The South Korean military reported that North Korea fired three Rodong-type midrange missiles just after midday. The missiles landed in the Sea of Japan after reaching about 1,000 kilometers (600 miles).
The missile launch comes on the back of the G-20 summit in Beijing, China. South Korea has pleaded with China to drop its opposition to a US backed missile defense shield. The North Korean bravado has made the shield seem far more necessary. As China continues to rise in global stature, most indications are that their opposition will stay.
Despite China’s opposition, South Korea is committed to deploying the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense, or Thaad, missile defense system by the end of 2017.
The Iran Link
It has been known by observers for years that a secret pact between Iran and North Korea allows both to continue development separately and yet merge success together. It is clear that while Iran has pushed forward with its nuclear program, the North Koreans have worked hard at perfect ballistic missiles. Now that Iran has begun to see itself normalized within a broader international framework, continued cooperation between the Iranians and North Koreans is assured.
This cooperation not only endangers the South Koreans, but Israel as well. With neither the Iranians or North Koreans prevented from building weapons of mass destruction, both sides can work together in sowing destruction on their enemies.
On Saturday more Turkish tanks crossed the Syrian border into the Syrian rebel-controlled town of al-Rai in order to support the new operation Euphrates Shield
Al-Rai is about 55 kilometers west of Jarablus, and part of a 90-kilometer strip near the Turkish border that Erdogan’s government says it is clearing of jihadis while making sure the YPG or Syrian Kurdish Army keeps away.
The Turkish backed rebels buoyed by the Turkish tanks spread out and then seized villages to the east and the south of al-Rai.
“They took several villages, about eight villages. At first they took two and withdrew from them, but then reinforcements came and there was an advance,” Zakaria Malahifji of the Aleppo-based Fastaqim group said.
While Ankara claims the The Turkish-backed operation’s goal is to put pressure on ISIS, most observers believe that Turkey’s real goal is to block the YPG from expanding and forming a formidable Kurdish state.
While Turkey views the Kurdish Army as a terrorist organization, NATO as a whole sees the group as the vanguard of their anti-ISIS strategy. This conflict of interest has caused stress between NATO and Turkey.
At the G20 summit Erdogan spelled out his view of the YPG to China’s CCTV:
“There is no good terrorist. All terrorists are bad. All organizations involved in terrorism are cursed. This is how we see things and how we put up our struggle.”
For Erdogan, the label of terrorist is a ruse to allow for a non-measured response to his Kurdish foes. Loosely applied, the Turkish military can be unleashed to finish them off.
For the first time since 2014 a major international investigative body is coming to Israel. In the past the ICC took one-sided stances as far as Israel and the “Palestinian” Arab, yet the International Criminal Court has promised that this time would be different.
For one, neither of the past two commissioners of previous investigations have been allowed in the country. Secondly, the ICC and Israel out of mutual interest will be carrying joint press conferences. The question for observers is why?
There are no real answers, but Bibi Netanyahu’s seeming change in approach is most likely due to the ICC coming down from its own tree. Afterall the region has changed from bad to worse, with the Syrian conflict overshadowing anything the ICC has accused Israel of in the past. Furthermore, past investigations have been so one-sided the ICC has lost a great deal of legitimacy.
Perhaps the about-face by Israel has more to do with its new-found involvement in Sub Saharan Africa and increased integration as a tech giant with many of the emerging economies. After all, most of the attacks on Israel throughout the years have been directed from developing nations that have been cajoled to support Arab causes. With this the Arab block losing its leverage on these countries, Israel has far more wiggle room in the international arena.
Don’t Trust Them
That being said, the trip is not just for PR, but to determine whether the ICC needs to step in and run its own investigation on Israel’s actions. This is the same ICC that declared its support for a Palestinian State in Judea and Samaria.
The government may feel it is in its best interest to placate the court with a warmer visit, but the ICC as an arm of Western ambitions throughout the region and the developing world does not have Israel’s interest in mind.
Part of the trip, led by chief investigator Fatou Bensouda is to find out if Israel can be trusted to run its own investigation into the 2014 Gaza war as well as the “Palestinian” territories in Judea and Samaria. Although Bensouda recognized Palestinian statehood as per the recommendation of UN General Assembly in 2015, she has since struck a far more conciliatory tone.
Fatou Bensouda
In an interview earlier in the year with the Jerusalem Post Bensouda insists she will only follow the Rome Statute:
“We are not looking, judging the whole judicial system of any state or any system that is supposed to have jurisdiction or that could exercise jurisdiction. We are not looking at the judicial system and how it is functioning. We are looking particularly at specific crimes and we are looking at specific conduct, we’re looking at specific persons, who bear responsibility for those crimes and what is being done with regard to that…and as I always say [we are doing this] in an independent and very dispassionate way and this is very critical whether it is in…any other situation.”
Yet, given Israel’s experience in the past and the wide ability for the ICC to operate once it is allowed to do so, should give Israel pause in how much leeway it gives the court. For now it is still deliberating on keeping the trip to a series of photo-ops or allowing the court to bring reps into Arab villages inside Judea and Samaria.
When the reusable SpaceX rocket was destroyed on Thursday after suffering a catastrophic explosion on launch at Cape Canaveral more than just some expensive satellites were destroyed.
Part of the payload was Israel’s Amos 6 satellite, considered the most advanced Israeli satellite ever. Its destruction was more than 200 million dollars, it was the last straw for a government that has pulled away from backing Israel’s satellite industry. Although, Israel has committed quite a bit to the IAI and Israel’s space agency, the once dominant satellite industry is seeing less and less.
Yet, as much as Israel space agency felt the pain from the SpaceX destruction, Amos 6 was meant to help Facebook beam internet to Sub-Saharan Africa. Although Zuckerberg claims he is pained at the loss of his altruistic pet project, there was nothing altruistic about it.
Ever since Edward Snowden released sensitive information about Facebook’s founding and use as an NSA global data collection tool, the company’s luster has dulled.
“He’s [Zuckerberg] the unemployed nephew of a ranking NSA official, whose aspirations of becoming an actor never materialized…until plans for ‘Operation Code Name: Facemash’ were drawn up and executed around 2003,” Snowden told reporters from various Chinese news agencies, as well as The Washington Post and the British paper Guardian. “Mark Zuckerberg is a fictional character.”
More intrusive than a massice govenment spying platform, Facebook now is being used to ensure society is fed certain perception of reality. While everyone has the ability to produce content on Facebook, its algorithm seems to only back those articles or posts that promote a certain agenda.
With the explosion of the SpaceX rocket, the globalist drive to force feed even more areas in the world with their agenda has been severely pushed back. With all of this in mind, the question should not be was the rocket intentionally destroyed, but rather who destroyed it?
If it is possible to believe Erdogan, his foray into Syria was for the purpose of driving ISIS from Jarablus, the only piece of land the Syrian Kurds did not control. Erdogan’s forces were of such mass that Turkey was accused of invading Syria. ISIS quickly melted away and the Turkish military set its sights on the true “nemesis” to the Turkish homeland YPG or the Kurdish army in Syria.
One thing has become clear. Erdogan’s actions have put NATO in a very uncomfortable spot. On one hand they have backed the Syrian Kurds as their vanguard attack force against ISIS and on the other they have the second largest NATO force in Turkey openly trying to wipe them out through a fake anti-ISIS operation.
Turkey has long maintained that a contiguous Kurdish state along its border running from the Mediterranean to Iran was an existential threat. In pushing the Kurds back over the Euphrates they are risking the NATO coalition’s strategy against ISIS. The Euphrates must be Washington’s red line. If Turkey is allowed to press on, the Kurds will be forced to pivot elsewhere and not only NATO will lose a valuable indigenous ally, Israel will have squandered years of covert training and arms deals.
The UN has officially announced that it not only believes that Jews should be prohibited from building on lands they have lived on for millenia, but openly supports terrorism against the Jews that live in these areas.
After the IDF announced it had fulfilled its duty to destroy the home of the terrorist Abd al-Majid in Dura who had murdered Rabbi Mickey Mark on route 60 in Har Hebron, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the “occupied Palestinian” issued a demolition alert for the house.
This behavior coupled with the following statement from Nikolay Mladenov, the UN’s Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process makes it clear the UN firmly believes that civilian lives when they are Jewish are in no way equal to the property of known murderers.
“No legal acrobatics can change the fact that all outposts, whether legalized by Israeli law or not, whether located on state land or absentee land or private Palestinian land – just like all settlements in Area C and East Jerusalem – remain illegal under international law,” said Mladenov.
Once again, the UN does differentiate or acknowledge any historic and indigenous rights of the Jewish people in their ancestral lands. By dissociating the two, the UN gives Arab murderers free rein to kill Jews.
Turkey’s invasion of Northern Syria is being billed as a full frontal attack on ISIS. Turkey has poured in ground troops, tanks, and harnessed NATO air cover to break the Kurdish control near their border.
True, there are pockets of ISIS near Jarablus the entry point for Turkish forces, but the Syrian Kurdish forces (YPG) have pretty much taken out the heaviest ISIS strongholds months ago. Furthermore, we know the Russian military has pounded ISIS into the ground in various locations in Northern Syria.
All of the above supports the assertion that Erdogan is far more concerned with the rise of an independent Kurdish State on its border than they are about Russian control over the Black Sea. Not only are the Turks concerned with an independent Kurdistan, it can be assumed NATO is as well.
The Kurdish Regional Government in Iraq based out of Erbil has been a fantastic tool for Western technocrats wanting to display their credentials in the indigenous rights movement. The KRG has pumped tons of oil into the global system and the Peshmerga has helped pushed back ISIS in many areas, but that is all the West is willing to concede.
The rise of Kurdistan from Iran to the Mediterranean is a danger to their post colonial rule, which saw the West hoist the Arabs up as the real indigenous rulers of the Middle East, while at the same time throwing at the most crumbs to the Kurds, Druze, Arameans, and Jews of the region. The fact is the an independent Kurdistan blows out the Arab claim of indigenous rights. The Kurds along with the Druze, Arameans, and Jews are far more indigenous than the British created Arab states now in control of these areas. Kurdistan is a reminder of what once was well before Mohamed heard the voices that drove him and his followers to start the Jihad and eventually colonize the surrounding area.
With Turkey’s rapproachment with Russia now in full swing, Erdogan can finish off what the Turks started centuries ago when they came from the East and that is to wipe out the truly indigenous people of the region, first the Armenians and now the Kurds.
In another sign of President Buhari of Nigeria’s ardent anti-Israel views he has remained the lone holdout to signing off on Prime Minister Netanyahu’s visit to the ECOWAS summit in January. The Prime Minister was set to meet with the leaders of the 15 African states that make up the Economic Community of West African States and was in fact personally invited by the head of ECOWAS Marcel Alain de Souza during his visit last month to Israel.
Muhammadu Buhari has taken a blatent anti-Israel tone since his surprising election last year. He defeated Goodluck Jonathan Nigeria’s first pro-Israel President in a very shady election. Buhari has used his election to attack opponents, especially in the territory of Biafra by arming Islamic Fulani herdsman and encouraging them to raid Jewish and Christian communities in the South and South East.
Bibi’s want to use the ECOWAS summit to replay his successful visit to East Africa. Furthermore he is attempting to shore up a coalition of African nations that could hold off the onslaught of radical Islam. Given Buhari’s connections to Boko Haram it is doubtful he would follow suit. The question remains to see if ECOWAS can stand up to him. Afterall Buhari is supported by President Barak Hussein Obama.
Multiple sources are reporting that Turkish special forces backed by artillery fire and F-16’s have begun a direct military assault on ISIS positions in Northern Syria. Turkish combat units such as regular infantry and tanks have rolled up to the Syrian border and are preparing to enter sovereign Syrian territory for the first time.
Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said:
Daesh [ISIS] should be completely cleansed from our borders and we are ready to do what it takes for that.
This change in Turkey’s relationship to the ongoing Syrian civil war is drastic and very well can lead to untold consequences as Turkey’s goals both align with the anti-ISIS coalition as well as are in conflict with it. Erdogan often times uses ISIS as a foil to attack Kurdish positions in both Syria and Iraq. The Turkish government has resigned itself to a Kurdish autonomous zone in Northern Iraq, but when the Syrian Kurds literally declared a federalized autonomous entity in Northern Syria, Turkey knew it had limited time to react before an inevitable Kurdish state arose on its border stretching from the Mediterranean to Iran.
The anti-ISIS particulars behind Turkey’s intensifying an already out of control conflict gives it the wiggle room it needs to invade Syria. The only question remains is whether Putin agreed to this or not. If he did not, then the Syrian civil war just got a whole lot uglier.
Yet, if this was agreed between Erdogan and Putin beforehand then the Russian leader must have promised Erdogan something big in return for destroying the very group Turkey helped set up in order to make a lot of money off the illegal oil trade. Of course, Erdogan didn’t do this alone. US and NATO were at least complicit with the set up of ISIS, a radical Sunni group in Eastern Syria. Using oil as payment to Turkey, NATO and the US were free to establish a blocking force against Iranian advancement, albeit one that has grown out of control.
Now with Turkey’s pivot to Russia, ISIS is more of a hindrance than a help. So what is the quid pro quo from Russia? Russia’s abandonment of the Kurds makes that an easy answer.
The Nigerian army has announced that they have fatally wounded Abubakar Shekau, leader of the Boko Haram terror group, in an air strike. The action took place Friday, but was only now just confirmed.
BREAKING NEWS: NIGERIAN AIR FORCE RAID KILLS BOKO HARAM TERRORISTS COMMANDERS… “ABUBAKAR SHEKAU” FATALLY WOUNDED!
The question isn’t whether Shekau is dead or not. Boko Haram’s leadership exist at the highest levels of the Nigerian government. President Buhari cleverly used the group to force former President Goodluck Jonathan from office. Buhari ran as a strong man claiming to be the only one capable of defeating Boko Haram. Yet, Buhari himself has been a known Boko Haram sympathizer.
According to CAN the Christian Association of Nigeria, Buhari is at the very least a Boko Haram sympathizer. On eof the group’s leaders Rev. Dr. Musa Asake issued the following statement after the brutal killing of a Christian woman at the hands of Muslim fanatics: “The discrimination against non-Muslims in Nigeria under the Buhari Administration is assuming a dangerous dimension that should not be left to the vagaries of time and circumstance to resolve.”
Three years ago Rev. Musa Asake had already called for Buhari’s arrest for serious links to Boko Haram.
Buhari cleverly used Boko Haram to attain power and has harnesed the group when necessary to bolster the Islamic Fulani Herdsman in their rampages agains Jewish and Christian Nigerians in Biafra. At other times Buhari claims to be fighting Boko Haram in order to procure better weapons from the Obama administration. These weapons are being used not against Boko Haram, but rather many forces connected to the free Biafra movement.
So is the leader of Boko Haram dead? Well, that depends on who the real leader is.
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