Marines landed at Nanjing to patrol near the university and to protect Americans in the vicinity.
Costa Rica, unhappy with the League of Nations failure to address regional issues, withdrew form the body.
The French mandate states of Aleppo and Damascus were united in the State of Syria.
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You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.
Matthew, Chapter 24.
I am Syrian, I was made in Syria, I have to live in Syria and die in Syria.
It is no exaggeration to say that Syria holds the key for nearly all of America's foreign policy goals in the Middle East. As Syria goes, so goes the region.
From Syria even to Rome I fight with wild beasts, by land and sea, by night and by day, being bound amidst ten leopards, even a company of soldiers, who only grow worse when they are kindly treated.
December 8, 2024
Syrian Civil War
Syrian rebels took Damascus and Assad has fled. The Syrian army is still fighting in some places, but has declared it is not under Assad.
Syrian rebels have attacked Kurdish forces in the north of the country.
cont:
It appears that the Russian manufactured airplane carrying Assad and his family out of the country was shot down near the Lebanese border. Or at least that's the rumor.
December 9, 2024
Syrian Civil War
Assad fled to Moscow and has received asylum.
Israel has seized positions in the Golan Heights outside of those it normally occupies.
cont:
Israel has occupied Mt. Hermon, Syria's highest peak, which puts Damascus within range of Israeli artillery.
December 11, 2024
Syrian Civil War
The US has been hitting ISIL targets in Syria since the fall of Assad. Israel has been hitting Syrian Army supplies. Turkey hit the Kurds with a drone strike.
The Kurd's in control of northern Syria have ordered the pre 1964 Syrian flag, which is used by rebel forces, flown on their territory.
December 14, 2024
South Korea
In a process that's clearly different than the American one, the President of South Korea has been stripped of his powers for declaring martial law, but remains in office until a constitutional court decides his fate. This is the result of an impeachment, one I'd note that worked.
December 16, 2024
Poland
Poland Poland has introduced compulsory military firearms classes in all its elementary and secondary schools.
December 17, 2024
Russo Ukrainian War
Ukrainian agents killed Russian Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, who chief of Russia's Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Troops, outside an apartment building in Moscow.
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we should keep in mind that, while reprehensible, he was not an Islamist.
The group that seems to have come out on top. . .for right now, basically is.
And some rebel group is already fighting the Kurds.
Assad was a Baathist, which is to say a fascist. Fascism is reprehensible, but it is a Western secular idea. That doesn't make it great, but it also isn't a sectarian Islamic band of jihadist.
Some Syrian rebels are democrats.
Not all by any means. Some are Sunni jihadists. Some, Al Queda, are very extreme jihadist. And in Syria, some are Kurdish nationalist.
We back the Kurds.
The Turks are backing the group that has the Sunni jihadist in it, perhaps because they oppose the Kurds.
Iran was backing the government, as was Russia, which is in no small part why Assad fell. In its murderous desire to attack Israel, Hamas caused a war that brought Hezbollah in, with both backed by Iran, and they got utterly pounded.
Ukraine has done the pounding on Russia.
So now what?
Well, strong multinational efforts, including frankly a very strong UN peacekeeping force, are in order.
But of course Donald Trump has already declared for doing nothing.
Doing nothing, is doing something, and that something won't be good for Syria in general, or the Kurds in particular.
Upset by the consecration of Cyril VI Tanas as Patriarch of Antioch, Orthodox Patriarch Jeremias III of Constantinople declared Cyril's election to be invalid, excommunicated him, and appointed Sylvester of Antioch.
The division was over Cyril's desire to reunited the Orthodox Church with Rome. Jeremias' action caused a schism which ultimately lead to the Melkite Greek Catholic Church's uniting with Rome, a branch of Catholicism that has over 1,500,000 members today.
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Israel is not "fighting Lebanon". I've seen that claim made, but it isn't.
It's striking Hezbollah targets in Lebanon.
Hezbollah, which translates as the "Party of God" is a Lebanese Shia Islamist political party and paramilitary group. The party does control large sections of Lebanon where Shia is dominant religious group.
Lebanon itself was carved out of Syria by the French during the French mandate period as it had a majority Christian population. It's one of the few areas of the Middle East which still does, with Islamic repression over centuries having forced conversions and emigration throughout the Middle East. Be that as it may, Lebanon is no longer a majority Christian state, and its a mess because of internal strife and division.
That came in due to the conflicts in the region, with the Palestinian refugee population of the 1970s being particularly problematic. The country fought a civil war that lasted in one form or another from 1975 to 1990. It's never been stable since.
It's very difficult to see a positive future for Lebanon in any form. That doesn't mean it won't occur, but it's hard to see.
What can be seen, in my view, is an Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon coming in the next week or so.
The Agreement on Disengagement between Israel and Syria was signed in Geneva. Artillery fire stopped at 1:15 p.m. The United Nations Disengagement Force was created by UN Security Council Resolution 350. Israel was left with the Golan Heights.
The British Home Office announced the end of the "bread and water" diet as a prison punishment.
Malaysia and China established diplomatic relations.
Vietnam Veterans marched from Boulder to Denver in protest over the war, which the US had of course withdrawn from, and for amnesty for draft evaders and deserters.
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An Aeroflot Il-18 crashed within site of the Leningrad airport, killing all 109 passengers. The Soviet press didn't report on the event, in spite of the hysteria which understandably broke out at the airport.
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“Iran lobbed 200+ missiles at Israel yesterday and we’re really worried that Israel will use this as an excuse to start a war”
What that lacks in intelligence, it makes up for in consistency: no matter what they are forced to endure, it’s somehow always the fault of the Jews.
Fr. Joseph Krupp on Twitter, with the quoted text paraphrasing the meaning of two Arab officials worrying that Israel will respond.
We should note that the Iranian assault was itself a response to the Israeli targeting the consular section of the Iranian Embassy in Syria to kill a senior member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Attacking an embassy is classically regarded as an act of war.
Of course, Iran and Israel have been in a shadow war for years.
Israel should not have done that. But the Iranian response was inept. Since they engaged in it, there's been a lot of commentary to the effect that Israel should not respond.
Really? To an assault like that? That's asking for a lot.
Basically, where this is at is here, by analogy. If Japan, on December 7, 1941, had lost all of its aircraft carriers and none of the ships in Pearl Harbor had been sunk, or even seriously damaged, would Japan have been allowed to come back with, "well there, we certainly taught you a lesson, now let's not overreact".
I doubt it.
Lots of people are hoping Israel doesn't respond, and it might not. Iran should certainly hope that, as its airborne offensive capabilities have been proven to be worthless against Israel and there's now an open question about what its defense capabilities are like. If it can't stop a serious Israeli counterstrike, it's fresh meat for the dogs in the neighborhood. "Oh look. . . Iran is bleeding. . . "
What this also shows is what Ukraine could do if it was provided with enough air defenses to take on Russian strikes. Russia's capabilities in this area really aren't much better than Iran's, and indeed, they're using Iranian drones.
Patty Hearst, a grandchild of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, was kidnapped from her apartment in Berkeley, California by the Symbionese Liberation Army. She was 19 at the time.
The group had first appeared in November when it had murdered Marcus Foster, the black Superintendent of Oakland Public Schools, and wounded his deputy superintendent Robert Blackburn.
The name of the entity, it might be noted, came from this, according to the organization:
The name 'symbionese' is taken from the word symbiosis and we define its meaning as a body of dissimilar bodies and organisms living in deep and loving harmony and partnership in the best interest of all within the body.
It's hard to seem how murdering public school superintendents fits that supposed goal. Robert Blackburn, who survived his wounds, noted:
These were not political radicals, They were uniquely mediocre and stunningly off-base. The people in the SLA had no grounding in history. They swung from the world of being thumb-in-the-mouth cheerleaders to self-described revolutionaries with nothing but rhetoric to support them.
Emblematic of the times, the goof ball entity was a kind of sort of Communist terrorist cell that rapidly became disenchanted with "the people" after distributions of food, which it had demanded as a ransom in Berkeley, didn't go well.
In April, the group raided a bank in San Francisco, in which Hearst seemed to take part, although she denied doing so willingly. She nonetheless was convicted due to the actions and served two years out of a seven-year sentence before Jimmy Carter, ever the kind man, had her released. Bill Clinton pardoned her.
In May the organization moved from the Bay Area to Los Angeles, where they got into a shootout at a sporting goods store where Hearst, on guard duty, fired shots. A shootout a couple of days later at a supposed safe house killed six of them.
Hearst was arrested in September 1975, back at a San Francisco safe house.
Hearst, as noted, was convicted, but she claimed she had never participated willingly, and had been raped and threatened while a captive. Given the nature of the SLA, that's certainly possible. Early on, however, after her arrest she had said that she comported her thoughts to theirs and was given a choice of being freed or fighting with them, and she elected to fight.
After her release, Hearst married Bernard Lee Shaw, a policeman who was part of her security detail during her time on bail. They had two children. He died in 2013.
The Provisional IRA bombed a bus on the M62 Motorway in England, killing nine solders and three civilians, including two children.
The Yom Kippur War resumed, but only as between Syria and Israel, with 500 Cuban soldiers joining a Syrian tank unit. Fighting resumed in the Golan Heights.
Time Magazine featured Speaker of the House Tip O'Neil on the cover, with the caption "The Impeachment Congress.
I've used the term "Coastal Arabs" here recently to describe the culture that stretches from teh Sinai to Turkey and which includes a lot of Syria.
It turns out, the word that I should have used is Levantines.
The region has its own dialect of Arabic, its own (really good) cuisine, and those who genetic history from the region can be identified by their DNA.
Yes, they are Arabs, but they are not Bedouin.
Syria became independent theoretically, but the French mandate continued.
The RAF bombed Berlin again.
The War Department was pondering its policies regarding African American soldiers.
From Sarah Sundin's blog:
Today in World War II History—January 1, 1944: Gen. Alexander Vandegrift replaces Gen. Thomas Holcomb as commandant of the US Marine Corps. US penny production switches from steel to a copper & brass alloy.
USC Trojans beat the Washington Huskies 29-0 in the Rose Bowl, Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets defeated Tulsa Golden Hurricane 20-18 in the Sugar Bowl., the LSU Tigers beat the Texas A&M Aggies 19-14 in the Orange Bow, the Cotton Bowl Classic ended in a 7–7 tie between the Randolph Field Ramblers and the Texas Longhorns.
I have now heard over and over in the press that the upcoming Israeli invasion is the "largest" this or that, suggesting that this is the biggest war, or the biggest deployment of troops, in Israel's history.
Is it?
Well, you have to have a sense of history to gauge that.
I've recently been running some items on the Yom Kippur War, which occured 50 years ago, and which brought the United States and the Soviet Union to the brink of war. That pitted about 400,000 Israeli troops against the armies of Egypt and Syria, plus another 100,000 troops from other regional states. Right at about 1,000,000 Arab troops contested the Israelis.
Now, in this one, we do hear that 300,000 IDF reservists have been called up, and yes, that's a bunch. The total number of mass Israeli troops may exceed those that were hastily called up in 1973. We'll see. But the scope of the contest is, so far, smaller. Indeed, the calling up of the reservists may be in the hopes of keeping it smaller.
In the Six Day War, Israel had 264,000 troops, but only deployed 100,000 of them. The Arab forces had over 500,000 troops, but only deployed about 250,000 of them.
Israel isn't going to send all of is troops into Gaza. A lot of those troops were likely called up in order to secure its northern border. Assuming that it invades Gaza with this model, it certainly will not be Israel's largest war, but it might mean the largest overall manpower size for the IDF in its history.
Not that the threat of this being much larger doesn't exist. Iran seems intent on making it so.
President Nixon vetoed the War Powers Act. His veto was overridden on November 7.
A second ceasefire between Egypt and Israel went into effect in the Yom Kippur War. By this point in the war Egyptian gains had been more than reversed.
Kojak premiered.
The day was the first UN World Development Information Day, which coincided with United Nations Day.
Vice President Spiro T. Agnew resigned as Vice President and then, on the same day, plead no contest to income tax evasion, this baack in the day when such accusations would doom your position in office.
Angew was the son of a Greek immigrant father and an American mother of English background. Mixed marriages were unusual for those of Greek ethnicity in the first place and even more unusually, he was raised as an Episcopalian rather than as Greek Orthodox. He served in the Army during World War Two and entered politics thereafter.
His tax troubles lead Maryland to disbar him as "morally obtuse", back when there was such a thing as a state bar that would disbar somebody for being morally obtuse. He died in 1996.
The USSR began airlifting military equipment to Egypt and Syria.
The Senate passed the War Powers Act. It'd be vetoed, but Congress over road the veto.
Famed economist Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises died in New York at age 92.
September 15, 2023
Russo Ukrainian War
Vasily Popov, commander of the Russian 247th Guard Air Assault Regiment, was killed in a counter-attack in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia area.
The European Parliament adopted a resolution recognizing Belarusian President Lukashenko as complicit in Russian crimes and called upon the International Criminal Court to issue a warrant for his arrest.
The Duma proposed blocking WhatsApp as part of the Kremlin’s effort to control the Russian information space.
cont:
Pro Russian Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov is critically ill.
September 16, 2023
Russo Ukrainian War
Ukrainian forces liberated Andriivka near Bakhmut.
September 19, 2023
Russo Ukrainian War
Six Ukrainian deputy defense ministers were fired on Monday as part of an ongoing cleanup of corruption in the Ukrainian defense department.
Post Soviet Union Ukraine has been plagued with corruption, as has post Soviet Union Russia. This is no surprise, as the Soviet system encouraged corruption by its very nature, and so that post Soviet societies would feature a lot of it is to be expected.
Ironically, this fact has led opponents of supporting Ukraine, which is democratic and is fighting a just fight, to cite the corruption as a reason to allow the country to be conquered by Russia, although they don't put it that way. While the country has featured a lot of corruption, Russia's is now endemic and currently not only that case, but watching modern Russia is a lot like watching Goodfellas in real time.
Following 2013's Euromaiden protest, the country has moved increasingly towards the west and has had a strong desire to join the European Union and NATO. That is what has, in no small part, brought the current war about, as Putin, a Russian nationalist at heart, is opposed to that and sees Ukraine as a mere Russian province. Efforts to join NATO have lead to a list of further items Ukraine must address in order to do so, once the war is over, and cleaning up corruption will no doubt continue.
The ISW is giving praise to Ukrainian offensive efforts near Bakhmut, which it cites as having kept Russian forces committed in that area, leaving the Russians unable to reinforce further south. It's reporting that Russian forces in both areas are suffering severe degradation.
Iran v. Kurds
The Iranian Revolutionary Guard has deployed unis to the border with Iraq in an effort to put pressure on Iraq to arrest Kurdish efforts in Iran.
Iran messes heavily in regional conflicts, taking an active pro-government role in Syria for example. Here, however, the war in Syria and the conclusion of the war in Iraq has led to Kurdish semi autonomy, which has in turn lead to Kurdish activity in northern Iran.
cont:
Azerbaijan v. Armenia
Azerbaijan’s declared an “anti-terrorist” campaign in Nagorno-Karabakh region, which is under Armenian control. Armenian media indicated air raid sirens and mortar fire in the regional capital of Stepanakert had been observed.
Armenian forces recently trained with U.S. forces.
September 21, 2023
Russo Ukrainian War
The Prime Minister of Poland has announced; "We are no longer transferring any weapons to Ukraine because we are now arming ourselves with the most modern weapons".
Poland and Ukraine have been in a dispute over grain, which has been flooding the Polish market as Ukraine's ports have been blocked, even while Poland has been a major supporter of Ukraine's war effort.
In spite of the way it's been portrayed, historically Poland and Ukraine have not gotten along and following World War One fought over their respective borders. During World War Two, Ukrainian nationalist militias committed acts of genocide against Polish villagers. The recent Polish support of Ukraine may reflect Polish animosity towards Russia as much as anything else.
U.S. Senator Rand Paul, who is a libertarian with isolationist tendencies, is holding up the most recent funding for Ukraine.
What both of these stories point out is that the slow moving progress of the Ukrainian offensive, while receiving support from some analysts such as those from the ISW, presents real problems in terms of ongoing Western support. Ukraine's strategy, from those supporting it, is reputed to be a slow moving offensive using artillery to attrit Russian forces, made necessarily in part by a lack of air assets. That may be correct, but if it is, Ukraine may find itself with decreasing material support from the West including the United States should the U.S. far right gain in Congress.
Wagner is withdrawing from Syria.
Cont:
Ukrainian light armor appears to have pushed through Russian lines near Bakhmut, which would be significant, if substantial and correct. Indeed, the fact that there are reports of this is significant as it would suggest Russian forces must be very downgraded in the area.
September 22, 2023
Russo Ukrainian War
Russian Navy Admiral Sokolov, the Commander of Black Sea Fleet, was killed today by a Ukrainian missile/drone attack on the Black Sea Fleet's Sevastopol headquarters.
September 23, 2023
Russo Ukrainian War
Poland walked back its earlier statement about not transferring arms to Ukraine, indicating that what was meant that new arms it is acquiring for itself will not be transferred.
September 24, 2023
Russo Ukrainian War
According to ISW, the Ukrainian Army has broken through Russian field fortifications west of Verbove in western Zaporizhia Oblast. This is not, however, the final Russian defensive line.
September 25, 2023
Russo Ukrainian War
Ukrainian forces are attacking north of Verbove appear to be close to surrounding the 56th VDV Regiment deployed in Novofedorivka.
September 26, 2023
Russo Ukrainian War
The Ukrainian Special Operations Forces reported on September 25 that a precision Ukrainian strike on the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet (BSF) in occupied Sevastopol, Crimea, on September 22 killed 34 Russian officers, including BSF Commander Admiral Viktor Sokolov.
Azerbaijan v. Armenia
Armenia effectively surrendered, and the subject enclave will be abandoned. Armenia is blaming Russia for its peacekeeping forces being ineffective.
US v. ISIL
The U.S. announced the capture of ISIL official Abu Halil al-Fad'ani in a raid in northern Syria.
September 27, 2023
Russo Ukrainian War
Russian Navy Admiral Sokolov, the Commander of Black Sea Fleet, was in fact not killed on the Ukrainian missile strike on the HQ of the Black Sea Fleet.
A Russian drone strike cut the ferry ties between Ukraine and Romania.
September 30, 2023
Armenia v. Azerbaijan
Almost the entire population of the ethnic Armenian enclave Nagorno-Karabakh, some 100,000 people, have since Azerbaijan seized the region last week.
October 1, 2023
Russo Ukrainian War
The emergency stopgap bill to fund the U.S. government for 45 days omits funds for Ukraine.
October 5, 2023
Russo Ukrainian War
Ukrainian drone attacks now occur inside of Russia daily. Two Russian cargo jets were destroyed at the Russian air base at Pskov yesterday, with the Russians claiming that the attacks were launched from inside of Russian territory.
Ukrainians have carried out a second commando raid on Crimea. The Russian navy has pulled out of Sevastopol and dispersed.
October 6, 2023
Syrian Civil War
A drone attack on a military graduation ceremony in the Syrian Homs, killed 80 and wounded 240. Some civilians were amongst the casualties.
China v. Everyone
A Chinese nuclear submarine is reported to have been caught in a Chinese submarine net last December, resulting in its sinking and the loss of the entire crew.
October 7, 2023
Hamas v. Israel
Hamas launched a large scale offensive against Israel yesterday, sending both ground forces and rockets across the border. Israel has termed it a war and has called up reservists.
Russo Ukrainian War
Ukraine has deployed snipers overseas against Wagner forces.
October 8, 2023
Russo Ukrainian War
Belarusian leader Lukashenko stated to newsmen last week, "I have to say that Zelensky is acting absolutely appropriately", a surprising statement from a Russian ally.
Hamas v. Israel
Russia bizarrely called for a ceasefire between the warring parties.
Civilian casualties are about equal so far, each standing at about 250 persons. Hamas took hostages back into Israel.
Last prior edition:
Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on Israel timed for the Yom Kippur holy day. The attack oddly commenced at 2:05 p.m.
It would be the largest of the Arab Israeli Wars, and one in which the Israeli Defense Force fared much more poorly than it had previously. Egypt's goals were limited, involving crossing the Suez Canal, which they succeeded in doing. Israeli forces would ultimately repulse the invading forces and come very near the Syrian capital of Damascus, but the results allowed the Egyptians to bargain for peace terms with Israel in later years.
Arab forces fared very well at first, catching the IDF off guard. Syrian advances caused the Israeli government to distribute Israel's small stock of nuclear weapons to is air force in case Arab forces advanced inside Israel itself, making this a non superpower war that came relatively close to becoming a nuclear one.
The British Mandate for Palestine went into effect, as did the French Mandate for Syria and Lebanon.
With this, the British Empire, and I'd guess French Empire reached their maximum territorial extents.
The grim news kept coming in on the recent Cole Creek disaster.
