• China has fielded its largest regional maritime deployment in decades, Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said Tuesday, as it monitors what it says is a surge of Chinese military activities in the Taiwan Strait and Western Pacific.
  • Taiwan has been on high alert since Monday as it braced for expected military drills after President Lai Ching-te sparked Beijing’s ire by making unofficial stops in Hawaii and the US territory of Guam earlier this month.
  • Taiwan on Monday said multiple formations of Chinese naval and coast guard vessels were moving in regional waters and around the Taiwan Strait. Beijing has not announced military drills or acknowledged the large-scale deployment cited by Taipei.

Source: cnn.com

 
Assad’s fall shows Russian military limited by Ukraine offensive

  • The collapse of Moscow ally Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian government has dealt a major blow to Russia’s image of global strength and laid bare the limits of its military reach as its Ukraine offensive drags on.
  • Moscow helped keep Assad in power when it intervened in the Syrian civil war in 2015, but with its troops and firepower now concentrated on Ukraine, its ability to protect the iron-fisted ruler this time was limited.
  • Rebels swept into the capital Damascus after a lightning offensive that took less than two weeks to topple the regime and send Assad fleeing, with Russian news agencies reporting he had been granted asylum in Moscow.

Source: breitbart.com

The road to Damascus: Syrian exiles return home to celebrate the fall of Assad

  • On the border of Syria and Lebanon, a group of men are setting foot on their home soil for the first time in more than 10 years. Kneeling on the road, they press their brows to the highway and praise God for their return from exile.
  • “Thank God, the tyrant has fallen,” one man says. “He is the one who made us hate one another.”
  • There are no Syrian soldiers to be seen. Instead, armed rebels are waiting at the border to greet the families finally returning to their homes.
  • The road to Damascus is still littered with signs of the fighting. All along the highway, men are tearing down banners and posters bearing the faces of deposed dictator Bashar al-Assad and his father.

Source: france24.com

Starmer says ‘no decision’ made on removing Hayat Tahrir al Sham terrorist designation in Syria

  •   On a diplomatic visit to Saudi Arabia, Sir Keir Starmer told broadcasters: “No decision is pending at all on this, it is far too early”.

Source: itv.com

  Defensive Points along the Syria-Israel Border.

Trump urges the U.S. to stay out of the Syrian rat’s nest. Joe Biden responds with airstrikes and big-dollar nation-building plans 

  • That’s obvious enough in his response to President Trump’s statement that the U.S. should stay out of Syria’s civil war, particularly since the Russians and Iranians are on the run and will no longer be players.
  • Biden instead decided to escalate U.S. involvement upon hearing that, with airstrikes and approximately 900 U.S. troops on the ground. Biden normally hesitates in taking action of any kind, whether of securing the border, delivering aid to hurricane-ravaged North Carolina, or in offing bin Laden, but this time he decided to be decisive.
  •  According to CNN:

President Joe Biden on Sunday called the extraordinary fall of the Assad regime in Syria “a moment of risk” and “historic opportunity” while offering a blueprint for how the US plans to support the region.

 

  • So instead of staying away from that war as his presidency winds down, he’s ramping it up. Some of the things he says he’ll address have some reasonable basis, such as keeping ISIS prisoners in jail. But the idea that it should be U.S. troops doing it, instead of the local talent on the ground, raises questions as to what he really wants over there — a big mire and morass for Trump to inherit, or what. 

 Are they pushing to remove him with the 25th amendment, at the same time creating as much chaos as possible for Trump

Source: americanthinker.com

 

Hohmann: In Syria, be careful what you wish for: Sharia law and new wave of refugees is more likely than ‘democracy’ following fall of Assad and U.S. meddling 

  •   The U.S. didn’t support the rebels who overran Syria because they thought Assad was too brutal of a dictator. They supported them because it was yet another way to deal a black eye to Russia.
  • Instead of Russia and Iran running the show in Syria, now we face the very real possibility that Russia and Iran will be replaced with Turkey and the Muslim Brotherhood.
  • Syria’s new jihadist regime has reportedly already started rounding up the Christians.
  • Now, with the Sunnis in control of the country, we should expect nothing other than oppression, if not open slaughter, of Syrian Christians. That’s what Sunni Muslim regimes always do when empowered. That’s their history. Read the works of historian Raymond Ibrahim and you will get acquainted with this history. A good place to start would be to study the history of the Ottoman Empire and what they did to the Armenian Christians.
  • If the West thinks Iran was the biggest threat to the Middle East, and Assad was the nastiest brutal dictator, they are about to learn what real brutality looks like.

Source: thegatewaypundit.com

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May 13, 2018 12:48:00 PM EDT
Q !4pRcUA0lBE ID: b080f8 No. 1397513 

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Full Circle. http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/presidential-campaign/292310-huma-abedins-ties-to-the-muslim-brotherhood https://www.scribd.com/doc/100244266/Bachmann-Letter-Responding-to-Ellison
It’s all connected.
Welcome back Huma.
Now comes the pain.
Q