"I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life"

Father God, thank you for the love of the truth you have given me. Please bless me with the wisdom, knowledge and discernment needed to always present the truth in an attitude of grace and love. Use this blog and Northwoods Ministries for your glory. Help us all to read and to study Your Word without preconceived notions, but rather, let scripture interpret scripture in the presence of the Holy Spirit. All praise to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Please note: All my writings and comments appear in bold italics in this colour
Showing posts with label killing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label killing. Show all posts

Thursday, November 9, 2023

Anti-Semitism spreading like Covid around the world > Mainstream media is helping the pandemic; Can't argue with stupid! Elderly Jew stalked and killed in L.A. protest, no arrests


Mainstream media, which is almost entirely left wing,  is helping to fuel the rise in antisemitism with their Palestinian, Muslim-friendly stories that ignore the evil Muslims do and elevate the often unproven, and often false stories that victimize Muslims.

History will not be kind to the 21st century media as they fan the flames of hatred toward another Holocaust.



Media Pushes ‘Islamophobia,’ Buries Actual Muslim Attack

on School in Indiana

She made reference to “her people back in Palestine”

It’s very telling what stories the media focuses on and which it buries out back.

The story of a Stanford Muslim student who claimed that he was hit by a driver who shouted ‘F— you and your people!’ is all over the media despite its vagueness. And I mean the national media, including CNN and CBS News, who have been mining the story for all it’s worth.

Meanwhile, a Muslim woman admitted to trying to attack a school that she thought was Jewish. And the media ignores it.

IMPD officers arrested a woman, who they labeled a “terrorist,” after she drove her car into a building that she thought was a Jewish school.

Ruba Almaghtheh, 34, was arrested on a preliminary charge of criminal recklessness.

Officers said Almaghtheh backed her car into the building while several adults and children were inside.

Almaghtheh told officers she was watching news coverage of the Israel-Hamas war on television and decided to plan an attack on the building because she was offended by the “Hebrew Israelite” symbol on the front of the building.

Police said Almaghtheh passed by the building a couple times and called it the “Israel school.”

IMPD said she made reference to “her people back in Palestine” and told officers, “Yes. I did it on purpose.

According to the report, Almaghtheh was interviewed by detectives and admitted to committing the “hate crime” during her courtesy phone call with a family member.

The Muslim attacker didn’t know enough to realize that she was attacking a Black Hebrew Israelite institution, a group that hates Jews, rather than a Jewish school. Not that it makes much of a difference because she did attack a school.

With kids inside. Black kids.

Two days in the story only seems to have appeared on the local FOX News and CBS News affiliate in Indianapolis.

Why is the Stanford story a national story while the Indianapolis story is a local crime story?

Outrageous bias and propaganda.

The Islamophobia narrative is important, not least of which because it flips the moral dial into making the perpetrators into the victims, while Muslim attacks have to be buried for the same reason.




NYC women rip down posters of kidnapped Israeli children, 

could ‘make people believe Hamas is a terrorist org’

There is just no arguing with this kind of stupidity!

Of course, Hamas really is a terrorist group. It operates according to a book it considers to be the word of the supreme being, and that tells them this: “Make ready for them all that you can of force and of warhorses, so that by them you may strike terror in the enemy of Allah and your enemy…” (Qur’an 8:60)





Pro-Palestinian protester ‘stalked’ Paul Kessler 

before alleged fatal punch: witness


By Olivia Land, NYPost
Published Nov. 8, 2023, 9:56 a.m. ET

The Jewish man who died following a supposed clash between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian protesters in California was “stalked” by his alleged attacker, who then struck him with a megaphone moments before his fatal fall, a witness said.

“[The man] crossed the street because, as I said, he stalked us … he came over here with the megaphone in his hand to do the same thing,” Jonathan Oswaks said Tuesday of how the man he claims attacked Paul Kessler on Sunday afternoon first approached him and put a megaphone against his ear, according to the Jewish Journal.

When Oswaks, 69, warned the man to “‘get that f–ing thing out of my ear,’” the would-be attacker moved on to Kessler, also 69, who was standing across the street with an Israeli flag, Oswaks alleged.

“Then all of a sudden, I see a punch. The reason I know I could see the punch was because it was the white megaphone flying through the air,” he claimed.

Kessler is then believed to have fallen backward and sustained serious head injuries. He was taken to the hospital, where he died early Monday.


“I was broken when I heard [of his death],” Oswaks told the Los Angeles Times.

Oswaks, who is Jewish and works as an engineer, said he met Kessler just a couple weeks earlier through the Nextdoor app.

The pair counter-protested a pro-Palestinian demonstration together on Oct. 29, when they were pushed into the street by an aggressive protester who then flashed a gun at them, Oswaks claimed.

Oswaks said he could not identify the culprit to police because the demonstrators had changed their masks and hoods.

Undeterred, Oswaks and Kessler organized a larger showing at a pro-Palestinian protest on Sunday.

While the men waited by a fountain at the appointed intersection, Oswaks got a call from a friend who said that his face was in a social media live and that he was “being watched,” he alleged on Tuesday.

Oswaks said he looked up and saw three men sitting on a bench, filming them.

“One of those men I recognize as the murderer,” he claimed. “The other man was an extreme agitator. The other fellow was just a young fellow, I couldn’t tell much about him.”

Oswaks and Kessler then met with Kessler’s friend, who brought an Israeli flag, an American flag and a Gadsden flag, he explained.

“Paul insisted on holding the Israeli flag,” Oswaks recalled. 

“I asked him at least three times to give it to me. Paul was a lot smaller than I am. He was like David. He was proud to hold that flag against the giant.

“[Paul also warned me] at these kinds of protests, somebody taking a megaphone and putting in your ear for purposes of harassing you is an assault.”

The men decided to split up around the intersection, he continued.

“It wasn’t long before the men that were videoing me and Paul stood behind me … with a megaphone in my ear, exactly the way [Kessler] told me it was gonna happen,” Oswaks claimed.

When Oswaks asked the man to back up, the offender offered him water or food.

“[I said] ‘I don’t want a f–ing thing from you except space. Get back,’” he claimed.

Just moments later, Oswaks said, the man crossed the street and was subsequently involved in the altercation with Kessler.

The megaphone came over the top [of the group],” he told the press conference.

“Maybe 10 people … close ranks really quick to see what was going on, so it obscured my vision.”

Oswaks claimed he did not know Kessler was injured until later.

Speaking from the scene of the alleged punch on Tuesday, he criticized authorities’ response to the incident.

“Where is the megaphone? Why didn’t the police collect the megaphone? Why didn’t the police collect the Israeli flag? What are the police doing?” he insisted.

At a press conference earlier Tuesday, Ventura County Sheriff Jim Fryhoff declined to comment on whether a megaphone was taken from the scene or believed to have been involved in Kessler’s injury.

A 50-year-old man from Moorpark was briefly detained while police executed a search warrant on Monday, but no one has been arrested or charged in connection with Kessler’s death, Fryhoff added.

Though the medical sales rep’s injuries were consistent with falling backwards, he also had injuries to his face that “could be consistent with a blow,” Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Christopher Youngs said.

“This is the same bulls— that’s happening in our streets. They’re letting people go through our shopping centers, destroying them,” Oswaks said.

“The police presence is nowhere to be found. Nowhere! None of you are safe. I don’t know if you even realize that. It’s not being reported on the news. Hopefully this will get the trick done.”

Oswaks was joined at the Tuesday presser by people holding signs demanding the release of the 240 Israeli hostages who have been held by Hamas since Oct. 7, the Jewish Journal reported.

There were also people holding Israeli and American flags, while flowers and yahrzeit candles marked the spot where Kessler fell, the outlet added.

Earlier this in the day, Elena Colomba — a recent convert to Judaism — spent hours marking the bloodstained spot where Kessler lay waiting for the ambulance with a Star of David drawn in blue chalk, reporter Jacob Gurvia wrote on X.


“We in the Jewish community have been saying over and over again for the last 30 days that what is happening on our streets, what is happening in social media, what is happening in our schools and what is happening on our campuses is intolerable and unsustainable,” Israeli-American Council CEO Elan Carr said at the presser.

“And we have also been saying that if this continues unabated, someone is going to die. 

“By the way, my friend and colleague Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, said those words three nights ago: if this continues someone is going to die. And here we are today.”

Carr argued that Kessler had a First Amendment right to protest holding an Israeli flag.

“For that act… Paul paid the ultimate price: he paid with his life,” he said.

“We are here today not only to bear witness to what happened but to make demands… enough is enough. We’re done with attacks against Jews…all people of goodwill [should] come together in total unity against this despicable and vicious rise in hate.”


All people of good will are together with Israel and the Jews, but it appears we are in a minority.




Thursday, October 5, 2023

Military Madness > Congress stops funding the Ukraine war; Pentagon finds a way to keep the killing going in uber-corrupt Ukraine

..

Ukraine's fate is now tied to a tumultuous place:

the U.S. Congress


U.S. funding for Ukraine war is swept up in uncertainty,

but there are still 4 ways it could continue


Alexander Panetta · CBC News · Posted: Oct 05, 2023 1:00 AM PDT | Last Updated: October 5

U.S. President Joe Biden meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office last month. The U.S. is overwhelmingly the top donor to Ukraine, but with Congress in limbo as Republicans search for a new House Speaker, it's not certain if that funding will continue. (Evan Vucci/The Associated Press)


The fate of Ukraine's war effort is now attached to an increasingly unpredictable place: the United States Congress. 

The U.S. is overwhelmingly the top donor to Ukraine's self-defence and there's new uncertainty about whether that funding can continue.

That's because the House of Representatives is in limbo as Republicans search for a new leader following their unprecedented ouster of a House Speaker.

Whether the next House Speaker is as pro-Ukraine as the ejected Kevin McCarthy is by no means certain, as Republican support softens.

There are still several paths to delivering new aid. They range from parliamentary procedural manoeuvring, to political risk-taking.

None of these options is guaranteed to succeed, and none will happen immediately, all of which spells a period of extended anxiety in Kyiv as current U.S. funding will dry up over the fall.

Republican Kevin McCarthy has been ousted as the Speaker of the House of Representatives in an extraordinary showdown. Those who voted him out include Democrats and members of his own party.


Acknowledging these emerging jitters, U.S. President Joe Biden called world leaders earlier this week and also said he'll be delivering a speech on this topic. 

"It does worry me," Biden said Wednesday of the suspension in funding.

He said he'll talk soon about potential short-term solutions. In the long run, he's appealing to the majority in Congress, which he says supports more Ukraine funding.

Biden's right — about three-quarters of U.S. lawmakers consistently vote for more Ukraine funds, and would undoubtedly back the president's request for $24 billion in additional funding. 

But it's less clear that a vote will even happen. This may depend on the next Republican leader, and on the mood in the Republican Party. 

Ukrainians react in Kyiv's Independence square on Oct. 1 during the minute of silence for soldiers killed during the war.
White House officials estimate current U.S. funding for Ukraine will last just a couple of months.
(Alex Babenko/The Associated Press)

The battlefield effects: Weeks or months


White House official John Kirby estimated current U.S. funding will last for about a couple of months and was more emphatic when asked whether Ukraine will be able to continue defending itself without American support.

"To be blunt … no," Kirby replied.

The U.S. has indeed supplied Ukraine with everything from medical bandages and goggles to tanks, missiles, drones, mine-clearing equipment, artillery and battlefield intelligence.

"The United States has unparalleled capabilities," said Mark Cancian, an expert on military budgeting at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and a retired marine and Defence Department official.

He offers a bleak assessment on what happens to Ukraine if that spigot is turned off. 

In a few weeks, he says, it would be felt on the front lines. Equipment shortages would accumulate and get progressively worse. Eventually, he said, Ukraine would face pressure to negotiate a quick ceasefire under unfavourable terms.

President Joe Biden underlined U.S. support for Ukraine's fight against Russia as the country's president visited Washington for the second time since Russia invaded. But Volodymyr Zelenskyy does have some critics among Republicans, whom he tried to win over during his visit.

A retired U.S. Army colonel put it even more bluntly.

"It will guarantee defeat for Ukraine in this war and victory for Russia," said Gian Gentile, associate director of the Army Research Division in the Washington-area office of the U.S. government-funded RAND Corporation think-tank.

The Pentagon potentially still has several months worth of funding for Ukraine. But it's not so straightforward, as different programs exist and they're not funded equally.

In an email to CBC News, the U.S. military said it had zero funds left in a program that buys new weapons for Ukraine; $5.4 billion left to supply Ukraine with U.S. weapons; and insufficient funds, $1.6 billion, left for the U.S. to replace the weapons it sends Ukraine.



The situation in Congress


Ukrainians have ample reason to be watching next week when the House of Representatives meets to pick a new Speaker.

The Speaker wields huge power in deciding which bills come to the congressional floor for a vote, and which die on a shelf.

One aspiring Speaker is a vocal opponent of additional assistance for Ukraine, the populist partisan Jim Jordan of Ohio.

He's followed a trajectory similar to many in his party: in 2022, Jordan initially supported Ukraine funding, tweeting things like, "Pray for Ukraine. May God bless its brave citizens." And he praised Ukraine's president, but within months he'd become a critic and now gets the lowest possible score from a pro-Ukraine group that tracks congressional votes.

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, is one aspiring Speaker who is a vocal opponent of additional assistance for Ukraine. He has noted the U.S. has bigger priorities at home. (Jacquelyn Martin/The Associated Press)

Jordan said Wednesday he opposes more funding for Ukraine, noting that the U.S. has bigger priorities at home. 

"The most pressing issue on Americans' mind is not Ukraine — it is the border situation, and it is crime on the streets," he said. 

In the other corner, there's rival Speaker candidate Steve Scalise of Louisiana, who has consistently voted for Ukraine funding while serving on McCarthy's leadership team.

It's worth noting that the last Speaker was emphatically pro-Ukraine. In his resignation news conference, McCarthy delivered an impassioned five-minute monologue comparing Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler and made clear his goal of supporting Ukrainian victory.

Moderate U.S. Republicans and Democrats approved a spending deal just hours before a government shutdown deadline on Saturday. The bill, presented by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, has further infuriated hardline Republicans already seeking to push him from his post.

Yet even he'd been hesitant to bring up another vote.

Look no further than the events of this week to understand why. All it took was a small revolt by eight Republicans and McCarthy's speakership was over. 

A Ukraine bill would trigger way more than eight naysayers, along with venom from some influential conservative commentators.  

Nearly half of Republicans recently tried blocking future Ukraine aid, although most polls still show a clear majority backing U.S. efforts to arm Ukraine.

This creates a serious problem for Republican leaders, who have a five-seat majority in the House, and are in no position to risk triggering a revolt.

Just ask McCarthy.

Continue reading this article at "Four paths forward"


=======================================================================================



As funding for the proxy war in Ukraine begins to dry up, America has found a unique way to allow the killing to continue. Anything seems better than talking to Putin about peace.



U.S. transfers 1.1M rounds of confiscated ammunition to Ukraine


By Darryl Coote

The United States this week transferred 1.1 million rounds of ammunition the U.S. Navy seized in the Arabian Sea in December. Photo courtesy of U.S. Justice Department


Oct. 4 (UPI) -- The United States transferred some 1.1 million rounds of ammunition to Ukraine that were confiscated in December while en route from Iran to militant groups in Yemen.

The transfer to Ukraine's armed forces was conducted Monday, U.S. Central Command said in a statement. But it comes at time when the future of U.S. backing for Ukraine's war in Russia may be in jeopardy by members of the Republican Party who are questioning future funds.

The munitions were seized along with rocket-propelled grenades and thousands of pounds of rocket-propelled-grenade propellant by U.S. Central Command naval forces from the flagless dhow Marwan 1 vessel in the Arabian Sea on Dec. 9.

U.S. officials said the weaponry was being transferred in violation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 2216 from Iran's elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to Houthi rebels who have been waging a civil war, with backing from Tehran, against the government since 2014.

Resolution 2216 was passed by the U.N. Security Council in April 2015 to impose sanctions on those accused of undermining the stability of Yemen.

Justice Department officials explained that the U.S. government filed a forfeiture action against the rounds in late March as part of its larger investigation into Iran's weapons-smuggling network.

The officials accused the network of being involved in trafficking advanced conventional weapons systems and their components by sanctioned Iranian entities, such as the IRGC, to support the Houthi rebels in Yemen as well as Tehran's other destabilizing activities in the region.

"The forfeiture complaint alleges a sophisticated scheme by the IRGC to clandestinely ship weapons to entities that pose grave threats to U.S. national security," the Justice Department said in a March press release.

The United States took ownership of the rounds on July 20, the department said.

"With this weapons transfer, the Justice Department's forfeiture actions against one authoritarian regime are now directly supporting the Ukrainian people's fight against another authoritarian regime," Attorney General Merrick Garland said Wednesday in a statement.

"We will continue to use every legal authority at our disposal to support Ukraine in their fight for freedom, democracy, and the rule of law."

"The Rule of Law"? Ukraine? Ukraine is not ready to join the EU because it is “corrupt at all levels of society”, Jean-Claude Juncker, the former European Commission president, has said.


At a commitment of some $44 billion in security assistance, the United States is by far the largest backer of Kyiv's defense against Russia's war. But Congressionally approved funds are dwindling and the Biden administration has called on the lawmakers to pass billions in supplemental assistance.

However, Ukraine funding has grown controversial in the United States and Europe, and funds for Kyiv present an obstacle over the weekend to pass crucial funding to prevent a U.S. government shutdown.

Ultimately, the 45-day stopgap resolution lacked any funds for Kyiv.

On Tuesday, Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters that the U.S. coffers hold funding to meet Ukraine's battle needs "for just a little bit longer," but that Congress must act to ensure there is no disruption in U.S. support.

On Wednesday, State Department principal deputy spokesman Vedant Patel mirrored the comments of her Defense Department counterpart.

"We cannot under any circumstances allow America's support for Ukraine to be interrupted," he said. "A lapse in support for even a short period of time could make all the difference in the battlefield, and so this is something that we're going to continue to work closely with our partners in Congress on and continue to coordinate directly."

The Pentagon will do anything to avoid talking to Putin. And it doesn't matter how many hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians are killed.






Wednesday, August 25, 2021

Military Madness - Dramatic Increase in Drone Strikes in Afghanistan - What did it Accomplish?

..

‘Killing for the sake of killing’: Disillusioned US drone pilots

leak footage of air strikes against unarmed Afghans, media says


25 Aug, 2021 13:54 / Updated 2 hours ago

FILE PHOTO. The US military in Kandahar, southern Afghanistan, a Taliban stronghold, are using high-tech Predator drones against their enemy. © Getty Images / Veronique de Viguerie; (inset) A U.S. Air Force MQ-1B Predator unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). © Getty Images / John Moore


American drone pilots have leaked video of “punitive” and “nihilistic” strikes in Afghanistan in 2019 that led to the killing of civilians, including at least one child, as the US looked for an exit strategy in the two-decade war.

The footage, published on Tuesday as part of an investigation by military news outlet Connecting Vets, reportedly reveals how successive US administrations and defense strategists relaxed the rules of engagement in Afghanistan – as part of a policy to pressure the Taliban to the negotiating table.

However, drone operators interviewed by the outlet claimed the loosened rules around air strikes served “no point” and did not “make a difference” – with one pilot stating that it was “killing for the sake of killing.” The strikes also reportedly killed far more civilians than the Pentagon has admitted.

An unidentified pilot, who worked with the Marines as part of ‘Task Force South West’ in the country’s Helmand province in 2019, said he had been traumatized by one mistaken killing and shared a journal account of the incident with the site.

My productivity today was derailed. We killed two innocent men and a charger [military slang for a child]. They were on a motorcycle and by dumb luck drove into the same intersection as our target as the hellfire [missile] struck.

The operator said the target was an Afghan man on a bike who had been using a two-way radio – which were commonly used in Helmand after cellular towers were downed.

However, the target “rode right through the blast and kept going,” the pilot wrote, adding that he “watched a passerby load the bodies into a truck and drive them to a hospital. They are all dead.”

The account was corroborated by a military official involved in the operation who spoke to the site on condition of anonymity. While the Afghan on the radio – whose name or connection to the Taliban was never discovered – drove off through the smoke like a “Bond villain,” the official said the “two adults and a toddler on the other motorcycle ... were killed right off.”

But the Connecting Vets report noted that the Department of Defense (DoD) recorded only one civilian casualty on the date of the strike, which was “likely the toddler,” while leaving out the two adult males who “just happened to be there.”

US Central Command, which had jurisdiction over military operations in the area, did not respond to questions submitted by the site.

Drone operators told the site about being disillusioned with the task force, whose Marines had apparently already given up on Helmand. By 2019, the province was largely under the control of the Taliban, with “virtually no American ground patrols ... and not many Afghan military ones”.

According to the outlet, the military had “transitioned from intelligence-driven targeting to using a target engagement criteria” such as holding a rifle, but the threshold for coming under suspicion could be easily crossed by unarmed adult men.

Last year, the DoD released air power summaries for Afghanistan that showed a six-fold increase from less than a thousand strikes in 2015 to 7,423 strikes in 2019.

And what did they accomplish except to keep the 'hellfire' inventory moving?

According to a 2017 report by the Council on Foreign Relations think tank, Barack Obama “vastly [expanded] and [normalized] the use of armed drones for counterterrorism” to the tune of 542 strikes, killing roughly 3,797 people in various countries.

Under Donald Trump, authorization for drone strikes was delegated to field commanders as part of a National Security Council strategy to get the Taliban to agree on an exit strategy for US forces.

How did that work?