Ya, right... so sayeth the Master of Spin. Whenever I see your endless string of convoluted comments and queries in a devolving thread, this is how I picture you...
[This message has been edited by Patrick (edited 12-15-2023).]
"Nah, no one comes close to the original Spin Master at PFF. He's been working his magic here since 2003."
And once again, you don't contribute to the conversation, but talk about everyone in it. It's the craziest thing. It took me a while to realize it, but you've never actually contributed to a conversation here. From the very beginning, it's like you walk into a room and then start making fun of everyone. I bet if I did a search on this forum, I can't find a single post where you're actually discussing the topic, rather... you're discussing the person in it.
The UN is a joke. They can not conscript armed troops from around the world. Who commands them ? Who pays for their weapons ?
The UN was our creation... it was in hopes that we could build a compliant military of "the willing" as we used to say, that could further the goals of democracy around the globe and provide humanitarian aide... without it always having to be U.S. forces.
The problem is, it became corrupted by other powers... and now it hates the United States... but knows it would collapse without us.
I bet if I did a search on this forum, I can't find a single post where you're actually discussing the topic, rather... you're discussing the person in it.
Let's go for it! $100 towards the PFF treasure chest?
Israeli security officials scored a major intelligence coup in 2018: secret documents that laid out, in intricate detail, what amounted to a private equity fund that Hamas used to finance its operations.
The ledgers, pilfered from the computer of a senior Hamas official, listed assets worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Hamas controlled mining, chicken farming and road building companies in Sudan, twin skyscrapers in the United Arab Emirates, a property developer in Algeria, and a real estate firm listed on the Turkish stock exchange.
The documents, which The New York Times reviewed, were a potential road map for choking off Hamas’s money and thwarting its plans. The agents who obtained the records shared them inside their own government and in Washington.
Nothing happened.
For years, none of the companies named in the ledgers faced sanctions from the United States or Israel. Nobody publicly called out the companies or pressured Turkey, the hub of the financial network, to shut it down.
A Times investigation found that both senior Israeli and American officials failed to prioritize financial intelligence—which they had in hand—showing that tens of millions of dollars flowed from the companies to Hamas at the exact moment that it was buying new weapons and preparing an attack.
That money, American and Israeli officials now say, helped Hamas build up its military infrastructure and helped lay the groundwork for the Oct. 7 attacks.
“Everyone is talking about failures of intelligence on Oct. 7, but no one is talking about the failure to stop the money,” said Udi Levy, a former chief of Mossad’s economic warfare division. “It’s the money—the money—that allowed this.”
At its peak, Israeli and American officials now say, the portfolio had a value of roughly half a billion dollars.
Even after the Treasury Department finally levied sanctions against the network in 2022, records show, Hamas-linked figures were able to obtain millions of dollars by selling shares in a blacklisted company. The Treasury Department now fears that such money flows will allow Hamas to finance its continuing war with Israel and to rebuild when it is over.
“It’s something we are deeply worried about and expect to see given the financial stress Hamas is under,” said Brian Nelson, the Treasury Department’s under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence. “What we are trying to do is disrupt that.”
That was what Israel’s terrorism-finance investigators hoped to do with their 2018 discovery. But at the top echelons of the Israeli and American governments, officials focused on putting together a series of financial sanctions against Iran. Neither country prioritized Hamas.
Israeli leaders believed that Hamas was more interested in governing than fighting. By the time the agents discovered the ledgers in 2018, the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was encouraging the government of Qatar to deliver millions of dollars to the Gaza Strip. He gambled that the money would buy stability and peace.
Mr. Levy recalled briefing Mr. Netanyahu personally in 2015 about the Hamas portfolio.
“I can tell you for sure that I talked to him about this,” Mr. Levy said. “But he didn’t care that much about it.”
Mr. Netanyahu’s Mossad chief shut down Mr. Levy’s team, Task Force Harpoon, that focused on disrupting the money flowing to groups including Hamas. . . .
A generous excerpt from a New York Times report, but considerably less than half of the entire text.
Originally posted by 82-T/A [At Work]: The UN was our creation... it was in hopes that we could build a compliant military of "the willing" as we used to say, that could further the goals of democracy around the globe and provide humanitarian aide... without it always having to be U.S. forces.
More than that.
Before the United Nations "the world" created the League of Nations. It espoused the same goal. One World Order. Woodrow Wilson was the brain child who basically created it. Not always a world military for peace force, other concerns included labor conditions, just treatment of native inhabitants, human and drug trafficking, the arms trade, global health, prisoners of war, and protection of minorities in Europe.
Patrick is also active in Tech and Chat. He does a nice job helping others with their problems.
There are a few of us that haunt P&R and also contribute to the rest of the Forum.
I know he is, I spend a lot of time in there too... and he helps a lot of people. I'm just saying that if you did a search in this forum ("politics and religion") you probably won't find anything of value. He's like a totally different person here... but I question why he even wastes his time because he never talks about the issues or any aspect of the topic.
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Originally posted by cliffw: More than that.
Before the United Nations "the world" created the League of Nations. It espoused the same goal. One World Order. Woodrow Wilson was the brain child who basically created it. Not always a world military for peace force, other concerns included labor conditions, just treatment of native inhabitants, human and drug trafficking, the arms trade, global health, prisoners of war, and protection of minorities in Europe.
Yeah, I just didn't want to get into the League of Nations because it's done and out. But I don't know if the point of the UN was a one world order, but it's certainly becoming that way. As long as countries believe and support their sovereignty, the UN can't take it away. It's when these countries freely give it up.
Iraq's capital city of Baghdad has been mostly off limits in recent years when it comes to U.S. drone strikes, but earlier today, in Baghdad, the U.S. "droned" a senior operative (and two less senior operatives, for good measure) of an Iran-allied militant group that's being referred to as "Nujaba."
The Nujaba group has allied itself with Hamas and has claimed responsibility for a drone strike in November on a school building in the southern Israeli city of Eilat that fortunately resulted in only a few minor injuries.
Nujaba is part of the Popular Mobilization Forces or "PopMob" that Iraq's national government counts as part of Iraq's national security apparatus.
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The killing of the [three Nujaba] operatives prompted calls from Iraqi political parties with links to Iran for the immediate withdrawal of all United States forces from Iraq. There are about 2,500 U.S. forces in Iraq, primarily in bases far from population centers.
Turning to yesterday's particularly gruesome bomb attack in Iran that has claimed at least 84 lives:
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Colin P. Clarke, a counterterrorism analyst at the Soufan Group, a security consulting firm based in New York, said he suspected the Islamic State’s Khorasan affiliate, also known as ISIS-K, which is based in Afghanistan, as a likely perpetrator of the attack.
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Some Iranian leaders had initially appeared to blame Israel for the attack, stoking fears that the war in Gaza—in which Israel is battling Hamas, a Palestinian ally of Iran—would widen into a regional conflict. But Western officials had cast doubt on that theory, saying that although Israel is believed to have regularly carried out covert operations in Iran, they have typically been targeted operations against specific individuals, Iranian scientists or officials, or strikes to destroy nuclear or weapons facilities.
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American officials said that it was unlikely that the Islamic State’s intention was to frame Israel for the bombings or set off a wider war. Instead, it was probably seizing an opportunity to hit an enemy: The Islamic State, a Sunni Islamist group, has long been opposed to Iran, which has a Shiite Islamic government and leads, funds and arms an alliance of Shiite groups across the Middle East.
The mass casualties were inflicted on Iranians who were gathering to show solidarity with the Iranian government and Iran's Revolutionary Guard and foreign-focused Revolutionary Quds Force on the fourth anniversary of the U.S. drone strike that killed Qassim Suleimani on Iraqi soil.
Suleimani was the mastermind behind the creation of the Shia-dominated "axis of resistance," which is a loose alliance of various Shia-led militant groups across the Middle East, including Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen.
The dominant Islamic "vibe" for Hamas is Sunni—not Shia—but Hamas has been befriended by Iran because of Hamas' enmity with Israel, in the spirit of the patented "enemy of my enemy is my friend" philosophy that has long characterized the violence-roiled Middle East.
Now you're up to date.
[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 01-04-2024).]
Originally posted by williegoat: And now the Pakistanis have joined in the fun. I have lost track of how many countries are involved in this "regional skirmish".
No worries! That was just a "tit for tat." Iran struck inside of Pakistan at what Iran claims are Iranian insurgents that hide across the border in Pakistan. Pakistan struck inside of Iran at what Pakistan claims are Pakistani insurgents that hide across the other side of the border, in Iran. So Iran did not strike against the Pakistani government or military, per se... and vice-versa.
Originally posted by rinselberg:No worries! That was just a "tit for tat." Iran struck inside of Pakistan at what Iran claims are Iranian insurgents that hide across the border in Pakistan. Pakistan struck inside of Iran at what Pakistan claims are Pakistani insurgents that hide across the other side of the border, in Iran. So Iran did not strike against the Pakistani government or military, per se... and vice-versa.
Interesting, and... although it doesn't specifically mention it, this goes along with my thoughts on how (for the most part) the mostly non-westernized parts of the middle east are still managed by tribes. This group, "Army for Justice" technically represents a group of people who are more or less a tribe of people (note, across both borders) in the area between Pakistan and Iran.
There are similar tribes that exist across the borders between Iraq, Iran, and Turkey... whom all three apparently hate (the name escapes me).
Interesting to note, that these are the last vestiges of the cultural make-up that we also see similarly in the bible... e.g., the 12 Tribes of Israel. I don't know (don't think) if the tribes in question branched off from either of those 12 tribes 1000s of years ago, but every group within the middle East started like that.
Originally posted by 82-T/A [At Work]: There are similar tribes that exist across the borders between Iraq, Iran, and Turkey... whom all three [countries] apparently hate. (The name escapes me.)
Beneath the cities, the orcs tunneled their graves deeper, making a stink. Morlocks planning their next attacks, whirring noises made deep underground. Pumping seawater into the tunnels seemed to upset the creatures, literally flushing them to the surface, into the sunlight where they could be destroyed for the insects they were. Stomping the bugs
Breaking news: United States and United Kingdom carrying out airstrikes on Houthi sites in Yemen.
Houthi and the Blowfish?
The Houthis even existing is Biden's fault. Trump supported Saudi Arabia's invasion to destroy the Houthis and reestablish the legitimate government of Yemen. Biden withdrew US support which forced the Saudis to leave and alloed the Houthis to take over most of the country. Iran gives the Houthis rockets and drones that cost a few thousands dollars and the US shoots them down for a few million dollars.
I'm not so naive as to think that I understand the clusterf*ck that is Yemen, or how to make it any better.
I think if I looked into it, I would probably see evidence that Biden had considerable bipartisan support when he decided to stop supporting the Saudi-led military effort in Yemen.
You can find people who say that the Saudis themselves were not unhappy about Biden's decision, because the Saudis themselves were ready to to cut their losses, and they themselves had accepted that continued, low-level conflict with the Houthis was a more palatable circumstance than continuing their military campaign against the Houthis.
"Fact Check" of claim that the Houthis are Biden's fault:
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This is a GLIB assertion that is UNSUPPORTABLE.
"Even worse is possible."
[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 01-23-2024).]
