Feminists have a lot to complain about. They post sexy pictures online to protest Silicon Valley "discrimination" against women, they think office temperatures are biased against women, they hold parades to demand the right to be called "sluts," they demand written consent for sex, they complain that women can't negotiate salaries, that movies feature too few 50-year-old women, and so on.
These seem like really big issues, perhaps, until you see what is happening in the Middle East.
ISIS fanatics have executed 19 women for refusing to have sex with its fighters, a Kurdish official has said. They were put to death because they refused to 'participate in the practice of sexual jihad,' a spokesman for the Kurdish Democratic Party in Mosul told Iraqi News.
She also verified a disturbing ISIS document which suggested the extremists sell the Yazidi and Christian women and children they have abducted, with girls aged just one to nine-years-old fetching the most money.
[A] shocking document described the women it abducted as 'items' and claimed a decrease in demand of 'women and cattle' affected 'Islamic State revenues as well as the funding of mujahideen in the battlefield'.
It then gives the prices of women and children by age, with one to nine-year-olds costing the most - around £110. The older the women, the lower the price.
An ISIS video released in November last year appeared to show an ISIS 'sex slave market' where fighters can choose among different Yazidi girls who are priced according to 'desirable' physical features.
Only last month, three Yazidi women who were forced to become jihadi said they were raped 'five times a day' after being traded as human cargo.
Bushra, who tried to kill herself when she was sold to an ISIS extremist, said: ''He raped me about five times a day. My sister was barely 14 when they raped her... I could hear her screaming but I couldn't do anything as I was tied up.'
... hundreds, and possibly thousands, have been forced to marry, 'sold' or given as 'gifts' to Islamic State fighters or their supporters - and many held as sexual slaves are girls younger than 14.
And the reaction of liberals and feminists in America? Not a peep.
Three possibilities:
1) Feminist groups don't care what happens to women in the Middle East because they are dark-skinned.
2) Feminist groups get angry about thermostat temperatures, and when men smile at then in the office, but are A-OK with women being taken as sex slaves. In that case, they would have no objections if Silicon Valley treated women as ISIS does. You'd hear no complaints if Google took women as concubines, or if Apple awarded young women as performance bonuses to their male engineering staff.
3) The feminist movement isn't really about "women's rights"; rather, it is about browbeating American men and getting special privileges in society not merited by conduct or skill. I think this is the likeliest explanation.
What other explanation could there be?
Some in the U.S. intelligence community warn that ISIS may be working to build the capability to carry out mass casualty attacks, a significant departure from the terror group's current focus on encouraging lone wolf attacks, a senior U.S. intelligence official told CNN on Friday.
To date, the intelligence view has been that ISIS is focused on less ambitious attacks, involving one or a small group of attackers armed with simple weapons. In contrast, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, has been viewed as both more focused on -- and more capable of -- mass casualty attacks, such as plots on commercial aviation. Now the intelligence community is divided.
Meanwhile, the U.S. effort to train rebels in Syria to fight ISIS is having trouble. The few rebels that the U.S. has put through training are already in disarray, with defense officials telling CNN that up to half are missing, having deserted soon after training or having been captured after last week's attack by the al-Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front attack on a rebel site.
One defense official admitted to CNN that "they are no longer a coherent military unit," and Pentagon officials acknowledged the approach of how to support the rebels has to change.
The potential change within ISIS itself is driven -- in part -- by a broadening competition between ISIS and AQAP for attention and recruits.
That same competition was evident this week when AQAP bomb-maker Ibrahim al-Asiri made an online appeal to supporters to carry out lone wolf attacks.
"I think they're taking a lot of the new recruits that don't have time to train, who have not been brought up in their systems, and they're using them to create the type of mass casualty which produces the media attention, which is exactly what they want, that shows they're still powerful," said CNN Military analysts Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling. Meanwhile, ISIS is continuing to draw large numbers of new foreign recruits. U.S. intelligence assesses that the formidable flow of foreign fighters to Syria and Iraq has not abated.
Currently, the total number of ISIS fighters is between 20,000 and 30,000, similar to the levels when the air campaign began, despite thousands of ISIS fighters believed to have been killed in coalition air strikes.
Turkey, the prime transit point into Syria, is still struggling to stem the flow. However, the U.S. believes its agreement to allow U.S. air strikes from a Turkish air base and to help establish a safe zone indicate Istanbul is stepping up.
The administration is also claiming gains on the ground.
"In Iraq, ISIL has lost the freedom to operate in some 30% of the territory that they held last summer," White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters Friday, using another name for ISIS. "Overall, ISIL has lost more than 17,000 square kilometers of territory in northern Syria."
Yanis Varoufakis, Greece's outspoken former finance minister, said the financial bailout from the country’s international creditors was really meant to drown Greece in debt to divert attention from other EU problems.
The reforms imposed on Athens by the EU, the European Central Bank and the IMF are “going to fail” Varoufakis told Spain’s El Pais as he hit out at the austerity measures imposed on Greece in return for an €86 billion rescue package.
“The third package will not work because it was initially designed to divert attention from the problems facing other EU countries, not to save Greece.
To lend it money only to drown it in debt… The German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble wants to reconstruct the Eurozone, and pushing Greece out is only part of this plan,” Varoufakis said.
“The main goal is to deprive the European Commission of its right to handle budgetary issues and set up some observatory fiscal body that would force
EU states to draw up their budgets the way the troika deems right… He wants the troika to dictate its terms where it has not been invited yet: in Madrid, Rome and above all in Paris. Greece is just a pawn on their chessboard,” the ex-Minister added.
In discussing the Iran Deal, most people are focused on the trees rather than the forest
By focusing on the details, we have discussed the efficacy of inspections, the breakout time required, the effects of sanctions relief, the absence of quid pro quo, the trustworthiness of Iran, etc. What has not been adequately debated is whether it is good or bad for America.
But that is undergoing a change.
In the last few days the following articles have been published:
The Real Goal of the Nuclear Deal: Iran Détente, by Jonathan Tobin, Commentary
The choice here isn’t one between a flawed nuclear deal and war, but between Iran détente with a tyrannical, anti-Semitic, aggressive Islamist regime and a reboot of the diplomatic process that has been hijacked by appeasers.
Why Empower Iran? By Alexander H Joffe, Middle East Forum
But there are deeper reasons for the outreach to Iran. Some have suggested that the long-term Obama policy, from at least 2008, has been to reintegrate Iran into the Middle East, putting it on the path to becoming a “very successful regional power,” as Obama put it, against an even longer term bet that moderate forces will become ascendant.
Norman Podhoretz wrote Israel’s Choice: Conventional War Now, or Nuclear War Later
For our negotiating partners, the new goal was to open the way to lucrative business contracts, but for Mr. Obama it was to remove the biggest obstacle to his long-standing dream of a U.S. détente with Iran. To realize this dream, he was ready to concede just about anything the Iranians wanted—without, of course, admitting that this was tantamount to acquiescence in an Iran armed with nuclear weapons and the rockets to deliver them.
Who Bamboozled Whom? By Michael Doron, MOSAIC
Those who think the Iranians outwitted us fail to recognize one very important thing: the White House never intended to contain Iran.
The nuclear deal with Iran is a wildly lopsided agreement. Whereas Iran received permanent concessions, the United States and its partners managed only to buy a little time. The agreement will delay the advent of a nuclear-capable Iran for about a decade—and much less than that should Tehran decide to cheat. Meanwhile, thanks to the deal, Iranian influence in the Middle East is set to grow. All of these benefits accrue to Iran without its ever having given any guarantee that it will change its revolutionary, expansionist, and brutal ways.
Money coming from weapons and other sales to Iran will help finance this enhancement of Russian capability which will improve Russia’s position as they announced in terms of their assaults against Ukraine, and in their announced aggravations against Poland and Latvia.
Russia has also announced that they will sell Iran short-range attack missiles, which place US naval forces in danger and give Iran control over the essential waterways [Strait of Hormuz; Bab el- Mandeb] which control approximately 50% of all of the petroleum that is shipped in the world.
The Iranian threat is directed primarily against the United States, the Great Satan.
To Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, his circle of ruling mullahs and the entire command structure of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, destroying Israel is, to them, just an added bonus and a religious obligation.
There are no restrictions on the money that will be released to Iran. The “hope” and “it’s only logical” arguments presented by the administration that it will be spent for internal economic and social improvements do not appear anywhere in the agreement.
Iran will have significantly increased resources to devote to terror and penetration operations that directly threaten American lives and American interests. Currently Iran is the major funder of international terrorism, so this agreement increases the IRGC’s operational abilities in Iraq and through proxies in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Sinai, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, etc.
The US military have been very vocal in expressing their concern to this agreement. For example see the congressional testimonies of both the outgoing and the incoming chiefs of the joint Chiefs:
- These military purchases from China and Russia are just the 1st wave of a major upgrade of Iran’s offensive and defensive capabilities. Also, these purchases provide both China and Russia with additional financial (purchase dollars +increased fleet sizes) which enable both China and Russia to invest in upgrades which will directly benefit the Chinese and Russian military forces.
- Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford, President Obama’s nominee to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: “Iran directly linked to deaths of more than 500 U.S. troops in Iraq, Afghanistan.”
- The Iran Task Force, a bi-partisan team made up of leading retired military, national security, and policy experts, has been a leading voice about the danger that this bad deal will allow Iran to become a nuclear state. See:
Several Planned Parenthood officials and three private bio-medical firms were targeted on Friday by a U.S. congressional panel as lawmakers dig deeper into a controversy swirling around the women's health organization.
A U.S. House of Representatives committee made public a letter requesting interviews with personnel from the organization who appeared in surreptitiously recorded videos in discussions about providing fetal tissue for research.
House Energy and Commerce Committee Republicans also said they had written to three companies identified as human fetal tissue suppliers to request information and briefings.
Lawmakers on the committee said last month they would investigate after the videos were released by an anti-abortion activist group called the Center for Medical Progress.
The videos purport to show Planned Parenthood officials negotiating prices for aborted fetal tissue. Under federal law, donated human fetal tissue may be used for research, but profiting from its sale is prohibited. Compensation for the tissue can cover only the costs of handling it.
"As you know, in several recent videotapes made public, these individuals have made statements concerning the manner in which fetal tissue is procured," the committee letter said.
"We are examining whether these statements ... are consistent with existing laws," said the letter, signed by the panel's chairman, Representative Fred Upton, and others.
A Planned Parenthood official said the organization had the letter, and would continue to cooperate fully with the committee.
As part of its massive rearmament program Russia is likely to focus major efforts on developing unmanned military systems, which could become its secret weapon, Blake Franko wrote in the National Interest.
"Conceptually, the idea of focusing on unmanned systems in Russia is not new. There has been significant development of these robotized systems in recent years," the expert noted.
Russia's new Armata combat vehicle is rumored to be on the way to become the world's fully automated tank. And while this impressive piece of military hardware is getting there, the Russian Army is already operating robotic systems.
One of them, dubbed Platform-M, was recently showcased in Crimea. The system is designed to carry out reconnaissance, patrol, cargo-carrying and combat missions. Trial tests of another robotic platform, capable of transforming into an array of useful units, ranging from a route clearance vehicle to electronic warfare system, are expected to start in late 2015.
Also see:
1 comment:
Yes, it's totally appalling that feminists take such an attitude over seemingly minor issues when women in other parts of the world are suffering the most horrendous abuse and treated only as commodoties to be bought and sold. We can all be very shortsighted at times.
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