Taliban beheadings & hangings in Afghanistan

The Forgotten War Still Rages

• Let's see, we declared victory and are leaving Afghanistan, but no one remembered to tell the Taliban that they lost.
• Now the same political morons that took us into Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and Somalia can't wait to take us to war in Iraq and Syria.

The Taliban beheaded 12 Afghan civilians, mostly family members of local policemen, in an assault that was part of a week-long offensive that has so far killed 60 people and wounded scores of people.

However, a Taliban spokesman in Ghazni province denied the reports of beheadings and civilian slayings, insisting the insurgents were only fighting Afghan forces there.

The violence comes amid the annual Taliban offensive, which this year will be an important gauge of how well Afghan government forces are able to face insurgent attacks before the withdrawal of foreign combat troops at the end of the year reports the Boston Globe.

According to the Ghazni provincial deputy police chief, Asadullah Ensafi, the Taliban Thursday captured and beheaded 12 civilians and torched about 60 homes in an attack in the district of Arjistan.

There are no NATO troops in the district.

‘‘We don’t have the time for this [beheadings] while we are fighting,’’ Taliban spokesman Qari Yousaf told Associated Press by phone. ‘‘These reports are baseless and a lie.’’

The offensive in Ghazni comes as Afghanistan readies to inaugurate the country’s new president, Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, who officially takes over from Hamid Karzai on Monday.

During the past week, the Taliban have been attacking several villages in Ghazni’s Arjistan district, Ensafi said, and battles in the area were still raging Friday, he said.

On Friday morning, the Taliban detonated a car bomb outside an encampment where about 40 Afghan policemen were based in Arjistan, killing at least 8 policemen, said the province’s deputy governor, Mohammad Ali Ahmadi.

Ahmadi, who also confirmed the beheadings, said that attack and the car bombing brought the overall death toll in the Taliban offensive in Ghazni to 60. The victims included both civilians and police officers, he said.

Afghan villagers hang Taliban fighters

Afghan villagers hanged four captured Taliban militants from a tree on Saturday as security forces battled the insurgents for a sixth day in a district of Ghazni province, an official said.

The hangings were carried out after Taliban fighters had killed more than 100 people in the area in the past week, including more than a dozen who were beheaded, according to Ghazni deputy governor Mohammad Ali Ahmadi.

The battle in the Ajrestan district of Ghazni, southwest of the capital Kabul, is part of an escalation of Taliban attacks around the country as the militants take advantage of dwindling U.S. air support as foreign forces leave reports The Star.

The assault by an estimated 700 Taliban fighters began about six days ago but Afghan army commando reinforcements and the threat of NATO air strikes have so far prevented the district from falling under Taliban control, said Ahmadi.

Heavy fighting continued on Saturday in Ajrestan, in the far west of the province.

The four captured militants were handed over to residents in Arzakai village, according to Ahmadi, who also uses the name Ahmadullah Ahmadi. It was unclear who handed the men over to the villagers, or why.

Army commandos supported by aircraft from the U.S.-led military coalition arrived on Friday to help local army and police, Ahmadi said.

"Coalition jets were in the air, but they did not bombard the area because of fears of civilian casualties," he said.

Foreign forces' air support will end entirely after international combat troops leave Afghanistan at the end of the year.

British Fortifications, Kabul in 1879
From 1839 to 1919 the British fought three wars in Afghanistan with near zero real results.  But politicians and soldiers love to play war and refuse to learn the lessons of history on the limits of military power.  Now these same moronic "leaders" want to jump back into Iraq and Syria.
.
(Battle of Kabul 1879)

Officers of the 10th Hussars at Jellalabad - 1879
South West of Jellalabad in North Eastern Afghanistan.
See The Battle of Futtehabad.

 

ISIS war costs close in one $1 Billion - Congress is in hiding

We are at War . . . Sort of

• Congress is in hiding.  The worthless shreds of human debris in the Democrat Senate and the pretend "Constitution loving" GOP House are running at light speed away from debating and voting on Obama's unconstitutional wars in Syria and Iraq.

The cost of the US-led war against the Islamic State (Isis) militant group has totalled at least $780m, according to a new estimate, as US drones and warplanes continued to attack Isis positions in Iraq and Syria on Monday.
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The US defense secretary, Chuck Hagel, said on Friday that the US military is spending up to $10 million a day and is likely to request more money from Congress to fund a war whose duration is uncertain. In August, before the US expanded strikes against Isis into Syria, the Pentagon estimated its daily war costs at $7.5m and has yet to provide a more precise estimate reports the Guardian.

The Center on Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), a thinktank influential with the Pentagon, estimated on Monday that the air war has already cost between $780m and $930m between 8 August, when it began, and 24 September.

Congress has not voted on going to war, outside of authorizing the military to train a proxy Syrian rebel ground force, and will not do so until after the November midterm elections at earliest.

The CSBA priced out estimates running a gamut of options proposed by politicians, retired military officers and pundits for escalating the war. What it called a “moderate level of air operations”, involving 2,000 “deployed ground forces” – a level slightly higher than the 1,600 ostensibly non-combat security and “advisory” US forces in Iraq now – would total as much as $320m each month and $3.8bn annually.

Should the US deploy a ground force of 25,000 US troops, as advocated by Iraq surge architect Frederick Kagan, annual costs would run “as high as $13bn to $22bn”. An air campaign with a higher operational tempo and a 5,000-troop deployment would cost between $350m and $570m per month and $4.2bn to $6.8bn each year.

General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, opened the door to US ground combat alongside Iraqi and Kurdish forces in congressional testimony earlier this month. He and Hagel on Friday anticipated asking Congress for additional money in the military’s baseline budget, which already stands at about $500,000, excluding nearly $59bn in requested war funding, mostly for Afghanistan.

That war funding is “gas money”, Dempsey said, above the strains that a new and budgetarily unanticipated war are likely to have on the funding assumptions of the military services.

Panic over Ukip has spread to Labour

UKIP's Nigel Farage and Labour's Ed Miliband.

Free Elections - What a Concept

• The Ruling Elites in Britain, just like in the U.S., have betrayed their own people in order to import millions of new workers to drive down wages.

(The Guardian)  -  In his keynote speech in Manchester, Ed Miliband taunted the prime minister for lying awake at night worrying not about the future of the United Kingdom but rather the United Kingdom Independence party. Badum-tish!

Like much of the speech the joke fell a bit flat because, as it happens, David Cameron isn’t the only one who has been losing sleep over Ukip. In previous years, the Labour conference treated the Faragist threat as private grief for Conservatives into which Miliband need not intrude. And it remains the case that Ukip takes more votes from the Tories. In a number of key marginal constituencies, Nigel Farage is making Labour’s work easier.

But that mechanical (and cynical) calculation is giving way to moral panic at the way Ukip campaigners are proselytising among traditional, white working-class communities.

Labour’s prospective parliamentary candidates (PPCs) at conference talk anxiously about a Faragist threat in their patch that has appeared suddenly and is growing rapidly. Fringe events on the Ukip menace were packed beyond standing room only. That used to happen at Tory conference. The fever is contagious reports The Guardian.

While back in the U.S. both parties with their corrupt monopoly on
elections worship at the thrown of illegal aliens.

There is some excitable talk about a serious threat to Labour in the Heywood and Middleton byelection on 9 October. The vote is on the same day as the Clacton contest where Douglas Carswell intends to ratify his defection to Ukip. Labour had hoped the higher-profile Essex race would allow them to fight a defensive battle on the outskirts of Manchester without attracting too much attention.

But Clacton is in the bag for Ukip – Carswell’s triumph and Cameron’s humiliation are priced in already. So Farage can afford to throw a bit of campaigning muscle at Heywood. “We won’t lose the seat,” one well-connected local Labour campaigner tells me. “But we’re definitely in line to get a bloody nose.”

It is precisely with a view to capitalising on Labour discomfort that Farage has chosen Doncaster, Miliband’s own seat, as the venue for his party’s conference this week. Labour MPs and councillors who know the area a lot better than I do report alarming levels of voter flirtation with Ukip and ready contempt for Miliband – not sufficient to cost him his seat but perhaps enough to cause embarrassment and distraction in a general election.

Meanwhile, Labour campaign strategists are starting to lose hope of winning the Essex constituency of Thurrock, officially number two on the party’s list of target seats. The PPC there is Polly Billington, a former Miliband adviser. She is battling hard and has the support of an unofficial “save Polly” drive from friends on the frontbench. But Ukip is still winning on the ground.

The greater source of alarm in Labour circles is not so much the threat in individual seats, but what that threat reveals about the weakness of the Miliband message. Angry voters aren’t listening. Worse, they don’t want to listen because they judge instinctively that Labour’s high command is stuffed with people unlike them.

The party’s response is a campaign depicting Ukip as Thatcher on steroids, seeking to fleece and exploit hardworking people: “More Tory than the Tories”. My guess is that this line will have limited effect. Voters want to judge for themselves whether or not one party is like another – and many have already made up their minds that Ukip represents something new and different. Labour doesn’t have the authority to brand it as something else. And besides, telling people they are being duped is not an attractive message – it reinforces the suspicion that Labour is in the business of piously bossing people around, claiming to know what is good for them. It comes across as just another sneer from mainstream politics at the choices voters make.

Above all, Labour’s problem is a shortage of messengers who can deliver an anti-Farage line in tones and terms that resonate.

Communists attack pro-democracy Hong Kong protests

Communists: "No freedom of speech."

Thousands protest for free elections.

Pro-democracy protesters, some wearing surgical masks and holding up umbrellas to protect against tear gas, expanded their rallies throughout Hong Kong on Monday, defying calls to disperse in a major pushback against Beijing’s decision to limit democratic reforms in the Asian financial hub.

Police officers tried to negotiate with protesters camped out on a normally busy highway near the Hong Kong government headquarters that was the scene of tear gas-fueled clashes that erupted the evening before.

An officer with a bullhorn tried to get them to clear the way for the commuters. A protester, using the group’s own speaker system, responded by saying that they wanted Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying to demand a genuine choice for the territory’s voters reports the New York Post.

“Do something good for Hong Kong. We want real democracy!” he shouted.

 

 

Drone Captures Hong Kong Protests From The Skies

 

 

 

Despite the heavy use of tear gas on Sunday, pro-democracy protesters

returned to central Hong Kong on Monday.Photo: Getty Images

China has called the protests illegal and endorsed the Hong Kong government’s crackdown. The clashes — images of which have been beamed around the world — are undermining Hong Kong’s image as a safe financial haven, and raised the stakes of the face-off against President Xi Jinping’s government. Beijing has taken a hard line against threats to the Communist Party’s monopoly on power, including clamping down on dissidents and Muslim Uighur separatists in the country’s far west.

The mass protests are the strongest challenge yet to Beijing’s decision last month to reject open nominations for candidates under proposed guidelines for the first-ever elections for Hong Kong’s leader, promised for 2017. Instead, candidates must continue to be hand-picked by Beijing — a move that many residents viewed as reneging on promises to allow greater democracy in the semi-autonomous territory.

With rumors swirling, the Beijing-backed and deeply unpopular Leung reassured the public that speculation that the Chinese army might intervene was untrue.

The protest has been spearheaded largely by student-age activists but has gathered momentum among a broad range of people, from high school students to the elderly.

Protesters also occupied streets in other parts of Hong Kong Island, including the upscale shopping area of Causeway Bay as well as across the harbor in densely populated Mong Kok on the Kowloon peninsula. The city’s transport department said roads in those areas were closed.

Sky's Mark Stone In Midst Of Hong Kong Protests  

Thousands Of Protesters Camp Out In Hong Kong  

Pro-democracy protesters take a rest after intense
conflicts with police on Sept. 29.

 

Tear gassing the crowd

ISIS now one mile from 'the gates of Baghdad'

Obama's Frankenstein Rages in Iraq

• The CIA and our allies poured mountains of weapons into Syria to arm Islamist rebels, and then we claim to be "shocked" that Islamist rebels are armed.  Yes we are either that fucking stupid or this was all done on purpose to create anarchy.  Pick one.

(Daily Mail)  -  Fierce fighting has been reported on the outskirts of Baghdad where ISIS militants are attempting to seize control of the Iraqi capital - despite ongoing Western airstrikes against the terror group.

 

The fighting is taking place just one mile to the west of the city, with government forces desperately trying to hold off the militants, who allegedly killed up to 1,000 soldiers during clashes yesterday.

 

ISIS have held a number of towns and villages close to the Iraqi capital since earlier in the year, when government troops melted away following a lightning advance in the west of the country - enabling the terrorist group to seize further swaths of territory for their so-called caliphate.

Reports that ISIS militants are now just one mile from Baghdad came from the Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation in the Middle East - an organisation supporting the work of Canon Andrew White, vicar of the city's St George's Church, the only Anglican church in Iraq.

 

 

In a message posted on Facebook, the group said: 'The Islamic State are now less than 2km away from entering Baghdad. They said it could never happen and now it almost has. 

'Obama says he overestimated what the Iraqi Army could do. Well you only need to be hear a very short while to know they can do very very little,' they added.

 

The claims were backed up by Canon White himself, who shared the message just hours after he had earlier suggested the group were approximately six miles from the centre of Baghdad.

 

In a message he also posted on Facebook, Canon White had said: 'The Islamic State are now within 10km of entering Baghdad. Over a 1000 Iraqi troops were killed by them yesterday, things are so bad. As I said all the military air strikes are doing nothing. If ever we needed your prayer it is now.'

 

The militants are understood to have had their advance halted by airstrikes yesterday at Ameriyat Al-Falluja yesterday - a small city about 18 miles south of Fallujah and 40 miles west of Baghdad.

 

But the clashes did not force the bulk of the fighters - with many of them now having made their way to the Baghdad suburbs for this morning's fighting.

Read more: Daily Mail.
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And one for you, and for you. Now calm down
guys and wait your turn.

The moron politicians and their lap-dog media
somehow "forget" to ask where ISIS gets
their weapons and funding.

Obama withholds weapons from the Kurds who are fighting ISIS

Kurdish homemade weapons because the U.S.
is starving them of equipment.

Uncle Sam is Screwing You

• A Defense official told Fox News, “The Department of Defense has not provided direct arms to the Kurds and has no plans to do so in the future."
• The Sheeple public has no clue how they are being used by our government.  They do not want to understand that after more than ten years of U.S. "help" the Iraqi air force simple does not exist.  The Russians and Iranians are shipping in equipment, men and fighter jets to defend Iraq from the CIA backed Islamist terrorists.
• With one hand, the un-official U.S. policy was to deliberately starve Iraq and Kurdistan of weapons to defend themselves so they would be forced to rely on the U.S.  Then with the other hand the CIA and our allies fully armed ISIS and other Islamists in Syria. 
• As the Islamist armies marched at their leisure across the wide-open Arabian deserts not one single bomb fell on them from the U.S. or any of our allies.  After all, why would you bomb the troops that you had just armed?  It appears the U.S. goal is endless war and anarchy with us stirring the pot of hate and death.

Irregular armed forces have to rely on their ingenuity to arm themselves. And while rifles and mortars can be bought on the black market, getting hold of a tank or two can be a bit tricky. But you can always make a DIY version with your own hands.

At least that’s what fighters of the Kurdish militias in northern Syria do. Called People's Protection Units, or YPG, they have been dedicated to protecting Kurds from whatever the three-year-long war in the country may throw at them. Lately it’s been the Islamic State, the big bad terrorist group that proved to be worthy of being bombed by America itself reports RT News.

The People’s Protection Units don’t have killer drones or stealth bombers. They are mostly armed with small arms, with some heavier weapons such as mortars and rocket launchers, pickup trucks turned into mobile gun turrets and an occasional piece of artillery.

Coldkurd™ @ColdKurd Follow

#jazza #ypg controlled rocket launcher

10:01 AM - 23 Aug 2014

And the Kurds also have homemade armor – an assortment of vehicles that would make Marvin Heemeyer proud. (Heemeyer, an American welder, infamously used a bulldozer, armor plating and a few guns to go on a rampage in in Granby, Colorado, in 2004 to settle grievances over a zoning conflict.)

Kurdish homemade weapons.
The U.S. leaves the Kurds to twist slowly in the wind.



Gudaw English @GudawEnglish Follow

Some of the armoured vehicles manufactured by YPG. amazing. s

elf relying #TwitterKurds

3:59 PM - 9 Sep 2014

The former cars and track vehicles may look like cast-offs from Tatooine desert scenes of Star Wars, but with proper deployment they are no less efficient in battle than the early tanks of World War I were on European battlefields.

Fuck!!!  I want one!
Perfect for home defense.

Must See Videos!

Kurdish Peshmergas Fightback Against ISIS  

Kurdish Peshmerga troops
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See our article:
Russian Pilots are bombing ISIS

How The “Syrian Rebels” Really Feel About “Friendly” US Airstrikes

"This war could last for decades.”

Abu Firas al-Suri

by Zero Hedge |

Late yesterday, General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the U.S. military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, disclosed what in a nutshell US strategy in Syria would be.

For one, he announced that the US would require some 12,000-15,000 armed, trained and paid for boots on the ground, i.e., mercenaries to do Obama’s dirty work on the ground because the Nobel peace prize winner is unwilling to go all the way with his belligerent pivot.

As a reminder, the last notable time the US engaged in wholesale arming and funding of offshore mercenaries was the Afghan war, when the CIA got involved with the Mujahideen “freedom fighters” whose funding began with $20–$30 million per year in 1980 and rose to $630 million per year in 1987, culminating with the terrorist action of Osama Bin Laden, once a close friend of the US and the CIA (read more about Operation Cyclone here).

More importantly, as Reuters reported, Dempsey said that the endgoal is “to recapture lost territory in eastern Syria”. Territory, which as we reported in July, amounts to 35% of Syria’s landmass and includes most of its oilfields.

And sure enough, the territory would be preserved for the exclusive use of the “rebels”, or the group of Islamists from whose ranks none other than ISIS arose over the past year. And since the rebels couldn’t care one way or another, this is merely a way for the US to say that whatever Syrian territory is “liberated” from ISIS presence, it will be disposed of as the US sees fit, with the only decisions being whether to grant it to Qatar or Saudi Arabia.

In the meantime, things on the propaganda front are going form bad to worse. Recall the Nusra front - the extreme wing of the "rebels" that the US is allegedly supporting? Well as Haaretz just reported, ""the al Qaida-linked Nusra Front on Saturday denounced U.S.-led air strikes on Syria, saying they amounted to a war against Islam and vowing to retaliate against Western and Arab countries that took part.

Er, that doesn't help the official party line that Syrian rebels are greeting the US with open arms. "We are in a long war. This war will not end in months nor years, this war could last for decades," the group's spokesman Abu Firas al-Suri said.

Funny, because earlier today, Syria's foreign minister Walid al-Muallem was informed, by the US mind you, that the war against ISIS will continue for three years, or just after until the end of Obama's second, and hopefully final term.

"It's not a war against Nusra Front, it's a war against Islam," he added in an audio message published on the group's social media network, its first reaction since the launch of the U.S.-led strikes on Tuesday.

Full Article . . . .

US sponsored Taliban fighting with FSA
Around 1,000 members of the Pakistani Taliban have been killed in clashes near the Syrian capital city of Damascus, reports say. Russia says the West has failed to achieve enough control on Syria’s newly formed opposition coalition, warning against the repetition of the military intervention in Libya.
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According to recent reports, the bodies of the Pakistani Taliban members, who were killed during battles around Syria’s International Airport near Damascus, have been buried in mass graves.  (Jafria News.com)

2nd Conservative MP resigns, joins UKIP

When "Conservatives" are no longer Conservative

  "Today I am leaving the Conservative Party

and joining UKIP."

(Editor  -  Britain has the same problem as the U.S.  Simply so-called "Conservatives" are not conservative at all but moderate leftists.  At least in the UK they have other choices on their ballot. Here is the U.S. we Conservatives are royally screwed.)

Tory MP Mark Reckless has said he is leaving his party to join UKIP, announcing his decision on the eve of the Conservatives' conference.

The Rochester and Strood MP told the UKIP conference he had resigned as an MP, triggering a by-election.

He said that, as a Tory, he could not keep a promise to "cut immigration while treating people fairly," reports BBC News.

He is the second Tory MP to defect to UKIP after Clacton MP Douglas Carswell did the same in August.

Reckless will seek re-election in his constituency for UKIP.

Real choices on your ballot - Maybe we
should try free elections in the U.S.

Reckless won his seat as a Conservative in 2010 with a majority of 9,953 votes over Labour's Teresa Murray.

Appearing on stage at the UKIP conference in Doncaster, Mr Reckless said: "Today I am leaving the Conservative party and joining UKIP."

He said he had not taken the decision lightly.

Reckless said the Conservative leadership was "part of the problem that is holding our country back".

Criticising the three main parties, he said: "People feel ignored, taken for granted, over-taxed, over-regulated, ripped off and lied to."

On immigration, Reckless said constituents needed to believe that the UK had control over who comes into the country, adding: "At the moment we do not have any sense of that."

He said: "Does anyone left or right genuinely support an immigration system where we turn away the best and brightest from our Commonwealth, people with links and family here in order to make room for unskilled immigration from southern and eastern Europe.

"I promise to cut immigration while treating people fairly and humanely.

"I cannot keep that promise as a Conservative. I can keep it as UKIP."

T

General Election 2010: Rochester and Strood
Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Conservative	Mark Reckless	23,604	49.2	+6.6
	Labour	Teresa Murray	13,651	28.5	−13.1
	Liberal Democrat	Geoff Juby	7,800	16.3	+3.9
	English Democrats	Ron Sands	2,182	4.5	N/A
	Green	Simon Marchant	734	1.5	N/A
Majority			9,953	20.7
Turnout			47,971	64.9	+2.5
	Conservative hold		Swing	+9.8

See

Le Pen's Front National wins seats in French Senate

The Rise of Conservatism

• Marine Le Pen’s Conservative party made its third political breakthrough after strong showings in municipal and European elections.

The Conservative Front National (FN) scored a historic victory in elections to the French senate on Sunday, winning its first ever seats in the upper chamber as the ruling Socialists and their leftwing allies lost their majority to rightwing parties.

The shock victory of Stéphane Ravier from Marseilles and David Rachline from Fréjus confirmed the party’s political breakthrough under Marine Le Pen, who has brushed the poisonous legacy of her father Jean-Marie Le Pen under the carpet in an attempt to “de-demonise” the FN.

The two seats are both in the FN’s stronghold in southern France, and at 26 Rachline, the mayor of Fréjus, is the youngest French senator ever elected reports the Guardian.

The result marks a third humiliating electoral defeat for the Socialist party, which has been punished by disillusioned voters while support for the FN has surged. Le Pen’s party won control of a dozen municipalities in elections last March, including the 7th district in Marseilles where Ravier was elected mayor.

“No to Islamism,” the poster screams in big black letters.
 The image is central to Le Pen's party.

It also came top in the European elections two months later, when it knocked the centre-right UMP into second place. One poll earlier this month said that Le Pen could theoretically beat the country’s president, François Hollande, in the second round of the next presidential election, scheduled for 2017.

Referring to the presidency after his election to the senate, Ravier said: “There’s just one more door to open, the Elysée. In 2017 we’ll have Marine Le Pen to do it.”

Sunday’s complex vote was for half of the 348 seats in the senate by an electoral college of 87,000 voters made up of city councillors and local officials. A first round of voting which concluded around midday provided a foretaste of the final shock result, with the Socialists losing seven seats, including in Hollande’s own constituency of La Correze. “It’s Berezina,” one leading Socialist said, referring to Napoleon’s defeat while retreating from Russia.

With Hollande’s popularity at an unprecedented low of 13% and the government hit by budget woes, record joblessness and zero growth, his party had expected to lose the senate majority it has held with the Communists and Greens since 2011.

Le Pen hailed her party’s success as a “great victory, an absolutely historic victory” which she said would represent a “breath of fresh air in a rather sleepy chamber”.

“With every day that passes, our ideas are making progress,” she told BFMTV, predicting further gains for the FN in the forthcoming territorial and regional elections.