CATEGORY: Politics
22.03.2012
VIDEO: Mohammed Mehra, profile of the Beast of Toulouse
So what do we know about Mohammed Mehra, the 24-year-old Frenchman of Algerian extraction who killed three French paratroopers and four Jews in Toulouse?
According to various reports, here are some interesting bits of information about his psychological profile:
He was arrested 15 times as a youth, and spent a full year in a juvenile penitentiary.
He was prone to serious violence as a youth. As a young adult, he traveled to the most dangerous place on earth, the border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan, to be trained in combat by some of the most violent and despicable people in the world.
He said he was a Salafi and a member of al-Qaida. Both of these ‘groupings’ are pretty much as extreme as you can get.
French prosecutors say he had a mental illness as a child.
When French anti-terror police brought his mother to the house he was holed up in, she said she could not talk to him because she “has no influence on him.”
He liked to watch videos of beheadings on the internet. READ MORE
18.03.2012
A poem for our times
On a table, together with all my options,
I sat under a nuclear umbrella and played with a mushroom cloud.
I was in a zone,
Of immunity.
I pitted a nuclear duck against a terrorist octopus.
They crossed each others’ red lines until both reached the point of no return
And spinning, they fell off the table.
I got up to close the window of opportunity,
as it was letting in a cold draft from the Islamic Winter outside.
Spring, all too short, was over.
CATEGORIES: English Politics Short Story WTF
14.03.2012
10 lessons from the Gaza fighting so far
So what have we learned from this latest round of fighting so far?
1. While the Iron Dome anti-rocket system is a big hit in battle with the relatively small Islamic Jihad group [it has frustrated their plans and provided the Israeli government with time and space not to launch a heavier assault on Gaza], it won’t stand up to a massive and sustained rocket barrage from the much larger, much more heavily-armed Hamas. Like King David and King Saul, Islamic Jihad has thousands of rockets, and Hamas has tens of thousands of rockets. If the Iron Dome won’t stand up to a massive and sustained rocket barrage from the relatively small Hamas terrorist group, it definitely won’t stand up to a massive and sustained rocket barrage from the Hezbollah terrorist group. If the Iron Dome won’t stand up to a massive and sustained rocket barrage from the relatively small Hezbollah terrorist group, it definitely won’t stand up to a massive and sustained rocket barrage from the Syrian army. The Iron Dome is a smart, but limited tool, effective only in a limited conflict.
2. In short, politicians’ call to produce more Iron Domes systems is cheap populist talk: the economies of scale and terror in these parts guarantee that Israel will never have enough Iron Domes to effectively protect its civilians from massive and sustained rocket attacks. Each Kassam and Grad rocket costs up to a thousand dollars and every Iron Dome interceptor missile fired at a Grad costs 40,000 dollars. We’ll spend ourselves into a recession and still not have enough interceptors. It costs $45 million to produce an Iron Dome battery. You do the math. While it’s a lifesaver for many people in the south now, it won’t deliver bang for its buck in a larger battle. It’s unsustainable.
3. Iron Dome batteries are effective for small-scale battles against small terror groups like the Popular Resistance Committees and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. They are not effective against large terror groups and armies with tens of thousands of rockets in their arsenals. To deal with these threats, Israel has to strike in a way that makes it not cost-effective for the other side to fire its rockets. And that means that, apart from striking very hard at the terrorist leadership and infrastructure, the IDF has to sow massive damage to the civilian infrastructure of the areas under the control of the terror groups until they are unable to care for the civilians under their aegis. In any case, Hezbollah and Hamas fire from within civilian areas using them as human shields, and are thus forfeiting their lives. But this obviously then, puts Israel in a no-win situation: it creates a humanitarian disaster in Gaza and southern Lebanon, brings down world condemnation, and is forced into a ceasefire before it can exact a steep enough price from the enemy. Israel is then forced into a shape it doesn’t want to get into, like chasing rocket squads in built-up areas – which is the kind of warfare Hamas and Hezbollah want to drag the IDF into.
4. The mantra from the government and the IDF is that the resilience of the home front is the wind in the sails of the fighting armed forces. If that is truly the case, then the constant reports coming in of damaged bomb shelters is very worrying. Every day we’re hearing reports of shelters without water, electricity, toilets and such amenities. Some shelters have been taken over by civilians and turned into storage rooms or being used as synagogues. The government, through the police and the local authorities, need to go to every single public bomb shelter and make sure it is open, equipped and ready for use. Otherwise expect chaos in the home front, and massive pressure on the government to bring any fighting to a sudden halt. READ MORE
13.03.2012
It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s Ahmadineduck!
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the AIPAC conference in Washington this morning that there are still people who believe that Iran is not working to develop nuclear weapons:
Amazingly, some people refuse to acknowledge that Iran’s goal is to develop nuclear weapons. You see, Iran claims to do everything it’s doing, that it’s enriching uranium to develop medical isotopes.
Yeah, that’s right.
A country that builds underground nuclear facilities, develops intercontinental ballistic missiles, manufactures thousands of centrifuges, and that absorbs crippling sanctions, is doing all that in order to advance…medical research.
So you see, when that Iranian ICBM is flying through the air to a location near you, you’ve got nothing to worry about. It’s only carrying medical isotopes.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then what is it?
That’s right, it’s a duck. But this duck is a nuclear duck.
So, ladies and gentlemen, I present you with the Iranian nuclear duck. I call him: Ahmadineduck!
12.03.2012
Please watch this, do something and share it !
CATEGORIES: Documentation English Film Politics Press Social Culture WTF
06.03.2012
The handshake that launched a thousand planes?
This is the picture released today by the Israeli Government Press Office after the meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama.
From looking at the picture, and from reading the remarks, it seems to me that the two men have not come to an agreement that whittles down the grey area between the two countries’ red lines on Iran. Obama went through his main talking points clearly: there is still time for a diplomatic solution, and for sanctions. The military option remains firmly on the table; and that Israel should trust him that when it comes to Israel’s security, “America has Israel’s back,” he says.
Netanyahu’s main point is that Israel reserves the right to act as it sees fit to remove any existential threat. It is the master of its own fate, Bibi says.
Obama wants Netanyahu to wait, and Netanyahu wants Obama to act now, or at least not get in Israel’s way.
No common ground on this main issue.
The picture shows a strong handshake, with both men pursing their lips, both men coming from a strong position. They’re both completely convinced of their position. Both men look determined, and entrenched.
And so if that is the case, my assessment is that Netanyahu will not let Israel’s window of opportunity for an attack against Iran’s nuclear facilities close. He will not take the leap of faith that Obama has asked him to take. The essence of Netanyahu’s message is that “you cannot ask us to put our fate into your hands. The whole point of the Jewish state is that we don’t ever have to do this.” READ MORE
CATEGORIES: English Politics Short Story
04.03.2012
Stop worrying and love the Iranian bomb
In the run-up to the 2009 general elections opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu criss-crossed the world saying the year was 1938. “It’s 1938 and Iran is Germany. And Iran is racing to arm itself with atomic bombs,” Netanyahu told delegates at the annual United Jewish Communities General Assembly. “Believe him and stop him,” he said of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. “This is what we must do. Everything else pales before this.” While the Iranian president “denies the Holocaust,” Netanyahu said, “he is preparing another Holocaust for the Jewish state.”
A YEAR AND A HALF later and we are deep into 1939.
Israel’s, and the world’s, failure to stop Iran from achieving a nuclear breakout capacity is now a sad and undeniable fact.
While the Iranians were somewhat slowed down in their progress (some experts say that had it not been for various covert sabotage operations they would have reached breakout two years ago), they finally got there.
The Iranians now have all the components they need to independently build nuclear weapons. They have thousands of scientists working at multiple facilities across Iran; they have all the enrichment hardware they need (their software recently took a bit of a knock, but once the “bug” was discovered and sealed they continued apace); they have advanced missiles of varying ranges; and now all they need to do is enrich to weapons grade levels and put a warhead on a missile.
This is not a simple process, but the Iranians can do it, by themselves, whenever they choose to. They have all three necessary elements and now all that they need to do is to take the political decision to put a couple of bombs together and become a regional hegemonic power. They achieved this by spreading their nuclear program broadly, over multiple facilities, with slow and methodical progress. READ MORE
CATEGORIES: English Politics Social Culture WTF
