Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was born April 28, 1937 and died December 30, 2006. He was the fifth President of Iraq, holding that position from July 16, 1979 until 9 April 2003. He was one of the leading members of the revolutionary Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party, and afterward, the Baghdad-based Ba’ath Party and its regional organization Ba’ath Party, Iraq Region, which advocated ba’athism, an ideological marriage of Arab nationalism with Arab socialism. (Patricia Ramos, july 2013)

"The national security of America and the security of the world could be attained if the American leaders [..] become rational, if America disengages itself from its evil alliance with Zionism, which has been scheming to exploit the world and plunge it in blood and darkness, by using America and some Western countries.
What the American peoples need mostly is someone who tells them the truth, courageously and honestly as it is.
They don’t need fanfares and cheerleaders, if they want to take a lesson from the (sept. 11) event so as to reach a real awakening, in spite of the enormity of the event that hit America.
But the world, including the rulers of America, should say all this to the American peoples, so as to have the courage to tell the truth and act according to what is right and not what to is wrong and unjust, to undertake their responsibilities in fairness and justice, and by recourse to reason..."

Saddam Hussein, INA 15-9-2002

"Zionism [..] has transformed into an imperialistic claw used against the Arab nation. Zionism has partnered wit imperialism and participated in its economic and political plans. Moreover, it relies on its unfounded, historical belief for the purpose of destroying the Arab nation... This means maintaining the weak state of the Arab nation...
Zionism regards unity of Arabs as contradictory to its existence. Therefore, Zionism's line of defense is based on the principle that the Arab nation must be broken....
It is necessary for Zionism to revive all the old historical frictions that took place in the path of nationhood, so it can use them [..] to break up the fabric of Arab nations." (The Saddam's tapes, 1978-2001, page 67)

"Syria is the heart of the Middle East. Everybody knows that. If the Middle East is sick, the whole world will be unstable. In 1991, when we started the peace process, we had a lot of hope. Now, after over 20 years, things are not at square one; they’re much below that square.

So the policy should be to help peace in the region, to fight terrorism, to promote secularism, to support this area economically, to help upgrade the mind and society like you did in your country. That is the supposed mission of the United States, not to launch wars. Launching war doesn’t make you a great power."

Bashar Al-Assad, January 26th, 2015

President Bashar, 'Le Figaro' interview 3-9-2013: "How can the parliamentarians convince the French public that their country is secular, yet at the same time it supports extremism and sectarianism in other parts of the world? How can France advocate for democracy but yet one of its closest allies – Saudi Arabia – is still living in medieval times?"
"My message to the French Parliamentarians is: go back to the principles of the French Revolution that the whole world is proud of: Liberty, Justice, Equality."

"A lot of rulers today still view principled people, who persist in defending their noble and just causes and who refuse to compromise at the expense of their peoples, their nations, the honour of their cause, their integrity and their principles, as a burden on them.
The policy of the United States still finds in this kind of genuine, honest and loyal people an obstacle before their evil and futile ambitions towards the world and humanity at large..." Saddam Hoessein, Oath and Speech, INA 17-10-2002

"The majority of people who imitate philosophers confuse the true with the false, and they do nothing but deceive and pretend knowledge, and they do not use what they know of the sciences except for base and material purposes; and if they see a certain person seeking for the right and preferring the truth, doing his best to refute the false and untrue and leaving aside hypocrisy and deceit, they make a fool of him and mock him."

Omar Khayyam, 18-5-1048, Nishapur - Persia

Joseph Goebbels: Propaganda has nothing to do with truth

When Goebbels was asked what he considered was good propaganda he replied thus:
"That propaganda is good which leads to success, and that is bad which fails to achieve the desired result, however intelligent it is, for it is not propaganda's task to be intelligent, its task is to lead to success.
Therefore no one can say your propaganda is too rough, too mean; these are not criteria by which it may be characterized. It ought not be decent, nor ought it be soft and humble; it ought to lead to success...

About political holism

Political holism is based on the recognition that "we" are all members of a single whole. There's no "they," even though "we" are not all alike. Because "we" are all part of the whole, and therefore interdependent, we benefit from cooperating with each other. Political holism is a way of thinking about human cultures and nations as interdependent.
Political holists search for solutions other than war to settle international disagreements. Their model of the world is one in which cooperation and negotiation, even with the enemy, even with the weak, promotes political stability more than warfare.
In an overpopulated world with planet-wide environmental problems, the development of weapons of mass destruction has rendered war obsolete as an effective means to resolve disputes.

Political dualists consider political holists unpatriotic for questioning the necessity to defeat "them." In times of impending war, political dualists tend to measure patriotism by the intensity of one's hostility to the country's immediate enemy.
Naturally, they would view as disloyalty any suggestion that the enemy is not evil, any call for cooperation with the enemy, any criticism of one's own country.
To political dualists, cooperation with the enemy means capitulation, relinquishment of the nation's position of dominance.

At its extreme, political dualism is essentially tribalism. (Betty Craige, 16-8-1997)

"We must become bigger than we have been: more courageous, greater in spirit, larger in outlook. We must become members of a new race, overcoming petty prejudice, owing our ultimate allegiance not to nations but to our fellow men within the human community." Haile Selassie

“Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned.., until there are no longer first-class and second class citizens of any nation..., until the color of a man's skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes.., until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race...., until that day, the dream of lasting peace and world citizenship and the rule of international morality will remain but a fleeting illusion, to be pursued but never attained..." Haile Selassie 6-10-1963

Netanyahu: 'No Future for Jews without the Jewish State'
By Arutz Sheva staff, 28-6-2015

New 'National Military Strategy' warns of risk, change
By Andrew Tilghman , military times, July 1, 2015

"The United States must continue to lead the world
in order to ensure our economic prosperity and national security”
John McCain, 5-1-2012

The Pentagon's new "National Military Strategy" released Wednesday warns that the threat of major war with another nation is "growing" and significant changes to the military personnel policies and culture will be required to succeed in the 21st century. The 17-page document was updated to reflect a new global security situation in which the U.S. is facing near-peer adversaries like Russia and China while simultaneously trying to diffuse non-state militant groups like the Islamic State.

"Since the last National Military Strategy was published in 2011, global disorder has significantly increased while some of our comparative military advantage has begun to erode," Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, wrote in his introduction to the strategy document.

The strategy specifically calls out Iran, Russia and North Korea as aggressive threats to global peace.
According to the strategy document, the US military must be ready to counter "revisionist states" such as Russia that are challenging international norms... "We are working with allies to deter, deny and -- when necessary -- defeat potential state adversaries," the document says.
It also mentions China, but notably begins that paragraph by saying the Obama administration wants to "support China's rise and encourage it to become a partner for greater international security," continuing to thread the line between China the economic ally and China the regional competitor.

"None of these nations are believed to be seeking direct military conflict with the United States or our allies," the strategy states. "Nonetheless, they each pose serious security concerns which the international community is working to collectively address by way of common policies, shared messages, and coordinated action."

Later, the document notes that "today, the probability of U.S. involvement in interstate war with a major power is assessed to be low but growing."
However, "hybrid conflicts" — not just the Islamic State, but forces such as the Russian-backed rebels in Ukraine — are likely to expand.

Revisionist state is a term from Power Transition Theory within the wider field of international relations. It is used to describe states.
Powerful and influential nations in international relations such as the United States, United Kingdom, France and other nations like Japan that are better placed in the world order, are likely to fall under the category of status quo states (seek the status quo), while North Korea, Iran, Russia and other nations dissatisfied with their place in the international system are termed revisionist states (seek revision in international relations).

Putin: We don’t expect any change in hostile policies toward Russia
Russia Today, July 03, 2015

See also: Pentagon’s new military strategy
calls for preserving US dominion of the world

Hillary: I'll Fight Against BDS
By Moshe Cohen, Arutz Sheva, 7/6/2015

In a letter to entertainment mogul Haim Saban, Democratic Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton expressed her “alarm” over attempts to boycott Israel, bother commercially and academically.
In her letter to Saban, Clinton wrote that she was seeking Saban's “advice on how we can work together to reverse this trend with information and advocacy, and fight back against further attempts to isolate and delegitimize Israel.”

BDS, said Clinton, “seeks to punish Israel and dictate how Israelis and Palestinians should resolve the core issues of their conflict. This is not the path to peace,” she wrote, adding that “Israel's long-term security and future depend on having two states for two peoples. But that outcome can only be achieved through direct negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians – it cannot be imposed from the outside or by unilateral actions.”

As Secretary of State, an office she held during Obama's first term as president, Clinton said she had opposed “dozens of anti-Israel resolutions” in international forums.
“I opposed the biased Goldstone Report. Making it clear that Israel must be allowed to defend itself like any other country. And I made sure the United States blocked Palestinian attempts at the UN to unilaterally declare statehood.” All that would continue if she became president, said Clinton.
“I have made it clear that America will always stand up for Israel – and that's what I'll always do as President.”

Iran should not be optimistic about US
Tehran, July 5, Islamic Republic News Agency

Commander of ground forces of the Army Brigadier General Ahmadreza Pourdastan on Sunday said, 'the US may reach agreements with Iran in the nuclear talks, but, the United States is not trustworthy.'
Referring to Ayatollah Khamenei's pessimism about US promises, Pourdastan said, 'their enmity with us is deep-rooted because we are seeking the right, we are seeking the freedom of the nations, but they are seeking to exploit the nations.'
The Islamic Awakening movements in West and East Asia and North Africa have been inspired by the 1979 Islamic Revolution of the Iranian nation and the United States is angry with that, Pourdastan said.
When they saw they couldn't bring Iran to its knees through hard war, they resorted to soft war, he said, adding that today nearly 3,000 TV channels are hatching plots against the Islamic Republic and spending billions of dollars.

Flashback: February 14, 2007
As Iran Exported Its Shiite Revolution, Sunni Arabs Resisted
Mike Shuster, www.npr.org

1979 was a pivotal year in the Muslim world.
The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, Sunni Muslim fundamentalists seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca, and Ayatollah Khomeini led a Shiite revolution that swept the Shah of Iran from power and put in place the modern world's first Islamic republic.

But Khomeini had more grandiose goals.
"Khomeini did not envisage himself as making a revolution in one country," says Juan Cole, professor of Middle East history at the University of Michigan. "His ideology of clerical rule, rejection of the Western colonial heritage, he felt was a universal message."
Khomeini put forward the claim that he was the leader of the entire Muslim world, not simply of Shiite Iran. That message was not well received among the Sunni Muslim rulers of the Middle East...

"Saddam Hussein represented himself as the bastion of Arab nationalism resisting Persian hordes," says Ray Takeyh, author of Hidden Iran: Paradox and Power in the Islamic Republic.
Iraq had no trouble attracting the support of all of the Sunni Muslim leaders in the region...

"Saddam Hussein wishes to return Islam to blasphemy and polytheism ... if America becomes victorious ... and grants victory to Saddam, Islam will receive such a blow that it will not be able to raise its head for a long time ... The issue is one of Islam versus blasphemy, and not of Iran versus Iraq". Ruhollah Khomeini, 1900-1989, Statement on the Iran-Iraq War

The Iran-Iraq war
By Roger Hardy, BBC, 22-9-2005

Iraq invaded Iran on 22 September 1980, triggering a bitter eight-year war which destabilised the region and devastated both countries.
The then Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein claimed as a reason for the invasion a territorial dispute over the Shatt al-Arab, the waterway which forms the boundary between the two countries. However, the conflict was rooted in regional rivalry.
Saddam Hussein felt directly threatened by the Islamic revolution which had brought Ayatollah Khomeini to power in Iran the year before.
For Saddam Hussein, the war's purpose was pre-emptive: to overthrow the Khomeini regime before that regime could overthrow him. He believed that Iran was in turmoil and that his forces could achieve quick victory. It was a monumental mistake.
By 1982 Iranian forces had regained the territory they had lost and pushed across the border into Iraq.
Khomeini rejected an Iraqi offer of a ceasefire. So although Baghdad had started the war, it was Khomeini who prolonged it...
With Khomeini's death shortly after the end of the war, the country entered a new and more introspective era.

The Iran-Iraq war left a painful legacy. Few modern conflicts have been so long, so bloody and so futile.

Morality, But No Fun And Parties With Khomeini
Iranian woman who left Islam and now is a Christian

Iranian people who are a very fun-loving and party-loving people had to be very careful not to make too much noise in their parties and family gatherings in their own private homes, because otherwise the “moral-patrol” could come and break into their houses with guns and arrest everybody and search every inch of their house in the process, which meant they might find their contraband: homemade vodka, playing cards or backgammon sets (banned due to Islam’s ban of all gambling), “illegal” pop-music tapes (and later CDs), and their “illegal” Hollywood VHS tapes and DVDs) all obtained in the black-market.

A Great YES To Life I look into a mirror to remain afloat, and talk an endless soliloquy This entire torrent of words is a great yes to life, A yes indifferent to good and evil, A self-regarding, prudent, avid, generous, stupid, cosmos yes, A yes of acceptance That in its monotonous flow fuses and confuses past, present and future What I was, remain and will become, everything and everyone together In a great exclamation Like a sea surge that rises, falls and jumbles All things together in a whole, that has no beginning or end. Niran Abbas, Iraq Daily 18-10-2002

Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf (a Shia muslim) was Iraqi Information Minister under Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. He came to wide prominence around the world during the 2003 invasion of Iraq ('Baghdad Bob'), acting as the spokesperson for the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party and Saddam's regime. Iraqi media were strictly controlled by the Iraqi government. The Iraqi Ministry of Information appointed all of the country's journalists.

Western civilization’s fate depends on Israel
So, support the brave Jewish settlers
Giulio Meotti, Arutz Sheva, 8-7-2015

Arutz Sheva (Channel Seven) is an Israeli media network identifying with Religious Zionism

I support the Jewish communities of Judea and Samaria and you all should do the same.
I haven’t met anyone in Israel who doesn’t want “peace”. But not with killers and certainly not before they have laid down their weapons.
The greatest “sin” of the Jews of Judea and Samaria is not their home address, but their refusal to surrender.
That is why the world hates them and has convinced Western public opinion that the “West Bank" is "Palestine" and the Jews living there are “squatters on land stolen with the blood of Arabs.”
They will build, they will plant, they will grow, they will thrive.

Israel needs the heroes living in Judea and Samaria.
These Jews are committed to Zionism and have the support of world Jewry, even of those who would never say it openly. Those who are now struggling to establish new Jewish communities in Israel are committed fighters, and support is vital to their success.

Jewish communities all over the world and the Gentiles who love Jews should make a concerted effort, both morally and materially, to help in the fight for the future of Eretz Israel.
If Western civilization’s fate depends on Israel and the fate of Israel lies on Judea and Samaria’s shoulders, the world’s freedom depends on this tiny entity, the brave “Jewish settlers”. Support them.

Giulio Meotti – A True Defender of Israel
January 26, 2015 by Steven DeNoon

Regardless that the World hates the tiny Nation of Israel and every countries leaders have chosen to stand with the fabricated nation of the Palestinians, there is still one journalist that will stand for Israel’s sovereignty.
That man is Giulio Meotti an Italian journalist that not only knows the truth behind the scenes of a globalist agenda to over-throw the tiny nation in favor of Papal Rule but he is bold enough to publish his thoughts from the current seat of the Antichrist’s homeland – Rome.
Without a doubt like other journalist before him he does not go unnoticed by the elite and his words closely monitored. Yet his articles are packed with truth that irritates the Worlds leaders but pleasing to The G-d of Israel. May The G-d of Israel long bless his efforts.

Arutz Sheva interviewed Meotti about his new book:
"The Vatican Against Israel: J'Accuse" (12-3-2014)

- Question: Why did you write the book?
- Meotti: I wanted to investigate a mystery. For over 100 years, and half a century after the Holocaust, the Vatican has been hostile to the creation of a Jewish homeland in the Middle East with its capital as Jerusalem.
For the sixty years after the Jewish State gained independence in 1948, the Catholic Church adopted a policy fitting to Israel’s Arab-Islamic enemies: total non-recognition of Jewish statehood and peoplehood.
Despite acceptance by every Western nation, Israel was not accorded formal diplomatic recognition by the Vatican until 1993... Apparently, the Vatican considered only the State of Israel undeserving of its recognition. Why? To answer that question I wrote this book.

- Question: But the Vatican recognized the State of Israel in 1993...
- Meotti: The diplomatic relations between Israel and the Vatican created the illusion of normalcy. Despite the formal agreement, the Vatican is still ‘at war’ with the State of Israel when it deals with military self-defense, global anti-Semitism, Jewish attachment to the land, Islamic rejectionism, support for Arab irredentism, a retrograde Catholic anti-Zionist theology, and a strategic terrorist campaign against Israeli civilians.

- Question: What are the major points of the book?
- The book shows how the Vatican glided smoothly from classic anti-Semitism to its new form, anti-Zionism.
It proves that the Christological themes of Palestinianism were based on the Judeophobic schemas of Catholic crucifixion; that the Arab Churches, supported by the Vatican, transfigured Palestinian terrorism into a Jesus-like image of martyrdom.
It shows, among other things, that during the last fifty years, the Vatican authorities obfuscated the reality of a Jewish State as 'democracy under siege' by calling it “occupation”; that the Vatican has been able to impose a narrative in which “peace” is contingent on Israeli concessions and efforts to dismantle the Jewish State...

The Vatican: No “promised land” - No “chosen people”

- Question: Can you provide us some examples of the Vatican's new anti-Semitism?
- Meotti: October 2010, Vatican synod of the Middle East bishops in Rome: the clerics proclaimed that there is no “promised land” nor “chosen people”.
During the Second Intifada, 2005, humanitarian Catholic organizations such as Caritas and Pax Christi called Arabs the innocent “victims” of Israeli occupation.

BRICS states urge to avoid selective approach
to combating terrorism
Itar-Tass, July 09, 2015

MOSCOW, July 9. Leaders of the BRICS group (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) have condemned terrorist activity of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, says the final Declaration of the BRICS Summit adopted on Thursday.

"The US-led Western alliance, while acting as an advocate of democracy, rule of law and human rights in individual countries, is acting in the international arena from the opposite position, rejecting the democratic principle of the sovereign right of states enshrined in the UN Charter and trying to decide for others what is good and what is bad." Sergei Lavrov (UN General Assembly in New York, 27-9-2014)

"We condemn in the strongest terms terrorism in all its forms and manifestations, the continued, widespread and grave abuses of human rights and violations of international humanitarian law committed by the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, Al-Nusrah Front and associated terrorist groups, and in particular the persecution of individuals and communities on the basis of their religion or ethnicity, as well all forms of violence against civilians, particularly women and children," the document says. The BRICS leaders also stated, "We are determined to consistently strengthen our cooperation in preventing and countering international terrorism." "We stress that the UN has a central role in coordinating international action against terrorism, which must be conducted in accordance with international law, including the UN Charter, international refugee and humanitarian law, human rights and fundamental freedoms," the Declaration says. "We believe that terrorist threats can be effectively addressed through a comprehensive implementation by states and the international community of all their commitments and obligations arising from all relevant resolutions of the UN Security Council and the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy. We call upon all states and the international community to adhere to their commitments and obligations and in this regard to resist political approaches and selective application," the Declaration says.

Meeting of BRICS leaders with heads of guest countries
Kremlin website, 9-7-2015

The final item on the agenda of the BRICS summit in Ufa was the meeting of the BRICS leaders with heads of guest countries – members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and the Eurasian Economic Union. Prior to the meeting, all the leaders came out for a joint photo session.

Vladimir Putin: Speech

I am happy to welcome participants to the joint session of leaders from BRICS nations, Shanghai Cooperation Organisationmember states and the Eurasian Economic Union...
Like each of our nations, all our associations and organisations have a common interest in developing optimal methods for sustainable development, and an aspiration to ensure the well-being and prosperity of our peoples under guaranteed peace and security.

We are all working under the principles of mutual respect, equality and open dialogue. At the same time, our different historical, cultural and regional traditions, as well as our socioeconomic structures, do not divide us; on the contrary, they allow us to build a fair and comprehensive partnership model that is capable of ensuring sustainable global governance in the 21st century.

The topic we have chosen for our outreach format is Ways to Increase the Well-Being of Our Nations...
I truly believe we have all the prerequisites to expand the horizons of mutually beneficial cooperation, combining our existing raw materials, human capital and enormous consumer market capacity to achieve a major economic breakthrough...
Our planet’s population growth requires activating cooperation on food security, intensifying agriculture, prudently using water resources and, of course, caring for the earth’s entire biosphere to save the planet for future generations.

And another issue we view as fundamental: a just and secure world is impossible to build without close humanitarian cooperation. That is precisely why Russia strives to deepen contacts in culture, science, education, tourism with all its partners through BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, the Eurasian Union and through other formats.

Climate of suspicion, bigotry and fear nixes global coexistence
Samar Fatany, Saudi Gazette, 10-7-2015

Obviously there is a confrontation between intellectuals
and the conservative elements of their societies

Rumi, was born on September 20, 1207 in Balkh, which was part of the Persian empire. Rumi's writings may be enjoyed by everyone. We still yearn for the same spiritual balance that Rumi spoke about; we still ask the same questions about the meaning of life and death that Rumi addressed. Rumi peace is the natural quest for a "whole person," and the human being's inclination to it arises from a natural universal order. In humankind's fight to root out conflict, violence and war, Rumi's holistic view of unconditional love may prove one of our best friends...

Islam today is challenged with critical problems and fundamental tensions within the Muslim world. Islam is challenged to address the misguided and hostile youth and their negative attitudes that can no longer be tolerated or ignored. These tensions throughout the Muslim world must be confronted with a new and more realistic approach. Today serious and significant debates are taking place in many parts of the Muslim world. Obviously there is a confrontation between Muslim intellectuals and the conservative elements of their societies. However, the moderate argument is not strong enough to influence change. What is needed at this stage is the acceptance of Muslim societies of modern ideas and global coexistence. A renaissance of ijtihad is needed to address the distorted interpretations of Islamic values and principles. The prevalent perception that the extremist ideology is the only correct one has misguided the Muslim youth for too long. Muslim societies need enlightened scholars who can interpret the old and introduce the new to serve Islamic ideals...

Flashback - A Fountain Of Life

"The civil society which we aspire to establish is based on our collective identity whose attainment requires the continuous and ceaseless endeavours of intellectuals and thinkers. It is not a treasure that can be unearthed overnight, rather, it is a fountain of life and morality from whose constant effusion we will benefit.
Therefore enjoyment of this treasure is gradual and dependent on scrupulous cognizance and re-examination of our heritage as well as our doctrinal and intellectual tradition on the one hand, and sophisticated, scientific and philosophical understanding of the modern world on the other.
Hence, it is the thinkers and men of learning who are pivotal in this movement and play the principal role. Our success along this path depends upon politics serving thought and virtue and not acting as a confined and restrictive framework for them."

Seyyed Mohammad Khatami
President of the Islamic Republic of Iran 2003

Kerry doesn't view Russia as existential threat
By David Brunnstrom, Reuters|Yahoo, 11-7-2015

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry does not agree with the Marine Corps general nominated to be America's next top uniformed commander that Russia poses an existential threat to the United States, a spokesman said on Friday.
On Thursday, Marine General Joseph Dunford told lawmakers weighing his nomination to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that Russia presented the greatest threat to U.S. national security...

U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said Kerry did not share the assessment, even though Russia's actions in Ukraine posed regional security challenges.
"The secretary doesn't agree with the assessment that Russia is an existential threat to the United States, nor China, quite frankly," Toner told a regular news briefing when asked about Dunford's remarks.
"You know, these are major powers with whom we engage and cooperate on a number of issues, despite any disagreements we may have with them," he said. "Certainly we have disagreements with Russia and its activities within the region, but we don't view it as an existential threat." ...
Toner said Kerry did consider the rapid growth of groups like Islamic State, particularly in ungoverned spaces, an existential threat.

Dunford & The Homeland
Marine Times, 20-7-2014

Q. What role do you envision for the Marine Corps in homeland security and homeland defense?
A. The primary contribution of the Marine Corps is to protect the homeland by being forward deployed and forward engaged to shape the environment and respond to crises before the homeland is threatened. When directed by the president or secretary of Defense, the Marine Corps uses its active-duty and reserve forces to rapidly respond to natural disasters or other threats against the homeland.

Vladimir Putin: "We pay tribute to all those who fought to the bitter for every street, every house and every frontier of our Motherland."

Speech at military parade on Red Square in Moscow to mark the 70th anniversary of Victory in the 1941–1945 Great Patriotic War. (Kremlin, May 9, 2015

Hitler's reckless adventure became a tough lesson for the entire world community. At that time, in the 1930s, the enlightened Europe failed to see the deadly threat in the Nazi ideology.
Today, seventy years later, the history calls again to our wisdom and vigilance. We must not forget that the ideas of racial supremacy and exclusiveness had provoked the bloodiest war ever...
The Soviet Union bore the brunt of the enemy's attacks. The elite Nazi forces were brought to bear on it. All their military power was concentrated against it.
Our entire multi-ethnic nation rose to fight for our Motherland’s freedom. Everyone bore the severe burden of the war. Together, our people made an immortal exploit to save the country. They predetermined the outcome of World War II. They liberated European nations from the Nazis.

The Great Victory will always remain a heroic pinnacle in the history of our country. But we also pay tribute to our allies in the anti-Hitler coalition.
We are grateful to the peoples of Great Britain, France and the United States of America for their contribution to the Victory.
We remember the historical meeting on the Elbe, and the trust and unity that became our common legacy and an example of unification of peoples – for the sake of peace and stability.
It is precisely these values that became the foundation of the post-war world order.
The United Nations came into existence. And the system of the modern international law has emerged.
These institutions have proved in practice their effectiveness in resolving disputes and conflicts.

We must not forget that the ideas of racial supremacy and exclusiveness had provoked the bloodiest war ever...

However, in the last decades, the basic principles of international cooperation have come to be increasingly ignored. These are the principles that have been hard won by mankind as a result of the ordeal of the war.
We saw attempts to establish a unipolar world. We see the strong-arm block thinking gaining momentum. All that undermines sustainable global development.
The creation of a system of equal security for all states should become our common task.
Such system should be an adequate match to modern threats, and it should rest on a regional and global non-block basis. Only then will we be able to ensure peace and tranquillity on the planet.

Smarter Foreign Policies or Bigger Blowbacks?
by Ralph Nader, CounterPunch, July 13, 2015

Are Washington’s relentless bombings and military immersions in sectarian battles within Arab and neighboring regions accelerating the spread of terrorist attacks? Yes.
The recent rash of terror attacks in Kuwait, Tunisia, Somalia, France, and other countries are tragic examples of the strategic failures of our government and its very heavy reliance on military interventions...
From the first bombings of al-Qaeda’s small band of fighters in the mountains of Afghanistan to the toppling of the Taliban government there by President George Bush in 2001, all Washington’s weaponry, soldiers, and trillions of dollars have accomplished is to spread al-Qaeda’s numerous offshoots into over a dozen countries.

The CIA calls this “blowback”. For fourteen years this “blowback” has destabilized countries, initiated civil wars costing millions of mostly civilian lives and leaving others sickened and injured, and caused many families to be driven out of their homes as masses of weeping refugees...

Moreover, trillions of U.S. taxpayer dollars have been wasted destroying other countries and bloating our military budget. Our soldiers and veterans pay the price with painful (physical, mental, and emotional) experiences...

Unfortunately, there is no indication that the Obama administration has any diplomatic plan to extricate our country from these uncontrollable vortexes, including Hillary Clinton’s undeclared, unfunded war on Libya and the chaotic, violent aftermath that has spread into central Africa.

Justice is the best answer to terrorism

There needs to be a stronger focus on humanitarian programs to help those suffering from the death and destruction in their communities and countries. That is the real way to win “hearts and minds” and for those with a focus on the bottom-line, it is far cheaper in the long run to fund development in these regions than it is to fund our ever-growing militarism.
As Ashraf Ghani has explained well before being elected President of Afghanistan, justice is the best answer to terrorism. The alternative is perpetual, expanding wars with no exit strategy.

Christian Zionism & the tribal Jewish version of God
By Yoginder Sikand, CounterCurrents.org, 14-12-2005

Represented by literally hundreds of small denominations and churches today, particularly in America, Christian Zionism is today a formidable force and a major actor in global politics.

Christian Zionism comes in various shades, but the core of its message is total, unflinching support to the state of Israel and the Zionist imperialist project.
War, conquest and imperialist domination, based on a fanatic insistence on the absolute truth of Christianity and the racial superiority of the Jews lie at the very heart of Christian Zionism.
Christian Zionists believe that the Jews are God's 'Chosen People' and that God has given the Jews the absolute right to complete control over not just Palestine but, indeed, a vast stretch of territory, extending from present-day Egypt to Iraq, the so-called 'Greater Israel'.
God, they claim, has selected the Jews above all other people. Hence, they insist, those who oppose the imperialist project of the advocates of 'Greater Israel' or the Zionist occupation of Palestine are 'God's enemies', deserving to be crushed by every available means, including outright war and decimation...

Biblical literalism is pressed into the service of the Christian Zionist imperialist and racist agenda.
Drawing upon numerous verses of the Bible, John Hagee argues, 'God watches over Israel as a protective parent hovers over an only child'. 'The nation of Israel', he makes so bold as to declare, 'was created by a sovereign act of God...
The tribal Jewish version of God that Hagee presents appears entirely unjust and arbitrary, far from being impartial in the way he deals with His creation.
Given the fact that the God of the Biblical literalist imagination is a Jewish deity, and not the universal God who looks upon His entire creation impartially, he is seen as blessing Jewish conquests of territories of their enemies.
Thus, quoting the Bible, Hagee writes that God gave the land of 'Greater Israel', a vast swathe of land stretching from Egypt all the way till Iraq, to the Jews, descendants of Isaac, forever. That being the case, Hagee suggests that people living in those territories, millions of Arabs, both Muslims and Christians, have no right to live there or else must accept to live under Jewish rule.
'Jews have the absolute right as mandated by God to the land of Israel and, more specifically, to the city of Jerusalem'. Hence, he suggests, Palestinians have no claim to their own historical land, and must make way for Jewish occupiers.

The city of Jersualem, Hagee believes, is the crux of the final battle before Jesus' 'second coming'...
In this regard, Hagee says, Christians, for their part, must staunchly defend Israel and must refuse any peace offers, such as allowing for a shared Jerusalem or joint control of the town by Jews and Arabs. In particular, he appeals to the United States to do everything in its power to back Israel and to crush its opponents, claiming this is the only way to win God's favour. If America fails to do this, he warns, it would be crushed by God Himself!

Of course, Christian Zionism is hardly unique in its use of religion for such blatantly political ends, but given the immense clout enjoyed by its advocates today, especially in America, it is a much more menacing threat to world peace than is sometimes imagined and cannot be simply dismissed as the ravings of lunatics on the fringe.

INFO: Pastor John C. Hagee is the founder and Senior Pastor of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas.
Dr. Hagee gains support for this worthy cause by conducting A Night to Honor Israel in every major city in America and by organizing an annual Washington D.C.-Israel Summit where thousands of CUFI delegates from every state in the union have the opportunity to meet the members of congress face to face on behalf of Israel.
Christians United for Israel has grown to become the largest Christian pro-Israel organization in the United States – with over 2.1 million members - and one of the leading Christian grassroots movements in the world.
Christians United for Israel has recently opened offices in the United Kingdom and Canada to combat anti-Semitism. (John Hagee Website)

Einstein: No chosenness Albert Einstein denied any superior rights for Jews, calling for "complete equality" for Palestinians as the "most important aspect" of Jewish policy, saying: "The most important aspect of our policy must be our ever-present, manifest desire to institute complete equality for the Arab citizens living in our midst ... The attitude we adopt toward the Arab minority will provide the real test of our moral standards as a people." Only cooperation with Arabs, led by "educated, spiritually alert" Jewish workers, he wrote, "can create a dignified and safe life." He also said, "What saddens me is less the fact that the Jews are not smart enough to understand this, but rather, that they are not smart enough to want it." (hypertexts.com)

Historic Iran nuclear deal reached
Jeruslam Post, 14-7-2015

VIENNA -- World powers have reached a final, comprehensive agreement with Iran that will govern its nuclear program for over a decade...
The deal culminates a two-year diplomatic effort in which the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, led by the United States, have sought to end a twelve-year crisis over Iran's suspicious nuclear work.
Formally known as the the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the 100-page document amounts to the most significant multilateral agreement reached in several decades.
Its final form is roundly opposed in Israel by the government, by its opposition, and by the public at large.

The JCPOA allows Iran to retain much of its nuclear infrastructure, and grants it the right to enrich uranium on its own soil. But the deal also requires Iran to cap and partially roll back that infrastructure for ten to fifteen years, and grants the UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, managed access to monitor that program with intrusive inspections.
In exchange, the governments of Britain, France, Russia, China, the US and Germany have agreed to lift all UN sanctions on the Islamic Republic, once Iran abides by a set of nuclear-related commitments.
The deal seeks to verifiably prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, and to keep Tehran at least one year away from having the capability to build such a weapon.
The United Nations' nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, will be tasked with enforcing the agreement over its lifetime.

Israel and its Arab neighbors are united in opposition to the agreement, warning it will legitimize Iran as a nuclear-threshold state in the short-term, and embolden its form of government - a theocratic republic - in the long-term.

Netanyahu says Iran nuclear deal
'a bad mistake of historic proportions'
Jerusalem Post, 14-7-2015

The Iran nuclear accord hammered out in Vienna between the world powers and Tehran is a “historic mistake” for the world, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday.
The prime minister said that the powers negotiating with Iran – the US, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany – made far reaching concessions...
In addition, he said, Iran will receive “hundreds of billions of dollars” with which it will be able to fuel its terrorist activities and aggression in the region and around the world...

The prime minister, coming under withering criticism from the opposition for what is being termed a colossal failure on his part to stop the agreement, called for Israel's political leaders to put party politics aside and unite around a most fateful issue for Israel's future and security.

Iran, P5+1 strike historic nuclear deal
Middle East Online, 14-7-2015

The diplomatic push began when Iranian President Hassan Rouhani came to power in 2013. In November that year an interim deal was agreed but two deadlines in 2014 for a lasting accord were missed.
Then in April, the parties scored a major breakthrough by agreeing the main outlines of an accord, aiming to finalise it by June 30, a deadline since pushed back twice.
Since April, legions of legal and technical experts have made great strides working out the nuts and bolts of how the highly ambitious and technical agreement will work.
The final hurdles had included the exact timing and pace of sanctions relief and Iran's desire to have a UN arms embargo lifted.

The agreement is a diplomatic victory for US President Barack Obama, who made the talks a centrepiece of his foreign policy, as well as for Rouhani, a moderate seeking to bring his country in from the diplomatic wilderness.
They have faced opposition from hardliners from home, as well as from Iran's arch-foe Israel, believed to be the only country in the Middle East with atomic bombs, although it has never confirmed it.

Senator Graham blasts Iran nuclear conclusion
as 'death sentence for Israel'
Press TV, Tue Jul 14, 2015

Lindsey Graham, december 2014: "I'm here to tell you mister prime minister that the US Congress will follow your lead.."

US presidential candidate and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham has described the conclusion of nuclear talks with Iran as "a possible death sentence for Israel" which will "make everything worse." A well-known foreign policy hawk, Sen. Graham of South Carolina sharply criticized US President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry for their role in the nuclear talks and their policies in the Middle East. "This is the most dangerous, irresponsible step I've ever seen in the history of watching the Mideast," Graham said in an interview on MSNBC on Tuesday. He called the nuclear conclusion “akin to declaring war on Israel and the Sunni Arabs.” In an apparent attempt to appeal to Jewish voters and the Israeli lobby, Graham called on Congress to reject the achievement. "Barack Obama and John Kerry have been dangerously naive about the Mideast in general. They've taken it to a new level and any senator who votes for this is voting for a nuclear arms race in the Mideast," Sen. Graham said.

Netanyahu's bid to lobby Congress
to kill Iran deal will fail, Obama says
Jerusalem Post, 15-7-2015

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s anticipated efforts to lobby Congress to derail the Iranian nuclear agreement will fail, US President Barack Obama told New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman on Tuesday. The president spoke to Friedman as part of his public relations campaign to rally support for the Iran agreement...

“Prime Minister Netanyahu would prefer, and many of the critics would prefer, that [Iran] doesn’t even have any nuclear capacity,” Obama told The New York Times. “But really, what that involves is eliminating the presence of knowledge inside of Iran.”

“Nuclear technology is not that complicated today, and so the notion that the yardstick for success was now whether they ever had the capacity possibly to obtain nuclear weapons — that can’t be the yardstick,” Obama said.
“The question is, Do we have the kind of inspection regime and safeguards and international consensus whereby it’s not worth it for them to do it? We have accomplished that.”

President al-Assad congratulates Khamenei and Rouhani
on final nuclear deal, says it asserts Iran’s credibility
Syria Online, 14-7-2015

President Bashar al-Assad sent on Tuesday two cables to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani congratulating them on reaching the final nuclear deal between Iran and the P5+1 group.
In his cable addressed to Khamenei, the President described the deal as “a great victory” achieved by Iran...
“Indubitably, this agreement crowns the steadfastness of the Iranian people, with all their components and inclinations, in the face of the unfair sanctions that were imposed on the Islamic Republic of Iran,” he said.
Notwithstanding the cruelty of those sanctions, he added, the Iranian people have created a chance out of them to boost their own capabilities and take their researches, universities and achievements to high levels that earned them the recognition of the entire world...

The signing of this agreement constitutes a “major turning point” in the history of Iran, the region and the world, said President al-Assad.
It is also, he added, an “unequivocal recognition by the world countries of the peacefulness of the Iranian nuclear program,” one that safeguards the national rights of Iran’s people and asserts its sovereignty and the independence of its political decision.

Syrian Culture Minister calls to return to authority of culture
Syria Online, 14-7-2015

Minister of Culture Issam Khalil affirmed that humanity is witnessing a dreadful project which aims to ruin minds, absolve thinking and reasoning, and adopt a trend towards acquiring information from the fastest sources without checking the validity or reliability of these sources.
During a speech at the third international conference of “Cultural Policy and Policy for Culture” Khalil said that modern technological developments didn’t help in changing the “culture of authority into an authority of culture,” asserting that the authority of culture is the force that can cause humanity to transcend instincts and achieve intellectual advancement.
He noted that the advances in communications technology has created a state of human dissociation, creating rifts between people and their surroundings, which serves a project that seeks to homogenize thought to make it controllable and malleable.

Yerevan, the capital and largest city of Armenia, hosted the Cultural Policy and Policy for Culture conference on July 11-13. Participants from 45 countries and international organizations attended the event, which commemorated the 70th anniversary of establishing the UNESCO.

Yuli Edelstein on Jabotinsky Day:
Iran Deal Is 'Internationally Sponsored Hallucination'
By Gil Ronen, Arutz Sheva, 15-7-2015

"Zionist colonisation must either stop, or else proceed regardless of the native population. Which means that it can proceed and develop only under the protection of a power that is independent of the native population – behind an iron wall, which the native population cannot breach. That is our Arab policy; not what we should be, but what it actually is, whether we admit it or not. ..."
"We all demand that there should be an iron wall. Yet we keep spoiling our own case, by talking about "agreement" which means telling the Mandatory Government that the important thing is not the iron wall, but discussions. Empty rhetoric of this kind is dangerous...."
"What is impossible is a voluntary agreement. As long as the Arabs feel that there is the least hope of getting rid of us, they will refuse to give up this hope in return for either kind words or for bread and butter..." Vladimir Jabotinsky, in The Iron Wall (1923)

Knesset Speaker MK Yuli Edelstein (Likud) said Wednesday that the deal struck with Iran signals a Western moral collapse in the face of murderous Islamism, and stressed that Israel must do anything and everything it can to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons.
Speaking at the Knesset's special session in honor of Jabotinsky Day, honoring Zionist founding father Ze'ev Jabotinsky, Edelstein said:

"I regret to say that the agreement signed yesterday with Iran expresses a systemic collapse, a hallucination with international sponsorship. Iran is toying with the West and stating openly its intention to continue its murderous plans even against the ones negotiating with it, and that is why this is a dangerous illusion – not just for Israel but for the world's peace.
"I have a deep foreboding, which is not without basis, that it is paving the way for building numerous nuclear bombs, while giving tens of billions of dollars to the Iranian terror machine.” ...
“What happened yesterday is a true collapse of our 'iron wall' – in the face of fundamentalist evil,” he added, employing a phrase coined by Ze'ev Jabotinsky. “This agreement is the beginning of the collapse of the western wall of resistance to the murderous conquest of the Tehran school of extreme Islam.
"From today, Israel, which stands at the forefront of the struggle against evil, bears the moral responsibility to do everything – everything! – to stop the Iranian nuclear program...”

There is NO international law. There's only Zionist Law

Either Zionism is moral and just ,or it is immoral and unjust. But that is a question that we should have settled before we became Zionists. Actually we have settled that question, and in the affirmative. We hold that Zionism is moral and just. And since it is moral and just, justice must be done, no matter whether Joseph or Simon or Ivan or Achmet agree with it or not. There is no other morality. Zeev Jabotinsky, The Iron Wall, 1923

Albert Einstein, Manhattan Opera House 22-4-1935:
Revisionists are an obstacle to peace

Declaring that the Revisionists are “inner enemies”, Prof. Albert Einstein urged the establishment of friendly relations with the Arabs and warned against viewing Palestine merely as a place of refuge.
Revisionism is the embodiment of those harmful forces which Moses with foresight sought to banish when he formulated his model code of social law.
Furthermore, the state of mind fed by Revisionism is the most serious obstacle in the way of our peaceable and friendly cooperation with the Arabs, people who are racially our kin.”

Iranian regime very similar to the regime of Louis XVI
Mordechai Kedarm, Arutz Sheva, July 15, 2015

Arutz Sheva is the voice of the religious zionist movement in Israel

For the past 226 years, the 14th of July has been commemorated as "Bastille Day", the day that the infamous Parisian prison fell into the hands of the people who, rebelling against King Louis XVI, stormed its gates during the French Revolution of 1789.
The fall of the Bastille symbolizes the fall of the French monarchy and its despotism, and the establishment of the Republic, the nation of the people, based on liberty, equality and fraternity.
This is France's national holiday. The French Revolution became a model for many other peoples who took their destiny into their own hands...

On the very same day, 226 years later, the 14th of July 2015, representatives of several democracies together with representatives of less democratic countries, Russia and China, signed an agreement in which the democratic world capitulated to the despotic dictatorship that is Iran.
How strange that Germany, of all nations, is an active and central participant in allowing Iran to finish the job Hitler did not manage to complete...
The agreement legitimizes the present Iranian regime, so very similar to the regime of Louis XVI, accepting it into the twenty-first century's family of nations...

The Iranian Revolution (also known as the 1979 'anti-arrogance' Revolution, refers to events involving the overthrow of the Pahlavi dynasty under Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, who was supported by the United States and its eventual replacement with an Islamic republic under the Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the revolution, supported by various leftist and Islamic organizations and Iranian student movements.

On Bastille Day this year, the14th of July 2015, France (yes, France!), Great Britain, Germany and the United States of America betrayed the values of democracy, liberty and government of the people, by granting one of the darkest, most violent and anti-democratic regimes in the world the license to continue developing the nuclear program that will allow it to rule over its neighbors and export murder and destruction to every corner of the world...

Dr. Mordechai Kedar is a senior lecturer in the Department of Arabic at Bar-Ilan University. He served in IDF Military Intelligence for 25 years, specializing in Arab political discourse, Arab mass media, Islamic groups and the Syrian domestic arena.

Ali Khamenei & Arrogance
Meeting with Students on "National Day of Fighting Against Global Arrogance", 11-3-2013

Psalm 86:14: "O God, arrogant men are rising against me,
a gang of brutes is seeking my life, and to you they pay no attention.
But you, Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God..."

What does arrogance mean? Arrogance is a Quranic term. The word "arrogance" has been used in the Holy Quran.
An arrogant individual, an arrogant government and an arrogant group of people means those individuals and those governments which intend to interfere in the affairs of other human beings and other nations.
They interfere in all the affairs of other nations in order to preserve their own interests. They think they are free to do anything and they grant themselves the right to impose different things on other nations and to interfere in the affairs of other countries. And they do not answer to anyone. This is the meaning of arrogance.

At the opposite end of the scale, there is a group of people who fight against arrogance. What does fighting against arrogance mean? Primarily, it means refusing to give in to this bullying. The meaning of fighting against arrogance is not convoluted and it is not complicated.
Fighting against arrogance means the refusal of a nation to give in to the interference and imposition of an arrogant power, individual or government. This is the meaning of fighting against arrogance. (Khamenei website 2013)

Webster-definition: an insulting way of thinking or behaving that comes from believing that you are better, smarter, or more important than other people
Cambridge-dictionary: unpleasantly proud and behaving as if you are more important than, or know more than, other people
Century-dictionary: The condition or quality of being arrogant; a manifest feeling of personal superiority in rank, power, dignity, or estimation; the exalting of one's own worth or importance to an undue degree; pride with contempt of others.

Ruhollah Khomeini set patterns of simple life- style
"What matters is service..."

Ruhollah Khomeini always recommended the government officials and authorities, religious scholars, clerics to adopt simple styles in all fields and arenas.
He also advised all devotees and believers to avoid luxurious life and instead assist help the needy, oppressed and poor classes of society.
He considered the blessed month of Ramadan to practice divine virtues and getting rid of bad habits such as greed, cruelty and selfishness.
He led the Islamic revolution by describing himself a servant of the nation.

“Leader and leadership in the divine religions including Islam is not in itself something grand to make men proud and self conceited”. “If they call me a servant, it would be better than being called a leader. Being a leader is not what matters. ...".

George W. Bush vs. Vice President Al Gore
Presidential debate, October 12, 2000

GEORGE W. BUSH: If we’re an arrogant nation, they’ll resent us; if we’re a humble nation, but strong, they’ll welcome us. And our nation stands alone right now in the world in terms of power, and that’s why we’ve got to be humble, and yet project strength in a way that promotes freedom.

AL GORE: I think that one of the problems that we have faced in the world is that we are so much more powerful than any single nation has been in relationship to the rest of the world than at any time in history, that I know about anyway, that there is some resentment of U.S. power. So I think that the idea of humility is an important one.

The Senators and Representatives, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support the Constitution of the United States; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

"I would dedicate this Nation to the policy of the good neighbor"
Franklin D. Roosevelt's First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933

The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit...
Recognition of the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success, goes hand-in-hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public office, and high political position, are to be valued only by the standards of pride of place and personal profit; and, there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which, too often, has given to a sacred trust, the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing.

In the field of world policy I would dedicate this Nation to the policy of the good neighbor -- the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others -- the neighbor who respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements, in and with, a world of neighbors.

Clinton Challenged to Break Up
—and Break Up With— Wall Street Banks
by Lauren McCauley, Common Dreams, 18-7-2015

Faced with the possibility of yet another Wall Street crony taking over the Oval Office next year, progressive lawmakers are directly challenging Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton to break up —and break up with— the big banks.
Speaking at an annual meeting for progressive organizers and advocacy groups on Friday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) called on presidential hopefuls to support recently introduced legislation that would stem the ever-turning revolving door between government and the financial industry.

"We have a presidential election coming up. I think anyone running for that job — anyone who wants the power to make every key economic appointment and nomination across the federal government — should say loud and clear that they agree: we don’t run this country for Wall Street and mega corporations. We run it for people," Warren said, according to her prepared remarks, during the keynote address...

As Nation columnist George Zornick notes, Warren's address "can fairly be read as a direct challenge to Clinton," who is known for her long-standing ties to Wall Street.
Asked whether Mrs. Clinton would seek to break up the country’s largest banks or reinstate Glass-Steagall, an aide to Mrs. Clinton said she would speak in more detail about both issues in the coming weeks.
(Alan Blinder, an economist who is advising Mrs. Clinton, said this week that she would not attempt to revive Glass-Steagall.)

The Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, passed during the Great Depression, prevented commercial banks from trading securities with their clients’ deposits and created the FDIC as a guard against bank runs. Passed in 1933 as the Banking Act, Glass-Steagall was chipped away over the years and eventually repealed during the Clinton Administration with the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999. Some experts believe that the act’s repeal contributed to the 2008 financial crisis...
The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act is "often cited as a cause" of the 2007 subprime mortgage financial crisis "even by some of its onetime supporters." President Barack Obama has stated that GLBA led to deregulation that, among other things, allowed for the creation of giant financial supermarkets that could own investment banks, commercial banks and insurance firms, something banned since the Great Depression.

Damascus hosts anti-takfiri terror conference
By Zen Adra, The Arab Source, July 23, 2015

A media conference especially dedicated to back Syria’s fight angst extremist terror groups will be held in the capital Damascus on the 24th and 25th of July.

“The attendees represent different political and partisan trends, but they all agree on the peril of takfiri extremism and the necessity to uproot this epidemic phenomenon before it is too late”, an official from Syria’s Ministry of Information told reporters.
The conference, dubbed “International Media Conference Against Tafkiri Terror”, is not the first held in the war-torn country since the uprising broke out in 2011. On November 2014, Damascus hosted a similar conference...

Aleppo-Syria 2010, 2012,2013

Syria’s once peaceful demonstrations has turned into a bloody civil war when the radical Islamists took arms against security and military personnel. Ever since, the country has become a hob for extremist militants flocking from all over the world to topple the secular regime of President Bashar al-Assad and establish Shariaa-run cantons.
Groups blacklisted as world terror organizations such as the Syrian al-Qaeda branch; Jabhet al-Nusra and the notorious Islamic State have found ground in Syria, turning the country into a raging battleground and perpetrating the most barbaric anti-humane acts ever.

The Start of the Syrian Mess
By Jonathan Marshall, July 22, 2015

Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad replaced his autocratic father as president and head of the ruling Ba’ath Party in 2000. Only 35 years old and British educated, he aroused widespread hopes at home and abroad of introducing reforms and liberalizing the regime...
But almost from the start, Assad was marked by the George W. Bush administration for “regime change.” ...

The history of the Bush administration’s approach toward Syria is important to understand.
Shortly after 9/11, former NATO Commander Wesley Clark learned from a Pentagon source that Syria was on the same hit list as Iraq. As Clark recalled, the Bush administration “wanted us to destabilize the Middle East, turn it upside down, make it under our control.”
Sure enough, in a May 2002 speech titled “Beyond the Axis of Evil,” Under Secretary of State John Bolton named Syria as one of a handful of “rogue states” along with Iraq that “can expect to become our targets.”
Syria’s opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and its suspected involvement in the February 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri deepened the administration’s hostility toward Damascus.

Covertly, Washington began collaborating with Saudi Arabia to back Islamist opposition groups including the Muslim Brotherhood, according to journalist Seymour Hersh.
One key beneficiary was said to be Abdul Halim Khaddam, a former Syrian vice president who defected to the West in 2005. In March 2006, Khaddam joined with the chief of Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood to create the National Salvation Front, with the goal of ousting Assad.
Thanks to Wikileaks, we know that key Lebanese politicians, acting in concert with Saudi leaders, urged Washington to support Khaddam as a tactic to accomplish “complete regime change in Syria” and to address “the bigger problem” of Iran.
In March 2007, McClatchy broke a story that the Bush administration had “launched a campaign to isolate and embarrass Syrian President Bashar Assad...

Obama's diplomacy

President Obama sent representatives from the State Department and National Security Council to Damascus in early 2009; dispatched envoy George Mitchell three times to discuss a Middle East peace settlement; nominated the first ambassador to Damascus since 2005; and invited Syria’s deputy foreign minister to Washington for consultations.
However, Obama also continued covert funding to Syrian opposition groups, which a senior U.S. diplomat warned would be viewed by Syrian authorities as “tantamount to supporting regime change.”

At home, Obama’s new policy of engagement was decried by neoconservatives. Elliott Abrams, the Iran-Contra convict who was pardoned by President George H.W. Bush and who directed Middle East policy at the National Security Council under President George W. Bush, branded Obama’s efforts “appeasement” and said Syrian policy would change only “if and when the regime in Iran, Assad’s mainstay, falls.”

As late as March 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton continued to defend talks with Assad, saying: “There’s a different leader in Syria now. Many of the members of Congress of both parties who have gone to Syria in recent months have said they believe he’s a reformer.”
But that stance would change a month later, when the White House condemned “in the strongest possible terms” the Damascus regime’s “completely deplorable” crackdown on political opponents in the city of Dara’a, ignoring the killing of police in the city.

August 2011 President Obama joined European leaders in demanding that Assad “face the reality of the complete rejection of his regime by the Syrian people” and “step aside.” (In fact, a majority of Syrians polled in December 2011 opposed Assad’s resignation.)
Obama’s policy opened the door to support from the Gulf States and Turkey for Islamist forces.
As early as the summer of 2012, a classified Defense Intelligence Agency report concluded, “The salafist [sic], the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI [al-Qaeda in Iraq, later the Islamic State]” had become “the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria.”

A Violent Start

Fuck Secularism The Ba'ath affiliated Revolution Youth Union's Dara'a branch – destroyed by protesters on March 21. Photograph: Hussein Malla/AP

The city of Dara’a, near the Jordanian border, was the epicenter of protests that triggered Syria’s civil war in 2011...
No doubt inspired by the Arab Spring, protesters gathered at a local mosque and began to march for political rights and an end to corruption, chanting “God, Syria, Freedom.” Syrian police reportedly responded with water cannons, batons and even gunfire to disperse the marchers, killing three protesters. The government news agency claimed that “infiltrators” among the marchers had smashed cars, destroyed other property and attacked police, causing “chaos and riots.”

Matters went from bad to worse when demonstrators fought back. As one Israeli journalist reported, “In an uncharacteristic gesture intended to ease tensions the government offered to release the detained students, but seven police officers were killed, and the Baath Party Headquarters and courthouse were torched, in renewed violence.” Around the beginning of April, according to another account, gunmen set a sophisticated ambush, killing perhaps two dozen government troops headed for Dara’a.

President Assad tried to calm the situation.. He announced several national reforms. As summarized by the UN’s independent commission of inquiry on Syria, “These steps included the formation of a new Government, the lifting of the state of emergency, the abolition of the Supreme State Security Court, the granting of general amnesties and new regulations on the right of citizens to participate in peaceful demonstrations.”
His response failed to satisfy protesters who took to the streets and declared the city a “liberated zone.”

"The people want the overthrow of the regime"
Global Research 5-7-2015:

In the case of Daraa the clearly stated aim was to topple the secular or ‘infidel-Alawi’ regime.
The front-line US collaborators were Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey. The head of the Syrian Brotherhood, Muhammad Riyad Al-Shaqfa, issued a statement on 28 March which left no doubt that the group’s aim was sectarian. The enemy was ‘the secular regime’ and Brotherhood members ‘have to make sure that the revolution will be pure Islamic’ (Al-Shaqfa 2011).

Flashback: "That what is sacred in the world is man"
General Mufti of the Syrian Arabic Republic, Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun

Turning to education, Dr Hassoun said, "Let us teach our school pupils that what is sacred in the world is man" since man "is the creation of the creator".
If we want peace, starting for example with Palestine and Israel, he suggested that rather than building walls, "let us build bridges of peace".
He also argued that "we must create states on a civil basis, not a religious basis", adding "I don't impose my religion on you, nor do you impose your religion on me". (European parlement, 15-1-2008)

Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun: "I am Sunni in practice, Shiite in allegiance.
My roots are Salafi, and my purity is Sufi."

The speech of the grand mufti of Syria at his son Sarya's funeral

Assassinations have become a near-daily occurrence Nir Rosen, Al-Jazeera 3 Oct 2011 As the Syrian uprising turns more violent, the latest victim in a spate of assassinations is Saria Hassoun, the 22-year-old son of Syria's Grand Mufti, Sheikh Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun. The shooting occurred outside Ibla University on the Idlib-Aleppo highway. Also killed with Saria Hassoun was Mohammad al-Omar, a professor of History at Aleppo University. Assassinations have become a near-daily occurrence, especially in the central province of Homs, where academics and officials are targeted in a tactic reminiscent those used by the Muslim Brotherhood in their armed uprising between 1976 and 1982.

US, Turkey to ‘stem flow’ of ISIL militants
on Turkish-Syrian border - Press TV, Jul 23, 2015

Washington and Ankara have agreed to work jointly in a declared attempt to tighten security along Turkey’s border with Syria, aimed at controlling the movement of ISIL militants in the region.
The White House said in a statement that US President Barack Obama and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan had reached the agreement on Wednesday.
The statement said that the two sides plan to cooperate to “stem the flow” of foreign-backed militants and to secure Turkey’s border with neighboring Syria.
Reports indicate that thousands of militants have joined ISIL – which has been carrying out deadly attacks in Syria and Iraq – by crossing unimpeded through Turkey.

The latest development comes just days after a bomb attack targeted Socialist Youth Associations Federation (SGDF) members, who had gathered in Sanliurfa Province’s town of Suruç, in order to help in the restructuring of the Kurdish Syrian town of Kobani damaged by ISIL militants, located across the border.

Netanyahu and the King of Vegas
by Uri Avnery, CounterPunch, July 24, 2015

Casino king Sheldon Adelson (Real Time Net Worth As of 7/25/15 $29 Billion) spent $100 million trying to put a Republican in the White House in 2012 and is already shaping up to be a power player in 2016. In February 2015, he signed on to support the candidacy of Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina. (www.forbes.com)

Haaretz, 7-11-2012: Ehud Olmert accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of blatantly interfering in favor of Republican nominee Mitt Romney, adding that he did so in the name of Romney-backer Sheldon Adelson.

The emperor of the gambling world, the king of Las Vegas, the prince of Macao: Sheldon Adelson does not hide his support for Netanyahu the man, the family and the party. He spends huge sums of money on a Hebrew daily newspaper that is distributed gratis to Israelis, whether they want it or not. It is now the largest-circulation paper in Israel, and devoted personally to Netanyahu and his wife. It has no other purpose.

What is he getting in return?
Adelson has bought Netanyahu for one single purpose: to place a stooge of his in the White House... He has to select its candidate for the presidency, derail Hillary Clinton and win the elections. To succeed in all these tasks, he has to mobilize the immense power of the pro-Israel lobby over the US Congress and destroy President Obama.

Does this look like a caricature of Der Stürmer, the infamous anti-Semitic Nazi rag, or, worse, like a page out of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the notorious anti-Semitic forgery?
It is the classical anti-Semitic picture: the ugly finance-Jew striving for world mastery.

For an Israeli, there is something revolting in this picture. The Zionist vision was born out of the total rejection of this caricature. Jews would cease dealing in stocks and shares and money-lending. Jews would till the land with the sweat of their brow, do productive manual work, reject all kinds of parasitic speculations. This was considered such a high ideal that it justified even the displacement of the indigenous Arab population... And here we are, a state following the orders of an international casino mogul whose line of business is perhaps the most unproductive in the cosmos. Sad.

Is there a valiant opposition to this course in Israel? None. Literally none...
In all of my life I have never experienced such a situation of total unanimity, of total absence of doubting and questioning, as now...

Sheldon Adelson: Puppet master of the GOP
Damon Linker, The Week, May 21, 2014

Thanks to the Supreme Court's conservative majority, America's efforts in recent decades to regulate the role of money in politics have been shredded. American democracy just has to cope with the consequences.
Among those consequences is a public square in which the voices of 99.99 percent of Americans are drowned out by the blaring megaphones of a handful of billionaires who get to exercise a singular influence on the content and character of the nation's political conversation.
Some of these billionaires support liberals, but the biggest spenders by far can be found on the Right.

Foremost among them is casino magnate Sheldon Adelson... Currently ranked as the 11th-richest person on the planet, Adelson reportedly spent roughly $150 million trying to defeat President Obama in 2012.
The issue that Adelson cares about most is Israel — above all ensuring that Republican candidates for high office unconditionally support the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party, very much including its drive to expand settlements in the occupied West Bank. If this support includes expressions of skepticism about the prospect for peace talks with the Palestinians and promises of war with Iran to destroy its nuclear program, all the better...
As long as Sheldon Adelson has a say in the matter, no Republican candidate for president will ever challenge the party's unconditional support for the bellicose policies and territorially expansionist priorities of Likud.

Bill Moyers, 4-3-2015
He with the gold rules

Adelson owns the daily Israel Hayom, a leading newspaper, as well as Makor Roshon, the daily newspaper of Israel’s Zionist religious right and NRG, a news website. He gives Israel Hayom away for free in order to promote his hardline views – the headline in the paper the day after Obama’s re-election was “The US Voted [for] Socialism.”
More important, he uses the paper to bang the drum incessantly for Netanyahu and his right-wing Likud Party, under the reign of which Israel has edged closer and closer to theocracy...
Not only is this casino mogul the unofficial head of the Republican Party in America (“he with the gold rules”), he is the uncrowned King of Israel — David with a printing press and checkbook instead of a slingshot and a stone.

---

Huckabee: Obama Marching Israelis to 'Door of the Oven'
Nitsan Keidar, Arutz Sheva (Religious Zionist Newspaper), 26-7-2015

Mike Huckabee - Zionist and pro-Israel activist - receives the Adelson Defender of Israel Award and addresses attendees of the annual Zionist Organization of America Dinner. (ZOA, 7-11-2013)

Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee slammed the nuclear deal signed between Iran and world powers on July 14 - this time accusing President Barack Obama of acting unethically.
“This president’s foreign policy is the most feckless in American history," Huckabee charged during an interview on the Breitbart News Saturday radio program. "It is so naive that he would trust the Iranians." "By doing so, he will take the Israelis and march them to the door of the oven," the former governor of Arkansas asserted.
"This is the most idiotic thing, this Iran deal. It should be rejected by both Democrats and Republicans in Congress and by the American people..."

"As president, I will stand with Israel and keep all options on the table, including military force, to topple the terrorist Iranian regime," Huckabee, a vocal supporter of the Jewish state, vowed.
According to Breitbart, Huckabee, who until recently hosted a talk show on Fox News, has the highest favorability rating of all Republican candidates running for president in 2016.

The top four Republican candidates were: (1) Mike Huckabee at 24.8 percent; (2) Gov. Jeb Bush (R-FL) at 22.1 percent; (3) Dr. Ben Carson at15 percent; (4) Gov. Scott Walker at 13.3 percent.

Alan Hart: "Why are all the Republican would-be presidents
speaking from Netanyahu’s script and dancing to his tune?"

The answer is in two parts. The first is their hunger for campaign funds. The second is their ignorance.
They have no knowledge of the truth of history as it relates to the making and sustaining of the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel. They are completely unaware, for example that Israel’s existence has never, ever, been in danger from any combination of Arab military force.
The notion that Israel has lived and still lives in danger of annihilation, the “driving in the sea” of its Jews, is Zionist propaganda nonsense at its brilliant best.
Zionism’s success in selling it to the political and mainstream media institutions of the West is the reason why a diplomatic resolution of the conflict has been and remains a mission impossible. (Palestine Chronicle, 24-7-2015)

President al-Assad: "Combat terrorism through rational
and realistic policies, Press TV, 26-7-2015

Damascus 2015 - Bashar al-Assad said Sunday that the West still deals with terrorism in a hypocritical way.
Talking before heads and members of public organizations; vocational syndicates; and chambers of industry, trade, agriculture and tourism, President Assad added.. they call it terrorism when it hits them, and revolution; freedom; democracy and human rights when it hits us.
The President said that despite of the complexities of the situation in Syria, the reality has appeared clearly and masks have dropped from many faces and fake terminologies have fallen down and lies have been divulged

Terrorism is an ill ideology, a distorted doctrine and an anomalous exercise that emerged and grew up in environments of ignorance and backwardness, and it is obvious for all that colonization is the side that founded these factors and boosted them and is still boosting them, President al-Assad added.
”Who wants to combat terrorism could do it through rational and realistic policies, based on justice and the respect of peoples’ will of determining their future, managing their affairs, restoring their rights on the basis of spreading knowledge, combating ignorance, improving economy, raising awareness of the society as well as developing it.

"A world where relations are between equals
with no masters and slaves"
Baath Arab Socialist Party Website, 27-7-2015

The President said that the West’s hypocrisy can be summed up in the fact that they claim to be fighting a monster when in fact this monster is of their own creation and it went out of control.
“What they want is keep this monster in check and not eliminate it. All their military, political and media campaigns are in fact smoke screens, and what the West has done so far has led to a growth of terrorism instead of eliminating it...

President al-Assad questioned the possibility of expecting states with a long history of colonialism [..] to actually fight terrorism, asserting that such a thing is impossible because colonialism and terrorism are similar.
“We have not depended on anyone other than ourselves since the first day, and we expected good intentions only from a few real friends of the Syrian people who have principles and morals, who want stability in the region, Syria, and the world, and who respect international law and appreciate the will of the people, viewing the world in a manner where relations are between equals with no masters and slaves,” he explained.

The President lauded the position of the BRICS states and others regarding the crisis, saying that Iran has provided economic, military, and political support to bolster the Syrians’ steadfastness, something that Russia did as well.
“Russia, along with China, have constituted a safety valve that prevented the transformation of the Security Council into a tool for threatening peoples and a platform for aggression on states, particularly Syria,” he said...

The President said that logically speaking, there is no link between political work and terrorism, as the first seeks prosperity and development, while terrorism is all about killing and destruction...
The President said that those who support terrorists have confronted the Syrian people with two choices: either to succumb to their will, to turn Syria to a satellite state which takes orders from them, or they will go on supporting terrorists to destroy Syria, adding: "terrorism is a tool they implement to reach the goals they aspire to".
“As long as terrorism is a tool in their hands.., and as long as they are capable of aborting the political track, then any talk of what they call political solution and we call political track is hollow and meaningless.
“Of course, this will be exploited in foreign media now. They will say that the Syrian president announced his rejection of political work and held on to the military solution. You know that all this nonsense doesn’t concern us now...
President al-Assad reaffirmed Syria’s support for the political track, clarifying “but it is one thing to support the political track, and another to be fooled by it...”

Commenting on the military situation, the President said that the Syrian armed forces cannot be omnipresent in every part of the Syrian lands, which makes it possible for terrorists to enter areas and strike their stability until the Syrian army comes to liberate them...
"This has led to some state-controlled areas coming under the control of terrorists, which has somewhat frustrated the Syrian citizens, and the anti-Syria propaganda has fed this frustration by marketing the illusion that the Syrian state is losing the factors of its steadfastness and that the Syrian army is collapsing.”
He said that leadership decisions are governed by priorities and reality on the ground... The leadership’s decisions try to balance the military importance and the civilian importance of areas, but when the situation is critical and terrorists gain an advantage, the military priority takes precedence..., adding “this is what war is like.”
President al-Assad said that a main priority is the lives of soldiers, who have families waiting for them at home, so decisions take into account the lives of civilians and soldiers alike as they are both more precious than land which can be reclaimed, but a lost life cannot be reclaimed...

President al-Assad said that before the crisis, many were unaware of the dangers posed by sectarian sentiments, but now the lesson has been learned, noting that there has been no movement of civilians from state-controlled areas to terrorist-controlled areas, nor is there any diversity in those areas; in fact terrorists of various nationalities are on one side, and the rest of Syrians are on the other side, so any talk of division is untrue.
The President called for adhering to the nationalist terms that bring us together and unify us, and keep away from the proposed entities and identities some try to market in place of a unified Syria...
“The war is a war of existence; to be or not to be,” the President said.

President al-Assad struck an optimistic note despite the grim toll that the crisis has taken on the economy, reminding of the tough years that the Syrians have endured, citing in particular 2012 when the Syrian people managed to cope with an unprecedented economic downturn.
He noted that Syria has started to export goods, and production has gotten underway and some sectors have started to function, which are good signs, with some lingering obstacles regarding the service sectors such as electricity and fuel

President al-Assad concluded by saluting the members of the Army and Armed Forces, popular defense forces, and their families, particularly the families of martyrs, in addition to saluting those who were injured in the battle against terrorism, promising to spare no effort to rescue abductees and missing people, thanking Russia, Iran and China for their support, and finally saluting all Syrians who stood fast and challenged terrorism, remaining committed to their homeland despite all difficulties and temptations.

Elie Podeh, Jerusalem Post 07/27/2015 : "The West, including Israel, faces a dilemma regarding whether to support Syria – backed by the demonized Iran – or to bet on an alternative regime, with the risk of chaos, anarchy and even territorial changes.
Turkey and Saudi Arabia would prefer to get rid of Assad at all costs, while Egypt has decided to prop up the Assad regime.
Indeed, one may wonder whether the potential rise of IS or another radical Islamic entity in Syria might be an even more destructive scenario than the Iranian “threat.”

Erdogan Stops Talking with Kurdish Militants
Al-Alam 28-7-2015

Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Tuesday it was impossible to continue talks with Kurdish militants...
Speaking in Ankara ahead of a state visit to Beijing, Mr. Erdogan said Turkey wouldn’t back down in the face of terror and warned that Kurdish lawmakers — who won a record number of seats in June elections — would be stripped of their immunity from prosecution if deemed to support militant groups.
“It is not possible for us to continue the peace process with those who threaten our national unity and brotherhood,” Mr. Erdogan told reporters.
“Turkey has the strength to hold terrorists and so-called politicians accountable for the blood of our martyrs. Stepping back is out of the question,” he said.
Mr. Erdogan’s speech appeared to codify the collapse of Turkey’s peace talks with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK — a Kurdish militia listed as a terror organization by Turkey and the US that has fought for greater autonomy from the Turkish state since 1984.

Mr. Erdogan’s statement comes as Turkish officials have cast operations against ISIL and Kurdish militants as a “war on terror with distinction.” In recent days, Turkish security forces have launched a series of raids to arrest more than 1,000 alleged members of the PKK, ISIL and other prescribed organizations.
“For us the PKK and ISIL are the same”, a Turkish official said.

The shift has drawn condemnation from Kurdish lawmakers, who have accused the government of using the strikes against ISIL as a smokescreen for a broader attack on Kurdish groups, a charge the government denies.

Syrian government only reliable partner
ICH - Moon of Alabama, 26-7-2015

The Kurds in Syria and their leader Salih Muslim are under attack from the Islamic State and now also from Turkey. They have now offered to reconcile with their only reliable partner, the Syrian government.
Salih Muslim said that the Kurds would join the Syrian army if that army would show a "new mentality". He spoke favorably of the father of Bashar al Assad and his relations with the Kurds and discussed various forms of federalism.

Should the Syrian government take up this offer for talks and guarantee some kind of Kurdish autonomy within some federal Syrian structure the Syrian army would regain the manpower to again go on the offense.
Supported by Iran and Russia and united with the Kurds the Syrian army would again be dominant power in the country and likely be able to retake the insurgency and islamist occupied areas.

Flashback 2011 - Salih Muslim Muhammad, chairman of the PYD:
»Turkey's henchmen in Syrian Kurdistan are responsible for the unrest here«
KurdWatch, 20-10-2011

-KurdWatch: How does the PYD envision the future of Kurds in Syria?
- Salih Muslim Muhammad: We have put forth a project: »democratic autonomy«...
We, as the Kurdish Freedom Movement reject the classical understanding of power. We reject classical models like federalism, con-federalism, self-government, and autonomy. Our goal is the formation of a new Kurdish society, the formation of a free person, a person with free will and free thought.
The question is not whether a county commissioner, a district mayor, or a governor is one of us... It is about culture, institutions, structure, organization, towns and cities. We are not concerned with autonomy. Autonomy does not move us Kurds forward.

- KurdWatch: Is there an agreement between the PYD and the Syrian regime?
- Salih Muslim Muhammad: The state knows that if PYD leaders are arrested, there will be serious protests everywhere. This is not in the state's interest.

- KurdWatch: There are many voices in Syria demanding the fall of President Bashar al-Assad and his regime. What are your demands?
- Salih Muslim Muhammad: We demand a fundamental change to the oppressive system. There are some who hold up the slogan: the fall of the regime. In contrast we demand the fall of the oppressive authoritarian system.
Our problems are not problems of powers. The ruling powers in Damascus come and go. For us Kurds, this isn't so important...

- KurdWatch: Can you imagine working with the Muslim Brotherhood?
- Salih Muslim Muhammad: No. The Muslim Brotherhood does not acknowledge the existence of the Kurds. They have signed an agreement with Turkey that they will deny the existence of the Kurds if they come to power in Syria...
Turkey's henchmen in Syrian Kurdistan are responsible for the unrest here. Turkey is afraid that the Kurds in Syrian Kurdistan will receive their rights.

- KurdWatch: Who are Turkey's Kurdish henchmen?
- Salih Muslim Muhammad: All those who are currently sitting on the Syrian National Council and who have signed the agreement with Turkey.

Iran: Faculties of Kurdish language and literature
established in Kurdistan - IRNA 30-7-2015

Sanandaj, July 30 - A faculty member of University of Kurdistan said here Thursday that the establishment of faculties of Kurdish language and literature in Kurdistan province universities was the materializing of President Rouhani's promise to provincial residents in that respect.
Speaking with IRNA, Professor Najmeddin Jabbari said that the development is a great cultural achievement for the Iranian Kurdish citizens... The faculty member of University of Kurdistan hoped that this development will be the beginning of teaching Kurdish language and literature in various levels up to PhD level in universities throughout Iran.
He said that the development followed serious demand of the provincial population and will play a decisive role in development of the Kurdish civilization in Iran's Kurdistan province, as well as in raising public satisfaction level with their central government.

He hoped that the government's other promises on economic and social development in Kurdistan province, too, will be kept like this promise - especially allocation of management posts to the Sunni Kurdish citizens in Iran and the country.

Participation of all Iranians, free from language and religion

President Hassan Rouhani had in two paragraphs of his presidential campaign leaflet on Iranian tribes and religious minorities promised those groups that if he would be elected they will be used in management posts in the country, and especially in their provinces.

'Public participation of the Iranians, free from language and religion concerns in top management positions of the country will be observed in a way that the entire Iranian fellow citizens will be benefitted from equal conditions up to cabinet minister level,' reads the 2nd paragraph of that presidential election campaign pamphlet.

According to the 2010 national consensus of the Iranian Statistics Organization, Iran's Kurdistan province had a population of 1,439,645 people, 66% of whom lived in cities and 34% in villages. More than 80% of the provincial population is Sunni Kurds who have in various national elections showed very high participation, such as the last presidential election in which 72% of them voted for Dr. Rouhani. (IRNA 30-7-2015)

Gaddafi's son sentenced to death
by an unrecognized Islamist government
Al Arabiya News, 28 July 2015

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the son of Libya’s former dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, has been sentenced to death by a court in Tripoli in a mass trial of former regime figures widely criticised by human rights groups and observers.
The trial, which lasted just two days, was conducted in Tripoli by an unrecognized Islamist government that came to power after forcing the rival government out of the Libyan capital.
A militia group from the town of Zintan is currently holding Saif and it’s unclear if the group will agree to give him up in order for the death sentence to be carried out.

Ahmed Qaddaf Al Dam, Colonel Muammar Qaddafi’s cousin, strongly condemned the death sentence...
In an exclusive statement to Al Arabiya News, Gaddaf Al Dam, said “This sentence blows up every hope and initiative for a dialogue and for Libya’s stability.”
“We are now before gangs carrying executions every morning outside the law’s frame. The prisons are full with more than 40000 men and women who did nothing except refusing the state of falsehood which resulted in a forced displacement and exodus of not less than half of the Libyan people”, he said.

The former official throws “the full responsibility of these sentences and of what is taking place, to the countries which participated in overthrowing the Libyan state and destroying its army."

Flashback - Putin: "A medieval crusade"
by Lidia Okorokova, Moscow News, 28/04/2011

Russia toughened its opposition to Western military intervention in Libya this week as Prime Minister Vladimir Putin deployed his strongest criticism yet of NATO airstrikes in the country.
On Tuesday, speaking during a news conference in Copenhagen, Putin said the North African country was being illegally destroyed by “so-called civilised society” and that NATO was going beyond the UN mandate when it dropped guided bombs on embattled Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s compound in Tripoli...
The premier’s comments came after he earlier likened the UN Security Council resolution to enforce a no-fly zone in the country to a “call to a medieval crusade.”

Kosachev: "Russia should act more insistently
to see UN Charter observed, TASS August 01, 2015

Russia should take more resolute action to see the UN Charter observed, so that the United Nation retains its major role in the world, the chairman of the Russian upper house’s committee for international affairs, Konstantin Kosachev, wrote on his Facebook page on Saturday.
He said Russia could fight "passively, when it has to use its right of veto, and actively - through putting forward its own initiatives, that are not so numerous so far," the parliamentarian from the Federation Council wrote.
Kosachev accused the US of an attempt to create a system in which the country and its loyal allies would be outside the jurisdiction.
He dubbed an attempt to force through a draft resolution on a tribunal on the Malaysia Airlines MH17 flight crash as ‘dancing on the bones’.
He said if international tribunals were created under UN Charter’s Chapter VII, the first cases they should look into were NATO air strikes on Belgrade in 1999, an operation of the US and its allies against Iraq in 2003 in bypassing the United Nations, and their disregard for UN decisions on Libya in 2011.

Qaida-Led Court Executes 10 in Syria's Aleppo
by Naharnet Newsdesk, 2-8-2015

At least 10 people were executed on Saturday in Syria's Aleppo city on the orders of a religious court dominated by al-Qaida affiliate Al-Nusra Front, a monitor said.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said two of the executed were accused of adultery, with the rest accused of collaboration with the Syrian government.
The executions, in the eastern Aleppo neighbourhood of Shaar, were ordered by a religious court that includes several conservative rebel groups but is dominated by Al-Nusra Front.
All 10 men were shot dead, the Observatory said.

Islamic courts have been set up in many towns and villages in Syria taken from government forces by Islamist militants or jihadist groups.
Al-Nusra has also carried out summary executions of government troops in areas it has captured.

A new, extremely dangerous kind of Jewish fanaticism
Using freedom of expression to recruit hate criminals
Nauhum Barnea, YNet News|Opinion, 4-8-2015

"The Shin Bet has been dealing in the past year with a radical group of young messianic Jews aiming to bring down the Zionist state and replace it with a holy kingdom. In order to fulfill their goal, they are willing to sacrifice their lives and have no problem killing." Alex Fishman

I am angry...
Israel's governments should have treated the settler public differently. They shouldn't have gave in to the lawbreakers in Sebastia, they shouldn't have pardoned the Jewish Underground terrorists prematurely, they shouldn't have – acting on an order from above – skipped the rabbis who inflamed Yigal Amir, funded their whims, winked at them and flattered them.
Governments are not the only ones who sinned deeply here. The Supreme Court, under the leadership of Chief Justice Meir Shamgar and mainly under the leadership of Chief Justice Aharon Barak, gave full, remarkably liberal protection to the freedom of expression on the one hand, while on the other hand legitimizing the settlement enterprise in the territories in different ways.

It was a lethal combination. It opened the door to weeds like Kahane Chai, the Lehava organization and the price tag gang. It conveyed a message to the judges in the lower courts, to the State Prosecutor's Office, to the police, that political delinquency can be forgiven as part of the freedom of expression. There is no wonder that slain Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's widow, Leah, refused to shake Barak's hand over her husband's grave.

Freedom of expression is a noble value... But the court has failed to equip democracy with the tools it needs to defend itself against those who are turning freedom of expression into a basis for recruiting hate criminals.
This applies both to extreme right-wing organizations and to the haredim. Hate crimes are usually not committed in an empty space: There is an atmosphere, there are instigators, there is a supportive community.

The recurring waves of terror and the failure of the peace process, and perhaps the demographic changes as well, have made the Israeli street more rightist.
The voters wanted a government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Little did they know they would be getting a government which depends on the finger of one Bezalel Smotrich, a Knesset member on behalf of the Bayit Yehudi faction, who combines both haredi for Arabs and hatred for the LGBT community. He is the supreme authority.

Education Minister Naftali Bennett, the head of Smotrich's party, asked if he could speak at the LGBT protest on Saturday evening. He was offended when his request was turned down. "I wanted to tell them I love them," Bennett said. "I disagree with them and I love them." ...
The members of the LGBT community don’t need his patronizing love. They need security.
The education system Bennett is in charge of is afflicted with racism and homophobia. He should start with the state-religious education and the ultra-Orthodox streams.

Rouhani invites nation to ‘think globally, act domestically’
Mehr News, 5 August 2015

Iranian high school students have come in first place in the 9th International Olympiad on Astronomy and Astrophysics (Press TV, 4-8-2015)

President Hassan Rouhani called on the administrative body to think on a global scale but take actions toward promoting domestic production. “Some think the opposite, that we should think on a domestic scale and apply our ideas globally, which is impossible,” said Rouhani... The Iranian president asserted that that the educational system must be founded on ‘independence’, and expressed the need for the modernization of education, the public sphere and the opinions of the younger generation in the country. Lauding Iran’s historic nuclear achievement, the president reaffirmed that one must not yield to the demands of major powers but rather move toward attaining its own rights and objectives through logic, reasoning, and the art of negotiation and diplomacy. “The Geneva interim agreement showed that a win-win negotiation is possible, and constructive interaction is the right way to go,” said Rouhani.

Time for an update of Judaism
Orna Oshri, YNet News|Opinion 5-8-2015

Quran 9:30: The Jews say, 'Ezra is the Son of God'; the Christians say, 'The Messiah is the Son of God.' ... How they are perverted!
They have taken their rabbis and their monks as lords apart from God, and the Messiah, Mary's son -- and they were commanded to serve but One God; there is no god but He; glory be to Him, above what they associate with Him...

Matthew 22: When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered themselves together. One of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?" And He said to him, "'You shall love the Lord with al your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' "This is the great and foremost commandment. "The second is like it, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' "On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets."

I've been grappling with Judaism for many years... I considered (and still do) faith in a higher power to be a far-fetched idea, and that was pretty much all I had to say about religion.
All that changed completely about two years ago, when I got to know a genuine haredi family through the Havruta project - a family that became my second home, and my great love...
My friendship with religious Jews has led to quite a few heated arguments...
I make the argument that Judaism is a chauvinistic and arcane religion, they give me some Yiddishkeit about a compassionate, divine and eternal religion...
The thing that stands out most when talking to haredim is their lack of willingness to admit that Halacha laws, and their public, need an update. It's time to remove the facade of pleasantness and say: Original Judaism, the manufacturer's version, is harsh, judgmental and racist...

Netanyahu, teaching Jewish kids to handle their anger

Delving into the depths of the Bible paints the picture of a violent and bloody reality, and digging into the Mishnah and the Talmud reveals infuriating differences between menand women and exposes the pettiness of many Halacha laws.
All of this is done under the cover of endless philosophizing of men and even more men.
Ultra-Orthodox Jews' attempt to live today according to these ancient perceptions is absurd in my opinion, but it would've been perfectly acceptable if it was limited to their courts.

Chuck Schumer Breaks With Obama
"I am a 'shomer' (guardian) for Israel"
Huffington Post, 6-8-2015

New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, the chamber's third-ranking Democrat, plans to announce his opposition to the nuclear deal negotiated by the U.S., Iran, and five world powers.
As the soon-to-be leader of his party in the Senate, Schumer’s decision to directly fight President Barack Obama on the biggest foreign policy achievement of his presidency is a bold, but not surprising, move.
Schumer has long been more hawkish on foreign policy than some of his fellow Democrats.
In 2002, he voted for the Authorization for the Use of Military Force in Iraq. In 2006 he backed John Bolton's nomination to serve as George W. Bush's ambassador to the United Nations, reportedly telling a Senate Democratic caucus meeting that "a vote against Bolton was a vote against Israel." Bolton is an ardent foe of negotiation with Iran.

In response to Schumer's announcment, MoveOn, an anti-war advocacy group and political action committee vowed to launch a donor strike against the Democratic Party...
"No real Democratic leader does this," MoveOn wrote of the incoming party leader in a statement. "If this is what counts as 'leadership' among Democrats in the Senate, Senate Democrats should be prepared to find a new leader..."

The New York Senator has developed close ties to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the influential pro-Israel lobbying group that has pledged over $20 million to kill the nuclear accord.
During his 34 years in Congress, Schumer has become fond of telling his voters that his surname is derived from “shomer,” the Hebrew word for “guardian.”
“I am a shomer for Israel and I will continue to be that with every bone in my body,” he said in 2010.

Charles Ellis "Chuck" Schumer (born November 23, 1950) is the senior United States Senator from New York and a member of the Democratic Party. Schumer was born in Brooklyn, the son of Selma and Abraham Schumer. His family is Jewish.
Schumer was a supporter of the Iraq War Resolution. He is a strident pro-Israel member of Congress. In a June 3, 2008 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Schumer wrote that cooperative economic sanctions could topple Iran's theocratic government.
Speaking at an Orthodox Union event in Washington D.C, in June 2010, he defended Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip. He called on Israel to "strangle them economically until they see that's not the way to go".
He also said, "The Palestinian people still don't believe in a Jewish state, in a two state solution... They don't believe in the Torah. They don't believe in King David. So, they don't think it's our land..." (Wikipedia Info)

Flashback: Netanyahu Pens Letter in Sefer Torah
By Chabad.org Staff, August 8, 2014

Chabad: For a Jew, the Land of Israel is more than a place. It is a body for the soul of a people.
"The land upon which the eyes of G-d your G-d constantly gaze…" (Deuteronomy 11:12)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, at a ceremony with Chabad rabbis and representatives, prepares to pen a letter in a Sefer Torah honoring soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces.
The prime minister took part in what he called an especially moving ceremony, and said of the upcoming press conference: “There, I will do again what the Rebbe (Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory) told me to do decades ago — to light a small candle in the great darkness of lies that surrounds us.”
Netanyahu revealed that on Shabbat during the ongoing war with Hamas in Gaza, “the only time that I have a few minutes with my family, we read the weekly Torah portion at the end of our Shabbat meal together, and this gives us a lot of strength.”

Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Aharonov, director of the Chabad Youth Organization in Israel, emphasized the importance of encouraging Jewish men everywhere to do tefillin, pointing to the “Tefillin Campaign” launched by the Rebbe before the Six-Day War in 1967, noting that: “The nations of the world will see that the name of God is called upon you, and they will fear you.” (Deuteronomy 28:10)