The post Africa’s Mali crisis widens as extremist groups advance and state control erodes – analysis first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

An Al-Qaeda-linked group on Tuesday claimed responsibility for the attack in Bamako against highly sensitive targets, including a military police training centre and the military airport.

The post Jihadist Attacks In Mali Capital Spark Condemnation, Questions first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

It was the only thing that hadn’t gone wrong.  At least there was no war in the Middle East.  But, suddenly, there is.  Maybe this wasn’t thought all the way through.  Did the terrorists not know the wrath their inhumane actions would unleash?  Now they can watch Gaza get blown up.  Large segments already have been.

Americans who haven’t lived in the society of those who sneaked into Israel have no idea about the mindset of these people.  It’s a society where hatred is king.  The more hatred they can drum up, the more successful they’ll be in their society.  If you want to know what they did, you’ve come to the wrong place.  Do people not know the  savagery that defines them?  By their way of thinking, there’s nothing they can do to equal the injustices visited upon them.  The fact of Israel’s existence is the supposed reason for their rage, generation after generation.  Or they might just be crazy.   

In order to understand the depths to which some individuals will go, you have to realize they’re schooled in it.  And it’s their religion.  It’s non-stop on their TV channels, a fact of life, and even in the cartoons.  Allah has spoken, and will not stand by and be insulted.  It’s been going on forever.  But a fuse has been lit with this sneak invasion.  

For years now racism has been the worst thing going.  It’s just about the worst accusation (in woke society) there is.  But liberals have traditionally argued the Palestinian cause.  The Palestinians are drenched in racism.   “Intellectuals” are  saying this war is all Israel’s fault.  Hatred is taught unabashedly in the schools, at home and in the mosques.  From the time children are old enough to talk they parrot back the talking points.  The more they thirst for revenge, the further they will go.  Western minds have a hard time grasping such depth of hatred.  

Everything else will now take a back seat.  This war might well spread.  It already has as missiles are being fired from southern Lebanon, opening another front.  Let’s hope Jordan and Egypt stay out of it, or this could be the one that gets out of control.

We can’t help wondering if Iran is in the mix.  The missiles, the speedboats, the training.  The media are already linking money released to Iran with this terrorist action.  The pretender’s team is saying that money was designated for humanitarian purposes and has not been touched.  Since when do we pay ransom?  There will be Americans getting kidnapped all the time!  

Terrorists don’t wear uniforms.  They can blend back into the civilian population, and they do.  The next thing we’ll hear is how Israel is killing innocent civilians.  Israel delayed it’s ground offensive and told the residents to evacuate.  The Arabs have been beating their breasts for forty years and longer about how heartless and brutal Israel is.  There’s no atrocity they can commit to even the score.  It is borne of a hatred we can scarcely understand.

Beheadings, bodies blown to bits, torture…  No one can imagine the pain of families with lost loved ones, especially when they know they endured suffering at the hands of these animals.  There are reportedly photographs that will break the heart of anyone who sees them.  We’re supposed to look, and experience the heartbroken rage against those responsible.  No thanks.  

Iran is denying they had anything to do with the sneak attack that killed a thousand civilians and took hostages back into Gaza.  It may have been a big mistake to carry off American hostages who were attending a music festival near the border.  There’s video circulating.  Maybe you’ve seen the guy who played dead in the bushes and avoided the fate of those rounded up or shot.  He says the terrorists were laughing, celebrating.  

The terrorists are calling for worldwide jihad.  Syria, Jordan and Egypt are making statements that are less than reassuring.  Israel already bombed airport facilities in Syria to prevent arms being forwarded to Gaza.  

Believe it or not, one publication predicted that the weakness of the incoming administration would result in another Middle Eastern war.  It was the Spectator in Australia.  If you want to see what they said we’ll link it here.  I don’t think this is the big one, but who knows where this will go? 

Mark

The post Weekly Update by Mark Armstrong – October 13, 2023 first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Feb. 5 (UPI) — Iranian head of state Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Wednesday wholly rejected the Mideast peace plan by President Donald Trump that calls for a Palestinian state, but allows Israelis to remain in disputed lands — and encouraged other opponents to do likewise.

Khamenei made the remarks to a crowd of Iranians in Tehran, saying Trump’s controversial plan has no chance of attracting Palestinian support — and will die even before the 73-year-old American leader will.

“The Americans are taking comfort in the belief that choosing a big name for the plot against the Palestinian nation will help it to succeed,” Khamenei said, calling on armed Palestinians to oppose Israel and pledging Iranian support for the fighters “in whatever manner and to whatever extent [we] can.”

Later, Khamenei said Palestinians worldwide must take back their land, through jihad if necessary.

“They will try to further their plot with bribes, weapons, and enticements,” he said of the United States. “What’s the remedy? It is bold resistance by the Palestinian nation and groups in order to force out the Zionist enemy and the U.S. through jihad. All Muslim nations and the world of Islam must support them too.”

Jihad is an Arabic word meaning “struggling” or “striving,” and is used to encourage virtually any effort to influence desired Islamic change. The term is most often used by Islamic extremists as a call to change through armed aggression.

Trump’s peace plan last week called for a two-state solution and a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem, but it allows Israel to annex disputed lands and settlements that Palestinians and the United Nations consider to be occupied territory.

The Palestinians have long demanded that any future border with Israel should be detailed on pre-1967 maps before Israel took certain territory by force and Jerusalem as its capital.

Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed the proposal as the most “realistic” path to Palestinian statehood, but the idea was quickly rejected by Palestinian authorities.

Source: https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2020/02/05/Khamenei-Palestinians-must-force-out-Israel-US-with-jihad/3651580916519/?sl=2&ur3=1

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(Natural News) A Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by an Ann Arbor, Mich., law firm has turned up evidence of a widespread Islamic propaganda campaign being waged against public school teachers in the state and elsewhere.

As reported by The Gateway Pundit, the Thomas More Law Center (TMLC) became concerned about Christian-bashing Islamic materials being force-fed to teachers after being notified of a mandatory two-day training course presented by a Muslim consultant hired by Michigan’s Novi Community Schools District.

The law center “filed a FOIA request for documents related to this two-day Islamic training workshop and discovered that the teachers were being told lies about Islamic terrorism, jihad, and Sharia law,” TGP reported.

What’s more, teachers were being told by a Muslim consultant for Culture Links LLC, Huda Essa, a hijab-clad Arab woman from Dearborn, that white males are more dangerous than Islamic jihadists and terrorists.

“We found that the teachers were subjected to two days of Islamic propaganda, where Islam was glorified, Christianity disparaged, and America bashed—all funded by Novi taxpayers,” said Richard Thompson, TMLC’s president and chief counsel.

“This type of infiltration amounts to an Islamic Trojan horse within our public school systems,” he continued. “No other religion gets this kind of special treatment in our schools.”

The notion that “white males” present a bigger “terrorist threat” in the U.S. comes from mass shootings over the past several years, the majority of which have indeed been committed by young, white men. However, the vast majority of those attacks were not considered acts of domestic terrorism, so to characterize them that was is factually incorrect. (Related: Astonishing bias: 452 Islamic terror attacks in 31 countries just THIS YEAR (so far) and zero coverage from the media.)

The lie has been repeated by Muslim members of Congress as well such as Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.).

As for the Muslim curriculum uncovered by TMLC, the legal group noted that over the past five years, the school district in question has not presented similar teacher-training seminars that focused on Christianity, Judaism, or any other religion — just Islam.

This is all part of the Left’s efforts to destroy American culture

The center noted further in a press release: 

Most disappointing was the fact that of the more than 400 teachers attending the workshop, not one teacher challenged Essa’s denigration of Christianity or attacks on America.

The legal organization reviewed scores of internal school documents as well as audio recordings of Essa’s presentation, uncovering a raft of falsehoods and errors of omission the center believes were intended to deceive course participants.

For instance, she provided “no truthful information” regarding Sharia law and jihad, which are considered some of the most important tenets of the Islamic religion. All references to terrorism were depicted as having nothing at all to do with Islam, and white Christian males were depicted as being more threatening and dangerous than Muslim extremists.

TMLC officials also found that the materials Essa presented were not celebratory of “patriotic Americans who believe in our nation’s exceptionalism,” according to the press release.

What’s more, she’s been spreading her “trash American first” propaganda to a growing list of American colleges and universities. Her client list includes professional educator associations throughout her home state of Michigan but also schools in California, Texas, Florida, Georgia, and others.

The materials are presented under the guise of ‘spreading diversity,’ but again, the curriculum is distinctly anti-American and focused only on spreading an often false view of Islam. She also believes that the Koran, the Muslim holy book, is superior to the Christian Bible, according to the law center’s review of her materials.

It’s not hard to see what the Left is attempting to do with the spread of counter-cultural materials: Destroy American traditions, undermine our founding, and — eventually — replace our republican form of government with an enslaving tyranny.

Source: https://www.dcclothesline.com/2019/08/27/legal-firm-uncovers-taxpayer-funded-islamic-propaganda-that-bashes-christianity-is-being-forced-on-teachers-students/

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In an astounding series of statements, Russia has made it clear that it expects all foreign forces to withdraw from Syria. Alexander Lavrentiev, President Putin’s envoy to Syria, specified on May 18, 2018, that all “foreign forces” meant those forces belonging to Iran, Turkey, the United States, and Hizbullah.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov added this week that only Syrian troops should have a presence on the country’s southern border, close to Jordan and Israel. Previously, Russia had been a party to the establishment of a “de-escalation zone” in southwestern Syria along with the United States and Jordan. Now, Russian policy was becoming more ambitious.  Lavrov added that a pullback of all non-Syrian forces from the de-escalation zone had to be fast.

The regime in Tehran got the message and issued a sharp rebuke of its Russian ally. The Iranians did not see their deployment in Syria as temporary. Five years ago, a leading religious figure associated with the Revolutionary Guards declared that Syria was the 35th province of Iran. Besides such ideological statements, on a practical level, Syria hosts the logistical network for Iranian resupply of its most critical Middle Eastern proxy force, Hizbullah, which has acquired significance beyond the struggle for Lebanon.

Over the years, Hizbullah has become involved in military operations in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and elsewhere. Without Syria, Iran’s ability to project power and influence in an assortment of Middle Eastern conflicts would be far more constrained. Syria has become pivotal for Tehran’s quest for a land corridor linking Iran’s western border to the Mediterranean. The fact that Iran was operating ten military bases in Syria made its presence appear to be anything but temporary.

Already in February 2018, the first public signs of discord between Russia and Iran became visible. At the Valdai Conference in Moscow, attended by both Lavrov and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif (and by this author), the Russian Foreign Minister articulated his strong differences with the Iranians over their pronouncements regarding Israel: “We have stated many times that we won’t accept the statements that Israel, as a Zionist state, should be destroyed and wiped off the map. I believe this is an absolutely wrong way to advance one’s own interests.”

Iran was hardly a perfect partner for Russia. True, some Russian specialists argued that Moscow’s problems with Islamic militancy emanated from the jihadists of SunniIslam, but not from Shiite Islam, which had been dominant in Iran since the 16th century. But that was a superficial assessment. Iran was also backing Palestinian Sunni militants like Islamic Jihad and Hamas. This May, Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, told a pro-Hizbullah television channel that he had regular contacts with Tehran.

Iran Supports both Shiites and Sunnis

Iran was also supporting other Sunni organizations like the Taliban and the Haqqani network in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It harbored senior leaders from al-Qaeda. Indeed, when the founder of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, sought a regional sanctuary after the fall of Afghanistan to the United States, he did not flee to Pakistan, but instead, he moved to Iran. There is no reason why Iran could not provide critical backing for Russia’s adversaries in the future.

But, that was not the perception in Moscow when Russia gave its initial backing for the Iranian intervention in Syria. In the spring of 2015, Moscow noted that the security situation in Central Asia was deteriorating, as internal threats to Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan were increasing. On top of all this, the Islamic State (IS) was making its debut in Afghanistan. An IS victory in Syria would have implications for the security of the Muslim-populated areas of Russia itself.¹

It was in this context that Russia dramatically increased arms shipments to its allies in Syria. It also coordinated with Iran the deployment of thousands of Shiite fighters from Iraq and Afghanistan under the command of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). That also meant the construction of an expanded military infrastructure on Syrian soil for this Shiite foreign legion.

At the same time, Russia maintained and upgraded a naval base at the Syrian city of Tartus and an air facility at the Khmeimim Air Base near Latakia. Moscow also had access to other Syrian facilities as well.

Russia Achieved Its Main Goal and Changed Its Policy

What changed in Moscow? It appears that the Kremlin began to understand that Iran handicapped Russia’s ability to realize its interests in the Middle East. The Russians had secured many achievements with their Syrian policy since 2015. They had constructed a considerable military presence that included air and sea ports under their control in Syria. They had demonstrated across the Middle East that they were not prepared to sell out their client, President Bashar Assad, no matter how repugnant his military policies had become – including the repeated use of chemical weapons against his own civilian population. The Russians successfully converted their political reliability into a diplomatic asset, which the Arabs contrasted with the Obama administration’s poor treatment of President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt at the beginning of the Arab Spring in 2011. However, now Iran was putting Russia’s achievements at risk, through a policy of escalation with Israel.

The Russian security establishment appeared to understand from the start that Israel’s strategy in Syria was essentially defensive. For example, Israel wanted to prevent the delivery of weapons to Hizbullah that could alter the military balance in its favor. One feature of Russian military policy at a very early stage was the carte blanche Moscow appeared to give Israel to strike at these weapons deliveries and later at Iranian facilities across Syria.

According to one report, a Moscow think tank, closely identified with President Putin, published a commentary blaming Iran for the deteriorating situation between Iran and Israel in the Syrian theater. The Sunni Arab states, which Russia was courting, were also voicing their concerns with growing Iranian activism. Undoubtedly, the Russians noticed the complaints that came from Tajikistan this year that Iran was seeking to destabilize the country by funding militant Islamists.

Russian President Putin meets with Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mohammed Khatami in 2015 (Kremlin)

Putin seemed to have growing reservations about Iran’s policy of exporting the Islamic revolution from the soil of Syria. Now, with IS fundamentally vanquished, Iranian military activity in Syria lost its primary justification. And if Moscow was considering to more closely coordinate its Middle Eastern policy with Washington in the future, it needed to adjust its approach to Iran.²

On May 22, 2018, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo listed aspects of Iranian activism which the United States was now demanding that Iran halt. It was not surprising to see in Pompeo’s list the demand that “Iran must withdraw all forces under Iranian command throughout the entirety [of] Syria.”

Russia is not cutting its ties with Iran. But it is clearly cutting back Iran’s freedom of action in Syria. The idea that Russia would back Iran’s use of Syria as a platform for operations against Israel or Jordan is not tenable. Still, Russia would remain the primary supplier of Bashar Assad’s army in Syria as well as his strategic partner. Unquestionably, Iran would need to reassess its Middle Eastern strategy after Moscow’s pronouncements calling for it to leave Syria and not continue to be perceived as the force that put at risk all that Russia had achieved as a result of the Syrian civil war.

Source: http://jcpa.org/russia-constrains-iran/

The post Russia Constrains Iran first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.