Israeli Wonder Woman
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| The new Wonder Woman in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice: an ex-Israel Defense Forces soldier/Miss Israel |
Putin is waging war while the West is talking sanctions
Staunton, July 27 – Having taken the measure of the West and found it wanting, Vladimir Putin has expanded his aggression from the military occupation of Crimea to the organization of irredentist insurgencies in eastern Ukraine to the shooting down of the Malaysian jetliner to the shelling of Ukrainian targets from the territory of the Russian Federation.
All these steps are acts of war. But in response, Western leaders have done nothing Putin cannot live with. On the one hand, the sanctions regimes they have imposed or talked about have not hurt him. Instead, they have allowed him to deflect attention from his own failures at home. And if anything, they have contributed to his popularity there.
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If the West continues with economic sanctions being the only thing on the table and with those being leaky and incomplete at best as the French sales of warships to Moscow and the German purchases of Russian gas ensure that it will be, Putin thus has little reason to stop what he has doing. Indeed, he may conclude he has ever more reason to engage in aggression now.
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What is Putin likely to do next? Unless the Ukrainian military is more successful than the continuing influx of Russian materiel and manpower makes likely, the Kremlin leader almost certainly will move in the coming weeks to occupy more of Ukraine. As was true with Hitler and the Sudetenland, Putin wants far more than Donetsk and Luhansk. He wants Kyiv.
Putin's "sinister, lonely life"
More than a week after the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, the world's attention remains focused on Russian president Vladimir Putin.Related link: Putin's inner circle sheds light on his "sinister, lonely life"
Despite his leading role on the world stage, Putin has remained much a mystery. Now, interviews with members of his inner circle, done over the course of more than three years and revealed in Newsweek's recent cover story, portray much more about the life he leads beyond the public eye, CBS News correspondent Michelle Miller reports.
In public, Putin is known for his icy stare, seemingly impenetrable, much like the life he leads.
"He doesn't talk," one interpreter told Newsweek writer Ben Judah. "He feels no need to smile."
Poland is stepping up her defence spending
POLAND spent $4.7 billion on 48 American-built F-16 fighters, but in the event of a conflict with Russia, the safest place for the warplanes would be on a German airfield, quips a defence analyst. Threadbare Soviet-era air defences would be unable to protect Poland against an attack.
With neighbouring Ukraine in turmoil, Warsaw is more acutely aware of its vulnerability than at any moment since the end of the cold war...
A similar sense of pressure for rapid results is guiding Poland’s multi-year 140 billion zloty ($46 billion) military modernisation programme, one of the largest investments in new military kit by any European NATO member. The original plan called for a tender on supplying about 30 attack helicopters to begin only in 2018. But replacing Poland’s ageing Soviet-era Mi-24 “Hind” helicopters has now been pushed forward to 2016; possible suppliers have until August 1st to announce their interest...
Poland wants to make its forces significantly more lethal in case of an attack. The government is pushing hard for America to sell it upgraded stealthy JASSM cruise missiles, which have a range of almost 1,000km (625 miles). The missiles, which can be launched from F-16s, would give Poland the ability to counter attack by striking deep into Russia.
The need for such a system may have seemed in doubt when Poland first announced its military modernisation programme, to be completed in 2022. But Russia’s annexation of Crimea, its support for the insurgency in eastern Ukraine and its aggressive Russian-Belarusian war-games in recent years, not far from Poland’s eastern border, have made policymakers much more aware that the country faces a real security risk.
Russia is firing missiles into Ukraine
WASHINGTON—The U.S. believes Russia is firing artillery across its border at Ukrainian military positions, the State Department said on Thursday, an assertion that Moscow is playing a more direct role in the Ukrainian conflict.
The latest accusations show U.S. officials raising pressure on Moscow and more closely examining Russian activities near the rebel-held portions of eastern Ukraine since the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, which Washington blames on pro-Russian separatist fighters.
State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf also said the U.S. has evidence that Russia intends to deliver powerful rocket systems to the pro-Russia fighters in Ukraine, but declined to provide details about the systems or about how officials came to that conclusion.
"We have new evidence that the Russians intend to deliver heavier and more powerful multiple rocket launchers to the separatist forces in Ukraine and have evidence that Russia is firing artillery from within Russia to attack Ukrainian military positions," Ms. Harf told reporters at a news briefing, calling the findings "some pieces of info I've been able to get from our intelligence friends."
Russia has repeatedly denied supporting the separatist fighters. Moscow denounced as fantasy previous charges by Kiev that missiles fired from Russia brought down two Ukrainian military planes on Wednesday.
If it weren't for MH17, the Ukraine headline of the week would be the fact that my team at The Interpreter actually proved that Russia was shelling Ukraine with GRAD rockets. The Buks that shot down MH17 either came from Russia or would have needed a highly trained team of specialists (with matching launch key-cards), a crew that could have been trained only in the Russian military. Wednesday, separatists shot down two more Ukrainian military jets, so there are plenty more Russian anti-aircraft missiles still in rebel hands.
The veil has been dropped. Russia is driving this conflict, feeding the flames by providing the rebels with tanks, anti-aircraft missiles, fighters, and perhaps most importantly, cover in the international community.
This crisis exists because Russia wants it to exist. It's time for the international community to realize that Putin is not a reliable partner in solving it.
Woman who was condemned to death in Sudan for leaving Islam meets Pope Francis in Rome
Vatican City, Jul 24, 2014 / 06:44 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A Sudanese woman spared of a death sentence for refusing to renounce her Christian faith arrived in Rome with her family Thursday, where they met with Pope Francis a few hours after landing.
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According to Vatican Radio, Ibrahim and her husband Daniel Wani, a U.S. citizen, as well as their two children, 1-year-old Martin and 2-month-old Maya, who was born in prison, met the Roman Pontiff in the Vatican’s Saint Martha guesthouse at 1:00 p.m. local time.
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In May, the 27-year-old woman was charged with abandoning Islam under Sudanese law. Because her father was a Muslim, Ibrahim was legally considered a Muslim even though her mother raised her as a Christian after her father left the family when she was 6 years old.
Despite pressure and multiple death threats, Ibrahim refused to renounce her Christian faith while in prison.
In addition to the crime of apostasy – or the abandoning of the Islamic faith – Ibrahim was also charged with adultery. Her marriage to her Christian husband was not considered valid since she was considered a Muslim.
She was to receive 100 lashes for the adultery charge and was sentenced to death by hanging for apostasy.
Now rebel leader admits the pro-Russian separatists may have shot down MH-17 [UPDATE and then denies it]
In an interview with Reuters, Alexander Khodakovsky, commander of the Vostok Battalion, acknowledged for the first time since the airliner was brought down in eastern Ukraine on Thursday that the rebels did possess the BUK missile system and said it could have been sent back subsequently to remove proof of its presence.
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"I knew that a BUK came from Luhansk. At the time I was told that a BUK from Luhansk was coming under the flag of the LNR," he said, referring to the Luhansk People’s Republic, the main rebel group operating in Luhansk, one of two rebel provinces along with Donetsk, the province where the crash took place.
"That BUK I know about. I heard about it. I think they sent it back. Because I found out about it at exactly the moment that I found out that this tragedy had taken place. They probably sent it back in order to remove proof of its presence," Khodakovsky told Reuters on Tuesday.
"The question is this: Ukraine received timely evidence that the volunteers have this technology, through the fault of Russia. It not only did nothing to protect security, but provoked the use of this type of weapon against a plane that was flying with peaceful civilians," he said.
"They knew that this BUK existed; that the BUK was heading for Snezhnoye," he said, referring to a village 10 km (six miles) west of the crash site. "They knew that it would be deployed there, and provoked the use of this BUK by starting an air strike on a target they didn’t need, that their planes hadn’t touched for a week."
"And that day, they were intensively flying, and exactly at the moment of the shooting, at the moment the civilian plane flew overhead, they launched air strikes. Even if there was a BUK, and even if the BUK was used, Ukraine did everything to ensure that a civilian aircraft was shot down."
Russian Wikipedia Tampering
Russians Scramble To Edit Wikipedia So The Kremlin’s Claims Make Sense
16:24 (GMT)
As we reported earlier, the Kremlin now says that flight MH17 was “tailed” by a Ukrainian military Su-25 aircraft during much of its flight over Ukraine. As we pointed out, this claim may be physically impossible since Russia says that the Su-25 was consistently between 3 and 5 kilometers away from MH17, but the Su-25 can’t fly high enough to have this claim make any sense.
Well, today the Su-25 has been given some significant upgrades — at least on Wikipedia. Several IP addresses that track back to central Moscow appear to have edited the maximum altitude of the Su-25 from 7 kilometers to 10 kilometers to match the flight path of MH17.
One such IP address that made such a change appears to use the “ROSNIIROS” ISP (Russian Institute for Public Networks) and, according to one IP tracking service, is associated with an organization called “JSK IT. Information Technologies Co.”
Another address that made this change is also from Moscow and was tracked back to the “Closed joint-stock company Telecommunication company.”
We have not translated the full transcript of the Russian press conference yet, but according to an editor for the Russian Kremlin-operated propaganda network RT, the claim is that the Su-25 can briefly climb to 10,000 meters (though there’s no indication of this capability on the manufacturer’s website).
Totally against binding Citizen's Initiated Referenda
Conservative Party leader Colin Craig says he would not form a Government with National unless it agreed to introduce binding referenda.
Mr Craig confirmed the party's bottom line for potential coalition talks at its annual meeting in Auckland this afternoon, attended by around 120 delegates.
In his keynote speech, he said: "We are not playing a mystery game. We are being upfront with the electorate.
"The thing that we want, that will be required if a party wants our support, is that they are going to need to agree to a change whereby that the people of this country have the right on those rare occasions ... to tell the government where to go and what to do."
Where is the Polish Foreign Minister in this current crisis with Russia?
AT THE start of the Ukraine crisis Poland’s foreign minister, Radek Sikorski (pictured), was a central figure in formulating a European response to Russia's actions in Ukraine. Yet as the crisis in Poland’s neighbouring country is escalating Mr Sikorski seems to have been sidelined from Europe’s diplomatic efforts.
Mr Sikorski travelled to Kiev earlier this week to meet with top Ukrainian officials. His solitary journey was a marked contrast to his trip to the Ukrainian capital in February, when he was accompanied by both his French and German counterparts. The three minsters played an important role in negotiating an end to the violence on Kiev's Maidan, the square at the centre of the recent upheaval.
Back in Warsaw, Mr Sikorski said Ukraine's leaders had appealed to him to get the European Union to press Russia over its refusal to reduce tensions in eastern Ukraine and its continued military support for pro-Russian separatists. The foreign minister also presciently warned about the dangers posed by such supplies, especially ground-to-air missiles. “These are mobile rockets whose sale is governed by international rules and they are forbidden from being supplied to non-state groups, because that creates the possibility of the proliferation of these kinds of weapons, which creates a danger to civil aviation around the world,” Mr Sikorski said, speaking two days before an anti-aircraft missile shot down a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 over eastern Ukraine, killing all 295 aboard.
Poland's diminished role is in part a result of Russian demands. The new formula for negotiating Ukraine is a four-country grouping consisting of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine, where Poland's overt scepticism of Russia has no place. “Poland was pushed aside,” says a Polish diplomat. Marcin Zaborowski, head of the Polish Institute for International Affairs, a foreign policy think-tank, adds, “France and Germany are interested in de-escalating and Poland causes problems with this.”
Escalation in Ukraine has been happening for weeks and now the world is paying attention
President Putin has been recklessly escalating the crisis in eastern Ukraine since he was embarrassed and outmaneuvered by the Ukrainian president three weeks ago. Allowing a passenger jet to be shot down is the act of an increasingly desperate man.Russia has been escalating its war in Ukraine for weeks. The urgency to win turned to recklessness.
The Kremlin ordered tanks, heavy weapons and Russian fighters to pour over the border stoking up the crisis until tragedy struck. We should have seen it coming; on Wednesday morning the front page of Foreign Policy magazine had a headline that should have sent shockwaves through the geopolitical landscape: Russia Is Firing Missiles At Ukraine.
The story followed several Russian citizens posting videos to social media which they said show GRAD rockets being fired from Russian territory toward Ukraine. By triangulating the different camera angles, my team at The Interpreter proved that the unguided rockets were indeed being fired into Ukraine from Russia. Thursday morning, there were reports that a group of Ukrainian soldiers had been hit by the rocket fire and were actually receiving medical treatment on the other side of the border, ironically enough in the same town from which the rockets had been launched in the first place.
This should have been huge news. How could things in Ukraine have deteriorated to the point where Putin was now engaged in such a reckless act of aggression? Of course, it was huge news... but for only a few hours. Quickly this headline was buried under the news that another Malaysian airlines flight was missing, and evidence is steadily growing that either Russian-backed separatists or Russia itself may have fired the missile that brought it down.
Thanks to all who are still reading
Stupidity reigns supreme in rebel held area of Ukraine where a Malaysian passenger plane has been shot down [UPDATE]
A social media page that Ukrainian media frequently attribute to Igor Girkin, a Russian citizen who describes himself as a rebel military leader in Donetsk, appeared to claim responsibility for the downed plane shortly after it went missing.
“We have just shot down an AN-26 plane in the Torez region, it is lying somewhere near the Progress mine,” read a post at 5:50 p.m. Moscow time on the social media site VKontakte. “We have warned emphatically: Do not fly in ‘our sky.’” The post then offered “video confirmation” of the crash.
The post was removed Thursday evening, shortly after reports confirmed that the crashed aircraft was a commercial airliner.
The initial post suggested that pro-Russian rebels mistook the aircraft for a Ukrainian military transport plane. Earlier this week, an AN-26 was brought down over the Luhansk region. Two crew members were reported killed.
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The Ukraine Security Service later released a recording of intercepted phone calls in which separatists purportedly discussed the shootdown, indicating that they were responsible.
“We have just shot down a plane,” says one man on the tape, identified as Igor Bezler, one of the leaders in the pro-Russian separatist movement in eastern Ukraine, at about 4:40 p.m. local time. “It was 100 percent a passenger aircraft,” another man, identified as “Major,” responds later.
“There are lots of corpses of women and children,” another militant says. “They say it’s written Malaysia Airlines on the plane. What was it doing on Ukraine’s territory?”
“That means they were carrying spies,” says another voice, identified as that of Nikolay Kozitsin. “They shouldn’t be [expletive] flying. There is a war going on.”
Labour wants to ban cosmetics and make all children learn Maori
A personal update
Supermodel Kathy Ireland On Abortion
I dove into the medical books [...] What I learned is, at the moment of conception, a new life comes into being. The DNA - the genetic blueprint - is there, the sex is determined, the blood type is determined, the unique set of fingerprints is there. And, I picked up the phone, called Planned Parenthood, 'help me out here, give me your best argument!'
And, the best arguments, 'well, it's just a clump of cells if you get it early enough. It doesn't even look like a baby.' We're "clumps of cells" and that unborn human being does not look like a baby, the same way a baby does not look like a teenager; a teenager does not look like a senior, but that unborn human being looks EXACTLY the way unborn human beings are supposed to look at that stage of development. And this human life continues to grow and change. Some people say, well, if you get it at a certain stage, it's OK. According to the law of biogenesis, all life comes from pre-existing life and each species reproduces after its own kind, therefore, human beings can only reproduce other human beings. So, it doesn't start out as one species and suddenly become a human being somewhere along the way.
