Hiz"B"Allah's Overextention

Moqawama!

Little Satan's recent mini blitz that knocked off Revo Gurad Corps Generals and an especial HbA legacy - son of Imad Muganiyah - got a mini counter attack in Lebanon. Little Satan instantly responded with a few air sortees.

So what now? Escalation time?

Wednesday’s ambush raised many other questions. Did Hezbollah now believe that it had settled its score with Israel, that this round was over? The two sides have exchanged rocket fire since the initial Hezbollah ambush, but questions remained about whether Israel would try to engage the group in a new war, stretch its resources, and precipitate an angry backlash against it in Lebanon.

Ensuing clashes between the two sides also killed a U.N. peacekeeper and threatened to blow open a front that had largely been dormant since the devastating war between Hezbollah and Israel in 2006.

A new conflict could further erode support for Hezbollah in Lebanon; it’s also plausible that the Lebanese would grudgingly rally around the group as it battles its original foe, if Israel exacts collective punishment against Lebanon and not just against Hezbollah fighters.

During the 2006 war with Israel, southern Lebanese, who form the bulk of Hezbollah’s constituency, were sheltered by Lebanese in other parts of the country and in Syria. Where will those people find refuge if another conflict erupts? Can Hezbollah risk bringing out the mass internal displacement of Lebanese while the country is struggling to cope with the huge influx of displaced Syrians?

There are broader regional calculations as well. Both Hezbollah and Syria’s Assad are politically and financially backed by Iran. Plummeting oil prices must be straining Iran’s (and Russia’s) economic lifeline to Assad. A new Hezbollah front with Israel would make further demands on Tehran’s purse.

Can Iran afford to foot Hezbollah’s bill? If Israel escalates the conflict, can Hezbollah choose not to respond without losing face? Is Israel just engaged in election-season muscle flexing? Would Hezbollah draw some of its forces back home from Syria to fight Israel, if that front reopened?

Pic - "Hezbollah considers any attack on any faction of the resistance movements, or on the two supporting nations of Iran or Syria, as an attack on all of them"

Long Range Strike Bomber

 

Beleaf it or don't - Air Force is getting all sexed up for a new bomber, baby!   

AF plans to pick, sometime in the next couple months, a contractor to develop the new Long Range Strike Bomber. Boeing and Lockheed Martin have teamed up to offer a joint design. But Northrop, with its recent experience building the B-2 and the reams of useful data it’s gleaned from the X-47B, seems poised to win.  

Bombs Away! 

The new “Long-Range Strike Bomber” would be slightly less sophisticated and therefore cheaper than the Next-Generation Bomber: just $550 million per copy for up to 100 copies, with production beginning in the early 2020s. The U.S. Congress approved the first $300 million in development funding in late 2011. The Pentagon has vowed to cancel the Long-Range Strike Bomber if the total projected program cost exceeds $55 billion. Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Northrop Grumman will compete for the contract, details of which are a closely guarded secret.

 

Pic - "B 3 will be a long-range, air-refuelable, highly survivable aircraft with significant nuclear and conventional stand-off and direct-attack weapons payload."

 



Shia Crescent

Eons ago - after ascending the Hashemite Throne in Amman - Jordon's King Abdullah caveat'd that Iran was crafting a "Shia Crescent" that would be a real prob.

Tons of ppl LOL'd the idea and passed it off as a regional fear.

Only thing, see, since Yemen's government collapsed and shialicious elements have seized power, it doesn't look so funny.

As best understood - Iran"s Sunni Free Imperium would look sump like this here:

Stretching from Persia to the Med and Red Seas the southern horn would sweetly snatch up ancient wicked woman worshipping Imperialist Colonial Crusader created cats like Kuwait, Southern Iraq, Bahrain (outright annexation by Iran) Qatar, the UAE and the oil rich Shia bearing regions of Saudi Arabia, and deserty Yemen.

Northern Horn would like do Baghdad, intermittant pock pock pockets of shias across Iraq all the way to Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and an out post or two in the Strip and West Bank.

Obviously - fighting the ISIS ISIL in what's left of Iraq and Syria are queering the mix on hegemonic designs, yet Yemen's fall is a victory of sorts for Iraq's Preacher Command.


Pic - “Shiites in the region are more loyal to Iran than their own countries"

Audie Murphy Day!!

For those of us born betwixt the Fall of the Wall and 911, we kinda grew up with Great Satan unbound. Until Operation Iraqi Freedom, for older Americans - battles and history were old school stuff that would probably never happen again.

As "Rock of The Marne" blitzed through the largest Arab army in history in 20 days, her combat power was unparalled:

"An infantry division in name only, fielding 270 Abrams M1 tanks with mobile infantry that could be hastily formed into adhoc battle groups to handle a variety of missions"

Thunder Running into downtown Baghdad, even phoning up the Iraqi Minister of Misinformation at Palestine Hotel to request "Parking for 88 tanks" seemed like the debut of audacious American war fighting.

Actually - "Rock of the Marne" was following in the footsteps of their spiritual great grandfathers

"On 26 January 1945, 2d Lt. Murphy commanded Company B, which was attacked by 6 tanks and waves of infantry. 2d Lt. Murphy ordered his men to withdraw to prepared positions in a woods, while he remained forward at his command post and continued to give fire directions to the artillery by telephone. 

"Behind him, to his right, 1 of our tank destroyers received a direct hit and began to burn. Its crew withdrew to the woods. 

"2d Lt. Murphy continued to direct artillery fire which killed large numbers of the advancing enemy infantry. With the enemy tanks abreast of his position, 2d Lt. Murphy climbed on the burning tank destroyer, which was in danger of blowing up at any moment, and employed its .50 caliber machinegun against the enemy.

"He was alone and exposed to German fire from 3 sides, but his deadly fire killed dozens of Germans and caused their infantry attack to waver. The enemy tanks, losing infantry support, began to fall back. For an hour the Germans tried every available weapon to eliminate 2d Lt. Murphy, but he continued to hold his position and wiped out a squad which was trying to creep up unnoticed on his right flank.

"Germans reached as close as 10 yards, only to be mowed down by his fire. He received a leg wound, but ignored it and continued the single-handed fight until his ammunition was exhausted. He then made his way to his company, refused medical attention, and organized the company in a counterattack which forced the Germans to withdraw.

"His directing of artillery fire wiped out many of the enemy; he killed or wounded about 50. 2d Lt. Murphy's indomitable courage and his refusal to give an inch of ground saved his company from possible encirclement and destruction, and enabled it to hold the woods which had been the enemy's objective.

"The President of the United States of America has awarded in the name of The Congress the MEDAL OF HONOR to LIEUTENANT AUDIE L. MURPHY, UNITED STATES ARMY

Today is the anniversary of Lt Murphy's heroic achievement - Americans everywhere should get on their knees and thank God Almighty for raising up this laughing race of free men.


Pic - "Our Heroes Live In Our Hearts"

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)

*First place with 3 1/3 votes!–The Noisy Room – An American Intifada – Communists and Radical Islamists Join Forces

Second place with 2 2/3 votes –Joshuapundit-The ‘Selma’ Controversy And What It Says About Race In America

Third place with 1 2/3 votes –Ask Marion – American Sniper… Hollywood and Sharpton

Fourth place *t* with 1 1/3 votes –Bookworm Room – Mt. Holyoke, The Vagina Monologues, and why “The Coming College Decline” is a good thing

Fourth place *t* with 1 1/3 votes –The Razor – Consensual Incest Puts Progressives on Slippery Slope

Fifth place with 1 vote –The Right Planet – The Marxist Dialectic – From Lenin to Obama

Sixth place *t* with 2/3 vote –Simply Jews – Deborah Maccoby to Jews of Europe: denounce Israel and live happily thereafter

Sixth place *t* with 2/3 vote –Nice Deb – The Obama Regime, CAIR, and the Doctrine of Taqiyya

Seventh place with 1/3 vote –VA Right! - Hanover Photo-gate Deepens – New Photo Casts Doubt on Statement to Mechanicsville Local

Non-Council Winners

• First place with 2 votes! –Victor Davis Hanson – Muslims And Islamists submitted by Joshuapundit
• Second place *t* with 1 1/3 votes –Marine Le Pen –To Call This Threat By Its Name submitted by The Razor
• Second place *t* with 1 1/3 votes –Global Guerillas – Saudi Arabia Plunges into an Abyss submitted by The Glittering Eye
• Second place *t* with 1 1/3 votes –Jerome Corsi/WND - Admirals, generals, intel: Benghazi inquest compromised, ‘I think Gowdy has been warned away or threatened’ submitted by Ask Marion
• Second place *t* with 1 1/3 votes –Sultan Knish –The Importance Of Blasphemy submitted by The Independent Sentinel
• Third place *t* with 1 vote –Michelle Malkin –Attack Of The Open-Borders Mau-Mau-ers submitted by The Noisy Room
• Third place *t* with 1 vote –Kevin D. Williamson/ NRO -The FOX News Obsession submitted by Nice Deb
• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 votes -The Passing Parade – The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same submitted by Simply Jews
• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 votes -American Thinker – Eric Cantor Lectures On How to Win Elections? submitted by VA Right!
• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 votes -Tom Rogan/NRO – The New Islamic State: Boko Haram submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD
• Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote -Mike McDaniel/The Truth About Guns-It Happened Before, It Will Happen Again submitted by Bookworm Room
• Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote -The New American – Obama and UN Created Terror State in Libya submitted by The Right Planet
• Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote -Volokh Conspiracy – Over 80 percent of Americans support “mandatory labels on foods containing DNA” submitted by Rhymes with Right
• Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote -Eli Lake – Why Obama Can’t Say ‘Radical Islam’ submitted by The Watcher
• Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote -The Other McCain – Rapists Rape and Rape Again submitted by The Watcher

• See you next week!  And don't forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

The King Is Dead

 

The King is Dead! Long Live The King?

The original Women Hating Hijaz Kingdom will soon be doing the Royal Succession dance...

Crown Prince Salman, born Dec. 31, 1935, who is also defense minister, has been chairing Cabinet meetings for several months and handling almost all foreign travel responsibilities for the monarchy since he became the heir in 2012. He has visited China, Japan, India, Pakistan, the Maldives and France since becoming crown prince after the death of his predecessor, Prince Nayif.

Salman was governor of Riyadh province for 48 years. When he became governor in 1963, Riyadh had 200,000 inhabitants; today, it has more than 7 million. Salman presided over this remarkable transformation with a record for good governance and a lack of corruption. Since most of the royal princes and princesses live in Riyadh, he was also the family sheriff, ensuring any transgressions were dealt with smoothly and quietly with no publicity.

Salman also oversaw the collection of private funds to support the Afghan mujahedeen in the 1980s, working very closely with the kingdom's Wahhabi clerical establishment. In the early years of the war, before the United States and the kingdom ramped up their secret financial support for the anti-Soviet insurgency, this private Saudi funding was critical to the war effort. At its peak, Salman was providing $25 million a month to the mujahedeen. He was also active in raising money for the Bosnian Muslims in the war with Serbia.

Salman's sons include the first Muslim astronaut, Prince Sultan, and the governor of Medina, Prince Faisal. Another son, Prince Khaled, is a fighter pilot in the Royal Saudi Air Force (RSAF) and led the first RSAF mission against Islamic State targets in Syria last year. The family controls much of the Saudi media.

Salman has his own health issues and suffered a stroke. His successor was announced in February 2013 to ensure continuity. Second Deputy Prime Minister Prince Muqrin was born Sept. 15, 1945, and was educated at the Royal Air Force College in England before becoming a pilot in the Royal Saudi Air Force. Later, he was governor of Medina province and then head of Saudi intelligence. Muqrin is very close to Abdullah.

All three are sons of the modern kingdom's founder, Abdulaziz Ibn Saud, who had 44 recognized sons. The survivors and their heirs constitute the Allegiance Council, which Abdullah created in 2007 to help choose the line of succession. In practice, it has only ratified the king's decisions after the fact.

Muqrin is widely believed to be the last capable son of Ibn Saud. So if and when Muqrin ascends to the position of crown prince, the kingdom will face the unprecedented challenge of picking a next in line from the grandsons of Ibn Saud. That will raise questions of legitimacy not faced in the last century of Saudi rule.

Meanwhile In Yemen

If anyone noticed...44 didn't mention Yemen or al Qaeda once in SOTU...

The situation in Sana’a, Yemen’s capital, deteriorated very rapidly over the weekend and developments are still unfolding. Yemen’s President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi has “no control,” according to his information minister, who also called yesterday’s takeover of the presidential palace a “coup.” The US military is on alert should US Embassy Sana’a require an evacuation, especially after an embassy vehicle was fired on yesterday.

Here’s what we know:

• The al Houthis, a Zaydi Shiite movement in Yemen, are in power in the capital. The president is under al Houthi guard in his residence, and the al Houthis now hold key state infrastructure, including the presidential palace. They entered Sana’a in September and, under the cover of the Peace and National Partnership Agreement, have held the Yemeni government hostage since then.
• The trigger was President Hadi’s decision to press forward with Yemen’s constitution. That document, in the al Houthis’ eyes, is illegitimate because it is a byproduct of the National Dialogue Conference (NDC) that concluded—and was rejected by the al Houthis—a year ago. The drafted constitution would formalize a six-region federal system that divides the al Houthis’ stronghold between two regions. The al Houthis kidnapped Hadi’s chief-of-staff Ahmed Awad bin Mubarak on his way to a meeting to submit the draft constitution and used negotiations for his release to press their demands against the current draft. The al Houthis said they would not let the NDC move forward and they have carried through on that promise.
• It’s not a coup, at least not yet. The al Houthis have personnel in the National Security Bureau, Political Security Office, Yemen’s state media, and even took control of a missile base on the outskirts of Sana’a. But they have kept Hadi in charge. It’s not clear whether the al Houthis will oust the government and take full control after all of this. Except for this hiccup, Hadi’s puppet government was working well for them.

The latest crisis in Sana’a draws more international attention to a country already under scrutiny because of the Yemen-headquartered al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s claims of responsibility for the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attacks. But a resolution of the ongoing power struggle in Sana’a will barely scratch the surface of Yemen’s troubles.  The more intractable problem, as the US and France should know all too well, is al Qaeda. And while the Iranian-backed al Houthis may well be creating more space for al Qaeda, the truth is that the much-touted “Yemen model” for fighting terror was broken long ago.

American Sniper

Just lucky perhaps - certain elements view small government fans, NRA enablers, Christians etc as a bigger threat than any of our Foriegn Enemies. And the American Military can be added to the mix in their eyes.

Heroism on the battlefield had never gone away, of course, far from it (witness the Medals of Honor awarded for acts of extraordinary valor in Iraq and Afghanistan). But the classic war hero is more than just brave or fierce. He is famous and almost universally acclaimed. On top of his battlefield exploits, he is a cultural phenomenon.

American Sniper had the largest opening ever on Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, or any weekend in January. It is producing the kind of numbers — a projected $105 million weekend — usually reserved for mindless comic-book superhero movies. It has played especially well in Middle America, with its top-grossing theaters in places like San Antonio, Oklahoma City, Houston, and Albuquerque.

All of this is profoundly disquieting to the Left, which has so much sway in Hollywood. It hates and distrusts the idea of the war hero, believing it smacks of backwardness and jingoism.

Actor Seth Rogen compared American Sniper to the Nazi propaganda film featured in the movie Inglourious Basterds. Director Michael Moore tweeted that he’d been taught to consider snipers cowards. Kyle “was a hate-filled killer,” according to the Guardian, which also deems him “a racist who took pleasure in dehumanizing and killing brown people.” One member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences — American Sniper is up for best picture — told the website TheWrap that Kyle “seems like he may be a sociopath.”

Chris Kyle enjoyed combat, as he makes clear in his book. He had no doubt about the righteousness of his mission protecting American troops, or about the evil of our enemies. These are welcome qualities in a warrior, no matter how offensive they might be to people who will never be entrusted with the responsibility of making life-and-death decisions in real time while in mortal danger.

Much is made of Kyle calling the people he killed “damn savages.” The description is typically salty (Kyle had a taste for pitch-black dark humor), but inarguably apt. Kyle was fighting suicide bombers and torturers, the forerunners of the Islamic State that has made a point of advertising its savagery to the world.

One can only imagine, in this spirit, the criticisms that might have been made of past American war heroes. Why did John Paul Jones have such destructive urges toward British shipping? Did Joshua Chamberlain have to be so bloodthirsty when under assault on Little Round Top? What was wrong with Alvin York and Audie Murphy that they were so obsessed with killing Germans?

Despite the reaction against it in some quarters, American Sniper is hardly a simplistic glorification of warfare. It shows its terrible cost, in lost and broken lives. The New Yorker, accurately, calls it “a devastating pro-war movie and a devastating anti-war movie.” Kyle himself is nearly consumed by the horrors of what he experienced in Iraq, and his tragic death at the hands of a disturbed vet is a heartbreaking coda to his service.
Chris Kyle, who had his flaws like anyone else, wasn’t a saint.

 He was an exceptional warrior whose bravery and feats on the battlefield will now be remembered for a very long time. He is, in short, a war hero

. 

Lone Wolves Myth

Lone Wolves!

That partic myth may be deader than ObL in accepted memes au courant...   

The attacks in Paris and the radical Islamist cell dismantled in Brussels have challenged the idea of the “lone wolf” terrorist who works alone, without the help of a jihadist organization

Every terrorist that has attempted or carried out attacks in the West in recent years — down to the Kouachi brothers who struck the Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris this month — has had some level of ties to extremist groups engaged in global jihad

The concept of “lone wolves” emerged at a time when Western observers were still struggling to understand the apparently diffuse threat from global jihadists — that operated with less clear-cut structures than the major terrorist organisations of the 20th century.

Even if they act alone, or as part of small local cells, they are following a clear blueprint set out by groups with global name recognition.

The Soufan Group, says a better term for "lone wolves" would be "known wolves", given how many are already known to Western intelligence agencies before they strike.

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

Thus, sans further adieu (or a don't)

*First place with 5 1/3 votes! -Joshuapundit-Jihad,Islam and The French Farce In Paris

Second place with 1 1/3 votes –The Independent Sentinel – Well, the Paris Rally Is over and Europeans Want to Ban Insults

Third place *t* with 1 vote –Nice Deb – Daniel Bongino Rips Obama A New One For Lying About Secret Service

Third place *t* with 1 vote –The Noisy Room – NoisyRoom.net Proudly Publishes the Mohammed Cartoons – Everyone Should Flood the Web With Them

Third place *t* with 1 vote –The Glittering Eye -The Search for the Historical Mohammed

Third place *t* with 1 vote –VA Right! - Hanover Supervisor Kelly-Wicek Photoshops Herself Into Event

Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote –Bookworm Room – When it comes to Islam and politics, Leftist stupidity unfortunately has the bully pulpit

Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote –The Right Planet – So, You Don’t Like Mohammed Cartoons, Huh?

Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote –Simply Jews – Jews Will Suffer Greatly At The BBC’s Hands

Fifth place with 1/3 vote –Ask Marion – US Must Arm Muslims Fighting Extremists ‘To the Teeth’ Says Judge Pirro as World Leaders, Sans Obama and Kerry, Gather in Paris

Non-Council Winners

• First place with 3 votes! –Andrew McCarthy/NRO – Don’t Blame the Charlie Hebdo Mass Murder on ‘Extremism’ submitted by Joshuapundit
• Second place with 1 2/3 votes –Christopher Caldwell/New York Magazine-Why History Will Eviscerate Obamasubmitted by Bookworm Room
• Third place *t* with 1 1/3 votes – Foxtrot Alpha – Meet France’s Elite Revolver-Toting Counter-Terrorism Units submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD
• Third place *t* with 1 1/3 votes – Melanie Phillips – The Paris massacre and Western funk submitted by The Watcher
• Fourth place *t* with 1 vote – Nick Cohen/Spectator – Charlie Hebdo: the truths that ought to be self-evident but still aren’t submitted by Simply Jews
• Fourth place *t* with 1 vote – Sic Semper Tyrannis – The ‘hybrid’ terror cell behind the Paris Attacks (part 1) by Patrick Bahzad submitted by The Glittering Eye
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote -Daniel Greenfield/FrontPage –Laughing At Mohammed submitted by The Noisy Room
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote -Steve Crowder -#FreeCommunityCollege – You Morons Can’t Afford It! submitted by Nice Deb
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote -Glenn Reynolds/USA Today – Clash between two Islams submitted by The Watcher
• Sixth place *t* with 2/3 vote -AIM / Cliff Kincaid – Why Was Putin a No-show in Paris? submitted by The Right Planet
• Sixth place *t* with 2/3 vote -Hogewash – Mortal danger is an effective antidote for fixed ideas. submitted by Rhymes with Right

See you next week!

Deadlier By The Day

While Western Education may be forbidden - cranking up the murder machine is A O Tay

Boko Haram is now on par with the Islamic State in terms of violent deaths — the latter was responsible for roughly 5,500 deaths in 2014, while BoKo Haram is up to over 5K.

Things are getting worse. It's difficult to pinpoint the precise number of deaths carried out by Boko Haram, in part because reporting in the area is "notoriously difficult," as the Guardian put it. But while there are sometimes discrepancies in the numbers — the Nigeria Social Violence Dataset puts the 2014 death toll at roughly 5,000, and the Washington-based Council on Foreign Relations echoes that number — what is clear is that the crisis of militant terror has gone from bad to worse in a short period of time.

In the Nigerian town of Baga, Boko Haram insurgents carried out one of the bloodiest attacks in the group's history, killing an estimated 2,000 people. Most of the victims were women, children and elderly people who couldn't escape after fighters drove into the town firing rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons at local residents.

The world watched in horror while two gunmen slaughtered 12 people at the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris last week, yet a massacre of a different kind was happening halfway across the world.

Using data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Dataset, which produces real-time data for disaggregated conflict analysis and mapping in Africa, the chart illustrates a stark pattern: The number of deaths caused by Boko Haram is rising from year to year. And if last week's singular attack is any indication, the threat is growing.

And yet few international organizations are taking any notice. Despite the utter destruction of Baga's residents, the media seems to have turned a blind eye to the conflict.

The West, particularly the United States, has an enormous amount at stake when it comes to the Islamic State. They pose a serious threat to our interests abroad and have the power to entangle us in yet another Middle Eastern conflict.

Nigeria, on the other hand, holds no such power, and Boko Haram's attacks have thus far targeted a population that is far removed from our own. 44's own logic for fighting against the Islamic State — that we must protect targeted groups from its violence — could be used in the case of Boko Haram, and yet no major calls to action have been put forth.

 Boko Haram's pattern of growth since 2009 makes it clear that it will continue to wage a violent war on its own population. It may not be happening on our doorstep, but that doesn't mean we can ignore it.

Pic - "The main difference between France and Nigeria isn't that the public and the media care about one and not the other. It is, rather, that one country has an effective government and the other does not."

Cyber War

L'Stache Grande gives it up on Cyber War!

Before last month, most Americans thought very little about cyberwarfare. But when North Korea attacked Sony Pictures for daring to mock its leader Kim Jong-un in the now-famous film “The Interview,” cyberwarfare arrived at center stage.

Pyongyang's idea of a Christmas present offers us an opportunity we should not miss. Cyberspace, information technology and social networks can all be used for malign as well as beneficial purposes. While digital businesses, information-technology executives and defense officials have been worrying about protecting cyberspace, broader public awareness was largely missing. “Hacking” might have been a well-known term but war in cyberspace still sounded like science fiction. The often-arcane-sounding debates had a minimal effect on public policy.

Indeed, despite the best efforts of many concerned about national security, we as a nation remain woefully unprepared to appreciate and adapt to the cyberwarfare world. Kim Jong-un, inadvertently to be sure, has given us a critical opportunity to catch up.

A vital starting point is defining carefully what we actually mean by “cyberwarfare.” Our ongoing (and very dangerous) confusion already is evident in the Sony Pictures incident. President Obama called it “vandalism,” even while attributing responsibility for the attack to a hostile foreign government and acknowledging Sony's substantial economic and social costs. Moreover, the perpetrators combined their electronic offensive with threats of 9/11-style terrorism against theaters and moviegoers. Given North Korea's history of terrorism, its closeness to terrorist states like Iran, and its nuclear weapons capability, the threat was chilling.

But how should we judge? To decide properly how to prepare for, defend against and respond to cyberthreats, we must get the basics in order. Today in the cyberwarfare realm, we lack essential theoretical and conceptual foundations. There are no cyberwarfare theories comparable to what Albert Wohlstetter and Herman Kahn created for nuclear weapons. We are at far more elementary levels.

To start, we need an “escalation ladder” for cyberspace so we can better understand and distinguish the gravity and implications of various kinds of intrusions and interferences in the digital world; defend properly against them; and develop and deploy the necessary offensive capabilities to enhance our safety by creating the perception and reality of effective deterrence. To provoke a wider discussion, consider the following, concededly imperfect, outline for such an escalation ladder.

At the low end of the spectrum, we face vandalism, the cyber equivalent of spray-painting graffiti, causing relatively low levels of damage. Vandalism might come from digital delinquents (“hackers”), students with nothing better to do or troublemakers with grudges. These are essentially local law-enforcement problems.

Next higher on the ladder is significant criminal activity, including today's electronic equivalents of second-story men; identity thieves; malicious business competitors; intellectual-property pirates; and governments purloining critical technology or resources. Such criminal behavior is basically a more-serious law-enforcement problem, at least where the perpetrators are domestic.

When foreign states are involved, however, we are edging into the next-higher threat level, namely espionage, hostile clandestine actions and “influence” operations. Intelligence agencies routinely engage both in gathering information and conducting covert actions that can involve significant damage to their targets. We are long past Secretary of State Henry Stimson's disdainful observation that gentlemen do not read each other's mail, especially in cyberspace.

The most threatening, most dangerous categories of attacks amount to acts of war or terrorism, at various levels of intensity. This end of the spectrum is difficult for many to grasp because cyberwarfare does not necessarily involve visible physical damage, at least initially. But warfare or terrorism it is nonetheless. Thus, North Korea's attack on Sony should be seen, at a minimum, as state terrorism, verging on an act of war, not mere vandalism, as 44 opined.

Moreover, for countries like North Korea or China, cyberwarfare is quintessentially asymmetric warfare; such states cannot realistically confront America in the traditional spectrum of military conflict. That is also why the likes of North Korea and Iran have nuclear-weapons programs. And it is gravely important that we grasp that cyberattacks and our responses cannot necessarily be confined to cyberspace but must be evaluated in broader politico-military terms.

America's posture, therefore, cannot simply be defensive. We need far more muscular offensive cyber capabilities, since in cyberspace, as elsewhere, offense and defense are two sides of the same coin. Enhanced U.S. offensive power will help build the psychology of deterrence to prevent or dissuade future cyberattacks.

Thus, our response to Pyongyang should not be, as 44 asserted, merely “proportional.” It should be disproportional and not confined to cyberspace. The newly announced sanctions against Pyongyang might be a first step but are not nearly enough.

We need both more public debate about cyberspace and far greater awareness of the foreign and domestic threats our citizens, businesses and governments now face. We are behind (although not hopelessly so). But we cannot delay any longer. We have precious few laurels to rest on.

Pic - "Cyberspace is now a battlespace."

Blowback

Seems everytime intolerant creepy killers act out the olde B word is appropriated  - as if illiterate Xians in the West will start stomping certain elements to death in the streets.

Often nom d'guerr'd as You Know What phobia...

Fears about widespread anti-Muslim violence, about the spread of toxic Islamophobic hate through the streets and in workplaces, are unfounded, because their driving force is the anti-natives, anti-pleb prejudices of the elites rather than any hard evidence of extreme hostility to Muslims.

On the other hand - the French are responding by making m"Hammedists in house uncomfortable...

According to reports by AFP and others, the attacks have included:

• Three training grenades thrown at a mosque in Le Man; a bullet hole was also found in one of the mosque windows
• A bomb blast at a restaurant adjacent to and associated with a mosque in Villefranche-sur-Saone
• Gunshots fired at a mosque in Port-la-Nouvelle
• A boar's head and entrails were left outside an Islamic prayer center in Corsica with a note: "Next time it will be one of your heads."

Blowback - in a milder form - may be key here.

Consider, if, as we are told, Jihad is only a tiny bit of bunches of ppl and thus can only be fixed up within the confines of m"Hammedism by other m"Hammedists then perhaps they should be made to feel very uncomfortable until they purge their communities of rowdy jihad lovers.

After all, even Aegypt's V Checker General and President For Life recently wept how Jihad is
P.O. ing the world beyond repair

Thus, Burka bans, cartoons, abolition of No Go Zones, hard looks and hard quizes should be hand in hand with the West's wicked women worshipping risque fun and free choice at every opportunity sans modesty or restraint 

Pic - "It is not obnoxious and freewheeling satire but terrorist atrocities that really and devastatingly promote Islamophobia in France and around the world."

Le Pen

Since the mass murders in Paris...

Le Pen’s popularity, and her share of votes, has only increased, and she has managed to present her agenda—anti-European Union, anti-immigrant, anti-euro—as approaching the mainstream, even as she cherishes her status as an outsider, untainted by the past twenty years of deepening French political crisis.

In the immediate aftermath of the attack on Wednesday, as traffic surged on her Facebook page and she picked up thousands of new followers, she did nothing special to insert herself into the story or to exploit the fears that the Front has long fed on. She reiterated her longstanding call for France to withdraw, unilaterally and at once, from the Schengen Agreement, which allows for open borders within the extended European community, but that was hardly newsworthy.

Rather, Le Pen appeared to adopt the time-tested opposition strategy of waiting for the political establishment to make a misstep that would turn attention her way—and she did not have to wait long. Within hours of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, the ruling Socialists and a coalition of allied parties of the left announced plans for a massive solidarity rally on Sunday—a silent march through the heart of Paris in the cause of “national unity”—without extending an invitation to the National Front.

The exclusion of the Front was great news for Le Pen. Nobody believed that she would have wanted to go and be associated with the political mainstream, but, by failing to invite her, the Socialists had given her a cudgel. “I don’t intend to submit myself to this blackmail,” she told Le Monde.

 “It’s a total perversion of the concept of national union. They’ll have to accept the consequences from the voters.” She went on, “This whole thing is a way of pushing aside the only political movement that has no responsibility in the present situation, along with its millions of voters. All the other parties are deathly afraid. They’re thinking of their little elections and their little mandates. Their old reflexes that have frozen political life for twenty years and that dug the chasm between those who govern and the people. If I’m not invited, I’m not going to insist. It’s an old trap. The slightest incident and they’ll say it’s my fault.”

Pic - "Meantime in Deutschland..."

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

Thus, sans further adieu (or a don't)

Council Winners

First place with 2 1/3 votes! –Joshuapundit-Who’s ‘Responsibility?’

Second place with 2 votes –The Noisy Room – John McCain’s Progressive Hand Is Behind The Purge Of Tea Party Detractors From The Arizona GOP

Third place *t* with 1 2/3 votes –Bookworm Room – The New York Times ignores the reasons why Swedes might be turning against immigrants

Third place *t* with 1 2/3 votes – VA Right! - Barack Obama – The President of No!

Fourth place with 1 vote –Ask Marion – Time For GOP Leadership

Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote –Nice Deb – Lefty Losers Spam Twitter With Lie About Officer Liu’s Widow

Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote –Simply Jews – Jonathan Freedland and the liberal Zionists’ support: thanks but no thanks

Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote –The Razor – What I learned In 2014

Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote –The Right Planet – British Lawmaker: Hitler Was a Socialist

Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote – The Glittering Eye -The Problem With Student Debt

Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote –The Independent Sentinel – Cuomo’s Captious New Law: No More Selfies With Tigers and Lion

Non-Council Winners

• First place with 2 1/3 votes! –Rush Limbaugh -The GOP Leadership’s Attitude Toward Its Own Base Is Unprecedentedsubmitted by Ask Marion
• Second place with 2 votes –Victor Davis Hanson – Autopilot nation submitted by Joshuapundit
• Third place *t* with 1 2/3 votes –Roger L. Simon/PJ Media – Egypt’s al-Sisi Makes Extraordinary Speech on Islam submitted by The Glittering Eye
• Third place *t* with 1 2/3 votes –Sultan Knish –December 31st, 1912 submitted by The Independent Sentinel
• Fourth place *t* with 1 vote –Klari Goldman Bates/ Times Of Israel – A Tango With Hypocrisy submitted by Simply Jews
• Fourth place *t* with 1 vote –Peter Pomerantsev/Politico – Inside Putin’s Information War submitted by The Razor
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 votes – USNI News – Navy Wants Rail Guns to Fight Ballistic and Supersonic Missiles Says RFI submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 votes -Angry White Dude – Trust the Republicans They Said! This Time Will Be Different, They Said!submitted by VA Right!
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 votes – Powerline – Liberals Can’t Argue, They Can Only Bully [Updated] submitted by The Watcher
• Sixth place with 1/3 vote –Weasel Zippers -Today #BlackLivesMatters Imploded submitted by Nice Deb

See you next week!

el Sisi

Pyramidland's General President - same cat who invented V Checks for girls - recently delivered a Ummah Culpa that is especially delish and totally au courant...

Egyptian president (and strongman) Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi delivered a possibly epochal speech at Al-Azhar University on New Year's Day. More than a thousand years old, Al-Azhar is considered by many to be the epicenter of scholarly m"Hammedism.

Addressing the assemblage of imams in the room, al-Sisi called for a "religious revolution" in which you know what clerics take the lead in rethinking the direction m"Hammedism has taken recently. An excerpt (as translated by Raymon Ibrahim's website):

"I am referring here to the religious clerics. … It's inconceivable that the thinking that we hold most sacred should cause the entire umma (Islamic world) to be a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world. Impossible!

"That thinking — I am not saying 'religion' but 'thinking' — that corpus of texts and ideas that we have sacralized over the centuries, to the point that departing from them has become almost impossible, is antagonizing the entire world. It's antagonizing the entire world! ... All this that I am telling you, you cannot feel it if you remain trapped within this mindset. You need to step outside of yourselves to be able to observe it and reflect on it from a more enlightened perspective.

"I say and repeat again that we are in need of a religious revolution. You, imams, are responsible before Allah. The entire world, I say it again, the entire world is waiting for your next move … because this umma is being torn, it is being destroyed, it is being lost — and it is being lost by our own hands."

Pic - "Western leaders also need to be more forthright in defense of liberal values. They have a lot of ground to make up."        

Charlie Hebo

Mein Gott! 44 was correct in this case when he LOL'd the future doesn't belong to cats who insult the PBUH guy

The satirical weekly has been the target before, having been fire-bombed back in late 2011 after running a caricature of the Prophet Mohammed and its editor has been under police protection for some time. Even though a target of Islamist ire, the magazine has not shied away from running other stories and cartoons offensive to Muslim sensibilities. Just this week it ran a cover story on a new book that imagines a future France in which the country is led by an Islamic party and has a Muslim president who, among other things, bans women from the workplace. 

No doubt also worrying French officials is that, unlike the recent terrorist attacks in Quebec and Ottawa in October or the one in London in May 2013, the attack on the Paris magazine office Charlie Hebdo was, it appears, well-planned and done with skill.

But what will be something of a surprise to the French is that the attack took place at all. Since the mid-1990s, and after a decade of terrorism on its streets, Paris has not seen a major terrorist attack.  As written in 2007 (“France: Europe’s Counterterrorist Powerhouse”) and in Safety, Liberty and Islamist Terrorism: American and European Approaches to Domestic Counterterrorism, France had been, especially before 9/11, in a “league of its own” when it comes to developing investigative tools, court proceedings, and laws that have allowed French authorities to stay ahead of the terrorist problem. 

This aggressive stance has of course upset civil libertarians of the French left and right—not unlike here in the U.S. in the wake of the Snowden leaks of the programs of the National Security Agency.  

As the U.S. Congress turns this year to the issue of whether to renew, reform, or let die key sections of the Patriot Act on terrorism surveillance, it might want to keep in mind what has just happened in Paris. If a country such as France—with as strong a counterterrorism effort as there is in a liberal democracy—is still vulnerable, it should give some pause to those members who think now is the time to water-down our own counterterrorism efforts.

Mother Russia

Rossiya-Matushka!

Commonwealth revises her military doctrine...

Decrying what it sees as Western efforts to turn Ukraine into a "front line of confrontation,” the revised doctrine would allow for Russia to deploy precision conventional weapons “as part of strategic deterrent measures” against what it sees as its principal threat: NATO. According to the document “the expansion of NATO’s military infrastructure to the Russian borders” poses a significant threat to Russian security. The doctrine also allows for the use of tactical nuclear weapons in the case of a conventional attack that “threatens the very existence” of the Russian state.

Narod!

The new defense doctrine cites NATO troop deployments and induction of former Soviet-allied states as the top threat to Russian security. It also deems the developing Prompt Global Strike program of the United States as hostile. The precision weapons system is being designed to be able to strike anywhere in the world so swiftly that the target has too little time to respond.

The new doctrine also mentions NATO missile defense plans as destabilizing and for the first time identifies a priority for Russia to protect its natural resource and maritime interests in the Arctic Sea.

Palestine Forever Quest

Boring your britches off faster than mee maw's tale of the cat who cried wolf

The Palestinian Authority is not a country, but rather a group allied with a terrorist organization, and for that reason its appeal to the International Criminal Court should be rejected out of hand, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday. Netanyahu’s comment came at the end of an interministerial meeting he convened in Tel Aviv to discuss ways to combat the Palestinian Authority’s signing of the Rome Statute and its intention of bringing Israelis to the court on war crimes charges. “We expect the International Criminal Court to completely reject the hypocritical act by the Palestinian Authority, because the Palestinian Authority is not a state. It is an entity in an alliance with a terrorist organization, Hamas, that commits war crimes,” he said.

See,

The ICC gambit follows the Palestinian Authority’s failed effort at the United Nations Security Council to obtain recognition as a state. That effort resulted in part from the Obama administration’s malfeasance. Former ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton writes:

A firmer U.S. strategy might have prevented the dilemma from arising. The White House’s opening diplomatic error was in sending strong signals to the media and U.S. allies that 44, wary of offending Arab countries, was reluctant to veto any resolution favoring a Palestinian state. Secretary of State John Kerry took pains not to offer a view of the resolution before it was taken up. Such equivocation was a mistake because even this administration asserts that a permanent resolution of the Israeli-Arab conflict requires direct negotiations and agreements among the parties themselves.  

No draft resolution contrary to these precepts should be acceptable to the U.S., or worth wasting time on in the diplomatic pursuit of a more moderate version. This American view, advocated for years and backed by resolute threats to veto anything that contradicted it, has previously dissuaded the Palestinians from blue-smoke-and-mirror projects in the Security Council.

As bad as the administration has been, however, responsibility for these antics rests squarely with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. “Palestinians continue to be plagued by poor leadership. Being unable to get nine votes in the Security Council; losing when they might have won by delaying a month; energizing American opposition to their actions—all to join an organization where they are actually far more at risk than Israel,” observes former deputy national security adviser Elliott Abrams. “The Fatah leadership in Ramallah is not brave enough to face down Hamas and make peace, nor brave enough to face their own people in an election. So they go for these gyrations in New York instead, hoping to fool Palestinians into thinking these charades constitute courageous action.”

The Palestinian Authority’s repudiation of bilateral negotiations as the route to a peace settlement leaves 44, who has sought at every turn to blame Israel for the breakdown in the “peace process,” with egg on his face. Not only could 44 not restrain allies such as France and Jordan from proceeding on the U.N. Security Council proposal, but also the Palestinian Authority is entirely unresponsive to his pleas to return to the bargaining table, despite all his coddling.

All of this leaves the Palestinian people no better off, and arguably worse. The administration will be under pressure to limit support to the Palestinian Authority and to exit from any international organization that accepts the Palestinian Authority. Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies notes: “The idea now is to sow fear among Israelis that the threat of war crimes lingers. But it’s still unclear whether the PA has a case, let alone standing.” The move will have no effect on Israel nor improve the Palestinian Authority’s bargaining position, he warns. “The Israelis are not cowering. The Palestinian street is not impressed. The international community has grown weary of these diplomatic stunts,” he says. “Ultimately, there is little choice for the PA but to return to the tough slog of negotiations.”

Abbas will not do this, however. The international theatrics are a sign that he is unable to move forward to a positive way on behalf of Palestinians, who will discover that none of his machinations bring them any closer to a state. Michael Makovsky of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), a pro-Israel group, observes that Abbas “feels weak domestically versus Hamas and compelled to bolster his hardline creds.” Makovsky speculates that Abbas might actually want “to abet the Israeli right’s chances in March parliamentary elections, because–he believes–it could lighten pressure on him to make hard choices.” Whatever the thinking, “None of these inferences are encouraging for a lasting deal and the US should pressure Abbas to change course,” says Makovsky.

Frankly, this mess was entirely foreseeable and inevitable once Obama began parroting the Palestinian Authority’s line that it was ready for peace, that Israel had to be bullied and that Israeli building stood in the way. How could the Palestinian Authority be less intransigent than the president of the United States? How could Abbas stop inciting violence and distance himself from Hamas if the president kept saying that he was already a “partner for peace”?

44 came into office with the misguided belief that the United States had been too close to Israel (which under 43 had withdrawn from Gaza, lifted checkpoints and agreed not to expand the footprint of settlements). Instead, 44 cozied up to the Palestinian Authority, encouraging its worst instincts and making bilateral negotiations more difficult. If nothing else, Abbas has demonstrated yet again how disastrous the 44-Hillary Clinton-John Kerry Middle East foreign policy has been. Indeed, it is hard to imagine how things could get any worse — unless, of course, Iran gets the bomb.

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

Thus, sans further adieu (or a don't)

Council Winners

• *First place with 3 votes!-The Noisy Room – Meet The Agitators Behind the New York Protests and Cop Killings
• Second place with 2 1/3 votes –The Right Planet – A World Conspiracy
• Third place *t* with 1 vote –Ask Marion – Experimental treatment uses immune system to fight Cancer – Immunotherapy coming to US in 2015
• Third place *t* with 1 vote –Bookworm Room – A “Letter of Solidarity” from Cal. State University, Northridge reads like a parody of Leftist anti-Americanism
• Third place *t* with 1 vote –Nice Deb – Giuliani Doubles Down On Obama Criticism, Says de Blasio Should Apologize To NYPD (Video)
• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 votes –Simply Jews – US policy on Cuba as a (recalcitrant) state of mind
• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 votes –The Independent Sentinel – Ministry of Truth News: Obama Says Race Relations Are Better Under His Reign
• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 votes –GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD – The Iran – Pakistan War
• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 votes –Joshuapundit-Thought Crime! College President Begs For Forgiveness After Saying ‘All Lives Matter’
• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 votes –The Glittering Eye -We Never Had It So Good

Non-Council Winners

• First place with 2 1/3 votes! –Kurt Schlichter – 2014: The Year The Liberal Lies Died submitted by Joshuapundit
• Second place with 1 2/3 votes – Allen West – Quite possibly the most racist article you will ever read submitted by The Watcher
• Third place *t* with 1 1/3 votes –Kenneth Timmermann/FrontPageMag–Obama’s White Whale submitted by The Noisy Room
• Third place *t* with 1 1/3 votes –Breach Bang Clear-Ferguson, Idiot Cops, and Experts Who Know Nothing At All submitted by Bookworm Room
• Fourth place with 2/3 vote -Bill Flax/Forbes – Obama, Hitler, And Exploding The Biggest Lie In History submitted by The Right Planet
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 votes -The Passing Parade – The Benchley Memorandum, not by Robert Ludlum submitted by Simply Jews
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 votes -FrontPage Mag –Front Page’s 2014 Person of the year: The American Police Officer submitted by The Independent Sentinel
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 votes – Ishaan Tharoor/WAPO Blogs – 7 Awful Unreported Conflicts submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 votes -Sharyl Attkisson -Belatedly Released and Revealing Fast & Furious Docs submitted by Nice Deb
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 votes -TechCrunch – On Immigration, Engineers Simply Don’t Trust VCs submitted by The Glittering Eye
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 votes -Rabbi Uri Pilichowski/Times Of Israel – The terror attack that didn’t make the news submitted by The Watcher
• Sixth place with 1/3 vote -American Thinker -American Thinker – American Achiever of 2014: Sarah Palin submitted by Ask Marion

See you next week!