From BBC:
Activists and residents there said IS cancelled Friday prayers and emptied mosques across the city amid fears of further strikes.
Can anybody see the same happening if these had been NATO air strikes instead of Russian air strikes? In fact, we would have seen the opposite, with fighters congregating in mosques to escape.
The CIA World Factbook noted the following breakdown of religion in Afghanistan in 1989: 74% Sunni Muslim, 15% Shia Muslim, 11% other. In 2014 it noted the breakdown as follows: Sunni Muslim 80%, Shia Muslim 19%, other 1%.
Anecdotal evidence also points to the same thing. In case of Hinduism, “Before the Soviet war in Afghanistan, there were several thousand Hindus living in the country but today their number is only about 1,000”. In case of Sikhism, “Before the 1990s, the Afghan Sikh population was estimated around 50,000. As of 2013, they are around 800 families of which 300 families live in Kabul.”
Similar trend is noted in Middle Eastern countries such as Iraq where World Factbook notes that “ recent reporting indicates that the overall Christian population may have dropped by as much as 50 percent since the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime in 2003, with many fleeing to Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon “. In case of Jews, the large scale migration began much earlier and left the Muslim countries devoid of Jews.
How are these trends in different countries tied to the transmogrification of Islam as exemplified by ISIS? Now that non-Muslims, such as Jews, Christians, Hindus and Sikhs, have been extirpated from the Muslim countries, the rage of Muslims has turned to those less Muslim than they are. The Sunni-Shiite conflict is just one aspect of this war as it will be extended to Sufis just like it has come to include the Yazidis. The moderates Sunnis will be the last in this long queue.
New Yorker film critic “Pauline Kael famously commented, after the 1972 Presidential election, ‘I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don’t know. They’re outside my ken. But sometimes when I’m in a theater I can feel them.’”
The CEO of one large Wall Street firm, who declined to be identified by name criticizing the GOP front-runner, … “I don’t know anyone who is a Donald Trump supporter. I don’t know anyone who knows anyone who is a Donald Trump supporter. They are like this huge mystery group,” the CEO said. “So it’s a combination of shock and bewilderment. No one really knows why this is happening. But my own belief is that the laws of gravity will apply and those who are prepared to run the marathon will benefit when Trump drops out at mile 22. Right now people think Trump is pretty hilarious but the longer it goes on the more frightening it gets.”
The Baltimore riots have once again shown the issues facing the liberal ideology thus unleashing a torrent of excuses from leftist journalist.
Into the fray steps one Barrack Obama with, as is his wont, a brilliant and original idea that the solution is “… to get massive investments in urban communities,”. No matter what the problem is, the solution is always the same, more government spending. And this in a city run by Democrats since 1967.
Is he aware that the 2015 US budget calls for a total expenditure of $3.90 trillion with a deficit of $564 billion thus putting the US debt at 102.6% of GDP, according to the same Wikipedia page? If total expenditure of 21.4% of GDP isn’t enough, then what is?
The GDP numbers released today showed a sclerotic growth rate of just 0.2%. It is important to note that the debt-to-GDP has crossed the 90% level which bodes ill for economic growth.
The authors had already drawn on two centuries of public-debt data for their seminal 2009 financial history, “This Time is Different”. In their paper Ms Reinhart and Mr Rogoff sorted the figures into four categories of indebtedness and took average growth rates for each. They found that public debt has little effect on growth rates until debt reaches 90% of GDP. Growth rates then drop sharply. Over the entire two-century sample (from 1790 to 2009), average growth sinks from more than 3% a year to just 1.7% once debt rises above the critical level.
Is there a solution? Yes, but…
In a moment of unusual candor, Prime Minister of Luxembourg and Head of the Euro-Group Jean-Claude Junker stated: “We all know what to do, we just don’t know how to get re-elected after we have done it.”
From the minds of a Nobel Prize winner in economic planning, Paul Krugman, this advice in 1998.
The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in “Metcalfe’s law”–which states that the number of potential connections in a network is proportional to the square of the number of participants–becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s.
As the rate of technological change in computing slows, the number of jobs for IT specialists will decelerate, then actually turn down; ten years from now, the phrase information economy will sound silly.
As the great man himself said in 2013:
“Right-wing intellectuals and politicians live in a bubble…..
It seems that the path Obama is traversing is one that is well worn. A chronological summary below.
1. Heck of a job Obama
On Larry King Live last night, Vice President Joe Biden said Iraq “could be one of the great achievements of this administration. You’re going to see 90,000 American troops come marching home by the end of the summer. You’re going to see a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving toward a representative government.”
In a speech at Ft. Bragg, NC on December 14, 2011, President Barack Obama said the United States was “leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government that was elected by its people.”
Saturday from the White House South Lawn, President Barack Obama blamed “intelligence estimates” for not anticipating the speed in which ISIS would capture large sections of Iraq.
The president,who has been under harsh media criticism for likening ISIS to an Al-Qaeda JV basketball team in January said, “There is no doubt that their advance their movement over the last several of months has been more rapid than the intelligence estimates and I think the the expectation of policy makers both in and outside of Iraq.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdoDFV5lKaA
Now the mission has gone from sending 300 special forces troops in June to bombing missions in August and Obama is stating that “this is going to be a long-term project.”
Of course it wasn’t suppose to be this way as one of Obama’s favourite blogger Andrew Sullivan, better known for this assertion that Trig Palin, Sarah Palin’s son, was actually the child of her daughter, Bristol, noted in 2007.
What does he offer? First and foremost: his face. Think of it as the most effective potential re-branding of the United States since Reagan. Such a re-branding is not trivial—it’s central to an effective war strategy….
Consider this hypothetical. It’s November 2008. A young Pakistani Muslim is watching television and sees that this man—Barack Hussein Obama—is the new face of America. In one simple image, America’s soft power has been ratcheted up not a notch, but a logarithm. A brown-skinned man whose father was an African, who grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, who attended a majority-Muslim school as a boy, is now the alleged enemy. If you wanted the crudest but most effective weapon against the demonization of America that fuels Islamist ideology, Obama’s face gets close. It proves them wrong about what America is in ways no words can.
The other obvious advantage that Obama has in facing the world and our enemies is his record on the Iraq War. He is the only major candidate to have clearly opposed it from the start. Whoever is in office in January 2009 will be tasked with redeploying forces in and out of Iraq, negotiating with neighboring states, engaging America’s estranged allies, tamping down regional violence. Obama’s interlocutors in Iraq and the Middle East would know that he never had suspicious motives toward Iraq, has no interest in occupying it indefinitely, and foresaw more clearly than most Americans the baleful consequences of long-term occupation.
Welcome to the reality-based world.
Prior to today, the biggest bank robbery was in Beirut:
Beirut, Lebanon: The world’s biggest bank robbery took place in 1976, when guerrillas in Beirut blasted the vaults inside the British Bank of the Middle East and escaped with safe deposit boxes containing £22m – the equivalent of £156m in today’s money.
Today we learned the following:
The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Shams (Isis) has become the richest terror group ever after looting 500 billion Iraqi dinars – the equivalent of $429m (£256m) – from Mosul’s central bank, according to the regional governor….
Following the siege of the country’s second city, the bounty collected by the group has left it richer than al-Qaeda itself and as wealthy as small nations…
This is not only going to make things worse in Iraq, but will also allow the Jihadis to fund their ideology across Middle East. Our only hope now is a great speech from Obama!
It all started with Obama’s famous ‘red line’ on Syria’s chemical weapons which led to the Kerry-Lavrov agreement that was going to put an end to them.
Russia and the US agree on how to destroy Syria’s chemical arms, President Vladimir Putin said after meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry in Bali. He also said peace talks on Syria should include major players from the Muslim world.
Where do we stand with that agreement today? NYT fills in the details.
France’s foreign minister said Tuesday there were strong indications that the Syrian government had carried out attacks using chemical agents, especially chlorine, as many as 14 times in recent months, despite its promise to renounce such weapons in joining the global treaty banning them last year.
The minister, Laurent Fabius, who met here Tuesday morning with Secretary of State John Kerry, also said that he regretted that the Obama administration had decided against using force to enforce its “red line” after a chemical weapons attack in Damascus last Aug. 21 that Western nations, led by the United States, blamed on forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.
Guardian provides more background to this.
Iran and its close ally President Bashar al-Assad have won the war in Syria, and the US-orchestrated campaign in support of the opposition’s attempt to topple the Syrian regime has failed, senior Iranian officials have told the Guardian.
In a series of interviews in Tehran, top figures who shape Iranian foreign policy said the west’s strategy in Syria had merely encouraged radicals, caused chaos and ultimately backfired, with government forces now on the front foot.
Now let us turn the clock back to Sept 12, 2013 where Obama fanboi Andrew Sullivan shared this with us.
President Putin’s op-ed in the NYT today is fantastic. It’s a virtual end-zone twerk, as this botoxed former KGB hack brags about restoring a more peaceful world order, basks in the relatively new concept of Russia’s global stature, asserts obvious untruths – such as the idea that the rebels were behind the chemical attack of August 21 or that they are now targeting Israel – and generally preens.
Good. And whatever the American president can do to keep Putin in this triumphant mood the better. Roger Ailes was right. If the end-result is that Putin effectively gains responsibility and control over the civil war in Syria, then we should be willing to praise him to the skies. Praise him, just as the far right praises him, for his mastery of power politics – compared with that ninny weakling Obama. Encourage him to think this is a personal and national triumph even more than he does today. Don’t just allow him to seize the limelight – keep that light focused directly on him. If that also requires dumping all over the American president, calling him weak and useless and incapable of matching the chess master from Russia, so be it. Obama can take it. He’s gotten used to being a pinata.
All this apparent national humiliation is worth it. The price Russia will pay for this triumph is ownership of the problem. At some point, it may dawn on him that he hasn’t played Obama. Obama has played him.
Yes, you read that right, “Obama has played him”. With cheerleaders like that, no wonder Obama thinks that he can do no wrong.
Well it was bound to happen. People have married themselves, as well as cat, dog, dolphin, horse, snake cow and goat so this was inevitable.
Chris Sevier, a man from Florida, believes he should be allowed to wed his Macbook.
Mr Sevier argues that if gays should be allowed to marry, then so should other sexual minorities.
Mr Sevier states he has fallen in love with a pornography laden computer.
“Over time, I began preferring sex with my computer over sex with real women,” he told a court in Florida.
This appears to be not a passing holiday romance, but a lifelong commitment.
Ian Fleming: ‘Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action’
Is Preet Bharara, the US attorney who was born in India, targeting Indians?
Preet Bharara vs Rajat Gupta: An Indian-American saga
Meet Preet Barara, who ordered Devyani Khobragade’s arrest
Preet Bharara indicts Dinesh D’Souza for campaign finance fraud
Going forward Bharara has a rich target area that he can harvest.