Yep, I have said this from the very beginning. The loss of real estate and tactical advantage it brings to the victor secures the peace in the future. Now, that said, booting "arabs" from their homes and building settlements in areas where families of them have raised generations of their kin to veritable reservations is not exactly good for their public image in spite of their justification and victory either. The carrot and the stick that Trump is offering behind the scenes unsuccessfully to both them and the surrounding nations is a prelude to this IMO. They have already refused it and I think everyone knew they would. It will be the handy justification used however when all hell breaks loose. We are seeing a taste of that with the refinery attacks. We offered you billions in aid and economic prosperity and instead you chose war. The UN and every other international body will have no leg to stand on. I think your patent pending prognostication helmet is pretty good Muzhik.
Thanks! I like it. It's never been right yet buuuuut... That's the nice thing about being a pessimist. Eventually you're right.
Don posted about the following above is another article about it with a photo . U.S. Blames Iran for Attack on Saudi Oil Facilities Saudi Arabia shuts down about half its oil output after drone strikes Smoke billowing after a fire at a Saudi Aramco factory in Abqaiq, Saudi Arabia, on Saturday. Photo: Videos obtained by Reuters/Reuters By Summer Said, Jared Malsin and Jessica Donati Updated Sept. 14, 2019 6:20 pm ET | https://www.wsj.com/articles/drone-strikes-spark-fires-at-saudi-oil-facilities-11568443375 Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blamed Iran for coordinated drone strikes on the heart of Saudi Arabia’s oil industry, saying they marked an unprecedented attack on the world’s energy supply. The strikes shut down half of the kingdom’s crude production on Saturday, potentially roiling petroleum prices and demonstrating the power of Iran’s proxies. Iran-allied Houthi rebels in neighboring Yemen claimed credit for the attack, saying they sent 10 drones to strike at important facilities in Saudi Arabia’s oil-rich Eastern Province. But Mr. Pompeo said there was no evidence the strikes had come from Yemen. In a tweet, he said the U.S. will work with allies “to ensure that energy markets remain well supplied and Iran is held accountable for its aggression.” He added that the strikes showed Iran wasn’t serious about diplomacy. Mr. Pompeo didn’t explain how the U.S. believes Iran was to blame or where the strikes originated, but Iran-backed militias in Iraq have previously been responsible for targeting Saudi Arabia’s oil industry. The production shutdown amounts to a loss of about 5.7 million barrels a day, the kingdom’s national oil company said, roughly 5% of the world’s daily production of crude oil. Officials said they hoped to restore production to its regular level of 9.8 million barrels a day by Monday. Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman said lost production would be offset through supplies of oil already on hand. The strikes mark the latest in a series of attacks on the country’s petroleum assets in recent months, as tensions rise among Iran and its proxies like the Houthis, and the U.S. and partners like Saudi Arabia. The attacks could drive up oil prices if the Saudis can’t turn production back on quickly and potentially rattle investor confidence in an initial public offering of Saudi Aramco, the national oil company. President Trump called Saudi Arabia’s day-to-day ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, on Saturday and said the U.S. was ready to “cooperate with the kingdom in supporting its security and stability,” according to the Saudi Press Agency, the official news service. SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS How should the U.S. respond to the drone strikes on Saudi oil fields? Join the conversation below. The White House confirmed that Mr. Trump spoke with the crown prince, saying in a statement that the president offered “his support for Saudi Arabia’s self-defense.” The attacks happened a few days before world leaders are set to gather in New York for the United Nations General Assembly, where Mr. Trump has said he is interested in meeting with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to defuse tensions. Iran didn’t react to the attacks on Saturday, and officials have said Mr. Rouhani won’t meet with Mr. Trump until the U.S. lifts sanctions imposed after the president pulled out of the 2015 international nuclear deal. The new strikes thrust Mr. Trump into a fierce foreign-policy crosswind as his national security team is at its thinnest point in more than a year and concerns about a global slowdown are fanning recession fears. Mr. Trump has supported Saudi Arabia’s leaders in their war in Yemen at a time when many U.S. lawmakers have soured on the conflict and grown impatient with the kingdom’s crown prince. At the same time, Mr. Trump has pursued what he calls his “maximum pressure” campaign of sanctions and military threats against Iran. Saturday’s attack was the largest yet claimed by the Houthis in terms of its overall impact on the Saudi economy. The attack hit hundreds of miles away from their Yemen stronghold. “The attack has been quite surprising” for the amount of damage it caused, said Fabian Hinz, an arms researcher at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, Calif. “We have seen quite a few drone and missile attacks against Saudi infrastructure, but in most cases the actual damage caused has been quite minimal,” said Mr. Hinz. Armed Drones Are a Growing Threat From Rebels in Yemen Yemen’s Houthi rebels are using armed drones with startling success. WSJ reporters describe their increasing sophistication and recent confirmed attacks. Illustration: Laura Kammermann Even before Mr. Pompeo tweeted, analysts cautioned against accepting the Houthi claim of responsibility at face value. An attack in May on a Saudi oil-pumping station, which Saudi officials initially blamed on the Houthis and Iran, later turned out to have been launched by an Iranian-backed militia in Iraq, according to U.S. officials. Saudi officials aren’t sure the attack emanated from Yemen and were discussing on Saturday the possibility that the attack came from the north, according to people familiar with the matter. Saudi oil officials rushed to contain the damage as fires raged in two major oil facilities. Aramco held an emergency board meeting on Saturday to manage the unfolding crisis, the people familiar with the matter said. The attacks hit Hijra Khurais, one of Saudi Arabia’s largest oil fields, which produces about 1.5 million barrels a day. They also hit Abqaiq, the world’s biggest crude stabilization facility, which processes seven million barrels of Saudi oil a day, about 8% of the world’s total. There were no injuries reported. The Abqaiq facility has come under attack before. In 2006, suicide bombers sent by terrorist group al Qaeda blew themselves up at the gate of the facility. “If you really want to stab the Saudi regime in the heart and send oil prices up, this is your target,” said Bob McNally, an energy expert and former member of the National Security Council under President George W. Bush who was involved in efforts to secure the facility between 2001 and 2003. The Houthis took control of Yemen’s capital, San’a, in 2014 during a civil war. Since then, a Saudi-led coalition has fought to unseat the Houthis and reinstate a government supported by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other regional powers. In recent months the Houthis, along with Iranian-backed armed groups in Iraq, have intensified a campaign of missile and drone attacks on Saudi Arabia, launching more than a dozen attacks at Saudi airports, a desalination plant and oil infrastructure. Suspected Houthi ordnance originating from the Yemeni border is launched at Saudi Arabia several times a week, a U.S. official said. The increasing sophistication of the attacks has shown deepening cooperation between the Houthis and Iran as Tehran has sought ways to apply pressure on their Saudi and American adversaries, according to U.S. officials and analysts. The Iranian government denies controlling the Houthi movement. A U.N. panel last year said there were strong indications Iran was the source of Houthi missile and drone technology but didn’t directly accuse the Tehran government of providing the weaponry. It said Iran has failed to take the necessary measures to prevent such transfers. “We promise the Saudi regime that our future operations will expand and be more painful as long as its aggression and siege continue,” a Houthi spokesman said Saturday. The strikes complicate U.N. and U.S. efforts to negotiate an end to the conflict, which has killed more than 10,000 people over the last four years. U.S. officials had quietly attempted to launch a back channel to the Houthis. The Yemen war is a central front in a new and more aggressive foreign policy overseen by Prince Mohammed, who launched the intervention with a coalition of allied states in 2015. Under the prince’s watch, the kingdom also applied a blockade on neighboring Qatar, detained Lebanon’s prime minister, and sent a team of men to kill exiled journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul in 2018. A conservative kingdom with a Sunni Muslim majority, Saudi Arabia has been an opponent of Iran in a struggle for power across the broader Middle East since the 1979 revolution that toppled Iran’s monarchy. The drone attacks on Aramco’s facilities are poorly timed for Aramco’s coming IPO and pose a challenge to oil officials after a changing of the guard in their leadership. Aramco last week picked seven international banks to help it list on Saudi Arabia’s domestic exchange, an IPO that could value the company at about $2 trillion dollars and come before the end of the year. —Rory Jones, Warren Strobel and Nancy A. Youssef contributed to this article.
Now, so far I haven't read anything about destroying existing Palestinian settlements, only about building in areas without any development at this time. But thanks to your pointing that out, I think we can pinpoint when the war will start: one week before construction begins on new settlements. Like armies, you don't start building major projects in the winter. It's much, much more difficult to move earth then. So Israel will probably wait until April or May to begin. One week before construction is scheduled to begin, the Palestinian Authority will unilaterally declare itself to be the independent State of Palestine. All of the surrounding Arab states will immediately recognize it, and with 24 hours of the declaration (and after being recognized by Russia, North Korea, China, and other freedom-loving nations at the UN), the new "state" will launch small attacks against Israel "to preserve its territorial integrity". Plus, all of the current Jewish settlers living in the new "state" will be rounded up for "repatriation at the end of hostilities" even though Israel has yet to fire a shot. Three guesses as to how many of those Jewish settlers get out alive. If, after 48 hours where no Israeli troops have advanced into the new "state", a series of incidents will spontaneously (Yes! Really!) occur that will force Israel's hand, and lead to the surrounding nations (all specified in Psalm 83) to launch rockets, etc., into Israel in support of the new "state". More prognostications to follow, after I replace the batteries...
Whew!!! An asteroid larger than some of the world's tallest buildings will zip by Earth Saturday .......... ATLAS, which is two telescopes 100 miles apart on the Big Island and Maui, scans the entire sky every two nights for asteroids that could impact Earth. It can spot small asteroids half a day before they arrive at Earth and could point to larger asteroids days before. Although much of the knowledge of their capabilities and determinations about the asteroid was worked out after the fact, astronomers believe that ATLAS and Pan-STARRS could help predict more in the future. https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/14/world/asteroid-flyby-2000-qw7-scn-trnd/index.html
https://www.dw.com/en/turkey-cracks-down-on-syrian-refugees/a-50435380 Turkey cracks down on Syrian refugees President Erdogan has threatened to ditch the EU refugee deal. After election losses and faced with escalating conflict in Idlib, the attitude toward the growing number of Syrian refugees has become increasingly harsh. When President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced in early September that Turkey could be forced to "open the gates" if Europe failed to offer more support in sheltering refugees and creating "safe zones" in North Syria, it wasn't technically a threat. Erdogan's strong rhetoric was referring to the refugee deal that Turkey and the EU agreed to in March 2016. In it, the EU promised to compensate Turkey with €6 billion ($6.6 billion) over several years if Ankara would take care of Syrian refugees. According to the European Commission, some €2.4 billion has already been paid out and another €3.5 billion has been contractually committed. In contrast to the harsh tone emanating from Ankara, officials in Brussels appear unperturbed. "We trust that we can continue this work in good faith with our Turkish partners," said a spokesperson on September 5. Kristian Brakel, who heads the Heinrich Böll Foundation office in Istanbul, also believes Erdogan won't ditch the agreement. Brakel said the president has "few better options," and said the problem lies elsewhere. Over the past several months the number of refugee deportations from Turkey has gone up dramatically, with many Syrians who fled the civil war in their homeland being sent to hotly contested areas such as Idlib. Ankara has made no effort to hide the fact that it has deported some 320,000 Syrian refugees. Yet officials in Turkey say those refugees have "voluntarily returned," a claim that hasn't convinced Brakel. He told DW there have been numerous credible claims from people who went to Turkish police stations to extend their residency permits, only to be "ordered to sign documents for a 'voluntary return.'" They were made to understand — under the threat of physical violence — that refusal to sign the documents was not an option. "You can't call that a voluntary return," said Brakel. At first glance, such harsh measures are surprising: Erdogan and members of his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) have consistently spoken of their willingness to help. "We have been trying to help those suffering in Syria for years. That is our tradition, our culture," Fatma Sahin, an AKP member who has served as mayor of the city of Gaziantep near the Syrian border for five years, told DW in 2017. "If your neighbor is hungry, then you must try to help him. I am of the opinion that our stance has become a global example. We have become the conscience of the world." Indeed, Turkey has played a special role, especially with regard to Syrian refugees. More than 6.3 million people have been forced to flee Syria since the civil war broke out in 2011; Turkey has taken in more than half of them. Nevertheless, the initial warm welcome for the refugees has begun to subside in many places. For instance, the established practice of allowing Syrians not registered in Istanbul to remain there regardless is no longer accepted. Now such refugees have been ordered to leave the city. Brakel has traced the change in Erdogan's tone back to this summer's AKP election losses in the city. "The AKP lost a lot of ground in many areas with high concentrations of refugees. Even though some of those neighborhoods were AKP strongholds, voters clearly punished the party," he said. The tense economic situation has only exacerbated the problem, he said, adding that hostility toward refugees, either through violence or overt racism, has significantly increased. "The change in rhetoric is clearly an attempt to regain control of the situation." In neighboring Syria over the past few weeks, fighting around Idlib — the last rebel stronghold and an area that borders Turkey — has escalated. Some 3 million refugees live in the region. Should the situation continue to deteriorate, those people might attempt to flee to Turkey. Reacting to the development, Ankara has announced a Syria summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, due to take place on Monday.
Scuttlebutt that there are meetings taking place today at the pentagon. Lots of them. Maybe they can swing military action against Iran this time but I hope not. I'd love to see the evidence that this attack can be linked to Iran conclusively. Non of that babies in incubators BS they love to pass off as facts to justify war.
So drones are not able to be tracked via tracking radar. This is what makes them such a threat and such a force multiplier for both good guys and bad. They have the radar signature of a bird or even smaller. Most of the ones able to be used by bad guys don't have much range though. If cruise missiles were used, they are easily tracked and able to be traced from origin to target. Remember, we have carrier groups in that region. There isn't anything entering any airspace there that isn't being monitored. Someone should come out with some actual evidence for these accusations and stop with the speculation.
We could have built enough nuclear reactors in the US with the money spent fighting wars in the ME to be completely energy independent and lowered our oil demand drastically at the same time. The risk is practically zero with modern reactors as well. I don't think it is a coincidence that this happened the week of the anniversary of 9/11.
Hard to escape the suspicion this is another proxy attack by the deep state to get us into war. ..Rosaries friends!!!!
Yeah, but don't start worrying until the local pizza places start making a lot of late-night deliveries.
This whole oil thing...3 days before Israeli elections. Netan yahoo...had a good chance to lose...but probably not now. He is definitely for war with Iran. Well...we are at war now.
Netanyahu is with Trump....not the Deep State who's apparently behind this false flag. DS is targeting Netanyahu there like Trump is being targeted by them here.
