'Palestinians' threaten members of UNESCO World Heritage Committee over Jerusalem vote
It's not the first time that the 'Palestinians' have threatened seemingly stronger countries to kotow them to do their bidding. But it's certainly one of the most blatant instances. There's a vote of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee coming up tomorrow that would once again deny the Jewish connection to the Temple Mount. And in light of comments about last week's vote made by Mexico, Brazil and Italy (none of which have a vote tomorrow), the 'Palestinian Authority' is making sure with threats that UNESCO's World Heritage Committee toes the line.
The resolution, which refers to the Temple Mount solely by its Muslim
name of Al-Haram Al Sharif, is expected to be approved by the committee
at its 40th session.
But in light of public statements on such resolutions made last
week by Italy, Mexico and Brazil, the Palestinians want the resolution
to pass by consensus, with the full support of all 21 member states of
the World Heritage Committee (WHC).
On Monday, they sent a letter to committee members asking them to submit their positions on the resolution by noon Tuesday.
“Otherwise,
the delegation of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and the delegation of
Palestine would and according to the rules of procedure be obliged to
consider other options,” they stated.
Without pledges of a
consensus approval, the Palestinians and Jordanians plan to resubmit a
text with language that was even more problematic to Israel, explained
Israel’s Ambassador to UNESCO Carmel Shama-Hacohen.
Wednesday’s
vote, had initially been scheduled to take place in Istanbul in July,
but the failed coup in Turkey cut that session short.
At the
time, the Palestinians and the Jordanians had worked out a consensus
text which they understood had the support of the European Union and the
WHC.
In their letter, they reminded WHC members of this
agreement and said, “At the beginning of the current WHC40 session, we
learned that a few member states are still hesitant whether they can
commit to our agreement in Istanbul or not.”
The Jordanians and the Palestinians said that they understood this “hesitance as a retreat from the consensual language.”
Shama-Hacohen said in response that “the Palestinians and the Arab states understand that after Mexico and Italy there might be more unpleasant surprises."
“They
are broadcasting a message that says don’t abandon us or we’ll burn the
house down with extremist anti-Israel resolutions,” said Shama-Hacohen.
He added that such resolutions would only cause tremendous damage to
UNESCO, under whose umbrella the WHC operates.
Just so totally shocked to hear UNESCO approves living a lie.
“There is a 47 mile long “Open Border” with Mexico. This makes It is
very convenient for terrorists because what they do is fly to Mexico
City, then fly to Ciudad Juarez. The beginning of the “open border zone”
is literally 11 miles from the Juarez airport.
...
So think for a second an open border within 11 miles of a major
international airport. How convenient is that for the terrorists, called
”Other than Mexican’s” to cross into the USA/ Your government tax
dollars at work. If you don’t want to get your feet too wet you continue
east and come across the border between Esperanza and Fort Hancock
where the river is less than 6 inches deep. We put almost 100
miles on our car criss-crossing this 47 mile long open zone and we did
not find one…..Not one Border Patrol agent guarding the border.
So we drove and drove and we drove some more; we looked and we
searched… We put almost 100 miles on our car criss crossing this 47 mile
long open zone and we did not find one…..Not one Border Patrol agent
guarding the border.
So a Border Patrol agent in El Paso told me a 75%
reduction in field staffing in East County (the open border zone). The
correct answer from our research is that there is 100% stand down of
border patrol agents allowing any and everyone to cross over the open
unsecured borders into the USA.
Regardless of your political affiliation you really have to wonder what is going on here. The people coming into Estados Undios/United States here are not Mexicans. They are categorized as OTM (Other than Mexican).
They routinely caught people from (the following countries)….
Iran
Iraq
Pakistan
Egypt
Syria
Yemen
Turkey
...
(Editor’s Note: This is a who’s who list of countries containing terrorists
who want to do harm to all Americans. It is also interesting to note
that many of the countries listed in the Barber Report include the same
countries that we see in Refugee/Resettlement
programs which are bringing tens of thousands of unscreened immigrants
into the U.S. Further, this reports casts the OTM invasion of the United
States, last summer, in a different light. Last summer’s border
invasion was a cover for ISIS to set up camps and prepare to strike at targets inside of the United States....)
“When we take a big ISIS hit and we will! You now
know where our government let them into this country. You will know how
they circumvented the internal Border Patrol checkpoints which are too
busy arresting legal Americans and seizing their cash… El Paso, which is
the only major city in the United States where you can not leave the
area without being checked at an internal Border Patrol checkpoint. It
is curious that the government says these checkpoints are to enforce
immigration laws yet over 84% of those arrested at these internal checkpoints are legal United States Citizens .
The fines from these arrests are a source of revenue for the Obama
administration. If you have over $1000 in cash on you that is legally
yours, “they” (your USA government) seizes/ your money…
Why did I mention Chicago in the title? Read it all to find out.
The exact location where the terrorist group has established its base
is around eight miles from the U.S. border in an area known as “Anapra”
situated just west of Ciudad Juárez in the Mexican state of Chihuahua.
Another ISIS cell to the west of Ciudad Juárez, in Puerto Palomas,
targets the New Mexico towns of Columbus and Deming for easy access to
the United States, the same knowledgeable sources confirm.
During the course of a joint operation last week, Mexican Army and
federal law enforcement officials discovered documents in Arabic and
Urdu, as well as “plans” of Fort Bliss – the sprawling military
installation that houses the US Army’s 1st Armored Division. Muslim prayer rugs were recovered with the documents during the operation.
Law enforcement and intelligence sources report the area around
Anapra is dominated by the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes Cartel (“Juárez
Cartel”), La Línea (the enforcement arm of the cartel) and the Barrio
Azteca (a gang originally formed in the jails of El Paso). Cartel
control of the Anapra area make it an extremely dangerous and hostile
operating environment for Mexican Army and Federal Police operations.
According to these same sources, “coyotes” engaged in human smuggling
– and working for Juárez Cartel – help move ISIS terrorists through the
desert and across the border between Santa Teresa and Sunland Park, New
Mexico. To the east of El Paso and Ciudad Juárez, cartel-backed
“coyotes” are also smuggling ISIS terrorists through the porous border
between Acala and Fort Hancock, Texas. These specific areas were
targeted for exploitation by ISIS because of their understaffed
municipal and county police forces, and the relative safe-havens the
areas provide for the unchecked large-scale drug smuggling that was
already ongoing.
Mexican intelligence sources report that ISIS intends to exploit the
railways and airport facilities in the vicinity of Santa Teresa, NM (a
US port-of-entry). The sources also say that ISIS has “spotters” located
in the East Potrillo Mountains of New Mexico (largely managed by the
Bureau of Land Management) to assist with terrorist border crossing
operations. ISIS is conducting reconnaissance of regional universities;
the White Sands Missile Range; government facilities in Alamogordo, NM;
Ft. Bliss; and the electrical power facilities near Anapra and
Chaparral, NM.
In the meanwhile, the Obama administration has legalized the presence of millions of illegal immigrants in the United States without any kind of background checks. Some of them are likely Islamist terrorists.
If they're running drugs from Mexico, I suppose it's inevitable that they're also in the American Southwest.
Terrorism expert Matthew Levitt writes
that an increasing number of U.S. prison inmates have tattoos that are
pro-Hezbollah or are in Farsi, the language spoken in Iran. The claim is
made in Levitt’s new book, Hezbollah: The Global Footprint of Lebanon's Party of God.
“Law enforcement officials across the
Southwest are reporting a rise in imprisoned gang members with Farsi
tattoos” and some express loyalty to Hezbollah.
His book includes an eye-opening quote
from another official: “You could almost pick your city and you would
probably have a [Hezbollah] presence.”
Hezbollah’s business relationship with Mexican drug cartels is seen as a driving force behind the phenomenon.
Let's go to the videotape.
Read it all. And think about what will happen if the Obama administration succeeds in making them all legal.
State Department decides Iran in Latin America not a threat
Adam Kredo reports that the US State Department has decided that Iran doesn't pose a threat in Latin America.
“The final classified report you received reflects the view of the
entire Administration,” State Department Assistant Secretary Thomas
Gibbons wrote in a Sept. 5 letter to Rep. Jeff Duncan (R., S.C.), who
released the letter publicly late Friday.
The administration claims this view is held throughout the U.S. government.
“Our characterization of the Iranian threat in the Western Hemisphere
is shared by all relevant agencies within the executive branch,
including the Department of Defense and intelligence agencies,” Gibbons
wrote.
...“Iran’s involvement in the Western Hemisphere is a matter for concern,” the letter stated.
Duncan called this response troubling and criticized the State Department for stonewalling congressional investigators.
“The State Department has chosen to obstruct congressional oversight
of Iran’s deepening relations with countries in Latin America by sending
a letter that did not answer even a single question,” Duncan said in a
statement.
“The State Department owes the American people answers to these
questions on whether they still believe Iran’s influence is ‘waning’ in
the Western Hemisphere,” he said.
“Recent congressional hearings on this issue uncovered disturbing
evidence of Iran’s ability to recruit over a thousand students from
Latin America to travel to Iran for training, obtain fraudulent passport
documentation, exploit free trade zones and loose border security
measures, and cooperate with drug cartels and criminal networks,” he
said.
...
The State Department’s minority view of Iran is reflective of a
bureaucratic culture that downplays serious threats, said Roger Noriega,
a former State Department official and U.S. ambassador to the
Organization for American States.
“I have not read the classified report, but the unclassified document
is a joke,” said Noriega, a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise
Institute. “Even after Benghazi, the culture of the State Department is
one of willful neglect.”
Iran’s proxy group Hezbollah has a foothold in the region and plans attack nearly “every day,” Noriega said.
“Based on documents and information that my team has obtained from
sources in the region, which we have shared with numerous U.S. Agencies,
I am convinced that Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorist are plotting every
day to launch an attack against U.S. Interests in Latin America, aided
and abetted by Venezuela and other hostile regimes in the region,” he
said.
Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander: US law enforcement officials are furious over the release from prison of Mexican drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero, who ordered the murder of a US Drug Enforcement Administration agent in 1985.
Caro Quintero was sentenced to 40 years in prison for the 1985 kidnapping and killing of DEA agent Enrique Camarena
but a Mexican federal court ordered his release this week saying he
had been improperly tried in a federal court for state crimes.
The 60-year-old walked out of a prison in the western state of Jalisco early Friday after serving 28 years of his sentence.
“The release of this violent butcher is but another example of how good faith efforts by the U.S. to work with the Mexican government can be frustrated by those powerful dark forces that work in the shadows of the Mexican ‘justice’ system,” the organization said in a statement.
Prime Minister Netanyahu posted to his website the astounding success rate of Israel's newly completed border fence on its border with Egypt (Hat Tip: Ricky G).
"The fence that we built in the south is achieving the result for
which it was erected," Netanyahu said. "As opposed to the over 2,000
infiltrators who entered Israel exactly one year ago and dispersed to
various cities, in May 2013 exactly two infiltrators crossed the border
and were detained. Now we need to focus on repatriating the illegal
infiltrators who are here, and we will meet this task as well."
The main, 144-mile section of the fence was completed in early 2013, according to a January report by the Wall Street Journal.
It is sixteen feet high and includes "barbed wire, surveillance cameras
and radar." By comparison, the U.S.-Mexico border is roughly 2,000
miles long, and only about a third is fenced off. The Israeli fence's
construction was accelerated due to security concerns in the years since
Egyptian autocrat Hosni Mubarak left power, leaving a vacuum eventually
filled by a Muslim Brotherhood government.
If I were a drug dealer in Mexico, I'd be really happy that Obama is President of the United States and not Netanyahu....
I've been warning for years now about the infiltration of Islamic terrorists from Mexico and other countries in the south into the United States. I have warned of the existence of Hezbullah sleeper cells in Latin America and in the United States itself. In the wake of the Boston Marathon terror attack, there is now a similar warning from the Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, Representative Michael McCaul (R-Texas).
“We’re concerned about Hezbollah operatives here in the United States,” McCaul told a San Diego news outlet.
“While
before they had a relationship [in America] about money, finance, the
fact they could become operational is very much a national security
concern.”
McCaul worked on a November 2012 House subcommittee
report, titled “Line in the Sand,” which “concluded that Iran and
Hezbollah pose a threat to the entire Western Hemisphere including the
United States and our southwest border.”
According to the
document, Hezbollah is keenly aware of the porous nature of the border
around San Diego, and its leadership has been channeling money to drug
cartels in exchange for a foothold near the US-Mexico border and aid in
crossing it. The report cites at least one intelligence mission in
coordination with Colombian authorities – called Operation Titan – that
led to the seizure of $23 million in assets.
The report notes the
arrest of Said Jaziri – a suspected Muslim extremist from Tunisia – who
was smuggled across the San Diego border with Mexico in the trunk of a
car.
After four and a half years of open gates under the Obama administration, and after 16 years of lax enforcement under the Clinton and Bush administration, shutting off illegal immigration now is like shutting the barn door after the cow has escaped... except that in this case, there are still more cows left in the barn, and there is a possibility of returning other cows to the barn (i.e. deportation). The United States would do well to be a lot more careful to whom it grants citizenship and visa extensions.
Hezbullah partners with Mexican drug kingpin, Iran launders money through Venezuela, State Department buries head in sand
In April, it will be seven years since I first warned about Hezbullah activities in Mexico. Now, with the State Department still ostrich-like burying its head in the sand, the chickens are coming home to roost. Adam Kredo reports on Hezbullah's partnership with a Mexican drug kingpin and Iran laundering billions of dollars through Venezuela (Sanctions? What sanctions?), while the State Department continues to pretend not to see anything (Hat Tip: Sunlight).
Iran’s foothold in the country is expected to grow exponentially
under the rule of Chavez’s likely successor, Vice President Nicolas
Maduro.
[Roger] Noriega and other experts warned House lawmakers at a Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Wednesday that Iran’s terrorist proxy Hezbollah is gaining power in Venezuela.
Hezbollah, which carries out terrorist attacks on Iran’s behalf, has
helped Tehran access Venezuela’s sophisticated financial sector, experts
said.
“It’s easy to say billions have been laundered through various
Iranian enterprises and institutions through the Venezuelan economy,”
Noriega told the Free Beacon in an interview Thursday. “The Iranians have seized on this as a way to evade sanctions.”
Hezbollah has not only infiltrated Venezuela’s governmental bodies.
The organization has also established terrorist training facilities on
the country’s Margarita Island, according to Noriega.
Hezbollah has been able to form from this Caribbean haven “a marriage
of convenience” with various narcotics traffickers and drug gangs that
bring the terrorist “threat to our doorstep,” Noriega told lawmakers
Wednesday.
The Mexican drug lord Joaquin Guzman, ringleader of the deadly Sinaloa Cartel, is known to have spent time on Margarita Island where he likely established ties with Hezbollah, according to Noriega.
“Our [belief] is that the brokered a relationship, a collaboration
between Hezbollah and that narco group,” said Noriega, who also served
as the U.S. ambassador to the Organization of American states from 2001
to 2003.
Read the whole thing. If you're an Israeli, it's obvious to you why this is so bad, but if you're an American, think about this: There have been hundreds of thousands of converts to Islam in Mexico over the last few years. What if some of those Mexicans stealing across the border into the United States are adherents of 'radical Islam' who are forming Hezbullah cells in the United States? What if? You can bet that it's happening. And now, President Obama is granting them amnesty so that they can stay in the US.
Hezbullah presence in Toronto threatens Upstate New York
Legislation signed into law in December calls on the US State Department to assess the dangers to the United States - and particularly to Upstate New York - from the presence of Hezbullah in North America. Hezbullah has a large presence in Toronto. It has also become a major player in drug running in Mexico.
Though the law is formally titled the Countering Iran in the Western
Hemisphere Act, the counterterrorism legislation correctly views
Hezbollah and Iran’s anti-American clerical regime as a merged terror
apparatus.Iran’s
rulers generously fund Hezbollah’s global terrorism activities. And
there is no shortage of compelling evidence to explain why Hezbollah
remains a lethal threat to Americans and U.S. interests in both North
and South America. Hezbollah — a Lebanese-based Shiite group founded in
1982 — launched a terror campaign against the United States shortly
after its 1982 inception. David Cohen, under-secretary of the Treasury
for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, said in August, “Before Al
Qaeda’s attack on the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001, Hezbollah was responsible
for killing more Americans in terrorist attacks than any other terrorist
group.”
...
The United States designated Hezbollah a terrorist entity in 1995.
The growing involvement of Hezbollah in the Mexican narcotics trade
coupled with its clandestine operatives across the U.S. and Canada
present a significant security threat. “Does Hezbollah use Buffalo as a
pathway to its other operations in the U.S.?” Higgins asked, according
to the Buffalo News.
“Or do they use Buffalo as a pathway to Canada?”The
new legislation will require the U.S. State Department to address the
types of questions posed by Higgins in a study and examine other gaps in
U.S. national security in connection with Iran and Hezbollah. The
terrorism reach of Iran and Hezbollah has inflicted damage on our allies
in Europe and in the Middle East. U.S. and Israeli intelligence
officials attributed the suicide bombing in July, which blew up a bus
full of Israeli tourists in the Bulgarian village of Burgas, to a joint
Iran-Hezbollah operation. The terror attack resulted in the murders of
five Israelis and their Bulgarian bus driver.
Doing a study is very nice but the real question is what the US will do with the results. And why Canada is allowing a situation like this to continue.
The first post I wrote about Hezbullah operating in Mexico was in April 2006. In the time since then, Hezbullah has become more entrenched and has become deeply involved in trafficking cocaine. Now, with their Iranian funding drying up due to sanctions relating to the Iranian nuclear program, the Mexican cocaine operation is becoming a major source of Hezbullah funding.
US intelligence indicates that Mexico is home to some 200,000 Syrian
and Lebanese immigrants – most of them illegal – who were able to
cross the border via an extensive web of contacts with drug cartels,
both in Mexico and in other countries in South America.
These cartel contacts smuggle illegal immigrants – including individuals affiliated with Iran, Hezbollah,
al-Qaeda and other radical Islamist groups – into Mexico, placing them a virtual stone's-throw away from the United States.
Western intelligence agencies have been able to gather ample evidence
suggesting that the drug cartels in Mexico – which are the de facto
rulers of the northern districts bordering the US – are in cahoots with
Islamic terror organizations, which are eager to execute attacks against
American, Israeli, Jewish
and western targets; but most of all, the Islamic terror groups are
eager to make money, so they can fund their nefarious aspirations.
In December 2011, the US authorities released an indictment filed
against Lebanese drug lord Ayman Juma, which exposed Hezbollah's
involvement with the Los Zetas drug cartel. According to the US
Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), Los Zetas is the most technologically advanced and most dangerous cartel operating in Mexico.
Juma was indicted in absentia for smuggling 85 tons of cocaine into
the US and for laundering $850 million for Los Zetas. He was also
accused of serving as a go-between for the Mexican crime syndicate and
the Shiite terror group.
According to US officials, for a modest 8%-14% commission, Juma's
money laundering process would take about a week. The operation involved
bank accounts in dozens of countries, making it virtually impossible to
track the dirty money.
According to the
indictment, Hezbollah is using Juma's cartel connections to minimize its
dependency on Iranian funding. The international sanctions crippling
Tehran's economy have taken a serious bite out of the $200 million in
annual aid given to Hezbollah, but the latter's appetite for cash has
only grown. Los Zetas' Beirut-based money man has reportedly helped the
Shiite terror group meet its financial needs.
I've been warning for years about Hezbullah infiltrating Latin America. On Saturday night, three alleged Hezullah terrorists were arrested in Mexico. One of them, Rafic Mohammad Labboun Allaboun, is a US citizen and was deported to the US on Sunday to face prior charges in Houston. The other two were carrying Belizean passports at the time of their arrest.
Labboun Allaboun was arrested in a house located in the street 41-B, between 56 and 5 of the colony Francisco de Montejo in the west part of the city. At the moment of the arrest, the suspect identified himself with a fake passport from the government of Belize.
Eyewitnesses from the colony, where the operative took place, recalled that close to 9 PM vehicles from the INM and the SSP parked front of the premises, several officers heavily armed got out, and in a very quick and effective operation arrested three men. The suspects were taken, apparently, to a security complex located on the loop highway escorted by a high security convoy.
In the same operation, George Abdalah Elders and Justin Yasser Safa were also arrested; both Belizeans citizens with valid migratory forms (FM1) issued by the INM.
Official sources stated that intelligence agencies from the United States were tracking down this group, allegedly part of the terrorist network of Hezbollah, this cell operates in Mexico and Central America.
After the arrest, information leaked that somehow Labboun Allaboun is linked to the 911 attack of the Twin Towers in New York, the data has not yet been fully confirmed.
Allegedly the group arrested were participating in financing activities in an attempt to bail out incarcerated Hezbollah members jailed in the United States.
Over the years, I've done many posts about why Americans should be concerned about Islamic terrorists entering their country from Mexico. See, for example, here. Here's another story that shows how Hezbullah and Islam continue to make inroads in Mexico, starting with 200,000 Syrians and Lebanese who live among the United States' southern neighbor (Hat Tip: Elihu S).
The evidence that many Islamists in Mexico are plotting against the U.S., using all means—such as drug trafficking, which is not forbidden in Sharia law if it serves to empower Islam—is overwhelming.
Under various methods—from the violent to the subversive to the exploitative—Islam allows Muslims to lie and commit other duplicitous acts in the furtherance of Islam. Taqiyya [dissimulation] permits Hezbollah and other Islamists To engage in Mexico's drug cartel, just as "pious" members of the Taliban in Afghanistan pursued the heroin trade. Aside from sheer violence, justified as "jihad," or holy war, tactics pursued by Mexico's Islamists include:
Kidnappings and enslavement, for which Mexico is already notorious. Sharia permits kidnapping, and even enslaving the infidel, in this situation, any non-Muslim in Mexico. The Quran not only approves of this, but allows male jihadists to have sex with female captives of war (Sura 4, verse 3). Here, for example, is a Muslim politician trying to legalize the institution of "sex-slavery."
Extortion and blackmail, features of the Mexican landscape, are also permissible in Islam. According to Sharia, during jihad, Muslims are permitted to hold for ransom infidels to be sold back for large amounts of money. Here, for instance, is a popular Egyptian sheikh saying that the Islamic world's problem is that it has stopped plundering and enslaving its infidel neighbors. He even boasts that under true Sharia, he could go to the local market and "buy" a female "sex-slave."
In using subversive elements for da'wa, Muslims might comfortably use false arguments to turn Mexicans against their northern neighbors. They might, for instance, argue that Islam is a religion of "racial equality," whereas Christianity is the "white man's" religion, imposed on their ancestors by racist whites who sought to keep them "impoverished" beyond the border. Islamist strategies in Mexico amount to trying to win the unbelievers over to their side, whether through conversion or just cooperation. For those who refuse to cooperate, they are infidels to be used in any way that seems fit.
PUBLICATION: ask me first ATTRIBUTION: N/A SOURCE DESCRIPTION: MX301 - Former Mexican cop, Latam military analyst, writes for Jane's SOURCE RELIABILITY: A ITEM CREDIBILITY: 1 SUGGESTED DISTRIBUTION: SPECIAL HANDLING: n/a
...
Ok, here's the really juicy part: There is a private Mexican company called Idra that the government funded to make UAVs. They are actually pretty high standard according to him and beat out the Israeli UAVs in testing. My friend was consulting Idra at the time and so he was privy to a lot of deals that were on the table. This is the story --
The Mexican government is now paying some $25m (? can get the #s later) for UAVs from Israel. Idra is basically like WTF, but the reason is basically corruption. There is a deal b/w the Mexican interior ministry and the Israelis where they're getting a hefty kickback.
This is the interesting part, though.
Idra had an offer to sell UAVs to Georgia (this was happening during and after the war). The reason Georgia needed the UAVs is because the UAVs they had bought from Israel had been compromised by the Russians. The Russians got the data link for the UAV (there is some suspicion that the Israelis after the war may have given this to them. Remember all the intense mtgs b/w the Israelis and the Russians where the Russians got the Israelis to back off of defense deals to Georgia in return for Russia backing off Iran?). Anyway, the Georgians gave Idra a picture of one of their crashed UAVs. The source explained though that if the UAV were targeted, it would have been blown to pieces pretty much (it's like the size of a car basically). But the picture he saw showed the UAV intact. He inquired and basically what happened was that the Russians acquired the data link to hack into the system and force the UAV into the ground. I think they may have crashed another one too.
So, since the Georgian UAVs were compromised, they then tried to sell them to the Azerbaijanis. I dont know if that deal went through. Idra backed off the deal to Georgia because they were advised that it would raise a lot of political complications between Mexico and Russia.
...
PUBLICATION: No, but ask first ATTRIBUTION: N/A SOURCE DESCRIPTION: MX301 - Former Mexican cop, Latam military analyst, writes for Jane's SOURCE RELIABILITY: A ITEM CREDIBILITY: 1 SUGGESTED DISTRIBUTION: SPECIAL HANDLING: n/a
Met with my Mexican source/friend again today and dude is getting shadier by the day. We followed up on our past discussion on Russia compromising the Israeli-made Georgian UAVs prior to the August war.
Here is what else I learned
One of the source's friends/colleagues -- formerly military i think but now does private defense deals on the side (it's Mexico) contacted him in July (prior to the Georgia war). Apparently the Georgians had contacted this guy because they were frantically looking for a replacement for the Israeli UAVs that were compromised....
Here is the most interesting part:
I inquired more about the compromised Israeli UAVs. What he explained was that Israel and Russia made a swap -- Israel gave Russia the 'data link' code for those specific UAVs; in return, Russia gave Israel the codes for Iran's Tor-M1s.
I asked about the S-300 (source tracks a lot of defense deals for Jane's). He doesn't think the Russians will give it to the Iranians. Besides, he said... Israel and Turkey have been collaborating very closely on the S-300s. He explain how about 8 years ago when Russia sold S-300s to Greece to base in Crete (which were supposed to protect Cyprus), Russia delivered those with a carrier so that Turkey wouldn't try to sink them. (things got a bit noisy so i may have misheard some of this). The gist of what he said is that Turkey has been cracking the S-300 since the Crete sale and has been sharing intel on the S-300 with the Israelis to ensure that they retain an advantage over Iran should Iran get them from the Russians.
as far as the Georgian UAVs go, they were interested in the Mexican ones because the Mexican UAVs had something (forget the name. it was auto-something' that basically backs up teh UAV system in case someone hacks into it and immediately returns the UAV to base.
Hmmm.
By the way, that's a Tor M-1 at the top.
UPDATE 1:41 AM
I forgot to add that Israel Radio has been reporting all evening that Georgia's Foreign Minister was here for a one-day 'secret' mission on Tuesday. But if Stratfor was correct and Georgia knew its UAV's had been compomrised, one has to wonder why he was here now. It may have had nothing to do with this.
Here's Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler for Friday, November 18.
1) Why do rational people make irrational decisions? If you follow baseball, like I do, you've probably noticed that baseball has changed a bit in the past 20 years. Whether it is the way teams evaluate player or reporters cover the game, statistical analysis is playing a bigger role in baseball. Bill James, who spurred this revolution in baseball, wrote the following observations:
“Baseball men, living from day to day in the clutch of carefully metered chance occurrences, have developed an entire bestiary of imagined causes to tie together and thus make sense of patterns that are in truth entirely accidental,” James wrote. “They have an entire vocabulary of completely imaginary concepts used to tie together chance groupings. It includes ‘momentum,’ ‘confidence,’ ‘seeing the ball well,’ ‘slumps,’ ‘guts,’ ‘clutch ability,’ being ‘hot’ and ‘cold,’ ‘not being aggressive’ and my all time favorite the ‘intangibles.’ By such concepts, the baseball man gains a feeling of control over a universe that swings him up and down and tosses him from side to side like a yoyo in a high wind.” It wasn’t just baseball he was writing about, James continued. “I think that the randomness of fate applies to all of us as much as baseball men, though it might be exacerbated by the orderliness of their successes and failures.”
The letter quoted here, was written to Amos Tversky. Tversky and his colleague, Daniel Kahneman described thought processes that explained why people would make bad decisions even if they seemingly had all the necessary information and expertise to make good ones.
Michael Lewis (of "Moneyball" fame) caught up with Dr. Kahneman and got him to describe his conclusions. Writing for Vanity Fair, Lewis explained (h/t Rob Neyer):
Kahneman walks the lay reader (i.e., me) through the research of the past few decades that has described, as it has never been described before, what appear to be permanent kinks in human reason. The story he tells has two characters—he names them “System 1” and “System 2”—that stand in for our two different mental operations. System 1 (fast thinking) is the mental state in which you probably drive a car or buy groceries. It relies heavily on intuition and is amazingly capable of misleading and also of being misled. The slow-thinking System 2 is the mental state that understands how System 1 might be misled and steps in to try to prevent it from happening. The most important quality of System 2 is that it is lazy; the most important quality of System 1 is that it can’t be turned off. We pass through this life on the receiving end of a steady signal of partially reliable information that we only occasionally, and under duress, evaluate thoroughly. Through these two characters the author describes the mistakes your mind is prone to make and then explores the reasons for its errors.
I’ve come to realize a hitherto hidden dimension of why it is so hard for Western establishment figures (policymakers, journalists, and academics) to understand the Middle East. It is the conflict between the thirst for good news and the reality of bad news. Being optimists (based on the relatively good course of their own societies?) and believing that positive change is really easy if people only put their minds to making it happen (ditto and also liberal thinking), they exaggerate any sign that things are getting better. Moreover, contemporary thinking trembles in horror about saying anything critical about Third World peoples (racism, Islamophobia) while it is considered noble to criticize “ourselves.” On top of that is the assumption that no one can really be radical. They are just responding to past mistreatment and will revert to being moderate the minute the oppression is corrected. So constantly we are led to an artificial optimism that ignores threats or even converts them into benefits.
Prof Rubin is effectively describing a collective of "System 1" thinkers dominating field of Middle East studies, diplomacy and journalism.
Here at Gruenewald railway station, on these platforms, on 39.11.42, three children of the Bobkar family - Maly, Hala and Abraham - stood here by themselves.Perhaps the two older sisters held their seven-year-old brother by the hand. They stood here without mother or father and the train came. The transport number was #23, the destination was Auschwitz, they were among the first. The Wansee Conference had taken place not long before, on the other side of the forest.
The Bobkar children, as Sharon told, were on the way to their deaths.
In 1958, shortly after Yaakov moved to Israel, he and his wife filled out a page of testimony at Yad Vashem commemorating his dead parents. Nahum had meanwhile settled in Ukraine, where his surname was mangled into Koramblyum. For the rest of their lives, the brothers searched for each other in vain, the paper trail often coming to a dead end because of the differing spellings of their names. In 2006, Yaakov’s daughter, Bracha Fleishman-Korenblum, updated the online entry, attaching an old black-and-white photo of her grandparents and four of their children — including Nahum and Yaakov. Two months ago, one of Nahum’s American grandchildren stumbled upon the entry and was shocked to recognize his grandfather in the picture. He reached out to the Korenblum clan in Israel and a reunion was put into motion.
3) The Iran Mexico axis
A few weeks ago it was reported that a couple of Iranians had plotted to kill the Saudi ambassador to the United States. The Iranians were intending to enlist a Mexican drug ring to carry out the hit. But what was the connection.
This week the London Times reported (h/t Honest Reporting) that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards were engaged in the international drug trade. A shorter version of the article appears to have been published in the Australian.
Iranian sources, including a former IRGC intelligence officer, have named two senior figures within the Guard involved in the drug trade. Abdullah Araghi, the IRGC commander for Greater Tehran, is alleged to have extensive connections with gangs in Eastern Europe. Mohsen Rafighdoost was head of the IRGC in the 1980s and has maintained close contact with the organisation since retiring. Sajjad Haghpanah, a former investigator with the IRGC's domestic intelligence division, said drug trafficking was endemic within the unit. "There are several commanders involved in smuggling narcotics. Raw opium or morphine is smuggled in from Afghanistan and developed in labs inside Iran," said Mr Haghpanah. "They work with criminal gangs to move it overseas. They have their own ships, aircraft and haulage companies, everything needed for import and export. Their power is limitless."
Is this where the suspects first came into contact with drug gangs? 4) NGO proliferation
Gerald Steinberg, the group’s president, said, however, that he opposed the two new bills under consideration. He added that he suspected they would not survive. ... He said that European governments spend more per year on left-wing Israeli and pro-Palestinian groups than their total contributions to nonprofit human rights groups in other countries in the Middle East. “We estimate that together, this amounts to between $75 and $100 million from European governments to Israeli and Palestinian groups annually, far exceeding funding for human rights and democracy organizations in the rest of the region,” he said.
That's a pretty ridiculous focus on Israel. Daled Amos provides (NGO Monitor's) chart. It looks like a number of people are well paid for digging up damaging information against Israel and then being a primary source for news stories.
A tunnel running 250 feet beneath the U.S.-Mexican border has been discovered fully kitted out with electricity, water pumps and ventilation.
Authorities in Arizona said although they've found dozens of tunnels in Nogales, a city in Santa Cruz County since the 1990s, this one is by far the most sophisticated.
Chief border patrol agent Randy Hill said those who were building it had chiselled through solid rock and installed lighting and other equipment.
Border patrol found an entrance to the tunnel on May 2 in an abandoned building. An investigation has begun with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the Mexican government.
The tunnel lies 15 feet beneath the ground and is three feet wide and five feet high.
Chief Hill said: 'This tunnel is more sophisticated than other recently discovered tunnels. They chiselled through solid rock and then installed electricity, lighting, water pumps, and ventilation.
There are two groups with expertise in designing tunnels like that: Hamas and Hezbullah.We already know that Hezbullah has operatives in Mexico and Hamas is also rumored to be involved in drug smuggling there. What could go wrong?
Some of you in the US may not realize it, but just south of your border there's a war going on. The war is between the Mexican drug cartels and the Mexican government. The cartels are getting help from a familiar name in the international terror market: Hezbullah.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
