Wars & Rumours of Wars

nivek

As Above So Below
Xi says Chinese reunification with Taiwan 'must happen' as Beijing marks anniversary of revolution - days after state media warned WW3 could erupt 'at any moment' following fury over US special forces based on island



China harbours ambitions of a 'peaceful reunification' with Taiwan, the country's leader Xi Jinping said ahead of the island's National Day of celebration on Sunday. The president's renewed call for the island to be integrated into China comes amid a rise in aggressive threats and provocative military action over Taiwanese airspace in recent days. Mr Xi was speaking at an official celebration in Beijing's Great Hall of the People that focused largely on the need for the ruling Communist Party to continue to lead China as the country rises in power and influence.

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1963

Noble
View attachment 15148
Robot hunter-killers dropped by drones, its over.

Don't worry Shadow,... just relax, that's 'old-hat' , Dr. Who had that avenue covered decades ago. ... but the thing is that it proved a bit less effective than you are imagining , because these things will always be in the wrong place or broken down whenever they would be useful to put an early end to a new threat, as was usually the way with K-9. :Tongue:

R.1c6e7c35978d8b649113275615689c17



Cheers Buddy.
 

nivek

As Above So Below
There are still hundreds of Americans trapped in Afghanistan but the Biden administration doesn't want to hear about it, they don't care...

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Biden admin's 'persistent lie' about number of Americans trapped in Afghanistan

Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., released a statement Friday criticizing President Biden's administration after it "repeatedly lied" about the number of Americans that remain "trapped behind Taliban lines" in Afghanistan.

"The Biden Administration has shamelessly and repeatedly lied about the number of Americans trapped behind Taliban lines," Sasse said in a statement. "For weeks, their official number was ‘about a hundred’ and it magically never changed — as Americans slowly got out the total number never went down. Now they say more than 300 Americans are still in Afghanistan."

He said the new information was "contrary to the administration’s persistent lie."


"The Biden Administration lied to hide the consequences of the President's morally indefensible decision to abandon our people in a war zone," said Sasse, who claimed the "slow-motion hostage crisis and the administration’s coverup are disgraceful."

"Mr. President, bring our people home," concluded Sasse, who is a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

In a statement provided to Fox News, Sasse communications director James Wegmann insisted reports from the administration conflict with public reports regarding departures of Americans from Afghanistan.

"Since the end of August, their ‘around a hundred’ line has stayed the same despite public reports of Americans leaving," said Wegmann. "It is a deliberately vague number as they’re not sharing a rolling baseline that explains either addition of new contacts or subtraction of departures. There’s a difference between correctly acknowledging that the numbers are not static and repeating a line that both conflicts with public reports of departures and gives no visibility into the accounting."

According to sources familiar with the exchange, the State Department told congressional staff in a call Thursday that nearly 200 of the more than 300 Americans who remain in Afghanistan want to escape the Taliban's control, according to CNN.

(More on the link)

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nivek

As Above So Below
Sudan's leaders are rounded up and detained by the army in 'military coup', sparking protests on the streets

Sudan's prime minister has been arrested in what civilian leaders have described as a military coup in the African nation. Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok was one of several 'political and government' leaders arrested by armed men who barged into homes early Monday, the country's information ministry said.

Hamdok was placed under house arrest and ordered to issue a 'pro-coup statement' then taken to an 'unknown location' when he refused, the ministry added. The 65-year-old former UN diplomat, who survived a failed coup just last month and an assassination attempt in 2020, was leading Sudan's transition from decades of autocratic and military rule towards democracy following a revolution in 2019.

Trade unions which were central to that revolution have denounced what they called a fresh coup attempt on Monday and urged people on to the streets for protests. Crowds were subsequently pictured in the capital Khartoum burning tyres and blocking roads, while military forces moved to occupy bridges.

Internet services have gone down or been disrupted across Sudan, monitors said, while TV and radio broadcasts were interrupted by renditions of patriotic songs.

Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, a military general who was supposed to be handing over power to Hamdok next month, is due to make a statement shortly, according to the New York Times.

Sudan's 2019 revolution overthrew decades of rule by Omar al-Bashir, a former military general, and then a military council that stepped in to replace him. Since April 2019, the country has been led by a transitional council run by both military and civilian leaders tasked with rewriting the constitution and then holding elections, due for November 2022.


(More on the link)

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AD1184

Celestial
View attachment 15015

PIERS MORGAN: Where is 'righteous' President Biden's empathy towards the innocent Afghan family he slaughtered with a botched drone strike - and why is the tame liberal mainstream media turning such a blind eye to an atrocity that shames America?

Three weeks ago, a US drone strike was ordered on a white Toyota Carolla car in Kabul, Afghanistan, being driven by a suspected terrorist.

The single Hellfire missile was launched from an M-Q Reaper drone which had surveilled its target for eight hours, flying at a maximum altitude of 50,000 feet.

Hellfire missiles travel at speeds of up to Mach 1.3 or 997 miles per hour, so there would have been around half a minute between the missile being launched and detonating.

The drone did its job and killed the suspected terrorist, whom American intelligence had identified as working for ISIS-K – Islamic State Khorasan Province, the most extreme and violent jihadist militant group in Afghanistan.

It also killed nine other people including seven children.

Despite immediate reports of innocent civilian casualties, Gen. Mark A. Milley, the Chinese-friendly chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave a Pentagon news conference several days later in which he described the attack as a 'righteous strike.'

Righteous, according to the dictionary, means 'morally right or justifiable', 'free from guilt or sin' and 'very good, excellent.'

And General Milley certainly sounded very righteous as he defended the decision to 'neutralize' the suspected ISIS-K bomb maker who was supposedly preparing an imminent attack on Kabul airport.

But there was just one problem. A rather massive problem, in fact. The terror suspect, Zamarai Ahmadi, wasn't a terrorist.

He was an aid worker - a $500-a-month employee of the California-based charity Nutrition and Education International.

None of the other victims were terrorists or connected to any terror group either.

They were though all from Ahmadi's family including his three sons, Zamir, 20, Faisal, 16, and Farzad, 11, three children of one of his brothers, Arwin, 7, Benyamin, 6 and Hayat, 2, Malika, the 3-year-old daughter of another brother, his nephew, Nasser, 30, and Somaya, a cousin's infant daughter.

Virtually a whole family was therefore destroyed in a terrifying onslaught of hellfire and shrapnel that devastated their compound and the surrounding area.

There was nothing 'righteous' about this horrifying incident. It was the pre-meditated slaughter of what turned out to be ten completely innocent people.

The Pentagon's now admitted it was all a terrible mistake and apologized.

But that's not good enough
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(More on the link)

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The deaths of these innocents are a tragedy, but this is, or was, the ongoing cost of the war in Afghanistan. There were thousands of civilian casualties every single year in the conflict, of people who were either misidentified by NATO forces' 'intelligence' as Taliban or terrorists, or who were killed as 'collateral damage'. Many liberal leaders who would balk at sentencing people to death for murder after a jury trial were quite readily accepting of killing and maiming innocents by accident or as an acceptable cost of their enthusiasm for killing terrorists in attacks from the air over another country.
 

nivek

As Above So Below

nivek

As Above So Below
Hostage families to Biden: 'Bring our fellow Americans home'

Relatives of more than two dozen American hostages and wrongful detainees held overseas told President Joe Biden in a letter on Monday that they questioned his administration's commitment to bringing their loved ones home.

In the letter, obtained by The Associated Press, the family members complained that the administration seemed to be getting “bogged down in burdensome processes or policy debates that keep our loved ones from coming home and keep us uninformed of what you can and cannot do to help us.”

“We need to be shown that the promises of your administration to prioritize the return of our family members are not empty. Now is the time for action. Now we need you to bring our fellow Americans home,” the letter states.

The letter reflects growing concerns within the hostage community that the Biden administration's foreign policy agenda does not prioritize the release of hostages, and that legal and political actions have complicated rather than advanced efforts to get captives released. In some cases, the letter to Biden asserts, the families feel as if they're in a “worse” situation now than eight months ago.

The U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan without bringing home Mark Frerichs, an American contractor abducted there in early 2020. Six American oil executives who'd been under house arrest in Venezuela were ordered back to jail this month following the extradition to the U.S. on corruption charges of a businessman who prosecutors say was a major conduit for corruption by President Nicolás Maduro’s inner circle.

The Biden team has been short on high-profile detainee and hostages releases so far. It was an area of keen interest to President Donald Trump, who in keeping with his unconventional approach to foreign policy appeared open to outside-the-box machinations with regard to hostage negotiations, such as a high-level but ultimately unsuccessful trip to Damascus aimed at getting journalist Austin Tice home. He also invited American captives who'd been freed during his administration to appear with him at the 2020 Republican National Convention.

The families note in the letter that they were optimistic following a February call with Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Since then, though, they say they have been unable to meet with Biden or with his national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, “which leads us to believe that your administration is not prioritizing negotiations and other methods to secure their release.

“When we do meet with other officials we feel we are being kept in the dark about what the U.S. government intends to do to free our loved ones,” the letter says.

The White House had no immediate comment Monday.

The letter was signed by family members of 26 American hostages and detainees held in countries across the world.


(More on the link)

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nivek

As Above So Below
Thirty seconds in is the clincher...

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nivek

As Above So Below
The way that he leant in close to that woman was bizarre. Did he touch her thigh?

Yes and it does appears that he did touch her thigh with both hands, notice how he gently pushed off her thigh as he rose back up...

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pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
You are all clearly racist Donald Trump supporters. The people who concocted Hunter Biden's laptop(s) and framed the poor lad are obviously responsible for this fabrication. Although to be fair it's well done; I believe making a pie-grab is considered to be the peak of professionalism for any public speaker.
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
This must be for internal consumption like North Korea's rhetoric. The Great Satan is one of the legs propping up that government. Put this in the file along with Kharg (sounds Klingon) sinking and their attacks on dummy wooden aircraft carriers. Iran’s largest naval warship burns and sinks in Gulf of Oman

They probably have some dangerous local capabilities and all things considered the US Navy has shown retrain. But keep poking at it and maybe one day they won't.

List of current ships of the Islamic Republic of Iran Navy - Wikipedia


Iran holds large-scale military drill after US navy confrontation

The naval part of the drill, expected to last several days, is held east of the Strait of Hormuz and in the Sea of Oman.

AP21311269348341.jpg

Iran’s army and the IRGC have held several large-scale drills in different parts of the country in recent months amid tensions with the US, threats by Israel, and disagreements with northwestern neighbour Azerbaijan [Iranian Army via AP Photo]
By Maziar Motamedi Published On 7 Nov 2021

Tehran, Iran – Iran’s army is holding a large-scale sea, land and air military drill, which comes shortly after the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and United States Navy had a confrontation in the Sea of Oman over a seized oil tanker.

The drill was launched on Sunday morning and is expected to incorporate soldiers, vessels, armoured vehicles, manned and unmanned aircraft, and missile and radar systems in both offensive and defensive capacities.

Abdolrahim Mousavi, commander-in-chief of Iran’s army, told state television that the exercises will be held in an area encompassing one million square kilometres (386,000 sq miles) east of the Strait of Hormuz, the Sea of Oman, and the northern parts of the Indian Ocean.

On land, the drill will be held in the general area of the southeastern provinces of Sistan and Balochistan, and Hormozgan, in addition to the coasts of Makran.

“Since we are aware that the enemy is trying to gather its required information after our forces mobilised in the area, from today we are reinforcing our efforts to monitor enemy movements that had begun days ago,” he said from the southeastern port of Konarak.

Mousavi also detailed that on the first day of the drill, which is expected to last several days, vessels and commandos will undertake an operation to breach enemy shore defences from the sea, while Iranian forces and missile and radar systems will simulate defending beach lines.

State TV also aired footage of speedboats manoeuvring at sea, soldiers boarding combat helicopters, and commandos parachuting out of aircraft to land on beach areas.

Iran’s army and the IRGC have held several large-scale drills in different parts of the country in recent months amid tensions with the US, threats by Israel, and disagreements with northwestern neighbour Azerbaijan.

US ‘taken unawares’ in tanker incident
Iranian military officials on Sunday continued to praise the country’s military capabilities in relation to a confrontation over a Vietnamese-flagged tanker publicised on Wednesday that they said the US tried to seize in order to “steal” its cargo of Iranian oil. It was unclear where the tanker was heading.

Yadollah Javani, the IRGC’s political deputy, told the state broadcaster that the US was trying to prevent Iranian oil sales and enforce unilateral sanctions it imposed following its 2018 withdrawal from Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal.

“But the Americans were caught unawares because … IRGC Navy forces used heliborne operations to deploy troops on the tanker that wanted to steal Iranian oil and redirected the ship to Iranian waters from a long distance,” he said.

Earlier this week, state television aired dramatic footage of the incident, which happened on October 25, showing Iranian soldiers boarding the vessel. They were also shown warning off a US ship and helicopter, and escorting the tanker back.

The tanker, called the Sothys, and its crew are now in Iranian custody and Vietnam said it has begun talks to release them.

US officials have offered a contrasting account of what happened during the incident, saying the Iranian claim that it had been trying to steal their oil was not true and that US forces were present simply to monitor the situation.

The incident was publicised a day before the 42nd anniversary of the takeover of the US embassy in Tehran, which led to a hostage crisis lasting 444 days.

Iranian officials celebrated the anniversary on Thursday with anti-American and anti-Israeli messages, and IRGC commander-in-chief Hossein Salami praised the response to the tanker incident and pledged to resist American influence in the region.

Iran on Wednesday announced that talks with world powers in Vienna to restore its nuclear deal – which if successful will lift US sanctions – will resume on November 29 after halting in June to allow President Ebrahim Raisi to form his administration.
 

AD1184

Celestial
Yes and it does appears that he did touch her thigh with both hands, notice how he gently pushed off her thigh as he rose back up...

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I can't help but notice how the character in your avatar picture resembles Joe Biden.

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He even looks like he has fallen asleep.
 
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