Geopolitics and shifting regional alliances due to Russian intervention: Links 2 on Oct. 5 – 2015

1. UPDATED: Syrian rebels call for regional alliance against Russia and Iran

More than 40 Syrian insurgent groups including the powerful Islamist faction Ahrar al-Sham have called on regional states to forge an alliance against Russia and Iran in Syria, accusing Moscow of occupying the country and targeting civilians.

The insurgents, including rebel groups under the umbrella of the Free Syria Army, said such regional cooperation was needed to counter “the Russian-Iranian alliance occupying Syria”.

Last week Russian jets based in western Syria launched air strikes against targets Moscow has identified as bases of the hardline Islamic State group, but which President Bashar al-Assad’s opponents say disproportionately hit rival, foreign-backed insurgents.

2. Saudi Arabia signals easing of tension with Brotherhood leader

(Salafis and Wahabiis uniting over Russia?)

The spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood attended a ceremony organized by Saudi Arabia in Doha on Friday, signaling an easing of Riyadh’s hostility towards the Islamist movement.

Sheikh Youssef Qaradawi, an Egyptian-born and Qatar-based cleric, whose fiery sermons have strained ties with Egypt and Gulf neighbors, appeared alongside the Qatari prime minister and the Saudi ambassador at an event in Doha to celebrate Saudi Arabia’s national day.

3. Iraqi Shia militia welcomes Russian action against Islamic State, criticises US

One of Iraq’s most powerful Shia Muslim militias said on Monday it fully supported Russia’s intervention and air strikes against Islamic State in the Middle East and accused the United States of being indecisive in its campaign against the group.

Naim al-Uboudi, a spokesman for Asaib Ahl al-Haq, said Russia’s air strikes in Syria had already produced results.

“We know that the United States, during the past year and a half was not serious about putting an end to Daesh,” he said, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

Last month, Iraq said its military officials were engaged in intelligence and security cooperation in Baghdad with Russia, Iran and Syria to counter the threat from Islamic State.

4. Edward Snowdon explains how your phone can be controlled by outside agency to a degree that leaves you vulnerable even if you think you have tuned it off.

5. China’s military advisers ‘heading to Syria to help fight ISIS’ – report

The General Tzo

China will be helping out the Syrian government in the fight against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIL/ISIS) by sending “military advisers,” media reports have claimed.

“The Chinese will be arriving in the coming weeks,” a Syrian army official told the Lebanon-based news website Al-Masdar Al-‘Arabi.

The report claims that a Chinese naval vessel is on its way to Syria with dozens of “military advisers” on board. They will reportedly be followed by troops.

The ship is said to have passed the Suez Canal in Egypt and be making its way through the Mediterranean Sea.

(There may be a lot more to this story than is written in this article. If true, it should be known shortly. But the Chinese may invest itself heavily in this situation very quickly)

6. Islamic State ‘executes 70 Sunni tribesmen in Iraq’

Sheikh Naeem al-Gaoud told the BBC that members of the Al Bu Nimr tribe were shot dead in the village of Khanizir, in Anbar province, on Sunday night.

He said the tribesmen were killed because they had relatives serving in the Iraqi security forces.

The Al Bu Nimr have played an important role in battling jihadists for years.

7. AUSTRALIA – Farhad Jabar: Police believe gunman was no ‘lone wolf’ but part of an extremist pack

POLICE are working on the ­theory that teen terrorist Farhad Khalil Mohammad Jabar was acting on the orders of other radicals and was not a “lone wolf’’ killer.

NSW counterterrorism ­officers are investigating who may have supplied the gun he used to carry out the brutal ­murder of a civilian staffer at Parramatta police headquarters on Friday afternoon.

“The possibility the teenager was used by extremists is a strong line of inquiry,’’ a senior officer involved in the operation told The Daily Telegraph.

“That includes searching his computers, electronic devices and who he was in contact with on the days leading up to the shooting and on the day itself.’’

8. Two Turkish fighter jets harassed on Syrian border: Army

(It may not navigate directly there, in which case you have to select the headline above in the right sidebar from where the link takes you)

 Two Turkish F-16 fighter jets were harassed by an unidentified MIG-29 for five minutes during a patrol flight on the border with Syria, the Turkish General Staff has stated.

“Ten F-16 fighter jets were patrolling the Turkey-Syria border. During this mission, two of our F-16’s were harassed by an unidentified MIG-29, with a lock on for a total of five minutes and 40 seconds,” said the statement.

Thank you M., Wrath of Khan, Richard, and all.

All comments welcome.

About Eeyore

Canadian artist and counter-jihad and freedom of speech activist as well as devout Schrödinger's catholic

22 Replies to “Geopolitics and shifting regional alliances due to Russian intervention: Links 2 on Oct. 5 – 2015”

  1. Audience Member Asks Texas DPS Chief if Suspected Islamic State Members Have Been Apprehended at the Border — Here’s His Answer

    http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/10/05/audience-members-asks-texas-dps-chief-if-suspected-islamic-state-members-have-been-apprehended-at-the-border-heres-his-answer/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Firewire%20-%20HORIZON%2010-5-15%20FINAL&utm_term=Firewire

    Have any suspected members of the Islamic State terrorist group ever been apprehended on the Texas-Mexico border?

    That was the question posed by one audience member to Texas Department of Public Safety director Steven McCraw at the annual Texas Border Coalition annual meeting recently — and his answer was alarming.

    “Individuals that come across the Texas-Mexican border from countries with a known terrorism presence, and the answer to that is yes,” McCraw said.

    He added that the Texas DPS and U.S. Border Patrol are working together, with the help of about 5,000 motion-detecting cameras, according to KGNS-TV. McCraw said that the Texas DPS also has a plan to increase security at the various ports of entry along the state’s border with Mexico, should more violence begin spilling into the United States.

    McCraw further expressed his concern over the “vulnerabilities” that exist, saying the government and law enforcement have to always be thinking about what could be the next attack.

  2. Obama’s Exposed Foreign Affairs Failures
    Putin gains the upper-hand in the Middle East and the Ukraine

    http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/260321/obamas-exposed-foreign-affairs-failures-joseph-puder

    U.S. President Barack Obama’s initiated meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin last Monday in the aftermath of their speeches at the UN General Assembly in New York was an admission of his failure on two fronts. It testifies to his failure to destroy the Islamic State (a.k.a. Daesh in Arabic, ISIS and ISIL) as he promised on several occasions, including last year during the 15-minute address from the White House (September 10, 2014) when he said, “I have made it clear that we will hunt down terrorists who threaten our country wherever they are. That means I will not hesitate to take action against ISIS in Syria, as well as Iraq. This is a core principle of my presidency: If you threaten America, you will find no safe haven.” Obama added, “America will lead a broad coalition to roll back this terrorist threat. Our objective is clear: We will degrade, and ultimately destroy ISIS through a comprehensive and sustained counterterrorism strategy.”

    Army General Lloyd Austin, head of the U.S. headquarters overseeing the war against the Islamic State, admitted in his testimony before the U.S. Senate Armed Services committee (September 16, 2015) that the effort to train 5,400 Syrian fighters has so far resulted in “four or five” Syrian fighters who still remain on the ground and are active in combat.

  3. Why the Left Can’t Tolerate Carson’s Truth-Telling About Sharia

    http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/260324/why-left-cant-tolerate-carsons-truth-telling-about-jack-kerwick

    When Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson claimed that Islam and the American Constitution are incompatible, he immediately found himself buried by an avalanche of criticism.

    Neither the tone nor the substance of the lion’s share of this criticism was rational, and the vast majority of it stemmed, unsurprisingly, from his partisan opponents on the “progressive” left.

    While we are by now all too familiar with both the left’s ideology as well as the tactics that its adherents routinely appropriate in their quest to prevail over their competitors—i.e. charges of “racism,” “sexism,” “Islamophobia,” “homophobia,” etc.—the phenomenon of self-styled “egalitarians” or “progressives” falling all over themselves to defend Islam at all costs doesn’t fail to leave the unprejudiced observer incredulous.

    One needn’t be an Islamic scholar to recognize that Islam, considered both as a theology and a 1400 year-old historical practice, isn’t just incompatible with the egalitarian, fundamentally secular goals of self-avowed “progressives;” the former and the latter are systematically incompatible with each other, for Islam demands the imposition of Sharia law, a totalizing, divinely instituted system, upon everyone

  4. The ‘Refugee Crisis’: Muslim History vs. Western Fantasy
    Those who forget or ignore history are destined to be conquered by those who remember and praise it.

    http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/260338/refugee-crisis-muslim-history-vs-western-fantasy-raymond-ibrahim

    One of the primary reasons Islamic and Western nations are “worlds apart” is because the way they understand the world is worlds apart. Whereas Muslims see the world through the lens of history, the West has jettisoned or rewritten history to suit its ideologies.

    This dichotomy of Muslim and Western thinking is evident everywhere. When the Islamic State declared that it will “conquer Rome” and “break its crosses,” few in the West realized that those are the verbatim words and goals of Islam’s founder and his companions as recorded in Muslim sources—words and goals that prompted over a thousand years of jihad on Europe.

    Most recently, the Islamic State released a map of the areas it plans on expanding into over the next five years. The map includes European nations such as Portugal, Spain, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Greece, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Romania, Armenia, Georgia, Crete, Cyprus, and parts of Russia.

    The reason these European nations are included in the Islamic State’s map is simple. According to Islamic law, once a country has been conquered (or “opened,” as it’s called in the euphemistic Arabic), it becomes Islamic in perpetuity.

    • How Dare You?! The Supremacist Nature of Muslim ‘Grievances’

      http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/how-dare-you-the-supremacist-nature-of-muslim-grievances/

      n 2012 in Pakistan, as Christian children were singing carols inside their church, Muslim men from a nearby mosque barged in with an axe, destroyed the furniture, desecrated the altar, and beat the children. Their justification for such violence? “You are disturbing our prayers…. How dare you use the mike and speakers?”

      Welcome to the true face of “Muslim grievance”—what I call the “how dare you?!” phenomenon. Remember it next time “progressive” media and politicians tell you that Muslim terrorism—whether the 9/11 strikes, Fort Hood Massacre, Boston Bombing, or recent London Beheading—are products of grievances against the West. Missing from their analyses is the supremacist nature of Muslim grievances.

      The Conditions of Omar, a foundational medieval Muslim text, mandates this sense of superiority over non-Muslims. Among other stipulations, the Conditions commands conquered Christians not to raise their “voices during prayer or readings in churches anywhere near Muslims” (hence the axe-attack in Pakistan). It also commands them not to display any signs of Christianity—specifically Bibles and crosses—not to build churches, and not to criticize the prophet.

      If the supremacist nature of Islamic law is still not clear enough, the Conditions literally command Christians to give up their seats to Muslims on demand.

  5. German Jews Worried About Muslim Migrant Anti-Semitism

    http://www.frontpagemag.com/point/260346/german-jews-worried-about-muslim-migrant-anti-daniel-greenfield

    The New Nazis are coming to Europe. And they’re bringing all their hatred and bigotry preached in their Koran with them.

    Christian refugees in Germany already report persecution.

    Said went across Turkey on foot. He never thought that his problems would only be starting once he made it to Germany.

    “In Iran, the Revolutionary Guards have arrested my brother in a house church. I fled the Iranian secret police, because I thought in Germany I can finally freely live by my religion,” says Said. “But in the home for asylum seekers, I can’t even openly admit that I am a Christian.”

    Mainly Syrian refugees, mostly devout Sunni Muslims, live in the home. “They wake me before dawn during Ramadan and say that I should eat before the sun comes up. If I refuse, they say, I’m a, kuffar ‘, an unbeliever. They spit at me,” says Said. “They treat me like an animal. And threaten to kill me.”

    Said says he has called the Security Service which not interested in his problems. “They are also all Muslims.”

  6. Muslims Persecute Christian Refugees in Germany
    “Where we are, there is the Sharia, there is our law.”

    http://www.frontpagemag.com/point/260262/muslims-persecute-christian-refugees-germany-daniel-greenfield

    If you hate the Islamic State, why take in Muslim refugees to repeat its crimes on European soil? Taking in Muslim refugees only perpetuates the Muslim persecution of Christians. Muslim migrants have already drowned Christians seeking asylum. They are persecuting Christian refugees who have made it to Europe.

    Said went across Turkey on foot. He never thought that his problems would only be starting once he made it to Germany.

    “In Iran, the Revolutionary Guards have arrested my brother in a house church. I fled the Iranian secret police, because I thought in Germany I can finally freely live by my religion,” says Said. “But in the home for asylum seekers, I can’t even openly admit that I am a Christian.”

    Mainly Syrian refugees, mostly devout Sunni Muslims, live in the home. “They wake me before dawn during Ramadan and say that I should eat before the sun comes up. If I refuse, they say, I’m a, kuffar ‘, an unbeliever. They spit at me,” says Said. “They treat me like an animal. And threaten to kill me.”

    Said says he has called the Security Service which not interested in his problems. “They are also all Muslims.”

  7. Russians Tried To Hack Hillary Five Times
    Hackers got malware-infected email through to the then-secretary of state.
    October 5, 2015
    Matthew Vadum

    http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/260354/russians-tried-hack-hillary-five-times-matthew-vadum

    Hackers linked to Vladimir Putin’s Russia tried to gain access to Hillary Clinton’s insecure private email account at least five times while the Democrat presidential candidate served as U.S. secretary of state.

    The disturbing revelation comes months after retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn said the chances Clinton’s private email account was hacked were “very high.” At the time the former top Obama administration intelligence official implied Clinton should have been fired as the nation’s top diplomat.

    “As a military officer, if I said I was doing something for convenience’s sake to the soldiers that I was leading and it was solely for my convenience instead of their, you know, their welfare, I should be relieved of duty. I would expect to be fired,” Flynn said.

    “You know, it’s one of those things where if it doesn’t feel good it probably isn’t. And this one doesn’t feel good to me.”

    “China, Russia, Iran, potentially the North Koreans,” were involved in hacking Clinton’s email.

    Evidence of the Russian hacking attempts came in the form of Clinton emails from four years ago that were made public last week.

  8. Jihadist Jew-Hunting in Jerusalem and Shomron
    The difference between a mentally ill lone mass murderer in the West and a mentally ill Jihadist in Israel.

    http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/260353/jihadist-jew-hunting-jerusalem-and-shomron-phyllis-chesler

    The recent murders of Jews in Jerusalem and in Shomron are as horrifying as they are predictable. They are Third Intifada lone-Jihadist stabbing sprees, post-Abbas-at-the-United Nations vigilante group shootings. These very specific anti-Semitic murders are being minimized, poorly covered, subsumed under the front page headlines of the Oregon college shootings.

    For example, the Oregon atrocity made page A1 in the New York Times and took up two whole additional pages in Section A. The Jerusalem murders appeared on page 8, at page bottom, and took up only 1/4th of the page. In addition, the Palestinian stabber-shooter was described as a “law student”; his victims were described as “ultra-Orthodox Jewish men.” Late last week, Palestinians shot and killed two parents in front of their four children; they are described as “settlers” in the “occupied West Bank.”

    In short, as many have been led to believe, these Jewish victims are somehow deserving of their fates, since they have “provoked” Palestinians by “humiliating them.”

    The NYT “spin” on the Oregon shooting is, as usual, one which focuses on the need for gun control and the crisis of mental illness. The killers featured there are mainly white, mentally ill men, who had access to guns. This is the company in which the Oregon shooter is placed. The Times and other mass media do not write that Mercer-Harper is bi-racial nor do they focus on his internet love affair with Jihad.

  9. White Supremacism Is the New Black
    The media can’t see real racism.

    http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/260350/white-supremacism-new-black-daniel-greenfield

    Even though Christopher Harper-Mercer, the Oregon killer, had a black mother who raised him, the media insisted that he was a “white supremacist”. Mercer was about as white as Obama. Most of his victims were white Christians. If being half-black and hating Christians qualifies you as a white supremacist, then Obama needs to be investigated for possible white supremacist leanings.

    Maybe the media meant that Mercer was a half-white supremacist who believed in the innate racial superiority of half-white people. More likely the media had grown so used to throwing around false accusations of racism that it was no longer paying attention to whether any of them made sense.

    Mercer may be black, but white supremacism is the new black. A thoughtless accusation to be hurled in the media’s frantic culture wars against anyone to the right of Bernie Sanders.

    Hardly a day goes by without another media piece accusing Donald Trump of white supremacism.

  10. BREAKING: Something Crazy Just Happened At ‘Clock Boy’ Ahmed Mohamed’s School

    http://www.westernjournalism.com/breaking-something-crazy-just-happened-at-clock-boy-ahmed-mohameds-school/?utm_campaign=54ebe14371e7fc692400399a&utm_source=BoomTrain&utm_medium=email&utm_content=recommended&bt_alias=eyJ1c2VySWQiOiIwMjYwYmZmZC03Nzc5LTQ4ZTUtODQ1Mi0zODlmZmM4NGU4OWIifQ%3D%3D

    Students at the former Texas high school of clock maker Ahmed Mohammed were forced to evacuate the campus after someone called in a bomb threat on Wednesday morning.

    KDFW-4 reports that the caller contacted MacArthur High School at 9:45 AM from an anonymous number and said that a bomb would go off in 30 minutes.

    School officials took the threat seriously and evacuated all the students to a nearby football field.

    Irving police came and inspected the school, but found nothing suspicious. The officers gave the “all clear” at 10:45 AM.

    Breitbart reports that the police have called the threat a “hoax” and are investigating. The person who made the call could receive up to 6 months in jail and a $10,000 fine.

    https://youtu.be/pFfGDi2P9os

  11. Did Putin Steal Trump’s ISIS Strategy?

    http://americanactionnews.com/articles/did-putin-steal-trump-s-isis-strategy

    Reports out of Syria suggest that the Russian President is taking a no holds barred approach that may completely decimate ISIS. First, Putin took action last week to conscript 150,000 troops. At the time, he suggested that this had nothing to do with the war in Syria, but insiders are now suggesting otherwise:

    The Russian leader is reportedly mounting an enormous military mission to take control of the terror group’s stronghold of Raqqa.

    The city is the self-declared capital of ISIS in Syria and is patrolled by as many as 5,000 jihadi members.

    Putin is set to mobilise 150,000 reservists who he conscripted into the military earlier this week.

    An insider revealed: “It is very clear that Russia wants to sweep up the west of the country, taking Raqqa and all the oil and gas resources around Palmyra.

    “This is fast becoming a race to Raqqa – to secure the oil fields they need to cleanse the region of insurgents, and the IS capital is vital to do that.”

    – See more at: http://americanactionnews.com/articles/did-putin-steal-trump-s-isis-strategy#sthash.cb7F75Lz.dpuf

  12. Is Putin Winning?

    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/opinion/sunday/ross-douthat-is-putin-winning.html?ref=opinion&_r=1

    ONCE again, Vladimir Putin is on the move in ways the Obama White House did not anticipate. Once again, American foreign policy analysts can’t agree on whether he’s acting out of brilliance or desperation.

    Is Putin’s bombing campaign in Syria a geopolitical masterstroke? Is he filling a regional vacuum, creating a new Baghdad-Tehran-Damascus-Moscow axis, demonstrating the impotence of American foreign policy? Is his strategy of provocation putting NATO on the ropes?

    Or is Putin actually acting out of weakness, trying to save a deteriorating position? Is his Middle Eastern gambit, like his Ukrainian intervention, a flailing, foredoomed to regain ground that Russia has lost of late? Should we ignore his bluster and macho photo ops, take note of his slumping economy and sanctions-bitten inner circle, and assume that his Syria intervention will lead to quagmire and blowback?
    Ross Douthat
    Politics, religion, moral values and higher education.

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    The curious reality is that these interpretations are not mutually exclusive, because whether Putin is “winning” depends on how you define success.
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    If success means a more prosperous Russia with an array of client states, a solid domestic foundation for Putin’s regime, and Russia’s re-emergence as an attractive civilizational rival to the liberal democratic West (a recurring fantasy of Putinists), then there isn’t anything particularly impressive about the Russian leader’s record.

  13. Re #6
    This would appier to be a Chinese power grab along with the Russians.
    It would seem that Marx et al , are alive and kicking.

    Re#7
    IS are now basically saying the following,
    “If ANY member of your family fights against us, we will kill you all! (Except the women and kiddies, who we will rape).

  14. Iraq violence: More than 60 people killed in bombings (BBC, Oct 5, 2015)
    http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-34447851

    “At least 63 people have been killed in a series of car bomb attacks in Iraq, police and medical sources say.

    One of the largest bombs was in the Shia-majority town of Khalis in the eastern province of Diyala, where at least 40 people were killed.

    Another attack in the town of al-Zubair, about 15km (9 miles) south-west of the oil town of Basra, is reported to have killed at least 10 people.

    A third bomb in Baghdad killed at least 13 people, police said.

    At least 25 others were wounded in the blast in the capital’s north-eastern neighbourhood of Husseiniya, according to Associated Press…”

  15. BOMBSHELL: Oregon Gunman’s Social Network Found… Media Silent Because Of This HUGE Detail – See more at: http://www.teaparty.org/bombshell-oregon-gunmans-social-network-found-media-silent-huge-detail-122850/#sthash.l5oEWyk4.dpuf

    (AFF) – The Umpqua Community College shooter has been identified as Chris Harper-Mercer. He killed nine people and injured seven. The police later killed the gunman.

    This is a horrific tragedy and has left people asking the question to why he did this.

    Fox News reports: No background on Mercer, 26 – or details about any possible motive – were released. However, Fox was told that as a precaution, counterterrorism officials were running his name against watchlists and checking his e-mail history, phone logs, social media profiles and online history to rule out any links to terrorism.

    Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin said that as of Thursday night, “we are reporting 10 fatalities in the shooting (and) seven injuries” who were transported to a local hospital and to a hospital in Eugene. Mercer was included in the death count.

    The Washington Times reported that Harper-Mercer’s shooting was probably a hate crime, as he specifically targeted Christians during his attack.

    Stacey Boylan, the mother of a witness to the shooting, told reporters that he asked potential victims whether or not they were Christian.

    “And they would stand up and he said, ‘Good, because you’re a Christian, you’re going to see God in just about one second.’ And then he shot and killed them.”

    Kortney Moore, 18, told the News-Review she was in her Writing 115 class in Snyder Hall when a shot came through the window. Moore said she saw her teacher get shot in the head. The shooter then reportedly told the students to get on the ground before asking people to stand up and state their religion. He then began firing. Moore said she was lying on the ground with people who had been shot.

    Among the details authorities have discovered was one detail the media doesn’t want to report on — a MySpace account on which he was friends with an apparent Islamic terror supporter.

  16. Turkey’s Erdo?an says Kurdish PYD fighting ISIL is terror group (todayszaman, Oct 5, 2015)
    http://www.todayszaman.com/diplomacy_turkeys-erdogan-says-kurdish-pyd-fighting-isil-is-terror-group_400695.html

    “Syrian Kurdish militants backed by the United States in the fight against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) belong to a terrorist organisation and are collaborating with the terrorist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an said on Monday.

    The Democratic Union Party’s (PYD) role supporting the US-led coalition’s battle against ISIL does not give the group legitimacy, Erdo?an said in remarks broadcast live from Brussels.

    The autonomy-seeking PKK, which has close links with the PYD, has waged a war against Turkey since 1984 that flared anew this summer. Turkey, the European Union and the United States all list the PKK as a terrorist organisation.”