Chinese Military Capable of Jamming U.S. Communications System

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

China’s military is using stolen U.S. military secrets obtained from a convicted spy to defeat a high-technology communications system used in joint warfighting, combined arms warfare, and missile defenses, according to U.S. officials.

The disclosure that China has the capability of jamming the Joint Tactical Information Distribution System, or JTIDS, was revealed in a Chinese military technical article published in July.

JTIDS is part of a group of military communications systems called Link 16 that gives U.S. military forces jam-resistant communications, a key strategic advantage used in joint warfighting, a specialty of the American military.

JTIDS allows for a nearly unlimited number of military commanders and operators to share information, such as precision location or position data, critical in tracking, monitoring, and targeting. It is also resistant to electronic warfare attacks by rapidly jumping to different frequencies.

The Chinese article reveals that the People’s Liberation Army is studying this feature and working to defeat it.

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Syrian Opposition says Christians Will Live as Dhimmis in Sharia State

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Photo Credit: Jihad Watch

Photo Credit: Jihad Watch

“The commanders of the Islamist brigades, who have declared more than once that their project was to establish a caliphate, have repeatedly indicated that no one will persecute the Christians or drive them out of their homes because they are ‘people of the book’ and dhimmis (non-Muslim citizens of the Islamic state), so there are no problems with them, unlike the rest of the communities such as Shiites, Alawites and Druze.”

So apparently they want to subjugate the Christians, in accord with the cornerstone of the dhimmi system, Qur’an 9:29, which mandates that Muslims fight against the “People of the Book” until they “pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued” (9:29). And the Shiites, Alawites and Druze will evidently just be massacred.

“Syrian Opposition Fails To Reassure Christians,” by Tareq al Abed, translated from As-Safir (Lebanon) in Al-Monitor, September 11 (thanks to AINA):

Syrian Christians as a whole have not thrown their support behind either side in the Syrian war. Nevertheless, Christians in Syria have been subjected to a lot of pressure by both the regime and the opposition, which failed to give them (or any religious or ethnic Syrian component) any assurances or support.

Some armed groups have accused the church of supporting the regime. And many of the opposition’s statements and video clips do not reassure minorities that they will be participants in the new Syria.

The political opposition: failure without borders

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Pope Says Church Is ‘Obsessed’ With Gays, Abortion and Birth Control

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Six months into his papacy, Pope Francis sent shock waves through the Roman Catholic church on Thursday with the publication of his remarks that the church had grown “obsessed” with abortion, gay marriage and contraception, and that he had chosen not to talk about those issues despite recriminations from critics.

His surprising comments came in a lengthy interview in which he criticized the church for putting dogma before love, and for prioritizing moral doctrines over serving the poor and marginalized. He articulated his vision of an inclusive church, a “home for all” — which is a striking contrast with his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, the doctrinal defender who envisioned a smaller, purer church.

Francis told the interviewer, a fellow Jesuit: “It is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time. The dogmatic and moral teachings of the church are not all equivalent. The church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently.

“We have to find a new balance,” the pope continued, “otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel.”

The pope’s interview did not change church doctrine or policies, but it instantly changed its tone. His words evoked gratitude and hope from many liberal Catholics who had felt left out in the cold during the papacies of Benedict and his predecessor, John Paul II, which together lasted 35 years. Some lapsed Catholics suggested on social media a return to the church, and leaders of gay rights and gay Catholic groups called on bishops to abandon their fight against gay marriage.

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Former Guantanamo Prisoner Killed in Syria after Joining Islamist Brigade

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

A former prisoner at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. naval base died fighting for anti-government rebels in Syria, according to an Islamist opposition group which posted a video of his funeral on YouTube.

Moroccan-born Mohammed al Alami, who was released in 2006, is the first former Guantanamo detainee to die in battle in the Syrian civil war, analysts say.

The video, first reported by The Miami Herald, was posted by Harakat Sham al-Islam, one of the Islamist brigades fighting against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. It showed the August 5 funeral in which Alami is praised by a rebel leader for enduring “the prison of the Americans in Guantanamo for five years … where he did not reform or change.”

U.S. Defense Department officials had no comment.

Aaron Zelin, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who monitors jihadi activities at the website Jihadology.net, said the video appeared to confirm rumors that had been circulating for several weeks about a former Guantanamo prisoner being killed in Syria.

“The sources seem to be legitimate,” he said, adding that the video was posted on a known jihadi website.

Alami fought in Afghanistan and was captured in Pakistan after the September 11 attacks.

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Muslim Brotherhood Official, Former Clinton Foundation Employee Arrested in Cairo

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Photo Credit: LinkedIn

Photo Credit: LinkedIn

A senior Muslim Brotherhood official who, until recently, had been employed by the William J. Clinton Foundation was arrested in Cairo on Tuesday and charged with inciting violence.

Gehad el-Haddad served as one of the Muslim Brotherhood’s top communications officials until Egyptian security forces seized him as part of a wider crackdown on officials loyal to ousted former President Mohamed Morsi.

Before emerging as a top Brotherhood official and adviser to Morsi, el-Haddadserved for five years as a top official at the Clinton Foundation, a nonprofit group founded by former President Bill Clinton.

El-Haddad gained a reputation for pushing the Muslim Brotherhood’s Islamist agenda in the foreign press, where he was often quoted defending the Brotherhood’s crackdown on civil liberties in Egypt.

He was raised in a family of prominent Brotherhood supporters and became the public face of the Islamist organization soon after leaving his post at the Clinton Foundation.

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Australia’s New Prime Minister Scraps Carbon Tax and Halts Asylum-Seeking Boats

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Photo Credit: AFP

Photo Credit: AFP

Tony Abbott was sworn in as Australia’s new prime minister on Wednesday and immediately ordered the scrapping of the nation’s carbon tax and the halting of asylum-seeker boats.

The 55-year-old conservative launched straight into work with a cabinet meeting after the ceremony at Government House in Canberra where his Liberal/National government officially brought six years of Labor rule to a close.

“Today is not just a ceremonial day, it’s an action day. The Australian people expect us to get straight down to business and that’s exactly what this government will do,” said, Abbott, a political hardman who has worked to soften his macho image in recent months.

In presenting his frontbench team to Governor-General Quentin Bryce, he added: “We will be a problem-solving government based on values not ideology.”

Abbott was elected on September 7 on a pledge to quickly scrap taxes on corporate pollution and mining profits imposed under Labor, as well as introducing a costly paid parental leave scheme and a vow to build new roads across the vast nation.

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Syria Claims Win in Weapons Deal

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U.S. Forces Battle Rising Insurgency In IraqA high-ranking Syrian official called the U.S.-Russian agreement on securing Syria’s chemical weapons a “victory” for President Bashar Assad’s regime, but the United States warned on Sunday “the threat of force is real” if Damascus fails to carry out the plan.

The comments by Syrian Minister of National Reconciliation Ali Haidar to a Russian state news agency were the first by a senior Syrian government official on the deal struck a day earlier in Geneva. Under the agreement, Syria will provide an inventory of its chemical arsenal within one week and hand over all of the components of its program by mid-2014.

“We welcome these agreements,” Haidar was quoted as saying by the RIA Novosti agency. “On the one hand, they will help Syrians get out of the crisis, and on the other hand, they averted a war against Syria by removing the pretext for those who wanted to unleash one.”

He added: “These agreements are a credit to Russian diplomacy and the Russian leadership. This is a victory for Syria, achieved thanks to our Russian friends.”

There has been no official statement from the Syrian government.

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China Builds Fast to Trigger Drone Race with America

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Photo Credit: The Sunday Times

Photo Credit: The Sunday Times

CHINA has sent a military drone on what is thought to be the first mission of its kind in a significant show of the country’s determination to match America and Japan in the technology of warfare.

Japanese F-15 jet fighters scrambled from a base in Okinawa last Monday to intercept the unmanned aerial vehicle, which turned back towards the Chinese coast.

Although the drone flew in international airspace, officials in Tokyo said it had entered Japan’s air defence identification zone. Last year Japan scrambled its fighters more than 300 times to intercept Chinese military aircraft.

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Mexico Captures Third Man Linked to Killing of U.S. Border Agent Brian Terry

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Border Patrol Agents Monitor US-Mexico BorderMexico has arrested a third man wanted over the 2010 murder of a U.S. Border Patrol agent whose death drew attention to a botched operation to track guns smuggled to Mexico that embarrassed the U.S. government.

Mexican police in the northwestern state of Sinaloa said they had captured Ivan Soto Barraza, suspected of participating in the murder of U.S. agent Brian Terry, who was killed in a shootout in the Arizona borderlands in December 2010.

The killing of Terry was linked to a U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) sting operation dubbed “Fast and Furious,” which allowed weapons to slip across the border to Mexico.

Mexican Interpol agents working with federal and state police captured Soto, 30, near the town of El Fuerte late on Wednesday and took him to a prison in Hermosillo, Sonora, on Thursday where he awaits extradition, a police spokesman said.

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation also took part in the operation to track down Soto, the spokesman added.

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Al-Qaeda Chief Calls for Attacks on US in 9/11 Speech to Followers

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Photo Credit: AFP/GETTY

Photo Credit: AFP/GETTY

In an audio message released on Friday, two days after the anniversary of September 11th, Ayman al-Zawahiri said America was not a “mythic power” and that it could be defeated even through small-scale strikes by “one brother or a few of the brothers”.

“We should bleed America economically by provoking it to continue in its massive expenditure on its security, for the weak point of America is its economy, which has already begun to stagger due to the military and security expenditure,” he said, according to SITE, a jihadist monitoring group. “America is not a mythic power and the Americans, after all, are humans who can be defeated, felled and punished.”

Zawahiri urged the Islamic world to “abandon the dollar and replace it with a currency of other countries that are not taking part in the aggression against us”. He also said that Muslims should refuse to buy goods from America and its allies, as such spending only helped to fund US military action in Muslim lands.

Read more from this story HERE.