Apocalyptic Visions

The Moon Bosporus Rises Over the Golden Planet Ar-Rum

About a month ago I was working on a post about the ISIS Islamic version of Apocalypse based on certain ahadith. I was busy getting ready for my granddaughter, and the post was rather large, and I never did it, figuring that nobody but me would want to read such a thing anyway.
I was working on my post before Pope Francis spoke about wall-building, and I had merely been looking around in apocalyptic traditions.

However, there is a great post in The Atlantic which covers the exact same thing and comes to the exact same conclusion I did. I quote it below at some length.

The Atlantic
Donald Trump and the Apocalypse:Is Rome really ISIS’s “ultimate trophy”?
Graeme Wood Feb 22, 2016
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/02/donald-trump-pope-isis/470307/

[When Pope Francis implicitly criticized Donald Trump by saying that]... anyone who preferred building walls rather than bridges “not Christian.”...Trump retorted within minutes, in a speech on Kiawah Island in South Carolina. The Vatican, he said, is “ISIS’s ultimate trophy,” and the pope should beg God for Trump’s protection. “The Vatican [will be] attacked by ISIS,” he prophesied, in a statement whose grammar suggested it was translated by computers into Cantonese and back before publication. “I can promise you that the Pope would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been President because this would not have happened.”

The apocalyptic narratives of Islam differ from those of Christianity, and even many Muslims aren’t familiar with the end-times prophecies of their faith. So Trump’s apparent misunderstanding or partial ignorance of a key element of ISIS ideology is understandable. Indeed, for a man like Trump, any awareness of the prominence of “Rome” in Islamic scripture is a bit surprising—like discovering that Taylor Swift knows how to tie a perfect trucker’s hitch, or that one’s cat can operate the dishwasher. But his claim that Rome is “ISIS’s ultimate trophy” deserves correction, just in case he thinks it’s true rather than merely a fun way to troll the pontiff.

The Arabic word Rum is cognate with the English word “Rome” and is usually translated as such, although on modern maps the city of Rome will generally be written as Ruma. The word appears in the Koran and in the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, typically rendered in English as “Rome.” These instances include prophecies of battles against “Roman” armies in Asia Minor and (most famously) Dabiq, the Syrian agricultural hamlet that inspired the name of ISIS’s magazine:

The Last Hour would not come until the Romans would land at Al-A’maq [a valley northwest of the Syrian city of Aleppo] or in Dabiq. An army consisting of the best soldiers of all the Earth at that time will come from Medina to counteract them. [Sahih Muslim 2897]

The Islamic State constantly harps on this series of battles. Only once they have occurred will the Antichrist appear, and only after his appearance can the world be rocked by tribulation and saved by the descended Jesus of Nazareth. For the true believers of ISIS, these stories provide an imaginative backdrop to hyperdramatize what is otherwise just another awful Middle Eastern war.

One of the most-quoted statements by Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, the spokesman of the Islamic State, cited another hadith:

We will conquer your Rome, break your crosses, and enslave your women, by the permission of Allah, the Exalted. This is His promise to us; He is glorified and He does not fail in His promise. If we do not reach that time, then our children and grandchildren will reach it, and they will sell your sons as slaves at the slave market.

On the authority of ‘Abdullah Ibn ‘Amr Ibn al-‘As, who said, “We were with [Muhammad] writing down what he was saying, when he was asked, ‘Which of the two cities will be conquered first? Constantinople or Rome?’ So Muhammad said, ‘The city of Heraclius will be the first to be conquered.’” Meaning the city of Constantinople. It was reported by al-Hakim in “Al-Mustadrak” according to the conditions of the two sheikhs (Bukhari and Muslim) and declared authentic by Imam adh-Dhahabi.

Islamic State propaganda at times encourages a straightforward, Trumpian reading of the word “Rome.” Last year, the Islamic State’s Tripoli province explicitly menaced the city of Rome. In a video depicting the simultaneous beheading of 21 Coptic Christians, the camera lingers over the image of Christian blood mixing with the tides of the Mediterranean. Soon after, ISIS supporters on social media began using the hashtag #We_Are_Coming_O_Rome (until Italians hijacked the tag and clogged it with travel advice and assorted ridicule). A film made by ISIS’s Nineveh propaganda bureau in December depicted an Islamic State-flagged tank crossing a desert to capture the Colosseum. In the distance is the Vittoriano.

There is a Scalia-like originalism in some forms of scriptural interpretation: Find out what “Rome” meant at the time of God’s revelation of the Koran to Muhammad, and you’ll know its One True Meaning. (The analogy to U.S. legal traditions is imperfect, but it’ll do.) Islam has its Breyers and Ginsburgs as well, and they ask the obvious questions: Do these prophecies mentioning “Rome” really refer to the “Rome” known to an illiterate seventh-century Arab merchant? Or are the prophecies “living” documents that require constant reinterpretation?
Related Story

What ISIS Really Wants

If we hew closely to what Muhammad meant by “Rome,” we couldn’t easily construe the word to mean the modern, geopolitically trivial Italian capital. Indeed, Rum probably referred not to the city of Rome at all, but to the Eastern Roman (or Byzantine) Empire, centered in Constantinople. According to this interpretation, the Rome of La Dolce Vita and spaghetti carbonara has nothing to do with Rum, and the bluster from Trump and ISIS propagandists rests on a simple misreading.

But that leaves believers with a quandary of a whole other sort, since the Byzantine Empire fell in 1453 and is therefore no longer around to fight. It’s as if Muhammad predicted that the Brooklyn Dodgers would play the New York Yankees in the 2020 World Series. At some point, Muslims concerned with these prophecies have to figure out how a defunct franchise (the Brooklyn Dodgers ceased to exist when they moved to Los Angeles in 1958) will field a team.

And here’s where things get metaphysical. If Muhammad was not wrong, how might he be right? One method of reckoning with this obstacle—the non-existence of “Rome” in the seventh-century sense—is to ask which latter-day entity most resembles Rome. Apocalyptic theorists today have suggested that Rome might be NATO, “the West,” America, Russia, or something else.

One of the Islamic State-linked ideologues I interviewed for my March 2015 story about the group has taken unusual interest in this question. Last year, Musa Cerantonio, a young Australian convert, published a pamphlet in which he purported to answer the question “Who is Rum?” definitively. He considers whether Rome can be identified simply by finding the entities that inhabit the same geography as the Byzantines, or that use their language, or come from their tribe, or use their same form of government. But he rejects all these possibilities, on the grounds that even during the early decades of Islam, the territory, language, and forms of government of the Byzantines varied a great deal, and the name Rum never changed. The essence of Rum must be deeper.

Cerantonio notes that the Ottomans, who defeated the Byzantines, accepted the mantle of “Rome” explicitly: The sultan called himself the “Caesar of Rome” and believed he was establishing a third Roman Empire. And when the Ottoman line ended in 1924—leaving the world without a caliph—their successors were the secular republicans of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Those successors still reign in Istanbul and Ankara, and the Islamic State considers them apostates, even though the most recent of them, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is generally counted as an Islamist by those who aren’t members of ISIS.
ISIS’s discussion of prophecy is not about if but when, where, and who.

For Cerantonio, that settles it: The Rum of the end-times hadith is not the Rome of Pope Francis but the Rome of the Republic of Turkey. Almost two weeks ago, when press reports suggested that the Turkish military had crossed the border near the Syrian city of Aleppo, into the town of Azaz, a social-media account supportive of Cerantonio’s Rum thesis tweeted the news out excitedly: Azaz is smack in the middle of Dabiq/A’maq territory, exactly where the armies of Rome and Islam are meant to meet—right on schedule...

Here is the relevant map of the area:

Azaz is the urban area in the left upper quadrant and Dabiq is the area outlined in the lower right quadrant.


Rum is Constantinople, now Istanbul, and refers to that city on the Bosporus.
It is Turkey that is being talked about, and I am amazed that the present President of Turkey is unaware of his role as Dajjal or the Anti-Christ.
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Bookends

 Bomb Aftermath in Homs

Over the weekend, there were bombings in Damascus and Homs in Syria:

BBC
Syria conflict: Homs and Damascus bomb blasts kill 140
21 February 2016
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-35624654

Bomb blasts in the Syrian cities of Homs and Damascus have left at least 140 people dead, monitors and state media say.

At least four blasts struck the southern Damascus suburb of Sayyida Zeinab, killing at least 83 people, state media said.

Earlier in Homs, 57 people, mainly civilians, were killed in a double car bombing, a monitoring group reported.

So-called Islamic State (IS) said it carried out the attacks in both cities.

Meanwhile, US Secretary of State John Kerry has said a "provisional agreement" has been reached with Russia on a partial truce in the conflict...

The Damascus bombing was in the Sayyida Zainab district, home of the shrine to Sayyida (Lady) Zainab, daughter of 'Ali       زينب بنت علي
and it is this 'Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet, whom the Shi'a consider to be the correct successor to the caliphate and not Mu'awiyah and then Mu'awiyah's son, Yazid, whose troops killed Hussein - the son of 'Ali - at Karbala.


{ http://www.ezsoftech.com/stories/sayyida.zainab.asp
Birthday of Sayyida Zainab (sa) is observed as Nurse's Day in Iran...

A nurse's occupation is not an ordinary one. Nursing is a sacred and valuable profession. A nurse does not work for money or material benefits, for the wages she receives do not compensate of her untainted labors. When a nurse sees that her patient's life is in danger, she forgets everything and becomes selfless. Birthday of Sayyida Zainab (sa) is observed as Nurse's Day in Iran.

At the height of the Islamic month of Muharram, in the year 61, after Hijrah, on the night of Ashura, when the devilish enemy set the Ahlul Bayt's (as) tent on fire and drove the children to the desert in the night, Sayyida Zainab (sa) tended women and children in a half-burnt tent, shared in their sorrow with patience and endurance, and nursed the feverish patient of Karbala, Imam Sajjad (as)...

She is a model of resistance and sacrifice..
...with special characteristics gathered within her, it is as if she were the protector of moral values, law abidance, the protector and executor of our higher duties, sympathetic, kind, conscientious, independent, shouldering responsibility, hard-working and untiring.

Sayyida Zainab (sa) was not only a nurse for women and children. She nursed those who had suffered in body and soul, those whose clothing and skin had burned in the frightening tent fire at dusk on Ashura, those who had suffered mentally, those who had heard rejoicing in their miseries. This nursing began at dusk on the day of Ashura and continued to Kufah, Karbala and Medina...}


At the end of January, 2016, Damascus witnessed a similar bombing:

The Guardian
Dozens killed after suicide bombing at Shia shrine in Damascus
Reuters in Beirut
Sunday 31 January 2016 07.26 EST
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/31/damascus-syrian-double-suicide-bombing-sayeda-zeinab

Islamic State bombers have killed more than 60 people near Syria’s holiest Shia shrine in Damascus as the country’s main opposition group met the UN mediator, Staffan de Mistura, for the first time.

Representatives of the Saudi-backed Higher Negotiation Committee (HNC) – which includes political and militant opponents of President Bashar al-Assad – warned they may yet walk away from the Geneva talks unless the suffering of civilians in the five-year conflict was eased.

The head of the Syrian government delegation said that the blasts in Damascus, which the interior ministry blamed on a car bomb and two suicide bombers, merely confirmed the opposition’s terrorist links – even though Isis has been excluded from the talks...

The birth date of Lady Zainab, a day when Shi'a may come to the shrine in Damascus to pay their respects, fell on February 14, 2016, a date almost directly between the two attacks. It was as if ISIS - or some ISIS surrogate - sought to maximize the damage and had some deadly glitches, jumping the gun in January and being a week late in February, thus bookending the birth date of Lady Zainab with a bloody rain of mortal remains... invoking a memory of Karbala.

Shrine of Sayyida (Lady) Zainab in Southern Damascus

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New Syrian Taxes

Reading KABOBfest
Worst New Syrian Tax Ever
By Guest ⋅ December 11, 2015
http://www.kabobfest.com/2015/12/worst-new-syrian-tax-ever.html

We stood by and we watched him crush protests, bomb civilians and oversee his country’s demise just so he can stay in power. But now, he’s gone too far. We must put our foot down. It is time for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to go.

On Thursday, the long-necked leader announced a raft of new taxes, including most egregiously, a 10% levy on all kabobs and shawarma sandwiches. This threatens not only to diminish meat consumption but goes against everything we at KABOBfest stand for.

Also, a Syria expert on CNN probably speculated that this tax will drive Damascus’s Alawite and Christian communities to Islamic State, where the sanctity of meat is recognized.

The tax is just plain upsetting. “Last week I had to pay 220 Syrian pounds for my shawarma sandwich instead of 200 and the restaurant owner told me it was because there’s a new 10% ‘reconstruction tax’ that’s being imposed on each sandwich,” 50-year-old Damascus resident Tony Abu George said.

“My niece, who works in Raqqa as a sex slave, tells me there’s no such tax in the caliphate. In fact, it’s like an all-you-can-eat shawarma party!”

Mabruk al-Shawareb, a spokesman for the Assad government, said the new taxes were necessary to replenish state coffers after four years of costly war against opposition forces and extremist groups, including the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS)...

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Horrible (?) Hezbollah

G ‏@SyrianLionesss

Hezbollah soldier salutes the statue of Jesus in Saydnaya #Syria


Interesting.
There seem to be quite a few photos of Hezbollah people respecting Jesus and Mary.
Both are mentioned in the Qu'ran, of course.
Maybe they respect their neighbors, too. 

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Syria Considered As A Hafgerding

Hafgerding, as used by the Norse adventurers to Greenland,  means "sea-hedge" , and it compares the sea to a plot of land surrounded by hedges, as if one were sitting in a grassy garden surrounded by boxwood hedges:

only at sea, and would look something more like:

 

 in which that wall of white is ice on the lake which appears to be a high wall-like hedge.

The concept of Hafgerding [ Plural: Hafgerdingar ] is discussed in

 

where the quote from the medieval Norse manuscript King's Mirror appears:

{Q1}

and Dr. Lehn continues : 

{Q2}

Dr. Lehn develops an explanation for the hafgerding effect based on optics and observed mirages, such as that shown above on Lake Winnipeg. 

Dr. Lehn concludes:

{Q3}

I myself do not think the mirage model works as an explanation for Q2 above. It seems to me there are two phenomena involved here:
(1) the mirage event, and
(2) the rogue wave event.
Dr. Lehn demonstrates correlation between the mirage event and ensuing cyclonic storms 87% of the time in these waters, but the Bishop's description in Q2 seems to indicate a monster wave to me.

Regardless of this controversy, Lord, we pray to Thee for those in peril of the Sea!

And Syria!

Why do I think Syria is so filled with bale?
Because we are whipped into thinking it is a "War", but our government would not drop bombs on the ISIS trucks hauling oil-for-profit into Turkey until the Paris massacre.

It is a Game of Kings; it is a chess match of foreign policy.

We are the pawns. It is our lives destroyed in the senseless gambits of a pointless policy.

It is a reflection of emptiness: we have no hope, so we watch our life dissolve into constant wars and weaponized societies and casinos of hopeless markets.

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The Candidates' Debate

The Democratic debate last night:

The Atlantic
The Dilemma Facing Democratic Voters
David A. Graham
http://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2015/12/the-dilemma-facing-democratic-voters/421386/

... Thus the major dilemma for Democratic voters in 2016: Do they support Sanders, a guy whose positions are in line with the party’s mainstream, but who obviously has a fairly superficial, ideologically rigid engagement with foreign policy? Or do they support Clinton, who has a more powerful, detailed, and nuanced command of the issues than any other candidate, but is also far more hawkish than most Democrats?

Mrs. Clinton's grasp of foreign policy is profound.
It is also misguided.
The fingerprints of Secretary of State Clinton are all over Syria, and she has learned nothing. I would guess that only the thoroughgoing nature of the Iraq disaster turned her against that adventurism.

Read another, older article about Mrs. Clinton's involvement in Iraq:
The Federalist
Can Hillary Clinton Recover From Her Support Of The Iraq War?
Dan McLaughlin
May 19, 2014
http://thefederalist.com/2014/05/19/can-hillary-clinton-recover-from-her-support-of-the-iraq-war/

... Why did she choose, instead, to support and justify a war that Democratic partisans now regard as a war crime, beyond the pale of civilized discourse and disagreement?...

I am not by any stretch of the I-magination a Democratic partisan, but I do consider the Iraq war to be a criminal enterprise.

I believe the burden of guilt will cause great suffering unless we somehow reconcile. But Mrs. Clinton believes in more of the same: more regime change, more disruption, more war.
No one has dared broach the topic of War Guilt.
The karma of the murder of millions will hound us.

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NATO Dearest

Following up on the Russian fighter shot down by NATO ally, Turkey;
ConsortiumNews.com (Independent Investigative Journalism Since 1995)
Facts Back Russia on Turkish Attack
November 30, 2015
https://consortiumnews.com/2015/11/30/facts-back-russia-on-turkish-attack/

Turkey claims its Nov. 24 shoot-down of a Russian warplane along the Syrian border was justified — and the Obama administration is publicly siding with its NATO ally — but a review of the evidence supports Russian accusations of an “ambush,” writes Gareth Porter for Middle East Eye.

By Gareth Porter

The United States and its NATO allies offered a ritual of NATO unity after Turkish officials presented their case that the shoot-down of a Russian jet occurred after two planes had penetrated Turkish airspace. The Turkish representative reportedly played a recording of a series warning the Turkish F-16 pilots had issued to the Russian jets without a Russian response, and U.S. and other NATO member states endorsed Turkey’s right to defend its airspace.

U.S. Defense Department spokesman Colonel Steve Warren supported the Turkish claim that 10 warnings had been issued over a period of five minutes. The Obama administration apparently expressed less concern about whether Russian planes had actually crossed into Turkish airspace. Col. Warren admitted that U.S. officials have still yet to establish where the Russian aircraft was located when a Turkish missile hit the plane.

Although the Obama administration is not about to admit it, the data already available supports the Russian assertion that the Turkish shoot-down was, as Russian President Vladimir Putin asserted, an “ambush” that had been carefully prepared in advance. The central Turkish claim that its F-16 pilots had warned the two Russian aircraft 10 times during a period of five minutes actually is the primary clue that Turkey was not telling the truth about the shoot-down.

The Russian Su-24 “Fencer” jet fighter, which is comparable to the U.S. F-111, is capable of a speed of 960 miles per hour at high altitude, but at low altitude its cruising speed is around 870 mph, or about 13 miles per minute. The navigator of the second plane confirmed after his rescue that the Su-24s were flying at cruising speed during the flight.

Close analysis of both the Turkish and Russian images of the radar path of the Russian jets indicates that the earliest point at which either of the Russian planes was on a path that might have been interpreted as taking it into Turkish airspace was roughly 16 miles from the Turkish border – meaning that it was only a minute and 20 seconds away from the border.

Furthermore according to both versions of the flight path, five minutes before the shoot-down the Russian planes would have been flying eastward – away from the Turkish border.

If the Turkish pilots actually began warning the Russian jets five minutes before the shoot-down, therefore, they were doing so long before the planes were even headed in the general direction of the small projection of the Turkish border in Northern Latakia province. In order to carry out the strike, in fact, the Turkish pilots would have had to be in the air already and prepared to strike as soon as they knew the Russian aircraft were airborne...

What is the reason for this?
Are my ridiculous speculations starting to make sense? Even I hope not. Even I hope that NATO was... is not really involved in opium in Afghanistan nor in ISIS oil flowing through Turkey and funds flowing back to ISIS.

However, in the past our governments would whip us with wire hangers, sort of like Joan Crawford's Mommie Dearest. Now they whip us with incomprehensible scorpions.

One of their favorite scorpion-whips is that there is no solution in Syria without   Assad; no solution with Assad. (Sorry about that typo: "without" for "with"... sort of changes the meaning a whole lot.)
I suppose that they wish it to work out like their other successes in creating new regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq.

 NATO Dearest Reacts To Russian Wire Hangers
and goes Totally Joan Crawford on Mr. Putin

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ISIS Gas And Fuel, LLC

Friendly Neighborhood ISIS Gas Station

After the attack in Paris, I wrote a post about the exceedingly strange nature of the war against ISIS.

What Kind Of War Is This?
http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2015/11/what-kind-of-war-is-this.html

New York Times:
U.S. Warplanes Strike ISIS Oil Trucks in Syria
By MICHAEL R. GORDON NOV. 16, 2015
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/17/world/middleeast/us-strikes-syria-oil.html?_r=0

ISTANBUL — Intensifying pressure on the Islamic State, United States warplanes for the first time attacked hundreds of trucks on Monday that the extremist group has been using to smuggle the crude oil it has been producing in Syria, American officials said...

And I asked, ".... the first time ?!?!"
The USA has had airplanes there and this is the first time it has used them to disrupt the flow of funds to ISIS? The USA never did this before? It took a hundred people in France to be killed before we could bomb and oil convoy of our ostensible enemy?

Was this war on terror against ISIS another one of our phony wars, like the war on drugs?
The war on drugs during which NATO occupied Afghanistan, after which Afghanistan jumped into first place in the world production of opium?

Now Mr. Putin of Russia says that oil from ISIS has been flowing into Turkey now for a long time. Therefore, a NATO country, Turkey, has been a major component in the flow of funds to ISIS through the sale of oil.

RT
‘Commercial scale’ oil smuggling into Turkey becomes priority target of anti-ISIS strikes
Published time: 27 Nov, 2015 00:42
Edited time: 27 Nov, 2015 03:09
https://www.rt.com/news/323603-isis-oil-smuggling-turkey/

... “We assume that the top political leadership of Turkey might not know anything about this [illegal oil trade]. Hard to believe, but it is theoretically possible,” Putin said, adding that this however does not excuse Ankara from not stopping the illegal smuggling of oil.

Putin pointed out the lack of smoke from any fires or the existence of any commercial enterprises created to deal with the destruction of oil, which would be possible to find if the Turkish leadership is aware and is seizing and destroying smuggled products, as it claims.

“But if the top political leadership [in Turkey] doesn’t know anything about this, let them find out. I can admit that there may be some elements of corruption, secret dealing, they should sort it out,” said Putin.

Putin stated that sales of oil from ISIS are in direct violation of international law, and that the proceeds from ‘black gold’ cost innocent people their lives.

“In this respect there is a special UN Security Council resolution banning the direct purchase of oil from terrorists, because these barrels, that they supply, it is not just oil, there is the blood of our citizens, because from the money [received], terrorists buy weapons, ammunition, and then conduct bloody actions,” Putin said...

Suddenly it may become clear why NATO has not bombed the oil convoys from ISIS: they may have been headed to a NATO ally, Turkey.
And there may be an answer for why ISIS stays close to the Turkish border, where the Russian fighters were shot down a few days ago, following terrorists and straying too close for Turkish comfort.

ISIS is just another means to the end...
as I said yesterday.

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Mr. Obama

I have an enormous admiration for Mr. Obama.
I think the long-term effort and planning that went into the Iran treaty was amazing, and men and women of lesser fortitude would have dropped along the wayside long ago. When it comes to this type of thoughtful negotiation, Mr. Obama is the best.

However, even though we wish that thoughtful negotiations would cure all the world's ills that are due to differences between peoples, I do not think that is always the case.

War is a case in point.

That is why the New York Times article from yesterday that reported that American airplanes attacked ISIS oil delivery trucks for the first time was so astounding for me.
Yet, upon reflection on Mr. Obama's style, it is not so surprising.

Mr. Obama only follows part of Sun Tzu's Art Of War.

Mr. Obama subscribes entirely to the peaceful method of achieving his goals with as little bloodshed as possible:

"For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill."

and seemingly ignores:

"What is essential in war is victory, not prolonged operations."

and 

“There is no instance of a nation benefitting from prolonged warfare.”

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What Kind Of War Is This...?

an empty shell...
(Lyrics from Stop The World, yadda-yadda-yadda)


New York Times:
U.S. Warplanes Strike ISIS Oil Trucks in Syria
By MICHAEL R. GORDONNOV. 16, 2015
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/17/world/middleeast/us-strikes-syria-oil.html?_r=0

ISTANBUL — Intensifying pressure on the Islamic State, United States warplanes for the first time attacked hundreds of trucks on Monday that the extremist group has been using to smuggle the crude oil it has been producing in Syria, American officials said...

The "first time"?

And since we are on the topic, just how much fighting is Turkey, our NATO ally doing?
They are bombing Kurds, who are fighting ISIS, but what is Turkey doing in this War on Terror?
What are our other allies in the region doing? Are there any Saudi troops or planes, or are they all in Yemen bombing weddings?


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Mercenaries In Syria

I am reprinting two posts about the nature of the "rebels" our country is supposed to be interested in supporting in Syria:

 AP Photo of Syrian Rebel

Associated Press   (link)
Muhammed Muheisen

In this Sunday, Aug. 26, 2012 file photo, Syrian rebel fighter Tawfiq Hassan, 23, a former butcher, poses for a picture, after returning from fighting against Syrian army forces in Aleppo, at a rebel headquarters in Marea on the outskirts of Aleppo city, Syria. America's Arab allies have dramatically stepped up weapon supplies to Syrian rebels in preparation for a push on the capital Damascus, the main stronghold of President Bashar Assad, officials and Western military experts say, with one official saying airlifts to neighboring Jordan and Turkey have doubled the past month. The U.S. and other Western governments are involved to channel the flow toward more secular fighters, they say. The influx appears to be boosting a rebel drive to seize supply routes from the border with Jordan to Damascus.

My Muslim friends, some of whom are from Syria, were surprised to see this picture; they were no more surprised than I was. I saw it early this morning and thought, "What in the world...?" as I fell off my chair.
There is a sequence of photos, each purporting to be some every-day Ahmad, who used to be a butcher, baker, or barber, who has taken up arms in the cause of freedom.

The man identified as Tawfiq Hassan has tattoos !
Tattoos are  haram  in Islam; they are forbidden.

Not only does this man have tattoos, but the tattoos picture animate creatures: two women crowned with doves, one on each shoulder blade.
The depiction of animate creatures is also haram, forbidden, to a greater or lesser degree, depending on one's school of the law.

It is, in other words, a double whammy... or haramān   (two forbiddens)... if you will.

I can imagine a good deal of serious discussion given in Muslim forums about tattoos and about the depiction of human beings, but I think it would take a long stretch of the imagination to think that anyone would look at these tattos and think anything but haram.

If this guy is anything but a mercenary, I will be very surprised.

If they are non-Islamic, who are they? Perhaps they are Middle Eastern, but they seem to have no religious roots. Perhaps they are the sociopaths being groomed to rule the future Syria.

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Following up my post on Tattooed Muslims, there was another story on CNN about an ex-US Army soldier arrested for fighting for Al Qaeda in Syria.

 

http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/28/justice/former-soldier-charged/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

Very interesting, very interesting.

Just a note on the tattoos, the soldier was obviously posing to show them off for the photographer. The photographer, who may have been from a Islamic background, may have very well known about the status of tattoos in Islam.

I am very surprised that such things would be a focus of a story about Syria. I mean, you would think no one would want to show off the tattoos, which are forbidden in the Hadiths of the Prophet 

It is very mysterious.

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Vox Rationis

Sweet Voice of Reason...

Mr. Putin said:

... We also remember certain episodes from the history of the Soviet Union. Social experiments for export, attempts to push for changes within other countries based on ideological preferences, often led to tragic consequences and to degradation rather than progress.

It seemed, however, that far from learning from others’ mistakes, everyone just keeps repeating them, and so the export of revolutions, this time of so-called democratic ones, continues. It would suffice to look at the situation in the Middle East and North Africa, as has been mentioned by previous speakers. Certainly political and social problems in this region have been piling up for a long time, and people there wish for changes naturally.

But how did it actually turn out? Rather than bringing about reforms, an aggressive foreign interference has resulted in a brazen destruction of national institutions and the lifestyle itself. Instead of the triumph of democracy and progress, we got violence, poverty and social disaster. Nobody cares a bit about human rights, including the right to life...

Seems spot on to me. Mr. Putin reminisces about the days when the super powers - 2 of 'em - exported ideologies by hook or by crook. He observes that the outcomes were often tragic. Now there is only one superpower left, but there still seems to be ideological packaging for export.

Since when did Democracy become a commodity to be handled by the Export-Import Bank? So much a commodity easily shipped across country borders that even Amazon could sell and ship Democracy.
Want brand-new democracy? Low price... just allow 5 to 7 days for shipping and civil wars to take place.

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The Uses Of Atomic Power

Der Tag wird heiß – wie wehst du kühl, o Weidenlaub von Babylon!
The days grow hot, O, Babylon; 'tis cool beneath thy willows trees.


Iran was plausibly capable of developing atomic weaponry; therefore, it is treated with respect and the USA and its allies negotiate an agreement with Iran to remove sanctions and not to develop atomic bombs.

Syria under its Baathist (secular) regime had no such capability. It is said that its research facility was bombed by the Israel ten years or so ago.

So Syria is treated like scum, and it is laid open to a myriad of war-mongering monsters, and its people are killed and spread in exile over the face of the earth......

--

The Death Of Aylan Kurdi

Aylan 


Indifference is the ghost beneath my bed,
the bush where tinsel ghosts congregate,
trolls that wish to party and dismember me,
to scatter the pieces of my body
around the Mediterranean -
(Venice of the soul, as we sink into a sea;
great Doges of our madness!) – 
like the alabaster torso of Osiris
washed up from Syria and Beirut,
drowned upon the shore,
where we Instagram
and soon forget
th’indifference what drove us mad.


 --

written 09/03/2015 on hearing of the death of Aylan Kurdi of Syria.

Descent Into Madness

 Aleppo

US accuses Assad of backing Islamic State's Aleppo advance

US Embassy in Damascus says Syrian military 'not only avoiding ISIS lines, but actively seeking to bolster their position.

Reuters
Published: 06.02.15, 17:29 / Israel News

The United States has accused the Syrian military loyal to President Bashar Assad of carrying out air strikes to help Islamic State fighters advance around the northern city of Aleppo, messages posted on the US Embassy in Syria's official Twitter feed said.

Islamic State fighters pushed back rival insurgents north of Aleppo on Sunday near the Turkish border, threatening their supply route to the city, fighters and a group monitoring the war said.

Fighters from Levant Front, a northern alliance which includes Western-backed rebels and Islamist fighters, said they were worried Islamic State was heading for the Bab al-Salam crossing between Aleppo and the Turkish province of Kilis...

The Assad Regime is working with IS?
Why?
Has there been an agreement between Assad and IS to partition Syria, leaving Assad with a power base in the western part of Syria and IS ruling in the eastern part and in what portions of Iraq and Turkey it may conquer?

Or is no one on top of the situation still?

--

Syria 2015

Syria Year-End Predictions and Analysis
by Joshua Landis (28 December 2014)
http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/year-end-predictions-analysis-joshua-landis-28-december-2014/

... In the bowels of the Pentagon, officers probably look at Assad’s state as a bulwark against ISIS and Nusra. They cannot allow it to be destroyed for fear that the the Jihadists will sweep into Damascus and Syria’s cities. Once ensconced in the capital, they would own Syria.

What is more, a new wave of refugees would flee from Syria into Lebanon and Jordan, possibly overwhelming both governments. Certainly Baathists, security personnel, and regime apparatchiks would flee. If Alawites, Christians, Druze and Shiites believed that they were no longer safe due to religious persecution, refugee numbers could reach into the millions. America’s policy has been to contain the violence in Syria. Regime collapse could defeat that policy, just as regime survival seems to defeat it.

Most of America’s allies and the Syrian opposition insist that US war planes should be bombing Assad as well as ISIS. The US cannot risk an extremist victory by destroying the Syrian Army. But US politicians also want to weaken the regime. Israel wants to destroy its advanced missile systems. Syria is a perfect case where US military planners may want a policy quite different from that set out by politicians...

In war, politicians' goals are the bloody maw of Moloch.

The hatred of politicians for Assad goes back to our ill-conceived war in Iraq, as if by throwing good money after bad and immeasurably increasing the pain and suffering in the region we may somehow redeem ourselves from our original sins.

--

Sow The Wind...

Flag Of The Syrian Social National Party

When slapped, it is said to turn the other cheek. After that, there is no further direction.

The first response being one of peace will engender a peaceful response in most people who have offended us in some way. Those who are immune to the peaceful response have to be handled some other way.
Even Gandhi missed this essential point when it came to dealing with Hitler.

Now the Christians of Syria have taken up arms.
It's time to read and inform ourselves.

1)
Resurgence of the SSNP in Syria: An Ideological Opponent of the Regime Gets a Boost from the Conflict
Posted by Matthew Barber on Friday, December 19th, 2014
by Joel Veldkamp
http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/resurgence-of-the-ssnp-in-syria-an-ideological-opponent-of-the-regime-gets-a-boost-from-the-conflict/

The Facebook page of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party’s Homs branch recently boasted: “The families of Homs return to their homes and thank the Party for providing security for them.”

[...]

While the SSNP does not spout sectarian rhetoric, it goes without saying that Syrian Christians perceived the rebel attacks on the Christian towns of Saddad, Maaloula, Sednaya and Kassab as attacks on their faith group. One possible interpretation of the SSNP’s vigorous fight against the Syrian opposition is that of a Christian resistance against Sunni Muslim attack...


2)
Al Monitor
Christians taking up fight in Syria
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/security/2014/03/syria-conflict-threat-to-christians-take-up-arms.html
In the midst of the civil war currently raging in Syria, the phenomenon of “fighting Christians” has appeared. It is clear that this phenomenon in western Syria is geographically confined to Christian villages in the area of Safita, its extension in Wadi al-Nasara, near the Christian quarter in Damascus, in the village of Saidnaya, in some of its surroundings in the Damascus countryside, and in perhaps limited areas with Greek Orthodox and Melkite concentrations...

Syrian Greek Catholics Fighting in Dukhaniyah

--

I Do Not Understand Our Policy In The Middle East

Washington denounces Syrian air strikes on ISIS
By Peter Symonds
28 November 2014
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/11/28/syri-n28.html

The US has seized on Syrian air force strikes on the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) stronghold of Raqqa to denounce Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and push for his government’s removal. For the past three years, the Obama administration has backed anti-Assad militias in Syria. The main aim of its new Middle Eastern war remains regime-change in Damascus.

US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki on Wednesday said the US was “horrified” by reports that Syrian air strikes the previous day killed scores of civilians. She condemned the Syrian regime’s “continued slaughter of Syria civilians” and “callous disregard for human life,” declaring that “Assad long ago lost all legitimacy to govern.”

I believe that the US airstrikes against ISIS also had some spoil sports grumbling about civilian deaths, and they kvetched about callous disregards.

(1) The USA is on track here to destroying another regime and replacing it with another incompetent buffoonery of democratic government which will be unable to defend itself, and

(2) the USA is arming militants who may - as did Al Qaida - turn our own arms against us.

Whatever this group in Washington thinks may be gained for the people of Syria by establishing a vast vacuum of leadership in this area will be lost 1,000 times over by the rush of violence coming in to fill the emptiness.

The only way any of all this makes any sense is the hypothesis that the USA wishes a Middle East filled with turmoil for the near future, perhaps another 66 years.

--

The Fog Of War

The phenomenon called "fog of war" usually occurs during intense battle, when information flows are interrupted, passions are high, and smoke obscures the fields of battle. No one can be sure what's going on.

Here in the USA, we have improved on the concept, and we have extended the fog of war even to the planning stages.
We started this process back in Iraq in 2003, when we mislaid the files containing the plans for what to do once the shooting stops. This ran at the same time as the Afghanistan war when we pushed the enemy out of the country, but notoriously failed to destroy his ability to re-infiltrate Afghanistan and to wage war.
A war which does not destroy the enemy's ability to wage war is more like a pugilistic walk in the park.

Concerning the entity now known as Islamic State, the Congress has voted to support a vastly flawed plan.
(Can you imagine what would happen if the idiots actually were not dysfunctional and were able to come together effectively to "run" our own country?!  It makes one tremble.)

Now Iran will not back the US led Alliance of Airplanes against IS, but will support Syria and Hezbollah in their fight against IS.
Of course, the USA, true to its long, long, long history of arming people and seeing those arms later turned against the USA itself, will "vet" Syrian rebels and supply the "good" rebels with arms to fight IS. (How we determine the "good" rebels probably comes down to asking them to pinkie swear that they will not use US weapons against US soldiers and people.)

Since Assad and Hezbollah will continue their fight against Syrian rebels - even the "good" ones - the two efforts against IS will soon find themselves at odds, and the independent efforts will soon turn from merely being uncoordinated into being actively deleterious to each other. Then the match will be "Advantage, Islamic State!"


... AND, in case you have not noticed, by doing this we have introduced ourselves into the middle of a religious civil war!

Sunni versus Shia. Our allies - Saudi Arabia, Qatar, etc. etc. - versus Iran.
The one thing everyone has agreed the USA should never do: step into a religious civil war in the Middle East, has just been accomplished by our elected leaders.

No fog in that war, pal. We got a pretty good idea what's going to happen.
--

Who Is ISIS? 2

 AP Photo of Syrian Rebel

ISIS is our creation just as Osama bin Laden was.

ISIS is a group of monsters and mercenaries we - and our "friends"... the wispy-minded Doctors Praetorius that infest the graveyards of our foreign policy - hired to do our dirty work. Remember the post I ran about the Syrian Civil War, in which the photo above appeared?
http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2013/03/tattoed-muslims.html

Not only tattoed, but tattoed with blatant female imagery. That is just the type of thing an observant and pious Sunni Muslim would do, right? Not!

The so-called "militants" are monsters and mercenaries.
They are not a group of Sunni religious minded people who just happen to kill and crucify other people.

So, who has lied to us?

The President has lied to us about our support of monsters in Syria.
The House of Representatives has lied to us, particularly Rep. Mike Rogers of Michigan.
The Senate has lied to us.
The Media has lied to us.
And we lie to each other.

People that continuously believe that they can control their own monsters, even after copious experience has shown otherwise, are the veritable monsters.


--

postscriptum:

 Photo of Dr. Praetorius