Posts Tagged ‘Yom Kippur War’

LinkSwarm for December 1, 2023

Friday, December 1st, 2023

Congratulations! You’ve successfully made it to the last month of 2023! Give yourself a cookie!

I’ve spent most of today getting my latest book catalog ready to send out, so I’m probably going to have to break this LinkSwarm into two parts. This part: More Biden corrupton evidence, Big Brother wants all your tweets, Jihadi gets stabby in Ireland, and a couple of fairly notable political deaths.

  • “Bank Investigator Flagged ‘Unusual’ Chinese Payments behind $40k Check to Biden, Raised Possibility of Influence Peddling.” Ya think?

    A bank money-laundering investigator expressed serious concerns about a transfer of funds from China that ultimately trickled down to President Biden in the form of a $40,000 check from his brother, James Biden, according to an email obtained by the House

    Biden received a $40,000 personal check from an account shared by his brother, James Biden, and sister-in-law, Sara Biden, in September 2017 — money that was marked as a “loan repayment.” The alleged repayment was sent after funds were filtered from Northern International Capital, a Chinese company affiliated with the Chinese energy firm CEFC, through several accounts related to Hunter Biden and eventually down to the personal account shared by James and Sara Biden.

    Northern International Capital sent $5 million to Hudson West III, a joint venture established by Hunter Biden and CEFC associate Gongwen Dong on August 8.

    On the same day, Hudson West III then sent $400,000 to Owasco, P.C., an entity owned and controlled by Hunter Biden. Six days later, Hunter Biden wired $150,000 to Lion Hall Group, a company owned by James and Sara Biden. Sara Biden withdrew $50,000 in cash from Lion Hall Group on August 28 and then deposited the funds into her and her husband’s personal checking account later that day.

    On September 3, 2017, Sara Biden wrote a check to Joe Biden for $40,000.

    We all know that if Trump did something remotely close to this, he’d already be in prison.

  • “Hamas Violates Cease-Fire, Israel Resumes Airstrikes in Gaza.” This is my shocked face.
  • Big Brother says that all your tweets are belong to us.

    Special Counsel Jack Smith demanded information on Twitter users who liked or retweeted former President Donald Trump’s tweets leading up to the January 6 riot, according to a heavily redacted search warrant and other documents released Monday.

    Smith’s comprehensive search warrant sought the 2024 Republican presidential primary front-runner’s search history, direct messages, and “content of all tweets created, drafted, favorited/liked, or retweeted” by his account from October 2020 to January 2021.

    The special counsel also demanded a list of all devices used to log into Trump’s then-Twitter, now X account, as well as information on users who interacted with the then-president in the months leading up to Jan. 6, 2021, the court filings show.

    Among the information Smith sought were lists of all Twitter users who “favorited or retweeted” Trump’s tweets, “as well as all tweets that include the username associated with the account” in “mentions” or “replies.”

    The special counsel also requested a list of every user Trump “followed, unfollowed, muted, unmuted, blocked, or unblocked” and a list of users who took any of the same actions with Trump’s account during the aforementioned timeframe.

    “There is no benign or reasonable justification for that demand,” wrote former FBI agent/whistleblower Steve Friend on X.

  • “Patrick Wojahn, a well-known LGBTQ activist and friend of key people in the Joe Biden administration, was sentenced to 30 years in prison on Monday. Wojahn pleaded guilty to 140 charges related to child pornography as part of a deal struck with prosecutors.”
  • Henry Kissinger dead at 100.

    Henry Kissinger, the legendary diplomat who played a central role in advising Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford on foreign policy, died at his home in Connecticut late Wednesday at age 100.

    Kissinger was the only person to simultaneously be secretary of state and hold the position of White House national-security adviser. In 1973, he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Le Duc Tho for their work in brokering the 1973 Paris Agreement ending America’s involvement in Vietnam.

    Kissinger was born in Germany in 1923. Three months before Kristallnacht, his family fled, bound for New York City. Kissinger served in the Army during World War II and was assigned to the 84 Infantry Division, voluntarily staying behind at the Battle of the Bulge to reportedly conduct “hazardous counter-intelligence duties” while also “making good use of his German.”

    Kissinger was a key Cold War figure as Secretary of State, and one who doesn’t deserve all of the extensive condemnation he receives (for different reasons) from left and right, nor the hosannas of praise he received from the mainstream media during is heyday. The instantly betrayed peace treaty with North Vietnam (the won he won the Nobel Peace Prize for) was shameful, but LBJ’s incompetence and Washington elite failure of nerve probably doomed South Vietnam before Kissinger even got to the negotiating table. The opening to China was a brilliant move to counter the Soviet Union at the time, and helped usher in a brief period of economic and political liberalization that has now been almost completely undone. SALT1 and the ABM treaties were violated by the Soviet Union before the ink was even dry.

    Kissinger was at his best down deep in the intricacies of face-to-face diplomacy, and played a key role in negotiating details after the Yom Kippur War. Indeed, Kissinger’s goal of stabilizing the Middle East (at least as far as preventing another major Arab-Israeli War) was met.

    Kissinger was ultimately wrong for favoring detente over rollback, but that preference was also emblematic of the Washington foreign policy establishment of the time, and it would take Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980 to set America on the right course (and the Soviet Union to the dust-heap of history).

  • Sandra Day O’Connor dead at 93. Eh, she wasn’t the worst Republican appointee to the Supreme Court.
  • Irish riot over illegal alien stabbing spree against children. Rioting is bad, mmkay, but Irish citizens, like those across the rest of the EU, are tired of the enforced consensus for allowing unassimilable Islamic immigrants to cross the border and immediately apply for the welfare rolls.
  • History made as the Irish riot while sober.
  • “Ireland Declares Asking An Immigrant To Stop Stabbing You A Hate Crime.”
  • Not just Ireland. “‘We are here to stab white people’: Teen killed, 16 others wounded in French village after migrant gang reportedly descends on winter ball.”
  • High prices and “lot rot” are doing CarMax in. Not to mention the Biden recession…
  • More of that voting fraud that doesn’t exist. “Virginia Election Official ‘Altered Election Results’ in 2020.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • I just must not be paying attention, because I missed I missed the return of former UK PM David Cameron as foreign secretary a few weeks ago. Eh, you do get a lot of reruns this time of year…
  • “Disney got Microsoft to change its AI image generator because people were making too many savage Pixar-style posters.”
  • Examples, some of which are very not safe for work:

  • Speaking of AI, Sports Illustrated has evidently been caught using it rather than hiring competent sportswriters.
  • Critical Drinker is not too impressed with Napoleon.
  • “Biden Airdrops Humanitarian Resupply Of Hostages Into Gaza.”

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    Posted in Austin, Border Control, Communism, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Jihad, Media Watch, Military, Social Justice Warriors, Supreme Court, Waste and Fraud | 3 Comments »

    The First Time As Tragedy, The Second Time As Farce

    Saturday, October 7th, 2023

    Hamas decided to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War by launching another war.

    Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared “we are at war, and we will win it” early Saturday as the country’s air force began striking targets in Gaza in response to a surprise Hamas attack on the 50th anniversary of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, involving more than 3,000 rockets and groups of terrorists descending on Israeli territory by land, sea, and even paraglider.

    At least 40 Israelis have been killed in the fighting and at least 740 injured, the Israeli military said, and videos posted on social media appear to show Hamas taking civilian hostages. A militant group in Gaza, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, also claims to be holding a group of Israeli soldiers hostage.

    As rockets rained down on central and southern Israel, the televisions began broadcasting footage of armed groups of Hamas terrorists pouring into towns across the country in pickup trucks, the Times of Israel reported. In response, the IDF deployed forces to the south, where troops began engaging with the Hamas invaders.

    The Israeli Air Force also scrambled dozens of jets to strike four command centers and 17 military compounds in the Gaza strip, the air force announced on X. At least 198 Palestinians have been killed and 1,610 have been wounded in the retaliatory attacks, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

    The biggest difference between the real Yom Kippur War and Hamas’ farce is the size of of the opposition. In 1973, Israel was attacked by the armies of Egypt and Syria supported by forces from Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Jordan, Iraq, Libya, Kuwait, Tunisia, and Morocco, plus some random units from Cuba and North Korea, a coalition that theoretically could wipe Israel off the map. By contrast, Hamas is a terrorist organization that controls some 141 miles of square territory and survives on handouts from the UN, EU, Iran and Syria.

    Israel has the most modern and technologically advanced army in the Middle East, and arguably the second most technologically advanced in the world. Their air force is entirely American-made, including F-35s.

    The news that Hamas is using technicals is both interesting and obvious, as they’re a very cost-effective option. They’re not ideal for urban combat or stand-up fights, but if they can get out of the built-up area around Gaza and out into the flatter, more open terrain to the south they can do some damage as hit and run forces, at least until the Israeli Air Force can track them down. I assume Hamas has drones, because it’s 2023 and everyone has drones, plus their patron Iran makes some.

    Enjoy some random combat footage, including what looks like a knocked-out Merkava tank.

    We all know what the outcome of this conflict will be: Hamas will kill some Israeli civilians and a few IDF soldiers, and Israel will pound the snot out of Hamas and it’s command and control infrastructure, after which it will take Hamas a decade or so of payments from its sugar daddies to build up enough to do it all over again.

    Hamas is a pustule that occasionally needs to be lanced, but little more.

    Update: Yep, drones. IDF needs to go back to the makers of Trophy and ask why it didn’t stop a slow-moving, top-drop munition.

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    Posted in Foreign Policy, Guns, Jihad | 8 Comments »

    LinkSwarm for October 9, 2015

    Friday, October 9th, 2015

    If you want to attend tomorrow’s blogshoot/meetup/tweetup, try to drop me a line (lawrenceperson at gmail dot com) so I’ll know how many will attend.

    Now the LinkSwarm:

  • ObamaCare co-ops are going bankrupt.
  • Thanks to The Magic Power of Socialism™ and an estimated 800% inflation rate, Venezuela is now the most expensive place to live in the world, at least going by the official exchange rate. “Depending on which exchange rate you use, Venezuela can either be one of the cheapest countries in the world, or the most expensive.”
  • Democrats last year: “All those gun-toting white racist redneck freaks from Jesusland will be lining up to vote for Hillary!” Pollsters this year: Not so much.
  • Hillary Clinton now totally opposes the very Tran-Pacific Partnership she helped negotiate.
  • “Let’s take Malcolm Turnbull at his word that it’s only “a very very small percentage of violent extremist individuals”. What is the actual percentage? In the aforementioned Malmo, where up to a thousand mostly young male “refugees” arrive each day, suppose the “very very small percentage” is two per cent. That’s 20 brand new “violent extremists” per day. During the Northern Irish “Troubles”, MI5 estimated that there were no more than a hundred active members of the IRA at any one time – that’s to say, people actively involved in shooting and killing. So Malmo is taking in the equivalent of the entire IRA every week.”
  • How spree killers get their weapons. Or, once again, the New York Times twists facts to fit the narrative.
  • Speaking of the Times, this is what happens when the professional editors and proof-readers edit and proofread professional writers.
  • Wendy Davis thinks the reason she lost is she didn’t talk about abortion enough. Sure, Wendy, that’s it. Go with that… (Hat tip: Perry vs. World).
  • The Nairobi mall attack revisited. If this report is to be believed, armed civilians actually contained the threat, then army and security forces showed up and promptly managed to start shooting each other.
  • “In zombie world, the man who relies on the government for his safety will be zombie chow in short order…In zombieland, there are three kinds of people: those who know how to use guns, those who learn how to use guns, and zombies.”
  • Remembering the Yom Kippur War.

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    Posted in Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Economics, Elections, Foreign Policy, Guns, Jihad, Media Watch, Texas, Welfare State | No Comments »

    The Egyptian Military and Existential Threats

    Thursday, June 14th, 2012

    Some people have wondered why Egypt’s high court, doing the military leadership’s bidding, just invalidated the Egyptian parliament, even though the Muslim Brotherhood’s popularity, though strong, seemed to be on the wan. I think the simplest explanation is not that they were afraid of losing their grip on Egyptian society (though that’s probably part of the equation), but that the Egypt’s military leadership prefers not be be killed. I don’t mean this in a metaphorical sense, I mean that there was real (and probably justified) fear that a government lead by Muslim Brotherhood would lead, in very short order, to the liquidation of the military leadership. I think they were facing not one but two existential threats.

    First, as shown in Turkey, when a nation’s existing military leadership also acts as an independent power base, islamists are only willing to tolerate potential threats to their own rule as long as they have to. Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s islamist AKP has moved to put vast swathes of Turkey’s previously independent military leadership on trail for blocking Islamist aims in the past. Egypt’s military is just as strong a power center (albeit one considerably less scrupulous than Turkey’s); how long do you think it would take the Muslim Brotherhood to move against the military leadership after they had consolidated power? My guess is not long at all, and the military knew it too.

    Second, if we take the Muslim Brotherhood at their word, it’s obvious they’re itching for another war against Israel. And why not? They regard the “Zionist Entity” as a literal affront against God, one that must be wiped off the face of the earth. Moreover, what better way to tighten control over the levers of governmental powers than with a war against a hated enemy? There are are all sorts of ways to use “emergency wartime decrees” to eliminate opposition figures and seize direct control of businesses and ministries when everyone’s focused on the military action.

    And who would bear the brunt of any war against Israel? The hated military. Win, and members of the Muslim Brotherhood government are heroes to Muslims all over the world. Lose, and it could only be attributable to traitorous disloyalty by the military leadership, which would be immediately purged.

    And make no mistake about: Egypt would lose. Badly. No matter how they may try to spin the 1973 Yom Kipur War as a victory, the Egyptian military got it’s ass handed to it in all four of the Arab-Israeli Wars. The Six Day War was particularly brutal, with Israel destroying all the Arab air forces arrayed against it, most on the ground, and decisively crushing Egyptian forces in the Sinai while taking minimal casualties; they could even have taken Cairo were it not for frantic pleas of the U.S. and heavy threats from the Soviet Union. Egypt lost the Yom Kippur War as well, but actually managed to bloody Israel’s nose in the Sinai, using effective anti-tank tactics to inflict real damage on the IDF before being overwhelmed. This would be pretty much the only instance where an Arab army stood toe-to-toe with the IDF (even temporarily) until the 2006 war on Lebanon, which Hezbollah would survive despite being badly mauled.

    The Egyptian military knows it would lose any war against Israel for the foreseeable future (even discounting Israel’s likely nuclear weapons arsenal), and it knows the best way to prevent one is to prevent the Muslim Brotherhood from coming to power. Strangely enough, in this instance the Egyptian military leadership is actually acting in the best interests of the nation, even if the end result also happens to be saving their own hide.

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    Posted in Foreign Policy, Jihad, Military | No Comments »