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Allahu akbar: Turks hold Hagia Sophia triumphal march
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Page 4: Opinion
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Page 1: WoT Operations
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Page 6: Politix
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Europe
Europe’s NGO cold war to ‘mitigate pro-Israel voices’
[Jpost] European officials routinely deny that funding is politically motivated or specifically targeted at Israel.

The cold war between Europa
...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum...
and Israel over the politics of nongovernmental organizations escalated sharply with the discovery of a Belgian strategic document that includes funds for "mitigating the influence of pro-Israel voices."
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: trailing wife || 07/26/2020 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  "Each NGO receives a subsidy, but what they write on this document is part of their autonomy as representatives of civil society. We do not exercise this type of control over NGOs; this is one of the main principles of democracy.

So much word salad just to say Judenrein.

Posted by: Matt || 07/26/2020 10:18 Comments || Top||


Iraq
Setting The Records Straight In Iraq
Hattip Dr. Steve, who thought we might enjoy this. Very long with lots of links, so grab the beverage of your choice, get comfortable, and dig in. A taste:
[WarOnTheRocks] The issues putting pressure on the U.S.-Iraqi relationship are daunting. The confrontation between 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 Jews Zionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol...
and the United States frequently plays out on Iraqi streets. COVID-19 is spreading at alarming rates and overwhelming Iraq’s beleaguered healthcare system. The collapsing oil market has the country’s finances on the brink. Washington has focused its support to Baghdad on much-needed economic and political reforms, while also encouraging the government’s more assertive stance against Popular Mobilization Forces militias operating beyond the state’s control. Meanwhile,
...back at the precinct house, Fat Tony demanded his rosco back. He didn't say please...
the Pentagon has sought to help the Iraqi military maintain pressure against the remnants of ISIS while continuing to reduce the number of American troops in the country.

Given everything happening in the bilateral relationship, why was a historical archive based in Caliphornia, an impregnable bastion of the Democratic Party, on the agenda of the recent U.S.-Iraq Strategic Dialogue?

The State Department is currently in the process of returning to Iraq some 6.5 million pages of documents from Saddam Hussein’s regime. The archive in question, currently at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, contains mountains of seemingly mundane paperwork generated by the bureaucracy running a single-party state. But it also includes sensitive material pertaining to the membership files of the former ruling Baʿth Party, regime informants, and information gathered by the security services on prominent political figures and ordinary citizens alike.

The U.S. government’s longstanding relationship with Mustafa al-Kadhimi
...erstwhile anti-Saddam activist, in 2016 he was tapped to be Iraq’s spy chief...
, Iraq’s new prime minister who is deeply familiar with the issue of the documents, offers a valuable opportunity for cooperation on this matter and a number of related historical and archival issues. Although improved cultural ties will not mitigate the severe fiscal, public-health, and political challenges facing Iraq, positive developments on this front may create a better environment to address other issues as well. Increased American political support for ongoing diplomatic efforts should help strengthen U.S.-Iraqi relations, foster an increasingly positive relationship between Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government, and continue to safeguard an important part of Iraq’s historical patrimony for all of its citizens.

HISTORY OF THE BAʿTH PARTY ARCHIVE
Secured as a result of the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq, the Baʿth Regional Command Collection, also known as the Baʿth Party Archive, will be the final Saddam-regime collection of documents returned to Iraq that were transferred outside the country during the 1991 and 2003 wars. The documents have been in the possession of the Iraq Memory Foundation, a non-governmental organization registered first in Washington, D.C. and later Baghdad, since 2003. In 2005, with the approval of Iraq’s interim government, the Defense Department airlifted the documents out of Iraq for safekeeping in the United States. At the time, the security situation in Baghdad was rapidly deteriorating as the country descended into civil war. Pentagon officials under then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz supported the airlift on the grounds that the documents were useful for understanding the predominantly Sunni-based insurgency battling U.S. troops in central and western Iraq. Upon arriving in West Virginia, Defense Intelligence Agency personnel completed the digitization of the documents, a process that had begun in Baghdad.
Posted by: trailing wife || 07/26/2020 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under: Govt of Iraq


Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Iran regime grapples with its worst crisis, hamstrung by internal power struggle
[IsraelTimes] Challenges of COVID-19 and economic meltdown are exacerbated by frequent explosions — most of which may have less to with Israel than a battle between reformists and conservatives

The stream of mysterious explosions and fires in 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 Jews Zionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol...
over the past few weeks has stirred the imagination of countless Israelis and media outlets.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: trailing wife || 07/26/2020 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under: Govt of Iran

#1  the so called 'moderate wing' of Iran isn't moderate by any rationale standard

they are just crazy is a different way
Posted by: lord garth || 07/26/2020 0:22 Comments || Top||

#2  They understand that even if Joe Foreign Policy Whiz Kid Joe Biden
is elected, he isn’t expected to lift the sanctions immediately, but his election would at least inspire hope.


He'll give no hope to Americans but to Iranians he'll give lots.

What's wrong with this picture?
Posted by: AlanC || 07/26/2020 8:01 Comments || Top||

#3  Islam is all just one big power struggle. It's baked in.
Posted by: Bob Grorong1136 || 07/26/2020 8:21 Comments || Top||


Terror Networks
Stability for our enemies
[Arutz 7] - Since the 1990s, the dominant view in Israel’s national security community has been that Israel’s top priority in relation to the Palestinians is to maintain the stability of their leadership. This is the case in relation to both the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority in Judea and Samaria and the Hamas regime in Gaza.

The rationale behind this view is that despite their hostility, if the regimes lose control things will be worse for Israel, which will have to take over, at great cost in lives and international stature. In other words, it’s either Fatah and Hamas or the Israel Defense Forces. And Israel’s security establishment prefers the former.

...Israel’s security community isn’t alone in its preference for stability—even at the cost of strengthening enemies. Their American colleagues are in the same cognitive boat. The place where the Americans have been pushing this position most strongly in recent years is in Lebanon. Following the Second Lebanon War in 2006, despite the direct assistance both the Lebanese government and the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) provided Hezbollah in its war against Israel, the Bush administration massively expanded U.S. civilian and military assistance to the Lebanese government and the LAF. Obama expanded the aid packages still further. And despite opposition from some quarters of the Trump administration, the Pentagon insists on maintaining the assistance.

...The counterproductive nature of the shared preference of the Israeli and U.S. security elites for stability above all was exposed with brutal clarity by the civil war in Syria.

For decades both Israeli and American security authorities supported the Assad regime in Syria. As they still argue with regard to the Palestinians and the Lebanese, the experts insisted that the Assad tyranny was better than any alternative. True, both Hafez Assad and his son and heir Bashar Assad sponsored terrorism and developed weapons of mass destruction. True, under their rule, Syria served and continues to serve as a Russian and Iranian satellite and a hub for global terrorism.

...Israel was not harmed by the destabilization of the Assad dynasty. It was empowered. Assad couldn’t back Hezbollah strikes against Israel when he needed them in Syria to protect him. So the civil war in Syria reduced the prospect of a Hezbollah strike on Israel to an unprecedented low.

Then there were the Syrians themselves. It worked out that once the people began rising up against their oppressor, they were eager to reach out to Israel. Even as Israel maintained an official position of complete impartiality in the war in Syria, and deployed no forces across its border, the Syrians themselves were willing to reward Israel’s humanitarian assistance with significant intelligence assistance.

According to multiple reports and sources, today, nine years after the war broke out, Syria is an open book for Israeli intelligence. And thanks to Israel’s intelligence prowess in Syria, it has gained unprecedented intelligence gathering capabilities throughout the Arab world and in Iran.

...Thanks to the Israeli security community’s slavish devotion to stability, neither Hamas nor Fatah need to concern themselves with internal dissent. Rather than rebel against their Fatah and Hamas overlords, (and turn towards Israel), the various Palestinian factions maintain themselves by joining their regimes in attacking Israel. It’s the only game in town. Were the P.A. and the Hamas regime to collapse, the dynamic would change. And as has been the case in Syria, the Palestinians’ choices would change.

Although it is easy to understand the allure of stability, relations with enemy regimes are inherently unstable and today more than ever, our world is unstable. Our enemies are either collapsing or on the brink of collapse. No Israeli interest is served by saving them.

And no American interest in the broader ME. You don't need their f#cking oil anymore. Let them break into a hundred warring tribal coalitions.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 07/26/2020 04:36 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  That’s a sound working principle for dealing with M.E. Politics:
Any change will be for the worse.
Posted by: Grunter || 07/26/2020 18:52 Comments || Top||



Who's in the News
32[untagged]
9Antifa/BLM
5Taliban
3Sublime Porte
3Govt of Iraq
2Moslem Colonists
2Govt of Iran
1Hamas
1Hezbollah
1Muslim Brotherhood
1Arab Spring
1al-Qaeda
1Commies
1Govt of Sudan
1Govt of Syria

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Two weeks of WOT
Sun 2020-07-26
  Allahu akbar: Turks hold Hagia Sophia triumphal march
Sat 2020-07-25
  Taliban ready for intra-Afghan dialogue immediately after Eid
Fri 2020-07-24
  Federal officers in Portland may have been permanently blinded by lasers
Thu 2020-07-23
  Photo Appears to Show Black Lives Matter Supporters Holding Down and Kneeling on Neck of White Baby
Wed 2020-07-22
  At Least 14 People Wounded In Mass Shooting Outside Funeral in Chicago
Tue 2020-07-21
  BLM Beats Conservative Michelle Malkin With Clubs In Denver
Mon 2020-07-20
  Turkey says 27 IS suspects arrested in Istanbul
Sun 2020-07-19
  Minneapolis: ‘It’s 24-Hour Crime’
Sat 2020-07-18
  Jordan’s top court dissolves country’s Muslim Brotherhood
Fri 2020-07-17
  Nigeria: 602 Boko Haram terrorists surrender
Thu 2020-07-16
  Video footage from Iranian port after 7 ships caught fire
Wed 2020-07-15
  Explosion as fire breaks out at Iranian industrial complex
Tue 2020-07-14
  BLM activist claimed in ultra-viral tweet that racist messages were left on his car. Video shows he placed them there himself
Mon 2020-07-13
  Florida man crashes into Catholic Church,
sets it on fire with worshipers inside
Sun 2020-07-12
  Turkish military seizes strategic summit in Iraqi-Kurdistan

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