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Sat, 16 Oct 2021
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Star of David

Britain hopes to besiege Hezbollah in Lebanon on behalf of Israel

Aerial Map
© Treadstone 71
Red area: IDF bases • Blue area: civilian zones
When the Syrian war broke out in 2011, the West - that was a direct participant in the war along with the Gulf countries and Turkey - believed that President Bashar al-Assad would fall after months, or a year or two: he would not last very long in power. Preparations began to lay siege to "Hezbollah" as a pre-emptive step after Assad's overthrow because Syria was an essential member of the "Axis of the Resistance" and part of the main Hezbollah supply route. Britain took rapid steps to tighten control of the Lebanese-Syrian borders.

The management of the Lebanese-Syrian borders was an old Israeli request as a basic during the Israeli 2006 war before it realised that it had not won the war and could not impose its conditions.

In 2012, frenetic work began on establishing a military training program for the Lebanese Army in the two airbases of Hamat and Rayak and to enable the capacity of the Lebanese Army institutions. However, the first and last goal is not to strengthen the Lebanese Army. Hezbollah's objective and its weapons break the balance of deterrence and cause terror to Israel, though not to Britain, which is geographically located very far from Lebanon.

Rocket

IRGC Navy unveils new missile city

missiles
© IRGC
Naval force of the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps has unveiled a new missile city.
In a ceremony on Monday attended by IRCG commander Major General Hossein Salami, IRGC Navy commander Rear Admiral Tangsiri, and a host of ranking military commanders a new missile city was unveiled. The base is equipped with different systems and cruise and ballistic missiles that have different ranges.

The new systems and equipment make IRGC Navy capable of launching precision missiles from underground, launching naval mines with different ranges, firing at 360-degree, confronting electronic warfare, and increasing the range and destruction power in operations.

All the mentioned systems have been produced by Iranian experts at the Ministry of Defense, knowledge-based companies, and research centers of the IRGC.

One of the newly unveiled missile systems has the capability of changing the target after the launch of the missile.

"Today, part of our missile power that offers superiority in the battlefield and has been developed by domestic experts and capabilities enter the operational section of the IRGC Navy," Brigadier General Tangsiri said in the ceremony. The process of making IRGC Navy 'stronger' will continue, he said, warning enemies that they will receive a "deadly blow" in case of any aggression against Iran.

Comment: A checkmate moment: Iran displays increased deterrence options.




Whistle

Cuomo created disabled group home deathtraps, says whistleblower

Cuomo
© Washington Examiner
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's nursing home deathtraps have silent partnersa network of some 7,000 group homes where thousands of disabled COVID-19-positive residents languished with little foresight or intervention by the state, a whistleblower has told the Washington Examiner.

Some 552 developmentally disabled individuals died from COVID-19 in the past year living in small residential group homes, while an additional 6,382 residents and workers were infected, according to the New York State Office for People With Developmental Disabilities. No comprehensive protocol existed to combat the disease as infected individuals were purposely mixed with clean households, said care worker Jeff Monsour.
"In one case, an individual shared a room in a medically frail facility with another individual — one had COVID, and the other did not. The only thing separating them was a cloth privacy screen. I have been complaining about this COVID situation for a year, along with some other things. I believe the dysfunction goes all the way to the top, to Cuomo."
Cuomo, who is currently facing a raft of sexual harassment allegations, is also under increasing pressure to resign over a nursing home scandal that claimed the lives of 15,000 patients due to a policy of forcing sick individuals back into clean homes. An initial report said only 6,432 people had died.

Comment: While Cuomo's future may not be to his liking, thousands of innocent folks under his governance have no life at all.

See also:


X

US and Israel bar cargo ships, oil tankers from entering Syria

Russian cargo ship
© Press TV
Russian vessel RoRo SPARTA II sails through the Bosphorus to the port city of Tartous, Syria.
The United States and Israel are trying to prevent cargo ships and oil tankers from entering Syrian waters as part of the economic siege against the Arab country and its reconstruction process following the bloody civil war, a political analyst says.

Saleh Abu Izzah, a senior expert in West Asia affairs, told Press TV that the US is using the economic blockade to achieve what it failed to accomplish in the battlefield of the full-scale war. He said the US has started its regular attacks against Syria since 2011, and later, along with its allies, imposed a cruel and horrible blockade against the government, ruling system, and people of Syria by passing the Caesar Act in 2020.

Abu Izzah referred to the siege as a mechanism used by Washington, Riyadh, and Tel Aviv to undermine the Astana Peace Process, an initiative launched by Iran, Russia, and Turkey to find a political settlement to the Syria crisis.

Sheriff

Russian government gives Twitter one month to remove child abuse content, or it will block platform from internet

child abuse internet
The Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology, and Mass Media (Roskomnadzor) will block the Twitter social network in Russia in a month if the service does not delete the prohibited information, the agency's deputy head Vadim Subbotin told TASS.

"If Twitter does not comply with the requirements of Roskomnadzor, the requirements of Russian legislation, respectively, we will consider an option to completely block the service on the territory of Russia," he added.

The official noted that, if the company fulfills all the requirements, the sanctions against it will be lifted.

Comment: Why hasn't any other country in the West made similar demands? The content mentioned above is illegal there too:


Newspaper

NATO sees no direct military threats from Russia, China - Stoltenberg

Stoltenberg
© Sputnik / Aleksei Vitvitsky
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Monday said that he sees no direct military threats from Russia and China, and this situation is possible thanks to the efforts of the alliance.

"I was asked about whether I see any threat against NATO allies from China or from Russia. I don't see any imminent threat of a military attack against any NATO ally", Stoltenberg said while addressing the European Parliament's Committee on Foreign Affairs and Subcommittee on Security and Defence.

Comment: Russia and China pose a threat to NATO's relentless warmongering and chaos creation, but its clear that neither country are in that business themselves: The dangerous US/NATO strategy in Europe


USA

The Biden-Noem smackdown: "Imposter" Joe meets Kristi "The Lionhearted"

cowboy with US flag
"She hath borne herself beyond the promise of her age, doing, in the figure of a lamb, the feats of a lion." William Shakespeare

Did you catch Biden's speech on Thursday?

I did. I foolishly thought Biden would use the opportunity to address the 90 million-or-so Americans who think the election was stolen and that Biden is not really the president. But, no, the niggling issue of "legitimacy" never even came up, nor did any of the ten other top issues that Americans care about most. Instead, Imposter Joe devoted the entire 22 minutes to fearmongering about a virus that has almost entirely vanished and which is rapidly losing its power to keep people voluntarily locked up in their own homes. That development - which should have been cause for celebration - has Biden worried, which is why his handlers settled on a nationwide speech to rekindle waning public anxiety.

The Biden crew are determined to keep the pandemic restrictions in place in order to curtail the freedom of movement, limit the size of public gatherings, and preserve the autocratic powers of the state governors. The obvious objective is to perpetuate the appearance of a public health crisis that serves as cover for the permanent suspension of personal liberties and the subsequent evisceration of the middle class. At its heart, the Covid scam- much like the BLM protests and spurious claims of "white supremacy"- has always been part of a broader class war aimed at conservative, blue-collar patriots. Here's Biden:
"Look, we know what we need to do to beat this virus. Tell the truth. Follow the science. Work together. Put trust and faith in our government to fulfill its most important function, which is protecting the American people. No function is more important. We need to remember the government isn't some foreign force in a distant capital. No, it's us. All of us. We, the people." (President Biden's prime-time speech, ABC News)

Comment: For more on how perfectly awful Biden's recent speech was:


Bad Guys

UK to sanction Assad's allies on 10th anniversary of West's war on Syria

syria assad flag
© AP Photo / Hassan Ammar
The new restrictive measures against top Syrian officials come as a decade has passed since Syria descended into a bloody civil war that grew to involve multiple regional and foreign actors.


Comment: The West helped foment unrest in Syria which it then used as pretext to wage war on Syria.


The United Kingdom has introduced sanctions against six officials close to President Bashar al-Assad. The punitive measures target Foreign Minister Faisal Miqdad, Assad adviser Luna al-Shibl, financier Yassar Ibrahim, businessman Muhammad Bara' Al-Qatirji, Republican Guard commander Malik Aliaa, and Army Major Zaid Salah.

Comment: See also:


Ice Cube

The Chilling Return of Normalcy

HarrisBiden
© amazonnews.com public images
US VP Kamala Harris • US President Joe Biden
The normal can be a relative term. My normal isn't your normal, though we probably share general similarities of work and family. It's the specifics that differ.

For others, the normal is unbelievable. Mike Tyson in Undisputed Truth, described his normal day as an 8 year-old:
"We'd go to school, eat breakfast, and then we'd get on the bus and train and start robbing during school hours."
Tyson's autobiography - a fascinating read of his life as a fighter, a heartbreaking read of his youth - touches on the concept of "baseline normal" when he discusses the counseling he received later in life. This concept of baseline normal matters to all of us, and to Tyson specifically, because what we experience when young (whether "love, attention, neglect, deprivation or violence") becomes what we consider to be "normal and often accept[ed] without question" as an adult.

Tyson had baseline normal of neglect, violence, sex, criminal activity, and abandonment at a young age. Suddenly, when he gets married and has a relatively stable life, that was abnormal and he had to find his "normal" through drugs and sex and violence. A return to normalcy.

Comment: A return to normalcy? Even the 'old normal' feels somehow unfamiliar. We are 'not in Kansas' anymore.


Snakes in Suits

Congressional Testimony: The leading activists for online censorship are corporate journalists

Committee hearing
© unknown
House Judiciary’s Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law hearing
March 12, 2021
There are not many Congressional committees regularly engaged in substantive and serious work — most are performative — but the House Judiciary's Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law is an exception. Led by its chairman Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI) and ranking member Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO), it is, with a few exceptions, composed of lawmakers whose knowledge of tech monopolies and anti-trust law is impressive.

In October, the Committee, after a sixteen-month investigation, produced one of those most comprehensive and informative reports by any government body anywhere in the world about the multi-pronged threats to democracy posed by four Silicon Valley monopolies: Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple. The 450-page report also proposed sweeping solutions, including ways to break up these companies and/or constrain them from controlling our political discourse and political life. That report merits much greater attention and consideration than it has thus far received.

The Subcommittee held a hearing on Friday and I was invited to testify along with Microsoft President Brad Smith; President of the News Guild-Communications Workers of America Jonathan Schleuss, the Outkick's Clay Travis, CEO of the Graham Media Group Emily Barr, and CEO of the News Media Alliance David Chavern. The ostensible purpose the hearing was a narrow one: to consider a bill that would vest media outlets with an exemption from anti-trust laws to collectively bargain with tech companies such as Facebook and Google so that they can obtain a greater share of the ad revenue.