May their prison stay be brief, so they can go to hell where they belong.
Seriously GAYS adopting kids??????????
[WRDW] A Walton County couple will spend the rest of their lives in jail without parole after being convicted of sexually abusing their two adopted children.
The Alcovy Judicial Circuit District Attorney’s Office, which oversees Walton and Newton counties, said William and Zachary Zulock were convicted of the following charges:
William Zulock: six counts of aggravated sodomy, three counts of aggravated child molestation, two counts of sexual exploitation of children and other sexual offenses.
Zachary Zulock: two counts of aggravated sodomy, three counts of aggravated child molestation, two counts of sodomy, three counts of sexual exploitation of children, two counts of pandering for a person under 18 and other sexual offenses.
William pleaded guilty to all the crimes in August. In October, Zachary also pled guilty to every charge except one, which he was found guilty of after a bench trial, the district attorney’s office said.
Both were sentenced by a judge last Thursday.
The Walton County Sheriff’s Office began investigating the case in July 2022, when the GBI’s Exploitation and Computer Crimes Unit contacted deputies about a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The tip was about suspected homemade child sexual abuse material that was uploaded to a Google account and connected to an IP address in Walton County.
Deputies searched the home associated with the IP address and found Hunter Lawless, who admitted to the crime and said he received the material from Zachary. Lawless pled guilty to sexual exploitation of children and was sentenced to 20 years, with the first 12 to be served in prison.
Investigators then searched the Zulock’s home, where they lived with two young boys they adopted a few years before. During an interview, both men admitted to sexually abusing the children, the district attorney’s office said.
Law enforcement reviewed two weeks of footage from the home’s interior surveillance cameras, which showed several acts of abuse in different parts of the house. Their cell phones also had graphic material and text and social media messages about the abuse, according to the district attorney’s office.
A cell phone review found that Zach had sent messages to Luis Vizcarro-Sanchez about the abuse. Vizcarro-Sanchez pled guilty to pandering for a person under 18. After also pleading guilty to stealing computers from his workplace, a Kroger in Loganville, he was sentenced to 16 years, with the first 15 to be served in prison.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Evgeniya Kondakova
[REGNUM] Elections are a domestic political matter, because they determine how the state will live in the future, but sometimes the outcome of the vote in one country has an impact on global processes. And it so happened that in the outgoing year such elections took place in a continuous series, one after another, turning the whole of 2024 into a continuous global plebiscite: a year of fateful choice.
The tone of the global election marathon was set by the election campaign in the United States. In 2024, millions of people in different parts of the world followed with interest the intrigue that lasted until the last minute.
HERE THE BULLET WHISTLED...
The 45th US President Donald Trump was eager to take revenge for his 2020 defeat, which he still does not admit. And none of his fellow party members could provide him with real competition in the primaries. Republican voters wanted Trump to reach the "final" of the race. Many Americans believe that this was not only what voters wanted, but also higher powers.
There was a debate in the Democratic camp about whether Joe Biden should run. According to the established political tradition in America, the incumbent president is re-elected for a second term, and his fellow party members do not interfere with this. However, the cognitive abilities of the White House occupant began to raise serious doubts.
No matter how much the White House tried to convince the public that the president was in good health and of sound mind, everything became obvious during the debates with Trump (by the way, this was the first time in US history that two people who held the presidential post met).
After the obvious fiasco of the Democratic Party, there was nothing left but to replace the candidate in the midst of the campaign - US Vice President Kamala Harris entered the race. Trump also risked leaving the election race following his sworn friend Biden, but then the very intervention of higher powers happened.
During a rally in Pennsylvania on July 13, two days before the party's national convention, he was assassinated, but the politician, by a lucky chance, turned his head to the side in time to read the inscriptions on the posters about illegal immigrants, otherwise the bullet would have hit the target.
As security tried to escort the former president off stage, he raised his fist into the air, shouting, "Fight!" The gesture later appeared on Republican campaign posters.
As a result, Trump won the election, receiving 312 electoral votes (with 270 needed), while Harris received 226. Thus, Trump became the second president in history to serve a second non-consecutive term; previously, this achievement was only achieved by Democrat Grover Cleveland, who led the country in 1885–1889 and 1893–1897.
There are several interesting electoral features to note about these elections.
The share of independent voters has grown to 43%. In addition, in 2024, Americans began actively voting early, and, surprisingly, this method was often chosen by Republicans, although they had previously been skeptical about it, considering it a source of fraud. This became one of the factors in Trump's victory, which is due personally to his daughter-in-law Lara, co-chair of the Republican National Committee (she left this post immediately after the election), who insisted that Republican voters take part in mail-in voting.
In addition to the presidential elections, the Democrats also lost the congressional elections - both chambers came under the control of the Republicans. After this fiasco, Biden practically did not appear in public, his fellow party members were indignant about this, because two months before the inauguration, Trump actually began to determine the political course of the United States.
Harris disappeared from the radar altogether.
RIGHT TURN IN THE EUROPEAN UNION
In Europe, the trend that took place last year continued – the strengthening of the positions of right-wing political forces, both at the EU level and in individual countries. However, such a turning point in this struggle as happened overseas did not occur in the Old World.
In the European Parliament elections in June, right-wing parties increased their representation, while the allies of individual country leaders suffered defeat.
Thus, the People's Party of Spain and the Freedom Party of Austria overtook the ruling parties. In France, the National Rally of Marine Le Pen won (34.05%), the Renaissance Party of President Emmanuel Macron finished second (14.44%).
In Germany, the top two places were taken by the largest opposition force, the CDU/CSU (30%) and Alternative for Germany (15.9%), while Chancellor Olaf Scholz's SPD came in third (13.9%).
However, the majority in the European Parliament remains with the mainstream centre-right European People's Party, so the right has not been able to radically change the course of the pan-European representative body. But voters have sent a powerful signal about their mood.
This signal resonated especially strongly in France, where it alarmed the leader of the Fifth Republic so much that Marcon made a decision that was unexpected for many: to dissolve parliament and call early elections in order to obtain a majority. As a result, this undertaking resulted in a deep political crisis for France.
The National Union emerged as the leader in the first round of elections, but by uniting against the right in the second round, the left-wing bloc New Popular Front and the government coalition Together for the Republic prevented them from coming to power.
This was followed by lengthy negotiations, due to which France did not have a prime minister for almost two months, and eventually they settled on the candidacy of the former Brexit negotiator on the EU side, Michel Barnier, representing the Republican party, which took 4th place in the elections. However, he only held the post for 90 days, during which he managed to approve the social part of the budget expenditures bypassing parliament. After his resignation, Macron appointed former French Justice Minister François Bayrou as prime minister.
The right was not allowed to come to power in Austria either, although it was the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) that won the parliamentary elections with 28.8%, the ruling Austrian People's Party took 2nd place (26.3%), and the Social Democratic Party of Austria took 3rd place (21.1%). The country's President Alexander van der Bellen instructed the three parties that received the most votes to conduct coalition negotiations.
FPÖ Chairman Herbert Kickl made it clear that the Freedom Party would only participate in a coalition government if he himself were chancellor, but the other political forces did not express their willingness to join a coalition with him, and so the head of state instructed the current chancellor, Karl Nehammer, to form a government.
A vote of no confidence was also announced in 2024 for the German government. The Traffic Light coalition fell apart due to internal squabbles, resulting in a minority government (SPD and Greens) in Germany, which had to coordinate any of its initiatives with the CDU/CSU. Germans' dissatisfaction with the quality of life grew, and, as a result, there was a lack of confidence in the government, and early elections were scheduled for February.
The leader of the CDU, Friedrich Merz, has a good chance of becoming the next chancellor, although in the latest poll, AfD co-chair Alice Weidel was the most popular politician in Germany. For the first time in its history, the Alternative will nominate a candidate for chancellor – it will be Weidel. And for the first time, the Alternative took first place in the state elections in Thuringia, and in Saxony it became second (after the CDU).
ELECTORAL CHAOS ON THE EU PERIPHERY
The history of the presidential elections in Romania also clearly demonstrates the fatigue with systemic forces and the thirst for change.
According to the results of the first round, to the surprise of many, the victory with 22.95% was won by independent candidate Calin Georgescu, a former second-rate official who entered the elections with slogans of strengthening national sovereignty, ending aid to Ukraine and restoring good relations with Russia.
He called Vladimir Putin "a man who loves his country."
But the fight for 2nd place was fought until the last counted ballot. As a result, the head of the center-right Union for the Rescue of Romania, Elena Lasconi (19.18%), who advocates for strengthening cooperation with NATO and the EU, as well as increasing defense spending in Ukraine, was 0.3% ahead of the current Prime Minister of Romania, Marcel Ciolacu from the Social Democratic Party, who was generally considered the favorite in the elections and at the same time an inconvenient figure for Brussels.
At first, the Constitutional Court of Romania approved the results of the first round of elections, but soon - after the secret services declassified documents that allegedly testified to the illegal financing of Georgescu's election campaign, hacker attacks on the country's digital infrastructure, and the notorious "interference" of Russia - it radically changed its decision and cancelled the results, ordering that the election campaign be held anew.
As the court ruling states, “one of the candidates used aggressive propaganda by over-exploiting the algorithms of social media platforms.” This is clearly Georgescu, who, in the absence of a campaign headquarters, campaigned primarily on TikTok.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov compared the situation in Romania with the 2004 elections in Ukraine, when instead of Yanukovych winning the majority of votes, a third round of elections was called, with Yushchenko emerging as the winner.
Naturally, there was no Russian interference in the Romanian elections, as confirmed by the investigative journalism portal snoop.ro. The National Tax Administration Agency of Romania established that Georgescu's election campaign was financed by the National Liberal Party of Romania, not Moscow.
INTOLERABLE WOMEN OF THE POST-SOVIET SPACE
And in the post-Soviet space, current female presidents are holding on to their posts with all their might.
On October 26, parliamentary elections were held in Georgia. There, the ruling Georgian Dream – Democratic Georgia, which advocates traditional values, national sovereignty and pragmatic relations with Russia, set itself the task of obtaining a constitutional majority (113 out of 150 seats, or ¾). It was opposed by a whole bunch of pro-Western opposition parties that sought to overthrow the Dream, which had been in power since 2012.
As a result, Georgian Dream won for the fourth time in a row, gaining 53.93% of the votes (thus receiving 89 mandates, which is significantly less than the target of 113).
The opposition did not recognize the results of the vote and staged mass riots in Tbilisi. The President of Georgia herself, French citizen Salome Zurabishvili, called for protests in protest of the ruling party's victory and demanded that a new vote be held.
On December 14, presidential elections were held in Georgia, and according to new rules: the head of state is now elected not by citizens directly, but by a panel of 300 people (all 150 members of the Georgian parliament and 150 representatives of local authorities, including members of the highest representative bodies of the Abkhaz and Adjara Autonomous Republics), and not for six, but for five years.
The opposition did not put forward its candidate for them, and the only contender for the highest post was former MP and earlier football player Mikheil Kavelashvili, who was nominated by the Georgian Dream. As a result, he gained the necessary 2/3 of the electoral votes for victory (or 224, to be exact) and is due to take office on December 29. However, Zurabishvili does not intend to give up power.
So the republic's authorities are left with two options: either to put up with Zurabishvili's presence, or to use force and literally remove her from the presidential chair. Dual power is looming on the horizon, with some TV channels planning to broadcast Zurabishvili's New Year's greetings, while others are going to broadcast Kavelashvili's.
In Moldova, Maia Sandu and Alexandru Stoianoglo are competing for the presidential post.
Sandu, who lived in the United States while serving as an adviser to the executive director of the World Bank, advocates rapprochement with the EU and NATO and is an outspoken supporter of Ukraine. Stoianoglo, a native of Gagauzia, led the Moldovan Prosecutor General's Office to make major strides in investigating the "theft of the century" — the theft of $1 billion from Moldova's banks shortly after a Western-backed coalition of pro-European parties came to power in 2009.
In the first round, Sandu won by a small margin, but in the second round, the total votes of the opposition electorate should have been enough for Stoianoglo to win. But the young lady found a way to get out of the situation. Having lost at polling stations located in Moldova itself, she snatched the overall victory thanks to the votes received at more than 200 polling stations opened in EU countries. In Russia, only two foreign polling stations were opened.
De facto, following the election results, Sandu became the president of the diaspora, and Stoianoglo the president of Moldova, as local media and social media users wrote, but de jure Maia remained in the presidential chair.
THE QUESTION OF LEGITIMACY
It so happened that 2024 will be the year of presidential elections in both countries involved in the Ukrainian conflict, although they are elected for different terms (in Russia for six years, in Ukraine for five).
The outcome of the vote in Russia was predictable - Vladimir Putin was re-elected for another term, but another aspect is important here - he gained 87.28%, and this is the highest result for all the elections in which he participated since 2000. 76,277,708 people voted for the current president. This indicates that the overwhelming majority of citizens trust the head of state and approve of the course he is implementing both within the country and in the foreign policy arena.
u Scholz, Biden and Macron." How Germany elected the Russian president
And what about Ukraine? Nothing.
Volodymyr Zelensky, citing martial law in the country, cancelled the elections, arguing that voting could not be held under such conditions. However, not everyone agrees with this interpretation.
"The law prohibits holding any elections during martial law. The Constitution of Ukraine regulates this situation with regard to parliament. According to Article 83, if the parliamentary term ends during martial law, the parliamentary powers continue until the new convocation. But there is no such clause with regard to the president," emphasizes Ivan Brikulsk, an expert in comparative constitutional law.
Putin said the same thing, adding that the only legitimate authority in Ukraine now is the Verkhovna Rada and its chairman Ruslan Stefanchuk
Zelensky has no plans to hold a vote until the fighting ends, but says he will win the next election by a landslide.
However, in December last year, the head of state (then still legitimate) did not think so, Ukrainian media reported. The presidential office cancelled the elections, seeing a threat to the dictator's rating from the increasingly popular commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Valeriy Zaluzhny, although he had never expressed presidential ambitions. He was quickly exiled to an honorable exile in Great Britain, violating a number of diplomatic procedures during his appointment as ambassador.
The 2024 global election cycle has clearly demonstrated the main political divide of our time between conservative forces that strive for national sovereignty and peaceful coexistence, and liberals who have placed their bets on war to maintain their own power.
The "icon" of global liberals has become Zelensky, an illegitimate president who cancelled elections in his own country and banned peace talks. Liberals in Romania are clearly following his example, having cancelled election results they didn't like without any reason, and in Georgia, simply refusing to admit defeat. After all, it turns out that this is now possible.
In the US, they tried to kill a candidate who was unpopular with the liberal elites, and if they succeeded, a candidate who had not gone through any preliminary nomination procedures could have come to power.
Against this backdrop, the elites in “Old Europe” are prepared to sacrifice political stability in order to prevent the most popular politicians in society, who advocate sovereignty, traditional values and peaceful coexistence, from coming to power.
The coming year 2025 should tip the scales in favor of one of the two global political camps.
#5
Just another potential ten wasted seconds on the automatic phone help menu.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
12/28/2024 13:20 Comments ||
Top||
#6
#3 Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan are most likely red and have as much 'love' for Ottawa as most flyover country in the States has for the Swamp.
[YouTube] This is an in-depth and wide-ranging discussion with former Assistant Secretary of the Army Casey Wardynski. Everything is covered from the highest-ranking generals who worked against President Trump in his first term, to the failures of the military response to the storm disaster in Western North Carolina, to what the DOD’s participation in January 6 might have been.
[IsraelTimes] Rare raid in Jenin aims to bring law and order to a hotbed of terrorism, while trying to position Ramallah to take over governance in Gaza after the war there ends
Gunfire has rung out for days from the West Bank’s Jenin refugee camp. But this time, it’s not Israeli forces that are facing off against gangs. It is the forces of the Paleostinian Authority clashing with Paleostinian button men.
The Paleostinian Authority, which administers parts of the West Bank, launched a rare crackdown earlier this month that has sparked one of the worst armed confrontations between Paleostinians in years. The PA says it wants to bring law and order to what’s long been a hotbed of terrorism and a place where it has little control.
Its ability to contain terror groups there will reverberate far beyond the West Bank. The Paleostinian Authority wants to position itself to take over governance in the Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... Strip once the war there between Israel and Hamas ..a regional Iranian catspaw,... ends, though Jerusalem objects to this. But confronting Paleostinians at a time when many view the authority as a subcontractor for Israel could deepen divisions in Paleostinian society.
Here is a look at the days of fighting between Paleostinians in the West Bank:
FIGHTING RAGES ON THE STREETS AND AT LEAST 5 ARE DEAD
Earlier this month, PA security forces stormed into Jenin refugee camp, a restive terrorist stronghold, and began a crackdown against gangs.
Fighting has raged in the streets of the camp, and armored cars are seen patrolling. Paleostinian security forces have taken over part of a hospital, using it as a base and shooting from inside, according to the United Nations ...aka the Oyster Bay Chowder and Marching Society... At least one gunman from the Paleostinian Islamic Jihad ...created after many members of the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood decided the organization was becoming too moderate. Operations were conducted out of Egypt until 1981 when the group was exiled after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat. They worked out of Gaza until they were exiled to Lebanon in 1987, where they clove tightly to Hezbollah. In 1989 they moved to Damascus, where they remain a subsidiary of Hezbollah... terror group and three security force members have been killed, including a captain in the intelligence services whose death was announced Wednesday, according to PA security forces. About 50 people have been arrested.
At least two uninvolved civilians have been killed and some maimed. The fighting prompted the main UN agency for Paleostinian refugees and their descendants, UNRWA, to suspend its services, including schooling. The violence has disrupted safe access for Paleostinians to other services, including water and health. It also has complicated the restoration of services destroyed in previous Israeli raids of the camp.
THE JENIN REFUGEE CAMP EXPLAINED
The urban, built-up refugee camp in the northern West Bank houses Paleostinians whose families were displaced in the 1948 War of Independence surrounding Israel’s creation. It has long been a center for Paleostinian terrorism and a bastion of armed struggle against Israel. The terror groups Islamic Jihad and Hamas operate freely there, and its streets are regularly lined with posters depicting slain fighters as deaders for the Paleostinian cause.
The Paleostinian Authority, which administers the main Paleostinian population centers of the West Bank as part of interim peace agreements with Israel from the 1990s, has little presence in Jenin. Many people view the PA forces with suspicion and see them as serving Israel’s interests because of security coordination that has facilitated Israel’s own crackdowns on Paleostinian terrorism.
The camp and the adjacent city of Jenin have long been targets of Israel in its stated bid to stamp out terrorism. Since the start of the ongoing war against Hamas, sparked by the terror group’s October 7, 2023, massacre, Israel has raided or carried out Arclight airstrike ...KABOOM!... s in Jenin multiple times.
According to the PA health ministry, more than 716 West Bank Paleostinians have been killed in that time. The IDF says the vast majority of them were button men killed in exchanges of fire, rioters who clashed with troops or holy warriors carrying out attacks.
During the same period, 42 people, including Israeli security personnel, have been killed in terror attacks in Israel and the West Bank. Another six members of Israeli security forces were killed in festivities with terror operatives in the West Bank.
RESTORING ORDER — AND LOOKING TO POSTWAR GAZA
According to PA security forces spokesperson Brig. Gen. Anwar Rajab, the raid is meant to impose law and order and restore peace and security. The troops were focused on "eradicating" Iran-backed terror groups that were trying to incite "chaos and anarchy," he added. The raid will end when those goals are reached, according to the security forces.
But the raid is also shining a spotlight on the Paleostinian Authority’s ability to impose order and security in a restive area. With no clear vision for who will administer postwar Gaza, the raid could convince skeptics that the authority has what it takes to rule the coastal enclave. PA President the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas ...aka Abu Mazen, a graduate of the prestigious unaccredited Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow with a doctorate in Holocaust Denial. While no Yasser Arafat, he has his own brand of evil, just a little more lowercase....> is considering an agreement with Hamas that would create a committee of politically independent technocrats to administer the Gaza Strip after the war. The committee would report to him.
US President Joe The Big Guy Biden ...46th president of the U.S. We hold these truths to be self-evident. All men and women created ... by the — you know — you know, the thing... ’s administration sees a rehabilitated Paleostinian Authority as the best option to govern and secure postwar Gaza. The US has for years invested heavily in training the PA’s security forces, and the administration has seen its reentry into Gaza, after being routed by Hamas in 2007, as a feasible replacement for Hamas.
Israel rejects any role for Hamas in Gaza after the war the terror group started last year, and has also said it does not trust Abbas’s PA to run the enclave.
The incoming Donald Trump ...The Hero of Butler, Pennsylvania... administration has not yet laid out its vision for postwar Gaza, but Trump’s first term was overwhelmingly supportive of Israel’s positions.
Paleostinians are not strangers to divisions within their society, with the most prominent the rift between Hamas and Abbas’s Fatah party. The parties fought bloody street wars in Gaza before Hamas forced Fatah out of the territory, and the sides have failed to reconcile since.
Since then, the Fatah-dominated Paleostinian Authority has tried to diminish Hamas’s influence in the West Bank, often with Israel’s help.
Reeling from the years-long internal rift, Paleostinians have staged general strikes and protests calling for unity. But the raid could deepen the perception of the Paleostinian Authority as a controller of Israel’s desires and potentially undermine any popular support for it to return to effectively rule Gaza.
[IsraelTimes] Security chiefs mistrust Syria’s new rulers and don’t think Hezbollah is finished; assess Iran will seek the bomb but wait to see how Trump will act; favor a hostage deal, for moral and practical reasons
Almost 15 months after Hamas ..the braying voice of Islamic Resistance®,... invaded, a catastrophic Israeli political and military complacency regarding this country’s fundamental safety in the region has now been replaced by a recognition that every front is potentially unstable.
While much of the international community has rushed to embrace Syria’s new jihadist leadership, for instance, Israel is not merely wary, but has been proactive in minimizing the military consequences should the rebels’ ostensible congeniality prove only as superficial as their suits. Hence the ongoing Arclight airstrike ...KABOOM!... s on weapons stores and infrastructure, and the IDF’s seizure and retention of the border buffer zone.
Hezbollah is down, but is regarded as emphatically not out. There is no expectation in Israel that the terror group will now skulk off into oblivion, nor any confidence that internal change in Leb ...The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozen flavors of Christians, plus Armenians, Georgians, and who knows what else?... will compel it to do so. Rather, the assessment is that Hezbollah will work assiduously to rebuild its capabilities and to revive efforts to attack — including to infiltrate across the border — however many years this may take. Last month’s ceasefire is holding for now, but the IDF is bolstering its defenses on the border.
The threat du jour, posed by the Iran's Houthi sock puppets ...a Zaidi Shia insurgent group operating in Yemen. They have also been referred to as the Believing Youth. Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi is said to be the spiritual leader of the group and most of the military leaders are his relatives. The legitimate Yemeni government has accused the them of having ties to the Iranian government. Honest they did. The group has managed to gain control over all of Saada Governorate and parts of Amran, Al Jawf and Hajjah Governorates. Its slogan is God is Great, Death to America™, Death to Israel, a curse on the Jews They like shooting off... ummm... missiles that they would have us believe they make at home in their basements. On the plus side, they did murder Ali Abdullah Saleh, which was the only way the country was ever going to be rid of him... s in Yemen ...an area of the Arabian Peninsula sometimes mistaken for a country. It is populated by more antagonistic tribes and factions than you can keep track of... , underlines the multiplicity of challenges for an Israeli security establishment — notably including an intelligence corps — that has limited resources. New Defense Minister Israel Katz threatened on Tuesday that Israel will target Houthi chiefs, but the fact is that Israeli intel has, until now, hardly been focused on providing the information and assessing the means for carrying out any such missions.
Early in this war, Israeli security chiefs were wont to say that the Houthis were beyond anyone’s control — and that includes their Iranian backers and suppliers — and shrug helplessly when asked how Israel would be able to deter them. With millions of Israelis now forced to dash for the bomb shelters several nights a week, the military echelons know they can’t afford to shrug any longer. More, and more potent, Israeli strikes are in the offing, but there is no great confidence that these will stop the Houthi fire. As my colleague Lazar Berman writes here, a wider international coalition would be more likely to succeed.
In the West Bank, meanwhile, there has been a relative decline in terrorist attacks and attempted attacks, and the IDF is watching as the Paleostinian Authority intensifies its activities against terrorist cells in Jenin. Unlike many key figures in Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition, the military does not see an Israeli interest in the collapse of the PA, but neither does it trust the PA.
The lightning-fast ouster of Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Supressor of the Damascenes... ’s regime in Syria has also underlined that all bets are potentially off even in the apparently fairly stable regimes in Israel’s two other neighboring states, Egypt and especially Jordan, with which it has maintained peace treaties for decades.
The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the occupiers of Greek Asia Minor... , too, has entered more deeply into Israeli calculations — because of the intensity of President His Enormity, Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdogan the First ...Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him. It's a sin, a shame, and a felony to insult the president of Turkey. In Anatolia did Recep Bey a stately Presidential Palace decree, that has 1100 rooms. That's 968 more than in the White House, 400 more than in Versailles, and 325 more than Buckingham Palace, so you know who's really more important... ’s loathing of Israel and the strength of his military. Where Ankara is concerned, the Israeli mindset might best be summed up as cooperation when possible, mistrust at all times.
Regarding Iran, the Israeli assessment would now seem to be that the ayatollahs — exposed and humiliated by the radical degradation of their two main proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas — are likely to try to attain nuclear weapons. Israel further appears to believe that it knows what Iran ...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate JewsZionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol... is doing or not doing when it comes to weaponization.
Here, as on many of these active and potential war fronts, Israel would appear to be waiting for the return to office of US President-elect Donald Trump ...Oh, noze! Not him!... . If all else fails, Israel has always said it will do whatever it takes to prevent Iran from attaining nuclear weapons. But as the New York Times
...which still proudly claims Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize... ’ astute and well-informed David Sanger noted in an overview on Tuesday, "destroying Iran’s nuclear infrastructure would be extremely difficult for Israel, unless Mr. Trump authorized the kind of help that his predecessors refused to offer."
A GAZA TURNING POINT
Trump’s attitude to the region will also shape Israel’s ongoing policy in Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... , where 100 hostages, unthinkably, remain in captivity 446 days after Hamas and other terror groups invaded and kidnapped them while slaughtering 1,200 others across southern Israel.
The IDF continues to seek intel and attempt to create opportunities for rescue operations, but the murder of six hostages by their captors at the end of August would appear to have been a turning point where such efforts are concerned.
As its own probe, published on Tuesday, confirmed, the IDF did not have concrete, real-time information regarding those six hostages and, indeed, incorrectly and fatally assessed that no hostages were being held in the specific Tel Sultan area of Rafah. The determination to ensure no repetition of this tragedy radically constrains the IDF’s ability to attempt hostage rescues, and also radically constrains the IDF’s ability to battle Hamas in even the general Gaza areas where it knows or assesses hostages may be held.
As things stand, therefore, the IDF is focused on tackling Hamas guerrilla forces in the far north of Gaza, from where almost all civilians have been evacuated, ahead of a potential pilot project under which one or more private American security firms might come in and take responsibility for aid distribution. Except that, for now, there is no sign of this happening.
Extremely limited in their operations in southern Gaza, security chiefs see a wide Israeli interest in a hostage deal — in line with the formal goals of the war; the sacred obligation to the hostages, their families and the nation; and the potential for more forceful efforts to prevent a Hamas return anywhere in Gaza once the hostages are returned. To put it brutally, the sooner that all or even almost all of the living hostages are released, the greater the IDF’s capacity to step up operations against Hamas in southern Gaza. Unfortunately, this is an equation that Hamas understands all too well.
THE VITAL STATE INQUIRY
One final word: It is outrageous that, almost 15 months after Hamas was able to burst across the border, no state commission of inquiry has yet been established, much less issued its findings, into what went wrong and who was to blame.
The prime minister has, to date, managed to prevent the establishment of such a probe because he knows that its conclusions and recommendations would prove politically devastating for him. The abiding failure to shed the fullest light on the catastrophe, and thus, crucially, to maximize the ability of the political and security leadership to prevent further such disasters, however, is deeply dangerous and potentially devastating for all of Israel.
#2
This may be stupid, but it looks like Houthi missiles would have to go over Saudi airspace to reach Israel. SA was fighting a proxy war against the Houthi. Seems as if they would not want low quality Iranian missiles flying across their skies on a regular basis.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
12/28/2024 12:57 Comments ||
Top||
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.
..a regional Iranian catspaw,...
..the braying voice of Islamic Resistance®,...
