World Threats

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s handpicked successor has been booted off of Iran’s presidential ballot. So has former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. Esfandiar Mashei has been close to the current President but has been knocked off the ballot after Ahmadinjead has deepened disagreements with the country’s supreme cleric Khameinei.

Mashaie is viewed with suspicion by figures from Iran’s conservative establishment, who believe he heads a “deviant current” that seeks to sideline clerical authority.

They also believe that Ahmadinejad, who has fallen out with Iran’s conservatives since his disputed 2009 re-election and cannot seek a third consecutive term because of constitutional limits, seeks to maintain power through his ally.
Following the disqualification of hundreds of would-be presidential candidates in Iran, including two top figures from the ballot, the United States slammed the Islamic Republic’s electoral body on Tuesday for “vague” decision-making.

HT: BBC

After days of aerial and artillery bombardment, followed up by a massive Syrian and Hezbollah assisted offensive on the previously Rebel held town of Qusair, forces loyal to Bashar al-Assad have retaken the strategic town that is a vital highway on the road to Damascus and crucial for smuggling supplies to rebel forces.

As you can Qusair is a geographically important point near the Mediterranean Sea, Lebanon and important Syrian cities.

It is just another success in recent weeks for government forces in the two year old civil war, as the lethal combination of state sponsors in Moscow and Tehran and allied jihadists coming over from Lebanon are emboldening the Assad forces to push back against hard fought rebel gains, and sadly are rather effective.

Perhaps the head turning moment from this particular fight? Not only did rebels suffer heavy casualties from the intense pre-offensive bombardment and the actual fight itself, but almost two dozen Hezbollah terrorists were also killed in the battle that involved Sunni militants from mutual Lebanon fighting on the rebels behalf.

I don’t need to tell anyone the news from Syria is bad this afternoon: Assad forces are actively being aided by Hezbollah forces in pivotal battles, rebel forces are suffering severe casualties and losing momentum too fast and after two years of intense fighting the nation is split approximately in half geographically, politically, and thanks to recent government successes, militarily.

And with the Western world paralyzed with indifference, all we can do is pray and hope for this ugly civil war to eventually conclude with the worst characters eliminated, and hopefully a chance for peace for the Syrian families who have lost too much already in this conflict and who deserve to see their tyrant pay for innumerable crimes.

What say you?

On May 7, three explosions were heard in the vicinity of the Raja-Shimi chemical complex in Tehran Province. Though the Iranian regime claims the site is privately owned and the explosions were part of planned detonations of out-of-date ammunition, local residents confirm that the site is related to Iran’s ballistic missile program.

The complex is linked to the Defense Ministry and is next to the Revolutionary Guards’ Center for Missile Research and an Air Force garrison. The site is suspected of producing ingredients for chemical weapons and fuel for surface-to-surface ballistic missiles, the delivery system for a nuclear warhead. Nearby residents indicate that it is also a missile storage center.

Click here to read the rest of my article.

Several thousand in Hatay.

The Turkish government seems to blame conspirators linked to Syria as more than 40 have been killed on the border. Meanwhile, riots have taken place in the town, blaming the Turkish government for its Syria policy and Syria for its possible involvement.

The bombs ripped into crowded streets near Reyhanli’s shopping district in the early afternoon, scattering concrete blocks and smashing cars in the town in Turkey’s southern Hatay province, home to thousands of Syrian refugees.

 

Restaurants and cafes were destroyed and body parts were strewn across the streets. The damage went at least three blocks deep from the site of the blasts.

With unconfirmed reports of an Israeli airstrike inside Syria allegedly targeting a weapons transfer from the Assad regime to the Lebanon based terrorist group Hezbollah, world attention must shift from the Israeli’s targeted strike to Western indifference on the ongoing Civil War in Syria.

For two years we have sat idly by and watched as Bashar al-Assad murdered seventy thousand of his own people in the worst Middle Eastern uprising as a result of the unsavory Arab Spring, with not one action to speak of besides drafting several U.N. Security Council resolutions that hold the same weight as cow chips.

The Israeli Defense Force has now struck Syrian weapons shipments twice within the past four months – as they don’t fool around with the possibility of Hezbollah acquiring chemical weapons of any kind – while U.S. and other western politicians debate arming the Syrian rebels with useful weaponry that gives them an honest chance of striking in Damascus and ridding the wold of Assad.

When are we finally going to act? Well… Not anytime soon if polling within France, the United Kingdom, the United States and Germany is correct, as all four western powers citizens oppose arming the rebels by two-to-one margin, and after a decade of war, many are just tired of continuous conflict.

But, unfortunately, such is life when there is evil in the world and bad characters willing to kill thousands upon thousands for ideology, greed, power or all of the above, and as such is common day life, so should our fight to prevent the darkness of evil from prevailing and to better secure the chaotic world we live in.

What say you?

An Egyptian-American source has sent ClarionProject.org an Arabic TV news report about an Egyptian professor that is being persecuted for a class discussion about religious intolerance in Egypt. According to a translation of the report, she is accused of “defaming” religion, specifically Islam.

Dr. Mona Prince is an English literature professor at Suez Canal University. Her class features discussions on current events where students are free to express different points of view. She says that she suggested a discussion on religious intolerance and no one objected.

Click here to read the rest of my article.

From UPI:

The Free Syrian Army says Israeli air force jets flew over President Bashar Assad’s palace and bombed a chemical weapons site near Damascus, Maariv reported.

The report said Israeli jets entered Syrian airspace close to 6 a.m Saturday and flew over Assad’s palace in Damascus and other security facilities before striking a chemical weapons compound near the city.

The Hebrew language daily said a Syrian army air defense battery positioned in the city fired at the Israeli jets, but the aircraft left Syrian airspace unscathed. FSA rebels posted a video showing smoke rising from the headquarters for chemical weapons.

There were no reports of the extent of damage or casualties.

Neither Damascus nor Jerusalem responded to the report.

Bashar al Assad

With U.S. intelligence assets and the British Foreign Office both confirming small-scale chemical weapon use by the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, the international community is now asking what their next move is to end the two-year old civil war that has claimed over seventy thousand lives, with the potential for many more imminent.

And with increased attention on Syria’s use of chemical weapons, reportedly Sarin gas, the world is shifting its collective gaze towards 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and President’s Obama “red line” that if Assad ever resorted to chemical warfare to remain in control that the United States would necessarily increase military involvement.

The administration has thus far remained silent on the matter, but with both Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) and Senator John McCain (R-AZ) calling for American or international intervention to prevent the further use of biological agents or secure whatever stockpiles do exist, the pressure is on President Obama to finally act.

It has been two years since the start of this never-ending bloody conflict in Syria. 70,000, or more are dead, neither side has the ability to overcome the other as conditions currently stand and with Assad’s grip on his family’s six-decade reign of terror slipping in some parts of the country, he’s resorting to desperate measures.

The time to act has been for a long time, but with two highly competent and trustworthy sources confirming the use of chemical agents by the Assad regime in their attempt to maintain power, we can no longer sit idly by. Action must be taken and it must be done before we witness the chemical version of the Hama massacre.

What say you?

Developing:

BREAKING:SenMcCain says he received letter from PresObama saying Syria HAS used chemical weapons
— Shannon Bream (@ShannonBream) April 25, 2013

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As the jihadist elements fighting Bashar al-Assad become stronger, the largest faction in the rebel forces rejects their ideas of holy war. The Free Syrian Army has eschewed the calls for jihad levied by groups like Ansar al-Sunna. They still hope for a secularist coalition to depose the dictator.

“Our official position as the Supreme Military Command of the Free Syrian Army… is that we thank them but we reject any calls for jihad in Syria,” FSA political and media coordinator Louay Muqdad told AFP.

“We reject any presence of foreign fighters, regardless of where they are from. We have said that what we are missing in Syria is weapons, not men,” he added.

HT: The Hill

The Syrian Electronic Army, an pro-Assad web based group that will “spread the truth about all those who wish ill of our country,” claimed responsibility for hacking the Associated Press twitter feed earlier today.

The tweets caused bit of panic on Wall Street when they falsely reported that there had been two explosions at the White House, injuring President Obama in the process, but were abated when White House Press Secretary Jay Carney assured reporters that it was a hoax.

There is no independent confirmation of the groups supposed responsibility, and the FBI is investigating who is responsible for the social media breach along with the Secret Service. The twitter feed has been suspended by the Associated Press to prevent further false information from being spread on their account.

What say you?

From NPR:

Israel’s top military intelligence official said Tuesday that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons repeatedly, and he criticized the international community for not taking tougher action against the Syrian leadership.

 

Israel and the Syrian opposition have on multiple occasions accused President Bashar Assad’s government of using chemical weapons in the country’s civil war, but have not offered much in the way of evidence.

 

Israeli Brig. Gen. Itai Brun, speaking at a security conference in Israel, gave the most definitive statement so far by an Israeli official.

 

“To the best of our professional understanding, the regime used lethal chemical weapons against the militants in a series of incidents over the past months,” Brun said, according to an Associated Press report from Tel Aviv. “Shrunken pupils, foaming at the mouth and other signs indicate, in our view, that lethal chemical weapons were used.”

Bashar al Assad

Two individuals linked to the Al-Qaeda network in Iran have been arrested in Canada, foiling a plot to derail a train from New York to Toronto. Though Canadian officials and media reports emphasize that there’s no evidence tying the Iranian regime to the plot, the Obama Administration confirmed in 2011 that Iran and Al-Qaeda had a “secret deal.”

“The individuals were receiving support from Al-Qaeda elements located in Iran,” said Royal Canadian Mounted Police official James Malizia.

An anonymous U.S. official influenced press coverage by telling Reuters that the Iranian regime does not protect the Al-Qaeda network in its territory. The official apparently believes the Iranian regime is capable of preventing another Green Revolution but is somehow unable to round up an Al-Qaeda network that the U.S. government has publicly identified.

Click here to read the rest of my article.

French and Libyan officials are still in the dark as to who is responsible for this morning’s car bombing just outside the French Embassy in a residential area in Tripoli where two security guards and civilians were hurt, but thankfully no one was killed.