In light of recent military gains by a ‘too-extreme-for-Al-Qaeda’ jihadi group in Iraq, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has said Tehran may consider cooperating with Washington to battle the extremist threat.
"We have said that all countries must unite in combating terrorism. But right now regarding Iraq we have not seen the Americans taking a decision yet," Rouhani said at a press conference on Saturday.
Asked if Tehran would work with its old adversary the United States in tackling advances by Sunni insurgents in Iraq, he replied, "We can think about if we see America starts confronting the terrorist groups in Iraq or elsewhere."
Rouhani denied previous reports that Iran had already sent troops into Iraq to aid government forces, saying any such move would be contingent on Baghdad’s approval.
"No specific request has been put forward, but we are prepared to help – within the frameworks of international regulations – if there is a request," he said.
Iran has already sent a Major General from the Revolutionary Guard to meet with leaders in the Iraqi capital.
US President Barack Obama has so far ruled out putting American troops on the ground in Iraq, though Washington is seriously considering other options, including deploying air or naval forces to carry out air strikes against militant positions.
"We will not be sending US troops back into combat in Iraq, but I have asked my national security team to prepare a range of other options that could help support Iraqi security forces," Obama said on Friday.
The White House is expected to make a decision in the coming days, though Obama stressed that Iraq was ultimately responsible for its own security.
“The United States will do our part, but ultimately it's up to the Iraqis as a sovereign nation to solve their problems," Obama said. "We can't do it for them."
The Sunni insurgents – from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) – have managed to seize the Iraqi cities of Mosul and Tikrit with an estimated 7,000 strong force. On Friday, Shia fighters attempted to counter ISIS momentum near Muqdadiya, just 80km (50 miles) from Baghdad's city limits.
The UN said ISIS forces have carried out summary executions and rapes in as it battles to take over the country.
The hyper-fundamentalist group has alienated Al-Qaeda with its tactics, which include publicly crucifying and beheading those who violate their strict religious interpretations.
Iraq came under the influence of a Shia-majority government after the US-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated regime in 2003. Since the withdrawal of US troops in 2011, sectarian tensions boiled over, resulting in Sunni insurgents increasingly waging war against the central government.
Iran, a strict Shia-theocracy since 1979, Iran has built close political and economic ties with and does not want to see a Sunni-caliphate established on its borders.
Three yeshiva students in their teens are believed to have been kidnapped in the West Bank, Israeli officials announced Friday afternoon.
The IDF spokesperson’s office said they lost contact with the three Thursday overnight. Israeli security forces were conducting a widespread operation to locate them, the IDF said.
“Since the morning, we have been engaged in operational activity designed to find [them] and bring them [back],” said Brig. Gen. Motti Almoz, the commander of the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit. “Over the past several hours, there has been a very large intelligence effort to try and determine what happened with those youths since they disappeared.”
Facts that might interfere with the ongoing investigation, he said, were being withheld at this time.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the families of the missing teenagers,urged them to remain strong and told them the State of Israel would do everything possible for their sons. He promised to keep them updated.
The Prime Minister’s Office said it held the Palestinian Authority of President Mahmoud Abbas responsible for their well-being.
Earlier Friday, a senior Islamic Jihad official called on Palestinians to kidnap Israeli citizens, arguing that Israel had proven in the past that it was willing to negotiate the release of Palestinian security prisoners in exchange for the lives of its civilians.
The three students were reported missing Thursday night after witnesses said they had been seen hitching rides home at around 10 p.m. from their yeshiva in Gush Etzion. They have not been heard from since late Thursday night.
Palestinian Islamists have repeatedly called to kidnap Israelis, including to use them as bargaining chips to extract the release of Palestinian security prisoners.
A senior defense official said Friday that Israel was operating on the working assumption that the feared kidnappings of three teenage yeshiva students in the West Bank Thursday overnight was a hostage situation.
The official told Channel 2 that authorities were waiting for better intelligence surrounding the events or for a Palestinian group to take responsibility. A Salafist jihadi organization called Dawlat al Islam issued a claim of responsibility for the incident, but it was not clear whether the claim had any credibility.
Israel’s security forces were continuing their large-scale operation Friday to locate the three teenagers, and roadblocks were set up around the West Bank to prevent the possible transfer of the three to the Gaza Strip, Channel 2 reported Friday.
Palestinian prisoners in Israel were celebrating the news of the feared kidnappings, according to Channel 2. Over 100 Palestinian prisoners have been on hunger strike to protest their detention without charge.
No Palestinian organization has yet claimed responsibility. A senior Islamic Jihad official on Friday called on Palestinians to kidnap Israeli citizens, arguing that Israel had proven in the past that it was willing to negotiate the release of Palestinian security prisoners in exchange for the lives of its civilians.
Palestinian Islamists have repeatedly called to kidnap Israelis, including to use them as bargaining chips to extract the release of Palestinian security prisoners.
One of the three teenage yeshiva students who went missing and were feared kidnapped in the West Bank Thursday overnight is a dual Israeli-American citizen, according to Israeli media. US Ambassador in Israel, Dan Shapiro, was briefed on the situation.
Israel’s security forces were continuing their large-scale operation Friday to locate the three teenagers, and roadblocks were set up around the West Bank to prevent the possible transfer of the three to the Gaza Strip, Channel 2 reported Friday.
Climate McCarthyism has claimed another victim. Dr Caleb Rossiter - an adjunct professor at American University, Washington DC - has been fired by a progressive think tank after publicly expressing doubtabout man-made global warming.
Rossiter, a former Democratic congressional candidate, has impeccably liberal credentials. As the founder of Demilitarization for Democracy he has campaigned against US backed wars in Central America and Southern Africa, against US military support for dictators and against anti-personnel landmines. But none of this was enough to spare him the wrath of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) when he wrote an OpEd in the Wall Street Journal describing man-made global warming as an "unproved science."
Two days later, he was sacked by email. The IPS said: "We would like to inform you that we are terminating your position as an Associate Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies...Unfortunately, we now feel that your views on key issues, including climate science, climate justice, and many aspects of US policy to Africa, diverge so significantly from ours."
In the WSJ OpEd entitled Sacrificing Africa for Climate Change, Rossiter argued that Africans should benefit from the same mixed energy policy as Americans rather than being denied access to fossil fuels on spurious environmental grounds by green activists. He wrote: "The left wants to stop industrialization - even if the hypothesis of catastrophic, man-made global warming is false."
But the Institute for Policy Studies ("Ideas into Action for Peace, Justice, and the Environment") is ideologically committed to ensuring that Africans only enjoy the benefits of expensive, intermittent, inefficient renewable energy such as wind and solar.
Rossiter told Climate Depot:
"If people ever say that fears of censorship for 'climate change' views are overblown, have them take a look at this: Just two days after I published a piece in the Wall Street Journal calling for Africa to be allowed the 'all of the above' energy strategy we have in the U.S., the Institute for Policy Studies terminated my 23-year relationship with them…because my analysis and theirs 'diverge.'"
His sacking follows the persecution last month of Lennart Bengtsson, a Swedish meteorologist and climatologist who decided to resign his position at the Global Warming Policy Foundation after being harassed by climate alarmists for his "incorrect" views on man-made climate change.
A US Department of Defense (DoD) research programme is funding universities to model the dynamics, risks and tipping points for large-scale civil unrest across the world, under the supervision of various US military agencies. The multi-million dollar programme is designed to develop immediate and long-term "warfighter-relevant insights" for senior officials and decision makers in "the defense policy community," and to inform policy implemented by "combatant commands."
Launched in 2008 – the year of the global banking crisis – the DoD 'Minerva Research Initiative' partners with universities "to improve DoD's basic understanding of the social, cultural, behavioral, and political forces that shape regions of the world of strategic importance to the US."
Such war-games are consistent with a raft of Pentagon planning documents which suggest that National Security Agency (NSA) masssurveillance is partially motivated to prepare for the destabilising impact of coming environmental, energy and economic shocks.
James Petras, Bartle Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University in New York, concurs with Price's concerns. Minerva-funded social scientists tied to Pentagon counterinsurgency operations are involved in the "study of emotions in stoking or quelling ideologically driven movements," he said, including how "to counteract grassroots movements."
Minerva is a prime example of the deeply narrow-minded and self-defeating nature of military ideology. Worse still, the unwillingness of DoD officials to answer the most basic questions is symptomatic of a simple fact – in their unswerving mission to defend an increasingly unpopular global system serving the interests of a tiny minority, security agencies have no qualms about painting the rest of us as potential terrorists.
A leaked New York State Counter Terrorism Bulletin provided exclusively to Infowars reveals how law enforcement are being told to prepare for increased violence from “far-right extremists.”
Bulletin warns of those who believe in “government gun confiscation”
The Department of Defense has disbursed some funds
to universities so that scientists might study the dynamics of civil unrest — and how the U.S. military might best respond.
to universities so that scientists might study the dynamics of civil unrest — and how the U.S. military might best respond.
It’s called the “Minerva Research Initiative,” and it’s a program that was kicked off in 2008 to “improve DoD’s basic understanding of the social, cultural, behavioral and political forces that shape regions of the world of strategic importance to the U.S.,” The Guardian reported.
More to point: the multi-million dollar research program seeks to uncover “warfighter-relevant insights” to help senior ranking officials in the “defense policy community” come up with “combatant commands” that work in civil unrest situations, The Guardian reported.
research program seeks to uncover “warfighter-relevant insights” to help senior ranking officials in the “defense policy community” come up with “combatant commands” that work in civil unrest situations, The Guardian reported.
One area of study that’s planned for the 2014-2017 time frame partners Cornell University researchers with the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research to come up with a model for the “dynamics of social movement mobilization and contagions,” the text of the program stated. That particular research area will ultimately determine the “critical mass (tipping point),” of civil uprisings, where protests turn violent, the program text states, The Guardian reported.
of social movement mobilization and contagions,” the text of the program stated. That particular research area will ultimately determine the “critical mass (tipping point),” of civil uprisings, where protests turn violent, the program text states, The Guardian reported.
More to point: the multi-million dollar research program seeks to uncover “warfighter-relevant insights” to help senior ranking officials in the “defense policy community” come up with “combatant commands” that work in civil unrest situations, The Guardian reported.
research program seeks to uncover “warfighter-relevant insights” to help senior ranking officials in the “defense policy community” come up with “combatant commands” that work in civil unrest situations, The Guardian reported.
One area of study that’s planned for the 2014-2017 time frame partners Cornell University researchers with the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research to come up with a model for the “dynamics of social movement mobilization and contagions,” the text of the program stated. That particular research area will ultimately determine the “critical mass (tipping point),” of civil uprisings, where protests turn violent, the program text states, The Guardian reported.
of social movement mobilization and contagions,” the text of the program stated. That particular research area will ultimately determine the “critical mass (tipping point),” of civil uprisings, where protests turn violent, the program text states, The Guardian reported.
The research will also analyze social media users’ accounts, and look at Twitter posts and conversations “to identify individuals mobilized in a social contagion and when they become mobilized.”
, and look at Twitter posts and conversations “to identify individuals mobilized in a social contagion and when they become mobilized.”
In a question to a key project researcher that went largely unaddressed, The Guardian raised some troubling issues: “Does the U.S. Department of Defense see protest movements and social activism in different parts of the world as a threat to U.S. national security? If so, why? Does the U.S. Department of Defense consider political movements aiming for large scale political and economic change as a national security matter? If so, why? Activism, protest, ‘political movements’ and of course NGOs are a vital element of a healthy civil society and democracy — why is it that the DoD is funding research to investigate such issues?”
of a healthy civil society and democracy — why is it that the DoD is funding research to investigate such issues?”
In response, Erin Fitzgerald, a key program manager and an official with the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, said simply — and in part — that “by better understanding these conflicts and their causes beforehand, the Department of Defense can better prepare for the dynamicfuture security environment,” The Guardian reported.
environment,” The Guardian reported.
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