Iran-US tensions heating up again, folks. Same old song and dance from Tehran.

Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian went full blame game on Saturday, pointing fingers at President Donald Trump, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, and Europe for supposedly "stirring tensions" and "provoking" people during the recent protests rocking the Islamic regime. 

Sure, because nothing says "peaceful domestic unrest" like claiming the entire West is puppeteering your own citizens who are fed up.

Pezeshkian dropped this gem while Trump was sounding pretty confident the day before, telling reporters at the White House: "I can say this, they do want to make a deal." 

Classic Trump, dangling the carrot while waving the big stick.

Trump even threw in that he's set some mysterious deadline for Iran to start talking about their nuclear program and missiles (no word on what the actual cutoff is, of course). And just to make sure everyone gets the message, he bragged about the military buildup: "We have a large armada, flotilla, call it whatever you want, heading toward Iran right now." He added: "Hopefully we'll make a deal. If we do make a deal, that's good. If we don't make a deal, we'll see what happens."

Iran, predictably, shot back that their missile and defense capabilities are "never" up for negotiation. Shocking.

Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian 

On the side drama, Iran's secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, Ali Larijani, met with Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Friday. Details? Sparse. But AFP says Russia is offering to play mediator between the US and Iran. 

Imagine having Putin as the "neutral negotiator." 

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Meanwhile, the Trump administration slapped sanctions on Iran's interior minister Eskandar Momeni, accusing him of overseeing the repression that literally killed thousands of peaceful protesters. 

The whole mess kicked off with nationwide protests against the regime, escalating after Trump threatened action over the crackdown and moved that carrier strike group into the region. What started as pushing back on the violence has morphed into Trump's push for a shiny new nuclear deal.

So here we are: Iran pointing at everyone but themselves, Trump talking tough with ships on the way, and the mullahs still wondering why their people keep hitting the streets. Business as usual in the Middle East by the religion of peace.

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IDF assisting UN forces in "repelling attack" in Syria

On Saturday, the Israeli army announced that its troops were helping UN peacekeepers in the Golan Heights to fend off an attack "by armed individuals," making the notion that war creates strange bedfellows very meaningful.

 Meanwhile, Israel's Foreign Minister stated that "armed forces" had entered the UN-patrolled buffer zone.

The UN force, UNDOF, reported that its personnel had seen "unidentified armed individuals in the area of separation, including approximately 20 who went into one of the mission's positions in the northern part of the area of separation," according to a UN Peacekeeping spokesperson who spoke to AFP.

"The inviolability of UN premises must be respected at all times," the spokesperson said.

In its statement, the IDF described the incident, saying, "an attack was carried out by armed individuals at a UN post in the Hader area in Syria," which is near the buffer zone.

"The (Israeli Army) is currently assisting the UN forces in repelling the attack."

Late on Saturday, Foreign Minister Gideon Saar posted on X: "During the last day, armed forces entered the buffer zone on the Syrian side of the border with Israel. Among other things, attacks were carried out on the (peacekeepers) in the area."

Saar expressed concern about the violations of the 1974 armistice agreement with Syria, stating, "Israel does not intervene in the internal conflict in Syria."

Earlier that day, Syrian rebels had captured the provincial capital of Quneitra, which is about 8 miles (12 kilometers) south of Hader, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights based in Britain.

The Syrian civil war, which had been at a standstill, saw significant rebel advances late last month, with numerous major cities being taken over.

The Israeli military also noted that its army chief, Herzi Halevi, visited the Syrian border that day. He reiterated Israel's non-intervention policy in Syria, saying, "Israel's primary focus is on observing Iran's movements and interests" while also focusing on Syrian factions to "ensure they do not mistakenly direct their actions towards us."

The military did not provide Brain Flushings nor the legacy media with any updates regarding whether the attack was still happening later in the evening.

Israel took control of most of the Golan Heights during the Six-Day War in 1967 and later annexed it, a move which has not been recognized by the international community.

UNDOF has been overseeing the buffer zone between the territories controlled by Israel and Syria since 1974.

In a notable past incident in August 2014, Islamist rebels attacked UNDOF, capturing over 40 Fijian peacekeepers and holding them hostage for nearly two weeks.

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Taliban Takes Control Over Parts of Kabul Airport

According to a report by Barrons, the Biden-assisted Taliban has taken control of parts of Kabul airport on Friday, as the Tuesday, August 31st deadline draws insidiously closer. [H/T Barrons; AFP]

"Today, three important locations in the military part of Kabul airport were evacuated by the Americans and are under the control of the Islamic Emirate," spokesman Bilal Karimi said on Twitter. 

By 'evacuated' Karimi is referring to an ordered retreat by our military. The United States of America has finally come to a point where the left is trying to protect our military, whose job it is is to protect American citizens, while stranding our citizens who need protecting. Everything the left does is ass-backwards or false.

Obviously this is a recent event and more information will be forthcoming.

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Where have all the ISIS jihadis gone?

The Islamic State has been getting their collective butts kicked by U.S.-backed forces now that the rules of engagement have been relaxed by President Trump to the point where we can actually destroy them. 

But we haven't destroyed them all and of the estimated 40,000 who have traveled from all around the globe to fight for Allah a few hundred still survive and are thought to still be fighting as the terror organization lost most of its territory.

But what about the rest of the scumquats? Where did they go?

Thousands have been killed in the intense fighting, but it's believed that many survived and will continue to be a real threat in the future.

"The issue is: how many have died? How many are still there and willing to fight? How many have gone elsewhere to fight?" Seth Jones, director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the Rand Corporation said. "How many have given up? I don't think we have a good answer."

Counterterror groups are trying to answer these questions and are doing all they can to name and track foreign fighters.

In France, about 1,700  jihadists went to Syria and Iraq since 2013 to join IS. Of those, about 400 have been sent to their virgins in the sky and 250 returned to France.

Foreign Affairs Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said that around 500 are still in the Iraq-Syria theater and it's now going to be very difficult for them to return to France. However, that still leaves about 500 whose whereabouts are unknown.

Terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman of Georgetown University believes that "thousands" have escaped the war zone. How he knows this is a mystery, but that's why he's the expert.

"Today, some of them are most likely in the Balkans, lying low for the time being, waiting for the opportunity to infiltrate themselves to the rest of Europe," he said.

No less than 80 IS jihadis from Russia, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Yemen have joined since May, the IS-allied Abu Sayyaf fart-weasels who now fight government forces in the southern Philippines, kidnapping unsuspecting tourists and beheading them for fun and profit.

In the northern Afghanistan province of Jowzjan, local people in the area told the AFP that French-speaking IS fighters from France or northern African countries have recently arrived there. 

There remains escape routes from the battlefields of Syria and Iraq. IS militants were able to blend in with civilian refugees or bribe their way, or sneak into Turkey.

Many of the IS jihadis never planned on going home and have no choice but to continue the fight for their Sixth Century values against the civilized world where folks take regular showers and don't fool around with children or the livestock.


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Islamic State trades paradise for mass graves

Photo: IS

Yes, they had dreams and hopes and plans for the future--a heaven on earth, so to speak.

They wanted a place where they could go and pray five times a day. They wanted a place free from the filth of infidels, dogs and bacon products. They wanted an Islamic paradise where they could put their foreheads to the ground and their butts to the sky, develop a healthy zebibah (prayer mark) to show off to their four wives. 

To put it simply: all they wanted was a caliphate to call home and all the world's infidels to die in a horrific way.

Was that too much?

But all the jihadists got was mass graves or their bodies lying out in the open for the wild, hungry dogs to munch on as flies buzz around their remains in the quiet little Iraqi town of Dhuluiyah, about 55 miles north of Baghdad.

Dozens of dead terrorist dudes killed in 2015 lie in a hastily built pit.

"They should have ended up in the stomachs of stray dogs," local police officer, some guy named, you guessed it, Mohammed, told the AFP.

"We buried them here not out of love, but because we wanted to avoid diseases," Mo said.

Since the start of the 2014 air strikes in Iraq and the lovely land of Syria, about 80,000 scum crumpets have been killed by U.S.-led coalition forces. But that doesn't account for those killed by Russian and Syrian strikes.

Dhuluiyah is on the banks of the Tigris river. It's an agricultural community so when residents had to figure out what to do with the trash, (i.e. dead jihadis) they came up with the idea of using a bulldozer.

"We could have thrown them into the water, but we love the river too much to pollute it," said a local policeman, possibly also named Mohammed. "The people here as well as their animals drink from the Tigris."

So they dug a hole and threw them in, refusing to give them a proper Islamic burial.

"We buried them with bulldozers. Even in the ground they are still mired in their own filth," said farmer Shalan al-Juburi. "They said that they would got to paradise to enjoy the gardens of delights [like getting laid by 72 virgins and drink from rivers of wine], but this is how they ended up."

I guess bulldozers are haram, the opposite of halal.

Nearby a beautiful graveyard filled with happy-go-lucky martyrs of the town, stands in sharp contrast to the hole the dead jihadis lie in.

As Iraqi forces in Anbar province look to oust the ISIS crap weasels from their final footholds, operation commander Mahmoud [a derivative of Mohammed] al-Fellahi insisted that any Islamic State jihadis killed will end up in mass graves.

A senior Iraqi commander told the AFP that earthmoving equipment was used "to bury the jihadists after we collected information on their identities and nationalities.

In Syria, where the U.S. and Russia are having a pissing contest over who can kill the most scumquats, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimates only 50,000 have been killed, but both countries have assured the Observatory that they're still working on it.

One Syrian commander told the media that what happens to dead jihadis is not a priority. "At the moment, we are more interested in what happens above ground than under it."

Another military source said, "The terrorists try to collect the dead. If we find them, we try to identify the foreigners for a possible information swap with their home countries."Was that too much?

Rest in pieces, dog chum.


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Blogger "Mother Mushroom" jailed for 10 years

A prominent Vietnamese blogger known as "Mother Mushroom" received a 10-year prison sentence after a brief trial that rights groups called "outrageous" Thursday. The blogger gets her pen name from her daughter's nickname.

Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh was arrested in October 2016 then charged with anti-state propaganda over Facebook posts critical of the government. 

The "Nam's" one-party state doesn't allow for dissent and routinely jails activists, bloggers and even lawyers who speak out against the communist regime. [Put that in your bongs and smoke it, commie lovers].

The 37-year-old woman had a closed-door trial and could have faced a maximum of 12 years, but the 10-year sentence was still quite "harsh," according to her lawyer. 

"I am not happy with the result of the trial today," Nguyen Kha Thanh told AFP. 

Quynh will appeal.

The press was barred from attending the one-day trial in Khanh Hoa province, which was heavily guarded by police, according to social media.

"Mother Mushroom" was calm throughout the trial, her lawyer said. In a pre-sentence statement, she admitted no guilt but instead used the opportunity to send a message to her two children and mother. "She apologized to her mother and the two kids for what effect this has had on them, but she said they must be very proud of her," Thanh told AFP.

Quynh was charged under Article 88 of Vietnam's criminal code and held incommunicado with no access  to an attorney until June 20, according to Thanh.

She has been a vocal critic of Vietnam's human rights record and civilian deaths in police custody. She has also been critical of the government's handling of a toxic leak that killed tons of fish last year.

Her arrest came October 10 last year while visiting a fellow activist in prison.

In the verdict, the judge said Quynh had defamed the government, harmed national security, eroded popular trust of the government and undermined national security.

The conviction included her publishing of alleged inaccurate information to humiliate the police and erode public trust in them based on her reports regarding police brutality.

"The scandal here is not what Mother Mushroom said, but Hanoi's stubborn refusal to repeal draconian, rights-abusing laws that punish peaceful dissent and tarnish Vietnam's international reputation," Phil Robertson, Human Rights Watch deputy Asia director said in a statement Wednesday. 

The United States, the European Union and Britain have called for Quynh's release.

Quynh received the International Woman of Courage Award from the US State Department in March, which Vietnam said was "not appropriate and of no benefit for the development of relations between the two countries."

She also was award the Civil Rights Defender of the Year by a Sweden-based international advocacy group in 2015.

She is not an advocate of fake news.


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Hamas holds AP journalist at gunpoint, beats AFP photographer

[Photo credit: Mohammed Othman/Flash90]

The darlings of the UN and the left, Hamas, has blocked journalists from filming a major protest against power cuts in the northern Gaza Strip on Thursday. They detained and held an Associated Press journalist at gunpoint and brutally beat up an Agence France-Presse photographer who refused to hand over his camera.

The AP journalist was trying to cover a demonstration against frequent electricity shortages in Gaza, described by that press outlet as "one of the largest unauthorized protests in the territory since the Islamic militant group took power a decade ago."

The AP reported that: "Hamas forces blocked journalists from filming the gathering, and an Associated Press journalist was briefly detained at gunpoint until he handed over his mobile phones to plainclothes security men."

The Foreign Press Association said the Hamassholes "stuck a pistol in his chest and verbally threatened the reporter until he agreed to give them the phones." In the same statement, they said "an AFP photographer was badly beaten to the head by uniformed policemen [and] required medical care after he had refused to give up his camera. The memory card of his camera was confiscated and he was placed under arrest. He was subsequently released and the memory card was returned."

One day prior to the protest, Hamassholes arrested a local comedian who wasn't being funny when he made a video that went viral about the power outages.

In spite of all the love Hamas gets from the UN and our leftists here, they often are criticized for limiting press freedoms such as warning journalists against sharing negative incriminating details in their reports from Gaza and forcing them to delete such details if included in their coverage.

But at least they aren't Israel, John Kerry says to himself when shampooing his hair.

Palestinian affairs journalist Khaled Abu Toameh, in a 2009 report for the Gatestone Institute wrote:

Foreign journalists who manage to cross into the Gaza Strip face many restrictions imposed by the Hamas government. Local facilitators hired by foreign journalists are also under scrutiny by the Hamas government. That is why they are careful not to bring the dirty laundry out by telling the foreign media about things that could reflect negatively on Hamas.

During Operation Protective Edge, the 2014 war between Israel and Hamas, it was clear how the latter restricted the reporting. Foreign reporters admitted after they left the Middle East that they had waited to report news that put Hamas in a bad light, such as their use of human shields, and their decision to fire rockets next door to their hotel. The reporters were afraid of Hamas' retaliation, so they waited until they were safely home or at least out of the area. 

In fact, a Hamas spokeswoman admitted in August of 2014 that Hamas had intimidated journalists into providing more favorable coverage of them.

Mark Lavie, a former AP journalist wrote that the intimidation of reporters was the main reason news from Gaza is skewed.

Human Rights Watch, a nonprofit organization, condemned the treatment of journalists by both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, saying that their tactics led to a "chilling effect" on freedom of expression in the Palestinian territories.

"Both Palestinian governments, operating independently, have apparently arrived at similar methods of harassing, intimidating and physical abuse of anyone who dares criticize them," said Sari Bashi, the HRW's Israel-Palestine director.

Freedom House's press freedom score  of 84 (with 100 being the worst) was given to the Palestinian territories in 2015. And a survey in 2014 found "80% of Palestinian journalists in the West Bank and Gaza practice self-censorship of their writing." The same year, a poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research found 70% of Palestinians didn't believe they could criticize the PA.

But these are simply facts and not feelings so what and who are you going to believe?




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Poor Hamas--Israel Is So Mean (So they Say)

I am never amazed anymore about blatant media bias. Of course it works both ways, left and right, but it seems that it's the left that is lacking in factual clarity.

The AFP, a global news agency with over 2,000 reporters worldwide, contributed to a Yahoo News story about Israel and Gaza. They claim to be fair and unbiased but you can judge for yourself. 

"Gaza City (Palestinian Territories( (AFP)- More than 60 Palestinians were killed Sunday as Israeli forces pounded northern Gaza, sending thousands more fleeing in terror in the deadliest assault on the enclave in five years.

"Sunday's bloody toll prompted urgent efforts by the International Committee of the Red Cross to broker a temporary ceasefire to allow paramedics to evacuate the dead and wounded in a deal accepted by both sides.

"Inside the ravaged neighbourhood of Shejaiya, there were hellish scenes of carnage and chaos as a convoy of ambulances rushed in to make the most of the calm, an AFP correspondent said."

The report goes on to say that the deal lasted less than an hour "with Israel accusing Hamas of firing in violation of the agreement, and saying its forces were 'responding accordingly.'"

Well gee, do you think Israel was lying about that? Do you believe Hamas really plays by the rules and honored the ceasefire?

Hamas is a terrorist organization. Their goal, as stated in their charter, is to wipe Israel off the map and kill all the Jews that live and breathe. If Israel responded to Hamas' attacks with the same disregard for civilian casualties, the war would have been over in a few hours.

Instead, Israel has gone out of its way to eliminate as many civilian casualties as possible. No other country in the world has made such efforts in a time of war. They have warned of their impending attacks with leaflets and phone calls. Then they dropped "dummy bombs" on the intended targets to tell whoever remained that it's time to go. No other nation does that, because no other nation is regarded as critically as Israel.

"As Israel's blistering offensive on Shejaiya showed no sign of easing, thousands could be seen fleeing for their lives after heavy shelling left casualties lying in the streets, an AFP correspondent reported."

It sounds like Israel is the devil, and that is exactly how Islamists want us to perceive Israel. It sounds like Israel started this war, and the three teens who were kidnapped and brutally murdered had nothing to do with it--not even when Hamas praised this event. It sounds like the Palestinians are the victims in all of this and the Jews are the murdering marauders.

The Islamists have made it very clear that they want to kill Jews, including their women and children because they believe that no Jew is innocent. They believe this because their prophet Mohammed told them that Jews and Christians cannot co-exist in the Arabian peninsula, and that Jews are derived from apes and pigs. This belief has gone on since Mohammed was dying of pleurisy and refused to believe that it was not caused by some Jew poisoning him.

The power of the written word remains enormous. The press no longer appears to be the unbiased purveyors of information as it once did many years ago when Ben Franklin had a printing press.

But the scariest thing of all is how it has become rather fashionable to be anti-Zionist while pretending not to be anti-Semitic.

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