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Rush to judgement carries risks or does it?
And:
Speaks for itself:
Dennis Prager: Capitol Siege Was ‘Vile’ but Left’s Suppression of Free Speech Is Worse ‘The left in the United States is totalitarian’
Posted By Ruth King
Radio talk show host and columnist Dennis Prager said in an interview with The Epoch Times’ American Thought Leaders program Tuesday that, while last week’s violent siege of the U.S. Capitol was “vile” and “disgusting” and worthy of condemnation, the ongoing suppression of free speech in America by the left poses a bigger threat.
Prager was responding to a question about criticism leveled by some media personalities against some conservatives and “China hawks” who they accuse of being much more concerned about denouncing censorship and curtailment of freedom of speech rather than criticizing the Capitol riot.
The two are “incomparably imbalanced” in terms of the actual threat they pose to America, Prager said. While denouncing last Wednesday’s unrest, Prager argued that it did not threaten the U.S. nearly as much as the suppression of free speech.
“The whole point of America was freedom,” he said. “The left is suppressing, oppressing the greatest feature of the United States.”
“What threatens the country? A foolish, stupid, wrongheaded, vile attack on the Capitol, which reopened for business within hours, versus the ongoing suppression of free speech? It’s not symmetrical.”
“There’s no comparison,” he said. “The disgusting events of January 6 do not threaten this country nearly as much as the suppression of free speech does,” he contended.
While a full reckoning of the attack on the Capitol has yet to be completed as investigations by the Justice Department and the FBI have only just gotten underway, there is a long historical record of the consequences of leftist repression, Prager said.
“The left suppresses liberty everywhere it takes power—there is no exception,” he said, noting the presence of numerous examples in the last 100 years of communist regimes committing egregious acts of oppression against their own people.
“And it is happening, incredibly, in the country of the Statue of Liberty and the Liberty Bell, for which they have contempt,” he said, adding that he sees evidence that the left is exploiting the Capitol siege to dial-up restrictions on freedom of expression.
“There was no exception in the last 100 years to the left taking power and not suppressing free speech,” he said, adding that, “they’re using January 6 as the excuse to do so” now.
Amazon taking down Parler is a “perfect example” of this, he said. On Monday morning, Amazon Web Services took down Parler, sparking debate about whether the suspension was about stifling free speech.
In reply to a lawsuit brought by Parler, Amazon Web Services said Wednesday that, “This case is not about suppressing speech or stifling viewpoints. It is not about a conspiracy to restrain trade.”
“Instead, this case is about Parler’s demonstrated unwillingness and inability to remove from the servers of Amazon Web Services (‘AWS’) content that threatens the public safety, such as by inciting and planning the rape, torture, and assassination of named public officials and private citizens,” the company said.
The CEO of Parler, John Matze, has condemned calls for violence on his platform.
“We would never condone it, we have a lot of things in place to stop it,” said Matze of users inciting violence, adding that Parler is about free speech.
Meanwhile, following the Jan. 6 unrest, social media giants Twitter and Facebook announced stricter measures on their platforms. Facebook is targeting content with the phrase “stop the steal,” a reference to claims of election fraud, while Twitter is taking aim at accounts that focus on the QAnon movement.
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Is war with Iran inevitable?
Israel determined to prevent Iran from achieving ‘Syria Project’
Israel has struck thousands of Iranian targets in Syria in past years to prevent the rise of an Iranian war machine on its border, yet the latest reported attacks in eastern Syria still appear unusual for a number of reasons.
Media reports carried news of intensive airstrikes against Iranian-linked targets in eastern Syria early on Wednesday, attributed to the Israeli Air Force. The alleged strikes in the Deir al-Zour and Albu Kamal areas were the latest in a long series of reported Israeli attacks that are designed to thwart the Islamic Republic’s attempts at building a war machine in Syria.
The airstrikes nevertheless stood out in light of the extraordinary comments made by a senior American intelligence official, who told the Associated Press that the bombings were enabled by intelligence provided to Israel by the United States.
There appears to be no reason to doubt this version of events, marking what would seem to be an unusual acknowledgment of the close level of cooperation between the American and Israeli defense establishments in combating the Iranian presence in Syria.
Strikingly, the same official said that the targeted warehouses also served as a “pipeline for components that support Iran’s nuclear program,” though no further details were immediately available.
A second reason that makes the strikes stand out is the unconfirmed report by a Syrian opposition war-monitoring group that at least 57 fighters were killed, including 14 Syrian regime soldiers, in addition to Iranian-backed militia members, as well as dozens more wounded.
Although uncorroborated, the claim represents a far higher casualty count than those that usually follow such strikes.
The attack is part of an unmistakable increase in airstrikes that have been hitting Iranian targets across Syria, marking the fourth known such incident in the past three weeks.
Those incidents include a reported missile attack on Syria’s Scientific Studies and Research Center, also known by its French acronym CERS, north of Damascus. CERS is a facility that is responsible for developing and manufacturing advanced missiles and chemical weapons, and is likely used by both Iran and Syria’s Bashar Assad regime to develop and produce weapons systems, some of which is also destined for Hezbollah’s missile depots in Lebanon.
CERS was also bombed in 2018 and 2019. The area surrounding CERS doubles up as a base for Iranian personnel and Iran-controlled militias in Syria. The other recent attacks have hit reported weapons-production facilities and military bases in southern and western Syria.
In attempting to understand why the uptick in alleged preventative Israeli attacks has occurred now, Israel’s former ambassador to the United Nations offered this explanation: “Iran is attempting to take advantage of the transition in the United States and in Israel to alter the balance of power. Israel and the U.S. will not allow this. We will act resolutely and as needed.”
According to this explanation, Iran is trying to exploit political instability in Israel, which is on its way to its fourth elections in less than two years. That is coupled with the fact that the Trump administration is about to be replaced by the Biden administration, all while Tehran attempts to scale up its efforts to build a military foothold in Syria.
Ebb and flow of Tehran’s efforts over the years
It is also important to place the latest incidents in the wider context: Israel has struck thousands of Iranian targets in Syria in recent years, according to comments made in 2019 by former Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot.
The centerpiece of Eizenkot’s legacy is a low profile, yet highly effective, campaign of preventative airstrikes to severely dent Iran’s “Syria project” and to roll back Tehran’s attempt to turn Syria into an extension of the attack front that it built in Lebanon, where Iran has helped Hezbollah take hold of some 130,000 rockets and missiles, and point them at Israeli cities and strategic targets.
In its annual summary for 2020, the IDF stated that “approximately 50 targets were struck on the Syrian front” in the past year, as well as more than 1,400 battle-formation Israeli Air Force sorties over unspecified areas.
These figures reveal a central feature Israel’s campaign in Syria: It is fueled by intelligence of Iran’s activities, and the increase and decrease of Israel’s campaign is a direct reflection of the ebb and flow of Iran’s own efforts over the years.
The campaign against Iran in Syria has been raging for several years, and often, it is the same sites that are hit over and over again.
For example, in March 2020, reports said that unidentified aircraft struck a target in Albu Kamal, the town on the border with Iraq, where Iran had been constructing its Imam Ali military base for the deployment and storage of missiles and fighters. A total of 26 fighters were allegedly killed in that attack.
The Iranians had apparently been building a tunnel for hiding weapons at the Imam Ali Base, which replaced an older tunnel also attacked in the past.
In March 2019, reports also said that 12 people were killed in an airstrike on an Iran-linked target in Deir Ezzor in eastern Syria, which sits five kilometers (about 3 miles) from the Iraqi border.
Deir Ezzor and Albu Kamal are areas that are earmarked by Iran for the construction of a land corridor that would allow Tehran to move weapons, battle formations, and other resources into Syria from Iraq. If the corridor is completed, Iran would have land access all the way to the Mediterranean Sea, connecting Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon along a single network of roads.
Israel has no intention of letting that happen, just as it did not allow Iran to fly cargo planes of advanced missiles into Damascus airport with impunity.
Military tensions high between U.S. forces, Iran in Gulf
Iran’s efforts are being masterminded by its overseas subversion and terrorism unit, the Quds Force, headed by Esmail Ghaani, who replaced the infamous Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani after his assassination in Baghdad in January 2020 in a U.S. drone strike.
Ghaani appears to be working hard to try and fill Soleimani’s shoes, though with little apparent success to show for it so far.
Soleimani’s grand vision was to create air smuggling routes, a land corridor, and naval smuggling routes to flood Syria and Lebanon with precision-guided weapons, bases, missile factories, and militias, and Israel kept that vision firmly in check, just as it is doing with Ghaani’s efforts.
Russia, for its part, has no interest in allowing Iran to take over Syria, having earmarked the country for its own long-term military presence and economic reconstruction programs. Still, Moscow is also keen to avoid witnessing an escalation that can threaten the Assad regime, which it spent years protecting from demise together with Iran.
Meanwhile, the atmosphere in the region is particularly explosive and unstable, due to Iran’s determination to seek vengeance for the killing of its chief nuclear-weapons scientists, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, whom Iran blames Israel for assassinating in December, as well as Hezbollah’s own repeated threats to take revenge for the death of one of its operatives, who was killed in an airstrike on an Iranian target in Syria in July.
Military tensions between U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf and Iran also remain high with the possibility of miscalculation is very real.
None of these factors, however, are sufficient to deter Israel from enforcing its red lines in Syria and doing whatever is necessary to keep Iran from fulfilling its dangerous “Syria project.”
And:
Reports that Iran has expanded ‘kamikaze drone’ base in Yemen
Iran is very openly bragging about its UAV capabilities and regularly lists its arsenal.
Iran has sent drones to Yemen, enabling the creation of a base for so-called “suicide drones” or what are known as loitering munitions, according to Newsweek. The report claims that “Shahed-136” drones are now based in Al-Jawf. These are supposedly “advanced UAVs.”
The report is unclear as to most of the details, only noting that these drones might have a range of some 2,200 kilometers which puts them conveniently just within range of Israel. In the past Iran has claimed long ranges for its drones. It operates drones that are basically like cruise missiles, they are given a target coordinate and fly to it without needing communications with their base. In this sense they operate like a German V-1 rocket more than a modern drone. They don’t really “loiter” over a target. The article at Newsweek speaks of the Shahed-136 and Shahed 131, which it calls a “predecessor.” The article has been picked up by other media. It alleges that these drones could give Iran plausible deniability because if the Houthis use a long-range drone to attack then Iran can claim it didn’t do it. The allegation is that Iran would use this secret drone base to carry out the attack. A blurry aerial photo alleges to show the drone.
According to the Drone Center at Bard Iran has several Shahed series drones. It has the Shahed-123 and 129. These are surveillance-style drones. The 129 looks similar to Israel’s Hermes 450. Iran often models its drones on foreign drones. The Iran Aircraft Manufacturing Industrial Company, HESA, builds them. Iran has other Shahed drones, including the 191 and 171 which are copies of the US RQ-170, a flying wing design. The Shahed 125 is a copy of the US Shadow. Iran has armed the 123, 129 and 191 with missiles.
When it comes to loitering munitions Iranian technology helped the Houthis build the Qasef and Samad series of drones, some of which have a long range. These have links to the Iranian Ababil series of drones. Iran also has something called the Raad and Karrar, which are more like cruise missiles.
An Iranian delta-wing UAV that is of an unknown variety has also been downed in Saudi Arabia. The Houthis and Iran have a cruise missile called Quds-1 which is based on their Soumar missile. The Newsweek article includes an aerial photo of the alleged site of the drone base and a photo of the previously unknown delta-wing drone. What is the Shahed-136, it has not been seen before and those who write about Iranian drones don’t seem to mention it previously. The Oryx Handbook of Iranian drones blog shows the same image from the Newsweek article calls it an unknown munition used against Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq in 2019. Kan media in Israel call it the Shahed-129.
The Shahed 129 is usually shown in a configuration similar to a US Predator, which Iran copied it from. It doesn’t look like the delta-wing alleged in the photo. The photo is so grainy that it’s impossible to tell how anyone figures out that this V-wing design aircraft actually appears in it. A study at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy noted the Abqaiq attack was don with “newer delta-wing unmanned aerial vehicles.” Is this the one in the photo?
In the past the US, UAE and Saudi Arabia have documented how Iran has supplied the Houthis in Yemen. The US Navy even interdicted ships with material destined for the Houthis. Reports show how gyroscopes and other elements of drones in Yemen have Iranian components or design.
Iran is very openly bragging about its UAV capabilities and regularly lists its arsenal. It’s unclear where a Shahed 136 new UAV could emerge from if it hasn’t been named as such in Iranian media. A search of Iranian media did not produce any examples of this drone.
The article comes amid rising tensions with Iran and in the wake of airstrikes in Syria. Israel has warned about Iran potentially using Yemen as a base of operations or threats.
And:
Massive airstrikes pound Syria: 40 killed, Iranian weapons depots destroyed
Airstrike attributed to Israel targeted Iranian weapons stores including parts for Iran’s nuclear program.
By Paul Shindman
A Syrian human rights group said Wednesday that at least 40 people were killed and as many injured in airstrikes attributed to Israel that targeted three different Iranian weapons facilities in eastern Syria on the Iraqi border.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that in the attacks that occurred just after midnight only nine of the dead were Syrians with the rest belonging to “loyal militias of Iranian nationalities other than Syria.” MORE
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Do the Social Media giants still have protection under 230? Did they lose their protected status and become publishers?
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