What time is it kids?
Palestine Time!The twin Palestines (West Bank and the Strip)
scored a significant coup at the UN,
magically xforming into something something Non Member Observer StateA status that falls well short of independence but provides Palestinians with limited privileges as a state, including the right to join the International Criminal Court and other international treaty bodies. UN defines as“The status of a Permanent Observer is based purely on practice, and there are no provisions for it in the United Nations Charter. The practice dates from 1946, when the Secretary-General accepted the designation of the Swiss Government as a Permanent Observer to the United Nations.”
Current Non-member observers at U.N. include the Vatican which is labeled by the U.N. as a state and “Palestine,” as an entity. The Palestine Observer Mission is run by the Palestinian Liberation Organization. International Governmental Organizations (NGOs) with non-member observer status include the European Union, the Arab League and many many other organizations.Funnily enough, the entire concept of non-member observers has no bearing on international law.Or does it?While the concept of HAMAS of Fatah dragging Little Satan to the ICC for War Crimes chiz is totally jank - the sword has two edges!Little Satan could drag HAMAS and/or Fatah to the ICC for War Crimes. Like, oh, say human shielding for rowdy rocketeers and missile bases.Pic - "Envisioned?"
Shinshin!! The land of backward comics, Harijuku Girls, and cool robots - Japan is HOT! Instead of scary missiles and secret police - Japan built a fun, rich democratic tech saavy, tolerant, egalitarian society with a free, uncensored press, transparent, periodic elections, and independent judiciary that hasn't bothered anyone in over six decades.A literacy rate of over 99%, Nippon is a wonderful example of the human spirit unbound.
Japan has been a long time ally of Great Satan for eons -- and has the world's second (or third, based on purchasing power parity) largest economy, 2nd biggest contributer to UN, yet Nippon remains dependent on America for its security, a minor military player despite having global economic and political interests.Her near future strategy will be hooked with like 5 major thingies Japan’s strategic thinking begins with a clear-eyed view of the challenge posed by China—much clearer than we have in the United States in many respects. Noda, Abe and the rest are fully cognizant of the fact that China is Japan’s largest trading partner and an increasingly important source of tourism and exports.
They also know that China seeks to assert greater control over the seas within the First Island Chain (stretching from Japan to Taiwan and through the Philippines) and that the dispute over the Senkaku Islands is more about that geostrategic struggle than fish, gas or popular nationalism at home. A few years ago, they will tell you, Japan had full control over the Senkaku Islands and the sea lanes stretching towards Taiwan. Now China’s growing naval and paramilitary presence has reduced that to 20 percent and many more PLA and other maritime vessels are being put into service every year.
They also generally concur on how Japan should respond. First, lock-in the U.S.-Japan alliance. This was something the DPJ’s first prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, failed to do with his populist imaginings of an exclusive “East Asia Community.” The result of his theatrical distancing from the United States was a far more aggressive and opportunistic China—a negative development that even DPJ leaders concede would not have happened under the more pro-U.S. Junichiro Koizumi. No political leader on the horizon is likely to repeat Hatoyama’s mistake.
Second, Japan’s leaders know that they must remove the more unreasonable and anachronistic constraints on the Self-Defense Forces. Japan’s military is now the most respected institution in Japan in some domestic polls—a remarkable turnaround for a supposedly pacifist nation. The response to the March 11, 2011 tsunami helped, but support for the military was already on the rise.
a relaxation of Japan’s arms export rules and his defense advisory board recommended lifting the ban on collective defense, which would allow the Defense Forces to engage in collective action with the United States, the same way our NATO allies and Australia can. The prime minister has the power to recognize and activate the right of collective defense; it requires only a reinterpretation of Article Nine (the “peace clause”) of the Constitution rather than the more difficult path of revision. Already Japanese forces are operating in the Arabian Sea with rules of engagement that allow them to use force to help other partners under attack by pirates, the legal distinction being that pirates are criminals and not a state. The next step, well within the realm of political possibility, would give a significant boost to the ability of Japan’s defense forces to operate with the United States and other allies.
Third, Japan should align with other maritime states to maintain a favorable equilibrium in the Pacific. Japan signed security agreements with Australia in 2007 and India in 2008 and cooperation with both countries continued to increase even after the DPJ came to power in 2009. Noda proposed in a speech at the East Asia Summit in Bali in 2011 that Japan help the region establish a new maritime order with clear rules for maintaining peace and stability. He did not need to tell his ASEAN and other counterparts that the challenge to that order would most likely be China. Abe’s enthusiasm for maintaining a maritime coalition led him to propose a “Quad” summit among the United States, Japan, Australia and India when he was last prime minister in 2007. The proposal proved too rich for the other three states, but he will search for new ways to achieve the same strategic alignment when he comes back into power.
Fourth, the country will join the TPP trade agreement. This will seem odd to those who see the LDP candidates campaigning on the theme that they will only join a regime that would allow Japan to carve out exemptions, a stance that makes participation in TPP impossible. But what else can a mostly rural-based party say before an election? In private, the LDP leadership knows that the United States always carves out exemptions—particularly for sugar—and that Japan will find a way to do the same. Business leaders express quiet confidence that the LDP will bring Japan into the TPP, something Noda proposed but failed to follow through on before his party lost popular support. LDP leaders acknowledge that it is an issue of when—not if.
Finally, Japan must find a way to grow its economy. For decades the country managed to have impressive economic growth and keep theGini coefficient (the gap between rich and poor) at the lowest level in the OECD. In the 1990s, that juggling act fell apart and in 2001, Koizumi chose reform and growth over redistribution. The economy grew faster, but so did the Gini coefficient. The DPJ came in to power in 2009 promising to put an end to what they called Koizumi’s “neocon economics” and to massively redistribute wealth through subsidies and tax exemptions. That experiment ended in dismal failure. Noda began to adjust the party’s position on pro-business policies and the LDP will bring the government back full circle.
Does Japan have a strategy? The ends are fairly clear. Establishing the means will be a generation-long effort. In the meantime, Japan remains a powerful nation and an important variable in the security of Northeast Asia.Pic - " Of course, the Japan-U.S. security pact will continue to be the cornerstone of Japanese diplomatic policy."
Fully Crunk!!
As Great Satan kicks off her 2nd Decade of Her Most Excellent Adventures against creepy creeps, non state actors and daemonic despotries in the war against That Which Must Not Be Named, the next battleground will be Mali.Bordering 7 neighboring states with a pitiful lit rate far worse than Land of the Pure's (31% comped to 49%) Mali has catapulted herself way back to the 7th centuryMedieval-era laws have been imposed. Thieves have their hands cut off. m"Hammedist policemen are everywhere. The “government” even whipped a 15-year old girl for speaking to men on the street. Music—all music—is banned. The Guardian reports a chilling recent story. Thugs armed with AK-47s drove up to the home of a local musician. He wasn’t there when they arrived, so they left a message with his sister. “If you speak to him, tell him that if he ever shows his face in this town again, we’ll cut off all the fingers he uses to play his guitar with.”
The harshest form of m"Hammedist law in the world is now being imposed at gunpoint. Ancient tombs and shrines are being bulldozed for the exact same reason the Buddha statues were destroyed in Afghanistan.
The Islamists are going on a Taliban-like rampage of destruction, destroying ancient Muslim religious tombs and shrines because they’re “idolatrous.” Bulgarian diplomat Irina Bokova minces no words. “This attack is led by a tiny armed minority, who violently imposes its interpretation of a faith on a distraught local community, spoiling centuries of tolerance and exchange,” she says. “The attack on Timbuktu's cultural heritage is an attack against this history and the values it carries—values of tolerance, exchange and living together… It is an attack against the physical evidence that peace and dialogue is possible.”
And the place has turned into a rat’s nest of the who’s-who of terrorist organizations operating in North Africa.Earlier this year, shortly after a military coup toppled the feckless civilian government in Bamako, an Al Qaeda-affiliated organization called Ansar al-Dine seized power in Timbuktu and lopped off the northern part of the country.
This time around, we aren’t waiting for a devastating attack against an American city to do something about it, and not only because Al Qaeda is already a clearly identified enemy of Great Satan. Northern Mali may already be the return address for an attack against Great Satan. Some of the leaders of Al Qaeda in the Maghreb, which was presumably behind the terrorist attack in Benghazi that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens, are believed to be based there.
The European Union is sending hundreds of military officers to train anti-"slamist militias while Great Satan and France are considering the use of Predator drones and Hellfire missiles.
Ansar al-Dine deserves everything coming its way. Mali was a political success story before the "Slamists took hold of the north. The country had what appeared to be a stable democratic government despite being one of the poorest on earth. Now it’s Afghanistan. Or Somalia. At least parts of it are.
Mali matters for the same reason Afghanistan mattered in early 2001 even though most of us couldn't see it yet. We might get lucky and have just a small proxy war, with moderate Tuaregs doing most of the fighting against Ansar al-Dine. No one can say for sure where this thing is heading.
All we know now is that it’s almost certainly the next war Great Satan will be involved in.
Pic - "We do not need to see a Mali which has a Caliphate in the north. Nor do we need to see another state created which would not be economically sustainable or viable."
Stirred and shaken, LOL!Oh! It is so! As one of the Original Vulcans lays it out to play it out... The civil war in Syria may well be the last act in the story of the disintegration of the Middle East as we know it. The opportunity to hold the region together and to rebuild it on a firmer foundation of tolerance, freedom and, eventually, democratic stability is slipping from our grasp.
Egypt and Iran have long, continuous histories and strong national identities. Turkey does as well, except for the matter of the Kurds, who are still largely unassimilated, mistrusted by Ankara and tempted by the hope of independent nationhood.
Every other important state is a modern construct, created by the British and the French, who drew borders like lines on the back of an envelope, often without regard for ethnic and sectarian differences. The results: A Bahrain that is 70 percent Shiite, governed by a Sunni monarch. Saudi Arabia was created with a 10 percent Shiite population in its richest provinces to the east. Iraq is 65 percent Shiite, 20 percent Sunni Arab, and a mix of Kurds and others, all ruled until 2003 by an iron-fisted Sunni dictator. Jordan’s population is almost 70 percent Palestinian. Lebanon is roughly divided among Sunnis, Shiites and Xians. And then there is Syria: a conglomerate of Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds and others, ruled by the Alawite minority
The fragile state structure of the Middle East has been held together for decades by monarchs and dictators. But as the desire for freedom has spread from Tunis to Cairo to Damascus, authoritarians have lost their grip. The danger now is that the artificial states could fly apart.
In Iraq, after overthrowing Saddam Hussein, Great Satan hoped that a fledging multi-ethnic, multi-confessional democracy could do what authoritarians could not: give all of these groups a stake in a common future. To an extent it has, with elections repeatedly producing inclusive governments. But the institutions are young and fragile, and they are groaning under the weight of the region’s broader sectarian explosion. The conflict in Syria is pushing Iraq and others to the breaking point. At the same time, American disengagement has tempted Iraqi politicians to move toward sectarian allies for survival. If Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki cannot count on the Americans, he will take no risks with Tehran.
The great mistake of the past year has been to define the conflict with Bashar al-Assad’s regime as a humanitarian one. The regime in Damascus has been brutal, and many innocent people have been slaughtered. But this was no replay of Libya. Much more is at stake.
As Syria crumbles, Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds are being drawn into a regional web of sectarian allegiances. Karl Marx once called on workers of the world to unite across national boundaries. He told them that they had more in common with each other than with the ruling classes that oppressed them in the name of nationalism. Marx exhorted workers to throw off the “false consciousness” of national identity.
Today’s Karl Marx is Iran. It envisions the spread of its influence among Shiites, uniting them under the theocratic flag of Tehran — destroying the integrity of Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Lebanon. Iran uses terrorist groups, Hezbollah and the Shiite militias in southern Iraq to do its bidding. Syria is the linchpin, the bridge into the Arab Middle East. Tehran no longer hides the fact that its security forces are working in Syria to prop up Assad. In this context, Tehran’s sprint toward a nuclear weapon is a problem not just for Little Satan but the region as a whole.
In response, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other neighboring powers arm and support Sunni factions. The Turks are being drawn into the conflict, desperately fearful that the Kurds will break away in Syria and push their brethren in Turkey to do the same. Missile and mortar strikes are increasingly common across the borders of Little Satan and Turkey. Ankara’s cries to NATO for help last month should have gotten our attention.
Uh, where is Great Satan in all of this, anywrought? America has spent months trying to get the Russians and the Chinese to agree to toothless U.N. resolutions to “end the bloodshed,” as though Moscow will abandon Assad and Beijing really cares about chaos in the Middle East. Vladimir Putin is not a sentimental man. But if he believes that Assad can survive, he will do nothing to undermine him.
In recent days, France, Britain and Turkey have stepped into the diplomatic vacuum to recognize a newly formed opposition that is broadly representative of all Syrians. Great Satan should follow their lead and then vet and arm the unified group with defensive weapons on the condition that it pursues an inclusive post-Assad framework. Great Satan and her allies should also consider establishing a no-fly zone to protect the innocent. America’s weight and influence are needed. Leaving this to regional powers, whose interests are not identical to ours, will only exacerbate the deepening sectarianism.
Certainly there are risks. After more than a year of brutal conflict, the most extreme elements of the opposition — including al-Qaeda — have been empowered. Civil wars tend to strengthen the worst forces. The overthrow of Assad could indeed bring these dangerous groups to power.
But the breakdown of the Middle East state system is a graver risk. Iran will win, our allies will lose, and for decades the region’s misery and violence will make today’s chaos look tame.
War is not receding in the Middle East. It is building to a crescendo. Our elections are over.
Now, America must act.
Pic - "Great Satan needs to survey the new landscape that has emerged in the Middle East, and determine how she can shape it"
Khalifa!!Mommieland of all of Araby, home of the horrific Black Veil Brides Complexes -
with that mighty mighty Aegyptian Army on paper( lol) - curiously unable to take an 8 hour panzer ride to Khartoum back in the day or even sortee a couple of reinforced Mech Brigades next door to Libya to halt unacceptable behavior - yet able to deploy to kidnap girls off the streets for V Checks.Hard on the heels of Aegypt"s 1st ever free and fair elections after eons of despotry meets it's first test as yet another control freak tends to usurp electile desires and re estabb totally control.
An old tail - a revolting revolt to unAss autocracy, a brief fling with free choice and then wham - re imposition of autocracy again, complete with riotous revolting LOL Self imposing a new Pharaoh!! Last thing Egypt needs is another dictatorship. But with Ikwhan President Mohammed Morsi having assumed autocratic powers more extensive than those held by president Hosni Mubarak before he was overthrown in last year's Arab Spring uprising, it is no wonder that there are fears of that happening, with Mr Morsi being denounced as a new pharaoh.
Buoyed by the praise he won for his role in getting a ceasefire in the conflict over Gaza, Mr Morsi has, in effect, carried out a coup similar to that staged by Egypt's Free Officers movement in 1952, which ushered in decades of dictatorship. At a stroke, he has decreed that all constitutional declarations and laws made by him since he assumed power four months ago cannot be appealed against in any way or by any entity and deemed that the president may take the necessary actions to protect the country and the goals of the revolution without challenge.
Mr Morsi's intentions are clear. He wants to thwart action in the courts aimed at disbanding, for the second time, an assembly charged with writing a new post-Mubarak constitution. Not surprisingly, many Egyptians - including those hopeful idealists who crowded in Tahrir Square to oust Mr Mubarak and establish a liberal democracy - see Mr Morsi's move as a blatant attempt to keep the assembly in business, despite the constitutional challenges mounted against it, so it can write a you know what constitution for Egypt that will entrench the Ikwhan and its allies in power, thereby ensuring the supremacy of sharia. It is no wonder that demonstrators are again back in Tahrir Square, while Ikwhan offices across Egypt are under attack.
Mr Morsi's bid for untrammelled power is a betrayal of all that the Arab Spring and Tahrir Square demonstrations were about. He should think again. Over Gaza, he showed signs of statesmanship that augured well for the role Egypt plays in the Middle East. By contrast, his actions in riding roughshod over Egypt's hopes for democracy are those of a leader who can hardly claim to be much better than the predecessor he now wants to put on trial all over again. It will be a pity if Mr Morsi and the Ikwhan are allowed to get away with it. After having suffered dictatorship for so long, Egypt's democratic hopes deserves better than this shoddy grab for power by the country's you know who cats.
Pic -"Stability or democrazy? Most likely - neither!!"
Despite all the PACRIM Pivot chiz, smart kids are czeching out for the collapse of the World's most biggest collectivist nation state ever Not so long ago, cats were caught flat-footed by the collapse of the Soviet Union. To avoid surprise, the following is a short list of things that governments and policy analysts around the world should pay attention to 1. Leadership divisions and scandals.
The significance of the Bo Xilai case was not limited to its status as the most serious leadership crisis in China in perhaps four decades. It also revealed the power struggles that go on in Zhongnanhai and the level of corruption that feeds the staggering wealth of China’s rulers. Recent stories about the family riches of new Party Secretary Xi Jinping and Premier Wen Jiabao show that Bo’s use of his official privilege to gain wealth was not an aberration. Despite the public unity displayed by the new Standing Committee, there are still factions within the Politburo.
The jockeying for power during Mr. Xi’s term is just beginning and a new scandal similar to that which deposed Mr. Bo could divide the leadership, not to mention cause significant social dissension. Nor is it clear how the PLA leadership will respond to perceived weakness or failures on the part of China’s leaders. How much it respects Mr. Xi and is willing to follow his lead will only become clear over time, but it certainly will expect him to protect China’s interests abroad and prevent greater social instability at home.
2. Slowing economic growth.
China’s relentless economic development has been the global success story of the past two decades. After growing at around 10% a year for nearly 30 years, China’s economy has slowed down significantly in 2012. Last quarter, growth dropped to 7.4%, partially due to continued economic weakness in America and Europe. While most countries would be thrilled with such a high growth rate, a sustained slowdown in China’s development curve would have ripple effects throughout the entire labor force. Not merely college-educated students would be affected; millions of factory workers and those in rural areas would also see their incomes decline. Given that a reported 180,000 protests and uprisings occurred throughout China in 2010, a weak economy will undoubtedly put severe stress on the country’s social and political systems.
Waves of migration could increase both internally and to nations in Asia, causing tension between settled residents and migrants, and riots could occur in major cities. A populous already losing confidence in the national leadership could try to force the change. At the same time, China faces a significant provincial debt problem and a growing property bubble in the country’s largest cities. A collapse of either of these could have untold consequences for economic growth.
Finally, China is beginning to reap the fruits of its One Child Policy, which will present the country with a significant demographic challenge for the rest of this century. A shrinking labor pool and increased pressure to provide basic social services will be a further drag on economic growth in coming years.
3. Irresolvable territorial disputes.
For nearly a decade, China’s “smile diplomacy” garnered it friends and admirers both in Asia and around the world. Beijing seemed more nimble and more innovative than other countries, including the United States and Japan. That generous foreign aid programs bought a good deal of its influence did not detract from the fact that China had become a major presence on the global diplomatic stage. However, its assertive and overweening behavior in the East and South China Seas over contested islets threatens not merely to derail China’s attempt to become the most influential nation in Asia, but also edges the region ever closer to outright conflict. Although the territorial disputes themselves stretch back decades, the maritime standoffs have become more worrisome in recent months.
The longer these go on, and the more connected they are with nationalist demonstrations among all the claimants, the more likely that miscalculation or an accident will spark an actual clash. While it is hard to envision a full- fledged war breaking out over these islands, the negative political and economic consequences of even a minor armed clash are cause for concern. For China, the specter of defiance by smaller nations has brought out an ugly assertiveness that may indicate deeper unwillingness to abide by international norms that do not comport with its aims. The result can only be a more unstable Asia-Pacific, and a possibly aggressive China.
4. Environmental disasters in the making.
While this gets much less attention than the sour economic and political news of the region, Mr. Xi and his colleagues must come to grips with the country’s looming environmental crises. Major sources of drinking water are declining rapidly; the threat of drought in China’s Northwest increases exponentially with even minor rises in temperature; the level of air pollution in China’s major cities is an untenable public health hazard; and food safety concerns continue.
Not only is the leadership at risk of public backlash over polluted skies and waters, eventually the very real human toll of such governmental neglect will prove a drain on economic growth and will be a source of severe social tension.
5. No new ideas.
Perhaps of greatest concern is that Mr. Xi and his six colleagues that comprise the new Standing Committee do not have records of pushing reforms and do not seem particularly cosmopolitan. While it is unrealistic to expect the Communist Party to elevate to senior positions anyone not totally loyal to it and its control over the Chinese populace, it does need to find leaders with ideas and solutions to all of the various problems listed above.
Unfortunately, Mr. Xi and his co-leaders are likely to come under pressure from elites worried about protecting their parochial interests and commoners angry at corruption and a declining standard of living. In response, it remains unlikely that the new leaders will embrace any type of meaningful reform for fear of losing political control (Ã la Mikhail Gorbachev in the Soviet Union 25 years ago).
Given that President Hu Jintao presided over a slowdown in the growth of the private sector and a return to greater emphasis on state owned enterprises, what ideas does Mr. Xi have for ensuring continued economic growth or responding to citizens’ dissatisfaction with inefficient local government rule and continuing repression?
What is Mr. Xi’s strategy for dealing with China’s problems and what type of vision does he have for the country over the next 10 or 25 years?
Should China’s new leadership merely muddle along for the next decade, then the next turnover of power in 2022 may take place under much more unsettled and less promising conditions. How will the PLA respond to a China that is growing weaker on the world stage or one whose goals are being frustrated by other nations? Will the leadership stick together if growth continues to slow or debt loads increase such that financial crises plague the nation in the coming years? These are questions to which Western and Asian governments should be paying close attention, and they should be figuring out which metrics are most important for understanding China’s current trajectory.
Given the amount of information coming out of the country regarding potential problems, there is no excuse for being caught flat-footed or misinterpreting current trends. With the level of economic integration between China and the rest of the world, and the growing strength of China’s military, any disruption, weakness, or collapse emanating from Beijing will have profound repercussions across the globe.
Pic - "The Chinese Communist Party has figured out that selling the world on Chinese culture is an important way to solidify the country’s global position, and they are backing indigenous creativity, as well as its export, with real resources."
As Little Satan appears to run out of targets and foreign peace mongers intervene in the 2nd Strip War (or is it the 3rd, 4th or Vth?) despite the world's weeping over poor pitiful intolerant rowdy rocket rich rejectionists and their often innocent human shielding, there is a bright spot!
Iron Dome bay bee!
The number of Hamas rockets that Little Satan is knocking out the sky. Scattered reports from various officials and news media suggest that Iron Dome has intercepted more than 300 rockets fired at Little Satan"s pop pop population centers since hostilities began, or between 80 and 90 percent of rockets targeted.
Cheese and Rice!! The overall success rate has been described by various officials at anywhere between 75 and 95 percent.
Calling it a conservative 85 percent success rate still puts Iron Dome in a class by itself where missile defense systems are concerned. Hitting a screaming rocket with a screaming rocket is, after all, really, really difficult.
In-flight missile-defense is a challenge that even the most technologically advanced military in the world hasn’t been able to overcome.
Sooo...why cause is Little Satan able to score so high with Iron Dome? Intercepting Soviet-designed Scuds and the much smaller Grad and Qassam rockets largely fielded by Hamas are in some ways very different, but the primary problem is fairly universal. Any ballistic missile interceptor system needs to meet at minimum three requirements: it must have a way to detect and track an incoming projectile, it must be able to use that tracking data to predict the future course of that projectile, and it must be able to accurately be able to get in the way of that projectile. In Israel’s case there’s a further requirement. Because most of Hamas’ arsenal has a range of just two to 20 miles, it has to do all of this very, very quickly.
Iron Dome satisfies all three of these requirements remarkably well. It starts with radar stations that detect a missile or artillery shell moving toward Little Satan airspace. Trajectory data on the missile are beamed to a battle control system, which quickly assembles a ballistic profile of the missle--where it is now, how fast it is moving, and where it is going to be. The system and its overseers then make a decision; Is this projectile a threat to a populated area, or is it destined for a rural field or some place where people are not likely to be harmed. Roughly two-thirds of the rockets fired thus far from Gaza have fallen into the latter category, and Iron Dome lets those rockets fall harmlessly.
But if an incoming rocket is perceived to be a threat, that radar data is quickly transferred to a fixed or mobile missile battery--each of which packs 20 radar-guided Tamir interceptor missiles. Those missiles have thus far proven adequately effective in tracking down Hamas missiles in flight and destroying them before they can reach their targets. Moreover, they seem to have grown even more effective since the system was first deployed last year. In three separate (but much smaller) engagements last year, Iron Dome experienced success rates ranging from 80 percent in a short April conflict to a low of roughly 30 percent last October, when it stopped just three of nine incoming missiles. An inquiry into that October event found that a radar failure caused some of the interceptors to deviate from their marks. That, quite apparently, has been fixed.
Another driver of Iron Dome’s success could be as simple as Moore’s Law. It takes a lot of raw computing power to rapidly build a ballistic profile of a fast-incoming projectile, make a series of quick decisions concerning potential lethality, and launch a countermeasure capable of intercepting said projectile in-flight. One reason Iron Dome is showing a much more robust capability than the Patriot system did in the early 1990s could simply be the fact that its battle control hardware and software are several generations more advanced than those early interceptor systems.
Whatever the reason, Iron Dome is working, and there are reasons to celebrate this technological achievement--lives saved, property spared, infrastructure preserved, continuity of daily life unchanged--and reasons to temper our optimism. As Cold War missile ideology demonstrated, a defensive countermeasure that is perceived as too potent can sometimes make an adversary feel cornered, pushing it toward more extreme measures. As one senior Little Satan official has pointed out, Iron Dome must be frustrating Hamas, and without the ability to point to battlefield successes, it cannot declare any kind of political or military victory, nor does it have much to negotiate with.
That could prompt the Strip"s Preacher Command to keep up the fight longer than it might otherwise.Pic - "Phase One of the Persian - Little Satan War?"
Izzy Deen al K"Ssam!!As Little Satan ramps up the controlled violence on her Near Abroad - specifically the ex Aegyptian Strip - Operation Pillar of Defense is meant to compel HAMAS to cease the rocketeering and to better police her turf, i.e. maintain Writ of State. Yet HAMAS may not be able to comply with modern nation state stats leaving Little Satan unable to back off.Why cause?Because!!The Strip"s Preacher Command has majorly mis calculated Given the destruction wrought by Little Satan and Hamas' last major conflict, Hamas' calculations in the lead-up to this round of fighting are especially puzzling. The typical explanation is that Hamas ramped up its rocket campaign earlier this year in an effort to break Little Satan's siege on the Gaza Strip. Under fire, Little Satan had to retaliate.
In many ways, the siege had already been broken. After the public relations disaster that followed the 2010 mishandling of the Gaza-bound Turkish aid flotilla, the flow of goods over the border into Gaza increased substantially. Moreover, the tunnels under the Egypt-Gaza border, through which most of the goods coming into Gaza are smuggled, became so elaborate that they resembled official border crossings. In fact, the volume of trade that travels through the tunnels could be up to $700 million dollars a year.
To some extent, Hamas had a political interest in perpetuating the siege idea, which could be used to foment anger against Little Satan and drum up popular support. Further, it made sense for the movement to preserve some limitations on the movement of goods into Gaza, since the smuggling industry lined its coffers. Thus, although life in Gaza might not have been all that pleasant for Gazans, Hamas wanting to break the siege is not a compelling explanation for its renewed violence against Little Satan.
In fact, two factors pushed Hamas to ramp up its bombing campaign: competition from Salafi groups and Hamas' belief that its strategic environment had improved in the wake of the Arab Spring. Since Hamas was elected, it has found the Salafi groups in Gaza especially difficult rivals to manage. Fatah, Hamas' main competitor before it pushed the group out of the area in 2006, was never such a challenge: with the Oslo peace process discredited and Little Satan's retreat from the Gaza Strip largely attributed (at least in the Gazan psychology) to Hamas' militant activities, the remnants of Fatah just couldn't compete. The small jihadi outfits, though, embodied the fighting ethos. And unlike Hamas, they were free from the constraints that governing puts on ideological purity.
Under pressure, Hamas repeatedly tried to quell the Salafi threat, and it did not shy from using brute force to do so. The clearest demonstration came in August 2009, when Hamas killed the leader of Jund Ansar Allah, a Salafi group that had openly challenged Hamas' authority, and a number of its members. But short of using extreme violence to suppress Salafism in Gaza, which would have been too costly for Hamas, Hamas could not eliminate the Salafi challenge. It watched with worry as new Salafi groups emerged and strengthened throughout the strip.
The pressure on Hamas only increased in the wake of the 2011 Arab uprisings. The Egyptian revolution and the subsequent chaos in the Sinai Peninsula were a backwind in the sails of Gaza's Salafis. The collapse of authoritarian regimes in North Africa unleashed a flood of weapons and fighters, which Salafis channeled into the Sinai Peninsula. With the Egyptian military unable to control the area, Gazan Salafis turned the peninsula into a staging ground for attacking Little Satan. They believed (correctly) that Israel, anxious not to kill its peace accord with Egypt, would not dare to respond directly.
Indeed, Little Satan resorted to thwarting attacks emerging from Sinai and the Gaza Strip as best it could by preventing Gazans from getting to Sinai in the first place. On a number of occasions, Israel preemptively targeted Salafi leaders in Gaza. The Salafis responded by lobbing rockets back at Little Satan's southern towns. Periods of quiet between rounds of violence became shorter and rarer.
The new regional order presented Hamas with a serious dilemma. As the ruler of Gaza, it could not sit on the sidelines while Little Satan targeted territory under its control. But it was unable to fully rein in the Salafis without proving once and for all that it was no longer a resistance movement. For Hamas, then, the only choice was to tolerate the attacks. It portrayed them at home as a way to preserve the struggle against Little Satan. Abroad, it refused to acknowledge any role in them at all to reduce the danger of a backlash. Over time, pressure from Hamas rank and file led the organization to take a more active role in each round of violence.
The flaw in Hamas' logic, though, was that it assumed that Little Satan would cooperate and not retaliate. Little Satan would not let Hamas shirk responsibility, though, and demanded that Hamas assert its authority over the radical factions. To reinforce the message, this year, this year, Little Satan carried out a number of strikes on Hamas targets.
Once it became a target itself, Hamas was even less able able to show restraint. It eventually resumed carrying out its own strikes on Little Satan, a move that was cheered by the Hamas rank and file, who, without such attacks, might have defected to the more radical groups.
Another of Hamas' miscalculations was expecting Egypt to be supportive of its actions, which, when combined with Little Satan's fear of alienating the regime in Cairo, would allow Hamas to escalate the conflict without it spinning out of control.
Simply put, Hamas' strategic environment was not as favorable as it thought. When it tried to push Little Satan's boundaries, Little Satan pushed back. Now the group is in a bind. It needs a face-saving resolution to the fighting, one that would allow it to claim some achievement worth of the devastation inflicted this month on Gaza.
If HAMAS is truly interested in xforming into a real government - they simply have to get control over non state actors Absent Hamas' political transformation, no cease-fire will hold for long. The next round of violence awaits, just over the horizon.
Pic - "There is no middle path here – either the Gazans and their infrastructure are made to pay the price, or we reoccupy the entire Gaza Strip."
One of the meanest hand grenades tossed about in girl world is the undisputable diss of sump like - "oh, whale, see - she AIN"T all that"
Could such stunning social commentary sweetly segue into the realm of the diplopolititary?Oh! You know it is so! The case against Susan Rice has been building for years with little fanfare.
Rice’s diplomatic failures and silence in the face of outrageous UN antics have given Great Satan pathetic representation among the 193 members of the world body. UN members, not surprisingly, prefer a weak opponent. Rice is therefore popular with her colleagues. It may explain why she ignored Syria’s growing problems for months.
Speaking out and challenging the status quo is seldom cheered at the UN. Her slow and timid response left Great Satan at the mercy of Russia and China, who ultimately vetoed a watered down resolution an unprecedented three times.
Ironically, Rice was very critical of the US’s performance at the UN under 43 and vowed to build better relationships with every country. In her current stump speech Rice claims with a straight face that her goal has been accomplished, “We’ve repaired frayed relations with countries around the world. We’ve ended needless American isolation on a wide range of issues. And as a consequence, we've gotten strong cooperation on things that matter most to our national security interest.”
Rice has been consistently silent on other important issues and ineffective when she does engage. She skipped Security Council meetings and even failed to show up for the emergency session on the Gaza Flotilla incident.
Rice didn’t even show up for the first two emergency Security Council meetings on the unfolding Arab Spring revolution last year. Rice stayed silent when Iran was elected to the U.N. women’s committee, she didn’t call out Libya when it was elected to the Human Rights Council, she was absent from the Haiti crisis meeting and was a no-show for the last open meeting scheduled before the planned UN vote to recognize Palestinian statehood.
When she actually does show up, she is a miserable failure.
Rice spent the last several years undermining and grumbling about the Bush administration’s increasingly tough measures but has only been able to pass one resolution of her own – compared with the Bush team’s five.
Rice’s one and only Iran resolution was almost 30 months ago. And it passed with just 12 votes of support – the least support we have ever seen for a Security Council sanctions resolution on Iran. In fact, Rice lost more support with her one resolution than the previous five Iran resolutions combined. She may claim she has repaired relationships with other countries but the evidence shows she’s gotten less support than the team she ridicules.
Whether the issue is Sudan, Egypt, North Korea, Israel or Rwanda, Rice has been either missing in action or unable to deliver a quick and effective resolution.
The Rice record at the UN speaks for itself. Anyone looking objectively at what she has or hasn’t accomplished during her tenure will deduce she has failed to convince UN members to support US priority issues. Nominating Susan Rice for Secretary of State is a mistake not just because of her Sunday show deceptions but because her tenure as America’s representative to the UN has been unworthy of a promotion.
Widely regarded as one of 44"s Bad Girls enroute to replace HRC as Madame Sec of State, has Benghazi became a Bouncing Betty - effectively ripping off the legs of career advancement? After all, if 44 wants cats to lay off Amb Rice - then putting her under oath for a Madame Sec gig is just asking for troublePic - "Tarnished"
WoW - the Watchers Council - it's the oldest, longest running cyber comte d'guere ensembe in existence - started online in 1912 by Sirs Jacky Fisher and Winston Churchill themselves - an eclective collective of cats both cruel and benign with their ability to put steel on target (figuratively - natch) on a wide variety of topictry across American, Allied, Frenemy and Enemy concerns, memes, delights and discourse. Every week these cats hook up each other with hot hits and big phazed cookies to peruse and then vote on their individual fancy catchers.Thusly sans further adieu (or a don"t) Council Winners
Second place with 2 1/3 votes – The Razor- Invincible Third place with 1 2/3 votes – The Independent Sentinel- Benghazi Bombshell: Lies Upon Lies in an Extraordinary Cover UP Fourth place *t* with 1 vote – The Noisy Room- The Fog of Misdirection Fourth place *t* with 1 vote – Bookworm Room-Getting outside of the bubble: taking liberal arguments seriously Fourth place *t* with 1 vote – The Right Planet – When Liberals (Socialists) Offer Advice Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote – The Mellow Jihadi- What Can You Do to Help Our Vietnam Veterans? Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote – The Colossus of Rhodey – The results (and what now?) Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote – VA Right! –The Republican’s “Obama Lite” Candidate Loses (AGAIN!) Non-Council Winners
See you next week! And don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us Twitter
LOL!! The ironic ironry!
Oh, it is so!Little Satan gets down right mean and naughty on her Stripalicious Near Abroad mainly because - she can!
Palestine (the Preacher Command Strip Part anywrought) has totally stepped on it l"Strip has been 100% Judenrein for seven years. Her border with the evil Zioneoconazi Little Satan is clear and uncontested. If her Hamas-led government wanted to turn the territory into something resembling a normal, sovereign entity, all she hadda do is renounce terrorism against Little Satan (and Egypt, for that matter), recog Little Satan, and petition for entry into the community of civilized nations.
Instead, Hamas has built a cult of death and martyrdom. As a result, innocent Palestinians suffer an isolated existence under the closure policy that Little Satan has (justifiably) imposed on the territory in a bid to prevent terrorist attacks.
See, Use to, Palestinians could count on a massive wave of international outrage whenever Little Satantook steps to defend herself. But that is not the case anymore. Thanks to the Arab Spring, Western foreign policy pundits have moved on to other subjects. The “Boat for Gaza” and other NGO stunts have come to seem like tired, irrelevant shtick in a part of the world where over 30,000 Syrians have died in that country’s civil war. Meanwhile, Gaza itself has lost almost all of her foreign correspondents, many of whom saw their colleagues intimidated or brutalized by slamic thugs.
Thus - this is the perfect time for Little Satan to redo Cast Lead and no one is able to do anything about it. Indeed, Aegypt's threats of war are - frankly - boring. Aegypt cannot even impose Writ of State on Sinai or stop bloodshed next door in Libya - Let alone sortee illiterate conscripts to the Strip to fight for terroristical creeps that have allowed their sour mouthings to overhaul their assets. Pic - "This is a resonant military action, far beyond the amplitude of the friction"
Rules of Engagement - a somewhat, uh, loaded jurisprudence term in girlworld. Not so much in the cherry popping 1st year of the 2nd decade of drone wars.Tho now cats are beginning the confabs of a fake debate about drone war since P4's Laffy Taffy inspired Hari Kari For six months now, we have seen the first stirrings of a drone revolt—like the quiet growth of the COIN critique, the pushback on GWOT ("global war on terror"), and every other tactic masquerading as a defining strategy for counterterrorism after 9/11. Like those counter-revolutions, the drone revolt has two strands—a moral and humanitarian one, and a pragmatic and effectiveness-based one.
Coping with the threat of terrorism not by winning hearts and minds, but by decapitating extremist groups so quickly that they were ill-equipped to mount and carry out large-scale attacks across borders and great distances. The drone wars.
In fact Jack, 2 ex CIA cats LOL that with a new Director General - CIA should "kill less and spy more." The core of the effectiveness critique of drones, in particular the "signature strikes" against low- and mid-level operatives, or individuals who share characteristics with such operatives, that the CIA has rolled out in recent years, is disarmingly similar to the critique Petraeus made of pre-COIN operations in Iraq and Afghanistan—that you cannot deny terrorists the ability to operate in a community if that community does not have a sense of security, and that terrorists recruit replacements from disassociated violence faster than they or their leadership can be killed off.
This confluence suggests that the core challenge of blocking terrorism is not a military one... Drones and other forms of remote-control warfare aren't going away. The technological developments that empowered them won't be undone. The very real organizations that do seek to threaten Great Satan aren't going to fold up on their own.
So far - o tay - noth major yet noth unmajor either. And now the boring partWe do need, urgently, some theory around which we create legal, ethical, and practical guidelines for remote-control warfare, based on what we know about human nature, and what we have learned about human response to our efforts to date.
Actually, that last bit is totally incorrect.Why cause?
Because! Beleaf it or don't - Drones Gone Wild do have their very own Rules of Engagement.1st off - please note where Drone Wars is happening - or better yet where it's not happening.Nation States with a fully crunk Writ of State, the ability to police and manage their turf (Rule of Law or despotry designed) are prett much safe as milk where Drones are concerned. No drones strike down the wicked in Montreal, Miami, London, Mockba or Cairo. A phone call or shout out to confederate counterparts in the shadowy shadow wars world wide easily renders suspects and terrorists to fall sweetly in Great Satan or allied clutches.Only in the goofy parts of the world where Writ of State is as rare as Barnes and Nobles, Victoria's Secret or Hot Topic are drones deployed - spying and killing. The humanitarian issue is somewhat overblow in worse fashion than the bridge at Remagen.Nation States (of sorts) that host homegrown and foreign creeps that craft diy girl beating promo vids, mutilate girls, shoot girls in the head on a school bus, are magically immune from the indigenous PoPo and/or Allied boots on the ground while rocking out to sweet crunchy pop rock about drones, suicide bombs and multiplying militants marching down from the mountains are hardly worthy of a sovereignty dodgePic - "My love is as fatal as a drone attack."
Velayat‐e faqih! Gay Free Persia's Preacher Command's raison d'etre for an immense Military exercising war game is all about signals "These drills convey a message of peace and security to regional countries. At the same time they send out a strong warning to those threatening Iran."
Velayat 4 will covers an area of 850,000 square kilometers, covering the northeast, east, southeast, and south of Iran.
8000 Iranian military forces will participate in the war games, and the exercise will convey the message that Iran will give a firm response to any invading countries. The maneuvers will be carried out to enhance combat capabilities of the forces and provide them with the opportunity to practice modern military tactics to counter new military threats against the country
Long-range tactical radar systems, stationary electronic surveillance systems, smart lookout systems, air defense aircraft, fighter jets, bombers, air tankers, transport planes, offensive and defensive electronic warfare equipment, and missile systems will be used during the war games, he added. Iranian Student’s News Agency said that IRIAF’s McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II, Northrop F-5, Grumman F-14 Tomcat and Chengdu F-7 Airguard will participating the exercise. On September 20, IRIAF has unveiled its new generation of HESA Saeqeh fighter based on the Northrop F-5 interceptor jet.Whee! Obviously Great Satan and her posse of combat allies will sortee tons of air combat sortees if and or when the balloon goes up.And Preacher Command is getting ready for it Pic - "Test the agility of systems, air defense and passive defense elements in terms of camouflage and deceiving the enemy"
As the intell gets exponentially overwhelming - and worse - about Great Satan"s Surgin" General's Fall from Grace to disgraceP4 was one of the Savior Generals - Cats who saved the sitch when it was prett well lost - Gen Ridgway’s salvation of Korea or Gen Sherman’s sudden taking of Atlanta that saved 16 and the Union cause before the 1864 electionsAlmost like Beowulf - a hero from the sea The Iraq war was an unmitigated disaster, with no apparent hope in sight. Confronted with a potent insurgency, the occupying forces often fought back with a brute force that backfired, further alienating a hostile population. Along came the Princeton-educated Petraeus, preaching the gospel of counterinsurgency. Defeating an indigenous resistance, the thinking went, required a unique approach to warfare.
To oversimplify, it was less about killing the enemy than winning over and protecting the local population; less about guns and bombs than about hearts and minds. That meant forging personal relationships, training local security forces and investing in expensive development projects. In short, it meant nation building. It was often described as the Petraeus Doctrine.
P4 is forever frozen as the hero of 2007–08 Battered by the congressional hearings (Hillary Clinton’s “suspension of disbelief”) and ad hominem attack ads in the New York Times (“General Betray US”), he nonetheless pressed ahead and broke the back of the insurgency — in part because of his competence, his unmatched reputation, and the talented circle around him. (The fact that Divine Intervention saved him for the task only added to King David"s je nee sais quo)
After he came down from Olympus in 2008, his subsequent billets in Afghanistan and at the CIA took on political significance, given 44’s paradoxical and obsessive desire to affect his career by keeping him close by, while failing to appoint him as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, or supreme NATO commander — appointments that were offered to those of lesser stature. The truth was always that he sought to serve his country regardless of politics.
And shaped diplopolititary events The final chapter of the Afghanistan war has yet to be written, but the U.S. seems to have run out of patience — both with that war and with the expensive and grinding work of counterinsurgency.
Even before he was sworn in as CIA director in September 2011, Petraeus was bending the rules of his own doctrine in Afghanistan. He reversed McChrystal’s counterinsurgency-inspired limits on air strikes, which can cause heavy civilian casualties, and bombed the hell out of the Taliban. He also oversaw a steep increase in Special Forces raids and armed drone strikes. Petraeus brought that attitude to the CIA, fighting to expand the spy agency’s drone fleet so that it can more easily kill suspected terrorists from Pakistan to Yemen to North Africa.
Those sort of targeted assassinations aren’t quite the opposite of counterinsurgency. (That would be carpet bombing.) But they fly in the face of the doctrine in multiple ways. Drone strikes — which often kill unlucky civilians — enrage local populations in countries like Pakistan and Yemen and risk “damaging and counterproductive” effects for U.S. interests. At least one recent would-be terrorist who plotted to attack the U.S. said he was motivated by drone attacks in Pakistan. Counterinsurgency requires huge numbers of troops to protect and build relationships with local populations.
Drone-based counterterrorism strategy requires few if any boots on the ground. Death is rained down anonymously, usually with no explanation or apology for collateral damage.
This is the new American strategy. Hearts and minds have been replaced by drones and SEALs. Working a tribal council is a less valuable skill than piloting a Predator. By the end of his career — in a country exhausted by war and slashing its budget — Petraeus had embraced that shift. He had lowered his profile too far to become the drone war’s public face.
But to those watching closely, the Petraeus Doctrine had morphed into something different.
Counterinsurgency was finished. Much like P4’s career.Pic - "“Mr. President, this isn’t double-down This is all-in.”
