Islamic State-linked militants struck more than a dozen army and police targets in the restive Sinai Peninsula with simultaneous attacks involving a car bomb and mortar rounds on Thursday, killing at least 26 security officers.
An Army spokesman immediately blamed former Islamist President Mohammed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood of orchestrating the attack, which killed 25 Army soldiers and one policeman.
The wide-ranging attacks late Thursday required a previously unseen level of coordination. At least one car bomb was set off outside a military base, while mortars were simultaneously fired at the base, toppling some buildings and leaving soldiers buried under the debris, official said.
Other attacks included mortar rounds fired at a hotel, a police club and more than a dozen checkpoints, officials said.
The militants struck the Northern Sinai provincial capital el-Arish, the nearby town of Sheik Zuwayid and the town of Rafah bordering Gaza.
Hours before the attack, the Islamic State affiliate in Egypt posted on its official Twitter account pictures of masked militants dressed in black. They were carrying rocket-propelled grenades in a show of force, while flying the Islamic State black flag.
The Islamic State affiliate later took credit for Thursday’s attacks on Twitter, according to the SITE Intelligence Group.
At least 60 people were wounded in the attack, according to medical officials, who also confirmed the death toll. Officials said the death toll was expected to rise. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press.The Thursday attacks are expected to cause a great deal of embarrassment to the Egyptian government and military after nearly a yearlong offensive in Sinai aimed at uprooting Islamic militants under the banner of fighting terrorism, is largely failing.
Mikhail Gorbachev has accused the US of dragging Russia into a new Cold War. The former Soviet president fears the chill in relations could eventually spur an armed conflict.
“Plainly speaking, the US has already dragged us into a new Cold War, trying to openly implement its idea of triumphalism,” Gorbachev said in an interview with Interfax.
The former USSR leader, whose name is associated with the end of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States, is worried about the possible consequences.
“What’s next? Unfortunately, I cannot be sure that the Cold War will not bring about a ‘hot’ one. I’m afraid they might take the risk,” he said.
Gorbachev’s criticism of Washington comes as the West is pondering new sanctions against Russia, blaming it for the ongoing military conflict in eastern Ukraine, and alleging Moscow is sending troops to the restive areas. Russia has denied the allegations.
“All we hear from the US and the EU now is sanctions against Russia,” Gorbachev said. “Are they completely out of their minds? The US has been totally ‘lost in the jungle’ and is dragging us there as well.”
Gorbachev suggests the situation in the EU is “acute” with significant differences among politicians and different levels of prosperity among member nations.
“Part of the countries are alright, others – not so well, and many, including Germany, are excessively dependent on the US.”
In the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev served as General Secretary of the Communist Party's Central Committee from 1985 until 1991, and as the Soviet Union's only president from 1990. He led controversial perestroika reforms that are believed to have accelerated the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev’s rule was marked by considerable warming in relations with the West.
Meanwhile, international relations experts in America are quite alarmed over the new Cold War possibility – although not as much as the general public. While over 48 percent of scholars answered "no" when asked whether the US and Russia are headed towards such a conflict, the scenario was deemed likely by 38 percent.In Russia, one-third of the population believes their country and the US are on a collision course.
According to a poll conducted by the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center VCIOM in November 2014, the possibility of a new Cold War was considered likely by over 30 percent of Russians, being the highest number in the past seven years. Every fourth Russian (25 percent of respondents) believed such a conflict was already ongoing.
Washington’s attack on Russia has moved beyond the boundary of the absurd into the realm of insanity.
The New Chief of the US Broadcasting Board of Governors, Andrew Lack, has declared the Russian news service, RT, which broadcasts in multiple languages, to be a terrorist organization equivalent to Boko Haram and the Islamic State, and Standard and Poor’s just downgraded Russia’s credit rating to junk status.
Today RT International interviewed me about these insane developments.
In prior days when America was still a sane country, Lack’s charge would have led to him being laughed out of office. He would have had to resign and disappear from public life. Today in the make-believe world that Western propaganda has created, Lack’s statement is taken seriously. Yet another terrorist threat has been identified–RT. (Although both Boko Haram and the Islamic State employ terror, strictly speaking they are political organizations seeking to rule, not terror organizations, but this distinction would be over Lack’s head. Yes, I know. There is a good joke that could be made here about what Lack lacks. Appropriately named and all that.)
Nevertheless, whatever Lack might lack, I doubt he believes his nonsensical statement that RT is a terrorist organization. So what is his game?
The answer is that the Western presstitute media by becoming Ministries of Propaganda for Washington, have created large markets for RT, Press TV, and Al Jazeera. As more and more of the peoples of the world turn to these more honest news sources, Washington’s ability to fabricate self-serving explanations has declined.
RT in particular has a large Western audience. The contrast between RT’s truthful reporting and the lies spewed by US media is undermining Washington’s control of the explanation. This is no longer acceptable.
Lark has sent a message to RT. The message is: pull in your horns; stop reporting differently from our line; stop contesting the facts as Washington states them and the presstitutes report them; get on board or else.
In other words, the “free speech” that Washington and its EU, Canadian, and Australian puppet states tout means: free speech for Washington’s propaganda and lies, but not for any truth. Truth is terrorism, because truth is the major threat to Washington.
Washington would prefer to avoid the embarrassment of actually shutting down RT as its UK vassal did to Press TV. Washington simply wants to shut up RT. Lark’s message to RT is: self-censure.
A look at the facts serves to establish the political nature of the ruling. Don’t expect the corrupt US financial press to look at the facts. But right now, we will look at the facts.
Indeed, we will put the facts in context with the US debt situation.
According to the debt clocks available online, the Russian national debt as a percentage of Russian GDP is 11 percent. The American national debt as a percentage of US GDP is 105 percent, about ten times higher. My coauthors, Dave Kranzler, John Williams, and I have shown that when measured correctly, the US debt as a percent of GDP is much higher than the official figure.
The Russian national debt per capita is $1,645. The US national debt per capita is
$56,952.
$56,952.
The size of Russia’s national debt is $235 billion, less than one quarter of a trillion. The size of the US national debt is $18 trillion, 76.6 times larger than the Russian debt.
Putting this in perspective: according to the debt clocks, US GDP is $17.3 trillion and Russian GDP is $2.1 trillion. So, US GDP is 8 times greater than Russian GDP, but US national debt is 76.6 times greater than Russia’s debt.
Clearly, it is the US credit rating that should have been downgraded to junk status. But this cannot happen. Any US credit rating agency that told the truth would be closed and prosecuted. It wouldn’t matter what the absurd charges are. The rating agencies would be guilty of being anti-american, terrorist organizations like RT, etc. and so on, and they know it. Never expect any truth from any Wall Street denizen. They lie for a living.
According to this site: http://people.howstuffworks.com/5-united-states-debt-holders.htm#page=4the US owes Russia as of January 2013 $162.9 billion. As the Russian national debt is $235 billion, 69 percent of the Russian national debt is covered by US debt obligations to Russia.
If this is a Russian Crisis, I am Alexander the Great.
Claims by anonymous sources that the Obama administration is deeply offended by a “breach of protocol” in the planned appearance by Benjamin Netanyahu at a joint meeting of Congress are increasing.
The New York Times quotes an unnamed official as saying the anger goes beyond John Boehner and Netanyahu, to the Israeli Ambassador:
The Obama administration, after days of mounting tension, signaled on Wednesday how angry it is with Israel that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accepted Republican leaders’ invitation to address Congress on Iran without consulting the White House.The outrage the episode has incited within President Obama’s inner circle became clear in unusually sharp criticism by a senior administration official who said that the Israeli ambassador, Ron Dermer, who helped orchestrate the invitation, had repeatedly placed Mr. Netanyahu’s political fortunes above the relationship between Israel and the United States.
William Kristol argues that Obama views Netanyahu as an impediment to appeasement of Iran, much as Churchill was viewed with regard to the rise of fascism in Germany:
"It is Obama’s failures that explain his anger—his failures, and his hopes that a breakthrough with Iran could erase the memories of failure and appear to vindicate his foreign policy. Israel stands in the way, he thinks, of this breakthrough. Prime Minister Netanyahu stands in the way. And so Obama lashes out.
It’s of course unseemly. But it’s also dangerous. Neville Chamberlain and the British establishment were far angrier with Winston Churchill, and much harsher in their attempts to discredit him, in the late 1930s when the dreams of appeasement were failing, than earlier, when hope for the success of appeasement was alive. When you think your policies are going to be vindicated, you ignore or dismiss critics. It’s when you suspect and fear imminent failure that you lash out.
So we have an angry president, increasingly desperate for vindication of his failed foreign policy, accelerating both his appeasement of Iran and his attacks on Israel….”
I think that’s the point.
Obama doesn’t like Netanyahu and wants him out of office. That has been clear for years, and most recently when John Kerry and others reportedly urged the Palestinian Authority not to push it’s Security Council resolution prior to the Israeli elections so as not to help the Israeli right wing. Which means Netanyahu’s coalition.
The Obama administration attempted to interfere in the Israeli elections, and continues to do so through anonymous sources, including the person who called Netanyahu a “chicken****.”
While I do believe Obama is thin-skinned, I think there is much more here. He has found an opening to remove an obstacle to his plan to force an Israeli withdrawal to the 1949 armistice borders and to accommodate not just the Iranian nuclear program but also Iran’s role as a regional power. That is consistent with six years of Obama policy, and Netanyahu’s alleged breach of protocol changed nothing.
Obama sees an opportunity to separate Netanyahu not just from Democrats in Congress but also from Israeli voters, where the supposed damage to relations with the U.S. may help Netanyahu’s adversaries. It may be that Boehner and Bibi handed Obama just the excuse he needed.
This entire episode is about the Obama administration breaching protocol and interfering in Israeli elections, not the other way around.
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