[LawEnforcementToday] Nobody stains their profession more in the legal arena than King County Juvenile Court Judge Veronica Galvan.
Court documents described the victim’s injuries:
"His head was swollen on both sides and clearly deformed. His intestines were hanging outside of his body from the open wounds."
There is surveillance footage of the attack, which lasted 20 minutes.
Millorz Canales, 17, of Snohomish County, WA., has numerous criminal charges and convictions going back to 2022. He is now facing charges, including first-degree assault, first-degree kidnapping, and robbery.
Somehow, the 14-year-old survived the violent attack.
Joe Biden and Alejandro Mayorkas also have some culpability in this incident as both the victim and his killers have ties to the rival Norteno and Sureno gangs, both illegal alien gangs.
[NEWARAB] Israeli military and political officials are once more sounding the alarm over what they describe as 'build-up' by the Egyptian military in the Sinai Peninsula, calling for caution and warning against a potential confrontation with Egypt in the future.
Citing Egyptian military activity in the north-western territory, which was liberated by Egypt from Israeli occupation in 1973, the officials referred to logistical preparations and the construction of cement obstacles in central Sinai.
These obstacles, they were quoted by some Israeli media outlets as saying, aim at blocking Israeli armoured vehicles.
Egypt, they claimed, maintains more than a dozen tunnels between Rafah in the Gaza Strip and points deep in Sinai, which have not been demolished yet.
The new warnings come less than a month after a retired Israeli diplomat accused Egypt of violating the 1979 peace treaty with his country by increasing troop presence in Sinai.
David Govrin, who served as Israel's ambassador to Cairo from July 2016 to May 2019 and was Israel's first ambassador to Morocco, told the Hebrew news site, Ynet, last month that Egypt was sending more troops into Sinai than stipulated in the security annex of the treaty.
Egypt is investing, he said, huge amounts of money in the military build-up, even as no other country threatens it and despite its tough economic conditions.
Except that at this point Israel is doing it all on her own, without getting America involved at all — in fact despite America. And the war isn’t in the least bit phony — Iran really has been behind it all. Zero points for Professor Sachs, who did see the trees, but completely missed the forest they made.
[IsraelTimes] US President-elect Donald Trump shares a video on his Truth Social account which includes a professor calling Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “dark son of a bitch,” accusing him of being “obsessive” as he tries to get the US to go to war against Iran.
Trump shares a snippet of a lecture by Columbia University economics professor Jeffrey Sachs, where he speaks about the pretext for the US invasion of Iraq, and how the US government at the time was trying to find a way to sell the “phony war” to the American people.
“Where did that war come from?” Sachs asks, rhetorically, in a speech that is an attack on the Obama administration’s actions.
“You know what? It’s quite surprising. That war came from Netanyahu, actually,” he claims.
“Netanyahu had, from 1995 on, the theory that the only way we are going to get rid of Hamas and Hezbollah, is by toppling the governments that support them. That’s Iraq, Syria and Iran,” he adds.
“And the guy [Netanyahu] is nothing if not obsessive, and he is still trying to get us to fight Iran to this day, this week,” he claims. “He is a deep, dark son of a bitch, sorry to tell you.”
“He has gotten us into endless wars, and because of the power of all this in US politics, he has gotten his way,” Sachs concludes.
— Donald J. Trump Posts From His Truth Social (@TrumpDailyPosts) January 7, 2025
Posted by: trailing wife ||
01/09/2025 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11134 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
#1
https://thehill.com
From economist to Kremlin mouthpiece: The troubling …
Jun 19, 2024 · Three weeks ago, Tucker Carlson invited economist Jeffrey Sachs for an interview, that could claim second prize in the category of “Whitewashing Russian President Vladimir Putin for Republican...
[IsraelTimes] Eric Trager, a Republican staffer on the Senate Armed Services Committee, will reportedly become the next White House National Security Council senior director for the Middle East and North Africa.
Trager, who previously worked at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, will replace Brett McGurk, who played a massive role in crafting outgoing US President Joe Biden’s Mideast policy, Jewish Insider reports. A "Total Success"...
Trager has staked out hawkish foreign policy positions regarding the Middle East with his research focusing on Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood.
[IsraelTimes] Yuval Vagdani was subject of probe for allegedly filming himself destroying residential building in Gaza; says having to flee Brazil ‘felt a little like a bullet in the heart’
The Israeli soldier who was forced to flee Brazil after the country’s Federal Court ordered police to open a war crimes investigation into him has returned to Israel, according to Hebrew media reports.
The soldier, who was named as Yuval Vagdani, landed in Israel Wednesday morning after he was forced to hurriedly end his vacation in Brazil. He spoke to the Kan broadcaster about his ordeal after he landed.
"I woke up in the morning, opened the phone and suddenly saw eight calls — the Foreign Ministry, my brothers, my mother, consuls," he told Kan. "I knew something was up."
Vagdani said he was in Brazil for his "dream trip" after a long stint in the reserves, and that he had planned the trip for over four years.
Being forced to flee Brazil "felt a little like a bullet in the heart," he said.
According to Channel 12, Vagdani was "smuggled" into Argentina ...a country located on the other side of the Deep South. It is covered with Pampers and inhabited by Grouchos, who dance the Tangle. They used to have some islands called the Malvinas located where the Falklands are now. They're not supposed to cry for Evita... with the help of the Foreign Ministry, and from there was able to fly to Miami, and then Israel.
Upon arrival at Ben Gurion Airport, Vagdani told Channel 12 that he learned from his mistakes and wouldn’t upload videos from 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... . "I won’t go back to Brazil again," he added.
The Foreign Ministry said on Sunday that Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar had ordered the ministry’s Consular Section and the embassy in Brazil to contact the man and his family, and they "accompanied him throughout the event until his swift and safe departure from Brazil."
The complaint to the Brazilian court was reportedly submitted by the Hind Rajab Foundation, which is named after a 6-year-old girl, who was killed in Gaza in January. Her death was blamed on the IDF, but an initial probe conducted by the army said that there were no troops in the area at the time.
The organization identifies IDF soldiers via social media content they post from their operations in Gaza and then alerts local law enforcement when they travel abroad in an attempt to get them arrested and prosecuted for war crimes.
Its feed on X is full of soldiers it has identified by name and photo and the locations they have traveled to.
According to the Brazilian Metrópoles news outlet, Vagdani was being investigated in Brazil under suspicion of being involved "in the destruction of a residential building in the Gaza Strip while using explosives outside of combat" in November. The Hind Rajab Foundation claims the building allegedly destroyed with the soldier’s involvement was being used as a shelter for Paleostinians who had been displaced by the war and said its complaint consisted of more than 500 pages of evidence that the soldier was complicit in war crimes.
In a post on X on Saturday night, the organization urged Brazilian authorities to arrest the soldier, claiming that it had information that the Israeli government was helping the soldier escape the country, and that "there are also indications that evidence is being destroyed."
"They wrote that I murdered thousands of children and turned it into a 500-page document," Vagdani said. "All that was there was a picture of me in uniform in Gaza."
Vagdani was a survivor of the Hamas ..not a terrorist organization, even though it kidnaps people, holds hostages, and tries to negotiate by executing them,... attack on the Nova festival on October 7, 2023, during the massive onslaught on southern Israel in which murderous Moslems killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 251 hostages, starting the ongoing war in Gaza. More than 360 of the victims were murdered at the music festival.
Vagdani survived the attack by running for many kilometers until he reached safety, narrowly dodging Hamas gunfire multiple times on the way.
On Sunday, the Foreign Ministry added that it "draws the attention of Israelis to posts on social media about their military service, and to the fact that anti-Israeli elements may exploit these posts to initiate futile legal proceedings against them."
According to Kan, none of the Hind Rajab Foundation’s accusations have resulted in any arrests, although its actions are of concern to the Foreign Ministry.
Courtesy of Grom the Reflective in comments a few days ago. I wanted to put it where it can be searched in the archives.
[Jpost] A leaked Israeli Diaspora Affairs Ministry profile on Dyab Abou Jahjah described him as a "former Hezbollah operative."
Dyab Abou Jahjah,
…alternately Dyab Abu Jahjah, he emigrated to Belgium from his native Lebanon in 1991 in pursuit of higher education, then stayed on to cause trouble…
the man behind the Hind Rajab Foundation, which has been doxxing Israeli soldiers and seeking legal action against them in foreign states, admitted to joining Hezbollah as a youth and implied that he was returning to Lebanon to fight in the 2006 war, according to press releases by his previous organization and an old New York Times interview.
The Arab European League (AEL)
…while it claimed to be pan-Arabist, attachment to Shiism and Iran appeared fairly early on. Active in Belgium and the Netherlands, they harassed police in the name of preventing individual and institutional Islamophobia, led anti-Israel protests that gleefully turned into riots since 2002, and instigated attacks on Jews. At one point they teamed up with a Maoist political party to run in Belgian elections, peaking at about a quarter of a percent of the votes, which was not enough to get a seat anywhere….
that he founded, according to the Internet Archive, shared on its website a 2003 New York Times profile piece in which the activist admitted to his Hezbollah affiliation. The article related that “he said, he joined the Hezbollah resistance against Israel.”
“I had some military training, I’m still very proud of that,” he told the NYT in 2003.
Abou Jahjah also admitted that he had lied about a falling out with Hezbollah leadership when he was seeking asylum in Belgium.
“Most asylum seekers invent a story, and I said I had had a conflict with the Hezbollah leaders,” he said. “It was just a low political trick to get my papers.”
A leaked Israeli Diaspora Affairs Ministry profile on Abou Jahjah described him as a “former Hezbollah operative.”Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli said on Sunday night that Abou Jahjah had previously declared ties to Hezbollah, and claimed that he had led “Hezbollah tours in Europe.”
According to NYT, Flemish Nationalist Party member Filip Dewinter described him as “a foreign agent, directed and paid from abroad.”
The Arab European League, which its founder described in a 2005 letter as “an Arab Nationalist organization that upholds Islam as a source of inspiration,” routinely published statements from Hezbollah on its website and articles praising the group, and appeared to have published a 2007 interview with current Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Qassem.
Abou Jahjah has a long history of support for terrorist organizations besides Hezbollah, issuing support for the October 7 terrorist attacks.
“These Palestinian resistance fighters entering these settlements are all refugees whose parents were ethnically cleansed from these villages in 1948/1967,” he wrote on X/Twitter on October 7. “Anyone neglecting this fact is not seriously engaging in a conversation but is spreading Israeli propaganda, whether willfully or not.”
Abou Jahjah and Lebanon-born Hind Rajab Foundation co-founder Karim Hassoun both signed a 2009 appeal calling for the removal of Hamas and other Palestinian groups from the European list of proscribed terrorist organizations.
This call echoed 2002 AEL statements demanding that “all Palestinian resistance groups would be taken off the terrorist list.
“The decision of Europe to extend its so-called terrorist list to include Palestinian resistance organizations is totally unfair and unacceptable,” the league said.
“It is unfair because it is criminalizing the struggle of a people that is under siege and under attack by one of the mightiest armies on earth, a people fighting for its freedom with the limited possibilities it has. If you want the Palestinian people to stop using suicide-bombings, give it the possibility to destroy the tanks that are blowing Palestinian children into pieces.
“AEL will keep on supporting the legitimate resistance of the Palestinian people until the total defeat of Zionism and the total liberation of Palestine, and the establishing of a democratic Palestinian state with Jerusalem (Al Quds) as its capital and the return of all Palestinian refugees to their homes.”
SUPPORTER OF HEZBOLLAH
CHIKLI ALSO noted on Sunday that Hassoun was also a supporter of Hezbollah, having been photographed wearing a Hezbollah hat and issuing praise of Samir Kuntar, who led the murders of members of an Israeli family in 1979.
“During his tenure as head of the AEL, the organization was convicted in a Dutch court for disseminating Holocaust denial content,” the Diaspora affairs minister said.
[GEO.TV] US Secretary of State Antony Blinken ...71st United States secretary of state and a leading light of the corrupt and inept Biden administration. He previously served as deputy national security advisor from 2013 to 2015 and deputy secretary of state from 2015 to 2017 under the corrupt and inept Obama administration. He advocated for the 2003 invasion of Iraq while serving as the Democratic staff director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 2002 to 2008. He was a foreign policy advisor for the Biden 2008 presidential campaign. During his tenure in the Obama administration, Blinken helped craft B.O.'s policy on Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the nuclear program of Iran. We all saw how well each of those worked. After leaving government service, Blinken moved into the private sector, co-founding WestExec Advisors, a lobbying firm... said on Wednesday that a 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... ceasefire remained close, but reiterated that it may not happen before 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... hands over to Donald Trump ...His ancestors didn't own any slaves... "In the Middle East, we're very close to a ceasefire and hostage deal," Blinken told news hounds in Gay Paree.
[IsraelTimes] Israel denies a report in Lebanese media that talks for a hostage-ceasefire deal are examining the possibility of a truce lasting six to eight weeks, during which Israel would receive a list of the names of all the living hostages.
In a statement, the Prime Minister’s Office calls the report “a complete lie and another part of the psychological warfare that Hamas is trying to inflict on the hostage families and on the citizens of Israel.”
“Israel will continue to work around the clock and tirelessly to bring all of our hostages home,” it says.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/09/2025 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11139 views]
Top|| File under: Hamas
#1
Yea, yea, yea, how many times has he said that over the years?
I'll wait until it actually happens and I'll bet when it does happen, it'll be because of Trump, not Blinkie, Biden or do nothing Harries.
#3
The Bidet admin will burn Israel down to get a cease fire. They need to point to something, ANYTHING, as an accomplishment. I thought I couldn't hate these bastards more, but I was wrong.
Posted by: Whiskey Mike ||
01/09/2025 5:23 Comments ||
Top||
#4
Diplospeak for anything short of the parties haven't killed and eaten the negotiators...
#10
I thought that the Iranian funds that the State Department unfroze paid for all this slaughter. I didn’t realize that Tony was the protagonist of this chapter of history. My bad.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
01/09/2025 11:30 Comments ||
Top||
[NEWARAB] The UAE has reportedly discussed with the US and Israel taking part in a provisional administration in post-war 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... , until a "renewed" Paleostinian Authority is able to govern.
Such an administration could see the Gulf country, the US and potentially other nations temporarily supervise the reconstruction, governance and security of the Paleostinian territory, which is still being bombed by Israeli forces today.
The Gulf country is reportedly proposing a reformed Paleostinian Authority (PA) to govern Gaza, the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem under an independent Paleostinian state, sources revealed to Rooters on Tuesday.
An official said that Abu Dhabi "will not participate in any plan that fails to include significant reform of the Paleostinian Authority, its empowerment, and the establishment of a credible roadmap toward a Paleostinian state".
A US State Department spokesperson also confirmed that there were talks with several partners, including the UAE, on options for governance, security and reconstruction, and that various draft proposals, plans and ideas had been put forward by partners.
"These have been deliberative discussions that continue, as we seek the best way forward," he said.
In these talks, Emirati officials reportedly suggested the use of private military contractors as part of a post-war peacekeeping force in Gaza. The other sources confirmed they were briefed on what they described as Emirati post-war proposals, which included the possible use of such forces.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/09/2025 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11134 views]
Top|| File under: Hamas
#1
Hurry, while you still can, UAE. Hell is coming.
[IsraelTimes] In a speech last week, Iran’s top general in Syria said the Islamic Republic was “defeated very badly” by the fall of Syria’s Bashar Assad, despite the repeated public downplaying of its significance by Iranian leaders.
“I don’t consider losing Syria something to be proud of,” says Brig. Gen. Behrouz Esbati in a recording of the speech, according to the New York Times. “We were defeated, and defeated very badly, we took a very big blow and it’s been very difficult.”
Esbati also said ties with Assad had been strained prior to the Syrian regime’s collapse over his refusal to let Iran-backed militias to open a new front against Israel from Syria, and accused Russia of saying it was bombing rebel forces when it was in fact dropping munitions on open fields.
Despite Assad’s ouster, Esbati said Tehran will still look for ways to enlist fighters in Syria regardless of political developments there.
“We can activate all the networks we have worked with over the years,” he is quoted as saying. “We can activate the social layers that our guys lived among for years; we can be active in social media and we can form resistance cells.”
“Now we can operate there as we do in other international arenas, and we have already started.”
[IsraelTimes] An Italian journalist arrested in Iran and jailed for three weeks has been freed and is returning to Italy, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s office says.
“The plane taking journalist Cecilia Sala home took off from Tehran a few minutes ago” following “intense work on diplomatic and intelligence channels,” Meloni’s office says in a statement.
[IsraelTimes] Leb ...Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects.... is set to extradite the son of late senior Moslemholy manYoussef al-Qaradawi
… (1926-2022). Peripatetic academic, scholar, and charismatic public intellectual, the chairman of the International Union of Muslim Scholars was known as The Voice of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood because of his popular Al Jazeera television show that claimed a worldwide audience of 40-60 million, the IslamOnline website he started in 1997 as dawa, or Muslim outreach, and the more than 120 books he wrote on various Muslim subjects. The Muslim Brotherhood claimed him as as one of their chief theologians, though he denied it, and a sharia-compliant bank of which he was the principal shareholder was listed at the UN as associated with Al Qaeda until 2010, so possibly he wasn’t the moderate Muslim some claimed, though he was definitely in the Muslim mainstream…
to the United Arab Emirates after the country’s caretaker cabinet approved the move, the Lebanese prime minister’s office says.
Abdul Rahman al-Qaradawi,
…a.k.a. Abdul Rahman Yusuf, the third son of Youssef al-Qaradawi is a poet known for his criticisms of the UAE, the Sisi regime in Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, so sooner or later his number would be up…
an Egyptian-Ottoman Turkish poet, was detained in Lebanon on Dec. 28 after returning from Syria, according to his lawyer Mohammad Sablouh and human rights ...which often include carefully measured allowances of freedom at the convenience of the state... group Amnesty International.
His arrest followed critical comments Qaradawi made of the UAE, Saudi Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula, largely made up of sand and oil rigs. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual haj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. Formerly dictatorial and steeped in Olde Tyme Religion, deferring to Salafist holy men on all issues, it has now done a 180 and is making a serious effort to modernize, so as not to be left in the sand by its Gulf Arab neighbors. The holy men have been shoved to the background and the nation is now still dictatorial but somewhat rational. That doesn't make them trustworthy, but it's a start... n and Egyptian authorities in a video posted online.
See?
The UAE and Egypt have both filed requests for his extradition.
The requests "are believed to be based on the legitimate exercise of his right to freedom of expression," Amnesty International’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa, Sara Hashash says in a statement, urging Lebanese authorities to reject the extradition requests.
The Egyptian and Emirati foreign ministries do not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Qaradawi’s lawyer says he will file an urgent appeal to block his client’s extradition but fears the poet might be flown out of the country before then.
Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi, who died in 2022, was a spiritual guide to the Moslem Brüderbund who championed the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings and unsettled rulers in Egypt and the Gulf with his Islamist preaching. He spoke in favor of suicide kabooms against Israelis and denied Israel’s right to exist.
Born in Egypt, Qaradawi spent much of his life in Qatar ...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates. Home of nutbag holy manYusuf al-Qaradawi... , where he became one of the Arab world’s most influential Sunni Moslemholy mans thanks to regular appearances on Qatar’s Al Jazeera television network.
Broadcast into millions of homes, his sermons fueled tensions that led Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies to impose a blockade on Qatar in 2017 and declare Qaradawi a terrorist.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Regnum] The armed forces of Turkey and Syria will conduct a large-scale military operation against the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) if the West makes new demands. This was written on January 8 by the Turkish newspaper Hürriyet.
"Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has warned that if the PKK does not lay down its arms, if it continues to insist on another administration in Syria, and if Western countries make demands in this direction, then a large-scale military operation together with the Syrian state will be inevitable," the publication writes.
Does HTS know this, or has President Erdogan made assumptions for others again?
It is not specified what demands the West is talking about. It is also noted that Turkey did not make efforts in Syria so that “the PKK could continue to exist.”
The publication added that Ankara is currently implementing Plan A, but “Plan B is also on the table.”
As reported by the Regnum news agency, on January 6, the Hürriyet newspaper, citing sources, reported that the new Syrian authorities, during negotiations with the PKK leadership, demanded that they lay down their arms. It was noted that the Kurdish representatives demanded that in exchange for the surrender of their arms, they be given a division or army corps in the Syrian army being created and that the oil fields in the north of the country, controlled jointly with the United States, be equally divided.
On December 25, Erdogan said the PKK had no choice but to lay down its arms, vowing otherwise to “bury the Kurdish fighters along with their weapons.”
The conflict between Turkey and the PKK began in 1984. Ankara considers the group a threat to national security, regularly conducting raids against its supporters in the country and operations in northern Iraq and Syria.
Posted by: badanov ||
01/09/2025 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11130 views]
Top|| File under: Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (al-Nusra)
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.
[LawEnforcementToday] Nobody stains their profession more in the legal arena than King County Juvenile Court Judge Veronica Galvan.
..not a terrorist organization, even though it kidnaps people, holds hostages, and tries to negotiate by executing them,...
...71st United States secretary of state and a leading light of the corrupt and inept Biden administration. He previously served as deputy national security advisor from 2013 to 2015 and deputy secretary of state from 2015 to 2017 under the corrupt and inept Obama administration. He advocated for the 2003 invasion of Iraq while serving as the Democratic staff director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 2002 to 2008. He was a foreign policy advisor for the Biden 2008 presidential campaign. During his tenure in the Obama administration, Blinken helped craft B.O.'s policy on Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the nuclear program of Iran. We all saw how well each of those worked. After leaving government service, Blinken moved into the private sector, co-founding WestExec Advisors, a lobbying firm...
...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula, largely made up of sand and oil rigs. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual haj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. Formerly dictatorial and steeped in Olde Tyme Religion, deferring to Salafist holy men on all issues, it has now done a 180 and is making a serious effort to modernize, so as not to be left in the sand by its Gulf Arab neighbors. The holy men have been shoved to the background and the nation is now still dictatorial but somewhat rational. That doesn't make them trustworthy, but it's a start...
