[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] he jihadist militias fighting the Libyan Army in Benghazi, which are in complete control of Derna, are in an alliance known as the Libyan Dawn which is dominated by the Ansar al-Sharia ...a Salafist militia which claims it is not part of al-Qaeda, even though it works about the same and for the same ends. There are groups of the same name in Libyaand Yemen, with the Libyan versions currently most active. Tunisia's Shabaab al-Tawhid started out an Ansar al-Sharia and changed its name in early 2014. It still uses the old name now and then, probably because the stationery's not all used up and the web site hasn't expired yet... militia which has now formally announced its affiliation to 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.... of ISIS, where they started flying the ISIS flag even before the formal announcement of affiliation.
Embassy attacks
This past week, boom-mobiles went kaboom! outside the UAE and Egyptian embassies in Tripoli ...a confusing city, one end of which is located in Lebanon and the other end of which is the capital of Libya. Its chief distinction is being mentioned in the Marine Hymn... - both embassies had been evacuated when Moslem Bruderbund led militias seized the Libyan capital last summer after the Brotherhood and allied Islamists' poor showing in the elections of a new parliament back in June. So, the bombings were basically symbolic gestures to protest Egypt and the UAE's strong support for the government formed by the recently elected parliament after it fled to Tobruk.
It is assumed that the Moslem Bruderbund-dominated alliance of militias in control of Tripoli known as Libyan Shield were responsible for the symbolic attacks against the two embassies.
There was nothing symbolic in the case of a suicide kaboom and a series of boom-mobiles this past week in Tobruk and neighboring towns which resulted in a number of dead and maimed. Since the Libyan Shield militias are still fighting the Libyan Army which is loyal to the legitimate government in Tobruk in towns located close to Tripoli, it is assumed that Libyan Shield is also responsible for the attacks in Tobruk.
But the jacket wallah and those who set off the boom-mobiles in Tobruk could have also been sent to Tobruk by the Libyan Dawn. Both alliances are fighting against the Libyan Army supporting the legitimate government in Tobruk.
Condemning the attacks
The U.N. Security Council strongly condemned the attacks against the embassies in Tripoli as did the United Nations ...where theory meets practice and practice loses... Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) which declared, according to a U.N. blurb, that it was "greatly concerned" about the beheadings, but it continues to talk about the need for political dialogue between all parties.
This curious sort of moral equivalence has been encouraged by a ruling of the Libyan Supreme Court two weeks ago that the legitimate parliament in Tobruk was unconstitutional. The Court had remained in Tripoli and when it announced it would hear a case challenging the elected parliament the legitimate government made the mistake of participating in the proceedings. This was naive on the part of the government for the Court was now meeting in an environment in which any ruling against Libyan Shield could result in arrest or even liquidation.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/19/2014 00:00 ||
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Link ||
[11126 views]
Top|| File under: Arab Spring
#1
"So what ever happened to that Responsibility to Protect, Susan?"
#2
Actually g(r)om, they more resemble a middle-school (jr high) clique. You can't sit at our table, we don't talk to you, etc.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
11/19/2014 7:42 Comments ||
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#3
Read the whole article.
It also is a near perfect description of Muslims.
If I want it, it’s mine.
If I give it to you and change my mind later, it’s mine.
If I can take it away from you, it’s mine.
If I had it a little while ago, it’s mine.
If it’s mine it will never belong to anyone else no matter what.
If we are building something together, all the pieces are mine.
If it looks like mine, it’s mine.
It also speaks of the left's obsession with feces...do I need to explain THAT correlation?
#6
g(r)omgoru, as Churchill is claimed to have said:
"If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain."
[DAWN] "SLAVERY is a weed that grows in every soil," said philosopher-politician Edmund Burke in the 18th century. In every soil and in every age, it seems. Even today, as space probes land on comets and synthetically bioengineered body parts are implanted into patients, slavery -- that most wretched of human conditions -- continues to hold millions in thrall.
According to the 2014 Global Slavery Index, nearly 36 million men, women and kiddies live in circumstances that can be defined as 'modern slavery'. These include debt bondage, forced labour, prostitution, forced marriage, etc. The report, by an Australian human rights ...which are usually open to widely divergent definitions... group called the Walk Free Foundation, presents a ranking of 167 countries. Its findings reveal that the concentration of slavery varies greatly: 71pc of the world's slaves are to be found in 10 of the countries surveyed. India tops the list where numbers are concerned, with 14 million enslaved individuals, followed by China (3.2m) and Pakistain (2.1m). In terms of percentage of total population, Mauritania leads the ranking with 4pc, while Pakistain with 1.13pc comes in at number six.
Much of that 1.13pc -- or two million plus -- of our population toils every day under inhuman conditions in brick kilns, in fields, in factories etc across the country, deprived of even the most basic rights, in order to render the lives of the rest more comfortable. It is not that Pakistain lacks legislation to address the issue. Its Constitution prohibits slavery, forced labour and child labour. A law banning bonded labour, the most common form of slavery in Pakistain, has been in force since 1992. There also exists legislation against practices such as forced marriage. The problem, as always, is that of powerful lobbies who profit from the fruits of slavery, and the cultural acceptance of 'traditions' such as child marriage; this, coupled with widespread poverty and lack of awareness, allows the privileged to exploit the weak. For, in the words of former slave and renowned abolitionist Frederick Douglass: "Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave."
Posted by: Fred ||
11/19/2014 00:00 ||
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[11122 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
#2
Obviously wrong. They don't even discuss the American South. Just ask Sharpton or J Jackson.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
11/19/2014 7:39 Comments ||
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#3
These include debt bondage, forced labour, prostitution, forced marriage, etc.
And herein lies part of the problem. As with so many things, the do-gooders/lefties OVER sell the size and nature of the problem (see also, rape on campus, racism) to the point where it becomes no big deal.
But if you don't over-blow the problem you might actually solve it and then what would you do (see Jackson, Sharpton, et al)?
I'm not downplaying the problems listed above but they are not all the same and mostly don't fit the traditional definition of slavery.
[DAWN] ONCE described as the "epicentre of terrorism", Miranshah ... headquarters of al-Qaeda in Pakistain and likely location of Ayman al-Zawahiri. The Haqqani network has established a ministate in centered on the town with courts, tax offices and lots of madrassas... is now reduced to mere rubble. The long row of hotels that had sprung up over the last few years and had been used by foreign murderous Moslems as rest and relaxation centres have been blown up by air strikes and heavy artillery fire.
Sitting in the midst of the destruction is a sprawling mosque, which was more than a place of worship. A labyrinth of rooms in the basement served as the joint headquarters of the various terrorist groups operating from the area. Soldiers stood guard on top of the half-destroyed structures. Although the town and the surrounding villages are now under full control of the army, small bands of murderous Moslems are still lurking around in the hills.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
11/19/2014 00:00 ||
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[11124 views]
Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in Pakistan
#1
The last paragraph says it all re Pakistan's main problem!
Posted by: Paul D ||
11/19/2014 8:47 Comments ||
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News for you Mike: Lebanon and Libya also no longer exist, and for the same reasons Syria no longer exists. Iraq is trying really, really hard to follow Syria down that sewer pipe, and Egypt is taking notes...
The tyrannical regime of Bashar al-Assad governs parts of what’s left of it. The psychopathic Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) controls another large swath. Small scraps of territory are ruled by sundry other militias which, more likely than not, will eventually be absorbed by Assad or ISIS.
Up north the Kurds have carved out a proto state of their own which they call Rojava. It is being violently squeezed by ISIS from the south, and it’s jammed up against the wall of the Turkish border to the north. It is split into three besieged non-contiguous cantons, the most endangered of which is based around the city of Kobani.
Yet Syrian Kurdistan, spliced and diced though it may be, stubbornly continues existing...
Saving or fixing all of Syria is impossible, but a partial victory is better than nothing. If you doubt this, consider how Seoul would look today if North Korea had swallowed the south at the end of the Korean War.
What’s happening in Syria is an echo of what happened in Iraq during the 1990s and 2000s. The Kurds first broke away from Saddam Hussein’s totalitarian rule, then shored up their defenses against Al Qaeda in Iraq, the precursor to ISIS that the Kurds in Syria are facing today.
What the Kurds achieved in Iraq is permanent. Never again will that region be lorded over by Baghdad. Its independence from Iraq has been achieved in all but name. It’s a fait accompli. Nor will ISIS ever control it. The Kurds will fight ISIS with kitchen knives and even their own teeth if they have to...
There is nothing holy about borders in the Middle East or anywhere else. Kosovo recently broke off from Serbia. Scotland nearly split from the United Kingdom earlier this year. Abkhazia told Georgia to sod off. Almost everyone on earth thinks the Palestinians will have their own state in the West Bank and Gaza at some point.
The Czechs and the Slovaks managed to get an amiable divorce and even worked out the alimony. It doesn't always have to be bloody...
The only plausible things standing in the way of a permanent de-facto independent Kurdish state called Rojava at this point are ISIS, the Assad regime, and the Turks. Two of those three will eventually cease to exist.
There can be no peace in the Eastern Mediterranean until the Assad regime and the ISIS are both erased from the face of the earth, but the Kurdish regions can be saved and strengthened right now and used as beachheads—or at the very least buffer zones—in the future.
And then -- the Turks? Tell the Kurds how you're (more correctly, they're) going to manage that one...
#1
It is being reported today that an ISIS unit was told they were going to Kobane. 9 members of the unit deserted and fled across the border to Turkey.
#2
Kurds need the Kurdish areas in Turkey incorporated into their territory. And that's what has Erdogan pissing his harem pants. a large minority of Turkey's population is Kurdish, including a majority in the SE part of the country.
#3
I think that the Turks are fanning these flames with a long view to a reestablishment of an Ottoman type state encompassing parts of Syria, Lebanon and Iraq. What happens to the Kurds then???
Of course Obola probably sees himself taking over the Sultan's role.
#4
a large minority of Turkey's population is Kurdish, including a majority in the SE part of the country.
About a quarter of the national population, as I recall, but the quarter with double the birthrate of the rest of the country, ie. well above replacement instead of below replacement. All they need do is wait a generation or so, and they'll be the majority. That is what has Erdogan, etc.
#5
What happens to the Kurds when Turkey re-establishes the empire?
Why, what happens to every minority in an empire. Fit in or else.
The Hapbsburgs, the French, the Hohenzollerns, the Russians, and so on ran empires that way. There was a vested interest in ensuring that minorities headed the rule of the Czar/Kaiser/King, and the King has a vested interest in ensuring that all the minorities managed tolerably.
That's what would happen if the Turks reestablished the borders of the late Ottoman Empire -- say to include most of Lebanon, Syria and upper Iraq. A 21st century Empire can't oppress too badly, especially close to Europe (note Putin's cunning and calculation here). But it will have ways to ensure that the minorities behave or else.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/19/2014 10:59 Comments ||
Top||
#6
Doc Steve, in theodern era, the conform or else doesn't work against such a large number and large segment of a society, especially if the have support over a border in a sanctuary area like Iraq Kurdistan. Also the Kurds are long established as a rebel or revolutionary force, well organized. The turks cannot stop them short of Saddam style nerve gas and genocide actions.
The Kurds themselves are already planning for the Turks. Not saying much more than mountainous terrain is very helpful for hiding stockpiles etc
#7
The turks cannot stop them short of Saddam style nerve gas and genocide actions.
Genocide is a long-established method of asserting Turkish rule. One of the "fit in or else" rules.
#8
On the other hand, the vast number of Han Chinese have a historically vested interest in seeing that Middle Kingdom minorities kowtow to the Dragon Throne. Tens of millions of Han Chinese have perished miserably when that interest was not asserted properly, and they do remember. It's not all about oligarchies.
#9
They rise from the mud, too. The newest generation of Kurds, are young men and women, fearless, armed and smiling all the way to liberty or death.
A young woman shot in the abdomen in Kobane who was taken to a recovery location across the border in Turkey said "the hills around Kobane are liberated. If I survive I will return to fight and die in Kobane." She died of her wounds the next day.
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Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
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