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Oh Snap!!
Persia's Revo Guards LOL they just captured one of Great Satan's Drones Gone Wild which may signal that
when it comes to more sophisticated foes such as Iran, which has Russian-made anti-aircraft missile systems, the drone is vulnerable to attack. Last year the Iranians shot down a sophisticated stealth drone, the bat-winged RQ-170 Sentinel, and now the Revolutionary Guards say they have captured a ScanEagle version, which is launched from sea. Clearly the golden age of the drones, when they ruled supreme in the skies, is drawing to a close.
Perhaps - yet drones remain totally hot over uncontested airspace - which - sans a few girls night outs in Iran- is their modus operandi.
And the unpublished rule set seems to run like this here:
The first concern is secrecy.
Drone strikes and targeted kill lists are highly classified. This makes it difficult to discern the true effects of their use in warfare. Keeping all the details in the shadows also creates confusion among media outlets and human rights organizations, which are attempting to calculate precise casualty statistics.
The second concern is legality.
Under the rules of International Humanitarian Law, targeted killing is only lawful when met by three requirements: 1) The target is directly participating in the hostilities; 2) the use of force is proportionate; and 3) precautions are taken to minimize harm to civilians.
Ambiguous terminology raises questions: How are we sure they are direct participants? What is proportionate use of force? What is acceptable harm to civilians? It may not take lawyers and policymakers long to develop calculated justifications to rationalize and defend military operations, but there must be accountability somewhere along the way, and long before the order to “fire.”
The third concern is efficacy.
Does drone warfare create a safer environment and keep Americans out of harm’s way?
Pic - "Designate targets with precision, based on the most convincing and thoroughly examined evidence"
Air power that is.
Talk Talk Talking bout the latest hello betwixt Little Satan and the Strip.
Experts may go on and on about who won, who lost - calculating different perspectives in the internat'l arena and re reading sacred texts to conclude a conclusion yet one glaring obvious obviate remains:
Rather than blitz the Strip and
invade Gaza on the ground, uproot its terrorist infrastructure, and place Little Satan in an excellent position to dictate terms for her withdrawal, the gov relied
on air power, just as predecessors did in the Second Lebanon War, and got
the same results.
To truly get some kinda closure at least - Little Satan is most likely considering doing the Strip the Fallujah Way
“Invade Gaza and remain in place. She will have to kill or imprison thousands of terrorists, send thousands
more packing for Sinai, and then spend years patrolling the streets of
Gaza and arresting terrorists just as She does today in Judea and
Samaria.”
Pic - "Iron Dome"
WoW - the Watchers Council - it's the oldest, longest running cyber comte d'guere ensembe in existence - started online in 1912 by Sirs Jacky Fisher and Winston Churchill themselves - an eclective collective of cats both cruel and benign with their ability to put steel on target (figuratively - natch) on a wide variety of topictry across American, Allied, Frenemy and Enemy concerns, memes, delights and discourse.
Every week these cats hook up each other with hot hits and big phazed cookies to peruse and then vote on their individual fancy catchers.
Thusly sans further adieu (or a don"t)
Council Winners
Non-Council Winners
See you next week! And don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us Twitter
What time is it kids?
Palestine Time!
The twin Palestines (West Bank and the Strip)
scored a significant coup at the UN,
magically xforming into something something Non Member Observer State
A status that falls well short of independence but provides Palestinians
with limited privileges as a state, including the right to join the
International Criminal Court and other international treaty bodies.
UN defines as
“The status of a Permanent Observer is based purely on
practice, and there are no provisions for it in the United Nations
Charter. The practice dates from 1946, when the Secretary-General
accepted the designation of the Swiss Government as a Permanent Observer
to the United Nations.”
Current Non-member observers at U.N. include the Vatican which is labeled by the U.N. as a state and
“Palestine,” as an entity. The Palestine Observer Mission is run by the
Palestinian Liberation Organization. International Governmental Organizations (NGOs) with non-member observer status include the European Union, the Arab League and many many other organizations.
Funnily enough, the entire concept of non-member observers has no bearing on international law.
Or does it?
While the concept of HAMAS of Fatah dragging Little Satan to the ICC for War Crimes chiz is totally jank - the sword has two edges!
Little Satan could drag HAMAS and/or Fatah to the ICC for War Crimes. Like, oh, say human shielding for rowdy rocketeers and missile bases.
Pic - "Envisioned?"
Shinshin!!
The land of backward comics, Harijuku Girls, and cool robots - Japan is HOT! Instead of scary missiles and secret police - Japan built a fun, rich democratic tech saavy, tolerant, egalitarian society with a free, uncensored press, transparent, periodic elections, and independent judiciary that hasn't bothered anyone in over six decades.
A literacy rate of over 99%, Nippon is a wonderful example of the human spirit unbound.
Japan has been a long time ally of Great Satan for eons -- and has the world's second (or third, based on purchasing power parity) largest economy, 2nd biggest contributer to UN, yet Nippon remains dependent on America for its security, a minor military player despite having global economic and political interests.
Her near future strategy will be hooked with like 5 major thingies
Japan’s strategic thinking begins with a clear-eyed view of the challenge posed by China—much clearer than we have in the United States in many respects. Noda, Abe and the rest are fully cognizant of the fact that China is Japan’s largest trading partner and an increasingly important source of tourism and exports.
They also know that China seeks to assert greater control over the seas within the First Island Chain (stretching from Japan to Taiwan and through the Philippines) and that the dispute over the Senkaku Islands is more about that geostrategic struggle than fish, gas or popular nationalism at home. A few years ago, they will tell you, Japan had full control over the Senkaku Islands and the sea lanes stretching towards Taiwan. Now China’s growing naval and paramilitary presence has reduced that to 20 percent and many more PLA and other maritime vessels are being put into service every year.
They also generally concur on how Japan should respond. First, lock-in the U.S.-Japan alliance. This was something the DPJ’s first prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, failed to do with his populist imaginings of an exclusive “East Asia Community.” The result of his theatrical distancing from the United States was a far more aggressive and opportunistic China—a negative development that even DPJ leaders concede would not have happened under the more pro-U.S. Junichiro Koizumi. No political leader on the horizon is likely to repeat Hatoyama’s mistake.
Second, Japan’s leaders know that they must remove the more unreasonable and anachronistic constraints on the Self-Defense Forces. Japan’s military is now the most respected institution in Japan in some domestic polls—a remarkable turnaround for a supposedly pacifist nation. The response to the March 11, 2011 tsunami helped, but support for the military was already on the rise.
a relaxation of Japan’s arms export rules and his defense advisory board recommended lifting the ban on collective defense, which would allow the Defense Forces to engage in collective action with the United States, the same way our NATO allies and Australia can. The prime minister has the power to recognize and activate the right of collective defense; it requires only a reinterpretation of Article Nine (the “peace clause”) of the Constitution rather than the more difficult path of revision. Already Japanese forces are operating in the Arabian Sea with rules of engagement that allow them to use force to help other partners under attack by pirates, the legal distinction being that pirates are criminals and not a state. The next step, well within the realm of political possibility, would give a significant boost to the ability of Japan’s defense forces to operate with the United States and other allies.
Third, Japan should align with other maritime states to maintain a favorable equilibrium in the Pacific. Japan signed security agreements with Australia in 2007 and India in 2008 and cooperation with both countries continued to increase even after the DPJ came to power in 2009. Noda proposed in a speech at the East Asia Summit in Bali in 2011 that Japan help the region establish a new maritime order with clear rules for maintaining peace and stability. He did not need to tell his ASEAN and other counterparts that the challenge to that order would most likely be China. Abe’s enthusiasm for maintaining a maritime coalition led him to propose a “Quad” summit among the United States, Japan, Australia and India when he was last prime minister in 2007. The proposal proved too rich for the other three states, but he will search for new ways to achieve the same strategic alignment when he comes back into power.
Fourth, the country will join the TPP trade agreement. This will seem odd to those who see the LDP candidates campaigning on the theme that they will only join a regime that would allow Japan to carve out exemptions, a stance that makes participation in TPP impossible. But what else can a mostly rural-based party say before an election? In private, the LDP leadership knows that the United States always carves out exemptions—particularly for sugar—and that Japan will find a way to do the same. Business leaders express quiet confidence that the LDP will bring Japan into the TPP, something Noda proposed but failed to follow through on before his party lost popular support. LDP leaders acknowledge that it is an issue of when—not if.
Finally, Japan must find a way to grow its economy. For decades the country managed to have impressive economic growth and keep theGini coefficient (the gap between rich and poor) at the lowest level in the OECD. In the 1990s, that juggling act fell apart and in 2001, Koizumi chose reform and growth over redistribution. The economy grew faster, but so did the Gini coefficient. The DPJ came in to power in 2009 promising to put an end to what they called Koizumi’s “neocon economics” and to massively redistribute wealth through subsidies and tax exemptions. That experiment ended in dismal failure. Noda began to adjust the party’s position on pro-business policies and the LDP will bring the government back full circle.
Does Japan have a strategy? The ends are fairly clear. Establishing the means will be a generation-long effort. In the meantime, Japan remains a powerful nation and an important variable in the security of Northeast Asia.
Pic - " Of course, the Japan-U.S. security pact will continue to be the cornerstone of Japanese diplomatic policy."
Fully Crunk!!
As Great Satan kicks off her 2nd Decade of Her Most Excellent Adventures against creepy creeps, non state actors and daemonic despotries in the war against That Which Must Not Be Named, the next battleground will be Mali.
Bordering 7 neighboring states with a pitiful lit rate far worse than Land of the Pure's (31% comped to 49%) Mali has catapulted herself way back to the 7th century
Medieval-era laws have been imposed. Thieves have their hands cut off. m"Hammedist policemen are everywhere. The “government” even whipped a 15-year old girl for speaking to men on the street. Music—all music—is banned. The Guardian reports a chilling recent story. Thugs armed with AK-47s drove up to the home of a local musician. He wasn’t there when they arrived, so they left a message with his sister. “If you speak to him, tell him that if he ever shows his face in this town again, we’ll cut off all the fingers he uses to play his guitar with.”
The harshest form of m"Hammedist law in the world is now being imposed at gunpoint. Ancient tombs and shrines are being bulldozed for the exact same reason the Buddha statues were destroyed in Afghanistan.
The Islamists are going on a Taliban-like rampage of destruction, destroying ancient Muslim religious tombs and shrines
because they’re “idolatrous.” Bulgarian diplomat Irina Bokova minces no
words. “This attack is led by a tiny armed minority, who violently
imposes its interpretation of a faith on a distraught local community,
spoiling centuries of tolerance and exchange,” she says.
“The attack on Timbuktu's cultural heritage is an attack against this
history and the values it carries—values of tolerance, exchange and
living together… It is an attack against the physical evidence that
peace and dialogue is possible.”
And the place has turned into a rat’s nest of the who’s-who of terrorist organizations operating in North Africa.
Earlier this year, shortly after a military coup toppled the feckless civilian government in Bamako, an Al Qaeda-affiliated organization called Ansar al-Dine seized power in Timbuktu and lopped off the northern part of the country.
This time around, we aren’t waiting for a devastating attack against an American city to do something about it, and not only because Al Qaeda is already a clearly identified enemy of Great Satan. Northern Mali may already be the return address for an attack against Great Satan. Some of the leaders of Al Qaeda in the Maghreb, which was presumably behind the terrorist attack in Benghazi that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens, are believed to be based there.
The European Union is sending hundreds of military officers to train anti-"slamist militias while Great Satan and France are considering the use of Predator drones and Hellfire missiles.
Ansar al-Dine deserves everything coming its way. Mali was a political success story before the "Slamists took hold of the north. The country had what appeared to be a stable democratic government despite being one of the poorest on earth. Now it’s Afghanistan. Or Somalia. At least parts of it are.
Mali matters for the same reason Afghanistan mattered in early 2001 even though most of us couldn't see it yet.
We might get lucky and have just a small proxy war, with moderate
Tuaregs doing most of the fighting against Ansar al-Dine. No one can
say for sure where this thing is heading.
All we know now is that it’s
almost certainly the next war Great Satan will be involved in.
Pic - "We do not need to see a Mali which has a Caliphate in the north. Nor do we need to see another state created which would not be economically sustainable or viable."
