This is America, where we come together to defeat evil, without waiting for government officials to do it for us..
[IsraelTimes] Jiujitsu practitioner says he and some of his buddies at the gym wanted to accompany Jewish residents of the area following antisemitic attacks during Gaza war.
Remi Franklin thought about his two communities and realized there could be a match: His pals at the gym might want to volunteer to walk with Los Angeles-area Jews who were fearful of attending services on Shabbat following attacks on Jews in the city during the latest Israel-Hamas war.
The Los Angeles Times interviewed Franklin on Saturday while he was greeting congregants at an Orthodox synagogue and asking them if they wanted a walk home. Franklin, a jiujitsu practitioner who according to the Forward is coordinating his volunteer effort with Magen Am, a security service for the Jewish community, told the Times a lot of friends signed up.
He said his effort has recruited Jews and non-Jews, including practitioners of jiujitsu, boxing and mixed martial arts.
“We have ladies who are former dancers and gymnasts,” he told the Times.
Last week, pro-Palestinian attackers threw punches and bottles at diners at a sushi restaurant in Los Angeles.
Among the volunteers Franklin recruited was Jonathan Lipnicki, who starred as a child in “Jerry Maguire” and is now a Brazilian jiujitsu black belt. He said he attends Shabbat dinners hosted by Franklin.
“It’s a scary time for the Jewish community,” Lipnicki, who is Jewish, told the Times.
The problem with bare-knuckle gung ho types is most of them are criminals themselves, and they all tend to be on the same side. Which is why a clever leadership selectively incentivizes 'nationalist' goons.
[ToloNews] US Central Command announced on Tuesday that they estimate the US withdrawal from Afghanistan to be somewhere between 16% and 25% complete. President Joe The Big Guy Biden ...46th president of the U.S. Joe's wife and daughter weren't killed by a drunk driver. He didn't graduate with three or even two degrees, wasn't in the top half of his law class, and his daddy didn't come home from a hard day's work in the mines and play football with the guys. The NAACP hasn't endorsed him every time he's run.... announced earlier that the complete withdrawal would finish by September 11, 2021.
Approximately 160 C-17 loads of materiel and equipment have left Afghanistan, the US Department of Defense (DoD) reported, and more than 10,000 pieces of military equipment have been turned over to the Defense Logistics Agency.
US-controlled installations in Afghanistan are also being returned to the Afghan Defense Ministry, and so far five installations have been handed back, said the DoD.
After 20 years, the US is leaving Afghanistan because the mission there is complete, said Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby during a press briefing on Tuesday at the Pentagon.
However, some people cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go... US involvement in the region is not going to end entirely, according to Kirby, who said the US will be ready to meet threats by strengthening existing "over-the-horizon" capabilities there and growing new ones.
Kirby said the US already has some over-the-horizon capacity in the region with forces already stationed there and long-range capabilities that are outside the region.
According to an AP report, last week Gen. Frank McKenzie, the commander of US Central Command, said negotiations with Afghanistan's neighbors for overflight rights and troop basing are "moving forward" but will take time.
Reacting to reports about the US’s possible intention to keep its presence in the region after leaving Afghanistan, the Taliban ...mindless ferocity in a turban... in a statement on Wednesday asked neighboring countries to not provide such an opportunity.
The Taliban said they have pledged that Afghanistan will not be used as a threat against others; therefore, they call on countries in the region to avoid the use of their territories against Afghanistan.
The Taliban warned of "future consequences" for those countries that allow "foreign bases" on their territories.
The US and coalition forces started withdrawing from the country on May 1. Some bases have been handed over to Afghan forces. US forces have started scrapping equipment that can neither be repaired or handed over to Afghan forces in its current state. The scrapping of vehicles and other equipment is taking place at the country’s largest air base, the Bagram Airfield.
#2
They're overdue for the false flag event that requires US troops stay. Must be intelligence community infighting. This typically happens with a king in his dotage.
Direct translation
Edited
[Korrepondent] The KGB of Belarus said that the detained founder of the opposition portal Nexta Roman Protasevich took part in the hostilities in the Donbass as part of the Azov battalion. The founder of the volunteer unit of the National Guard, Andrei Biletsky, confirmed that Protasevich "was with Azov," but did not fight.
"Terrorist journalist"
On May 26, President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko said that opposition journalist Roman Protasevich, for whose arrest a Ryanair plane was forcibly landed , together with his accomplices, was going to "arrange a massacre and bloody mutiny" in the country.
"Now let his numerous Western defenders answer the question: what special services did this person work for? Not only him, but also his accomplice. Western defenders must answer the question: who paid him for participation in the war in Donbass? This is probably what they are afraid of Most of all. Therefore, they raised a howl. He has a great experience as a mercenary. These facts are known not only in our country and in fraternal Russia, but throughout the world, "he said.
Lukashenko noted that Protasevich was a mercenary and "a bastard who killed people in the south-east of Ukraine."
Later, the head of the KGB of Belarus Ivan Tertel said that Protasevich fought in the Azov regiment.
"It is indisputable that this person fully complies with the definition of a terrorist, a mercenary fighter, a participant in the bloody events in the infamous Azov battalion associated with the atrocities and deaths of civilians in southeastern Ukraine," he said.
Tertel noted that the data on this "presented in the media with personal confessions of Protasevich, which are widely available." According to the chief Belarusian security officer, the detainee "actively used" in Belarus the wholesale obtained in the Donbass.
On the eve of the first commander of the volunteer regiment, the leader of the Ukrainian party National Corps Andriy Biletsky, announced the attitude of Protasevich to Azov.
"I'll dot all the Is right away. Yes, Roman really, together with Azov and other military units, fought against the occupation of Ukraine. He was with us in Shirokino, where he was wounded. But his weapon as a journalist was not a machine gun, but a word," wrote Biletsky in Telegram on May 25.
Azov fought in the Mariupol area. The unit drove the militants out of there on June 13, 2014, and then defended the approaches to it after the Ilovaisk tragedy. In the fall of 2014, the battalion became part of the National Guard as a separate special forces detachment and has since remained part of the regular formations of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine.
Russia and its allies blame Azov for war crimes in eastern Ukraine, and many of his fighters are called neo-Nazis. The Russian authorities have banned the activities of Azov and the National Corps, and those suspected of participating in hostilities in the Donbas as part of a battalion are sentenced to real prison terms.
The Belarusian media have repeatedly reported about Protasevich's involvement in the Azov battalion in 2014-2015, when he was 18-19 years old.
"Protasevich is, to put it mildly, an interesting character. At first he gained some experience during the Ukrainian revolution, even participated in the ATO zone. Last summer and autumn, he introduced all this experience on the Belarusian information front," local television said on 23 May.
The co-founder of Nexta himself said that he came to the Maidan and was even seriously injured during another confrontation with the security forces.
Then, according to him, he met the future commanders of Azov. In the combat zone, he said, together with the battalion, he worked exclusively as a war correspondent, and rejected claims of participation in hostilities.
In recent days, several fakes have appeared about Protasevich's participation in the hostilities in the Donbass.
For example, the pro-Russian blogger Anatoly Shariy published the cover of the Black Sun magazine with a photograph of a guy in the uniform of an Azov battalion with a machine gun, claiming with reference to "separate face matching programs" that this is evidence against Protasevich.
However, the publication Insider writes that Shariy passed off another person for Protasevich - the Azov fighter Andrei Snitko, who died in August 2014 in the battles for Ilovaisk. In 2016, Snitko was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of Ukraine.
The publication in its publication refers to the representatives of the battalion, as well as to the photographs of Andrey Snitko: they really resemble the image of the man on the aforementioned cover of the Black Sun.
Also in social networks, a clipping from the video of the TV channel Nowadays is distributed with the alleged father of Protasevich Dmitry. Of all the material, only one phrase was left: "criminal cases were opened against my son even when in 2014 he was in the territory of Donbass and fought on the side of the Ukrainian army."
However, the person in the frame visually and in voice does not look like Dmitry Protasevich, who recently gave several interviews. There is no indication of the time and circumstances of the shooting, and there is no link to the report from which this phrase was cut.
Zmitser Protasevich himself said in an interview with ERB that he knows nothing about his son's connections with the armed formations. Even if Roman Protasevich was in Donbass, the detainee's father notes, it was only as a freelance journalist.
The father of the Nexta co-founder is sure that in this way they are trying to denigrate him, putting an equal sign between a journalist and a terrorist.
The military journalist of the Russian edition of Komsomolskaya Pravda, Alexander Kots, who supports the separatists in Donbass, published several photos on his Telegram with an Azov fighter who looks like Protasevich.
He also cited an interview with a Belarusian volunteer under the call sign Kim, who, according to indirect data, can be mistaken for Protasevich.
On May 5, Roman Protasevich turned 26 years old. His Twitter profile reads "The first ever terrorist journalist." Protasevich is the first citizen in the history of Belarus, included in the official list of persons who may be involved in terrorist activities.
Roman Protasevich took part in protests against Lukashenko since the early 2010s - he was still a schoolboy. For the very first action he was expelled from the lyceum at the National Technical University, and he returned to a regular school.
He entered the Faculty of Journalism of the Belarusian State University, but he was also expelled from there.
Protasevich started working as a freelancer for several independent media outlets. In parallel, he wrote news for the Telegram channel, which he and another recent schoolboy Stepan Putilo created.
The Telegram channel was called Nexta (Nekhta - from the Belarusian "someone"), and at first it was a by-product, the main one was the channel of the same name on YouTube, and the teenagers planned to upload their music there.
In the spring of 2020, as the protest moods in Belarus grew, the channel began to enjoy more and more popularity. And in August, after the presidential elections, the number of Nexta readers in a few days increased from 300 thousand to 1.8 million people.
In terms of popularity, Nexta was second only to TUT.by, the country's main independent media outlet, which was read by 62 percent of Belarusians.
The channel actively covers protests against Lukashenko, for which the Belarusian authorities recognized him as extremist. Shortly before that, Protasevich announced his withdrawal from the project, began to conduct the Telegram-channel Belarus of the brain, which is also recognized as extremist in the Republic of Belarus.
In November 2020, the Investigative Committee of Belarus opened several criminal cases against Protasevich. He is accused of mass riots, organizing and preparing actions that grossly violate public order, as well as inciting racial, national, religious or other social hostility or discord.
On May 4, Lukashenko, by his decree, deprived the rank of lieutenant colonel of Roman's father, Dmitry Protasevich, who had served in the army for almost 30 years.
By Ruslan Trad Ruslan Trad is a Bulgarian journalist
In February 2018, people in the Russian town of Asbest were surprised to learn that several of their fellow citizens had died in Khasham, eastern Syria, 4,000 kilometers (2,489 miles) from home. When Maxim Borodin, the star news hound from the newspaper Novy Den (New Day), arrived in Asbest, the deaths were still shrouded in mystery. Asbest, in the Sverdlovsk region, is known mainly for its asbestos factories, but after the fall of the Soviet Union, the population in this industrial hamlet was hit hard. Residents lost their jobs, and to feed their families they increasingly turned to employment opportunities in private security for individuals and companies, a sector that has grown since the early 1990s, thanks to the associated risks of doing business in Russia’s nascent market economy.
Borodin was determined to find out what the men were doing in Syria and how they had died. He interviewed relatives and the commanders of the dear departed and attended their secret funerals. His resulting article provoked a national scandal and drew attention to a topic the Russian government had wanted to keep quiet: the use of private military companies (PMCs) to serve the Kremlin’s foreign policy objectives and secure and protect the business interests of the kleptocrats in charge of Russia’s most lucrative resources. The article would be Borodin’s last.
On April 12, 2018, Borodin was found seriously injured and in a coma in his hometown of Yekaterinburg. Police say Borodin "fell" from his balcony while smoking. The day before, he had contacted a friend and told him that he’d spotted gunnies in camouflage near his apartment. Three days later, he was dead.
Through his investigation in Asbest, Borodin discovered that the dead had joined a mercenary force known as the Wagner Group, a PMC created in 2014 and financed by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian oligarch and catering magnate close to President Vladimir Putin ...President-for-Life of Russia. He gets along well with other presidents for life. He is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substance. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to him. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substances... . While PMCs are technically illegal, private security companies are not. PMCs like the Wagner Group adopt the facade of a security company, but at the same time they have clear ties to Russian intelligence agencies such as the FSB (national security services) and GRU (military intelligence) and to both the Russian special forces and the army. In making the connection between the deaths of Russian civilians in Syria and their work with the Wagner Group, Borodin uncovered a tangled web of state, business, and security interests that are primarily concerned with preserving their influence and power.
There are a number of PMCs in Russia, but the Wagner Group typifies the way global business and geopolitics operate in Putin’s Russia. Mercenaries who work for companies like the Wagner Group provide security to sites (such as mines and oil fields) that are of strategic interest to the Kremlin and its kleptocrats. PMCs also perform such functions on behalf of foreign governments, and in this way, they have become an important tool for the Kremlin to promote its foreign policy objectives. For each of the key parties involved — the Kremlin, foreign governments, state industries, and private business interests — PMCs not only offer lucrative opportunities but, due to their quasi-legal structure, also provide plausible deniability for their clandestine activities. More at the link
#1
So, let me see if I got it right. Russia uses state supported mercenary companies, while USA uses it's regular military. Russia spends 1% of what USA does and actually gains influence instead of losing it (the local vermin in Afghanistan & ME used to fear USA - and then they found out that they can kill Americans with impunity).
And, do "Soviet Origins" in the title refers to the fact that Russia continues some of Soviet Union's foreign policies (which themselves were continuation of the Tsarist Russian Empire policies) - or are simply the author's way of expressing his disapproval?
#3
So they're not really as Soviet as they're capitalist? Anyway, PMCs are not thugs. They're professionals, mostly ex-military and bound by rules and agreements. Using professionals you can squeeze later is way better policy than lighting a fuse in some moslem buttholes and managing expectations later.
The state of democracy and the ineptitude of civv leaderships being what it is, I would say PMCs are the future. Hell, neighbourhoods in liberal democracies one day will contract PMCs to protect themselves.
[IsraelTimes] In the interview, UNRWA Gaza director Matthias Schmale was asked about the IDF's assertion that its military strikes were very precise. He responded: "I'm not a military expert but I would not dispute that. I also have the impression that there is a huge sophistication in the way the Israeli military struck over the last 11 days."
He also said that there were not currently any shortages of food, medicine or water in Gaza as Israel had reopened the crossings.
"Recent remarks I made on Israeli TV have offended & hurt those who had family members & friends killed & injured during the war that has just ended. I truly regret to have caused them pain, & reiterate following points I have made through countless interviews & tweets," he tweeted.
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
05/27/2021 00:00 ||
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[Rudaw] Some five hundred people affiliated with the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really 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 western pols talk they're not really Moslems.... (ISIS) returned to Iraq from al-Hol camp in Syria late on Tuesday, which has drawn criticism from locals and Yazidi survivors.
One returnee that spoke to Rudaw showed little remorse for joining the terror group.
Continued on Page 49
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05/27/2021 00:00 ||
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[IsraelTimes] The Gulf state, a key backer of the Strip’s Hamas, the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood, rulers, pledges money following recent fighting in the enclave.
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... announced on Wednesday that it would provide $500 million for Gazoo
Continued on Page 49
[IsraelTimes] Four Arabs have been indicted in the Jerusalem District Court for an assault on a Haredi man in the city some two weeks ago, as Israel was in the throes of massive Arab-Jewish unrest in the capital and throughout the country.
The four, aged 17 and 18, are accused of mobbing the Jewish man near the Old City’s Damascus Gate and repeatedly beating him before coppers intervened and chased them away.
Hamas rep in Lebanon Ahmad Abdhadi has said that former Qods Force chief Qasem Soleimani traveled to Gaza “many times,” crediting him and former Hizballah commander Emad Mughniyeh with suggesting and helping plan extensive tunneling in Gaza. pic.twitter.com/JjkUEbotE1
— Resistance Axis Monitor (@MonitorAxis) May 26, 2021
And that worked ever so well. The man's genius is missed.
Posted by: 3dc ||
05/27/2021 00:00 ||
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#1
doubtful that Soleimani ever visited Gaza
would have been an enormous risk to the guy and also would have required a lot of planning, a lot of bribes, tying up security, etc.
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
05/27/2021 9:18 Comments ||
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#2
And under a sundered rotunda...
"I wonder, effendi, who'd fund a--"
[two jooz listening in
here endearingly grin]
"Gazan Aryan Bund Peenemunde?"
[BenarNews] An Indonesian court on Tuesday found two oil-tanker captains from China and 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... guilty of violating the Southeast Asian country’s navigational rules by carrying out an unauthorized ship-to-ship petroleum transfer in January, but suspended their one-year prison sentences.
Chen Yo Qun, captain of the Panama-flagged MT Freya, and Mehdi Monghasemjahromi, captain of the Iranian-flagged MT Horse, will not have to serve time in prison unless they commit a similar offense during the next two years, the Batam District Court ruled.
Continued on Page 49
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05/27/2021 00:00 ||
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[IsraelTimes] Head of UN nuclear watchdog urges tight monitoring, warns that even if 2015 pact is revived Iranian program cannot be rolled back to previous status.
The head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog has said Iran is enriching uranium to levels that only countries seeking to make atomic weapons reach, and that the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program can no longer be returned to where it stood when a landmark 2015 deal was struck with world powers.
“A country enriching at 60 percent is a very serious thing — only countries making bombs are reaching this level,” International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi said in an interview with the Financial Times published on Wednesday and cited by the Reuters News Agency.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: trailing wife ||
05/27/2021 01:54 ||
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#1
To explain the math...
If you look at the enrichment process as removing U238 from a sample, well... unenriched Uranium is 0.7% 235.
To enrich it to 60%, you'd need to remove a fraction of the sample equivelent to (1-(.007*(3/2)) which works out to 98.95 %.
#3
The end game for Iran is a bomb, but along the way, there are a lot of enrichment products that could be used to dirty-up conventional munitions. Doesn't even need to be a dangerous amount of radiation, just enough to ping a Geiger counter and set off a media panic. And if they use one of their cat's paws, they get plausible deniability. For small values of plausible, anyway.
[Rudaw] Human Rights Watch on Wednesday urged Nordic nations to repatriate 164 of their citizens, mainly children, being held in "life-threatening conditions" in northeast Syria (Rojava).
There are 114 Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, and Swedish children, more than half of them under the age of six, 36 women, and 14 men held among thousands of foreigners with suspected links to the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really 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 western pols talk they're not really Moslems.... group (ISIS) in camps in Rojava, according to the watchdog.
"Nordic countries have the ability to end the unlawful detention and horrific suffering of their nationals, most of them children who were victims of ISIS," said Human Rights Watch’s Letta Tayler. "As these detainees enter a third year of indefinite detention, their governments’ excuses for inaction ring increasingly hollow."
There are an estimated 60,000 people from dozens of countries, mainly family members of suspected ISIS fighters including more than 8,500 foreigners, housed in al-Hol camp and another fewer than 2,500 are in Roj camp. Rojava authorities have repeatedly called on governments to take responsibility for their citizens, but most Western nations are reluctant to repatriate nationals who may be a security risk and are making decisions on a case-by-case basis, prioritizing children.
Rojava authorities arrange the repatriations with visiting foreign delegations, but fighters and women who have committed crimes will not be handed over, and children will not be allowed to leave without the consent of their mothers, Abdulkarim Omar, co-chair of Rojava’s foreign relations office, told Rudaw English last week. Those who have committed crimes "should be tried here," in northeast Syria where the crimes were committed, he said.
Rojava authorities have said they intend to put on trial thousands of suspected ISIS members and were working with Sweden for international monitoring of the trials.
According to Human Rights Watch, a judge has not reviewed the legality of the detention of any of the foreigners held in Rojava.
Conditions in the overcrowded al-Hol camp are poor. Dozens of people have died in 2021 and there is concern the camp is a breeding ground for terrorism.
Last week, Denmark’s Justice Minister Nick Hekkerup said they would repatriate 22 people — three women and their 14 children, as well as five other children without their mothers.
So far, the four Nordic countries have repatriated 25 of their nationals, according to Human Rights Watch.
On Tuesday, a French delegation visited Rojava and Kurdish authorities reiterated the need for the international community to repatriate and rehabilitate the children of suspected ISIS families.
Rojava authorities have released some Syrian families, allowing them to return to their homes, and on Tuesday a first group of 100 Iraqi families were returned and taken to al-Jada camp near Qayyara.
[NPASYRIA] On Wednesday, the security forces of the Syrian government collected the students residing in the university campus of Damascus to film them and force them to participate in the presidential elections.
The security forces supported by some Baathists collected the students in front of the dorms, inspected them and took their data to push them to collectively participate in the election taking place today.
The students were transported to the Faculty of Arts and Humanities in the early morning, where they were filmed as if they were coming to participate in the election of their own volition.
"They knocked on the doors at 5 am and collected the students in the university campus," Reem al-As’ad, a pseudonym for a student at the Geography Department, told North Press.
"They inspected the rooms to be sure that no one remains inside," she added.
"After that, all the students were transported to the Faculty of Arts and Humanities where the government’s media was waiting for us which filmed us as if it is a spontaneous involvement by the students in the election," al-As’ad noted.
The presidential elections in Syria began on Wednesday to determine the president of the republic for the next seven years, amid Syrians believing that the current president, Bashir al-Assad, does not face any serious competition from the candidates Abdullah Salloum Abdullah and Mahmoud Merei.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/27/2021 00:00 ||
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[IsraelTimes] Moscow’s Defense Ministry says Tu-22M3 planes will take part in training missions; deployment marks first time since Cold War that Russia has stationed heavy bombers in Mideast.
The Russian military said Tuesday it has deployed three nuclear-capable long-range bombers to its base in Syria, a move that could strengthen Moscow’s military foothold in the Mediterranean.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said that three Tu-22M3 bombers have arrived at the Hemeimeem air base, located in Syria’s coastal province of Latakia and the main hub for Moscow’s operations in the country.
The ministry said bomber crews would fly a series of training missions over the Mediterranean. The Tupolev Tu-22M3, code-named Backfire by NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A single organization with differing goals, equipment, language, doctrine, and structure.... , is a supersonic twin-engine long-range bomber which is capable of carrying nuclear weapons and has a range exceeding 5,000 km (3,100 miles).
Russia has waged a military campaign in Syria since September 2015, allowing Syrian Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Oppressor of the Syrians and the Lebs... ’s government to reclaim control over most of the country following a devastating civil war.
The Russian ministry said the runway at Hemeimeem had been extended to host the heavy bombers and a second runway has been modernized.
Russia also has expanded and modified a naval base in the Syrian port of Tartus, the only such facility that Russia currently has outside the former Soviet Union.
As part of President Vladimir Putin ...President-for-Life of Russia. He gets along well with other presidents for life. He is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substance. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to him. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substances... ’s efforts to beef up Russia’s military amid tensions with the West, the Russian navy in recent years has revived the Soviet-era practice of constantly rotating its warships in the Mediterranean.
The bombers’ deployment marks the first time since Cold War times that Moscow has stationed heavy bombers in the region.
About 60 Tu-22M3s are estimated to remain in service with the Russian air force, and some have flown bombing missions to strike bandidosbandidos turbans in Syria from their bases in Russia.
Russian media reports said that the Tu-22M3 could be modernized to carry the latest hypersonic missiles.
Oh, pooh! They're just strategic heavy bombers the Russians use when they need to blow something to hell and gone. Not long ago, they were flying them from the motherland to pound Syrian targets. That the planes can be stationed in Syria just means they feel safe in doing so, which is probably a good sign.
#2
...This looks like it might be a bit of oneupsmanship on the part of the Soviets Russians. The planes have been spotted with live missiles, and are apparently flying in areas that the HMS Queen Elizabeth CVBG will be passing through - and likely launching airstrikes from - in the next few weeks. Expect some really nice pics of the beasts being escorted by RN and USMC F-35s.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
05/27/2021 4:23 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.
...46th president of the U.S. Joe's wife and daughter weren't killed by a drunk driver. He didn't graduate with three or even two degrees, wasn't in the top half of his law class, and his daddy didn't come home from a hard day's work in the mines and play football with the guys. The NAACP hasn't endorsed him every time he's run....
Mustbe intelligence community infighting. 
By Ruslan Trad
...President-for-Life of Russia. He gets along well with other presidents for life. He is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substance. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to him. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substances...
[IsraelTimes] In the interview, UNRWA Gaza director Matthias Schmale was asked about the IDF's assertion that its military strikes were very precise. He responded: "I'm not a military expert but I would not dispute that. I also have the impression that there is a huge sophistication in the way the Israeli military struck over the last 11 days."
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling 
[IsraelTimes] Four Arabs have been indicted in the Jerusalem District Court for an assault on a Haredi man in the city some two weeks ago, as Israel was in the throes of massive Arab-Jewish unrest in the capital and throughout the country.
...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 
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling 
...President-for-Life of Russia. He gets along well with other presidents for life. He is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substance. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to him. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substances...
