Monday, March 31, 2014





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Slip When Towing Part-2

By: jironde on: 8:10 PM
WTF!



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WTF! Mega Fail

By: jironde on: 7:10 PM




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How to Look Like A Douche On Your Rice Rocket

By: jironde on: 1:54 PM
Women are often referred to as terrible drivers. Here are several pieces of evidence.



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Woman+car=Fail

By: jironde on: 1:24 PM
This is a fun remake i made from a wonderful crash from motogp Enjoy! If you liked that check out my main channel for more great motorcycle videos



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Motorcycle Track Days With Benny Hill

By: jironde on: 12:09 PM




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How Not To Pull Your Truck Out Of The Pond

By: jironde on: 12:09 PM
Security cameras in a gas station convenience store caught a fail robbery by a 16 yo boy at Kiryat Malachi, Israel. The cops noticed him walking around in the city and followed him to the gas station. At one point, a man enters the store.. sees the kid with the knife.. hears the cashier cry for help and leaves the shop..; The cops got a hold of the kid as he was stepping outside... his advocate denied the charges and say it a wrong identification case LOL He was the only one there and was apprehended .. fucking lawyers will try anything ** 14/03/2014 ** Channel 2 News



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Robbery fail Kiryat Malachi, Israel

By: jironde on: 9:10 AM
So Funny Fail, Must See! LOL



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Funny Fail! Cat vs Dog ( 1 - 0 )

By: jironde on: 9:10 AM
haha, go easy bro!



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Neck and nominate goes wrong

By: jironde on: 9:10 AM
not



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Russian Gymnastic Time

By: jironde on: 6:54 AM
poor shed



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Tree Cutting Gone Bad

By: jironde on: 2:55 AM
Some trees shoot back.



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These Trees Dont Like Being Shot At Video

By: jironde on: 1:10 AM

Sunday, March 30, 2014

Last month an Iranian MP boasted during a speech that Iran had trained some 150,000 Syrian regime fighters on Iranian soil, another 150,000 in Syria, in addition to 50,000 Hezbollah Lebanon fighters. Now another MP is demanding that Seyyed Mahmoud Nabavian, who revealed the information, is prosecuted. Mansour Haghighatpour says disclosing such details paints Iran as a "supporter of terrorists" and would harm the country's "national interests". Interestingly, Haghighatpour, who is affiliated with the ruling conservative block, did not deny the Iranian regime's role in training and supporting Basshar al-Assad's forces and those fighting alongside them. He only insisted that revealing such details would harm Iran's 'national interest' and should therefore be kept secret. COMMENT FROM THE EDITOR: Iranian hardliners are facing a dilemma: on the one hand, they need to boast in order to justify Iran's military presence in Syria and mobilise their followers. On the other, they have to watch out for Western countries' reactions to such statements to avoid further fractures in their already troubled relations with the West. Such maneuvers are doomed to fail, however. After two years of bloodshed in Syria, no one - not even Iranian officials - can deny Sepah Pasdaran's substantial role in keeping Bashar al-Assad in power against Syrian peoples' will. NOTES: Farsi: http://ift.tt/P6OhhX English: http://ift.tt/1fCsncW. http://ift.tt/1jN5A4x source:http://ift.tt/1fCsncZ



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MP boasted during a speech that Iran had trained some 150,000 Syrian regime fighters on Iranian soil

By: jironde on: 11:54 PM
A truck in Sochi, Russia crushed a couple of parked cars after rolling out of control down a hill. -For The Love Of God, Always Apply The Handbrake On A 10-Tonne Dump Truck-



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Dump Truck Overturns

By: jironde on: 8:08 PM
Girls Getting Owned



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Strip Pole FAILS

By: jironde on: 6:54 PM




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Best Fails Of The Week April

By: jironde on: 5:08 PM
Haha loser!



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Fail!

By: jironde on: 1:39 PM
So it was a calm International Women's Day in the city of Bydgoszcz in Poland when this accident occured. The man driving an Audi hit the pedestrian on a crosswalk. He then stopped and helped to move the injured man, with a bleeding head, to the sidewalk. He also brought the first aid kit. After that he returned to his car and drove away. Police is still looking for the driver... NOTE: Look how there's a police cruiser driving by at 1:21 not giving a single crap. The police showed up after an HOUR and an ambulance after 10 minutes. I live in this city and the funniest part is that behind the recording car, like 100 meters away, there's a Main Police Station and the whole accident could be even seen from it's windows. The nearest hospital is also very close to this place. Source



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Driver hits pedestrian and runs away after helping him.

By: jironde on: 9:09 AM
failllllllllllllllllllllllllll



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hotel door chain fail

By: jironde on: 9:09 AM
Poor car.



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Fire Truck Fail

By: jironde on: 9:09 AM




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KRL Drifting

By: jironde on: 9:09 AM
=}



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Fail compilation and funny moments!

By: jironde on: 7:55 AM
The true head of the church made a special appearance this morning at a special ceremony held in Iceland to signify the new and truer intent of religion. **cough**



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Church Procession Fail

By: jironde on: 7:55 AM
well that never worked out, nice head movement at the end though.



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drunk kid tries to fight, fails miserably

By: jironde on: 7:55 AM
fail



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City worker downhill frontflip

By: jironde on: 2:05 AM

Saturday, March 29, 2014

Compilation



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Huge 2014 Fail compilation

By: jironde on: 10:09 PM
Since a couple of Opera fails have cropped up on LL, I thought here's a good opp to share this: An unfortunate rendition of Also sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30 (Thus Spoke Zarathustra or Thus Spake Zarathustra) composed by Richard Strauss.. screaming in his fucking grave, the poor bastard. No further details available.. perhaps luckily for the orchestra.



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2001 A Space Fail: Orchestral Edition **BLEEDING EARS WARNING**

By: jironde on: 9:03 PM
Some very funny japanese tv bloopers. Sit back and laugh. Facebook: http://ift.tt/P3BnRQ... Twitter: http://ift.tt/1gvrWGs E-mail: blue_squab@yahoo.com



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Japanese TV Bloopers

By: jironde on: 6:09 PM
Some of the best korean news bloopers. Facebook: http://ift.tt/P3BnRQ... Twitter: http://ift.tt/1gvrWGs E-mail: blue_squab@yahoo.com



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Korean News Bloopers

By: jironde on: 6:09 PM
Cesar Antonio Suarez trying to hit the high F in the aria "Credeasi, misera" from Bellini's opera "I Puritani". Unfortunately, this incident ended his singing career.



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Tenor Fails Hitting High Note - End of Career

By: jironde on: 3:09 PM




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Ultimate drunk girls fail Compilation 2014

By: jironde on: 2:10 PM
Angry Black Man version



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USPS Delivery Fail with AUDIO

By: jironde on: 11:07 AM
between al bundy and my magic 8 ball Ill never fail at life..ty Al



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Mr Al Bundy....my personal hero

By: jironde on: 11:07 AM
YouTube video URL: http://ift.tt/1hFTTqh YouTube Channel URL: http://ift.tt/1o96gnB Published on Jun 21, 2012 What is wrong with EU? After WW2 Germans had debt about 29,7 billion Deutsche Marks (21 percent of GDP). Greece, Ireland and other creditor countries decided to forgive these debts partially and erased half of them. Half of public as well as private debt. Situation of Germany after WW2 was eased via support to its exportation. In Finland leading politicians as well as those neoliberal economic professors in power (during early 90s especially) were incompetent to see what banks could do with so called "free markets". Banks started to act like magicians and created money "out of thin air." Result of this was gigantic digital money Ponzi-scheme that politicians here in Finland (or elsewhere) did not understand. There is approximately derivative bubble of 700 trillion dollars in balance sheets of banks (meaning that the economic crisis is more like insolvency crisis because the whole banking system is basically dead). No politician in Finland (or anywhere else) can downgrade this virtual Ponzi-scheme debt. When in Iceland derivatives were downgraded to real value during Iceland's systemic banking collapse 94 percent of value melted! (So one could say that those banks had owned mainly toilet paper) Neither governments nor taxpayers can save the sinking banking system Titanic. The banks along with other financial institutions have given money in other words debt to everyone including those completely credit unworthy. EU and IMF demand austerity, cuts and structural changes countries like Greece, Spain Ireland and so on. So it is whole different policy than after WW2 in case of Germany. Now is about the time abandon this sinking Titanic called European Union. At the moment Finland backs the banks with 50 billion euros (This is huge considering that the budget of Finland is around 54 billion euros). And in addition Bank of Finland has to pay about 70 billion euros to ECB (and who else it is but the taxpayer who pays) If or when economy goes from really bad to a lot of worse Finnish taxpayers will pay these banker bail-outs around 110 billion euros which is over two times Finnish national budget. Consequence of this will be the economic nakba. "Nakba" means catastrophe and for Palestinians it means The Ethnic Cleansing which way political Zionist movement took the land and formed state of Israel. In Finland and in rest of the Europe this is happening under the mantle of economic crisis. Faceless markets pull the strings. In their tax havens "The Bankster Mafia Oligarchy" laughs all the ridiculous beliefs that our politicians have. What happens when the real problem of economy will be revealed that the balance sheets of the banking system is worthless and full of toilet paper derivatives and bonds? This article is partially Based on Internet article (http://ift.tt/1hFTRPj) written by Finnish Author Ari Ojapelto who saw (in his book "Ahneuden Aika" = The Time Of Greed or The Age Of Greed) in advance the financial crisis that began 2007-2008. (In a way he could be described as Finnish Gerald Celente) Category Education License Standard YouTube License PS: - The Global Trap: Civilization and the Assault on Democracy and Prosperity is a 1996 book by Hans-Peter Martin and Harold Schumann that describes possible implications of current trends in globalisation. It was published in English in 1997. The book was a best-seller in the author's native Germany. In particular, the book is known for defining a possible "20/80 society". In this possible society of the 21st century, 20 percent of the working age population will be enough to keep the world economy going. The other 80 percent live on some form of welfare and are entertained with a concept called "tittytainment", which aims at keeping the 80 percent of frustrated citizens happy with a mixture of deadeningly predictable, lowest common denominator entertainment for the soul and nourishment for the body. - Neo-Nazism, Nazism and all forms of extreme ideoligies are rising again. And historically this has always been the case when political and financial elite faces problems. After WW2 The Bretton Woods Conference was held from the 1st to 22nd of July, 1944. The dollar became reserve currency. This made United States Superpower. Agreements were executed that later established the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD, which is part of today's World Bank Group) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). So in The Bretton Woods Conference Modern Fractional Reserve Banking System controlled by The Bank for International Settlements (BIS, The Central Bank Of the Central Banks.) was formed. So rule of Multinationals, Corporatocracy which is known as globalization was born. There was United States is really Corporate America protecting interests of the Multinationals, Banks and therefore The Ultra Rich. Corporate America has gone far from original United States and its (We The People) Constitution by founding fathers. So there is no United States anymore only Corporate America of Corporatocracy. Its leaders are puppets of this Corporatocracy. Not only that but the NeoCons of this regime are Sociopaths. Not all of course. But the NeoCons. Which really are Nazis in a sense that they believe use of military and force. But real Nazis of totalitarian are those behind them. The Corporatocracy. Because those benefit from poverty, from misery, from wars. So We The People are therefore always their final target. They have made us believe that Nazism went away with Hitler. It never really went away. Because Nazism is nothing more than ideology and the ideology itself means nothing. Those who want war and us poor are Sociopaths. They do not want to see real democracy (direct democracy, pure democracy, kind of towards real we the people globalization) to happen. Because if we are poor, they control. If we are not poor, the Corporatocracy or this financial oligarchy have no control over us, We The People. And by the way we are already global, we don't needs these Sociopaths of multinationals, banks or financial institutions to tell us what to think, what to do and how to live. These Sociopaths are ready to fund al-Qaeda as well as neo-nazis as we have seen in Ukraine. They fund any Criminal Terrorist Group or Drug Cartel as these Sociopaths benefit from it. They sell us racism and hatered. The Corporatocracy have no country. Yet they benefit from wars between countries. Towards Neo-Renaissance And Cultural Evolution - True Media (Alternative Media) and Free Speech (The Debate) - Alternative Currencies and Monetary Democracy (There is no Democracy without Monetary Democracy.) - The Movement of People and We The People politics (No to corporate funding & Corruption) - Binding referendums (Let The People vote) (Active Citizens) - Decentralization of power (This is sort of regulation and corruption elimination) - We The People Are The Hope And Solution (You Are The Victory) NOTICE: The Peace of Westphalia was a series of peace treaties signed between May and October 1648. Concept of the "nation state" is born. This concept also means that every living person has certain rights. The best example is The Constitution of the United States. Since the Constitution was adopted, it has been amended twenty-seven times. The first ten amendments (along with two others that were not ratified at the time) were proposed by Congress on September 25, 1789, and were ratified by the necessary three-fourths of the States on December 15, 1791. These first ten amendments are known as the Bill of Rights. The Nation State with our rights have really given our wealth. Now our wealth is destroyed via austerity which means that we are not allowed to feed our citizens. We have austerity because of Economic Crisis. But this is actually Big Transfer Of Wealth and austerity is also violation against Democracy. This is also Fascism or Economic Dictatorship because in Capitalism there is no such thing as: "Too Big To Fail." But actually there is not significant difference between Communism, Capitalism or Fascism. On the very top level they look like the same. WITH THINKING HUMANITY WILL PROSPER. IT IS OUR MIND THAT HAS GIVEN US PROSPERITY. I DO BELIEVE THAT WE WILL OUT-THINK THE CORPORATOCRACY. CREATE BLOGS, BE WITH YOUR FAMILY AND PUT YOUR MONEY ON MEANINGFUL THINGS. - Who should decide? The Corporatocracy (THE 1% OF THE 1%) says: "The Markets should decide." WE THE PEOPLE SAY: "We The People should decide." (Direct/Pure Democracy)Embed Code (Normal Size): <iframe width="640" height="360" src="http://ift.tt/1o96hYQ" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Embed Code (Smaller Size): <iframe width="526" height="285" src="http://ift.tt/1o96hYQ" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Embed Code (Very Little): <iframe width="261" height="142" src="http://ift.tt/1o96hYQ" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Published on Jun 21, 2012 What is wrong with EU? After WW2 Germans had debt about 29,7 billion Deutsche Marks (21 percent of GDP). Greece, Ireland and other creditor countries decided to forgive these debts partially and erased half of them. Half of public as well as private debt. Situation of Germany after WW2 was eased via support to its exportation. In Finland leading politicians as well as those neoliberal economic professors in power (during early 90s especially) were incompetent to see what banks could do with so called ^aEURoefree markets^aEUR



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The Final Countdown - 99 % against Sociopaths

By: jironde on: 7:09 AM
bomb Fail and almost killed some FSA terrorists + Slowmotion



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throwing a bomb Fail and almost killed some FSA terrorists + Slowmotion

By: jironde on: 4:55 AM
Israel Deputy Defense Minister Danon: Peace talks going nowhere, Palestinians only want terrorists freed - The Palestinian Authority's minister of prisoners' affairs warned Israel Thursday against backtracking on its past commitment to free the fourth and final group of prisoners as part of the US-brokered peace talks, a move which will prove key in deciding whether the talks, resumed in July after a three-year hiatus, unravel or not. Under the deal relaunching the peace negotiations, Israel said it would release 104 Arab prisoners held since before the 1993 Oslo Accords in exchange for the Palestinians not pressing their statehood claims via the UN. Israel has so far freed 78 prisoners but there are growing fears Netanyahu's cabinet may block the final release, particularly that of Israeli Arab terrorists. As the release nears, victims of terror attacks have been mounting pressuring against the government in a bid to force it to backtrack on the release. According to Ma'an, Palestinian Authority Minister of Prisoners' Affairs Issa Qaraqe said in a statement that the release was crucial for any future progress in the peace talks and served as a test of Israel's reliability in the peace process. "Israel has been playing an ugly game of blackmail ... using Palestinian prisoners as a pressure tool to obtain political gains, which we completely reject," Ma'an quoted Qaraqe as saying. Qaraqe said that he holds Israel responsible for the consequences of not releasing the prisoners on time, warning of the "anger" in the Palestinian street. Qaraqe, Ma'an reported, added that if Israel did not release all prisoners it committed to, the Palestinian Authority would have no choice but to turn to international bodies for recognition. He further noted that the prisoners set to be released had expressed their support for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in his resolve and determination to secure their release. Israel has already freed three groups of veteran prisoners as part of a trust-building measure in ongoing peace talks, and are due to release a fourth group in April. Israeli officials have hinted that release of the fourth group might be conditional on Abbas agreeing to extend talks beyond their end of April deadline, but Abbas has been reluctant to do so, citing ongoing settlement construction and a lack of progress in talks. * Deputy Defense Minister Danon: Peace talks going nowhere, Palestinians only want terrorists freed -Following a report that the release of a group of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails would not go ahead this weekend, Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon (Likud) slammed the Palestinians for failing to make concessions in the peace process and for only being interested in releasing terrorists. "It is clear to all sides that the negotiations are leading nowhere and it good that the Palestinians understand that Israel will not make it concessions without receiving anything in return," Danon said. "The true face of the Palestinians was revealed when they declared that their sole aim was to free terrorists," he added. Israel has reportedly informed the Palestinian Authority that it will not release a fourth and final batch of prisoners expected to be freed as part of peace negotiations, a Palestinian official said Friday. "The Israeli government has informed us through the American mediator that it will not abide with its commitment to release the fourth batch of Palestinian prisoners scheduled for tomorrow, Saturday 29," AFP quoted Fatah official Jibril Rajoub as saying. Rajoub charged that "Israel has refused to commit to the names that were agreed upon of prisoners held by Israel since before the 1993 Oslo agreements". As a gesture for resuming diplomatic negotiations in July, Israel said it would free 104 Palestinian terrorists convicted before the 1993 Oslo accords. In exchange, the Palestinians pledged to halt their diplomatic efforts to seek full recognitions a member state in the United Nations. "Not releasing the prisoners will mark the beginning of the efforts in the international community to challenge the legality of the occupation," stressed Rajoub, who also serves as the chairman of the Palestinian Football Association. Israel has so far release 78 long-serving Palestinian prisoners. Jerusalem would have needed to publicly release on Wednesday the names of the terrorists it planned to free to allow for a 48-hour appeals period - not including Shabbat - ahead of a Saturday night release. The Fatah official slammed Israel's said refusal to release the 26 remaining prisoners as a "slap in the face of the US administration and its efforts". The Israeli government had no immediate response to the report. http://ift.tt/1o7UNos Photos: One of previous prisoner release and Israelis protests against further release of terrorists



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PA warns of 'Palestinian anger' should Israel fail to free Palestinian prisoners/terrosists

By: jironde on: 3:09 AM
"It happened Monday afternoon on U.S. 41 just north of Gibsonton Drive. The woman spoke to ABC Action News but asked that her name not be broadcast or made public. Instead, she is going by her Youtube username, Florida Driver."That's what you get, all on video buddy," you can hear her say while laughing in the video. Florida Highway Patrol troopers arrested the driver, Jeffrey White, 33, of Tampa and charged him with leaving the scene of a crash."He kept spinning his wheels but couldn't get out," Florida Driver said. She added that one of White's friends came with a tow chain to get him out and that he fled before law enforcement officers arrived.The video shows he took out a light pole owned by the Florida Department of Transportation and caused extensive damage to the grassy median.As he drove off, Florida Driver said she drove up and took a picture of his tag. She gave that picture to police and they arrested him Wednesday. White has since bonded out. ABC Action News in Tampa Bay went to White's home but no one answered the door. Meanwhile, Florida Driver explained she was not ready for this video to go viral. She explained that she only put it online to show coworkers. Now she has received more than 5,000 messages in her YouTube inbox regarding the video." Original article can be found here http://ift.tt/1fsKXnG



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Instant Karma! Redneck in big truck gets instant karma attack

By: jironde on: 12:54 AM

Friday, March 28, 2014

Cenk Uygur talks about recent false flag plans against syria and youtube ban in Turkey



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Why The YouTube Ban In Turkey Will Fail

By: jironde on: 10:53 PM
Yes Florida again.



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Redneck Road Rage / Instant Karma

By: jironde on: 9:54 PM
Israeli business leaders are pushing Netanyahu to cut a peace deal. Will he listen? In late January, the face of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began to appear on scores of billboards in Tel Aviv. The caption read: "A strong state signs the deal. Bibi only you can do it!" The message-to work out a peace agreement with the Palestinians-was idealistic. But the money was all business. The 1 million shekel (around $300,000) advertising campaign was paid for by the Israeli wing of Breaking the Impasse, an alliance of more than 150 Israeli corporate executives.The campaign comes at a crucial time. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is one month away from his April 29 deadline to release a framework agreement that will establish the U.S. government's principles for a final deal. After nine months of discussion there is widespread worry that the framework agreement will be dead on arrival. Kerry's demands from the Palestinians might cause Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, to withdraw from talks or lose his authority to negotiate. At the same time, Kerry's demands for Israeli concessions over settlements or East Jerusalem might lead the Israeli right to pressure Netanyahu to withdraw from the talks. Israelis are pessimistic about the peace process, and Netanyahu has little domestic incentive to make concessions to spur negotiations. "The boycott issue is a threat because Israel is an open economy. Our exports are about 40 percent of the GDP." Yarom AriavThis worries Israeli business executives. They're concerned that Israel will face increasing international isolation, including an expanded boycott campaign, if the talks founder. BTI represents these business people. It's planning a well-funded public campaign to pressure Netanyahu to make concessions and sign a deal. BTI's first public move came in late January, when major European banks and funds divested from Israeli banks and companies. At that time, Norway's sovereign wealth fund reissued a ban on two Israeli companies involved in settlement construction in East Jerusalem: PGGM, a large Dutch pension fund, divested from five major Israeli banks because of their business in the West Bank. Danske, a major Danish bank, divested from Hapoalim, Israel's largest bank. The European decisions gave a big boost to the BDS movement, which advocates boycotts, divestment, and sanctions to change Israeli policy. The policy hasn't changed yet, but BTI's emergence shows Israeli politics are shifting. In a country that takes great pride in its entrepreneurs and business elite, hundreds of Israeli tycoons and tech leaders are pressuring the government to sign an agreement with the Palestinians. The pressure is both public and private. In January, Smadar Barber Tsadik, CEO of the First International Bank of Israel, visited Netanyahu with a delegation of other BTI leaders. According to Yedioth Aharot , Tsadik warned, "The largest investment fund in Holland has already announced that it will not invest in Israel anymore because of its treatment of the Palestinians-and that's a problem." BTI leaders have had many private meetings with Netanyahu's cabinet over the past few months to discuss the threats to Israel's economy if the country doesn't make peace. Israeli business leaders affiliated with BTI cite several economic reasons for Israel to resolve the Palestinian situation. But they emphasize that the boycott movement could devastate the Israeli economy. Yarom Ariav, the executive chairman of Lavi Capital and former director general of Israel's Ministry of Finance, told me, "The boycott issue is a threat because Israel is an open economy. We don't have a big internal market was the case in South Africa. ... Our exports are about 40 percent of the GDP." Oren Most, the founder of two major Israeli telecommunications companies, rejected the idea of "taking shortcuts to satisfy the boycotters." But he acknowledged, "The boycotts are a potentially major threat." The best defense against them, he argued, is "to continue to work on the peace process and let everyone know that we are doing it." BTI has real clout. The Israeli economy is dominated by a relatively small number of tycoons. According to Ariav, the businesspeople who make up BTI control more than 30 percent of Israel's GDP, when you add up their personal wealth, the companies they run, and the funds they oversee. This gives BTI's members, including tech entrepreneur Yossi Vardi and Meir Bran, the CEO of Google Israel, influence with Israel's center-right leadership. It also means that the January advertising blitz was a test run for a potentially far larger public campaign. According to Ariav, once Kerry reveals his framework agreement, BTI plans to fund "a campaign in the streets" to counter the "right-wing militant groups ... that are pushing for no compromise." Most says BTI's goal is to "create the right atmosphere for leaders to take the credit." In a January poll , 87 percent of Israelis predicted that the peace talks will fail. The left does not believe Netanyahu is interested in a two-state solution. The right is opposed to concessions on West Bank settlements and Jerusalem that would be required for peace. Furthermore, the right has passed a bill requiring a public referendum if any "sovereign" Israeli land is relinquished as part of a treaty. When Netanyahu surveys the political scene, it is hard for him to find much upside in making a serious commitment to peace. His own party has implied that it will kick him out if he does. Unless Kerry's peace terms are radically slanted toward Israel, the referendum would pit an angry, mobilized right against a suspicious, apathetic left. BTI wants to change that equation. Its goal, in Ariav's words, is to "help Netanyahu find the courage to make the decision to go through with the negotiations." Top Comment Given that he doesn't listen to common sense, or a logical analysis of what is best for his people, I doubt this will sway him either. Some people are just jerks. More... -Michael's Rabbits 34 Comments Join In The surest sign of BTI's influence is that it has the Israeli right worried. Uriel Lynn, the president of the Federation of Israeli Chambers of Commerce (the largest employers association in Israel) and a former Knesset member from Netanyahu's party, Likud, told me that BTI was "behaving very irresponsibly." Israel, he insisted, is "not going to in any way bend for economic reasons." But he acknowledged BTI's importance: "BTI serves a trend in Israel. They may be able to move something which would be anti-Israel." Likud, like Netanyahu, is fiercely pro-business and fiercely nationalistic. BTI is telling the prime minister that he can't be both. This time, he might have to listen. http://ift.tt/Qg5Ltg



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Muscle Tov

By: jironde on: 8:09 PM
In the world of hasbara -Israel advocacy-it is commonly suggested that the best way to make Israel's case is by emphasizing that Israel wants peace: pointing to Israel's willingness to negotiate, its withdrawals from territory, its evacuation of settlements, its prisoner releases, the settlement freezes, the moves to help establish and strengthen the Palestinian Authority. It's true that Israel has done all of these things, but how is Israel's standing in the world doing? Have peace talks and the surrender of territory done anything to placate those who only ever respond to these moves by calling for still more Israeli concessions? The hard truth is that today, in many circles, Israel's legitimacy is in a worse place than it's ever been. Israel negotiates and concedes, yet the movement to boycott and demonize Israel has only grown increasingly strident. Israel has been locked down in the latest round of negotiations for months now. To make these talks happen Israel was first compelled to consent to the release of 104 convicted Palestinian terrorists. In the past Israel has been forced to freeze Jewish communities in the West Bank and even projects in Jerusalem. In both cases these concessions were to no avail. President Obama and Secretary Kerry regularly threaten Israel that should this current round of allegedly last-chance negotiations fail, Israel will be cast asunder to meet its fate in a cold world of boycotts and diplomatic isolation. Concessions and goodwill from Israel are rarely cause for praise from Western allies, they have simply come to be expected. The boycott threat that Obama and Kerry try to use to panic Israel into doing whatever they instruct is really a case in point. Israel doesn't await a wave of calls for boycotts if these talks fail; it faces them now. If anything, while this past round of Israeli concessions and negotiations have dragged on, the call for the boycott of Israel has only become louder. Across Europe and on American campuses, the campaign for boycotts is becoming frenetic. Oxfam's attack on Scarlett Johansson and SodaStream made the headlines but there have been many cases that didn't. In Europe a Dutch pension fund and several Scandinavian banks have already divested from Israel, while on both sides of the Atlantic the student campaign for boycotts has become particularly ugly. As Jonathan Tobin wrote about yesterday , the BDS campaign has even come to propagate racist hate speech. During a boycott vote only last night at King's College, London, Jewish students were first hectored and reduced to tears, then mocked and taunted by BDS students. At the very least, the fact that all of this goes on while Israel is in negotiations to try and end its presence in the West Bank should convince us that this has nothing to do with the "occupation." Omar Barghouti, one of the leading founders of BDS, has been unequivocal in saying that the creation of two states would not end calls for boycotts. Yet if it is true that none of this is about creating a Palestinian state but rather opposing a Jewish one, then where does this leave notions about land for peace? Indeed, it would seem that on this point the boycotters are consistent with the Palestinians' own refusal to let go of the desire to end Israel, even if it prevents them from getting a state themselves. In a hard-hitting follow-up piece for Mosaic, Yoav Sorek tells us that since the beginning of the Oslo peace process, when Israel reneged on its pledge to itself not recognize or negotiate with the terrorist PLO, the net result has not only been unprecedented waves of carnage and violence, but the onset of deep self-doubt about Israel's own national legitimacy. By promoting the idea that the conflict is a territorial one, Israel at once legitimized the PLO and undermined its own legitimacy before the world, as well as to itself. Accepting the land-for-peace equation meant that Israel was now saying it was the problem, not Arab annihilationism toward the Jewish state, but rather its occupation of "Palestinian land." Israel has placed itself in the dock by endorsing land-for-peace. By promoting this idea Israel accepts that its activities over the 1949 armistice lines are illegitimate if not illegal. For the international community, land for peace means that Israel withdraws from territory and gets peace in return. By that logic the absence of peace is on account of the presence of Israelis in occupied land. Israel knows that it can't hand over territory to those who will only use it to advance warfare against its people. So Israel is forced to say one thing and do another; the debate becomes fixated on whether or not the Palestinians are really a partner for peace and the Israelis just appear dishonest. Nor does Israel get any praise for the withdrawals it makes for, as Evelyn Gordon has argued previously , by denying its claim to the land Israel earns the status of a thief only partially returning what never belonged to her. Sorek suggests that asserting to the world Israel's legal rights in the West Bank is the only viable option left. Once Israel establishes that it has the land by right, only then can it effectively confront Arab rejectionism, which negotiations and land withdrawals actually spur on. It would seem that if Israel cannot tolerate the status quo then it must either unilaterally withdraw from the West Bank or otherwise annex it. But it's quite possible that further withdrawals might actually damage Israel's legitimacy more than annexation would. http://ift.tt/1hb7Y2s



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Could the Peace Process Be Destroying Israel's Legitimacy?

By: jironde on: 7:09 PM
Iron Gates Made in China Aren't Built to Last



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Iron Gates Made in China Aren't Built to Last

By: jironde on: 5:54 PM
*Turkey blocked YouTube after a leaked recording of officials discussing a military incursion into Syria appeared on the site. The Foreign Ministry called the leak a "despicable attack" on national security, in a statement e-mailed from Ankara yesterday. It said the meeting, attended by Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, the head of national intelligence and other military and diplomatic officials, was held to discuss how to respond to threats by Islamist militants against an enclave of Turkish territory inside Syria. Some sections of the tape were "doctored," the ministry said. Turkey's telecommunications authority said it has blocked access to YouTube, where the recording was posted. The government imposed a temporary ban on news about the recording, according to Turkey's broadcasting watchdog...* The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur breaks it down. *Read more here from Andrew J. Barden / Bloomberg: http://ift.tt/1hyeyQA...



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Why The YouTube Ban In Turkey Will Fail

By: jironde on: 1:24 PM
Well, at least he tried



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Police Chase Fail

By: jironde on: 11:09 AM
Cat 793 gets dropped onto ship in Durban Harbour, South Africa.



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36 Ton dump truck falls onto a boat.

By: jironde on: 11:09 AM
A Brazilian woman hung herself earlier this week, apparently due to depression. On the back of a photo found -unrelated to the suicide- it states, ironically: "I am Happy because when many people try to knock me down, and when they think I'm already giving up, they fail, because I always stand up for myself even stronger." She left behind a husband and two children.



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Brazilian woman hangs herself onto a tree in public suicide.

By: jironde on: 9:08 AM
So cute fail



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Funny Cats was Jump FAIL! 2014

By: jironde on: 9:08 AM
Check out the USPS guy dropping off a package. Prior to the video I went out to receive the mail, which was a couple of envelopes, and he notifies me that there is a package as well. So I tell him to just honk or whistle so I can come out and receive it. This guy does the opposite. When I confront him he yells "I thought you left man". Then I inform him that I will be generating a complaint he goes "You want the number?". I inform him "Nah I got my cameras. It's all that I need". Once informing him of the cameras he got super serious and kept staring at them. Even as he drove off he kept staring at them, trying to figure out if the cameras were real or not. SMH.



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USPS Delivery Fail

By: jironde on: 7:54 AM
http://ift.tt/O1tueG Controlling the Lens: The Media War Being Fought Over Ukraine Between the Western Bloc and Russia The BBC and CNN versus RT By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya Global Research, March 27, 2014 Governments and major corporations control or, at least, try to manipulate public opinion and discursive processes through mass media communication. They also wage information wars through the use of mass media communication. Like other geopolitical events, this is the case concerning the Ukrainian anti-government protests and the proceeding February 2014 coup in Kiev. This information war is a contest where the international news networks and major newspapers act as armies, the weapons being used are the media, and the frontline is the interactive space known as the public sphere. Radio frequencies, air waves, satellite feeds, social media, cellular or mobile phone uploads, communication networks, and the internet are all part of the war. What is an Information War? Different technologies and modes of communication are used to enforce certain themes in the conflict. Language, selective words, particular expressions, specific pictures, multimedia presentations, and communication are all the ammunition for the war. The aims of information warfare are to use discourse to influence populations across the world and to establish a total monopoly on the flow of information, the perceptions of audiences, and the discursive processes shaping the modern world. At its basis power and relationships are being realized through mass media communication. The messages and ideas that the mass media transmit through mass communication are constructed by those that control the media and, in succession, used by them to construct the perceptions of audiences. Since what the majority of people in most modern societies know is heavily shaped by the mass media, the mass media is used to lead audiences into forming certain opinions and to make their decisions on the bases of those opinions. This is done either subtly or overtly through the delivery of repetitive messages. The messages, being delivered to audiences by the mainstream media and information networks, are generally a form of social action, because the delivery of information by these outlets takes the reactions of audiences into account before any information is disseminated. The reactions that are taken into consideration include physical reactions or material processes. This also includes considerations about the manifestation of protests as a reaction to the information delivered or economic considerations such as investor withdrawals, currency devaluation, and market shifts. Monopolizing the narrative being delivered to the public and discrediting alternative or rival narratives, be they true or false, is an important aspect of the information war. Although this form of warfare is not new, it is becoming increasingly sophisticated and intensifying as it becomes an important tactic in the tool box of non-conventional warfare that is becoming increasingly characteristic of the current century. The type of information management that both privately-owned and publicly-owned major news networks seek eventually creates what social scientists call a common sense assumption that informs the actions and reactions of the audiences towards particular subjects and situations. These common sense assumptions are not based on any real facts that exist in the real world, but are formed on the basis of what has repeatedly been presented as fact and conventional knowledge. In the reporting of international affairs the deeply politicized messages being delivered to audiences have led to common sense attitudes that believe that Shiite Muslims and Sunni Muslims are bitter blood enemies or that Hugo Chavez was a autocrat or that there is an irreversible deep seated hatred between Serbs and Croats. None of these assumptions are grounded in reality, but it has slowly trickled into the canon of false assumptions that inform a segment of international audiences about international issues. Moreover, in many cases these messages are delivered under the disguise of apolitical neutral objectivity, which prevents large portions of the audience from questioning the motives and implications of the messages being transmitted. Ukraine is currently a front, just as Syria and Venezuela are, in a global information war, which is being reflected through a battle of the international media networks. The objectives of this media war are to secure and manage domestic and international public opinion in support or opposition of the coup that took place in Kiev and the new Ukrainian transitional government in Kiev. International Media War: Move over BBC World and CNN International The United States of America used to enjoy a near monopoly in the dissemination of information in the international media, but that has changed over the years as countries like Russia, Iran, China, and Venezuela respectively setup international news networks like Russia Today (RT), Press TV, Chinese Central Television (CCTV), and the pan-Latin American La Nueva Televisora del Sur (teleSUR) to challenge the international media networks of the US and its allies. These new anti-establishment international media networks - if they can be described thus - from Russia, Iran, China, Venezuela, and elsewhere collectively begun to challenge the status quo in the international media. The prevailing narratives being presented by the dominant international news networks, particularly the Atlanta-based Cable News Network (CNN) and the state-owned British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), which had a near monopoly on the international stage, were disrupted and slowly eroded. To borrow from the words of Russian President Vladimir Putin, while he was visiting the Moscow studios of RT in June 2013 , the task of anti-establishmentarian international news networks like RT is to "try to break the Anglo-Saxon monopoly on the global information streams." The newer international news networks, like RT and Press TV, became so effective in challenging the discourse being propagated by major news networks like CNN, BBC, Fox News, and Sky News that American and British officials began to reconsider their media strategies and examine ways to challenge and cripple the international news networks challenging their control on the flow of information. The steps taken by the US and its allies included the blocking of the English-language Press TV , the Arabic-language Al-Alam, and other state-owned Iranian stations in Europe and elsewhere. The near monopoly that the US and Britain enjoyed on the international stage was clearly broken by the time 2011 arrived as many viewers began to diversify their sources of information. Stations like CNN and BBC were heavily discredited about their coverage on the US-led NATO war against the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. Hillary Clinton, while she was the sixty-seventh secretary of state of the US, was even forced to publicly outline the important role that international news networks and the mass media played in the success of US foreign policy. While speaking to a 2011 congressional committee dealing with foreign affairs in the US Congress, Clinton declared that Washington was losing the global information war. She told the committee she was testifying to that the US needed to revert to Cold War-style media transmissions and outreach methods while requesting increased funding for US state media operations as a means of waging an information war against foreign media networks that carry diverging messages. She denounced RT without naming it directly, describing it as the English-language channel of the Russians and saying "it is quite instructive." Secretary Clinton lamented that the US and the state-owned BBC were cutting back their international media operations and that Washington needed to reverse the cutbacks "to get America's message out." She, however, was wrong about the US and BBC cutbacks. Resources were not the issue; the decreasing number of audiences tuning in to stations like CNN International or BBC World was the real problem. Clinton's statements echoed the state-run Broadcasting Board of Governors US federal agency, which runs Radio Free Europe, Voice of America (VOA), Alhurra in Iraq, and all the state-run international broadcasting of the US. Walter Isaacson, its chairman, declared a few months earlier that the US was waging an information war and that " America cannot let itself be out communicated by its enemies ." Isaacson, who was formerly the CEO of CNN, also emphasized that "delivering the news top down needs to be complemented by a new approach that catalyzes social networks." This is very important to keep in mind when considering the interface between anti-government protests, social media, and the mainstream media. While addressing Secretary Clinton's 2011 declaration about US involvement in a global information war, the coverage of the mainstream media in the US about her statements was selective and distorted to portray a friendly and innocent image of the US government simply working to communicate with the outside world. Instead of displaying any reflectively or making any substantive analytical reports explaining that what was taking place on Capitol Hill was a discussion by US officials about sharpening the US government's overseas propaganda and dominating the information available to the international public, US media outlets casually glossed over Secretary Clinton's statements at the hearing or entirely overlooked it. The Washington Post , for example, made no attempt in its reporting to analyze what Clinton and the US senators were discussing. For instance, when Senator Richard Lugar, a known war hawk and military expansionist, said that the international media operations of the Broadcasting Board of Governors are "still a great force of diplomacy, to get our message across," The Washington Post 's Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Joby Warrick did not even elaborate that what Lugar was talking about was the US government exerting its power over other nations by using the mass media to influence their governments through a US-tailored flow of information to their populations. This passiveness of the mainstream media that the coverage on Clinton's testimony demonstrated is usually justified on the basis of a false objectivity. This is very common when it comes to important issues involving governments, corporations, individuals, or entities that the mainstream media do not want to criticize or undermine. The claim is that the facts are simply being reported without bias or subjective interpretations. The US mainstream media coverage of the event would have been much different if it were a Russian official speaking to a parliamentary committee in the Duma about using the Russian media to influence foreign countries. The same standards are not applied when these same outlets deal with rival entities. Instead assertive reporting that involves an active or assertive voice by the mainstream media about the news being covered is then applied to attack or undermine the decisions and actions of these rival entities in the name of investigative journalism and critical analysis. Western Media Lashes out at Iranian, Chinese, Russian Media on Failures in Syria While there has been an ongoing information war, a very distinct media war began to become visible in 2011. T he NATO war on Libya , where international media networks played an important role in the war effort, highlighted this. The new anti-establishment news networks had matured enough to challenge US propaganda and provide alternative narratives that challenged the legitimacy of the broadcasts from CNN and BBC, even hurting their credibility and reducing their international and domestic viewership. Libya, however, was merely the start whereas Syria displayed an open and intense conflict between these news networks being fought mainly in the English, Arabic, and Spanish languages. The effectiveness of the anti-establishmentarian media networks in challenging the discourse of networks like CNN, BBC, Fox News, and Al Jazeera about Syria demonstrated that the days of a US stranglehold on the flow of information where long gone. The US and British media began to very distinctly condemn the Chinese, Iranian, and Russian international media networks for their narratives about Syria by the start of 2012. The BBC incorrectly claimed, as one of its titles illustrated, that the " Chinese, Iranian press alone back UN Syria veto " on February 6, 2012 while Robert Mackey of The New York Times opined that, as the title for his text illustrates, the " Crisis in Syria Looks Very Different on Satellite Channels Owned by Russia and Iran " a few days later, on February 10, 2012. Lashing out at the perspectives of the Chinese, Iranian, and Russian media, the US and British press overlooked the segments of the African, Arab, Asian, European, and Latin American media that shared the same views as the Iranian, Chinese, and Russian media in countries like Algeria, Argentina, Belarus, Bolivia, Brazil, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, India, Iraq, Lebanon, Namibia, Serbia, South Africa, Ukraine, and Venezuela. While trying to deliberately undermine and understate the support that Syria enjoyed from a segment of the international community to their audiences, the US and British media betrayed the frustration of the political agendas of the directorships controlling their discourse. The media war is a reflection of rivalries between powerful actors in the real world. This is why it should come as no surprise that it was during the same juncture that Hillary Clinton began to publicly exhibit US frustration against the Russians and the Chinese. Secretary Clinton began lecturing her fellow foreign ministers from the other countries gathering at the international conferences that support regime change and military operations against Syria. She told the other foreign ministers that the Russians and Chinese had to " pay a price " for opposing Washington's idea of "progress." It is worth revisiting Clinton's statements from July 2012 . She said as follows: "I don't think Russia and China believe they are paying any price at all - nothing at all - for standing up on behalf of the Assad regime. The only way that will change is if every nation represented here directly and urgently makes it clear that Russia and China will pay a price because they are holding up progress - blockading it - that is no longer tolerable !" Clinton's definition of progress in Syria, it should be mentioned, means regime change in Damascus and a military bombing campaign against the Syrians. She was expressing Washington's rage, because she made the statement after Moscow and Beijing refused to allow the US, Britain, and France to get the United Nations Security Council to authorize a war against Syria. After Washington displayed its infuriation at Russia for preventing regime change in Syria, the US began to seriously contemplate ways it could apply sanctions against the Russians and methods to target the international Russian media networks in the information and media war being waged between the two camps. Those considerations are now materializing or being activated with the crisis in Ukraine. The calls for sanctions against the Russians, however, are not merely the result of the crisis in Ukraine; they are part of an inclination that Washington already had and even consideration by US officials on how to undermine the mega oil-for-goods trade deal that the Russians and Iranians have been negotiating. How the Western Media is Framing the Actors in the Ukrainian Crisis The mainstream media selects which narratives and messages get out and dominant conversations. Certain voices are only allowed to be heard while others are excluded or utterly ignored from the conversation while circumstances that could challenge what the mainstream media is trying to frame for audiences are in many cases left out from narratives or trivialized and discredited. A manipulated narrative that supports European Union and NATO expansion in Ukraine is being constructed where a distorted reality is being represented about what took place in Kiev. The vocabulary chain or series of related words setting the tempo of the discourse on the anti-government protests is very telling. President Viktor Yanukovych is constantly presented as corrupt, as the constant media focus on his wealth and mansion present , and pro-Russian whereas the protesters have been presented as activists and democrats with little delving into the backgrounds of the opposition leaders. The words and phrases indicate or, to put it more bluntly, betray the political position of the media networks. These descriptions and messages are formulated on the basis of judgment calls that are conveying the position of the supposedly objective media sources. The en masse conveyance of these news networks starts turning more and more into psychological imposition as it gradually becomes accepted by audiences as they are constantly bombarded by the same view points and narratives about the anti-government protests in Ukraine. The narrative being framed is that a corrupt pro-Russian regime has been ousted by a democratic revolution. This has no bearing to what has happened. The same media sources that have portrayed Yanukovych as a greedy figure and corrupt autocrat fail to mention that the opposition figures that they present so favourable are also wealthy and have mansions, priceless art, pools, car collections, and vast wealth. They also fail to mention that the main opposition leaders were already in power before and lost popularity, because of their mismanagement and corruption. Nor is the fact that the opposition leaders took power through a coup mentioned. As for the allegations of Yanukovych being pro-Russian, any source that mentions this is either lying or utterly ignorant about Ukrainian politics; Yanukovych's Party of the Regions caters mostly (but not only) to Russian-speakers and ethnic Russians in Ukraine (which do prefer Russia to the US and the EU), but his party is not pro-Russian at all and has even advanced cooperation with NATO and even disappointed its constituents by trying to bring Ukraine closer to the European Union, instead of Russia, after the most recent elections in Ukraine. The vilifying language being used against Russia and Vladimir Putin in these reports is very telling too. This language illustrates or presents the attitudes or beliefs that these media outlets want to project about the Russian Federation and Putin. President Putin is being framed as an autocrat and militaristic brute. Putin's ex-KGB background is frequently referred to as a means of demonizing him whereas the CIA background of George H. W. Bush Sr. was almost never referred to by the same outlets when the latter was president of the US; when the CIA background of George H. W. Bush Sr. was mentioned, it was done either in a passive or positive voice. The negative language that has been reserved for Putin about a Russian invasion of Crimea has never been used by networks like CNN or the BBC to describe any US president or British prime minister involved in the invasions and wars against Afghanistan, Iraq, or Libya either. These attitudes framing the discourse on Russia and Putin are based on an adversarial stance towards Russia as an economic and geopolitical rival, which is structurally engrained in the power structure controlling the mass media in North America and the European Union. Journalists and media sector employees consciously or subconsciously work around its contours and either knowingly or unknowingly serve its objectives to vilify Russia and otherizing it as an adversary or alien. Western Media Target RT and the Russian Media to Control the Narrative on Ukraine During the start of the crises in Libya and Syria the US and its allies refused to admit that they were supporting militants with deviant and intolerant views that many have described as either Al-Qaeda forces or affiliates of Al-Qaeda. With time the US and its allies were slowly forced to admit that these intolerant deviant forces did exist in Libya and Syria. This acknowledgment by the US and its allies was the result of the successful information campaign being waged by the mass media of Syrian allies like Iran, China, and Russia. The Qatari-based Al Jazeera Network's overbearing position in the Arab World was even marred as channels like Rusiya Al-Yaum, Al-Manar, and Al-Mayadeen challenged its coverage on the Syrian crisis. The case with the Ukraine has been the same. The US and its allies have tried to deny the ultra-nationalist involvement and to frame the story that benefits their interests in Ukraine. The Russian media, however, has been a thorn in their side and challenging their discourse. So a campaign has been initiated against the Russian media by the US and its allies. Like the frustration that was expressed against the Russian international media networks over their coverage of Syria, the aim of the mainstream media in North America and the European Union is to present the Russian mainstream media as unobjective and untrustworthy; that is why the US state-run RFE's Claire Bigg reported in a December 2013 article, as her opening line says, that "Russia's state-run television channels are not known for their impartiality" and tries to paint a conspiratorial picture of the Russian media where they claim that the bad weather is linked to the protests in Ukraine by taking one Russian meteorologist's comments out of context. The campaign against the Russian media particularly targets its English-language segments and international arms, namely RT America and RT International, which have challenged the narrative that Washington and Brussels want to sell to public opinion about the coup in Ukraine. The comments of two RT employees and the issue of Crimean autonomy have been used in the attack against RT America and RT International. In the case of the latter point, it is worth noting that when it looked like there was a possibility that the coup against the Ukrainian government could fail (speculatively speaking, probably because they expected the coup to take place on February 20 after the snipers murdered protests), the Atlanticist media started reporting about how the western portion of Ukraine could breakaway without any traces of concern. The Guardian reported the following about the situation on February 21, 2014 : "While protests continue on the streets of central Kiev, the cities in the west of Ukraine are slipping towards autonomy with new parallel governments and security forces that have openly admitted they have deserted to the side of protesters." Albeit it is important to note that the report fails to mention the role of ultra-nationalist militias in taking over the western cities and intimidating their politicians, the point is that the Crimean move towards independence in the Atlanticist media has been overtly treated under a totally different standard. The mainstream media in North America and the European Union had no problem with autonomy in the western half of Ukraine, but clearly do not apply the same standards to Crimea and oppose it. The same media ignores or downplays the agency of the Crimean people, instead framing the Crimean move towards independence as a decision taken by the Kremlin. Repetitively RT has been blasted either subtly or overtly by the mainstream media in North America and the European Union as a propaganda arm of the Kremlin on the basis that it refuses to report "truthfully" about a Russian invasion of Crimea like the BBC, CNN, Fox News, Sky News, and France 24. Yet, it is CNN and these news networks and outlets that have a very well known track record of distorting the facts. They are now steadily demonizing the people of Crimea that are pro-Russian. The Telegraph in a March 11, 2014 report authored by Patrick Reevell and David Blair has even gone so far as to report that the voting in the Autonomous Republic of the Crimea has only two choices for the Crimean population: join Russia now or later. Stretching its interpretation of the question on the ballots, the British newspaper says that the referendum will ask the people of Crimea if they want to join the Russian Federation directly or through parliamentary means. Instead of directly saying that the referendum will ask the people of Crimea if they want to join Russia or remain a part of Ukraine under the 1994 Crimean Constitution, which could allow for the possibility of a parliamentary vote to join Russia, the British newspaper uses contorted language to confuse the matter as a means of discrediting the referendum. Another example of this type of demonizing reporting is an article written by CNN's Nick Paton Walsh, Laura Smith-Spark, and Ben Brumfield that near the start says, "If you come by train, expect to be searched by pro-Russian militia. If you want to rally in favor of Ukraine's West-leaning interim government, expect to be surrounded by pushy pro-Russians." In this narrative the people being repressed are those that support the unconstitutional post-coup government in Kiev while those that are pro-Russian are conveniently portrayed as aggressive, as the comment about being search by pro-Russian militias and being surrounded by "pushy pro-Russians" if you try to express yourself are intended to mean. Not only does the narrative being presented paint Russia and those in Crimea that want to join Russia negatively, it ignores the coup that took place in Kiev and the fact that the searches on the border are aimed at preventing any armed agents or ultra-nationalist individuals from destabilizing Crimea. Both visual and verbal modes of communication have been used to discredit RT. For example the BBC claimed that RT was presenting the eastern and southern portions of Ukraine as a part of Russia in its reporting on the basis of a map that was taken out of context. Other claims showed a map of Crimea out of context saying that RT had recognized it as a part of Russia. The individual or individuals at the BBC and elsewhere that decided to reproduce the de-contextualized visuals from RT are categorically dishonest and unprincipled. They intentionally misrepresented the meaning of the images by presenting footage or screen grabs that were taken out of context. They omitted the facts that the maps were presented as part of a report showing internal demographic breakups in Ukraine's geography or the different possibilities that the Crimean people faced. The BBC has a history of misrepresenting footage and images. The BBC has been caught red handed with these types of fabrications many times whereas there is no case of RT being involved in this type of reporting. Tibetan monks being beaten by Indian security forces were presented by the BBC as Tibetans being oppressed by the Chinese government in 2008. Another case is when Indians at a rally waving Indian flags were billed to audiences as Libyans celebrating the ouster of the Libyan government in 2011. More recently, the BBC was caught even doing voice overs in its coverage of the Syrian crisis in 2013. Former British diplomat Craig Murray is worth quoting about the BBC's Syria fabrication : "The disturbing thing is the footage of the doctor talking is precisely the same each time. It is edited so as to give the impression the medic is talking in real time in her natural voice - there are none of the accepted devices used to indicate a voiceover translation. But it must be true that in at least one, and possibly both, the clips she is not talking in real time in her own voice." What Simple Questions From the Mainstream Media Say The role of journalists in the clash cannot be underemphasized either. For example, BuzzFeed reporter Rosie Gray presented Margarita Simonyan, the head of RT, the following questions: (1) Do you regularly have meetings at the Kremlin or with Russian government officials? Can you describe them, if so? How much direct influence does the Kremlin have over what RT reports? (2) Why is your office apparently located on a different floor than the newsroom, as one employee told me? (3) Also, was Anastasia Churkina hired because of who her father is? Why was she allowed to interview her own father on camera? (4) I'm told that RT Arabic is run by President Putin's former translator - is that how that position was filled? It is hard to tell if the questions are serious or an insult. No reporters in North America have dared asked how Mika Brzezinski got her job at MSNBC and if her father Zbigniew Brzezinski had anything to do with her employment. If questions like this are asked, they are much more subtle. Yet, North American media and its journalists do not apply the same standards when dealing with Russians or members of other societies. Regardless of the seriousness of the inquiries, the questions are deeply flawed or designed to get specific outputs from the respondent. Firstly, the questions are leading, because they are designed to lead the answers in a certain direction to embarrass and discredit RT as a news network. Secondly the questions are loaded, because they include assumptions and try to limit the answers to serve the reporter's agenda. A model example of a loaded question is as such: "Have you stopped beating your children?" The premise of the entire question is based on an incorrect assumption. In most cases, no matter what the responded says, they are put in an embarrassing situation and offer the question some legitimacy by merely answering it. In response, Margarita Simonyan mocked Gray's loaded questions. The Dangerous Abuses of Mass Media Communication in the Information Age The divisions that exist between the US and Russia will harden as the situation in Ukraine continues to simmer. The ramifications of this crisis will be felt globally from Syria, the Korean Peninsula, and the United Nations to the negotiating table about the Iranian nuclear program between Tehran and the P5+1. Ultimately, the waging of an information war between the US and Russia may sound appropriate for a juncture in history that has been dubbed the Information Age. Its role, however, is a gloomy one. The control and manipulation of information by the mass media prevents individuals from being authentically cognizant about the world around them and the social relationships that are behind the structures of their daily lives. Its power to inform decisions, socialize individuals, and shape popular culture is being misused. The information war is not only waged between rival powers and economic blocs. The control and manipulation of information is used internally by governments and corporations against the lower echelons of society. It atomizes information as a means of creating a blinding closed system that ignores the social realities about privilege and the unequal distribution of wealth and power. Even those behind the fabrications and false narratives can be overtaken as hostages to an inauthentic and de-humanizing view of the world. The propagandists can become hostages of that which their own hands have sown. The discourse about the might of the Pentagon makes policymakers in the US think that a confrontation between the United States and either the Russian Federation or China will have diminutive consequences and not entail the possibility of a nuclear war. Both Russia and China form a formidable alliance with a deadly arsenal of nuclear weapons and major military resources. A clash between the US and either Russia or China could have apocalyptic consequences for all life on this planet. If information is not used properly during the Information Age we may return to the Stone Age as Albert Einstein once said. http://ift.tt/QCra9v



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Controlling the Lens: The Media War Being Fought Over Ukraine Between the Western Bloc and Russia

By: jironde on: 7:54 AM
27/03 00:27 CET For the first time Germany is making moves to tackle benefit abuse as migration from Bulgaria and Romania is set to double this year. Economic growth and low unemployment in the country is luring citizens wishing to take advantage of the free movement of labour, but EU expansion has also fulled fears of an influx of people fleeing poverty. German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizi`ere has been taking part in a panel set up by the German government on seeking ways to avoid so-called 'benefit tourism.' "The number of migrants from Bulgaria and Romania and the social problems linked to some of them can be managed nationally, but in certain regions it is alarming and the rise in numbers is alarming so it is right that we must take some measures so that they do not become a big problem for Germany as a whole." A government report suggests tightening rules such as limiting migrants' stay to three months if they fail to find work. It also plans to clamp down on firms employing unregistered immigrants or fraudsters who register them as self-employed workers to claim supplementary benefits. Sixteen German city mayors have asked for help coping with poor immigrants from eastern Europe, while figures show that most Romanian and Bulgarians come to study or work and are unlikely to be unemployed Source



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Germany moves to tackle benefit cheats as concerns grow over rising immigration

By: jironde on: 7:54 AM




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FAIL!!! Motion Detector

By: jironde on: 12:53 AM
...takes an enormous amount of skill and calculation. Unfortunately, these guys didn't do their sums quite right.



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Driving a Tractor on ice....

By: jironde on: 12:53 AM

Thursday, March 27, 2014

This woman from South London found a new and creative way to maximise on space. Her new lb80k Land Rover Sport had just 500 miles on the clock when she decided to do this.....



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Bought a new Range Rover Sport? Short of parking space?

By: jironde on: 7:57 PM
From the wars in the colonial era, to the current crisis in the arab world, conventional arab armies have enjoyed few -if any- victories in battle against western troops. As an Arab, a muslim, and former conscript in the army, i recognise many truths in this report. It is harsh, but fair. It also explains in detail why the SAA is having such a hard time with the rebels, why it is reluctant to engage in fresh hostilities with Israeli forces- or even react to attacks made on its territory by israeli and/or or turkish troops It is a pretty long text, and it's my first contribution. Please bear with me as you read through it, it DOES bring into light the root causes of many problems faced today by the Syrian Arab Army, and other arab armies. Norvell De Atkine, a U.S. Army retired colonel with eight years residence in Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt, and a graduate degree in Arab studies from the American University of Beirut, was instructing U.S. Army personnel assigned to Middle Eastern areas. The opinions expressed here are strictly his own. Arabic-speaking armies have been generally ineffective in the modern era. Egyptian regular forces did poorly against Yemeni irregulars in the 1960s. 1 Syrians could only impose their will in Lebanon during the mid-1970s by the use of overwhelming weaponry and numbers. 2 Iraqis showed ineptness against an Iranian military ripped apart by revolutionary turmoil in the 1980s and could not win a three-decades-long war against the Kurds. 3 The Arab military performance on both sides of the 1990 Kuwait war was mediocre. 4 The Arabs have done poorly in nearly all the military confrontations with Israel. Why this unimpressive record? There are many factors-economic, ideological, technical-but perhaps the most important has to do with culture and certain societal attributes which inhibit Arabs from producing an effective military force. It is a truism of military life that an army fights as it trains , and so I draw on my many years of firsthand observation of Arabs in training to draw conclusions about the ways in which they go into combat. The following impressions derive from personal experience with Arab military establishments in the capacity of U.S. military attach'e and security assistance officer, observer officer with the British-officer Trucial Oman Scouts (the security force in the emirates prior to the establishment of the United Arab Emirates), as well as some thirty year's study of the Middle East. False Starts Including culture in strategic assessments has a poor legacy, for it has often been spun from an ugly brew of ignorance, wishful thinking, and mythology. Thus, the U.S. army in the 1930s evaluated the Japanese national character as lacking originality and drew the unwarranted conclusion that the country would be permanently disadvantaged in technology. Hitler dismissed the United States as a mongrel society and consequently underestimated the impact of America's entry into the war. As these examples suggest, when culture is considered in calculating the relative strengths and weaknesses of opposing forces, it tends to lead to wild distortions, especially when it is a matter of understanding why states unprepared for war enter into combat flushed with confidence. The temptation is to impute cultural attributes to the enemy state that negate its superior numbers or weaponry. Or the opposite: to view the potential enemy through the prism of one's own cultural norms. American strategists assumed that the pain threshold of the North Vietnamese approximated their own and that the air bombardment of the North would bring it to its knees. Three days of aerial attacks were thought to be all the Serbs could withstand; in fact, seventy-eight days were needed. It is particularly dangerous to make facile assumptions about abilities in warfare based on past performance, for societies evolve and so does the military subculture with it. The dismal French performance in the 1870 Franco-Prussian war led the German high command to an overly optimistic assessment prior to World War I. The tenacity and courage of French soldiers in World War I led everyone from Winston Churchill to the German high command vastly to overestimate the French army's fighting abilities. Israeli generals underestimated the Egyptian army of 1973 based on Egypt's hapless performance in the 1967 war. Culture is difficult to pin down. It is not synonymous with an individual's race nor ethnic identity. The history of warfare makes a mockery of attempts to assign rigid cultural attributes to individuals-as the military histories of the Ottoman and Roman empires illustrate. In both cases it was training, discipline, esprit, and 'elan which made the difference, not the individual soldiers' origin. The highly disciplined, effective Roman legions, for example, were recruited from throughout the Roman empire, and the elite Ottoman Janissaries (slave soldiers) were Christians forcibly recruited as boys from the Balkans. The Role of Culture These problems notwithstanding, culture does need to be taken into account. Indeed, awareness of prior mistakes should make it possible to assess the role of cultural factors in warfare. John Keegan, the eminent historian of warfare, argues that culture is a prime determinant of the nature of warfare. In contrast to the usual manner of European warfare which he terms "face to face," Keegan depicts the early Arab armies in the Islamic era as masters of evasion, delay, and indirection. Examining Arab warfare in this century leads to the conclusion that Arabs remain more successful in insurgent, or political warfare-what T. E. Lawrence termed "winning wars without battles. Even the much-lauded Egyptian crossing of the Suez in 1973 at its core entailed a masterful deception plan. It may well be that these seemingly permanent attributes result from a culture that engenders subtlety, indirection, and dissimulation in personal relationships. Along these lines, Kenneth Pollack concludes his exhaustive study of Arab military effectiveness by noting that "certain patterns of behavior fostered by the dominant Arab culture were the most important factors contributing to the limited military effectiveness of Arab armies and air forces from 1945 to 1991. These attributes included over-centralization, discouraging initiative, lack of flexibility, manipulation of information, and the discouragement of leadership at the junior officer level. The barrage of criticism leveled at Samuel Huntington's notion of a "clash of civilizations in no way lessens the vital point he made-that however much the grouping of peoples by religion and culture rather than political or economic divisions offends academics who propound a world defined by class, race,and gender, it is a reality, one not diminished by modern communications. But how does one integrate the study of culture into military training? At present, it has hardly any role. Paul M. Belbutowski, a scholar and former member of the U.S. Delta Force, succinctly stated a deficiency in our own military education system: "Culture, comprised of all that is vague and intangible, is not generally integrated into strategic planning except at the most superficial level. And yet it is precisely "all that is vague and intangible" which defines low-intensity conflicts. The Vietnamese communists did not fight the war the United States had trained for, nor did the Chechens and Afghans fight the war the Russians prepared for. This entails far more than simply retooling weaponry and retraining soldiers. It requires an understanding of the enemy's cultural mythology, history, attitude toward time, etc.-demanding a more substantial investment in time and money than a bureaucratic organization is likely to authorize. Mindful of walking through a minefield of past errors and present cultural sensibilities, I offer some assessments of the role of culture in the military training of Arabic-speaking officers. I confine myself principally to training for two reasons. First, I observed much training but only one combat campaign (the Jordanian Army against the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1970). Secondly, armies fight as they train. Troops are conditioned by peacetime habits, policies, and procedures; they do not undergo a sudden metamorphosis that transforms civilians in uniform into warriors. General George Patton was fond of relating the story about Julius Caesar, who "In the winter time so trained his legions in all that became soldiers and so habituated them to the proper performance of their duties, that when in the spring he committed them to battle against the Gauls, it was not necessary to give them orders, for they knew what to do and how to do it. Information as Power In every society information is a means of making a living or wielding power, but Arabs husband information and hold it especially tightly. U.S. trainers have often been surprised over the years by the fact that information provided to key personnel does not get much further than them. Having learned to perform some complicated procedure, an Arab technician knows that he is invaluable so long as he is the only one in a unit to have that knowledge; once he dispenses it to others he no longer is the only font of knowledge and his power dissipates. This explains the commonplace hoarding of manuals, books, training pamphlets, and other training or logistics literature. On one occasion, an American mobile training team working with armor in Egypt at long last received the operators' manuals that had laboriously been translated into Arabic. The American trainers took the newly-minted manuals straight to the tank park and distributed them to the tank crews. Right behind them, the company commander, a graduate of the armor school at Fort Knox and specialized courses at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds ordnance school, collected the manuals from the crews. Questioned why he did this, the commander said that there was no point in giving them to the drivers because enlisted men could not read. In point of fact, he did not want enlisted men to have an independent source of knowledge. Being the only person who can explain the fire control instrumentation or boresight artillery weapons brings prestige and attention. In military terms this means that very little cross-training is accomplished and that, for instance in a tank crew, the gunners, loaders, and drivers might be proficient in their jobs but are not prepared to fill in for a casualty. Not understanding one another's jobs also inhibits a smoothly functioning crew. At a higher level it means there is no depth in technical proficiency. Education Problems Training tends to be unimaginative, cut and dried, and not challenging. Because the Arab educational system is predicated on rote memorization, officers have a phenomenal ability to commit vast amounts of knowledge to memory. The learning system tends to consist of on-high lectures, with students taking voluminous notes and being examined on what they were told. (It also has interesting implications for foreign instructors; for example, his credibility is diminished if he must resort to a book.) The emphasis on memorization has a price, and that is in diminished ability to reason or engage in analysis based upon general principles. Thinking outside the box is not encouraged; doing so in public can damage a career. Instructors are not challenged and neither, in the end,are students. Head-to-head competition among individuals is generally avoided, at least openly, for it means that someone wins and someone else loses, with the loser humiliated. This taboo has particular import when a class contains mixed ranks. Education is in good part sought as a matter of personal prestige, so Arabs in U.S. military schools take pains to ensure that the ranking member, according to military position or social class, scores the highest marks in the class. Often this leads to "sharing answers" in class-often in a rather overt manner or junior officers concealing scores higher than their superior's. American military instructors dealing with Middle Eastern students learn to ensure that, before directing any question to a student in a classroom situation, particularly if he is an officer, the student does possess the correct answer. If this is not assured, the officer will feel he has been set up for public humiliation. Furthermore, in the often-paranoid environment of Arab political culture, he will believe this setup to have been purposeful. This student will then become an enemy of the instructor and his classmates will become apprehensive about their also being singled out for humiliation-and learning becomes impossible. Officers vs. Soldiers Arab junior officers are well trained on the technical aspects of their weapons and tactical know-how, but not in leadership, a subject given little attention. For example, as General Sa'd ash-Shazli, the Egyptian chief of staff, noted in his assessment of the army he inherited prior to the 1973 war, they were not trained to seize the initiative or volunteer original concepts or new ideas. Indeed, leadership may be the greatest weakness of Arab training systems. This problem results from two main factors: a highly accentuated class system bordering on a caste system, and lack of a non-commissioned-officer development program. Most Arab officers treat enlisted soldiers like sub-humans. When the winds in Egypt one day carried biting sand particles from the desert during a demonstration for visiting U.S. dignitaries, I watched as a contingent of soldiers marched in and formed a single rank to shield the Americans; Egyptian soldiers, in other words, are used on occasion as nothing more than a windbreak. The idea of taking care of one's men is found only among the most elite units in the Egyptian military. On a typical weekend, officers in units stationed outside Cairo will get in their cars and drive off to their homes, leaving the enlisted men to fend for themselves by trekking across the desert to a highway and flagging down busses or trucks to get to the Cairo rail system. Garrison cantonments have no amenities for soldiers. The same situation, in various degrees, exists elsewhere in the Arabic-speaking countries-less so in Jordan, even more so in Iraq and Syria. The young draftees who make up the bulk of the Egyptian army hate military service for good reason and will do almost anything, including self-mutilation, to avoid it. In Syria the wealthy buy exemptions or, failing that, are assigned to noncombatant organizations.As a young Syrian told me, his musical skills came from his assignment to a Syrian army band where he learned to play an instrument. In general, the militaries of the Fertile Crescent enforce discipline by fear; in countries where a tribal system still is in force, such as Saudi Arabia, the innate egalitarianism of the society mitigates against fear as the prime motivator, so a general lack of discipline pervades. The social and professional gap between officers and enlisted men is present in all armies, but in the United States and other Western forces, the noncommissioned officer (NCO) corps bridges it. Indeed, a professional NCO corps has been critical for the American military to work at its best; as the primary trainers in a professional army, NCOs are critical to training programs and to the enlisted men's sense of unit esprit. Most of the Arab world either has no NCO corps or it is non-functional, severely handicapping the military's effectiveness. With some exceptions, NCOs are considered in the same low category as enlisted men and so do not serve as a bridge between enlisted men and officers. Officers instruct but the wide social gap between enlisted man and officer tends to make the learning process perfunctory, formalized, and ineffective. The show-and-tell aspects of training are frequently missing because officers refuse to get their hands dirty and prefer to ignore the more practical aspects of their subject matter, believing this below their social station. A dramatic example of this occurred during the Gulf war when a severe windstorm blew down the tents of Iraqi officer prisoners of war. For three days they stayed in the wind and rain rather than be observed by enlisted prisoners in a nearby camp working with their hands. The military price for this is very high. Without the cohesion supplied by NCOs, units tend to disintegrate in the stress of combat. This is primarily a function of the fact that the enlisted soldiers simply do not trust their officers. Once officers depart the training areas, training begins to fall apart as soldiers begin drifting off. An Egyptian officer once explained to me that the Egyptian army's catastrophic defeat in 1967 resulted from a lack of cohesion within units. The situation, he said, had only marginally improved in 1973. Iraqi prisoners in 1991 showed a remarkable fear and enmity toward their officers. Decision-making and Responsibility Decisions are made and delivered from on high, with very little lateral communication. This leads to a highly centralized system, with authority hardly ever delegated. Rarely does an officer make a critical decision on his own; instead, he prefers the safe course of being identified as industrious, intelligent, loyal-and compliant. Bringing attention to oneself as an innovator or someone prone to make unilateral decisions is a recipe for trouble. As in civilian life, conformism is the overwhelming societal norm; the nail that stands up gets hammered down. Orders and information flow from top to bottom; they are not to be reinterpreted, amended, or modified in any way. U.S. trainers often experience frustration obtaining a decision from a counterpart, not realizing that the Arab officer lacks the authority to make the decision-a frustration amplified by the Arab's understandable reluctance to admit that he lacks that authority. This author has several times seen decisions that could have been made at the battalion level concerning such matters as class meeting times and locations requiring approval from the ministry of defense. All of which has led American trainers to develop a rule of thumb: a sergeant first class in the U.S. Army has as much authority as a colonel in an Arab army. Methods of instruction and subject matter are dictated from higher authorities. Unit commanders have very little to say about these affairs. The politicized nature of the Arab militaries means that political factors weigh heavily and frequently override military considerations. Officers with initiative and a predilection for unilateral action pose a threat to the regime. This can be seen not just at the level of national strategy but in every aspect of military operations and training. If Arab militaries became less politicized and more professional in preparation for the 1973 war with Israel, once the fighting ended, old habits returned. Now, an increasingly bureaucratized military establishment weighs in as well. A veteran of the Pentagon turf wars will feel like a kindergartner when he encounters the rivalries that exist in the Arab military headquarters. Taking responsibility for a policy, operation, status, or training program rarely occurs. U.S.trainers can find it very frustrating when they repeatedly encounter Arab officers placing blame for unsuccessful operations or programs on the U.S. equipment or some other outside source. A high rate of non-operational U.S. equipment is blamed on a "lack of spare parts"-pointing a finger at an unresponsive U.S. supply system despite the fact that American trainers can document ample supplies arriving in country and disappearing in a malfunctioning supply system. (Such criticism was never caustic or personal and often so indirect and politely delivered that it wasn't until after a meeting that oblique references were understood.) This imperative works even at the most exalted levels. During the Kuwait war, Iraqi forces took over the town of Khafji in northeast Saudi Arabia after the Saudis had evacuated the place. General Khalid bin Sultan, the Saudi ground forces commander, requested a letter from General Norman Schwarzkopf, stating it was the U.S. general who ordered an evacuation from the Saudi town. And in his account of the Khafji battle, General Bin Sultan predictably blames the Americans for the Iraqi occupation of the town. In reality the problem was that the light Saudi forces in the area left the battlefield. The Saudis were in fact outgunned and outnumbered by the Iraqi unit approaching Khafji but Saudi pride required that foreigners be blamed. As for equipment, a vast cultural gap exists between the U.S. and Arab maintenance and logistics systems. The Arab difficulties with U.S. equipment are not, as sometimes simplistically believed, a matter of "Arabs don't do maintenance," but something much deeper. The American concept of a weapons system does not convey easily. A weapons system brings with it specific maintenance and logistics procedures, policies, and even a philosophy, all of them based on U.S. culture, with its expectations of a certain educational level, sense of small unit responsibility, tool allocation, and doctrine. Tools that would be allocated to a U.S. battalion (a unit of some 600-800 personnel) would most likely be found at a much higher level-probably two or three echelons higher-in an Arab army. The expertise, initiative and, most importantly, the trust indicated by delegation of responsibility to a lower level are rare. The U.S. equipment and its maintenance are predicated on a concept of repair at the lowest level and therefore require delegation of authority. Without the needed tools, spare parts, or expertise available to keep equipment running, and loathe to report bad news to his superiors, the unit commander looks for scapegoats. All this explains why I many times heard in Egypt that U.S. weaponry is "too delicate." I have observed many in-country U.S. survey teams: invariably, hosts make the case for acquiring the most modern of military hardware and do everything to avoid issues of maintenance, logistics, and training. They obfuscate and mislead to such an extent that U.S. teams, no matter how earnest their sense of mission, find it nearly impossible to help. More generally, Arab reluctance to be candid about training deficiencies makes it extremely difficult for foreign advisors properly to support instruction or assess training needs. Combined Arms Operations A lack of cooperation is most apparent in the failure of all Arab armies to succeed at combined arms operations. A regular Jordanian army infantry company, for example, is man-for-man as good as a comparable Israeli company; at battalion level, however, the coordination required for combined arms operations, with artillery, air, and logistics support, is simply absent. Indeed, the higher the echelon, the greater the disparity. This results from infrequent combined arms training; when it does take place, it is intended to impress visitors (which it does-the dog-and-pony show is usually done with uncommon gusto and theatrical talent) rather than provide real training. This problem results from three main factors. First, the well-known lack of trust among Arabs for anyone outside their own family adversely affects offensive operations. Exceptions to this pattern are limited to elite units (which throughout the Arab world have the same duty-to protect the regime, rather than the country). In a culture in which almost every sphere of human endeavor, including business and social relationships, is based on a family structure, this orientation is also present in the military, particularly in the stress of battle. Offensive action, basically, consists of fire and maneuver. The maneuver element must be confident that supporting units or arms are providing covering fire. If there is a lack of trust in that support, getting troops moving forward against dug-in defenders is possible only by officers getting out front and leading, something that has not been a characteristic of Arab leadership. Second, the complex mosaic system of peoples creates additional problems for training, as rulers in the Middle East make use of the sectarian and tribal loyalties to maintain power. The 'Alawi minority controls Syria, East Bankers control Jordan, Sunnis control Iraq, and Nejdis control Saudi Arabia. This has direct implications for the military, where sectarian considerations affect assignments and promotions. Some minorities (such the Circassians in Jordan or the Druze in Syria) tie their well-being to the ruling elite and perform critical protection roles; others (such as the Shi'a of Iraq) were excluded from the officer corps. In any case, the assignment of officers based on sectarian considerations works against assignments based on merit. The same lack of trust operates at the interstate level, where Arab armies exhibit very little trust of each other, and with good reason. The blatant lie Gamal Abdel Nasser told King Husayn in June 1967 to get him into the war against Israel-that the Egyptian air force was over Tel Aviv (when most of its planes had been destroyed)-was a classic example of deceit. Sadat's disingenuous approach to the Syrians to entice them to enter the war in October 1973 was another (he told them that the Egyptians were planning total war, a deception which included using a second set of operational plans intended only for Syrian eyes). With this sort of history, it is no wonder that there is very little cross or joint training among Arab armies and very few command exercises. During the 1967 war, for example, not a single Jordanian liaison officer was stationed in Egypt, nor were the Jordanians forthcoming with the Egyptian command. Third, Middle Eastern rulers routinely rely on balance-of-power techniques to maintain their authority. They use competing organizations, duplicate agencies, and coercive structures dependent upon the ruler's whim. This makes building any form of personal power base difficult, if not impossible, and keeps the leadership apprehensive and off-balance, never secure in its careers or social position. The same applies within the military; a powerful chairman of the joint chiefs is inconceivable. Joint commands are paper constructs that have little actual function. Leaders look at joint commands, joint exercises, combined arms, and integrated staffs very cautiously for all Arab armies are a double-edged sword. One edge points toward the external enemy and the other toward the capital. The land forces are at once a regime-maintenance force and threat at the same time. No Arab ruler will allow combined operations or training to become routine; the usual excuse is financial expense, but that is unconvincing given their frequent purchase of hardware whose maintenance costs they cannot afford. In fact, combined arms exercises and joint staffs create familiarity, soften rivalries, erase suspicions, and eliminate the fragmented, competing organizations that enable rulers to play off rivals against one another. This situation is most clearly seen in Saudi Arabia, where the land forces and aviation are under the minister of defense, Prince Sultan, while the National Guard is under Prince Abdullah, the deputy prime minister and crown prince. In Egypt, the Central Security Forces balance the army. In Iraq and Syria, the Republican Guard does the balancing. Politicians actually create obstacles to maintain fragmentation. For example, obtaining aircraft from the air force for army airborne training, whether it is a joint exercise or a simple administrative request for support of training, must generally be coordinated by the heads of services at the ministry of defense; if a large number of aircraft are involved, this probably requires presidential approval. Military coups may be out of style, but the fear of them remains strong. Any large-scale exercise of land forces is a matter of concern to the government and is closely observed, particularly if live ammunition is being used. In Saudi Arabia a complex system of clearances required from area military commanders and provincial governors, all of whom have differing command channels to secure road convoy permission, obtaining ammunition, and conducting exercises, means that in order for a coup to work, it would require a massive amount of loyal conspirators. Arab regimes have learned how to be coup-proof. Security and Paranoia Arab regimes classify virtually everything vaguely military. Information the U.S. military routinely publishes (about promotions, transfers, names of unit commanders, and unit designations) is top secret in Arabic-speaking countries. To be sure, this does make it more difficult for the enemy to construct an accurate order of battle, but it also feeds the divisive and compartmentalized nature of the military forces. The obsession with security can reach ludicrous lengths. Prior to the 1973 war, Sadat was surprised to find that within two weeks of the date he had ordered the armed forces be ready for war, his minister of war, General Muhammad Sadiq, had failed to inform his immediate staff of the order. Should a war, Sadat wondered, be kept secret from the very people expected to fight it? One can expect to have an Arab counterpart or key contact to be changed without warning and with no explanation as to his sudden absence. This might well be simply a transfer a few doors down the way, but the vagueness of it all leaves foreigners with dire scenarios-scenarios that might be true. And it is best not to inquire too much; advisors or trainers who seem overly inquisitive may find their access to host military information or facilities limited. The presumed close U.S.-Israel relationship, thought to be operative at all levels, aggravates and complicates this penchant for secrecy. Arabs believe that the most mundane details about them are somehow transmitted to the Mossad via a secret hotline.This explains why a U.S. advisor with Arab forces is likely to be asked early and often about his opinion of the "Palestine problem," then subjected to monologues on the presumed Jewish domination of the United States. Indifference to Safety In terms of safety measures, there is a general laxness, a seeming carelessness and indifference to training accidents, many of which could have been prevented by minimal efforts. To the (perhaps overly) safety-conscious Americans, Arab societies appear indifferent to casualties and show a seemingly lackadaisical approach to training safety. There are a number of explanations for this. Some would point to the inherent fatalism within Islam, and certainly anyone who has spent considerable time in Arab taxis would lend credence to that theory, but perhaps the reason is less religiously based and more a result of political culture. As any military veteran knows, the ethos of a unit is set at the top; or, as the old saying has it, units do those things well that the boss cares about. When the top political leadership displays a complete lack of concern for the welfare of its soldiers, such attitudes percolate down through the ranks. Exhibit A was the betrayal of Syrian troops fighting Israel in the Golan in 1967: having withdrawn its elite units, the Syrian government knowingly broadcast the falsehood that Israeli troops had captured the town of Kuneitra, which would have put them behind the largely conscript Syrian army still in position. The leadership took this step to pressure the great powers to impose a truce, though it led to a panic by the Syrian troops and the loss of the Golan Heights. Conclusion It would be difficult to exaggerate the cultural gulf separating American and Arab military cultures. In every significant area, American military advisors find students who enthusiastically take in their lessons and then resolutely fail to apply them. The culture they return to-the culture of their own armies in their own countries-defeats the intentions with which they took leave of their American instructors. When they had an influence on certain Arab military establishments, the Soviets reinforced their clients' cultural traits far more than, in more recent years, Americans were able to. Like the Arabs', the Soviets' military culture was driven by political fears bordering on paranoia. The steps taken to control the sources (real or imagined) of these fears, such as a rigidly centralized command structure, were readily understood by Arab political and military elites. The Arabs, too, felt an affinity for the Soviet officer class's contempt for ordinary soldiers and the Soviet military hierarchy's distrust of a well-developed, well-appreciated, well-rewarded NCO corps. Arab political culture is based on a high degree of social stratification, very much like that of the defunct Soviet Union and very much unlike the upwardly mobile, meritocratic, democratic United States. Arab officers do not see any value in sharing information among themselves, let alone with their men. In this they follow the example of their political leaders, who not only withhold information from their own allies, but routinely deceive them. Training in Arab armies reflects this: rather than prepare as much as possible for the multitude of improvised responsibilities that are thrown up in the chaos of battle, Arab soldiers, and their officers, are bound in the narrow functions assigned them by their hierarchy. That this renders them less effective on the battlefield, let alone places their lives at greater risk, is scarcely of concern, whereas, of course, these two issues are dominant in the American military culture, and are reflected in American military training. Change is unlikely to come until it occurs in the larger Arab political culture, although the experience of other societies (including our own) suggests that the military can have a democratizing influence on the larger political culture, as officers bring the lessons of their training first into their professional environment, then into the larger society. It obviously makes a big difference, however, when the surrounding political culture is not only avowedly democratic (as are many Middle Eastern states), but functionally so. Until Arab politics begin to change at fundamental levels, Arab armies, whatever the courage or proficiency of individual officers and men, are unlikely to acquire the range of qualities which modern fighting forces require for success on the battlefield. For these qualities depend on inculcating respect, trust, and openness among the members of the armed forces at all levels, and this is the marching music of modern warfare that Arab armies, no matter how much they emulate the corresponding steps, do not want to hear. 1 Saeed M. Badeeb, The Saudi-Egyptian Conflict over North Yemen 1962-1970, (Boulder, Westview Press: 1986), pp. 33-42. 2 R. D. McLaurin, The Battle of Zahle (Aberdeen Proving Grounds, Md.: Human Engineering Laboratory, Sept. 1986), pp. 26-27. 3 Anthony Cordesman and Abraham Wagner, The Lessons of Modern War, Volume II: The Iran-Iraq War, (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1990), pp. 89-98; Phebe Marr, The Modern History of Iraq (Boulder Colo.: Westview Press, 1985), pp. 22-223, 233- 234. 4 Kenneth M. Pollack, "The Influence of Arab Culture on Arab Military Effectiveness" (Ph.d. diss., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1996), pp. 259-261 (Egypt); pp. 533-536 (Saudi Arabia); pp. 350-355 (Iraq). Syrians did not see significant combat in the 1991 Gulf war but my conversations with U.S. personnel in liaison with them indicated a high degree of paranoia and distrust toward Americans and other Arabs. 5 David Kahn, "United States Views of Germany and Japan," Knowing One's Enemies: Intelligence Before the Two World Wars, ed., Ernest R. May (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), pp. 476-503. 6 Gerhard L. Weinberg, The Foreign Policy of Hitler's Germany: Diplomatic Revolution in Europe, 1933-1936 (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1970), p. 21. 7 Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History (New York: Penguin Books, 1984), p. 18. 8 Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of Great Powers (New York: Random House, 1987), pp. 186-187. The German assessment from T. Dodson Stamps and Vincent J. Esposito, eds., A Short History of World War I (West Point, N.Y.: United States Military Academy, 1955), p. 8. 9 William Manchester, Winston Spencer Churchilll: The Last Lion Alone, 1932-1940 (New York: Dell Publishing, 1988), p. 613; Ernest R. May "Conclusions," Knowing One's Enemies, pp. 513-514. Hitler thought otherwise, however. 10 Avraham (Bren) Adan, On the Banks of the Suez (San Francisco: Presideo Press, 1980), pp. 73-86. "Thus the prevailing feeling of security, based on the assumption that the Arabs were incapable of mounting an overall war against us, distorted our view of the situation," Moshe Dayan stated."As for the fighting standard of the Arab soldiers, I can sum it up in one sentence: they did not run away." Moshe Dayan: Story of My Life (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1976), p. 510. 11 John Keegan, A History of Warfare (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993), p. 18. 12 Ibid., p. 387 13 John Walter Jandora, Militarism in Arab Society: A Historiographical and Bibliographical Sourcebook (Westport, Ct.: Greenwood Press, 1997), p. 128. 14 T. E. Lawrence, The Evolution of a Revolt (Ft. Leavenworth Kans.: CSI, 1990), p. 21.( A reprint of article originally published in the British Army Quarterly and Defense Journal, Oct. 1920.) 15 Author's observations buttressed by such scholarly works as Eli Shouby, "The Influence of the Arabic Language on the Psychology of the Arabs," Readings in Arab Middle Eastern Societies and Culture, ed. Abdullah M. Lutfiyya and Charles Churchill (The Hague: Mouton Co., 1970), pp. 688-703; Hisham Shirabi and Muktar Ani, "Impact of Class and Culture on Social Behavior: The Feudal-Bourgeois Family in Arab Society," Psychological Dimensions of Near Eastern Studies, ed. L. Carl Brown and Norman Itzkowitz (Princeton: The Darwin Press, 1977), pp. 240-256; Sania Hamady, Temperament and Character of the Arabs (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1960), pp. 28-85; Raphael Patai, The Arab Mind (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1973), pp. 20-85. 16 Pollack, "The Influence of Arab Culture," p. 759. 17 Samuel P. Huntington, "The Clash of Civilizations," Foreign Affairs, Summer 1993, pp. 21-49. 18 Paul M. Belbutowski, "Strategic Implications of Cultures in Conflict," Parameters, Spring 1996, pp. 32-42. 19 Carlo D'Este, Patton: A Genius for War (New York: Harper-Collins, 1996), p. 383. 20 Saad el-Shazly, The Crossing of the Suez (San Francisco: American Mideast Research, 1980), p. 47. 21 Pollack, "The Influence of Arab Culture," pp. 256-257. 23 H. Norman Schwarzkopf, It Doesn't Take A Hero (New York: Bantam Books, 1992), p. 494. 24 Khaled bin Sultan, Desert Warrior: A Personal View of the War by the Joint Forces Commander (New York: Harper-Collins, 1995), pp. 368-69. 25 Based on discussions with U.S. personnel in the area and familiar with the battle. 26 Yesoshat Harkabi, "Basic Factors in the Arab Collapse During the Six Day War," Orbis, Fall 1967, pp. 678-679. 27 James Lunt, Hussein of Jordan, Searching for a Just and Lasting Peace: A Political Biography (New York: William Morrow, 1989), p. 99. 28 Patrick Seale, Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), pp. 197-99; Shazly, Crossing of the Suez, pp. 21, 37. 29 Samir A. Mutawi, Jordan in the 1967 War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 161. 30 James A. Bill and Robert Springborg, Politics in the Middle East, 3rd Ed. (New York: Harper-Collins, 1990), p. 262. 31 Anwar el-Sadat, In Search of Identity (New York: Harper and Row, 1978), p. 235. 32 Hamady, Temperament and Character of the Arabs, pp. 184-193; Patai, The Arab Mind, pp.147-150. 33 Joseph Malone, "Syria and the Six-Day War," Current Affairs Bulletin, Jan. 26, 1968, p. 80.



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Why the SAA (and other arab armies) do not reach their full potential (Report)

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