10/2020 06:24 || Comments || Link || [5 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Appears someone has connected the dots.

What kind of man is the Tinfoil hat man? Oh, he's just like any other man, only infinitely more suspicious of the government and media.

Posted by: Besoeker || 01/10/2020 6:27 Comments || Top||


#3  Prediction:

CNN Breaking - Susan Rice reports Tehran crash ruled 'pilot error.' Russian Tor AAA missile found at Ukraine crash site was being returned to Russia for routine maintenance.
Posted by: Besoeker || 01/10/2020 9:18 Comments || Top||

#4  What these flights have in common is they were international. Ad Ron Brown's fatal flight to the mix...
Posted by: M. Murcek || 01/10/2020 12:14 Comments || Top||

#5  "Canadian and European citizens killed in Trump's crossfire."
Posted by: swksvolFF || 01/10/2020 16:32 Comments || Top||


Peter Zeihan's take on the recent events in Iran: "It isn't every day you can say a missile strike means things are calming down, but hey, it's the Middle East. The rules are different."
Peter’s new book, Disunited Nations, is available for pre-Order now on IndieBound, Apple Books, Hudson Booksellers, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Google Play, or Kobo.

[Zeihan.com] It isn’t every day you can say a missile strike means things are calming down, but hey, it’s the Middle East. The rules are different.

Overnight Jan 2-3 the United States killed Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s go-to guy for using paramilitary tactics to spread Iranian influence throughout the Middle East. As Soleimani was the lynchpin for much of Iran’s regional strategy, Iran immediately swore revenge. According to Iranian state media, that revenge began last night (overnight Jan 7-8) when the Iranians sent a few missile barrages into Iraq, ostensibly targeting US troops.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Herb McCoy || 01/10/2020 00:00 || Comments || Link || [7 views] Top|| File under: Govt of Iran


Home Front: Culture Wars
Killing Civilization: The Great Equality Farce
[American Thinker] - For the West to live, equality must die. By the latter, I mean equality dogma, and a recent video I stumbled across again brought this issue to mind. It was part of an intersex wage-gap discussion that took place in Australia last year among renowned Canadian psychology professor Jordan Peterson, Labor Party politician Terri Butler, and other individuals on a program called Q&A. While as usual Peterson made good points and deserves credit for suffering fools gladly, a more fundamental problem should be addressed: Why assume that "equality" is any kind of good at all?
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 01/10/2020 06:51 || Comments || Link || [8 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Why assume that "equality" is any kind of good at all?

Mother nature doesn't. Then again, the same people who scream the science is settled and save Mother Gaia, don't care about truly natural aspects of evolution. Hint - its all about power.
Posted by: Procopius2k || 01/10/2020 8:26 Comments || Top||

#2  Equal misery for all! Except for those who are more equal than you and me.
Posted by: M. Murcek || 01/10/2020 15:19 Comments || Top||

#3  "All men are created equal."

After the sperm and egg, it all goes to shit.
Posted by: Skidmark || 01/10/2020 17:21 Comments || Top||

#4  Equality under (God's) law has always been the bedrock of Judaeo-Christian civilization.

Try living for a while in one of the many societies that do not enshrine equality under law, and you'll start to appreciate our culture's commitment to due process, equal treatment and equal opportunity.

Which of course are not synonymous with equal outcomes.
Posted by: Lex || 01/10/2020 17:39 Comments || Top||

#5  Try living for a while in one of the many societies that do not enshrine equality under law,

Ironically, that's where we're headed thanks to equalism.

After all, sharia law is as valid as Western jurisprudence, right?

Who are we to refuse the mass enrichment that will lead to its enshrinement?

We're on the verge of civilizing ourselves to death.
Posted by: charger || 01/10/2020 17:56 Comments || Top||



Who's in the News
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2Govt of Pakistan
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1Narcos
1al-Qaeda in North Africa
1Lashkar e-Taiba

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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.

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Meet the Mods
In no particular order...
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Two weeks of WOT
Fri 2020-01-10
  Iran invites American investigators to take part in the probe into PS752 plane incident that killed 176 people on board
Thu 2020-01-09
  U.S. Officials Confirm Iran Shot Down Ukrainian Airliner
Wed 2020-01-08
  Iran informs the United Nations and #UNSC that they ''do not seek war and warn of any military adventures"
Tue 2020-01-07
  Iraq Under Missile Attack From Iran
Mon 2020-01-06
  3 Americans Dead, 6 Aircraft Destroyed Or Damaged, Including A Rare Spy Plane, In #Kenya Attack
Sun 2020-01-05
  Iran Puts $80M Bounty on Trump's Head for Soleimani Hit
Sat 2020-01-04
  6 More Iran-Backed Leaders Zapped, incl. Shibl al-Zaidi, commander of Kataib Imam Ali
Fri 2020-01-03
  Lebanon Hizbullah: "It's war!"
Thu 2020-01-02
  Qassim Soleimani, head of Iran's elite Quds force, zapped in Iraq
Wed 2020-01-01
  Hashid Al Shaabi #PMF leader Abo Alaa Al Walae threatens to attack Embassies of #Saudi, #UAE, #Bahrain and others in #Baghdad.
Tue 2019-12-31
  Crowd storms US Embassy compound in Baghdad
Mon 2019-12-30
  Qais al-Khazali was a close associate of Qassem Suleimani - killed by USAF.
Sun 2019-12-29
  Iraq launches new military operation against ISIS 4 provinces
Sat 2019-12-28
  US civilian contractor killed and several US and Iraqi personnel wounded in Kirkuk rocket attack
Fri 2019-12-27
  Libya's Tripoli-based govt makes formal request for Turkish military support, Turkey gets ready to rock


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