Syria, America and Putin's Bluff

[mendeleyev]

Wiki is often off or slanted. The Crusades were primarily to open up areas that had been overrun by Islamic forces. I can't think of a crusade in my lifetime.

[Daveman]

...I am truly curious.

Really? and why would that be?  If you are truly interested then feel free to get to know me. Drop me a PM. 

[Shadow]

Its great that you have still not found Jesus.  I too am not interested in hearing about the moral superiority of your religion either.

You said you woukd fight for my freedom.  How?  what would you be willing to do?  what have you done in the past that qualifies as fighting for freedom?  I am truly curious.

Do you promise to call that TV show ? I promise to watch if you do 

[Ade]

Do you promise to call that TV show ? I promise to watch if you do 

Yeah, that would be interesting. 

[Shadow]

This was in Wednesday's edition the Daily News from Istanbul.

The writer, Burak Bekdil, is Turkish.

And likely to be Muslim as well.

[Ranetka]

When people say there is/was no Christian terrorism they are very conveniently forgetting IRA. Just check how many bombings there were and how many people have died in terrorist attacks. (Clue - in England much much much more than from Islamic terrorists). And anyone thinking there is a way to segregate politics and religion...they should rethink their position really.

[ML]

Really? and why would that be?  If you are truly interested then feel free to get to know me. Drop me a PM.

Soliciting for more intimate relationships!

What is this board coming to?

Where can we advertise for 'bromance?'   

[tfcrew]

  The Crusades were primarily to open up areas that had been overrun by Islamic forces. I can't think of a crusade in my lifetime.

The primary area is Jerusalem. Continues to this day.
An obsession even if the obsession is to ignore it or pretend it isn't there.

[mendeleyev]

The primary area is Jerusalem. Continues to this day.
An obsession even if the obsession is to ignore it or pretend it isn't there.

I've been there and wasn't aware that Christians were battling Muslims in a Crusade to this day.

[Shadow]

I've been there and wasn't aware that Christians were battling Muslims in a Crusade to this day.

Probably you were there on the wrong day.
On Friday the Muslims can not battle, they are praying.
On Saturday the Jews ask all not to fight, they are praying.
On Sunday the Christians can not battle, they are praying.
That leaves just 4 days in the week.
On Monday and Thursday they are building up the battleground or breaking it down. On Tuesday they send the invitations.
That leaves Wednesday, and as children are to school only half a day they have just half a day to battle.
At that rate they will continue for the next 1000 years...

[mendeleyev]

Shadow, that explains it! 

[ML]

Who is this?

[cc3]

When people say there is/was no Christian terrorism they are very conveniently forgetting IRA. Just check how many bombings there were and how many people have died in terrorist attacks. (Clue - in England much much much more than from Islamic terrorists). And anyone thinking there is a way to segregate politics and religion...they should rethink their position really.

The "Troubles" in Northern Ireland was not a religious conflict. It was 'nativist' Irish, who happened to be mostly Catholic, carrying on with centuries-long resistance to British invasion. The Brit invaders, and Scottish settlers (imported by the invaders) in Northern Ireland, happened to mostly be Protestant. Catholics and Protestants, at the time of the Troubles, got along with each other extremely well in all other Anglo nations (UK, Canada, USA, Australia, NZ, South Africa, etc.)

Even if you want to maintain that it was religiously inspired, it was Christian against Christian, not Christians murderously persecuting non-Christians.

[lordtiberius]

Like I predicted, Russia is countering its vulnerabilities in the Middle East, in Eastern Europe.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/09/26/russia-belarus-conduct-massive-joint-military-exercise-involving-more-than/

Russia, Belarus conduct massive joint military exercise involving more than 22,000 troops
Published September 26, 2013 | Associated Press

    
MINSK, Belarus –  Russia's President Vladimir Putin and his Belarusian counterpart have watched a massive joint military exercise of the two ex-Soviet neighbors that involved more than 22,000 troops.

The West 2013 exercise conducted Thursday near the city of Grodno in western Belarus and in Russia's westernmost Kaliningrad region also involved more than 500 armored vehicles and about 90 aircraft along with ships of Russia's Black Sea Fleet.

Russia and Belarus are allies and have close economic, political and military ties. Russia has several military facilities in Belarus, and the two nations operate a joint air defense system.

The two armies have regularly conducted joint maneuvers, Thursday's exercise being the biggest so far.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko attended the exercise along with his nine-year old son, who donned full combat fatigues.


http://freebeacon.com/russia-china-hold-large-scale-war-games/

Russia, China Hold Large-Scale War Games
NATO to counter with E. European war games in November

BY:  Bill Gertz   Follow @BillGertz
September 26, 2013 5:00 am



Pentagon intelligence agencies are closely watching Russian and Chinese war games now taking place in Europe and Asia involving tens of thousands of troops.

Meanwhile, NATO military forces are set to conduct large-scale maneuvers in November that will be designed to counter growing concerns of a westward Russian military encroachment, according to U.S. officials.

“The Russians are moving forces closer to Europe, and that is troubling,” said a military official.


Russia’s Zapad-13 military exercises in Belarus are scheduled to end Thursday. They included practice attacks on a western state, said one official familiar with reports of the maneuvers.

Some 13,000 Russian and Belarusian troops took part with over 60 aircraft and helicopters and up to 250 vehicles.

The forces practiced “rapid reaction” drills.

Russian officials recently denied Polish press reports that the Zapad-13 would include a notional nuclear attack on Warsaw. However, Russian officials have said the war games will involve practicing precision air and missile strikes.

On the Russian air base, Russian air force chief Lt. Gen. Vladimir Bondarev announced in June that the air base for Su-27 jets in Belarus would be opened near the city of Lida, near the border with Poland and Lithuania.
Bondarev said the warplanes would bolster a 1997 defense agreement between the two countries in response to NATO expansion.

It will be Russia’s first military base in Europe since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and along with it the Warsaw Pact, in 1991. Moscow currently has military bases in Armenia, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan.

Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko has moved away from democracy and shifted the former Soviet republic away from Europe and toward Russia, restoring many symbols from Soviet Belarus.

In response to Polish press reports on the simulated nuclear strike on Poland’s capital, state-run Interfax news agency in April denied the reports. “Claims that West 2013 will allegedly practice a preventive nuclear strike on Warsaw are nothing but imagination of Polish journalists,” a high-ranking officer was quoted as saying.

Belarusian Deputy Defense Minister Maj. Gen. Pyotr Tsikhanowski said in June, “The theme of the exercise is the training and the engagement of troops in order to ensure the military security of the Union State [of Belarus and Russia].” New weapons and military equipment will be tested during the exercises, he added.

War game scenarios include an “escalation of relations with countries based on interethnic, interreligious differences, and territorial claims,” he said.

“At the same time, the conflicting states are hypothetically located within the actual borders of Belarus and the three western and northwestern regions of Russia,” Tsikhanowski said.

U.S. military officials said the war games are part of a larger Russian effort to use military power to bolster its position in the former Soviet republics with a larger military presence.

Russia also has a ballistic missile warning radar at Baranovichi, Belarus, and a Navy communications facility used to communicate with Russian submarines. Moscow also supplied Belarus with advanced S-300 missile defenses and Tor-M2 surface-to-air missiles.
The exercises drew criticism from Eastern European NATO governments.

“Russia has officially stated that these are anti-terrorism exercises,” Lithuanian Defense Minister Juozas Olekas told AFP. “But the number of participants and amount of military equipment indicates that that this is not their agenda.”

Senior Estonian military official Lt. Col. Eero Rebo said: “The Kremlin claims that the exercise is about fighting terrorism, but based on the information we have on Zapad 2013, the exercise has an anti-West agenda.”

“If you look at the Baltic sea region, the strategic balance has been changing quite drastically in the last decade, and not in our favor,” Latvian Defense Minister Artis Pabriks said Friday.

“We are concerned because we see such large-scale exercises in context,” he added. NATO approved special defense plans for Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, which have a combined population of just over six million, in 2010.

NATO will hold an Eastern European exercise in November called Steadfast Jazz in the Baltic region and Poland with around 6,000 NATO troops.
The alliance claims the exercises from Nov. 2 to Nov. 9 are not aimed at Russia.

“For the past 10 to 12 years we have become incredibly proficient at the counter-insurgency mission that we have been fighting in Afghanistan,” NATO’s military commander, U.S. Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, told reporters in Brussels Sept. 18.

To defend an alliance state, “we have to be prepared for the more high end of military operations,” he said, according to Reuters.

The exercise scenario will involve NATO forces ousting a foreign invader that Breedlove denied was a hypothetical counterstrike to a Russian invasion.

Meanwhile in China, Chinese military forces are engaged in large-scale exercises involving some 40,000 troops.

The People’s Liberation Army announced its “Mission Action 2013” began Tuesday.

Troops from the Nanjing and Guangzhou military regions and air forces were set to take part.

The PLA troops will conduct maneuvers over large areas using military ground vehicles, trains, ships, and aircraft to test forces for “real war” conditions.

The exercises will include coordination between military and civilian assets, including civilian jets and trains to transport forces, according to state-run Chinese press reports.

Chinese aircraft taking part in the war games include jet fighters, bombers, and other aircraft.

The exercise also will seek to boost Chinese combined arms warfare capabilities that integrate air, naval, and ground forces for long-distance fighting, joint air defense, and joint warfighting on unfamiliar terrain.

©2013 All Rights Reserved

[Muzh]

This thread just proves that as soon as religion disappears world-wide, the better the human race will be.

[mendeleyev]

The Russians and Chinese do this every year. It is at least in part a Vladimir Putin "hold your friends close and your enemies closer" strategy in keeping Chinese expansion contained in the Far East. Nothing new in these exercises.

As to Belarus, Russia is in command of Belorussian forces in the Union State, and of the Customs Union treaties. Again, this happens every year and the Russians want to make sure that Belorussian forces are trained and work in coordination with their counterparts.

The USA does the same type of thing will NATO and other Allies.

U.S. military officials said the war games are part of a larger Russian effort to use military power to bolster its position in the former Soviet republics with a larger military presence.

I love it when pseudo experts make official statements. First, Russia is not going into these Republics uninvited. Each of these is part of an alliance.   

[Shadow]

Who is this?

Guess I am not the only one with a canine face. 

[lordtiberius]

It would be no big deal to those whose territorial integrity has never had a history of invasion and domination.  The Belarussians are Poles.  Lushenko is a race traitor to some.   Putin is a Russian Saladin. 

[Shadow]

It would be no big deal to those whose territorial integrity has never had a history of invasion and domination.  The Belarussians are Poles.  Lushenko is a race traitor to some.   Putin is a Russian Saladin.

And Native Americans are Russians. Give Russia your land!

[mendeleyev]

It would be no big deal to those whose territorial integrity has never had a history of invasion and domination.

Since charity begins at home should be start with the Indians or the native Hispanics?

[GQBlues]

"...Distancing themselves from the exile opposition’s call for a democratic, civil government to replace Mr. Assad, they called on all military and civilian groups in Syria to “unify in a clear Islamic frame.” Those that signed the statement included three groups aligned with the Western-backed opposition’s Supreme Military Council.


Mohannad al-Najjar, an activist close to the leadership of one of the statement’s most powerful signers, Al Tawhid Brigade, said the group intended to send a message of disapproval to an exile leadership it believes has accomplished little.
       
 “We found it was time to announce publicly and clearly what we are after, which is Shariah law for the country and to convey a message to the opposition coalition that it has been three years and they have never done any good for the Syrian uprising and the people suffering inside,” he said...................



You need two parties for an agreement, and there is no viable political alternative to the coalition,” he said, defining a disconnect between the diplomatic efforts taking shape in New York and the reality across Syria.


Inside Syria, rebel groups that originally formed to respond to crackdowns by Mr. Assad’s forces on political protests have gradually merged into larger groupings, some commanded and staffed by Islamists. But differences in ideology and competition for scarce foreign support have made it hard for them to unite under an effective, single command...."

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/26/world/middleeast/syria-crisis.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0


"Que sera, sera...whatever will be, will be".

I say, leave these guys alone and let Allah sort them out.

[mendeleyev]

I say, leave these guys alone and let Allah sort them out.

Absolutely.

Trying to manage, frame and control the outcome would be like herding cats. Only this time cats with lethal tendencies.

[tfcrew]

I've been there and wasn't aware that Christians were battling Muslims in a Crusade to this day.

Then become aware.

http://www.cbn.com/spirituallife/onlinediscipleship/understandingislam/IslamHistory0212.aspx

[mendeleyev]

tf, great article and I've bookmarked it.

However it presents no evidence of a modern day crusade by Christians to regain territory from Muslim invaders, which was what the Crusades were about.

[tfcrew]

However it presents no evidence of a modern day crusade by Christians to regain territory from Muslim invaders, which was what the Crusades were about.

I merely just stated that the Crusades never really ended.
It's simply on a return backwave.

There is a never-ending cause that persists to this day.
Jerusalem is the prize.
The jihadist  wishes to totally regain this territory that he feels was wrongfully taken from his people...but then you know this.
True, there are no longer Knights Templar with sword in hand to thwart them.
Several books defining the increasing dilemma are available.
One of the most recent is 'Crucified Again'

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/05/the-muslim-war-on-christianity.php