So, like, WW3

[nowaysj]

Palestinians fire 50 rockets, mortars into Israel

67 rockets fired since evening; southern municipalities cancel school amid escalation.

Double double, toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble.

[nowaysj]

Israel bombs Sudan.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-20050781

[Kochari]

Two old geezers on the bus talking about Israel

Old geezer #1: There'll be another war I tells ya, world war threeeeeeeee
Old geezer #2: The war of...ARMAGEDDON

Dun kno the old geezer crewdem

[alphacat]

[nowaysj]

http://www.theatlantic.com/internationa ... an/264082/

Read it at the link, the typography is better.

It's not often that a government eagerly announces a military facility in its capital city has been destroyed in a stunning and audacious sneak attack, even in light of plausible evidence to the contrary. Yet here we are: Yesterday, Sudanese culture and information minister Ahmed Bilal Osman alleged that the previous evening, four Israeli fighter jets flew over Khartoum from the east and partially destroyed the Yarmouk munitions factory, in the city's south.

The night before, the governor of Khartoum claimed on local television and radio that an accidental fire was to blame for the incident, according to sources I was able to contact in Sudan. And Israel is an all-too-convenient scapegoat for everything from shark attacks to major political assassinations. After all, it makes intuitive sense that a broke, beleaguered and internationally-sanctioned Sudanese government would rather trumpet its failure in protecting the capital than allow an exploding weapons factory to serve as an all-too-obvious reminder of the country's dysfunction. Blaming an external enemy could unite a fractured and restive populace; indeed, nationalistic feeling surged during the country's brief military confrontation with the South Sudan this past spring. Acknowledging the truth has no such advantage. It is plausible that Sudan's nominally-Islamist and Iran-allied government would rather blame Israel than openly acknowledge the depths that austerity, economic depression and international pariah-status have brought it to. There was reason to doubt Osman's claims.

But there is plenty of reason not to dismiss them. Evidence abounds that the facility was destroyed in an aerial bombardment. An AFP report from Khartoum states that both an AFP journalist and local residents witnessed either an "aircraft or missile" flying overhead. The journalist "saw two or three fires flaring across a wide area, with heavy smoke and intermittent flashes of white light bursting above the state-owned factory." A video of the incident uploaded to YouTube is consistent with this description -- it's clear that there were explosions above the factory, even if it is unclear what caused them. Yesterday, Girifna, a global network of Sudanese anti-regime activists with numerous sources and members in Khartoum, tweeted, "witnesses suggest [the facility] was attacked."

There's really only one country that has the capabilities or the motive to wage a pinpointed aerial assault on a single wing of a single weapons facility in the southern reaches of city of a 5 million people: Israel. The defense ministers of Sudan and Iran signed a "military cooperation agreement" in 2008. Sudan has hosted Iranian Revolutionary Guard personnel, and allegedly served as a transit point for weapons bound for Hamas, in the Gaza Strip. The Israelis are acutely aware of the situation: an April, 2009 diplomatic cable published by Wikileaks paraphrases Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as telling U.S. officials that "the arms pipeline runs from Iran to Sudan to Egypt." And in a meeting with U.S. special envoy Scott Gration, Sudanese intelligence chief Salah Ghosh acknowledged that anti-Israel weapons smuggling was occurring on Sudanese territory -- but denied that his government was directly involved ("'The Rashaida (tribe in the eastern Sudan engaged in smuggling) in many countries is now beginning to talk about killing Americans and Israelis,'" Ghosh was reported as saying).

Israel might have struck inside the Sudan before: once, in early 2009, when it allegedly destroyed a 23-truck weapons smuggling convoy in the country's east, and again in April of 2011, when Israel might have been responsible for the bombing of a Hamas arms trafficker in Port Sudan. Assuming it was also Israel's doing, the destruction of the weapons facility would represent another level of audacity. "I would say that if the Sudanese government's claims are correct, then this is longest strike -- the farthest strike -- ever executed by the Israeli air force," says Ehud Yaari, the Israel-based Lafer International Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "We are talking about something that is 1,800 or 1,900 kilometers [from Israel], depending on the route. That's farther away than the range from Israel to the main Iranian nuclear installations in Natanz and Qom."

Khartoum isn't just further away and more densely populated than either of Israel's previous alleged targets inside the Sudan. It's probably better-protected as well. According to the 2012 edition of the International Institute for Strategic Studies' The Military Balance, the Sudanese air force still consists of 61 combat capable aircraft, as well as Russian-built Divina 2 anti-aircraft missiles. It's unlikely that the Sudanese air force's rusting collection of Cold War-era MiGs and Sukhois could take out a column of Israeli fighter jets. But an attack on the Sudanese capital is hardly a risk-free proposition, or at least it isn't as easy as attacking remote tracts of desert hundreds of kilometers northeast of Khartoum.

So why do it? Yaari hypothesizes that the facility was partly dedicated to the Iranian-assisted production of weapons headed for Gaza. "There is reason to believe that Iranians were involved in the production of munitions there, and that it was used for the weapons smuggling operation that has been going through Sudan for years now into the Sinai." Even so, it might never be publicly known why the Israelis were convinced that the destruction of the facility was worth such a unique and potentially-dangerous mission. "If it is the Israelis who carried it out they must have had very good reason to put pilots in hazard's way. This is something unprecedented in terms of the range."

Maybe that's the entire point. This was undoubtedly an anxious week for Israel's diplomatic and security apparatus. This week, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, the Emir of Qatar, became the first head of state to visit the Hamas-governed Gaza Strip, in effect legitimizing the group's control of the coastal territory at time when Israel is still attempting to politically, physically, and military isolate the Islamist militant movement. Unnervingly, al-Thani's visit coincided with an uptick of Hamas rocket attacks on Israeli civilians living in the areas around Gaza; over 60 rockets and mortars landed in Israel on Tuesday and Wednesday alone. The Khartoum attack (if there was one) might have been a dramatic victory over Hamas and an allied government at a time when tensions between Israel and Gaza appear to be escalating. And it's one that doubled as a very public reminder--perhaps to a certain would-be developer of nuclear weapons -- of exactly what the Israeli military is capable of.

Or it might have been nothing more than a fire at a munitions facility. When reached for comment on Wednesday afternoon, Aaron Segui, the spokesperson for the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C., offered a straightforward "no-comment," then another "no comment" when asked if the statement could be interpreted as a denial. The mystery of what happened in Khartoum continues -- for now.

[_v_]

^The fact it was a munitions factory,
has witnesses with video evidence (which id like to see)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1OB720ULGU
has happened before,
& the Netanyahu Wikileaks saying arms line runs from Sudan,
All kinda points at them,
it would not suprise me...

[butter_man]

Everytime i watch the news i think "shots fired" shits gonna get greazy. Population control and its gonna be a doozie

[nowaysj]

Think it would be so much easier to do population control in other ways. One sneeze could kill every single human on (not in) the planet.

==

But this situation is really starting to bubble now. Not even checking, but probably 100 rockets in the past day fired into Israel, Israel has been bombing the gaza strip. The Syrian conflict is now involving Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan. Israel is also, apparently, bombing Sudan, both stemming the supply of arms to its enemies, as well as demonstrating that Israel can get deep up the ass of Iran, if it so chooses (first report that I read said that the aircraft had low radar signatures, which I think means stealth, hehe).

To really make it juicy, something has to kick off in asia though. Like Kashmir has to heat up, or the Korea's could start shooting again, or maybe China v Philippines, some such thing.

[_v_]

^Dude, sounds like your hoping for WW3?

[nowaysj]

Hardly, but I find tension to be less preferable than open conflict. If they are going to do it, lets do it then. Why wait?

[_v_]

Hardly, but I find tension to be less preferable than open conflict. If they are going to do it, lets do it then. Why wait?

So you'd rather a few million people die in a world war,

over an area in the world having tension with its neighbours?

What if WW3 does kick off & you got conscripted by the U.S army to go over and fight there?

[nowaysj]

I'd rather that all people in every nation realize that almost all of us want the same thing: party a little bit, work a little bit, have a good family, and live valuable lives; and that any leader that brings its people to war is an enemy of all people and all peace.



But what I'd rather happen doesn't have much to do with what does and will happen.

[nowaysj]

A couple of cease fires, there you go.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-d ... t-1.472181

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world ... 866511.htm

==

But

http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east ... m-1.472090

[_v_]

I see your point.

You think its inevitable so get it over with already...

cant see that vid atm.

[butter_man]

Think it would be so much easier to do population control in other ways. One sneeze could kill every single human on (not in) the planet.

==

But this situation is really starting to bubble now. Not even checking, but probably 100 rockets in the past day fired into Israel, Israel has been bombing the gaza strip. The Syrian conflict is now involving Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan. Israel is also, apparently, bombing Sudan, both stemming the supply of arms to its enemies, as well as demonstrating that Israel can get deep up the ass of Iran, if it so chooses (first report that I read said that the aircraft had low radar signatures, which I think means stealth, hehe).

To really make it juicy, something has to kick off in asia though. Like Kashmir has to heat up, or the Korea's could start shooting again, or maybe China v Philippines, some such thing.

not just the death count though the adversity faced by people in times of war probably creates a more resilient, ingenious and industrious worker ant. We have no memory and no fear it seems and have got fat and lazy with our internetz and burger kingz a nice bit of strife is needed to whip the collective into some ingenuity.

[faultier]

not just the death count though the adversity faced by people in times of war probably creates a more resilient, ingenious and industrious worker ant. We have no memory and no fear it seems and have got fat and lazy with our internetz and burger kingz a nice bit of strife is needed to whip the collective into some ingenuity.

not sure a war is gonna change that tbh

case in point: the US have pretty much been at war non stop since ww2, still numero uno when it comes to lazy fat people stuffing themselves with burger kingz while browsing the internetz

[butter_man]

To quote rugged man "this is just a military conflict (in regards to nam)" no i mean a war with blackouts air raids frighten the fat fuckers on their own soil and watch the weight fly off them as they repeatedly shit themselves from mortar attacks sniper attacks kamikaze kfc employees call it xbox 3d "you wanna play games Johnny?"

[faultier]

i dont think if there's gonna be a ww3 its gonna be a remake of ww2, complete with blackouts, air raids, disney propaganda cartoons and churchill getting drunk with de gaulle

horses and bayonets init

[butter_man]

Im pretty sure there be bullets bombs and an (un)necessary loss of life though. We shud teach teenagers ' this is what really happens when you dont wear a condom' right before we push em out the trenches.

[zerbaman]

Haven't read the whole thread, only on page 2.
I reckon any hypothetical global conflict would involve extensive usage of biological weaponry, assuming that it doesn't start out with the US attacking someone like Iran. If it's China vs US, AIDS will be everywhere.