#nato caliph | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mariacallous · 2 months

Text

The March 22 terrorist attack targeting concertgoers in Moscow, which was later claimed by the Islamic State, was an eerily familiar shock for Russians. In 2002, approximately a year after 9/11, Islamist terrorists claiming allegiance to a separatist movement in Chechnya besieged the crowded Dubrovka Theater in Moscow. More than 130 people were killed in the operation to clear the theater.

Last month’s attack, which killed at least 144 people, opened multiple geopolitical fissures. The Kremlin, having caught—and tortured—at least a few of the suspected perpetrators, claimed that the terrorists were looking to head toward Ukraine, where Russia is embroiled in its own endless war. Online, the story took a life of its own as conspiracy theories overwhelmed facts.

As attention shifted eastward toward the Islamic State-Khorasan (ISK), the group’s branch based in Afghanistan, contrarian views, mostly in Russian media but amplified on social media platforms, of this being a false-flag operation designed by the West simultaneously took off.

In between such distractions, the victor was the Islamic State. The group’s spokesperson, known by his nom de guerre Abu Hudhayfah al-Ansari, released a 41-minute audio message a few days after the Moscow attack. Curiously, the message, titled “By God, this religion [Islam] will prevail,” mentioned Russia only in passing. It however congratulated Islamic State ecosystems and wilayas (Arabic for provinces), or offshoots, on a successful 10 years of the caliphate.

The message takes the listener on a world tour of sorts, highlighting the group’s presence across regions from Africa to Southeast Asia, challenging the notion that it is a spent force. Ansari also congratulated the group’s fighters for their campaigns against the Chinese, Russians, Sikhs, and Hindus. It also chastised the very idea of democracy—a long-standing ideological position for most jihadi groups.

Only a few hours prior to this, ISK had released a separate 18-minute propaganda video in Pashto targeting the Afghan Taliban’s outreach with India. This is particularly noteworthy after India facilitated the evacuation of Sikhs and Hindus from the country, specifically after ISK claimed an attack against a Sikh temple in Kabul in 2022. Islamic State propaganda has also long stoked communal divisions in India to instigate Muslims against the state.

The video took the format of a first-person narrative, discussing how the Taliban regime was working with the Indian state, which ISK views as an anti-Muslim institution. This was not the first time either the Islamic State or ISK had targeted India in its propaganda, but interestingly, the latter’s primary aim here was the Taliban’s behavior and not necessarily India, its democracy, or its perceived Hindu-nationalist political bent by itself.

The chaotic U.S. exit from Afghanistan and subsequent return to power of the Taliban in 2021 was a watershed moment. But the negotiated exit was not a difficult decision for the U.S. government, which was clear in its vision on what it wanted out of leaving, as Washington looked to pivot toward new areas of strategic competition in Asia.

The challenge fell to powers within the region, which were left to deal with an extremist movement in control of a critical neighboring state. For more than 20 years, Afghanistan’s neighbors, including China and Russia, benefited from the expansive U.S. and NATO military umbrella. This allowed them to pursue their own strategic interests such as developing influence within Afghanistan’s ethnic divisions and the power brokers representing these groups without any significant military commitment. On Aug. 30, 2021, then-Maj. Gen. Christopher T. Donahue was the last U.S. soldier to leave the country. Afghanistan was now an Asian problem.

But Russia, China, and Iran—the three primary adversaries of the United States, and by association Western geopolitical constructs—were in fact happy. After two decades, there were no massive U.S. military deployments on Iran’s eastern border at a time when its relations with Washington were at their worst. Tehran’s own history with Afghanistan, and specifically the Taliban, is confrontational.

Throughout the 1990s, the Iranians supported anti-Taliban groups, particularly rebel leaders such as Ahmad Shah Massoud and the Northern Alliance. Tehran was not alone, as others, including India, Russia, and Tajikistan among others, supported these groups against the Taliban and its sponsors in Pakistan.

Fast forward to 2021, and Iran decided to go the opposite way. It opened diplomatic and economic channels with the new regime in Kabul and looked to build support in exchange for a healthy level of anti-Western patronage and relative calm on the borders.

Iran’s two other closest allies in Moscow and Beijing followed suit. Iran, Russia, and China have all, in a way, recognized the Taliban as the quasi-official rulers of Afghanistan. Beijing has gone a step beyond, with Chinese President Xi Jinping officially accepting the accreditation of the new Taliban-appointed ambassador to his country.

Russia, still a little wary due to its history of fighting against and losing to the U.S.-backed mujahideen between 1979 and 1989 and more vocal in its criticism, accepted Taliban diplomats in Moscow in 2022 and is now even considering removing the Taliban from its list of banned terrorist organizations.

The stance these three states have adopted is a calculated risk; they see Taliban rule as a more palatable crisis to deal with than an expansive U.S. military presence at a time when great-power competition is once again taking hold of contemporary international relations.

Other countries, such as many of those in Central Asia, have also grudgingly taken the path of engagement with Kabul so as to try to avoid a return of regional conflict and proliferation of extremist ideologies by using the Taliban itself as a buffer as they try to keep one foot in and the other out the proverbial door.

Pakistan, long the Taliban’s patron, is already caught in a lover’s feud with its own protégés in Afghanistan as Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan continues a militant campaign against Islamabad. Meanwhile, India has begun to balance between naked strategic interest and the long-term costs of the political normalization of such entities.

A trend of political victories for militant groups such as the Taliban is expanding. In the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, the latter has in many respects come out on top by gaining more legitimacy than it ever expected despite the bloodiness of its attack against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Hamas has managed to move its own narrative away from being a proscribed terrorist group to being viewed as a revolutionary movement for the liberation of Palestine. Its political leadership, based out of Qatar, even condemned the terrorist attack in Russia.

The spectacle of an Islamist terrorist group publicly condemning another Islamist terrorist group underscores the absurdity of this situation. Hamas leaders, such as Ismail Haniyeh, have visited Iran and Russia to drum up support. Beijing, while asking for a secession of hostilities, has yet to denounce Hamas by name for its actions. At some level, all these states are happy to engage with such militant groups if it aids in the weakening of U.S. power and hegemony.

A significant level of global cooperation against terrorism, which was achieved in the aftermath of 9/11 and during the so-called global war on terrorism, is fast eroding. For example, up until 2015, Moscow had allowed NATO military supply flights meant for Afghanistan to use its airspace. Multilateral forums such as the United Nations are now repeatedly questioned over their purpose and worth.

For groups such as the Islamic State, this is a boon. Even though most of these competing powers see the group as a security threat that requires military solutions, a lack of uniformity creates a tremendous vacuum in which such entities can thrive. And while most of Afghanistan’s neighbors today are forced to view the Taliban as the “good Taliban,” considering its fundamental aversion to the Islamic State and its ideology (due to tension between Deobandis and Salafi jihadis), these new realities will make cohesive and effective global cooperation against terrorism far less likely.

This raises a critical question: Who is going to lead the global counterterrorism push? Militarily, the kind of capacity the United States deploys against terrorist groups remains unchallenged. From the killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in 2019 to the new Islamic State caliphs being degraded to faceless, often nameless personas, the U.S.-led Operation Inherent Resolve in Syria has been effective—and it continues to this day. But the expansion of Islamic State wilayas and their own individual clout, as highlighted by Ansari, challenges these successes.

In Africa, Russia is empowering local warlords and dilettantes to take on the Islamic State while it simultaneously cements its own presence, particularly as Western powers such as the United States and France struggle to hold on to their military footing. Propping up regimes in places such as Mali and Burkina Faso by offering political stability and pushing them to fight groups such as the Islamic State is a model both Russia and China seem to gravitate toward.

As the Moscow attack revealed, an era of increased rivalry between major powers that tolerate terrorist groups that target their adversaries could ultimately spawn a resurgence of Islamist terrorism. This new geopolitical landscape, by default, will give terrorist groups more chances of political compromise through negotiations than ever before.

The popular yet often frowned-on adage of “one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter” seems to be a winning formula for those who were widely seen as critical threats yesterday but now are aspiring to be the stakeholders of tomorrow.

3 notes · View notes

beardedmrbean · 1 year

Text

March 9 (UPI) -- The governor of Afghanistan's Balkh province in the north of the country was killed along with two others after a bomb exploded at his office in the capital Mazar-I-Sharif on Thursday, police said.

The early morning attack that killed Mohammad Dawood Muzammil injured at least seven people, according to local hospital officials.

A man wearing a suicide vest blew himself up on the second floor of the building where Muzammil had had his offices, provincial police officials said.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, confirming the governor's death in a Twitter post, said it was "with great sadness we received the news that Balkh Governor Alhaji Mullah Mohammad Daud Muzammil was martyred in an explosion by the enemies of Islam."

RELATEDHouse committee told Afghanistan troop withdrawal was 'an organizational failure '

He added that authorities had begun an investigation into the attack.

No group has claimed responsibility but in the 18 months since regaining power following the pullout of U.S.-led NATO forces in 2021, the Taliban has been targeted by Islamic State.

Thursday's deadly attack came 24 hours after the Taliban claimed it had killed eight rebel forces in Mazar-I-Sharif without saying with which group they were affiliated.

Muzammil, the second most senior Taliban figure to be killed since it retook control of Afghanistan, headed a crackdown on IS in the Nangarhar Province in the country's east where he was governor before being appointed governor of Balkh last year.

IS has emerged as the Taliban's biggest security threat launching attacks against Afghans as well as foreign interests.

The group claims it is fighting for a global Islamic "caliphate", as opposed to the Taliban's more parochial ambition for an independent Afghanistan over which it would rule.

RELATEDHuman Rights Watch: Protests show totalitarian regimes losing grip on power

IS claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing in January near the foreign ministry in Kabul that killed 10 people as well as attacks in Balkh last year.

#nunyas news

3 notes · View notes

brookstonalmanac · 4 months

Text

Events 2.10

1258 – The Siege of Baghdad ends with the surrender of the last Abbasid caliph to Hulegu Khan, a prince of the Mongol Empire. 1306 – In front of the high altar of Greyfriars Church in Dumfries, Robert the Bruce murders John Comyn, sparking the revolution in the Wars of Scottish Independence. 1355 – The St Scholastica Day riot breaks out in Oxford, England, leaving 63 scholars and perhaps 30 locals dead in two days. 1502 – Vasco da Gama sets sail from Lisbon, Portugal, on his second voyage to India. 1567 – Lord Darnley, second husband of Mary, Queen of Scots, is found strangled following an explosion at the Kirk o' Field house in Edinburgh, Scotland, a suspected assassination. 1712 – Huilliches in Chiloé rebel against Spanish encomenderos. 1763 – French and Indian War: The Treaty of Paris ends the war and France cedes Quebec to Great Britain. 1814 – Napoleonic Wars: The Battle of Champaubert ends in French victory over the Russians and the Prussians. 1840 – Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom marries Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. 1846 – First Anglo-Sikh War: Battle of Sobraon: British defeat Sikhs in the final battle of the war. 1861 – Jefferson Davis is notified by telegraph that he has been chosen as provisional President of the Confederate States of America. 1862 – American Civil War: A Union naval flotilla destroys the bulk of the Confederate Mosquito Fleet in the Battle of Elizabeth City on the Pasquotank River in North Carolina. 1906 – HMS Dreadnought, the first of a revolutionary new breed of battleships, is christened. 1920 – Józef Haller de Hallenburg performs the symbolic wedding of Poland to the sea, celebrating restitution of Polish access to open sea. 1920 – About 75% of the population in Zone I votes to join Denmark in the 1920 Schleswig plebiscites. 1923 – Texas Tech University is founded as Texas Technological College in Lubbock, Texas. 1930 – The Việt Nam Quốc Dân Đảng launches the failed Yên Bái mutiny in hope of overthrowing French protectorate over Vietnam. 1933 – In round 13 of a boxing match at New York City's Madison Square Garden, Primo Carnera knocks out Ernie Schaaf. Schaaf dies four days later. 1936 – Second Italo-Abyssinian War: Italian troops launch the Battle of Amba Aradam against Ethiopian defenders. 1939 – Spanish Civil War: The Nationalists conclude their conquest of Catalonia and seal the border with France. 1940 – The Soviet Union begins mass deportations of Polish citizens from occupied eastern Poland to Siberia. 1943 – World War II: Attempting to completely lift the Siege of Leningrad, the Soviet Red Army engages German troops and Spanish volunteers in the Battle of Krasny Bor. 1947 – The Paris Peace Treaties are signed by Italy, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Finland and the Allies of World War II. 1954 – U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower warns against United States intervention in Vietnam. 1962 – Cold War: Captured American U2 spy-plane pilot Gary Powers is exchanged for captured Soviet spy Rudolf Abel. 1964 – Melbourne–Voyager collision: The aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne collides with and sinks the destroyer HMAS Voyager off the south coast of New South Wales, Australia, killing 82. 1967 – The 25th Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified. 1972 – Ras Al Khaimah joins the United Arab Emirates, now making up seven emirates. 1984 – Kenyan soldiers kill an estimated 5,000 ethnic Somali Kenyans in the Wagalla massacre. 1989 – Ron Brown is elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee, becoming the first African American to lead a major American political party. 1996 – IBM supercomputer Deep Blue defeats Garry Kasparov in chess for the first time. 2003 – France and Belgium break the NATO procedure of silent approval concerning the timing of protective measures for Turkey in case of a possible war with Iraq. 2009 – The communications satellites Iridium 33 and Kosmos 2251 collide in orbit, destroying both. 2016 – South Korea decides to stop the operation of the Kaesong joint industrial complex with North Korea in response to the launch of Kwangmyŏngsŏng-4.

#Events

0 notes

newstfionline · 3 years

Text

Saturday, August 28, 2021

With wildfire threatening, Lake Tahoe prepares for emergency (AP) The decision to flee their home Thursday in the mountains above Lake Tahoe became clear when Johnny White and Lauren McCauley could see flames on the webcam at their local ski resort. Even as ash rained down under a cloud of heavy smoke, the couple wasn’t panicked because they had an early warning to leave their home near Echo Summit, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) south of the lake, and wanted to avoid last-minute pandemonium if the wildfire continued its march toward the tourist destination on the California and Nevada border. Firefighters were facing changing weather conditions that could push the fire closer to the Tahoe Basin, a home to thousands and recreational playground for millions of tourists who visit the alpine lake in summer, ski at the many resorts in winter and gamble at its casinos year-round. Fires in California have destroyed around 2,000 structures and forced thousands to evacuate while also blanketing large swaths of the West in unhealthy smoke.

The Western air crisis (NYT) “We have had smoke in the sky literally since the third week of July,” Amy Ginder, a 47-year-old resident of Reno, said. “We have been inhaling toxins for five weeks now. You can’t be outside. You can’t breathe. You can’t see the sun.” In response, Ginder has stopped jogging outdoors. “If it were just this summer, you’d just suck it up and move on,” she said. “But it isn’t. It’s the realization that this is our future.” Smoke-clogged air has become a regular part of life in the American West. Climate change has increased the frequency of droughts, extreme heat and, by extension, large wildfires. The smoke then drifts across large parts of the Pacific Coast and Mountain West. Sometimes, it even reaches the East Coast. One measure of the problem: In several places yesterday—including Bend, Ore.; an area north of Sacramento; and Lake Tahoe—air pollution reached levels that can damage lungs when people spend time outdoors. Phil Abernathy, a Lake Tahoe resident who decided to flee the area in search of cleaner air, told The Times that simply inhaling can feel like a “sizable man is standing on my chest.”

Tropical Storm Ida Forms in Caribbean, Heading for Louisiana (Bloomberg) Tropical Storm Ida has formed in the Caribbean and is forecast to a grow into a powerful hurricane in the days ahead, wreaking havoc across the Gulf of Mexico and ultimately crashing into the U.S coast. Ida, the ninth storm of the 2021 Atlantic hurricane season, is swirling past Jamaica, with top winds of 40 miles (64 kilometers) per hour. It’s forecast to strike Cuba Friday, reach hurricane strength over the gulf Saturday and make landfall in Louisiana or Mississippi late Sunday or Monday. “Sunday is the anniversary of Katrina—it seems like a particularly cruel date for a hurricane landfall in Louisiana,” said Ryan Truchelut, president of Weather Tiger LLC. said in an interview. The storm’s winds are forecast to peak at 110 miles per hour (177 kilometers per hour), which would put it just below Category 3 major hurricane status on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale, the National Hurricane Center said Thursday. Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards declared a state of emergency ahead of the storm.

Nowhere To Go (AP) The earthquake in Haiti killed and injured thousands, and wiped away thousands of homes. Now, a more grim reality is setting in for those who survived and were hospitalized—if released, they have nowhere to go. 25-year-old Jertha Ylet came to the hospital on August 14, unconscious and with a crushed leg. Her 5-year-old daughter survived unharmed, but her father and two other relatives were killed, her brother seriously injured and her house destroyed. A surgeon had put a metal rod in her lower left leg, but Ylet hadn’t been out of bed or tried to walk since she arrived. Ylet was discharged Thursday—the hospital needed her bed for other patients. “I said to the doctor, ‘I don’t have any place to go,’” Ylet said. Medical staff is sympathetic, but pragmatic. The beds are needed. “After someone gets well they have to go.” In the first days after the earthquake, the hospital was overwhelmed with patients. The injured lay on patios and breezeways awaiting care. Now there are still people in those areas, but they’re discharged patients or others never admitted at all but who are coming for the donations of food and water and clothing arriving at the hospital daily.

Biden: ‘We Will Hunt You Down’ (Foreign Policy) Hours after the Islamic State launched a coordinated suicide bomb attack among the desperate crowds gathered outside Kabul’s international airport on Thursday, U.S. President Joe Biden vowed to continue evacuations—and to retaliate against the perpetrators. “Know this: We will not forgive, we will not forget,” he said in a speech from the White House. “We will hunt you down and make you pay.” The attack killed more than 70 Afghan civilians and 13 U.S. troops in at least two blasts, leaving the area around the airport in chaos. Members of the Islamic State group’s local branch, known as Islamic State-Khorasan, detonated suicide vests at the airport’s Abbey Gate and outside the nearby Baron Hotel. Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid condemned the attack, which underscores the security challenges the group faces as it formally establishes a government in Kabul. It remains unclear whether a military response to the bombings is already being undertaken, and if the United States has adequate capacity on the ground to carry it out. [Note: The death toll has been updated to as many as 169 Afghans.]

As NATO countries end their Kabul airlift, many interpreters, embassy staffers and drivers are left behind (Washington Post) Thousands of Afghans who put their lives at risk to work with America's NATO allies have been left behind as the military evacuations wrap up and they hunker down in fear over Taliban reprisals. Britain became the latest nation to announce an end to its airlifts on Friday, as Defense Secretary Ben Wallace told LBC radio that evacuations would end in hours. The military has airlifted nearly 14,000 people out over the past two weeks, but “the sad fact is that not every single one will get out,” he said, with up to 1,100 eligible Afghans who “didn’t make it.” Other countries fell further short of their targets. Germany, whose last soldiers flew out of Afghanistan on Thursday evening, said it had rescued around 4,000 Afghans—far shy of the 10,000 people it had identified as at risk. From Berlin to Ottawa, questions have been raised as to why more was not done to save those who were vulnerable sooner. “I think humanity has fallen apart,” said one employee of a local nongovernmental organization contracted by the German government. He shared a photo of what he said was one of his colleagues, beheaded by the Taliban when they took over his neighborhood. “It feels as though I am so alone,” he said, his voice breaking as he spoke. European governments have said they were left with little choice but to end their military rescue operations as the United States pulls out.

Afghanistan’s Islamic State (AP) The Islamic State offshoot that Americans blame for Thursday’s deadly suicide attacks outside the Kabul airport coalesced in eastern Afghanistan six years ago, and rapidly grew into one of the more dangerous terror threats globally. The Islamic State’s Central Asia affiliate sprang up in the months after the group’s core fighters swept across Syria and Iraq, carving out a self-styled caliphate, or Islamic empire, in the summer of 2014. The group started as several hundred Pakistani Taliban fighters, who took refuge across the border in Afghanistan after military operations drove them out of their home country. Other, like-minded extremists joined them there, including disgruntled Afghan Taliban fighters unhappy with what they—unlike the West—saw as the Taliban’s overly moderate and peaceful ways. As the Taliban pursued peace talks with the United States in recent years, discontented Taliban increasingly moved to the more extremist Islamic State, swelling its numbers. Many were attracted to the Islamic State’s violent and extreme ideology, including promises of a caliphate to unite the Islamic world, a goal never espoused by the Taliban.

Afghanistan got just 5 minutes of coverage on the network newscasts last year, analysis says (The Week) The current chaos in Afghanistan may be dominating the headlines, but in 2020, the war reportedly received just a handful of minutes of network news coverage throughout the entire year. According to analysis from the Tyndall Report via the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, the national evening newscasts on CBS, ABC, and NBC in 2020 devoted just five minutes to Afghanistan coverage. The coverage came in February 2020, when the Trump administration announced the Doha agreement with the Taliban to end the war. "Five minutes!" Andrew Tyndall writes. "Such were the demands on the news agenda of the looming coronavirus pandemic in the early spring of 2020. Coverage of all other developments was eclipsed by COVID. The networks had long since given up covering the war as a war." [Since 2014] they "have treated the role of the military there as an afterthought," he said.

New Zealand extends virus lockdown (AP) New Zealand’s government has extended a strict nationwide lockdown through Tuesday as it tries to quash its first outbreak of the coronavirus in six months. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Friday the government expects to keep Auckland, where most of the cases have been found, in full lockdown for at least two more weeks. But she expects most other parts of the country can ease restrictions slightly from Wednesday. The announcement came as health authorities reported 70 new daily cases, the most yet in the outbreak, which has grown to nearly 350 cases in total. Ardern said there was evidence the lockdown was working and new case numbers were beginning to level off. She said she remained committed to the strategy of eliminating the virus entirely.

Gunmen release students in northern Nigeria 3 months later (AP) Gunmen have released some of the children kidnapped from a school in northern Nigeria back in May, some of whom were as young as 5 years old, the school’s head teacher said late Thursday. He could not confirm the exact number freed. Authorities have said that 136 children were abducted along with several teachers when gunmen on motorcycles attacked the Salihu Tanko Islamic School in Niger state. Other preschoolers were left behind as they could not keep pace when the gunmen hurriedly moved those abducted into the forest. The release came a day after local media quoted one parent as saying six of the children had died in captivity. The government has been unable to halt the spate of abductions for ransom. As a result, many schools have been forced to close due to the concerns about the kidnapping risk.

Gig apps for a pandemic economy (AP) For months, Gabrielle Walker had been looking for a part-time job. Then one day, Walker, a 19-year-old student at University College London, was scrolling through TikTok and stumbled on a video about an app called Stint, which helps students earn money by working brief temporary stints at places like restaurants and bars that require little training or experience. Walker downloaded the app, took a 15-minute intro course and days later snagged a job polishing cutlery at a Michelin-star restaurant in London—for one day. Between May and June, she took on several other gigs, squeezing them into her class schedule where she could. Stint, in use across the U.K., has grown in popularity, alongside similar apps in the United States like Instawork and Gigpro, as one response to the peculiar ways in which economies have been rebounding from the pandemic recession. In contrast to Stint, Instawork and Gigpro are suited more for skilled or experienced workers who want or need short-term shifts. Collectively, the newer apps represent a variation on the many gig apps that sprang up in recent years—from Uber and DoorDash to TaskRabbit and Thumbtack—that typically serve households in need of a one-time service. What distinguishes the latest apps is that they link workers with employers that have a steady need for labor but don’t necessarily want to commit to permanent hires given the uncertainties from the pandemic.

#headlines #news

2 notes · View notes

goodwettoco2727 · 3 years

Text

Donald J. Trump: On the Threshold of Greatness

By Daniel Davies

Despite the many ways in which he’s reviled today, I believe that history will record Trump as one of America’s greatest presidents. Looking at America’s most admired presidents, I was able to identify the four criteria needed to earn that accolade:

• First and foremost, the president led the country through a life and death struggle.

• Second, the president suffered intense defamation, attack, pernicious plots, and even demonization both domestic and foreign but prevailed.

• Third, the president defended and supported our Republic’s foundational documents and institutions: the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, including all Amendments, especially the Bill of Rights.

• Fourth, he supported American liberty, prosperity, and social welfare. All the greats promoted the actualization of the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights during their presidencies.

Four presidents have met all those criteria: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan. One president, Donald Trump, is on the threshold of meeting those criteria. His place is reserved at Mt. Rushmore and history will tell if he is successful. If he is not successful, our nation may perish in the face of the life and death struggle we are now in.

Donald Trump entered the office of the president in 2016 facing a life and death struggle. The previous administration had eviscerated the US military, created an unhealthy alliance with Iran, taken a stand against Israel, failed to take the ISIS caliphate seriously, and presided over a weakening NATO alliance in which member states failed to contribute to the mutual defense. In addition, both Iran and North Korea openly developed nuclear weapons and North Korea threatened an attack on the USA. The United States economy, still not recovered from the recession triggered by the 9/11/2001 attacks, suffered from unequal trade agreements and suffocating government regulations. Race war threatened to break out in a hyper divided nation. The USA also maintained a co-dependent relationship with China, enabling its campaign of total war against the USA in their quest to become the world’s only superpower.

As serious as all those challenges were, the most serious challenge came from within the USA (the second criterion). The previous administration colluded with the DOJ, CIA, FBI, and the federal court system. In addition, corporate media colluded with the administration. The previous administration’s executives entered into corrupt relationships with China, Russia, and Ukraine in return for money.

Despite the constant attack from domestic forces, especially the deep state media, deep state politicians, deep state executive branch departments which falsely accused Trump of racist policies, immorality, graft, collusion with Russia, fascist policies, poor health, and insanity, President Trump presided over the most successful presidency in history, thereby meeting the third and fourth criteria. He

• defused the North Korean and Iranian nuclear threats,

• completely defeated the ISIS caliphate,

• concluded the wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan,

• renegotiated trade agreements,

• strengthened NATO,

• brought energy independence to the USA,

• presided over the strongest economic recovery in history, especially for minorities,

• husbanded historic stock market highs,

• freed businesses from strangling regulations,

• advanced religious liberty,

• protected freedom of speech,

• thwarted illegal immigration,

• rebuilt the military,

• kept the promise to acknowledge Jerusalem as the capital of Israel,

• brokered peace treaties between Israel and former enemies,

• protected the rights of the unborn,

• protected Second Amendment rights,

• advanced health insurance reforms, and

• reformed the VA hospital system.

President Trump nearly single-handedly brought the USA back as the world leader. We were prosperous, at peace, and growing in national unity. All in the face of the most vicious and hostile attacks domestic and foreign.

Donald Trump’s election caught the ruling party by surprise. They had counted on manipulating the 2016 election to maintain control of the government. When that failed, the Deep State launched an all-out effort to remove Donald Trump from office by any means possible. The Deep State (including the CIA, DOJ, FBI, Congress, media including social media, and state governments loyal to the administration) colluded to remove Donald Trump from office through impeachment. When those efforts failed, the Deep State, led by the previous administration behind the scenes, ramped up its program to steal the election of 2020.

In January 2020, both the first and second metrics reappeared (great national crisis; extreme attacks against the president). China unleashed a weapons-grade, biologically engineered virus on the world, the so-called COVID-19 virus. President Trump took quick action to thwart the attack by banning Chinese from traveling to the USA, providing care for the sick, and developing preventatives as well as vaccines. The Deep State immediately seized the opportunity to use the pandemic to consolidate control of the government (federal and state) and to damage President Trump politically.

The pandemic worked perfectly into their plan to steal the election from President Trump. They learned from the campaign of 2016 that they could not defeat President Trump in a fair election because most Americans rejected the Deep State’s anti-American values.

The Deep State’s plans to rig the election got aid from billions of dollars from social media giants and anti-American agents. They manipulated state governments through courts to permit unmonitored mail-in ballots, bypassing the state legislatures in key swing states. Through that and other types of fraud, the Deep State engineered a stolen election.

On January 6, 2021, when Congress convened to accept the electors’ votes for president and vice president, between 500,000 to 1 million Americans assembled in Washington D.C. to protest the stolen election and oppose Congress’s acceptance of electors. Despite overwhelming proof of election fraud, the swing states ramrodded through electors supporting the Deep State’s candidates. State and federal courts refused to review the evidence to delegitimize the election. Members of both political parties voted to accept the sham electors. The people who gave President Trump a landslide victory felt betrayed.

The Deep State, working hand in glove with domestic terrorists, co-opted a huge, peaceful protest into a small assault on the Capitol buildings. The Deep State media (included social media), through prearranged statements, immediately characterized the protest as an “insurrection” that President Trump engineered. The media censored any view to the opposite and sought to shut down all free speech.

This is a life and death threat to the Republic unlike the life and death threats faced by other great presidents. This is an attack on American institutions and values from within and without. If President Trump can save the country from this attack, he will take his place in Mr. Rushmore. I believe that he will.

5 notes · View notes

lightoftruth · 3 years

Photo

Well Said Franklin!!! Franklin Graham and what he had to say about the ten Republicans who joined with Nancy Pelosi...

Shame, shame on the ten Republicans who joined with Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats in impeaching President Trump yesterday. After all that he has done for our country, you would turn your back and betray him so quickly? We have never had a president like him in my lifetime. He gave us lower taxes, a strong economy, and low unemployment. He made NATO take notice and pay their own way. He had the guts to take on North Korea and meet with their leader personally. He didn’t let China walk all over us. Just his Mideast peace initiatives in the last couple of months deserve a Nobel Peace Prize. He has defended religious liberty like no president before him, and that matters to all people of faith. He has worked to bring prison reform and secured our southern border. He defeated the ISIS caliphate in Syria, and he strengthened our military. He was also the most pro-life president we have ever had. But the House Democrats impeached him because they hate him and want to do as much damage as they can. And these ten, from his own party, joined in the feeding frenzy. It makes you wonder what the thirty pieces of silver were that Speaker Pelosi promised for this betrayal.President Trump isn’t a perfect person. I don’t support or agree with some of the things the President said and did the last couple of weeks. January 6 was a low point in his presidency. We knew he had flaws when he ran for office in 2016. But I, and millions of others, voted for him because of the platform and policies he promised. I still support those. The Democrats have been trying to get rid of the President since the day he took office. What they did yesterday only further divides our nation. I hope President-elect Biden will keep his word and work for unity as he has said.

2 notes · View notes

antoine-roquentin · 5 years

Link

In a major shift in United States military policy in Syria, the White House said on Sunday that President Trump had given his endorsement for a Turkish military operation that would sweep away American-backed Kurdish forces near the border in Syria.

Turkey considers the Kurdish fighters to be a terrorist insurgency, and has long sought to end American support for the group. But the Kurdish group, known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, or S.D.F., has been the United States’ most reliable partner in fighting the Islamic State in a strategic corner of northern Syria.

Now, Mr. Trump’s decision goes against the recommendations of top officials in the Pentagon and the State Department who have sought to keep a small troop presence in northeast Syria to continue operations against the Islamic State, or ISIS, and to act as a critical counterweight to Iran and Russia.

Administration officials said that Mr. Trump spoke directly with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey on the issue on Sunday. And the officials indicated that the 100 to 150 United States military personnel deployed to that area would be pulled back in advance of any Turkish operation but that they would not be completely withdrawn from Syria.

“Turkey will soon be moving forward with its long-planned operation into Northern Syria,” the White House said in a statement released just before 11 p.m. in Washington. “The United States Armed Forces will not support or be involved in the operation, and United States forces, having defeated the ISIS territorial ‘Caliphate,’ will no longer be in the immediate area.”

It was unclear how extensive the Turkish operation would be, or whether Turkish forces would clash with the American-backed Kurds, a development that could jeopardize many of the counterterrorism gains achieved by the American military in the fight against ISIS....

“Allowing Turkey to move into northern Syria is one of the most destabilizing moves we can do in the Middle East,” Representative Ruben Gallego, an Arizona Democrat and former Marine who served in the Iraq war, said on Twitter on Sunday night. “The Kurds will never trust America again. They will look for new alliances or independence to protect themselves.”

Mr. Erdogan has demanded a “safe zone” for his nation to run 20 miles deep and 300 miles along the Turkish-Syrian border east of the Euphrates. That area, he has said, would be reserved for the involuntary return of at least a million Syrian refugees now inside Turkey. Mr. Erdogan has threatened to send a wave of Syrian migrants to Europe instead if the international community does not support the initiative to send them back to Syria.

Since early August, the American and Turkish militaries have been working together on a series of confidence-building measures — including joint reconnaissance flights and ground patrols — in a 75-mile-long strip of that 300-mile border area.

American-backed Kurdish forces have pulled back several miles and destroyed fortifications in that area.

The pace of these operations has not been fast enough for Mr. Erdogan, and last week he began indicating that he planned to launch an incursion across the border. He did the same thing over the summer, prompting a flurry of American diplomatic activity bolstered by the military confidence-building measures.

Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper and Gen. Mark Milley, the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, both called their Turkish counterparts last week to try and reduce tensions. But unresolved threats from Turkey apparently resulted in the decision by Mr. Trump on Sunday.

American officials contacted late Sunday would not say how far back from the Turkish border American troops would redeploy, or whether this signals the beginning of a larger overall withdrawal of the 1,000 American troops now in northeast Syria conducting and supporting counterterrorism operations.

One official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe a fluid military situation, said that American forces were pulling back from northeast Syria to “get out of the way.”

Officials described a military and political tension as the American military is pulled between two important allies in the civil war in Syria. Turkey is a major NATO ally, but the Kurdish S.D.F. forces have been a partner in the fight against ISIS.

“We are not going to support the Turks and we are not going to support the S.D.F.,” the official said. “If they go to combat, we’re going to stay out of it.”...

Though Mr. Trump hailed a total defeat of the Islamic State this year — and asserted its territorial demise in Sunday night’s statement — defense officials in the region see things differently, acknowledging that what remains of the terrorist group is here to stay.

Over the past several months, ISIS has made inroads into a sprawling tent camp in northeast Syria, and there is no ready plan to deal with the 70,000 people there, including thousands of family members of ISIS fighters.

American intelligence officials say the Al Hol camp, managed by Syrian Kurdish allies with little aid or security, is evolving into a hotbed of ISIS ideology. The American-backed Syrian Kurdish force also holds more than 10,000 ISIS fighters, including 2,000 foreigners, in separate makeshift prisons.

The custody of all these people could be in jeopardy, American officials said Sunday night, depending on whether any Turkish incursion sets off a much larger conflict in northeast Syria.

190 notes · View notes

go-redgirl · 3 years

Photo

Franklin Graham: ‘Shame, Shame’ on the 10 Republicans Who Voted to Impeach Trump

Rev. Franklin Graham on Thursday blasted the ten GOP lawmakers who sided with Democrats in impeaching President Trump for the second time, noting that it “makes you wonder what the thirty pieces of silver were that Speaker Pelosi promised for this betrayal.”

“Shame, shame on the ten Republicans who joined with Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats in impeaching President Trump yesterday. After all that he has done for our country, you would turn your back and betray him so quickly?” Graham asked in a Thursday Facebook post, listing some of President Trump’s key accomplishments, including lowering taxes, strengthening the economy, and engaging in Middle East peace initiatives:

We have never had a president like him in my lifetime. He gave us lower taxes, a strong economy, and low unemployment. He made NATO take notice and pay their own way. He had the guts to take on North Korea and meet with their leader personally. He didn’t let China walk all over us. Just his Mideast peace initiatives in the last couple of months deserve a Nobel Peace Prize. He has defended religious liberty like no president before him, and that matters to all people of faith. He has worked to bring prison reform and secured our southern border. He defeated the ISIS caliphate in Syria, and he strengthened our military. He was also the most pro-life president we have ever had.

House Democrats, Graham continued, impeached Trump because they “hate him and want to do as much damage as they can.”

“And these ten, from his own party, joined in the feeding frenzy. It makes you wonder what the thirty pieces of silver were that Speaker Pelosi promised for this betrayal,” he continued.

Graham clarified that he does not support or agree with “some of the things the President said and did the last couple of weeks” and identified January 6 as a “low point in his presidency.” However, he reiterated that he and “millions of others” voted for Trump “because of the platform and policies he promised.”

“I still support those. The Democrats have been trying to get rid of the President since the day he took office,” he added, concluding that the impeachment vote only serves to further divide the nation:

Franklin Graham on Thursday

He had the guts to take on North Korea and meet with their leader personally. He didn’t let China walk all over us. Just his Mideast peace initiatives in the last couple of months deserve a Nobel Peace Prize. He has defended religious liberty like no president before him, and that matters to all people of faith.

He has worked to bring prison reform and secured our southern border. He defeated the ISIS caliphate in Syria, and he strengthened our military. He was also the most pro-life president we have ever had. But the House Democrats impeached him because they hate him and want to do as much damage as they can.

And these ten, from his own party, joined in the feeding frenzy. It makes you wonder what the thirty pieces of silver were that Speaker Pelosi promised for this betrayal.

President Trump isn’t a perfect person. I don’t support or agree with some of the things the President said and did the last couple of weeks. January 6 was a low point in his presidency. We knew he had flaws when he ran for office in 2016.

But I, and millions of others, voted for him because of the platform and policies he promised. I still support those. The Democrats have been trying to get rid of the President since the day he took office. What they did yesterday only further divides our nation. I hope President-elect Biden will keep his word and work for unity as he has said.

___________________________________________

The House voted to impeach President Trump on Wednesday, 232 to 197, accusing him of inciting the chaos that descended upon the U.S. Capitol last week as Congress gathered to certify the electoral votes. Ten Republican House members sided with the Democrats, including Reps. Anthony Gonzalez (OH), Peter Meijer (MI), Fred Upton (MI), Liz Cheney (WY), John Katko (NY), Adam Kinzinger (IL), Tom Rice (SC), Jamie Herrera Beutler (WA), Dan Newhouse (WA), and David Valadao (CA).House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who on Wednesday said Trump “bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters,” has refused to back efforts to remove Cheney, the House Republican Conference chairwoman, from her leadership role.

NOTE: So, now we know who the inside traitors are that was against President Donald John Trump from the very beginning. Never, ever trust a ‘traitor’.

______________________________________

NOTE: Joe Biden is a ‘evil’ Devil, just look at him and his track records. If you can’t see that, then you have blinders on!

Let the truth be told!

1 note · View note

mariacallous · 8 months

Text

Israel is set to begin an imminent ground operation in an effort to destroy Hamas after the militant group’s cross-border invasion into Israel left more than 1,300 people dead this week.

Israeli officials said the goal of the effort is to dismantle Hamas—destroying its infrastructure, decapitating its leadership, and decimating its rank-and-file troops. And they’re asking civilians to get out of harm’s way. The Israeli military on Thursday ordered the evacuation of more than 1 million people from northern Gaza—a move the United Nations condemned, warning against “devastating humanitarian consequences” from the forced relocation.

But officials and experts are wary that Israel, one of the most advanced militaries in the world, with a stockpile of American precision-guided munitions at its disposal, will get drawn into an urban brawl with the Iran-backed militant group.

“They’ll seek to draw it into a city street fight,” said Frank McKenzie, a retired U.S. Marine four-star general who led U.S. Central Command, overseeing all American troops in the Middle East, until 2022. “They can use their tunnel network to get in behind the attack or to attack in all directions to make it very difficult for Israel to effectively employ a technological advantage.”

McKenzie said that Hamas will likely try to take the fight into a proverbial phone booth, up close and personal, “where it’s very hard to discern where Israeli forces end or Hamas begins.”

Hamas may also take a page from the Islamic State, which utilized tactics to blend into the dense urban environment in its dual capitals of Mosul, in Iraq, and Raqqa, in Syria, using women, children, and disabled people as human shields, before a U.S.-supported coalition helped demolish its self-declared caliphate. Haim Regev, Israel’s ambassador to the European Union and NATO, asserted in an interview that Hamas will likely use human shields to protect itself. “All options are on the table,” Regev said. “But it’s going to be very tough.”

The Israeli military insists it has protocols in place to protect the civilian population in Gaza, a thin strip of land in between Israel and Egypt that is about the geographic size of Philadelphia and is one of the most densely populated areas in the world.

“The goal is to hit Hamas in a way that it will never recover militarily,” Regev told Foreign Policy in an interview in his office on Tuesday. “We have to be sensitive. There are 2 million people there in Gaza. We are warning people before we hit some of the targets.” Regev said the Israeli military had succeeded in stopping, killing, or arresting the remaining Hamas infiltrators who had broken through the fence over the weekend.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF), which has mobilized 300,000 reserve troops, about two-thirds of the active-duty U.S. Army, is dropping leaflets and plans to knock on doors to let residents know it is coming, when operational conditions allow it. And even if Israel follows the protocols to the letter, which include diverting airstrikes if warplanes detect the presence of children nearby, Hamas can draw on an extensive network of man-made tunnels under the Gaza Strip that it can use to store supplies of weapons and food or prepare more attacks.

“They will have to dismount their infantry and essentially fight soldier on soldier and block by block in the built-up areas,” said Mick Mulroy, a former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East. “Special operations forces may be leaping ahead in surgical strikes to take out Hamas leadership and recover hostages.”

Even as Israel prepares the urban battlefield with airstrikes while softening up Hamas targets with artillery and indirect fire, the human cost of the war continues to rise. Israel’s death toll has soared to 1,300 people since Hamas fighters breached the Gaza border fence on Saturday. The Israeli military said it has recovered the bodies of more than 1,500 militants from the group, which the United States and European Union designate as a terror organization, some of them from roadsides in southern Israel.

Regev said the Israeli military operation also aimed to stop the cycle of Hamas rocket strikes from Gaza—most of which are intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system—that have been a feature of life in the country for years. “The rocket era from Gaza has ended,” Regev said. “Now there is zero tolerance.” The Israeli diplomat added that the country hoped to see moderate Palestinians take control of the Gaza Strip after the operation but said that Israel did not have any intention to again control the area as it once did and would withdraw troops after the military achieved its mission.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Tuesday announced Israel’s move to a full offensive following Hamas’s deadly attack from the weekend. As the Israeli military prepares for a possible ground strike in Gaza, it has already imposed a food, fuel, and water blockade. Gaza’s sole power plant ran out of fuel on Wednesday—increasing the risk of hospital generators dying and exacerbating the crisis.

Mulroy said that while the IDF had superior troops, weapons, and equipment, Hamas has become very comfortable fighting in the urban jungle on home soil. As IDF troops come forward, Mulroy said, they are likely to face obstacles aimed at directing them into prepared kill zones where mines, anti-tank missiles, and deadly drones can take out their tanks and vehicles.

“This is about as hard a tactical problem as anyone has faced lately,” said Joseph Votel, a retired U.S. Army four-star general who led U.S. Central Command until 2019.

And the threat on the northern front is even worse: Iran-backed Hezbollah boasts a missile force of between 150,000 and 180,000 rockets that it could fire into Israel if it enters the conflict in any significant fashion.

U.N. experts warn that without essential supplies, the 2.3 million Gazans are at an “inescapable risk of starvation” and are calling for an immediate de-escalation. “[T]here’s going to be a determined effort to try to decapitate Hamas,” said Michael Lynk, who served as the U.N. special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories. “And the only way to do that is to lay waste to large sections of Gaza and its civilian population.”

“This is both a humanitarian crisis and a challenge for international law,” he said. “Collective punishment, the punishment of not the guilty but the innocent, is an absolute prohibition in the Fourth Geneva Convention which governs the laws of occupation and the laws of war.”

The U.N. has estimated that at least 340,000 Palestinians have been displaced by the fighting, and there are likely to be more as the Biden administration has urged putting in place humanitarian corridors so the Israeli ground operation can proceed with as little civilian bloodshed as possible.

It’s already been a bad year. Omar Shakir, the Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch, said that 2023 saw the most Palestinians killed in the West Bank in any year since the U.N. began systematically recording fatalities in 2005.

“The bloodshed did not begin this week,” he said.

1 note · View note

cincinnatusvirtue · 4 years

Text

Six Day War: June 5th-10th, 1967

Background: The year 70 AD saw the Roman Empire put down the Jewish Revolt, in the province of Judea. Included in the quelling of this rebellion was the reconquest of Jerusalem and destruction of the Second Jewish Temple. After this shattering of their homeland, many Jews left the Levant in waves spreading to the far reaches of the Roman Empire and elsewhere forming a diaspora. For nearly the next two thousand years the diaspora survived amid changing polities and had to adapt to the laws and frequent whims of the societies in which they lived. Many Jews did face many trials, pogroms, ghettos, heavy taxes, religious and social discrimination among others. Some Jews depending on the society also could adapt and do fairly well in parts of Europe, this was relatively true in the Middle Ages in some Muslim territories like Al-Andalus in Spain & Portugal and even the Ottoman Empire. It was also true Jews fared well in medieval Poland as well.

The 7th century saw the rise of Islam and it spread into the Levant following the early Islamic Caliphate’s victories over the Eastern Roman Empire and Persianate Sasanian Empire which had weakened each other through continual war. Islam was founded among the Arabs in their homeland of Arabia, today’s Arabian Peninsula. The Arabs were previously very diverse in their beliefs with some practicing pagan beliefs, other converting to Christianity, Judaism or Zoroastrianism. Arab Christians tended to live in the Roman Levant or on the borderlands between Arabia and the Roman Empire. Islam provided them a sense of unity as it did throughout the Middle East and North Africa. Following the Battle of Yarmouk in 636 AD, Islam spread to the Levant and would be the predominant religion of the region over the following centuries. In time, Arabs who settled these lands and intermixed with other peoples would became culturally and ethnolinguistically Arabized overall and the region became known as Palestine, though never an official country, it became the common name for the region. There did remain a continual albeit smaller Jewish presence throughout the land too and this was more or less settled alongside the ruling Islamic dynasties that came and went over the centuries.

The Crusades, undertaken by Europeans in the Middle Ages saw temporary periods of restored Christian control to swaths of the Levant. In these times Christian pilgrimages and settlements grew and also lived alongside Jews and Muslims to varying degrees of tolerance & intolerance in their interactions. Nevertheless, following the 13th and 14th centuries Muslim rule was resolutely restored to the whole of the Levant under the Mamluk Sultanate from Egypt. Control of the area fell to the Turkish Ottoman Empire in the 16th century and it remained in their hands through the early 20th century.

In the 19th century a growing modern movement for the restoration of a Jewish state was gaining some prominence in Europe & America, particularly as outlined by a Jewish journalist and activist Theodor Herzl from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The movement and ideology became known as Zionism. While it is true many Jews since antiquity wished for a restored Jewish state in the Middle East, Herzl is largely credited with articulating and organizing the modern movement of Zionism as we understand it. The main aim was to establish a nation-state for the Jewish people where their religion, language and culture could be safely practiced on their own without being subject to the politics of the societies the diaspora had found them. Their was debate about where this homeland would be with some proposals placing Jews in South America or even in Eastern Africa. Herzl and most Zionists however looked for a place within the confines of the then Ottoman Empire, namely a restoration to their historical ancestral homeland in the region then known as Palestine but to the Jews, the land of Israel. How this would be accomplished was debated, most advocated for a purchase agreement, to purchase lands from the Ottomans and set up Jewish settlements which would lead to an eventual state. World War I would provide the impetus and accelerate events, though perhaps somewhat unintentionally.

World War I (1914-1918) pitted the Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria & the Ottoman Empire against Britain, France, Russia, Italy, the United States and others. One of its many theaters of war was the Middle East in which the British and French sought to knock out the Ottoman Empire to deny Germany access to the Middle East for oil and trade, political influence and to potential threats to British and French interests in the region. The British in particular would use their influence and future political promises to undermine the Ottomans in the Middle East. In doing so, they ignited the aspirations of both Jewish and Arab nationalist movements. The Jews were promised a future homeland in the region under the infamous Balfour Declaration of 1917 which declared British intent to support such an aspiration. In turn, a number of Jews formed an actual Jewish Legion which fought in support of the British, under the command of Colonel John Patterson, an Anglo-Irish Evangelical Protestant who was a Christian Zionist and major supporter of the movement. The Jewish Legion would help put push out the Turks from the Levant, forming the first all-Jewish led combat unit in modern history. Many future key players in Israel would serve in this unit in various capacities. Meanwhile, the Arabs also lead a crucial revolt against the Ottomans with aid from the British, under their agent TE Lawrence, known to history as Lawrence of Arabia. The Hashemite Kingdom of the Hejaz was supposed to be the realization of a united Arab state in the Middle East, under the rule of Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca. They too played an essential role in forcing the Ottomans hand in the region, by 1918 the war was over and the British and French now formed protectorates over the region with Syria going to the French and Palestine & Transjordan going to the British.

Over the coming two decades, a gradual but steady influx of Jews arrived from Europe and America to settle the lands in Britain’s Mandate of Palestine. This gradually increased tensions with the Arabs. The British decided what yet to do with the rival Jewish and Arab claims, both of which were promised sponsorship from Britain. Meanwhile, developments in Europe lead to the rise of anti-Semitism and the rise of Nazi Germany in particularly with its anti-Jewish sentiment and policies lead to an even greater increase of Jewish refugees for the Middle East, many were turned away as illegal arrivals by the British. During the Second World War, tensions remained and their were attempts by the Nazis to appeal to the Arabs to side with them against the British and by extension the Jews. Though practically speaking not much came of these attempts. Again a number of Jews fought in the British Army as did some Arabs against the Nazi allied Vichy France which had its colonies and protectorates around the world to varying degrees fight against the Allies, including in Syria.

Following the defeat of the Nazis in 1945 and the exposure of their crimes against humanity, most expressly in the Holocaust, world sympathy for the Jewish people was more visibly aroused. The notion that Jews could -re-assimilate to Europe was viewed with greater doubt by the Jews and indeed many non-Jews agreed. The British overextended and weakened by World War II’s end decided to leave the Middle East, at least overtly. It handed over the fate of the Mandate of Palestine to the United Nations (UN). In the years leading up to 1947-48 both Jewish and Arab communities formed paramilitaries engaged in acts of terrorism against each other as well as the British occupation which hastened the British decision to leave without a true decision made on the region’s political outcome. The UN proposed two new states, one Arab and one Jewish that would zigzag over the region and have crisscross junctures at various spots. Jerusalem was to remain an international city, despite its sacred status to both Jews and Arabs. 1948 saw the Jews accept this offer with the creation of the State of Israel, but this was rejected by the Palestinian Arabs and not recognized by the Arab states of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq or Jordan which resulted in an Arab invasion of Israeli territory that was eventually beaten back by the Jews with an shipment of arms from Czechoslovakia. Eventually an armistice was agreed to but no official declaration of peace of mutual recognition by either the Israelis or the Arabs. The de-facto existence of Israel was accepted by the Arabs as a temporary reality but to the Jews it was the fulfillment of Zionist aspirations.

The Cold War & Prelude to 1967: Post World War II saw the world bifurcate into largely two camps the capitalist oriented camp lead by the United States of America and NATO along with other allied liberal democracies against the Communist Bloc lead by the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact as well as China. Both America and Soviet Union sought influence in the world including in the Middle East and both competed for influence among the Arabs and Israelis. Israeli for its part began to function as a full on nation with elections, growing diplomatic recognition, increased population, including the influx of Jews expelled from Arab nations following the Arab-Israeli War of 1948-49. Meanwhile, the Palestinian Arabs or Palestinians as they had become known were forced off their lands with some settlements outright destroyed by Jewish forces during the war with both sides committing atrocities. They had moved to the few territories maintained by various Arab powers despite their defeat, namely the West Bank of the Jordan River and East Jerusalem controlled by Jordan and the Gaza Strip controlled by Egypt.

In 1952, there was a coup by military officers in Egypt which lead to the overthrow of the monarchy there. It established Egypt in becoming the Arab Republic of Egypt, under leadership of military officer and now President, Gamal Abdel Nasser. It promoted an ideology of secular Pan-Arabism and promoted a sort of anti-monarchical view, pared with Syria it became known as the United Arab Republic, though functionally speaking the two nations remained separate. Nasser was courted by both American and Soviet agents to pivot Egypt as a vital chess piece in the game of world influence between the two superpowers. Nasser also found himself at odds with the British and French over the Suez Canal which was jointly operated by companies on behalf of their governments and had been an international waterway under their control. Nasser sought to nationalize the canal for Egyptians as a means to coalesce support around him and assert Egypt’s independence. By 1956 the canal was indeed nationalized by Egypt and under an agreement organized by Britain, France and Israel which sought to end Egyptian tensions with Israel, the three nations launched a joint military operation against Nasser’s Egypt. In a military sense it succeeded, the Israelis defeated the Egyptians in the Sinai Peninsula while the British and French regained control of the canal. However, the US did not support the move fearing it would alienate the Arab world from their and NATO’s influence in favor of the Soviets. Under political pressure from US President Dwight Eisenhower, the British and French agreed to leave Egypt. Meanwhile, the UN placed a peacekeeping force in the Sinai to buffer between Israel and Egypt. Britain’s withdrawal showed its decline in stature to America and the world over. In Egypt though a military disaster Nasser turned it into a political victory, his tough stance against Britain, France and Israel raised his profile in the Arab and greater Islamic world. Egypt maintained control of the Suez Canal politically but it promised to open the waterway to international shipping. Despite, America not sanctioning the invasion, it was seen as not doing enough to prevent it and therefore in Nasser’s mind and other Arab leaders, the Soviet Union became more friendly with the Arabs states than previously before. It became a chief supplier of military arms, intelligence and joint projects. in turn Israel became more and more under the influence of America, in effect the Arab nations and Israel became client states of America and the Soviet Union.

From this state of affairs post-1956 a stalemate in the region developed but tensions remained on both sides. Which lead to May 1967...

Countdown to War: May 1967 saw the Soviet Union develop a plan to increase its influence further in the region. It sought to undermine the US which was fighting a politically unpopular war against Communism in Vietnam. Its plan was to orchestrate a war, even a small one in which its Arab allies (Egypt & Syria) demonstrating the power of Soviet backed weaponry would crush Israel and demonstrate the benefits of its support. It would in turn show American and NATO’s weakness, making more Arab nations turn to the Soviet fold. The Soviets through the KGB informed Egypt and Syria that Israel was massing divisions against the Syrian border in an attempt to preemptively attack the Arabs and start a war. These reports turned out to be false. Whether or not the Soviets truly believed this to be the case, it started a series of events that would unravel into open warfare. The Soviet information was taken seriously enough by the Arabs who began saber rattling. Nasser, by then the most revered politician in the Arab world took the lead with Egypt’s forces becoming partially mobilized. In addition, Egypt began mobilizing troops on the Sinai border with Israel, kicked out the UN peacekeepers and ultimately gave the Israelis their casus belli, closure of the Straits of Tiran which was the most vital link to Israeli shipping. Nasser claimed he was not looking for a war but famously said if the Israelis wanted a fight “We say, welcome!” Egypt and Syria both planned to fight against Israel and Jordan, under King Hussein also agreed to fight, placing his troops nominally under overall Egyptian command. Israel now had enemies to consider in the north, east and southwest. Iraq also supported Jordan and Syria, as did Lebanon but Egypt, Syria and Jordan would be the primary Arab force.

Israel’s leadership at the time was under Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, largely a man known for his micromanaging and accounting skills, not a man who conveyed military expertise. He and his cabinet met frequently throughout May 1967 to discuss options. The military leaders wanted a first strike but Eshkol remained non-committal hoping for a diplomatic solution to growing tensions. he hoped appealing the US and USSR would convince the Arabs to back down. Sending diplomats to America to find out their position. The American President Lyndon Johnson, dealing with civil unrest at home and ongoing fallout from escalating the war in Vietnam conveyed token support to reopen the Straits of Tiran through UN consensus but ultimately urged Israel not to strike first. Ultimately, the US Navy’s Sixth Fleet was deployed to the eastern Mediterranean as a show of force against any Soviet aggression. The Soviets in turn shadowed the American fleet with detection ships of their own. Soviet pilots were tasked to leave for Syria on a moment’s notice. They also urged the Arabs to restrain from striking first.

Arab propaganda only added to tensions, Radio Cairo and Egyptian television was broadcast daily throughout the Middle East depicting the Jews in stereotypes reminiscent of Nazi era propaganda, the Arabs also depicted the Jews being crushed and killed. In Israel, everyday citizens of the 19 year country perceived this to be an imminent second Holocaust. Volunteers of Jews from elsewhere in the world flocked to Israel and rabbis consecrated public parks on the assumptions new cemeteries for many dead would be needed soon. The propaganda was effective in the Arab world and the Egyptian show of force created widespread excitement and support. Even in Palestinian territory, Nasser was praised as a hero and icon, hailed as their eventual liberator.

Despite realizing the Americans weren’t going to help outright except to deter the Soviets and facing domestic pressure Eshkol continued to hold out. Finally, the generals and other cabinet members as well as the public demanded more of Israel’s Prime Minister, especially after a speech on the radio that included awkward pauses and forgotten queues, it conveyed a sense of indecision. The public demanded Eshkol make changes in his leadership. As Israeli Prime Minister he could also hold the cabinet position of Defense Minister if the government formed yield to such occasions due to Israeli politics. Eshkol was forced to relinquish his control of the Defense Minister’s position to the charismatic Moshe Dayan. Dayan was a military figure from the 1948 War and the Suez War of 1956 in which he became a household name. He possessed extensive military knowledge and projected absolute calm confidence in Israel’s ability to handle itself unilaterally. Dayan was well known for wearing an eye patch, having lost his left eye in World War II fighting for the British against Vichy France.

Dayan now assumed de-facto control of the military and decisions regarding the nation’s defense. He agreed with the cabinet by vote...a first strike was needed.

War: On paper, the Arabs combined had more men and resources than the Israelis. Their equipment was Soviet made for the most part ranging from planes & tanks to small firearms. Egypt had the largest army overall followed by Syria and Jordan with contributions from Iraq and Lebanon. Other nations in the Arab world were sending volunteers to aid as well. Egypt’s army was largely untested though and made of peasant conscripts. The elite units were actually fighting in Yemen and would play no part in the war. Jordan’s army and Syria’s aside from raids and skirmishes had little combat experience since the 1948 war.

Israel, even with its reservists did not have the combined manpower of the Arab coalition. Israeli equipment was a mix of French airplanes and armored ground vehicles from American and British companies along with Israeli self-made small arms such as the Uzi among western contributions.

Israel’s strategy relied on a first strike. Israel planned June 5th in the morning as the date of the attack. Seeing air supremacy as key to victory, Operation Focus was the Israeli first strike. The Israeli Air Force since the 1956 war had actually planned for a preemptive strike against their Arab foes in the event of another war. Israeli troops were compared to their Arab counterparts much more regimented in their training. They had relentlessly drilled their combined forces in multiple scenarios to allow for tactical flexibility and strategic deployment. At dawn on June 5th, the entire Israeli Air Force (bombers and fighters) aside from 12 planes left in reserve took off in various waves toward Egyptian air bases both located in the Sinai Peninsula and across the Suez Canal. Flying low to avoid radar detection and in an unexpected direction out over the Mediterranean Sea, the Israelis swept southward over the Sinai, the Nile delta and elsewhere. Egyptian farmers actually are reported to have waved at the planes thinking the planes Egyptian. The Israelis started bombing runs to destroy the Egyptian air force. First targeting runways so as to prevent the launch and potential escape of the planes, then to target the planes themselves, namely bombers that Egyptian propaganda stated was intended to bomb Tel Aviv. The attack was so effective, that Egypt’s Minister of Defense and Chief of Staff for the military, Abdel Hakim Amer was actually touring the Sinai Peninsula reviewing troops for the upcoming war when he was made aware of its start by Israeli planes flying overhead and bombing the Egyptian planes. In less than three hours, the Israelis had destroyed almost the entire Egyptian air force. They then turn north and destroyed the Syrians within two hours to the east destroy Jordan’s in mere minutes. Completely rending the Arabs without air support. The few Egyptian planes that did manage off the ground were picked off by Israeli fighters rapidly. There was no warning, total surprise had been achieved. The ramifications of this first strike would essentially determine the outcome of the whole war.

Israel had to fight on three fronts, the Sinai deserts against Egypt to the southwest, the West Bank against Jordan in the east and the Golan Heights against Syria in the north. Israeli tanks and infantry advanced on these fronts encountering the first Arab counter attacks in Jerusalem when Jordanian artillery began shelling Western Jerusalem. The Egyptian tanks in the Sinai were essentially sitting ducks as the Israelis at their leisure could bomb them too, destroying their armor in quick succession. Egypt was in full fighting retreat across the Sinai towards the Suez Canal and Israeli armor was in full pursuit. The Egyptians did put up some resistance in a number of areas but all in vain with Israeli air superiority and the qualitative superiority of their weapons against the Soviet made weapons used by the Arabs. By June 8th the entire Sinai Peninsula up to the eastern banks of the Suez Canal were in Israeli hands.

In the West Bank Jerusalem was the primary target, the Israelis had attempted its capture in 1948-49 but were driven back, giving the Arabs a small measure of victory in that war. Since that time, East Jerusalem which contained the most holy remnants of the ancient Second Temple and the Old City quarter was under Jordanian control. The earlier destruction of Jordanian, Syrian and Egyptian air forces determined the war’s outcome from the get go. Iraq’s air force stationed in Jordan was likewise destroyed. Initially, Moshe Dayan didn’t plan to capture the Old City but upon hearing of a pending UN push for ceasefire, he pressed Israeli paratroopers to do so, thinking it would improve Israel’s negotiation position later. The Egyptians asked the Jordanians to retreat from all the West Bank to preserve their fighting forces elsewhere, given the Israeli armored deployment from all directions. The Jordanians began to comply with this but on June 6th and 7th intense fighting remained within the Old City which eventually along with Bethlehem and the rest of the West Bank fell to Israel. The emotional and political significance of Jews being able to enter the Old City of Jerusalem for the first time freely and under Jewish auspices since antiquity was not lost on many. Suddenly secular Jews began spontaneous prayer at the Western Wall, a remnant of the Second Temple, these moments were etched in Israeli and indeed more broadly Jewish collective psyche for all time.

In the north, fighting over the strategically vital high ground known as the Golan Heights took place. Syria’s ground troops largely avoided conflict the first few days of the war. Early Egyptian propaganda was proclaiming great victories on the radio which informed Syrian moves. Israel having jammed much Arab military communications meant that only public radio informed the Syrians in some respects. These false reports designed to hold up the façade of Nasser’s image would have bad ramifications for Syria. Syria joined in shelling Israeli settlements in northern Israel and launched a few remaining fighters along with Lebanon to bomb Israeli positions but the Israeli planes either shot them down or drove them off. Israel debated taking the Golan Heights but given past Syrian shelling and raids from this area, Dayan pushed for taking them. Indeed, as the deadline for a ceasefire approached Israel continued its advance taking roughly 20 kilometers of territory. By June 10th the ceasefire went into effect and the war was over in six days total.

1,000,000 Arabs between the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Sinai Peninsula and Golan Heights were under total Israeli occupation.

Aftermath: Israel’s victory was total through a combination of pre-war drilling, advanced planning and of course the initiative gained by the first strike on June 5th to achieve total air superiority. Their attack caught the Arabs totally by surprise and left them in no good position to defend themselves. 700-900 Israelis died, 4,500 were wounded while the Egyptians had 10,000-15,000 dead, Syria 2,500 and Jordan 700 with smaller amounts for Iraq and Lebanon. Israel would now more than double its territory and begin controversial settlements in all the occupied territories. Nasser for his part resigned when the obvious sight of Israelis occupying the east bank of the Suez Canal undermined the official story of victory. The ragtag nature of the Egyptian military in retreat further showed the totality of their defeat. Despite yet another military defeat and one much worse than 1956, Nasser was encouraged to stay on as President when political party supporters helped amp up support for Nasser in the streets, He rescinded his resignation due to these demonstrations of support and would remain President for the rest of his days. Though in private, he was said never to be quite the same for the humiliation of defeat and the hubris his rhetoric had played in its development. Later that year at the Khartoum conference of the Arab League in Sudan, Nasser and all other Arab leaders took up the famous three no’s. “No peace, no recognition and no negotiation with Israel.” Nasser would die in 1970. During this time, Egypt and Israel continued small scale raids or demonstrations, though it was mostly low level. Palestinians also began to rely less on other Arab nation-states for their cause, instead many moved to Jordan and began launching attacks from there, forming the PLO headed by Yasser Arafat.

Israel for its part offered to return land for peace but given the Khartoum summit’s Three No’s policy it fell on deaf ears. At the same time Israeli settlers begin settlements in these newly occupied areas. Nasser’s successor Anwar Sadat continued Soviet relations despite the obvious failure of Soviet weaponry and failure of Soviet intelligence which lead to a war ending in such disaster for the Arabs. Sadat would launch the Yom Kippur War in 1973 with Syrian help though this time the Israelis laxed their defenses and were taken by relative surprise. That war would allow the Egyptians to re-cross the Suez Canal in dramatic fashion before the Israelis would regroup and eventually encircle and defeat the Egyptians , crossing due the west banks of the Suez themselves before yet another ceasefire was implemented. The Syrians would try and retake the Golan Heights before being pushed back and the Israelis advanced within 25 miles of Damascus, the Syrian capital by war’s end. In 1978 Egypt and Israel with American sponsorship signed a bilateral agreement to peace and recognition, turning against the Three No’s policy of 1967. Sadat’s change of heart would change Arab-Israeli politics. Realizing a military solution was no longer viable, Egypt and Israel formed an alliance which persists to the modern day. Eventually Jordan and the PLO made similar agreements in the 1990′s with Israel. In 1981, Egypt was given the Sinai back in accordance with the treaty. Israel also unilaterally withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005. Though settlements remain in the Golan Heights and West Bank which remain effectively under international law occupied territories but de-facto Israeli territory. Though Israel, with some international recognition has now claimed the Golan permanently and the West Bank’s status remains controversial since a future potential Palestinian state largely is thought to majority existence in the West Bank. Jerusalem also remains a political hotbed of controversy but remains completely in Israeli hands since 1967 and is declared its capital with limited recognition. The conflict remains unresolved yet today and 1967 in some ways exacerbated the issue at hand but at the same time demonstrated the futility of constant warfare between the various nation-states of the Middle East. Overall, the conflict appears intractable to many for the foreseeable future, with two rival claims to the same piece of land, fueled by religious and historic claims, it remains perhaps the most contentious conflict in the modern world.

8 notes · View notes

brookstonalmanac · 2 years

Text

Events 11.19

461 – Libius Severus is declared emperor of the Western Roman Empire. The real power is in the hands of the magister militum Ricimer. 636 – The Rashidun Caliphate defeats the Sasanian Empire at the Battle of al-Qādisiyyah in Iraq. 1493 – Christopher Columbus goes ashore on an island called Borinquen he first saw the day before. He names it San Juan Bautista (later renamed again Puerto Rico). 1794 – The United States and the Kingdom of Great Britain sign Jay's Treaty, which attempts to resolve some of the lingering problems left over from the American Revolutionary War. 1802 – The Garinagu arrive at British Honduras (present-day Belize). 1808 – Finnish War: The Convention of Olkijoki in Raahe ends hostilities in Finland. 1816 – Warsaw University is established. 1847 – The second Canadian railway line, the Montreal and Lachine Railroad, is opened. 1863 – American Civil War: U.S. President Abraham Lincoln delivers the Gettysburg Address at the dedication ceremony for the military cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. 1881 – A meteorite lands near the village of Grossliebenthal, southwest of Odessa, Ukraine. 1885 – Serbo-Bulgarian War: Bulgarian victory in the Battle of Slivnitsa solidifies the unification between the Principality of Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia. 1911 – The Doom Bar in Cornwall claims two ships, Island Maid and Angele, the latter killing the entire crew except the captain. 1912 – First Balkan War: The Serbian Army captures Bitola, ending the five-century-long Ottoman rule of Macedonia. 1916 – Samuel Goldwyn and Edgar Selwyn establish Goldwyn Pictures. 1941 – World War II: Battle between HMAS Sydney and HSK Kormoran. The two ships sink each other off the coast of Western Australia, with the loss of 645 Australians and about 77 German seamen. 1942 – World War II: Battle of Stalingrad: Soviet Union forces under General Georgy Zhukov launch the Operation Uranus counterattacks at Stalingrad, turning the tide of the battle in the USSR's favor. 1942 – Mutesa II is crowned the 35th and last Kabaka (king) of Buganda, prior to the restoration of the kingdom in 1993. 1943 – Holocaust: Nazis liquidate Janowska concentration camp in Lemberg (Lviv), western Ukraine, murdering at least 6,000 Jews after a failed uprising and mass escape attempt. 1944 – World War II: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt announces the sixth War Loan Drive, aimed at selling US$14 billion in war bonds to help pay for the war effort. 1944 – World War II: Thirty members of the Luxembourgish resistance defend the town of Vianden against a larger Waffen-SS attack in the Battle of Vianden. 1946 – Afghanistan, Iceland and Sweden join the United Nations. 1950 – US General Dwight D. Eisenhower becomes Supreme Commander of NATO-Europe. 1952 – Greek Field Marshal Alexander Papagos becomes the 152nd Prime Minister of Greece. 1954 – Télé Monte Carlo, Europe's oldest private television channel, is launched by Prince Rainier III. 1955 – National Review publishes its first issue. 1967 – The establishment of TVB, the first wireless commercial television station in Hong Kong. 1969 – Apollo program: Apollo 12 astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean land at Oceanus Procellarum (the "Ocean of Storms") and become the third and fourth humans to walk on the Moon. 1969 – Association football player Pelé scores his 1,000th goal. 1977 – TAP Air Portugal Flight 425 crashes in the Madeira Islands, killing 131. 1979 – Iran hostage crisis: Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini orders the release of 13 female and black American hostages being held at the US Embassy in Tehran. 1984 – San Juanico disaster: A series of explosions at the Pemex petroleum storage facility at San Juan Ixhuatepec in Mexico City starts a major fire and kills about 500 people. 1985 – Cold War: In Geneva, U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Union General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev meet for the first time. 1985 – Pennzoil wins a US$10.53 billion judgment against Texaco, in the largest civil verdict in the history of the United States, stemming from Texaco executing a contract to buy Getty Oil after Pennzoil had entered into an unsigned, yet still binding, buyout contract with Getty. 1985 – Police in Baling, Malaysia, lay siege to houses occupied by an Islamic sect of about 400 people led by Ibrahim Mahmud. 1988 – Serbian communist representative and future Serbian and Yugoslav president Slobodan Milošević publicly declares that Serbia is under attack from Albanian separatists in Kosovo as well as internal treachery within Yugoslavia and a foreign conspiracy to destroy Serbia and Yugoslavia. 1994 – In the United Kingdom, the first National Lottery draw is held. A £1 ticket gave a one-in-14-million chance of correctly guessing the winning six out of 49 numbers. 1996 – A Beechcraft 1900 and a Beechcraft King Air collide at Quincy Regional Airport in Quincy, Illinois, killing 14. 1998 – Clinton–Lewinsky scandal: The United States House of Representatives Judiciary Committee begins impeachment hearings against U.S. President Bill Clinton. 1999 – Shenzhou 1: The People's Republic of China launches its first Shenzhou spacecraft. 1999 – John Carpenter becomes the first person to win the top prize in the TV game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?.[8] 2002 – The Greek oil tanker Prestige splits in half and sinks off the coast of Galicia, releasing over 76,000 m3 (20 million US gal) of oil in the largest environmental disaster in Spanish and Portuguese history. 2004 – The worst brawl in NBA history results in several players being suspended. Several players and fans are charged with assault and battery. 2010 – The first of four explosions takes place at the Pike River Mine in New Zealand. Twenty-nine people are killed in the nation's worst mining disaster since 1914. 2013 – A double suicide bombing at the Iranian embassy in Beirut kills 23 people and injures 160 others.

#Events

1 note · View note

klbmsw · 4 years

Text

No, Trump didn’t predict Brexit the day before. No, the US didn’t perpetually lose at the WTO before Trump took office. No, ISIS didn’t control 100% of its caliphate when Trump took office. No, NATO spending wasn’t declining before Trump took office. YES, Trump is a Fuking LIAR’

12 notes · View notes

militant-holy-knight · 5 years

Text

The Neo-Bashibasouks

The Janissaries are probably the one thing that comes to mind as an military force associated with the Ottoman Empire - Christian boys taken from their families as part of the devisherme system (jyzia) by the Ottomans, forcibly converted to Islam and indoctrinated to be loyal to the Sultan. They were considered one of the elite forces in Europe, very disciplined and ready to enter in combat anytime. On the flip side, they possessed immense political clout and had the power to depose sultans that did not play along with their interests. When Mahmud II began a series of reforms on the army, the janissaries mutinied and were suppressed them in what is known the Auspicious Event. Despite these reforms, another group emerged in the 17th century known as Bashibasouks.

Their name translating to “crazyheads” or “corrupted heads”, they were irregular forces formed from criminals or homeless of the Empire and belonged to no specific ethnicity (the majority were Turkish, but they employed white Circassians just like black Sudanese), who were completely undisciplined, not salaried like normal soldiers and instead were paid on plunder and loot. During the Crimean War, British and French officers had difficulties working with them because they acted like brigands rather than proper soldiers. Even Ottoman troops were forced to disarm them several times because of their unruly nature. The incident they are most infamous for was the April Uprising when Bulgarians rose up against the Ottoman occupation and in response, bashibasouks were deployed to crush the populace. News of the massacre reached Europe led to outrage because of the vivid descriptions of the atrocities carried out by the brigands:

Let me tell you what we saw at Batak ... The number of children killed in these massacres is something enormous. They were often spitted on bayonets, and we have several stories from eye-witnesses who saw the little babes carried about the streets, both here and at Olluk-Kni, on the points of bayonets. The reason is simple. When a Mohammedan has killed a certain number of infidels he is sure of Paradise, no matter what his sins may be ... It was a heap of skulls, intermingled with bones from all parts of the human body, skeletons nearly entire and rotting, clothing, human hair and putrid flesh lying there in one foul heap, around which the grass was growing luxuriantly. It emitted a sickening odour, like that of a dead horse, and it was here that the dogs had been seeking a hasty repast when our untimely approach interrupted them

(The Bulgarian Martyress by Konstantin Makovsky is one notable representation of the Bashibazouks assaulting two Bulgarian women - one of them dead in the ground)

Even more outrageous was the British Empire’s support of Turkey at the time, which lead to liberal politician William Gladstone denouncing the Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli for standing with the Sublime Porte. On his manifesto, he attacked the Turks, stressing it wasn’t a matter of Islam, but rather specific to Turkey:

Let me endeavour, very briefly to sketch, in the rudest outline what the Turkish race was and what it is. It is not a question of Mohammedanism simply, but of Mohammedanism compounded with the peculiar character of a race. They are not the mild Mohammedans of India, nor the chivalrous Saladins of Syria, nor the cultured Moors of Spain. They were, upon the whole, from the black day when they first entered Europe, the one great anti-human specimen of humanity. Wherever they went a broad line of blood marked the track behind them, and, as far as their dominion reached, civilization vanished from view. They represented everywhere government by force as opposed to government by law.

Ultimately, their atrocities escalated into a full blown intervention by the Russian Empire, Serbia and Romania in 1877, beginning the 11th Russian-Turkish War, which once again saw the Ottoman Empire as the loser, thousands of Muslims refugees from the Balkans fleeing from ethnic cleansing, Bulgarian gaining autonomy as an principality and the bashibazouks being disused by the Ottomans (however, irregular troops continued to being used to persecute Christian minorities like Greeks, Armenians and Assyrians in the intervening years before the complete ethnic cleansing in Anatolia).

It’s not a surprise that in Erdogan’s nostalgic and revanchist delusions to revive the Ottoman Empire, he would restore the bashibazouks in the form of the Free Syrian Army. It has used them as both shock troops and canon fodder to fight mostly Kurdish forces along the border, but as a ceasefire began last week these units turned to looting attacking civilians and mutilating corpses, according to videos they posted online. The US says human rights violations may be occurring. Kurdish activists wonder why NATO stands behind religious extremists whose statements look little different than ISIS.

Videos showed men waving swords and chanting about "killing the kuffar" or "infidels," terminology often used by ISIS. On October 21, a group calling itself Jaish Islam, calls on its members to treat Christians as second-class citizens in areas that are conquered and to make them pay special taxes in accordance with discriminatory religious laws. More accounts that emerged on October 22 showed a man with a beard and his friends celebrating the killing of what they call "the corpses of pigs." They claim to be from the "mujahideen of Faylaq al-Majd." The man shows off a dead body of a woman and says "this is one of your whores whom you have sent us. This whore is under our feet."

This is an attitude reflected by Erdogan specially in his Arabic twitter where he exploits religion by using terms like “Army of Mohammed” descending on their enemies, which is ironic because they claim to be fighting against terrorists themselves. He is surely breathing a huge sign of relief with the recent death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi that he no longer has any rival to leading the potential Caliphate if he feels bold enough to declare it.

#terrorism #politics #rants #news #history

17 notes · View notes

newstfionline · 3 years

Text

Friday, June 4, 2021

America’s Biggest Companies (Fortune) Fortune magazine released its annual ranking of America’s largest companies, with Walmart topping the list for the ninth straight year. Boosted by the pandemic-driven consumer shift to online and bulk purchasing, the retail behemoth brought in nearly $560B in revenue. The company was followed by Amazon ($386B in revenue), Apple ($275B), CVS Health ($269B), and UnitedHealth Group ($257B). The combined list generated almost $14T in revenue last year—about two-thirds of the US economy.

Drought ravages California’s reservoirs ahead of hot summer (AP) Each year Lake Oroville helps water a quarter of the nation’s crops, sustain endangered salmon beneath its massive earthen dam and anchor the tourism economy of a Northern California county that must rebuild seemingly every year after unrelenting wildfires. But now the mighty lake—a linchpin in a system of aqueducts and reservoirs in the arid U.S. West that makes California possible—is shrinking with surprising speed amid a severe drought, with state officials predicting it will reach a record low later this summer. While droughts are common in California, this year’s is much hotter and drier than others, evaporating water more quickly from the reservoirs and the sparse Sierra Nevada snowpack that feeds them. The state’s more than 1,500 reservoirs are 50% lower than they should be this time of year, according to Jay Lund, co-director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at the University of California-Davis. If Lake Oroville falls below 640 feet (195 meters)—which it could do by late August—state officials would shut down a major power plant for just the second time ever because of low water levels, straining the electrical grid during the peak demand of the hottest part of the summer.

Miami Faces the Hard Choices of Climate Change (NYT) Three years ago, not long after Hurricane Irma left parts of Miami underwater, the federal government embarked on a study to find a way to protect the vulnerable South Florida coast from deadly and destructive storm surge. Already, no one likes the answer. Build a wall, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed in its first draft of the study, now under review. Six miles of it, in fact, mostly inland, running parallel to the coast through neighborhoods—except for a one-mile stretch right on Biscayne Bay, past the gleaming sky-rises of Brickell, the city’s financial district. The dramatic $6 billion proposal remains tentative and at least five years off. But the startling suggestion of a massive sea wall up to 20 feet high cutting across beautiful Biscayne Bay was enough to jolt some Miamians to attention: The hard choices that will be necessary to deal with the city’s many environmental challenges are here, and few people want to face them. The trouble is that the magnitude of the interconnected obstacles the region faces can feel overwhelming, and none of the possible solutions are cheap, easy or pretty.

A deadly vote (Washington Post) TAXCO, Mexico—Mario Figueroa sat in his armored SUV, surrounded by bodyguards clutching semiautomatic rifles. The bulletproof vest was stashed behind the back seat. These days, Figueroa rarely travels without his security team. As a candidate for mayor of this Spanish colonial city—once popular with American tourists, now lashed by drug violence—the 53-year-old businessman has already taken a bullet in the chest. Mexico is in the final days of one of its most violent electoral campaigns in modern times. Eighty-nine politicians have been killed since September, according to the security consulting firm Etellekt. Scores more have been wounded or threatened. The campaign has become a stark illustration of crime organizations’ quest to expand their control of Mexico’s territory. The violence has focused largely on races for mayor and other local government posts. “They want control of the police, control of public works projects, the budget, and illicit activities,” said Marcial Rodríguez Saldaña, the state leader of Morena, the party of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. “We’ve reached an extreme,” Figueroa said.

US troops storm sunflower oil factory in Bulgaria (Foreign Policy) The owner of a sunflower oil factory in Bulgaria has taken legal action after U.S. soldiers accidentally stormed his business during a NATO training exercise. The mix-up occurred while soldiers were simulating the clearing of an airfield in southern Bulgaria, and continued on to Marin Dimitrov’s factory, where workers watched on as gun-wielding soldiers stalked through the premises. The incident has led to a rebuke from the highest levels with Bulgarian President Rumen Radev calling it “absolutely unacceptable.” “We always learn from these exercises and are fully investigating the cause of this mistake,” the U.S. embassy in Sofia said in a statement.

Beijing Introduces Three-Child Policy (Foreign Policy) On Monday, China announced that married couples would be allowed to have up to three children, raising the official two-child limit in a widely anticipated move. Despite government hopes, the introduction of the two-child policy in 2016 failed to produce a baby boom. It’s unlikely the latest policy change will affect China’s fertility rate, either. The public has responded with mocking contempt toward the idea that government restraints have held parents back from having more children, rather than the exorbitant costs of child rearing in China—from migrant families forced to pay fees for local public schools to upper-class parents who fear their children will fall behind without flute or calligraphy lessons. So why keep a limit on the number of children a couple can have at all? One reason is to provide cover for the ongoing forced sterilization of the Uyghur minority in Xinjiang, whose birthrate fell by nearly 50 percent between 2017 and 2020. Another is that China now has an enormous family planning bureaucracy that supports many jobs. Party leaders may also be concerned that the rich flaunting large families—such as late Macao casino tycoon Stanley Ho, known for his four wives and 17 children—would spark resentment.

Lebanese leaders exchange barbs as country sinks into crisis (AP) Lebanon’s president and prime minister-designate traded barbs Wednesday, accusing one another of obstruction, negligence and insolence in a war or words that has for months obstructed the formation of a new government as the country sinks deeper into economic and financial crisis. The power struggle between the premier-designate, Saad Hariri, on one side and President Michel Aoun and his son-in-law Gebran Bassil on the other, has worsened despite warnings from world leaders and economic experts of the dire economic conditions tiny Lebanon is facing. The World Bank on Tuesday said Lebanon’s crisis is one of the worst the world has seen in the past 150 years. In a late night burst of anger, protesters blocked main roads in Beirut and north of the capital. A young activist told a local TV station the protest was against the constant humiliation of Lebanese who line up to fill their cars with fuel, increasing power cuts, search for medicine and deal with confused banking decisions that are robbing thousands of their savings. The Lebanese pound, pegged to the dollar for 30 years at 1,507, has been in a free fall since late 2019. It is now trading at nearly 13,000 to the dollar at the black market.

Netanyahu opponents reach coalition deal to oust Israeli PM (AP) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s opponents announced Wednesday that they have reached a deal to form a new governing coalition, paving the way for the ouster of the longtime Israeli leader. The dramatic announcement by opposition leader Yair Lapid and his main coalition partner, Naftali Bennett, came shortly before a midnight deadline and prevented what could have been Israel’s fifth consecutive election in just over two years. The agreement still needs to be approved by the Knesset, or parliament, in a vote that is expected to take place early next week. If it goes through, Lapid and a diverse array of partners that span the Israeli political spectrum will end Netanyahu’s record-setting but divisive 12-year rule. Netanyahu, desperate to remain in office while he fights corruption charges, is expected to do everything possible in the coming days to prevent the new coalition from taking power. If he fails, he will be pushed into the opposition. (Foreign Policy) While a new government is not yet set in stone, normal business carries on: Benny Gantz arrives in Washington today to request $1 billion in emergency military aid in order to replenish Israel’s Iron Dome defenses and help restock its bomb supply following the bombardment of Gaza. “I would imagine that the administration would say yes to this request and it will sail through Congress,” Senator Lindsey Graham said on Tuesday.

In Syria camp, forgotten children are molded by IS ideology (AP) At the sprawling al-Hol camp in northeast Syria, children pass their days roaming the dirt roads, playing with mock swords and black banners in imitation of Islamic State group militants. Few can read or write. For some, the only education is from mothers giving them IS propaganda. It has been more than two years since the Islamic State group’s self-declared “caliphate” was brought down. And it has been more than two years that some 27,000 children have been left to languish in al-Hol camp, which houses families of IS members. Most of them not yet teenagers, they are spending their childhood in a limbo of miserable conditions with no schools, no place to play or develop, and seemingly no international interest in resolving their situation. Only one institution is left to mold them: remnants of the Islamic State group. Kurdish authorities and aid groups fear the camp will create a new generation of militants. They are pleading with home countries to take the women and children back. The problem is that home governments often see the children as posing a danger rather than as needing rescue.

‘Come On In, Boys’: A Wave of the Hand Sets Off Spain-Morocco Migrant Fight (NYT) Daouda Faye, a 25-year-old migrant from Senegal, was elated when he heard that Moroccan border guards had suddenly started waving in undocumented migrants across the border to Ceuta, a fenced-off Spanish enclave on the North African coast. “‘Come on in, boys,’” the guards told him and others as they reached the border on May 17, Mr. Faye said. Normally, Morocco tightly controls the fenced borders around Ceuta, a six-mile-long peninsula on Morocco’s northern coast that Spain has governed since the 1600s. But now its military was allowing migrants into this toehold of Europe. Over the next two days, as many as 12,000 people flowed over the border to Ceuta in hopes of reaching mainland Spain, engulfing the city of 80,000. The crisis has laid bare the unique pressure point Morocco has over Spain on migration. Spanish government officials and other experts say Morocco increasingly sees the migrants as a kind of currency and is leveraging its control over them to extract financial and political prizes from Spain. Hours after the migrants began pouring into Ceuta, Spain approved 30 million euros, about $37 million, in aid to Morocco for border policing.

A Military Drone With A Mind Of Its Own Was Used In Combat, U.N. Says (NPR) Military-grade autonomous drones can fly themselves to a specific location, pick their own targets and kill without the assistance of a remote human operator. Such weapons are known to be in development, but until recently there were no reported cases of autonomous drones killing fighters on the battlefield. Now, a United Nations report about a March 2020 skirmish in the military conflict in Libya says such a drone, known as a lethal autonomous weapons system—or LAWS—has made its wartime debut. But the report does not say explicitly that the LAWS killed anyone. The assault came during fighting between the U.N.-recognized Government of National Accord and forces aligned with Gen. Khalifa Haftar, according to the report by the U.N. Panel of Experts on Libya. “Logistics convoys and retreating [Haftar-affiliated forces] were subsequently hunted down and remotely engaged by the unmanned combat aerial vehicles or the lethal autonomous weapons systems such as the STM Kargu-2 ... and other loitering munitions,” the panel wrote. The Kargu-2 is an attack drone made by the Turkish company STM that can be operated both autonomously and manually and that purports to use “machine learning” and “real-time image processing” against its targets.

#headlines #news

3 notes · View notes