We continue to watch the movements being made towards the eventual and expected wars in the Middle East. Preparations are underway. It is only a matter of time now - not 'if' but 'when':
After a relative lull of more than a year, Palestinian terror groups in Gaza have begun once again to regularly launch rockets at southern Israel. Already 20 have been fired at Israeli communities since the beginning of the year.
Israeli defense officials believe Hamas is not behind the attacks, but that the Islamist leadership of Gaza can do more to stop Islamic Jihad and Al-Qaeda linked terror groups from launching the missiles.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday vowed to respond forcefully to the attacks.
“We are determined to preserve the quiet in the South,” Netanyahu said. “We do this through a policy of prevention and by responding powerfully against those who try to harm or hurt us. I suggest that Hamas take our policy into account.”
On Friday, an unnamed diplomatic source told the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv that there is concern in Jerusalem that the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, mediated by Egypt and the Obama administration in November 2012 may be “dissolving.”
Earlier on Sunday, Israeli Air Force jets struck three targets in Gaza, including a motorcycle, seriously injuring a Palestinian militant, Ahmed Sa’ad, suspected of involvement in the rocket attacks.
Last Wednesday, five rockets launched from Gaza at the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon were intercepted by the Iron Dome anti-missile system.
An unnamed Israeli military official told Reuters that some militants in Gaza fire rockets from locations near their homes, which makes it challenging for Hamas to stop them.
The official said that Iran is paying smaller terrorist groups thousands of dollars for every successful missile launched.
“However, Hamas has proven its ability to prevent terror attacks out of Gaza, so we can demand that they act like a ruler and maintain order,” he said.
Israeli politicians, left, right and center, are resorting again to their familiar clichés to trade accusations over where ongoing negotiation with the Palestinians should or should not be going. Meanwhile, the Palestinians have other plans, the first of which is to terminate peace talks with Israel.
In that sense, little has changed in the thirteen years since the United States began taking a hand in the “Middle East peace process.”
In 2000, President Bill Clinton brought Israel’s prime minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to Camp David, purportedly to knock their heads together for a peace agreement. He was perfectly aware that Palestinian plans were in place for the suicide bombing intifada war a month hence in September, and that nothing would come of the heavily televised encounter.
Without waiting for the peace talks to wind down the end of April, as agreed, Abbas, according to intelligences reports, was deep in plans to enlist 63 international organizations for a massive anti-Israel boycott. The same number of teams was busy drawing up separate applications for these organizations to join boycotts against Israel in every field of endeavor, according to their respective spheres.
Among the addresses is the International Court at the Hague which is to be asked to indict Israel for hundreds if not thousands of alleged war crimes and the practice of apartheid
...in recent weeks, Abbas and his security agencies have lost control of suburbs in the West Bank towns under their rule, and especially the 19 refugee camps which have been taken over by local armed militias.
These militias, as well as Hamas, Jihad Islami and other violent bands, are getting organized for a fresh outbreak of terrorist operations including suicide bombers.
These militias, as well as Hamas, Jihad Islami and other violent bands, are getting organized for a fresh outbreak of terrorist operations including suicide bombers.
In the Nablus and Bethlehem areas of the West Bank, some Palestinian gangs are also preparing to shoot Qassam rockets at Jerusalem and other Israel towns.
In the year 2000, the Israeli powers-that-be, led by the IDF Chief of staff at the time, Shaul Mofaz, kept Palestinian preparations for their intifada away from the public notice, so as not to upset peace diplomacy.
The incumbent army chief, Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, likewise complies with government directives to keep the true situation dark so as not to derail Kerry’s peace efforts.
Once Palestinian violence explodes, no one in the international community will want to remember precisely how far Netanyahu and Kerry were willing to go along the path of peace.
Abbas’s tactics are built around never parting from Israel, but staying uncomfortably close and proving to the world that Israel is an occupying power which denies them independence. Disengagement would spoil the game which has kept Abbas in power since Nov. 2004 as Arafat’s successor.
Calls on the prime minister from the political left wing to take “courageous steps” are likewise divorced from this reality. However courageous his steps may be, Abbas will still say they are not enough and try and squeeze more. Nothing Israeli or the most diligent US Secretary of State does will divert him from this strategy and the path he has set himself.
Some time in April, therefore, Israel will face the onset of a disastrous Palestinian diplomatic assault on its legitimacy, backed by their friends in many countries. Only time will tell how it evolves.
Russia and China have agreed to conduct a joint naval drill in the Mediterranean Sea, a Russian media report cites the Defense Ministry. The countries’ fleets are currently involved in an intl operation to escort the Syrian chemical weapons stockpile.
The Defense Ministry said on Sunday that group of Russian naval officers deployed onboard a heavy nuclear missile cruiser "Peter the Great" visited Chinese frigate Yancheng.
“On board the Chinese patrol ship, Russian sailors discussed with their foreign counterparts the possibility of joint tactical exercises in the Mediterranean Sea. Under the agreement, such exercises can be carried out in the near future in an effort to improve the level of operational compatibility between Russian and Chinese warships during joint operations in the eastern Mediterranean,” the statement from the Ministry of Defense said.
The main aim of the joint naval exercise would be to increase the level of operational cooperation between the two navies designed to tackle terrorist threats and improve joint rescue operations at sea, the Ministry explained.
On January 7, both counties escorted the first consignment of Syrian chemical weapons materials that has left the country on a Danish ship. This became the first practical interaction between the Russian and the Chinese navies.
“On board the Chinese patrol ship, Russian sailors discussed with their foreign counterparts the possibility of joint tactical exercises in the Mediterranean Sea. Under the agreement, such exercises can be carried out in the near future in an effort to improve the level of operational compatibility between Russian and Chinese warships during joint operations in the eastern Mediterranean,” the statement from the Ministry of Defense said.
The main aim of the joint naval exercise would be to increase the level of operational cooperation between the two navies designed to tackle terrorist threats and improve joint rescue operations at sea, the Ministry explained.
On January 7, both counties escorted the first consignment of Syrian chemical weapons materials that has left the country on a Danish ship. This became the first practical interaction between the Russian and the Chinese navies.
Both Russian and Chinese ships have polished their skills in joint air-defense and maritime replenishment. They have also practiced tackling submarine threats and tested their skills in joint escort and in rescuing a hijacked ship while shooting maritime targets.
Author of ‘shock and awe’ doctrine says elite threatened by non-state actors like Edward Snowden.
Writing for the Atlantic Council, a prominent think tank based in Washington DC, Harlan K. Ullman warns that an “extraordinary crisis” is needed to preserve the “new world order,” which is under threat of being derailed by non-state actors like Edward Snowden.
The Atlantic Council is considered to be a highly influential organization with close ties to major policy makers across the world. It’s headed up by Gen. Brent Scowcroft, formerUnited States National Security Advisor under U.S. Presidents Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush. Snowcroft has also advised President Barack Obama.
Harlan K. Ullman was the principal author of the “shock and awe” doctrine and is now Chairman of the Killowen Group which advises government leaders.
In an article entitled War on Terror Is not the Only Threat, Ullman asserts that, “tectonic changes are reshaping the international geostrategic system,” arguing that it’s not military superpowers like China but “non-state actors” like Edward Snowden, Bradley Manning and anonymous hackers who pose the biggest threat to the “365 year-old Westphalian system” because they are encouraging individuals to become self-empowered, eviscerating state control.
“Very few have taken note and fewer have acted on this realization,” notes Ullman, lamenting that “informationrevolution and instantaneous global communications” are thwarting the “new world order” announced by U.S. President George H.W. Bush more than two decades ago.
“Without an extraordinary crisis, little is likely to be done to reverse or limit the damage imposed by failed or failing governance,” writes Ullman, implying that only another 9/11-style cataclysm will enable the state to re-assert its dominance while “containing, reducing and eliminating the dangers posed by newly empowered non-state actors.”
Ullman concludes that the elimination of non-state actors and empowered individuals “must be done” in order to preserve the new world order. A summary of their material suggests that the Atlantic Council’s definition of a “new world order” is a global technocracy run by a fusion of big government and big business under which individuality is replaced by transhumanist singularity.
Ullman’s rhetoric sounds somewhat similar to that espoused by Trilateral Commission co-founder and regular Bilderberg attendee Zbigniew Brzezinski, who in 2010 told a Council on Foreign Relations meeting that a “global political awakening,” in combination with infighting amongst the elite, was threatening to derail the move towards a one world government.
Ullman’s implied call for an “extraordinary crisis” to reinvigorate support for state power and big government has eerie shades of the Project For a New American Century’s 1997 lament that “absent some catastrophic catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor,” an expansion of U.S. militarism would have been impossible.
In 2012, Patrick Clawson, member of the influential pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) think tank, also suggested that the United States should launch a staged provocation to start a war with Iran.
Ullman’s concern over failing state institutions having their influence eroded by empowered individuals, primarily via the Internet, is yet another sign that the elite is panicking over the “global political awakening” that has most recently expressed itself via the actions of people like Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, Bradley Manning and their growing legion of supporters.
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