Iran Guard simulates capture of Al-Aqsa Mosque

[bananas]

Source: Associated Press

Thousands of paramilitary forces from Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard have held a war game simulating the capture of Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque from Israeli control, state media reported Saturday.

It said forces stormed and "liberated" a replica of the mosque in the exercise. They say that 120 brigades from the Basij, the paramilitary unit of the Guard, participated in Friday's exercise outside the holy city of Qom in central Iran.

The symbolic operations were backed up by Guard helicopters, drones and Tucano planes that bombed hypothetical enemy positions before ground troops captured the replica of the mosque set up at the top of a mountain.

In a common mistake, the Guard set up a replica of the gold-topped Dome of the Rock mosque instead of the nearby gray-domed Al-Aqsa mosque. Official photos showed one of the troops going to the top of the dome and waving an Iranian flag and a red flag, a symbol of martyrdom.

<snip>

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/iran-guard-simulates-capture-al-aqsa-mosque-072202482.html

[geek tragedy]

1. Is this like how they practice sinking aircraft carriers?

They have a flair for showmanship, too bad their grasp on modernity isn't so good.

[leftynyc]

2. Except Israel doesn't control

Al Asqa mosque...or the Temple Mount. That's why Jews aren't allowed to pray there. Chriitians either. Only Muslims. This is just Iran behaving like assholes.

[iandhr]

3. True

However once someone hears god talking to them all rational thought goes out the window.

[Jack Rabbit]

4. Good retort

Those who talk to God can do some pretty horrible things, like rape a little girl, behead her parents and crucify her kid brother or send missiles into schools and beaches where children play soccer.

[leftynyc]

6. And the deflections begin

Because I had the unmitigated nerve to post the absolute undeniable truth. How pathetically predictable.

[7962]

7. How dare you point out the truth! You should know better by now!!

never ceases to amaze me though. Such ignorance of reality to some

[Jack Rabbit]

9. When a writer is misunderstood, it's usually his fault

I did not dispute your post, sir. Israel does not control the Mosque.

I was complementing iandhr's response and pointing out that the Middle East is too full of people who hear God talking and have a nasty habit of leaving dead bodies, often small ones, strewn about the landscape as a result.

Of course, I hope that the scenario on which the Iranians designed their training exercise never materializes.

My apologies for not being clear.

[leftynyc]

13. Peace

[iandhr]

21. That's the problem with online forums.

It's easy to misunderstand each other.

[freshwest]

10. Should be known as the basics. Iran* stoking the fire as usual.

By referencing Iran* I mean the ayatollahs, not Iranians as individuals. Who likely feel greatly put upon by them and the world.

I wonder why did Saddam decide to make war with Iran? Not the geopolitical CTs offered as the end of all thinking processes, but what was really in it for Iraq?

There was a beef between Iraq and Kuwait over oil drilling, pricing, something. I'd like to think Iran's obsession with Israel is not due to a messianic need for a strategic position.

The Daesh insisted that at the dawning of 'The End,' their possession of the Syrian region, Dabiq must be in place for the Final Battle. As quoted here, it's still an uncertain prophecy:

After its battle in Dabiq, Cerantonio said, the caliphate will expand and sack Istanbul. Some believe it will then cover the entire Earth, but Cerantonio suggested its tide may never reach beyond the Bosporus. An anti-Messiah, known in Muslim apocalyptic literature as Dajjal, will come from the Khorasan region of eastern Iran and kill a vast number of the caliphate’s fighters, until just 5,000 remain, cornered in Jerusalem. Just as Dajjal prepares to finish them off, Jesus the second-most- revered prophet in Islam- will return to Earth, spear Dajjal, and lead the Muslims to victory.**

“Only God knows” whether the Islamic State’s armies are the ones foretold, Cerantonio said. But he is hopeful. “The Prophet said that one sign of the imminent arrival of the End of Days is that people will for a long while stop talking about the End of Days,” he said. “If you go to the mosques now, you’ll find the preachers are silent about this subject.” On this theory, even setbacks dealt to the Islamic State mean nothing, since God has preordained the near-destruction of his people anyway. The Islamic State has its best and worst days ahead of it.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-wants/384980/?utm_source=SFTwitter

**HELLO? Jesus is against ___ and kill its hero and then... the mind boggles...

Yet the Daesh has wholesale condemned the majority of Iran, which IIRC, is Shia. IOW, they'll slaughter the Iranians, the Saudis and the Israelis, too. Israel is always on their dessert menu.

Something not quite right about the Iranians, Daesh and the rest of these guys. We are not getting the full picture and it's not because of our media - I suspect it is the language barrier.

So what, other than hunger for land and power, do the groups with their strong obsession with Israel have to do with each other? Is humanity so far gone that genocide is its only answer to problems of population and climate change? Is it inescapable, and does all religion and ideology mean nothing?

That's why I don't go for the deflection using religion. It's ust another way of saying others are stupid, ignorant or insane. (Not that it may not feel that way.) I see a lot more at play at a deeper, more material level.

I doubt you will have time or inclination to answer my rambling, but I'm asking this as you do comment about the area, just in case.

[leftynyc]

15. I think I followed

Your thought except for one thing. Why would daesh want to kill Saudis? They're financing them?

[freshwest]

18. Only certain wealthy Saudis are financing the Daesh. Their banking system is not at all like ours.

Wealthy individuals send money to fight the current regime in SA and it's been proven that the money is not traceable or controlled:

Hawala or Hewala (Arabic: حِوالة‎, meaning transfer), also known as hundi, is an informal value transfer system based on the performance and honour of a huge network of money brokers, primarily located in the Middle East, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and the Indian subcontinent, operating outside of, or parallel to, traditional banking, financial channels, and remittance systems.

The unique feature of the system is that no promissory instruments are exchanged between the hawala brokers; the transaction takes place entirely on the honour system. As the system does not depend on the legal enforceability of claims, it can operate even in the absence of a legal and juridical environment. Trust and extensive use of connections, such as family relations and regional affiliations, are the components that distinguish it from other remittance systems.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hawala&printable=yes

The parts I emboldened have made me think this way. I'm not going for the CT stuff about the Illuminati and how... whatevers. Kerry went to the Saudis to see if they could tweak the system to trace the Daesh donors. Another problem is at the link itself, the barter system. NSA, etc. are not able to trace every drop of oil or herd of sheep or even slaves that Daesh trades in kind for other things in kind that are being given them. But for the most part, the Daesh are self-sufficient and don't need donors anymore. The reason the Russians and the USA is now bombing fuel tankers and manufacturing facilities is the same reason the Allies and the Russians did the same to the Nazis. They need that more than money and what money they need they get from theiving, blackmail, etc.

The Saudi royals don't want to help the Daesh, they are among their prime targets.
Even though the Saudis give lip service to various Arab causes, its real goal is to maintain the royal family and their rule over the land and resources of SA.

But the Daesh has promised to slaughter the royals and blow up the sites in Mecca that they object to for the same reason they object to the Shia. They are not into the extremism that Daesh is selling to the angry and desperate, but they feel that the Saudis are still not the practicers of their version of Islam, or so they say. But I don't believe the leaders of Daesh believe in any of this, it's a con job. Just my idea.

I see the Shia as much like the Protestants opposed to the Vatican. but am willing to be talked out of that. The Pope is said to be carrying the mantle of Peter. The Saudis think the same thing, and their bloodline goes a long way to the original friends of Mohammed, and they've got divine rights.
The Daesh see them as very wrong, or so they say. I say it's about land.

Shia see their teachers as valid as the Sunnis and have some texts added. It seems to be a family fight. We've been removed from this by distance and time and think it's just dumb. Not everyone does, there are still fortunes to be made and dynasties to be created by strongmen.

The Lutheran and Catholic split was long and bloody. A lot of it had to do less with true belief and the transfer of property. Example would be France, where Catholics slaughtered those they said were heretics to Rome. But only after being promised their land by the Pope. Then they went on a rampage.

IDK if this the source of the French aristocracy and the source of concentrations of wealth in other nations, but I suspect so. Make excuses to kill, clear and land and steal resources and give them to their leaders. The Daesh is going with the same method.

The Saudi royal family are not as bad as the Daesh, but that's not saying much in the eyes of most of us. But it's all about 'maintaining stability' that the European royalty and its descendents, the present governments, are in bed with them.

Because of the results of the glorious bloody revolution some cheer on and crave so much don't end like movies:

Movies love stories of scrappy heroes overthrowing an evil regime, and in these stories, there are exactly three types of characters:

1. The heroic revolutionaries
2. The evil empire
3. The nameless civilians running screaming in the background

We never get the story from that third group -- even though the vast majority of us would fall into that category should regime change ever come to our land.

http://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-1406-5-survival-lessons-from-inside-real-world-dystopia.html

Daesh offers genocide in its place and an even more tidy society. Well, for some people, at least. And they'll get away with it, when you really think about it:

#3. When It's Over, The Bad Guys Get Away With It

Sudbin and his brother weren't shot. They floated away and were eventually rescued by the Czech Red Cross and taken to a refugee camp. This was a gigantic improvement over "death camp," but also no kind of place for an 18-year-old trying to restart his life. "... you are there, you are doing nothing, in some sort of ghetto again. For two years, you don't know what is going on with Bosnia. You are thinking about your future, you wish to have your own job, to work, to have money -- to not be a parasite. And we think ... 'Go to Germany -- it is the Promised Land.' Irony, those who destroyed Jewish population are now the promised land for everybody."

They were smuggled into Germany by "the Hungarian mafia," a detail Sudbin seemed uncomfortable providing any more detail about. They actually traveled to Germany twice -- failing to start up there in 1993, but trying again in 1994. Eventually, Sudbin found a place for himself working in theater in Munich.The Bosnian genocide ended in 1995, at which point all those neighbors who'd been murdering each other just ... stopped and went back to work. Like it had never happened...

#1. Genocide Works

That's right. We said it. You can go buy your "Genocide Works" T-shirts in the Cracked merchandise store right now.

Oh, there are still Bosniak Muslims, just as there are still European Jews. But in both cases, the genocide accomplished much of its goal. At the time the killings came to Sudbin's sleepy town of Prijedor, Muslims were the largest ethnic group in the city, composing 43 percent of the population. Today, only a tiny fraction remain...

The killers primarily targeted adult men. Most women survived ... and were raped repeatedly by Serbian soldiers, the idea being that they'd then give birth to more Serbian kids. Between the death camps and the rape, most of the Muslim population in Bosnia was scattered to the wind and wound up living in other parts of Europe. The war criminals who wanted to turn Sudbin's chunk of Bosnia into a Serbian, Christian-dominated region succeeded. Even if the dead of Omarska get a monument someday, even if people "never forget" what happened in Bosnia, the Bosniak Muslims who survived still lost their homeland.

"They lost this kind of feeling which we all have of being at home. This kind of feeling is the same for everybody -- to be at home, to be happy, to have a family. And this is the most expensive thing in the world. This is happiness."
And if history has taught us anything, that state of being is both fragile and temporary. Don't take it for granted.

http://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-2022-6-awful-things-i-learned-surviving-genocide.html

More than you needed, but that explains my view on some of this.

[ericson00]

5. Muslims have 1000s of holy sights in dozens of countries. Jews have one country

and a few holy sites. I've never seen such spoiled fucking brats in my life. Radical Muslims are like muggers who kill the person they just robbed for not giving them enough money.

[markj757]

12. What bullshit.....

That's all I have to say to that to comment.

[name not needed]

14. Let me guess...

one too many Jewish states for your liking?

[leftynyc]

16. Your no doubt

Right on the money assessment made me smile and shake my head.

[Comrade Grumpy]

17. Let me guess....

Reflex accusation of anti-Semitism for no real reason? Cheesy.

[leftynyc]

22. Let ME guess

A post that just says something is bullshit - no argument, no facts, no nothing but you still defend it simply because you perceive it as anti-Israel. How predictable.

[ericson00]

19. how is it bullshit?

<a data-flickr-embed="true" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/134096898@N07/22799317877/in/dateposted-public/" title="Muslim World vs Jewish World"><img src="" width="640" height="319" alt="Muslim World vs Jewish World"></a><script async src="//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

[7962]

8. Good luck with that, boys, you'll just be mowed down. Bring LOTS of "red flags"

[Archae]

11. Reminds me of when they attacked an "aircraft carrier."

Stock in cardboard and plywood went up that day.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/26/world/iran-mock-carrier-destroyed/

[yurbud]

20. like most countries, Iran is only a threat on their home turf