Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2015

Among notable articles for 2015 we would like to recommend Brainwashing as a key component of the US social system. Which contains an illuminating discussion of ZeroHedge readers...

"...Why do Americans believe "official sources" despite the proven fact that "official sources" lie repeatedly and never tell the truth?"

"...The failure of the American character has had tremendous and disastrous consequences for ourselves and for the world. At home Americans have a police state in which all Constitutional protections have vanished. Abroad, Iraq and Libya, two formerly prosperous countries, have been destroyed. Libya no longer exists as a country. One million dead Iraqis, four million displaced abroad, hundreds of thousands of orphans and birth defects from the American ordnance, and continuing ongoing violence from factions fighting over the remains. These facts are incontestable. Yet the United States Government claims to have brought "freedom and democracy" to Iraq. "Mission accomplished," declared one of the mass murderers of the 21st century, George W. Bush."

"...Americans with good character are being maneuvered into a position of helplessness."

"...When Clinton's Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, was asked if the Clinton's regime's sanctions, which had claimed the lives of 500,000 Iraqi children, were justified, she obviously expected no outrage from the American people when she replied in the affirmative."

"...No, I don't think Americans are intentionally ignorant, any more than other nationalities. What they are tribal. Tribal peoples don't care whether their policies are right or wrong; they are instinctively loyal to them and to those who formulate them."

Jul 25, 2015 | Zero Hedge

Original title: The Eroding Character Of The American People

Paul Craig Roberts

How can the life of such a man
Be in the palm of some fool's hand?
To see him obviously framed
Couldn't help but make me feel ashamed to live in a land
Where justice is a game.—Bob Dylan, "Hurricane"

Attorney John W. Whitehead opens a recent posting on his Rutherford Institute website with these words from a song by Bob Dylan. Why don't all of us feel ashamed? Why only Bob Dylan?

I wonder how many of Bob Dylan's fans understand what he is telling them. American justice has nothing to do with innocence or guilt. It only has to do with the prosecutor's conviction rate, which builds his political career. Considering the gullibility of the American people, American jurors are the last people to whom an innocent defendant should trust his fate. The jury will betray the innocent almost every time.

As Lawrence Stratton and I show in our book (2000, 2008) there is no justice in America. We titled our book, "How the Law Was Lost." It is a description of how the protective features in law that made law a shield of the innocent was transformed over time into a weapon in the hands of the government, a weapon used against the people. The loss of law as a shield occurred prior to 9/11, which "our representative government" used to construct a police state.

The marketing department of our publisher did not appreciate our title and instead came up with "The Tyranny of Good Intentions." We asked what this title meant. The marketing department answered that we showed that the war on crime, which gave us the abuses of RICO, the war on child abusers, which gave us show trials of total innocents that bested Joseph Stalin's show trials of the heroes of the Bolshevik Revolution, and the war on drugs, which gave "Freedom and Democracy America" broken families and by far the highest incarceration rate in the world all resulted from good intentions to combat crime, to combat drugs, and to combat child abuse. The publisher's title apparently succeeded, because 15 years later the book is still in print. It has sold enough copies over these years that, had the sales occurred upon publication would have made the book a "best seller." The book, had it been a best seller, would have gained more attention, and perhaps law schools and bar associations could have used it to hold the police state at bay.

Whitehead documents how hard a not guilty verdict is to come by for an innocent defendant. Even if the falsely accused defendant and his attorney survive the prosecutor's pressure to negotiate a plea bargain and arrive at a trial, they are confronted with jurors who are unable to doubt prosecutors, police, or witnesses paid to lie against the innocent defendant. Jurors even convicted the few survivors of the Clinton regime's assault on the Branch Davidians of Waco, the few who were not gassed, shot, or burned to death by US federal forces. This religious sect was demonized by Washington and the presstitute media as child abusers who were manufacturing automatic weapons while they raped children. The charges proved to be false, like Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction," and so forth, but only after all of the innocents were dead or in prison.

The question is: why do Americans not only sit silently while the lives of innocents are destroyed, but also actually support the destruction of the lives of innocents? Why do Americans believe "official sources" despite the proven fact that "official sources" lie repeatedly and never tell the truth?

The only conclusion that one can come to is that the American people have failed. We have failed Justice. We have failed Mercy. We have failed the US Constitution. We have failed Truth. We have failed Democracy and representative government. We have failed ourselves and humanity. We have failed the confidence that our Founding Fathers put in us. We have failed God. If we ever had the character that we are told we had, we have obviously lost it. Little, if anything, remains of the "American character."

Was the American character present in the torture prisons of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and hidden CIA torture dungeons where US military and CIA personnel provided photographic evidence of their delight in torturing and abusing prisoners? Official reports have concluded that along with torture went rape, sodomy, and murder. All of this was presided over by American psychologists with Ph.D. degrees.

We see the same inhumanity in the American police who respond to women children, the elderly, the physically and mentally handicapped, with gratuitous violence. For no reason whatsoever, police murder, taser, beat, and abuse US citizens. Every day there are more reports, and despite the reports the violence goes on and on and on. Clearly, the police enjoy inflicting pain and death on citizens whom the police are supposed to serve and protect. There have always been bullies in the police force, but the wanton police violence of our time indicates a complete collapse of the American character.

The failure of the American character has had tremendous and disastrous consequences for ourselves and for the world. At home Americans have a police state in which all Constitutional protections have vanished. Abroad, Iraq and Libya, two formerly prosperous countries, have been destroyed. Libya no longer exists as a country. One million dead Iraqis, four million displaced abroad, hundreds of thousands of orphans and birth defects from the American ordnance, and continuing ongoing violence from factions fighting over the remains. These facts are incontestable. Yet the United States Government claims to have brought "freedom and democracy" to Iraq. "Mission accomplished," declared one of the mass murderers of the 21st century, George W. Bush.

The question is: how can the US government make such an obviously false outrageous claim without being shouted down by the rest of the world and by its own population? Is the answer that good character has disappeared from the world?

Or is the rest of the world too afraid to protest? Washington can force supposedly sovereign countries to acquiesce to its will or be cut off from the international payments mechanism that Washington controls, and/or be sanctioned, and/or be bombed, droned, or invaded, and/or be assassinated or overthrown in a coup. On the entire planet Earth there are only two countries capable of standing up to Washington, Russia and China, and neither wants to stand up if they can avoid it.

For whatever the reasons, not only Americans but most of the world as well accommodate Washington's evil and are thereby complicit in the evil. Those humans with a moral conscience are gradually being positioned by Washington and London as "domestic extremists" who might have to be rounded up and placed in detention centers. Examine the recent statements by General Wesley Clark and British Prime Minister Cameron and remember Janet Napolitano's statement that the Department of Homeland Security has shifted its focus from terrorists to domestic extremists, an undefined and open-ended term.

Americans with good character are being maneuvered into a position of helplessness. As John Whitehead makes clear, the American people cannot even prevent "their police," paid by their tax payments, from murdering 3 Americans each day, and this is only the officially reported murders. The actual account is likely higher.

What Whitehead describes and what I have noticed for many years is that the American people have lost, in addition to their own sense of truth and falsity, any sense of mercy and justice for other peoples. Americans accept no sense of responsibility for the millions of peoples that Washington has exterminated over the past two decades dating back to the second term of Clinton. Every one of the millions of deaths is based on a Washington lie.

When Clinton's Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, was asked if the Clinton's regime's sanctions, which had claimed the lives of 500,000 Iraqi children, were justified, she obviously expected no outrage from the American people when she replied in the affirmative.

Americans need to face the facts. The loss of character means the loss of liberty and the transformation of government into a criminal enterprise.

benb

The American people have been scientifically mis-educated, propagandized, and beaten down. A disproportionate number of the under 30's are societal DOAs thanks to ... weaponized TV. But I am being too optimistic...

PrayingMantis

... Americans are "intentionally ignorant" of other countries' rights and sovereignty while other countries had been well-informed of America's malicious intents of destroying other countries' rights and sovereignty ...

BarnacleBill

No, I don't think Americans are intentionally ignorant, any more than other nationalities. What they are tribal. Tribal peoples don't care whether their policies are right or wrong; they are instinctively loyal to them and to those who formulate them.

Also, I have to say that I believe the US empire is a long, long, way from collapse. It is still expanding, for goodness sake. Empires collapse only when the shrinking process is well under way. (The recent Soviet Empire was exceptional, in this regard.) It will take several more generations before the darkness lifts, I'm afraid.

macholatte

The only conclusion that one can come to is that the American people have failed.

It's now official, PCR is a complete dipshit.

Hey Paul, how about you get your head out of the clouds and stop looking down your nose at everyone long enough to read a couple of books about brain washing and then get back to us. Maybe you start with this: http://edward-bernays.soup.io/post/19658768/Edward-Bernays-Propaganda-19...

"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind."
-- Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda

OldPhart

"Americans need to face the facts. The loss of character means the loss of liberty and the transformation of government into a criminal enterprise."

I think that happened August 13, 1971, but didn't get fully organized (as in Mafia) until 2000.

PT

The majority have their nose to the grind stone and as such can not see past the grind stone. They rely on "official sources" to put the rest of the world in order for them, but have no time to audit the "official sources". Would public education suffer if mothers and fathers were monitoring what the children were learning? But who has got time for that when both parents are working? How many non-work organizations were your parents and grand-parents involved in (both the wage-earner and the housekeeper)? How many organizations are you involved in?

Do you constantly hassle your local politicians or do you just say, "I'll vote 'em out in four years time"? (Yes, I know, you just don't vote. Fair enough, this question is for the voters.)

Yes, some of us are guilty of not fighting back. We had "Shut up and do as you're told" and "Well, if you're not happy with what you've got then work harder" beaten into us. Some of us are a little awake because, despite all our efforts, the grind stone was removed from us and then we got to see the larger picture of what lies behind the grind stone. Others are still busy, nose to the wheel, and all they see is the wheel.

And that is before we even consider HypnoToad on the Idiot Box. Some "need" the idiot box to help them wind down. Some can no longer enjoy the silence. (Remember Brave New World? It's true. Many people can no longer stand to be around silence, with nothing but their own thoughts.) I tell everyone that TV is crap. Radio is crap. Newspapers are crap. Turn that shit off for six months to a year, then go back to it and see what you really think of it. But they can't handle the thought of being away from "the background noise".

Ever spoken to grandparents who remember wars and depressions? And even amongst the rations and the hardships they still find positive memories? Time to talk to them again. Or not. I guess we'll get first-hand experience soon enough.

AlaricBalth

Allow me for a moment to share a brief anecdote about the new "American Character".

Last Sunday I was at the local supermarket. I was at the bakery counter, when suddenly a nicely dressed, Sunday best, non-Caucasian woman barrels into my cart riding a fat scooter. She rudely demands from the counter person a single cinnamon bun and then wheels off towards the front. Curious, I follow her up the aisle as she scarfs down the pastry in three bites. She then proceeds to stuff the empty bag between some soda bottles and scooters through the checkout without paying for her item. In the parking lot she then disembarks from her scooter, easily lifts it into the trunk of her Cadillac and walks to the drivers side, gets in and speeds off with her kids, who were in the back seat.

Amazed at what I had just witnessed, I went back into the store, retrieved the empty bag, included it in my few items at checkout and then went to the manager to share this story with him. He laughed and said there was nothing he could do.

The new "American Character" is that of a sense of entitlement and apathy.
I weep for the future.

Headbanger

Having character is not politically correct. Plus there's no need to develop character anymore because there's no jobs requiring any!

Consumption is the ONLY value of the inDUHvidual today.

And the less character they have, the more shit they'll consume to feel fulfilled cause they can't get that from themselves.

clymer Sat, 07/25/2015 - 07:34

Macholatte, i don't think PCR is writing from a point of view that is haughty and contemptful of the American people, per se, but rather from a perspective that is hopeless and thoroughly depressed after contemplating what the American people of many generations ago has taken for themselves as natural rights from a tyrranical government, only to see the nation slowly morph into something even worse than what was rejected by the founders.

"A nation can survive its fools and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within...
He rots the soul of a nation; he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city; he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist."

ThroxxOfVron

"The loss of character means the loss of liberty and the transformation of government into a criminal enterprise. "

"I think that happened August 13, 1971 "

The entirety of the Western Hemisphere, not just 'The United States', was seized by invaders from Europe.

It is not an 'American' disease: it is a European disease and always was.

The indiginous populations of the Western Hemisphere were suystemaically and with forethought expropriated, ensalved, and slaughtered. The indiginous persons that dwelled within the geographical domain that presently comprise the USA were still being margialized, forcibly relocated, and murdered, long after the so-called 'American Civil War' had been decided.

...& As much as it is fashionable and/or politically expedient to vilify and blame the 'white' Europeans both for this history and extenuate that history to inform the present state of affairs, the Dutch, the French, the Portuguese, and the Spanish ( most eggregiously IMHO) were brutal and savage.

Look at the demographics of the Western Hemisphere.

If you have a shred of honesty you just can't hang the blame on 'whites', put it on a bumper sticker or a #shittyhashtagmeme and go back to fucking off.

The disgusting fraud of Manifest Destiny was a fig leaf to hide the enormity of these crimes; but, they are most obviously European crimes.

...& has Europe changed since the West was settled? Did Europeans even stop their warring amonsgst themselves?

See for yourself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_Europe

That would be: Hell NO.

Neither in Europe itself, nor in the settled West.

The Pacific Ocean wasn't named for calm waters.

It was named thusly because it is the natural geographic boundary where the mayhem and brutality and genocide ceased, if only because the greedy and ruthless Europeans had run out of land in the Western Hemisphere with people upon it to plunder and murder...

El Vaquero

The US will collapse within the next decade if some serious new technology is not developed and the infrastructure to use it is put in. There is too much debt and not enough material resources to continue growing the ponzi scheme that is our monetary system at an exponential rate without something breaking. The question is, will it be at the end of this boom-bust cycle, or the next? And if you look at what is being done on the financial front, which is the backbone of our neo-empire, that is shrinking.

The USD is slowly falling out of favor. There will come a point where that rapidly accelerates. We've been in a state of collapse for 15 years.

Abitdodgie

ignorance is choice these days and Americans love it.

AetosAeros

Not only a choice, but the ONLY choice they are prepared to accept. Cognitive Dissonance at it's finest. And to make matters worse, in only the best American fashion, we've asked if if it can be Supersized to go along with the Freedom Lies we feed ourselves.

I've seen the enemy, and....

But only if I'm willing to look in the mirror. Today's American doesn't look for what's right there in front of him/her, we look for all the new 'Social Norms' that we aren't living up to. This article is completely on target, and I hope Roberts hasn't decided to do any remodeling, cause too many idle nails guns make for a great Evening News sidebar mention.

Damnit all to hell.

Fun Facts

Fun Facts's picture

• protocol #1 - Take control of the media and use it in propaganda for our plans
• protocol #2 - Start fights between different races, classes and religions
• ... ... ...
• protocol #13 - Use our media to create entertaining distractions
• protocol #14 - Corrupt minds with filth and perversion
• protocol #15 - Encourage people to spy on one another

Rubicon727

We educators began seeing this shift towards "me-ism" around 1995-6. Students from low to middle income families became either apathetic towards "education" or followed their parent's sense of "entitlement." Simultaneously, the tech age captured both population's attention. Respecting "an education" dwindled.

Fast forward to the present: following the 2007-8 crash, we noted clear divisions between low income vs middle/upper class students based on their school behavior. Low to slightly middle income students brought to school family tensions and the turmoil of parents losing their jobs. A rise in non-functioning students increase for teachers while the few well performing students decline significantly.

Significant societal, financial shifts in America can always be observed in the student population.

reader2010

Mission Accomplished.

"When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; a culture-death is a clear possibility."

- Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, 1985

Lea

"The American people have been scientifically mis-educated".

You've got the answer there. The education system is the root cause of the problem. I'm from Europe, but if I've understood correctly, the US education policy is to teach as little as possible to children, and expect them to fill in the gaps in the Universities, past a certain age.

Only, it can't work. Children WILL learn, as childhood is the time when most informations are stored. If the schools don't provide the knowledge, they will get it from the television, movies or games, with the consequences we can see: ignorance, obsession with TV and movies stars, inability to differentiate life from movies, and over-simplistic reasoning (if any).

In Europe, we knew full well children learn fast and a lot, and that was why the schools focused on teaching them as much general knowldge as possible before 18 years old, which is when - it is scientifically proved - the human brain learns best.

Recently, the EU leading countries have understood that having educated masses doesn't pay if you want to lead them like sheep, so they are perfidiously trying to lower the standards... to the dismay of parents.

My advice, if I may presume to give any, would be to you USA people: teach your children what they won't learn at school, history, geography, literature (US, European and even Asian, why not), a foreign language if you can, arts, music, etc; and keep them away from the TV, movies and games.

And please adapt what you teach them to their age.

Refuse-Resist

Bang on! One anecdotal example: insisting that all 3rd graders use calculators "to learn" their multiplication tables. If I didn't do flashcards at home with my kids they wouldn't know them.

As somebody who majored in engineering and took many many advanced math courses, I always felt that knowing your 'times tables' was essential to being successful in math.

What better way to dumb down otherwise intelligent children by creating a situation where the kid can't divide 32 by 4 without a calculator.

Trigonometry? Calculus? Linear Algebra? Fuggedaboudit.

doctor10

The CB's and MIC have Americans right where they want them.

the consequences of 3-4 generations of force feeding Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny

ThroxxOfVron

Some of US were never fucking asleep. Some of us were born with our eyes and minds open.

We were, and are: hated, and reviled, and marginalized, and disowned for it.

The intellectual repression was, and is, fucking insane and brutal.

Words such as ethics and logic exist for what purpose?

What are these expressions of? A bygone time? Abstractions?

Those that have tried to preserve their self awareness, empathy, and rationality have been ruthlessly systematically demeaned and condemed for confronting our families, our culture and institutions.

We all have a right to be angry and disgusted and distrustful of the people and institutions around us.

I am very fucking angry, and disgusted, and distrustful of the people and institutions around me.

But I still have hope.

Nothing lasts forever..

This self-righteous nation called The United States, this twisted fraud of a culture called America, is most dangerously overdue for receipt of chastisment and retribution.

It would be best if the citizenry of the United States taught themselves a lesson in stead of inviting Other nations and cultures to educate them.

A serious self education may be tedious and imperfect; but, it would be far far cheaper than forcing someone to come all the way over those oceans to educate Americans at the price they will be demanding for those lessons...

I do not require representation. I will speak my own mind and act of my own accord.

Every time other so-called Americans take a shit on me for thinking and speaking and acting differently it is a badge of honor and a confirmation of my spiritual and intellectual liberty. They don't know it but they are all gonna run out of shit before I run out of being free.

ThroxxOfVron

"The loss of character means the loss of liberty and the transformation of government into a criminal enterprise. "

"I think that happened August 13, 1971 "

The entirety of the Western Hemisphere, not just 'The United States', was seized by invaders from Europe. It is not an 'American' disease: it is a European disease and always was.

The indigenous populations of the Western Hemisphere were systematically and with forethought expropriated, enslaved, and slaughtered. The indigenous persons that dwelled within the geographical domain that presently comprise the USA were still being marginalized, forcibly relocated, and murdered, long after the so-called 'American Civil War' had been decided.

...& As much as it is fashionable and/or politically expedient to vilify and blame the 'white' Europeans both for this history and extenuate that history to inform the present state of affairs, the Dutch, the French, the Portuguese, and the Spanish ( most eggregiously IMHO) were brutal and savage.

Look at the demographics of the Western Hemisphere.

If you have a shred of honesty you just can't hang the blame on 'whites', put it on a bumper sticker or a #shittyhashtagmeme and go back to fucking off.

The disgusting fraud of Manifest Destiny was a fig leaf to hide the enormity of these crimes; but, they are most obviously European crimes.

...& has Europe changed since the West was settled? Did Europeans even stop their warring amonsgst themselves?

See for yourself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_Europe

That would be: Hell NO.

Neither in Europe itself, nor in the settled West.

The Pacific Ocean wasn't named for calm waters.

It was named thusly because it is the natural geographic boundary where the mayhem and brutality and genocide ceased, if only because the greedy and ruthless Europeans had run out of land in the Western Hemisphere with people upon it to plunder and murder...

Mini-Me

"The loss of character means the loss of liberty and the transformation of government into a criminal enterprise."

I agree with the first part. As for the latter, "government," by definition, is a criminal enterprise. It doesn't start out pure as the driven snow and then change into something nefarious over time. Its very essence requires the initiation of violence or its threat. Government without the gun in the ribs is a contradiction.

The fact that those in power got more votes than the losing criminals does not magically morph these people into paragons of virtue. They are almost without exception thoroughly deranged human beings. Lying is second nature to them. Looting is part of the job description. Killing is an end to their means: the acquisition and aggrandizement of power over others, no matter how much death and destruction results.

These people are sick bastards. To expect something virtuous from them after an endless string of wanton slaughter, theft and abuse, is simply wishful thinking.

Jack Burton

I agree with Paul Craig Roberts. He asks "Why" and "How." Well, Paul, here is my answer. Decades of Public Education and over 50 years of mass media monopoly. In an age where FOX is the top rated News station and CNN is considered liberal? Where kids in Public school are offered Chocolate milk and frozen pizza for school breakfast before going to class rooms with 30-40 kids. When Texas political appointees chose school text book content for the nation? A nation where service has ended, replaced with volunteer soldiers signing up for pay and benefits, instead of just serving as service, like we did in the 70's?

Paul Craig Roberts points out the police war against the people. That comes right from the very top, orders filter down to street cops. Street Cops are recruited from groups of young men our fathers generation would have labeled mental! But now they are hired across the board, shaved heads, tatoos, and a code of silence and Cops Above Justice.

• Schools
• Media
• Crazed Cops
• And a corporate owned government.

The people have allowed the elites to rule in their place, never bothering to question the two fake candidates we are allowed to vote for.

Jtrillian

There is a difference between IGNORANCE and STUPIDITY. As Ron White said, "YOU CAN'T FIX STUPID".

In todays information age, ignorance is a choice.

Part of the problem that no one is talking about or addressing is the population explosion. And it's not linear. Those who are the least educated, fully dependent others for their survival (welfare), the most complacent, and often with violent criminal records are breeding the fastest.

Evolution is not guaranteed. It can be argued that the apathy we experience today is a sign of the human race de-evolving. It takes a certain amount of cognitive ability to observe and question what is going on.

Further, the society we have created where "60 is the new 40" creates very little time to pay attention to what is going on in the world. Many people rely on mainstream media which is not really news any more. When six corporations control more than 90% of the news, it's the message of the corporate elite that we are fed. This becomes painfully obvious when you start turning to other sources for information like social media and independent news. Mainstream media today is full of opinion bias - injecting opinion as though it were fact. They also appeal to the lowest commmon denominator by focusing on emotionally charged topics and words rather than boring facts. Finally, the mainstream media is extremely guilty of propaganda by omission, ignoring important events altogether or only presenting one side of the story as is being done with regard to ISIS, Syria, and Ukraine today. People who watch the mainstream media have no idea that the US played a significant role in arming ISIS and aided in their rise to power. They have no idea that it was likely ISIS that used chemical weapons in Syria. They have no idea that the US has propped up real life neo nazis in high government positions in Ukraine. And they have ignored the continuing Fukushima disaster that is STILL dumping millions of gallons of radioactive water into the ocean every single day.

To sum up, democracies only work when people pay attention and participate. People are either too stupid, too overworked, are are looking to the wrong sources for information.

Until we break up mainstream media, remove incentives for those who cannot even care for themselves to stop breeding, and make fundamental changes to our society that affords people the time to focus on what is happening in the world, it will only get worse.

Much worse.

serotonindumptruck

A dying empire is like a wounded, cornered animal.

It will lash out uncontrollably and without remorse in a futile effort to save itself from certain death.

Enough Already

The problem is that we have no "Constitution." That is a fable. The constitution of the separation of powers has been undermined from almost day one. Witness the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798.

In the centuries since then, there has been no "separation of powers." Marbury v Madison (1803) gave the Supreme Court the right to "decide" what the "law" was. Although, only in the 20th century did the "Supreme" court really start "legislating" from the bench.

We're just peons to the Overall Federal Power; the three "separate" parts of the federal government have been in collusion from the first.

But like all empires, this one is in the final stage of collapse; it has just gotten too big.

gswifty

Yes sir. Globalization has failed us. The infinite growth paradigm has failed us, as we knew it would. Castro's Cuba, based in a localized agrarian economy, is looking pretty good about now. Localization is the only way back to sustainability.

napples

Books? Who said books? You mean reading books? Let me throw a couple out there:

I read 'The Image: A Guide To Pseudo-Events In America' last year, it was published 50+ years ago by a very recommended writer and accomplished historian. Boorstin's observations are truer today and even more concerning thanks to our modern, ubiquitous "connectivity".

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/159979.The_Image

Another by Boorstin, The Discoverers was my fav, like Bryson's 'Short History' on steroids:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_J._Boorstin

I'm currently trying to fathom all of the historical implications of the claims Menzies is making in his book '1434', where apparently everything I learned about history is a lie. While he's making a lot of claims(hoping some sticks?) I'm not truly convinced. It is a very good, believable thought experiment. It almost makes perfect sense given the anglo/euro history of deceit & dishonesty, but I digress:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavin_Menzies

This one took a long time to grok, Dr Mandelbrot tried to warn us:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/665134.The_Mis_Behavior_of_Markets#

Benoit's friend & protege tried to warn us too:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Swan_%282007_book%29

Put them together and you get the financial meltdown's 'Don't say we didn't warn you' manifesto from 2006(not a book, but a compelling read):
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/5372968a-ba82-11da-980d-0000779e2340.html

OK, I'm tired. Time to unplug.

reader2010

Adorno famously pointed out in 1940 that the "Mass culture is psychoanalysis in reverse." It takes 75 years for someone such as PCR to reiterate. He doesn't blame the masses because he simply points out the fact that Americans are completely ignorant and blindly believe anything MSM spoon-fed to them.

George Orwell once remarked that the average person today is about as naive as was the average person in the Middle Ages. In the Middle Ages people believed in the authority of their religion, no matter what. Today, we believe in the authority of what Adorno called Culture Industry and MSM, no matter what. Today we are indeed in another Dark Age

PoasterToaster

"Americans" are not one person. Individuals are not fungible. Reasoning from the "average American" leads to false conclusions.

reader2010

Jacques Derrida says, "The individualism of technological civilization relies precisely on a misunderstanding of the unique self. It is the individualism of a role and not of a person. In other words it might be called the individualism of a masque or persona, a character [personnage] and not a person." There are many Americans but they all play the same role in the Pursuit of Happiness, aka wage slaves, career slaves, debt slaves, information junkies, and passive consumers.

Moccasin

Paul Craig Roberts believe that the people are capable of creating a better and more just society. Instead the people have voted against their own best interest and overwhelmingly believe the propaganda.

When do the people or the society take responsibility for its greater good or own the crimes of those they put into power?

Blaming the aristocracy or the oligarchs seems like a scapegoat when the people have never stood up to the corruption in a cohesive or concerted way. imho, After a few generations of abuse and corruption the people need to take responsibility for their future. I expect that most will just buy into the charade and live the lie, on that basis as a society we are doomed to live in a corporatocracy fascist state.

Aldous Huxley called it a scientific dictatorship, Edward Bernays referred to us as a herd.

Moccasin

In the USA being white, monied and having the capacity to afford a good education is privileged. To his credit he speaks to the greater population, the 'average citizen' and not the plutocratic class.

MSorciere

What we have is the result of conditioning and commoditizing a population. The country is filled with consumers, not citizens. Teach the acquisition of money and goods as the main goal and individualism as the only acceptable social unit. We end up with a nation of insatiable sociopaths, ruled by power-hungry psychopaths.

Divisive politics, jackbooted authority from the DC scumpond down to the cop on the beat, the constant preaching of the cult of the individual as a sustitute for true liberty... all of these have served to destroy a sense of community and decentness between Americans.

The ONLY thing that could threaten the ruling class is a banding together of the people - in large numbers. 'They' have purposefully and effectively quashed that.

Chupacabra1977

When you let jews run your society this is what happens. Go Goy go!!!!!

TrulyStupid

Shifting responsibility to the usual suspects is simply a manifestation of the American moral collapse. Man up and do some self evaluation.

T-NUTZ

"what I have noticed for many years is that the American people have lost, in addition to their own sense of truth and falsity, any sense of mercy and justice for other peoples"

Unfortunately, Paul, the American people have lost any sense of mercy and justice for their own people.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXRDq9nKJ0U

Phillyguy

Painful as it may be, we need to rationally look at US history/society. The nascent US was formed by stealing land from the native population and using human capital (read African Slaves) to generate wealth (it took a civil war with circa 500K casualties to stop this- one could argue the US "civil war" never ended). More recently, the US has been almost continuously at war since 1940, we dropped atomic bombs on Japan. Currently, the US/NATO war theater extends from the Levant, to Caspian Basin, Persian Gulf, China Sea, Indian Ocean, Horn of Africa (Saudi/US war on Yemen), the Maghreb and E Europe and Russian Border.

Radical Marijuana

"... the transformation of government into a criminal enterprise ..."

Governments were created by the history of warfare, which was always organized crime developing on larger and larger scales. In the context, the greater problem is that people like Paul Craig Roberts are reactionary revolutionaries, who provide relatively good analysis, followed by bogus "solutions" based upon impossible ideals.

The "American People" are the victims of the best scientific brainwashing that money could buy. As Cognitive Dissonance has previously stated on Zero Hedge: "The absolute best controlled opposition is one that doesn't know they are controlled."

It is practically impossible to exaggerate the degree to which that is so, on such profound levels, because of the ways that most people want to continue to believe that false fundamental dichotomies and impossible ideals are valid, and should be applied to their problems, despite that those mistaken ideas cause the opposite to happen in the real world, because those who promote those kinds of false fundamental dichotomies and their related impossible ideals, ARE "controlled opposition."

Rather, the place to begin would be by recognizing that all human beings and civilizations must necessarily operate as entropic pumps of energy flows, which necessarily are systems of organized lies operating robberies. Everyone has some power to rob, and power to kill to back that up. Governments assembled and channeled those powers. There was never a time when governments were not organized crime. There could never be any time when governments were not organized crime. The only things that exist are the dynamic equilibria between different systems of organized lies operating robberies. Those dynamic equilibria have become extremely unbalanced due the degree that the best organized gangs of criminals were able to control their opposition.

Paul Craig Roberts, as well as pretty well all of the rest of the content published on Zero Hedge, are presentations of various kinds of controlled opposition groups, most of which do not recognize that they are being controlled by the language that they use, and the philosophy of science that they take for granted. THAT is the greatest failure of the American People, as well as most of the rest of the people everywhere else. They believe in false fundamental dichotomies, and the related impossible ideals, and therefore, their bogus "solutions" always necessarily backfire badly, and cause the opposite to happen in the real world.

After all, the overwhelming vast majority of the American People operate as the controlled opposition to the best organized gangs of criminals that most control the government of the USA. Therefore, the FAILURES of the American People are far more profound and problematic than what is superficially presented by guys like Paul Craig Roberts, and also, of course, his suggested bogus "solutions" are similarly superficial.

The ONLY things which can actually exist are the dynamic equilibrium between different systems of organized lies operating robberies. The degree to which the American People, as well as most of the rest of the people in the world, FAIL to understand that is the degree to which they enable the best organized gangs of criminals to control them, due to the vast majority of people being members of various controlled opposition groups. Controlled opposition always presents relatively superficial analysis of the political problems, which are superficially correct. However, they then follow that up with similarly superficial "solutions." Therefore, magical words are bandied about, that express their dualities, through false fundamental dichotomies, and the related impossible ideals.

Governments must exist because organized crime must exist. Better governments could be achieved through better organized crime. However, mostly what get presented in the public places are the utter bullshit of the biggest bullies, who dominate the society because they were the best organized gangs of criminals, who were also able to dominate their apparent opposition. Therefore, instead of more realistic, better balancing of the dynamic equilibria between different systems of organized lies operating robberies, we get runaway developments of the best organized gangs of criminals being able to control governments, whose only apparent opposition is controlled to stay within the same bullshit frame of reference regarding everything that was actually happening.

The mainline of the FAILURES of the American People have been the ways that the international bankers were able to recapture control over the American public "money" supply. After that, everything else was leveraged up, through the funding of the political processes, schools, and mass media, etc., being more and more dominated by that fundamentally fraudulent financial accounting system. Of course, that FAILURE has now become more than 99% ... Therefore, no political possible ways appear to exist to pull out of that flaming spiral nose dive, since we have already gone beyond the event horizon into that social black hole.

Most of the content on Zero Hedge which is based upon recognizing that set of problems still acts as controlled opposition in that regard too. Therefore, the bogus "solutions" here continue to deliberately ignore that money is necessarily measurement backed by murder. Instead of accepting that, the controlled opposition groups like to promote various kinds of "monetary reforms." However, meanwhile, we are actually already headed towards the established debt slavery systems having generated debt insanities, which are going to provoke death insanities.

In that context, the only realistic resolutions to the real problems would necessarily have to be monetary revolutions, that may emerge out of the future situations, after the runaway debt insanities have provoked death insanities. Indeed, the only genuine solutions to the problems are to develop different death control systems, to back up different debt control systems, which must necessarily be done within the context that governments are the biggest forms of organized crime, controlled by the best organized gangs of criminals.

The various controlled opposition groups do not want to face those social facts. Rather, they continue to want to believe in the dualities expressed as false fundamental dichotomies and the related impossible ideals, which is their greatest overall FAILURE. In my view, the article above by Roberts contained a lot of nostalgic nonsense. There was never a time when there were any governments which were not based on the applications of the principles and methods of organized crime, and there could never be any time in the future when that could be stopped from being the case.

The greatest FAILURE of the American People, as well as most of the rest of the world's people, has been to become so brainwashed to believe in the biggest bullies' bullshit world view, that there is no significant opposition that is not controlled by thinking inside of the box of that bullshit. The government did NOT transform into a criminal enterprise. The government was necessarily ALWAYS a criminal enterprise. That criminal enterprise has become more and more severely UNBALANCED due to the FAILURE of the people to understand that they were actually members of an organized crime gang, called their country. Instead, they were more and more scientifically brainwashed to believe in bullshit about everything, including their country.

The ONLY connection between human laws and the laws of nature is the ability to back up lies with violence. The development of the government of the USA has been the developed of integrated systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence. Those systems of ENFORCED FRAUDS have been able to become more extremely unbalanced because there is almost nothing which is publicly significant surrounding that core of organized crime but various controlled opposition groups.

Of course, it seems politically impossible for my recommendations to actually happen within the foreseeable future, as the current systems of debt slavery drive through debt insanities to become death insanities, but nevertheless, the only theoretically valid ideas to raise to respond to the real problems would have to based upon a series of intellectual scientific revolutions. However, since we have apparently run out of time to go through those sorts of paradigm shifts sufficiently, we are stuck in the deepening ruts of political problems which guys like Roberts correctly present to be the case

... HOWEVER, ROBERTS, LIKE ALMOST EVERYONE ELSE, CONTINUE TO PRESUME UPON DUALITIES, AND THEREFORE, HAVE THEIR MECHANISMS REGARDING "SOLUTIONS" ABSURDLY BACKWARDS.

Rather, we should start with the concept of SUBTRACTION, which then leads to robbery. We should start with the recognition that governments are necessarily, by definition, the biggest forms of organized crime. Governments did NOT transform into being that. Governments were always that. The political problems we have now are due to the best organized gangs of criminals, which currently are primarily the biggest gangsters, which can rightly be referred to as the banksters, having dominated all aspects of the funding of politics, enough to capture control over all sociopolitical institutions, so that the American People would more and more be subjected to the best scientific brainwashing that money could buy, which was built on top of thousands of years of previous history of Neolithic Civilizations being based on backing up lies with violence.

The runaway systems of ENFORCED FRAUDS, or the integrated systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, that more and more dominate the lives of the American People are due to the applications of the methods of organized crime, and could not be effectively counter-balanced in any other ways. However, the standing social situation is that there is no publicly significant opposition that is not controlled to stay within the same frame of reference of the biggest bullies, which is now primarily the frame of reference of the banksters. Indeed, to the degree to which people's lives are controlled by the monetary system, they are debt slaves. Moreover, the degree to which they do not understand, and do not want to understand, that money is necessarily measurement backed by murder, then they think like controlled opposition groups, who have their mechanisms absurdly backwards, when they turn from their superficial analysis of what the political problems, to then promote their superficial solutions of those problems.

I AGREE that "Americans need to face the facts." However, those facts are that citizens are members of an organized crime gang, called their country. "Their" country is currently controlled by the best organized gangs of criminals. However, there are no genuine resolutions for those problems other than to develop better organized crime. Since the controlled opposition groups that are publicly significant do not admit any of the deeper levels of the scientific facts regarding human beings and civilizations operating as entropic pumps of energy flows, but rather, continue to perceive all of that in the most absurdly backward ways possible, the current dynamic equilibria between the different systems of organized lies operating robberies continue to become more and more extremely UNBALANCED.

In the case of the article above, Roberts does NOT "face the facts" that governments were always forms of organized crime, and must necessarily be so, because human beings must live as entropic pumps of energy flows. Rather, Roberts tends to illustrate how the controlled opposition takes for granted certain magical words and phrases, such as "Liberty" or "Constitution," that have no adequate operational definitions to connect them to the material world.

We are living inside of an oxymoronic scientific dictatorship, which has applied the progress in science primarily to become better at backing up lies with violence, while refusing to allow scientific methods to admit and address how and why that has been what has actually happened. Therefore, almost all of the language that we use to communicate, as well as almost all of the philosophy of science that we take for granted, was based on the biggest bullies' bullshit, which is now primarily manifested as the banksters' bullshit, as that bullshit developed in America to become ENFORCED FRAUDS.

ALL of the various churches, corporations, and countries are necessarily various systems of organized lies operating robberies. Those which are the biggest now were historically the ones that were the best at doing that. The INTENSE PARADOXES are due to human systems necessarily being organized lies operating robberies, wherein the greatest social successfulness has been achieved by those who were the best professional liars and immaculate hypocrites. That flows throughout ALL of the established systems, which are a core of organized crime, surrounded by controlled opposition groups.

The degree to which the American People, as well as the rest of the world's people, have been more and more scientifically brainwashed to believe in bullshit about governments in particular, and human beings and civilizations in general, is the degree to which the established systems based upon ENFORCED FRAUDS are headed towards some series of psychotic breakdowns. For all practical purposes, it is politically impossible to get enough people to stop acting like incompetent political idiots, and instead start acting more like competent citizens, because they do not understand, and moreover have been conditioned to not want to understand that governments are necessarily organized crime.

Roberts ironically illustrated the deeper nature of the political problems that he also shares, when he perceives that governments have somehow transformed into being criminal enterprise, when governments were always necessarily criminal enterprises. Similarly, with those who recognize that, but then promote the impossible solutions based upon somehow stopping that from being the case, which is as absurdly backwards as stopping human beings from operating as entropic pumps of energy flows, which then also presumes that it would be possible to stop human civilizations from being entropic pumps of energy flows.

Rather, the deeper sorts of intellectual scientific revolutions that we should go through require becoming much more critical of the language that we use to communicate with, and more critical about the philosophy of science that we presumed was correct. Actually, we were collectively brainwashed to believe in the biggest bullies' bullshit, which is as absurdly backwards as it could possibly be. However, due to the collective FAILURES of people to understand that, as reflected by the ways that the core of organized crime is surrounded by nothing which is publicly significant than layers of controlled opposition, there are no reasonable ways to doubt that the established debt slavery systems will continue to drive even worse debt insanities, which will provoke much worse death insanities. Therefore, to be more realistic about the foreseeable future, the development of new death control systems will emerge out of the context of crazy collapses into chaos, wherein the runaway death insanities provide the possible opportunities for new death controls to emerge out of that situation.

Of course, the about 99% FAILURE of the American People to want to understand anything that I have outlined above indicates that the foreseeable future for subsequent generations shall not too likely be catalyzed transformations towards enough people better understanding their political problems, in order to better resolve those problems. Rather, what I mostly expect is for the psychotic breakdowns of the previous systems of ENFORCED FRAUDS to give opportunities to some possible groups of controlled opposition to take advantage of that, to perhaps emerge as the new version of professional liars and immaculate hypocrites, who will be able to operate some new version of organized lies, operating robberies, who may mostly still get away with being some modified versions of still oxymoronic scientific dictatorship, due to social success still being based upon the best available professional liars and immaculate hypocrites, who were able to survive through those transformations, so that the new systems arise from some of the seeds of the old systems.

At the present time, it is extremely difficult to imagine how the human species could possibly reconcile progress in physical science by surpassing that with progress in political science. Rather, what mostly exists now is the core of organized crime, which gets away with spouting the bullshit about itself, such as how the banksters dominate the mass media, and the lives of everyone else who depend upon the established monetary system (which is dominated by the current ways that governments ENFORCE FRAUDS by privately controlled banks), while that core of organized crime has no publicly significant opposition that is not controlled by the ways that they think, which ways stay within the basic bullshit world view, as promoted by the biggest bullies for thousands of years, and as more and more scientifically promoted to brainwash the vast majority of people to believe in that kind of bullshit so completely that it mostly does not occur to them that they are doing that, and certainly almost never occurs to them that they are doing that in the most profoundly absurd and backward ways possible.

That is how and why it is possible for an author like Roberts to correctly point out the ways in which the government of the USA is transforming into being more blatantly based on organized crime ... HOWEVER, Roberts is not willing and able to go through deeper levels of intellectual scientific revolutions, in order to recognize how and why governments were always necessarily manifestations of organized crime. Therefore, as is typically the case, Roberts does not recognize how ironically he recommends that Americans should "face the facts," while he himself does not fully do so.

The whole history of Neolithic Civilizations was social pyramid systems based on being able to back up lies with violence, becoming more sophisticated systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, which currently manifest as the globalized electronic frauds of the banksters, were are backed up by the governments (that those banksters effectively control) having atomic bombs. Those are the astronomically amplified magnitudes of the currently existing combined money/murder systems. Therefore, it appears to be politically impossible at the present time to develop better governments, due to the degree that almost everyone is either a member of the core groups of organized crime, or members of the surrounding layers of groups of controlled opposition, both of which want to stay within the same overall bullshit frame of reference, because, so far, their lives have been socially successful by being professional liars and immaculate hypocrites.

Ironically, I doubt that someone like Roberts, or pretty well everyone else whose material is published on Zero Hedge is able and willing to recognize the degree to which they are actually controlled opposition. Indeed, even more ironically, as I have repeated before, even Cognitive Dissonance, when he previously stated on Zero Hedge: "The absolute best controlled opposition is one that doesn't know they are controlled." DOES NOT "GET IT" regarding the degree to which he too is controlled opposition, even while superficially attempting to recognize and struggle with that situation. (Indeed, of course, that includes me too, since I am still communicating using the English language, which was the natural language that most developed to express the biggest bullies' bullshit world view.)

Overall, I REPEAT, the deeper problems are due to progress in physical science, NOT being surpassed by progress in political science. Instead, while there EXIST globalized electronic frauds, backed by atomic bombs, practically nothing regarding the ways of thinking that made that science and those technologies possible has found any significant expression through political science, because political science would have to go through even more profound paradigm shifts within itself in order to do that.

The INTENSE PARADOXES continue to be the manifestation of the oxymoronic scientific dictatorship, that deliberately refuses to become any more genuinely scientific about itself. Therefore, the banksters have been able to pay for the best scientific brainwashing that money could buy, for generation after generation, in order to more and more brainwash most of the American People to believe in the banksters' bullshit world view. While there exist electronic frauds, backed by atomic bombs, practically nothing regarding the physical science paradigm shifts that made that possible have even the slightest degree of public appreciation within the realms of politics today, which are almost totally dominated by the biggest bullies' bullshit world view, despite that being as absurdly backwards as possible, while the controlled opposition groups, mostly in the form of old-fashioned religions and ideologies, continue to stay within that same bullshit world view, and adamantly refuse to change their perceptual paradigms regarding political problems.

However, I REPEAT, the issues we face are NOT that governments have transformed to become criminal enterprises, but that governments were always necessarily criminal enterprises, which had the power to legalized their own lies, and then back those lies up with legalized violence. Thereby, the best organized criminals, the international bankers, as the biggest gangsters, or the banksters, were able to apply the methods of organized crime through the political processes. Meanwhile, the only "opposition" that was allowed to be publicly significant was controlled, to basically stay within the same bullshit world view, which is what Roberts has done in his series of articles, as well as what is almost always presented in the content published on Zero Hedge.

The NEXT LEVEL of "the need to face the facts" is to recognize that the political economy is based upon ENFORCED FRAUDS, or systems of debt slavery backed by wars based on deceits. However, the NEXT LEVEL "the need to face the facts" is the that the only possible changes are to change the dynamic equilibria between the different systems of organized lies operating robberies, i.e., change those ENFORCED FRAUDS, in ways which CAN NOT STOP THOSE FROM STILL BEING ENFORCED FRAUDS, because of the degree to which money is necessarily measurement backed by murder.

For the American People, as well as the rest of the world's people, to stop being such dismal FAILURES would require them to become more competent citizens. However, at the present time they appear to be totally unable to do that, because they are unwilling to go through the profound paradigm shifts that it would take them to become more competent citizens inside of world where there exist globalized electronic frauds, backed by atomic bombs. The vast majority of the American People would not like to go through the severe cognitive dissonance that would be required, to not only recognize that "their" government was a criminal enterprise, but that it also must be, and that they too must necessarily be members of that organized crime gang. However, without that degree of perceptual paradigm shifts of the political problems, then enough of the American People could not become more competent citizens.

Somehow, most people continue to count on themselves never having to think about how and why progress was achieved in physical science, by going through series of profound paradigm shifts in the ways that we perceived the world. Most people continue to presume that it is not necessary for their perception of politics to go through profound paradigm shifts, that surpass those which have already been achieved in physical science. We continue to live in an oxymoronic scientific dictatorship, that employs science and technology to become better at being dishonest and violent, but does not apply science and technology to "face the facts" about that scientific dictatorship as a whole.

At the present time, technologies which have become trillions of times more capable and powerful are primarily used as special effects within the context of repeating the same old-fashioned, stupid social stories, such as promoted by the biggest bullies, and their surrounding controlled opposition groups. Ironically, especially when it comes to politics, that tends to manifest the most atavistic throwbacks to old-fashioned religions and ideologies being relied upon to propose bogus "solutions," despite that those kinds of social stories adamantly refuse to change their paradigms in light of the profound paradigms shifts which have been achieved in physical science.

The article above was another illustration of the ways that the typical reactionary revolutionaries, Black Sheeple, or controlled opposition groups, respond to recognizing the more and more blatant degrees to which there has been an accelerating "transformation of government into a criminal enterprise." THE PROBLEM IS THAT THEY CONTINUE TO STAY WITHIN THE SAME OLD-FASHIONED BULLSHIT-BASED FRAME OF REFERENCE, INSTEAD, AROUND AND AROUND WE GO, STUCK IN THE SAME DEEPENING RUTS, since they do NOT more fully "face the facts" regarding how and why the only realistic solutions to the real problems would require developing better organized crime. INSTEAD, they continue to promote the same dualities based upon false fundamental dichotomies, and the associate bogus "solutions" based upon impossible ideals ...

Given that overall situation, that there there almost nothing which is publicly significant than the core of organized crime, surrounded by controlled opposition groups, I see no reasonable hopes for the foreseeable material future of a civilization controlled by ENFORCED FRAUDS, since there is no publicly possible ways to develop better dynamic equilibria between the different systems of organized lies operating robberies, since the biggest forms of doing that were most able to get away with pretending that they are not doing that, which was facilitated by their controlled opposition promoting the opinions that nobody should do that, while actually everyone must be doing that.

Roberts' article above, to me, was another typical example of superficially correct analysis, which implies some bogus "solutions" because those are based upon the same superficiality. It is NOT good enough to recognize "transformation of government into a criminal enterprise," unless one goes through deeper levels of analysis regarding how and why that is what actually exists, and then, one should continue to be consistent with that deeper analysis when one turns to proposing genuine solutions to those problems, namely, I REPEAT THAT the only realistic resolutions to the real political problems requires the transformation of government into a better organized criminal enterprise, which ideally should be based upon enough citizens who are competent enough to understand that they are members of an organized crime gang, which should assert themselves to make sure that their country becomes better organized crime. 

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• 20151210 : A Critique of Piketty on the Normative Force of Wealth Inequality ( Dec 11, 2015 , Crooked Timber )
• 20151210 : A Critique of Piketty on the Normative Force of Wealth Inequality ( Dec 11, 2015 , Crooked Timber )
• 20151210 : Pandering to Plutocrats ( Dec 10, 2015 , Economist's View )
• 20151209 : The Politics behind Piketty ( December 7, 2015 , Crooked Timber )
• 20151209 : Are Windows and OS X malware ( May 26, 2015 , ITworld )
• 20151209 : How Hillary Clinton Abused Her State Department Role To Help Her Hedge Funder Son-In-Law Zero Hedge ( www.zerohedge.com )
• 20151208 : France's cowardly elite is to blame for the rise of Marine Le Pen ( www.theguardian.com )
• 20151208 : Nepotism and corruption on high levels of US government ( economistsview.typepad.com )
• 20151208 : The importance of the global financial cycle in creating boom and bust cycles in emerging markets ( economistsview.typepad.com )
• 20151207 : If you dont read a newspaper every day, you are uninformed. If you do, you are misinformed ( ourfiniteworld.com )
• 20151207 : Did Erdogan Commit Political Suicide Shahir ShahidSaless ( www.huffingtonpost.com )
• 20151206 : With allies like Turkey, who needs enemies ( www.dailykos.com )
• 20151206 : US elite strategy toward Russia is replica of UK strategy a century before ( russia-insider.com )
• 20151206 : More Planes Than Targets Why the Air War on ISIS Will Fail ( www.counterpunch.org )
• 20151206 : Public and Private Sector Payroll Jobs Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama ( hoocoodanode.org )
• 20151206 : CIA personnel and assets had the strongest motives to murder Kennedy ( www.nakedcapitalism.com )
• 20151206 : The USA is number one small arms manufacturer in the world ( peakoilbarrel.com )
• 20151204 : China vows to drive smart aleck lecturers from its universities ( The Guardian )
• 20151203 : Russia won't forget downed jet, Putin warns Turkey in annual address ( The Guardian )
• 20151203 : It's a pretty tough situation for Putin ( marknesop.wordpress.com )
• 20151203 : Who are those moderate rebels in Syria ( marknesop.wordpress.com )
• 20151203 : Germany Rebukes Its Own Intelligence Agency for Criticizing Saudi Policy ( The New York Times )
• 20151203 : Murder And Mayhem In The Middle East ( Dec 1, 2015 , Safehaven.com )
• 20151203 : ISIS Oil Plot Thickens Turkish MP Has Evidence Erdogans Son-In-Law Involved In Illegal Crude Trade ( Zero Hedge )
• 20151203 : The history of the Arab conquest of Byzantium is purposefully ignored ( economistsview.typepad.com )
• 20151203 : ISIS oil hub with 3000 parked oil trucks escaped detection by the USA and its eagle-eyed coalition ( marknesop.wordpress.com )
• 20151203 : Why did Turkey shoot down the Russian Soukhoï 24 ( www.voltairenet.org )
• 20151203 : Putin says Turkey 'will regret' shooting down of Russian bomber ( www.hurriyetdailynews.com )
• 20151203 : Tomgram Andrew Bacevich, An Invitation to Collective Suicide ( Dec 03, 2015 , TomDispatch )
• 20151202 : When it comes to Wall Street buying our democracy you just need to follow the money ( economistsview.typepad.com )
• 20151202 : When it comes to Wall Street buying our democracy you just need to follow the money ( economistsview.typepad.com )
• 20151202 : BOMBSHELL Ambush of Russian Bomber Was Guided by US Reconnaissance ( russia-insider.com )
• 20151202 : Russia Presents Detailed Evidence Of ISIS-Turkey Oil Trade ( Zero Hedge )
• 20151130 : The Spanish General could give the order to shoot down Russian su- ( Nov 30, 2015 )
• 20151130 : Paul Craig Roberts Rages At The Arrogance, Hubris, Stupidity Of The US Government ( Zero Hedge )
• 20151130 : Erdogan Says Will Resign If Oil Purchases From ISIS Proven After Putin Says Has More Proof ( Nov 30, 2015 , Zero Hedge )
• 20151130 : Is Balanced Growth Really the Answer ( Nov 30, 2015 , Economist's View )
• 20151129 : Former CIA Deputy Director Gives A Stunning Reason Why Obama Has Not Attacked ISIS Oil Infrastructure ( Zero Hedge )
• 20151129 : ANDREW NAPOLITANO What to be thankful for ( Nov 29, 2015 , Washington Times )
• 20151129 : Former CIA Deputy Director Gives A Stunning Reason Why Obama Has Not Attacked ISIS Oil Infrastructure ( Zero Hedge )
• 20151129 : Turkish militants kill russian pilot while he is decending ( yudenich.ru )
• 20151129 : Turkey hands over body of Russian pilot to Russia ( www.hurriyetdailynews.com )
• 20151129 : How ISIS is financed ( peakoilbarrel.com )
• 20151129 : Top U.S. Air Defense Commander Turkey's Shootdown of Russian Jet "Had to Be PRE-PLANNED" ( Zero Hedge )
• 20151128 : Most of What You Learned in Econ 101 Is Wrong ( Bloomberg View )
• 20151128 : Russias Intervention in Syria and What Washington Should Do ( Nov 28, 2015 , Foreign Affairs )
• 20151128 : An Invisible US Hand Leading to War Turkey's Downing of a Russian Jet was an Act of Madness ( www.counterpunch.org )
• 20151128 : Violence Erupts In Turkey After Prominent Lawyer Is Assassinated On Live TV ( Zero Hedge )
• 20151128 : Remaking the Middle East: How the US Grew Tired and Less Relevant ( November 14, 2015 , original.antiwar.com )
• 20151128 : Turkey's Erdogan Expresses Regret Over Russian Plane Downing ( www.huffingtonpost.com )
• 20151128 : ISIS Oil Trade Full Frontal Raqqas Rockefellers, Bilal Erdogan, KRG Crude, And The Israel Connection ( Zero Hedge )
• 20151128 : John Helmer The Classic Rules for Combatting Turkish Aggression ( naked capitalism )
• 20151128 : Who is buying ISILs oil ( Al Jazeera English )
• 20151128 : Jonathan Marshall ( Nov 27, 2015 , The Scott Horton Show )
• 20151128 : Shooting down the Russian jet a symptom of Turkey's central malaise - GÜVEN SAK ( www.hurriyetdailynews.com )
• 20151128 : Syria intervention plan fueled by oil interests, not chemical weapon concern ( peakoilbarrel.com )
• 20151128 : Experts Turkey might be tried for financing ISIL, arms trafficking ( www.todayszaman.com )
• 20151128 : The Iraqi Pissing Match - John Kiriakou on RAI (4-10) ( therealnews.com )
• 20151128 : The Perils of Endless War - Antiwar.com ( November 28, 2015 , Antiwar.com )
• 20151127 : Russia imposes sanctions on Turkey over downed plane ( www.theguardian.com )
• 20151127 : Russia continues to block Turkish goods amid lingering jet crisis ( www.todayszaman.com )
• 20151127 : James Winnefeld, the deputy chief of General Staff of the US military, was in Ankara when the incident occurred ( marknesop.wordpress.com )
• 20151127 : Syrian Turkmen commander who killed Russian pilot turns out to be Turkish ultranationalist ( RT News )
• 20151127 : Turkish F-16 attacked Russian Su-24 without warning, both were above Syria – commander ( Nov 27 , 2015 , RT News )
• 20151127 : Putin Hard to imagine Turkish gov't unaware of oil supplies from ISIL ( www.todayszaman.com )
• 20151127 : Russian economic retaliation rains down on Turkey as tension lingers ( www.todayszaman.com )
• 20151127 : Kremlin Cutting Economic Links With the Turks ( Nov 27, 2015 , www.nytimes.com )
• 20151127 : Putin Accuses Obama Of Leaking Flight Details To Turkey ( www.zerohedge.com )
• 20151127 : Turkeys attack on Russian jet is foreign policy nightmare Austrian ex-chancellor ( RT - SophieCo )
• 20151127 : If these other foreign goupes searching for pilot include Americans and that might be the reason that after the plane was shot down, Russia was slapped with additional sanctions ( marknesop.wordpress.com )
• 20151127 : Reckless Turkey ( RT CrossTalk )
• 20151127 : Turkish President Erdo an warns Russia not to play with fire ( www.hurriyetdailynews.com )
• 20151127 : Turkish minister says trade retaliation by Russia will hurt its farmers ( www.hurriyetdailynews.com )
• 20151127 : Suspiciously well-equipped group of militants was looking for a catapult of the Navigator the fallen in Syria bomber su-24, ( www.gazeta.ru )
• 20151127 : Guest Post Why Is The US Hanging Turkey Out To Dry ( Zero Hedge )
• 20151127 : Who's-who--Syria's-terror-list ( Al-Ahram Weekly )
• 20151127 : Downing of Russian Jet Over Turkey was Inevitable ( Al Jazeera America )
• 20151127 : Turkey has spent years allowing jihadist groups to flourish - so beware its real reasons for shooting down a Russian plane ( independent.co.uk )
• 20151127 : President Erdogan hits out at 'shameful' accusations Turks profit from Isis ( independent.co.uk )
• 20151127 : We need an asymmetrical responce ( izvestia.ru )
• 20151126 : Russian Foreign Ministry recommended Russian not to fly to Turkey ( svpressa.ru )
• 20151126 : Russia targets Turkish economy in retaliation for downing of warplane ( The Washington Post )
• 20151126 : Why did it take Turkey just 17 seconds to shoot down Russian jet? ( www.theguardian.com )
• 20151126 : Russia says 'destroyed' Syria rebels in area where jet brought down News , Middle East ( THE DAILY STAR )
• 20151126 : Turkey would have acted differently if it had known jet was Russian Erdogan News , Middle East ( dailystar.com.lb )
• 20151126 : Turkey and Russia on collision course in Syria ( Al Arabiya News )
• 20151126 : France's Hollande Calls for Anti-isil Coalition ( Al Jazeera America )
• 20151126 : Putin: Turkey 'knew downed fighter jet was Russian' ( www.bbc.com )
• 20151126 : The U.S. Is the Most Unequal Developed Economy Outside Southern Europe ( Bloomberg Business )
• 20151126 : Argentine Election a Setback, But Not Likely to Reverse Latin America's 21st Century Trend ( cepr.net )
• 20151126 : Meet The Man Who Funds ISIS Bilal Erdogan, The Son Of Turkey's President ( Nov 26, 2015 , Zero Hedge )
• 20151126 : The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity Who Is Protecting ISIS And Why ( ronpaulinstitute.org )
• 20151126 : Syrian Rebels Make Intensive Use of US Missiles ( Nov 26, 2015 , Antiwar.com )
• 20151126 : Turkey won't apologize for downing Russian jet Erdo an ( www.hurriyetdailynews.com )
• 20151125 : Is Vladimir Putin right to label Turkey accomplices of terrorists ? ( www.theguardian.com )
• 20151125 : Turkish military releases recording of warning to Russian jet ( www.theguardian.com )
• 20151125 : The shooting down of a Russian jet tangles the diplomatic web still further ( www.theguardian.com )
• 20151125 : Russian jet incident planned, Turkish opposition member says ( www.hurriyetdailynews.com )
• 20151125 : Poking the 'Russian Bear' comes at a cost ( www.hurriyetdailynews.com )
• 20151125 : Airplane crisis raising questions about future of close economic, trade ties between Russia and Turkey ( www.hurriyetdailynews.com )
• 20151125 : Russian nationalists attack Turkish Embassy in Moscow ( www.hurriyetdailynews.com )
• 20151125 : Russia and Turkey refuse to back down News , Middle East ( THE DAILY STAR )
• 20151125 : Downing of Russian plane reveals potential for more conflict ( Nov 25, 2015 , The Washington Post )
• 20151125 : The motive How Russias enemies benefit from the downing of Su-24 ( Fort Russ )
• 20151125 : Sultan Erdogans War on Russia ( sputniknews.com )
• 20151125 : Russia accuses Turkey of hypocrisy after Erdogan admits airspace violation does not justify attack ( independent.co.uk )
• 20151125 : Washington using Turkey as a tool to destabilize Russia ( RT Op-Edge )
• 20151125 : Turkish jets gave us no warning before shooting ( www.rt.com )
• 20151125 : NATO Is Harboring ISIS, And Heres The Evidence ( www.zerohedge.com )
• 20151125 : Turkeys Shootdown of Russian Jet What You Need to Know ( naked capitalism )
• 20151125 : Russian foreign minster calls plane downing 'planned provocation' ( www.washingtonpost.com )
• 20151125 : An Invisible US Hand Leading to War Turkey's Downing of a Russian Jet was an Act of Madness ( www.counterpunch.org )
• 20151125 : 17 Seconds That Changed The World - Leaked Letter Exposes Turkeys Hair-Trigger Reality ( Zero Hedge )
• 20151125 : Russia to deploy S-400 air defense system in Hmeimim airbase ( sana.sy )
• 20151125 : Alarm bells toll for Turkish tourism sector over Russia crisis ( www.hurriyetdailynews.com )
• 20151125 : Why it was done? The simple answer is to put pressure on Russia to force it to withdraw from Syria ( www.kp.ru )
• 20151125 : Turkey's Stab in the Back ( Nov 25, 2015 Antiwar.com )
• 20151125 : Why Did Turkey Attack a Russian Plane ( The American Conservative )
• 20151124 : Nato meets as Russia confirms one of two pilots dead after jet shot down - live updates ( www.theguardian.com )
• 20151124 : Russo-Syrian Forces Close to Cutting Off ISILs Supply Routes From Turkey ( sputniknews.com )
• 20151124 : Putin condemns Turkey after Russian warplane downed near Syria border ( www.theguardian.com )
• 20151124 : The Russians had it coming to them ( Nov 24, 2015 , Telegraph )
• 20151124 : Sultan Erdogan has been served notice ( marknesop.wordpress.com )
• 20151124 : Russian jet downed over Syria, Putin This is a stab in the back by terrorism backers… Lavrov cancels Turkey visit Syrian Ara ( sana.sy )
• 20151124 : Turkey Shoots Down Russian Warplane Near Syrian Border ( The New York Times )
• 20151124 : We shot the pilots while they were landing with parachutes ( hurriyetdailynews.com )
• 20151124 : The Two Versions Of The Latakia Plane Incident ( M of A )
• 20151124 : Putin's response ( marknesop.wordpress.com )
• 20151124 : PM Turkey has right to take all kinds of measures ( www.turkishpress.com )
• 20151123 : Who Turned My Blue State Red? ( economistsview.typepad.com )
• 20151123 : The Pentagon expands an inquiry into Central Command over allegations that officials overstated the progress of airstrikes against the Islamic State ( www.nytimes.com )
• 20151123 : Putin's crushing strategy for Syria ( bostonglobe.com )
• 20151122 : The Political Aftermath of Financial Crises Going to Extremes ( Nov 22, 2015 , Economist's View )
• 20151121 : The REALLY ANNOYING Don't-Wanna-Subsidize-Wealthy-Kids'-College-Tuition Canard ( November 20, 2015 , naked capitalism )
• 20151116 : Bankrupt British Empire Keeps Pushing To Overthrow Putin ( January 1, 2012 , http://schillerinstitute.org/russia/2012/0122_overthrow_putin.html )
• 20151115 : The New Brand of Authoritarianism ( economistsview.typepad.com )
• 20151115 : Nomi Prins Wall Street, the Imperial Presidency, Political Corruption, and Crony Capitalism ( Jesse's Café Américain )
• 20151115 : Paris attacks Andrew J. Bacevich A war the West cannot win ( Nov 14, 2015 , The Boston Globe )
• 20151115 : State Dept. not saying if Hillary Clinton signed separation agreement ( finance.yahoo.com )
• 20151114 : The Regime Change Problem in American Politics ( Nov 13, 2015 , The New York Times )
• 20151112 : The Emperor Has No Clothes and Nobody Cares ( www.howtogeek.com )
• 20151111 : Friction is Now Between Global Financial Elite and the Rest of Us ( Economist's View )
• 20151107 : Russia and China Victory-by-default ( Nov 07, 2015 , Zero Hedge )
• 20151106 : Facebook Revenue Surges 41%, as Mobile Advertising and Users Keep Growing ( Nov 06, 2015 , The New York Time )
• 20151106 : The C word is a Hidden Tax on Growth ( Nov 05, 2015 , Economist's View )
• 20151106 : How Firefox's New Private Mode Trumps Chrome's Incognito ( 11/05/15 , Observer )
• 20151106 : Egypt's Dismissal of Terrorism in Russian Plane Crash Creates a Rift ( The New York Times )
• 20151106 : If Journalism Were Run Like Science, Would It Be More Believable? ( 10/21/15 , Observer )
• 20151106 : Wikileaks' Hacked Stratfor Emails Shed Light on Feds Using License Plate Readers ( Oct 01, 2015 , observer.com )
• 20151106 : An Entire City Trolled NSA Spies Using an Art Project ( observer.com )
• 20151106 : Health Inequality ( Nov 06, 2015 , Economist's View )
• 20151106 : Putin Suspends Flights To Egypt As World Blames ISIS For Plane Crash ( Nov 06, 2015 , Zero Hedge )
• 20151105 : This 19th-Century Invention Could Keep You From Being Hacked ( observer.com )
• 20151104 : Surveillance Q A: what web data is affected – and how to foil the snoopers ( The Guardian )
• 20151104 : Neoliberalism neofashism and feudalism ( www.nakedcapitalism.com )
• 20151104 : Mussolini-Style Corporatism, aka Fascism, on the Rise in the US ( November 3, 2015 , nakedcapitalism.com )
• 20151102 : Frankenstein capitalism is sucking the life from Americas soul by Paul B. Farrell ( Oct 31, 2015 , finance.yahoo.com )
• 20151102 : Dilemmas of Domination The Unmaking of the American Empire ( American Empire Project )
• 20151102 : The Fatal Blindness of Unrealistic Expectations ( Peak Prosperity )
• 20151102 : Engineering of consent ( Oct 30, 2015 , Peak Oil Barrel )
• 20151101 : Erdogan's party enjoys decisive election victory in Turkey ( The Washington Post )
• 20151101 : The Rise and Decline of the Turkish "Deep State": The Ergenekon Case ( derinsular.com )
• 20151101 : Anatomy of the Deep State ( February 21, 2014 , billmoyers.com )
• 20151101 : Why has American national security policy changed so little from the Bush administration to the Obama ( January 20, 2015 , Homeland Security Watch )
• 20151031 : Another Black Swan? Turkey Holds Snap Elections Amid NATO-Backed Civil War ( zerohedge.com )
• 20151031 : All Knew That This Interest Was Somehow The Cause of the War ( naked capitalism )
• 20151031 : Congresswoman Calls US Effort To Oust Assad Illegal, Accuses CIA Of Backing Terroists ( Oct 31, 2015 , Zero Hedge )
• 20151030 : Russia Takes Over The Mid-East Moscow Gets Green Light For Strikes In Iraq, Sets Up Alliance With Jordan ( Oct 24, 2015 , Zero Hedge )
• 20151029 : Sheldon Wolins the reason I began drinking coffee ( Oct 28, 2015 , coreyrobin.com )
• 20151028 : US Ground Troops In Syria Is Illegal, Big Mistake, Russia Warns Obama Of Unpredictable Consequences ( Zero Hedge )
• 20151028 : Guest Post Inequality Undermines Democracy ( Zero Hedge )
• 20151028 : How the U.S. Wrecked the Middle East ( October 22, 2015 , The American Conservative )
• 20151028 : The Senate, ignorant on cybersecurity, just passed a bill about it anyway ( www.theguardian.com )
• 20151024 : The best lesson China could teach Europe: how to play the long game ( Oct 23, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20151024 : Turkish Parliament Members Turkey Provided Chemical Weapons for Syrian Terrorist Attack ( Oct 24, 2015 , Zero Hedge )
• 20151024 : Snowden NSA, GCHQ Using Your Phone to Spy on Others (and You) ( Oct 15, 2015 , The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity )
• 20151023 : Middle Class Shrinks Further as More Fall Out Instead of Climbing Up ( JAN. 25, 2015 , The New York Times )
• 20151023 : The Devils Chessboard Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of Americas Secret Government ( Amazon )
• 20151023 : Putin Just Warned Global War Is Increasingly More Likely Heres Why ( www.zerohedge.com )
• 20151022 : Why the U.S. Is Selling Saudi Arabia $13 Billion Worth of New Weapons ( finance.yahoo.com )
• 20151022 : The Vineyard of the Saker Putin's speech at the Valdai Club - full transcript ( vineyardsaker.blogspot.com )
• 20151022 : Energy Crash - 97% of Fracking Now Operating at a Loss at Current Oil Prices ( January 6, 2015 , Alternet )
• 20151021 : The New Cold War and the Death of the Discourse by Justin Raimondo ( Oct 19, 2015 , Antiwar.com )
• 20151021 : An invitation to Putin regarding Ukraine Do the maths ( Oct 21, 2015 , FT Alphaville )
• 20151021 : Andrew Bacevich A Decade of War ( May 15, 2012 , YouTube )
• 20151021 : The End of American Exceptionalism with Andrew J. Bacevich - November 7, 2013 ( Nov 7, 2003 , YouTube )
• 20151021 : CIA chief's emails exposed Key things we learned from WikiLeaks' Brennan dump ( Oct 21, 2015 , RT USA )
• 20151021 : The CIA director was hacked by a 13-year-old, but he still wants your data ( www.theguardian.com )
• 20151021 : Son of two Australian MH17 victims says Ukraine should have closed airspace ( www.theguardian.com )
• 20151019 : The Banksters and American Foreign Policy by Justin Raimondo ( July 15, 2011 , Antiwar.com )
• 20151019 : An alliance of Russian liberasts Western pundits and putinslivsiks ( marknesop.wordpress.com )
• 20151019 : John Helmer US Strategy In The Middle East Is Dying, Along With Its Authors, Carter And Brzezinski; Putin, Al-Assad Get To Dan ( www.nakedcapitalism.com )
• 20151019 : Syrian Gambit: US at Pains to Create 'Another Afghanistan' for Russia ( Oct 18, 2015 , sputniknews.com )
• 20151019 : After failing to set new Afghanistan for Russia in Ukraine ( marknesop.wordpress.com )
• 20151018 : US and Russia Should Form Coordinated Coalition in Syria – Stephen Cohen ( sputniknews.com )
• 20151018 : Irrational Unrequited Love of Ukrainians for the West ( Oct 15, 2015 , Fort Russ )
• 20151018 : A Strong Press is the Best Defense Against Crony Capitalism ( Oct 18, 2015 , Economist's View )
• 20151018 : MH17 downed by outdated BUK missile fired from Kiev-controlled area – Defense system manufacturer ( Oct 13, 2015 , RT News )
• 20151018 : Zaroshchenske vs Snizhne as a launch point: early controversy ( July 23, 2014 , Dances With Bears )
• 20151017 : Assad thinks that an independent state working for the interests of people is better then the state working for the interests of the West ( marknesop.wordpress.com )
• 20151017 : Russia's 'Import Substitution' Isn't Working ( Oct 15, 2015 , http://www.forbes.com/sites/markadomanis/2015/10/15/russias-import-substitution-isnt-working/ )
• 20151016 : Just three pieces of shrapnel supposedly points to BUK by John Helmer ( johnhelmer.net )
• 20151016 : "Almaz-Antey" have accused the Netherlands of falsifying the map of where the Boeing crashed ( www.kp.ru )
• 20151016 : Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 most likely it was shot down from ground Discussion ( Oct 16, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20151016 : ISIS on verge of defeat as Russian jets cut off arms supplies ( World News Daily Express )
• 20151016 : MH17 field Experiment done by Almaz-Antey ( The Vineyard of the Saker )
• 20151014 : I do not take my mandate from the European people ( Oct 13, 2013 , naked capitalism )
• 20151014 : Security farce at Datto Inc that held Hillary Clintons emails revealed by Louise Boyle & Daniel Bates ( Oct 13, 2015 , Daily Mail Online )
• 20151014 : T ( Oct 10, 2015 , nakedcapitalism.com/ )
• 20151014 : In Australia the news the Dutch investigation last night was immediately followed with coverage of the Russian points refuting some of Dutch claims ( Jun 16, 2003 , www.nakedcapitalism.com )
• 20151014 : Russia states that their military no longer use older type of BUK missile which supposly hit MH17 ( Oct 13, 2015 , Zero Hedge )
• 20151014 : Putin Calls US and Allies Oatmeal Heads On Syria ( Oct 13, 2015 , Zero Hedge )
• 20151013 : Hillary Clintons private server was open to low-skilled-hackers ( Daily Mail Online )
• 20151013 : MH17 Report Reveals Shocking Details of Jet's Last Moments ( Oct 13, 2015 , www.nbcnews.com )
• 20151013 : What's a Buk What to Know About the Cold War Missile That Downed MH17 ( Oct 13, 2015 ] NBC News )
• 20151013 : A Critique of Crisis Theory ( A Critique of Crisis Theory, )
• 20151013 : MH17 Downed by Missile Fired from Kiev-Controlled Territory – BUK Manufacturer ( MH17 Downed by Missile Fired from Kiev-Controlled Territory – BUK Manufacturer, Oct 13, 2015 )
• 20151013 : What happened to Carlos the air traffic controller who sent word about military interference at ATC ( Jun 16, 2003 , Zero Hedge )
• 20151013 : Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 Most Likely Hit by Russian-Made Missile, Inquiry Says ( The New York Times )
• 20151013 : Flight MH17 downed by Russian-built missile, Dutch investigators say ( The Guardian )
• 20151012 : MH17 What we know on eve of Dutch Safety Board report ( Oct 12, 2015 , RT News )
• 20151011 : What Ambulance-Chasing Lawyers Reveal About the MH17 Shoot-Down ( www.nakedcapitalism.com )
• 20151011 : Russias Move In Syria Threatens Energy Deals With Turkey ( Russia's Move In Syria Threatens Energy Deals With Turkey, Oct 11, 2015 )
• 20151010 : Obama Launches A Proxy War On Russia ( www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20151010 : Three main reasons for which NATO is not attacking Russia right now ( the unbalanced evolution of homo sapiens )
• 20151010 : Forums and bulleting board users are watched by GCHQ ( Oct 10, 2015 , marknesop.wordpress.com )
• 20151010 : Three main reasons for which NATO is not attacking Russia right now ( the unbalanced evolution of homo sapiens )
• 20151009 : Dutch media sue govt, demand it release full info on MH17 crash ( Oct 09, 2015 , RT News )
• 20151009 : Russias Syria gambit could be a game changer – but only if it hastens transition ( Oct 05, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20151009 : A proxy cold war in Syria ( Oct 07, 2015 , Peak Prosperity )
• 20151007 : US Ruling Circles Split On Use of Jihadists in Syria ( Oct 07, 2015 , therealnews.com )
• 20151007 : Russia Claims ISIS Now On The Ropes As Fighters Desert After 60 Airstrikes In 72 Hours ( Oct 07, 2015 , Zero Hedge )
• 20151007 : Syria SITREP October 07th 2015 by John Rambo ( October 07, 2015 , The Vineyard of the Saker )
• 20151006 : Turkey cannot endure Russian violation of airspace, president says ( Oct 06, 2015 , www.theguardian.com )
• 20151005 : An Up Close And Personal Look At The Russian Firepower Deployed In Syria ( Oct 05, 2015 , Zero Hedge )
• 20151005 : Major Interview (38 questions!) of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to the Iranian Khabar TV channel ( Oct 05, 2015 , The Vineyard of the Sake )
• 20151004 : Wake-up call on Syrian army weakness prompted Russian intervention ( Oct 01, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20151004 : Saudis Mull Launch Of Regional War As Russia Pounds Targets In Syria For Fourth Day ( Oct 04, 2015 , www.zerohedge.com )
• 20151004 : Gulf states plan military response as Putin raises the stakes in Syria ( Oct 04, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20151004 : Syria and the Danger of Moral Imperialism ( Oct 02, 2015 , The American Conservative )
• 20151004 : Finally some clarity about the Russian plans about Syria ( Oct 04, 2015 , The Vineyard of the Saker )
• 20151004 : Syria and the Danger of Moral Imperialism ( Oct 02, 2015 , The American Conservative )
• 20151003 : Moscow and Kiev in positive mood over talks to end east Ukraine conflict ( Oct 02, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20151003 : Fascism and Neoconservative Republicans ( March 25, 2010 , Populist Daily )
• 20151003 : Lawrence Wilkerson The Empire is in Deep, Deep Trouble ( Oct 03, 2015 , naked capitalism )
• 20151003 : The Athens Affair shows why we need encryption without backdoors ( Sep 30. 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20151003 : Fascism and Neoconservative Republicans ( March 25, 2010 , Populist Daily )
• 20151003 : Obama says Russian strategy in Syria is 'recipe for disaster' ( Oct 03, 2015 , www.theguardian.com )
• 20151003 : Lawrence Wilkerson The Empire is in Deep, Deep Trouble ( Oct 03, 2015 , naked capitalism )
• 20151003 : Putin Checkmates Obama On New World Order WWIII ( Oct 03, 2015 , YouTube )
• 20151003 : The Athens Affair shows why we need encryption without backdoors ( Sep 30. 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20151002 : The pretense that it was a Russian invasion in Donetsk is exactly that, a pretense. ( Oct 02, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20151002 : This is a War – pure and simple. The Global Informational War. ( This is a War – pure and simple. The Global Informational War. , Oct 02, 2015 )
• 20150930 : Obama Snubbed as Xi, Putin Stay at Chinese Owned Waldorf ( Sep 30, 2015 , Zero Hedge )
• 20150928 : The Only Two Things That Matter: Why I'm Supporting Larry Lessig ( Sep 28, 2015 , baselinescenario.com )
• 20150928 : Obama America Has Few4 Economic Interests In Ukraine... And This Very Big One ( Sep 28, 2015 , Zero Hedge )
• 20150928 : What Oil Investors 4Can Learn From Gold by Michael McDonald ( OilPrice.com )
• 20150928 : Kunstler Rages Perhaps America Has Gotten What It Deserves ( Sep 28, 2015 , Zero Hedge )
• 20150927 : US On The Ropes China To Join Russian Military In Syria While Iraq Strikes Intel Deal With Moscow, Tehran ( Sep 27, 2015 , Zero Hedge )
• 20150927 : Since st least 2009 GCHQ has targeted a range of popular websites as part of an effort to covertly collect cookies on a massive scale ( Sep 27, 2015 , marknesop.wordpress.com )
• 20150927 : The moral universe of the corporate killers ( Sep 27, 2015 , www.samefacts.com )
• 20150927 : How America built its empire The real history of American foreign policy that the media won't tell you ( Sep 27, 2015 , www.salon.com )
• 20150927 : Ukraine was downgraded to default ( Sep 27, 2015 , marknesop.wordpress.com )
• 20150927 : Argentina vs vulture funds ( Sep 27, 2015 , marknesop.wordpress.com )
• 20150927 : Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for Russian Foreign Ministry, grades Nulands paper ( September 16, 2015 , Fort Russ/Komsomolskaya Pravda )
• 20150927 : Putin Russia Supports Legitimate Governments, Unlike US ( Sep 27, 2015 , www.newsmax.com )
• 20150927 : 60 Minutes of Putin Quotes From Charlie Rose Interview ( Sep 27, 2015 , www.sputniknews.com )
• 20150927 : Since st least 2009 GCHQ has targeted a range of popular websites as part of an effort to covertly collect cookies on a massive scale ( Sep 27, 2015 , marknesop.wordpress.com )
• 20150927 : If Putin wants to dest4ruct Ukraine he got a lot of competition from the EU, US and NATO ( Sep 27, 2015 , marknesop.wordpress.com )
• 20150927 : ClubOrlov Americas Latest Foreign Policy Fiascos, Part I ( Sep 27, 2015 , cluborlov.blogspot.ca )
• 20150927 : On the curious bigotry and racism of #Russias pro-Western liberals ( Sep 27, 2015 , www.facebook.com )
• 20150927 : BBC anti-russian propaganda -- WWII German women rape story ( Sep 27, 2015 , marknesop.wordpress.com )
• 20150927 : Damage inflicted on the Soviet Union by delay of the invasion of France ( Sep 27, 2015 , marknesop.wordpress.com )
• 20150927 : Meet The Man Who Prevented World War III ( Sep 27, 2015 , Zero Hedge )
• 20150927 : The moral universe of the corporate killers ( Sep 27, 2015 , www.samefacts.com )
• 20150927 : How America built its empire The real history of American foreign policy that the media won't tell you ( Sep 27, 2015 , www.salon.com )
• 20150927 : Ukraine was downgraded to default ( Sep 27, 2015 , marknesop.wordpress.com )
• 20150927 : Argentina vs vulture funds ( Sep 27, 2015 , marknesop.wordpress.com )
• 20150927 : Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for Russian Foreign Ministry, grades Nulands paper ( September 16, 2015 , Fort Russ/Komsomolskaya Pravda )
• 20150926 : Full text of Pope Francis speech before Congress ( Sep 26, 2015 , UPI.com )
• 20150926 : U.S. Billionaires Political Power Index ( Sep 26, 2015 , Brookings Institution )
• 20150926 : John Boehner left because Republicans true faith is incompatible with governing ( Sep 25, 2015 , theguardian.com )
• 20150926 : Phone Passwords Protected By 5th Amendment, Says Federal Court ( Sep 26, 2015 , yro.slashdot.org )
• 20150926 : NSA Director Admits that Sharing Encryption Keys With the Government Leaves Us Vulnerable to Bad Guys ( Sep 26, 2015 , www.zerohedge.com )
• 20150926 : Standing Before Congress, Pope Francis Calls Out the Industry of Death ( Sep 26, 2015 , original.antiwar.com )
• 20150926 : US and China back off internet arms race but Obama leaves sanctions on the table ( Sep 25, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150926 : Phone Passwords Protected By 5th Amendment, Says Federal Court ( Sep 26, 2015 , yro.slashdot.org )
• 20150926 : NSA Director Admits that Sharing Encryption Keys With the Government Leaves Us Vulnerable to Bad Guys ( Sep 26, 2015 , www.zerohedge.com )
• 20150926 : Putin and Xi rock da house4 ( Sep 26, 2015 , Asia Times )
• 20150926 : Standing Before Congress, Pope Francis Calls Out the Industry of Death ( Sep 26, 2015 , original.antiwar.com )
• 20150926 : British Think Tank Complains Russia Might Harm al-Qaeda in Syria ( Sep 26, 2015 , news.antiwar.com )
• 20150926 : The City Of London Has Turned Britain Into A Civilized Mafia State ( Sep 10, 2015 , Zero Hedge )
• 20150926 : US and China back off internet arms race but Obama leaves sanctions on the table ( Sep 25, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150925 : Why Inequality Matters ( Sep 25, 2015 , www.gatesnotes.com )
• 20150924 : Don Quijones: Uruguay Does Unthinkable, Rejects TISA and Global Corporatocracy ( Sep 24, 2015 , www.nakedcapitalism.com )
• 20150924 : Michael Hudson – Episode 19 ( Sep 24, 2015 , store.counterpunch.org )
• 20150924 : Forget The New World Order, Here is Who Really Runs The World ( Sep 24, 2015 , TheAntiMedia.org, )
• 20150924 : Michael Hudson – Episode 19 ( Sep 24, 2015 , store.counterpunch.org )
• 20150924 : Forget The New World Order, Here is Who Really Runs The World ( Sep 24, 2015 , TheAntiMedia.org, )
• 20150921 : Is Everything Carly Fiorina Says a Lie, Including "And" and "The"? ( September 21, 2015 , The naked capitalism )
• 20150921 : Is Everything Carly Fiorina Says a Lie, Including "And" and "The"? ( September 21, 2015 , The naked capitalism )
• 20150920 : The History of Witchhunts and Their Relevance to the Present Day ( Sep 20, 2015 , naked capitalism )
• 20150920 : Imperialism on the March: Africa, Syria, and Beyond ( Sep 20, 2015 , stopimperialism.org )
• 20150920 : Deep State America ( Deep State America, Sep 20, 2015 )
• 20150920 : The History of Witchhunts and Their Relevance to the Present Day ( Sep 20, 2015 , naked capitalism )
• 20150920 : Imperialism on the March: Africa, Syria, and Beyond ( Sep 20, 2015 , stopimperialism.org )
• 20150920 : Deep State America ( Deep State America, Sep 20, 2015 )
• 20150919 : Disability Claims are not Skyrocketing ( Sep 09, 2015 , Economist's View )
• 20150919 : Unemployment Insurance and Progressive Taxation as Automatic Stabilizers ( Sep 19, 2015 , Economist's View )
• 20150919 : Greece awaits outcome of Alexis Tsipras gamble: 'We have all aged' ( Sep 19, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150919 : The Typical Male U.S. Worker Earned Less in 2014 Than in 1973 ( 'The Typical Male U.S. Worker Earned Less in 2014 Than in 1973', )
• 20150919 : Unemployment Insurance and Progressive Taxation as Automatic Stabilizers ( Sep 19, 2015 , Economist's View )
• 20150919 : Greece awaits outcome of Alexis Tsipras gamble: 'We have all aged' ( Sep 19, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150919 : The Typical Male U.S. Worker Earned Less in 2014 Than in 1973 ( 'The Typical Male U.S. Worker Earned Less in 2014 Than in 1973', )
• 20150919 : John Helmer MH17 – The Lie to End All Truths, and New Evidence ( Sep 19, 2015 , naked capitalism )
• 20150919 : Russia Says It May Send Troops Into Combat In Syria As A d Netanyahu Heads To Moscow ( Sep 19, 2015 , Zero Hedge )
• 20150918 : Ukranian official finds wrong kind of corruption, setup and arrested for corruption ( Ukranian official finds wrong kind of corruption, setup and arrested for corruption , Sep 18, 2015 )
• 20150918 : Speech of Vladimir Putin before the Collective Security Treaty Organisation's Collective Security Council in Dushanbe ( Speech of Vladimir Putin before the Collective Security Treaty Organisation's Collective Security Council in Dushanbe, Sep 18, 2015 )
• 20150918 : The Weaponization of Ignorance: the West's Go-To Experts ( The Weaponization of Ignorance: the West's Go-To Experts, Sep 18, 2015 )
• 20150918 : U.S. Begins Military Talks With Russia on Syria ( Sep 18, 2015 , The New York Times )
• 20150918 : Assad Must Go No, American Arrogance Must Go! by Andrew Korybko ( Assad Must Go No, American Arrogance Must Go!, Sep 18, 2015 )
• 20150918 : Ukranian official finds wrong kind of corruption, setup and arrested for corruption ( Ukranian official finds wrong kind of corruption, setup and arrested for corruption , Sep 18, 2015 )
• 20150918 : Coalition aircraft may find themselves providing close air support to New Syrian Forces embedded with a Free Syrian Army unit that Russian aircraft are targeting ( Coalition aircraft may find themselves providing close air support to New Syrian Forces embedded with a Free Syrian Army unit that Russian aircraft are targeting, Sep 18, 2015 )
• 20150918 : Putin did not speak to Elton John ( Putin did not speak to Elton John, Sep 18, 2015 )
• 20150918 : Robert Parry: Who's to Blame for Syria Mess? Putin! ( Robert Parry: Who's to Blame for Syria Mess? Putin!, Sep 18, 2015 )
• 20150918 : September 15, 2015 at 9:45 am ( September 15, 2015 at 9:45 am, )
• 20150918 : Speech of Vladimir Putin before the Collective Security Treaty Organisation's Collective Security Council in Dushanbe ( Speech of Vladimir Putin before the Collective Security Treaty Organisation's Collective Security Council in Dushanbe, Sep 18, 2015 )
• 20150918 : Poroshenko is deliberately overpricing the company so it won't sell ( Poroshenko is deliberately overpricing the company so it won't sell, Sep 18, 2015 )
• 20150918 : Russian Insider article concerning the ever truthful and impartial BBC ( Russian Insider article concerning the ever truthful and impartial BBC, Sep 18, 2015 )
• 20150918 : Popular Russian pranksters claim responsibility for calling Elton John ( Popular Russian pranksters claim responsibility for calling Elton John, Sep 18, 2015 )
• 20150918 : Syria: The (Russian Air) Cavalry Is Coming ( Syria: The (Russian Air) Cavalry Is Coming, Sep 18, 2015 )
• 20150918 : Putin Accuses World Of Using Terrorist Groups To Destabilize Governments ( Sep 16, 2015 , Zero Hedge )
• 20150916 : Is This Americas Biggest Problem... And Why It Wasnt Always Like This ( Is This America's Biggest Problem... And Why It Wasn't Always Like This, Sep 16, 2015 )
• 20150916 : Oil war Is Saudi Arabia walking into its own trap ( Sep 16, 2015 , Asia Times )
• 20150916 : For Canadian Oil Sands It's Adapt Or Die ( Sep 16, 2015 , Zero Hedge )
• 20150916 : Record 46.7 Million Americans Live In Poverty; Household Income Back To 1989 Levels ( Sep 16, 2015 , Zero Hedge )
• 20150916 : The pernicious effects of corporate bonuses by Michel Santi ( May 14, 2015 , michelsanti.fr )
• 20150916 : To save the rich, relieve the poor! by Michel Santi ( April 29, 2015 , www.michelsanti.fr )
• 20150916 : Is This Americas Biggest Problem... And Why It Wasnt Always Like This ( Is This America's Biggest Problem... And Why It Wasn't Always Like This, Sep 16, 2015 )
• 20150916 : Oil war Is Saudi Arabia walking into its own trap ( Sep 16, 2015 , Asia Times )
• 20150916 : For Canadian Oil Sands It's Adapt Or Die ( Sep 16, 2015 , Zero Hedge )
• 20150916 : Record 46.7 Million Americans Live In Poverty; Household Income Back To 1989 Levels ( Sep 16, 2015 , Zero Hedge )
• 20150916 : The pernicious effects of corporate bonuses by Michel Santi ( May 14, 2015 , michelsanti.fr )
• 20150916 : To save the rich, relieve the poor! by Michel Santi ( April 29, 2015 , www.michelsanti.fr )
• 20150914 : The Intellectual History of the Minimum Wage and Overtime ( The Intellectual History of the Minimum Wage and Overtime, Sep 14, 2015 )
• 20150914 : mainly macro Media myths by Simon Wren-Lewis ( Sep 11, 2015 , mainlymacro.blogspot.com )
• 20150914 : Putin shifts fronts in Syria and Ukraine ( Sep 14, 2015 , The Washington Post )
• 20150913 : Whoring one's talent ( Sep 13, 2015 , marknesop.wordpress.com )
• 20150913 : Western "scientific publications on the Russian strategy" mean Putin=evil, Russian=scary; Putin + Russian = Mordor. ( Western "scientific publications on the Russian strategy" mean Putin=evil, Russian=scary; Putin + Russian = Mordor., Sep 13, 2015 )
• 20150913 : Radolsaw Sikorski has joined Poroshenko's Advisory Council for Reforms ( Radolsaw Sikorski has joined Poroshenko's Advisory Council for Reforms, Sep 13, 2015 )
• 20150911 : Epic Caller Pilot Questions Impossible Scenarios Outlined In Official 911 Report - YouTube ( Epic Caller Pilot Questions Impossible Scenarios Outlined In Official 911 Report - YouTube, Sep 11, 2015 )
• 20150911 : Bloody Arseny in the 90's ( Bloody Arseny in the 90's, Sep 11, 2015 )
• 20150911 : I mourn disable and scarred vets, neglected by the country ( I mourn disable and scarred vets, neglected by the country , Sep 11, 2015 )
• 20150911 : Epic Caller Pilot Questions Impossible Scenarios Outlined In Official 911 Report ( YouTube )
• 20150910 : Hillary Clinton admits private email server was a mistake ( Sep 08, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150910 : The Weaponization of Ignorance: the West's Go-To Experts by marknesop ( September 9, 2015 , marknesop.wordpress.com )
• 20150909 : What spawned Russia's 'troll army'? Experts on the red web share their views ( Sep 08, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150909 : How Rising Inequality Increases Political Polarization ( Economist's View )
• 20150909 : How an Area's Union Membership Can Predict Children's Advancement ( Sept 9, 2015 , The New York Times )
• 20150909 : Disability Claims are not Skyrocketing ( Economist's View )
• 20150909 : Disability Claims are not Skyrocketing ( Economist's View )
• 20150908 : Yanis Varoufakis How Europe Crushed4 Greece ( Sep 08, 2015 , The New York Times )
• 20150907 : The divergence between pay and productivity ( The divergence between pay and productivity, Sep 07, 2015 )
• 20150906 : The Dangerous Separation of the American Upper Middle Class ( The Dangerous Separation of the American Upper Middle Class , Sep 06, 2015 )
• 20150903 : Kievs week of violence is a crisis of its own making ( Sep 03, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150903 : The Afterthought of Nagasaki ( The Afterthought of Nagasaki, Sep 03, 2015 )
• 20150902 : Repugnance as a Constraint on Markets ( libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org )
• 20150831 : China can ride out this crisis. But we're on course for another crash ( Aug 30, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150831 : Ukrainian guardsman killed in protests against vote on rebel autonomy ( Aug 31, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150830 : The Guardian view on the latest Ukraine ceasefire call: why this could be the one that works ( Aug 30, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150830 : The US does not permit negative media to undermine domestic support for its war effort ( The US does not permit negative media to undermine domestic support for its war effort, Aug 30, 2015 )
• 20150830 : The Abyss Looks Back: Europes Phenomenal Arrogance ( Aug 25, 2015 , marknesop.wordpress.com )
• 20150828 : Ukraine agrees win-win debt restructuring deal ( Aug 28, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150828 : Ukraines debt deal is better than defaulting – but its just a stop gap ( Aug 27, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150827 : Digital surveillance 'worse than Orwell', says new UN privacy chief ( Aug 24, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150827 : Where Is Neo When We Need Him ( Aug 27, 2015 , zerohedge.com )
• 20150826 : What If The Crash Is As Rigged As Everything Else ( Aug 26, 2015 , Zero Hedge )
• 20150823 : Investors Race to Escape Risk in Once-Booming Emerging-Market Bonds by LANDON THOMAS Jr ( Aug 22, 2015 , The New York Times )
• 20150823 : Thomas Piketty: New Thoughts on Capital in the Twenty-First Century ( Thomas Piketty: New Thoughts on Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Aug 23, 2015 )
• 20150822 : Why Is Market Fundamentalism So Tenacious ( www.resilience.org )
• 20150822 : Scientists Do Not Demonize Dissenters. Nor Do They Worship Heroes. ( Scientists Do Not Demonize Dissenters. Nor Do They Worship Heroes., Aug 22, 2015 )
• 20150822 : William J. Astore Seventy Years of Military Mediocrity ( William J. Astore Seventy Years of Military Mediocrity, )
• 20150822 : Propaganda, Intelligence and MH-17 by Ray McGovern ( Propaganda, Intelligence and MH-17, Aug 22, 2015 )
• 20150816 : The Real News - 9/11 The Man Who Knew Too Much ( The Real News - 9/11 The Man Who Knew Too Much, Aug 16, 2015 )
• 20150816 : Deal or War': Is Doomed Dollar Really Behind Obama's Iran Warning? ( August 15, 2015 , ronpaulinstitute.org )
• 20150816 : Iran Nuclear Deal: Why Empire Blinked First ( August 14, 2015 , ronpaulinstitute.org )
• 20150816 : The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity Republicans Cant Face the Truth About Iraq ( August 15, 2015 , ronpaulinstitute.org )
• 20150813 : Its not migrants who are the marauders and plunderers ( Aug 13, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150812 : The Macroeconomic Divide ( Economist's View )
• 20150810 : The U.S. Is Destroying Europe ( zerohedge.com )
• 20150810 : Naryshkin: the US wants to grab the natural resources of other countries ( Naryshkin: the US wants to grab the natural resources of other countries, Aug 10, 2015 )
• 20150810 : Big myth that Yanukovych was pro-Russian ( Big myth that Yanukovych was pro-Russian, Aug 10, 2015 )
• 20150809 : Seven countries near bankruptcy ( Aug 08, 2015 , usatoday.com )
• 20150809 : The main points of this Gorbulin-Poroshenko Plan ( marknesop.wordpress.com )
• 20150809 : Hillary Clinton State Department Emails, Mexico Energy Reform, and the Revolving Door ( naked capitalism )
• 20150809 : US pledges $68mn NATO investment into Estonian military ( US pledges $68mn NATO investment into Estonian military , Aug 09, 2015 )
• 20150809 : The intention of installing Gaidar in a position of power in Ukraine is to infuriate Russia ( The intention of installing Gaidar in a position of power in Ukraine is to infuriate Russia, Aug 09, 2015 )
• 20150808 : France to pay Russia under $1.31 billion over warships ( marknesop.wordpress.com )
• 20150808 : France to pay Russia under $1.31 billion over warships ( marknesop.wordpress.com )
• 20150808 : Russia found good way to get even with Netherlands ( marknesop.wordpress.com )
• 20150808 : The people who demand unrestricted access to Internet regardless its source implicitly belief that those who pitch them information are telling them the truth ( marknesop.wordpress.com )
• 20150808 : In order to be an imperialist power, the country should have a very powerful financial sector ( In order to be an imperialist power, the country should have a very powerful financial sector , Aug 08, 2015 )
• 20150808 : U.S. As Corrupt As Russia, Says Former NSA Exec ( August 06, 2015 , valuewalk.com )
• 20150808 : Russia's Stalinist Diplospeak ( Russia's Stalinist Diplospeak, Aug 08, 2015 )
• 20150807 : Billmon The Eurosystems (Monetary) Control of Europes Politics ( Jul 16, 2015 , M of A )
• 20150801 : Ron Paul: All Wars Are Paid For Through Debasing The Currency ( Zero Hedge )
• 20150728 : The Geopolitical Big Bang You Probably Don't See Coming ( Jul 28, 2015 ,  thenation.com )
• 20150727 : For Greece, Oligarchs Are an Obstacle to Recovery ( Dec 05, 2012 , The New York Times )
• 20150727 : Mathew D. Rose: The Crisis In Europe Has Only Just Begun ( Jul 24, 2015 , nakedcapitalism.com )
• 20150727 : The F Story about the Great Inflation ( Jul 27, 2015 , Economist's View )
• 20150726 : Greece, [yet another] the Sacrificial Lamb ( Jul 25, 2015 , The New York Times )
• 20150726 : The great Greece fire sale ( July 24, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150726 : What Is Wrong with the West's Economies? ( What Is Wrong with the West's Economies?, Jul 26, 2015 )
• 20150726 : Mathew D. Rose The Crisis In Europe Has Only Just Begun naked capitalism ( Mathew D. Rose The Crisis In Europe Has Only Just Begun naked capitalism, Jul 26, 2015 )
• 20150725 : The Eurasian Big Bang How China Russia Are Running Rings Around Washington ( Jul 24, 2015 , Zero Hedge )
• 20150724 : Mario Draghi: The ECB Has No Mandate To Ensure Checks Clear Or Credit Cards Work ( July 23, 2015 , nakedcapitalism.com )
• 20150723 : Greece, Iran, and the Rules of the Game ( Jul 23, 2015 , LobeLog )
• 20150722 : This is What Economists do not Understand About the Euro Crisis – or the U.S. Dollar ( Jul 22, 2015 , Economist's View )
• 20150722 : The Courage of Hopelessness by Slavoj Zizek ( The Courage of Hopelessness by Slavoj Zizek, Jul 22, 2015 )
• 20150721 : Greece: plea for unity as banks reopen ( Jul 20, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150720 : Which Is A Bigger Act Of Faith - Owning Gold Or Stocks? ( 07/19/2015 )
• 20150720 : The Dangerously Vague Romance of War by Shane Smith ( July 20, 2015 , original.antiwar.com )
• 20150719 : Negotiating with Germany is a Waste of Time ( Jul 13, 2015 , Economist's View )
• 20150719 : Paul Craig Roberts Greeces Lesson For Russia ( Jul 19, 2015 , Zero Hedge )
• 20150718 : M of A - Billmon The Eurosystems (Monetary) Control of Europes Politics ( Jul 18, 2015 , Moon of Alabama )
• 20150718 : Disaster In Europe ( Disaster In Europe, Jul 18, 2015 )
• 20150718 : Greece bailout revives image of the 'cruel German' ( Jul 18, 2015 , The Washington Post )
• 20150718 : Billmon The Eurosystem's (Monetary) Control of Europe's Politics ( Jul 18, 2015 , Moon of Alabama )
• 20150718 : Paul Krugman: Liberals and Wages ( Paul Krugman: Liberals and Wages, )
• 20150718 : Little-Known History of the Euro Crisis Was Baked In from the Start ( Jul 18, 2015 , Zero Hedge )
• 20150718 : Why is Germany so tough on Greece? Look back 25 years ( Jul 18, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150718 : There's no end in sight to the Greco-European drama ( Jul 15, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150716 : The crucifixion of Greece is killing the European project ( The crucifixion of Greece is killing the European project , Jul 16, 2015 )
• 20150715 : The Greek Deal From Germany - Reading Between the Lines - Darkness Over the Earth ( The Greek Deal From Germany - Reading Between the Lines - Darkness Over the Earth, Jul 15, 2015 )
• 20150714 : Francis in America: a radical pope journeys to the heart of the [neoliberal] machine ( Jul 14, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150714 : Greek bailout: Angela Merkel accused of blackmailing Athens ( Jul 14, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150714 : Peace In Our Time ( jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com )
• 20150714 : Rich countries accused of foiling effort to give poorer nations a voice on tax ( Jul 14, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150714 : Grexit may have been avoided, but divisions in Europe are growing ( Jul 12, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150713 : Germany is attempting to force Greece out of the common currency union as a lesson to France ( Germany is attempting to force Greece out of the common currency union as a lesson to France, Jul 13, 2015 )
• 20150713 : Greece and eurozone reach agreement in bailout talks ( Jul 13, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150713 : Greece Schaeubles Track ( Jul 12, 2015 , M of A )
• 20150712 : The Best Way to End Homelessness ( The Best Way to End Homelessness , Jul 12, 2015 )
• 20150712 : Rethinking Russia A Conversation With Russia Scholar Stephen F. Cohen ( Jul 07, 2015 , huffingtonpost.com )
• 20150712 : Putin, the Greeks, and Academic Spies by Phil Butler ( July 9, 2015 , phillip-butler.com )
• 20150711 : Varoufakis: Behind Germany's Refusal to Grant Greece Debt Relief ( Jul 11, 2015 , jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com )
• 20150711 : Merkel and the NSA - Analysis ( October 24, 2013 , www.tomroganthinks.com )
• 20150710 : Hillary Clinton emails reveal Cherie Blair acted as go-between for leading Qatari and the-then US Secretary of State ( Jul 10, 2015 , independent.co.uk )
• 20150710 : US torture doctors could face charges after report alleges post-9/11 collusion ( Jul 10, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150710 : A dozen foreign NGOs declared unwelcome in Russia Europe ( Jul 09, 2015 , DW.COM )
• 20150710 : Unbridled capitalism is the dung of the devil, says Pope Francis ( Jul 10, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150710 : The video was meant to look fresh and spontaneous, but researchers back in March unrooted the fact that it was produced by a professionals ( The video was meant to look fresh and spontaneous, but researchers back in March unrooted the fact that it was produced by a professionals, Jul 10, 2015 )
• 20150710 : Greece is the latest battleground in the financial elite's war on democracy ( The Guardian )
• 20150709 : More Work Hours Jeb Bush, Try Talking to the Employers ( Jul 09, 2015 , Forbes )
• 20150709 : Countdown To Grexit ( Moon of Alabama )
• 20150705 : Patriotism Begins With Localism ( Jul 05, 2015 , The American Conservative )
• 20150705 : Russian university fires US academic accused of harming national interests ( Jul 05, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150705 : The Observer view on Greeces referendum ( Jul 05, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150705 : Greeces mass psychology of revolt will survive the financial carpet-bombing ( Jul 05, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150704 : Leaders of Europe are shallow people unequipped to cope with a continental problem ( Jul 04, 2015 , marknesop.wordpress.com )
• 20150704 : Yanis Varoufakis accuses creditors of terrorism ahead of Greek referendum ( Jul 04, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150704 : Paul Krugman Europes Many Economic Disasters ( Jul 04, 2015 , Economist's View )
• 20150703 : Greek referendum: how would top economists vote? ( Jul 11, 2015 , theguardian.com )
• 20150703 : Greece Sane Voices Call For A No Vote ( Jul 03, 2015 , M of A )
• 20150703 : Throughout history, debt and war have been constant partners ( Jul 03, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150703 : Europes leaders must end this reckless standoff with Greece by Guy Verhofstadt, former prime minister of Belgium ( Jul 03, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150703 : Renegotiating Greeces debt ( Renegotiating Greece's debt, Jul 03, 2015 )
• 20150702 : Global Deaths in Conflict Since the Year 1400 ( June 30, 2015 , ritholtz.com )
• 20150702 : Did The IMF Just Open Pandoras Box? ( Jul 02, 2015 , ,zerohedge.com )
• 20150702 : Greek Referendum Euro Crisis Explodes into Dramatic Climax ( Greek Referendum Euro Crisis Explodes into Dramatic Climax, Jul 02, 2015 )
• 20150701 : Syriza cant just cave in. Europes elites want regime change in Greece ( Jul 01, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150701 : Path to Grexit Tragedy Paved by Political Incompetence ( Jul 01, 2015 , Economist's View )
• 20150630 : Russian culture minister calls for tax on Hollywood films ( Jun 30, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150630 : The Limits to Growth and Greece Systemic or Financial collapse ( Jun 30, 2015 , resilience.org )
• 20150630 : Greek failure to make IMF payment deals historic blow to eurozone ( Jun 30, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150630 : World Oil Energy Consumption by Sector, 1973-2010 ( World Oil Energy Consumption by Sector, 1973-2010, )
• 20150630 : Stiglitz: Troika has Kind of Criminal Responsibility ( Jun 30, 2015 , economistsview.typepad.com )
• 20150630 : Joseph Stiglitz: how I would vote in the Greek referendum ( Jun 30, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150629 : Russian sanctions blockback ( www.unz.com )
• 20150629 : Everything Russia puts out is actually disinformation, while everything the west puts out, despite being caught lying, is fact ( Everything Russia puts out is actually disinformation, while everything the west puts out, despite being caught lying, is fact, Jun 29, 2015 )
• 20150629 : NSA intercepted French corporate contracts worth $200 million over decade ( Jun 29, 2015 , WikiLeaks )
• 20150629 : Greek Tale(s) ( June 27, 2015 , Angry Bear )
• 20150629 : Capped ( Jesse's Café Américain )
• 20150629 : European Leaders Insist Greek Deal Is Still Possible ( Jun 29, 2015 , NYT )
• 20150629 : Shares slide as deepening Greek crisis shakes global markets ( Jun 29, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150629 : Greece crisis: markets begin to tumble as investors flee ( Jun 29, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150629 : The current round of sanctions, it reports, was designed not to have too much impact on the Russian economy so that a threat of harsher sanctions could be applied. ( The current round of sanctions, it reports, was designed not to have too much impact on the Russian economy so that a threat of harsher sanctions could be applied., Jun 29, 2015 )
• 20150628 : Former Finance Minister of Cyprus on the Greek Crisis ( Jun 28, 2015 , Economist's View )
• 20150628 : The Greek Tragedy: Curtain Closes On Most Absurd Act ( moonofalabama.org )
• 20150628 : The Troika pretends to suffocate Greece at all costs ( Jun 28, 2015 , voltairenet.org/RT )
• 20150628 : Fuck the US Imperialism -- Top German Politician Blasts Nuland Carter ( Jun 28, 2015 , Zero Hedge )
• 20150628 : IMF and Germany Are Hell-Bent on Finishing Off Even a Moderate Left in Greece ( Jun 28, 2015 , Truthout )
• 20150628 : Inquiry needed into GCHQ's operations ( Jun 28, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150627 : Greece: Its the Politics, Stupid! ( Jun 27, 2015 , Economist's View )
• 20150627 : Breaking Greece ( Breaking Greece, Jun 27, 2015 )
• 20150627 : Tsipras Bailout Referendum Sham naked capitalism ( June 27, 2015 , economistsview.typepad.com )
• 20150627 : The Bankruptcy of Americas Elites naked capitalism ( June 26, 2015 , nakedcapitalism.com )
• 20150627 : Obamas Anti-Russia Policy Escalates DoD Tells Congress Nukes Are Still On The Table ( Jun 15, 2015 , Zero Hedge )
• 20150627 : U.S. Pushes Russia Towards War ( June 26, 2015 , Information Clearing House )
• 20150626 : Can Pepsi, Coke -- Russian MP asks govt to ban US sodas as counter-sanction measure ( Jun 26, 2015 , RT Russian politics )
• 20150626 : Russia rejects calls for UN tribunal to prosecute MH17 suspects ( Russia rejects calls for UN tribunal to prosecute MH17 suspects , Jun 26, 2015 )
• 20150625 : Who is That Trip-Trapping on my Bridge – the Fable of Putin's Troll Army by marknesop ( April 11, 2015 , marknesop.wordpress.com )
• 20150625 : We Are Reaching Peak Energy Demand, BP Data Suggests ( softpanorama.org, Jun 25, 2015 )
• 20150625 : Putins protection of compatriots problem ( Jun 25, 2015 , marknesop.wordpress.com )
• 20150624 : So The Spy Services Are The Real Internet Trolls ( So The Spy Services Are The Real Internet Trolls, Jun 24, 2015 )
• 20150624 : NYT's Orwellian View of Ukraine ( June 22, 2015 , Consortiumnews )
• 20150624 : M of A - So The Spy Services Are The Real Internet Trolls ( M of A - So The Spy Services Are The Real Internet Trolls, Jun 24, 2015 )
• 20150623 : Bill Black: A Harvard Don is Enraged that Pope Francis is Opposed to the World Economic Order ( Jun 23, 2015 , www.nakedcapitalism.com )
• 20150622 : The Boomerang Effect: Sanctions on Russia Hit German Economy Hard ( nationalinterest.org )
• 20150622 : The Russian Pipeline Waltz ( Jun 22, 2015 , naked capitalism )
• 20150622 : NATO "two-track" policy toward Russia ( NATO "two-track" policy toward Russia, )
• 20150622 : Russia does not accept the jurisdiction of Hague arbitration court ( Russia does not accept the jurisdiction of Hague arbitration court, Jun 22, 2015 )
• 20150622 : Newsflash, America Ukraine Cannot Afford a War with Russia ( Jun 22, 2015 , The National Interest )
• 20150622 : Carter -- We will stand up against Russia ( Carter -- We will stand up against Russia, Jun 22, 2015 )
• 20150622 : Pope Francis says those in weapons industry cant call themselves Christian ( Jun 22, 2015 , theguardian.com )
• 20150620 : Charleston and the National-Security State ( Jun 19, 2015 , The Future of Freedom Foundation )
• 20150620 : Paul Krugman Voodoo, Jeb! Style ( Jun 20, 2015 , Economist's View )
• 20150620 : I Agree with Milton Friedman! ( I Agree with Milton Friedman!, Jun 20, 2015 )
• 20150619 : Confiscation of Russian state property in West has hidden goals ( Jun 19, 2015 , vz.ru )
• 20150619 : Resistance of suvereign state or rebellion of a vassal of the USA ( tertiaroma.livejournal.com )
• 20150619 : Angry Russia Will Respond In Kind To Europes Asset Seizures ( Jun 19, 2015 , Zero Hedge )
• 20150618 : Pope encyclical, climate-change live reaction and analysis ( The Guardian )
• 20150618 : Pope Blames Markets for Environments Ills ( June 18, 2015 WSJ )
• 20150618 : Torture is a war crime the government treats like a policy debate ( Jun 17, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150618 : Russia promises tit for tat punishment against Belgium, if the latter carries through with its threats ( Jun 18, 2015 , marknesop.wordpress.com )
• 20150618 : Russia might once again lose ( Jun 17, 2015 , inosmi.ru / Reflex, Czech Republic )
• 20150617 : The Culture War Returns ( The National Interest )
• 20150615 : Five Reasons the MI6 Story is a Lie ( June 14, 2015 , Craig Murray )
• 20150615 : Snowden, Putin, Greece It's All The Same Story ( Jun 15, 2015 , Zero Hedge )
• 20150614 : Czech media about G7: why does Putin need this farce ( Czech media about G7: why does Putin need this farce , Jun 14, 2015 )
• 20150614 : Snowden files read by Russia and China: five questions for UK government ( Snowden files read by Russia and China: five questions for UK government , Jun 14, 2015 )
• 20150614 : Pew Survey On Ukraine ( Jun 14, 2015 , M of A )
• 20150614 : UK Said To Withdraw Spies After Russia, China Hack Snowden Encryption, Sunday Times Reports ( Jun 14, 2015 , Zero Hedge )
• 20150613 : Former secretary of state officially launches presidential campaign, says shell fight for all Americans ( Jun 13, 2015 , CBS News )
• 20150613 : The Index Of Evil Whos The Bad Guy Now ( Zero Hedge )
• 20150613 : Dual Citizenship and US National Security ( Dual Citizenship and US National Security, Jun 13, 2015 )
• 20150612 : IMF to Alexis Tsipras: Do you feel lucky, punk? ( Jun 12, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150612 : 3 Questions Amy Glasmeier on the living wage ( June 11, 2015 MIT News )
• 20150612 : Germany drops inquiry into claims NSA tapped Angela Merkels phone by Ewen MacAskill ( Jun 12, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150612 : The West opens a second front against the Russian elite in Ukraine - Fort Russ ( June 12, 2015 , Pravoye Delo )
• 20150612 : The "Nation Interest" erupted with this article several days ago -- Russia and America: Toward a New Détente ( Jun 12, 2015 , marknesop.wordpress.com )
• 20150611 : The Party of Fiscal Responsibility in Action ( Jun 11, 2015 , Economist's View )
• 20150610 : Obama Is Destroying Europe, Dragging It Into A Crusade Against Russia Former French PM, German Banker Admit ( Jun 10, 2015 , Zero Hedge )
• 20150610 : Pope Francis urged to take tougher stance against Vladimir Putin ( Jun 10, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150610 : Paul Krugman Fighting the Derp ( Jun 8, 2015 , Economist's View )
• 20150609 : People and Power – The Technology Threat ( Jun 09, 2015 , naked capitalism )
• 20150608 : Falling Job Tenure Labor as Just another Commodity ( Jun 08, 2015 , Economist's View )
• 20150607 : CEO Pay Fueled Top 1% Income Growth ( CEO Pay Fueled Top 1% Income Growth, Jun 07, 2015 )
• 20150607 : We are the propagandists The real story about how The New York Times and the White House has turned truth in the Ukraine on it ( Jun 03, 2015 , salon.com )
• 20150606 : World War III will start with Pentagon bombing of RT – Kusturica ( Jun 06, 2015 , RT News )
• 20150605 : What to Be Afraid Of ( NYTimes.com )
• 20150605 : Edward Snowden The World Says No to Surveillance ( June 4, 2015 , NYTimes.com )
• 20150604 : March of the Imperial Senators ( May 29, 2015 , http://www.theamericanconservative.com )
• 20150604 : Found letters of love and poetry by Chechen fighters in Syria posted online ( Jun 04, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150604 : How to succeed in Iran: lessons from Russia and China by Tehran Bureau correspondent ( Jun 04, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150603 : US Congress passes surveillance reform in vindication for Edward Snowden ( Jun 02, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150602 : The Current Overproduction Crisis And War ( softpanorama.org, Jun 02, 2015 )
• 20150602 : The Delusional World Of Imperial Washington ( Zero Hedge )
• 20150602 : The Problem With O'Malley's New-Generation Pitch Elizabeth Warren is 65 and Bernie Sanders is 73 ( June 1, 2015 , angrybearblog.com )
• 20150601 : Kiev Big Lie on Ending Donbas Conflict in Two Weeks ( Kiev Big Lie on Ending Donbas Conflict in Two Weeks, Jun 01, 2015 )
• 20150601 : David Runciman writes something goofy about US vs. British Politics by Rich Yeselson ( May 28, 2015 , Crooked Timber )
• 20150530 : Rand Paul declares surveillance war and hints at filibuster for NSA reform ( May 29, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150530 : Dare to say NATO no ( May 27, 2015 , Aftonbladet )
• 20150529 : Bernie Sanders doesnt have to win the Democratic primary to do a lot of good ( May 28, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150528 : Ukraine financial catastrophe of 2014 2015 ( foreignpolicy.com )
• 20150528 : New Jersey Faces a Transportation Funding Crisis, With No Clear Solution ( May 28, 2015 , NYTimes.com )
• 20150528 : Bernie Sanders, Running for President, Promises a Political Revolution by Ross Barkan ( May 26, 2015 , Observer )
• 20150528 : Yats bleat about Tatar rights in Crimea before the Maidan events ( May 28, 2015 )
• 20150528 : Moscow's account of Nato expansion is a case of false memory syndrome ( May 24, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150527 : Ukraine is now problem for both Russian and West, but West managed to score several points against Russia and do it relatively cheaply ( May 26, 2015 , marknesop.wordpress.com )
• 20150527 : Andrzej Duda victory in Polish presidential election signals shift to right ( May 27, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150524 : Problems he face are becoming less and less managable for the Chocolate King ( tasnimnews.com )
• 20150523 : Ukraines Bloody Civil War No End in Sight ( Mar 31, 2015 , The National Interest )
• 20150523 : Failure of the US coup in Macedonia by Thierry Meyssan ( www.voltairenet.org )
• 20150523 : L. TODD WOOD Russia still angry about Serbia ( May 22, 2015 , Washington Times )
• 20150523 : The Original Chechnya Bombers - The CIA, The Saudis And Bin Laden ( Zero Hedge )
• 20150523 : MICHAEL HAYDEN The chasm between the security agencies and the Obama administration - ( May 20, 2015 , Washington Times )
• 20150523 : The Children of the Abyss ( May 20, 2015 , Jesse's Café Américain )
• 20150523 : Porky and Yats repeatedly state that Russia is an aggressor state, and with the same breath they ask Russia for a discount on further gas supplies, for which Ukraine owes billions ( Porky and Yats repeatedly state that Russia is an aggressor state, and with the same breath they ask Russia for a discount on further gas supplies, for which Ukraine owes billions, May 23, 2015 )
• 20150523 : May 23, 2015 at 4:12 am ( May 23, 2015 at 4:12 am, )
• 20150523 : The video purportedly depicting the hanging of a Novorossiyan militant and his pregnant wife ( The video purportedly depicting the hanging of a Novorossiyan militant and his pregnant wife, May 23, 2015 )
• 20150522 : Ukraine fears spread of separatist conflict amid hostility towards Kiev ( May 22, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150522 : Stephen Kinzers The Brothers John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War ( May 15, 2015 , Foreign Policy Journal )
• 20150521 : Militarization Is More Than Tanks Rifles It's a Cultural Disease, Acclimating Citizens To Life In A Police State ( May 21, 2015 , Zero Hedge )
• 20150520 : Russia to take legal moves if Ukraine defaults on $3bn debt - finance minister ( May 20, 2015 , RT Business )
• 20150520 : Russia bans undesirable international organisations ahead of 2016 elections ( May 20, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150520 : How Isis is recruiting migrant workers in Moscow to join the fighting in Syria Discussion by Daniil Turovsky ( May 20, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150520 : Video raises concerns over Ukraine's treatment of Russian prisoners ( May 20, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150519 : The New Lie About Iraq ( May 19, 2015 , The American Conservative )
• 20150519 : Why Soldiers Lie ( May 18, 2015 , The American Conservative )
• 20150519 : US Taxpayer On The Hook As Ukraine Prepares Moratorium On Debt Repayments, Increases Military Spending ( Zero Hedge )
• 20150519 : The Worrying Rise of Anti-China Discourse in the US by Dingding Chen ( May 16, 2015 , The Diplomat )
• 20150519 : Military Bureaucracy ( October 26, 2009 , outsidethebeltway.com )
• 20150519 : Americas Warfare State Revolution ( Apr 05, 2015 , Zero Hedge )
• 20150519 : Paul Krugman Errors and Lies ( May 18, 2015 , Economist's View )
• 20150519 : The Military-Industrial Complex in the United States Evolution and Expansion from World War II to the War on Terror ( Sept 1, 2013 , studentpulse.com )
• 20150518 : NYT throws Poroshenko under the bus ( NYT throws Poroshenko under the bus, May 18, 2015 )
• 20150518 : Did Uncle Sam buy off the Maidan? ( May 17, 2015 , ZEIT ONLINE )
• 20150518 : New Military Spending Bill Expands Empire But Forbids Debate on War ( May 17, 2015 , The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity )
• 20150518 : Open thread for night owls The empire strikes back ( May 17, 2015 , , Daily Kos News )
• 20150518 : I herewith enter in to evidence the following article by Neuters written with excruciating spin ( I herewith enter in to evidence the following 'article' by Neuters written with excruciating spin , May 18, 2015 )
• 20150517 : Ukraine Recession Deepens as GDP Falls 17.6% ( May 15, 2015 , NASDAQ.com )
• 20150517 : US Empire: American Exceptionalism Is No Shining City On a Hill ( May 15, 2015 , informationclearinghouse.info )
• 20150517 : The west is in a poor position to sustain an economic war against Russia ( The west is in a poor position to sustain an economic war against Russia, May 17, 2015 )
• 20150517 : The Emperor Lies ( May 16, 2015 "Information Clearing House" )
• 20150517 : U.S. Wakes Up to New (Silk) World Order ( May 16, 2015 , Information Clearing House )
• 20150516 : The Making of Hillary Clinton " CounterPunch Tells the Facts, Names the Names ( The Making of Hillary Clinton " CounterPunch Tells the Facts, Names the Names, May 16, 2015 )
• 20150515 : Why I Wept at the Russian Parade Information Clearing House ( May 14, 2015 "Information Clearing House" )
• 20150515 : The west talks about a new cold war. For Russians it has already started ( May 14, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150514 : War-Crazed Western Propaganda Machine Rages at Its Growing Insignificance ( russia-insider.com )
• 20150513 : How Russias opposition united to finish Nemtsovs report on Ukraine ( May 13, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150512 : GOP antics may lead to a de-Americanized world ( 10/15/13 , MSNBC )
• 20150512 : Merkel-Ferkel yesterday in the Kremlin ( Merkel-Ferkel yesterday in the Kremlin, May 12, 2015 )
• 20150512 : Kerry set to meet Putin in first visit to Russia since start of Ukraine crisis ( May 12, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150511 : Why Ukraine Still Cant Break Ties With Russian Aggressor State by Simon Shuster ( Apr 13, 2015 , TIME )
• 20150511 : Anglo-American Bankers Organized World War II ( May 11, 2015 , Voltaire Network )
• 20150511 : The Choice Before Europe ( May 05, 2015 , Information Clearing House )
• 20150510 : Battle Tested, Ukraine Troops Now Get U.S. Basic Training ( May 09, 2015 , NYTimes.com )
• 20150510 : The New York Times does its government s bidding Here s what you re not being told about US troops in Ukraine ( May 09, 2015 , NYTimes.com )
• 20150510 : Republican presidential hopefuls focus fire on Obama foreign policy ( May 09, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150510 : Obama s Petulant WWII Snub of Russia by Ray McGovern ( May 09, 2015 , antiwar.com )
• 20150510 : After the fall of the Soviet Union, the U.S. tried to help Russians ( April 15, 2015 , antiwar.com )
• 20150510 : US and Russian Servicemen March Together in Belarus on V-Day ( May 10, 2015 , ABC News )
• 20150510 : Putin voices grievances as huge parade marks 70th anniversary of victory ( May 10, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150509 : David Cameron and Conservatives Get Majority in British Election ( May 09, 2015 , NYTimes.com )
• 20150509 : Vladimir Putin: US trying to create unipolar world by Damien Gayle ( May 09, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150509 : Why Is the US Failing to Honor Russia's Victory Day Anniversary by Martin Sieff ( May 09, 2015 , The Nation )
• 20150508 : Obamas Real Motive Behind The Iran Deal A Backdoor Channel To Sell Weapons To Saudi Arabia ( May 06, 2015 , Zero Hedge )
• 20150508 : What a Conservative Victory in the UK Means for Everyday People ( May 08, 2015 , therealnews.com )
• 20150508 : Power The Essence of Corrupt Banking and Politics Is to Grow and Control the Debt ( May 04, 2015 , Jesse's Café Américain )
• 20150508 : - Its Official The U.S. Collaborates With Al Qaeda ( May 6, 2015 , M of A )
• 20150508 : The Inner Circle Large Corporations and the Rise of Business Political Activity in the U.S. and U.K. (978019504033 ( July 7, 2005 , Amazon.com )
• 20150508 : The Cold War Against Cuba Changed Us by Jacob G. Hornberger ( May 07, 2015 , The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity )
• 20150508 : The Bankruptcy of U.S. Trade and Foreign Policy by Patrick J. Buchanan ( The American Conservative )
• 20150507 : The Illegal Phone-Data Sweeps by THE EDITORIAL BOARD ( May 07, 2015 , NYTimes.com )
• 20150506 : Clinton Cash: errors dog Bill and Hillary exposé – but is there any there there? by Ed Pilkington ( May 05, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150503 : US Goes Ballistic Over Ukraine as Both Sides There Wage Peace by William Boardman, ( US Goes Ballistic Over Ukraine as Both Sides There Wage Peace, May 03, 2015 )
• 20150503 : Hillary Clinton The International Neocon Warmonger, by Webster G. Tarpley ( April 13, 2015 , voltairenet.org )
• 20150503 : Bernie Sanders calls for political revolution against billionaire class ( May 03, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150503 : U.S. Hasn't Helped Kiev's "Endless Dysfunction" by Michael S. Rozeff ( LewRockwell.com )
• 20150503 : Obamas Triple Crown ( FPIF )
• 20150502 : Any analysis of Russia has to consider the effect of Nato expansion ( Apr 22, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150502 : US Foreign Policymakers Cannot Be Trusted by Sheldon Richman, ( April 23, 2015 , Antiwar.com )
• 20150501 : There was heroism and cruelty on both sides: the truth behind one of Ukraine s deadliest days by Howard Amos in Odessa ( Apr 30, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150501 : Lincoln Chafee's Clinton Critique Is Actually Compelling by W. James Antle III ( The American Conservative )
• 20150501 : Neocons the Echo of German Fascism by Todd E. Pierce ( March 27, 2015 , Consortiumnews )
• 20150428 : Ten Years Later, What Paul Wolfowitz Owes to the Country by James Fallows ( The Atlantic )
• 20150422 : M of A - Ukraine Both Sides Touched By NATO Related Murder Of The Other Side ( Apr 22, 2015 , moonofalabama.org )
• 20150420 : Another Idiotic Plan to Hurt Russia by MIKE WHITNEY ( Another Idiotic Plan to Hurt Russia, April 20, 2015 )
• 20150420 : Stop The Presses Nobel-Prize Winning Economist Slams QE ( Apr 20, 2015 , Zero Hedge )
• 20150418 : The New York Times "basically rewrites whatever the Kiev authorities say" Stephen F. Cohen on the U.S.-Russia-Ukraine history ( The New York Times "basically rewrites whatever the Kiev authorities say" Stephen F. Cohen on the U.S.-Russia-Ukraine history, Apr 18, 2015 )
• 20150418 : Brent Scowcroft The Wise Man by Jacob Heilbrunn ( February 25, 2015 , The National Interest )
• 20150418 : Petro Poroshenkos REAL Problem (And Its Not Russia) by Raymond Sontag ( Apr 18, 2015 , The National Interest )
• 20150417 : Will Ukraine Push the US Into War ( Apr 17, 2015 , The American Conservative )
• 20150417 : Chinas AIIB Challenge How Should America Respond ( April 17, 2015 , The National Interest )
• 20150417 : EU pushing Ukraine towards trilateral free trade, with Russia ( EU pushing Ukraine towards trilateral free trade, with Russia, )
• 20150417 : Graham Allison on World War I, Ukraine and Realism ( Apr 17, 2015 , The National Interest )
• 20150416 : Chaos And Hegemony - How US Dollar Imperialism Dominates The World ( Apr 16, 2015 , Zero Hedge )
• 20150414 : The Message from the 22 Year Old Suicide at the Nations Capitol ( Apr 14, 2015 , Jesse's Café Américain )
• 20150414 : Profiles In Hypocrisy, In the Garden of Beasts ( 08 April 2015 , Jesse's Café Américain )
• 20150414 : Western ISIS adventurism, Israel behind Hamas - new Assange revelations ( Apr 14, 2015 , RT News )
• 20150414 : Nuland Ensconced in Neocon Camp Who Believes in Noble Lie ( Mar 5, 2015 , The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity )
• 20150414 : The New Militarism: Who Profits? ( Apr 12, 2015 , The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity )
• 20150412 : No Longer Quiet On The Eastern Front (Part 3) ( Apr 12, 2015 , Zero Hedge )
• 20150410 : Ukraine's dilemma Creditors refuse to write off $10bn debt ( Apr 10, 2015 , RT Business )
• 20150410 : The Toronto Symphony Orchestra Silences Valentina Lisitsas Music by Olga Luzanova ( Apr 06, 2015 , SLAVYANGRAD.org )
• 20150410 : Shadow Government by Bruce Morgan ( October 28, 2014 , Tufts Now )
• 20150410 : Michael Glennon on who REALLY runs the government by Tom Jackson ( Dec 2, 2014 , anduskyregister.com )
• 20150410 : Professor Michael Glennon on the Rise of the American System of Double Government by Michael Glennon ( November 7, 2014 , fletcherforum.org )
• 20150410 : Exhumation of fascism by neoliberalism ( Apr 06, 2015 , Izvestia )
• 20150410 : Mission Accomplished? ISIS Leaders Are All Ex-Saddam Hussein Army Officers ( Apr 06, 2015 , zerohedge.com )
• 20150410 : Rahm Emanuel and Rick Perry Hold Public in Bipartisan Contempt by Lambert Strether ( April 7, 2015 , nakedcapitalism.com )
• 20150409 : Ukraine The Global Corporate Annexation ( Apr 21, 2014 , Jesse's Café Américain )
• 20150409 : National Security and Double Government by Michael J. Glennon ( Amazon.com )
• 20150407 : How America Became An Oligarchy by Ellen Brown ( Zero Hedge/The Web of Debt blog )
• 20150404 : The majority of Maidan supporters are experiencing severe impoverishment instead of welfare bonanza from EU they expected ( marknesop.wordpress.com )
• 20150404 : Big Brother's Liberal Friends by Henry ( October 27, 2014 , Crooked Timber )
• 20150404 : Plutocracy 1.0 ( naked capitalism )
• 20150403 : Were not cattle Kiev protesters throw manure at US embassy ( Apr 03, 2015 , offguardian )
• 20150403 : U.S. Trained Fascists To Storm Kiev ( Apr 01, 2015 , M of A )
• 20150403 : West is trying to buy allies of Russia ( Apr 03, 2015 , svpressa.ru )
• 20150403 : Jeb is more interested in undermining Democratic constituencies than in financial gain ( Apr 02, 2015 , naked capitalism )
• 20150402 : Hillary Clinton: foreign policy is her strong suit – but it could be her undoing by Tom McCarthy ( Apr 02, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150331 : Ukraine s Bloody Civil War No End in Sight ( Mar 31, 2015 , The National Interest )
• 20150331 : Generous Welfare Benefits Make People More Likely To Want to Work, Not Less ( Mar 31, 2015 , Economist's View )
• 20150331 : Four TBTF Banks Threaten To Withhold Funds To Democrats Over Elizabeth Warrens Wall Street Rants ( Mar 31, 2015 , zeroh edge.com )
• 20150331 : NYT Publishes Call to Bomb Iran Common Dreams Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community ( Mar 30, 2015 , commondreams.org )
• 20150330 : IRS Scandal Deja Vu Hillary Clintons Email Server Wiped Clean ( www.zerohedge.com )
• 20150330 : Nulands Mastery of Ukraine Propaganda by Robert Parry ( March 11, 2015 , consortiumnews.com )
• 20150330 : Big Brother Is Here Facebook Reveals Its Master Plan - Control All News Flow ( Mar 29, 2015 , Zero Hedge )
• 20150330 : Elizabeth Warren Strikes Back as Citigroup Tries to Blackmail the Democratic Party by Yves Smith ( March 29, 2015 , naked capitalism )
• 20150329 : Netanyahu The Israeli Leader No President Can Stomach ( Mar 29, 2015 , The National Interest )
• 20150328 : For Once, Don't Blame the Israelis by Philip Giraldi ( Mar 26, 2015 , The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity )
• 20150328 : Psaki was very careful to avoid answering questions about what role the US played in the Ukrainian coup, but sometimes her answers were extremely cynical ( Mar 28, 2015 , marknesop.wordpress.com )
• 20150327 : Obama's Drone Policy Crashes and Burns ( In These Times )
• 20150326 : Ukraine pleads for quick restructuring of debts by Larry Elliott ( Ukraine pleads for quick restructuring of debts , Mar 26, 2015 )
• 20150325 : Congress Demands War in Ukraine! by Daniel McAdams ( March 23, 2015 , The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity )
• 20150324 : Are NGOs Agents of Subversion by Patrick J. Buchanan ( March 24, 2015 , Antiwar.com )
• 20150324 : Russia Under Attack by PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS ( Mar 24, 2015 , CounterPunch )
• 20150324 : The MSM ignore and blatantly lie about the nature of the regime the West is backing ( Mar 22, 2015 , marknesop.wordpress.6com )
• 20150324 : The Deep State ( February 28, 2014 , theamericanconservative.com )
• 20150324 : Regime Change Americas Failing Weapon Of International Deception ( Zero Hedge )
• 20150324 : Why Ron Paul is Right about Ukraine by Dan Sanchez ( Mar 24, 2015 , antiwar.com )
• 20150324 : The New Brand of Authoritarianism ( March 21, 2015 , economistsview.typepad.com )
• 20150322 : Economists View Controlling the Past ( March 22, 2015 , economistsview.typepad.com )
• 20150321 : Propaganda Shouldn't Pay by NICK COHEN ( July/August 2014 , standpointmag.co.uk )
• 20150321 : The Anatomy of Fascism by Robert O. Paxton ( Amazon.com )
• 20150321 : Guest Post How Putin Can Win The Economic War Against The West by Ron Holland ( Zero Hedge )
• 20150321 : Presidents, Prime Ministers, Congressmen, Generals, Spooks, Soldiers and Police ADMIT to False Flag Terror by George Washington ( Mar 18, 2015 , Zero Hedge )
• 20150321 : Germany riot targets new ECB headquarters in Frankfurt ( BBC News )
• 20150321 : The NSAs plan: improve cybersecurity by hacking everyone else by Trevor Timm ( Mar 21, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150320 : Rethinking the National Interest by Condoleezza Rice ( July 1, 2008 , Foreign Affairs )
• 20150320 : Alexander Lebedev gives up bankrolling Russia's Novaya Gazeta by Roy Greenslade ( Mar 20, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150319 : Paul Tudor Jones Warns This Disastrous Market Mania Will End By Revolution, Taxes, Or War ( Mar 19, 2015 , Zero Hedge )
• 20150318 : Russia withdrew from the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty ( Russia withdrew from the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty, Mar 18, 2015 )
• 20150318 : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-31921011 ( bbc.co.uk )
• 20150318 : The Opportunity Cost of Americas Disastrous Foreign Policy by Vlad Sobell ( Mar 18, 2015 , Russia Insider )
• 20150316 : Three Maps for Professor Muravchik by Adam L. Silverman ( Sic Semper Tyrannis )
• 20150316 : Is Putin ill? 'Everything is fine' despite cancelled meetings and old photos ( The Guardian )
• 20150316 : A Green Light for the American Empire by Ron Paul ( March 14, 2015 , ronpaulinstitute.org )
• 20150315 : Republicans Wary Of Obama Campaign Staffers In Israel ( Mar 15, 2015 , Crooks and Liars )
• 20150315 : Neocons Probably Going Wobbly On Bombing Iran ( Mar 15, 2015 , M of A )
• 20150315 : British security services recruit Russian-language speakers again ( Mar 15, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150315 : Why our leaders can't be heroes any more by Jonathan Powell ( Mar 13, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150314 : The Damage to U.S. Interests Abroad of Domestic Political Intemperance ( Mar 11, 2015 , The National Interest Blog )
• 20150314 : Russia warns US against supplying 'lethal defensive aid' to Ukraine ( Mar 14, 2015 , RT News )
• 20150314 : No matter what Russia does, US neo-cons will always go for Cold War ( RT Op-Edge )
• 20150314 : Michael Hudson on the IMFs Tender Ministrations in Ukraine and Greece naked capitalism ( Mar 14, 2015 , nakedcapitalism.com )
• 20150314 : The Coming Chinese Crackup ( Mar 14, 2015 , Zero Hedge )
• 20150314 : A Review of Frontline Ukraine by Richard Sakwa ( Mar 05, 2015 , hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk )
• 20150314 : http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/mar/14/hillary-clinton-arkansas-friends ( Mar 14, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150314 : The women fighting on the frontline in Ukraine ( Mar 06, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150314 : The Damage to U.S. Interests Abroad of Domestic Political Intemperance ( Mar 11, 2015 , The National Interest Blog )
• 20150313 : Ukraine or the Rebels Who Won in Minsk The National Interest Blog by Nicolai N. Petro ( Feb 13, 2015 , nationalinterest.org )
• 20150313 : Europes Desperate Hail Mary to Save Ukraine by Nikolas K. Gvosdev ( February 13, 2015 , The National Interest )
• 20150313 : The Most Outlandish Empire Semantics ( Mar 13, 2015 , moonofalabama.org )
• 20150312 : Eurosceptics playing into Vladimir Putins hands, says Labour ( Eurosceptics playing into Vladimir Putin's hands, says Labour , Mar 12, 2015 )
• 20150312 : This Is a Declaration of War by Bruce K. Gagnon ( March 12, 2015 , informationclearinghouse )
• 20150312 : Victoria Nuland Knowingly Deceives Senate, Displays Ardent Support For Fascist Junta by Andrew W. Griffin ( Mar 12, 2015 , themillenniumreport.com )
• 20150312 : German Historian Tells Poroshenko 'Be Careful of American Support' ( Sputnik International )
• 20150312 : NATO Lies and Provocations by MIKE WHITNEY ( Mar 12, 2015 , CounterPunch )
• 20150312 : US to send Ukraine small drones and armoured Humvees ( Mar 11, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150312 : Who is Aleksandr Dugin ( Mar 12, 2015 , Crooked Timber )
• 20150311 : The Gathering Storm ( Mar 1, 2015 , Jesse's Café Américain )
• 20150311 : U.S. oil production still surging ( Mar 11, 2015 , econbrowser.com , 26 Replies )
• 20150311 : Testimony on Ukraine Before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by Victoria Nuland ( March 10, 2015 , http://www.state.gov/p/eur/rls/rm/2015/mar/238722.htm )
• 20150310 : CIA worked to break into Apple devices for years – Snowden docs ( March 10, 2015 , RT USA )
• 20150310 : The Disintegrating Empire Of Controlled Chaos by Dmitry Orlov ( Mar 10, 2015 , Zero Hedge via Club Orlovb blog, )
• 20150310 : Sheldon Adelson – The Dangerous American Oligarch Behind Benjamin Netanyahu ( Mar 10, 2015 , Zero H4edge )
• 20150310 : Frontline Ukraine: How Europe failed to slay the demons of war by Richard Sakwa ( March 10, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150310 : Vladimir Putin describes secret meeting when Russia decided to seize Crimea by Agence France-Presse ( Mar 09, 2015 , theguardian.com )
• 20150310 : Killary Clinton faces new questions over personal emails she chose not to keep by Jon Swaine ( 10 March 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150310 : A Europe-U.S. Divorce Over Ukraine ( Mar 10, 2015 , moonofalabama.org )
• 20150309 : Boris Nemtsov ally: Islamist speculation over murder 'useful for Kremlin' by Shawn Walker ( Mar 09, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150308 : Clinton email domain shows effort for security and obscurity, say experts ( Mar 08, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150308 : Russias Most Notorious Hitman Claims Nemtsovs Killers Were Amateurs ( Mar 08, 2015 , Sputnik International )
• 20150308 : US Hawks Undermine Berlins Peace Efforts in Ukraine - German Newspaper ( Mar 08, 2015 , Sputnik International )
• 20150307 : Russian Opposition Putin Did NOT Assassinate Opposition Leader ( March 1, 2015 , WashingtonsBlog )
• 20150307 : Russian Opposition Putin Did NOT Assassinate Opposition Leader ( March 1, 2015 , WashingtonsBlog )
• 20150307 : Washingtons Cloned Female Warmongers by Finian Cunningham ( February 09, 2014 , Information Clearing House )
• 20150307 : Germany Has Had Enough With US Neocons: Berlin "Stunned" At US Desire For War In Ukraine ( Mar 07, 2015 , zerohedge.com )
• 20150307 : Meet the Big Wallets Pushing Obama Towards a New Cold War ( February 25, 2015 , Alternet )
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• 20150307 : Under the Radar, Big Media Internet Giants Get Massive Access to Everything About You ( March 5, 2015 , alternet.org )
• 20150307 : The killing of my friend Boris Nemtsov must signal the death of appeasement by Garry Kasparov ( The killing of my friend Boris Nemtsov must signal the death of appeasement, Mar 07, 2015 )
• 20150307 : Russia detains two men in Boris Nemtsov murder inquiry by Chis Johnston ( Mar 07, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150305 : The demonisation of Russia risks paving the way for war by Seumas Milne ( Mar 05, 2015 , The Guardian )
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• 20150304 : Russia's actions in Ukraine conflict an 'invasion', says US official US news by Alan Yuhas ( Mar 04, 2015 , The Guardian )
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• 20150304 : Neoliberalism switched to attack mode ( March 4, 2015 , The White House )
• 20150302 : Whodunnit? ( Mar 02, 2015 , Moon of Alabama )
• 20150301 : US Pushes For Escalation, Arms Kiev By Laundering Weapons Through Abu Dhabi ( Mar 01, 2015 , moonofalabama.org )
• 20150301 : Russias opposition: who is left to take on Vladimir Putin? by Shaun Walker ( Mar 01, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150228 : Russian opposition leaders allege Kremlin links to Nemtsov slaying ( Feb 28, 2015 , The Washington Post )
• 20150228 : Putin threatens to cut gas to Ukraine as showdowns shift to economy ( Feb 25, 2015 , The Washington Post )
• 20150228 : Putin Spokesman Says Nemtsov Murder Was 100% Provocation ( Feb 28, 2015 , Zero Hedge )
• 20150228 : World leaders condemn murder of Russian politician Boris Nemtsov by Shaun Walker & Chris Johnston ( Feb 28, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150228 : To launch a color revolution the sacral victim is not enough ( Feb 28, 2015 , vzglyad.ru )
• 20150227 : Ukraine: UK and EU badly misread Russia ( bbc.com )
• 20150227 : The EU's plan for an energy union would call Vladimir Putin's bluff by Natalie Nougayrède ( Feb 27, 2015 , theguardian.com )
• 20150226 : Germans at the Crux of Crises, but Reluctantly by STEVEN ERLANGERFEB ( Feb 26, 2015 , NYTimes.com )
• 20150225 : Ukraine Enters The Endgame ( Feb 25, 2015 , Zero Hedge )
• 20150225 : Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands by Richard Sakwa review – an unrivalled account ( Feb 19, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150224 : UK Journalist Calls Out Fraud on Readers in Coverage of HSBC ( Feb 24, 2015 , jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com )
• 20150223 : On the way to war on Russia by Brian Cloughley ( Feb 18, 2015 , Asia Times Online )
• 20150222 : Russia Holds Anti-Maidan Rally ( Russia Holds Anti-Maidan Rally, Feb 22, 2015 )
• 20150220 : Biden Donates Counter Mortar Radar To Russian Weapon Exhibition ( Biden Donates Counter Mortar Radar To Russian Weapon Exhibition, Feb 20, 2015 )
• 20150220 : Debaltsevo fallout in Banderastan ( The Vineyard of the Saker )
• 20150220 : Vucic wants to commit political suicide by hiring Blair ( RT Op-Edge )
• 20150220 : Ukraine Is NOT Munich ( Feb 20, 2015 , The National Interest )
• 20150220 : German newspaper BILD gets inside US-NATO-Nuland planning session ( Fort Russ )
• 20150215 : Ron Paul: Ukraine Coup Planned By Nato And EU ( Feb 15, 2015 , zerohedge.com )
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• 20150214 : If the US arms Kiev, Russia's response may be something more than tit-for-tat. ( Feb 14, 2015 , marknesop.wordpress.com )
• 20150214 : Dont Arm Ukraine by John J. Mearsheimer ( Feb 8, 2015 , NYTimes.com )
• 20150212 : BBC send signals - Its not that simple with EuroMaidan snipergate events! ( Feb 12, 2015 , annbeaker.livejournal.com )
• 20150211 : The Bout Opening – Stick to Checkers, America. Not Up In Here ( Feb 11, 2015 , marknesop.wordpress.com )
• 20150210 : Merkel to meet Obama amid growing US scepticism over Ukraine peace talks ( Feb 10, 2015 , The Guardian )
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• 20150201 : US considers providing arms to Ukraine as rebels step up attacks, says report ( Feb 01, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150201 : Putin must be stopped. And sometimes only guns can stop guns ( Feb 01, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150131 : Obamas hypocrisy seems to know no bounds ( Jan 31, 2015 , jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com )
• 20150131 : Finding the Foreign Agents by Philip Giraldi ( January 30, 2015 , The American Conservative )
• 20150131 : Le couvercle de la marmite commence à sautiller by Oscar Fortin ( January 29, 2015 , AgoraVox )
• 20150130 : Ukraine Through the Fog of the Presstitutes by Paul Craig Roberts ( Mar 06, 2014 , CounterPunch )
• 20150130 : EU would have to respond to large military offensive in Ukraine Steinmeier ( Reuters )
• 20150130 : U.S.s Kerry to Visit Ukraine Next Week ( NYTimes.com )
• 20150130 : Saudi Kreminology: what does King Salmans reshuffle mean for the future? ( Jan 30, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150130 : Greece's leftist government sparks fears of a Russian beachhead in Europe ( The Washington Post )
• 20150130 : Alexis Tsipras Most Outrageous Outburst Yet ( Jan 29, 2015 , Zero Hedge )
• 20150129 : Obamas Advice: "Do Not Trust My Public Words" ( Jan 29, 2015 , The Hill )
• 20150129 : We must stop Angela Merkel's bullying – or let the forces of austerity win by Owen Jones ( Jan 28, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150129 : Libya - Why Hillary Clinton Should Never Again Hold A Public Office ( Jan 29, 2015 , moonofalabama.org )
• 20150129 : Syrizas Original 40 Point Manifesto ( Zero Hedge )
• 20150129 : 'Empire of Chaos' in the House by Pepe Escobar ( January 27, 2015 , RT Op-Edge )
• 20150128 : Ukraine at war: 'People feel abandoned' ( Jan 28, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150128 : Doubt everything – Ukrainian students warning to Russian counterparts ( Jan 28, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150126 : Ukraine's advantage for the new German empire is precisely that it doesn't exist by Olivier Berruyer ( Ukraine's advantage for the new German empire is precisely that it doesn't exist, Jan 26, 2015 )
• 20150125 : How can the West solve its Ukraine problem? by Anatol Lieven ( Dec 3, 2015 , BBC News )
• 20150124 : A typical pattern of behaviour of western MSM in Ukraine civil war coverage ( Jan 24, 2015 , marknesop.wordpress.com )
• 20150123 : State of the Union 2015: Lethal, Predatory, Delusional ( State of the Union 2015: Lethal, Predatory, Delusional, Jan 23, 2015 )
• 20150122 : Donetsk trolleybus explosion blows Ukraine peace negotiations apart by Shaun Walker ( The Guardian )
• 20150120 : The Guardian View of war in Ukraine maintain the pressure on Russia ( Jan 20, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150120 : Ukraine Goes to War – and Always Will as Long as Maidan Holds Power ( Jan 20, 2015 , network54.com )
• 20150120 : "America: Host or Parasite?" ( "America: Host or Parasite?", Jan 20, 2015 )
• 20150119 : They were never there: Russia's silence for families of troops killed in Ukraine by Alec Luhn ( The Guardian )
• 20150119 : Economists View Links for 01-19-15 ( Economist's View Links for 01-19-15, Jan 19, 2015 )
• 20150119 : How Do Projected Long-Run Deficits Matter Daily Focus by Howard Gleckman ( Jan 19, 2015 , Washington Center for Equitable Growth )
• 20150119 : The New Compassionate Conservatism and Trickle-Down Economics by Robert Reich ( January 18, 2015 , robertreich.org )
• 20150117 : Lessons from Paris ( ronpaulinstitute.org )
• 20150116 : Dont worry. The authorities will quickly explain to you what "freedom of speech" means by putting you in jail, if you uttered something stupid by Olga Tukhanina ( vz.ru )
• 20150115 : The New Ukraine Is Run by Rogues, Sexpots, Warlords, Lunatics and Oligarchs by By Mikhail Klikushin ( Jan 14, 2015 , observer.com )
• 20150115 : The New Ukraine Is Run by Rogues, Sexpots, Warlords, Lunatics and Oligarchs by Mikhail Klikushin ( Jan 14, 2015 , observer.com )
• 20150114 : Don't Risk War With Russia by Philip Giraldi • ( December 9, 2014 , The American Conservative )
• 20150112 : Ron Paul: "Lessons From Paris" ( Ron Paul: "Lessons From Paris", Jan 12, 2015 )
• 20150112 : A very original way to have additional weight in Parliamentary discussion ( Jan 9, 2015 , IGCP )
• 20150111 : Ukraine's forgotten city destroyed by war by Oleg Orlov for Echo Moskvy ( Jan 07, 2014 , The Guardian )
• 20150111 : Better Putin Than Weimar Russia by Justin Raimondo ( January 6, 2015 , The American Conservative )
• 20150110 : Is Wall Street Signing Its Own Warrant? by David Atkins ( January 10, 2015 , washingtonmonthly.com )
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• 20150110 : Economists View Links for 01-10-15 ( Economist's View )
• 20150109 : Latvia proposes 'alternative' to Russian TV propaganda ( Jan 07, 2015 , marknesop.wordpress.com )
• 20150109 : European Union continues to suffer from western sanctions against Russia ( Global Deflation News )
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• 20150109 : Russia's London exodus as companies look east ( telegraph.co.uk )
• 20150109 : India & Russia- Friends Forever ( YouTube/ Ministry of External Affairs, India )
• 20150109 : Will 2015 Bring War The American Conservative ( Will 2015 Bring War The American Conservative, )
• 20150106 : Wishing Back Ghaddafi ( moonofalabama.org )
• 20150105 : US and Russia in danger of returning to era of nuclear rivalry by Julian Borger ( Jan 01, 2015 , The Guardian )
• 20150105 : Is Obama Desperate to Precipitate a Nuclear War? ( January 5, 2015 , dewaynenet.wordpress.com )
• 20150105 : Is Poroshenko Preparing for Peace or War by Joshua Tartakovsky ( Jan 2, 2015 , fortruss.blogspot.co.at )
• 20150105 : Do Svidanya 2014 ( Jan 05, 2015 , moonofalabama.org )
• 20150105 : The teeth of the Dragon by Western elite produce a frightening offspring. ( The teeth of the Dragon, Jan 05, 2015 )
• 20150104 : Warlords and armed groups threaten Ukraine's rebuilding by Adrian Karatnycky ( December 30, 2014 , The Washington Post )
• 20150104 : 2014 "End of Year" report and a look into what 2015 might bring ( 2014 "End of Year" report and a look into what 2015 might bring, Jan 04, 2015 )
• 20150102 : Isolationism Has Lost All Meaning by W. James Antle III ( 'Isolationism' Has Lost All Meaning, Jan 02, 2015 )

Old News ;-)

[Jun 17, 2019] Student Loan Debt Is the Enemy of Meritocracy

In 1980, the states subsidized 70% of the cost per student. Today it is less than 30% and the amount of grants and scholarships has likewise declined. Tax cuts for rich people and conservative hatred for education are the biggest problem.

Notable quotes:

"... "easy" student loans are a subsidy to colleges, ..."

"... 1965 median family income was $6900, more than 200% of the cost of a year at NU. Current median family income is about 75% of a year at NU. ..."

"... Allowing young adults to avoid challenging and uncomfortable and difficult subjects under the guise of compassion is the enemy of meritocracy. Financial illiteracy is the enemy of meritocracy. ..."

"... The specific market dynamics of health care expenditures are obviously different, but as categories of expenses they have some things in common. First, both are very expensive relative to most other household expenditures. Second, unlike consumer merchandise, neither lends itself very well to cost reduction via offshoring or automation. So in an economy where many consumer prices are held down through a corresponding suppression of real wage growth, they consume a correspondingly larger chunk of the household budget. ..."

"... JUST HAD AN IDEA THAT MIGHT LIMIT THE DAMAGE OF THESE PHONEY ONLINE COLLEGES (pardon shouting, but I think it's justified): ..."

"... of-paying) IF a built for that purpose government agency APPROVES said loan. What do you think? ..."

"... Kaplan Ed is among the worst of the worst of internet federal loan and grant sucking diploma mills. ..."

"... Because every event in today's economy is the wish of the wealthy. Do you see why they suddenly wish to deeply educate the proles? ..."

economistsview.typepad.com

Thomas Piketty on a theme I've been hammering lately, student debt is too damn high!:

Student Loan Debt Is the Enemy of Meritocracy in the US: ...the amount of household debt and even more recently of student debt in the U.S. is something that is really troublesome and it reflects the very large rise in tuition in the U.S. a very large inequality in access to education. I think if we really want to promote more equal opportunity and redistribute chances in access to education we should do something about student debt. And it's not possible to have such a large group of the population entering the labor force with such a big debt behind them. This exemplifies a particular problem with inequality in the United States, which is very high inequality and access to higher education. So in other countries in the developed world you don't have such massive student debt because you have more public support to higher education. I think the plan that was proposed earlier this year in 2015 by President Obama to increase public funding to public universities and community college is exactly justified.

This is really the key for higher growth in the future and also for a more equitable growth..., you have the official discourse about meritocracy, equal opportunity and mobility, and then you have the reality. And the gap between the two can be quite troublesome. So this is like you have a problem like this and there's a lot of hypocrisy about meritocracy in every country, not only in the U.S., but there is evidence suggesting that this has become particularly extreme in the United States. ... So this is a situation that is very troublesome and should rank very highly in the policy agenda in the future in the U.S.

DrDick -> Jeff R Carter:

"college is heavily subsidized"

Bwahahahahahahaha! *gasp*

In 1980, the states subsidized 70% of the cost per student. Today it is less than 30% and the amount of grants and scholarships has likewise declined. Tax cuts for rich people and conservative hatred for education are the biggest problem.

cm -> to DrDick...

I don't know what Jeff meant, but "easy" student loans are a subsidy to colleges, don't you think? Subsidies don't have to be paid directly to the recipient. The people who are getting the student loans don't get to keep the money (but they do get to keep the debt).

DrDick -> to cm...

No I do not agree. If anything, they are a subsidy to the finance industry (since you cannot default on them). More basically, they do not make college more affordable or accessible (his point).

cm -> to DrDick...

Well, what is a subsidy? Most economic entities don't get to keep the money they receive, but it ends up with somebody else or circulates. If I run a business and somebody sends people with money my way (or pays me by customer served), that looks like a subsidy to me - even though I don't get to keep the money, much of it paid for operational expenses not to forget salaries and other perks.

Just because it is not prearranged and no-strings (?) funding doesn't mean it cannot be a subsidy.

The financial system is involved, and benefits, whenever money is sloshing around.

Pinkybum -> to cm...

I think DrDick has this the right way around. Surely one should think of subsidies as to who the payment is directly helping. Subsidies to students would lower the barrier of entry into college. Subsidies to colleges help colleges hire better professors, offer more classes, reduce the cost of classes etc. Student loans are no subsidy at all except to the finance industry because they cannot be defaulted on and even then some may never be paid back because of bankruptcies.

However, that is always the risk of doing business as a loan provider. It might be interesting to assess the return on student loans compared to other loan instruments.

mrrunangun -> to Jeff R Carter...

The cost of higher education has risen relative to the earning power of the student and/or the student's family unless that family is in the top 10-20% wealth or income groups.

50 years ago it was possible for a lower middle class student to pay all expenses for Northwestern University with his/her own earnings. Tuition was $1500 and room + board c $1000/year. The State of Illinois had a scholarship grant program and all you needed was a 28 or 29 on the ACT to qualify for a grant that paid 80% of that tuition. A male student could make $2000 in a summer construction job, such as were plentiful during those booming 60s. That plus a low wage job waiting tables, night security, work-study etc could cover the remaining tuition and expense burden.

The annual nut now is in excess of $40,000 at NU and not much outside the $40,000-50,000 range at other second tier or elite schools.

The state schools used to produce the bedrock educated upper middle class of business and professional people in most states west of the seaboard. Tuition there 50 years ago was about $1200/year and room and board about $600-800 here in the midwest. Again you could put yourself through college waiting tables part-time. It wasn't easy but it was possible.

No way a kid who doesn't already possess an education can make the tuition and expenses of a private school today. I don't know what the median annual family income was in 1965 but I feel confident that it was well above the annual nut for a private college. Now it's about equal to it.

mrrunangun -> to mrrunangun...

1965 median family income was $6900, more than 200% of the cost of a year at NU. Current median family income is about 75% of a year at NU.

anne -> to 400 ppm CO2...

Linking for:

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Presentation-National-Debt.png

Click on "Share" under the graph that is initially constructed and copy the "Link" that appears:

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=13Ew

March 22, 2015

Federal debt, 1966-2014

This allows a reader to understand how the graph was constructed and to work with the graph.

ilsm:

The US spends half the money the entire world spends on war, that is success!

Massive student debt, huge doses poverty, scores of thousands [of annual neglect related] deaths from the wretched health care system etc are not failure!

tew:

Poor education is the enemy of meritocracy. Costly, bloated administrations full of non-educators there to pamper and pander to every possible complaint and special interest - that is the enemy of meritocracy.

Convincing kids to simple "follow their dreams" regardless of education cost and career potential is the enemy of meritocracy. Allowing young adults to avoid challenging and uncomfortable and difficult subjects under the guise of compassion is the enemy of meritocracy. Financial illiteracy is the enemy of meritocracy.

Manageable student debt is no great enemy of meritocracy.

cm -> to tew...

This misses the point, aside frm the victim blaming. Few people embark on college degrees to "follow their dream", unless the dream is getting admission to the middle class job market.

When I was in elementary/middle school, the admonitions were of the sort "if you are not good in school you will end up sweeping streets" - from a generation who still saw street cleaning as manual labor, in my days it was already mechanized.

I estimate that about 15% or so of every cohort went to high school and then college, most went to a combined vocational/high school track, and some of those then later also went college, often from work.

This was before the big automation and globalization waves, when there were still enough jobs for everybody, and there was no pretense that you needed a fancy title to do standard issue work or as a social signal of some sort.

Richard H. Serlin:

Student loans and college get the bulk of the education inequality attention, and it's not nearly enough attention, but it's so much more. The early years are so crucial, as Nobel economist James Heckman has shown so well. Some children get no schooling or educational/developmental day care until almost age 6, when it should start in the first year, with preschool starting at 3. Others get high quality Montessori, and have had 3 years of it by the time they enter kindergarten, when others have had zero of any kind of education when they enter kindergarten.

Some children spend summers in high quality summer school and educational programs; others spend three months digressing and learning nothing. Some children get SAT prep programs costing thousands, and high end educational afterschool programs; others get nothing after school.

All these things should be available in high quality to any child; it's not 1810 anymore Republicans, the good old days of life expectancy in the 30s and dirt poverty for the vast majority. We need just a little more education in the modern world. But this also makes for hugely unequal opportunity.

Observer -> to Observer...

Data on degree by year ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_United_States

Observer -> to Syaloch...

One needs to differentiate between costs (total dollars spent per student credit hour or degree, or whatever the appropriate metric is) and price (what fraction of the cost is allocated to the the end-user student).

Note that the level of state funding impacts price, not cost; that discussion is usually about cost shifting, not cost reduction.

I'd say that the rate of increase in costs is, more or less, independent of the percent of costs borne by the state. You can indeed see this in the increase in private schools, the state funding is small/nil (particularly in schools without material endowments, where actual annual fees (prices) must closely actual match annual costs). Price discounts and federal funding may both complicate this analysis.

I think much more effort should be spent on understanding and controlling costs. As with health care, just saying "spend more money" is probably not the wise or even sustainable path in the long term.

Costs were discussed at some length here a year(?) or so ago. There is at least one fairly comprehensive published analysis of higher education costs drivers. IIRC, their conclusion was that there were a number of drivers - its not just food courts or more administrators. Sorry, don't recall the link.

Syaloch -> to cm...

Actually for my first job out of college at BLS, I basically was hired for my "rounded personality" combined with a general understanding of economic principles, not for any specific job-related skills. I had no prior experience working with Laspeyres price indexes, those skills were acquired through on-the-job training. Similarly in software development there is no degree that can make you a qualified professional developer; the best a degree can do is to show you are somewhat literate in X development language and that you have a good understanding of general software development principles. Most of the specific skills you'll need to be effective will be learned on the job.

The problem is that employers increasingly want to avoid any responsibility for training and mentoring, and to shift this burden onto schools. These institutions respond by jettisoning courses in areas deemed unnecessary for short-term vocational purposes, even though what you learn in many of these courses is probably more valuable and durable in the long run than the skills obtained through job-specific training, which often have a remarkably short shelf-life. (How valuable to you now is all that COBOL training you had back in the day?)

I guess the question then is, is the sole purpose of higher education to provide people with entry-level job skills for some narrowly-defined job description which may not even exist in a decade? A lot of people these days seem to feel that way. But I believe that in the long run it's a recipe for disaster at both the individual and the societal level.

Richard H. Serlin -> to Observer...

"Observer"

The research is just not on you side, as Heckman has shown very well. Early education and development makes a huge difference, and at age 5-7 (kindergarten) children are much better off with more schooling than morning to noon. This is why educated parents who can afford it pay a lot of money for a full day -- with afterschool and weekened programs on top.

Yes, we're more educated than 1810, but I use 1810 because that's the kind of small government, little spending on education (you want your children educated you pay for it.) that the Republican Party would love to return us to if they thought they could get away with it. And we've become little more educated in the last 50 years even though the world has become much more technologically advanced.

anne:

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=14T9

January 30, 2015

Student Loans Outstanding as a share of Gross Domestic Product, 2007-2014

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=14Ta

January 30, 2015

Student Loans Outstanding, 2007-2014

(Percent change)

anne:

As to increasing college costs, would there be an analogy to healthcare costs?

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/25/why-markets-cant-cure-healthcare/

July 25, 2009

Why Markets Can't Cure Healthcare
By Paul Krugman

Judging both from comments on this blog and from some of my mail, a significant number of Americans believe that the answer to our health care problems - indeed, the only answer - is to rely on the free market. Quite a few seem to believe that this view reflects the lessons of economic theory.

Not so. One of the most influential economic papers of the postwar era was Kenneth Arrow's "Uncertainty and the Welfare Economics of Health Care," * which demonstrated - decisively, I and many others believe - that health care can't be marketed like bread or TVs. Let me offer my own version of Arrow's argument.

There are two strongly distinctive aspects of health care. One is that you don't know when or whether you'll need care - but if you do, the care can be extremely expensive. The big bucks are in triple coronary bypass surgery, not routine visits to the doctor's office; and very, very few people can afford to pay major medical costs out of pocket.

This tells you right away that health care can't be sold like bread. It must be largely paid for by some kind of insurance. And this in turn means that someone other than the patient ends up making decisions about what to buy. Consumer choice is nonsense when it comes to health care. And you can't just trust insurance companies either - they're not in business for their health, or yours.

This problem is made worse by the fact that actually paying for your health care is a loss from an insurers' point of view - they actually refer to it as "medical costs." This means both that insurers try to deny as many claims as possible, and that they try to avoid covering people who are actually likely to need care. Both of these strategies use a lot of resources, which is why private insurance has much higher administrative costs than single-payer systems. And since there's a widespread sense that our fellow citizens should get the care we need - not everyone agrees, but most do - this means that private insurance basically spends a lot of money on socially destructive activities.

The second thing about health care is that it's complicated, and you can't rely on experience or comparison shopping. ("I hear they've got a real deal on stents over at St. Mary's!") That's why doctors are supposed to follow an ethical code, why we expect more from them than from bakers or grocery store owners.

You could rely on a health maintenance organization to make the hard choices and do the cost management, and to some extent we do. But HMOs have been highly limited in their ability to achieve cost-effectiveness because people don't trust them - they're profit-making institutions, and your treatment is their cost.

Between those two factors, health care just doesn't work as a standard market story.

All of this doesn't necessarily mean that socialized medicine, or even single-payer, is the only way to go. There are a number of successful healthcare systems, at least as measured by pretty good care much cheaper than here, and they are quite different from each other. There are, however, no examples of successful health care based on the principles of the free market, for one simple reason: in health care, the free market just doesn't work. And people who say that the market is the answer are flying in the face of both theory and overwhelming evidence.

* http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/82/2/PHCBP.pdf

anne -> to anne...

http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CUUR0000SEEB01?output_view=pct_12mths

January 30, 2015

College tuition and fees, 1980–2015

(Percentage change)

1980 ( 9.4)
1981 ( 12.4) Reagan
1982 ( 13.4)
1983 ( 10.4)
1984 ( 10.2)

1985 ( 9.1)
1986 ( 8.1)
1987 ( 7.6)
1988 ( 7.6) Bush
1989 ( 7.9)

1990 ( 8.1)
1991 ( 10.2)
1992 ( 10.7) Clinton
1993 ( 9.4)
1994 ( 7.0)

1995 ( 6.0)
1996 ( 5.7)
1997 ( 5.1)
1998 ( 4.2)
1999 ( 4.0)

2000 ( 4.1)
2001 ( 5.1) Bush
2002 ( 6.8)
2003 ( 8.4)
2004 ( 9.5)

2005 ( 7.5)
2006 ( 6.7)
2007 ( 6.2)
2008 ( 6.2)
2009 ( 6.0) Obama

2010 ( 5.2)
2011 ( 5.0)
2012 ( 4.8)
2013 ( 4.2)
2014 ( 3.7)

January

2015 ( 3.6)

Syaloch -> to anne...

I believe so, as I noted above. The specific market dynamics of health care expenditures are obviously different, but as categories of expenses they have some things in common. First, both are very expensive relative to most other household expenditures. Second, unlike consumer merchandise, neither lends itself very well to cost reduction via offshoring or automation. So in an economy where many consumer prices are held down through a corresponding suppression of real wage growth, they consume a correspondingly larger chunk of the household budget.

Another interesting feature of both health care and college education is that there are many proffered explanations as to why their cost is rising so much relative to other areas, but a surprising lack of a really authoritative explanation based on solid evidence.

anne -> to Syaloch...

Another interesting feature of both health care and college education is that there are many proffered explanations as to why their cost is rising so much relative to other areas, but a surprising lack of a really authoritative explanation based on solid evidence.

[ Look to the paper by Kenneth Arrow, which I cannot copy, for what is to me a convincing explanation as to the market defeating factors of healthcare. However, I have no proper explanation about education costs and am only speculating or looking for an analogy. ]

anne -> to Syaloch...

The specific market dynamics of health care expenditures are obviously different, but as categories of expenses they have some things in common. First, both are very expensive relative to most other household expenditures. Second, unlike consumer merchandise, neither lends itself very well to cost reduction via offshoring or automation. So in an economy where many consumer prices are held down through a corresponding suppression of real wage growth, they consume a correspondingly larger chunk of the household budget.

[ Nicely expressed. ]

Peter K. -> to anne...

"As to increasing college costs, would there be an analogy to healthcare costs?"

Yes, exactly. They aren't normal markets. There should be heavy government regulation.

Denis Drew:

JUST HAD AN IDEA THAT MIGHT LIMIT THE DAMAGE OF THESE PHONEY ONLINE COLLEGES (pardon shouting, but I think it's justified):

Only allow government guaranteed loans (and the accompanying you-can-never-get-out-of-paying) IF a built for that purpose government agency APPROVES said loan. What do you think?

Denis Drew -> to cm...

A big reason we had the real estate bubble was actually the mad Republican relaxation of loan requirements -- relying on the "free market." So, thanks for coming up with a good comparison.

By definition, for the most part, people taking out student loans are shall we say new to the world and more vulnerable to the pirates.
* * * * * * * * * *
[cut and paste from my comment on AB]
Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post.

According to an article in the Huffington Post At Kaplan University, 'Guerrilla Registration' Leaves Students Deep In Debt, Kaplan Ed is among the worst of the worst of internet federal loan and grant sucking diploma mills. Going so far as to falsely pad bills $5000 or so dollars at diploma time - pay up immediately or you will never get your sheepskin; you wasted your time. No gov agency will act.

According to a lovely graph which I wish I could patch in here the Post may actually be currently be kept afloat only by purloined cash from Kaplan:

earnings before corporate overhead

2002 - Kaplan ed, $10 mil; Kaplan test prep, $45 mil: WaPo, $100 mil
2005 - Kaplan ed, $55 mil; Kaplan test prep, $100 mil; WaPo, $105 mil
2009 - Kaplan ed, $255 mil; Kaplan test prep, $5 mil; WaPo negative $175 mil

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/22/kaplan-university-guerilla-registration_n_799741.html

Wonder if billionaire Bezos will reach out to make Kaplan Ed victims whole. Will he really continue to use Kaplan's pirated money to keep WaPo whole -- if that is what is going on?

Johannes Y O Highness:

"theme I've been hammering lately, student debt is too damn high!: "

Too damn high
but why?

Because! Because every event in today's economy is the wish of the wealthy. Do you see why they suddenly wish to deeply educate the proles?

Opportunity cost! The burden of the intelligentsia, the brain work can by carried by robots or humans. Choice of the wealthy? Humans, hands down. Can you see the historical background?

Railroad was the first robot. According to Devon's Paradox, it was overused because of its increment of efficiency. Later, excessive roadbeds were disassembled. Rails were sold as scrap.

The new robots are not heavy lifters. New robots are there to do the work of the brain trust. As first robots replaced lower caste jokers, so shall new robots replace upper caste jokers. Do you see the fear developing inside the huddle of high rollers? Rollers now calling the play?

High rollers plan to educate small time hoods to do the work of the new robots, then kill the new robots before the newbie 'bot discovers how to kill the wealthy, to kill, to replace them forever.

Terrifying fear
strikes

Observer:

Good bit of data on education costs here

http://centerforcollegeaffordability.org/

This chart shows state spending per student and tuition ...

" overall perhaps the best description of the data is something along the lines of "sometimes state appropriations go up and sometimes they go down, but tuition always goes up." "

http://centerforcollegeaffordability.org/2012/12/04/chart-of-the-week-state-appropriations-and-public-tuitions/

[Jun 17, 2019] Student Loan Debt Is the Enemy of Meritocracy

In 1980, the states subsidized 70% of the cost per student. Today it is less than 30% and the amount of grants and scholarships has likewise declined. Tax cuts for rich people and conservative hatred for education are the biggest problem.

Notable quotes:

"... "easy" student loans are a subsidy to colleges, ..."

"... 1965 median family income was $6900, more than 200% of the cost of a year at NU. Current median family income is about 75% of a year at NU. ..."

"... Allowing young adults to avoid challenging and uncomfortable and difficult subjects under the guise of compassion is the enemy of meritocracy. Financial illiteracy is the enemy of meritocracy. ..."

"... The specific market dynamics of health care expenditures are obviously different, but as categories of expenses they have some things in common. First, both are very expensive relative to most other household expenditures. Second, unlike consumer merchandise, neither lends itself very well to cost reduction via offshoring or automation. So in an economy where many consumer prices are held down through a corresponding suppression of real wage growth, they consume a correspondingly larger chunk of the household budget. ..."

"... JUST HAD AN IDEA THAT MIGHT LIMIT THE DAMAGE OF THESE PHONEY ONLINE COLLEGES (pardon shouting, but I think it's justified): ..."

"... of-paying) IF a built for that purpose government agency APPROVES said loan. What do you think? ..."

"... Kaplan Ed is among the worst of the worst of internet federal loan and grant sucking diploma mills. ..."

"... Because every event in today's economy is the wish of the wealthy. Do you see why they suddenly wish to deeply educate the proles? ..."

economistsview.typepad.com

Thomas Piketty on a theme I've been hammering lately, student debt is too damn high!:

Student Loan Debt Is the Enemy of Meritocracy in the US: ...the amount of household debt and even more recently of student debt in the U.S. is something that is really troublesome and it reflects the very large rise in tuition in the U.S. a very large inequality in access to education. I think if we really want to promote more equal opportunity and redistribute chances in access to education we should do something about student debt. And it's not possible to have such a large group of the population entering the labor force with such a big debt behind them. This exemplifies a particular problem with inequality in the United States, which is very high inequality and access to higher education. So in other countries in the developed world you don't have such massive student debt because you have more public support to higher education. I think the plan that was proposed earlier this year in 2015 by President Obama to increase public funding to public universities and community college is exactly justified.

This is really the key for higher growth in the future and also for a more equitable growth..., you have the official discourse about meritocracy, equal opportunity and mobility, and then you have the reality. And the gap between the two can be quite troublesome. So this is like you have a problem like this and there's a lot of hypocrisy about meritocracy in every country, not only in the U.S., but there is evidence suggesting that this has become particularly extreme in the United States. ... So this is a situation that is very troublesome and should rank very highly in the policy agenda in the future in the U.S.

DrDick -> Jeff R Carter:

"college is heavily subsidized"

Bwahahahahahahaha! *gasp*

In 1980, the states subsidized 70% of the cost per student. Today it is less than 30% and the amount of grants and scholarships has likewise declined. Tax cuts for rich people and conservative hatred for education are the biggest problem.

cm -> to DrDick...

I don't know what Jeff meant, but "easy" student loans are a subsidy to colleges, don't you think? Subsidies don't have to be paid directly to the recipient. The people who are getting the student loans don't get to keep the money (but they do get to keep the debt).

DrDick -> to cm...

No I do not agree. If anything, they are a subsidy to the finance industry (since you cannot default on them). More basically, they do not make college more affordable or accessible (his point).

cm -> to DrDick...

Well, what is a subsidy? Most economic entities don't get to keep the money they receive, but it ends up with somebody else or circulates. If I run a business and somebody sends people with money my way (or pays me by customer served), that looks like a subsidy to me - even though I don't get to keep the money, much of it paid for operational expenses not to forget salaries and other perks.

Just because it is not prearranged and no-strings (?) funding doesn't mean it cannot be a subsidy.

The financial system is involved, and benefits, whenever money is sloshing around.

Pinkybum -> to cm...

I think DrDick has this the right way around. Surely one should think of subsidies as to who the payment is directly helping. Subsidies to students would lower the barrier of entry into college. Subsidies to colleges help colleges hire better professors, offer more classes, reduce the cost of classes etc. Student loans are no subsidy at all except to the finance industry because they cannot be defaulted on and even then some may never be paid back because of bankruptcies.

However, that is always the risk of doing business as a loan provider. It might be interesting to assess the return on student loans compared to other loan instruments.

mrrunangun -> to Jeff R Carter...

The cost of higher education has risen relative to the earning power of the student and/or the student's family unless that family is in the top 10-20% wealth or income groups.

50 years ago it was possible for a lower middle class student to pay all expenses for Northwestern University with his/her own earnings. Tuition was $1500 and room + board c $1000/year. The State of Illinois had a scholarship grant program and all you needed was a 28 or 29 on the ACT to qualify for a grant that paid 80% of that tuition. A male student could make $2000 in a summer construction job, such as were plentiful during those booming 60s. That plus a low wage job waiting tables, night security, work-study etc could cover the remaining tuition and expense burden.

The annual nut now is in excess of $40,000 at NU and not much outside the $40,000-50,000 range at other second tier or elite schools.

The state schools used to produce the bedrock educated upper middle class of business and professional people in most states west of the seaboard. Tuition there 50 years ago was about $1200/year and room and board about $600-800 here in the midwest. Again you could put yourself through college waiting tables part-time. It wasn't easy but it was possible.

No way a kid who doesn't already possess an education can make the tuition and expenses of a private school today. I don't know what the median annual family income was in 1965 but I feel confident that it was well above the annual nut for a private college. Now it's about equal to it.

mrrunangun -> to mrrunangun...

1965 median family income was $6900, more than 200% of the cost of a year at NU. Current median family income is about 75% of a year at NU.

anne -> to 400 ppm CO2...

Linking for:

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Presentation-National-Debt.png

Click on "Share" under the graph that is initially constructed and copy the "Link" that appears:

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=13Ew

March 22, 2015

Federal debt, 1966-2014

This allows a reader to understand how the graph was constructed and to work with the graph.

ilsm:

The US spends half the money the entire world spends on war, that is success!

Massive student debt, huge doses poverty, scores of thousands [of annual neglect related] deaths from the wretched health care system etc are not failure!

tew:

Poor education is the enemy of meritocracy. Costly, bloated administrations full of non-educators there to pamper and pander to every possible complaint and special interest - that is the enemy of meritocracy.

Convincing kids to simple "follow their dreams" regardless of education cost and career potential is the enemy of meritocracy. Allowing young adults to avoid challenging and uncomfortable and difficult subjects under the guise of compassion is the enemy of meritocracy. Financial illiteracy is the enemy of meritocracy.

Manageable student debt is no great enemy of meritocracy.

cm -> to tew...

This misses the point, aside frm the victim blaming. Few people embark on college degrees to "follow their dream", unless the dream is getting admission to the middle class job market.

When I was in elementary/middle school, the admonitions were of the sort "if you are not good in school you will end up sweeping streets" - from a generation who still saw street cleaning as manual labor, in my days it was already mechanized.

I estimate that about 15% or so of every cohort went to high school and then college, most went to a combined vocational/high school track, and some of those then later also went college, often from work.

This was before the big automation and globalization waves, when there were still enough jobs for everybody, and there was no pretense that you needed a fancy title to do standard issue work or as a social signal of some sort.

Richard H. Serlin:

Student loans and college get the bulk of the education inequality attention, and it's not nearly enough attention, but it's so much more. The early years are so crucial, as Nobel economist James Heckman has shown so well. Some children get no schooling or educational/developmental day care until almost age 6, when it should start in the first year, with preschool starting at 3. Others get high quality Montessori, and have had 3 years of it by the time they enter kindergarten, when others have had zero of any kind of education when they enter kindergarten.

Some children spend summers in high quality summer school and educational programs; others spend three months digressing and learning nothing. Some children get SAT prep programs costing thousands, and high end educational afterschool programs; others get nothing after school.

All these things should be available in high quality to any child; it's not 1810 anymore Republicans, the good old days of life expectancy in the 30s and dirt poverty for the vast majority. We need just a little more education in the modern world. But this also makes for hugely unequal opportunity.

Observer -> to Observer...

Data on degree by year ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_United_States

Observer -> to Syaloch...

One needs to differentiate between costs (total dollars spent per student credit hour or degree, or whatever the appropriate metric is) and price (what fraction of the cost is allocated to the the end-user student).

Note that the level of state funding impacts price, not cost; that discussion is usually about cost shifting, not cost reduction.

I'd say that the rate of increase in costs is, more or less, independent of the percent of costs borne by the state. You can indeed see this in the increase in private schools, the state funding is small/nil (particularly in schools without material endowments, where actual annual fees (prices) must closely actual match annual costs). Price discounts and federal funding may both complicate this analysis.

I think much more effort should be spent on understanding and controlling costs. As with health care, just saying "spend more money" is probably not the wise or even sustainable path in the long term.

Costs were discussed at some length here a year(?) or so ago. There is at least one fairly comprehensive published analysis of higher education costs drivers. IIRC, their conclusion was that there were a number of drivers - its not just food courts or more administrators. Sorry, don't recall the link.

Syaloch -> to cm...

Actually for my first job out of college at BLS, I basically was hired for my "rounded personality" combined with a general understanding of economic principles, not for any specific job-related skills. I had no prior experience working with Laspeyres price indexes, those skills were acquired through on-the-job training. Similarly in software development there is no degree that can make you a qualified professional developer; the best a degree can do is to show you are somewhat literate in X development language and that you have a good understanding of general software development principles. Most of the specific skills you'll need to be effective will be learned on the job.

The problem is that employers increasingly want to avoid any responsibility for training and mentoring, and to shift this burden onto schools. These institutions respond by jettisoning courses in areas deemed unnecessary for short-term vocational purposes, even though what you learn in many of these courses is probably more valuable and durable in the long run than the skills obtained through job-specific training, which often have a remarkably short shelf-life. (How valuable to you now is all that COBOL training you had back in the day?)

I guess the question then is, is the sole purpose of higher education to provide people with entry-level job skills for some narrowly-defined job description which may not even exist in a decade? A lot of people these days seem to feel that way. But I believe that in the long run it's a recipe for disaster at both the individual and the societal level.

Richard H. Serlin -> to Observer...

"Observer"

The research is just not on you side, as Heckman has shown very well. Early education and development makes a huge difference, and at age 5-7 (kindergarten) children are much better off with more schooling than morning to noon. This is why educated parents who can afford it pay a lot of money for a full day -- with afterschool and weekened programs on top.

Yes, we're more educated than 1810, but I use 1810 because that's the kind of small government, little spending on education (you want your children educated you pay for it.) that the Republican Party would love to return us to if they thought they could get away with it. And we've become little more educated in the last 50 years even though the world has become much more technologically advanced.

anne:

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=14T9

January 30, 2015

Student Loans Outstanding as a share of Gross Domestic Product, 2007-2014

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=14Ta

January 30, 2015

Student Loans Outstanding, 2007-2014

(Percent change)

anne:

As to increasing college costs, would there be an analogy to healthcare costs?

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/25/why-markets-cant-cure-healthcare/

July 25, 2009

Why Markets Can't Cure Healthcare
By Paul Krugman

Judging both from comments on this blog and from some of my mail, a significant number of Americans believe that the answer to our health care problems - indeed, the only answer - is to rely on the free market. Quite a few seem to believe that this view reflects the lessons of economic theory.

Not so. One of the most influential economic papers of the postwar era was Kenneth Arrow's "Uncertainty and the Welfare Economics of Health Care," * which demonstrated - decisively, I and many others believe - that health care can't be marketed like bread or TVs. Let me offer my own version of Arrow's argument.

There are two strongly distinctive aspects of health care. One is that you don't know when or whether you'll need care - but if you do, the care can be extremely expensive. The big bucks are in triple coronary bypass surgery, not routine visits to the doctor's office; and very, very few people can afford to pay major medical costs out of pocket.

This tells you right away that health care can't be sold like bread. It must be largely paid for by some kind of insurance. And this in turn means that someone other than the patient ends up making decisions about what to buy. Consumer choice is nonsense when it comes to health care. And you can't just trust insurance companies either - they're not in business for their health, or yours.

This problem is made worse by the fact that actually paying for your health care is a loss from an insurers' point of view - they actually refer to it as "medical costs." This means both that insurers try to deny as many claims as possible, and that they try to avoid covering people who are actually likely to need care. Both of these strategies use a lot of resources, which is why private insurance has much higher administrative costs than single-payer systems. And since there's a widespread sense that our fellow citizens should get the care we need - not everyone agrees, but most do - this means that private insurance basically spends a lot of money on socially destructive activities.

The second thing about health care is that it's complicated, and you can't rely on experience or comparison shopping. ("I hear they've got a real deal on stents over at St. Mary's!") That's why doctors are supposed to follow an ethical code, why we expect more from them than from bakers or grocery store owners.

You could rely on a health maintenance organization to make the hard choices and do the cost management, and to some extent we do. But HMOs have been highly limited in their ability to achieve cost-effectiveness because people don't trust them - they're profit-making institutions, and your treatment is their cost.

Between those two factors, health care just doesn't work as a standard market story.

All of this doesn't necessarily mean that socialized medicine, or even single-payer, is the only way to go. There are a number of successful healthcare systems, at least as measured by pretty good care much cheaper than here, and they are quite different from each other. There are, however, no examples of successful health care based on the principles of the free market, for one simple reason: in health care, the free market just doesn't work. And people who say that the market is the answer are flying in the face of both theory and overwhelming evidence.

* http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/82/2/PHCBP.pdf

anne -> to anne...

http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CUUR0000SEEB01?output_view=pct_12mths

January 30, 2015

College tuition and fees, 1980–2015

(Percentage change)

1980 ( 9.4)
1981 ( 12.4) Reagan
1982 ( 13.4)
1983 ( 10.4)
1984 ( 10.2)

1985 ( 9.1)
1986 ( 8.1)
1987 ( 7.6)
1988 ( 7.6) Bush
1989 ( 7.9)

1990 ( 8.1)
1991 ( 10.2)
1992 ( 10.7) Clinton
1993 ( 9.4)
1994 ( 7.0)

1995 ( 6.0)
1996 ( 5.7)
1997 ( 5.1)
1998 ( 4.2)
1999 ( 4.0)

2000 ( 4.1)
2001 ( 5.1) Bush
2002 ( 6.8)
2003 ( 8.4)
2004 ( 9.5)

2005 ( 7.5)
2006 ( 6.7)
2007 ( 6.2)
2008 ( 6.2)
2009 ( 6.0) Obama

2010 ( 5.2)
2011 ( 5.0)
2012 ( 4.8)
2013 ( 4.2)
2014 ( 3.7)

January

2015 ( 3.6)

Syaloch -> to anne...

I believe so, as I noted above. The specific market dynamics of health care expenditures are obviously different, but as categories of expenses they have some things in common. First, both are very expensive relative to most other household expenditures. Second, unlike consumer merchandise, neither lends itself very well to cost reduction via offshoring or automation. So in an economy where many consumer prices are held down through a corresponding suppression of real wage growth, they consume a correspondingly larger chunk of the household budget.

Another interesting feature of both health care and college education is that there are many proffered explanations as to why their cost is rising so much relative to other areas, but a surprising lack of a really authoritative explanation based on solid evidence.

anne -> to Syaloch...

Another interesting feature of both health care and college education is that there are many proffered explanations as to why their cost is rising so much relative to other areas, but a surprising lack of a really authoritative explanation based on solid evidence.

[ Look to the paper by Kenneth Arrow, which I cannot copy, for what is to me a convincing explanation as to the market defeating factors of healthcare. However, I have no proper explanation about education costs and am only speculating or looking for an analogy. ]

anne -> to Syaloch...

The specific market dynamics of health care expenditures are obviously different, but as categories of expenses they have some things in common. First, both are very expensive relative to most other household expenditures. Second, unlike consumer merchandise, neither lends itself very well to cost reduction via offshoring or automation. So in an economy where many consumer prices are held down through a corresponding suppression of real wage growth, they consume a correspondingly larger chunk of the household budget.

[ Nicely expressed. ]

Peter K. -> to anne...

"As to increasing college costs, would there be an analogy to healthcare costs?"

Yes, exactly. They aren't normal markets. There should be heavy government regulation.

Denis Drew:

JUST HAD AN IDEA THAT MIGHT LIMIT THE DAMAGE OF THESE PHONEY ONLINE COLLEGES (pardon shouting, but I think it's justified):

Only allow government guaranteed loans (and the accompanying you-can-never-get-out-of-paying) IF a built for that purpose government agency APPROVES said loan. What do you think?

Denis Drew -> to cm...

A big reason we had the real estate bubble was actually the mad Republican relaxation of loan requirements -- relying on the "free market." So, thanks for coming up with a good comparison.

By definition, for the most part, people taking out student loans are shall we say new to the world and more vulnerable to the pirates.
* * * * * * * * * *
[cut and paste from my comment on AB]
Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post.

According to an article in the Huffington Post At Kaplan University, 'Guerrilla Registration' Leaves Students Deep In Debt, Kaplan Ed is among the worst of the worst of internet federal loan and grant sucking diploma mills. Going so far as to falsely pad bills $5000 or so dollars at diploma time - pay up immediately or you will never get your sheepskin; you wasted your time. No gov agency will act.

According to a lovely graph which I wish I could patch in here the Post may actually be currently be kept afloat only by purloined cash from Kaplan:

earnings before corporate overhead

2002 - Kaplan ed, $10 mil; Kaplan test prep, $45 mil: WaPo, $100 mil
2005 - Kaplan ed, $55 mil; Kaplan test prep, $100 mil; WaPo, $105 mil
2009 - Kaplan ed, $255 mil; Kaplan test prep, $5 mil; WaPo negative $175 mil

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/22/kaplan-university-guerilla-registration_n_799741.html

Wonder if billionaire Bezos will reach out to make Kaplan Ed victims whole. Will he really continue to use Kaplan's pirated money to keep WaPo whole -- if that is what is going on?

Johannes Y O Highness:

"theme I've been hammering lately, student debt is too damn high!: "

Too damn high
but why?

Because! Because every event in today's economy is the wish of the wealthy. Do you see why they suddenly wish to deeply educate the proles?

Opportunity cost! The burden of the intelligentsia, the brain work can by carried by robots or humans. Choice of the wealthy? Humans, hands down. Can you see the historical background?

Railroad was the first robot. According to Devon's Paradox, it was overused because of its increment of efficiency. Later, excessive roadbeds were disassembled. Rails were sold as scrap.

The new robots are not heavy lifters. New robots are there to do the work of the brain trust. As first robots replaced lower caste jokers, so shall new robots replace upper caste jokers. Do you see the fear developing inside the huddle of high rollers? Rollers now calling the play?

High rollers plan to educate small time hoods to do the work of the new robots, then kill the new robots before the newbie 'bot discovers how to kill the wealthy, to kill, to replace them forever.

Terrifying fear
strikes

Observer:

Good bit of data on education costs here

http://centerforcollegeaffordability.org/

This chart shows state spending per student and tuition ...

" overall perhaps the best description of the data is something along the lines of "sometimes state appropriations go up and sometimes they go down, but tuition always goes up." "

http://centerforcollegeaffordability.org/2012/12/04/chart-of-the-week-state-appropriations-and-public-tuitions/

In Defense of Difficulty By Steve Wasserman

March 18, 2015 | The American Conservative

A phony populism is denying Americans the joys of serious thought.

... ... ...

Universities, too, were at fault. They had colonized critics by holding careers hostage to academic specialization, requiring them to master the arcane tongues of ever-narrower disciplines, forcing them to forsake a larger public. Compared to the Arcadian past, the present, in this view, was a wasteland.

It didn't have to be this way. In the postwar era, a vast project of cultural uplift sought to bring the best that had been thought and said to the wider public. Robert M. Hutchins of the University of Chicago and Mortimer J. Adler were among its more prominent avatars. This effort, which tried to deepen literacy under the sign of the "middlebrow," and thus to strengthen the idea that an informed citizenry was indispensable for a healthy democracy, was, for a time, hugely successful. The general level of cultural sophistication rose as a growing middle class shed its provincialism in exchange for a certain worldliness that was one legacy of American triumphalism and ambition after World War II. College enrollment boomed, and the percentage of Americans attending the performing arts rose dramatically. Regional stage and opera companies blossomed, new concert halls were built, and interest in the arts was widespread. TV hosts Steve Allen, Johnny Carson, and Dick Cavett frequently featured serious writers as guests. Paperback publishers made classic works of history, literature, and criticism available to ordinary readers whose appetite for such works seemed insatiable.

Mass circulation newspapers and magazines, too, expanded their coverage of books, movies, music, dance, and theater. Criticism was no longer confined to such small but influential journals of opinion as Partisan Review, The Nation, and The New Republic. Esquire embraced the irascible Dwight Macdonald as its movie critic, despite his well-known contempt for "middlebrow" culture. The New Yorker threw a lifeline to Pauline Kael, rescuing her from the ghetto of film quarterlies and the art houses of Berkeley. Strong critics like David Riesman, Daniel Bell, and Leslie Fiedler, among others, would write with insight and pugilistic zeal books that often found enough readers to propel their works onto bestseller lists. Intellectuals such as Susan Sontag were featured in the glossy pages of magazines like Vogue. Her controversial "Notes on Camp," first published in 1964 in Partisan Review, exploded into public view when Time championed her work. Eggheads were suddenly sexy, almost on a par with star athletes and Hollywood celebrities. Gore Vidal was a regular on Johnny Carson. William F. Buckley Jr.'s "Firing Line" hosted vigorous debates that often were models of how to think, how to argue, and, at their best, told us that ideas mattered.

As Scott Timberg, a former arts reporter for the Los Angeles Times, puts it in his recent book Culture Crash: The Killing of the Creative Class, the idea, embraced by increasing numbers of Americans, was that

drama, poetry, music, and art were not just a way to pass the time, or advertise one's might, but a path to truth and enlightenment. At its best, this was what the middlebrow consensus promised. Middlebrow said that culture was accessible to a wide strat[um] of society, that people needed some but not much training to appreciate it, that there was a canon worth knowing, that art was not the same as entertainment, that the study of the liberal arts deepens you, and that those who make, assess, and disseminate the arts were somehow valuable for our society regardless of their impact on GDP.

So what if culture was increasingly just another product to be bought and sold, used and discarded, like so many tubes of toothpaste? Even Los Angeles, long derided as a cultural desert, would by the turn of the century boast a flourishing and internationally respected opera company, a thriving archipelago of museums with world-class collections, and dozens of bookstores selling in some years more books per capita than were sold in the greater New York area. The middlebrow's triumph was all but assured.

The arrival of the Internet by century's end promised to make that victory complete. As the Wall Street Journal reported in a front-page story in 1998, America was "increasingly wealthy, worldly, and wired." Notions of elitism and snobbery seemed to be collapsing upon the palpable catholicity of a public whose curiosities were ever more diverse and eclectic and whose ability to satisfy them had suddenly and miraculously expanded. We stood, it appeared, on the verge of a munificent new world-a world in which technology was rapidly democratizing the means of cultural production while providing an easy way for millions of ordinary citizens, previously excluded from the precincts of the higher conversation, to join the dialogue. The digital revolution was predicted to empower those authors whose writings had been marginalized, shut out of mainstream publishing, to overthrow the old monastic self-selecting order of cultural gatekeepers (meaning professional critics). Thus would critical faculties be sharpened and democratized. Digital platforms would crack open the cloistered and solipsistic world of academe, bypass the old presses and performing-arts spaces, and unleash a new era of cultural commerce. With smart machines there would be smarter people.

Harvard's Robert Darnton, a sober and learned historian of reading and the book, agreed. He argued that the implications for writing and reading, for publishing and bookselling-indeed, for cultural literacy and criticism itself-were profound. For, as he gushed in The Case for Books: Past, Present, and Future, we now had the ability to make "all book learning available to all people, or at least those privileged enough to have access to the World Wide Web. It promises to be the ultimate stage in the democratization of knowledge set in motion by the invention of writing, the codex, movable type, and the Internet." In this view, echoed by innumerable worshippers of the New Information Age, we were living at one of history's hinge moments, a great evolutionary leap in the human mind. And, in truth, it was hard not to believe that we had arrived at the apotheosis of our culture. Never before in history had more good literature and cultural works been available at such low cost to so many. The future was radiant.

Others, such as the critics Evgeny Morozov and Jaron Lanier, were more skeptical. They worried that whatever advantages might accrue to consumers and the culture at large from the emergence of such behemoths as Amazon, not only would proven methods of cultural production and distribution be made obsolete, but we were in danger of being enrolled, whether we liked it or not, in an overwhelmingly fast and visually furious culture that, as numerous studies have shown, renders serious reading and cultural criticism increasingly irrelevant, hollowing out habits of attention indispensable for absorbing long-form narrative and sustained argument. Indeed, they feared that the digital tsunami now engulfing us may even signal an irrevocable trivialization of the word. Or, at the least, a sense that the enterprise of making distinctions between bad, good, and best was a mug's game that had no place in a democracy that worships at the altar of mass appeal and counts its receipts at the almighty box office.

... ... ...

...Today, America's traditional organs of popular criticism-newspapers, magazines, journals of opinion-have been all but overwhelmed by the digital onslaught: their circulations plummeting, their confidence eroded, their survival in doubt. Newspaper review sections in particular have suffered: jobs have been slashed, and cultural coverage vastly diminished. Both the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post have abandoned their stand-alone book sections, leaving the New York Times as the only major American newspaper still publishing a significant separate section devoted to reviewing books.

Such sections, of course, were always few. Only a handful of America's papers ever deemed book coverage important enough to dedicate an entire Sunday section to it. Now even that handful is threatened with extinction, and thus is a widespread cultural illiteracy abetted, for at their best the editors of those sections tried to establish the idea that serious criticism was possible in a mass culture. In the 19th century, Margaret Fuller, literary editor of the New York Tribune and the country's first full-time book reviewer, understood this well. She saw books as "a medium for viewing all humanity, a core around which all knowledge, all experience, all science, all the ideal as well as all the practical in our nature could gather." She sought, she said, to tell "the whole truth, as well as nothing but the truth."

The arrival of the Internet has proved no panacea. The vast canvas afforded by the Internet has done little to encourage thoughtful and serious criticism. Mostly it has provided a vast Democracy Wall on which any crackpot can post his or her manifesto. Bloggers bloviate and insults abound. Discourse coarsens. Information is abundant, wisdom scarce. It is a striking irony, as Leon Wieseltier has noted, that with the arrival of the Internet, "a medium of communication with no limitations of physical space, everything on it has to be in six hundred words." The Internet, he said, is the first means of communication invented by humankind that privileges one's first thoughts as one's best thoughts. And he rightly observed that if "value is a function of scarcity," then "what is most scarce in our culture is long, thoughtful, patient, deliberate analysis of questions that do not have obvious or easy answers." Time is required to think through difficult questions. Patience is a condition of genuine intellection. The thinking mind, the creating mind, said Wieseltier, should not be rushed. "And where the mind is rushed and made frenetic, neither thought nor creativity will ensue. What you will most likely get is conformity and banality. Writing is not typed talking."

The fundamental idea at stake in the criticism of culture generally is the self-image of society: how it reasons with itself, describes itself, imagines itself. Nothing in the excitements made possible by the digital revolution banishes the need for the rigor such self-reckoning requires. It is, as Wieseltier says, the obligation of cultural criticism to bear down on what matters.

♦♦♦

Where is such criticism to be found today? We inhabit a remarkably arid cultural landscape, especially when compared with the ambitions of postwar America, ambitions which, to be sure, were often mocked by some of the country's more prominent intellectuals. Yes, Dwight Macdonald famously excoriated the enfeeblements of "mass cult and midcult," and Irving Howe regretted "This Age of Conformity," but from today's perspective, when we look back at the offerings of the Book-of-the-Month Club and projects such as the Great Books of the Western World, their scorn looks misplaced. The fact that their complaints circulated widely in the very midcult worlds Macdonald condemned was proof that trenchant criticism had found a place within the organs of mass culture. One is almost tempted to say that the middlebrow culture of yesteryear was a high-water mark.

The reality, of course, was never as rosy as much of it looks in retrospect. Cultural criticism in most American newspapers, even at its best, was almost always confined to a ghetto. You were lucky at most papers to get a column or a half-page devoted to arts and culture. Editors encouraged reporters, reviewers, and critics to win readers and improve circulation by pandering to the faux populism of the marketplace. Only the review that might immediately be understood by the greatest number of readers would be permitted to see the light of day. Anything else smacked of "elitism"-a sin to be avoided at almost any cost.

This was a coarse and pernicious notion, one that lay at the center of the country's longstanding anti-intellectual tradition. From the start of the republic, Americans have had a profoundly ambivalent relationship to class and culture, as Richard Hofstadter famously observed. He was neither the first nor the last to notice this self-inflicted wound. As even the vastly popular science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov understood, "Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'"

... ... ...

When did "difficulty" become suspect in American culture, widely derided as anti-democratic and contemptuously dismissed as evidence of so-called elitism? If a work of art isn't somehow immediately "understood" or "accessible" by and to large numbers of people, it is often ridiculed as "esoteric," "obtuse," or even somehow un-American. We should mark such an argument's cognitive consequences. A culture filled with smooth and familiar consumptions produces in people rigid mental habits and stultified conceptions. They know what they know, and they expect to find it reinforced when they turn a page or click on a screen. Difficulty annoys them, and, having become accustomed to so much pabulum served up by a pandering and invertebrate media, they experience difficulty not just as "difficult," but as insult. Struggling to understand, say, Faulkner's stream-of-consciousness masterpiece The Sound and the Fury or Alain Resnais's Rubik's Cube of a movie "Last Year at Marienbad" needn't be done. The mind may skip trying to solve such cognitive puzzles, even though the truth is they strengthen it as a workout tones the muscles.

Sometimes it feels as if the world is divided into two classes: one very large class spurns difficulty, while the other very much smaller delights in it. There are readers who, when encountering an unfamiliar word, instead of reaching for a dictionary, choose to regard it as a sign of the author's contempt or pretension, a deliberate refusal to speak in a language ordinary people can understand. Others, encountering the same word, happily seize on it as a chance to learn something new, to broaden their horizons. They eagerly seek a literature that upends assumptions, challenges prejudices, turns them inside out and forces them to see the world through new eyes.

The second group is an endangered species. One reason is that the ambitions of mainstream media that, however fitfully, once sought to expose them to the life of the mind and to the contest of ideas, have themselves shrunk. We have gone from the heyday of television intellection which boasted shows hosted by, among others, David Susskind and David Frost, men that, whatever their self-absorptions, were nonetheless possessed of an admirable highmindedness, to the pygmy sound-bite rants of Sean Hannity and the inanities of clowns like Stephen Colbert. Once upon a time, the ideal of seriousness may not have been a common one, but it was acknowledged as one worth striving for. It didn't have to do what it has to today, that is, fight for respect, legitimate itself before asserting itself. The class that is allergic to difficulty now feels justified in condemning the other as "elitist" and anti-democratic. The exercise of cultural authority and artistic or literary or aesthetic discrimination is seen as evidence of snobbery, entitlement and privilege lording it over ordinary folks. A perverse populism increasingly deforms our culture, consigning some works of art to a realm somehow more rarified and less accessible to a broad public. Thus is choice constrained and the tyranny of mass appeal deepened in the name of democracy.

... ... ...

Steve Wasserman, former literary editor of the Los Angeles Times, is editor-at-large for Yale University Press.

This essay is adapted with permission from his chapter in the forthcoming The State of the American Mind: Sixteen Critics on the New Anti-Intellectualism, edited by Adam Bellow and Mark Bauerlein, to be published by Templeton Press in May 2015.

[Feb 02, 2019] In Fiery Speeches, Francis Excoriates Global Capitalism

The French economist Thomas Piketty argued last year in a surprising best-seller, "Capital in the Twenty-First Century," that rising wealth inequality was a natural result of free-market policies, a direct challenge to the conventional view that economic inequalities shrink over time. The controversial implication drawn by Mr. Piketty is that governments should raise taxes on the wealthy.

Notable quotes:

"... His speeches can blend biblical fury with apocalyptic doom. Pope Francis does not just criticize the excesses of global capitalism. He compares them to the "dung of the devil." He does not simply argue that systemic "greed for money" is a bad thing. He calls it a "subtle dictatorship" that "condemns and enslaves men and women." ..."

"... The Argentine pope seemed to be asking for a social revolution. "This is not theology as usual; this is him shouting from the mountaintop," said Stephen F. Schneck, the director of the Institute for Policy Research and Catholic studies at Catholic University of America in Washington. ..."

"... Left-wing populism is surging in countries immersed in economic turmoil, such as Spain, and, most notably, Greece . But even in the United States, where the economy has rebounded, widespread concern about inequality and corporate power are propelling the rise of liberals like Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who, in turn, have pushed the Democratic Party presidential front-runner, Hillary Rodham Clinton, to the left. ..."

"... Even some free-market champions are now reassessing the shortcomings of unfettered capitalism. George Soros, who made billions in the markets, and then spent a good part of it promoting the spread of free markets in Eastern Europe, now argues that the pendulum has swung too far the other way. ..."

"... Many Catholic scholars would argue that Francis is merely continuing a line of Catholic social teaching that has existed for more than a century and was embraced even by his two conservative predecessors, John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Pope Leo XIII first called for economic justice on behalf of workers in 1891, with his encyclical "Rerum Novarum" - or, "On Condition of Labor." ..."

"... Francis has such a strong sense of urgency "because he has been on the front lines with real people, not just numbers and abstract ideas," Mr. Schneck said. "That real-life experience of working with the most marginalized in Argentina has been the source of his inspiration as pontiff." ..."

"... In Bolivia, Francis praised cooperatives and other localized organizations that he said provide productive economies for the poor. "How different this is than the situation that results when those left behind by the formal market are exploited like slaves!" he said on Wednesday night. ..."

"... It is this Old Testament-like rhetoric that some finding jarring, perhaps especially so in the United States, where Francis will visit in September. His environmental encyclical, "Laudato Si'," released last month, drew loud criticism from some American conservatives and from others who found his language deeply pessimistic. His right-leaning critics also argued that he was overreaching and straying dangerously beyond religion - while condemning capitalism with too broad a brush. ..."

"... The French economist Thomas Piketty argued last year in a surprising best-seller, "Capital in the Twenty-First Century," that rising wealth inequality was a natural result of free-market policies, a direct challenge to the conventional view that economic inequalities shrink over time. The controversial implication drawn by Mr. Piketty is that governments should raise taxes on the wealthy. ..."

"... "Working for a just distribution of the fruits of the earth and human labor is not mere philanthropy," he said on Wednesday. "It is a moral obligation. For Christians, the responsibility is even greater: It is a commandment." ..."

"... "I'm a believer in capitalism but it comes in as many flavors as pie, and we have a choice about the kind of capitalist system that we have," said Mr. Hanauer, now an outspoken proponent of redistributive government ..."

"... "What can be done by those students, those young people, those activists, those missionaries who come to my neighborhood with the hearts full of hopes and dreams but without any real solution for my problems?" he asked. "A lot! They can do a lot. ..."

Jul 11, 2015 | msn.com

ASUNCIÓN, Paraguay - His speeches can blend biblical fury with apocalyptic doom. Pope Francis does not just criticize the excesses of global capitalism. He compares them to the "dung of the devil." He does not simply argue that systemic "greed for money" is a bad thing. He calls it a "subtle dictatorship" that "condemns and enslaves men and women."

Having returned to his native Latin America, Francis has renewed his left-leaning critiques on the inequalities of capitalism, describing it as an underlying cause of global injustice, and a prime cause of climate change. Francis escalated that line last week when he made a historic apology for the crimes of the Roman Catholic Church during the period of Spanish colonialism - even as he called for a global movement against a "new colonialism" rooted in an inequitable economic order.

The Argentine pope seemed to be asking for a social revolution. "This is not theology as usual; this is him shouting from the mountaintop," said Stephen F. Schneck, the director of the Institute for Policy Research and Catholic studies at Catholic University of America in Washington.

The last pope who so boldly placed himself at the center of the global moment was John Paul II, who during the 1980s pushed the church to confront what many saw as the challenge of that era, communism. John Paul II's anti-Communist messaging dovetailed with the agenda of political conservatives eager for a tougher line against the Soviets and, in turn, aligned part of the church hierarchy with the political right.

Francis has defined the economic challenge of this era as the failure of global capitalism to create fairness, equity and dignified livelihoods for the poor - a social and religious agenda that coincides with a resurgence of the leftist thinking marginalized in the days of John Paul II. Francis' increasingly sharp critique comes as much of humanity has never been so wealthy or well fed - yet rising inequality and repeated financial crises have unsettled voters, policy makers and economists.

Left-wing populism is surging in countries immersed in economic turmoil, such as Spain, and, most notably, Greece. But even in the United States, where the economy has rebounded, widespread concern about inequality and corporate power are propelling the rise of liberals like Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who, in turn, have pushed the Democratic Party presidential front-runner, Hillary Rodham Clinton, to the left.

Even some free-market champions are now reassessing the shortcomings of unfettered capitalism. George Soros, who made billions in the markets, and then spent a good part of it promoting the spread of free markets in Eastern Europe, now argues that the pendulum has swung too far the other way.

"I think the pope is singing to the music that's already in the air," said Robert A. Johnson, executive director of the Institute for New Economic Thinking, which was financed with $50 million from Mr. Soros. "And that's a good thing. That's what artists do, and I think the pope is sensitive to the lack of legitimacy of the system."

Many Catholic scholars would argue that Francis is merely continuing a line of Catholic social teaching that has existed for more than a century and was embraced even by his two conservative predecessors, John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Pope Leo XIII first called for economic justice on behalf of workers in 1891, with his encyclical "Rerum Novarum" - or, "On Condition of Labor."

Mr. Schneck, of Catholic University, said it was as if Francis were saying, "We've been talking about these things for more than one hundred years, and nobody is listening."

Francis has such a strong sense of urgency "because he has been on the front lines with real people, not just numbers and abstract ideas," Mr. Schneck said. "That real-life experience of working with the most marginalized in Argentina has been the source of his inspiration as pontiff."

Francis made his speech on Wednesday night, in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, before nearly 2,000 social advocates, farmers, trash workers and neighborhood activists. Even as he meets regularly with heads of state, Francis has often said that change must come from the grass roots, whether from poor people or the community organizers who work with them. To Francis, the poor have earned knowledge that is useful and redeeming, even as a "throwaway culture" tosses them aside. He sees them as being at the front edge of economic and environmental crises around the world.

In Bolivia, Francis praised cooperatives and other localized organizations that he said provide productive economies for the poor. "How different this is than the situation that results when those left behind by the formal market are exploited like slaves!" he said on Wednesday night.

It is this Old Testament-like rhetoric that some finding jarring, perhaps especially so in the United States, where Francis will visit in September. His environmental encyclical, "Laudato Si'," released last month, drew loud criticism from some American conservatives and from others who found his language deeply pessimistic. His right-leaning critics also argued that he was overreaching and straying dangerously beyond religion - while condemning capitalism with too broad a brush.

"I wish Francis would focus on positives, on how a free-market economy guided by an ethical framework, and the rule of law, can be a part of the solution for the poor - rather than just jumping from the reality of people's misery to the analysis that a market economy is the problem," said the Rev. Robert A. Sirico, president of the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, which advocates free-market economics.

Francis' sharpest critics have accused him of being a Marxist or a Latin American Communist, even as he opposed communism during his time in Argentina. His tour last week of Latin America began in Ecuador and Bolivia, two countries with far-left governments. President Evo Morales of Bolivia, who wore a Che Guevara patch on his jacket during Francis' speech, claimed the pope as a kindred spirit - even as Francis seemed startled and caught off guard when Mr. Morales gave him a wooden crucifix shaped like a hammer and sickle as a gift.

Francis' primary agenda last week was to begin renewing Catholicism in Latin America and reposition it as the church of the poor. His apology for the church's complicity in the colonialist era received an immediate roar from the crowd. In various parts of Latin America, the association between the church and economic power elites remains intact. In Chile, a socially conservative country, some members of the country's corporate elite are also members of Opus Dei, the traditionalist Catholic organization founded in Spain in 1928.

Inevitably, Francis' critique can be read as a broadside against Pax Americana, the period of capitalism regulated by global institutions created largely by the United States. But even pillars of that system are shifting. The World Bank, which long promoted economic growth as an end in itself, is now increasingly focused on the distribution of gains, after the Arab Spring revolts in some countries that the bank had held up as models. The latest generation of international trade agreements includes efforts to increase protections for workers and the environment.

The French economist Thomas Piketty argued last year in a surprising best-seller, "Capital in the Twenty-First Century," that rising wealth inequality was a natural result of free-market policies, a direct challenge to the conventional view that economic inequalities shrink over time. The controversial implication drawn by Mr. Piketty is that governments should raise taxes on the wealthy.

Mr. Piketty roiled the debate among mainstream economists, yet Francis' critique is more unnerving to some because he is not reframing inequality and poverty around a new economic theory but instead defining it in moral terms. "Working for a just distribution of the fruits of the earth and human labor is not mere philanthropy," he said on Wednesday. "It is a moral obligation. For Christians, the responsibility is even greater: It is a commandment."

Nick Hanauer, a Seattle venture capitalist, said that he saw Francis as making a nuanced point about capitalism, embodied by his coinage of a "social mortgage" on accumulated wealth - a debt to the society that made its accumulation possible. Mr. Hanauer said that economic elites should embrace the need for reforms both for moral and pragmatic reasons. "I'm a believer in capitalism but it comes in as many flavors as pie, and we have a choice about the kind of capitalist system that we have," said Mr. Hanauer, now an outspoken proponent of redistributive government policies like a higher minimum wage.

Yet what remains unclear is whether Francis has a clear vision for a systemic alternative to the status quo that he and others criticize. "All these critiques point toward the incoherence of the simple idea of free market economics, but they don't prescribe a remedy," said Mr. Johnson, of the Institute for New Economic Thinking.

Francis acknowledged as much, conceding on Wednesday that he had no new "recipe" to quickly change the world. Instead, he spoke about a "process of change" undertaken at the grass-roots level.

"What can be done by those students, those young people, those activists, those missionaries who come to my neighborhood with the hearts full of hopes and dreams but without any real solution for my problems?" he asked. "A lot! They can do a lot. "You, the lowly, the exploited, the poor and underprivileged, can do, and are doing, a lot. I would even say that the future of humanity is in great measure in your own hands."

[Dec 27, 2017] Russian military to order major research to counter color revolutions

Jun 22, 2015 | rt.com

Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu has told reporters that the military will sponsor a major research of coups conducted through mass protest – so called 'color revolutions' – to prevent the situations that Russia faced in 1991 and 1993.

"Some people say that the military should not be involved in political processes, some say the direct opposite. We will order a study on the phenomenon of color revolutions and the military's role in their prevention,"

Shoigu told the participants of the Army-2015 political forum Friday.

"We have no right to allow the repetitions of the collapses of 1991 and 1993," he said. "How to do it is another story, but it is clear that we must deal with the situation. We must understand how to prevent this and how to teach the younger generation so that it supported the calm and gradual development of our country."

The minister added that the consequences of color revolutions can be now observed in many Arab nations and also in Serbia. He also said that the Ukrainian crisis that started in 2014 also was "a major tragedy in the row of color revolutions."

In March this year the head of Russia's Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev promised that this body would develop a detailed plan of action aimed at preventing color revolutions or any other attempts of forceful change of lawfully elected authorities through mass street protest. He also said that the Security Council had prepared a list of proposed measures that could negate the possible threat, including some steps against "network protest activities" and propaganda work against "romantic revolutionary stereotype."

Also in March, President Vladimir Putin addressed the dangers of color revolutions in his speech to the Interior Ministry.

"The extremists' actions become more complicated," he said. "We are facing attempts to use the so called 'color technologies' in organizing illegal street protests to open propaganda of hatred and strife on social networks."

In the same month, the Interior Ministry drafted a bill containing amendments to the law on rallies that covered car protests and sit-ins. The ministry experts said that the move would circumvent legal ambiguity in the interest of society as a whole.

In November, Putin blasted color revolutions as a main tool used by destructive forces in the geopolitical struggle.

"In the modern world, extremism is used as a geopolitical tool for redistribution of spheres of interest. We can see the tragic consequences of the wave of the so-called color revolutions, the shock experienced by people in the countries that went through the irresponsible experiments of hidden, or sometimes brute and direct interference with their lives,"

the Russian leader said.

In January, a group of Russian conservative activists, uniting war veterans, nationalist bikers and pro-Christian politicians launched an "anti-Maidan" political movement in Moscow to oppose any attempts to thwart the stable development of the country. Its first rallies were held on the same days as some anti-government protests and according to law enforcers the conservatives outnumbered the pro-revolution activists by almost 10-fold.

Read more

• Police want to broaden law on rallies, cover new forms of protest
• Russian security doctrine to be adjusted after Arab Spring, Ukraine turmoil - official

[Dec 05, 2016] The Trans-Pacific Partnership Permanent Lock In The Obama Agenda For 40% Of The Global Economy

Oct 06, 2015 | Zero Hedge

We have just witnessed one of the most significant steps toward a one world economic system that we have ever seen. Negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership have been completed, and if approved it will create the largest trading bloc on the planet. But this is not just a trade agreement. In this treaty, Barack Obama has thrown in all sorts of things that he never would have been able to get through Congress otherwise. And once this treaty is approved, it will be exceedingly difficult to ever make changes to it. So essentially what is happening is that the Obama agenda is being permanently locked in for 40 percent of the global economy.

The United States, Canada, Japan, Mexico, Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam all intend to sign on to this insidious plan. Collectively, these nations have a total population of about 800 million people and a combined GDP of approximately 28 trillion dollars.

Of course Barack Obama is assuring all of us that this treaty is going to be wonderful for everyone…

In hailing the agreement, Obama said, "Congress and the American people will have months to read every word" before he signs the deal that he described as a win for all sides.

"If we can get this agreement to my desk, then we can help our businesses sell more Made in America goods and services around the world, and we can help more American workers compete and win," Obama said.

Sadly, just like with every other "free trade" agreement that the U.S. has entered into since World War II, the exact opposite is what will actually happen. Our trade deficit will get even larger, and we will see even more jobs and even more businesses go overseas.

But the mainstream media will never tell you this. Instead, they are just falling all over themselves as they heap praise on this new trade pact. Just check out a couple of the headlines that we saw on Monday…

• Time Magazine: "Pacific Trade Deal Is Good for the U.S. and Obama's Legacy"
• The Washington Post: "The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a trade deal worth celebrating"

Overseas it is a different story. Many journalists over there fully recognize that this treaty greatly benefits many of the big corporations that played a key role in drafting it. For example, the following comes from a newspaper in Thailand…

You will hear much about the importance of the TPP for "free trade".

The reality is that this is an agreement to manage its members' trade and investment relations - and to do so on behalf of each country's most powerful business lobbies.

These sentiments were echoed in a piece that Zero Hedge posted on Monday…

Packaged as a gift to the American people that will renew industry and make us more competitive, the Trans-Pacific Partnership is a Trojan horse. It's a coup by multinational corporations who want global subservience to their agenda. Buyer beware. Citizens beware.

The gigantic corporations that dominate our economy don't care about the little guy. If they can save a few cents on the manufacturing of an item by moving production to Timbuktu they will do it.

Over the past couple of decades, the United States has lost tens of thousands of manufacturing facilities and millions of good paying jobs due to these "free trade agreements". As we merge our economy with the economies of nations where it is legal to pay slave labor wages, it is inevitable that corporations will shift jobs to places where labor is much cheaper. Our economic infrastructure is being absolutely eviscerated in the process, and very few of our politicians seem to care.

Once upon a time, the city of Detroit was the greatest manufacturing city on the planet and it had the highest per capita income in the entire nation. But today it is a rotting, decaying hellhole that the rest of the world laughs at. What has happened to the city of Detroit is happening to the entire nation as a whole, but our politicians just keep pushing us even farther down the road to oblivion.

Just consider what has happened since NAFTA was implemented. In the year before NAFTA was approved, the United States actually had a trade surplus with Mexico and our trade deficit with Canada was only 29.6 billion dollars. But now things are very different. In one recent year, the U.S. had a combined trade deficit with Mexico and Canada of 177 billion dollars.

And these trade deficits are not just numbers. They represent real jobs that are being lost. It has been estimated that the U.S. economy loses approximately 9,000 jobs for every 1 billion dollars of goods that are imported from overseas, and one professor has estimated that cutting our trade deficit in half would create 5 million more jobs in the United States.

Just yesterday, I wrote about how there are 102.6 million working age Americans that do not have a job right now. Once upon a time, if you were honest, dependable and hard working it was easy to get a good paying job in this country. But now things are completely different.

Back in 1950, more than 80 percent of all men in the United States had jobs. Today, only about 65 percent of all men in the United States have jobs.

Why aren't more people alarmed by numbers like this?

And of course the Trans-Pacific Partnership is not just about "free trade". In one of my previous articles, I explained that Obama is using this as an opportunity to permanently impose much of his agenda on a large portion of the globe…

It is basically a gigantic end run around Congress. Thanks to leaks, we have learned that so many of the things that Obama has deeply wanted for years are in this treaty. If adopted, this treaty will fundamentally change our laws regarding Internet freedom, healthcare, copyright and patent protection, food safety, environmental standards, civil liberties and so much more. This treaty includes many of the rules that alarmed Internet activists so much when SOPA was being debated, it would essentially ban all "Buy American" laws, it would give Wall Street banks much more freedom to trade risky derivatives and it would force even more domestic manufacturing offshore.

The Republicans in Congress foolishly gave Obama fast track negotiating authority, and so Congress will not be able to change this treaty in any way. They will only have the opportunity for an up or down vote.

I would love to see Congress reject this deal, but we all know that is extremely unlikely to happen. When big votes like this come up, immense pressure is put on key politicians. Yes, there are a few members of Congress that still have backbones, but most of them are absolutely spineless. When push comes to shove, the globalist agenda always seems to advance.

Meanwhile, the mainstream media will be telling the American people about all of the wonderful things that this new treaty will do for them. You would think that after how badly past "free trade" treaties have turned out that we would learn something, but somehow that never seems to happen.

The agenda of the globalists is moving forward, and very few Americans seem to care.

HedgeAccordingly

CIA Insider: China is About to End the Dollar

two hoots

Bill Clinton on signing NAFTA:

First of all, because NAFTA means jobs. American jobs, and good-paying American jobs. If I didn't believe that, I wouldn't support this agreement.

Freddie

Many of those NeoCon Bibi lovers and Jonathan Pollard conservatives love TPP and H1B Ted Cruz. Ted is also a Goldman Sachs boy.

Squids_In

That giant sucking sound just got gianter.

MrTouchdown

Probably, but here's a thought:

It might be a blowing sound of all things USA deflating down (in USD terms) to what they are actually worth when compared to the rest of the world. For example, a GM assembly line worker will make what an assembly line worker in Vietnam makes.

This will, of course, panic Old Yellen, who will promptly fill her diaper and begin subsidizing wages with Quantitative Pleasing (QP1).

Buckaroo Banzai

If this gets through congress, the Republican Party better not bother asking for my vote ever again.

Chupacabra-322

Vote? You seem to think "voting" will actually influence actions / Globalists plans which have been decades in the making amoungst thse Criminal Pure Evil Lucerferian Psychopaths hell bent on Total Complete Full Spectrum World Domination.

Yea, keep voting. I'll be out hunting down these Evil doers like the dogs that they are.

Buckaroo Banzai

I have no illusions regarding the efficacy of voting. It is indeed a waste of time.

What I said was, they better not dare even ASK for my vote.

Ignatius

Doesn't matter. Diebold is so good at counting that you don't even need to show up at the polls anymore. It's like a miracle of modern technology.

Peter Pan

Did the article say 40%?

I imagine they meant 40% of whatever is left after we all go to hell in a hand basket.

Great day for the multinationals and in particular the pharmaceutical companies.

[Sep 21, 2016] There are still a lot of "handshakable" (created by kreacks for kreakls) mass media outlets in Russia despite cries of neoliberal MSM about absence of "free press" in Russia

"Handshakable" is Soviet dissidents times term meaning a person not too in bed with "despicable" regime. Now used mainly in satical sense with the meaning almost identical to kreakls" -- useless person with strong opinions about everything and very active on the Internet.

Lyttenburgh, July 21, 2015 at 2:39 am

I've found this little gem 2 days ago and I'm still… "overjoyed" by it.

Despite Manichean claims of the Free and Independent ™ Western Media that in Russia "there are no free press", that everything is controlled by Kremlin and Putin, and only [Radio] Ekho Moskvy, Novaya Gazeta [Newspaper] and Dozhd [TV] are the few remaining honest sources of truth and independent journalism ™, there are still a lot of "handshakable" outlets created for kreakls by kreakls.

In one such handshakeble paper, the "Snob" [well, at least they are honest with themselves and their readers] recently was published this interview with another extremely handshakable, ah, "person", who used to be the Chief Editor of the "KommmersantЪ" paper in it's [even more] handshakable heyday. This particular excerpt seems especially "meaty" (translation is mine):

Snob: And when do you think the era of the "rich cooperators'" of the 90s came to an end?

AV: I think it happened when they arrested Khodorkovsky. Then not only the era of cooperators came to an end, the society in this country was finished also.

Snob: Why is society so easily reconciled with this and it's own end?

AV: And because it could not be otherwise! Because there are no such country – Russia! This is a huge geopolitical mistake … I do not know whose, Lord God's or Darwin's. This country never existed, don't exist now and never will be. This country is bad.

Snob: Even if it is so bad, it does not mean that it doesn't exist.

AV: Well, fuck with it! Here's my answer. Fuck with it, that it exists! I wish it to be healthy! But this is not interesting for me. It is a cancer on the body of the world! What, should I fight with it? I'm not a professor Pirogov, I will not cut out this tumor, I just do not know how. Honestly, I don't know how.

Snob: What are the symptoms of this cancer?

AV: There are two evidences of this cancer. Never in my life Russia and its people had any other national ideas then "we are surrounded by enemies" and "Russia for the Russians!". With such two fundamental attributes there can't be country. This is just savagery. Can you give me somw other Russian national ideas?

Snob: Empire from sea to sea.

AV: This is just "We are surrounded by enemies" and "Russia for the Russians!" in other words. It's just combined in a beautiful word "empire". Nothing else! And with such fundamental principles country of course, some country might even exist, but who needs it? I do not! It is necessary to those inside.

Needless to say, Andrey Vasiliev now is a proud and free emigre.

So, after reading this little interview I got a proverbial train of thoughts going in my head at a top speed,finally arriving to it's destination. Now I can say that I "understand" (as in "understand what makes them tic") all of them – liberasts, Byelarussian zmagars, Ukrainian svidomites, pint-sized Baltic patriots, sausage emigrants forming Brighton Beach Bitching Brigade etc.

But that's the topic for another post

ThatJ, July 21, 2015 at 2:50 am

Does Andrey Vasiliev live in Brighton Beach now?

yalensis, July 21, 2015 at 3:24 am

No, Vasiliev lives in Geneva, Switzerland.

And, no, he is not Jewish, in case that's what you are trying to get at.

He is of Russian ethnicity.

yalensis, July 21, 2015 at 3:27 am

Dear Lyttenburgh:

Thanks for this find.

These Fifth Columnists are all the same, aren't they?

For them, the true litmus test was, and always has been, Khodorkovsky.

They longed for a world in which Khodorkovsky owned every single thing in Russia that wasn't nailed down; and everybody else, including these kreakls, just getting crumbs from his table.

But the kreakls receiving bigger crumbs, plus an honored place at the master's side.

Moscow Exile, July 21, 2015 at 3:35 am

I regularly ask Russians – ordinary work-a-day Russians, be they of the working or the professional classes – if they could imagine leaving Russia forever, if they could consider emigrating, never intending to return. They all say they couldn't. They say they'd like to travel, but they always feel they would want to come "home".

I have never yet met one Russian person who speaks as does Vasiliev, no one who says "I hate this place and my fellow countrymen so much: it's a shithole; it's a dump; it's full of morons etc., etc….", though I often hear them speaking loudly and clearly in that way from afar through the bullhorn of the Western mass media.

I ask my children regularly if they would like to live in England. I get a resounding "No!" off them. They speak English fluently now (except the youngest) and say they like visiting the place, that it's "cool" and, curiously enough, all their pals think it's "cool" that they are "half-English". My children do as well, not least because I suspect they can already sense the great advantage that their bilingualism has given them – but they categorically state they are Russian and that Russia is their Motherland, their rodina, the land that "bore" them, their "Mother Russia".

My wife is the same.

None of them are nationalistic, but they are very, very patriotic.

People such as Vasiliev are a small yet vociferous minority that, I suspect, suffers from some psychological aberration.

I am so glad that many of them leap at the first opportunity to fuck off away from here.

Pavlo Svolochenko, July 21, 2015 at 3:46 am

The type is not unique to Russia.

America has a whole university set aside for people who hate America. A sort of open-air loonybin.

Your Russian anti-patriots can be corralled and stowed out of sight in the same way, if you wish. Market it right, and they'll do it entirely of their own accord.

yalensis, July 21, 2015 at 3:55 am

Dear Pavlo: Which open-air university is that? Berkeley?? :)

Pavlo Svolochenko, July 21, 2015 at 4:11 am

Naturally.

Moscow Exile, July 21, 2015 at 4:19 am

Why is Berkeley "open-air"?

Pavlo Svolochenko, July 21, 2015 at 4:23 am

In that nothing prevents the inmates from escaping but fear of employment.

Moscow Exile , July 21, 2015 at 4:28 am

I should add that I know many who have chosen to leave Russia in search of fame and fortune, education, a better standard of living etc., but none of them left because they loathe the land and its people.

I also have over the years come across a few who have returned: some because, having achieved success, they preferred to live out the rest of their lives in their Mother Russia; others because they could not adapt to an alien culture ("No 'soul' in the USA!" I have often heard such folk say; and others simply because they were homesick.

Interestingly, and unbeknownst to me, my sister emailed my wife last week when I was in the UK and told her that I was clearly "homesick".

I was: for Russia and my wife and children

Home is where the heart is.

[Dec 31, 2015] Absolutely Mr. Celik. Absolutely!

marknesop.wordpress.com

Northern Star, December 30, 2015 at 3:11 pm

http://www.ndtv.com/world-news/moscow-demands-arrest-of-rebel-for-murder-of-russian-warplane-pilot-1260805

"Revenge is the most natural right," Celik said in the interview, while refraining from claiming the pilot's death"

Absolutely Mr. Celik Absolutely! ..

yalensis , December 30, 2015 at 5:53 pm

Ooo, this explains a mystery to me. I noticed on my own blog today there was an unusual spike of views for an older story, from November 29, which happened to be about this particular guy, Alparslan Çelik.
People must have googled his name, and maybe my story came up in the search results.

[Dec 31, 2015] Vladimir Putin Fights the War Party on All Fronts

readersupportednews.org

Ket's talk about "Russian aggression."

The fight to the death in Moscow's inner circles is really between the Eurasianists and the so-called Atlantic integrationists, a.k.a. the Western fifth column. The crux of the battle is arguably the Russian Central Bank and the Finance Ministry – where some key liberalcon monetarist players are remote-controlled by the usual suspects, the Masters of the Universe.

The same mechanism applies, geopolitically, to any side, in any latitude, which has linked its own fiat money to Western central banks. The Masters of the Universe always seek to exercise hegemony by manipulating usury and fiat money control.

So why President Putin does not fire the head of the Russian Central Bank, Elvira Nabiulina, and a great deal of his financial team - as they keep buying U.S. bonds and propping up the U.S. dollar instead of the ruble? What's really being aggressed here if not Russian interests?

It's clear by now which party profited from the downing of the Russian Su-24 by the Turkish Air Force – a graphic act of war. The immediate result was the suspension – which could lead to the cancelling – of a crucial Pipelineistan plank: Turkish Stream, which is a bête noire for the Masters of the Universe as Turkey was about to become the key alternative bypassing failed state Ukraine for supplying natural gas to southern Europe.

On top if it the EU paid Ankara 3 billion euros for its "indirect" services (the official excuse is to allow Turkey to control Syrian immigration to the EU.) And EU sanctions to Russia were extended for another six months.

... ... ...

Putin – and Russian intel – didn't see it coming: Sultan Erdogan's "stab in the back." So a case can be made that Russian intel seriously underestimated Erdogan's massive investment on regime change in Syria.

Whatever happens on the ground – much more than in the Vienna-Geneva charade now passing for a "peace process" – the future of Syria bears two stark options; a neo-Ottoman colony, but essentially subordinated to the whims of the Masters of the Universe; or a unitary sovereign nation, not partitioned, with a strong relationship to both Russia and Iran.

The question, though, remains; how does Turkey get away with such a provocation, with Russia imposing just a few sanctions?

lorenbliss 2015-12-30 03:36

I fear that is indeed what we are watching, not so much in terms of Orwellian geopolitics as in terms of the One Percenters' tyranny literally surpassing human conception.

Picture not so much Orwell's world, which retained at least some small pretense of kindness, but rather the (fictional?) Borg hybrid with Nazi Germany, a ruthless global empire run by a capitalist Ruling Class whose bottomless Ayn Rand moral imbecility would make even a Ted Bundy flinch.

No doubt there will be scattered pockets of resistance, but in those realms, the unspeakable depredations of the Empire will eventually turn death into the ultimate synonym for freedom.

Which is why, as I said on another RSN thread, I am so very glad I have no living children -- no descendants to dwell in a world so inconceivably and irremediably malevolent toward the 99 Percent, the living will envy the dead.

That is the future that looms -- unless we the people of this planet somehow manage to overthrow capitalism, which is by far the most malignant evil we have ever unleashed upon ourselves.

cmp 2015-12-30 03:07

The 20th century, saw war, like none other before.

This century, the "War Party" (sadly, this sounds like a pun), but, their folly continues:
~" That follows a "tradition" Bill Blum, for instance, ... and the list goes on. "~

And:
~" .. About 75 per cent of the world's people live in "Eurasia", and most of the world's physical wealth is there as well, both in its enterprises and underneath its soil. "Eurasia" accounts for about three-fourths of the world's known energy resources. "~
~ Brzezinski, Zbigniew (2006). The grand chessboard : American primacy and its geostrategic imperatives ([Repr.] ed.). New York, NY: Basic Books. p. 31. ~

[Dec 31, 2015] Vladimir Putin Fights the War Party on All Fronts

readersupportednews.org

Ket's talk about "Russian aggression."

The fight to the death in Moscow's inner circles is really between the Eurasianists and the so-called Atlantic integrationists, a.k.a. the Western fifth column. The crux of the battle is arguably the Russian Central Bank and the Finance Ministry – where some key liberalcon monetarist players are remote-controlled by the usual suspects, the Masters of the Universe.

The same mechanism applies, geopolitically, to any side, in any latitude, which has linked its own fiat money to Western central banks. The Masters of the Universe always seek to exercise hegemony by manipulating usury and fiat money control.

So why President Putin does not fire the head of the Russian Central Bank, Elvira Nabiulina, and a great deal of his financial team - as they keep buying U.S. bonds and propping up the U.S. dollar instead of the ruble? What's really being aggressed here if not Russian interests?

It's clear by now which party profited from the downing of the Russian Su-24 by the Turkish Air Force – a graphic act of war. The immediate result was the suspension – which could lead to the cancelling – of a crucial Pipelineistan plank: Turkish Stream, which is a bête noire for the Masters of the Universe as Turkey was about to become the key alternative bypassing failed state Ukraine for supplying natural gas to southern Europe.

On top if it the EU paid Ankara 3 billion euros for its "indirect" services (the official excuse is to allow Turkey to control Syrian immigration to the EU.) And EU sanctions to Russia were extended for another six months.

... ... ...

Putin – and Russian intel – didn't see it coming: Sultan Erdogan's "stab in the back." So a case can be made that Russian intel seriously underestimated Erdogan's massive investment on regime change in Syria.

Whatever happens on the ground – much more than in the Vienna-Geneva charade now passing for a "peace process" – the future of Syria bears two stark options; a neo-Ottoman colony, but essentially subordinated to the whims of the Masters of the Universe; or a unitary sovereign nation, not partitioned, with a strong relationship to both Russia and Iran.

The question, though, remains; how does Turkey get away with such a provocation, with Russia imposing just a few sanctions?

lorenbliss 2015-12-30 03:36

I fear that is indeed what we are watching, not so much in terms of Orwellian geopolitics as in terms of the One Percenters' tyranny literally surpassing human conception.

Picture not so much Orwell's world, which retained at least some small pretense of kindness, but rather the (fictional?) Borg hybrid with Nazi Germany, a ruthless global empire run by a capitalist Ruling Class whose bottomless Ayn Rand moral imbecility would make even a Ted Bundy flinch.

No doubt there will be scattered pockets of resistance, but in those realms, the unspeakable depredations of the Empire will eventually turn death into the ultimate synonym for freedom.

Which is why, as I said on another RSN thread, I am so very glad I have no living children -- no descendants to dwell in a world so inconceivably and irremediably malevolent toward the 99 Percent, the living will envy the dead.

That is the future that looms -- unless we the people of this planet somehow manage to overthrow capitalism, which is by far the most malignant evil we have ever unleashed upon ourselves.

cmp 2015-12-30 03:07

The 20th century, saw war, like none other before.

This century, the "War Party" (sadly, this sounds like a pun), but, their folly continues:
~" That follows a "tradition" Bill Blum, for instance, ... and the list goes on. "~

And:
~" .. About 75 per cent of the world's people live in "Eurasia", and most of the world's physical wealth is there as well, both in its enterprises and underneath its soil. "Eurasia" accounts for about three-fourths of the world's known energy resources. "~
~ Brzezinski, Zbigniew (2006). The grand chessboard : American primacy and its geostrategic imperatives ([Repr.] ed.). New York, NY: Basic Books. p. 31. ~

[Dec 31, 2015] The World According to Russia

Notable quotes:

"... "I believe," Putin tells Solovyov, "that no one should ever impose any sort of values he considers correct on anyone. We have our own values, our own conceptions of justice." ..."

"... Putin doesn't name names here, but the implication is clear throughout: World Order endeavors to incriminate American foreign policy and place the blame for the current chaos in the Middle East on the United States. The film's anti-Americanism is subtle but relentless ..."

"... some of its criticisms of wrongheaded U.S. policies and blundering interventions in the Middle East since September 11, 2001, would give American liberals, centrists, and even a few conservatives little cause for dispute ..."

"... Russia comes off as unjustly demonized and Russians themselves forced to suffer economically as a result ..."

www.theatlantic.com

"Do you realize what you have done?" Vladimir Putin demanded at the United Nations in September. The question was a rebuke to the American-led bloc of countries that initially viewed with optimism the Arab Spring, which began five years ago this month, but has since given way to chaos and Islamist violence across once-stable parts of the Middle East and North Africa. Those events, and much else, look different when viewed from Russia than they do from the United States, and a documentary that aired recently on Russian state television helps explain the worldview behind Putin's question.

The two-hour-plus film, Miroporyadok (World Order), explores, in the words of its narrator Vladimir Solovyov, "what is happening with us [Russians], what sort of world we have inherited from our parents, and what sort of world we will leave to our children." Partly through interviews with the Russian president himself, it also offers a window on Putin's own realpolitik perspective, one that I've found to be widely shared throughout Russia over many years of living in the country-a worldview according to which international relations consist of competing blocs of nations pursuing their interests, and the violation of sovereignty is a recipe for instability. This stands in contrast to Obama's own position, which he stated at the UN two years ago, that "sovereignty cannot be a shield for tyrants to commit wanton murder, or an excuse for the international community to turn a blind eye to slaughter."

"I believe," Putin tells Solovyov, "that no one should ever impose any sort of values he considers correct on anyone. We have our own values, our own conceptions of justice."

Putin doesn't name names here, but the implication is clear throughout: World Order endeavors to incriminate American foreign policy and place the blame for the current chaos in the Middle East on the United States. The film's anti-Americanism is subtle but relentless, and the spin comes mostly from omission of relevant facts.

And though it originated within the Russian state propaganda machine, some of its criticisms of wrongheaded U.S. policies and blundering interventions in the Middle East since September 11, 2001, would give American liberals, centrists, and even a few conservatives little cause for dispute. Yet the documentary goes further, leaving the strong impression that greedy, bungling, incorrigibly myopic conspirators "from across the ocean" (a phrase Putin uses repeatedly in the film to describe the U.S. leadership) bent on world domination are to blame; Russia comes off as unjustly demonized and Russians themselves forced to suffer economically as a result. "

[Dec 31, 2015] Where to celebrate New year: the most interesting places to visit in Moscow

December 30, 2015 | ru-an-info.livejournal.com

A Kingdom of Light and Ice – New Year in Moscow. The city decoration this year has a record 100 kilometres of lights and dozens of tons of ice for sculptures. New Year's Eve Muscovites and guests of the capital will see grandiose first-class performances of the festival "Journey to the New Year", a colourful platform for festivals with fireworks and more fireworks, giant ice rinks and ice slides.

These days it seems that Moscow is the capital of not only the country but of the whole world. It is a way to become acquainted with the Russians' favourite holiday and perhaps to try some champagne. On New Year's Eve, you can also easily take part in something sportive. Health and fun is guaranteed on the home rink of the country of the Soviet era. Here you will be able see off the Old and welcome the New as many as five times: in China, in Siberia, in traditional Moscow, in Finland and and in France. [Albeit that the last two despise Russia! – ME]

In Gorky Park guests will be invited to dance. You will not get bored by the popular DJs. This December 31 Dyed Moroz will arrive from space. In the Museon every hour you can watch as the country celebrates the New year. The festival "Circle of light" is going to give a great show. Ice and light music will create the atmosphere. Here you can race around on an ice slide. Another track for skiing has arisen on Poklonnaya Hill. Here is the capital in miniature. Moscow in ice looks fabulous.

The warm weather has helped craftsmen create real masterpieces. All the sculptures are crystal clear. All this has happened just before the New year. After this has happened, who can no longer believe in miracles and the magic of the season! [Refers to the unseasonably warm weather of the past 2 weeks, which suddenly changed to real winter only a few days ago – ME] "A thousand tons of ice: here Ostankino tower, there – the Pushkin monument; over there – the Bolshoi Theatre and the Moscow state University building, and a collective farm. And, of course, the Kremlin", - says the President of the national programme "In the Family Circle", Aleksandr Kovtunets.

The peculiarity of this year is that celebrating the first few minutes of the New Year on Red Square will be impossible: it will be closed off this morning. [31 December – ME] An ice Kremlin shall serve as a replacement and whose chimes are frozen at twenty to midnight. The feeling is that here the New Year will arrive. And underfoot are real cobbles, too, and a Victory Park. On Nicholas Street you will be offered forged horseshoes for good luck. To warm up there will be sweets and hot drinks in booths. And should you wish to stock up on memories with hundreds of pictures there are luxurious lighting installations.

The entire centre – Tverskaya, Kuznetsky Most, Bolshaya Dmitrovka Street, Tverskoi Boulevard – are one big New Year fantasy. The sky, streets and buildings will be emblazed by hundreds of thousands of coloured lights. At midnight there are to be 12 firework displays in different parts of the capital: at Babushkinsky - a retromancer, actors on stilts, an interactive performance about a ballerina that has been imprisoned in a transparent ball; at Kuzminki and Sadovniki - jazz music; at Severnoye Tushino and Goncharovsky Park - a carnival night; at Izmailovo - a party in rockabilly style; at. In Sokolniki - hits of the 90s; at Bauman Garden – Soviet smash hits.

A New Year show will be in every metropolitan park. You will be able to plunge headlong into the festival from outside the Garden Ring. Public transport on New Year's Eve will be open longer than usual: the metro until 2 a.m. and buses until three o'clock. And here's wishing you all the best for the whole night!

[Dec 30, 2015] Ukrainian economy in depression: exports fall by about a third in 2015

Recession in Russia was the last nail on the coffin...

izvestia.ru

Exports of goods and services of Ukrainian production in 2015 will fall by about a third. And this is not surprising: as a result of "reforms" in the country almost died the industry lost its main Russian market, where Ukraine has supplied products with high added value. The cumulative figure of industrial production YTD is approximately -15%. The main export product of Ukraine for the first time since the pre-industrial era were products of agriculture. In the first place - corn.

[Dec 30, 2015] Ukrainian economy in depression: exports fall by about a third in 2015

Recession in Russia was the last nail on the coffin...

izvestia.ru

Exports of goods and services of Ukrainian production in 2015 will fall by about a third. And this is not surprising: as a result of "reforms" in the country almost died the industry lost its main Russian market, where Ukraine has supplied products with high added value. The cumulative figure of industrial production YTD is approximately -15%. The main export product of Ukraine for the first time since the pre-industrial era were products of agriculture. In the first place - corn.

[Dec 30, 2015] Syrian troops backed by Russian jets enters rebel-held southern town army

Notable quotes:

"... Rebels still control large parts of the region, that also borders Israel, but have been largely on the defensive since their failed offensive in June to take the government-controlled part of Deraa city. ..."

"... In the course of actions aimed to cut terrorists' sources of income, the Russian aircraft eliminate large number of oil production, storing and transportation facilities on the ISIS-controlled territories in Syria. ..."

"... Russian Su-34 bomber performed a strike on the target and eliminated more than 20 oil trucks, which had been used by the ISIS for illegal oil transportation, two off-roaders equipped with ZU-23 AD systems. ..."

"... It is necessary to pay attention to the statement made by representative of the US State Department. Time is changed. Situation is changed. Representatives of the State Department are changed. However, speech writers are not. ..."

"... All these impersonal claims without evidences about performing strikes on civilian objects by allegedly Russian aviation in Syria close resemble performances held by hypnotists or chapiteau. ..."

"... It is about absurd: there are serious accusations referring to some "reputable non-governmental organizations". However, there is no information about the exact name of these organizations and who they are reputable for. ..."

"... All this is happening while actions and, the most important, results of the US air bombardment in this region are keeping absolute silent. ..."

"... If this continue the Syrian military will regain control of all Syrian cities and all these terrorist islamic groups supported by foreign countries will be defeated and expelled from Syria. ..."

"... Well thats interesting. A "mainstream anti Assa armed group", yet they go through all that without actually revealing the name. ..."

"... Is there any question now that the WH was simply letting Syria get demolished in the hopes Assad would fall? ..."

"... Theres a lot of people that support Assad. The WH knows this. The WH stated that Assad hasent a chance in hell of getting re elected. Well if thats the case, why does the WH refuse to see his name on a ballot. ..."

"... They are "Islamist" and the Christian genocide would continue on and on and on. Dont forget, not one of these guys came to power without holding on to a gun. Does that sound like someone you would vote for? ..."

"... hilarious, while this silly article says the syrin army is making gains only after the Russian bombing. They slipped an wrote that the terrorists lost in June against the syrian army!! The russians only got involved in october!! propaganda always has its draw back....the truth!! ..."

"... Until DC provides the list of Moderate Rebels that don't have any Islamic reference they ALL will be viewed as Islamic Terrorists Organizations. And until that list is provided let the Russians bomb the Hell out of them. ..."

"... Let's get this straight... IS militants are all TERRORISTS. Any rebel groups that are fighting alongside with the IS group are also part of the terrorist group. And if those so-called rebel groups are supported by the US or NATO or Turkey, it means that those nations are directly or indirectly supporting the ISIS or TERRORISTS. ..."

"... Sheikh Meskeen is vital and strategic due to its location along the second most important highway in the Dara'a province; it is also the key to the cities of Nawa and Jassim. ..."

"... The Russians are doing this right, get rid of all terrorist groups including the one Israel and the U.S. are supporting, funding and arming. ..."

"... Terrorists are no longer terrorists but are now called rebels? That would mean the Paris slaughter was done by rebels. ..."

"... Somebody please tell to these so called moderate rebels and their brothers in ISIS that their heydays are over. Run while you can. ..."

"... Wonder what the US response would be to Russian airdropping thousands of RPG's and millions of rifles and ammunition to the #$%$, Aryan Nation, Nation of Islam and various militia group in the US who feel they are being oppressed? ..."

"... Since there wasn't a single mention of ISIS in this article, then the emphasis should have been Obama's Syrian "rebel" allies are getting the krap kicked out of them by the Russians. ..."

"... But Reuters, being an Obama support group would only mention them as "backed by Western Powers". ..."

"... Does anyone see the connection between the terrorists, who are backed by the West, and the outright Lies the media tries to pass off as the truth. One other note here, they keep recycling parts of this article which appear almost verbatim in several other reports on Yahoo about Syria. ..."

"... The US is guilty of arming rebels against a government with representation at the United Nations. That is a crime. ..."

"... All the US resources are wasted on misguided and ill-convince military adventures that support corporations than its own citizens. ..."

"... Just like in the north of Syria....ALL the "rebel" groups in the south fight under Al-Nusra's umbrella and command structure. Al-Nusra plans ALL of their offensives, as well as ALL of their defense. You can call them moderate if you want. but ALL the "rebel" groups in Syria work hand-in-hand with the Salafist and Takfiri. ..."

"... Personally I think it's heartwarming the way Western governments and the 'free' press has lined up behind the radical Islamists against Russia and the secular regime in Syria where women can do such evil things as go outside without a sheet over their heads and men can drink beer and etc! This is madness! Russia is evil! ..."

"... stop this nonsense, no one believes it ny more... moderate rebels, barrel bombs ...they are all islamic terorrists, and very well funded and equipped by saudi arabia and qater and trained and supplied by turkey and the u.s. clear as day light ,they are all sunni muslim terrorists! ..."

"... I seriously doubt the "moderate" rebels would approve of anything Christmas-related. Assad looks a lot more moderate to me than the US-backed "moderates". ..."

news.yahoo.com

Rebels still control large parts of the region, that also borders Israel, but have been largely on the defensive since their failed offensive in June to take the government-controlled part of Deraa city.

Vladimir

Here's the latest from Russia's General Staff, with some interesting info about the US Air Force activities.

In the course of last two days, since December 28, aircraft of the Russian Aerospace Forces in the Syrian Arab Republic have performed 121 combat sorties engaging 424 terrorists' objects

In the course of last two days, since December 28, aircraft of the Russian Aerospace Forces in the Syrian Arab Republic have performed 121 combat sorties engaging 424 terrorists' objects in the Aleppo, Idlib, Latakia, Hama, Homs, Damascus, Daraa, Raqqah and Deir ez-Zor provinces.

Near Mahin (Homs province), Russian Su-34 performed a strike on a large terrorists' base of the ISIS. A hangar with military hardware, depots with weapons, materiel and munitions of terrorists were destroyed. Five off-road vehicles equipped with large-caliber machine guns, an infantry fighting vehicle, and four trucks loaded with munitions were eliminated.

Near Shawarighat al-Arz (Aleppo province), Russian Su-25 destroyed a terrorists' strong point. Direct hits caused elimination of a tank and three off-road vehicles equipped with large-caliber machine guns.

Near Lahaya (Hama province), a Su-25 of the Russian Aerospace Forces eliminated two artillery guns and an ammunition depot.

In suburbs of al-Khadr (Latakia province), Su-25 carried out a strike on a large strong point of terrorists and eliminated 2 pieces of hardware.

Command staff of the Russian aviation group continues receiving information about objects of the ISIS and other terrorist groups active in Syria from representatives of patriotic opposition forces.

Therefore, on Monday, Russian party received information from representatives of one of the Syrian opposition detachments active in northeastern Syria concerning a planned meeting of the ISIS field commanders in the suburbs of Raqqah.

The Russian Defence Ministry organized a day-and-night air observation of the object. After receiving confirmation on arriving of militants' leaders to the assigned point, Russian Su-34 bomber performed a strike on the building, where the meeting was taking place. As a result of direct hit with guided missile, the building was destroyed with all its contents.

Several days ago, representatives of a patriotic opposition formation active in the Idlib province presented information to the Russian Defence Ministry about location of a large ammunition depot of the Jabhat al-Nusra near al-Zerba.

After making research on the aerial photographs of the region and checking reconnaissance data, Russian Su-24M hit the target. Objective monitoring data confirmed elimination of the object.

Means of intelligence detected a hidden reinforced concrete shelter of the AD complex Osa. A Su-34 bomber received an order to liquidate the target. Direct hits of BETAB-500 air bombs caused destruction of the building with all its contents.

In the course of actions aimed to cut terrorists' sources of income, the Russian aircraft eliminate large number of oil production, storing and transportation facilities on the ISIS-controlled territories in Syria.

In the course of last two days, the Russian aviation group destroyed six objects of oil trafficking in the Deir ez-Zor and Aleppo provinces.

In the course of the aerial intelligence operation near Kafr Nabl (Idlib province), the Russian aircraft detected concentration of oil tankers moving to the Syrian-Turkish borders. They were escorted by off-roaders equipped with anti-aircraft systems.

Russian Su-34 bomber performed a strike on the target and eliminated more than 20 oil trucks, which had been used by the ISIS for illegal oil transportation, two off-roaders equipped with ZU-23 AD systems.

***

It is necessary to pay attention to the statement made by representative of the US State Department. Time is changed. Situation is changed. Representatives of the State Department are changed. However, speech writers are not.

All these impersonal claims without evidences about performing strikes on civilian objects by allegedly Russian aviation in Syria close resemble performances held by hypnotists or chapiteau.

It is about absurd: there are serious accusations referring to some "reputable non-governmental organizations". However, there is no information about the exact name of these organizations and who they are reputable for.

All this is happening while actions and, the most important, results of the US air bombardment in this region are keeping absolute silent.

However, every day aircraft and strike UAV's of the US Air Force carry out from six to twenty combat sorties with performing missile and bomb strikes on ground targets.

Therefore, all the public community learns information about effectiveness of operations held by the US Air Force, when their "flights" had caused mass killing. It is impossible to be hide or shift responsibility to any party.

kingn500

Russia carpet bombing is winning the war for the Syrian military that is a strong army that was losing due to lack of air force power and lack of cities war fare experience needed during the attack and defense of Syrian cities, Syrian military was not trained for guerrilla warfare inside the cities but with Russia carpet bombing and Russia retraining the Syrian military in cities warfare they begin to regain Syrian cities and defeating these terrorist rebels If this continue the Syrian military will regain control of all Syrian cities and all these terrorist islamic groups supported by foreign countries will be defeated and expelled from Syria. Good for the Syrian people that most of them don't want an islamic state in Syria. Go Russia go .

smlslk

Rebels from another mainstream anti-Assad armed opposition alongside some Islamist groups"

Well thats interesting. A "mainstream anti Assa armed group", yet they go through all that without actually revealing the name.

Is there any question now that the WH was simply letting Syria get demolished in the hopes Assad would fall?

Theres a lot of people that support Assad. The WH knows this. The WH stated that Assad hasent a chance in hell of getting re elected. Well if thats the case, why does the WH refuse to see his name on a ballot.

So lets get this strait. All the people that now back Assad including all the people that would now vote for him would then become the terrorist if the WH appointed one of these nameless "armed mainstream anti Assad terrorist groups". They are "Islamist" and the Christian genocide would continue on and on and on. Dont forget, not one of these guys came to power without holding on to a gun. Does that sound like someone you would vote for?

Ramsis

hilarious, while this silly article says the syrin army is making gains only after the Russian bombing. They slipped an wrote that the terrorists lost in June against the syrian army!! The russians only got involved in october!! propaganda always has its draw back....the truth!!

stefan

Until DC provides the list of Moderate Rebels that don't have any Islamic reference they ALL will be viewed as Islamic Terrorists Organizations. And until that list is provided let the Russians bomb the Hell out of them.

J M

Let's get this straight... IS militants are all TERRORISTS. Any rebel groups that are fighting alongside with the IS group are also part of the terrorist group. And if those so-called rebel groups are supported by the US or NATO or Turkey, it means that those nations are directly or indirectly supporting the ISIS or TERRORISTS.

DAVID

The Syrian Army announced minutes ago that its troops alongside the popular forces drove the militant groups back from the entire districts of the key town of Sheikh Meskeen North of Dara'a after killing, wounding and capturing a large number of the terrorists. "Sheikh Meskeen is now under the full control of the Syrian government forces," the army said.

"The militant groups have suffered a heavy death toll. Most of the militants in the town have been killed or wounded. In addition, a large number of the militants have surrendered, while the rest preferred to flee the war zone," the army added.

"The Syrian army is fortifying its positions in the town now," it went on to say.

"Pro-government troops are patrolling the town to find the rest of the militants," the army added.

"The Syrian soldiers are transferring the captured and injured militants to safer areas behind the frontline," the army went on to say.

"The engineering units of the army are defusing the Improvised Explosive Devices (IED) planted by the terrorists groups across the government buildings," the army said.

Reports said earlier that the Syrian government forces' rapid advances in the town of Sheikh Meskeen have forced the militant groups to start pulling back forces and fleeing the battlefield to evade more casualties.

"The Syrian army and the National Defense Forces (NDF) have continued to push back the militant groups from different districts of the town, including the residential area of the military forces and one of the main roundabouts of the strategic town," the army said.

"The militant groups, who have witnessed the heavy attacks of the Syria forces and the collapse of their defense lines in the Northeastern, Northern and Eastern parts of the city, have started to withdraw from more districts," the sources said.

"In the meantime, large groups of militants are fleeing the town in order to evade more casualties," the sources added.

"The militant groups have sustained a heavy death toll and are hopeless. The terrorists' commanders have called for fresh militants but have received no response from their comrades in other parts of the province thus far," the sources said.

"The government forces have completed their control over the Eastern part of the town, Pharmacy Street, al-Ra'esi Roundabout in the middle of the town, and Jame'a al-Omari and are advancing against the militants' strongholds," the sources said.

"The Syria forces also have surrounded the militant group of al-Wila Seif al-Sham in the city and are hunting them one by one," the sources said.

Reports said that the Russian and Syrian Air Forces' joint combat sorties over the militant groups' positions in Sheikh Meskeen North of Dara'a claimed the lives of large groups of terrorists and destroyed their military grid.

"The Russian and Syrian fighter jets, in over 25 sorties, massively bombed the militant positions in Sheikh Meskeen, which left many terrorists dead or wounded," the army sources said.

"The aerial coverage created by the Russian and Syrian fighter jets in Sheikh Meskeen battlefield was one the most important causes of the Syrian ground forces' advances against the militant groups on Tuesday," the army added.

The Syrian army and its allies have been significantly advancing against the militant groups in the province in the recent weeks, particularly in Sheikh Meskeen.

Army announced on Tuesday that its troops and their popular allies advanced in the Northern battlefronts of Sheikh Meskeen rapidly and pushed the militants back from more positions.

"Following the capture of Battalion 82 base and Tal al-Hish, the Syrian government forces captured the Sheikh Meskeen's Pool Facility, killing over 15 enemy combatants from the Free Syrian Army (FSA), the army said.

"The Syrian army, the National Defense Forces and other popular fighters are on a roll in the Dara'a province after launching a massive assault on the strategic town of Sheikh Meskeen over 72 hours ago," the army added.

Sheikh Meskeen is vital and strategic due to its location along the second most important highway in the Dara'a province; it is also the key to the cities of Nawa and Jassim.

Bill

MY FELLOW AMERICANS, the first "War on Terror" was during Jefferson's presidency. For nearly fifteen centuries the world has faced the disease of Islam, but our nation faced it head on when Thomas Jefferson, serving as the ambassador to France, and John Adams, servicing as the ambassador to Britain, went to London to meet with Ambassador Abdrahaman, the Dey of Tripoli's ambassador to Britain. Of course they met with Abdrahaman to negotiate a peace treaty, but keep in mind that in Islam, the only peace is submission to Islam.

After independence, however, pirates often captured U.S. merchant ships, pillaged cargoes and enslaved or held crew members for ransom. Jefferson had opposed paying tribute to the Barbary States since as far back as 1785, and in 1801, he authorized a U.S. Navy fleet under Commodore Richard Dale to make a show of force in the Mediterranean, the first American naval squadron to cross the Atlantic ...this lead to the "First Barbary Wars".

America, though this victory proved only temporary, according to Wood, "many Americans celebrated it as a vindication of their policy of spreading free trade around the world and as a great victory for liberty over tyranny." My fellow Americans, I am a veteran, I have fought against terror for over a decade (2001 to 2011). These radicalists have been like this from generation to generation to as far back as the 7th century. I'm concerned on what we will leave behind for our next generation and the future of this great nation! So I say onto you, my fellow Americans, LET NO ONE -AND I MEAN NO ONE- COME INTO OUR HOUSE AND PUSH US AROUND!

Paul

The Russians are doing this right, get rid of all terrorist groups including the one Israel and the U.S. are supporting, funding and arming.

The

Terrorists are no longer terrorists but are now called rebels? That would mean the Paris slaughter was done by rebels.

Kevin

Somebody please tell to these so called moderate rebels and their brothers in ISIS that their heydays are over. Run while you can.

Detritus of Sloth

Wonder what the US response would be to Russian airdropping thousands of RPG's and millions of rifles and ammunition to the #$%$, Aryan Nation, Nation of Islam and various militia group in the US who feel they are being oppressed?

Vicious

Since there wasn't a single mention of ISIS in this article, then the emphasis should have been Obama's Syrian "rebel" allies are getting the krap kicked out of them by the Russians.

But Reuters, being an Obama support group would only mention them as "backed by Western Powers".

RT

insurgents on the ground told Reuters........you mean Terrorists don't you? This is a constant source of the media information, the terrorists themselves. We know what color pajamas the Jihadists wear to bed at night, and every move they make, and why, but our military seems to have missed this.......

Does anyone see the connection between the terrorists, who are backed by the West, and the outright Lies the media tries to pass off as the truth. One other note here, they keep recycling parts of this article which appear almost verbatim in several other reports on Yahoo about Syria.

jane

Who know, maybe in 2016 all "Sunni moderate rebels" and ISIS will be expelled. Then Syria will see peace and its refugees can return home. But I bet the blood-thirsty US Snake Department and the CIA probably will prefer continued bloodshed.

Peetie

The US is guilty of arming rebels against a government with representation at the United Nations. That is a crime.

Hezbollah:

Let's look at so-called "moderate rebels" supported by American taxpayers. Example: Jeysh Al-Islam:

- It means "Army of Islam"
- Its leader called for extermination of all minorities in Damascus
- Its leader called Alawites "more infidel than Jews and Christians"
- Is directly financed by Saudis
- Has clearly shown its support for Islamic Caliphate and vehemently opposes democracy
- Been involved in series of tortures, beheadings, murders and disappearances

Yep, "moderate rebels" all right.

J. de Molay

The two super powers, China and Russia, maneuvered on the global stage for supremacy while the US citizens politically in-fight with no clear future oriented goals or plans. Sadly, the US is slowly dissolving away from what is was supposed to be that was framed by the founders a mere 235+ years ago. All the US resources are wasted on misguided and ill-convince military adventures that support corporations than its own citizens.

Davin

Just like in the north of Syria....ALL the "rebel" groups in the south fight under Al-Nusra's umbrella and command structure. Al-Nusra plans ALL of their offensives, as well as ALL of their defense. You can call them moderate if you want. but ALL the "rebel" groups in Syria work hand-in-hand with the Salafist and Takfiri.

Relja

Seems 'the rebels' are regular troops from jordan and turkey. President Asad lost large teritorry because of turkish, joprdan and saudi 'rebels' loved by west/Us.

Reyter

Personally I think it's heartwarming the way Western governments and the 'free' press has lined up behind the radical Islamists against Russia and the secular regime in Syria where women can do such evil things as go outside without a sheet over their heads and men can drink beer and etc! This is madness! Russia is evil!

CRL

"Rebels from another mainstream anti-Assad armed opposition alongside some Islamist groups said they shelled the city of Izraa, a main government held town"

How many innocent civilians were killed? Did not see the number in the press.

Ramsis

stop this nonsense, no one believes it ny more... moderate rebels, barrel bombs ...they are all islamic terorrists, and very well funded and equipped by saudi arabia and qater and trained and supplied by turkey and the u.s. clear as day light ,they are all sunni muslim terrorists!

Mark

There is a news report "Christmas and New Year carnival in Damascus- Video" on SANA news website. I seriously doubt the "moderate" rebels would approve of anything Christmas-related. Assad looks a lot more moderate to me than the US-backed "moderates".

TruthMonger

Why our media is viewing Syrian events from the terrorists' perspective, never from the legitimate government's??

Scott

That GGAADDAAMMMM IDIOT BUSH & The AFFLUENZA Party (Republican Party) are 100% to Blame......for Creating ISIS....and The Whole Mess in Middle East.......Says RAND PAUL & TED CRUZ........92% of Americans Agree

analogy

I keep on reading "rebels , freedom fighters, moderates" that this means the Paris attackers and the ones that brought down the towers are one of the above?

[Dec 30, 2015] Putin rules out reconciliation with Turkey

Notable quotes:

"... On Thursday, Putin went as far as to say that the Islamic State group was a "secondary issue" in Syria as it was created as "cannon fodder under Islamist slogans" to protect economic interests of other players, although he did not name Turkey. ..."

news.yahoo.com

Moscow (AFP) - Russian President Vladimir Putin fired off an angry tirade against Turkey on Thursday, ruling out any reconciliation with its leaders and accusing Ankara of shooting down a Russian warplane to impress the United States.

In comments littered with crude language, Putin dismissed the possibility that the downing of the warplane over the Turkey-Syria border last month was an accident, calling it a "hostile act".

"We find it difficult if not impossible to come to an agreement with the current leadership of Turkey," the Kremlin strongman said at his annual news conference.

"On the state level, I don't see any prospects of improving relations with the Turkish leadership," he said of Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Ties between Russia and the NATO member have hit rock bottom since the November 24 incident, which led to deaths of two Russian military officers.

Turkey has said the Russian jet strayed into its airspace and ignored repeated warnings, but Moscow insists it never left Syrian territory.

Putin said he did not rule out that Ankara was acting with tacit approval from Washington, possibly so that the United States would look the other way to let Turkey "go onto Iraqi territory and occupy part of it".

"I don't know if there was such a trade-off, maybe there was," Putin said.

"If somebody in the Turkish leadership decided to lick the Americans in one place... I don't know, if they did the right thing," he added.

"Did they think we would run away now? Russia is not that kind of country," Putin said, speaking of Moscow's increased military presence in Syria.

"If Turkey flew there all the time before, breaching Syrian airspace, well, let's see how they fly now."

Turkey has voiced concern about Russian air raids in northern Syria because of the Turkmen minority in the area, a Turkic-speaking people who have had an uneasy relationship with the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

But Putin declared: "I've never heard anything about these so-called Turkmen.

"I know that there are our Turkmen, living in Turkmenistan," he said, referring to the ex-Soviet Central Asian country.

Putin also accused Turkey's leaders of overseeing a "creeping Islamisation" of the country "which would probably cause (modern Turkey's founding father Mustafa Kemal) Ataturk to turn in his grave."

- Not an 'enemy state' -

Putin and Erdogan have been locked in a war of words since the plane downing, and Moscow has even accused Erdogan's family of engaging in oil smuggling operations with Islamic State jihadists.

On Thursday, Putin went as far as to say that the Islamic State group was a "secondary issue" in Syria as it was created as "cannon fodder under Islamist slogans" to protect economic interests of other players, although he did not name Turkey.

However, he said he does not consider Turkey an enemy state. "They committed an enemy act against our aviation, but to say that we view Turkey as enemy state -- that is not the case."

Russia has imposed a number of sanctions on Turkey but Putin brushed aside questions from journalists about raids against Turkish firms and expulsions of Turkish students from Russian universities.

Putin said that had the downing of the plane been an accident, Turkish leaders should have tried to "pick up the phone and explain themselves".

Erdogan attempted to call Putin on the day of the incident, but the Kremlin ignored his request to speak to the Russian leader.

[Dec 30, 2015] Moscow demands arrest of rebel for 'murder' of Russian warplane pilot

Please note the AFP does not mentions that killing parachuted pilot is a war crime.

Notable quotes:

"... Zakharova said that the publication of Celik's comments in a major Turkish newspaper had angered and surprised Moscow, and accused the media outlet of being a "platform where terrorists and murderers brag about their crimes and spread hate of Russia and the Russian people through nationalist ideology." ..."

"... She added that Celik's comments constituted an admission of his "direct involvement in the murder of the Russian pilot". ..."

news.yahoo.com

Moscow (AFP) - Moscow on Wednesday called for Ankara to arrest a rebel it claims killed the pilot of the Russian jet downed by Turkey last month on the Syrian border.

"We demand that the Turkish authorities take immediate steps to apprehend Alparslan Celik and his accomplices and bring them to justice for the murder of the Russian pilot," foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement.

In an interview published Sunday in Turkish newspaper Hurriyet, Celik -- a Turkmen rebel and citizen of Turkey -- said that his "conscience cannot be bothered by a person who threw bombs at Turkmen civilians every day," referring to the slain Russian pilot.

Both pilots aboard the downed Su-24 jet ejected and parachuted to the ground on the Syrian side of the border, one of whom was killed by gun fire from the ground.

"Revenge is the most natural right," Celik said in the interview, while refraining from claiming the pilot's death.

Moscow and Ankara have been locked in a bitter spat over the downing of the Su-24 jet on November 24, with the Kremlin imposing a raft of economic sanctions against Turkey.

Zakharova said that the publication of Celik's comments in a major Turkish newspaper had angered and surprised Moscow, and accused the media outlet of being a "platform where terrorists and murderers brag about their crimes and spread hate of Russia and the Russian people through nationalist ideology."

She added that Celik's comments constituted an admission of his "direct involvement in the murder of the Russian pilot".

Turkish authorities have accused Russia of "ethnic cleansing" in Syria, targeting Turkmen and Sunni population that oppose the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Moscow's long-time ally.

Turkey says the Russian jet strayed into its airspace and ignored repeated warnings, while Moscow insisted it did not cross over from Syria and accused Ankara of a planned provocation.

[Dec 29, 2015] The Fed and Financial Reform – Reflections on Sen. Sanders op-Ed

Notable quotes:

"... The obvious candidate for this dark force [correlation between (rising) inequality and (low) growth] is crony capitalism. When a country succumbs to cronyism, friends of the rulers are able to appropriate large amounts of wealth for themselves -- for example, by being awarded government-protected monopolies over certain markets, as in Russia after the fall of communism. That will obviously lead to inequality of income and wealth. It will also make the economy inefficient, since money is flowing to unproductive cronies. Cronyism may also reduce growth by allowing the wealthy to exert greater influence on political policy, creating inefficient subsidies for themselves and unfair penalties for their rivals. ..."

"... The real problem is that money does not go to where it should go, as we see for example in the United States. The money does not flow into the real economy, because the transmission mechanism is broken. That is why we have a bubble in the financial system. The answer is not to tighten monetary policy, but to reform monetary policy so as to ensure that the money gets to the right place... ..."

"... As Stiglitz notes, the transmission mechanisms are broken. Economists trickle down monetary policy might work in theory, but not in practice, as we have seen for the last seven years, when low rates dont trickle down and were wasted instead on asset speculation by the 1%. ..."

"... Reform of the Fed, and the end of cronyism are essential to making sure that the stimulus of low rates gets to Main Street, to ordinary people, and not primarily to asset speculators. ..."

"... The recent decision by the Fed to raise interest rates is the latest example of the rigged economic system. Big bankers and their supporters in Congress have been telling us for years that runaway inflation is just around the corner. They have been dead wrong each time. Raising interest rates now is a disaster for small business owners who need loans to hire more workers and Americans who need more jobs and higher wages. As a rule, the Fed should not raise interest rates until unemployment is lower than 4 percent. Raising rates must be done only as a last resort - not to fight phantom inflation. ..."

"... And in one sentence Summers illustrates exactly why we dodged a bullet in not appointing Summers to be Fed Chair. Preserving the power of the Fed is not the most important policy. Changing the Fed composition so that it is more consumer friendly and not dominated by Wall Street interests is the most important policy change needed. ..."

"... the Balkanized character of US banking regulation is indefensible and would be ended. The worst regulatory idea of the 20th century-the dual banking system-persists into the 21st. The idea is that we have two systems one regulated by the States and the Fed and the other regulated by the OCC so banks have choice. With ambitious regulators eager to expand their reach, the inevitable result is a race to the bottom. ..."

"... Summers is also calling for higher capital requirements. Excellent stuff! ..."

Dec 29, 2015 | Economist's View

'The Fed and Financial Reform – Reflections on Sen. Sanders op-Ed'

This is the beginning of a long response from Larry Summers to an op-ed by Bernie Sanders:

The Fed and Financial Reform – Reflections on Sen. Sanders op-Ed : Bernie Sanders had an op Ed in the New York Times on Fed reform last week that provides an opportunity to reflect on the Fed and financial reform more generally. I think that Sanders is right in his central point that financial policy is overly influenced by financial interests to its detriment and that it is essential that this be repaired.

At the same time, reform requires careful reflection if it is not to be counterproductive. And it is important in approaching issues of reform not to give ammunition to right wing critics of the Fed who would deny it the capacity to engage in the kind of crisis responses that have judged in their totality been successful in responding to the financial crisis.

The most important policy priority with respect to the Fed is protecting it from stone age monetary ideas like a return to the gold standard, or turning policymaking over to a formula, or removing the dual mandate commanding the Fed to worry about unemployment as well as inflation. ...

JohnH said...

Disagree!!! There is more to this than just interest rates. There is the matter of how the policy gets implemented--who gets low rates. Currently the low rates serve mostly the 1%, who profit enormously from them. Case in point: Mort Zuckerberg's 1% mortgage!

"The obvious candidate for this dark force [correlation between (rising) inequality and (low) growth] is crony capitalism. When a country succumbs to cronyism, friends of the rulers are able to appropriate large amounts of wealth for themselves -- for example, by being awarded government-protected monopolies over certain markets, as in Russia after the fall of communism. That will obviously lead to inequality of income and wealth. It will also make the economy inefficient, since money is flowing to unproductive cronies. Cronyism may also reduce growth by allowing the wealthy to exert greater influence on political policy, creating inefficient subsidies for themselves and unfair penalties for their rivals."

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-12-24/cronyism-causes-the-worst-kind-of-inequality

As we know (although most here steadfastly ignore it) the Fed is rife with crony capitalism. As Bernie pointed out, 4 of the regional governors are from Goldman Sachs. Other examples are abundant. Quite simply, the system is rigged to benefit the few, minimizing any potential trickle down.

If a broad economic recovery is the goal, ending cronyism at the Fed is likely to be far more effective that low interest rates channeled only to the 1%.

JohnH said in reply to JohnH...

Stiglitz:

The real problem is that money does not go to where it should go, as we see for example in the United States. The money does not flow into the real economy, because the transmission mechanism is broken. That is why we have a bubble in the financial system. The answer is not to tighten monetary policy, but to reform monetary policy so as to ensure that the money gets to the right place...

Small and medium enterprises cannot borrow money at zero interest rates - not even a private person, I wish I could do that (laughs). I'm more worried about the loan interest rates, which are still too high. Access for small and medium enterprises to credit is too expensive. That's why it is so important that the transmission mechanism work..."
http://www.cash.ch/news/alle/stiglitz-billiggeld-lost-kein-problem-3393853-448

And let's not forget consumer credit rates, which barely dropped during the Great Recession and are still well above 10%. Even mortgage lending, which primarily benefits the affluent, have been stagnant for years despite historically low rates.

As Stiglitz notes, the transmission mechanisms are broken. Economists' trickle down monetary policy might work in theory, but not in practice, as we have seen for the last seven years, when low rates don't trickle down and were wasted instead on asset speculation by the 1%.

Reform of the Fed, and the end of cronyism are essential to making sure that the stimulus of low rates gets to Main Street, to ordinary people, and not primarily to asset speculators.

Peter K. said in reply to JohnH...

Bernie Sanders:

"The recent decision by the Fed to raise interest rates is the latest example of the rigged economic system. Big bankers and their supporters in Congress have been telling us for years that runaway inflation is just around the corner. They have been dead wrong each time. Raising interest rates now is a disaster for small business owners who need loans to hire more workers and Americans who need more jobs and higher wages. As a rule, the Fed should not raise interest rates until unemployment is lower than 4 percent. Raising rates must be done only as a last resort - not to fight phantom inflation. "

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/23/opinion/bernie-sanders-to-rein-in-wall-street-fix-the-fed.html

EMichael said in reply to Peter K....

It is hilarious.

"He's right! But his policies are wrong!"

You couldn't make this up......

JF said...

The financial system reform legislation in 2017 will also need to include these matters:

1. Licensure fees and higher and more differential income taxation rates based on the type of financial trading ratios the entities have (in order to direct more emphasis to real-economy lending and away from speculative and leveraged positions used in the financial asset trading marketplaces, so hedge funds probably would face the highest rates in income taxation). For a certain period after enactment these added taxes would be payable by the banks using their excess reserves, which will simply be eliminated until the reserve accounts return to the historically normal period when excess reserves were very small (there would no longer be a need for IOER, as the excess would be eliminated by operation of the taxation statutes). Attaching added ways & means statutes to all the financial service entities also serves to 'cover' some more of huge financial risk held by society and produced by them while the success of this huge sector actually contributes to the financing of self-government - which is also an indirect way to attach high Net Worth being used).

2. New statutory provisions need to reach any and all entities in the financial community regardless of definitions based on the functions they serve or provide (or the way they are named - so yes, the prior separation for deposit-management banking from investing activities can still happen, but this only helps to define which of the differential provisions apply, not help the entity escape them). Perhaps as a result Bank Holding Companies and other large entities won't use a complex network of hundreds of subsidiaries as these would not then serve as a way to avoid taxation, regulatory standards on what are prudent expectations, or supervision; or be used simply to obfuscate -- so investors and regulators can't see the truth of matters.

3. The newly named central bank needs to hold the discretion to buy Treasury bonds directly from the Treasury. This would discipline these fundamental asset-trading marketplaces and the huge primary dealer group of entities, and weaken the fox-and-hen-house influence on public finance.

4. New accounting approaches for the central bank would clarify what happens should the Congress direct redemption amounts or asset sales for the public's purposes. A good portion of the current FRB's book of owned assets can be redeemed or sold without affecting the 'power' of the central bank, and the proceeds used then, for example, to lower payroll taxes via a direct transfer to the social security trust fund's set of accounts).

Senator Sanders, good stuff. Bring out the vote, let us get others in Congress with whom you can work.

BillB said...

Summers: "The most important policy priority with respect to the Fed is protecting it from stone age monetary ideas like a return to the gold standard, or turning policymaking over to a formula, or removing the dual mandate commanding the Fed to worry about unemployment as well as inflation."

And in one sentence Summers illustrates exactly why we dodged a bullet in not appointing Summers to be Fed Chair. Preserving the power of the Fed is not the most important policy. Changing the Fed composition so that it is more consumer friendly and not dominated by Wall Street interests is the most important policy change needed.

Summers argument is the same we always hear from so-called "centrists." "You hippies should shut up because you are helping the opposition."

You hear the same sort of argument with respect to Black Lives Matter.

pgl said in reply to pgl...

On financial regulation - Summers is spot on here:

"the Balkanized character of US banking regulation is indefensible and would be ended. The worst regulatory idea of the 20th century-the dual banking system-persists into the 21st. The idea is that we have two systems one regulated by the States and the Fed and the other regulated by the OCC so banks have choice. With ambitious regulators eager to expand their reach, the inevitable result is a race to the bottom."

It is called regulatory capture.

Summers is also calling for higher capital requirements. Excellent stuff!

[Dec 29, 2015] The military strategy to defeat the Islamic State can be summed up as "isolate and eradicate"

Notable quotes:

"... "Our toothpaste will degrade and ultimately destroy cavities." ..."

"... D'oooooooooh! ..."

"... I suggest you read about the Boer War, where Roberts lost, and Kitchener, who replaced Roberts, won. Focus on the mechanism Kitchener employed to win – depopulation the countryside and gathering all the civilian (Afrikaans) population in camps, where a significant percentage died of diphtheria. ..."

"... "ISIS…ISIL..IS..(ok I prefer Daesh.. but whateva whateva)… is stockpiling RedBull for "The Long March" ..."

"... "I get the impression they are more a Wahhabi brand of ME Organized Crime in a religious jihadist wrapper than a bona-fide organizer of worldwide Caliphate." ..."

"... "Unlike, say the Taliban which has pursued a more modest goal of converting Afghanistan into a retro-fantasy barbaric Islamic fundamentalist State, IS has more ambitiously declared Jihad against the entire World. Now that's anyone and everyone including other Muslim sects that are not Wahhabis, or more precisely ANYONE including other Wahhabis not with the program!" ..."

www.nakedcapitalism.com

Andrew Watts December 28, 2015 at 10:34 am

RE: A Fearful Congress Sits Out the War Against ISIS

I have no idea what they're talking about. There aren't any American troops fighting the Islamic State in Northern Syria or Iraq. Only advisers and volunteers who do not see much frontline action… right?

The problem with the Obama Administration is that they seem to believe that every issue is a matter of public relations. I mean take the "degrade and ultimately destroy the Islamic State" statement for example. One of those words doesn't mean what they think it means. It makes a great marketing line from a toothpaste salesman though. "Our toothpaste will degrade and ultimately destroy cavities." F- yeah! In any case it's probably asking too much of Congress to give their vote of confidence in a war that lacks a coherent plan from the administration and when the US military may have exceeded it's military prerogative.

As for the British/German response there are potential consequences at stake that need to be considered. Fallout… eh? That's an interesting choice of words. D'oooooooooh!

Andrew Watts December 28, 2015 at 10:38 am

…and because Congress shouldn't get off that easy and the fact it's the holiday season I offer the Obama administration the plan and media spin they desire in the spirit of the season. The military strategy to defeat the Islamic State can be summed up as "isolate and eradicate". By attacking and cutting major supply lines to and from the Islamic State's centers of gravity, with the co-operation of local and other opposition forces, IS forces will find themselves in increasingly dire straits. This is the strategy being followed by the Syrian Democratic Forces and was previously pursued by the Kurdish YPG/J. ("Just in case anybody didn't get the memo the first time around…") The successful result that this strategy has produced is self-evident thus far.

With the capture of Tishrin Dam and the ongoing advance from that area west of the Euphrates River and the forthcoming SDF campaign for the remaining IS territory in Hasakah province the Islamic State will find itself isolated in Aleppo province and cut off one of the last major supply lines from Turkey to the rest of the alleged Caliphate. By securing the remaining IS territory located in Hasaka province SDF will have effectively closed the most direct path from Mosul to Raqqa leaving it vulnerable. Raqqa will fall.

Ultimately, facing isolation and eradication in Mosul and cut off from it's remaining city strongholds in Anbar the Islamic State will face two incredibly bad choices; a guerrilla war of attrition that it will eventually lose or a high risk "Long March" maneuver into Saudi Arabia. We should all know which choice Mao successfully made.

God, this is gonna be an exciting year!

Synoia December 28, 2015 at 12:02 pm

Ultimately, facing isolation and eradication in Mosul and cut off from it's remaining city strongholds in Anbar the Islamic State will face two incredibly bad choices; a guerrilla war of attrition that it will eventually lose

And how pray, will ISIS, with legions of faithful supporters and new converts, a process fueled by US policy, US Military actions, and unwavering US support for Israel's bashing fellow Muslims on a daily basis, lead to a loss of a guerrilla war?

One cannot "win" a guerrilla war by attrition, because the actions of attrition generate supporters for the war at a greater rate than the loss from so called attrition.

I suggest you read about the Boer War, where Roberts lost, and Kitchener, who replaced Roberts, won. Focus on the mechanism Kitchener employed to win – depopulation the countryside and gathering all the civilian (Afrikaans) population in camps, where a significant percentage died of diphtheria.

Then explain how the lessons learned from the Boer War, an insurgency, from1899 to 1902, apply to ISIS today.

Those who do not know their history, etc…

Andrew Watts December 28, 2015 at 2:01 pm

For all it's pretense the Islamic State doesn't come close to representing every Sunni Muslim in the world. Although the idea of the re-emergence of the Caliphate must be an appealing ideal. As for blaming the US for everything wrong in the region, why do you think that the Shia and other minorities are targeted for annihilation by Sunni jihadists is solely the fault of Uncle Sam?

There are quite a few ways to win a guerrilla war. The Boer War was won by the British through the eradication of the guerrilla's base of support. Similarly the America crushed the Filipino insurgency through similar methods. Their loss was almost destined from the beginning though. The Filipinos were already divided by class, ethnicity, and geography and it's the latter I am focused on in the context of the former.

As other historical examples will prove there are less gruesome ways of accomplishing that goal. The Chinese Civil War will furnish many lessons to the students of history. The Chinese Nationalists tried and failed to wage a insurgency after they fled to Taiwan. In no small part due to the repeated defeats that were inflicted upon their forces by both foreign and domestic enemies and the subsequential humiliation that resulted.

Nobody wants to fight and die for a losing cause. Only for glorious victory.

Synoia December 28, 2015 at 2:57 pm

Answer the question: How will the ISIS insurgency collapse when there appears to be a large supply of the disaffected?

You made the assertion, state the means.

Banana Breakfast December 28, 2015 at 4:43 pm

US/Western/capitalist imperial boondoggles will continue to create disaffected youths, who will continue to become guerillas, but if IS, having talked some big talk and taken the big step of capturing territory and making the pretense of being a state level actor, loses their territory, IS will not be such an attractive name to associate with. Al Qaeda shrank because they became associated with losing, and only the serious, long game playing, professional revolutionaries have the patience to stick that out. When IS becomes associated with losing, they'll be replaced as well.

Andrew Watts December 28, 2015 at 8:57 pm

Somebody gets it. Furthermore IS fighters can be divided by their status as conscripts, mercenaries, and even fewer who are true believers that'll stick out the jihadist revolution to the end. Plus more than a few infiltrators from foreign intelligence agencies. It's the Levant after all.

Everybody thinks they can manipulate jihadist sentiment and it's gotta be one of the reasons why there's a glass ceiling for the advancement of non-Iraqis in the Islamic State.

MyLessThanPrimeBeef December 28, 2015 at 5:27 pm

That's human nature.

And you see that towards the end of any war, with generals defecting, leading to a swift defeat of the losing side. 'Saving lives,' they tell themselves and anyone will listen.

Going with the winner is how the rich will always have followers and supporters.

optimader December 28, 2015 at 12:14 pm

ISIS…ISIL..IS..(ok I prefer Daesh.. but whateva whateva)… is stockpiling RedBull for "The Long March"
http://english.alarabiya.net/en/perspective/features/2015/07/19/Western-products-showcased-in-ISIS-shopping-mall-.html

I get the impression they are more a Wahhabi brand of ME Organized Crime in a religious jihadist wrapper than a bona-fide organizer of worldwide Caliphate. I mean, let's be generous and say the "organization" is good for what 40k dingdongs,, against the world?.. Really? How many times in History has that not worked?, (or as the Military would ultimately frame such an operation: "… it has been less than a complete success…)

Unlike, say the Taliban which has pursued a more modest goal of converting Afghanistan into a retro-fantasy barbaric Islamic fundamentalist State, IS has more ambitiously declared Jihad against the entire World. Now that's anyone and everyone including other Muslim sects that are not Wahhabis, or more precisely ANYONE including other Wahhabis not with the program!

I think of them more along the lines of the overly ambitious but ultimately doomed to fail Virus strain that kills it's hosts. Maybe they'll be the cause of a lot of death and destruction directly and indirectly as sovereign countries are used as fullscale weapons proving grounds, but ultimately IS will be hoisted by it's own Petard.
In the long play, targeting the least critical thinking disaffected youth in the West and ME with stale packages of M&Ms, Cadbury Chocolates and an opportunity to enjoy the camaraderie of shooting an AK (or being summarily married off to a GoldStar member if you're female) until you're aerosolized is not a solid longterm plan IMO.

Andrew Watts December 28, 2015 at 2:07 pm

"ISIS…ISIL..IS..(ok I prefer Daesh.. but whateva whateva)… is stockpiling RedBull for "The Long March"

They call themselves Islamic State so that's what I call them. It's been tough over the years trying to keep up with their constant name changes. I forget what came before ISI > ISIS > ISIL > IS. And hey when you can't drink alcohol because your religion forbids it you need other stimulants.

"I get the impression they are more a Wahhabi brand of ME Organized Crime in a religious jihadist wrapper than a bona-fide organizer of worldwide Caliphate."

Who knows. I still haven't made up my mind if the revanchist Baathists are using the jihadists for their own self-interest or the other way around. Before the inception of Al Qaeda in Iraq it was some motley crew of jihadists trying to destabilize Jordan and overthrow the government which sounds like something the Iraqi intelligence apparatus would want. After the Iraqi invasion they relocated to Anbar to wage an insurgency against the American occupation… who just so happen to link up with Saddam regime loyalists drawn from the intelligence services?

If the Iraqis who comprise the leadership positions in the Islamic State are only in it for the money the whole Caliphate could collapse as the leaders abandon the cause when the prospects turn sour. That seems like wishful thinking though.

"Unlike, say the Taliban which has pursued a more modest goal of converting Afghanistan into a retro-fantasy barbaric Islamic fundamentalist State, IS has more ambitiously declared Jihad against the entire World. Now that's anyone and everyone including other Muslim sects that are not Wahhabis, or more precisely ANYONE including other Wahhabis not with the program!"

Undoubtedly the Islamic State will target other Wahhabis as their jihad is aimed at other Sunni Muslims. That's why I think of them as Wahhabi revolutionaries. They're trying to overthrow not just the state, secular or otherwise, but eradicate other sects of Islam.

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john December 28, 2015 at 6:59 pm

I hear the Israeli Secret Inteligence Service isn't so happy about the "ISIS"-branding issue.

The elites tell us the truth right to our faces, but it is so terrible and offensive to our humanity we can only turn away.

The same narciscists who see us as animals, and cast themselves as gods are mere beasts.

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different clue December 28, 2015 at 8:43 pm

Probably each thinks it is using the other. But because the Old Baathists are smarter, and they have the institutional memory of decades of conspiratorial activity, and then secret police activity, etc.; the Old Baathists will outlive ISIS in the end. The Old Baathists will not disappear on their own. They will either have to be invited to Come In From The Cold, or they will have to be separately and specially hunted down and killed.

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Jim Haygood December 28, 2015 at 1:10 pm

'There aren't any American troops fighting the Islamic State in Northern Syria or Iraq.'

Things have changed, comrade. Jim Dandy Special Ops to the rescue:

WASHINGTON - They are taking on a larger combat role in Afghanistan, where the war was supposed to be over. They are headed to Syria to help fight the Islamic State in its stronghold. And President Obama recently ordered nearly 300 of them to Cameroon to assist African troops in their battle against a militant group that has pledged loyalty to the Islamic State.

Even as Mr. Obama has repeatedly said that he opposes American "boots on the ground" in far-flung parts of the world, his administration continues to carve out exceptions for Special Operations forces - with American officials often resorting to linguistic contortions to mask the forces' combat role.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/28/world/middleeast/more-and-more-special-forces-become-obamas-military-answer.html

This is how empires die: $58 billion for "overseas contingency operations" in the omnibus spending bill.

It would just as productive (and create more jobs) to build a giant marble sphinx on the Capitol Mall, featuring the fatuous mug of Obamamandias, King of Kings. Look on his works, ye mighty, and despair.

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MyLessThanPrimeBeef December 28, 2015 at 1:24 pm

When the legions retreated from Britain (or, was it Dacia), the empire was over.

Perhaps the lesson is, never retreat.

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Andrew Watts December 28, 2015 at 2:19 pm

The Romans didn't exactly go out with a whimper. So the potential lesson to be learned is that even when the empire is collapsing you can still annihilate some barbarians on the way out.

It's not a perfect world.

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Synoia December 28, 2015 at 3:06 pm

Don't be ridiculous. Rome fell in 410 AD, well after Constantine moved the Roman Empire to Constantinople, where it continued for about another 1,000 years.

It was the western roman empire which crumbled in 410 ad.

Rome at that time was governed by the Church.

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efschumacher December 28, 2015 at 3:15 pm

Lest We Forget: the Romans retreated from Britain because they needed to protect the 'heartland' that had already been sacked by Attila and his running dogs. The Romans retreated because the Germans were in the process of winning. That led to the 1500 year Reich that we are still enjoying.

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Andrew Watts December 28, 2015 at 2:12 pm

I can still pretend that they're just advisers and volunteers even though the Obama administration is making it impossible to do so. That'd be the smart move as opposed to the other option.

…and where's your holiday spirit?!

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Jim Haygood December 28, 2015 at 4:48 pm

Holiday spirit? I donated to Médecins Sans Frontières to help offset the damage that the Kunduz Killa did when he bombed their hospital.

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Andrew Watts December 28, 2015 at 9:00 pm

Well, you know sure know how to poop in the punch bowl.

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Carolinian December 28, 2015 at 2:27 pm

Reaganmandias. Oh wait, they already named the airport after him.

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Katniss Everdeen December 28, 2015 at 10:42 am

No surprise to most here, but the "affordable" care act is not so "affordable" after all.

"I love my family, and I'm not going to let them go without health insurance," said Kevin Broyles, a 63-year-old insurance broker from Knoxville, Tennessee.

Broyles, who had been paying $629 per month for coverage from a long-standing Blue Cross plan for himself, his wife and their three children, recently got an an "eye-opener" when Blue Cross canceled his plan because it was not compliant with ACA standards. He learned the lowest-priced "bronze" plan in his area would cost $1,161 per month, or $13,932 annually to cover himself, his wife, and their two teenage children who will remain on the family's plan.

"This is almost 14 percent of our pretax income," said Broyles. "If we could afford the [second least-expensive] 'silver plan' in our area, that would cost $1,568 per month, or $18,816 per year. That would be almost 19 percent of our pretax income."

Broyles makes about $100,000 per year. I can remember when that kind of income was considered "wealthy."

Gee, I wonder where all the "savings" from lower gas prices went.

http://www.cnbc.com/2015/12/24/obamacare-plans-put-big-dent-in-customers-wallets.html

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edmondo December 28, 2015 at 10:49 am

See, under ObamaCare, he can get insurance, he just can't afford it!

And the clowns over at the DNC will sit there in wonderment why these "stupid people" continue to "vote against their own interests".

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MyLessThanPrimeBeef December 28, 2015 at 12:20 pm

It sounds like they are in the infamous 1% circle.

Too bad they don't belong to the 0.01%.

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allan December 28, 2015 at 11:07 am

But as with a glass of red wine with dinner, too much of a good thing creates new problems. If people have insurance that pays for too much, they don't have enough skin in the game. They may be too quick to seek professional medical care.

(Mankiw&Summers, 2015). The problem with the family in the story is that
they don't have enough skin to get in the game.
Which should incentivize them to get another job or two. Or vote GOP. I wonder which will happen.

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Vatch December 28, 2015 at 11:25 am

Huh. I wonder what kind of health insurance policies Summers and Mankiw have; pretty good, I would imagine. They're both tenured full professors (not adjunct professors) at Harvard. I suspect they're doing rather well financially, and will continue to do so whether or not they have the proper amount of skin in the game. It's easy for people like that to demand that others should pay more.

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Katniss Everdeen December 28, 2015 at 11:33 am

Always love that "skin in the game" bit. If they wanted "healthcare consumers" to have "skin in the game," they'd have put price tags on everything. That "shoppers" could see PRIOR to "purchasing."

Interesting concept those price tags. And pretty hilarious watching people try to "shop" without 'em.

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flora December 28, 2015 at 11:45 am

"Always love that "skin in the game" bit."
heh. It always comes out sounding like "pound of flesh."

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ambrit December 28, 2015 at 12:25 pm

Or, as Obamas' "Uncle Shylock" would put it:
"My debtor! Oh my ducats! Oh my debtor,
Fled with an Austerian! Oh my Austerian ducats!
Justice, the Law, my ducats and my debtor!
A sealed bag, two sealed bags of ducats,
Oh double ducats, stolen from me by my debtor!
And jewels–two stones, two rich and precious stones–
Stolen by my debtor. Justice, find the churl!"

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Katniss Everdeen December 28, 2015 at 12:29 pm

Always reminds me of the movie "Silence of the Lambs." The serial killer kidnapped his victims and starved them for a few days to loosen up their skin. Then he killed them and cut pieces of skin off to make a dress.

Sounds about right.

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Pat December 28, 2015 at 2:01 pm

I always feel the need to point out the various things the insurance industry and Private Medical jettisoned when adapting the Swiss system for the Heritage/Dole/Romney/Obama health insurance plan.

In this case, the government also regulates all medical costs. In Switzerland if you get an appendectomy it costs X. There might be some differences of price based on Canton, but otherwise if you get it at one hospital it costs X, if you get it at another it costs X. If you have insurance it costs X, any insurance, if you don't it costs X, Same with drugs, medical tests and doctors visits. You may not chose not to have the appendectomy, but you know what it costs.

That and everything else they jettisoned is why the Swiss system still works. It may be the most expensive version of universal health care out there, but it still works. But we had to butcher it to have it because even though it was the most 'market friendly' it was highly regulated and controlled and so not market friendly. So we have the most expensive health care in the world and still do not have universal care – even with our piece of crap version of 'reform'.

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Jagger December 28, 2015 at 12:22 pm

They may be too quick to seek professional medical care.

I don't know about everyone else but I don't want to go to the doctor. I suspect most people have other things to do and only go if they absolutely have to. The percentage of people who go to the doctor just because they have an urge has got to be pretty small.

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cwaltz December 28, 2015 at 2:24 pm

I have co pay insurance for doctor's visits and I still can think of at least a half a dozen things I'd rather do with the $25 than sit in an office with other sick people waiting on a doctor that may or may not tell me what's wrong and how to fix it.

$25 buys flowers for my garden, it pays for the movies for the family, it pays for the indoor pool for the family in our burg, it could pay for a new book from the bookstore, etc, etc

All things I'd rather do with the money than visit with the doctor. I think it's absurd that the insurance community is selling this idea that people are visiting doctors too quickly for no reason whatsoever(which just so happens to cost them in profits.) When individuals go to the doctor they're going because something is wrong and they want help(whether the medical community can provide it or not is in my mind a different argument.)

[Dec 28, 2015] Collection of Vladimir Putins most notable speeches published

Walker, as usual, is just doing his paid job ;-). Bots have no Christmas vacations by definition: MTavernier, Metronome151, psygone, Alderbaran, MentalToo, Hektor Uranga, and one interesting new one Chukuriuk are all on duty. A deep observation by one of the commenters: "Interesting how all the trolling comments, such as yours, seem to be against Putin..."

What some people doe not understand is that Putin represents a countervailing force to the US imperial expansionism (and neoliberal expansionism in general). As there is an inherent value in existence of countervailing force (neocons thing otherwise ;-) Putin deserve some level of support even if one does not agree with everything he is doing. In a way Putin is more valuable to the USA then to Russia as he prevents the USA elite from doing extremely stupid thing which were done during Yeltsin rule which led to overstretching of the US empire and contains seeds its subsequent decline.

Notable quotes:

"... For all his sins you have to admire Putin. He is a man of conviction that actually believes in something that is worth saving, and will stop at nothing to achieve it. ..."

"... Battling against hostility from the West Putin has reformed the nations economy, and continues to work on behalf of his peoples interests. Its hard to imagine how Russia could ever replace Putin, or indeed what the new Russia would even look like without Putin at the helm. But for now the people are clearly grateful to have a strong decisive leader, as indeed are many other leaders across the globe who find Putin's honesty and conviction a breath of fresh air in a world of deception and double dealing. I guess with Putin you get what it says on the tin. ..."

"... Russian military requested by Assad to assist him in protecting his government. All others including America, British, French, Australian,Canadian, etc are there in contravention of International law ..."

"... Murdoch and Thatcher as a model of the free press? ..."

"... The Guardian and its puppet-masters hate the Russian people don't they? But they can't bring themselves to say that, so it's Putin they attempt to ridicule. ..."

"... Give me one Putin over a hundred Cameron's any day of the week. I've listened to a couple of those speeches, they are excellent, I don't bother listening to Mr Cameron. ..."

"... I know a few 'Russians' who have lived in the 'west' for 15/20 years. They had no illusions about their soviet upbringing, but knew the qualities of life - health care, education, housing - that it brought. They are generally agreed that the wonderland that was supposed to exist beyond their borders was an illusion. But they're hard working people, and they do OK. ..."

"... Russia has been able, in just 20 years, without wars and other troubles, to go from a semi-colony up to a world stage recognized leader. All Putin's risk-taking decisions have been successes or are still playing out and have good potential for ending in success. ..."

"... All this, quietly and imperceptibly, without tanks or strategic aviation, has been achieved by the Russian diplomacy, directed in a difficult confrontation with the block of the most powerful militarily and economically countries, while starting from a much lower position. ..."

"... Crimea would never have happened without the illegal coup backed by the west. We could choose to believe the western media's opinion on the state of Russia, or we could listen to the people who live there. ..."

"... What's that Shaun?.. Someone's publishing a book of Putin quotes?.. I've got a similar book by that other respected world leader and statesman.. You know.. Short, fat, speech impediment, drunk most of the time ... what's his name?..oh yeah, Churchill. ..."

"... This is what many in the west said too. Putin is just one of the few people with serious power to publically state the same. Western officials including Tony Blair admit that IS arose out of the chaos in Iraq. Its not even up for debate. The abomination that is IS is the chaos he warned us of. ..."

"... However, in the USA, Presidents tend to have Library Centers to archive their words of wisdom. Bush Junior's is located on the campus of Southern Methodist University (SMU) in University Park, Texas, opened on April 25, 2013. ..."

"... Interesting how all the trolling comments, such as yours, seem to be against Putin... ..."

"... The MSM has brainwashed the western world and they don't know anything else but what they are fed. ..."

"... If you understand that the leader's image is so important for the well-being of the population you wouldn't be criticizing him. After the drunken years of Yeltsin the Russians needed a different role model. There is a reason for Obama (a heavy smoker) not to do it ( at least not in front of the cameras) ..."

"... They might have added his habit of speaking the truth. Best chance of finding out what's actually going on in Syria + the Middle East generally is to listen to Putin. ..."

The Guardian

Words That Change the World is a 400-page compilation of Vladimir Putin's most notable speeches, and has been sent out to all Russian MPs and other political figures as a gift from the presidential administration ahead of the country's new year holiday.

Anton Volodin of the pro-Kremlin youth group Network, which published the book, told the Guardian: "A year ago we noticed when reading one of his early speeches that it was exactly right in its predictions, so we decided to check all of his other speeches. And it turns out basically everything he said has either already come true or is in the process of coming true at this very moment."

There are 19 articles and speeches collected in the book, starting from 2003 and ending with Putin's speech to the UN general assembly earlier this year. Volodin said: "If you read through them all, you can see a clear pattern in his rhetoric and thoughts. A lot of people say he's unpredictable or untruthful, but actually everything he says is transparent, clear and fully formed."

Alderbaran -> Popeyes 28 Dec 2015 16:21

China's GDP is roughly five times that of Russia and China is already leasing land in Russia's east. I'm also assuming it is getting a pretty good deal on oil at the moment too - Don't expect an equal partnership

Russia needs the West, just as the West needs Russia. Do you agree?

Laurence Johnson 28 Dec 2015 16:19

For all his sins you have to admire Putin. He is a man of conviction that actually believes in something that is worth saving, and will stop at nothing to achieve it.

Battling against hostility from the West Putin has reformed the nations economy, and continues to work on behalf of his peoples interests. Its hard to imagine how Russia could ever replace Putin, or indeed what the new Russia would even look like without Putin at the helm. But for now the people are clearly grateful to have a strong decisive leader, as indeed are many other leaders across the globe who find Putin's honesty and conviction a breath of fresh air in a world of deception and double dealing. I guess with Putin you get what it says on the tin.

KoreyD -> dyst1111 28 Dec 2015 16:19

Russian military requested by Assad to assist him in protecting his government. All others including America, British, French, Australian,Canadian, etc are there in contravention of International law

Popeyes 28 Dec 2015 16:18

"If those who had been present at the UN general assembly had listened to Putin's words, the world would be a very different place. Hundreds of thousands of people would still be alive and Europe would not be full of refugees from the middle east."
Of course he was right but of course he wasn't the only one saying these things at the time. Such a shame our witless leaders didn't listen and perhaps we wouldn't be in the mess we are now.

Popeyes 28 Dec 2015 15:54

Russia is slowly moving out of the dollar system and Western sanctions will eventually have little impact on the Russian economy. Russia and China can easily survive and prosper without the dollar. Unfortunately Europe will lose out massively due to Russia's response to the sanctions and will continue banning imports from the EU, agricultural produce, as well as manufactured goods, leaving hundreds of thousands of jobs at risk. Just think what Putin has done even before he started bombing ISIS. He protects his country, his management of Russia's economy despite international sanctions are feats that are to be admired. Is it any wonder he is hated and feared by the West.

Fallowfield -> MTavernier 28 Dec 2015 16:16

I'm trying to work this out. Come on, you're not really saying that we have a free press in the west are you?

I believe it happened once, Watergate and all that. Murdoch and Thatcher as a model of the free press?

No, you're taking the piss. I'll stop there.

Fallowfield -> Alderbaran 28 Dec 2015 16:10

The people I know were 'the younger generation'. Their illusions about the west were quickly shattered. Different mafias, you see.
Putin's message? How very unlike our own dear Queen's Speech.

Alderbaran -> SHappens 28 Dec 2015 16:03

A very fair point but you have to admit that a forum saturated with meaningless posts is frustrating for those who actually want to discuss the article. I feel compelled to challenge a number of these posters.

Personally I feel that Russia started on a very different track following Putin's return as president in 2012 and following the Bolotnaya square demonstrations - He was shaken by this!

I see a cult of personality blinding many Russians, including many of the commentators on this forum and it seems that in Russia what is important is not the facts but nationalism and a shared identity. This helps to protect Putin from criticism ans shores up his position but it is worrying when a government relies so much on one man and that there is nothing to indicate that Putin intends to change this. The publication of a book of speeches by "Network" is yet another indication of the reliance on this personality cult and to be very frank, it disturbs and saddens me.

Does any of this concern you too, or do you think that this is the best that Russia should hope for at the moment?

Equidom 28 Dec 2015 16:02

The Guardian and its puppet-masters hate the Russian people don't they? But they can't bring themselves to say that, so it's Putin they attempt to ridicule.

Rantalot 28 Dec 2015 15:42

Give me one Putin over a hundred Cameron's any day of the week. I've listened to a couple of those speeches, they are excellent, I don't bother listening to Mr Cameron.

Fallowfield 28 Dec 2015 15:29

I know a few 'Russians' who have lived in the 'west' for 15/20 years. They had no illusions about their soviet upbringing, but knew the qualities of life - health care, education, housing - that it brought. They are generally agreed that the wonderland that was supposed to exist beyond their borders was an illusion. But they're hard working people, and they do OK.

They support Putin. Why? KGB indoctrination? Far from it, these are the people who wanted to get away. And they - just like you - love their homeland. And who protects their homeland? The President of the USA? The PM of the UK? You must be joking.
Putin. Nobody else.

SHappens -> apacheman 28 Dec 2015 15:26

Russia has been able, in just 20 years, without wars and other troubles, to go from a semi-colony up to a world stage recognized leader. All Putin's risk-taking decisions have been successes or are still playing out and have good potential for ending in success.

All this, quietly and imperceptibly, without tanks or strategic aviation, has been achieved by the Russian diplomacy, directed in a difficult confrontation with the block of the most powerful militarily and economically countries, while starting from a much lower position.

This is part of Putin, and Lavrov's great achievements. Might be worth for you to read this book after all, you might be learning something.

Alderbaran -> WalterCronkiteBot 28 Dec 2015 15:20

Who said you were Russian and why did you suggest that you might be if Putin has a lot of support outside the country?

What surprised me is your apparently unsupportable notion that Putin is trying to make Russia look amicable. Your post also brought up topics far from the bounds of this article, yet you state that you don't know what to believe in.

If you are sincere in wanting to understand Russia better, David Remnick's excellent book on Russia is a great start - see Lenin's Tomb. Chrystia freeland's 'Sale of the Century' brilliantly describes the Yeltsin years and the power struggles taking place following the fall of the wall. I'd also recommend listing to Mark Galeotti on the sublect of Russia, and he is a regular conrtibutor to both RT and RFERL.

Peter Evans -> Alderbaran 28 Dec 2015 15:10

Crimea would never have happened without the illegal coup backed by the west. We could choose to believe the western media's opinion on the state of Russia, or we could listen to the people who live there.

Fallowfield -> CoinBiter 28 Dec 2015 15:09

After the USA, UK and other allied countries had invaded Russia in 1919 the eventual Soviet Republic did what it could to protect itself I suppose. And Russia still does. Ask where the USA bases are, and compare their distribution to those of Russia.

The USA didn't fancy one in Cuba, did they? A perfectly lawful international agreement. They threatened nuclear destruction as an ultimatum.

WalterCronkiteBot -> Alderbaran 28 Dec 2015 15:04

Yes I'm an evil Russian. I can't possibly be from the west.

To answer your question though, I don't know what to believe hence me stating "What I don't get with Putin is...". I don't understand the actual situation because I don't have inside knowledge.

I'm saying on the face of it he appears to speak for those in the west against war in the ME, which is good, but we shouldnt trust him entirely.

If that makes me a Kremlin shill so be it.

Not4TheFaintOfHeart 28 Dec 2015 14:59

Can somebody please tell Shaun to come in from the cold... It's over Shaun: Syria saved from a Libya/Iraq fate x2, ISIS degraded very nicely, thank you, Crimea voted to be part of the RF, Mistrals now sold to Egept, BRICS bank created, colour revolution in Georgia thwarted...

What's that Shaun?.. Someone's publishing a book of Putin quotes?.. I've got a similar book by that other respected world leader and statesman.. You know.. Short, fat, speech impediment, drunk most of the time ... what's his name?..oh yeah, Churchill.

Fallowfield -> Metronome151 28 Dec 2015 14:49

Well we certainly jailed members of the WSPU for wanting to vote. 14 Northern Irish civil rights protest marchers, legal and unarmed, were shot dead on the street by British troops in 1972, as I remember. Striking workers have been jailed, and many more have had cases against them dropped in court for 'lack of evidence', ie when the police evidence presented was so obviously falsified. I wonder where the KGB got their ideas from?

apacheman -> Fallowfield 28 Dec 2015 14:48

And the Soviet people could thank the West for the Lend-Lease supplies that allowed them to withstand the Nazi juggernaut, without which they would have collapsed.

WalterCronkiteBot 28 Dec 2015 14:46

"Putin was correct to predict chaos in international affairs if the UN and other institutions of international law are ignored."

This is what many in the west said too. Putin is just one of the few people with serious power to publically state the same. Western officials including Tony Blair admit that IS arose out of the chaos in Iraq. Its not even up for debate. The abomination that is IS is the chaos he warned us of.

In 2013 Putin accused Kerry of lying when he told a senate hearing that AQ are not in Syria and as such pose no threat in that region. He warned us but noone listened. Now we have Syria overran by AQ affiliated groups toting US made weaponry.

What I don't get with Putin is the apparent naivety. As his speeches show he is well aware of the machinations of the western powers, yet puts faith in them time and time again. Hes either very naive or just wants to ensure that Russia look as amicable as possible in the history books.

Peter Evans 28 Dec 2015 14:34

The US loved Yeltsin, a weak leader, they do not like a strong Russian leader who does the best for his country.

mgeary -> rcil2003 28 Dec 2015 14:33

Oh, the results in the USA are the same as in Russia, the only difference being that they have a ruling elite there, who promote different faces every election for the Presidency.

This and the fact that, in contrast to Russia, they are being subtle about it...

Chuckman 28 Dec 2015 14:25

The most able leader of our generation. Simply a remarkable man.

Readers may enjoy:

https://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2014/03/04/vladimir-putin-the-worlds-last-true-statesman/

presstheredbutton 28 Dec 2015 14:14

This got me pondering on what an equivalent publication for George W Bush would contain. Chapter One - reading "My Pet Goat".

However, in the USA, Presidents tend to have Library Centers to archive their words of wisdom. Bush Junior's is located on the campus of Southern Methodist University (SMU) in University Park, Texas, opened on April 25, 2013. The janitor wasn't best pleased; he had to find a new broom cupboard...

rcil2003 -> euphoniumbrioche 28 Dec 2015 14:16

western leaders are nothing but interchangeable game show hosts. Behind them is the real power, wielded in secret by utterly evil characters like Dick Cheney, who would have been right at home in the Third Reich.

presstheredbutton -> nonanon1 28 Dec 2015 14:15

Interesting how all the trolling comments, such as yours, seem to be against Putin...

Parangaricurimicuaro -> Metronome151 28 Dec 2015 14:20

Now you are giving me the reason. The MSM has brainwashed the western world and they don't know anything else but what they are fed.

Parangaricurimicuaro -> hermionegingold 28 Dec 2015 14:01

If you understand that the leader's image is so important for the well-being of the population you wouldn't be criticizing him. After the drunken years of Yeltsin the Russians needed a different role model. There is a reason for Obama (a heavy smoker) not to do it ( at least not in front of the cameras)

greatapedescendant -> Strummered 28 Dec 2015 13:46

They might have added his habit of speaking the truth. Best chance of finding out what's actually going on in Syria + the Middle East generally is to listen to Putin.

ID7586903 28 Dec 2015 13:45

Putin is the savior of Europe, and its culture

[Dec 28, 2015] 2015 – The year Russia exposed Western barbarism

From Countervailing power - Wikipedia.

Countervailing Power, or countervailence, is the idea in political theory of institutionalized mechanisms that the wielding of power within a polity having two or more centers can, and often does, provide counter-forces that usefully oppose each other. This political organization stands in contrast to polities such as principalities where "various princes were absolute rulers in their domain"[1] or in modern examples of totalitarian governments.

In the 20th century, "Countervailing Power" is a theory of political modification of markets, formulated by American economist John Kenneth Galbraith in his 1952 book American Capitalism. In the classic liberal economy, goods and services are provided and prices set by free bargaining. According to Galbraith, modern economies give massive powers to large business corporations to bias this process, and there arise 'countervailing' powers in the form of trade unions, citizens' organizations and so on, to offset business's excessive advantage.[2]

Seventeenth century England was an active time for the development of countervailance theory. Although much political discourse during the period was focused on the matter of sovereignty, or absolutism for the sovereign as, for example, we observe in the writings of Thomas Hobbes, the principle "significance of seventeenth-century England for constitutional theory was that during this period the concept of sovereignty was replaced by the concept of checks and balances."^[."[3] The evolution of political practice in England paralleled the evolution in theory, for it was during this period that "the operational dynamics of the system developed in accordance with the countervailance model of government."[3] While the trend reversed somewhat under the power of Oliver Cromwell and the era of the later Stuarts, and was therefore rather uneven over the flow of the 17th century, the Glorious Revolution of 1688 "firmly established the principles of dispersed power and checks and balances as the central pillars of English constitutionalism."[3]

Notable quotes:

"... The US, Britain and France have reportedly supplied weapons to so-called "moderate rebels" only for these weapons and indeed fighters to end up with the known extremist brigades of IS and Al Nusra. Saudi Arabia and Qatar have also funded Islamist networks, such as Jaish al Fatah and Ahrar al Shams, which are known to be involved with IS and Al Nusra. ..."

"... A central part of the charade is how NATO member and EU aspirant Turkey has been involved in smuggling oil and weapons across the Syrian border. Russia's concerted airstrikes have exposed the Turkish connection to the Western-backed illegal regime-change operation in Syria, and no doubt that was a factor in why Turkish fighter jets shot down a Russian warplane on November 24. ..."

"... The deterioration of legal standards, sovereignty and explosion of conflicts and terrorism in many parts of the world can be directly attributed to the machinations of the United States and its European partners. "Do you see now what you have done?" asked Putin before the UN. ..."

Dec 28, 2015 | RT Op-Edge

... ... ...

Russia's military intervention in the Syrian conflict in support of its long-time ally beginning on September 30 has transformed the dynamic. Russia's intervention, along with that of Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah resistance movement, is the only lawful foreign contingency in the five-year-old war, because it has been requested and approved by the Syrian government.

All other foreign interventions in Syria from the United States and EU members, Britain, France and Germany, are in violation of international law. Russia's intense aerial bombardment against all illegally armed militants, including the IS and Al Nusra Front, is not encumbered with the false dichotomy articulated by the US-led military coalition, which disingenuously divides militants into extremists and moderates. In three months of Russian aerial operations, the losses suffered by anti-government militants in Syria have been much greater than during 16 months of bombing by the US-led coalition. That is because Russia is working in close liaison with the Syrian Arab Army, which is now making sweeping ground advances. Also, the US and its allies are accused of not being fully committed to combating terrorist groups in Syria, because these militants are at the same time being used by Washington and its partners as proxy forces to illegally achieve regime change in Syria.

The US, Britain and France have reportedly supplied weapons to so-called "moderate rebels" only for these weapons and indeed fighters to end up with the known extremist brigades of IS and Al Nusra. Saudi Arabia and Qatar have also funded Islamist networks, such as Jaish al Fatah and Ahrar al Shams, which are known to be involved with IS and Al Nusra.

Oil smugglers are us

Russia's dramatic intervention in Syria has exposed what can only be described as a charade in which the US, European powers and their regional allies have been involved in trying to destroy a sovereign country through covertly supporting an array of illegally armed mercenary networks.

A central part of the charade is how NATO member and EU aspirant Turkey has been involved in smuggling oil and weapons across the Syrian border. Russia's concerted airstrikes have exposed the Turkish connection to the Western-backed illegal regime-change operation in Syria, and no doubt that was a factor in why Turkish fighter jets shot down a Russian warplane on November 24.

... ... ...

Putin made a seminal speech at the UN General Assembly in September when he clearly called out rogue powers who have trashed international law with illegal military, political and economic interventions overseas. The deterioration of legal standards, sovereignty and explosion of conflicts and terrorism in many parts of the world can be directly attributed to the machinations of the United States and its European partners. "Do you see now what you have done?" asked Putin before the UN.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

Finian Cunningham (born 1963) has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. Originally from Belfast, Northern Ireland, he is a Master's graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in newspaper journalism. For over 20 years he worked as an editor and writer in major news media organizations, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent. Now a freelance journalist based in East Africa, his columns appear on RT, Sputnik, Strategic Culture Foundation and Press TV.

READ MORE:

• This isn't about ISIS, just good old fashioned regime change
• A 'warning shot'- The crazy logic of UK's Hammond and what lies behind it

[Dec 28, 2015] Wars Past and Wars to Come

Notable quotes:

"... With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, elements within the U.S. ruling class came to believe that their country was militarily invincible. ..."

"... A long-heralded Revolution in Military Affairs was taking place, enabling the United States to reshape the world. New smart technologies would disperse the "fog of war," making it possible for the United States to kill its enemies without their being able to strike back, and the "Vietnam syndrome" could be overcome once and for all.… Even so, at this point in time, the U.S. government proceeded with considerable caution. ..."

"... Ten years later such caution had been replaced by an overweening self-confidence, by a belief that the United States could completely reshape the Middle East, starting with Iraq, and then moving on to Syria and Iran. And, moreover, this could all be achieved with a comparatively small invading and occupying army. ..."

monthlyreview.org

With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, elements within the U.S. ruling class came to believe that their country was militarily invincible. Indeed, they believed this newfound military superiority over any potential rival was something new in human history. So great was its technological advantage, the United States could destroy its enemies with complete impunity.

A long-heralded Revolution in Military Affairs was taking place, enabling the United States to reshape the world. New smart technologies would disperse the "fog of war," making it possible for the United States to kill its enemies without their being able to strike back, and the "Vietnam syndrome" could be overcome once and for all.… Even so, at this point in time, the U.S. government proceeded with considerable caution.

The then-secretary of defense, Dick Cheney no less, made clear that the United States did not invade and occupy Iraq at this time because of the danger of finding itself in a "quagmire" where it would be taking casualties while the Kurds, the Shia, and the Sunnis fought it out. The administration decided not to involve itself in "that civil war."

Such a commitment would have had to involve the use of "overwhelming force" for an extended period if it was to have any chance of success. This was in 1991.

Ten years later such caution had been replaced by an overweening self-confidence, by a belief that the United States could completely reshape the Middle East, starting with Iraq, and then moving on to Syria and Iran. And, moreover, this could all be achieved with a comparatively small invading and occupying army.

[Dec 24, 2015] Israeli-made air-to-air missile may have downed MH17

Notable quotes:

"... "fragments of the pilots' cockpit have suffered specific damages in the form of localized puncture holes and surface dents typical for hypervelocity impacts with compact and hard objects," ..."

"... "intricate shape" ..."

"... "most probably incorrect." ..."

Dec 24, 2015 | RT News

A report on Malaysian Airlines MH17 air disaster in Ukraine last year by a group of old-hand aviation security experts maintains that the Boeing might have been downed by an Israeli Python air-to-air missile.

Trends: Malaysia MH17 plane crash, Ukraine turmoil

The report was leaked via the private LiveJournal account of Albert Naryshkin (aka albert_lex) late on Tuesday and has already been widely discussed by social media communities in Russia.

The authors of the investigative report have calculated the possible detonation initiation point of the missile that hit the passenger aircraft and approximate number and weight of strike elements, which in turn designated the type and presumed manufacturer of the weapon.

©http://albert-lex.livejournal.com

Malaysian Airline Boeing 777-200 performing flight MH17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur on July 17, 2014, crashed on the territory of Ukraine near the village of Grabovo, killing all 283 passengers and 15 crewmembers aboard.

The aircraft disintegrated in the air and the debris of MH17 were scattered across an area of about 50 sq. km.

The external view of MH17 hull pieces indicates that "fragments of the pilots' cockpit have suffered specific damages in the form of localized puncture holes and surface dents typical for hypervelocity impacts with compact and hard objects," the report says, stressing that similar damage could be found on the inner side of the cockpit.

The report specifically points out that chips of the body coat around the holes in the fragment are typical of wave effects created by hypervelocity impacts.

©http://albert-lex.livejournal.com

Some damage, though larger and less clustered, could be found near the air-scoop of the left-wing engine of the aircraft.

The nature of the damage allows for the identification of the source as a high-explosive fragmentation warhead from a modern anti-aircraft weapon, claims the report.

Apart from the large puncture holes, the debris of the nose and the cockpit of the aircraft bear a large number of scattered micro-craters resulting from the impact of high-velocity dust and tiny debris, such as an unburnt blasting agent and elements of the ordnance that accompany a shock wave from a blast that occurred very close to the target. In the case of MH17, the pilots' cockpit.

The report says that as a rule, the initial speed of the striking elements of modern anti-aircraft weapons vary between 1,500 and 2,500 meters per second.

©http://albert-lex.livejournal.com

Altogether, the experts considered photos of five fragments of the cockpit and left port of the flight MH17, on which they counted some 230 "battle-damage" holes and punctures.

All this considered, the experts claim that the exact zone of the blast impact could be established with a fair degree of accuracy.

The warhead of the missile exploded very close to the cockpit, to its left side at a distance of 0.8-1.6 meters from the cockpit windows, exactly opposite the sliding window of the aircraft commander.

©http://albert-lex.livejournal.com

The dimensions and character of the puncture holes left by the strike elements allegedly allow their size and form factor to be established, which in its turn makes it possible to identify the type of weapon used in a particular case.

The cross dimension of absolute majority, 86 percent, of the 186 hull holes studied by experts measure between 6 and 13mm, with explicit maximum of them having cross dimension of 8mm.

©http://albert-lex.livejournal.com

This fact brought the expert group to a conclusion about the size of the strike elements of the warhead. If the warhead had been armed with two types of strike elements, the majority of the holes would have been of two types, the reports notes.

The strike element has been established of being a rectangular block measured 8mm x 8mm x 6mm, with margin of error of 0.5 mm, a high probability it was made of steel and an estimated weight of 3 grams each. The total number of such elements should have varied between 2,000 and 4,000.

The bulk of the strike elements are estimated between 4.88 – 14.8 kilograms.

@ http://albert-lex.livejournal.com

The report confutes the argument of Russia's Almaz-Antey military concern that early claimed that "intricate shape" double-t steel fragments, similar to those used in warheads of surface-to-air Buk missile systems, have been extracted from the debris of MH17 flight.

Howwever, the double-t strike elements of a Buk missile weigh 8.1 grams, more than twice as much as a single damage fragment among those that pierced MH17's hull. Thus, according to the report, the hypothesis about a Buk missile system being involved in the crash is "most probably incorrect."

With 95 percent probability, the group of experts estimates the weight of the missile's warhead (explosives plus strike elements) that shot down MH17 of being between 10 and 40kg.

©http://albert-lex.livejournal.com

This led the experts to determine the exact type of the weapon used against Malaysian Airlines flight MH17.

The report says that that Soviet- and Russian-made surface-to-air missile systems use more powerful warheads than the established maximum 40kg, as is the case with MH17.

Moreover, Soviet- and Russian-made air-to-air missiles which have a similar 10-40kg warhead capability use other types of strike elements within one warhead - obviously not the case with MH17.

A whole range of existing foreign air-to-air missiles have corresponding warhead characteristics, yet lack of physical elements of the missile used against MH17 prevented experts from establishing the exact type of the weapon used.

Still, the circumstances and conditions of the assault allowed experts to make certain assumptions.

©http://albert-lex.livejournal.com

The missile that attacked MH17 had a passive radar homing head, which explains why the missile exploded so close to the cockpit. Under the radar-transparent nosecone of a Boeing 777-200 there is a surveillance radar station operable during the flight, so most likely the missile homed on to this radar as the target.

Apart from a radar homing head, the missile could also be equipped with an advanced, matrix type, imaging IR seeker, which enables the missile to determine the size and the type of the target and choose for attack its most vital element. For a huge Boeing aircraft, that's the cockpit.

A simulation of the missile attack has proved that missiles with that type of guidance choose to attack a big passenger plane from the front hemisphere.

There are four air-to-air missiles that fit the description established by the experts, namely: French Magis-2, Israeli Shafrir, American AIM-9 and Israeli Python – all short-range.

The first three have been struck off the list for various reasons, including type of warhead or guidance system specifications. The Python deserved a closer look.

The Python is equipped with a matrix-imaging IR seeker. It enables a relatively moderate power warhead to effectively engage big aircrafts. The warhead is armed with a set of ready strike elements. Even more importantly, some open military sources suggest that in early 2000s a number of Sukhoi Su-25 assault fighter jets we refurbished to use fourth and fifth generation Python missiles, which look very similar to the Su-25's standard air-to-air R-60 missile.

@ http://albert-lex.livejournal.com

The unofficial report leaked in LiveJournal has become yet another one among many other unofficial versions presented over the year that has passed since the catastrophe occurred on July 17, 2014.

The Dutch Safety Board that has been heading an international investigation into the cause of the crash is due to release its official report in October.

[Dec 24, 2015] Is The Russian-Turkish Standoff An Opportunity For The West

Notable quotes:

"... apparently, two USAF F-15C Eagle air superiority fighters (which had been deployed to Incirlik Air Force Base, Turkey, in November 2015) were in the air as back-up to the Türk Hava Kuvvetleri (Turkish Air Force: THK) F-16s, one of which shot down the Su-24. ..."

"... At best, Russia may now move to cover its tactical operations in northern Syria more effectively by offering its own deterrence of top cover by advanced fighters while the ground attack aircraft, such as the Su-24s, do their job. It is also clear that any further Turkish incursions into Syrian airspace were now at-risk, but the Turks already knew that. ..."

Dec 14, 2015 | OilPrice.com

It was, in this latest incident, Turkey, working with the U.S. Government of President Barack Obama, which planned and executed the November 24, 2015, interception of the Russian Air Force Su-24. The event was not a spontaneous occurrence, and, apparently, two USAF F-15C Eagle air superiority fighters (which had been deployed to Incirlik Air Force Base, Turkey, in November 2015) were in the air as back-up to the Türk Hava Kuvvetleri (Turkish Air Force: THK) F-16s, one of which shot down the Su-24. USAF sources subsequently said that the U.S. was taken by surprise when the THK shot down the Sukhoi, but that hardly squares with the historical Turkish practice of coordinating such actions with Washington. Moreover, the Turkish narrative that it "warned" the Russian aircraft several times over a period of five minutes before the THK F-16 shot it down also does not square with reality.

And in this particular ground attack operation, the two Su-24s - including the one which was destroyed - were engaged on missions which did not require them to enter Turkish airspace, even though an acci-dental entry into it was conceivable. Their targets were in the area of northern Syria: pro-Ankara Turkmen militia engaged in supporting the massive cross-border operations of ISIS (asad- Dawlah al-Islamiyah fi al-'Iraq wash-Sham, or Islamic State) moving oil, fighters, and weapons across the Syria-Turkish border.

Dave Majumdar, Defense Editor at the U.S. blogsite, The National Interest, on December 7, 2015, noted: "The United States and Turkey are working on an agreement that would allow the US Air Force F-15Cs to defend Turkish airspace. However, the precise rules of engagement and procedures have yet to be ironed out." It is possible that Turkey wanted to illustrate to the US that its airspace was, in fact, threatened. But what has been clear is that no credible Russian military threat to Turkey existed.

At best, Russia may now move to cover its tactical operations in northern Syria more effectively by offering its own deterrence of top cover by advanced fighters while the ground attack aircraft, such as the Su-24s, do their job. It is also clear that any further Turkish incursions into Syrian airspace were now at-risk, but the Turks already knew that.

Recently-retired U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lt.-Gen. Michael Flynn publicly said in Moscow on December 10, 2015, that there was no possibility that the Turkish shootdown was undertaken without the express permission and direction of "the highest authority" in Turkey.

Indeed, Turkey has traditionally played the role of aggressor in terms of airspace violation. Not only did the THK lose an RF-4E Phantom II reconnaissance aircraft well into Syrian airspace on June 22, 2012, as a result of surface-to-air missile fire, it continues to consistently invade the airspace of fellow NATO member and neighbor Greece in a manner far more hostile than the penetration of Turkish airspace it alleged Russia undertook (for 17 seconds). THK F-16s entered Greek airspace some 2,200 times in 2014 alone. Moreover, Turkey consistently has violated Cypriot air-, sea, and land-space since its 1974 invasion and occupation of the northern 37 percent of Cyprus.1

So Turkey is hardly the victim. [Indeed, by deliberately starting the "civil war" to remove Pres. Bashar al-Assad from power in Syria, Turkey only incurred a "refugee problem" as a result of its own actions, and has subsequently sought to push those refugees onward into Europe as quickly as possible, seeking political rewards from Europe as the only power capable of stopping the refugee flows.]

In any event, Pres. Erdogan, three years ago said that "a short- term border violation can never be a pre-text for an attack". But that, of course, was when a THK aircraft was shot down by Syria when the THK F-4E deliberately and for some time penetrated Syrian airspace on a mission against Syria.

... .... ....

Turkey, too, will not remain inactive. It will resume its support for anti-Russian terrorism, including support for jihadist movements in the Caucasus. These have included such groups as Kvadrat (Quadrant), a Bos-nia-based Wahhabist unit, which had "laundered" its operations through Turkish-occupied Northern Cy-prus, thence into Turkey and on into the Russian Caucasus.4 But the reactivation of Turkish-backed terror-ism in the Russian Caucasus will be far wider than just Kvadrat: Turkey works extensively, even now, with Chechen and other Caucasus groups inside ISIS and in the jihadi operations in Syria.

Significantly, by early December 2015, President Erdogan assumed that the crisis had passed sufficiently for Turkey to expand its activities in the area. There was no indication that Turkey and ISIS had diminished their extensive and integrated operations in terms of oil transactions, the supply of weapons to ISIS via Turkey, and the use of Turkey as a medical support arena for ISIS wounded. But Turkey went further and deployed Turkish Army troops into northern Iraq near the ISIS-held city of Mosul in early December 2015. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi led calls for Turkish troops to be withdrawn immediately; they had not been withdrawn by the time this report went to press.

... ... ...

The path, however, is open for a great Russian cooperation with the Kurdish forces, as well as with other regional allies which are concerned about Turkey's strategic adventurism. The Kurds, particularly those led by the majority Kurdish force (under the PKK: Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan, the Kurdish Workers' Par-ty), are now well underway in responding to Ankara. The civil war is underway inside Turkey, and it re-mains literally out-of-bounds to the international media. What is significant is that the Kurds have thus far not agreed to cooperate with Russia, but are awaiting a nod from their principal ally, Israel, before trust-ing Russia.

Thus Israel's position becomes critical in this debate.

Much of the Israeli leadership still hopes that a rapprochement might be achievable with Turkey, but that hope is fading. On the other hand, Israeli planners have to consider whether a broken Turkey - perhaps replaced by a patchwork of states, and with no non-Arab player other than Iran to monitor the region - is worse than a troublesome Turkey. There is also the question of whether unqualified Israeli support for the Kurdish "big push" against Turkey would then jeopardize Israeli strategic relations with Saudi Arabia, which is apparently undecided on whether, or how much, it favors a continuation of the Turkish state.

Without Turkey, according to the Saudi rationale, who would be the counterweight to Iran?

Israel is also not immune to this argument, although for Israel the prospect exists for an eventual reunion with Tehran, after the clerical leadership goes, or modifies.

So Russia is left with three potential regional allies - apart from Syria, Iraq, and Iran - against Ankara: Greece, Egypt, and Jordan. And Cyprus and Armenia to the limited extent that they can assist.

... ... ...

Articles 10 to 18 are the articles which allow for various states, including Russia, to transit military ships through the straits. In short, if Turkey invoked either Article 20 or Article 21, Russia would be legally blocked from moving any naval vessel through the Straits.

Moscow has clearly long gamed out this scenario, which accounts for President Putin's commitment to a measured response to Ankara. Thus it must be a proxy response, for the most part, as well as an economic one. But while it demonstrates the delicacy needed by Moscow, it also demonstrates the reality that Russia cannot continue to be strategically constrained by an increasingly hostile and ambitious Turkey.

So where Turkey is vulnerable is in its economy.

The effects of Russian economic embargoes against Turkey are far more significant than would seem to be the case because the Turkish economy is more vulnerable than it has been portrayed. It is far more leveraged with borrowings than at any time in the recent past. It has a discreet outflow of domestic capital and is heavily reliant on discreet financial injections, probably coming from Qatar, and possible Saudi Arabia. But Saudi Arabia's ability to prop up Turkey is becoming limited.

...while Turkey may not be regarded as an entirely stable partner for the PRC in the region, Beijing would be wary of acting precipitously against it.

...Iran - like Russia - is constrained to act cautiously and indirectly against Turkey. Moreover, Iran cannot risk that its own Kurdish population could join with Syrian, Iraqi, and Turkish Kurds to form a new Kurdish state.

...And in the short-term, this all has hardened Ankara's position on remaining in control of the northern 37 percent of Cyprus, which it has occupied militarily since 1974.

...There is no doubt that Pres. Erdogan believes that continued brinkmanship will be possible, although he is not perhaps aware that he is losing the information war, or the psychological war.

Amvet on December 15 2015 said:

Thank you Mr. Copley for a well researched, honest, and very interesting article. Any chance of getting this published in any US mainstream
newspaper or magazine ?? .

Jim on December 15 2015 said:

...Nice information actually, most mainstream media doesn't even come close. Thanks. definitely a deliberate and pre-approved escalation of the conflict, pointing fingers back to Washington, D.C.

Chris on December 15 2015 said:

A great article that brings together much of what has been reported and provides a coherent framework for understanding it. This piece should be in a general interest publication such as the NY Times so that more Americans could understand what is really going on in the Middle East.

[Dec 23, 2015] The antipathy the Russian kreakly bear toward Matthew Lee

Notable quotes:

"... the antipathy the Russian kreakly ..."

"... the Russian intelligentsia ..."

marknesop.wordpress.com

Moscow Exile, December 20, 2015 at 3:09 am

Russian "oppositionist" tweets – don't you just love 'em?

Colonel Matt Lee receiving instructions from his superiors

No doubt the person who posted the above tweet thinks Psaki, Harf, Trudeau, Rear-Admiral Kirby et al. have all been unfairly tested by this Russian FSB colonel Matt Lee and he should not have been allowed to take part in the Dept. of State press briefings because he is an agent of the Dark Lord, whilst the above mentioned Dept. of State spokespersons are all on the side of righteousness.

marknesop , December 20, 2015 at 11:38 am

I do love them, actually. For anyone who is not stupid, the antipathy the Russian kreakly bear toward Matthew Lee and anyone like him who questions the pat and Manichean State Department narrative bespeaks an admiration for the way the United States government operates. Quite apart for an unhealthy devotion to 'Murkan nationalism and a clear belief that when America seizes something, it should be grateful because it is a compliment if America wants it, it is a preview of how they would govern if they had power. Russia's 'intellectuals' are great admirers of the disinformation and manipulation of the public consciousness with which the State Department gets about its daily work.

It is noteworthy that Matt Lee has never at any time expressed any gratuitous admiration for Russia or Putin or the way Russia conducts global affairs. He merely questions the State Department when its lies get too big or when it purports something as incontestable fact which it has gleaned from social media and Syrian activists. But the Russian intelligentsia view him as an impediment to a unipolar world ruled by America The Great And Good.

[Dec 23, 2015] How America Lost the Rest of the World

Notable quotes:

"... I'm still trying to think through the implications but they are certainly disquieting. Without trying to hard I'd summarize that "the masks are coming off." ..."

"... The question then is, what happens after "the masks come off?" ..."

"... Short-sighted western pundits will still be penning deadline copy headlined "How Putin lost Ukraine" while those with real vision will be putting the finishing touches on "How America Lost the Rest of the World" ..."

marknesop.wordpress.com

Cortes, December 18, 2015 at 3:38 am

Michael Hudson on IMF manoeuvres

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/12/18/the-imf-changes-its-rules-to-isolate-china-and-russia/

Tim Owen, December 18, 2015 at 6:24 am

Hard to overstate the importance of this article. Thanks for spotting it.

There's a lot here but this passage is kind of free-standing in its value by simply condensing how the IMF has contorted itself:

"The IMF thus is breaking four rules:

1. Not lending to a country that has no visible means to pay back the loan breaks the "No More Argentinas" rule adopted after the IMF's disastrous 2001 loan.
2. Not lending to countries that refuse in good faith to negotiate with their official creditors goes against the IMF's role as the major tool of the global creditors' cartel.
3. And the IMF is now lending to a borrower at war, indeed one that is destroying its export capacity and hence its balance-of-payments ability to pay back the loan.
4. Finally, the IMF is lending to a country that has little likelihood of refuse carrying out the IMF's notorious austerity "conditionalities" on its population – without putting down democratic opposition in a totalitarian manner. Instead of being treated as an outcast from the international financial system, Ukraine is being welcomed and financed."

I'm still trying to think through the implications but they are certainly disquieting. Without trying to hard I'd summarize that "the masks are coming off."

The question then is, what happens after "the masks come off?"

… war.

(Sometimes it's best just to blurt out what's worrying you.)

marknesop, December 18, 2015 at 10:36 am

Short-sighted western pundits will still be penning deadline copy headlined "How Putin lost Ukraine" while those with real vision will be putting the finishing touches on "How America Lost the Rest of the World".

[Dec 23, 2015] Sensational government session in a European country. A historic precedent

You probably need to read the whole transcribed dialog to understand that the current situation in Ukrainian government. Here are just small except.

southfront.org

AVAKOV: You said that the cabinet of ministers itself was heading the corruption

SAAKASHVILI: …what do you mean I'm softer? Yes, your Martinenko is a criminal

... ... ...

00:46 AVAKOV: Then get the damn out of here if you don't give a damn

00:48 Poroshenko: Arsen Borisovich, I'm…

00:50 SAAKASHVILI: I'm calling you to politeness

00:53 AVAKOV: Shut up

... ... ...

1:13 AVAKOV: Shut up, you corrupt governor

... ... ....

1:39 AVAKOV: When we are speaking about the whole list of things that have been said

1:42 AVAKOV: Of course privatization

1:44 AVAKOV: Of course a total privatization

1:46 AVAKOV: including OPZ [Odessa Port Plant]

... ... ...

2:32 SAAKASHVILI: And I'm not going… not going to tolerate some corrupt minister

2:36 SAAKASHVILI: who, the entire country knows he's a thief

... ... ...

2:46 AVAKOV: I need to punch him or something?

2:47 POROSHENKO: I'm… I'm adjourning the meeting

2:51 AVAKOV: F4cking faggot!

2:52 POROSHENKO: Arsen… AVAKOV: Damn bastard!

2:55 SAAKASHVILI: Thief!

2:57 AVAKOV: Yes, a thief [irony]

2:58 SAAKASHVILI: So, you will be in a jail, or just because you are…

3:01 AVAKOV: Piss off!

3:02 SAAKASHVILI: We are going to restore the country and you'll be in a jail

... ... ...

OneFrame

This is incredible that that the functioning of the state cabinet behaves like this. Incredible the results the US delivers to the world. Very sad. I feel for the people of Ukraine and their suffering. This would not be happening if the coup had not happened. Sakashvilli is a wanted man in his own country and should not be in Ukraine. He should have been sent back to Georgia to face the charges. Unbelievable.

aprescoup

Afghanistan a basket case; Iraq a basket case; Libya a basket full of jihadi terrorists; Syria, if not for the Russian aid, would be ISIS central and a basket case, and then this example of American values playing out in the basket case of Ukraine...

WTF?!

[Dec 23, 2015] NATO in damage control mode.

marknesop.wordpress.com

et Al, December 19, 2015 at 3:51 am

Neuters: NATO agrees Turkey air defence package, seeks 'predictability'
http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-mideast-crisis-turkey-nato-exclusive-idUKKBN0U123D20151218?

NATO allies agreed on Friday to send aircraft and ships to Turkey to strengthen Ankara's air defences on its border with Syria, the alliance's chief said.

Diplomats said the package is partly designed to avoid more shoot-downs of Russian planes…

…"We have agreed on a package of assurance measures for Turkey in view of the volatile situation in the region," Stoltenberg said, although he avoided any reference to Russia's military involvement in Syria and its air incursions…..

…Due to be assembled in the coming weeks, the package will include NATO's AWACS surveillance planes and what Stoltenberg described as "enhanced air policing, and increased naval presence including maritime patrol aircraft."

The ships will be provided by Germany and Denmark, which are exercising in the eastern Mediterranean.

AWACS monitor airspace within a radius of more than 400 km (250 miles) and exchange information via digital data links, with ground-based, sea-based and airborne commanders.

Asked if this was about managing Turkey's airspace with more caution than Ankara has shown in the past, Stoltenberg said: "This will give us a better situational awareness … more transparency, more predictability and that will contribute to stabilising the situation in the region and also calm tensions," Stoltenberg said.

AWKWARD POSITION

Spain has also agreed to extend its Patriot surface-to-air missiles along Turkey's border to shoot down any missiles from Syria's conflict fired into Turkish territory. Germany and the United States recently removed their batteries from the area….
####

NATO yet again in damage control mode. This is all about NATO's credibility. On the one hand it could be seen as a golden cage, that by having more NATO assets there that it would stop Turkey from future rash decisions, but on the other hand Erd & Dav would see it as NATO having their back whatever they do and will probably only encourage them further, much like the EU capitulating to Ankara over refugees. The government behaves badly, it gets presents from the West.

It smacks of 'do something', however stupid to show that NATO is relevant.

This is also a bad strategic situation and will without doubt be seen as upping the Ante against Russia, however much Stollenberg & the Pork Pie News Networks try to sell this as 'defensive' which they may well believe.

And what do we know from history about big countries pushing their militaries up against each other? A small spark sets of a conflagration.

marknesop , December 19, 2015 at 6:51 am

Why cannot Bashar al-Assad now complain stridently that NATO is "massing forces on his border" and is preparing an invasion? It worked just fine for Ukraine, and the western press was happy to report it every time Kiev mentioned it. Well, we all know why not – Assad has no ear in western media and nobody would print anything from him unless he threatened someone.

As someone else here discussed earlier, it is probable that NATO is merely taking over policing the border from the Turks because it fears another escalation by loose-cannon Erdogan or his nutty PM. NATO aircraft would have strict rules of engagement and would stay well away from the border themselves, knowing that if a Turkish aircraft penetrated Syrian airspace now it would be smacked out of the sky moments later. The S-400 provides local Russian forces with a capability they did not previously have in Syria, and Russia is likely keen for an opportunity to punish the Turks, although they would have to be in the wrong. NATO aircraft in this case are there to provide a more professional component and with a view to preventing another incident. Still, the more aircraft are flying around, the more likely an incident becomes.

I don't know why they are bothering to send AWACS; we learned from the shootdown of MH17 that AWACS has huge holes in its coverage, as it apparently didn't see a thing. Oh, except for an SA-11 being launched by Russian-backed separatists, which makes them technically not Ukrainians.

Patient Observer, December 19, 2015 at 9:04 am

There was an article a few weeks ago linked in Yahoo describing what it would take to overcome the S-400 system. AWACS, F-18G Growlers and an array of other electronic warfare equipment (some ground based) combined with drone decoys, cruise missiles, etc. to be successful in degrading the system. Hence, the reason for AWACS is to help challenge the S-400. The F-18s are carrier-based and the other stuff can be moved into Turkey

It defies rationality to package the deployment described by NATO as a way to ensure stability and to minimize accidental engagements. The claims have the same stink as the claims that the ABM systems in Eastern Europe were intended against Iran and North Korea. Pleeeassssseee

[Dec 23, 2015] The Ukraine declaration of bankruptcy today is a double victory for Putin

marknesop.wordpress.com

Moscow Exile, December 18, 2015 at 10:49 am

See: Die Welt

The Ukraine declaration of bankruptcy today is a double victory for Putin

According to the financial market today, the Ukraine is bankrupt. The country has not settled a debt that amounts to $3 billion, thereby making possible a double victory for its greatest enemy.

Not with weapons has Vladimir Putin won this greatest of victories in the Ukraine crisis – not with tanks or soldiers or militiamen. The battlefield where this victory has been won was not the streets of Donetsk, the embattled provinces of East Ukraine: it was on the financial market. The state, ripped asunder by an almost year-long conflict, failed on Friday to settle a $3 billion dollar loan – a loan that it owes Russia, and that means bankruptcy…

and so on and so forth.

The newspaper "Die Welt" is very much to the right of the German political spectrum, but it does not attempt to hide the enormity of the situation; it pulls no punches: this is an out and out victory for Russia.

Strange how there is no comment from our Finnish Russophile, expressing his pleasure over this apparent wonderful success for Russian policies as regards the Ukraine crisis.

Then again, all this would not have happened if a year ago the Russian army had made a Blitzkrieg lunge against Kiev…

[Dec 23, 2015] Turkey won't respond to Putin's insulting comments

nation.com.pk

On Thursday, Putin escalated the rhetoric by saying that Turks had decided to "lick the Americans in a certain place" as he accused of a "creeping Islamisation of Turkey that would have Ataturk rolling in his grave".

... ... ...

...He has been shown that if you poke Turkey and NATO in the eye, bad things happen," said Bryza, who is also former deputy assistant of the US secretary of state for the South Caucasus.

"I think this [combative rhetoric] is going to fade away. It already has on the Turkish side, they have been more restrained."

He added that it was likely that the Syrian conflict and Turkey's ties with Israel will take centre stage in the weeks ahead.

Israel and Turkey reached a preliminary agreement to normalise relations, including the return of one another's ambassadors to both countries, an Israeli official said on Thursday.

The deal came five years after relations reached a low point for the two countries over a deadly Israeli raid on a ship carrying Turkish activists attempting to break Israel's blockade on Gaza.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Friday that negotiations with Israel are "ongoing at the expert level", while in New York attending international and UN talks on Syria.

harry

Putin does not have to answer his parliament. He will show his teeth when the situation demands it. Turkey cannot afford to be on the wrong side of Putin.

[Dec 23, 2015] Russia Khodorkovsky: Court orders exiled tycoon's arrest

BBC News

Mr Khodorkovsky has been living in exile in Europe since he was pardoned by President Vladimir Putin in 2013 after 10 years in jail for fraud. He told the BBC he was considering applying for political asylum in Britain as one of several options.

... ... ....

Mr Khodorkovsky is accused of ordering several of his employees to kill both the mayor and a businessman, who survived.

Investigators allege Vladimir Petukhov, the mayor of Nefteyugansk, was killed on 26 June 1998 for demanding Mr Khodorkovsky's oil firm, Yukos, pay taxes that the company had been avoiding.

Local businessman Yevgeny Rybin was allegedly targeted because his activities "clashed with Yukos's interests", Russia's powerful Investigative Committee (SK) said in a statement (in Russian) as it announced his arrest in absentia.

Mr Rybin survived a gun attack in November 1998 and a second attack on his car in March 1999, when another man in the vehicle was killed and several people were injured.

[Dec 23, 2015] The antipathy the Russian kreakly bear toward Matthew Lee

Notable quotes:

"... the antipathy the Russian kreakly ..."

"... the Russian intelligentsia ..."

marknesop.wordpress.com

Moscow Exile, December 20, 2015 at 3:09 am

Russian "oppositionist" tweets – don't you just love 'em?

Colonel Matt Lee receiving instructions from his superiors

No doubt the person who posted the above tweet thinks Psaki, Harf, Trudeau, Rear-Admiral Kirby et al. have all been unfairly tested by this Russian FSB colonel Matt Lee and he should not have been allowed to take part in the Dept. of State press briefings because he is an agent of the Dark Lord, whilst the above mentioned Dept. of State spokespersons are all on the side of righteousness.

marknesop , December 20, 2015 at 11:38 am

I do love them, actually. For anyone who is not stupid, the antipathy the Russian kreakly bear toward Matthew Lee and anyone like him who questions the pat and Manichean State Department narrative bespeaks an admiration for the way the United States government operates. Quite apart for an unhealthy devotion to 'Murkan nationalism and a clear belief that when America seizes something, it should be grateful because it is a compliment if America wants it, it is a preview of how they would govern if they had power. Russia's 'intellectuals' are great admirers of the disinformation and manipulation of the public consciousness with which the State Department gets about its daily work.

It is noteworthy that Matt Lee has never at any time expressed any gratuitous admiration for Russia or Putin or the way Russia conducts global affairs. He merely questions the State Department when its lies get too big or when it purports something as incontestable fact which it has gleaned from social media and Syrian activists. But the Russian intelligentsia view him as an impediment to a unipolar world ruled by America The Great And Good.

[Dec 22, 2015] Destruction of the financial system of Ukraine is complete

Essentially it got "below junk" rating...

Notable quotes:

"... How could Ukraine's government deficit only be 4.1% when its currency has crashed, it has lost most of its sources of income and it has just defaulted on its debt? What the fuck are they talking about? ..."

"... First, there is no way on God's green earth that there is a negative difference of only 4.1% between Ukraine's annual revenues and its annual expenditures, especially since it has almost no revenues except from taxation. ..."

marknesop.wordpress.com

marknesop, December 19, 2015 at 6:43 pm

According to Madame Jaresko, their decision not to pay the $3 Billion bond to Russia has set Ukraine free, free as a bird, and allowed it to now be in full compliance with the financing requirements of the IMF program.

Start shovelin' in the money, IMF, because Ukraine has the magic formula – just refuse to pay what you owe, call it a 'temporary suspension of payments' instead of 'a default', and reap the reward for your display of responsibility.

I foresee the mileage Russia is going to get out of this will far exceed the value of the $3 Billion.

marknesop, December 19, 2015 at 8:47 pm

How could Ukraine's government deficit only be 4.1% when its currency has crashed, it has lost most of its sources of income and it has just defaulted on its debt? What the fuck are they talking about?

"The proposed budget would work to reduce the government's deficit from 4.1% to 3.7%, with measures including an increase in revenue by widening the tax base."

First, there is no way on God's green earth that there is a negative difference of only 4.1% between Ukraine's annual revenues and its annual expenditures, especially since it has almost no revenues except from taxation.

And now the IMF expects to realize more revenue from widening the tax base – yes, I can imagine what a popular initiative that is. Now you know how Yushchenko felt, Yatsie, when the IMF denied him a second big loan because he refused to eliminate the gas subsidies to residents.

Now the IMF has finally realized that triumph through a different leader, and it wants to see even more tax revenue. You are about to be as popular as a turd in the punch bowl; have fun with that.

kirill, December 20, 2015 at 12:58 pm

I would not trust any GDP numbers from the Kiev regime either. They lost 25% of the economy in the Donbas alone not counting Crimea. This has knock on effects to the rest of Banderastan. Yet they are yapping about some 12% contraction in 2015 after a 7% contraction in 2014. I see no clear indication that they are counting the GDP only for regime controlled Banderastan.

As for the budget, according to regime officials, Banderastan lost 30% of its hard currency revenues with the loss of the Donbass. I estimate the tax loss to Kiev to be about 30% as well.

The Donbass was the industrialized part of the country while western Banderastan is primarily agrarian. So talk about 4% shortfalls in revenue is utter rubbish. In most countries the money making parts of the economy subsidize the rest and sure as hell it was not western Banderastan that was subsidizing the Donbass. That was just virulent blood libel such as the claim that Russians settled eastern Ukraine only after the Holodomor.

marknesop, December 20, 2015 at 1:13 pm

Europe deserves Ukraine. Let them have it, the quicker the better. It's fine when Yats is selling that stinking mess to his simple-minded constituents, but European policymakers will see through it right away. Unfortunately, Brussels knows better than to bring Ukraine any closer into the fold, because if they get a visa-free regime, the place will empty out in a week as Ukrainians flee throughout Europe (which is already, everyone must know, full of refugees) looking for jobs.

[Dec 22, 2015] Seymour M. Hersh · Military to Military · LRB 7 January 2016

lrb.co.uk

Barack Obama's repeated insistence that Bashar al-Assad must leave office – and that there are 'moderate' rebel groups in Syria capable of defeating him – has in recent years provoked quiet dissent, and even overt opposition, among some of the most senior officers on the Pentagon's Joint Staff. Their criticism has focused on what they see as the administration's fixation on Assad's primary ally, Vladimir Putin. In their view, Obama is captive to Cold War thinking about Russia and China, and hasn't adjusted his stance on Syria to the fact both countries share Washington's anxiety about the spread of terrorism in and beyond Syria; like Washington, they believe that Islamic State must be stopped.

The military's resistance dates back to the summer of 2013, when a highly classified assessment, put together by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, then led by General Martin Dempsey, forecast that the fall of the Assad regime would lead to chaos and, potentially, to Syria's takeover by jihadi extremists, much as was then happening in Libya. A former senior adviser to the Joint Chiefs told me that the document was an 'all-source' appraisal, drawing on information from signals, satellite and human intelligence, and took a dim view of the Obama administration's insistence on continuing to finance and arm the so-called moderate rebel groups. By then, the CIA had been conspiring for more than a year with allies in the UK, Saudi Arabia and Qatar to ship guns and goods – to be used for the overthrow of Assad – from Libya, via Turkey, into Syria. The new intelligence estimate singled out Turkey as a major impediment to Obama's Syria policy. The document showed, the adviser said, 'that what was started as a covert US programme to arm and support the moderate rebels fighting Assad had been co-opted by Turkey, and had morphed into an across-the-board technical, arms and logistical programme for all of the opposition, including Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic State. The so-called moderates had evaporated and the Free Syrian Army was a rump group stationed at an airbase in Turkey.' The assessment was bleak: there was no viable 'moderate' opposition to Assad, and the US was arming extremists.

Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, director of the DIA between 2012 and 2014, confirmed that his agency had sent a constant stream of classified warnings to the civilian leadership about the dire consequences of toppling Assad. The jihadists, he said, were in control of the opposition. Turkey wasn't doing enough to stop the smuggling of foreign fighters and weapons across the border. 'If the American public saw the intelligence we were producing daily, at the most sensitive level, they would go ballistic,' Flynn told me. 'We understood Isis's long-term strategy and its campaign plans, and we also discussed the fact that Turkey was looking the other way when it came to the growth of the Islamic State inside Syria.' The DIA's reporting, he said, 'got enormous pushback' from the Obama administration. 'I felt that they did not want to hear the truth.'

'Our policy of arming the opposition to Assad was unsuccessful and actually having a negative impact,' the former JCS adviser said. 'The Joint Chiefs believed that Assad should not be replaced by fundamentalists. The administration's policy was contradictory. They wanted Assad to go but the opposition was dominated by extremists. So who was going to replace him? To say Assad's got to go is fine, but if you follow that through – therefore anyone is better. It's the "anybody else is better" issue that the JCS had with Obama's policy.' The Joint Chiefs felt that a direct challenge to Obama's policy would have 'had a zero chance of success'. So in the autumn of 2013 they decided to take steps against the extremists without going through political channels, by providing US intelligence to the militaries of other nations, on the understanding that it would be passed on to the Syrian army and used against the common enemy, Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic State.

[Dec 22, 2015] Americas Double Standard on Trade

Dec 22, 2015 | naked capitalism

Yves here. If you followed the TransPacific Partnership negotiations closely, you may recall that Japan looked like it was going along only to placate Washington, and then it signed up only because the US allowed it to drop its "defense only" posture (remember that Japan is a military protectorate of the US) and gave major concession on agriculture (Japan's farmers are a famously powerful voting block). But even then, Japan is not firmly in the US fold. It has made clear that the US needs to get a deal done pronto.

By contrast, this post describes the US foot-dragging and gamesmanship to protect US agricultural interests from competition from developing economies.

Yesterday, U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman delivered his plenary statement to the trade ministers gathered in Nairobi for the World Trade Organization's tenth ministerial conference. His statement, which calls for the abandonment of the Doha Development Round in favor of negotiations on new issues of more strategic interest to the United States, deserve a response from a countryman.

Mr. Froman calls on trade representatives "to move beyond the cynical repetition of positions designed to produce deadlock." Yet this is precisely what Mr. Froman has come to Nairobi to repeat: U.S. positions designed to produce deadlock.

He decries the lack of progress in the last 15 years of Doha negotiations, yet he fails to acknowledge that the United States has been, and remains, the principal reason for that failure. Since 2008, when negotiations broke down, the U.S. has refused to continue negotiating on the key issues central to the development agenda – reducing agricultural subsidies, allowing developing countries special protection measures for agriculture, eliminating export subsidies and credits, and a host of other issues.

Those issues remain critical to developing countries, and U.S. intransigence in addressing those concerns is the main reason Doha has stagnated. In addition, the U.S. has introduced new issues to create further obstacles to progress, such as its objection to India's ambitious and laudable public stockholding program to provide food security to fully two-thirds of its people.

The draft declaration on agriculture in Nairobi offers no progress on resolving this issue, despite the explicit commitment in Bali and later in Geneva to find a permanent solution that can allow India and other countries to pursue such programs.

That is not the only developing country issue left unaddressed. The declaration offers nothing to developing countries to allow them to protect sensitive sectors from unfair or sudden import surges, the Special Safeguard Mechanism. It offers no meaningful cuts in U.S. export credits, which have favored U.S. exporters to Africa with some $1.25 billion in credits over the last six years.

Perhaps most notably, the declaration makes no mention of the key issue in the Doha Round: reductions in rich country agricultural subsidies and supports. With crop prices low and a new Farm Bill authorizing rising levels of support to U.S. farmers and exporters, this omission is a direct blow to those developing countries which see their farmers and export prospects harmed by underpriced U.S. exports.

Nor does Mr. Froman mention cotton subsidies, an issue which the United States and the WTO membership committed to address "expeditiously" ten long years ago in Hong Kong. The issue remains unresolved, and the draft agriculture text fails to offer anything to Africa's C-4 cotton producing countries, which have millions of poor farmers desperately in need of relief.

Instead, the U.S. Farm Bill promises further price suppression. According to a recent study, cotton subsidies could total $1.5 billion, increasing U.S. exports 29% and suppressing prices by 7%. All cotton producers in the rest of the world will suffer an estimated $3.3 billion in annual losses, with India projected to lose $800 million per year.

The C-4 countries as a group stand to lose $80 million a year in reduced income, a huge blow to struggling farmers in low-income countries.

Mr. Froman touts the ways U.S. policy has moved forward beyond Doha. He says the United States extended the African Growth and Opportunity Act by a decade, "the longest extension in that program's history." That limited extension of trade preferences to African countries last year provided a paltry $264,000 in benefits to the C-4 countries. The projected losses from U.S. cotton dumping are 300 times greater.

Mr. Froman concludes that with a new approach that abandons the development round while taking up issues of investment, procurement, and other matters of priority to the United States, "we can ensure that global trade will drive development and prosperity as strongly this century as it did in the last."

The U.S. Trade Representative seems to have conveniently forgotten that the Doha Development Round he wants to sweep aside was a direct response to the fact that global trade rules in the last century failed to drive development and prosperity, at least for many developing countries.

As a U.S. researcher long engaged with the issues of concern to developing countries, I find Mr. Froman's approach shameful. Multilateralism demands engagement and compromise, particularly in a "development round" designed to address past inequities. Mr. Froman is unfortunately offering nothing more than "the cynical repetition of positions designed to produce deadlock." The latest in a steady stream of U.S. hypocrisy.

By Timothy Wise, Director of the Research and Policy Program at the Global Development and Environment Institute, Tufts University. Originally published in The Standard (Nairobi, Kenya)

[Dec 22, 2015] Orwells Nightmare Is Here - China Just Gamified Obedience To The State (And Soon Itll Be Mandatory)

That's something new and pretty Orwelian : computerized score of "political correctness" made similar for FICO score and based on data about you in social media.

Notable quotes:

"... Among the things that will hurt a citizen's score are posting political opinions without prior permission, or posting information that the regime does not like, such as about the Tiananmen Square massacre that the government carried out to hold on to power, or the Shanghai stock market collapse. ..."

"... "Imagine the social pressure against disobedience or dissent that this will create." ..."

"... "very ambitious in scope, including scrutinizing individual behavior and what books people read. It's Amazon's consumer tracking with an Orwellian political twist." ..."

"... "Coming soon to a New World Order near you: social credit! Earn points by behaving like the government wants you to behave! Get penalized if you don't act like a doubleplusgood citizen! What could be more fun?" ..."

"... Applying for a passport? Buy my book and learn how to boost your patriotism score by 400 points in 6 months! We can even give you a spambot to do the work for you! ..."

"... At this point, any good developer can write a program that reads Twitter/Facebook/Renren/WeChat feeds, gives the posts to IBM's Watson (or some simpler algorithm), and have the program spit out a score. And this program would take at most a month to make. I know, I write similar stuff ;) ..."

"... What scares me is how the initial assumptions that go into querying data can give you radically different results at the end, and these intelligence agencies do not exactly explain what methods they are using to determine who is a 'bad guy.' ..."

"... Patriot Points. ..."

"... The article has taken some real, some proposed and some imaginary credit tracking programs and smushed them into one 'terrifying', freedom-destroying blob. In other words, it's irresponsible b.s. intended to make the Chinese government look even more diabolical and oppressive than our own. ..."

"... The underlying cultural truth, though, is that Chinese are willing to cooperate with – and trust – their government much more than we are. They've always respected and looked up to their national leaders and expected those leaders to actually lead – morally and practically. It works for them, as we see. ..."

"... Digital will end up being our worse nightmare and our undoing. It is the Perfect tool for the crazed sociopaths around us and the insane psychopaths that want to control our every breath (literally). ..."

"... The social networks are piped right into governments security complex. ..."

Dec 22, 2015 | Zero Hedge

As if further proof were needed Orwell's dystopia is now upon us, China has now gamified obedience to the State. Though that is every bit as creepily terrifying as it sounds, citizens may still choose whether or not they wish to opt-in - that is, until the program becomes compulsory in 2020. "Going under the innocuous name of 'Sesame Credit,' China has created a score for how good a citizen you are," explains Extra Credits' video about the program. "The owners of China's largest social networks have partnered with the government to create something akin to the U.S. credit score - but, instead of measuring how regularly you pay your bills, it measures how obediently you follow the party line."

Zheping Huang, a reporter for Quartz, chronicled his own experience with the social control tool in October, saying that

"in the past few weeks I began to notice a mysterious new trend. Numbers were popping up on my social media feeds as my friends and strangers on Weibo [the Chinese equivalent to Twitter] and WeChat began to share their 'Sesame Credit scores.' The score is created by Ant Financial, an Alibaba-affiliated company that also runs Alipay, China's popular third-party payment app with over 350 million users. Ant Financial claims that it evaluates one's purchasing and spending habits in order to derive a figure that shows how creditworthy someone is."

However, according to a translation of the "Planning Outline for the Construction of a Social Credit System," posted online by Oxford University's China expert, Rogier Creemers, it's nightmarishly clear the program is far more than just a credit-tracking method. As he described it,

"The government wants to build a platform that leverages things like big data, mobile internet, and cloud computing to measure and evaluate different levels of people's lives in order to create a gamified nudging for people to behave better."

While Sesame Credit's roll-out in January has been downplayed by many, the American Civil Liberties Union, among others, urges caution, saying:

"The system is run by two companies, Alibaba and Tencent, which run all the social networks in China and therefore have access to a vast amount of data about people's social ties and activities and what they say. In addition to measuring your ability to pay, as in the United States, the scores serve as a measure of political compliance.

Among the things that will hurt a citizen's score are posting political opinions without prior permission, or posting information that the regime does not like, such as about the Tiananmen Square massacre that the government carried out to hold on to power, or the Shanghai stock market collapse. It will hurt your score not only if you do these things, but if any of your friends do them."

And, in what appears likely the goal of the entire program, added, "Imagine the social pressure against disobedience or dissent that this will create."

Social pressure, of course, can be highly effective given the right circumstances. China seems to have found exactly that in the intricate linking of people's scores to their contacts, which can be seen publicly by anyone - and then upping the ante through score-based incentives and rewards. Rick Falkvinge pointed out a startling comparison:

"The KGB and the Stasi's method of preventing dissent from taking hold was to plant so-called agents provocateurs in the general population, people who tried to make people agree with dissent, but who actually were arresting them as soon as they agreed with such dissent. As a result, nobody would dare agree that the government did anything bad, and this was very effective in preventing any large-scale resistance from taking hold. The Chinese way here is much more subtle, but probably more effective still."

As Creemers described to Dutch news outlet, de Volkskrant,

"With the help of the latest internet technologies, the government wants to exercise individual surveillance. The Chinese aim […] is clearly an attempt to create a new citizen."

Chinese internet specialist at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, Johan Lagerkvist, said the system is

"very ambitious in scope, including scrutinizing individual behavior and what books people read. It's Amazon's consumer tracking with an Orwellian political twist."

James Corbett has been tracking the implementation of Sesame Credit for some time. Introducing the ubiquitous tracking system for a recent episode of the Corbett Report, he mused:

"Coming soon to a New World Order near you: social credit! Earn points by behaving like the government wants you to behave! Get penalized if you don't act like a doubleplusgood citizen! What could be more fun?"

Indeed, because mandatory enrollment in Sesame Credit is still a few years away, its true effectiveness won't be measurable for some time. But even a reporter's usual wariness appears knocked off-kilter, as Zheping Huang summarized his personal experience,

"Even if my crappy credit score doesn't mean much now, it's in my best interest I suppose to make sure it doesn't go too low."

And that, of course, is precisely why gamifying State obedience is so terrifying.

Cornfedbloodstool

We just have FICO scores in the US, that measures how obidient you are to the banks, the true rulers of the country.

ToSoft4Truth

And Facebook 'Likes'. Can't get laid without the Likes, man.

CAPT DRAKE

It is already here. There is a thing called an "NSA Score", based on your habits, contacts, and email/posts. Fortunately, porn surfing, even addiction, is not a negative. Only anti state stuff counts, and no, most of the posts on ZH don't count as they are seen as venting and not actionable intel.

knukles

I love Big Brother...

Miffed Microbiologist

"The children and adults, including his own parents, tiptoe nervously around him, constantly telling him how everything he does is "good," since displeasing him can get them wished away into a mystical "cornfield", an unknown place, from which there is no return. At one point, a dog is heard barking angrily. Anthony thinks the dog is "bad" and doesn't "like [him] at all," and wishes it into the cornfield. His father and mother are horrified, but they dare not show it."

Welcome to the Twilight Zone.

Miffed

Old Poor Richard

You beat me to it on FICO score. If you're off the grid, out of the electronic money system or not paying sufficient fealty to banksters, you are NOT being obedient to the state.

NoDebt

I'm as off the grid as you can get and still live a middle class lifestyle with electricity and a cell phone. I assure you they still score me and I'm usually over 800. I don't use credit much these days but what I use says nothing but "pays as agreed".

Now, if you start to factor in the "slightly to the right of the John Burke Society" shit I post on ZH I'd be down around -500.

Uchtdorf

http://qz.com/519737/all-chinese-citizens-now-have-a-score-based-on-how-...

Dated October 9th of this year.

savagegoose

thats it, in the communist version of facebook you can vote on gov post's, ie you can like them.

Government needs you to pay taxes

Cmon its China, where numbers are faked everyday. Ya think this number will be any different? And even if its effective in China, when the US .govbots roll this out, how effective can it be when US .gov employees 'at the wheel'?

The US .gov can fuck ANYTHING up.

roisaber

It will be funny to see who gets a low citizen loyalty oath score for unpredictable reasons, or from hacks, and their increasing radicalization as their honest efforts to try to get themselves back into good standing only makes them register as more anti-social.

techpriest

The other question is, how many services are going to pop up to help you boost your score, just like there are books, guides, and services for your credit score currently?

"Applying for a passport? Buy my book and learn how to boost your patriotism score by 400 points in 6 months! We can even give you a spambot to do the work for you!"

SgtShaftoe

China doesn't have enough enforcers to control the population. They will lose control. That is only a matter of time. They may be able to delay the inevitable for a while but eventually reality will arrive. Keep pushing that volatility into the tail and see what happens. When it goes, it will blow your fucking socks off.

Tick tock motherfuckers, and that goes for the US as well...

tarabel

That is the (evil) genius of this scheme. It is collectively enforced by the proletarians themselves. If you do anti-social things, that will reflect badly on your friends and family so they will excoriate you and, if necessary, shun you until you get with the program. Really, it's just a crowd-sourced Communist Block Warden program gone digital.

I don't worry about the Chinese. They're fooked any which way you slice it. But China invents nothing, merely imitates. So where did they get this idea from, hmmm?

techpriest

At this point, any good developer can write a program that reads Twitter/Facebook/Renren/WeChat feeds, gives the posts to IBM's Watson (or some simpler algorithm), and have the program spit out a score. And this program would take at most a month to make. I know, I write similar stuff ;)

With that in mind, what would you be able to accomplish with a team of 40-50 developers and several months? What scares me is how the initial assumptions that go into querying data can give you radically different results at the end, and these intelligence agencies do not exactly explain what methods they are using to determine who is a 'bad guy.'

cherry picker

"I have nothing to hide"

Well, the bozos who coined the above term, have fun. You think keeping up with mortgage, car payments, Obama Care, taxes, raising kids and keeping a spouse happy is stressful, wait til .gov does a 'test' on you.

Me, I'm not worried. I'm a non conformist, live in the boonies and am too old. I tell my children and grandchildren they need to get rid of this 'evil eye' government encroachment.

They think I am crazy now, but I think they may be coming around.

techpriest

I would love to turn that "You shouldn't be afraid if you have nothing to hide" around by pointing out that the Fed shouldn't be afraid of an audit if they have nothing to hide.

Amish Hacker

Patriot Points.

Bopper09

Is this not what assface is? (facebook for people plugged in). I admit I went on it for the simple fact I couldn't find anything better for talking to my Russian fiance. But even a year before she got here, I said fuck it. Tried cancelling, but if you click a link that has something to do with facebook, your profile becomes active again. Fucking criminals. I left a computer for 3 weeks (not that I haven't done that before. TRY IT, no cell phone or computer for ONE WEEK. Take vacation days and see what's important in your life. Seriously, I've never owned a cell phone. Where I work I don't need one. Cell phones do not 'save your life'.

Consuelo

Interesting the references to FB, especially when one considers who's at the head and his position on censorship. Then again, what happened in Mao's China descended from the likes of Trotsky, so it kinda sorta follows...

Gantal

The article has taken some real, some proposed and some imaginary credit tracking programs and smushed them into one 'terrifying', freedom-destroying blob. In other words, it's irresponsible b.s. intended to make the Chinese government look even more diabolical and oppressive than our own.

The underlying cultural truth, though, is that Chinese are willing to cooperate with – and trust – their government much more than we are. They've always respected and looked up to their national leaders and expected those leaders to actually lead – morally and practically. It works for them, as we see.

The underlying lie is that the Chinese government needs to repress its people. It doesn't. Anyone purporting to be China 'experts' like Messrs. Lagerkvist and Creemers, should know that China's government is the most popular, most trusted government on earth.

By why let facts get in the way of a good story?

Fuku Ben

The score is created by Ant Financial

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lcUHQYhPTE#t=36s

FedFunnyMoney

Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer...Chinese style.

rejected

Digital will end up being our worse nightmare and our undoing. It is the "Perfect" tool for the crazed sociopaths around us and the insane psychopaths that want to control our every breath (literally).

Sure, it's cool, you can play games and other useless crap but even a blind man could see how governments are going to be useing it. The social networks are piped right into governments security complex. Wouldn't surprise me if everything we post even here on ZH is stored on some digital crap machine somewhere.

For sure it's on ZH servers and thus available to any Tom, Dick or Harry LEO. I myself am very close to going dark. This stuff isn't laughable anymore. It's getting DEADLY serious.

[Dec 22, 2015] US imposes financial restrictions to reinforce Ukraine sanctions

www.theguardian.com

The new sanctions match those put in place by America's allies and demonstrate Washington's "unwavering resolve to pressure Russia to respect the security and sovereignty of Ukraine", Smith added.

Russia quickly decried the announcement.

"This is a continuation of the unfriendly line against Russia that runs counter to logic," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. His government would review the US decisions "and then gather proposals on possible countermeasures", he said.

HollyOldDog -> HHeLiBe 22 Dec 2015 16:45

There are no separatists in Ukraine. The East Ukrainians were upset with the American sponsored take over of the Kiev government and the brutal actions of the Right Sector firing on the Ukrainian Police and demonstrators. But instead of trying to calm down the rival fractions once the previous president who had to run for his life - the 'revised' Kiev administration decided to bomb and shell East Ukraine - they could have only learned such incompetence from their 'masters' in the USA.

Leondeinos 22 Dec 2015 16:28

The US has a number of requests of Russia. The "sanctions" won't help get the needed assistance, some of which might be important. Those sanctions also are causing far more damage to Ukraine. For example, since the beginning of 2015 the exchange rate for the Ukrainian Hryvnia is now such that $1 US costs 45% more than on 1 January (this has often been much higher during the year); for the Russian Ruble, the increase is 23%. How can that help people in Ukraine who need imports? (particularly since the country has lost its eastern industrial regions)

If Uncle Sam really wanted Russian cooperation (this is highly uncertain), he might just realize that, to them, NATO expansion is the most serious issue of all (as they have said all along). Useful agreement could be reached on this topic in various ways. How about combining dropping the proposed Ukrainian entry into NATO with an agreement to end foreign support, financial and with armament, for Ukrainian political factions [by all sides]? There are other possibilities for agreement. That's a big order given the history of US and Russian meddling in Ukraine, but it offers better prospects than more sanctions which are splitting the country apart-- forever-- and driving corruption in Ukraine to an intense level.

MurkyFogsFutureLogs 22 Dec 2015 16:24

"The US has been trying to find the right balance of carrots and sticks to push Russia into making a full withdrawal from eastern Ukraine, while securing its cooperation on ending Syria's civil war,"

So in one paragraph the Guardian states the U.S wants to push Russia into withdrawing forces it couldn't prove invaded in the first place and then touches upon the U.S's desire to co-operate with Russia in Syria even though the U.S is flying over Syria ILLEGALLY...

The Guardian along with the rest of the MSM really are becoming different departments within the "Ministry of Truth".

laticsfanfromeurope 22 Dec 2015 16:21

What a bunch of hypocrites...why no sanction against Saudi Arabia, guilty of genocide in Yemen, and guilty of syupporting extremism in the region and in the whole world?
Why nobody sanction the US and the other countries that support the islamist rebels in Syria?
So why not sanctions against Turkey, Qatar, England, France etc....

However the sanctions are not working at all, only the oil low price give problems to Russia...

[Dec 21, 2015] Ignorance is Strength

Notable quotes:

"... " it's also a person who kills journalists, political opponents, and invades countries" ..."

"... It's okay to bullshit if the Culturally Superior Westerner ™ is dissing with libelious claims Inferior Non-Westerner. See, who needs any proof that "Putin kills journalists"? No one! Not even trump or their auditory – They Know It For Fact ™. ..."

marknesop.wordpress.com

et Al, December 19, 2015 at 11:02 am

Butnits Insider: Donald Trump left Joe Scarborough stunned after being asked about Vladimir Putin killing journalists
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/donald-trump-praises-vladimir-putin-125622048.html

…Scarborough pointed to Putin's status as a notorious strongman.

"Well, I mean, it's also a person who kills journalists, political opponents, and invades countries. Obviously that would be a concern, would it not?" Scarborough asked.

"He's running his country, and at least he's a leader," Trump replied. "Unlike what we have in this country."

"But again: He kills journalists that don't agree with him," Scarborough said.

The Republican presidential front-runner said there was "a lot of killing going on" around the world and then suggested that Scarborough had asked him a different question.

"I think our country does plenty of killing, also, Joe, so, you know," Trump replied. "There's a lot of stupidity going on in the world right now, Joe. A lot of killing going on. A lot of stupidity. And that's the way it is. But you didn't ask me [that] question, you asked me a different question. So that's fine."

Scarborough was left visibly stunned.

"I'm confused," the MSNBC host said. "So I mean, you obviously condemn Vladimir Putin killing journalists and political opponents, right?"

"Oh sure, absolutely," Trump said…

…But Friday during his "Morning Joe" interview, Trump said he always "felt fine" about Putin and touted the Russian president's poll numbers. Putin's position in his country is bolstered by the Russian government's control over much of the Russian news media.

"I always felt fine about Putin," Trump said. "I think that he's a strong leader. He's a powerful leader … He's actually got a popularity within his country. They respect him as a leader."

Trump contrasted Putin's numbers with President Obama's.

"I think he's up in the 80s. You see where Obama's in the 30s and low 40s. And he's up in the 80s," Trump said. "And I don't know who does the polls. Maybe he does the polls, but I think they're done by American companies, actually."
####

When I read stuff like this, I'm so glad the US is so far away. Damn modern technology.

Lyttenburgh, December 19, 2015 at 11:50 am

" it's also a person who kills journalists, political opponents, and invades countries"

It's okay to bullshit if the Culturally Superior Westerner ™ is dissing with libelious claims Inferior Non-Westerner. See, who needs any proof that "Putin kills journalists"? No one! Not even trump or their auditory – They Know It For Fact ™.

P.S. "Ignorance is Strength"

[Dec 21, 2015] Journalists are really mouthpieces for political factions within their own government power structure but the best journalists choose faction that actually embraces reality

"... Regarding Patrick Lang, I noticed that he posted a quite vehement attack against conspiracy theorists postings on his blog who were – if I recall correctly – claiming that the military were involved in the subterfuge to arm extremists in Syria. (Probably cocked up the details but too tired to check.) It struck me as noteworthy as it suggested an internecine intra-Washington struggle between Military / CIA who was going to "own" the debacle in Syria at the very least. It is utterly reminiscent of the struggle between Dulles / CIA power structure (think: institutional group think) and the incoming JFK administration / New Frontiersman during and after the Cuban Missile Crisis. ..."

"... Of course it's worth noting that Hersh had to revert to publishing this "intimate" conversation between American power structures in a foreign publication. What does that tell you about the "freedom index"? Samizdat here we come! ..."

marknesop.wordpress.com

Tim Owen, December 20, 2015 at 1:53 pm

Sy Hersh's latest via M of A:

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n01/seymour-m-hersh/military-to-military

marknesop, December 20, 2015 at 7:58 pm

Washington does not care who assumes power in Syria – whether it be feuding warlords or an Islamic mullah or Assad's cat. Washington knows that Islamic State needs money to survive and keep power, as does any individual or group who will rule, and that to remain in power, it will sell oil. Good enough, as far as Washington is concerned. If the place remains a seething cauldron of destabilizing hatreds, so much the better.

Tim Owen, December 20, 2015 at 8:50 pm

I read this carefully earlier today and wish I had made some notes.

It's an interesting article just in what it says about the politics of American journalism at this point in time almost regardless of the subject matter in a kind of Kremlinology vein. It almost reads like a ransom note. My impression is that Hersh is pulling punches at some key points in order not to overplay his hand.

My suggestion: don't get bogged down in the details. From my recollection of the piece from earlier today Hersh is basically championing a few figures and – most importantly – their perspectives here:

• Michael Flynn, who led the DIA revolt against Syria policy
• Dempsey, a pragmatic cold warrior who is allergic to making the enemy into a cardboard super-villan (good enough for this Putinista)
• Patrick Lang (more below)
• and that wonderfully clear-headed Hawaiin congress-critter (can't be arsed to look her up)

It's worth remembering that Hersh's articles on the Ghoutta attack immediately predated the great stand-down by Obama from all out air-war to destroy Syria.

Given that it's axiomatic that journalists are really mouthpieces for political factions within their own government power structure and that the BEST journalists – like Hersh – actually embrace this reality, what does the appearance of this article augur?

I especially like the sign off:

"The Joint Chiefs and the DIA were constantly telling Washington's leadership of the jihadist threat in Syria, and of Turkey's support for it. The message was never listened to. Why not?"

That sounds kind of threatening. In a good way.

* Regarding Patrick Lang, I noticed that he posted a quite vehement attack against conspiracy theorists postings on his blog who were – if I recall correctly – claiming that the military were involved in the subterfuge to arm extremists in Syria. (Probably cocked up the details but too tired to check.) It struck me as noteworthy as it suggested an internecine intra-Washington struggle between Military / CIA who was going to "own" the debacle in Syria at the very least. It is utterly reminiscent of the struggle between Dulles / CIA power structure (think: institutional group think) and the incoming JFK administration / New Frontiersman during and after the Cuban Missile Crisis.

In other words: we, the west, have basically made no progress fighting for reform of our leadership and political structures. Meanwhile the Russians seem to have gone "right round the horn" – as the dinosaur in Toy Story might put it.

Tim Owen, December 20, 2015 at 9:08 pm

Of course it's worth noting that Hersh had to revert to publishing this "intimate" conversation between American power structures in a foreign publication. What does that tell you about the "freedom index"? Samizdat here we come!

[Dec 21, 2015] Australians has doubts about Dutch safety board conclusion about the type of monitions that destroyed the aircraft

Notable quotes:

"... "initial information that the aircraft was shot down by a [Buk] surface to air missile" did not meet the Australian or international standard of evidence …." ..."

"... What will happen to the resolve of the holdouts if the narrative on MH17 begins to veer away from rock-solid Russian ownership of the tragedy? Because that was the whole backbone of the sanctions – Crimea was not enough to get Germany and France on board, and they still needed the little push that MH17 provided. If that rationale vanished, or even if serious doubt was introduced, the whole EU position on sanctions could fall apart. ..."

"... It's bigger than I thought – there is some sort of internal power struggle going on, and West refuses to change his findings – which still point to Russia for responsibility – in spite of Donoghoe's testimony. ..."

marknesop.wordpress.com

Jen, December 19, 2015 at 7:12 pm

Wooooh, this news is a doozy:

http://johnhelmer.net/?p=14787
http://investmentwatchblog.com/mh17-australia-say-russia-not-to-blame-evidence-tampered-with/

First two paragraphs:
"The Australian Federal Police and Dutch police and prosecutors investigating the cause of the crash of Malaysian Airlines MH17 believe the Dutch Safety Board (DSB) has failed to provide "conclusive evidence" of what type of munition destroyed the aircraft, causing the deaths of 283 passengers and 15 crew on board.

Testifying for the first time in an international court, Detective Superintendent Andrew Donoghoe, the senior Australian policeman in the international MH17 investigation, said a "tougher standard than the DSB report" is required before the criminal investigation can identify the weapon which brought the aircraft down, or pinpoint the perpetrators.

Their criminal investigation will continue into 2016, Donoghoe told the Victorian Coroners Court (lead image) on Tuesday morning. He and other international investigators are unconvinced by reports from the US and Ukrainian governments, and by the DSB, of a Buk missile firing. "Dutch prosecutors require conclusive evidence on other types of missile," Donoghoe said, intimating that "initial information that the aircraft was shot down by a [Buk] surface to air missile" did not meet the Australian or international standard of evidence …."

marknesop, December 19, 2015 at 7:31 pm

Great catch, Jen!! Wow, you're right – this is big, especially in view of the wavering by some EU members on sanctions. I wonder what Merkel has up her sleeve; she says Germany – while going ahead with Nord Stream II, which is "first and foremost a business proposition" – is "seeking ways to ensure that Ukraine is not completely excluded as a transit country".

Ummm…what role would that be? Because if, in exchange for pushing ahead on Nord Stream, Russia is maneuvered into still sending gas through Ukraine so that Ukraine can collect transit fees, the project would be self-defeating. I trust the business minds in Russia are sharp enough to stay ahead of that one. Ukraine will still receive gas from Russia, if it wants it and can pay in advance for it, but it will be for domestic supplies only and consequently not subject to transit fees. Russia must not weaken on this, because the EU still hopes to rebuild Ukraine using Russian money, and it cannot do it without Russian help and support. If that is withheld, Russia only needs to wait them out.

Needless to say, Tusk supports Renzi's position, not because he is an Italiophile but because he supports Ukraine and would like to see it remain a transit country, and pocketing $2 Billion a year in Russian cash.

What will happen to the resolve of the holdouts if the narrative on MH17 begins to veer away from rock-solid Russian ownership of the tragedy? Because that was the whole backbone of the sanctions – Crimea was not enough to get Germany and France on board, and they still needed the little push that MH17 provided. If that rationale vanished, or even if serious doubt was introduced, the whole EU position on sanctions could fall apart.

marknesop, December 19, 2015 at 8:37 pm

It's bigger than I thought – there is some sort of internal power struggle going on, and West refuses to change his findings – which still point to Russia for responsibility – in spite of Donoghoe's testimony. There were revelations in the original post such as that Australia had sought permission from the Novorossiyan authorities to collect evidence and artifacts, as well as Kiev – thereby implicitly recognizing Novorossiya – and that when it solicited witnesses to testify, some agreed only on the condition their names would not be revealed, that the Ukrainian authorities would not be involved and that the investigators would protect them. Sure sounds like they want to say something they know the Ukrainian government will punish them for saying, if it can identify them. This whole inquiry just got interesting again.

At the moment it looks like a faction of the Australian investigation disagrees with the pat finding of the Dutch, but the Victorian state coroner is totally on board with the "Russia did it" scenario and is determined to have his way no matter how foolish it makes him look. This one could go anywhere from here.

Moscow Exile, December 19, 2015 at 11:28 pm

Clearly that Aussie cop is in the pocket of the Evil One!

Isn't he the one who said earlier that the Russian-backed terrorists at the MH-17 crash site behaved like decent human beings and treated the crash victims' remains with dignity and did not loot their belongings?

I mean, what a ludicrous thing to say!

Everyone knows that these Russian beasts are ….blah, blah, blah ...

davidt, December 20, 2015 at 2:03 pm

Donoghue is not the only AFP cop speaking up for the crash site locals. Their sensitivity and humanity is a rather at odds with a disparaging comment about the AFP on these pages over a year ago (and which I objected to at the time). I noticed last week that Patrick Armstrong is now reconsidering the Sukhoi did it scenario because of an apparent lack of fragments from a Buk warhead.

This has always been a serious concern to the Russian investigators, see
http://www.nst.com.my/news/2015/10/russians-angered-dutch-probe

[Dec 20, 2015] Michael Hudson The IMF Changes its Rules to Isolate China and Russia

Notable quotes:

"... By Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City, and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. His latest book is ..."

"... KILLING THE HOST: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy ..."

"... What especially annoys U.S. financial strategists is that this loan by Russia's sovereign debt fund was protected by IMF lending practice, which at that time ensured collectability by withholding new credit from countries in default of foreign official debts (or at least, not bargaining in good faith to pay). To cap matters, the bonds are registered under London's creditor-oriented rules and courts. ..."

"... After the rules change, Aslund later noted, "the IMF can continue to give Ukraine loans regardless of what Ukraine does about its credit from Russia, which falls due on December 20. [8] ..."

"... The post-2010 loan packages to Greece are a notorious case in point. The IMF staff calculated that Greece could not possibly pay the balance that was set to bail out foreign banks and bondholders. Many Board members agreed (and subsequently have gone public with their whistle-blowing). Their protests didn't matter. Dominique Strauss-Kahn backed the US-ECB position (after President Barack Obama and Treasury secretary Tim Geithner pointed out that U.S. banks had written credit default swaps betting that Greece could pay, and would lose money if there were a debt writedown). In 2015, Christine Lagarde also backed the U.S.-European Central Bank hard line, against staff protests. [10] ..."

"... China and Russia harbored the fantasy that would be allowed redress in the Western Courts where international law is metered out. They are now no longer under that delusion. ..."

"... It's not Hudson but the US that has simplified the entire world situation into "good guys vs. bad guys", a policy enshrined in Rumsfeld's statement "you're either with us or you're against us". ..."

"... what is left unsaid is the choices Russia then faces once their legal options play out and the uneven playing field is fully exposed. Do they not then have a historically justifiable basis for declaring war? ..."

December 18, 2015 | naked capitalism

By Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City, and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. His latest book is KILLING THE HOST: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy

The nightmare scenario of U.S. geopolitical strategists seems to be coming true: foreign economic independence from U.S. control. Instead of privatizing and neoliberalizing the world under U.S.-centered financial planning and ownership, the Russian and Chinese governments are investing in neighboring economies on terms that cement Eurasian economic integration on the basis of Russian oil and tax exports and Chinese financing. The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) threatens to replace the IMF and World Bank programs that favor U.S. suppliers, banks and bondholders (with the United States holding unique veto power).

Russia's 2013 loan to Ukraine, made at the request of Ukraine's elected pro-Russian government, demonstrated the benefits of mutual trade and investment relations between the two countries. As Russian finance minister Anton Siluanov points out, Ukraine's "international reserves were barely enough to cover three months' imports, and no other creditor was prepared to lend on terms acceptable to Kiev. Yet Russia provided $3 billion of much-needed funding at a 5 per cent interest rate, when Ukraine's bonds were yielding nearly 12 per cent."[1]

What especially annoys U.S. financial strategists is that this loan by Russia's sovereign debt fund was protected by IMF lending practice, which at that time ensured collectability by withholding new credit from countries in default of foreign official debts (or at least, not bargaining in good faith to pay). To cap matters, the bonds are registered under London's creditor-oriented rules and courts.

On December 3 (one week before the IMF changed its rules so as to hurt Russia), Prime Minister Putin proposed that Russia "and other Eurasian Economic Union countries should kick-off consultations with members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) on a possible economic partnership."[2] Russia also is seeking to build pipelines to Europe through friendly instead of U.S.-backed countries.

Moving to denominate their trade and investment in their own currencies instead of dollars, China and Russia are creating a geopolitical system free from U.S. control. After U.S. officials threatened to derange Russia's banking linkages by cutting it off from the SWIFT interbank clearing system, China accelerated its creation of the alternative China International Payments System (CIPS), with its own credit card system to protect Eurasian economies from the shrill threats made by U.S. unilateralists.

Russia and China are simply doing what the United States has long done: using trade and credit linkages to cement their geopolitical diplomacy. This tectonic geopolitical shift is a Copernican threat to New Cold War ideology: Instead of the world economy revolving around the United States (the Ptolemaic idea of America as "the indispensible nation"), it may revolve around Eurasia. As long as the global financial papacy remains grounded in Washington at the offices of the IMF and World Bank, such a shift in the center of gravity will be fought with all the power of the American Century (indeed, American Millennium) inquisition.

Imagine the following scenario five years from now. China will have spent half a decade building high-speed railroads, ports power systems and other construction for Asian and African countries, enabling them to grow and export more. These exports will be coming on line to repay the infrastructure loans. Also, suppose that Russia has been supplying the oil and gas energy needed for these projects.

To U.S. neocons this specter of AIIB government-to-government lending and investment creates fear of a world independent of U.S. control. Nations would mint their own money and hold each other's debt in their international reserves instead of borrowing or holding dollars and subordinating their financial planning to the IMF and U.S. Treasury with their demands for monetary bloodletting and austerity for debtor countries. There would be less need for foreign government to finance budget shortfalls by selling off their key public infrastructure privatizing their economies. Instead of dismantling public spending, the AIIB and a broader Eurasian economic union would do what the United States itself practices, and seek self-sufficiency in basic needs such as food, technology, banking, credit creation and monetary policy.

With this prospect in mind, suppose an American diplomat meets with the leaders of debtors to China, Russia and the AIIB and makes the following proposal: "Now that you've got your increased production in place, why repay? We'll make you rich if you stiff our New Cold War adversaries and turn to the West. We and our European allies will help you assign the infrastructure to yourselves and your supporters, and give these assets market value by selling shares in New York and London. Then, you can spend your surpluses in the West."

How can China or Russia collect in such a situation? They can sue. But what court will recognize their claim – that is, what court that the West would pay attention to?

That is the kind of scenario U.S. State Department and Treasury officials have been discussing for more than a year. The looming conflict was made immediate by Ukraine's $3 billion debt to Russia falling due by December 20, 2015. Ukraine's U.S.-backed regime has announced its intention to default. U.S. lobbyists have just changed the IMF rules to remove a critical lever on which Russia and other governments have long relied to enforce payment of their loans.

The IMF's Role as Enforcer of Inter-Government Debts

When it comes down to enforcing nations to pay inter-government debts, the International Monetary Fund and Paris Club hold the main leverage. As coordinator of central bank "stabilization" loans (the neoliberal euphemism for imposing austerity and destabilizing debtor economies, Greece-style), the IMF is able to withhold not only its own credit but also that of governments and global banks participating when debtor countries need refinancing. Countries that do not agree to privatize their infrastructure and sell it to Western buyers are threatened with sanctions, backed by U.S.-sponsored "regime change" and "democracy promotion" Maidan-style.

This was the setting on December 8, when Chief IMF Spokesman Gerry Rice announced: "The IMF's Executive Board met today and agreed to change the current policy on non-toleration of arrears to official creditors." The creditor leverage that the IMF has used is that if a nation is in financial arrears to any government, it cannot qualify for an IMF loan – and hence, for packages involving other governments. This has been the system by which the dollarized global financial system has worked for half a century. The beneficiaries have been creditors in US dollars.

In this U.S.-centered worldview, China and Russia loom as the great potential adversaries – defined as independent power centers from the United States as they create the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as an alternative to NATO, and the AIIB as an alternative to the IMF and World Bank tandem. The very name, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, implies that transportation systems and other infrastructure will be financed by governments, not relinquished into private hands to become rent-extracting opportunities financed by U.S.-centered bank credit to turn the rent into a flow of interest payments.

The focus on a mixed public/private economy sets the AIIB at odds with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and its aim of relinquishing government planning power to the financial and corporate sector for their own short-term gains, and above all the aim of blocking government's money-creating power and financial regulation. Chief Nomura economist Richard Koo, explained the logic of viewing the AIIB as a threat to the US-controlled IMF: "If the IMF's rival is heavily under China's influence, countries receiving its support will rebuild their economies under what is effectively Chinese guidance, increasing the likelihood they will fall directly or indirectly under that country's influence."[3]

Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov accused the IMF decision of being "hasty and biased."[4] But it had been discussed all year long, calculating a range of scenarios for a long-term sea change in international law. The aim of this change is to isolate not only Russia, but even more China in its role as creditor to African countries and prospective AIIB borrowers. U.S. officials walked into the IMF headquarters in Washington with the legal equivalent of financial suicide vests, having decided that the time had come to derail Russia's ability to collect on its sovereign loan to Ukraine, and of even larger import, China's plan for a New Silk Road integrating a Eurasian economy independent of U.S. financial and trade control. Anders Aslund, senior fellow at the NATO-oriented Atlantic Council, points out:

The IMF staff started contemplating a rule change in the spring of 2013 because nontraditional creditors, such as China, had started providing developing countries with large loans. One issue was that these loans were issued on conditions out of line with IMF practice. China wasn't a member of the Paris Club, where loan restructuring is usually discussed, so it was time to update the rules.

The IMF intended to adopt a new policy in the spring of 2016, but the dispute over Russia's $3 billion loan to Ukraine has accelerated an otherwise slow decision-making process.[5]

The Wall Street Journal concurred that the underlying motivation for changing the IMF's rules was the threat that Chinese lending would provide an alternative to IMF loans and its demands for austerity. "IMF-watchers said the fund was originally thinking of ensuring China wouldn't be able to foil IMF lending to member countries seeking bailouts as Beijing ramped up loans to developing economies around the world."[6] In short, U.S. strategists have designed a policy to block trade and financial agreements organized outside of U.S. control and that of the IMF and World Bank in which it holds unique veto power.

The plan is simple enough. Trade follows finance, and the creditor usually calls the tune. That is how the United States has used the Dollar Standard to steer Third World trade and investment since World War II along lines benefiting the U.S. economy.

The cement of trade credit and bank lending is the ability of creditors to collect on the international debts being negotiated. That is why the United States and other creditor nations have used the IMF as an intermediary to act as "honest broker" for loan consortia. ("Honest broker" means in practice being subject to U.S. veto power.) To enforce its financial leverage, the IMF has long followed the rule that it will not sponsor any loan agreement or refinancing for governments that are in default of debts owed to other governments. However, as the afore-mentioned Aslund explains, the IMF could easily

change its practice of not lending into [countries in official] arrears … because it is not incorporated into the IMF Articles of Agreement, that is, the IMF statutes. The IMF Executive Board can decide to change this policy with a simple board majority. The IMF has lent to Afghanistan, Georgia, and Iraq in the midst of war, and Russia has no veto right, holding only 2.39 percent of the votes in the IMF. When the IMF has lent to Georgia and Ukraine, the other members of its Executive Board have overruled Russia.[7]

After the rules change, Aslund later noted, "the IMF can continue to give Ukraine loans regardless of what Ukraine does about its credit from Russia, which falls due on December 20.[8]

Inasmuch as Ukraine's official debt to Russia's sovereign debt fund was not to the U.S. Government, the IMF announced its rules change as a "clarification." Its rule that no country can borrow if it is in default to (or not seriously negotiating with) a foreign government was created in the post-1945 world, and has governed the past seventy years in which the United States Government, Treasury officials and/or U.S. bank consortia have been party to nearly every international bailout or major loan agreement. What the IMF rule really meant was that it would not provide credit to countries in arrears specifically to the U.S. Government, not those of Russia or China.

Mikhail Delyagin, Director of the Institute of Globalization Problems, understood the IMF's double standard clearly enough: "The Fund will give Kiev a new loan tranche on one condition that Ukraine should not pay Russia a dollar under its $3 billion debt. Legally, everything will be formalized correctly but they will oblige Ukraine to pay only to western creditors for political reasons."[9] It remains up to the IMF board – and in the end, its managing director – whether or not to deem a country creditworthy. The U.S. representative naturally has always blocked any leaders not beholden to the United States.

The post-2010 loan packages to Greece are a notorious case in point. The IMF staff calculated that Greece could not possibly pay the balance that was set to bail out foreign banks and bondholders. Many Board members agreed (and subsequently have gone public with their whistle-blowing). Their protests didn't matter. Dominique Strauss-Kahn backed the US-ECB position (after President Barack Obama and Treasury secretary Tim Geithner pointed out that U.S. banks had written credit default swaps betting that Greece could pay, and would lose money if there were a debt writedown). In 2015, Christine Lagarde also backed the U.S.-European Central Bank hard line, against staff protests.[10]

IMF executive board member Otaviano Canuto, representing Brazil, noted that the logic that "conditions on IMF lending to a country that fell behind on payments [was to] make sure it kept negotiating in good faith to reach agreement with creditors."[11] Dropping this condition, he said, would open the door for other countries to insist on a similar waiver and avoid making serious and sincere efforts to reach payment agreement with creditor governments.

A more binding IMF rule is that it cannot lend to countries at war or use IMF credit to engage in warfare. Article I of its 1944-45 founding charter ban the fund from lending to a member state engaged in civil war or at war with another member state, or for military purposes in general. But when IMF head Lagarde made the last IMF loan to Ukraine, in spring 2015, she made a token gesture of stating that she hoped there would be peace. But President Porochenko immediately announced that he would step up the civil war with the Russian-speaking population in the eastern Donbass region.

The problem is that the Donbass is where most Ukrainian exports were made, mainly to Russia. That market is being lost by the junta's belligerence toward Russia. This should have blocked Ukraine from receiving IMF aid. Withholding IMF credit could have been a lever to force peace and adherence to the Minsk agreements, but U.S. diplomatic pressure led that opportunity to be rejected.

The most important IMF condition being violated is that continued warfare with the East prevents a realistic prospect of Ukraine paying back new loans. Aslund himself points to the internal contradictions at work: Ukraine has achieved budget balance because the inflation and steep currency depreciation has drastically eroded its pension costs. The resulting lower value of pension benefits has led to growing opposition to Ukraine's post-Maidan junta. "Leading representatives from President Petro Poroshenko's Bloc are insisting on massive tax cuts, but no more expenditure cuts; that would cause a vast budget deficit that the IMF assesses at 9-10 percent of GDP, that could not possibly be financed."[12] So how can the IMF's austerity budget be followed without a political backlash?

The IMF thus is breaking four rules: Not lending to a country that has no visible means to pay back the loan breaks the "No More Argentinas" rule adopted after the IMF's disastrous 2001 loan. Not lending to countries that refuse in good faith to negotiate with their official creditors goes against the IMF's role as the major tool of the global creditors' cartel. And the IMF is now lending to a borrower at war, indeed one that is destroying its export capacity and hence its balance-of-payments ability to pay back the loan. Finally, the IMF is lending to a country that has little likelihood of refuse carrying out the IMF's notorious austerity "conditionalities" on its population – without putting down democratic opposition in a totalitarian manner. Instead of being treated as an outcast from the international financial system, Ukraine is being welcomed and financed.

The upshot – and new basic guideline for IMF lending – is to create a new Iron Curtain splitting the world into pro-U.S. economies going neoliberal, and all other economies, including those seeking to maintain public investment in infrastructure, progressive taxation and what used to be viewed as progressive capitalism. Russia and China may lend as much as they want to other governments, but there is no international vehicle to help secure their ability to be paid back under what until now has passed for international law. Having refused to roll back its own or ECB financial claims on Greece, the IMF is quite willing to see repudiation of official debts owed to Russia, China or other countries not on the list approved by the U.S. neocons who wield veto power in the IMF, World Bank and similar global economic institutions now drawn into the U.S. orbit. Changing its rules to clear the path for the IMF to make loans to Ukraine and other governments in default of debts owed to official lenders is rightly seen as an escalation of America's New Cold War against Russia and also its anti-China strategy.

Timing is everything in such ploys. Georgetown University Law professor and Treasury consultant Anna Gelpern warned that before the "IMF staff and executive board [had] enough time to change the policy on arrears to official creditors," Russia might use "its notorious debt/GDP clause to accelerate the bonds at any time before December, or simply gum up the process of reforming the IMF's arrears policy."[13] According to this clause, if Ukraine's foreign debt rose above 60 percent of GDP, Russia's government would have the right to demand immediate payment. But no doubt anticipating the bitter fight to come over its attempts to collect on its loan, President Putin patiently refrained from exercising this option. He is playing the long game, bending over backward to accommodate Ukraine rather than behaving "odiously."

A more pressing reason deterring the United States from pressing earlier to change IMF rules was that a waiver for Ukraine would have opened the legal floodgates for Greece to ask for a similar waiver on having to pay the "troika" – the European Central Bank (ECB), EU commission and the IMF itself – for the post-2010 loans that have pushed it into a worse depression than the 1930s. "Imagine the Greek government had insisted that EU institutions accept the same haircut as the country's private creditors," Russian finance minister Anton Siluanov asked. "The reaction in European capitals would have been frosty. Yet this is the position now taken by Kiev with respect to Ukraine's $3 billion eurobond held by Russia."[14]

Only after Greece capitulated to eurozone austerity was the path clear for U.S. officials to change the IMF rules in their fight to isolate Russia. But their tactical victory has come at the cost of changing the IMF's rules and those of the global financial system irreversibly. Other countries henceforth may reject conditionalities, as Ukraine has done, and ask for write-downs on foreign official debts.

That was the great fear of neoliberal U.S. and Eurozone strategists last summer, after all. The reason for smashing Greece's economy was to deter Podemos in Spain and similar movements in Italy and Portugal from pursuing national prosperity instead of eurozone austerity. Opening the door to such resistance by Ukraine is the blowback of America's tactic to make a short-term financial hit on Russia while its balance of payments is down as a result of collapsing oil and gas prices.

The consequences go far beyond just the IMF. The fabric of international law itself is being torn apart. Every action has a reaction in the Newtonian world of geopolitics. It may not be a bad thing, to be sure, for the post-1945 global order to be broken apart by U.S. tactics against Russia, if that is the catalyst driving other countries to defend their own economies in the legal and political spheres. It has been U.S. neoliberals themselves who have catalyzed the emerging independent Eurasian bloc.

Countering Russia's Ability to Collect in Britain's Law Courts

Over the past year the U.S. Treasury and State Departments have discussed ploys to block Russia from collecting under British law, where its loans to Ukraine are registered. Reviewing the repertory of legal excuses Ukraine might use to avoid paying Russia, Prof. Gelpern noted that it might declare the debt "odious," made under duress or corruptly. In a paper for the Peterson Institute of International Economics (the banking lobby in Washington) she suggested that Britain should deny Russia the use of its courts as an additional sanction reinforcing the financial, energy, and trade sanctions to those passed against Russia after Crimea voted to join it as protection against the ethnic cleansing from the Right Sector, Azov Battalion and other paramilitary groups descending on the region.[15]

A kindred ploy might be for Ukraine to countersue Russia for reparations for "invading" it, for saving Crimea and the Donbass region from the Right Sector's attempt to take over the country. Such a ploy would seem to have little chance of success in international courts (without showing them to be simply arms of NATO New Cold War politics), but it might delay Russia' ability to collect by tying the loan up in a long nuisance lawsuit.

To claim that Ukraine's debt to Russia was "odious" or otherwise illegitimate, "President Petro Poroshenko said the money was intended to ensure Yanukovych's loyalty to Moscow, and called the payment a 'bribe,' according to an interview with Bloomberg in June this year."[16] The legal and moral problem with such arguments is that they would apply equally to IMF and US loans. Claiming that Russia's loan is "odious" is that this would open the floodgates for other countries to repudiate debts taken on by dictatorships supported by IMF and U.S. lenders, headed by the many dictatorships supported by U.S. diplomacy.

The blowback from the U.S. multi-front attempt to nullify Ukraine's debt may be used to annul or at least write down the destructive IMF loans made on the condition that borrowers accept privatizations favoring U.S., German and other NATO-country investors, undertake austerity programs, and buy weapons systems such as the German submarines that Greece borrowed to pay for. As Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov noted: "This reform, which they are now trying to implement, designed to suit Ukraine only, could plant a time bomb under all other IMF programs." It certainly showed the extent to which the IMF is subordinate to U.S. aggressive New Cold Warriors: "Essentially, this reform boils down to the following: since Ukraine is politically important – and it is only important because it is opposed to Russia – the IMF is ready to do for Ukraine everything it has not done for anyone else, and the situation that should 100 percent mean a default will be seen as a situation enabling the IMF to finance Ukraine."[17]

Andrei Klimov, deputy chairman of the Committee for International Affairs at the Federation Council (the upper house of Russia's parliament) accused the United States of playing "the role of the main violin in the IMF while the role of the second violin is played by the European Union. These are two basic sponsors of the Maidan – the symbol of a coup d'état in Ukraine in 2014."[18]

Putin's Counter-Strategy and the Blowback on U.S.-European and Global Relations

As noted above, having anticipated that Ukraine would seek reasons to not pay the Russian loan, President Putin carefully refrained from exercising Russia's right to demand immediate payment when Ukraine's foreign debt rose above 60 percent of GDP. In November he offered to defer payment if the United States, Europe and international banks underwrote the obligation. Indeed, he even "proposed better conditions for this restructuring than those the International Monetary Fund requested of us." He offered "to accept a deeper restructuring with no payment this year – a payment of $1 billion next year, $1 billion in 2017, and $1 billion in 2018." If the IMF, the United States and European Union "are sure that Ukraine's solvency will grow," then they should "see no risk in providing guarantees for this credit." Accordingly, he concluded "We have asked for such guarantees either from the United States government, the European Union, or one of the big international financial institutions." [19]

The implication, Putin pointed out, was that "If they cannot provide guarantees, this means that they do not believe in the Ukrainian economy's future." One professor pointed out that this proposal was in line with the fact that, "Ukraine has already received a sovereign loan guarantee from the United States for a previous bond issue." Why couldn't the United States, Eurozone or leading commercial banks provide a similar guarantee of Ukraine's debt to Russia – or better yet, simply lend it the money to turn it into a loan to the IMF or US lenders?[20]

But the IMF, European Union and the United States refused to back up their happy (but nonsensical) forecasts of Ukrainian solvency with actual guarantees. Foreign Minister Lavrov made clear just what that rejection meant: "By having refused to guarantee Ukraine's debt as part of Russia's proposal to restructure it, the United States effectively admitted the absence of prospects of restoring its solvency. … By officially rejecting the proposed scheme, the United States thereby subscribed to not seeing any prospects of Ukraine restoring its solvency."[21]

In an even more exasperated tone, Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev explained to Russia's television audience: "I have a feeling that they won't give us the money back because they are crooks. They refuse to return our money and our Western partners not only refuse to help, but they also make it difficult for us."[22] Adding that "the international financial system is unjustly structured," he promised to "go to court. We'll push for default on the loan and we'll push for default on all Ukrainian debts."

The basis for Russia's legal claim, he explained was that the loan

was a request from the Ukrainian Government to the Russian Government. If two governments reach an agreement this is obviously a sovereign loan…. Surprisingly, however, international financial organisations started saying that this is not exactly a sovereign loan. This is utter bull. Evidently, it's just an absolutely brazen, cynical lie. … This seriously erodes trust in IMF decisions. I believe that now there will be a lot of pleas from different borrower states to the IMF to grant them the same terms as Ukraine. How will the IMF possibly refuse them?

And there the matter stands. As President Putin remarked regarding America's support of Al Qaeda, Al Nusra and other ISIS allies in Syria, "Do you have any idea of what you have done?"

The Blowback

Few have calculated the degree to which America's New Cold War with Russia is creating a reaction that is tearing up the world's linkages put in place since World War II. Beyond pulling the IMF and World Bank tightly into U.S. unilateralist geopolitics, how long will Western Europe be willing to forego its trade and investment interest with Russia? Germany, Italy and France already are feeling the strains. If and when a break comes, it will not be marginal but a seismic geopolitical shift.

The oil and pipeline war designed to bypass Russian energy exports has engulfed the Near East in anarchy for over a decade. It is flooding Europe with refugees, and also spreading terrorism to America. In the Republican presidential debate on December 15, 2015, the leading issue was safety from Islamic jihadists. Yet no candidate thought to explain the source of this terrorism in America's alliance with Wahabist Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and hence with Al Qaeda and ISIS/Daish as a means of destabilizing secular regimes seeking independence from U.S. control.

As its allies in this New Cold War, the United States has chosen fundamentalist jihadist religion against secular regimes in Libya, Iraq, Syria, and earlier in Afghanistan and Turkey. Going back to the original sin of CIA hubris – overthrowing the secular Iranian Prime Minister leader Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953 – American foreign policy has been based on the assumption that secular regimes tend to be nationalist and resist privatization and neoliberal austerity.

Based on this fatal long-term assumption, U.S. Cold Warriors have aligned themselves not only against secular regimes, but against democratic regimes where these seek to promote their own prosperity and economic independence, and to resist neoliberalism in favor of maintaining their traditional mixed public/private economy.

This is the back story of the U.S. fight to control the rest of the world. Tearing apart the IMF's rules is only the most recent chapter. The broad drive against Russia, China and their prospective Eurasian allies has deteriorated into tactics without a realistic understanding of how they are bringing about precisely the kind of world they are seeking to prevent – a multilateral world.

Arena by arena, the core values of what used to be American and European social democratic ideology are being uprooted. The Enlightenment's ideals of secular democracy and the rule of international law applied equally to all nations, classical free market theory (of markets free from unearned income and rent extraction by special vested interests), and public investment in infrastructure to hold down the cost of living and doing business are to be sacrificed to a militant U.S. unilateralism as "the indispensible nation." Standing above the rule of law and national interests, American neocons proclaim that their nation's destiny is to wage war to prevent foreign secular democracy from acting in ways other than submission to U.S. diplomacy. In practice, this means favoring special U.S. financial and corporate interests that control American foreign policy.

This is not how the Enlightenment was supposed to turn out. Classical industrial capitalism a century ago was expected to evolve into an economy of abundance. Instead, we have Pentagon capitalism, finance capitalism deteriorating into a polarized rentier economy, and old-fashioned imperialism.

The Dollar Bloc's Financial Iron Curtain

By treating Ukraine's nullification of its official debt to Russia's Sovereign Wealth Fund as the new norm, the IMF has blessed its default on its bond payment to Russia. President Putin and foreign minister Lavrov have said that they will sue in British courts. But does any court exist in the West not under the thumb of U.S. veto?

What are China and Russia to do, faced with the IMF serving as a kangaroo court whose judgments are subject to U.S. veto power? To protect their autonomy and self-determination, they have created alternatives to the IMF and World Bank, NATO and behind it, the dollar standard.

America's recent New Cold War maneuvering has shown that the two Bretton Woods institutions are unreformable. It is easier to create new institutions such as the A.I.I.B. than to retrofit old and ill-designed ones burdened with the legacy of their vested founding interests. It is easier to expand the Shanghai Cooperation Organization than to surrender to threats from NATO.

U.S. geostrategists seem to have imagined that if they exclude Russia, China and other SCO and Eurasian countries from the U.S.-based financial and trade system, these countries will find themselves in the same economic box as Cuba, Iran and other countries have been isolated by sanctions. The aim is to make countries choose between impoverishment from such exclusion, or acquiescing in U.S. neoliberal drives to financialize their economies and impose austerity on their government sector and labor.

What is lacking from such calculations is the idea of critical mass. The United States may use the IMF and World Bank as levers to exclude countries not in the U.S. orbit from participating in the global trade and financial system, and it may arm-twist Europe to impose trade and financial sanctions on Russia. But this action produces an equal and opposite reaction. That is the eternal Newtonian law of geopolitics. The indicated countermeasure is simply for other countries to create their own international financial organization as an alternative to the IMF, their own "aid" lending institution to juxtapose to the U.S.-centered World Bank.

All this requires an international court to handle disputes that is free from U.S. arm-twisting to turn international law into a kangaroo court following the dictates of Washington. The Eurasian Economic Union now has its own court to adjudicate disputes. It may provide an alternative Judge Griesa's New York federal court ruling in favor of vulture funds derailing Argentina's debt negotiations and excluding it from foreign financial markets. If the London Court of International Arbitration (under whose rules Russia's bonds issued to Ukraine are registered) permits frivolous legal claims (called barratry in English) such as President Poroshenko has threatened in Ukrainian Parliament, it too will become a victim of geopolitical obsolescence.

The more nakedly self-serving and geopolitical U.S. policy is – in backing radical Islamic fundamentalist outgrowths of Al Qaeda throughout the Near East, right-wing nationalist governments in Ukraine and the Baltics – the greater the catalytic pressure is growing for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, AIIB and related Eurasian institutions to break free of the post-1945 Bretton Woods system run by the U.S. State, Defense and Treasury Departments and NATO superstructure.

The question now is whether Russia and China can hold onto the BRICS and India. So as Paul Craig Roberts recently summarized my ideas along these lines, we are back with George Orwell's 1984 global fracture between Oceanea (the United States, Britain and its northern European NATO allies) vs. Eurasia.

... .... ....

RabidGandhi December 18, 2015 at 9:16 am

My issue with Hudson is that he tends to paint things in a "good guys/bad guys" dichotomy viz. the IMF vs. the AIIB. Personally, I think it's quite positive that the international sovereign finance institutions will now be more international and less unipolar, but his scenario where

Nations would mint their own money and hold each other's debt in their international reserves instead of borrowing or holding dollars and subordinating their financial planning to the IMF and U.S. Treasury with their demands for monetary bloodletting and austerity for debtor countries.

is rather pie-in-the sky. What reason do we have to believe that concentrated Chinese capital would somehow be more benevolent than our current overlords? Oh because AIIB has the word "infrastructure" in its title (just as the Interamerican Development Bank is all about development) /sarc.

Furthermore, if US planners had half a clue about economics, they would be jumping for joy that the AIIB and the CIPS will finally help release them (eventually) from the burden of having the USD as the global reserve currency, thus relieving the US of the albatross of having to ship its internal demand to China and other net exporters.

All in all, yes AIIB should be positive, but as Hudson himself points out, this is not so much about economics as it is geopolitics. The world should tread with the utmost caution.

Dino Reno December 18, 2015 at 9:48 am

I think his main point is not so much about economics or geopolitics, it's about the rule of law, specifically international law and how it applies to the debt collection brokered between counties.

China and Russia harbored the fantasy that would be allowed redress in the Western Courts where international law is metered out. They are now no longer under that delusion.

Even if they come up with a lending facility, the West will thwart their ability to collect on those debts at every turn by simply declaring those debts null and void and extending new funds using the infrastructure build by the bad (Russian/Chinese) debt as collateral. The thirst for power and profit will always be with us, but now it will not be tempered by any international order under the rule of law.

Nick December 18, 2015 at 10:15 am

China is learning the hard way how the game is played. For example, they're discovering that much of the tens of billions in no-strings attached loans given to Africa will not provide the returns initially thought (even accounting for massive corruption on all sides), which is why they have been reduced for the first time in a decade this past year.

Alejandro December 18, 2015 at 10:41 am

Don't see how "economics" and "social" can be de-linked from "politics"…understanding the limits of "local" may provide an awareness of the "quid pro quo" of extending, direction of extension, and what defines (in/inter) "dependency"…how sacrifice is "shared" or imposed, and how "prosperity" is concentrated or distributed…

OpenThePodBayDoorsHAL December 18, 2015 at 2:50 pm

It's not Hudson but the US that has simplified the entire world situation into "good guys vs. bad guys", a policy enshrined in Rumsfeld's statement "you're either with us or you're against us".

It's like a playground with one big bully and lots of kids running scared, now a second bully appears and they all have to ask themselves whether Bully #2 will be nicer to them, in this case it appears Bully #2 is saying he won't tell them how to run their lives or steal their lunch money.

Post-comet in 2000 when everything started going to hell the worst casualty has been the rule of law, from hanging chads through to the Patriot Act, death by a thousand cuts of the Constitution, unprosecuted war crimes, unprosecuted financial crimes, and now the very fabric of international law being rent apart. I'm reminded of the Hunter Thompson scene where he has an expired driver's license and a cop pulls him over, he has two choices, hand over the license and get busted, or drive away and get busted… so he comes up with a third choice: he blows his nose all over the license and hands it over to the cop. The equivalent of Bully #1 taking the only soccer ball on the playground and kicking it over the fence so the game is screwed up for everybody, Pepe's "Empire of Chaos" indeed.

global123 December 18, 2015 at 9:47 am

stellar article michael hudson

1)Western economies depend on ocean transport…if chinese or ruskies destroy it, USA-EU will be bankrupt in weeks..USA-EU are consumers and not producers..their exports to rest of world are tiny..So,their position is very weak at this point
2)The asian countries like china-india will be forced to join hands under joint attack by US financial system and islamic jihadists..Russia and china,former enemies,are now friends…who could have imagines it?
Russo-chinese-iranian alliance is huge failure of US foreign policies
3)Using islamic terrorists and islamic countries like turkey-saudi arabia-pakistan-indonesia-egypt is not going to work for USA because muslims think USA as enemy no.1…
4)A military superiority can not guarantee permanent -everlasting victory against too many opponents
What i see here is USA has made entire islamic world their enemy,alongwith china and russia
In case of real war,USA position will be very weak

camelotkidd December 18, 2015 at 9:49 am

This is an amazing article. Bravo!
Now it's becoming clear just what Margaret Thatcher meant when she told everyone that there was no alternative to neoliberalism.

Steve H. December 18, 2015 at 10:00 am

Thank you for continuing to mark the historical specifics of the finance/legal wing of geopolitical conflict, and the perverse failings of Full Spectrum Dominance.

The Oceana/Eurasia dichotomy is a dangerous frame of reference. It essentially contrasts the transport efficiencies of water to the solid defensive capacity of the frozen steppes. But when things get bloody, they usually crack along language lines. Not only as a proxy for migrations of the gene, but also world-views. How horse-people see things, what metaphors they use, are very different than how cow-people categorize the world.

This highlights that Russia is continuing to operate within the language and legal framework of the Indo-European languages. In other words (!), it is a fight between the U.S. and Russia for European alliances. If this is the case, then the alliance of NATO with Turkic and Arabic lines is of convenience, in that they are not partners but proxies. Europe is faced with the habit of the U.S. in saying, Let's you and him fight. But there's an oceans difference between the U.S. and European interests.

It also means that Russia and China are being pushed together by western exclusion, like drops of oil on the water. I maintain that Russia has doubled down on global warming, to open up northern sea routes and make the steppes arable. China is already a sea-power, but its massive population will need lebensraum as the fossil-fuel support for the energy needs of megapoli decay. The mountains are a formidable barrier for them to take the steppes by force.

The question for the rest of the world then becomes, who do you want to have as a friend in a hundred years. Do you bet on the Wizards of Wall Street, with their Magic Money Wand of Fiat? Or do you think Russia will ground-n-pound the fairy dust into the mud?

SocietalIllusions December 18, 2015 at 11:17 am

what is left unsaid is the choices Russia then faces once their legal options play out and the uneven playing field is fully exposed. Do they not then have a historically justifiable basis for declaring war?

The game of brinksmanship continues…

Jim Haygood December 18, 2015 at 11:18 am

'The Russian and Chinese governments are investing in neighboring economies on terms that cement Eurasian economic integration.'

Whereas the U.S. is 'investing' in new military bases to cement U.S. global domination.

Guess which model actually benefits local living standards, and 'wins hearts and minds'?

Global domination as a policy goal bankrupted the USSR. It's not working for the USSA either, as the U.S. middle class (once the envy of the world) visibly sinks into pauperization.

Thus the veracity of Michael Hudson's conclusion that 'when a break comes, it will not be marginal but a seismic geopolitical shift.'

Steven December 18, 2015 at 1:56 pm

I get the same thrill reading Hudson the religiously devout must experience reading their bibles or Korans – a glimpse of 'truth' as best it can be known. My first encounter was this interview in Counterpunch: An Interview with Michael Hudson, author of Super Imperialism That led directly to "Super Imperialism" (and just about every book since its publication). After reading it, I was left with the uneasy feeling that no good would come from an international monetary system that allowed any one nation to pay its way in the world by creating money 'out of thin air' i.e. as sovereign and private debt or, almost the same thing, Federal Reserve Notes.

The race to the bottom of off-shored jobs and industries freed from all environmental restrictions, AKA 'globalization', had started to really kick in but it was just before Operation Iraqi Liberation (get it?). Fundamentally, it wasn't war for oil, of course, but a war to preserve the Dollar Standard. Recycling petrodollars bought a little time after the 1971 collapse of Bretton Woods. But with the world's treasuries filling up with US dollars and debt, the product of the Congressional-military-industrial-complex running wild and more recently the U.S. 0.01% successfully evading almost all forms of taxation, some kind of control more basic than controlling the world's access to money (which basically means credit) was required.

When people like Alan Greenspan (pretend to) come clean, you really want to look twice:

THOUGH it was not understood a century ago, and though as yet the applications of the knowledge to the economics of life are not generally realized, life in its physical aspect is fundamentally a struggle for energy, in which discovery after discovery brings life into new relations with the original source.

Frederick Soddy, WEALTH, VIRTUAL WEALTH AND DEBT, 2nd edition, p. 49
The world can live without American dollars, especially these days when the U.S. no longer makes much the world needs or can afford but most obviously because it already possesses more of them than can ever be redeemed ('debt that can't be repaid and won't be') What it can't live without is ENERGY.

So long as most of that energy needs to be pumped out of the ground, the nation that ultimately controls access to the pumps – or to the distribution networks required to deliver it to the ultimate user – controls the world. This is most likely why Reagan promptly dismantled Jimmy Carter's White House solar panels. It is why the US and its European vassals have been dragging their feet for a half-century on the development of renewable energy sources and the electrification of transportation. It is why the banks and Wall Street will stand solidly behind the various electrical utilities efforts to discourage the development of any alternative energy sources from which their executives and shareholders can not extract the last pint of blood or has Hudson more politely calls it 'economic rent'.

P.S. Hudson seems to have a dangerous monopoly on economic truth these days. Is there anyone else who even comes close?

[Dec 19, 2015] Russia opens black box of jet downed by Turkey

Notable quotes:

"... I believe it was not there on patrol, but specifically to shoot the Russian plane down and come back ..."

"... Although I believe the Turkish map, I still think the Turks proved themselves on the side of the terrorists. ..."

"... Crossing that strip of Turkish territory by a friendly plane should not have been reason for shooting it down, only a PRETEXT. That may be the reason why the plane was shot down, because the Russians were not expecting the Turks to shoot at them. ..."

news.yahoo.com

Mister 2 hours ago 0

[The air force commander said 14 countries had been invited to monitor the (Russian) investigation but only China and Britain had accepted the official offer]

Shameful.

Shelly Winters 1 day ago 5

Not sure what information this "black box" contains, but CVR's and FDR's in most all aircraft (especially commercial jetliners) records only what the flight crew says in the cockpit and what operational parameters the aircraft experienced i.e. throttle settings, aileron positions, pitch, etc. It's questionable if the downed fighter aircraft's actual flight path would be stored internally in any such device, especially a fighter aircraft operating in hostile airspace. This data the Russians claim to have, if it really exists, could be certainly manipulated. The only true data for flight path would be a ground radar tape pulled from two different locations in the area.

James

I said it before, I believe the radar map the Turks showed with the paths was correct. And here are the military, but also their Religious reasons.

"War of the maps: Turkey released a map showing where Russia violated its airspace, and Russia countered"

/finance[dot]yahoo[dot]com/news/war-maps-turkey-released-map-210422386.html

You can see there is a very narrow strip of Turkish territory, about a mile wide, protruding deep into the Syrian territory. I don't know exactly the frequency of the sweep of the Turkish radar, but still, looking at the distances between dots, you can figure out the speed. The time to cross the Turkish strip must have been no longer than 20seconds, my initial estimate was 8, the Turks later said 17, but that's not important. The Russian plane is seen to make a wide circle near the Syrian border, flying much below it's maximum speed, probably looking for terrorist bases and convoys, and which circles crossed that limb. It was flying slow and probably low, and in circles, to get a good look. During the next cycle, I do believe the Turks warned it while flying over Syria, 10 times during 5' not to cross that 1 mile strip again. The Russian Su-24 bomber is seen heading for the strip the second time. Notice the Su-24 is a bomber not a dog-fighter like the F-16 and it's older. And there were two F-16's. The Turkish map shows only one path though. But the Russian maps shows only one too! On the Turkish map though, the F-16 is seen lurking in the air, and at some point accelerated sharply, approaching very close and very fast, probably in full afterburner, which is specifically reserved for attack.

I believe it was not there on patrol, but specifically to shoot the Russian plane down and come back. At (probably) the same time, the Russian path is seen with a very sharp small quirk. A sort of a mini-loop. I am sure they were trying to avoid incoming missiles. Their plane got hit, and it is seen trying to accelerate, probably to flee, and then the record ends.

HOWEVER ----------------- Although I believe the Turkish map, I still think the Turks proved themselves on the side of the terrorists.

After all, if the Russian plane was trying to get rid of the terrorists at the Turkish border, and no HONEST state wants terrorists at it's border, and the Russians were trying to do the "dirty job" of getting rid of them, Turkey should have been glad the Russians are helping them. But the fact they shot the Russian plane down, proves Turkey is harboring and abetting terrorists, if not recruits and send them itself.

Crossing that strip of Turkish territory by a friendly plane should not have been reason for shooting it down, only a PRETEXT. That may be the reason why the plane was shot down, because the Russians were not expecting the Turks to shoot at them.

So the Turks are not technically lying, but they ARE! The Russians probably did go through that miserable strip, and that's the technical truth. But Turkey is defending terrorists, and claiming it is not, that's the lie!

There are very sharp Religious reasons why they should do that, and still show the correct map. INTERESTING.. Ever heard of Tawriyya? Let me explain it for you in short. The Koran forbids a Muslim to lie, under penalty of the white-hot fires of Hell. But.. We already know if he becomes a Martyr, all his sins including lies will be forgotten.

But.. for a lie, you will be forgotten, if it's technically, a truth. What does that mean? Say, a Muslim has a $100 bill in his pocket. Somebody comes and asks him for a nickel. He will say: I don't have a nickel in my pockets! That's Tawriya, and Allah will have no reason to send him to Hell, because indeed he does not have a nickel in his pockets! That's a technical truth.

Erdogan, if he were asked "Are the terrorists working for you"? He could answer "Not a single terrorist is working for me". Indeed. Not one, but thousands. Allah won't punish him for that.

He could be asked: "Why did you shoot the plane down"? and he could answer "It was flying over our territory". He will not mention the reason was to protect his terrorists and their oil convoys. That's "Kitman". Saying half the truth. Allah won't punish him for that either.

As for lying to the Infidels, Allah won't punish him if he does it out of fear of the Infidels. Yes, but Islam is at perpetual war with the Infidels, until they either convert or disappear from the face of the Earth by any means, so orders Allah. So being at war with ANY infidel, a Muslim can lie to an Infidel all day and all night long! BUT THEY ARE ALWAYS AT WAR WITH ALL INFIDELS, UNTIL THERE ARE NO MORE INFIDELS! SO ORDERS ALLAH! DO YOU REALIZE WHAT THAT MEANS?

BUT THE TOUGHEST OF ALL IS THE "MURUNA" DOCTRINE. That literally explains terrorism. If you get to understand, you will be very surprised, of how you didn't know it.

If you want to find what terrorism is, and why Erdogan himself, said "There is no moderate and extremist Islam. There is only Islam". And he knew what he was talking about, learn more. So find the MURUNA concept or doctrine. You can find a better explanation here:

You can look on Google for this: "Knowing Four Arabic Words May Save Our Civilization from Islamic Takeover"

And save it before it disappears.

Remember, you won't win any battle not knowing your enemy first.

BTW, did you know where the expression "the writing is on the wall" comes from? I's origin is also explained there.

[Dec 19, 2015] Ukraine still committed to good faith debt talks with Russia Finance Ministry

Notable quotes:

"... Ukraine remains committed ... to negotiating in good faith a consensual restructuring of the December 2015 Eurobonds, Nonsense, they are nothing but thieves in suits; Fascist politicians stealing from the taxpayers in the USA, EU, Russia and the Ukraine. You supporters of modern Fascism are disgusting little NeoCon trolls, yes you are! ..."

"... Under this IMF restructuring deal with the Ukraine, the oligarchs mandated that Monsanto GMO comes in. Now the once fertile farms will grow poisoned food. ... They also mandated hydraulic fracking rights to Exxon and BP. Now the aquifers will be poisoned. ... Moreover, the IMF social chapter destroys family values and requires that corrosive gay propaganda be thrust into the children's minds. ... Welcome to the new Globalist Business Model. ..."

"... The Ukraine is like a dying carcass. ... The EU jackals are howling, the IMF vultures are circling, and the NATO hyenas are picking the flesh off of the bones. ..."

"... Ukraine's Finance Minister, who promised in the above Reuters article today Dec 18, 2015, to talk in good faith with the Russian Federation about their $3 Billion Loan due and payable on Dec 15, as of today is in Default on that $3 Billion Loan , and therefore isn't eligible to receive any Loan from the IMF, headed by Chief Lagarde who must now stand trial for an improper loan of $434 Million . ..."

"... Good faith? They actually mean bait and switch ..."

"... The deadbeat American lackeys in Kiev have no intention of paying their debts to Russia because Washington DC is run by thieves and immoral people. You know this is true. ..."

"... Meanwhile Ukraine has restricted air travel, cutoff Crimea, and fought efforts to grant autonomy to Russian-speaking regions. With unpaid debt, the country still stokes war with Russia after being warned by Mr. Kerry to stop. ..."

news.yahoo.com

Algis

"Ukraine remains committed ... to negotiating in good faith a consensual restructuring of the December 2015 Eurobonds," Nonsense, they are nothing but thieves in suits; Fascist politicians stealing from the taxpayers in the USA, EU, Russia and the Ukraine. You supporters of modern Fascism are disgusting little NeoCon trolls, yes you are!

Robert

This is the new Globalist Business Model.

1. Overthrow a sovereign country by revolution or outright bombing campaign.
2. Appoint oligarchs to run it and fascists to rule the streets.
3. Rack the country with unpardonable debt.
4. Bring in the IMF and other global banks to 'restructure' the economy.
5. Loot the country's resources by selling off the infrastructure for pennies on the dollar.
6. Impose huge austerity programs. ... Cuts pensions in half and double basic living costs.
7. Finally, colonialize the citizens under multi-national corporate rule where the people have little or no say.

Under this IMF restructuring deal with the Ukraine, the oligarchs mandated that Monsanto GMO comes in. Now the once fertile farms will grow poisoned food. ... They also mandated hydraulic fracking rights to Exxon and BP. Now the aquifers will be poisoned. ... Moreover, the IMF social chapter destroys family values and requires that corrosive gay propaganda be thrust into the children's minds. ... Welcome to the new Globalist Business Model.

The Ukraine is like a dying carcass. ... The EU jackals are howling, the IMF vultures are circling, and the NATO hyenas are picking the flesh off of the bones.

Algis

Russia needs to take payment out of their proverbial hides. No one consider it unjustified except a few brainwashed Americans and of course the immoral and corrupt ruling class of the Empire!

new_federali...

Ukraine's Finance Minister, who promised in the above Reuters article today Dec 18, 2015, to talk in good faith with the Russian Federation about their $3 Billion Loan due and payable on Dec 15, as of today is in Default on that $3 Billion Loan , and therefore isn't eligible to receive any Loan from the IMF, headed by Chief Lagarde who must now stand trial for an improper loan of $434 Million .

Therefore, Gold did achieve an all-important triple bottom at $1,050 per ounce this week, and is now in a furious rally up $15 to $1,065 per ounce as DXY (U.S. Dollar Index) falls sharply today due to utter failure of U.S.- led IMF to rescue Ukraine from Financial Collapse today -- Thus Gold will now rally sharply through at least Feb 2016 when Gold will be at $1,500 per ounce, and ultimately going to new all-time highs above $2,000 per ounce -- Dec 18, 2015 at 11:53 a.m. PST.

Commenter

Good faith? They actually mean bait and switch

Algis

The deadbeat American lackeys in Kiev have no intention of paying their debts to Russia because Washington DC is run by thieves and immoral people. You know this is true.

RonP

Meanwhile Ukraine has restricted air travel, cutoff Crimea, and fought efforts to grant autonomy to Russian-speaking regions. With unpaid debt, the country still stokes war with Russia after being warned by Mr. Kerry to stop.

[Dec 19, 2015] Turkey Blasts Breakthrough UN Resolution On Syria It Lacks Perspective. Assad Must Go!

Notable quotes:

"... "Now, is there a way of us constructing a bridge, creating a political transition, that allows those who are allied with Assad right now, allows the Russians, allows the Iranians to ensure that their equities are respected, that minorities like the Alawites are not crushed or retribution is not the order of the day? I think that's going to be very important as well." ..."

"... Seymour Hersh Links Turkey to Benghazi, Syria and Sarin ..."

"... The assessment of the Defense Intelligence Agency is that the sarin was supplied by Turkey to elements in Ghouta with the intent of "push[ing] Obama over the red line. " Intercepted transmissions from Turkish operators in the aftermath of the attack are jubilant, and the success of their covert mission must have seemed well in hand. Obama's implicit call to war in the coming month was proof of that. ..."

Dec 19, 2015 | Zero Hedge

Following June elections in which AKP lost its absolute parliamentary majority thanks in part to a stronger than expected showing at the polls by the pro-Kurdish HDP, Turkish President Recip Tayyip Erdogan began to lose his mind.

The vote put in jeopardy Erdogan's bid to effectively rewrite the country's constitution on the way to consolidating his power in an executive presidency. That decisively undesirable outcome could not stand and so Erdogan did what any respectable autocrat would do: he nullified the election. First, the President undermined the coalition building process so he could call for new elections. Next, he fanned the flames of civil war and reignited a long-simmering conflict with the PKK. The idea was to scare the electorate into believing that a "strong" AKP government was the only antidote to domestic and international terror. Finally, Erdogan cracked down on the press and anyone else critical of his rule. AKP was also suspected of covertly backing attacks on HDP offices and newspapers. Some (i.e. the PKK) went so far as to suggest that Erdogan secretly worked with Sunni extremists to orchestrate suicide bombings - in other words, there's speculation Erdogan terrorized his own people.

Sure enough, AKP had a better showing at re-do elections last month, but by that point, Erdogan was on the fast track to dictatorial delirium. On November 24, he shot down a Russian fighter jet near the border with Syria in the first such direct military confrontation between Russia and a NATO member in at least six decades. And the madness didn't stop there. After Putin and the Russian MoD laid out their case against Ankara's role in financing Islamic State via Turkey's complicity in the group's lucrative oil trafficking business, Turkey sent hundreds of troops and around two dozen tanks to Bashiqa in Iraq which is right on the crude smuggling route. The deployment infuriated Baghdad and after Turkey refused to pull the troops out, Iraq went to the UN Security Council. Subsequently, Turkish troops were "attacked" by Islamic State.

The Turks claim that Iraq invited them in the past, a contention Baghdad vehemently denies. Thanks to Barzani and the Kurds, Ankara gets to claim that at least someone welcomes the Turkish troop presence (remember, despite Erdogan's hatred of the PKK and the YPG, Turkey is friendly with Erbil, which relies on Turkey to get some 630,000 b/d of what is technically illegal crude to market).

Well, for anyone who thought Turkey might be set to bow to international pressure by moving its troops north and thus back towards the Turkey-Iraq border, think again because on Saturday, Turkish PM Ahmet Davutoglu was out with a series of declarations that seem to suggest Turkey is going full-belligerent-retard as Erdogan scrambles to preserve the "Assad must go" narrative on the way to securing whatever Ankara's interests are in both Iraq and Syria.

First, Davutoglu said that the provision of training to the Peshmerga and Mosul militiamen is "in line with a request from Iraq authorities and as such, the mission in Iraq will continue "until Mosul is freed" from ISIS.

Ok, so two things there. The deployment is not "in line with a request from Iraq." At this point, Turkey's position has moved from comically absurd to maddeningly obstinate. How many times does Baghdad have to say that Turkey isn't invited before NATO forces Turkey to drop the "they told us we could be here" line? Further, the idea that Turkey will stay until Mosul "is liberated" from ISIS, means Erdogan plans to remain in Iraq indefinitely. As we've documented on several occasions, an operation to retake Mosul is for all intents and purposes a pipe dream and if Turkey intends to wait it out, the troops and tanks could be there for years.

Next, Davutoglu claims that the Islamic State attacks on Turkish positions in Bashiqa prove Turkey "is right." "Right" about what, it's not clear, but what's interesting is that the attacks came just as ISIS launched its first major offensive in northern Iraq since July in a move that US officials say was likely designed to disrupt preparations for an assault on Mosul. The point: all of this is rather conveniently timed.

Davutoglu then slammed a UN Security Council resolution agreed in New York on Friday. The meeting of foreign ministers was tipped by John Kerry in Moscow on Tuesday and when discussions ended, diplomats adopted a resolution which purports to draw a road map for ending the war in Syria. As WSJ notes, the resolution "left unresolved divisions among world powers on key issues in the conflict."

Which "key issues", you ask? Well, the only ones that matter - namely, i) the fate of Bashar al-Assad and ii) which groups should be recognized as "terrorists" and which should be awarded the "moderate opposition" badge.

"Both issues were left out of the resolution after an hourslong meeting of foreign ministers in New York on Friday failed to reach a compromise and at one point verged on collapse," WSJ goes on the recount, adding that "Russian and Iranian diplomats said the question of Mr. Assad wasn't discussed on Friday because neither of their countries would accept a deal that calls for Mr. Assad's exit, even at the end of a political transition period."

As we've said on too many occasions to count, Syria is absolutely critical for Tehran when it comes to preserving Iranian influence and ensuring that the so-called "Shiite crescent" doesn't wane. For Russia, this is a chance to supplant the US as Mid-East superpower puppet master and Moscow isn't about to see it slip away by agreeing to a resolution that makes Assad's ouster a foregone conclusion.

For Turkey, the absence of a decision on Assad's future is maddening. The Security Council resolution "lacks realistic perspective," Davutoglu said on Saturday, before adding that the "Syria crisis can only be solved if Bashar al-Assad leaves power."

Consider that, and consider the fact that, as we reported yesterday, Ankara is now establishing a military base in Qatar in order that the two country's might work more closely on tackling "common enemies."

What we're beginning to see here is the formation of three alliances in the Mid-East: 1) Russia, Iran, Syria, and Iraq; 2) Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar; 3) Britain, France, and Germany. The first alliance is pro-Assad, anti-terror. The second is anti-Assad, pro-Sunni extremist. The third is anti-Assad (although less vehemently so), anti-terror (conspiracy theories aside). Note that we've left the US out. Why? Because Washington is now stuck. The US wants desperately to maintain coordination with Ankara, Riyadh, and Doha, but between stepped up media coverage of Saudi Arabia's role in underwriting extremism (via the promotion of Wahhabism) and hightened scrutiny on Erdogan's role in financing terrorists, the position is becoming increasingly untenable. But aligning solely with the UK, France, and Germany entails adopting a more conciliatory approach to Assad - just ask Berlin which, as we reported on Friday, is now working with Assad's intelligence police and may soon establish a base in Damascus.

With that in mind, we'll close with the following from Obama, which underscores the extent to which the US is now thoroughly confused as to what to do next:

"Now, is there a way of us constructing a bridge, creating a political transition, that allows those who are allied with Assad right now, allows the Russians, allows the Iranians to ensure that their equities are respected, that minorities like the Alawites are not crushed or retribution is not the order of the day? I think that's going to be very important as well."

JustObserving

First try the sarin gas supplying war criminal, Erdogan

Turkey supplied the sarin that killed over 1300 Syrians in Ghouta to try to get the Nobel Prize Winner to bomb Assad into oblivion

Seymour Hersh Links Turkey to Benghazi, Syria and Sarin

The assessment of the Defense Intelligence Agency is that the sarin was supplied by Turkey to elements in Ghouta with the intent of "push[ing] Obama over the red line." Intercepted transmissions from Turkish operators in the aftermath of the attack are jubilant, and the success of their covert mission must have seemed well in hand. Obama's implicit call to war in the coming month was proof of that.

http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2014/05/06/seymour-hersh-links-turke...

WTFRLY

White House, Media Silent One Year After Murder of US Reporter Who Exposed Western Links to ISIS October 20, 2015

Turkey killed and American reporter to protect the lies. British reporter Jackie Sutton was found dead a year to the day in Istanbul airport...

DeadFred

There aren't that many Turkish troops in Iraq, they can be removed with Iraqi Army and Shiite militia ground troops. The Russian can fly CAP but they shouldn't be involved beyond that. The purpose of Erdogan's insanities is to goad Putin into doing something that will bring NATO against him. He's been wise enough to avoid that so far. The Western economies are a gnats eyelash from collapse so all he needs to so is wait. Maybe selling a few shares of SPY at the right time would help or giving a few billion to some untracable players who call for delivery on their gold futures. I hope he's patient, the end-game is upon us but the fewer nukes that get used the better.

two hoots

Israel, where are you in all of this? Oh, see below:

Forget Qatar/Russia pipelines.

Israel/Turkey/US/NATO connection found here: "That would allow Turkey to reduce its energy dependence on Russia and open up a new market for Israeli and U.S. developers of a new natural gas project off the Israeli coast." (WSJ)

http://www.wsj.com/articles/israel-turkey-poised-to-renew-diplomatic-relations-1450438539

Nat Gas in Israel waters: "Israel has proposed that EU countries invest in a multi-billion euro pipeline to carry its natural gas to the continent, noting that the supply from Israel would reduce Europe's current dependence on natural gas from Russia." (Start Up-Israel)

http://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-pitches-massive-natural-gas-pipeline-plan-to-europe/

It could be a whole new NG game? And what thinks Russia/Qatar in all of this?

[Dec 18, 2015] The Upward Redistribution of Income: Are Rents the Story?

Looks like growth of financial sector represents direct threat to the society

Notable quotes:

"... Perhaps the financialization of the economy and rising inequality leads to a corruption of the political process which leads to monetary, currency and fiscal policy such that labor markets are loose and inflation is low. ..."

"... Growth of the non-financial-sector == growth in productivity ..."

"... In complex subject matters, even the most competent person joining a company has to become familiar with the details of the products, the industry niche, the processes and professional/personal relationships in the company or industry, etc. All these are not really teachable and require between months and years in the job. This represents a significant sunk cost. Sometimes (actually rather often) experience within the niche/industry is in a degree portable between companies, but some company still had to employ enough people to build this experience, and it cannot be readily bought by bringing in however competent freshers. ..."

December 18, 2015 | cepr.netDean Baker:

Working Paper: : In the years since 1980, there has been a well-documented upward redistribution of income. While there are some differences by methodology and the precise years chosen, the top one percent of households have seen their income share roughly double from 10 percent in 1980 to 20 percent in the second decade of the 21st century. As a result of this upward redistribution, most workers have seen little improvement in living standards from the productivity gains over this period.

This paper argues that the bulk of this upward redistribution comes from the growth of rents in the economy in four major areas: patent and copyright protection, the financial sector, the pay of CEOs and other top executives, and protectionist measures that have boosted the pay of doctors and other highly educated professionals. The argument on rents is important because, if correct, it means that there is nothing intrinsic to capitalism that led to this rapid rise in inequality, as for example argued by Thomas Piketty.

Flash | PDF

RC AKA Darryl, Ron said in reply to Fair Economist, December 18, 2015 at 11:34 AM

"...the growth of finance capitalism was what would kill capitalism off..."

"Financialization" is a short-cut terminology that in full is term either "financialization of non-financial firms" or "financialization of the means of production." In either case it leads to consolidation of firms, outsourcing, downsizing, and offshoring to reduce work force and wages and increase rents.

Consolidation, the alpha and omega of financialization can only be executed with very liquid financial markets, big investment banks to back necessary leverage to make the proffers, and an acute capital gains tax preference relative to dividends and interest earnings, the grease to liquidity.

It takes big finance to do "financialization" and it takes "financialization" to extract big rents while maintaining low wages.

RC AKA Darryl, Ron said in reply to RC AKA Darryl, Ron, December 18, 2015 at 11:42 AM

[THANKS to djb just down thread who supplied this link:]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021305040

Finance sector as percent of US GDP, 1860-present: the growth of the rentier economy

[graph]

Financialization is a term sometimes used in discussions of financial capitalism which developed over recent decades, in which financial leverage tended to override capital (equity) and financial markets tended to dominate over the traditional industrial economy and agricultural economics.

Financialization is a term that describes an economic system or process that attempts to reduce all value that is exchanged (whether tangible, intangible, future or present promises, etc.) either into a financial instrument or a derivative of a financial instrument. The original intent of financialization is to be able to reduce any work-product or service to an exchangeable financial instrument... Financialization also makes economic rents possible...financial leverage tended to override capital (equity) and financial markets tended to dominate over the traditional industrial economy and agricultural economics...

Companies are not able to invest in new physical capital equipment or buildings because they are obliged to use their operating revenue to pay their bankers and bondholders, as well as junk-bond holders. This is what I mean when I say that the economy is becoming financialized. Its aim is not to provide tangible capital formation or rising living standards, but to generate interest, financial fees for underwriting mergers and acquisitions, and capital gains that accrue mainly to insiders, headed by upper management and large financial institutions. The upshot is that the traditional business cycle has been overshadowed by a secular increase in debt.

Instead of labor earning more, hourly earnings have declined in real terms. There has been a drop in net disposable income after paying taxes and withholding "forced saving" for social Security and medical insurance, pension-fund contributions and–most serious of all–debt service on credit cards, bank loans, mortgage loans, student loans, auto loans, home insurance premiums, life insurance, private medical insurance and other FIRE-sector charges. ... This diverts spending away from goods and services.

In the United States, probably more money has been made through the appreciation of real estate than in any other way. What are the long-term consequences if an increasing percentage of savings and wealth, as it now seems, is used to inflate the prices of already existing assets - real estate and stocks - instead of to create new production and innovation?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financialization

pgl said in reply to RC AKA Darryl, Ron, December 18, 2015 at 03:25 PM

Your graph shows something I've been meaning to suggest for a while. Take a look at the last time that the financial sector share of GDP rose. The late 1920's. Which was followed by the Great Depression which has similar causes as our Great Recession. Here is my observation.

Give that Wall Street clowns a huge increase in our national income and we don't get more services from them. What we get is screwed on the grandest of scales.

BTW - there is a simple causal relationship that explains both the rise in the share of financial sector income/GDP and the massive collapses of the economy (1929 and 2007). It is called stupid financial deregulation. First we see the megabanks and Wall Street milking the system for all its worth and when their unhanded and often secretive risk taking falls apart - the rest of bear the brunt of the damage.

Which is why this election is crucial. Elect a Republican and we repeat this mistake again. Elect a real progressive and we can put in place the types of financial reforms FDR was known for.

Peter K. said in reply to RC AKA Darryl, Ron, December 18, 2015 at 11:50 AM

" and it takes "financialization" to extract big rents while maintaining low wages."

It takes governmental macro policy to maintain loose labor markets and low wages. Perhaps the financialization of the economy and rising inequality leads to a corruption of the political process which leads to monetary, currency and fiscal policy such that labor markets are loose and inflation is low.

djb said...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021305040

I don't know about the last couple years but this chart indicates a large growth in financials as a share of gdp over the years since the 40's

RC AKA Darryl, Ron said in reply to djb, December 18, 2015 at 12:03 PM

[Anne gave you FIRE sector profits as a share of GDP while this gives FIRE sector profits as a share of total corporate profits.]

*

[Smoking gun excerpt:]

"...The financial system has grown rapidly since the early 1980s. In the 1950s, the financial sector accounted for about 3 percent of U.S. gross domestic product. Today, that figure has more than doubled, to 6.5 percent. The sector's yearly rate of growth doubled after 1980, rising to a peak of 7.5 percent of GDP in 2006. As finance has grown in relative size it has also grown disproportionately more profitable. In 1950, financial-sector profits were about 8 percent of overall U.S. profits-meaning all the profit earned by any kind of business enterprise in the country. By the 2000s, they ranged between 20 and 40 percent...

[Ouch!]

[Now the whole enchilada:]

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/novemberdecember_2014/features/frenzied_financialization052714.php?page=all

If you want to know what happened to economic equality in this country, one word will explain a lot of it: financialization. That term refers to an increase in the size, scope, and power of the financial sector-the people and firms that manage money and underwrite stocks, bonds, derivatives, and other securities-relative to the rest of the economy.

The financialization revolution over the past thirty-five years has moved us toward greater inequality in three distinct ways. The first involves moving a larger share of the total national wealth into the hands of the financial sector. The second involves concentrating on activities that are of questionable value, or even detrimental to the economy as a whole. And finally, finance has increased inequality by convincing corporate executives and asset managers that corporations must be judged not by the quality of their products and workforce but by one thing only: immediate income paid to shareholders.

The financial system has grown rapidly since the early 1980s. In the 1950s, the financial sector accounted for about 3 percent of U.S. gross domestic product. Today, that figure has more than doubled, to 6.5 percent. The sector's yearly rate of growth doubled after 1980, rising to a peak of 7.5 percent of GDP in 2006. As finance has grown in relative size it has also grown disproportionately more profitable. In 1950, financial-sector profits were about 8 percent of overall U.S. profits-meaning all the profit earned by any kind of business enterprise in the country. By the 2000s, they ranged between 20 and 40 percent. This isn't just the decline of profits in other industries, either. Between 1980 and 2006, while GDP increased five times, financial-sector profits increased sixteen times over. While financial and nonfinancial profits grew at roughly the same rate before 1980, between 1980 and 2006 nonfinancial profits grew seven times while financial profits grew sixteen times.

This trend has continued even after the financial crisis of 2008 and subsequent financial reforms, including the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Financial profits in 2012 were 24 percent of total profits, while the financial sector's share of GDP was 6.8 percent. These numbers are lower than the high points of the mid-2000s; but, compared to the years before 1980, they are remarkably high.

This explosion of finance has generated greater inequality. To begin with, the share of the total workforce employed in the financial sector has barely budged, much less grown at a rate equivalent to the size and profitability of the sector as a whole. That means that these swollen profits are flowing to a small sliver of the population: those employed in finance. And financiers, in turn, have become substantially more prominent among the top 1 percent. Recent work by the economists Jon Bakija, Adam Cole, and Bradley T. Heim found that the percentage of those in the top 1 percent of income working in finance nearly doubled between 1979 and 2005, from 7.7 percent to 13.9 percent.

If the economy had become far more productive as a result of these changes, they could have been worthwhile. But the evidence shows it did not. Economist Thomas Philippon found that financial services themselves have become less, not more, efficient over this time period. The unit cost of financial services, or the percentage of assets it costs to produce all financial issuances, was relatively high at the dawn of the twentieth century, but declined to below 2 percent between 1901 and 1960. However, it has increased since the 1960s, and is back to levels seen at the early twentieth century. Whatever finance is doing, it isn't doing it more cheaply.

In fact, the second damaging trend is that financial institutions began to concentrate more and more on activities that are worrisome at best and destructive at worst. Harvard Business School professors Robin Greenwood and David Scharfstein argue that between 1980 and 2007 the growth in financial-industry revenues came from two things: asset management and loan origination. Fees associated either with asset management or with household credit in particular were responsible for 74 percent of the growth in financial-sector output over that period.

The asset management portion reflects the explosion of mutual funds, which increased from $134 billion in assets in 1980 to $12 trillion in 2007. Much of it also comes from "alternative investment vehicles" like hedge funds and private equity. Over this time, the fee rate for mutual funds fell, but fees associated with alternative investment vehicles exploded. This is, in essence, money for nothing-there is little evidence that hedge funds actually perform better than the market over time. And, unlike mutual funds, alternative investment funds do not fully disclose their practices and fees publicly.

Beginning in 1980 and continuing today, banks generate less and less of their income from interest on loans. Instead, they rely on fees, from either consumers or borrowers. Fees associated with household credit grew from 1.1 percent of GDP in 1980 to 3.4 percent in 2007. As part of the unregulated shadow banking sector that took over the financial sector, banks are less and less in the business of holding loans and more and more concerned with packaging them and selling them off. Instead of holding loans on their books, banks originate loans to sell off and distribute into this new type of banking sector.

Again, if this "originate-to-distribute" model created value for society, it could be a worthwhile practice. But, in fact, this model introduced huge opportunities for fraud throughout the lending process. Loans-such as "securitized mortgages" made up of pledges of the income stream from subprime mortgage loans-were passed along a chain of buyers until someone far away held the ultimate risk. Bankers who originated the mortgages received significant commissions, with virtually no accountability or oversight. The incentive, in fact, was perverse: find the worst loans with the biggest fees instead of properly screening for whether the loans would be any good for investors.

The same model made it difficult, if not impossible, to renegotiate bad mortgages when the system collapsed. Those tasked with tackling bad mortgages on behalf of investors had their own conflicts of interests, and found themselves profiting while loans struggled. This process created bad debts that could never be paid, and blocked attempts to try and rework them after the fact. The resulting pool of bad debt has been a drag on the economy ever since, giving us the fall in median wages of the Great Recession and the sluggish recovery we still live with.

And of course it's been an epic disaster for the borrowers themselves. Many of them, we now know, were moderate- and lower-income families who were in no financial position to borrow as much as they did, especially under such predatory terms and with such high fees. Collapsing home prices and the inability to renegotiate their underwater mortgages stripped these folks of whatever savings they had and left them in deep debt, widening even further the gulf of inequality in this country.

Moreover, financialization isn't just confined to the financial sector itself. It's also ultimately about who controls, guides, and benefits from our economy as a whole. And here's the last big change: the "shareholder revolution," started in the 1980s and continuing to this very day, has fundamentally transformed the way our economy functions in favor of wealth owners.

To understand this change, compare two eras at General Electric. This is how business professor Gerald Davis describes the perspective of Owen Young, who was CEO of GE almost straight through from 1922 to 1945: "[S]tockholders are confined to a maximum return equivalent to a risk premium. The remaining profit stays in the enterprise, is paid out in higher wages, or is passed on to the customer." Davis contrasts that ethos with that of Jack Welch, CEO from 1981 to 2001; Welch, Davis says, believed in "the shareholder as king-the residual claimant, entitled to the [whole] pot of earnings."

This change had dramatic consequences. Economist J. W. Mason found that, before the 1980s, firms tended to borrow funds in order to fuel investment. Since 1980, that link has been broken. Now when firms borrow, they tend to use the money to fund dividends or buy back stocks. Indeed, even during the height of the housing boom, Mason notes, "corporations were paying out more than 100 percent of their cash flow to shareholders."

This lack of investment is obviously holding back our recovery. Productive investment remains low, and even extraordinary action by the Federal Reserve to make investments more profitable by keeping interest rates low has not been able to counteract the general corporate presumption that this money should go to shareholders. There is thus less innovation, less risk taking, and ultimately less growth. One of the reasons this revolution was engineered in the 1980s was to put a check on what kinds of investments CEOs could make, and one of those investments was wage growth. Finance has now won the battle against wage earners: corporations today are reluctant to raise wages even as the economy slowly starts to recover. This keeps the economy perpetually sluggish by retarding consumer demand, while also increasing inequality.

How can these changes be challenged? The first thing we must understand is the scope of the change. As Mason writes, the changes have been intellectual, legal, and institutional. At the intellectual level, academic research and conventional wisdom among economists and policymakers coalesced around the ideas that maximizing returns to shareholders is the only goal of a corporation, and that the financial markets were always right. At the legal level, laws regulating finance at the state level were overturned by the Supreme Court or preempted by federal regulators, and antitrust regulations were gutted by the Reagan administration and not taken up again.

At the institutional level, deregulation over several administrations led to a massive concentration of the financial sector into fewer, richer firms. As financial expertise became more prestigious than industry-specific knowledge, CEOs no longer came from within the firms they represented but instead from other firms or from Wall Street; their pay was aligned through stock options, which naturally turned their focus toward maximizing stock prices. The intellectual and institutional transformation was part of an overwhelming ideological change: the health and strength of the economy became identified solely with the profitability of the financial markets.

This was a bold revolution, and any program that seeks to change it has to be just as bold intellectually. Such a program will also require legal and institutional changes, ones that go beyond making sure that financial firms can fail without destroying the economy. Dodd-Frank can be thought of as a reaction against the worst excesses of the financial sector at the height of the housing bubble, and as a line of defense against future financial panics. Many parts of it are doing yeoman's work in curtailing the financial sector's abuses, especially in terms of protecting consumers from fraud and bringing some transparency to the Wild West of the derivatives markets. But the scope of the law is too limited to roll back these larger changes.

One provision of Dodd-Frank, however, suggests a way forward. At the urging of the AFL-CIO, Dodd-Frank empowered the Securities and Exchange Commission to examine the activities of private equity firms on behalf of their investors. At around $3.5 trillion, private equity is a massive market with serious consequences for the economy as a whole. On its first pass, the SEC found extensive abuses. Andrew Bowden, the director of the SEC's examinations office, stated that the agency found "what we believe are violations of law or material weaknesses in controls over 50 percent of the time."

Lawmakers could require private equity and hedge funds to standardize their disclosures of fees and holdings, as is currently the case for mutual funds. The decline in fees for mutual funds noted above didn't just happen by itself; it happened because the law structured the market for actual transparency and price competition. This will need to happen again for the broader financial sector.

But the most important change will be intellectual: we must come to understand our economy not as simply a vehicle for capital owners, but rather as the creation of all of us, a common endeavor that creates space for innovation, risk taking, and a stronger workforce. This change will be difficult, as we will have to alter how we approach the economy as a whole. Our wealth and companies can't just be strip-mined for a small sliver of capital holders; we'll need to bring the corporation back to the public realm. But without it, we will remain trapped inside an economy that only works for a select few.

[Whew!]

Puerto Barato said in reply to RC AKA Darryl, Ron,

"3 percent of U.S. gross domestic product. Today, that figure has more than doubled, to 6.5"
~~RC AKA Darryl, Ron ~

Growth of the non-financial-sector == growth in productivity

Growth of the financial-sector == growth in upward transfer of wealth

Ostensibly financial-sector is there to protect your money from being eaten up by inflation. Closer inspection shows that the prevention of *eaten up* is by the method of rent collection.

Accountants handle this analysis poorly, but you can see what is happening. Boiling it down to the bottom line you can easily see that wiping out the financial sector is the remedy to the Piketty.

Hell! Financial sector wiped itself out in 008. Problem was that the GSE and administration brought the zombie back to life then put the vampire back at our throats. What was the precipitating factor that snagged the financial sector without warning?

Unexpected
deflation
!

Gimme some
of that

pgl said in reply to djb...

People like Brad DeLong have noted this for a while. Twice as many people making twice as much money per person. And their true value to us - not a bit more than it was back in the 1940's.

Rock O Sock O Choco said in reply to djb... December 18, 2015 at 06:26 PM

• http://www.mybudget360.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/financial-sector-gdp-percent.png
• http://wadhwa.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Finance-Sector-as-percentage-of-GDP.png
• https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/NYUGDPFinancialShare.jpg

JEC - MeanSquaredErrors said...

Wait, what?

Piketty looks at centuries of data from all over the world and concludes that capitalism has a long-run bias towards income concentration. Baker looks at 35 years of data in one country and concludes that Piketty is wrong. Um...?

A little more generously, what Baker actually writes is:

"The argument on rents is important because, if correct, it means that there is nothing intrinsic to capitalism that led to **this** rapid rise in inequality, as for example argued by Thomas Piketty." (emphasis added)

But Piketty has always been very explicit that the recent rise in US income inequality is anomalous -- driven primarily by rising inequality in the distribution of labor income, and only secondarily by any shift from labor to capital income.

So perhaps Baker is "correctly" refuting Straw Thomas Piketty. Which I suppose is better than just being obviously wrong. Maybe.

tew said...

Some simple math shows that this assertion is false "As a result of this upward redistribution, most workers have seen little improvement in living standards" unless you think an apprx. 60% in per-capita real income (expressed as GDP) among the 99% is "little improvement".

Real GDP 2015 / Real GDP 1980 = 2.57 (Source: FRED)
If the income share of the 1% shifted from 10% to 20% then The 1%' real GDP component went up 410% while that of The 99% went up 130%. Accounting for a population increase of about 41% brings those numbers to a 265% increase and a 62% increase.

Certainly a very unequal distribution of the productivity gains but hard to call "little".

I believe the truth of the statement is revealed when you look at the Top 5% vs. the other 95%.

cm said in reply to tew...

For most "working people", their raises are quickly eaten up by increases in housing/rental, food, local services, and other nondiscretionary costs. Sure, you can buy more and better imported consumer electronics per dollar, but you have to pay the rent/mortgage every months, how often do you buy a new flat screen TV? In a high-cost metro, a big ass TV will easily cost less than a single monthly rent (and probably less than your annual cable bill that you need to actually watch TV).

pgl said in reply to tew...

Are you trying to be the champion of the 1%? Sorry dude but Greg Mankiw beat you to this.

anne said...

In the years since 1980, there has been a well-documented upward redistribution of income. While there are some differences by methodology and the precise years chosen, the top one percent of households have seen their income share roughly double from 10 percent in 1980 to 20 percent in the second decade of the 21st century. As a result of this upward redistribution, most workers have seen little improvement in living standards from the productivity gains over this period....

-- Dean Baker

anne said in reply to anne...

http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/historical/household/

September 16, 2015

Real Median Household Income, 1980 & 2014

1980 ( 48,462)

2014 ( 53,657)

53,657 - 48,462 = 5,195

5,195 / 48,462 = 10.7%

Between 1980 and 2014 real median household income increased by a mere 10.7%.

anne said in reply to don...

I would be curious to know what has happened to the number of members per household....

http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/historical/household/

September 16, 2015

Household Size

2014 ( 2.54)
1980 ( 2.73)

[ The difference in household size to real median household incomes is not statistically significant. ]

anne said in reply to anne...

http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/historical/families/index.html

September 16, 2015

Real Median Family Income, 1948-1980-2014

1948 ( 27,369)

1980 ( 57,528)

2014 ( 66,632)

57,528 - 27,369 = 30,159

30,159 / 27,369 = 110.2%

66,632 - 57,528 = 9,104

9,104 / 57,528 = 15.8%

Between 1948 and 1980, real median family income increased by 110.2%, while between 1980 and 2014 real median family income increased by a mere 15.8%.

cm said...

"protectionist measures that have boosted the pay of doctors and other highly educated professionals"

Protectionist measures (largely of the variety that foreign credentials are not recognized) apply to doctors and similar accredited occupations considered to be of some importance, but certainly much less so to "highly educated professionals" in tech, where the protectionism is limited to annual quotas for some categories of new workers imported into the country and requiring companies to pay above a certain wage rate for work visa holders in jobs claimed to have high skills requirements.

A little mentioned but significant factor for growing wages in "highly skilled" jobs is that the level of foundational and generic domain skills is a necessity, but is not all the value the individual brings to the company. In complex subject matters, even the most competent person joining a company has to become familiar with the details of the products, the industry niche, the processes and professional/personal relationships in the company or industry, etc. All these are not really teachable and require between months and years in the job. This represents a significant sunk cost. Sometimes (actually rather often) experience within the niche/industry is in a degree portable between companies, but some company still had to employ enough people to build this experience, and it cannot be readily bought by bringing in however competent freshers.

This applies less so e.g. in medicine. There are of course many heavily specialized disciplines, but a top flight brain or internal organ surgeon can essentially work on any person. The variation in the subject matter is large and complex, but much more static than in technology.

That's not to knock down the skill of medical staff in any way (or anybody else who does a job that is not trivial, and that's true for many jobs). But specialization vs. genericity follow a different pattern than in tech.

Another example, the legal profession. There are similar principles that carry across, with a lot of the specialization happening along different legislation, case law, etc., specific to the jurisdiction and/or domain being litigated.

[Dec 18, 2015] How low can oil prices go? Opec and El Niño take a bite out of crudes cost

Oil is a valuable chemical resource that is now wasted because of low prices... "The obvious follow-up question is, how long will the sane people of the world continue to allow so much fossil-fuel combustion to continue? An exercise for readers."

Notable quotes:

"... Iran wont flood the market in 2016. Right now Iran is losing production. It takes time to reverse decline and make a difference. ..."

"... Those who predict very low prices dont understand the industry (I do). The low price environment reduces capital investment, which has to be there just to keep production flat (the decline is 3 to 5 million barrels of oil per day per year). At this time capacity is dropping everywhere except for a few select countries. The USA is losing capacity, and will never again reach this years peak unless prices double. Other countries are hopeless. From Norway to Indonesia to Colombia to Nigeria and Azerbaijan, peak oil has already taken place. ..."

"... If oil prices remain very low until 2025 itll either be because you are right or because the world went to hell. ..."

"... But Im with Carambaman - prices will go up again. Demand is and will still be there. The excess output will eventually end, and the prices stabilises. And then move up again. ..."

"... Time to examine the real question: how long can the Saudis maintain their current production rates? Theyre currently producing more than 10 Mbarrels/day, but lets take the latter figure as a lower bound. They apparently have (per US consulate via WikiLeaks--time for a followup?) at least 260 Gbarrels (though it seems no one outside Saudi really knows). You do the math: 260 Gbarrels / (10 Mbarrels/day) = 26 kdays ~= 70 years. @ 15 Mbarrels/day - 47.5 years. @ 20 Mbarrels/day - 35 years. ..."

"... The obvious follow-up question is, how long will the sane people of the world continue to allow so much fossil-fuel combustion to continue? An exercise for readers. ..."

"... Saudi Arabia, a US ally, using oil production and pricing to crush US oil shale industry? Did I read that correctly? ..."

"... Yeah, but I suspect it was *written* incorrectly. Im betting the Saudis real target is the Russians. ..."

"... In 1975 dollars, thats $8.31 / bbl (with a cumulative inflation factor of 342% over 40 years), or $.45 / gal for gas (assuming a current price of $2.00 / gal). ..."

"... I spent 30 years in the oil industry and experienced many cycles. When it is up people cannot believe it will go down and when it is down people cannot believe it will go up. It is all a matter of time ..."

Dec 16, 2015 | The Guardian

Fernando Leza -> jah5446 15 Dec 2015 06:12

Iran won't flood the market in 2016. Right now Iran is losing production. It takes time to reverse decline and make a difference.

Those who predict very low prices don't understand the industry (I do). The low price environment reduces capital investment, which has to be there just to keep production flat (the decline is 3 to 5 million barrels of oil per day per year). At this time capacity is dropping everywhere except for a few select countries. The USA is losing capacity, and will never again reach this year's peak unless prices double. Other countries are hopeless. From Norway to Indonesia to Colombia to Nigeria and Azerbaijan, peak oil has already taken place.

Fernando Leza -> SonOfFredTheBadman 15 Dec 2015 06:05

If oil prices remain very low until 2025 it'll either be because you are right or because the world went to hell. I prefer your vision, of course. But I'm afraid most of your talk is wishful thinking. Those of us who do know how to put watts on the table can't figure out any viable solutions. Hopefully something like cheap fusion power will rise. Otherwise you may be eating human flesh in 2060.

Fernando Leza -> p26677 15 Dec 2015 06:00

Keep assuming. I'll keep buying Shell stock.

MatCendana -> UnevenSurface 14 Dec 2015 03:36

Regardless of the breakeven price, producers with the wells already running or about to will keep pumping. Better to have some income, even if the operation is at a loss, than no income. This will go on and on right until the end, which is either prices eventually go up or they run out of oil and can't drill new wells.

But I'm with Carambaman - prices will go up again. Demand is and will still be there. The excess output will eventually end, and the prices stabilises. And then move up again.

Billy Carnes 13 Dec 2015 19:52

Also this hurts the states...Louisiana is now in the hole over 1.5 Billion or more

TomRoche 13 Dec 2015 12:31

@Guardian: Time to examine the real question: how long can the Saudis maintain their current production rates? They're currently producing more than 10 Mbarrels/day, but let's take the latter figure as a lower bound. They apparently have (per US consulate via WikiLeaks--time for a followup?) at least 260 Gbarrels (though it seems no one outside Saudi really knows). You do the math: 260 Gbarrels / (10 Mbarrels/day) = 26 kdays ~= 70 years. @ 15 Mbarrels/day -> 47.5 years. @ 20 Mbarrels/day -> 35 years.

That's just Saudi (allegedly) proven reserves. But it's plenty long enough to push atmospheric GHG levels, and associated radiative forcing, to ridiculously destructive excess.

The obvious follow-up question is, how long will the sane people of the world continue to allow so much fossil-fuel combustion to continue? An exercise for readers.

TomRoche -> GueroElEnfermero 13 Dec 2015 12:14

@GueroElEnfermero: 'Saudi Arabia, a US ally, using oil production and pricing to crush US oil shale industry? Did I read that correctly?'

Yeah, but I suspect it was *written* incorrectly. I'm betting the Saudis' real target is the Russians.

Sieggy 13 Dec 2015 11:49

In 1975 dollars, that's $8.31 / bbl (with a cumulative inflation factor of 342% over 40 years), or $.45 / gal for gas (assuming a current price of $2.00 / gal).

Carambaman 13 Dec 2015 10:25

I spent 30 years in the oil industry and experienced many cycles. When it is up people cannot believe it will go down and when it is down people cannot believe it will go up. It is all a matter of time

[Dec 17, 2015] US militarism is Alice in Wonderland

economistsview.typepad.com

anne, December 17, 2015 at 11:50 AM

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/17/world/asia/navy-seal-team-2-afghanistan-beating-death.html

December 16, 2015

Navy SEALs, a Beating Death and Complaints of a Cover-Up
By NICHOLAS KULISH, CHRISTOPHER DREW and MATTHEW ROSENBERG

U.S. soldiers accused Afghan police and Navy SEALs of abusing detainees. But the SEAL command opted against a court-martial and cleared its men of wrongdoing.

ilsm said in reply to anne...

Too much training to send to jail.

While E-4 Bergdahl does in captivity what several hundred officers did in Hanoi and gets life!

US militarism is Alice's Wonderland!

[Dec 17, 2015] Please Don't Shut Down the Internet, Donald Trump

The New Yorker

Still, two interesting-and vexing-issues for the technology industry, and for the politicians who regulate it, emerged in the debate. The first came up in John Kasich's response to Trump's proposal. "Wolf, there is a big problem-it's called encryption," he said. "We need to be able to penetrate these people when they are involved in these plots and these plans. And we have to give the local authorities the ability to penetrate, to disrupt. That's what we need to do. Encryption is a major problem, and Congress has got to deal with this, and so does the President, to keep us safe."

The central question is whether American technology companies should offer the U.S. government, whether the N.S.A. or the F.B.I., backdoor access to their devices or servers. The most important companies here are Apple and Google, which, in the fall of 2014, began offering strong encryption on the newer versions of Android and iOS phones. If you keep your passcode secret, the government will be unable to, for instance, scroll through your contacts list, even if it has a warrant. This has, naturally, made the government angry. The most thorough report on the subject is a position paper put out last month by Cyrus Vance, Jr., Manhattan's district attorney. In the previous year, Vance wrote, his office had been "unable to execute approximately 111 search warrants for smartphones because those devices were running iOS 8. The cases to which those devices related include homicide, attempted murder, sexual abuse of a child, sex trafficking, assault, and robbery."

The solution isn't easy. Apple and Google implemented their new encryption standards after Edward Snowden revealed how the government had compromised their systems. They want to protect their customers-a government back door could become a hacker's back door, too-and they also want to protect their business models. If the N.S.A. can comb through iPhones, how many do you think Apple will be able to sell in China? In the debate, Carly Fiorina bragged about how, when she ran Hewlett-Packard, she stopped a truckload of equipment and had it "escorted into N.S.A. headquarters." Does that make you more or less eager to buy an OfficeJet Pro?

The second hard issue that came up indirectly in the debate-and, more specifically, in recent comments by Hillary Clinton-is how aggressive American companies such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google (with YouTube) should be in combatting the use of their platforms by ISIS. Again, there's no simple answer. You can't ban, say, everyone who tweets the hashtag #ISIS, because then you'd have to ban this guy. The algorithms are difficult to write, and the issues are difficult to balance. Companies have to consider their business interests, their legal obligations to and cultural affinities for free speech, and their moral obligations to oppose an organization that seeks to destroy the country in which they were built-and also kill their C.E.O.s.

[Dec 17, 2015] Ex-House Speaker Dennis Hastert legal issues

economistsview.typepad.com

In October, Hastert, 73, entered a guilty plea to a single felony count of evading bank reporting laws by withdrawing about $950,000 in cash in increments of less than $10,000. Prosecutors contend he used the money to conceal his "misconduct" with a longtime associate. Court filings are silent on the nature of the relationship, but sources say it involved sexual contact with a former student at the high school where Hastert served as a wrestling coach and teacher before entering politics. He has not responded publicly to those allegations.

Hastert is set to be sentenced on the banking charge on February 29, but that could be delayed if his health woes continue. Prosecutors and defense lawyers have agreed that sentencing guidelines call for him to receive between zero and six months in prison.

im1dc, December 17, 2015 at 01:23 PM

Ex-House Speaker Dennis Hastert legal issues - 1h ago

"Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert suffered stroke, has been hospitalized for about 6 weeks, his lawyer says - @politico"

Read more on politico.com

im1dc -> im1dc...

Ya gotta ask yourself this: If Jared Fogle of Subway infamy is going away to Prison for his fiddling with the underage why has Dennis Hastert escaped felony conviction for his diddling with at least one underaged teen boy and probably three of them and getting caught paying the guy for years to cover it up?

Something is clearly wrong with the US Justice when the high and mighty, current D.C. Lobbyist, formerly 3rd most powerful politician in America, and still well connected politically his connections in the government stay out of prison when prison is where America wants criminals like him and Jared Fogle.

[Dec 17, 2015] A symbol of defiant greed arrested for security fraud

Notable quotes:

"... Martin Shkreli, the boyish drug company entrepreneur, who rocketed to infamy by jacking up the price of a life-saving pill from $13.50 to $750, was arrested by federal agents at his Manhattan home early Thursday morning on securities fraud related to a firm he founded. ..."

"... Shkreli, 32, ignited a firestorm over drug prices in September and became a symbol of defiant greed. ..."

"... His arrest, witnessed by Reuters, comes amid a continuing separate controversy that has turned Shkreli into a lightning rod for growing outrage over the soaring prices of prescription drugs. ..."

economistsview.typepad.com

Fred C. Dobbs said... December 17, 2015 at 07:57 AM

Pharma CEO Martin Shkreli arrested on charges of securities
fraud http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2015-martin-shkreli-securities-fraud/
Bloomberg - Christie Smythe and Keri Geiger - December 17

32-year-old suspected of plundering Retrophin to pay debts

Martin Shkreli, the boyish drug company entrepreneur, who rocketed to infamy by jacking up the price of a life-saving pill from $13.50 to $750, was arrested by federal agents at his Manhattan home early Thursday morning on securities fraud related to a firm he founded.

Shkreli, 32, ignited a firestorm over drug prices in September and became a symbol of defiant greed. The federal case against him has nothing to do with pharmaceutical costs, however. Prosecutors in Brooklyn charged him with illegally taking stock from Retrophin Inc., a biotechnology firm he started in 2011, and using it to pay off debts from unrelated business dealings. He was later ousted from the company, where he'd been chief executive officer, and sued by its board.

In the case that closely tracks that suit, federal prosecutors accused Shkreli of engaging in a complicated shell game after his defunct hedge fund, MSMB Capital Management, lost millions. He is alleged to have made secret payoffs and set up sham consulting arrangements. A New York lawyer, Evan Greebel, was also arrested early Thursday. He's accused of conspiring with Shkreli in part of the scheme.

Retrophin replaced Shkreli as CEO "because of serious concerns about his conduct," the company said in a statement. The company, which hasn't been accused of any wrongdoing, has "fully cooperated with the government investigations into Mr. Shkreli." ...

Fred C. Dobbs said in reply to Fred C. Dobbs...

Turing Pharma CEO Martin Shkreli arrested
http://www.trust.org/item/20151217115340-g99u8

Dec 17 (Reuters) - Pharmaceutical entrepreneur Martin Shkreli was arrested by the FBI on Thursday, amid a federal investigation related to his former hedge fund and a drug company he previously headed.

The previously disclosed investigation of Shkreli, 32, who is now chief executive of Turing Pharmaceuticals, stemmed from his time as manager of hedge fund MSMB Capital Management and chief executive of biopharmaceutical company Retrophin Inc .

His arrest, witnessed by Reuters, comes amid a continuing separate controversy that has turned Shkreli into a lightning rod for growing outrage over the soaring prices of prescription drugs.

[Dec 17, 2015] Putin hails Donald Trump as bright and talented

economistsview.typepad.com

Fred C. Dobbs said... December 17, 2015 at 11:26 AM

Putin hails Donald Trump as 'bright and talented'
http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2015/12/17/putin-hails-donald-trump-bright-and-talented/CCIktxBPs0ax3bGNMz7yqO/story.html?event=event25 via @BostonGlobe
Vladimir Isachenkov - Associated Press - December 17, 2015

MOSCOW - Russia and the US agree on a general approach to settling the Syrian crisis, President Vladimir Putin said Thursday, saying that Moscow stands ready to improve ties with Washington.

Putin also said that Russia will continue its air campaign in Syria until a political process starts, and lashed out at Turkey for trying to ''lick the Americans in some of their private parts'' by downing a Russian warplane. ...

Commenting on relations with Washington, Putin said that Russia supports a US-drafted U.N. Security Council resolution on settling the Syrian crisis, presented by US Secretary of State John Kerry during his visit to Moscow earlier this week.

''In general, we like it,'' Putin said. ''I believe that the Syrian authorities should be OK with it too, although they may not like something in it.''

He added that ''concessions must be made by both sides'' to end the conflict that has killed more than 250,000 and turned millions into refugees since 2011.

He said the Russian approach, ''strangely as it may seem, coincides with the US vision: joint work on a constitution, creation of instruments of control over future early elections, holding the vote and recognizing its results on the basis of that political process.''

''We will help settle this crisis in every possible way,'' Putin said. At the same time, he reaffirmed Russia's stance on the key issue that divided Russia and the West, the fate of Syrian President Bashar Assad, saying the Syrians themselves must determine who rules them. ...

Already on his way out of the hall, he was asked about US presidential candidate Donald Trump and praised him as a ''very bright and talented man,'' adding that he welcomes the Republican's pledges to establish closer ties with Russia. ...

[Dec 17, 2015] US militarism is Alice in Wonderland

economistsview.typepad.com

anne, December 17, 2015 at 11:50 AM

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/17/world/asia/navy-seal-team-2-afghanistan-beating-death.html

December 16, 2015

Navy SEALs, a Beating Death and Complaints of a Cover-Up
By NICHOLAS KULISH, CHRISTOPHER DREW and MATTHEW ROSENBERG

U.S. soldiers accused Afghan police and Navy SEALs of abusing detainees. But the SEAL command opted against a court-martial and cleared its men of wrongdoing.

ilsm said in reply to anne...

Too much training to send to jail.

While E-4 Bergdahl does in captivity what several hundred officers did in Hanoi and gets life!

US militarism is Alice's Wonderland!

[Dec 17, 2015] A Blind Eye Toward Turkey's Crimes

Notable quotes:

"... The Official Story of the sarin attack – as presented by Secretary of State John Kerry, Human Rights Watch and other "respectable" sources – firmly laid the blame for the Aug. 21, 2013 atrocity killing hundreds of civilians outside Damascus on Assad. That became a powerful "group think" across Official Washington. ..."

December 16, 2015 | consortiumnews.com

A Blind Eye Toward Turkey's Crimes

To make the story even more compelling, an opposition leader braves the wrath of the autocrat by seeking to expose these intelligence schemes, including the cover-up of key evidence. The autocrat's government then seeks to prosecute the critic for "treason."

But the problem with this story, as far as the American government and press are concerned, is that the autocratic leader, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is in charge of Turkey, a NATO ally and his hated neighbor is the much demonized Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Major U.S. news outlets and political leaders also bought into the sarin deception and simply can't afford to admit that they once again misled the American people on a matter of war.

The Official Story of the sarin attack – as presented by Secretary of State John Kerry, Human Rights Watch and other "respectable" sources – firmly laid the blame for the Aug. 21, 2013 atrocity killing hundreds of civilians outside Damascus on Assad. That became a powerful "group think" across Official Washington.

Though a few independent media outlets, including Consortiumnews.com, challenged the rush to judgment and noted the lack of evidence regarding Assad's guilt, those doubts were brushed aside. (In an article on Aug. 30, 2013, I described the administration's "Government Assessment" blaming Assad as a "dodgy dossier," which offered not a single piece of verifiable proof.)

However, as with the "certainty" about Iraq's WMD a decade earlier, Every Important Person shared the Assad-did-it "group think." That meant - as far as Official Washington was concerned - that Assad had crossed President Barack Obama's "red line" against using chemical weapons. A massive U.S. retaliatory bombing strike was considered just days away.

... ... ...

But the "group think" was resistant to all empirical evidence. It was so powerful that even when the Turkish plot was uncovered by legendary investigative reporter Seymour M. Hersh, his usual publication, The New Yorker, refused to print it. Rebuffed in the United States – the land of freedom of the press – Hersh had to take the story to the London Review of Books to get it out in April 2014. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Was Turkey Behind Syria Sarin Attack?"]

... ... ...

In statements before parliament and to journalists, Erdem cited a derailed indictment that was begun by the General Prosecutor's Office in the southern Turkish city of Adana, with the criminal case number 2013/120.

Erdem said the prosecutor's office, using technical surveillance, discovered that an Al Qaeda jihadist named Hayyam Kasap acquired the sarin.

At the press conference, Erdem said, "Wiretapped phone conversations reveal the process of procuring the gas at specific addresses as well as the process of procuring the rockets that would fire the capsules containing the toxic gas. However, despite such solid evidence there has been no arrest in the case. Thirteen individuals were arrested during the first stage of the investigation but were later released, refuting government claims that it is fighting terrorism."

Erdem said the released operatives were allowed to cross the border into Syria and the criminal investigation was halted.

Another CHP deputy, Ali Şeker, added that the Turkish government misled the public by claiming Russia provided the sarin and that "Assad killed his people with sarin and that requires a U.S. military intervention in Syria."

Erdem's disclosures, which he repeated in a recent interview with RT, the Russian network, prompted the Ankara Prosecutor's Office to open an investigation into Erdem for treason. Erdem defended himself, saying the government's actions regarding the sarin case besmirched Turkey's international reputation. He added that he also has been receiving death threats.

"The paramilitary organization Ottoman Hearths is sharing my address [on Twitter] and plans a raid [on my house]. I am being targeted with death threats because I am patriotically opposed to something that tramples on my country's prestige," Erdem said.

[Dec 16, 2015] Donald Trump's Divisiveness Is Bad for the Economy

Notable quotes:

"... A divided society cannot function optimally, especially when the divisions erect walls between groups that are difficult to cross. There are all sorts of attempts to divide us right now, but I want to focus on something other than the bigotry that has been on display in the Republican race for the presidential nomination, the division into winners and losers. ..."

"... To some extent that's correct, but competitive capitalism is not divisive. In fact, it is just the opposite. Competition is a great leveling force. ..."

"... For example, when a firm discovers something new, other firms, if they can, will copy it and duplicate the innovation. If a firm finds a highly profitable strategy, other firms will mimic it and take some of those profits for themselves. A firm might temporarily separate itself from other firms in an industry, but competition will bring them back together. Sometimes there are impediments to this leveling process such as patents, monopoly power, and talent that is difficult to duplicate, but competition is always there, waiting and watching. ..."

"... Competition also drives us forward individually and as a nation. It is a source of new innovation and new technology as people and firms try to find ways to do better than others, to earn higher incomes, gain more popularity, to escape from the pack. People pursue education and other ways to improve themselves not just as a source of knowledge, but also as a way to distinguish themselves. ..."

"... There are differences in talents and abilities, of course, that prevent a full leveling, but to the extent possible people will copy anything that leads to success. ..."

"... Inequality erects those barriers as those who have been fortunate try to protect themselves from capitalism's inherent tendency to erode away their superior position. They feel threatened by competition and do all they can to avoid it once they have found success. ..."

"... When those barriers exist, talent is wasted and we are worse off as a nation. How many great ideas will never be known simply because some people never had the education or opportunity needed to draw the ideas out? ..."

"... Separating the winners from the losers is okay if it is based on merit. If we start equally, and have the same chance to get ahead, then unequal outcomes are less of a concern. The problem is that some people are born "winners" even though they have done nothing to earn it, and others have little chance to win due to our unwillingness to truly embrace what equal opportunity means. ..."

Dec 15, 2015 | The Fiscal Times

White House spokesperson Josh Earnest described Donald Trump as "offensive and toxic," though that only begins to describe the corrosive effect his bigotry, divisiveness, and xenophobia have on our society. It is at odds with our values as a nation.

It's also bad for the economy.

A divided society cannot function optimally, especially when the divisions erect walls between groups that are difficult to cross. There are all sorts of attempts to divide us right now, but I want to focus on something other than the bigotry that has been on display in the Republican race for the presidential nomination, the division into winners and losers.

It might seem at first that this is exactly what capitalism does. It uses competition to separate people into various income classes, decide who gets the best jobs, who gets to live in desirable locations – it decides who wins and who loses. Some people, hopefully those who have earned it, do well and others fall behind. This drive to be a winner, it is argued, is the driving force behind capitalism.

To some extent that's correct, but competitive capitalism is not divisive. In fact, it is just the opposite. Competition is a great leveling force.

For example, when a firm discovers something new, other firms, if they can, will copy it and duplicate the innovation. If a firm finds a highly profitable strategy, other firms will mimic it and take some of those profits for themselves. A firm might temporarily separate itself from other firms in an industry, but competition will bring them back together. Sometimes there are impediments to this leveling process such as patents, monopoly power, and talent that is difficult to duplicate, but competition is always there, waiting and watching.

Competition also drives us forward individually and as a nation. It is a source of new innovation and new technology as people and firms try to find ways to do better than others, to earn higher incomes, gain more popularity, to escape from the pack. People pursue education and other ways to improve themselves not just as a source of knowledge, but also as a way to distinguish themselves.

However, any successful strategy will be followed. There are differences in talents and abilities, of course, that prevent a full leveling, but to the extent possible people will copy anything that leads to success. The fact that this is true – that capitalism will take away gains and differences if it can – is what drives people to continue to try to get ahead. If you rest on your laurels, they will be taken away.

But there is an essential feature in the system that makes it work, and this takes us back to the attempt by Trump and the Republican Party more generally to erect walls between groups of people. The system works best when people have the freedom to enter a new business (if they have the means and are willing to take the risk). It works best when people compete for jobs on equal footing, have access to the same opportunities, when there are no artificial barriers in society that prevent people from reaching their full potential.

Inequality erects those barriers as those who have been fortunate try to protect themselves from capitalism's inherent tendency to erode away their superior position. They feel threatened by competition and do all they can to avoid it once they have found success. And it's not just the wealthy. Even the middle class will attempt to erect roadblocks – social, legal, whatever it takes – if it feels threatened from competition from traditionally disadvantaged groups.

When those barriers exist, talent is wasted and we are worse off as a nation. How many great ideas will never be known simply because some people never had the education or opportunity needed to draw the ideas out?

But it's not just the children of poorer households that are disadvantaged by inequality. The children of the wealthy have no incentive, in many cases, to reach their full potential. Why struggle, take risks, do the hard work that is needed to come up with a new and useful idea when your needs are already taken care of? How much talent is wasted because of this?

It is not inequality that drives innovation and economic growth--it is the attempt to escape the leveling forces of capitalism. If we truly wanted to produce the most economic growth, everyone should start off equal to the extent possible. That way, everyone would have the incentive to differentiate themselves from others, and the means to do so. Inheritance taxes would be 100 percent; schools would be assigned randomly to ensure there's an incentive to equalize resources, and so on, and so on.

Of course, that will never happen. As we're seeing in the presidential election, those with means are trying to make the divisions larger rather than break them down. They tell us inequality drives our economy, when in fact inequality is an outcome, the driving force behind it is the desire to escape the equalizing forces of competition. Inequality as a starting point takes away opportunity from the children of the poor, and it dulls incentives for the children of the rich. It's not hard to understand why recent research has found that high and persistent inequality is associated with lower economic growth.

Separating the winners from the losers is okay if it is based on merit. If we start equally, and have the same chance to get ahead, then unequal outcomes are less of a concern. The problem is that some people are born "winners" even though they have done nothing to earn it, and others have little chance to win due to our unwillingness to truly embrace what equal opportunity means.

And, as Republican campaigns for the presidential nomination are making abundantly clear, that's just the way some people want it.

• Related: Americans More Concerned About Over-Regulation Than Economic Inequality
• Related: Why Americans Shrug Off Income Inequality
• Related: The Politics of Income Inequality

[Dec 16, 2015] Cornering Russia, Risking World War III

Notable quotes:

"... "The chance for a durable Washington-Moscow strategic partnership was lost in the 1990 after the Soviet Union ended. Actually it began to be lost earlier, because it was [President Ronald] Reagan and [Soviet leader Mikhail] Gorbachev who gave us the opportunity for a strategic partnership between 1985-89. ..."

"... "And it certainly ended under the Clinton Administration, and it didn't end in Moscow. It ended in Washington - it was squandered and lost in Washington. And it was lost so badly that today, and for at least the last several years (and I would argue since the Georgian war in 2008), we have literally been in a new Cold War with Russia. ..."

"... "TODAY THERE ARE NO RED LINES. One of the things that Putin and his predecessor President Medvedev keep saying to Washington is: You are crossing our Red Lines! And Washington said, and continues to say, 'You don't have any red lines. We have red lines and we can have all the bases we want around your borders, but you can't have bases in Canada or Mexico. Your red lines don't exist.' This clearly illustrates that today there are no mutual rules of conduct. ..."

"... "Another important point: Today there is absolutely no organized anti-Cold War or Pro-Detente political force or movement in the United States at all –– not in our political parties, not in the White House, not in the State Department, not in the mainstream media, not in the universities or the think tanks. … None of this exists today. … ..."

"... In practice, President Assad's imposed ouster precisely will empower ISIS, rather than implode it, and the consequences will ripple across the Middle East – and beyond. ..."

"... Indeed, ISIS and the other Caliphate forces have very clear human motivations and clearly articulated political objectives, and none of these is in any way consistent with the type of Syrian State that America says it wants for Syria. This precisely reflects the danger of becoming hostage to a certain narrative, rather than being willing to examine the prevailing conceptual framework more critically. ..."

"... unfortunately, today's reports seem to indicate that the White House and State Department are thinking primarily how to counter Russia's actions in Syria. They are worried, it was reported, that Russia is diminishing America's leadership in the world. ..."

"... Washington's disinclination to permit Russia any enhancement to its standing in Europe, or in the non-West, through its initiative strategically to defeat Wahhabist jihadism in Syria, is not only to play with fire in the Middle East. It is playing with a fire of even greater danger: to do both at the same time seems extraordinarily reckless. ..."

"... As Europe becomes accomplice in raising the various pressures on Russia in Syria – economically through sanctions and other financial measures , in Ukraine and Crimea, and in beckoning Montenegro, Georgia and the Baltic towards NATO – we should perhaps contemplate the paradox that Russia's determination to try to avoid war is leading to war. ..."

"... Russia's call to co-operate with Western states against the scourge of ISIS; its low-key and carefully crafted responses to such provocations as the ambush of its SU-24 bomber in Syria; and President Putin's calm rhetoric, are all being used by Washington and London to paint Russia as a "paper tiger," whom no one needs fear. ..."

"... In short, Russia is being offered only the binary choice: to acquiesce to the "benevolent" hegemon, or to prepare for war. ..."

Consortiumnews

Official Washington is awash with tough talk about Russia and the need to punish President Putin for his role in Ukraine and Syria. But this bravado ignores Russia's genuine national interests, its "red lines," and the risk that "tough-guy-ism" can lead to nuclear war, as Alastair Crooke explains.

We all know the narrative in which we (the West) are seized. It is the narrative of the Cold War: America versus the "Evil Empire." And, as Professor Ira Chernus has written, since we are "human" and somehow they (the USSR or, now, ISIS) plainly are not, we must be their polar opposite in every way.

"If they are absolute evil, we must be the absolute opposite. It's the old apocalyptic tale: God's people versus Satan's. It ensures that we never have to admit to any meaningful connection with the enemy." It is the basis to America's and Europe's claim to exceptionalism and leadership.

And "buried in the assumption that the enemy is not in any sense human like us, is [an] absolution for whatever hand we may have had in sparking or contributing to evil's rise and spread. How could we have fertilized the soil of absolute evil or bear any responsibility for its successes? It's a basic postulate of wars against evil: God's people must be innocent," (and that the evil cannot be mediated, for how can one mediate with evil).

Westerners may generally think ourselves to be rationalist and (mostly) secular, but Christian modes of conceptualizing the world still permeate contemporary foreign policy.

It is this Cold War narrative of the Reagan era, with its correlates that America simply stared down the Soviet Empire through military and – as importantly – financial "pressures," whilst making no concessions to the enemy.

What is sometimes forgotten, is how the Bush neo-cons gave their "spin" to this narrative for the Middle East by casting Arab national secularists and Ba'athists as the offspring of "Satan": David Wurmser was advocating in 1996, "expediting the chaotic collapse" of secular-Arab nationalism in general, and Baathism in particular. He concurred with King Hussein of Jordan that "the phenomenon of Baathism" was, from the very beginning, "an agent of foreign, namely Soviet policy."

Moreover, apart from being agents of socialism, these states opposed Israel, too. So, on the principle that if these were the enemy, then my enemy's enemy (the kings, Emirs and monarchs of the Middle East) became the Bush neo-cons friends. And they remain such today – however much their interests now diverge from those of the U.S.

The problem, as Professor Steve Cohen, the foremost Russia scholar in the U.S., laments, is that it is this narrative which has precluded America from ever concluding any real ability to find a mutually acceptable modus vivendi with Russia – which it sorely needs, if it is ever seriously to tackle the phenomenon of Wahhabist jihadism (or resolve the Syrian conflict).

What is more, the "Cold War narrative" simply does not reflect history, but rather the narrative effaces history: It looses for us the ability to really understand the demonized "calous tyrant" – be it (Russian) President Vladimir Putin or (Ba'athist) President Bashar al-Assad – because we simply ignore the actual history of how that state came to be what it is, and, our part in it becoming what it is.

Indeed the state, or its leaders, often are not what we think they are – at all. Cohen explains: "The chance for a durable Washington-Moscow strategic partnership was lost in the 1990 after the Soviet Union ended. Actually it began to be lost earlier, because it was [President Ronald] Reagan and [Soviet leader Mikhail] Gorbachev who gave us the opportunity for a strategic partnership between 1985-89.

"And it certainly ended under the Clinton Administration, and it didn't end in Moscow. It ended in Washington - it was squandered and lost in Washington. And it was lost so badly that today, and for at least the last several years (and I would argue since the Georgian war in 2008), we have literally been in a new Cold War with Russia.

"Many people in politics and in the media don't want to call it this, because if they admit, 'Yes, we are in a Cold War,' they would have to explain what they were doing during the past 20 years. So they instead say, 'No, it is not a Cold War.'

"Here is my next point. This new Cold War has all of the potential to be even more dangerous than the preceding 40-year Cold War, for several reasons. First of all, think about it. The epicentre of the earlier Cold War was in Berlin, not close to Russia. There was a vast buffer zone between Russia and the West in Eastern Europe.

"Today, the epicentre is in Ukraine, literally on Russia's borders. It was the Ukrainian conflict that set this off, and politically Ukraine remains a ticking time bomb. Today's confrontation is not only on Russia's borders, but it's in the heart of Russian-Ukrainian 'Slavic civilization.' This is a civil war as profound in some ways as was America's Civil War."

Cohen continued: "My next point: and still worse – You will remember that after the Cuban Missile Crisis, Washington and Moscow developed certain rules-of-mutual conduct. They saw how dangerously close they had come to a nuclear war, so they adopted "No-Nos,' whether they were encoded in treaties or in unofficial understandings. Each side knew where the other's red line was. Both sides tripped over them on occasion but immediately pulled back because there was a mutual understanding that there were red lines.

"TODAY THERE ARE NO RED LINES. One of the things that Putin and his predecessor President Medvedev keep saying to Washington is: You are crossing our Red Lines! And Washington said, and continues to say, 'You don't have any red lines. We have red lines and we can have all the bases we want around your borders, but you can't have bases in Canada or Mexico. Your red lines don't exist.' This clearly illustrates that today there are no mutual rules of conduct.

"Another important point: Today there is absolutely no organized anti-Cold War or Pro-Detente political force or movement in the United States at all –– not in our political parties, not in the White House, not in the State Department, not in the mainstream media, not in the universities or the think tanks. … None of this exists today. …

"My next point is a question: Who is responsible for this new Cold War? I don't ask this question because I want to point a finger at anyone. The position of the current American political media establishment is that this new Cold War is all Putin's fault – all of it, everything. We in America didn't do anything wrong. At every stage, we were virtuous and wise and Putin was aggressive and a bad man. And therefore, what's to rethink? Putin has to do all of the rethinking, not us."

These two narratives, the Cold War narrative, and the neocons' subsequent "spin" on it: i.e. Bill Kristol's formulation (in 2002) that precisely because of its Cold War "victory," America could, and must, become the "benevolent global hegemon," guaranteeing and sustaining the new American-authored global order – an "omelette that cannot be made without breaking eggs" – converge and conflate in Syria, in the persons of President Assad and President Putin.

President Obama is no neocon, but he is constrained by the global hegemon legacy, which he must either sustain, or be labeled as the arch facilitator of America's decline. And the President is also surrounded by R2P ("responsibility-to-protect") proselytizers, such as Samantha Power, who seem to have convinced the President that "the tyrant" Assad's ouster would puncture and collapse the Wahhabist jihadist balloon, allowing "moderate" jihadists such as Ahrar al-Sham to finish off the deflated fragments of the punctured ISIS balloon.

In practice, President Assad's imposed ouster precisely will empower ISIS, rather than implode it, and the consequences will ripple across the Middle East – and beyond. President Obama privately may understand the nature and dangers of the Wahhabist cultural revolution, but seems to adhere to the conviction that everything will change if only President Assad steps down. The Gulf States said the same about Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in Iraq. He has gone (for now), but what changed? ISIS got stronger.

Of course if we think of ISIS as evil, for evil's sake, bent on mindless, whimsical slaughter, "what a foolish task it obviously [would be] to think about the enemy's actual motives. After all, to do so would be to treat them as humans, with human purposes arising out of history. It would smack of sympathy for the devil. Of course," Professor Chernus continues, "this means that, whatever we might think of their actions, we generally ignore a wealth of evidence that the Islamic State's fighters couldn't be more human or have more comprehensible motivations."

Indeed, ISIS and the other Caliphate forces have very clear human motivations and clearly articulated political objectives, and none of these is in any way consistent with the type of Syrian State that America says it wants for Syria. This precisely reflects the danger of becoming hostage to a certain narrative, rather than being willing to examine the prevailing conceptual framework more critically.

America lies far away from Syria and the Middle East, and as Professor Stephen Cohen notes, "unfortunately, today's reports seem to indicate that the White House and State Department are thinking primarily how to counter Russia's actions in Syria. They are worried, it was reported, that Russia is diminishing America's leadership in the world."

It is a meme of perpetual national insecurity, of perpetual fears about America's standing and of challenges to its standing, Professor Chernus suggests.

But Europe is not "far away"; it lies on Syria's doorstep. It is also neighbor to Russia. And in this connection, it is worth pondering Professor Cohen's last point: Washington's disinclination to permit Russia any enhancement to its standing in Europe, or in the non-West, through its initiative strategically to defeat Wahhabist jihadism in Syria, is not only to play with fire in the Middle East. It is playing with a fire of even greater danger: to do both at the same time seems extraordinarily reckless.

Cohen again:

"The false idea [has taken root] that the nuclear threat ended with the Soviet Union: In fact, the threat became more diverse and difficult. This is something the political elite forgot. It was another disservice of the Clinton Administration (and to a certain extent the first President Bush in his re-election campaign) saying that the nuclear dangers of the preceding Cold War era no longer existed after 1991. The reality is that the threat grew, whether by inattention or accident, and is now more dangerous than ever."

As Europe becomes accomplice in raising the various pressures on Russia in Syria – economically through sanctions and other financial measures, in Ukraine and Crimea, and in beckoning Montenegro, Georgia and the Baltic towards NATO – we should perhaps contemplate the paradox that Russia's determination to try to avoid war is leading to war.

Russia's call to co-operate with Western states against the scourge of ISIS; its low-key and carefully crafted responses to such provocations as the ambush of its SU-24 bomber in Syria; and President Putin's calm rhetoric, are all being used by Washington and London to paint Russia as a "paper tiger," whom no one needs fear.

In short, Russia is being offered only the binary choice: to acquiesce to the "benevolent" hegemon, or to prepare for war.

Alastair Crooke is a British diplomat who was a senior figure in British intelligence and in European Union diplomacy. He is the founder and director of the Conflicts Forum, which advocates for engagement between political Islam and the West. [This article also appeared at the Conflicts Forum's Web site and is republished with permission.]

[Dec 16, 2015] Congress just revived the surveillance state in the name of cybersecurity

Notable quotes:

"... Whistleblower: "Every Time There Is a Terrorist Attack, What We Really Need to Do Is Demand that They CUT the Budgets of All the Intelligence Agencies" - William Binney ..."

Dec 16, 2015 | The Guardian

Stumphole 16 Dec 2015 17:44

Use a VPN and Start Page as a search engine. Nothing is saved from your search.

Fgt 4URIGHTS -> lefthalfback2 16 Dec 2015 19:44

Only the brain dead idiots who are deceived and under collective Stockholm syndrome are fine with it. Yeah, all the illegal surveillance in the world didn't stop the San Bernadinos attack. Also, let's not forget the treason and terrorism being conducted against innocent Americans (Cointelpro/Gangstalking) and hidden from the American people while their asleep to the crimes happening in secret all around them. Yeah for a fascist, totalitarian police state, isn't it cool?? I feel so safe knowing my criminal government is there to protect me because they love me so much.

Whistleblower: "Every Time There Is a Terrorist Attack, What We Really Need to Do Is Demand that They CUT the Budgets of All the Intelligence Agencies" - William Binney

sand44 16 Dec 2015 18:26

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
-Benjamin Franklin 1755

How far has the standard of American politicians managed to fall?

AvZweeden 16 Dec 2015 14:53

Edward Snowden might as well not have blown any whistle, and saved himself a lot of trouble.
Most Americans think America is a democracy, but it is really an oligarchy in disguise. Probably always was. I read this earlier this year:
https://theintercept.com/2015/07/30/jimmy-carter-u-s-oligarchy-unlimited-political-bribery/

[Dec 16, 2015] Big Banks Caught Using Credit Default Swaps To Destroy Nations

Notable quotes:

"... when the Big Banks were caught and convicted of conspiring to manipulate the $500 trillion, LIBOR debt market ..."

"... when the Big Banks were caught and convicted of conspiring to launder trillions for the global drug cartels and "terrorist" entities, despite the supposed "wars" the U.S. claims to be fighting against drugs and terrorism ..."

"... The Vampire Squid Firmly Attached To The Face Of Humanity ..."

"... As far as I can gather, the World Bank and the IMF are apart of the very same Cartel that own/control the Central Banks. ..."

Dec 16, 2015 | Zero Hedge

Then we have the confessions of the criminals. A full one-quarter of Wall Street's and London's senior banking executives freely admit that crime is a way of life in their industry -- organized crime. Even in our justice system (or what remains of it), once armed with confessions, the principle of "innocent until proven guilty" no longer applies – the guilt is conceded.

The Big Banks manipulate credit default swaps to perpetrate economic terrorism against other nations in the world, where they literally destroy the economies of those victim-nations. It used to be a theory, but now the proof is finally emerging. You heard it here first.

LawsofPhysics

So what? Has any of the bank management/leaders gone to prison and lost all their wealth?

Ghordius

good article

"when the Big Banks were caught and convicted of conspiring to manipulate the $500 trillion, LIBOR debt market"

(Citicorp, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Barclays Plc and Royal Bank of Scotland Plc agreed to plead guilty to felony charges of conspiring to manipulate the price of U.S. dollars and euros)

"when the Big Banks were caught and convicted of conspiring to launder trillions for the global drug cartels and "terrorist" entities, despite the supposed "wars" the U.S. claims to be fighting against drugs and terrorism"

(Wells Fargo and JPMorgan)

and of course, The Vampire Squid Firmly Attached To The Face Of Humanity, Goldman Sachs, The Great Destroyer

commoncourtesy

Fancy-free please will you explain further.

As far as I can gather, the World Bank and the IMF are apart of the very same Cartel that own/control the Central Banks. All are controlled by the BIS who is run/controlled by pretty much all the same criminals on a merry-go-round. Throw in the Vatican, The Crown (BAR) Temple - The City of London, Washington DC, the Rothschild's et al, puppet Governments (and their military) on the same payroll and the world is pretty much screwed.

Who are the Board of Governors you are talking about?

Who is this coalition?

Please name names.

Can you vouch for their credibility or are they part of the corrupt cartel?

There is far TOO MUCH SECRECY going on.

If everything was more transparent, out of the shadows and open the world would not be in the state is in today.

Closed dealings, complexity and behind the curtain negotiations promote corruption.

How can justice be served when most public jurors would not be able to understand the fraudulent accounting practices being utilised?

What is the TRUTH?

andrewp111

A big load of bullshit. The US has its own currency and that currency is backed by military power. Greece is a subordinate vassal state of the EU. There is no comparison between the two.

[Dec 15, 2015] Noahpinion Academic B.S. as artificial barriers to entry

Notable quotes:

"... And of course, some folks accuse the economics profession of being a front for laissez-faire ideology. ..."

"... Or an entire field, which labored mightily to understand why they missed the second worse crisis in 80 years, only to discover it was for the same reason they missed the worst crisis 80 years ago. ..."

"... It is that economics matter and the nonsense that dominates the discourse, and therefore policy, affects everyone's life. ..."

"... So console yourself that as bad of writers most economist are, their obscurantism is couched in equations so it's harder for the unschooled to ridicule heir papers. ..."

"... A cynical advantage to the increased use or mathematics and mathiness is that the economics field gets to use university math departments to thin the herd just like the engineering field does. Better still, the filter imposed by requiring calculus, statistics and differential equations is not always anticipated: while prospective engineers take AP Calculus and end up in a class where they already know half the material, prospective economists enter Calculus I and flunk out. ..."

"... General Equilibrium, Rational Expectations, Microfoundations, The parculiar definitions of "Rationality" and "Efficiency", Utility Optimization, etc. are all very ideologically driven, and if you do not conform to these standards, you are not accepted within the discipline. I've been told just how completely unreadable Econ papers are, not even talking about the math component, thanks to all of the Jargon. ..."

noahpinionblog.blogspot.com

Paul Romer complains of "mathiness" in macroeconomics. Paul Pfleiderer talks about "chameleon" models. Ricardo Caballero says macroeconomists encourage the "pretense of knowledge". Everywhere, people complain about economists' fetish for pointless model-making.

And of course, some folks accuse the economics profession of being a front for laissez-faire ideology.

...A commenter points out that, as usual, Feynman did this snark way before I did.

Jammer812 10:00 PM

Does it really matter if its obscurantism or tendentious cant that a certain type of of economist engages in (cough, neo Fisherism, cough), and then declare victory, when another prominent economist spend 70 pages to find out that if everyone can do algebra in their heads, it might, just might possibly be true. So lets assume a can opener.. sorry I mean that people can, when experience teaches us that most people can't calculate a 20% tip.

Or on the other side, we have the economist who knows that because they are now accounting for the financial sector their DSGE model is just going to nail it.

Or how about a Noble committee that gives a prize to one economist, whose work is disproved by another economist who shared the prize.

Or an entire field, which labored mightily to understand why they missed the second worse crisis in 80 years, only to discover it was for the same reason they missed the worst crisis 80 years ago.

The difference between critical urban theory, or litcrit, or pomo philosophy or popomo art theory and economics isn't that it is easier for people to make fun . It is that economics matter and the nonsense that dominates the discourse, and therefore policy, affects everyone's life.

So console yourself that as bad of writers most economist are, their obscurantism is couched in equations so it's harder for the unschooled to ridicule heir papers.

Anonymous 1:56 PM

Presumably, no one here would expect a humanities PhD to determine whether an economic theory paper is accurate or useful. Why should the reverse be true?

There may well be advantages to this "obscure" language, in the same way that Bourbaki-esque notation and abstraction is useful in economics. This is communication between experts; the notion that you should be able to understand it most likely reflects a disrespect for the given field itself.

I don't envy any theorist whose primary tool of communication is verbal, but if I were put in that position, you may well expect a complex vocabulary to accompany complex ideas (or even simple ideas, rigorously stated). There may well be problems in the humanities, but we're not qualified to recognize them.

Graham Peterson 4:52 PM

Agree about cartels, but I don't think they're that schematic or conspiratorial. Professors across disciplines really do believe they are contributing to something beyond themselves, to knowledge or truth, and grabbing territory and raising salaries is just a means toward those altruistic ends.

Raising (or guaranteeing) salaries looks to me like an unintended consequence of what is proudly and loudly intended by economists and professors of humanities -- increasing the rigor of analysis. There is just about nobody who disagrees that increasing the rigor of analysis is a bad thing. But how do we do that? By opening up intellectual competition among disciplines, political ideologies, etc., or by constructing evermore elaborate apprentice programs designed to hone already-existing intellectual traditions *within* disciplines, ideologies, etc.?

I can't really see any qualitative difference between increasing the complexity of grammar using any symbolic system, bourbakian notation in mathematics or latinate phrases in English. What's most dangerous for economics is its disregard for empirical observation outside of econometrics. Econometrics, just like theory itself, becomes a theoretical exercise and is subject to all of the same self referential signaling games as high theory is.

Admiring each other's screw drivers isn't any more empirical than admiring each other's theories of how screws secure materials. The point is to turn some screws.

Yamaneko 11:37 PM

A cynical advantage to the increased use or mathematics and mathiness is that the economics field gets to use university math departments to thin the herd just like the engineering field does. Better still, the filter imposed by requiring calculus, statistics and differential equations is not always anticipated: while prospective engineers take AP Calculus and end up in a class where they already know half the material, prospective economists enter Calculus I and flunk out.

... ... ...

Øystein 6:07 PM

You might be interested to learn that the philosopher Jon Elster has drawn an analogy between "hard and soft obscurantism" (econ and critical theory).

Anonymous 9:38 AM

He devotes the last chapter of his book Explaining Social Behavior to this distinction. The whole book is very much worth a read: http://www.amazon.com/Explaining-Social-Behavior-Bolts-Sciences/dp/0521777445

Kain 7:12 PM

I generally agree with your point, except the part where you don't think of Economics as ideologically driven.

http://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/128894764282/what-is-indoctrination-and-how-is-it-different

"What is indoctrination and how is it different from regular instruction? Indoctrination, suggests Christina Hoff Summers, is characterized by three features, the major conclusions are assumed beforehand, rather than being open to question in the classroom; the conclusions are presented as part of a "unified set of beliefs" that form a comprehensive worldview; and the system is "closed," committed to interpreting all new data in the light of the theory being affirmed.
Whether this account gives us sufficient conditions for indoctrination, and whether, so defined, all indoctrination is bad college pedagogy, may certainly be debated. According to these criteria, for example, all but the most philosophical and adventurous courses in neoclassical economics will count as indoctrination, since undergraduate students certainly are taught the major conclusions of that field as established truths which they are not to criticize from the perspective of any other theory or worldview; they are taught that these truths form a unitary way of seeing the world; and, especially where microeconomics is concerned, the data of human behavior are presented as seen through the lens of that theory. It is probably good that these conditions obtain at the undergraduate level, where one cannot simultaneously learn the ropes and criticize them–although one might hope that the undergraduate will pick up in other courses, for example courses in moral philosophy, the theoretical apparatus needed to raise critical questions about these foundations."

General Equilibrium, Rational Expectations, Microfoundations, The parculiar definitions of "Rationality" and "Efficiency", Utility Optimization, etc. are all very ideologically driven, and if you do not conform to these standards, you are not accepted within the discipline. I've been told just how completely unreadable Econ papers are, not even talking about the math component, thanks to all of the Jargon.

Might be less politically-motivated, but it doesn't necessarily require a particular political viewpoint to be ideologically-motivated.

Dulimbai 7:48 PM

Yo do understand that this is exactly the point? Thomas Kuhn, which knew something about science, basically said that science requires barriers to entry to get amateurs out.

A good explanation can be found here http://lesswrong.com/lw/lr/evaporative_cooling_of_group_beliefs/

Ghyl Tarvoke 8:29 PM

I think here you are giving too much importance to the gatekeeping/economic aspect of the most vacuous outpourings of Critical Theory. My experience as a history MA is that such academics give so little thought to economics and their economic situation that such thoughts rarely enter their minds. However, it probably has had the effect of reducing the intellectual diversity of many subjects, which in the humanities at least is a major shame and a problem.

My theory is more straightforward and it's simple. Don't underestimate people's, even academics (perhaps especially academics), intellectual laziness and the desire to dress up their priors in language that looks 'intellectual' thus making your priors look smart and those who don't share your priors not so smart. In short the popularity of most of Critical Theory is due to the lazy man's guide to enlightenment, making something look intellectually difficult while not really challenging people at all. After all, it is not as if many of the core beliefs of large parts of critical theory once you remove the verbiage are not widespread among certain elements of society. And those elements are massively over represented among people liking to do a BA in literature or anthropology. Why are such beliefs so popular? Well, that's a different and difficult question.

However, I do feel liking pointing out, as others have already alluded to, critical theory and postmodernism have had their day. It peaked in the 90s and belongs to the era of Seinfeld, Grunge, and Triangulation. Now there is a trend towards another ideology, bland progressivism and the fear of giving anything that looks like a controversial opinion. This, at least, is notable in History (I can't speak for literature, in Anthropology pomo is more prevalent but is certainly declining). Some have justified this as 'empiricism', and perhaps it is a needed reaction to what went before, but it is frequently driven by the same intellectual forces I've described above. The difference between Generation Y and the Boomers perhaps. Either way, the gatekeeping aspect is barely part of it.

Tom Warner 2:00 PM

Seems to me anon you are agreeing with the complaint about academic obscurantism: it's the use of an artificial dialect, which only practitioners would invest in learning how to read, to create a false impression of sophistication. The only oddity is you seem inexplicably proud of your fluency in said dialect.

Anonymous 7:55 PM

"Mathematical theory, of the type economists do, is hard to do..."

Such barriers to entry should be erected so as to keep out the math and physics nerds that have destroyed economics.

[Dec 14, 2015] Barack Obama warns leaders of Islamic State in speech: 'you are next'

Notable quotes:

"... There is no "far left" in Europe any more. Since the Merkels, Hollandes, Blairs and Rasmussens of this world were planted in prominent positions because of their excruciatingly statusquo orientation, even the moderate "left" has practically ceased to exist. We now have rabid right or moderately rabid right to choose from, except for a few notable exceptions. ..."

"... Obama does not have a clue, he has lost the plot. He is backing Saudi Arabia who are the biggest instigators of terrorism in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia is announcing a 34-state military alliance to fight terrorism. ..."

"... Seems to me that IS was created, either accidentally or deliberately, by the US and its success has gone beyond the US administrations worst nightmare? When the US refuses slam Turkey for it's recent shoot-down of the Russian plane, and do anything to support Iraq in getting rid of unwanted Turkish military near Mosul, within Iraq and near the IS capital, nor wanting to know about Turkish involvement supplying Sarin gas agents to IS, or stopping Turkey supplying food and arms to IS, and receiving stolen Syrian and Iraqi oil as payment, nor preventing Turkey from being the transit centre and R & R centre for IS recruits, then maybe its time to assume that IS is the deliberate brainchild of the US, and that Turkey is playing to the US tune and protection, for promises of territory in a future carve up of Iraq and or Syria. ..."

"... Seems that ISIL, ISIS, IS and Daesh are all names invented by the US to spread the narrative through the media. They all mean US proxy army to me. Just my opinion. ..."

"... Perhaps that is because ISIS doesn't actually occupy "territory" as such. As Mr. Knight says, they are an ideology, an idea. An idea, unfortunately in this case, doesn't live in houses in prescribed areas any more than Republicanism lives in Chicago. The way forward has to involve NOT creating another 10,000 new mortal enemies in the Middle East every day. Even if only twelve innocent people had died in Iraq in 2003, instead of the hundreds of thousands who actually did, one could understand very large groups of people related to the victims cursing the US for its irresponsible meddling. ..."

"... Incredibly ignorant of the president. The US lives in sin with the Saudis. As long as the Saudis keep importing Wahhabism out of their country to others, the problem will exist. ..."

"... We bombed the Taliban. We bombed Al Qaeda. Neither lead to anything more than establishing the rise of ISIS in the destabilised areas we had bombed. ..."

"... The biggest contribution America can make to getting rid of Isis is to "persuade" its friends and allies - Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey mainly - to turn off the tap of finance, munitions and logistics to Isis, Al Qaeda in Syria (Al Nusra) and its allies like Ahrar Al Sham. No American ground troops needed; they would be counter-productive. ..."

"... The secular Syrian government, with women in its ranks, is fighting for its life against a most ruthless and abominable enemy: fanatical jihadist mercenaries financed by an execrable mediaeval tyranny, Saudi Barbaria. This is the enemy of all we stand for, the enemy that perpetrated 9/11 and 7/7 and their latest clone that bombed Paris concert-goers and Russian holiday-makers. They are paid and trained by Riyadh. And armed to the teeth with modern American weapons, passed to them by the newest demagogue, Turkey's Erdoğan. ..."

"... The sworn enemy of all these head-chopping bigots is Assad's secular republic of Syria because it challenges the ideological dogmatism of Sharia Law. This law is as rigid as Hitler's Nazism or Stalin's communism. ..."

"... I wonder if because 'a few weeks' was finally taken to supposedly destroy this critical infrastructure - if the 'evasive' ISIL oil business - along with revenues - will suffer? I also wonder why the air campaign hasn't been extended to include the purchasers of ISIL's oil supplies - at sea and in their home countries. ..."

"... Isis must ultimately be defeated by Muslim forces, or we'll be manufacturing radical faster than we can kill them. ..."

"... The Muslims seem to be manufacturing radicals quickly enough without any help from us. ..."

"... What have they been doing for the last two years then? No attacks on ISIS trucks transporting oil, no sanctions on countries that have been buying that oil. We only get some action now that Russia has been attacking ISIS in Syria and of course there is minimal reporting of the successes of the Russians in Western media. As far as Libya is concerned, there are very ominous signs that ISIS is moving to set up headquarters in that country, a country a lot closer to Europe than Syria or Iraq are. There is also the problem that the Russians will not be involved in Libya, unlike Syria, they do not have a functioning government to ask them in. Libya is the nightmare created by NATO and the US, they will have to take full responsibility for their dreadful actions there and fight the barbarians they created, no sitting back and allowing them to flourish this time. ..."

"... What a farce, who does Obama think he's kidding? If the US was serious about ISIS it would have been finished off a year ago, now that Russia has called the US's bluff they now have to pretend to step up to the plate. Pathetic. ..."

"... More drivel from the counterfeit president. His allies in the middle east are disgusting butchers. Take Turkey: it is a great shame for Turkey that 32 journalists are imprisoned in the 21st century. Some were arrested on Nov. 26 after being charged in May with espionage, revealing confidential documents and membership in a terrorist organization. The charges are related to a report published by a leading newspaper claiming weapons-loaded trucks that were discovered in January 2014 en route to Syria actually belonged to the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) and had been sent to provide support to rebel groups. ..."

The Guardian

ricohflex 14 Dec 2015 22:26

Talk big but no action. Hot air. Everybody knows now.
After the Syria red line fiasco, the whole world knows US president makes empty promises.
In the next TV broadcast, he will give excuses why he cannot do it. Then he will repeat "No Boots On The Ground". Then the US president will blame Congress for not giving him permission to do the most basic things.
...
Now in end-2015 Obama has only ONE thing on his mind.
He wants to preserve the legacy of his presidency.
He does not want to do anything to risk the presidency being blamed.
He does not want to take any mis-step.
It is a Zero Risk environment in the White House now.
He dares not even reveal the truth on what country's air space the SU-24 was flying in, when it was shot down.
It will just be TALK from now on until the next president takes over in 2016.

wardropper -> LupusCanis 14 Dec 2015 22:21

There is no "far left" in Europe any more. Since the Merkels, Hollandes, Blairs and Rasmussens of this world were planted in prominent positions because of their excruciatingly statusquo orientation, even the moderate "left" has practically ceased to exist. We now have rabid right or moderately rabid right to choose from, except for a few notable exceptions.

GerdT 14 Dec 2015 22:21

Looking out the window I can see the hills that mark the border to Cambodia and not far away Vietnam. I still remember the speeches given during the Vietnam War and how close victory was. The bombs dropped on these countries including North Vietnam during the war exceeded what was dropped during WWII in the Atlantic/European and the Pacific theater of war. Still, it was a US helicopter that left from the American Embassy in Saigon that concluded that war, with the US going home and into denial about the outcome of that war.

The apocalypse foreseen by the prophets of doomsday painting a picture of an Asian continent that would turn into a communist infested threat to human kind didn't happen.

I have been recently in Vietnam and Cambodia and seen that people get on with their lives and economies that try to improve for the coming ASEAN community. Without help from western countries they have started to rebuild what was left of their countries after the champion of democracy had left. As the peanut farmer and former President Jimmy Carter said, the destruction was mutual and hence Vietnam didn't deserve any compensation for the unbelievable collateral damage caused by US intervention in this country. If the US was really trying to protect democracy or as Bill Clinton described it protecting National Security, which he defined as US business interests and given the US a right to interfere in any country that tries to threaten them, is a debatable point.

During the following decades the US again would raise terror and war in countries to ensure that the branding of democracy they preferred would be exported. South Vietnam hadn't been a democracy when the US decided to send troops across and the political leaders of that country came from the military, granting themselves the titles of president and minister, but holding the country in the same grip as in the North the communist did. From South America to the Middle East the US supported groups and leaders that were favorable to US business interests. The Taliban were a useful tool to drive out the Soviet Union only to become a haven for Bin Laden and his followers. Iraq has turned into a political and humanitarian nightmare and ISIL that was as a startup supplied with weapons and training by the US to drive out Assad from Syria is now the greatest threat to world peace according to the US.

We only have to take a look at the close friends and allies of the US in the Middle East and South America to understand how they spell democracy and human rights. Maybe it is time to listen to the millions of people with families that want to live in peace and are tired of foreign interference in their countries. Instead of supplying arms and support to people that favor the western or eastern political view, we should start to invest and rebuild these countries to ensure they can become equal and respected partners within the global community.

Phil Atkinson 14 Dec 2015 22:18

What a joke! Ashton Carter to visit the Middle East to jockey along the Arab states - the same people that the USA supplies weapons to, that end up with terrorists. Or Turkey, that erstwhile NATO member which has been stealing Syrian oil and selling it to Israel and speaking of Israel, that country still illegally occupying the Golan Heights in Syria and aiding and abetting Al-Nusra Front fighters and bombing inside Syria.

Ashton Carter is a dangerous fool, who believes his own government's propaganda. He should be kept at home.

SomersetApples 14 Dec 2015 22:08

Obama does not have a clue, he has lost the plot. He is backing Saudi Arabia who are the biggest instigators of terrorism in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia is announcing a 34-state military alliance to fight terrorism.

Informed17 14 Dec 2015 22:08

If ISIS does not do what Obama says, US-led coalition of 60+ countries will destroy another pair of Islamist excavators. I am sure ISIS leaders are scared shitless.

RocketSurgeon 14 Dec 2015 22:03

Seems to me that IS was created, either accidentally or deliberately, by the US and its success has gone beyond the US administrations worst nightmare?
When the US refuses slam Turkey for it's recent shoot-down of the Russian plane, and do anything to support Iraq in getting rid of unwanted Turkish military near Mosul, within Iraq and near the IS capital, nor wanting to know about Turkish involvement supplying Sarin gas agents to IS, or stopping Turkey supplying food and arms to IS, and receiving stolen Syrian and Iraqi oil as payment, nor preventing Turkey from being the transit centre and R & R centre for IS recruits, then maybe its time to assume that IS is the deliberate brainchild of the US, and that Turkey is playing to the US tune and protection, for promises of territory in a future carve up of Iraq and or Syria.

Seems that ISIL, ISIS, IS and Daesh are all names invented by the US to spread the narrative through the media. They all mean US proxy army to me.
Just my opinion.

readerofgrauniad -> Stephen_Sean 14 Dec 2015 22:01

But who are the good boys in this? To end the war, Asad is probably the best option, and compared to IS he looks like a saint.

wardropper -> Lech1980 14 Dec 2015 21:59

Perhaps that is because ISIS doesn't actually occupy "territory" as such. As Mr. Knight says, they are an ideology, an idea. An idea, unfortunately in this case, doesn't live in houses in prescribed areas any more than Republicanism lives in Chicago. The way forward has to involve NOT creating another 10,000 new mortal enemies in the Middle East every day. Even if only twelve innocent people had died in Iraq in 2003, instead of the hundreds of thousands who actually did, one could understand very large groups of people related to the victims cursing the US for its irresponsible meddling. I would imagine our enemies over there number about 50 million by now, and nobody in human history has been able to survive having that many enemies...

Thomas Hancock 14 Dec 2015 21:55

Incredibly ignorant of the president. The US lives in sin with the Saudis. As long as the Saudis keep importing Wahhabism out of their country to others, the problem will exist. The thing you learn from history is that no one learns anything from history. Maybe someone can get a time machine and go back to kill Ho Chi Minh, and Vietnam will be a capitalist paradise. This is the same strategy that helped create ISIS in the first place.

Bernard Knight 14 Dec 2015 21:55

We bombed the Taliban. We bombed Al Qaeda. Neither lead to anything more than establishing the rise of ISIS in the destabilised areas we had bombed. What is the point?

1ClearSense -> Stephen_Sean 14 Dec 2015 21:48

Is that right? You mean when they hit 1050 oil tanker trucks, that's nothing? US followed up hitting 300. They stopped oil revenues for ISIS, and reduced their revenues by 50 %. The number of sorties they have run on ISIS has been considerably more than US. They have also hit other terrorists to secure the rear, so Syrian troops can move on ISIS. You guys are brainwashed.

Budovski Ximples -> AaronClausen 14 Dec 2015 21:42

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/syria-crisis-turkey-and-saudi-arabia-shock-western-countries-by-supporting-anti-assad-jihadists-10242747.html

pierotg LupusCanis 14 Dec 2015 21:42

"the US has killed 23,000 ISIL members in airstrikes"

Who told you? Disney Channel? Anyone can lie to you as long as you are behind a TV screen. It's quite an easy task (having sufficient intelligence resources and money of course)... It's incredibly obvious it would be sufficient hitting the financing of those mercenaries or not to buy the oil they are selling. You know all that "intelligence resources, analysts, linguists, SIGINT experts...". If only the US government wanted really. And yet what is ISIS? Quite a volatile entity... looks like franchising terror... IS/ISIS/ISIL/Daesh will "desappear" when it won't be useful anymore. And they will only find a new name whenever a new proxy ground army should be required.

"Kremlinbot"? The cold war revamping has seduced you. Let me rimand you this facts:

• In 2014 the USA has spent in its military expenditure more than 600 Bn $.
• Russia is around 80.
• It's been estimated that after WWII the USA caused the death of about 30 million people all over the planet (challenging Stalin scores).

You'll find the facts... Not on Disnet Channel though.

After the dissolution of USSR it was clear that it was not "the enemy" anymore. Yet the Ministry of Defence (and its industry) need powerful and fearsome enemies!
Et voilà, despite what the Ministry fo Truth says, after 20 years of tranquillity it's Russia getting sourranded by military bases along its borders, losing Ukraine (and possibly its strategic Crimea) and now directly challenged in Syria (where they have military bases). Doesn't Russia have the right to "defend" itself and have allies? They have a Ministry of Defense too...

What if Russia had intervened to topple king Salman of Suadi Arabia because of him being a fearsome dictator? Yet no one did nothing when the "arab spring" was brutally repressed in the region (with the help of the USA).

It's quite hard not to admit the USA has been quite agressive and active ... So whose to blame for this warfare and new cold war tensions? You might be more biased and less Whitehousebot.

PS
Of course I'm not russian.

Bernard Knight 14 Dec 2015 21:40

At it's core ISIS, ISL, DEASH, call them what you will, are a murderous death cult using jihad and the establishment of a califate as their raison d'etre. They are an ideology, an idea. No amounts of bombing or taking territory will annihilate that idea. Perhaps it should be the Islamic world that tackles this threat, starting with first and foremost, our foremost arms purchasers, Saudi Arabia.

Shatford Shatford 14 Dec 2015 21:34

Asked if Obama had consciously chosen to make his rhetoric more aggressive for public benefit, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said when the president meets the national security council, "he is not looking at public opinion polls".

Obvious bullshit. It's this kind of Hilary Clinton-like waffling rhetoric and pandering to opinion polls is what is driving the popularity of Donald Trump's campaign.

Nolan Harding 14 Dec 2015 21:25

The Islamic state is surrounded by hostile forces, they are under siege so how are they getting ammunition, refined gasoline, food, internet service and all thier Toyota trucks. Obviously the forces surrounding them are not that hostile. A real siege would have seen them starving to death years ago. Like in Leningrad...now THAT was a siege and REAL war, not this strategic game the deluded masses think is a ' war'.

JMWong 14 Dec 2015 21:24

Obama has missed the opportunity to announce that hw would the bunch of criminals consisting of Bush, Cheney, Blair, Rumsfeld, Allbright, McCain, Cameron, Hollande, etc. to the International Tribunal for trial for their crimes against humanity. They have murdered millions of people.

bunkusmystic -> burnel 14 Dec 2015 21:18

Have a look at the latest Isis videos they have all the latest American weapons ... How do you think they get them? Is it private citizens in Saudi who buy them or the government ... The Saudis want the Iraqi and Syrian oil fields and they are using this Isis fabrication to get them. If the coalition is so serious about fighting Isis how is it that thousands of oil tankers pass through turkey each day? With no one noticing??? It's only Russia who is taking real action

tjmars 14 Dec 2015 21:17

This is to draw the heat-seeker foreign press away from the Mad Turk Erdogan who is fake-begging the Russians to prove the accusations that Erdogan Jr is running "red-stained oil" to major buyers on the Turkish black market...
Ooops!...don't want to know who those 'terrorist supporting capitalists" are!...
Is this an example of 'laissez-faire" in Late Capitalism...a "bubble" for risk-taking investors?
Whew! Its a good thing "Soylent Green" was a fictional commodity in movies or the funeral homes would be void of any "dead meat" for ritual burials..
Thanlks to Capitalism, we will one day see the mythical "dog-eat-dog" aphorism come to light with "god-damned" good profits...
The western central bankers weren't 'standing behind the curtain" pulling the levers of power again were they?
Do a litmus test on their 'red tooth and claw' mentality...
Hey where did they go?
Obama made them disappear with his speech!

clashcr 14 Dec 2015 21:14

Hmm, not a word about Assad. Well US policy about radical Islam - take your pick there are nearly 20 groups in Syria - is about it being overt and not covert. So, they are pleased when radicals show their faces and establish territory because it attracts more radicals to leave the west to go there to be killed. The other result may be that the moderates like the Muslim Brotherhood who may seriously have been talking about a pan-Islamic Caliphate and Sharia law have seen their cause put back by decades.

JMWong -> sage10 14 Dec 2015 21:12

If the USA wants to fight ISIS, it must attack ISIS at its source, that is, the countries where the ISIS fighters originate. This means Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the USA itself, UK, France, etc. Bomb these countries and the sources of ISIS fighters will dry up.

sashasmirnoff 14 Dec 2015 21:09

I apologize for deviating slightly from this story, but I have a link to share concerning what would usually be considered a sensational story, but this paper has neglected to cover it. A Turkish Parliamentarian has come forward with documented proof that in 2013 Turkey supplied IS with the components to manufacture Sarin gas and facilitated their transport to the IS in Syria. I have no idea why the Guardian doesn't consider this to be newsworthy.

https://www.rt.com/news/325825-sarin-gas-syria-turkey/

sage10 14 Dec 2015 20:59

I still see nothing but a PR blitz here. The strategy has not changed. The claims of success are over-rated. ISIS still controls large swathes of territory; and more importantly, it has shown it can project power internationally...all the way to the US...through sleeper cells and lone wolf attacks. The only way to deal with such a pernicious organization is a full on-the-ground massive combined arms assault: armor, air power, and heavy infantry. It won't take a Desert Storm type campaign, as ISIS is no where near as large as Saddam's army; but it will take a real coordinated military campaign with boots-on-the-ground to seize and hold territory. No question about that. Obama won't commit to that type strategy, so it will be up to the next President to do so, as ISIS will still be around by then, given Obama's reliance solely on air power.

giorgio16 14 Dec 2015 20:59

...is Obama aware that Russia is already fighting isis,...and from the right side?... or he is pretending he is in charge now?
...Saudis are fighting shias in Yemen on one side, creating a humanitarian disaster no one wants to acknowledge, and Assad in Sirya on the other creating another disaster convenniently blamed on Assad by Obama and co...interesting times ahead...

TomGray 14 Dec 2015 20:43

Obama used the same decapitation tactic against Al Queda. Al Queda destabilized because of it and morphed into ISIS. There is no shortage of people who want to become leaders in any organization. Obama's tactics may hinder ISIS but they will not cause the organized violence that it currently represents to disappear. The players may change but the game remains the same.

Decapitation can only be part of an effective strategy and so far Obama has not demonstrated that he has the capability to draw together the other essential elements

ID4352889 -> DogsLivesMatter 14 Dec 2015 20:41

Saudi flew thousands of Jihadists out of Syria a while ago and sent them to Libya. It is well documented. The West did not interfere. Presumably for the same reasons they didn't interfere with the Turkey/Daesh oil scam.

DelOrtoyVerga 14 Dec 2015 20:35

Hurry up Obama before the Ruskies steal your thunder! or the few sparks that are left by now that is...
Mwahahaha...

I'm sure these special forces, these token "boots on the ground" you are sending will be exclusively focusing on ISIL and are not being sent to undermine the Syrian government or their allies, I repeat the special forces ARE NOT BEING SENT TO UNDERMINE THE SYRIAN GOVERNMENT OR THEIR ALLIES.

HowSicklySeemAll 14 Dec 2015 20:26

Why did the US wait until now to 'drop more bombs than ever before'?

Russian foreign minister recently stated that:

"We have noticed that the US-led coalition stepped up its fight against IS only after Russia dispatched a combat air group to Syria. The coalition efforts undertaken in Syria earlier could be described as odd, to say the least This brings to mind NATO's operations in Afghanistan We don't want the fight to be feigned."

DomesticExtremist 14 Dec 2015 20:13

Can we assume from this that the fix is in: Kilary has been selected for Pres and Obomber has to roll the pitch on her behalf so that she can hit the ground running?

"We came, we saw, they died. (insane cackle)."

Look out for some killer blow to be landed on the Donald soon.

Sualdam -> meewaan 14 Dec 2015 20:10

The biggest contribution America can make to getting rid of Isis is to "persuade" its friends and allies - Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey mainly - to turn off the tap of finance, munitions and logistics to Isis, Al Qaeda in Syria (Al Nusra) and its allies like Ahrar Al Sham. No American ground troops needed; they would be counter-productive.

MrJanuary 14 Dec 2015 19:55

Well done Russia for mobilizing the worlds second largest military force, the USA, in Syria against ISIS.

robertthebruce2014 -> MasonInNY 14 Dec 2015 19:48

We love Putin here in Europe, at least he defends European interests. The USA is only defending Saudi and Israeli interest. We are currently in the process of breaking up the NATO coalition. The USA can stick with Turkey, Israel, and the Saudis.

pierotg 14 Dec 2015 19:43

December 2015: "We are hitting Isil harder than ever" .

July 2015: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2NkjNvwuaU

!!! Look at the eys of that general behind, please! He was falling almost asleep and then ... frozen! Is it just my impression? That would be really hilarious if we weren't talking about war and crimes against humanity.

Please, stop lying this way.
This is far too much. This is alienating.

The USA and UK governments are loosing all that was left of their credibility and reliability in the last decade and the only strategy left seems to make the big lie bigger than ever. This is like shouting at the world "I can do whatever suits me and f**k the rest!"
Even their relationships with their EU partners have proved slick.

I've been listening to politicians speeches and interviews lately and found myself thinking: "That autocrat and ex KGB agent ruling Russia sounds much less hypocrite and far more competent". What if you could choose between Putin or Trump to represent your country (just as if they were sport pros you could hire for your team)?

This is far too much. This won't do any good and nuclear weapons can still destroy our planet in 30 minutes. Whoever is behind this mess what's going to profit then? This is obscene incompetence and fearsome irresponsibility.

In my teens Steve Stevens's Top Gun Theme got me goosebumps... On my Strat guitar there has been a Union Jack pickguard for 25 years... What shall I tell my son when he will ask me why I removed the original white one? I'm getting quite embarrassed.

Is it the End of the World as We know it? Yet I don't feel fine.

1ClearSense 14 Dec 2015 19:40

Yemen is the poorest Arab country with limited resources. The Saudis, along with a slew of other Arab regimes have been bombing the Yemeni military and Houthi militia who were clearing up Al Qaeda out of Yemen pretty good, for 9 months.

In the summer the Saudis and UAE sheiks decided to send ground forces to "liberate" Yemen. Other than taking some part of southern Yemen with the help of separatists and jihadis of all sort, they failed in their mission. A single attack on Saudi military caused dozens of Saudi and Emarati dead. The Emaratis decided on Colombian mercenaries, the Saudi paid Sudanese military to send troops. Yesterday the Yemenis killed a large number of these mercenaries (anywhere between 80 to 150) including the Saudi commander and another high official and a Emarati officer.

Southern Yemen, the "Saudi liberated" areas is being taken over by al Qaeda piece by piece, and also ISIS has become very active. The idea that these Arab regimes can be productive in anything to defeat jihadi terror is a pipe dream. It is all about public relations and having "Sunni Arabs" along to defeat "Sunni Arabs" jihadis. This is so completely miscalculation that will backfire. Saudis and their crew have no desire or ability to defeat the wahhabi terrorists. The time has come to see it as what it is, the only way to defeat the jihadi terrorists is teaming up with the people who are being successful, and that doesn't include the Arab tyrannies.

Panda Bear -> Steven Wallace 14 Dec 2015 19:33

Did your father know offices controlled by the \British at Suez were apparently given over to the Moslem Brotherhood? UK used Islamic extremists back then and US has continued the policy it appears.

I was recently reminded of Churchill's speech about the possibility of Germans invading Britain... "We'll fight them on the beeches" etc. Wonder if the Germans would have considered the British fighters terrorists if they had managed to occupy Britain?
Occupation by foreign forces is ok if it's our forces or our allies and our enemies cannot resist or they are designated as terrorists... National Sovereignty is disregarded whole sale by US/NATO and allies.

One rule for us, another for 'them'! Hypocrisy reigns supreme.

Steven Wallace -> Zara Thustra 14 Dec 2015 19:32

haha ok well thats too simplistic Mr Zarathustra . The issue with Islamic fundamentalism is that it uses a religion to kill innocents without targeting anyone of any real importance . The Koran has not changed like the New Testament but I really do not believe that modern day Muslims who pray would all wish to kill me because I am not a Muslim .

That scare mongering is simply a distraction ,as George Bush said " Who is this Bin Laden ?" Well I would have said " You know him George ,his family financed your oil business ,they are friends of your family ".

All Muslims are scary to us while the real issues are being ignored 24/7

The Bible is full of evil concepts ,why not consider ourselves in the West as evil Christians ?

Not me though ,I'm an atheist

LewisFriend -> Miramon 14 Dec 2015 19:32

Well Assad wasn't massacring people either till their was an uprising.. Yet in Syria people were a lot more free than Saudi.. They also don't have the CIA on the ground encouraging one. Be under no illusions the ruling Saudi clique are animals.

WatchEm 14 Dec 2015 19:30

Barack Obama warns leaders of Islamic State in speech: 'you are next'

Threats like that are enough to get my parrot squawking with laughter - forget any "terrorists" or anyone with a live brain cell.

Yet more tries to reassure a domestic audience, who unlike the majority of nations, apparently live in fear, and need convincing that the USG is doing something and "leading the way" in their declared "War on Terrorism". It's like having to tolerate listening to the banality of what purports to be US "news networks".

Unfortunately, after around 10,000 bombing runs and predictable time-wasting talk, the message is still not sinking in that the Grand Master Plan of 'leading the way' is a failure and reduced to hope that they can stop terrorism by 'taking out' some leadership. Yep, heard that one before. The USG 'defeated terrorism' by 'taking out' Al Queda leaders - a number of them 34+ times. Al Queda no longer exists - not.

Instead of 'leading from the rear' and expecting other nations to clean up the carnage and havoc left over by US adventures into the Middle East, perhaps the USG could find a few non-torturers, non rapists and no members of US death squads and clean the region up with their own trash collectors as 'boots on the ground'. Well... no harm in dreaming and fantasising it might work and "we can win, win, win" ...

So, bottom line, order more bombs with taxpayers funds Carter, and pretend you matter while the 'leader' continues the infantile rhetoric for US consumption, just as his predecessor did. May the US people and people in other victim nations be saved from US 'little men' - both 'generals' and politicians.

PS Try not to bomb innocent men, women and children on the ground during the bombing runs. They never deserved your slaughter, carnage, death squads and torture the last time around and don't need a US euphemism, "collateral damage", to justify their deaths. But of course, counting bodies is not a topic of conversation in the Rogue Regime of the West. It only matters if it is US men, women and children who are slaughtered while the US regime role play fighting for "democracy and freedom" by "leading from the rear".

Panda Bear -> MRModeratedModerate 14 Dec 2015 19:21

Some of them are very busy bombing Yemen to destruction and recruiting mercenaries in places such as Columbia to help! The situation for citizens in Yemen is dire, some areas described as on the verge of famine partly due to the embargo that is also imposed.

JMWong 14 Dec 2015 19:09

This speech shows the hypocrisy of the Americans. In fact, as it was made clear many times before, the real objective of the USA is to invade Syria, to destroy Syria and to murder as many Syrians as possible, including its President, Assad. The USA had the same objective with regards to Iraq and Lybia. Iraq was invaded and destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were murdered by the coalition of the willing led by the USA. The lives of tens of millions Iraqis have been destroyed. Its President, Saddam Hussein was murdered. In the case of Libya, the same coalition of the willing, led by the same USA, bombed Libya for six months. It was the greatest terrorist attack over the last ten years. It was six months of terror for millions of Libyans everyday for over six months. More than thirty thousand Libyans were murdered in this exceptional terror attack, including its President, Kaddafi. Now, the USA is leading the same coalition of the willing to murder hundreds of thousand Syrians. Assad must go, chant the USA and its f...king partners. We heard the same chant with regrda to Saddam Hussein and Kaddafi. Saddam Hussein must go. Kaddafi must go. As if the USA with its f.. Partners are the ones to choose who should and should not rule Iraq, Libya and Syria. ISIS was created, is funded, trained armed and supported by the USA and its willing partners. For more than one year that they are bombing Syria, they did not see the thousands and thousands of trucks carrying robbed oil from Syria to Turkey. And now Obama, flanked by thecriminal Ash Carter, a creature of McCain, claims that he is determined to fight ISIS. Since many of the ISIS fighters come from the USA, UK, France, why do you not start by bombing the USA, UK, France. Why start with Syria?

Steven Wallace 14 Dec 2015 19:05

Because truth has no place in the modern political theatre . Truth is down to perception and when you control the media you control the truth .Remember NORID ,when the US funded the IRA against the UK ? The IRA used bombs to kill many innocents in their resistance to the British occupation . My brother was a soldier in the British Army and believed he was doing the right thing by going to Northern Ireland . After reflection he now feels he was wrong to be a part of that situation .My father served in Egypt during the Suez Crisis and felt he was right to be there and later questioned why so many young lads were sent to such a inhospitable foreign land . The reason always comes down to money .

MRModeratedModerate 14 Dec 2015 19:04

"in recent weeks we've unleashed a new wave of strikes on their lifeline, on their oil infrastructure..."

I don't see no bombs falling on Turkey?

illbthr22 -> ObambiBot 14 Dec 2015 18:54

Your country provides nothing positive to the world. I watch American movies, eat American food, listen to American music. Russia doesn't exist to me. The only time i hear Russia mentioned is when Russia is threatening war with someone or 2 drunks are beating each other up on youtube.

supercool -> BG Davis 14 Dec 2015 18:49

Again read my comment. The way the war on drugs is waged and fought. It is never ending, murky and with so many dubious allegiances.

The war on terror is never ending, murky and with so many dubious allegiance. For example we exported Jihadism to Afghanistan to defeat the invading communist Soviet's, they eventually morphed to the Taliban who then gave sanctuary to Al-Qaeda. Which formed an affiliate branch in Iraq after our invasion in 2003 and which morphed into the Islsmic state.

HollyOldDog -> stonedage 14 Dec 2015 18:48

Obama is the first black American President but that doesn't mean that he is the first sensible one.

Whitt -> supercool 14 Dec 2015 18:46

As someone who is old enough to have lived under two great Presidents and three great-but-flawed Presidents, I'm saying that Obama is a 2nd-rater at best. A hundred years from now he'll be a triva-question President like Millard Fillmore or Grover Cleaveland.

OscarAwesome 14 Dec 2015 18:44

Sure, this is typical political spruiking. Obama doing the Commander in Chief thing, proclaiming PROGRESS, reaffirming how bad the 'enemy' are, saying tough things as a response to the accusations of weakness by US conservatives (who are coy about what their actual alternative to Obama's approach is because it probably looks very much like catastrophic full invasion foolishness of George W's Iraq war), blah, blah, we've seen it all before on countless occasions.

The situation in Syria in particular is ridiculously complex and consists of a plethora of detail and options for action about which we will all have wildly divergent opinions.

But there is a part of this that is simple. There are practically zero options for dealing with ISIL/IS/ISIS/whatever besides killing them. They seek no negotiations, offer no potential compromise position and their take on politics is to simply kill everyone who isn't them. The lack of alternate, peaceful/diplomatic options ISIS and similar groups offer, with their preposterous Dark Ages philosophies, is in a macabre way almost refreshing.

The hard bit is how to kill/capture/degrade their capability without a) slaughtering bystanders and b) causing such carnage as to act as an ISIS recruitment agency.
For all the great many faults and excesses of the West and the larger Muslin world, ISIS

do not in any way offer a comprehensive socio-political alternate system of government with a vestige of logical appeal to humanity (unlike, say the threat communism represented in the 20th century). They have some vague pipe dream of apocalyptic conflict where the other 99.999% of the human race is either slaughtered or magically converted to embracing the reversal of human history by 1,500 years. Not going to happen. Silly.

The threat ISIS represent is largely emotional. Unless you are lightning-strike like unfortunate (or they get hold of nuclear weapons) ISIS disturb our assumptions of physical safety in a symbolic way only. The histrionics generated by that fear is our real enemy.

Popeyes 14 Dec 2015 18:44

What a disappointment, I was waiting for Obama to explain just why he didn't bomb IS oil facilities, and why the U.S. are still best buddies with Saudi who it seems supplies and finances most of the terrorists in Syria and Iraq. Nothing new here move along.

Horst Faranelli 14 Dec 2015 18:43

...but the spot oil price is squeezing the heart out of Russia.

Panda Bear -> GustavoB 14 Dec 2015 18:43

There have been reports for a while (since Russia began bombing) that Isis have been fleeing Syria and many commanders have relocated to Libya. Isis have overtaken one of the so called governments and are making gains, oil assets their next target I read yesterday.

Seasuka -> DoomGlitter 14 Dec 2015 18:41

Whatever America's position now, for decades they have supported and helped to arm Salafist jihadis through Saudi and the Muslim World league in opposition to any secular or perceived communist movements in the region which might threaten oil supplies. Ditto uk.

jmNZ 14 Dec 2015 18:40

The secular Syrian government, with women in its ranks, is fighting for its life against a most ruthless and abominable enemy: fanatical jihadist mercenaries financed by an execrable mediaeval tyranny, Saudi Barbaria. This is the enemy of all we stand for, the enemy that perpetrated 9/11 and 7/7 and their latest clone that bombed Paris concert-goers and Russian holiday-makers. They are paid and trained by Riyadh. And armed to the teeth with modern American weapons, passed to them by the newest demagogue, Turkey's Erdoğan.

The sworn enemy of all these head-chopping bigots is Assad's secular republic of Syria because it challenges the ideological dogmatism of Sharia Law. This law is as rigid as Hitler's Nazism or Stalin's communism.

And we wonder whether we should support Assad?
For the record, here are some undisputed facts:

30 countries, including South Africa, sent election observers to Syria and found them to be "reasonably free and fair". This was in 2014 when Basher al-Assad got 88% of the vote in the first multi-party presidential elections. Nearly half the population of Syria actually made it to the polls. Not half the electorate, half the population.

Syria is governed by 5 parties in coalition opposed by a 2 party coalition of 5 members and 77 "Independents". Assad's Baqath Party has a majority, 134 out of 250.

Syria is today's Czechoslovakia.

Whitt -> supercool 14 Dec 2015 18:34

"Compare his Presidency with George Bush or most previous American President's if recent years." - supercool
*
Considering that most of the Presidents that we've had over the last few decades have been mediocrities and that Bush Jr. was downright incompetent, that is truly an example of damning with faint praise.
*
*
"Obama goes into the history books as a great President who achieved so many first's"
*
To paraphrase the immortal Douglas Adams, this is obviously some strange usage of the word "great" that I was not previously aware of.

ByThePeople 14 Dec 2015 18:10

"in recent weeks'...'destroying hundreds of their (ISIL's) tanker trucks, wells and refineries. So far, ISIL has lost about 40% of the populated area it once controlled n Iraq."

Anyone else a bit shocked that after having several countries dropping bombs on ISIL for an extended period of time - that ISIL would still be in possession of hundreds of tanker trucks, wells and refineries - their 'life line'....?

A full fledged oil business in up, running and in the market to sell oil - which is obviously all being bought up and these revenues, combined with other revenue streams, have been supporting ISIL's efforts for an extended period of time.

I wonder if because 'a few weeks' was finally taken to supposedly destroy this critical infrastructure - if the 'evasive' ISIL oil business - along with revenues - will suffer? I also wonder why the air campaign hasn't been extended to include the purchasers of ISIL's oil supplies - at sea and in their home countries.

Panda Bear -> supercool 14 Dec 2015 18:10

Homs has a cease fire, the 'moderate' terrorists have left. Syrian Arab Army and it's allies are making gains, an airport retaken yesterday. Much Isis oil trading infrastructure destroyed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PauFSKZafr4
http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/syrian-army-retakes-key-airbase-rebel-forces-eastern-ghouta-1589655831
I'm fascinated to know what the Henry Jackson Society is doing there/reporting...

ohhaiimark -> JackGC 14 Dec 2015 18:03

And here in lies the problem. The US is not serious about taking down ISIS. They are a convient bunch of psychopaths that can be used for various agendas the US has in mind. Including but not limited to weakening/removing Assad, getting Iran embroiled in costly war, terrifying domestic populations into giving up freedoms, justifying more military interventions that go against international law.

The list goes on

1ClearSense 14 Dec 2015 17:59

The cult of Wahhabi terrorist supported by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE and Turkey need to be defeated. With all the public information available, we are here because of all the wrong moves by the US. It is about time to nip this in the bud. The root problem is in Saudi Arabia. In no uncertain terms US needs to tell the Arab tyrannies to stop the jihadi terror. It is obviouse US has listened to the Saudis and Qataris to create a Sunni militia in Iraq, Syria to "confront" Iran. The imaginary ghost that constantly scares Saudi tyranny. The result has been all the various head chopping terror groups. The "Sunni" Arab tyrannies will never supply troops to take over areas occupied by terrorists. Qatar demands sanitizing al Qaeda terrorist in Syria and giving them a say. It is stupid to even consider these as allies in fight against the wahhabi Islamist terrorists. Time has come to forget about removing Assad, just cooperate with Russia, Syria, Iran and Iraq to take back land from all terrorists step by step, and have the legitimate government in Syria and Iraq, with their pro government militia control the ground.

TheBorderGuard -> gunnison 14 Dec 2015 17:55

Isis must ultimately be defeated by Muslim forces, or we'll be manufacturing radical faster than we can kill them.

The Muslims seem to be manufacturing radicals quickly enough without any help from us.

TonyBlunt 14 Dec 2015 17:51

"We are hitting Isil harder than ever."

Here is how hard the US and their regional allies have been hitting ISIL and the other jihadi terrorists:

• http://levantreport.com/2015/05/19/2012-defense-intelligence-agency-document-west-will-facilitate-rise-of-islamic-state-in-order-to-isolate-the-syrian-regime/
• http://www.mintpressnews.com/media-blacks-out-pentagon-report-exposing-u-s-role-in-isis-creation/206187/
• http://www.cbsnews.com/news/isis-we-have-our-hands-on-weapons-ammo-air-dropped-by-u-s/
• http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/06/world/isis-ammunition-is-shown-to-have-origins-in-us-and-china.html?_r=0
• http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/u-s-admits-funding-syrian-opposition-1.987112
• http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/03/05/070305fa_fact_hersh
• http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-led-bombing-raids-target-syrian-civilians-in-an-area-which-has-never-been-in-the-hands-of-isis/5482681
• http://jewishvoiceny.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=8783:turkeys-knee-deep-involvement-with-islamist-terrorists&catid=118:war-on-terror&Itemid=301
• http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/ar/originals/2013/08/turkey-considers-support-for-al-nusra.html#
• http://carnegieendowment.org/syriaincrisis/?fa=53532&reloadFlag=1
• http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/turkey/11093478/Turkish-government-co-operated-with-al-Qaeda-in-Syria-says-former-US-ambassador.html
• http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/kuwait/11077537/How-our-allies-in-Kuwait-and-Qatar-funded-Islamic-State.html

bolobo -> impartial12 14 Dec 2015 17:50

Good docu about that recently. Might still be available on BBCiplayer. The Americans bought Saudi drilling rights for 2cents and the Brits bought Iraqi rights for tuppence. Twenty years later the middle easterns thought "hold on a minute," and offered a fifty-fifty split. The Americans pragmatically accepted, thus their relationship with the House of Saud, the Brits got all uppity at the natives and got kicked out.

TheSindhiAbbasi -> gunnison 14 Dec 2015 17:45

What about billions of US military equipment in Iraq, that was captured by Daesh?

gunnison 14 Dec 2015 17:40

Freeze Saudi assets and blockade all their exports until they send all that gee-whiz military equipment we sold them into this fight, and all the Saudi military we trained too.

Isis must ultimately be defeated by Muslim forces, or we'll be manufacturing radical faster than we can kill them.

Panda Bear -> Jools12 14 Dec 2015 17:36

"We only get some action now that Russia has been attacking ISIS in Syria and of course there is minimal reporting of the successes of the Russians in Western media."

Exactly. Russia is the old enemy, it is interfering and questioning US actions and has huge natural resources. Putin called them out in his speech at the UN...
US has been provoking Russia for some time, and is also provoking China. This may not end well for any of us and no one will stand up and demand it stops!

HAGGISANCHIPS -> ame1ie 14 Dec 2015 17:34

The nazi ideology was removed militarily. It couldn't survive because it was morally wrong and repugnant, like Daesh.

Edward Frederick Ezell 14 Dec 2015 17:27

Sending our professional agents of coercion and terror to kill people in foreign countries over which we somehow more or less claim jurisdiction is not something that is clearly beneficial in the long term although it does respond appropriately to the call for vengeance and blood from our own political actors.

Panda Bear -> Taku2 14 Dec 2015 17:27

US has turned it into a proxy war with Russia and Iran and has called in the NATO allies to back them up. Obama seems to work differently to previous presidents like Bush, he seems to like to work quietly using drones and not much publicized actions and calls in the NATO and allied troops to cover their actions.

Taku2 14 Dec 2015 17:23

America will do this America will do that. Well, guess what; you cannot do it on your own. You cannot make a successful strategic plan to fight Daesh without the Russians, Iranians and Syrian government forces being integral elements of such a plan.

Daesh is like an Hydra, so bombing alone cannot defeat it, it just spread it to new areas. You need to do an honest review of how Daesh was created; albeit, unintentionally, by ill-conceived American and EU/NATO policies in the Middle East and Africa.

America and EU/NATO cannot effective fight the war being waged by Daesh and Al Qaeda, until they have learned the lessons to be learned from their misguided policies, and openly acknowledged the mistakes they have made.

Sunrise_Song 14 Dec 2015 17:18

What would it be like to live in a truly peaceful and free world? All it takes is strength, foresight and the guts to be honest.

All the things the West is failing at. Obama like most Western leaders is a weaver of lies and half-truths.

How can we ever have peace until we challenge the core issue? This is an ideological fight. It's a war of minds. ISIS believe the West is a basin of sin. That our liberal and secular ways need to be destroyed and replaced by their ideologies and way of life.

Only, we can see they're wrong. That even with our faults and flaws, our belief in freedom, democracy and equality is the best way, still we defend that same ideology in our own nations.

Obama is failing the American people. Just like Merkel and Co are failing the European people.

Bombs won't stop IS.

Jools12 14 Dec 2015 17:18

What have they been doing for the last two years then? No attacks on ISIS trucks transporting oil, no sanctions on countries that have been buying that oil. We only get some action now that Russia has been attacking ISIS in Syria and of course there is minimal reporting of the successes of the Russians in Western media. As far as Libya is concerned, there are very ominous signs that ISIS is moving to set up headquarters in that country, a country a lot closer to Europe than Syria or Iraq are. There is also the problem that the Russians will not be involved in Libya, unlike Syria, they do not have a functioning government to ask them in. Libya is the nightmare created by NATO and the US, they will have to take full responsibility for their dreadful actions there and fight the barbarians they created, no sitting back and allowing them to flourish this time.

TheBorderGuard 14 Dec 2015 17:13

Obama told reporters: "This continues to be a difficult fight. Isil is dug in, including in urban areas, and they hide behind civilians, using defenceless men, women and children as human shields. So even as we're relentless, we have to be smart, targeting Isil surgically, with precision."

Good luck, boss. Ask Netanyahu how it went for the Israelis when they tried to end Hamas' rocket attacks from Gaza. Because that's the kind of foe you'll be up against.

poechristy 14 Dec 2015 17:10

Someone has obviously told Obama that his Mr Nice Guy act was merely encouraging Islamic State and their supporters in the US. It's time for all Western nations to make clear that anyone involved in any way with Islamic State-funding them, promoting them, or returning from fighting for them- will feel the full force of the law. I can't understand why those returning from Syria are not immediately arrested and held to account.
I rather suspect we wouldn't be seeing the same appeasement if white supremacists were returning from a foreign land having been involved in the torture,rape and murder of ethnic minorities.

lefthalfback2 DogsLivesMatter 14 Dec 2015 17:06

NYT said a few days back that ISIS are looking to Surt in Libya as the spot to which they can decamp if the Heat comes down in Iraq. Does not seem likely to me since it is on the coast and could easily be struck from the sea.

Whitt DogsLivesMatter 14 Dec 2015 17:03

Weren't you paying attention?

(1) We have a coalition of the willing in the international War on Terror.
(2) ISIS is on their last legs. There's nothing left but a bunch of dead-enders.
(3) We're squeezing their heart in Iraq, their balls in Syria, and their spleen in Libya.
(4) There's a light at the end of the tunnel.
(5) Ve are vinning ze var!

Now get with the program and quit interfering with the narrative or it's off to Gitmo with you, me lad!

ohhaiimark 14 Dec 2015 16:58

Want to stop ISIS? It's rather simple. Sanction those who fund them. Sanction those who spread Wahhabism. Sanction those who buy oil off them....Basically sanction all of America's allies in the region.

Then work together with the Russians, the Syrians, the Iranians and whoever else is willing to send ground troops in to take each town and city occupied by these scumbags one by one.

You can't defeat ISIS if your goal is also to remove Assad. That will only help ISIS. It's time to wake up from that delusion that Assad is going anywhere. Once the war is over, then we can let the Syrian people decide who will lead them through democratic elections.

Djinn666 14 Dec 2015 16:56

They've squeezed so hard that it oozed into Libya and other points on the compass, including San Bernardino.

Note to CIC Obama, However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results (Winston Churchill).

Fence2 14 Dec 2015 16:54

What a farce, who does Obama think he's kidding? If the US was serious about ISIS it would have been finished off a year ago, now that Russia has called the US's bluff they now have to pretend to step up to the plate. Pathetic.

DogsLivesMatter 14 Dec 2015 16:50

Meanwhile in Libya....http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/12/world-leaders-push-libya-peace-isil-fills-vacuum-151214044020934.html
Apparently there are 3,000 ISIL fighters in Libya at the moment. It's time President Obama and John Kerry gave us the whole story, but I guess with Saudi Arabia and Turkey being allies the US can't rock the boat too much.

dikcheney 14 Dec 2015 16:48

More drivel from the counterfeit president. His allies in the middle east are disgusting butchers. Take Turkey: it is a great shame for Turkey that 32 journalists are imprisoned in the 21st century. Some were arrested on Nov. 26 after being charged in May with espionage, revealing confidential documents and membership in a terrorist organization. The charges are related to a report published by a leading newspaper claiming weapons-loaded trucks that were discovered in January 2014 en route to Syria actually belonged to the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) and had been sent to provide support to rebel groups.

The USA has been seduced and conned for decades until its entire policy is focused on fighting proxy wars to keep the middle east ablaze in the interests of others. SHAME on the dumb USA.

laguerre 14 Dec 2015 16:39

A load of rubbish. US supports the Saudis, who support ISIS. US attacks on ISIS are not serious, as the speech suggests.

[Dec 14, 2015] No Turkish fabric to make anti-Turkish T-shirts, say Russian designers

There are two possibilities here: iether Guardian pressitutes sometimes try to play degenarates or they consider their readers to be degenerates...

Notable quotes:

"... Typical The Moscow Times garbage. ..."

"... Hmmm, some really sophisticated comments and analysis apropos of current issues in geopolitics and international relations. Nuanced, objective, and informative. Excuse me but I have to go watch some more esoteric reportage from Fox News. ..."

www.theguardian.com

cvneuves 13 Dec 2015 21:12

Typical The Moscow Times garbage.

Scipio1 13 Dec 2015 18:54

Hmmm, some really sophisticated comments and analysis apropos of current issues in geopolitics and international relations. Nuanced, objective, and informative.

Excuse me but I have to go watch some more esoteric reportage from Fox News.

[Dec 14, 2015] The long-cherished neocon dream of "regime change" in Syria is blocking a possible route out of the crisis

consortiumnews.com

anne,

https://consortiumnews.com/2015/12/12/blocking-democracy-as-syrias-solution/

December 12, 2015

Blocking Democracy as Syria's Solution By Robert Parry

The long-cherished neocon dream of "regime change" in Syria is blocking a possible route out of the crisis – a ceasefire followed by elections in which President Assad could compete. The problem is there's no guarantee that Assad would lose and thus the dream might go unfulfilled.
By Robert Parry

The solution to the crisis in Syria could be democracy – letting the people of Syria decide who they want as their leaders – but it is the Obama administration and its regional Sunni "allies," including U.S.-armed militants and jihadists, that don't want to risk a democratic solution because it might not achieve the long-held goal of "regime change."

Some Syrian opposition forces, which were brought together under the auspices of the Saudi monarchy in Riyadh this past week, didn't even want the word "democracy" included in their joint statement. The New York Times reported on Friday, "Islamist delegates objected to using the word 'democracy' in the final statement, so the term 'democratic mechanism' was used instead, according to a member of one such group who attended the meeting."

Even that was too much for Ahrar al-Sham, one of the principal jihadist groups fighting side-by-side with Al Qaeda's Nusra Front, the two key elements inside the Saudi-created Army of Conquest, which uses sophisticated U.S.-supplied TOW missiles to kill Syrian government troops.

Ahrar al-Sham announced its withdrawal from the Riyadh conference because the meeting didn't "confirm the Muslim identity of our people." Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has sought to maintain a secular government that protects the rights of Christians, Alawites, Shiites and other religious minorities, but Sunni militants have been fighting to overthrow him since 2011.

Despite Ahrar al-Sham's rejection of the Saudi-organized conference, all the opposition participants, including one from Ahrar al-Sham who apparently wasn't aware of his group's announcement, signed the agreement, the Times reported.

"All parties signed a final statement that called for maintaining the unity of Syria and building a civil, representative government that would take charge after a transitional period, at the start of which Mr. Assad and his associates would step down," wrote Times' correspondent Ben Hubbard.

But the prospects of Assad and his government just agreeing to cede power to the opposition remains highly unlikely. An obvious alternative – favored by Assad and Russian President Vladimir Putin – is to achieve a ceasefire and then have internationally supervised elections in which the Syrian people could choose their own leaders.

Although President Barack Obama insists Assad is hated by most Syrians – and if that's true, he would presumably lose any fair election – the U.S. position is to bar Assad from the ballot, thus ensuring "regime change" in Syria, a long-held goal of Official Washington's neoconservatives.

In other words, to fulfill the neocons' dream of Syrian "regime change," the Obama administration is continuing the bloody Syrian conflict which has killed a quarter million people, has created an opening for Islamic State and Al Qaeda terrorists, and has driven millions of refugees into and through nearby countries, now destabilizing Europe and feeding xenophobia in the United States.

For his part, Assad called participants in the Saudi conference "terrorists" and rejected the idea of negotiating with them. "They want the Syrian government to negotiate with the terrorists, something I don't think anyone would accept in any country," Assad told Spanish journalists, as he repeated his position that many of the terrorists were backed by foreign governments and that he would only "deal with the real, patriotic national opposition."

Kinks in the Process

Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters on Friday that he was in contact with senior Saudi officials and noted, "there are some questions and obviously a couple of – in our judgment – kinks to be worked out" though expressing confidence that the problems could be resolved.

A key problem appears to be that the Obama administration has so demonized Assad and so bought into the neocon goal of "regime change" that Obama doesn't feel that he can back down on his "Assad must go!" mantra. Yet, to force Assad out and bar him from running in an election means escalating the war by either further arming the Sunni jihadists or mounting a larger-scale invasion of Syria with the U.S. military confronting Syrian and now Russian forces to establish what is euphemistically called "a safe zone" inside Syria. A related "no-fly zone" would require destroying Syrian air defenses, now supplied by the Russians.

Obama has largely followed the first course of action, allowing Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and other Sunni "allies" to funnel U.S. weapons to jihadists, including Ahrar al-Sham which fights alongside Al Qaeda's Nusra Front as the two seek to transform Syria into a Islamic fundamentalist state, a goal shared by Al Qaeda's spinoff (and now rival), the Islamic State.

Retired U.S. Army Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, has termed Obama's choice of aiding the jihadists a "willful decision," even in the face of DIA warnings about the likely rise of the Islamic State and other extremists.

In August 2012, DIA described the danger in a classified report, which noted that "The salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI [Al Qaeda in Iraq, later ISI or ISIS and then the Islamic State] are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria." The report also said that "If the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared salafist principality in eastern Syria" and that "ISI could also declare an Islamic State through its union with other terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria."

Despite these risks, Obama continued to insist that "Assad must go!" and let his administration whip up a propaganda campaign around claims that Assad's forces launched a sarin gas attack outside Damascus on Aug. 21, 2013. Though many of the U.S. claims about that attack have since been discredited – and later evidence implicated radical jihadists (possibly collaborating with Turkish intelligence) trying to trick the U.S. military into intervening on their side – the Obama administration did not retract or clarify its initial claims.

By demonizing Assad – much like the demonization of Russian President Putin – Obama may feel that he is deploying "soft power" propaganda to put foreign adversaries on the defensive while also solidifying his political support inside hawkish U.S. opinion circles, but false narratives can take on a life of their own and make rational settlements difficult if not impossible....

ilsm -> anne...

The Syria terror consortium was in Riyadh checking in with their bankers. To the Sunni democracy is apostate anathema.

anne -> ilsm...

I understand the frustration and beyond, after all I read about Yemen being bombed with American bombs and target sightings and I cannot imagine the policy incentives driving us.

Nonetheless, the Yemen bombings go on day on day on day.

anne -> ilsm...

Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen? Who could possibly ever understand, but our policy makers act as though they do.

[Dec 14, 2015] Offshoring and Unskilled Labor Demand Evidence That Trade Matters

Notable quotes:

"... I actually think that the bigger effect is not just offshoring, but a vicious circle relating to increasing inequality. After all, most of the economy today is services, but if normal people cant afford the services anymore, then that will of course stagnate, forcing down wages decreasing the affordability even more (or causing substitution of inferior automated or remote services). ..."

"... That is why the one employment bright spot is medical services which are subsidised (one way or the other) almost everywhere. We really have to investigate more the distribution of the circulation of money, how the concentration of money in a few hands means that money circulates through relatively hands. I dont know of anybody who actually investigates this. You could say, it is the disaggregation-is-important problem. ..."

"... One thing that really annoys with political discussion today is the dominance of money illusion. This is particularly extreme in the Euro area today where Germans keep complaining that so and so will be taking our tax money . No one ever seems to stop and think, where does the money come from in the first place , and yet, in macro-economics, this is absolutely the most important question. Nobody even seems to notice that both deleveraging and bankruptcy actively destroy money and that money needs to be replaced. ..."

"... Foreign companies like Toyota and Honda solidified their dominance in family and economy cars, gained market share in high-margin luxury cars, and, in an ironic twist, soon stormed in with their own sophisticatedly engineered and marketed SUVs, pickups and minivans. Detroit, suffering from a "good enough" syndrome and wedded to ineffective marketing gimmicks like rebates and zero-percent financing, failed to give consumers what they really wanted - reliability, the latest technology and good design at a reasonable cost. ..."

"... Yes, I see offshoring as a transitional stage while foreign workers are cheaper than machines. ..."

"... The plot was about automation, but the moral was about humanity. :) ..."

"... "The main business of humanity is to do a good job of being human beings, said Paul, not to serve as appendages to machines, institutions, and systems." ..."

"... It is not the PRODUCERS who have a huge incentive to make sure it never happens. Au contraire, they want their consumers to have more money. It is the OWNERS who want to make sure it never happens because that would dilute their power. ..."

Dec 14, 2015 | Economist's View

Syaloch said in reply to cm...

So you think that offshoring does not eventually increase living standards in the destination countries? That's odd. What's your evidence?

Automation may not be the first response, but it's always in the equation:

CEO: "Those pesky foreign workers are asking for more again! Machines are so much easier to work with. Can we replace them with machines yet?"

CTO: "Let me check... No, not yet, but a lot of smart people are working on it."

CEO: "OK, then let's look for another offshoring partner with more complacent workers for now and revisit this later."

The answer to this automation question only has to be yes once to permanently change the playing field.

reason said...

I actually think that the bigger effect is not just offshoring, but a vicious circle relating to increasing inequality. After all, most of the economy today is services, but if normal people can't afford the services anymore, then that will of course stagnate, forcing down wages decreasing the affordability even more (or causing substitution of inferior automated or remote services).

That is why the one employment bright spot is medical services which are subsidised (one way or the other) almost everywhere. We really have to investigate more the distribution of the circulation of money, how the concentration of money in a few hands means that money circulates through relatively hands. I don't know of anybody who actually investigates this. You could say, it is the disaggregation-is-important problem.

reason said...

One thing that really annoys with political discussion today is the dominance of money illusion. This is particularly extreme in the Euro area today where Germans keep complaining that so and so will be taking "our tax money". No one ever seems to stop and think, "where does the money come from in the first place", and yet, in macro-economics, this is absolutely the most important question. Nobody even seems to notice that both deleveraging and bankruptcy actively destroy money and that money needs to be replaced.

RC AKA Darryl, Ron said in reply to pgl...

"...the empty suits running GM and Ford were both greedy and incompetent..."

[Yep!]

http://www.amazon.com/The-United-States-Toyota-Squandered/dp/1592993028

The United States of Toyota: How Detroit Squandered Its Legacy and Enabled Toyota to Become America's Car Company

September 11, 2007

by Peter M. DeLorenzo

The United States of Toyota is many stories in one. First and foremost, it is a business story, detailing the decline of the American automobile industry - and the simultaneous rise of an Asian manufacturer to take its place. It is also a history book, providing an intimate portrait of the larger-than-life personalities and cars that led the American auto industry through its glory days and down the path toward extinction. It is a political/current affairs piece, presenting the rise of a Japanese company - Toyota - not just in terms of its sales success but also in terms of its cultural success, as it works to assimilate into American society. And finally, it is a never-before-seen primer on Detroit - The Motor City - a town and a region dominated by the auto companies, their suppliers and their ad agencies - and by a mindset and culture all its own. In commentary that is as accurate as it is blunt, Peter De Lorenzo presents the players and the action in the auto business in a way not seen before in print. His voice is unique and refreshingly candid. His provocative analyses and assessments - grounded in personal experience and a lifelong immersion in all things automotive - present a compelling picture of the state of the auto business - how it used to be, what it has become and where it is headed. From the arrogance and short-sightedness of the Detroit manufacturers to the acumen and relentlessness of Toyota, The United States of Toyota paints an insightful portrait of an iconic American industry as it struggles for survival in the early years of the 21st century.

http://www.amazon.com/The-End-Detroit-American-Market/dp/0385507704

The End of Detroit: How the Big Three Lost Their Grip on the American Car Market

September 21, 2004
by Micheline Maynard

An in-depth, hard-hitting account of the mistakes, miscalculations and myopia that have doomed America's automobile industry.

In the 1990s, Detroit's Big Three automobile companies were riding high. The introduction of the minivan and the SUV had revitalized the industry, and it was widely believed that Detroit had miraculously overcome the threat of foreign imports and regained its ascendant position. As Micheline Maynard makes brilliantly clear in THE END OF DETROIT, however, the traditional American car industry was, in fact, headed for disaster. Maynard argues that by focusing on high-profit trucks and SUVs, the Big Three missed a golden opportunity to win back the American car-buyer.

Foreign companies like Toyota and Honda solidified their dominance in family and economy cars, gained market share in high-margin luxury cars, and, in an ironic twist, soon stormed in with their own sophisticatedly engineered and marketed SUVs, pickups and minivans. Detroit, suffering from a "good enough" syndrome and wedded to ineffective marketing gimmicks like rebates and zero-percent financing, failed to give consumers what they really wanted - reliability, the latest technology and good design at a reasonable cost. Drawing on a wide range of interviews with industry leaders, including Toyota's Fujio Cho, Nissan's Carlos Ghosn, Chrysler's Dieter Zetsche, BMW's Helmut Panke, and GM's Robert Lutz, as well as car designers, engineers, test drivers and owners, Maynard presents a stark picture of the culture of arrogance and insularity that led American car manufacturers astray. Maynard predicts that, by the end of the decade, one of the American car makers will no longer exist in its present form.

*

[Like the executives of the US steel industry before them, the management of the big three (plus one) US automakers possessed legendary inabilities when it came to product development and production quality control. One can only imagine that their golf games must have been better than their understanding of auto making.]

pgl said in reply to RC AKA Darryl, Ron...

Exactly - products designs that were better than our. Lean production which we were slow to adapt. And there are those Jan commercials. Toyotas are selling like crazy. But at least Ford and GM is finally under new management.

sanjait said in reply to pgl...

A few decades later ... Ford and GM do indeed look to be getting their act together. I'd buy a car from either one of those companies today.

lower middle class said...

Paging Dr. Proteus... Dr. Paul Proteus!

cm said in reply to lower middle class...

That was automation, not offshoring.

Syaloch said in reply to cm...

In the end that's a distinction without a difference.

Julio said in reply to Syaloch...

Yes, I see offshoring as a transitional stage while foreign workers are cheaper than machines.

RC AKA Darryl, Ron said in reply to Julio...

Machines could not open up SE Asian markets to US firms in the way that offshoring could.

Syaloch said in reply to RC AKA Darryl, Ron...

Suppose we visited those factories from Player Piano and discovered that the few highly educated workers remaining were not overseeing automated machines, but rather shipping raw materials over to a foreign country where goods were produced by low-wage laborers. In terms of the domestic economy, would that make any difference?

Large-scale offshoring was enabled by machines that made the exchange of goods and information between remote locations possible. Whatever residual labor component is involved is merely an automation problem that hasn't been solved... yet.

RC AKA Darryl, Ron said in reply to Syaloch...

MNCs wanted their capital investment to have access to the markets with the most growth potential. Regulatory and FOREX arbitrage helped. Labor costs were low on the totem pole.

Syaloch said in reply to RC AKA Darryl, Ron...

That's more true with offshored manufacturing than with services. US companies aren't sending call center jobs to India because they hope to serve the Indian market.

But even with regard to manufacturing labor costs are obviously a major consideration. Just watch any episode of "Shark Tank" and listen to the sharks explain how stupid anyone is for trying to manufacture anything here in the US. Are t-shirts sewn in Bangladesh because of the huge growth potential in apparel sales there? Were the Mexican maquiladoras set up to have better access to the Mexican market?

lower middle class said in reply to cm...

The plot was about automation, but the moral was about humanity. :)

"The main business of humanity is to do a good job of being human beings," said Paul, "not to serve as appendages to machines, institutions, and systems."
― Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano

Syaloch said in reply to lower middle class...

Toward the end of Player Piano the Shah of Bratpuhr asks a very good question: What are people for?

When I first read Player Piano I also happened by pure chance to be reading a collection of essays by Wendell Berry titled "What Are People For?"

The eponymous essay from Berry's collection was a great complement to Vonnegut's book.

lower middle class said in reply to Syaloch...

Time for me to visit the library, thanks Syaloch!

reason said...

New Deal democrat
Yes, it is part of your name (and was copied then throughout the Western world). Then of course there was the Russian and Chinese revolutions, which at least initially were very egalitarian.

New Deal democrat said in reply to reason...

I think you misunderstood my point, which was about liberalizing international trade. I'm not 100% sure, but I don't think that was a really high priority of the Russian and Chinese revolutions. :)

pgl said in reply to New Deal democrat...

I studied Russian history. Free trade was not exactly what drove Lenin. And it is certainly not what drives Putin.

PPaine said in reply to New Deal democrat...

There was a significant debate about trade early on with bukharin advocating. Two way openness. And Lenin a two way state monopoly. Lenin anticipated what happened to russia after the wall fell ....70 or so years later.

He had a keen insight into MNCs free for all tactics. Unfortunately state concessions which he supported faced a tacit constriction.

Despite notable exceptions including Pater Koch

reason said...

P.S. New Deal democrat

It is not the PRODUCERS who have a huge incentive to make sure it never happens. Au contraire, they want their consumers to have more money. It is the OWNERS who want to make sure it never happens because that would dilute their power.

RC AKA Darryl, Ron said in reply to reason...

Yep. Capital gains... and gains... and gains, until there is little left for labor gains.

pgl said in reply to RC AKA Darryl, Ron...

Nike makes obscene profits. And for what? Designing new shoes? They don't make anything - their third party Chinese manufacturers do the hard work at low wages. BTW - the US does not get to tax those Nike profits as they end up in Bermuda.

[Dec 13, 2015] US military spending is currently $738.3 billion

Notable quotes:

"... military spending is currently $738.3 billion. ..."

"... Defense spending was 60.3% of federal government consumption and investment in July through September 2015. ..."

"... Defense spending was 23.1% of all government consumption and investment in July through September 2015. ..."

"... Defense spending was 4.1% of Gross Domestic Product in July through September 2015. ..."

economistsview.typepad.com

Economist's View

anne said...

http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/in-paris-talks-rich-countries-pledged-0-25-percent-of-gdp-to-help-poor-countries

December 13, 2015

In Paris Talks, Rich Countries Pledged 0.25 Percent of GDP to Help Poor Countries

In case you were wondering about the importance of a $100 billion a year, * non-binding commitment, it's roughly 0.25 percent of rich country's $40 trillion annual GDP (about 6 percent of what the U.S. spends on the military). This counts the U.S., European Union, Japan, Canada, and Australia as rich countries. If China is included in that list, the commitment would be less than 0.2 percent of GDP.

* http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/world/europe/climate-change-accord-paris.html

-- Dean Baker

anne said in reply to anne...

"...about 6 percent of what the U.S. spends on the military...."

I do not understand this figure since currently defense spending is running at $738.3 billion yearly or which 6% would be $44.3 billion:

http://www.bea.gov/iTable/iTableHtml.cfm?reqid=9&step=3&isuri=1&904=2014&903=5&906=q&905=2015&910=x&911=0

anne said in reply to anne...

Correcting Dean Baker:

http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/in-paris-talks-rich-countries-pledged-0-25-percent-of-gdp-to-help-poor-countries

December 13, 2015

In Paris Talks, Rich Countries Pledged 0.25 Percent of GDP to Help Poor Countries

In case you were wondering about the importance of a $100 billion a year, * non-binding commitment, it's roughly 0.25 percent of rich country's $40 trillion annual GDP (about 7.4 percent ** of what the U.S. spends on the military). This counts the U.S., European Union, Japan, Canada, and Australia as rich countries. If China is included in that list, the commitment would be less than 0.2 percent of GDP.

* http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/world/europe/climate-change-accord-paris.html

** http://www.bea.gov/iTable/iTableHtml.cfm?reqid=9&step=3&isuri=1&904=2014&903=5&906=q&905=2015&910=x&911=0

-- Dean Baker

anne said in reply to anne...

Dean Baker clarifies:

http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/in-paris-talks-rich-countries-pledged-0-25-percent-of-gdp-to-help-poor-countries

December 13, 2015

In Paris Talks, Rich Countries Pledged 0.25 Percent of GDP to Help Poor Countries

In case you were wondering about the importance of a $100 billion a year, * non-binding commitment, it's roughly 0.25 percent of rich country's $40 trillion annual GDP (about 6 percent of what the U.S. spends on the military). This counts the U.S., European Union, Japan, Canada, and Australia as rich countries. If China is included in that list, the commitment would be less than 0.2 percent of GDP.

(I see my comment on military spending here created a bit of confusion. I was looking at the U.S. share of the commitment, 0.25 percent of its GDP and comparing it to the roughly 4.0 percent of GDP it spends on the military. That comes to 6 percent. I was not referring to the whole $100 billion.)

* http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/world/europe/climate-change-accord-paris.html

-- Dean Baker

djb said in reply to anne...

100,000,000,000/0.06 = 1.67 trillion

anne said in reply to djb...

$100 billion a year, ........about 6 percent of what the U.S. spends on the military

100,000,000,000/0.06 = 1.67 trillion

[ This is incorrect, military spending is currently $738.3 billion. ]

anne said in reply to djb...

http://www.bea.gov/iTable/iTableHtml.cfm?reqid=9&step=3&isuri=1&904=2014&903=5&906=q&905=2015&910=x&911=0

January 15, 2015

Defense spending was 60.3% of federal government consumption and investment in July through September 2015.

(Billions of dollars)

$738.3 / $1,224.4 = 60.3%

Defense spending was 23.1% of all government consumption and investment in July through September 2015.

$738.3 / $3,200.4 = 23.1%

Defense spending was 4.1% of Gross Domestic Product in July through September 2015.

$738.3 / $18,064.7 = 4.1%

djb said in reply to djb...

oh never mind I get it

.25 % is 6 percent of the percent us spends on military

the 40 trillion is the gdp of all the countries

got it

anne said in reply to djb...

"I get it:

.25 % is 6 percent of the percent US spends on military."

So .25 percent of United States GDP for climate change assistance to poor countries is 6 percent of the amount the US spends on the military.

.0025 x $18,064.7 billion GDP = $45.16 billion on climate change

$45.16 billion on climate change / $738.3 billion on the military = 0.61 or 6.1 percent of military spending

anne said in reply to anne...

United States climate change assistance to poor countries will be .25 percent of GDP or 6% of US military spending.

anne said in reply to anne...

What the United States commitment to climate change assistance for poor countries means is spending about $45.2 billion yearly or .25 percent of GDP. Whether the President can convince Congress to spend the $45 billion yearly will now have to be answered.

anne said in reply to djb...

"I get it:

.25 % is 6 percent of the [amount] US spends on military."

[ This is correct. ]

anne said in reply to djb...

http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/in-paris-talks-rich-countries-pledged-0-25-percent-of-gdp-to-help-poor-countries

December 13, 2015

In Paris Talks, Rich Countries Pledged 0.25 Percent of GDP to Help Poor Countries

In case you were wondering about the importance of a $100 billion a year, * non-binding commitment, it's roughly 0.25 percent of rich country's $40 trillion annual GDP (about 6 percent of what the U.S. spends on the military). This counts the U.S., European Union, Japan, Canada, and Australia as rich countries. If China is included in that list, the commitment would be less than 0.2 percent of GDP.

(I see my comment on military spending here created a bit of confusion. I was looking at the U.S. share of the commitment, 0.25 percent of its GDP and comparing it to the roughly 4.0 percent of GDP it spends on the military. ** That comes to 6 percent. I was not referring to the whole $100 billion.)

* http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/world/europe/climate-change-accord-paris.html

** http://www.bea.gov/iTable/iTableHtml.cfm?reqid=9&step=3&isuri=1&904=2014&903=5&906=q&905=2015&910=x&911=0

-- Dean Baker

anne said in reply to djb...

http://www.bea.gov/iTable/iTableHtml.cfm?reqid=9&step=3&isuri=1&904=2007&903=5&906=q&905=2015&910=x&911=0

January 15, 2015

Defense spending was 4.1% of Gross Domestic Product in July through September 2015.

$738.3 / $18,064.7 = 4.1%

ilsm said in reply to anne...

UK is the only NATO nation beside the US that spend the suggested 2% of GDP. The rest run about 1.2%.

Small wonder they need US to run their wars of convenience.

More telling US pentagon spending is around 50% of world military spending and has not won anything in 60 years.

[Dec 12, 2015] The American middle class is now matched in number by those in the economic tiers above and below it

Notable quotes:

"... I would merely point out that the out-of-touch elite is not confined to the Republican Party. There are substantial elements within the Brookings-Third Way wing of the Democratic coalition that would rather cut Social Security than establish a sensible retirement-income system, and that would rather cut Medicare than improve the efficiency of health care finance and delivery, after all. ..."

"... Why a one-percentage-point rise in the GDP share of Social Security is something that calls in any technocratic sense for cuts to the Social Security system is something that eludes me. What cutting Social Security has to do with reducing poverty eludes me. But it is something that all fifteen of the authors thought was so obvious as to require no explanation or justification whatsoever... ..."

Economist's View

Links for 12-12-15

Syaloch said in reply to anne...

In other news, here at home we're shrinking too.

http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/12/09/the-american-middle-class-is-losing-ground/

The American Middle Class Is Losing Ground
No longer the majority and falling behind financially

After more than four decades of serving as the nation's economic majority, the American middle class is now matched in number by those in the economic tiers above and below it. In early 2015, 120.8 million adults were in middle-income households, compared with 121.3 million in lower- and upper-income households combined, a demographic shift that could signal a tipping point, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of government data.

Peter K. said...

I don't believe I've seen DeLong talk this way before. He and Krugman often focus on the Republicans or the European VSPs, with good reason.

But if Hillary doesn't move the ball down the field despite Republican opposition, increasing inequality will make politics worse and worse.

http://www.bradford-delong.com/2015/12/live-from-evans-hall-i-would-merely-point-out-that-the-out-of-touch-elite-is-not-confined-to-the-republican-party-ther.html

Live from Evans Hall: I would merely point out that the out-of-touch elite is not confined to the Republican Party. There are substantial elements within the Brookings-Third Way wing of the Democratic coalition that would rather cut Social Security than establish a sensible retirement-income system, and that would rather cut Medicare than improve the efficiency of health care finance and delivery, after all.

As all of the authors of the Brookings-AEI joint "consensus plan for reducing poverty and restoring the American dream" write:

there are reasonable ways both to cut spending and to raise revenue that are consistent with our core values. For example, Social Security spending is projected to consume over one percentage point more of national income in 2040 than it does today...

Why a one-percentage-point rise in the GDP share of Social Security is something that calls in any technocratic sense for cuts to the Social Security system is something that eludes me. What cutting Social Security has to do with reducing poverty eludes me. But it is something that all fifteen of the authors thought was so obvious as to require no explanation or justification whatsoever...

Paul Krugman: Empowering the Ugliness: "The story is quite different in America...

Continue reading "" "

[Dec 12, 2015] Visualizing The Worlds Hot Money

Notable quotes:

"... Goldman Sachs buzz-acronym BRICS are five of the largest exporters of hot money . It amuses me to no end how so many buy the idea that the BRICS are gonna take over the world... ..."

"... Better definitions would have black money correspond to any government/public spending, declared capital and proceeds from violent crime (i.e. money that is acquired through or enables violence) and honest money to all the undeclared savings, underground economy/trade proceeds and non-institutional drug money. ..."

"... the most of China money leaves through HK do you think HK is a dump ? ..."

"... Over the years I have written several brief explanations of how offshore havens work. The one at the link below covers the basic-basics reasonably well. http://barlowscayman.blogspot.com/2013/01/offshore-tax-havens-what-they-do.html ..."

"... once again, we see banksters and corrupt corporate sector players colluding with corrupt individuals and assorted criminals - many inside .gov itself - to move ill-gotten gains to safer places out of reach of law enforcement in their own countries. ..."

"... Banksters facilitate virtually every financial crime. ..."

Zero Hedge

Every year, roughly $1 trillion flows illegally out of developing and emerging economies due to crime, corruption, and tax evasion. This amount is more than these countries receive in foreign direct investment and foreign aid combined.

This week, a new report was released that highlights the latest data available on this "hot" money. Assembled by Global Financial Integrity, a research and advisory organization based in Washington, DC, the report details illicit financial flows of money from developing countries using the latest information available, which is up until the end of 2013.

Chart The World's Hot Money

The cumulative amount of this "hot money" coming out of developing countries totaled just over $7.8 trillion between 2004 and 2013. On an annual basis, it breached the $1 trillion mark each of the last three years of data available, which is good for a growth rate of 6.5% rate annually.

In Asia, illicit financial outflows are growing even quicker at an 8.6% clip. It's also on the continent that five of the ten largest source economies for these flows can be found, including the largest offender, which is Mainland China.

How does this "hot" money leave these countries? Global Financial Integrity has calculated that 83% of illicit financial flows are due to what it calls "trade misinvoicing".

It's defined as the following:

The misinvoicing of trade is accomplished by misstating the value or volume of an export or import on a customs invoice. Trade misinvoicing is a form of trade-based money laundering made possible by the fact that trading partners write their own trade documents, or arrange to have the documents prepared in a third country (typically a tax haven), a method known as re-invoicing. Fraudulent manipulation of the price, quantity, or quality of a good or service on an invoice allows criminals, corrupt government officials, and commercial tax evaders to shift vast amounts of money across international borders quickly, easily, and nearly always undetected.

Trade misinvoicing accounted for an average of $654.7 billion per year of lost trade in developing markets over the data set covered by the report.

Source: Visual Capitalist

38BWD22

Goldman Sachs buzz-acronym "BRICS" are five of the largest exporters of "hot money". It amuses me to no end how so many buy the idea that the BRICS are gonna take over the world...

markmotive

6 signals for an impending bear market:

http://www.planbeconomics.com/2015/12/6-signals-for-impending-bear-marke...

jefferson32

What the fuck is "illicit" money? Savings that weren't looted away?

Better definitions would have "black" money correspond to any government/public spending, declared capital and proceeds from violent crime (i.e. money that is acquired through or enables violence) and honest money to all the undeclared savings, underground economy/trade proceeds and non-institutional drug money.

avenriv

the most of China money leaves through HK do you think HK is a dump ?

did you ever leave your small town ?

38BWD22

I found Hong Kong rather nice some 20 years ago, Beijing not so much.

We just came back from India.

So, yes, I have been to four of those BRICS, and am not impressed. Sorry.

Feel free to tell me more though. Especially about your travels. ;)

BarnacleBill

As a (retired) tax-haven professional in three countries, and a former Manager of the Cayman Islands Chamber of Commerce, I must caution against the term "mis-invoicing" - with or without the hyphen...More properly, it's re-invoicing, and no more illicit than the procedure by which any trader buys goods at one price and sells them at another.

When a corporate buyer is owned by the same people as own the seller, their transaction may raise an eyebrow or two, but usually it would be permitted by the published taxation laws of all the relevant companies, as those laws are interpreted by both private-sector lawyers and the tax authorities. With transactions of that kind, it is beneficial for the owners if the tax-rates are different in the two jurisdictions. Well, of course; but that situation is always - always - allowed by the laws of those jurisdictions, whether they are developed or developing.

Over the years I have written several brief explanations of how "offshore" havens work. The one at the link below covers the basic-basics reasonably well. http://barlowscayman.blogspot.com/2013/01/offshore-tax-havens-what-they-do.html

Duc888

"Every year, roughly $1 trillion flows illegally out of developing and emerging economies due to crime, corruption, and tax evasion"

Yea, that would be banksterz, CIA and their drug running, NGO's and their child trafficking....... etc... Might want to throw a few more zero's in there too.

Bob who runs the deli down the street and pockets $500 "illicit" dollars a week is not your worry or concern you stupid fuckkkerz.

zeroboris

The Russian central bank every year publishes a report of how many billions of dollars have stolen from our economy, and... does nothing, nothing at all to stop this.

smacker

There are good arguments to say that what people do with their own money is nothing to do with .gov.

But once again, we see banksters and corrupt corporate sector players colluding with corrupt individuals and assorted criminals - many inside .gov itself - to move ill-gotten gains to safer places out of reach of law enforcement in their own countries.

Banksters facilitate virtually every financial crime.

[Dec 11, 2015] Demise of the US Middle Class Now Official

Notable quotes:

"... The US is in the midst of transforming itself into a much lower wage environment for all employers. ..."

"... Now the most telling part: Of the households with children in their twenties (a mixture of high school only and graduates in an approximately 50/50 mix of the two) none - absolutely none - can afford to live in the same style as their parents did. ..."

"... Those with no college degree are having, again, to live with their parents until they can afford somewhere to rent. ..."

"... Damn those neo-liberals, damn them to hell! ..."

"... Newsweek ran a story last year, titled "The Hit Men," about executives responsible for massive layoffs. The chief executives of AT T, Nynex, Sears, Philip Morris and Delta Air Lines were high on the list. Of course, international competition plays a role in some downsizings, but as Newsweek's list makes clear, it is hardly the most important cause of the phenomenon. To my knowledge there are no Japanese keiretsu competing to carry my long-distance calls or South Korean conglomerates offering me local service. Nor have many Americans started buying their home appliances at Mexican stores or smoking French cigarettes. I cannot fly Cathay Pacific from Boston to New York. … ..."

"... The ONLY reason these corporate scum downsize is to artificially drive up "productivity" numbers, not real growth in anything, just productivity (because fewer workers NOW have to do the work of 3, and THAT for less pay than before! Instant explosion in productivity!). This only serves to bump up share prices which don't actually reflect anything of value or even approach reality on its own terms. They get to say, "See? Massive increase in productivity, so pay me a bazillion damn dollars in 'bonus". ..."

"... Every pay cut, every job loss should be legally tied to a requirement to lay off a proportionate number of execs AND a proportional cut to top pay and compensation. The income of the top MUST be hard-locked to pay for workers. Worker pay and compensation decreases, then so MUST executive pay and compensation. ..."

"... America was a young country full of opportunity, like China a decade or two ago. As a nation matures the wealth concentrates without strong progressive taxation and high inheritance taxes. Now US social mobility is on a par with the UK, putting it at the second lowest in Europe which is pretty bad. Our privately educated elite are an obvious cause of low social mobility in the UK and perhaps private universities are doing the same job in the US. ..."

"... The 20th Century saw progressive taxation to do away with old money elites and so looking at the playing field now can be rather deceptive. Today's ideal is unregulated, trickledown Capitalism. We had unregulated, trickledown Capitalism in the UK in the 19th Century ..."

"... The Rothschild brothers of London writing to associates in New York, 1863: ..."

"... Our current wealth distribution is more the product of meritocracy than of inheritance. Harvard decided to go meritocratic back in the '50s. The average IQ of the incoming freshman class skyrocketed. There were still legacies, of course, but the whole Ivy League opened up to highly motivated, highly intelligent strivers. The result, in my view, and in the views of 'The Bell Curve' and 'The Revolt of the Elites' was a cognitive elite taking all the best jobs. Ivy league dominance of the most desirable positions in the FIRE sector, government, and the judiciary is far more pronounced today than it was in 1950. ..."

"... You don't seem familiar with the actual data. The US is more unequal than any other major industrialized nation on the planet. By a lot. And it's not a leftist thing. When Americans are surveyed about their desired wealth distribution, the mainstream – not leftist – viewpoint is that the ideal distribution looks roughly like Sweden. ..."

Dec 10, 2015 | naked capitalism

David Carl Grimes December 10, 2015 at 10:13 am

According to the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report, the middle class makes up only 38% of US adults. The poor make up 50%!

https://www.credit-suisse.com/ch/en/about-us/research/research-institute/publications.html

Felix47 December 10, 2015 at 10:36 am

The only real population growth in the US is at the extreme lower end. Nowadays we see fewer and fewer white baby boomers working. For now employers can hold their prices up somewhat because the baby boomers still consume and the employers now can profit because their labor gets less and less money. This will only last until the baby boomers die out. The replacement workforce and the workforce for the future is brown and sees minimum wage as a huge improvement over the situation in their native countries. The US is in the midst of transforming itself into a much lower wage environment for all employers. This study should be combined with a demographic analysis. My suspicion is that the "middle class" is simply dying off to be replaced by third world refugees who are going to earn a lot less.

Clive December 10, 2015 at 11:06 am

Where I live most of the houses around are the definition of "middle class" for England, and it has been a middle class neighbourhood for about a century. You can tell this from the houses types - starting at Edwardian villas with an attic for one (two at the most) live-in maids which would have been the bottom-run of middle class at the time, through to post-war medium sized houses, townhouses, a couple retirement bungalows then some more recent building from the mid-1990's. Nothing is much over 2000 sq. ft. and most are a little less than that. The majority of residents have lived here for 20+years (until recently, it had an extremely stable population base) and their occupations are, again, what you'd have thought of as being text-book middle class (teachers, local government mid-ranking managers, skilled manufacturing, some semi-skilled such as CNC machine operators but no unemployed households or people who are forced to rely on social security.

Now the most telling part: Of the households with children in their twenties (a mixture of high school only and graduates in an approximately 50/50 mix of the two) none - absolutely none - can afford to live in the same style as their parents did. I will emphasis again, this is not historically 1%'er or even a 10%'er neighbourhood. Up until the last 20 years, it was the middle of the middle. Those will college educations (most have had to return to their parents' houses, which is a social issue in itself) are having to wait until they - so they hope - get pay significant rises from their starting salaries to find a place which is not so far down the level they have been accustomed to or else move in with a partner (which again is a social issue because relationships are more difficult to sustain if they begin to be forced by the need to find suitable accommodation).

Those with no college degree are having, again, to live with their parents until they can afford somewhere to rent. This sounds ridiculous (the whole point of renting should be that you don't need to tie up capital or much savings) but because rents are so high this close to London, such a significant portion of their likely incomes will be tied up in rent that they need a cash cushion to survive the inevitable periods where work is not easy to come by and they have to take whatever is offered. Either that or, again, they need to be in a relationship and have someone to split the rent with. But founding a relationship is kind-a hard while living with your folks.

Traditionally, parents might have been able to help their kids with a loan deposit. But many parents already cleared themselves out of their own savings paying tuition fees and the worst excesses of their children's student loans so they would at least not end up starting out £30-£50k in debt. Even if they hadn't done that, a 10% deposit comes in at £25k on the sorts of housing which the middle classes expect to be living in - the kids' parents have been so hollowed out over the last two decades that they don't have that sort of money lying around. Oh, and even if they did, a £225k mortgage is - rightly - outside of most mainstream lender's mortgage criteria for those on a "middle class" job/salary combination as huge salary multiples are no longer available.

Even with college educations, while people in their twenties might be fairly able to get a job in London and the Home Counties paying, say, £30k pa. before taxes, they will have travel costs of £3-5k a year which takes a big chunk out of that before they've even started. Student loan payments will take another couple of thousand out of pre-tax income. If they live link monks (or nuns), they might just about be able to save £5 to £10k a year. Which means it will be another 5 to 7 years before they can achieve any sort of financial or family-life independence - they'll be pushing 30 in other words.

Without college, they are facing renting very poor accommodation for the rest of their days, with no viable option to improve their lot.

So it's RIP the Middle Class, in South East England anyway. If it's died here, I can't think where it might still have any hope of being alive. I've not even mentioned pension provision here, so old age will hold no succour whatsoever.

The FT piece was a Panglossian interpretation of this reality.

MLaRowe December 11, 2015 at 2:29 pm

Just wanted to say I appreciated this comment. I see the realness of what you have described in Central Ohio, USA myself. Thank you.

perpetualWAR December 10, 2015 at 11:49 am

I am a former 6-figure earner who has been fighting foreclosure on my house for six years. Right before the last go-round with the bank, I lost the job I got in 2010 (after a year and a half of unemployment.) So, rather than getting a job, I fought the foreclosure pro se for two years.

Just got new employment and am earning $14/hr.

BTW, my former career was marketing to architects. The gal in Atlanta is crazy to think that the newest construction boom will keep her employed. During my employment in 2010, I would ask architectural firms how the Greatest Depression affected their office. Most never responded to that question, however I will never forget one pricipal replied, "Eight out of our ten employees lost their homes to foreclosure."

You just can't bounce back after losing everything in middle age.

NOTaREALmerican December 10, 2015 at 11:50 am

Damn those neo-liberals, damn them to hell!

allan December 10, 2015 at 12:09 pm

In 1997, some guy wrote this about the effects of globalization:

Critics of the global economy invariably reply that America may be creating lots of jobs but that they are tenuous because of the prevalence of downsizing, which is a reaction to international competition (a line of reasoning that also provides a good excuse for companies undertaking layoffs).

Come again? Newsweek ran a story last year, titled "The Hit Men," about executives responsible for massive layoffs. The chief executives of AT&T, Nynex, Sears, Philip Morris and Delta Air Lines were high on the list. Of course, international competition plays a role in some downsizings, but as Newsweek's list makes clear, it is hardly the most important cause of the phenomenon. To my knowledge there are no Japanese keiretsu competing to carry my long-distance calls or South Korean conglomerates offering me local service. Nor have many Americans started buying their home appliances at Mexican stores or smoking French cigarettes. I cannot fly Cathay Pacific from Boston to New York. …

Many on the left dislike the global marketplace because it epitomizes what they dislike about markets in general: the fact that nobody is in charge. The truth is that the invisible hand rules most domestic markets, too, a reality that most Americans seem to accept as a fact of life. But those who would like to see us revert to a more managed society in all ways hope that popular unease over the economic influence of people who live in far-off places and have funny-sounding names can be used as the thin end of an ideological wedge.

If a vanishing middle-class is the price that needs to be paid for the triumph of Econ 101, so be it. /s

Praedor December 10, 2015 at 1:21 pm

The ONLY reason these corporate scum downsize is to artificially drive up "productivity" numbers, not real growth in anything, just productivity (because fewer workers NOW have to do the work of 3, and THAT for less pay than before! Instant explosion in productivity!). This only serves to bump up share prices which don't actually reflect anything of value or even approach reality on its own terms. They get to say, "See? Massive increase in productivity, so pay me a bazillion damn dollars in 'bonus'".

Every pay cut, every job loss should be legally tied to a requirement to lay off a proportionate number of execs AND a proportional cut to top pay and compensation. The income of the top MUST be hard-locked to pay for workers. Worker pay and compensation decreases, then so MUST executive pay and compensation.

Steven December 10, 2015 at 2:37 pm

If we reasoned similarly in physics, we should probably discover that weights possessed the property of levitation. It is the economist's definition of wealth that is at fault …

Frederick Soddy, WEALTH, VIRTUAL WEALTH AND DEBT, p. 78

As Ruskin said, logical definition of wealth is absolutely needed for the basis of economics needed for the basis of economics if it is to be a science.

ibid, p. 102

"But the securities of American millionaires can be exchanged in a flash for any currency in the world, for land, for other stocks and bonds. The wealth of the Indian princes is immobile, static; the wealth of their American counterparts is mobile, dynamic. In the money markets of the world the feudal wealth of the Indian princes is of no consequence."

Ferdinand Lundberg, "America's 60 Families", The Vanguard Press, New York, 1937, p. 7
Multiply that 'wealth' by the leverage a country's bankers are able to create with fractional reserve lending and you get:

"Finance is the new form of warfare - without the expense of a military overhead and an occupation against unwilling hosts."

http://michael-hudson.com/2010/10/why-the-imf-meetings-failed/

America's and Europe's middle class is dying because:

a. time marches on. We don't need armies of workers laboring day and night to create REAL, NEEDED wealth
b. the world's 0.01% would rather continue "doing God's work" than share the wealth created by advances in science and technology with their "laboring cattle". A leisure class with a genuine clue about what real needed wealth is and what is really happening in the world constitutes a genuine threat to the established order and to all that 'wealth' the 0.01% has piled up in the form of money. (See graph above)

All those jobs this country has off-shored with all the technology and education it takes to perform them ARE real wealth – along with things like renewable energy.

If it really is such a big surprise that countries like China are becoming relatively more wealthy and powerful than the U.S. then the world's rich really are as stupid as many of us believe they are.

RBHoughton December 10, 2015 at 8:32 pm

Well, I'll throw in a socialist comment and hope I'm not flamed.

Isn't it the case that everyone needs a roof over their heads, food and clothing? Perhaps a bicycle too. These things and free education are the minimum a government should supply to its people.

Keith December 11, 2015 at 3:29 am

America was a young country full of opportunity, like China a decade or two ago. As a nation matures the wealth concentrates without strong progressive taxation and high inheritance taxes. Now US social mobility is on a par with the UK, putting it at the second lowest in Europe which is pretty bad. Our privately educated elite are an obvious cause of low social mobility in the UK and perhaps private universities are doing the same job in the US.

If we want equality of opportunity we should think what a meritocracy would look like.

"What is a meritocracy?"

1) In a meritocracy everyone succeeds on their own merit.

This is obvious, but to succeed on your own merit, we need to do away the traditional mechanisms that socially stratify society due to wealth flowing down the generations. Anything that comes from your parents has nothing to do with your own effort.

2) There is no un-earned wealth or power, e.g inheritance, trust funds, hereditary titles

In a meritocracy we need equal opportunity for all. We can't have the current two tier education system with its fast track of private schools for people with wealthy parents.

3) There is a uniform schools system for everyone with no private schools.

Thinking about a true meritocracy then allows you to see how wealth concentrates.

Inheritance and trust funds are major contributors.

When you start off with a lot of capital behind you, you are in life's fast lane.

a) Those with excess capital invest it and collect interest, dividends and rent.
b) Those with insufficient capital borrow money and pay interest and rent.

If the trust fund/inheritance is large enough then you won't need to work at all and can live off the rentier income provided by your parents wealth and the work of an investment banker.

If you are in life's slow lane, with no parental wealth coming your way, you will be loaded up with student debt, rent, mortgages and loans.

To ensure the children of the wealthy get the best start we have private schools to ensure they get the best education and make the right contacts ready for the race of life.

The children of the poor are born in poor areas where schools are typically below average and they are handicapped before they have even started the race of life.

Wealth concentrates because the system is designed that way.

A meritocracy gives everyone equal opportunity but that is the last thing those in charge want for their children

Keith December 11, 2015 at 5:31 am

It is easier to see what is going on if we put things in a historical perspective. Is Capitalism the first social system since the dawn of civilisation to trickle down?
Since it is based on self-interest this seems highly unlikely. It would be drawn up in the self-interest of those that came up with the system, i.e. those at the top.

The 20th Century saw progressive taxation to do away with old money elites and so looking at the playing field now can be rather deceptive. Today's ideal is unregulated, trickledown Capitalism. We had unregulated, trickledown Capitalism in the UK in the 19th Century. We know what it looks like.

1) Those at the top were very wealthy
2) Those lower down lived in grinding poverty, paid just enough to keep them alive to work with as little time off as possible.
3) Slavery
4) Child Labour

Immense wealth at the top with nothing trickling down, just like today.

The beginnings of regulation to deal with the wealthy UK businessman seeking to maximise profit, the abolition of slavery and child labour. At the end of the 19th Century, with a century of two of Capitalism under our belt, it was very obvious a Leisure Class existed at the top of society. The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions, by Thorstein Veblen The Wikipedia entry gives a good insight. This was before the levelling of progressive taxation in the 20th Century.

It can clearly be seen that Capitalism, like every other social system since the dawn of civilisation, is designed to support a Leisure Class at the top through the effort of a working and middle class.

After the 20th Century progressive taxation the Leisure Class probably stay hidden in the US. In the UK, associates of the Royal Family are covered in the press and show the Leisure Class are still here with us today.

It was obvious in Adam Smith's day.

Adam Smith:

"The Labour and time of the poor is in civilised countries sacrificed to the maintaining of the rich in ease and luxury. The Landlord is maintained in idleness and luxury by the labour of his tenants. The moneyed man is supported by his extractions from the industrious merchant and the needy who are obliged to support him in ease by a return for the use of his money. But every savage has the full fruits of his own labours; there are no landlords, no usurers and no tax gatherers."

With Capitalism it's better hidden:

The Rothschild brothers of London writing to associates in New York, 1863:

"The few who understand the system will either be so interested in its profits or be so dependent upon its favours that there will be no opposition from that class, while on the other hand, the great body of people, mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantage that capital derives from the system, will bear its burdens without complaint, and perhaps without even suspecting that the system is inimical to their interests."

Keith December 11, 2015 at 5:32 am

Everyone works in their own self interest even economists.

• Malthus – supports the vested interests of landlords and so finds nothing wrong with parasitic landlord rent extraction.
• Ricardo – supports the vested interest of bankers coming from a banking family, sees problem with feudal landowners but not bankers that create money out of nothing
• The Austrian School – Austrian aristocrats, of the European Leisure class, support investor's interests. Anti-Government as they are trying to do away with the old European aristocracy. Give preference to those with money:

  You are free to spend your money as you choose.
  No money, no freedom.
  Money is freedom.

Most classical economists differentiated between earned and unearned wealth. The Austrian Aristocrats benefit from inherited wealth and hide the distinction. As members of the European Leisure class, they liked to invest and make money from the hard work of others while doing very little themselves.

Keith December 11, 2015 at 5:33 am

A monetary system devised by bankers where they create money out of nothing and lend it out charging interest to make a profit. When you come up with a system you make sure it works for you.

How is the legal system loaded? Why do people use expensive barristers/legal teams? It increases your chance of winning the case. What if you can't afford expensive barristers/legal teams? You decrease your chance of winning the case. It's loaded.

Jim in SC December 11, 2015 at 9:27 am

Our current wealth distribution is more the product of meritocracy than of inheritance. Harvard decided to go meritocratic back in the '50s. The average IQ of the incoming freshman class skyrocketed. There were still legacies, of course, but the whole Ivy League opened up to highly motivated, highly intelligent strivers. The result, in my view, and in the views of 'The Bell Curve' and 'The Revolt of the Elites' was a cognitive elite taking all the best jobs. Ivy league dominance of the most desirable positions in the FIRE sector, government, and the judiciary is far more pronounced today than it was in 1950.

What would the smartest strivers of the last sixty years have been doing if they hadn't gone to the Ivies? For one thing, they'd probably be living in the Heartland, or wherever they were from. They might have gone to a local college. IQs at local schools have dropped as IQs at the Ivies have risen. They might have worked at a union job. Losing people in the top 1% of intelligence to the Goldman Sachs and McKinseys of the world has been a terrible blow to those segments of society whose interests needed to be protected from unfettered capitalism.

I wish the terminal lefties here at Naked Capitalism would stop trotting out the tired old horse of wealth being perpetuated across generations. By and large, in the United States, it is dispersed over time. Europe may be a different story. There are still wealthy Fuggers, etcetera. But in the US it tends to get dispersed. Only one member of the Forbes 400 of which I am aware has a tie to a great 19th century fortune: David Rockefeller, and he worked at Citigroup. See Rob Arnott's take on wealth dispersion, and Dr. William Bernstein's.

Ulysses December 11, 2015 at 10:24 am

"I wish the terminal lefties here at Naked Capitalism would stop trotting out the tired old horse of wealth being perpetuated across generations. By and large, in the United States, it is dispersed over time."

There is a very narrow sense in which this is true. We do not enforce a system of male primogeniture among a landed aristocracy here in the United States. The fact that some of my ancestors once owned large estates, in New Holland and New York, doesn't entitle me to life as a lord of the manor today. What it did do for me however, was give to my maternal grandparents the easy circumstances necessary to pursue their own interests with no desperate struggle for survival. This allowed my parents to pursue careers in philosophy and linguistics. My generation saw my brother become a physicist and myself a medievalist. We will never be as wealthy as our great-great grandparents were. Yet, because of their wealth, (even much dispersed over time) we were given opportunities to pursue interests that are simply not often available to many others.

I always hear how Bill Gates was a "self-made" man. Really? His mother, Mary Maxwell House Gates was on the board at First Interstate Bank of Washington, and his father William H. Gates, II, was a wealthy attorney and philanthropist.

I know that not all DuPonts, Rockefellers, Whitneys, Vanderbilts, Sharpes, Hutchinsons, Van Rensselaers, etc. are super wealthy today. Yet the vast majority of them are at least comfortable, just as Bill Gates would have been– even if he had never worked a day in his life.

washunate December 11, 2015 at 5:32 pm

You don't seem familiar with the actual data. The US is more unequal than any other major industrialized nation on the planet. By a lot. And it's not a leftist thing. When Americans are surveyed about their desired wealth distribution, the mainstream – not leftist – viewpoint is that the ideal distribution looks roughly like Sweden.

Also, in a meritocratic society, the socioeconomic status of the parents would have no material impact on the child. In the US, by contrast, the parents are highly predictive of the child. Google the general term social mobility if you are interested in this. For example, we can predict that some kids will be arrested by police more than others simply by looking at the zip code of the parents at the time of birth. Stuff like that is nuts and completely incompatible with a merit-based hypothesis.

[Dec 11, 2015] How Far Can The Syria Conflict Spiral Out Of Control

Notable quotes:

"... By James Stafford, Editor in Chief of OilPrice. Originally published at OilPrice ..."

"... • How far the Russia-Turkey spat can go economically ..."

"... • The fallout effects for countries caught in between ..."

"... • What Russia wants ..."

"... • What Turkey wants ..."

"... • What other geopolitical purposes ISIS serves ..."

"... • Why ISIS can't be controlled ..."

"... • How Shi'ite radical groups differ ..."

"... • Why we're looking at a possible remapping of a significant part of the energy arena ..."

"... • Why we shouldn't listen to billionaire buffoons ..."

"... Larger picture of what's really going on with Turkey's intentions driven by Ergodan, Bensh's correct description of Ergo's character and flaws, and less explicitly stated US (he says "west") 1/2 ass efforts to defeat IS despite US leaders (from WH to Congress) emphatic claims otherwise… ..."

"... "Coupled with unparalleled levels of socioeconomic insecurity, Sunni marginalization produced a real social base whose attraction to ISIS goes beyond religious or ideological factors." ..."

"... ISIS may project a utopic promise of stability and prosperity, but this is far from the reality on the ground. We can be absolutely certain that it will experience its own internal revolts, as similarly declarative examples of Islamic "states" have faced in the past. ..."

"... Yet, from the point of view of Washington, a geostrategic problem lingered: how to break the Tehran-Damascus alliance. And ultimately, how to break the Tehran-Moscow alliance. ..."

"... The "Assad must go" obsession in Washington is a multi-headed hydra. It includes breaking a Russia-Iran-Iraq-Syria alliance (now very much in effect as the "4+1" alliance, including Hezbollah, actively fighting all strands of Salafi Jihadism in Syria). But it also includes isolating energy coordination among them, to the benefit of the Gulf petrodollar clients/vassals linked to US energy giants. ..."

"... Thus Washington's strategy so far of injecting the proverbial Empire of Chaos logic into Syria; feeding the flames of internal chaos, a pre-planed op by the CIA, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, with the endgame being regime change in Damascus. ..."

"... Of course Turkey is the wild card – Erdogan is increasingly looking like he might be the spark that sets off a much larger conflict. To answer the question, I think there are a lot of really bad scenarios that could happen here, and they are a lot closer than people think (Turkey shutting down the Bosphorus, for starters.) ..."

"... It is way past time for the arrogant stupidity of Washington's neoconservatives to be exposed and for them to at a minimum be removed from the levers of power – if not tried for crimes against humanity. And that includes Obama if he is really one of them, i.e. if he believes in anything but the politics of power. ..."

"... Specifically with respect to Syria, it looks like about the best the 'West' (i.e. the US and its vassals) can hope for is some pipeline arrangement providing Europe with an alternative, a competing supplier for its energy needs. In exchange, the 'West' can agree to end its economic war against Russia, Iran et.al and get back to the business of business, i.e. exporting something other than debt and bombs. ..."

"... I remember reading years ago that the rise of the AKP, and the rising standard of living with it, was fueled directly by a large stream of cash that was funneled from the House of Saud. ..."

"... The interest must be paid… ..."

"... I think the waffling on ISIS is due to their location among Sunnis. The US would like to win Sunnis over, so they're cautious about bombing, which of course is to ISIS' advantage. ..."

"... From where I sit, the Syria conflict is an important part of a much larger one – between the 'West' and Russia. Things have been heating up again in the Ukraine. Biden gave a speech there just a couple of days ago in which he insisted that 'NATO would not rest until Crimea was returned to the Ukraine.' That's not going to happen without a war. ..."

naked capitalism

By James Stafford, Editor in Chief of OilPrice. Originally published at OilPrice

...No one can fight a war without oil, according to Robert Bensh, partner and managing director of Pelicourt LLC oil and gas company. But while the politically unhinged are coming out the woodwork, the more important aspects of this story remain elusive to the public. Is the dangerously unspoken theory that ISIS is a bulwark against Iran what's keeping the West from tackling the Islamic State wholeheartedly on its territory?

... ... ...

In an exclusive interview with James Stafford of Oilprice.com, Bensh discusses:

• How far the Russia-Turkey spat can go economically
• The fallout effects for countries caught in between
• What Russia wants
• What Turkey wants
• What other geopolitical purposes ISIS serves
• Why ISIS can't be controlled
• How Shi'ite radical groups differ
• Why we're looking at a possible remapping of a significant part of the energy arena
• Why we shouldn't listen to billionaire buffoons

... ... ...

Robert Bensh: Russia and Turkey have a great deal of economic interdependence, and nowhere more than in the energy sector. There has been no talk of cutting Russian gas to Turkey, and I don't see how Russia can afford this right now. Turkey is not only a significant customer for Russia, but it's also a key gas-transit point.

James Stafford: So what does Turkey want?

Robert Bensh: The better question is: "What does Erdogan want?" You know, Putin's probably not too far off in his statement referring to Erdogan's loss of "mind and reason". Erdogan has been going down this path little by little for some time and it's no secret that he has some megalomaniacal tendencies that grow more and more out of control every year. It would seem that he has dreams of a return of the Ottoman Empire-and that ISIS could be a logical ally to that end. Of course, ISIS is not likely looking to be beholden to another Ottoman Empire controlling a greater Sunni-Arab dominion. Many, many Turks fail to share this dream with their leader, and his ambitions will also be his eventual downfall unfortunately.

For the Turkish regime, there is also the idea that ISIS will ostensibly give them more power against the rise of the Kurds, both in southeastern Turkey and in northern Syria. It will even raise the Turks' status in the face of the Saudis whose oil wealth has make them more powerful than the Turks in many ways.

Jim McKay December 11, 2015 at 9:03 am

Yves: I think your "quibble" is… indeed minor.

Larger picture of what's really going on with Turkey's intentions driven by Ergodan, Bensh's correct description of Ergo's character and flaws, and less explicitly stated US (he says "west") 1/2 ass efforts to defeat IS despite US leaders (from WH to Congress) emphatic claims otherwise…

These are realities. Whatever small portion of US electorate reads here, at least a few are being introduced to this. We are heading into another election with… in my view, more deeply entrenched public opinions on this based on lies, then maybe any time I recall my entire life. It's just, the game is bigger now with more potential for longer lasting catastrophe if we don't find a way to right our ship.

I appreciate this article… it's on the right track. Only other thing I'd mention: amidst all this, we've had recent international climate meetings with little progress. Clearly, this is bigger problem for entire planet that nobody will escape. I'm stuck by Bensh's comments on protecting their investments (oil) and how the various players he mentions all make decisions based on… oil. It over rides, it seems…everything else that matters.

The planet needs to get behind renewables, and develop them… fast. It's not so hard to see how doing so would change these other geo-political games forever.

financial matters December 11, 2015 at 9:15 am

I think taking the 'businessman' look at this is not a bad way to look at it. As Adam Hanieh has pointed out

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/12/isis-syria-iraq-war-al-qaeda-arab-spring/

"Coupled with unparalleled levels of socioeconomic insecurity, Sunni marginalization produced a real social base whose attraction to ISIS goes beyond religious or ideological factors."

and also

"ISIS may project a utopic promise of stability and prosperity, but this is far from the reality on the ground. We can be absolutely certain that it will experience its own internal revolts, as similarly declarative examples of Islamic "states" have faced in the past.

Despite all the setbacks of the last few years, the potential growth of a genuinely left alternative has not been extinguished and, most importantly, has never been more necessary."

--

William Polk echoes this idea of the importance of a non-military and non-police response.

https://consortiumnews.com/2015/11/17/falling-into-the-isis-trap/

"–The results of insurgency are described in my book Violent Politics. There I have shown that in a variety of societies over the last two centuries in various parts of Africa, Asia and Europe, guerrillas have nearly always accomplished their objectives despite even the most draconian counterinsurgency tactics."

His point being that dealing with the fundamental socioeconomic imbalances/repression can be more effective.

Eureka Springs December 11, 2015 at 9:16 am

Interesting to me as much for what is not considered by oil businessmen.

A few quick points:

• No mention of human suffering, not even in cost/opportunity terms.
• No mention of rule of law.
• No mention of what happens to the earths climate/ecosystem if all the oil and gas at stake is unleashed.
• No mention of who many of the business players are, certainly not in detail. No mention of Erdogans family, Tony Hayward, trafficking / selling this stolen oil…
• Nor mention of Israel being the major end buyer.
• When mentioning Assad buys oil from IS (U.S Turk Israel Saudi Qatari Qaeda Nusra) no mention of the point Assad is buying his countries own oil at the point of a gun from the thieves who stole it.
• No mention that this uncertainty/chaos is both deliberate and a constant feature of big oil and MIC's business model.
• No concern that more tyrants of the head chopping variety are bound to achieve or maintain power.

cassandra December 11, 2015 at 12:43 pm

…and

• No mention of strategic significance of naval base at Tartus
• No mention of "legal" Saudi arms purchasing and trafficking, and extremist support in Syria, Yemen and about the globe.

Brooklin Bridge December 11, 2015 at 9:29 am

This is a good interview. Along with other posts on the subject, this is bringing a little clarity to why there is no clarity.

participant-observer-observed December 11, 2015 at 9:46 am

Hmmm. No mention of Saudi and others in the dynamic…

for more details, read above with Escobar's Pipelineistan,
here c/o Tom Dispatch.

Jack Heape December 11, 2015 at 10:06 am

Thanks for that link. Escobar always has some good insights. I also suggest Juan Cole. He recently had a good piece on President Erdogan.

camelotkidd December 11, 2015 at 9:50 am

Pepe Escobar has been all over the back story of what he calls pipelineistan– http://counterpunch.org/2015/12/08/syria-ultimate-pipelineistan-war /

"Yet, from the point of view of Washington, a geostrategic problem lingered: how to break the Tehran-Damascus alliance. And ultimately, how to break the Tehran-Moscow alliance.

The "Assad must go" obsession in Washington is a multi-headed hydra. It includes breaking a Russia-Iran-Iraq-Syria alliance (now very much in effect as the "4+1" alliance, including Hezbollah, actively fighting all strands of Salafi Jihadism in Syria). But it also includes isolating energy coordination among them, to the benefit of the Gulf petrodollar clients/vassals linked to US energy giants.

Thus Washington's strategy so far of injecting the proverbial Empire of Chaos logic into Syria; feeding the flames of internal chaos, a pre-planed op by the CIA, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, with the endgame being regime change in Damascus."

participant-observer-observed December 11, 2015 at 10:10 am

Yes, thanks for that most recent Escobar piece at Counterpunch; the one i linked above is already old but still interesting.

The regime change recipe of DC has already been tried and has failed in Iraq, Libya, etc., no one can fathom any improvements replacing Assad + Isis with Isis alone, aka rag tag coalitions of jihadis! Even Saudis can hardly wish for it.

ChrisFromGeorgia December 11, 2015 at 10:29 am

Based on reported facts on the ground (well, reported by non-US media that is) the SAA is making slow but steady progress in retaking key towns and the highway between Aleppo and Damascus. No doubt Russian air and logistical support has made a difference.

If things keep going this way, Assad will likely regain the upper hand and the Saudi/US sponsored jihadis will be confined to the eastern part of the country. It's looking like Washington will have to make a choice – accept Assad as the legitimate ruler (for now) or continue to provoke the situation with guerrilla tactics. We know from history that there is precedent for long wars against legitimate governments that displease Washington (see Daniel Ortega, Sandanistas.) My guess is they go this route and hope to eventually install a stooge.

Of course Turkey is the wild card – Erdogan is increasingly looking like he might be the spark that sets off a much larger conflict. To answer the question, I think there are a lot of really bad scenarios that could happen here, and they are a lot closer than people think (Turkey shutting down the Bosphorus, for starters.)

Steven December 11, 2015 at 11:01 am

It is way past time for the arrogant stupidity of Washington's neoconservatives to be exposed and for them to at a minimum be removed from the levers of power – if not tried for crimes against humanity. And that includes Obama if he is really one of them, i.e. if he believes in anything but the politics of power.

This 'Arrogance of Power' has characterized US foreign policy making since the end of WWII. The U.N. was sold to the public as an arrangement for collective security so the U.S. would not have to 'make the world safe for democracy' (sic) a third time. It has been in reality nothing more than a tool for the pursuit of (perceived) US interests, promptly discarded when the principles in its charter became inconvenient.

Short of initiating the world's Mutually Assured Destruction, the U.S. is running out of options – in Syria and around the world. It may be too late for the U.S. to get serious about collective security, to tell the world 'this time we really mean it'. Having squandered economic and "too good to waste" military power in a successive string of needless wars, it may no longer be possible to convince especially those who hold the levers of power in Russia and China that we are serious about collective security and willing to accept a multi-polar world.

Specifically with respect to Syria, it looks like about the best the 'West' (i.e. the US and its vassals) can hope for is some pipeline arrangement providing Europe with an alternative, a competing supplier for its energy needs. In exchange, the 'West' can agree to end its economic war against Russia, Iran et.al and get back to the business of business, i.e. exporting something other than debt and bombs.

kgw December 11, 2015 at 11:17 am

I remember reading years ago that the rise of the AKP, and the rising standard of living with it, was fueled directly by a large stream of cash that was funneled from the House of Saud.

The interest must be paid…

susan the other December 11, 2015 at 12:17 pm

This was really to the point, without actually making it. One thing is becoming clear – the oil wars are distilling down to natural advantage. It currently belongs to SA – but the future looks like it prefers to use Levant & east Mediterranean oil because it will be easier to pipe to southern Europe. And maybe cleaner? So everybody and their dog is fighting for access to it.

It explains Netanyahu's trip to Moscow & the French clearly in league with Russia for achieving access to this resource (why else?). And it is partly being driven by decisions to leave current oil reserves in the ground. As Palast said it is a "war for no oil."

Which in turn makes sense of Kerry's admonishing the Senate about the Iran deal – that if they want to continue to be oil brokers (petrodollar brokers) they have to come to terms with Iran because there are plenty of other nations who can step up; and of course we want our EU cousins to get a cut of Levant oil, and etc. And Russia is clearly protecting its oil interests. I wonder how long this feeding frenzy will continue.

Horatio Parker December 11, 2015 at 12:28 pm

I think the waffling on ISIS is due to their location among Sunnis. The US would like to win Sunnis over, so they're cautious about bombing, which of course is to ISIS' advantage.

tgs December 11, 2015 at 2:40 pm

From where I sit, the Syria conflict is an important part of a much larger one – between the 'West' and Russia. Things have been heating up again in the Ukraine. Biden gave a speech there just a couple of days ago in which he insisted that 'NATO would not rest until Crimea was returned to the Ukraine.' That's not going to happen without a war.

[Dec 10, 2015] A Critique of Piketty on the Normative Force of Wealth Inequality

Notable quotes:

"... So… if I work hard all my life, say three minimum wage jobs, to put my kid through college, their college education is "unjustified"? ..."

"... Nothing is a priori just or unjust; Thomas More had slaves in his Utopia. However, when a socio-economic arrangement reaches a phase where its fairness is commonly questioned, that's a sure sign that the dominant ideology fails to convince, and the system is in trouble. Doesn't mean it's going to collapse tomorrow, obviously. ..."

"... In a perfectly equal society where no one inherited anything, everyone got exactly the same starting salary, saved the same amount, got the same raise every year and earned the same rate of return, the richest 1/5 would still control 66% of the wealth just due to cohort effects. ..."

"... This is an interesting paper about the dissipation of wealth: What is the True Rate of Social Mobility in Sweden? Suggests that the tendency of fortunes to fade away is generally underestimated ..."

"... My reading of r g is that its piketty's attempt to put an overarching intellectual framework over his results and that its the least successful part of the work, although Brad Delong has made pretty good sense of it here ..."

"... As Cudd concedes, Piketty presents a positive analysis predicting that inherited wealth will become dominant, and doesn't spell out any theory of justice, though it's obvious that he thinks this is a bad thing. ..."

"... So, Cudd makes up a theory of justice, imputes it to Piketty and then says it hasn't been proven. What's more she writes as this topic is being addressed for the first time. She doesn't mention any of the vast number of people who've written on equality and whose arguments might be relevant here. ..."

"... I agree with other posters. The OP 'reconstructed' an argument Piketty never made about a topic he didn't address, and then complained about how bad it is (and for really unconvincing reasons). It's not often you see someone lose an argument so badly with a straw man of their own construction. ..."

"... A greatly unequal society requires a great amount of resources to maintain its inequality, and thus itself. ..."

Dec 11, 2015 | Crooked Timber

on December 10, 2015

Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century is an important and valuable contribution to political economy, both empirically and philosophically. Piketty grounds his theory in vast empirical data,rather than settling for elegant mathematical models. He courageously embraces the fact that economic theory is inevitably value laden, and proposes a theory of the historical dynamics of wealth accumulation in order to offer an updated moral critique of capitalism. Grounding his prediction in the historical data and profoundly simple mathematics, Piketty projects that economic inequality is likely to increase and to favor those who own inherited capital over time. He advances the normative judgment that rising inequality is unjust and must be contained. Although Piketty raises important concerns about the possibility of growing wealth inequality, he fails to normatively ground or argue for his presupposition that this inequality is unjust. Since relative poverty can coincide with high levels of objective or subjective well-being, this presupposition is brought into question. However, there are causes of inequality (including wealth inequality) that clearly can be shown to be unjust. By considering other forms and causes of inequality and oppression, we can distinguish between those forms of wealth inequality that are unjust and those that are normatively benign. In this way Piketty's concerns about growing wealth inequality from inheritance can be partly justified, though of course not empirically verified. Piketty's argument for the injustice of growing economic inequality has two parts. The first part is an empirical, economic argument for the claim that returns from inherited wealth will far outstrip income. This argument can be summarized as follows. Let r be the rate of return on capital, and g be the growth rate of the annual flow of national income.

1. If r>g, then (wealth) inequality will grow over time.
2. Individuals who own a greater amount of capital earn a larger r.
3. Growth, g, is likely to be slower in future.
4. If r is great enough and g is low enough, then there will be ever more capital from older, inherited wealth, than from wealth saved from income.
5. Hence, (wealth) inequality will increase, and inherited wealth will make up the greatest amount of capital. [click to continue…]

T 12.10.15 at 4:24 pm

"To show that income inequalities are unjust, they also have to be shown to derive from injustice or to lead to injustice." First, thank you for taking the time to join the group blog. Second, it seems that high income and high wealth individuals have been very effective in tilting the tax, regulatory, and legal environment even more in their favor thereby increasing the inequality that you may argue was not originally unjust. Do you think those behaviors lead to unjust income inequality? Do you think those behaviors are a necessary consequence of increased wealth and income inequality?

Rakesh Bhandari 12.10.15 at 4:29 pm 2

Interesting and challenging comment which will take several readings to understand and evaluate the many different arguments being made.

Here is why Piketty thinks a rentier society contradicts the meritocratic worldview of democratic societies:

"…no ineluctable force standing in the way to extreme concentration of wealth…if growth slows and the return on capital increases [as] tax competition between nations heats up…Our democratic societies rest on a meritocratic worldview, or at any rate, a meritocratic hope, by whichI I mean a belief in a society in which inequality is based more on merit and effort than on kinship and rents. This belief and hope play a very crucial role in modern society, for a simple reason: in a democracy the professed equality of rights of all citizens contrasts sharply with the very real inequality of living conditions, and in order to overcome this contradiction it is vital to make sure that social inequalities derive from ration and universal principles rather than arbitrary contingencies. Inequalities must therefore be just and useful to all, at least in the realm of discourse and as far as possible in reality as well…Durkheim predicted that modern democratic society would not put for long with the existence of inherited wealth and would ultimately see to it that the ownership of property ended at death." p. 422

I understand Cudd to be raising a neo-liberal point discussed in Raymond Plant's book on neo-liberalism -- that if a fortune has been made through no injustice to a concrete other and its gifting and bequeathing does no concrete injustice to another, then there is no coherent ideal of social justice (Hayek's idea that social justice is mirage) that would allow us to condemn the resulting distribution of wealth, as fantastically concentrated as it may be.

Yet a rentier society would actually undermine social utility by reducing the incentives for entrepreneurial exertion; the largest incomes also could not be justified in terms of meritocratic principles; and rentiers would be in a position to use the political process to extract not what Piketty calls rent in terms of the income of a rentier but what most economists mean by rents. The last would have no justification in terms of welfare economics (of which Cudd gives an eloquent defense in her book on capitalism). Piketty is correct that to the extent that citizens understood the nature of a rentier society they would rise in opposition to it.

Plus, the wealth concentration of a rentier society would not be accepted in a Rawlsian original position and to the extent that some wealth is needed to exercise one's capabilities would be unjustifiable from Sen's and Nussbaum's capabilities theory. Piketty expresses sympathy for both normative political theories.

Now Cudd also notes that Piketty argues that the astronomical pay of super-managers cannot be justified in meritocratic terms; his argument is more developed than she lets on–it involves cross-sectional comparison and econometric analysis, controlling for luck and other factors in company performance outside the control of a supermanager as well as the inapplicability of marginal productivity theory to the unique jobs that a CEO does. Plus, he gives an institutional analysis of the way in which CEO's can capture boards and how their incentive to do so rose with lower marginal tax rates. Of course that Piketty undermines this justification does not necessarily mean that such compensation is unjustified, but he does undermine the meritocratic justification that is given for it.

MPAVictoria 12.10.15 at 4:34 pm 3

"When wealth inequalities stem from unjust inheritances"

Is there any inheritance anywhere in the world that is not an "unjust" inheritance? Serious question...

Bruce Wilder 12.10.15 at 4:34 pm 4

Piketty treats economic inequality stemming from return on capital . . . as a zero sum sort of situation, but that is clearly not true. Investment of capital creates improvements in standard of living for all.

"that is clearly not true" seems a bit emphatic for a proposition that should not be clear at all. It might be the case that an instance of capital investment improves the standard of living or it might be immiserating. A wealthy investor might invest in a payday loan operation with a remarkable return on investment. A corporation might invest in automation of a production process and bargain for a reduction of wages for the now less numerous and "less-skilled" workforce.

The emblematic condition of Piketty's work, r > g, ought to imply something about the balance at the margin. If the income share claimed by capital is rising faster than total income, it cannot be the case that all capital investment entails a positive-sum bargain in which the net gain is distributed.

We can certainly hope for the kind of capital investments that result in economic growth that exceeds the return to the owners of capital, but that's not the world Piketty is worried about.

Bruce Wilder 12.10.15 at 4:47 pm 5

Piketty argues that top managers today are paid unjustifiably large salaries because it is too difficult to assess the marginal productivity, and in the absence of any information they are able to manipulate their own and each other's wages. A market failure is not an injustice . . .

Calling an exercise of power and authority in a bureaucratic hierarchy "a market failure" is an error of ideological obduracy, since hierarchies are not "markets". Hierarchies of authority make economic use of social domination, which is, at least, potentially problematic for justice.

Bruce Wilder 12.10.15 at 4:53 pm 6

A significant cause of income inequality is the differences in human capital developed through education. Piketty notes that the educational systems in Europe and especially the US tend to prevent rather than promote social mobility, and instead transmit privilege. 'Parents' income has become an almost perfect predictor of university access.' (p. 485) Piketty's explanation seems to be that it is because wealthy parents buy places for their children in universities, but I think this overestimates the corruption in university admissions and it underestimates the degree of stratification of the developed academic abilities of college age students. Wealthier families are better able to invest in developing children's abilities and talents to prepare them for college, and have better schools in their neighborhoods. Especially elite universities in the US compete very hard to find and attract low income and minority students, but the competition is stiff for qualified students who will not need remediation in order to succeed.

Demand for low-cost tokens is outrunning supply.

Trader Joe 12.10.15 at 5:03 pm 7

I struggle a lot with the concept of inheritance and when/when not justified. Its easy to see how its unfair/unjustified when the amounts are signficant, far less so when they are not.

If I'm a Rockefeller and hand over the emprire to my children, its easy to see an undeserved conferred advantage.

If I'm farmer Joe who has worked my farm all my life, own it outright through my labor and savings and then want to pass that to my children, who have also worked it all their life(s), so that it can sustain them the same way as it sustained me – it seems far more fair though it still confers on them an advantage of priveldged and if they successfully manage that advantage they should be able to make it grow. Over some number of generations, the differences would collapse.

I think its a very natural instinct for a parent to want to transmit advantage to their children. Teaching them and nurturing their character are never criticized though no less an asset than dollars or farms.

I can see how the provision of an elite education transmits priveledge, but I'malso hard pressed to suggest a child should be denied the best possible education that they can get. If a child has intellectual talent it should be developed regardless of whether they come from a rich or poor family.

One take away from Picketty could be the best possible biological strategy is to try to get as rich as you possibly can because that's the best possible insurance for perpetuating your DNA. Probably not the policy prescription being encouraged, but certainly supported by the data.

Paul 12.10.15 at 5:21 pm 8

All property rights are oppressive; they amount to the restriction of the freedom of the non-property owner. Unless one wants to go communist (and argue that it is possible to create a society without property rights) or libertarian (and argue that property rights somehow exist a priori of society), any society is necessarily oppressive and unjust. The goal is to minimise this injustice without creating others or destroying the ability if society to function.

So I think the OP is wrong in asserting that any allocation of property rights should be assumed just in the absence if evidence that the distribution is "oppression". Property rights are (probably necessary) oppression, almost by definition.

notsneaky 12.10.15 at 5:43 pm 9

"Is there any inheritance anywhere in the world that is not an "unjust" inheritance?"

So… if I work hard all my life, say three minimum wage jobs, to put my kid through college, their college education is "unjustified"?

MPAVictoria 12.10.15 at 5:55 pm 11

"So I think the OP is wrong in asserting that any allocation of property rights should be assumed just in the absence if evidence that the distribution is "oppression". Property rights are (probably necessary) oppression, almost by definition."

Yep. Property is violence. Maybe beneficial violence in the utilitarian sense but violence all the same.

Ze K 12.10.15 at 6:34 pm 12

Nothing is a priori just or unjust; Thomas More had slaves in his Utopia. However, when a socio-economic arrangement reaches a phase where its fairness is commonly questioned, that's a sure sign that the dominant ideology fails to convince, and the system is in trouble. Doesn't mean it's going to collapse tomorrow, obviously.

Rakesh Bhandari 12.10.15 at 6:45 pm 13

It could be argued that entrepreneurial behavior is already individually irrational -- see Kahneman and Tversky. But it is often motivated at least partially by the dream of creating dynastic wealth and glory. Otherwise, it would make little sense to do the hard labor of thinking of new ways of doing things, convincing financiers of the worthiness of the project and giving up more secure incomes. One could worry that Piketty has exaggerated the importance of inherited wealth even in the face of his own evidence (only a small fraction of the top 1% receive most of their income as rentier rent IIRC) and that he has under-estimated its importance as an economic incentive for entrepreneurial labor and that he has also underestimated the extent to which great fortunes dissipate over time due to the growth of heirs and reasonable taxation.

MPAVictoria 12.10.15 at 6:51 pm14

"Nothing is a priori just or unjust"

He said as he foreclosed on the poor family and cast them out to starve in the street.

cassander 12.10.15 at 6:51 pm 15

>If r>g, then (wealth) inequality will grow over time.

If this were true, every Kennedy alive today would be richer than Joe Kennedy was. This is not the case. It is not the case because people eventually die and fortunes get divided up. It's not a statement of how feudalism works under primogeniture, but it doesn't describe modern economies. Everything Pikety says is built on this fundamental mistake.

> Wealthier families are better able to invest in developing children's abilities and talents to prepare them for college, and have better schools in their neighborhoods.

Large American urban school districts are not just the best funded in the country, they're the best funded in the world. And what Bruce says about market failure applies equally well here. people have voted massive amounts of money for urban schools, when those state run schools fail to perform well despite these resources, the failure cannot possibly be attributed to market forces.

> In the 19th century the top 10% most wealthy owned 90% of capital, the middle 40% owned 5% and the bottom 50% owned 5%.

In a perfectly equal society where no one inherited anything, everyone got exactly the same starting salary, saved the same amount, got the same raise every year and earned the same rate of return, the richest 1/5 would still control 66% of the wealth just due to cohort effects. This simple characterizations of wealth inequality by quintiles or deciles do more to conceal than to reveal. what matters is not snapshots, but lifetime expectations. These, however, are harder to calculate and make for much less snappy talking points

Paul 12.10.15 at 6:51 pm 16

This is an interesting paper about the dissipation of wealth: What is the True Rate of Social Mobility in Sweden? Suggests that the tendency of fortunes to fade away is generally underestimated

Paul 12.10.15 at 7:00 pm 17

My reading of r>g is that its piketty's attempt to put an overarching intellectual framework over his results and that its the least successful part of the work, although Brad Delong has made pretty good sense of it here

http://www.econ.hit-u.ac.jp/~makoto/Piketty_readings/Delong_2015.pdf

But even if you consider it in error its the conclusion more than the foundation. The data speaks for itself.

Cassander @15: I read your comment as "even a pretty equal society would be pretty unequal". The definition if a " pretty equal" society us surely one where the richest 20% only control a little more than 20% of the wealth, surely? After all, the tallest 20% do not account for 66% of the total height in the population.

Layman 12.10.15 at 7:13 pm

If we are to complain that Piketty fails to demonstrate that income inequalities originate from or lead to injustices, can we not also complain that he fails to demonstrate that the sun rises in the east, or that night follows day, or that it is quite difficult to put the toothpaste back into the tube? While this is not as bad as complaining that he fails to discuss 20th- and 21st- century novels, it approaches that degree of badness.

cassander 12.10.15 at 7:49 pm 21

@Paul

>This is an interesting paper about the disspation of wealth:

I just skimmed it, but that the paper argues that there's a great deal of dissipation of wealth, just that it's well below 100% dissipation.

>The definition if a " pretty equal" society us surely one where the richest 20% only control a little more than 20% of the wealth, surely? After all, the tallest 20% do not account for 66% of the total height in the population.

If everyone was born 2 feet tall and got 10% taller a year, then the tallest 20% would have 80% of the height. the point of the math I laid out is precisely that "a society where everyone has the same amount of stuff" and "a society where everyone gets the same amount of stuff" are not the same, despite our basic instinct that they should be.

T 12.10.15 at 7:52 pm 22

@16

This and other studies using unique surnames tends to suggest that mobility may be overstated.
http://faculty.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gclark/papers/Sweden%202012%20AUG.pdf

engels 12.10.15 at 7:53 pm 23

Apologies if I've misunderstood but does the OP really think that someone who affirm's Paine's maxim that

'Social distinctions can be based only on common utility, must believe that someone's inviting different numbers of people to two different dinner parties is unjust?

Paul 12.10.15 at 8:02 pm, 24

@cassander
But a world where everyone is born poor and steadily becomes rich is also a pretty unequal world, is it not? And piketty's shows that 50% of people in most western societies own nothing, which suggests a lot of people are not accumulating.

I can see your point that headline numbers can be misleading, but piketty also shows a clear trend, that wealth is becoming more concentrated. Unless the metrics are somehow a deteriorating representation if reality that's a real thing.

cassander 12.10.15 at 8:55 pm 25

@Paul

>But a world where everyone is born poor and steadily becomes rich is also a pretty unequal world, is it not?

For some definitions of unequal, yes, but I say those framing are not particularly useful We are all born ignorant and spend a lifetime accumulating knowledge, but we do not lament the "knowledge gap" between old and young. A world where everyone made X dollars a year, except for their 20th year when they make 1000X would not have a Gini score of 0, but I would call that world equal.

> And piketty's shows that 50% of people in most western societies own nothing, which suggests a lot of people are not accumulating.

It shows that most people aren't accumulating YET. In the real world, people do not save X percent of their income a year, they they consume a larger share of their income when young (consume much more than their income, actually) and save more as they age, for obvious reasons. That's why you have to look at wealth over lifetimes, not in snapshots.

Peter K. 12.10.15 at 9:15 pm 26

@ 15 Cassander

">If r>g, then (wealth) inequality will grow over time.

If this were true, every Kennedy alive today would be richer than Joe Kennedy was. This is not the case. It is not the case because people eventually die and fortunes get divided up. It's not a statement of how feudalism works under primogeniture, but it doesn't describe modern economies. Everything Pikety says is built on this fundamental mistake."

It's not saying that wealthy dynasties don't fall apart. They often do. But new dynasties are formed (often from well-off families, not the lower middle class).

Trump. Warren Buffet. George Soros. Bill Gates. Mark Zuckerberg. Oprah Winfrey.

These people need the financial sector to put their money to work. And as we've seen the last 100 years, the fiancial sector grows and grows as many of the newly rich are financiers.

Peter K. 12.10.15 at 9:21 pm 27

And the one percent also effect politics and policy through their generous campaign contributions (Koch brothers); sponsorship of think tanks; ownership of mass media (think Rupert Murdoch); etc. etc.

Politics and policy can effect both *r* and *g.*

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/30/us/politics/illinois-campaign-money-bruce-rauner.html

"Around the same time that Mr. Rauner began running for governor, a group of researchers based at Northwestern University published findings from the country's first-ever representative survey of the richest one percent of Americans. The study, known as the Survey of Economically Successful Americans and the Common Good, canvassed a sample of the wealthy from the Chicago area. Those canvassed were granted anonymity to discuss their views candidly.

Their replies were striking. Where merely affluent Americans are more likely to identify as Democrats than as Republicans, the ultrawealthy overwhelmingly leaned right. They are far more likely to raise money for politicians and to have access to them; nearly half had personally contacted one of Illinois's two United States senators.

Where the general public overwhelmingly supports a high minimum wage, the one percent are broadly opposed. A majority of Americans supported expanding safety-net and retirement programs, while most of the very wealthy opposed them. And while Americans are not enthusiastic about higher taxes generally, they feel strongly that the rich should pay more than they do, and more than everyone else pays.

"Probably the biggest single area of disconnect has to do with social welfare programs," said Benjamin I. Page, a political scientist at Northwestern University and a co-author of the study. "The other big area has to do with paying for those programs, particularly taxes on high-income and wealthy people.""

Soru 12.10.15 at 9:40 pm 28

One thing is that in reality, setting 'the wealth of a new born' as zero is rather arbitrary. In one country they might get , by right of citizenship, X dollars of security, legal, health and welfare services. In another, Y dollars..

Both have no money, but if X >> Y, then they are going to have very different average expected life outcomes.

At a high zero point, you get cops and judges who uphold the law, at a low one you can hire some bodyguards. At high zero point you can go to a library, at a low one hire a hack to write your autobiography.

You can extend that to cases of active oppression by giving that a dollar equivalent and a minus sign. After all, even slavery could usually be escaped from, in theory, by buying yourself…

Thing is, the _potential_ floor of wealth in a modern society _could be_ as far above active oppression as room temperature is above absolute zero.

And raising it never stops being a good.

T 12.10.15 at 9:53 pm 29

@27
Exactly. Regardless of how how rich got that way there is no question that they are using their wealth to increase and capture economic rents and to take actions that diminish income and wealth mobility. To the extent the economy veers to increased rent seeking, it could very well lower future growth by diverting resources to non-productive activities. If this behavior is baked in as inequality reaches a certain threshold, then it is inherently unjust. To the extent its not always baked in, it has certainly had that effect in the US over the last 30 years. Consequently, we can conclude that current levels of US inequality are unjust.

Mike Furlan 12.10.15 at 10:27 pm 30

An interesting snapshot of where we are.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/12/demise-of-the-us-middle-class-now-official.html

cassander 12.10.15 at 10:31 pm 31

@Peter K.

>It's not saying that wealthy dynasties don't fall apart. They often do. But new dynasties are formed (often from well-off families, not the lower middle class).

That's explicitly the argument pikety makes with R>G, that the rich get richer by virtue of being rich, not that the moderately well off occasionally become rich by some other means. None of the people you mention got rich by sitting on accumulated capital, nor did any of the fortune 500.

>And as we've seen the last 100 years, the fiancial sector grows and grows as many of the newly rich are financiers.

getting rich by playing financier with other people's investments is not what pikety is talking about. Warren Buffet's fortune, and almost every other financial fortune I can think of, was made by taking a percentage of the profit he got from investing other people's money, not his own.

js. 12.10.15 at 10:50 pm 32

However, the equality presumption is false; it is a fallacy akin to the principle of insufficient reason, which assumes equiprobability of events where there is no reason to assign another probability. But there is also no reason to assign equal probability rather than any other, and thus rationality cannot demand that. By the same token, morality cannot demand equal shares of a good (or bad) in the absence of a reason for it. I take this to be a point of logic, not morality.

This is almost bizarrely unconvincing. You seem to be using "inequality" in a purely formal sense-a sense in which "4 > 2" counts as an inequality. In this sense of the word, it may well be true that there is no presumption of equality. But that fact has no bearing on whether or not a presumption of equality is plausible in the case of interest, namely social and economic inequalities. In this particular case, if there is a widespread moral intuition in favor of the presumption of equality (as I think there is), you can't simply hand-wave away the presumption as a "matter of logic". You need to either (a) show that there is in fact no such widespread intuition, or (b) provide some sort of error theory for this intuition. And until one of these arguments is forthcoming, I'll continue to think that the presumption of equality has quite a bit going for it.

Tabasco 12.10.15 at 11:05 pm 33

wealthy dynasties don't fall apart. They often do. But new dynasties are formed (often from well-off families, not the lower middle class). Trump. Warren Buffet. George Soros. Bill Gates. Mark Zuckerberg. Oprah Winfrey

Gates is giving his money away. Buffet and Zuckerberg say they are going to give away their money. So, no dynasties there.

T 12.10.15 at 11:32 pm 34

@33

As for dynastic wealth, there are 4 Waltons, 3 Mars, and 2 Kochs among the top 18 richest Americans. That's 50%. Pinketty is forecasting a future of dynastic wealth, the Forbes 400 in 30 years. It's the kids of today's plutocrats that will be the beneficiaries.

UserGoogol 12.10.15 at 11:50 pm 35

Paul @ 8: I'd push against that in multiple directions. Even without property per se, some degree of excluding people from using resources is inevitable just from being an organism living in a world of limited resources. If I eat some food, I exclude others from eating that food. Property gives people rather extensive abilities to exclude others from using resources far beyond what is strictly necessary in a state of nature, but any existence involves curtailing the freedoms of others. The only way to have absolute freedom is to be God.

But by the same token it seems kind of vacuous and silly to call that injustice. Minimizing the amount of suffering (or keeping the suffering within "reasonable" bounds) seems like a more sensible way of defining that word.

To get back to the actual point you were making instead of making vague philosophical rumbling, property certainly ipso facto causes some degree of restriction of freedom and this is something deserving of critical attention. But I don't think you can usefully say that they're oppressive by definition.

F. Foundling 12.10.15 at 11:52 pm 36

The OP's notion of justice is not explained in the text, but it seems to be different from mine, and, I think, from that of many others. I think most people would agree that a just distribution is a distribution in accordance with the merits and/or needs of the individuals. Any deviation from such a distribution, for whatever reason, is unjust (it 'harms others' in the sense that the same resource could have been allocated to others more deserving of it based on their merits/needs, and the fact that more wealth has been created doesn't change anything as long as that new wealth is not distributed according to the same principle). This means that inheritance-determined distribution is inevitably unjust, just as any other distribution that is not deliberately made to reflect the merits and/or needs of the individuals can be reasonably assumed to be unjust by default, for the same reason that any random lottery ticket can be assumed not to be winning the jackpot, and any random sequence of body movements can be assumed not to result in the making of a sandwitch.

The equality presumption is basic to most people's sense of justice: most people, when asked to divide a loaf of bread 'justly' between two complete strangers of whom they know nothing, will split it into two equal parts unless there is an obvious criterion by which to differentiate (size, age, gender, caste, etc.). Indeed, even when the bread is distributed unequally in accordance with one or more of these characteristics, the very fact that the difference in share size is made proportionate to the difference in the chosen characteristic(s) shows that no other inequality is assumed apart from the one explicitly entailed by the characteristic – i.e. equality is assumed by default 'other things being equal'. Yes, it is very unlikely that these two random strangers really are *precisely* equally good and deserving; the point is that we have no *right* to assume otherwise, and as humans they have a *right* to be treated equally unless there is a specific reason for the contrary.

Bruce B. 12.11.15 at 12:26 am 37

It's worth noting that in a lot of cases where a particular family dynasty falls apart, a great deal of the money doesn't travel far. It goes to co-owners of shared enterprises, colleagues and rivals, and others in the same stratum. Cash can flow out quickly, but lots of assets hang around, and get used by someone close at hand.

If the principle that "since I didn't set out to harm anyone, you have no right to tax my stuff" were taken seriously in general, we wouldn't have laws against pollution or having your car run over someone because you didn't set the parking break. The idea sounds appealing widely at first hearing, but it doesn't take much of a context to establish how incompatible it is with a bunch of other moral reasoning.

John Quiggin 12.11.15 at 12:41 am 38

The OP seems to be completely misconceived. As Cudd concedes, Piketty presents a positive analysis predicting that inherited wealth will become dominant, and doesn't spell out any theory of justice, though it's obvious that he thinks this is a bad thing.

So, Cudd makes up a theory of justice, imputes it to Piketty and then says it hasn't been proven. What's more she writes as this topic is being addressed for the first time. She doesn't mention any of the vast number of people who've written on equality and whose arguments might be relevant here.

The closest actual engagement with Piketty is her reference to the epigraph 'Social distinctions can be based only on common utility,' which would most naturally be interpreted in utilitarian terms (that's the default assumption for an economist anyway). So, Piketty can be taken to say that a combination of slow growth and increasing inequality is unlikely to promote common (aggregate) utility. There are plenty of arguments that can be made for or against this, but Cudd doesn't even bother. Having cited the epigraph, she never again mentions utility.

js. 12.11.15 at 1:02 am 39

UserGoogol @35 - I'd make it even simpler: if you've got a conception of "justice" such that any possible social arrangement is unjust, i.e. justice is actually impossible, then whatever you've got is not a conception of justice.

engels 12.11.15 at 1:05 am 41

I agree with other posters. The OP 'reconstructed' an argument Piketty never made about a topic he didn't address, and then complained about how bad it is (and for really unconvincing reasons). It's not often you see someone lose an argument so badly with a straw man of their own construction.

Robb Lutton 12.11.15 at 1:16 am 42

…In the US today, top 10% own 25% and the next 40% own 25% of capital,…

This cannot be true else there would be no inequality as it would mean the bottom 50% would have 50% of capital.

Markos Valaris 12.11.15 at 1:51 am 44

js, UserGoogol, I suspect Paul is after something somewhat different, which is the idea that using force to exclude others from some resources must *either* be backed by good reasons *or* count as oppressive/unjust. This doesn't seem crazy, and it would generate the kind of request for justification the OP puzzles about.

LFC 12.11.15 at 2:06 am 45

I haven't read the comment thread with great care but I have the read the OP.

It seems to be the basic argument of the OP is roughly this:

1) Absolute poverty (in today's world) is always unjust, but relative poverty resulting from economic inequalities is not necessarily always (or even presumptively) unjust. Some economic inequalities are unjust, others aren't, and one needs to make an argument about why particular inequalities (when we're talking about relative and not absolute poverty) are unjust. This point strikes me as fairly uncontroversial.

2) Economic inequalities resulting in or reflecting relative (not absolute) poverty are unjust when they are caused by (or transmit) oppression and/or discrimination, or when they 'stigmatize' and thereby cause psychological harm to an identifiable group. This point I think is more controversial but interesting and defensible, at least with a more elaborate account, which I take it the author of the OP has given elsewhere.

As for where the OP directly engages with and criticizes Piketty, I'm not well-placed to get into this, but ISTM the passage where the OP criticizes him for ignoring the factor of oppression, e.g. w/r/t women in particular time periods, can be taken as a reasonable criticism.

When read with some care, the OP seems not anywhere near as hostile to some kind of egalitarian position, istm, as some commenters here apparently think.

LFC 12.11.15 at 2:27 am 47

One last thing: the criterion of "stigma" is arguably not that far from the Rawlsian criterion of 'self-respect' (which came up in the thread on Chris B's post), or at least it might be related… If one feels stigmatized or is objectively stigmatized by a particular situation of ec. inequality, then the social bases of self-respect are not being met. The OP refers to "social psychology" as tool of empirical investigation here, whereas in the other thread we were talking about moral psychology, but obvs. there's a common element: psychology.

Matt 12.11.15 at 3:52 am 48

LFC's reconstruction of the post strikes me as not only charitable, but pretty much obviously right. I'm pretty surprised, and sorry, to see the comments mostly get on the wrong foot and not address what's interesting in the post.

John Quiggin 12.11.15 at 4:20 am 49

'Surely not the case for women'. This is far from obvious. 40 per cent of female headed families live in poverty. http://www.epi.org/publication/female-headed-families-children-poverty/

This is an absolute poverty line set in the early 1960s, so the position of these families relative to the median household is considerably worse. Relative to the top 1 per cent of households, the gap has grown enormously.

The poverty rate for female headed households has barely changed since the 1970s, but (I think) the proportion of such households has increased substantially. On the other side of that equation, the proportion of couple households with two high incomes has also risen.

So, while it's certainly true that the wages of employed women have risen relative to those of employed men, that doesn't mean that gender based inequality and poverty have declined.

I haven't got a conclusive answer on this, but if it's going to be the central point of a critique it deserves more than a handwaving "surely".

F. Foundling 12.11.15 at 4:31 am 50

@js. 12.11.15 at 1:02 am
> if you've got a conception of "justice" such that any possible social arrangement is unjust, i.e. justice is actually impossible …

A banal point, probably, but AFAICS, everything is unjust compared to perfect justice, and perfect justice is impossible, because perfect anything is impossible. Not a reason not to keep 'perfecting' things. It's what humans do.

@LFC 12.11.15 at 2:06 am
> the OP seems not anywhere near as hostile to some kind of egalitarian position

'Some' does a lot of work here.

>Some economic inequalities are unjust, others aren't, and one needs to make an argument about why particular inequalities (when we're talking about relative and not absolute poverty) are unjust. This point strikes me as fairly uncontroversial.

The problem is that the OP's idea of what it takes to prove an inequality to be unjust is highly restricted. Not only is inequality assumed to be just until the opposite is proven, but it is argued that even if an inequality demonstrably, as Piketty claims, lacks any basis in merit (a blatant example being the case of inheritance), this is still not sufficient to make it unjust. That inequality per se does not even need to be justified by merit, or in any way at all, is a position so radically and counterintuitively anti-egalitarian that even right-wingers usually won't take it openly (rather, they'll insist that there is, in fact, a merit that justifies it). You see, only some very specific reasons such as certain proof of the presence of what the author calls 'stigma' and 'oppression' might potentially convince the author to deign to care about wealth-induced unequal outcomes in a way roughly comparable to the way the author cares about gender-induced and race-induced unequal outcomes. Personally, I don't think convincing the author is worth the trouble.

js. 12.11.15 at 4:35 am 51

Hey Markos, it's Jamsheed. I think I see what you're saying-maybe. If that's what Paul was getting at, fair enough. But if I'm understanding you correctly, I think it still ends up turning on the "equality presumption" bit, on which see below.

LFC - I agree with you that Cudd is sympathetic to egalitarianism in the post-and her points about gender inequality are well taken. I didn't mean to imply otherwise. It just seems to me that she's given up a good direct argument against inequality for a considerably more circuitous one-for reasons that remain utterly opaque to me. (For one thing, all those old homilies about the "gentler and fairer sex" can be taken as ways to defeat the equality presumption, which would militate against gender inequality; one could of course find more modern equivalents too.)

Anyway, this still seems wrong to me:

one needs to make an argument about why particular inequalities (when we're talking about relative and not absolute poverty) are unjust

I really think it's the other way around. One never needs to justify why an inequality is unjust-one only ever needs to justify the inequality itself. Of course, one sees plenty of arguments for why some inequality is unjust and why we need to fix that, but I think these are really arguments for disrupting existing social arrangements so as to make them more egalitarian, rather than arguments for the justice of equality per se, which again is something that's rarely needed an argument, it seems to me.

LFC 12.11.15 at 4:44 am 52

Matt @48
Thanks.
(Btw, in re-reading my comment @45, I see there are typos in the first two lines - sorry.)9

JQ @49: I said that "could be" a reasonable pt of criticism of P., but I don't/didn't know the empirics, so wasn't endorsing.

A H 12.11.15 at 4:46 am 53

I read Piketty as being a reformist liberal similar to Keynes. The reason wealth inequality is bad is because it threatens meritocratic liberal capitalism with either a return to feudalism or political upheaval. So any normative critique of Piketty needs to start with meritocracy.

greg 12.11.15 at 5:41 am 55

Any distribution of income in a society requires the consumption of resources to maintain itself. That distribution which requires the least consumption of resources to maintain itself is the most 'natural.' It is the most efficient, as well as the most robust economy.

A greatly unequal society requires a great amount of resources to maintain its inequality, and thus itself. (A perfectly equal society also requires a large amount of resources just to maintain equality.) This consumption of resources, merely to maintain inequality, reduces the amount of resources available to actually operate the economy. That is, it reduces the efficiency of the economy. If the efficiency of the economy is sufficiently reduced, the economy cannot maintain itself.

greg 12.11.15 at 5:47 am 56

But I suppose the survival of the economy is beside the point.

Paul 12.11.15 at 6:51 am 57

UserGoogol @35: If you stop a hungry person picking an apple from a tree, it may be just (there may be a hungrier person who has planted and tended the tree, for example), but it's hard to argue that it isn't oppressive. But I concede this is a silly argument.

The serious argument is that property is so deeply engrained in our society that it tends to get a free pass. I suspect that most people's conception of justice is based on the idea of "everyone has the right to their own stuff" ignoring completely how arbitrary our moral claims to owning anything as individuals actually are. What I dislike about the OP is that it effectively works from the position that existing claims on property are to be considered valid unless demonstrated otherwise; and doesn't make this argument directly, but instead makes it implicitly by making egalitarianism prove its case.

John Quiggin 12.11.15 at 7:12 am 58

Rather than imputing a theory of justice to Piketty based on hints from Capital in the 21st Century, it would have been more helpful to respond to the explicitly normative analysis in his work with Saez, which leads to a call for a top marginal tax rate of around 70 per cent.

This gives a clear answer to the "burden of proof" question raised in the comments above. In the absence of welfare-relevant differences between people, the utility derived from a given aggregate income is maximized when that income is distributed equally. So, any inequality needs to be justified, either on the basis of welfare-relevant differences, or on the basis that it is needed to generate a larger aggregate income.

Again, the OP does none of this. There's no sign that the author is even aware of Piketty's large body of work leading up to Capital in the 21st Century

TM 12.11.15 at 9:34 am 59

The article is poorly argued and based on irrelevant speculation.

Bruce W 4: "The emblematic condition of Piketty's work, r > g, ought to imply something about the balance at the margin. If the income share claimed by capital is rising faster than total income, it cannot be the case that all capital investment entails a positive-sum bargain in which the net gain is distributed."

In the light of our discussion in the other thread, I am a bit surprised. You are now admitting that Piketty's argument is based on capital's share of total income rising but clearly, that share cannot rise indefinitely or else it would swallow up all of production. This is what I have argued and you, if I remember correctly, called that "idiotic". So which is it?

TM 12.11.15 at 9:47 am 60

"a country that saves a lot and grows slowly will over the long run accumulate an enormous stock of capital (relative to its income)." (Piketty)

This kind of argument really drives me to despair. If that stock of capital is productive capital, it is a good, not a bad thing for a society to have accumulated an "enormous stock" of it. As of ownership, a lot of our accumulated capital is actually publicly owned and actually makes people's lives better. Piketty makes no difference between productive capital and unproductive wealth and none between publicly and privately owned capital. Piketty makes it sound as if public investment in productive infrastructure is a bad policy because we really shouldn't be accumulating so much capital. Exasperating.

Ze K 12.11.15 at 10:52 am 61

The justice thing is tricky. In the current western worldview, as I understand it, the only 'just' way to distribute a loaf of bread is to negotiate and sell it.

Capitalist inequality doesn't need to be justified, because it's not explicitly postulated (quite the opposite: 'all men are created equal'), but is merely a side-effect of a much more fundamental concept, the right to own property, also known as 'freedom', 'liberty'.

Social distinctions can be based only on common utility, but wealth, according to our worldview, can be legitimately acquired by luck. Inheriting wealth is one example of such luck.

Questioning these assumptions (again, in our current worldview) makes one a supporter of totalitarianism.

Richard M 12.11.15 at 11:45 am 62

> If that stock of capital is productive capital, it is a good, not a bad thing for a society to have accumulated an "enormous stock" of it.

That seems a failure of charitable reading. You can't get publicly owned utilities as a consequence of private savings. So by 'capital', he clearly means money, i.e. ownership rights, not the things that money buys.

Some interesting back-of-envelope calculations from link below suggest that there is two-to-three times as much ' investable capital' as 'capital required to run the economy'. Which explains why so much of it is spent trying to play zero-sum-except-in-case-of-fraud financial games. And why every-time someone does come up with a semi-valid new thing, they end up a billionaire.

http://continuations.com/post/134920840275/capital-is-no-longer-scarce

TM 12.11.15 at 1:04 pm 63

"You can't get publicly owned utilities as a consequence of private savings."

But Piketty ("a country that saves a lot" etc.) doesn't make any of these distinctions. Is it really uncharitable to take him literally?

reason 12.11.15 at 1:22 pm 64

There are some very controversial points raised in the OP.

This "even though human capital can create great wealth in a single lifetime, as Bill Gates's example would attest." is clearly fallacious (Bill Gates great wealth came from Intellectual Property not human capital).

reason 12.11.15 at 1:27 pm 65

"It seems that Piketty treats economic inequality stemming from return on capital or income as a zero sum sort of situation, but that is clearly not true."

I know Bruce W addressed this before @4, but to take another tack – it is also empirically not true since wage rates have been falling for 30 years at the same time as inequality has increased (not to mention that capital investment, at least since the invention of the joint stock company, is not an exclusive imperative of the wealthy).

reason 12.11.15 at 1:32 pm 66

Where do the figures from
" In the 19th century the top 10% most wealthy owned 90% of capital, the middle 40% owned 5% and the bottom 50% owned 5%. In the US today, top 10% own 25% and the next 40% own 25% of capital, while in Europe the top 10% own 60% and the next 40% own 35% of capital. " come from (there is no source given).

The figure for the US today looks simply odd:
http://inequality.org/wealth-inequality/ suggests the top 10% today own 75% of the wealth.

reason 12.11.15 at 1:45 pm 67

"Piketty claims that 'economics is a subdiscipline of the social sciences, alongside history, sociology, anthropology, and political science.'"

I regard this as rather unfortunate. I think economics is much closer in content and style to ecology and should be seen as a subset of ecology. If it saw itself that way, it would be much better.

MPAVictoria 12.11.15 at 2:19 pm 68

Paul I think you may find this article by Matt Bruenig interesting as it relates to many of the points you have made here:

http://www.demos.org/blog/6/3/14/lesson-grab-what-you-can

engels 12.11.15 at 2:27 pm 69

Lfc, speaking only for myself the problem with the OP of not that it's 'hostile to some kind of egalitarian position' but that it's making bad arguments against a set of made-up claims.

LFC 12.11.15 at 2:49 pm 70

reason @64
This "even though human capital can create great wealth in a single lifetime, as Bill Gates's example would attest." is clearly fallacious (Bill Gates great wealth came from Intellectual Property not human capital).

I think Cudd's point here in the context of the post is the fairly banal one that not all fortunes are inherited, even today: Gates did not inherit his wealth (though presumably he came from a middle or upper-middle class background) but made his fortune via inventing stuff in a garage etc and then turning it into a corporate empire, helped *greatly* of course by intellectual-property laws once the software etc hit the market. I agree the sentence should be tweaked, but the 'human capital' reference here is to the fact that he and others he worked with were able to come up w/ whatever they came up with in the first place. Anyway, it's sort of a side issue because the post is not about the legal, socioeconomic, and 'luck' conditions that allow some inventors to get wealthy and others not, and it was really a point just made in passing.

reason 12.11.15 at 2:54 pm 71

LFC @70
None the less the value of his human capital is what an employed programmer would have been paid to do what he did. And such a basic error, may not change the argument substantially, but along with some other errors (notably the incorrect wealth distribution figure quoted) gives the whole OP less authority than it otherwise might have had.

LFC 12.11.15 at 3:07 pm 72

JQ @58
In the absence of welfare-relevant differences between people, the utility derived from a given aggregate income is maximized when that income is distributed equally. So, any inequality needs to be justified, either on the basis of welfare-relevant differences, or on the basis that it is needed to generate a larger aggregate income.

But "welfare-relevant differences between people" frequently exist, so at this level of generality that mostly kicks the can down the road, so to speak. Piketty and Saez's call for a top marginal tax rate of around 70 percent is presumably based on a combination of their normative leanings and their empirical judgment that such a tax rate would not harm economic growth in a major way so as to offset its redistributive or other benefits. Assuming that judgment is correct, I'm still not sure it's reasonable to expect Cudd, who is a philosopher not an economist, to grapple with it. But I take the point that the OP as it's presented infers (or imputes) a normative analysis on P.'s part w/o noting what he had written in that vein before the book.

Layman 12.11.15 at 3:09 pm 73

"Gates did not inherit his wealth (though presumably he came from a middle or upper-middle class background) but made his fortune via inventing stuff in a garage etc"

I think this is the wrong myth. Perhaps you mean Jobs?

engels 12.11.15 at 3:10 pm 74

His father was a prominent lawyer, and his mother served on the board of directors for First Interstate BancSystem and the United Way. Gates's maternal grandfather was JW Maxwell, a national bank president. Gates has one elder sister, Kristi (Kristianne), and one younger sister, Libby. He was the fourth of his name in his family, but was known as William Gates III or "Trey" because his father had the "II" suffix.

engels 12.11.15 at 3:25 pm 75

Apropos of nothing where does being called Miles Fraser V or whatever place you in American class system: 1% or merely upper-middle class?

LFC 12.11.15 at 3:31 pm 76

js. @51
One never needs to justify why an inequality is unjust-one only ever needs to justify the inequality itself. Of course, one sees plenty of arguments for why some inequality is unjust and why we need to fix that, but I think these are really arguments for disrupting existing social arrangements so as to make them more egalitarian, rather than arguments for the justice of equality per se, which again is something that's rarely needed an argument, it seems to me.

The main issue here though is not inequality in general but inequality of wealth and income. And no functioning economy in the real world can maintain a *completely* equal income distribution over time without a degree of micromanagement from someone that would be unworkable; probably not even a socialist utopia is going to have a *completely* equal distribution.

So there *will be* some inequalities of income and wealth. If you want to start from the position that all of those inequalities have to be justified on a case-by-case basis, so to speak, that's fine with me, I guess. But you're not going to end up w complete equality of income, empirically b.c is it's not sustainable over time in any kind of minimally dynamic economy, and normatively b.c there are always going to be "welfare-relevant differences between people" (JQ's phrase), e.g., those with particular disabilities, etc etc.

F Foundling @50
only some very specific reasons such as certain proof of the presence of what the author calls 'stigma' and 'oppression' might potentially convince the author to deign to care about wealth-induced unequal outcomes in a way roughly comparable to the way the author cares about gender-induced and race-induced unequal outcomes. Personally, I don't think convincing the author is worth the trouble.

It depends partly on how broadly 'oppression' and 'stigma' are defined. If inherited wealth plays an ever-increasing role in an economy and if the result is a caste-like society which effectively stigmatizes those excluded from the top caste by denying them access to, e.g., anything like equal educational or employment opportunities, then on the OP's reasoning that would be grounds for restricting inheritances.

LFC 12.11.15 at 3:45 pm 78

@66, @77

There's a simple explanation: it's a typographical error. "25%" at that point should read "75%". Pretty obviously, the top 10% in the U.S. today don't own a mere 25% of the 'capital'. It's a typo.

que_es 12.11.15 at 3:57 pm79

cassander at 15:

>If r>g, then (wealth) inequality will grow over time.

"If this were true, every Kennedy alive today would be richer than Joe Kennedy was. This is not the case. It is not the case because people eventually die and fortunes get divided up. It's not a statement of how feudalism works under primogeniture, but it doesn't describe modern economies. Everything Pikety says is built on this fundamental mistake. "

Every Kennedy? Huh? A wealthy person today is perfectly free to leave all of his/her wealth to the eldest son. But wealthy families today are not stuck with primogeniture. They can design their own custom wealth preservation plans and impose restrictions on the use of family wealth for generations after the death of the patriarch/matriarch. Perhaps most importantly, they can and almost always do impose restrictions on the free alienability of that wealth that restricts the rights of third parties in ways that entrench the wealth within the family.

JimV 12.11.15 at 4:11 pm 80

A minor digressive point about Bill Gates (based on reading the unauthorized biography "Gates"): he came from a wealthy background and as a result went to a school which had a computer club which had access to a PDP-11 mini-computer, at a time when most high schools did not have computer clubs. He and Paul Allen (illegally) copied the Basic Interpreter program of that computer, received slaps on the wrist for it (not that I think it deserved much more, but kids of a different social class might have been treated more severely), and later used it as the basis for their first commercial success, a Basic Interpreter for the first home micro-computer.

He and Paul Allen are very smart people, but there were probably at least 10,000 other kids as smart or smarter from poor or middle-class backgrounds in the USA at that time, but who did not have the same opportunities.

In conclusion, not a case of capital accumulation only, but it played a part – which I think is all that is necessary, just a a small fitness advance will raise a species to domination over time.

LFC 12.11.15 at 4:19 pm 81

Ze K @61

…wealth, according to our worldview, can be legitimately acquired by luck. Inheriting wealth is one example of such luck.

Questioning these assumptions (again, in our current worldview) makes one a supporter of totalitarianism.

Rawls TOJ 1971, p.15, emphasis added: "Once we decide to look for a conception of justice that nullifies the accidents of natural endowment and the contingencies of social circumstance…, we are led to these principles [of justice]."

So Rawls was "a supporter of totalitarianism"? One could easily get the impression from reading certain things on the Internet and elsewhere that he was a squishy milquetoast liberal. My, my. Live and learn.

js. 12.11.15 at 4:20 pm 82

LFC @76 - Oh, I don't think each inequality needs to be justified on a case by case basis-something like the Difference Principle would do the trick.

Maybe I'm not being clear, but I mean to make one specific point: Cudd is wrong to think that the equality presumption is false, or at any rate she hasn't given any argument that would convince me otherwise.

This isn't a blanket criticism of her post or anything like that. For example, I think a lot of the stuff about oppression is interesting and worth thinking about. I just picked the one thing I disagree with (as one does).

LFC 12.11.15 at 4:29 pm 84

js. @82:
I get it. Fair enough.

Now we can get back to the burning question of whether people who support 80% inheritance/estate taxes and 70% top marginal tax rates are Stalinists or merely Trotskyites. ;)

Ze K 12.11.15 at 4:33 pm 85

"So Rawls was "a supporter of totalitarianism"? "

Yeah, sounds like it, according to this excerpt, unless it's ripped out of context. "nullifies the accidents of natural endowment and the contingencies of social circumstance" sounds more radical than stalinism, it's practically pol-potian.

LFC 12.11.15 at 5:24 pm 86

@85
well, since the bk quoted from is 600 pp. long, it was necessarily out of context. (R's first principle protects/prioritizes "basic [political] liberties".) Anyway, the pt was I don't think challenging inherited wealth equals Pol-Potianism. But this is just a minor eddy here, so we can agree to forget it.

LFC 12.11.15 at 5:40 pm 87

engels @75
where does being called Miles Fraser V or whatever place you in American class system: 1% or merely upper-middle class?

My hunch/sense is that this is not a particularly reliable index of class position. There are probably some very non-affluent African-American families today with people w names like Jones III or Smith IV, etc.

On the other hand, when you see names with clear references to 17th or 18th cent. (hypothetically, something like "John Hancock V"), you pretty much know the person is from an old-line WASP family that's been in the U.S. a long time. Which doesn't *necessarily* mean wealthy, though it could well mean that

[Dec 10, 2015] A Critique of Piketty on the Normative Force of Wealth Inequality

Notable quotes:

"... I understand Cudd to be raising a neo-liberal point discussed in Raymond Plants book on neo-liberalism -- that if a fortune has been made through no injustice to a concrete other and its gifting and bequeathing does no concrete injustice to another, then there is no coherent ideal of social justice (Hayeks idea that social justice is mirage) that would allow us to condemn the resulting distribution of wealth, as fantastically concentrated as it may be. ..."

"... Calling an exercise of power and authority in a bureaucratic hierarchy a market failure is an error of ideological obduracy, since hierarchies are not markets . Hierarchies of authority make economic use of social domination, which is, at least, potentially problematic for justice. ..."

"... I can see how the provision of an elite education transmits priveledge, but Imalso hard pressed to suggest a child should be denied the best possible education that they can get. If a child has intellectual talent it should be developed regardless of whether they come from a rich or poor family. ..."

"... So… if I work hard all my life, say three minimum wage jobs, to put my kid through college, their college education is unjustified ? ..."

"... Nothing is a priori just or unjust; Thomas More had slaves in his Utopia. However, when a socio-economic arrangement reaches a phase where its fairness is commonly questioned, thats a sure sign that the dominant ideology fails to convince, and the system is in trouble. Doesnt mean its going to collapse tomorrow, obviously. ..."

"... He said as he foreclosed on the poor family and cast them out to starve in the street. ..."

"... In a perfectly equal society where no one inherited anything, everyone got exactly the same starting salary, saved the same amount, got the same raise every year and earned the same rate of return, the richest 1/5 would still control 66% of the wealth just due to cohort effects. ..."

"... This is an interesting paper about the dissipation of wealth: What is the True Rate of Social Mobility in Sweden? Suggests that the tendency of fortunes to fade away is generally underestimated ..."

"... My reading of r g is that its pikettys attempt to put an overarching intellectual framework over his results and that its the least successful part of the work, although Brad Delong has made pretty good sense of it here ..."

"... But a world where everyone is born poor and steadily becomes rich is also a pretty unequal world, is it not? And pikettys shows that 50% of people in most western societies own nothing, which suggests a lot of people are not accumulating. ..."

"... As Cudd concedes, Piketty presents a positive analysis predicting that inherited wealth will become dominant, and doesnt spell out any theory of justice, though its obvious that he thinks this is a bad thing. ..."

"... So, Cudd makes up a theory of justice, imputes it to Piketty and then says it hasnt been proven. Whats more she writes as this topic is being addressed for the first time. She doesnt mention any of the vast number of people whove written on equality and whose arguments might be relevant here. ..."

"... I agree with other posters. The OP reconstructed an argument Piketty never made about a topic he didnt address, and then complained about how bad it is (and for really unconvincing reasons). Its not often you see someone lose an argument so badly with a straw man of their own construction. ..."

"... This is an absolute poverty line set in the early 1960s, so the position of these families relative to the median household is considerably worse. Relative to the top 1 per cent of households, the gap has grown enormously. The poverty rate for female headed households has barely changed since the 1970s, but (I think) the proportion of such households has increased substantially. On the other side of that equation, the proportion of couple households with two high incomes has also risen. So, while its certainly true that the wages of employed women have risen relative to those of employed men, that doesnt mean that gender based inequality and poverty have declined. ..."

"... if youve got a conception of justice such that any possible social arrangement is unjust, i.e. justice is actually impossible … A banal point, probably, but AFAICS, everything is unjust compared to perfect justice, and perfect justice is impossible, because perfect anything is impossible. Not a reason not to keep perfecting things. Its what humans do. ..."

"... The problem is that the OPs idea of what it takes to prove an inequality to be unjust is highly restricted. Not only is inequality assumed to be just until the opposite is proven, but it is argued that even if an inequality demonstrably, as Piketty claims, lacks any basis in merit (a blatant example being the case of inheritance), this is still not sufficient to make it unjust. That inequality per se does not even need to be justified by merit, or in any way at all, is a position so radically and counterintuitively anti-egalitarian that even right-wingers usually wont take it openly (rather, theyll insist that there is, in fact, a merit that justifies it). You see, only some very specific reasons such as certain proof of the presence of what the author calls stigma and oppression might potentially convince the author to deign to care about wealth-induced unequal outcomes in a way roughly comparable to the way the author cares about gender-induced and race-induced unequal outcomes. Personally, I dont think convincing the author is worth the trouble. ..."

"... A greatly unequal society requires a great amount of resources to maintain its inequality, and thus itself. ..."

"... This consumption of resources, merely to maintain inequality, reduces the amount of resources available to actually operate the economy. That is, it reduces the efficiency of the economy. If the efficiency of the economy is sufficiently reduced, the economy cannot maintain itself. ..."

"... Rather than imputing a theory of justice to Piketty based on hints from Capital in the 21st Century , it would have been more helpful to respond to the explicitly normative analysis in his work with Saez, which leads to a call for a top marginal tax rate of around 70 per cent. ..."

"... This kind of argument really drives me to despair. If that stock of capital is productive capital, it is a good, not a bad thing for a society to have accumulated an enormous stock of it. As of ownership, a lot of our accumulated capital is actually publicly owned and actually makes peoples lives better. Piketty makes no difference between productive capital and unproductive wealth and none between publicly and privately owned capital. Piketty makes it sound as if public investment in productive infrastructure is a bad policy because we really shouldnt be accumulating so much capital. Exasperating. ..."

"... Social distinctions can be based only on common utility, but wealth , according to our worldview, can be legitimately acquired by luck . Inheriting wealth is one example of such luck. ..."

"... You cant get publicly owned utilities as a consequence of private savings. So by capital, he clearly means money, i.e. ownership rights, not the things that money buys. ..."

"... Some interesting back-of-envelope calculations from link below suggest that there is two-to-three times as much investable capital as capital required to run the economy. Which explains why so much of it is spent trying to play zero-sum-except-in-case-of-fraud financial games. And why every-time someone does come up with a semi-valid new thing, they end up a billionaire. ..."

"... This even though human capital can create great wealth in a single lifetime, as Bill Gatess example would attest. is clearly fallacious (Bill Gates great wealth came from Intellectual Property not human capital). ..."

"... The figure for the US today looks simply odd: http://inequality.org/wealth-inequality/ suggests the top 10% today own 75% of the wealth. ..."

"... None the less the value of his human capital is what an employed programmer would have been paid to do what he did. And such a basic error, may not change the argument substantially, but along with some other errors (notably the incorrect wealth distribution figure quoted) gives the whole OP less authority than it otherwise might have had. ..."

"... Piketty and Saezs call for a top marginal tax rate of around 70 percent is presumably based on a combination of their normative leanings and their empirical judgment that such a tax rate would not harm economic growth in a major way so as to offset its redistributive or other benefits. Assuming that judgment is correct, Im still not sure its reasonable to expect Cudd, who is a philosopher not an economist, to grapple with it. But I take the point that the OP as its presented infers (or imputes) a normative analysis on P.s part w/o noting what he had written in that vein before the book. ..."

"... The main issue here though is not inequality in general but inequality of wealth and income. And no functioning economy in the real world can maintain a *completely* equal income distribution over time without a degree of micromanagement from someone that would be unworkable; probably not even a socialist utopia is going to have a *completely* equal distribution. ..."

Dec 11, 2015 | Crooked Timber

on December 10, 2015

Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century is an important and valuable contribution to political economy, both empirically and philosophically. Piketty grounds his theory in vast empirical data,rather than settling for elegant mathematical models. He courageously embraces the fact that economic theory is inevitably value laden, and proposes a theory of the historical dynamics of wealth accumulation in order to offer an updated moral critique of capitalism. Grounding his prediction in the historical data and profoundly simple mathematics, Piketty projects that economic inequality is likely to increase and to favor those who own inherited capital over time. He advances the normative judgment that rising inequality is unjust and must be contained. Although Piketty raises important concerns about the possibility of growing wealth inequality, he fails to normatively ground or argue for his presupposition that this inequality is unjust. Since relative poverty can coincide with high levels of objective or subjective well-being, this presupposition is brought into question. However, there are causes of inequality (including wealth inequality) that clearly can be shown to be unjust. By considering other forms and causes of inequality and oppression, we can distinguish between those forms of wealth inequality that are unjust and those that are normatively benign. In this way Piketty's concerns about growing wealth inequality from inheritance can be partly justified, though of course not empirically verified. Piketty's argument for the injustice of growing economic inequality has two parts. The first part is an empirical, economic argument for the claim that returns from inherited wealth will far outstrip income. This argument can be summarized as follows. Let r be the rate of return on capital, and g be the growth rate of the annual flow of national income.

1. If r>g, then (wealth) inequality will grow over time.
2. Individuals who own a greater amount of capital earn a larger r.
3. Growth, g, is likely to be slower in future.
4. If r is great enough and g is low enough, then there will be ever more capital from older, inherited wealth, than from wealth saved from income.
5. Hence, (wealth) inequality will increase, and inherited wealth will make up the greatest amount of capital. [click to continue…]

T 12.10.15 at 4:24 pm

"To show that income inequalities are unjust, they also have to be shown to derive from injustice or to lead to injustice." First, thank you for taking the time to join the group blog. Second, it seems that high income and high wealth individuals have been very effective in tilting the tax, regulatory, and legal environment even more in their favor thereby increasing the inequality that you may argue was not originally unjust. Do you think those behaviors lead to unjust income inequality? Do you think those behaviors are a necessary consequence of increased wealth and income inequality?

Rakesh Bhandari 12.10.15 at 4:29 pm 2

Interesting and challenging comment which will take several readings to understand and evaluate the many different arguments being made.

Here is why Piketty thinks a rentier society contradicts the meritocratic worldview of democratic societies:

"…no ineluctable force standing in the way to extreme concentration of wealth…if growth slows and the return on capital increases [as] tax competition between nations heats up…Our democratic societies rest on a meritocratic worldview, or at any rate, a meritocratic hope, by whichI I mean a belief in a society in which inequality is based more on merit and effort than on kinship and rents. This belief and hope play a very crucial role in modern society, for a simple reason: in a democracy the professed equality of rights of all citizens contrasts sharply with the very real inequality of living conditions, and in order to overcome this contradiction it is vital to make sure that social inequalities derive from ration and universal principles rather than arbitrary contingencies. Inequalities must therefore be just and useful to all, at least in the realm of discourse and as far as possible in reality as well…Durkheim predicted that modern democratic society would not put for long with the existence of inherited wealth and would ultimately see to it that the ownership of property ended at death." p. 422

I understand Cudd to be raising a neo-liberal point discussed in Raymond Plant's book on neo-liberalism -- that if a fortune has been made through no injustice to a concrete other and its gifting and bequeathing does no concrete injustice to another, then there is no coherent ideal of social justice (Hayek's idea that social justice is mirage) that would allow us to condemn the resulting distribution of wealth, as fantastically concentrated as it may be.

Yet a rentier society would actually undermine social utility by reducing the incentives for entrepreneurial exertion; the largest incomes also could not be justified in terms of meritocratic principles; and rentiers would be in a position to use the political process to extract not what Piketty calls rent in terms of the income of a rentier but what most economists mean by rents. The last would have no justification in terms of welfare economics (of which Cudd gives an eloquent defense in her book on capitalism). Piketty is correct that to the extent that citizens understood the nature of a rentier society they would rise in opposition to it.

Plus, the wealth concentration of a rentier society would not be accepted in a Rawlsian original position and to the extent that some wealth is needed to exercise one's capabilities would be unjustifiable from Sen's and Nussbaum's capabilities theory. Piketty expresses sympathy for both normative political theories.

Now Cudd also notes that Piketty argues that the astronomical pay of super-managers cannot be justified in meritocratic terms; his argument is more developed than she lets on–it involves cross-sectional comparison and econometric analysis, controlling for luck and other factors in company performance outside the control of a supermanager as well as the inapplicability of marginal productivity theory to the unique jobs that a CEO does. Plus, he gives an institutional analysis of the way in which CEO's can capture boards and how their incentive to do so rose with lower marginal tax rates. Of course that Piketty undermines this justification does not necessarily mean that such compensation is unjustified, but he does undermine the meritocratic justification that is given for it.

MPAVictoria 12.10.15 at 4:34 pm 3

"When wealth inequalities stem from unjust inheritances"

Is there any inheritance anywhere in the world that is not an "unjust" inheritance? Serious question...

Bruce Wilder 12.10.15 at 4:34 pm 4

Piketty treats economic inequality stemming from return on capital . . . as a zero sum sort of situation, but that is clearly not true. Investment of capital creates improvements in standard of living for all.

"that is clearly not true" seems a bit emphatic for a proposition that should not be clear at all. It might be the case that an instance of capital investment improves the standard of living or it might be immiserating. A wealthy investor might invest in a payday loan operation with a remarkable return on investment. A corporation might invest in automation of a production process and bargain for a reduction of wages for the now less numerous and "less-skilled" workforce.

The emblematic condition of Piketty's work, r > g, ought to imply something about the balance at the margin. If the income share claimed by capital is rising faster than total income, it cannot be the case that all capital investment entails a positive-sum bargain in which the net gain is distributed.

We can certainly hope for the kind of capital investments that result in economic growth that exceeds the return to the owners of capital, but that's not the world Piketty is worried about.

Bruce Wilder 12.10.15 at 4:47 pm 5

Piketty argues that top managers today are paid unjustifiably large salaries because it is too difficult to assess the marginal productivity, and in the absence of any information they are able to manipulate their own and each other's wages. A market failure is not an injustice . . .

Calling an exercise of power and authority in a bureaucratic hierarchy "a market failure" is an error of ideological obduracy, since hierarchies are not "markets". Hierarchies of authority make economic use of social domination, which is, at least, potentially problematic for justice.

Bruce Wilder 12.10.15 at 4:53 pm 6

A significant cause of income inequality is the differences in human capital developed through education. Piketty notes that the educational systems in Europe and especially the US tend to prevent rather than promote social mobility, and instead transmit privilege. 'Parents' income has become an almost perfect predictor of university access.' (p. 485) Piketty's explanation seems to be that it is because wealthy parents buy places for their children in universities, but I think this overestimates the corruption in university admissions and it underestimates the degree of stratification of the developed academic abilities of college age students. Wealthier families are better able to invest in developing children's abilities and talents to prepare them for college, and have better schools in their neighborhoods. Especially elite universities in the US compete very hard to find and attract low income and minority students, but the competition is stiff for qualified students who will not need remediation in order to succeed.

Demand for low-cost tokens is outrunning supply.

Trader Joe 12.10.15 at 5:03 pm 7

I struggle a lot with the concept of inheritance and when/when not justified. Its easy to see how its unfair/unjustified when the amounts are signficant, far less so when they are not.

If I'm a Rockefeller and hand over the emprire to my children, its easy to see an undeserved conferred advantage.

If I'm farmer Joe who has worked my farm all my life, own it outright through my labor and savings and then want to pass that to my children, who have also worked it all their life(s), so that it can sustain them the same way as it sustained me – it seems far more fair though it still confers on them an advantage of priveldged and if they successfully manage that advantage they should be able to make it grow. Over some number of generations, the differences would collapse.

I think its a very natural instinct for a parent to want to transmit advantage to their children. Teaching them and nurturing their character are never criticized though no less an asset than dollars or farms.

I can see how the provision of an elite education transmits priveledge, but I'malso hard pressed to suggest a child should be denied the best possible education that they can get. If a child has intellectual talent it should be developed regardless of whether they come from a rich or poor family.

One take away from Picketty could be the best possible biological strategy is to try to get as rich as you possibly can because that's the best possible insurance for perpetuating your DNA. Probably not the policy prescription being encouraged, but certainly supported by the data.

Paul 12.10.15 at 5:21 pm 8

All property rights are oppressive; they amount to the restriction of the freedom of the non-property owner. Unless one wants to go communist (and argue that it is possible to create a society without property rights) or libertarian (and argue that property rights somehow exist a priori of society), any society is necessarily oppressive and unjust. The goal is to minimise this injustice without creating others or destroying the ability if society to function.

So I think the OP is wrong in asserting that any allocation of property rights should be assumed just in the absence if evidence that the distribution is "oppression". Property rights are (probably necessary) oppression, almost by definition.

notsneaky 12.10.15 at 5:43 pm 9

"Is there any inheritance anywhere in the world that is not an "unjust" inheritance?"

So… if I work hard all my life, say three minimum wage jobs, to put my kid through college, their college education is "unjustified"?

MPAVictoria 12.10.15 at 5:55 pm 11

"So I think the OP is wrong in asserting that any allocation of property rights should be assumed just in the absence if evidence that the distribution is "oppression". Property rights are (probably necessary) oppression, almost by definition."

Yep. Property is violence. Maybe beneficial violence in the utilitarian sense but violence all the same.

Ze K 12.10.15 at 6:34 pm 12

Nothing is a priori just or unjust; Thomas More had slaves in his Utopia. However, when a socio-economic arrangement reaches a phase where its fairness is commonly questioned, that's a sure sign that the dominant ideology fails to convince, and the system is in trouble. Doesn't mean it's going to collapse tomorrow, obviously.

Rakesh Bhandari 12.10.15 at 6:45 pm 13

It could be argued that entrepreneurial behavior is already individually irrational -- see Kahneman and Tversky. But it is often motivated at least partially by the dream of creating dynastic wealth and glory. Otherwise, it would make little sense to do the hard labor of thinking of new ways of doing things, convincing financiers of the worthiness of the project and giving up more secure incomes. One could worry that Piketty has exaggerated the importance of inherited wealth even in the face of his own evidence (only a small fraction of the top 1% receive most of their income as rentier rent IIRC) and that he has under-estimated its importance as an economic incentive for entrepreneurial labor and that he has also underestimated the extent to which great fortunes dissipate over time due to the growth of heirs and reasonable taxation.

MPAVictoria 12.10.15 at 6:51 pm14

"Nothing is a priori just or unjust"

He said as he foreclosed on the poor family and cast them out to starve in the street.

cassander 12.10.15 at 6:51 pm 15

>If r>g, then (wealth) inequality will grow over time.

If this were true, every Kennedy alive today would be richer than Joe Kennedy was. This is not the case. It is not the case because people eventually die and fortunes get divided up. It's not a statement of how feudalism works under primogeniture, but it doesn't describe modern economies. Everything Pikety says is built on this fundamental mistake.

> Wealthier families are better able to invest in developing children's abilities and talents to prepare them for college, and have better schools in their neighborhoods.

Large American urban school districts are not just the best funded in the country, they're the best funded in the world. And what Bruce says about market failure applies equally well here. people have voted massive amounts of money for urban schools, when those state run schools fail to perform well despite these resources, the failure cannot possibly be attributed to market forces.

> In the 19th century the top 10% most wealthy owned 90% of capital, the middle 40% owned 5% and the bottom 50% owned 5%.

In a perfectly equal society where no one inherited anything, everyone got exactly the same starting salary, saved the same amount, got the same raise every year and earned the same rate of return, the richest 1/5 would still control 66% of the wealth just due to cohort effects. This simple characterizations of wealth inequality by quintiles or deciles do more to conceal than to reveal. what matters is not snapshots, but lifetime expectations. These, however, are harder to calculate and make for much less snappy talking points

Paul 12.10.15 at 6:51 pm 16

This is an interesting paper about the dissipation of wealth: What is the True Rate of Social Mobility in Sweden? Suggests that the tendency of fortunes to fade away is generally underestimated

Paul 12.10.15 at 7:00 pm 17

My reading of r>g is that its piketty's attempt to put an overarching intellectual framework over his results and that its the least successful part of the work, although Brad Delong has made pretty good sense of it here

http://www.econ.hit-u.ac.jp/~makoto/Piketty_readings/Delong_2015.pdf

But even if you consider it in error its the conclusion more than the foundation. The data speaks for itself.

Cassander @15: I read your comment as "even a pretty equal society would be pretty unequal". The definition if a " pretty equal" society us surely one where the richest 20% only control a little more than 20% of the wealth, surely? After all, the tallest 20% do not account for 66% of the total height in the population.

Layman 12.10.15 at 7:13 pm

If we are to complain that Piketty fails to demonstrate that income inequalities originate from or lead to injustices, can we not also complain that he fails to demonstrate that the sun rises in the east, or that night follows day, or that it is quite difficult to put the toothpaste back into the tube? While this is not as bad as complaining that he fails to discuss 20th- and 21st- century novels, it approaches that degree of badness.

cassander 12.10.15 at 7:49 pm 21

@Paul

>This is an interesting paper about the disspation of wealth:

I just skimmed it, but that the paper argues that there's a great deal of dissipation of wealth, just that it's well below 100% dissipation.

>The definition if a " pretty equal" society us surely one where the richest 20% only control a little more than 20% of the wealth, surely? After all, the tallest 20% do not account for 66% of the total height in the population.

If everyone was born 2 feet tall and got 10% taller a year, then the tallest 20% would have 80% of the height. the point of the math I laid out is precisely that "a society where everyone has the same amount of stuff" and "a society where everyone gets the same amount of stuff" are not the same, despite our basic instinct that they should be.

T 12.10.15 at 7:52 pm 22

@16

This and other studies using unique surnames tends to suggest that mobility may be overstated.
http://faculty.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gclark/papers/Sweden%202012%20AUG.pdf

engels 12.10.15 at 7:53 pm 23

Apologies if I've misunderstood but does the OP really think that someone who affirm's Paine's maxim that

'Social distinctions can be based only on common utility, must believe that someone's inviting different numbers of people to two different dinner parties is unjust?

Paul 12.10.15 at 8:02 pm, 24

@cassander
But a world where everyone is born poor and steadily becomes rich is also a pretty unequal world, is it not? And piketty's shows that 50% of people in most western societies own nothing, which suggests a lot of people are not accumulating.

I can see your point that headline numbers can be misleading, but piketty also shows a clear trend, that wealth is becoming more concentrated. Unless the metrics are somehow a deteriorating representation if reality that's a real thing.

cassander 12.10.15 at 8:55 pm 25

@Paul

>But a world where everyone is born poor and steadily becomes rich is also a pretty unequal world, is it not?

For some definitions of unequal, yes, but I say those framing are not particularly useful We are all born ignorant and spend a lifetime accumulating knowledge, but we do not lament the "knowledge gap" between old and young. A world where everyone made X dollars a year, except for their 20th year when they make 1000X would not have a Gini score of 0, but I would call that world equal.

> And piketty's shows that 50% of people in most western societies own nothing, which suggests a lot of people are not accumulating.

It shows that most people aren't accumulating YET. In the real world, people do not save X percent of their income a year, they they consume a larger share of their income when young (consume much more than their income, actually) and save more as they age, for obvious reasons. That's why you have to look at wealth over lifetimes, not in snapshots.

Peter K. 12.10.15 at 9:15 pm 26

@ 15 Cassander

">If r>g, then (wealth) inequality will grow over time.

If this were true, every Kennedy alive today would be richer than Joe Kennedy was. This is not the case. It is not the case because people eventually die and fortunes get divided up. It's not a statement of how feudalism works under primogeniture, but it doesn't describe modern economies. Everything Pikety says is built on this fundamental mistake."

It's not saying that wealthy dynasties don't fall apart. They often do. But new dynasties are formed (often from well-off families, not the lower middle class).

Trump. Warren Buffet. George Soros. Bill Gates. Mark Zuckerberg. Oprah Winfrey.

These people need the financial sector to put their money to work. And as we've seen the last 100 years, the fiancial sector grows and grows as many of the newly rich are financiers.

Peter K. 12.10.15 at 9:21 pm 27

And the one percent also effect politics and policy through their generous campaign contributions (Koch brothers); sponsorship of think tanks; ownership of mass media (think Rupert Murdoch); etc. etc.

Politics and policy can effect both *r* and *g.*

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/30/us/politics/illinois-campaign-money-bruce-rauner.html

"Around the same time that Mr. Rauner began running for governor, a group of researchers based at Northwestern University published findings from the country's first-ever representative survey of the richest one percent of Americans. The study, known as the Survey of Economically Successful Americans and the Common Good, canvassed a sample of the wealthy from the Chicago area. Those canvassed were granted anonymity to discuss their views candidly.

Their replies were striking. Where merely affluent Americans are more likely to identify as Democrats than as Republicans, the ultrawealthy overwhelmingly leaned right. They are far more likely to raise money for politicians and to have access to them; nearly half had personally contacted one of Illinois's two United States senators.

Where the general public overwhelmingly supports a high minimum wage, the one percent are broadly opposed. A majority of Americans supported expanding safety-net and retirement programs, while most of the very wealthy opposed them. And while Americans are not enthusiastic about higher taxes generally, they feel strongly that the rich should pay more than they do, and more than everyone else pays.

"Probably the biggest single area of disconnect has to do with social welfare programs," said Benjamin I. Page, a political scientist at Northwestern University and a co-author of the study. "The other big area has to do with paying for those programs, particularly taxes on high-income and wealthy people.""

Soru 12.10.15 at 9:40 pm 28

One thing is that in reality, setting 'the wealth of a new born' as zero is rather arbitrary. In one country they might get , by right of citizenship, X dollars of security, legal, health and welfare services. In another, Y dollars..

Both have no money, but if X >> Y, then they are going to have very different average expected life outcomes.

At a high zero point, you get cops and judges who uphold the law, at a low one you can hire some bodyguards. At high zero point you can go to a library, at a low one hire a hack to write your autobiography.

You can extend that to cases of active oppression by giving that a dollar equivalent and a minus sign. After all, even slavery could usually be escaped from, in theory, by buying yourself…

Thing is, the _potential_ floor of wealth in a modern society _could be_ as far above active oppression as room temperature is above absolute zero.

And raising it never stops being a good.

T 12.10.15 at 9:53 pm 29

@27
Exactly. Regardless of how how rich got that way there is no question that they are using their wealth to increase and capture economic rents and to take actions that diminish income and wealth mobility. To the extent the economy veers to increased rent seeking, it could very well lower future growth by diverting resources to non-productive activities. If this behavior is baked in as inequality reaches a certain threshold, then it is inherently unjust. To the extent its not always baked in, it has certainly had that effect in the US over the last 30 years. Consequently, we can conclude that current levels of US inequality are unjust.

Mike Furlan 12.10.15 at 10:27 pm 30

An interesting snapshot of where we are.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/12/demise-of-the-us-middle-class-now-official.html

cassander 12.10.15 at 10:31 pm 31

@Peter K.

>It's not saying that wealthy dynasties don't fall apart. They often do. But new dynasties are formed (often from well-off families, not the lower middle class).

That's explicitly the argument pikety makes with R>G, that the rich get richer by virtue of being rich, not that the moderately well off occasionally become rich by some other means. None of the people you mention got rich by sitting on accumulated capital, nor did any of the fortune 500.

>And as we've seen the last 100 years, the fiancial sector grows and grows as many of the newly rich are financiers.

getting rich by playing financier with other people's investments is not what pikety is talking about. Warren Buffet's fortune, and almost every other financial fortune I can think of, was made by taking a percentage of the profit he got from investing other people's money, not his own.

js. 12.10.15 at 10:50 pm 32

However, the equality presumption is false; it is a fallacy akin to the principle of insufficient reason, which assumes equiprobability of events where there is no reason to assign another probability. But there is also no reason to assign equal probability rather than any other, and thus rationality cannot demand that. By the same token, morality cannot demand equal shares of a good (or bad) in the absence of a reason for it. I take this to be a point of logic, not morality.

This is almost bizarrely unconvincing. You seem to be using "inequality" in a purely formal sense-a sense in which "4 > 2" counts as an inequality. In this sense of the word, it may well be true that there is no presumption of equality. But that fact has no bearing on whether or not a presumption of equality is plausible in the case of interest, namely social and economic inequalities. In this particular case, if there is a widespread moral intuition in favor of the presumption of equality (as I think there is), you can't simply hand-wave away the presumption as a "matter of logic". You need to either (a) show that there is in fact no such widespread intuition, or (b) provide some sort of error theory for this intuition. And until one of these arguments is forthcoming, I'll continue to think that the presumption of equality has quite a bit going for it.

Tabasco 12.10.15 at 11:05 pm 33

wealthy dynasties don't fall apart. They often do. But new dynasties are formed (often from well-off families, not the lower middle class). Trump. Warren Buffet. George Soros. Bill Gates. Mark Zuckerberg. Oprah Winfrey

Gates is giving his money away. Buffet and Zuckerberg say they are going to give away their money. So, no dynasties there.

T 12.10.15 at 11:32 pm 34

@33

As for dynastic wealth, there are 4 Waltons, 3 Mars, and 2 Kochs among the top 18 richest Americans. That's 50%. Pinketty is forecasting a future of dynastic wealth, the Forbes 400 in 30 years. It's the kids of today's plutocrats that will be the beneficiaries.

UserGoogol 12.10.15 at 11:50 pm 35

Paul @ 8: I'd push against that in multiple directions. Even without property per se, some degree of excluding people from using resources is inevitable just from being an organism living in a world of limited resources. If I eat some food, I exclude others from eating that food. Property gives people rather extensive abilities to exclude others from using resources far beyond what is strictly necessary in a state of nature, but any existence involves curtailing the freedoms of others. The only way to have absolute freedom is to be God.

But by the same token it seems kind of vacuous and silly to call that injustice. Minimizing the amount of suffering (or keeping the suffering within "reasonable" bounds) seems like a more sensible way of defining that word.

To get back to the actual point you were making instead of making vague philosophical rumbling, property certainly ipso facto causes some degree of restriction of freedom and this is something deserving of critical attention. But I don't think you can usefully say that they're oppressive by definition.

F. Foundling 12.10.15 at 11:52 pm 36

The OP's notion of justice is not explained in the text, but it seems to be different from mine, and, I think, from that of many others. I think most people would agree that a just distribution is a distribution in accordance with the merits and/or needs of the individuals. Any deviation from such a distribution, for whatever reason, is unjust (it 'harms others' in the sense that the same resource could have been allocated to others more deserving of it based on their merits/needs, and the fact that more wealth has been created doesn't change anything as long as that new wealth is not distributed according to the same principle). This means that inheritance-determined distribution is inevitably unjust, just as any other distribution that is not deliberately made to reflect the merits and/or needs of the individuals can be reasonably assumed to be unjust by default, for the same reason that any random lottery ticket can be assumed not to be winning the jackpot, and any random sequence of body movements can be assumed not to result in the making of a sandwitch.

The equality presumption is basic to most people's sense of justice: most people, when asked to divide a loaf of bread 'justly' between two complete strangers of whom they know nothing, will split it into two equal parts unless there is an obvious criterion by which to differentiate (size, age, gender, caste, etc.). Indeed, even when the bread is distributed unequally in accordance with one or more of these characteristics, the very fact that the difference in share size is made proportionate to the difference in the chosen characteristic(s) shows that no other inequality is assumed apart from the one explicitly entailed by the characteristic – i.e. equality is assumed by default 'other things being equal'. Yes, it is very unlikely that these two random strangers really are *precisely* equally good and deserving; the point is that we have no *right* to assume otherwise, and as humans they have a *right* to be treated equally unless there is a specific reason for the contrary.

Bruce B. 12.11.15 at 12:26 am 37

It's worth noting that in a lot of cases where a particular family dynasty falls apart, a great deal of the money doesn't travel far. It goes to co-owners of shared enterprises, colleagues and rivals, and others in the same stratum. Cash can flow out quickly, but lots of assets hang around, and get used by someone close at hand.

If the principle that "since I didn't set out to harm anyone, you have no right to tax my stuff" were taken seriously in general, we wouldn't have laws against pollution or having your car run over someone because you didn't set the parking break. The idea sounds appealing widely at first hearing, but it doesn't take much of a context to establish how incompatible it is with a bunch of other moral reasoning.

John Quiggin 12.11.15 at 12:41 am 38

The OP seems to be completely misconceived. As Cudd concedes, Piketty presents a positive analysis predicting that inherited wealth will become dominant, and doesn't spell out any theory of justice, though it's obvious that he thinks this is a bad thing.

So, Cudd makes up a theory of justice, imputes it to Piketty and then says it hasn't been proven. What's more she writes as this topic is being addressed for the first time. She doesn't mention any of the vast number of people who've written on equality and whose arguments might be relevant here.

The closest actual engagement with Piketty is her reference to the epigraph 'Social distinctions can be based only on common utility,' which would most naturally be interpreted in utilitarian terms (that's the default assumption for an economist anyway). So, Piketty can be taken to say that a combination of slow growth and increasing inequality is unlikely to promote common (aggregate) utility. There are plenty of arguments that can be made for or against this, but Cudd doesn't even bother. Having cited the epigraph, she never again mentions utility.

js. 12.11.15 at 1:02 am 39

UserGoogol @35 - I'd make it even simpler: if you've got a conception of "justice" such that any possible social arrangement is unjust, i.e. justice is actually impossible, then whatever you've got is not a conception of justice.

engels 12.11.15 at 1:05 am 41

I agree with other posters. The OP 'reconstructed' an argument Piketty never made about a topic he didn't address, and then complained about how bad it is (and for really unconvincing reasons). It's not often you see someone lose an argument so badly with a straw man of their own construction.

Robb Lutton 12.11.15 at 1:16 am 42

…In the US today, top 10% own 25% and the next 40% own 25% of capital,…

This cannot be true else there would be no inequality as it would mean the bottom 50% would have 50% of capital.

Markos Valaris 12.11.15 at 1:51 am 44

js, UserGoogol, I suspect Paul is after something somewhat different, which is the idea that using force to exclude others from some resources must *either* be backed by good reasons *or* count as oppressive/unjust. This doesn't seem crazy, and it would generate the kind of request for justification the OP puzzles about.

LFC 12.11.15 at 2:06 am 45

I haven't read the comment thread with great care but I have the read the OP.

It seems to be the basic argument of the OP is roughly this:

1) Absolute poverty (in today's world) is always unjust, but relative poverty resulting from economic inequalities is not necessarily always (or even presumptively) unjust. Some economic inequalities are unjust, others aren't, and one needs to make an argument about why particular inequalities (when we're talking about relative and not absolute poverty) are unjust. This point strikes me as fairly uncontroversial.

2) Economic inequalities resulting in or reflecting relative (not absolute) poverty are unjust when they are caused by (or transmit) oppression and/or discrimination, or when they 'stigmatize' and thereby cause psychological harm to an identifiable group. This point I think is more controversial but interesting and defensible, at least with a more elaborate account, which I take it the author of the OP has given elsewhere.

As for where the OP directly engages with and criticizes Piketty, I'm not well-placed to get into this, but ISTM the passage where the OP criticizes him for ignoring the factor of oppression, e.g. w/r/t women in particular time periods, can be taken as a reasonable criticism.

When read with some care, the OP seems not anywhere near as hostile to some kind of egalitarian position, istm, as some commenters here apparently think.

LFC 12.11.15 at 2:27 am 47

One last thing: the criterion of "stigma" is arguably not that far from the Rawlsian criterion of 'self-respect' (which came up in the thread on Chris B's post), or at least it might be related… If one feels stigmatized or is objectively stigmatized by a particular situation of ec. inequality, then the social bases of self-respect are not being met. The OP refers to "social psychology" as tool of empirical investigation here, whereas in the other thread we were talking about moral psychology, but obvs. there's a common element: psychology.

Matt 12.11.15 at 3:52 am 48

LFC's reconstruction of the post strikes me as not only charitable, but pretty much obviously right. I'm pretty surprised, and sorry, to see the comments mostly get on the wrong foot and not address what's interesting in the post.

John Quiggin 12.11.15 at 4:20 am 49

'Surely not the case for women'. This is far from obvious. 40 per cent of female headed families live in poverty. http://www.epi.org/publication/female-headed-families-children-poverty/

This is an absolute poverty line set in the early 1960s, so the position of these families relative to the median household is considerably worse. Relative to the top 1 per cent of households, the gap has grown enormously. The poverty rate for female headed households has barely changed since the 1970s, but (I think) the proportion of such households has increased substantially. On the other side of that equation, the proportion of couple households with two high incomes has also risen. So, while it's certainly true that the wages of employed women have risen relative to those of employed men, that doesn't mean that gender based inequality and poverty have declined.

I haven't got a conclusive answer on this, but if it's going to be the central point of a critique it deserves more than a handwaving "surely".

F. Foundling 12.11.15 at 4:31 am 50

@js. 12.11.15 at 1:02 am

> if you've got a conception of "justice" such that any possible social arrangement is unjust, i.e. justice is actually impossible … A banal point, probably, but AFAICS, everything is unjust compared to perfect justice, and perfect justice is impossible, because perfect anything is impossible. Not a reason not to keep 'perfecting' things. It's what humans do.

@LFC 12.11.15 at 2:06 am
> the OP seems not anywhere near as hostile to some kind of egalitarian position

'Some' does a lot of work here.

>Some economic inequalities are unjust, others aren't, and one needs to make an argument about why particular inequalities (when we're talking about relative and not absolute poverty) are unjust. This point strikes me as fairly uncontroversial.

The problem is that the OP's idea of what it takes to prove an inequality to be unjust is highly restricted. Not only is inequality assumed to be just until the opposite is proven, but it is argued that even if an inequality demonstrably, as Piketty claims, lacks any basis in merit (a blatant example being the case of inheritance), this is still not sufficient to make it unjust. That inequality per se does not even need to be justified by merit, or in any way at all, is a position so radically and counterintuitively anti-egalitarian that even right-wingers usually won't take it openly (rather, they'll insist that there is, in fact, a merit that justifies it). You see, only some very specific reasons such as certain proof of the presence of what the author calls 'stigma' and 'oppression' might potentially convince the author to deign to care about wealth-induced unequal outcomes in a way roughly comparable to the way the author cares about gender-induced and race-induced unequal outcomes. Personally, I don't think convincing the author is worth the trouble.

js. 12.11.15 at 4:35 am 51

Hey Markos, it's Jamsheed. I think I see what you're saying-maybe. If that's what Paul was getting at, fair enough. But if I'm understanding you correctly, I think it still ends up turning on the "equality presumption" bit, on which see below.

LFC - I agree with you that Cudd is sympathetic to egalitarianism in the post-and her points about gender inequality are well taken. I didn't mean to imply otherwise. It just seems to me that she's given up a good direct argument against inequality for a considerably more circuitous one-for reasons that remain utterly opaque to me. (For one thing, all those old homilies about the "gentler and fairer sex" can be taken as ways to defeat the equality presumption, which would militate against gender inequality; one could of course find more modern equivalents too.)

Anyway, this still seems wrong to me:

one needs to make an argument about why particular inequalities (when we're talking about relative and not absolute poverty) are unjust

I really think it's the other way around. One never needs to justify why an inequality is unjust-one only ever needs to justify the inequality itself. Of course, one sees plenty of arguments for why some inequality is unjust and why we need to fix that, but I think these are really arguments for disrupting existing social arrangements so as to make them more egalitarian, rather than arguments for the justice of equality per se, which again is something that's rarely needed an argument, it seems to me.

LFC 12.11.15 at 4:44 am 52

Matt @48
Thanks.
(Btw, in re-reading my comment @45, I see there are typos in the first two lines - sorry.)9

JQ @49: I said that "could be" a reasonable pt of criticism of P., but I don't/didn't know the empirics, so wasn't endorsing.

A H 12.11.15 at 4:46 am 53

I read Piketty as being a reformist liberal similar to Keynes. The reason wealth inequality is bad is because it threatens meritocratic liberal capitalism with either a return to feudalism or political upheaval. So any normative critique of Piketty needs to start with meritocracy.

greg 12.11.15 at 5:41 am 55

Any distribution of income in a society requires the consumption of resources to maintain itself. That distribution which requires the least consumption of resources to maintain itself is the most 'natural.' It is the most efficient, as well as the most robust economy.

A greatly unequal society requires a great amount of resources to maintain its inequality, and thus itself. (A perfectly equal society also requires a large amount of resources just to maintain equality.)

This consumption of resources, merely to maintain inequality, reduces the amount of resources available to actually operate the economy. That is, it reduces the efficiency of the economy. If the efficiency of the economy is sufficiently reduced, the economy cannot maintain itself.

greg 12.11.15 at 5:47 am 56

But I suppose the survival of the economy is beside the point.

Paul 12.11.15 at 6:51 am 57

UserGoogol @35: If you stop a hungry person picking an apple from a tree, it may be just (there may be a hungrier person who has planted and tended the tree, for example), but it's hard to argue that it isn't oppressive. But I concede this is a silly argument.

The serious argument is that property is so deeply engrained in our society that it tends to get a free pass. I suspect that most people's conception of justice is based on the idea of "everyone has the right to their own stuff" ignoring completely how arbitrary our moral claims to owning anything as individuals actually are. What I dislike about the OP is that it effectively works from the position that existing claims on property are to be considered valid unless demonstrated otherwise; and doesn't make this argument directly, but instead makes it implicitly by making egalitarianism prove its case.

John Quiggin 12.11.15 at 7:12 am 58

Rather than imputing a theory of justice to Piketty based on hints from Capital in the 21st Century, it would have been more helpful to respond to the explicitly normative analysis in his work with Saez, which leads to a call for a top marginal tax rate of around 70 per cent.

This gives a clear answer to the "burden of proof" question raised in the comments above. In the absence of welfare-relevant differences between people, the utility derived from a given aggregate income is maximized when that income is distributed equally. So, any inequality needs to be justified, either on the basis of welfare-relevant differences, or on the basis that it is needed to generate a larger aggregate income.

Again, the OP does none of this. There's no sign that the author is even aware of Piketty's large body of work leading up to Capital in the 21st Century

TM 12.11.15 at 9:34 am 59

The article is poorly argued and based on irrelevant speculation.

Bruce W 4: "The emblematic condition of Piketty's work, r > g, ought to imply something about the balance at the margin. If the income share claimed by capital is rising faster than total income, it cannot be the case that all capital investment entails a positive-sum bargain in which the net gain is distributed."

In the light of our discussion in the other thread, I am a bit surprised. You are now admitting that Piketty's argument is based on capital's share of total income rising but clearly, that share cannot rise indefinitely or else it would swallow up all of production. This is what I have argued and you, if I remember correctly, called that "idiotic". So which is it?

TM 12.11.15 at 9:47 am 60

"a country that saves a lot and grows slowly will over the long run accumulate an enormous stock of capital (relative to its income)." (Piketty)

This kind of argument really drives me to despair. If that stock of capital is productive capital, it is a good, not a bad thing for a society to have accumulated an "enormous stock" of it. As of ownership, a lot of our accumulated capital is actually publicly owned and actually makes people's lives better. Piketty makes no difference between productive capital and unproductive wealth and none between publicly and privately owned capital. Piketty makes it sound as if public investment in productive infrastructure is a bad policy because we really shouldn't be accumulating so much capital. Exasperating.

Ze K 12.11.15 at 10:52 am 61

The justice thing is tricky. In the current western worldview, as I understand it, the only 'just' way to distribute a loaf of bread is to negotiate and sell it.

Capitalist inequality doesn't need to be justified, because it's not explicitly postulated (quite the opposite: 'all men are created equal'), but is merely a side-effect of a much more fundamental concept, the right to own property, also known as 'freedom', 'liberty'.

Social distinctions can be based only on common utility, but wealth, according to our worldview, can be legitimately acquired by luck. Inheriting wealth is one example of such luck.

Questioning these assumptions (again, in our current worldview) makes one a supporter of totalitarianism.

Richard M 12.11.15 at 11:45 am 62

> If that stock of capital is productive capital, it is a good, not a bad thing for a society to have accumulated an "enormous stock" of it.

That seems a failure of charitable reading. You can't get publicly owned utilities as a consequence of private savings. So by 'capital', he clearly means money, i.e. ownership rights, not the things that money buys.

Some interesting back-of-envelope calculations from link below suggest that there is two-to-three times as much ' investable capital' as 'capital required to run the economy'. Which explains why so much of it is spent trying to play zero-sum-except-in-case-of-fraud financial games. And why every-time someone does come up with a semi-valid new thing, they end up a billionaire.

http://continuations.com/post/134920840275/capital-is-no-longer-scarce

TM 12.11.15 at 1:04 pm 63

"You can't get publicly owned utilities as a consequence of private savings."

But Piketty ("a country that saves a lot" etc.) doesn't make any of these distinctions. Is it really uncharitable to take him literally?

reason 12.11.15 at 1:22 pm 64

There are some very controversial points raised in the OP.

This "even though human capital can create great wealth in a single lifetime, as Bill Gates's example would attest." is clearly fallacious (Bill Gates great wealth came from Intellectual Property not human capital).

reason 12.11.15 at 1:27 pm 65

"It seems that Piketty treats economic inequality stemming from return on capital or income as a zero sum sort of situation, but that is clearly not true."

I know Bruce W addressed this before @4, but to take another tack – it is also empirically not true since wage rates have been falling for 30 years at the same time as inequality has increased (not to mention that capital investment, at least since the invention of the joint stock company, is not an exclusive imperative of the wealthy).

reason 12.11.15 at 1:32 pm 66

Where do the figures from

" In the 19th century the top 10% most wealthy owned 90% of capital, the middle 40% owned 5% and the bottom 50% owned 5%. In the US today, top 10% own 25% and the next 40% own 25% of capital, while in Europe the top 10% own 60% and the next 40% own 35% of capital. " come from (there is no source given).

The figure for the US today looks simply odd: http://inequality.org/wealth-inequality/ suggests the top 10% today own 75% of the wealth.

reason 12.11.15 at 1:45 pm 67

"Piketty claims that 'economics is a subdiscipline of the social sciences, alongside history, sociology, anthropology, and political science.'"

I regard this as rather unfortunate. I think economics is much closer in content and style to ecology and should be seen as a subset of ecology. If it saw itself that way, it would be much better.

MPAVictoria 12.11.15 at 2:19 pm 68

Paul I think you may find this article by Matt Bruenig interesting as it relates to many of the points you have made here:

http://www.demos.org/blog/6/3/14/lesson-grab-what-you-can

engels 12.11.15 at 2:27 pm 69

Lfc, speaking only for myself the problem with the OP of not that it's 'hostile to some kind of egalitarian position' but that it's making bad arguments against a set of made-up claims.

LFC 12.11.15 at 2:49 pm 70

reason @64
This "even though human capital can create great wealth in a single lifetime, as Bill Gates's example would attest." is clearly fallacious (Bill Gates great wealth came from Intellectual Property not human capital).

I think Cudd's point here in the context of the post is the fairly banal one that not all fortunes are inherited, even today: Gates did not inherit his wealth (though presumably he came from a middle or upper-middle class background) but made his fortune via inventing stuff in a garage etc and then turning it into a corporate empire, helped *greatly* of course by intellectual-property laws once the software etc hit the market. I agree the sentence should be tweaked, but the 'human capital' reference here is to the fact that he and others he worked with were able to come up w/ whatever they came up with in the first place. Anyway, it's sort of a side issue because the post is not about the legal, socioeconomic, and 'luck' conditions that allow some inventors to get wealthy and others not, and it was really a point just made in passing.

reason 12.11.15 at 2:54 pm 71

LFC @70
None the less the value of his human capital is what an employed programmer would have been paid to do what he did. And such a basic error, may not change the argument substantially, but along with some other errors (notably the incorrect wealth distribution figure quoted) gives the whole OP less authority than it otherwise might have had.

LFC 12.11.15 at 3:07 pm 72

JQ @58
In the absence of welfare-relevant differences between people, the utility derived from a given aggregate income is maximized when that income is distributed equally. So, any inequality needs to be justified, either on the basis of welfare-relevant differences, or on the basis that it is needed to generate a larger aggregate income.

But "welfare-relevant differences between people" frequently exist, so at this level of generality that mostly kicks the can down the road, so to speak. Piketty and Saez's call for a top marginal tax rate of around 70 percent is presumably based on a combination of their normative leanings and their empirical judgment that such a tax rate would not harm economic growth in a major way so as to offset its redistributive or other benefits. Assuming that judgment is correct, I'm still not sure it's reasonable to expect Cudd, who is a philosopher not an economist, to grapple with it. But I take the point that the OP as it's presented infers (or imputes) a normative analysis on P.'s part w/o noting what he had written in that vein before the book.

Layman 12.11.15 at 3:09 pm 73

"Gates did not inherit his wealth (though presumably he came from a middle or upper-middle class background) but made his fortune via inventing stuff in a garage etc"

I think this is the wrong myth. Perhaps you mean Jobs?

engels 12.11.15 at 3:10 pm 74

His father was a prominent lawyer, and his mother served on the board of directors for First Interstate BancSystem and the United Way. Gates's maternal grandfather was JW Maxwell, a national bank president. Gates has one elder sister, Kristi (Kristianne), and one younger sister, Libby. He was the fourth of his name in his family, but was known as William Gates III or "Trey" because his father had the "II" suffix.

engels 12.11.15 at 3:25 pm 75

Apropos of nothing where does being called Miles Fraser V or whatever place you in American class system: 1% or merely upper-middle class?

LFC 12.11.15 at 3:31 pm 76

js. @51
One never needs to justify why an inequality is unjust-one only ever needs to justify the inequality itself. Of course, one sees plenty of arguments for why some inequality is unjust and why we need to fix that, but I think these are really arguments for disrupting existing social arrangements so as to make them more egalitarian, rather than arguments for the justice of equality per se, which again is something that's rarely needed an argument, it seems to me.

The main issue here though is not inequality in general but inequality of wealth and income. And no functioning economy in the real world can maintain a *completely* equal income distribution over time without a degree of micromanagement from someone that would be unworkable; probably not even a socialist utopia is going to have a *completely* equal distribution.

So there *will be* some inequalities of income and wealth. If you want to start from the position that all of those inequalities have to be justified on a case-by-case basis, so to speak, that's fine with me, I guess. But you're not going to end up w complete equality of income, empirically b.c is it's not sustainable over time in any kind of minimally dynamic economy, and normatively b.c there are always going to be "welfare-relevant differences between people" (JQ's phrase), e.g., those with particular disabilities, etc etc.

F Foundling @50
only some very specific reasons such as certain proof of the presence of what the author calls 'stigma' and 'oppression' might potentially convince the author to deign to care about wealth-induced unequal outcomes in a way roughly comparable to the way the author cares about gender-induced and race-induced unequal outcomes. Personally, I don't think convincing the author is worth the trouble.

It depends partly on how broadly 'oppression' and 'stigma' are defined. If inherited wealth plays an ever-increasing role in an economy and if the result is a caste-like society which effectively stigmatizes those excluded from the top caste by denying them access to, e.g., anything like equal educational or employment opportunities, then on the OP's reasoning that would be grounds for restricting inheritances.

LFC 12.11.15 at 3:45 pm 78

@66, @77

There's a simple explanation: it's a typographical error. "25%" at that point should read "75%". Pretty obviously, the top 10% in the U.S. today don't own a mere 25% of the 'capital'. It's a typo.

que_es 12.11.15 at 3:57 pm79

cassander at 15:

>If r>g, then (wealth) inequality will grow over time.

"If this were true, every Kennedy alive today would be richer than Joe Kennedy was. This is not the case. It is not the case because people eventually die and fortunes get divided up. It's not a statement of how feudalism works under primogeniture, but it doesn't describe modern economies. Everything Pikety says is built on this fundamental mistake. "

Every Kennedy? Huh? A wealthy person today is perfectly free to leave all of his/her wealth to the eldest son. But wealthy families today are not stuck with primogeniture. They can design their own custom wealth preservation plans and impose restrictions on the use of family wealth for generations after the death of the patriarch/matriarch. Perhaps most importantly, they can and almost always do impose restrictions on the free alienability of that wealth that restricts the rights of third parties in ways that entrench the wealth within the family.

JimV 12.11.15 at 4:11 pm 80

A minor digressive point about Bill Gates (based on reading the unauthorized biography "Gates"): he came from a wealthy background and as a result went to a school which had a computer club which had access to a PDP-11 mini-computer, at a time when most high schools did not have computer clubs. He and Paul Allen (illegally) copied the Basic Interpreter program of that computer, received slaps on the wrist for it (not that I think it deserved much more, but kids of a different social class might have been treated more severely), and later used it as the basis for their first commercial success, a Basic Interpreter for the first home micro-computer.

He and Paul Allen are very smart people, but there were probably at least 10,000 other kids as smart or smarter from poor or middle-class backgrounds in the USA at that time, but who did not have the same opportunities.

In conclusion, not a case of capital accumulation only, but it played a part – which I think is all that is necessary, just a a small fitness advance will raise a species to domination over time.

LFC 12.11.15 at 4:19 pm 81

Ze K @61

…wealth, according to our worldview, can be legitimately acquired by luck. Inheriting wealth is one example of such luck.

Questioning these assumptions (again, in our current worldview) makes one a supporter of totalitarianism.

Rawls TOJ 1971, p.15, emphasis added: "Once we decide to look for a conception of justice that nullifies the accidents of natural endowment and the contingencies of social circumstance…, we are led to these principles [of justice]."

So Rawls was "a supporter of totalitarianism"? One could easily get the impression from reading certain things on the Internet and elsewhere that he was a squishy milquetoast liberal. My, my. Live and learn.

js. 12.11.15 at 4:20 pm 82

LFC @76 - Oh, I don't think each inequality needs to be justified on a case by case basis-something like the Difference Principle would do the trick.

Maybe I'm not being clear, but I mean to make one specific point: Cudd is wrong to think that the equality presumption is false, or at any rate she hasn't given any argument that would convince me otherwise.

This isn't a blanket criticism of her post or anything like that. For example, I think a lot of the stuff about oppression is interesting and worth thinking about. I just picked the one thing I disagree with (as one does).

LFC 12.11.15 at 4:29 pm 84

js. @82:
I get it. Fair enough.

Now we can get back to the burning question of whether people who support 80% inheritance/estate taxes and 70% top marginal tax rates are Stalinists or merely Trotskyites. ;)

Ze K 12.11.15 at 4:33 pm 85

"So Rawls was "a supporter of totalitarianism"? "

Yeah, sounds like it, according to this excerpt, unless it's ripped out of context. "nullifies the accidents of natural endowment and the contingencies of social circumstance" sounds more radical than stalinism, it's practically pol-potian.

LFC 12.11.15 at 5:24 pm 86

@85
well, since the bk quoted from is 600 pp. long, it was necessarily out of context. (R's first principle protects/prioritizes "basic [political] liberties".) Anyway, the pt was I don't think challenging inherited wealth equals Pol-Potianism. But this is just a minor eddy here, so we can agree to forget it.

LFC 12.11.15 at 5:40 pm 87

engels @75
where does being called Miles Fraser V or whatever place you in American class system: 1% or merely upper-middle class?

My hunch/sense is that this is not a particularly reliable index of class position. There are probably some very non-affluent African-American families today with people w names like Jones III or Smith IV, etc.

On the other hand, when you see names with clear references to 17th or 18th cent. (hypothetically, something like "John Hancock V"), you pretty much know the person is from an old-line WASP family that's been in the U.S. a long time. Which doesn't *necessarily* mean wealthy, though it could well mean that

[Dec 10, 2015] Pandering to Plutocrats

Notable quotes:

"... From my perspective, the person who should be read and properly considered and credited for describing the general politics experienced in Western Europe and the United States in the wake of recession is Naomi Klein. That economists so easily turn away from or unknowingly ridicule the Shock Doctrine ideas of Klein, ideas that are so sadly reasonable today, really troubles me. Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman were respectful, but what other economists? ..."

"... Noah Smith recently offered an interesting take * on the real reasons austerity garners so much support from elites, no matter how badly it fails in practice. Elites, he argues, see economic distress as an opportunity to push through reforms - which basically means changes they want, which may or may not actually serve the interest of promoting economic growth - and oppose any policies that might mitigate crisis without the need for these changes: ..."

"... What Smith didnt note, somewhat surprisingly, is that his argument is very close to Naomi Kleins Shock Doctrine, with its argument that elites systematically exploit disasters to push through neoliberal policies even if these policies are essentially irrelevant to the sources of disaster. I have to admit that I was predisposed to dislike Kleins book when it came out, probably out of professional turf-defending and whatever - but her thesis really helps explain a lot about whats going on in Europe in particular. ..."

"... What Smith didnt note, somewhat surprisingly, is that his argument is very close to Naomi Kleins Shock Doctrine, with its argument that elites systematically exploit disasters to push through neoliberal policies even if these policies are essentially irrelevant to the sources of disaster. ..."

"... GOP/thuggee appeal to the varied fears, hate and prejudice of poor people aka the base: ..."

"... Not only. Those tricks are just a small part of the strategy. The part which is typically called wedge issues politics. See for example Whats the matter with Kansas ..."

"... In order to explain to the Cons why no progress gets made on these issues, politicians and pundits point their fingers to a liberal elite, a straw man representing everything that conservatism is not. When reasons are given, they eschew economic reasons in favor of accusing this elite of simply hating America, or having a desire to harm average Americans. This theme of victimization by these elites is pervasive in conservative literature, despite the fact that at the time conservatives controlled all three branches of government, was being served by an extensive media devoted only to conservative ideology, and conservatives had won 6 of the previous 9 presidential elections. ..."

"... But the problem is much deeper. They dictate the rules, the rationality by which we live. This is a complete ideological victory and complete defeat of New Deal ideology by neoliberal ideology. ..."

"... Financial deregulation has driven capital away from growth-supporting investment, toward speculative trading that increases financial instability. It has also led to a diversion of talent and energy into negative value-added activities such as high-frequency trading, frontrunning, and LIBOR manipulation. The rise of banks too big to fail has led to a culture of impunity and lawlessness in the financial industry. Notwithstanding massive fraud in the mortgage industry and serial criminality on the part of major banks such as J. P. Morgan, virtually no guilty bankers have been prosecuted for their roles in the financial crisis, and fines capture only a small fraction of profits from illegal dealings. All of this has increased inequality. ..."

Dec 10, 2015 | Economist's View

Throw the middle class a bone to get their vote, then take even more away later.

The Tax Policy Center analyzed Jeb Bush's tax plan. Paul Krugman reacts:

Pandering to Plutocrats: ...Most of the headlines I've seen focus on the amazing price tag: $6.8 trillion of unfunded tax cuts in the first decade. But it's also important to realize the extent to which this is tax-cutting on the rich, by the rich, for the rich. Here's the change in after-tax income resulting from the plan:

Huge benefits for the super-elite. And if you are tempted to say that the middle class gets at least some tax cut, remember that the budget hole would force sharp cuts in spending..., this means sharp cuts in programs that benefit ordinary Americans, probably swamping any tax cuts.

So, huge tax cuts that would massively increase debt, with the benefits going to the very highest-income Americans. And this is the "responsible", moderate candidate.

> Dan Kervick said...

Same as it ever was. Republicans pretend to be against deficits, but are really just against spending. So they propose tax cuts to raise deficits (which they sometimes initially pretend won't materialize because of supply side effects), and then they push for the spending cuts to counter the deficits they created. This is the old Norquist strategy, and it still has political legs.

pgl -> Dan Kervick...

Are they against spending? Reagan increased defense spending. Everyone of the current clowns want to do it again. Republicans are for shifting the tax base to the little people even as they slash their Social Security benefits. Take from the poor and give to the rich.

likbez -> pgl...

"Are they against spending? Reagan increased defense spending. "

Good point. They are against non-defense spending, so for them the role of the state is limited to military industrial complex support.

And I would not discard completely the value of defense spending (aka Military Keynesianism). It is probably one of the most powerful drivers of technological progress that mankind has outside wars.

pgl -> likbez...

So you agree with Christie and Trump? Declare war on China and all of the Middle East. That will work well. Ahem.

likbez -> pgl...

Don't be so simplistic. What I stated is "It is probably one of the most powerful drivers of technological progress that mankind has outside wars."

My point is that wars, such as WWII or Vietnam, or Iraq war accelerate technical progress. That does not mean that I am warmonger like Hillary.

anne said...

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/12/09/the-banality-of-trumpism/

December 9, 2015

The Banality of Trumpism
By Paul Krugman

Brian Beutler has a good piece about the liberal reaction to Trumpism * - which is that the phenomenon

"was neither unexpected nor the source of any new or profound lesson."

But I think he casts it a bit too narrowly. The basic liberal diagnosis of modern conservatism has long been that it was a plutocratic movement that won elections by appealing to the racism and general anger-at-the-other of whites; there's nothing too surprising about an election in which the establishment candidates continue to serve plutocracy ** while the base turns to candidates who drop the euphemisms while going straight to the racism and xenophobia.

Beutler says that:

"The only people who claim to be befuddled by the Trump phenomenon are officials on knife-edge in the party he leads."

But surely the people most taken by surprise, least able to handle the phenomenon, are the self-proclaimed centrists, the both-sides-do-it crowd, who denounced the plutocrats-and-racists diagnosis as "shrill," insisting that we are having a real debate with just a few fringe characters on either side. Some of those people are still trying to portray the parties as symmetric: Bernie Sanders calling for single-payer health insurance is just like Trump calling for mass deportations and a ban on Muslims.

That was always a silly position. And as Beutler says, those of us who were clear-headed about conservative politics are almost bored by the repeated revelations of what we already knew.

* https://newrepublic.com/article/125353/trump-proves-liberals-right-along

** http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/12/09/pandering-to-plutocrats/

pgl said in reply to anne...

Nixon's Southern Strategy. Pretend to be racist so you get the votes of stupid white people. BTW - I grew up in Georgia so I lived this garbage as a kid. Trump is and always has been a disaster.

likbez said in reply to pgl...

"Nixon's Southern Strategy"

Or may be Trump is sensing the shift to the right of population of Western countries that we also observed recently in France and before that in Hungary and Poland.

anne said in reply to anne...

From my perspective, the person who should be read and properly considered and credited for describing the general politics experienced in Western Europe and the United States in the wake of recession is Naomi Klein.

That economists so easily turn away from or unknowingly ridicule the "Shock Doctrine" ideas of Klein, ideas that are so sadly reasonable today, really troubles me. Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman were respectful, but what other economists?

anne said in reply to anne...

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2010/04/hoisted-from-the-archives-tyler-cowen-thinks-naomi-klein-believes-her-own-bulls------grasping-reality-with-tractor-beams.html#tpe-action-resize-122

October 4, 2007

Tyler Cowen Thinks Naomi Klein Believes Her Own Bulls---

He reads her book. He doesn't think it meets minimum intellectual standards. I think he is right: now I can borrow Tyler's ideas and have an informed view:

"Shock Jock": *

* http://www.nysun.com/arts/shock-jock/63867/

-- Brad DeLong

anne said in reply to anne...

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2010/04/hoisted-from-the-archives-tyler-cowen-thinks-naomi-klein-believes-her-own-bulls------grasping-reality-with-tractor-beams.html

April 8, 2010

Hoisted from the Archives: Tyler Cowen Thinks Naomi Klein Believes Her Own Bulls---

He reads her book. He doesn't think it meets minimum intellectual standards. I think he is right: now I can borrow Tyler's ideas and have an informed view.... *

* http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2007/10/tyler-cowen-thi.html

October 4, 2007

-- Brad DeLong

anne -> anne...

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/16/the-smithkleinkalecki-theory-of-austerity/

May 16, 2013

The Smith/Klein/Kalecki Theory of Austerity

By Paul Krugman

Noah Smith recently offered an interesting take * on the real reasons austerity garners so much support from elites, no matter how badly it fails in practice. Elites, he argues, see economic distress as an opportunity to push through "reforms" - which basically means changes they want, which may or may not actually serve the interest of promoting economic growth - and oppose any policies that might mitigate crisis without the need for these changes:

"I conjecture that 'austerians' are concerned that anti-recessionary macro policy will allow a country to 'muddle through' a crisis without improving its institutions. In other words, they fear that a successful stimulus would be wasting a good crisis....

"If people really do think that the danger of stimulus is not that it might fail, but that it might succeed, they need to say so. Only then, I believe, can we have an optimal public discussion about costs and benefits."

As he notes, the day after he wrote that post, Steven Pearlstein ** of the Washington Post made exactly that argument for austerity.

What Smith didn't note, somewhat surprisingly, is that his argument is very close to Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine," with its argument that elites systematically exploit disasters to push through neoliberal policies even if these policies are essentially irrelevant to the sources of disaster. I have to admit that I was predisposed to dislike Klein's book when it came out, probably out of professional turf-defending and whatever - but her thesis really helps explain a lot about what's going on in Europe in particular.

And the lineage goes back even further. Two and a half years ago Mike Konczal *** reminded us of a classic 1943 (!) essay by Michal Kalecki, who suggested that business interests hate Keynesian economics because they fear that it might work - and in so doing mean that politicians would no longer have to abase themselves before businessmen in the name of preserving confidence. This is pretty close to the argument that we must have austerity, because stimulus might remove the incentive for structural reform that, you guessed it, gives businesses the confidence they need before deigning to produce recovery.

And sure enough, in my inbox this morning I see a piece more or less deploring the early signs of success for Abenomics: Abenomics is working - but it had better not work too well. **** Because if it works, how will we get structural reform?

So one way to see the drive for austerity is as an application of a sort of reverse Hippocratic oath: "First, do nothing to mitigate harm." For the people must suffer if neoliberal reforms are to prosper.

* http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2013/05/why-do-people-support-austerity.html

** https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/05/14/the-case-for-austerity-isnt-dead-yet/

*** http://rortybomb.wordpress.com/2011/01/21/kristol-kalecki-and-a-19th-century-economist-defending-patriarchy-all-on-political-macroeconomics/

**** http://qz.com/85282/abenomics-is-working-but-it-had-better-not-work-too-well/

anne -> anne...

What Smith didn't note, somewhat surprisingly, is that his argument is very close to Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine," with its argument that elites systematically exploit disasters to push through neoliberal policies even if these policies are essentially irrelevant to the sources of disaster. I have to admit that I was predisposed to dislike Klein's book when it came out, probably out of professional turf-defending and whatever - but her thesis really helps explain a lot about what's going on in Europe in particular....

-- Paul Krugman

ilsm

GOP/thuggee appeal to the varied fears, hate and prejudice of poor people aka the base:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/12/09/the-banality-of-trumpism/?_r=0

The get the fearful bigots to vote for plutocrats' interests the GOP/thuggee promise to make sure [more of] "those" people have less than the base.

likbez -> ilsm...

"GOP/thuggee appeal to the varied fears, hate and prejudice of poor people aka the base"

Not only. Those tricks are just a small part of the strategy. The part which is typically called wedge issues politics. See for example "What's the matter with Kansas" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What%27s_the_Matter_with_Kansas%3F)

=== quote ===

Frank says that the conservative coalition is the dominant coalition in American politics. There are two sides to this coalition, according to the author. Economic conservatives want business tax cuts and deregulation. Frank says that since the coalition formed in the late 1960s, the coalition has been "fantastically rewarding" for the economic conservatives. The policies of the Republicans in power have been exclusively economic, but the coalition has caused the social conservatives to be worse off, due to these very economic policies and because the social issues that this faction pushes never go anywhere after the election. According to Frank, "abortion is never outlawed, school prayer never returns, the culture industry is never forced to clean up its act."

He attributes this partly to conservatives "waging cultural battles where victory is impossible," such as a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. He also argues that the very capitalist system the economic conservatives strive to strengthen and deregulate promotes and commercially markets the perceived assault on traditional values.

Frank applies his thesis to answer the question of why these social conservatives continue to vote for Republicans, even though they are voting against their best interests. He argues that politicians and pundits stir the "Cons" to action by evoking certain issues, such as abortion, immigration, and taxation. By portraying themselves as champions of the conservatives on these issues, the politicians can get "Cons" to vote them into office. However, once in office, these politicians turn their attention to more mundane economic issues, such as business tax reduction or deregulation. Frank's thesis goes thus: In order to explain to the "Cons" why no progress gets made on these issues, politicians and pundits point their fingers to a "liberal elite," a straw man representing everything that conservatism is not. When reasons are given, they eschew economic reasons in favor of accusing this elite of simply hating America, or having a desire to harm "average" Americans. This theme of victimization by these "elites" is pervasive in conservative literature, despite the fact that at the time conservatives controlled all three branches of government, was being served by an extensive media devoted only to conservative ideology, and conservatives had won 6 of the previous 9 presidential elections.
=== end of quote ===

But the problem is much deeper. They dictate the rules, the rationality by which we live. This is a complete ideological victory and complete defeat of New Deal ideology by neoliberal ideology.

=== quote ===

1. Under the guise of 'free' markets, what was created was an alternative set of rules and practices rigged to serve capital owners and executives at the expense of ordinary workers, retirees, and young people. Let us count the ways.
2. IP monopolies have been strengthened worldwide. So-called 'free' trade deals have replaced labor-protecting tariffs with steeply increased capital-protecting IP regulations. Copyright terms have been extended far beyond any credible incentive effects.
3. Central banks across the OECD have practiced austerity, or failed to make unemployment reduction a priority, thereby gratuitously increasing unemployment to serve capital interests. Fiscal policy, too, has kept demand for labor weak, even while profits have soared. That r>g is due in part to g-depressing monetary and fiscal policies.
4. Laws and regulations regarding credit and bankruptcy have been rewritten to favor creditors. In the U.S., bankruptcy no longer fully discharges personal debts for many people. Millions of college students in the U.S. labor under mountains of undischargeable student debt. Usurious payday and title loans reinforce the cycle of poverty for more millions. Many creditors' business models are predatory, in which profits are generated by terms that trap people into spirals of debt, default, and accumulating fines and fees, and are deliberately designed to prevent people from paying off the loan, so they must pay interest and fees for a longer period. Regulators failed to reduce the principal owed on home loans after the financial crisis, gratuitously extending the length of the recession. In the EU, too, German-led monetary policy has strongly favored creditors over debtors, leading to recession and mass unemployment in the peripheral Eurozone countries.
   Antitrust enforcement has weakened, increasing the dominance of big firms that exploit their market power, fattening profits and executive compensation.
5. Financial deregulation has driven capital away from growth-supporting investment, toward speculative trading that increases financial instability. It has also led to a diversion of talent and energy into negative value-added activities such as high-frequency trading, frontrunning, and LIBOR manipulation. The rise of banks 'too big to fail' has led to a culture of impunity and lawlessness in the financial industry. Notwithstanding massive fraud in the mortgage industry and serial criminality on the part of major banks such as J. P. Morgan, virtually no guilty bankers have been prosecuted for their roles in the financial crisis, and fines capture only a small fraction of profits from illegal dealings. All of this has increased inequality.
6. On the labor side, in the U.S., basic employment laws are unenforced or carry penalties too low to deter, leading to massive wage and tip theft, forced work off the clock, and numerous other violations, especially at the low end of the wage scale. Employees are routinely misclassified as independent contractors, as a way to escape requirements to provide benefits, pay social insurance taxes, and fob business expenses onto workers. Young workers performing useful services for their employees are routinely misclassified as interns, so they don't have to be paid at all.
7. The rise of contingent and temporary labor and labor subcontracting has also enabled corporations to shed responsibilities for providing decent pay, benefits, and working conditions–a pure shift of income from labor to capital (or, for nonprofits such as universities, a pure shift of income from contingent workers such as adjunct faculty to the pockets of top-level administrators). Franchising performs similar functions, whereby the franchisor imposes costs and pricing structures on individual franchisees that all-but-guarantee that the latter cannot clear a profit without violating labor laws. Outsourcing abroad, including to enterprises that exploit forced and defrauded workers, magnifies these problems. These practices are due to a failure of employment law to close loopholes that empower firms to pretend that their employees are someone else's responsibility.
8. U.S. law has systematically failed to protect workers' contractual pension rights. During stock booms, firms are permitted to skim supposedly excess profits in their pension funds for distribution to shareholders. In the inevitable bear market that follows, they dump now severely underfunded pension funds as hopelessly insolvent. Public pensions, too, have been underfunded or raided for decades.
9. The shift from defined-benefit pensions to defined-contribution retirement plans has put the onus on naive investors to invest their savings. Yet financial advisors are free to peddle high-fee low-return investments to them, pretending to act in their interests, leading to returns on 401(k) plans for the ordinary investor that are well below r. While regulations have been proposed to end this practice in the U.S., its prevalence represents a pure shift of income and wealth from labor to capital, and from ordinary workers to high-paid financiers.
10. In the U.S., labor laws protecting the right to organize have been violated with impunity at least since the 1980s. The decline of labor unions, in turn, has led to a decline in labor's political influence for all policies affecting workers, whether they are unionized or not.
11. In the U.S., the minimum wage has not kept up with inflation. Without the backstop of a minimum wage, much of the incidence of publicly provided benefits to low-wage workers, such as food stamps and the earned-income tax credit, accrues to major corporations, who don't have to pay as high wages to induce the same labor supply.

http://crookedtimber.org/2015/12/07/the-politics-behind-piketty/
=== end of quote ===

[Dec 09, 2015] The Politics behind Piketty

Notable quotes:

"... I do think, however, she might add one to her list: the decline of the Rule Against Perpetuities (in the US) and the re-emergence of dynastic trusts, which lock in wealth across generations. ..."

"... A wonderful list; which in many ways can be summarized (not to diminish the longer version) as various forms of, "The wealthy have been allowed to write rules that work best for them" ..."

"... Deregulatory "free market" policies pushed by rich financiers and conservatives have made the economy more volatile and prone to the boom-bust cycle. During the boom, most of the gains accrue to the top, and after the bust, macro policy has been insufficient to bring about a swift recovery, again exacerbating inequality. ..."

"... What piketty does not analyze is nature of ideological hegemony in a rentier society. I already pointed to Bukharin's critique of rentier ideology in the economic theory of the leisure class. It makes for a fascinating comparison ..."

December 7, 2015 | Crooked Timber

Thomas Piketty traces widening inequality in rich countries since the early 1970s to increasing shares of income claimed by the top 1%. This trend is decomposed into the increasing share of income accruing to capital ownership, and the increasing share of labor income claimed by corporate executives and financiers. Piketty shows that the increasing share of labor income claimed by the top 1% is neither deserved nor economically useful, in the sense of stimulating better products and services, increasing economic growth, or providing other benefits to the 99%. Because he defines r, the return on capital, as the pure return to passive ownership (excluding returns to capital that could be traced to entrepreneurial activity or business judgment), it is evident that capital's share of income is also undeserved. But is it economically useful? Piketty misses an opportunity to connect his analysis to a critique of the ideology and associated politics that have driven increasing inequality since the early 1970s. While he rightly claims that the distribution of income and wealth is a deeply political matter, and connects increasing economic inequality to the increasing political clout of the top 1%, he does not identify political decisions, other than cuts in marginal tax rates on top incomes, that lie behind inequality trends. Filling in the ideological and political stories gives us some clues as to policy instruments, other than the tax code, needed to reverse the ominous trends he documents.

On the ideological front, several theories served to rationalized policy shifts in favor of increasing capital shares and top labor incomes. The stagflation of the 1970s was successfully blamed on Keynesian economics, fiscal irresponsibility, a bloated welfare state, militant labor unions, state regulation of the economy, and supposedly incentive-destroying high marginal tax rates on capital incomes and the rich. At the same time, the ideology of maximizing shareholder value took hold. Corporate executives who formerly lived merely like an especially comfortable middle class, and who gained prestige from sharing rents widely among corporate stakeholders, narrowed their focus to serving capital interests exclusively, and obtained compensation packages that tied their fates to that goal alone.

All of this might have made sense were it true that the only way to increase profits is to do things that add net value to the economy in which everyone else claims shares. But that's the hard way to increase capital's share of income, and thereby the income of top executives. It's much easier for the top 1% to make money by creating and exploiting opportunities to gain at the expense of everyone else. Under the guise of 'free' markets, what was created was an alternative set of rules and practices rigged to serve capital owners and executives at the expense of ordinary workers, retirees, and young people. Let us count the ways.

1. IP monopolies have been strengthened worldwide. So-called 'free' trade deals have replaced labor-protecting tariffs with steeply increased capital-protecting IP regulations. Copyright terms have been extended far beyond any credible incentive effects.
2. Central banks across the OECD have practiced austerity, or failed to make unemployment reduction a priority, thereby gratuitously increasing unemployment to serve capital interests. Fiscal policy, too, has kept demand for labor weak, even while profits have soared. That r>g is due in part to g-depressing monetary and fiscal policies.
3. Laws and regulations regarding credit and bankruptcy have been rewritten to favor creditors. In the U.S., bankruptcy no longer fully discharges personal debts for many people. Millions of college students in the U.S. labor under mountains of undischargeable student debt. Usurious payday and title loans reinforce the cycle of poverty for more millions. Many creditors' business models are predatory, in which profits are generated by terms that trap people into spirals of debt, default, and accumulating fines and fees, and are deliberately designed to prevent people from paying off the loan, so they must pay interest and fees for a longer period. Regulators failed to reduce the principal owed on home loans after the financial crisis, gratuitously extending the length of the recession. In the EU, too, German-led monetary policy has strongly favored creditors over debtors, leading to recession and mass unemployment in the peripheral Eurozone countries.
4. Antitrust enforcement has weakened, increasing the dominance of big firms that exploit their market power, fattening profits and executive compensation.
5. Financial deregulation has driven capital away from growth-supporting investment, toward speculative trading that increases financial instability. It has also led to a diversion of talent and energy into negative value-added activities such as high-frequency trading, frontrunning, and LIBOR manipulation. The rise of banks 'too big to fail' has led to a culture of impunity and lawlessness in the financial industry. Notwithstanding massive fraud in the mortgage industry and serial criminality on the part of major banks such as J. P. Morgan, virtually no guilty bankers have been prosecuted for their roles in the financial crisis, and fines capture only a small fraction of profits from illegal dealings. All of this has increased inequality.
6. On the labor side, in the U.S., basic employment laws are unenforced or carry penalties too low to deter, leading to massive wage and tip theft, forced work off the clock, and numerous other violations, especially at the low end of the wage scale. Employees are routinely misclassified as independent contractors, as a way to escape requirements to provide benefits, pay social insurance taxes, and fob business expenses onto workers. Young workers performing useful services for their employees are routinely misclassified as interns, so they don't have to be paid at all.
7. The rise of contingent and temporary labor and labor subcontracting has also enabled corporations to shed responsibilities for providing decent pay, benefits, and working conditions–a pure shift of income from labor to capital (or, for nonprofits such as universities, a pure shift of income from contingent workers such as adjunct faculty to the pockets of top-level administrators). Franchising performs similar functions, whereby the franchisor imposes costs and pricing structures on individual franchisees that all-but-guarantee that the latter cannot clear a profit without violating labor laws. Outsourcing abroad, including to enterprises that exploit forced and defrauded workers, magnifies these problems. These practices are due to a failure of employment law to close loopholes that empower firms to pretend that their employees are someone else's responsibility.
8. U.S. law has systematically failed to protect workers' contractual pension rights. During stock booms, firms are permitted to skim supposedly excess profits in their pension funds for distribution to shareholders. In the inevitable bear market that follows, they dump now severely underfunded pension funds as hopelessly insolvent. Public pensions, too, have been underfunded or raided for decades.
9. The shift from defined-benefit pensions to defined-contribution retirement plans has put the onus on naive investors to invest their savings. Yet financial advisors are free to peddle high-fee low-return investments to them, pretending to act in their interests, leading to returns on 401(k) plans for the ordinary investor that are well below r. While regulations have been proposed to end this practice in the U.S., its prevalence represents a pure shift of income and wealth from labor to capital, and from ordinary workers to high-paid financiers.
10. In the U.S., labor laws protecting the right to organize have been violated with impunity at least since the 1980s. The decline of labor unions, in turn, has led to a decline in labor's political influence for all policies affecting workers, whether they are unionized or not.
11. In the U.S., the minimum wage has not kept up with inflation. Without the backstop of a minimum wage, much of the incidence of publicly provided benefits to low-wage workers, such as food stamps and the earned-income tax credit, accrues to major corporations, who don't have to pay as high wages to induce the same labor supply.

From an ideological point of view, much of this can and has been peddled to the public as 'free' markets and 'deregulation.' The reality exposes the vacuity of these very ideas. In any advanced economy, the state must be involved in promulgating the constitutive rules of the economy. It can no more get out of the business of regulating the economy than the Commissioner of Baseball can get out of the business of promulgating the rules of Major League Baseball. The only real question is, in whose interests are the rules designed?

Ideology matters for politics. Once people have acquired income or wealth through the market, they feel strongly entitled to it. In the U.S. and increasingly in the rest of the OECD, the population at large, taken in by such representations, is reluctant to tax. Redistributing income and wealth by means of taxation, as Piketty proposes, becomes harder once people have it in their hands. We need to scrutinize the rules by which income and wealth get generated through the market, before it is taxed. They have been changing in a plutocratic direction for the past 45 years. The rule changes have not only increased r (at least for the top 1%), but also depressed g, by increasing monopoly power, shifting savings from real investment to speculation and scams, shifting top talent from production to value-extraction, and depressing aggregate demand.

Getting this story out is critical to changing politics. For plutocracy still must nod to what we might call 'weak' Rawlsianism: that inequality cannot be justified without showing that it delivers some benefits to the 99%. (It's not for nothing that one of the leading arms of plutocracy is called the Club for Growth.) Exposing the ways the game is rigged, as Elizabeth Warren has been doing, should open more levers to change than focusing on taxes alone–levers that should also help limit the pace of increasing inequality by raising g.

Rakesh Bhandari 12.07.15 at 5:50 pm

I think that this comments misses the force of Piketty's inequality r>g. Even if intellectual property laws were weaker (and rents thereby smaller) and and labor laws and Keynesian policies stronger (and thereby g higher) and even if small savers had a bit higher rate of return, the Piketty inequality would still be in operation (and big savers would still have much relative returns), giving us the uncanny return of a rentier society.
In short, this comments seems to me to miss the force of the r>g inequality.

Dan Cole 12.07.15 at 6:12 pm

I don't think it's a case of either or. it's true that Piketty does not pay sufficient attention to institutions and institutional changes that have increased returns to capital and reduced intergenerational economic mobility (up or down the ladder). His model stands on its own, but of course the returns to investment depend heavily on the kinds of institutions Prof. Anderson discusses.

I do think, however, she might add one to her list: the decline of the Rule Against Perpetuities (in the US) and the re-emergence of dynastic trusts, which lock in wealth across generations. This is still very much an institutional change in progress, state by state. Its probably will not begin to significantly affect social mobility statistics significantly for a generation.

Rakesh Bhandari 12.07.15 at 6:23 pm

I don't agree that Piketty ignores institutional changes or changes in property laws, e.g. the end of human chattel, the operation of war commissions, the evolution of minimum wage laws, the weakening of collective bargaining, and the "stakeholder" nature of Rhenish capitalism. Piketty is aware of all this, but he still reasons on the basis of his r>g inequality that the return of a rentier society is most likely except through a global tax on wealth. The principal reason: even if through institutional reforms r is reduced a bit, g is likely to revert to historical averages even with the right Keynesian policies. That gives us a r>g inequality great enough to yield an actual rentier society (not the petit rentier one we now have).

An On 12.07.15 at 7:38 pm

I'm sympathetic to the direction of this argument, but does a list so focused on the US provide an adequate explanation of a global phenomenon?

chris arnade 12.07.15 at 8:08 pm

A wonderful list; which in many ways can be summarized (not to diminish the longer version) as various forms of, "The wealthy have been allowed to write rules that work best for them"

This has meant diminished rules, and the enforcement of rules, for Wall Street and large corporations, sold under the free market notion that individual liberty is collectively beneficial.

Yet at the same time increased and aggressive regulation has been applied to poorer folks (Broken Windows policing and the War on Drugs) under the theory that individual liberty can collectively be corrosive.

The latter hasn't just been a moral outrage, it has also helped to devalue labor. It is harder to increase human capital when you are subjected to onerous rules and regulations.

T 12.07.15 at 8:32 pm

Hot off the presses, today's example of rent seeking in trillion dollar markets: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/07/business/a-revolving-door-helps-big-banks-quiet-campaign-to-muscle-out-fannie-and-freddie.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

Robert 12.07.15 at 9:15 pm

Robert Reich's new book, Saving Capitalism, is basically a longer statement of the thesis of this post, albeit not as a comment on Piketty. Krugman has a review in The New York Review of Books.

krippendorf 12.07.15 at 9:41 pm

see also work by Grusky and Weeden, who have been pushing the line that rents are ubiquitous throughout the labor market, and not just in the top 1%, for quite some time.

But, they are sociologists, so they are easily ignored by Stiglitz, Reich, and other economists who are trying to make rent-based arguments for rising income inequality.

Peter K. 12.07.15 at 9:53 pm 10

I am excited about this seminar and discussion.

What I believe Piketty has said is that *r* remains remarkably constant despite how one would think that the laws of supply and demand would mean that an oversupply of capital and slower growth would decrease *r* but it remains high because of a variety of factors.

Piketty discusses how Depression and Wars changed the dynamic so that inequality decreased in the post-war years. The list of policies here describe the many reasons why inequality has increased again and growth has slowed down.

As Jared Bernstein wrote "…since the late 1970s, we've been at full employment only 30 percent of the time (see the data note below for an explanation of how this is measured). For the three decades before that, the job market was at full employment 70 percent of the time."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/10/19/full-employment-a-bipartisan-goal-thats-missing-from-the-candidates-debates/

I believe macro policy (monetary, fiscal, trade) explains a large part of why growth has slowed and inequality increased since the 1970s.

Deregulatory "free market" policies pushed by rich financiers and conservatives have made the economy more volatile and prone to the boom-bust cycle. During the boom, most of the gains accrue to the top, and after the bust, macro policy has been insufficient to bring about a swift recovery, again exacerbating inequality.

Tabasco 12.07.15 at 10:38 pm, 11

Central banks across the OECD have practiced austerity

For nearly a decade central banks across the OECD have kept their policy interest rates at or near zero. In a couple of countries they are less than zero.

Whatever this is, it is not austerity.

Rakesh Bhandari 12.07.15 at 10:57 pm 12

From the phone. Even if r on average falls from 6 to 4 pc. and growth goes from 1.5 to 2pc you will still get a rentier society. Remember also wealthy will have higher average return m, say in this ex 6 pc. Then you have wealth growing 3 x the rate of income. I earlier argued that we should distinguish P's critique of rentier society from the Reich/Stiglitz critique of monopoly rents. P's whole point is that rentier society arises out of even competitive capitalism

Rakesh Bhandari 12.07.15 at 11:01 pm 13

What piketty does not analyze is nature of ideological hegemony in a rentier society. I already pointed to Bukharin's critique of rentier ideology in the economic theory of the leisure class. It makes for a fascinating comparison

Frank Wilhoit 12.07.15 at 11:35 pm 14

Chris Arnade @ 6:

A. "…the theory that individual liberty can collectively be corrosive…." is merely a cover for sadism.

B. "onerous rules and regulations" are only complained of by entities who do not wish to be held accountable.

bob mcmanus 12.07.15 at 11:44 pm 15

What piketty does not analyze is nature of ideological hegemony in a rentier society

As I read him, he doesn't need to, because it's irrelevant.

What Piketty's numbers prove is that it wasn't ideology or politics or unions or social movements and programs that gave us the Great Compression and decreased inequality but revolution, depression, and catastrophic war. Certainly history shows that every catastrophic war etc did not necessarily led to greater equality, but there is very little evidence for increases in equality without radical social disorder. Piketty explicitly says toward the end that moderate tax increases or redistributive social programs have had little effect, that the lower baseline after WWII was determining.

What is taken from the above can be up for discussion, perhaps the best can be done during peacetime is ameliorative efforts within a context of rising inequality, and ideology can help with those besides preparing for the inevitable collapse. But effective demand management will quickly fail for political reasons, see Kalecki.

If the above looks like Marxian praxis, it's no coincidence. Piketty's recommendation, taxing global wealth at confiscatory rates, should be understood as a practical recommendation. I think we all understand what it would take to tax away 40-50% of gross Saudi or Brunei or American wealth to distribute to Africa and South America, and Piketty surely was not unaware.

bob mcmanus 12.07.15 at 11:52 pm 16

I apologize, Piketty only asks, although I think he says "initially," for a lower global wealth tax rate, perhaps a few percent to counter r>g. I will dig out my copy. I am not at all bothered if Piketty details no clear process to confiscating global wealth, he surely doesn't have to, and it would get in the way of his message: that paths to equality are radically limited.

Peter T 12.07.15 at 11:54 pm 17

What struck me most about Piketty's data was the near constancy of r over centuries. This suggests to me that it is not a matter of balancing supply and demand for capital, but a structural feature (perhaps the return necessary to sustain the hierarchy of production?). So r, in itself, has little to do with the distribution of return: it could be spread across a large middling to wealthy class, or concentrated in the 0.1%, as political factors dictated.

I will add that the underlying mental model in much of economics seems to be the gentleman's estate. There is land, income for investment or consumption as prudence and virtue dictate, the lump sum in consols…with the ideal the improving landlord. That categories such as "capital" or "labour" do not stretch to countries does not seem to cross the imagination.

Mike Furlan 12.08.15 at 12:13 am 18

N. Taleb criticizes Piketty on mathematical grounds:

"What is worse, rejection of such theories also ignored the size effect, by countering with data of a different sample size, effectively making the dialogue on inequality uninformational statistically."
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1405.1791.pdf

I thought Piketty addressed this issue, for instance in looking at countries with relatively constant populations over time like France, and admitting that less could be learned from looking at a United States that grew from 3 to 300 million. But I'm sure that I'm missing many important aspects of this question.

Rakesh Bhandari 12.08.15 at 12:27 am 19

@18 If population is growing at a fast rate and therefore g as well, the fundamental inequality will be attenuated, and it will be difficult to see the long-term consequences of r>g in such a society. France gives us a better laboratory to see the likely effects of the fundamental inequality going forward than the US has hitherto provided.

Rakesh Bhandari 12.08.15 at 12:29 am 20

@15. I don't think this is quite right. Piketty thinks a fundamental problem with rentier society is in fact ideological, viz. that it cannot be squared with the meritocratic values that provide normative support for competitive markets. This raises the question of what the elements of a rentier ideology are. The only one I know to have provided an answer is Bukharin.

Rakesh Bhandari 12.08.15 at 12:52 am 21

@17 raises difficult questions. Some economists have claimed that r>g is just what you would expect from dynamically efficient economy, but this needs to be spelled out. Piketty has a complex section which I have not yet fully understood on why r being positive, and greater than g, cannot be explained in terms of a psychological theory of time preference. Perhaps another way of thinking about this would be: what would happen if r were to fall below g? Would there be mechanisms to restore Piketty's fundamental inequality? Piketty, I think, is saying "yes". So I shall re-read that section to get a better understanding of his argument.

John Quiggin 12.08.15 at 1:01 am 22

"Central banks across the OECD have practiced austerity"

As Tabasco observes, this point is loosely phrased. Austerity is a fiscal policy, not a monetary policy. But central banks can enforce austerity by refusing to accommodate government budget deficits. The ECB has clearly done this (as it was set up to do). In other cases, governments and legislatures have imposed austerity, with the support of central banks.

The US Fed is one example where the central bank has been less supportive of austerity than the legislature.

ZM 12.08.15 at 1:25 am 23

A question for the more economically minded – Would one reason that r is reasonably stable over a considerable time frame be because it is determined not by the most wealthy holders of capital (who presumably could afford to take a lower rate of return on a long term basis), but by the less wealthy who depend on a higher rate of r as otherwise their smaller investments wouldn't be financially rewarding?

For instance, in Australia workers have compulsory employer paid superannuation investments, and if the rate of return on these was lower I don't know that the policy of moving people to self-funded retirement by superannuation as opposed to government pensions would be feasible?

Peter K. 12.08.15 at 1:37 am 24

"Central banks across the OECD have practiced austerity"

I think that is right. They've not supported quick recoveries and have been overly fearful of phantom inflation.

http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/paul-krugman-larry-summers-and-the-fed-s-unused-ammunition

Sebastian H 12.08.15 at 1:39 am 25

I'm very sympathetic to much of the list of bad policies. I have a question about this though: "On the ideological front, several theories served to rationalized policy shifts in favor of increasing capital shares and top labor incomes. The stagflation of the 1970s was successfully blamed on Keynesian economics, fiscal irresponsibility, a bloated welfare state, militant labor unions, state regulation of the economy, and supposedly incentive-destroying high marginal tax rates on capital incomes and the rich."

What should it have been blamed on?

[I'm very open to the idea that the lessons of the 70s were overlearned–i.e. just because too much inflation is bad doesn't mean we should worry about it when it is below 5%. But this comment suggests that something else entirely was going on]

Rakesh Bhandari 12.08.15 at 1:56 am 26

@25 in regards to the quote from Anderson who, along with many others, is missing in my opinion Piketty's main thesis of how the normal operation of competitive or even social democratic capitalism or of course monopoly capitalism yields a rentier society in the absence of wealth and corporate taxation. Does not Piketty argue that the return to rentier society was underway before the Anglo-American neo-liberal turn (though it did obviously accelerate it) and has been happening even in societies not as neo-liberal as the Anglo-American ones? I read @5 as making this important point.

jake the antisoshul soshulist 12.08.15 at 1:56 am 27

I am not an economist, but the source of the blame was political. I have heard that the primary causes of "stagflation" were "printing money" to cover the debts from the Vietnam War, increased oil prices and supply issues driving up costs, and economic competition from Japan reducing demand. The economic elites saw an opportunity to
take advantage of the crisis and blame it on policies they did not like. And push to replace them with policies that were advantageous to those elites. Ronald Reagan was a very successful salesman for this.

Rakesh Bhandari 12.08.15 at 1:59 am 28

Maybe the American left is so focused on the critique of bad Republicans like Ronald Reagan and H.W. and W. Bush and so excited about Warren and Sanders–these political choices setting the limits of theoretical analysis – that it cannot countenance Piketty's deeper structural critique?

Peter T 12.08.15 at 2:29 am 29

Piketty uses "capital" or "wealth" to refer to any asset which provides a stream of income. This is, in my view, correct. This is quite distinct from "capital" in the ordinary economic sense. Much – in fact most – economic capital does not yield income (roads, schools, food crops…) and so does not count. There is no reason to believe that wealth in the first sense does or should correspond to capital in the second sense. Our collective capital dwarfs wealth, while much wealth is simply extractive. To count a claim on tax revenues (a government bond) in the same class as a terraced field is a major mistake.

From the late C19 on much private "capital" was withdrawn into the public spheres (eg private tolls or offices), a move that accelerated in the wars. Since 1980 this trend has reversed. Discussion of the amplitude or scarcity of capital should note that it is a legal and political category subject to large arbitrary changes.

Bruce Wilder 12.08.15 at 2:56 am 30

Piketty's deeper structural critique

Does Piketty have one? 'Cause then I missed it. It seems to me that Piketty is presenting the challenge of facts. He takes care to outline how the facts he documents are logically related, as in the analysis of how changes in the share distribution of income (between labor and capital) relates to economic growth and to the value of accumulated wealth as a stock. That's not "deep" or structural, though it is certainly necessary if we are to understand the facts as facts.

The first striking thing to me in Piketty's work is what Peter T discusses above at 2:29 am (@ 29): the distinction between wealth and capital, confusion about which powers the ideologies of more than a few economists and others. Just maintaining that distinction, while discussing the wild swings in the share of income going to capital over long periods of time forces attention to the politics. Is that "structure"?

notsneaky 12.08.15 at 4:06 am 31

@Rakesh – but the whole r vs. g thing in Piketty, while central to his book, is also the part that makes the least sense. It's made up, theoretically unsound, and with no evidence to back it up. It's junk. An accounting relationship is not a "law".

And it's really Piketty's single minded focus, based presumably on his desire to provide a grand "one size fits all" explanation for the phenomenon he's discussing, which leads him to sideline all the possible institutional explanations, such as the ones enumerated above (not that I agree with all or even most of them)

notsneaky 12.08.15 at 4:18 am 32

In terms of r vs. g

In linear production model – r > or or or g always but capital's share in income is constant. Taxing capital doesn't matter for distribution.

In Ramsey model with endogenous saving and non-Cobb Douglas production – r > g but same criticisms as above imply.

The only one story about r vs. g out of the whole book which sort of makes sense is that if r > g then capital income can become more unevenly distributed (even as capital total's share stays constant). But even that is based on some sketchy assumptions and relaxing these even slightly can completely flip the result.

The Journal of Economic Perspectives V 29/ N 1, 2015 has a symposium on the topic and it pretty much consists of various polite ways of saying "good data, but the r vs. g thing is nonsense"

Omega Centauri 12.08.15 at 4:39 am 33

I've argued before that the conclusion that the simple inequality r>g leads to unlimited inequality is wrong -or at best incomplete. There are multiple ways that concentrations of capital can be, and are dissipated (i.e. broken up into smaller bits owned by more people). Taxes, and "death-taxes" is only one mechanism to accomplish this. Having on average more than one inheritor is another. Think for example of the Saudi Royal family, which controls great deal of the wealth of the Kingdom. It isn't all concentrated in one nuclear family, there are now thousands of princes, after not too many more generations a plurality of the country will be able to claim royal inheritance. Also there are other mechanisms, that can dissipate wealth concentrations, including luxury goods: Maserati is distributing some wealth from the super rich, to its shareholders and employees… Major donations to charity is any other. Still another comes from the application of the saying "a fool and his money are soon parted": some of the progeny, will be separated from their inheritances. One can't just use a simple theory of the evolution of the distribution of wealth and income, if you ignore wealth dissipation effects you will get a wildly wrong result.

So in order to control or reverse the tendency towards ever increasing inequality, there could be deployed multiple strategies, all of which are aimed at increasing the dissipation of concentrations of wealth.

Omega Centauri 12.08.15 at 4:46 am 34

I also think there exist mechanisms in the economy which tend to stabilize R. The most obvious is that there are only so many profitable investments available at any given time, and supply/demand effects should lead to lower R if the amount of available capital gets too high or to increase it if there is less capital than investment opportunity. Also the tendency to spend wealth on immediate consumption versus investment changes as the expected return on investment changes. These effects should usually lead towards returning R towards some long term sustainable value.

[Dec 09, 2015] Are Windows and OS X malware

May 26, 2015 | ITworld

Are Windows and OS X malware?

Richard Stallman has never been...er...shy about sharing his opinions, particularly when it comes to software that doesn't adhere to his vision. This time around he has written an opinion column for The Guardian that takes on Microsoft Windows, Apple's OS X and even Amazon's Kindle e-reader.

Richard Stallman on malware for The Guardian:

Malware is the name for a program designed to mistreat its users. Viruses typically are malicious, but software products and software preinstalled in products can also be malicious – and often are, when not free/libre.

Developers today shamelessly mistreat users; when caught, they claim that fine print in EULAs (end user licence agreements) makes it ethical. (That might, at most, make it lawful, which is different.) So many cases of proprietary malware have been reported, that we must consider any proprietary program suspect and dangerous. In the 21st century, proprietary software is computing for suckers.

Windows snoops on users, shackles users and, on mobiles, censors apps; it also has a universal back door that allows Microsoft to remotely impose software changes. Microsoft sabotages Windows users by showing security holes to the NSA before fixing them.

Apple systems are malware too: MacOS snoops and shackles; iOS snoops, shackles, censors apps and has a back door. Even Android contains malware in a nonfree component: a back door for remote forcible installation or deinstallation of any app.

Amazon's Kindle e-reader reports what page of what book is being read, plus all notes and underlining the user enters; it shackles the user against sharing or even freely giving away or lending the book, and has an Orwellian back door for erasing books.

More at The Guardian

As you might imagine, Stallman's commentary drew a lot of responses from readers of The Guardian:

JohnnyHooper: "The Android operating system is basically spyware, mining your personal information, contacts, whereabouts, search activity, media preferences, photos, email, texts, chat, shopping, calls, etc so Google can onsell it to advertisers. Nice one, Google, you creep."

Ece301: "What the free software movement needs is more than just the scare stories about 'capability' - without reliable examples of this stuff causing real-world problems for real people such detail-free articles as this are going to affect nothing.

I'm quite willing to make the sacrifice of google, apple, the NSA etc. knowing exactly where I am if it means my phone can give me directions to my hotel in this strange city. Likewise if I want the capability to erase my phone should I lose it, I understand that that means apple etc. can probably get at that function too.

Limiting_Factor: "Or for people who don't want to mess about with command lines and like to have commercially supported software that works. Which is about 99% of the home computer using population. You lost, Richard. Get over it."

CosmicTrigger: "Selling customers the illusion of security and then leaving a great gaping hole in it for the government to snoop in return for a bit of a tax break is absolutely reprehensible."

Liam01: "This guy is as extreme as the director of the NSA , just at the other end of the spectrum. I'd be more inclined to listen if he showed a hint of nuance, or didn't open with an egoistic claim of "invented free software"."

AlanWatson: "My Kindle doesn't report anything, because I never turn the WiFi on. Just sideload content from wherever I want to buy it (or download if there is no copyright), format conversion is trivial, and for the minor inconvenience of having to use a USB cable I'm free of Amazon's lock-in, snooping and remote wipes. Simple."

Rod: "Here's my crazy prediction: Stallman's diatribes will continue to have zero measurable impact on adoption rates of Free software. Time to try a different approach, Richey."

Quicknstraight: "Not all snooping is bad for you. If it enhances your experience, say, by providing you with a better playlist or recommendations for things you like doing, what's the big deal?

Consumers don't have it every which way. You either accept a degree of data collection in return for a more enjoyable user experience, or accept that no data collection means you'll have to search out everything for yourself.

The average user prefers the easier option and has no interest in having to dig away through loads of crap to find what they want.

They key question should be what happens to data that is mined about users, not whether mining such data is bad per se."

Bob Rich: "As an author, I LIKE the idea that if a person buys a copy of my book, that copy cannot be freely distributed to others. With a paper book, that means that the original owner no longer has access to it. With an electronic book, "giving" or "lending" means duplicating, and that's stealing my work. The same is true for other creators: musicians, artists, photographers."

Mouse: "Stallman's a hero and we wouldn't have the level of (low-cost) technology all we enjoy today without him. I remember reading an article by him years ago and he said that the only laptop he'd use was the Lemote Yeeloong because it was the only system that was 100% open, even down to the BIOS - he was specifically paranoid about how government agencies might modify proprietary code for their own ends - and at the time I thought "Jeez, he's a bit of a paranoid fruitcake", but post-Snowden he's been proven to be right about what the security services get up."

More at The Guardian

[Dec 09, 2015] How Hillary Clinton Abused Her State Department Role To Help Her Hedge Funder Son-In-Law Zero Hedge

Notable quotes:

"... Most importantly, as DC concludes, the email shows that people close to Clinton had the inside track in pushing her their pet projects - a pattern that has been on display with nearly every monthly release of Clinton emails. ..."

www.zerohedge.com

While Hillary Clinton may have had some entertaining problems when using her Blackberry (or was that iPad) as US Secretary of State, one thing she excelled at was nepotism.

According to the latest set of emails released by the State Department, and first reported by the Daily Caller, Hillary intervened in a request forwarded by her son-in-law, Marc Mezvisnky, on behalf of a deep-sea mining firm, Neptune Minerals, to meet with her or other State Department officials.

One of the firm's investors, Harry Siklas who was Mezvinsky's coworker at Goldman (which donated between $1 and $5 million to the Clinton Foundation) had asked Mezvinsky, who married Chelsea Clinton in 2010 and who currently runs his own hedge fund (in which Goldman CEO Blankfein is also an investor) for help setting up such contacts, an email from May 25, 2012 shows.

Siklas told Mezvinsky that Neptune Minerals (a company founded by one of Siklas' close friends) was poised for great things. He also touted an investment that Goldman Sachs - had made in the company, which had underwater tenements in the South Pacific.

Siklas said that he and Adam hoped to meet with State Department officials, including Clinton, to discuss deep sea mining "and the current legal issues and regulations" surrounding it.

"I introduced them to GS and the bankers took them on as a client," Siklas wrote.

"There is a favor I need to ask, and hopefully it will not put you out, as I'm not one to ask for favors typically," Siklas wrote to Mezvinsky. "I need a contact in Hillary's office."

"Siklas said that he and Adam hoped to meet with State Department officials, including Clinton, to discuss deep sea mining "and the current legal issues and regulations" surrounding it.

As AP adds, the lobbying effort on behalf of Neptune Minerals came while Hillary Clinton - now the leading Democratic presidential candidate - was advocating for an Obama administration push for Senate approval of a sweeping Law of the Sea Treaty. The pact would have aided U.S. mining companies scouring for minerals in international waters, but the Republican-dominated Senate blocked it.

Clinton then ordered a senior State Department official, Thomas Nides and now a vice chairman at Morgan Stanley, to look into the request in August 2012.

"Could you have someone follow up on this request, which was forwarded to me?" Clinton asked Nides.

Nides replied: "I'll get on it."

The emails do not show whether Clinton or other State Department officials met with Harry Siklas or with executives from the Florida-based firm. Clinton's official calendars, recently obtained by The Associated Press, also do not show any meetings between Clinton and Neptune representatives.

Clinton's campaign declined through a spokesman to discuss the issue, despite AP asking detailed questions about the matter since Nov. 30. The AP attempted to reach Siklas and a Neptune executive, Josh Adam, by phone, email and in-person visits to their homes last week but received no replies.

As noted above, Siklas had said in his email that his then-employer, Goldman Sachs, was representing Neptune.

Unperturbed by the State Department's stonewalling, AP then dug deeper into its quest to see just how extensive the nepotism ran:

A spokesman for Eaglevale said Mezvinsky would not comment on his role. Emails to a spokeswoman for Chelsea Clinton went unreturned. Morgan Stanley officials did not respond to an AP request to interview Nides. The AP also left three phone messages with Neptune Minerals' office in St. Petersburg, Florida, and also left several phone and email messages with Hans Smit, the firm's current president, also with no reply.

Federal ethics guidelines warn government employees to "not give preferential treatment to any private organization or individual," but there are no specific provisions prohibiting officials from considering requests prompted by relatives.

As the AP then notes, "Clinton's willingness to intercede as a result of her son-in-law's involvement is the latest example of how the Clinton family's interests cut across intersecting spheres of influence in American politics, commerce and charity."

There's more:

A lawyer for an environmental group opposing deep-sea mining said Clinton's action was "cause for concern that the State Department might take any action that could encourage such activity." Emily Jeffers, an attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity, a group opposing deep-sea mining, filed suit against Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration last May, accusing the agencies of failing to conduct comprehensive environmental tests before licensing Lockheed Martin Corp. to mine for minerals in U.S. territorial waters in the Pacific Ocean.

Jeffers said her organization supports the Law of the Sea Treaty that Clinton championed during her tenure at the State Department. She said the proposal would give the U.S. and other countries roles in establishing standards to explore for oil, gas and minerals. Jeffers said her group worries that the U.S. and other commercial nations will encourage deep-sea mining once the treaty is adopted.

One provision of the treaty, backed by corporate interests, would allow nations, including the U.S., to sponsor mining companies seeking to scour deep seas for minerals. Clinton told senators in May 2012 that American mining firms would only be able to compete freely against foreign rivals under standards set by the treaty.

Seabed mining is "very expensive, and before any company will explore a mine site, it will naturally insist on having a secure title to the site and the minerals it will recover," she said.

Clinton's public push for a U.S. role in securing deep sea mining rights quickly hit home at Neptune Mining. Three days after her Senate appearance, Siklas, who described himself as a "passive investor" in Neptune, emailed Mezvinsky.

As Siklas explained to Clinton's son in law, Neptune was pursuing sea-floor massive sulfide (SMS) mining in the South Pacific and had just bought out two other mining firms. Siklas said that he and Adam needed "a contact in Hillary's office: someone my friend Josh (and I perhaps) can reach out via email or phone to discuss SMS mining and the current legal issues and regulations." Siklas, then registered as a stockbroker at Goldman Sachs in New York, had contributed $2,000 to Hillary Clinton's 2008 unsuccessful presidential bid.

Siklas said the State Department would be interested in the subject following Clinton's Senate testimony. He said he and Adam "would feel very fortunate to have someone's ear on this topical issue, with the hope that at some point we get in front of the secretary herself."

And since the emails do not show how Clinton became directly aware of Siklas' email to Mezvinsky or why it took three months for her to act after Mezvinsky became involved, it also raises questions how many emails in the chain had been illegally deleted, and what may be contained in them. As the Daily Caller observes:

... it is unclear why there is no record of Clinton being forwarded the email that Siklas sent to Mezvinsky. Clinton wrote in her email to Nides that she was forwarded the email from Siklas to her son-in-law. If Clinton had turned over all work-related emails that she has sent or received - as she has repeatedly claimed - it would be expected that she had an email sent directly to her inbox with Siklas's email attached.

The answer is simple: Clinton did not in fact produce all emails as had been demanded. But while the emails do not show a reply from Mezvinsky, Hillary Clinton eventually obtained a copy and sent it to Nides that August, ordering a follow-up.

Most importantly, as DC concludes, the email shows that people close to Clinton had the inside track in pushing her their pet projects - a pattern that has been on display with nearly every monthly release of Clinton emails.

For those who are shocked, feel free to read what little evidence Clinton did provide of just that, shown below.

[Dec 08, 2015] France's cowardly elite is to blame for the rise of Marine Le Pen

That looks like a French backlash against neoliberal globalization, Against the society that cares only about top 1%.

Notable quotes:

"... Contrary to what we are told by the transnational business-political-media elite, there is nothing inevitable about ever-increasing 'globalisation'. It is simply a race to the bottom for ever-cheaper labour and erasure of sovereign national obstructions to corporate profit. ..."

"... the impact of the third globalisation wave on any given country is the result of very deliberate political choices (many of which were taken by French governments rather later than their neighbours), not of some sort of inevitable natural fact. You do not, for instance, have to espouse unmitigated cross-border capital transfers. ..."

"... the sooner the European Left admits that it was right in the 70s, when it correctly identified the EEC as an anti-worker construct, the better. Unless you fancy having a smattering of far right governments all over the EZ, that is. ..."

"... France has terrible foreign policy. They completely destroyed Libya. France is responsible for the rise of far-right. ..."

"... The elite's disregard for anyone's opinion apart from their own is largely the cause of the rise of the Front National. It is difficult to see how allowing millions of immigrants to settle in Europe can end well in the short to long term. ..."

"... Not a bad article, this. Still, I wish this newspaper's writers would stop defining democracy as "that with which I agree". The FN is a Democratic Party. Deal with it. ..."

"... If mainstream liberal and conservative parties will not listen to the citizenry's very real and very legitimate concerns about immigration and Islam, that citizenry will hold their collective nose and vote for right wing populists who will. ..."

"... What we saw in France is being repeated in Sweden, the Netherlands and much of Eastern Europe. It is fueling Donald Trumps presidential run and Nigel Faranges parliamentary ambitions. ..."

"... For the older generation in particular, Britain has changed out of all recognition in hte last 50 years. Although change can be a good thing, it can also be extremely unsettling. ..."

"... Democracy in action. Unlike the UK whereby the politicians execute policy that they either lied about during the election, or they simply changed their mind in contempt of the electorate safe in the knowledge that the electorate will have to wait years to kick them out again. ..."

"... Agreed, any grand coalition of the French ruling elite created as a blocker will only prove to many of the French people that there is very little real difference between the established parties; possibly driving those who do want real change towards the FN. ..."

"... Globalisation depends on no borders - Factories and production have moved to avail of cheaper production. Shareholders and investment funds have benefited. Many, many citizens of sovereign nations have not. Now some European politicians and institutions have determined that immigration and multiculturalism is the new agenda anyway. There is to be no consultation by the political elite or the media with the people of the sovereign nations of Europe - It is to be forced on people whether they like it or not. ..."

"... The rise of Front National is happening for the same reason the rise of the far right (or just plain right wing) parties is happening all over Europe: Moderate parties on both sides of the political spectrum refuse to have anything even resembling a discussion on the negative side of immigration or multiculturalism. It's really as simple as that. The far right has been handed a complete monopoly on an issue which is becoming an increasingly hot topic. They have an open goal. ..."

www.theguardian.com

umbofreddy smarty78, 7 Dec 2015 22:01

Nougarayde was a journalist at the" Monde"; you know, this "french elite newspaper", who hate the front national and despise its supporters!

viscount_jellicoe, 7 Dec 2015 21:39

Contrary to what we are told by the transnational business-political-media elite, there is nothing inevitable about ever-increasing 'globalisation'. It is simply a race to the bottom for ever-cheaper labour and erasure of sovereign national obstructions to corporate profit.

Daniele Gatti, 7 Dec 2015 21:46

Your economic history is missing a few very important details, namely:

1) the impact of the third globalisation wave on any given country is the result of very deliberate political choices (many of which were taken by French governments rather later than their neighbours), not of some sort of inevitable natural fact. You do not, for instance, have to espouse unmitigated cross-border capital transfers.

2) there is no mention at all of the failed European monetary experiments, namely the ERM and the euro. The first was de facto dismantled in 1993 (by setting ridiculous oscillation bands) to avoid a French Black Wednesday after it had destroyed competitiveness pretty much everywhere apart from Germany and the Deutschemark area, the second is doing pretty much the same, only it was slower to compromise France than other countries because its economy is stronger than others.

The fact remains that while relatively high public spending, in violation of the Maastricht parameters, directly translates into higher inflation than Germany, which leads to loss of competitiveness, which leads to a CA deficit.

Sorry, but the French school system has absolutely nothing to do with all of the above, and the sooner the European Left admits that it was right in the 70s, when it correctly identified the EEC as an anti-worker construct, the better. Unless you fancy having a smattering of far right governments all over the EZ, that is.

Andu68, 7 Dec 2015 21:49

Why exactly is the FN far right? The only controversial position they have is their belief there is an urgent need to restrict immigration, yet this is a position held by the majority of European's public opinion, though not by mainstream politicians and certainly not by members of the left intellectual elite like Miss Nougareyde.

LouSmorels, 7 Dec 2015 21:49

If I were French, I would vote FN! Why should the French give up their country to become something else. Not everyone wants to end up like Sweden...

finnrkn -> LouSmorels, 7 Dec 2015 22:22

Not even Sweden wants to end up like Sweden nowadays.

ClaudeNAORobot, 7 Dec 2015 20:43

Perhaps the rise of the FN reflects its offering to the electorate something that they want. It's something you don't want, so, rather in the spirit of the EU's rejection of result of a referendum that gives the 'wrong' result, you seek some excuse for that that you perceive to be the ill judgement of a portion of the electorate. Democracy can be irritating, can't it?

euphoniumbrioche, 7 Dec 2015 20:46

France's cowardly elite is to blame for the rise of Marine Le Pen

France has terrible foreign policy. They completely destroyed Libya. France is responsible for the rise of far-right.

allom8 -> euphoniumbrioche, 7 Dec 2015 20:55

An inadequate explanation given the far right's continued rise all over Europe. The elephant in the room gets bigger with every passing day.

GodzillaJones, 7 Dec 2015 20:48

It's a reflection of politics in the West at the moment. When voters are not represented by their politicians, they look for something else, even if it's a bit unsavoury.

ID9969553, 7 Dec 2015 20:48

The elite's disregard for anyone's opinion apart from their own is largely the cause of the rise of the Front National. It is difficult to see how allowing millions of immigrants to settle in Europe can end well in the short to long term.

WagerObe -> gunforhire, 7 Dec 2015 22:01

Interestingly though, LR did not get the voting shares lost by the PS. They went to the FN. This is not a vote. against socialism, indeed on economic questions the FN is closer to the communists than classic right-wing parties.

This is a vote against the main stream parties, and frankly it is not surprising. A succession of UMP - PS governments have changed nothing. Remains to be seen if FN can confirm the try next Sunday. If they win PACA

finnrkn, 7 Dec 2015 20:49

Not a bad article, this. Still, I wish this newspaper's writers would stop defining democracy as "that with which I agree". The FN is a Democratic Party. Deal with it.

ID7475021 -> finnrkn, 7 Dec 2015 20:57

The Nazi party in Germany used democracy to help itself climb to power... one of the problems democracy has not managed to address is how to deal with parties who use that democracy with the ultimate aim of destroying it.

finnrkn -> ID7475021, 7 Dec 2015 21:04

True enough; communist parties also subverted democracy in Eastern Europe. Beyond nationalism, though, I can't see there's much of a comparison to be made between the FN and the Nazis.

elliot2511, 7 Dec 2015 20:49

If mainstream liberal and conservative parties will not listen to the citizenry's very real and very legitimate concerns about immigration and Islam, that citizenry will hold their collective nose and vote for right wing populists who will.

What we saw in France is being repeated in Sweden, the Netherlands and much of Eastern Europe. It is fueling Donald Trumps presidential run and Nigel Faranges parliamentary ambitions.

ltm123 elliot2511, 7 Dec 2015 21:09

Unfortunate those very real concerns about immigration are not very legitimate. You only have to do a small amount of research to realise that immigration isn't to blame for most of the things the main stream media would have you believe.

huzar30 ltm123, 7 Dec 2015 21:14

That really isn't the point. For the older generation in particular, Britain has changed out of all recognition in hte last 50 years. Although change can be a good thing, it can also be extremely unsettling.

elliot2511 -> ltm123, 7 Dec 2015 21:23

"You only have to do a small amount of research to realise that immigration isn't to blame for most of the things "

You may be right...but people do not want mass immigration, and more particularly, do not want mass immigration from Islamic countries. That might be fair or unfair, justified or unjustified, but surely the greater population should have some say in what their country looks like.

Laurence Johnson, 7 Dec 2015 20:50

Democracy in action. Unlike the UK whereby the politicians execute policy that they either lied about during the election, or they simply changed their mind in contempt of the electorate safe in the knowledge that the electorate will have to wait years to kick them out again.

Dave Beardsly -> Laurence Johnson, 7 Dec 2015 21:13

Democracy in action. Unlike the UK

Is it a better democracy? Or is it something to do with a more impartial, fairer, press? Because however bad our democracy is or isn't, we know for sure our press can make and break anyone it chooses.

Sachaflashman, 7 Dec 2015 20:51

"But the fact that such a question can now legitimately be raised is in itself a trauma for all those who care about democracy."

In plain English: a democratic party that has managed to purge its past, re-defined itself and convinced 6 million citizens to vote for it....is nothing more than a trauma. If anything, the democratic trauma is a system whereby party A. can win the most votes only to be knocked out in round two by party B. dropping out and lending its votes to party C.

This is a recipe for allowing bland, elitist politicians to stay in power forever.

Mark Steven -> Conway Sachaflashman, 7 Dec 2015 22:22

Agreed, any grand coalition of the French ruling elite created as a blocker will only prove to many of the French people that there is very little real difference between the established parties; possibly driving those who do want real change towards the FN.

Magicmoonbeam2, 7 Dec 2015 20:53

The so called elite have become accustomed to ruling independently of their electorates because for years their electorates had nowhere else to go. Now that their electorates have somewhere else to go, the brown squishy stuff is hitting the fan.

Quiller -> Dave Beardsly, 7 Dec 2015 21:29

Globalisation depends on no borders - Factories and production have moved to avail of cheaper production. Shareholders and investment funds have benefited. Many, many citizens of sovereign nations have not. Now some European politicians and institutions have determined that immigration and multiculturalism is the new agenda anyway. There is to be no consultation by the political elite or the media with the people of the sovereign nations of Europe - It is to be forced on people whether they like it or not.

Any nation, people or politician who questions the new ideology is categorised as backward and reactionary. Secret meeting are held to push the issues forward. People of the sovereign nations of Europe have not signed up to the Federal Europe - France and other nations rejected the European Constitution. Nonetheless the ideologues press the issues forward onto the people.

The latest revolt has been over the issue is immigration by Germany and Sweden - their initial action was - "we can do it !". When it dawned on them that they could not, they have tried to bully their way through the other sovereign nations via government structures, the European Union and the UN.

Following the atrocities in France, Beirut, Ankara, Nigeria, Syria - the people are deciding they do not want to be a part of the change to the multicultural environment. Why would they when they perceive the change to be a retrograde step. If the current political party that one has voted for does not serve one's interests or they appear to be a political party with no clothes, then it is time to move on to a different political representative party. Of course - the smear continues against political parties that do not have the ideologues view.

allom8, 7 Dec 2015 20:57

The rise of Front National is happening for the same reason the rise of the far right (or just plain right wing) parties is happening all over Europe: Moderate parties on both sides of the political spectrum refuse to have anything even resembling a discussion on the negative side of immigration or multiculturalism. It's really as simple as that.

The far right has been handed a complete monopoly on an issue which is becoming an increasingly hot topic. They have an open goal.

Koolio, 7 Dec 2015 21:03

"none of the mainstream parties have been able to address the many social and economic ailments"

They've never tried. French politicians promise bold visions of the past as they keep trying to reheat and perpetuate policies that generate the record unemployment and entrenched structural inequalities while hoping if they say "républicain" ten times a day nobody will question their consistent failure.

Even the politicians are stale, for example the Républicains are fighting over whether to back proven failure Sarkozy or convicted criminal Juppé (albeit gifted a crony-style presidential pardon by his ex-boss Chirac). Given choices like this no wonder millions of voters dissatisfied by Hollande and Valls skip to the FN.

bally38, 7 Dec 2015 21:08

Marine Le Pen has no solution for France's problems, her economic programme is all about retreating from the outside world and Europe.

My understanding of the FN economic policy. Withdraw from the Euro. Close the borders. Put up a high tariff wall around france. (Which would mean de facto withdrawal from the Single Market).

Quite how they think jobs are created in a global economy I really don't know. In some ways it would be great if they did win. Currently the eurosceptics can act all cosy with each other. Whereas in fact, their policies would amount to a mutual trade war.

MrBojangles007, 7 Dec 2015 21:08

Political dogma from the EU federalists and the invite from Merkel to all the worlds refugees is naive in the extreme. The people still love their country and most do not want a country called Europe.

Too much too soon, we do not even speak the same language around 28 countries, until we do - a country called Europe is for the birds. The Euro has not worked, open borders have not worked, the EU is in an utter mess.

FN - will always make progress when chaos reigns.

PrinceEdward, 7 Dec 2015 21:29

"The Prime Directive is not just a set of rules; it is a philosophy ... and a very correct one. History has proven again and again that whenever mankind interferes with a less developed civilization, no matter how well intentioned that interference may be, the results are invariably disastrous." -- Captain Jean-Luc Picard, USS Enterprise

flowerssoft, 7 Dec 2015 21:32

France's cowardly elite are responsible because they have refused to tackle issues which negatively affect the white working class in France.

PrinceEdward, 7 Dec 2015 21:35

People across the West are still scratching their heads as to why, given the large numbers of un and under employed young people, we need mass immigration, even in the face of austerity.

The only answer I ever here is: If you're not for it, you're a xenophobe. Regardless of the sharp cuts to social programmes and the lack of housing throughout Europe. And if a European Country genuinely needs unskilled workers, there are plenty of Eastern and Southern Europeans who would be happy to bridge the gap.

haunsk PrinceEdward, 7 Dec 2015 21:54

There you have it in a nutshell. We are being spun,we are being played.

smarty78, 7 Dec 2015 21:37

'France's cowardly elite...'

Natalie, it's rare I agree with you, so I'll focus on our consensus with the headline.

That the other parties are now looking to form a block against FN demonstrates quite perfectly the arrogance of the French political elite and their utter contempt for democracy.
I dearly wish FN the very best of luck - at least they attend to the legitimate grievances of a significant proportion of people.
Fascist, Nazi, extremist blahblah... Bring it on and watch this space.

André Pampel, 7 Dec 2015 21:51

Ironic being that as far as economics goes extreme left and right speak almost from the same page....Mainly protectionism. What Nougayréde conviently does not say is how many people from the extreme left have gone over to the fn and that their vote is extremely high in the 18-34 age group, and the well educated in that group too. And herself was and is still part of the "establishment" so ironic criticising her chums like that....

Anneke Ruben, 7 Dec 2015 21:52

If people feel threatened, they tend to be more conservative. And frankly, I don't see a reason why France or the rest of Europe shouldn't feel threatened.. Mass unemployment, the Euro zone mess, thousands of migrants that pose as "refugees", migrants that mostly follow an unreformed religion, the mass shootings in Paris... So... Why is the left blaming the "elite" and not the ones responsible for creating this mess?

[Dec 08, 2015] Nepotism and corruption on high levels of US government

Notable quotes:

"... As Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. aims to curb corruption in Ukraine, his son, Hunter, sits on the board of a Ukrainian company that the American ambassador has accused of having illicit assets. ..."

"... What is he, sort of a wayward, neer-do-well playboy type? Not really. Hes a graduate of Yale Law School and a former senior vice-president at MBNA America Bank. Good for him. During the Clinton administration he worked in the US Department of Commerce. Hes presently a partner in an investment firm. And counsel for a national law firm. And an adjunct professor at Georgetown University. I get it: he likes to keep busy. He has even found the time to join the board of a gas company called Burisma Holdings Ltd. Never heard of it. Perhaps thats because its a Ukrainian gas company; Ukraines largest private gas producer, in fact. Hes taking charge of the companys legal unit. Isnt that a bit fishy? Why do you say that? Because hes the vice-presidents son! Thats a coincidence. This is totally based on merit, said Burismas chairman, Alan Apter. ..."

"... Who? Devon Archer, who works with Hunter Biden at Rosemont Seneca partners, which is half owned by Rosemont Capital, a private equity firm founded by Archer and Christopher Heinz. ..."

"... Who? Christopher Heinz … John Kerrys stepson. ..."

"... I think Putins propaganda people can take a long weekend; their work is being done for them. ..."

economistsview.typepad.com

anne said... Tuesday, December 08, 2015 at 10:30 AM

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/09/world/europe/corruption-ukraine-joe-biden-son-hunter-biden-ties.html

December 8, 2015

Biden, His Son and the Case Against a Ukrainian Oligarch
By JAMES RISEN

As Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. aims to curb corruption in Ukraine, his son, Hunter, sits on the board of a Ukrainian company that the American ambassador has accused of having "illicit assets."

anne said in reply to anne...

http://www.theguardian.com/business/shortcuts/2014/may/14/hunter-biden-job-board-ukraine-biggest-gas-producer-burisma

May 14, 2014

Why shouldn't Hunter Biden join the board of a gas company in Ukraine?
The son of the US vice-president has been chosen to take charge of energy firm Burisma's legal unit – a decision based purely on merit, of course.

Name: Hunter Biden.

Age: 44.

Appearance: Chip off the old block.

His names rings a bell. Is he related to someone famous? He's the son of Joe Biden, the US vice president.

What is he, sort of a wayward, ne'er-do-well playboy type? Not really. He's a graduate of Yale Law School and a former senior vice-president at MBNA America Bank. Good for him. During the Clinton administration he worked in the US Department of Commerce. He's presently a partner in an investment firm. And counsel for a national law firm. And an adjunct professor at Georgetown University. I get it: he likes to keep busy. He has even found the time to join the board of a gas company called Burisma Holdings Ltd. Never heard of it. Perhaps that's because it's a Ukrainian gas company; Ukraine's largest private gas producer, in fact. He's taking charge of the company's legal unit. Isn't that a bit fishy? Why do you say that? Because he's the vice-president's son! That's a coincidence. "This is totally based on merit," said Burisma's chairman, Alan Apter.

He doesn't sound very Ukrainian. He's American, as is the other new board member, Devon Archer.

Who? Devon Archer, who works with Hunter Biden at Rosemont Seneca partners, which is half owned by Rosemont Capital, a private equity firm founded by Archer and Christopher Heinz.

Who? Christopher Heinz … John Kerry's stepson.

I think Putin's propaganda people can take a long weekend; their work is being done for them. What do you mean?

Hasn't Joe Biden pledged to help Ukraine become more energy independent in the wake of its troubles with Russia? Well, yes.

And isn't Burisma, as a domestic producer, well positioned to profit from rising gas prices caused by the conflict? Possibly, but Hunter Biden is a salaried board member, not an investor. According to anonymous sources in the Wall Street Journal, neither Rosemont Seneca nor Rosemont Capital has made any financial investment in Burisma.

So it's not fishy at all? No one's saying that.

Do say: "Somebody needs to get involved in Ukraine's corporate governance, and it might as well be a clutch of rich, well-connected American dudes with weird first names."

Don't say: "Thanks, Dad."

-- Guardian

[Dec 08, 2015] The importance of the global financial cycle in creating boom and bust cycles in emerging markets

economistsview.typepad.com

Syaloch -> sanjait..., December 08, 2015 at 08:31 AM

Meta-criticism of reports in this case is neither here nor there, since it's possible to track down the original sources.

The Times summary of Ms. Rey's Jackson Hole paper is accurate; in it she does discuss the importance of the global financial cycle in creating boom and bust cycles in emerging markets. (This isn't news to anyone who's followed Krugman's writings on global financial crises over the years.)

http://www.kansascityfed.org/publicat/sympos/2013/2013Rey.pdf

When Yellen announced that the Fed would not raise rates in September, she did cite "heightened uncertainties abroad" as a factor. While I cannot find her mentioning China specifically, a lot of the discussion in financial sources prior to the announcement cite the Chinese devaluation as an important factor leading to Yellen's decision.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/18/business/economy/fed-leaves-interest-rates-unchanged.html

As for economists warning that a rate increase combined with uncertain exchange rates in China and other countries would weaken global growth, that was most likely a reference to the IMF's World Economic Outlook report, which does indeed make this argument.

http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/survey/so/2015/RES100615A.htm

[Dec 07, 2015] If you don't read a newspaper every day, you are uninformed. If you do, you are misinformed

ourfiniteworld.com

Fast Eddy, December 6, 2015 at 1:11 am

"If you don't read a newspaper every day, you are uninformed. If you do, you are misinformed." – Mark Twain

We all like to know what's happening in the world, and for good reason… understanding our surroundings is essential to survival. We instinctively seek information… we need information. There is, however, a problem that we face:

No matter how much "news" you consume, you won't really know what's going on in the world.

We can't know, because 'the news' is half illusion, provided by government-dependent corporations that are paid to keep you watching and to keep you joined to the status quo.

Granted, they are quite good at providing pictures from disaster areas, but when it comes to explaining why the disaster happened, they mislead almost every time. Yes, some truth makes its way through the news machine, but most of it is wrapped in layers of manipulation. If, for example, you watch the news feeds all day, you'll find a good deal of truth, but you'll find it amongst a pile of half-truths. Do you really have enough time to analyze them all?

[Dec 07, 2015] Did Erdogan Commit Political Suicide Shahir ShahidSaless

www.huffingtonpost.com

Erdogan, desperate and angry over his losing battle to oust Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, ordered the shooting down of a Russian fighter jet. Erdogan has been actively pursuing the ouster of Assad since 2012, but Russia's recent intervention in Syria, in alliance with Iran and its highly ideologically and politically motivated proxies, has resulted in a serious setback for Erdogan's plans.

Putin's determination to destroy Turkey's proxies at the Syrian borders and to thwart Erdogan's plan to create a no-fly/buffer zone in the area has derailed Erdogan's plans for Syria. Erdogan hoped to use the buffer zone as an operational hub aimed at bringing down President Assad.

Russian attacks on Turkmen-dominated areas in Bayirbucak, where the Russian plane was downed, would also inflict serious collateral damage to Turkey. The Turkish government regards the area in north-west Syria, presently under the control of the Bayirbucak Turkmens, as an important buffer zone preventing the territorial expansion of Syria's Kurdish-minority militias, whom it regards as terrorists linked to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

Erdogan's objective in shooting down the plane was to provoke Russia into a harsh response. He hoped the response would bring Russia into conflict with the whole of NATO, which would help reverse Turkey's declining fortunes in the Syrian war.

Erdogan's calculations went terribly wrong. Following the incident, Turkey requested an emergency meeting with NATO members. Contrary to Erdogan's expectations, although, members did not support Russia, neither did they wholeheartedly support Turkey. Many members questioned Turkey's action and, according to Reuters, "expressed concern that Turkey did not escort the Russian warplane out of its airspace." In a clear indication of the suspicion among NATO members regarding Turkey's real intention behind its adventurism, some diplomats told Reuters, "There are other ways of dealing with these kinds of incidents."

Not only didn't Cold War II happen, French President Francois Hollande, who promised "merciless" revenge in the aftermath of Paris attacks, met with Putin and they agreed to form an alliance against Daesh (also known as ISIS/ISIL) in Syria. The outcome of such an alliance is that the "Assad must go" mantra will be overshadowed by the war against Daesh--something that Erdogan hated to occur. Erdogan's plan to bring the West and Russia into conflict became even more unattainable when France's move was followed by Britain and then Germany.

Turkey also lost significant room to maneuver in the post-shootdown of the Russian fighter jet. Russia, by deploying the powerful S-400 surface-to-air missile system in Hmeymim airbase near Latakia, sent a strong signal to Turkey--a de facto no-fly zone already in effect south of the Turkish-Syrian border.

Russia also sent Turkey and NATO a clear message by arming its fighter jets with air-to-air missiles. On November 30, the Russian Air Force announced that "today, for the first time ‪Su34‬ fighter-bombers departed for combat sorties with air-to-air short- and medium-range missiles.... The usage of such weaponry is necessary for providing security of the aircraft of the Russian" air force, the announcement read. ‬‬‬

Moscow also authorized numerous economic sanctions against Ankara ranging from tourism to agricultural products as well as sanctions on energy and construction projects.

Erdogan took a conciliatory stance after the incident. In a speech in Ankara, he said, "We are strategic partners ... 'Joint projects may be halted, ties could be cut'? Are such approaches fitting for politicians?" Erdogan even requested a meeting with Putin while both leaders were in Paris for the COP21 climate change conference on November 30, but Putin rejected the request.

Russians launched a heavy campaign to damage Erdogan's credibility and reputation. Vladimir Putin and numerous other Russian politicians leveled accusations regarding Turkey's sponsorship and cooperation with ISIS as well as allegations of buying oil smuggled by ISIS.

On November 30, on the sidelines of the climate change summit in Paris, Putin stated, "At the moment we have received additional information confirming that that oil from the deposits controlled by Islamic State militants enters Turkish territory on industrial scale." He even went further to say, "We have every reason to believe that the decision to down our plane was guided by a desire to ensure security of this oil's delivery routes to ports where they are shipped in tankers."

In response, Erdogan said he will resign as the country's president if Russia provides evidence that implicates Turkey in any oil trade with ISIS.

Later, Sergei Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister, said, "We have repeatedly publicly stated that oil from the IS-controlled territories is transported abroad, particularly to Turkey. The facts that substantiate these claims will be formally presented in the UN in particular, and to all parties concerned."

Then on December 2, the Russian Defense Ministry held a briefing concerning ISIS funding. During the briefing, which included a PowerPoint presentation, satellite images, and videos, Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov said, "According to our data, the top political leadership of the country - President Erdogan and his family - is involved in this criminal business."

Antonov added, "In the West, no one has asked questions about the fact that the Turkish president's son heads one of the biggest energy companies, or that his son-in-law has been appointed energy minister. What a marvelous family business."

On December 3, without mentioning specifics, Putin declared there was more evidence to come. "We are not planning to engage in military saber-rattling," he said. "But if anyone thinks that having committed this awful war crime ... are going to get away with some measures concerning their tomatoes or some limits on construction and other sectors, they are sorely mistaken."

At this point, it is apparent that Putin's ultimate objective is to take advantage of the opportunity presented to him to severely damage Erdogan's name and trustworthiness, both domestically and internationally, or, even better, bring him and his regime down as a perceived power behind the extremists and the anti-Assad forces in Syria. This is in line with Russia's plan for realizing its strategic objectives in Syria.

[Dec 06, 2015] With allies like Turkey, who needs enemies

Notable quotes:

"... Turkey and the U.S. State Department scoffed when Russia accused the Turkish government of being involved with smuggling ISIS oil. However, after Moscow presented convincing proof of Turkey's involvement, the Obama Administration changed its story. ..."

"... "If the American colleagues are not satisfied with those ones, they should watch videos gained by their own UAVs," the Russian Defense Ministry said on Facebook. ..."

"... The ever-changing political spin in Washington to avoid admitting the obvious looks increasingly dishonest. ..."

"... The deal regarding the base was signed between Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) President Massoud Barzani and Turkish Foreign Minister Feridun Sinirlioğlu, during the latter's visit to northern Iraq on Nov. 4. ..."

www.dailykos.com

Turkey has sent 2,000 troops into Iraq without getting permission from Baghdad.

The Iraqi government has demanded they withdraw, calling it a "hostile act", but Ankara has decided to ignore Baghdad's wishes.

This is only the latest act that undermines the wisdom of having Turkey as a military ally.

Turkey and the U.S. State Department scoffed when Russia accused the Turkish government of being involved with smuggling ISIS oil. However, after Moscow presented convincing proof of Turkey's involvement, the Obama Administration changed its story.

While the US has long hyped the problem of ISIS oil smuggling, the recent Russian Defense Ministry presentation, showing significant evidence of Turkey being involved in buying ISIS oil and taking it to refineries run by the Turkish government, has changed their tune.
After a previous denial of the allegation against Turkey, the US is now admitting that the oil is ending up smuggled into Turkey, but insists it is "of no significance" because so much of the oil produced in ISIS-controlled parts of Syria is consumed inside Syria.
"The amount of oil being smuggled is extremely low and has decreased over time," claimed US special envoy Amos Hochstein, a stunning admission which suggests the US was well aware of oil smuggling into Turkey even before the Russian evidence.

Just in case we don't want to believe the Russian videos, Moscow has a solution.

"If the American colleagues are not satisfied with those ones, they should watch videos gained by their own UAVs," the Russian Defense Ministry said on Facebook.

The ever-changing political spin in Washington to avoid admitting the obvious looks increasingly dishonest.

With the U.S. government knowing about Turkey's government involvement (Russia's photos show ISIS oil smuggling trucks passing through border crossings without stopping), it begs the question of what our objectives actually are?

gjohnsit

Erdogan Moves To Annex Mosul

Should Mosul be cleared of the Islamic State the Turkish heavy weapons will make it possible for Turkey to claim the city unless the Iraqi government will use all its power to fight that claim. Should the city stay in the hands of the Islamic State Turkey will make a deal with it and act as its protector. It will benefit from the oil around Mosul which will be transferred through north Iraq to Turkey and from there sold on the world markets. In short: This is an effort to seize Iraq's northern oil fields.

That is the plan but it is a risky one. Turkey did not ask for permission to invade Iraq and did not inform the Iraqi government.

The Turks claim that they were invited by the Kurds:

Turkey will have a permanent military base in the Bashiqa region of Mosul as the Turkish forces in the region training the Peshmerga forces have been reinforced, Hürriyet reported.

The deal regarding the base was signed between Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) President Massoud Barzani and Turkish Foreign Minister Feridun Sinirlioğlu, during the latter's visit to northern Iraq on Nov. 4.

There are two problems with this. First: Massoud Barzani is no longer president of the KRG. His mandate ran out and the parliament refused to prolong it. Second: Mosul and its Bashiqa area are not part of the KRG. Barzani making a deal about it is like him making a deal about Paris.

mookins

Al-masdar news-feed-thing had guncam footage of a night attack, by frogfoots with their cannons, on an ISIS truck park. Magnified view at first so you could see they were full-sized like semi's; and no casual agglomeration, these were parked efficiently in a herringbone pattern, at least 400 and I think closer to a thousand. At the film's end the whole thing is just large, neat rectangles of brightness.

So little did ISIS have to fear from an American-coalition airstrike that they had it set up like this. And now these White House statements that it was no big deal.

And Europe sees all this on the news, the ISIS we didn't fight, the flood of refugees that resulted, and sees Russia and Iran being the good guys.

I read where Putin was worried, called Merkel and Hollande to see if they were still on board with 'Minsk 2', the current ceasefire agreement in Ukraine, and they said yes they were. He was worried because Ukraine's President had said he rejected it and the U.S. had said we support that, we reject it too.

We've lost Europe. World getting better fast.

MrWebster, Dec 06 · 04:28:32 PM

Your observations are right on, but only if you assume that thee enemy is IS and Al Queda in Syria. At this point, I don't believe it is. Assad/Russians are perceived as the bigger and more important enemy for the Obama administration and the neocons to focus on. In this case, what Turkey is doing is acceptable-they are enabling opposition forces to Assad/Russians. Heck, when the Russians started bombing, the Al Nusrat Front (Al Queda in Syria) was magically transformed by the administration and the mass media into "rebels", "moderate rebels", "insurgents", "opposition".

native -> MrWebster

I wonder who gets to claim Mosel, after all the dust settles? Abadi seems to have lost all control over his nominal countrymen in the north. But will the Iraqi Kurds side with Turkey, and against their brethren just across the border?

[Dec 06, 2015] US elite strategy toward Russia is replica of UK strategy a century before

Notable quotes:

"... The relationship between Russia and Western Europe's far right may be a marriage of convenience... ..."

"... Closer ties with rising political parties in the EU will give Putin more leverage against NATO. For its part, the European right sees the Russian leader as a staunch defender of national sovereignty and conservative values who has challenged US influence ..."

russia-insider.com

merchantsofmenace

The relationship between Russia and Western Europe's far right may be a marriage of convenience...

Closer ties with rising political parties in the EU will give Putin more leverage against NATO. For its part, the European right sees the Russian leader as a staunch defender of national sovereignty and conservative values who has challenged US influence...

https://medium.com/the-eastern-project/greece-s-nazi-problem-continues-5b92ca57dc6d#.kfiaixvdm 1

YoringeTBE -> merchantsofmenace

russia-insider.com

Stratfor Chairman Straight-Talking: US Policy Is Driven by Imperative to Stop Coalition between Germany and Russia

George Friedman, Founder and Chairman of Stratfor, or what is called by many "private/shadow CIA" for its well known connections and close cooperation with the CIA, gave a very interesting speech to the Chicago Council of Foreign Affairs on subject Europe: Destined for Conflict? in February of this year.

[Dec 06, 2015] More Planes Than Targets Why the Air War on ISIS Will Fail

www.counterpunch.org

Even if Britain's role is symbolic at this stage, it has joined a very real war against an enemy of great ferocity and experience, not least of air attacks. The highly informed Turkish military analystMetin Gurcan, writing on Al-Monitor website, says that air strikes may have been effective against Isis communications and training facilities, but adds that "it is extraordinary that there is not a single [Isis] control facility that has been hit by allied air strikes".

This is not for lack of trying and shows that talk of destroying Isis command and control centres in Raqqa is wishful thinking, given that 2,934 American air strikes in Syria have failed to do so over the last 14 months.

Air strikes have had an impact on Isis's tactics and casualty rate, above all when they are used in close co-operation with a well-organised ground force like the Syrian Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG). Isis may have lost as many as 2,200 fighters at Kobani which is a small and closely packed city. On the other hand, the length of time it took to drive Isis out of it with 700 air strikes demonstrated their fighters' willingness to die.

Many Isis commanders reportedly regard their tactics at Kobani as a mistake which cost the group too many casualties and which it should not repeat. To do so it sacrificed two of its most important military assets which are mobility and surprise. This does not mean that it will not fight to the last bullet for cities like Raqqa and Mosul, but it did not do so for Tikrit and Sinjar where it used snipers, booby traps and IEDs, but did not commit large detachments of troops.

Isis has modified its tactics to take account of the continuing risk of air strikes. It now has a decentralised command structure, with tactical decisions being taken by leaders of small units of eight to 10 men, whose overall mission is determined from the centre – but not how it should be accomplished. This limits the ability of its opponents to monitor its communications.

Its forces assemble swiftly and attack soon afterwards with multiple diversionary operations, as was seen when Mosul was captured in June 2014 and again when they took Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, this May.

They had been fighting their way into Baiji refinery, but this turned out to be a diversion and Isis units pulled back from there as soon as Ramadi fell.

Isis's approach is to use a mixture of conventional, guerrilla and terrorist tactics, none unique in themselves, but they have never been used before in combination. Air strikes mean that it is less able to use captured tanks or big concentrations of vehicles packed with fighters. Instead it uses IEDs, booby traps, snipers and mortar teams in even greater numbers.

Public martyrdom as an expression of religious faith is such a central part of its ideology that it can deploy suicide bombers on foot or in vehicles in great numbers to destroy fortifications and demoralize the enemy. Some 28 suicide bombers were reportedly used in the final stages of the battle for Ramadi. Psychological warfare has always been an important element of Isis's tactical armory. It has sought to terrify opposition forces by showing videos in which captured Iraqi or Syrian soldiers are filmed being ritually decapitated or shot in the head.

Sometimes, the families of Syrian soldiers get a phone call from their son's mobile with a picture of his body with his severed head on his chest. Mass killings of prisoners have taken place after all Isis's victories (the al-Qaeda affiliate, al-Nusra Front, does the same thing).

Heavy air attack will increase Isis's losses and it will be more difficult to bring in foreign volunteers through Turkey because most of the border is now closed. But Isis rules an area with a population of at least six million and conscripts all young men, who often want to become fighters because there is no other employment. Isis may have a fighting force of 100,000 men, as is strongly suggested by the very long front lines it holds and its ability to make multiple attacks simultaneously. Whatever Britain's role, we will be fighting a formidable military machine.

[Dec 06, 2015] Public and Private Sector Payroll Jobs Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama

hoocoodanode.org

merchantsofmenace

Here's a link to Horowitz's article "Left-wing Fascism":
http://www.google.com/books?id=Au_Ktn22RxEC&pg=PA209&dq=%22left-wing+fascism%22

Here's a link to Bale's article on "'Left-wing' Fascism":
http://www.google.com/books?id=kne26UnE1wQC&pg=PA267&dq=%22left-wing+fascism%22+bale

Here's an article about the phenomenon called "Rebranding Fascism" (although the term "left-wing fascism is not used):
http://www.publiceye.org/magazine/v23n4/rebranding_fascism.html
The basic concept is that neo-fascist groups (who are extreme right-wing) disguise themselves as leftists, e.g., they say they are anti-zionist when they are anti-semitic.

Here's a link to Richard Wolin's chapter on "Left Fascism":
http://www.google.com/books?id=4H4BeyiYBuEC&printsec=frontcover&dq=The+Seduction+of+Unreason:+The+Intellectual+Romance+with+Fascism+:+from+Nietzsche+to+Postmodernism#PPA153,M1

[Dec 06, 2015] CIA personnel and assets had the strongest motives to murder Kennedy

www.nakedcapitalism.com

Vatch December 5, 2015 at 4:17 pm

JKF? I didn't know that the historian John King Fairbank was assassinated.

roadrider December 5, 2015 at 3:42 pm

Then I guess you have solid evidence to account for the actions of Allen Dulles, David Atlee Phillips, William Harvey, David Morales, E. Howard Hunt, Richard Helms, James Angleton and other CIA personnel and assets who had

1) perhaps the strongest motives to murder Kennedy

2) the means to carry out the crime, namely, their executive action (assassination) capability and blackmail the government into aiding their cover up and

3) the opportunity to carry out such a plan given their complete lack of accountability to the rest of the government and their unmatched expertise in lying, deceit, secrecy, fraud.

Because if you actually took the time to research or at least read about their actions in this matter instead of just spouting bald assertions that you decline to back up with any facts you would find their behavior nearly impossible to explain other than having at, the very least, guilty knowledge of the crime.

skk

Ruby claimed he was injected with cancer in jail, which ultimately rendered his second trial (after winning appeal overturning his death sentence) moot. It sounded crazy, but so did the motive proffered at his first trial-- that he wanted to save Mrs. Kennedy the anguish...

that is such an amazing story.. i've yet to watch the video of Lyndon Johnson's swearing in - where Marr states he's seen to be winking and smiling etc -

Jim Marrs - Kennedy Assassination Lecture

those who wish - Pick it up at around 12 minutes. actually in that lecture he may well be showing videos of it - I wdn't know cos just listen to the audio.

skk

JFK is the one 'safe' conspiracy to talk about without getting the extreme whacko label.

fascinating "lectures" - British Humanist Society and all - still you gotta listen to everything especially the other side:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/V6s_Jw3RU9g?feature=oembed&wmode=opaque&list=PL44BEE83ED9D841A8

Make a note of the names - rising stars in the I'm "left" but I'm not a conspiracist gaggle - ist a standard gaggle - Chomsky, Monbiot are in it ( to win it of course - their fabled "socialist" kingdom" ) - yeah yeah its BritLand so yeah why I care I suppose.

[Dec 06, 2015] The USA is number one small arms manufacturer in the world

peakoilbarrel.com

Glenn Stehle, 12/05/2015 at 2:54 pm

Ves,

There was an article in one of the Mexico City dailies today, written in response to the shootings in San Bernardino, that cited some numbers that were news to me:

1) The United States is the #1 small arms manufacturer in the world

2) 83% of small arms manufactured in the world are manufactured in the United States

3) The US's closest competitor is Russia, which manufactures 11% of the world's small arms

4) Small arms are the US's third largest export product, surpassed only by aircraft and agricultural products

5) The US market itself consumes 15 million small arms per year, and there are 300 million small arms currently in the posession of US private citizens

6) Saudi Arabia, however, is by far and away the largest small arms consumer in the world, and purchases 33.1% of all small arms produced in the world

7) Saudi Arabia then re-distributes these small arms to its allies in Syria, Lybia, etc.

8) So far in 2015, there have been 351 "mass shootings" in the United States in which 447 persons have been killed and another 290 wounded

9) The world's leading human rights organizations never speak of the bloodbath ocurring around the world due to the proliferation of small arms, much less the United Nations Security Council.

10) Both the United States and Russia seem quite content to keep any talk of small arms proliferation off the agenda.

http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2015/12/05/opinion/023a1pol

[Dec 04, 2015] China vows to drive smart aleck lecturers from its universities

Notable quotes:

"... Corruption happen everywhere, just look at US. They merely make it legal to bribe the politician, it is call lobbying. Look at all those who cheated their clients by selling them CDOs and betting against them. It became a financial worst crisis for the world, yet none of them was jailed and they all get to keep the billions. ..."

The Guardian

KarlBC g_reader_1, 4 Dec 2015 09:43

Corruption happen everywhere, just look at US. They merely make it legal to bribe the politician, it is call lobbying. Look at all those who cheated their clients by selling them CDOs and betting against them. It became a financial worst crisis for the world, yet none of them was jailed and they all get to keep the billions.

Estimate the cost to win 2016 president election = USD 1bn. Even Bush, not a front runner, had already spend USD30millions. Contribution of fund in return for IOU favors, look like corruption to me too.

NigelJ, 4 Dec 2015 10:53

some of this anti-corruption campaign would certainly not go amiss in the UK.

TheHighRoad isabey, 4 Dec 2015 09:29

Perhaps the difference is that many academics in the UK are contracted to do a certain number of hours teaching and must support the university's reputation with research but are also permitted - contractually - to work in industry and with NGOs to supplement their income and to expand their knowledge of current practice to make their teaching and research more relevant. It isn't illegal or even unusual or suspect and if you are envious of it I suggest you spend 8 years working your way through an ordinary degree, a master's and a doctorate so that you too can participate in it - though don't get your hopes up for "raking it in".

Oh, and they don't work in a system where corruption investigations are used as a pretext to weed out "unreliable elements" who talk about dangerous things that might lead impressionable young people to ask difficult questions about the government in a one-party state.

[Dec 03, 2015] Russia won't forget downed jet, Putin warns Turkey in annual address

The Guardian

Russian president says Ankara will not 'get away with a tomato ban' in response to 'cynical war crime'

... ... ...

The Russian president said he was still bemused by the Turkish decision to shoot down the Su-24. He said: "Perhaps only Allah knows why they did this. And it seems Allah decided to punish the ruling clique in Turkey by relieving them of their sense and judgment."

Russia has implemented a series of economic sanctions against Turkey, including banning fruit and vegetable imports and ordering Russian tour operators not to send tourists to the country. Putin emphasised that this limited response was not an attempt to move on and start afresh, however.

"There will not be a nervous, hysterical reaction, that would be dangerous for us and for the whole world," he said. "We will not engage in sabre rattling. But if people think that after carrying out a cynical war crime, killing our people, they'll get away with a tomato ban or some limits in the construction sector, they're very wrong. We will keep remembering what they did. And they will keep regretting it."

The day before, Russia's defence ministry had called journalists to a briefing at its command centre, showing slides and satellite imagery claiming to show proof that Turkey was profiting from the trade in Isis oil.

"A unified team of bandits and Turkish elites operates in the region to steal oil from their neighbours," deputy defence minister Anatoly Antonov said on Wednesday. Erdoğan later dismissed the accusations as "slander".

... ... ...

Putin again called for a unified coalition to fight terrorism, and said it was unacceptable to delineate between different terrorist groups. The Russian airstrikes have hit many groups that western countries do not consider terrorists. Putin also made it clear once again who he blames for the current terrorist threat.

"Iraq, Libya and Syria have turned into zones of chaos and anarchy which threaten the whole world," he said. "And of course we know why this happened. We know who wanted to change inconvenient regimes, and crudely impose their rules. And what was the result? They made a mess, ruined the states, turned different peoples against each other and then, as we say in Russia, washed their hands of the places, opening the road for radicals, extremists and terrorists."

[Dec 03, 2015] It's a pretty tough situation for Putin

Recently annonced: Too Late for Apologies: Russia Halts Turk Stream Gas Pipeline

marknesop.wordpress.com

Moscow Exile, December 3, 2015 at 4:39 am

Just announced:

Too Late for Apologies: Russia Halts Turk Stream Gas Pipeline

Earlier, during his address to the nation, the Evil One questioned the sanity of the Turkish political leadership, stressing that Russia is nor criticising the Turkish nation for the recent downturn in Russo-Turksh relationships.

marknesop, December 3, 2015 at 7:37 am

Washington will be delighted, as it was one of the hoped-for consequences of the major downturn in relations. Hoped for by Washington and Brussels, I mean. Brussels will now ramp up its rhetoric against Nord Stream II, and if the coalition building it have not got all their ducks in a row the EC will be all too ready to put a stop to it. The objective will be leaving Russia no option but to continue transit through Ukraine, because the transit fees are vital to its solvency. The EU can't afford to give it $2 Billion a year for nothing for as far as the eye can see.

kirill, December 3, 2015 at 2:13 pm

As I posted elsewhere, Russia needs to make a formal announcement that the transit of gas via Ukraine will stop at the end of 2016 regardless of the state of alternative routes. Brussels can then go and eat shit.

likbez, December 3, 2015 at 8:21 pm

It's a pretty tough situation for Putin. No friends anywhere. Everybody want a peace of Russia economically or otherwise. The situation reminds me a Russian cruiser Varyag at the Battle of Chemulpo Bay with the Japanese squadron of Admiral Uriu.

Fledging political alliance of Turkey and Ukraine is not a very good development. Also while economic sanctions are not that damaging to Russia per se as they are for Turkey, they still increase isolation of Russia. Exactly what the USA wanted from the very beginning.

So this whole incident with shooting down Russian Su-24 looks like another victory of the US diplomacy in its efforts to isolate Russia. And it might well be a plot similar to MH17 plot, if you wish. It does not matter if Erdogan acted on his own initiative or with gentle encouragement. The net result is the same.

Also a new Saudi leadership is a pretty impulsive and aggressive folk. And the are definitely adamantly anti-Russian.

[Dec 03, 2015] Who are those moderate rebels in Syria

marknesop.wordpress.com

yalensis, December 3, 2015 at 4:48 pm

You are burying the lede, which is Congressman Ed Royce's not-so veiled threat against Russia:

"I think what Vladimir Putin should think on, for a minute, is the fact that Moscow itself IS a target. The attack on the Metro-Liner from Russia over Egypt clearly is another message from ISIS. So, at this point what we would like to see is a recalibration on the part of the Russian military. So that instead of attacking the Free Syrian Army and the more secular Syrian forces, they should begin to attack ISIS. So far we haven't seen that."

Translation from American B.S. into plain talk:
"Putin: Stop attacking our guys, we know they are ISIS but we have to pretend they're not. If you keep attacking them, we'll have them commit ever more terror attacks against the Russian people."

marknesop , December 3, 2015 at 6:15 pm

The USA is perhaps the worst choice on the planet to ask who is a "moderate rebel" and who is ISIS, as witnessed by their sad-sack training plan for moderate rebels which produced 5 or so whom they say are reliable after spending $500 Million. Obviously they trained many more than 5, but they have no idea where those people or their equipment are now. The real hot button in that article is the mention of General Steven Groves and his operation to "oversee the suppression of assessments showing the war on a perilous trajectory." That's what the American intelligence organs do now – blow smoke up people's asses so they can't see reality.

[Dec 03, 2015] Germany Rebukes Its Own Intelligence Agency for Criticizing Saudi Policy

Notable quotes:

"... "The cautious diplomatic stance of the older leading members of the royal family is being replaced by an impulsive policy of intervention," said the memo, which was titled " Saudi Arabia - Sunni regional power torn between foreign policy paradigm change and domestic policy consolidation" and was one and a half pages long. ..."

"... Since taking the throne early this year, King Salman has invested great power in Prince Mohammed, making him defense minister and deputy crown prince and giving him oversight of oil and economic policy. The sudden prominence of such a young and untested prince - he is believed to be about 30, and had little public profile before his father became king - has worried some Saudis and foreign diplomats. ..."

"... Prince Mohammed is seen as a driving force behind the Saudi military campaign against the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, which human rights groups say has caused thousands of civilian deaths. ..."

"... In its memo, the BND said that Saudi rivalry with Iran for supremacy in the Middle East, as well as Saudi dependency on the United States, were the main drivers of Saudi foreign policy. ..."

"... The Saudi-Iranian rivalry plays out throughout the region, the memo said, most recently and strikingly in the Saudi military intervention in Yemen. There, it said, "Saudi Arabia wants to prove that it is ready to take unprecedented military, financial and political risks in order not to fall into a disadvantageous position in the region." ..."

"... In Syria, Saudi Arabia's aim was always to oust President Bashar al-Assad, and that has not changed, the memo said. ..."

"... "The concentration of economic and foreign policy power on Mohammed bin Salman contains the latent danger that, in an attempt to establish himself in the royal succession while his father is still alive, he could overreach with expensive measures or reforms that would unsettle other members of the royal family and the population," the memo observed, adding, "That could overstrain the relations to friendly and above all to allied states in the region." ..."

The New York Times

The intelligence agency's memo risked playing havoc with Berlin's efforts to show solidarity with France in its military campaign against the Islamic State and to push forward the tentative talks on how to end the Syrian civil war. The Bundestag, the lower house of the German Parliament, is due to vote on Friday on whether to send reconnaissance planes, midair fueling capacity and a frigate to the Middle East to support the French.

The memo was sent to selected German journalists on Wednesday. In it, the foreign intelligence agency, known as the BND, offered an unusually frank assessment of recent Saudi policy.

"The cautious diplomatic stance of the older leading members of the royal family is being replaced by an impulsive policy of intervention," said the memo, which was titled "Saudi Arabia - Sunni regional power torn between foreign policy paradigm change and domestic policy consolidation" and was one and a half pages long.

The memo said that King Salman and his son Prince Mohammed bin Salman were trying to build reputations as leaders of the Arab world.

Since taking the throne early this year, King Salman has invested great power in Prince Mohammed, making him defense minister and deputy crown prince and giving him oversight of oil and economic policy. The sudden prominence of such a young and untested prince - he is believed to be about 30, and had little public profile before his father became king - has worried some Saudis and foreign diplomats.

Prince Mohammed is seen as a driving force behind the Saudi military campaign against the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, which human rights groups say has caused thousands of civilian deaths.

... ... ...

In its memo, the BND said that Saudi rivalry with Iran for supremacy in the Middle East, as well as Saudi dependency on the United States, were the main drivers of Saudi foreign policy.

The Saudi-Iranian rivalry plays out throughout the region, the memo said, most recently and strikingly in the Saudi military intervention in Yemen. There, it said, "Saudi Arabia wants to prove that it is ready to take unprecedented military, financial and political risks in order not to fall into a disadvantageous position in the region."

In Syria, Saudi Arabia's aim was always to oust President Bashar al-Assad, and that has not changed, the memo said.

But it suggested that the recent shift in Saudi leadership has added new factors in the Middle East. "The concentration of economic and foreign policy power on Mohammed bin Salman contains the latent danger that, in an attempt to establish himself in the royal succession while his father is still alive, he could overreach with expensive measures or reforms that would unsettle other members of the royal family and the population," the memo observed, adding, "That could overstrain the relations to friendly and above all to allied states in the region."

[Dec 03, 2015] Murder And Mayhem In The Middle East

Notable quotes:

"... Because you live in the real world, you know that NATO knew exactly where Gaddafi was at all times and that he was in that convoy attempting to escape NATOs bombing raid. Further, you wont be surprised to learn that many of these vehicles were pickup trucks that really posed no military threat to NATO. The point was to kill Gaddafi, and numerous resources were brought to bear on that mission. ..."

"... Gaddafis killing was the assassination of a foreign leader by Western interests. In this case, Gaddafi was just yet another target in a long line of leaders that attempted to keep those same interests at bay. ..."

"... While imperfect by many standards, all of these countries were stable and increasingly prosperous before outside interests came in and turned them into a living nightmare. ..."

"... It is this context that explains why such reactionary and violent groups as ISIS arose. They are the natural response of violated people seeking to assert some control over lives that otherwise have no hope and even less meaning. ..."

"... Islamic State militants have consolidated control over central Libya, carrying out summary executions, beheadings and amputations, the United Nations said on Monday in a further illustration of the North African states descent into anarchy. ..."

"... All sides in Libyas multiple armed conflicts are committing breaches of international law that may amount to war crimes, including abductions, torture and the killing of civilians, according to a U.N. report. ..."

"... Islamic State (IS) has gained control over swathes of territory, committing gross abuses including public summary executions of individuals based on their religion or political allegiance , the joint report by the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights and the U.N. Support Mission in Libya said. ..."

"... The U.N. had documented IS executions in their stronghold city of Sirte, in central Libya along the Mediterranean coast, and in Derna to the east, from which they were later ousted by local militias. Victims included Egyptian Copts, Ethiopians, Eritreans and a South Sudanese, the report said. ..."

Dec 1, 2015 | Safehaven.com

Why it matters to those living in the West

To understand what's happening in Syria right now, you have to understand the tactics and motivations of the US and NATO -- parties sharing interwoven aims and goals in the Middle East/North African (MENA) region.

While the populations of Europe and the US are fed raw propaganda about the regional aims involved, the reality is far different.

Where the propaganda claims that various bad dictators have to be taken out, or that democracy is the goal, neither have anything at all to do with what's actually happening or has happened in the region.

For starters, we all know that if oil fields were not at stake then the West would care much much less about MENA affairs.

But a lot of outside interests do care. And their aims certainly and largely include controlling the region's critical energy resources. There's a lot of concern over whether Russia or China will instead come to dominate these last, best oil reserves on the planet.

Further, we can dispense with the idea that the US and NATO have any interest at all in human rights in this story. If they did, then they'd at least have to admit that their strategies and tactics have unleashed immeasurable suffering, as well as created the conditions for lots more. But it would be silly to try and argue about or understand regional motivations through the lenses of human rights or civilian freedoms -- as neither applies here.

Divide And Conquer

Instead, the policies in the MENA region are rooted in fracturing the region so that it will be easier to control.

That's a very old tactic; first utilized to a great extent by Britain starting back in the 1700s.

Divide and conquer. There's a reason that's a well-worn catch phrase: it's hundreds of years old.

But to get a handle on the level of depravity involved, I think it useful to examine what happened in Libya in 2011 when NATO took out Muamar Gaddafi and left the country a broken shell -- as was intended.

I cannot really give you a good reason for NATO involving itself in taking out Gaddafi. I only have bad ones.

The official reason was that after the Arab Spring uprising in Libya in early 2011 (with plenty of evidence of Western influences in fanning those flames) things got ugly and protesters were shot. This allowed the UN to declare that it needed to protect civilians, and the ICC to charge Gaddafi with crimes against humanity, declaring that he needed to stand trial.

Here's how it went down:

On 27 June, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Gaddafi, his son Saif al-Islam, and his brother-in-law Abdullah Senussi, head of state security, for charges concerning crimes against humanity.[268] Libyan officials rejected the ICC, claiming that it had "no legitimacy whatsoever" and highlighting that "all of its activities are directed at African leaders".[269]

That month, Amnesty International published their findings, in which they asserted that many of the accusations of mass human rights abuses made against Gaddafist forces lacked credible evidence, and were instead fabrications of the rebel forces which had been readily adopted by the western media.

Source

After the ICC's indictment, it was a hop, skip and a jump to declaring a NATO-enforced 'no fly zone' over Libya to protect civilians.

From there it was just a straight jump to NATO actively shooting anything related to the Gaddafi government. NATO had thereby chosen sides and was directly supporting the rebellion.

The pattern in play here is always the same: cherry-picked events are used as a pretext to support the side seeking to topple the existing government and thereby leave a sectarian wasteland to flourish in the inevitable power vacuum.

If you are like most people in the West, you know almost nothing of any of this context. It's not well reported. And Libya is rarely in the news even though it's going through increasingly desperate times.

I found a speech given by Gaddafi a few months before he was killed to be especially compelling and revealing. I will reproduce it in its entirety here:

For 40 years, or was it longer, I can't remember, I did all I could to give people houses, hospitals, schools, and when they were hungry, I gave them food. I even made Benghazi into farmland from the desert, I stood up to attacks from that cowboy Reagan, when he killed my adopted orphaned daughter, he was trying to kill me, instead he killed that poor innocent child. Then I helped my brothers and sisters from Africa with money for the African Union.

I did all I could to help people understand the concept of real democracy, where people's committees ran our country. But that was never enough, as some told me, even people who had 10 room homes, new suits and furniture, were never satisfied, as selfish as they were they wanted more. They told Americans and other visitors, that they needed "democracy" and "freedom" never realizing it was a cut throat system, where the biggest dog eats the rest, but they were enchanted with those words, never realizing that in America, there was no free medicine, no free hospitals, no free housing, no free education and no free food, except when people had to beg or go to long lines to get soup.

No, no matter what I did, it was never enough for some, but for others, they knew I was the son of Gamal Abdel Nasser, the only true Arab and Muslim leader we've had since Salah-al-Deen, when he claimed the Suez Canal for his people, as I claimed Libya, for my people, it was his footsteps I tried to follow, to keep my people free from colonial domination - from thieves who would steal from us.

Now, I am under attack by the biggest force in military history, my little African son, Obama wants to kill me, to take away the freedom of our country, to take away our free housing, our free medicine, our free education, our free food, and replace it with American style thievery, called "capitalism," but all of us in the Third World know what that means, it means corporations run the countries, run the world, and the people suffer. So, there is no alternative for me, I must make my stand, and if Allah wishes, I shall die by following His path, the path that has made our country rich with farmland, with food and health, and even allowed us to help our African and Arab brothers and sisters to work here with us, in the Libyan Jamahiriya.

I do not wish to die, but if it comes to that, to save this land, my people, all the thousands who are all my children, then so be it.

Let this testament be my voice to the world, that I stood up to crusader attacks of NATO, stood up to cruelty, stood up to betrayal, stood up to the West and its colonialist ambitions, and that I stood with my African brothers, my true Arab and Muslim brothers, as a beacon of light. When others were building castles, I lived in a modest house, and in a tent. I never forgot my youth in Sirte, I did not spend our national treasury foolishly, and like Salah-al-Deen, our great Muslim leader, who rescued Jerusalem for Islam, I took little for myself...

In the West, some have called me "mad", "crazy", but they know the truth yet continue to lie, they know that our land is independent and free, not in the colonial grip, that my vision, my path, is, and has been clear and for my people and that I will fight to my last breath to keep us free, may Allah almighty help us to remain faithful and free.

Source

Gaddafi's great crime seems to be giving away too much oil wealth to his people. Was he a strongman? Yes, but you have to be to rule in that region right now. Was he the worst strong man? No, not by a long shot.

As bad as he was, at least he didn't kill a million Iraqis on trumped up charges of non-existent weapons of mass destruction. Nor was he chopping off 50 heads per week and stoning females for adultery as is the case with Saudi Arabia right now.

But again, whether he killed protestors or not, or committed war crimes or not, is irrelevant to the power structure. What mattered was that he had locked out Western interests, and instead used his country's oil wealth to provide free or extremely cheap health care, education and housing to a wide swath of Libyans.

So let's cut to the murder scene. Here's how it went down:

At around 08:30 local time on 20 October, Gaddafi, his army chief Abu-Bakr Yunis Jabr, his security chief Mansour Dhao, and a group of loyalists attempted to escape in a convoy of 75 vehicles.[7][8] A Royal Air Force reconnaissance aircraft spotted the convoy moving at high speed, after NATO forces intercepted a satellite phone call made by Gaddafi.[9]

NATO aircraft then fired on 11 of the vehicles, destroying one. A U.S. Predator drone operated from a base near Las Vegas[8] fired the first missiles at the convoy, hitting its target about 3 kilometres (2 mi) west of Sirte. Moments later, French Air Force Rafale fighter jets continued the bombing.[10]

The NATO bombing immobilized much of the convoy and killed dozens of loyalist fighters. Following the first strike, some 20 vehicles broke away from the main group and continued moving south. A second NATO airstrike damaged or destroyed 10 of these vehicles. According to the Financial Times, Free Libya units on the ground also struck the convoy.[11]

According to their statement, NATO was not aware at the time of the strike that Gaddafi was in the convoy. NATO stated that in accordance with Security Council Resolution 1973, it does not target individuals but only military assets that pose a threat. NATO later learned, "from open sources and Allied intelligence," that Gaddafi was in the convoy and that the strike likely contributed to his capture.[11]

Source

To believe NATO, it had no idea Gaddafi was in that convoy (honest!), but just managed to have a Predator drone handy as well as a large number of jets armed for ground targets (not anti-aircraft missiles, as a no-fly zone might imply). It merely struck all of these vehicles over and over again in their quest to kill everyone on board because they were "military assets that posed a threat."

Because you live in the real world, you know that NATO knew exactly where Gaddafi was at all times and that he was in that convoy attempting to escape NATO's bombing raid. Further, you won't be surprised to learn that many of these vehicles were pickup trucks that really posed no military threat to NATO. The point was to kill Gaddafi, and numerous resources were brought to bear on that mission.

Gaddafi's killing was the assassination of a foreign leader by Western interests. In this case, Gaddafi was just yet another target in a long line of leaders that attempted to keep those same interests at bay.

After NATO was finished making a mess of Libya by taking out Gaddafi and leaving a right proper mess of a power vacuum, it simply departed -- leaving the country to fend for itself. Libya descended, of course, into an outright civil war and has remained ever since a hotbed of sectarian violence and increasing ISIS control and presence.

If NATO/US had to follow the Pier I rule of "you break it, you buy it" they would still be in Libya offering money and assistance as the country settles down and begins the long process of rebuilding.

But no such luck. That's absolutely not how they operate. It's disaster capitalism in action. The idea is to break things apart and then make money off of the pieces. It's not to help people.

Otherwise, how do we explain these images?

While imperfect by many standards, all of these countries were stable and increasingly prosperous before outside interests came in and turned them into a living nightmare.

It is this context that explains why such reactionary and violent groups as ISIS arose. They are the natural response of violated people seeking to assert some control over lives that otherwise have no hope and even less meaning.

I'm not justifying ISIS; only explaining the context that led to its rise.

Speaking of which, let's turn back to Libya:

ISIS is tightening its grip in Libya

Nov 15, 2015

GENEVA (Reuters) - Islamic State militants have consolidated control over central Libya, carrying out summary executions, beheadings and amputations, the United Nations said on Monday in a further illustration of the North African state's descent into anarchy.

All sides in Libya's multiple armed conflicts are committing breaches of international law that may amount to war crimes, including abductions, torture and the killing of civilians, according to a U.N. report.

Islamic State (IS) has gained control over swathes of territory, "committing gross abuses including public summary executions of individuals based on their religion or political allegiance", the joint report by the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights and the U.N. Support Mission in Libya said.

The U.N. had documented IS executions in their stronghold city of Sirte, in central Libya along the Mediterranean coast, and in Derna to the east, from which they were later ousted by local militias. Victims included Egyptian Copts, Ethiopians, Eritreans and a South Sudanese, the report said.

Some were accused of "treason", others of same-sex relations, but none were given due legal process, according to the report, which covered the year through October.

Four years after the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi, Libya is locked in a conflict between two rival governments - an official one in the east and a self-declared one controlling the capital Tripoli - and the many armed factions that back them.

Source

After that atrocious summary, how bad does life under Gaddafi sound now? Again, he was targeted for execution by Western interests and the resulting mess is of little surprise to anybody with even modest curiosity about how violent overthrows tend to work out in the MENA region.

But where is the UN security council denouncing the war crimes? And where is the ICC leveling crimes against humanity charges? Nowhere. There's no more Western political interest in Libya now that it has been broken apart.

As they say in the military: once is bad luck, twice is a coincidence, but three times is enemy action. This pattern of eliminating "a very bad man" and leaving the country in a complete mess has happened three times of late, with Syria targeted to be the fourth. So enemy action it is.

ISIS and other extreme jihadist groups arose because of brutal conditions that made such harsh interpretations of ancient religious texts make sense by comparison. When you have nothing left to believe in, one's belief system can compensate by becoming rather inflexible.

I know I have greatly simplified a terribly complex dynamic, but -- speaking of beliefs -- I don't believe that terrorists are born, I believe they are raised. When one has nothing left to lose, then anything becomes possible, including strapping on a suicide belt and flicking the switch.

What I am saying is that this is not a battle between Christians and Muslims, nor is it a battle between good and evil, both characterizations that I've read recently in great abundance. That's all nonsense for the masses.

This is about resources and true wealth that is being siphoned from the people who have had the misfortune to be born on top of it, and towards other regions with greater power and reach.

There's nothing different in what I am reading today from what the British redcoats did in India from the late 1700's throughout the 1800's. Their military might assured that the East India Tea Company could continue to extract resources from the locals.

At the time the locals were called heathens, implying they were subhuman and therefore could be safely dispatched. Now they are called terrorists -- same thing. Dehumanize your foe to help rationalize one's behaviors. It's a tried and true practice of war propaganda.

How This Affects You

While we might be tempted to sit in our Western environs, secure in the idea that at least we aren't 'over there' where all the bad things are happening, it would be a mistake to think that this turmoil will not impact you.

I'm not talking about the ultra-remote chance of being a victim of blow-back terrorism either. I am referring to the idea that it would be a mistake to think that any government(s) that think nothing of ruining entire MENA countries will hesitate to throw anybody else under the bus that gets in their way.

Ben Bernanke gave no thought to throwing granny under the bus in order to help the big banks get even bigger. He willingly and knowing transferred over a trillion dollars away from savers and handed it to the big banks.

Similarly, we shouldn't expect enlightened behavior to emerge from the shadows of leadership once things get even dicer on the world stage. In fact, we should expect the opposite.

It would be a mistake to think that powers in charge would not turn their malign intent inwards toward their own populace if/when necessary. Today it's Syria, yesterday it was Libya, but tomorrow it might be us.

The people of France recently got a small taste of the horror that has been visited upon the people of Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Libya. And while I have no interest in seeing any more violence anywhere, perhaps the people of France will finally begin to ask what happened and why. I don't mean the fine details of the night of the massacre, but how it came to be considered a 'thing to do' at all by the people who did it. (For those unaware, France has been particularly involved for years in fomenting revolt within Syria)

Conclusion

My intention in stringing these dots together is so that we can have an informed discussion about what's happening in Syria and the Middle East at large. I am not at all interested in trying to understand events through the framing lenses of religion and/or 'terrorism', both of which are tools of distraction in my experience.

Instead, I want to understand the power dynamics at play. And to try to peel back the layers, to understand why the powers that be consider this region so important at this moment in history.

I think they know as well as we do that the shale oil revolution is not a revolution at all but a retirement party for an oil industry that has given us everything we hold economically dear but is on its last legs.

I think that the power structures of the next twenty years are going to be utterly shaped by energy - who has it, who needs it and who's controlling it.

Saudi Arabia is acting increasingly desperate here and I think we know why. They have a saying there: "My father rode a camel, I drove a car, my son flies a jet and his son will ride a camel."

They know as well as anyone that their oil wealth will run out someday; and so, too, will the West's interest in them. With no giant military to protect them, the royalty in Saudi Arabia should have some serious concerns about the future.

Heck, it's even worse than that:

Saudi Wells Running Dry -- of Water -- Spell End of Desert Wheat

Nov 3, 2015

Saudi Arabia became a net exporter of wheat in 1984 from producing almost none in the 1970s. The self-sufficiency program became a victim of its own success, however, as it quickly depleted aquifers that haven't been filled since the last Ice Age.

In an unexpected U-turn, the government said in 2008 it was phasing out the policy, reducing purchases of domestic wheat each year by 12.5 percent and bridging the gap progressively with imports.

The last official local harvest occurred in May, although the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization projects that a small crop of about metric 30,000 tons for traditional specialty bakery products will "prevail" in 2016. At its peak in 1992, Saudi Arabia produced 4.1 million tons of wheat and was one of the world's top 10 wheat exporters.

Source

The Saudis did something very unwise - they pumped an aquifer filled over 10,000 years ago and used it to grow wheat in the desert. Now their wells are running dry and they have no more water.

And yet their population is expanding rapidly even as their oil fields deplete. There's a very bad intersection for Saudi Arabia, and the rulers know it.

It helps to explain their recent actions of lashing out against long-standing regional foes and helps to explain the increasing desperation of their moves to help destabilize (and even bomb) their neighbors.

My point here is that as resources become tight, the ruling powers can be expected to act in increasingly desperate ways. This is a tenet of the Long Emergency of which James Kunstler wrote.

The only response that makes any sense to me, at the individual level, is to reduce your needs and increase your resilience.

This is something we cover in great detail in our new book, Prosper!: How To Prepare for the Future and Create a World Worth Inheriting, so I won't go into all the details here. Instead, my goal is to help cast a clarifying light on recent events and add some necessary detail that can help us more fully appreciate what's happening around the world and why taking prudent preparations today is becoming increasingly urgent.

[Dec 03, 2015] ISIS Oil Plot Thickens Turkish MP Has Evidence Erdogans Son-In-Law Involved In Illegal Crude Trade

Notable quotes:

"... Underscoring that contention is CHP lawmaker Eren Erdem who says he, like Moscow, will soon provide proof of Erdogan's role in the smuggling of Islamic State oil. I have been able to establish that there is a very high probability that Berat Albayrak is linked to the supply of oil by the Daesh terrorists," Erdem said at a press conference on Thursday (see more from Sputnik ). ..."

"... There is one company, headquartered in Erbil, which in 2012 acquired oil tankers, and which is currently being bombarded by Russian aircraft," Erdem said. "I am now studying this companys records. It has partners in Turkey, and I am checking them for links to Albayrak. ..."

"... Note that this is entirely consistent with what we said last week , namely that in some cases, ISIS takes advantage of the Kurdish oil transport routes, connections, and infrastructure in Turkey. It will certainly be interesting to see if theres a connection between Albayrak, the energy ministry, and Bilal Erdogans BMZ Group. ..."

"... Many loose ends now for Erdogan popping up. How long he can play whack-a-mole until one illuminates paper trail implication between ISIS and Erdogans masters like McCain, Graham, Nuland? ..."

"... Maybe Erdogan will come up with a massive distraction that makes oil-thievery insignificant. Hope not. ..."

Zero Hedge

... ... ...

Underscoring that contention is CHP lawmaker Eren Erdem who says he, like Moscow, will soon provide proof of Erdogan's role in the smuggling of Islamic State oil. "I have been able to establish that there is a very high probability that Berat Albayrak is linked to the supply of oil by the Daesh terrorists," Erdem said at a press conference on Thursday (see more from Sputnik).

Berat Albayrak is Erodan's son-in-law and is Turkey's Minister of Energy and Natural Resources.

Erdem isn't the only person to mention Albayrak this week. Recall that in his opening remarks at the dramatic Russian MoD presentation on Wednesday Deputy Minister of Defence Anatoly Antonov said the following:

"No one in the West, I wonder, does not cause the issue that the son of the President of Turkey is the leader of one of the largest energy companies, and son-in-appointed Minister of Energy? What a brilliant family business!"

"There is one company, headquartered in Erbil, which in 2012 acquired oil tankers, and which is currently being bombarded by Russian aircraft," Erdem said. "I am now studying this company's records. It has partners in Turkey, and I am checking them for links to Albayrak."

Note that this is entirely consistent with what we said last week, namely that in some cases, ISIS takes advantage of the Kurdish oil transport routes, connections, and infrastructure in Turkey. It will certainly be interesting to see if there's a connection between Albayrak, the energy ministry, and Bilal Erdogan's BMZ Group.

If you know anything about Erdogan, you know that he doesn't take kindly to this kind of thing and as Erdem goes on to account, he's already been the subject of a smear campaign:

"Today, the Takvim newspaper called me an American puppet, an Israeli agent, a supporter of the [Kurdish] PKK, and the instigator of a coup…all in the same sentence. I am inclined to view this attack on me as an attempt to belittle my significance, to attack my reputation in the eyes in the public, given that my investigation is a real threat to the government. Such a sharply negative reaction suggests that my assumptions are fair, and I am moving in the right direction to find the truth."

The lawmaker says that type of attack has "only convinced [him] further on the need to carry this investigation through to the end."

In the meantime, we can only hope that, for the sake of exposing the truth, "the end" doesn't end up being a Turkish jail cell, or worse for Erdem.

Troll Magnet

Do they make nail guns in Turkey?

Truther

Yep, with top brands for JPM, Goldman, RBS, WF, CITI and Deutche. They even self point at you too.

Baby Bladeface

Many loose ends now for Erdogan popping up. How long he can play whack-a-mole until one illuminates paper trail implication between ISIS and Erdogan's masters like McCain, Graham, Nuland?

o r c k

Maybe Erdogan will come up with a "massive" distraction that makes oil-thievery insignificant. Hope not.

Anonymous User

The shit is hitting the fan for the turks

GhostOfDiogenes

Go figure huh?

http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/israel-main-buyer-isis-oil-report/...

[Dec 03, 2015] The history of the Arab conquest of Byzantium is purposefully ignored

economistsview.typepad.com

Syaloch said in reply to anne...,

Yep. I sometimes think that the history of the Arab conquest of East Roman (Byzantine) provinces is purposefully ignored because it doesn't fit into a Western narrative of what Arab Muslim peoples are like.

The modern Islamic fundamentalist movements we see today are actually a fairly recent invention -- Wahhabism for example originated in the 18th century. And their rise to dominance is largely due to meddling by Western governments, which backed these groups to prevent Soviet expansion into the Middle East and southern Asia and to undermine nationalist movements that might oppose Western interests.

[Dec 03, 2015] ISIS oil hub with 3000 parked oil trucks escaped detection by the USA and its eagle-eyed coalition

marknesop.wordpress.com

marknesop, December 2, 2015 at 2:10 pm

Here's the evidence that the USA rejects. I particularly enjoyed the satellite imagery of the "ISIS oil hub", at which were parked 3,000 oil trucks. Apparently it escaped detection by the USA and its eagle-eyed coalition. Does it seem realistic that a country which was offered a major and legitimate pipeline deal would rather move its oil around in thousands of tanker trucks? If the oil trucking business were benefiting Assad's regime, don't you think ISIS would have blown it sky-high by now? It's in a region they control and apparently in the middle of open ground, completely unguarded.

The battle lines have been drawn in yet another field of conflict – Russia aims to take down Erdogan, and Washington aims to keep him in his position. It remains to be seen just how embarrassing that will become.

marknesop, December 2, 2015 at 1:10 pm

Moscow is not backing away at all from accusations that Erdogan's family is personally involved in receiving and trafficking in ISIS oil. In a phenomenon pointed out by others of late, Yahoo comments are now overwhelmingly supportive of Russia on these issues. Not only that, mainstream news are picking up the accusation rapidly. The USA may reject Russia's evidence, but we knew they would do that anyway – the USA would reject a signed confession by Erdogan if they got it from Russia. I don't know why Moscow even bothers to show evidence to the Americans, it would do far better to approach Europeans – especially Germany and France – with its proof. If it could convince Germany, the USA would look a lot more foolish if it said it was all more Russian propaganda and lies.

The USA will shield Erdogan for so long as it can, because his country is in a tremendous strategic position and is studded with NATO military installations. Washington certainly does not want to be confronted with a leadership transition it cannot micromanage. It might throw Erdogan under the bus, but not until it has identified and groomed a successor.

It is also significant that rather than groveling for mercy, Russia continues to attack the alliance's credibility, and it is scoring hits.

Patient Observer, December 2, 2015 at 2:11 pm

The comment with the most "likes" on a yahoo article on Russian claiming that Turkey is buying ISIS oil (lost the link):
" 542 – likes
First it does not require a high school education to understand in order for ISIS to sell any oil from captured oil fields and or refineries it must have buyers of said oil. Our govt claims to watch everyone and know everything yet with all their tax payer space observations, massive fleet of drones to track ants in the sand they cannot figure out where all the oil goes to fund ISIS?
Our govt is intentionally not stopping this oil from being sold and our leaders aware of this need to be exposed then put on trial then executed. In fact political figures in our country need to be facing firing squads monthly until they tell the truth and serve just our citizens. This in turn makes for a huge employment opportunity both in firing squads and new politicians."

marknesop, December 2, 2015 at 2:21 pm

The European Union voted to give itself permission to buy oil from "Syrian rebels" to help them overthrow Assad. The only stipulations of who could not benefit from it were "regime-associated" individuals and companies. The agency that must be consulted – the Syrian National Coalition – is based in Turkey and its president is chummy with Erdogan. Come on. Washington is ready to indict and convict Moscow on a hell of a lot less evidence than this on any day you care to name.

et Al, December 2, 2015 at 2:43 pm

Neuters: Russia says it has proof Turkey involved in Islamic State oil trade
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/12/02/mideast-crisis-russia-turkey-idUKL8N13R2KV2015120

…U.S. officials say coalition air strikes have destroyed hundreds of IS oil trucks while the Russian campaign has mainly targeted opponents of the Syrian government who are not from Islamic State, which is also known as ISIL.

"The irony of the Russians raising this concern is that there's plenty of evidence to indicate that the largest consumer of ISIL oil is actually Bashar al-Assad and his regime, a regime that only remains in place because it is being propped up by the Russians," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said.

The State Department's Toner said U.S. information was that Islamic State was selling oil at the wellheads to middlemen who were involved in smuggling it across the frontier into Turkey…

…The ministry said the Western route took oil produced at fields near the Syrian city of Raqqa to the settlement of Azaz on the border with Turkey.

From there the columns of tanker trucks pass through the Turkish town of Reyhanli, the ministry said, citing what it said were satellite pictures of hundreds of such trucks moving through the border crossing without obstruction.

"There is no inspection of the vehicles carried out … on the Turkish side," said Rudskoy.

Some of the smuggled cargoes go to the Turkish domestic market, while some is exported via the Turkish Mediterranean ports of Iskenderun and Dortyol, the ministry said.

Another main route for smuggled oil, according to the ministry, runs from Deir Ez-zour in Syria to the Syrian border crossing at Al-Qamishli. It said the trucks then took the crude for refining at the Turkish city of Batman….

…The defence ministry officials said the information they released on Wednesday was only part of the evidence they have in their possession, and that they would be releasing further intelligence in the next days and weeks.
####

I can't wait for that twitter evidence from the State Department and the Pentagon. It should be devastating.

[Dec 03, 2015] Why did Turkey shoot down the Russian Soukhoï 24

Notable quotes:

"... It was agreed that the Turkish army would be allowed to penetrate Syrian territory, within a limit of 8 kilometres, in order to ensure that the PKK could not fire mortars from Syria. ..."

"... Since the beginning of the current aggression against Syria, the Turkish army has used and abused this privilege - no longer to prevent attacks by the PKK, but to set up training camps for jihadists. ..."

"... In October 2015, when the Russian military campaign was just starting, and Salih Muslim was beginning the operation of forced Kurdisation of Northern Syria, the famous Turkish whistle-blower, Fuat Avni, announced via Twitter that Turkey was preparing the destruction of a Russian aircraft. This occurred on the 24th November. ..."

www.voltairenet.org

At the end of the Turkish civil war, Turkey threatened to invade Syria with the help of NATO if it continued to offer asylum to the leader of the PKK, Abdullah Öcallan. President Hafez el-Assad thus asked Öcallan to find another refuge, and was obliged to conclude an oral agreement with Turkey. It was agreed that the Turkish army would be allowed to penetrate Syrian territory, within a limit of 8 kilometres, in order to ensure that the PKK could not fire mortars from Syria.

Since the beginning of the current aggression against Syria, the Turkish army has used and abused this privilege - no longer to prevent attacks by the PKK, but to set up training camps for jihadists.

In October 2015, when the Russian military campaign was just starting, and Salih Muslim was beginning the operation of forced Kurdisation of Northern Syria, the famous Turkish whistle-blower, Fuat Avni, announced via Twitter that Turkey was preparing the destruction of a Russian aircraft. This occurred on the 24th November.

From the perspective of the Third Syrian War [1], the attack was designed to send a message to Russia in order to scare it into defending only Damascus and Lattakia, leaving the rest of the country in the hands of Turkey and its allies.

Technically, the aerial defence of Turkey, like that of all NATO members, is co-ordinated by the CAOC in Torrejón (Spain). The chief of the Turkish air force, General Abidin Ünal, should therefore have given advance warning of his decision to CAOC commander General Rubén García Servert. We do not know if he did so [2]. In any case, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan confirmed that he himself had validated the order to destroy the Russian plane.

The Russian chief of staff had provided NATO with the flight plans of their aircraft in advance, so that neither the Alliance nor Turkey could ignore the fact that the plane was Russian, despite Turkish allegations to the contrary. Besides this, a NATO AWACS had taken off beforehand from the Greek base in Aktion (close to Preveza) in order to survey the area [3].

The Russian army bombarded the Sultan Abdülhamid Brigade – from the name of the last Ottoman sultan, infamous for organising the massacre of Oriental Christians. Since the beginning of the war against Syria, the Turkish secret services have never stopped supplying weapons to the Turkmen militias in Northern Syria, and overseeing their operations. The Turkish Press has documented the transfer of at least 2,000 truck-loads of weapons and ammunition - which President Erdoğan has admitted [4] – the majority of which was immediately distributed to Al-Qaïda by the Turkmen militias. In particular, in 2011, these militias dismantled the 80,000 factories in Aleppo, the Syrian economic capital, and sent the machine tools to Turkey [5]. So, contrary to Turkish allegations, the Russian bombing was not intended to target the Turkmen, but effectively to destroy a terrorist group guilty of organised pillage, according to the definition in international conventions [6]. The Russian bombardment had provoked the flight of 1,500 civilians and caused vigourous protests by Turkey [7], which addressed a letter to the Security Council [8].

The Turkish – not Syrian – jihadist, member of the Grey Woves, Alparslan Çelik, is commander of the Turkmen militias in Syria.

The main leader of the Turkmen militias in Syria is Alparslan Çelik, a member of the Grey Wolves, the Turkish neo-fascist party, which is historically linked to the NATO secret services [9]. He claims to have given the order to kill the Russian pilots as they parachuted down [10].

The Russian plane which was shot down only entered Turkish air-space for 17 seconds, and was hit after it was already in Syrian air-space. However, since Turkey considered that it had annexed the 8-kilometre corridor which it was authorised to enter according to the agreement with ex-President Hafez el-Assad, it may have believed that the intrusion lasted longer. In any case, in order to shoot down the Sukhoï 24, the Turkish fighter had to enter Syrian air-space for 40 seconds [11].

The Russians had taken no particular measures to protect their bombers, considering that Turkey is an official participant in the fight against terrorist organisations. And an intrusion lasting only a few seconds has never been considered as a " threat to national security " " particularly since Turkey had been informed of the flight plan, and also that it regularly violates the air-space of other states, such as Cyprus.

Immediately solicited by Turkey, NATO called a meeting of the North Atlantic Council, which was unable to issue a resolution, but did its best by asking for a reading of a brief declaration by their General Secretary which called for ... de-escalation -- [12]. Various sources reported profound disagreement within the Council [13].

The official Saudi Press published an audio recording of an appeal by Turkish military air controllers to the Russian plane warning it against an entry into Turkish air-space [14]. Several AKP politicians commented on this recording and denounced the risks taken by the Russian army. However, the Russian military has denied the authenticity of the recording, and has proved that it is a fake. The Turkish government then denied any implication in the publishing of the recording.

President Putin qualified the destruction of the Soukhoï 24 as a " knife in the back ". He publicly questioned the rôle of Ankara in the financing of Daesh, particularly because of the free transit of stolen petrol across Turkey. The Russian Minister for Foreign Affairs has asked the 4.5 million Russians who had planned to travel to Turkey to cancel their trip, and has restored entry visas for Turkish nationals. By decree, the Kremlin has forbidden all new contracts between Russian persons or organisations and Turkish persons or organisations, including the employment of personnel, the import/export of merchandise, and tourism [15].

[Dec 03, 2015] Putin says Turkey 'will regret' shooting down of Russian bomber

www.hurriyetdailynews.com

Turkey will regret "more than once" about its shooting down of a Russian bomber jet near the Syrian-Turkish border, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Dec. 3.

President Vladimir Putin said Turkey's shooting down of a Russian military jet was a "war crime" and that the Kremlin would punish Ankara with additional sanctions, signaling fallout from the incident would be long-lasting and serious.

Putin, who made the comments during his annual state of the nation speech to his country's political elite on Dec. 3, said Russia would not forget the Nov. 24 incident and that he continued to regard it as a terrible betrayal.

"We are not planning to engage in military saber-rattling [with Turkey]," said Putin, after asking for a moment's silence for the two Russian servicemen killed in the immediate aftermath of the incident, and for Russian victims of terrorism.

"But if anyone thinks that having committed this awful war crime, the murder of our people, that they are going to get away with some measures concerning their tomatoes or some limits on construction and other sectors, they are sorely mistaken."

Turkey would have cause to regret its actions "more than once," he said, promising Russia's retaliatory actions would be neither hysterical nor dangerous.

In his aggressive remarks unusual in diplomatic tongue, Putin said "it appears that Allah decided to punish the ruling clique of Turkey by depriving them of wisdom and judgment."

Putin said Moscow's anger over the incident was directed "at particular individuals" and not at the Turkish people.

[Dec 03, 2015] Tomgram Andrew Bacevich, An Invitation to Collective Suicide

Notable quotes:

"... Aside from long-shots Bernie Sanders and Rand Paul, any candidate likely to enter the Oval Office in January 2017 will be committed to some version of much-more war, including obviously Donald Trump, Marco (" clash of civilizations ") Rubio, and Hillary Clinton, who recently gave a hawkish speech at the Council on Foreign Relations on her version of war policy against the Islamic State. ..."

"... Assume that the hawks get their way -- that the United States does whatever it takes militarily to confront and destroy ISIS. Then what? Answering that question requires taking seriously the outcomes of other recent U.S. interventions in the Greater Middle East. In 1991, when the first President Bush ejected Saddam Hussein's army from Kuwait, Americans rejoiced, believing that they had won a decisive victory. A decade later, the younger Bush seemingly outdid his father by toppling the Taliban in Afghanistan and then making short work of Saddam himself -- a liberation twofer achieved in less time than it takes Americans to choose a president. After the passage of another decade, Barack Obama got into the liberation act, overthrowing the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi in what appeared to be a tidy air intervention with a clean outcome. As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton memorably put it , "We came, we saw, he died." End of story. In fact, subsequent events in each case mocked early claims of success or outright victory. Unanticipated consequences and complications abounded. "Liberation" turned out to be a prelude to chronic violence and upheaval. ..."

"... Indeed, the very existence of the Islamic State (ISIS) today renders a definitive verdict on the Iraq wars over which the Presidents Bush presided, each abetted by a Democratic successor. A de facto collaboration of four successive administrations succeeded in reducing Iraq to what it is today: a dysfunctional quasi-state unable to control its borders or territory while serving as a magnet and inspiration for terrorists. ..."

"... Were it not for the reckless American decision to invade and occupy a nation that, whatever its crimes, had nothing to do with 9/11, the Islamic State would not exist. ..."

"... True, in both Syria and Iraq the Islamic State has demonstrated a disturbing ability to capture and hold large stretches of desert, along with several population centers. It has, however, achieved these successes against poorly motivated local forces of, at best, indifferent quality. ..."

"... Time and again the unanticipated side effects of U.S. military action turned out to be very bad indeed. In Kabul, Baghdad, or Tripoli, the Alamo fell, but the enemy dispersed or reinvented itself and the conflict continued. Assurances offered by Kristol that this time things will surely be different deserve to be taken with more than a grain of salt. Pass the whole shaker. ..."

"... American Interest ..."

"... Now I happen to think that equating our present predicament in the Islamic world with the immensely destructive conflicts of the prior century is dead wrong. Yet it's a proposition that Americans at this juncture should contemplate with the utmost seriousness. ..."

"... With so much on the line, Cohen derides the Obama administration's tendency to rely on "therapeutic bombing, which will temporarily relieve the itch, but leave the wounds suppurating." The time for such half-measures has long since passed. Defeating the Islamic State and "kindred movements" will require the U.S. to "kill a great many people." To that end Washington needs "a long-range plan not to 'contain' but to crush" the enemy. Even with such a plan, victory will be a long way off and will require "a long, bloody, and costly process." ..."

"... Nor were Americans sufficiently willing to die for the cause. In South Vietnam, 58,000 G.I.s died in a futile effort to enable that country to survive. In Iraq and Afghanistan, where the stakes were presumably much higher, we pulled the plug after fewer than 7,000 deaths. ..."

"... In the meantime, U.S. forces would have to deal with the various and sundry "kindred movements" that are already cropping up like crabgrass in country after country. Afghanistan -- still? again? -- would head the list of places requiring U.S. military attention. But other prospective locales would include such hotbeds of Islamist activity as Lebanon, Libya, Palestine, Somalia, and Yemen, along with several West African countries increasingly beset with insurgencies. Unless Egyptian, Pakistani, and Saudi security forces demonstrate the ability (not to mention the will) to suppress the violent radicals in their midst, one or more of those countries could also become the scene of significant U.S. military action. ..."

"... At first glance, $1.8 trillion annually is a stupefyingly large figure. To make it somewhat more palatable, a proponent of World War IV might put that number in historical perspective. During the first phases of World War III, for example, the United States routinely allocated 10% or more of total gross domestic product (GDP) for national security. With that GDP today exceeding $17 trillion, apportioning 10% to the Pentagon would give those charged with managing World War IV a nice sum to work with and no doubt to build upon. ..."

"... In other words, funding World War IV while maintaining a semblance of fiscal responsibility would entail the kind of trade-offs that political leaders are loathe to make. Today, neither party appears up to taking on such challenges. That the demands of waging protracted war will persuade them to rise above their partisan differences seems unlikely. It sure hasn't so far. ..."

"... In my view, Cohen's World War IV is an invitation to collective suicide. Arguing that no alternative exists to open-ended war represents not hard-nosed realism, but the abdication of statecraft. Yet here's the ultimate irony: even without the name, the United States has already embarked upon something akin to a world war, which now extends into the far reaches of the Islamic world and spreads further year by year. ..."

"... Andrew J. Bacevich, a ..."

"... , is professor emeritus of history and international relations at Boston University. He is the author of ..."

"... , among other works. His new book, ..."

"... is due out in April 2016. ..."

"... on Twitter and join us on Facebook . Check out the newest Dispatch Book, Nick Turse's ..."

"... , and Tom Engelhardts latest book, ..."

Dec 03, 2015 | TomDispatch

Let's consider the two parties in Washington. I'm not referring to the Republican and Democratic ones, but our capital's war parties (there being no peace party, of course). They might be labeled the More War Party and the Much (or Much, Much) More War Party. Headed by President Obama, the first is distinctly a minority grouping. In a capital city in which, post-Paris, war seems to be the order of the day, it's the party of relative restraint, as the president has clearly grasped the obvious: for the last 14 years, the more wholeheartedly the U.S. has gone into any situation in the Greater Middle East, militarily speaking, the worse it has turned out.

Having promised to get us out of two wars and being essentially assured of leaving us in at least three (and various other conflicts on the side), he insists that a new invasion or even a large-scale infusion of American troops, aka "boots on the ground," in Syria or Iraq is a no-go for him. The code word he uses for his version of more war -- since less war is simply not an option on that "table" in Washington where all options are evidently kept -- is "intensification." Once upon a time, it might have been called "escalation" or "mission creep." The president has pledged to merely "intensify" the war he's launched, however reluctantly, in Syria and the one he's re-launched in Iraq. This seems to mean more of exactly what he's already ordered into the fray: more air power, more special forces boots more or less on the ground in Syria, more special ops raiders sent into Iraq, and perhaps more military advisers ever nearer to the action in that country as well. This is as close as you're likely to get in present-day America, at least in official circles, to an antiwar position.

In the Much (or Much, Much) More War party, Republicans and Democrats alike are explicitly or implicitly criticizing the president for his "weak" policies and for "leading from behind" against the Islamic State. They propose solutions ranging from instituting "no-fly zones" in northern Syria to truly intensifying U.S. air strikes, to sending in local forces backed and led by American special operators (à la Afghanistan 2001), to sending in far more American troops, to simply putting masses of American boots on the ground and storming the Islamic State's capital, Raqqa. After fourteen years in which so many similar "solutions" have been tried and in the end failed miserably in the Greater Middle East or North Africa, all of it, as if brand new, is once again on that table in Washington.

Aside from long-shots Bernie Sanders and Rand Paul, any candidate likely to enter the Oval Office in January 2017 will be committed to some version of much-more war, including obviously Donald Trump, Marco ("clash of civilizations") Rubio, and Hillary Clinton, who recently gave a hawkish speech at the Council on Foreign Relations on her version of war policy against the Islamic State. Given that stark reality, this is a perfect moment to explore what much-more war (call it, in fact, "World War IV") might actually mean and how it might play out in our world -- and TomDispatch regular Andrew Bacevich is the perfect person to do it. Tom

Beyond ISIS: The Folly of World War IV
By Andrew J. Bacevich

Assume that the hawks get their way -- that the United States does whatever it takes militarily to confront and destroy ISIS. Then what?

Answering that question requires taking seriously the outcomes of other recent U.S. interventions in the Greater Middle East. In 1991, when the first President Bush ejected Saddam Hussein's army from Kuwait, Americans rejoiced, believing that they had won a decisive victory. A decade later, the younger Bush seemingly outdid his father by toppling the Taliban in Afghanistan and then making short work of Saddam himself -- a liberation twofer achieved in less time than it takes Americans to choose a president. After the passage of another decade, Barack Obama got into the liberation act, overthrowing the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi in what appeared to be a tidy air intervention with a clean outcome. As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton memorably put it, "We came, we saw, he died." End of story.

In fact, subsequent events in each case mocked early claims of success or outright victory. Unanticipated consequences and complications abounded. "Liberation" turned out to be a prelude to chronic violence and upheaval.

Indeed, the very existence of the Islamic State (ISIS) today renders a definitive verdict on the Iraq wars over which the Presidents Bush presided, each abetted by a Democratic successor. A de facto collaboration of four successive administrations succeeded in reducing Iraq to what it is today: a dysfunctional quasi-state unable to control its borders or territory while serving as a magnet and inspiration for terrorists.

The United States bears a profound moral responsibility for having made such a hash of things there. Were it not for the reckless American decision to invade and occupy a nation that, whatever its crimes, had nothing to do with 9/11, the Islamic State would not exist. Per the famous Pottery Barn Rule attributed to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, having smashed Iraq to bits a decade ago, we can now hardly deny owning ISIS.

That the United States possesses sufficient military power to make short work of that "caliphate" is also the case. True, in both Syria and Iraq the Islamic State has demonstrated a disturbing ability to capture and hold large stretches of desert, along with several population centers. It has, however, achieved these successes against poorly motivated local forces of, at best, indifferent quality.

In that regard, the glibly bellicose editor of the Weekly Standard, William Kristol, is surely correct in suggesting that a well-armed contingent of 50,000 U.S. troops, supported by ample quantities of air power, would make mincemeat of ISIS in a toe-to-toe contest. Liberation of the various ISIS strongholds like Fallujah and Mosul in Iraq and Palmyra and Raqqa, its "capital," in Syria would undoubtedly follow in short order.

In the wake of the recent attacks in Paris, the American mood is strongly trending in favor of this sort of escalation. Just about anyone who is anyone -- the current occupant of the Oval Office partially excepted -- favors intensifying the U.S. military campaign against ISIS. And why not? What could possibly go wrong? As Kristol puts it, "I don't think there's much in the way of unanticipated side effects that are going to be bad there."

It's an alluring prospect. In the face of a sustained assault by the greatest military the world has ever seen, ISIS foolishly (and therefore improbably) chooses to make an Alamo-like stand. Whammo! We win. They lose. Mission accomplished.

Of course, that phrase recalls the euphoric early reactions to Operations Desert Storm in 1991, Enduring Freedom in 2001, Iraqi Freedom in 2003, and Odyssey Dawn, the Libyan intervention of 2011. Time and again the unanticipated side effects of U.S. military action turned out to be very bad indeed. In Kabul, Baghdad, or Tripoli, the Alamo fell, but the enemy dispersed or reinvented itself and the conflict continued. Assurances offered by Kristol that this time things will surely be different deserve to be taken with more than a grain of salt. Pass the whole shaker.

Embracing Generational War

Why this repeated disparity between perceived and actual outcomes? Why have apparent battlefield successes led so regularly to more violence and disorder? Before following Kristol's counsel, Americans would do well to reflect on these questions.

Cue Professor Eliot A. Cohen. Shortly after 9/11, Cohen, one of this country's preeminent military thinkers, characterized the conflict on which the United States was then embarking as "World War IV." (In this formulation, the Cold War becomes World War III.) Other than in certain neoconservative quarters, the depiction did not catch on. Yet nearly a decade-and-a-half later, the Johns Hopkins professor and former State Department official is sticking to his guns. In an essay penned for the American Interest following the recent Paris attacks, he returns to his theme. "It was World War IV in 2001," Cohen insists. "It is World War IV today." And to our considerable benefit he spells out at least some of the implications of casting the conflict in such expansive and evocative terms.

Now I happen to think that equating our present predicament in the Islamic world with the immensely destructive conflicts of the prior century is dead wrong. Yet it's a proposition that Americans at this juncture should contemplate with the utmost seriousness.

In the United States today, confusion about what war itself signifies is widespread. Through misuse, misapplication, and above all misremembering, we have distorted the term almost beyond recognition. As one consequence, talk of war comes too easily off the tongues of the unknowing.

Not so with Cohen. When it comes to war, he has no illusions. Addressing that subject, he illuminates it, enabling us to see what war entails. So in advocating World War IV, he performs a great service, even if perhaps not the one he intends.

What will distinguish the war that Cohen deems essential? "Begin with endurance," he writes. "This war will probably go on for the rest of my life, and well into my children's." Although American political leaders seem reluctant "to explain just how high the stakes are," Cohen lays them out in direct, unvarnished language. At issue, he insists, is the American way of life itself, not simply "in the sense of rock concerts and alcohol in restaurants, but the more fundamental rights of freedom of speech and religion, the equality of women, and, most essentially, the freedom from fear and freedom to think."

With so much on the line, Cohen derides the Obama administration's tendency to rely on "therapeutic bombing, which will temporarily relieve the itch, but leave the wounds suppurating." The time for such half-measures has long since passed. Defeating the Islamic State and "kindred movements" will require the U.S. to "kill a great many people." To that end Washington needs "a long-range plan not to 'contain' but to crush" the enemy. Even with such a plan, victory will be a long way off and will require "a long, bloody, and costly process."

Cohen's candor and specificity, as bracing as they are rare, should command our respect. If World War IV describes what we are in for, then eliminating ISIS might figure as a near-term imperative, but it can hardly define the endgame. Beyond ISIS loom all those continually evolving "kindred movements" to which the United States will have to attend before it can declare the war itself well and truly won.

To send just tens of thousands of U.S. troops to clean up Syria and Iraq, as William Kristol and others propose, offers at best a recipe for winning a single campaign. Winning the larger war would involve far more arduous exertions. This Cohen understands, accepts, and urges others to acknowledge.

And here we come to the heart of the matter. For at least the past 35 years -- that is, since well before 9/11 -- the United States has been "at war" in various quarters of the Islamic world. At no point has it demonstrated the will or the ability to finish the job. Washington's approach has been akin to treating cancer with a little bit of chemo one year and a one-shot course of radiation the next. Such gross malpractice aptly describes U.S. military policy throughout the Greater Middle East across several decades.

While there may be many reasons why the Iraq War of 2003 to 2011 and the still longer Afghanistan War yielded such disappointing results, Washington's timidity in conducting those campaigns deserves pride of place. That most Americans might bridle at the term "timidity" reflects the extent to which they have deluded themselves regarding the reality of war.

In comparison to Vietnam, for example, Washington's approach to waging its two principal post-9/11 campaigns was positively half-hearted. With the nation as a whole adhering to peacetime routines, Washington neither sent enough troops nor stayed anywhere near long enough to finish the job. Yes, we killed many tens of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans, but if winning World War IV requires, as Cohen writes, that we "break the back" of the enemy, then we obviously didn't kill nearly enough.

Nor were Americans sufficiently willing to die for the cause. In South Vietnam, 58,000 G.I.s died in a futile effort to enable that country to survive. In Iraq and Afghanistan, where the stakes were presumably much higher, we pulled the plug after fewer than 7,000 deaths.

Americans would be foolish to listen to those like William Kristol who, even today, peddle illusions about war being neat and easy. They would do well instead to heed Cohen, who knows that war is hard and ugly.

What Would World War IV Look Like?

Yet when specifying the practical implications of generational war, Cohen is less forthcoming. From his perspective, this fourth iteration of existential armed conflict in a single century is not going well. But apart from greater resolve and bloody-mindedness, what will it take to get things on the right track?

As a thought experiment, let's answer that question by treating it with the urgency that Cohen believes it deserves. After 9/11, certain U.S. officials thundered about "taking the gloves off." In practice, however, with the notable exception of policies permitting torture and imprisonment without due process, the gloves stayed on. Take Cohen's conception of World War IV at face value and that will have to change.

For starters, the country would have to move to something like a war footing, enabling Washington to raise a lot more troops and spend a lot more money over a very long period of time. Although long since banished from the nation's political lexicon, the M-word -- mobilization -- would make a comeback. Prosecuting a generational war, after all, is going to require the commitment of generations.

Furthermore, if winning World War IV means crushing the enemy, as Cohen emphasizes, then ensuring that the enemy, once crushed, cannot recover would be hardly less important. And that requirement would prohibit U.S. forces from simply walking away from a particular fight even -- or especially -- when it might appear won.

At the present moment, defeating the Islamic State ranks as Washington's number one priority. With the Pentagon already claiming a body count of 20,000 ISIS fighters without notable effect, this campaign won't end anytime soon. But even assuming an eventually positive outcome, the task of maintaining order and stability in areas that ISIS now controls will remain. Indeed, that task will persist until the conditions giving rise to entities like ISIS are eliminated. Don't expect French President François Hollande or British Prime Minister David Cameron to sign up for that thankless job. U.S. forces will own it. Packing up and leaving the scene won't be an option.

How long would those forces have to stay? Extrapolating from recent U.S. occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, something on the order of a quarter-century seems like a plausible approximation. So should our 45th president opt for a boots-on-the-ground solution to ISIS, as might well be the case, the privilege of welcoming the troops home could belong to the 48th or 49th occupant of the White House.

In the meantime, U.S. forces would have to deal with the various and sundry "kindred movements" that are already cropping up like crabgrass in country after country. Afghanistan -- still? again? -- would head the list of places requiring U.S. military attention. But other prospective locales would include such hotbeds of Islamist activity as Lebanon, Libya, Palestine, Somalia, and Yemen, along with several West African countries increasingly beset with insurgencies. Unless Egyptian, Pakistani, and Saudi security forces demonstrate the ability (not to mention the will) to suppress the violent radicals in their midst, one or more of those countries could also become the scene of significant U.S. military action.

Effective prosecution of World War IV, in other words, would require the Pentagon to plan for each of these contingencies, while mustering the assets needed for implementation. Allies might kick in token assistance -- tokenism is all they have to offer -- but the United States will necessarily carry most of the load.

What Would World War IV Cost?

During World War III (aka the Cold War), the Pentagon maintained a force structure ostensibly adequate to the simultaneous prosecution of two and a half wars. This meant having the wherewithal to defend Europe and the Pacific from communist aggression while still leaving something for the unexpected. World War IV campaigns are unlikely to entail anything on the scale of the Warsaw Pact attacking Western Europe or North Korea invading the South. Still, the range of plausible scenarios will require that U.S. forces be able to take on militant organizations C and D even while guarding against the resurgence of organizations A and B in altogether different geographic locations.

Even though Washington may try whenever possible to avoid large-scale ground combat, relying on air power (including drones) and elite Special Operations forces to do the actual killing, post-conflict pacification promises to be a manpower intensive activity. Certainly, this ranks as one of the most obvious lessons to emerge from World War IV's preliminary phases: when the initial fight ends, the real work begins.

U.S. forces committed to asserting control over Iraq after the invasion of 2003 topped out at roughly 180,000. In Afghanistan, during the Obama presidency, the presence peaked at 110,000. In a historical context, these are not especially large numbers. At the height of the Vietnam War, for example, U.S. troop strength in Southeast Asia exceeded 500,000.

In hindsight, the Army general who, before the invasion of 2003, publicly suggested that pacifying postwar Iraq would require "several hundred thousand troops" had it right. A similar estimate applies to Afghanistan. In other words, those two occupations together could easily have absorbed 600,000 to 800,000 troops on an ongoing basis. Given the Pentagon's standard three-to-one rotation policy, which assumes that for every unit in-country, a second is just back, and a third is preparing to deploy, you're talking about a minimum requirement of between 1.8 and 2.4 million troops to sustain just two medium-sized campaigns -- a figure that wouldn't include some number of additional troops kept in reserve for the unexpected.

In other words, waging World War IV would require at least a five-fold increase in the current size of the U.S. Army -- and not as an emergency measure but a permanent one. Such numbers may appear large, but as Cohen would be the first to point out, they are actually modest when compared to previous world wars. In 1968, in the middle of World War III, the Army had more than 1.5 million active duty soldiers on its rolls -- this at a time when the total American population was less than two-thirds what it is today and when gender discrimination largely excluded women from military service. If it chose to do so, the United States today could easily field an army of two million or more soldiers.

Whether it could also retain the current model of an all-volunteer force is another matter. Recruiters would certainly face considerable challenges, even if Congress enhanced the material inducements for service, which since 9/11 have already included a succession of generous increases in military pay. A loosening of immigration policy, granting a few hundred thousand foreigners citizenship in return for successfully completing a term of enlistment might help. In all likelihood, however, as with all three previous world wars, waging World War IV would oblige the United States to revive the draft, a prospect as likely to be well-received as a flood of brown and black immigrant enlistees. In short, going all out to create the forces needed to win World War IV would confront Americans with uncomfortable choices.

The budgetary implications of expanding U.S. forces while conducting a perpetual round of what the Pentagon calls "overseas contingency operations" would also loom large. Precisely how much money an essentially global conflict projected to extend well into the latter half of the century would require is difficult to gauge. As a starting point, given the increased number of active duty forces, tripling the present Defense Department budget of more than $600 billion might serve as a reasonable guess.

At first glance, $1.8 trillion annually is a stupefyingly large figure. To make it somewhat more palatable, a proponent of World War IV might put that number in historical perspective. During the first phases of World War III, for example, the United States routinely allocated 10% or more of total gross domestic product (GDP) for national security. With that GDP today exceeding $17 trillion, apportioning 10% to the Pentagon would give those charged with managing World War IV a nice sum to work with and no doubt to build upon.

Of course, that money would have to come from somewhere. For several years during the last decade, sustaining wars in Iraq and Afghanistan pushed the federal deficit above a trillion dollars. As one consequence, the total national debt now exceeds annual GDP, having tripled since 9/11. How much additional debt the United States can accrue without doing permanent damage to the economy is a question of more than academic interest.

To avoid having World War IV produce an endless string of unacceptably large deficits, ratcheting up military spending would undoubtedly require either substantial tax increases or significant cuts in non-military spending, including big-ticket programs like Medicare and social security -- precisely those, that is, which members of the middle class hold most dear.

In other words, funding World War IV while maintaining a semblance of fiscal responsibility would entail the kind of trade-offs that political leaders are loathe to make. Today, neither party appears up to taking on such challenges. That the demands of waging protracted war will persuade them to rise above their partisan differences seems unlikely. It sure hasn't so far.

The Folly of World War IV

In his essay, Cohen writes, "we need to stop the circumlocutions." Of those who would bear the direct burden of his world war, he says, "we must start telling them the truth." He's right, even if he himself is largely silent about what the conduct of World War IV is likely to exact from the average citizen.

As the United States enters a presidential election year, plain talk about the prospects of our ongoing military engagement in the Islamic world should be the order of the day. The pretense that either dropping a few more bombs or invading one or two more countries will yield a conclusive outcome amounts to more than an evasion. It is an outright lie.

As Cohen knows, winning World War IV would require dropping many, many more bombs and invading, and then occupying for years to come, many more countries. After all, it's not just ISIS that Washington will have to deal with, but also its affiliates, offshoots, wannabes, and the successors almost surely waiting in the wings. And don't forget al-Qaeda.

Cohen believes that we have no alternative. Either we get serious about fighting World War IV the way it needs to be fought or darkness will envelop the land. He is undeterred by the evidence that the more deeply we insert our soldiers into the Greater Middle East the more concerted the resistance they face; that the more militants we kill the more we seem to create; that the inevitable, if unintended, killing of innocents only serves to strengthen the hand of the extremists. As he sees it, with everything we believe in riding on the outcome, we have no choice but to press on.

While listening carefully to Cohen's call to arms, Americans should reflect on its implications. Wars change countries and people. Embracing his prescription for World War IV would change the United States in fundamental ways. It would radically expand the scope and reach of the national security state, which, of course, includes agencies beyond the military itself. It would divert vast quantities of wealth to nonproductive purposes. It would make the militarization of the American way of life, a legacy of prior world wars, irreversible. By sowing fear and fostering impossible expectations of perfect security, it would also compromise American freedom in the name of protecting it. The nation that decades from now might celebrate VT Day -- victory over terrorism -- will have become a different place, materially, politically, culturally, and morally.

In my view, Cohen's World War IV is an invitation to collective suicide. Arguing that no alternative exists to open-ended war represents not hard-nosed realism, but the abdication of statecraft. Yet here's the ultimate irony: even without the name, the United States has already embarked upon something akin to a world war, which now extends into the far reaches of the Islamic world and spreads further year by year.

Incrementally, bit by bit, this nameless war has already expanded the scope and reach of the national security apparatus. It is diverting vast quantities of wealth to nonproductive purposes even as it normalizes the continuing militarization of the American way of life. By sowing fear and fostering impossible expectations of perfect security, it is undermining American freedom in the name of protecting it, and doing so right before our eyes.

Cohen rightly decries the rudderless character of the policies that have guided the (mis)conduct of that war thus far. For that critique we owe him a considerable debt. But the real problem is the war itself and the conviction that only through war can America remain America.

For a rich and powerful nation to conclude that it has no choice but to engage in quasi-permanent armed conflict in the far reaches of the planet represents the height of folly. Power confers choice. As citizens, we must resist with all our might arguments that deny the existence of choice. Whether advanced forthrightly by Cohen or fecklessly by the militarily ignorant, such claims will only perpetuate the folly that has already lasted far too long.

Andrew J. Bacevich, a TomDispatch regular, is professor emeritus of history and international relations at Boston University. He is the author of Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country, among other works. His new book, America's War for the Greater Middle East (Random House), is due out in April 2016.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, Nick Turse's Tomorrow's Battlefield: U.S. Proxy Wars and Secret Ops in Africa, and Tom Engelhardt's latest book, Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.

Copyright 2015 Andrew J. Bacevich

[Dec 02, 2015] When it comes to Wall Street buying our democracy you just need to follow the money

Notable quotes:

"... Let's compare donations from people who work at Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs to Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Hillary Clinton, has received $495,503.60 from people who work on Wall Street Bernie Sanders, has received only $17,107.72. Hillary Clinton may have Wall Street, ..."

"... The false promise of meritocracy was most disappointing. It basically said that meritocracy is hard to do, but never evaluates whether it is the right thing to do. Hint - it isn't enough. We need to worry about (relative) equality of outcome not just (relative) equality of opportunity. An equal chance to starve is still an equal chance. ..."

"... Making economies games is how you continued rigged distribution apparatus. Question all "rules"! ..."

economistsview.typepad.com

RGC, December 02, 2015 at 05:55 AM

Bernie's latest pitch:

When it comes to Wall Street buying our democracy, you just need to follow the money. Let's compare donations from people who work at Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs to Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Hillary Clinton, has received $495,503.60 from people who work on Wall Street Bernie Sanders, has received only $17,107.72. Hillary Clinton may have Wall Street, But Bernie has YOU! Bernie has received more than 1.5 million contributions from folks like you, at an average of $30 each.

pgl -> RGC, December 02, 2015 at 05:58 AM

$17,107.72? Jamie Dimon spends more than that on his morning cup of coffee. Go Bernie!

EMichael -> RGC, December 02, 2015 at 06:03 AM

To be fair, don't you think we should count donations for this election cycle for Clinton?

Y'know, she was the Senator from New York.

pgl -> EMichael,

Some people think anyone from New York is in bed with Wall Street. Trust me on this one - not everyone here in Brooklyn is in Jamie Dimon's hip pocket. Of course those alleged liberals JohnH uses as his sources (e.g. William Cohan) are in Jamie Dimon's hip pocket.

EMichael -> pgl,

I hate things like this. No honesty whatsoever. This cycle.

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres16/contrib.php?cycle=2016&id=N00000019

RGC -> EMichael,

How is there no honesty whatsoever?

The total for Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan and Bank of America is $326,000.
That leaves Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs to contribute $169,000.

EMichael -> RGC,

I stand corrected, somewhat.

Let me know how much comes from those organizations PACs.

reason said,

The false promise of meritocracy was most disappointing. It basically said that meritocracy is hard to do, but never evaluates whether it is the right thing to do. Hint - it isn't enough. We need to worry about (relative) equality of outcome not just (relative) equality of opportunity. An equal chance to starve is still an equal chance.

ilsm -> reason,

Making economies games is how you continued rigged distribution apparatus. Question all "rules"!

von Neumann should have been censored.

[Dec 02, 2015] When it comes to Wall Street buying our democracy you just need to follow the money

Notable quotes:

"... Let's compare donations from people who work at Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs to Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Hillary Clinton, has received $495,503.60 from people who work on Wall Street Bernie Sanders, has received only $17,107.72. Hillary Clinton may have Wall Street, ..."

"... The false promise of meritocracy was most disappointing. It basically said that meritocracy is hard to do, but never evaluates whether it is the right thing to do. Hint - it isn't enough. We need to worry about (relative) equality of outcome not just (relative) equality of opportunity. An equal chance to starve is still an equal chance. ..."

"... Making economies games is how you continued rigged distribution apparatus. Question all "rules"! ..."

economistsview.typepad.com

RGC, December 02, 2015 at 05:55 AM

Bernie's latest pitch:

When it comes to Wall Street buying our democracy, you just need to follow the money. Let's compare donations from people who work at Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs to Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Hillary Clinton, has received $495,503.60 from people who work on Wall Street Bernie Sanders, has received only $17,107.72. Hillary Clinton may have Wall Street, But Bernie has YOU! Bernie has received more than 1.5 million contributions from folks like you, at an average of $30 each.

pgl -> RGC, December 02, 2015 at 05:58 AM

$17,107.72? Jamie Dimon spends more than that on his morning cup of coffee. Go Bernie!

EMichael -> RGC, December 02, 2015 at 06:03 AM

To be fair, don't you think we should count donations for this election cycle for Clinton?

Y'know, she was the Senator from New York.

pgl -> EMichael,

Some people think anyone from New York is in bed with Wall Street. Trust me on this one - not everyone here in Brooklyn is in Jamie Dimon's hip pocket. Of course those alleged liberals JohnH uses as his sources (e.g. William Cohan) are in Jamie Dimon's hip pocket.

EMichael -> pgl,

I hate things like this. No honesty whatsoever. This cycle.

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres16/contrib.php?cycle=2016&id=N00000019

RGC -> EMichael,

How is there no honesty whatsoever?

The total for Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan and Bank of America is $326,000.
That leaves Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs to contribute $169,000.

EMichael -> RGC,

I stand corrected, somewhat.

Let me know how much comes from those organizations PACs.

reason said,

The false promise of meritocracy was most disappointing. It basically said that meritocracy is hard to do, but never evaluates whether it is the right thing to do. Hint - it isn't enough. We need to worry about (relative) equality of outcome not just (relative) equality of opportunity. An equal chance to starve is still an equal chance.

ilsm -> reason,

Making economies games is how you continued rigged distribution apparatus. Question all "rules"!

von Neumann should have been censored.

[Dec 02, 2015] BOMBSHELL Ambush of Russian Bomber Was Guided by US Reconnaissance

Looks like Obama revenge to Putin for entering Syria...

Notable quotes:

"... The American E-3A was supposed to determine the activity of the Su-24M2s onboard targeting radar, to determine if it was in search mode or if it had already locked on to a target and was processing launch data. It is known that the AWACS can direct the activity of aircraft in battle, conveying information to their avionics and flight computers. ..."

"... This plane [the F-16CJ] had been specifically built for Turkey. Its distinctive feature is a computer that controls a new, AN/APG-68 radar system, and which fulfills the role of a copilot-navigator. ..."

"... Indeed, the interception accuracy of the F-16CJ fighters was augmented by ground-based U.S. Patriot air defense systems, which are deployed in Turkey, or more precisely, their multirole AN/MPQ-53 radars. The Patriot can work with an E-3 or with MENTOR spy satellites, and it cant be ruled out that the satellite assets involved the Geosat space system as well. ..."

"... The flight trajectory of the F-16CJ indicates a precision interception of its target by means of triangulation: A pair of E-3s plus the Patriots air defense radar plus the geostationary MENTOR spy satellites plus, possibly, the Geosat space system. ..."

"... Of course. A pair of F-16CJs flew to the [missile] launch zone and, at a distance of 4-6 kilometers, practically point blank!, launched an AIM-9X Sidewinder air-to-air missile into the rear hemisphere of our Russian bomber. Besides which, the AN/APG-68 onboard radar of the fighter which launched the missile, was working in "target illumination" mode. That is, it turned on at the moment of launch, and turned off as soon as the missile definitively locked on to its target. ..."

"... The Turks nonetheless committed one mistake, which led to their provocation not quite working out. The F-16CJ went out on its interception two minutes late, when the Su-24M2 had already left the disputed 68-kilometer zone in the north of Syria [this may be referring to the Turks self-styled no-fly-zone against Assad]; to leave it required at most 1.5 minutes. But the "kill" command to the F-16CJ had not been revoked; thus the missile launch was carried out a bit further than the intended point. This is confirmed by the fact that the [Turkish TV] footage of the Su-24M2s fall was planned to be filmed from both Syrian territory and Turkish territory; however, the "Syrian footage" is more detailed. It appears that this saved our navigator. He was able to go into the woods and wait for a rescue team. ..."

russia-insider.com

A Russian military expert and columnist of the journal Arsenal of the Fatherland explains the details of the downing of the bomber and why not all went smoothly in an interview to the news agency Regnum

How did it all happen?

A U.S. Air Force Boeing E-3 Sentry AWACS plane took off on 24 November from the Preveza airbase in Greece. A second E-3A of the Saudi Arabian air force took off from the Riyadh airbase. Both planes were executing a common task-determining the precise location of Russian aircraft. It is they that picked the "victim."

The American E-3A was supposed to determine the activity of the Su-24M2's onboard targeting radar, to determine if it was in search mode or if it had already locked on to a target and was processing launch data. It is known that the AWACS can direct the activity of aircraft in battle, conveying information to their avionics and flight computers.

That is, to determine how defenseless was our plane?

As it turns out, yes. As we know, the Su-24M2 was returning from its mission, and its flight computer was operating in "navigation" mode in tandem with the GLONASS [Russian GPS system.] It was returning to base and was not preparing for action. The whole time, the E-3s were transferring detailed information about the Su-24M2 to a pair of Turkish F-16CJ's. This plane [the F-16CJ] had been specifically built for Turkey. Its distinctive feature is a computer that controls a new, AN/APG-68 radar system, and which fulfills the role of a copilot-navigator.

But this information is obviously not enough to precision-strike a small target. Was something else used?

Indeed, the interception accuracy of the F-16CJ fighters was augmented by ground-based U.S. Patriot air defense systems, which are deployed in Turkey, or more precisely, their multirole AN/MPQ-53 radars. The Patriot can work with an E-3 or with MENTOR spy satellites, and it can't be ruled out that the satellite assets involved the Geosat space system as well.

The flight trajectory of the F-16CJ indicates a precision interception of its target by means of triangulation: A pair of E-3s plus the Patriot's air defense radar plus the geostationary MENTOR spy satellites plus, possibly, the Geosat space system.

Besides which, the E-3s provided guidance as to the location of our plane in the air; they determined its route, speed, and the status of its weapons control systems; and the Patriot's air defense radar together with the MENTOR spy satellite provided telemetry on the SU-24M2's movement relative to the ground surface-that is, it provided a precise prediction as to where our plane would be visible relative to the mountainous terrain.

So it turns out that the Turkish fighters knew with absolutely certainty where to wait in ambush for our plane?

Of course. A pair of F-16CJ's flew to the [missile] launch zone and, at a distance of 4-6 kilometers, practically point blank!, launched an AIM-9X Sidewinder air-to-air missile into the rear hemisphere of our Russian bomber. Besides which, the AN/APG-68 onboard radar of the fighter which launched the missile, was working in "target illumination" mode. That is, it turned on at the moment of launch, and turned off as soon as the missile definitively locked on to its target.

Did our pilots have a chance to save their plane?

No. The Su-24M2 crew's probability of escaping destruction was equal to zero…

…Turkey does not have its own capabilities for such a detailed and very precise operation. And don't forget about the second E-3, from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The whole scenario was very fast-moving, lasting just seconds.

Did it really happen that smoothly?

The Turks nonetheless committed one mistake, which led to their provocation not quite working out. The F-16CJ went out on its interception two minutes late, when the Su-24M2 had already left the disputed 68-kilometer zone in the north of Syria [this may be referring to the Turk's self-styled no-fly-zone against Assad]; to leave it required at most 1.5 minutes. But the "kill" command to the F-16CJ had not been revoked; thus the missile launch was carried out a bit further than the intended point. This is confirmed by the fact that the [Turkish TV] footage of the Su-24M2's fall was planned to be filmed from both Syrian territory and Turkish territory; however, the "Syrian footage" is more detailed. It appears that this saved our navigator. He was able to go into the woods and wait for a rescue team.

[Dec 02, 2015] Russia Presents Detailed Evidence Of ISIS-Turkey Oil Trade

Notable quotes:

"... Now obviously, conclusive evidence that Ankara is knowingly facilitating the sale of ISIS crude will probably be hard to come by, at least in the short-term, but the silly thing about Erdogans pronouncement is that were talking about a man who was willing to plunge his country into civil war over a few lost seats in Parliament. The idea that he would ever step down is patently absurd. ..."

"... Whats critical is that the world gets the truth about whos financing and facilitating Raqqas Rockefellers. If a NATO member is supporting this, and if the US has refrained from bombing ISIS oil trucks for 14 months as part of an understanding with Erdogan, well then we have a problem. ..."

"... In the opening address, the Deputy says the ISIS oil trade reaches the highest levels of Turkeys government. He also says Erdogan wouldnt resign if his face was smeared with stolen Syrian oil. Antonov then blasts Ankara for arresting journalists and mocks Erdogans lovely family oil business. Antonov even calls on the journalists of the world to get involved and help Russia expose and destroy the sources of terrorist financing. ..."

"... I might be too harsh, but at the hands of the Turkish military killed our comrades. The cynicism of the Turkish leadership is unlimited. Look what theyre doing ?! Climbed to a foreign country, it shamelessly robbed. And if the owners interfere, then they have to be addressed. ..."

"... No one in the West, I wonder, does not cause the issue that the son of the President of Turkey is the leader of one of the largest energy companies, and son-in-appointed Minister of Energy? What a brilliant family business! ..."

"... National intelligence agencies watch Facebook, Twitter, Google and other search engines to see if they have to do damage control. If a few sites come out with articles implicating Bilal but the little people dont do many searches for him or re-tweet links, then theres no reason to react. They simply ignore the story. ..."

"... The government defines the narrative, and MSM stenographers fill in the pieces. Facebook, Twitter and Google are checked to see if they had the desired effect. They can also use a bit more direct techniques like massaging the Google search result rankings or blowing away Facebook and Twitter accounts they dont like. Israel is insane about collecting this data from Americans and reacting. Uncle Sugar isnt going to cough up that free $3 billion a year handout to them if the people are in the streets with pitchforks and torches. They are especially interested in de-ranking Google results that make Israel look bad, and promoting sites that deliver the message they want. Google is the worst search engine to look for Israeli current events. ..."

"... Obama Administration Supporting Islamic State -- OASIS. It certainly is if youre a terrorist rebel or well-connected oil pimp... ..."

"... The US made a deal with OPEC: the US would help to remove Assad, and in return, OPEC would dump oil to weaken Russia and Iran, fulfilling PNAC/Cheneys pet dream of consolidating the remaining oil reserves under US-friendly control. ISIS was a tool to that end. ..."

"... Now that the cat is out of the bag, now that Chinas overdue correction has been triggered, now that Brazil and Canada know who is largely responsible for their collapsing economies, now that Europe knows why they are overrun by refugees, I wonder how friendly those countries will be moving forward. ..."

"... As I read it, according to traditional international law, the Russian Federation may legally seize Erdogans Maltese-flagged neutral tankers carrying ISIS crude oil, because that crude oil constitutes a significant portion of ISIS war making potential, that tanker then effectively constituting an enemy merchant vessel, with the tankers subsequent condemnation in Russian prize courts, as the capturing belligerent power. ..."

"... A former police commander from Tajikistan was featured in an ISIS video recently where he admitted he was trained by the U.S. State Department and former military contractor Blackwater all the way up until last year. ..."

"... It was Turkeys national intelligence agency, known as MIT, that first organized Syrian military defectors into Western-backed groups under the banner of the Free Syrian Army. ..."

"... Free Syrian Army factions still convene on Turkish soil in the Joint Operations Center, a CIA-led intelligence hub that gives vetted rebels training as well as U.S.-made TOW antitank missiles used to destroy Syrian army tanks and armored units. ..."

"... Islamist groups, however, have benefited from Turkeys pro-opposition policy as well. In May, the Turkish daily newspaper Cumhuriyet published video from 2014 showing customs agents impounding a truck owned by the MIT. The trucks manifest said it was carrying humanitarian assistance for Syrians. Instead it was bearing a cache of ammunition and shells the newspaper said were destined for Islamist rebels. The videos release caused a furor. Erdogan vowed to prosecute Cumhuriyet, a threat he carried out Friday when authorities arrested two of the papers journalists on charges of espionage and aiding a terrorist organization. ..."

"... According to a 2015 United Nations study, two border crossings controlled by a faction of the Army of Conquest handle more than 300 trucks a day, a figure that exceeds prewar levels. The traffic yields an estimated $660,000 a day. ..."

Zero Hedge

On Monday, Turkey's sultan President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said something funny. In the wake of Vladimir Putin's contention that Russia has additional proof of Turkey's participation in Islamic State's illicit crude trade, Erdogan said he would resign if anyone could prove the accusations.

Now obviously, conclusive evidence that Ankara is knowingly facilitating the sale of ISIS crude will probably be hard to come by, at least in the short-term, but the silly thing about Erdogan's pronouncement is that we're talking about a man who was willing to plunge his country into civil war over a few lost seats in Parliament. The idea that he would ever "step down" is patently absurd.

But that's not what's important. What's critical is that the world gets the truth about who's financing and facilitating "Raqqa's Rockefellers." If a NATO member is supporting this, and if the US has refrained from bombing ISIS oil trucks for 14 months as part of an understanding with Erdogan, well then we have a problem. For those who need a review, see the following four pieces:

• The Most Important Question About ISIS That Nobody Is Asking
• Meet The Man Who Funds ISIS: Bilal Erdogan, The Son Of Turkey's President
• How Turkey Exports ISIS Oil To The World: The Scientific Evidence
• ISIS Oil Trade Full Frontal: "Raqqa's Rockefellers", Bilal Erdogan, KRG Crude, And The Israel Connection

Unfortunately for Ankara, The Kremlin is on a mission to blow this story wide open now that Turkey has apparently decided it's ok to shoot down Russian fighter jets. On Wednesday, we get the latest from Russia, where the Defense Ministry has just finished a briefing on the Islamic State oil trade. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Turkey may be in trouble.

First, here's the bullet point summary via Reuters:

• RUSSIA'S DEFENCE MINISTRY SAYS RUSSIA'S AIR STRIKES IN SYRIA HELPED TO ALMOST HALVE ILLEGAL OIL TURNOVER
• RUSSIA'S DEFENCE MINISTRY SAYS TURKISH PRESIDENT AND FAMILY INVOLVED IN BUSINESS WITH ISLAMIC STATE OIL
• RUSSIAN DEFENCE MINISTRY SAYS WILL CONTINUE STRIKES IN SYRIA ON ISLAMIC STATE OIL INFRASTRUCTURE
• RUSSIA'S DEFENCE MINISTRY SAYS KNOWS OF THREE ROUTES BY WHICH ISLAMIC STATE OIL IS DIRECTED TO TURKEY
• RUSSIAN DEFENCE MINISTRY SAYS TO PRESENT NEXT WEEK INFORMATION SHOWING TURKEY HELPING ISLAMIC STATE

That's the Cliff's Notes version and the full statement from Deputy Minister of Defence Anatoly Antonov is below. Let us be the first to tell you, Antonov did not hold back.

In the opening address, the Deputy says the ISIS oil trade reaches the highest levels of Turkey's government. He also says Erdogan wouldn't resign if his face was smeared with stolen Syrian oil. Antonov then blasts Ankara for arresting journalists and mocks Erdogan's "lovely family oil business." Antonov even calls on the journalists of the world to "get involved" and help Russia "expose and destroy the sources of terrorist financing."

"Today, we are presenting only some of the facts that confirm that a whole team of bandits and Turkish elites stealing oil from their neighbors is operating in the region," Antonov continues, setting up a lengthy presentation in which the MoD shows photos of oil trucks, videos of airstrikes and maps detailing the trafficking of stolen oil. The clip is presented here with an English voice-over. Enjoy.

... ... ...

Oh, and for good measure, Lieutenant-General Sergey Rudskoy says the US is not bombing ISIS oil trucks.

ISIS OIL logistics hub, over 3,000 TRUCKS, travelling between Iraq & TURKEY & US can't seem to find this???
BS pic.twitter.com/TNBa7CD9F0

- WowWow (@wowscasino) December 2, 2015

* * *

Full statement from Anatoly Antonov (translated)

At a briefing for the media, "the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in the fight against international terrorism. The new data "

International terrorism - is the main threat of our time. This threat is not illusory but real, and many countries, primarily Russia, knows this firsthand. The notorious "Is Islamic state" - the absolute leader of the terrorist international. This is a rearing monster of international terrorism can be countered. And you can win. Over the past two months, Aerospace Russian forces is clearly demonstrated.

We are firmly convinced that victory over LIH need to deliver a powerful and devastating blow to the sources of its funding, as repeatedly mentioned by President Vladimir Putin. Terrorism has no money - is a beast without teeth. Oil revenues are a major source of terrorist activity in Syria. They earn about $ 2 billion. Dollars annually, spending this money on hiring fighters around the world, providing them with weapons, equipment and weapons. That's why so LIH protects thieves oil infrastructure in Syria and Iraq.

The main consumer of stolen from legitimate owners - Syria and Iraq - the oil is Turkey. According to the data entered in this criminal business involved the highest political leadership of the country - President Erdogan and his family.

We have repeatedly talked about the dangers of flirting with terrorists. It's like that stokes. The fire from one country can spill over to others. This situation we are seeing in the Middle East. Today, we present only part of the facts, confirming that the region has a team of bandits and Turkish elites stealing oil from the neighbors.

This oil in large numbers on an industrial scale, for the living pipelines from thousands of oil tankers entering the territory of Turkey. We are absolutely convinced today present you the hard facts about what the final destination of the stolen oil - Turkey. There is a large number of media representatives, and Our briefing will see more of your colleagues. In this regard, I would like to say the following. We know and appreciate the work of journalists. We know that in the journalistic community, many courageous, fearless people honestly do its job. Today, we have clearly shown you how the illegal trade in oil, the result of which - the financing of terrorism. Provided concrete evidence that, in our opinion, may be the subject of investigative journalism.

We are confident that the truth with your help will, will find its way. We know the price to Erdogan. He has already been caught in a lie again Turkish journalists who opened Turkey delivery of arms and ammunition to militants under the guise of humanitarian convoys. For this imprisoned journalists.

Do not resign Turkish leaders, particularly Mr. Erdogan, and did not recognize, even if their faces will be smeared by oil thieves. I might be too harsh, but at the hands of the Turkish military killed our comrades. The cynicism of the Turkish leadership is unlimited. Look what they're doing ?! Climbed to a foreign country, it shamelessly robbed. And if the owners interfere, then they have to be addressed.

I stress that Erdogan's resignation is not our goal. It is - it is the people of Turkey. Our goal and the goal to which we urge you, ladies and gentlemen, - joint action to block the sources of funding for terrorism. We will continue to provide evidence of robbery by Turkey of its neighbors. Maybe I'll be too straightforward, but the control of these thieves in business can be entrusted only to the most close people.

No one in the West, I wonder, does not cause the issue that the son of the President of Turkey is the leader of one of the largest energy companies, and son-in-appointed Minister of Energy? What a brilliant family business!

This, in general, may elsewhere? Well, once again, of course, such cases can not be charging anyone, only the closest people. Votes this fact in the Western media we do not see much, but it sure can not hide the truth. Yes, of course, dirty petrodollars will work. I am sure that there are now discussions about the fact that everything you see here, - falsification. Well. If it did not - let be allowed in those places that we showed journalists.

It is obvious that today the publicity was devoted only part of the information about the monstrous crimes of the Turkish elites who directly finance international terrorism. We believe that any sane journalist should fight this plague of the XXI century. The world experience has repeatedly argued that the objective journalism is able to be an effective and formidable tool in the fight against various financial corruption schemes. We invite colleagues to investigative journalism on the disclosure of financial schemes and supplies oil from the terrorists to the consumers. Especially since the oil produced in the controlled militants territories in transit through Turkish ports shipped to other regions. For its part, the Ministry of Defense of Russia will continue to disclose new evidence on the supply of terrorists oil to foreign countries and to talk about the conduct of aerospace forces of Russia operations in Syria.Let's unite our efforts. We will destroy the sources of financing of terrorism in Syria, as you get involved in the kind of work abroad. "

Latina Lover

Doesn't matter what evidence Putin offers, the USSA Minion Mainstream Media liars will bury, distort or outright lie to defend Turkey. If Putin wanted any media play, he should photoshop the detailed evidence on a picture of Kim Kardasians ass.

The good news is that the Turks will figure it out, along with the rest of the world.

The9thDoctor

The main difference between al-CIAduh and CIsisA is that even the dumbest of the dumb have figured out that ISIL is controlled and equipped by Western Intelligence.

two hoots

John Kerry can explain this....to his own satisfaction.

Gaius Frakkin' ...

I've already seen more evidence for ISIS-Turkey oil trading than Saddam's WMDs... still waiting for that BTW.

farflungstar

NATO cunts supporting terrorists deserve whatever they get.

There was a lull when the Russians made their entrance into Syria, as Thinktank Land had to recalibrate their bullshit and get on message for the sheep. A couple weeks later the AmeriKans are crying crocodile tears over civilians and Russia killing kinder, gentler terrorists rather than ISIS.

LOL AmeriKans concerned over civilian casualties.

Kirk2NCC1701

And yet, we are still suppose to "Support Our Troops"

If they had 'truth in advertising', they'd call it "Support Our Storm-Troopers", to serve the Empire

Wise up, people. We have a MERCENARY ARMY -- by Definition.

MERCENARY =

a. You Volunteered 1,

b. You are getting Paid,

c. You have a Contract (with or w/o a Retirement Package)

d. After said Contract has expired, and if Released from further Duty (at sole discretion of Employer), you may enter a new Contract with a private 'security firm', i.e. "Mercs R US", or retire to pursue other activities (work for Gov.US, or one of its para-Gov units known as NGOs). In some cases, you may be so disillusioned or burned out, that you actually join the private sector. In some rare cases, assuming you haven't killed yourself, you may actually have become an open or closet anti-war activist. Which makes you a Born-Again Citizen, and a genuine Hero. If you are married with children, you are a mutha-facking hero, aka... 'Dad'.

[1] It matters not/naught if you're a well-meaning 'Patriot' (10%), a Economic Desperado (85%) or a Closet Psycho (5%). They'll take you even if you're not a US Citizen. In which case, you can become one after a mere 2 years, and in the Naturalization Process their Look-back Window is literally 2 years. I know this for fact. If you want to challenge me on this, you'll have to put your money where your mouth is, and pony up some serious Cash/BTC

McMolotov

For people of a certain age, "Russia is evil" is their default setting. They literally had that message pounded into their brains for decades, and unless they frequent alternative media sites, it's hard to overcome.

I see it with my parents. I can talk to them about this stuff for a few hours and gradually get them to see glimmers of the truth, but they usually completely revert to their normal thinking by the next time I see them. It doesn't help that they have Fox News on all the time.

rwe2late

UndergroundPost

Su-24 you say?

There is fair certainty that the SU-24 was hit (inside Syria) by radar-guided missiles(s) fired by the Turk jets,

and the missiles were guided and the SU-24 targeted by airborne US AWACS.

http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/bombshell-turkish-attack-russian-s...

The Chief

Im not sure which is worse, domestic frackers and their rape of the the american consumer and retiree with ridiculous oil and gas prices, junk bond sales to pensioners, etc, or ISIS. ISIS, in my view is no threat at all. These are contractors working for deep state functionaries intent on a long-term rape of the global population...but really, just hoodlums intent on taking a vig from illegal oil sales. Just ask Bush, Cheney, and now the democratic machine. New guys at the trough.

Frackers, however, are scum of the fucking earth. The business doesnt work unless oil prices are high. Fuck that. They pay their bills with a junk bond ponzi.

As for frackers themselves...its a tiny fraction of the workforce. Go be auto mechanics or go back to selling meth, fuckers.

847328_3527

Canada could take 50,000 refugees by end of 2016

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/governor-general-urges-support-fo...

The Canadian Gubmint will need to cut benefits to its citizens for the benefit of newcomers just as Barry wants to cut SS for Senior Americans so he can import thousands more.

"Yes we can!"

kralizec

Must be Vlad is daring the Turk to invoke Artcile 21 of Montreux: Erdogan has a trump card against Putin that would transform the Syrian war

You have to admire their bold manner, they are fearless.

They love warning NATO to back off. http://news.yahoo.com/russia-warns-nato-montenegro-invite-111359017.html

But who doesn't? They are a paper tiger, seems pointless to join them.

They get to build on newly seized territory ala China. http://news.yahoo.com/russia-building-military-bases-islands-claimed-jap...

The annexation of Crimea and Donbas is secure. Oil, gas and currency deals with China, India...nuclear deals with Iran.

And nobody is stopping him. Who can? That Muzzie faggot pretender in Washington? The toothless NATO police? The bed-wetting Euro's submitting to Islam?

Ha!

It is a de facto Russian/Chinese world now. Most still have no clue. The kabuki is so strong, the illusion of states and freedom and wealth...all an illusion.

Pah, who cares? Put on the DWTS, snort some lines and pop the bubbly! All is well!

Life of Illusion

Kralizec, you need to complete the illusion......wheres the oil goes when in Turkey.....

http://www.invest.gov.tr/en-US/infocenter/news/Pages/210714-goldman-sachs-buys-turkish-petkim-aegean-port.aspx

Goldman Sachs buys into Turkish Petkim's Aegean port 21.07.2014

Hurriyet Daily News – Global leader US investment firm Goldman Sachs has become a partner in Turkey's largest integrated port, operated by petrochemicals maker Petkim, in a deal that will boost Petkim's plans to develop the port as the largest in the Aegean region.

Petkim announced that it has reached a preliminary agreement to sell its 30 percent stake in Petkim Limanc?l?k (Petlim) for USD 250 million, after months of talks beginning in February of this year.

Petkim and Petlim are controlled by the Turkish branch of Azeri energy giant SOCAR. Petlim was founded to run the financial operations of Petkim's port in the Alia?a district of the Aegean province of ?zmir.

"For one of the world's biggest investors to become a partner in our port company means approval of the value and finance of our project," SOCAR Turkey President Kenan Yavuz said, speaking after a ceremony to mark the signing of the deal

Urban Redneck

The yahoos at Yahoo!News should really stick to message boards and perhaps one day expand to fringe blogging (if they can ever pull their heads of their asses). Neither the Russians nor the Turks are interested in seeing the Straights closed.

The purpose of the Montreaux Convention is to prevent another Russo-Turkish war by guaranteeing Russia (and other States that border the Black Sea) will have full military and commercial access to the Straights, while foreign powers will have only limited access. In return for providing this guarantee Turkey was allowed to build fortification to support its obligations under the treaty, while maintaining Turkey's natural right to self defense.

Any attempt by Turkey to prevent Russian access to the Straights, is an act of blockade, and invites either a blockade of Turkish ports (and pipelines) on the Mediterranean, if not another Russo Turkish war. Closing the Straights is simply not some trump card, and even the Sultan of Ankara isn't dumb enough to view such an action as a step towards extending his grip on power.

moonshadow

Putin with "checkmate". Erdogan can only flip the board over and walk away muttering to the int'l crowd somethin bout "Putin...cheater". Great article, Antonov's comments priceless, and video worth a smirk a minute

Noplebian

The NATO led escalation and it's push towards WW3, continues unabated……

http://beforeitsnews.com/conspiracy-theories/2015/11/us-gives-their-prox...

JustObserving

Will Erdogan resign?

How about detailed evidence on the shooting of the Russian jet?
BOMBSHELL: Ambush of Russian Bomber Was Guided by US Reconnaissance

A U.S. Air Force Boeing E-3 Sentry AWACS plane took off on 24 November from the Preveza airbase in Greece. A second E-3A of the Saudi Arabian air force took off from the Riyadh airbase. Both planes were executing a common task-determining the precise location of Russian aircraft. It is they that picked the "victim."

http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/bombshell-turkish-attack-russian-s...

JustObserving

Erdogan and his oil-smuggling son, Bilal, will be welcomed as heroes in Neocon-controlled Washington. Argentina and Paraguay are now for minor criminals only.

Calmyourself

Erdogan you Islamist bastard Ataturk is laughing at you from beyond the grave, GTFO

edit: why the hell has no one dropped cluster munitions on that truck park? US has been there a year and just missed it? Apparently Obama's (Stalin's) purge of the military has been quite successful because none of them have any balls.

RockySpears

Because cluster bombs are illegal. Not that this is exactly what they were designed for, but people cried about the little bomblets that failed to go off and were subsequently "ploughed" up by civilian farmers.

War is bad, but sometimes it is made worse by the intention to do good.

Same as Chemical weapons, for the most part, they kill no one, they just incapacitate. And anyway, why is a 1,000lb of TNT NOT chemical?

Calmyourself

Only against civilians and nobody signed on anyway.

"During Desert Storm US Marines used the weapon extensively, dropping 15,828 of the 27,987 total Rockeyes against armor, artillery, and personnel targets. The remainder were dropped by Air Force (5,346) and Navy (6,813) aircraft.[1]"

Chairman

2003-2006: United States and allies attacked Iraq with 13,000 cluster munitions, containing two million submunitions during Operation Iraqi Freedom. At multiple times, coalition forces used cluster munitions in residential areas, and the country remains among the most contaminated by this day, bomblets posing a threat to both US military personnel in the area, and local civilians.

When these weapons were fired on Baghdad on April 7, 2003 many of the bomblets failed to explode on impact. Afterward, some of them exploded when touched by civilians. USA Today reported that "the Pentagon presented a misleading picture during the war of the extent to which cluster weapons were being used and of the civilian casualties they were causing." On April 26, General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that the US had caused only one civilian casualty.

margincall575

Follow up

Breaking: Did the US and Saudis use AWACS to help target the SU-24?
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2015/12/01/breaking-did-the-us-and-saudis-u...

zeroboris

I used to read the soviet newspaper Pravda and am reading modern western media. And know what? Pravda was many times more truthful. Many of us, Russians, didn't understand this in soviet times (we had no access to western papers). But now I can tell this without any doubt. Most of modern Russian papers are less truthful too.

ThanksChump

I'd be surprised if the WPost ignores this. They did cover the Iraqi claim that the US is backing ISIS.

Paveway IV

National intelligence agencies watch Facebook, Twitter, Google and other search engines to see if they have to do damage control. If a few sites come out with articles implicating Bilal but the 'little people' don't do many searches for him or re-tweet links, then there's no reason to react. They simply ignore the story. If they notice enough little people start Googling Bilial and illegal oil sales or retweeting damaging articles, then they let the boss know. The U.S. MSM is ordered to send out a few stories quoting each other to spin it one way or another.

The government defines the narrative, and MSM stenographers fill in the pieces. Facebook, Twitter and Google are checked to see if they had the desired effect. They can also use a bit more direct techniques like massaging the Google search result rankings or blowing away Facebook and Twitter accounts they don't like. Israel is insane about collecting this data from Americans and reacting. Uncle Sugar isn't going to cough up that free $3 billion a year handout to them if the people are in the streets with pitchforks and torches. They are especially interested in de-ranking Google results that make Israel look bad, and promoting sites that deliver the message they want. Google is the worst search engine to look for Israeli current events.

You'll notice none of the MSM ISIS oil sales articles will mention U.S. stooge Barzani's involvement, and they for damn sure won't mention Israel as a destination for much of the stolen oil. They'll simply steer the narrative to focus on Turkish oil sales, and somehow blame it on Assad.

krispkritter

Obama Administration Supporting Islamic State --> OASIS. It certainly is if you're a terrorist 'rebel' or well-connected oil pimp...

ThanksChump

Occam's Razor.

The US made a deal with OPEC: the US would help to remove Assad, and in return, OPEC would dump oil to weaken Russia and Iran, fulfilling PNAC/Cheney's pet dream of consolidating the remaining oil reserves under US-friendly control. ISIS was a tool to that end.

That's the easy obvious part.

Less obvious is the tie to Ukraine. Ukraine should have been "converted" after Assad was driven out, and not before. This has me confused. Was it only a mistake in timing?

Now that the cat is out of the bag, now that China's overdue correction has been triggered, now that Brazil and Canada know who is largely responsible for their collapsing economies, now that Europe knows why they are overrun by refugees, I wonder how friendly those countries will be moving forward.

Mike Masr

https://www.rt.com/news/324252-russian-military-news-briefing/

US pal and NATO ally Turkey

• 12:26 GMT

  2,000 fighters, 250 vehicles and over 120 tons of ammo have been sent in the past weeks from Turkey to terrorists in Syria, fuelling the violence in the country.

• 12:31 GMT

  Russia cannot comprehend that such a large-scale business as oil smuggling could not have been noticed by the Turkish authorities. Russia concludes that the Turkish leadership is directly involved in the smuggling.

• 12:35 GMT

  Russia doesn't expect Turkish President Erdogan to resign in the face of the new evidence, even though he had promised to do so. His resignation is not Russia's goal and is a matter for the Turkish people.

SoDamnMad

I' m watching the rebroadcast live right now. Video of all these trucks. Damn good video and stills. Gee, why can't the USSA produce these(oh yeah, the MSM isn't allowed to show the truth. Better to show some college campus protest rather than the truth about whose side is really trying to stop terrorism.) Maybe our reconaissence equipment isn't as good as Russian equipment and our satelittes can't find the Turkish-Syrian border. Never seen so many trucks back to back, even on the Jersey Turnpike or the Long Beach Freeway before a holiday when the economy was good.s a lot of bucks going into Erdogan son's pocket (and Israel's)

fel.temp.reparatio

Erdogan: "So what if the MIT trucks were filled with weapons?"

Yttrium Gold Nitrogen

Statements available in English here:

http://eng.syria.mil.ru/en/index/syria/news/more.htm?id=12070726@cmsArticle

Duc888

....another interesting point here...

http://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/features/2015/11/26/raqqas-rockefellers...

"The Islamic State group uses millions of dollars in oil revenues to expand and manage vast areas under its control, home to around five million civilians.

IS sells Iraqi and Syrian oil for a very low price to Kurdish and Turkish smuggling networks and mafias, who label it and sell it on as barrels from the Kurdistan Regional Government.

It is then most frequently transported from Turkey to Israel, via knowing or unknowing middlemen, according to al-Araby's investigation.

The Islamic State group has told al-Araby that it did not intentionally sell oil to Israel, blaming agents along the route to international markets."

no1wonder

Official media release (and speech translation into English) by Russia's Defense Ministry:

http://eng.syria.mil.ru/en/index/syria/brief.htm

cn13

This story is finally hitting the MSM in the U.S. after being reported here for the past week. The powers to be must have needed time to get their lies straight. Anyway, check out the comment section on Yahoo regarding this story. It is almost 100% pro-Russian and anti-NATO/U.S.

I have never seen anything like this before.

The U.S. public has lost total confidence in the government. They are finally catching on to the lies and deceit of those in power.

http://news.yahoo.com/russia-says-proof-turkey-main-consumer-islamic-state-124337872.html

MadVladtheconquerer

Looks like Putin is simply trying to maintain what little remains of the status quo in Syria:

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/is-russia-fighting-isil-or-occupying-sy...

gregga777

As I read it, according to traditional international law, the Russian Federation may legally seize Erdogan's Maltese-flagged "neutral" tankers carrying ISIS' crude oil, because that crude oil constitutes a significant portion of ISIS' war making potential, that tanker then effectively constituting an enemy merchant vessel, with the tanker's subsequent condemnation in Russian prize courts, as the capturing belligerent power.

I hope that the Russian Federation's Navy seizes all of Erdogan's tankers, bankrupting Erdogan's company. Let them then sit in port for the next several years awaiting disposition in a Russian prize court.

dot_bust

Then there's this rather enlightening bit of information:

ISIS Colonel was Trained By Blackwater and U.S. State Department for 11 Years

A former police commander from Tajikistan was featured in an ISIS video recently where he admitted he was trained by the U.S. State Department and former military contractor Blackwater all the way up until last year.

http://theantimedia.org/isis-colonel-trained-by-blackwater-and-us-state-...

Amun

http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-syria-turkey-20151201-stor...

"It was Turkey's national intelligence agency, known as MIT, that first organized Syrian military defectors into Western-backed groups under the banner of the Free Syrian Army.

Free Syrian Army factions still convene on Turkish soil in the Joint Operations Center, a CIA-led intelligence hub that gives vetted rebels training as well as U.S.-made TOW antitank missiles used to destroy Syrian army tanks and armored units.

Islamist groups, however, have benefited from Turkey's pro-opposition policy as well. In May, the Turkish daily newspaper Cumhuriyet published video from 2014 showing customs agents impounding a truck owned by the MIT. The truck's manifest said it was carrying humanitarian assistance for Syrians. Instead it was bearing a cache of ammunition and shells the newspaper said were destined for Islamist rebels. The video's release caused a furor. Erdogan vowed to prosecute Cumhuriyet, a threat he carried out Friday when authorities arrested two of the paper's journalists on charges of espionage and aiding a terrorist organization.

Turkish assistance has been instrumental in empowering the Army of Conquest, a loose coalition of hard-line Islamist factions including Al Nusra Front, which seized control of Idlib province in March in an offensive backed by Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

Economic ties also have been forged between Turkey and rebel factions.

According to a 2015 United Nations study, two border crossings controlled by a faction of the Army of Conquest handle more than 300 trucks a day, a figure that exceeds prewar levels. The traffic yields an estimated $660,000 a day. "

[Nov 30, 2015] The Spanish General could give the order to shoot down Russian su-

This is not very probably hypothesis, but if this is true then it was NATO organized provocation...

"All the airspace in southern Europe from the Azores to the Eastern border of Turkey (Syria, Iraq, Iran) controlled by the radars mounted on towers airbase in Torrejon near Madrid. Command there 57-year-old General Ruben Garcia Servert. The final decision in the center of the Combined Air Operations takes it.

Notable quotes:

"... There is, of course, is an option that responsibility for the attack on "Drying" took over the Turkish General 62-year-old Abidin Unal, but in this case, a high-ranking Spanish military became the main witness giving orders. "If you want to shoot down the aircraft of the enemy, I is the person taking final decision" is a quote from an interview Garcia of Servert given in January of this year to the newspaper "El Mundo". ..."

"All the airspace in southern Europe from the Azores to the Eastern border of Turkey (Syria, Iraq, Iran) controlled by the radars mounted on towers airbase in Torrejon near Madrid. Command there 57-year-old General Ruben Garcia Servert. The final decision in the center of the Combined Air Operations takes it.

There is, of course, is an option that responsibility for the attack on "Drying" took over the Turkish General 62-year-old Abidin Unal, but in this case, a high-ranking Spanish military became the main witness giving orders. "If you want to shoot down the aircraft of the enemy, I is the person taking final decision" is a quote from an interview Garcia of Servert given in January of this year to the newspaper "El Mundo".

Who actually gave the order to shoot down the su-24, still we do not know. But do know that the recent crash of the UAV happened at the command of a Turkish General unknown, what was not slow to inform the military. In October two cases of violation by Russian planes of air space of Turkey Abidin conceded right to make the final decision to the Spaniard".

[Nov 30, 2015] Paul Craig Roberts Rages At The Arrogance, Hubris, Stupidity Of The US Government

Notable quotes:

"... No, except make a fool of itself by supporting ISIS. We brought ISIS in there (to Syria) - everybody knows that. Just the other day the former head the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency said on television that 'Yes, we created ISIS and we used them as henchmen to overthrow governments.' (Laughter). ..."

"... And the polls in Europe show that the people are on Russia's side regarding the shooting down of their aircraft. They don't believe (the West's) story at all. So I think what you are seeing here is the arrogance, hubris, and stupidity of the United States government. They are just handing every possible advantage over to the Russians. ..."

"... Read more here and listen to the full interview... ..."

Zero Hedge

On the heels of the Chinese stock market plunging 5.5%, continued turmoil in the Middle East and the price of gold hitting 5 year lows, former U.S. Treasury official, Dr. Paul Craig Roberts told Eric King of King World News that Putin and the Russians are now dominating in Syria and the Middle East as the West destroys itself.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts: "It could well be that this is going to work out so much in Russia's favor that Putin will send a letter of thanks to the Turkish President and say, 'Thank you very much. You've done us a huge favor. (Laughter). We lost a pilot and a naval marine but we sure have gained a lot. That was only two deaths for winning a war."…

"So that looks to me like the most likely outcome. The unintended consequence of this are so positive for Russia that it's got Washington quaking and Europe wondering about the idiocy of being in NATO."

Eric King: "What I'm hearing from you Russia is dominating in Syria. The Russians have completely taken over and there's really nothing Washington can do."

Paul Craig Roberts: "No, except make a fool of itself by supporting ISIS. We brought ISIS in there (to Syria) - everybody knows that. Just the other day the former head the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency said on television that 'Yes, we created ISIS and we used them as henchmen to overthrow governments.' (Laughter).

And the polls in Europe show that the people are on Russia's side regarding the shooting down of their aircraft. They don't believe (the West's) story at all. So I think what you are seeing here is the arrogance, hubris, and stupidity of the United States government. They are just handing every possible advantage over to the Russians.

This American government is the most incompetent government that has ever walked the earth. Those people don't have any sense at all. Just look at what they've done. In 14 years they've destroyed 7 countries, killed millions of people, and displaced millions of people. And where are those displaced people? They are overrunning Europe.

This is all because those Europeans were stupid enough to enable our wars. Now the political parties in Europe are under tremendous pressure from these refugees and the populations who object to them, and from the rising dissident parties who are saying, 'Look at what these people who you trusted have done. They've changed your country. It's not Germany anymore - it's Syria.' (Laughter).

This is a disaster. Only the stupid Americans could have produced such a disaster. Does Putin need to do anything? We're doing it all for him. So he doesn't need to do anything. He's not going to attack anybody. What does he need to attack anybody for? The idiot Americans are destroying themselves and their allies. This is an amazing fiasco."

Read more here and listen to the full interview...

Chupacabra-322

"This American government is the most incompetent government that has ever walked the earth. Those people don't have any sense at all. Just look at what they've done. In 14 years they've destroyed 7 countries, killed millions of people, and displaced millions of people. And where are those displaced people? They are overrunning Europe."

So true, it must be repeated.

chubbar

It's so incompetent it is looking deliberate.

KingFiat

King World News always says the price of gold is going to the moon tomorrow when the financial system collapses. After a while you realize no real news comes from there, and ignore them.

Not the same for Paul Craig Roberts, And I am glad to read his insights here, even if originated from KWN.

CaptainDanite

There is no denying that the KWN site is hokey, and that Eric King has a limited repertoire of "stunning" adjectives, and that the frequent employment of bold red and blue fonts can be annoying, etc., etc. However, the simple fact remains that he CONSISTENTLY conducts well-directed and well-edited interviews with some of the most respected voices in the alternative media arena. I routinely look forward to his interviews with Nomi Prins, Eric Sprott, Ronald Stoeferle, and Bill Fleckenstein -- among many, many others. At least KWN is not entirely inundated with ads like ZH is, nor is the mobile version of the site repeatedly susceptible to adware browser hijacks like ZH's mobile version is.

Furthermore, while I frequently find points of disagreement with Paul Craig Roberts, this most recent interview is PCR at his ever-loving best; it strikes to the heart of the matter of the increasingly frightening conflict brewing between the US, NATO, and the Russians. I highly recommend this interview to everyone out there who is starting to get very uncomfortable about the foreign policy incompetence of the Obama administration as it appears to be deliberately steering us into the maw of WWIII.

Lore

PATHOCRACY

"The ultimate cause of evil lies in the interaction of two human factors: 1) normal human ignorance and weakness and 2) the existence and action of a statistically small (4-8% of the general population) but extremely active group of psychologically deviant individuals. The ignorance of the existence of such psychological differences is the first criterion of ponerogenesis. That is, such ignorance creates an opening whereby such individuals can act undetected.

The presence of such 'disease' on the individual level is described in the Almost Human section of this website. However, depending on the type of activity of psychopathic and characteropathic individuals, evil can manifest on any societal level. The greater the scope of the psychopath's influence, the greater harm done. Thus any group of humans can be infected or 'ponerized' by their influence. From families, clubs, churches, businesses, and corporations, to entire nations. The most extreme form of such macrosocial evil is called 'pathocracy'.

Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes

"If the many managerial positions are assumed by individuals deprived of sufficient abilities to feel and understand the majority of other people, and who also exhibit deficiencies in technical imagination and practical skills - (faculties indispensable for governing economic and political matters) - this then results in an exceptionally serious crisis in all areas, both within the country in question and with regard to international relations. Within, the situation becomes unbearable even for those citizens who were able to feather their nest into a relatively comfortable modus vivendi. Outside, other societies start to feel the pathological quality of the phenomenon quite distinctly. Such a state of affairs cannot last long. One must then be prepared for ever more rapid changes, and also behave with great circumspection." (2nd. ed., p. 140)

LetThemEatRand

It's long by today's standards, but another great PCR link for those who are interested. Intelligent and thoughtful debate where the two participants actually allow each other to make their points. http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2015/11/25/pcr-debates-the-intelligent-a...

Killdo

this is a pretty good book on how to spot psychos and prevent being screwed over by them:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0767915828?keywords=the%20sociopath%20n...

I've read about 10 books on the subject and I find this one very intresting, well written and based on realaity (I think the author is a prof frm harvard).

It really helped me connect the dots while I lived in LA (according to the author one of 3 world'scapitals of psychopathy together with London and NY)

[Nov 30, 2015] Erdogan Says Will Resign If Oil Purchases From ISIS Proven After Putin Says Has More Proof

Notable quotes:

"... "There are security officers who are sympathizing with ISIS in Turkey. They are allowing them to go from Istanbul to the borders and infiltrate ... Syria and Iraq." ..."

Nov 30, 2015 | Zero Hedge

"I've shown photos taken from space and from aircraft which clearly demonstrate the scale of the illegal trade in oil and petroleum products," Vladimir Putin told reporters earlier this month on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Antalya. Putin was of course referencing Islamic State's illicit and highly lucrative oil trade, the ins and outs of which we've documented extensively over the past two weeks:

• The Most Important Question About ISIS That Nobody Is Asking
• Meet The Man Who Funds ISIS: Bilal Erdogan, The Son Of Turkey's President
• How Turkey Exports ISIS Oil To The World: The Scientific Evidence
• ISIS Oil Trade Full Frontal: "Raqqa's Rockefellers", Bilal Erdogan, KRG Crude, And The Israel Connection

Turkey's move to shoot down a Russian Su-24 warplane near the Syrian border afforded the Russian President all the motivation and PR cover he needed to expose Ankara's alleged role in the trafficking of illegal crude from Iraq and Syria and in the aftermath of last Tuesday's "incident," Putin lambasted Erdogan. "Oil from Islamic State is being shipped to Turkey," Putin said while in Jordan for a meeting with King Abdullah. In case that wasn't clear enough, Putin added this: "Islamic State gets cash by selling oil to Turkey."

To be sure, it's impossible to track the path ISIS oil takes from extraction to market with any degree of precision. That said, it seems that Islamic State takes advantage of the same network of smugglers, traders, and shipping companies that the KRG uses to transport Kurdish crude from Kurdistan to the Turkish port of Ceyhan. From there, the oil makes its way to Israel and other markets (depending on which story you believe) and if anyone needs to be thrown off the trail along the way, there's a ship-to-ship transfer trick that can be executed off the coast of Malta. The maneuver allegedly makes the cargoes more difficult to track.

Some believe Erdogan's son Bilal - who owns a marine transport company called BMZ Group - is heavily involved in the trafficking of Kurdish and ISIS crude. Most of the ships BMZ owns are Malta-flagged.

In light of the above, some have speculated that Turkey shot down the Su-24 in retaliation for Russia's bombing campaign that recently has destroyed over 1,000 ISIS oil trucks. Here's what Syrian Information Minister Omran al-Zoub said on Friday:

"All of the oil was delivered to a company that belongs to the son of Recep [Tayyip] Erdogan. This is why Turkey became anxious when Russia began delivering airstrikes against the IS infrastructure and destroyed more than 500 trucks with oil already. This really got on Erdogan and his company's nerves. They're importing not only oil, but wheat and historic artefacts as well."

Al-Zoub isn't alone in his suspicions. In an interview with RT, Iraqi MP and former national security adviser, Mowaffak al Rubaie - who personally led Saddam to the gallows - said ISIS is selling around $100 million of stolen crude each month in Turkey. Here are some excerpts:

"In the last eight months ISIS has managed to sell ... $800 million dollars worth of oil on the black market of Turkey. This is Iraqi oil and Syrian oil, carried by trucks from Iraq, from Syria through the borders to Turkey and sold ...[at] less than 50 percent of the international oil price."

"Now this either get consumed inside, the crude is refined on Turkish territory by the Turkish refineries, and sold in the Turkish market. Or it goes to Jihan and then in the pipelines from Jihan to the Mediterranean and sold to the international market."

"Money and dollars generated by selling Iraqi and Syrian oil on the Turkish black market is like the oxygen supply to ISIS and it's operation," he added. "Once you cut the oxygen then ISIS will suffocate."

"There isn't a shadow of a doubt that the Turkish government knows about the oil smuggling operations. The merchants, the businessmen [are buying oil] in the black market in Turkey under the noses – under the auspices if you like – of the Turkish intelligence agency and the Turkish security apparatus."

"There are security officers who are sympathizing with ISIS in Turkey. They are allowing them to go from Istanbul to the borders and infiltrate ... Syria and Iraq."

"There is no terrorist organization which can stand alone, without a neighboring country helping it – in this case Turkey."

That's pretty unequivocal. But it gets better.

On Monday, Putin was back at it, saying that Russia has obtained new information that further implicates Turkey in the Islamic State oil trade. "At the moment we have received additional information confirming that that oil from the deposits controlled by Islamic State militants enters Turkish territory on industrial scale," Putin said on the sidelines of the climate change summit in Paris. "We have traced some located on the territory of the Turkish Republic and living in regions guarded by special security services and police that have used the visa-free regime to return to our territory, where we continue to fight them."

"We have every reason to believe that the decision to down our plane was guided by a desire to ensure security of this oil's delivery routes to ports where they are shipped in tankers," he added, taking it up another notch still.

As for Erdogan, well, he "can't accept" the accusations which he calls "not moral":

• ERDOGAN: TURKEY CAN'T ACCEPT RUSSIA CLAIMS THAT IT BUYS IS OIL

LATEST - Erdo?an: Russia's claim that Turkey bought oil from Daesh is not 'moral', such claims have to be proved pic.twitter.com/PZka8MwzpL

- DAILY SABAH (@DailySabah) November 30, 2015

Hilariously, the man who just finished starting a civil war just so he could regain a few lost seats in Parliament and who would just as soon throw you in jail as look at you if he thinks you might be a threat to his government, now says he will resign if Putin (or anyone else) can present "proof": "We are not that dishonest as to buy oil from terrorists. If it is proven that we have, in fact, done so, I will leave office. If there is any evidence, let them present it, we'll consider [it]."

Hold your breath on that.

And so, the Turkey connection has been exposed and in dramatic fashion. Unfortunately for Ankara, Erdogan can't arrest Vladimir Putin like he can award winning journalists and honest police officers who, like Moscow, want to see the flow of money and weapons to Sunni militants in Syria cut off.

The real question is how NATO will react now that Turkey is quickly becoming a liability. Furthermore, you can be sure that the US, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar (who are all heavily invested in the Sunni extremist cause in Syria), are getting nervous. No one wants to see this blown wide open as that would mean the Western public getting wise to the fact that it is indeed anti-ISIS coalition governments that are funding and arming not only ISIS, but also al-Nusra and every other rebel group fighting to wrest control of the country from Assad. Worse, if it gets out that the reason the US has refrained from bombing ISIS oil trucks until now is due to the fact that Ankara and Washington had an understanding when it comes to the flow of illicit crude to Cehyan, the American public may just insist on indicting "some folks."

Remember, when it comes to criminal conspiracies, the guy who gets caught first usually ends up getting cut loose. It will be interesing to see if Erdogan starts to get the cold shoulder from Ankara's "allies" going forward.

[Nov 30, 2015] Is Balanced Growth Really the Answer

Notable quotes:

"... I can only add, that our economic system already redistributes income upward to capital and management, whose contribution to productivity is far below what they are paid. ..."

"... That's the idea of neoliberal transformation of society that happened since 80th or even earlier. Like John Kenneth Galbraith noted "Trickle-down theory is the less than elegant metaphor that if one feeds the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows" ..."

"... "The sense of responsibility in the financial community for the community as a whole is not small. It is nearly nil." John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash of 1929 ..."

"... Just as was the case with his work on financial instability, Hyman Minsky's analysis of the problems of poverty and inequality in a capitalist economy, as well as his understanding of the political dysfunctions that would result from treating these problems in the wrong way, were prophetic. See this piece by Minksy's student L. Randall Wray, especially Section 2: http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_515.pdf ..."

"... it is unjust to tell the poor that they must change before they will be entitled to work-whether it is their skills set or their character that is the barrier to work... Minsky always argued that it is preferable to "take workers as they are," providing jobs tailored to the characteristics of workers, rather than trying to tailor workers to the jobs available before they are allowed to work ..."

"... Further, NIT (and other welfare programs) would create a dependent class, which is not conducive to social cohesion (Minsky 1968). Most importantly, Minsky argued that any antipoverty program must be consistent with the underlying behavioral rules of a capitalist economy (Minsky no date, 1968, 1975a). One of those rules is that earned income is in some sense deserved. ..."

"... This misreads the politics. People who are disconnected from the job market very easily get disconnected from the political process. They don't vote. ..."

"... The problem in thinking here is the equilibrium paradigm. Equilibrium NEVER exists. If there is a glut the price falls below the marginal cost/revenue point, if the seller is desperate enough it falls to zero! Ignoring disequilibrium dynamics means this obvious (it should be obvious) point is simply ignored. The assumption of general equilibrium leads to the assumption of marginal productivity driving wages. You are not worth what you produce, you are worth precisely what somewhat else would accept to do your job. ..."

"... Never say never. There some stationary points at which equilibrium probably exists for a short period of time. But as the whole system has positive feedback loop built-in and is unstable by definition. So you are right in a sense that disequilibrium is the "normal" state of such a system and equilibrium is an exception. ..."

"... And the problem is more growth, is more growth is a trick we cannot always do in a finite resource technologically sophisticated world. (At least not growth as it is currently seen.) We need to start thinking in much longer term time scales. Saying that we have enough oil for 30 years, is not optimistic - it is an imminent crisis - or do we want our grandchildren to see the end of the world? ..."

Nov 30, 2015 | Economist's View

DrDick said...

"then more growth will simply lead to even more inequality."

Which is exactly what we have seen for the past 40 years, Great analysis here. I can only add, that our economic system already redistributes income upward to capital and management, whose contribution to productivity is far below what they are paid.

ikbez -> DrDick...

"then more growth will simply lead to even more inequality."

That's the idea of neoliberal transformation of society that happened since 80th or even earlier. Like John Kenneth Galbraith noted "Trickle-down theory is the less than elegant metaphor that if one feeds the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows"

And another relevant quote:

"The sense of responsibility in the financial community for the community as a whole is not small. It is nearly nil." John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash of 1929

anne -> likbez...

"The sense of responsibility in the financial community for the community as a whole is not small. It is nearly nil." John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash of 1929

[ Perfect. ]

Dan Kervick, November 30, 2015 at 11:12 AM

Just as was the case with his work on financial instability, Hyman Minsky's analysis of the problems of poverty and inequality in a capitalist economy, as well as his understanding of the political dysfunctions that would result from treating these problems in the wrong way, were prophetic. See this piece by Minksy's student L. Randall Wray, especially Section 2: http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_515.pdf

The centerpiece of Minsky's preferred approach was based on a government commitment to "tight full employment". He believed that neither human capital investment, economic growth, nor redistribution would be sufficient on their own to address the problem.

As part of the critique of the human capital approach, Minsky argued that:

"it is unjust to tell the poor that they must change before they will be entitled to work-whether it is their skills set or their character that is the barrier to work... Minsky always argued that it is preferable to "take workers as they are," providing jobs tailored to the characteristics of workers, rather than trying to tailor workers to the jobs available before they are allowed to work (Minsky 1965, 1968, 1973)."

Minsky accurately foresaw the way in which a welfare approach to poverty, as opposed to a full employment approach, would politically divide working people among themselves:

"Further, NIT (and other welfare programs) would create a dependent class, which is not conducive to social cohesion (Minsky 1968). Most importantly, Minsky argued that any antipoverty program must be consistent with the underlying behavioral rules of a capitalist economy (Minsky no date, 1968, 1975a). One of those rules is that earned income is in some sense deserved."

"With the perspective of the 1980s and 1990s now behind us, it is hard to deny Minsky's arguments-President Reagan successfully turned most Americans against welfare programs and President Clinton finally "eliminated welfare as we know it." According to Minsky, a successful antipoverty program will need to provide visible benefits to the average taxpayer."

We can note that this political problem has only gotten worse, as can be seen from the deepening ugliness of our domestic politics, and the poll results that MacGillis cites.

Minsky also understood the unhealthy political and economic dynamics of an undirected aggregate demand approach to poverty, and promoted, following ideas of Keynes, a measure of socialized investment and direct job creation:

"Minsky feared that using demand stimulus to reduce poverty would necessarily lead to "stop-go" policy. Expansion would fuel inflation, causing policy makers to reverse course to slow growth in order to fight inflation (Minsky 1965, 1968). Because wages (and prices) in leading sectors would rise in expansion, but could resist deflationary pressures in recession, there would be an upward bias to rising wages in those sectors. However, in the lagging sectors, wage increases would come slowly-only with adequate tightening of labor markets -- and could be reversed in recession. Hence, Minsky argued that a directed demand policy would be required-to raise demand in the lagging sectors and for low wage and unemployed workers. For this reason, he concluded that a direct job creation program would be required."

All this adds up to a more activist role for the government sector.

likbez -> Dan Kervick...

My impression is that "human capital" is one of the most fundamental neoliberal myths. See, for example What Exactly Is Neoliberalism by Wendy Brown https://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/booked-3-what-exactly-is-neoliberalism-wendy-brown-undoing-the-demos

As for people betraying their own economic interests, this phenomenon was aptly described in "What's the matter with Kansas" which can actually be reformulated as "What's the matter with the USA?". And the answer he gave is that neoliberalism converted the USA into a bizarre high demand cult. There are several characteristics of a high demand cult that are applicable. Among them:

• "The group is preoccupied with making money."
• "Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished."
• "Mind-numbing techniques (for example: meditation, chanting, speaking in tongues, debilitating work routines) are used to suppress doubts about the group or its leader(s)." Entertainment and, especially sport events in the US society serves the same role.
• "The group's leadership dictates – sometimes in great detail – how members should think, act, and feel." Looks like this part of brainwashing is outsourced to economy departments ;-)
• "The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its leader(s), and members (for example the group and/or the leader has a special mission to save humanity)."
• "The group has a polarized, "we-they" mentality that causes conflict with the wider society."
• "The group's leader is not accountable to any authorities (as are, for example, clergy with mainstream denominations)."
• "The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify means (for example: collecting money for bogus charities) that members would have considered unethical before joining."
• "The group's leadership induces guilt feelings in lower members for the lack of achievement in order to control them."
• "Members are expected to devote inordinate amounts of time to the group."
• "Members are encouraged or required to live and/or socialize only with other group members."

It is very difficult to get rid of this neoliberal sect mentality like is the case with other high demand cults.

cm -> likbez...

What has any of this to do with human capital? "Capital" is basically a synonym for productive capacity, with regard to what "productive" means in the socioeconomic system or otherwise the context that is being discussed.

E.g. social or political capital designates the ability (i.e. capacity) to exert influence in social networks or societal decision making at the respective scales (organization, city, regional, national etc.), where "productive" means "achieving desired or favored outcomes for the person(s) possessing the capital or for those on whose behalf it is used".

Human capital, in the economic domain, is then the combined capacity of the human population in the domain under consideration that is available for productive endeavors of any kind. This includes BTW e.g. housewives and other household workers whose work is generally not paid, but you better believe it is socially productive.

likbez -> cm...

"Human capital, in the economic domain, is then the combined capacity of the human population in the domain under consideration that is available for productive endeavors of any kind. This includes BTW e.g. housewives and other household workers whose work is generally not paid, but you better believe it is socially productive."

This is not true. The term "human capital" under neoliberalism has different semantic meaning: it presuppose viewing a person as a market actor.

See the discussion of the term in http://www.jceps.com/wp-content/uploads/PDFs/10-1-07.pdf

kthomas

"...it's driven be resentment..."

No, its driven by racism. White trash will take with one hand, then walk right into a voting both and screw themselves because they think they sticking it to blacks, mexicans, gays, etc.

Syaloch -> kthomas...

Racism is certainly part of it, but it's really more fundamental than that.

"This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition, though necessary both to establish and to maintain the distinction of ranks and the order of society, is, at the same time, the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments. That wealth and greatness are often regarded with the respect and admiration which are due only to wisdom and virtue; and that the contempt, of which vice and folly are the only proper objects, is often most unjustly bestowed upon poverty and weakness, has been the complaint of moralists in all ages."

Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments

http://knarf.english.upenn.edu/Smith/tms133.html

cm -> kthomas...

What is racism if not an expression of resentment?

bakho said...

This misreads the politics. People who are disconnected from the job market very easily get disconnected from the political process. They don't vote. The people who do have jobs and are worried about keeping them and being paid too little are voting against the "losers" who they see as parasites. Never mind that the Malefactors of Great Wealth are the true parasites. Elections in the US are won or lost on voter turnout.

The Rage said...

I guess it depends on what kind of economy you want.

Growth of all kinds is not good. The 2001-2007 "growth" was badly constructed. I think America itself is in a bad rut....and has been since 1974. That itself will not be popular. The consensus belief was everything was rosy up until 2001. That is lie. They used to have a saying "nothing really happens on the X-files anymore". It really applies to America since 1974. It goes beyond "inequality".

I mean, we could have 3% wage growth in 2016 and 4% wage growth in 2017. That doesn't mean a damn thing for a economy's health. The infrastructure is bad. It shows up in pop culture apathy.

pgl -> The Rage...

"The 2001-2007 "growth" was badly constructed."

Glenn Hubbard might quarrel with this. He was well constructed for George W. Bush's base - rich people.

On the whole - great comment!!!

cm -> The Rage...

The Y2K/dotcom boom unraveled in 2000, but not all at once. It is difficult to impossible to disentagle the boundary between dotcom bust, 9/11 and the prolonged reaction to it, and the start of the Bush presidency (and the top policymaking figures that came with that, I don't want to necessarily tie it to Bush himself).

At the same time, the global rollout of the internet, telecommunication, (start of) commodity videoconferencing, broadband and realtime data exchange, etc. enabled the outsourcing and offshoring of large and growing segments of blue and white collar jobs, and much increased fungibility of variously skilled labor altogether.

On that foundation, a lot of things will appear as badly constructed. Or from a different angle, given that foundation, how would you arrange for things to be well constructed?

likbez -> cm...

I would view 9/11 as a perfect cure for dot-com bust. Soon after invasion of Iraq stock market returned to almost precrash levels. War is the health of stock market. And since probably 1998 nobody cared about real economy anyway.

Also housing boom started around this period as conscious, deliberate effort of Fed to blow the bubble to cure the consequences of the crash at all costs and face the day of reckoning later (without Mr. Greenspan at the helm)

reason said...

The problem in thinking here is the equilibrium paradigm. Equilibrium NEVER exists. If there is a glut the price falls below the marginal cost/revenue point, if the seller is desperate enough it falls to zero! Ignoring disequilibrium dynamics means this obvious (it should be obvious) point is simply ignored. The assumption of general equilibrium leads to the assumption of marginal productivity driving wages. You are not worth what you produce, you are worth precisely what somewhat else would accept to do your job.

Lafayette -> reason...

I could not agree more. A Market-Economy is a dynamic in constant disequilibrium, changing positively and negatively around a mean. The mean is very rarely an "equilibrium".

likbez -> reason...

Never say never. There some stationary points at which equilibrium probably exists for a short period of time. But as the whole system has positive feedback loop built-in and is unstable by definition. So you are right in a sense that disequilibrium is the "normal" state of such a system and equilibrium is an exception.

reason said...

And the problem is more growth, is more growth is a trick we cannot always do in a finite resource technologically sophisticated world. (At least not growth as it is currently seen.) We need to start thinking in much longer term time scales. Saying that we have enough oil for 30 years, is not optimistic - it is an imminent crisis - or do we want our grandchildren to see the end of the world?

[Nov 29, 2015] Former CIA Deputy Director Gives A Stunning Reason Why Obama Has Not Attacked ISIS Oil Infrastructure

Notable quotes:

"... As the Daily Caller adds, Morell also said the White House was concerned about destroying infrastructure that could be used by the Syrian people. Such profound concern for a people which has been traumatized for the past 5 years courtesy of a US-funded effort to destabilize the nation courtesy of US-armed "rebels" whose only purpose has been the deposition of yet another elected president, and where the emergence of the CIA-created Islamic State has led to the biggest wave of refugees to emerge, and flood Europe, since World War II. ..."

"... Meanwhile, the real reasons behind ISIS massive wealth build up: the illicit oil trade facilitated by, and involving NATO-member state Turkey, whose president and his son collect billions in illegal profits by arranging the charter of Islamic State oil to Israel and other international buyers of ISIS' cheap oil, and which involves such "highly respected" commodity traders as Trafigura and Vitol , continues to this day, and only Putin has done anything to put a dent in it. ..."

"... Depleted Uranium And The Iraq War's Legacy Of Cancer ..."

"... Depleted Uranium Contamination: A Crime against Humanity ..."

"... when 'baby`bush' raided iraq in 2003, he and his filthy scum cronies destroyed [bombed, etc.] every last bit of iraqis antiquities, libraries, religious monuments, museums etel, and... guarded with total authority the Ministry of Energy, oil infrastructure, and Iraq's Central bank with a small army of specialized forces ranging from 12k-18k soldiers. ..."

Zero Hedge

As we pointed out a week ago, even before the downing of the Russian jet by a Turkish F-16, the most important question that nobody had asked about ISIS is where is the funding for the terrorist organization coming from, and more importantly, since everyone tacitly knows where said funding is coming from (as we have revealed in an ongoing series of posts "Meet The Man Who Funds ISIS: Bilal Erdogan, The Son Of Turkey's President", "How Turkey Exports ISIS Oil To The World: The Scientific Evidence" and "ISIS Oil Trade Full Frontal: "Raqqa's Rockefellers", Bilal Erdogan, KRG Crude, And The Israel Connection") few on the US-led Western Alliance have done anything to stop the hundreds of millions in oil sale proceeds from funding the world's best organized terrorist group.

We concluded by asking "how long until someone finally asks the all important question regarding the Islamic State: who is the commodity trader breaching every known law of funding terrorism when buying ISIS crude, almost certainly with the tacit approval by various "western alliance" governments, and why is it that these governments have allowed said middleman to continue funding ISIS for as long as it has?"

To be sure, the only party that actually did something to halt ISIS' oil infrastructure was Russia, whose bombing raids of Islamic State oil routes may not only have contributed to the fatal attack by Turkey of the Russian Su-24 (as the curtailment of ISIS' oil flows led to a big hit in the funds collected by the biggest middleman in the region, Turkey, its president and his son, Bilal not to mention Israel which may have been actively buying ISIS oil over the past year) but prompted questions why the bombing campaign by the US-led alliance had been so woefully incapable of hitting ISIS where it truly hurts: its funding.

This past week, someone finally came up with a "reason" why the Obama administration had been so impotent at denting the Islamic State's well-greased oil machine. In an interview on PBS' Charlie Rose on Tuesday, Rose pointed out that before the terrorist attacks in Paris, the U.S. had not bombed ISIS-controlled oil tankers, to which the former CIA deputy director Michael Morell responded that Barack Obama didn't order the bombing of ISIS's oil transportation infrastructure until recently because he was concerned about environmental damage.

Yes, he really said that:

We didn't go after oil wells, actually hitting oil wells that ISIS controls, because we didn't want to do environmental damage, and we didn't want to destroy that infrastructure.

In other words, one can blame such recent outbreaks of deadly terrorist activity as the Paris bombings and the explosion of the Russian passenger airplane over Egypt's Sinai Peninsula on Obama's hard line stance to not pollute the atmosphere with the toxic aftermath of destroyed ISIS infrastructure.

Brilliant.

As the Daily Caller adds, Morell also said the White House was concerned about destroying infrastructure that could be used by the Syrian people. Such profound concern for a people which has been traumatized for the past 5 years courtesy of a US-funded effort to destabilize the nation courtesy of US-armed "rebels" whose only purpose has been the deposition of yet another elected president, and where the emergence of the CIA-created Islamic State has led to the biggest wave of refugees to emerge, and flood Europe, since World War II.

But back to Obama's alleged decision that not polluting the environment is more important than halting the funding artery that keeps ISIS in business.

Morell continued "Prior to Paris, there seemed to be a judgment that look, we don't want to destroy these oil tankers because that's infrastructure that's going to be necessary to support the people when ISIS isn't there anymore, and it's going to create environmental damage. And we didn't go after oil wells - actually hitting oil wells that ISIS controls because we didn't want to do environmental damage and we didn't want to destroy that infrastructure, right."

Then we started asking questions, others joined in, and everything changed: "So now we're hitting oil in trucks and maybe you get to the point where you say we also have to hit oil wells. So those are the kind of tough decisions you have to make."

Of course, the lunacy gets even more ridiculous when one recalls that none other than one of the democrat frontrunners for president, Bernie Sanders, suggested in all seriousness that the real cause for terrorism is climate change, an allegation subsequently echoed by both UK's Prince Charles and none other than the chief of the UN, Ban Ki-moon himself.

So here is the purported logic: climate change leads to terrorism, but one can't eradicate the primary funding source of the biggest terrorist threat in the world, the Islamic State, because of dangers it may lead to even more environmental damage and climate change.

We are truly speechless at this idiocy.

Meanwhile, the real reasons behind ISIS massive wealth build up: the illicit oil trade facilitated by, and involving NATO-member state Turkey, whose president and his son collect billions in illegal profits by arranging the charter of Islamic State oil to Israel and other international buyers of ISIS' cheap oil, and which involves such "highly respected" commodity traders as Trafigura and Vitol, continues to this day, and only Putin has done anything to put a dent in it.

For those who can't believe any of this (and it took us quite a while to realize this is not some elaborate prank) here is the clip proving the former CIA deputy director actually said it all.

Looney

Morell is the same spook who "edited" Susan Rice's Benghazi SNAFU. Why don't all these assholes like Morell, Greenspan, Bernanke, just shut up, crawl under a rock, and hope they're never found? ;-)

Buckaroo Banzai

The media is in the tank for cunts like this, and most people just don't bother paying attention anyway. If Charlie Rose asked tough questions, his career would have ended before it even began. Instead he makes a wonderful living playing the kindly avuncular shill.

Ignatius

There is no lie these murderous cunts won't tell. I guess depleted uranium is not an environmental concern? Fuck 'em. Fuck all of 'em.

Pladizow

• ----> Not OK to spill oil
• ----> OK to spill blood

JustObserving

2400 tons of depleted uranium used in Iraq and 1000 tons in Afghanistan.

Fallujah cancer rates worse than Hiroshima due to use of depleted uranium. Leukemia rates 38 times higher than normal https://vimeo.com/38175279

Depleted Uranium And The Iraq War's Legacy Of Cancer

http://www.mintpressnews.com/depleted-uranium-iraq-wars-legacy-cancer/19...

Depleted Uranium Contamination: A Crime against Humanity

http://www.globalresearch.ca/depleted-uranium-contamination-a-crime-agai...

prmths2

It's not that simple:

"In a follow up study, in which Dr Busby was a co-author, hair, soil and water samples were taken from Fallujah and tested for the presence of heavy metals. The researchers expected to find depleted uranium in the environmental samples. It is well known that the US used depleted uranium weapons in Iraq during the 1991 Gulf war; and Iraqis, at least, are well aware of the increases in cancers and infant mortality rates in the city of Basrah, which was heavily bombarded during Desert Storm. However, what the researchers found was not depleted uranium, but man-made, slightly enriched uranium."

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/oct/25/fallujah-iraq-healt...

"Whilst the results seem to qualitatively support the existence of serious mutation-related health effects in Fallujah, owing to the structural problems associated with surveys of this kind, care should be exercised in interpreting the findings quantitatively. "

"Finally, the results reported here do not throw any light upon the identity of the agent(s) causing the increased levels of illness and although we have drawn attention to the use of depleted uranium as one potential relevant exposure, there may be other possibilities and we see the current study as investigating the anecdotal evidence of increases in cancer and infant mortality in Fallujah."

http://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/7/7/2828/htm

It is possible that there may be a synergistic effect involving heavy metals in general (i.e., Pb, U, Hg)

http://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs00128-012-0817-2.pdf

Urban Redneck

It's not necessarily a lie, but it is necessarily a straw man and red herring, which distracts from a conversation of the forgone alternatives to achieve the (supposedly) desired ends. Charlie cocksucker and his mindless followers apparently buy the implicit argument the only tools in the almighty CIA's chest to combat ISIS's operations funding with oil revenues was "bombing Syria's (relatively tiny) oil fields" and creating an environmental catastrophe somehow akin to Saddam in Kuwait...

'Muricans are getting exactly the government the (collectively) deserve.

Lore

I think the psychopaths don't give a shit. Remember the scale of MONEY and CONTROL at stake. If you want to disable an insubordinate regime for standing up to your plans for regional hegemony and energy supply, you punish the host population by taking out key infrastructure. So for starters, place the launch triggers for all the drone strikes and aircraft sorties in the hands of obedient lackies who follow orders without giving a shit, assemble a list of strategic targets, and then announce "Aha! ISIS happens to be standing directly in front of this strategically-important piece of infrastructure" (bridge, refinery, storage tank, whatever), and then press the button. Proxy war is simply the policy of blaming somebody else for your own rotten behaviour. If the Syrian people are displaced, so much the better, because mass migration conveniently handicaps the economies of nations in Europe that might get in the way of continued button-pushing.

It's fucking evil, from start to finish. There was a time when it was a compliment to be called a Company Man, but nowadays it just means you're a pathological liar and a whore and a louse.

NoDebt

So they'll blow up wedding parties and whatever innocent civilians happen to be around their "targets" but they won't dare touch an oil well.

That speaks volumes. Delusional is the wrong word. Makes it sound like it's not their fault or something.

KesselRunin12Parsecs

"We didn't go after oil wells, actually hitting oil wells that ISIS controls, because we didn't want to do environmental damage"

So now explain 'SCORCHED EARTH POLICY' after you presumably rescued babies from incubators in 1991 you POS mF'er.

Kirk2NCC1701

Actually, he's telling you everything he can and you need to know or figure out.

Y'all must be 'Mericans, cause you can't read between the lines or read the situation/context. Allow me to translate for you:

1. He's under an NDA, and must keep his Oath of Secrecy.

2. If he gives you a blatantly BS answer, it is YOUR job to figure out that he (a) can't tell you the truth and (b) that it's Code for "Yes we support them to the hilt, and use Middle-men and Cutouts as SOP, but also we deny everything as SOP."

Normalcy Bias

He reminds me of his movie counterpart, the 'Robert Ritter, CIA Deputy Director' character from Clear and Present Danger.

Evil, arrogant, smug, and devoid of any conscience...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKsDjpKr2Mk

me or you

Meanwhile:US and Turkey cease flights over Syria, as Russia deploys 7000 troops to Turkish border with Armenia

Chris88

We didn't go after oil wells, actually hitting oil wells that ISIS controls, because we didn't want to do environmental damage, and we didn't want to destroy that infrastructure.

..damage a perfectly good CIA creation.

Junerberno

After the attack by Boko Haram (Al Qaeda) on the shopping mall in Nairobi, the US moved to seize a senior Al Qaeda operative living in a mansion in North Africa. We knew where he was all along, but never went after him, until after the attack. He was "made" by the Saudis and we were appeasing him while he was "doing good" (killing Shia) but when he stepped out of line we punished him. It's certain we asked for permission before arresting him finally, of course.

Pausing, because it must sink in: Al Qaeda. Who attacked us 9-11. Our brownshirts.

So now we suddenly care about ISIL after they "step out of line" in Paris. They were our friends when they were sawing the heads off Shia. But they stepped out of line so we used a stick on their hands.

The US knows where all of ISIL are at all times. ISIL has been permitted to slaughter everyone in its path because they are focused on killing Shia, and Israel supports a holocaust against Shia muslims.

earleflorida

when 'baby`bush' raided iraq in 2003, he and his filthy scum cronies destroyed [bombed, etc.] every last bit of iraqis antiquities, libraries, religious monuments, museums etel, and... guarded with total authority the Ministry of Energy, oil infrastructure, and Iraq's Central bank with a small army of specialized forces ranging from 12k-18k soldiers.

Raymond_K._Hessel

No, isis is not fairly described as comprised of former Baathists. Thats some neocon propaganda.

Its mostly Libyans and Saudis and Yemenis and some Iraqis and Turks, cats herded by the us and israel and saudi.

Isis is a proxy for these states and turkey.
http://www.voltairenet.org/article189385.html
http://ftmdaily.com/what-jerry-thinks/whysyria/

coast

But they can bomb the fuck out of Iraq, Libya, Syria etc. setting those countries back to the stone age, displacing and killing millions, destroying historical buildings, build nuke plants on fault lines, gmo food, flouride poison in our water, spraying shit in the skies etc....but NOOOO!!, we cant bomboil oil infrastructures that are helping arm the terrorists...what a fucking liar piece of shit..

marcusfenix

this is some epic and absurd bullfuckingshit to the highest degree right here.

if they had no plans to hit IS in the one way it would really hurt them, in the only way it would make any difference then it begs the question....

why bother bombing them at all?

these people are not stupid, they know exactly how war works, how to wage it properly and how to defeat an enemy. and yet they try and sell the idiotic idea that they did not go after the most valuable and vulnerable of IS assets out of environmental concerns?

really?

and this is exactly why the "coalition" warned the Syrian air force against carrying out missions in these areas, outright threatened them in fact. to provide air cover and a safe route for IS oil to find it's way into Turkey and Iraq. and it worked, it was smooth sailing and billions all around right up until Moscow stepped in and literally started blowing up the program.

the "save the environment" excuse doesn't play on any level and WFT good does it do the Syria people for this infrastructure to exist so long as IS controls it, they sure as shit are not benefiting from it. in fact it only hurts them more because the longer IS can make billions off the sale of this oil the longer this war will drag on.

the longer the war drags on the more innocent Syrian's die so it would in fact be better for the common people of Syria for this oil pipeline to be destroyed and ISIS starved to death. then afterwords the Syrians can go ahead and start rebuilding the infrastructure. but there won't be an afterwords so long as IS can make that money and fund there whole drug soaked, murderous operation.

and I wonder what the citizens of Paris think about the environmental concerns vs wiping out the islamic states revenue stream?

all this sudden care and concern flowing from DC about civilians, about oil smugglers, civilian infrastructure and mother earth makes me want to vomit.

because it's all just a never ending stream of bullshit and lies.

sometimes, in the darkest corners of my mind, I do sincerely wonder weather nuclear war might just the only thing that will bring this lunacy to an end. not saying i want it to happen or that i want to live through it but it might just be the only way for somebody, somewhere in the world to get a fresh start free of this insane asylum we all live in.

Johnny Horscaulk

http://original.antiwar.com/dan_sanchez/2015/10/05/seize-the-chaos/
https://medium.com/dan-sanchez/clean-break-to-dirty-wars-d5ebc5fda9f9

http://leaksource.info/2015/01/17/the-yinon-plan-greater-israel-syria-ir...

Isis is a name for us/israeli/saudi/Israeli mostly foreign mercenaries there to destroy Syria as a functioning state.

For Israel.

http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=western_support_for_islam...

And to block the Iran pipeline
http://www.mintpressnews.com/migrant-crisis-syria-war-fueled-by-competin...

But for the us deep state, the zog, its really basically about Greater Israel.

http://www.sweetliberty.org/issues/israel/zionist2.html

[Nov 29, 2015] ANDREW NAPOLITANO What to be thankful for

Notable quotes:

"... What if the government's goal is to perpetuate itself? What if the real levers of governmental power are pulled by agents, diplomats and bureaucrats behind the scenes? ..."

"... What if the frequent public displays of adversity between the Republicans and the Democrats are just a facade and a charade? ..."

"... What if the congressional leadership and most of the membership from both major political parties believe in perpetual war and perpetual debt? ..."

"... What if the political class in America believes that war is the health of the state? ..."

"... What if the government demands transparency from all of us but declines to be transparent to us? ..."

"... Story Continues → ..."

Nov 29, 2015 | Washington Times

What if the government's goal is to perpetuate itself? What if the real levers of governmental power are pulled by agents, diplomats and bureaucrats behind the scenes? What if they stay in power no matter who is elected president or which political party controls Congress?

What if the frequent public displays of adversity between the Republicans and the Democrats are just a facade and a charade? What if both major political parties agree on the transcendental issues of our day?

What if the leadership of both major political parties believes that our rights are not natural to our humanity but instead gifts from the government? What if those leaders believe that the government that gives gifts to the people can take those gifts back?

What if the leadership of both parties gives only lip service to Thomas Jefferson's words in the Declaration of Independence that all people "are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, [and] among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness" and that the purpose of government is to protect these rights? What if the leadership of both parties dismisses these ideas as just Jefferson's outdated musings? What if Jefferson's arguments have been enacted into the federal laws that all in government have sworn to uphold?

... ... ...

What if the congressional leadership and most of the membership from both major political parties believe in perpetual war and perpetual debt? What if the history of American government in the past 100 years is proof of this nearly universal belief among the political class?

What if the political class in America believes that war is the health of the state? What if the leadership of that class wants war so as to induce the loyalty of the voters, open the pocketbooks of the taxpayers and cause compliance among the people? What if the political class uses war to enrich its benefactors? What if the government has been paying for war by increasing its debt?

What if the political class has been paying for prosperity by increasing the government's debt? What if that class has controlled the cash-creating computers at the Federal Reserve, and the free cash the Fed creates is to bankers and traders what heroin is to addicts? What if the $18.6 trillion current federal government debt has largely been caused by borrowing to pay for war and false prosperity? What if 20 cents of every tax dollar collected by the feds today is spent on interest payments for the government's debt?

... ... ...

What if the government demands transparency from all of us but declines to be transparent to us? What if the government fosters the make-believe notion that it exists to serve us? What if the government denies that it works for us and thinks we work for it? What if it has access to all of our communications, bank accounts, health and legal records, and monthly utility and credit card bills? What if the government knows more about us than we know about it?

What if the government stays in power by bribery? What if it bribes the states with grants of cash, the rich with bailouts, the middle class with tax cuts and the poor with welfare? What if the courts have approved this bribery?

What if, on Thanksgiving Day, our gratitude is not to the government that assails our freedoms but to God, who gave us our freedoms? What if, on Thanksgiving Day, our gratitude is for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? What if we possess them despite the government?

Story Continues →

[Nov 29, 2015] Former CIA Deputy Director Gives A Stunning Reason Why Obama Has Not Attacked ISIS Oil Infrastructure

Notable quotes:

"... As the Daily Caller adds, Morell also said the White House was concerned about destroying infrastructure that could be used by the Syrian people. Such profound concern for a people which has been traumatized for the past 5 years courtesy of a US-funded effort to destabilize the nation courtesy of US-armed "rebels" whose only purpose has been the deposition of yet another elected president, and where the emergence of the CIA-created Islamic State has led to the biggest wave of refugees to emerge, and flood Europe, since World War II. ..."

"... Meanwhile, the real reasons behind ISIS massive wealth build up: the illicit oil trade facilitated by, and involving NATO-member state Turkey, whose president and his son collect billions in illegal profits by arranging the charter of Islamic State oil to Israel and other international buyers of ISIS' cheap oil, and which involves such "highly respected" commodity traders as Trafigura and Vitol , continues to this day, and only Putin has done anything to put a dent in it. ..."

"... Depleted Uranium And The Iraq War's Legacy Of Cancer ..."

"... Depleted Uranium Contamination: A Crime against Humanity ..."

"... when 'baby`bush' raided iraq in 2003, he and his filthy scum cronies destroyed [bombed, etc.] every last bit of iraqis antiquities, libraries, religious monuments, museums etel, and... guarded with total authority the Ministry of Energy, oil infrastructure, and Iraq's Central bank with a small army of specialized forces ranging from 12k-18k soldiers. ..."

Zero Hedge

As we pointed out a week ago, even before the downing of the Russian jet by a Turkish F-16, the most important question that nobody had asked about ISIS is where is the funding for the terrorist organization coming from, and more importantly, since everyone tacitly knows where said funding is coming from (as we have revealed in an ongoing series of posts "Meet The Man Who Funds ISIS: Bilal Erdogan, The Son Of Turkey's President", "How Turkey Exports ISIS Oil To The World: The Scientific Evidence" and "ISIS Oil Trade Full Frontal: "Raqqa's Rockefellers", Bilal Erdogan, KRG Crude, And The Israel Connection") few on the US-led Western Alliance have done anything to stop the hundreds of millions in oil sale proceeds from funding the world's best organized terrorist group.

We concluded by asking "how long until someone finally asks the all important question regarding the Islamic State: who is the commodity trader breaching every known law of funding terrorism when buying ISIS crude, almost certainly with the tacit approval by various "western alliance" governments, and why is it that these governments have allowed said middleman to continue funding ISIS for as long as it has?"

To be sure, the only party that actually did something to halt ISIS' oil infrastructure was Russia, whose bombing raids of Islamic State oil routes may not only have contributed to the fatal attack by Turkey of the Russian Su-24 (as the curtailment of ISIS' oil flows led to a big hit in the funds collected by the biggest middleman in the region, Turkey, its president and his son, Bilal not to mention Israel which may have been actively buying ISIS oil over the past year) but prompted questions why the bombing campaign by the US-led alliance had been so woefully incapable of hitting ISIS where it truly hurts: its funding.

This past week, someone finally came up with a "reason" why the Obama administration had been so impotent at denting the Islamic State's well-greased oil machine. In an interview on PBS' Charlie Rose on Tuesday, Rose pointed out that before the terrorist attacks in Paris, the U.S. had not bombed ISIS-controlled oil tankers, to which the former CIA deputy director Michael Morell responded that Barack Obama didn't order the bombing of ISIS's oil transportation infrastructure until recently because he was concerned about environmental damage.

Yes, he really said that:

We didn't go after oil wells, actually hitting oil wells that ISIS controls, because we didn't want to do environmental damage, and we didn't want to destroy that infrastructure.

In other words, one can blame such recent outbreaks of deadly terrorist activity as the Paris bombings and the explosion of the Russian passenger airplane over Egypt's Sinai Peninsula on Obama's hard line stance to not pollute the atmosphere with the toxic aftermath of destroyed ISIS infrastructure.

Brilliant.

As the Daily Caller adds, Morell also said the White House was concerned about destroying infrastructure that could be used by the Syrian people. Such profound concern for a people which has been traumatized for the past 5 years courtesy of a US-funded effort to destabilize the nation courtesy of US-armed "rebels" whose only purpose has been the deposition of yet another elected president, and where the emergence of the CIA-created Islamic State has led to the biggest wave of refugees to emerge, and flood Europe, since World War II.

But back to Obama's alleged decision that not polluting the environment is more important than halting the funding artery that keeps ISIS in business.

Morell continued "Prior to Paris, there seemed to be a judgment that look, we don't want to destroy these oil tankers because that's infrastructure that's going to be necessary to support the people when ISIS isn't there anymore, and it's going to create environmental damage. And we didn't go after oil wells - actually hitting oil wells that ISIS controls because we didn't want to do environmental damage and we didn't want to destroy that infrastructure, right."

Then we started asking questions, others joined in, and everything changed: "So now we're hitting oil in trucks and maybe you get to the point where you say we also have to hit oil wells. So those are the kind of tough decisions you have to make."

Of course, the lunacy gets even more ridiculous when one recalls that none other than one of the democrat frontrunners for president, Bernie Sanders, suggested in all seriousness that the real cause for terrorism is climate change, an allegation subsequently echoed by both UK's Prince Charles and none other than the chief of the UN, Ban Ki-moon himself.

So here is the purported logic: climate change leads to terrorism, but one can't eradicate the primary funding source of the biggest terrorist threat in the world, the Islamic State, because of dangers it may lead to even more environmental damage and climate change.

We are truly speechless at this idiocy.

Meanwhile, the real reasons behind ISIS massive wealth build up: the illicit oil trade facilitated by, and involving NATO-member state Turkey, whose president and his son collect billions in illegal profits by arranging the charter of Islamic State oil to Israel and other international buyers of ISIS' cheap oil, and which involves such "highly respected" commodity traders as Trafigura and Vitol, continues to this day, and only Putin has done anything to put a dent in it.

For those who can't believe any of this (and it took us quite a while to realize this is not some elaborate prank) here is the clip proving the former CIA deputy director actually said it all.

Looney

Morell is the same spook who "edited" Susan Rice's Benghazi SNAFU. Why don't all these assholes like Morell, Greenspan, Bernanke, just shut up, crawl under a rock, and hope they're never found? ;-)

Buckaroo Banzai

The media is in the tank for cunts like this, and most people just don't bother paying attention anyway. If Charlie Rose asked tough questions, his career would have ended before it even began. Instead he makes a wonderful living playing the kindly avuncular shill.

Ignatius

There is no lie these murderous cunts won't tell. I guess depleted uranium is not an environmental concern? Fuck 'em. Fuck all of 'em.

Pladizow

• ----> Not OK to spill oil
• ----> OK to spill blood

JustObserving

2400 tons of depleted uranium used in Iraq and 1000 tons in Afghanistan.

Fallujah cancer rates worse than Hiroshima due to use of depleted uranium. Leukemia rates 38 times higher than normal https://vimeo.com/38175279

Depleted Uranium And The Iraq War's Legacy Of Cancer

http://www.mintpressnews.com/depleted-uranium-iraq-wars-legacy-cancer/19...

Depleted Uranium Contamination: A Crime against Humanity

http://www.globalresearch.ca/depleted-uranium-contamination-a-crime-agai...

prmths2

It's not that simple:

"In a follow up study, in which Dr Busby was a co-author, hair, soil and water samples were taken from Fallujah and tested for the presence of heavy metals. The researchers expected to find depleted uranium in the environmental samples. It is well known that the US used depleted uranium weapons in Iraq during the 1991 Gulf war; and Iraqis, at least, are well aware of the increases in cancers and infant mortality rates in the city of Basrah, which was heavily bombarded during Desert Storm. However, what the researchers found was not depleted uranium, but man-made, slightly enriched uranium."

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/oct/25/fallujah-iraq-healt...

"Whilst the results seem to qualitatively support the existence of serious mutation-related health effects in Fallujah, owing to the structural problems associated with surveys of this kind, care should be exercised in interpreting the findings quantitatively. "

"Finally, the results reported here do not throw any light upon the identity of the agent(s) causing the increased levels of illness and although we have drawn attention to the use of depleted uranium as one potential relevant exposure, there may be other possibilities and we see the current study as investigating the anecdotal evidence of increases in cancer and infant mortality in Fallujah."

http://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/7/7/2828/htm

It is possible that there may be a synergistic effect involving heavy metals in general (i.e., Pb, U, Hg)

http://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs00128-012-0817-2.pdf

Urban Redneck

It's not necessarily a lie, but it is necessarily a straw man and red herring, which distracts from a conversation of the forgone alternatives to achieve the (supposedly) desired ends. Charlie cocksucker and his mindless followers apparently buy the implicit argument the only tools in the almighty CIA's chest to combat ISIS's operations funding with oil revenues was "bombing Syria's (relatively tiny) oil fields" and creating an environmental catastrophe somehow akin to Saddam in Kuwait...

'Muricans are getting exactly the government the (collectively) deserve.

Lore

I think the psychopaths don't give a shit. Remember the scale of MONEY and CONTROL at stake. If you want to disable an insubordinate regime for standing up to your plans for regional hegemony and energy supply, you punish the host population by taking out key infrastructure. So for starters, place the launch triggers for all the drone strikes and aircraft sorties in the hands of obedient lackies who follow orders without giving a shit, assemble a list of strategic targets, and then announce "Aha! ISIS happens to be standing directly in front of this strategically-important piece of infrastructure" (bridge, refinery, storage tank, whatever), and then press the button. Proxy war is simply the policy of blaming somebody else for your own rotten behaviour. If the Syrian people are displaced, so much the better, because mass migration conveniently handicaps the economies of nations in Europe that might get in the way of continued button-pushing.

It's fucking evil, from start to finish. There was a time when it was a compliment to be called a Company Man, but nowadays it just means you're a pathological liar and a whore and a louse.

NoDebt

So they'll blow up wedding parties and whatever innocent civilians happen to be around their "targets" but they won't dare touch an oil well.

That speaks volumes. Delusional is the wrong word. Makes it sound like it's not their fault or something.

KesselRunin12Parsecs

"We didn't go after oil wells, actually hitting oil wells that ISIS controls, because we didn't want to do environmental damage"

So now explain 'SCORCHED EARTH POLICY' after you presumably rescued babies from incubators in 1991 you POS mF'er.

Kirk2NCC1701

Actually, he's telling you everything he can and you need to know or figure out.

Y'all must be 'Mericans, cause you can't read between the lines or read the situation/context. Allow me to translate for you:

1. He's under an NDA, and must keep his Oath of Secrecy.

2. If he gives you a blatantly BS answer, it is YOUR job to figure out that he (a) can't tell you the truth and (b) that it's Code for "Yes we support them to the hilt, and use Middle-men and Cutouts as SOP, but also we deny everything as SOP."

Normalcy Bias

He reminds me of his movie counterpart, the 'Robert Ritter, CIA Deputy Director' character from Clear and Present Danger.

Evil, arrogant, smug, and devoid of any conscience...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKsDjpKr2Mk

me or you

Meanwhile:US and Turkey cease flights over Syria, as Russia deploys 7000 troops to Turkish border with Armenia

Chris88

We didn't go after oil wells, actually hitting oil wells that ISIS controls, because we didn't want to do environmental damage, and we didn't want to destroy that infrastructure.

..damage a perfectly good CIA creation.

Junerberno

After the attack by Boko Haram (Al Qaeda) on the shopping mall in Nairobi, the US moved to seize a senior Al Qaeda operative living in a mansion in North Africa. We knew where he was all along, but never went after him, until after the attack. He was "made" by the Saudis and we were appeasing him while he was "doing good" (killing Shia) but when he stepped out of line we punished him. It's certain we asked for permission before arresting him finally, of course.

Pausing, because it must sink in: Al Qaeda. Who attacked us 9-11. Our brownshirts.

So now we suddenly care about ISIL after they "step out of line" in Paris. They were our friends when they were sawing the heads off Shia. But they stepped out of line so we used a stick on their hands.

The US knows where all of ISIL are at all times. ISIL has been permitted to slaughter everyone in its path because they are focused on killing Shia, and Israel supports a holocaust against Shia muslims.

earleflorida

when 'baby`bush' raided iraq in 2003, he and his filthy scum cronies destroyed [bombed, etc.] every last bit of iraqis antiquities, libraries, religious monuments, museums etel, and... guarded with total authority the Ministry of Energy, oil infrastructure, and Iraq's Central bank with a small army of specialized forces ranging from 12k-18k soldiers.

Raymond_K._Hessel

No, isis is not fairly described as comprised of former Baathists. Thats some neocon propaganda.

Its mostly Libyans and Saudis and Yemenis and some Iraqis and Turks, cats herded by the us and israel and saudi.

Isis is a proxy for these states and turkey.
http://www.voltairenet.org/article189385.html
http://ftmdaily.com/what-jerry-thinks/whysyria/

coast

But they can bomb the fuck out of Iraq, Libya, Syria etc. setting those countries back to the stone age, displacing and killing millions, destroying historical buildings, build nuke plants on fault lines, gmo food, flouride poison in our water, spraying shit in the skies etc....but NOOOO!!, we cant bomboil oil infrastructures that are helping arm the terrorists...what a fucking liar piece of shit..

marcusfenix

this is some epic and absurd bullfuckingshit to the highest degree right here.

if they had no plans to hit IS in the one way it would really hurt them, in the only way it would make any difference then it begs the question....

why bother bombing them at all?

these people are not stupid, they know exactly how war works, how to wage it properly and how to defeat an enemy. and yet they try and sell the idiotic idea that they did not go after the most valuable and vulnerable of IS assets out of environmental concerns?

really?

and this is exactly why the "coalition" warned the Syrian air force against carrying out missions in these areas, outright threatened them in fact. to provide air cover and a safe route for IS oil to find it's way into Turkey and Iraq. and it worked, it was smooth sailing and billions all around right up until Moscow stepped in and literally started blowing up the program.

the "save the environment" excuse doesn't play on any level and WFT good does it do the Syria people for this infrastructure to exist so long as IS controls it, they sure as shit are not benefiting from it. in fact it only hurts them more because the longer IS can make billions off the sale of this oil the longer this war will drag on.

the longer the war drags on the more innocent Syrian's die so it would in fact be better for the common people of Syria for this oil pipeline to be destroyed and ISIS starved to death. then afterwords the Syrians can go ahead and start rebuilding the infrastructure. but there won't be an afterwords so long as IS can make that money and fund there whole drug soaked, murderous operation.

and I wonder what the citizens of Paris think about the environmental concerns vs wiping out the islamic states revenue stream?

all this sudden care and concern flowing from DC about civilians, about oil smugglers, civilian infrastructure and mother earth makes me want to vomit.

because it's all just a never ending stream of bullshit and lies.

sometimes, in the darkest corners of my mind, I do sincerely wonder weather nuclear war might just the only thing that will bring this lunacy to an end. not saying i want it to happen or that i want to live through it but it might just be the only way for somebody, somewhere in the world to get a fresh start free of this insane asylum we all live in.

Johnny Horscaulk

http://original.antiwar.com/dan_sanchez/2015/10/05/seize-the-chaos/
https://medium.com/dan-sanchez/clean-break-to-dirty-wars-d5ebc5fda9f9

http://leaksource.info/2015/01/17/the-yinon-plan-greater-israel-syria-ir...

Isis is a name for us/israeli/saudi/Israeli mostly foreign mercenaries there to destroy Syria as a functioning state.

For Israel.

http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=western_support_for_islam...

And to block the Iran pipeline
http://www.mintpressnews.com/migrant-crisis-syria-war-fueled-by-competin...

But for the us deep state, the zog, its really basically about Greater Israel.

http://www.sweetliberty.org/issues/israel/zionist2.html

[Nov 29, 2015] Turkish militants kill russian pilot while he is decending

yudenich.ru

watch-v=tiR8E-SwVeI

Terrorism is typically ideologically driven and as such has no nationality. But this case looks like an e4xception: Turkish media machine has already asssigned this crime to certain mythical "Syrian Turkomans".

But in reality this looks like Grey Wolfs not "Turkomans", and their leader is a Turkish neo-fascist Alpaslan Celik - son of the mayor of a small Turkish town. Golden youth so to speak.

http://ntv.livejournal.com/426110.html?mode=reply#add_comment

So, all those dances over the body of pilot are very similar to explosions in Suruç and Ankara.

[Nov 29, 2015] Turkey hands over body of Russian pilot to Russia

www.hurriyetdailynews.com

Turkey has initiated the process to hand over the body of a Russian pilot to Moscow after his jet was shot down by Turkey, a day before a United Nations climate conference starts in Paris that could bring a "saddened" Turkish president and his Russian counterpart together.

In a press briefing held at Ankara's airport prior to his departure for a EU-Turkey Summit in Brussels on Nov. 29, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said the body of Russian pilot Oleg Peshkov, who died after his plane was downed by Turkish F-16s on Nov. 24 when it reportedly breached Turkish airspace for 17 seconds, had been taken by Turkey and would be sent to Russia on its request.

[Nov 29, 2015] How ISIS is financed

Notable quotes:

"... Their main source of income is oil sales, but they also resource to taxes to the population, sales of antiquities, bank raids, appropriation of part of Iraq salaries to government employees in occupied areas that are still being paid, extortion to businesses, appropriation of part of crops, ransoms and slave sales. Some of the magnitudes are estimated. ..."

"... The income from oil is estimated at 1.5 million dollars per day from 34-40,000 barrels per day at 20-35 $ per barrel. ..."

"... Their main expense is calculated at 10 million dollars per month (0.33 mill $/day) in salaries. They pay almost a fifth of their income in salaries, and that is one of the reasons of their popularity. ..."

"... Recently the international coalition, with France taking a very active role, has started bombing their oil facilities, thus attacking the jugular of ISIS. They must be desperate because they see no way of protecting their oil financing from air attacks. After a very long time of successes, ISIS is now having problems to hold its ground in parts of Syria and Kurdistan. ..."

peakoilbarrel.com

Javier, 11/14/2015 at 11:03 am

OFM,

This article in Spanish from one of the main journals explains how ISIS is financing. Their main source of income is oil sales, but they also resource to taxes to the population, sales of antiquities, bank raids, appropriation of part of Iraq salaries to government employees in occupied areas that are still being paid, extortion to businesses, appropriation of part of crops, ransoms and slave sales. Some of the magnitudes are estimated.

The income from oil is estimated at 1.5 million dollars per day from 34-40,000 barrels per day at 20-35 $ per barrel.

Their main expense is calculated at 10 million dollars per month (0.33 mill $/day) in salaries. They pay almost a fifth of their income in salaries, and that is one of the reasons of their popularity.

http://www.elmundo.es/papel/historias/2015/11/11/56422776268e3efc608b45e5.html

Recently the international coalition, with France taking a very active role, has started bombing their oil facilities, thus attacking the jugular of ISIS. They must be desperate because they see no way of protecting their oil financing from air attacks. After a very long time of successes, ISIS is now having problems to hold its ground in parts of Syria and Kurdistan.

I have family in Paris. My niece, her husband and all his family are in Paris. None of them was present in the attacks, but we are all shocked by the magnitude.

Caelan MacIntyre, 11/13/2015 at 8:02 pm

"Fourth-generation warfare (4GW) is conflict characterized by a blurring of the lines between war and politics, combatants and civilians.

The term was first used in 1989 by a team of American analysts, including William S. Lind,[citation needed] to describe warfare's return to a decentralized form. In terms of generational modern warfare, the fourth generation signifies the nation states' loss of their near-monopoly on combat forces , returning to modes of conflict common in pre-modern times." ~ Wikipedia

Ironically, much of it is and will be the result of the nation states' monopolies on violence enacted.

[Nov 29, 2015] Top U.S. Air Defense Commander Turkey's Shootdown of Russian Jet "Had to Be PRE-PLANNED"

See also Ambush of Russian Su-24 over Syria

Notable quotes:

"... Yesterday, McInerney told Fox News – much to the surprise of the reporter interviewing him – that assuming the Turkish version of the flight path of the Russian jet is accurate, Russia wasn't ..."

"... As the International Court of Justice ruled in the seminal Nicaragua case (1986), any use of force even in alleged self-defense must also fulfill the basic customary international law requirements of (1) necessity and (2) proportionality. Even accepting the government of Turkeys version of events, it does not appear that there was any necessity for Turkey to destroy the Russian jet. ..."

"... From another [International Court of Justice] case, the basic test for "necessity" is that the necessity of self-defense must be instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means and no moment for deliberation. Clearly, that was not the case here. ..."

Zero Hedge

In his role as Norad commander for Alaska, McInerney dealt with more Russian fighter jet incursions (which he calls "bear penetrations") than anyone else in the world.

So McInerney knows how to tell innocent from hostile incursions by foreign fighter jets, standard rules of engagement of foreign fighter jets, how to read radar tracks, and the other things he would need to know to form an informed opinion about the shootdown of a foreign jet.

Yesterday, McInerney told Fox News – much to the surprise of the reporter interviewing him – that assuming the Turkish version of the flight path of the Russian jet is accurate, Russia wasn't threatening Turkey, and that Turkey's shoot down of the Russian jet "had to be pre-planned", as the jet wasn't in Turkish air space long enough for anything other than a premeditated attack to have brought it.

Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com

McInerney is right … especially given that a U.S. official told Reuters that the Russian jet was inside of Syria when it was shot down:

The United States believes that the Russian jet shot down by Turkey on Tuesday was hit inside Syrian airspace after a brief incursion into Turkish airspace, a U.S. official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

... ... ...

International law expert Francis Boyle - Professor of International Law at the University of Illinois, Champaign, who was responsible for drafting the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989 – said by email:

The Russian bombing of Syria is technically legal because they have the explicit permission of the Syrian government, but of course Putin will ultimately act in accord with his interests, not what is best for the Syrian people.

***

As the International Court of Justice ruled in the seminal Nicaragua case (1986), any use of force even in alleged self-defense must also fulfill the basic customary international law requirements of (1) necessity and (2) proportionality. Even accepting the government of Turkey's version of events, it does not appear that there was any "necessity" for Turkey to destroy the Russian jet.

Washington's Blog asked Boyle whether this is analogous to the "use of force" by someone with a gun who claims he was threatened by someone else. He answered affirmatively, explaining:

Necessity and Proportionality are each separate requirements for the use of force in self-defense.

From another [International Court of Justice] case, the basic test for "necessity" is that the necessity of self-defense must be instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means and no moment for deliberation. Clearly, that was not the case here.

[Nov 28, 2015] Most of What You Learned in Econ 101 Is Wrong

Greg Mankiw is not a scientist in any meaningful sense. As a member of "Harvard mafia" he is hired propagandist that camouflages as an economist and works for financial oligarchy which promotes neoliberalism. And under neoliberalism like in Marxism the economics serves as a tool to justify social theory.

Notable quotes:

"... Mankiw's book, like every introductory econ textbook I know of, has a big problem. Most of what's in it is probably wrong. ..."

"... But for Econ 101 classes, explaining only a small slice of reality isn't good enough. If economics majors leave their classes thinking that the theories they learned are mostly correct, they will make bad decisions in both business and politics. We shouldn't train tomorrow's business elite to have faith in theories that have only a small amount of empirical success. ..."

"... Current textbooks, including Mankiw's, almost all play down the role of data and evidence. ..."

"... so basically all the supply siders and libertarians and the like are preaching the same sort of economics theories that were taught prior to Keynes ..."

"... yea maybe we should call the supply siders the flat earthers ..."

"... Not every economic class is taught using Mankiw. Thankfully. ..."

"... but there is also the issue of whether in reality the employee could survive on the given wage if the pay does not allow the worker to survive, then him/her agreeing to work for the less than living wage doesn't help ..."

"... It is not a viable situation. The workers will not be able to perform their duties. It will not work anyway. We didn't treat horses this way, as if their cost could approach zero without consequences, why do we treat people as if they could survive on less and less resources with no limit. ..."

"... Then if they don't accept that impossible situation and ask for help from the government or form unions, then they are the ones "causing all the problems" ..."

"... How about this? A $15 minimum raise hike is more likely to close down jobs in the mid wage category than in the low wage. A hike probably means income will come from the mid overall to the low overall because low wage produced goods were relatively under priced (not marked to market because of prior monopsony). ..."

Bloomberg View

Harvard's Greg Mankiw, author of the most popular college introductory economics textbook, is often regarded as America's econ teacher. He famously refers to his "Principles of Economics" as "my favorite textbook," and I must admit that it's also my favorite. It's written in a clear, explanatory style and covers the basics of most important theories in modern economics.

But Mankiw's book, like every introductory econ textbook I know of, has a big problem. Most of what's in it is probably wrong.

In the last three decades, the economics profession has undergone a profound shift. The rise of information technology and new statistical methods has dramatically increased the importance of data and empirics. This means that many professional economists are no longer, as empirical pioneer David Card put it, "mathematical philosophers." Instead, they are more like scientists, digging through mountains of evidence to find precious grains of truth.

And what they have found has often been revolutionary. The simple theories we teach in Econ 101 classes work once in a while, but in many important cases they fail.

For example, Econ 101 theory tells us that minimum wage policies should have a harmful impact on employment. Basic supply and demand analysis says that in a free market, wages adjust so that everyone who wants a job has a job -- supply matches demand. Less productive workers earn less, but they are still employed. If you set a price floor -- a lower limit on what employers are allowed to pay -- then it will suddenly become un-economical for companies to retain all the workers whose productivity is lower than that price floor. In other words, minimum wage hikes should quickly put a bunch of low-wage workers out of a job.

That's theory. Reality, it turns out, is very different. In the last two decades, empirical economists have looked at a large number of minimum wage hikes, and concluded that in most cases, the immediate effect on employment is very small. It's only in the long run that minimum wages might start to make a big difference.

That doesn't mean the theory is wrong, of course. It probably only describes a small piece of what is really going on in the labor market. In reality, employment probably depends on a lot more than just today's wage level -- it depends on predictions of future wages, on long-standing employment relationships and on a host of other things too complicated to fit into the tidy little world of Econ 101.

For academic economists, that's no problem. If existing theories explain only a sliver of reality, they simply roll up their sleeves and get to work. Many labor economists are now working on complex theories that model the process of employees looking for work and employers looking for people to hire. For professional theorists, empirical failures simply mean more work to do.

But for Econ 101 classes, explaining only a small slice of reality isn't good enough. If economics majors leave their classes thinking that the theories they learned are mostly correct, they will make bad decisions in both business and politics. We shouldn't train tomorrow's business elite to have faith in theories that have only a small amount of empirical success.

Another example is welfare. Econ 101 theory tells us that welfare gives people an incentive not to work. If you subsidize leisure, simple theory says you will get more of it.

But recent empirical studies have shown that such effects are usually very small. Occasionally, welfare programs even make people work more. For example, a study in Uganda found that grants for poor people looking to improve their skills resulted in people working much more than before.

This has big political implications. If we train tomorrow's business elites to think that welfare encourages laziness, they may block support for policies that really improve the lives of the poor -- and the economic productivity of the whole nation. But this is precisely what Econ 101 is now doing.

So what's the solution? Complex theories sometimes do a better job of explaining reality than simple ones, but these theories are way beyond the mathematical skill of most undergrad econ majors. A better alternative is to start teaching empirics in 101.

Current textbooks, including Mankiw's, almost all play down the role of data and evidence. They sometimes refer to the results of empirical studies, but they don't give students an in-depth understanding of how those studies worked. Yet this wouldn't be very hard to do. The kind of empirical analysis now taking over the econ profession -- often called the "quasi-experimental" approach -- isn't that hard to understand. Simple examples could even be done in the classroom, or as homework assignments.

In other words, the economics profession has gotten real, and it's time for Econ 101 to do the same. We now have an academic economics profession focused on examining evidence and an Econ 101 curriculum that focuses on telling pleasant but often useless fables. Econ education needs to get with the times.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story:

Noah Smith at [email protected]

Selected Skeptical Comments (Economist View, November 25, 2015)

Anonymous said... Wednesday, November 25, 2015 at 05:34 AM

"Most of What You Learned in Econ 101 Is Wrong"

To this crowd, it should be - Most of what we taught you in Econ 101 is Wrong.

djb -> Peter K....

from the smith article

"For example, Econ 101 theory tells us that minimum wage policies should have a harmful impact on employment. Basic supply and demand analysis says that in a free market, wages adjust so that everyone who wants a job has a job -- supply matches demand."

if this is what they are teaching in econ 101 then of course it is wrong and I would not be surprised if mankiws book is teaching this

as Keynes showed 80 years ago

so basically all the supply siders and libertarians and the like are preaching the same sort of economics theories that were taught prior to Keynes

Say's law, invisible hand, always at full employment, no such thing as involuntary unemployment, no possibility of inadequate aggregate demand

amazing

Peter K. -> djb...

Agreed. I would divide the world into the Keynesians and supply siders. Mankiw is a strange hack in that he gets the "new Keynesian" view but often puts out propaganda on behalf of the supply siders.

Anonymous, Kervick and their ilk argue that some Keynesians are just as bad as the supply siders.

But they have no grounds.

pgl -> Peter K....

It is more than the macroeconomic debates. The minimum wage debate comes down to whether all markets are perfectly competitive. Any economist worth his salt realizes that they are not.

Dan Kervick -> Peter K:

Not sure what that means exactly - since I don't know what kinds of supply siders you are talking about. But since Mankiw is one of the leading figures of New Keynesianism, and is pretty bad, then yeah .. I guess it follows that some Keynesians are as bad as supply siders.

Keynes suggested a social philosophy that followed from his economic analysis. The social philosophy was based on the idea that the lack of full employment and arbitrary and inequitable distributions of income were "faults" of our economic society - bad things. But if someone doesn't think those are bad things, then I suppose they could completely accept Keynes's analysis of how the economy works, but not go in for the Keynesian social philosophy and the policy choices it leads to.

anne said in reply to Dan Kervick...

Keynes suggested a social philosophy that followed from his economic analysis. The social philosophy was based on the idea that the lack of full employment and arbitrary and inequitable distributions of income were "faults" of our economic society...

[ Nice passage. ]

William said in reply to djb...

Imagine if other courses were taught like econ.

History would start with reading Herodotus as fact, flat earth, giant ants and all.

Psychology 101 would teach you only the ideas of Freud. Sure none of his ideas are taken seriously anymore, but he is easy to understand and the foundation of modern, complex theories, so it's all good right?

djb said in reply to William...

yea maybe we should call the supply siders the flat earthers

pgl said in reply to William...

Not every economic class is taught using Mankiw. Thankfully.

pgl said in reply to djb...

Noah really wrote this? "That doesn't mean the theory is wrong, of course. It probably only describes a small piece of what is really going on in the labor market. "

Noah needs to take a time out from blogging until he reads Dani Rodrik's Economist Rules. Dani notes we have lots of theories but the real trick is to figure out which one to use for a particular situation.

I have not looked at a Mankiw text for a long time (overpriced from an arrogant Harvard Republican homeboy) so I don't know if he only presents the perfectly competitive model of employment. If he does - no wonder his book is so clueless on the minimum wage debate.

When I took undergraduate principles, I read Paul Samuelson's excellent book and it did talk about things like monopsony power. Put a wage floor on a monopsonist and employment rises.

So the real issue is are we presenting students with the full array of models and then having them read Dani's excellent book.

djb said in reply to pgl...

one issue regarding minimum wages issues. The classical school says if only the person would work for less we would have full employment

(Keynes proved this false)

but there is also the issue of whether in reality the employee could survive on the given wage if the pay does not allow the worker to survive, then him/her agreeing to work for the less than living wage doesn't help

It is not a viable situation. The workers will not be able to perform their duties. It will not work anyway. We didn't treat horses this way, as if their cost could approach zero without consequences, why do we treat people as if they could survive on less and less resources with no limit.

Then if they don't accept that impossible situation and ask for help from the government or form unions, then they are the ones "causing all the problems"

but seriously, that is what the theoretical idea that workers should take less and less and less with no limit gives us in reality

Denis Drew, November 25, 2015 at 07:14 AM

Re: Most of What You Learned in Econ 101 Is Wrong - Noah Smith

How about this? A $15 minimum raise hike is more likely to close down jobs in the mid wage category than in the low wage. A hike probably means income will come from the mid overall to the low overall because low wage produced goods were relatively under priced (not marked to market because of prior monopsony).

Consumers tend to purchase more of goods produced by employees at their own wage level. Ergo, when income flows overall from the mid to the low -- the low may spend that new money disproportionately among themselves. While some mid wage producers will lose out on business gone south and be forced to lay off workers.

Easy way to make this loss from mid to low painless as possible: hybrid redistribution via tax hikes for the (really) top with matching tax cuts for the mids.

I am thinking (just to throw something out) 90% taxes on all income over $2 million dollars. Maybe 50% over $650,000 (the entry to the top 1%?).

Under the theory that people will enthusiastically work for $200 a week if that is the best their economic place and time can do -- but the same people will not work for $400 a week if their era could and should be paying $800.

I'm thinking grossly underpaid Chicago retail clerk ($800 a week by collective bargaining marked to market) and Chicago gangs which now have 100,000 out of my guesstimate 200,000 gang-age, minority males. I'm also thinking old American born taxi drivers like myself who wont work 60 grueling hours for $500 a week (I did for $750). I'm thinking family raising adults who no longer show up for two-tier (thanks to Walmart) contract supermarket work.

Today's time and US place CEOs, professional athletes (who basically just retain feral animal skills), TV news anchors and movie stars earn 20 times what their 50s and 60s predecessors did -- they can certainly pay similarly high tax rates (though not from as low a starting point -- double per capita income in this era). They will work just as hard once they get used to the new (hybrid) redistribution regime representing the most anybody can squeeze out of their era.

PPaine said in reply to PPaine ...

Brad Delong is the iconic merit elite culprit. Why? Larry S and Stan fish cake are handsomely rewarded. Plutonian über hacks . Brad is flying solely on merit fumes

Peter K. said in reply to PPaine ...

If DeLong has been listened to the recovery would have been much better.

Both he and Summers argue policymakers have squandered one year's worth of GDP. That's a damning statement. They're on the job class side more than not. Same with Krugman and Thoma.

"As well they should. U.S. output is now about 10 percent below a trend estimated through 2007. If one attributes even half of this figure to the effects of recession and assumes no catch up on this component until 2030, the cost of the financial crisis in the U.S. is about one year's gross domestic product. And matters are worse in the rest of the industrial world.

As macroeconomics was transformed in response to the Depression of the 1930s and the inflation of the 1970s, another 40 years later it should again be transformed in response to stagnation in the industrial world.

Maybe we can call it the Keynesian New Economics."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/03/larry-summers-advanced-economies-are-so-sick-we-need-a-new-way-to-think-about-them/

They're not like Varoufakis and Zizek but so what there will be a broad coalition.

http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2015/11/24/europe-is-kaputt-long-live-europe-royal-festival-hall-woth-slavoj-zizek-julian-assange/

[Nov 28, 2015] Russias Intervention in Syria and What Washington Should Do

Standard neocon drivel... Standard Republican hawk mentality (he is a junior senator from Arkansas). The only interesting detail is that this guy was both in 1977.

Notable quotes:

"... In Syria, Putin professes that he wants to fight ISIS, but this is mere posturing. Even with new Russian strikes on ISIS-controlled areas in the aftermath of the Paris terrorist attacks and the downing of the Russian airliner over the Sinai Peninsula, Russian forces have trained the large majority of its bombs on coalition-backed opposition fighters. Putin has also explicitly stated that he wants to prop up Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime, which directly contrasts with stated U.S. policy. Turkey, a NATO ally, has suffered repeated violations of its airspace as Russia pursues its offensive against Syrian opposition forces. ..."

"... Putin is very consciously challenging the United States and the U.S.-led international order, and is now waging a proxy war against it. It is well past time for the West to recognize his challenge, rise up to it, and move to win the proxy war ..."

Nov 28, 2015 | Foreign Affairs

he attacks by the Islamic State (also known as ISIS) in Paris have forced a major rethinking of U.S. strategy in the Syrian conflict. A part of that rethinking must be U.S. President Barack Obama's unwise decision to treat Russia as a legitimate partner in negotiations over Syria's future.

At the G-20 meeting in Turkey this week, Russia quickly offered itself as a key partner in the fight against ISIS and the stabilization of Syria, and Obama again expressed his willingness to entertain that notion.

This is a grave mistake. Rather than being a constructive partner, President Vladimir Putin's Russia has been engaged in a proxy war against the United States in Syria, despite Obama's protestations to the contrary. And when an enemy wages war against the United States, it does not get to choose whether it is at war; its only choice is to win or lose. Right now, the United States is losing the proxy war in Syria-and a wider competition for regional influence-against Russia. And it will continue to do so without a dramatic shift in policy to confront Russian aggression.

A PROXY WAR AND THE WIDER STRUGGLE

In Syria, Putin professes that he wants to fight ISIS, but this is mere posturing. Even with new Russian strikes on ISIS-controlled areas in the aftermath of the Paris terrorist attacks and the downing of the Russian airliner over the Sinai Peninsula, Russian forces have trained the large majority of its bombs on coalition-backed opposition fighters. Putin has also explicitly stated that he wants to prop up Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime, which directly contrasts with stated U.S. policy. Turkey, a NATO ally, has suffered repeated violations of its airspace as Russia pursues its offensive against Syrian opposition forces.

Russia is engaged in a shooting war against the United States' clients to undermine U.S. policy. If that's not a proxy war, what is?

But this proxy war is only the most recent and dramatic front in a wider competition between the United States and Russia. Ukrainians overthrew former President Viktor Yushchenko, who was aligned with Putin, in 2013 and sought to reorient their country toward the West. In short order, Russia invaded Crimea-which it still illegally occupies-and fomented the ongoing civil war in the Donbass. Likewise, Russia illegally occupies the Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions in Georgia, one of the most pro-Western countries in Eastern Europe. In fact, Russia has continued to seize more Georgian territory in recent months.

Russia also continues a campaign of provocations against NATO allies in northern and Eastern Europe, threatening their air and naval boundaries and putting civil aviation at risk. Meanwhile, Central and Eastern European countries-who suffered under Soviet domination-report that Russian propaganda in traditional and social media has become pervasive.

Russia has become so emboldened that it does not even demur from direct provocations against the United States. Last month, Russian ships and submarines operated near U.S. undersea data cables and Russian bombers buzzed the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier, forcing it to scramble for fighters. And last week, it was revealed by Russian media-perhaps inadvertently, perhaps not-that the Russian military is developing an unmanned underwater vehicle capable of carrying nuclear payloads that is invulnerable to interception. A nuclear attack on U.S. port cities is the only reasonable rationale for such a weapon.

... ... ...

Finally, assertive diplomacy must be a part of U.S. policy toward Russia. The Department of State should create a new "country-at-risk" designation that would entitle nations under threat from external destabilization to a basket of U.S. and NATO assistance programs, including the intelligence assistance described above. This basket of assistance could also include programs aimed at helping these nations diversify their industrial bases and their sources of energy to be less dependent on trade with Russia. The overall effect of the new designation would signal increased commitment from the United States, and indicate to Putin that any escalation by Russia would automatically invite greater Western engagement.

The United States should also energize its public diplomacy and information strategies. It could take the lead in funding translation services to make Western media available in Russia. The United States needn't create content. Unlike in Russia, robust debate and diverse viewpoints already exist in U.S. media. The United States simply needs to ensure that this content is disseminated widely in Russia and Eastern Europe to provide a counter-narrative to Russian-controlled media and an example to the Russian people of what free media looks like.

... ... ...

Putin is very consciously challenging the United States and the U.S.-led international order, and is now waging a proxy war against it. It is well past time for the West to recognize his challenge, rise up to it, and move to win the proxy war. Otherwise, Washington may find itself in a genuine war against a nuclear peer

Tom Cotton - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Thomas Bryant "Tom" Cotton^[1] (born May 13, 1977) is an American politician who is the junior United States Senator from Arkansas. A member of the Republican Party, Cotton has been serving in the Senate since January 3, 2015.

[Nov 28, 2015] An Invisible US Hand Leading to War Turkey's Downing of a Russian Jet was an Act of Madness

www.counterpunch.org

In considering the terrifying but also sadly predictable news of a Russian fighter jet being downed by two Turkish fighters, let's start with one almost certain assumption - an assumption that no doubt is also being made by the Russian government: Turkey's action, using US-supplied F-16 planes, was taken with the full knowledge and advance support of the US. In fact, given Turkey's vassal status as a member of US-dominated NATO, it could well be that Ankara was put up to this act of brinksmanship by the US.

... ... ...

Russia - knowing that this is really not about Turkey, but about push-back by the US against growing Russian power and influence, both globally and in the Middle East region - could also choose to respond in a venue where it has more of an advantage, for example in Ukraine, where it could amp up its support for the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Lugansk, perhaps by downing a Ukrainian military plane, or more broadly, providing air cover to protect those regions. Russia could also, less directly, provide aid to Kurdish rebels in both Syria and in Turkey itself who are fighting against Turkish forces.

... ... ...

It is all terribly dangerous and it is hard to predict where things will lead. One thing seems certain, though. This outrageous shootdown of a Russian plane that was in no way posing a threat to Turkey or Turkish forces, will not end here, because Russia and President Putin cannot allow Turkey and NATO to so blatantly act against Russia and its pilots and go unpunished, particularly as it is Russia that is acting legally in Syria, while the US, Turkey and other nations backing rebel forces there are in all acting blatant violation of international law.

Unless saner heads start prevailing in Washington, this could all quickly spiral into the kind of situation in 1914, where a lot of ill-conceived treaties led to a minor incident in the Balkans turning inexorably into World War I.

Dave Lindorff is a founding member of ThisCantBeHappening!, an online newspaper collective, and is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press).

[Nov 28, 2015] Violence Erupts In Turkey After Prominent Lawyer Is Assassinated On Live TV

Notable quotes:

"... While Erdogan is indeed a nasty piece of work, it does seem like someone IS trying to topple him and destablize Turkey. As a vassal, he doesnt quite know his place and had actually contemplate joining the East as shown by Blue Stream and negotiations to purchase Chinese Red Flag missile system. ..."

"... Quite possilbly being encoraged to shoot down the Russian fighter and led to believe NATO would back him up. Once relationship with Russia is being torn and completely isolated in teh world by having his relationship with ISIS exposed, Turkey is ready for destablisation and eventual carved-up. Its no wonder the western press has only good things to say about the Kurds. ..."

"... Reminds me of Iraq/Kuwait. ..."

"... The only regional power counter to Iran on the ground is Turkey, so now you will see that place put through the wringer as well. Population is around 75 million, so its heavy density, old culture, access to NATO and western security interests and all the other trappings compel Turkey to fill the vacuum to be created in Syria. ..."

"... The arrival of the Russians in Syria seems to have awoken NATO. NATO has started its response to Russia and will penalize it for the support for the Assad government. ..."

"... We know that Turknam commander Alparslan Celik, deputy commander of a Syrian Turkmen brigade turned out to be the son of a mayor of a Keban municipality in Turkey's Elazig province. He is a member of the Grey Wolves. ..."

"... We know that use of the BGM-71 TOW missiles – which cost $50,000 a piece – is up over 850% in October with the American-made weapons responsible for the destruction of scores of Syrian army tanks. These are being passed through Turkey. ..."

"... They dont share our values Maybe not your values but certainly Washingtons values ..."

"... the bigger question is why is there even a NATO at all? The big bad Soviet Union Warsaw Pact are long gone. Truth is NATO now is the Atlanticists + some puppet regimes in eastern Europe/Turkey. ..."

"... It is obvious the west is trying to stretch Russia via Ukraine and Syria and now Turkey; the further you stretch an any, the more difficult it is to focus on the bigger picture. China better step up to the Russian plate and soon if anyone expects to reign in the NATO terrorists. ..."

"... Seems like everything in the Middle East is going tribal, sectarian, and vigilante. Bad day for established government and power for the people in a general sense ..."

Zero Hedge

Dame Ednas Possum

I read the UK's weekend FT (Financial Times) over lunch. There was no mention whatsoever of the Russian bomber being shot down several days ago.

This paper supposedly prides itself on objective analysis of important events.

Not one single mention of this blatant, premeditated act of war.

Imagine if the shoe was on the other foot?

No mention of Turkey's active support of Isis.

No mention of the oil sales or the arms supplies.

The mainstream media is complicit in the crimes.

Pathetic, piece of shit shill presstitutes.

trader1

Dame,

Last updated: November 24, 2015 6:44 pm
Turkey shoots down Russian fighter jet on Syrian border
FT reporters

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/d2b1abb0-9287-11e5-94e6-c5413829caa5.html

Optimusprime

And I have friends--staunch "progressives"--who think reading FT and The Economist (both Rothschild organs) somehow keeps one realistically abreast of the news.

Killdo

you are right - FT is pathetic - I stopped reading it about 6 months ago after many years. Even their best books of they year section is not that good any more.

I've noticed the Guardian is pretty anti-Russian (but comments are almost like ZH)

fleur de lis

Ergodan is giving us a real time profile of the typical violent psychopath dragging entire nations into a ditch. It is rare that they spin out of control in public so badly. The Matrix must be furious. He wrecked their little scheme and gave the Russians the upper hand.

Psychopaths are everywhere at the helms of power, destroying entire social structures, looting resources, triggering wars and leaving a trail of bloodshed to keep the NWO in control.

But these things must be done quietly. The target populations must not be alerted that they are being terrorized and robbed. They might catch on and revolt.

That is why NATO is so angry with him -- they don't care about the Russian jet or the murders of the pilot and the marine. It's just that Ergodan made such an absolute mess of it. Maybe it was being planned along those lines anyway but he got out in front and did things his way, thus overplaying his hand and NATO's.

By becoming the biggest loose cannon on Earth he has attracted the negative attention of his handlers. He will be reprimanded in no uncertain terms.

Fractal Parasite

Well, the Erdogan regime has scored so many own goals lately, it's hard not to imagine that he is being purposefully chucked under the bus.

rwe2late

A familiar road travelled often. Erdogan strives to retain power by a crackdown on domestic dissent coupled with expansionist war abroad.

Major US news media champion for Turk-run "safe zone" inside Syria. Turk troops as well as operatives have already invaded Syria.

Turk media has proclaimed: "Aleppo to become the 82nd province of Turkey"

https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2015/08/09/18775960.php

US about to back escalated Turk invasion/annexation of Northern Syria??

http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-turkey-edging-up-to-syrian-border-pretex...

To Hell In A Handbasket

Turkey invented the DEEP STATE. Everything is fucked and our generation will be officially be viewed as fucking USELESS, as it was on our watch that tyranny and plutocracy made a come back. How many good men and women around the world have died standing up to political bullying and the plebs have stood by and did nothing?

Cindy6

While Erdogan is indeed a nasty piece of work, it does seem like someone IS trying to topple him and destablize Turkey. As a vassal, he doesn't quite know his place and had actually contemplate joining the East as shown by Blue Stream and negotiations to purchase Chinese Red Flag missile system.

Quite possilbly being encoraged to shoot down the Russian fighter and led to believe NATO would back him up. Once relationship with Russia is being torn and completely isolated in teh world by having his relationship with ISIS exposed, Turkey is ready for destablisation and eventual carved-up. It's no wonder the western press has only good things to say about the Kurds.

Reminds me of Iraq/Kuwait.

If he has any brain cell left, he should immediately patch up relationship with Russia and China. Else he's toast and Eurasia having another failed state.

Parrotile

Well, it seems that Erdogan may NOT have any functioning brain cells left - russia-turkey-war-of-words-escalates.

So we have:

1. Shootdown of Russian aircraft in Syrian airspace;
2. "Pretence" that the aircraft "violated" Turkish airspace for a few seconds (this is the same Turkey that regards 2000 violations of Greek airspace to be perfectly OK;
3. Support of oil smuggling – let's be honest, oil THEFT, by a known terrorist group (and we know who is a direct beneficiary from this trade – "Keep it in the Family".)

This being an Aussie MSM publication, notice that none of the above points have been mentioned even in passing. Got to keep feeding the masses "Government Approved" information, lest that might have ideas of their own . . . .

Linoleum Blownapart

In my mind, there's a difference between an ongoing feud with tension and jabs, vs. an all-out fist fight to the death.

Events so far have been isolated enough that diplomats can still sit around the table and talk. Personally, I'm not calling WW3 until U.S. and Russia have severed diplomatic relations, which they haven't at all:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/16/g20-barack-obama-and-vladim...

bankonzhongguo

The only regional power counter to Iran on the ground is Turkey, so now you will see that place put through the wringer as well. Population is around 75 million, so its heavy density, old culture, access to NATO and western security interests and all the other trappings compel Turkey to fill the vacuum to be created in Syria.

That's a tall order to fill, but one easily paid for using the same model in Saudi and Egypt over the decades.

Good time to be in the black markets in Turkey witness all the refugees in the pipeline to Berlin and Washington.

Not sure of what kind of Alevi-Sufi capacity Quds has in the east, but given how the Sons of Noah operate in Chechnya who knows what the future holds.

atthelake

www.kingworldnews.com has some good tapes, including Paul Craig Roberts on Russia and Turkey.

SgtShaftoe

Agreed, I just got done listening to the PCR piece about an hour ago. It was very good analysis.

Ms No

People will start disappearing in mass and they will find them 15 years down the road in mass graves. This is a pattern which is constant throughout history any time there is a military dicatorship or tyranny of whatever variety... and yes they will likely be tortured. This is right out of the CIAs South America playbook. Same MO every time with only slight variations.

Moccasin

Things are moving quickly, what's next is what's important. Each criminal act inside a NATO country is used by NATO to its advantage in the escalation of war in Syria. With emphasis on Turkey where its most recent criminal activities appear premeditated. NATO is rushing to war in Syria after the recent criminal act in Paris. The arrival of the Russians in Syria seems to have awoken NATO. NATO has started its response to Russia and will penalize it for the support for the Assad government.

The criminal act in Turkey, the assassination of a "Prominent Kurdish Lawyer" is just another move that will be used to justify more war. The slippery slope of war is getting steep. I will expect Turkish ground troops to arrive in Syria soon to create a 'buffer zone' and that slice of dirt will be the ground where the Turks will put the Kurds backs to the wall again. What's next is what is important. War Pigs!

flapdoodle

I suspect the problem for Turkey invading Syria is that Putin told Erdogan that anything that crosses into Syrian territory near Latakia will have the shit bombed out of it.

The US and NATO is trying desperatly to put in ground troops (hence the Paris false flag to try to get the French (NATO) in, but I still think Turkey (also NATO) is reluctant to do this openly), and they may succeed in getting troops into Eastern Syria, but Putin, with SAA, Quds, and Hezbullah, has the advantage in Western Syria and will make a move there very difficult for NATO. If Western Syria was a crucial part of the Zionazi gameplan, they better come up with something else quick. Putin has reached the high ground first.

The fact that Turkey has grounded their flights into Syria is telling. They don't know what the fuck to do.

Its quite possible that Putin maneuvered the Turks into downing the Su-24. or at least set up the environment propitious to its occurring - unfortunately for Turkey.

Putin really knows his judo and used his opponents own move against him. The S-400 timing was just right, and the downing gave Russians the perfect excuse to smash the hell out of the Turkey/Syria border.

Whatever happened to Turkey's vaunted 5mi exclusion zone at the border??? Its gone, baby, gone...

GreatUncle

Think most people know what Erdogan is about ...

Cynically the US pipes up condemming the killing but support Erdogan. US foreign policy is a fucking shambles ain't that the truth. So once again Turkey shows it should never be allowed to join the EU because it does not support human rights.

2 pillars of the EU are already crumbling, the euro and the schengen agreement, then allowing Turkey into the EU club you just dismantled a 3rd pillar and the EHCR.

So which supporting pillar of the EU crumbles next then ? Or alternatively you might want to consider the Lisbon Treaty a worthless piece of paper.

debtor of last ...

So the gas pipeline from Quatar stops at the Syrian-Turkish border. For now.

Dutch Geert Wilders (our Marine le Pen) called Erdogan a madman, about 3 years back. But he's raciss of course....

green dragon

We know that Turknam commander Alparslan Celik, deputy commander of a Syrian Turkmen brigade turned out to be the son of a mayor of a Keban municipality in Turkey's Elazig province. He is a member of the Grey Wolves.

We know that use of the BGM-71 TOW missiles – which cost $50,000 a piece – is up over 850% in October with the American-made weapons responsible for the destruction of scores of Syrian army tanks. These are being passed through Turkey.

We know that Turkey has focused their bombing efforts on Kurdish sites.

We know that so called nice Terrorists supported by Turkey seized Kurds from buses travelling from the town of Afrin to the city of Aleppo.

We know that Erdogan's government is planned to place reporters who exposed weapons in Aid shipments from Turkey in jail.

We know much but do nothing!

I-am-not-one-of-them

they won't denounce their own foreign policy, they want that policy to succeed

you seem to think criminals should have a concience or morals

smacker

Westerners should boycott all travel and tourism to Turkey. Too much civil unrest, cold blooded street assassinations, riots, police violence etc. "Turkey has become a terrorist country and is unsafe"

Dark Daze

Why are the Turks in NATO? They don't deserve to be. They don't share our values, our traditions, our religion or our style of government. They are nothing more than evil, back stabbing, slimey bags of Sunni shit, and always have been. And now that Erdogan is becoming a dictator things are only going to get worse. I would not support my government sending one soldier, one plane or one ship to defend those animals. Let the Russians have at them I say.

Omen IV -> Dark Daze

"They don't share our values" Maybe not your values but certainly Washington's values

ross81 -> Dark Daze

the bigger question is why is there even a NATO at all? The "big bad" Soviet Union & Warsaw Pact are long gone. Truth is NATO now is the Atlanticists + some puppet regimes in eastern Europe/Turkey. They want the entire Middle East and wont tolerate a Russian or BRICS influence there at all. Good to see though that the Shiite Bloc are tired of all this fucking chaos & mayhem and are joining the Russian side.

Joe Plane

The Warsaw pact was created after NATO and as a counter act.

Don't know how many people know this but in 1954 the USSR, Belorussia and Ukraine (the latter two being seperate members of the UN) applied for membership in NATO. And were rejected.

Crocodile

It is obvious the west is trying to stretch Russia via Ukraine and Syria and now Turkey; the further you stretch an any, the more difficult it is to focus on the bigger picture. China better step up to the Russian plate and soon if anyone expects to reign in the NATO terrorists.

... ... ...

farflungstar

Kurdistan is being groomed to be israel's latest manufactured ally in the region - they've been stroking the Kurds for quite some time.

http://www.voltairenet.org/article189385.html

I wonder just how willing Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey (nations with significant Kurdish pops.) are going to be to cede territory to what will be an israeli ally - a little? not too much? not at all?

Eventually they may have no choice.

nah

Seems like everything in the Middle East is going tribal, sectarian, and vigilante. Bad day for established government and power for the people in a general sense

[Nov 28, 2015] Remaking the Middle East: How the US Grew Tired and Less Relevant

Notable quotes:

"... In reality, this perception is misleading; not that Kerry is a warmonger on the level of George W. Bush's top staff, such as Vice-President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld. The two were the very antithesis of any rational foreign policy such that even the elder George H. W. Bush described them with demeaning terminology , according to his biographer, quoted in the New York Times . Cheney was an "Iron-ass", who "had his own empire … and marched to his own drummer," H.W. Bush said, while calling Rumsfeld "an arrogant fellow" who lacked empathy. Yet, considering that the elder Bush was rarely a peacemaker himself, one is left to ponder if the US foreign policy ailment is centered on failure to elect proper representatives and to enlist anyone other than psychopaths? ..."

"... comparing the conduct of the last three administrations, that of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, one would find that striking similarities are abundant. In principle, all three administrations' foreign policy agendas were predicated on strong militaries and military interventions, although they applied soft power differently. ..."

"... In essence, Obama carried on with much of what W. Bush had started in the Middle East, although he supplanted his country's less active role in Iraq with new interventions in Libya and Syria. In fact, his Iraq policies were guided by Bush's final act in that shattered country, where he ordered a surge in troops to pacify the resistance, thus paving the way for an eventual withdrawal. Of course, none of that plotting worked in their favor, with the rise of ISIS among others, but that is for another discussion. ..."

"... In other words, US foreign policy continues unabated, often guided by the preponderant norm that "might makes right", and by ill-advised personal ambitions and ideological illusions like those championed by neo-conservatives during W. Bush's era. ..."

"... The folly of W. Bush, Cheney and company is that they assumed that the Pentagon's over $1.5 billion-a-day budget was enough to acquire the US the needed leverage to control every aspect of global affairs, including a burgeoning share of world economy. ..."

"... The Russian military campaign in Syria, which was halfheartedly welcomed by the US. has signaled a historic shift in the Middle East. Even if Russia fails to turn its war into a major shift of political and economic clout, the mere fact that other contenders are now throwing their proverbial hats into the Middle East ring, is simply unprecedented since the British-French-Israeli Tripartite Aggression on Egypt in 1956. ..."

"... It will take years before a new power paradigm fully emerges, during which time US clients are likely to seek the protection of more dependable powers. In fact, the shopping for a new power is already under way, which also means that new alliances will be formed while others fold. ..."

November 14, 2015 | original.antiwar.com

US Secretary of State, John Kerry, is often perceived as one of the "good ones" – the less hawkish of top American officials, who does not simply promote and defend his country's military adventurism but reaches out to others, beyond polarizing rhetoric.

His unremitting efforts culminated partly in the Iran nuclear framework agreement in April, followed by a final deal, a few months later. Now, he is reportedly hard at work again to find some sort of consensus on a way out of the Syria war, a multi-party conflict that has killed over 300,000 people. His admirers see him as the diplomatic executor of a malleable and friendly US foreign policy agenda under President Obama.

In reality, this perception is misleading; not that Kerry is a warmonger on the level of George W. Bush's top staff, such as Vice-President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld. The two were the very antithesis of any rational foreign policy such that even the elder George H. W. Bush described them with demeaning terminology, according to his biographer, quoted in the New York Times. Cheney was an "Iron-ass", who "had his own empire … and marched to his own drummer," H.W. Bush said, while calling Rumsfeld "an arrogant fellow" who lacked empathy. Yet, considering that the elder Bush was rarely a peacemaker himself, one is left to ponder if the US foreign policy ailment is centered on failure to elect proper representatives and to enlist anyone other than psychopaths?

If one is to fairly examine US foreign policies in the Middle East, for example, comparing the conduct of the last three administrations, that of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, one would find that striking similarities are abundant. In principle, all three administrations' foreign policy agendas were predicated on strong militaries and military interventions, although they applied soft power differently.

In essence, Obama carried on with much of what W. Bush had started in the Middle East, although he supplanted his country's less active role in Iraq with new interventions in Libya and Syria. In fact, his Iraq policies were guided by Bush's final act in that shattered country, where he ordered a surge in troops to pacify the resistance, thus paving the way for an eventual withdrawal. Of course, none of that plotting worked in their favor, with the rise of ISIS among others, but that is for another discussion.

Obama has even gone a step further when he recently decided to keep thousands of US troops in Afghanistan well into 2017, thus breaking US commitment to withdraw next year. 2017 is Obama's last year in office, and the decision is partly motivated by his administration's concern that future turmoil in that country could cost his Democratic Party heavily in the upcoming presidential elections.

In other words, US foreign policy continues unabated, often guided by the preponderant norm that "might makes right", and by ill-advised personal ambitions and ideological illusions like those championed by neo-conservatives during W. Bush's era.

Nevertheless, much has changed as well, simply because American ambitions to police the world, politics and the excess of $600 billion a year US defense budget are not the only variables that control events in the Middle East and everywhere else. There are other undercurrents that cannot be wished away, and they too can dictate US foreign policy outlooks and behavior.

Indeed, an American decline has been noted for many years, and Middle Eastern nations have been more aware of this decline than others. One could even argue that the W. Bush administration's rush for war in Iraq in 2003 in an attempt at controlling the region's resources, was a belated effort at staving off that unmistakable decay – whether in US ability to regulate rising global contenders or in its overall share of global economy.

The folly of W. Bush, Cheney and company is that they assumed that the Pentagon's over $1.5 billion-a-day budget was enough to acquire the US the needed leverage to control every aspect of global affairs, including a burgeoning share of world economy. That misconception carries on to this day, where military spending is already accounting for about 54 percent of all federal discretionary spending, itself nearly a third of the country's overall budget.

However, those who are blaming Obama for failing to leverage US military strength for political currency refuse to accept that Obama's behavior hardly reflects a lack of appetite for war, but a pragmatic response to a situation that has largely spun out of US control.

The so-called "Arab Spring", for example, was a major defining factor in the changes of US fortunes. And it all came at a particularly interesting time.

First, the Iraq war has destroyed whatever little credibility the US had in the region, a sentiment that also reverberated around the world.

Second, it was becoming clear that the US foreign policy in Central and South America – an obstinate continuation of the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, which laid the groundwork for US domination of that region – has also been challenged by more assertive leaders, armed with democratic initiatives, not military coups.

Third, China's more forceful politics, at least around its immediate regional surroundings, signaled that the US traditional hegemony over most of East and South East Asia are also facing fierce competition.

Not only many Asian and other countries have flocked to China, lured by its constantly growing and seemingly more solid economic performance, if compared to the US, but others are also flocking to Russia, which is filling a political and, as of late, military vacuum left open.

The Russian military campaign in Syria, which was halfheartedly welcomed by the US. has signaled a historic shift in the Middle East. Even if Russia fails to turn its war into a major shift of political and economic clout, the mere fact that other contenders are now throwing their proverbial hats into the Middle East ring, is simply unprecedented since the British-French-Israeli Tripartite Aggression on Egypt in 1956.

The region's historians must fully understand the repercussions of all of these factors, and that simply analyzing the US decline based on the performance of individuals – Condoleezza Rice's hawkishness vs. John Kerry's supposed sane diplomacy – is a trivial approach to understanding current shifts in global powers.

It will take years before a new power paradigm fully emerges, during which time US clients are likely to seek the protection of more dependable powers. In fact, the shopping for a new power is already under way, which also means that new alliances will be formed while others fold.

For now, the Middle East will continue to pass through this incredibly difficult and violent transition, for which the US is partly responsible.

Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is a media consultant, an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father was A Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story (Pluto Press).

[Nov 28, 2015] Turkey's Erdogan Expresses Regret Over Russian Plane Downing

He already flip-flopped his reaction on staged by his government ambush several times. This is probably not the last.

www.huffingtonpost.com

Turkey (AP) -- Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday voiced regret over Turkey's downing of a Russian warplane, saying his country was "truly saddened" by the incident and wished it hadn't occurred.

It was the first expression of regret by the strongman leader since Tuesday's incident in which Turkish F-16 jets shot down the Russian jet on grounds that it had violated Turkey's airspace despite repeated warnings to change course. It was the first time in half a century that a NATO member shot down a Russian plane and drew a harsh response from Moscow.

"We are truly saddened by this incident," Erdogan said. "We wish it hadn't happened as such, but unfortunately such a thing has happened. I hope that something like this doesn't occur again."

Addressing supporters in the western city of Balikesir, Erdogan said neither country should allow the incident to escalate and take a destructive form that would lead to "saddening consequences."

He renewed a call for a meeting with President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of a climate conference in Paris next week, saying it would be an opportunity to overcome tensions.

[Nov 28, 2015] ISIS Oil Trade Full Frontal Raqqas Rockefellers, Bilal Erdogan, KRG Crude, And The Israel Connection

Notable quotes:

"... "All of the oil was delivered to a company that belongs to the son of Recep [Tayyip] Erdogan. This is why Turkey became anxious when Russia began delivering airstrikes against the IS infrastructure and destroyed more than 500 trucks with oil already. This really got on Erdogan and his company's nerves. They're importing not only oil, but wheat and historic artefacts as well. ..."

"... "First and foremost, the Turks help the militants sell stolen Iraqi and Syrian oil for $20 a barrel, which is half the market price. ..."

"... According to a European official at an international oil company who met with al-Araby in a Gulf capital, Israel refines the oil only once or twice because it does not have advanced refineries. It exports the oil to Mediterranean countries - where the oil gains a semi-legitimate status - for $30 to $35 a barrel. ..."

"... The oil is sold within a day or two to a number of private companies, while the majority goes to an Italian refinery owned by one of the largest shareholders in an Italian football club [name removed] where the oil is refined and used locally, added the European oil official. ..."

"... Israel has in one way or another become the main marketer of IS oil. Without them, most IS-produced oil would have remained going between Iraq, Syria and Turkey. Even the three companies would not receive the oil if they did not have a buyer in Israel, said the industry official. ..."

Zero Hedge

One person who definitely thinks the Erdogans are trafficking in ISIS oil is Syrian Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi who said the following on Friday:

"All of the oil was delivered to a company that belongs to the son of Recep [Tayyip] Erdogan. This is why Turkey became anxious when Russia began delivering airstrikes against the IS infrastructure and destroyed more than 500 trucks with oil already. This really got on Erdogan and his company's nerves. They're importing not only oil, but wheat and historic artefacts as well."

And then there's Iraq's former National Security Adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie who posted the following to his Facebook page on Saturday:

"First and foremost, the Turks help the militants sell stolen Iraqi and Syrian oil for $20 a barrel, which is half the market price."

Meanwhile, the US is preparing for an all-out ISIS oil propaganda war. As WSJ reported on Wednesday, "the Treasury [has] accused a Syrian-born businessman, George Haswani, who his a dual Syrian-Russian citizen, of using his firm, HESCO Engineering and Construction Co., for facilitating oil trades between the Assad regime and Islamic State." Why Assad would buy oil from a group that uses the cash at its disposal to wage war against Damascus is an open question especially when one considers that Assad's closest allies (Russia and Iran) are major oil producers. Of course between all the shady middlemen and double dealing, there's really no telling.

Ultimately we'll probably never know the whole story, but what we do know (and again, most of the evidence is either circumstantial, anecdotal, of largely qualitative) seems to suggest that in addition to providing guns and money to the FSA and al-Nusra, Turkey may well be responsible for facilitating Islamic State's $400+ million per year oil enterprise. And as for end customers, consider the following bit from Al-Araby al-Jadeed:

According to a European official at an international oil company who met with al-Araby in a Gulf capital, Israel refines the oil only "once or twice" because it does not have advanced refineries. It exports the oil to Mediterranean countries - where the oil "gains a semi-legitimate status" - for $30 to $35 a barrel.

"The oil is sold within a day or two to a number of private companies, while the majority goes to an Italian refinery owned by one of the largest shareholders in an Italian football club [name removed] where the oil is refined and used locally," added the European oil official.

"Israel has in one way or another become the main marketer of IS oil. Without them, most IS-produced oil would have remained going between Iraq, Syria and Turkey. Even the three companies would not receive the oil if they did not have a buyer in Israel," said the industry official.

Finally, you'll note that this is all an effort to answer what we called "the most important question about ISIS that no one is asking" - namely, "who are the middlemen?" As we noted more than a week ago, "we do know who they may be: the same names that were quite prominent in the market in September when Glencore had its first, and certainly not last, near death experience: the Glencores, the Vitols, the Trafiguras, the Nobels, the Mercurias of the world." Consider that, and consider what Reuters says about the trade in illicit KRG oil: "Market sources have said several trading houses including Trafigura and Vitol have dealt with Kurdish oil. Both Trafigura and Vitol declined to comment on their role in oil sales."

Similarly, FT notes that "both Vitol and Trafigura had paid the KRG in advance for the oil, under so-called 'pre-pay' deals, helping Erbil to bridge its budget gaps."

Indeed, when Kurdistan went looking for an advisor to assist in the effort to circumvent Baghdad, the KRG chose "Murtaza Lakhani, who worked for Glencore in Iraq in the 2000s, to assist finding ships."

"He knew exactly who would and who wouldn't deal with us. He opened the doors to us and identified willing shipping companies to work with us," Ashti Hawrami (quoted above) said.

Indeed. And given everything said above about the commingling of illegal KRG crude and illicit ISIS oil shipments, it's probably a foregone conclusion that these same firms are assisting in transport arrangements for Islamic State

Noplebian

Interesting, but not surprising......

http://beforeitsnews.com/conspiracy-theories/2015/11/us-gives-their-prox...

Occident Mortal

Outstanding work. And Raqqafellers will stick.

I pointed to these assholes yesterday...

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-11-27/how-turkey-exports-isis-oil-wor...

quintago

Right after 9/11, the Israelis swept in and starting building links with the Kurds. Google it. They are using the Kurds as a destabilizer and as a source for oil. Ashkelon and Haifa moving oil to europe is their grand dream.

BuddyEffed

If there has been ship to ship transfers I bet someone, and maybe several recon capable countries have spy photos. That could be part of the over the top game here. Let's bargain or we will release photos.

BuddyEffed

This just in : http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/erdogan-russian-plane-downing_5659bd...
Erdogan expressing regrets for the downed plane. Also probably regretting ZH analysis.

I'm guessing the photos of the ship to ship transfers won't be released at this time.

jefferson32

Once again Meyssan's analysis proves extremely accurate. In July 2014, he writes:

On June 20, Israel bought the oil that the local Kurdish government had stolen in Kirkuk despite the international opinion voiced by the Iraqi federal government. The transit of the oil had been facilitated by the ISIL which controls the pipeline and Turkey which allowed the goods to be loaded onto a tanker at the port of Ceyhan.

http://www.voltairenet.org/article184669.html

jefferson32

To understand how Turkey can, on one hand, cooperate with the Kurds in northern Irak - and enable their oil commerce - and, on the other hand, be fighting Kurds in Syria (and Turkey itself), it is important to realize these two populations, although both ethnically kurdish, have little in common.

For starters, they don't speak the same language, and killed each other throughout the Cold War.

Nowadays, the Iraki Kurds are pro-West and lead by Barzani (admitedly a Mossad agent put in place by the Americans and British). The Syrian Kurds are aligned with Iran and Russia.

Thierry Meyssan's exposé is much better than mine:

http://www.voltairenet.org/article189385.html

Paveway IV

Half of all Turks live under the poverty line. A quarter of those live underneath the starvation line = eat from dumpsters. Erdogan and his crime family live in a three-quarters of a billion dollar palace.

The Kurds have it worse, from Be Very Worried About Barzani Family Power Struggle

"...Masud Barzani is president and lives in a palace complex in a resort inherited from Saddam Hussein. His nephew, Nechirvan Barzani, is prime minister. His uncle, Hoshyar Zebari, was Iraq's foreign minister and is now finance minister. Masud's eldest son, Masrour Barzani, leads the intelligence service; and his second son Mansour is a general, as is Masud's brother Wajy. Barzani's nephew Sirwan owns the regional cell phone company which, while purchased with public money, remains a private holding. Barzani's sons are frequently in Washington D.C. They have their wives give birth in Sibley Hospital in order to ensure the next generation has American citizenship, and Masrour Barzani acquired an $11 million mansion in McLean, Virginia. Hanging out in Tyson's Corner, Virginia, some of Masoud Barzani's daughters-in-law have, according to Kurdish circles, been known to introduce themselves as "Princesses of Kurdistan" as they visit high-end shops accompanied by their own rather unnecessary (while in the United States) security details..."

Kurds hate Barzani - he's in power because Israel and the U.S. back him. Time to strip the Barzani babies of their U.S. citizenship and bar their entire clan from ever setting foot on U.S. soil for the rest of their lives.

Everything the U.S. touches turns to shit. Every country we have anything to do with is ruled by psychopathic, money-grubbing gangsters. Every country we "freedomize and liberate" ends up knee-deep in the blood of their own citizens while the wars have turned out to be neocon chickenhawks grudge against a leader they don't like.

When Syria and Iraq have been sufficiently destroyed, U.S. and U.K. oil companies will own the oil and gas production destined for the EU or Israel. The U.S. will continue to turn a blind eye to the tin-pot dictators they have empowered and made profanely rich while their 'little people' eat out of garbage cans. If those peons rise up to kick the dictator's asses (Erdogan, Barzani, and whoever is in charge if the Iraqi hell-hole of death), then we will be there with weapons, armor, aircraft and troops to kill those dumpster-diving terrorists.

If we don't like the Saddam Husseins or Bashar al-Assads of the world, WHY THE FUCK DO WE KEEP MAKING MORE OF THEM?

Paveway IV

The Tylers do a good job of showing the trail of breadcrumbs in these oil operations. If you need a PowerPoint deck and streaming video of Israeli brokers negotiating legally-questionable and terrorist-supporting stolen oil purchases and scans of bill-of-sales from ISIS from Erdogan's son, then you're probably on the wrong site.

There are plenty of accounts of Israel buying Kurdish oil directly, or acting as a middleman for EU sales. Any Israeli brokers can legally claim ignorance of the source of the oil, but everyone involved knows exactly where some it comes from and why it's so cheap. The legality of ANY Kurdish oil sales are still in legal limbo - the U.S. courts won't permit its import. The fact that a substantial quantitiy of Kurdish (or Turkish terminal spot sales of 'Kurdish') oil is in fact ISIS oil stolen in Syria and Iraq really isn't a secret to anybody. To show what is (or should be) obvious to a reasonably intelligent person is not the same thing as concrete proof with a documented legal trail. Israel probably regrets the ISIS connection, but ISIS won't be around forever. Israel plans on buying oil from the Kurds for a long, LONG time, so I don't expect them to ask too many questions now.

We're talking a few Israeli brokers and refinery buyers, not ten million Israelis conspiring to buy and sell ISIS oil. If it wasn't Israeli oil dealers, it would be someone else.

Urban Redneck

It's not tenuous, it's politely phrased, but there are actually a lot more people and institutions involved. The physical oil trade is a black art, and all the practitioners know each other, and as many times as a title to cargo may trade hands at sea, ONE party is responsible for legitimizing black market product (after which it can be traded more freely). Unfortunately, the simplest and least bloody solution is unlikely at this point, international sanctions on Turkey and an embargo on all oil from Ceyhan not originating from the Baku pipeline.

Lurk Skywatcher

Why Assad would buy oil from a group that uses the cash at its disposal to wage war against Damascus is an open question especially when one considers that Assad's closest allies (Russia and Iran) are major oil producers.

Only an open question for trolls and dullards. Syria has lost a lot of its oil infrastructure, and it needs oil to operate. The Assad government probably isn't buying directly, but unscrupulous middlemen will try to make a profit no matter what their nationality.

Watch how the MSM will pump the US version, and ignore the Russian version, of who benefits from ISIS oil sales... it fits their agenda like a glove.

Kayman

Perversely Obama was correct in saying ISIS is the JV team. A small cog in a very illegal, immoral but lucrative trade in stolen oil. A lot of dirty money to pass around, deposit in Swiss bank accounts in Potus' name, or members of the family, Congress vendors, etc.

If the U.S. and Nato wanted to- they could strangle the neck of the ISIS chicken by cutting off all oil going through Turkey and all newbie ISIS recuits and arms heading back into Raqqa.

But there is too much dirty money being made by the real players in the game. Can't have a peace settlement with dirty hands in the game. I now wonder if the ISIS internet recruitment videos are being made in Turkey, Israel or Hollywood.

Neochrome

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/b8234932-719b-11e5-ad6d-f4ed76f0900a.html#axzz...

According to this it is Syrian REBELS who are dependent on ISIS oil, it would also partially explain why is US unhappy with turn of events. It is safe to say that the line between ISIS and "rebels" is practically non-existent:

"It's a situation that makes you laugh and cry," said one Syrian rebel commander in Aleppo, who buys diesel from Isis areas even as his forces fight the group on the front lines. "But we have no other choice, and we are a poor man's revolution. Is anyone else offering to give us fuel?"

Indeed, diesel and petrol produced in Isis areas are not only consumed in territory the group controls but in areas that are technically at war with it, such as Syria's rebel-held north: the region is dependent on the jihadis' fuel for its survival.

"At any moment, the diesel can be cut. No diesel - Isis knows our life is completely dead," says one oil trader who comes from rebel-held Aleppo each week to buy fuel and spoke to the Financial Times by telephone.

Palladin

According to this article the US destroyed 116 oil trucks, and the Russians destroyed another 500. I don't know how many barrels of oil that is but that has to make a real mess with all that oil leaking all over the place.

Where are all the Envrionmentlists wringing their Dawn covered hands over all of this. Probably no Seagulls were harmed, but still somebody has to clean up the mess.

And it seems to me the MSM should be paying more attention to this "Envrrionmental Disaster" like they love to do whenever an offshore oil rig spills any amount of oil.

Kayman

Palladin

Obama couldn't risk killing "innocent" truck drivers- a direct acknowledgement that everyone but the public knew Turkey was the oil conduit. Now you are offering him the opportunity to stop incinerating the trucks for environmental reasons- you ought to be on Obama's staff.

I-am-not-one-of-them's picture

the US used Russian footage of destroying 116 oil trucks as proof. I doubt they did, it's their mercenaries and their operation

that's why nothing happened in the 2 years they pretended to destroy ISIS and Russia has immediate success, one is genuine and the other is fake

harleyjohn45

This article says 1300 transports have been destroyed. I read an article that ISIS is using smaller trucks as tankers now, instead of 36,000 liters to 9000 liters per load. Soon they will be carrying oil in 5 gallon buckets.

Noplebian

This just about sums up the whole ISIS situation......

http://beforeitsnews.com/global-unrest/2015/11/cowardly-isiss-terrorist-...

Perfecthedge

This is outstanding, investigative journalism. Not the trash that we get from CNN, Fox and the BBC.

I just checked Trafigura.com and whenever I see a corporation talking about "ethics and transparency" (on their home page). I get suspicious. I am sure KPMG or whatever hooker-accounting firm is auditing this firm, is doing a fine job.

On another side note, Paypal thinks I am a terrorist and money-laundering criminal, because I wanted to transfer 20 Euros from my Bank account to my Paypal, to buy swimwear on Ebay.

FUCK THEM. FUCK THEM HARD IN THE ASSHOLE.

Herdee

Americans need to look at the world through different perspectives.Use alternative media and open up your minds:

http://russia-insider.com/en

Teh Finn

Russian media claims the men are "ISIS leaders who it is [thought] participated in massacres in Syria's Homs and Rojava, the Kurdish name for Syrian Kurdistan or Western Kurdistan."

How do you say "Chris Matthews" in Rus?

PoasterToaster

The other unasked question is, "After they trade the oil for money, who the hell is selling them all the weaponry?".

smacker

"[...] the trucks that haul oil north just might have, maybe, a teensy-weensy, tiny, itsy-bitsy chance of carrying weapons back from Turkey."

I think you're right. Recall that convoy Russian jets bombed yesterday which ended up in flames.

Erdogan bellyached about it in a press interview claiming it was "humanitarian aid" (ho-ho). Too bad. Video pix showed the trucks had crates of shells and other weaponry. Some of the shells appeared to have Ukraine/Cyrillic markings on them.

green dragon

Veterens Today makes a case that

[Turkey did this all during the Bush era, having cut a deal with US "manager" Paul Bremmer, a deal VT insiders helped manage for Bremmer and that I was witness to personally.

The game involved playing Baghdad against Erbil and bleeding off oil revenues from the Kirkuk Oil Fields, largest oil reserves in the world, as they moved by pipeline through Kurdistan and into Turkey. There they were offloaded onto American tankers in the Mediterranean where these huge ships, largest in the world, were filled with oil but it was never recorded and the oil never paid for.

Turkey got their cut, certain Turkish naval officers became fabulously wealthy while the Bush cabal poured billions into their Cayman offshore accounts managed by Bain Capital.]

[Nov 28, 2015] John Helmer The Classic Rules for Combatting Turkish Aggression

Even if it was some forces not controlled by Erdogan committed this ambush, his reaction was a typical reaction of ultranationalist, panturkist. All this talk about out turkish brothers is just a smoke screen for territorial and regional ambitions of Erdogan government. He is becoming kind of Saudi Arabia Nop.1 but without oil. and that spell trobles for the edonomy and his regime.

Notable quotes:

"... To me Erdogan and his government more and more look like members of Grey Wolf organization, a copycat of Ukrainian Svoboda with the same level of ultra-nationalism and neofascism in their brains. ..."

"... Has anyone considered the possibility this was not Erdogan's decision – perhaps his son's oil partners in ISIS had the right connections in the Turkish military, or suppose Uncle Sam just directed Erdogan to ratchet it up or watch his career dissolved by that same military, or maybe something worse, for males. ..."

"... It's not like going after Syria was Erdogan's idea – he'd had good relations with Assad for years ..."

naked capitalism

... Igor Sechin, the former deputy to President Vladimir Putin, was a leading advocate of forgetting Russia's historical lessons for dealing with the Turks, and disdaining to learn new ones. Putin was reluctant to learn them until yesterday.

Here they are:

1. Turkey never makes a military move without getting Pentagon approval first. In order for yesterday's shoot-down of the Su-24 to take place as it did, a battery of signals intelligence and other electronic warfare means would have been deployed by a joint US-Turkish command unit, giving the Turkish F-16 pilot confidence he was taking the Russian pilot unprepared. It was not, as the Turkish Government has announced, "an automatic response to our airspace being violated" because the airspace was Syrian, unilaterally claimed by the Turks to be their "exclusion zone". Neither was it, as Putin has announced, a "stab in the back" from the Turks. Nor was it, as Putin added, "despite the agreement we have signed with our American partners to prevent air incidents". What happened was full frontal – it was because of the agreement the Turks have with the US military command. Nor can Putin have been genuinely surprised that "instead of immediately establishing contacts with us, as far as we know Turkey turned to its NATO partners to discuss this incident." Had Putin said he suspected that Turkey turned to "its NATO partners" before the "incident", he would have been closer to the truth.

2. Aggression by Turkey and the US can be defeated by a smaller force, but it must be in constant readiness, employing every form of early warning and disguising its force by surprise. Putin has said the Russian Su-24 was struck by a missile fired by a Turkish F-16 when the Russian aircraft was one kilometre inside the Syrian side of the border. That being true, Russian air defence support for the fighter must have been tracking the Turkish aircraft from the second it started its take-off roll. It ought to have tracked its course upward, and monitored its missile-arming electronics and such fire orders as came from elsewhere. The Russian warning and control operators and the Su-24 crew should have detected the hostile fire-radar, and had the option to jam it. If none of these things was done on the Russian side, alerting the Su-24 crew to their peril, the Russian forces weren't ready, and the Su-24 was taken by surprise. The consequences cannot be explained by the commander-in-chief telling a visitor – the King of Jordan pretending to call the Russian president his "brother": "we will never turn a blind eye to such crimes as the one that was committed today." Blind is the word for it – before, not after.

THE RUSSIAN SU-24 FLIGHT PATH – TURKISH, BBC VERSION

THE RUSSIAN DEFENCE MINISTRY VERSION

Source: http://sputniknews.com/military/20151124/1030695406/mod-su-24-flight-path.html

3. In western Europe, in the Balkans, and in the Middle East the Turks have no durable friend or ally. For Russian strategy not to be ambushed by the Turks, it must have strong allies like Iran, weak ones like Cyprus and Serbia, and vacillating ones like the Bulgarians, and listen to their experience of warfighting with the Turks. It is a waste of breath to try reassuring Ankara that Russia's "plane and our pilots were in no way a threat to the Turkish Republic in any way." That's because the Turks know we know they are threatening, as well as financing the break-up of the Russian Caucasus. It's because they know Russia is committed to blocking Turkish expansion, and to protecting Shiite Iraq and the Kurds from Turkish attack. If these aren't the new strategic commitments, then Russia should hasten to withdraw its forces before it falls into more bloody ambushes. If they are the new commitments, then the consequences are as obvious as they are immediate.

All Russians are now at risk if they travel to Turkey, so President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's exclusion zone should stop all Russian flights and all Russian nationals from entering the country.

Time, too, for the Turks to warm their houses and cook their dinners with someone else's gas.

liberal, November 26, 2015 at 10:08 am

IMHO Turkey didn't consult with the US first. It smells of a stupidity that Ergodan would commit.

I mean, here's the idiot who apparently didn't game out the overthrow of Assad, and the likely impact it would have on the Kurds.

timbers, November 26, 2015 at 10:33 am

Great article. It's implication of how Russia should respond might be:

Russia should concentrate on protecting it's fighters near Turkish border and be prepared to protect and respond to head off Turkish aggression, and not directly escalate militarily but instead stay focused on it's original mission.

Putin's past behavior may suggest he will choose a good course not unlike the above, weather he knows of the lesson Helmer describes, or not. Putin is not rash, realizes that while Russia is powerful and has options it is not the only powerful nation and faces constraints as well (if only the US did, too), considers before he moves. Hopefully this will keep him focused on what he wants to achieve in Syria and not get side tracked with Turkey even if it makes him look "weak" in the media. Read that Putin is looking at sealing the Syrian-Turkish border, which would freeze out the biggest influx of trouble makers in Syria. Am thinking Putin should slowly move to freeze out all Western access to Syrian airspace, perhaps with the much discussed S-400's and another methods.

Positioning more defensive missiles, jet fighter escorts, and using the radar warning Helmer discusses to deter and preemptively defend against Turkey repeating this incident, is the best corse IMO. It appears Russia is doing at least some of these things from what I'm reading.

mike, November 26, 2015 at 3:16 pm

Fair enough assessment; I would not expect a second Russian plan to be shot down! Your right Putin is not rash!

kl, November 26, 2015 at 10:59 am

The West forgot Turkey. We forgot something it never did, that its main role is ultra-nationalism and ripping off the West.
Apparently, Russians forgot this too. As a Russian passport offers few travel opportunities, Turkey and Egypt are prime destinations. I see Russian women suck up to Turkish and other middle Eastern men regularly. It's sad and shows a complete lack of understanding of the Turkish aggression, including enslaving slaves not that any centuries ago (officially) and the extant burgeoning sex slave trade (unofficially) today.

al apaka, November 27, 2015 at 1:43 am

uhhh regarding Russian passports, that is just plain wrong. go to Asia sometime. or Africa.
the rest of your screed is sad, you've obviously got issues with swarthy folks, me senses projection in your focus on Russian women…lose your wife to a raghead, did you?

digi_owl, November 26, 2015 at 3:16 pm

Turkey has always been a wild card in NATO. Heck, the reason they are a member at all is that USA needed a standing ground army near the USSR that was not made up of US troops. And turkey had the biggest such after WW2 (and still has the biggest one next to USA within NATO). Their physical location also provided a "second front" deterrent to a land war in Europe.

Then again while a land war was perhaps a risk during Stalin, afterwards it was more about having a buffer between Russia and Germany than anything else. the Soviet leadership was more worried about a offense from USA than planning some kind of grand takeover of Europe.

kj1313, November 26, 2015 at 9:44 pm

Tbh Turkey is the one country where I would have trusted the military to depose the tin pot dictator.

Jon, November 27, 2015 at 8:33 am

Turkey is no longer the solid Nato member and unflinching US ally that it was during the Cold War, or indeed even 15 years ago. The AKP government has new friends in the World and is happy play its cards against the EU and US when it chooses.

Most like this move was part of Turkey's soft-on-ISIS/hard-on-PKK-and-other-Kurds playbook and most unlikely to be cleared with the US – though of course playing the Nato membership card after the event makes sense.

Mustafa, November 27, 2015 at 2:58 pm

Whenever Russian and Turks are fighting our enemies win. When they come together the history is changing its direction. This the a lesson from the history. There is a saying in Russian " The Russian-Turkish war from 1877 is a war where we have lost 100 million golden rubles and 100.000 lives and won nothing." Turkey have lost the Balkans and Cyprus in this very same war. But Atatürk and Lenin made it differently and the course of the history has changed. The battle in Galipoli where Atatürk defeated the super powers at that time the British and French and opened the door for the success of the Soviet revolution in 1917. Then Lenin gave his hand to Atatürk in 1920 and opened the door for the establishment of the Republic of Turkey. This was the end of British and French dominance in the east. Putin and Erdogan have to learn from the history…

likbez, November 27, 2015 at 11:16 pm

To me Erdogan and his government more and more look like members of Grey Wolf organization, a copycat of Ukrainian Svoboda with the same level of ultra-nationalism and neofascism in their brains.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_Wolves_(organization)

Looks like in several countries we are returning to 1930th. Talleyrand complain about the restoration of the monarchy "These people have learned nothing and for­gotten nothing" is perfectly applicable to nationalism Renaissance we experience today. It this an allergic reaction on neoliberalism or may be nationalism is once in a century epidemics that hit mankind to regulate its numbers is unclear to me.

The sad side of this incident is that will damage Russia economically by increasing economic isolation. So the winner of Peace Nobel Price and all neocons around him got a good Thanksgiving present. Or, from another point of view, Putin's decision to save Alawite community from extermination by Islamic radicals backfired. No good deed is left unpunished in high politics.

Fiver, November 28, 2015 at 4:47 am

Has anyone considered the possibility this was not Erdogan's decision – perhaps his son's oil partners in ISIS had the right connections in the Turkish military, or suppose Uncle Sam just directed Erdogan to ratchet it up or watch his career dissolved by that same military, or maybe something worse, for males.

It's not like going after Syria was Erdogan's idea – he'd had good relations with Assad for years, but he (and everyone else outside and in) was relentlessly pushed from the 'west' (yes, no capital 'W' earned this century) even as the European portion of it again failed to open for Turkey – the big payoff of Admission to the EU/EZ that is just recently promised yet anew for Turkey, but with events will recede again as the ink dries. So Erdogan cast his lot with Uncle re the 'Arab Regime Change Spring' and like the US, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Qatar, GCC et al, Erdogan took deeply of the sort of Kool Aid that makes bad ideas look good – and so Erdogan got religion in both supporting ISIS by enabling ISIS oil operations and trade in Syria and profiting from it, even while assuring the west it was taking the fight to ISIS.

This is what they call a 'fluid' situation, and I can well imagine other events that place one or more other allied leaders in even worse political jams. The collateral damage this confrontation has already inflicted is stupendous, and being borne by all the wrong people. I'm sure this will give Erdogan plenty of future reasons for him want to flip back to a more pro-Syria, or pro-Russia footing. Or more.

[Nov 28, 2015] Who is buying ISILs oil

Al Jazeera English

On the face of it, it looks like any state-run oil industry. Engineers, managers and traders all help extract, refine and distribute oil, which makes its way across Syria and Iraq, as well as overseas. But this is no state-run company. This is the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant's (ISIL) lifeline - a business that provides the armed group with more revenue than any other source.

Oil helps to fund its war in Syria and Iraq, as well as to provide electricity to the 10 million people living under ISIL control. But despite the oil trade being targeted by the US-led coalition against ISIL, the business continues to thrive. And many people are increasingly asking why.

Russia has accused Turkey of buying oil from the armed group. Ankara in turn threw this allegation back at Moscow because of Russian support for Bashar al-Assad, who is also accused of buying oil from ISIL.

And to complicate matters, ISIL oil is also being sold to other rebel groups in Syria, most of whom are opposed to ISIL but have no alternative sources of fuel.

So, who are the individuals and groups involved in refining and selling ISIL's oil? And where does that oil end up?

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidestory/2015/11/buying-isil-oil-151127173736852.html

Presenter: Hazem Sika

Guests:

Shwan Zulal - Managing Director of Carduchi Consulting

Carole Nakhle - Director of Crystol Energy

Afshin Shahi - Director of the Centre for the Study of Political Islam

[Nov 28, 2015] Jonathan Marshall

Nov 27, 2015 | The Scott Horton Show

Jonathan Marshall, an independent researcher living in San Anselmo, California, discusses the Obama administration's failure to broker a peace deal in Syria due to its neocon-like focus on regime change.

[Nov 28, 2015] Shooting down the Russian jet a symptom of Turkey's central malaise - GÜVEN SAK

Notable quotes:

"... President Recep Tayyip Erdo an has said he would do it again if he could go back, but he also said we might have reacted differently had we known that the unidentified aircraft was Russian. I'm not sure which statement to believe. ..."

"... In Turkish, we sometimes say "I am telling this to my daughter with the hope that my daughter-in-law will get the message." People in this part of the world communicate obliquely. What is Turkey's overriding concern in Syria? It is keeping the PKK/PYD in check, plain and simple. ..."

"... Thanks to the civil war, the PYD has in some ways surpassed Öcalan's dreams. It has become a governing institution of the Syrian Kurds, and the YPG, its armed wing, has become the main instrument of the Western coalition against ISIL. That means Turkey cannot fight it directly. Meanwhile, Turkey's reconciliation process with its own Kurdish population has come to an abrupt halt. Why? Because the civil war in Syria shifted the balance of power in the Kurds' favor. ..."

www.hurriyetdailynews.com

The million dollar question is: Why did Turkey do it? The Russians were violating Turkish airspace on an almost daily basis. Did it feel like it had to make good on its threats for earlier violations? Why now?

Since the start of this war in Syria, Turkey has wanted to be taken seriously. Syria shot down a Turkish plane in 2012, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) took Turkish Consulate staff in Mosul hostage for months, and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK)-affiliated Democratic Union Party (PYD) is steadily gaining ground with Western backing. Russia's blatant disregard for Ankara's concerns was only the straw that broke the camel's back. The Turkish leadership felt it necessary to show it means business, and shooting down a Russian plane, they thought, might have been a way to show that. But was it the right move? President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said he would do it again if he could go back, but he also said we might have reacted differently had we known that the unidentified aircraft was Russian. I'm not sure which statement to believe.

In Turkish, we sometimes say "I am telling this to my daughter with the hope that my daughter-in-law will get the message." People in this part of the world communicate obliquely. What is Turkey's overriding concern in Syria? It is keeping the PKK/PYD in check, plain and simple. Turks are obsessed with this, to the extent that talking about fighting ISIS makes them uncomfortable, not necessarily because they like the group, but because they don't want to overshadow the threat of the PYD. They have not forgotten that the PYD was established by Abdullah Öcalan during his exile as a small Syrian arm of his operations. Thanks to the civil war, the PYD has in some ways surpassed Öcalan's dreams. It has become a governing institution of the Syrian Kurds, and the YPG, its armed wing, has become the main instrument of the Western coalition against ISIL. That means Turkey cannot fight it directly. Meanwhile, Turkey's reconciliation process with its own Kurdish population has come to an abrupt halt. Why? Because the civil war in Syria shifted the balance of power in the Kurds' favor.

Why did Turkey down that Su-24? Because it needed its Western allies to know that it means business, even if it won't hit PYD bases directly. That would not normally be a problem, but the range of responses from Ankara shows that it was not a very calculated step. Rather, it was a product of our tangled feelings toward Kurdish politics, which manifested obliquely in the debris of that plane. Similar to the Mavi Marmara incident, the episode will probably be useful in domestic politics but it will end up disproportionately hurting Turkey's foreign policy.

Ankara must learn to measure its actions based on realities out there on the ground, not its emotional and ideological echo chamber at home. In the case of Syria, this means facing up to our feelings about the Kurds, at home and across the border, once and for all.

[Nov 28, 2015] Syria intervention plan fueled by oil interests, not chemical weapon concern

Notable quotes:

"... It's no secret by now that both Turkey and Saudi Arabia are funding Islamic extremists in Syria and Iraq ..."

"... Frida Ghitis says the Syrian conflict "pitted moderates against extremists, and then extremists against ultra-extremists." http://edition.cnn.com/2015/11/24/opinions/ghitis-russia-jet-shot-down/index.html So I suppose the United States is now on the side of the "extremists." We certainly would never approve of backing the "ultra-extremists," the way our allies Turkey and Saudi Arabia do. ..."

"... Not Turkmen commander-Turkish ..."

"... So Putin may have to put some of his other goals in the region on the back burner in order to actually wage war on ISIS and other Islamic extremist groups. ..."

"... Putin is right in saying that Turkey, a NATO member, is backing ISIS, not only financially but militarily. For Turkey their main interest is in Syrian Kurds not getting organized, armed, and in control of their own territory. When Turkey says they are fighting ISIS, they are dropping most of the bombs on Syrian Kurds. And they have never respected Iraq borders when attacking Iraqi Kurds. ..."

"... Saudi Arabia is also supporting ISIS, not only because they also defend an extremist Sunni Islam as Wahabbist Saudi Arabia, but also because it is part of their proxy wars against Shia Iran, and Syria is one of the Shia States with Sunni majority. Saudi Arabia is probably the biggest supporter of Islamic terrorism. ..."

"... Holland stupidly wants to march on ISIS, but nobody else wants to put troops on the ground. The only ones with troops on the ground fighting ISIS are Syrian army and Kurds. The latter ones are unacceptable to Turkey, so the former ones might become our new ally. ..."

"... Alawites, the core of the Syrian army, are paying a very high price for the war. About a third of their manpower has died in the 5 year war. They only keep fighting because they know they face extermination if they lose the war, whether from Syrian Sunnies or from ISIS. ..."

"... who want higher oil prices might have had their wish granted today after the downing of the russian SU-24 inside syria from a turkish F-16 (you will hear loads of shit in CnnAbcFoxNbcNewYotkTimes…please feel free to complete the alphabet soup here …they are all the SAME! that it was in turkish air space but THAT IS A LIE!!!!) ..."

"... It is your right to believe that Erdogan/Turkey -and they alone- are "brave" enough to shoot down a Russian aircraft while flying OUTSIDE their territory; It is your right to believe that Maidan/Kiev protests and the ousting of Yanukovich happened/grew genuinely from the Ukrainian people; It is your right to believe that the pro-russian rebels shut down the MH17 in Ukraine; It is your right to believe that our army and air force cannot destroy a bunch of white-basketball-shoe-wearing-mid-eval -lunatics after a year of bombing campaign and that we cannot disrupt their tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of barrels of oil per day production/selling which brings them millions of dollars per day in hard currency (…yet somehow russians did it in a month); It is your right to believe that russians are threatening Europe even though we are expanding NATO right at their borders; It is your right to believe that a bunch of illiterate, ugly, smelly morons with rusted AK-47 can defeat France and Belgium; It is your right to believe that: "…they hate us for our freedoms…" and "…our troops are fighting over there to keep us safe over here…" and other "lovely" narratives as such. It is your right! ..."

"... Are you absolutely sure of that? The Russians are saying that's not true, that the plane never entered Turkish air space. Russia's side is presented in this video: https://www.rt.com/news/323369-turkey-downed-russian-jet/ ..."

"... If a person is indeed on a truth-finding mission, is it not incumbent upon that person to listen to what all sides have to say, and then make up one's mind based on the evidence which is presented? ..."

"... RT, for instance, has a short clip of an interview with retired U.S. Airforce general Thomas McInery where he asserts that the downing of the Russian jet "had to be pre-planned." ..."

"... If what General McInery says is correct - that the downing of the Russian jet "had to be pre-planned" - then there was plenty of time for Anakra to get Washington's approval before the pre-planned attack occurred. I'm not saying that this happened, only that it is not outside the realm of possiblity. ..."

"... Well as far as I am concerned, President Obama circling the wagons around Turkey hardly qualifies him as being one the brightest lights on the Christmas tree. Obama is attempting to defend the indefensible. Why do you believe that is? ..."

"... It is clear that this was an hostile deliberate act by Turkey against Russia regardless of where that plane was at the moment. Where the plane was is only relevant to see if it was legal or illegal, but the deliberate hostile act remains either case. ..."

"... Turkey doesn't like the way Russia is helping the Syrian government, but they just proved to NATO that they are unreliable and more a liability than a trustworthy ally. This is how wars start, by unjustified escalation. ..."

"... If one watches the RT video I linked above, Erdogan can be heard saying exactly that same thing back in 2012 after Syria shot down a Turkish jet because of an air space violation. Here's what Erdogan said then: ..."

"... But whether the US might have given the green light for such an act, and the potential reasons for such a thing. Well, now that's interesting, despite Ron's insistence that it's absolutely untenable position. I say, very tenable for a country that has invaded and overthrown dozens of governments in just my short lifetime. ..."

"... personally think Ves' comment below about Turkey's desperation about losing their proxies is probably closer to the mark though. I've seen over the past couple decades Turkey has seen itself as a regional player linking the middle east and Europe and global economic hub. ..."

"... Hey Petro, yeah, just on the face of it I didn't see your comment as being that outlandish. the united states has a very very very long history of making moves that seem quite "beyond the pale" ..."

"... To say, if he did, that the US directly said, "shoot a plane down ASAP" is probably unlikely. But Turkey, a member of NATO, might be a little hesitant to take such an action unless it felt that the United States had its back. Now Turkey has been a bit "rogue" in recent years – http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/13/turkey-denies-agreement-open-air-bases-us-isis . I mean the final answer is really above my pay grade, but I think you are beginning to see that there are a lot of moving parts to this equation and I'm beginning to agree with wimbi – can we go back to how much drag there would be on a bomber if it lost its tail section? ..."

"... That Turks are so desperate to stop their proxies in Syria being annihilated within next few months? Shooting down Russian plane is what desperate party does in order to change war dynamics on the ground. ..."

"... Unlike US, Russia is very active attacking oil trucks that smuggle ISIS oil to Turkey. Those trucks belong to a shipping company BMZ that belongs to the son of Erdogan. Russia is causing a personal economic loss to the Erdogan family. ..."

"... The international coalition against Syria and Russia is beginning to crack on the wake of the Paris attacks by ISIS. Turkey doesn't want that to happen. This explains the shooting of the plane and the rushed going of Turkey to NATO to ask for support. It is intended to dynamite any possibility of understanding between US-lead coalition in Syria and Russia against ISIS. Obama has his hands tied, as he needs to use his base in Turkey. ..."

peakoilbarrel.com

Glenn Stehle, 11/24/2015 at 5:34 pm

Opening up natural gas supplies to Turkey and Europe which are not controlled by Russia and its allies? This requires a pipeline across Syria but Assad nixed the deal.

No wonder Saudi Prince…told President Vladmir Putin that "whatever regime comes after" Assad, it will be "completely" in Saudi Arabia's hands and will "not sign any agreement allowing any Gulf country to transport its gas across Syria to Europe and compete with Russian gas exports", according to diplomatic sources. When Putin refused, the Prince vowed military action.

THE GUARDIAN, "Syria intervention plan fueled by oil interests, not chemical weapon concern"

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/aug/30/syria-chemical-attack-war-intervention-oil-gas-energy-pipelines

Jimmy, 11/24/2015 at 7:55 pm

Something tells me Putin is gonna turn up the dial on Turkeys little Kurdish problem. Putin has a lot of levers to choose from in dealing with Turkey. Whilst Russia does need Turkey perhaps more than Turkey needs Russia they certainly don't need Erdogan.

Watcher, 11/24/2015 at 5:18 pm

btw given these short time periods quoted, you also have to add the seconds req'd for all these alleged warnings.

ZH commenters are saying Turkish PM's son is the primary recipient of ISIS oil flowing thru Turkey. That was motivation, allegedly. Shrug.

I can say one thing for sure, no way in hell there were 10 warnings of this jet in the time frame available.

Jimmy, 11/24/2015 at 8:00 pm

Russia seems to be getting in the way of the Turkish Presidents family business of smuggling ISIS oil. FOX missed it.

http://olympia.gr/2015/11/24/erdogans-son-bilal-erdogan-smuggles-illegal-isiss-oil-russianplane-syria/

Glenn Stehle, 11/25/2015 at 7:18 am

It's no secret by now that both Turkey and Saudi Arabia are funding Islamic extremists in Syria and Iraq:

Turkey and Saudi Arabia are actively supporting a hardline coalition of Islamist rebels against Bashar al-Assad's regime that includes al-Qaeda's affiliate in Syria….

The decision by the two leading allies of the West to back a group in which al-Nusra plays a leading role has alarmed Western governments and is at odds with the US, which is firmly opposed to arming and funding jihadist extremists in Syria's long-running civil war.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/syria-crisis-turkey-and-saudi-arabia-shock-western-countries-by-supporting-anti-assad-jihadists-10242747.html

Frida Ghitis says the Syrian conflict "pitted moderates against extremists, and then extremists against ultra-extremists." http://edition.cnn.com/2015/11/24/opinions/ghitis-russia-jet-shot-down/index.html

So I suppose the United States is now on the side of the "extremists." We certainly would never approve of backing the "ultra-extremists," the way our allies Turkey and Saudi Arabia do.

twocats,11/25/2015 at 9:28 pm

I thought Russia and US both agreed to start bombing oil shipments. Of course, the US didn't WANT to do that as it weakens their proxy allies. It's an a great game of thrones episode that's for sure.

Opritov Alexandr, 11/25/2015 at 9:25 am

"A Turkmen commander said they shot the pilots."
--–
Not Turkmen commander-Turkish : http://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/2491068.html#comments

twocats,11/25/2015 at 9:23 pm

I'm calling "completely irrelevant due to the fact that it's irrelevant". Is Turkey at war with Russia? Are they in a direct conflict in any way really? Does ISIS have bombers? So there's absolutely positively no way they could have "mistaken" the bomber for something else. And unless they are ready to declare war directly with Russia, the attack is on the verge of insanity.

I know sovereignty is important and all, and they could certainly buzz and even fire "shots across the bow" pretty easily. If we are disputing between 19 and 10 seconds of air space violations, we are idiots. Geeky idiots, but idiots nonethe less.

Fernando Leanme, 11/26/2015 at 5:06 am

The Turks were defending Turkmen on the Syrian side. Erdogan said so. The Russians may sit down with turkey and concede a portion of Latakia to Turkey. The excuse will be the fact that it's populated by Turkmen. If Turkey agrees and redraws the border it will be huge win for Russia. It will give them the precedent to justify taking over the Crimea and the Donbas.

Glenn Stehle says: 11/25/2015 at 6:49 am

Germany apparently has come to a similar conclusion.

German Vice-Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel said:

This incident shows for the first time that we are to dealing with an actor who is unpredictable according to statements from various parts of the region – that is not Russia, that is Turkey.

https://www.rt.com/news/323240-russia-turkey-warplane-downed/

NATO, however, has closed ranks with Turkey. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said that the alliance backs Ankara:

We stand in solidarity with Turkey and support the territorial integrity of our NATO ally.

https://www.rt.com/news/323240-russia-turkey-warplane-downed/

Obama joined NATO in closing ranks with Turkey:

http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/plane-shootdown-could-lead-to-nato-conflict-with-russia/

and

http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/hollande-and-obama-address-isis-threat/

The MSM talking heads are also swinging into action to defend Turkey, arguing that even if the Russian jet was not shot down over Turkey (something an anonymous Pentagon official told Reuters is the case, since video evidence makes further denials by Anakra and Washington unplausible) then Russia still had it coming. Nick Burns, former National Security Council Director for Russian Affairs, charged:

There's an important principle at stake here… Every nation has a right to protect its own borders. And President Obama sided with the Turks today in saying that they have that right. It was a gross violation of international law for the Russians to even fly close to that border…

The Russians may have thought that the Turks weren't serious but they found out today they were.

http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/analysis-of-russian-plane-shootdown/

This incident should shed light on the fact that neither the great powers (like the US, France or Russia) nor the regional players (like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, or Iran) are participating in this conflict to fight a common enemy, ISIS. They are there for other reasons.

Russia, however, is in a tough spot. Pepe Escobar, for instance, noted in Asia Times that Russia has eight times the Islamic extremists living on its soil as does France:

Bajolet tells us that at least 500 French jihadis from "Syraq" might present a threat; compare it with 4,000 in respect to Russia (and that explains Putin's determination to go after all shades of jihadism).
http://www.sott.net/article/306819-Pepe-Escobar-Paris-terror-attacks-who-profits

So Putin may have to put some of his other goals in the region on the back burner in order to actually wage war on ISIS and other Islamic extremist groups.

Javier, 11/25/2015 at 7:37 am

Glenn,

It is a very complex issue as every player has different interests. Putin is right in saying that Turkey, a NATO member, is backing ISIS, not only financially but militarily. For Turkey their main interest is in Syrian Kurds not getting organized, armed, and in control of their own territory. When Turkey says they are fighting ISIS, they are dropping most of the bombs on Syrian Kurds. And they have never respected Iraq borders when attacking Iraqi Kurds.

Saudi Arabia is also supporting ISIS, not only because they also defend an extremist Sunni Islam as Wahabbist Saudi Arabia, but also because it is part of their proxy wars against Shia Iran, and Syria is one of the Shia States with Sunni majority. Saudi Arabia is probably the biggest supporter of Islamic terrorism.

The Alawites of Syria (including the al-Assad family) are also happy that ISIS is in Syria. Without them they have no chance of keeping power, but in a three sides war with one of them being unacceptable to Occident, they are no longer looking so bad.

Syrian opposition is the big loser here. They are bombed by Turkey and Russia (different targets) and attacked on land by Alawites and ISIS as each one wants to expand first at their expense.

This is why refugees are coming out in droves now as the war is getting much worse.

Turkey feels pretty safe. NATO has no choice but to close ranks, and the European Union is paying big money to Turkey to keep a lid on the refugee problem, as Spain does with Morocco.

Holland stupidly wants to march on ISIS, but nobody else wants to put troops on the ground. The only ones with troops on the ground fighting ISIS are Syrian army and Kurds. The latter ones are unacceptable to Turkey, so the former ones might become our new ally.

Alawites, the core of the Syrian army, are paying a very high price for the war. About a third of their manpower has died in the 5 year war. They only keep fighting because they know they face extermination if they lose the war, whether from Syrian Sunnies or from ISIS.

Ves, 11/25/2015 at 8:40 am

Javier,
You got all ingredients right but all your conclusions are not correct.

Paulo, 11/26/2015 at 10:33 am

I wonder what Obama will say about the right of a country to shoot down an aircraft for airspace violation….when one of theirs gets shot down over the Spratleys by China?

Petro, 11/24/2015 at 4:04 pm

A bit off topic Ron, but maybe not by much:

-Shallow Sand et al.

who want higher oil prices might have had their wish granted today after the downing of the russian SU-24 inside syria from a turkish F-16 (you will hear loads of shit in CnnAbcFoxNbcNewYotkTimes…please feel free to complete the alphabet soup here …they are all the SAME! that it was in turkish air space but THAT IS A LIE!!!!)

Let us ALL hope and pray that Putin does not take this at face value (Act of WAR!….which indeed is….probably ordered by your and my tax dollars in DC)….for if He does, oil prices are going to be the last thing we have to worry about, dear Shallow Sand!!!!

Be well,

Petro

P.S.: sorry for the off topic comment Ron and thank you for the post!

Ron Patterson , 11/24/2015 at 5:17 pm

(Act of WAR!….which indeed is….probably ordered by your and my tax dollars in DC)…

Petro, that that the shooting down of this Russian plane was probably ordered by the President, or the Pentagon, is the most ignorant thing I have ever read on this blog. Any goddamn fool with half a brain would know better than that.

Sorry for the strong language but when someone posts something so utterly stupid just to take a swipe at our President, or government, really pisses me off.

That being said, I agree that Turkey shooting down that Russian plane was a very stupid and dangerous thing for Turkey to do. But to say such action was ordered by the US is beyond belief.

Petro, 11/24/2015 at 10:45 pm

Dear Ron,

First, I would like to apologize for being caught in your "cross-hairs" as the result of my unorthodox comment. It will not happen again!

Second, I genuinely respect the tremendous amount of time and information with which you so generously enable all of us frequenting this great forum each and every week! As I have mentioned on numerous comments of mine here, I feel lucky and empowered every time I read one of your well written "mind-teasers".
I truly do!
-For those reasons (and a couple of others) I will not engage on answering:
"…is the most ignorant thing I have ever read on this blog. Any goddamn fool with half a brain would know better than that…."
and
"…when someone posts something so utterly stupid…".

I would sincerely hope however, that in this forum we refrain from using word concoctions such as : "goddamn fool", "utterly stupid", "most ignorant thing I have ever read" aimed at the PERSONAL level – even when scientifically and logically (with regard to this blog) they are "deserved"

– i.e. when Peter writes "If 2015 is the peak Oil year, then it is the $45 per barrel peak.

This should give people pause for thought. How on earth can we really be at peak oil, with prices this low. We cannot."

-or RDG writes "Peak Oil is irrelevant because the world's methane potential is underestimated…"

-or Arceus writes"I suspect if the Saudis could double their production to 20 million boepd they could almost double their market share. The only downside would be oil would likely be selling at 20 dollars per barrel."

-to which you (to my delight-I might add) replied:

"That's the funniest thing I have read in weeks."

It is your right to believe that Erdogan/Turkey -and they alone- are "brave" enough to shoot down a Russian aircraft while flying OUTSIDE their territory;
It is your right to believe that Maidan/Kiev protests and the ousting of Yanukovich happened/grew genuinely from the Ukrainian people;
It is your right to believe that the pro-russian rebels shut down the MH17 in Ukraine;
It is your right to believe that our army and air force cannot destroy a bunch of white-basketball-shoe-wearing-mid-eval -lunatics after a year of bombing campaign and that we cannot disrupt their tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of barrels of oil per day production/selling which brings them millions of dollars per day in hard currency (…yet somehow russians did it in a month);
It is your right to believe that russians are threatening Europe even though we are expanding NATO right at their borders;
It is your right to believe that a bunch of illiterate, ugly, smelly morons with rusted AK-47 can defeat France and Belgium;
It is your right to believe that: "…they hate us for our freedoms…" and "…our troops are fighting over there to keep us safe over here…" and other "lovely" narratives as such.
It is your right!

What I am trying to suggest however, is that there is quite a bit of very logical and credible evidence that points to other versions of the "truth".
…and NO!
I do not follow idiots akin to Alex Jones and Rush Limbaugh…, nor do I wear a tin foil hat.
You say: "…our President, or government…"
I say that the LAST president to be considered truly OURS was JFK.
How did we go from Jefferson/Adams/Payne/…..JFK to ReaganBushClintonBushWO and worse- seriously considering idiots like TrumpHillarious – is beyond me and only Heavens know (I guess A.Bartlet applies even with regard to "worse" and "worse-er" and "worse-rer-rer" people).
What is really done in our name and with our money dear Ron, shall give a "heart attack" to us all …very soon.

In any case, I tried to follow up with Shallow since he was worried about oil prices and I have replied to him (and others) about that on several previous comments.

Again, I apologize for my unorthodox comment and for any unintentional insult.

Be well,

Petro

Ron Patterson, 11/25/2015 at 6:59 am

Petro, I stand by my comment. The plane was in Turkish air space for seconds. If you think someone in Washington said "shoot the goddamn thing down" then you are a fool.

There was not time to notify anyone except Turkish officials on the ground. Turkey does not take orders from Washington.

Nothing else going on in France, Belgium or anywhere else had anything to do with what I wrote or what I was replying to. You simply saw an opportunity to blame the US government for something they very obviously had nothing to do with. I would have agreed with everything you wrote in that one post had you not took the opportunity to blame it on Washington. If you are going to post on this blog then you have the obligation to use a little common sense.

Glenn Stehle, 11/25/2015 at 8:39 am

Ron Patterson said:

The plane was in Turkish air space for seconds.

Are you absolutely sure of that? The Russians are saying that's not true, that the plane never entered Turkish air space. Russia's side is presented in this video: https://www.rt.com/news/323369-turkey-downed-russian-jet/

If a person is indeed on a truth-finding mission, is it not incumbent upon that person to listen to what all sides have to say, and then make up one's mind based on the evidence which is presented?

RT, for instance, has a short clip of an interview with retired U.S. Airforce general Thomas McInery where he asserts that the downing of the Russian jet "had to be pre-planned."

One could probably do no better than to heed the advice which Thomas Jefferson gave his nephew in a letter dated August 10, 1787:

[S]hake off all the fears and servile prejudices under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear….

Caelan MacIntyre, 11/25/2015 at 8:52 am

The Fog of War

Ron Patterson, 11/25/2015 at 8:59 am

Hey, that was not my point. My point was that the shoot down was not ordered by the US Government in Washington.

Shooting down that Russian warplane was an extremely stupid thing for Turkey to do. But what is even more stupid is to say that the shoot down was ordered by Washington.

Glenn Stehle, 11/25/2015 at 11:37 am

Ron,

I was referring to your argument:

The plane was in Turkish air space for seconds. If you think someone in Washington said "shoot the goddamn thing down" then you are a fool.

If what General McInery says is correct - that the downing of the Russian jet "had to be pre-planned" - then there was plenty of time for Anakra to get Washington's approval before the pre-planned attack occurred. I'm not saying that this happened, only that it is not outside the realm of possiblity.

I have a feeling like these cat-and-mouse games between pilots probably go on continuously during conflict situations. However, I have no experience in these matters, and oddly enough, the only fighter pilot I've ever known in my entire life was transgendered:

I also worked for "T" vets inclusion in GLBVA during those years and VA support of "T" vets (which finally happened recently) – I'm a retired USAF Major and Command Pilot. During the '90s I was a rather prolific writer; although, quite a bit of it is probably lost to transgender antiquity. I've been lecturing on gender, gender roles, and the "T" topic at Trinity University for the past 16 years.

http://research.cristanwilliams.com/2012/03/09/tere-fredrickson-interview/

Ron Patterson, 11/25/2015 at 12:08 pm

there was plenty of time for Anakra to get Washington's approval before the pre-planned attack occurred. I'm not saying that this happened, only that it is not outside the realm of possiblity.

Goddammit, will the stupid shit never stop. It is just down in the dirt stupid to suggest that the President would want such a thing. It could lead to the break-up of NATO. Also, the very idea that Turkey would cot-tow to Washington's wishes is also stupid.

To shoot this plane down was the stupidest thing Turkey could possibly do. But a lot stupider things have been done by Middle East Islamic rulers causing things to get a lot worse. But to suggest that our President is just as stupid is beyond the pale. Can you guys just not use a little common sense?

To suggest that Washington was behind this smacks of a conspiracy theory. I think all conspiracy theorists have a screw loose.

Glenn Stehle, 11/25/2015 at 4:06 pm

Ron,

Well as far as I am concerned, President Obama circling the wagons around Turkey hardly qualifies him as being one the brightest lights on the Christmas tree. Obama is attempting to defend the indefensible. Why do you believe that is?

And you don't believe that reinforces the appearance of impropriety, of him being complicit in Turkey's shooting down the plane? Talk about bad optics!

Mark Ames minces no words:

Russia will just have to play and replay the shooting down of its jet, and the Syrian rebels gloating over the dead pilots, to see Putin's already sky-high popularity ratings push even higher….

Point being: this is working out wonderfully for Putin.

In fact, if there's any conspiracy I can make sense of with what's gone on over the past year and a half, it's that anti-Russia neocons and their pals have been doing everything possible to increase Putin's popularity and power at home, in order to build him up as an even more plausible villain over here. Or maybe they're straight-up Putin moles. But that of course gives everyone, especially these idiots, too much credit.

https://pando.com/2015/11/24/turkey-shoots-down-russian-plane-wars-have-funny-way-taking-life-their-own/eba0108e463df65f823e3f435b3eead1d41c6e25/

Ron Patterson, 11/25/2015 at 5:05 pm

Glenn, the idea that Obama ordered the shooting down the Russian plane is pure ignorance, stupidity gone to seed. I will not lower myself by arguing such an utterly stupid scenario.

One more point. This is not a conspiracy theory website. We do not discuss conspiracy theories here.

Bye now.

twocats, 11/26/2015 at 12:08 am

What if this conversation happened:

Turkey, "A lot of recent missions by Russia has put them very close to our borders if not outright in our airspace. What do you want us to do."

White House, "You have the right to defend the sovereignty of your airspace by any means you deem necessary. We feel that Russia is being very reckless in their choice of targets and are endangering stability in the area."

NATO, "You do realize that if Turkey provokes Russia it could draw us directly into the conflict."

White House, "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it."

I mean, if you can't see some version of the above dialogue happening then all I can say to you that you'll understand is, "God Bless America, the greatest country that ever existed."

Javier, 11/25/2015 at 9:09 am

Glenn,

Does it really matter? There is international consensus that planes are not shot down for briefly entering foreign airspace without permit when the nations are not belligerent. Airspace is not clearly delimited up in the air and pilots are often too busy to check.

It is clear that this was an hostile deliberate act by Turkey against Russia regardless of where that plane was at the moment. Where the plane was is only relevant to see if it was legal or illegal, but the deliberate hostile act remains either case.

To me it looks like the Russian plane was flying in circles and was passing over a small tip (~2 km wide) of Turkish territory each time. This was used as an excuse to shoot down the plane in what cannot be claimed as a self-defense act, but clearly a hostile warning.

Turkey doesn't like the way Russia is helping the Syrian government, but they just proved to NATO that they are unreliable and more a liability than a trustworthy ally. This is how wars start, by unjustified escalation.

Ron Patterson, 11/25/2015 at 9:26 am

This time I agree 100% with Javier's assessment of the situation.

Glenn Stehle, 11/25/2015 at 11:02 am

Javier said:

There is international consensus that planes are not shot down for briefly entering foreign airspace without permit when the nations are not belligerent. Airspace is not clearly delimited up in the air and pilots are often too busy to check.

If one watches the RT video I linked above, Erdogan can be heard saying exactly that same thing back in 2012 after Syria shot down a Turkish jet because of an air space violation. Here's what Erdogan said then:

A short-term border violation can never be a pretext for an attack.

https://www.rt.com/news/323369-turkey-downed-russian-jet/

Now, however, the Ministry of Truth in Washington, Anakra and Brussels is saying just the opposite.

Ves, 11/25/2015 at 11:06 am

Blowback. Sinking fast due to their own narrative.

Javier, 11/25/2015 at 11:56 am

Hahahaaa, that's a good one.

Politicians, or the art of defending one thing and the opposite without any blush.

twocats, 11/26/2015 at 12:02 am

fuck an A glen, you're back to the minutiae of that!! stop derailing these conversations about whether or not the plane was in airspace of turkey. I mean really does it matter?! 1km, 40 km, I don't know, irrelevant.

But whether the US might have given the green light for such an act, and the potential reasons for such a thing. Well, now that's interesting, despite Ron's insistence that it's absolutely untenable position. I say, very tenable for a country that has invaded and overthrown dozens of governments in just my short lifetime.

I personally think Ves' comment below about Turkey's desperation about losing their proxies is probably closer to the mark though. I've seen over the past couple decades Turkey has seen itself as a regional player linking the middle east and Europe and global economic hub.

Or it could just be the pilot took the wrong pills getting into the cockpit.

Petreo, 11/25/2015 at 11:04 pm

"If you are going to post on this blog then you have the obligation to use a little common sense."

Dear Ron,
I clearly was!
Not just a little, but a lot of common sense.
In my comment to Shallow I wrote: "…sorry for the off topic comment Ron…"
In my second comment to you I wrote: "…First, I would like to apologize for being caught in your "cross-hairs" as the result of my unorthodox comment.
It will not happen again!…"

I did that, for I did not want to remind you of our first exchange on this site -in which you got a taste of how good I am at "shooting back" (just as Erdogan shall taste how good Putin is at shooting back …very soon!)
-Yet, you continued with your hysterical, inflammatory bursting!
I am not certain what pricked your "bubble" -holiday shopping not going well, perhaps – my condolences!
In any event, you GROSSLY misunderstood and misrepresented what I wrote.
Nowhere did I write that: " …ourPresident ordered: shoot the goddamn thing down…" – as you so eloquently put it.
Let me repeat to you what I wrote (short term amnesia – especially when one is enraged – is a bitch!):
"….probably ordered by your and my tax dollars in DC…".

-What I was trying to convey (obviously fruitlessly!) was that even though Erdogan/Turks pulled the trigger (or maybe you prefer: "pushed the button") and shot the SU24 down, our un-Kosherly dumb (at the very best!) policies for the last 15 years (and maybe longer!) in the region (and wider), have GREATLY empowered "Erdogan" types.
Key word is "at the very best" here, for there is unmistakable and unambiguous evidence to suggest the other extreme of that spectrum (hint: intent)!

-Whether you consider a senior senator (i.e.McCain) posing with known international criminal be-headers, or viceSercretaryOfState (i.e.V.Nuland) hand picking puppets for the head of KievGovrmt after orchestrating, directing and financing a CLASSIC "coup d'etat" to overthrow the previous govmt there, part of ourGovrmt, or NOT – is your business.
However, that does not give you the moral and social (let alone the common sense one!) right to engage in hysterical, inflammatory and wildly accusational burstings against somebody – even on your blog site!
If that is your idea of patriotism, you surely missed it!

-Yes!
It was theTurks who shot down theRussian aircraft – not us!
But to put it in a historical context, SIMPLER for you to understand:
it was NOT Great Britain, France and US (among others) that in 1933 made Adolf Hitler Reich Chancellor;
it was the Germans – whether they be German elites, or German plebes!

Behavior(s) and decisions by political and economical/financial leaders in those Countries however, GREATLY facilitated Hitler's ascend to power!
In December 1938, less than 10 months before starting the carnage that killed 100 million people worldwide , Hitler was Time Magazine's "Man of the Year".

I would strongly suggest to you sources other than NYT and Fox for your world news updates – you would be enlightened!
If you do not want me to comment here and this is personal, be a man and say so without wild explosions of nastiness!
We are all adults here (one can only hope!) and can take it.
And stop throwing the "conspiracy" label around, as well!
Makes you sound very foolish and brainwashed.

-Have a good Thanksgiving tomorrow and maybe/hopefully by Friday feel more relaxed…

Be well,

Petro

twocats, 11/26/2015 at 12:50 am

Hey Petro, yeah, just on the face of it I didn't see your comment as being that outlandish. the united states has a very very very long history of making moves that seem quite "beyond the pale"

http://www.amazon.com/KILLING-HOPE-William-Blum/dp/B007K517VE

in this specific case, ron's point that this move seems really really stupid does ring true for me. but i think we need to wait a little longer and see how it plays out to know for sure.

Ron Patterson, 11/26/2015 at 8:00 am

Back in 2010 I was living in Pensacola, FL. Right after the Deep Water Horizon disaster everyone was pointing the finger, blaming somebody. And there was a lot of blame to go around but I met several folks here that blamed Obama. Yes, they said, Obama planned and ordered the whole disaster. Just why he would order such a thing no one seemed to know. A few came up with a reason, but no one had the same reason as the other nut cases.

I see the same thing in almost every other disaster throughout the world, "Obama planned and ordered the whole disaster". So whenever I see someone blaming Obama, or Washington, for this or that disaster, it really pisses me off.

And like the other nut cases that blamed Obama for the Macondo disaster, they cannot come up with a reason that Obama would do such a thing, but he is the US president and they hate everything that comes out of Washington so he must have been somehow responsible.

Some people never ever miss a chance to blame Obama, or Washington, for some evil act especially when it cannot be proven otherwise.

twocats, 11/26/2015 at 11:45 am

Yep I'll definitely give you the anti-Washington, and vehement anti-Obama thing (gotta be a lot of rascism wrapped up in that). But I'm assuming you are aware of the fairly well known shenanigans of the United States in terms of intervening and influencing countries in order to make terrible terrible things happen:

1) training Saddam to help overthrow Qasim which led to, well Saddam
2) overhthrowing Mossadeg to install Shah which led to Iranian Revolution
3) giving Saddam chemical weapons to kill 100s thousands of Iranians
4) training Al-Qaeda to fight Russia in Afghanistan, and latter trained again to fight in Kosovo
5) Backed wahabi tribe of Saud and backed their play for power in Arabian penninsula which led to of course Saudi Arabia, despised totalitarian regime which regularly beheads and then crucifies people.

i mean i could go on for hours. so the idea that United States hinted to Turkey that it wouldn't be upset if it 1) defended its border, 2) defended Turkmen majority cities on Syrian side (thanks Fernando), these are not such crazy notions. (see article from oriental review – http://orientalreview.org/2015/11/25/whys-the-us-hanging-turkey-out-to-dry/)

twocats, 11/26/2015 at 12:00 pm

and just for giggles here is a more direct corollary

http://foreignpolicy.com/2011/01/09/wikileaks-april-glaspie-and-saddam-hussein/

Petro's post was a little long and poorly written so i didn't read it all and he may have been overstating it.

To say, if he did, that the US directly said, "shoot a plane down ASAP" is probably unlikely. But Turkey, a member of NATO, might be a little hesitant to take such an action unless it felt that the United States had its back. Now Turkey has been a bit "rogue" in recent years – http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/13/turkey-denies-agreement-open-air-bases-us-isis. I mean the final answer is really above my pay grade, but I think you are beginning to see that there are a lot of moving parts to this equation and I'm beginning to agree with wimbi – can we go back to how much drag there would be on a bomber if it lost its tail section?

Ron Patterson, 11/26/2015 at 12:05 pm

but I think you are beginning to see that there are a lot of moving parts to this equation

I am beginning to see there is a lot of bullshit in this equation and it is getting deeper and deeper. As I said, it is very easy to throw out bullshit when it cannot be proven otherwise. You can seem like a master of knowledge when all you really are is a master of bullshit.

Reply

AlexS, 11/25/2015 at 7:37 am

Russian jet hit inside Syria after incursion into Turkey: U.S. official

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/25/us-mideast-crisis-syria-turkey-impact-idUSKBN0TE04M20151125

The United States believes that the Russian jet shot down by Turkey on Tuesday was hit inside Syrian airspace after a brief incursion into Turkish airspace, a U.S. official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The official said that assessment was based on detection of the heat signature of the jet.
---------------

Russia to move S-400 air defense system to Syria - defense minister

http://tass.ru/en/defense/839109

MOSCOW, November 25. /TASS/. Russia will move its air defense system S-400 Triumf to the Hmeimim air base in Syria, accommodating its air and space group, Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said on Wednesday.
The Russian General Staff has warned that Russia will be destroying all potentially dangerous targets over Syria and moved towards the Syrian shores its guided missile cruiser The Moskva armed with the Fort system (the sea-launched equivalent of S-300).
-----------------–
Second pilot of downed Su-24 jet safe, brought to Russian base - Russian defense minister

http://tass.ru/en/defense/839080

MOSCOW, November 25. /TASS/. The second pilot of the Su-24 bomber downed by Turkey has been rescued by the Russian and Syrian forces and is safe and sound, Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said on Wednesday.
"The operation ended successfully. The pilot has been taken to our base. Safe and sound," Shoigu said.
He said the rescue operation lasted for 12 hours.
-------------------–

Turkey's Erdogan says does not want escalation after Russian jet downed

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/25/us-mideast-crisis-syria-turkey-erdogan-idUSKBN0TE0QT20151125

President Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday that Turkey did not want any escalation after it shot down a Russian warplane near the Syrian border, saying it had simply acted to defend its own security and the "rights of our brothers" in Syria.
But while neither side has shown any interest in a military escalation, Russia has made clear it will exact economic revenge through trade and tourism. Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on Wednesday that important joint projects could be canceled and Turkish firms could lose Russian market share.
Increased tensions could have significant economic and political repercussions which are in neither Moscow nor Ankara's interests, analysts warned. But both Putin and Erdogan are strong-willed leaders ill-disposed to being challenged.

"If Erdogan becomes involved a cycle of violence, FDI (foreign direct investment), tourism, and relations with the EU and U.S. will all be in jeopardy," risk analysis firm Eurasia Group said in a note.
"Our bet is that the episode will not escalate … National interest will probably prevail over emotion, but given the players, that's not a sure bet."
Turkey imports almost all of its energy from Russia, including 60 percent of its gas and 35 percent of its oil. Russia's state Atomic Energy Corporation (Rosatom) is due to build Turkey's first nuclear power station, a $20 billion project, while plans are on the table for a gas pipeline from Russia known as TurkStream.
Turkish building and beverage companies also have significant interests in Russia.
Shares in Enka Insaat, which has construction projects in Russia and two power plants in Turkey using Russian gas, fell for a second day on Wednesday. Brewer Anadolu Efes, which has six breweries in Russia and controls around 14 percent of the market, also saw its shares fall on Tuesday.
Russians are second only to Germans in terms of the numbers visiting Turkey, bringing in an estimated $4 billion a year in tourism revenues. But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Tuesday advised them not to visit and one of Russia's largest tour operators to the country said it would temporarily suspend sales of trips.

Javier, 11/25/2015 at 8:52 am

Interesting, Alex,

Turkish might have built themselves a no-fly zone at their Syrian border. Russians have Syrian permit to fly their space, while Turkish have not. After what has happened any Turkish plane over Syrian space can be considered a dangerous target by the Russians and shot down.

I don't understand Turkish actions. If it was a military decision from some commander, they should have tried to apologize, and not run to NATO for cover. If it was a presidential decision, I fail to see what good can come from it for Turkey.

Anyway, I hope those Russian tourists going to Egypt or Turkey can find some solace in Spain [grin].

Ves, 11/25/2015 at 11:18 am

Javier: " I don't understand Turkish actions."

It is very obvious what they want. They want NATO boots on the ground. Do you want to go? Do you know any of Germans that want to go? Greeks, Italians? There are no takers in Europe. Even Obama is not biting.

Javier, 11/25/2015 at 12:13 pm

I've never been in favor of bombing other countries, much less of sending troops.

NATO is a defensive pact in theory. I could understand NATO troops in Turkey if invaded by Russia, but not NATO troops in Syria because Turkey shoots down Russian planes. And I don't believe Turkey is trying to trigger a Russian aggression. Too much to lose.

Your words still don't make sense to me.

Ves, 11/25/2015 at 12:23 pm

What part does not make sense?

That Turks are so desperate to stop their proxies in Syria being annihilated within next few months? Shooting down Russian plane is what desperate party does in order to change war dynamics on the ground.

Javier, 11/26/2015 at 5:10 am

Found a much better explanation than yours over at Euan Mearn's blog in a Syrian drought article in the comments.

Unlike US, Russia is very active attacking oil trucks that smuggle ISIS oil to Turkey. Those trucks belong to a shipping company BMZ that belongs to the son of Erdogan. Russia is causing a personal economic loss to the Erdogan family.

The international coalition against Syria and Russia is beginning to crack on the wake of the Paris attacks by ISIS. Turkey doesn't want that to happen.

This explains the shooting of the plane and the rushed going of Turkey to NATO to ask for support. It is intended to dynamite any possibility of understanding between US-lead coalition in Syria and Russia against ISIS. Obama has his hands tied, as he needs to use his base in Turkey.

Putin is probably too smart to respond. He'll find another way. Perhaps supporting Kurds.

Ves, 11/26/2015 at 8:22 am

Javier,
Drought? So we have all armadas of the world, including Lichenstain's one plane, circling Middle East for the last 30 years because of – drought??!!!
No wonder you believe that one of the stated EU goals is for everybody to hold hands and sing Kumbaya at Eurovison contest. Javier, it's always having been delusions of power, control and mucho dinero that caused the conflict- not drought.

Glenn Stehle, 11/26/2015 at 10:27 am

https://twitter.com/ijattala/status/669389283225026560?refsrc=email&s=11

Ves, 11/26/2015 at 10:54 am

Glenn,
that is exactly what explained to Javier. Cutting the oil line for the finance of the Turkish proxies. Once the money line is cut even the proxies don't fight for free.

Javier, 11/26/2015 at 11:33 am

Ves

Did I say anything about drought being related to the conflict?
I just pointed where I got the information.

You seem to like to engage in straw man arguments. Please continue, don't let yourself be bothered by reality.

Ves, 11/26/2015 at 1:48 pm

Javier said: "Found a much better explanation than yours over at Euan Mearn's blog in a Syrian drought article "

I am sorry but I don't know who is Euarn Mearn's and what Syrian drought article has to do with all this. Leave a link or something.

Javier, 11/26/2015 at 2:06 pm

Ves,

Euan Mearns is a frequent visitor and commenter in this blog. He was also a frequent contributor of The Oil Drumm. He has a very good blog on Energy and also some Climate. If you just google his name you get there. The link to the article is this:
http://euanmearns.com/drought-climate-war-terrorism-and-syria/
The information I posted was in one of the comments.
The article actually argues against the climate change-Syrian war-ISIS connection that has appeared in some media.

Ves, 11/26/2015 at 3:25 pm

Thanks Javier. Okey with that little bit of info from you I know what to expect when I click on that link. I will read it.

You have to understand that I limit my reading to only few limited sources just not to corrupt my mind. You see there are expert internet oil "analysts" who claim that US is oil exporter so there are very dangerous stuff out there in cyber space.

Ves, 11/26/2015 at 9:33 pm

Javier,
I agree with article but I am floored that he actually spent all that energy debunking that nonsense that drought caused all this. Who armed all these people, who financed illegal oil operations, where thousands oil tankers are from, why after 4 years of civil war refugees just suddenly start flowing to Europe this summer, so someone let them purposely go, who is blackmailing Europe?

twocats, 11/26/2015 at 2:59 am

the most ignorant, craziest, stupidest, outrageously reasonably explained plausible fitting into global and regional goals possible thing that's ever been said on this blog:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-11-25/guest-post-why-us-hanging-turkey-out-dry

[Nov 28, 2015] Experts Turkey might be tried for financing ISIL, arms trafficking

www.todayszaman.com

Russia's pledge to take the issue of Turkey's alleged financing of terrorist factions within Syria -- such as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) -- to the United Nations after Turkey recently shot down its jet, has stirred speculation that Turkey could be tried in international courts.

Tensions between Turkey and Russia have been running amok over the past few days, as on Tuesday NATO's second largest army the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) downed a Russian Su-24 jet near the Syrian border, after repeatedly warning it over airspace violations.

Moscow blames Turkey and has set about bolstering its military presence in the region, dispatching several S-400 air defense systems to bolster its Khmeimim air base in Syria's Latakia province. The Kremlin is also determined to punish its one-time friend with economic sanctions such as refusing to buy poultry from Turkey and ordering Russian tourists not to visit the country.

However, the biggest damage Turkey may incur in the fallout of the fallen jet may come after the statements made by Russian leaders, which claim that they will take the issue of ISIL's financial avenues to the UN Security Council -- and that may cause Turkey a much-unneeded headache.

President Vladimir Putin called the downing of the jet a stab in the back administered by "the accomplices of terrorists," referring to Turkey and ISIL.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov echoed Putin, when he said on Wednesday that the Turkish action came after Russian planes successfully targeted the oil infrastructure used by ISIL.

More importantly, Lavrov alleged that Turkey benefited from the oil trade and said Russia will ask the UN Security Council to examine information on how terrorists are financed.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan defied those claims on Thursday saying, "Those who claim we [AK Party] have brought petrol from Daesh [the Arabic term for ISIL], are required to prove their claims, otherwise I will call them [Russian leaders] slanderers."

This is not the first time Turkey has been accused of intermediating ISIL's oil. In July a senior Western official claimed that information gathered at the compound of Abu Sayyaf, ISIL's officer responsible for oil smuggling operations, pointed to high-level contacts between Turkish officials and high-ranking ISIL members, according to a report by the UK-based Guardian newspaper.

Turkey, which only started to take an active part in the international coalition against ISIL, reluctantly, and after two years, has also been accused of turning a blind eye to the crossing of militants into Syria to join ISIL, if not openly facilitating militants' border crossings to join ISIL in Syria.

While giving voice to veiled criticisms of Turkey's dubious dealings with ISIL, Western officials had refrained, until very recently, from directly critiquing Turkish authorities. Russia's recent disclosures indicate that Turkey may be the target of international scrutiny.

Law professor gives al-Bashir example, says trial of Turkey ruler may be possible in future

Günal Kurşun, a professor of criminal law and the president of the Association for Human Rights Agenda, maintained that the current administration could only be tried in international tribunals if and when a new administration comes along and wants to clear the name of the country.

Kurşun gave the example of Omar al-Bashir, the internationally ostracized leader of Sudan, who is currently being tried on 10 counts of crime, including five counts of crimes against humanity, two counts of war crimes, and three counts of genocide according to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The law professor added that even though the legal aspects of Turkey's rulers such as Erdoğan being tried in the ICC may not be certain, the political ramifications will be far reaching, even as far as to confine the rulers within Turkey by way of entry restrictions to other countries.

He explained to Today's Zaman that there are three parties that can bring up a court case in the ICC against an individual.

To begin with, the prosecutor of the ICC can initiate an investigation, as can a state party to the Rome statute and also the UN Security Council (UNSC) may refer investigations to the ICC, acting to address a threat to international peace and security.

There are four instances where individuals can be tried at the ICC. Those are on charges of genocide, aggression, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Kurşun said it is possible for the UNSC to ascertain Turkey as aiding ISIL, which is held as an international terrorist organization, but added that without the cooperation of the member state, not much could be done in terms of the investigation.

Erdoğan's tacit acknowledgment of weapons filled trucks en-route Syria

Also, the question of whether President Erdoğan should be tried at the (ICC) as an individual stemming from allegations that he had knowledge of, if not actively facilitated, the transfer of weapons-filled trucks to radical groups in Syria, claimed by many to be ISIL.

The issue of Turkey's transportation of arms to Syria came to the fore early in 2014, when an anonymous tip led to the search of a number of trucks on the suspicion of weapons smuggling. It was later discovered that the vehicles where actually en route to Syria and belonged to the National Intelligence Organization (MİT).

The first stop-and-search took place in Hatay province on Jan. 1, 2014. Another anonymous tip led to three more trucks being intercepted in Turkey's southern Adana province on Jan. 19, 2014.

Erdoğan who was prime minister at the time, said in a TV program immediately after the search of the trucks became public that they were carrying aid supplies to Turkmens in Syria. On the program, Erdoğan appeared to be particularly angry with the prosecutor for having demanded the search of the trucks to be recorded on video and described the search as "treason."

However, Syrian-Turkmen Assembly Vice Chairman Hussein al-Abdullah said in January 2014 no trucks carrying aid had arrived from Turkey.

Then, this Tuesday, Erdoğan seemingly validated claims that the Turkish government was sending weapon-filled trucks to radical groups in Syria by sarcastically asking, "So what if MİT trucks were filled with weapons?"

Speaking to a room full of teachers on Tuesday gathered for Teachers' Day, Erdoğan said, "You know of the treason regarding MİT trucks, don't you? So what if there were weapons in them? I believe that our people will not forgive those who sabotaged this support."

In May, Selahattin Demirtaş, the leader of the Pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democracy Party (HDP) said in an election rally in the run up to the June 7 general election; "They [the AK Party and Erdoğan] have committed many crimes. They have committed grave sins domestically and internationally, and now there is the possibility that they may be tried at the ICC."

Former ECtHR judge says US-Nicaragua case sets precedent

Rıza Türmen, a former judge at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and one of Turkey's leading expert in international law, told Today's Zaman that a powerful country like the United States was in the past tried and found guilty by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) of aiding and abetting militants in the Central American country of Nicaragua, and that Turkey is no exception.

In 1984, the hitherto relatively unknown country of Nicaragua took the US to the ICJ on the ground that it was responsible for illegal military and paramilitary activities in and against Nicaragua between 1981 and 1984.

In April 1981, US terminated aid to Nicaragua and in September 1981, according to Nicaragua, the United States "decided to plan and undertake activities directed against Nicaragua."

The armed opposition to the new Nicaraguan government was mainly conducted by the Fuerza Democratica Nicaragüense (FDN) and Alianza Revolucionaria Democratica (ARDE). Initial US support to these groups fighting against the Nicaraguan government (called "contras") was covert.

"Turkey does not have the right to intervene in the affairs of another state. However, if the trucks of weapons may be true, as the President [Erdoğan] said, then Turkey will have intervened in the internal affairs of another country," Türmen said.

He added that the UN Security Council is able to initiate the investigations at the ICC, which tries individuals who are charged with committing crime against humanity rather than countries, such as the example with Sudanese leader Omar al-Bashir.

The former judge did note however that Turkey does not recognize the ICC and that it was very unlikely for Erdoğan to be tried there, but added that even being uttered in the same breath as such allegations would be enough to tarnish the reputation of any leader in the international forum.

Professor: Erdoğan hoped to lead bloc of countries from Tunisia to Syria

According to Baskın Oran, a professor at Ankara University's Faculty of Political Sciences, Erdoğan hoped, after the Arab Spring revolts began in 2011, to lead a bloc of countries, ranging from Tunisia to Syria, all headed by Islamist Muslim Brotherhood governments.

Oran wrote in a June article that when Erdoğan saw "Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was blocking this dream; [he] gave orders that arms were to be sent to opposition forces in Syria with the intent of helping to topple Assad."

Oran stated that in sending those weapons, the Erdoğan government clearly violated the United Nations General Assembly's Resolution 2,625 made on Oct. 24, 1970.

Resolution 2,625 clearly reads that "no State shall organize, assist, foment, finance, incite or tolerate subversive, terrorist or armed activities directed towards the violent overthrow of the regime of another State."

Hariri Tribunal set up UN Security Council serves as reminder

In 2005 the UN Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1,595, to establish a commission to assist Lebanese authorities in their investigation of the assassination of former Prime Minister Refik Hariri in Beirut, which took place on Feb. 14, 2005.

Under the resolution, the United Nations International Independent Investigation Commission (UNIIIC) was formed and investigated the assassination for four years, but was later superseded by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), also referred to as the Hariri Tribunal, in March 2009.

The United Nations investigation initially implicated high-level Lebanese and Syrian security officers in Hariri's killing, according to the online news portal gulfnews.com. Arrest warrants were issued by the tribunal, demanding the arrests of four Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorists.

[Nov 28, 2015] The Iraqi Pissing Match - John Kiriakou on RAI (4-10)

therealnews.com

JAY: It's crazy. There's an interview with Lyndon Johnson near the end of his presidency in the Vietnam War, and he's asked, why do you keep continuing this? What is this about? And he actually, apparently, pulls down his fly and brings out his organ--as this is how it's described by one of his biographers--and he says, this is what it's about.

KIRIAKOU: I believe that story.

JAY: At the time, how much do you understand that's what it's about, that it's just a pissing match?

KIRIAKOU: I did understand it, and I grew frustrated with it. I grew frustrated with American policy toward Iraq and decided I've got to do something completely different. And that's when I began looking for new job.

JAY: Within the CIA

KIRIAKOU: Within the CIA

JAY: And you go to Greece.

KIRIAKOU: Well, there was a position advertised that called for either a Greek or Arabic speaker. And it turned out that at the time--.

JAY: You know what? I'm sorry. I want to go back to where you said you can believe the Johnson story.

Alright. So you're a professional analyst. You're analyzing what's going on in Iraq, what should be done. I mean, it sounds like you're coming to the conclusion, like, all of this is unnecessary in terms of real U.S. national interest. You're saying this is essentially a pissing match. I mean, and I don't think we should make that too banal. What I mean by that: it isn't just a personality thing. I think ingrained in U.S. foreign policy is this, that we must make everyone believe we are stronger than they are. And it's sort of like a loan shark. I said this in another interview. If you let someone get away with not paying back their interest that week, then everyone else isn't going to pay back. That's the theory. So you've got to break some knees, and if somebody's really defiant, for that, for its own sake, you have to prove you can put that person in their place.

But, as an analyst, you can see this isn't good foreign policy.

KIRIAKOU: No, it was quite bad foreign policy. It was a waste of resources and people were getting killed. But at the same time, it goes beyond the president and the State Department and the Defense Department. You have congressional leaders hammering the president for being weak on Iraq and to bomb more and to fight harder and to make sure that Saddam is humiliated. And so you have this spiral of bad policy that you just can't get out of.

JAY: And how much do you think that for certain sectors of the economy--'cause it's certainly not true for all of the economy, but if you're in fossil fuels or if you're in military production and associated high tech, war's damn good for business.

KIRIAKOU: It is good for business. And when you think about it, though, if we--. Look at it this way. We bought much, much more Libyan oil than we ever bought Iraqi oil. Iraqi oil mostly went to Europe. And when Libya collapsed and their oil industry came to a screeching halt, it had virtually no effect on our own economy. Virtually none. So did we really need to hammer the Iraqis like this over more than a decade to protect the oil? We really didn't need the oil anyway.

JAY: But by fossil fuel I mean as long as there's conflict, the price of oil's high.

KIRIAKOU: Mhm. It stays high.

JAY: We know big oil companies make more money the higher the price of oil.

KIRIAKOU: That's right.

JAY: People selling arms, the more stuff you blow up, the more stuff you've got to buy to replace it, and the more threat of conflict, the more--.

KIRIAKOU: Right. It's good for business.

JAY: How much do you think that drives U.S. foreign policy?

KIRIAKOU: I think that's an integral part of U.S. foreign policy. I really do. You know, we've got not just arms manufacturers, but now we have drone manufacturers, for example, that are having to compete against Israeli drones and Chinese drones and Russian drones. So we need for there to be conflicts so we can sell our drones. It's the same with aircraft. You know, Boeing and other aircraft manufacturers would go under if we couldn't sell F-15s and F-16s and F-whatever they are, 23s, the new ones that are coming out, both for our own military and for foreign militaries. So war is good for business.

JAY: I mean, if you're thinking of the current situation, the more potential conflict there is between the Saudis and the Iranians, that's a gold mine If you're selling arms.

KIRIAKOU: Especially when the Saudis have a bottomless pit of money that they can dip into. The same with the Qataris and the Emiratis. It's very lucrative for us to be in the Gulf.

JAY: Now, let's go back. As you're leaving, you go back to Arlington. You're back on the Iraq file. You're starting to see how crazy all this stuff is. Are you starting to question now? KIRIAKOU: Yeah, now I'm starting to get frustrated. This policy is broken, it's not working, and there's no hope of changing it. So I decided to do something completely different. JAY: Okay. KIRIAKOU: And that was operations. JAY: So--oh. Now you're going to leave analysis go to operations. Now, this to me sounds a little contradictory. You're starting to see the pattern of some of the underlining rot of the policy, but now you're going to go over to operations, where some of the dark stuff gets done. KIRIAKOU: Yeah, but some of the dark stuff was meant to save and to protect American lives, and that's really what I wanted to focus on. I ended up going to Greece and spending two years in Greece. And my job in Greece was to try to disrupt terrorist attacks committed by a group that was called Revolutionary Organization 17 November. 17 November had murdered the CIA station chief in Athens in 1975. They murdered two defense attaches. They had shot and severely wounded several embassy officers. And they murdered an American Air Force technical sergeant who was just--the poor guy was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. And they had murdered almost two dozen Greek nationals as well, important people--cabinet ministers, the heads of the central bank, university professors, prominent business leaders. And I thought, this is something I could sink my teeth into. JAY: But when you decide to join ops, you don't know that's where you're going. KIRIAKOU: Oh, yeah. JAY: You do? KIRIAKOU: Oh, yeah. JAY: Oh, you know it's Greece. KIRIAKOU: I applied specifically for that job. JAY: And what's the training? KIRIAKOU: It was all of the traditional operational training at--. JAY: Tradecraft they call it. Is that right? KIRIAKOU: Tradecraft, right,-- JAY: Yeah. KIRIAKOU: --at a facility they call "the Farm", which is located south of here. JAY: And how long is the training? KIRIAKOU: Well, because I was midcareer, I didn't have to go through what they called CIA 101. So I went straight into the shooting and the car crashing and the explosives training. And that lasted four and a half months.

[Nov 28, 2015] The Perils of Endless War - Antiwar.com

Notable quotes:

"... John Quincy Adams, for his part, loved an America that "goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy." ..."

November 28, 2015 | Antiwar.com

War tends to perpetuate itself. As soon as one brute gets killed, another takes his place; when the new guy falls, another materializes.

Consider Richard Nixon's intensification of the American war on Cambodia. In hopes of maintaining an advantage over the Communists as he withdrew American troops from Southeast Asia, Nixon ravaged Vietnam's western neighbor with approximately 500,000 tons of bombs between 1969 and 1973. But instead of destroying the Communist menace, these attempts to buttress Nguyen Van Thieu's South Vietnamese government and then Lon Nol's Cambodian government only transformed it. The bombings led many of Nixon's early targets to desert the eastern region of the country in favor of Cambodia's interior where they organized with the Khmer Rouge.

As a CIA official noted in 1973, the Khmer Rouge started to "us[e] damage caused by B-52 strikes as the main theme of their propaganda." By appealing to Cambodians who were affected by the bombing raids, this brutal Communist organization, a peripheral batch of 10,000 fighters in 1969, had expanded by 1973 into a formidable army with 20 times as many members. Two years later, they seized control of Phnom Penh and murdered more than one million of their compatriots in a grisly genocide.

The following decade, when war erupted between the forces of Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and Iraq's Saddam Hussein, the United States hedged its bets by providing military assistance to both governments as they slaughtered hundreds of thousands of people. But when Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990, ousted the emir, and ultimately assassinated about 1,000 Kuwaitis, the United States turned on its former ally with an incursion that directly killed 3,500 innocent Iraqis and suffocated 100,000 others through the destruction of Iraqi infrastructure. The US also maintained an embargo against Iraq throughout the 1990s, a program that contributed to the deaths of 500,000 Iraqis and that UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq Dennis Halliday deemed "genocidal" when he explained his 1998 resignation.

The newly restored Kuwaiti government, for its part, retaliated against minority groups for their suspected "collaboration" with the Iraqi occupiers. The government threw Palestinians out of schools, fired its Palestinian employees, and threatened thousands with "arbitrary arrest, torture, rape, and murder." Beyond that, Kuwait interdicted the reentry of more than 150,000 Palestinians and tens of thousands of Bedoons who had evacuated Kuwait when the tyrant Saddam took over. Thus, years of American maneuvering to achieve peace and security – by playing Iran and Iraq off of each other, by privileging Kuwaiti authoritarians over Iraqi authoritarians, by killing tens of thousands of innocent people who got in the way – failed.

The chase continues today as the United States targets the savage "Islamic State," another monster that the West inadvertently helped create by assisting foreign militants. History suggests that this war against Islamism, if taken to its logical extreme, will prove to be an endless game of whack-a-mole. Yes, our government can assassinate some terrorists; what it cannot do is stop aggrieved civilian victims of Western bombings from replacing the dead by becoming terrorists themselves. Furthermore, even if ISIS disappeared tomorrow, there would still exist soldiers – in Al-Qaeda, for instance – prepared to fill the void. That will remain true no matter how many bombs the West drops, no matter how many weapons it tenders to foreign militias, no matter how many authoritarian governments it buttresses in pursuit of "national security."

So, what are we to do when foreign antagonists, whatever the source of their discontent, urge people to attack us? We should abandon the Sisyphean task of eradicating anti-American sentiments abroad and invest in security at home. Gathering foreign intelligence is important when it allows us to strengthen our defenses here, but bombing people in Iraq and Syria, enabling the Saudi murder of Yemenis, and deploying troops to Cameroon are futile steps when enemy organizations can constantly replenish their supply of fighters by propagandizing among natives who deplore Western intervention.

This understanding, though underappreciated in contemporary American government, reflects a noble American tradition. John Quincy Adams, for his part, loved an America that "goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy." Decades later, Jeannette Rankin doubted the benefits of American interventionism, contending that "you can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake." Martin Luther King Jr. warned that "violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones." These leaders adamantly rejected an American politics of unending aggressive war. It is time for us to do the same.

Tommy Raskin is a contributor to the Good Men Project and Foreign Policy in Focus.

[Nov 27, 2015] Russia imposes sanctions on Turkey over downed plane

Notable quotes:

"... He earlier called the act a "stab in the back by the accomplices of terrorists" and promised "serious consequences" ..."

www.theguardian.com

...the country's tourist board has suspended all tours to Turkey, a move that it estimated would cost the Turkish economy $10bn (£6.6bn). Russia also said it was suspending all military cooperation with Turkey, including closing down an emergency hotline to share information on Russian airstrikes in Syria.

Putin accused Turkey of deliberately trying to bring relations between Moscow and Ankara to a standstill, adding that Moscow was still awaiting an apology or an offer of reimbursement for damages. He earlier called the act a "stab in the back by the accomplices of terrorists" and promised "serious consequences"

... ... ...

Russia has insisted that its plane never strayed from Syrian airspace, while Turkey says it crossed into its airspace for 17 seconds. The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said that even if this was the case, shooting the plane down was an extreme over-reaction and looked like a pre-planned provocation.

[Nov 27, 2015] Russia continues to block Turkish goods amid lingering jet crisis

www.todayszaman.com

Trucks carrying Turkish products on international routes have been facing numerous obstacles encouraged by Russia over the four days since Turkey shot down a Russian jet, and many drivers are waiting in long lines to enter Russia at border crossings in Ukraine and Georgia.

"Earlier, Russian custom officials used to take samples from each truck and let them cross the border but now they have halted all entrances saying that they need to check the whole load even though no inspection has been underway since Tuesday," said Fatih Şener, the executive president of the İstanbul-based International Transporters' Association (UND).

Turkish and international media reported after the outbreak of the crisis that Russia immediately launched economic retaliatory steps on its southern border after Turkey's military shot down a Russian fighter near the country's Syrian border. Official statements from Russia revealed that joint economic projects had been placed under risk while many Turkey-bound tourism ventures were cancelled. Amid such restrictions, product transporters have been complaining of the new barriers they have been facing for the past three days. On Friday, Turkish lira hit 2.9345 versus the US dollar, its lowest since Oct. 29.

"I need to underline that barriers are being imposed not only on Turkish trucks but also on Bulgarians and others that carry Turkish products to Russia," Şener added.

Explaining that most of the trucks were loaded with fresh fruits and vegetables, Şener said exported machinery products that had been on their way to Russia, were also hampered.

But the Kremlin has said it will not impose official sanctions on Turkish products, a statement that Şener said the UND was pinning all its hopes on, adding that he hopes the barriers will not be here to stay in the long-term.

Tension threatens $1 bln worth in produce exports

Of the $2.3 billion in fresh fruit and vegetable exports of Turkey in 2014, Russia-bound sales made up 40 percent of the total, or roughly $1 billion. Turkey mostly exports tomatoes, citrus fruits, grapes, pomegranates and cherries to its northern neighbor.

"I don't want to predict disaster but the situation is very gloomy," Hasan Yılmaz, the head of Aegean Fresh Fruit and Vegetables Exporter Unions told the Cihan news agency.

Cihan also reported on Friday that exporters of produce in the southern province of Antalya, who conducted sales worth around $350 million to Russia in 2014, resorted to releasing their goods on the domestic market.

Necati Zengin, a representative at the Antalya-based Kalyoncu Group, a giant exporter company that used to send around a hundred truckloads of produce to Russia via its seven to eight freighters before the crisis, reportedly said all his trucks are now waiting idle at Russian borders. "It is hard to calculate the losses given that a truck is loaded with some $45,000 worth of goods a day," Zengin said.

[Nov 27, 2015] James Winnefeld, the deputy chief of General Staff of the US military, was in Ankara when the incident occurred

marknesop.wordpress.com

marknesop, November 25, 2015 at 11:16 pm

Great post up at Moon of Alabama on the possibility of American involvement in this caper – James Winnefeld, the deputy chief of General Staff of the U.S. military, was in Ankara when the incident occurred. Although it appeared yesterday to have been Erdogan acting on his own, who knows? If he was persuaded into it, you can chalk up another country that will be an avowed enemy of the USA before a year is out, because it is the Turks who will pay for it in lost revenue and economic reprisals. I agree with a lot of B's conclusions as well.

yalensis, November 26, 2015 at 6:00 am

Of course Americans were involved – duh!

Americans played on Erdogan's Islamist streak and flattered the regional ambitions of this "sick man of Europe".
Under Erdie's incompetent rule, Turkey has become just another two-bit goon to put into play against Russia.
Americans sub-contracted out to Erdogan, to control other Turk-based "goon franchises" such as Djemiliev's fake "Crimean Tatars", Chechen "Caliphate" types such as Osmaev, some Azerbaijani types, and obviously the "Turkmen" sub-brigades of ISIS.
Erdogan is the designated "Team Leader" for all of these dubious elements.
Erdogan himself reports back to the "big guy", shown here pardoning a Turkey owned by a certain Dr. Jihad. Coincidence? I think not!

kirill, November 26, 2015 at 2:14 pm

Thanks for the link and great post! Outside of science and other non-politicized parts of academia, all these academics are regime bootlicks. One such "academic" is Nina Khruscheva. They all spew intellectually insulting drivel.

ucgsblog, November 26, 2015 at 1:35 am

Beautiful article Mark! I completely agree with it. Of note:

1. The Turkmen on the Syrian side of the border, who enjoy Erdogan's protection and intervention, machine-gunned the Russian fighter's pilot and navigator while they were hanging in their parachutes, falling from the sky. Is that a war crime? You bet it is.
2. This knee-jerk defense of a lying shitbag like Erdogan is why Russians are grim and filled with resolve.
3. Lavrov likely does have a point, and the Turks were probably lying in ambush for a Russian plane.
4. [The] official response from Washington was that Turkey has a right to defend its territory and its air space, and President Obama blamed the incident on "an ongoing problem with Russian operations near the Turkish border."

These are the reasons why Russia is going to overreact. Add to this that the EU, at the behest of Obama, the only political national leader who didn't offer condolences to Russia after ISIS bombed a Russian civilian plane, imposed sanctions on Russia over an accidental shooting, that Erdogan's been excessively aggressive, and that Russia is just sick and tired of being treated without any respect by the same elites that back Erdogan, it's no surprise that Erdogan will be hit hard from all directions. The economic damages from the tourism market alone is going to be at least $9 billion. Turkish Stream is probably going to be cancelled, as will generous loans. I'm surprised that there's no official break off in relations just yet, but I think that's also coming. And if Erdogan goes into Syria, well, then it gets interesting.

[Nov 27, 2015] Syrian Turkmen commander who killed Russian pilot turns out to be Turkish ultranationalist

RT News

A Syrian rebel commander who boasted of killing a Russian pilot after Turkey downed Russian jet on Tuesday appeared to be Turkish ultranationalist and a son of former mayor in one of Turkish provinces.

Alparslan Celik, deputy commander of a Syrian Turkmen brigade turned out to be the son of a mayor of a Keban municipality in Turkey's Elazig province.

He also turned out to be the member of The Grey Wolves ultranationalist group, members of which have carried out scores of political murders since 1970s.

READ MORE: Russian Su-24 pilots shot dead while parachuting over Syria - Turkmen militia

Celik came under spotlight after he announced that as the two Russian pilots descended by parachute after the Su-24 jet was downed by Turkish military, both were shot dead by Turkmen forces on Tuesday.

A graphic video posted earlier on social media purported to show a Russian pilot lying on the ground surrounded by a group of armed militants.

[Nov 27, 2015] Turkish F-16 attacked Russian Su-24 without warning, both were above Syria – commander

Notable quotes:

"... "unprecedented backstab." ..."

"... Both aircraft remained in the area for 34 minutes. During this time there was no contact between the crews of the Russian bombers and the Turkish military authorities or warplanes. ..."

"... Commander Bondarev noted that a pair of Turkish F-16Cs had been in the area close to the attack zone for more than an hour prior to the attack, which explains their presence in the area. The time needed to get the aircraft ready at the Diyarbak r airfield and travel to the attack zone is an estimated 46 minutes. ..."

"... One of Turkish F-16Cs stopped its maneuvers and began to approach the Su-24M bomber about 100 seconds before the Russian aircraft came closest to the Turkish border, which also confirms the attack was pre-planned, Commander Bondarev stressed. ..."

"... The chief of Russia's Air Force also called attention to the readiness of the Turkish media, which released a professionally-made video of the incident recorded from an area controlled by extremists a mere 1.5 hours after the Su-24 was downed. ..."

"... The Turkish military not only violated all international laws on protecting national borders, but never delivered an apology for the incident or offered any help in the search and rescue operation for the Su-24 crew. ..."

"... "more than massive, devastating" ..."

Nov 27 , 2015 | RT News

14:13Edited time: 27 Nov, 2015 16:57 Get short URL A Turkish fighter jet launched a missile at a Russian bomber on Tuesday well ahead of the Su-24 approaching the Turkish border, the chief of Russia's Air Force said. The bomber remained on Turkish radars for 34 minutes and never received any warnings. TrendsSu-24 downing

The attack on the Russian Su-24 bomber was intentional and had been planned in advance, Viktor Bondarev, the chief of Russia's Air Force, announced Friday, calling the incident an "unprecedented backstab."

The commander shared with the media previously unknown details of what happened on Tuesday.

On November 24, a pair of Russian Sukhoi Su-24 tactical bombers took off from Khmeimim airbase in Latakia at 06:15 GMT, with an assignment to carry out airstrikes in the vicinity of the settlements of Kepir, Mortlu and Zahia, all in the north of Syria. Each bomber was carrying four OFAB-250 high-explosive fragmentation bombs.

Ten minutes later, the bombers entered the range of Turkish radars and took positions in the target area, patrolling airspace at predetermined heights of 5,800 meters and 5,650 meters respectively.

Both aircraft remained in the area for 34 minutes. During this time there was no contact between the crews of the Russian bombers and the Turkish military authorities or warplanes.

Some 20 minutes after arriving at the designated area, the crews received the coordinates of groups of terrorists in the region. After making a first run, the bombers performed a maneuver and then delivered a second strike.

Immediately after that, the bomber crewed by Lieutenant-Colonel Oleg Peshkov and Captain Konstantin Murakhtin was attacked by a Turkish F-16 fighter jet operating from the Diyarbakır airfield in Turkey.

Read more FSA video claims Russian-made helicopter hit with US-made TOW missile near Su-24 crash site

To attack the Russian bomber with a close-range air-to-air missile, the Turkish fighter jet had to enter Syrian airspace, where it remained for about 40 seconds. Having launched its missile from a distance of 5-7 kilometers, the F-16 immediately turned towards the Turkish border, simultaneously dropping its altitude sharply, thus disappearing from the range of Russian radars at the Khmeimim airbase.

The Turkish fighter moved two kilometers into Syrian airspace while the Russian bomber at no stage violated Turkish airspace, Bondarev stressed.

The crew of the second Su-24M had a clear view of the moment the missile was fired from the Turkish F-16, and reported this to base.

Commander Bondarev noted that a pair of Turkish F-16Cs had been in the area close to the attack zone for more than an hour prior to the attack, which explains their presence in the area. The time needed to get the aircraft ready at the Diyarbakır airfield and travel to the attack zone is an estimated 46 minutes.

One of Turkish F-16Cs stopped its maneuvers and began to approach the Su-24M bomber about 100 seconds before the Russian aircraft came closest to the Turkish border, which also confirms the attack was pre-planned, Commander Bondarev stressed.

The chief of Russia's Air Force also called attention to the readiness of the Turkish media, which released a professionally-made video of the incident recorded from an area controlled by extremists a mere 1.5 hours after the Su-24 was downed.

Commander Bondarev also mentioned the memorandum of understanding regarding the campaign in Syria, signed by Moscow and Washington on October 26. In accordance with this agreement, the Russian side informed its American counterparts about the mission of the two bombers in the north of Syria on November 24, including the zones and heights of operation.

Read more Terrorists in Su-24 search operation area killed - Russian Defense Ministry

Taking this into account, the Turkish authorities' statement on not knowing which aircraft were operating in the area raises eyebrows, Bondarev said.

The Turkish military not only violated all international laws on protecting national borders, but never delivered an apology for the incident or offered any help in the search and rescue operation for the Su-24 crew.

The Su-24's pilot, Lieutenant-Colonel Oleg Peshkov, was shot dead by militants while parachuting to the ground, having ejected from the stricken aircraft. His partner, navigator Captain Konstantin Murakhtin, survived being shot at while parachuting and managed to stay alive on the ground in an area full of terrorists.

The rescue operation took several hours and eventually recovered Murakhtin, although one Russian Marine in the team was killed when the rescue helicopter was destroyed by a US-made tank missile launched by the extremists – an incident they filmed and published online.

Commander Bondarev specifically stressed that the Russian pilot who survived the attack was actively looked for not only by the jihadists, but also by a number of unidentified and technically well-equipped groups.

After Captain Murakhtin was rescued, the Russian Air Force delivered "more than massive, devastating" airstrikes against the militants in the region where the operation had been taking place, Bondarev reported.

[Nov 27, 2015] Putin Hard to imagine Turkish gov't unaware of oil supplies from ISIL

Notable quotes:

"... He also said that the shooting down by Turkey of a Russian jet was an act of betrayal by a country Russia considered to be its friend. ..."

www.todayszaman.com

It is hard to imagine that the Turkish government is unaware of oil supplies to Turkey from areas controlled by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Syria, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday after talks with French leader Francois Hollande.

Putin used the opportunity of the joint news conference with Hollande to repeat his accusations against Turkey of turning a blind eye to oil smuggling by ISIL. He said it was "theoretically possible" that Ankara was unaware of oil supplies entering its territory from ISIL-controlled areas of Syria but added that this was hard to imagine.

He also said that the shooting down by Turkey of a Russian jet was an act of betrayal by a country Russia considered to be its friend.

[Nov 27, 2015] Russian economic retaliation rains down on Turkey as tension lingers

Notable quotes:

"... Turkeys economy will grow only under 3 percent this year, below the governments target, weighed down by political uncertainty at home and conflict in the Middle East. ..."

"... There are also a whole range of deals, investments and commercial relationships that could be threatened in the fallout from the downing of the Russian jet. ..."

"... Tourism is already being hit. After Russian officials on Tuesday advised holidaymakers against traveling to Turkish resorts ..."

www.todayszaman.com

Moscow made public a series of economic retaliation steps against Turkey on Thursday, after efforts to defuse tensions between Ankara and Moscow over the downing of a Russian jet fighter on Tuesday failed to pay off.

Russia said on Thursday it may impose various economic restrictions on Turkey, including measures to restrict the planned TurkStream gas pipeline, ending cooperation in building Turkey's first nuclear plant and limiting civilian flights to and from Turkey. Such moves would heap serious pain on either Turkey or Russia, both of which are already struggling economically, experts agree.

Russia said on Thursday it would be looking to cut economic ties with Turkey and scrap investment projects in a matter of days in the aftermath of the Turkish downing of a Russian warplane. The televised statement by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev came a day after Russian media reported hundreds of trucks bringing Turkish goods stranded at the border. Medvedev ordered the Russian government to draw up measures that would include freezing some joint investment projects with Turkey, in retaliation for the downing of a Russian warplane by Turkey. He also told a meeting of Cabinet ministers on Thursday that the measures would include restrictions on food imports from Turkey.

Shortly after Medvedev, Russian Economy Minister Alexei Ulyukayev said on Thursday that the restrictions against Ankara may include the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant, which is currently under construction in the southern province of Mersin in Turkey. He said the restrictions, drawn up in retaliation for the downing of a Russian warplane by Turkey, may also include limits to civil flights to and from Turkey and a halt to preparations for a Free Trade Zone. Moscow will also halt the creation of a single Turkish-Russian investment fund, Ulyukayev added. Meanwhile, cooperation between Russia and Turkey in tourism will "obviously" be halted, the head of Russia's tourism agency, Rostourism, said on Thursday, the Interfax news agency reported. Separately on Thursday, local authorities in Crimea also said a dozen of planned Turkish investment projects in the region were cancelled.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, however, on Thursday dismissed as "emotional" and "unfitting of politicians" the suggestions that projects with Russia could be canceled.

Turkish stocks fell more than 2 percent while the lira weakened to above 2.9 against the US dollar on Thursday.

Crackdown on Turkish food imports

Russia has increased checks on food and agriculture imports from Turkey, its Agriculture Ministry said on Thursday, in the first public move to curb trade in a dispute with Ankara for downing a Russian fighter jet.

The government told food safety watchdog Rosselkhoznadzor to increase controls after Agriculture Ministry research showed about 15 percent of agriculture imports from Turkey did not meet regulations, the ministry said.

Rosselkhoznadzor normally only checks some food deliveries. The decision to start checking all supplies from Turkey means that while imports will continue, they could be significantly delayed. Moscow often uses Rosselkhoznadzor regulations in diplomatic spats, imposing bans on imports of certain products, citing health reasons. Officials deny the agency's actions are politically driven.

Moscow banned most Western food imports in 2014 when Western countries imposed sanctions on Russia over its role in the Ukraine crisis.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Thursday the government was not planning to impose any embargo on Turkish imports. Turkey accounts for about 4 percent of Russia's total food imports, supplying mainly fruits, nuts and vegetables. Agricultural and food product imports from Turkey were worth $1 billion in the first 10 months of 2015, according to customs data. But 20 percent of Russia's vegetables come from Turkey.

Russian Agriculture Minister Alexander Tkachev said any shortfall could be made up with supplies from Iran, Morocco, Israel and Azerbaijan. Citrus imports could come from South Africa, Morocco, China and other countries if necessary, he said in a statement. Russia's biggest food retailer Magnit said it was still buying fruits and vegetables from Turkey and declined to provide further comment. Food retailer Dixy said it would do its best to find other suppliers if needed.

Russian retailers were forced to find new suppliers in 2014 after Russia banned most Western food imports.

Fragile economies

Russia's economy will shrink around 4 percent this year from the combined effects of the low oil price and sanctions over the conflict in Ukraine.

Andrei Kostin, the head of Russian state-owned bank VTB, told reporters at a forum in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg that politics and economics should be kept separate. "I would not be inclined to whip up the situation right now," he said, adding: "I think that one has to approach this very calmly. There are always negative events going on in the world."

Meanwhile, Turkey's economy will grow only under 3 percent this year, below the government's target, weighed down by political uncertainty at home and conflict in the Middle East. "Erdoğan is a tough character, and quite emotional, and if Russia pushes too far in terms of retaliatory action, I think there will inevitably be a counter reaction from Turkey [like] tit-for-tat trade sanctions," Nomura strategist Timothy Ash wrote in a note. "But I think there is also a clear understanding that any such action is damaging for both sides, and unwelcome."

There are also a whole range of deals, investments and commercial relationships that could be threatened in the fallout from the downing of the Russian jet.

Russia's state Atomic Energy Corporation, known as Rosatom, is due to build Turkey's first nuclear power station, a $20 billion project. Rosatom said it has no comment on the issue.

Shares in Turkish firm Enka İnşaat, which has construction projects in Russia and two power plants in Turkey using Russian gas, fell for a second day on Wednesday. Turkish brewer Anadolu Efes, which has six breweries in Russia and controls around 14 percent of the market, also saw its shares fall on Tuesday.

Tourism is already being hit. After Russian officials on Tuesday advised holidaymakers against traveling to Turkish resorts, at least two large Russian tour operators said they would stop selling packages to Turkey. Russians are second only to Germans in terms of the numbers visiting Turkey, bringing in an estimated $4 billion a year in tourism revenues.

[Nov 27, 2015] Kremlin Cutting Economic Links With the Turks

Notable quotes:

"... Oh, Turkey is in a lot of trouble, but this country essentially committed succeed de and I cannot fathom the lack of decent press coverage on that fact. First, Turkey's account of a 17 second overflight of Turkish airspace is mathematically impossible. Worse, Russian, in an attempt to cooperate with the Obama White House, released details of the flight path of that Russian plane to the Turks. Someone in the US government told Turkey exactly when and where that plane would be and Turkey, shot it down for them. WikiLeaks attributes this madness directly to Obama. ..."

"... Claiming Russia gave flight information to the US and therefore Turkey (isn't this a real coalition, he asks, mockingly?) further exacerbates one tension in this complex matrix of relations. ..."

"... President Bush said Saddam must go! That led to a catastrophe in Iraq with unfathomable losses on all sides. President Obama said Assad must go! Now we another catastrophe evolving in Syria and it's neighbors. ..."

"... This superficial assessment of things fails to capture the great gravity of the current situation caused by Turkey's foolish crime. ..."

"... It also reveals that Turkey sides with the Daesh Takfiri terrorists, the same ones who blew up a filled Russian plane just a few weeks ago. ..."

"... The decision to down the Russian plane regardless of whether it was in Turkish airspace for 20 seconds or not, was a major error on the part of Erdogan. He is rapidly losing what few friends in the West and the Middle East he may ever have had. The Turks were doing OK before this guy came on the scene. ..."

"... Obama was in Turkey one week before this incident. His remarks following the incident implicitly threatened Russia with more of the same. It is unlikely that Erdogan would have taken such a step without the support of his buddy Obama. ..."

"... Erdogan is trying to calm the storm and hold France 24 television: "We might have been able to prevent this violation of our airspace differently." ..."

"... Perhaps he realises that Ankara might have over-reacted. Turkish airforce could have fired warning shots, without hitting the plane. It was essential to remind Russia of violating Turkish air-space, although Russian planes are not a direct threat to Turkey. ..."

"... Turkey staged a provocation with full knowledge of where and when this Russian airplane will be. And after that NATO fully supported their member. I wonder why Russia sees NATO as threat. The message is loud and clear - NATO countries may provoke Russia under the protection of the allies. ..."

Nov 27, 2015 | www.nytimes.com

The New York Times

"One gets the impression that the Turkish leaders are deliberately leading Russian-Turkish relations into a gridlock," Mr. Putin said, adding later in the day: "Turkey was our friend, almost an ally, and it is a shame that this was destroyed in such a foolish manner."

... ... ...

During a news conference with Mr. Hollande late Thursday, Mr. Putin suggested that the United States, an ally of Turkey, was responsible for the fate of its warplane, since Moscow had passed on information about where and when its bombers would fly.

"What did we give this information to the Americans for?" Mr. Putin asked, rhetorically, before adding: "We proceed from the assumption that it will never happen again. Otherwise we don't need any such cooperation with any country."

... ... ...

Maria Zakharova, the spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, objected to the failure of Turkish or NATO officials to offer condolences over the two Russian military men who died after the plane was shot down. She also demanded an explanation from Turkey about the death of the pilot, who was killed after he parachuted from the plane. It is believed he was shot by Turkmen insurgents who live along the border on the Syrian side and who are supported by Ankara.

... ... ...

Hundreds of trucks bearing Turkish fruits, vegetables and other products were lining up at the Georgian border with Russia, Russian news media reported, as inspections slowed to a crawl and Russian officials suggested there might be a terrorist threat from the goods.

"This is only natural in light of Turkey's unpredictable actions," Dmitri S. Peskov, the presidential spokesman, told reporters.

jamil simaan, Boston

If you compare Russia as a whole today to a person reacting to unexpected slights and/or attacks from people they used to trust, I don't think its response would seem irrational. Russia will definitely take an economic hit for applying sanctions to Turkey, but who respects a person who always prioritizes making money over self-respect? The way Turkey took down this jet made it all but impossible for Russia not to respond very aggressively because the Russian military has quickly become a moral pillar of Russian society, where the economy is flagging and politics stagnant. What did they expect Russia to do, just take it?

No matter how you slice it, though, Turkey's behavior has been much much worse for Turkey than anybody else. The American perspective is pretty pragmatic, and I'm sure a lot of people in the Obama administration are thinking they'd be pretty angry, too, if that happened to the US. It appears that behind closed doors the American and NATO leadership is not happy with Turkey, especially Erdogan. It couldn't be clearer right now how little any other NATO country would like to go to war for Turkey, especially when it is doing stupid things like this.

Wandering Jew, Israel 1 hour ago

It was reckless and dangerous move on the part of Turkey as a member of NATO. There was no reason to escalate the already sensitive situation shooting down Russian plane that was no real threat for Turkey's security.
Erdogan is more dangerous as a partner than he is as an enemy.

ngop, halifax, canada 4 hours ago

Erdogan is hardly in a position to criticize Russia for violating Turkish airspace (for all of 20 seconds at most) when his forces routinely do much worse things in Syria. His unconscionable and indiscriminate bombing of Kurds, both in Turkey and Syria, as well as doing everything possible to dislodge Assad has the objective result of helping the Islamic State. And speaking of territorial integrity, let's not forget about the forty years of illegal Turkish occupation of Cypress. With friends like Erdogan and his Saudi mentors, we don't need any enemies.

courther, USA 3 hours ago

Can we bottom line this situation? Turkey has really messed up by not only shooting down the bomber but killing the Russian pilot while he was in his parachute floating to the ground. I guess the barbaric Turkmen didn't realize that they were violating the Geneva Convention when they shot the pilot.

The US has also messed up when Russia gave the US its flight plan for the bombers in which the US apparently shared with Turkey. Both the US and Turkey have now backed themselves into a corner with Russia in Syria.

Putin has ordered the S-400 anti-missile defense system to be located 30 miles from the border of Turkey. The S-400 is one of the most advanced anti-missile systems in the world. The US military doesn't have an answer for this powerful and precise anti-defense system. The system is designed to target and destroy 75 targets simultaneously. This include Tomahawks missiles, stealth fighter planes such as the F-22 and the F-35 fighter jets. The system is accurate and precise. It doesn't miss its target. It is fully effective within a 250 miles radius.

Here is where most of you missed the point. With this type of weapon Putin can establish a no-fly zone in Syria and any plane that violate Syrian airspace can be shot down and there is nothing NATO or the US can do because of international law. Russia is a legitimate ally to Syria and can act on Syria's behalf. Whoever let Turkey join NATO messed up.

Julien, Canada

Turkey Violated only Greek Airspace 2,244 Times Last Year!!! Not to mention vialation of other countries.

http://dailycaller.com/2015/11/24/turkey-violated-greek-airspace-2244-ti...

A formation of Turkish fighter jets violated Greek airspace a total of 20 times!!! in a sigle day engaging in dogfight with Greek defenders. Clear provocation.
http://www.businessinsider.com/turkish-and-greek-jets-engaged-in-dogfigh...

Moreover when Syrian air defence downed Turkish F-4 Phantom, as a reaction Erdogan said in 2012: "Brief Airspace Violations Can't Be Pretext for Attack".

I let you decide what you think about it.

Paul, Virginia 3 hours ago

Considering the facts that both the US and Russia are nuclear powers and that Turkey is a member of NATO requiring NATO to go to war if Turkey was attacked, Turkey's shooting down the Russian jet and calling for an emergency NATO meeting was at the height of irresponsibility and recklessness and stupidity. The tepid reaction from the US and NATO indicates that Turkey was acting alone or without explicit consent from NATO. Russia's reaction so far has been confined to trade and tourism but Russia will surely and shortly begin to take actions that will intimidate Turkey short of an outright military attack, which will again raise at worst verbal tension with NATO for NATO will not risk a war with Russia over Turkey's behavior. It's overdue for the US and NATO to assess and downgrade alliance with Turkey.

Simon, Tampa 3 hours ago

I just hope that Putin takes revenge on Turkey, the Saudis, and other Gulf States by having the FSB leak to the media all the evidence that they are the ones financially supporting ISIS and Al Qaeda. This will embarrass our government, the French and other European countries doing business with them as they support terrorists who kill their citizens. Hollande wants to stop ISIS, then he should do stop doing business with these countries and call for international sanctions against them until they stop their indefensible behavior.

Knorrfleat Wringbladt, Midwest 3 hours ago

Turkey is lying in their effort to support Daesh and appropriate Syian territory. As the conflict worsens Turkey hopes to gain through suppression of its own citizens (Kurds) as well as stealing resources from surrounding weakened states. The fact that their strategy may cause serious setbacks for Western Civilization is an added bonus.
The West is foolish to ally themselves with a nation that for thousands of years has been the pivot between east and west. Turkey has learned to play both sides against each other. We need to do an end run apology to Russia (on Turkeys behalf), severely sanction Turkey for their non cooperation or kick them out of NATO altogether. If we do nothing they will continue to undermine us.

Mike Brooks, Eugene, Oregon 5 hours ago

Oh, Turkey is in a lot of trouble, but this country essentially committed succeed de and I cannot fathom the lack of decent press coverage on that fact. First, Turkey's account of a 17 second overflight of Turkish airspace is mathematically impossible. Worse, Russian, in an attempt to cooperate with the Obama White House, released details of the flight path of that Russian plane to the Turks. Someone in the US government told Turkey exactly when and where that plane would be and Turkey, shot it down for them. WikiLeaks attributes this madness directly to Obama.

Hamid Varzi, Spain 3 hours ago

Let us view the world, for as second, from an Iranian and Russian perspective:

The U.S. directly caused the rise of Islamic Extremism with 60 years of oppressive geopolitical policies in the Middle East. The U.S.'s current allies in the "War on Terror" are Wahhabi-infested Saudi Arabia, Palestine-baiting Israel, increasingly regressive Turkey and Al Qaeda refuge Pakistan. (Instead of focusing on the 50 nuclear weapons that already exist in the nation that created and supported the Taleban, the U.S. is focused on the nuclear programme of Iran that helped it defeat the Taleban in Afghanistan in the aftermath of 9/11!).

Having seen the disastrous results of removing Middle Eastern dictators in Iraq and Libya, the West has now decided to remove the dictator in Syria, but in the expectation of different results.

All the while, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Turkey are laughing their heads off at the discomfort faced by Iran and Russia as a result of crashing oil prices, seemingly ignorant of the far greater threat to their own security posed by the so-called Islamic State. The West, like deer caught in the Saudi, Israeli and Turkish headlights, has become paralyzed and has become easy pickings for radical Islamists, as we saw recently and tragically in Paris.

The West must realize it has become the victim of its own policies: It must urgently reappraise its geopolitical strategies by tackling Islamic Extremism at the source.

Tom, Fl Retired Junk Man 3 hours ago

Turkey is way out of line with their actions, they should apologize immeadiately and never be so foolish as to play with people's lives as though they were chess pieces.
This is not a game, if you screw with Russia there will be a strong response, and it is so unneccesary.

The Obama administration has messed up this relationship with Russia, that stupid reset button that Hillary presented to the Russian's should be reset again.

You get a lot more of a result with honey than with vinegar, and don't forget " Bears like Honey ".

So leave that Russian Bear alone.

This is news? Eugene, OR

Ignore Putin's pleas of outrage in this instance. This is about something other than a lost Russian pilot.

It is all about driving a wedge among NATO members, most specifically France and others inclined to cooperate with Putin in Syria, both practically and in terms of optics, and Turkey.

European-Turkish relations were already strained (human rights, Turkey abetting fighters travelling to join Daesh, rifts over the Kurds, failure to make progress on EU membership, and on) and Putin, believing he is needed by the West newly-energized to attack Daesh, is pressing on the sore point. He knows, for instance, that Turkey is 1) absolutely committed to Assad succession and 2) unwilling to see anything that doesn't hurt the Kurds develop.

With France leading Europe closer to Putin, the previous Western insistence on Assad leaving is weakening (for better or worse), giving way to the desire for tighter coop with Russia. Putin is framing this diplomatically as the only "serious" way to combat Daesh, putting Europe and Turkey increasingly on opposite sides of the Assad question in the short-term.

Claiming Russia gave flight information to the US and therefore Turkey (isn't this a real coalition, he asks, mockingly?) further exacerbates one tension in this complex matrix of relations.

Unlike Republicans I do not see Putin as some master strategist but this play is reasonably smart if transparently obvious.

Concerned. Michigan 2 hours ago

Plain and simple.

The only way ISIS criminals can get in and out of Syria is through Turkey. Why is it so hard to see how complacent are the Turks in allowing free access for these thugs in and out of Syria? It is high time for the world to confront the obvious. The Saudis and Qataris with their financial might have lobbied the Turks and the rest of the world to allow this to go on. Isis existence depends on human flow and money supply from gulf Arab donors and its oil trade through the Turkish border, address these main issues and Isis will be easier to defeat....

Dr. MB, Irvine, CA 4 hours ago

In the land of the Great Atarturk, this gentleman Mr. Erdogan does not fit in! Nations suffer when cynical persons wiggle into power, Turkey will not be an exception, unfortunately!

Barrie F. Taylor, Miami, Florida 4 hours ago

I was born in 1939 and have always been optimistic that war would eventually disappear after WW2 as a method for resolution of disputes between humans. Also I never thought that a nuclear war was likely to happen. The current state of discord in the world is astounding when one considers what we know about our world and existence. Religion should have died out by now but there are still ignorant people who still believe in God and immortality! Warfare and violence only beget violence and warfare - that should clear to anyone. Clearly our educational systems have failed.
As for warfare, it is always the average people who pay the price not our "leaders" who keep well out of harms way. They no longer lead the cavalry charge.
The West should keep out of the Middle East and let them resolve their problems - we've already messed up the area with colonialism , and that includes the US. The most important problem is the is a real likelihood of nuclear conflict due the abundance of nuclear weapons in the region. Because of the lunacy of religion this is probably bound to happen sometime soon.

NY 4 hours ago

The only way to ease the tensions is that Erdogan offers an apology to the Russian people and pays for the damage of the fighter Jet and compensation to the Pilots family. Bar the above he and the Turks will pay a much bigger price.

I would not be surprised if a Turkish F-16 or two being shot down in the future. Erdogan do the smart thing go down on your knees and apologize.

Byron Jones, Memphis, Tennessee 4 hours ago

Points to ponder
1. The Russian jet was in Turkish airspace for a few seconds in face of Turkish allegations that the pilots were warned for several minutes in advance.
2. Why shoot down the jet when a strong, morally outraged response from the Turks would play better internationally?
3. Both Putin and Erdogan have problems at home and there is a long history of bad blood between the two countries.

Putin and Erdogan -- two bullies playing a dangerous game of chicken.

Sridhar Chilimuri, New York 2 hours ago

What a mess!

President Bush said Saddam must go! That led to a catastrophe in Iraq with unfathomable losses on all sides. President Obama said Assad must go! Now we another catastrophe evolving in Syria and it's neighbors.

There is lesson for us to learn. We or any other country should not be participating in leadership changes of other countries - let their people do it!

MN, New York 1 hour ago

Russia had a choice between Assad and Turkey and they chose Assad. They started bullying Turkey repeatedly since their campaign in Syria begun, they went as far as putting eight Turkish F-16s under radar lock by both MiG-29 and anti-aircraft missiles in October. They also specifically targeted Turkmen villages and Turkey backed rebels on Syrian-Turkish borders since October. The list of provocation goes on and on. The Russian ambassador was summoned by Turkey at least 5 times since Russia started its campaign in Syria. Turkey complained to UN more than one time too about Russia.

So if you think Russia has not been asking for this, you're wrong. It's exactly what Russia wants. The provocation started by Russia and Turkey was patient with Russia until they started to bomb the Turkmen. Despite Turkey's effort to de-escalate after the incident, Russia has cut economic ties and the Kremlin even rejected a request to Putin-Erdogan meeting in upcoming Paris convention. Russia continued their path of further provocation by intensifying air strikes on every single Syrian-Turkish border held by Syrian rebels and on Turkmen villages. They even started giving air support to Kurd's PYD in their new push against Syrian rebels.

Turkey on the other hand is under pressure to respond to Russia provocation especially by nationalists who voted to the AKP government for the first time instead of their preferred extreme nationalist MHP party.

ZHR, NYC 2 hours ago

Turkey is not very accurate. Last week Turkish nationalists -- no doubt at the behest of the Erdouan government--protested Russian air strikes in Syria in front of the Dutch Consulate. They got the wrong consulate.

In July, it was reported that Turkish "demonstrators angry about the Chinese government's treatment of its Muslim Uighur minority attacked a Chinese restaurant. It turned out to be owned by a Turk, and worse still the chef was in fact an Uighur Muslim."

Don't blame the Turks. They probably thought they were downing a Bulgarian plane or maybe one from Lichtenstein.

Syed Abbas, Dearborn MI 4 hours ago

What Russia could not do in 70 years, ISIL has done in 1. Break up NATO.

Now, it is France, Russia, Germany Iran against Turkey, US, and ISIL, a conflict that will go on for the rest of the century.

Today, it is not the end, but beginning of the end.

Buckeye, Ohio 1 hour ago

This superficial assessment of things fails to capture the great gravity of the current situation caused by Turkey's foolish crime. This is the first time in over 50 years in which a NATO force attacked and destroyed a Soviet/Russian military target with fatal consequences. This reckless military aggression by Turkey deserves the condemnation, to support, of the USA and all other NATO countries.

It also reveals that Turkey sides with the Daesh Takfiri terrorists, the same ones who blew up a filled Russian plane just a few weeks ago. The most rational outcome of this criminal act of war by Turkey is to expel it from NATO which needs to join the Syrian government in annihilating the Daesh terrorists, their roots and current sources of support. Tragically, rationality does not guide the US verbal war on the Daesh terrorists, who, like it, still has regime change in Syria as their irrational goal.

Kosovo, Louisville, KY 2 hours ago

I'm with the Russians, the Turks are double dealing. They support ISIS and are becoming more of an Islamic state themselves...

Simon Sez, Maryland 2 hours ago

Turkey is being relentlessly pulled deeper and deeper into the morass of Islamism from which there is no return.

Ironic that all that Kemal Ataturk, the father of modern, secular Turkey, fought for is now being undone by Erdogan, an Islamic dictator who will brook no dissent.

While Putin is no saint, quite the opposite, his response is less aggressive than it might be. Many Russian nationalists, and there are a lot of them, are loudly criticizing him for not responding more forcefully to the downing of the Russian plane and murder of one of the survivors.

Turkey is going to lose more than Russia from all of this.

The decision to down the Russian plane regardless of whether it was in Turkish airspace for 20 seconds or not, was a major error on the part of Erdogan. He is rapidly losing what few friends in the West and the Middle East he may ever have had. The Turks were doing OK before this guy came on the scene.

Moral of the story: Be careful when you tangle with the Russian Bear.

Especially, when it is wearing the mask of Putin.

Victor O, NYC 2 hours ago

Obama was in Turkey one week before this incident. His remarks following the incident implicitly threatened Russia with more of the same. It is unlikely that Erdogan would have taken such a step without the support of his buddy Obama.

Does the U.S. truly wish to be drawn into a showdown with Russia? While it may be true that Russia is outclassed when it comes to conventional arms, Russia will resort to nuclear weapons if sufficiently challenged. Putin does not see the world through rose-colored glasses, and does not see gay marriage and global warming as the seminal issues of our time.

FromBrooklyn, Europe 2 hours ago

Yes, and the US, Russia and Europe should cooperate without reviving cold-war posturing and work together to defeat ISIS. Turkey can't be trusted; the Erdogans are getting rich from illegal oil and covertly support the terrorists.

anthony weishar, Fairview Park, OH 2 hours ago

There is a glaring problem with the Turkish version of the incident. The pilots ejected and landed in Syria, where "terrorist" captured or killed them. The Turkish map is not valid. If the pilots did land in Turkey, that would mean Turkey is protecting ISIS members and Syrian rebels.

Nick Zucker, San Francisco, CA 1 hour ago @Tolga

Nice revisionism there. All meant to justify a bellicose Turkish military of course. And what about the disputed landbetwwen syria and turkey this article talks about?

Turkey is the only country that doesn't not respect Greek territorial integrity and the only country that recognizes the northern regime in Cyprus. Face it, in the absence of true democracy, Turkish politicians have been feeding Turks a steady diet of imagined external threats (really, from Greece?) to consolidate public opinion around nationalist sentiment.

j. von hettlingen, is a trusted commenter switzerland 4 hours ago

Erdogan is trying to calm the storm and hold France 24 television: "We might have been able to prevent this violation of our airspace differently."

Perhaps he realises that Ankara might have over-reacted. Turkish airforce could have fired warning shots, without hitting the plane. It was essential to remind Russia of violating Turkish air-space, although Russian planes are not a direct threat to Turkey.

But since Russia embarked on the intervention in Syria, its arbitrary shelling of Turkmens in Syria, who are Turkish allies and rebels, backed by the West and the Arabs, has set the cat among the pigeons.

The US stands by NATO, which defended Turkey's action, because nobody wants to upset Ankara and jeopardise its access to the vital Turkish airbase at Incirlik.
That the Kremlin is considering severe economic ties to Turkey may just be rhetoric for domestic consumption because the Imperial Russia and the Ottoman Empire had fought a series of wars in the 17th-19th century. In recent years Moscow's support for Nagorno-Karabakh, the Armenian-controlled breakaway enclave in Azerbaijan, is a thorn in Ankara's side, because Azerbaijan and Turkey are seen as "one nation with two states. The annexation of Crimea has led to the marginalisation of the Tartars, a Turkic ethnic group, for whose wellbeing Ankara sees itself responsible.

Maxim, Canada, BC 2 hours ago

Please read what really happened:
https://www.rt.com/news/323651-turkey-su24-downing-syria/
Turkey staged a provocation with full knowledge of where and when this Russian airplane will be. And after that NATO "fully supported" their member. I wonder why Russia sees NATO as threat. The message is loud and clear - NATO countries may provoke Russia under the protection of the allies.

John Warnock, Thelma KY 2 hours ago

Webster can add a new definition to the dictionary for "Middle East"; Quagmire. We need to seriously weigh our long term strategic interests in regard to this region. Put rhetoric aside. Put the infatuation of some with the Holy Land aside. Keep our support for Israel in balance with our commitment to Human Rights.
Ultimately the Moslem Nations of the Middle East need to sort this mess out. The continued interjection of the USA, Russia and Europe only delays the sorting out that must come to pass.

This sorting out must neutralize ISIS and similar groups and probably result in new national boundaries and new nation states. So be it. ISIS is an idea, a terrible idea, not territory.

You cannot destroy it by bombing physical things. The Moslem world must sort it out; just as we have some adherents to various forms of fundamentalism in this country that we need to address. We attract the attention of ISIS because we are there and foolishly do things like maintain the prison at Guantanamo. We are not and should not consider ourselves the World's Cop!

Syed Abbas, Dearborn MI 5 hours ago

The world has decided Russia is clearly on the right on this one.

However, Putin should not punish Turkish (and Russian) people for the sins of Erdogan. Moral high ground is to protest, provide evidence, forgive, and forget, and move on.

Let the universe unfold as it should. Soon the sins of Erdogan will catch up with him.

[Nov 27, 2015] Putin Accuses Obama Of Leaking Flight Details To Turkey

Notable quotes:

"... which the US knew about well in advance, ..."

"... It looks like the shootdown was a planned ambush, and they were trying to capture a Russian pilot. ..."

www.zerohedge.com

This is what Putin said:

"We told our US partners in advance where, when at what altitudes our pilots were going to operate. The US-led coalition, which includes Turkey, was aware of the time and place where our planes would operate. And this is exactly where and when we were attacked. Why did we share this information with the Americans? Either they don't control their allies, or they just pass this information left and right without realizing what the consequences of such actions might be. We will have to have a serious talk with our US partners.

In other words, just like in the tragic bombing of the Kunduz hospital by US forces (which has now been attributed to human error), so this time the target was a Russian plane which the US knew about well in advance, was targeted however not by the US itself, but by a NATO and US-alliance member, Turkey.

strannick

America gave ISIS the TOW rocket that exploded Russia's helicopter on a search and rescue mission to save the remaining pilot.

America gave Turkey the co ordinates to shoot down the Russian bomber, so Turkeys corrupt leader could continue profiting from selling oil for ISIS to fund ISIS terrorism.

Putin's patience is what keeps the world from the brink of nuclear war.

God bless and keep Vladimir Putin.

America is a piece of shit nation with a piece of shit president .

America ruins the world to rule it.

God help us all.

turtle

U.S. knew Russian jet flight path: https://au.news.yahoo.com/a/30212396/us-knew-flight-path-of-plane-downed...

HowdyDoody

The US says ISIS doesn't have an air force?

Is it April 1 already?

Turkey ,a prime supporter and enabler of ISS, just gagging to open a consulate for ISIS, shot down a Russian aircraft involved in attacking ISIS. That seems like an ISIS airforce attack to me, even if we ignore the fact that the USAF attacks Assad instead of ISIS etc.

socalbeach

Russian MOD briefing on the rescue of the navigator, and other subjects. Terrorists and "other mysterious groups" with "special purpose locators" to find the pilot were eliminated by Russian airstrikes and Syrian artillery. "Western" special forces maybe? It looks like the shootdown was a planned ambush, and they were trying to capture a Russian pilot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdtQpfwOoSg

Rakshas

I thought this one was funny as well.....

https://au.news.yahoo.com/a/30178705/suspected-isis-recruiter-bombed-dur...

It's unclear when the footage was filmed, but video shows a man being hit by a strike.

The French launched airstrikes on Islamic State following the tragic Paris attacks, which killed 130 people, but it's unclear if they were responsible for this bomb.

France has since released video of their strikes against ISIS.

It's believed the video was filmed between November 15 and 17, it was uploaded to YouTube on November 18.

O Tempora O Morons

Directly from the troll house

Max Steel

I find it amusing when muritards can't use logic against facts and truth they conveniently
paint others as trolls ( Ever thought why West MSM never reported on CIA disinfo agent
and State Deptt of US trolls , do you think they don't exist? Ha! They do but western
censor media is not allowed to report it even rest Google browser being american will
flash non-usa troll msm articles first.

Western Media is a Troll Army

[Nov 27, 2015] Turkeys attack on Russian jet is foreign policy nightmare Austrian ex-chancellor

Notable quotes:

"... Turkey can do much more to fight ISIS, but they are concentrated to fight or to separate or to isolate the Turkish fighters. The Peshmerga, as you know, is a staunch ally against ISIL or ISIS, and Turkey could also do more to stop the influx of foreign recruits a route to Syria. You mentioned the oil smuggling... so I think, a lot can be done, also to stop refugees, uncontrolled flow of refugees from Turkey to Europe. So I think Turkey should do more and on the summit of the EU and Turkey, Im sure a lot of our member-states will ask Turkey to do much more. ..."

RT - SophieCo

Sophie Shevardnadze: Wolfgang Schussel former Chancellor and foreign minister of Austria, welcome to the show, it's really great to have you with us. Now, a NATO country, Turkey, has shot down a Russian bomber in Syria, claiming it strayed into Turkish airspace. When a Turkish plane was shot for violating Syrian airspace, mr. Erdogan dubbed it an "attack with no excuse" - now, when a Russian plane is shot by Turkey in similar circumstances, it's an "appropriate self-defence". How this ambiguous stance of a NATO member and an EU candidate is viewed in Europea? Why is Turkey changing its stance when it feels like it? What's European take on that?

Wolfgang Schussel: I think it's a nightmare incident, what happened a few days ago. This is exactly what some military experts warned about - there were repeated warning that there could be a clash between two nations in this already overcrowded Syrian sky. I think, what is needed is more cooperation and coordination. And, I think, the response of Turkey, even if there would be some incidents, let's say, for 2-5 seconds crossing a border land, it's not an appropriate reaction for that. So, I think, what is needed is a military coordination in this very disputed area.

SS: But also, the way we look at it, this incident with the fighter jet has only highlighted Turkey's dubious behaviour towards ISIS. I mean, the alleged buying of smuggled oil from terrorists, allowing militant movement back and forth over the border and attacking Kurds who are fighting ISIS. Why has this been tolerated by members of the anti-ISIS coalition for so long?

WS: I think it was criticised. Turkey can do much more to fight ISIS, but they are concentrated to fight or to separate or to isolate the Turkish fighters. The Peshmerga, as you know, is a staunch ally against ISIL or ISIS, and Turkey could also do more to stop the influx of foreign recruits a route to Syria. You mentioned the oil smuggling... so I think, a lot can be done, also to stop refugees, uncontrolled flow of refugees from Turkey to Europe. So I think Turkey should do more and on the summit of the EU and Turkey, I'm sure a lot of our member-states will ask Turkey to do much more.

SS: So you think on that summit Turkey is going to be asked by the allies to get its anti-terror act together? Because, "criticising" and actually pressuring Turkey to do this are two different things.

WS: Yeah, but you know, summit is a diplomatic effort to bring up different ideas and to coordinate the political actions, and I think it's an important meeting. I would not underestimate the impetus and a potential influx on the Turkish policy. I hope it will work.

SS: NATO said in October it is ready to defend Turkey against Russia. It now has taken a much more cautious tone. Why the change?

WS: It should not be, so to say, confrontation of NATO and Russia. I think what is needed is direct talks between Turkey and Russia and I hope, I got some information that there's an already planned meeting between Foreign Minister Lavrov and the Turkish foreign minister. They should discuss it, and, anyway, there is a strong need to coordinate military efforts. If Russia - and I would support it - would become a member of the coalition against ISIS and ISIL, there's a need to coordinate the actions, the moves, the targets, et cetera.

SS: Now, while the anti-terror campaign in Syria is ramping up, in Europe operations following the Paris attacks are also in full swing. All of Austria's neighbors - Italy, Hungary, Germany - they're on high terror alert in case of another attack. Why isn't Austria on such an alert? Is Austria confident it's safe, I mean, feeling no need to raise the threat level? Is Austria equipped to handle such a threat?

WS:I think, everybody is on alert and rightly so: because nobody can feel safe and secure or exempt from terror attacks from Al-Qaeda, Daesh, ISIL, ISIS - call it what you want. I think what we learned during the last years, months, or weeks or days is that nothing is guaranteed. We're fighting for our way of life, to entertain us, to love, to listen to music, to meet, to speak freely. This is an attack against all of us, an attack against our values. So I think we all have to be united and no one should think he or she is exempt from being a target of these terrorists. This is our common enemy, and we should also prioritise our action. In the moment, the most urgent priority is to fight against ISIS, and then the rest should be settled. Political, diplomatic effort to settle something, a diplomatic or political solution for Syria - that's for sure, this is needed, but now the most important priority is to fight the Islamic forces.

[Nov 27, 2015] If these other foreign goupes searching for pilot include Americans and that might be the reason that after the plane was shot down, Russia was slapped with additional sanctions

marknesop.wordpress.com

Erika, November 26, 2015 at 11:21 am

Russian Pilot Rescued by Iran's General Soleimani

http://en.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13940905000553

I am wondering if these other foreign forces they refer to are Americans and perhaps be the reason that after the shooting of the plane, Russia ended up getting additional sanctions.

[Nov 27, 2015] Reckless Turkey

Interesting discussion, Opinion of Charles Shoebridge is quite interesting.

Notable quotes:

"... Russia fighting ISIS, among other purposes, can divide NATO in Russia's interest. Downing of Russia fighter is to distract Russia focus under encouragement of U.S. Russia must not lose sight of the ball and fall into the trap by revenging Turkey. ..."

RT CrossTalk

And now for the consequences: In the wake of Turkey's intentional downing of a Russian military aircraft over Syrian airspace, the Russia-Turkey relationship is in steep decline. Ankara says it merely acted in self-defense, but it appears to be protecting Islamic State.

CrossTalking with Charles Shoebridge and Yenal Kucuker.

William Bellah

The bigger picture is at stake and it all depends on China. The bigger picture is world domination and Russia alone is not enough of a deterrent to stop the U.S. And NATO but with China onboard, backing Russia in Syria, it is a whole different ball game

George Rizk -> Yancey Tobias

Yancey Tobias

Kucuker: "Turkey misunderstood,..." ???? This is nonsense. In the ME, the role of Turkey is well understood. more...

You are correct. A couple of years ago, Egypt ousted a Muslim Brotherhood President, who had sent terrorist to Syria, and looked the other way as Islamists in Egypt torched 75 churches. Mr. Erdoghan at the UN podium chose to condemn Egypt's more than 30 millions revolution against the Muslim extremists. Erdoghan, has exposed himself as a supporter of Muslim extremism, barbarism right at the UN a couple of years ago, and the news are full of information about the terrorist training camps and arms smuggling from Turkey into Syria.

George Rizk

The way this issue should be framed is: gangs of savages have been armed and encouraged by Muslim Sunni fanatic countries to oust Assad. The savages behaved in extremely barbaric fashion, and went after European targets, which made the West repulsed by their actions. Nevertheless, no country had enough guts to send forces to support these barbarians.

Russia decided after four years of such devastation to fight them. Hence Russia is attempting to protect human kind from such subhuman gangs. Any one defending these subhumans is a supporter of forces of darkness. Tukey should be ousted from the UN, and NATO.

Chunde Shi

Russia fighting ISIS, among other purposes, can divide NATO in Russia's interest. Downing of Russia fighter is to distract Russia focus under encouragement of U.S. Russia must not lose sight of the ball and fall into the trap by revenging Turkey.

Vidas Jack

One i can say , Russia is not Great World Power as it was USSR, and that the reason how NATO took down Su-24 in the manner of engagement Russia to WW3.

[Nov 27, 2015] Turkish President Erdo an warns Russia not to play with fire

Notable quotes:

"... Erdo an also touched on the joint press conference held by Putin and French President François Hollande on Nov. 26, describing the former's comments as "unacceptable." Denying allegations that Turkey has been purchasing oil from ISIL, Erdo an said the oil trade between ISIL, Russia and the Syrian regime had been documented by the United States. ..."

www.hurriyetdailynews.com

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has warned Russia "not to play with fire" in the wake of a crisis between Ankara and Moscow following the downing of a Russian jet by Turkey on Nov. 24 near the Syrian border.

"[Russian President Vladimir] Putin says 'those who have double standards on terrorism are playing with fire.' I totally agree with him," Erdoğan said Nov. 27 in the northern province of Bayburt.

"Indeed, supporting the [Bashar] al-Assad regime in Syria, which has killed 380,000 people, is playing with fire. Striking opposition groups that have international legitimacy with the excuse of fighting against Daesh [an acronym of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, ISIL] is playing with fire. Using an incident in which Turkey's righteousness is accepted by the whole world as an excuse to torment our citizens who were in Russia to attend a fair is playing with fire. Irresponsibly hitting trucks in the region that are there for trade or humanitarian reasons is playing with fire. We sincerely advise Russia not to play with fire," he added.

Erdoğan also expressed his willingness to meet Putin during the upcoming climate change summit in Paris in order to find common ground and avoid a further escalation of tension.

"We are uncomfortable with efforts to take the dispute over the downed jet into other areas of relations. Let's not allow that to happen," he said, underlining that maintaining good relations was beneficial for both countries.

Claiming that Turkey's shooting down of the Russian jet was not "intentional" but simply a result of an automatic enforcement of rules of engagement, Erdoğan nevertheless argued that Turkey was right to do so.

"Turkey has proved its honesty" by releasing audio recordings of the warnings issued to the Russian pilots, he added.

Erdoğan also touched on the joint press conference held by Putin and French President François Hollande on Nov. 26, describing the former's comments as "unacceptable." Denying allegations that Turkey has been purchasing oil from ISIL, Erdoğan said the oil trade between ISIL, Russia and the Syrian regime had been documented by the United States.

[Nov 27, 2015] Turkish minister says trade retaliation by Russia will hurt its farmers

www.hurriyetdailynews.com

Any trade retaliation by Russia over Turkey's downing of a jet flying sorties in Syria would hurt Russian farmers more, Turkish Agriculture Minister Faruk Çelik said on Nov. 27, pointing to import-export figures.

Turkey has not yet received official notification of any embargo by Russia, Çelik also told reporters.

However, it would be wrong to let the tensions between Russia and Turkey impact farming, commercial and economic ties, he said.

Russia has increased checks on food and agriculture imports from Turkey, the Agriculture Ministry said on Nov. 26, in the first public move to curb trade in a dispute with Ankara for the downing a Russian fighter jet.

The Russian government told Russia's food safety watchdog Rosselkhoznadzor to increase controls after agriculture ministry research showed about 15 percent of agriculture imports from Turkey did not meet regulations, the Russian ministry said.

Çelik said Turkey exports around $1.3 billion of agricultural goods to Russia and buys $.2.9 billion of agricultural products from Russia.

"Any trade retaliation move will hurt mainly Russian farmers, not Turkish farmers," he said.

[Nov 27, 2015] Suspiciously well-equipped group of militants was looking for a catapult of the Navigator the fallen in Syria bomber su-24,

Notable quotes:

"... Suspiciously "well-equipped" group of militants was looking for a catapult of the Navigator the fallen in Syria bomber su-24, RIA "Novosti". This was stated by the VC commander-in-chief Viktor Bondarev. ..."

"... According to the military, the pilot was serach by a few "well-equipped" armed groups. Their origin is unknown. ..."

www.gazeta.ru

Suspiciously "well-equipped" group of militants was looking for a catapult of the Navigator the fallen in Syria bomber su-24, RIA "Novosti". This was stated by the VC commander-in-chief Viktor Bondarev.

According to the military, the pilot was serach by a few "well-equipped" armed groups. Their origin is unknown.

November 24 in the Syrian province of Latakia has fallen downed Russian bomber su-24. This responsibility took on the Turkish authorities, accusing Russia of violating its airspace. Moscow claims that the plane was flying solely over the territory of Syria.

[Nov 27, 2015] Guest Post Why Is The US Hanging Turkey Out To Dry

Notable quotes:

"... It can safely be assumed that the US influenced Turkey into shooting down the Russian jet over Syrian airspace, predicting quite accurately that this would immediately lead to the deterioration of ties between the two states. An elementary forecast of the specific counter-measures that Russia may take stipulates that these will likely relate to the diplomatic, economic, and energy sectors, which is just what the US wants. ..."

"... Furthermore, Turkish Stream looks to be indefinitely put on hold, thus delaying Russia's game-changing pivot to the Balkans. ..."

Zero Hedge

Authored by Andrew Korybko via OrientalReview.com,

Turkey's shooting down of the Russian anti-ISIL aircraft was an unprecedentedly direct aggression against Moscow that trumps even the tense and hostile militarism of the Old Cold War era. The world stands on edge in the immediate aftermath of this attack, with tabloid-esque commentators warning that the beginning of World War III awaits. President Putin, for his part, has been much more measured in responding to the incident, but still couldn't contain his shock at having received this "stab in the back delivered by accomplices of the terrorists."

The question now comes down to how Russia will respond to what happened, but perhaps even more important for observers to ponder is why the US is unofficially distancing itself from its ally's aggression. Despite both NATO and Obama giving full backing to Turkey's fateful decision, Reuters has quoted an anonymous American military official that purposely leaked that the Russian plane was downed while over Syrian airspace, basing the assessment on heat signature detection. This raises questions about why the US is playing both sides of the fence – on one hand, publicly supporting Turkey, while on the other, strategically releasing information that conflicts with Turkey's official depiction of events.

The Setup:

This dichotomy is suggestive of a Machiavellian plan whereby the US manipulates both Turkey and Russia into behaving according to what it has already forecast as their most likely responses, knowing full well that these could be guided into supporting grander American strategic interests. For starters, the US likely intimated to Erdogan that not only does he have the 'legal' right to shoot down any Russian aircraft he chooses, but that the US would actually prefer for him to take this course of action sooner than later. This is reminiscently similar to how the US put Sakkashvili up to bombing Tskhinval and invading South Ossetia – it may not have directly issued an official, on-paper order for this to occur, but it left no ambiguity as to how it wanted its proxy to act in each situation.

According To Plan:

For the most part, this explains the public pronouncements of NATO and the US' support for Turkey's actions, and it also goes a long way in soothing Erdogan's nerves and reassuring him that he did the right thing. The predicted aftereffect of the plane's downing was an immediate deterioration of Russian-Turkish relations, with the full consequences potentially affecting the diplomatic, military, economic, and energy spheres. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov cancelled his upcoming trip to Turkey and advised Russian tourists to refrain from visiting the country due to the terrorism level being similar to Egypt's. Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has spoken about the possibility of barring Turkish companies from the Russian market and cancelling planned nuclear and gas projects with the country.

All of these prospective actions are fully justifiable and grounded in the self-respect that Russia feels in not aiding what has proven itself to be a militantly hostile state no matter the economic stakes involved, but at the same time, one can't help but wonder whether this is exactly what the US wanted. There's no doubt that Russia would react this way, as even a cursory glance of its potential 'response toolkit' indicates that these are the most likely to be taken amidst any deterioration of relations. Therefore, it can't be discounted that the US put Erdogan up to shooting down the Russian jet precisely to provoke the predictable Russian response in threatening to cancel its forthcoming energy projects with Turkey, the core of the strategic partnership between the two. If this is the case, and it certainly seems likely, then it shows exactly how far the US is willing to go to make sure that Russian energy (and subsequently, all of the soft power and multipolar advantages that come with it) doesn't enter the Balkans through the Turkish Stream megaproject, likely because it understands the transformative impact that this would eventually have on the entire region.

The Curveball:

Thus far, everything seems reasonable and well within the realm of predictability, but the curveball comes with the Reuters revelation that an unnamed American military source is essentially saying that the Russian position is justified. Unexpectedly, it now seems as though the US is also playing to Russia's side to an extent, and this raises questions about what it really wants. After all, it's been proven beyond any doubt that American-supplied TOW anti-tank missiles were used to down the Russian rescue helicopter that attempted to retrieve the two pilots. With this indisputable evidence of indirect American aggression against Russia, it certainly is a curious fact that the US establishment would purposely leak a statement saying that the Turkey downed the Russian plane in Syrian airspace, and basically take Russia's side on this behind the scenes.

Playing The Kurdish Card:

Explaining this diplomatic twist requires knowledge about the popular response that Russian citizens and global supporters worldwide are requesting to Turkey's aggression. They quite reasonably propose that Russia intensify its arms shipments to anti-ISIL Kurdish fighters, with the wink-and-a-nod approval that some of them would be siphoned off to the PKK and be used against the Turkish military. This is an effective and pragmatic plan, and in reality, it actually doesn't even require a policy shift from Moscow because support is already being rendered to some Kurdish groups as part of their joint cooperation in the anti-ISIL struggle. The Kurdish Insurgency hasn't gone away since Erdogan unwittingly unearthed it this summer as an electioneering tool, and the fact that it's still going strong even after the elections has scared him so much that he might have been the one who ordered the recent assassination attempt against pro-Kurdish HDP co-chairman Selahattin Demirtas. Thus, if Russia chooses to inflict an asymmetrical response to Turkey by beefing up its indirect support for the PKK and other Turkish-based anti-government Kurds or disrupting Blue Stream gas supplies in order to provoke an intensified rebellion, then it could certainly inflict a heavy amount of strategic damage to Erdogan and increase the likelihood either of a military coup in Turkey (explained more in detail as part of a different article accessible here) and/or the creation of an independent Kurdistan.

That being said, the US has traditionally been the out-of-regional power that has the greatest interest in Kurdistan, seeing the possible state as a 'geopolitical Israel' from which it can simultaneously exert influence on the rump portions of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. The strategic trajectory of a theorized Kurdish state has been complicated by the anti-ISIL campaign, however, since many Kurds have shown themselves to be pragmatic in cooperating with Russia and Iran against this shared threat. The positive multipolar cooperation that each of these countries has engaged in with the Kurds challenges the US' planned hegemony over them and their territory, and it thus means that any forthcoming independent Kurdish political entity could theoretically go either towards the multipolar or the unipolar camps. At this point in time, and given all of the dynamic military and diplomatic developments of the past couple of months, the loyalty of a future Kurdish state (no matter if its boundaries are confined only to present-day Turkey and/or Iraq) is totally up for grabs, and it's impossible to accurately forecast which way it will go.

The strategic ambiguity that this entails means a few things to the US and Russia. For the US, it indicates that the time is now for it to bunker down and support Kurdistan's independence before it loses the strategic initiative to Russia, which might be moving in this direction (whether formally or informally) out of grand geopolitical spite for Turkey. Moscow, as was just mentioned, seems inclined to hit Ankara where it hurts most, and that's through supporting the Kurdish Insurgency in one way or another. However, it's not yet known how far this would go, and whether Russia would pursue this strategy as a form of short-term vengeance or if it would resolutely go as far in recognizing Kurdish Independence if it could ever be de-facto actualized. Of course, Russia wouldn't do anything that could endanger the territorial integrity of its Syrian, Iraqi, and Iranian allies, but if the Turkish-based Kurds contained their ambitions solely within the borders of Russia's historical rival, then it might be able to rectify itself with this reality, especially if they even refrain from legal independence and instead seek a sort of broadly de-facto independent federative or autonomous status within a unified Turkey (which could only realistically be brought about by an intensified insurgency and/or a coup in Ankara).

Joining Hands For Kurdistan:

Having explained all of this, it's now clear that a remarkable convergence of strategic interests has developed between the US and Russia focusing on Turkish-administered Kurdistan. Understanding the changing calculations that Russia may now be having towards this topic as a response to Turkey's aggression against it, one can't necessarily preclude the possibility that the Reuters leak was actually a strategic overture to Russia. Washington might be sending a signal that it wants to speak to Moscow about ways to cooperate in this regard, knowing that each of them possibly have an interest now in seeing the proto-state rise to the fore of the global arena. A shared understanding has likely developed by now that a New Cold War competition for Kurdistan's loyalty could be fought after the entity is legally formalized (whether as an independent state or a de-facto independent sub-state entity modeled off of the Kurdish Regional Government in Iraq), and that the two Great Powers need to put aside some of their differences in joining hands to see this happen first.

Such a strong signal could have been discretely and secretly communicated to Russia via secure diplomatic and intelligence channels, but the reason it was so publicly broadcast via Reuters, the global newswire service, is because the US also wants to send a signal to Turkey as well. Despite taking its side on the matter before the global eye, the US is also "stabbing its ally in the back", to channel President Putin, by purposely leaking the information that the Russian jet was shot down over Syrian airspace. It's not news that the US has been unhappy with Erdogan for not behaving more submissively in the past and refusing to blindly go along with the previous plans to invade Syria (rendered useless after Russia's anti-terrorist military intervention there), so it might be trying to convey the message it's had enough of his games and is now playing their own in return. Of course, the US has always been manipulating Turkey ever since it joined NATO and allowed the Americans to operate out of Incirlik airbase, but this time, the treachery is being taken to a higher level by implicitly throwing out suggestions to Russia, Turkey's new foe (and only because the US manipulated Turkey into taking aggressive action against it), that it might want to team up in undermining Ankara's control over its volatile southeast.

Concluding Thoughts:

It can safely be assumed that the US influenced Turkey into shooting down the Russian jet over Syrian airspace, predicting quite accurately that this would immediately lead to the deterioration of ties between the two states. An elementary forecast of the specific counter-measures that Russia may take stipulates that these will likely relate to the diplomatic, economic, and energy sectors, which is just what the US wants. Because of Turkey's aggression against Russia, the strategic partnership between the two is now broken (although not necessarily irreversibly), and Ankara has become the fourth and perhaps most geopolitically significant member of the anti-Russian Intermarum coalition. Furthermore, Turkish Stream looks to be indefinitely put on hold, thus delaying Russia's game-changing pivot to the Balkans. While the 'unintended' consequence of the crisis has been Russia's foreseeable and absolutely legitimate decision to deploy the S-400 SAM system to Syria, this in a way also plays to the manipulated Turkish-Russian rivalry that the US wanted to produce in order to solidify the completion of the Intermarum project and simultaneously counter Russia's growing influence in the Mideast.

The reaction that no one could have predicted, however, is the US purposely leaking comments to Reuters that support the Russian version of events, namely, that the anti-terrorist jet was shot down while flying over Syrian airspace. This completely conflicts with what the US and NATO have said in public, but it shows that the US has had enough time to game out the plane-shooting scenario well in advance, and that it's playing a sinister divide-and-conquer game against Turkey and Russia. Put in the position where its decision makers are scrambling for responses to the unprecedented aggression against them, Russia can now more easily be led into supporting the Kurdish struggle for sovereignty (whether formally independent or de-facto so) in Turkey, which coincides with one of the US' premier geopolitical projects.

From an American perspective, a divided Turkey is doubly useful for its grand strategic designs, as the large pro-NATO Turkish military would remain mostly intact, while the US could gain a major base for force projection (both hard and soft) right in between some of the most important states in the region. It can't, however, go fully forward with this project unless it has the support of the diplomatic leader of the multipolar world, Russia, otherwise Kurdistan will be just as illegitimate as Kosovo is and might not even come to geopolitical fruition if Moscow and Tehran work to stop it.

Seen from the Russian standpoint, the US' intimations actually seen quite attractive. An increase of Russian support to anti-ISIL Kurdish fighters would be a plausibly deniable but strategically obvious way to funnel weapons and equipment to anti-Turkish PKK insurgents. Weakening Turkey from within would be a strong asymmetrical response to a country that has lately been a major thorn in Moscow's side, and it might create the conditions either for a military coup against Erdogan, a divide between him and Davutoglu (which could be used to Russia's diplomatic advantage so long as the constitution remains unchanged and Davutoglu legally remains more powerful than Erdogan), or a weakening of Erdogan and a tempering of his anti-Russian and anti-Syrian positions.

Importantly, the emergence of an independent or semi-independent Kurdish entity in Turkey could create a tempting piece of geopolitical real estate in the New Cold War, but of course, it would then be contested between the multipolar and unipolar worlds. Still, however, it would represent a positive multipolar development in the Mideast, since under the present state of affairs, the entirety of Turkish territory is under unipolar control. If a large chunk of it suddenly became the object of competition between both blocs, then it would definitely signify a strategic advancement at the expense of unipolarity. Of equal importance, this would also significantly impact on the Turkish state and whatever government is in power by that time, and it could possibly make it more amenable to returning to the previously pragmatic relationship with Russia and perhaps even resurrecting Turkish Stream.

Therefore, Russia surprisingly has nothing to lose and everything to gain by covertly supporting the Kurdish cause in Turkey, no matter if it's full-out independence or relatively more restrained autonomy, and even if this is objective is shared by the US and done in semi-coordination with it. Turkey would immediately be put on the defensive (although it could try desperately responding by supporting Tatar terrorists in Crimea), the multipolar world have a chance at competing for the loyalty of an ultra-strategically positioned entity, and the consequences that this has for the Turkish government (whether it remains the same or is changed via a [military] coup) could recreate the political conditions for Turkish Stream's feasibility.

Main_Sequence

The shooting down of the Russia's SU-24 that had allegedly crossed into Turkish airspace was highly likely architected by the USSA and executed directly by CIA assets to drive a wedge between Russia and Turkey to further isolate Russia, and try to prevent any construction of natural gas pipelines from Russia via Turkey, that will eventually feed into Europe.

Due to Turkey's geo-strategic location between the Middle East, Europe, and Central Asia for gas pipelines, Turkey becomes the lynchpin for controlling the entire energy distribution network across the aforementioned regions.

DeadFred's picture

Whoa! Who says this un-named military official was doing what the Kenyan guy wanted? There are a lot of them left who detest him and some even remember that their oaths were to the constitution. Not much left of it but that's what they swore to protect.

pretty bird

America is doing the right thing. Obama wants to take charge of a chaotic situation. He's playing both sides against each other. Then the USA will take the lead role. God bless America. And God bless Israel.

Main_Sequence

I wish there was a timestamp for the post at the link below, since I called it earlier.

Moscow Warns CIA, Not Turkey, Downed Russian Fighter Plane Over Syria: http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1946.htm

The Navigator

America always fucks over their "friends". It's only when you're their enemy that you know where you stand. After 60 years on this spinning globe and having lived and seen from abroad, it's all a lie, American Pie, American Dream.

Welder

I'd love to see the Turks driven out of Asia Minor back to the steppes of Central Asia where they came from. And Istanbul's name changed back to Constantinople. It's a nice piece of real estate. Strategic too.

Coke and Hookers

This is an interesting analysis though. The only real action the US has apparently taken against ISIS is to support the Kurdish offensive. It seems clear that the US has some sort of plan for future Kurdistan and that ain't the same plan Turkey has. This discrepancy has gotten little attention so far. It makes sense that the US is grooming Kurdistan as a future client state in the area. The Kurds have been semi allied with Iran and Assad for a long time and neutralizing that would be a major bonus.

r0mulus

I don't buy the argument in this article.

The leaking of info to the media by the US general does not necessarily signify the desire of the US to undercut Turkey- it just as easily could suggest a power struggle between elite circles within the overall power structure, or it could simply be a whistleblower coming forward.

The author seems to have jumped to conclusions with their assertion regarding the intention of the leak.

fleur de lis

NATO is hellbent for a war with Russia.

Notice how none of the other NATO club members dare to rough up the Russians. But they needed a point man so they somehow convinced Turkey to shoot down a fighter jet. They must have promised something very sweet to the Turks. What could go wrong?

Did they mention that the FSA, ISIS, etc., would be on the ground waiting? And the cold blooded murder of a Russian pilot was part of the deal? And that their kinfolk the ethnic Turkmen would be so stupid as to boast about it on video for all the world to see?

Now the Turks realize that they have been poisoned. And they have been abandoned by their NATO friends and left to face a very angry bear all alone. The Turks had better wake up and realize that they have never been respected by NATO and are considered expendable by Western warmongers.

Winston Churchill

As I said on the other article, I'm begining to think that shooting down the jet was aimed at getting the S400's deployed. The west doesn't want anymore Russian surprises like
the radar jamming tech Breedlove keeps whining about.

No way this pre planned ambush was not OKed by Uncle Scam. Deploying 400's instead of the nearly obsolete S300's may have been a mistake.

[Nov 27, 2015] Who's-who--Syria's-terror-list

Al-Ahram Weekly

When the foreign ministers of 17 countries met in Vienna on 30 October, they agreed, among other things, that "Daesh [Islamic State] and other terrorist groups, as designated by the UN Security Council, and further, as agreed by the participants, must be defeated."

With this rallying cry in mind, Russia's chief diplomat, Sergei Lavrov, is now pressing for preparation of a list of all terrorist groups operating in Syria, so that the country may be rid of them through concerted international action.

When the same ministers convened again in Vienna, on Saturday, 14 November, the idea had gained some traction.

"It is time to deprive the terrorists of any single kilometre in which to hide," US Secretary of State John Kerry said.

The Russians are now pressing for two lists to be prepared: one for terrorist groups that must be annihilated, and one for friendly groups that can take part in the fight against the former. Jordan has been asked to prepare the list of terrorist groups.

But Syrian opposition groups are wary of the Russian approach. They fear that what Moscow is trying to obtain is not a list of groups involved in human rights abuses, but a list of groups opposed to Bashar Al-Assad's regime.

Sifting through the 800 or so armed groups operating in Syria today the Russians identified only 40 groups that they consider to be "moderate".

However, opposition figures told Al-Ahram Weekly that there are many more groups that have never been accused of human rights violations, never hired foreign fighters and never committed atrocities. These groups have for the past four years fought against both Islamic State (IS) and the regime.

Many of these groups are small, often operating within the perimeters of their villages or towns. They operate mostly in self-defence, and many have sworn to abide by the international laws of war and human rights principles.

At the recent meeting in Vienna, it was clear that neither Russia nor Iran is willing to discuss the fate of President Hafez Al-Assad. Indeed, Iran's Foreign Minister Mohamed Javad Zarif threatened to pull out of the Vienna talks if Al-Assad's fate was placed on the agenda.

So, without tackling this thorny issue, the foreign ministers came up with an 18-month plan, starting from early next year, to form an interim government and hold elections.

UN special envoy to Syria Staffan de Mistura described the plan as "challenging but possible."

According to the plan, delegates from the government and the "whole spectrum of opposition forces" should meet no later than 1 January 2016 to discuss the formation of an interim government. This interim government, the ministers agreed, will draft a new constitution and hold new elections within the next 18 months.

This will be a "Syrian-led process", Lavrov said during the talks, which were infused with a sense of urgency in the aftermath of the Paris attacks.

Mohamed Sabra, chief of the Syrian Republic Party, took issue with the Russian proposals. "The Russian proposal is based on dividing combatant groups into those who agree to a political deal and those who oppose it," he told the Weekly.

"Once the UN Security Council endorses [the terror lists], this would allow the shelling and extermination of those armed groups that Moscow seeks to destroy," he added.

According to Sabra, Moscow is also trying to isolate Islamic groups that disagree with the principles of a democratic and secular state, and thus exclude them from the political process.

"This will lead to a realignment of forces, change the essence of the military conflict in Syria, and sow the seeds of civil war in the country," Sabra remarked.

Among the many armed groups working in Syria today are some that have Gulf backing, others that are supported by Turkey, and some that are homegrown. Kurdish groups have taken up arms, as have the Turkmen, Assyrians, Druze, Christians, Sunnis and Shias.

Then there is the Free Syrian Army (FSA), which is an alliance of all of the above. Some of these groups have no more than 100 members, while some have tens of thousands of men under arms.

Deciding which of these groups is terrorist in nature is not going to be an easy task. Sayeed Muqbil, a prominent Syrian opposition figure, said that well-defined criteria must be set to differentiate between terrorists and non-terrorists.

"Before preparing the lists, we must bear in mind that the Syrian regime is responsible for 96 per cent of civilian casualties," Muqbil said, adding that the remaining four per cent were killed by other armed groups, including IS.

"So the forces of the regime and its affiliated militia should be subject also to the same norms. Also, the Lebanese, Iraqi and Iranian outfits fighting in Syria must be brought under the same scrutiny," said Muqbil.

In the flurry of diplomatic efforts to find a quick fix for the war in Syria it must not be forgotten that officials in the current regime have ordered massacres to be carried out, barrel bombs to be dropped from planes, and chemical weapons to be used against civilians.

Armed groups affiliated with the regime have killed and abducted its opponents and pillaged areas deemed hostile to the regime. These groups include the National Defence Militia (Milishyat Al-Difaa Al-Watani), Baath Battalions (Kataeb Al-Baath), People's Committees (Al-Ijan Al-Shaabiya), Tempest Eagles (Nosour Al-Zawbaah), Orchard Society (Jamiet Al-Oustan), Hatay Liberation Movement (Harakat Tahrir Iskandarun) and Syria's Hezbollah.

Iraqi groups affiliated with Iran have also committed atrocities. These include the Brigade of Abul Fadl Al-Abbas (Liwa Abul Fadl Al-Abbas), Fatimids Brigade (Liwa Fatimiyun), Zeinab Followers Brigade (Liwaz Zeinabiyun), Mahdi Army (Jeish Al-Mahdi) and Iraq's Hezbollah.

Palestinian factions fighting alongside the regime have also committed human rights abuses, including documented massacres. These groups include the Popular Front Militia (Milishia Al-Jabha Al-Shaabiya), Quds Brigade (Liwa Al-Quds), Thunderbolt Forces (Quwat Al-Saiqa) and Palestine Liberation Army (Jeish Al-Tahrir Al-Filastini).

The IRGC (the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps) and Lebanon's Hezbollah have also been implicated in war crimes.

Members of Syria's opposition that the Weekly spoke with say that the international community must examine all these groups. If terror is to be isolated, it must be done using clear criteria - criteria that is applied to all parties in the conflict.

[Nov 27, 2015] Downing of Russian Jet Over Turkey was Inevitable

Notable quotes:

"... Ankara may have simply decided it had to nip Russia's incremental aggressions in the bud, with the ruling AK Party feeling particularly confident on the heels of an election sweep last month. ..."

"... Ankara may also have been acting under domestic political pressure to defend the Syrian Turkmen rebels - who are considered ethnic Turks - active on the Syrian side of the border in Hatay province ..."

"... At the very least, many expect an escalation in Russian strikes on Turkey-backed rebels in Syria, including the Turkmens, in retaliation. ..."

"... increase Russian assistance to the Syrian Kurds, whom Turkey views as "a clear and present danger" due to their ties to the Kurdish PKK insurgency in southeast Turkey. ..."

Al Jazeera America

... Ankara may have simply decided it had to nip Russia's incremental aggressions in the bud, with the ruling AK Party feeling particularly confident on the heels of an election sweep last month.

Soner Cagaptay, a Turkey analyst at the Washington Institute think thank in Washington, D.C., noted that Ankara may also have been acting under domestic political pressure to defend the Syrian Turkmen rebels - who are considered ethnic Turks - active on the Syrian side of the border in Hatay province, where the plane was shot down. Russian targeting of Turkmen fighters, who are said to number in the thousands, has been a sore spot for many Turks.

But Turkey didn't appear to have NATO's backing in its decision to shoot down the plane, analysts said...

... Still, analysts said there was a sense of inevitability that this sort of incident could happen again. The Kremlin has sent out signals that Tuesday's events won't deter its mission in northern Syria, where Russian air power has been critical in rolling back rebel gains against Moscow's client, the Assad regime. At the very least, many expect an escalation in Russian strikes on Turkey-backed rebels in Syria, including the Turkmens, in retaliation. Fadi Hakura, a Turkey analyst at the Chatham House think tank in London, pointed out that an even more provocative step would be to increase Russian assistance to the Syrian Kurds, whom Turkey views as "a clear and present danger" due to their ties to the Kurdish PKK insurgency in southeast Turkey.

[Nov 27, 2015] Turkey has spent years allowing jihadist groups to flourish - so beware its real reasons for shooting down a Russian plane

independent.co.uk

Turkey is getting desperate. Under President Recep Tayip Erdogan and his party, the Justice and Development Party (AKP), its policies toward the conflict in Syria over the past four years have been misguided and costly. When conflict broke out in 2011, Ankara mistakenly under-estimated the strength of the Assad regime and supported hardline Islamist groups seeking its downfall. In the process, Turkey also marginalised the Kurds and alienated regional powers like Iran.

Four years on, Assad looks set to hold onto power and his regime will be a central part of a transition plan, one that foreign powers were negotiating last weekend. Turkey's regional rival, Iran, is a key player which can no longer be ignored by the West. Not only does the pro-Assad alliance now have Russian support firmly on its side, but the international community is no longer focused on defeating the regime – instead, it is concerned with defeating jihadist groups like Isis.

The shift in focus is a significant drawback for Erdogan. Years of support for, and investment in, Islamic fundamentalist groups like Jabhat al-Nusra (Al-Qaeda's affiliate in Syria) and Ahrar al-Sham are about to go to waste. Ankara has played a significant role in allowing Isis and other jihadists to flourish in Syria and the region. Turkey has acquiesced to jihadist groups entering Syria via Turkey as well as their use of Turkey as a transit point for smuggling arms and funds into Syria.

...The Kurds in Syria, meanwhile, have established themselves as a reliable Western ally and have created, in the process, an autonomous Kurdish region that has reinvigorated Kurdish nationalism in Turkey and across the region - much to Turkey's dismay as it continues a brutal military campaign to repress the Kurds.

\...The West appeased and bolstered Erdogan in Turkey in the run-up to the country's elections, with the aim of securing a deal with Ankara on the refugee crisis. It may now regret that. Erdogan is not only likely to drive a hard bargain but he may also walk away.

[Nov 27, 2015] President Erdogan hits out at 'shameful' accusations Turks profit from Isis

Notable quotes:

"... Western diplomats believe that, at best, Turkey for too long turned a blind eye to jihadist fighters using Turkey as a conduit for fighters and weapons. ..."

independent.co.uk

He hit back at claims that Turkish officials profited financially from the sale of oil from Isis-held territory, telling his critics: "Shame on you."

In a claim likely to raise eyebrows not only in Moscow but also in Washington, Mr Erodogan insisted that Turkey's fight against jihadists was "undisputed". Western diplomats believe that, at best, Turkey for too long turned a blind eye to jihadist fighters using Turkey as a conduit for fighters and weapons.

[Nov 27, 2015] We need an asymmetrical responce

Notable quotes:

"... All journalists in one voice say that the resulting shooting - professional, and obviously not filmed with a single camera. ..."

"... That is, the provocation was really well prepared. But then the question arises, what we want to achieve this provocation? And whose is it? Erdogan? Or the United States? Or NATO? Or military Turkish intelligence? ..."

"... Now Erdogan clumsily backtrack his previous statements. He stated that the Turkish authorities did not know what brought down the Russian plane, thinking it was Syrian. This is an outright lie. Erdogan gave in to the pressure of his corrupt son who asked his father to avenge for the the trucks burned by Russia's air strikes. ..."

"... Ambush of Russian aircraft is not accidental and is rooted in the psychology of Erdogan. He just won the parliamentary elections: for this purpose he destroyed the peace with the Kurds and started a war with them - in fact, only in order to obtain a parliamentary majority. He is very militant. And due to successes he lost the sense of reality. Now he says that he does not want escalation of the conflict. ..."

izvestia.ru

I think, for anybody not a secret that the impact on Russian aircraft was a well-calculated provocation. Recently I visited "al-Jazeera international, al-Jazeera, the Them", Sky News and other international channels. I had the opportunity to consult with different and very professional operators. All journalists in one voice say that the resulting shooting - professional, and obviously not filmed with a single camera.

That is, the provocation was really well prepared. But then the question arises, what we want to achieve this provocation? And whose is it? Erdogan? Or the United States? Or NATO? Or military Turkish intelligence?

Before you respond to provocation, you need to comprehend the situation. However, it is clear that this was a treacherous blow and the lies of the officials. Turkish plane flew into Syrian territory for the attack by Russian aircraft. Even in NATO, Turkey has presented evidence that Russian aircraft flew for 17 seconds. During this time, 10 times no one would be able to warn our pilot.

Turkish officials, of course, completely lost face. They lie that the plane was shot down over Turkish territory. Even if the plane flew for 17 seconds when he got hit, he was away over Syria. Lie that warned of the Russian pilots. Lying, that didn't mean it. It is clear that this is a trap. They lie that they do not consider Russia as the enemy. Lying that Russian planes, when they even flew into Turkish territory, pose a threat to the security of Turkey. The same Erdogan has repeatedly said that short-flown aircraft is not an excuse to open fire.

Now Erdogan clumsily backtrack his previous statements. He stated that the Turkish authorities did not know what brought down the Russian plane, thinking it was Syrian. This is an outright lie. Erdogan gave in to the pressure of his corrupt son who asked his father to avenge for the the trucks burned by Russia's air strikes.

Ambush of Russian aircraft is not accidental and is rooted in the psychology of Erdogan. He just won the parliamentary elections: for this purpose he destroyed the peace with the Kurds and started a war with them - in fact, only in order to obtain a parliamentary majority. He is very militant. And due to successes he lost the sense of reality. Now he says that he does not want escalation of the conflict.

And Russia does not want escalation, but to forgive treacherous murder of our pilot Russia too. Erdogan needs to understand that. He has a chance to apologize and pay the damages. To do this, Turkey should recognize that shot down Russian aircraft over Syrian territory. Erdogan should apologize to the family of the Russian pilot and assign her a huge lifetime pension. He also needs to give the order to stop military support to Islamic state terrorists and to prosecute those who organized the attack on the Russian plane.

If you meet those conditions, Russia might be satisfied. If Erdogan going to insist that the Turkish military have the right to kill any Russian citizen, whenever and wherever you want, then Russia needs to radically change its position on all issues which are sensitive for Erdogan. And first of all on Kurds.

Russia's response should be asymmetric. We need to fins set of measures the most painful for Erdogan, while maximally avoiding the negative consequences for the Russian population and for Turkish. First of all, the response must be to change the attitude of Russia to the Kurdish resistance and struggle of the Kurds with Turkey. Even minor efforts of Russia in this direction can jeopardize the stability of Erdogan regime and, most likely, will lead to its collapse.

But what we don't need is anti-Turkish hysteria. Neither Russia nor Turkey as the government is not interested to be drawn into conflict with each other. Only our strategic opponents profitable to pit Russia and Turkey against each other ans see from the sidelines the destructive effects of this.

Responsibility for this crime lies with the President Erdogan and the elite around him. It is foolish to blame the Turkish people. We should stop insulting a whole nation.

But the answer should follow. The answer should be tough but limited. And it should hit both Erdogan and his close associates guilty of this vile provocation. In no case we need a prepetition of events near the Turkish Embassy with stones knocking out Windows. Embassies in Russia of all countries should be inviolable. Only in this case we can claim a similar relationship to our embassies abroad.

I would also like to warn against hasty measures in trade and the economy. Cooperation with Turkey is beneficial not only her, but also of Russia and Russian citizens. Any economic sanctions should be applied only in case if we are confident that they minimally affect our population. Again, good work with the Kurds, and the destruction of the joint Turkish-ISIS oil transportation channel might help to created problems for Erdogan regime.

[Nov 26, 2015] Russian Foreign Ministry recommended Russian not to fly to Turkey

svpressa.ru

tour operators and travel agents have been asked to refrain from selling tours that involve flights (including commercial flights) from the Russian Federation to Turkey

The Russian foreign Ministry confirms the recommendation for Russian citizens to refrain from visiting Turkey, and those who are on the territory of the Republic, advises to return to their Homeland. This is stated in an official statement the Russian foreign Ministry.

The report stressed that it involves "continuing in Turkey for terrorist threats".

Earlier, the Minister of foreign Affairs of Russia Sergey Lavrov has decided to celebrate his visit to Turkey. Also he recommended that the Russians to refrain from traveling to this country. However, he stressed that this recommendation is not even involved with the crash of the Russian plane su-24.

[Nov 26, 2015] Russia targets Turkish economy in retaliation for downing of warplane

The Washington Post

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev on Thursday called for tough sanctions against Turkey that could bite into more than $30 billion in trade ties between the two countries, as police here began seizing Turkish products and deporting Turkish businessmen.

Russian officials are seething after Turkish F-16s downed a Russian warplane over the Syrian border in a debacle that ultimately left two Russian servicemen dead. Turkey says that the Russian plane breached its airspace and was warned five times to turn back, charges that Russia denies.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has described the act as "a stab in the back from the accomplices of terrorists," and on Thursday said in televised remarks that Turkey still had not apologized over the incident.

On Thursday, it became clear that the Russian government was now turning its ire on whatever extensions of the Turkish economy it could get its hands on.

At a cabinet meeting, Medvedev said that joint investment projects with Turkey would be frozen or canceled. Negotiations over a proposed preferential trade regime with Turkey would also be scrapped, he said. Medvedev called for recommendations from government agencies to be submitted within two days.

[Nov 26, 2015] Why did it take Turkey just 17 seconds to shoot down Russian jet?

Galeotti is just a tool...

Notable quotes:

"... In this respect, it is understandable that the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, called the attack a provocation and an ambush. ..."

"... This is a conflict that Ankara triggered and while it is being managed it is not going to go away. ..."

"... USer5555 26 Nov 2015 10:37 ..."

"... Yet another country Russia declares as "hostile" on the global stage : ) With only Assad, Hiz'bollah and Iran providing material comfort ..."

"... I just recorded my warnings to Russia over airspace violations in my bedroom. "Hello, you are heading in the wrong direction. Stop immediately!" No response whatsoever from the Russians. Can post the original recording if anyone is interested. ..."

"... Turkish claims that parts of the plane fell and injuried some Turks , it a joke too far. As is their uncorroborated claim about a warning. ..."

"... "The bearded, turban wearing throat-cutters danced around the dead body of the pilot whom they had killed while he was parachuting down. Is this your understanding of humanity, Ankara? Are these the ones you are protecting, Erdogan?" ..."

"... Yeah, it is fighting against another adventure of US/EU/those ME countries to have regime change to their liking in the region and against ISIS-which was created thanks to that adventure. ..."

"... The question, as posed in the article, is why, in a very short space of time Turkey decided to shoot down an aircraft whose identity they must have known? ..."

"... Erdogan admits giving the order, clear evidence of a deliberate set-up. ..."

"... A more interesting question than pointlessly discussing the morality of it, is what the motivation for the Turks was. I personally think that they wanted to derail the possibility of Russia making some type of détente with the West after the Paris attacks. ..."

"... In addition to son Bilal's illegal and lucrative oil trading for ISIS, Sümeyye Erdogan, the daughter of the Turkish President apparently runs a secret hospital camp inside Turkey just over the Syrian border where Turkish army trucks daily being in scores of wounded ISIS Jihadists to be patched up and sent back to wage the bloody Jihad in Syria, according to the testimony of a nurse who was recruited to work there until it was discovered she was a member of the Alawite branch of Islam, the same as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad who Erdogan seems hell-bent on toppling. ..."

"... They were waiting for the Russian bomber to cross this tiny bit of Turkish airspace that extends far to the South into Syrian territory. The Turks wanted to make a statement. ..."

"... Are you serious? They could not be in a more suitable company - NATO members killed close to 5 million people since WWII worldwide, polluted the countries they attacked with uranium and therefore will kill another couple of millions in decades to come, their corrupted banks caused the world recession, their corrupt politicians make life bitter for both their citizens and people in countries their banks have issues with...this is a fucked up world, there are no good guys. ..."

"... Does it matter? in reality one does not shoot a partner on the fight against terrorists who burn people alive, chop their heads, rape women and sell kids into slavery, and if the fucking yanks are incapable of naming who are these moderates they are also fair game. ..."

"... The way I look at it is that the Turks had two tactics a) wanted the involvement of NATO and Putin did not oblige by starting a conflict with and b) wanting to defend its pals in ISIS and all the offshoots that these despicable people are represented by. ..."

"... The US and Turkey have very different purposes in Syria and Iraq. The US uses "Kurds" as its main force in both Iraq and Syria. ..."

"... Since 2011 Erdogan has gone off the top and has resumed Turkey's war against the Kurds. That's all that matters to him. ..."

"... Both the US (through its Persian Gulf "friends") and Turkey were inventing and backing ISIS in 2011. The Russian newcomers began with steps that might save lives, but have also gotten caught up in the absurd US effort to remake the borders. More dead and refugees to follow. ..."

www.theguardian.com

...Airspace incursions, granted usually in less politically tense contexts, happen all the time, and generally you'd expect warning shots to be fired and then attempts to force the intruder to leave or to land.

That the Turks shot down the jet and did so within 17 seconds – with the president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, saying he gave the order to fire himself – suggests very strongly they were waiting for a Russian plane to come into or close enough to Turkish airspace with the aim of delivering a rather pyrotechnic message.

Turkish military releases audio recordings said to be warnings to Russian jet

In this respect, it is understandable that the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, called the attack a provocation and an ambush.

... ... ...

Moscow may put greater emphasis on countering Turkey's efforts to establish regional influence (Azerbaijan is an obvious place of contention) and could support problematic non-state actors inside Turkey, from Kurds to criminals (at least, those criminals not already tied to the Turkish state).

This is a conflict that Ankara triggered and while it is being managed it is not going to go away. Nor is it just going to become another chapter in the histories of Russo-Ottoman rivalry. Expect to see this play out in snide, deniable, but nonetheless bitter actions for months to come.

samstheman 26 Nov 2015 10:40

How the West can excuse the reaction of Turkey to a 17 second incursion is beyond me

As for the Turkmen rebels killing the pilot as he descended in possible "self defence" according to US State Department spokesman, please spare us the sophistry if such a description is apt

Vladimir Makarenko -> Dweezle 26 Nov 2015 10:40

...to shoot fish in a barrel. Unarmed bomber going under 300 mph. Well, we see what kind of training is really there now when Russians setting up S 400. This will be fun to watch, especially for Kurds.

psygone USer5555 26 Nov 2015 10:37

Yet another country Russia declares as "hostile" on the global stage : ) With only Assad, Hiz'bollah and Iran providing material comfort - its became a rather comical routine.

Nivedita 26 Nov 2015 10:37

It's obvious that Turkey shot the Russian plane to defend the ISIS barbarians. Why would any decent country would want dangerous criminals like Turkey or GCC tyrants for allies?

copyniated 26 Nov 2015 10:36

I just recorded my warnings to Russia over airspace violations in my bedroom. "Hello, you are heading in the wrong direction. Stop immediately!" No response whatsoever from the Russians. Can post the original recording if anyone is interested.

SallyWa 26 Nov 2015 10:35

and could support problematic non-state actors inside Turkey, from Kurds. Are Kurds more problematic than Turks? It seems they are more helpful, at least, when it comes to ISIS.

If_Not_Why_Not -> DarthPutinbot 26 Nov 2015 10:34

Russia denies it was in Turkish airspace. The wreckage was found well in Syria.(as were the pilots.)
Turkish claims that parts of the plane fell and injuried some Turks , it a joke too far. As is their uncorroborated claim about a warning.
Both sides map production proves nothing also.

USer5555 26 Nov 2015 10:30

I think that Mr. Erdogan will be terribly disappointed with what awaits him in the coming months and years. And I find it positive that Russia is no longer necessary to keep moral standards towards Turkey as Turkey never did it.

SallyWa 26 Nov 2015 10:30

Wow, quite harsh article towards Turkey.

Also, Turkey won't apologize for downing Russian warplane, Erdogan says.

It is nice that Erdogan not even shows any condolences to those dead and their families.

Proves, that Turkey planned it in advance and it wasn't about airspace or accident.

FGMisNOTOK -> Hottentot 26 Nov 2015 10:29

You are totally correct. There is no way it could be done. They were waiting to fire on the Russian plane as soon as it even slightly overshot the border. Give me a break... 17 seconds. Turkey itself (as the article above says) claimed that this was no cause for attack when its own planes flew over Syria. Hypocrites and liars.

photosymbiosis 26 Nov 2015 10:29

According to many reports, Erdogan's son is a central figure in ISIS cash-for-oil smuggling into Turkey, (which is incidentally heavily reliant on Russian oil and gas imports, for which they must pay full market price, unlike the 50% discount ISIS offers). Maps of the oil smuggling routes to Turkey show that the oil tanker convoys must pass through "moderate rebel anti-Assad" forces, to which should be appended, 'pro-ISIS?'
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-11-25/meet-man-who-funds-isis-bilal-erdogan-son-turkeys-president

"The reason we find this line of questioning fascinating is that just last week in the aftermath of the French terror attack but long before the Turkish downing of the Russian jet, we wrote about "The Most Important Question About ISIS That Nobody Is Asking" in which we asked who is the one "breaching every known law of funding terrorism when buying ISIS crude, almost certainly with the tacit approval by various "western alliance" governments, and why is it that these governments have allowed said middleman to continue funding ISIS for as long as it has?" - Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge

So was this Turkey's effort to stop Russian attacks on the oil tanker convoys (which supply ISIS with several million dollars a day - perhaps several hundred tanker trucks a day, that is)? Is this retaliation by Erdogan for lost revenue?

Jeremn 26 Nov 2015 10:27

Would NATO stand by Turkey even if Turkey acted against the law? Probably, but an interesting question (http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/international/261300-russians-may-have-a-strong-case-in-turkish-shootdown)

In short, it appears at this point that the Turkish case justifying the use of deadly force is, at best, weak. Nevertheless, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that NATO stands "in solidarity with Turkey." However, it may have been more prudent to withhold judgment until all the facts are definitively known and a full legal analysis is complete. Why? Article 5 of the NATO treaty governing self-defense tracks almost exactly with the Article 51 of the U.N. charter, so if the facts show illegality under international law, that would undercut the wisdom of NATO standing "in solidarity" with any nation.

ChristianAnsgar -> Rahere2015 26 Nov 2015 10:27

You missed the shooting of the pilots while parachuting bit in your rant,isn't that a war crime?

cheetah43 26 Nov 2015 11:08

"The bearded, turban wearing throat-cutters danced around the dead body of the pilot whom they had killed while he was parachuting down. Is this your understanding of humanity, Ankara? Are these the ones you are protecting, Erdogan?" - Russian Foreign Office spokeswoman today during press briefing.

SallyWa -> MTavernier 26 Nov 2015 11:07

Russia is fighting a different, conflicting war to everyone else in Syria.

Yeah, it is fighting against another adventure of US/EU/those ME countries to have regime change to their liking in the region and against ISIS-which was created thanks to that adventure.

Russia repeatedly violated Turkish airspace,

Turkey should learn from better countries how to act in this. European ones. They showed proper examples, while Turkey screwed up.

dyatel42 26 Nov 2015 11:07

It's almost as if Turkey was waiting for an SU24 to stray over it's border for a few seconds. How could they have issued 10 warnings to turn south in 17 seconds and asked the president for his OK to shoot it down in that time? Fairy stories. Given that the aircraft fell into Syria it must have been heading there when it was hit and was obviously not on a surprise mission to bomb Ankara for example. Two men's lives terminated for no real reason at all.

It would seem possible that Turkey was acting on a request from the USA to carry out this murderous attack - what other logical reason could they have had to do it? Given the US hatred of Russia / The Soviet Union and their growing irritation at Russia's involvement in Syria, (at the request of the ruling government of that country) it would be a way of punishing Putin without putting their own aircraft at risk from retaliation and possibly a dangerous escalation in the ongoing American persecution of Russia.

ID4352889 -> MTavernier 26 Nov 2015 11:06

And obviously you were in the cockpit to verify the warning that has been belatedly claimed by a notorious terror state which has been in cahoots with Daesh all along?

Hoppolocos -> MTavernier 26 Nov 2015 11:03

As is usual in these cases it may be they are both telling a version of the truth, credible deniability? The Turks may well have broadcast warnings, but on which frequency? The Russians may have elected to not be listening to any frequency the Turks may use ergo it's the other's that were at fault. The question, as posed in the article, is why, in a very short space of time Turkey decided to shoot down an aircraft whose identity they must have known?

In the current situation the possibility of an aircraft straying into the wrong airspace must be a consideration, thus as strong diplomatic protect would have seemed the more obvious reaction. Have there been such incursions in the recent past? Has Russia been pushing it's luck? If not then one has the feeling that Turkey is deliberately trying to push it's luck and push Russia away from the Turkmen bases. Would they have dared if they weren't confident of NATO support and if so, who has allowed them to think this would automatically be forthcoming given the circumstances?

Roger Hudson -> Ipek Ruacan 26 Nov 2015 11:00

Turkey violates Syrian airspace at will, it also violated Greek airspace over 2000 times last year.
The Russian plane flew over a small 'appendix' of true Turkey that is 2 miles wide, somebody worked out a jet can't fly slow enough to do it in 17 seconds. How long did the warning take?.' Erdogan admits giving the order, clear evidence of a deliberate set-up.

kritter 26 Nov 2015 11:00

Galeotti talks about this like there are good guys and bad buys here, when clearly there aren't.

It is simply another play in a proxy war between two very countries, led by two very similar presidents. A more interesting question than pointlessly discussing the morality of it, is what the motivation for the Turks was. I personally think that they wanted to derail the possibility of Russia making some type of détente with the West after the Paris attacks.

fireangel 26 Nov 2015 10:58

The smashing of ISIS' oil industry will not only be a blow to the entire ISIS death squad project, but will directly affect Turkey, widely thought to be involved in the transportation of ISIS-produced oil, and even Erdogan's family itself, as it is the company run by his son Bilal that is believed to be running the illicit trade.
Well well well....Bilan Erdogan

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-11-25/meet-man-who-funds-isis-bilal-erdogan-son-turkeys-president

*Bilal Erdo?an owns several maritime companies. He has allegedly signed contracts with European operating companies to carry Iraqi stolen oil to different Asian countries. The Turkish government buys Iraqi plundered oil which is being produced from the Iraqi seized oil wells. Bilal Erdo?an's maritime companies own special wharfs in Beirut and Ceyhan ports that are transporting ISIS' smuggled crude oil in Japan-bound oil tankers.*

In addition to son Bilal's illegal and lucrative oil trading for ISIS, Sümeyye Erdogan, the daughter of the Turkish President apparently runs a secret hospital camp inside Turkey just over the Syrian border where Turkish army trucks daily being in scores of wounded ISIS Jihadists to be patched up and sent back to wage the bloody Jihad in Syria, according to the testimony of a nurse who was recruited to work there until it was discovered she was a member of the Alawite branch of Islam, the same as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad who Erdogan seems hell-bent on toppling.

camerashy -> blogbath 26 Nov 2015 10:58

Listen, as an American I'm telling you, you're wrong and a victim of the billionaire owned propaganda machine they call the news media. You've got your facts all wrong, it's the US who's constantly sticking it to Russia/others because somehow we can't stand anyone opposing us and has independent opinions. From the cooked up US backed coup in Ukraine to provoking China in Asia, and shooting down Russian jets over Syria, look no further than the US/NATO alliance to find your answer.

Erdogan on his own couldn't kill time let alone shooting down Russian jets. Just imagine what would happen if one of our jets had been shot down, they'd have made movies on it already. Also I don't think you really know much about any of these other countries you so freely label! Don't be naive, things aren't always what they seem, you have access to the Internet, well, don't take my word for it, use it and find out from different sources ... here's one:

https://www.facebook.com/BenSwannRealityCheck/videos/882104321854519/

SallyWa -> USer5555 26 Nov 2015 10:57

Please note with the level of happiness and delight with which British journalists and readers described as the two nations will destroy each other

There is nothing jolly about it, actually. Even this article says situation is not looking hunky dory, it could fester underneath for quite some time.

secondiceberg 26 Nov 2015 10:54

1. "Smuggling weapons in the guise of humanitarian convoys (something we saw the Russians doing in Ukraine)". The constant repetition of unfounded charges against Russia seem to have become engrained in arsenal of MSM writers. If they have received and read the OSCE daily reports from Ukraine, they should note that those humanitarian convoys were opened and examined at a Russian checkpoint, at Customs, and by a Ukrainian checkpoint before crossing the border. If the Ukrainian officials found any weapons, where is the evidence?

2. "Turks are acting in support of their national interests in Syria with equal ruthlessness." An objective journalist would balance this with the claim by Russia and others that the Turks are illegally buying oil from ISIS, thereby funding them and that their "interests" are in continuing to buttress ISIS existence and actions. We still wait for journalistic investigation of the information given to G20 leaders that some of their own countries are similarly buying oil from ISIS thus keeping funding for that group flowing and giving them strong incentive not to "defeat" ISIS despite their ostensible reason for bombing Syria in the first place.

3. When are we going to find out exactly who the "moderate" Syrian rebels are? And where is the investigation regarding Putin's claim that a lot of the groups fighting with ISIS and against the Assad regime are, in fact, mercenaries? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQuceU3x2Ww

Newmacfan 26 Nov 2015 10:54

But it took longer than that according to Mr Erdogan, so many warnings, so many different time parameters quoted by Turkey, even their own maps would suggest that there was not enough time to warn the aircraft, await a reply, fire the weapon and for it to hit the target within the time it was in Turkeys air space, according to Mr Erdogan......in short it is a pack of lies, like the ISIS oil, the porous borders, this is something which should be followed up. There is more to this and Turkeys connection with ISIS and the destabilisation of Syria that warrants a cursory glance.....something possibly very deep and very nasty could well be lurking here and it would be foolhardy not to look!

LiviaDrusilla -> If_Not_Why_Not 26 Nov 2015 10:51

My only doubt is, did NATO know of this before hand?

Good question. I think the answer is 'no'.

To me, it's fairly obvious that the Turks had itchy fingers waiting for a chance to shoot down a Russian jet on the pretext of 'invading their airspace'. They then hoped to trigger the NATO 'an attack on one is an attack on all' clause, something which would, at the very least, lead to the closure of the Bosphurus to Russian shipping, hence making it extremely difficult for them to re-supply their troops. Look at how the very first thing they did was run crying to NATO.

However, it appears their cunning plan backfired. Even the Americans seemed to want to play down the 'violation', saying that the Russian jet was only over Turkish airspace for a grand total of 17 minutes. So Erdogan didn't get the declaration of war he has hoping for, and Turkey is now almost certain to be subjected to various retaliatory measures by Russia.

Bad move, Erdogan. Bad move.

IndependentScott -> raffine 26 Nov 2015 10:50

Wrong. The Turks can shoot down one single plane. They were waiting for the Russian bomber to cross this tiny bit of Turkish airspace that extends far to the South into Syrian territory. The Turks wanted to make a statement.

The Islamic extremists on the ground, be it ISIS or Al Qaeda (in this case it was an Al Qaeda affiliate) cannot do anything against the planes. They do not have anti aircraft weapons which are effective.

nishville -> UralMan 26 Nov 2015 10:52

Now that we have established that Ankara is as murderous, cheating, morally corrupt and evil as Moscow, what are the reasons nowadays for Turkey to remain a member of the NATO

Are you serious? They could not be in a more suitable company - NATO members killed close to 5 million people since WWII worldwide, polluted the countries they attacked with uranium and therefore will kill another couple of millions in decades to come, their corrupted banks caused the world recession, their corrupt politicians make life bitter for both their citizens and people in countries their banks have issues with...this is a fucked up world, there are no good guys.

mkwasp -> will2010 26 Nov 2015 10:48

The radar tracks of both sides show the downed plane flying parallel to the frontier, not into Turkey. Regardless of where it actually was (i.e which track is correct, if either of them were), it manifestly wasn't threatening Turkey. Turkey can't really claim provocation here. Le Monde is also reporting that the Turkish pilots couldn't identify the plane they shot at - which is even more worrying, given very few (US, French, Russian) air forces are operating over Syria.

IndependentScott 26 Nov 2015 10:48

Russia is bombing Turkmen. Turkey is protecting them.

The problem is, these Turkmen are allies of Al Nusra, the al Qaeda affiliate which is strong right next to the Turkmen areas. They, alongside the Islamic Front in the area, are fighting Assad troops just a few km away from the largest Russian navel base outside of Russia. Of course, Russia is bombing them. And of course Turkey wants to protect them.

Whether or not that Su-24 actually passed through Turkish airspace for 17 secs or not is completely irrelevant. This was a statement by Turkey to its own people and the Turkmens in the area that they will "help their fellow Turks".

The real awful thing is that a Russian pilot died in the process.

USer5555 26 Nov 2015 10:48

Please note with the level of happiness and delight with which British journalists and readers described as the two nations will destroy each other. Something like that British journalists probably experienced in 1941, when Adolf Hitler attacked the Soviet Union, and Turkey, by the way, was with him in alliance.

callaspodeaspode -> anatianblogger 26 Nov 2015 10:42

It is a decent bit of kit, even though old, but it not equipped to fend off fighters in actual combat. It will presumably have some ECM and ability to dispense flares to act as decoy when attacked by heat-seeking missiles, but I've no idea how effective it is against Western NATO standard fighters like up to date block versions of F-16s, which Turkey uses.

And it certainly isn't capable of 2000mph. I don't know where you get that from.
That's nearly Mach 3. Very few military aircraft are able to go at such speeds.
The Fencers top out at around Mach 1.35 at altitude. Are you perhaps confusing it with a Mig-31 fighter?

What I want to know is why the Turkish F16s didn't fly alongside to make themselves visually present and demand to the Russian pilots that they leave the area and then escort them out.

Like the UK's Typhoons do when Russian bombers come too near.

spearsshallbebroken -> anarxist 26 Nov 2015 10:19

Does it matter? in reality one does not shoot a partner on the fight against terrorists who burn people alive, chop their heads, rape women and sell kids into slavery, and if the fucking yanks are incapable of naming who are these moderates they are also fair game.

The way I look at it is that the Turks had two tactics a) wanted the involvement of NATO and Putin did not oblige by starting a conflict with and b) wanting to defend its pals in ISIS and all the offshoots that these despicable people are represented by.

I think the unrepresented swill that is Turkey is going to be done very slowly by Putin.

Leondeinos 26 Nov 2015 10:17

The US and Turkey have very different purposes in Syria and Iraq. The US uses "Kurds" as its main force in both Iraq and Syria. Once again the Kurds are being used and soon will be pounded by all hands. Five years ago Turkey was declaring its desire to be at peace with all its neighbors and doing well at it. It stayed out of the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. Since 2011 Erdogan has gone off the top and has resumed Turkey's war against the Kurds. That's all that matters to him.

Both the US (through its Persian Gulf "friends") and Turkey were inventing and backing ISIS in 2011. The Russian newcomers began with steps that might save lives, but have also gotten caught up in the absurd US effort to remake the borders. More dead and refugees to follow.

It's easy to make a handy ex post facto recording of pilots talking. Happens all the time after premeditated air attacks.

anarxist 26 Nov 2015 10:11

Are you sure about the 17 seconds? Does anyone do the math here?

1.15 miles / 17 seconds x 60 x 60 = 243 miles/hour = 391 km/hour

The Su-24's max speed is 1,320 km/hour.

So if we assume the Su-24 was actually going much faster, was 17 seconds more like 5 seconds? Or perhaps even less?

[Nov 26, 2015] Russia says 'destroyed' Syria rebels in area where jet brought down News , Middle East

THE DAILY STAR

Russia Thursday said its forces had wiped out Syrian rebel groups operating in the area where one of its jets was brought down, unleashing a huge bombardment after rescuing a pilot.

"As soon as our pilot was safe, Russian bombers and artillery of the Syrian government forces carried out massive strikes in the indicated area for an extended period," military official Igor Konashenkov told Russian news agencies.

"The terrorists operating in that area and other mysterious groups were destroyed," he said.

Turkey on Tuesday shot down a Russian jet in northern Syria alleging that it had crossed over into its air space and sparking a war of words with Moscow.

One pilot that parachuted out was later rescued by Russian and Syrian special forces, while a second pilot from the jet and a soldier sent to rescue him were killed by rebels on the ground.

Konsahenkov said that over the past three days its jets carried out 134 combat sorties over the war-torn country and struck 449 targets in the Aleppo, Damascus, Idlib, Latakia, Hama and Homs and Deir al-Zor provinces.

[Nov 26, 2015] Turkey would have acted differently if it had known jet was Russian Erdogan News , Middle East

dailystar.com.lb

THE DAILY STAR

ISTANBUL: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Thursday that Turkey would have acted differently if it had known that a warplane its forces downed on the Syrian border this week was Russian.

"If we had known if it was a Russian plane maybe we would have warned it differently," Erdogan told France 24 television, adding that Russian President Vladimir Putin had not answered his call after Tuesday's incident that has seriously damaged ties.

[Nov 26, 2015] Turkey and Russia on collision course in Syria

Al Arabiya News

...Ankara and Moscow, given their diametrically opposed political and operational roadmaps for the conflict in Syria, have been on a clashing trajectory since Russia entered the Syrian military fray last September. One of Russia's many objectives in Syria is to cut into Turkish influence in order to boost the Assad regime, and now that they are in each other's crosshairs, more clashes directly or via proxies seem inevitable.

...Moscow is attempting to shore up the authoritarian security structure of the Assad regime as it flirts with key minorities, while Turkey has pitted itself on the side of the anti-Assad rebels and is embracing the Islamist factions from the country's Sunni majority.

...Almost 1.5 million Syrians are members of the Turkmen community, including the head of the largest Syrian opposition coalition Khaled Khoja. The Turkmen community is historically, linguistically and culturally close to Turkey and their brigades are critical in the fighting against both Assad and ISIS. If Turkey has any hopes of securing a 100-km long safe zone "west of the Euphrates River and reaching into the province of Aleppo" as reported last summer by the Washington Post, the weight of governing and securing it from ISIS and Assad would fall on the Turkmen brigades, Ahrar Sham and Kurdish forces cooperating with Ankara.

...In their statements from the White House on Tuesday, both U.S. Presidents Barack Obama and his French counterpart Francois Hollande called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to focus his strikes on ISIS and refrain from targeting the rebel forces near Turkey's border. Hollande even hinted indirectly at possibility of a humanitarian safe zone, stating that "Turkey plays an important role, and it is together with Turkey that we must find solutions so that the refugees can stay close to their country of origin." Erdogan went a step further, saying Ankara "will soon put into practice humanitarian safe zone between Jarablus and Mediterranean coast" according to CNN Turk.

Easier set than done, however, as the task of securing any safe zone in Syria and managing the day to day services will be threatened by both Russia's and Assad's air force, as well as questions surrounding the opposition's ability to govern those areas.

... ... ...

_________________
Joyce Karam is the Washington Correspondent for Al-Hayat Newspaper, an International Arabic Daily based in London. She has covered American politics extensively since 2004 with focus on U.S. policy towards the Middle East. Prior to that, she worked as a Journalist in Lebanon, covering the Post-war situation. Joyce holds a B.A. in Journalism and an M.A. in International Peace and Conflict Resolution. Twitter: @Joyce_Karam

[Nov 26, 2015] France's Hollande Calls for Anti-isil Coalition

It' unclear who in the West exactly is supporting IISIS/ISIL and Al Nusra.

Notable quotes:

"... Both Obama and Hollande, however, insisted that a political transition in Syria must lead to Assad's departure. Russia, on the other hand, has been Assad's staunchest ally. ..."

Al Jazeera America

French President Francois Hollande told Russia's Vladimir Putin on Thursday that world powers must create a "grand coalition" to combat Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) fighters who control swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq.

...Germany, meanwhile, has decided to send reconnaissance aircraft, tanker planes and a warship to help in the fight against ISIL.

Following his meeting with the French president, Obama said Russian cooperation in the fight against IS would be "enormously helpful." Both Obama and Hollande, however, insisted that a political transition in Syria must lead to Assad's departure. Russia, on the other hand, has been Assad's staunchest ally.

Last week, Hollande called for the U.S. and Russia to set aside their policy divisions over Syria and "fight this terrorist army in a broad, single coalition." But his office acknowledges that "coordination" sounds like a far more realistic goal.

[Nov 26, 2015] Putin: Turkey 'knew downed fighter jet was Russian'

The most interesting part is " President Putin even suggested that Turkey had shot down the Russian bomber this week after receiving information about its location from the US." The USA elite like British elite in the past are master of." To pull the hot potato from the hot ashes using somebody else hands" Taking into account Obama warnings, t he USA government was clearly interested that such accident happened and may well play the role of facilitators via AWACS planes (according to Russian military two were in the air: one from Turkish and one for Saudis side) Erdogan is now lying trying to avoid consequences: consequences that are extremely beneficial to the USA not so much to Turkey and Erdogan personally. In other words Sultan of Turkey was used. And the events are very detrimental to Russians. But Russians are masters to even the game even when they have bad cards on hands. The incident is bad for Turkey and Erdogan in sense that it highlighted the fact that Turkey is the chief sponsor of radicals (the assertion provable by the available facts) and one of the major financial backer of ISIS and Al Nusra. It also highlighted the fact that Erdogan son is involved in smuggling oil from ISIS. "A stab in Russia's back by the accomplices of terrorists." is a very precise description of what happened. "There was no warning. Not via radio, or visually. There was no contact at all," the surviving co-pilot of the plane told journalists, safely back at Russia's airbase in Syria after his emergency mid-air ejection. He says the jet was shot down from behind. "If they had wanted to warn us, then they could have shown themselves - flown in parallel," Captain Murakhtin said. President Putin has already accused Ankara of siding with Islamic State (IS) by hitting the Russian jet; he also claimed some in Turkey are benefitting from the illicit sale of IS oil exports. The message to Turkey and its allies is clear: don't dare try it again.

Notable quotes:

"... Speaking at a news conference after the talks, President Putin even suggested that Turkey had shot down the Russian bomber this week after receiving information about its location from the US. ..."

"... Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has rejected calls by Russia to apologise, saying Turkey does not need to say sorry for the violation of its airspace. ..."

"... But Mr Putin insisted it was impossible for Turkey not to have known it was shooting at a Russian plane. It's got insignia, and you can see that very clearly . He went on: In advance, in accordance with our agreement with the US, we gave information on where our planes would be working - at what altitude, and in what areas. Turkey is part of that coalition and they had to know it was the Russian airforce working in that area. ..."

www.bbc.com

Russia has rejected Turkey's claims that it did not know the plane it shot down on the Syria border was Russian.

President Vladimir Putin said Russian planes were easily identifiable and the jet's flight co-ordinates had been passed on to Turkey's ally, the US.

Turkey's president said earlier if it had known the plane was Russian "maybe we would have warned it differently".

Mr Putin was speaking after meeting his French counterpart and pledging closer co-operation against Islamic State.

Russia and France have agreed to co-operate more closely in fighting terrorism in Syria. The two countries will exchange intelligence on Islamic State - and co-ordinate air strikes.

But differences remain over the fate of the Syrian leader. President Hollande made it clear that Bashar al-Assad could play no role in his country's future. President Putin said that was up to the Syrian people to decide.

And there is no sign of the kind of "grand coalition" against terror that France had been calling for, one that would include America.

Speaking at a news conference after the talks, President Putin even suggested that Turkey had shot down the Russian bomber this week after receiving information about its location from the US.

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has rejected calls by Russia to apologise, saying Turkey does not need to say sorry for the violation of its airspace. However, he told France 24 television: "If we had known it was a Russian plane, maybe we would have warned it differently".

But Mr Putin insisted it was "impossible" for Turkey not to have known it was shooting at a Russian plane. "It's got insignia, and you can see that very clearly". He went on: "In advance, in accordance with our agreement with the US, we gave information on where our planes would be working - at what altitude, and in what areas. Turkey is part of that coalition and they had to know it was the Russian airforce working in that area.

"If it was an American aircraft, would they have struck?"

Earlier on Thursday, Russia's military suspended all communication channels with the Turkish military, including a "hot line" to help avoid air accidents.

Russia's prime minister also warned the government was planning wide-ranging economic sanctions against Turkey within the coming days.

He warned that food products, Turkish interests in Russia and a number of joint investment projects could be affected.

Russia has also advised its nationals against visiting Turkey, and urged those already there to return home "due to the terrorist threats that remain on Turkish territory".

Turkey and Russia have important economic links. Russia is Turkey's second largest trading partner, while Turkey is the biggest foreign destination for Russian tourists.

On the ground inside Syria the changes have been more immediate. A cruiser has been despatched to help bolster air defences around the Russian base. The sophisticated S400 anti aircraft system is also being deployed and Russian planes will now be protected on bombing raids by fighter jets. The message to Turkey and its allies is clear: don't dare try it again. As for the rescued co-pilot, he says he is impatient to return to the skies. "I want to stay here," he said, referring to the Russian airbase. "I want payback for my commander."

[Nov 26, 2015] The U.S. Is the Most Unequal Developed Economy Outside Southern Europe

Notable quotes:

"... And yet Hillary mocked Bernie Sanders for wanting the U.S. to be more like Denmark. ..."

"... Excellent example of her opportunism, unprincipled ambition and revolting sense of superiority ..."

Bloomberg Business

Fred C. Dobbs said... November 25, 2015 at 10:50 AM

US Is the Most Unequal Developed Economy Outside
Southern Europe http://bloom.bg/1NrQVeT via @Bloomberg
Kasia Klimasinska - November 25, 2015

The developed world's most unequal economies are in struggling southern Europe, closely followed by the U.S.

That's according to a new report from Morgan Stanley, where analysts looked at indicators including the gender pay gap, involuntary part-time employment and Internet access. The bank also found that the rise of economies such as China and India has helped drive down inequality between countries, even though inequality within many individual has grown. Since the mid-1980s, income inequality has risen the most in Sweden when looking at developed economies. Even after that increase, Sweden (along with the rest of Scandinavia) still had the lowest levels of inequality. ...

Peter K. said in reply to Fred C. Dobbs...

And yet Hillary mocked Bernie Sanders for wanting the U.S. to be more like Denmark.

PPaine said in reply to Peter K....

Excellent example of her opportunism, unprincipled ambition and revolting sense of superiority

Among her peers those dangerous broiled creatures of middle class strivers domestic brimstone

She makes fellow victim turned brute [to the extent that] Dick Nixon look sympathetic

Fred C. Dobbs said in reply to Fred C. Dobbs... November 25, 2015 at 08:33 AM

BTW, there IS an unpostable link to the Morgan Stanley report in
the Bloomberg article

[Nov 26, 2015] Argentine Election a Setback, But Not Likely to Reverse Latin America's 21st Century Trend

Neoliberalism counterattacked and scored a victory in Argentina. the trick is to use economic difficulties caused by neoliberalism to bring to power a neoliberal candidate (or more liberal candidate, if the current was already neoliberal buy stayed Washington consensus). That trick was used previously in Ukraine.

Notable quotes:

"... Washington has maintained a policy of "rollback" and "containment" against almost all of the left governments that have won elections in the 21st century. So there is quite a bit of excitement here among the business and foreign policy elite ..."

"... Argentina and the region have changed too much over the past 15 years to return to the neoliberal, neocolonial past. The Washington foreign policy establishment may not understand this, but Macri's handlers did. That's why they took the trouble to package him as something very different from what he is. ..."

"... State Corruption is ever and always a pre text for reassertion of plutocratic hegemony ..."

cepr.net

The election of right-wing candidate Mauricio Macri as Argentina's president on Sunday, which just a few months ago was unexpected, is a setback for Argentina and for the region.

... ... ...

Washington has maintained a policy of "rollback" and "containment" against almost all of the left governments that have won elections in the 21st century. So there is quite a bit of excitement here among the business and foreign policy elite, with Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff facing a recession and political crisis, and Venezuela's Chavismo confronting an economic crisis and possible loss of its first national election in 17 years. So naturally they are happy about this unprecedented right-wing electoral victory in Argentina. Articles are already sprouting up, welcoming the long-awaited demise of the Latin American left.

But reports of this demise, to paraphrase Mark Twain, are somewhat exaggerated. A more likely outcome is like that of Chile, where a lackluster candidate was unable to take advantage of Socialist Party President Michelle Bachelet's 80 percent approval rating, and lost to a right-wing billionaire in 2010. He lasted four years, and then the country went back to Bachelet.

Argentina and the region have changed too much over the past 15 years to return to the neoliberal, neocolonial past. The Washington foreign policy establishment may not understand this, but Macri's handlers did. That's why they took the trouble to package him as something very different from what he is.

anne -> anne...

https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=1AK7

August 4, 2014

Real per capita Gross Domestic Product for Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Mexico, 2000-2014

(Percent change)

https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=1AK8

August 4, 2014

Real per capita Gross Domestic Product for Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Mexico, 2000-2014

(Indexed to 2000)

anne:

http://www.cepr.net/publications/op-eds-columns/argentine-election-a-setback-but-not-likely-to-reverse-latin-america-s-21st-century-trend

November 24, 2015

Argentine Election a Setback, But Not Likely to Reverse Latin America's 21st Century Trend
By Mark Weisbrot

The election of right-wing candidate Mauricio Macri as Argentina's president on Sunday, which just a few months ago was unexpected, is a setback for Argentina and for the region. In the last 13 years, Argentina had made enormous economic and social progress. Under the Kirchners (first Néstor and then Cristina Fernández de Kirchner), poverty fell by about 70 percent, and extreme poverty by 80 percent. (This is for 2003 to mid-2013, the last year for which independent estimates are available; they are also based on independent estimates of inflation.) Unemployment fell from more than 17.2 percent to 6.9 percent , according to the IMF.

But Daniel Scioli, the candidate of the Peronist "Front for Victory", who represented the governing coalition including President Fernández, did not do a good job defending these achievements. He also didn't seem to make clear what he would do to fix the country's current economic problems. In the past four years, growth has been slow (averaging about 1.1 percent annually), inflation has been high (with private estimates in the 20s), and a black market for the dollar has developed. This gave Macri (and his "Cambiemos" or "Let's Change" coalition) an opening to present himself as the candidate of a better future.

With skilled marketing help from an Ecuadorean public relations firm, he also succeeded in defining himself as something far more moderate than he is likely to be, thus winning over voters who might otherwise be afraid of a return to the pre-Kirchner depression years.

Some of the things he has indicated he would do could have a positive impact, if done correctly. He will likely cut a deal with vulture funds who have been holding more than 90 percent of Argentina's creditors hostage since New York judge Thomas Griesa ruled in 2014 that the government is not allowed to pay them. If the cost is not too high, it could be a net positive by re-opening a path for Argentina to return to international borrowing - something that Scioli would likely have also done.

A liberalization of the exchange rate that got rid of the black market could be a big step forward. But much depends on how it is done: If it causes inflation to spike and the government does nothing to protect poor and working people, they could lose a lot.

Macri may also take measures to bring down inflation, which is something that needs to be done. But here especially there are great dangers, because he is likely to do so by shrinking the economy. He wants to reduce the central government budget deficit, which will grow as a percent of GDP with austerity. Given his ideology and politics, there is serious risk of a downward spiral of austerity and recession, as the country suffered from 1998-2001. If there is inflation from the devaluation, and they are eager to get rid of that too, this could make matters worse.

His campaign statements and positions indicate that he is against a government role in promoting industry, so the country's development is likely to suffer as a result. He has proposed tax cuts for upper- income groups, and so budget cuts are likely since he has pledged to reduce the government budget deficit. If you add it all up, the majority of Argentines are likely to suffer from any economic transition that he can engineer.

But he will not have a working majority in Congress, so it remains to be seen how much he can do. Internationally, he has moved immediately to demonstrate his overwhelming loyalty to the United States government, which had been previously demonstrated in confidential U.S. embassy cables published by WikiLeaks. One of his very first statements after being elected was to denounce Venezuela and threaten to have them suspended from Mercosur. Since this is not an issue that was pressing to Argentine voters, it is clear that it is part of the U.S.-led international campaign leading up to Venezuela's December 6 elections, which seeks to delegitimize the government and the elections.

Macri's willingness to join this campaign is something that no other South American president would do. On the contrary, in the past decade South American presidents have repeatedly joined together to defend democracy in the region when it was under attack, with Washington on the other side - not only in Venezuela, in 2014, 2013, and 2002; but in but in Bolivia (2008); Honduras (2009); Ecuador (2010); and Paraguay (2012). If Macri continues down this road, he will not only bring shame to Argentina, but he will damage hemispheric relations.

Washington has maintained a policy of "rollback" and "containment" against almost all of the left governments that have won elections in the 21st century. So there is quite a bit of excitement here among the business and foreign policy elite, with Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff facing a recession and political crisis, and Venezuela's Chavismo confronting an economic crisis and possible loss of its first national election in 17 years. So naturally they are happy about this unprecedented right-wing electoral victory in Argentina. Articles are already sprouting up, welcoming the long-awaited demise of the Latin American left.

But reports of this demise, to paraphrase Mark Twain, are somewhat exaggerated. A more likely outcome is like that of Chile, where a lackluster candidate was unable to take advantage of Socialist Party President Michelle Bachelet's 80 percent approval rating, and lost to a right-wing billionaire in 2010. He lasted four years, and then the country went back to Bachelet.

Argentina and the region have changed too much over the past 15 years to return to the neoliberal, neocolonial past. The Washington foreign policy establishment may not understand this, but Macri's handlers did. That's why they took the trouble to package him as something very different from what he is.

Narwhal -> anne:

too much here to comment on.

Weisbrot couches his analysis in right vs left wing politics which played only a minor part.

The election was about the incompetence of the Kirchners. Argentinians have had enough and finally kicked the incompetents out.

"with Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff facing a recession and political crisis" THAT HER INCOMPETENCE AND TOTAL CORRUPTION CAUSED....the vast majority has had enough.

Has this guy actually visited Argentina and Brazil...

anne -> Narwhal:

Do set down a focused argument and references when possible.

When "incompetence" and "total corruption" assertions are made, and even capitalized, they should be referenced. As for the "vast majority" in Argentina who had had enough, would that be the 51.4% who voted for President Macri?

Narwhal -> anne:

Sorry, Anne, I am not going to post a university research paper with references and footnotes (been there and done that).

Argentine politics are so convoluted that I do not pretend to understand them. Suffice to say that the are far more nuanced than simple liberal vs conservative. Only that those of us here in Brazil breathed huge sigh of relief when the election results were announced.

OTOH his indirect references to Brazil showed even less knowledge of the region. I have made a very small attempt to give readers a tiny view of the Brazilian politics and corruption in my other comment.

anne -> Narwhal:

On the other hand [Mark Weisbrot's] indirect references to Brazil showed even less knowledge of the region.

[ I set down the direct references to Brazil by Mark Weisbrot, Franklin Serrano and Ricardo Summa. Possibly the work they have done on Brazil reflects little knowledge as supposedly the work done by Weisbrot on Argentina does, but I find the work carefully done and persuasive. ]

PPaine -> anne:

He has none. He's reacting like the usual middle brow bourgeois. Whatever he or she really is

Nuance here is just enough muddle to confuse the outsider. So long as that outsider salivates with every reference to corruption and incompetence

PPaine -> Narwhal:

No don't hide the hand grenade here. This is class struggle. Nuances are nonsense. State Corruption is ever and always a pre text for reassertion of plutocratic hegemony

The point will be clear once this agent of the haute bourgeoise. Starts rectifying more then a decade of improved welfare systematics

anne -> PPaine :

State Corruption is ever and always a pre text for reassertion of plutocratic hegemony

The point will be clear once this agent of the haute bourgeoise

Starts rectifying more then a decade of improved welfare systematics

[ Interesting and all too reasonable historically for Latin America. ]

Reply Wednesday, November 25, 2015 at 04:44 PM

anne -> anne:

https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=1AK7

August 4, 2014

Real per capita Gross Domestic Product for Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Mexico, 2000-2014

(Percent change)
https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=1AK8

August 4, 2014

Real per capita Gross Domestic Product for Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Mexico, 2000-2014

(Indexed to 2000)

Reply Wednesday, November 25, 2015 at 05:52 AM

anne -> anne:

https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=1AK9

November 1, 2014

Total Factor Productivity at Constant National Prices for Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Mexico, 2000-2011

https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=1AKc

November 1, 2014

Total Factor Productivity at Constant National Prices for Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Mexico, 2000-2011

(Indexed to 2000)

Reply Wednesday, November 25, 2015 at 05:54 AM

Narwhal -> anne:

This economist article gives a more complete review of Brazil's economic situation.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2015/10/economic-backgrounder

-- the real has devalued from about 2.1/US$ to 3.6/US$ today.

--bribes and kickbacks from Petrobras amounting to uncounted HUNDREDS of billions of reais had their origin when President Dilma was Chairwoman of the Board of Directors.

--Ex President Lula's closest aid is serving a jail term for corruption. The government's leader in the Senate was arrested today... the list goes on.

--The government took no steps to prevent the ecological disaster of two dam collapses this month. Many are dead and will never be found or even counted. Thousands are homeless. 60 million tons of toxic mud have completely destroyed 400 km of the Rio Doce. The mud reached the sea Sunday and is now killing the ocean habitat.

--Pres Dilma signed a decree declarion the disaster an act of god, thereby absolving the mining companies and the government of all legal responsibility.

PPaine -> anne:

The economist -- Now there's a source we can rely on --

anne -> anne:

http://www.cepr.net/publications/op-eds-columns/brazil-needs-new-economic-program-to-jump-start-growth-and-employment

September 4, 2015

Brazil Needs New Economic Program to Jump-Start Growth and Employment
By Mark Weisbrot

Finance Minister Joaquim Levy says that unemployment is going to increase in Brazil and that Brazilians should "face some realities." No country should have a finance minister with this attitude towards one of its population's most important needs – employment. And even worse, someone who is acting on these twisted beliefs in order to make them reality. His own job should be the first to go.

The vast majority of Brazilians are still hugely better off than they were before the Workers Party assumed the presidency in January of 2003. Poverty was reduced by 55 percent and extreme poverty by 65 percent from 2003-2012 and real (inflation-adjusted) wages grew by 35 percent – including a doubling of the real minimum wage. From 2004-2010, the economy grew twice as fast as it had over the previous 23 years, and the gains from growth were much more equally distributed.

But these gains are being eroded, as the economy sinks into recession and unemployment rises. Why has this happened? A new report * by Brazilian economists Franklin Serrano and Ricardo Summa shows that it is not primarily due to external factors – for example, the slowdown of global economic growth and trade. Rather it is mainly a result of government policies that have reduced aggregate demand since the end of 2010: tighter budgets, cuts in public investment, higher interest rates, and tighter credit.

Austerity is not working in Brazil -- any more than it has been working in Europe. These policies are not only creating unnecessary unemployment and poverty in the present, they are also sacrificing Brazil's future. Brazil needs public investment in transportation and other infrastructure, but this is the spending that is first to be sacrificed.

The Central Bank has raised short-term interest rates from 7.5 percent in April 2013 to 14.25 percent today. As a result of having exorbitant interest rates for many years, the government pays more than 6 percent of GDP – about 20 percent of federal spending – in net interest. This is among the world's highest government interest burdens.

Lowering interest rates could free up money in the budget for public investment. It is clear that the government needs to increase spending in order to jump-start the economy. This is what it did, successfully, when the global financial crisis and recession hit in 2009.

Brazil does not yet have to worry about external financial constraints, as it currently has $369 billion in reserves. Its net public debt is only about 34 percent of GDP (This is low by any comparison; the problem is the exorbitant interest rates, averaging 11 percent on outstanding government bonds). The economy has plenty of reason to grow, but it is clear that the private sector is not going to lead this growth.

Dilma won re-election in 2014 by promising to stand up to the oligarchy, and continue the successful policies that brought considerable economic and social progress to Brazil for the first time in decades. Levy and his friends in Brazil's powerful financial sector may prefer higher unemployment and lower wages, but that is not what Brazilians voted for. There is no reason for the government to commit political suicide by continuing to implement the failed economic program of its opposition.

* http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/Brazil-2015-08.pdf

anne -> anne:

http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/Brazil-2015-08.pdf

August, 2015

Aggregate Demand and the Slowdown of Brazilian Economic Growth from 2011-2014
By Franklin Serrano and Ricardo Summa

Executive Summary

This paper looks in detail at the sharp slowdown in the Brazilian economy for the years 2011-2014, in which economic growth averaged only 2.1 percent annually, as compared with 4.4 percent in the 2004-2010 period. The latter level of growth was also more than double Brazil's average annual growth rate over the prior 23 years (although it was much lower than the pre-1980 period). It is important to understand why the higher rate of growth experienced from 2004 to 2010 was not sustained over the past few years.

The authors argue that the slowdown is overwhelmingly the result of a sharp decline in domestic demand, rather than a fall in exports and even less any change in external financial conditions. The sharp fall in domestic demand, in turn, is shown to be a result of deliberate policy decisions made by the government. This decision to slow the economy was not necessary, i.e., it was not made in response to some external constraint such as a balance-of-payments problem.

Brazil's exports, and the change in their quantity between the two periods, was too small to account for most of the large slowdown in GDP growth. From 2011-2014, exports amounted to 11.3 percent of GDP, as compared with 11.9 percent for 2004-2010.

The idea that a deterioration in external financial conditions could have driven the slowdown is also contradicted by the data. For example, the total foreign debt-to-exports ratio dropped from 4.7 in 1999 to 1.27 by the end of 2010, and was 1.54 in 2014. The ratio of total external debt to foreign reserves was reduced from 6.5 in 2000 to 0.89 in 2010 (and was 0.93 in 2014). Also, the percent of Brazilian foreign liabilities that are denominated in dollars fell from around 75 percent in 2003 to a minimum of 35 percent in 2010, and was about 40 percent in 2014.

All of this indicates that the economy had room to expand after 2010. But the government decided to reduce aggregate demand through changes in monetary, fiscal, and macroprudential policies. For example, the Central Bank began a cycle of interest rate increases after February 2010 that lasted until August 2011, raising the basic nominal interest rate from 8.75 percent to 12.5 percent. The nominal interest rate increases and the macroprudential measures – which reduced the growth of credit -- helped to a certain extent to end the consumption boom (especially of durable goods). Private consumption growth decelerated sharply until mid-2012, partially as a result of these measures.

At the end of 2010, the government also decided to promote a strong fiscal adjustment in order to increase the primary surplus and to meet the full target of 3.1 percent of GDP in 2011. Another sign of this contractionary commitment of the new government was the decision, after years of high increases, not to raise the real minimum wage at all in 2011, something that had not occurred in Brazil since 1994. And despite the global economic slowdown in early 2011, the signs of which were evident from the first quarter, fiscal adjustment was maintained throughout 2011 and the full target for the primary surplus was achieved.

This rapid increase in the primary surplus was only possible thanks to a strong reduction in the growth of public spending. In 2011, public investment, both of the central government and the state-owned companies, fell dramatically, by 17.9 percent and 7.8 percent in real terms, respectively. The government's contractionary policies led to a pronounced decline in private investment as well, so that total investment (public and private) fell sharply. After growing at an average annual rate of 8.0 percent between 2004 and 2010, peaking at 18 percent in 2010, gross fixed capital formation over 2011-2014 grew by just 1.8 percent annually.

Thus it was the strong reduction in investment growth-not a process of "deindustrialization" related to the real exchange rate, as some have maintained-that explains the slowdown in industrial production since 2011. Manufacturing industry grew in the years 2007-2008 and in 2010, when the exchange rate was already appreciated. It is also worth noting that during the 2004-2010 period of higher growth, the appreciated real exchange rate was very important for controlling inflation and thus also for increasing real wages and the growth rate of household consumption.

This paper also shows that the analysis put forth to justify the government's post-2010 strategy was wrong. Even though the economy was already slowing in 2010, the argument was made that fiscal tightening was necessary in order to have a large reduction in interest rates. The lower interest rates, combined with tax cuts and other incentives for businesses, were expected to then allow the private sector to lead growth by stimulating private investment and also export-led growth as the real exchange rate depreciated due to the lower interest rates. However, as the pro-cyclical policies shrank aggregate demand, private investment plummeted; and for reasons explained below, export-led growth did not occur either. And the supposed link between public debt and sovereign risk also turned out to be an unfounded assumption.

The result is that the government's efforts to encourage the private sector to lead economic growth, through contractionary macro-economic policies, tax-cuts, and public-private partnerships, had the opposite result. To return growth and employment creation to the levels of the 2004-2010 period, the government will have to change course and return to some of the policies and strategy of those years, in which the government took responsibility for ensuring the growth of investment, consumption, formal sector employment, and necessary infrastructure.

Reply Wednesday, November 25, 2015 at 07:17 AM

pgl -> anne:

These authors are not buying this conventional wisdom:

"This paper also shows that the analysis put forth to justify the government's post-2010 strategy was wrong. Even though the economy was already slowing in 2010, the argument was made that fiscal tightening was necessary in order to have a large reduction in interest rates. The lower interest rates, combined with tax cuts and other incentives for businesses, were expected to then allow the private sector to lead growth by stimulating private investment and also export-led growth as the real exchange rate depreciated due to the lower interest rates."

Neither am I but maybe for different reasons. While I'm not expert on Brazil, its macroeconomic data paints a picture of nominal rates being high more because inflation is high not high real interest rates. Its currency is devaluing in nominal terms for similar reasons. Why a nation with a depressed economy has this high inflation is a mystery.

The conventional wisdom seems to be that Brazil should do a 1993 Clinton-Greenspan macroeconomic mix with fiscal austerity. This is akin to what Volcker tried to get the clueless Reagan White House to do in 1983. But it strikes me that Brazil's issues are different and that the fiscal austerity did not have the effects from this conventional wisdom.

Narwhal -> pgl:

Inflation is as much result of devaluation as a cause of devaluation. The major driver is the flow of funds; 1) The slow down and reversal of corporate investment from abroad; 2)Repatriation of accumulated corporate profits to sustain home country weaknesses and avoid probable devaluation before it occurred. 3)Outflow of 'hot money',speculative, portfolio investments. 4)The fall in value of commodity exports (oil). 4) Increased cost of servicing and rolling over foreign debt.

Other factor include: downgrading of Brazilian sovereign debt, the HUGE cost of the Petrobras and other scandals, total loss of confidence both internally and externally in the ability of the government to understand or much less deal with the political/economic situation.

Reply Wednesday, November 25, 2015 at 09:40 AM

PPaine -> anne:

This analysis leads to one conclusion

Intervene to lower the borrowing rate; that should also lower the forex rate

Brazil needs to attack inflation directly with controls on price increases

See the Abba club
Site now under construction for ultimate solutions
But for now price freezes ala Nixon

This won't happen
Because worker party compromises with the haute bourgeoise prevent this

Recall if dilma goes off he reservation
the coup birds still exist in brazil

Reply Wednesday, November 25, 2015 at 10:50 AM

PPaine -> PPaine :

The melodrama here was built right into the limits on worker party actions

Take the cut to state deficits

Totally toxic

But like here austerity is viewed as prudence by the respectable class

Reply Wednesday, November 25, 2015 at 10:53 AM

ilsm -> PPaine :

losers is losers

if "they" cannot win at austerity

losers is losers

Anonymous:

"Most of What You Learned in Econ 101 Is Wrong"

To this crowd, it should be - Most of what we taught you in Econ 101 is Wrong.

[Nov 26, 2015] Meet The Man Who Funds ISIS Bilal Erdogan, The Son Of Turkey's President

Notable quotes:

"... And people STILL don't understand this whole ISIS thing is entirely scripted. As if the us govt doesn't know exactly who is doing what with this illicit oil trade. Of course, maybe they don't. Maybe they are too busy spying on innocent us citizens to be bothered with actually doing their fucking jobs.... ..."

"... I'm sure we will get a press conference from Obama soon, where he will tell us that he just learned this by reading the newspaper and is just as shocked as we are. What a fucking clownshow we live in. ..."

"... It is inconceivable that the CIA does not already know all of this and a whole lot more. There are geostationary satellites over Iraq spamming Tb/s of data back to Langley. You only need to see the resolution of Google Maps over Iraq to know how much installed aerial surveillance covers that part of the world. Iraq has higher resolution than Manhattan. ..."

"... I would not be surprised if the CIA was tracking and analysing the movements of every single vehicle in Mosul. The technology to do it exists, it's the same technology that will manage driverless car fleets. ..."

"... What makes you think he doesn't know? Like that leading from behind propaganda in Libya so that Obama gets blamed for being a wimp or incompetent rather than the warmonger he really is. It is well known that Obama regularly fails to heed real experts advice or ignores it completely. It's claimed that in many briefings he doesn't even pay attention. His close circle of advisors, like the Kagan family, Victoria Nuland, Valerie Jarret, and such are war mongering conquer the planet types. ..."

"... For the US ISIS serves a purpose thus the pure propaganda that most US air strikes against ISIS are not approved because they might hurt civilians. Obama could care less about civilians or he never would have bombed Libya into a failed state and walked away, would not have supplied arms and money to Syrian foreign jihadists which comprise 90% of those fighting Assad, and he certainly would never run his drone campaign in at least 7 countries that has killed thousands of innocent people. ..."

"... Better to be looked upon in the history books as a tragic figure inexperienced and overwhelmed by the enormity of the office rather than the real Obama who loves spilling blood in world conquest. Recently the head of the UN called on all parties to stop this stuff in Syria and let the Syrians decide for themselves who leads them. Obama's reply was Assad must go which meant business as usual supplying weapons and cash for Syrian terrorists. ..."

"... As per videos and published reports Turkish trucking companies are making nice money hauling goods into Syria, especially to ISIS, with long lines at the border waiting to get across. The Russians are po'd about the Turks taking down their plane so they are targeting convoys entering Syria. Some nice videos of this. It's a wake up call for those trucking companies that it is now too dangerous and unprofitable to continue. They may be insured but close to all insurance companies will not pay off for damages in a war zone. ..."

"... When the Russians first entered the fray in Syria Obama's response was to drop over 100 pallets of weapons, and promises of anti tank and plane weapons, in the Syrian desert and hoped the proper rebels retrieved them. Look it up, it was all over the news. Does this sound like a peace loving leader to you? ..."

"... The US was *never* attacking ISIS (before the Bear showed up) - rather they were carrying out air-strikes on pro-Assad forces and claiming they were ISIS. Nobody outside of the MIC or on the ground there could tell the difference, so they got away with it ... until they didn't. ..."

"... This is directly related the the Su-24 shoot-down. The U.S. has turned a blind eye to Turkey's overt and covert military intervention through its Turkmen Jihadis because one of the main CIA arms-smuggling rat-lines is through the Turkmen Mountain region. The U.S. has willingly and eagerly supplied TOW-2As to the Turkmen jihadis there in order to preserve those smuggling routes. There were probably plenty of Xe/Academi military advisors helping the Turkmen and they were getting killed by Russian air strikes. The CIA is frantic to do something to prevent Syria/Russia from closing those routes, and will back any hair-brained Turkish scheme in desperation. CIA arms smuggling routes IN are also Turkish jihadi smuggling routes IN and ISIS stolen oil routes OUT. They're all related and all threatened by Russia. Same as the Aleppo-Aziz-Killis route - it's multi-purpose for many kinds of smuggling. ..."

"... Erdogan's crime family is a complex issue in already complex environment of Turkish politics - you did a great job of breaking down Bilal's motivations and the oil angle. I feel sorry for all the unfortunate Turks saddled with these psychopathic losers in charge (and I speak from the authority of experience here in the U.S.). ..."

"... Shim said she was among the few journalists obtaining stories of militants infiltrating into Syria through the Turkish border, adding that she had received images from militants crossing the Turkish border into Syria in World Food Organization and other NGOs' trucks. ..."

"... Plus, makes all the sense as to why NATO immediately bought off on the Rooskie fighter shoot-down ..."

"... Wow. I must say. Thanks a lot for this informative article ZH. I always taught that Erdogans many evil plots and insane schemes was really bad , but all the things that are brought into light now are even worse than I imagined. It all makes sense now and it actually explains why Obama and the rest of the western world has done about nothing to stop ISIS and their many war crimes around the globe. ..."

"... What Erdogan and his gangs of thugs are doing is plain out illegal and they should have been prosecuted and treated as ordinary criminals in the war criminal court in haag , but as the article tells us, also former France politicians and Obama has things to explain. ..."

"... If the Turkish President is shooting down anti-ISIS planes in order to save his son's business, and the NATO nations are excusing that action, then we really are in a filthy swamp of criminality. It's going to be very hard to climb out of it. Any high moral ground is way out of NATO's reach - now, if not before. ..."

"... A highly classified annex to the report, not made public, described a secret agreement reached in early 2012 between the Obama and Erdogan administrations. It pertained to the rat line. By the terms of the agreement, funding came from Turkey, as well as Saudi Arabia and Qatar; the CIA, with the support of MI6, was responsible for getting arms from Gaddafi's arsenals into Syria. A number of front companies were set up in Libya, some under the cover of Australian entities. Retired American soldiers, who didn't always know who was really employing them, were hired to manage procurement and shipping. The operation was run by David Petraeus, the CIA director who would soon resign when it became known he was having an affair with his biographer. (A spokesperson for Petraeus denied the operation ever took place.) ..."

"... Alain Juppe is pursuing the other movements privatizations initiated between 1986 and 1988 and since 1993 with the metallurgical group Pechiney and Usinor Sacilor in 1995, the French Foreign Trade Bank (BFCE, sold over the counter at the National Credit to give birth to Natixis), the Compagnie Générale Maritime (CGM also sold over the counter to the charter shipping company to create the group CMA - CGM), the General Insurance of France (AGF with the purse-up 51% of the capital, the State retaining only 2%) and the French Rhine Shipping Company (RNFL, sold over the counter at the Technical Association of the coal import ATIC) in 1996 . ..."

Nov 26, 2015 | Zero Hedge

Erdogan's Dirth Dangerous ISIS Games

More and more details are coming to light revealing that the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, variously known as ISIS, IS or Daesh, is being fed and kept alive by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish President and by his Turkish intelligence service, including MIT, the Turkish CIA Turkey, as a result of Erdogan's pursuit of what some call a Neo-Ottoman Empire fantasies that stretch all the way to China, Syria and Iraq, threatens not only to destroy Turkey but much of the Middle East if he continues on his present path.

In October 2014 US Vice President Joe Biden told a Harvard gathering that Erdogan's regime was backing ISIS with "hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of tons of weapons…" Biden later apologized clearly for tactical reasons to get Erdo?an's permission to use Turkey's Incirlik Air Base for airstrikes against ISIS in Syria, but the dimensions of Erdogan's backing for ISIS since revealed is far, far more than Biden hinted.

According to French geopolitical analyst, Thierry Meyssan, Recep Erdogan "organised the pillage of Syria, dismantled all the factories in Aleppo, the economic capital, and stole the machine-tools. Similarly, he organised the theft of archeological treasures and set up an international market in Antioch…with the help of General Benoît Puga, Chief of Staff for the Elysée, he organised a false-flag operation intended to provoke the launching of a war by the Atlantic Alliance – the chemical bombing of la Ghoutta in Damascus, in August 2013. "

Meyssan claims that the Syria strategy of Erdo?an was initially secretly developed in coordination with former French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé and Erdogan's then Foreign Minister Ahmet Davuto?lu, in 2011, after Juppe won a hesitant Erdogan to the idea of supporting the attack on traditional Turkish ally Syria in return for a promise of French support for Turkish membership in the EU. France later backed out, leaving Erdogan to continue the Syrian bloodbath largely on his own using ISIS.

greenskeeper carl

And people STILL don't understand this whole ISIS thing is entirely scripted. As if the us govt doesn't know exactly who is doing what with this illicit oil trade. Of course, maybe they don't. Maybe they are too busy spying on innocent us citizens to be bothered with actually doing their fucking jobs....

I'm sure we will get a press conference from Obama soon, where he will tell us that he just learned this by reading the newspaper and is just as shocked as we are. What a fucking clownshow we live in.

strannick

Ahh. It all makes sense now.

The Russian Su24 Bomber wasnt violating Turkish airspace much as it was violating Baby Bilal Erodagans dirty oil concession and destroying his supply tankers.

Daddy Erodagan risks WW3 so his precious can exploit a NATO oil embargo and sell oil for ISIS . Fork out on your own and get a real job and make poppa proud, Go be a Chambermaid in Munich, or show some real grit and open a kebab stand in Berlin, and so spare the planet a nuclear winter.

Ghordius

cosmos, is that the same French government that is currently in Moscow talking with Russia about how to bomb ISIS in Syria? You know, the ISIS that is producing propaganda videos accusing France and Russia to be an "Alliance Of Devils"? This while Germany is discussing about how to support this Franco-Russian cooperation?

giovanni_f

"while Germany is discussing"

"Germany" doesn't "discuss" anything, with Merkel a full-fledged CIA asset. Germany exists as economic exploitation area for Anglosaxon Fiat-money. Forget Germany. I know for I have lived in this country probably for longer time than anyone on ZH.

remain calm

So how hard is it Mr Obama to kill this dude, after all you said, "we are going to hunt down isil where every they are and destroy them and their infrastructure" Well if you kill the money guy the operation falls apart. But you don't want that, do you? You want little crisis's all over the world so you can divert attention from the economy and use the terrorism as a scapegoat. You and your policies are evil.Isil if it really wanted to be powerful needs to kill its true leader and that is you.

Occident Mortal

It is inconceivable that the CIA does not already know all of this and a whole lot more. There are geostationary satellites over Iraq spamming Tb/s of data back to Langley. You only need to see the resolution of Google Maps over Iraq to know how much installed aerial surveillance covers that part of the world. Iraq has higher resolution than Manhattan.

I would not be surprised if the CIA was tracking and analysing the movements of every single vehicle in Mosul. The technology to do it exists, it's the same technology that will manage driverless car fleets.

The problem here is that for whatever reason, the US intelligence agencies are clearly NOT sharing information with the US executive government.

Something has clearly broken in the chain of command inside .gov, and the rest of the world can see this clear as day. Obama is not being told anything.

Maybe to maintain plausible deniability, maybe for some other reason? But I don't think Obama knows squat about any of this. John Kerry must know, he is the guy who gets sent to meet ALL of the involved parties. Notice that they always send Kerry, never Obama. Kerry must hear it from the other side, he meets Lavrov, Assad, Bandar, Erdogan, et al.

This whole 5yr period is just weird.

I think that come 2017, the apple cart is gonna get flipped 50ft in the air as the USA strides back into geopolitics.

not dead yet

What makes you think he doesn't know? Like that leading from behind propaganda in Libya so that Obama gets blamed for being a wimp or incompetent rather than the warmonger he really is. It is well known that Obama regularly fails to heed real experts advice or ignores it completely. It's claimed that in many briefings he doesn't even pay attention. His close circle of advisors, like the Kagan family, Victoria Nuland, Valerie Jarret, and such are war mongering conquer the planet types.

For the US ISIS serves a purpose thus the pure propaganda that most US air strikes against ISIS are not approved because they might hurt civilians. Obama could care less about civilians or he never would have bombed Libya into a failed state and walked away, would not have supplied arms and money to Syrian foreign jihadists which comprise 90% of those fighting Assad, and he certainly would never run his drone campaign in at least 7 countries that has killed thousands of innocent people.

Better to be looked upon in the history books as a tragic figure inexperienced and overwhelmed by the enormity of the office rather than the real Obama who loves spilling blood in world conquest. Recently the head of the UN called on all parties to stop this stuff in Syria and let the Syrians decide for themselves who leads them. Obama's reply was Assad must go which meant business as usual supplying weapons and cash for Syrian terrorists. If he really was serious about peace he would have dropped all funding and arms for Syrian terrorists and forced others doing the same to stop and would have all parties join Assad to irradicate ISIS and the rest. The US has never seriously bombed ISIS, just around the edges to contain not kill them. ISIS has been selling oil for years yet the US never seriously bombed their tankers until the Russians did. Obama lost face and was compelled to finally take out a few tankers and broadcast it to the world to "prove" he was serious about stopping ISIS. Many times Obama claimed the war against ISIS was going to take 20 to 30 years yet the Kurds, who are on the ground fighting, claim if all parties make the effort ISIS could be destroyed in a few weeks.

As per videos and published reports Turkish trucking companies are making nice money hauling goods into Syria, especially to ISIS, with long lines at the border waiting to get across. The Russians are po'd about the Turks taking down their plane so they are targeting convoys entering Syria. Some nice videos of this. It's a wake up call for those trucking companies that it is now too dangerous and unprofitable to continue. They may be insured but close to all insurance companies will not pay off for damages in a war zone.

When the Russians first entered the fray in Syria Obama's response was to drop over 100 pallets of weapons, and promises of anti tank and plane weapons, in the Syrian desert and hoped the "proper rebels" retrieved them. Look it up, it was all over the news. Does this sound like a peace loving leader to you?

new game

never underestimate the enemy, they know wtf is going on. isis is the new commie to fuel the fear needed to keep the juice flowing. moar war, moar fiat financed by banksters. reasons vary depending on the hatred stirred. we are bystanders funding this shit show with our taxes, all captivated by fiat/debt in a closed system with no exits, unless of course, you live in a wood burning, no electric home w/ hand pump well, outdoor shitter, and exist like it is 1850, garden, root cellar and all that.

Trogdor

Like that leading from behind propaganda in Libya so that Obama gets blamed for being a wimp or incompetent rather than the warmonger he really is...

I seem to remember the Halfrican bragging, "I'm really good at killing people" which is something only an infantile psychopath would be proud of. Believing that he's just a simple dupe - or incompetent - is the result of not paying attention.

The US was *never* attacking ISIS (before the Bear showed up) - rather they were carrying out air-strikes on pro-Assad forces and claiming they were ISIS. Nobody outside of the MIC or on the ground there could tell the difference, so they got away with it ... until they didn't.

Oldwood

Plausible deniability

Obama doctrine: nothing that happens under his administration is his responsibility. Even his Obamacare, with all of its disasters, is blamed on him. Nothing. He always claims to be the outsider when in actuality he is in charge of everything.

Kayman

As if the U.S. isn't complicit in this. Look at a map- the oil can't go west thru Assad territory, it can't go south thru Shia Iraq, and it isn't going east thru Iran. So it has no other way to go but thru Turkey.

Turkey is a NATO member. The U.S. and Europe are supporting Turkey, therefore the U.S. and NATO are supporting ISIS. Period. Full stop.

Kick Turkey out of NATO and Blockade Turkey. And ISIS will wither and die.

Coke and Hookers

There will be three priorities now for Russia: 1) No-fly zone south of the Turkish-Syrian border enforced with S 400, 2) Hitting everything moving on every transit route from Turkey and 3) Bombing the shit out of the border area and the Turkmen scum/CIA agents hanging out there and then capturing it.

assistedliving

34 up arrows nowwithstanding, stick to the coke & hookers.

1. S400 deployment will be delayed

2. Nothing more will be hit from Turkey

3. less bombing now let alone "Bombing the shit out....?

Hard to imagine more wrong analysis; Easy to see ZH chickenhawk, Putin loving adoration

OldPhart

Ok, just an observation from the linked video. Your convoy just got bombed by a first world nation's advanced technologies.

You're fucking lucky to be alive. Yet you bunch up all the rest of the convoy, then stand around in the middle of it all watching, recording, the burning of some trucks. Doesn't it occur to these ignorant mother-fucks that what they just created is the biggist classical military strike of all time?

Russia is being merciful to fly by shit like this without strike. I thought Putin was a hard ass, maybe he does have a heart. Well, being a decent person in politics could make one look pretty fuckin' odd in these days of elected psychopaths.

Paveway IV

The ISIS-miniE oil sales are temporary. It was a bone the U.S. (and indirectly Israel) threw to Erdogan so the CIA could run arms through Turkey without questions. Same thing for the Barzani crime cartel in Iraqi Kurdistan. It's all just temporary because, long-term, U.S./U.K./Israeli interests will own and control every oil asset in Syria and Kurdistan. Genel is sliming their way into control of the oil fields stolen first from Iraq and soon from the Kurds. Tony "Deepwater Horizon" Hayward runs that shop for the Rothschilds. At the appropriate time, Mini-Erdogan and Barzani will cease to be useful to the Anglo-Zio cabal and liquidated, just like al Nusra and ISIS. Israel wants to replace Ceyhan with Haifa and control all the oil from their port, and they want to make sure nobody can turn the tap to them off. Rothschild and the U.K./U.S. Israeli-firsters just want their cut of the eventual loot and to preserve their dying petrodollar. They let Qatar and Saudi Arabia in the club for funding, and probably promised them their pipelines through Syria.

This is directly related the the Su-24 shoot-down. The U.S. has turned a blind eye to Turkey's overt and covert military intervention through its Turkmen Jihadis because one of the main CIA arms-smuggling rat-lines is through the Turkmen Mountain region. The U.S. has willingly and eagerly supplied TOW-2As to the Turkmen jihadis there in order to preserve those smuggling routes. There were probably plenty of Xe/Academi military advisors helping the Turkmen and they were getting killed by Russian air strikes. The CIA is frantic to do something to prevent Syria/Russia from closing those routes, and will back any hair-brained Turkish scheme in desperation. CIA arms smuggling routes IN are also Turkish jihadi smuggling routes IN and ISIS stolen oil routes OUT. They're all related and all threatened by Russia. Same as the Aleppo-Aziz-Killis route - it's multi-purpose for many kinds of smuggling.

The backup act of desperation is already playing out. While Syria/Russia tries to take back the two main corridors mentioned above, Turkey and the U.S. are trying to create an entirely new corridor through Afrin canton before Russia gets there. The U.S. may abhor another Kurd slaughter like they were party to in Kobane and Sinjar, but the CIA needs new rat-lines, damn it - that means some Afrin Rojava are going to have to die. Minne-E needs new oil smuggling routes (and a few new tankers), and daddy needs a reliable route to funnel Uighur, Uzbek and Chechen head-choppers to keep the pressure on Assad. Erdogan himself probably has a boner at the thought of another 25,000 dead Kurds. Barazani won't complain too much. The Rojava Kurds don't want to join his criminal gang and swear obedience to him, so he has no use for them. He just needs to convince the world that he is the supreme leader of the Kurdish cause, not the Kurds. See why he likes Erdogan so much?

For the anglo-zio oil cartel, the Syrian war isn't so much about replacing Assad right away. They would be delighted if that happened, but now they just want to preserve what they have in Syria in the face of Russian involvement. If worse comes to worse, all the parties will just retract their jihadis back across Turkish borders and wait for another opportunity. There's plenty of land-grabbing and bribery work in Iraqi Kurdistan to keep them busy for now. The long game is to own all the oil and gas possible in Syria and Iraq when the smoke clears, and then 100% control where it flows to and who sells it for what price. They'll kill every last Syrian, Iraqi and Kurd if necessary to make sure they control the spice.

Paveway IV

That was a damn fine article, Tyler. +1000. I should have offered that thought first before scratching out my rant.

Erdogan's crime family is a complex issue in already complex environment of Turkish politics - you did a great job of breaking down Bilal's motivations and the oil angle. I feel sorry for all the unfortunate Turks saddled with these psychopathic losers in charge (and I speak from the authority of experience here in the U.S.).

Escrava Isaura

Turkey needs this conflict to distract its population. Second, Turkey is a main supported of jihadi organizations such as al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham. Even the US trained rebels were killed by these jihadists with the help of Turkey.

http://www.military.com/daily-news/2015/08/03/pentagon-syria-rebels-trained-by-us-to-get-defensive-air-cover.html

Noplebian

WW3 – Turkey/ISIS/Russia – The Countdown Has Begun......
http://beforeitsnews.com/conspiracy-theories/2015/11/us-gives-their-prox...

Nostradumbass

The reason people have not talked about Turkey is because they tend to end up dead from accidents and suicides while passing through that country.

Yes, tragically, yes they do.

Press TV's correspondent in Turkey, Serena Shim, has been killed in a suspicious car accident near the Turkey-Syria border.

Shim was killed on Sunday as she was on a working mission in Turkey to cover the ongoing war in the strategic Syrian town of Kobani.

She was going back to her hotel from a report scene in the city of Suruç in Turkey's Urfa Province when their car collided with a heavy vehicle. The identity and whereabouts of the truck driver remain unknown.

Shim, an American citizen of Lebanese origin, covered reports for Press TV in Lebanon, Iraq, and Ukraine.

On Friday, she told Press TV that the Turkish intelligence agency had accused her of spying probably due to some of the stories she has covered about Turkey's stance on the ISIL terrorists in Kobani and its surroundings, adding that she feared being arrested.

Shim said she was among the few journalists obtaining stories of militants infiltrating into Syria through the Turkish border, adding that she had received images from militants crossing the Turkish border into Syria in World Food Organization and other NGOs' trucks.

Shim flatly rejected accusations against her, saying she was "surprised" at this accusation "because I have nothing to hide and I have never done anything aside my job."

Kobani and its surroundings have been under attack since mid-September, with the ISIL militants capturing dozens of nearby Kurdish villages.

Turkey has been accused of backing ISIL militants in Syria.

http://www.presstv.com/detail/2014/10/19/382854/press-tv-reporter-in-tur...

MrBoompi

Well of course Turkey sides with ISIS. Many of the ISIS fighters come across the border into Syria from Turkey, where they have been trained. Turkey is on board with the US and the rest of NATO. I suppose we have no choice but wait and see what the US pulls to get rid of Assad now. It won't be pretty.

Main_Sequence

Erdogan has a raging hard-on for the multiple gas pipelines from Libya, Egypt, Israel, and Qatar that will provide tens of billions of dollars in revenues in transit fees. Of course Turkey will do whatever it takes to ensure that Assad falls as it is literally costing Turkey billions of dollars every month that Assad is in power. None of what I have read about Turkey supporting ISIS surprises me in the slightest knowing what Turkey is losing.

knukles

Plus, makes all the sense as to why NATO immediately bought off on the Rooskie fighter shoot-down even though via the NATO documents, it technically puts NATO in a HOT war with Russia aside from the Hot Proxy wars...

Oh my....

REQUIRED READING: Tells it like it really is

http://turoks.net/Cabana/PoohGoesApeshit.php

Rusty Shorts

This U.S. Army film describes Turkey's history, economy, urban areas, industry, and its role in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsUEEPN9gWc

Bay of Pigs

Yeah, okay. The US is totally solvent, is that what youre saying....lol.

PeakOil

^This. But I would go further - Russia is fighting for its very existence.

The psychotic megalomaniacal Anglo-Zionist hegemon wishes to rule the world. Totally. Who is standing in their way? Pretty obvious what this is all about wouldn't you say?

AlaricGaudiTheSecond

So Russia is funding terrorists around the globe for profits too? Give me a f*** break!!! Liar!!

captain-nemo

Wow. I must say. Thanks a lot for this informative article ZH. I always taught that Erdogans many evil plots and insane schemes was really bad , but all the things that are brought into light now are even worse than I imagined. It all makes sense now and it actually explains why Obama and the rest of the western world has done about nothing to stop ISIS and their many war crimes around the globe.

What Erdogan and his gangs of thugs are doing is plain out illegal and they should have been prosecuted and treated as ordinary criminals in the war criminal court in haag , but as the article tells us, also former France politicians and Obama has things to explain.

I am simply overwhelmed over how bad it all turns out to be in reality. It explains why the western world was so reluctant to welcome the Russians in their fighting against ISIS, they were afraid that all their little secrets and rotten plots probably would come out. Thanks to Russia, that's exactly what has happened now.

There are absolutely no news about these things in my country, the mainstream media are only publishing the western political correct version of everything, and thus most people are probably still unaware of the real truth.

ISIS is responsible for terror attacks and the lifes of thousands of civilians all around the world. They are off course to blame and should be routed out. However. It is actually Erdogan and his thugs that are their real generals. It is Erdogan who has blood on his hands. It is Erdogan that should be wanted by the courts in Haag.

I am looking forward to read more about Erdogans son and the evil activities these people are involved in. Thank you ZH an keep up the good work.

Fuku Ben

This guy is shaping up to be like another Uday Hussein, Saddam's son. Does he have any rape, torture or murder under his belt, like Uday, in addition to his alleged war crimes and terrorist activities? Do the Turks realize they're going to be ceding a portion of their country for the greater glorious mission of rebuilding The Levant if ISIS/ISIL/Israel (see below) succeed in Syria?

Here is an old quote from a Kurd on the alleged details of the ISIS operation. "Housed in Turkey, trained in Jordan, logistics by Pakistan, literature from Saudi Arabia, funding from Qatar and Saudi Arabia, on the ground day to day running by Israel, arms by the U.S., intelligence by the British, Germans and French and original arms for ISIS came from the Muslim Brotherhood helping them take it from Libya."

One big happy family isn't it. This seems very plausible and explains why they would all be so pissed off at what Russia has done. Again at the last press conference Hollande and Obama openly refused to cooperate with Russia. Obama again insisting that Russia work through his coalition and that Assad be removed.

I wonder how many U.S. citizens even realize they are
under a declared state of Nation Emergency due to that deadliest of threats to the U.S. known as Syria. What a fraudulent joke.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/05/06/notice-continuati...

Is anyone operating inside Syrian airspace yet actually doing so lawfully besides Russia? Or are lawful authority and international law now just more fraudulent misrepresentations and treated as a joke? Similar to how the global corporations fraudulently act as Countries and pretending that by being a Citizen you have freedoms that they protect.

I'm struggling to find any U.N. authorization for the lawful use of force inside Syria without the consent of the Syrian government. Not that the U.N. has that authority anyway. If anyone finds any please feel free to post it.

http://www.un.org/press/en/2015/sc12132.doc.htm

XXL66

The ISIS-Turkey list :

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-l-phillips/research-paper-isis-turke...

smacker

That's a good document.

It places Turkey up to its neck at the scene of the ISIS crime.

Turkey are actively involved in supporting ISIS: recruitment, training, financing, supplying weapons and other goods to ISIS. Recep Erdogan himself is in control and his son Bilal is handling ISIS stolen oil.

Volkodav

US Sanctions Syria for buying oil from Islamic State...

https://in.news.yahoo.com/us-sanctions-syria-buying-oil-163505807.html

HowdyDoody

Syrian uses Syrian oil - sanctions.

Turkey deals in Syiran oil stolen by ISIS - no sanctions.

css1971

"Turkey's actions appear premeditated, planned, and undertaken with a specific objective."

Or put another way. We think you're evil, not stupid.

localizer

To sum it up: Erdogan has put his family income above his country's interests since the math is simple - family pockets gain a fraction of the billions that will not be collected by the Turkish companies now due to "sanctions" imposed by Russia, this has already begun - no Russian tourists (that is about $3 billion/year), suspended construction contracts in Russia for Turkish companies, extra "inspections" on ALL Turkish goods (textiles, food) entering Russia etc...

Lumberjack

You forgot Hillary

viator

And RT chimes in:

https://www.rt.com/business/323391-isis-oil-business-turkey-russia/

Maybe this is among the reasons that some people are mad: "Islamic State is selling oil at $15–25 per barrel"

https://twitter.com/hashtag/StopTurkeySuppportOfISIS

Hannibal

Mystery over who bombed Turkish convoy allegedly carrying weapons to militants in Syria

https://www.rt.com/news/323538-turkey-convoy-syria-attack/

BarnacleBill

If the Turkish President is shooting down anti-ISIS planes in order to save his son's business, and the NATO nations are excusing that action, then we really are in a filthy swamp of criminality. It's going to be very hard to climb out of it. Any high moral ground is way out of NATO's reach - now, if not before.

When I wrote about the famous ISIS Toyotas a year ago (link below), I reckoned the CIA might have bought them on ISIS's behalf - but now I wonder if perhaps Turkey's top oligarch didn't do it on his own. I also presumed the Toyotas had been manufactured in the US, but I've since learned that the Toyota company also manufactures left-hand-drive trucks in Thailand. This story has a lot of angles still to uncover - and not just which tax-haven was used to facilitate the transactions. More likely Hong Kong or Singapore than any one over in this part of the world, in this instance.

http://barlowscayman.blogspot.com/2014/10/who-sold-isis-all-those-toyotas.html

viator

"Russia is preparing wide-ranging economic sanctions against Turkey over the downing of one of its jets on the Turkey-Syria border."

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34933608

"Mr Medvedev said: "The government has been ordered to work out a system of response measures to this act of aggression in the economic and humanitarian spheres."He said the focus would be on "introducing limits or bans" on Turkish economic interests in Russia and a "limitation of the supply" of products, including food.He said tourism, transport, trade, labour and customs as well as "humanitarian contacts" could all be affected. "The same rules may apply to a whole range of investment projects," he said."

Wahooo

Do not focus on Ergodan, focus on the US:

Seymour Hersh, April 2014:

A highly classified annex to the report, not made public, described a secret agreement reached in early 2012 between the Obama and Erdogan administrations. It pertained to the rat line. By the terms of the agreement, funding came from Turkey, as well as Saudi Arabia and Qatar; the CIA, with the support of MI6, was responsible for getting arms from Gaddafi's arsenals into Syria. A number of front companies were set up in Libya, some under the cover of Australian entities. Retired American soldiers, who didn't always know who was really employing them, were hired to manage procurement and shipping. The operation was run by David Petraeus, the CIA director who would soon resign when it became known he was having an affair with his biographer. (A spokesperson for Petraeus denied the operation ever took place.)

Wrascaly Wabbit

The following article is an eye opener in terms of how ISIL finances itself!

http://journal-neo.org/2015/11/03/isis-financial-sources/

The bottom line is you can't sell anything, unless you have someone willing to buy it!

Whoa Dammit

Hey Tyler (or anyone else who wants to do the research,

It might not be a bad idea to look further into Alain Juppe who was mentioned in Engdahl's article. He was responsible for the privatization of a French foreign trade bank and two French shipping companies years back. But old ties run deep in politics and shady deals.

This is what I found from a cursory look at French Wiki:

Alain Juppe is pursuing the other movements privatizations initiated between 1986 and 1988 and since 1993 with the metallurgical group Pechiney and Usinor Sacilorin 1995, the French Foreign Trade Bank (BFCE, sold over the counter at theNational Credit to give birth to Natixis), the Compagnie Générale Maritime (CGM also sold over the counter to the charter shipping company to create the group CMA -CGM), the General Insurance of France (AGF with the purse-up 51% of the capital, the State retaining only 2%) and the French Rhine Shipping Company (RNFL, sold over the counter at the Technical Association of the coal import ATIC) in 1996.

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_Jupp%C3%A9

ISIS support in Turkey could have nothing at all to do with any of these companies today, but then again it might. Seeing the foreign trade bank and shipping connections here just alerted my spidey senses.

Joenobody12

http://journal-neo.org/2015/11/25/israeli-colonel-caught-with-is-pants-d...

It is about oil and the disintegration of the Arab countries. Destruction of nations and killing of their people mean absolutely nothing to these psycopaths. In fact , the chosen people have planned the destruction of the Arab countries just so there will be no centralized pwer to threaten Israel.

Gulag

Turkey is facilitating selling ISIS stolen oil from Iraq and Syria oilfields to G20 membership countries on the black market at a dumping price. Has been estimated that as much as $800mil of oil has been sold in Turkey by ISIS using Turkey / Syrian border in direct dealings between Turkish officials and ISIS members under the blind eye of UK and USA.

Turkey is a corrupt, jihadist sh*t hole that hosts, protects, finances and offer intelligence and logistics to ISIS under cover of NATO membership and alliance with USA.

Turkey is considered a USA ally while ISIS is considered a terrorist faction in war with America.

Turkey is s state sponsor of ISIS with a NATO membership. NATO is harboring a state that sponsors ISIS. That makes NATO and all nations within NATO membership accomplices of sponsoring terrorism.

... ... ...

me or you

Turkey is buying and selling ISIS oil while NATO is smuggling Taliban opium.

johmack2

What irks me the most is the lack of investigative journalism during this whole middle east fiasco. It was as if after the watergate scandal, washington vowed never again and thus began the death of journalism. In the day and age when you have have alternative media giving more indept analysis than CNN/BBC on geopolitical issues and sites like muddywaters using investigation as means of peeling away the corporate veil of corruption, one has to wonder the nature of the illusion we find ourselves in.

As i have assimilated more information, the words from morpheous in the matrix to neo in the training simulation continuously ring true.

"The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it. "

[Nov 26, 2015] The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity Who Is Protecting ISIS And Why

Notable quotes:

"... The US and its allies have allowed their desire for regime change in Syria to outweigh their stated desire to get rid of ISIS. What does that result in? Implicit or explicit protection for ISIS and related extremist groups inside Syria. Turkey was enjoying big business in Syrian underground oil shipments...until the Russians bombed ISIS's oil infrastructure. Then Turkey attacked a Russian plane. What does it mean? ..."

ronpaulinstitute.org

The US and its allies have allowed their desire for regime change in Syria to outweigh their stated desire to get rid of ISIS. What does that result in? Implicit or explicit protection for ISIS and related extremist groups inside Syria. Turkey was enjoying big business in Syrian underground oil shipments...until the Russians bombed ISIS's oil infrastructure. Then Turkey attacked a Russian plane. What does it mean? Tune in to the Liberty Report:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvFQ_Kp-GwU

Copyright © 2015 by RonPaul Institute. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given.
Please donate to the Ron Paul Institute

[Nov 26, 2015] Syrian Rebels Make Intensive Use of US Missiles

Nov 26, 2015 | Antiwar.com

US provision of advanced missiles to Syrian rebel factions once again came into close focus this week, when a faction affiliated with the Free Syrian Army (FSA) attacked and destroyed a Russian helicopter trying to rescue pilots from a plane shot down by Turkey.

According to Syrian military officials, however, the US TOW missiles are not the rare sight they once were in the war, and many factions, including those allied with al-Qaeda, are making "intensive" use of the US missiles in northwestern Syria.

TOW missile shipments are seen going through Turkey, with Saudi Arabia subsidizing the program. The US escalated the shipments after Russia began its involvement in the Syrian Civil War, despite insistence that the arms are purely targeted at the Syrian military.

Russia has warned the US the provision of those arms is a "major mistake," and that those arms are going to inevitably wind up in the hands of terrorist organizations, and not just the "vetted" groups. This has been the case in past US arms shipments, and hardly a terror faction exists in Syria anymore that isn't awash in US arms.

[Nov 26, 2015] Turkey won't apologize for downing Russian jet Erdo an

www.hurriyetdailynews.com

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Nov. 26 that Turkey would not apologize for the Nov. 24 downing of a Russian jet near the Syrian border.

"I think that if there is a party that needs to apologize, it is not us," Erdoğan said in an interview with CNN International.

He also added that the Turkish pilots who shot down the Russian jet had "done their duty within the rules of engagement."

"Those who violated our airspace are the ones who need to apologize. Our pilots and our armed forces, they simply fulfilled their duties, which consisted of responding to ... violations of the rules of engagement. I think this is the essence of the issue," Erdoğan said.

[Nov 25, 2015] Is Vladimir Putin right to label Turkey accomplices of terrorists ?

Notable quotes:

"... You have to laugh when you hear Erdogan and that puppy he's got for a Prime Minister solemnly saying that their airspace is sacrosanct and that they would never do the same to another sovereign nation. Yet, every week or so Turkish jets violate Greek airspace over the Aegean. And their jets don't stay for 30 seconds either. Personally I wouldn't believe anything that the Turks say about this incident. ..."

"... Bravo. Pumping out endless western propaganda for the moronic. The Americans and NATO are the biggest warmongers in history: http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/.../turkey-has-destroyed.../ ..."

"... Erdogan is a bad guy, who receives western political cover due to Turkey's NATO membership. ..."

"... According to Seymour Hersch it was Turkey that was behind the Ghouta gas attack (well it certainly wasn't Assad). There was also a plan to attack a Turkish shrine inside Syria to be used as a pretext for a full invasion. The video clip is available on youtube. In the recording you can hear the defence minister and the head of intelligence discussing the plan, agreeing to do it, even though they don't like the idea, while lamenting the fact that everything is politics in modern Turkey. Nobody ever talks about this. Erdogan's response to this was to shut down Youtube for a day. ..."

"... ISIS fighters move in and out of Turkey with ease, receive medical treatment there and selling their oil at very competitive prices to people close to the Erdogan regime. Because NATO have gone along with Turkey in the "Assad must go" mantra they've been stuck covering up for his antics. But shooting down a Russian jet that clearly wasn't threatening Turkey was extremely reckless - maybe regime change in Ankara may be on the cards. ..."

"... "Over the past two years several senior Isis members have told the Guardian that Turkey preferred to stay out of their way and rarely tackled them directly." ..."

"... Martin Chulov is certainly not biased in his reporting in favour of Russia or against Turkey. He has reported mostly in favour of the rebels in Syria and only recently realised what the outcome of all this is. ..."

"... His facts about the ISIS-Turkish connection are not imagination presented against reason. Isis i.e. was free to attack the Kurds inside Turkey and the government did nothing to stop them, even when they knew about them very well. ..."

"... Believing that Erdogan, whose country's human rights record is pretty unenviable (in particular with regard to journalists), fell out with Assad because he was appalled by the latter's repression is like believing that Mussolini's decision to aid Franco in the Spanish Civil War was largely motivated by his horror at the bad behaviour of Spanish Anarchists and Communists. ..."

"... Turkey is a conduit, the Turkish presidents son is buying the oil from ISIS, just like US Vice President Joe Bidens son joined the board of Ukraines largest Gas producer after Nato expanded into the Ukraine. ..."

"... Was the downing of the jet by Turkey a tit for tat exercise as Russia destroyed some of the hundreds of lorry oil tankers parked up in ISIS territory heading for Turkey 6 days ago? ..."

"... Al Qaeda was created and used by the usa to do terror on Russia. No reason tho think things have changed, when clearly they have not. Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, all have fallen....more to come. There is no "wondering" at all about the orogon an dpurpose of the ISIS when they admit they are al qaeda re packaged ...When the US admits al qaeda has melded into the ISIS. ..."

"... Terrorists in the middle east are a western supported geo-political tool to allow us to bomb, invade, destabilizen and balkanize soverign nations who refuse globalist ideology and orders. ..."

"... All a bit too convenient with the film crew at the ready. Clearly Erdogan is looking to further his agenda and set his sights on expanding Turkey's borders and it looks as though he's using NATO's protection to do it. ..."

"... It's ironic that NATO affords Turkey so much protection given that Turkey funds ISIS, it trades with them, it allows IS fighters free travel across Turkish borders and it also fights IS enemies for them - the Kurds. Outside of the Gulf, Turkey is the jihadist's biggest ally. ..."

"... Well, at least we have seen that those K-36 ejection seats do work; they have reportedly never failed. Of course Turkey, and Western Europe for that matter, has been playing a double game. Just like in Afghanistan in the 1980s, they prefer the acid-throwers and head-choppers to a Russian-backed secular regime. ..."

"... Even the Western MSM has openly reported about and from the staging areas in Turkey, where the jihadists gather before entering Syria. The US-lead "coalition" is now boasting about bombing ISIL oil convoys, but where has it been for the past few years? Everybody with a single functioning grey cell knows that Turkey is involved in the ISIS oil smuggling business and allowing the jihadist to train on its territory. ..."

"... The Turkmen who Turkey is protecting have been attacking Kurds. The Turks have been bombing the Kurds, who are fighting ISIS. ..."

"... The Turks have been buying ISIS' oil and giving other funding. Weapons funded by Gulf States have almost certainly been crossing the Turkish border for ISIS. It is suspected the Turkey has been providing a safe haven for ISIS fighters. Tens of thousands have crossed Turkeys borders to join rebel groups, the chances that some of them have not joined ISIS is nil. ..."

"... Lest anyone forget, Al Qaeda are themselves have orchestrated huge scale terrorist attacks. But becausing they are fighting Assad in Syria, who is hated by the Gulf States, Turkey and Israel, unquestioned or criticised almost regardless what they do by the West allies of the West, apparently Al Qaeda are now fine. ..."

"... I wonder if the leaders of NATO were involved in anyway at all??? ..."

"... And - does this lend weight to those who have shown that ISIS is a result of the Libyan, Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and that they are mercenaries who have formed an insurgency within Syria for a regime change? A war crime, definitely against international law. ..."

"... In the warnings at no point do the turks actually say the russians are in turkish airspace, just that they are heading towards it; they also do not threaten to fire upon the Russians like the RAF do over here when they issue a warning. Normally the defending plane would come alongside the transgressor to escort them out the airspace, here they just just shoot at the russians without issuing a warning. It also appears that there just so happened to be a tv crew there perfectly poised to film it - what a coincidence. There is no way we are getting dragged into a war over this. ..."

"... The whole rotten scam is coming undone. No one believes the mainstream media any more. I skip the articles and go straight to the comments. That's where you find out what's really going on. Thank you for all the insightful comments. The truth will set us free ..."

"... 'It is in West's interest that ISIS would spill into Russia one day and do the dirty job there for US and its associates.' ..."

"... Oh, and the "rebels" shooting the pilots as they made their descent is a war crime. ..."

"... "Turkey said one of its US-made F-16 fighters fired on the Russian plane when it entered Turkish airspace after having been warned on its approach to the Turkish border through a 13-mile no-fly zone inside Syria it had declared in July." ..."

"... By what right does Turkey declare a 13 mile no fly zone inside Syria? This is clearly grounds for believing that the Russian jet was in fact shot down over Syria and not Turkey. ..."

"... Turkey has overplayed its hand and Erdogan's strategy and tactics in respect of Syria are now in tatters. NATO will be scrambling to put the frighteners on Erdogan who is clearly a loose cannon and totally out of his depth. ..."

"... Quite interestingly, yesterday, Russians claimed that in the past two previous days they have made 472 attacks on oil infrastructure and oil-trucks controlled by ISIS, which is obviously the right thing to do if you want to derange their sources of financing - but, apparently, the 'training partners' of ISIS are reacting... ..."

"... Russia was invited into support Assad by Syrias leader whether we or Nato like it or not. Turkey France and US were not. Turkeys Air force will have to watch itself now as I suspect Russia will deploy fighter aircraft to protect there bombers and the Kurds. As for the original question I think Putin may be right and Turks do have a foot in both camps. Nato should be very aware of the consequences of playing the whose to blame game when the stakes are so high. ..."

"... So, Turkey downs a Russian bomber and immediately runs to its daddies ?!?! C'mon! What a joke!! ..."

"... Concerns continued to grow in intelligence circles that the links eclipsed the mantra that "my enemy's enemy is my friend" and could no longer be explained away as an alliance of convenience. Those fears grew in May this year after a US special forces raid in eastern Syria, which killed the Isis official responsible for the oil trade, Abu Sayyaf. A trawl through Sayyaf's compound uncovered hard drives that detailed connections between senior Isis figures and some Turkish officials. Missives were sent to Washington and London warning that the discovery had "urgent policy implications". ..."

"... Payback for the Russians bombing ISIS oil convoys? Would Turkey shoot down a Russian air force jet without the nod from allies? Situation getting very dangerous I would think. ..."

"... "the US could potentially extract a lot out of it " ..."

"... And even if something is extracted in return, at the end of the day, NATO and the US will be defacto protecting the islamists, which is Turkey's goal. You can say NATO and the US are fucked now because they will have to do what they didn't want to do at all. ..."

"... Attacking people parachuting from an aircraft in distress is a war crime under Protocol I in addition to the 1949 Geneva Conventions. ..."

"... From a Russian perspective the opening paragraphs of article speak for themselves. Russian entry into the 'game' meant Turkey became a second category power in a region they have sought to dominate, the strike is a sign of weakness and not strength and whoever sanctioned it (done so quickly you'd wonder if Ankara was aware) is an amateur player because it weakened Turkey and strengthened the Russian hand. ..."

"... Of course Putin is right but he only tells part of the story. The main accomplice of terrorists and other non-existent so called "moderate" head-choppers is the United States, and Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Israel are merely facilitating this policy on behalf of the US and in accordance to their independent regional pursuits, that converge however on the removal of Assad and the use of ISIS as a proxy army to remove Assad. ..."

"... Events like today's become a useful window on an otherwise murky, indecipherable geopolitics. In the fraught aftermath of the Paris attacks, we should do our best to see ISIS for what they are and have always been: the entree to the main course proxy war between Russia and Western allied interests. ..."

"... Today a Russian plane goes down and first of all it's Turkey's fault, but Turkey wouldn't have done that without explicit permission to do so from either NATO or the US, but then a few hours later as it all looks really bad for Turkey (and by association everyone else in the "coalition") it turns out to have been Turkmen, but which ones? There's two factions, one is a "rebel" group backed by the US, the other is a "terrorist" group (aligned with "ISIS") and backed by the US. They are both fighting Assad. ..."

"... Senator John McCain can be thankful the North Vietnamese were not as bad as these Turkmen Turks. "Turkmen militiamen in Syria claimed to have shot the pilots as they descended on parachutes from the stricken Su-24 bomber." What the Turkmen brag about having done is something neither the North Vietnamese nor the actual Nazis would have condoned. ..."

"... Let's assume that this lying ISIS loving terrorist, Erdogan, is speaking the truth. He says Russia has been attacking Syrian Turkoman who are defending their land. One should ask this blood-thirsty ape this question: What then are Kurdish people in Turkey doing? ..."

"... That's the whole problem. The banksters and corporations that run the US have too much to lose in Saudi Arabia and the Persian gulf. And they want that pipeline from the Gulf to the Levant but Syria (with its secular ruler, hated by the jihadists) won't play ball with the banksters. Hence, with American corporations' blessing, Turkey and Arabia loose the Daesh on them . And al-Qeada and al-Nusra and all the other "moderate" rebels supplied with modern weapons by American arms corporations. ..."

"... "Turkish businessmen struck lucrative deals with Isis oil smugglers, adding at least $10m (£6.6m) per week to the terror group's coffers, and replacing the Syrian regime as its main client." ..."

"... Why doesn't The Guardian grow a pair and investigate the role of Turkish President Erdogan in this illegal oil trade, specifically through his son Bilal Erdogan, whose shipping company (jointly owned with two of Erdogan's brothers) BMZ Group has a rapidly expanding fleet of oil tankers... ..."

www.theguardian.com

The relationship hinted at by Russian leader after warplane was shot down is a complex one, and includes links between senior Isis figures and Turkish officials

Wirplit 24 Nov 2015 20:43

Turkey under Erdogan is turning out to be a real problem for the West. Supporting Isis and other jihadist groups and attacking the Kurds. Maybe now the Russians will support the PKK. Tragedy for the liberal Turks that Erdogan won

Phil Atkinson moreblingplease 24 Nov 2015 19:57

The evidence is out there if you want to look for it. Erdogan's son runs a shipping company that transports - guess what? Oil.

Alexander Marne 24 Nov 2015 19:53

It is an obvious attempt of Turkey trying to make the European+American+Christian Civilization wage war against Russia with the NATO war pact argument. NATO at these times is the perfect ingredient needed for a Christian Winter, having Christian Nations disobey the whims of a secular NATO alliance that has everything bus dissolved since the Iron Curtain fell. We all know the radical Muslims and their cousins are our enemy now, not the Soviet WARSAW pact which NATO was created to defend against. NATO members that go to war against Russia would risk internal revolution lead by the Majority Christian Population that has grown evermore dissatisfied of their Frankenstein Secular Ethic governments and sellout leadership.

hfakos Fiddle 24 Nov 2015 19:51

No Russian gas pipeline and, thus transit fees, to Hungary either. Germany shut down SouthStream, only to sign a deal with evil Putin to double the capacity of NorthStream. Who wouldn't love an EU like that? We are all equal, but Germany and Western Europe are more equal than others.

Phil Atkinson -> marph70 24 Nov 2015 19:50

Agreed. NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) is a misnomer, given its current membership (28 countries). NATO was formed by 12 countries in 1949 and today, is a tool for encirclement of Russia.

yianni 24 Nov 2015 19:47

You have to laugh when you hear Erdogan and that puppy he's got for a Prime Minister solemnly saying that their airspace is sacrosanct and that they would never do the same to another sovereign nation. Yet, every week or so Turkish jets violate Greek airspace over the Aegean. And their jets don't stay for 30 seconds either. Personally I wouldn't believe anything that the Turks say about this incident.

somethingbrite -> KevinKeegansYfronts 24 Nov 2015 19:46

I think we can probably ask that chap in his semi in Coventry where ISIS plan to attack next...the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights is it? The man seems to have a hotline to Raqqa and every other ISIS held territory.

That said....the Guardian doesn't appear to have quoted him for a week or so....

Have they been unable to reach him since Paris?

Is he on the run? Hiding out in Belgium maybe?

SystemD 24 Nov 2015 19:40

I listened to Ashdown on Today yesterday. His comments about links between Gulf states and the Tories were extremely interesting and unexpected. The same questions should be asked regarding Turkey. Why has the report about the funding of jihadism in the UK not been published?

Phil Atkinson -> GemmaBlueSkySeas 24 Nov 2015 19:38

Would Turkey have shot down the SU-24 if Turkey wasn't a NATO member? Think on it.

camerashy -> Omniscience 24 Nov 2015 19:31

Yeah right, that's the western propaganda machine for you. They were saying the same thing last year ... Only misguided minds believe such nonsense!

Neutronstar7 -> Adrian Rides 24 Nov 2015 19:31

Bravo. Pumping out endless western propaganda for the moronic. The Americans and NATO are the biggest warmongers in history: http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/.../turkey-has-destroyed.../

I cannot believe it, but I feel ashamed of my own country and all the other western governments and our proxy's involved in this vile conspiracy. Blow us up, we deserve it.

WankSalad 24 Nov 2015 19:30

All of this should just make us more furious about the Paris attacks.

The attackers; ISIS, are quite literally being armed, supported and facilitated by our "friends and allies" Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Meanwhile Turkey directs it's fire at the Kurds - a group of moderate Muslims and secularists who have only ever wanted independent statehood - whom we are supposed to be helping fight ISIS.

Saudi Arabia has also been quite clearly the source of most of the extremist Islamism that has repeatedly attacked our civil societies. They have funded and set up Islamist mosques all throughout Europe and the rest of the world.

Are we really getting good value out of our relationships with these nations?

^Our leaders refuse to say any of this openly. It's infuriating. Sooner or later something has to give.

Omniscience -> James Brown 24 Nov 2015 19:30

How can a dictator, who took over from his father (a dictator) be called a legitimate government ? Even by a Russian...

hfakos -> Omniscience 24 Nov 2015 19:28

Sounds like everyday Western duplicity. Car bombs and suicide bombers are fine as long as they only target Damascus. But when the people the West has nurtured attack Paris, the world ends.

camerashy -> Omniscience 24 Nov 2015 19:27

You're such a feeble minded person! At least Puting didn't sell $hitloads of arms to Saudi Arabia enabling them to support and nurture Isis. Look in the mirror once in a while, will ya ...

camerashy 24 Nov 2015 19:19

There's nothing to worry about here ... Putin is one cool customer, he'll have his revenge when time is right, and it'll be nothing like a Cameroneasque thoughtless, hurried, knee jerk reaction. Turkey on its own wouldn't dare do anything like they've done, they're just being manipulated by NATO warmongers who are desperate to justify their existence.

DrKropotkin 24 Nov 2015 19:17

Erdogan is a bad guy, who receives western political cover due to Turkey's NATO membership. But he has strayed very far from the path of sanity and I think NATO will soon start looking for ways to get rid of him.

According to Seymour Hersch it was Turkey that was behind the Ghouta gas attack (well it certainly wasn't Assad). There was also a plan to attack a Turkish shrine inside Syria to be used as a pretext for a full invasion. The video clip is available on youtube. In the recording you can hear the defence minister and the head of intelligence discussing the plan, agreeing to do it, even though they don't like the idea, while lamenting the fact that everything is politics in modern Turkey. Nobody ever talks about this. Erdogan's response to this was to shut down Youtube for a day.

ISIS fighters move in and out of Turkey with ease, receive medical treatment there and selling their oil at very competitive prices to people close to the Erdogan regime. Because NATO have gone along with Turkey in the "Assad must go" mantra they've been stuck covering up for his antics. But shooting down a Russian jet that clearly wasn't threatening Turkey was extremely reckless - maybe regime change in Ankara may be on the cards.

KevinKeegans -> Yfronts 24 Nov 2015 19:17

"Over the past two years several senior Isis members have told the Guardian that Turkey preferred to stay out of their way and rarely tackled them directly."

So people in the Guardian are in contact with "senior" members of Isis? Was it a meeting over tea and scones? Perhaps you could stop being their mouthpiece and ask them which public area they intend to blow up next. After that you could give the authorities their contact details so that they can solve this issue quickly. That would be most helpful. Of course you might lose a couple of years worth of potential headlines.

moria50 -> Rubear13 24 Nov 2015 19:14

ISIS started back in 2009.Jordan has a Centcom underground training centre, and 2,000 US special Forces came to train them.Gen Dempsey oversaw this training camp.

Jordanian special forces were instructors along with the US.

James Brown 24 Nov 2015 19:10

Four years of providing money, transport, training, air and artillery cover against legitimate Syrian government forces to terrorists and Guardian asks this question? Turkey = #1 supporter of Islamic terrorism. Open your damn eyes.

hfakos -> Omniscience 24 Nov 2015 19:09

Given that ISIS was created with significant Western help, why would Putin do anything about it? He finally acted when the head-choppers got totally out of control and started to threaten Russia too. The downing of the Russian airliner, the several failed terror attacks in France, and the Paris massacre should have opened your eyes.

NATO has an abysmal foreign policy record. In a mere decade they managed to turn Europe into a place where one has to fear going to the Christmas market. Well done, "winners" of the Cold War.

pdutchman -> PMWIPN 24 Nov 2015 19:07

Martin Chulov is certainly not biased in his reporting in favour of Russia or against Turkey. He has reported mostly in favour of the rebels in Syria and only recently realised what the outcome of all this is.

His facts about the ISIS-Turkish connection are not imagination presented against reason. Isis i.e. was free to attack the Kurds inside Turkey and the government did nothing to stop them, even when they knew about them very well.

Once you see what is going on and what the results are, you have to consider the possibility Europe is threatened by fundamentalists, also inside Turkey and Turkish government.

Just read the political program of grand vizier Davutoğlu, or the speeches of Erdoğan on the glorious pas of the Ottoman empire when he visits former territory.

His vision is one of a regional Islamic state run by Turkey, that would be a superpower.

He detests western democracy and 'European' western humanitarian values and has not made a secret of this. He is a convinced islamist and his support for ISIS and Al Nusra has sadly enough been very successful.

elvis99 -> tr1ck5t3r 24 Nov 2015 19:06

I agree. Its all about the oil.
Not only that there is a huge fracking industry at risk. It costs approx. $80 a barrel to produce and it selling approx.$50 at present. They are running at a loss as most finance for these enterprises were secured when it was $120 a barrel. Yellen could not afford to raise interest rates as it would crush a fossil fuel industry within the USA. Get the war machine moving though and watch the price climb and save that profit margin

hfakos -> kohamase 24 Nov 2015 19:01

It's mostly the Western establishment, not the people. Hungary is not the West but we are in the EU and unfortunately NATO as well, and the vast majority of the population supports Russia on this imho. Russia made the mistake of trusting the West under Yeltsin. What you have to understand, and Putin has got it I think, is that Western Europe has a paranoid obsession to bring Russia to its knees. It's been like this for centuries, just think about how many times the civilized West has invaded your country. And old habits die hard. They prefer head-choppers and acid-throwers to having a mutually beneficial civilized relationship with Russia. But you are not alone, Eastern Europe, although formally in the EU, is also looked down upon by the West.

ID9793630 24 Nov 2015 19:01

It's possible Erdogan is rattled at the possibility that the Russians might be about to pull off a secretive realignment of external participants against ISIS - the possibility of unstated coordination between American, Russian and French armed actions in the air and on the ground, with various local allies - and this incident shooting down the jet, created for the cameras, is also intended to overturn that potential applecart.

underbussen -> DenisOgur 24 Nov 2015 19:00

Yeah, so what then, countries violate others airspace all the time - we don't see them downing each others aircraft do we? Maybe sometimes it happens, this is action by Turkey is outrageous, and very, very aggressive. Turkey will pay, one way or the other, lets see if that gas price goes up and now might they fare should they loose it?

Angelis Dania 24 Nov 2015 18:55

"The influx has offered fertile ground to allies of Assad who, well before a Turkish jet shot down a Russian fighter on Tuesday, had enabled, or even supported Isis. Vladimir Putin's reference to Turkey as "accomplices of terrorists" is likely to resonate even among some of Ankara's backers."

Assad's allies enabled and supported ISIS? Such an embarrassing thing to say.

"Assad, who had, until his brutal response to pro-democracy demonstrations in 2011, been a friend of the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. "After that he became an enemy," said one western official. "Erdoğan had tried to mentor Assad. But after the crackdown [on demonstrations] he felt insulted by him. And we are where we are today."

Armed infiltrators in the protest groups fired first at police according to numerous eyewitnesses. How poor a journalist do you have to be to continue to write articles on the basis of widely debunked allegations? Lol, "Erdoğan tried to mentor President Bashar Al-Assad". What on Earth would motivate you to even quote that? Like an inferiority-complex ridden backwards terrorist supporter like Erdoğan can approach the sagacity and popularity of Dr. Bashar Al-Assad.

MelRoy coolGran 24 Nov 2015 18:55

He did use his spy power to find out the source of Isis funding and was told the funding was coming from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey.

hfakos Gaudd80 24 Nov 2015 18:53

Because we, our governments that is, are not serious about tackling Islamist extremism. Scoring points against Russia is still the main motivation of the West. This strategy had a low cost for the West in 1980s far-away Afghanistan. But Syria is in our neighborhood and the world has become much more open. The yanks can still play this nasty game without repercussions, because they are an island protected by two oceans. But it's a mystery to me why Europeans are stupid enough to favor the nearby chaos of the head-choppers to secular regimes. ME oil and gas could be replaced to a large extent by Russia, but this again would go against the paranoid Western desire to see that crumble. So you see France, the UK, and the US bombing ISIS with one hand and giving it money through Saudi and Qatar with the other. It's insanity.

NotWithoutMyMonkey 24 Nov 2015 18:45

This is all you need to know:

Vice President Joe Biden stated that US key allies in the Middle East were behind nurturing ISIS

MelRoy 24 Nov 2015 18:43

Yes, I'm afraid he's right.

The problem is, nobody else is able to say it, because the Obama and Cameron administrations are up to their necks in it. They knew that Turkey was responsible for the gas attacks on civilians in Syria. They know (who doesn't?) that the Turks are killing the people who are fighting terrorists inside Syria. They know that the money, the weapons and the foreign fighters are being funnelled into Syria through Turkey, with the Turkish government's not just knowledge, but cooperation and even facilitation.

They can't say it, because over and over again they have bald-faced lied to the public. They can't say that the "good guys" in the fight against Isil are not just the Kurds, but the Iranians, Hezbollah, Assad and the Russians - our supposed "enemies", and the "bad guys" are the ones we are sending all the money and munitions to - our supposed "allies".

tr1ck5t3r northsylvania 24 Nov 2015 18:41

Oil.

Nothing more, nothing less.

Without oil, the Western economies would crash, we are so dependent on it, but the US military are the biggest dependents.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_usage_of_the_United_States_military
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174810/

the Pentagon might consume as much as 340,000 barrels (14 million gallons) every day. This is greater than the total national consumption of Sweden or Switzerland.

Take away the oil and you will see the US military industrial complex die on its knees.

salfraser 24 Nov 2015 18:40

It would be as well to understand the ultimate motives of the current day Saladin. Look what was said in May this year.
27th. May 2015 : President Erdogan And The Prime Minister Of The Turkey Dovotogolu Just Made This Declaration To The Entire Islamic World:
'We Will Gather Together Kurds And Arabs, And All Of The Muslim World, And Invade Jerusalem, And Create A One World Islamic Empire' By Allah's will, Jerusalem belongs to the Kurds, the Turks, the Arabs, and to all Muslims. And as our forefathers fought side by side at Gallipoli, and just as our forefathers went together to liberate Jerusalem with Saladin, we will march together on the same path [to liberate Jerusalem]."

Erdogan and Dovutoglu at their speech in which they spoke of the revival of the Ottoman Empire and the conquest of Jerusalem The amazing speeches by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu were given at the inauguration ceremony at the country's 55th airport in Yuksekova district of southeastern border province of Hakkari, in which they made an entire declaration to the Islamic world, on their desire to conquer Jerusalem and form a universal Islamic empire.

Looks like our American friends are about to create yet another conflict of interest!

Rubear13 Omniscience 24 Nov 2015 18:39

ISIS was created in 2013-2014 and proclaimed itself chalifate after taking much territory in 2014. During this year russian had a lot of problems with crisis, civil war and ~2-3 millions of refugeers from Ukraine. And he did much. Both in terms of weapons and policy.
By the way, Assad was actually winning war during 2012-2013 before creation of ISIS in Iraq.

RudolphS 24 Nov 2015 18:37

So the jet flew allegedly for 17 seconds in Turkish airspace. As Channel 4 News' international editor Lindsey Hilsum accurately asked today 'How come a Turkish TV crew was in the right place, filming in the right direction as a Russian plane was shot down? Lucky? Or tipped off?'

R. Ben Madison -> leonzos 24 Nov 2015 18:35

I suspect that Erdoğan switched sides when the West began to look like it was going to impose 'regime change' on Syria and wanted to be on the winning side. It took a herculean, bipartisan effort here in the US to keep Obama from obtaining Congressional support for a war on Syria. At the time, I (and many others) condemned the normally warmongering Republicans for tying the president's hands purely out of hypocritical spite, but the Democrats were against it too and the whole effort collapsed.

Having taken an early lead in the "get rid of Assad" race, Erdoğan seems to have had the rug pulled out from under him. Sorry for the mixed metaphor.

johnmichaelmcdermott -> BigNowitzki 24 Nov 2015 18:33

How about evidence such as an article from the notorious 'troofer' site, The Jerusalem Post, quoting that other infamous conspiracy site, The Wall Street Journal?

http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Report-Israel-treating-al-Qaida-fighters-wounded-in-Syria-civil-war-393862

Robert Bowen -> hfakos 24 Nov 2015 18:31

Gladio B.
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/whos-afraid-of-sibel-edmonds/

Celtiberico 24 Nov 2015 18:27

"Erdoğan had tried to mentor Assad. But after the crackdown [on demonstrations] he felt insulted by him. And we are where we are today."

Believing that Erdogan, whose country's human rights record is pretty unenviable (in particular with regard to journalists), fell out with Assad because he was appalled by the latter's repression is like believing that Mussolini's decision to aid Franco in the Spanish Civil War was largely motivated by his horror at the bad behaviour of Spanish Anarchists and Communists.

tr1ck5t3r 24 Nov 2015 18:25

Turkey is a conduit, the Turkish presidents son is buying the oil from ISIS, just like US Vice President Joe Bidens son joined the board of Ukraines largest Gas producer after Nato expanded into the Ukraine.

Was the downing of the jet by Turkey a tit for tat exercise as Russia destroyed some of the hundreds of lorry oil tankers parked up in ISIS territory heading for Turkey 6 days ago?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6oHbrF8ADs

Theres a pattern here.

Likewise Russia have released their version of events regarding the shot down jets route, claiming it didnt enter Turkish airspace.

Whats interesting is this Russian data was released at 8pm UK time, and yet the British press are still running with the rhetoric from this morning, where at 4am UK time a Russia jet was shot down according to Reuters..

So it would seem the UK press are sitting on this latest inconvenient news, perhaps trying to come up with a way to spin it or waiting for the UK Govt to advise how to spin it if its even to be mentioned so the Govt looks innocent in the eyes of the electorate.

Whilst the availability of data from Turkey was very quickly made available, perhaps it was fabricated and released too quickly in order to maintain momentum with todays news agenda?

All the while GCHQ and NSA sock puppets & other Nato countries flood various media outlets comments sections to drown out critical analysis.

I wonder if I'll be approached by more US and UK military personal "unofficially" whilst out walking the dog in Thetford forest, and be spoken to?

Its interesting watching the news from other countries, certainly watching Russia Today and their spin is interesting.

I can only conclude there will be another massive financial crisis coming for one or more countries, so in order to divert the masses a war is needed, as wars always boost economies.

Hyperion6 -> BigNowitzki 24 Nov 2015 18:24

Sensible people would realise that only one of ISIS and Assad can be brought to the negotiating table. Sensible people would realise that Turkey is playing the same duplicitous game that Pakistan played, namely supporting the most despicable fundamentalists while being an 'ally' of the West.

Frodo baggins -> Gaudd80 24 Nov 2015 18:24

Al Qaeda was created and used by the usa to do terror on Russia. No reason tho think things have changed, when clearly they have not. Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, all have fallen....more to come. There is no "wondering" at all about the orogon an dpurpose of the ISIS when they admit they are al qaeda re packaged ...When the US admits al qaeda has melded into the ISIS.

Terrorists in the middle east are a western supported geo-political tool to allow us to bomb, invade, destabilizen and balkanize soverign nations who refuse globalist ideology and orders.

Jan Burton 24 Nov 2015 18:23

Cut the bullshit.

Turkey is little more than an ISIS and al Qaeda support base, and now they're even providing an Air Force.

Get these scumbags out of NATO now

kohamase 24 Nov 2015 18:19

I don't understand you western guys. Am Russian and not a big fun of Putin but in this situation Russia fights terrorists , same people who organized massacre in Paris . Why , why shoot them down??? What is the meaning of this ? We can disagree on many questions but we should agree on One : ISIS must GO !!! If you don't want to do it then at list don't stand on our way cleaning up the mess you've created!!!

Tiberius2 24 Nov 2015 18:17

Crystal clear, the Turks are profiteering from stolen oil, the whole Turkish establishment is involved on this corrupted trade namely : border guards, police and the military, all of them being involved, plus business men with political connections .

ISIS get also weapons and training, Jihadist from the world over, gets red carpet treatment and supply with passports.

The Jihadist can travel unmolested, to and from Syria via Turkey in order to carry out atrocities like Paris and Tunisia.

The West looks the other way to this situation and try to ignore it ,until it gets hit in the hearth, like Paris.

fantas1sta -> BigNowitzki 24 Nov 2015 18:17

Oh, I do think Russia was wrong to send troops into Crimea, but I also think the west was wrong to back the coup against Ukraine's democratically elected government. NATO gambled that they could interfere in Ukraine and lost, now they know that Putin is difficult to intimidate and that Russia defends its sphere of influence like the US defends its own. All powers are hypocrites, such is the nature of their global interests, but Turkey are both hypocrites and cowards, shooting down a plane and then hiding their heads under Uncle Sam's sweater.

grish2 Tommy Thrillbigger 24 Nov 2015 18:16

Majority of people in Europe support the Russians. The governments are making excuses for the turks. And the turks are with the head choppers.

theoldmanfromusa -> ID9309755 24 Nov 2015 18:15

You have a strange opinion of the situation. The major problem is that the ruling classes (politicians, imams, etc.) use the most inflammatory rhetoric to stir up the population (most of it) that is not intellectual and/or clever. These intellectual/clever types can then make obscene profits from their rabble rousing.

Apollonian 24 Nov 2015 18:12

All a bit too convenient with the film crew at the ready. Clearly Erdogan is looking to further his agenda and set his sights on expanding Turkey's borders and it looks as though he's using NATO's protection to do it.

It's ironic that NATO affords Turkey so much protection given that Turkey funds ISIS, it trades with them, it allows IS fighters free travel across Turkish borders and it also fights IS enemies for them - the Kurds. Outside of the Gulf, Turkey is the jihadist's biggest ally.

Gaudd80 24 Nov 2015 18:11

If we are really serious about tackling Islamic extremists, then why is it that we are allied those states directly aiding them? Cameron is demanding the right to bomb Syria, while at the same time he's grovelling to the Saudis, crawling to the Gulf States and defending Erdogan. Hammond nearly bust a blood vessel when Skinner said what everyone knows. The whole thing is an utter sham, you have to wonder if ISIS and the other extremist groups aren't actually hugely convenient for some.

ElDanielfire -> Canuckistan 24 Nov 2015 18:05

Yes the Saudi's created ISIS. but the west helped build them up thinking they were something else because the west kept their fingers in their ears because they had a gard -on for yet anotehr regime change in the middle east, despite none of the previous ones (Afghan, Iraq, Libya) having worked and become hell for the citixens of those countries. Also the west always let Saudi and Qutar get awya with anything, even if they fund groups who attack western citizens. It's tragic.

hfakos 24 Nov 2015 18:04

Well, at least we have seen that those K-36 ejection seats do work; they have reportedly never failed. Of course Turkey, and Western Europe for that matter, has been playing a double game. Just like in Afghanistan in the 1980s, they prefer the acid-throwers and head-choppers to a Russian-backed secular regime.

Even the Western MSM has openly reported about and from the staging areas in Turkey, where the jihadists gather before entering Syria. The US-lead "coalition" is now boasting about bombing ISIL oil convoys, but where has it been for the past few years? Everybody with a single functioning grey cell knows that Turkey is involved in the ISIS oil smuggling business and allowing the jihadist to train on its territory.

But Western Europe is complicit too. With all the spying reported by Snowden how is it impossible to prevent thousands of European citizens from traveling to Turkey and onward to Syria and getting radicalized? It is obvious that we have turned a blind eye to the jihadi tourism. Funny that only after the Paris attacks did Hollande and co. start to take this constant flow of Europeans into Syria seriously.

NATO says, two minutes after this incident, that Turkey is right and its airspace has been violated. But all powerful NATO countries cannot track the returning jihadists and the mastermind of the Paris attacks has just been reported to have mingled with Paris policemen after the Bataclan massacre. And one guy is still on the run. The first chickens have come home to roost and there will be more to follow. The West has been playing with fire and will get burned. This is a much more global world with open borders than what we had in the 1980s, when NATO was supporting the Bin Ladens and Gulbudding Hekmatyars in Afghanistan. These jihadists will cause more havoc in Europe for certain. And Russia is more right again than NATO, when it comes to jihadists in Syria.

ID9309755 24 Nov 2015 18:04

Turkey's territorial expansionist ambitions have backfired, just as the ambitions of their Islamism has. The emperor has no clothes and yet it's difficult to deal with this maniac Erdog effendy who is pushing Turkey towards chaos internally and internationally... A country which has intellectuals and clever people has fallen under the power of a group of thugs, the story of the region.

i_pray thinkorswim 24 Nov 2015 18:03

One actually feels sorry for Putin. He is bound by a Treaty he signed along time ago with Assad. He is doing what he is obliged to do under that Treaty and at
the same time he is helping to destroy ISIS.

Then he is attacked up by Turkey a member of NATO, who are supposedly also committed to destroying ISIS .

If I were Putin, I would just walk away and leave the West to sort the mess out . I am sure that Russia feels that it has already lost too many lives.

Wehadonebutitbroke -> Roland Paterson-Jones 24 Nov 2015 18:00

Erm, yes. The Turkmen who Turkey is protecting have been attacking Kurds. The Turks have been bombing the Kurds, who are fighting ISIS.

The Turks have been buying ISIS' oil and giving other funding. Weapons funded by Gulf States have almost certainly been crossing the Turkish border for ISIS. It is suspected the Turkey has been providing a safe haven for ISIS fighters. Tens of thousands have crossed Turkeys borders to join rebel groups, the chances that some of them have not joined ISIS is nil.

Many of the 'moderate' rebels are Al Qaeda by another name or Al Qaeda affiliates. The Turkmen are Al Qaeda affiliates. The line between Al Qaeda and ISIS in Syria is vague and has been crossed both ways on numerous occasions.

Lest anyone forget, Al Qaeda are themselves have orchestrated huge scale terrorist attacks. But becausing they are fighting Assad in Syria, who is hated by the Gulf States, Turkey and Israel, unquestioned or criticised almost regardless what they do by the West allies of the West, apparently Al Qaeda are now fine.

anewdawn 24 Nov 2015 18:00

I wonder if the leaders of NATO were involved in anyway at all???

And - does this lend weight to those who have shown that ISIS is a result of the Libyan, Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and that they are mercenaries who have formed an insurgency within Syria for a regime change? A war crime, definitely against international law.

Roland Paterson-Jones 24 Nov 2015 17:56

Dudes, Turkey is losing some valuable oil supply due to Russia's 'indiscriminate' bombing of ISIS oil-field territory.

Turkey has some real-politik collateral in the form of 'refugees' to mainland Europe. So Turkey, politically, is in a strong position - EU is shoving money towards them.

Will NATO stand behind Turkey's real-politik?

twosocks 24 Nov 2015 17:54

Just watched the videos and listened to the turkish warnings. The SU24 appears to have been heading south as requested by the turks and in syria when it was hit. It also looks like the turks entered Syrian airspace before they fired on the Russians - just like the 1000+ times they have entered greek airspace in the last year, including one time with 8 planes at the same time.

In the warnings at no point do the turks actually say the russians are in turkish airspace, just that they are heading towards it; they also do not threaten to fire upon the Russians like the RAF do over here when they issue a warning. Normally the defending plane would come alongside the transgressor to escort them out the airspace, here they just just shoot at the russians without issuing a warning. It also appears that there just so happened to be a tv crew there perfectly poised to film it - what a coincidence. There is no way we are getting dragged into a war over this.

Adrian Rides 24 Nov 2015 17:54

The whole rotten scam is coming undone. No one believes the mainstream media any more. I skip the articles and go straight to the comments. That's where you find out what's really going on. Thank you for all the insightful comments. The truth will set us free

rumelian -> kmw2402 24 Nov 2015 17:49

YES, and the lesson for the West should be: Please stop supporting Erdogan and his fellow islamists. Watching events for a decade and praising the relentless efforts of a single party and it's (now former) leader to suppress secular Turks and eroding the pillars of the secular Turkish Republic, in the name of stability in the region, you actually create much instability and threat, both for the region, and for Europe. Squeeze down these so called "moderate" islamists, and with real pro-European Turks taking lead again, you will not have unexpected and complicated acts from Turkey .

thorella -> BigNowitzki 24 Nov 2015 17:48

'It is in West's interest that ISIS would spill into Russia one day and do the dirty job there for US and its associates.'

Totally logical

jaybee2 24 Nov 2015 17:46

Well said Pres Putin and hats off to Denis Skinner in parliament!

Turkey is a disgrace and should be booted out of NATO.

It bombs the Kurds fighting lsis barbarians, buys oil from lsis, protects anti Assad terrorists from the Syrian army, helps finance various 'moderate' terrorists as to its shame does this Tory government!

As the 'heir to Blair' Cameron is drooling at the thought of joining in on the bloodlust!

Thank you Mr Skinner, and Hammond, what a silly man!

MatthewH1 24 Nov 2015 17:46

Is Vladimir Putin right to label Turkey 'accomplices of terrorists'?

Yes.

Oh, and the "rebels" shooting the pilots as they made their descent is a war crime.

quaidesbrumes 24 Nov 2015 17:43

Guardian reports:

"Turkey said one of its US-made F-16 fighters fired on the Russian plane when it entered Turkish airspace after having been warned on its approach to the Turkish border through a 13-mile no-fly zone inside Syria it had declared in July."

By what right does Turkey declare a 13 mile no fly zone inside Syria? This is clearly grounds for believing that the Russian jet was in fact shot down over Syria and not Turkey.

Turkey has overplayed its hand and Erdogan's strategy and tactics in respect of Syria are now in tatters. NATO will be scrambling to put the frighteners on Erdogan who is clearly a loose cannon and totally out of his depth.

lisbon_calling 24 Nov 2015 17:43

The answer to the question in the title is absolutely clear after reading the very informative text.

Quite interestingly, yesterday, Russians claimed that in the past two previous days they have made 472 attacks on oil infrastructure and oil-trucks controlled by ISIS, which is obviously the right thing to do if you want to derange their sources of financing - but, apparently, the 'training partners' of ISIS are reacting...

MrMeinung DavidJayB 24 Nov 2015 17:38

Turkish fighters are violating Greek airspace habitually since decades. And not for mere seconds. The Greeks intercept them but do not shoot them down. The Greeks have brought all kinds of electronic documentation to both NATO and EU - no result.

It is ironic that Turkey of all nations is raising such arguments.

This action is inexcusable and the barbarity that followed (by all information) - the execution of the pilot/pilots - by Turkish friendly fighters, even more so.

LordJimbo -> CommieWealth 24 Nov 2015 17:38

Countries are operating on the basis of their national interests, Assad and Kurds represent threats to Turkey, Russia wants Assad to remain and sees IS and rebel groups (some of whom are reportedly backed by Turkey) as threats, so we see a classic clash of national interests in an already complicated region of the world, topped off by a brutal civil war that has cost the lives of over 200,000 and seen one of the worst humanitarian crises since WWII. The very definition of a perfect political and military storm. I suspect the Russian position will eventually win out in Syria especially now that Hollande wants IS targeted by a 'grand coalition'. For Turkey the major headache has to be the Kurds who will get arms, training and are winning huge amounts of territory.

powercat123 24 Nov 2015 17:36

Russia was invited into support Assad by Syrias leader whether we or Nato like it or not. Turkey France and US were not. Turkeys Air force will have to watch itself now as I suspect Russia will deploy fighter aircraft to protect there bombers and the Kurds. As for the original question I think Putin may be right and Turks do have a foot in both camps. Nato should be very aware of the consequences of playing the whose to blame game when the stakes are so high.

ManxApe 24 Nov 2015 17:36

Which Turkish businessmen did they strike deals with? Specifically which Turkish businessman's shipping company had their oil tankers bombed the other day by Russia? Is this businessman actually a very close relative of Erdoğan? A clue perhaps?Allegedly the shipping company is BMZ.

196thInfantry -> Artur Conka 24 Nov 2015 17:35

The Russian plane was never in Turkish airspace. ATC systems have recorders that record voice communications, radar tracks and controller actions all synchronized. You can be sure that the Turks will not release the raw recorded data.

aLLaguz 24 Nov 2015 17:32

So, Turkey downs a Russian bomber and immediately runs to its daddies ?!?! C'mon! What a joke!!
This is the long awaited war for the Syria-Turkey border, a border that must be closed. Whether for stop jihadists joining ISIS or to stop oil sales.

No fly-zone in northern Syria ?! The only affected parties with this is Assad allies and it is the same reason.... the Syria-Turkey border. For Assad, It is a key region, Kurds must be stopped to reach the Mediterranean sea, the border must be closed to stop jihadists or rebels to join the fight, to stop the oil sales of ISIS, etc, etc, etc.
Russia will fight for the control of the border whether NATO like it or not. Once it is Russian, Kurds will be pushed back.

Cecile_Trib -> penguinbird 24 Nov 2015 17:32

Turkey must learn to stop invading Greece airspace. Or you think it's OK for them as a member of NATO to do that? Or will you say it's OK for Greece to down a couple of Turkish jets?

"In the first month of 2014 alone, Turkish aircraft allegedly violated Greek airspace 1,017 times, Gurcan reports."

http://greece.greekreporter.com/2015/07/17/turkish-fighter-jets-violate-greek-airspace-again/

vivazapata38 -> penguinbird 24 Nov 2015 17:31

Ha ha, your post is bordering on...no is, sheer arrogance and complete ignorance.The Russian planes are defined as entering "an area of our interest".Which is really vague and is really international airspace.Both the US and UK do the same but more often.Moreover Russia is being surrounded by NATO firepower,missile systems and US paid for coups!

NezPerce 24 Nov 2015 17:31

Is Vladimir Putin right to label Turkey 'accomplices of terrorists'? Yes

Turkey are directly linked to Al Qaeda as is Saudi Arabia yet they are our allies in the never ending war against terrorism, a war it seems we forgot about when the terrorists became repackaged as freedom fighters. Many of us have been warning that this would inevitably lead us to become victims of the Jihadists but Cameron would not listen, he has a mania to get rid of Assad and has been prepared to get into bed with some of the nastiest people in the world. A New take on the Nasty party.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/11697764/Isil-reenters-key-Syria-border-town-of-Kobane-live.html

Turkey 'let Isil cross border to attack Kobane': as it happened

Today's early morning, a group of five cars, loaded with 30-35 of Isil elements, wearing the clothes and raising the flag of the FSA [Free Syrian Army rebels] has undertaken a suicide attack.

The nationalist Southern Front, which includes US-trained fighters, has confirmed that it is taking part in the fight for Daraa, alongside the powerful Islamist groups Ahrar al-Sham and the Al Qaida-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra.

BigNowitzki -> BeatonTheDonis 24 Nov 2015 17:29

Turkish government giving military support to ethnic Turks in a neighbouring country = good.

Russian government giving military support to ethnic Russians in a neighbouring country = bad.

Good point. I imagine the Putinbots will try and rationalise it away via cognitive dissonance, or some other bogus reason. As I said, Russia's position would be much stronger had they not invaded and occupied part of Ukraine. They were warned....

MaxBoson 24 Nov 2015 17:26

Thanks to the author for pointing out the role Turkey has played in the rise of ISIS, and its instrumentalization of the conflict in Syria for its own ends. Taking this, and Turkey's support for the Turkmen rebels-or terrorists, or freedom fighters, depending on which alliance one is supporting-into account, it is pretty obvious that the main reason why Turkey shot down the Russian planes was that they were bombing Turkmen targets in what Turkey has the cheek to call a no-fly zone, not because their wings were in its airspace for a few milliseconds.

deathbydemocracy 24 Nov 2015 17:23

Is Vladimir Putin right to label Turkey 'accomplices of terrorists'?

Answer below.

Concerns continued to grow in intelligence circles that the links eclipsed the mantra that "my enemy's enemy is my friend" and could no longer be explained away as an alliance of convenience. Those fears grew in May this year after a US special forces raid in eastern Syria, which killed the Isis official responsible for the oil trade, Abu Sayyaf.

A trawl through Sayyaf's compound uncovered hard drives that detailed connections between senior Isis figures and some Turkish officials. Missives were sent to Washington and London warning that the discovery had "urgent policy implications".

That would be a 'Yes'.

Of course Turkey has a right to defend it's borders. In this case though, their borders were not under attack. The Russian plane strayed into Turkish air space for just a few seconds, and it was clearly not part of an attack force against Turkey. The correct move would have been to complain about the Russians, not shoot them down.

robitsme -> BillyBitter 24 Nov 2015 17:23

Most states would show some restraint under the tinderbox circumstances. Erdogan is either completely insane, or he is playing a game, he as an agenda to provoke Russia in some way

rumelian -> JaneThomas 24 Nov 2015 17:21

You are right. Erdogan with his "conservative" comerades is rapidly and relentlessly ruining the the pillars of the secular Turkey for more than a decade, and for much of this time he was actively aided by the Western powers, frequently praized and portrayed as a "moderate" islamist and a reliable partner. The more power he gained, the more he showed his real nature.

Dreaming of becoming a "leader" of the muslim world (in the Middle East), countless times he showed his sympathy towards the fellow "islamists" in the whole region. USA and Western European leaders, still assume that Erdogan is better option than anyone else in Turkey, providing stability and a "buffer zone" to Europe, they ignore the fact, that Turkey was indeed a reliable partner for decades, when ruled by secular governments ,backed by a secular army, but now that's not the case. Western governments now don't know how to deal with it. When you look at the photos of the current Turkish ministers, and their wives (almost all are headscarved) you realize that they had nothing in common with millions of Turkish people who embraced Western lifestyle and customs. Ataturk has created a secular nation, suppressed these islamists almost a century ago for good, knowing their true nature, but now Turkey needs a new Ataturk-style leader to eradicate this pestilence. Until then, Turkey will not be a stable and reliable partner in the Middlle East.

Darook523 24 Nov 2015 17:20

Payback for the Russians bombing ISIS oil convoys? Would Turkey shoot down a Russian air force jet without the nod from allies? Situation getting very dangerous I would think.

vr13vr -> WarlockScott 24 Nov 2015 17:19

"the US could potentially extract a lot out of it "

It could but at the end of the day, can't and won't. The US is not going to split NATO so it will have to offer its support for Turkey. Nor can Europeans do much as they have this "refugees" problem to which Turkey hold the key. And even if something is extracted in return, at the end of the day, NATO and the US will be defacto protecting the islamists, which is Turkey's goal. You can say NATO and the US are fucked now because they will have to do what they didn't want to do at all.

PaniscusTroglodytes -> MrConservative2015 24 Nov 2015 17:18

NATO has had no legitimate purpose for 25 years now. Will this finally give the nudge to wind it up? One can but hope.

Yarkob -> Gglloowwiinngg 24 Nov 2015 17:17

The first reports said it was a Turkish F-16 with an AA missile. Some reports are still saying that. Damage limitation or diversion by Erdogan? The 10th Brigade Turkmen that Debka said carried out the attack are aligned with the US. That conveniently shifts the blame from Turkey back to the US by proxy. Back stabbing going on. Julius Ceasar shit going down I reckon

vgnych 24 Nov 2015 17:10

It is in West's interest that ISIS would spill into Russia one day and do the dirty job there for US and its associates. Syria and Asad has been just a dry run of the concept.

Putin must be seeing it very clear at this point.

Yarkob Gglloowwiinngg 24 Nov 2015 17:07

Attacking people parachuting from an aircraft in distress is a war crime under Protocol I in addition to the 1949 Geneva Conventions.

LordJimbo 24 Nov 2015 17:06

From a Russian perspective the opening paragraphs of article speak for themselves. Russian entry into the 'game' meant Turkey became a second category power in a region they have sought to dominate, the strike is a sign of weakness and not strength and whoever sanctioned it (done so quickly you'd wonder if Ankara was aware) is an amateur player because it weakened Turkey and strengthened the Russian hand.

Gideon Mayre 24 Nov 2015 17:05

Of course Putin is right but he only tells part of the story. The main accomplice of terrorists and other non-existent so called "moderate" head-choppers is the United States, and Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Israel are merely facilitating this policy on behalf of the US and in accordance to their independent regional pursuits, that converge however on the removal of Assad and the use of ISIS as a proxy army to remove Assad.

Michael Cameron 24 Nov 2015 17:05

Events like today's become a useful window on an otherwise murky, indecipherable geopolitics. In the fraught aftermath of the Paris attacks, we should do our best to see ISIS for what they are and have always been: the entree to the main course proxy war between Russia and Western allied interests.

The idea they're an imminent threat and immediate concern of Cameron and co suddenly hoves into view as hogwash on stilts. Their grandstanding over bombing ISIS while at once supporting their biggest enabler (Can anyone doubt Turkey's laissez-faire stance?) makes sense as an admission of complete powerlessness to resolve an issue above his pay grade i.e. taking on Putin. The extent to which all of these actors are clueless is terrifying. Foreign policy operations as fitful and faltering as anything this side of the Christmas board game.

fantas1sta 24 Nov 2015 17:04

Turkey has been looking for reasons to invade Syria for a long time:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/28/world/europe/high-level-leaks-rattle-turkey-officials.html?_r=0

Artur Conka 24 Nov 2015 17:03

A quote from Erdoğan about todays events.

"The reason why worse incidents have not taken place in the past regarding Syria is the cool-headedness of Turkey," Erdoğan said. "Nobody should doubt that we made our best efforts to avoid this latest incident. But everyone should respect the right of Turkey to defend its borders."

The arrogance of this man is beyond belief, as Al Jazeera reported that the plane, believed to be a Russian-made Sukhoi Su-24, crashed in Syrian territory in Latakia's Yamadi village and NOT in Turkish Airspace. What I love about this statement is the "cool-headedness of Turkey".

What about the headless act of supporting ISIS, and what about the fact that Turkey has some of the worst crackdown of journalist and freedom of speech of any country. Far worse then China.

I truly don't understand how Nato and Turkey's allies support its actions, especially the US. Could someone please explain.

WarlockScott 24 Nov 2015 17:03

Turkey is kinda fucked now, the US could potentially extract a lot out of it in return for 'protection'... For instance stop murdering Kurds or cut off all ISIS links, hell maybe even both. There's no way Erdoğan can play Putin as the counterbalance card now.

arkob 24 Nov 2015 17:02

Methinks the wheels are falling off the Syrian project and there is a scramble for the door and people are getting stabbed in the back all over the shop.

Look at the leaks over the last few weeks implicating the US DoD, Turkey, France and soon the UK, now Obama is telling us his intel assessments were "tainted" *cough*

Today a Russian plane goes down and first of all it's Turkey's fault, but Turkey wouldn't have done that without explicit permission to do so from either NATO or the US, but then a few hours later as it all looks really bad for Turkey (and by association everyone else in the "coalition") it turns out to have been Turkmen, but which ones? There's two factions, one is a "rebel" group backed by the US, the other is a "terrorist" group (aligned with "ISIS") and backed by the US. They are both fighting Assad.

More to come in the next few days, I reckon.

Branislav Stosic 24 Nov 2015 17:01

Cards can definitely be open to see :who wisely silent is on the terrorists side( read USA) and who is really against. There wont be some of the current uncertainties and media acting in this struggle. I hope that at least the European countries together wake up their unhealthy slumber after the terrorist actions in the neighborhood and together, not only in words ,start to put out the source of the fire and of terrorism in which some cunning players constantly topping oil on the fire.

madtoothbrush -> QueenElizabeth 24 Nov 2015 17:00

It's a well known fact that Turkey purchases oil from ISIS occupied territory. Not to mention they bomb Kurds that are fighting ISIS.

Vizier 24 Nov 2015 16:56

Perhaps Russia would like to provide air cover to the Kurds who are under murderous assault by Turkey in their own country. Carving about 20% off Turkey would be a good start.

Gglloowwiinngg 24 Nov 2015 16:55

Senator John McCain can be thankful the North Vietnamese were not as bad as these Turkmen Turks. "Turkmen militiamen in Syria claimed to have shot the pilots as they descended on parachutes from the stricken Su-24 bomber." What the Turkmen brag about having done is something neither the North Vietnamese nor the actual Nazis would have condoned.

NezPerce 24 Nov 2015 16:55

By then, Isis had become a dominant presence in parts of north and east Syria.

This is the problem, Turkey is in a struggle with Iran and the Kurds. Assad is seen as the enemy because he is closer to Iran.

It should be remembered that the Turks see the Kurds as biggest the threat and ISIS as an ally and that the U.S. not Russia has been arming the Kurds. It looks as if the Turks also want to send a message to the US and Europe, a message via air to air missile.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/10/world/europe/despite-crackdown-path-to-join-isis-often-winds-through-porous-turkish-border.html?_r=0

The issue has highlighted the widening gulf between Turkey and its Western allies, who have frequently questioned why Turkey, a NATO member with a large military and well-regarded intelligence service, is not doing more to address the jihadist threat.
In recent testimony in Washington before Congress, James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, was asked if he was optimistic that Turkey would do more in the fight against the Islamic State.

"No, I'm not," Mr. Clapper said in an unusually blunt public criticism. "I think Turkey has other priorities and other interests."

Georwell -> musterfritz 24 Nov 2015 16:54

nop, just an pair of fighters patrolling the zone 24/7 , since the radars told them the russians daily pattern on bombing the terrorists, AND an green-card to kill a russian plane on first occasion, even if that mind to (again) enter on syrian air space, for the matter. Fact is, the russian pilots do not believe the turks will really open fire - now they know - in the hard way; Was that an planed ambush ? I bet was.

Was a war crime to execute on mid-air the pilots descending on parachute ? Yes it was. Was a war crime to assault the body of the dead pilot ? (are several pictures on the net showing the pilot body stripped and pieces of flesh missing) - yes, was another war crime. All on the line of liver-eaters and "moderate" terrorists.

Maybe when those animals will target another EU capital the peoples will realize who its the true enemy here. For (to many..) bigots here the tragedy on Paris was not enough to bring them the the real picture.

Aneel Amdani -> musterfritz 24 Nov 2015 16:50

Russia did coordinate with other coalition members of US so I suppose Turkey should have been aware of this. F-16 should have bene in air and giving 10 warnings is utter nonsense. Russia has said no warning was given and their plane was in Syria territory. Turkey has a rule of engagement that their territory and threat are well in 5 km of Syria itself. So they take it as a threat. Turkey has gone nuts. they have first increased terrorism and now officially become the Air Force of SIIS. or more, they should have shown a response to Russians for busting more than 1000 oil tnakers that supply cheap oil to Turkey.

rumelian -> jonsid 24 Nov 2015 16:49

Surely, Russia will respond to that incident. I supposed it was not at all expected by Russians, and they will figure out a strategy on what kind of response it will be. I think too, that consequences for Turkey could be serious . But maybe it is a destiny for a country where almost half of the population votes for the corrupt, backward islamists, and their megalomaniac leader.

copyniated 24 Nov 2015 16:48

Let's assume that this lying ISIS loving terrorist, Erdogan, is speaking the truth. He says Russia has been attacking Syrian Turkoman who are defending their land.
One should ask this blood-thirsty ape this question: What then are Kurdish people in Turkey doing?

HuggieBear -> Mindmodic 24 Nov 2015 16:47

"I get the impression that a greater proportion of people in the US are blinded by patriotism" - patriotism would actually require disengaging with the mediaeval oil monarchies of the Middle East and butting out of the world's hot spots. Something Pat Buchanan has advocated for aged.

Aneel Amdani 24 Nov 2015 16:44

the residents of France and Belgium should ask their governments why did they let it to happen in the first place. ISIS was created by West and funded extensively by the Saudis, Turley and Qatar. US is not a kid that after spending more than a 100 billion on intelligence and CIA networks globally, never knew ISIS was getting rich. And now so when everyone knows Turkey buys cheap Oil from ISIS, why aren't they being sectioned or why individuals donating funds to these terrorists being sanctioned.

US is very prompt in going and sanctioning nations that are not with them, but they never sanction dictators like the kings and presidents that support terrorism. the blood of those who died in Paris and those all along since the war in Iraq are all to be blamed on these war hawks in west. If even now Paris cannot ask questions on their governments involvement in destabilizing Libya now, then I guess they will again see Paris happen again. West should be stopped from using the name of terrorism and a Muslim Jihad for their own strategic gains.

jmNZ -> earthboy 24 Nov 2015 16:38

That's the whole problem. The banksters and corporations that run the US have too much to lose in Saudi Arabia and the Persian gulf. And they want that pipeline from the Gulf to the Levant but Syria (with its secular ruler, hated by the jihadists) won't play ball with the banksters. Hence, with American corporations' blessing, Turkey and Arabia loose the Daesh on them . And al-Qeada and al-Nusra and all the other "moderate" rebels supplied with modern weapons by American arms corporations.

fantas1sta Roger -> Hudson 24 Nov 2015 16:36

Turkey has spent a lot of time and money to cultivate an image of itself as a modern, secular, democratic state - it is none of those. It's an ally of the US like Saudi Arabia is an ally of the US, it's a marriage of convenience, nothing else. The US knows that both countries fund terrorists, but they need some kind of presence in that region. The Turks and Saudis need a customer for their oil and someone to run to when they need their autocratic regimes propped up.

Roger Hudson 24 Nov 2015 16:29

Turkey buys ISIL oil.
Turkey helps foreign terrorists to get to ISIL.
Turkey attacks Kurds fighting ISIL.
Turkey facilitates the route of people including terrorists into Europe.
Turkey is run by a megalomaniac.
Turkey got into NATO as a US/CIA anti -Russian (USSR) puppet.
What the sort of corrupt people like Hammond think of their people, fools. Of course Turkey is on the 'wrong side'.

fantas1sta -> MaryMagdalane 24 Nov 2015 16:29

There's no reason for the US to directly antagonize one of the few countries in the world that has a military strong enough to enact its policy goals without the backing of another power - see Crimea. Why would Obama order a Russian plane to be shot down and then call for de-escalation?

jonsid Budovski -> Ximples 24 Nov 2015 16:28

They do have history;-
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/28/world/europe/high-level-leaks-rattle-turkey-officials.html?_r=0

altergeist Pupkin 24 Nov 2015 16:23

Erm on balance, yes. Empirically, provably more repugnant. Russia hasn't killed well over a million civilians since 2001, nor laid waste to an entire region, causing untold misery and suffering, screwing allies and enemies alike and helping (both by accident and design) the rise of ISIS. I'm no fan of Putin, and let's be honest, there's no nice people at that level in politics, but the US is far and away ahead of Russia on the dick-ometer these last 20-30 years.

Budovski Ximples 24 Nov 2015 16:23

Yes, of course he's right. What's wrong is that its taken journalists this long to even dare to look at the relationship between Turkey and Islamic State. Or specifically, Erdogan and Islamic State.

Turkey has been directly dealing with various terrorist groups in Syria, supplying weapons, fighters, intelligence and arms as well as buying massive amounts of oil from ISIS refineries (which Russia just pulverized).

They have left their borders open, allowing terrorists to go in and out of Syria as they please.

Their claims to be fighting ISIS are a joke. In their first week of 'fighting ISIS' they did 350 strikes on the Kurds and literally 1 on ISIS.

The terrorist attack by ISIS, aimed at Erdogans opponents, was timed so perfectly to help Sultan Erdogan get elected that I'd go as far as suspect direct Turkish intelligence involvement.

Bonnemort 24 Nov 2015 16:21

Turkey are complicit in terrorism, but then so are the Gulf States/Saudis/US and UK. They're just a bit closer and their hands a bit bloodier. Putin is correct,

Just think, only two years ago Cameron wanted us to join the Syrian civil war on ISIS' side.

And also think - Cameron and Boris Johnson want Turkey to be a full EU member as soon as possible.

Roger Hudson -> Samir Rai 24 Nov 2015 16:21

Turkey was let (pulled) into NATO during the cold war just so US missiles and spy bases could get up on the USSR border. Turkey was run by a military junta at that time.
Same old CIA/US nonsense.

Turkey should be kicked out of NATO and never be allowed near the EU.

photosymbiosis -> kahaal 24 Nov 2015 16:04

Ah, the oil smuggling route to Turkey runs right through a zone controlled by these 'moderates' - perhaps middlemen is a better word? - and so you can't really cut off the flow of oil out of ISIS areas without bombing those convoys even if they are under the temporary protection of "moderates" - so it looks like Turkish oil smugglers and their customers (Bilal Erdogan's shipping company? commodities brokers? other countries in the region?) are working hand in hand with ISIS and the moderates to deliver some $10 million a week to ISIS - and that's how terrorists in Brussels can establish safe houses, purchase weapons and explosives on the black market, and stage attacks - isn't it?

Alexander Hagen 24 Nov 2015 16:02

That is interesting that Erdogan and Assad were on good terms previously. That is hard to fathom. I cannot imagine two people with more differing world views. I did not meet a single Turk while travelling through Turkey that had a kind word about Erdogan, so elevating him to a higher level (mentor) might require some qualification. Though it is true the Turkish economy grew enormously under Erdogan, "The lights of free expression are going out one by one" - paraphrasing Churchill.

cop1nghagen 24 Nov 2015 16:01

"Turkish businessmen struck lucrative deals with Isis oil smugglers, adding at least $10m (£6.6m) per week to the terror group's coffers, and replacing the Syrian regime as its main client."

Why doesn't The Guardian grow a pair and investigate the role of Turkish President Erdogan in this illegal oil trade, specifically through his son Bilal Erdogan, whose shipping company (jointly owned with two of Erdogan's brothers) BMZ Group has a rapidly expanding fleet of oil tankers...

photosymbiosis 24 Nov 2015 16:01

Would anyone be surprised to find that the accomplices of ISIS in Turkey - i.e. the oil smugglers who operate with the full knowledge of the Turkish government - are also transferring cash on behalf of ISIS to their 'recruiters and activists' (aka: 'terrorists') in places like London, Paris, Brussels, etc.?

The lure of oil profits make relationships with terrorists very attractive, it seems - kind of like how Royal Dutch Shell and Standard Oil kept selling oil to the Nazi U-boat fleet right up to 1942, when the US Congress finally passed the Trading With The Enemy Act.

[Nov 25, 2015] Turkish military releases recording of warning to Russian jet

www.theguardian.com

Konstantin Murakhtin, a navigator who was rescued in a joint operation by Syrian and Russian commandos, told Russian media: "There were no warnings, either by radio or visually. There was no contact whatsoever."

He also denied entering Turkish airspace. "I could see perfectly on the map and on the ground where the border was and where we were. There was no danger of entering Turkey," he said.

The apparent hardening of both countries' versions of events came as Russian warplanes carried out heavy raids in Syria's northern Latakia province, where the plane came down. Tuesday's incident – the first time a Nato member state has shot down a Russian warplane since the Korean war – risks provoking a clash over the ongoing conflict in Syria, where Russia has intervened to prop up the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

... ... ...

Later, in a telephone call with John Kerry, the US secretary of state, Lavrov said Turkey's actions were a "gross violation" of an agreement between Moscow and Washington on air space safety over Syria. The state department said Kerry called for calm and more dialogue between Turkish and Russian officials.

... ... ...

Russian officials made it clear that despite the fury the reaction would be measured. There is no talk of a military response, and no suggestion that diplomatic relations could be cut or the Turkish ambassador expelled from Moscow. However, the tone of relations between the two countries is likely to change dramatically.

... ... ...

A Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, hit out at the US state department official Mark Toner, who said the Turkmen fighters who shot the Russian airman as he parachuted to the ground could have been acting in self defence. "Remember these words, remember them forever. I will never forget them, I promise," Zakharova wrote on Facebook.

[Nov 25, 2015] The shooting down of a Russian jet tangles the diplomatic web still further

Notable quotes:

"... Recently, Moscow's rapprochement with the Syrian Kurds, the PYD, only added to the huge complexity of the situation. ..."

"... any solution of the Syrian conflict will be based on a precondition that the US and Russia put aside their differences, ..."

"... At least one good thing has come from all of this. At least it took Putin to be the first leader to openly say exactly what turkey actually is. A despicable, Islamist supporting vile wolf in Sheep's clothing. ..."

"... well , just think for a second .... all the image - they were shooting him while he was in the air , shouting "Allah Akbar " then they showed a photo with dead pilot , being proud of that ..... Those ppl are the "hope" for a Syria post-Assad....don't you feel that something is wrong here ? ..."

"... Also as soon as the noble Turkman started shooting at the pilot and navigator once they'd bailed out of the plane they showed themselves to be the terrorists they are. Playing "no prisoners" against Russia. ..."

"... At the G20 Antalya summit of Nov 15, Putin embarrassed Obama publicly showing satellite pictures of ridiculously long tanker lines waiting for weeks to load oil from ISIS, as the coalition spared them any trouble. "I've shown our colleagues photos taken from space and from aircraft which clearly demonstrate the scale of the illegal trade in oil," said Putin. ..."

"... So there you have it. For 15 months, the US didn't touch the oil trade that financed ISIS affairs, until Russia shamed them into it. Then, the mightiest army in the world bombs 400 trucks, while Russia destroys 1000. Then Russia provides videos of its airstrikes, while the US doesn't, and PBS is caught passing off Russian evidence as American. ..."

"... Of course Turkey did not need to down this jet: well planned and a clear provocation to start the propaganda war against Russia which actually wants to stop this war before a transition without a pre-planned (US) outcome. ..."

"... With Saudi and Turkish support for ISIS , just who have they bothered saving and sending out into Europe amongst their name taking and slaughters ? Wahabists? How many cells set up now globally? ..."

"... The turkmen are illegally staging war. Russia is the only country legally in Syria. That's why CIA, Saudi, Turk, Israel etc etc etc operate clandestine. But they all enjoy bombing hotheads. A pity so many of them think their brands of religion or old stories from centuries ago of enemies have any bearing today. Or perhaps they just believe rich mens newspapers and media too much. Maybe all their educations and futures were lost by gangsters that were funded and protected and given country ownership for oil and now forces clean up their centuries long mess for newer deals. ..."

"... I thought Russia was INVITED by the Syrian Gov. to assist them in eradicating ALL rebel factions including a bunch of Turkmen rebels funded by Erdogan. No others operating in Syria are legitimate. Any cowards shouting Allah uakbar and killing POWs should be eradicated ..."

"... According to the BBC the Turkmen fight with Al Nusra. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-34910389 UN Resolution 2249 calls not only for action against IS but also Al Nusra and other AQ associated groups. ..."

"... I also know Turkey has been "laundering" ISIS oil from Syria and Iraq to the tune of $2 million/day. ..."

"... Well, a US Air Force has now also suggested that the Turkish shooting down of the Russian had to have been a pre-planned provocation. Also US officials have said it cannot be confirmed that the Russian jet incurred into Turkish territory. And of course there is the testimony of the Russian pilot. ..."

"... What ethnic cleansing??? Assad has a multi sect and multi ethnic government. Meanwhile western and Turkish backed jihadist have openly said they will massacre every last Kurd,Christian,Alawi and Druze in the country. ..."

"... Shooting down the Russian plane was Turkey's way of flexing its muscles. The murder of the pilot in the parashoot was a cowardly act. These are the people the US are backing. They can be added to Obama's list of most favored and join the ranks of the Saudis who behead and crucify protesters ..."

"... Erdogan is playing both NATO and Russia for fools. Trying to create a wedge and sabotage the restoration of stability in Syria. ..."

"... It is all a giant make-believe. They are only using ISIS as a pretext to occupy and breakup Syria. And Western populations swallow all these lies without blinking and feel victimized by refugees. ..."

"... Now, I'd bet that Putin has no plans to exacerbate the current situation by shooting down any Turkish jets out of revenge for yesterday's incident. But it will be unsettling for Turkish flyboys and their bosses to know that a good chunk of their a airspace is totally vulnerable and they fly there only because Russia lets them. ..."

"... it's astonishing how many of the Putin hating NATObots from the Ukrainian-themed CIF threads turn out to be ISIS supporters. ..."

"... indeed, with the "stench" of US grand mufti all over them.. How far do you think Obama will bow on his next visit to Saudi. ..."

"... Yup the FT estimated before the Russians got involved that ISIS were producing between 30,000 and 40,000 barrels of oil a day. You would need over 2000 full size road tankers just to move one days output. Now its fair to assume after filling up it takes more than a day before it gets back to the pump. Surprisingly the US has neither noticed all these tankers and even more surprisingly the oil tanks and installations. ..."

"... The whole regime change plan is hanging in the balance and every day Russia solidifies Assad's position. If this continues for even another month it will be virtually impossible for the Western alliance to demand the departure of Assad. ..."

"... Their bargaining position is diminishing by the day and it is great to watch. Also good to read that the Russians have been pounding the shi*e out of those Turkmen areas. Expect those silly buggers to be slaughtered whilst Erdogan and the Turks watch on helplessly. If they even try anything inside the Syrian border now the Russians will annihilate them. ..."

"... Erdogan's reaction to Syria shooting down a Turkish jet in 2012. "Erdogan criticized Syria harshly on Tuesday for shooting down the Turkish fighter jet, saying: "Even if the plane was in their airspace for a few seconds, that is no excuse to attack." "It was clear that this plane was not an aggressive plane. Still it was shot down," the corrupt ISIS supporting scumbag said" ..."

www.theguardian.com

The nervousness displayed by the AKP administration, in Ankara, has a lot to do with Turkey's Syria policy being in ever-growing disarray, and its failure to set priorities to help resolve the conflict. As the Syrian quagmire deepened, old anti-Kurdish fixations in Ankara came to the surface, and clashed with the priorities of its allies, centred on Isis. Ankara's blocking moves against the only combat force on ground, the PKK-YPG axis, has impeded the fight against jihadists, and its constant redrawing of red-lines (Kurds, Turkmens, no-fly zone, Assad gone etc) may have been frustrating the White House, but does not seem to affect Moscow. Recently, Moscow's rapprochement with the Syrian Kurds, the PYD, only added to the huge complexity of the situation.

In the recent G20 summit, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was once more keen to underline that "terror has no religion and there should be no our terrorist and your terrorist"

... ... ...

So, the tension now rises between one determined and one undecided, conflicted player – one lucid on strategy, the other lacking it. If any, the lesson to be drawn from this showdown is this: any solution of the Syrian conflict will be based on a precondition that the US and Russia put aside their differences, agree in principle on the future of the region, build a joint intelligence gathering and coordinated battle scheme against jihadists, and demand utter clarity of the positions of their myopic, egocentric allies. Unless they do so, more complications, and risks beyond turf wars will be knocking at the door

Eugenios -> André De Koning 25 Nov 2015 23:24

Assad is targeted because it is a necessary prelude to an attack on Iran. Pepe Escobar called that long ago. What is sought is a Syria in the imperialist orbit or in chaos.

Attack on Iran by whom--you ask? Actually several in cahoots, including Israel and Saudi Arabia, et al.

Lyigushka -> trandq 25 Nov 2015 23:22

BBC maps show ISIS controlled territory only a few miles from the Turkmen area where the shooting down took place.
Your not very good at this are you
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-27838034

Lyigushka -> trandq 25 Nov 2015 23:11

A brief search on the internet shows many items referring to Turkish support for IS.

Now the SAA with Russian support is on the border dealing with the jihadist Turkmen, Turkey's duplicity is in danger of being revealed .

Hence the impotent rage and desperate pleas for support to its other US coalition partners and the strange reluctance of the complicit western MSM to fully reveal the lies and double standards of the western allies in this foul business.

Only the other day a US TV program was trying to con its viewers that the US was bombing ISIS oil trucks, with video from a Russian airstrike.

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2015/11/pbs-uses-russian-airstrike-videos-to-claim-us-airstrike-successes.html

James H McDougall 25 Nov 2015 23:09

At least one good thing has come from all of this. At least it took Putin to be the first leader to openly say exactly what turkey actually is. A despicable, Islamist supporting vile wolf in Sheep's clothing. Who else was buying ISIS oil....the tooth fairy ? Never in my life did I think I'd be defending the red team yet here I am.

AtelierEclatPekin -> murati 25 Nov 2015 23:06

well , just think for a second .... all the image - they were shooting him while he was in the air , shouting "Allah Akbar " then they showed a photo with dead pilot , being proud of that ..... Those ppl are the "hope" for a Syria post-Assad....don't you feel that something is wrong here ?

Shankman -> ianhassall 25 Nov 2015 23:02

He was awfully quick to accept Turkey's version of events.

As for his Nobel "Peace" Prize, Alfred Nobel is probably still turning in his grave.

Lyigushka -> trandq 25 Nov 2015 23:02

Of course Turkey supports ISIS and has done for all its existence as part of an opposition to its main enemies, Assad and the Kurds.

A brief search of the internet provides countless articles on this without even having to quote Russian sources. Examples
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-l-phillips/research-paper-isis-turke_b_6128950.html
http://www.infowars.com/former-nato-commander-turkey-is-supporting-isis/

iusedtopost 25 Nov 2015 23:01

.....and the censors are out again.....SHAME on you Guardian.

I say again.....MSM now referring to "Turkmen" like they are cuddly toys FFS

They are head chopping....moon howling....islamo-terrorists.

Russia has the right idea....kill the lot them

ianhassall -> ianhassall 25 Nov 2015 22:56

Also as soon as the noble Turkman started shooting at the pilot and navigator once they'd bailed out of the plane they showed themselves to be the terrorists they are. Playing "no prisoners" against Russia.

And as for the US - they can bomb a Medicin sans Frontiers field hospital in Afghanistan for 37 minutes and the best excuse they come out with is "the plane's email stopped working, it didn't know where the target was, they didn't know where they were, so they just attacked something that looked like". So much for US military's navigation abilities.

NikLot -> LordMurphy 25 Nov 2015 22:44

Dear Lord, where did I defend it?!! How do you read that?!!! Of course it is appalling!!!

I wanted to point out that the 'good terrorist' Turkmen militia or whoever else did it would have done the same to NATO pilots and that the story should be explored from that angle too. Statement by Turkey's PM today, if true, confirms my concern:

"Davutoglu told his party's lawmakers on Wednesday that Turkey didn't know the nationality of the plane that was brought down on Tuesday until Moscow announced it was Russian."

ianhassall 25 Nov 2015 22:38

Its amazing that NATO have been bombing ISIS for 2 years and did very little to halt its progress.

Russia's been doing it for a month and have bombed ISIS, the military supplies NATO have been giving ISIS, and the illegal oil racket that Turkey's been running with ISIS - all at a fraction of the cost that's going into supporting ISIS and other Syrian terrorist groups.

I can see why Turkey's upset. Also anyone who thinks Turkey shot down this plane without the approval of NATO and Obama is kidding themselves. Obama has blood up to his armpits with what's been going on in Syria, despite his Peace Prize credentials.

luella zarf -> ArundelXVI 25 Nov 2015 22:28

OK I did some research and I was somewhat wrong, Russia did initiate the bombing of the oil delivery system, but at the G20 summit. This is the actual chronology:

At the G20 Antalya summit of Nov 15, Putin embarrassed Obama publicly showing satellite pictures of ridiculously long tanker lines waiting for weeks to load oil from ISIS, as the coalition spared them any trouble. "I've shown our colleagues photos taken from space and from aircraft which clearly demonstrate the scale of the illegal trade in oil," said Putin.

The next day, on Nov 16, the US bombed a truck assembly for the first time in the history of the coalition and then claimed to have hit 116 oil tankers. In the meantime, Russia carried on its own airstrike campaign, destroying more than 1,000 tankers and a refinery in a period of just five days, and posting video footage of the airstrikes.

Because the US never made available any recordings, on Nov 19 PBS used footage of Russian fighter jets bombing an oil storage facility and passed it off as evidence of the US hits. The Moon of Alabama website was the first to notice. On Nov 23, a second American air raid claimed to have destroyed 283 oil tankers.

So there you have it. For 15 months, the US didn't touch the oil trade that financed ISIS affairs, until Russia shamed them into it. Then, the mightiest army in the world bombs 400 trucks, while Russia destroys 1000. Then Russia provides videos of its airstrikes, while the US doesn't, and PBS is caught passing off Russian evidence as American.

idkak -> John Smith 25 Nov 2015 22:17

Currently 18 aircraft are patrolling the area on a daily basis, they must have misread the memo.... Downing a Turkish plane over Turkish soil, or attacking a NATO aircraft on mission in Syria within the alliance that is currently bombing ISIS or other terrorist variants... won't be favorable for Russia or their forces in Syria. Even without NATO, Turkey has a very large military and the location we are talking about is about 2-5 minutes to bomb, and 1-2 minutes to intercept.. so the attack would be about the same level of strategic stupidity as attacking Russia from the Ukraine.

André De Koning -> trandq 25 Nov 2015 22:16

How naive: downing a jet who fights al-Nusra. Of course Turkey has supported terrorist there for a long time and left the border between Turkey and Syria porous, so the proxy war can be fought against Assad (just one man (?) always features in the multi-factorial warfare, which is easy on the ears of simpletons). There were already plans in 1957 and more modern ones in the US to ruin Syria and take the land and resources and use it for the oil pipelines from Saudi to Turkey (Assad did not sign off in 2009, so war was bound to happen).

André De Koning 25 Nov 2015 22:11

Imagine a US fighter being shot down? From the beginning of the war Russia and Syria said there were not just peaceful demonstrators, but people who were shooting and grew into ISIS and Al-Nusra and al-Qaeda. This did not fit the western propaganda and the Divide and Ruin policy (title of Dan Glazebrook's recent book of articles) which is that Syria was a on the Ruin-map for a long time. Turkey's Erdogan is intellectually an Islamist and together with Saudi they and the terrorists are fighting this proxy war the US can hardly afford.

In 7 weeks Russia destroyed more of ISIS infrastructure and oil tankers than the US did in a year (the superpower has managed to make ISIS increase seven-fold). The only objective is one man: Assad and the ruin of Syria to be 'rebuilt' (plundered) by western investments and domination of the entire region of the Middle East. The rest is lies to prop up propaganda and doing as if they bring democracy (like the West does in Saudi?! the biggest friend and weapons buyer. Just like Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq, which did not play ball, it will be destroyed by the West. It gets harder with Russia actually wishing to stop the proxy war: Syria itself deciding what their future will be? No way as far as US and UK are concerned (and the weak EU following with their businessmen contingent to reap the benefits). Absolutely disgusting that the people have to suffer it.

Of course Turkey did not need to down this jet: well planned and a clear provocation to start the propaganda war against Russia which actually wants to stop this war before a transition without a pre-planned (US) outcome.

EightEyedSpy -> Eugenios 25 Nov 2015 21:59

Meanwhile, Turkey just gave the Russians a no-fly zone--against Turks.

Not true - unless Russia intends to breach the resolution unanimously passed by the UN Security Council authorising all member nations to fight against ISIS on territory controlled by ISIS in Syria.

Pursuant to the Security Council resolution, which Russia voted for, all member nations have the legal right to use Syrian airspace and traverse Syrian territory for the purpose of fighting ISIS in Syria.

If Russia attempts to impose a no-fly zone against Turkey in Syria, Russia will violate the Security Council resolution ...

btt1943 25 Nov 2015 21:59

Forget about whether Russian jet has infiltrated Turkey's airspace or not as claimed by one and denied by other, the bottom line is Turkey has been wanting to play a big and decisive role in Syrian conflict and ISIS's rise. Ankara does not wish to see Russian's growing influence and intervention in the messy region.

Jimmi Cbreeze -> Normin 25 Nov 2015 21:49

With Saudi and Turkish support for ISIS , just who have they bothered saving and sending out into Europe amongst their name taking and slaughters ? Wahabists? How many cells set up now globally?

Jimmi Cbreeze EightEyedSpy 25 Nov 2015 21:17

The turkmen are illegally staging war. Russia is the only country legally in Syria. That's why CIA, Saudi, Turk, Israel etc etc etc operate clandestine. But they all enjoy bombing hotheads. A pity so many of them think their brands of religion or old stories from centuries ago of enemies have any bearing today. Or perhaps they just believe rich mens newspapers and media too much. Maybe all their educations and futures were lost by gangsters that were funded and protected and given country ownership for oil and now forces clean up their centuries long mess for newer deals.

And then you have the Murdochs and the Rothchilds and the arms industries.

Because where the people are'nt divided by cunning for profit, they are too lunatic and gangster minded to live in peace with each other anyway.
The whole matter is a multi joint taskforce of opportunism. And wealth is going for broke stamping and taking as much corporate ground as possible worldwide.

What chance is there of calling peace? Where and when are all these lunatics going to live in peace and constructively? How would they with half the the globe shitstirring and funding trouble amongst them for profit and gain?

Turkey has attacked Russia on Syrian soil and Russia is the only country legally at arms in Syria. Makes you wonder that Turkey does'nt like Turkmen or consider them a problem. That they provoke getting them wiped out of Syria. How could Assad or anyone govern getting undermined from a dozen directions.

Who knows, the place is a mess. It's no use preaching peace inside the turmoil. It has to come from outside and above. But it appears with this lot-what peace ever.

Bosula trandq 25 Nov 2015 21:07

Since you can't or don't bother to actually read the Guardian or other papers you probably missed that UN Resolution 2249 calls not only for action against IS but also Al Nusra and other AQ associated groups in Syria. The Syrian Free Army is linked with these groups, particularly Al Nusra.

Now you have learned something.

Eugenios 25 Nov 2015 21:04

It seems more likely than not that the Russians will make an effort to capture and try the moderate terrorists who shot the Russian pilot parachuting. It is a war crime after all. The old Soviets would have dispensed with such niceties as trials, but the RF is more legalistic. Nicely enough the moderate terrorists identified themselves on video, don't you know?

There may also be several legal cases brought against Erdogan and Turkey.

Meanwhile, Turkey just gave the Russians a no-fly zone--against Turks.

ozhellene -> trandq 25 Nov 2015 20:57

I thought Russia was INVITED by the Syrian Gov. to assist them in eradicating ALL rebel factions including a bunch of Turkmen rebels funded by Erdogan. No others operating in Syria are legitimate. Any cowards shouting Allah uakbar and killing POWs should be eradicated

luella zarf -> ArundelXVI 25 Nov 2015 20:54

US air strikes destroys 283 oil tankers used for smuggling to fund terror group. You were saying? I don't know why some people around here just feel free to make things up.

Give us a break. The US hit ISIS oil tanks 6 full days after Russia released footage which showed its fighter jets targeting 200 oil trucks and a refinery. In 15 months of bombing ISIS, there were no American airstrikes on oil tanks until Russia came along and showed them how it's done. Even PBS pointed out when reporting the attack "For the first time, the US is attacking oil delivery trucks."

ozhellene 25 Nov 2015 20:35

will this be a "turkey shoot"? Big mistake Mr Erdogan! You just condemned you Turkmen buddies to be bombed by the Russian bears.
Turkey will never avoid the Kurdish finally taking back their rightful lands, stolen during the Ottoman rule.
Never forget that Kurds make up a lot of your population.....waiting for the right moment...

WalterCronkiteBot 25 Nov 2015 20:32

According to the BBC the Turkmen fight with Al Nusra. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-34910389 UN Resolution 2249 calls not only for action against IS but also Al Nusra and other AQ associated groups.

These guys advertise and run jihadist training camps for children. http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2015/09/uighur-jihadist-group-in-syria-advertises-little-jihadists.php

They might not be explicitly AQ affiliated or Al Nusra itself but they share similar doctrines and fight together. Attacking them may not be by the word of the resolution but its certainly in the spirit of it.

ianhassall -> ianhassall 25 Nov 2015 20:13

Whether I think the Turkman should be wiped out is generally irrelevent.

I just know in the past 24 hours I've seen Turkey shoot down a Russian plane over Syria to defend the Turkmen. I also saw the Turkmen shooting at 2 Russian pilots why they attempted to parachute to safety, and one was killed. And I've seen the Turkmen fire a Saudi Arabia-supplied TOW missile at a Russian rescue helicopter, destroying it and killing two pilots.

I also know Turkey has been "laundering" ISIS oil from Syria and Iraq to the tune of $2 million/day.

You reap what you sow.

nnedjo 25 Nov 2015 19:49

In the recent G20 summit, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was once more keen to underline that "terror has no religion and there should be no our terrorist and your terrorist".

Yes, just when Erdogan says this, he thinks only on the Kurds, and wonder why the rest of the world considers the Kurds as freedom fighters, and only Turkey considers them as [its] terrorists.

However, the main message of this article is correct. In order to achieve peace in the Middle East, first the rest of the world must come to terms. The divisions in the world, inherited from the times of the Cold War were reflected also on the Islamic world, and so deepened or even provoked a new sectarian Sunni-Shia divisions and conflicts. So although it's "a chronic disease", it is fallen now into an acute phase in Syria and Iraq. And the urgency of the case requires that really has to come to some deal, primarily between the US and Russia, that it could reach the end of the civil war in Syria, but also in Iraq, because it's all inter-connected. Otherwise, this problem will become even more complicated and prolonged, with unforeseeable consequences.

Eugenios 25 Nov 2015 19:58

Well, a US Air Force has now also suggested that the Turkish shooting down of the Russian had to have been a pre-planned provocation. Also US officials have said it cannot be confirmed that the Russian jet incurred into Turkish territory. And of course there is the testimony of the Russian pilot. No doubt the Guardian will be covering these points, yes?

ianhassall -> EightEyedSpy 25 Nov 2015 19:47

Yes, I know. Why shouldn't Turkey defend terrorits and shoot down a Russian jet while its flying missions in Syria and not incur any wrath.

Russians have been fighting Islamic extremists for a bit longer than the West, who have generally only ever funded or armed them. I'd believe Putin 99 times out of a 100 before I'd believe Obama once.

illbthr22 -> EightEyedSpy 25 Nov 2015 19:21

What ethnic cleansing??? Assad has a multi sect and multi ethnic government. Meanwhile western and Turkish backed jihadist have openly said they will massacre every last Kurd,Christian,Alawi and Druze in the country.

Andrew Nichols -> Jeremn 25 Nov 2015 19:14

We don't have a clear, clear understanding of everything that happened today, okay? I've said that and I can keep saying it all day. We're still trying to determine what happened. It's easy to rush to judgments and to make proclamations and declarations after an incident like this.

Which is exactly what the US did - by supporting Turkeys side of the story. Dont you wish the journalist would point this out?

Cecile_Trib -> Spiffey 25 Nov 2015 19:12

Turkmen terrorists backed by Turkey (now from the air) are there not to fight with Assad but to wipe out Kurds in this region - Edorgan's sweet dream to get the political weight back.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/08/12/world/middleeast/turkey-kurds-isis.html?_r=0

spitthedog -> centerline 25 Nov 2015 18:43

Amazing how Russia attacking the ISIS oil operation can suddenly embarrass the Yanks into doing the obvious. Why didn't they do it before? If ISIS and their FSA buddies loses they can't get rid of Assad for Bibi, simples. The good old FSA, chanting Jihad and carrying white on black Al Qaeda flags. We have an interesting idea of what "moderate" is. Then again Blair was a moderate and he.... ummm....errrr....oops!

luella zarf -> TheOutsider79 25 Nov 2015 18:38

are France the only honest brokers in all of this, the only ones actually doing what they say they are doing - targeting ISIS

No, of course not. It's all spin. France, which was Syria's colonial master, is hoping to regain some of its former influence. ISIS is just a pretext, and they really have no incentive of destroying their only justification for being there in the first place.

When France launched its first airstrikes in Sep, Reuters wrote: "Paris has become alarmed by the possibility of France being sidelined in negotiations to reach a political solution in Syria. A French diplomatic source said Paris needed to be one of the "hitters" in Syria - those taking direct military action - to legitimately take part in any negotiations for a political solution to the conflict."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/27/us-mideast-crisis-france-syria-idUSKCN0RR07Y20150927

This is why they are participating - to get a seat at the table when the great powers break up Syria and hand out land rights for pipelines to big oil.

SallyWa -> HHeLiBe 25 Nov 2015 18:46

Turkey has no interest in the peaceful settlement to the conflict in Syria that world powers are negotiating. As it gets desperate, Turkey will attempt to bring focus back on the Assad regime and reverse the losses it has made both in Syria and geopolitically.

SallyWa -> FelixFeline 25 Nov 2015 18:45

Really? I guess I'll have to take your word for that.

Really. That's sort of your issue, not mine.

Do you have any links to support your claims about these lost ISIS territories?

For example http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/12/russian-airstrikes-support-syrian-troops-to-push-back-rebels-in-strategic-town
Article tried to call ISIS as rebels, though, it happens sometimes as those are always "good terrorists" or just "rebels" if they do what we need, like in this case if they are anti-Assad .

midnightschild10 25 Nov 2015 18:33

Although there has been a war of words between Greece and Turkey, with Turkey charging the Greeks with invading its air space, Turkey has yet to fire on a Greek plane. The turkmen are considered "moderates, and the US arm them to fight the Assad government. Shooting down the Russian plane was Turkey's way of flexing its muscles. The murder of the pilot in the parashoot was a cowardly act. These are the people the US are backing. They can be added to Obama's list of most favored and join the ranks of the Saudis who behead and crucify protesters, one upmanship over ISIS gruesome beheadings, and of course there is alSiSi, who executes all opposition. Petroshenko, wants to freeze the people of Crimea, and has over 6500 Ukrainian deaths notched on his belt since Nuland and Obama gave him the keys to Kiev.

Turkey feels feisty right now, but he obviously isn't aware of the talk coming from Washington about dividing up Syria among four leaders like they did to Berlin.

Turkey will have no part to play, and the US really wants to keep Russia out of the picture. They blame Assad for ISIS but the vacuum left by the US and the coalition left in Iraq is what gave birth to ISIS. Easy to depose governments, and then let chaos reign. Since Obama keeps bringing up the right of a sovereign nation to protect its borders, he should realize that the Syrian government never invited the US onto its soil. The Turkmen through their actions have shown they are terrorists, and Russia will treat them accordingly.

HHeLiBe 25 Nov 2015 18:32

Erdogan is playing both NATO and Russia for fools. Trying to create a wedge and sabotage the restoration of stability in Syria.

Branko Dodig 25 Nov 2015 18:26

The Russian plane was shot over Syrian airspace. Even if it had strayed over Turkish airspace, it was not shot down there. Basically, an act of revenge for bombing their "rebel" buddies.

SallyWa -> FelixFeline 25 Nov 2015 18:24

It is "Turkey screwed up and overreacted". Not confusing at all.

SallyWa -> FelixFeline 25 Nov 2015 18:23

Sorry, but I'm not Russian and also where have you been - Russia has been fighting ISIS in Syria better than US/coalition, though US/coalition did it like for a whole year.The result is that ISIS lost territories which it gained under US's "watch".

centerline 25 Nov 2015 18:12

Since the G20 meeting, Russia has photographed and destroyed the Turkish/ISIS oil convoys.

In the day or so since Turkey shot down the Russian plane in defence of al Qaeda, Russia has for the first time attacked a Turkish logistics convoy to ISIS and al Qaeda right at the main border crossing to Allepo. A number of trucks destroyed and 7 killed in that operation. turkey will pay dearly in the days to come, without Russia ever having to move into Turkish territory.

Any Turks running errands for AQ and ISIS within Syria will now be an endangered species. Or more to the point they will simply be eradicated like the vermin they are.

luella zarf -> TonyBlunt 25 Nov 2015 18:10

What a joke.

In one year of bombing, August 2014-July 2015, the coalition conducted 44,000 airstrikes in Syria-Iraq and killed 15,000 ISIS fighters, which comes at 3 sorties per terrorist!

It is all a giant make-believe. They are only using ISIS as a pretext to occupy and breakup Syria. And Western populations swallow all these lies without blinking and feel victimized by refugees.

pfox33 25 Nov 2015 17:49

The US and Israel were totally freaking when Russia first considered selling Iran S-300 systems, even though they're defensive. It would have taken the feasibility of bombing Iran's nuclear infrastructure to an unknown place. Russia sold these systems to select customers, like China. The S-400 is not for sale. Any search of Youtube will explain why.

When the S-400 is set up around Latakia they will effectively own the surrounding skies for 400 miles in every direction. That extends well into Turkey.

Now, I'd bet that Putin has no plans to exacerbate the current situation by shooting down any Turkish jets out of revenge for yesterday's incident. But it will be unsettling for Turkish flyboys and their bosses to know that a good chunk of their a airspace is totally vulnerable and they fly there only because Russia lets them.

So maybe the Turks pissed in the pickles. This little problem is keeping the Nato nabobs up at night. They haven't said a fucking word.

Geraldine Baxter -> SallyWa 25 Nov 2015 17:47

it's astonishing how many of the Putin hating NATObots from the Ukrainian-themed CIF threads turn out to be ISIS supporters.

indeed, with the "stench" of US grand mufti all over them.. How far do you think Obama will bow on his next visit to Saudi.

Liesandstats -> luella zarf 25 Nov 2015 17:47

Yup the FT estimated before the Russians got involved that ISIS were producing between 30,000 and 40,000 barrels of oil a day. You would need over 2000 full size road tankers just to move one days output. Now its fair to assume after filling up it takes more than a day before it gets back to the pump. Surprisingly the US has neither noticed all these tankers and even more surprisingly the oil tanks and installations.

jonsid 25 Nov 2015 17:33

An article about Syria is now infested with Banderites. They need to worry more about their own long-time disaster of a country instead of stalking every article mentioning Russia.

Anette Mor 25 Nov 2015 17:29

Russians spent all this time signing the rules of engagement and recognition of each other air crafts over Syria with the US, only to be shot by Turkey. Does NATO even exist as a unit other than in the headquarter offices? They constantly refer to the terms which could allegedly force then to support each other in case of external threat, while clearly they will fuck each other on technicalities for years before doing anything practically viable. Russia waste their time talking to NATO, instead had to bribe Turkey separately into a workable local deal. I am sure Turkey got just the same conclusion after wasting time in NATO talks. Corruption and complicity eaten away common sense in western politician and military heads. They only think how weak or strong they would look imitating one or another decision.

aretheymyfeet -> psygone 25 Nov 2015 17:22

Hilarious, checkmate Putin? The only reason the Turks took this drastic action is because the Western alliance has lost the initiative in Syria and they are desperately trying to goad Russia into overreacting. But, as we have seen time and again from the Russians (Lavrov is an incredibly impressive Statesman) that they are cool headed, and restrained.

The whole regime change plan is hanging in the balance and every day Russia solidifies Assad's position. If this continues for even another month it will be virtually impossible for the Western alliance to demand the departure of Assad.

Their bargaining position is diminishing by the day and it is great to watch. Also good to read that the Russians have been pounding the shi*e out of those Turkmen areas. Expect those silly buggers to be slaughtered whilst Erdogan and the Turks watch on helplessly. If they even try anything inside the Syrian border now the Russians will annihilate them. I'd say if anything, the Turks have strengthened the Russians providing them with the perfect excuse to close the Syrian air space to "unfriendly" forces. Check.

thatshowitgoes 25 Nov 2015 16:56

Erdogan's reaction to Syria shooting down a Turkish jet in 2012. "Erdogan criticized Syria harshly on Tuesday for shooting down the Turkish fighter jet, saying: "Even if the plane was in their airspace for a few seconds, that is no excuse to attack." "It was clear that this plane was not an aggressive plane. Still it was shot down," the corrupt ISIS supporting scumbag said"

SallyWa -> psygone 25 Nov 2015 16:56

means he's politically impotent, militarily boxed in a corner and incompetent for self-inflicting

You know you just described Obama and all his policies in a nutshell.

Bob Nassh -> keepithuman 25 Nov 2015 16:54

I believe there's conditions within the NATO treaty that prevent them from defending another member nation providing the conflict was instigated by war crimes committed by the member nation.

MRModeratedModerate 25 Nov 2015 16:50

But of course Turkey was exposed last year...Yet our governments continue to ignore and cover.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-l-phillips/research-paper-isis-turke_b_6128950.html?ir=Australia

luella zarf Jeremn 25 Nov 2015 16:45

The US doesn't bomb ISIS, only pretends it does. Actually nobody bombs ISIS there except Russia.

Only between August 2014 and July 2015 the coalition aircraft have flown nearly 44,000 sorties, according to USNews, and Airwars said the strikes have killed more than 15,000 Islamic State militants during this period.

http://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2015/07/21/stealthy-jet-ensures-other-war-fighting-aircraft-survive

So they needed 3 sorties per terrorist! I have no idea how they manage to be this ineffective unless a) they are world's worst airforce b) it's all make-believe. My money is on option b).

Yury Kobyzev -> Valois1588 25 Nov 2015 16:41

Now fact - turkey government is on ISIS side. Its simplifies situation. Russia now quite free to clean the Turkey border from interface with ISIS. It's half a job in fight.

I don't see why Russia can be damaged by so stupid current west policy. I think that clever part of west will change policy towards Russia in near future and will find there friends as it was during ww2. You can repeat mantra Pu... tin as I use Ooom ... but is he of your level?

Chummy15 25 Nov 2015 16:30

Turkey has made it pretty clear where its primary loyalties lie, with ISIS and the other anti-Assad elements. It was a foolish move shooting down the Russian plane which clearly was no threat to the security of Turkey whether or not it had violated Turkish airspace, something that happen around the world regularly. It adds a further dimension to an already complicated war

[Nov 25, 2015] Russian jet incident planned, Turkish opposition member says

www.hurriyetdailynews.com

The Nov. 24 downing of a Russian fighter jet that violated Turkey's border with Syria by the Turkish military was planned, according to a senior figure from the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP).

"It is seen that the downing of the Russian jet was decided and planned earlier, and it was just implemented yesterday," said İdris Baluken, the opposition party's deputy chair, on Nov. 25.

"What we saw yesterday is a scene from a planned policy," he said.

The AKP [Justice and Development Party] has shown in its insistent practices that it is a part of the war in Syria," he said.

"The real matter about the downing of the jet is that the AKP feels the need to intervene in operations against some gangs such as Ahrar al-Sham and al-Nusra" he said, claiming that the AKP was not actually concerned about Syria's Turkmens.

The government and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan have said recent Russian operations in Syria were not targeting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) but Turkmens in the north of the country.

"The AKP did not raise its voice when Turkmens were being killed in Mosul and Telafar in 2014," Baluken said, referring to 2014 ISIL attacks targeting Iraq's heavily-populated Turkmen areas.

Baluken was speaking at a press conference in parliament before the announcing of the new government program and said the Turkish people had already seen the content of the program in the government's recent moves.

Baluken also stated eight civilians were killed in the town of Nusaybin, which entered its 13th day under curfew. The town is located in the southeastern province of Mardin

[Nov 25, 2015] Poking the 'Russian Bear' comes at a cost

Notable quotes:

"... The fate of the Russian pilots in the downed jet will also play a key role here. If it is true that one of the pilots was killed while parachuting down by Turkmen fighters, as Moscow claims, there will be a clamoring for merciless revenge by the Russian public against this group. ..."

"... we had reports of members of Turkey's secret service, the National Intelligence Organization (MIT), scurrying to the region desperately trying to find the pilots after the SU-24 was downed. It is questionable, therefore, whether this move by Turkey, legal as it may be, will have bolstered the position of the Turkmens. The immediate impression one gets is that it will make it worse. ..."

"... It is not clear whether Moscow will use the economic card against Turkey, which has a great dependence on Russian natural gas, and the Russian market, not to mention the millions of Russian tourists that stream into Turkey every year. ..."

"... The economic card cuts both ways of course. Russia needs to sell its gas to earn money. But Russian preparedness to sacrifice, once nationalist sentiments are aroused in that country, is a historic fact. ..."

"... it is clear why President Recep Tayyip Erdo an is saying that Turkey has no interests in escalating the crisis with Russia. He has undoubtedly been made aware that poking the "Russian Bear" comes at a cost. ..."

www.hurriyetdailynews.com

There is no doubt that the happiest person because of this unprecedented crisis between Turkey and Russia is Syria's Bashar al-Assad. He must have been delighted at the extremely angry remarks by President Putin aimed at Turkey, and his dire warning that the downing of their jet will have serious consequences for Turkish-Russian ties.

It is also clear that Russia will not be deterred by this affair in either its support for Assad or its operations north of Latakia where it is hitting groups supported by Turkey, including Turkmens. Russia will also take added precautions to bolster its air defense systems in the region, and will back its operations there with support from its military assets in the eastern Mediterranean.

As long as it does not violate Turkish airspace again, there is little, if anything, Turkey can do to ensure that Russia does not bomb the Turkmens with added intensity and ferocity. Turkey can send surface air missiles to the Turkmens, of course, but it is doubtful its NATO allies will allow this, given the risk of these weapons falling into the wrong hands.

The simple fact is that no one in the West is clear about whom these Turkmens really are, and whether they are radical Sunni jihadists or "moderate Islamists." Turkey has to help clarify this point if it wants sympathy in the West for the Turkmens.

The fate of the Russian pilots in the downed jet will also play a key role here. If it is true that one of the pilots was killed while parachuting down by Turkmen fighters, as Moscow claims, there will be a clamoring for merciless revenge by the Russian public against this group.

It was not for nothing that we had reports of members of Turkey's secret service, the National Intelligence Organization (MIT), scurrying to the region desperately trying to find the pilots after the SU-24 was downed. It is questionable, therefore, whether this move by Turkey, legal as it may be, will have bolstered the position of the Turkmens. The immediate impression one gets is that it will make it worse.

Then there is the economic dimension, which is being widely covered by the media and need not be repeated here. It is not clear whether Moscow will use the economic card against Turkey, which has a great dependence on Russian natural gas, and the Russian market, not to mention the millions of Russian tourists that stream into Turkey every year.

The economic card cuts both ways of course. Russia needs to sell its gas to earn money. But Russian preparedness to sacrifice, once nationalist sentiments are aroused in that country, is a historic fact.

Looking at all of this, it is clear why President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is saying that Turkey has no interests in escalating the crisis with Russia. He has undoubtedly been made aware that poking the "Russian Bear" comes at a cost.

[Nov 25, 2015] Airplane crisis raising questions about future of close economic, trade ties between Russia and Turkey

Notable quotes:

"... Russia may consider cancelling some important joint projects with Turkey after the downing of the Russian jet by Turkish F-16s near the Syrian border on Nov. 24, raising questions about the future of the countries' intimate economic and trade relations. ..."

"... Turkish companies could lose Russian market share due to the jet fighter incident, Medvedev said in a statement published on the government website. He suggested it may lead to the barring of Turkish companies from the Russian market. ..."

www.hurriyetdailynews.com

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said Nov. 25 that Russia may consider cancelling some important joint projects with Turkey after the downing of the Russian jet by Turkish F-16s near the Syrian border on Nov. 24, raising questions about the future of the countries' intimate economic and trade relations.

Turkish companies could lose Russian market share due to the jet fighter incident, Medvedev said in a statement published on the government website. He suggested it may lead to the barring of Turkish companies from the Russian market.

"The direct consequences are likely to be the renunciation of a number of important joint projects and Turkish companies losing their position on the Russian market," Medvedev said.

The joint projects that immediately come to mind are a number of existing and planned energy projects between Russia and Turkey.

Turkey commissioned Russia's state-owned Rosatom in 2013 to build four 1,200-megawatt reactors in a project worth $20 billion.

Russia and Turkey are also working on the Turkish Stream pipeline project, an alternative to Russia's South Stream pipeline, which was to transport gas to Europe without crossing Ukraine. The South Stream plan was dropped last year due to objections from the European Commission.

The talks over the pipeline have been postponed due to Turkey's election agenda and disagreements over a gas price discount, as officials from the both countries had earlier mentioned.

"It is quite difficult to start the talks again. If a reconciliatory step is not taken, Russia will most likely not continue this project. Even Russia could even scrap this project and start an alternative project, like, for example, a Nord Stream 2 Gas Pipeline project," said a sector representative, anonymously quoted by daily Hürriyet on Nov. 25.

... ... ...

Turkish-Russian economic and trade ties in figures

• ENERGY: Turkey meets around 55 percent of its gas demand from Russia. Turkey is the second biggest consumer of Russian gas after Germany
• CONSTRUCTION: Turkish companies undertook a total of 47 projects worth around $4 billion in Russia in 2014
• RETAIL: Turkish retailers have over 700 stores in Russia
• HOUSING: Russian citizens are the third largest foreign buyers of property in Turkey, with 1,750 units over this year
• TOURISM: Russia is the second largest tourism provider for Turkey, with around 3.3 million Russian tourists visiting the country over this year
• TRADE: Turkey's exports to Russia in 2014: $5.9 billion, with around 20 percent of Turkey's food exports and 15 percent of its textile exports going to Russia

Russia's exports to Turkey in 2014: $25 billion

[Nov 25, 2015] Russian nationalists attack Turkish Embassy in Moscow

www.hurriyetdailynews.com

An ultra-nationalist group of protestors targeted the Turkish Embassy in Moscow on Nov. 25 following demonstrations at Turkey's Nov. 24 downing of a Russian fighter jet near the Syrian border.

Around 500 protestors of the Russian political party LDPR carrying Russian, Syrian and party flags first shouted slogans against Turkey in front of the Turkish embassy in the afternoon before pelting the building with stones.

Windows on the first two floors of the four-story building were completely broken, according to diplomats at the embassy.

Diplomats said no one was injured in the attack, adding that the Russian police failed to stop the attack.

Protesters also pelted the embassy's external wall with tomatoes and eggs.

The ultra-nationalist protestors also chanted "We will come again tomorrow" after the attack.

[Nov 25, 2015] Russia and Turkey refuse to back down News , Middle East

Notable quotes:

"... President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made no apology, saying his nation had simply been defending its own security and the "rights of our brothers in Syria." He made clear Turkish policy would not change. ..."

"... Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov described it as a planned act and said it would affect efforts towards a political solution in Syria. Moscow would "seriously reconsider" its relations with Ankara, he said. ..."

"... But the Russian response was carefully calibrated, indicating Moscow did not want to jeopardize its main objective in the region: to rally international support for its view on how the conflict in Syria should be resolved. ..."

"... "We have no intention of fighting a war with Turkey," Lavrov said. ..."

THE DAILY STAR

Russia sent an advanced missile system to Syria Wednesday to protect its jets operating there and pledged its air force would keep flying missions near Turkish airspace, sounding a defiant note after Turkey shot down a Russian fighter jet.

Underscoring the message, Russian forces launched a heavy bombardment against insurgent-held areas in Latakia Wednesday, near where the jet was downed, rebels and a monitoring group said.

The United States and Europe both urged calm and continued dialogue in telephone conversations with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, a sign of international concern at the prospect of any escalation between the former Cold War enemies.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made no apology, saying his nation had simply been defending its own security and the "rights of our brothers in Syria." He made clear Turkish policy would not change.

Russian officials expressed fury over Turkey's action and spoke of retaliatory measures that were likely to include curbing travel by Russian tourists to Turkish resorts and some restrictions on trade.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov described it as a planned act and said it would affect efforts towards a political solution in Syria. Moscow would "seriously reconsider" its relations with Ankara, he said.

Jets believed to be Russian also hit a depot for trucks waiting to go through a major rebel-controlled border crossing with Turkey, Bab al-Salam, the head of the crossing said.

Syrian jets have struck the area before, but if confirmed to have been carried out by Russia, it would be one of Moscow's closest airstrikes to Turkish soil, targeting a humanitarian corridor into rebel-held Syria and a lifeline for ordinary Syrians crossing to Turkey.

But the Russian response was carefully calibrated, indicating Moscow did not want to jeopardize its main objective in the region: to rally international support for its view on how the conflict in Syria should be resolved.

"We have no intention of fighting a war with Turkey," Lavrov said.

Erdogan also said that Ankara had no intention of escalating tensions with Russia.

In Paris, President Francois Hollande expressed concern over the war of words raging between Ankara and Moscow.

"We must all work to make sure that the situation [between Russia and Turkey] de-escalates," Hollande told a joint news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Merkel said in response she would act "swiftly" to see how Germany could take up "additional responsibilities" to assist in the fight against terror.

[Nov 25, 2015] Downing of Russian plane reveals potential for more conflict

Notable quotes:

"... Russia will choose from a menu of asymmetric responses in retaliation against Turkey, including informal economic sanctions and providing military aid to Turkey's enemies, including the Kurds. ..."

Nov 25, 2015 | The Washington Post

In Moscow at least, the event is being seen as something larger than an attack on an errant jet.

... ... ...

The Russian Defense Ministry announced in a statement Wednesday that Russian fighter jets will now escort the bombers, and Moscow will move into Syria powerful new ground-to-air missiles that can reach across the country and far into Turkey from the Russian air base in the province of Latakia on Syria's Mediterranean coast.

Additionally, analysts say, Russia will choose from a menu of asymmetric responses in retaliation against Turkey, including informal economic sanctions and providing military aid to Turkey's enemies, including the Kurds.

... ... ...

Russian attitudes toward Turkey, which were reasonably friendly a year ago, have turned cold with alarming speed. Most Russian tour operators stopped selling travel packages to Turkey on Wednesday. Protesters in Moscow pelted the Turkish Embassy with eggs and rocks, shattering windows. Russian lawmakers introduced a bill that would criminalize denying that the mass killings of Armenians in 1915 by the Ottoman Empire was a "genocide." The issue remains highly sensitive: Turkey acknowledges that atrocities occurred but has long denied that what took place constituted a genocide.

... ... ...

Russia will seek retribution against Turkey but wants to avoid antagonizing the West, Baunov said. "If this becomes a fight between Russia and the West, then that goes against the goals of the intervention in the first place: to escape international isolation connected to sanctions," he said.

[Nov 25, 2015] The motive How Russias enemies benefit from the downing of Su-24

Notable quotes:

"... The nightmare of the birth of Kurdistan hangs over Turkey like a sword of Damocles for many decades. The emergence after the collapse of Saddam Hussein of de facto independent Iraqi Kurdistan has made the situation especially dangerous for Turkey, and the sudden appearance of ISIS aggressively fighting the Kurds, the ISIS army led by former Saddam generals, of course, made Turks more than happy. Turkish troops and the air force strike the Kurdish militias in Syria directly. ..."

"... In a sense, our policy today is paying the price for refusing to be consistent in solving geopolitical issues. We entered the game in Syria, with the outstanding issue of Crimea-Novorossia, as a result, today we have an exacerbation in Donetsk, energy and transport blockade of Crimea, a front against ISIS and a looming front against Turkey, which is a NATO member. ..."

"... So, today we are faced with the threat of war on several fronts, in which Turkey has assumed the role of lead instigator and aggressor who must lay siege to Russia. ..."

"... So the situation is really extreme. In a sense, we are cornered. ..."

"... If Russia wants to look good in this conflict it would have to force Turkey to publicly apologize for which it needs a set of effective sanctions and threats - from supporting Kurdistan to breaking the economic and tourist relations, and most importantly - be prepared for fierce stand-off of defense systems at the Syrian border. Then Russia can forget about supplying our group through the Bosphorus. In conclusion, we got another major front in addition to the already existing. ..."

"... And without the support of Washington Turkeys capabilities will shrink to the scale of the state, the power of which is simply not comparable with Russia. We must play not against the player, but against the game technicians. ..."

Fort Russ

...Historically, Turkey owns "the keys of our house," as the Straits of Bosporus and Dardanelles were called in the XIX century by the first Russian geopoliticians. Only with great difficulty in the XVII-XIX centuries Russia has managed to squeeze Turkey from Northern Black Sea coast, Novorossia and Crimea.

By an amazing coincidence the provocation occurred on the birthday of Alexander Suvorov. However, all attempts of the Russian Empire to gain control over the straits and over the ancient Byzantine capital Constantinople met with united resistance of the European powers led by Britain, supporting Turkey. The latest attempt to control the straits by Russia was carried out by Stalin, a response to which was the withdrawal of Turkey under the NATO umbrella.

By controlling the straits Turkey controls most of the supply of our military group in Syria. Montreux Convention makes the peacetime regime of the straits free for all the Black Sea countries, but in time of war Turkey gets the legal right to block the straits to the enemies and open them to the allies.

Turkey allies are NATO countries, and the enemy, judging by the downed aircraft, may be Russia. That is, a provocation with the Su-24 puts supply of our troops in Syria under jeopardy. The only other routs left - much more uncomfortable through Iran and potentially problematic through Iraq, where the United States have a big influence.

... Neo-islamist and neo-ottoman Erdogan carries out a very aggressive policy, not appealing to either Washington or Berlin or Brussels, in fact, seeking to restore the Ottoman Empire.

... Erdogan was the most fanatical enemy of Assad, as he hoped that Islamized Sunni Syria would become a vassal of Turkey, and perhaps even return inside its borders. Turkey was one of the midwives at the birth of ISIS - it is extremely interested in the local oil, and in the ISIS fight with the Iraqi and Syrian Kurds.

The nightmare of the birth of Kurdistan hangs over Turkey like a sword of Damocles for many decades. The emergence after the collapse of Saddam Hussein of de facto independent Iraqi Kurdistan has made the situation especially dangerous for Turkey, and the sudden appearance of ISIS aggressively fighting the Kurds, the ISIS army led by former Saddam generals, of course, made Turks more than happy. Turkish troops and the air force strike the Kurdish militias in Syria directly.

Russian operation in Syria mixed all the cards for Erdogan.

• First, it ensures the political future of Assad, or at least a successor agreed with Assad. Restored Syria will become Alawite-Christian-Shia-Sunni and certainly anti-Turkish. Oil extraction has been pulled out from under his nose, and Erdogan began resembling a furious Sherkhan ...
• Secondly, Russia, and now France, made it their ultimate goal the complete eradication of ISIS, which automatically means strengthening the Kurds and the reduction of the Turkish influence in the region.
• Moreover, Russia is doing this in tandem with Iran, which is de facto a key ally of Russia in the Middle East, an alliance of the type, where both sides are mutually reinforcing, both working for the common cause, and both sides benefit from the union.
• And Iran is Turkey's main rival in the struggle for regional dominance. And it also developed historically. Byzantium (the place of which is geographically occupied by Turkey) against the Iranian Sassanids, then Ottomans against Safavids and Qajar, and today Sunni Erdogan against the Shiite ayatollahs. That is, the strengthening of Iran by Russia would be tantamount to the collapse of the entire imperial policy of Turkey.

Naturally, the Turkish government is furious and wants to somehow kick Russia out of Syria. Turkey has repeatedly made threatening statements and gestures regarding alleged violations of Turkish borders by our aviation operating against Syrian terrorists.

No other country, including even the United States, made so many attacks against Russian foreign policy. Some experts do not rule out even the involvement of Turkish and Qatari security services in the tragedy with the Russian airplane in Sinai, though officially this hypothesis has never been voiced.

... ... ...

And here comes the next move - the downing of the Russian plane targeting the terrorists, under the pretext of its entry into the Turkish airspace. According to the Turkish version, the Russian Su-24 was shot down after warnings by the Turkish F-16s. According to our Ministry of Defense, the plane never left Syrian airspace.

There is no reason to believe that the Russian side is just being defensive and the Turkish is speaking the truth. The tactical goal of the Turks is with this plane crash to indicate an actual "no-fly zone" in northern Syria, which would save the militants from ultimate annihilation, which in Latakia, (where our plane was shot down) was quite close.

This idea of a no-fly zone was supported by the US hawks, who consider Russia an enemy number one. The last straw, apparently, was the demonstrative destruction by our air-space forces of oil convoys coming from ISIS territory to Turkey.

Most of all the incident with the plane crash is reminiscent of a classic provocation. The Turkish side showed a diagram in which the Russian bomber is flying over microscopic wedge of the Turkish territory deep into Syria. Turkish geographic wedge into Syria - is the so-called area of ​​Alexandretta, which Turkey annexed from France, which controlled Syria after World War I.

In 1938, parliament of this region declared the area an independent republic of Hatay - it was the last foreign policy operation of Kemal Ataturk before his death. In 1939, Turkey annexed Hatay.

This is how the Turkish wedge into the Syrian territory was formed, covered with a multitude of small protrusions. That a Russian plane could fly over one of them is, in principle, not impossible, as the border is very complex and elusive. But it only means that this time it was expected to be knocked down.

The triumphant demonstration of the body of our pilot on Turkish TV and generally surprisingly high preparedness by Turkish media to broadcast the incident in real time, speaks for it being a direct provocation against Russia.

... ... ...

Escalation of the conflict could also be in Turkey's interest, as this will allow it to cut the sea communications of our group in Syria, and perhaps even try to block it with ground forces, which Turkey has much more of in the region (although I would not overestimate the fighting capacity of the Turkish army) .

Turkey can carry out the aggressive actions under the NATO umbrella, because the alliance will likely have to intervene if the Turks employ article 5 of the "North Atlantic Treaty". The Western countries are seriously annoyed by Erdogan, but it is hardly enough to refuse to perform the obligations of the NATO treaty.

Russia's military options to influence Turkey are limited by the weakness of our Black Sea fleet, and most importantly - by the threat of escalating to a global conflict, and, moreover, by extremely disadvantageous configuration of the possible theater of the conflict, as our air-space forces are operating in the Turkish rear and their land communications and air bridge options depend on the politically unstable Iraq, just recently occupied by the US.

That is, before our forces in Syria looms the very threat of severing communications, which was seen from the outset as serious, in contrast to the mythical "militant attacks."

In a sense, our policy today is paying the price for refusing to be consistent in solving geopolitical issues. We entered the game in Syria, with the outstanding issue of Crimea-Novorossia, as a result, today we have an exacerbation in Donetsk, energy and transport blockade of Crimea, a front against ISIS and a looming front against Turkey, which is a NATO member.

So, today we are faced with the threat of war on several fronts, in which Turkey has assumed the role of lead instigator and aggressor who must "lay siege" to Russia. This role for Turkey is historically organic. Here we can recall the war of 1787-1891, which was directly provoked by the Western powers in response to the strengthening of Russia and its occupation of Crimea.

No sooner had Mother Catherine rode to Crimea with foreign delegations, and Potemkin showed his villages, as Turkey declared war on Russia, which made Suvorov and Ushakov famous. Moreover, for Russia it was a war on two fronts - simultaneously Sweden declared war on Russia, and its attack was repelled by the Baltic fleet with almost no involvement of ground forces.

So Russia finally managed, and with the Treaty of Jassy Turkey recognized Crimea Russian, and the Russian border has been pushed beyond the Dniester. But do not forget that Russia was then supported by Austria, but today there are not many of those who wish to go against Turkey in the European Union.

So the situation is really extreme. In a sense, we are cornered. If Russia flushes the incident, it would mean a public apology from our side, then all the Western media publications have already prepared the headlines that the cocky Russia has been put in its place by Turkey, reminding who is who.

If Russia wants to look good in this conflict it would have to force Turkey to publicly apologize for which it needs a set of effective sanctions and threats - from supporting Kurdistan to breaking the economic and tourist relations, and most importantly - be prepared for fierce stand-off of defense systems at the Syrian border. Then Russia can forget about supplying our group through the Bosphorus. In conclusion, we got another major front in addition to the already existing.

The most promising, in my opinion, would be to treat the situation as a systemic problem. That is, Turkish issue should be solved not in Syria but in Ukraine and Novorossia, because Turkey is just a piece of the puzzle in a global confrontation and its aggression will immediately lose its meaning for Washington, if we win at the front nearest to us.

And without the support of Washington Turkey's capabilities will shrink to the scale of the state, the power of which is simply not comparable with Russia. We must play not against the player, but against the game technicians.

[Nov 25, 2015] Sultan Erdogans War on Russia

sputniknews.com

Let's cut to the chase. The notion that Turkey's downing of a Russian Su-24 by a made in USA F-16 was carried out without either a green light or at least pre-arranged "support" from Washington invites suspension of disbelief.

Turkey is a mere vassal state, the eastern arm of NATO, which is the European arm of the Pentagon. The Pentagon already issued a denial - which, considering their spectacular record of strategic failures cannot be taken at face value. Plausibly, this might have been a power play by the neocon generals who run the Pentagon, allied with the neocon-infested Obama administration.

The privileged scenario though is of a vassal Turkey led by Sultan Erdogan risking a suicide mission out of its own, current, desperation.

Here's Erdogan's warped reasoning in a nutshell. The Paris tragedy was a huge setback. France started discussing close military collaboration not within NATO, but with Russia. Washington's unstated aim was always to get NATO inside Syria. By having Turkey/NATO - clumsily, inside Syrian territory - attacking Russia, and provoking a harsh Russian response, Erdogan thought he could seduce NATO into Syria, under the pretext (Article 5) of defending Turkey.

As Bay-of-Pigs dangerous as this may be, it has nothing to do with WWIII - as apocalyptic purveyors are braying. It revolves around whether a state which supports/finances/weaponizes the Salafi-jihadi nebulae is allowed to destroy the Russian jets that are turning its profitable assets into ashes.

President Putin nailed it; it was "a shot in the back". Because all evidence is pointing towards an ambush: the F-16s might have been actually waiting for the Su-24s. With Turkish TV cameras available for maximum global impact.

[Nov 25, 2015] Russia accuses Turkey of hypocrisy after Erdogan admits airspace violation does not justify attack

independent.co.uk

Turkey has been accused of hypocrisy over the downing of a Russian warplane on the Syrian border, after it emerged that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan himself said "a short-term border violation can never be a pretext for an attack".

The Russian jet which came down on Tuesday morning entered a small sliver of Turkish airspace for 17 seconds, according to the Turkish military's own data, while the Russian defence ministry says the Su-24 bomber was in Syria at all times.

The incident has echoes of a reverse situation in 2012, when the Syrian regime shot down a Turkish F-4 Phantom which, it said, entered its airspace off the country's north-east coast.

Then, Turkey spoke of its "rage" at the decision to shoot down the jet, which was on a training flight testing its own country's radar systems.

"A short-term border violation can never be a pretext for an attack", Mr Erdogan said at the time, threatening in response that "every military element approaching Turkey from the Syrian border… will be assessed as a military threat and treated as a military target".

[Nov 25, 2015] Washington using Turkey as a tool to destabilize Russia

Notable quotes:

"... "I don't think the Turkish government would have undertaken such an action against a military superpower like Russia without the consent of the US. It's simply ridiculous to suggest the Turkish military would have acted alone," ..."

"... "So they were carrying out this attack certainly with the backing of the US," ..."

"... "Until 2011, Turkey had a policy in the Middle East which was considered quite diplomatic and progressive; it had a good-neighborly policy," ..."

"... "In the future you're going to see Turkey emerge as a new maritime power." ..."

"... "... You have a Turkish speaking population in Central Asia and in the North Caucasus region. So Turkey has a lot of levers to pull with Russia, and what we're seeing with these attacks is an attempt to raise the tension with Russia," ..."

"... "Of course Russia is destroying the Islamic State, and Turkey needs to keep the IS going in Syria. They have been openly backing it, and that had been openly admitted by the western press," ..."

"... "This is much less about violating Turkish airspace and much more about the fact that both Russia and Turkey are backing different sides in the conflict in Syria. And we effectively have a proxy war. And these types of clashes and conflicts were completely predictable and inevitable", ..."

"... "advances US interests in this particular conflict, so they have no problem with those missiles being used in that capacity and in that direction." ..."

"... "extending and perpetuating the crisis." ..."

"... "The US has no particular problem in allowing its missiles to be used by rebel forces that it considers friendly," ..."

"... "It explains why there has been relative silence with respect to the use of its own missiles in this particular context." ..."

"... "Well, I think right now it's avoiding escalation and cooler heads hopefully will prevail so that Turkey doesn't try to invoke Article 5 under the NATO treaty [Collective Defence]," ..."

"... "But again cooler heads prevailed and they just decided to invoke Article 4 which was to have a consultation. Hopefully that will happen again," ..."

"... "What happened was that the Russian jet got too close to some very serious interests of Turkey, and that is why they probably took action," ..."

"... "It is probably one of the routes through which they send their forces in through Turkey into Syria to fight on behalf of the jihadist groups," ..."

"... "since it was aiming at possibly Al-Nusra or one of the other jihadist groups that was on the ground." ..."

"... "Turkey has tremendous relations and exchanges with Russia from energy to a lot of trade," ..."

"... "It is only right that the two sides get together and talk this thing out. But I don't see NATO getting engaged in this except to have consultations, because the last thing the European countries want - including the US – is an armed conflict with Russia," ..."

RT Op-Edge

NATO member state Turkey seems strangely committed to keeping Islamic State going strong in Syria, thus willing to take dangerous risks in confronting Russia in the region. Hopefully cooler heads will prevail, a group of experts told RT.

"I don't think the Turkish government would have undertaken such an action against a military superpower like Russia without the consent of the US. It's simply ridiculous to suggest the Turkish military would have acted alone,"O'Colmain told RT.

"So they were carrying out this attack certainly with the backing of the US," he added.

The political analyst argues we need to look at the region in general. "Until 2011, Turkey had a policy in the Middle East which was considered quite diplomatic and progressive; it had a good-neighborly policy," said O'Colmain.

The expert suggested that the long-term strategy of the US is to use Turkey as a tool to destabilize Russia, and that was confirmed recently by the head of Stratfor, George Friedman, who said: "In the future you're going to see Turkey emerge as a new maritime power."

"... You have a Turkish speaking population in Central Asia and in the North Caucasus region. So Turkey has a lot of levers to pull with Russia, and what we're seeing with these attacks is an attempt to raise the tension with Russia," O'Colmain told RT.

"Of course Russia is destroying the Islamic State, and Turkey needs to keep the IS going in Syria. They have been openly backing it, and that had been openly admitted by the western press," analyst added.

Turkey-Russia proxy war in Syria

We effectively have a proxy war, says Nader Hashemi, Assistant Professor of Middle East Politics at the University of Denver.

"This is much less about violating Turkish airspace and much more about the fact that both Russia and Turkey are backing different sides in the conflict in Syria. And we effectively have a proxy war. And these types of clashes and conflicts were completely predictable and inevitable", he told RT.

Nader Hashemi thinks US-made TOW missiles are being used in a way that "advances US interests in this particular conflict, so they have no problem with those missiles being used in that capacity and in that direction."

Meanwhile, the US holds the opinion that Bashar al-Assad is the primary source of the problem in Syria and Russia's policy in supporting Bashar al-Assad is "extending and perpetuating the crisis."

"The US has no particular problem in allowing its missiles to be used by rebel forces that it considers friendly," Hashemi continued.

"It explains why there has been relative silence with respect to the use of its own missiles in this particular context."

Turkey committed 'foolish and rash decision' in attacking Russian jet

Turkey feels a political need to show its strength inside the country as well as in the Middle East region, Senior Policy Consultant from British American Security Information Council Ted Seay told RT.

"In fact in early October there were supposedly a couple of incursions by Russian military aircraft into Turkish airspace – they were chased away," said Seay.

"What has happened now, I believe, is that Turkey is feeling some kind of political need, whether it is domestically or for its regional sort of audience, to show its strength in these things, and it has made a very foolish and rash decision in firing missiles at a Russian aircraft just to do this," he added.

He argues that "Turkey is in the unfortunate position of being a frontline state with the Syrian civil war, on the one hand, and a NATO ally, on the other."

"It looks to me, as someone who has worked in NATO for several years – that there was ineffective coordination beforehand with NATO authorities and with the allies about how Turkey ought to be ready to respond if, for example, future incidents along the lines of early October again with, again, these alleged airspace incursions happened again," Seay told RT.

He said that there should have been a rehearsal for what is and isn't acceptable under these circumstances. "Quite frankly, apart from self-defense, firing of air-to-air missiles is not acceptable," the expert added.

Acting against Russia not in Erdogan's interest

Ankara took action against a Russian fighter jet because the plane got too close to some serious interests of Turkey, former senior security policy analyst in the office of the US Secretary of Defense Michael Maloof told RT.

It is not in Erdogan's interest to escalate conflict with Russia any further, former senior security policy analyst in the office of the US Secretary of Defense Michael Maloof told RT.

"Well, I think right now it's avoiding escalation and cooler heads hopefully will prevail so that Turkey doesn't try to invoke Article 5 under the NATO treaty [Collective Defence]," Maloof told RT.

He said they tried that a few years ago when they shot down a Syrian jet. "But again cooler heads prevailed and they just decided to invoke Article 4 which was to have a consultation. Hopefully that will happen again," he added.

"What happened was that the Russian jet got too close to some very serious interests of Turkey, and that is why they probably took action," Maloof said.

"It is probably one of the routes through which they send their forces in through Turkey into Syria to fight on behalf of the jihadist groups," he told RT.

Maloof suspects the Russian jet was getting too close "since it was aiming at possibly Al-Nusra or one of the other jihadist groups that was on the ground."

Expert believes that it is really not in Erdogan's interest to escalate this thing any further. "Turkey has tremendous relations and exchanges with Russia from energy to a lot of trade," he said.

"It is only right that the two sides get together and talk this thing out. But I don't see NATO getting engaged in this except to have consultations, because the last thing the European countries want - including the US – is an armed conflict with Russia," Maloof added.

READ MORE: Downing of Russian Su-24 looks like a planned provocation - Lavrov

[Nov 25, 2015] Turkish jets gave us no warning before shooting

The sole survivor of the downed Russian warplane, its navigator no less, categorically denies that his aircraft crossed into Turkish airspace. He also says no visual or radio warning was given before his aircraft was fired at.

www.rt.com

The navigator of the Russian Su-24 shot down by a Turkish fighter jet on Tuesday insists that his plane did not cross into Turkey's airspace, and says he was given no visual or radio warning before being fired at.

"It's impossible that we violated their airspace even for a second," Konstantin Murakhtin told RT and other Russian media. "We were flying at an altitude of 6,000 meters in completely clear weather, and I had total control of our flight path throughout."

As well as denying Ankara's assertions that the plane was in Turkey's airspace, Murakhtin, who says he knows the mission area "like the back of my hand," also refuted Turkish officials' claims that the pilots were warned repeatedly.

"In actual fact, there were no warnings at all. Neither through the radio, nor visually, so we did not at any point adjust our course. You need to understand the difference in speed between a tactical bomber like a Su-24, and that of the F16. If they wanted to warn us, they could have sat on our wing," said Murakhtin, who is currently recuperating at Russia's airbase in Latakia, northern Syria.

"As it was, the missile hit the back of our plane out of nowhere. We didn't even have time to make an evasive maneuver."

READ MORE: Leaked Ankara UN letter claims Su-24's 'air space violation' lasted 17 seconds

As the plane was hit and went down in Syria, the two pilots ejected. Captain Sergey Rumyantsev was killed, with a rebel Turkmen brigade claiming they shot him to death while he was still parachuting.

Murakhtin was extracted in a 12-hour joint operation by Russian and Syrian special forces, in which a Russian marine died.

[Nov 25, 2015] NATO Is Harboring ISIS, And Heres The Evidence

Notable quotes:

"... Conspicuously missing from President Hollande's decisive declaration of war, however, was any mention of the biggest elephant in the room: state-sponsorship. ..."

"... Earlier this year, the Turkish daily Meydan reported citing an Uighur source that more than 100,000 fake Turkish passports had been given to ISIS. The figure, according to the US Army's Foreign Studies Military Office (FSMO), is likely exaggerated, but corroborated "by Uighurs captured with Turkish passports in Thailand and Malaysia." ..."

"... direct dealings between Turkish officials and ranking ISIS members was now 'undeniable.' ..."

"... The same official confirmed that Turkey, a longstanding member of NATO, is not just supporting ISIS, but also other jihadist groups, including Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda's affiliate in Syria. "The distinctions they draw [with other opposition groups] are thin indeed," said the official. "There is no doubt at all that they militarily cooperate with both." ..."

"... The former ISIS fighter told Newsweek that Turkey was allowing ISIS trucks from Raqqa to cross the "border, through Turkey and then back across the border to attack Syrian Kurds in the city of Serekaniye in northern Syria in February." ISIS militants would freely travel "through Turkey in a convoy of trucks," and stop "at safehouses along the way." ..."

"... In January, authenticated official documents of the Turkish military were leaked online, showing that Turkey's intelligence services had been caught in Adana by military officers transporting missiles, mortars and anti-aircraft ammunition via truck "to the al-Qaeda terror organisation" in Syria. ..."

"... According to other ISIS suspects facing trial in Turkey, the Turkish national military intelligence organization (MIT) had begun smuggling arms, including NATO weapons to jihadist groups in Syria as early as 2011. ..."

"... Documents leaked in September 2014 showed that Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan had financed weapons shipments to ISIS through Turkey. ..."

"... A report by the Turkish Statistics Institute confirmed that the government had provided at least $1 million in arms to Syrian rebels within that period, contradicting official denials. Weapons included grenades, heavy artillery, anti-aircraft guns, firearms, ammunition, hunting rifles and other weapons?-?but the Institute declined to identify the specific groups receiving the shipments. ..."

"... Turkey has also played a key role in facilitating the life-blood of ISIS' expansion: black market oil sales. Senior political and intelligence sources in Turkey and Iraq confirm that Turkish authorities have actively facilitated ISIS oil sales through the country. ..."

"... Last summer, Mehmet Ali Ediboglu, an MP from the main opposition, the Republican People's Party, estimated the quantity of ISIS oil sales in Turkey at about $800 million?-?that was over a year ago. ..."

"... Meanwhile, NATO leaders feign outrage and learned liberal pundits continue to scratch their heads in bewilderment as to ISIS' extraordinary resilience and inexorable expansion. ..."

"... "Had Turkey placed the same kind of absolute blockade on Isis territories as they did on Kurdish-held parts of Syria… that blood-stained 'caliphate' would long since have collapsed?-?and arguably, the Paris attacks may never have happened. And if Turkey were to do the same today, Isis would probably collapse in a matter of months. Yet, has a single western leader called on Erdo?an to do this?" ..."

"... The consistent transfers of CIA-Gulf-Turkish arms supplies to ISIS have been documented through analysis of weapons serial numbers by the UK-based Conflict Armament Research (CAR), whose database on the illicit weapons trade is funded by the EU and Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs. ..."

"... ISIS, in other words, is state-sponsored?-?indeed, sponsored by purportedly Western-friendly regimes in the Muslim world, who are integral to the anti-ISIS coalition. ..."

"... Remember when neocon intellectuals were talking about using proxy forces to roll back Syria in 1996? Good thing for Israel most mouth breathing morons only get their news from the zio box. ..."

www.zerohedge.com

Zero Hedge

For the better part of a year, Turkey remained on the sidelines in the "fight" against ISIS.

Then, on July 20, a powerful explosion ripped through the town of Suruc. 33 people were killed including a number of Socialist Party of the Oppressed (ESP) and Socialist Youth Associations Federation (SGDF) members who planned to assist in the rebuilding of Kobani.

The attack was promptly attributed to Islamic State who took "credit" for the tragedy the next day.

To be sure, the attack came at a rather convenient time for President Tayyip Erdogan. A little over a month earlier, the ruling AKP party lost its absolute parliamentary majority in part due to a strong showing at the ballot box for the pro-Kurdish (and PKK-aligned) HDP. What happened in the wake of the Suruc bombing was nothing short of a largely successful attempt on Erdogan's part to use fear and violence to scare the electorate into restoring AKP's dominance in snap elections that took place earlier this month.

In short, Erdogan used Suruc as an excuse to begin a "war on terror." Part and parcel of the new campaign was an invite from Ankara for Washington to use Turkey's Incirlik air base. Subsequently, Erdogan reminded the world that the PKK is also considered a terrorist organization and as such, the anti-ISIS campaign would also include a crackdown on Kurdish militants operating in Turkey. Erdogan proceeded to focus squarely on the PKK, all but ignoring ISIS while simultaneously undercutting the coalition building process on the way to calling for new elections. Unsurprisingly, AKP put on a much better showing in the electoral redo, and with that, Erdogan had succeeded in using ISIS as a smokescreen to start a civil war with the PKK, in the process frightening voters into restoring his party's grip on power.

Through it all, the PKK has suggested that Ankara is and always has been in bed with Islamic State. That contention will come as no surprise to those who frequent these pages. It's common knowledge that Turkey backs the FSA and participates in the US/Saudi-led effort to supply Syrian rebels with weapons, money, and training. Indeed, those weapons were on full display Tuesday when the FSA's 1st Coastal Brigade used a US-made TOW to destroy a Russian search and rescue helicopter. That came just hours after the Turkmen FSA-allied Alwiya al-Ashar militia posted a video of its fighters celebrating over the body of an ejected Russian pilot.

In short, Turkey has made a habit out of supporting anyone and everyone who opposes Assad in Syria and that includes ISIS. In fact, if one were to rank the US, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar in order of who is suspected of providing the most assistance to Islamic State, Turkey would likely top the list. Here's what Vladimir Putin had to say earlier today after Turkey downed the Russian Su-24:

• PUTIN: OIL FROM ISLAMIC STATE IS BEING SHIPPED TO TURKEY
• PUTIN SAYS ISLAMIC STATE GETS CASH BY SELLING OIL TO TURKEY
• PUTIN: ISLAMIC STATE GETS MILITARY SUPPORT FROM MANY STATES

It's with all of this in mind that we bring you excerpts from a new piece by Nafeez Ahmed who, you're reminded, penned a lengthy expose earlier this year explaining how the US views ISIS as a "strategic asset." In his latest, Ahmed takes a close look at the relationship between Ankara and Islamic State. The evidence is truly damning.

* * *

From "NATO is harbouring the Islamic State: Why France's brave new war on ISIS is a sick joke, and an insult to the victims of the Paris attacks," by Nafeez Ahmed, originally published in Medium

"We stand alongside Turkey in its efforts in protecting its national security and fighting against terrorism. France and Turkey are on the same side within the framework of the international coalition against the terrorist group ISIS." --Statement by French Foreign Ministry, July 2015

The 13th November Paris massacre will be remembered, like 9/11, as a defining moment in world history.

The murder of 129 people, the injury of 352 more, by 'Islamic State' (ISIS) acolytes striking multiple targets simultaneously in the heart of Europe, mark a major sea-change in the terror threat.

For the first time, a Mumbai-style attack has occurred on Western soil?-?the worst attack on Europe in decades. As such, it has triggered a seemingly commensurate response from France: the declaration of a nationwide state of emergency, the likes of which have not been seen since the 1961 Algerian war.

ISIS has followed up with threats to attack Washington and New York City.

Meanwhile, President Hollande wants European Union leaders to suspend the Schengen Agreement on open borders to allow dramatic restrictions on freedom of movement across Europe. He also demands the EU-wide adoption of the Passenger Name Records (PNR) system allowing intelligence services to meticulously track the travel patterns of Europeans, along with an extension of the state of emergency to at least three months.

Under the extension, French police can now block any website, put people under house arrest without trial, search homes without a warrant, and prevent suspects from meeting others deemed a threat.

"We know that more attacks are being prepared, not just against France but also against other European countries," said the French Prime Minister Manuel Valls. "We are going to live with this terrorist threat for a long time."

Hollande plans to strengthen the powers of police and security services under new anti-terror legislation, and to pursue amendments to the constitution that would permanently enshrine the state of emergency into French politics. "We need an appropriate tool we can use without having to resort to the state of emergency," he explained.

Parallel with martial law at home, Hollande was quick to accelerate military action abroad, launching 30 airstrikes on over a dozen Islamic State targets in its de facto capital, Raqqa.

[...]

Conspicuously missing from President Hollande's decisive declaration of war, however, was any mention of the biggest elephant in the room: state-sponsorship.

Syrian passports discovered near the bodies of two of the suspected Paris attackers, according to police sources, were fake, and likely forged in Turkey.

Earlier this year, the Turkish daily Meydan reported citing an Uighur source that more than 100,000 fake Turkish passports had been given to ISIS. The figure, according to the US Army's Foreign Studies Military Office (FSMO), is likely exaggerated, but corroborated "by Uighurs captured with Turkish passports in Thailand and Malaysia."

[...]

A senior Western official familiar with a large cache of intelligence obtained this summer from a major raid on an ISIS safehouse told the Guardian that "direct dealings between Turkish officials and ranking ISIS members was now 'undeniable.'"

The same official confirmed that Turkey, a longstanding member of NATO, is not just supporting ISIS, but also other jihadist groups, including Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda's affiliate in Syria. "The distinctions they draw [with other opposition groups] are thin indeed," said the official. "There is no doubt at all that they militarily cooperate with both."

In a rare insight into this brazen state-sponsorship of ISIS, a year ago Newsweek reported the testimony of a former ISIS communications technician, who had travelled to Syria to fight the regime of Bashir al-Assad.

The former ISIS fighter told Newsweek that Turkey was allowing ISIS trucks from Raqqa to cross the "border, through Turkey and then back across the border to attack Syrian Kurds in the city of Serekaniye in northern Syria in February." ISIS militants would freely travel "through Turkey in a convoy of trucks," and stop "at safehouses along the way."

The former ISIS communication technician also admitted that he would routinely "connect ISIS field captains and commanders from Syria with people in Turkey on innumerable occasions," adding that "the people they talked to were Turkish officials… ISIS commanders told us to fear nothing at all because there was full cooperation with the Turks."

In January, authenticated official documents of the Turkish military were leaked online, showing that Turkey's intelligence services had been caught in Adana by military officers transporting missiles, mortars and anti-aircraft ammunition via truck "to the al-Qaeda terror organisation" in Syria.

According to other ISIS suspects facing trial in Turkey, the Turkish national military intelligence organization (MIT) had begun smuggling arms, including NATO weapons to jihadist groups in Syria as early as 2011.

The allegations have been corroborated by a prosecutor and court testimony of Turkish military police officers, who confirmed that Turkish intelligence was delivering arms to Syrian jihadists from 2013 to 2014.

Documents leaked in September 2014 showed that Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan had financed weapons shipments to ISIS through Turkey. A clandestine plane from Germany delivered arms in the Etimesgut airport in Turkey and split into three containers, two of which were dispatched to ISIS.

A report by the Turkish Statistics Institute confirmed that the government had provided at least $1 million in arms to Syrian rebels within that period, contradicting official denials. Weapons included grenades, heavy artillery, anti-aircraft guns, firearms, ammunition, hunting rifles and other weapons?-?but the Institute declined to identify the specific groups receiving the shipments.

Information of that nature emerged separately. Just two months ago, Turkish police raided a news outlet that published revelations on how the local customs director had approved weapons shipments from Turkey to ISIS.

Turkey has also played a key role in facilitating the life-blood of ISIS' expansion: black market oil sales. Senior political and intelligence sources in Turkey and Iraq confirm that Turkish authorities have actively facilitated ISIS oil sales through the country.

Last summer, Mehmet Ali Ediboglu, an MP from the main opposition, the Republican People's Party, estimated the quantity of ISIS oil sales in Turkey at about $800 million?-?that was over a year ago.

By now, this implies that Turkey has facilitated over $1 billion worth of black market ISIS oil sales to date.

[...]

The liberal Turkish daily Taraf quoted an AKP founder, Dengir Mir Mehmet F?rat, admitting: "In order to weaken the developments in Rojova [Kurdish province in Syria] the government gave concessions and arms to extreme religious groups…the government was helping the wounded. The Minister of Health said something such as, it's a human obligation to care for the ISIS wounded."

The paper also reported that ISIS militants routinely receive medical treatment in hospitals in southeast Turkey-?including al-Baghdadi's right-hand man.

[...]

Meanwhile, NATO leaders feign outrage and learned liberal pundits continue to scratch their heads in bewilderment as to ISIS' extraordinary resilience and inexorable expansion.

[...]

As Professor David Graeber of London School of Economics pointed out:

"Had Turkey placed the same kind of absolute blockade on Isis territories as they did on Kurdish-held parts of Syria… that blood-stained 'caliphate' would long since have collapsed?-?and arguably, the Paris attacks may never have happened. And if Turkey were to do the same today, Isis would probably collapse in a matter of months. Yet, has a single western leader called on Erdo?an to do this?"

[...]

In his testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee in September 2014, General Martin Dempsey, then chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, was asked by Senator Lindsay Graham whether he knew of "any major Arab ally that embraces ISIL"?

General Dempsey replied:

"I know major Arab allies who fund them."

In other words, the most senior US military official at the time had confirmed that ISIS was being funded by the very same "major Arab allies" that had just joined the US-led anti-ISIS coalition.

These allies include Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, and Kuwait in particular.

[...]

Porous links between some Free Syrian Army (FSA) rebels, Islamist militant groups like al-Nusra, Ahrar al-Sham and ISIS, have enabled prolific weapons transfers from 'moderate' to Islamist militants.

The consistent transfers of CIA-Gulf-Turkish arms supplies to ISIS have been documented through analysis of weapons serial numbers by the UK-based Conflict Armament Research (CAR), whose database on the illicit weapons trade is funded by the EU and Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs.

[...]

ISIS, in other words, is state-sponsored?-?indeed, sponsored by purportedly Western-friendly regimes in the Muslim world, who are integral to the anti-ISIS coalition.

Which then begs the question as to why Hollande and other Western leaders expressing their determination to "destroy" ISIS using all means necessary, would prefer to avoid the most significant factor of all: the material infrastructure of ISIS' emergence in the context of ongoing Gulf and Turkish state support for Islamist militancy in the region.

WTFRLY

Every alternative theory about Syria and ISIS, Serena Shim proved, on video. They killed her the same day as those airdrops to the Kurds where one was confirmed to fall into ISIS hands...

White House, Media Silent One Year After Murder of US Reporter Who Exposed Western Links to ISIS October 20, 2015

Hugh G Rection

Remember when neocon intellectuals were talking about using proxy forces to "roll back" Syria in 1996? Good thing for Israel most mouth breathing morons only get their news from the zio box.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1438.htm

earleflorida

"Azerbaijan?' and Oil-- smack in the middle of the 'Silk Highway'...

http://us.wow.com/wiki/Israel-Azerbaijan_relations

http://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/israel-and-azerbaijan-geopolitical-reasons-for-stronger-ties-2/

this should give some color on a creepy`Mossad' Bibi

(does ^*cuibono want a 'bibi?) southpark

earleflorida

"Paris: Made in Libya, not Syria?" by Peter Lee

http://atimes.com/2015/11/paris-made-in-libya-not-syria/

[Nov 25, 2015] Turkeys Shootdown of Russian Jet What You Need to Know

Notable quotes:

"... Overt military response is unlikely, except that from now on any Turkish AF aircraft that enters Syrian airspace would be summarily destroyed. ..."

"... Obama remarked that if Putin stopped bombing "moderate" Syrian rebels, then Russian planes wouldn't get shot down. Judging from that remark, it would seem that the Turks and USA want to force the Russians to back away from bombing Nusra positions anywhere near the Turkish border, i.e. a de facto no-fly zone. ..."

"... Certainly there was nothing accidental or unforeseen about the Turkish attack. The Turks fully intended to attack some Russian aircraft and were waiting for an opportunity. ..."

"... The Syrian War is growing past the stage of proxy war. This is now heading toward conventional confrontation between powers. Few of the current world leaders have relevant experience during their lifetimes of either waging such wars, or of avoiding them. ..."

"... Obama's remarks certainly made me wonder if the the Turks had the green light from Washington. He also returned to the standard demand that Assad must go. His remarks appeared to put the blame on Russia and certainly won't help matters. I wouldn't put it pass the neocons that shooting down a Russian plane is all just part of the gameplan. ..."

"... What gets me is that this likely means that Erdogan is getting a much stronger grip on Turkish military, which historically was the only thing that held Turkey secular (in fact, it felt it was its mission from Kemal Ataturk). Or, in what could be even scarier is that military did this deliberately assuming any Putin's reaction would target Erdogan much more than the military, in which case a phrase "rogue generals playing with a nuclear power" comes to mind. ..."

"... As mentioned above, the best response Russia could make right now is to help Kurds with weapons/supplies and establishing no-fly zone over Syria's Kurds. Since Kurds are officially seen by most of the West as "good" (let's ignore the need to have everything black and white for a second), it would be very hard for Turkey to object, even if Russia shoots down some Turkish planes/helicopters over Syria. ..."

"... The governments of "new" members in the Balkans and even Central Europe may say whatever they want, they are figureheads. The populace will not allow any situation where they enter a war against Russia on behalf of Turkey. Too much bad history there, for six centuries now. In Bulgaria the man on the street is right now in a very bad mood and very anti-turk. ..."

"... Here, on the street, everyone see Turkey as an emerging Islamist menace, looking to grab some land in Europe. ..."

"... The Russian bomber shot down is one of the cascade of catastrophic events that started with the West's determination to destabilize Eurasia with proxy neo-Nazi and Jihadist forces and Russia's counter intervention into Syria. ..."

"... Its pretty clear that the Turks deliberately decided to attack a Russian plane in revenge for earlier Russian incursions, hoping that NATO membership protects them from a counter response. The historical analogies that come to mind are numerous – from Armenians carrying out attacks on Turks hoping that 'Christian powers' would come to their aid when the Turks retaliated, to Paul Pot attacking the Vietnamese assuming that China would come to his aid. Both those didn't exactly end well. ..."

"... He can do lots of things to make things more difficult for Turkey. Other people in this thread noted gas deliveries, tourist income, exports and those are a nice place to start. And how about arming the YPG/PKK; now that would be some poetic justice right there. ..."

"... I think Putin is probably, unfortunately, the most rational leader out of a sad bunch. I think the Russian response will be graduated: Cutting tourism, sabotaging Turkish exports with bureaucracy, Russian gas contracts will face sudden bureaucratic difficulties, later the Kurds may suddenly be much better armed and Russia will certainly bomb the everliving shit out of the entire "Turkish terrorist infrastructure" right along the borders, this time going with fighter escorts and perhaps even full ECM support (If they go with ECM support, *that* would be ominous indeed, once these systems are used, they get measured and analyzed, counter-counter measures come up and it's back to the lab for another 20 years). ..."

"... The danger to Russia is that the Turks close the Bophorus. Huge amounts of Russian trade and oil, and their supplies to Syria, ship through this point. ..."

"... The Turks can't and won't close the Bosphorus over economic sanctions. They can try over an eventual shoot-down of a Turkish jet over Syria, but then again the very presence of Turkish jets conducting bombing runs inside Syria is an act of aggression and unless Erdogan wants a Kurdish insurgency armed by Russia inside Turkey proper he won't try to close the shipping lanes. ..."

"... 'The difference between "attack" and "defense" can be infinitesimal, especially if you control the media.' ..."

"... Are the Turks the wild card or is this NATO's project green light? This seems more in line with the Russians must pay for Snowden, Crimea, and Assad than Turkey going off the reservation. ISIL is once again a secondary consideration as Russia must be further backed into a corner. Holland's request that Obama join Russia seems to have been conveniently preempted by world events. Putin is learning that there is no greater crime than embarrassing the West. ..."

"... McInerney said that while he was a NORAD commander in Alaska they would never have done anything like this. ..."

"... If one believes Sibel Edmonds analysis on Operation Gladio B, specifically centered on NATO and the CIAs fostering of criminal organizations to do their dirty work for them, extending so far as to breaking Interpols most wanted criminals out of prisons to work for them, then Turkeys role in fostering ISIS in Syria and the Uyghurs in Xinjiang make perfect sense. ..."

"... The question remains, who is actually conducting this asymmetric warfare? Who are the real puppet masters? My money is on the neocons and the MIC. ..."

"... Fast forward to last month and it is a Russian passenger jet blown up with 224 lives on board by ISIS - which most people know by now is funded, trained, and supplied by various parties including Langley. This week and this time it is a Russian jet fighting ISIS and its ilk shot down over the Syrian border by an actual NATO Turkish F16 jet. Then Youtube videos emerge of FSA rebels killing its ejected pilot and navigator. To crown the whole thing off, a Russian Search and Rescue helicopter is blown up with a US-made TOW missile. Provocations rarely come this extreme and so serendipitously for the provocateurs. ..."

naked capitalism

Krell, November 25, 2015 at 12:12 am

Does Turkey think that Russia will just shut up and accept their dead? Seriously? Some of the articles in our Western media have been truly bad on this development and have been mocking both Putin and the Russians. The whole thing absolutely reeks of a set-up, including the destruction of that rescue helicopter. Whatever the Russians decide to do it will not end well for Turkey.

Putin might just decide to establish a protective umbrella over the Syrian Kurds and stop the Turks from bombing them. Will the Turks then complain to the UN or NATO when some of their aircraft are taken out whilst illegally flying uninvited over a foreign country (Syria) and bombing its citizens (Syrian Kurds)?

As for the Turkmen in Syria, I would not want to be them after murdering those pilots. Especially when they could have traded them to Russia for only 'light' treatment by the Russian military. Turkey apparently, has been wanting to take this part of Syria and fold it into Turkey. Not gunna happen now but I am guessing that the Islamist militants will be marked for special targeting now.

OIFVet, November 25, 2015 at 12:28 am

Overt military response is unlikely, except that from now on any Turkish AF aircraft that enters Syrian airspace would be summarily destroyed. There will be a huge pressure from on Putin to send a few turks to meet their allah but such didn't work in Ukraine and won't work now.

Rather, the huge Russian tourist stream to Turkey will disappear, Turkish exports to Russia will be banned, gas supplies will be disrupted due to 'technical reasons' and 'pipeline maintenance', and various financial and government institutions will find themselves under a sustained electronic attacks.

In private Europe is horrified, regardless of what poodle Stoltenberg might say, and most blame Sultan Erdogan for the migrant crisis and for the subsequent blackmail of Europe by the neo-ottoman idiocracy in Ankara. This went too far, and came too soon after Paris, for even the lemmings not to notice whose side Turkey is really on. I am next door right now, and let's just say that the 'man on the street' opinion is harshly and violently anti-turk. Europe will soon be making a choice either way, and 0bama is not helping the US much with his peevish belligerence.

Bill Smith, November 25, 2015 at 7:00 am

Might be tricky doing that as other countries aircraft are staging out of Turkey to bomb targets in Syria.

OIFVet, November 25, 2015 at 7:17 am

If Russia and Syria declare that any aircraft entering Syrian airspace from Turkey will be considered hostile and is therefore subject to being shot down, US and French aircraft will bug out and use the Med corridor, pending Russian and Syrian approval. Either way, it will be open season on Turkish jets in Syrian airspace. And rightly so, all Turkey does is enable ISIS by bombing the PKK and arming/oil trading with IS. Putin did not just state that Russia was stabbed in the back by terrorist enablers for nothing.

Roland, November 25, 2015 at 1:10 am

Obama remarked that if Putin stopped bombing "moderate" Syrian rebels, then Russian planes wouldn't get shot down. Judging from that remark, it would seem that the Turks and USA want to force the Russians to back away from bombing Nusra positions anywhere near the Turkish border, i.e. a de facto no-fly zone.

Certainly there was nothing accidental or unforeseen about the Turkish attack. The Turks fully intended to attack some Russian aircraft and were waiting for an opportunity.

The Syrian War is growing past the stage of proxy war. This is now heading toward conventional confrontation between powers. Few of the current world leaders have relevant experience during their lifetimes of either waging such wars, or of avoiding them.

My prediction is that Russia will fight much harder in Syria than would seem "rational." For Russia the question is whether or not they can sustain an alliance. For Russia the Syrian War is not just about Syria, it is about Belarus and other former Soviet republics.

I will be surprised if the Russians back off here. I wonder what the Turks will do when a future batch of Russian air strikes near the Turkish border all have proper fighter escort? Would the Turks engage in a full-fledged air superiority battle at the Syrian frontier?

Would the Russians risk exposing valuable electronic countermeasures assets to enemy observation and assessment, in anything less than a major war?

At any rate, ISIS leaders are chortling. These stupid big lugs are about to lurch into one another and send themselves brawling and sprawling. And all they had to do was shoot some concertgoers!

William C, November 25, 2015 at 8:50 am

The FT is reporting that Turkey has imposed an exclusion zone over Syrian airspace that runs fifteen miles into Syria.

Those whom the Gods wish to destroy?

Jagger, November 25, 2015 at 9:47 am

Obama remarked that if Putin stopped bombing "moderate" Syrian rebels, then Russian planes wouldn't get shot down.
judging from that remark, it would seem that the Turks and USA want to force the Russians to back away from bombing Nusra positions anywhere near the Turkish border, i.e. a de facto no-fly zone.

Obama's remarks certainly made me wonder if the the Turks had the green light from Washington. He also returned to the standard demand that Assad must go. His remarks appeared to put the blame on Russia and certainly won't help matters. I wouldn't put it pass the neocons that shooting down a Russian plane is all just part of the gameplan.

Fajensen, November 25, 2015 at 2:22 am

Europe has been at war with Turkey – on and off – for about 1300 years.

It is pretty unlikely (and certain political suicide) that any European country will enter a war *for* Turkey, regardless of any NATO onligations. It's just not done!
The joker is of course the new NATO members (and Sweden) they are always gagging to have go at Russia – if they could just get the US to do all the work for them. Unfortunately, The US have enough bellicose crazies to like this idea.

vlade, November 25, 2015 at 4:16 am

The general feeling in what you call the "new NATO" countries (i.e. ex Soviet block) is that Turkey massively overstepped. They have deep seated (and historically very much justified) suspicion of Russia and its actions, but they like islamists even less, and Turkey's shift from secularism went much less unnoticed than in the rest of Europe/US. After all, Russia isn't the only one who invaded/occupied most of them during the last few hundreds of years..

What gets me is that this likely means that Erdogan is getting a much stronger grip on Turkish military, which historically was the only thing that held Turkey secular (in fact, it felt it was its mission from Kemal Ataturk). Or, in what could be even scarier is that military did this deliberately assuming any Putin's reaction would target Erdogan much more than the military, in which case a phrase "rogue generals playing with a nuclear power" comes to mind.

As mentioned above, the best response Russia could make right now is to help Kurds with weapons/supplies and establishing no-fly zone over Syria's Kurds. Since Kurds are officially seen by most of the West as "good" (let's ignore the need to have everything black and white for a second), it would be very hard for Turkey to object, even if Russia shoots down some Turkish planes/helicopters over Syria.

OIFVet, November 25, 2015 at 5:36 am

Exactly. I imagine you are Serbian, I am from Bulgaria by birth and currently there on a short vacation. The governments of "new" members in the Balkans and even Central Europe may say whatever they want, they are figureheads. The populace will not allow any situation where they enter a war against Russia on behalf of Turkey. Too much bad history there, for six centuries now. In Bulgaria the man on the street is right now in a very bad mood and very anti-turk. Accordingly even the government figureheads are unusually subdued and cautious in what they say in reaction to the downing of the Russian jet. To put not too fine a point on it, people are scared of a nuclear conflagration and the situation is explosive.

fajensen, November 25, 2015 at 6:18 am

Sorry my mistake for generalizing.

I was thinking about Georgia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – which only last week (according to Danish media) were eager for "steps to be taken against Russia". Sweden would be totally eager to prove to the world (which actually don't care about Sweden) that they are *so totally not racists* that they (well, "they" being the official Sweden) will readily step up and defend any belief system, the more alien, obnoxious and perverse the better, for "proof of non-racistness". It's really, really weird and strange.

Here, on the street, everyone see Turkey as an emerging Islamist menace, looking to grab some land in Europe.

VietnamVet, November 25, 2015 at 3:57 am

The Russian bomber shot down is one of the cascade of catastrophic events that started with the West's determination to destabilize Eurasia with proxy neo-Nazi and Jihadist forces and Russia's counter intervention into Syria. There are five nuclear countries flying sorties over Syria; Russia, USA, Israel, France and the United Kingdom. World War III is underway but it is unacknowledged. If the rulers headquartered in London, Frankfurt, New York and Washington DC don't fear extinction from the ignition of hydrogen bombs overhead, then that is exactly what will happen. The War will inevitably escalate with no one trying to damp it down.

One alternative to destroying the Northern Hemisphere is to forget regime change and join in an alliance with Russia and the rest of the world to eliminate the Islamic State and quarantine radical Islam.

Plutoniumkun, November 25, 2015 at 5:32 am

Its pretty clear that the Turks deliberately decided to attack a Russian plane in revenge for earlier Russian incursions, hoping that NATO membership protects them from a counter response. The historical analogies that come to mind are numerous – from Armenians carrying out attacks on Turks hoping that 'Christian powers' would come to their aid when the Turks retaliated, to Paul Pot attacking the Vietnamese assuming that China would come to his aid. Both those didn't exactly end well.

I think the key danger here is Russia. Putin knows full well that Germany and France will not respond to a request for help from Turkey, no matter what NATO's agreements state. He may see it as an ideal opportunity to rip NATO apart. He may gamble that a strike against Turkey strong enough to humiliate it, but calculated enough to ensure that the the Germans/French won't join in (the UK will do whatever Obama tells them) would make the NATO agreement a dead letter. He may well succeed. The problem comes if he miscalculates.

drexciya, November 25, 2015 at 5:48 am

Turkey needs to be taken down a bit, so I wouldn't mind Putin learning Erdogan a lesson. But I think Putin is more subtle. He can do lots of things to make things more difficult for Turkey. Other people in this thread noted gas deliveries, tourist income, exports and those are a nice place to start. And how about arming the YPG/PKK; now that would be some poetic justice right there.

vlade, November 25, 2015 at 5:59 am

strike directly against Turkey? that would escalate massively, and could backfire like Polish invasion in WW2, where Hitler thought allies would just roll over as ever before. Except they didn't. Rest assured that this similarity would be drawn out very quickly.

On the other hand, shooting down a Turkish jet or three over Syria, especially if the jets were bombing Kurds, now that would make a different story. Mind you, even that would be a large esaclation but unlikely to draw in NATO...

fajensen, November 25, 2015 at 6:40 am

NATO should have croaked along with the USSR. I'm quite fine with NATO splitting at the seams – because – right now it's a bunch of obsolete war-planners looking for some fight to justify their continued existence, any fight, in fact, NATO today is pretty much a mercenary force for the USA. No way nearly enough equipped for taking on any serious opponent, but good enough for bombing the shit out of places with poor air defense and weak friends. Of course 50% of the population feels the exact opposite way.

I think Putin is probably, unfortunately, the most rational leader out of a sad bunch. I think the Russian response will be graduated: Cutting tourism, sabotaging Turkish exports with bureaucracy, Russian gas contracts will face sudden bureaucratic difficulties, later the Kurds may suddenly be much better armed and Russia will certainly bomb the everliving shit out of the entire "Turkish terrorist infrastructure" right along the borders, this time going with fighter escorts and perhaps even full ECM support (If they go with ECM support, *that* would be ominous indeed, once these systems are used, they get measured and analyzed, counter-counter measures come up and it's back to the lab for another 20 years).

Maybe the Greek's will see an opportunity to pop one off at one of the many, many Turkish violations of Greek airspace?

OIFVet, November 25, 2015 at 6:54 am

The turks violate Greek airspace several thousand times a year. It's the turkish version of American exceptionalism.

Jim Haygood, November 25, 2015 at 9:24 am

'NATO – right now it's a bunch of obsolete war-planners looking for some fight to justify their continued existence, any fight.'

Amen, bro. WW I demonstrated how strategic alliances with mutual defense guarantees could escalate disastrously.

NATO lost its reason for existence when the USSR collapsed. Then it began violating its own treaty with "out of area" aggression (Serbia, Kosovo, Bosnia, Afghanistan).

Clearly, NATO has degenerated into a rogue organization, serving as a fig leaf for US military occupation of Europe 70 years after the war ended. Will Europe ever develop enough backbone to expel its American occupiers?

russell1200, November 25, 2015 at 8:40 am

The danger to Russia is that the Turks close the Bophorus. Huge amounts of Russian trade and oil, and their supplies to Syria, ship through this point.

It is the obvious response to a too forceful response, and obviously escalates in an extreme way.

OIFVet, November 25, 2015 at 8:54 am

The Turks can't and won't close the Bosphorus over economic sanctions. They can try over an eventual shoot-down of a Turkish jet over Syria, but then again the very presence of Turkish jets conducting bombing runs inside Syria is an act of aggression and unless Erdogan wants a Kurdish insurgency armed by Russia inside Turkey proper he won't try to close the shipping lanes. Erdogan is nuts but I don't think he is that stupid. In any case, as a native Bulgarian I view a non-Kemalist, islamist, sultan erdogan-led turkey as a danger for regional and global peace and in such case I won't mind one bit the return of Constantinople to Greece and to Orthodox christendom.

nothing but the truth, November 25, 2015 at 7:12 am

you will definitely see SAM missiles being launched against Turkish aircraft from Syrian border areas.

The way NATO is set up it will inevitably lead to a member country pulling everyone into a world war.

The difference between "attack" and "defense" can be infinitesimal, especially if you control the media.

NATO members will push Russia till it retaliates, then all NATO says "game on" and WWW3 is in full mode.

Turkey wouldnt dare do this unless it was part of NATO. So NATO basically has increased member bellicosity and misadventurism.

Jim Haygood, November 25, 2015 at 9:31 am

'The difference between "attack" and "defense" can be infinitesimal, especially if you control the media.'

Our brave stenographers on the front lines of the media battle already are producing telling strikes, such as this morning's NYT article asserting Turkey's 'nuanced reasons' for attacking Russia's aircraft.

Huddled in our bomb shelters, we can draw comfort from the majestic chords of the media's Mighty Wurlitzer.

ex-PFC Chuck, November 25, 2015 at 7:29 am

The Russian responses under Putin will be subtle, strategic surprises, and most likely effective just as they have been in the Ukraine situation. But they will be short of anything that gives cause to the Erdogan regime to formally declare war. Otherwise Turkey will be legally entitled to close the Bosphorus and Dardanelles to Russian shipping, which would greatly complicate their conduct of operations in Syria. As has been said many times in the past two years, he is playing chess while his opponents are at best capable of something between tic tac toe and checkers.

hemeantwell, November 25, 2015 at 8:35 am

Right. Putin has a many options and he will not react in so headstrong a way as to lose them. Erdogan was able - accusations of vote rigging aside - to boost AKP support through crisis escalation. The shoot down is in a strong sense more of the same. But now Putin can work to isolate Turkey from the rest of NATO, undercut Turkey's already struggling economy, justify aid to the Kurds. I wonder what Erdogan's domestic opposition will do with this. Does anyone know what Gulen and his supporters think?

Jagger, November 25, 2015 at 9:59 am

Right. Putin has a many options and he will not react in so headstrong a way as to lose them.

The problem is public opinion in Russia. They will expect a response and Putin must respond in such a manner that he doesn't get assassinated or couped out of a job because he did not respond forcefully. Putin is a competent or better leader but not invulnerable.

ltr, November 25, 2015 at 7:40 am

An absolute disgrace. Turkey has been encouraging and supporting the destruction of the Syrian government for years and is supporting the destructive insurgents in Syria. Turkey has betrayed the rest of NATO and betrayed Russia.

Dino Reno, November 25, 2015 at 8:43 am

Are the Turks the wild card or is this NATO's project green light? This seems more in line with the Russians must pay for Snowden, Crimea, and Assad than Turkey going off the reservation. ISIL is once again a secondary consideration as Russia must be further backed into a corner. Holland's request that Obama join Russia seems to have been conveniently preempted by world events. Putin is learning that there is no greater crime than embarrassing the West.

Cabreado

"Meanwhile, NATO leaders feign outrage and learned liberal pundits continue to scratch their heads in bewilderment as to ISIS' extraordinary resilience and inexorable expansion."

The most important dynamic in play...

And the most important response is to (re)arrange your thinking to vigorously protect the Principles, because this next war is also set to rip this place apart from within.

Demdere

Pretty clear case of Treason, I believe.

http://www.usconstitution.net/xconst_A3Sec3.html

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

The Congress shall have power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder ofTreason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.

------

The problem will be sorting out who to charge. If the CIA has cooperated with ISIS, and is therefore, as an agency, guilty of Treason, are all of the other people in government who gave any in the CIA aid and comfort also guilty?

I think we should err on the side of justice here, and charge them all.

https://thinkpatriot.wordpress.com/2015/11/20/ghandis-terrorists/

Just to remind everyone that this is a psyops game, and that anyone can play. As a systems guy and player of games, I assure you that our distributed side of a periphery-vs-cental side of an evolutionary arms race is a guaranteed win. It is our ingenuity against theirs, them mostly bureaucracies.

But we will become very poor.

https://thinkpatriot.wordpress.com/patriot-games/

news printer

McInerney: Turkey Shooting Down Russian Plane Was a 'Very Bad Mistake'

McInerney said that while he was a NORAD commander in Alaska they would never have done anything like this.

"This airplane was not making any maneuvers to attack the territory," McInerney said. "It was probably pressing the limits, that's fair. But you don't shoot 'em down just because of that."

http://insider.foxnews.com/2015/11/24/lt-gen-mcinerney-turkey-shooting-down-russian-plane-was-very-bad-mistake

YHC-FTSE

If one believes Sibel Edmond's analysis on Operation Gladio B, specifically centered on NATO and the CIA's fostering of criminal organizations to do their dirty work for them, extending so far as to breaking Interpol's most wanted criminals out of prisons to work for them, then Turkey's role in fostering ISIS in Syria and the Uyghurs in Xinjiang make perfect sense. It compliments the efforts of the war hawks in Washington who benefit from conflict: The neocon zionazis, the MIC and others (Israel foremost, but Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States and Turkey who use the fear of terrorism as a pretext to keep them in power and excuse their military expansion)

The question remains, who is actually conducting this asymmetric warfare? Who are the real puppet masters? My money is on the neocons and the MIC.

Whoever it may be, a pattern of behaviour is emerging to start a major world war by poking at Russia to the extreme point of no return. Consider Ukraine and its PM: Yatsenyuk (Supported by US State Dept Victoria Nuland and NATO as the face of the Kiev coup) announcing on national tv that he would burn all Russian speakers alive. Then this actually taking place all over Ukraine, most famously at Odessa perpetrated by another Zionazi and Israeli dual national Igor Kolomoisky. Even the current president Poroshenko now admits that the 2014 euromaidan "revolution" was a coup d'etat. As if this wasn't incitement enough, we've had almost a continuous diet of MSM demonization of Putin with several hundred fake "Russian invasion" reports and the downing of MH17. At the same time, NATO mechanized troops have been gathering (In the case of Baltic States) a mere few hundred feet from the Russian border.

Fast forward to last month and it is a Russian passenger jet blown up with 224 lives on board by "ISIS" - which most people know by now is funded, trained, and supplied by various parties including Langley. This week and this time it is a Russian jet fighting ISIS and its ilk shot down over the Syrian border by an actual NATO Turkish F16 jet. Then Youtube videos emerge of FSA rebels killing its ejected pilot and navigator. To crown the whole thing off, a Russian Search and Rescue helicopter is blown up with a US-made TOW missile. Provocations rarely come this extreme and so serendipitously for the provocateurs.

My two cents: There is a pattern to provoke a direct major war with Russia by Victoria Nuland/Kagan and her ilk. It's insane and it's happening. This latest incident is a lure to force Russia into rash action that will be used as the "proof" that has been so lacking to date to demonize Putin in the msm worldwide to hearten the public to taste the blood of war. Sadly, it is delusional to think anyone will survive the full scale nuclear exchange this war may initiate. The tiny portion of humanity left will most likely be rendered sterile by the radiation from thousands of broken and unattended nuclear power stations around the globe. It's game over if this is allowed to continue. But maybe sanity will prevail and it will be a footnote in the annals of close calls.

HowdyDoody

Turkey was also up to its neck in supporting Chechen jihadists used against Russia. They were both a transit route and a location for training camps.

Anunnaki

http://atimes.com/2015/11/turkey-gets-toehold-on-syrian-territory-finally/

It's worse than we think. Obama has given Erdogan the go ahead to seize Syrian Turkmen villages at the G20 gathering

Shooting the plane down in Syrian territory is ipso facto a Turkish No Fly Zone

That is why it has happened now. Expect Turkish vs Russian air battles as Turkey defends its ill gotten gains.

Dr. Bonzo

Very credible mainstream-available evidence links the 9/11 attacks to the CIA, Mossad, Pakistani intelligence and Saudi Arabia. Why should we be surprised? The PNAC policy paper stated plain as day for all to read regime change in Syria, Iraq and Iran. A casual look back at the mideast wars of the last 14 years suggest this very dynamic was at play and remains at play. That the mideast becomes even more destabilized isn't considered an issue of consequence. This is the chief miscalculation by the Masters of the Universe. Israel is territorially not large enough to survive a serious nuclear attack, and the increased nuclear proliferation and enmity engendered by this fucktarded regime change obsession all but guarantees this outcome. It's not an issue of if, but when.

Phillyguy

The goal of US/NATO (including France)/GCC is regime change in Syria. This goal has not changed, Paris attacks notwithstanding. Turkey functions as a US/NATO vassal state, doing the west's bidding. Sultan Erdogan's dreams of a neo-Ottoman empire may well end up turning Turkey in a smoldering mass of rubble.

dogismycopilot

ISIS is setting up a Consulate in Istabul: http://awdnews.com/top-news/islamic-state-isis-to-open-its-first-consula...

grunk

It's time for the media to rehabilitate the ISIS image from fanatical extremists into fierce fighters for liberty.

JohnFrodo

The takeover of Rushbaldi revealed the facts above long ago.

Mike Masr

What is ISIS? A U.S. smokescreen for regime change and war ops

http://novorossia.today/what-is-isis-a-u-s-smokescreen-for-regime-change...

[Nov 25, 2015] Russian foreign minster calls plane downing 'planned provocation'

www.washingtonpost.com

Lavrov's comments offered the clearest signals that Moscow views the downing as more than an accidental mishap while Russia steps up its airstrikes in Syria to support the embattled government of President Bashar al-Assad.

Turkey and its Western allies have backed rebel groups seeking to topple Assad in Syria's nearly five-year civil war. Pentagon officials, meanwhile, have raised worries about possible mishaps between Russia's air campaign and a U.S.-led coalition conducting airstrikes against the Islamic State.

... ... ...

"We have serious doubts this was an unintended incident and believe this is a planned provocation," Lavrov said after discussions with Turkey's foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu. Lavrov did not elaborate on Moscow's claims.

... ... ...

Moscow further alleged at Turkey was sheltering the Islamic State from Russian attacks. "A stab in the back from the accomplices of terrorism," said Putin on Tuesday.

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev on Wednesday warned that the "damage will be hard to repair." Russian officials have raised possible responses such as a ban on Turkish airlines or canceling a proposed gas pipeline between the two countries.

So far, however, Russia has not taken any steps other than to recommend Russian tourists not visit Turkey. Russian tour operators have cancelled most of their packages to Turkish resorts, the Interfax news service reported. More than 3 million tourists visited the popular vacation destination from Russia last year.

[Nov 25, 2015] An Invisible US Hand Leading to War Turkey's Downing of a Russian Jet was an Act of Madness

www.counterpunch.org

Russia - knowing that this is really not about Turkey, but about push-back by the US against growing Russian power and influence, both globally and in the Middle East region - could also choose to respond in a venue where it has more of an advantage, for example in Ukraine, where it could amp up its support for the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Lugansk, perhaps by downing a Ukrainian military plane, or more broadly, providing air cover to protect those regions. Russia could also, less directly, provide aid to Kurdish rebels in both Syria and in Turkey itself who are fighting against Turkish forces.

I'm sure there are plenty of other options available to Russia also to turn the screws against both Turkey and NATO, without openly pushing buttons that could lead to a direct confrontation with the US and its NATO fiction. Working in Russia's favor is that the US aside, the European nations of NATO have no desire to be at war with Russia. There are clearly hotheads in the US Congress, the Pentagon, and perhaps even within the neo-con-infested Obama administration, who are pushing for just such a mad showdown. But in Europe, where the actual fighting would mostly occur, and where memories are still strong of the destructive power of war, there is no taste for such insanity. It could, in fact, have been a big error in the long run for the US to push Turkey into such a deadly provocation, if it leads to more anti-American sentiment among the citizens of such key NATO countries as France, Germany, Italy and Britain.

Dave Lindorff is a founding member of ThisCantBeHappening!, an online newspaper collective, and is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press).

[Nov 25, 2015] 17 Seconds That Changed The World - Leaked Letter Exposes Turkeys Hair-Trigger Reality

Notable quotes:

"... Either way, Turkey seems to have tipped their hand, and that is probably VASTLY more important to how this plays out than the death of a pilot in an armed conflict. ..."

"... All Russia has to do is stay a few miles from the border and keep blowing shit up and killing assholes. ..."

"... Economics and finance is how this war is being fought. Syria is just the hot spot. Look for action on the banking, finance, trade, and economic front. It is coming. ..."

"... Stop all the chatter and simply as, Cui Bono? The answer... as always in deceptive operations like this - is the same. ..."

"... Erdogan set a fucked up precedent for world stability and the West hasn't heard the last of the rhetoric it used in defending his insane actions. Turkey, like every country, has a right to defend its territory and its airspace. -Barack Obama ..."

"... [stated after Turkey destroyed a Russian jet, which resulted in the death of at least one of the pilots, while the jet was conducting anti-terror operations in Syria against ISIS - admitted bombers of a Russian civilian airliner] ..."

"... Russia, Iran, Syria will prevail because they must prevail. There is no alternative for them. Putin is a very cautious man despite being displayed as hazardeur by western presstitute media. He knows exactly what he is doing and he will be doing it until the logical goal has been reached. For a psychopath like Erdogan, longing for Ottoman empire 2.0 ruled by a mixture of muslim brothers like himself and Turkey-style Wahabists, losing control over the airspace over Syria near the border to Turkey is absolutely inacceptable. By ordering to shoot down that SU-24 Erdogan made a big strategic miscalculation and simply accelerated his complete loss of control, i.e., what he fears most. ..."

"... For Russia it comes as a gift: It has now all reasons to set up a total no-fly zone over North Syria referring to today's incident. And no power in the world can prevent Russia from doing this. ..."

"... That F16 was on an intercept course, it wasn't patrolling up and down the border. That shooting was a deliberate act especially as it took place inside Syrian airspace. ..."

"... You really think Turkey did this without American neocon plotting via NATO via Turkey? All on their own? ..."

"... Apparently Russians are a big source of Tourist income for Turkey. And then, there is all that ISIS blood-oil flowing through Turkey which will now be stopped by Russian carpet bombing of ISIS tankers. ..."

"... Also its going to be awfully hard for Turkish planes to raid into Syria, what with the Russians waiting to mistakenly shoot them down and have local rebels shoot Turkish pilots. ..."

"... One thing I keep meaning to look into, before all my mentors and sources kick the bucket... and I can no longer kick the can, is what the level of Turkish involvement in the various disturbances in the Caucasus actually after the collapse of the Soviet Union. People write about Saudi Arabia's ideological ties, but in the rush to extract Caspian energy for the west, some of those projects took suspicious turns for the strategic benefit of Ankara. ..."

"... The F16 was loitering waiting for the chance to pounce. No way was this anything innocent and baloney about Turkey defending its air space is retard-spew. ..."

"... The preponderance of facts as we now have them would indicate in Russia's favor. ..."

"... They seem to indeed be trying to pull NATO in on Article 5. ..."

"... Mr Erdogan spoke of Turkey's rage at the decision to shoot down the F-4 Phantom on 22 June and described Syria as a clear and present threat . A short-term border violation can never be a pretext for an attack, he said. ..."

Zero Hedge

The highlighted passage reads: "Disregarding these warnings, both planes, at an altitude of 19,000 feet, violated Turkish national airspace to a depth of 1.36 miles and 1.15 miles in length for 17 seconds from 9:24:05 local time."

So, as RT notes, even if we buy Turkey's story (i.e. if we accept that Russia actually did violate Turkish airspace), then it would appear that Ankara has something of an itchy trigger finger. That is, Turkey was apparently willing to risk sparking a wider conflict between NATO and Russia over a 17 second incursion.

But something doesn't sound right.

Journalists: Learn to do basic maths. Look at Turkey's statement to UN: 1.15 miles / 17 seconds x 60 x 60 = 243 miles/hour = 391 km/hour

- WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) November 24, 2015

In other words, as Sputnik put it earlier this evening, "according to those numbers, the Su-24 would have had to be flying at stall speed."

The Su-24's max speed is 1,320 km/hour.

So if we assume the Su-24 was actually going much faster, was 17 seconds more like 5 seconds? Or perhaps even less?

It's important not to forget the context here. Ankara is fiercly anti-Assad and in addition to being generally displeased with Russia's efforts to support the regime, just four days ago, Turkey summoned Russian ambassador Andrey Karlov over the alleged bombing of Turkish villages near the border. "Turkey has asked Russia to 'immediately end its operation,'" AFP reported, adding that "Ankara warned bombing villages populated by the Turkmen minority in Syria could lead to 'serious consequences.'"

Of course Russia wasn't just bombing Turkish civilians for the sheer hell of it. It's likely Moscow was targeting the very same FSA-affiliated Alwiya al-Ashar militiamen who shot and killed the parachuting Russian pilot earlier today.

In short, it looks like Ankara saw an opportunity to shoot down a Russian jet in retaliation for strikes on Turkish rebel fighters who are operating alongside anti-Assad forces. Erdogan is essentially gambling that Russia will not retailiate militarily against Turkey because doing so would open the door for a direct confrontation with NATO.

Time will tell whether that gamble pays off or whether Moscow decides that the next time a Turkish F-16 gets "lost" over Latakia, a little payback is in order.

Femme Fatale

You got it all wrong. That's not what happened at all. Erdogan told Putin: "the Israelis wagged the Americans who wagged me, so what's a poor Turk to do?" >> https://goo.gl/qazI3V

-.-'s picture

Physics are a bitch Erdogan.

TahoeBilly2012

That's some cheeze whiz shit right there, Turkey supports ISIS, so does France....bastards, you kill your own people in cafes!!

Chuckster

Exactly...if you watch the Russians they are always slow to release information. It's like they enjoy letting the rest of the world make asses out of themselves then they come forth with powerful evidence. They have satellites so I expect to see some evidence of what they are saying in the future. In the meantime paybacks are a bitch.

highandwired

Russian defense ministry has already released the satellite info:

https://youtu.be/KGlJFoIBKQw?t=1m16s

CrazyCooter

In war, people die. Equipment is lost. It is fscking reality people. Maybe the pilot fscked up. Maybe they crossed the border and thought it wouldn't matter. Maybe they didn't and just got ambushed.

Either way, Turkey seems to have tipped their hand, and that is probably VASTLY more important to how this plays out than the death of a pilot in an armed conflict. Or, to quote Stalin, "One death is a tragedy, a million a statistic." Y'all won't be pity partying for the next 1,000 dead Russian pilots.

All Russia has to do is stay a few miles from the border and keep blowing shit up and killing assholes.

Economics and finance is how this war is being fought. Syria is just the "hot" spot. Look for action on the banking, finance, trade, and economic front. It is coming.

Good thing Turkey doesn't need Russia for goods, services, parts, energy, food, and shit like that.

Regards,

Cooter

J S Bach

Stop all the chatter and simply as, "Cui Bono?" The answer... as always in deceptive operations like this - is the same.

Supernova Born

They'll be some chagrin in Western capitals the day China starts quoting all this right of self-defense and defense of territory stuff when the next military ship intentionally cruises right past a Chinese base on the Senkakus or Spratleys.

"You are within Chinese territorial waters. You have 17 seconds to depart."

Erdogan set a fucked up precedent for world stability and the West hasn't heard the last of the rhetoric it used in defending his insane actions. "Turkey, like every country, has a right to defend its territory and its airspace." -Barack Obama

[stated after Turkey destroyed a Russian jet, which resulted in the death of at least one of the pilots, while the jet was conducting anti-terror operations in Syria against ISIS - admitted bombers of a Russian civilian airliner]

giovanni_f

No (I am unsure how such a US-centric crap even deserves the label "assessment"). Russia, Iran, Syria will prevail because they must prevail. There is no alternative for them. Putin is a very cautious man despite being displayed as hazardeur by western presstitute media. He knows exactly what he is doing and he will be doing it until the logical goal has been reached. For a psychopath like Erdogan, longing for Ottoman empire 2.0 ruled by a mixture of muslim brothers like himself and Turkey-style Wahabists, losing control over the airspace over Syria near the border to Turkey is absolutely inacceptable. By ordering to shoot down that SU-24 Erdogan made a big strategic miscalculation and simply accelerated his complete loss of control, i.e., what he fears most.

For Russia it comes as a gift: It has now all reasons to set up a total no-fly zone over North Syria referring to today's incident. And no power in the world can prevent Russia from doing this.

The answer to "cui bono" is Russia but as in chess it was the enemy to make the gift.

Hope that helps for you amateur geopoliticians.

Wile-E-Coyote

That F16 was on an intercept course, it wasn't patrolling up and down the border. That shooting was a deliberate act especially as it took place inside Syrian airspace. Now I expect Russia to hit anything with a pulse in that area, your move Turkey, but be careful Xmas is coming you could get a right stuffing.

an_indian

You really think Turkey did this without American neocon plotting via NATO via Turkey? All on their own?

Apparently Russians are a big source of Tourist income for Turkey. And then, there is all that ISIS blood-oil flowing through Turkey which will now be stopped by Russian carpet bombing of ISIS tankers.

Look for more such Turkish villages to be bombed in future and some of those bombs/missiles losing their way (like the cruise missile that supposedly landed in Iran) and landing on Turkish soil.

Also its going to be awfully hard for Turkish planes to raid into Syria, what with the Russians waiting to "mistakenly" shoot them down and have local rebels shoot Turkish pilots.

This is going to get really complicated real fast.

Urban Redneck

Perhaps nominally, but I think Turkey had the most, relatively, to lose. Petroleum is somewhat fungible, and the current glut notwithstanding, a buyer generally be can found near the current market price. The Turks, however, are traders and if a pipeline doesn't flow through Turkey, their cut is eliminated. One thing I keep meaning to look into, before all my mentors and sources kick the bucket... and I can no longer kick the can, is what the level of Turkish involvement in the various disturbances in the Caucasus actually after the collapse of the Soviet Union. People write about Saudi Arabia's ideological ties, but in the rush to extract Caspian energy for the west, some of those projects took suspicious turns for the strategic benefit of Ankara.

Max Steel

Here is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccENeRldkW4

The F16 was loitering waiting for the chance to pounce. No way was this anything innocent and baloney about "Turkey defending its air space" is retard-spew.

Most importantly they are not at war with each other so Turkish plane could have escorted them out but NOPE.

Turkey's airspace was violated 114 times in one year by Greek, Israeli, and Italian aircraft They somehow avoided shooting any down. "Air space violations are incidents that happen almost every day, and are resolved in a matter of minutes within international law," the Turkish General Staff said in a statement. Six airplanes violated Turkish airspace last week alone, the General Staff said, of which none were shot down and left Turkey's airspace after they were warned by Turkish personnel.

A violation of one to two kilometers is accepted as "natural" given the speed of aircraft, the statement said. This year's violations of Turkish airspace lasted between 20 seconds and nine minutes, which showed "airspace violations can be resolved by warning and interceptions," the statement said."

cheech_wizard

On a bright note:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2015/11/25/russia-halts-gas...

Last line in the article is priceless.

Temperatures in Ukraine where most homes rely on piped gas for central heating were below freezing Wednesday morning.

SmittyinLA

Russia won't retaliate against Turkey, they'll target Erdogan and his donors-personally like Israelis, behind the jihad are businessmen with assets and interests-that they're gonna lose shortly.

Financial punishment is coming for "friends of Erdogon"

Putin will make it personal, Russia doesn't do "calm", they do "stoic".

css1971

Sampling period. The turkish account of 17 seconds could be related to the sampling period on their monitoring system, but it looks like a large overestimation.

Now, if you look at the Russian realtime tracking, they clipped the border maybe, but didn't enter Turkish airspace :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Cs8jdJKSGo

So it comes down to how accurate are the monitoring systems whether the plane entered Turkish airspace or not. He said, she said.

There's a different question though, even if you take the Turkish explanation. As a NATO member, do you shoot down planes :

1. That has entered your airspace literally for seconds and has clearly exited by the time you shoot it down that part is quite clear.

2. From a country which had an agreement in place ahead of time explicitly to prevent exactly this situation.

No, you don't. Unless you are explicitly and deliberately and cynically attempting to escalate the situation.

lakecity55

The preponderance of facts as we now have them would indicate in Russia's favor.

At the least, it would have taken more time for the Turks to set up the shot than any time the bomber may have been in their airspace. A needless provocation on Turkey's part. The math is very telling; at the claimed speed, the bomber would indeed be flying too slow. You can look the bomber's specs up on the intertubes.

They seem to indeed be trying to pull NATO in on Article 5.

jughead

Mr Erdogan spoke of Turkey's "rage" at the decision to shoot down the F-4 Phantom on 22 June and described Syria as a "clear and present threat". "A short-term border violation can never be a pretext for an attack," he said.

whoopsie

Noplebian

The Road to WW3......
http://beforeitsnews.com/conspiracy-theories/2015/11/us-gives-their-prox...

Last of the Middle Class

Definitely a speed trap waiting, got perfect video footage of the event too. hmmmmm. Turkey was protecting their RADICAL muslim brothers they do NOT want bombed. That is what happened and now the want NATO to intervene on their behalf. Fuck them to hell and back let Putin bomb their radical muslim asses too.

[Nov 25, 2015] Russia to deploy S-400 air defense system in Hmeimim airbase

sana.sy

Russian President Vladimir Putin approved deploying S-400 air defense system at the Russian airbase in Hmeimim in Lattakia, the Kremlin announced on Wednesday.

Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the President approved the Russian Defense Ministry's proposal to deploy the S-400 system, Russia's most advanced anti-aircraft defense system.

Earlier, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said at a Defense Ministry meeting that S-400 will be deployed in Hmeimim airbase after a Russian Su-24 aircraft was downed yesterday by an air-to-air missile launched from a Turkish F-16 fighter jet when it was returning from an anti-terrorist mission in the northern countryside of Lattakia.

The S-400 is employed to ensure air defense using long- and medium-range missiles that can hit aerial targets at ranges up to 400 kilometers. The S-400 is capable of hitting tactical and strategic aircraft as well as ballistic and cruise missiles. The system includes a set of radars, missile launchers and command posts, and is operated solely by the Russian military.

[Nov 25, 2015] Alarm bells toll for Turkish tourism sector over Russia crisis

www.hurriyetdailynews.com

Turkish tourism representatives have voiced concern after Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov advised Russians on Nov. 24 not to visit Turkey, after Turkey downed of a Russian plane on the Syrian frontier.

Lavrov also said the threat of terrorism in Turkey was no less than in Egypt, where a bomb attack brought down a Russian passenger plane last month.

Russia's tourism agency then recommended the suspension of package holiday sales to Turkey.

"This is no good. We cannot lose the Russian market, which is the second largest source of Turkey's tourism sector. We have already lost over 800,000 Russian tourists over this year due to economic woes in [Russia], and had to make significant cuts in hotel prices to overcome our losses in addition to other concessions. Despite this, we still cannot close the gap," said the head of the Turkish Hoteliers Federation (TUROFED), Osman Ayık.

... ... ...

While 3.3 million Russian tourists visited Turkey in 2014, Turkey saw a decrease of approximately 25 percent in the number of tourists from Russia and its neighbors over this year. However, Turkey did become more attractive for Russian tourists after Moscow suspended flights to Egypt.

Turkey's tourism revenues declined 4.4 percent, reaching only $12.29 billion in the third quarter, the Turkish Statistics Institute (TÜİK) said on Oct. 30, amid security concerns and a decrease in the number of Russian tourists visiting the country.

[Nov 25, 2015] Why it was done? The simple answer is to put pressure on Russia to force it to withdraw from Syria

www.kp.ru

That Turkish F16 fighter pilot alone could not take a decision about the attack. Especially in the border area. Usually every opportunity is used to resolve the situation peacefully. The pilot of a Turkish fighter definitely got the order to land from very high command. But it is unlikely Turkey independently decided about the attack on Russian military aircraft. Most likely, the approval of this provocation was given on the Potomac river. Question: for what?

The simple answer is to put pressure on Russia to force it to withdraw from Syria. But the authors of this provocation here clearly miscalculated. First, in the near future we should expect increase of air strikes on sites under the control of the ISIS.

Secondly, bombers in Syria will no longer fly without cover of fighters, and every attempt of attack on our aircraft will get an adequate response. And finally, third, because Russia is the only invited to the military presence and aid the country's only legitimate government of Syria, now our air defenses and will be hard to clap each attempt any incursion into Syrian airspace by forces that we ourselves define as hostile.

[Nov 25, 2015] Turkey's Stab in the Back

Nov 25, 2015 Antiwar.com

This incident has revealed what the real sides are in the Syrian civil war: who is fighting whom, and for what. The Russian plane crashed into Syrian territory and one of the pilots was shot from the skies as he parachuted: this barbaric act was captured on video by the rebels, who are being reported as affiliated with the Turkmen "10th Brigade." This is just for public consumption, however: in reality, the area is controlled by an alliance of rebel forces dominated by the al-Nusra Front, which is the official Syrian affiliate of al-Qaeda. The jihadists took control of the area in March of this year, and it has been the focal point of recent fighting between al-Qaeda and Syrian government forces backed by the Russian air offensive.

... ... ...

Putin's accusation that this is "a stab in the back by the accomplices of terrorists" is absolutely correct – but he isn't just talking about Turkey, whose Islamist regime has been canoodling with the terrorists since the start of the Syria civil war. Washington and its allies, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Qatar – who have been directly aiding ISIS as well as the "moderate" head-choppers – is indirectly responsible for the downing the Russian plane – including a barbaric attack on the rescue helicopter, which was downed by a US-provided TOW missile launcher.

... ... ...

it's the Americans who want a repeat of the Cuban missile crisis, not Putin....

NOTES IN THE MARGIN

You can check out my Twitter feed by going here. But please note that my tweets are sometimes deliberately provocative, often made in jest, and largely consist of me thinking out loud.

I've written a couple of books, which you might want to peruse. Here is the link for buying the second edition of my 1993 book, Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement, with an Introduction by Prof. George W. Carey, a Foreword by Patrick J. Buchanan, and critical essays by Scott Richert and David Gordon (ISI Books, 2008).

You can buy An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (Prometheus Books, 2000), my biography of the great libertarian thinker, here

[Nov 25, 2015] Why Did Turkey Attack a Russian Plane

Notable quotes:

"... Why would the Turks do that? Because Russia is supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, apparently with considerable success, and Turkey has been extremely persistent in their demands that he be removed. Al-Assad is seen by Turkey, rightly or wrongly, as a supporter of Kurdish militancy along the long and porous border with Turkey. This explains why Ankara has been lukewarm in its support of the campaign against ISIS, tacitly cooperating with the terrorist group, while at the same time focusing its own military effort against the Kurds, which it sees as an existential threat directed against the unity of the Turkish Republic. ..."

"... Would Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan do something so reckless? ..."

"... if his objective was to derail the creation of a unified front against terrorist and rebel groups in Syria and thereby weaken the regime in Damascus, he might just believe that the risk was worth the potential gain. ..."

The American Conservative

Why would the Turks do that? Because Russia is supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, apparently with considerable success, and Turkey has been extremely persistent in their demands that he be removed. Al-Assad is seen by Turkey, rightly or wrongly, as a supporter of Kurdish militancy along the long and porous border with Turkey. This explains why Ankara has been lukewarm in its support of the campaign against ISIS, tacitly cooperating with the terrorist group, while at the same time focusing its own military effort against the Kurds, which it sees as an existential threat directed against the unity of the Turkish Republic.

Would Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan do something so reckless? Only he knows for sure, but if his objective was to derail the creation of a unified front against terrorist and rebel groups in Syria and thereby weaken the regime in Damascus, he might just believe that the risk was worth the potential gain.

Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is executive director of the Council for the National Interest.

[Nov 24, 2015] Nato meets as Russia confirms one of two pilots dead after jet shot down - live updates

Notable quotes:

"... Turkey's international airports have also been busy. Many, if not most, of the estimated 15,000-20,000 foreign fighters to have joined the Islamic State (Isis) have first flown into Istanbul or Adana, or arrived by ferry along its Mediterranean coast. ..."

"... The influx has offered fertile ground to allies of Assad who, well before a Turkish jet shot down a Russian fighter on Tuesday, had enabled, or even supported Isis. Vladimir Putin's reference to Turkey as "accomplices of terrorists" is likely to resonate even among some of Ankara's backers. ..."

"... Lavrov, speaking to reporters in the southern Russian city of Sochi, advised Russians not to visit Turkey and said the threat of terrorism there was the no less than in Egypt, where a bomb attack brought down a Russian passenger plane last month. ..."

"... One of the possible retaliatory measures Russia could take would be ban flights to Turkey, as Moscow did with Egypt after the Metrojet bombing over Sinai last month, writes Shaun Walker. There are dozens of flights a day between the two countries, so such a move would undoubtedly seriously affect trade and tourism. ..."

www.theguardian.com

Martin Chulov

When Putin labeled Turkey "accomplices of terrorists," he was hinting at complex relationship which includes links between senior Isis figures and Turkish officials, explains the Guardian's Martin Chulov in this analysis.

Turkey's international airports have also been busy. Many, if not most, of the estimated 15,000-20,000 foreign fighters to have joined the Islamic State (Isis) have first flown into Istanbul or Adana, or arrived by ferry along its Mediterranean coast.

The influx has offered fertile ground to allies of Assad who, well before a Turkish jet shot down a Russian fighter on Tuesday, had enabled, or even supported Isis. Vladimir Putin's reference to Turkey as "accomplices of terrorists" is likely to resonate even among some of Ankara's backers.

From midway through 2012, when jihadis started to travel to Syria, their presence was apparent at all points of the journey to the border. At Istanbul airport, in the southern cities of Hatay and Gaziantep – both of which were staging points – and in the border villages.

Foreigners on their way to fight remained fixtures on these routes until late in 2014 when, after continued pressure from the EU states and the US, coordinated efforts were made to turn them back.

Lavrov cancels planned visit to Turkey

No great surprise this, but Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has cancelled a planned visit to Turkey.

Lavrov was due to visit Ankara on Wednesday for bilateral talks. Turkish officials had insited it would go ahead as planned.

Lavrov, speaking to reporters in the southern Russian city of Sochi, advised Russians not to visit Turkey and said the threat of terrorism there was the no less than in Egypt, where a bomb attack brought down a Russian passenger plane last month.

One of the possible retaliatory measures Russia could take would be ban flights to Turkey, as Moscow did with Egypt after the Metrojet bombing over Sinai last month, writes Shaun Walker. There are dozens of flights a day between the two countries, so such a move would undoubtedly seriously affect trade and tourism.

(That's it from me. I'm handling the live blog over to Mark Tran).

Shaun Walker

...Writing on Twitter Alexei Pushkov, the head of the Russian parliament's international relations committee, said: "Ankara clearly did not weigh the consequences of its hostile acts for Turkey's interests and economy. The consequences will be very serious."

Here's video of Putin's response to the downing of the Russia jet:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2015/nov/24/vladimir-putin-turkey-russian-jet-video

Here are the key quotes from Putin's statement:

• "The loss today is a stab in the back, carried out by the accomplices of terrorists. I can't describe it in any other way."
• "Our aircraft was downed over the territory of Syria, using air-to-air missile from a Turkish F-16. It fell on the Syrian territory 4km from Turkey."
• "Neither our pilots nor our jet threatened the territory of Turkey."
• "Today's tragic event will have significant consequences, including for Russia-Turkish relations ... Instead of immediately getting in contact with us, as far as we know, the Turkish side immediately turned to their partners from Nato to discuss this incident, as if we shot down their plane and not they ours."
• "Do they want to make Nato serve ISIS? ... We hope that the international community will find the strength to come together and fight against the common evil."

Summary

... ... ...

Russia's president Vladimir Putin has warned Turkey of 'serious consequences' after a Russia fighter jet was shot down close to Turkey's border with Syria. Putin described the incident as a "stab in the back" and accused Turkey of siding with Islamic State militants in Syria.

... ... ...

[Nov 24, 2015] Russo-Syrian Forces Close to Cutting Off ISILs Supply Routes From Turkey

Notable quotes:

"... "The endgame is at hand, and only the most desperate measures can hope to prevent Russia and Syria from finally securing Syria's borders. Turkey's provocation is just such a measure," he emphasizes. ..."

"... "As in the game of chess, a player often seeks to provoke their opponent into a series of moves," Cartalucci notes. ..."

sputniknews.com

Geopolitical analyst Tony Cartalucci draws attention to the fact that over the recent weeks Russian and Syrian forces have been steadily gaining ground in Syria, retaking territory from ISIL and al-Qaeda.

"The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) has even begun approaching the Euphrates River east of Aleppo, which would effectively cut off ISIS [ISIL] from its supply lines leading out of Turkish territory," Cartalucci narrates in his latest article for New Eastern Outlook.

He explains that from there, Syrian troops with Russian air support would move north, into the very "safe zone" which Washington and Ankara have planned to carve out of Syria. Cartalucci points out that the "safe zone" includes a northern Syria area stretching from Jarabulus to Afrin and Al-Dana.

If Syrian troops establish their control over this zone, the Western plan of taking and holding the territory (with the prospect of further Balkanization of the region) would fall apart at the seams. In light of this, the regime change project, harbored by the West since the very beginning of the Syrian unrest, would be "indefinitely suspended," Cartalucci underscores.

"The endgame is at hand, and only the most desperate measures can hope to prevent Russia and Syria from finally securing Syria's borders. Turkey's provocation is just such a measure," he emphasizes.

"As in the game of chess, a player often seeks to provoke their opponent into a series of moves," Cartalucci notes.

According to the geopolitical analyst, Russia's best choice now is to continue winning this war, eventually taking the Jarabulus-Afrin corridor. By fortifying this area Russian and Syrian forces would prevent NATO from invading Syria, at the same time cutting off the ISIL and al-Nusra Front supply route from Turkey.

Russo-Syrian victory would have far-reaching consequences for the region as a whole. "With Syria secured, an alternative arc of influence will exist within the Middle East, one that will inevitably work against Saudi and other Persian Gulf regimes' efforts in Yemen, and in a wider sense, begin the irreversible eviction of Western hegemony from the region," Cartalucci underscores.

[Nov 24, 2015] Putin condemns Turkey after Russian warplane downed near Syria border

Notable quotes:

"... "We have always treated Turkey as a friendly state. I don't know who was interested in what happened today, certainly not us. And instead of immediately getting in contact with us, as far as we know, the Turkish side immediately turned to their partners from Nato to discuss this incident, as if we shot down their plane and not they ours." ..."

www.theguardian.com

A government official said: "In line with the military rules of engagement, the Turkish authorities repeatedly warned an unidentified aircraft that they were 15km or less away from the border. The aircraft didn't heed the warnings and proceeded to fly over Turkey. The Turkish air forces responded by downing the aircraft.

More on this topic: Turkey caught between aiding Turkmen and economic dependence on Russia

"This isn't an action against any specific country: our F-16s took necessary steps to defend Turkey's sovereign territory."

The Turkish UN ambassador, Halit Cevik, told the UN Security Council in a letter that two planes had flow a mile into Turkey for 17 seconds. "Following the violation, plane 1 left Turkish national airspace. Plane 2 was fired at while in Turkish national airspace by Turkish F-16s performing air combat patrolling in the area," he wrote.

... ... ...

Putin said there would be "serious consequences" for Russia-Turkish relations.

"We have always treated Turkey as a friendly state. I don't know who was interested in what happened today, certainly not us. And instead of immediately getting in contact with us, as far as we know, the Turkish side immediately turned to their partners from Nato to discuss this incident, as if we shot down their plane and not they ours."

[Nov 24, 2015] The Russians had it coming to them

Schadenfreude ecstasies of UK conservatives. They are glad that Turkey shot down Russian bomber. Not very surprising as Cameron wanted to ally with ISIS against President Asad forces just two years ago. Comments were not allowed for this article.

Notable quotes:

"... Turks would certainly resist any attempt by Russia to launch retaliatory action against the Turkmen, who yesterday claimed they had shot dead the two Russian pilots as they attempted to parachute to safety, although this was later denied by Turkish officials. ..."

"... Turkey funds a number of Turkmen militias in northern Syria that are fighting to overthrow the Assad regime. ..."

"... Mr Putin has badly misread Turkey's determination to defend its interests and, by so doing, has further complicated the tangled web of alliances that underpin the Syrian conflict. ..."

Nov 24, 2015 | Telegraph

The challenge now, for Nato as well as for Russia, is to prevent tensions between Moscow and Ankara from spiralling out of control. Turkey's relations with Russia are already strained following Moscow's Syrian intervention, with the Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan warning that Turkey could cut its lucrative energy ties with Russia. The Turks would certainly resist any attempt by Russia to launch retaliatory action against the Turkmen, who yesterday claimed they had shot dead the two Russian pilots as they attempted to parachute to safety, although this was later denied by Turkish officials.

Turkey funds a number of Turkmen militias in northern Syria that are fighting to overthrow the Assad regime. It is unlikely the Turks would tolerate Russian attacks on their ethnic allies, which could easily lead to direct military confrontation between Russia and Turkey, with all the implications that would have for the Nato alliance, which would then be obliged to defend Turkey's borders.

Mr Putin has badly misread Turkey's determination to defend its interests and, by so doing, has further complicated the tangled web of alliances that underpin the Syrian conflict. He has also made life more difficult for David Cameron, who will tomorrow tell the Commons about his own plans for Britain to participate in the air war against Isil. Like Mr Putin, Mr Cameron says he wants to launch air strikes against Isil in Syria. But, after yesterday, Mr Cameron can be in no doubt that, however he views Mr Putin's role in the conflict, it will most certainly not be that of an ally.

[Nov 24, 2015] Sultan Erdogan has been served notice

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7343nXyGS0s

Notable quotes:

"... However, it is wrong to conclude that the Turkish demarche is a mere tactical ploy. There is also the backdrop of the robust Turkish push for establishing a 'no-fly zone' in northern Syria to be kept in view. The demarche is linked to a live broadcast by Erdogan on Wednesday where he underscored that the creation of 'no-fly' and 'safe' zones is crucial to resolving the Syrian crisis… ..."

"... …Put differently, the race for Aleppo has begun. The point is, the Turkish-American operation comes at a time when with Russian air cover, Syrian government forces are struggling to retake Aleppo, which has been under the control of opposition groups for two years. To be sure, the Turkish demarche on Friday threatening Russia with "serious consequences" falls in perspective. ..."

"... The US role in this daring Turkish enterprise remains hidden from view. Senior US officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry, are credited with privately expressing views supportive of the Turkish proposal on free-trade zone, and leading Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has openly backed the idea, but President Barack Obama has so far preferred to stand in the shade with an ambivalence that appeared to weigh against the 'no-fly zone'… ..."

"... Russia's best bet is to simply continue winning the war. Taking the Jarabulus-Afrin corridor and fortifying it against NATO incursions while cutting off ISIS and other terrorist factions deeper within Syria would be perhaps the worst of all possible retaliations. ..."

"... Such a provocation is exactly what the West would do if it were losing in Syria. And Putin doesn't have to prove anything to the Russian people. ..."

"... Erdogan is feeling especially froggy. He says he will establish a humanitarian safe zone between Jarabulus and the Mediterranean with his allies. God help us all. ..."

"... Turkey's territorial integrity cannot include 5 miles of Syrian territory to which it helps itself as a security zone. And Stoltenberg is a tool who should never be taken seriously. He would institute a NATO tax and pour the money directly into arms purchases if he could – he is a dream leader if you are a defense contractor. ..."

"... At the WH news today ….Obama was his usual watermouth in chief clown self…..He kept referring to Hollande as "Francois"….as if they were frat boys smokin' a joint and swillin' beer… ..."

"... But he still is not thru running his unhelpful and provocative trap…He then tries to marginalize the Russkie anti ISIS coalition effort…and condescendingly chides and berates Putin for not toeing the line that Obama hasn't even thought out as to what or where to tow to begin with!!! Then Hollande chimes in with the usual 'Assad must go' mantra…. ..."

"... The NATO freaks have to keep a steadying hand on Francois, lest he wander off the reservation… ..."

"... War is continuation of politics by other means. Diplomatic successes of Russia created backlash and Russia was backstabbed. So one way to look at this incident is that it was a Russian sacrifice on the altar of victory over ISIS. Shooting down of a Russian plane is to be expected in such a war and the fact that it happened just now and the shooter was Turkish F14 changed very little. But if this was a provocation, then timing was perfect. ..."

"... This hysterical gesture also might reflect existence of a split in Turkish leadership and effort of one wing of government to enforce its political plans on the nation. The part who are willing to sacrifice economic ties with Russia to achieve their political goals in Syria Their immediate goal is that the pro-Turkish forces not government forces liberate Rakka (Al-Raqqah) ..."

"... I would add that breaking economic ties with Turkey will hurt Russia no less then Turkey. Closure of Dardanelles by turkey also will not help Russian efforts to defeat ISIS. ..."

"... In any case the partition Syria along religious and ethnic lines was planned from the very beginning by the very same players who are behind this incident. Nobody has any doubts that Turkey was one of the main instigators of Syrian civil war and along with Qatar and Saudis served and still serves the financial hub for the armed opposition and first of all salafists. The fact salafists fighters from the rest of the world travel to Syria via Turkey is an open secret. ..."

marknesop.wordpress.com

et Al, November 24, 2015 at 5:30 am

A very interesting, appropriate and very good response.

Sultan Erdogan has been served notice. I hope he's bricking it. Let him stew.

It makes sense that Putin should treat differentiate Turkey from western states. It also help him to present NATO with a stark choice and not much chance to try and claim the middle ground. Either way, unless Turkey gets categorical support from the NATO meeting and not the usual meaningless waffle, he's lost support from both NATO & Russia. Not a good place to be in.

et Al, November 24, 2015 at 12:55 pm

via a comment by GoraDiva on the Moon of Alabama post above:

Asia Times: Turkey gets toehold on Syrian territory, finally
http://atimes.com/2015/11/turkey-gets-toehold-on-syrian-territory-finally/

he cloud of uncertainty is lifting about any new directions of Turkish policies on Syria following the parliamentary elections three weeks ago, which led to a great political consolidation by President Recep Erdogan. The policies will run in the old directions – regime change in Syria – as per Erdogan's compass, which was set four years ago, but they will be vastly more visible in the 'kinetics'…

…An easy explanation is possible that Turkey decided to set the agenda for Lavrov's talks on coming Wednesday that would devolve upon the parameters of the Russian operations in northern Syria that will not cross Turkey's 'red lines'. The exceptionally strong words used by Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu regarding the "bloody and barbarian" Syrian regime leaves very little to the imagination as to how Erdogan views the prospect of Assad's future role. The last known Turkish stance is that Erdogan can tolerate Assad for a maximum period of six months during the transition.

However, it is wrong to conclude that the Turkish demarche is a mere tactical ploy. There is also the backdrop of the robust Turkish push for establishing a 'no-fly zone' in northern Syria to be kept in view. The demarche is linked to a live broadcast by Erdogan on Wednesday where he underscored that the creation of 'no-fly' and 'safe' zones is crucial to resolving the Syrian crisis…

…Put differently, the race for Aleppo has begun. The point is, the Turkish-American operation comes at a time when with Russian air cover, Syrian government forces are struggling to retake Aleppo, which has been under the control of opposition groups for two years. To be sure, the Turkish demarche on Friday threatening Russia with "serious consequences" falls in perspective.

The US role in this daring Turkish enterprise remains hidden from view. Senior US officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry, are credited with privately expressing views supportive of the Turkish proposal on free-trade zone, and leading Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has openly backed the idea, but President Barack Obama has so far preferred to stand in the shade with an ambivalence that appeared to weigh against the 'no-fly zone'…
####

A good piece by M.K. Bhadrakumar but I wouldn't call it anything like a toe hold yet. While the Americans haven't expressed open support for Turkey, they haven't either condemned Turkey., so I will modify my earlier and a bit rash opinion that the US has hung Turkey out to dry. On reflection, it seems far more reasonable that as usual, if it works out, the US will try to claim some sort of credit, but if it all goes Pete Tong, Turkey is all on its lonesome. NATO is being kept out of this one because the US certainly wouldn't get the unanimity need from all NATO members for such a plan, though I'm sure the Brits and others were informed unofficially.

et Al, November 24, 2015 at 1:03 pm

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2015/11/the-two-versions-of-the-latakia-plane-incident.html#c6a00d8341c640e53ef01bb0894fb5d970d

If Russia doesn't respond severely, the attacks on Russian and Syrian assets in Syria will escalate.

I think Tony Cartalucci gets it right: http://journal-neo.org/2015/11/24/russian-warplane-down-natos-act-of-war/

Russia's best bet is to simply continue winning the war. Taking the Jarabulus-Afrin corridor and fortifying it against NATO incursions while cutting off ISIS and other terrorist factions deeper within Syria would be perhaps the worst of all possible retaliations.

My "Russian intuition" tells me that this is what Russia will do. Such a provocation is exactly what the West would do if it were losing in Syria. And Putin doesn't have to prove anything to the Russian people.

Cortes, November 24, 2015 at 1:58 pm

The Twisted Genius, a regular poster on the "Turcopolier " blog Sic Semper Tyrannis of Col. Pat Lang,

After the NATO meeting, Jens Stoltenberg stated, "we stand in solidarity with Turkey and support its territorial integrity." After this and the statements of supplication out of Washington this morning, Erdogan is feeling especially froggy. He says he will establish a humanitarian safe zone between Jarabulus and the Mediterranean with his allies. God help us all.

Northern Star, November 24, 2015 at 3:00 pm

http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2015/11/24/belgium-counterterrorism

Here's a little insight into Belgium…that may surprise you….
This is the fourth day that the country has been under a virtual martial law lockdown…

Brussels is in Belgium……NATO can't even secure-cover- its home base ass!!!!!!!

marknesop, November 24, 2015 at 3:04 pm

Turkey's territorial integrity cannot include 5 miles of Syrian territory to which it helps itself as a security zone. And Stoltenberg is a tool who should never be taken seriously. He would institute a NATO tax and pour the money directly into arms purchases if he could – he is a dream leader if you are a defense contractor.

Northern Star, November 24, 2015 at 2:50 pm

At the WH news today ….Obama was his usual watermouth in chief clown self…..He kept referring to Hollande as "Francois"….as if they were frat boys smokin' a joint and swillin' beer…

It should have been on this grim occasion "Mr. President"..Not "Francois….Then he continues to flippantly refer to The Russian leader as "Putin"…not President Putin…..How fucking smart (wise) is it to antagonize PRESIDENT Putin…in ANY way….especially when on a global forum addressing billions at a time of imminent potential crisis…AKA WW3.

But he still is not thru running his unhelpful and provocative trap…He then tries to marginalize the Russkie anti ISIS coalition effort…and condescendingly chides and berates Putin for not toeing the line that Obama hasn't even thought out as to what or where to tow to begin with!!! Then Hollande chimes in with the usual 'Assad must go' mantra….

marknesop, November 24, 2015 at 3:12 pm

The NATO freaks have to keep a steadying hand on Francois, lest he wander off the reservation….

likbez, November 24, 2015 at 6:10 pm

Hotheads want immediate Russian reaction now. But it will be better if Russians behaved like in well known Russian proverb " mount the horse very slowly and then ride really fast, "

It might be prudent to ignore this incident for now. Here is approximate version of opinion of one Russian analyst about the situation
( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2YtDQhpkJI )

War is continuation of politics by other means. Diplomatic successes of Russia created backlash and Russia was backstabbed. So one way to look at this incident is that it was a Russian sacrifice on the altar of victory over ISIS. Shooting down of a Russian plane is to be expected in such a war and the fact that it happened just now and the shooter was Turkish F14 changed very little. But if this was a provocation, then timing was perfect. Relocation US F15 interceptors in the light of this incident looks now strangely well-timed preemptive move. Let's assume that this was accidental "perfect timing" of "our American partners" like Putin like to say.

In case of open democratic elections Assad will win and that's why the game "Assad must go" is played. Turkey tried to force her own plan of settlement. And this incident might well be a part of political game of the most radically pro-Islamist part of Turkish leadership. This hysterical gesture also might reflect existence of a split in Turkish leadership and effort of one wing of government to enforce its political plans on the nation. The part who are willing to sacrifice economic ties with Russia to achieve their political goals in Syria Their immediate goal is that the pro-Turkish forces not government forces liberate Rakka (Al-Raqqah)

I would add that breaking economic ties with Turkey will hurt Russia no less then Turkey. Closure of Dardanelles by turkey also will not help Russian efforts to defeat ISIS.

In any case the partition Syria along religious and ethnic lines was planned from the very beginning by the very same players who are behind this incident. Nobody has any doubts that Turkey was one of the main instigators of Syrian civil war and along with Qatar and Saudis served and still serves the financial hub for the armed opposition and first of all salafists. The fact salafists fighters from the rest of the world travel to Syria via Turkey is an open secret. As Wikipedia notes:

The Syrian opposition, represented by the Syrian National Coalition, receives financial, logistical, political and in some cases military support from major Sunni states in the Middle East allied with the U.S., most notably Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey.

…The Salafist groups are partially supported by Turkey, while the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant received support from several non-state groups and organizations from across the Muslim World.

This incident also changes nothing in this set of facts. So continuing to work against the plan to partition Syria and "Assad must go" gambit which includes the creation of buffer zone on the border with Turkey probably is the best option Russians have right now. Like French used to say "revenge is a dish that best served cold".

Turkey and Erdogan will be on the same place the next year too, And probably two years from now too. When there will be much less, if any, Russian tourists in Turkey. And Kurds will exist in the exact the same number and with exactly the same political goals. Fragmentation and internal squabbles within Turkish leadership also will exist in foreseeable future. So future might presents more options for the meaningful reaction then exist today. Loss of the face in this case (and Turkey itself) are much less important then the winning over ISIS.

[Nov 24, 2015] Russian jet downed over Syria, Putin This is a stab in the back by terrorism backers… Lavrov cancels Turkey visit Syrian Ara

Notable quotes:

"... Putin said Russia respects the regional interests of other nations, but warned the atrocity committed by Turkey would not go without an answer. Before Putin's statements came out, his spokesman Dmitry Peskov had said Turkish army's downing of the Russian plane over Syria is "a very serious incident." ..."

sana.sy

Sochi, SANA – Russian President Vladimir Putin said the downing of the Russian aircraft over Syria is a stab in the back delivered by the forces backing terrorism.

"This incident stands out against the usual fight against terrorism," said Putin during a meeting with King of Jordan Abdullah II in the Russian city of Sochi.

"Our troops are fighting heroically against terrorists, risking their lives. But the loss we suffered today came from a stab in the back delivered by accomplices of the terrorists," he added.

Putin said the plane was hit by an air-to-air missile launched by a Turkish jet and crashed in the Syrian territory four kilometers from the border with Turkey, stressing that the Russian plane was flying at an altitude of 6000 meters about a kilometer from the Turkish border.

He stressed that the plane and pilots posed no threat to Turkey as they were carrying out a mission against ISIS in mountainous areas targeting terrorists, most of whom came from Russia.

"ISIS has big money, hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars, from selling oil. In addition they are protected by the military of an entire nation. One can understand why they are acting so boldly and blatantly. Why they kill people in such atrocious ways. Why they commit terrorist acts across the world, including in the heart of Europe," the Russian President said.

The downing of the Russian warplane happened despite Russia signing an agreement with the US to prevent such incidents in Syria, Putin stressed. Turkey claims to be part of the US-led coalition fighting against ISIS in Syria, he added.

The incident will have grave consequences for Russia's relations with Turkey, Putin warned.

"We have always treated Turkey as not only a close neighbor, but also as a friendly nation," he said. "I don't know who has an interest in what happened today, but we certainly don't."

Putin said Russia respects the regional interests of other nations, but warned the atrocity committed by Turkey would not go without an answer. Before Putin's statements came out, his spokesman Dmitry Peskov had said Turkish army's downing of the Russian plane over Syria is "a very serious incident."

Peskov told reporters in a statement that Russia has confirmed information showing that the aircraft was all the time flying within the borders of Syria, adding that this was registered by electronic monitoring means

Asked about any possible consequences the incident might have on the Russian-Turkish relations, Peskov said it was too early to draw conclusions until the whole situation is clear.

Meanwhile, the Russian Defense Ministry announced that it has summoned the Turkish military attaché in Moscow over the incident.

Earlier, the Ministry said a Russian Su-24 fighter jet had been shot down in Lattakia province.

The Ministry confirmed that the plane hadn't violated Turkish airspace and was flying at an altitude of 6,000 meters.

The pilots managed to eject from the downed jet, the ministry said, adding that their fate is still unknown.

Lavrov cancels Turkey visit over downing of Russian military jet

In a relevant context, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov canceled his visit to Turkey, due on Wednesday, after a Russian Su-24 jet was downed within the Syrian airspaces by a Turkish air force.

"It's necessary to emphasize that the terror threats have been aggravated and that's true even if we don't take into account what happened today," Lavrov said, adding "We estimate the threats to be no less than in Egypt.

The minister also pointed out the increasing level of the terror threat in Turkey which is "not lower than in Egypt, recommending Russians to refrain from visiting Turkey.

[Nov 24, 2015] Turkey Shoots Down Russian Warplane Near Syrian Border

Looks like it was Turkish way to enforce no fly zone over border villages... Like was initial US-Turkish plan. But now its a different game...

Notable quotes:

"... And so, the NYT continues its stenography for the Neocons, by refusing to report that whether the Russian jet actually violated Turkish airspace is in dispute. Even CNN has presented both possibilities. ..."

"... So, Turkey is attacking and oppressing Kurds, won't attack ISIS, seems to be provoking Russia, acts as a middle-man for ISIS oil revenues, is imposing increasingly intolerant religious laws, threatens Israel, and allows thousands of refugees to stream into Europe. ..."

"... Erdogan is playing a dangerous game, he's essentially banking on NATO to come to his aid if Russia retaliates ..."

"... The Syrian crisis started when Turkey, with the backing of Saudi, tried to get rid of Assad. It backfired and created a refugee crisis. Then one day, suddenly, all of the refugees decided to leave for Europe. The question is - how did the refugees take this decision on their own? It was Turkey's secret plan to bring back the glory of the Ottoman empire to Europe. Note that all the terrorists from UK, Australia and other countries who joined ISIS first went to Turkey. Turkey, backed by Saudi, has been supporting ISIS. Turkey has created this mess and its a pity that Angela Merkel does not understand! ..."

"... In war, truth is the first casualty. The strong do what they will, the weak suffer what they must. Not much has changed since ancient times, just more destructive technology. ..."

The New York Times

Mr. Putin, clearly angry, responded that the Russian jet had never violated Turkish airspace and was shot down over Syria. Speaking in Sochi, he called the downing of the plane a "stab in the back delivered by the accomplices of terrorists," warning that it would have "serious consequences for Russian-Turkish relations."

Mr. Putin said that instead of "immediately making the necessary contact with us, the Turkish side turned to their partners in NATO for talks on this incident. It's as if we shot down the Turkish plane and not they, ours. Do they want to put NATO at the service of the Islamic State?"

... ... ...

What may make matters worse is that those same tribesmen said they shot both Russian pilots as they floated to earth in their parachutes, having apparently ejected safely after the plane was hit by air-to-air missiles. The Russian minister of defense said that the navigator of the warplane is alive and has been rescued by Syrian and Russian special forces, but that the pilot was killed by ground fire.

... ... ...

Russia's retaliation so far has been largely symbolic. Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov canceled a Wednesday visit to Turkey, and a large Russian tour operator, Natalie Tours, announced it was suspending sales to Turkey. Russians accounted for 12 percent of all tourists to Turkey last year.

The two countries are also significant trade partners. But "Russia-Turkey relations will drop below zero," Ivan Konovalov, director of the Center for Strategic Trends Studies, said on the state-run Rossiya 24 cable news channel.

David, Brisbane, Australia 5 hours ago

Turks are lying. According to the tracks they published the downed plane crossed a sliver of Turkish territory no more than 3 km wide. That should take a slowly flying jet less than 15 seconds, nowhere near 5 min the Turks claim it took them to issue 10 warnings. That was a premeditated provocation by the Turks, they were waiting for that plane. It is hard to believe that they would go for such major escalation without getting a go-ahead from US/NATO first.

Peisinoe, New York 4 hours ago

Excuse me NYT - but Turkey is not 'The West'.

It is a country that aligns itself with Wahabism-oriented nations that support and finance terrorism (ie Saudi Arabia).

Lets keep things clear: We cannot fight ISIS by allying ourselves with countries which support it.

It is about time the US stops selling itself for Saudi money - doesn't matter on which side of the aisle you're from - that is plain and simple corruption - corruption of values, of morality, of money, of power...

Jayne Cullen, Anytown, USA

"Turkish fighter jets on patrol near the Syrian border shot down a Russian warplane on Tuesday after it violated Turkey's airspace..."

And so, the NYT continues its stenography for the Neocons, by refusing to report that whether the Russian jet actually violated Turkish airspace is in dispute. Even CNN has presented both possibilities.

Brian, Toronto

So, Turkey is attacking and oppressing Kurds, won't attack ISIS, seems to be provoking Russia, acts as a middle-man for ISIS oil revenues, is imposing increasingly intolerant religious laws, threatens Israel, and allows thousands of refugees to stream into Europe.

What is the process for kicking someone out of NATO?

Ajatha Shatru,

Erdogan is playing a dangerous game, he's essentially banking on NATO to come to his aid if Russia retaliates.

If Russia doesn't retaliate, Putin will loose face in Arab world and Erdogan will be crowned the modern age Saladin.

Western Europe knows Erdogan controls the refugee tap and his leverage is that tens of thousands of refugees will flood into Europe if they don't back him up against Russia.

Putin cares about his macho and decisive image and to maintain it there will be Russian war answer to this downing.

America and NATO needs to call Turkey's bluff and let it face Russian music alone or we are heading towards world war III.

Aay, Sydney

The Syrian crisis started when Turkey, with the backing of Saudi, tried to get rid of Assad. It backfired and created a refugee crisis. Then one day, suddenly, all of the refugees decided to leave for Europe. The question is - how did the refugees take this decision on their own? It was Turkey's secret plan to bring back the glory of the Ottoman empire to Europe. Note that all the terrorists from UK, Australia and other countries who joined ISIS first went to Turkey. Turkey, backed by Saudi, has been supporting ISIS. Turkey has created this mess and its a pity that Angela Merkel does not understand!

Dan O'Brien, Massachusetts

In war, truth is the first casualty. The strong do what they will, the weak suffer what they must. Not much has changed since ancient times, just more destructive technology.

This is going to end very badly for everyone.

[Nov 24, 2015] We shot the pilots while they were landing with parachutes

This is in incorrect information. One pilot was rescued by Russian and Syrian special forces...

hurriyetdailynews.com

Speaking to the Doğan News Agency, Turkmen Deputy Commander to the 2nd Coast Division Alpaslan Çelik had claimed that both pilots were killed.

"We shot the pilots while they were landing with parachutes. Their bodies are here," Çelik said.

"Our friends are carrying the bodies from the other side of the mountains. Their IDs will probably be found on them," he added.

[Nov 24, 2015] The Two Versions Of The Latakia Plane Incident

Notable quotes:

"... Now I believe that the jet was in the Syrian airspace. It is not difficult to figure out that is purposeful action/plan by NATO and their faithful executioner Turkey. The plan might be to shut down Bosporus and Dardanelles to Russian Navy. ..."

"... "There were three villages left to us from Hassa. Others were Teyek, Ekbez, Beylan, the boroughs of skenderun, the township of Reyhaniye, the Antakya district, the Ordu district, the Bay r, Bucak and Hazine townships, a major portion of the Kilis borough, the Elbeyli and Turkmen districts south of Çobanbey-Cerablus region of Antep… This is all Turkish soil that constitutes integrity with the motherland…" ..."

"... This then was not legitimate air-defense but an ambush. ..."

"... Exactly. The context. It happened in the wake of Putin's visit to Iran, which cemented the alliance Russia/Iran for time to come, and strengthened their ties at strategic levels. This is Turkey's declaration of war against both Russia and Iran for supporting Syria. ..."

"... Turkey was one of the G-20 countries denounced by Russia as sponsors of terrorism. Further investigations should expose Turkey et al financial links to takfiri terrorists, possibly creating a diplomatic/political downfall, and with UN sanctions in sight, a preemptive black flag operation was planned. It started with the circus of the Turkmen, calling Russia's envoy to protest, revival of the so-called safe-zone, and the shooting of the Russian jet is the logical consequence of a carefully developed choreography. ..."

"... Russia cannot just take the hit to avoid further escalation. As we all know, restraint and moderation is embedded in Russia's art of diplomacy, but if rabid dog Erdogan is not caged by his US/NATO handlers, the possibility of an escalation is high. However, in the aftermath of France 13/11, and the French/Russian collaboration, another coup from Russian diplomacy, we can expect NATO's response to be measured. ..."

M of A

Bart | Nov 24, 2015 7:42:49 AM | 11

I really don't think this was a whim of Erdogan - he must have had the go-ahead of Obama or even all of NATO to do this - it is a little test case to see what Russia will do. This kind of 5- or 10-second 'trespassing' must be going on on a daily basis, given the very limited aitrspace in which all htese operations take place...

Hoarsewhisperer | Nov 24, 2015 7:50:59 AM | 12

Russia has plenty of options and there's no rush. Turkey will still be there next week /month /year. I hope Vlad keeps Emperor Erdogan in suspense for a while.
AFTER announcing that the shoot-down won't go un-answered.
Everyone likes a good thriller...

Oui | Nov 24, 2015 8:04:03 AM | 13

Live RT – statement by Putin: "We were stabbed in the back by terrorists' supporters. Serious consequences for tragic events on Syrian border."

Further, quite irritated with Turkey, Putin said they talked to their NATO allies first before contacting Russian foreign diplomats to discuss the event.

○ NATO holding emergency session after Turkey shoots down Russian warplane

Oui | Nov 24, 2015 8:05:11 AM | 14

Mount Turkmen has not fallen to Assad: Turkmen commander

Omar Abdullah, commander of the Sultan Abdulhamit Han Brigade in Syria, said on Monday that the Turkmen brigades have recaptured a strategic point on Mount Turkmen from Assad forces backed by Russia, Iran and Hezbollah.

"Mount Turkmen has not fallen to Assad forces. They only seized a part of Kızıldağı," Abdullah said.
In recent days, Syrian regime forces started a heavy assault on Mount Turkmen in Bayır Bucak, a Turkmen populated area in Latakia province.

Turkmens were under intensified Russian airstrikes while Iranian forces and Hezbollah from Lebanon launched a joint land attack with Assad forces. Russian warships fired missiles as tanks and cannons attacked unarmed civilians in Mount Turkmen area.

never mind | Nov 24, 2015 8:12:18 AM | 17

From RT's live coverage

12:53 GMT
Turkey backstabbed Russia by downing the Russian warplane and acted as accomplices of the terrorists, Russian President Vladimir Putin said.

The plane was hit by a Turkish warplane as it was travelling 1 km away from the Turkish border, Putin said. The plane posed no threat to Turkish national security, he stressed.

Putin said the plane was targeting terrorist targets in the Latakia province of Syria, many of whom came from Russia.

Russia noticed of the flow of oil from Syrian territory under the control of terrorists to Turkey, Putin said.

Apparently, IS now not only receives revenue from the smuggling of oil, but also has the protection of a nation's military, Putin said. This may explain why the terrorist group is so bold in taking acts of terrorism across the world, he added.

The incident will have grave consequences for Russia's relations with Turkey, Putin warned.

The fact that Turkey did not try to contact Russia in the wake of the incident and rushed to call a NATO meeting instead is worrisome, Putin said. It appears that Turkey want NATO to serve the interests of IS, he added.

Putin said Russia respects the regional interests of other nations, but warned the atrocity committed by Turkey would not go without an answer.

Putin was speaking at a meeting with King of Jordan Abdullah II in Sochi, who expressed his condolences to the Russian leader over the loss of a Russian pilot in Tuesday's incident, as well as the deaths of Russians in the Islamic State bombing of a passenger plane in Egypt.

The two leaders discussed the anti-terrorist effort in Syria and Iraq and the diplomatic effort to find a political solution to the Syrian conflict.

Strong words. It looks like Putin will hold Turkey to account for the downing of one of their jets (and the death of at least one of their own) regardless. The russian intervention in Syria will no doubt continue unabated, maybe even intensify, near the turkish border.

I wonder what assurances Turkey will get in turn from NATO.

Neretva'43 | Nov 24, 2015 8:20:52 AM | 20

In all honesty I think that the Russian "intervention" is way exaggerated. When I see the whole picture I believe it is have been designed to save face of the West Death Squad aka regime change policy. The western media offensive, hence the ruling establishment's policy, give us picture of we-have-nothing-to-do-with-mercenaries. We are now to believe so-called IS is organic product of Islam. And refuges are all terrorist or means to inflitrate into Europe, and their "way of life". The West doesn't wont to be remembered by history department that it is them who instigate of what we have today. Lessons from Central America is learned.

Remember, A HREF="http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/nazi-germany/leni-riefenstahl/">Leni Riefenstahl's words.

...the "messages" of her films were dependent not on "orders from above," but on the "submissive void" of the German public. Did that include the liberal, educated bourgeoisie? "Everyone," she said.

Russia and the West has one thing in common, that is hate for Islam. While the West uses Islam as a tool for social engineering and to promote own goals, Russia sees it as existential threat. The West and Russia are alarmed by (unwelcome) refuges in condition of economic malaise.

Downing of Russian jet, if that what's really happened, is new development. As if the crisis actors were unaware of danger which Russian action pose. Do we remember of shooting down mysterious Turkish jet four years ago, of the coast of Latakia and not that far from now downed jet? How come do not see the parachutes, and how come that "independent" channel filmed that as if per order?

Neretva'43 | Nov 24, 2015 8:33:38 AM | 25

Now I believe that the jet was in the Syrian airspace. It is not difficult to figure out that is purposeful action/plan by NATO and their faithful executioner Turkey. The plan might be to shut down Bosporus and Dardanelles to Russian Navy.

harry law | Nov 24, 2015 8:51:55 AM | 30

Putin said "This is a stab in the back and instead of immediately getting in contact with us, as far as we know, the Turkish side immediately turned to their partners from NATO to discuss this incident, as if we shot down their plane and not they ours". If the jet was shot down in an action against an enemy at war, it would be acceptable. In these circumstances Turkey's action itself was an act of war, since in no way could that Russian jet be threatening Turkey.

Neretva'43 | Nov 24, 2015 8:56:47 AM | 32

@ somebody | Nov 24, 2015 8:46:13 AM | 28

nope!

"The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion […] but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do."

Samuel Huntington, US Gov./CIA brain trust member.

Oui | Nov 24, 2015 8:57:17 AM | 33

Who Are These Turkmen?

The Turkmens of Bayırbucak | Hürriyet Daily News |

The current Turkish-Syrian border was drawn with the Oct. 20, 1921, agreement signed between France, the mandatary of Syria, and the Ankara government; regions such as Hatay as well as Bayır and Bucak were on the Syrian side. This was approved in Lausanne.

Mersin deputy Niyazi (Ramazanoğlu) Bey delivered a very important speech in the parliament on the day of Aug. 21, 1923. He stated that while the 1921 agreement was signed, Ankara was still in a very troubled situation and criticized the acceptance of the border agreed upon in 1921.

In his speech, Niyazi Bey explained the Turks who were left on the Syrian side as such:

"There were three villages left to us from Hassa. Others were Teyek, Ekbez, Beylan, the boroughs of İskenderun, the township of Reyhaniye, the Antakya district, the Ordu district, the Bayır, Bucak and Hazine townships, a major portion of the Kilis borough, the Elbeyli and Turkmen districts south of Çobanbey-Cerablus region of Antep… This is all Turkish soil that constitutes integrity with the motherland…"

They were all on the Syrian side.

○ The Lausanne Conference: The Evolution of Turkish and British Siplomatic Strategies 1922-1923 [pdf]

Neretva'43 | Nov 24, 2015 8:58:53 AM | 34

Re: guest77 | Nov 24, 2015 8:54:40 AM | 30

Partially true. What is full truth is that Without Iran's Support the Syrian Gov. would fall.

Lone Wolf | Nov 24, 2015 9:28:44 AM | 39

This then was not legitimate air-defense but an ambush.

Exactly. The context. It happened in the wake of Putin's visit to Iran, which cemented the alliance Russia/Iran for time to come, and strengthened their ties at strategic levels. This is Turkey's declaration of war against both Russia and Iran for supporting Syria.

Turkey was one of the G-20 countries denounced by Russia as sponsors of terrorism. Further investigations should expose Turkey et al financial links to takfiri terrorists, possibly creating a diplomatic/political downfall, and with UN sanctions in sight, a preemptive black flag operation was planned. It started with the circus of the Turkmen, calling Russia's envoy to protest, revival of the so-called "safe-zone," and the shooting of the Russian jet is the logical consequence of a carefully developed choreography.

As predicted, we have entered "Deadly Ground" (Sun Tzu).

Russia cannot just take the hit to avoid further escalation. As we all know, restraint and moderation is embedded in Russia's art of diplomacy, but if rabid dog Erdogan is not caged by his US/NATO handlers, the possibility of an escalation is high. However, in the aftermath of France 13/11, and the French/Russian "collaboration," another coup from Russian diplomacy, we can expect NATO's response to be measured.

The next few days are crucial, and will test the extent of the US empire and its minions commitment to destroy Syria and control the ME. It will also test Russia and the 4+1 will to the strategic defense of the ME and by extension, of the Eurasian mass.

alkomv | Nov 24, 2015 9:45:53 AM | 42

@24

The plan might be to shut down Bosporus and Dardanelles to Russian Navy

This has been a plan known to Russia for some time, Turkey/US/NATO have actively sought ways to break Montreux and stop the supply of necessary equipment to both Assad and the Russian Federation Forces active in Syria via the "Syria Express".

harry law | Nov 24, 2015 10:02:39 AM | 50

Lone Wolf@38. "The next few days are crucial, and will test the extent of the US empire and its minions commitment to destroy Syria and control the ME". The US in alliance with Israel, Saudi Arabia and other Gulfies are determined to have hegemony over the middle east. The battle over Syria is crucial in that respect. In my opinion the Syrians with the help of Russia, Iran, Iraq and Hezbollah will triumph over the forces of medieval Wahhabism, and its enablers. The US position in the middle east is at stake, so they will go all in. In the case of Iran, Syria and Hezbollah this battle is existential, and so they will fight this battle to the bitter end.

Claud | Nov 24, 2015 10:05:53 AM | 51

Apropos question of degree of US "nudge," I'm basically on the side of those who think no, first, and, anyway, Erdogan (user here as metonymy for Turkish "deep state") doesn't need nudge, and is used to US retroactively agreeing or covering-up whatever he decides to do, so there's no need to think Turkey's acting on behalf of anyone except itself.

HOWEVER, one news bit I've been reading here and there has been roughly to the effect that the CIA/other-three-letter-agencies people tasked with supplying/transporting/training the "moderate rebels" in Turkey have been in a very ugly "Bay of Pigs", Obama-fucked-us mood (a quote a journalist heard was, "Putin just made us his prison bitch"), and I imagine it's with those people that Turkish security types "interface" most from day to day. That might contribute to an odd idea of what DC would "really" want Turks to do.

All this obviously wildly speculative, and in a sense unnecessary in Occan's Razor terms (Erdogan quite capable of thinking this a good idea on his own). However, thought I'd bring up (possibly irrelevant) factor of a good number of pissed-off paramilitaries/contractors with little to do since Russia effectively shut down their "training" boondogle.

Jackrabbit | Nov 24, 2015 10:23:00 AM | 57

You can bet that USA and France were well aware of Turkey's support for ISIS - and well before the Charlie Hebdo attack. Yet it is Russia that: details the funding for ISIS; seriously attacks oil trucks; publicly names Turkey as an ISIS 'accomplice'.

The West should have demanded that Turkey cease their support of ISIS long ago. Instead, we get political/police theatre: troops in the streets, mild airstrikes, aircraft carrier deployments, MSM's amplifying of Islamophobia (ISIS is everywhere!, refugees = ISIS!, oh-hum reporting of attacks on refugees),etc.

Prediction: NATO will support Turkey's defending of its airspace.

Tom Welsh | Nov 24, 2015 10:39:17 AM | 61

@RTE:

"Once you're In - it's hard to get out again".

As the Russians say, "it's a kopeck to get in, but a rouble to get out". Where a rouble may mean a life.

harry law | Nov 24, 2015 11:10:01 AM | 84

RTE @59. "by all International laws and standards they had every right to do what they did". I disagree, Russia is not at war with Turkey, violation of someones airspace, [if it happened] should be dealt with diplomatically. What Turkey did was a act of war, there can be no doubt about that.

Mina | Nov 24, 2015 11:39:32 AM | 92

RTE: could you stop being paranoid and giving people intentions they don't have?

Good article about the Turkmen villages.
http://www.lemonde.fr/proche-orient/article/2015/11/24/qui-sont-les-turkmenes_4816573_3218.html
Turkey is trying to provoke a crisis in Hatay because it is afraid of losing this buffer zone it wants to create on a soil which never belonged to it (see the links of OUI above)

somebody | Nov 24, 2015 11:44:31 AM | 95

Re: RTE | Nov 24, 2015 11:29:02 AM | 88 Problem with your reasoning is that the Russian plane seems to have been shot down in Syrian not in Turkish airspace so the violation is Turkish - if there has been a Russian violation before or not. To shoot down an airplane is an act of war. Turkey dares to do it because they are part of NATO. NATO's reaction will tell if they back this provocation of Russia or not.

[Nov 24, 2015] Putin's response

marknesop.wordpress.com

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7343nXyGS0s

et Al, November 24, 2015 at 5:30 am

A very interesting, appropriate and very good response.

Sultan Erdogan has been served notice. I hope he's bricking it. Let him stew.

It makes sense that Putin should treat differentiate Turkey from western states. It also help him to present NATO with a stark choice and not much chance to try and claim the middle ground. Either way, unless Turkey gets categorical support from the NATO meeting and not the usual meaningless waffle, he's lost support from both NATO & Russia. Not a good place to be in.

et Al, November 24, 2015 at 5:45 am

At about 8:30 he points out that terrorists from Russia are located north of Latakia and could come back to kill Russians.

He mentions stab in the back twice. He's called Turkey as complicit in supporting terrorism in all but direct name and called the shooting down a crime. He's furious.

Still, this is King Abdullah of Jordan, a loyal American ally, coming to Moscow. Crikey.

Moscow Exile, November 24, 2015 at 5:52 am

Abdullah's mother was English, daughter of an officer and gentleman, no less, in the colonial service. That's why old Abdullah is so well house-trained, I guess.

Patient Observer, November 24, 2015 at 6:12 am

Putin's comment characterizing the Turkish action as a "stab in the back" was spot on. As my father used to say in such situations "They just shitted in their mess kit".

Warren, November 24, 2015 at 5:11 am

Moscow Exile, November 24, 2015 at 5:34 am

Good point that he made about the Turks immediately contacting their NATO allies after downing the Russian warplane, which was making no threat against Turkey, and not contacting Russia. "As if we downed a Turkish jet", he says and asks: "Do they want NATO to serve the interests of ISIS?" A stab in the back, he adds, as the Turks are allegedly fighting terrorism in the area together with their NATO partners.

et Al, November 24, 2015 at 7:15 am

BBC's Jonothan Marcus, their chief diplomatic bloke, has just said that the Su-24 may only have crossed Turkish airspace for 15 or 20 seconds so shooting it down looks dodgy and comments that other military analysts point this out and that this is 'browned off' Turkey telling the Russians to keep out. Most normal people would call it an 'ambush', which is exactly what Moon of Alabama called it hours ago.

karl1haushofer , November 24, 2015 at 9:21 am

Russia's "allies" Belarus and Kazakhstans supported the UN resolution recognizing the nuclear facilities in the Crimea as Ukrainian: http://nnr.su/75218#hcq=2cNuCup

They did not even abstain, but instead supported the resolution.

It is scary how alone Russia seems to be in it's western hemisphere. Surrounded by Finland (coldly hostile against Russia), the Baltics (extremely hostile chihuahuas), Ukraine (hostile enough to nuke Russia if it had nukes), Belarus (not really hostile, but not friendly either. Next target for a Western coup attempt), Turkey (hostile enough to shoot down Russia's military jets), Georgia (hostile), Azerbaijan (hostile/neutral), Armenia (friendly, but poor and meaningless).and Kazakhstan (seems to be the best of Russia's neighbors, but refuses to back Russia in international stage).

Further to West there are also hostile Sweden, very hostile Poland and Romania, and hostile Bulgaria. Those European countries with warm relations towards Russia (like Serbia and Montenegro) are small and strategically unimportant for Russia.

How did it ever come to this?

Patient Observer, November 24, 2015 at 11:24 am

Seems like a good response so far per RT:
https://www.rt.com/news/323329-russia-suspend-military-turkey/
"Three steps as announced by top brass:
– Each and every strike groups' operation is to be carried out under the guise of fighter jets
– Air defense to be boosted with the deployment of Moskva guided missile cruiser off Latakia coast with an aim to destroy any target that may pose danger
– Military contacts with Turkey to be suspended"

The Russian action of using ship-based anti-aircraft systems suggest that the stories about S-300 or S-400 being deployed in Syria are likely not true (and conforming with what Russia has maintained).

[Nov 24, 2015] PM Turkey has right to take all kinds of measures

www.turkishpress.com

ANKARA - Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has said that Turkey has the right to take "all kinds of measures" against border violations.

He was speaking amid reports that Turkish fighter jets downed a Russian military plane violating Turkish airspace earlier on Tuesday.

Speaking during an engagement in Ankara, Davutoglu said:

"We would like the entire world to know that we will take all necessary measures and make any sacrifices when it comes to the lives and dignity of our citizens and for the security of our borders while our country is in a circle of fire."

Davutoglu said Turkey had exercised its "international right and national duty" by downing the plane which the authorities say was flying over the country's southern Hatay province.

The Turkish premier called on the international community to act regarding the ongoing conflict in Syria.

"Let's put out the fire in Syria," Davutoglu said, adding: "Our message is clear for the Syrian regime forces, terrorist organizations or other foreign forces that are involved in pouring fire over Bayirbucak Turkmens, Aleppo Arabs or Azaz Arabs, Kurds or Turkmens, instead of putting out the fire in Syria.

"While carrying out effective counter-terrorism we are aware that the prerequisite for counter-terrorism is the growing up of young generations within peace and their love for each other," he added.

Turkish, UK PMs discuss downing of Russian jet

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu had a phone conversation with his British counterpart David Cameron on Tuesday after Turkish Air Force shot down a Russian warplane.

"Our prime minister has expressed that UN and NATO countries will be informed in detail about the issue," said the Turkish Prime Ministry's press office in a statement.

"It was told [to Cameron] that the ambassadors of the P5 countries [China, France, Russia, the U.K. and the U.S.] were also informed by our Foreign Ministry," the statement added.

"The Prime Minister strongly encouraged Prime Minister Davutoglu to make sure there was direct communication between the Turks and Russians on this, so a clearer understanding could be formed of what had happened and how to avoid this happening in the future and to avoid an escalation," said a Downing Street spokeswoman.

"We respect Turkey's right to protect its airspace. There are procedures in place for flying through a country's airspace - you need to seek permission and have it granted and there should be communication between the authorities on the ground and the pilot. All those steps need to be properly followed," she added.

The two leaders agreed to meet on Sunday at the Turkey-EU summit in Brussels, according to the statement.

A Russian warplane was shot down at the Turkish-Syrian border earlier Tuesday after repeatedly ignoring warnings that it was violating Turkish airspace.

Cameron is expected to address parliament Thursday to extend U.K. strikes against Daesh in Syria. The U.K. targets the organization in Iraq.

Thousands of Turkmens have recently been displaced due to simultaneous air and ground attacks by Syrian government forces and Russian jets. Approximately 2,000 Syrian Turkmens have arrived in southern Turkey in the past several days.

Russian warplanes previously violated Turkish airspace twice in October. The incidents came within a few days of the start of Russia's air campaign in Syria on Sept. 30 and led to international condemnation.

Copyright © 2015 Anadolu Agency

[Nov 23, 2015] Who Turned My Blue State Red?

economistsview.typepad.com

Fred C. Dobbs said...

Who Turned My Blue State Red?
http://nyti.ms/1kLMLSC
NYT - ALEC MacGILLIS - NOV. 20

It is one of the central political puzzles of our time: Parts of the country that depend on the safety-net programs supported by Democrats are increasingly voting for Republicans who favor shredding that net.

In his successful bid for the Senate in 2010, the libertarian Rand Paul railed against "intergenerational welfare" and said that "the culture of dependency on government destroys people's spirits," yet racked up winning margins in eastern Kentucky, a former Democratic stronghold that is heavily dependent on public benefits. Last year, Paul R. LePage, the fiercely anti-welfare Republican governor of Maine, was re-elected despite a highly erratic first term - with strong support in struggling towns where many rely on public assistance. And earlier this month, Kentucky elected as governor a conservative Republican who had vowed to largely undo the Medicaid expansion that had given the state the country's largest decrease in the uninsured under Obamacare, with roughly one in 10 residents gaining coverage.

It's enough to give Democrats the willies as they contemplate a map where the red keeps seeping outward, confining them to ever narrower redoubts of blue. The temptation for coastal liberals is to shake their heads over those godforsaken white-working-class provincials who are voting against their own interests.

But this reaction misses the complexity of the political dynamic that's taken hold in these parts of the country. It misdiagnoses the Democratic Party's growing conundrum with working-class white voters. And it also keeps us from fully grasping what's going on in communities where conditions have deteriorated to the point where researchers have detected alarming trends in their mortality rates.

In eastern Kentucky and other former Democratic bastions that have swung Republican in the past several decades, the people who most rely on the safety-net programs secured by Democrats are, by and large, not voting against their own interests by electing Republicans. Rather, they are not voting, period. They have, as voting data, surveys and my own reporting suggest, become profoundly disconnected from the political process. ...

(Indeed. Why are impoverished, federal-dollar absorbing states typically So Red? It's a good question. But Kentucky, Iowa & Maine are not good examples.
Kentucky has always been on the very edge of the Old South. Iowa is deeply evangelical. And Maine is just Maine.)

[Nov 23, 2015] The Pentagon expands an inquiry into Central Command over allegations that officials overstated the progress of airstrikes against the Islamic State

Notable quotes:

"... Obomber is an interventionista, owned by Lockheed. He at least has not had to duck shoes thrown at him, otherwise we have a repeat of W in the white house.e. Obomber also gets on the board of ARAMCO later in life ..."

www.nytimes.com

anne said...

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/us/politics/military-reviews-us-response-to-isis-rise.html

November 21, 2015

Military Reviews U.S. Response to Rise of ISIS
By MATT APUZZO, MARK MAZZETTI, and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT

The Pentagon has seized a trove of emails from military servers as it expands an inquiry into Central Command over allegations that officials overstated the progress of airstrikes against the Islamic State.

anne ->anne...

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/17/opinion/the-elusive-truth-about-war-on-isis.html

September 16, 2015

The Elusive Truth About War on ISIS

During the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, American military officials often provided misleadingly upbeat assessments of battlefield efforts and belittled reporting that contradicted their narrative. Their take on the progress of the troops was frequently at odds with the conclusions of civilian intelligence analysts and reporting by journalists in the field. The opposing views were important because they sometimes forced the Pentagon to face unpleasant truths and change course.

The war against the Islamic State terrorist group, which the Obama administration launched more than a year ago, however, has unfolded out of sight by design....

anne ->anne...

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/16/us/politics/analysts-said-to-provide-evidence-of-distorted-reports-on-isis.html

September 15, 2015

Reports on ISIS Were Distorted by Military, Analysts Say
By MARK MAZZETTI and MATT APUZZO

The Pentagon's inspector general is examining claims that senior military officers manipulated conclusions about progress against the Islamic State.

anne ->anne...

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/26/world/middleeast/pentagon-investigates-allegations-of-skewed-intelligence-reports-on-isis.html

August 25, 2015

Inquiry Weighs Whether ISIS Analysis Was Distorted
By MARK MAZZETTI and MATT APUZZO

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon's inspector general is investigating allegations that military officials have skewed intelligence assessments about the United States-led campaign in Iraq against the Islamic State to provide a more optimistic account of progress, according to several officials familiar with the inquiry....

ilsm ->anne...

Everything that is done inside the pentagon-capitol-K St axis is distorted to sell more weaponry and plunder the US.

ilsm ->anne...

The same misinformation campaign brought you: 10 years of misguided war profiteering in Southeast Asia for Saigon thugs' survival, the nuclear TRIAD to assure the US could kill everything on earth in its dying throes, and the past 40 years of expensive imperialism around the world.

im1dc said... November 22, 2015 at 08:45 AM Ohhhh, someone is not happy with CENTCOM's 'manipulation of (ISIL) intelligence'

Heads to Roll, Careers to be Ended, and hopefully some time in the brig for the top brass who ordered the bogus INTEL too

Fight against Islamic State militants - 8h ago

"Obama on manipulation of intelligence about Islamic State: 'I don't know what we'll discover in regards to what happened at CENTCOM'"

im1dc said...

islm, the President thinks your belief of SA ISIL financial support is wrong

Fight against Islamic State militants - 9h ago

"Saudi Arabia is helping to co-ordinate the fight against financing for Islamic State, Obama says"

Fred C. Dobbs ->im1dc...

The Saudi guv'mint may
be cooperating, while
the vast Saudi wealth
may be at cross purposes.

ilsm ->im1dc...

Obomber is an interventionista, owned by Lockheed. He at least has not had to duck shoes thrown at him, otherwise we have a repeat of W in the white house.e.
Obomber also gets on the board of ARAMCO later in life

[Nov 23, 2015] Putin's crushing strategy for Syria

Notable quotes:

"... The Russians have announced that they will partner with the French to fight the Islamic State in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris. But beyond new friendships forged in the wake of the Paris massacre and the downing of a Russian charter flight over the Sinai in October, Moscow's strategic interest in Syria is longstanding and vital to its interest. ..."

"... For all the mythmaking and propaganda, there is a powerful historical context to Russia's latest foreign military intervention. Like all states that try to project force beyond their borders, Putin's Russia faces limits. But those limits differ markedly from those that doomed America's recent fiascoes in Iraq and Afghanistan. ..."

"... The spectacular international attacks by Islamic State militants against targets in the Sinai, Beirut, and Paris have reminded Western powers of the other interests at stake beyond a resurgent Russia ..."

bostonglobe.com

LATAKIA, Syria - When Russian jets started bombing Syrian insurgents, it was no surprise that fans of President Bashar Assad felt buoyed. What was surprising was the outsized, even over-the-top expectations placed on Russian help.

"They're not like the Americans," explained a Syrian government official responsible for escorting journalists around the coastal city of Latakia. "When they get involved, they do it all the way."

Naturally, tired supporters of the Assad regime are susceptible to any optimistic thread they can cling to after five years of a war that the government was decisively losing when the Russians unveiled a major military intervention in October. Russian fever isn't entirely driven by hope and ignorance. Many of the Syrians cheering the Russian intervention know Moscow well.

A fluent Russian speaker, the bureaucrat in Latakia had spent nearly a decade in Moscow studying and working. Much of Syria's military and Ba'ath Party elite trained in Moscow, steeped in Soviet-era military and political doctrine, along with an unapologetic culture of tough-talking secular nationalism (there's also a shared affinity for vodka or other spirits).

The Russians have announced that they will partner with the French to fight the Islamic State in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris. But beyond new friendships forged in the wake of the Paris massacre and the downing of a Russian charter flight over the Sinai in October, Moscow's strategic interest in Syria is longstanding and vital to its interest.

The world reaction to the Russian offensive in Syria has been as much about perception as military reality. Putin, according to Russian analysts who carefully study his policy, wants more than anything else to reassert Russia's role as a high-stakes player in the international system.

Sure, they say, he wants to reduce the heat from his invasion of Ukraine, and he wants to keep a loyal client in place in Syria, but most of all, he wants Russia's Great Power role back.

For all the mythmaking and propaganda, there is a powerful historical context to Russia's latest foreign military intervention. Like all states that try to project force beyond their borders, Putin's Russia faces limits. But those limits differ markedly from those that doomed America's recent fiascoes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The spectacular international attacks by Islamic State militants against targets in the Sinai, Beirut, and Paris have reminded Western powers of the other interests at stake beyond a resurgent Russia and a prickly Iran. Until now, Russia's new role in Syria has stymied the West, impinging on its air campaign against ISIS and all but eliminating the possibility of an anti-Assad no-fly zone. ...

-----

The Syria agreement: Too good to be true
http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/editorials/2015/11/19/the-syria-agreement-too-good-true/0diRPSdAE92OY2uOQnrIaO/story.html?event=event25
via @BostonGlobe - editorial - Nov 19

A day after the horrific attacks in Paris, Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov announced a silver lining: The world had come together and agreed to end the Syrian civil war. At a press conference in Vienna, they laid out an ambitious time line. A cease-fire would be negotiated in a matter of weeks between the Assad regime and rebel groups, with the exception of "terrorists." Talks between Assad and the opposition would be held by Jan. 1. A "credible, inclusive, nonsectarian" government would be established within six months. A new constitution and free and fair elections would materialize within 18 months.

If their plan - backed by the Arab League, the United Nations, the European Union, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates - sounds too good to be true, that's because it probably is.

Much like Kerry's overly optimistic goal of creating a Palestinian state within two years, the Syria plan is based more on the desire for peace than the prospects for it actually happening on the ground. ...

-----

I'm a Muslim - ask me about Islam.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2015/11/19/saadia-ahmad-muslim-ask-about-islam/KuZ7PqboSznrQRciyYa1II/story.html?event=event25 via @BostonGlobe
Saadia Ahmad - November 19, 2015

... One of the goals of radical Islamic terrorist groups is to divide Muslims and the rest of the world. The disparity in our concern for victims of terrorism, depending on the country attacked and the dominant religion, inadvertently feeds into their narrative. ...

I am as committed to my American identity as I am to my Muslim identity, but I often cannot feel fully at home in either due to misunderstandings and poorly managed conflicts between the two. Muslims like myself seeking to bring reconciliation often encounter backlash and distrust from extremist Muslims and Americans alike.

But my hybrid identity as a Muslim-American born and raised in New Jersey serves as the foundation for my commitment to dialogue facilitation, conflict resolution, and peacebuilding. As an American, I know the sheer terror that 9/11 instilled in our individual and collective psyche. I understand the desire to regain a sense of security and comfort in our everyday lives and to defend against any group or ideology that appears even remotely threatening. As a Muslim, I know the exasperation of having our religion hijacked and used for something that was never its purpose. I understand the outrage of being held responsible for what we did not do – in the form of discrimination, prejudice, and warfare against home countries.

The sources of misunderstanding and pain for Americans and Muslims are actually not so different: They arise out of fear and trauma. So, too, the sources for healing are shared, and can be found in dialogue, compassion, and community. I see my purpose as guiding members of these groups to realizing these commonalities, and from this basis developing relationships that mitigate and prevent violent manifestations of conflict. Through my hybrid identity as a Muslim-American, I strive to provide one of many examples of how it is indeed possible to move past fear of "the other" and toward mutually beneficial relationships.

One of my most treasured verses in the Qur'an - introduced to me by a Catholic - has a universal message: "If God had so willed, He could have made you a single people, but His plan is to test you in what He has given you, so strive as one human race in all virtues according to what He has given you (5:48)." Most especially in the wake of trauma and terror, how we each decide to engage with "the other" is our own individual choice, but the fate is shared by us all. ...

(Saadia Ahmad is a student studying conflict resolution at the McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston.)

Selected Skeptical Comments from Economist's View blog

Fred C. Dobbs -> Fred C. Dobbs, November 22, 2015 at 06:25 AM

'Putin, according to Russian analysts who carefully study his policy, wants more than anything else to reassert Russia's role as a high-stakes player in the international system.'

It's almost like Putin wants Russia to 'assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature entitle' them. What nerve?

Fred C. Dobbs -> Fred C. Dobbs, November 22, 2015 at 06:35 AM

US, Russia, and World Powers (but Not Syrians) Agree to Syria Peace Plan
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/11/14/vienna_talks_negotiators_agree_to_syria_peace_road_map_in_the_wake_of_paris.html via @slate
Joshua Keating = November 14

A day after the attacks in Paris underlined the global danger posed by the continuing violence in Syria, Russia, the United States, and governments in Europe and the Middle East agreed at talks in Vienna to a road map for ending the devastating and destabilizing war.

The proposal (*), which appears to draw heavily from a Russian peace plan circulated before the talks, sets Jan. 1 as a deadline for the start of negotiations between Bashar al-Assad's government and opposition groups. Within six months, they would be required to create an "inclusive and non-sectarian" transitional government that would set a schedule for holding new, internationally supervised elections within 18 months. Western diplomats involved in the talks told the Wall Street Journal that the meeting had produced more progress than expected, and the events in Paris may have added new urgency to the proceedings, given the need to build a united front against ISIS, but stumbling blocks remain.

The biggest one is the fate of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whose role is side-stepped in the agreement. ...

*- AP: Diplomats set plan for political change in Syria http://apne.ws/1kvMdAi

im1dc -> Fred C. Dobbs., November 22, 2015 at 06:50 AM

US, Russia, and World Powers (but Not Syrians) Agree to Syria Peace Plan"

Oh yea which 'Syrians' did they ask, the Assad group, the ISIL group, the Islamist Rebels, the Iran backed Syrians, or the Democracy Rebels?

Fred C. Dobbs -> im1dc, November 22, 2015 at 06:58 AM

Not them, but apparently 'the Arab League, the United Nations, the European Union, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates' are on board.

Could be the other parties were otherwise engaged.

ilsm -> Fred C. Dobbs...

There is a story going around about Iranian F-14's escorting Russian Bear bombers on their way through to bomb Syrian deserts.

US navy went all out for F-18 and Tom Cruse's F-14 been in the boneyard for years.

Syaloch -> ilsm, November 22, 2015 at 07:23 AM

Do Israel's New Fighter Jets Mean Stealth Is Going Out of Style?

https://news.vice.com/article/do-israels-new-fighter-jets-mean-stealth-is-going-out-of-style

November 6, 2015

Israel just did something a wee bit nutty with their most recent wish list of US war goodies. It's one of those nerdtastically insider geek things that might actually mean some really interesting stuff.

So - drumroll please - reports have just emerged that Israel wants to buy a proposed, but as yet unmade, version of the F-15 fighter jet called the F-15SE Silent Eagle, in addition to several F-35s.

Okay, so it's not that exciting, unless you've been following the Israeli Air Force. But if you have, this purchase tells you something interesting about what advice those guys are getting from their strategic-planning Ouija boards on the topic of stealth...

ilsm -> Syaloch, November 22, 2015 at 10:14 AM

Not so much stealth.

Israel is using US aid money to "buy" F-35's, likely because the "F-35 sale is a string" for support for more aid to the IDF. There are many things the F-35 cannot do, there are many issues that mean sustaining 18 F-35's is less "capability" than 12 F-15 or F-16's.

Stealth is less a game changer than the reality of F-35 expenses and flaws. I am no fan of stealth it adds expense and overhead with unproven theory as to its "use".

A single engine fighter that carries 16000 of jet fuel is troubling. Rumblings USAF wants a buy of F-16s and F-35s for the same reasons.

Fred C. Dobbs -> ilsm, November 22, 2015 at 11:02 AM

I recall that terms between US & Israel *require* them to purchase US arms, in huge amounts.

If Iran is still flying F14 Tomcats, what of their cobbled together yet shrinking fleet of F4 Phantoms, the '57 Chevy of US jets?

ilsm -> Fred C. Dobbs, November 22, 2015 at 01:04 PM

A story on Iran F-14.

http://www.airspacemag.com/military-aviation/persian-cats-9242012/?no-ist

Seems the Iran AF used F-4's in a ground attack on ISIS positions in 2014. Last recorded F-4 ejection in 2012. The site stopped updating in 2012.

http://www.ejection-history.org.uk/Country-By-Country/iranian_f_4_phantom_losses.html

I have a regard for F-4's if nothing else they are only a little less ugly than the A-10, unless they save your bacon in a tight spot on the front line.

Fred C. Dobbs -> Fred C. Dobbs...

Related?

Powerful pill is called toxic
fuel for fighters in Syrian war http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/world/2015/11/21/the-tiny-pill-fueling-syria-war-and-turning-fighters-into-superhuman-soldiers/gLUkphVvyEN8Y5WzzowNhL/story.html?event=event25 via @BostonGlobe

Peter Holley Washington Post November 21, 2015

The war in Syria has become a tangled web of conflict dominated by competing military factions fueled by an overlapping mixture of ideologies and political agendas.

Just below it, experts suspect, they're powered by something else: Captagon.

The tiny, highly addictive pill is produced in Syria and now widely available across the Middle East. Its illegal sale funnels hundreds of millions of dollars back into the war-torn country's black-market economy each year, likely giving militias access to new arms, fighters, and the ability to keep the conflict boiling, according to the Guardian.

''Syria is a tremendous problem in that it's a collapsed security sector, because of its porous borders, because of the presence of so many criminal elements and organized networks,'' the UN Office on Drugs and Crime regional representative, Masood Karimipour, told Voice of America.

''There's a great deal of trafficking being done of all sorts of illicit goods - guns, drugs, money, people. But what is being manufactured there and who is doing the manufacturing, that's not something we have visibility into from a distance.''

A powerful amphetamine tablet based on the original synthetic drug known as fenethylline, Captagon quickly produces a euphoric intensity in users, allowing Syria's fighters to stay up for days, killing with a numb, reckless abandon.

''You can't sleep or even close your eyes; forget about it,'' said a Lebanese user, one of three who appeared on camera without their names for a BBC Arabic documentary that aired in September. ''And whatever you take to stop it, nothing can stop it.''

''I felt like I own the world high,'' another user said. ''Like I have power nobody has. A really nice feeling.''

''There was no fear anymore after I took Captagon,'' a third man added. ...

... production of Captagon has taken root in Syria, long a heavily trafficked thoroughfare for drugs journeying from Europe to the Gulf States, and it has begun to blossom.

''The breakdown of state infrastructure, weakening of borders and proliferation of armed groups during the nearly three-year battle for control of Syria, has transformed the country from a stopover into a major production site,'' Reuters reported.

''Production in Lebanon's Bekaa valley - a traditional center for the drug - fell 90 percent last year from 2011, with the decline largely attributed to production inside Syria,'' the Guardian noted.

Cheap and easy to produce using legal materials, the drug can be purchased for less than $20 a tablet and is popular among those Syrian fighters who don't follow strict interpretations of Islamic law, according to the Guardian. ...

[Nov 22, 2015] The Political Aftermath of Financial Crises Going to Extremes

Notable quotes:

"... The typical political reaction to financial crises is as follows: votes for far-right parties increase strongly, government majorities shrink, the fractionalisation of parliaments rises and the overall number of parties represented in parliament jumps. ..."

"... In the light of modern history, political radicalization, declining government majorities and increasing street protests appear to be the hallmark of financial crises. As a consequence, regulators and central bankers carry a big responsibility for political stability when overseeing financial markets. Preventing financial crises also means reducing the probability of a political disaster. ..."

"... If you look at the Republican Party and, especially, Republican candidates, now it is not the question of radicalization, but the question of sanity that arises. They are so completely detached from reality that Marxists look like "hard core" realists in comparison with them. ..."

"... The whole party looks like an extreme and bizarre cult that intends to take over the country: another analogy with Marxists. Like Marx quipped: History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce. ..."

"... Democrats are not that different either. With Sanders representing probably the only candidates which can be classified as "center-left" in European terms. For all practical reasons Hillary is a center-right, if not far-right (and as for foreign policy agenda she is definitely far right) candidate. ..."

"... So the key question is about sanity of the US society under neoliberalism, not some form of "radicalization". ..."

Nov 22, 2015 | Economist's View

mrrunangun:

Given that honesty in politics and government is relative, I wonder if relatively honest politics and relatively honest regulation of financial systems prevents financial crises.

pgl

Hillary Clinton hedges on a key issue:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/hillary-clinton-break-up-big-banks

She says she would break up the mega banks ... if needed. It is needed - so no hedging on this issue.

JohnH -> pgl...

Once again pgl shows how gullible he is...believing what Hillary says not what she has done. What has she done? Well, Wall Street made her a millionaire.

http://money.cnn.com/2015/10/13/investing/hillary-clinton-wall-street/

Second, she announced her run for Senator from New York (Wall Street) immediately after Bill did Wall Street the mother of all favors...ending Glass-Steagall. In his naivete, pgl certainly believes that there was no quid pro quo!!!

Third, lots of people doubt whether she can be trusted to rein in Wall Street.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/us/politics/wall-st-ties-linger-as-image-issue-for-hillary-clinton.html?_r=0

Of course, pgl believes lots of silly things...like his claim that Obama never proposed and signed off on austerity in 2011...or that he has proposed cutting Social Security...or that trickle down monetary policy hasn't overwhelmingly benefited the 1%.

I wonder when somebody will finally get to sell him the Brooklyn Bridge [better act now, pgl, get a really cheap loan while you still can!!!]

JohnH -> JohnH...

pgl thinks that Obama NEVER proposed cutting Social Security's! What a rube!

anne:

http://www.voxeu.org/article/political-aftermath-financial-crises-going-extremes

November 21, 2015

The political aftermath of financial crises: Going to extremes
By Manuel Funke, Moritz Schularick, and Christoph Trebesch

Implications

The typical political reaction to financial crises is as follows: votes for far-right parties increase strongly, government majorities shrink, the fractionalisation of parliaments rises and the overall number of parties represented in parliament jumps. These developments likely hinder crisis resolution and contribute to political gridlock. The resulting policy uncertainty may contribute to the much-debated slow economic recoveries from financial crises.

In the light of modern history, political radicalization, declining government majorities and increasing street protests appear to be the hallmark of financial crises. As a consequence, regulators and central bankers carry a big responsibility for political stability when overseeing financial markets. Preventing financial crises also means reducing the probability of a political disaster.

anne -> anne...

What strikes me, is that the political response to the short-lived international financial crisis but longer lived recession was quite restrained in developed countries. Leadership changes struck me as moderate, even moderate in beset Greece as the political stance of Syriza which looked to be confrontational with regard to the other eurozone countries quickly became accepting.

European developed country governments have been and are remarkably stable. Japan has been stable. There is political division in the United States, but I do not attribute that to the financial crisis or recession but rather to social divisions.

The essay is just not convincing.

likbez said...

"What strikes me, is that the political response to the short-lived international financial crisis but longer lived recession was quite restrained in developed countries"

If you mean that the goal of the state is providing unconditional welfare for financial oligarchy (which actually is true for neoliberalism), then I would agree.

But if you use any common sense definition of "restrained" this is a joke. Instead of sending criminals to jail they were awarded with oversized bonuses.

I think the authors are way too late to the show. There is no much left of the New Deal anyway, so radicalization of the US society was a fait accompli long before crisis of 2008.

If you look at the Republican Party and, especially, Republican candidates, now it is not the question of radicalization, but the question of sanity that arises. They are so completely detached from reality that Marxists look like "hard core" realists in comparison with them.

The whole party looks like an extreme and bizarre cult that intends to take over the country: another analogy with Marxists. Like Marx quipped: History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.

Democrats are not that different either. With Sanders representing probably the only candidates which can be classified as "center-left" in European terms. For all practical reasons Hillary is a center-right, if not far-right (and as for foreign policy agenda she is definitely far right) candidate.

So the key question is about sanity of the US society under neoliberalism, not some form of "radicalization".

[Nov 21, 2015] The REALLY ANNOYING Don't-Wanna-Subsidize-Wealthy-Kids'-College-Tuition Canard

Notable quotes:

"... Can anyone really imagine Bernie Sanders in the White House? , ..."

"... I said here yesterday that Clinton is running a Republican-style campaign. But it's not only its style–its tactics–that are Republican. Watch her edge ever closer on substance as well. Which is the way she began her campaign last spring and early summer, until it became clear that Sanders' campaign was catching on. ..."

November 20, 2015 | naked capitalism

Yves here. Readers know I have a weakness for righteous rants…

By Beverly Mann. Originally published at Angry Bear

Hillary Clinton's performance wasn't as clean or as crisp as her last one. Among other things, she invoked 9/11 in order to dodge a question about her campaign donors. But she effectively made the case that, though Sanders speaks about important questions, his solutions are ultimately simplistic and hers are better. Instead of railing about breaking up the big banks, focus on identifying and moderating the biggest risks to the financial system. Instead of making college free for everyone, increase access to those who need it and decline to subsidize wealthy kids' tuition.

– Can anyone really imagine Bernie Sanders in the White House?, Stephen Stromberg, Washington Post, Nov. 15

Stromberg, a Washington Post editorial writer who also blogs there, is an all-but-official Clinton campaign mouthpiece who last month, in a blog post and (unforgivably) a Post editorial (i.e., commentary with no byline, published on behalf of the Post's editorial board) baldly misrepresented what Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon on Tuesday misrepresented about Sanders' single-payer healthcare insurance plan, but from a different angle: Stromberg said that the cost of the single-payer plan would be in addition to the cost of healthcare now. Actual healthcare, not just insurance premiums.

According to Stomberg and the Post's editorial board then, hospitals, physicians and other healthcare provides would receive full payment from private insurers and also full payment from the government. And employers, employees and individual-market policyholders would continue to pay premiums to private insurers while they also paid taxes to the federal government for single-payer-double-payer?-insurance.

A nice deal for some but not, let's say, for others. Also, a preposterous misrepresentation of Sanders' plan.

Fast-forward a month and Stromberg, this time speaking only for himself (as far as I know; I don't read all the Post's editorials) and for the Clinton campaign, picks up on Clinton's invocation of the horror of the public paying college tuition for Donald Trump's kids. But since he probably knows that Trump's kids no more went to public colleges than did Clinton's kid, he broadens it.

Instead of making college free for everyone, increase access to those who need it and decline to subsidize wealthy kids' tuition. Good line! At least for the ears of voters who are unaware that public universities, like private ones, quietly skew their admissions processes to favor the kids of parents who likely can pay full tuition simply by switching the funds from a CD or other savings account into a checking account at the beginning of each semester, thus removing the need for the school to dig into its endowment fund to provide financial assistance. Or to worry about whether the student will have that loan money ready at the beginning of each semester.

Which is why Jennifer Gratz, salutatorian at her working class Detroit suburb's high school, whose extracurriculars included cheerleading but probably not a summer in Honduras assisting the poor, was denied admission to the University of Michigan back in 1995. And why she sued the University in what eventually became a landmark Supreme Court case challenging the constitutionality under the equal protection clause of UM's affirmative action program.

She did not challenge the constitutionality of the U's almost-certain, but unstated, admissions policy that would ensure that the freshman class had a substantial percentage of students from families wealthy enough to pay the full tuition.

Y'know, the ones wealthy enough to pay for SAT tutoring, SAT practice courts, and if necessary more than one SAT exam.

What especially angers me about this let's-not-subsidize-wealthy-kids'-college-tuition canard is that it uses disparities in ability to pay the tuition as a clever way to ensure the admissions status quo. Or something close to the status quo.

In her and her campaign spokesman's statements in the last several days-most notably her "Read My Lips; No New Taxes on the Middle Class, Even $1.35/wk to Pay for Family and Medical Leave" declaration, but other statements too-she's overtly declaring herself a triangulator. And some progressive political pundits are noticing it. Yes!* They!** Are!*** And Sanders needs to start quoting these articles, in speaking and in web and television ads.

I said here yesterday that Clinton is running a Republican-style campaign. But it's not only its style–its tactics–that are Republican. Watch her edge ever closer on substance as well. Which is the way she began her campaign last spring and early summer, until it became clear that Sanders' campaign was catching on.

[Nov 16, 2015] Bankrupt British Empire Keeps Pushing To Overthrow Putin

Notable quotes:

"... Lyndon LaRouche has observed that anybody acting according to this British agenda with the intention of coming out on top is a fool, since the British financial-political empire is bankrupt and its entire system is coming down. ..."

"... EU: British imperial interests are intent on destroying Prime Minister Putins bid for the Presidency, and throwing Russia into deadly political turmoil. ..."

"... In her testimony, Diuk came off like a reincarnation of a 1950s Cold Warrior, raving against the Russian government as authoritarian, dictators, and so forth. She said, The trend lines for freedom and democracy in Russia have been unremittingly negative since Vladimir Putin took power and set about the systematic construction of a representation of their interests within the state. She announced at that point that the elections would be illegitimate: [T]he current regime will likely use the upcoming parliamentary elections in December 2011 and presidential election in March 2012 with the inevitable falsifications and manipulations, to claim the continued legitimacy of its rule. ..."

"... The British-educated Nadia Diuk is vice president of the National Endowment for Democracy, from which perch she has spread Cold War venom against Putin and the Russian government. ..."

"... Rafal Rohozinski and Ronald Deibert, two top profilers of the Russian Internet, noted that the Runet grew five times faster than the next fastest growing Internet region, the Middle East, in 2000-08. ..."

"... NED grant money has gone to Alexei Navalny (inset), the online anti-corruption activist and cult figure of the December demonstrations. Addressing crowds on the street, Navalny sounds more like Mussolini than a proponent of democracy. A Russian columnist found him reminiscent of either Hitler, or Catalina, who conspired against the Roman Republic. Shown: the Dec. 24 demonstration in Moscow. ..."

January 1, 2012 | http://schillerinstitute.org/russia/2012/0122_overthrow_putin.html

This article appears in the January 20, 2012 issue of Executive Intelligence Review and is reprinted with permission.

[PDF version of this article]

January 9, 2012 -Organizers of the December 2011 "anti-vote-fraud" demonstrations in Moscow have announced Feb. 4 as the date of their next street action, planned as a march around the city's Garden Ring Road on the 22nd anniversary of a mass demonstration which paved the way to the end of the Soviet Union. While there is a fluid situation within both the Russian extraparliamentary opposition layers, and the ruling circles and other Duma parties, including a process of "dialogue" between them, in which ex-Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin is playing a role, it is clear that British imperial interests are intent on-if not actually destroying Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's bid for reelection as Russia's President in the March 4 elections-casting Russia into ongoing, destructive political turmoil.

Lyndon LaRouche has observed that anybody acting according to this British agenda with the intention of coming out on top is a fool, since the British financial-political empire is bankrupt and its entire system is coming down.

Review of the events leading up to the Dec. 4, 2011 Duma elections, which the street demonstrators demanded be cancelled for fraud, shows that not only agent-of-British-influence Mikhail Gorbachov, the ex-Soviet President, but also the vast Project Democracy apparatus inside the United States, exposed by EIR in the 1980s as part of an unconstitutional "secret government,"[1] have been on full mobilization to block the current Russian leadership from continuing in power.

Project Democracy

Typical is the testimony of Nadia Diuk, vice president of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), before the Subcommittee on Europe and Eurasia of the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs last July 26. The NED is the umbrella of Project Democracy; it functions, inclusively, through the International Republican Institute (IRI, linked with the Republican Party) and the National Democratic Institute (NDI, linked with the Democratic Party, and currently headed by Madeleine Albright).

Diuk was educated at the U.K.'s Unversity of Sussex Russian studies program, and then taught at Oxford University, before coming to the U.S.A. to head up the NED's programs in Eastern Europe and Russia beginning 1990. She is married to her frequent co-author, Adrian Karatnycky of the Atlantic Institute, who headed up the private intelligence outfit Freedom House[2] for 12 years. Her role is typical of British outsourcing of key strategic operations to U.S. institutions.

EU: British imperial interests are intent on destroying Prime Minister Putin's bid for the Presidency, and throwing Russia into deadly political turmoil.

In her testimony, Diuk came off like a reincarnation of a 1950s Cold Warrior, raving against the Russian government as "authoritarian," "dictators," and so forth. She said, "The trend lines for freedom and democracy in Russia have been unremittingly negative since Vladimir Putin took power and set about the systematic construction of a representation of their interests within the state." She announced at that point that the elections would be illegitimate: "[T]he current regime will likely use the upcoming parliamentary elections in December 2011 and presidential election in March 2012 with the inevitable falsifications and manipulations, to claim the continued legitimacy of its rule."

Diuk expressed renewed hope that the disastrous 2004 Orange Revolution experiment in Ukraine could be replicated in Russia, claiming that "when the protests against authoritarian rule during Ukraine's Orange Revolution brought down the government in 2004, Russian citizens saw a vision across the border of an alternative future for themselves as a Slavic nation." She then detailed what she claimed were the Kremlin's reactions to the events in Ukraine, charging that "the leaders in the Kremlin-always the most creative innovators in the club of authoritarians-have also taken active measures to promote support of the government and undermine the democratic opposition...."

Holos Ameryky

The British-educated Nadia Diuk is vice president of the National Endowment for Democracy, from which perch she has spread "Cold War" venom against Putin and the Russian government.

While lauding "the democratic breakthroughs in the Middle East" in 2011, Diuk called on the Congress to "look to [Eastern Europe] as the source of a great wealth of experience on how the enemies of freedom are ever on the alert to assert their dominance, but also how the forces for freedom and democracy will always find a way to push back in a struggle that demands our support."

In September, Diuk chaired an NED event featuring a representative of the NED-funded Levada Center Russian polling organization, who gave an overview of the then-upcoming December 4 Duma election. Also speaking there was Russian liberal politician Vladimir Kara-Murza, who predicted in the nastiest tones that Putin will suffer the fate of President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. In this same September period, Mikhail Gorbachov, too, was already forecasting voting irregularities and a challenge to Putin's dominance.

The NED, which has an annual budget of $100 million, sponsors dozens of "civil society" groups in Russia. Golos, the supposedly independent vote-monitoring group that declared there would be vote fraud even before the elections took place, has received NED money through the NDI since 2000. Golos had a piecework program, paying its observers a set amount of money for each reported voting irregularity. NED grant money has gone to Alexei Navalny-the online anti-corruption activist and cult figure of the December demonstrations-since 2006, when he and Maria Gaidar (daughter of the late London-trained shock therapy Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar) launched a youth debating project called "DA!" (meaning "Yes!" or standing for "Democratic Alternative"). Gorbachov's close ally Vladimir Ryzhkov, currently negotiating with Kudrin on terms of a "dialogue between the authorities and the opposition," also received NED grants to his World Movement for Democracy.

Besides George Soros's Open Society Foundations (formerly, Open Society Institute, OSI), the biggest source of funds for this meddling, including funding which was channeled through the NDI and the IRI, is the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Officially, USAID has spent $2.6 billion on programs in Russia since 1992. The current acknowledged level is around $70 million annually, of which nearly half is for "Governing Justly & Democratically" programs, another 30% for "Information" programs, and only a small fraction for things like combatting HIV and TB. On Dec. 15, Assistant Secretary of State, Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs Philip Gordon announced that the Obama Administration would seek Congressional approval to step up this funding, with "an initiative to create a new fund to support Russian non-governmental organizations that are committed to a more pluralistic and open society."

Awaiting McFaul

White House/Pete Souza

The impending arrival in Moscow of Michael McFaul (shown here with his boss in the Oval Office), as U.S. Ambassador to Russia, is seen by many there as an escalation of Project Democracy efforts to destabilize the country.

People from various parts of the political spectrum in Russia see the impending arrival of Michael McFaul as U.S. Ambassador to Russia as an escalation in Project Democracy efforts to destabilize Russia. McFaul, who has been Barack Obama's National Security Council official for Russia, has been working this beat since the early 1990s, when he represented the NDI in Russia at the end of the Soviet period, and headed its office there.

As a Russia specialist at Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Hoover Institution, as well as the Carnegie Endowment, and an array of other Russian studies think tanks, McFaul has stuck closely to the Project Democracy agenda. Financing for his research has come from the NED, the OSI, and the Smith-Richardson Foundation (another notorious agency of financier interests within the U.S. establishment). He was an editor of the 2006 book Revolution in Orange: The Origins of Ukraine's Democratic Breakthrough, containing chapters by Diuk and Karatnycky.

In his own contribution to a 2010 book titled After Putin's Russia,[3] McFaul hailed the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine-which was notoriously funded and manipulated from abroad-as a triumph of "people's political power from below to resist and eventually overturn a fraudulent election."

Before coming to the NSC, one of McFaul's many positions at Stanford was co-director of the Iran Democracy Project. He has also been active in such projects as the British Henry Jackson Society which is active in the drive to overthrow the government of Syria.

The Internet Dimension

The December 2011 street demonstrations in Moscow were organized largely online. Participation rose from a few hundred on Dec. 5, the day after the election, to an estimated 20,000 people on Bolotnaya Square Dec. 10, and somewhere in the wide range of 30,000 to 120,000 on Academician Sakharov Prospect Dec. 24.

Headlong expansion of Internet access and online social networking over the past three to five years has opened up a new dimension of political-cultural warfare in Russia. An EIR investigation finds that British intelligence agencies involved in the current attempts to destabilize Russia and, in their maximum version, overthrow Putin, have been working intensively to profile online activity in Russia and find ways to expand and exploit it. Some of these projects are outsourced to think tanks in the U.S.A. and Canada, but their center is Cambridge University in the U.K.-the heart of the British Empire, home of Bertrand Russell's systems analysis and related ventures of the Cambridge Apostles.[4]

The scope of the projects goes beyond profiling, as can be seen in the Cambridge-centered network's interaction with Russian anti-corruption crusader Alexei Navalny, a central figure in the December protest rallies.

While George Soros and his OSI prioritized building Internet access in the former Soviet Union starting two decades ago, as recently as in 2008 British cyberspace specialists were complaining that the Internet was not yet efficient for political purposes in Russia. Oxford University's Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism produced a Soros-funded report in 2008, titled "The Web that Failed: How opposition politics and independent initiatives are failing on the Internet in Russia." The Oxford-Reuters authors regretted that processes like the Orange Revolution, in which online connections were crucial, had not gotten a toehold in Russia. But they quoted a 2007 report by Andrew Kuchins of the Moscow Carnegie Center, who found reason for optimism in the seven-fold increase in Russian Internet (Runet) use from 2000 to 2007. They also cited Robert Orttung of American University and the Resource Security Institute, on how Russian blogs were reaching "the most dynamic members of the youth generation" and could be used by "members of civil society" to mobilize "liberal opposition groups and nationalists."

Scarcely a year later, a report by the digital marketing firm comScore crowed that booming Internet access had led to Russia's having "the world's most engaged social networking audience." Russian Facebook use rose by 277% from 2008 to 2009. The Russia-based social networking outfit Vkontakte.ru (like Facebook) had 14.3 million visitors in 2009; Odnoklassniki.ru (like Classmates.com) had 7.8 million; and Mail.ru-My World had 6.3 million. All three of these social networking sites are part of the Mail.ru/Digital Sky Technologies empire of Yuri Milner,[5] with the individual companies registered in the British Virgin Islands and other offshore locations.

The Cambridge Security Programme

Rafal Rohozinski and Ronald Deibert, two top profilers of the Russian Internet, noted that the Runet grew five times faster than the next fastest growing Internet region, the Middle East, in 2000-08.

Two top profilers of the Runet are Ronald Deibert and Rafal Rohozinski, who assessed its status in their essay "Control and Subversion in Russian Cyberspace."[6] At the University of Toronto, Deibert is a colleague of Barry Wellman, co-founder of the International Network of Social Network Analysis (INSNA).[7] Rohozinski is a cyber-warfare specialist who ran the Advanced Network Research Group of the Cambridge Security Programme (CSP) at Cambridge University in 2002-07. Nominally ending its work, the CSP handed off its projects to an array of organizations in the OpenNet Initiative (ONI), including Rohozinski's SecDev Group consulting firm, which issues the Information Warfare Monitor.

The ONI, formally dedicated to mapping and circumventing Internet surveillance and filtering by governments, is a joint project of Cambridge (Rohozinski), the Oxford Internet Institute, the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, and the University of Toronto.

Deibert and Rohozinski noted that the Runet grew five times faster than the next fastest growing Internet region, the Middle East, in 2000-08. They cited official estimates that 38 million Russians were going online as of 2010, of whom 60 had broadband access from home; the forecast number of Russia-based Runet users by 2012 was 80 million, out of a population of 140 million. Qualitatively, the ONI authors welcomed what they called "the rise of the Internet to the center of Russian culture and politics." On the political side, they asserted that "the Internet has eclipsed all the mass media in terms of its reach, readership, and especially in the degree of free speech and opportunity to mobilize that it provides."

This notion of an Internet-savvy core of the population becoming the focal point of Russian society is now being hyped by those who want to push the December demonstrations into a full-scale political crisis. Such writers call this segment of the population "the creative class," or "the active creative minority," which can override an inert majority of the population. The Dec. 30 issue of Vedomosti, a financial daily co-owned by the Financial Times of London, featured an article by sociologist Natalya Zubarevich, which was then publicized in "Window on Eurasia" by Paul Goble, a State Department veteran who has concentrated for decades on the potential for Russia to split along ethnic or other lines.

Zubarevich proposed that the 31% of the Russian population living in the 14 largest cities, of which 9 have undergone "post-industrial transformation," constitute a special, influential class, as against the inhabitants of rural areas (38%) and mid-sized industrial cities with an uncertain future (25%). Goble defined the big-city population as a target: "It is in this Russia that the 35 million domestic users of the Internet and those who want a more open society are concentrated."

The Case of Alexei Navalny

In the "The Web that Failed" study, Oxford-Reuters authors Floriana Fossato, John Lloyd, and Alexander Verkhovsky delved into the missing elements, in their view, of the Russian Internet. What would it take, they asked, for Runet participants to be able to "orchestrate motivation and meaningful commitments"? They quoted Julia Minder of the Russian portal Rambler, who said about the potential for "mobilization": "Blogs are at the moment the answer, but the issue is how to find a leading blogger who wants to meet people on the Internet several hours per day. Leading bloggers need to be entertaining.... The potential is there, but more often than not it is not used."

Creative Commons
Creative Commons/Bogomolov.PL

NED grant money has gone to Alexei Navalny (inset), the online "anti-corruption" activist and cult figure of the December demonstrations. Addressing crowds on the street, Navalny sounds more like Mussolini than a proponent of democracy. A Russian columnist found him reminiscent of either Hitler, or Catalina, who conspired against the Roman Republic. Shown: the Dec. 24 demonstration in Moscow.

It is difficult not to wonder if Alexei Navalny is a test-tube creation intended to fill the missing niche. This would not be the first time in recent Russian history that such a thing happened. In 1990, future neoliberal "young reformers" Anatoli Chubais and Sergei Vasilyev wrote a paper under International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) auspices, on the priorities for reform in the Soviet Union. They stated that a certain personality was missing on the Soviet scene at that time: the wealthy businessman. In their IIASA paper, Chubais and Vasilyev wrote: "We now see a figure, arising from historical non-existence: the figure of a businessman-entrepreneur, who has enough capital to bear the investment responsibility, and enough technological knowledge and willingness to support innovation."[8]

This type of person was subsequently brought into existence through the corrupt post-Soviet privatization process in Russia, becoming known as "the oligarchs." Was Navalny, similarly, synthesized as a charismatic blogger to fill the British subversive need for "mobilization"?

Online celebrity Navalny's arrest in Moscow on Dec. 5, and his speech at the Academician Sakharov Prospect rally on Dec. 24 were highlights of last month's turmoil in the Russian capital. Now 35 years old, Navalny grew up in a Soviet/Russian military family and was educated as a lawyer. In 2006, he began to be financed by NED for the DA! project (see above). Along the way-maybe through doing online day-trading, as some biographies suggest, or maybe from unknown benefactors-Navalny acquired enough money to be able to spend $40,000 (his figure) on a few shares in each of several major Russian companies with a high percentage of state ownership. This gave him minority-shareholder status, as a platform for his anti-corruption probes.

It must be understood that the web of "corruption" in Russia is the system of managing cash flows through payoffs, string-pulling, and criminal extortion, which arose out of the boost that Gorbachov's perestroika policy gave to pre-existing Soviet criminal networks in the 1980s. It then experienced a boom under darlings of London like Gaidar, who oversaw the privatization process known as the Great Criminal Revolution in the 1990s. As Russia has been integrated into an international financial order, which itself relies on criminal money flows from the dope trade and strategically motivated scams like Britain's BAE operations in the Persian Gulf, the preponderance of shady activity in the Russian economy has only increased.

Putin's governments inherited this system, and it can be ended when the commitment to monetarism, which LaRouche has identified as a fatal flaw even among genuinely pro-development Russians, is broken in Russia and worldwide. The current bankruptcy of the Trans-Atlantic City of London-Eurozone-Wall Street system means that now is the time for this to happen!

Yale Fellows

In 2010, Navalny was accepted to the Yale World Fellows Program, as one of fewer than 20 approved candidates out of over a thousand applicants. As EIR has reported, the Yale Fellows are instructed by the likes of British Foreign Office veteran Lord Mark Malloch-Brown and representatives of Soros's Open Society Foundations.[9] What's more, the World Fellows Program is funded by The Starr Foundation of Maurice R. "Hank" Greenberg, former chairman and CEO of insurance giant American International Group (AIG), the recipient of enormous Bush Jr.-Obama bailout largesse in 2008-09; Greenberg and his C.V. Starr company have a long record of facilitating "regime change" (aka coups), going back to the 1986 overthrow of President Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines. Navalny reports that Maria Gaidar told him to try for the program, and he enjoyed recommendations from top professors at the New Economic School in Moscow, a hotbed of neoliberalism and mathematical economics. It was from New Haven that Navalny launched his anti-corruption campaign against Transneft, the Russian national oil pipeline company, specifically in relation to money movements around the new East Siberia-Pacific Ocean pipeline. The ESPO has just finished the first year of operation of its spur supplying Russian oil to China.

Navalny presents a split personality to the public. Online he is "Mr. Openness." He posts the full legal documentation of his corruption exposés. When his e-mail account was hacked, and his correspondence with U.S. Embassy and NED officials about funding him was made public, Navalny acknowledged that the e-mails were genuine. He tries to disarm interviewers with questions like, "Do you think I'm an American project, or a Kremlin one?"

During the early-January 2012 holiday lull in Russia, Navalny engaged in a lengthy, oh-so-civilized dialogue in Live Journal with Boris Akunin (real name, Grigori Chkhartishvili), a famous detective-story author and liberal activist who was another leader of the December demonstrations, about whether Navalny's commitment to the slogan "Russia for the Russians" marks him as a bigot who is unfit to lead. Addressing crowds on the street, however, Navalny sounds like Mussolini. Prominent Russian columnist Maxim Sokolov, writing in Izvestia, found him reminiscent of either Hitler, or Catalina, who conspired against the Roman Republic.

Navalny may well end up being expendable in the view of his sponsors. In the meantime, it is clear that he is working from the playbook of Gene Sharp, whose neurolinguistic programming and advertising techniques were employed in Ukraine's Orange Revolution in 2004.[10] Sharp, a veteran of "advanced studies" at Oxford and 30 years at Harvard's Center for International Affairs, is the author of The Politics of Nonviolent Action: Power and Struggle, which advises the use of symbolic colors, short slogans, and so forth.

While at Yale, Navalny also served as an informant and advisor for a two-year study conducted at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, one of the institutions participating in the OpenNet Initiative, launched out of Cambridge University in the U.K. The study produced a profile titled "Mapping the Russian Blogosphere," which detailed the different sections of the Runet: liberal, nationalist, cultural, foreign-based, etc., looking at their potential social impact.

Allen Douglas, Gabrielle Peut, David Christie, and Dorothea Bunnell did research for this article.

---

• [1] "Project Democracy: The 'parallel government' behind the Iran-Contra affair," Washington, D.C.: EIR Research, Inc., 1987. This 341-page special report explored the connection between the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the illegal gun-running operations of Col. Oliver North, et al., which had been mentioned in cursory fashion in the Tower Commission report on that "Iran-Contra" scandal. Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.'s introduction to the report identified the roots of North's "Irangate" gun-running in Henry A. Kissinger's reorganization of U.S. intelligence under President Richard M. Nixon, in the wake of post-Watergate findings by the 1975 Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (Church Committee). The process of replacing traditional intelligence functions of government with National Security Council-centered operations, often cloaked as promoting ``democracy'' worldwide, was continued under the Trilateral Commission-created Administration of Jimmy Carter. Supporting ``democracy''--often measured by such criteria as economic deregulation and extreme free-market programs, which ravage the populations that are supposedly being democratized--became an axiom of U.S. foreign policy. The NED itself was founded in 1983.
• [2] "Profile: 'Get LaRouche' Taskforce: Train Salon's Cold War Propaganda Apparat," EIR, Sept. 29, 2006, reviews the Truman-era roots of relations among Anglo-American intelligence figures John Train, James Jesus Angleton, Jay Lovestone, and Leo Cherne, all of whom were later active against LaRouche and his influence. Cherne's International Rescue Committee (IRC) was described by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, its one-time director of public relations, as an instrument of "psychological warfare." The closely related Freedom House project was directed by Cherne for many years. Geostrategists such as Zbigniew Brzezinski, who has written that Russia is destined to fragment as the Soviet Union did, have sat on its board.
• [3] Stephen K. Wegren, Dale Roy Herspring (eds.), After Putin's Russia: Past Imperfect, Future Uncertain, Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010, p. 118.
• [4] Craig Isherwood, "Universal Principles vs. Sense Certainty," The New Citizen, October/November 2011, p. 12 (http://cecaust.com.au/pubs/pdfs/cv7n6_pages12to14.pdf). Founded as the Cambridge Conversazione Society in 1820, by Cambridge University professor and advisor to the British East India Company, the Rev. Charles Simeon, the Apostles are a secret society limited to 12 members at a time. Its veterans have held strategic intelligence posts for the British Empire, both in the heyday of overt colonialism, and in the continuing financial empire and anti-science "empire of the mind," for nearly two centuries, during which Cambridge was the elite university in Britain, Trinity College was the elite college within Cambridge, and the Apostles were the elite within Trinity. Isherwood reported, "Among other doctrines, the Apostles founded: Fabian socialism; logical positivism specifically against physical chemistry; most of modern psychoanalysis; all modern economic doctrines, including Keynesianism and post-World War II 'mathematical economics'; modern digital computers and 'information theory'; and systems analysis. They also founded the world-famous Cavendish Laboratory as the controlling priesthood for science, to attack Leibniz, Gauss, and Riemann, in particular.... John Maynard Keynes, a leader of the Apostles, ... traced the intellectual traditions of the Apostles back to John Locke and Isaac Newton, and through Newton back to the ancient priesthood of Babylon." The group's abiding focus on influencing Russia is exemplified by not only Bertrand Russell himself, but also the involvement of several members of the Apostles, including Lord Victor Rothschild of the banking family, and future Keeper of the Queen's Pictures Sir Anthony Blunt, in the Anglo-Soviet spy rings of the mid-20th Century.
• [5] Billionaire Milner is a self-described failed physicist. He worked for the World Bank on Russian banking issues in the 1990s, before making his fortune as one of Russia's newly minted "oligarchs"-a business partner of now-jailed Mikhail Khodorkovsky in the Menatep banking group, among other projects.
• [6] In Access Controlled: The Shaping of Power, Rights, and Rule in Cyberspace, an OpenNet Initiative (ONI) book, Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2010.
• [7] David Christie, "INSNA: 'Handmaidens of British Colonialism'," in The Noösphere vs. the Blogosphere: Is the Devil in Your Laptop?, LaRouchePAC, 2007, page 20.
• [8] Anatoliy Chubais and Sergei A. Vasiliev, "Privatization in the USSR: Necessary for Structural Change," in Economic Reform and Integration: Proceedings of 1-3 March 1990 Meeting, Laxenberg, Austria: IIASA, July 1990. The authors' notion of a charismatic businessman-entrepreneur comes straight from Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter who coined the term Unternehmergeist, or "entrepreneur-spirit," to describe people he called agents of "creative destruction."
• Lord Malloch-Brown: Soros Man Is British Conduit to Obama," EIR, Aug. 22, 2008 reports the earlier collaboration of these two in support of the Rose Revolution in Georgia, in 2003.
• Ukraine: A Post-modernist Revolution," EIR, Feb. 11, 2005. Sharp's Albert Einstein Institution received grants from the NED and the IRI.

Related pages:

• New Strategic Alliance: Cooperation Among Sovereign Nations United States, Russia and China Versus the British Empire
• Russia Articles
• Has your neighbor been brainwashed about Lyndon LaRouche? The John Train "Salon" Delivered Perjured Testimony in the "Get LaRouche" Trials
• Dope, Inc., the Book That Still Drives British Royals Mad, Is Back
• 1 Million Afghan Addicts: Cash-Starved Bankers and Terrorists Keep Asia Narcotics Boom Going
• Obama War To Defend The Opium Traffickers
• Stop the "New Violence"
• Download PDF of Noösphere vs the Blogosphere: Is the Devil in Your Laptop?

[email protected]

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Washington, DC 20041-0244
703-771-8390

[Nov 15, 2015] The New Brand of Authoritarianism

Notable quotes:

"... Political Institutions under Dictatorship ..."

"... Competitive authoritarianism: hybrid regimes after the cold war ..."

"... Journal of Economic Perspectives ..."

"... Political Science Quarterly ..."

"... The Pinochet Effect: Transnational Justice in the Age of Human Rights ..."

"... the US needs to only be mildly interventionist, since moneyed interests will own the megaphones and censor their own workers; and since the one-sidedness of information is no threat to the regime. ..."

"... In light of the New American Police State, post 9-11, it is clear to me that the United States has undergone a coup d'etat. ..."

"... Most of us back Chavez, Morales, or Correa for the policies they have followed in their own countries to the benefit of the great masses of the poor and their refusal to put the interests of international capital ahead of their people. ..."

economistsview.typepad.com

From Vox EU:

The new authoritarianism, by Sergei Guriev, Daniel Treisman, Vox EU: The changing dictatorships Dictatorships are not what they used to be. The totalitarian tyrants of the past – such as Hitler, Stalin, Mao, or Pol Pot – employed terror, indoctrination, and isolation to monopolize power. Although less ideological, many 20th-century military regimes also relied on mass violence to intimidate dissidents. Pinochet's agents, for instance, are thought to have tortured and killed tens of thousands of Chileans (Roht-Arriaza 2005).

However, in recent decades new types of authoritarianism have emerged that seem better adapted to a world of open borders, global media, and knowledge-based economies. From the Peru of Alberto Fujimori to the Hungary of Viktor Orban, illiberal regimes have managed to consolidate power without fencing off their countries or resorting to mass murder. Some bloody military regimes and totalitarian states remain – such as Syria and North Korea – but the balance has shifted.

The new autocracies often simulate democracy, holding elections that the incumbents almost always win, bribing and censoring the private press rather than abolishing it, and replacing comprehensive political ideologies with an amorphous resentment of the West (Gandhi 2008, Levitsky and Way 2010). Their leaders often enjoy genuine popularity – at least after eliminating any plausible rivals. State propaganda aims not to 'engineer human souls' but to boost the dictator's ratings. Political opponents are harassed and defamed, charged with fabricated crimes, and encouraged to emigrate, rather than being murdered en masse.

Dictatorships and information

In a recent paper, we argue that the distinctive feature of such new dictatorships is a preoccupation with information (Guriev and Treisman 2015). Although they do use violence at times, they maintain power less by terrorizing victims than by manipulating beliefs. Of course, surveillance and propaganda were important to the old-style dictatorships, too. But violence came first. "Words are fine things, but muskets are even better," Mussolini quipped. Compare that to the confession of Fujimori's security chief, Vladimir Montesinos: "The addiction to information is like an addiction to drugs". Killing members of the elite struck Montesinos as foolish: "Remember why Pinochet had his problems. We will not be so clumsy" (McMillan and Zoido 2004).

We study the logic of a dictatorship in which the leader survives by manipulating information. Our key assumption is that citizens care about effective government and economic prosperity; first and foremost, they want to select a competent rather than incompetent ruler. However, the general public does not know the competence of the ruler; only the dictator himself and members of an 'informed elite' observe this directly. Ordinary citizens make what inferences they can, based on their living standards – which depend in part on the leader's competence – and on messages sent by the state and independent media. The latter carry reports on the leader's quality sent by the informed elite. If a sufficient number of citizens come to believe their ruler is incompetent, they revolt and overthrow him.

The challenge for an incompetent dictator is, then, to fool the public into thinking he is competent. He chooses from among a repertoire of tools – propaganda, repression of protests, co-optation of the elite, and censorship of their messages. All such tools cost money, which must come from taxing the citizens, depressing their living standards, and indirectly lowering their estimate of the dictator's competence. Hence the trade-off.

Certain findings emerge from the logic of this game.

• First, we show how modern autocracies can survive while employing relatively little violence against the public.

Repression is not necessary if mass beliefs can be manipulated sufficiently. Dictators win a confidence game rather than an armed combat. Indeed, since in our model repression is only used if equilibria based on non-violent methods no longer exist, violence can signal to opposition forces that the regime is vulnerable.

• Second, since members of the informed elite must coordinate among themselves on whether to sell out to the regime, two alternative equilibria often exist under identical circumstances – one based on a co-opted elite, the other based on a censored private media.

Since both bribing the elite and censoring the media are ways of preventing the sending of embarrassing messages, they serve as substitutes. Propaganda, by contrast, complements all the other tools.

Propaganda and a leader's competency

Why does anyone believe such propaganda? Given the dictator's obvious incentive to lie, this is a perennial puzzle of authoritarian regimes. We offer an answer. We think of propaganda as consisting of claims by the ruler that he is competent. Of course, genuinely competent rulers also make such claims. However, backing them up with convincing evidence is costlier for the incompetent dictators – who have to manufacture such evidence – than for their competent counterparts, who can simply reveal their true characteristics. Since faking the evidence is costly, incompetent dictators sometimes choose to spend their resources on other things. It follows that the public, observing credible claims that the ruler is competent, rationally increases its estimate that he really is.

Moreover, if incompetent dictators survive, they may over time acquire a reputation for competence, as a result of Bayesian updating by the citizens. Such reputations can withstand temporary economic downturns if these are not too large. This helps to explain why some clearly inept authoritarian leaders nevertheless hold on to power – and even popularity – for extended periods (cf. Hugo Chavez). While a major economic crisis results in their overthrow, more gradual deteriorations may fail to tarnish their reputations significantly.

A final implication is that regimes that focus on censorship and propaganda may boost relative spending on these as the economy crashes. As Turkey's growth rate fell from 7.8% in 2010 to 0.8% in 2012, the number of journalists in jail increased from four to 49. Declines in press freedom were also witnessed after the Global Crisis in countries such as Hungary and Russia. Conversely, although this may be changing now, in both Singapore and China during the recent decades of rapid growth, the regime's information control strategy shifted from one of more overt intimidation to one that often used economic incentives and legal penalties to encourage self-censorship (Esarey 2005, Rodan 1998).

The kind of information-based dictatorship we identify is more compatible with a modernized setting than with the rural underpinnings of totalitarianism in Asia or the traditional societies in which monarchs retain legitimacy. Yet, modernization ultimately undermines the informational equilibria on which such dictators rely. As education and information spread to broader segments of the population, it becomes harder to control how this informed elite communicates with the masses. This may be a key mechanism explaining the long-noted tendency for richer countries to open up politically.

References

Esarey, A (2005), "Cornering the market: state strategies for controlling China's commercial media", Asian Perspective 29(4): 37-83.

Gandhi, J (2008), Political Institutions under Dictatorship, New York: Cambridge University Press.

Guriev, S and D Treisman (2015), "How Modern Dictators Survive: Cooptation, Censorship, Propaganda, and Repression", CEPR Discussion Paper, DP10454.

Levitsky, S, and L A Way (2010), Competitive authoritarianism: hybrid regimes after the cold war, New York: Cambridge University Press.

McMillan, J, and P Zoido (2004), "How to subvert democracy: Montesinos in Peru", Journal of Economic Perspectives 18(4): 69-92.

Rodan, G (1998), "The Internet and political control in Singapore", Political Science Quarterly 113(1): 63-89.

Roht-Arriaza, N (2005), The Pinochet Effect: Transnational Justice in the Age of Human Rights, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Peter K. said...

"A final implication is that regimes that focus on censorship and propaganda may boost relative spending on these as the economy crashes."

Instead of military Keynesianism, it's "police state" Keynesianism.

More social spending coupled with more social control.

ilsm said...

The corporation runs the governors.....

"Investor State Dispute Settlement" is a new twist where the actions of government, like investor "losses" from shuttering frackers would be compensated by a standing unelected nor appointed by the locals "board" filled with corporate cronies to take sovereignty from governments when foreign investors are denied pillaging "rights".

"Investor State Dispute Settlement" is why you should oppose TPP fast track.

The kleptocarcy is well advanced in the US!

GeorgeK said...

..."This helps to explain why some clearly inept authoritarian leaders nevertheless hold on to power – and even popularity – for extended periods (cf. Hugo Chavez"...

Guess your definition of authoritarian leaders depends on who's Ox is being gored. If you were wealthy or upper middle class Chavez was a failure, if you were poor or indigenous he was a savior.

..."Chávez maintains that unlike other global financial organizations, the Bank of the South will be managed and funded by the countries of the region with the intention of funding social and economic development without any political conditions on that funding.[262] The project is endorsed by Nobel Prize–winning, former World Bank economist Joseph Stiglitz, who said: "One of the advantages of having a Bank of the South is that it would reflect the perspectives of those in the south," and that "It is a good thing to have competition in most markets, including the market for development lending."[263]"...
Guess nobody told Stiglitz about Chavez's authoritarian incompetence.

Julio said in reply to anne...

Seems clear enough to me. Consider "freedom of the press": the US needs to only be mildly interventionist, since moneyed interests will own the megaphones and censor their own workers; and since the one-sidedness of information is no threat to the regime.

But in a government attempting left-wing reforms, and where the government is less stable, there is less room for the government to accept the unanimity and hostility of the press; it may need to intervene more strongly to defend itself. Take e.g. Ecuador where Correa has been accused of suppressing press liberties along these very lines.

anne said in reply to Julio...

Seems clear enough to me. Consider "freedom of the press": the US needs to only be mildly interventionist, since moneyed interests will own the megaphones and censor their own workers; and since the one-sidedness of information is no threat to the regime....

[ Thinking further, I realize that the United States is wildly aggressive with governments of countries considered strategic and does not hesitate to use media in those countries when our "needs" do not seem met. I am thinking even of the effort to keep allied governments, even the UK, France and Germany, from agreeing to become members of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank that China has begun. ]

Peter K. said in reply to GeorgeK...

"Guess your definition of authoritarian leaders depends on who's Ox is being gored."

This is how I see it. There are no objective standards.

Lefties criticize Obama for going after whistle blowers. Snowden is treated as a hero. Then guys like Paine and Kervack defend the behaviro of a Putin or Chavez because the U.S. doesn't like them.

Peter K. said in reply to Peter K....

I think a lot of the older left is stuck in a Cold War mind set.

Opposing America is good because you're opposing multinational capitalism. So they'll provide rhetorical support to any nutjob who opposes the West no matter how badly he mistreats his people.

Peter K. said in reply to Peter K....

It's the flipside to the Dick Cheney-Security State rationalizations of torture and police state tactics like warrantless surveillence.

It's okay if we do it, because they're trying to destroy us.

The ends justify the means.

hyperpolarizer said in reply to Peter K....

I am the older left (born right after WW II). I grew up with the cold war, but -- despite its poisonous legacy (particularly the linking of the domestic labor movement to international communism)-- I have assuredly left it behind.

In light of the New American Police State, post 9-11, it is clear to me that the United States has undergone a coup d'etat.

Roger Gathmann said in reply to anne...

Defending Chavez doesn't seem like a bad thing to do. So, Peter K., do you defend, say, Uribe? Let's see - amended constitution so he could run again - Chavez, check, Uribe check. Associated with paramilitaries, Uribe, check, Chavez, demi-check. Loved by the US, Uribe, check, Chavez, non-check. Funny how chavez figures in these things, and Uribe doesn't.
https://www.citizen.org/documents/TalkingPointsApril08.pdf

Peter K. said in reply to Roger Gathmann...

I never said a thing about Uribe. I said there should be single standards across the board for Uribe, America, Chavez, Putin, China, etc...

Roger Gathmann said in reply to Peter K....

Right. Double standard. That is what I am talking about. The double standard that allows US tax dollars to go into supporting a right wing dictator like Uribe. I don't have to piss off. You can piss off. I doubt you will. I certainly won't. It is adolescent gestures like that which make me wonder about your age.

Are you going to slam the door next and saY I hate you I hate you I hate you?
You need to get a little pillow that you can mash. Maybe with a hello kitty sewed on it.

Nietil said in reply to Roger Gathmann...

I don't see how any of these criteria has anything to do with being an autocrat.

Autocracy is an answer to the question of the source of legitimacy (democratic, autocratic, or theocratic). It has nothing to do with either the definition of the sovereign space (feudal, racial or national) or with the number of people running the said government (anarchy, monarchy, oligarchy).

The UK for example was a national and democratic monarchy for a long, long time. Now it's more of a national and democratic oligarchy. And it can still change in the future.

DrDick said in reply to Peter K....

I really do not think that is at all accurate. While there are certainly some like that, it is far from the majority. Most of us back Chavez, Morales, or Correa for the policies they have followed in their own countries to the benefit of the great masses of the poor and their refusal to put the interests of international capital ahead of their people.

Much of that support is also conditional and qualified, for reasons that have been mentioned here. All evaluations of current leaders is conditioned by both past history in the country and region, as well as the available alternatives. By those standards, all of the men I mentioned look pretty good, if far from perfect.

anne said...

http://www.cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=10454

March, 2015

How Modern Dictators Survive: Cooptation, Censorship, Propaganda, and Repression
By Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman

We develop an informational theory of dictatorship. Dictators survive not because of their use of force or ideology but because they convince the public--rightly or wrongly--that they are competent. Citizens do not observe the dictator's type but infer it from signals inherent in their living standards, state propaganda, and messages sent by an informed elite via independent media. If citizens conclude the dictator is incompetent, they overthrow him in a revolution. The dictator can invest in making convincing state propaganda, censoring independent media, co-opting the elite, or equipping police to repress attempted uprisings -- but he must finance such spending with taxes that depress the public's living standards. We show that incompetent dictators can survive as long as economic shocks are not too large. Moreover, their reputations for competence may grow over time. Censorship and co-optation of the elite are substitutes, but both are complements of propaganda. Repression of protests is a substitute for all the other techniques. In some equilibria the ruler uses propaganda and co-opts the elite; in others, propaganda is combined with censorship. The multiplicity of equilibria emerges due to coordination failure among members of the elite. We show that repression is used against ordinary citizens only as a last resort when the opportunities to survive through co-optation, censorship, and propaganda are exhausted. In the equilibrium with censorship, difficult economic times prompt higher relative spending on censorship and propaganda. The results illuminate tradeoffs faced by various recent dictatorships.

[ This is the discussion paper, which I find more coherent than the summary essay. ]

JayR said...

Wow quite a few countries, maybe even the US with Obama's war on whistle blowers, could fit this articles definition if the authors actually though more about it.

Roger Gathmann said in reply to Peter K....

Yes, the people of Greece can vote to leave the Eurozone, just like the people of Crimea can vote to leave the Ukraine, or the people of Kosovo could vote to leave Serbia. There are many ways, though, of looking at soft dictatorship. I think the EU bureaucrats have been busy inventing new ones, with new and ever more onerous chains. To say Greece can vote to leave the EU is like saying the merchant can always defy the mafioso, or the moneylender. It isn't that easy.

Roger Gathmann said...

and then of course there are the death squads:
https://nsarchive.wordpress.com/2010/12/09/wikileaks-on-colombia-uribe-%E2%80%9Cviews-military-success-in-terms-of-kills%E2%80%9D-army-commander-ospina-tried-to-initimidate-witnesses-to-extrajudicial-executions/

[Nov 15, 2015] Nomi Prins Wall Street, the Imperial Presidency, Political Corruption, and Crony Capitalism

Notable quotes:

"... The connection between democracy and free markets is interesting though. Democracy is predicated on the idea that every vote counts equally, and in the utopian perspective, the government adopts policies that benefit or adhere to the majority of those votes. In fact, its the minority of elite families and private individuals that exercise the most control over Americas policies and actions. ..."

"... The myth of a free market is that every trader or participant is equal, when in fact the biggest players with access to the most information and technology are the ones that have a disproportionate advantage over the smaller players. What we have is a plutocracy of government and markets. The privileged few dont care, or need to care, about democracy any more than they would ever want to have truly free markets, though what they do want are markets liberated from as many regulations as possible. In practice, that leads to huge inherent risk. ..."

Jesse's Café Américain

Too big to fail is a seven-year phenomenon created by the most powerful central banks to bolster the largest, most politically connected US and European banks. More than that, it's a global concern predicated on that handful of private banks controlling too much market share and elite central banks infusing them with boatloads of cheap capital and other aid.

Synthetic bank and market subsidization disguised as 'monetary policy' has spawned artificial asset and debt bubbles - everywhere. The most rapacious speculative capital and associated risk flows from these power-players to the least protected, or least regulated, locales.

There is no such thing as isolated 'Big Bank' problems. Rather, complex products, risky practices, leverage and co-dependent transactions have contagion ramifications, particularly in emerging markets whose histories are already lined with disproportionate shares of debt, interest rate and currency related travails.

The notion of free markets, mechanisms where buyers and sellers can meet to exchange securities or various kinds of goods, in which each participant has access to the same information, is a fallacy. Transparency in trading across global financial markets is a fallacy. Not only are markets rigged by, and for, the biggest players, so is the entire political-financial system.

The connection between democracy and free markets is interesting though. Democracy is predicated on the idea that every vote counts equally, and in the utopian perspective, the government adopts policies that benefit or adhere to the majority of those votes. In fact, it's the minority of elite families and private individuals that exercise the most control over America's policies and actions.

The myth of a free market is that every trader or participant is equal, when in fact the biggest players with access to the most information and technology are the ones that have a disproportionate advantage over the smaller players. What we have is a plutocracy of government and markets. The privileged few don't care, or need to care, about democracy any more than they would ever want to have truly "free" markets, though what they do want are markets liberated from as many regulations as possible. In practice, that leads to huge inherent risk.

Michael Lewis' latest book on high frequency trading seems to have struck some sort of a national chord. Yet what he writes about is the mere tip of the iceberg covered in my book. He's talking about rigged markets - which have been a problem since small investors began investing with the big boys, believing they had an equal shot.

I'm talking about an entirely rigged political-financial system.

Nomi Prins

[Nov 15, 2015] Paris attacks Andrew J. Bacevich A war the West cannot win

"It's past time for the West, and above all for the United States as the West's primary military power, to consider trying something different.

Rather than assuming an offensive posture, the West should revert to a defensive one. Instead of attempting to impose its will on the Greater Middle East, it should erect barriers to protect itself..."

Notable quotes:

"... Today, notwithstanding the Obama administration's continuing appetite for military piddling - air strikes, commando raids, and advisory missions - few Americans retain any appetite for undertaking further large-scale hostilities in the Islamic world. ..."

"... In proposing to pour yet more fuel on that fire, Hollande demonstrates a crippling absence of imagination, one that has characterized recent Western statesmanship more generally when it comes to the Islamic world. There, simply trying harder won't suffice as a basis of policy. ..."

"... Rather than assuming an offensive posture, the West should revert to a defensive one. Instead of attempting to impose its will on the Greater Middle East, it should erect barriers to protect itself from the violence emanating from that quarter. Such barriers will necessarily be imperfect, but they will produce greater security at a more affordable cost than is gained by engaging in futile, open-ended armed conflicts. Rather than vainly attempting to police or control, this revised strategy should seek to contain. .. ..."

Nov 14, 2015 | The Boston Globe

French President Francois Hollande's response to Friday's vicious terrorist attacks, now attributed to ISIS, was immediate and uncompromising. "We are going to lead a war which will be pitiless," he vowed.

Whether France itself possesses the will or the capacity to undertake such a war is another matter. So too is the question of whether further war can provide a remedy to the problem at hand: widespread disorder roiling much of the Greater Middle East and periodically spilling into the outside world.

It's not as if the outside world hasn't already given pitiless war a try. The Soviet Union spent all of the 1980s attempting to pacify Afghanistan and succeeded only in killing a million or so Afghans while creating an incubator for Islamic radicalism. Beginning in 2003, the United States attempted something similar in Iraq and ended up producing similarly destabilizing results. By the time US troops withdrew in 2011, something like 200,000 Iraqis had died, most of the them civilians. Today Iraq teeters on the brink of disintegration.

Perhaps if the Russians had tried harder or the Americans had stayed longer they might have achieved a more favorable outcome. Yet that qualifies as a theoretical possibility at best. Years of fighting in Afghanistan exhausted the Soviet Union and contributed directly to its subsequent collapse. Years of fighting in Iraq used up whatever "Let's roll!" combativeness Americans may have entertained in the wake of 9/11.

Today, notwithstanding the Obama administration's continuing appetite for military piddling - air strikes, commando raids, and advisory missions - few Americans retain any appetite for undertaking further large-scale hostilities in the Islamic world. Fewer still will sign up to follow President Hollande in undertaking any new crusade. Their reluctance to do so is understandable and appropriate.

It's difficult to imagine the nihilism, and contempt for humanity, that could motivate such cold-blooded rage.

The fact is that United States and its European allies, to include France, face a perplexing strategic conundrum. Collectively they find themselves locked in a protracted conflict with Islamic radicalism, with ISIS but one manifestation of a much larger phenomenon. Prospects for negotiating an end to that conflict anytime soon appear to be nil. Alas, so too do prospects of winning it.

In this conflict, the West generally appears to enjoy the advantage of clear-cut military superiority. By almost any measure, we are stronger than our adversaries. Our arsenals are bigger, our weapons more sophisticated, our generals better educated in the art of war, our fighters better trained at waging it.

Yet most of this has proven to be irrelevant. Time and again the actual employment of that ostensibly superior military might has produced results other than those intended or anticipated. Even where armed intervention has achieved a semblance of tactical success - the ousting of some unsavory dictator, for example - it has yielded neither reconciliation nor willing submission nor even sullen compliance. Instead, intervention typically serves to aggravate, inciting further resistance. Rather than putting out the fires of radicalism, we end up feeding them.

In proposing to pour yet more fuel on that fire, Hollande demonstrates a crippling absence of imagination, one that has characterized recent Western statesmanship more generally when it comes to the Islamic world. There, simply trying harder won't suffice as a basis of policy.

It's past time for the West, and above all for the United States as the West's primary military power, to consider trying something different.

Rather than assuming an offensive posture, the West should revert to a defensive one. Instead of attempting to impose its will on the Greater Middle East, it should erect barriers to protect itself from the violence emanating from that quarter. Such barriers will necessarily be imperfect, but they will produce greater security at a more affordable cost than is gained by engaging in futile, open-ended armed conflicts. Rather than vainly attempting to police or control, this revised strategy should seek to contain. ...

Fred C. Dobbs ->Fred C. Dobbs...

'Rather than assuming an offensive posture, the West should revert to a defensive one. Instead of attempting to impose its will on the Greater Middle East, it should erect barriers to protect itself from the violence emanating from that quarter. Such barriers will necessarily be imperfect, but they will produce greater security at a more affordable cost...'

The question remains: Is it possible to do this?

Granted, the Mediterranean Sea is an insufficient barrier.

anne ->Fred C. Dobbs... November 14, 2015 at 12:35 PM

'Rather than assuming an offensive posture, the West should revert to a defensive one. Instead of attempting to impose its will on the Greater Middle East, it should erect barriers to protect itself from the violence emanating from that quarter. Such barriers will necessarily be imperfect, but they will produce greater security at a more affordable cost...'

The question remains: Is it possible to do this?

Granted, the Mediterranean Sea is an insufficient barrier.

[ My understanding is that such a barrier is only possible to maintain when there are working governments in countries through the Middle East. Destroying the governments of Iraq and Libya proved disastrous strategic mistakes, destroying the government of Syria would be another such mistake but we have been determined to do just that. Yemen, the same.

Iraq was a strategic disaster but we learned nothing and went after Libya and now Syria and Yemen. ]

pgl ->Fred C. Dobbs... November 14, 2015 at 12:46 PM

ISIS is doing a lot of boosting now. Osama bin Laden was doing a lot of past late in 2001. What ever happened to that guy? Pissing off both the French and the Russians by killing 100s of their citizens is a good way to get yourself killed.

[Nov 15, 2015] State Dept. not saying if Hillary Clinton signed separation agreement

From comments: "If in fact she did sign it, then why doesn't she just say YES? And if she didn't, then why doesn't she just say NO? Because, either way she broke the law. She's guilty if she did, and she's guilty if she didn't. When are the Billary fans going to realize, that she's the mistake by the lake. This is a Conniving, Scheming, Narcissistic, non Feeling or Caring poor excuse of a humanbeing. This is one nasty women, and I'm amazed that so many people don't see it. Don't let Oh-Bummer happen to us 3 times. "

Notable quotes:

"... In fact, did all of Hillarys staff sign this document? ..."

"... According to other stories on Yahoo today, the State Dept said she did not sign the form. ..."

finance.yahoo.com

David

They say they are for transparency. In 2013, President Obama boasted, "This is the most transparent administration in history." But watch what his administration does.

Today, it will issue new rules exempting a key administrative office that handles issues such as request for access to government email records from the Freedom of Information Act. That law is specifically designed to allow private parties to look at government documents that aren't privileged or involve national security.

Hillary and Obama are the most deceitful and dishonest people in America and neither of them should be in an office representing the United States of America.

cafe

My question is whether Huma Abedin had to sign the exit document specifying that she would ensure that all of her electronic documents were given to the State Department when she left her position at the same time that Hillary Clinton did.

In fact, did all of Hillary's staff sign this document? It has been shown that Huma and other staff members have email addresses on the Clinton email server which validates the measures to have that server turned into the government!!!!

All of them need to be served subpoenas and this server need turned in!

Bob from Cape Cod

According to other stories on Yahoo today, the State Dept said she did not sign the form. This speaks to the ineptness of this Administration.

What I'm thinking is: She did, but told Obama if it were released that she did sign it, she would spill the beans on all the inside B$ that would hurt Obama.

This way she gets to escape perjury charges and still keep the private server and keep deciding by herself what she will release and what she will not.

And her KoolAid drinking minions will accept everything she says.

Mister Karma

Hillary...In the news- Factual History

As a 27-year-old staffer, she was fired from the Watergate committee for fraud and unethical behavior. Her former boss, Jerry Zeifman, finally spoke out in 2008:
"Because she was a liar," Zeifman said in an interview last week. "She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer. She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality.".....

From a June 2000 article in the Los Angeles Times:

There is "substantial evidence" that First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton lied under oath in denying that she played a role in the 1993 White House travel office firings, independent counsel Robert W. Ray reported Thursday....

On Sept. 11, 2012, Ambassador Chris Stevens and 3 other Americans were murdered by Islamic militants in Benghazi, Libya. Originally the attack was blamed on outrage due to an anti-Muslim You Tube video, and then-UN Ambassador Susan Rice made the rounds to all the Sunday shows to denounce the hate speech. For weeks, Hillary adamantly supported the ridiculous notion that these were "spontaneous demonstrations," despite overwhelming evidence that she knew from the beginning that this was simply false...
....... The truth is that Hillary has a long, checkered career, full of scandals and lies.

Terry

If in fact she did sign it, then why doesn't she just say YES? And if she didn't, then why doesn't she just say NO? Because, either way she broke the law. She's guilty if she did, and she's guilty if she didn't. When are the Billary fans going to realize, that she's the mistake by the lake. This is a Conniving, Scheming, Narcissistic, non Feeling or Caring poor excuse of a humanbeing. This is one nasty women, and I'm amazed that so many people don't see it. Don't let Oh-Bummer happen to us 3 times.

Justa Nobody

I'm so disappointed with our government. Isn't it time for voters from all parties to send a message that We The People want and expect open and transparent government.

[Nov 14, 2015] The Regime Change Problem in American Politics

Notable quotes:

"... Studying what actually happens in elections, as opposed to spinning tales based on a few up-close-and personal interviews, is definitely the way to go. ..."

"... Yet I don't think I'm being unfair in saying that so far this cycle the political scientists aren't doing too well. In particular, standard models of how the nomination process works seem to be having trouble with the durability of clowns. Things don't seem to be working the way they used to. ..."

"... And surely it's not too much of a stretch to say that something equally or more fundamental has happened to US politics. Partisan divisions run deeper; establishment figures are widely distrusted; the GOP base has gone mad; and so on. History is just less of a guide than it used to be. ..."

Nov 13, 2015 | The New York Times

This post isn't about what you think it's about. I'm not talking about a looming coup; I'm talking about the problems facing political science, which - it recently occurred to me - are a bit like the problems facing macroeconomics after 2008.

First things first: I'm a big admirer of political science, and a fairly heavy consumer of the more quantitative end. Larry Bartels, McCarty/Poole/Rosenthal, Alan Abramowitz, Andrew Gelman, and more have helped shape my understanding of what is going on in this country; I get more out of any one of their papers than out of a whole election cycle's worth of conventional horse-race punditry. Studying what actually happens in elections, as opposed to spinning tales based on a few up-close-and personal interviews, is definitely the way to go.

Yet I don't think I'm being unfair in saying that so far this cycle the political scientists aren't doing too well. In particular, standard models of how the nomination process works seem to be having trouble with the durability of clowns. Things don't seem to be working the way they used to.

And this makes me think of the way some economic analysis went astray after 2008. In particular, I'm reminded of the way many fairly reasonable analysts underestimated the adverse effects of austerity. They looked at historical episodes, and this led them to expect around a half point of GDP contraction for every point of fiscal tightening. What actually seems to have happened was around three times that much.

Now, as it happens we know why - and some people (e.g., me) predicted this in advance: the conditions under which past austerity took place were different from the recent episode, in which monetary policy was constrained by the zero lower bound and unable to offset fiscal contraction. But the point was that the world had entered a different regime, in which historical relationships could be and were misleading.

And surely it's not too much of a stretch to say that something equally or more fundamental has happened to US politics. Partisan divisions run deeper; establishment figures are widely distrusted; the GOP base has gone mad; and so on. History is just less of a guide than it used to be.

In the case of macroeconomics, fortunately, we had models that allowed us to make reasonably good predictions about how the regime would shift at the ZLB. If there's anything comparable in political science, I don't know about it (but would be happy to be enlightened.)

I'll still take academic analysis over horserace punditry any day. But we really do know less than ever.

[Nov 12, 2015] The Emperor Has No Clothes and Nobody Cares

www.howtogeek.com

... ... ...

Ever since we found out just how much government spying is going on, the security community has been systematically looking into every piece of technology that we use, from operating systems to network protocols, and we've learned just how insecure everything is.

... ... ...

That's the good news. The bad news is that nothing has fundamentally changed as far as the spying is concerned, despite all of the stories and media attention online. Organizations like the ACLU have tried, and failed, to even bring cases to figure out what's actually going on. Very few politicians even talk about it, and the ones that do have no power to change anything. People not only haven't exploded in anger, they don't even know the details, as John Oliver illustrated brilliantly in his interview with Snowden.

Everybody knows the government is probably spying on everything, and nobody really cares.

[Nov 11, 2015] Friction is Now Between Global Financial Elite and the Rest of Us

Notable quotes:

"... But the standard explanation, as well as the standard debate, overlooks the increasing concentration of political power in a corporate and financial elite that has been able to influence the rules by which the economy runs ..."

"... This means that the fracture in politics will move from left to right to the anti-establishment versus establishment. ..."

"... In most cases, international agreements are negotiated by elites that have more in common with each other than with working people in the countries that they represent. ..."

"... when we negotiate economic agreements with these poorer countries, we are negotiating with people from the same class. That is, people whose interests are like ours – on the side of capital ..."

"... Accordingly, the fundamental purpose of the neo-liberal polices of the past 20 years has been to discipline labor in order to free capital from having to bargain with workers over the gains from rising productivity. ..."

"... Moreover, unregulated globalization in one stroke puts government's domestic policies decisively on the side of capital. In an economy that is growing based on its domestic market, rising wages help everyone because they increase purchasing power and consumer demand – which is the major driver of economic growth in a modern economy. But in an economy whose growth depends on foreign markets, rising domestic wages are a problem, because they add to the burden of competing internationally. ..."

"... Both the international financial institutions and the WTO have powers to enforce protection of investors' rights among nations, the former through the denial of financing, the latter through trade sanctions. But the institution charged with protecting workers' rights – the International Labor Organization (ILO) – has no enforcement power. ..."

Economist's View

Friction is now between global financial elite and the rest of us, The Guardian:

... ... ...

But the standard explanation, as well as the standard debate, overlooks the increasing concentration of political power in a corporate and financial elite that has been able to influence the rules by which the economy runs. ...

Dan Kervick said...

"This means that the fracture in politics will move from left to right to the anti-establishment versus establishment."

I think this is probably right, but the established parties are doing their best to prevent it. Each of them has an interest in continuing to divide people along various cultural, religious and ethnic identity lines in order to prevent them from achieving any kind of effective solidarity along class lines.

Anyway, I fear we may be headed toward a turbulent and very unpleasant future.

Kenneth D said...

"Rethinking the Global Political Economy" By Jeff Faux April 24, 2002

In most cases, international agreements are negotiated by elites that have more in common with each other than with working people in the countries that they represent. As a retired U.S. State Department official put it to me bluntly a few years ago, "What you don't understand," he said, "is that when we negotiate economic agreements with these poorer countries, we are negotiating with people from the same class. That is, people whose interests are like ours – on the side of capital."

Accordingly, the fundamental purpose of the neo-liberal polices of the past 20 years has been to discipline labor in order to free capital from having to bargain with workers over the gains from rising productivity.

But labor is typically at a disadvantage because it usually bargains under conditions of excess supply of unemployed workers. Moreover, the forced liberalization of finance and trade provides enormous bargaining leverage to capital, because it can now threaten to leave the economy altogether.

Moreover, unregulated globalization in one stroke puts government's domestic policies decisively on the side of capital. In an economy that is growing based on its domestic market, rising wages help everyone because they increase purchasing power and consumer demand – which is the major driver of economic growth in a modern economy. But in an economy whose growth depends on foreign markets, rising domestic wages are a problem, because they add to the burden of competing internationally.

Both the international financial institutions and the WTO have powers to enforce protection of investors' rights among nations, the former through the denial of financing, the latter through trade sanctions. But the institution charged with protecting workers' rights – the International Labor Organization (ILO) – has no enforcement power.

[Nov 07, 2015] Russia and China Victory-by-default

Notable quotes:

"... Actually oil accounts for only about 15% of the Russian economy, which is rapidly diversifying because of the impetus provided by sanctions. ..."

"... Ironically too, because oil is still mainly traded in inflated USD and the ruble devalued, the price drop is not as great as it seems at first glance, and because internal trade, manufacturing, etc. is conducted in rubles, the impact is lessened even more. ..."

"... The USSR collapsed because the people, the foundation of support, were disgusted and disillusioned with a system with pervasive corruption at the top, while the majority suffered deprivation. ..."

"... Actually the Soviet Union was dismantled from above. The ruling (elite) group - in government, managers of large industries, academics, etc. wanted the economic privileges available in capitalist countries. Circa 80% of the population (i.e., working people) supported the Soviet Union and socialism and were the ones whose living standards collapsed following the conversion to capitalism. See- Revolution From Above: The Demise of the Soviet System by David Kotz and Fred Weir ..."

Nov 07, 2015 | Zero Hedge

Written by Jeff Nielson (CLICK FOR ORIGNAL)

... ... ...

While the American Empire still exists and has extended its imperialistic reach, it is a very different empire from the days of the Reaganites. Most obviously, the Rule of Law is dead. Saturation corruption permeates this now rancid empire.

Financial criminals (primarily based in the U.S.) commit crimes literally a thousand times larger than anything previously seen in our history, and then repeat these crimes again and again. The U.S. 'Justice' Department spends its time not in prosecuting and incarcerating these criminals (and criminalized "banks"). Rather, it expends its energies explaining why it refuses to prosecute these criminals.

The primary "prey" of this banking crime syndicate is now the American people and the U.S. economy , itself. The United States has not merely become insolvent, it is obviously bankrupt. The Oligarchs who control its puppet government literally shipped the U.S. manufacturing base to the low-wage regimes of Asia, which ironically included China. As a result, the once-envied U.S. Middle Class has been transformed into the Working Poor .

In most respects (outside of economic parameters), the American Empire would be judged to be "stronger than ever". Clearly this is true militarily. Despite having no real "enemies" since the defeat-by-default of the Soviet Union, U.S. Neo-Cons have been busy as beavers inventing Boogeymen (and then destroying them) in order to justify the continued, relentless expansion of its war machine.

Politically, successively more-fascist regimes have rendered the U.S. Constitution essentially obsolete. Legally illegitimate (i.e. null-and-void), fascist laws have been wallpapered over the Constitution, stripping the American people of their rights and liberties.

In legitimate democracies, Constitutions are the ultimate Law of the Land, which serve primarily to protect the People from the State. In fascist regimes, invariably illegitimate governments create endless laws designed to protect the State from the People. The American Empire used to represent the former paradigm. Now it epitomizes the latter .

At one time, the closer that one moved toward the "heart" of the American Empire, the more strict was adherence to the Rule of Law. Today, the closer one approaches to the political cesspool known as "Washington, D.C.", or the financial cesspool known as "Wall Street", the more-overpowering becomes the stench of corruption – and lawlessness.

In a perverse twist of fate, the American Empire now mirrors the Soviet Union, in almost every respect. In the Soviet Union, voters were given the choice of two candidates, in what it called "elections". However both of those candidates represented the Communist Party.

In the American Empire, voters are also given the choice of two candidates, they simply pretend to represent two, different parties. Incredibly, this political charade has managed to persist for at least a century.

"There is no material difference now in the old political parties, except which shall control the patronage."

- (former Congressman/prosecutor) Charles Lindbergh Sr., The Economic Pinch (p.61), 1923

Perhaps more significantly, the American Empire now bears considerable resemblance to the Roman Empire, as well. Historians are in agreement that at the time the Roman Empire was at the absolute peak of its military might that "the decline of the Roman Empire" had already been underway for centuries.

Where the ancient Roman Empire differs from the modern American Empire is that in the 21 st century, events – including the rise-and-fall of empires – progress much, much more rapidly. Roughly speaking, what used to stretch over centuries now takes place in decades. Instant communication, rapid global transportation, computerization, and numerous, other technological advances are responsible for this accelerated pace of political/economic/social evolution.

Morally and economically bankrupt, the American Empire now relies more and more heavily on its Big Stick, which it wields with ever more impunity and recklessness. Statesmen such as Ron Paul and Paul Craig Roberts have regularly warned that the current generation of Neo-Cons (who wield all, real power in the U.S. government) are marching relentlessly toward World War III.

However, while we see Psychopaths on the left/West, we see an entirely opposite political dynamic in the East. The strengthening alliance between China and Russia, represents two, large, global powers which (at least at this point in time) demonstrate no imperial aspirations. But this is only one significant way in which the East differs from the West.

In an essay titled Grandmaster Putin's Trap , Russian writer Dmitry Kalinichenko provides us with aninsightful allegory . Cold War II is not a militarily-oriented confrontation, rather it is a geopolitical chess match. The important point here is that only one "side" understands how to play (and win) a chess match.

How does a skilled chess-player achieve victory? Positioning, positioning, and more positioning. It is only once one's opponent has been completely out-positioned that any thought is given to overt attack. Chess is a game of patience, and (often) a game of simply waiting for one's opponent to self-destruct, via strategic error, or mere impatience.

This brings us back to the current geopolitical stage. In the East, we see Russia and China constantly engaged in improving their position. Unlike the American Empire, they are improving their economies – notcannibalizing them. They are relentlessly adding to their gold reserves ("He who has the gold makes the rules" – The Golden Rule), while the American Empire has squandered most of its own reserves .

While the U.S., and the West, in general, unremittingly alienates the Rest of the World, Russia and China have been rapidly improving their political and economic cooperation with other nations. While the political/economic institutions created or sponsored by the American Empire lose their legitimacy due to corruption, Russia and China are creating parallel, corruption-free institutions – to replace them.

If this was a real chess match, the player on the left would have already 'pushed over his King' (i.e. capitulated). The player on the right now has such superior position that the outcome of the game is no longer in doubt. However, this is not a game, but rather real life – where one side has utterly no respect for anything resembling "rules".

Russia and China are clearly headed for victory-by-default in Cold War II. The psychopaths of the American Empire have demonstrated that they are ready-and-willing to do literally anything to prevent this seemingly inevitable outcome. For this reason, the warnings of people such as Ron Paul and Paul Craig Roberts should be given our most serious consideration.

GreatUncle

Russia & China, you might want to add India too.

It is called mutual support because as each year passes the US becomes more and more aggressive and to be out on your own and a threat to those in power there you will be turned upon to keep you in your place.

If anything I expect this coalition of nations to only get stronger because if any become isolated and seems to be current foreign policy with Russia you are in for a bit of brutality. Then once one side or the other is eliminated and that can be economically too they will turn on the another to keep them in their place.

Top dog is always going to have an inferiority complex against any who may challenge it.

Consequence? In the last decade reckon under its own steam the US has magnificently turned a substantial portion of the global population against it. It might not be in the MSM, it will be undercurrents of all the brutality like killing innocent citizens with drones or a shoot to kill policy by the US military and the if you are not with us you are against us mentality.

laomei

Russia and China are clearly headed for victory-by-default in Cold War II.

Lol, the Russian economy is collapsing, it relies entirely on oil and oil is dirt cheap. Russia gave the EU an out with sanctions to tear up the contracts and will soon be able to turn to alternative sources. That leaves China as their main partner for oil, while Russia buys up cheap Chinese garbage. But, at the same time, China is more or less in the same position as Mexico was, combined with systemic problem that are virtually identical to the Japan bust. It's a ticking time bomb and the government is literally locking up anyone who dares to even suggest that such a thing is even possible now. Purely out of fear that someone might be listening. China is still dealing with record outflows of cash and is rapidly liquidating those vast reserves. Once the economic growth drops (official numbers or not), there will be no choice left but to devale, which is great for exporters, but toxic for all companies that have borrowed USD. It's enough to destroy entirely their advanced sectors, and they do not have the willing labor at competitive rates to rush back to manufacture like they used to.

Setarcos

Actually oil accounts for only about 15% of the Russian economy, which is rapidly diversifying because of the impetus provided by sanctions.

Ironically too, because oil is still mainly traded in inflated USD and the ruble devalued, the price drop is not as great as it seems at first glance, and because internal trade, manufacturing, etc. is conducted in rubles, the impact is lessened even more.

bthunder

If corruption is what brings empires down, then considering level of corruption in China and Russia vs in the US of A, Russia and China will collapse long before USA will.

As far as Putin's "grandmaster" skills supposedly demonstrated by Russia's "positioning, positioning, and more positioning", during 15 years of his rule Russia's economy has been positioned for oil exports, nat gas exports, and more oil exports. That takes some grndmaster-like skills indeed.

Now that he's involved in 2 conflicts and China is refusing to pay previously negotiated prices for oil and nat gas (china demands discounts to reflect current low prices) it will be interesting to see how he can conduct and pay for 2 wars at the same time.

Crash N. Burn

"As far as Putin's "grandmaster" skills..."

Perhaps you should have clicked the link in that paragraph:

"After realizing its failure in Ukraine, the West, led by the US set out to destroy Russian economy by lowering oil prices, and accordingly gas prices as the main budget sources of export revenue in Russia and the main sources of replenishment of Russian gold reserves....

..Putin is selling Russian oil and gas only for physical gold.

Putin is not shouting about it all over the world. And of course, he still accepts US dollars as an intermediate means of payment. But he immediately exchanges all these dollars obtained from the sale of oil and gas for physical gold!..

..in the third quarter the purchases by Russia of physical gold are at all-time high record levels. In the third quarter of this year, Russia had purchased an incredible amount of gold in the amount of 55 tons. It's more than all the central banks of all countries of the world combined"

Grandmaster Putin's Trap

strangewalk

The USSR collapsed because the people, the foundation of support, were disgusted and disillusioned with a system with pervasive corruption at the top, while the majority suffered deprivation. Now things have reversed, it is Americas turn.

Freddie

The USSR was totally corrupt just like the USA today. The USA has been on a slipperly slope since before the Banksters - Civil War. I pretty much expected when Obola was selected by Soros and other zios that the uSA was headed towards an implosion like the old USSR.

Phillyguy

Actually the Soviet Union was dismantled from above. The ruling (elite) group - in government, managers of large industries, academics, etc. wanted the economic privileges available in capitalist countries. Circa 80% of the population (i.e., working people) supported the Soviet Union and socialism and were the ones whose living standards collapsed following the conversion to capitalism. See- Revolution From Above: The Demise of the Soviet System by David Kotz and Fred Weir

GC

Now, I'm pretty pro-Russia these days, but..

"Only Mother Russia remained intact."

I suggest checking an atlas, or googlemap. "mother Russia" most certainly included Belarus and, arguably, some if not all of Ukraine. They don't seem to be part of the Russian federation nowadays.

"Unlike the American Empire, they are improving their economies – not cannibalizing them."

That's, unfortunately, very arguable about Russia. Russia lived on the oil price highs of the last 10 years, but its economy is largely unchanged, imports are rampant, agriculture can't keep up with internal demand and infrastructures, in general but in particular in the immense Asian part, has not much changed since the 90s, or maybe even 60s (with the exception of the oil related projects) and corruption is omnipresent.

datura

you don't seem to know much about Russia.

1] Belarus is not technically part of Russia, but in many way it is and still heading for greater integration. Belarus is now part of what is legally called Union State of Russia and Belarus. Interestingly, although economic integration has proved difficult at this point, the two states are integrated militarily. Besides, Belarus is a member of the Eurasian Union, which is a Russian parallel to the European Union. It is perhaps more easy for Russia to have this Union instead of incorporating the former Soviet countries directly into Russia again. Although there are regions, who would very much like to rejoin Russia directly, but cannot do so, because it would provoke fury of the American Empire. So all the integration and rejoining must be done very quietly and under the blanket for now.

2) asian part, has not much changed since the 90s: ummm....this has been true for entire thousands of year long history of Russia. It is incredibly difficult for Russia to develop all its territory, because it is huge. Russia will need help of China and other Asian states to do this. But cities like Vladivostok have changed for better already and are booming. There are plans for greater development of those regions and many projects in place. One of them is the new Russian cosmodrome, which will provide jobs and centre of life for many people, once it is completed. But of course, developing those regions is an enormous effort for generations to come, which Putin can only start and his successors will have to continue.

3) Apart from Far East, Russia is also positioning itself in the Artics, building bases and projects. This is also task for future generations.

4) Russian economy is certainly not unchanged! Russia jumped higher in the ranking of easy to do business chart and the World Bank says that d oing Business in Russia is now easier than in China. Russian debts (both state and external) are still decreasing and gold reserves growing. Agriculture is self-sufficient already (no Russians dying from hunger and import bans still in place). It also has much to improve, but Russians can now feed themselves without the help of the West. For example dairy production has grown 26%. And more than that, for example Russia is now surpassing USA in wheat export. Poorer regions like Africa and Middle-Eastern countries like Egypt and Iran are buying more and more food from Russia, as it is cheaper.

5) Imports rampant? I don't get what rampant means, but imports are much smaller than last year and still dropping. And most imports are now undertandably coming from China. http://www.tradingeconomics.com/russia/imports

6) Corruption is also decreasing and it is nowhere as terrible as in the USA (if only for the simple reason that Russia does not print money and does not increase its debts, so the amount of money to steal from is limited). This should be an example for future Americans. Corruption will always exist, but it will be much less, if you don't print money out of nothing and if you don't increase debts to pass them on to your children.

People tend to forget that Russia, despite being an old civilization, is actually a very young as a state in the current form. Its economy and capitalism have had far less time to develop than USA! The Russian Constitution was created only in 1993, so even its political system is very young. So it is logical that everything is still in its beginnings and evolving. Russia is now where USA was in, say, 1791:-) But that is not necessarily a bad thing, as Russians still have a lot of space for creativity and building of their state - they are in the beginning of a new cycle, while USA is in the end of a cycle.

GC

And you don't seem to understand the arguments made.

1) The writer said that "mother Russi has remained intact". Belarus and Ukraine are part of teh concept of "MOther Russia". ukraine goes without saying, considering that it is where the whole concept of Russia begun (you know, Kievan Rus?). Now, Belarus was part of Kievan Rus and Minsk itself was settled by Russians in the 9th century (the city proper was created in the 11th, still by Russians). yes, it could be argued is that the polonization process that happened once it came under the Polish-Lithuanian union when the Russian state had been conquered by the mongols set belarus culturally and linguistically apart for a few centuries, but ideally, Belarus is undoubtly part of "mother Russia". You seem to know little of the history of the place yourself for accusing othes not to know much of it.

2) yes, indeed... but still, not even you countered my argument that infrastructure is basically what it used to be. of course, not exactly what it used to be.. note that I used "largely the same". there are a few exceptions.

3) true, but artict exploration is like the space age race of the 60s: a show of power and a technological feat, with large upfront costs and with limited impact on the real economy (or rather, a large impact, but on a very long timeframe since the technologies ended up mainstream).

4) saying that doing business in Russia in easier than in China is not saying much, considering how closed to foreigners the Chinese economy is (the fact that it is open to FDI doesn't mean it is an open economy, even if many confuse the two things). Russia can feed itself with grain and potatoes, of course, and it can also export them (as it has done for decades in its history), but it cannot actually produce for a diversified internal demand, forcing people to either pay a large premium for imports (even larger now with sanctions, hence the reduction of imports) or go for second line products via import substitution. the reason why food prices jumped with sanctions is that Russia wasn't able to produce enough to make do for the food it imported and prices raised as goods were to few to meet demand. There's simply no easier evidence than that AND the fact that just last july the ministry of agricolture for Russia promised MASSIVE subsidies to the agricolture sector to stimulate production. So, are we really arguing the insufficiency of Russian agricoltural sector? Which brings as to...

5) ...You confuse the fact that imports are slowing due the economic crisis and ruble depreciation with economic strenght, which is funny. Truth is, if you remove oil from russian exports, the balance of trade of Russia is utterly negative and getting worse. Russia is not Saudi Arabia, of course, where everythign revolves around oil, but most of the economic resurgence of the Putin era is due to oil windfall and not much has been done to improve other sectors of the economy. proof is, there is no major company that is considered a major player which has been born in Russia in the last 20 years. All top russian companies are oil related (Gazprom, Rosnef and Lukoil) or financial (which raised due the financial needs and revenues of oil), while there is a (relative) desert in services and computer technology. Russia has been and largely continue to be, a raw material exporting country with heavy industries tied to raw materials and armaments, not much of an advanced tertiary or high value added items economy. And I add, unfortunately so, as nothing would please me more to see a strong enough Russia to limit the American idiocy around Europe and teh middle East. The world has gone insane since the loss of a counterweight.

6) your understanding of corruption is.. well, not understanding. Corruption isn't tied to money production, it is tied with money transfers within an economy. If you have to pay for a permission or a to move goods around, that is a net loss for the economy. In transpareny international index, Russian CPI was 24 in 2014, ranking it 136 of 175 countries, in 2012 it was 28. It IS improving, but it's still one of the most corrupt countries in the world.

One can be a Russian fan (I am), but denying the limits of the country's economy doesn't help. Putin himself understands the limits and that's the reason why Russian isn't, differently than the US id in Iraq and Afghanistan, going with its army in Ukraine or Syria: they don't have the financial means to sustain a ground war. I wish Russia a bright future, but they have much to improve and their economy has much to diversify to self sustain.

Btw, Russia has another, immense bordering on the catastrophic, problem and that is demography. Between very low natality and, until very recently, a lowering life expectancy (which is still one of the lowest , if not the lowest, of all advanced economies) Russians risk to go extincted to irrilevance by the end of the century (but at least, they are not following the folly of our Europeans to substitute disappearing locals with muslims from the middle east and Africa). I really hope they will manage to reverse the trend.

Lucky Leprachaun

Destruction from within? Undoubtedly. Caused by Americans themselves? More problematical. You see the agents of this destruction - Neocons, banksters, Cultural Marxist degenerates - are largely the 'rootless cosmopolitans' of legend, with at best a transient attachment to the country.

[Nov 06, 2015] Facebook Revenue Surges 41%, as Mobile Advertising and Users Keep Growing

In after Snowden world, is this a testament that most smartphone users are idiots, or what ?

Notable quotes:

"... The company said mobile advertising in the third quarter accounted for a colossal 78 percent of its ad revenue, up from 66 percent a year ago. ..."

"... ... ... ... ..."

Nov 06, 2015 | The New York Time

Facebook is so far defying concerns about its spending habits - a criticism that has at times also plagued Amazon and Alphabet's Google - because the social network is on a short list of tech companies that make money from the wealth of mobile visitors to its smartphone app and website. The company said mobile advertising in the third quarter accounted for a colossal 78 percent of its ad revenue, up from 66 percent a year ago.

... ... ...

Revenue was also bolstered by Facebook increasing the number of ads it showed users over the past year, said David Wehner, the company's chief financial officer. And video advertising, a growth area for Facebook, is on the rise: More than eight billion video views happen on the social network every day, the company said.

Hand in hand with the increased advertising is more users to view the promotions. The number of daily active users of Facebook exceeded one billion for the first time in the quarter, up 17 percent from a year earlier, with monthly active mobile users up 23 percent, to 1.4 billion.

... ... ...

Beyond the properties it owns, Facebook is dabbling in partnerships with media companies that could prove lucrative in the future. In May, the company debuted a feature called Instant Articles with a handful of publishers, including The New York Times, which lets users read articles from directly inside the Facebook app without being directed to a web browser.

[Nov 06, 2015] The C word is a Hidden Tax on Growth

Corruption == inequality: "Corruption is a tax on growth just as inequality is a tax on growth. Money that could be spent on improving conditions overall winds up in the hands of a small wealthy oligarchy. The only real difference is legalistic. Technically corruption involves some type of illegality, but the end results are the same."

Notable quotes:

"... Deregulation, of course. A semantic trick so typical of the IMF. Openness is fair and to manage openness you may need a clear regulatory framework that provides rules and clarity with strong institutions that can ensure compliance. Pushing all the time for deregulation is ideological bias. ..."

"... I like the idea of economist studying the economic effects of corruption. One of the benefits, of course, is that it will bring more to light these rationalizations like the one Ignacio brings up. So if only we didnt have laws against shoplifting then the shoplifter would not have to hide what he was doing or be guilty of a crime ..."

"... Corruption is a tax on growth just as inequality is a tax on growth. Money that could be spent on improving conditions overall winds up in the hands of a small wealthy oligarchy. The only real difference is legalistic. Technically corruption involves some type of illegality, but the end results are the same. ..."

"... This may sound a bit strong, but if you do the math, corruption and relentless upward distribution are the same thing in terms of national accounting. Do the math and youll see. ..."

"... When talking about corruption, everybody focuses on illicit flows of payments, which is of course a primary factor, but I would say the greasing of hands is not the most damaging part, rather it is the associated dereliction of duty and shaping policy and decision making, and initiation, selection, or prioritization of projects not to serve the public benefit (or that of the organizations involved) but to arrange private advantages. ..."

"... the largest problem is not the driving up of the cost though thats bad enough, but the corruption of the very decision making which inevitably leads to not delivering what was needed or requested, but something counterproductive (and not rarely in a way that conveniently enables the next round of graft). ..."

"... In the days of the notoriously corrupt Tammany Hall they used to talk about honest corruption and dishonest corruption. The idea is that honest corruption got the thing built or done, even if the cost was incredibly bloated. Tammany Hall made a point of distributing the loot up and down the line. The big guys would get millions, but every worker on the job got bonus pay, fake overtime and spare parts . ..."

Nov 05, 2015 | Economist's View

From IMF-direct:

The "C word": A Hidden Tax on Growth, by Vitor Gaspar and Sean Hagan: In recent years, citizens' concerns about allegations of corruption in the public sector have become more visible and widespread. From São Paulo to Johannesburg, citizens have taken to the streets against graft. In countries like Chile, Guatemala, India, Iraq, Malaysia and Ukraine, they are sending a clear and loud message to their leaders: Address corruption!

Policymakers are paying attention too. Discussing the "C word" has long been a sensitive topic at inter-governmental organizations like the International Monetary Fund. But earlier this month at its Annual Meetings in Lima, Peru, the IMF hosted a refreshingly frank discussion on the subject. The panel session provided a stimulating debate on definitions of corruption, its direct and indirect consequences, and strategies for addressing it, including the role that individuals and institutions such as the IMF can play. This blog gives a flavor of the discussion. ...

Ignacio said...

Here goes the IMF:

"Openness of the economy through deregulation and liberalization will also help since overly-regulated economies create strong incentives to maintain corrupt practices."

Deregulation, of course. A semantic trick so typical of the IMF. Openness is fair and to manage openness you may need a clear regulatory framework that provides rules and clarity with strong institutions that can ensure compliance. Pushing all the time for deregulation is ideological bias.

djb -> anne...

I like the idea of economist studying the economic effects of corruption. One of the benefits, of course, is that it will bring more to light these rationalizations like the one Ignacio brings up. So if only we didn't have laws against shoplifting then the shoplifter would not have to hide what he was doing or be guilty of a crime

am

Professor Stephenson of Harvard has a very good blog on corruption well worth a look. http://globalanticorruptionblog.com/

kaleberg said...

Corruption is a tax on growth just as inequality is a tax on growth. Money that could be spent on improving conditions overall winds up in the hands of a small wealthy oligarchy. The only real difference is legalistic. Technically corruption involves some type of illegality, but the end results are the same.

This may sound a bit strong, but if you do the math, corruption and relentless upward distribution are the same thing in terms of national accounting. Do the math and you'll see.

cm -> kaleberg...

When talking about corruption, everybody focuses on illicit flows of payments, which is of course a primary factor, but I would say the greasing of hands is not the most damaging part, rather it is the associated dereliction of duty and shaping policy and decision making, and initiation, selection, or prioritization of projects not to serve the public benefit (or that of the organizations involved) but to arrange private advantages.

If it were only about the money, it would be more like being slightly overcharged on the bill, but still getting what you ordered or needed.

cm -> cm...

Of course not to forget the lining of pockets. But my main point still stands - the largest problem is not the driving up of the cost though that's bad enough, but the corruption of the very decision making which inevitably leads to not delivering what was needed or requested, but something counterproductive (and not rarely in a way that "conveniently" enables the next round of graft).

kaleberg -> cm...

In the days of the notoriously corrupt Tammany Hall they used to talk about honest corruption and dishonest corruption. The idea is that honest corruption got the thing built or done, even if the cost was incredibly bloated. Tammany Hall made a point of distributing the loot up and down the line. The big guys would get millions, but every worker on the job got bonus pay, fake overtime and "spare parts".

likbez said...

IMF neoliberal perspective on governance failed to highlight the major source of corruption -- neoliberalism as a social system.

Over recent years, IMF and World Bank have been promoting an artificially constructed discourse on corruption that separates it from its historic narrative -- the neoliberal political system under which it now flourish. They use pretty elaborate smoke screen designed to hide the key issues under the set of fuzzy terms such as "transparency", "accountability", "governance", "anticorruption initiatives". Ignoring the socio-political role of corruption as the key mechanism of the neoliberal debt enslavement of peripheral nations (see Confessions of an Economic Hit Man - Wikipedia )

Privatization might well be the most widespread type of corruption which occurs when an office-holder or other governmental employee acts in an official capacity to sell government property for pennies on the dollar to local oligarchs of international companies. With delayed payment via the "revolving door" mechanism.

If we assume that corruption is 'illegitimate use of public power to benefit a private interest" then neoliberalism is the most corrupt social system imaginable.
But in neoliberal ideology only the state is responsible for corruption. The private sector under neoliberalism is immune of any responsibility. In reality it is completely opposite and state represents a barrier to private companies especially international sharks to get unfair advantage. And they can use the USA embassy as a source of pressure instead of bribing government officials. Neoliberals argues without any proof that if the market is let to function through its own mechanisms, and the role of state diminished to a minimum regulatory role, "good governance" could be realized and corruption be diminished. As US subprime crisis has shown this is untrue and destroys the stability of the economy.

Actually the term "governance" serves as the magical universal opener in neoliberal ideology. It is ideologically grounded up the narrative of previous mismanagement of economy ("blame the predecessor" trick).

This assumes the ideal economic sphere, in which players somehow get an equal opportunities automatically without regulatory role of the state and in case of peripheral nations without being strong armed by more powerful states. Under neoliberalism ethical responsibilities on players are reduced to the loyalty to contract.

Moreover antisocial behavior under liberalism is explicitly promoted (" greed is good") and the West serves as a "treasure vault" for stolen money and provides "safe heaven" for corrupt officials that face prosecution. At least this is true for Russian oligarchs when each crook automatically became "fighter for freedom" after landing in London airport and stolen money are indirectly appropriated by British state and never returned to Russia.

The USA is very similar. It likes to condemn corruption but seldom returns that money stolen -- for example it never returned to Ukraine money stolen by Ukrainian Prime minister under President Kuchma Pavlo Lazarenko (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavlo_Lazarenko) .

gunste said...

Applied Republican ideology is operating and legislating in favor of money donors and their businesses. It is America's legalized corruption and bribery.

[Nov 06, 2015] How Firefox's New Private Mode Trumps Chrome's Incognito

11/05/15 | Observer

Comment

Firefox ups its privacy game with version 42.

Mozilla made a bit of a splash this week with the announcement of its updated "private mode" in Firefox, but it's worth spelling out exactly why: Firefox's enhanced privacy mode blocks web trackers.

Users familiar with Chrome's "Incognito Mode" may assume that's what it does as well, but it doesn't. It's no fault of Google or the Chromium Project if someone misunderstands the degree of protection. The company is clear in its FAQ: all Incognito Mode does is keep your browsing out of the browser's history.

'We think that when you launch private browsing you're telling us that you want more control over the data you share on the web.'

Firefox's new "Private Mode" one-ups user protection here by automatically blocking web trackers. Nick Nguyen, Vice President for Product at Mozilla, says in the video announcement, "We think that when you launch private browsing you're telling us that you want more control over the data you share on the web." That sounds right. In fact, most people probably think private modes provide more safety than they do.

Firefox has been working to educate web users about the prevalence of trackers for a long time. In 2012, it introduced Collusion to help users visualize just how many spying eyes were in the background of their browsing (a tool now known by the milquetoast name 'Lightbeam') and how they follow you around.

Privacy nuts might be thinking, "Hey, isn't the new Private Mode basically doing what the Ghostery add-on/extension does already? It looks that way. Ghostery was not immediately available for comment on this story. This reporter started using Ghostery in earnest in the last few weeks, and while it does bust the odd page, overall, it makes the web much faster. As Mr. Nguyen says in the video, Firefox's new mode should do the roughly the same.

The best way to update Firefox is within the 'About Firefox' dialogue. Open it and let it check for updates (if it doesn't say version 42.0 or higher, the browser doesn't have it). On Macs, find "About Firefox" under the "Firefox" tab in the menu bar. On a PC, find it in the hamburger menu in the upper right.

Competition in the browser battles keeps improving the functionality of the web. When Chrome first came along, Firefox had become incredibly bloated.

Notice of what's new in 'Private Mode' when opened in Firefox, after updating. (Screenshot: Firefox)

Then, Chrome popularized the notion of incognito browsing, back when the main privacy concern was that our roommate would look at our browsing history to see how often we were visiting Harry Potter fansites (shout out to stand-up comic, Ophira Eisenberg, for that one).

As the web itself has become bloated with spyware, incorporating tracker blocking directly into the structure of the world's second most popular browser is a strong incentive for web managers to be more judicious about the stuff they load up in the background of websites.

Don't forget, though, that even with trackers blocked, determined sites can probably identify visitors and they can definitely profile, using browser fingerprinting. If you really want to hide, use Tor. If you're mega paranoid, try the Tails OS.

[Nov 06, 2015] Egypt's Dismissal of Terrorism in Russian Plane Crash Creates a Rift

Why western MSM push so hard the version about the bomb ? Investigation just started and there are multiple version including now known far there that were war games by NATO the same day in the same area.

Notable quotes:

"... Egypt faces an economic disaster if tourism and business travel stops, and you don't think they will say it was just a simple accident -- move along now, nothing to see here ..."

"... The reality is the West ruined Libya, abandoned Tunis, and chickened out by backing Sisi in Egypt. Therefore, there are alot of armed Jihadis looking for Westerners to shoot. Its also about to get worse since now its Russia's turn to ruin things even more...... ..."

"... I am in no way a fan of Putin, but recently he explained his issue with the West pretty clearly. Most Russians subscribe to that. Russia does not see West as a threat, but as a trouble maker at large, causing havoc and destabilizing the world. Listen to him if you want to understand the other side ..."

The New York Times

Tom Mariner, Bayport, New York

Egypt faces an economic disaster if tourism and business travel stops, and you don't think they will say it was just a simple accident -- "move along now, nothing to see here".

njglea, is a trusted commenter Seattle

Tension in the Middle East is rising and it is very frightening because it's a no-win situation as it stands now. Everybody loses. I am reminded of a song from the 1960s that addresses this situation perfectly and is a message that should go to every world leader and hater. "One Tin Soldier". Please listen and read the lyrics and, if you agree, forward this message to everyone you know. WE can live in a peaceful world if enough of us take small actions to make it so.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKx0tdlxMfY

della, cambridge, ma 52 minutes ago

I just flew back from Istanbul -- four layers of security -- superior to US.

Matthew Abbasi, Los Angeles 52 minutes ago

Why would any Westerner in his/her right mind go to Egypt, Tunisia, or Libya for a vacation? These are unstable nations with ongoing civil wars so Western nations really need to ban tourist for a bit for until things calm down. Its not enough to say that these nations need the tourist money. The risk should not be discounted just because of that. The reality is the West ruined Libya, abandoned Tunis, and chickened out by backing Sisi in Egypt. Therefore, there are alot of armed Jihadis looking for Westerners to shoot. Its also about to get worse since now its Russia's turn to ruin things even more......

Abbas -> Matthew Abbasi, San Francisco, CA 43 minutes ago

Egypt does not have a civil war. Statistically, it is far safer to visit than many places in the U.S.

Rohit, New York

Quoting another poster

"I am in no way a fan of Putin, but recently he explained his issue with the West pretty clearly. Most Russians subscribe to that. Russia does not see West as a threat, but as a trouble maker at large, causing havoc and destabilizing the world. Listen to him if you want to understand the other side"

https://youtu.be/OQuceU3x2Ww

And what is fascinating is that every word spoken by Putin could just as easily have been said by Noam Chomsky or even by President Eisenhower.

PS, Vancouver, Canada

I have little faith in airport security checks in the middle east. Was in Morocco this summer - put my bags on the conveyor belt. Fine - but there was nary a soul manning the monitors. Yes, it was screened (given that it passed through an x-ray machine, but there were no human eyes checking it) . . . also, no one bothered to take my water bottle (which I had inadvertently carried with me.

[Nov 06, 2015] If Journalism Were Run Like Science, Would It Be More Believable?

10/21/15 | Observer

A lesson from Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson on scientific method and the value of news

Science, circa 1955 (Photo: Orlando /Three Lions/Getty Images)

Our biggest challenge in journalism is not ad blockers or declining print circulation or Silicon Valley. It is value. What are we worth to the public we serve? Are we reliable? Trustworthy? Useful? We are not as liked as we would like to believe.

Last week, I had the fun privilege of interviewing Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson-astrophysicist, podcaster, tweeter, TV star, and debunker of stupidity-when he received the Knight Innovation Award at CUNY's Graduate School of Journalism.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/SJbhl_OO-nk

As I wrote in these pages recently, we decided to give the award to Mr. Tyson precisely because he is not a journalist, because he brings explanation, fact, and discipline to the process of informing and educating the public. We saw him as an example to journalists as they innovate in their own craft.

... ... ...

That goal-an informed society-does not mesh with our methods, business models, and metrics. So long as we earn our money attracting as many people as possible to our content, then wholesaling their eyeballs by the ton to advertisers, then we are motivated to grab attention with stories and headlines that report just the latest, not necessarily the preponderance, of facts relating to any given question or dispute. We measure our success on the basis of how much audience attention we grabbed, not by measuring how much we informed and educated the public-not in our impact, our utility, our value.

We must shift our business toward value, toward proving our worth in people's lives. We must measure our success on whether the public ends up better informed through our efforts-not whether they merely gave us their attention and certainly not when they only calcify their previously held and uninformed beliefs. We in journalism-like Mr. Tyson-need to act and judge ourselves more as scientists trafficking in evidence and as educators making impact. Or else, why bother?

[Nov 06, 2015] Wikileaks' Hacked Stratfor Emails Shed Light on Feds Using License Plate Readers

Oct 01, 2015 | observer.com

Federal law enforcement began planning to use license plate readers in 2009 to track cars that visited gun shows against cars that crossed the border into Mexico, according to notes from a meeting between United States and Mexican law enforcement, released on Wikileaks. The notes were taken by Marko Papic, then of Stratfor, a company that describes itself as a publisher of geopolitical intelligence.

License plate readers are becoming a standard tool for local and national law enforcement across the country. In 2013, the ACLU showed that state and local law enforcement were widely documenting drivers' movements. Ars Technica looked at license plate data collected in Oakland. In January, the ACLU described documents attained from the Drug Enforcement Agency under the Freedom of Information Act that showed that agency has been working closely with state and local law enforcement. Many of the findings in these latter documents corroborate some of the insights provided by the 2009 meeting notes on Wikileaks.

Wikileaks began publishing these emails in February 2012, as the "Global Intelligence Files," as the Observer previously reported. The documents have to be read with some caution. These were reportedly attained by hackers in December 2011. A Stratfor spokesperson declined to comment on the leaked emails, referring the Observer instead to its 2012 statement, which says, "Some of the emails may be forged or altered to include inaccuracies; some may be authentic. We will not validate either."

While it's hard to imagine that such a giant trove could be completely fabricated, there is also no way to know whether or not some of it was tampered with. That said, details about federal license plate reader programs largely square with subsequent findings about the surveillance systems.

The meeting appears to have been primarily concerned with arms control, but related matters, such as illegal drug traffic and the Zetas, come up as well. The focus of the meeting appears to be information sharing among the various authorities, from both countries. Among other initiatives, the notes describe the origins of a sophisticated national system of automobile surveillance.

Here are some findings on law enforcement technology, with an emphasis on tracking automobiles:

• The program wasn't fully live in 2009. The notes read, "Mr. 147 asked about the License Plate Reader program and Mr. 983 from DEA responded that they were still in the testing phase but that once completed the database would be available for use by everyone." However, an email found by the ACLU from 2010 said that the DEA was sharing information with local law enforcement as of May 2009. (People at the meeting are largely referred to by numbers throughout the notes)
• Gun shows. The officials in the meeting suspect that a lot of guns that reach Mexico come from American gun shows. The Ambassador from Mexico is cited as believing that shows were the main source of firearms coming into his country. The ATF then says that investigating gun shows is "touchy."
• Cross-referencing. Despite the sensitivity, the ATF hoped to be able to identify vehicles that visited gun shows and then crossed the border. The notes read, "[Mr. 192] noted that they would do the check once they came into Mexico. Mr. 009 stated part of the new ways that are being looked at is incorporating that type of information into license plate readers for local law enforcement. He added that DEA is going to provide more and more license plate readers especially southbound." This last point squares with ACLU's finding, which found a 2010 document that said the DEA had 41 readers set up in southern border states.
• ATF and the NRA. Apparently law enforcement checks in with the gun rights advocates. Mr. 123 is identified as an ATF employee in the hacked email. In a conversation about the federal government's gun tracking system, eTrace, the notes attribute to him the following, "He added that they are in constant communication with Mr. Templeton who has the Cross Roads of the West Gun Show as well as NRA attorneys and that there had been no complaints on how things were moving." Bob Templeton is shown as the President of the National Association of Arms Shows on this op-ed and runs the gun show mentioned, according to its site.
• Other data. The notes also indicate that the ATF was working on ways to identify people who bought more guns at gun shows than their income should allow. It also indicated that the United States' gun tracking system was being translated into Spanish, so that Mexican authorities could check guns against American records.

The notes themselves are not dated, but the email containing them is dated September 4, 2009. It provides no names, but it cites people from the Mexican Embassy, the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firerearms, DEA, Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and others. The only person named is Marko Papic, who identifies himself in this hacked email. Stephen Meiners circulated Mr. Papic's notes from the summit's morning and afternoon session in one email.

The Supreme Court of California is set to review police's exemption to sharing information on how they use license plate reader data in that state. A court in Fairfax County, Virginia, is set to consider a suit against police there over local law enforcement keeping and sharing of data about people not suspected of a crime.

The DEA and the ATF did not reply to a request for comment for this story.

[Nov 06, 2015] An Entire City Trolled NSA Spies Using an Art Project

Notable quotes:

"... This created an open communication network, meaning that with the use of any wifi-enabled device, anyone could send anything (text messages, voice calls, photos and files) anonymously for those listening to hear. ..."

"... "If people are spying on us, it stands to reason that they have ..."

"... To no surprise, there was a ton of trolling. ..."

observer.com

When it was revealed in 2013 that the NSA and its UK equivalent, GCHQ, routinely spied on the German government, artists Mathias Jud and Christoph Wachter came up with a plan.

They installed a series of antennas on the roof of the Swiss Embassy in Berlin and another giant antenna on the roof of the Academy of Arts, which is located exactly between the listening posts of the NSA and GCHQ. This created an open communication network, meaning that with the use of any wifi-enabled device, anyone could send anything (text messages, voice calls, photos and files) anonymously for those listening to hear.

"If people are spying on us, it stands to reason that they have to listen to what we are saying," Mr. Jud said in a TED Talk on the subject that was filmed at TED Global London in September and uploaded onto Ted.com today.

This was perfectly legal, and they named the project "Can You Hear Me?"

To no surprise, there was a ton of trolling. One message read, "This is the NSA. In God we trust. In all others we track!!!!!" Another said, "Agents, what twisted story of yourself will you tell your grandchildren?" One particularly humorous message jokingly pleaded, "@NSA My neighbors are noisy. Please send a drone strike."

Watch the full talk here for more trolling messages and details about the project:

... ... ...

[Nov 06, 2015] Health Inequality

Notable quotes:

"... Low life expectancies in the South have been widely documented for decades ..."

"... methodology has advantages in that is it is doable, but limitations in that it was divided into quintiles solely by average income in the zipcode. Top quintile income group was 48000 average bottom quintile 22000. Of course the debt load was going down more for lower income zip codes compared to higher income zip codes ..."

Nov 06, 2015 | Economist's View

Health is a Key Component of Inequality

In terms of welfare (under standard assumptions on the welfare function), the elimination of the left tail of mortality would have a beneficial impact that is about 60 percent larger than full consumption equalization.

What are the policies that might eliminate the lower tail of the life-expectancy distribution? This remains a topic for further discussion. However, we observe that the increase in life expectancy that we need to achieve the elimination of the lower tail is not unprecedented. Over a span of twenty years, life expectancy increased on average by three years across U.S. counties, which would be sufficient to raise the lower tail substantially.

DrDick said...

Low life expectancies in the South have been widely documented for decades. I would note that most of the high mortality areas in Montana are associated with Indian reservations. The one in the NW corner is anti-government survivalists and libertarian whackaloons. Objectivist jerky indeed.

djb said...

methodology has advantages in that is it is doable, but limitations in that it was divided into quintiles solely by average income in the zipcode. Top quintile income group was 48000 average bottom quintile 22000. Of course the debt load was going down more for lower income zip codes compared to higher income zip codes, which goes counter to JohnH's assertions about monetary policy

[Nov 06, 2015] Putin Suspends Flights To Egypt As World Blames ISIS For Plane Crash

Is this a replay on MH17? Looks like like was the case on 9/11 and MH17 there were war games the same day in the same air space.

Notable quotes:

"... Conspicuously absent from MSM is the fact that Israel, USA, Poland, Greece were having war game air dogfights 40 miles from where the plane was shot down. ..."

"... I caught that too, and it has gotten no play at all in western media. I heard it mentioned in Russian media. These are regular air superiority exercises. Air to Air combat using air superiority fighters and air to air missiles. Should this be investigated? Of course. It has already done this once before in 1980 during air to air exercises of NATO. ..."

"... On 23 January 2013 Italys top criminal court ruled that there was abundantly clear evidence that the flight was brought down by a missile ..."

"... Putin has proven in Ukraine that he cannot be goaded into action. This is an attempt to get Russian popular opinion ,to force his hand. ..."

"... The contradictions are getting so massive, even sheeple might begin to notice. ..."

"... Force his hand to do what? I dont exactly understand what youre suggesting. I guarantee you this airliner downing has only made Russians dislike ISIS more...it hasnt made them suddenly think oh we should not mess around there anymore. ..."

"... Something done in rage, rather than his cool, calculating lawyerly approach. Anything that can be portrayed as terrible to the RoW to disuade them from crossing into his camp. Its a Hail Mary pass IMO, but it shows how desperate they are getting. ..."

"... I have not confirmed myself but reports are that Israeli firms supplied the security for that airport. Some reports say the Saudis also have some component of the security or operations. ..."

"... Nope. Not while sportsball is on the teebee they wont. The trough of stupidity is a sweet, intoxicating slurry of false promises, self promotion and uplifting exceptionalism. ..."

"... I just know you voiced equal measures of concern over the 2+ million killed and the countless more driven out, crippled or orphaned by USSA warmongering in the region, not to mention all the noise Im sure you raised about israel killing thousands of civilians in Palestine too? ..."

"... Your lazy sarcasm aside - Russian media comports strangely with independent media, and it is no less trustworthy than the absolute nonsense in the pages of the NYT, Wa Post and other, indeed, Zionist {and Establishment media}. ..."

"... NYT Still Pretends No Coup in Ukraine ..."

"... The notion that American media is more trustworthy is absolutely absurd. One simply has to read from as broad an array as possible and assume that everyone has an agenda, everyone is trying to convince you of a *version*. Only its the US and its allies that have gone around the world bombing and killing based on pretext and lies, not the Russians. ..."

"... in Kiev itself it is now public information that most sniper shoots were fired from the Ukraine Hotel that was headquarters to Right Sector Fascists. ..."

"... Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Because this fraud guy in his small house in England has been exposed again and again as a liar and fraud, anyone using him as a source is making themsleves highly suspect. As if a fake source, as long as it says what you one wants, is good enough . ..."

"... ISIS(ISIL) Completely Fabricated Enemy by US: Former CIA Contractor! Socio-Economics History Blog ..."

"... The Russians are asking British Intel after making the statement that if they have some supporting intel they would like to hear it. They refuse to share any intel; For a disaster and possibly a terrorist attack investigation? Hmmmm Wonder why? What are they hiding from? Why would you not want to help an investigation? Why do they want to promote an unproven story? To deflect the blame? Somebody has something to hide. ..."

"... The US/UK has amazingly good information on what IS is doing, n est ce pas? And fantastic surveillance data, right out of the chute, in stark contrast to the seeming complete inattention paid to Malaysian jetliners. ..."

"... If the British and American governments are saying it was a bomb, then you can be sure it was NOT a bomb. I am leaning toward believing that it was an act taken by the US and Israel during their war games from a location nearby the downing. Too much of a coincidence. ..."

"... Lets harken back to MH-17. The instant and coordinated lies across all western media within hours, suggests a link between all Media Corporations and their Editorial Staffs. A German journalist wrote a book about his work for the CIA as a German journalist. He was under the impression that CIA was active across all media corporations and their editorial staff. I think MH-17 proved the fact that CIA does control much of what we read and hear. Otherwise, who can explain the exact same stories in all western media appearing before any of them even had a chance to read each others work! Odds of replication without prior knowledge are zero! ..."

"... Whether or not it was a bomb matters a lot less than who knew when and how they knew it. Like, for instance, if they knew it was a bomb before it blew up. The details and pattern of the media operation are pretty interesting, but more matters of art than fact. ..."

"... Is it not the case that a Russian passenger plane was downed after the Russian air force bombed ISIS for a month, while no US planes were terrorized after the US air force bombed ISIS for a year. ..."

Nov 06, 2015 | Zero Hedge

detached.amusement

Conspicuously absent from MSM is the fact that Israel, USA, Poland, Greece were having war game air dogfights 40 miles from where the plane was shot down.

Jack Burton

I caught that too, and it has gotten no play at all in western media. I heard it mentioned in Russian media. These are regular air superiority exercises. Air to Air combat using air superiority fighters and air to air missiles. Should this be investigated? Of course. It has already done this once before in 1980 during air to air exercises of NATO.

Aerolinee Itavia Flight 870

the cause of the crash to a missile fired from a French Navy aircraft, despite contrary evidence presented in Frank Taylor's 1994 report. On 23 January 2013 Italy's top criminal court ruled that there was "abundantly" clear evidence that the flight was brought down by a missile.^[1] To date, this remains the deadliest aviation incident involving a DC-9-10/15 series."

cougar_w

When everything is a false flag operation then nothing is.

ISIS is perfectly capable to pulling this off, and seems to enjoy the infamy, and they couldn't wait to claim credit. Looks good to me, no need to go any further than that.

... ... ...

Winston Churchill

The gambit is pretty obvious.

Putin has proven in Ukraine that he cannot be goaded into action. This is an attempt to get Russian popular opinion ,to force his hand.

They keep on telling us he's a dictator, so why would that affect him ?

The contradictions are getting so massive, even sheeple might begin to notice.

Glasnost -> Winston Churchill

Force his hand to do what? I don't exactly understand what you're suggesting. I guarantee you this airliner downing has only made Russians dislike ISIS more...it hasn't made them suddenly think oh we should not mess around there anymore.

Winston Churchill -> Glasnost

Something done in rage, rather than his cool, calculating lawyerly approach. Anything that can be portrayed as terrible to the RoW to disuade them from crossing into his camp. Its a Hail Mary pass IMO, but it shows how desperate they are getting.

Blankone

I have not confirmed myself but reports are that Israeli firms supplied the security for that airport. Some reports say the Saudi's also have some component of the security or operations.

Maybe they should focus on that as well.

trulz4lulz

Now the sympathisers are trying to "pass the buck!"... an american tradition. much akin to "indian giving" but better.

dear american gubmit: Who created ISIS?

american gubmit: uhhh uhhhh, they did it!!! yeah! it was them all along, ya see?!

Yttrium Gold Nitrogen

France 2 reports that a sound of an explosion was recorded by the blackboxes, according to official who had access to the recordings.

trulz4lulz -> Winston Churchill

The contradictions are getting so massive, even sheeple might begin to notice.

Nope. Not while sportsball is on the teebee they wont. The trough of stupidity is a sweet, intoxicating slurry of false promises, self promotion and uplifting exceptionalism. The world is an aweful place when there isnt anyone there to tell you how exceptional you are. Murikistanians will NOT look away from the trough. Its just too delicious.

El Vaquero -> trulz4lulz

Having them distracted with bread and circuses is a double edged sword.

Winston Churchill -> El Vaquero

Yep, distraction beats jingo.

It was much easier to whip up a blood frenzy before kim Kardasians ass blocked out the horizon.

trulz4lulz -> Winston Churchill

I agree, but it also helps promote patriotism and consumerism, which also is good for the economy because it focuses on the packadged food sector which is where a lot of jobs data comes from. . The model for the distraction workings is fascinating to me.

forputin

So which sources are credible? Only those russian? Yes, I also thought so. Only those sources that are controlled by Putin can be trusted. All other are controled by Anglo Zion Banking NWO Lizzard People Elite. Thank God Putin protects us from that information!

farflungstar -> forputin

Voactiv uses Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, so yeah it's probably bullshit. Reuters @ Buiness Insider too, more bullshit, Hymie.

I just know you voiced equal measures of concern over the 2+ million killed and the countless more driven out, crippled or orphaned by USSA warmongering in the region, not to mention all the noise I'm sure you raised about israel killing thousands of civilians in Palestine too?

Fuckin dickmouth

Raymond_K._Hessel

the Syrian Observatory is absolutely not credible - its one guy being used as a quote factory.

Your lazy sarcasm aside - Russian media comports strangely with independent media, and it is no less trustworthy than the absolute nonsense in the pages of the NYT, Wa Post and other, indeed, Zionist {and 'Establishment' media}.

NYT Still Pretends No Coup in Ukraine
https://consortiumnews.com/2015/01/06/nyt-still-pretends-no-coup-in-ukra...

The notion that American media is more trustworthy is absolutely absurd. One simply has to read from as broad an array as possible and assume that everyone has an agenda, everyone is trying to convince you of a *version*. Only its the US and its allies that have gone around the world bombing and killing based on pretext and lies, not the Russians.

So the false equivalency ploy makes sense - until you give it a moment's thought.

Cookie?

Jack Burton

30,000 trained, paid and organized fascists appeared on the Madian in the matter of a couple days, armed and outfitted in body armor. But Euro Maidan is not a Coup according to NYT. Every peaceful protest gets a 30,000 man army arrive to help it along. Also, in Kiev itself it is now public information that most sniper shoots were fired from the Ukraine Hotel that was headquarters to Right Sector Fascists.

Jack Burton

Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Because this fraud guy in his small house in England has been exposed again and again as a liar and fraud, anyone using him as a source is making themsleves highly suspect. As if a fake source, as long as it says what you one wants, is good enough".

Western Media refuses to expose this guy for what he is. He hides up in his house, claiming people are out to kill him, and puts out posts about war crimes. He hasn't been to Syria for over a decade, and admits No First Hand Knowledge of his Syrian sources, he gets his information second hand from so called friends of friends in Syria. RT caught up to him and made a fool out of him on camera.

Yet he is the West's Top Source on Syrian war crimes.

Johnny Horscaulk

ISIS(ISIL) Completely Fabricated Enemy by US: Former CIA Contractor! Socio-Economics History Blog

alphahammer

Here is an excellent source of what happening there -- down to the minute.

BTW. This nugget jumps out.

----

Big impact of Russia's suspension of Egypt flights

Roland Oliphant, our correspondent in Moscow, writes:

Quote

It's not just the Egyptian economy that will hurt after this. Russia's association of tour agencies says today's decision cuts off their biggest market and sets them on a "direct path to bankruptcy."

"Egypt is the single biggest selling destination on the Russian tourism market, and right now it is peak season. It's the main destination for all the large tour operators," said Irina Tyurina, a spokeswoman for the Russian Union of Tour Operators.

"There's 50,000 Russians there now, and those who have to come home early or have bought tickets but now can't travel, should get their money back from the tour operators. It's a direct path to bankruptcy for many firms."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/11978962/Russian...

trulz4lulz

Heavily invested in the tourist industry, are we? America is about to trigger a world warand you people are screeming aout lost vacation revenue? You are either one of the dumbest humans on earth that has learned to word good, or you are just plan software. Im guessing software. Nothiing but a program can be so blatantly stupid.

alphahammer

Dumb?

BBBWWWAAAAHHHAAAA!!!!!

I cut and paste the direct words from Roland Oliphant, our correspondent in Moscow, writes:

If you had a lick of mental capacity, you would understand the comment is about RUSSIAN investment in tourism because Egypt is Russias #1 spot for vacationing Russians.

ITS THE RUSSIANS SCREAMING ABOUT LOST TOURIST REVENUE EINSTEIN...

Dumb? Yes, look it up in the dictionary and there will be your picture...

swmnguy

Oliphant is doing a good job in his role, helping to bait the hook the Zbigniew Brzezinski acolytes are jiggling out there. Oliphant's editorial comments about the Russian people's unwillingness to take casualties suggests he's gotten his Garanimals mixed up. Russians aren't Americans.

farflungstar

Because ISIS, Manischewitz Land, the US and UK "intelligence" agencies said they did it, does this mean it's true? Who would reasonably believe these serial liars at this point in time? Credibility is shot.

I'd like to hear what the Russians have to say after a thorough investigation.

SSRI Junkie

this works out well for obola. he hates egypt for tossing out his muslim brotherhood lackeys and gets putin to cancel their flights in and out of egypt. his bung brothers in saudi arabia keep pumping oil even if it's unprofitable to stomp out our domestic oil production as well as russia's oil production. obola is a plague of unprecendented proportion even if the cdc doesn't recognize it

cowdiddly

Britain and the Us both are trying to say that this was a bomb planted by ISIS. The Russians are saying they will wait for the data.

The Russians are asking British Intel after making the statement that if they have some supporting intel they would like to hear it. They refuse to share any intel; For a disaster and possibly a terrorist attack investigation? Hmmmm Wonder why? What are they hiding from? Why would you not want to help an investigation? Why do they want to promote an unproven story? To deflect the blame? Somebody has something to hide.

Somebody is involved here that is going to reveal a nasty truth and I would not want to be them cause right now the bear is just smiling at you and he is all ears.

THE DORK OF CORK

The Tunisia beech job was very effective.

It inflated the Spanish and Italian economies over the summer.

It seems like part of the banks armoury.

The Dogs of Moar

An update of the Tourney between Langley and Moscow this first week of November.

As you know, on Wednesday the Big Big Three, Barack Obama, President of the US, David Cameron, Prime Minister of the UK, and Doofus al-Evil, the US appointed Emir of ISIL, tried to co opt the investigation of the crash of the Russian plane in Sinai.

"I don't think we know yet" what caused the crash, Obama said ... But it is certainly possible that there was a bomb on board."

British Prime Minister David Cameron says it's "more likely than not."

ISIS released a message on November 4 with claims that the group was responsible for the Russian plane crash in Sinai, and said its method will be revealed soon.

ISIS first claimed credit for the downing of the Russian passenger jet an hour after the plane went down. Six days later they're telling the world that "their method will be revealed soon."

WHAT THEY ARE REALLY SAYING IS THAT THEIR METHOD WILL BE REVEALED AS SOON AS THE CIA TELLS THEM WHAT METHOD THE CIA USED AND THAT ISIS SHOULD CLAIM THE SAME.

THE CIA'S FEAR IS THAT THE INVESTIGATORS WILL UNCOVER A SOPHISTICATED EXPLOSIVE THAT THE RETARDNIKS IN ISIS COULD ONLY HAVE GOTTEN FROM LANGLEY OR MI6.

But Russian and Egyptian authorities pushed back Thursday on suggestions that a bomb brought down Metrojet Flight 9268 over Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, saying there's no evidence yet to support that theory.

Today the National Anti-Terrorist Committee said it deems it necessary to stop all Russian flights to Egypt until the causes of the A321 plane crash are established. Russian experts are taking wipe-samples from the plane fragments and passengers' luggage to trace possible explosives.

If this investigation gets troublesome, there will be a fight in Langley between those who wanted the plane to go down in the drink and those who wanted it down in the desert for the propaganda value.

Atticus Finch

" RETARDNIKS IN ISIS COULD ONLY HAVE GOTTEN FROM LANGLEY OR MI6."...

You forgot Mossad.

trulz4lulz

If this investigation gets troublesome, there will be a fight in Langley between those who wanted the plane to go down in the drink and those who wanted it down in the desert for the propaganda value.

that sums it up right there. arguing over which aspect of treason to commit and cover up. this is whats wrong. exactly.

swmnguy

The US/UK intelligence guys screwed up the timeline this past week, putting out new rules for their people and announcing they had intel proving IS did it before cluing in the Russians.

It was a surprisingly blatant mistake. Let's see, whom do we know in a position of power in Russia who would be intimately familiar with the way this game is played? Who would know immediately exactly what this timeline error signifies?

The US/UK has amazingly good information on what IS is doing, n' est ce pas? And fantastic surveillance data, right out of the chute, in stark contrast to the seeming complete inattention paid to Malaysian jetliners.

Telling.

The Dogs of Moar

On October 27, 1964 -- here's what Ronald Reagan said

"If all of this seems like a great deal of trouble, think what's at stake. We are faced with the most evil enemy mankind has known in his long climb from the swamp to the stars.

Did he realize how prescient he was, in thus describing the United States of America?

Grandad Grumps

If the British and American governments are saying it was a bomb, then you can be sure it was NOT a bomb. I am leaning toward believing that it was an act taken by the US and Israel during their war games from a location nearby the downing. Too much of a coincidence.

The video was not clear enough for me to determine if a missile was involved or the altitude a missile might have originated from.

Jack Burton -> Grandad Grumps

That's a valid thought. We should be asking "why the USA and UK are in such a hurry to claim bomb". It was a Russian plane, and the US and UK have no interest in this, unless they do have a hidden interest in this.

Lets harken back to MH-17. The instant and coordinated lies across all western media within hours, suggests a link between all Media Corporations and their Editorial Staffs. A German journalist wrote a book about his work for the CIA as a German journalist. He was under the impression that CIA was active across all media corporations and their editorial staff. I think MH-17 proved the fact that CIA does control much of what we read and hear. Otherwise, who can explain the exact same stories in all western media appearing before any of them even had a chance to read each others work! Odds of replication without prior knowledge are zero!

swmnguy -> Jack Burton

Whether or not it was a bomb matters a lot less than who knew when and how they knew it. Like, for instance, if they knew it was a bomb before it blew up. The details and pattern of the media operation are pretty interesting, but more matters of art than fact.

farflungstar

The Mockies over at Charlie Hebdo seemed to find it funny that this plane crashed, not so funny when a bunch of their people got killed at work back in January:

http://sputniknews.com/cartoons/20151106/1029698946/JeNeSuisPasCharlie.html

One of the pictures shows a jihadist of the Islamic State (IS) militant group and plane's debris falling around him. The caption says "IS: Russian Aviation intensifies its bombing campaign.

Mocking a plane crash where 224 people were killed, such a rich source of humor hahahaha so fucking hysterical fucking faggot frogs

http://sputniknews.com/world/20151106/1029683872/plane-crash-charlie-heb...

Jack Burton

I saw this yesterday. Honestly, given what we call "Western Values" I fully expected the guardians of culture in France to come up with something like this. When their people die, it's a world wide event. When others die, it is a joke. Let's be clear, this story has made it deep into Russian media. Need I tell you what the mood is now?

The Dogs of Moar

Is it not the case that a Russian passenger plane was downed after the Russian air force bombed ISIS for a month, while no US planes were terrorized after the US air force bombed ISIS for a year.

... ... ...

KashNCarry

Meanwhile off the coast of Libya:

Gaddafis Ghost Laughs In Your Face - YouTube

[Nov 05, 2015] This 19th-Century Invention Could Keep You From Being Hacked

Just typing your correspondence on disconnected from internet computer and pointing it on connected via USB printer is enough. Or better writing letter using regular pen.

observer.com

The most secure and, at the same time, usable, method of creating, sharing and storing information is to write it up on a manual typewriter and store it in a locked filing cabinet

If the CIA's Director John Brennan can't keep his emails private, who can? Sadly, the fact that email and instant messaging are far more convenient than communicating via papers in envelopes or by actually talking on the phone, or (God forbid) face to face, these technologies are far more insecure. Could it be that the old ways protected both secrecy and privacy far better than what we have now?

The men and women in the United States government assigned to protect our nation's most important secrets have good reason to quote Allen Ginsberg, the Beat poet who proclaimed, "The typewriter is holy." For that matter so are pens, pencils, carbon paper and ordinary paper. In the digital age privacy as we once knew it, is dead, not just for ordinary citizens, but for government officials including, apparently, the head of the CIA-not to mention our former Secretary of State. Neither the NSA nor the U.S. military have been able to keep their secrets from being exposed by the likes of WikiLeaks or Edward Snowden.

... ... ...

Given America's failures to protect our own secret information, one hopes and wishes that the U.S. is as successful at stealing information from our potential foes as they are at stealing from us.

In the private sector, hackers steal information from countless companies, ranging from Target to Ashley Madison. The banks rarely let on how badly or how often they are victimized by cybercrime, but rumor has it that it is significant. At least for now, the incentives for making and selling effective cyber security systems are nowhere near as powerful as the incentives for building systems that can steal secret or private information from individuals, as well as from corporations and governments. In the digital age, privacy is gone.

Increasingly, organizations and individuals are rediscovering the virtues of paper. Non-digital media are simply invulnerable to hacking. Stealing information from a typewriter is harder than stealing it from a word processor, computer or server. A physical file with sheets of paper covered in words written either by hand or by typewriter is a safer place to store confidential information than any electronic data storage system yet devised.

[Nov 04, 2015] Surveillance Q A: what web data is affected – and how to foil the snoopers

Notable quotes:

"... The government is attempting to push into law the ability for law enforcement agencies to be able to look at 12 months of what they are calling "internet connection records", limited to the website domains that UK internet users visit. ..."

"... It does not cover specific pages: so police and spies will not be able to access that level of detail. That means they would know that a person has spent time on the Guardian website, but not what article they read. ..."

"... Information about the sites you visit can be very revealing. The data would show if a person has regularly visited Ashley Madison – the website that helped facilitate extramarital affairs. A visit to an Alcoholics Anonymous website or an abortion advice service could reveal far more than you would like the government or law enforcement to know. ..."

"... In using a VPN you are placing all your trust in the company that operates the VPN to both secure your data and repel third parties from intercepting your connection. A VPN based in the UK may also be required to keep a log of your browsing history in the same way an ISP would. ..."

"... One way to prevent an accurate profile of your browsing history from being built could be to visit random sites. Visiting nine random domains for every website you actually want to visit would increase the amount of data that your ISP has to store tenfold. But not everybody has the patience for that. ..."

The Guardian

Critics call it a revived snooper's charter, because the government wants police and spies to be given access to the web browsing history of everyone in Britain.

However, Theresa May says her measures would require internet companies to store data about customers that amount to "simply the modern equivalent of an itemised phone bill".

Who is right? And is there anything you can do to make your communications more secure?

What exactly is the government after?

The government is attempting to push into law the ability for law enforcement agencies to be able to look at 12 months of what they are calling "internet connection records", limited to the website domains that UK internet users visit.

This is the log of websites that you visit through your internet service provider (ISP), commonly called internet browsing history, and is different from the history stored by your internet browser, such as Microsoft's Edge, Apple's Safari or Google's Chrome.

It does not cover specific pages: so police and spies will not be able to access that level of detail. That means they would know that a person has spent time on the Guardian website, but not what article they read.

Clearing your browser history or using private or incognito browsing modes do nothing to affect your browsing history stored by the ISP.

What will they be able to learn about my internet activity?

Information about the sites you visit can be very revealing. The data would show if a person has regularly visited Ashley Madison – the website that helped facilitate extramarital affairs. A visit to an Alcoholics Anonymous website or an abortion advice service could reveal far more than you would like the government or law enforcement to know.

The logged internet activity is also likely to reveal who a person banks with, the social media they use, whether they have considered travelling (eg by visiting an airline homepage) and a range of information that could in turn link to other sources of personal information.

Who will store my web browsing data?

The onus is on ISPs – the companies that users pay to provide access to the internet – to store the browsing history of its customers for 12 months. That includes fixed line broadband providers, such as BT, TalkTalk, Sky and Virgin, but also mobile phone providers such as EE, O2, Three and Vodafone.

... ... ...

Don't ISPs already store this data?

They already store a limited amount of data on customer communications for a minimum of one year and have done for some time, governed by the EU's data retention directive. That data can be accessed under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (Ripa).

The new bill will enshrine the storage of browsing history and access to that data in law.

Can people hide their internet browsing history?

There are a few ways to prevent the collection of your browsing history data, but each way is a compromise.

The most obvious way is the use of virtual private networks (VPNs). They channel your data from your computer through your ISP to a third-party service before immersing on the internet. In doing so they can obfuscate your data from your ISP and therefore the government's collection of browsing history.

Companies routinely use VPNs to secure connections to services when off-site such as home workers. Various companies such as HotspotShield offer both free or paid-for VPN services to users.

Using the Tor browser, freely available from the Tor project, is another way to hide what you're doing from your ISP and takes things a stage further. It allows users to connect directly to a network of computers that route your traffic by bouncing it around other computers connected to Tor before emerging on the open internet.

Your ISP will see that you are connected to Tor, but not what you are doing with it. But not everybody has the technical skills to be comfortable using Tor.

Is there any downside to using a VPN?

In using a VPN you are placing all your trust in the company that operates the VPN to both secure your data and repel third parties from intercepting your connection. A VPN based in the UK may also be required to keep a log of your browsing history in the same way an ISP would.

The speed of your internet connection is also limited by the VPN. Most free services are slow, some paid-for services are faster.

Tor also risks users having their data intercepted, either at the point of exit from the Tor network to the open internet or along the path. This is technically tricky, however. Because your internet traffic is bounced between computers before reaching you, Tor can be particularly slow.

Can I protest-browse to show I'm unhappy with the new law?

One way to prevent an accurate profile of your browsing history from being built could be to visit random sites. Visiting nine random domains for every website you actually want to visit would increase the amount of data that your ISP has to store tenfold. But not everybody has the patience for that.

At some point it will be very difficult to store that much data, should everyone begin doing so.

... ... ...

[Nov 04, 2015] Neoliberalism neofashism and feudalism

Notable quotes:

"... feudalism is a hierarchical system of distributed administration. A king is nominally in charge or "owns" a kingdom, but he has lords who administer its first primary division, the fiefdom. Lords in turn have vassals, who administer further subdivisions or, in the cases of smaller fiefs, different aspects of governance. Vassals may have their own captains and middle managers, typically knights but also clerks and priests, who in turn employ apprentices/novices/pages who train under them so as to one day move up to middle management. If this is starting to resemble modern corporate structure, then bonus points to you. ..."

"... Anyone in a position of vassalage was dependent upon the largess of his immediate patron/lord/whatever for both his status and nominal wealth. The lowest rungs of the administrative ladder were responsible for keeping the peasants, the pool of labor, in line either through force or through the very same system of dependence upon largess that frames the lord/vassal relationship. ..."

"... A CEO may resign in disgrace over some scandal, but that does little to challenge the underlings who carried out his orders. ..."

"... It's not that peasants can be vassals in the overall order so much as they are in the subject position, but without the attendant capacity to then lord it over someone beneath them. Lord/vassal in feudalism are also generic terms to describe members of a fixed relationship of patronage. It's confusing, because those terms are also used for levels of the overall hierarchy. ..."

"... I suspect that the similarity of medeavil fuedalism with the relationship between a large modern corporation and its employees is not properly appreciated because the latter, unlike the former, does not necessarily include direct control over living conditions (housing, land, rent), even though in the end there may be a similar degree of effective servitude (lack of mobility and alternatives, and so effective entrapment at low wages) . ..."

www.nakedcapitalism.com

Mussolini-Style Corporatism, aka Fascism, on the Rise in the US naked capitalism

Uahsenaa, November 3, 2015 at 11:26 am

I want to expand on the point about feudalism, since it's even more apt than the article lets on. It was not "rule by the rich," which implies an oligarchic class whose members are more or less free agents in cahoots with one another. Rather, feudalism is a hierarchical system of distributed administration. A king is nominally in charge or "owns" a kingdom, but he has lords who administer its first primary division, the fiefdom. Lords in turn have vassals, who administer further subdivisions or, in the cases of smaller fiefs, different aspects of governance. Vassals may have their own captains and middle managers, typically knights but also clerks and priests, who in turn employ apprentices/novices/pages who train under them so as to one day move up to middle management. If this is starting to resemble modern corporate structure, then bonus points to you.

This means feudalism found a way to render complicit in a larger system of administration people who had no direct and often no real stake in the produce of its mass mobilization of labor. Anyone in a position of vassalage was dependent upon the largess of his immediate patron/lord/whatever for both his status and nominal wealth. The lowest rungs of the administrative ladder were responsible for keeping the peasants, the pool of labor, in line either through force or through the very same system of dependence upon largess that frames the lord/vassal relationship. Occasionally, the peasants recognize that no one is below them in this pyramid scheme, and so they revolt, but for the most part they were resigned to the status quo, because there seemed to be no locus of power to topple. Sure, you could overthrow the king, but that would do nothing to deter the power of the lords. You could overthrow your local lord, but the king could just install a new one.

Transpose to the modern day. A CEO may resign in disgrace over some scandal, but that does little to challenge the underlings who carried out his orders. You might get your terrible boss fired for his tendency to sexually harass anyone who walks in the door, but what's to stop the regional manager from hiring someone who works you to the bone. Sometimes the peas–err, employees revolt and form a union, but we all know what means have been employed over the years to do away with that.

tl;dr – Feudalism: it's about the structure, not the classes

Lambert Strether, November 3, 2015 at 2:19 pm

Hmm. I don't think a serf can be a vassal. The vassals sound a lot like the 20%. The serfs would be the 80%. I'm guessing class is alive and well.

James Levy, November 3, 2015 at 2:38 pm

You wouldn't be a vassal (that was a very small percentage of the population) but you could have ties of patronage with the people above you, and in fact that was critical to all societies until the Victorians made nepotism a bad word and the ethic of meritocracy (however bastardized today) took shape. If you wanted your physical labor obligation converted into a money payment so you could spend more time and effort on your own holding, or you needed help in tough times, or the 99 year lease on your leasehold was coming due, or you wanted to get your son into the local priory, etc. you needed a friend or friends in higher places. The granting or refusal of favors counted for everything, and kept many on the straight and narrow, actively or passively supporting the system as it was.

Uahsenaa, November 3, 2015 at 2:39 pm

It's not that peasants can be vassals in the overall order so much as they are in the subject position, but without the attendant capacity to then lord it over someone beneath them. Lord/vassal in feudalism are also generic terms to describe members of a fixed relationship of patronage. It's confusing, because those terms are also used for levels of the overall hierarchy.

The true outliers here are the contemporaneous merchants, craftsmen, and freeholders (yeomen) who are necessary for things to run properly but are not satisfactorily accounted for by the overall system of governance, in part because it was land based. Merchants and craftsmen in particular tended not to be tied to any one place, since their services were often needed all over and only for limited periods of time. The primary administrative apparatus for craftsmen were the guilds. Merchants fell into any number of systems of organization and often into none at all, thus, according to the old Marxist genealogy, capitalism overthrows feudalism.

Peasants may have had something like a class consciousness on occasion, but I'm not entirely convinced it's useful to think of them in that way. In Japan, for instance, peasants were of a much higher social status than merchants and craftsmen, technically, yet their lives were substantially more miserable by any modern economic measure.

visitor, November 3, 2015 at 4:01 pm

I think that the article gets it seriously wrong about feudalism - an example of what Yves calls "stripping words of their meaning".

First of all, feudalism was actually an invention of an older, powerful, even more hierarchical organization: the Catholic Church.

The Church realized early on that imposing its ideal of a theocratic State ("city of God") led by the Pope upon the strong-headed barbarian chiefs (Lombards, Franks, Wisigoths and others) that set up various kingdoms in Europe was impossible.

Hence the second best approach, feudalism: a double hierarchy (worldly and spiritual). The populations of Europe were subject to two parallel hierarchical authorities with taxation, judicial and other economic powers (such as the right to determine when and for whom to work).

Second, there was a class of wealthy people which did not quite fit in the feudal hierarchy - in particular, they had no vassals, nor, despite their wealth, any fiefdom: merchants, financiers, the emerging burger class in cities. They were the ones actually lending money to feudal lords.

Third, the problem for underlings was never to overthrow the king (this was a hobby for princely families), and extremely rarely the local lord (which inevitably brought the full brunt of the feudal hierarchy to bear on the seditious populace).

Historically, what cities and rural communities struggled for was to be placed directly under the authority of the king or (Holy Roman Germanic) emperor. This entailed the rights to self-administration, freedom from most egregious taxes and corvées from feudal seigneurs, recognition of local laws and customs, and the possibility to render justice without deferring to local lords.

The king/emperor was happy to receive taxes directly from the city/community without them seeping away in the pockets of members of the inextricable feudal hierarchy; he would from time to time require troops for his host, hence reducing the dependency on troops from his vassal lords; and he would rarely be called to intervene in major legal disputes. Overall, he was way too busy to have time micromanaging those who swore direct allegiance to him - which was exactly what Basque communities, German towns and Swiss peasants wanted.

Therefore, an equivalence between feudalism and the current organizational make-up of society dominated by for-profit entities does not make sense.

Lambert Strether, November 3, 2015 at 4:11 pm

"the problem for underlings was never to overthrow the King"

Not even in the peasant revolts?

visitor, November 3, 2015 at 5:15 pm

If you look at this list, it appears that they were revolts directed against the local nobility (or church) because of its exorbitant taxation, oppressive judiciary, rampaging mercenaries and incompetent leadership in war against foreign invasions.

The French Jacquerie took place when there was no king - he had been taken prisoner by the English and the populace blamed the nobility for the military defeats and the massive tax increases that ensued.

During the Spanish Guerra de los Remensas, the revolted peasants actually appealed to the king and he in turn allied with them to fight the nobles.

During the Budai Nagy Antal revolt, the peasants actually asked the Hungarian king to arbitrate.

In other cases, even when the king/emperor/sultan ultimately intervened to squash the revolt, the insurrection was directed against some local elite.

Peasants revolts in 16th century Scandinavia were against the king's rule, but they were linked to reformation and took place when feudalism was on the wane and the evolution towards a centralized monarchical state well advanced.

Apparently, only the John and William Merfold's revolt explicitly called for the overthrow of the English king.

Jim Haygood, November 3, 2015 at 4:51 pm

'The populations of Europe were subject to two parallel hierarchical authorities with taxation, judicial and other economic powers (such as the right to determine when and for whom to work).'

Just as Americans are subject to two parallel hierarchical authorities with taxation and judicial powers, the states and the fedgov.

Before 1914, federal criminal laws were few, and direct federal income taxation of individuals was nonexistent. Today one needs federal authorization (E-verify) to get a job.

Now that the Fifth Amendment prohibition on double jeopardy has been interpreted away, notorious defendants face both federal and state prosecution. Thus the reason why America has the world's largest Gulag, with its slam-dunk conviction machine.

Uahsenaa, November 3, 2015 at 4:58 pm

Except, first off, there were non-Christian societies that made use of the system of warrior vassalage, and the manorial system that undergirded feudal distribution of land and resources, as least as far as Bloch is concerned, is a fairly clear outgrowth of the Roman villa system of the late empire. Insofar as the Late Roman empire was nominally–very nominally–Christian, I suppose your point stands, but according to Bloch, the earliest manorial structures were the result of the dissolution of the larger, older empire into smaller pieces, many of which were beyond meaningful administrative control by Rome itself. Second, bishoprics and monasteries, the primary land holdings of the clergy, were of the same order as manors, so they fit within the overall feudal system, not parallel to it.

If Bloch is not right about this, I'm open to reading other sources, but that's what my understanding was based on. Moreover, the basic system of patronage and fealty that made the manor economy function certainly seems to have survived the historical phenomenon we call feudalism, and that parallel was what I was trying to draw attention to. Lord/vassal relationships are fundamentally contractual, not just quid pro quo but organized around favors and reputation, and maybe the analogy is a bit strained, but it does point to the ways in which modern white collar work especially is about more than fixed pay for a fixed sum of labor output.

Thure Meyer, November 4, 2015 at 7:30 am

Isn't this rather off-topic?

This is not a discussion about the true and correct history of European feudalism or whether or not it applies to the situation at hand, but a dialogue about Global fascism and how it expresses itself in this Nation.

HarrySnapperOrgans, November 4, 2015 at 4:46 am

I suspect that the similarity of medeavil fuedalism with the relationship between a large modern corporation and its employees is not properly appreciated because the latter, unlike the former, does not necessarily include direct control over living conditions (housing, land, rent), even though in the end there may be a similar degree of effective servitude (lack of mobility and alternatives, and so effective entrapment at low wages) .

[Nov 04, 2015] Mussolini-Style Corporatism, aka Fascism, on the Rise in the US

Notable quotes:

"... The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name ..."

"... Similarly, even as authoritarianism is rapidly rising in the US and citizens are losing their rights (see a reminder from last weekend, a major New York Times story on how widespread use of arbitration clauses is stripping citizens of access to the court system *), one runs the risk of having one's hair on fire if one dares suggest that America is moving in a fascist, or perhaps more accurately, a Mussolini-style corporatist direction. Yet we used that very expression, "Mussolini-style corporatism," to describe the the post-crisis bank bailouts. Former chief economist of the IMF, Simon Johnson, was more stark in his choice of terms, famously calling the rescues a "quiet coup" by financial oligarchs. ..."

"... By Thom Hartmann, an author and nationally syndicated daily talk show host. His newest book is "The Crash of 2016: The Plot to Destroy America -- and What We Can Do to Stop It." Originally published at Alternet ..."

"... "The really dangerous American fascists," Wallace wrote, "are not those who are hooked up directly or indirectly with the Axis. The FBI has its finger on those. The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. "With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power." ..."

"... If classical liberalism spells individualism, Fascism spells government. ..."

"... If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States. There are probably several hundred thousand if we narrow the definition to include only those who in their search for money and power are ruthless and deceitful. … They are patriotic in time of war because it is to their interest to be so, but in time of peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead. ..."

"... "Fascism is a worldwide disease," Wallace further suggest that fascism's "greatest threat to the United States will come after the war" and will manifest "within the United States itself." ..."

"... It Can't Happen Here ..."

"... There are two [political] parties, the Corporate and those who don't belong to any party at all, and so, to use a common phrase, are just out of luck! ..."

"... Still another danger is represented by those who, paying lip service to democracy and the common welfare, in their insatiable greed for money and the power which money gives, do not hesitate surreptitiously to evade the laws designed to safeguard the public from monopolistic extortion. American fascists of this stamp were clandestinely aligned with their German counterparts before the war, and are even now preparing to resume where they left off, after 'the present unpleasantness' ceases. ..."

"... Fascists have an agenda that is primarily economic. As the Free Dictionary ( www.thefreedictionary.com ) notes, fascism/corporatism is "an attempt to create a 'modern' version of feudalism by merging the 'corporate' interests with those of the state." ..."

"... Thus, the neo-feudal/fascistic rich get richer (and more powerful) on the backs of the poor and the middle class, an irony not lost on author Thomas Frank, who notes in his book What's The Matter With Kansas ..."

"... The businesses "going out of business" are, in fascist administrations, usually those of locally owned small and medium-sized companies. As Wallace wrote, some in big business "are willing to jeopardize the structure of American liberty to gain some temporary advantage." ..."

"... Monopolists who fear competition and who distrust democracy because it stands for equal opportunity would like to secure their position against small and energetic enterprise [companies]. In an effort to eliminate the possibility of any rival growing up, some monopolists would sacrifice democracy itself. ..."

"... The symptoms of fascist thinking are colored by environment and adapted to immediate circumstances. But always and everywhere they can be identified by their appeal to prejudice and by the desire to play upon the fears and vanities of different groups in order to gain power. It is no coincidence that the growth of modern tyrants has in every case been heralded by the growth of prejudice. It may be shocking to some people in this country to realize that, without meaning to do so, they hold views in common with Hitler when they preach discrimination… ..."

"... But even at this, Wallace noted, American fascists would have to lie to the people in order to gain power. And, because they were in bed with the nation's largest corporations – who could gain control of newspapers and broadcast media -- they could promote their lies with ease. ..."

"... "The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact," Wallace wrote. "Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity, every crack in the common front against fascism. They use every opportunity to impugn democracy." ..."

"... They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection. ..."

"... Franklin D. Roosevelt, said when he accepted his party's renomination in 1936 in Philadelphia, "…out of this modern civilization, economic royalists [have] carved new dynasties…. It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction…. And as a result the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the Minute Man…." ..."

"... The Republican candidates' and their billionaire donors' behavior today eerily parallels that day in 1936 when Roosevelt said, "In vain they seek to hide behind the flag and the Constitution. In their blindness they forget what the flag and the Constitution stand for." ..."

"... Amen -- I've always detested the weasel words "neoliberal" and "neoconservative". Lets just be honest enough to call ideologies and political behaviors by their proper name. ..."

"... Call Dems what they are – corrupt right wingers, ultra conservatives. ..."

"... Isn't it important to keep in mind that fascism, as it developed in Italy and Germany, were authentic mass based movements generating great popular enthusiasm and not merely a clever manipulation of of populist emotions by the reactionary Right or by capitalism in crisis. ..."

"... Authentic augmented by the generous application of force, I'd say. That I think is a very interesting discussion about just how freely fascism develops. I don't think Italy and especially Germany developed with a particularly genuine popular enthusiasm. ..."

"... Or to put it differently, I'd say the appearance of popular enthusiasm from a mass movement was the result of fascist control as much as the cause. That's what's so unnverving about the American context of 21st century fascism. It does not require a mass movement to implement this kind of totalitarianism. It merely requires the professional class to keep their heads down long enough for a critical mass to be reached by the power structure in hollowing out the back-office guts of democratic governance. ..."

"... Fascism was a counter revolution to Bolshevikism. The upper and upper-middle class was scared to death of what happen in Russia under Bolshevikism. They united with the military looking for someone to counter Bolshevikism and settled on Hitler and the Nazi's. The military thought they control him but they ended up being wrong. ..."

"... "Those who own America should govern it" ..."

"... Corporation in Italian has approximately the meaning of guild and has nothing to do with big enterprises ..."

"... Massinissa and lou strong are correct -- corporatism in Mussolini's Italy meant structuring the State and the legislative body around organizations representing specific professional or economic sectors. ..."

"... By the way: we should not forget another fascist State, Portugal, which during the entire Salazar regime officially defined itself as a "corporatist republic". ..."

"... besides for-profit corporations. ..."

"... elimination ..."

"... It is apparent that both corporate parties are increasingly incapable of properly deflecting and channeling the interests of the electorate. Whether you think of 2007-08 as simply another business cycle, one that was exacerbated by toxic assets, a product of increasing income and wealth disparity, etc. it seems that portions of the electorate have been shocked out of their confidence in the system and the steering capacity of economic and political elites. ..."

"... This might lead the parties, under the pressure of events, to might reformulate themselves as the political cover of a "government of national unity" that, depending on the extremity of the next downturn, impose a "solidarity from above," blocking the development of popular organizations in a variety of ways. I certainly see this as possible. But treating the parties, or the system itself, as fascist at this point in time is not only not helpful, it is fundamentally disorienting. ..."

"... Chamber of the Fascist Corporations ..."

"... My impression is that today Corporatism more closely represents the interests of multinational corporations and the people who hold executive leadership positions within those companies. What they have in common is a listing on NYSE. ..."

November 3, 2015 | nakedcapitalism.com

The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name. Confucius

One of the distressing things about politics in the US is the way words have either been stripped of their meaning or become so contested as to undermine the ability to communicate and analyze. It's hard to get to a conversation when you and your interlocutors don't have the same understanding of basic terms.

And that is no accident. The muddying of meaning is a neo-Orwellian device to influence perceptions by redefining core concepts. And a major vector has been by targeting narrow interest groups on their hot-button topics. Thus, if you are an evangelical or otherwise strongly opposed to women having reproductive control, anyone who favors womens' rights in this area is in your vein of thinking, to the left of you, hence a "liberal". Allowing the Overton Window to be framed around pet interests, as opposed to a view of what societal norms are, has allowed for the media to depict the center of the political spectrum as being well to the right of where it actually is as measured by decades of polling, particularly on economic issues.

Another way of limiting discourse is to relegate certain terms or ideas to what Daniel Hallin called the "sphere of deviance." Thus, until roughly two years ago, calling an idea "Marxist" in the US was tantamount to deeming it to be the political equivalent of taboo. That shows how powerful the long shadow of the Communist purges of the McCarthy era were, more than a generation after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Similarly, even as authoritarianism is rapidly rising in the US and citizens are losing their rights (see a reminder from last weekend, a major New York Times story on how widespread use of arbitration clauses is stripping citizens of access to the court system*), one runs the risk of having one's hair on fire if one dares suggest that America is moving in a fascist, or perhaps more accurately, a Mussolini-style corporatist direction. Yet we used that very expression, "Mussolini-style corporatism," to describe the the post-crisis bank bailouts. Former chief economist of the IMF, Simon Johnson, was more stark in his choice of terms, famously calling the rescues a "quiet coup" by financial oligarchs.

Now admittedly, the new neoliberal economic order is not a replay of fascism, so there is reason not to apply the "f" word wholesale. Nevertheless, there is a remarkable amount of inhibition in calling out the similarities where they exist. For instance, the article by Thom Hartmann below, which we've reposted from Alternet, is bold enough to use the "fascist" word in the opening paragraph (but not the headline!). But it then retreats from making a hard-headed analysis by focusing on warnings about the risks of fascism in America from the 1940s. While historical analysis is always enlightening, you'll see the article only selectively interjects contemporary examples. Readers no doubt can help fill out, as well as qualify, this picture.

By Thom Hartmann, an author and nationally syndicated daily talk show host. His newest book is "The Crash of 2016: The Plot to Destroy America -- and What We Can Do to Stop It." Originally published at Alternet

Ben Carson's feeble attempt to equate Hitler and pro-gun control Democrats was short-lived, but along with the announcement that Marco Rubio has brought in his second big supporting billionaire, it brings to mind the first American vice-president to point out the "American fascists" among us.

Although most Americans remember that Harry Truman was Franklin D. Roosevelt's vice-president when Roosevelt died in 1945 (making Truman president), Roosevelt had two previous vice-presidents: John N. Garner (1933-1941) and Henry A. Wallace (1941-1945).

In early 1944, the New York Times asked Vice-President Henry Wallace to, as Wallace noted, "write a piece answering the following questions: What is a fascist? How many fascists have we? How dangerous are they?"

Vice-President Wallace's answer to those questions was published in the New York Times on April 9, 1944, at the height of the war against the Axis powers of Germany and Japan.

"The really dangerous American fascists," Wallace wrote, "are not those who are hooked up directly or indirectly with the Axis. The FBI has its finger on those. The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information.

"With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power."

In this, Wallace was using the classic definition of the word "fascist" -- the definition Mussolini had in mind when he claimed to have invented the word. (It was actually Italian philosopher Giovanni Gentile who wrote the entry in the Encyclopedia Italiana that said: "Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power." Mussolini, however, affixed his name to the entry, and claimed credit for it.)

As the 1983 American Heritage Dictionary noted, fascism is, "A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism."

Mussolini was quite straightforward about all this. In a 1923 pamphlet titled "The Doctrine of Fascism" he wrote, "If classical liberalism spells individualism, Fascism spells government." But not a government of, by, and for We The People; instead, it would be a government of, by, and for the most powerful corporate interests in the nation.

In 1938, Mussolini brought his vision of fascism into full reality when he dissolved Parliament and replaced it with the Camera dei Fasci e delle Corporazioni -- the Chamber of the Fascist Corporations. Corporations were still privately owned, but now instead of having to sneak their money to folks like Tom DeLay and covertly write legislation, they were openly in charge of the government.

Vice-President Wallace bluntly laid out in his 1944 Times article his concern about the same happening here in America:

If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States. There are probably several hundred thousand if we narrow the definition to include only those who in their search for money and power are ruthless and deceitful. … They are patriotic in time of war because it is to their interest to be so, but in time of peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead.

Nonetheless, at that time there were few corporate heads who'd run for political office, and in Wallace's view, most politicians still felt it was their obligation to represent We The People instead of corporate cartels.

"American fascism will not be really dangerous," he added in the next paragraph, "until there is a purposeful coalition among the cartelists, the deliberate poisoners of public information…."

Noting that, "Fascism is a worldwide disease," Wallace further suggest that fascism's "greatest threat to the United States will come after the war" and will manifest "within the United States itself."

In Sinclair Lewis's 1935 novel It Can't Happen Here a conservative southern politician is helped to the presidency by a nationally syndicated radio talk show host. The politician, Buzz Windrip, runs his campaign on family values, the flag and patriotism. Windrip and the talk show host portray advocates of traditional American democracy as anti-American.

When Windrip becomes president, he opens a Guantanamo-style detention center, and the viewpoint character of the book, Vermont newspaper editor Doremus Jessup, flees to Canada to avoid prosecution under new "patriotic" laws that make it illegal to criticize the President.

As Lewis noted in his novel, "the President, with something of his former good-humor [said]: 'There are two [political] parties, the Corporate and those who don't belong to any party at all, and so, to use a common phrase, are just out of luck!' The idea of the Corporate or Corporative State, Secretary [of State] Sarason had more or less taken from Italy."

And, President "Windrip's partisans called themselves the Corporatists, or, familiarly, the 'Corpos,' which nickname was generally used."

Lewis, the first American writer to win a Nobel Prize, was world famous by 1944, as was his book. And several well-known and powerful Americans, including Prescott Bush, had lost businesses in the early 1940s because of charges by Roosevelt that they were doing business with Hitler.

These events all, no doubt, colored Vice-President Wallace's thinking when he wrote:

Still another danger is represented by those who, paying lip service to democracy and the common welfare, in their insatiable greed for money and the power which money gives, do not hesitate surreptitiously to evade the laws designed to safeguard the public from monopolistic extortion. American fascists of this stamp were clandestinely aligned with their German counterparts before the war, and are even now preparing to resume where they left off, after 'the present unpleasantness' ceases.

Fascists have an agenda that is primarily economic. As the Free Dictionary (www.thefreedictionary.com) notes, fascism/corporatism is "an attempt to create a 'modern' version of feudalism by merging the 'corporate' interests with those of the state."

Feudalism, of course, is one of the most stable of the three historic tyrannies (kingdoms, theocracies, feudalism) that ruled nations prior to the rise of American republican democracy, and can be roughly defined as "rule by the rich."

Thus, the neo-feudal/fascistic rich get richer (and more powerful) on the backs of the poor and the middle class, an irony not lost on author Thomas Frank, who notes in his book What's The Matter With Kansas that, "You can see the paradox first-hand on nearly any Main Street in middle America -- 'going out of business' signs side by side with placards supporting George W. Bush."

The businesses "going out of business" are, in fascist administrations, usually those of locally owned small and medium-sized companies. As Wallace wrote, some in big business "are willing to jeopardize the structure of American liberty to gain some temporary advantage."

He added:

Monopolists who fear competition and who distrust democracy because it stands for equal opportunity would like to secure their position against small and energetic enterprise [companies]. In an effort to eliminate the possibility of any rival growing up, some monopolists would sacrifice democracy itself.

But American fascists who would want former CEOs as president, vice-president, House Majority Whip, and Senate Majority Leader, and write legislation with corporate interests in mind, don't generally talk to We The People about their real agenda, or the harm it does to small businesses and working people.

Instead, as Hitler did with the trade union leaders and the Jews, they point to a "them" to pin with blame and distract people from the harms of their economic policies.

In a comment prescient of Alabama's recent closing of every drivers' license office in every Alabama county with more than 75% black residents (while recently passing a law requiring a drivers' license or similar ID to vote), Wallace continued:

The symptoms of fascist thinking are colored by environment and adapted to immediate circumstances. But always and everywhere they can be identified by their appeal to prejudice and by the desire to play upon the fears and vanities of different groups in order to gain power. It is no coincidence that the growth of modern tyrants has in every case been heralded by the growth of prejudice. It may be shocking to some people in this country to realize that, without meaning to do so, they hold views in common with Hitler when they preach discrimination…

But even at this, Wallace noted, American fascists would have to lie to the people in order to gain power. And, because they were in bed with the nation's largest corporations – who could gain control of newspapers and broadcast media -- they could promote their lies with ease.

"The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact," Wallace wrote. "Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity, every crack in the common front against fascism. They use every opportunity to impugn democracy."

In his strongest indictment of the tide of fascism, the vice-president of the United States saw rising in America, he added:

They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.

This liberal vision of an egalitarian America in which very large businesses and media monopolies are broken up under the 1890 Sherman Anti-Trust Act (which Reagan stopped enforcing, leading to the mergers & acquisitions frenzy that continues to this day) was the driving vision of the New Deal (and of "Trust Buster" Teddy Roosevelt a generation earlier).

As Wallace's president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, said when he accepted his party's renomination in 1936 in Philadelphia, "…out of this modern civilization, economic royalists [have] carved new dynasties…. It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction…. And as a result the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the Minute Man…."

Speaking indirectly of the fascists Wallace would directly name almost a decade later, Roosevelt brought the issue to its core:

These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power." But, he thundered, "Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power!

In the election of 2016, we again stand at the same crossroad Roosevelt and Wallace confronted during the Great Depression and World War II.

Fascism is again rising in America, this time calling itself "conservativism." The Republican candidates' and their billionaire donors' behavior today eerily parallels that day in 1936 when Roosevelt said, "In vain they seek to hide behind the flag and the Constitution. In their blindness they forget what the flag and the Constitution stand for."

It's particularly ironic that the "big news" is which billionaire is supporting which Republican candidate. Like Eisenhower's farewell address, President Roosevelt and Vice-President Wallace's warnings are more urgent now than ever before.

_____
* In trying to find the New York Times story again, I simply Googled "arbitration," on the assumption that given that the article was both high traffic and recent that it would come up high in a search. Not only did the story not come up on the first page, although a reference to it in Consumerist did, but when I clicked on "in the news" link, it was again not in the first page in Google. If this isn't censorship, I don't know what is. The story was widely referenced on the Web and got far more traffic than the "news" story that Google gave preference (such as, of all things, a Cato study and "Arbitration Eligible Brewers

Brew Crew Ball-19 hours ago"). In fact, the NYT article does not appear on the first five pages of the Google news search, even though older and clearly lower traffic stories do. And when you find the first reference to the story on the news page, which is a Cato piece mentioning it, and you click through to the "explore in depth" page, again the New York Times story is not the prominent placement it warrants, and is listed fifth. Consider how many clicks it took to find it.

Crazy Horse, November 3, 2015 at 10:49 am

Amen -- I've always detested the weasel words "neoliberal" and "neoconservative". Lets just be honest enough to call ideologies and political behaviors by their proper name.

timbers, November 3, 2015 at 11:17 am

I agree!

Telling my friends Obama is "neoliberal" means nothing to 99% of them, they couldn't care less, it does not compute. So instead I tell them Obama is the most right wing President in history who's every bit un-hinged as Sarah Palin and at least as bat shit insame as John McCain, but you think that's totally OK because you're a Dem and Dems think that because Obama speaks with better grammar than Sarah Palin and is more temperate than John McCain. Them I tell them to vote Green instead of the utlra right wing Dems

Call Dems what they are – corrupt right wingers, ultra conservatives.

Barmitt O'Bamney, November 3, 2015 at 11:01 am

LOL. You get to take your pick between TWO fascist parties in 2016. Just like you did for the last several elections. I wonder if the outcome will be different this time – will Fascism grab the prize again, or will it be Fascism coming out ahead at the last minute to save the day?

David, November 3, 2015 at 11:04 am

Why didn't Wallace become President when Roosevelt died? From the St. Petersburg Times,

The Gallup Poll said 65 percent of the voting Democrats wanted Wallace and that 2 percent wanted Senator Truman. But the party bosses could not boss Wallace. They made a coalition with the Roosevelt-haters and skillfully and cynically mowed down the unorganized Wallace forces.

Take note Bernie fans.

washunate November 3, 2015 at 11:28 am

With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power

Such a concise and cogent explanation. The go-to policy advice of the fascist is to do moar of whatever he's selling.

susan the other November 3, 2015 at 12:18 pm

I was just going to say something like this too. There is a logical end to fascism and if it is blocked and prolonged then when it finally runs its course it ends in a huge mess. And even the fascists don't know what to do. Because everything they were doing becomes pure poison. Moar money and power have an Achilles Heel – there is an actual limit to their usefulness. So this is where we find ourselves today imo – not at the beginning of a fascist-feudal empire, but at the bitter and confused end. Our implosion took far longer than Germany's, but the writing was on the wall from 1970 on. And then toss in the wages of prolonged sin – neoliberalism's excesses, the planet, global warming.

TarheelDem November 3, 2015 at 1:02 pm

Yes. This.

One would think that Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and the killing of 1000 people by cops would be a clue. As would an understanding of the counter-New Deal that began to unfold in 1944, gained power in 1946, and institutionalized itself as a military and secret government in 1947. Or the rush to war after every peace, the rush to debt after every surplus, and perpetual inability of the IRS to collect taxes from the wealthiest.

Maybe not even a Franco-level fascist state or a fascist state with a single dictator, more like the state capitalism of the Soviet Union and current China without the public infrastructure. Just the oligarchs.

And yet it is in a state of failure, and inability to do anything but feather then nests of those who rule, all those King Midases.

participant-observer-observed November 3, 2015 at 1:49 pm

Also, the increase of censorship (GMO labels or fracking chemicals), and persecution of whistleblowers and political prisoners, incarceration of whole swathes of black population, along w execution w no due process, continuous wars abroad w no apparent tbreat to domestic security and the state of the nation is apparent.

participant-observer-observed November 3, 2015 at 2:56 pm

Whoops, almost forgot to include: mass surveillance.

Jim November 3, 2015 at 3:27 pm

Isn't it important to keep in mind that fascism, as it developed in Italy and Germany, were authentic mass based movements generating great popular enthusiasm and not merely a clever manipulation of of populist emotions by the reactionary Right or by capitalism in crisis.

The orthodox left made this mistake in the 1920s and early 1930s and in 2015 still appears wedded to this erroneous assumption.

washunate November 3, 2015 at 8:17 pm

Authentic augmented by the generous application of force, I'd say. That I think is a very interesting discussion about just how freely fascism develops. I don't think Italy and especially Germany developed with a particularly genuine popular enthusiasm. Very early on, the national socialists were arresting internal political opposition through parallel courts with explicit references to things like state security. Dachau, for example, was originally for German political prisoners. Jews and foreign nationals came later.

And of course there's the ultimate in false flags, the Reichstag Fire Decree. The whole point of that and the Enabling Act was to circumvent the checks and balances of democratic governance; Hitler himself certainly did not trust the German people to maintain the power he wanted of their own accord and discernment.

Or to put it differently, I'd say the appearance of popular enthusiasm from a mass movement was the result of fascist control as much as the cause. That's what's so unnverving about the American context of 21st century fascism. It does not require a mass movement to implement this kind of totalitarianism. It merely requires the professional class to keep their heads down long enough for a critical mass to be reached by the power structure in hollowing out the back-office guts of democratic governance.

Ishmael November 3, 2015 at 8:47 pm

Fascism was a counter revolution to Bolshevikism. The upper and upper-middle class was scared to death of what happen in Russia under Bolshevikism. They united with the military looking for someone to counter Bolshevikism and settled on Hitler and the Nazi's. The military thought they control him but they ended up being wrong.

You have to understand that after WW1 the allies kept a sea blockade on Germany and that resulted in over a million Germans starving to death. Then came depression followed by hyperinflation. Then there was the fear of Bolsheviks. The Nazi's showed up and things started working again. The Bolsheviks were driven from the street. The Nazi's started borrowing tons of money (yes they issued bonds) and started work programs. The economy started recovering. People had work and food and soon the Nazi's were furnishing free health care. After you had gone through hell this was heaven.

MathandPhysics November 3, 2015 at 10:18 pm

It's strange but 9/11 and the 3 steel frame buildings collapse into dust in few seconds isn't recognized by the masses as false flag Hitler style, then what do you expect ? Massmedia did what it could to confuse them all, only math and physics can help you to see the truth.

Jim November 3, 2015 at 11:23 pm

It would, indeed, be an extremely worthwhile discussion to analyze how freely fascism developed in Italy and Germany.

As a first step in that directkion, Washunate, you might take a look at studies like "Elections, Parties, and Political Traditions: Social Foundations of German parties and party systems.

In the July 1932 elections the SPD (Socialist Party) received 21.6 percent of the vote and was replaced by the NSDAP (Nazi party) as the countries largest political party (with 37.3% of the vote). with the KPD (the communists) capturing 14.5%of the vote.

It was at that time that the Nazi party become a true "people's party" with a support base that was more equally distributed among social and demographic categories than any other major party of the Weimar republic.

Tone November 3, 2015 at 11:42 am

The thing that troubles me most is that there are no leaders like Roosevelt or Wallace today. Where are the POPULAR politicians (Roosevelt was elected 4 times!) calling it like it is and publicly refuting conservative/fascist dogma? Sanders? Maybe. But he's trailing Clinton and certainly he's not a force in the Democratic party like Roosevelt was. At least not yet.

I agree with the "quiet coup" assessment, and I keep waiting for the next Roosevelt, the next Lincoln, the next Founding Father, to appear on the political stage and fight the battle against corporatist/fascist forces. Sadly, it hasn't happened yet.

Masonboro November 3, 2015 at 11:50 am

Unfortunately the next Founding Father to appear (or has appeared) will be John Jay (first Chief Justice among other roles) who was quoted as having said :

"Those who own America should govern it"

Jim

TarheelDem November 3, 2015 at 1:07 pm

Hank Paulson and George W. Bush prevented the situation in 2008 from forcing a Rooseveltian Congress. And the Congress went along with them. Then it was so easy for the do-nothings to argue for less and continue the austerity. And as in Roosevelt's era, racism helped prevent full change, which allowed the post-war rollback.

participant-observer-observed November 3, 2015 at 1:52 pm

Even among the corporatists in govt or business, there are no distinctive shining exemplars of leadership or competence !

Massinissa November 3, 2015 at 2:12 pm

Founding fathers?

Who do you think put the basis of rule by the rich into practice in the first place? A series of 'popular movements' like Shays Rebellion was what forced the founding fathers to make voting rights not dependent on owning land, not because the Founding Fathers were really nice people who luvved 'Democracy'.

Oregoncharles November 4, 2015 at 1:57 am

We just might have to be that "leader" ourselves.

Masonboro November 3, 2015 at 11:46 am

"on the rise" or firmly entrenched ? We already have Homeland Security, Justice Thomas, Donald Trump ,Ted Cruz, and the Koch Brothers (who are running ads in NC extolling recently passed changes in the tax code to continue shifting from income to consumption taxes). What is missing?

Jim

susan the other November 3, 2015 at 12:32 pm

I always think of the Kochs when the word fascist is used. They are ostensibly great environmentalists. Never mind that they operate some of the filthiest industries on the planet. They sponsor NOVA; one brother is a raving environmentalist (that's fine with me) and the other two tone it down. But their brand of conservative politix is as pointless as it is ignorant. That's an interesting topic – the hypocrisy of rich corporatist environmentalists. They are living a contradiction that will tear them apart. But at least they are agonizing over the problem.

lou strong November 3, 2015 at 11:56 am

Maybe my English is too bad, but it seems there's a misunderstanding about "corporatism" meaning, which is unfortunately reflected, as it seems again, in some American dictionaries. Corporation in Italian has approximately the meaning of guild and has nothing to do with big enterprises.

So, while there is no doubt that fascists took power in Italy as the armed wing of big capital, big finance and big landholders against the unrests of the low classes, the idea of corporatist state for them meant the refusal of the principle of class war in favor of the principle of class (guilds, "corporations" :both for employers and employees/trade unions) collaboration , and all of them as subservients to the superior interest of the state.Fascism agenda wasn't primarily economic. There wasn't either a specific agenda : until '29 the regime acted as deeply "neoliberal" with privatizations, deflationary policies to fix a strong lira smashing labor rights and purchase power etc etc , after the crisis it nationalized the failed enterprises and introduced some welfare state elements.

So at least the regime got the property of the failed banks/enterprises, much unlike current situation , where we see the mere socialization of losses and privatization of profits .

Massinissa November 3, 2015 at 2:23 pm

You are correct, I have read this before.

But English speakers either dont know or dont care. Ive seen people talk about "Mussolini Corporatism" like this for what, five years, and they never get corrected.

I dont think theres anything we can do to get people to stop using that term as if it means what they think it means.

visitor November 3, 2015 at 3:19 pm

Massinissa and lou strong are correct -- corporatism in Mussolini's Italy meant structuring the State and the legislative body around organizations representing specific professional or economic sectors.

By the way: we should not forget another fascist State, Portugal, which during the entire Salazar regime officially defined itself as a "corporatist republic".

Barmitt O'Bamney November 3, 2015 at 4:21 pm

You can direct them to the Wikipedia entry for corporatism, which is extensive, or to Michael Lind's 2014 article on the multiple historical meanings and recent misuse of this term. But the term has currency and traction today for reason neither article quite puts a finger on. Under Italian Fascism, the traditional meanings of corporative representation and bargaining were invoked but fused tightly under the auspices -or control- of the nation state, which of course was a single party state. The theoretical representativeness of corporatism was as a facade for political control of all institutions of Italian life by the Fascist Party. In the present time, with unions and guilds a fading memory, regions homogenized and classes atomized, with churches that are little more than money making enterprises as transparent as any multilevel marketing scheme, there are few non-government institutions in western life with any weight besides for-profit corporations. When people struggle to describe what seems wrong to them with our political life, the subservience of our government – and therefore everything else – to profit seeking corporations, they need a term that reflects neatly what has happened and where we are. Democracy of course is defunct both as a term and in reality. We don't have a state of decayed democracy (passive, negative), we have a state of corporate diktat (active, positive). "Corporatism" is an attractive and convenient verbal handle for the masses to latch onto, no matter how much this disappoints the learned. In English, when enough people "misuse" a term for a sufficiently long time, what happens is that the OED adds a new sub-entry for it reflecting its current usage.

Vatch November 3, 2015 at 4:46 pm

I've tried to correct people's misunderstanding of corporazione, but it's probably a losing battle:

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/03/neo-liberalism-expressed-simple-rules.html#comment-1919832

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/05/tpp-fascism-issue.html#comment-2439813

run75441 November 4, 2015 at 7:47 am

Try "corpocracy"

Les Swift November 3, 2015 at 12:09 pm

Corporatism is indeed an old idea, feudalism re-branded as "fascism." After Hitler ruined the term, fascism remained, but underground, until it reemerged in the 1960s as what George Ball termed the "world company," which is better known as the system of global corporations. The same general idea, but under a new marketing slogan. Today we have globalization, the raft of "trade" treaties, the Austrian/Libertarian ideology, all of which ultimately push the world toward yet another replay of feudalism. The box says "new and improved," but inside it's the same old crap.

kevinearick November 3, 2015 at 1:01 pm

Clone Dreams

"The more people that transact with one another, the greater the division of labour and knowledge, the greater the ability to develop comparative advantage and the greater the productivity gains."

What could possibly go wrong?

In any empire, virtual or otherwise, you are always surrounded by communist thieves that think they are going to control your output with a competitive advantage illusion, which conveniently ignores opportunity cost. Government is just a derivative piece of paper, the latest fashion for communists, all assuming that the planet is here for their convenience, to exploit. Well, the critters have blown right through 45/5000/.75, and Canada was supposed to be the proving ground for the Silicon Valley Method. Now what?

"Don't panic : world trade is down….Don't bet against the Fed….BTFD." Expect something other than demographic variability, financial implosion, and war.

The communists are always running head first over the cliff, expecting you to follow. Labor has no use for cars that determine when, where and how you will travel, and the communists can't fix anything, because the 'fix' is already inside, embedded as a feature. America is just the latest communist gang believing it has commandeered the steamroller, rolling over other communist gangs.

The Bear isn't coming down from the North, China isn't selling Treasuries, and families are not moving away from the city by accident. Only the latest and greatest, new-world-order communists, replacing themselves with computers, are surprised that technology is always the solution for the problem, technology. Facebook, LinkedIn and Google are only the future for communists, which is always the same, a dead end, with a different name.

Remember that Honda of mine? I told the head communist thief not to touch that car while I was gone, told his fellow thieves and their dependents that I told him so, and even gave him the advantage of telling him what the problem was. How many hours do you suppose the fools spent trying to control that car, and my wife with it?

I don't care whether the communists on the other side of the hill or the communists on this side of the hill think they are going to control Grace, and through her my wife, and through her me. And there are all kinds of communist groups using pieces of my work to advance their AI weapons development, on the assumption that my work will not find itself in the end. Grace will decide whether she wants to be an individual or a communist.

The only way the communists can predict and control the future is to control children. That's what financialization is all about. And all communism can do is train automatons to follow each other, which is a problem-solution addressed by the planet every three generations. You don't have to do anything for communism to collapse, but get out of the way.

Technology is just a temporary tool, discarded by labor for the communists to steal, and stealing a hammer doesn't make anyone a carpenter, much less a King, which is why the Queen always walks through the wreckage, to a worthless throne. The story of Jesus was in fact the story of a king, who had no use for a worldly kingdom, other than as a counterweight, always surrounded by communists, like pigs at a trough. Jesus was no more and no less a child of God than you are.

Labor loses every battle because it doesn't participate, leaving the communists to label each other as labour and knowledge. And if you look, you will see that all their knowledge is real estate inflation, baked into everything, with oil as grease. The name, Robert Reich, didn't give you a hint; of course he knew all along, and like a good communist, changes sides on a regular basis.

You can't pick your parents or your children, or make choices for them, but you can love them without pissing your life away. Navy hasn't disappeared just because the US Navy chose to be a sunk cost, at the beck and call of Wall Street, trying to defend the status quo of communism, for communists on the other side of the pond. A marine is not always a Marine, and a flattop can be turned on a dime.

"The Muses doe attend upon your Throne, With all the Artists at your becke and call…"

If you want to show up at WWIII with a communist and a dc computer as a weapon, that's your business, but I wouldn't recommend doing so. Labor can mobilize far quicker than the communists can imagine, which isn't saying much. Be about your business until the laws of physics have been overthrown, and that hasn't happened yet.

You can count on communists to be at an intersection, creating a traffic jam, building a bigger toll booth, and voting for more of the same, thinking that they are taking advantage of each other, doing the wrong thing at the wrong time at the wrong place. Any intersection of false assumptions will do.

alex morfesis November 3, 2015 at 1:12 pm

let the merry breezes blow synthetic winds…

his name was hanz…or so I was told…we had acquired a lease from the NYC HPD from a parking lot/marina that was at the very north edge of Harlem River Drive at Dyckman (pronounced dikeman)….there is a school there now…he "came" with the lease…years later I would find out he was working with Carlos Lehder and helping arrange for cash payments to conveniently amnesiastic police officers who used the hardly functioning marina to go fishing…in the east river & the hudson…go figure…the more I tried to get rid of him…the more "problems" occurred…my father begged me stop poking around and just "leave it alone"…I don't think he ever really knew what "hanz" was doing or who he was…oh well…might explain how we lost a billion dollars in real estate (ok…it was not worth a billion back then…but it had not debt other than real estate taxes…it was not lost for simply economic reasons)

we as a nation were "convinced" to allow 50 thousand former nazis to enter this country after ww2…under the foolish notion that "the russians" (who have never killed too many americans if my history serves me right) were a "new danger" and only the folks who LO$T to the russians had the knowledge needed to save us from those "evil communists"…(evil communists who helped the Koch Family make their financial start…details details…)

those nazis, from my research have probably grown to a force of about 250 thousand who are the basic clowns (MIC…see you real soon…KEY…why, because we like you…) Ike was talking about in January of 1961…

but…as Ike mentioned when talking about the Koch dad and his John Birch nonsense…they are small and they are stupid…

the use of "coup" in the context of some of the strange happenings in our history these last 55 years is probably not a reasonable term…

I would say we have had "coupettes" where certain groups threatened MAD if they did not get their way or were not left alone…and then those wimps in power decided…better you than me…and turned a blind eye for 30 pieces of silver…coincidence and causality sometimes are not just mathematical anomalies…

there is no need to "take back" our country…it is ours and has always been ours…the reason "the clowns that be" worry so much is that for all the use of bernaze sause…they can hardly fake half the population into showing up to vote on "one of the chosen ones"…and that 50% that are not fully mesmerized are the fear factor for the clowns that be…

remember…try as "they" might…can "they" keep you watching the same tv show for ever…or get you to buy their useless "branded" product without coupons or advertising…

it is not as bad or scary as they would like you to believe…they would not be working this hard if they were comfortable in their socks…they do not sleep well at night…you are the "zombie apocalypse" they are afraid off…

pass the popcorn please…

and may our freedom

"bloom again" at "the end of the century"

(or sooner…)

happy trails…

Les Swift November 3, 2015 at 1:24 pm

Huh? Many of the things you brand as "communist" existed long before Communism was created. To blame it all on "communists" is a serious error which blinds you to much older evils, some of which Communism was at least nominally intended to correct. It is important to recognize that the "Red scares" have been used by forces in the West to bolster their own power. One can both disagree with Communism and disagree with the "Red menace" propaganda at the same time. The people who scare you with the threat of Communism are more of a threat than the Communists themselves.

kevinearick November 3, 2015 at 1:33 pm

Funny thing about words…under the law, they mean whatever the author intends them to mean.

kevinearick November 3, 2015 at 1:50 pm

not a big believer in evil, just stupid, willful ignorance, aggregated.

Gio Bruno November 3, 2015 at 10:37 pm

GWBush is evil and stupid. Dick Cheney is evil, stupid, and ignorant, aggregated.

Doug November 3, 2015 at 1:58 pm

Time to re-read The Moneysburg Address:

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/07/the-moneysburg-address.html

Jim November 3, 2015 at 2:32 pm

When talking about the rise of fascism(especially if the US experiences another economic/financial meltdown in the next few years) it is so important to get the historical context as accurate as possible.

Mussolini began his political career as an exponent of a different type of socialism. One of his early followers was Antonio Gramsci and they both deplored the passivity of orthodox Marxists.

Mussolini was attracted to the theoretical framework of Sorel to offset traditional left passivity and the syndicalist focus on the importance of human will. He founded a journal in 1913 called Utopia and called for a revision of socialism in which he began referring to "the people" and not the proletariat, as well as stressing the importance of the nation. He attempted to bring nationalist and syndicalist streams of thought together.

After World War I Mussolini helped found a new political movement in Italy which brought together both nationalist and socialist themes. Its first program was anticapitalist, antimonarchical and called for an 8 hour day, minimum wages, the participation of workers' representatives in industrial management and a large progressive tax on capital.

By the early 1920s the Fasci of Mussolini gained a powerful base of support in rural Italian areas, advocating of program of peasant proprtietorship rather than endorsing the calls for the nationalization of property of the orthodox left.

By this time fascism presented itself as an opponent of "Bolshevism" and a guardian of private property while emphasizing the collective good and criticizing absentee landlords and "exploitative capitalists"

For an excellent discussion of the development of these ideas as well as the concrete steps toward corporatism that took place after 1922 see Sheri Berman "The Primacy of Politics"

A key point to keep in mind was that the fascism that eventually developed in Italy was willing to assert unconditionally the power of the state over the market.

participant-observer-observed November 3, 2015 at 2:37 pm

Relevant postbocer at Counterpunch too:

Not everybody just "wants what we have," as the common view here has it. In fact, from Bolivia, where the average person consumes perhaps 1/20th the total resources of her analogue in the US, comes the old-new idea of buen vivir (the good life): a life in which the health of your human community and its surrounding ecosystem are more important than the amount of money you make or things you own.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/11/03/the-browning-of-the-world-blame-the-greed-of-the-rich/

Jacob November 3, 2015 at 3:16 pm

"In this, Wallace was using the classic definition of the word fascist' -- the definition Mussolini had in mind when he claimed to have invented the word."

An Italian Jew by the name of Enrico Rocca is cited in "Roots of Hate: Anti-Semitism in Europe Before the Holocaust" as the founder of Roman fascism. This name is completely unknown in the U.S. A large number of Italian Jews were founders and members of the Italian fascist party prior to 1938 when anti-Semitism became official. "Among Mussolini's earliest financial backers were three Jews: Giuseppe Toeplitz of the Banca Commerciale Italiana, Elio Jona [?], and the industrialist Gino Olivetti. . . ." The banker Toeplitz was the main financier behind Mussolini's blackshirts, which served as union busters for big business and land owners (also see "Fascism and Big Business" by Daniel Guerin). Undermining organized labor in order to drive down wages was a central aim of fascism in Italy and later under Hitler in Germany. In 1933, roughly ten percent of Italian Jews were members of the fascist party. These facts are important to know because moderns are led to believe that fascism is inherently anti-semitic, but that wasn't the case in the early years of fascism in Italy, where it was founded.

Jim November 3, 2015 at 3:58 pm

It is also important to keep in mind, as Sheri Berman has argued, that social democracy, the fascism of Mussolini and National Socialism in Germany agree on a set of key assumptions.

1. All assume the primary importance of politics and cross-class cooperation. Edward Bermstein at the turn of the 20th century began attacking the main pillars of orthodox Marxism, historical materialism and class struggle while arguing for an alternative vision based on state control of markets–social democracy became the complete severing of socialism from Marxism.

2. For these same Social Democrats the primacy of the political meant using the democratic state to institutionalize policies and protect society from capitalism.

3. For fascists and national socialists using a tyrannical state to control markets was supposedly necessary–but, of course, this postion deteriorated into moves to ensure the hegemony of the modern State.

But is it the case, in 2015, taken the power of our contemporary Surveillance regime, that a democratic state still exists?

Do contemporary democratic socialists first have to first focus on how to restore democracy in the U.S. rather than assuming that the contemporary political structure just needs the right leadership–someone like Bernie Sanders–and the right credit policy– such as MMT?

hemeantwell November 3, 2015 at 4:31 pm

Hartmann draws from Mussolini the idea that the fascist state prioritizes and organizes corporate interests, but misses what Mussolini left out of his harmonistic definition, which was that in both Germany and Italy organized terror was to be used to destroy opposition to corporate interests. The systematic use of terror had major implications for the way the internal politics of the fascist state developed, for the weight given in its organizational structure and tactical options to the elimination of internal enemies. Along with this, both political orders were infused with a leadership ethos that, particularly in Nazi Germany, could attain strikingly absolute forms, demanding absolute obedience and sacrifice. This encouraged a strong tendency to subordinate any institution that might serve as a point of coalescence to interests opposed to the regime. The Fuhrer's picture had to be both on your wall and in your heart.

Hartmann misses this political knife edge of fascism and the leadership fascination that supports it. It is not wildly speculative to say that this is largely because the domestic enemies against which it was directed, primarily leftist trade unions, are not a threat in the US. No such organizations need to be wrecked, no such memberships need to be decimated, imprisoned, and dispersed. It is simply astonishing that Hartmann says nothing specifically about labor organizations as the prime instigating target of both fascists and the corporations who supported them. In this respect his analysis unwittingly incorporates the ideological suppression of the labor movement that mirrored the fascist onslaught.

It is also telling that although Hartmann references Wallace and Roosevelt he fails to note that they themselves have also been accused of corporatism, albeit one that involved the imposition of a Keynesian, welfarist orientation to capitalist interests that were, at least in some quarters, inclined to "liquidate, liquidate" their way into a revolution against themselves. Instead, he quotes Wallace and Roosevelt as they render fascism as a kind of power-hungry, antidemocratic urge on the part of some "royalists," thereby blurring out how the central issue was how to manage labor. He misses that Roosevelt offered the state as an organizer of conflict between capital and labor within a framework in which labor was guaranteed bargaining status. Roosevelt was thereby moved to attack capitalists who wanted to deny labor that status and risk both devastating hardship and insurrection. Hartmann falls for Roosevelt's broad democratic rhetoric against them, more exhortation than analysis, and so he himself ends up talking ethereally of threats to "freedom" and "American institutions."

We're not living under fascism and Hartmann, whose criticism is often very useful, is wrong in trying to use the term as a rallying orientation. I agree that the social order is corporatist, but its maintenance has not required the kind of direct oppression + totalitarian/personalized leadership cult that is a marker of fascism. Concepts the Frankfurt School have used such as "total administration" and the like are perhaps too anodyne, not to mention absolute in their own way, but they fit better with a situation in which explicit violence does not have to be generalized.

Robert Paxton's "The Anatomy of Fascism" is a useful backgrounder on this.

Jim November 3, 2015 at 6:30 pm

Heamtwell stated directly above that " We're not living under fascism…"

Some concepts/ questions which may begin to get at our potential propensity for moving in that direction might include the following:

Paxton, mentioned by Heamtwell above, isolated five stages of fascism.
(1) the initial creation of fascist movements
(2) their rooting as parties in a political system
(3) the acquisition of power
(4) the exercise of power
(5) their radicalization or entropy

Paxton has argued that Fascism can appear where democracy is sufficiently implanted to have aroused disillusion–a society must have known political liberty.

In regards to Paxtons first 2 stages and our situation in the US.

Are political fascists becoming rooted in political parties that represent major interests and feelings and wield major influence on our political scene?

Is our constitutional system in a state of blockage increasingly insoluble by existing authorities?

Is rapid political mobilization taking place in our society which threatens to escape the control of traditional elites to the point where they would be tempted to look for tough helpers in order to stay in charge?

hemeantwell November 3, 2015 at 7:16 pm

Is rapid political mobilization taking place in our society which threatens to escape the control of traditional elites to the point where they would be tempted to look for tough helpers in order to stay in charge?

I think that's the primary question, and it helps to define what we're facing with the current party system.

It is apparent that both corporate parties are increasingly incapable of properly deflecting and channeling the interests of the electorate. Whether you think of 2007-08 as simply another business cycle, one that was exacerbated by toxic assets, a product of increasing income and wealth disparity, etc. it seems that portions of the electorate have been shocked out of their confidence in the system and the steering capacity of economic and political elites.

This might lead the parties, under the pressure of events, to might reformulate themselves as the political cover of a "government of national unity" that, depending on the extremity of the next downturn, impose a "solidarity from above," blocking the development of popular organizations in a variety of ways. I certainly see this as possible. But treating the parties, or the system itself, as fascist at this point in time is not only not helpful, it is fundamentally disorienting.

Ron November 3, 2015 at 8:05 pm

F* is an ugly word as is all its close relatives, but your definitions are very interesting, and so maybe I've learned some things by reading them. However; by what contrivance did you manage to get any of these pages past the f* who own the internet? It seems I must suspend my disbelief to believe, Freunde von Grund

todde November 3, 2015 at 8:20 pm

I disagree.

In Fascism, corporations were subservient to the State. What we have is the State subservient to Corporations. Also Italian corporatism was more than just business, as a.corporation in Italy can have.non business functions.

tommy strange November 3, 2015 at 8:23 pm

Great post and great comments. Though I wonder why no one has brought up the only way to stop fascism. A militant class based libertarian left. Outside of the ballot box. If a liberal party still 'exists' they will then at least respond to the larger non party real left, just to nullify it's demands. Fascism has never been defeated by the ballot, only by a militant anarchist/socialist left. Or at the least, that 'left' fought back. Liberals rarely have fought back, and most often conceded. How do you do form such? Urban face to face organizing. With direct action and occupation and even organization towards workers' control of manufacturing.

Ishmael November 3, 2015 at 8:53 pm

tommy -Fascism has never been defeated by the ballot, only by a militant anarchist/socialist left.

I believe you should go re-look at history. Fascism has always defeated socialist left. Three examples -- Italy, Germany and Argentina. I welcome an example other wise and if it did how did it end.

visitor November 4, 2015 at 10:57 am

The paramount example is of course Spain, where all left-wing movements (communists, trotskists, anarchists, socialists) were ultimately defeated by fascists despite ferocious fighting.

Synoia November 3, 2015 at 9:48 pm

Mussolini-Style Corporatism, aka Fascism, on the Rise Well Established in the US

Set to Dominate World after TPP, TTIP and TISA ratified.

Keynesian November 3, 2015 at 11:03 pm

Much of Robert Paxton's work has focused on models and definition of fascism.

In his 1998 paper "The Five Stages of Fascism", he suggests that fascism cannot be defined solely by its ideology, since fascism is a complex political phenomenon rather than a relatively coherent body of doctrine like communism or socialism. Instead, he focuses on fascism's political context and functional development. The article identifies five paradigmatic stages of a fascist movement, although he notes that only Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy have progressed through all five:

1.Intellectual exploration, where disillusionment with popular democracy manifests itself in discussions of lost national vigor
2.Rooting, where a fascist movement, aided by political deadlock and polarization, becomes a player on the national stage
3.Arrival to power, where conservatives seeking to control rising leftist opposition invite the movement to share power
4.Exercise of power, where the movement and its charismatic leader control the state in balance with state institutions such as the police and traditional elites such as the clergy and business magnates.
5.Radicalization or entropy, where the state either becomes increasingly radical, as did Nazi Germany, or slips into traditional authoritarian rule, as did Fascist Italy.[4]

In his 2004 book The Anatomy of Fascism, Paxton refines his five-stage model and puts forward the following definition for fascism:

[quote]Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victim-hood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.[5][/quote]

Here is a more contemporary analysis of politics in America using Paxton's model.

[quote]Fascist America: Are We There Yet?
Friday, August 07, 2009 -- by Sara

In the second stage, fascist movements take root, turn into real political parties, and seize their seat at the table of power. Interestingly, in every case Paxton cites, the political base came from the rural, less-educated parts of the country; and almost all of them came to power very specifically by offering themselves as informal goon squads organized to intimidate farmworkers on behalf of the large landowners. The KKK disenfranchised black sharecroppers and set itself up as the enforcement wing of Jim Crow. The Italian Squadristi and the German Brownshirts made their bones breaking up farmers' strikes. And these days, GOP-sanctioned anti-immigrant groups make life hell for Hispanic agricultural workers in the US. As violence against random Hispanics (citizens and otherwise) increases, the right-wing goon squads are getting basic training that, if the pattern holds, they may eventually use to intimidate the rest of us.

Paxton wrote that succeeding at the second stage "depends on certain relatively precise conditions: the weakness of a liberal state, whose inadequacies condemn the nation to disorder, decline, or humiliation; and political deadlock because the Right, the heir to power but unable to continue to wield it alone, refuses to accept a growing Left as a legitimate governing partner." He further noted that Hitler and Mussolini both took power under these same circumstances: "deadlock of constitutional government (produced in part by the polarization that the fascists abetted); conservative leaders who felt threatened by the loss of their capacity to keep the population under control at a moment of massive popular mobilization; an advancing Left; and conservative leaders who refused to work with that Left and who felt unable to continue to govern against the Left without further reinforcement."

And more ominously: "The most important variables…are the conservative elites' willingness to work with the fascists (along with a reciprocal flexibility on the part of the fascist leaders) and the depth of the crisis that induces them to cooperate."[/quote]

hermes November 4, 2015 at 12:10 am

I think there is something missing from this analysis, having to do with the definition of corporatism itself. I think our contemporary definition of corporatism is rooted in neoliberalism and is actually a far cry from the definition used by the Fascists in forming the Chamber of the Fascist Corporations. Because to them corporatism wasn't simply business interests (which is how we know it today), but (from Wikipedia):

'[was] the sociopolitical organization of a society by major interest groups, or corporate groups, such as agricultural, business, ethnic, labour, military, patronage, or scientific affiliations, on the basis of common interests. It is theoretically based on the interpretation of a community as an organic body. The term corporatism is based on the Latin root word "corpus" (plural – "corpora") meaning "body".'

In other words, corporatism was not only made up of business interests, but all major (and competing) interests within society.

This is not to downplay the importance and absolute seriousness of confronting the increasing absolutism of ruling business interests. It is also not to downplay the historical truth of who ultimately held power in Fascist Italy. But I think it is also important to place Fascism in it's own historical context, and not try to blur historical lines where doing so may be misleading. When Fascists spoke of corporatism they had something else in mind, and it does not help us to blur the distinction.

hemeantwell November 4, 2015 at 8:35 am

Good point, and it raises this question: how can institutional organicity, with its ideological aura of community, partnership, and good old Volkishness, develop when we're talking about corporations that are multinational in scope as well as financialized and thereby even more rootless and and community indifferent? How can organicity develop in the sort of institutional setup foreshadowed by the TPP?

sd November 4, 2015 at 1:09 am

My impression is that today Corporatism more closely represents the interests of multinational corporations and the people who hold executive leadership positions within those companies. What they have in common is a listing on NYSE.

Oregoncharles November 4, 2015 at 1:09 am

Anyone heard from Naomi Wolf lately? She was the most prominent author calling out fascism during the Bush administration, got wide coverage at least on the left. She re-emerged during the Occupy movement, for a little while.

I ask that because, at the time, she said she'd go silent if it looked like people like her (that is, writers/journalists) were being persecuted. Haven't heard from her, at least on this topic, since Obama started prosecuting whistleblowers. Didn't see a farewell, either.

And that leads to a personal question: how safe are our bloggers feeling? Arguably, this site is an exercise in personal courage. Any ugly straws in the wind?

[Nov 02, 2015] Frankenstein capitalism is sucking the life from Americas soul by Paul B. Farrell

Another nickname for neoliberalism ;-)

Notable quotes:

"... They assume infinite growth of resources and opportunities for profits, income and wealth. Ad infinitum. Though rich and brilliant, American capitalists have a childlike, irrational conviction that they can indefinitely produce, mine, grow, fish, dump and extract resources from the planet's limited supply, without ever paying a steep price or planning for the day the planet's resources are exhausted. Hence their bizarre opposition to all carbon pollution-taxation and regulation. ..."

"... Stiglitz warns that today's zombies all have a definite conservative bias on political issues. Economic courses taught at Harvard, for example, use a textbook written by a former member of President Bush's Council of Economic Advisors that pushes "a particular ideological view that markets work perfectly." ..."

"... Today the "Atlas Shrugged" ideology of Ayn Rand is the core of Frankenstein economics, having replaced Adam Smith's original capitalism. It is now in a war to the death with liberalism. This extremism is now the conventional wisdom of conservative politicians: "When I say 'capitalism,' I mean a pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism." It is "the only system that can make freedom, individuality, and the pursuit of values possible." Compromise is impossible. ..."

"... Today Rand's ideology is not only deeply embedded in conservative economic thought, it has emerged as a conspiracy of a Super Rich elite and the political right, in a dangerous spiral repetition of the historical patterns Acemoglu and Robinson warn we are closing the door to America's future, setting up the collapse of our economy and our nation's failure. ..."

Oct 31, 2015 | finance.yahoo.com

... ... ...

Halloween once was the family favorite across America, loads of fun. But this year, it seems zombies, ghouls, vampires all de-materializing, draining all the bloody spirit out of Halloween. America's Frankenstein economy is in line with Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson predictions in "Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty": Nations grow. Wealth concentrates at the top. The elite manipulate to protect their wealth. They close doors that got them to the top. Economies collapse. Nations fail.

This Halloween that same pattern is accelerating across America as wealth rapidly concentrates at the top, GDP growth keeps declining. This time, however, the door is also closing on entrenched zombie capitalists as the inequality gap widens. They are losing the battle to control government, threatening insiders, setting up revolutions. Here are seven signs of this classic pattern:

1. Frankenstein economics is a mausoleum for trickle-down capitalism

This theory that policies that help the rich get richer will "ultimately help everybody," has been with us a long time. Foreign Policy says it was coined by the great urban philosopher Will Rogers when he commented on Herbert Hoover's 1928 tax cuts: "The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy," but the president didn't "know that money trickles up."

Since the presidency of Ronald Reagan, zombie capitalists have turned trickle-up into a flood. Forbes Global Billionaires list rocketed from 322 in 2000 to 1,826 in 2015. By 2099 Credit Suisse predicts 11 trillionaires. But for the rest of the world, capitalism is a cancer: A billion live on less than two dollars a day. And as global population explodes to 10 billion by 2050, the widening inequality gap will trigger revolutions, pandemics, starvation, an overheated planet. Trillionaires? Or GDP below 1% by 2099?

2. Frankenstein economy is now America's new Invisible Hand

Adam Smith was a moral philosopher, believed the Invisible Hand of a divine power would act to the benefit of all. Unfortunately, today's capitalists took away control of the Invisible Hand, transformed it into a blood-sucking vampire, into "mutant capitalism" as Jack Bogle calls it, an egocentric materialism with no moral compass that justifies America's obsession with celebrity power and personal wealth.

Nobel Economist Joseph Stiglitz warned of this new "Frankenstein economy" mythology. Lacking any scientific proof of their own ideologies, insiders use computer technology, math and physics to justify their ideological biases, dismissing the economic impact of climate change, research on the predictably irrational, often evil behavior of all humans.

As a result, today's capitalists often become climate deniers, ignore social issues, focusing instead on justifying the self-serving behavior of billionaires maximizing profits, accumulating massive wealth, dangerously widening the inequality gap. They pretend their myth-based economy works, even as they drain our GDP's soul of blood.

3. Frankenstein capitalism is trapped in a Myth of Perpetual Growth

Capitalism's Frankenstein economics is failing America: by relying on its core Myth of Perpetual Growth. They assume infinite growth of resources and opportunities for profits, income and wealth. Ad infinitum. Though rich and brilliant, American capitalists have a childlike, irrational conviction that they can indefinitely produce, mine, grow, fish, dump and extract resources from the planet's limited supply, without ever paying a steep price or planning for the day the planet's resources are exhausted. Hence their bizarre opposition to all carbon pollution-taxation and regulation.

4. Frankenstein capitalists have short-term-thinking brains

Wall Street bankers, corporate insiders, and other capitalists tend to focus on today's stock prices, quarterly earnings, annual bonuses. Most of these Frankenstein capitalists are alpha-males, aggressive short-term thinkers, says Jeremy Grantham, while America's next generation needs new leaders for 2050 with a "historical perspective." But unfortunately our leaders have grown into "an army of left-brained immediate doers" which "guarantees" they "will always to miss" the next big one.

5. Frankenstein capitalism has a conservative GOP political bias

Stiglitz warns that today's zombies all have a definite conservative bias on political issues. Economic courses taught at Harvard, for example, use a textbook written by a former member of President Bush's Council of Economic Advisors that pushes "a particular ideological view that markets work perfectly."

Moreover, they tend to see environmental issues as liberal myths, and back GOP politicians committed to climate-science denialism. And yet, politically biased economic theories, whether conservative or liberal, are dangerous to America's future. Future leaders need to be flexible, open to compromise, making decisions on broader public policies, not, for example, locked on some rigid version of Adam Smith's theories. Time to bury that corpse.

6. Frankenstein capitalism is accelerating disasters, famine, pandemics

Flash forward: The planet is incapable of feeding the 10 billion people projected on Earth by 2050, warns Jeremy Grantham, whose firm manages over $120 billion. And yet, most economists today work for banks and businesses that ignore demographics, except as a source of consumer marketing data, trapped in a self-destructive climate-science-denial bubble.

Snap out of it, reread "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism." See why this kind of thinking will require a disaster of epic proportions, a World War III, worldwide famine or global pandemic to shock the Frankenstein capitalist mind-set, awaken their conscience, revive the original moral core of Adam Smith's economic soul.

7. Frankenstein economy trapped between uncompromising ideologies

Today the "Atlas Shrugged" ideology of Ayn Rand is the core of Frankenstein economics, having replaced Adam Smith's original capitalism. It is now in a war to the death with liberalism. This extremism is now the conventional wisdom of conservative politicians: "When I say 'capitalism,' I mean a pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism." It is "the only system that can make freedom, individuality, and the pursuit of values possible." Compromise is impossible.

Today Rand's ideology is not only deeply embedded in conservative economic thought, it has emerged as a conspiracy of a Super Rich elite and the political right, in a dangerous spiral repetition of the historical patterns Acemoglu and Robinson warn we are closing the door to America's future, setting up the collapse of our economy and our nation's failure.

Happy Halloween, the good news is that this war will soon come to a predictably irrational end: By the 2020 presidential election when Clinton is reelected. By then the GOP will have been looking at 16 long years out of the presidency.

Plus by 2020, the grim realities of global warming will force Big Oil and the worldwide fossil-fuel industry to wake up and accept the need for controlling global warming. And finally, that will break the conspiracy trapping GOP politicians like Donald Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz, Sen. Marco Rubio, and even Sen. James Inhofe in the mythic greed of climate-science denialism.

Now isn't that a truly scary thought for Frankenstein capitalists on this wonderful Happy Halloween?

Paul B. Farrell is a MarketWatch columnist based in San Luis Obispo, Calif. Follow him on Twitter @MKTWFarrell.

[Nov 02, 2015] Dilemmas of Domination The Unmaking of the American Empire

Notable quotes:

"... Dilemmas of Domination contends that the US has entered into a period of decline as the world's hegemon. ..."

"... Because the US dominates international financial institutions like the IMF, World Bank and most of the regional development banks, their imposition of neo-liberal structural adjustments programs has led to a revolt against their destructive policies as witnessed by the left ferment especially in Latin America but also in the rest of the global South. ..."

"... I've read lots of books about globalization and free trade but none exposes the uneven playing field of free trade as good as Walden Bello. He shows that not only the evenness of playing field but also how the way U.S. is imprudently trying to dominate the world by adapting short sighted policies. These kind of policies have become the distinctive mark of recent American ideology domestically and foreign. ..."

American Empire Project

• File Size: 854 KB
• Print Length: 270 pages
• Publisher: Metropolitan Books (November 19, 2013)
• Publication Date: November 19, 2013

Tom Mertes - See all my reviews

Dilemmas indeed, April 28, 2005

The problems of the US mount daily from a ballooning deficit to heightened opposition from multiplying points on the globe. Walden Bello's Dilemmas of Domination is a tour de force dissection of the causes of these mounting problems.

He argues from an objective and non-partisan position in the global South. Because he primarily works outside of the US and because his method relies heavily on history, his account is compelling.

Dilemmas of Domination contends that the US has entered into a period of decline as the world's hegemon. Three crises characterize the loss of power and prestige.

• The first crisis is the problem of manufacturing and raw materials overproduction that leads to a decline in profits, and as wages are squeezed to stabilize profits demand falls further. Added to these problems is the fact that the US, the consumer of last resort, cannot continue to borrow and buy forever. The IOUs to the rest of the world will eventually have to be repaid.
• A second critical problem is military overextension. According to Bello, the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq demonstrate the US is not invincible. If it were, how could guerillas continue to move about these occupied nations so freely and make nation-building into such a farce? The US military is so strained that it has to hire mercenaries from companies like Blackwater to protect its corporate interests abroad because a draft would undermine all of its imperial adventures.
• The third crisis, perhaps the most enduring, is legitimacy. Ideologically, the US has lost its currency to lead the world. Because the US dominates international financial institutions like the IMF, World Bank and most of the regional development banks, their imposition of neo-liberal structural adjustments programs has led to a revolt against their destructive policies as witnessed by the left ferment especially in Latin America but also in the rest of the global South. Furthermore, the US bullying and sometimes insulting treatment of the UN has further sullied the US's reputation. Added to this international delegitimation is the quagmire of domestic politics from the surrender of civil liberties to the patently obvious corporate control of both major parties. For readers looking for a rich and clear formulation of why the US government is detested and feared by much of the earth's population this is the best primer.

Khalid S. Al Khateron October 26, 2005

Free trade as a tool for domination

I've read lots of books about globalization and free trade but none exposes the uneven playing field of free trade as good as Walden Bello. He shows that not only the evenness of playing field but also how the way U.S. is imprudently trying to dominate the world by adapting short sighted policies. These kind of policies have become the distinctive mark of recent American ideology domestically and foreign.

Luc REYNAERT, November 4, 2005

The weak must hang together, otherwise they hang separately

In this stringent view from the South, Walden Bello discerns three different crisis levels beleaguering the US world domination: a military, a judicial and an economical level.

On the military front, the Iraq war shows clearly the limits of interventions: 'today the entire US military is either in Iraq, returning from Iraq or getting ready to go.' The lesson for the South is that the US military supremacy can be brought to a halt with guerrilla warfare. A sledgehammer is useless in swatting flies.

On the judicial front, the US is loosing its legitimacy. In Western societies, enhancement of individual freedom and democratic representation are the ideological cornerstones of the regime. Nationally, recognized human rights (no access to personal information, privacy) are jeopardized in the US by the Patriot Act in the name of the war against terrorism. For Walden Bello, the US government is becoming authoritarian, because it is in the hands of the military-industrial complex, which functions on a risk-free, cost-plus basis and grabs one half of the US budget. He quotes judiciously William Pfaff: 'The military is already the most powerful institution in the US government, largely unaccountable to the executive branch.'

Internationally, consensus and multilateralism are needed through international institutions. However, the US behaves unilaterally. Dealings with the South are subordinated to strategic considerations (R. Zoellick: 'countries that seek free trade agreements with the US must cooperate on its foreign policy goals.') Walden Bello's analysis of the WTO agreements is devastating. He calls them a free trade monopoly in the hands of corporate interests. WTO's agreement on Agriculture is not less than 'Socialism for the Rich'. The result is that the US democratic messianism is seen as sheer hypocrisy by the rest of the world.

Economically, some of Walden Bello's arguments are a little of the mark. Finite natural resources and ecological space are demographic problems. The conflict between a minority in command of assets and the majority of the population is a trade union and an election problem. But some of his arguments are to the point. There is a widening inequality gap in the US: the richest 1% of the population pocketed more than half the benefit of the latest tax reduction. The actual US budget and trade deficits are unsustainable in the long run and certainly if the inflow of foreign capital comes to a halt.

Finally, there is a new hegemon at the horizon: China with its state-assisted capitalism. The author summarizes brilliantly China's behavior: 'nations have no permanent friends, only permanent interests.'

But what should the South do in the meantime: regional economic blocks, G-20, South-South cooperation, because 'the weak must hang together, otherwise they will hang separately'.

Walden Bello's hard hitting analysis of current events should be a vademecum for all politiciams and laymen. A must read. In this context, I also recommend the works of Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed and Noreena Hertz.

[Nov 02, 2015] The Fatal Blindness of Unrealistic Expectations

Notable quotes:

"... Snowden revealed some outrageous practices and constitutional abuses and the Obama administration - yes the same one that has not managed to bring a single criminal charge against a single senior banker - wants to charge Snowden with espionage. ..."

"... The fact is that Mr Snowden committed very serious crimes, and the US government and the Department of Justice believe that he should face them." ..."

Peak Prosperity

cmartenson

Speaking of not having a clear strategy or vision

Snowden revealed some outrageous practices and constitutional abuses and the Obama administration - yes the same one that has not managed to bring a single criminal charge against a single senior banker - wants to charge Snowden with espionage.

It bears repeating; US Bankers committed literally hundreds of thousands of serious felonies and *not one* was ever charged by the Justice Dept. under Obama's two terms.

Recently the White House spokesman said "The fact is that Mr Snowden committed very serious crimes, and the US government and the Department of Justice believe that he should face them."

Well, either you believe serious crimes should be prosecuted or you don't.

Pick one.

But to try and be selective about it all just makes one something of a tyrant. Wielding power when and how it suits one's aims instead of equally is pretty much the definition of tyranny (which includes "the unreasonable or arbitrary use of power")

However, the EU has decided to drop all criminal charges against Snowden showing that the US is losing legitimacy across the globe by the day.

EU parliament votes to 'drop any criminal charges' against whistle-blower

The European parliament voted to lift criminal charges against American whistle-blower Edward Snowden on Thursday.

In an incredibly close vote, EU MEPs said he should be granted protection as a "human rights defender" in a move that was celebrated as a "chance to move forward" by Mr Snowden from Russia.

This seems both right and significant. Significant because the US power structure must be seething. It means that the EU is moving away form the US on important matters, and that's significant too. Right because Snowden revealed deeply illegal and unconstitutional practices that, for the record, went waaaaAAaaay beyond the so-called 'meta-data phone records' issue.

And why shouldn't the EU begin to carve their own path? Their interests and the US's are wildly different at this point in history, especially considering the refugee crisis that was largely initiated by US meddling and warmongering in the Middle East.

At this point, I would say that the US has lost all legitimacy on the subject of equal application of the laws, and cannot be trusted when it comes to manufacturing "evidence" that is used to invade, provoke or stoke a conflict somewhere.

The US is now the Yahoo! of countries; cheerleading our own self-described excellence and superiority at everything when the facts on the ground say something completely different.

Quercus bicolor

cmartenson wrote:

Recently the White House spokesman said "The fact is that Mr Snowden committed very serious crimes, and the US government and the Department of Justice believe that he should face them."

And this "serious crime" was committed by Snowden because he saw it as the only viable path to revealing a systematic pattern of crimes by none other than our own federal government that are so serious that they threaten the basic founding principles on which our REPUBLIC was founded.

lambertad

Truth is treason

You know how the old saying goes "truth is treason in the empire of lies". I'm a staunch libertarian, but I wasn't always that way. Before that I spent most of my 20's in Special Operations wanting to 'kill bad guys who attacked us' on 9/11. It wasn't until my last deployment that I got ahold of Dr. Ron Paul's books and dug through them and realized his viewpoint suddenly made much more sense than anyone else's. Not only did it make much more sense, but it was based on Natural Law and the founding principals of our country.

A lot has been made of the fact that Snowden contributed money to Dr. Paul's 2008 presidential campaign and that this was an obvious tell that he was really an undercover (insert whatever words the media used - traitor, anarchist, russian spy, etc.). The part that I find troubling is the fact that Snowden revealed to the world that we are all being watched, probably not in real time, but if they ever want to review the 'tapes' they can see what we do essentially every minute of every day. That's BIG news to get out to the citizenry. If you've got access to that kind of data, you don't want that getting out, but here's the kicker - Very few in this country today even care. Nothing in this country has changed that I'm aware of. GCHQ still spies on us and passes the info to the NSA. The NSA still spys on everyone and the Brits and passes the info to GCHQ. Austrialia and NZ and Canda still spy on whoever and pass the info on to whoever wants it. It's craziness.

At the same time, as Chris and others have pointed out, we're bombing people (ISIS/Al Nusra/AQ) we supported ('moderate rebels) before we bombed them (AQ) after we bombed Sadaam and invaded Iraq. Someone please tell me the strategy other than the "7 countries in 5 years plan". Yup, sounds a lot like Yahoo!.

I'm looking forward to Christmas this year because I get to spend 5 days with my wife's family again. My father-in-law is a smart man, but thinks the government is still all powerful and has everything under control. It should make some interesting conversations and debating.

Thanks for the article Adam, interesting parallel between TPTB and Yahoo!.

[Nov 02, 2015] Engineering of consent

Notable quotes:

"... "successful social and political management often depends on proper coordination of propaganda with coercion, violent or non-violent; economic inducement (including bribery); diplomatic negotiation; and other techniques." ..."

"... So beginning around the turn of the century, the scientific engineers of consent unleashed a Weltanschauungskrieg ("worldview war") on an unsuspecting public, Simpson argues, in which they sought "a shift in which modern consumer culture displaced existing social forms." ..."

"... Automobile marketers, for example, do not simply tout their products for their usefulness as transportation; they seek to convince their customers to define their personal goals, self-esteem, and values in terms of owning or using the product…. ..."

"... Ordinary people are to be kept voiceless, Simpson concludes, "voiceless in all fields other than selection of commodities." ..."

"... The interesting thing is that is also part and parcel of the cultural memes presently prevalent in the industrialized societies of wealthy western industrialized nations. These memes have been spreading throughout the world at a very rapid rate and it is MHO that this meme is spreading what amounts to a terminal cultural pathology. In other words it is a dead end with an expiration date. ..."

"... Technological shifts occurring now because of perfect storm of maturing technologies and the end of age of oil, are bringing us the Uberization of many facets of our civilization that we had taken for granted as almost eternal and immutable. "Like we all need a car to be free!" ..."

Oct 30, 2015 | Peak Oil Barrel

US Oil Production by State

Glenn Stehle,10/31/2015 at 9:15 am

So one is left wondering what is causing the downward mobility of most Americans. Is it caused by increasingly less abundant natural resources, making it more costly to exploit those that remain? Or is it caused by one group of humans which is more aggressively exploiting another group?

Most Americans seem to believe it's the latter. The Economist reports that:

The country faces a crisis of mutual resentment… Sharply-delineated voter blocs are alarmingly willing to believe that rival groups are up to no good or taking more than their fair share.
http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21591180-americas-political-divisions-have-deeper-social-consequences-why-americans-are-so-angry

So Americans are mad as hell. And as they descend into an orgy of victimization, even rich white straight protestant men can be heard bellowing for victim status.

Where will it all lead, and especially if the politicians are no longer able to bring the bacon home?

I'm reading Christopher Simpson's the Science of Coercion where he notes that Harold Lawswell, one of the seminal "scientific engineers of consent" in the United States, claimed that "successful social and political management often depends on proper coordination of propaganda with coercion, violent or non-violent; economic inducement (including bribery); diplomatic negotiation; and other techniques."

So beginning around the turn of the century, the scientific engineers of consent unleashed a Weltanschauungskrieg ("worldview war") on an unsuspecting public, Simpson argues, in which they sought "a shift in which modern consumer culture displaced existing social forms."

"We have thought in terms of fighting dictatorships-by-force," Donald Slesinger noted of the new strategy and tactics, "through the establishment of dictatorship-by-manipulation."

As Simpson goes on to explain, for the scientific engineers of consent

the simple sale of products and services is not enough. Their commercial success in a mass market depends to an important degree on their ability to substitute their values and worldview for those previously held by their audience, typically through seduction and deflection of rival worldviews. Automobile marketers, for example, do not simply tout their products for their usefulness as transportation; they seek to convince their customers to define their personal goals, self-esteem, and values in terms of owning or using the product….

Ordinary people are to be kept voiceless, Simpson concludes, "voiceless in all fields other than selection of commodities."

So now, after a century of hammering the values and worldview of a mass consumer culture into the peoples' heads, how quickly can the public's worldview be turned around?

And if we remove "economic inducement" and "vocie in the selection of commodities" from the toolbox of the scientific engineers of consent, what's left? Propaganda; coercion (violent or non-violent); diplomatic negotiation; and "other techniques"?

Fred Magyar,10/31/2015 at 11:09 am

"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the I'm reading Christopher Simpson's the Science of Coercion where he notes that Harold Lawswell, one of the seminal "scientific engineers of consent" in the United States, claimed that "successful social and political management often depends on proper coordination of propaganda with coercion, violent or non-violent; economic inducement (including bribery); diplomatic negotiation; and other techniques."

That sounds an awful lot like this crap!

organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. …We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. …In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind."
― Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda circa 1928

There is no doubt that this way of thinking is the basis of the so called capitalist infinite growth paradigm. Which only has a chance of working up until the point that physical limits of our finite planet are reached. Then the shit tends to hit the fan for all concerned.

The interesting thing is that is also part and parcel of the cultural memes presently prevalent in the industrialized societies of wealthy western industrialized nations. These memes have been spreading throughout the world at a very rapid rate and it is MHO that this meme is spreading what amounts to a terminal cultural pathology. In other words it is a dead end with an expiration date.

The good news is, that it isn't written stone that the current culture itself can not be deeply disrupted and profoundly changed.

Technological shifts occurring now because of perfect storm of maturing technologies and the end of age of oil, are bringing us the Uberization of many facets of our civilization that we had taken for granted as almost eternal and immutable. "Like we all need a car to be free!"

Well, a lot of young people are no longer buying into that world view. So the old guard and power brokers of the linear consumer society such as the Oil Majors, Automobile manufactures, and producers of unnecessary useless consumer goods are losing their grip on economic power to the new crop of digital entrepreneurs who are ushering in a totally new economic, political and social paradigm.

Technology is changing the way we interact and form connections within society.

This video a the end of my post might seem a bit off topic but to me it underscores how different this new world has the potential to be. I especially love the example of an expensive commercial failure of a consumer product that suddenly became cheap enough for use as a musical instrument in a computer orchestra and the fact that a thousand people can suddenly come together in a show of support by singing together… And If I could travel back in time, I'd murder Eduard Bernays.

Ge Wang:
The DIY orchestra of the future

https://www.ted.com/talks/ge_wang_the_diy_orchestra_of_the_future

We need to stop thinking linearly!

Glenn Stehle, 11/01/2015 at 9:12 am

Fred Magyar said:

The good news is, that it isn't written stone that the current culture itself can not be deeply disrupted and profoundly changed.

Technological shifts occurring now because of perfect storm of maturing technologies and the end of age of oil, are bringing us the Uberization of many facets of our civilization that we had taken for granted as almost eternal and immutable….

So the old guard and power brokers of the linear consumer society such as the Oil Majors, Automobile manufactures, and producers of unnecessary useless consumer goods are losing their grip on economic power to the new crop of digital entrepreneurs who are ushering in a totally new economic, political and social paradigm.

The idea of cultural transformation has been with us for a long time. It's very much part of the Christian evangelical tradition, and we can see how the idea played out in practice after Spain's and Portugal's conquest of the Americas.

Combining cultural revolution with technological transformation, however, seems to be a purely 20th-century innovation. And the idea has been no less appealing to left Hegelians than it has been to right Hegelians.

On the left, we see the notion of a combined cultural-technological revolution emerge first with the Russian nihilists. "Drawing heavily on the German materialists Jacob Moleschott, Karl Vogt, and Ludwig Buchner," Michael Allen Gillespie explains in Nihilism Before Nietzsche, "the nihilists argued that the natural sciences were preparing the way for the millennium."

"This turn to materialism was also bound up with the growth of atheism," Gillespie adds, which was "given a concrete reality by materialism, especially in combination with the Darwinism that became increasingly popular with the nihilists."

"We are witnesses of the greatest moment of summing-up in history, in the name of a new and unknown culture, which will be created by us, and which will also sweep us away," Sergey Diaghilev gushed in 1905.

This nihilist brand of Futurism, combining cultural revolution with technological revolution, was to prove highly attractive to the later Bolsheviks, even though the Russian avant-garde which occurred under Lennin would be quite different from the Socialist Realism which took place later under Stalin.

Anatoli Lunacharsky, Lennin's Commissar for Education and Enlightenment, wrote in 1917, "If the revolution can give art its soul, then art can endow the revolution with speech."

"There was a need to explain, encourage, teach and enthuse the masses," Victor Awars explains in The Great Russian Utopia. "Agit-Prop was to be the means."

In the catalogue for the Tenth State Exhibition organized by Lunacharsky in 1919, El Lissitzky wrote:

Technology…was diverted by the war from the path of construction and forced on to the paths of death and destruction. Into this chaos came Suprematism… We, on the last stage of the path to Suprematism blasted aside the old work of art… The empty phrase 'art for art's sake' had already been wiped out and in Suprematism we have wiped out the phrase 'painting for painting's sake.'

In May 1924 Vladimir Tatlin in his lecture "Material Culture and Its Role in the Production of Life in the USSR" offered a synoptic statement of what was still the task at hand:

…to shed light on the tasks of production in our country, and also to discover the place of the artist-constructor in production, in relation to improving the quality both of the manufactured product and of the organization of the new way of life in general."

The same sentiment is heard again a year later when Vladimir Maiakovskii declared that: "To build a new culture a clean sweep is needed. The sweep of the October revolution is needed."

What is happening is "the conversion of revolutionary effort into technological effort," is how Asja Lacis summed it up in 1927.

In this poster, one can see how the worker's revolution was melded with the technological revolution, all under the banner of the Russian Revolution.

Nikolai Dolgorukov
Transport Worker! Armed with a Knowledge of Technology.

[Nov 01, 2015] Erdogan's party enjoys decisive election victory in Turkey

Looks like neo-Islamism = neoliberalism and radical Islam is a part of neoliberal fifth column... a definition of neo-Islamism includes these key characteristics: non-traditional religiosity, gradualism, Islam modernization, nationalism and pragmatic relations with the West. They are trying to rally a larger constituency than hard-core devout Muslims, recasting religious norms as more vague conservative values (family, property, work ethic, honesty) adopting a neoliberal approach to the economy, and endorsing a constitution, and parliament and regular elections. (Roy 2011a 31. Roy, O., 2011a. The paradoxes of the re-Islamisation of Muslim societies, 10 years after september 11. Available from: http://essays.ssrc.org/10yearsafter911/the-paradoxes-of-the-re-islamization-of-muslim-societies/ [accessed 14 October 2014]. See also Neo-Islamism in the post-Arab Spring - Contemporary Politics - Volume 20, Issue 4 The Turkish ruling party AKP provided an interesting example of this trend which changed their priorities merging "shariatization" with the nationalism and expansion of nation state (Nationalist Islamism)

Notable quotes:

"... I share the frustration expressed by other posts with WAPO and other Western journalism on Turkey. Luckily for me, the strategy behind the AKP victory was explained to me several days priors to the election by a fellow with intimate knowledge of Turkey. Erdogan looked at the Nationalist MHP and Islamist SP and figured out that his only way for strengthen his support would be by moving as many of their voters to the AKP. ..."

"... He figured that a rift with the Kurds will attract the nationalists and more Islamist positions will attract the latter. If you compare the results of the Nov 1 elections with the June 7 elections, you can see that it worked brilliantly. ..."

"... The great experiment in westernized Islam is dead. ..."

"... I would be only relieved if Turkish government would come up and speak all of those words you have mentioned. Iran did it. I have to respect that. They said what they stood for and that they do not like any others very clearly. This is at least honest and brave. If Turkey can pronounce its standing in between West and East, if you will, I will the most proud person even though I will be standing against here. Very well said. ..."

"... byetki - Exactly! At least a snake has dignity. A rat will do anything to survive! ..."

"... Remember the cynical adage about Democracy? Many of us rooted for, supported the campaign of, and voted for Obama. And what did we get? Obama and Erdogan and King Salman: and ongoing wars as far the eye can see. ..."

"... Bombing your own people wins elections. The Americans taught us this.. ..."

The Washington Post

Josh26

I share the frustration expressed by other posts with WAPO and other Western journalism on Turkey. Luckily for me, the strategy behind the AKP victory was explained to me several days priors to the election by a fellow with intimate knowledge of Turkey. Erdogan looked at the Nationalist MHP and Islamist SP and figured out that his only way for strengthen his support would be by moving as many of their voters to the AKP.

He figured that a rift with the Kurds will attract the nationalists and more Islamist positions will attract the latter. If you compare the results of the Nov 1 elections with the June 7 elections, you can see that it worked brilliantly.

Thus, Erdogan moved Turkey even further from the Western/democratic world in order to realize his unrelenting ambition for more and more power.
The US needs now to rely much more on the Kurds to defend US interests in the area, but it will be a real surprise if the current WH will do it.

Oscargo, 9:38 PM EST [Edited]

Turkey has chosen a religious Islamist state and an intolerant regime that jails reporters and journalists, even foreign, and does not accept dissent, over the pluralism, inclusiveness and freedom of speech of the European democracies.

Bye Bye EU!

Steve Willer

Who says corruption, murder, nullifying elections that don't come out your way, jailing the media etc doesn't pay? It did for Erdogan. Turkey should be removed from NATO as long as Erdogan is Sultan.

realityboy

The great experiment in "westernized" Islam is dead.

byetki

I would be only relieved if Turkish government would come up and speak all of those words you have mentioned. Iran did it. I have to respect that. They said what they stood for and that they do not like any others very clearly. This is at least honest and brave. If Turkey can pronounce its standing in between West and East, if you will, I will the most proud person even though I will be standing against here. Very well said.

ed_bx__

byetki - Exactly! At least a snake has dignity. A rat will do anything to survive!

MACLANE

Optimist on Democracy. Remember the cynical adage about Democracy? Many of us rooted for, supported the campaign of, and voted for Obama. And what did we get? Obama and Erdogan and King Salman: and ongoing wars as far the eye can see.

FalseProphet

So Turkey moves closer to being a autocratic theocracy. can't be good

ed_bx__, 4:14 PM EST

Bombing your own people wins elections. The Americans taught us this..

ed_bx__, 4:06 PM EST

It's not too late to get behind Al Assad. He is a more natural ally to the west than Erdogan.

[Nov 01, 2015] The Rise and Decline of the Turkish "Deep State": The Ergenekon Case

Notable quotes:

"... The Theory of Distributional Coalitions Mancur Olson's theory of distributional coalitions holds that, as societies establish themselves, group interests become more identifiable, and subsets of the society organize in an effort to secure these interests. ..."

"... This exclusivity factor is of special importance in the way these rent-seeking (or special-interest) groups operate, since, unlike highly-encompassing organizations, exclusive organizations do not have an incentive to increase the productivity of the society. This is due to the disproportion between the sizes of the exclusive organization and the population. To use Olson's idiom, such organizations are in a position either to make larger the pie the society produces or to obtain larger slices for their members. ..."

"... That is still the case even when the organization's cost to the society is significantly more than the benefits it seeks for its members. Such behavior is not at all unexpected of exclusive organizations, since it is the very policy of exclusion itself that enables the group to distribute more to its members.In that respect, disproportional allocation of resources goes hand in hand with barriers to entry into the favored areas of the special-interest group. ..."

"... The genesis of the Turkish deep state is traceable to the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP, ttihad ve Terakki Cemiyeti ), a secret society founded in Istanbul in 1889 by a group of medical students who had a passion for reform in the Ottoman Empire.3 The CUP organized so extensively that, in less than two decades, it became a revolutionary political organization with branches inside and outside the Ottoman Empire.4 Within the organization existed numerous factions, and the body of membership was ethnically and even ideologically diverse. ..."

"... The CUP used the Fedaiin to have its political opponents assassinated, among other things, and later on, employed the Special Organization in the mass killings of the Ottoman- Armenians in 1915.8 The CUP disbanded in 1918, a year that also marked the beginning of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire after World War I. ..."

"... "Unionism" ( ttihatç l k ) has persisted in the political culture of Turkey, and has manifested itself primarily in (1) ultranationalism, (2) military involvement/ intervention in politics, and (3) justification of extrajudicial activities and violence in the name of the fatherland ( vatan ). ..."

"... Of particular importance among these clandestine operations were those by the Gendarmarie Intelligence and Counter-terror Unit (J TEM, Jandarma stihbarat ve Terörle Mücadele ), which is allegedly responsible for thousands of extrajudicial executions and assassinations of PKK sympathizers and supporters. ..."

derinsular.com

This paper argues that Mancur Olson's theory of distributional coalitions largely explains this network's raison d'être. The paper first outlines the main tenets of the theory, and then examines the historical roots of the Turkish deep state, as well as the paradigm shift its exposure caused in the public opinion. The network's

• exclusive character,
• impacts on the workings of the Turkish society, and finally
• efforts to sustain its dominating influence, which is manifested especially in its attempts to reverse the country's democratization process,

demonstrate that the emergence, influence, and the incentives of the Turkish deep state confirm the fundamental assumptions of Olson's theory.

The Theory of Distributional Coalitions Mancur Olson's theory of distributional coalitions holds that, as societies establish themselves, group interests become more identifiable, and subsets of the society organize in an effort to secure these interests. Since these interests are best served by coordinated action, institutions emerge. Yet, such institutions tend to be exclusive by nature, and pursue only the interests of their own members, who account to a very small minority.

This exclusivity factor is of special importance in the way these rent-seeking (or special-interest) groups operate, since, unlike highly-encompassing organizations, exclusive organizations do not have an incentive to increase the productivity of the society. This is due to the disproportion between the sizes of the exclusive organization and the population. To use Olson's idiom, such organizations are in a position either to make larger the pie the society produces or to obtain larger slices for their members.

"Our intuition tells us," Olson says, "that the first method will rarely be chosen."2 Because, on the one hand, it is very costly to increase the productivity of society as a whole, and on the other, even if this is achieved, the The Rise and Decline of the Turkish "Deep State": The Ergenekon Case 101 members of the minuscule organization will accordingly reap only a minuscule portion of the benefits.

Therefore, exclusive groups aim to present their own interests as being the interests of their constituencies, and to use all of their organizational power for collective action in that direction.

That is still the case even when the organization's cost to the society is significantly more than the benefits it seeks for its members. Such behavior is not at all unexpected of exclusive organizations, since it is the very policy of exclusion itself that enables the group to distribute more to its members.In that respect, disproportional allocation of resources goes hand in hand with barriers to entry into the favored areas of the special-interest group.

Yet the existence of barriers to entry further damages the society by reducing the economic growth.

When coupled with the interferences of the special-interest groups with the possibilities of change in the existing state of affairs, the level of the reduction in economic growth can be large.

In order to achieve their goals, special-interest groups engage in lobbying activities and collusion – both of which, by creating special provisions and exceptions, further increase not only inefficiency but also (1) the complexity of regulation, (2) the scope of government, and (3) the complexity of understandings.

The Formation and the Evolution of the Turkish Deep State The genesis of the Turkish deep state is traceable to the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP, İttihad ve Terakki Cemiyeti), a secret society founded in Istanbul in 1889 by a group of medical students who had a passion for reform in the Ottoman Empire.3 The CUP organized so extensively that, in less than two decades, it became a revolutionary political organization with branches inside and outside the Ottoman Empire.4 Within the organization existed numerous factions, and the body of membership was ethnically and even ideologically diverse.

Yet it was the commonly-shared goal of changing the regime rather than conformity that bound the members together, and they successfully achieved that goal with the Young Turk Revolution of 1908, which restored the Constitution of 1876 (Kanun-ı Esasi) that restricted the powers of the Sultan, and made the Ottoman Empire a constitutional monarchy again after 32 years of absolutism.

The genesis of the Turkish deep state is traceable to the Committee of Union and Progress, a secret society founded in Istanbul in 1889 by a group of medical students who had a passion for reform in the Ottoman Empire SERDAR KAYA 102 What makes the CUP extraordinary as a case is that it never fully transformed into a genuine political party even after the revolution it brought about.

Instead, it continued to operate as the secret committee it always was.5 Back then, in reference to this fact, some of the critics of the CUP had coined the phrase "invisible people" (rical-i gayb).6 In the end, this code of conduct rendered the committee as a clandestine force that exerted influence by informal means in order to change the course of affairs the way it saw fit.

The reflections of that proclivity are traceable in many of the major occurrences of the time.

In what is today commonly referred to as the coup of 1913, for example, a group of CUP operatives broke into the Sublime Porte as the Cabinet was in session, murdered the minister of defense and two prominent government officials, and forced the Grand Vizier, the head of the Cabinet, to resign immediately.

The coup of 1913 is also important in that it set a precedent in the country for military interventions and ultimatums, the latest of which occurred on April 27, 2007.

A second example to the code of conduct of the CUP may be the clandestine activities of the Special Organization7 (Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa).

Although the CUP established the Special Organization in 1913, ten months after the coup of 1913, it was in fact the continuation of the Fedaiin, the secret organization the CUP established in 1905 – that is, before the Young Turk Revolution of 1908.

The CUP used the Fedaiin to have its political opponents assassinated, among other things, and later on, employed the Special Organization in the mass killings of the Ottoman- Armenians in 1915.8 The CUP disbanded in 1918, a year that also marked the beginning of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire after World War I.

However, many of its members as well as the political culture it created survived within the Republic of Turkey.

To this day, "Unionism" (İttihatçılık) has persisted in the political culture of Turkey, and has manifested itself primarily in (1) ultranationalism, (2) military involvement/ intervention in politics, and (3) justification of extrajudicial activities and violence in the name of the fatherland (vatan).

Nevertheless, different aspects of this political culture have gained primacy in different periods, and with the influence of the changes in the domestic and international conjuncture, it more or less evolved. For example, during the One Party Era (1925-45), the influence of interwarperiod fascism further radicalized the nationalist ideology of the ruling cadre. Then, in the 1960s, variations of the same Unionist background found expression The Rise and Decline of the Turkish "Deep State": The Ergenekon Case 103 in the rightist and leftist political movements, which, unsurprisingly, entered into violent conflict in the 1970s.

In the mid-1980s, the Kurdish question reemerged with the terrorist activities of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), the separatist guerilla group, which became a source of instability in the southeast region of the country, and in so doing, provided a new fertile ground for the clandestine operations of the Turkish deep state.

Of particular importance among these clandestine operations were those by the Gendarmarie Intelligence and Counter-terror Unit (JİTEM, Jandarma İstihbarat ve Terörle Mücadele), which is allegedly responsible for thousands of extrajudicial executions and assassinations of PKK sympathizers and supporters.

Yet the same decade also marked the time period in which Turkey opened its borders and started to integrate with the rest of the world. As a result, after the 1980s, new social, political and economic perspectives started to emerge. However, this new West that Turkey came to closer contact with during and after the 1980s was fundamentally different from the West of the interwar period in that the former was democratic, and the latter fascist.

The increasing interaction with the West did not instantly trigger the demands for democratization in the country. It was the Susurluk scandal and a combination of other events that occurred approximately a decade later that started to dramatically shift the prevalant paradigms. On the one hand, these experiences created a more profound societal cognizance of questioning authority, and on the other, in line with these experiences, people came to attach new meanings to the nature of the state-society relations in Turkey in a manner which provided a more convenient ground for the democratization process in the country.

Apparently, these paradigm shifts also coincided with the developments since the Helsinki European Council of 1999, where the European Union (EU) formally referred to Turkey as a candidate and thus invigorated the country's accession process.

[Nov 01, 2015] Anatomy of the Deep State

Notable quotes:

"... During the time in 2011 when political warfare over the debt ceiling was beginning to paralyze the business of governance in Washington, the United States government somehow summoned the resources to overthrow Muammar Ghaddafi's regime in Libya, and, when the instability created by that coup spilled over into Mali, provide overt and covert assistance to French intervention there. ..."

"... Yes, there is another government concealed behind the one that is visible at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue, a hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country according to consistent patterns in season and out, connected to, but only intermittently controlled by, the visible state whose leaders we choose. My analysis of this phenomenon is not ..."

"... Cultural assimilation is partly a matter of what psychologist Irving L. Janis called "groupthink," the chameleon-like ability of people to adopt the views of their superiors and peers. This syndrome is endemic to Washington: The town is characterized by sudden fads, be it negotiating biennial budgeting, making grand bargains or invading countries. Then, after a while, all the town's cool kids drop those ideas as if they were radioactive. As in the military, everybody has to get on board with the mission, and questioning it is not a career-enhancing move. The universe of people who will critically examine the goings-on at the institutions they work for is always going to be a small one. As Upton Sinclair said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." ..."

"... The Deep State does not consist of the entire government. It is a hybrid of national security and law enforcement agencies: the Department of Defense, the Department of State, the Department of Homeland Security, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Justice Department. I also include the Department of the Treasury because of its jurisdiction over financial flows, its enforcement of international sanctions and its organic symbiosis with Wall Street. All these agencies are coordinated by the Executive Office of the President via the National Security Council. Certain key areas of the judiciary belong to the Deep State, such as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, whose actions are mysterious even to most members of Congress. ..."

"... The Party is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted , appeared in paperback on August 27, 2013. ..."

"... "These men, largely private, were functioning on a level different from the foreign policy of the United States, and years later when New York Times reporter Neil Sheehan read through the entire documentary history of the war, that history known as the Pentagon Papers, he would come away with one impression above all, which was that the government of the United States was not what he had thought it was; it was as if there were an inner U.S. government, what he called 'a centralized state, far more powerful than anything else, for whom the enemy is not simply the Communists but everything else, its own press, its own judiciary, its own Congress, foreign and friendly governments – all these are potentially antagonistic. ..."

"... The IMF/World Bank scam was working for a while. It doesn't work any more: South American countries simply reject it. And the US has no power to muscle South American countries any more; I'm not quite sure how they managed to become immune to US military intervention, but they have. They have had about 200 years of trial and error in figuring out how. ..."

"... Just before the Civil War, we saw the same dynamic: most of the country was completely disillusioned about the "slavocracy", as they called the corrupt US government dominated by slaveholders. This led to the election of Lincoln, the destruction of the Whig Party, and finally, the Civil War. ..."

February 21, 2014 | billmoyers.com

Rome lived upon its principal till ruin stared it in the face. Industry is the only true source of wealth, and there was no industry in Rome. By day the Ostia road was crowded with carts and muleteers, carrying to the great city the silks and spices of the East, the marble of Asia Minor, the timber of the Atlas, the grain of Africa and Egypt; and the carts brought out nothing but loads of dung. That was their return cargo.

– The Martyrdom of Man by Winwood Reade (1871)

---

There is the visible government situated around the Mall in Washington, and then there is another, more shadowy, more indefinable government that is not explained in Civics 101 or observable to tourists at the White House or the Capitol. The former is traditional Washington partisan politics: the tip of the iceberg that a public watching C-SPAN sees daily and which is theoretically controllable via elections. The subsurface part of the iceberg I shall call the Deep State, which operates according to its own compass heading regardless of who is formally in power. [1]

During the last five years, the news media has been flooded with pundits decrying the broken politics of Washington. The conventional wisdom has it that partisan gridlock and dysfunction have become the new normal. That is certainly the case, and I have been among the harshest critics of this development. But it is also imperative to acknowledge the limits of this critique as it applies to the American governmental system. On one level, the critique is self-evident: In the domain that the public can see, Congress is hopelessly deadlocked in the worst manner since the 1850s, the violently rancorous decade preceding the Civil War.

Yes, there is another government concealed behind the one that is visible at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue, a hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country…

As I wrote in The Party is Over, the present objective of congressional Republicans is to render the executive branch powerless, at least until a Republican president is elected (a goal that voter suppression laws in GOP-controlled states are clearly intended to accomplish). President Obama cannot enact his domestic policies and budgets: Because of incessant GOP filibustering, not only could he not fill the large number of vacancies in the federal judiciary, he could not even get his most innocuous presidential appointees into office. Democrats controlling the Senate have responded by weakening the filibuster of nominations, but Republicans are sure to react with other parliamentary delaying tactics. This strategy amounts to congressional nullification of executive branch powers by a party that controls a majority in only one house of Congress.

Despite this apparent impotence, President Obama can liquidate American citizens without due processes, detain prisoners indefinitely without charge, conduct dragnet surveillance on the American people without judicial warrant and engage in unprecedented - at least since the McCarthy era - witch hunts against federal employees (the so-called "Insider Threat Program"). Within the United States, this power is characterized by massive displays of intimidating force by militarized federal, state and local law enforcement. Abroad, President Obama can start wars at will and engage in virtually any other activity whatsoever without so much as a by-your-leave from Congress, such as arranging the forced landing of a plane carrying a sovereign head of state over foreign territory. Despite the habitual cant of congressional Republicans about executive overreach by Obama, the would-be dictator, we have until recently heard very little from them about these actions - with the minor exception of comments from gadfly Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. Democrats, save a few mavericks such as Ron Wyden of Oregon, are not unduly troubled, either - even to the extent of permitting seemingly perjured congressional testimony under oath by executive branch officials on the subject of illegal surveillance.

These are not isolated instances of a contradiction; they have been so pervasive that they tend to be disregarded as background noise. During the time in 2011 when political warfare over the debt ceiling was beginning to paralyze the business of governance in Washington, the United States government somehow summoned the resources to overthrow Muammar Ghaddafi's regime in Libya, and, when the instability created by that coup spilled over into Mali, provide overt and covert assistance to French intervention there. At a time when there was heated debate about continuing meat inspections and civilian air traffic control because of the budget crisis, our government was somehow able to commit $115 million to keeping a civil war going in Syria and to pay at least £100m to the United Kingdom's Government Communications Headquarters to buy influence over and access to that country's intelligence. Since 2007, two bridges carrying interstate highways have collapsed due to inadequate maintenance of infrastructure, one killing 13 people. During that same period of time, the government spent $1.7 billion constructing a building in Utah that is the size of 17 football fields. This mammoth structure is intended to allow the National Security Agency to store a yottabyte of information, the largest numerical designator computer scientists have coined. A yottabyte is equal to 500 quintillion pages of text. They need that much storage to archive every single trace of your electronic life.

Yes, there is another government concealed behind the one that is visible at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue, a hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country according to consistent patterns in season and out, connected to, but only intermittently controlled by, the visible state whose leaders we choose. My analysis of this phenomenon is not an exposé of a secret, conspiratorial cabal; the state within a state is hiding mostly in plain sight, and its operators mainly act in the light of day. Nor can this other government be accurately termed an "establishment." All complex societies have an establishment, a social network committed to its own enrichment and perpetuation. In terms of its scope, financial resources and sheer global reach, the American hybrid state, the Deep State, is in a class by itself. That said, it is neither omniscient nor invincible. The institution is not so much sinister (although it has highly sinister aspects) as it is relentlessly well entrenched. Far from being invincible, its failures, such as those in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, are routine enough that it is only the Deep State's protectiveness towards its higher-ranking personnel that allows them to escape the consequences of their frequent ineptitude. [2]

How did I come to write an analysis of the Deep State, and why am I equipped to write it? As a congressional staff member for 28 years specializing in national security and possessing a top secret security clearance, I was at least on the fringes of the world I am describing, if neither totally in it by virtue of full membership nor of it by psychological disposition. But, like virtually every employed person, I became, to some extent, assimilated into the culture of the institution I worked for, and only by slow degrees, starting before the invasion of Iraq, did I begin fundamentally to question the reasons of state that motivate the people who are, to quote George W. Bush, "the deciders."

Reactions: Andrew Bacevich on Washington's Tacit Consensus

Cultural assimilation is partly a matter of what psychologist Irving L. Janis called "groupthink," the chameleon-like ability of people to adopt the views of their superiors and peers. This syndrome is endemic to Washington: The town is characterized by sudden fads, be it negotiating biennial budgeting, making grand bargains or invading countries. Then, after a while, all the town's cool kids drop those ideas as if they were radioactive. As in the military, everybody has to get on board with the mission, and questioning it is not a career-enhancing move. The universe of people who will critically examine the goings-on at the institutions they work for is always going to be a small one. As Upton Sinclair said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

A more elusive aspect of cultural assimilation is the sheer dead weight of the ordinariness of it all once you have planted yourself in your office chair for the 10,000th time. Government life is typically not some vignette from an Allen Drury novel about intrigue under the Capitol dome. Sitting and staring at the clock on the off-white office wall when it's 11:00 in the evening and you are vowing never, ever to eat another piece of takeout pizza in your life is not an experience that summons the higher literary instincts of a would-be memoirist. After a while, a functionary of the state begins to hear things that, in another context, would be quite remarkable, or at least noteworthy, and yet that simply bounce off one's consciousness like pebbles off steel plate: "You mean the number of terrorist groups we are fighting is classified?" No wonder so few people are whistle-blowers, quite apart from the vicious retaliation whistle-blowing often provokes: Unless one is blessed with imagination and a fine sense of irony, growing immune to the curiousness of one's surroundings is easy. To paraphrase the inimitable Donald Rumsfeld, I didn't know all that I knew, at least until I had had a couple of years away from the government to reflect upon it.

The Deep State does not consist of the entire government. It is a hybrid of national security and law enforcement agencies: the Department of Defense, the Department of State, the Department of Homeland Security, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Justice Department. I also include the Department of the Treasury because of its jurisdiction over financial flows, its enforcement of international sanctions and its organic symbiosis with Wall Street. All these agencies are coordinated by the Executive Office of the President via the National Security Council. Certain key areas of the judiciary belong to the Deep State, such as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, whose actions are mysterious even to most members of Congress. Also included are a handful of vital federal trial courts, such as the Eastern District of Virginia and the Southern District of Manhattan, where sensitive proceedings in national security cases are conducted. The final government component (and possibly last in precedence among the formal branches of government established by the Constitution) is a kind of rump Congress consisting of the congressional leadership and some (but not all) of the members of the defense and intelligence committees. The rest of Congress, normally so fractious and partisan, is mostly only intermittently aware of the Deep State and when required usually submits to a few well-chosen words from the State's emissaries.

I saw this submissiveness on many occasions. One memorable incident was passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendments Act of 2008. This legislation retroactively legalized the Bush administration's illegal and unconstitutional surveillance first revealed by The New York Times in 2005 and indemnified the telecommunications companies for their cooperation in these acts. The bill passed easily: All that was required was the invocation of the word "terrorism" and most members of Congress responded like iron filings obeying a magnet. One who responded in that fashion was Senator Barack Obama, soon to be coronated as the presidential nominee at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. He had already won the most delegates by campaigning to the left of his main opponent, Hillary Clinton, on the excesses of the global war on terror and the erosion of constitutional liberties.

As the indemnification vote showed, the Deep State does not consist only of government agencies. What is euphemistically called "private enterprise" is an integral part of its operations. In a special series in The Washington Post called "Top Secret America," Dana Priest and William K. Arkin described the scope of the privatized Deep State and the degree to which it has metastasized after the September 11 attacks. There are now 854,000 contract personnel with top-secret clearances - a number greater than that of top-secret-cleared civilian employees of the government. While they work throughout the country and the world, their heavy concentration in and around the Washington suburbs is unmistakable: Since 9/11, 33 facilities for top-secret intelligence have been built or are under construction. Combined, they occupy the floor space of almost three Pentagons - about 17 million square feet. Seventy percent of the intelligence community's budget goes to paying contracts. And the membrane between government and industry is highly permeable: The Director of National Intelligence, James R. Clapper, is a former executive of Booz Allen Hamilton, one of the government's largest intelligence contractors. His predecessor as director, Admiral Mike McConnell, is the current vice chairman of the same company; Booz Allen is 99 percent dependent on government business. These contractors now set the political and social tone of Washington, just as they are increasingly setting the direction of the country, but they are doing it quietly, their doings unrecorded in the Congressional Record or the Federal Register, and are rarely subject to congressional hearings.

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Washington is the most important node of the Deep State that has taken over America, but it is not the only one. Invisible threads of money and ambition connect the town to other nodes. One is Wall Street, which supplies the cash that keeps the political machine quiescent and operating as a diversionary marionette theater. Should the politicians forget their lines and threaten the status quo, Wall Street floods the town with cash and lawyers to help the hired hands remember their own best interests. The executives of the financial giants even have de facto criminal immunity. On March 6, 2013, testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Eric Holder stated the following: "I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if you do prosecute, if you do bring a criminal charge, it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy." This, from the chief law enforcement officer of a justice system that has practically abolished the constitutional right to trial for poorer defendants charged with certain crimes. It is not too much to say that Wall Street may be the ultimate owner of the Deep State and its strategies, if for no other reason than that it has the money to reward government operatives with a second career that is lucrative beyond the dreams of avarice - certainly beyond the dreams of a salaried government employee. [3]

The corridor between Manhattan and Washington is a well trodden highway for the personalities we have all gotten to know in the period since the massive deregulation of Wall Street: Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers, Henry Paulson, Timothy Geithner and many others. Not all the traffic involves persons connected with the purely financial operations of the government: In 2013, General David Petraeus joined KKR (formerly Kohlberg Kravis Roberts) of 9 West 57th Street, New York, a private equity firm with $62.3 billion in assets. KKR specializes in management buyouts and leveraged finance. General Petraeus' expertise in these areas is unclear. His ability to peddle influence, however, is a known and valued commodity. Unlike Cincinnatus, the military commanders of the Deep State do not take up the plow once they lay down the sword. Petraeus also obtained a sinecure as a non-resident senior fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard. The Ivy League is, of course, the preferred bleaching tub and charm school of the American oligarchy. [4]

Petraeus and most of the avatars of the Deep State - the White House advisers who urged Obama not to impose compensation limits on Wall Street CEOs, the contractor-connected think tank experts who besought us to "stay the course" in Iraq, the economic gurus who perpetually demonstrate that globalization and deregulation are a blessing that makes us all better off in the long run - are careful to pretend that they have no ideology. Their preferred pose is that of the politically neutral technocrat offering well considered advice based on profound expertise. That is nonsense. They are deeply dyed in the hue of the official ideology of the governing class, an ideology that is neither specifically Democrat nor Republican. Domestically, whatever they might privately believe about essentially diversionary social issues such as abortion or gay marriage, they almost invariably believe in the "Washington Consensus": financialization, outsourcing, privatization, deregulation and the commodifying of labor. Internationally, they espouse 21st-century "American Exceptionalism": the right and duty of the United States to meddle in every region of the world with coercive diplomacy and boots on the ground and to ignore painfully won international norms of civilized behavior. To paraphrase what Sir John Harrington said more than 400 years ago about treason, now that the ideology of the Deep State has prospered, none dare call it ideology. [5] That is why describing torture with the word "torture" on broadcast television is treated less as political heresy than as an inexcusable lapse of Washington etiquette: Like smoking a cigarette on camera, these days it is simply "not done."

Reactions: Heidi Boghosian on Mass Surveillance

After Edward Snowden's revelations about the extent and depth of surveillance by the National Security Agency, it has become publicly evident that Silicon Valley is a vital node of the Deep State as well. Unlike military and intelligence contractors, Silicon Valley overwhelmingly sells to the private market, but its business is so important to the government that a strange relationship has emerged. While the government could simply dragoon the high technology companies to do the NSA's bidding, it would prefer cooperation with so important an engine of the nation's economy, perhaps with an implied quid pro quo. Perhaps this explains the extraordinary indulgence the government shows the Valley in intellectual property matters. If an American "jailbreaks" his smartphone (i.e., modifies it so that it can use a service provider other than the one dictated by the manufacturer), he could receive a fine of up to $500,000 and several years in prison; so much for a citizen's vaunted property rights to what he purchases. The libertarian pose of the Silicon Valley moguls, so carefully cultivated in their public relations, has always been a sham. Silicon Valley has long been tracking for commercial purposes the activities of every person who uses an electronic device, so it is hardly surprising that the Deep State should emulate the Valley and do the same for its own purposes. Nor is it surprising that it should conscript the Valley's assistance.

Still, despite the essential roles of lower Manhattan and Silicon Valley, the center of gravity of the Deep State is firmly situated in and around the Beltway. The Deep State's physical expansion and consolidation around the Beltway would seem to make a mockery of the frequent pronouncement that governance in Washington is dysfunctional and broken. That the secret and unaccountable Deep State floats freely above the gridlock between both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue is the paradox of American government in the 21st century: drone strikes, data mining, secret prisons and Panopticon-like control on the one hand; and on the other, the ordinary, visible parliamentary institutions of self-government declining to the status of a banana republic amid the gradual collapse of public infrastructure.

The results of this contradiction are not abstract, as a tour of the rotting, decaying, bankrupt cities of the American Midwest will attest. It is not even confined to those parts of the country left behind by a Washington Consensus that decreed the financialization and deindustrialization of the economy in the interests of efficiency and shareholder value. This paradox is evident even within the Beltway itself, the richest metropolitan area in the nation. Although demographers and urban researchers invariably count Washington as a "world city," that is not always evident to those who live there. Virtually every time there is a severe summer thunderstorm, tens - or even hundreds - of thousands of residents lose power, often for many days. There are occasional water restrictions over wide areas because water mains, poorly constructed and inadequately maintained, have burst. [6] The Washington metropolitan area considers it a Herculean task just to build a rail link to its international airport - with luck it may be completed by 2018.

It is as if Hadrian's Wall was still fully manned and the fortifications along the border with Germania were never stronger, even as the city of Rome disintegrates from within and the life-sustaining aqueducts leading down from the hills begin to crumble. The governing classes of the Deep State may continue to deceive themselves with their dreams of Zeus-like omnipotence, but others do not. A 2013 Pew Poll that interviewed 38,000 people around the world found that in 23 of 39 countries surveyed, a plurality of respondents said they believed China already had or would in the future replace the United States as the world's top economic power.

The Deep State is the big story of our time. It is the red thread that runs through the war on terrorism, the financialization and deindustrialization of the American economy, the rise of a plutocratic social structure and political dysfunction. Washington is the headquarters of the Deep State, and its time in the sun as a rival to Rome, Constantinople or London may be term-limited by its overweening sense of self-importance and its habit, as Winwood Reade said of Rome, to "live upon its principal till ruin stared it in the face." "Living upon its principal," in this case, means that the Deep State has been extracting value from the American people in vampire-like fashion.

We are faced with two disagreeable implications. First, that the Deep State is so heavily entrenched, so well protected by surveillance, firepower, money and its ability to co-opt resistance that it is almost impervious to change. Second, that just as in so many previous empires, the Deep State is populated with those whose instinctive reaction to the failure of their policies is to double down on those very policies in the future. Iraq was a failure briefly camouflaged by the wholly propagandistic success of the so-called surge; this legerdemain allowed for the surge in Afghanistan, which equally came to naught. Undeterred by that failure, the functionaries of the Deep State plunged into Libya; the smoking rubble of the Benghazi consulate, rather than discouraging further misadventure, seemed merely to incite the itch to bomb Syria. Will the Deep State ride on the back of the American people from failure to failure until the country itself, despite its huge reserves of human and material capital, is slowly exhausted? The dusty road of empire is strewn with the bones of former great powers that exhausted themselves in like manner.

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But, there are signs of resistance to the Deep State and its demands. In the aftermath of the Snowden revelations, the House narrowly failed to pass an amendment that would have defunded the NSA's warrantless collection of data from US persons. Shortly thereafter, the president, advocating yet another military intervention in the Middle East, this time in Syria, met with such overwhelming congressional skepticism that he changed the subject by grasping at a diplomatic lifeline thrown to him by Vladimir Putin. [7]

Has the visible, constitutional state, the one envisaged by Madison and the other Founders, finally begun to reassert itself against the claims and usurpations of the Deep State? To some extent, perhaps. The unfolding revelations of the scope of the NSA's warrantless surveillance have become so egregious that even institutional apologists such as Senator Dianne Feinstein have begun to backpedal - if only rhetorically - from their knee-jerk defense of the agency. As more people begin to waken from the fearful and suggestible state that 9/11 created in their minds, it is possible that the Deep State's decade-old tactic of crying "terrorism!" every time it faces resistance is no longer eliciting the same Pavlovian response of meek obedience. And the American people, possibly even their legislators, are growing tired of endless quagmires in the Middle East.

But there is another more structural reason the Deep State may have peaked in the extent of its dominance. While it seems to float above the constitutional state, its essentially parasitic, extractive nature means that it is still tethered to the formal proceedings of governance. The Deep State thrives when there is tolerable functionality in the day-to-day operations of the federal government. As long as appropriations bills get passed on time, promotion lists get confirmed, black (i.e., secret) budgets get rubber-stamped, special tax subsidies for certain corporations are approved without controversy, as long as too many awkward questions are not asked, the gears of the hybrid state will mesh noiselessly. But when one house of Congress is taken over by tea party Wahhabites, life for the ruling class becomes more trying.

If there is anything the Deep State requires it is silent, uninterrupted cash flow and the confidence that things will go on as they have in the past. It is even willing to tolerate a degree of gridlock: Partisan mud wrestling over cultural issues may be a useful distraction from its agenda. But recent congressional antics involving sequestration, the government shutdown and the threat of default over the debt ceiling extension have been disrupting that equilibrium. And an extreme gridlock dynamic has developed between the two parties such that continuing some level of sequestration is politically the least bad option for both parties, albeit for different reasons. As much as many Republicans might want to give budget relief to the organs of national security, they cannot fully reverse sequestration without the Democrats demanding revenue increases. And Democrats wanting to spend more on domestic discretionary programs cannot void sequestration on either domestic or defense programs without Republicans insisting on entitlement cuts.

So, for the foreseeable future, the Deep State must restrain its appetite for taxpayer dollars. Limited deals may soften sequestration, but agency requests will not likely be fully funded anytime soon. Even Wall Street's rentier operations have been affected: After helping finance the tea party to advance its own plutocratic ambitions, America's Big Money is now regretting the Frankenstein's monster it has created. Like children playing with dynamite, the tea party and its compulsion to drive the nation into credit default has alarmed the grown-ups commanding the heights of capital; the latter are now telling the politicians they thought they had hired to knock it off.

The House vote to defund the NSA's illegal surveillance programs was equally illustrative of the disruptive nature of the tea party insurgency. Civil liberties Democrats alone would never have come so close to victory; tea party stalwart Justin Amash (R-MI), who has also upset the business community for his debt-limit fundamentalism, was the lead Republican sponsor of the NSA amendment, and most of the Republicans who voted with him were aligned with the tea party.

The final factor is Silicon Valley. Owing to secrecy and obfuscation, it is hard to know how much of the NSA's relationship with the Valley is based on voluntary cooperation, how much is legal compulsion through FISA warrants and how much is a matter of the NSA surreptitiously breaking into technology companies' systems. Given the Valley's public relations requirement to mollify its customers who have privacy concerns, it is difficult to take the tech firms' libertarian protestations about government compromise of their systems at face value, especially since they engage in similar activity against their own customers for commercial purposes. That said, evidence is accumulating that Silicon Valley is losing billions in overseas business from companies, individuals and governments that want to maintain privacy. For high tech entrepreneurs, the cash nexus is ultimately more compelling than the Deep State's demand for patriotic cooperation. Even legal compulsion can be combatted: Unlike the individual citizen, tech firms have deep pockets and batteries of lawyers with which to fight government diktat.

This pushback has gone so far that on January 17, President Obama announced revisions to the NSA's data collection programs, including withdrawing the agency's custody of a domestic telephone record database, expanding requirements for judicial warrants and ceasing to spy on (undefined) "friendly foreign leaders." Critics have denounced the changes as a cosmetic public relations move, but they are still significant in that the clamor has gotten so loud that the president feels the political need to address it.

When the contradictions within a ruling ideology are pushed too far, factionalism appears and that ideology begins slowly to crumble. Corporate oligarchs such as the Koch brothers are no longer entirely happy with the faux-populist political front group they helped fund and groom. Silicon Valley, for all the Ayn Rand-like tendencies of its major players, its offshoring strategies and its further exacerbation of income inequality, is now lobbying Congress to restrain the NSA, a core component of the Deep State. Some tech firms are moving to encrypt their data. High tech corporations and governments alike seek dominance over people though collection of personal data, but the corporations are jumping ship now that adverse public reaction to the NSA scandals threatens their profits.

The outcome of all these developments is uncertain. The Deep State, based on the twin pillars of national security imperative and corporate hegemony, has until recently seemed unshakable and the latest events may only be a temporary perturbation in its trajectory. But history has a way of toppling the altars of the mighty. While the two great materialist and determinist ideologies of the twentieth century, Marxism and the Washington Consensus, successively decreed that the dictatorship of the proletariat and the dictatorship of the market were inevitable, the future is actually indeterminate. It may be that deep economic and social currents create the framework of history, but those currents can be channeled, eddied, or even reversed by circumstance, chance and human agency. We have only to reflect upon defunct glacial despotisms such as the USSR or East Germany to realize that nothing is forever.

Throughout history, state systems with outsized pretensions to power have reacted to their environments in two ways. The first strategy, reflecting the ossification of its ruling elites, consists of repeating that nothing is wrong, that the status quo reflects the nation's unique good fortune in being favored by God and that those calling for change are merely subversive troublemakers. As the French ancien régime, the Romanov dynasty and the Habsburg emperors discovered, the strategy works splendidly for a while, particularly if one has a talent for dismissing unpleasant facts. The final results, however, are likely to be thoroughly disappointing.

The second strategy is one embraced to varying degrees and with differing goals, by figures of such contrasting personalities as Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Charles de Gaulle and Deng Xiaoping. They were certainly not revolutionaries by temperament; if anything, their natures were conservative. But they understood that the political cultures in which they lived were fossilized and incapable of adapting to the times. In their drive to reform and modernize the political systems they inherited, their first obstacles to overcome were the outworn myths that encrusted the thinking of the elites of their time.

As the United States confronts its future after experiencing two failed wars, a precarious economy and $17 trillion in accumulated debt, the national punditry has split into two camps. The first, the declinists, sees a broken, dysfunctional political system incapable of reform and an economy soon to be overtaken by China. The second, the reformers, offers a profusion of nostrums to turn the nation around: public financing of elections to sever the artery of money between the corporate components of the Deep State and financially dependent elected officials, government "insourcing" to reverse the tide of outsourcing of government functions and the conflicts of interest that it creates, a tax policy that values human labor over financial manipulation and a trade policy that favors exporting manufactured goods over exporting investment capital.

Mike Lofgren on the Deep State Hiding in Plain Sight

All of that is necessary, but not sufficient. The Snowden revelations (the impact of which have been surprisingly strong), the derailed drive for military intervention in Syria and a fractious Congress, whose dysfunction has begun to be a serious inconvenience to the Deep State, show that there is now a deep but as yet inchoate hunger for change. What America lacks is a figure with the serene self-confidence to tell us that the twin idols of national security and corporate power are outworn dogmas that have nothing more to offer us. Thus disenthralled, the people themselves will unravel the Deep State with surprising speed.

---

[1] The term "Deep State" was coined in Turkey and is said to be a system composed of high-level elements within the intelligence services, military, security, judiciary and organized crime. In British author John le Carré's latest novel, A Delicate Truth, a character describes the Deep State as "… the ever-expanding circle of non-governmental insiders from banking, industry and commerce who were cleared for highly classified information denied to large swathes of Whitehall and Westminster." I use the term to mean a hybrid association of elements of government and parts of top-level finance and industry that is effectively able to govern the United States without reference to the consent of the governed as expressed through the formal political process.

[2] Twenty-five years ago, the sociologist Robert Nisbet described this phenomenon as "the attribute of No Fault…. Presidents, secretaries and generals and admirals in America seemingly subscribe to the doctrine that no fault ever attaches to policy and operations. This No Fault conviction prevents them from taking too seriously such notorious foul-ups as Desert One, Grenada, Lebanon and now the Persian Gulf." To his list we might add 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.

[3] The attitude of many members of Congress towards Wall Street was memorably expressed by Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL), the incoming chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, in 2010: "In Washington, the view is that the banks are to be regulated, and my view is that Washington and the regulators are there to serve the banks."

[4] Beginning in 1988, every US president has been a graduate of Harvard or Yale. Beginning in 2000, every losing presidential candidate has been a Harvard or Yale graduate, with the exception of John McCain in 2008.

[5] In recent months, the American public has seen a vivid example of a Deep State operative marketing his ideology under the banner of pragmatism. Former Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates - a one-time career CIA officer and deeply political Bush family retainer - has camouflaged his retrospective defense of military escalations that have brought us nothing but casualties and fiscal grief as the straight-from-the-shoulder memoir from a plain-spoken son of Kansas who disdains Washington and its politicians.

[6] Meanwhile, the US government took the lead in restoring Baghdad's sewer system at a cost of $7 billion.

[7] Obama's abrupt about-face suggests he may have been skeptical of military intervention in Syria all along, but only dropped that policy once Congress and Putin gave him the running room to do so. In 2009, he went ahead with the Afghanistan "surge" partly because General Petraeus' public relations campaign and back-channel lobbying on the Hill for implementation of his pet military strategy pre-empted other options. These incidents raise the disturbing question of how much the democratically elected president - or any president - sets the policy of the national security state and how much the policy is set for him by the professional operatives of that state who engineer faits accomplis that force his hand.

Mike Lofgren is a former congressional staff member who served on both the House and Senate budget committees. His book about Congress, The Party is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted, appeared in paperback on August 27, 2013.

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• Anonymous

  Another attribute of the "Deep State" is that is highly nepotistic. Entry into it relies on connections rather than skill. Many positions within it exist simply to provide suitably lucrative work for the children of the ruling class.

• Nisswapaddy

  Lofgren has certainly provided a good overview of the situation, although what he postulates is by no means original thinking. However, it is particularly heartening to have this analysis come from a fellow who could easily have sold his soul like David Petraeus, to name just one in an endless line of the well connected who have cashed in. Yet I believe our situation is more dire than even Lofgren suggests. As the philosopher John Ralston Saul characterized it, we have undergone a coup d'etat in slow motion and now live, not in a constitutional democracy but 'Democracy Inc.' (described in detail in a book by the same name by Prof. Sheldon Wolin). LIke Lofgren, neither of these thinkers sees some carefully contrived conspiracy at work. It is merely the inevitable result of following a rigid ideology that allows unfettered corporate capitalism to have its way unopposed and essentially unregulated. Now that massive corporation have taken control of all the levers of power (as Lofgren summarizes above) it will be very, very difficult for 'the people' to take them back. Remember what Upton Sinclair observed over 100 years ago:

  "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon him NOT understanding it."

  I give you men like Dave Petraeus, or Jamie Dimon or (fill in the blank) who are subject to this 'lack of understanding'. They are not co-conspirators, at least not in any active, conscious sense. However, the corporations they work for, whose only function is to maximize profits for the benefit of their shareholders and investors and to 'externalize' any and all costs and expenses possible, are, by definition, sociopaths. And those corporations, run by men and women simply doing their jobs and going home to a loving family, also have a 'lack of understanding'. When the corporation you work for has only reason for being, to make a profit 'come heck or high water', and that corporation and hundreds of others with the she mission, control the executive, congress, the judiciary and their regulators (who are now required to call the corporations they supposedly regulate "their customers" ) it doesn't take much imagination to see how we got where we are. Nor how it is that corporations get what they need, the rest of us be dammed. In short, the 'deep state' Lofgren shines a light on is much deeper than he indicates. And it will take more than spats between large corporations to bring it to an end.

• William Jacoby

  Good essay but everybody should know this by now. In the next elections, in which good candidates will by definition not be viable because they won't be bankrolled by the Deep State, we must use the alternative media to coalesce around a few non-negotiable demands. Things like prosecuting Clapper for lying, immediate prohibition of the intelligence community's revolving door, nationalization of companies like Booz Allen, creation of public banks as suggested by Ellen Brown and nationalization of banks too big to fail, a student loan debt strike, and a constitutional amendment overturning Citizens United. Failure to grant these demands must be met with withdrawal from the two-party system; go Green or go Libertarian, whichever you prefer, but put a monkey wrench in the system. Keep using the alternative media, defend them from the Deep State, educate yourself, network with the growing numbers of people who are onto the Deep State, or the National Security State, or whatever you want to call it. But get over talking about how the Constitution is in danger; it's dead, and if there's anything you liked about it, you'll have to bring it back from the graveyard. Take action, and support others who do.

• cross1242

  Unfortunately, I don't see anything changing the Deep State or the government in Washington until there is some kind of revolution. That revolution might be bloodless but nothing guarantees that. If the Deep State ultimately feels threatened, it will defend itself with all the national security forces at its command.

• Yes. An example. Paper granted PhD's are "promised" suitably lucrative work in academia. So it's not just corporate.

• http://twilightirruption.blogspot.com/ abbeysbooks

  Time for you to read Foucault's Discipline and Punish and all the rest of his work. Include Virilio, Baudrillard and the rest of Continental Philosophy. Lofgren is just catching up with a long way to go. Check out Zizek.

• Kibik

  Look up "Bohemian Club" too.

• Peter Michaelson

  The fact that an invisible government of elites is in charge of our democracy is entirely predictable. This political arrangement simply depicts the state of our psychological development. We have a "Deep State" within our unconscious mind. Our thoughts, desires, aspirations, and beliefs are all under the influence of this inner "Deep State." Through our ego we're each like a puppet prince, thinking we're in charge of the show. Both liberals and conservatives have too much invested in self-image and are afraid of facing what amounts to an inner tyranny. We're too egotistical and narcissistic; we don't want to be humbled by inner truth. We've produced superficial psychologies (behavioral, positive, cognitive, etc.) that refuse to face the inner reality. We'll have real democracy in America and the world when we establish inner democracy. It can be done, and it needs to be done soon. Start by tossing out all the so-called "scientific psychology" that academic psychologists are pedaling. Go back to Freud and understand what he's really saying, that we'll go on generating suffering and self-defeat until we become more conscious of our inner conflicts, psychological defenses, and entanglements in negative emotions.

• Anonymous

  As has been mentioned the greatest power is the people. Without the cooperation of the people none of the pathological behavior described would be possible. The West Coast Strike of 1934 is an example of what can be done. A major way that the 1% control the 99% is through debt. That control could actually be reversed. What would happen if only 10% of the 99% decided to no longer to pay their debts? A movement like that could rapidly escalate once people realize that there is no system that could cope with massive non payment of debt.
  What would happen if the pilots, truck drivers, rail workers and dock workers decided to strike? or the telecommunication workers? All or any of those could be implemented peacefully. No need to hit the streets. Just stay home and contribute nothing to the deep state. Imagine how long it could survive the massive non cooperation of the 99%. There is a multitude of possibilities.

• Charles Shaver

  'How can I thank thee [Bill Moyers], let me count the ways…' and now, too, Mike Lofgren. For some time I've been thinking that vastly superior aliens from deep space might be holding the U.S. Government hostage and causing all of the recent illegal, immoral, unconstitutional and just plain stupid national self-destruction. What a relief to learn it is only too-typical low IQ humanity that is responsible. Seriously, now, that which gives me the audacity and courage to comment on these things about which I personally know so little, is my lay acquired understanding of the basics. To me, in early 2014, these are mere, obvious, matters of the hierarchy of law, relevant laws and violations thereof.

  Ignoring most of the basics and my personal lack of qualifications, suffice it to say for now that above and beyond the laws of man are those self-evident in nature. Insightfully, since August of 1975, I have observed not only do the higher laws apply to both machine and man but the U.S. Constitution is imbedded with them, intentionally or not. So, to finally get to the point, when Mike Lofgren says 'Groupthink' I think of The Universal Law of Order: "Whenever two or more individuals unite to form an organization the survival of the organization becomes paramount to the survival of the individual." and how the Constitution was ignored again. When someone says 'there's nothing I can do' I think of The Third Rule of Human Behavior: "Self-determination shall prevail." and how the Constitution was ignored again. Deep space, or 'Deep State,' it 'don't look good' for us when a vast majority keeps enabling a selfish minority to impose rule. Now, it will probably take a paradigm shift to fix what's broke but, fortunately, naturally, 'shift happens.'

• http://leisureguy.wordpress.com Leisureguy

  Magnificent article-greatly extends the range of my awareness, since I was just starting to get a glimpse of this.

  It should definitely be noted in the article that Senator Barack Obama pledged and promised that he would vote against telecom immunity and then he voted in favor of it. That did not auger well, albeit accurately.

• http://leisureguy.wordpress.com Leisureguy

  This is why bloody revolutions happen: the course of last resort would certainly be violence, which hurts everyone. Elections were supposed to allow an orderly way to bring about change without violence, but once that mechanism is jammed and will no longer respond, violence is lapping at our heels.

• http://leisureguy.wordpress.com Leisureguy

  I have the same feeling. We thought we had a mechanism that would enable us to respond to the need for revolutionary change in an orderly way, but that mechanism has been deliberately broken. That is very, very bad.

  Although one must allow that much of this is driven by our deep nature: social animals acting as social animals do, with all sorts of social-driven instincts and responses. Biology is destiny?

• rleighton27

  I am not part of the hallelujah chorus greeting this article. Some, if not most of it, smacks of the apologia of a professional bureaucrat who suddenly has found a conscience. Also, his claim that President Obama was itching to start a war in Syria, but was only held back from doing so by "overwhelming Congressional skepticism"…as if that wasn't a daily occurrence to be dealt with from day one of his tenure. I am convinced that it was part of his strategy from the outset…to rattle sabres loudly enough to frighten a bellicose Putin, who knew his own military prowess was hampered by an ill-trained and poorly equipped manpower pool, into making his lapdog Assad stop playing nasty with his population–and it worked. I agree with much of the article's commentary about the "boys in the back room" who, in fact, have commandeered the running of the country out of the hands of elected officials, but condemn it's tone of "it really doesn't matter who's in charge." It does matter. Articles of this type just encourage voter apathy, and that plays into the schematic laid out by the Powell Memorandum for the usurping of Democracy, placing it into the hands of the ALEC/Koch consortium of Plutocratic traitors.

• http://leisureguy.wordpress.com Leisureguy

  This helps me understand why such an intensive effort is underway to destroy our educational system and the low value we seem to place on education. I'm thinking of privatization, charter schools, constant pressure to pay public money to religious schools, defunding of higher education, closures of departments of humanities and non-applied science and art-that sort of thing. And now I get it: the last thing the corporate state wants is people "wasting" time and effort on a bunch of abstract principles and reasoning and critical thinking, especially since it just causes trouble in the workplace and makes people question orders. Better to do away with that: turn the focus to what will make the most money, and your problem's solved. And then you can cut costs-always the imperative-by closing departments that seem to create the most troublemakers. Two birds, one stone.

• Bob Baldock

  Peter Dale Scott articulated this first, and has it deeper and darker. Check his website.

• Anonymous

  As I read the final sentence,

  "What America lacks is a figure with the serene self-confidence to tell us that the twin idols of national security and corporate power are outworn dogmas that have nothing more to offer us. Thus disenthralled, the people themselves will unravel the Deep State with surprising speed."

  I remembered the demise of individuals who fit "figure with serene self-confidence"…..

  John F. Kennedy
  Martin Luther King
  Robert Kennedy
  Malcolm X
  Paul Wellstone

• Joan Harris

  It's been awhile since I have had anyone refer to Freud. Never mind the "new age" psychology. Defenses have always been the problem. In a perfect world we would all live consciously and greed and prejudices would give way to peace and harmony. In the meantime we must address all the ills, if for no other reason then to prevent us from becoming complacent. I shall retain a little healthy cynicism until the world is healthy.

• I. Spoke Umbra

  Let's be clear about what the "group-think" means when speaking about the NSA:

  As someone who was once in the bowels of the NSA beast, I observed a number of disturbing traits permeate every nook and cranny of the operation. If those traits were applied to an individual, they would be considered a very serious characterological disorder, perhaps warranting hospitalization:

  1. Paranoid
  2. Obsessive compulsive
  3. Sociopathic
  4. Grandiose
  5. Narcissistic (self-rationalizing)
  6. Uber-patriotic (self-justifying)

  The groupthink scenario in that place is as toxic as it can get for a human enterprise. It is a clear and present danger to the security of Democracy as we know it.

• Pamela Zuppo

  This was no stroke of genius, this was Greenspan, Reagan, and the Bush clan. The better term for contemporary capitalism is "disaster capitalism" as coined by Naomi Klein. The big question is what are we to do about this? Do what Kiev has done? Due to "group think", or brain-washing of the masses who have lost their own control via their televisions, it seems the zombies outnumber the enlightened. It's clear to me something must be done.

• SufferinSuccotash,Pivoting

  Randolph "War is the Health of the State" Bourne is also worth a read. Not to mention Jack London's The Iron Heel. These All-American doods had the National Security-Oligarchy State pretty much nailed down a century ago. Why people concerned with our current predicament skip over these Progressive Era radicals in favor of Continental Philosophy (which reminds me of a skimpy breakfast) is beyond me. I've been watching the emancipatory elements in this country floundering around for the past four decades now and it's pretty depressing, especially the seemingly chronic inability to connect with the USA's radical past. No historical knowledge=no sense of history=no political judgement=the Bad Guys keep on winning.
  Ukrainians are my favorite people at the moment and you can bet that their sense of history is pretty sharp.
  This concludes this Sunday morning rant.

• Joseph Brant

  It is commendable to preserve hope among reformers, but hopes do not solve problems.

  While security agencies can serve democracy when better regulated, the failure to regulate is the result of failed democratic institutions which have not themselves been "vulnerable to a vigilant public." The dark state invisible power corrupts invisibly, but gold is the invisible power which had already corrupted the visible institutions.

  We need more than a "self-confident figure" to tell us that "national security and corporate power are outworn dogmas" so that "the people themselves will unravel the Deep State." The "deep…hunger for change" was deeper in 2008 when so easily destroyed by its self-confident Obama by simply not mentioning what "outworn dogmas" he would change. The hawkish Hillary is not about to "unravel the Deep State" and mere self-confidence will not finance campaigns or buy media support to do more than split the vote of reformers. The media and elections must first be freed of gold, and the people cannot do that without free media and free elections.

  While history is full of surprises, the succession of cold-war fearmongering by global war upon diffuse "terrorist" backlash and political opposition to half-witted right wing imperialism does not suggest a passing reaction, nor that any lesson was learned from three generations of failed military adventures with no relationship to the declared national principles. The cancerous dark state has grown in proportion to the failure of right wing foreign policy, the failure of its own rationales. It is the triumphant institution of right wing tyranny as the immune sovereign over a failed democracy.

  Democracy may make further ultimate progress in China than in the US, or may survive only in micropowers of no interest to the right wing. But we must have faith in the power of the people, or we lose hope and take no action.

• Barbara Mullin

  I call it vulture capitalism.

• jrdel

  Since the People of United States overthrew British ruling class government of our country and after the revolution, through wise government, and luck we got out from under the thumb of any rulers whether clerics, nobility, landlords, businessmen, political dictators, banks, etc. etc. these forces have been working to reestablish their control over our lives and by gradual steps have done so. Great Americans turned back the tide here and there for a while, Jackson ended the national bank, T. Roosevelt broke up monopoly corporations, F. Roosevelt supported efforts for economic democracy, etc. but the enemies of liberty never rest and always find new ways to undermine it.
  So every few generations the People are faced with another fight if they are to keep their liberties. This time the odds look particularly bad, Enemies stronger, richer, more devious, more insidious, more corrupt; the People weaker, more divided, confused, distracted. What the hell do we do? Voting just doesn't do much. Big money floods the media with their point of view. The People, relatively poorer than ever; don't have enough money to reply.
  Petitions, reforms, protests, revolution? All impractical, or impossible (imagine a revolution in the streets against the power of the U.S. military.) The days when we can grab our muskets and go out and make a revolution have long gone folks.
  I think humanity will have to wait for another age, and another nation to see real liberty and real democracy in control of the world again.

• SufferinSuccotash,Pivoting

  Given that back in his day "merchants" were often interchangeable with "bankers" Smith certainly scored a bulls-eye with that one. The perfect Horrible Example in the 1770s was the East India Company, which couldn't govern Bengal without trashing its economy and couldn't keep off the financial rocks either. Eventually the British government put the Company on a shorter leash and still later the Company lost its monopoly over East Indian trade. But one short-term measure to bail out the Company was to give it a monopoly over selling tea to the dumb colonists over in America. Oops. That was a real "tea party", not some bogus affair staged by geezers in funny hats.

• SufferinSuccotash,Pivoting

  Of course. I spent quite a few years rationalizing and pretending that Everything Was Pretty Much OK In These Here United States myself. The problem with being a history teacher–at least in this case–is that the past, which as William Faulkner famously said wasn't only not dead but not even past, can catch up with you. This country is paying and will continue to pay pretty heavily for decades of folly which anyone with a sense of history could have predicted at least 40 years ago.

• joanne

  We have had millenia to "cage the beast", tame the beast, train, heal, and/or defang the beast. Predatory behavior is mediated, never extinguished. The Deep State is both institutionalized predation and paradoxically, a grotesque attempt to protect itself from itself.

• Anonymous

  The ideology is hinted at throughout the article. Capitalism; The premise that money is a form of commodity and the winner is whomever has the most. Unfortunately money is a contract and while such notional promises seemingly can be manufactured to infinity, through the creation of the other side of the ledger, debt, their underlaying value is dependent on the increasingly precarious solvency of those taking on that debt. It is what is referred to in hindsight as a bubble. If you want to see the future of the US in about fifty years, it will likely be in the states and regions.

• J Timothy

  The US military-intelligence-industrial aparatus is filled with loyal American patriots who love this country and have sworn to uphold the US Constitution. Unfortunately, they don't seem to understand that the system is extremely expensive and is impoverishing the middle class of America. We have nine air craft carrier groups while the next closest military has just two. Air craft carriers are incredibly expensive.

  In my opinion, the next revalation to hit the mainstream media will be that SOME of the covert, clandestine, black budget projects have been financed via securities fraud. They've done it before. Arms for hostages, Hmong drug running in Vietnam, etc, are examples of this. Catherine Austin Fitts has also made a great point that HUD, of all agencies, has funded some black budget procurements.

  Clearly, either the CIA or the NSA are at the center of the cabal. So, what is the justification for all of this secracy? What is soooo important that the adult eagle scout christians of America can't tell us? What could it be? Terrorism? Russians? Soverign citizens? Shoe bombers?

  Here is where i will lose most people over 50 years old. IN MY OPINION, a the core of the military industrial aparatus and its wall street enablers is a desperate race to achieve near technological parity with….(pregnant pause) (dramatic pause) other entities, species, e.t. collectives, etc, who are visiting sol 3 (earth). This effort is extremely expensive and involves spending trillions of dollars covertly to build spacecraft and weapons systems based on both advanced human originated technology and also technology from the reverse engineering of recovered alien vehicles.

  Many people belive that securities fraud funds this effort. It sounds crazy, but, YES, building trillion dollar weapon systems and spaceships is at the core of the secrecy cult. Nothing else makes sense. What else could possibly require siphoning trillions out of the US economy? Many many authors are written on the subject and it is most definitely NOT a joke. Yes, Bill, lets ask the awkward questions.

  Is there a secret space program funded via securities fraud? Have we received help from ET visitors?

  One man who asked the awkward question was Congressman Steve Schiff of New Mexico. He asked the Congressional General Accounting Office to inquire about the alleged Roswell alien craft recovery. He got the USAF to give us a third story – (first was a disc, second a weather baloon and third was project mogul) This all took place in the mid 90's.

  He was only about 50 yrs old when he caught agressive skin cancer. He resigned from congress and was dead soon after. He was 51.

• aTomsLife

  I disagree that Mr. Lofren's article provokes apathy. It sheds light on the duopoly that is the two-party system and encourages voters to seek an alternative, namely a more libertarian, decentralized form of government.

  "Overwhelming Congressional skepticism" to Syria included party-line Democrats as well: Unlike the usual D vs. R bickering, it was D's and R's forced to contradict the military industrial complex. It was a powerful moment.

  Syria proved the American people - and perhaps only the American people - are capable of muzzling the Deep State. The only reason we didn't intervene there was because constituencies throughout the country stood united, not because of potential international condemnation. The irony of Putin's victory is that he achieved it because he had the backing of the American people. He morphed into our de-facto representative.

  Even for the plutocrats, Putin represented the the lesser of two evils. It would have been a catastrophic loss of face to have to admit that D.C. remains beholden to the American people when, united, we're unwilling to follow the script.

  Until there's meaningful campaign finance reform, "it really doesn't matter who's in charge." That's the simple truth. But it's a reason to become more engaged in politics, not less.

• J Timothy

  One of the problems with dealing with the intelligence services is that they have people embeded within the media to get their point of view across. So, when Moyers talks about asking "Awkward Questions" he underestimates how difficult this is.

  Ed Bernays and Walter Lippman were the gentleman geniuses who showed us that marketing and propaganda could be used to manage public opinion without limits.

  Yes, lets ask the awkward questions. What is so important to the military-industrial-complex that it needs to siphon, literally, trillions of dollars out of the US economy?

  One man asked an awkward question. His name was Congressman Steve Schiff. After he asked his question, he died of agressive skin cancer. He was 51 years old. Sure. It cold have been coincidence. But he was the only one asking awkward questions at the time and he was the only one who got agressive skin cancer. Meanwhile, the CIA's top spooks like George HW Bush and Kissinger are still alive into their 90's. Go figure.

• http://daybrown.org Dale H. (Day) Brown

  Mother Nature bats last. When we look at the list of empires crashed because bad weather ruined crops, we see it includes all of them. People will put up with appalling corruption- until they are hungry. The Deep State has not picked up on the risk of unusual weather on agriculture, altho the price of crop insurance rose dramatically. Agribusiness will do fine with govt checks, but people cant eat insurance.

  Part of the problem is that ag policy is set to reduce the cost of the hobby operations of politicians, like Bush's ranch, but failing to support the backbone of American agriculture, the family farm. The average age of farmers now is over 60, and because of land speculation by friends of elected representatives, the next generation cant afford to buy farms. The result is land owned by absent aristocracy and worked by men whose only interest is their immediate benefit and not the condition of land to be inherited by sons.

  Another of the many reasons we need a Gnu Party not run by lawyers.

• Thomas Milligan

  Can't blame you for feeling ripped off. You have been. We all have been, except for those in the very top income brackets. Lofgren does a pretty good job of detailing the forces that have perpetrated the heist. I've come to call it The Money; it includes the actors Lofgren details, plus billionaire types like the Koch brothers and Richard Mellon Scaife, plus the mainstream media (even much of PBS, unfortunately), which has become the Ministry of Propaganda for The Money. All Is Well. The USA Is Number 1. The Government Is Keeping Us Safe from Terrorism. Buy More Stuff. Whistleblowers Are Traitors. The Economy Is Recovering. Buy More Stuff. If Things Aren't Getting Better for You It's Because You're a Loser. So Buy More Stuff.

  Don't romanticize the '50's too much. The discontent that exploded in the 60's was just under the surface even then. To the extent that it was "better" then it was because the prosperity of the nation *was* more broadly shared. A single "breadwinner" (usually Dad) could feed a family, with enough left over to save for old age, and Mom was available to nurture the kids. Do you know *any* families for whom that could be true today? And the mainstream media was populated by actual journalists rather than mouthpieces for The Money who look good in suits and understand what their owners want said. Bill Moyers, obviously, is an exception to this rule. One of the few.

  I'm surprised you're not angry. You have every reason to be.

• Thomas Milligan

  Mr. Lofgren does a pretty good job of detailing the forces that have perpetrated the sad parody of self-government into which our nation has devolved, but he left out a couple. I've come to calling the whole thing "The Money." It includes the actors Lofgren details, plus billionaire types like Scaife and the Koch brothers, plus the mainstream media (even much of PBS, unfortunately), which has become the Ministry of Propaganda for The Money and the so-called "Washington Consensus." Where once we had journalists, now we have (with the almost-sole exception of Bill Moyers) pretty people who look good in suits and like to be on TV, reading the scripts they're given.

• Anonymous

  Well, that's rather a 'rose colored glasses' view of the Tea Party given their current platform position. While I agree there are some redeeming qualities – not because I deem them to be but because they do contribute to the discussion – But, by-n-large the solutions offered by the Tea Party platform will only serve to weaken any hopes of salvaging the Democracy. One such example is this meme that 'all Govt. is bad' which only someone disingenuous would suggest does not prominently inhabit the TP. Another would be the position on so called 'entitlements'. Yet another would be the Tea Party backing of the likes of Ted Cruz or Rand Paul who adopt a position on health care that is antithetical toward a robust Democracy. (And spare me the notion that private enterprise provides better health care etc. – it's simply untrue and there's no evidence to support these fictions.).

  One has to examine a few things about the Tea Party – It is quite clear why individuals such as the Koch brothers have gone to great lengths to fund the Tea Party because it is the entrenched Plutocrats and Corporate elite who benefit the most from a weakened Govt. Many TP members see their quality of life eroding and have chosen to go after the wrong entity why? Well, those reasons are numerous – for some it is fear, for others racism, others an inability to grasp the weight of their decisions, etc. and Irrespective of their reasons the actions of the party, quite ironically, will only strengthen the grasp of the very problems you wish to suggest they will address. While a nice sentiment to feel the Tea Party could work with others the reality is much different.

• Anonymous

  Wow, how do you create such a canvas of revisionist history? I also found it quite tragic that you espouse 'we need to stop this R vs L' dichotomy but you make every effort to assault the left – exclusively. While that would be with merit if it were true (indeed both parties have played a role in where we now sit) it becomes quite another matter when viewed against, oh idk, the backdrop of reality. A.) Historically it is regulation that keeps corporate interests in check and deregulation promotes the 'crony capitalism' you mention. It's hysterical to assume the inverse. B.) Progressive policies have, again in reality, led to the greatest moments of growth and prosperity in this country. I"m sorry you don't believe those facts. And, why didn't you mention the inequality gap on steroids since Reagan? or the Bush tax cuts that benefitted the richest Americans? Or the subsidization of big pharma. and big oil? Both parties have no interest in representing people without money and every incentive not to. But, don't prattle on this nonsense about the dangers of progressivism. it's ill-thought and smells of ideological belief hungering to trump facts and history; it smells.

• Anonymous

  It is quite disheartening and the road forward most uncertain. I'm fairly confident those you allude to will not act from a position of reason and evidence that is fact based. I cannot, for the life of me, imagine circumstances in which those guided by fantasy, belief, and hate (one or all) will shift ideological positions and address the problems that inhabit this country by the corporate state. Individuals like Ted Cruz, Jamie Dimon (more subtly), the Koch brothers are gifted in their cunning ability to take advantage of these, what Thom Hartmann calls 'low information voters' – I've little reason for optimism and plenty of evidence for pessimism without hope.

• Anonymous

  After reading this all I can say God help us. I think I can speak for millions of Americans who grew up in a different country. We use to believe that hard work, play by the rules and everything would work out for the Middleclass American. All could share in the American dream. Those beliefs are not what I hear anymore. Apathy and fear are rampant..I fear for the country my children with inherit.

• fenway67

  yeah, i don't think that is his main point. it's the corporations and the banks that have infiltrated and that is the fault of both sides of the aisle. The author notes that the bipartisan divide is mostly noise obscuring the bigger picture.

• fenway67

  i am hopeful that firstlook.org will be a source of honest journalism. Scahill, Poitras, Greenwald and Taibbi are real journalists working toward finding the truth.

• Anonymous

  Wars forced us into debt slavery to the Big banks that financed them, thus we are slaved to the NWO BANKS and corporations Federal Reserve Banks buys and owns most of our debt, they are international now We are controlled by the bankers and the secret NWO financial network running the governments of the world. Everything trickles down from these taskmasters. Follow the money and everything is controlled by where it leads. Globalization, one financial system running the world into their vision of one world government controlled by their big money. They been ruling us for a long time now. CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM would fix us election process and would scare them knowing they can't put their bag men in office anymore.

• Anonymous

  So you believe the blame for big government lies only with the liberals? Give me a break. Here are just four Presidents who expanded Government. They are named Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Bush. Flaming liberals to you I would assume.

• John Gregor

  Looking forward to odering some of those books. Have read all Foucault's books. The author wrote quite a nice essay about contemporay American politics. Our majot export seems to be Dollars, like manure they have some value, but I imagine alot of the people who are getting them are not entirely happy

• Anonymous

  I saw Mike on c-span Sunday and enjoyed his comments, and now reading this piece I have trouble with a GOP former congressional analysis troubled about how the govt is working or not working beginning in 2009.

  As with many of former GOP legislators or analysts never do they dig deeper into the underlying problems that cause the congress to not work. Mentioning the Deep State reminds me of Washington Post investigation exposing the 2nd govt in DC. It's where all the retired legislators or lost elections legislators, the congressional staff, the retired military generals go. They pop up in media (tv, radio, newspapers) spewing out a talking point for their respective 2nd govt think tank in DC. C-span is a major platform that they use, and 99% of them promote some corporation dealing with the 1st govt.

  Too bad we don't see the name tags of the corporations they represent. Now that we have citizens united we're back into the age of the Robber Barons.

• Andrew Kloak

  This insightful essay shows that Silicon Valley is not be what it claims to be. Neither is Wall Street or the massive build-up of federal government power around Washington, D.C.

  The article also alludes to the notion that these companies in Silicon Valley are waking and trying to resist Deep State regime. California can't save American society. We are only 12% of the entire population. Plus, they don't want to, they have to answer to shareholders. Profit is the highest good for companies and government. They want influence and money.

  All this is like marionette theatre. James Clapper from the NSA used misdirection when reporters started to zero-in on the scale of the deception and breach of trust last Fall. Enormous change is just ahead but not without enormous turmoil. People intuitively know that national security and corporate power are worn out dogmas.

  There is an urgency to all this. Many of these people in these positions of power have no soul. It doesn't have to be this way, it just is. I think they want it this bad because they profit and garner influence when it is this ineffectual.

  The biggest changes are within anyway. We have to go deeper in ourselves. That shift in consciousness is already underway. The confluence of forces will sweep away these external constructs. The hidden factors not discussed in the article are the unconscious forces (emotion). Once people are more aware of the light and darkness in themselves things will open up. There is dynamic tension (a good thing) in each person. Self-awareness, integrity and connection to others will change everything.

  This article makes interesting connections to something that is hidden in
  plain sight. It will change.

• richard anderson

  I have been giving the political system another chance since Vietnam. Each time we have an election I hear some good things. But when these people are in office they change. When Ralph Nader ran for office he was kept out by various means and not allowed to debate. The system is rigged. This talk of voting for the right person is not going to cut it. With the problems this deep and the protection that has been set up to keep this system in place there is NOT a way to change it. In other words voting will not work. Something more is needed. Demonstrations don't work either. Just look at how long the Vietnam war was protested and when Bush stumped for invasion of Iraq. They didn't care. Resistance may be the answer.

• Anonymous

  Rothschild family made their banking trillions beginning from financing Napoleon's wars up until now. Their family owns media houses, governments, etc and their influence knows no bounds. You will never see their family listed on Forbes richest people lists because they own the media and do not want to see their names or advertise their wealth. The Bankers truly own the world and War debt was the fastest way to do it.

• Anonymous

  lol. good comment and link.

  I will be interested in seeing what First Look does, but I really don't trust the bazillionaire who is starting it up – or at least his motives. Once a plutocrat, always a plutocrat. I predict it will start like Arianna Huffington's HuffPo, initially game changing and valuable, then slowly just another click generating tabloid profit machine with a bubble like mentality forced on contributers, moderators and commentors alike. Time will tell.

• Ellie

  We have all this information, but nothing ever comes of it! No one goes to jail The laws are changed to help the criminals . We still have a two party system which is a joke. Unless people are hungry and cold and willing to die for a cause nothing is going to change in this country.

• J.G. Sandom

  We have become almost as much a plutocracy as our former Cold War nemesis, Russia. Tech, Big Oil and Wall Street oligarchs, combined with the military-industrial complex (which Eisenhower tried to warn us against) collude (in spirit, if not in actual boardrooms) to keep the people's power in check via libertarian deregulation, union-busting, Citizens United (and other activist SCOTUS rulings), privatization of the Intelligence Community (IC), the opiate of digital media that pushes the idolatry of money & all things celebrity to distract us, and our collective fear of terrorism (hence our perpetual war footing). This is what my forthcoming novel, 404, is all about-not just how IP tech is invading our lives, but how this invasion is a metaphor for the larger invasion. (HAL2, in my book, IS what Mike Lofgren calls the Deep State.) Wake up, America! Our country is being stolen from us in plain sight. Thank you Bill Moyers, and thank you Mike Lofgren for helping to alert the American public. You are 21st century Paul Reveres! Al Qaeda is less of a threat to America because of some future possible terrorist threat, and more because the collective American fear it engenders helps the Deep State sink its claws more effectively into our national flesh.

• Anonymous

  What rings clear is we now have a non-elected government operating outside our constitutional government and is purposely gridlocked. Our government and judicial system have been hijacked and steps must be taken to remove Big Hidden money that is controlling our constitutional government. Great interview Bill, thanks as always!

• Jack Wolf

  Mike forgot something. There is a simple fact that rules the deep state, the reformists, and the declinests, whether they accept it or not: Natural Law. Abrupt climate change can not be controlled now. To suggest that any of these groups are in control or have the ability to make substantial change belies what is really going on. From now on, all these groups can only react and as far as I can tell, today will be the best day of the rest of our lives. It's all downhill from here and there is irreversible.

• Thomas Milligan

  Oh, I know about those guys and I love what they do. The trouble is, somehow *their* work doesn't, as a rule, get picked up, amplified and developed in the mass media the way, say "Watergate" was back when we had real journalists. Meanwhile every load of BS that comes out of the Heritage Foundation, Cato et. al. somehow becomes received wisdom. I'm also a bit concerned that by going off on their own they're setting themselves up to be marginalized and ignored. Trees may fall, but very few people will hear them.

• Thomas Milligan

  Somehow your response above… to *my* response… to your original post… got posted under a *separate* post I offered… scroll down far enough, you'll find your original post & my response.

  Can't blame you for wanting to shield your children. The thing is, you can't, neither from the anger nor from global climate change. I have grandchildren and grieve when I look at them for the world they're apparently going to inhabit.

  One last thing: it's possible… theoretically at least… to have anger without hatred. Anger at what's been done can be a spur to action… and effective action could be taken while still treating the perpetrators with the compassion we know all sentient beings deserve. I'm not sure *I* could manage it because truth to tell I'm not a very good Christian… or Buddhist either… but it's at least theoretically possible.

• Thomas Milligan

  Good point about our old nemesis, The Evil Empire.

  I always found it ironic that as the Soviet Union was collapsing, the United States was moving toward one-party rule. You can write the Nov. 5 headline right now: "Republocrats Win Yet Again!"

• fenway67

  Agreed, the MSM has a vested interest in having their product on the shelf at eye-level and it's hard for the little guy to buy space in this market. I'll be doing my part by re-posting and tweeting important stories that they cover and I just hope the quality will get them noticed. I'm sure the smear campaign against them will begin soon.

• fenway67

  I wasn't aware of his motives beyond providing a platform for real journalists. What have you heard? I am hopeful that the high quality work of the people he has hired so far will keep it in the same company as the Moyers people.

• Kenneth Killiany

  This is an issue that concerns me greatly actually. Both sides have adopted policies that have fed it. I find it interesting that you mention Allen Drury, who was my uncle. Al was a dogged reporter, uncovering, in his day, the Manhattan Project, which he did not report on because of World War II. Should he have? He never doubted his judgment. However, he was very concerned about how the State just grew and operated on its won. You can see mentions of it in ADVISE AND CONSENT and MARK COFFIN, where he discusses the whole public-private daisy chain and how irresponsible it is. It's true, you can't get drama out of it, but he mentions it, but in PENTAGON, he wrote a whole book about a bureaucracy can be diverted from what it is meant to do by concerns for its own prerogatives. A&C and MARK COFFIN have just been re-released, and PENTAGON will follow next year. This kind of reporting in your article is the kind he admired and it is a great service.

• freelance-writer

  A.k.a.:Ukraine 2014. Though there are many factors and stake-holders at work in the Ukraine issue, it behooves the citizenry of all western nations tainted by the same `deep-state' tyranny to bear witness. It will take bricks against bullets to resolve this global crisis once and for ever.

• Mary Brown

  The only terrorists we have to face in the USA are our own government and the ones that government is purposely importing to continue their reign of fear. Problem is a large part of America is now well armed and a terrorist would die rather quickly long before any government police forces arrives.

• Len

  Most of us frogs are in a pot of water that is getting hotter and hotter and we don't feel it. As quoted from this essay "After
  a while, a functionary of the state begins to hear things that, in another
  context, would be quite remarkable, or at least noteworthy, and yet that simply
  bounce off one's consciousness like pebbles off steel plate". Replace "a functionary of the state" with "we the people".

  This essay was terrific.

• Anonymous

  I am worried that the boiling pot will lead to the elimination of Social Security. For years now politicians been saying it will end to each generation. When it does, a very high percentage of Americans will be at poverty level. I don't want to be living in American cities when that happens, crime and robberies will be common place.

• Anonymous

  Yes, this is not a new development… The funny thing is that Bill Moyers' Iran-Contra era expose entitled "The Secret Government" actually covers this subject better than the piece we are commenting on. And iirc, he interviews Peter Dale Scott about the CIA in that report…

• Anonymous

  There is a world of difference between bailouts and nationalization. I cannot begin to quantify the folly of calling this system "Marxist" when the party on the left of the two party system has moved so far to the right as to make Eisenhower seem like Trotsky by comparison.

• Anonymous

  For Gods sake, not this again. What Banking family who made the bulk of their fortune from War debt and being worth $500 Trillion dollars are you referring to? Everybody is afraid to print anything on these influential banking members. Their influence in this world has no bounds. As we all know Bankers always protect their money and are devising new ways to make more money. If you naively think that Bankers in this world are Godly benevolent people, you better look around the state of the world again and formulate a revised opinion. but there you go, I got my opinion and you have yours and we will respectfully leave it as that. Thanks for your comment!

• Anonymous

  Last time I looked capitalism is buying and bought our election process. In fact, in the past the main focus of our government has been on business priorities and concerns. Doesn't look anything as Marxism to me.

• Jimmy Solomon

  I read this article and watched your interview. Both are most enlightened. What happened, however, on the eleventh day of the ninth month thirteen years ago was clearly a result of this deep state and it is too bad you won't recognize this glaring example of the corruption of which you write.

• Anonymous

  "the party on the left of the two party system"

  There is little or no difference between the two faces of the party of state power. They use different words, and then enact the same policies.

  Politics is about power, nothing more. There is no "left" or "right", only power.

• Antonio Germano

  Again, what filibusters? You have provided no examples. Except for the (unfortunately) pathetic attempts of Cruz, Paul and Lee to derail Obamacare and the recent debt ceiling/government shutdown (I wish) affair, where has there been any effective Republican opposition to any of Obama's agenda?
  You are typical of the person who blames one side for our problems, when it's both sides (i.e., the government) that is the problem. Both sides are playing their respective constituencies like a Stradivarius. get over your obsession with partisanship and see the real issue – the whole system is corrupt and needs to be abolished.
  Your pining for 'majority rules' is a recipe for tyranny. The filibuster rules were put into place to prevent temporary majorities from steam-rolling temporary minorities. I think it should be even harder to pass laws, not easier, so mischief is avoided.
  I repeat – the State is the enemy of us all. get over blaming one side or the other. You are being played.

• Anonymous

  amazing that such a powerful article was written. too bad its several years too late, and ever so slightly off the mark. you need to let go of the rhetoric of bipartisanship. the DNC and GOP establishments are both operating on the same basic policies. while they offer crumbs to their bases, they are both pushing the agenda of the deep state.they are both to blame, and until people declare that both have no clothes, the powers behind the curtain will continue to rule.

• Anonymous

  Thanks, well said.

  There's also the "Shallow State" of American campaign consultants like David Axelrod and Mark Penn who make big money in places like Ukraine and Georgia because the locals assume they wield influence over their clients in Washington. If American foreign policy became less aggressive, foreigners wouldn't pay them so much money:

  http://isteve.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-shallow-state.html

• Auntie Analogue

  "F]inancialization, outsourcing, privatization, deregulation and the commodifying of labor."
  Yes, "commodifying of labor" thanks to Teddyquiddick pushing the 1965 Hart-Cellers act that began the importation of million Third World unskilled laborers per year, thanks also to the Deep State paralyzing all efforts of us, the People, to force our so-called "representatives" to close, fortify, and defend our borders – to stop the massive flow of scores of millions of illegal immigrants. Immigration has done more to stagnate and reduce Americans' wages and to destroy what had been our historically unprecedented middle class affluence and economic-political power.
  Objective One for those of us who would dismantle the Deep State and restore our democracy is obvious: Stop All Immigration. Accomplish this by these measures: one, end birthright citizenship (and thus also end birth tourism); two, abolish State Department power to import refugees and government funding of NGO's that "resettle" refugees; deport all illegal aliens; impose massive, draconian fines on employers that hire illegal alien labor. Why are these measures Objective One? Simple: when we allow our Dear Rulers to displace and dispossess us on our own soil, we forfeit – we surrender – our power to control our representatives and their appointees and their wealth transfer from ourselves to foreigners.

• Mil

  This is just a small list. But it at least provides some of the examples you are asking to see.

  http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/recent-business/bills-blocked-by-republican-filibusters

• rgrisham

  This is not a revelation. Noam Chomsky has been pointing this out clearly for the past 40 years… There a couple public documents that might help explain to the educated class exactly what has been going in the U.S. for the past 40 years… The Powell Memo written by Lewis Powell in 71 and the Crisis of Democracy a document publicly published by the Trilateral Commission in the mid 70's these are both damning omissions by powerful groups that control both the business world and governments at all levels of governance. These two documents that we know about are internal look at the dogma of the ruling class.. Neo Liberalism is the term they used but it sure aint new and it sure aint liberal. It just another way for the ruling class to re-institute Feudalism.

• Anonymous

  What you say is essentially true. Fascism by definition is the merger of corporations and the military. Another amusing quote: "A capitalist will sell you the rope you hang him with." Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

  These Deep State proponents will succeed in fully displaying their stupidity when the global environment collapses under the weight and consequence of their actions and humanity becomes extinct. In the meantime, they will be having fun and braying like jackasses as they descend into the abyss.

• Anonymous

  What about the level of organization required to create the Trilateral Commission and its formal takeover of the US executive branch when Carter took office? The majority of the cabinet (all but one) were Trilateralists in the newly created group of only 300 worldwide members. Trilateralists were placed in high level international corporate and political positions and this paradigm holds today. Scholars Antony Sutton and Patrick Wood wrote extensively on this international power dynamic with its influence now extending to every part of the globe. It was Trilateralist Larry Summers, former US Secretary of Treasury and Goldman Sachs executive, who was sent to Russia when it's economy imploded to advise Putin on how to privatize the Russian peoples' state owned assets leading the to rise of eight powerful oligarchs with internationalist sensibilities, a very deliberate centralization of capital and a means to control Russian political power players. From the beginning of the transfer of the US manufacturing sector to China, it became Brzezinski's model Technocracy, Brzezinski being the a founder of the Trilateralists, Carter's National Security Adviser, and author of The Grand Chessboard. (reference: Patrick Wood's augustforecast.com) These actions and the concomitant level of organization goes beyond the Deep State model.

• Anonymous

  .. if there were no abuses by the IRS, then why did IRS official Lois Lerner plead the fifth ? If my boss asked me to explain possible abuses of power at my job and I pleaded the fifth, my new office would be on the curb.

• Anonymous

  The meetings happen in Rancho Mirage and other places for Koch Brothers, and ALEC, etc. They are the ones paying the Pols and they definitely meet and plan conspiracies to disenfranchise voters. And, William Pepper wrote a book that reveals the conspiracies within those security agencies that control pols. It is great the Lofgren is talking about the Deep State. But, to deny the conspiracies within it is naive. The crashing of the Obama garden party by Robert Gates associates is a case in point. The Supreme Court ultimately is the last point of call to stop this Deep State within all the branches. They have judicial oversight, and they are not using it.

• scratphd

  The great swamp philosopher Pogo got it right. "I have meet the enemy and he is us."
  A complacent America.

• Christanne

  Lofgren: What America lacks is a figure with the serene self-confidence to tell us that the twin idols of national security and corporate power are outworn dogmas that have nothing more to offer us. Thus disenthralled, the people themselves will unravel the Deep State with surprising speed.

  This essay echoes Ivan Illich's "Tools for Convivality," which, although written in the '70s is even more applicable today. This is not new. Lofgren is an important wedge to cauterize the deep state and dispell delusions of unending "progress." However, I don't see any evidence for his assertion that the people themselves will unravel the Deep State. What we've done so far is just buy a new toy, both literally and figuratively, even when so many of us are going hungry.

• Anonymous

  Excellent essay. A very good (semi-) insider's look at happenings within the Beltway. However, my instinct tells me that the real nexus of power doesn't lie there, but that the Deep State operatives are allowed to continue their game-playing at public expense in order to serve a larger agenda–the ultimate bankrupting of the US and the ushering in of a new world order which has been in the making for centuries by the real powers-that-be. Uber-conspiratorial? Maybe, but I just can't shake the feeling.

• The One

  There is no doubt that the great american experiment has ended in ruin. There is hope on the horizon though. Due to technological progression and its rapid increase in power, the very fabric of society will change. Our social and economic models must change radically due to technological improvements. There is no end in sight to the technological pace we have been blazing at, and if there is an end it seems to be distant. The tremendous benefits of creative AI and the automation of white and blue collar workers must be built into a new social and economic model in which the benefits are distributed evenly and equally among the peoples of planet earth. Even now, if we used our technology wisely, we could unshackle large swaths of the labor markets with automated robots.

  The current state of unimaginable corruption which is inflicting the world, not just the US, is a dying last grasp for air as the oligarchies face a new powerful threat, the connection of all things. The internet has the power to upend these corrupt power structures which lie at the heart of society, and thus at the heart of every human life on this planet. Our current economic model is not situated in reality. I can't say if the market will be up or down tomorrow, but what I know for certain is that earth is 196.9 million square miles. Which is a finite space. Not a good place for an economic model which requires economic expansion for survival. The labor markets will be greatly dis-stressed due to technological displacement. The current scientific revolution is unlike any that has ever happened on the surface of this planet. Even highly skilled workers such as surgeons have the capacity to be replaced by highly advanced robots specializing in surgery. People will see awaken to the fact that this "annoying high unemployment" is actually the new normal and will only get worse. This REQUIRES a new economic model.

  If a business refused to integrate their business with the latest automation technology, a rival that had enough foresight to not oversee this would drive his competitor out of business. Then, in our current economic model, that rival that just won the market would reap all the rewards. BUT, it will also be in the best interest of that company, if in some new economic manner, a portion of those profits would go into a general citizens fund which would provide all humans with a basic income. This type of model will be absolutely necessary due to mass unemployment. This leaves the motive for profit intact which also leads a motive for innovation, creation, and competition that humans need. With scarcity gone, and universal income for all, the future will look very very bright for our young human species. The seas of interstellar space beckon.

• Anonymous

  "…another thing" – yup – if they changed the rule so they could get what they claimed was their agenda passed, the Reps might have been able to do the same – however the Reps could do that anyway themselves if they regained power –

  In any case, what does that say about a Party that would refuse to advance a decent agenda just so the other party couldn't advance its own at another date – in essence, cutting off our noses to spite the Reps face – they could have done what they knew we sent them there to do, and they refused, hiding behind rules they could have changed – more and more folks are waking up …

  ISTM it oughta be obvious by now that this "struggle" between the Reps and the Dems isn't about principle or ideology and it certainly isn't about representing us – it is about who gets to be in charge of handing out the perks and who gets the perks – those in power are the ones who get both ….

• Charles Shaver

  Nice to keep learning of a plethora of ambiguous symptoms but, short of too costly general strikes or domestic insurrection, only voting proved corrupt politicians of both major parties out of high office every other November will eventually restore legal functionality to the U.S. Government. So, vote in every general election and vote against those who stray. 'How to know' one might ask? Simply vote 'out with the old; in with the new,' every time, until we have the kind of America the Founders prescribed in the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution.

• Anonymous

  It only depends on your definition of "the US." Yes, a panel of CEOs famously declined Ralph Nader's invitation to join him in the Pledge of Allegiance, but in the State Department memo that outlined the policy of containment of the USSR, George Kennan said the vast wealth disparity between the US and the rest of the world must be maintained, while civil rights and democracy could be neglected.

  By then, the post-World War One idealists who'd joined calls for socialism and one-world government, to prevent another such catastrophe, had seen things differently once Russia turned Eastrrn Europe into a barricade against further invasions from the West. They could not bring themselves to reb against their banker fathers, but they still believed in a one-world government – it would simply be the government of the United States. The entire world would be brought into the economc system we ran, no matter what citizens and their elected governments wanted.

  During the Cold War, NATO was used to bring European intelligence agencies and militaries under domnance by the CIA and the Pentagon. Putting ordnance, money and men in place to resist a Soviet takeover made perfect sense, but it operated in peacetime to keep left-wingers out of Continental governments. We overthrew an Italian government, for example. Not by ourselves, of course: the secret "stay-behind" troops were nitorious right-wing fanatics, who could be trusted to carry out their missions regardless of law, Constitutionality or morality. False-flag shootings and bombings in public squares and supermarkets killed many innocent civilians and were blamed on leftist radical groups which had been thoroughly penetrated already anyway. This was to win public support for stricter security policies and, perhaps, punish citizens for voting in liberal-to-left governments. This was admitted in the Italian parliament by the Prime Minister in 1990. Operation GLADIO, as it was called, involved every NATO country. Investigations were promised, but were aborted or came to mothing.

  This is what Putin knows will happen if Ukraine joins NATO, for instance, so don't expect him to take it lying down. He operates a Russian version.

  In the US, a group of Wall Street financiers discussed literally overthrowing FDR in order to end the New Deal regulatory state, but didn't get past the talking stage. The Senate held hearings but J. Edgar Hoover declined to investigate becayse "no crime was committed." This is the same FBI director who opened pressure dossiers on citizens who carried protest signs or wrote letters to newspapers or the government opposing our war policies, and tried to get Martin Luthed King to commit suicide.

  Note the secrecy surrounding current trade-agreement negotiations, and accompanying high security. This dates back to the fiaco of the world trade talks in Seattle some years ago, when street protests neatly brought them to a halt. An Italian citizen was killed during protests against trade talks in Genoa yeats later.

• Anonymous

  This was a superb essay–one I have been awaiting for years. One minor addition: there is another non DOD component to the aforementioned group, which is DOE. Admittedly,
  it's rather easy to forget about them–but one should not. Ever.

• Anonymous

  But I really wonder if voting is a sufficient tool for the citizenry to tell the government what it thinks.
  Elections are not very frequent, they are deeply manipulated by complex "strategists" (look at the connection between the now-slowly-debunked gay marriage referenda and the re-election of Bush Jr).
  Though I find it tedious and at times inefficient I wouldn't mind being part of a citizenry like France that literally shuts the country down until the government says "uncle".

• Anonymous

  I believe the fourth estate and the way the US government interacts with it have a lot to do with the opacity of the veil I find floating between myself and whatever happens inside the beltway.

  The US government keeps journalists begging for the tiniest crumbs. No one is willing to leak anything for fear of being caught.

  When I asked a friend in the diplomatic corps what was the most striking about his stint in DC he said the depth at which government officials changed with each new administration compared to other countries. DC's moving business is booming beyond anything imaginable. This is also a tidy way to keep a tight grip on "messaging" – a skill each administration seems to get better and better at.

  There is a reason wikileaks has emerged and parody has replaced the stale format of the evening news.

• Charles Shaver

  Voting is still an effective tool. Unfortunately, statistically, a majority of manipulated voters will only dirty their hands to install and re-install soluble Democrats and Republicans when seeking water tight integrity; insane, by Einstein's definition. Now is well past the best time to make some real repairs but, perhaps, not yet too late to save a sinking ship. And, shutting the engine down won't plug the leaks.

• Pat Kittle

  We Americans are already plenty overcrowded, but Israel lobby billionaires want open borders and they've paid big bucks to both Republicans & Democrats. So open borders and endless population growth it is, ecological sustainability be damned.

  And don't give me that "anti-Semitic" hooey, I'm just stating facts.

  Zuckerberg, Bloomberg, Soros, Gelbaum, Adelson, etc., etc., Israel lobby, all of them.

  No serious discussion of the "deep state" would ignore that elephant in the living room.

• Anonymous

  This is not a valid critique. The Deep State serves organized wealth and works to further increase inequality and social stratification. Thus the Deep State represents entrenched right-wing power. It is a matter of state capture. Both parties support this consensus and are thus supremely conservative. The same goes for the media which is owned by these same centers of organized wealth.

• Matt P.

  It's not a matter of keeping one's mouth shut, but actions speak louder than words. Being angry and contentious all the time is not the same as being productive about the issues you believe in. Whenever I see an inequality in the street, on the subway, or at a party I react. I stand up for the person, I intervene and get involved. The rest of the time I do keep my mouth shut because there's nothing to say. It doesn't help anyone to spread unhappiness around. In fact it drains your energy so you're not ready or as effective for the next opportunity.

• Sean Kurnow

  I get a laugh at people who yell, whine and complain about politicians and party politics….It's like yelling at a ventriloquist dummy instead of the person controlling it. America became a plutocracy in 1913 when the Federal Reserve was created. Since then, we all know that special interest groups control almost every aspect of government policy.

• Anonymous

  I will assume you simply did not understand what I wrote or what 'slouching' wrote – ironic eh?
  Lets remove Thom Hartmann from the equation, as it seems to be where you flew off the rails…what then is your defense of the idiots we allude to?

• Anonymous

  I well understand the argument about brainwashing – have heard it a gazillion times ….

  The "idiots" you refer to – who are these folk? And while the corp media was brainwashing them, what were the rest of us doing? Sitting on our hands?

• Bill Wesley

  well for once I have no comment, its not required in that the writer has made the case with expert precision, I find no flaws, no omissions, no theory or dogma obstructing the writers view. Its nice to see such well presented intellectual compitance, it allows me to feel relief, I can take a break since others are seen to be on the ball

• FroboseTF

  Charles:
  Voting used to be an effective tool. Unfortunately with the advent of "Electronic Voting Machines" which must be "Programmed", and leave no paper trail to allow a recount; I fear that if the truth be known our elections are probably rigged on a regular basis to reflect the will of those in actual power now.

  I believe it was Joseph Stalin who said "It's not who casts the votes that's important. It's who counts them.

• Anonymous

  Actually, it was a Mossad (Israeli Intel)/US Intel op. US organized it and funded the Al Qaeda end of it via Paki intel officer General Mahmoud Ahmed, while the Mossad prepped the US targets and ran the anthrax mail op. I'm not sure that Mossad didn't dream it up in the first place, but, whatever the details, Al Qaeda was definitely just a bit player in the op with the real culprits being our own fearless leaders.

• Reuben_the_Red

  Winner-takes-all elections (as opposed to proportional representation) and the Electoral College are inherently undemocratic and present the illusion of voter participation without the danger of undue voter influence.

• Reuben_the_Red

  Excellent discussion of the intersection of money, power, and early 21st century technology in the US today. Food for thought, especially paired with Moyer's recent documentary about ALEC.

  One caveat: Paragraph 21 starts out saying, "the Deep State is so heavily entrenched, so well protected by
  surveillance, firepower, money and its ability to co-opt resistance that
  it is almost impervious to change," but in paragraph 22, "there are signs of resistance to the Deep State and its demands." Paragraph 21 has already made the case that resistance is irrelevant and impotent in the face of the Deep State apparatus, power/wealth reserves, and democracy-subverting methodology. And that's probably true. There may be no way to actually extricate the Deep State from The Superficial State.

  We are left in the final few paragraphs with a series of reasons that the Deep State might reverse course voluntarily, or unravel of its own accord, but in the end what we really need is "a figure with the serene self-confidence to tell
  us that the twin idols of national security and corporate power are
  outworn dogmas that have nothing more to offer us": in other words, some kind of charismatic, messianic Jesus-person, to save us from ourselves. I don't object to the author trying to end with a hopeful note of optimism, but how would this person reach us with that message? Are there not already a host of people who have been saying exactly that for decades, from Noam Chomsky to Angela Davis, from Daniel Quinn to Arundhati Roy, from Mark Twain to John Lennon? Have we not managed to ignore and disregard a notable and widely-published list of people trying to tell us that national security and corporate power are outworn dogmas that do nothing to elevate humanity nor the human condition?

  "Thus disenthralled,
  the people themselves will unravel the Deep State with surprising speed." It seems clear that we will be forever enthralled with our credit scores and our televised sporting events and other televised virtual realities until the government of the US actually collapses due to a variety of currently known and unknown factors (economic, ecological, etc). And that's not gonna be pretty either. And even then there is the further possibility that in such an event of complete destabilization (not unthinkable, has happened throughout history, around the world), the Deep State could become simply The State.

• Reuben_the_Red

  Agreed. Presumably there is no incentive in the Deep State to undermine the omnipotence of the Deep State.

  There are ways to increase voter participation (non-participation fines and penalties as I understand Australians are subject to; make voting day a federal holiday or even better a three-day weekend; give the right to vote back to felons and inmates alike; etc.) but wouldn't we still be left to choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee?

• Charles Shaver

  I haven't voted for Tweedledee or Tweedledum for President since Ronald Reagan and, since learning of Gramm-Leach-Bliley in 2012, I don't vote for either for Congress. I'd rather take a chance on a third, fourth or fifth party unknown, a blank ballot or a write-in candidate than on another known destroyer from one of the two major parties. Participation alone is not enough; it has to be informed participation, referenced against the clear, plain and simple language of the U.S. Constitution. So, how do we get the word out?

• Reuben_the_Red

  It would have been a very different election in 2012 if the Republican establishment and the corporate media machine had not colluded to rig the primaries so that Mitt Romney was the nominee, and not the one that the majority of voting Republicans wanted, Ron Paul, who ran on a platform that ironically appealed to many leftists, because of his insistence that foreign military interventions and US global military incursions cease immediately.

  It's possible that the realistic threat of a viable third party candidate on the outer fringe of the left or the right could be enough to force that respective party to yield to those fringe demands, incorporating those demands into a mainstream platform, more or less like the Tea Party did with the Republican party in recent years, threatening to take their votes elsewhere.

  At the same time, more Americans voted for left wing platforms than right wing platforms in 2000, but due to the winner-takes-all elections, we didn't get a government that was 5% Nader, 45% Gore, 45% Bush, majority leftist reflecting the vote. We got 100% Bush. We got corporate welfare, tax cuts for the uber wealthy which did not result in higher employment, we got two decade-long unprovoked foreign wars riddled with war crimes, and we got persistent recession. Some of these things, if not all of them, would not and could not have happened under a Nader/Gore-led government. The Deep State expanded massively with the Bush/Cheney administration's complicity. I wish that it was worthwhile to vote for third-party candidates, but we can expect them to receive no media coverage, few votes overall despite the possibly broad appeal of their platform, and in the end it would be irrelevant because of the Electoral College. If I live in Oregon and vote for Romney my vote is thrown away as surely as if I live in Utah and vote for Obama.

  In answer to your question, how do we get the word out, I think the only answer is media ownership. Our lives are more consumed by media today than ever before in the history of the world, and all of the media is concentrated in fewer hands, with more consensus among those few hands, than ever before.

• Charles Shaver

  It would be a very different election every time, and nation, if the majority would simply quit believing in the now defunct two-party system, corporate owned media and an extremist capitalist system that values the gains of the uber wealthy over the lives and limbs of workers and the poor. It's okay to question the status quo, ignore corporate media, do independent research, vote totally independent of family tradition and elect questionable strangers (as opposed to proved bipartisan failures) to defund the Deep State. Need a little more direction? Review the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution. It pretty well sums it all up in rather clear, plain and simple English, if you keep in mind that not just millionaires, billionaires and multi-national corporations (allegedly) are 'people.' Good conversation.

• jeffries

  Mike Lofgren wrote the essay. Bill Moyers was allowed to interview him. PBS has its hands tied by the "deep state" too. If you doubt this talk ask PBS why they pulled the plug on the Koch Brothers expose.

• jeffries

  The "deep state," like a parasite, will continue until its host is dead. My guess is they are in a state of panic-their host is on life support. The party is over- the rest of the world has had enough of the U.S. The petro dollar has been broken. The dollar will be dethroned as the world reserve currency and the torch will be passed to China no later than 2018. The players of the "deep state" will not be able to infiltrate and latch onto this new host and so they will fight to the death, more accurately our sons and daughters death, to keep the U.S. in its position. Resist war is all we can do and not buy into the steady stream of propaganda that will be bombarding us at every turn.

• Hatha Sunahara

  I haven't read all 328 comments so far, but I just wonder if anybody has picked up on the reason the deep state has developed. I think it's development stems from the evolution of the United States from a Republic into an Empire. No empire can exist with restrictions on its power like those put on the United States by the Constitution. So, instead of discarding the Constitution, the United States was subsumed into an 'extra-constitutional government'. Of course, nobody bothered to tell the people of the United States that their power had been usurped by a lawless Imperial overlord. Responsibility for that egregious oversight can be laid to the mainstream media, which is owned by the owners of the extra-constitutional government. These are the global media corporations.

  If you view politics this way, it explains a lot of things. Empire relies on it's military power and the acceptance of its money. Anyone who does not accept the empire's money generates hostility from the empire. The empire wages war without any declaration of war. The extra constitutional government allows that. The empire cannot tolerate privacy because that would allow people to plot against the empire without interference. So the empire puts everyone under surveillance. The empire cannot tolerate resistance or disobedience, so it develops a police state to instil fear and obedience in people. There are many many more examples of how empire rules America and usurps the US government–which exists for the people of the United States. Americans, and the people of the other countries in the world understand this viscerally, but are unable to express this in coherent thought because their language has been corrupted by the forces of empire. Mike Lofgren doesn't make this connection because iit violates the rules of political correctness. Everyone's career is tied to strict adherence to political correctness, and

• Anonymous

  And many of the voters have been brainwashed by the 5 or 6 corporations that control the media. Fear entertainment.

• Anonymous

  After I read Top Secret America I came to the conclusion that since 9/11 Homeland Security has become so incredibly humongous and so political it will keep growing until the US is bankrupt. The was the goal of Benladen. Europe did not fall for it be we did.

• Anonymous

  Some contemporary books Blackwater, Bloodmoney, and especially Confessions if a Economic Hit Man. Also Top Secret America.

• Charles Shaver

  I think a better name for 'Homeland Security' is 'elitist money addict insecurity.' And, it and treasonous corporate media propaganda will keep growing until we as an injured people finally 'Just say NO!' to the 'perpetraitors.' Thanks for commenting, above and below.

• Anonymous

  There is a small very readable book written by John Perkins named Confessions of an Economic hit Man. This is the way the Corporatocracy has used the IMF and World Bank to take over the assets of less developed countries. And if their leaders do not agree to go along well then read what happens to them.

• Anonymous

  In many states felons are legally allowed to vote if they have served their sentences. And if they moved to Florida their vote was legal. But Jeb Bush broke the law and did not allow their vote to count in the Bush/Gore election. The Republicans also paid a fortune to a company named Choice Point to scrub the polls. They also did this in the latest election for Governor. How can they get away with these tactics? The tactics that are being used in North Carolina lately are extremely difficult to counteract.

• Anonymous

  Funny (not ha ha) when I try to tell friends what is going on within Homeland Security (the redundancy, the extreme size of it and the number of government and private buildings all around the Washington suburbs) they respond by stating that they approve of all this. Homeland security is so political that this state if affairs will be sucking up our tax dollars forever.

• Neil Kitson

  "These men, largely private, were functioning on a level different from the foreign policy of the United States, and years later when New York Times reporter Neil Sheehan read through the entire documentary history of the war, that history known as the Pentagon Papers, he would come away with one impression above all, which was that the government of the United States was not what he had thought it was; it was as if there were an inner U.S. government, what he called 'a centralized state, far more powerful than anything else, for whom the enemy is not simply the Communists but everything else, its own press, its own judiciary, its own Congress, foreign and friendly governments – all these are potentially antagonistic.

  It had survived and perpetuated itself,' Sheehan continued, 'often using the issue of anti-Communism as a weapon against the other branches of government and the press, and finally, it does not function necessarily for the benefit of the Republic but rather for its own ends, its own perpetuation; it has its own codes which are quite different from public codes.

  Secrecy was a way of protecting itself, not so much from threats by foreign governments but from detection from its own population on charges of its own competence and wisdom.' Each succeeding Administration, Sheehan noted, was careful, once in office, not to expose the weaknesses of its predecessor. After all, essentially the same people were running the governments, they had continuity to each other, and each succeeding Administration found itself faced with virtually the same enemies.

  Thus the national security apparatus kept its continuity, and every outgoing President tended to rally to the side of the incumbent President.

  "Out of this of course came a willingness to use covert operations; it was a necessity of the times, to match the Communists, and what your own population and your own Congress did not know was not particularly important; it was almost better if they did not know…"

  David Halberstam
  The Best and The Brightest

• Charles Shaver

  Very typically, you appear to be better informed and better read on some aspects of our failed and failing nation-state than I. Admittedly, I don't have all the answers. Briefly, though, respective of all you cite, I find the vast majority of Americans just don't want to be burdened any more with good citizenship (e.g., election statistics). Most recently, another symptom of the underlying problem was highlighted when the billionaire owner of a mere commercial (as opposed to 'professional') basketball team in a society that tolerates abject poverty and illegal war was severely chastised and sanctioned for only elitist, racist remarks. Summarily, let me say that my America took a big turn for the worse when the 'Pied Piper' was bribed to play the National Anthem. Nope, not 'ha ha' funny, at all. And, I don't know whether to dread or rejoice the day when the coerced laughter finally ends, and the music dies.

• Anonymous

  During the 2nd Bush administration I started to notice all the books listed in the Washington Post book section about his administration. After awhile I thought maybe I should start reading. The first page turner was one by Bob Woodward about the lead up to the Iraq war. It showed me that we were not getting truth from the media so I kept on reading books. First about Iraq-Fiasco, The man who got is into the war Amad Chalabi, Blackwater, Bloodmoney and many others. I keep telling people to read more but they choose not to. They are either working too hard or if retired playing too hard. They just want to be spoon fed and are addicted to outrage entertainment. I continued my reading on economics, finance, climate change and understand much more than I did before. Keynes vs Hyeck explains the history of the two economic theories. Also how the shift to the right happened during The Reagan and Thatcher administrations. Age of Greed explains how a few very greedy men influenced congress to repeal laws and pass laws in their favor. Tim Flannerys book The Weather Makers explains Climate change. And there are too many books written on income disparity and the danger to democracy. What is happening is out of control and a nightmare. I don't think people understand that when a government service for the commons is privatized it becomes a corporation with lobbyists that influence Congress and that we taxpayers must pay their employees at a much higher rate. Like the army contractors, prisons and so on. People do not put on their thinking caps. Sorry for the rant.

• Charles Shaver

  Interesting, impressive; different paths, one destination; better a rant than a sell-out or surrender. Beware of putting too much faith in the opinions of others, myself included. We all are products of our past and there is a natural tendency for the adult progeny to emulate the parent; the student to mimic the teacher; the reader to quote the author. I find the U.S. Constitution is the best source of information about how America should function but I don't hear or see much of that from any of the so-called 'experts.' If electrical engineers treated Ohm's Law like authors, bankers, government, lawyers and the 'people' treat the U.S. Constitution, you'd be reading this in script on parchment by candlelight, if at all. And, don't let me discourage you; where I fail you may succeed. Let reason prevail. Thanks for the stimulating conversation.

• Anonymous

  Yes we all have the tendency to read whatever validates our worldview. I read Gretchen Morgensterns book named Reckless Endangerment about Fannie Mae. Saw her talk on Cspan book channel. Needed to get to the bottom of that mess. Jim Johnson was and still is a very shady character. It is strange however that the Republicans reduced the entire 2008 recession down to two sound bites Fannie Mae and the CRA (I think that is the acrynom) for the program to stop the redlining. No one knows anything about the history and purpose of Fannie Mae and it's original purpose until Johnson got his hands on it. If one has critical thinking one can sift out the truth. I just cannot believe that people will believe a sound bite without any hesitation.

• Charles Shaver

  Been 'deep thinking' a lot more about the Deep State but, without yesterday's lost credentials or celebrity (good or bad), there's not much I can presently do. One clever sound-bite might do the trick but none I've composed and tried so far have caught on. Still, probably, is tomorrow.

• Anonymous

  I actually thought of a really good sound bite and communicated it to the White House. No one took me up on it. Wish I could remember what it was. If you have any you could try. But they are not very confrontational.

• Charles Shaver

  I liked candidate Obama's words but never voted for him, because he already belonged to one of two already proved dysfunctional major political parties. Writing the Obama White House and even getting a few generic replies while watching him fail the office, too, I do not regret 'wasting' my vote on a 'green' third party candidate. After rereading The Anatomy of the Deep State, today, I'm sure I could read more and probably phrase things better but am still confident in my decades of working-class experience-based conclusions and suggestions.

• sorval

  "Land of the Free, Home of the Brave"

  has become

  Land of the "Free", Home of the "Brave".

• johnnyomaha

  Privatization of the US constitution to serve the elite…..

• http://www.rrstevens.net/ Robert Stevens

  … OR is it "Land of the Greed, Home of the Knave" -- Let's sing it all together before the next Football Game and Circus: ♫ "o'er the Land of the Greed …" ♫

• Anonymous

  Where's the who, what, when, where, and why? Collected everyday simple observations will awaken one to the existence of a higher controlling entity. No more problem identification or descriptions, thank you very much. We need 1) facts and 2) solutions.

• unheilig

  Lofgren gives both. Did you read the article? Confirmation is easy enough too: all you need is a browser and a few hours searching off-off-lamestream information sources.

• Jocelyn Hawley

  To both dn7904 and Charles Shaver, I read your back and forth discussion and realize that I so crave that type of intelligent, informed and aware discussion within my interactions in my daily life, but none can really exist. Most people are so concerned with the outcomes of the game, or fantasy football, or the latest t.v. series, and how on earth to pay rent and other minutia. The little bit of news comes from prime time networks like Fox, NBC and CNN and they think they know what is happening in the world, but don't actually want to know what is really happening. The trick to an article like this one, is not yet how we change the problem, but how we get people to notice, be aware and to care. That is the real question and the first- most prominent problem to be solved.

• Anonymous

  I think there are more creative ways for the citizenry to communicate their discontent than to wait four years for the next highly-funded election.
  I remember being in an international conference and the minister of Health from a major developed country came on stage just days after making a very unpopular move. One person stood up and simply turned her back on the Minister, then another, then a dozen, then the whole auditorium of major players in the scientific community.
  It made headlines.
  I resent the fact that a movement like MoveOn now just asks me for money like all the other PAC's. They used to send out flyers and have photos posted of people all over the country holding the same flyer.
  What comes to mind is that we remain the developed country in which the fewest people take vacation. How can we possibly stop and think about creative democracy? Ironically the revolutionary thought that was the spark that set off the flames of this country came from the leisure class who had plenty of time to think and write about things like freedom and liberty.

• Charles Shaver

  Thank you for prodding me to do some additional 'Deep Thinking.' The harm is done. Thanks to the apathetic and/or ignorant majority of a voting minority, the balance of power in the U.S. has now been transferred from the left hand of organized crime to the right hand, for the next two years. At least the majority is consistent in its failure to self-govern by voting, and voting wisely.

  While (if) still allowed, voting wisely is the only reasonable solution. Creative protesting (e.g., 'occupy' them, pass out flyers, shout them down, turn your back or throw them a shoe) means nothing when the final vote is counted to determine who actually makes and enforces the rules. Not omniscient or perfect, either, I'm open to suggestions but with very little to work with after several decades of too-typical abuse, betrayal, exploitation and oppression, served in the pseudonyms of loyalty, patriotism, sacrifice and service. If mere reasoning worked then Bill Moyers and 'company' would have already solved most of the major problems. Don't let me discourage you, though, keep on with your own deep thinking.

• John Schoneboom

  Two flaws jump out at me from this otherwise rather good and useful article. The first is that Mr. Lofgren implies that the Deep State is mainly a Republican thing. In the picture he paints, it's the Republicans who want to pay the national security state, while the poor hapless Democrats just want to increase social spending. Similarly, he makes excuses for Obama in footnote 7. (Presidents are surely mostly puppets, but Obama's 2008 FISA vote as Senator betrays his own predilections well enough.) At best, this is the farcical veneer of Deep State Theatre. I suspect Mr. Lofgren knows better and didn't mean to imply otherwise.

  Secondly, government shutdowns and budgetary problems may be an inconvenience to the Deep State, but no accounting of the Deep State is complete without figuring in off-the-books revenue from the global drug trade. International partnerships and oil interests also help diversify the income stream nicely. There are many billions feeding this thing that have nothing to do with the US budget.

  It's also somewhat criminal not to name-check Peter Dale Scott in this subject area. But I'm nitpicking. I'll not bother criticizing the piece for not addressing Deep State ties with terrorism, that kettle of fish deserves its own barrel. Like I said, nice piece, useful, well done, thank you.

• Douglas Harris

  does no one see there is a reason for the immense defense spending as America becomes #2 in world economy and the dollar might be replaced as the reserve currency?
  The Chinese own enough treasury paper to close the American economy, alone or with several willing partners. BUT…America even as a declining economic dictator will still have the arms to maintain world control…

• Anonymous

  I had no real a-ha moment reading this well written piece. Nothing jumped out at me as something foreign or unknown. Instead, I had the sense of deja vu, the kind of deja vu I'd rather not have. All these things have been known if the consumer of this good piece has been paying attention to the not-mainline press. What is so exciting about this is the writer put all the information in one place and drew out the connections that weren't always so obvious. Though Mr. Lofgren paints a somewhat plausible picture of how this State may rather suddenly crumble, I'm a bit dubious.

  What seems missing are the global links among many of these actors especially the oligarchs reach and connection to many things terrorism. What I'm saying is that I'm not terribly optimistic that a leader will come along who is sufficiently unbeholden to the state and who can remain un-co-opted and call this state for what it is thus raising our fellow Americans sustained interest and desire to see through the mess it will take to overthrow this Deep State.. In any case, thanks so much for such a thoughtful and creepy picture.

• Anonymous

  None of this is news. A President who cared could smash the Deep State in, probably, nine months. The key lockhold the Deep State has at the moment is on the nomination process, which is used to filter out any Presidents, and most Congressional nominees, who show signs of independent thought. They've been doing this since Reagan (Carter was the last President with independent thought; Reagan was ideal, being an actor with Alzheimer's and so not thinking much at all.) There are two ways this can play out: either they lose their lockhold on the nomination process, or the entire system is discredited and we get a revolution.

  The Deep State is actually very fragile due to their fundamental incompetence. But they're quite capable of wrecking our existing system, at which point there will be an opening for a Caesar or a Napoleon or a Lenin who *is* competent. That is the true danger moment. The worst scenario is revolving-door coups, such as Mexico suffered for decades in the 18th and 19th century.

• Anonymous

  The American Empire is, however, in decline phase. You can identify that by the inability to conquer territory and the slow loss of territory from the edges. The peak of the American Empire was actually in the late 19th century… A collapsing empire follows a weird trajectory. Many comparisons have been made to the Roman Empire. That worked out poorly.

• Anonymous

  You could also read the much older "War is A Racket" by Smedley Butler.

  The IMF/World Bank scam was working for a while. It doesn't work any more: South American countries simply reject it. And the US has no power to muscle South American countries any more; I'm not quite sure how they managed to become immune to US military intervention, but they have. They have had about 200 years of trial and error in figuring out how.

  Now, the rest of the world just needs to copy the South American model and the US IMF/World Bank scam becomes untenable.

• Anonymous

  Proportional representation is critical, but I haven't figured out how to get anyone to pay attention to it. Even at the local level, where the deep state has no traction because it's paying no attention.

• Anonymous

  Thankfully the fight against electronic voting machines is already pretty strong. This is something people understand viscerally and this is a key plank for whatever party is going to dethrone the Rs & Ds. Basically, if electronic "voting" machines are delegitimized (as they should be), this means people will actually fight for their paper ballots…

• Anonymous

  I think you're wrong about how most Americans will react. The levels of disillusionment are very, very high now and you can measure them in polls.

  Just before the Civil War, we saw the same dynamic: most of the country was completely disillusioned about the "slavocracy", as they called the corrupt US government dominated by slaveholders. This led to the election of Lincoln, the destruction of the Whig Party, and finally, the Civil War.

  This is the sort of situation we have now. The Deep State can't win; it will be smashed as Americans unite behind a Lincoln-like figure. The only questions are when this will happen, and more importantly *what comes next*. Things are wide open after that happens: Sun Yat-Sen led (unfortunately) to Mao.

• jeffries

  Well it will be interesting how the Greece situation plays out. It seems strange we don't hear much or read much in main stream media about it. They are challenging the status quo. At first the banks gave them until the 28th and then cut it to 10 days. It would be in everyone's best interest if this was the beginning of the end for the EU. Diffused power is the best power. If the EU fails we won't be pressured into a union with Canada and Mexico. I think that was the plan of the global deep state. Aggregate nations into regions and then larger regions and then it would not be such a jump to global government.

• Anonymous

  "….. Americans sustained interest…."
  Lack of interest is the real killer of all empires.

[Nov 01, 2015] Why has American national security policy changed so little from the Bush administration to the Obama

America's "Madisonian institutions," namely, the Congress, the presidency, and the courts have been supplanted by a "Trumanite network" of bureaucrats who make up the permanent national security state. National security policymaking has been removed from public view and largely insulated from law and politics.

Notable quotes:

"... national security policy is determined largely by "the several hundred managers of the military, intelligence, diplomatic, and law enforcement agencies who are responsible for protecting the nation and who have come to operate largely immune from constitutional and electoral restraints." The president, congress and the courts play largely a symbolic role in national security policy ..."

"... You can read a Harvard National Security Journal article that outlines Glennon's argument at this link: http://harvardnsj.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Glennon-Final.pdf . The paper is not an especially easy read, but I found it to be well researched and – for me – persuasive. ..."

"... National Security and Double Government ..."

"... "Glennon shows how the underlying national security bureaucracy in Washington – what might be called the deep state – ensures that presidents and their successors act on the world stage like Tweedledee and Tweedledum." ..."

"... "In our faux democracy, those we elect to govern serve largely ornamental purposes, while those who actually wield power, especially in the realm of national security, do so chiefly with an eye toward preserving their status and prerogatives. Read this incisive and richly documented book, and you'll understand why." ..."

"... U.S. national security policy is in fact conducted by a shadow government of bureaucrats and a supporting network of think tanks, media insiders, and ambitious policy wonks. ..."

"... "is that the United States government has enduring institutional interests that carry over from administration to administration and almost always dictate the position the government takes." ..."

"... And now IMO the DEEP STATE is about to DEEP SIX the Career military in the US as it organizes violence and the SURVEILLANCE STATE outside the ARMED FORCES. ..."

"... My short answer is that Government of the people, by the people, and for the people [the Lincoln formulation] probably expired with the dead of Hiroshima and Nagasaki! ..."

"... I think we could make as much of the supine legislature that lends weight to Glennon's argument as he does the "permanent" executive agency security apparatus. If they're to be properly responsive to public will, executive agencies need better written laws. ..."

January 20, 2015 | Homeland Security Watch

That's the question Michael J. Glennon asks in his book "National Security and Double Government."

His answer: national security policy is determined largely by "the several hundred managers of the military, intelligence, diplomatic, and law enforcement agencies who are responsible for protecting the nation and who have come to operate largely immune from constitutional and electoral restraints." The president, congress and the courts play largely a symbolic role in national security policy, Glennon claims.

You can read a Harvard National Security Journal article that outlines Glennon's argument at this link: http://harvardnsj.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Glennon-Final.pdf. The paper is not an especially easy read, but I found it to be well researched and – for me – persuasive.

His book adds more analysis to the argument, using (from Graham Allison's Essence of Decision) the rational actor model, the government politics model, and the organizational behavior model. Glennon extends that framework by discussing culture, networks, and the myth of alternative competing hypotheses. The book is richer, in my opinion. But the core of Glennon's position is in the paper.

This link takes you to a video of Glennon talking about his book at the Cato Institute: http://www.cato.org/events/national-security-double-government (the talk starts at the 5:20 mark).

From the Cato site:

In National Security and Double Government, Michael Glennon examines the continuity in U.S. national security policy from the Bush administration to the Obama administration. Glennon explains the lack of change by pointing to the enervation of America's "Madisonian institutions," namely, the Congress, the presidency, and the courts. In Glennon's view, these institutions have been supplanted by a "Trumanite network" of bureaucrats who make up the permanent national security state. National security policymaking has been removed from public view and largely insulated from law and politics. Glennon warns that leaving security policy in the hands of the Trumanite network threatens Americans' liberties and the republican form of government.

Some blurb reviews:

• "If constitutional government is to endure in the United States, Americans must confront the fundamental challenges presented by this chilling analysis of the national security state."
  Bruce Ackerman
• "Glennon shows how the underlying national security bureaucracy in Washington – what might be called the deep state – ensures that presidents and their successors act on the world stage like Tweedledee and Tweedledum." John J. Mearsheimer
• "National Security and Double Government is brilliant, deep, sad, and vastly learned across multiple fields–a work of Weberian power and stature. It deserves to be read and discussed. The book raises philosophical questions in the public sphere in a way not seen at least since Fukuyama's end of history." David A. Westbrook
• "In our faux democracy, those we elect to govern serve largely ornamental purposes, while those who actually wield power, especially in the realm of national security, do so chiefly with an eye toward preserving their status and prerogatives. Read this incisive and richly documented book, and you'll understand why." Andrew J. Bacevich
• "…Michael Glennon provides a compelling argument that America's national security policy is growing outside the bounds of existing government institutions. This is at once a constitutional challenge, but is also a case study in how national security can change government institutions, create new ones, and, in effect, stand-up a parallel state…." Vali Nasr
• "Instead of being responsive to citizens or subject to effective checks and balances, U.S. national security policy is in fact conducted by a shadow government of bureaucrats and a supporting network of think tanks, media insiders, and ambitious policy wonks. Presidents may come and go, but the permanent national security establishment inevitably defeats their efforts to chart a new course…."Stephen M. Walt, Robert and Renee Belfer

I've spoken to three people I consider to be members of the "shadow national security state." One person said Glennon's argument is nothing new. The second told me he's got it exactly right. The third said it's even worse.

William R. Cumming, January 20, 2015 @ 8:38 am

ah! the deep state analyzed correctly imo!

and imo only the nuclear priesthood rivals the deep state but not exactly part of it yet its original source!

like the mayan priests only those in it know how accurate this book is in its analysis!

and a congress marches on in complete ignorance!

Mike Mealer, January 21, 2015 @ 7:48 pm

Great article. Read it a few months ago. I didn't know whether I should feel more secure or afraid. Looking the items I highlighted and a few standout.

"The dirty little secret here," a former associate counsel in the Bush White House, Brad Berenson, explained, "is that the United States government has enduring institutional interests that carry over from administration to administration and almost always dictate the position the government takes."178 P34

Its cohesion notwithstanding, the Trumanite network is curiously amorphous. It has no leader. It is not monolithic. It has no formal structure. P32

The maintenance of Trumanite autonomy has depended upon two conditions. The first is that the Madisonian institutions appear to be in charge of the nation's security. The second is that the Madisonian institutions not actually be in charge. P34

Public opinion is, accordingly, a flimsy check on the Trumanites; it is a manipulable tool of power enhancement. It is therefore rarely possible for any occupant of the Oval Office to prevail against strong, unified Trumanite opposition, for the same reasons that members of Congress and the judiciary cannot; a non-expert president, like a non-expert senator and a non-expert judge, is intimidated by expert Trumanites and does not want to place himself (or a colleague or a potential political successor) at risk by looking weak and gambling that the Trumanites are mistaken. So presidents wisely "choose" to go along. P70

John Comiskey, January 22, 2015 @ 7:14 am

Civic Education 101

Glennon laments as did Justice Souter, the pervasive civic ignorance of the citizenry. Democracy requires an informed and engaged citizenry. The recent and ongoing debates about the role the police in society raise similar question and doubts about our social contract and governance for the 21st century.

Where to from here?

A national conversation about civics and K-12 civic education.

What is the proper role of citizens in society?
What is the proper role of our polity?

William R. Cumming, January 22, 2015 @ 8:53 am

Again interesting thread and comments. The use of the term "Trumanite" is unfortunate and totally inaccurate IMO! Truman reluctantly signed the National Security Act of 1947 to resolve the documented failures of Jointness between the Army and Navy in WWII [the Secretary of War and the Secretary of the Navy--Stimson and King]! Truman was personally opposed to the establishment of the CIA for many good reasons.

What is the real failure is the creation of the Nuclear Priesthood which largely failed to guard its secrets from other Nation-States and individuals and the warping into the DEEP STATE [the better term than DOUBLR GOVERTNMENT]!

And now IMO the DEEP STATE is about to DEEP SIX the Career military in the US as it organizes violence and the SURVEILLANCE STATE outside the ARMED FORCES.

A close study of the overturning of the ALIEN AND SEDITION Acts of 1798 which destroyed chances for a second term for John Adams and created the first real Presidential Election in the USA, the Presidential Election of 1800, which brought into officer Jefferson, but almost brought Aaron Burr to real power.

Study of James Madison so-called VIRGINIA RESOLUTION opposing the ASA is fully warranted. Too bad John Yoo did not know this history.

William R. Cumming, January 22, 2015 @ 2:43 pm

I need to mention that I did read the article and listened to the Cato Institute Panel.

The Panel presentations might lead one to argue that Double or nothing or the DEEP STATE what difference does it make past, present, or future?

My short answer is that Government of the people, by the people, and for the people [the Lincoln formulation] probably expired with the dead of Hiroshima and Nagasaki! Perhaps not but until argued and proven otherwise that is my conclusion! Perhaps wrong and hoping so!

Jack, January 24, 2015 @ 2:47 pm

A fascinating and needful argument, though I think we could make as much of the supine legislature that lends weight to Glennon's argument as he does the "permanent" executive agency security apparatus. If they're to be properly responsive to public will, executive agencies need better written laws.

The Critical Infrastructure Protection Act or CIPA, which passed the house in 2014, would, "require the Assistant Secretary of the National Protection and Programs Directorate to: (1) include in national planning scenarios the threat of electromagnetic pulse (EMP) events…" (emphasis mine). The national planning scenarios were rescinded in 2011, making CIPA either a very easy or very hard law to execute.

Likewise, the Biggert-Waters flood insurance reform act of 2012 altered regulatory definitions for "substantial damage" and "substantial improvement" by misunderstanding the way field damage assessments are performed under the National Flood Insurance Program.

Which means, I suppose, that we need more able legislators…which may be unlikely if more Americans don't know Publius from Curly.

[Oct 31, 2015] Another Black Swan? Turkey Holds Snap Elections Amid NATO-Backed Civil War

Notable quotes:

"... Turkey is suspected of supplying the chemical weapons used in Ghouta in August 2013 as reported by Seymour Hersh here . In May 2013, Nusra fighters were arrested in possession of sarin but quickly and quietly released by Turkish authorities. ..."

zerohedge.com

JustObserving

Supporting the Kurds will lead to more terrorism per Erdogan. But it is fine and dandy to support ISIS terrorists and to be at war with Syria. Turkey will soon be a failed state:

The following examples show the extent of Turkish involvement in the war on Syria:

• –Turkey hosts the Political and Military Headquarters of the armed opposition. Most of the political leaders are former Syrians who have not lived there for decades.
• –Turkey provides home base for armed opposition leaders. As quoted in the Vice News video "Syria: Wolves of the Valley": "Most of the commanders actually live in Turkey and commute in to the fighting when necessary."
• –Turkey's intelligence agency MIT has provided its own trucks for shipping huge quantities of weapons and ammunition to Syrian armed opposition groups. According to court testimony, they made at least 2,000 trips to Syria.
• –Turkey is suspected of supplying the chemical weapons used in Ghouta in August 2013 as reported by Seymour Hersh here. In May 2013, Nusra fighters were arrested in possession of sarin but quickly and quietly released by Turkish authorities.
• –Turkey's foreign minister, top spy chief and senior military official were secretly recorded plotting an incident to justify Turkish military strikes against Syria. A sensational recording of the meeting was publicized, exposing the plot in advance and likely preventing it from proceeding.
• –Turkey has provided direct aid and support to attacking insurgents. When insurgents attacked Kassab Syria on the border in spring 2014, Turkey provided backup military support and ambulances for injured fighters. Turkey shot down a Syrian jet fighter that was attacking the invading insurgents. The plane landed 7 kilometers inside Syrian territory, suggesting that Turkish claims it was in Turkish air space are likely untrue.
• –Turkey has recently increased its coordination with Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

more at:

https://consortiumnews.com/2015/06/25/turkeys-troubling-war-on-syria/

[Oct 31, 2015] All Knew That This Interest Was Somehow The Cause of the War

Notable quotes:

"... encouraging ..."

"... Wage slavery is VERY different from chattel slavery. The danger of ignoring that difference is that it obscures the intimate connection between the two, which is the legal institution of private property. ..."

"... The Roman law of property derived by analogy from conditions of slave ownership. Owning land is an analog of owning slaves. ..."

"... Born in debt. Live in debt. Die in debt. The one thing they got right: human slavery is so distasteful we can't do it openly anymore. But wage slavery is just fine, especially debt peonage. No one can complain if you get yourself into debt, just if someone else puts you there. ..."

"... I hate my job. I am de facto a day laborer, delivering items as and when my boss tells me to. As a former university professor, this is a hard blow. But to say I and 99.9% of the population are coffled is pure nonsense. My situation is lousy. But comparing what the black slaves went through with what I am going through is like saying the internment camps which held the Japanese-Americans were the same as the death camps in Nazi Germany. One was bad, the other indescribably worse. Not all evils are identical or commensurate. ..."

"... Any adequate reading of the history of the Civil War will show that the 11 Confederate States destroyed themselves out of lust to extend slavery to the northwestern states. They had through "compromises" extended slavery to the states south of Missouri already. The threat of urbanization and immigration creating enough free voters to outvote their 1.6 people gerrymanders terrified the Southern powers-that-be to the point of pre-emptive war. Read the Secession declarations of each state; believe them for what they say, not the subsequent reunion-period histories. ..."

"... The economic benefits of the internal slave breeding industry were matched by the political benefits; they could try to outbreed the Northern increase through immigration and make profits off sales to western states. ..."

"... David Graeber's book (Debt: The first 5000 years) convincingly relates debt directly to slavery, real slavery. Creditors ("masters") rigged the game, took all their debtors assets, and when there was nothing left for them to take, they took them, as slaves. Or their wives, daughters, sons. I know, ancient slavery was different in some respects; slaves could earn their way out or be "redeemed" by a family member or other creditor. (And there was the Jubilee year – I have to read Michael Hudson on that someday.) I can accept that American chattel slavery was distinct and diabolical, but it was an intense form of something that seems to have been with us, humanity, for a long time. ..."

"... The westward expansion after the War of 1812 and the closure of the overseas slave trade in 1808 created the conditions for the internal slave breeding industry with its generation of roving coffles and slave traders, it major slave markets, a good many of which have been preserved, and its new forms of finance and legal entities. ..."

"... Yes, Graeber's book is excellent on this point: "Slavery is the ultimate form of being ripped from one's context, and thus from all social relationships that make one a human being. Another way to put this is that the slave is, in a very real sense, dead." ..."

"... The important point. The United States of America (Lincoln) did not want to fight. The abolitionists were a minority. The Southern media (newspaper editors) freaked out like to media shock jocks did over the election of Barack Obama. Unlike this time around, at least so far, the Southern states were stampeded by their elites into seceding; the state legislatures and governors were part of those elites. In the midst of the tension Edmund Ruffin, a pro-secessionist rabble-rouser from Virginia went to Charleston SC, and with the help of military school Citadel and Arsenal cadets, and SC militia, conducted a coast artillery attack on the closest military installation – Fort Sumter. And reactions escalated, very much like the diplomatic environment after the the 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. And they escalated because the Southern hotheads wanted war. ..."

"... Regarding the coffle, it seems this is early capitalism's answer to the "Trail of Tears" and the famous "Bataan Death March". Then again, maybe it's not "early" capitalism at all….I'm thinking of Malaysia and the TPP. ..."

"... Many years ago I visited a small slavery museum out in the cotton fields somewhere around Memphis - I forget which side of the river it was on. It was in an old house that might be found anywhere, but more likely in a suburb than far out in the cotton fields, with no other house in view. Even the nearest line of trees was hundreds of yards away. In the largest room they had a lot of chains with large, heavy links, bigger than you would think would be necessary to hold even a very active human being. ..."

"... Slavery in the US was rather tame and short lived in comparison to the slavery practiced by the Muslims and Africans themselves. ..."

"... It was not until 1960 that slavery was outlawed in Saudi Arabia although it may well continue to this day. To really understand large scale slavery we need to go back to the origins of the Muslim movement. ..."

"... Hi Lambert, the book that first put the scope of the slave trading and breeding industries into context for me was The World That Made New Orleans by Ned Sublette. It's a fascinating and terrible account and if I recall correctly, describes some of the slave breeding operations carried out by Thomas Jefferson. ..."

naked capitalism

… About a quarter of those trafficked southward were children between eight and fifteen, purchased away from their families. The majority of coffle prisoners were male: boys who would never again see their mothers, men who would never again see wives and children. … The only age bracket in which females outnumbered males in the trade was twelve to fifteen, when they were as able as the boys to do field labor, and could also bear children. Charles Bell, forcibly taken from Maryland to South Carolina in 1805, recalled that

The women were merely tied together with a rope, about the size of a bed cord, which was tied like a halter round the neck of each; but the men…. were very differently caparisoned. A strong iron collar was closely fitted by means of a padlock around each of our necks. A chain of iron, about a hundred feet in length, was passed through the hasp of each padlock, except at the two ends, where the hasps of the padlock passed through a link in the chain. In addition to this, we were handcuffed in pairs, with iron staples and chains, with a short chain, uniting the handcuffs and their wearers in pairs.

As they tramped along, coffles were typically watched over by whip- and gun-wielding men on horseback and a few dogs, with supply wagons bringing up the rear… The captives were not generally allowed to talk among themselves as they tramped along, but sometimes, in the midst of their suffering, they were made to sing. The English geologist G. W. Featherstonehaugh, who in 1834 happened upon the huge annual Natchez-bound chain gang led by trader John Armfield, noted that "the slave drivers… endeavour to mitigate their discontent by feeding them well on the march, and by encouraging them" - encouraging them? - "to sing 'Old Virginia never tire,' to the banjo. Thomas William Humes, who saw coffles of Virginia-born people passing through Tennessee in shackles on the way to market, wrote; "It was pathetic to see them march, and to hear their melodious voices in plaintive singing as they went."…

From the first American coffles on rough wilderness treks along trails established by the indigenous people, they were the cheapest and most common way to transport captives from one region to another.

The Federally built National (or Cumberland) Road, which by 1818 reached the Ohio River port of Wheeling, Virginia (subsequently West Virginia), was ideal for coffles. It was the nation's first paved highway, with bridges across every creek. Laying out approximately the route of the future US 40, its broken-stone surface provided a westward overland transportation link that began at the Potomac River port of Cumberland, Maryland. From Wheeling, the captives could be shipped by riverboat down to the Mississippi and on to the Deep South's second-largest slave market at Natchez, or further on to the nation's largest slave market, New Orleans.

I'll stop at the demonstration of how Federal infrastructure improve the slave trade's supply chain.

From my vantage point (starting with my family history and where I live), the coffle seems like a work of fiction, a dystopian nightmare written by a demeted sadist. Imagine a hundred or so slaves chained together and being driven down the main street of my small town by dogs and men with whips. And now imagine this scene was normal, and kids coming home from school walked right past it. When do I wake up? (Sure, Rome. But that was thousands of years ago!)

And yet this is not science fiction stuff, or fantasy. It's history. Here's a list of the Presidents who owned slaves:

• George Washington (between 250-350 Slaves)
• Thomas Jefferson (about 200)
• James Madison (more than 100)
• James Monroe (about 75)
• Andrew Jackson (fewer than 200)
• Martin Van Buren (one)
• William Henry Harrison (eleven)
• John Tyler (about 70)
• James Polk (about 25)
• Zachary Taylor (fewer than 150)
• Andrew Johnson (probably eight)
• Ulysses S. Grant (probably five)[1]

... ... ...

Conclusion

I focused on the long passage from the Sublette's book because it seemed to me to be an objective correlative for living in the midst of a slave power, and that experience is an important - a critical - part of American history, and I believe that getting the history right is important.

And although I've written I prefer human gift to human rental (wage labor), and human rental to human sale (slavery), I don't have any grand policy pronouncements to make. I do think we need to be leery of using slavery as a metaphor; "wage slavery" is not slavery; where's the coffle? Ditto "debt slavery." (That's not to say that wages and debt are not power relations, because of course they are, but the human reality of the power relations is different.)

So all I can do is ask you to get the image of the coffle firmly in your mind, and children watching one go by. The coffle was a thing. That was what was going on. The whole thing makes me want to take a bath. And we're still living with the complicated and painful consequences of slavery today.

NOTE

Title quotation from Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address.

NOTES

• [1] On Grant and slaves, see here, here, and here.
• [2] The twenty-first century word to describe this attribute is "passion."

Eric Patton, October 28, 2015 at 11:33 am

And wage slavery isn't all that different from chattel slavery. The propaganda is much better, though.

Plantation owners: capitalists; overseers: coordinators; slaves: workers.

Sandwichman, October 28, 2015 at 1:46 pm

Wage slavery is VERY different from chattel slavery. The danger of ignoring that difference is that it obscures the intimate connection between the two, which is the legal institution of private property.

The Roman law of property derived by analogy from conditions of slave ownership. Owning land is an analog of owning slaves.

David Wayne, October 28, 2015 at 3:06 pm

The thing that stands out to me in this article is the reference that all this is a function of capitalism. All that we are and all that we know is dictated by the needs of capitalism. We don't run capitalism, it runs us. So much so that it is impossible to conceive past that little box you're in to imagine – is this the only way we can live. Born in debt. Live in debt. Die in debt. The one thing they got right: human slavery is so distasteful we can't do it openly anymore. But wage slavery is just fine, especially debt peonage. No one can complain if you get yourself into debt, just if someone else puts you there.

Synoia, October 28, 2015 at 12:27 pm

he had felt it was his patriotic duty as a Virginian

His patriotism was founded on his state, not his country?

a soldier fights for his country-right or wrong-he is not responsible for the political merits of the course he fights in" and that

Was repudiated at Nuremberg, and enshrined on the concept of "War Crimes." However, the attitude it suits many in Washington, DC today.

James Levy, October 28, 2015 at 4:04 pm

I hate my job. I am de facto a day laborer, delivering items as and when my boss tells me to. As a former university professor, this is a hard blow. But to say I and 99.9% of the population are coffled is pure nonsense. My situation is lousy.

But comparing what the black slaves went through with what I am going through is like saying the internment camps which held the Japanese-Americans were the same as the death camps in Nazi Germany. One was bad, the other indescribably worse. Not all evils are identical or commensurate.

Working for a wage is tough, but the number of workers flogged to death, publically whipped, or who had their thumbs legally broken in thumbscrews last year was pretty low. And the number of American workers last year who got raises or left one job for a better one was pretty high in comparison with your average black slave.

So cut the crap about how your job today is "just as bad" as being a slave in pre-1865 America. I can't tell if you sound more like crybabies or idiots.

Jef, October 28, 2015 at 12:31 pm

Cheap almost free oil effectively gives every american 100 to 1000 slaves. Giving up oil will be as or more difficult than giving up the slaves back then.

TarheelDem, October 28, 2015 at 4:15 pm

Any adequate reading of the history of the Civil War will show that the 11 Confederate States destroyed themselves out of lust to extend slavery to the northwestern states. They had through "compromises" extended slavery to the states south of Missouri already. The threat of urbanization and immigration creating enough free voters to outvote their 1.6 people gerrymanders terrified the Southern powers-that-be to the point of pre-emptive war. Read the Secession declarations of each state; believe them for what they say, not the subsequent reunion-period histories.

The economic benefits of the internal slave breeding industry were matched by the political benefits; they could try to outbreed the Northern increase through immigration and make profits off sales to western states.

The financial system relative to international monetary relations was so different in the ante-bellum period that the creation of Confederate money offered little incentive to punishment. Negotiation with foreign financial centers disputing the credibility of the money, yes. Would you take currency from a putative new country that was engaged in a war of secession? But as a causus belli, not likely.

The attempt to frame the United States with the responsibility for the war was primarily a post-bellum propaganda effort in support of restoring white supremacy.

Generalfeldmarschall von Hindenburg, October 28, 2015 at 5:47 pm

Yeah- the southern gentlemen were fully aware that even with the stupid 3/5 compromise, they were going to be on the losing end of a demographic shift if they couldn't expand the slave states. Hence the weird plots to annex Cuba and take over Mexico.

Oguk, October 28, 2015 at 2:43 pm

I don't know if I posted about this or not, but David Graeber's book (Debt: The first 5000 years) convincingly relates debt directly to slavery, real slavery. Creditors ("masters") rigged the game, took all their debtors assets, and when there was nothing left for them to take, they took them, as slaves. Or their wives, daughters, sons. I know, ancient slavery was different in some respects; slaves could earn their way out or be "redeemed" by a family member or other creditor. (And there was the Jubilee year – I have to read Michael Hudson on that someday.) I can accept that American chattel slavery was distinct and diabolical, but it was an intense form of something that seems to have been with us, humanity, for a long time.

2nd comment is that slave narratives, like Solomon Northrup's or Frederick Douglass's, really drive the point of this post home. It is a chilling history.

TarheelDem, October 28, 2015 at 7:43 pm

Graeber's book is excellent on the relationship between debt and slavery, a relationship useful to exploring post-bellum country-store and private debt selling and the debt slavery or working off debt for third parties. Part of this examination of debt slavery should pay attention to the way that debt was accounted for and who did the accounting. Company stores in isolated rural areas were notorious in mining, manufacturing. logging, and agriculture for false books in order to keep people in debt bondage.

But chattel slavery in America has origin in war raids, not indebtedness, war raids that were encouraged by the slave traders and in North America involved aboriginal peoples raiding other aboriginal peoples to provide Amerindian slave for transport from North America to the West Indies even into the 1700s. That arose aside and independent of English traders trading European goods on credit for deerskins (in Virginia and Carolina) and slaves. [Alan Gallay, The Indian Slave Trade: The Rise of the English Empire in the American South, 1670-1717]

The political triangulation of the sweeping frontier balance this slavery, white indentured servitude, and African chattel slavery as balances of forces to preserve the local aristocracy. So three forms of servitude co-existed until 1717, two persisted until African chattel slavery was dramatically profitable in the Tidewater tobacco plantations and Carolina rice and indigo plantations and internal increase of the plantations caught up with labor demand. And the growth of the political confederations of the "Five Civilized Tribes" in the mid-1700s shut down the Indian slave trade. The westward expansion after the War of 1812 and the closure of the overseas slave trade in 1808 created the conditions for the internal slave breeding industry with its generation of roving coffles and slave traders, it major slave markets, a good many of which have been preserved, and its new forms of finance and legal entities. This industry is even visible in census records. Recording the occupations in the 1850 or 1860 census of slave areas in the Carolinas or Virginia, one comes upon a patter in the vicinity of major plantation slaveowners. There are scattered settlements that comprise an overseer, a number of blacksmiths, a waggonmaker, and a wheelwright in close propinquity in a ratio of about one settlement for ever 150 slaves listed as property of the slaveowner. The blacksmiths made and maintained the coffles. The wagon technicians made and repaired the planters fleet for hauling bales or hogsheads. The census lists free men, who rarely are identified as black or mulatto in these areas, generally not in sensitive occupations, such as blacksmith.

Slave traders are generally listed as "merchant". You have to look from specific ads for slaves to figure out how extensive their trading business was.

Justicia, October 28, 2015 at 9:44 pm

Yes, Graeber's book is excellent on this point: "Slavery is the ultimate form of being ripped from one's context, and thus from all social relationships that make one a human being. Another way to put this is that the slave is, in a very real sense, dead."

Dead, perhaps, to the slave-owner and the laws that protected his property but very much alive and human to their companions in suffering and to those not blinded by greed, prejudice, propaganda and social convention.

TarheelDem, October 29, 2015 at 9:16 am

The notion of being dead as far as the law is concerned about his person and his property puts a very interesting twist on knowing one's "place". And greed, prejudice, propaganda, and social convention are not as much a primary issue as is the power to plunder and abuse regardless of the particular motive. It is the institutions that defend the behaviors that hold in being the attitudes. Rush Limbaugh, the shock jocks, Sheriff Clarke of Milwaukee County, and their like defend the behaviors of abusive police; that is to let black people know that the law is dead to them and to "stay in their place". Focusing on the attitude reduces the issue to an individualist one of "personal responsibility" and the action of one or a few cops instead of a pervasive network of abusive institutions held in place by a seamless nationwide network of racist propaganda, material support for abusers, and legal defenses.

Darthbobber, October 28, 2015 at 11:42 pm

Another take on Graeber's book, from the Brit libertarian (no not those libertarians) Marxists who publish Aufheben. I only agree with a portion of their critique, but its worth a read.
http://libcom.org/library/5000-years-or-debt

nobody October 28, 2015 at 3:05 pm

About those textbooks… not those in the state of Texas, but those in use in the other states, Morris Berman's got some interesting insights:

When you think about it, nearly everything in modern American history turns on the Civil War, because the ideology I have been describing (which can be more accurately described as a mythology, or grand narrative) requires us to 'fix' traditional societies and eliminate obstacles to progress. With the Civil War these two goals converged, making it the paradigm case of how we carry out, or attempt to carry out, these two projects. What the North did to the South is really the model of what America in general did and does to 'backward' (i.e., traditional) societies, if it can. You wipe out almost the entire indigenous population of North America; you steal half of Mexico; you bomb Vietnam 'back to the Stone Age' (in the immortal words of Curtis LeMay); you 'shock and awe' Iraqi civilians, and so on. In what follows, then, I want to look at the War Between the States in a completely different way than the one found in the typical American history textbook. This, in fact, is what generated the energy that led to a four-year battle and the death of 625,000 individuals. What follows is an elaboration of this argument.

Let's start with the view of the South as seen from the North. The popular image of the antebellum South, as it was presented in American history textbooks and classes when I went to high school in the North, was pretty much the same then as it is now. That is to say, we were taught that the South, as the home of slavery, was a backward and immoral place, and its refusal to abandon that institution was the cause of the Civil War. Under the leadership of Abraham Lincoln (pretty much depicted as a saint), the virtuous Union armies defeated the evil Confederate ones, and the slaves were finally set free. Mutatis mutandis, this remains the politically correct version, as well as the liberal academic version, of the war down to the present time.

[However…]

All the evidence suggests that the North's 'nobility' in fighting slavery was a long-after-the-fact justification, an attempt to portray the conflict as a victory of morality and equality over depravity. It's a thesis that gets people all worked up, but it finally doesn't wash.

[…]

In reality, the treatment of the South by the North was the template for the way the United States would come to treat any nation it regarded as an enemy: not merely a scorched earth policy, but also a 'scorched soul' policy (the destruction of the Native American population was, of course, a preview of this). From Japan to Iraq, the pattern is the same, to the extant that we have been able to impose it: first destroy the place physically (in particular, murder huge numbers of civilians, as the North did to the South during the Civil War-fifty thousand of them by 1865), and then 'Americanize' it. Humiliation, the destruction of the identity of the defeated party, has always been an important part of the equation.

[…]

Sure, the war was about slavery; it was hardly a minor issue. But it was part of a much larger one about two very different and incompatible civilizations, and a fixation on the moral question of slavery can blind us to the larger (world) context of the Civil War, which was really the American version of the global modernization process. No, I have no wish to live in a slave society; I regard it as an abomination. But the South saw a different type of abomination on the horizon, one that is now with us; and quite frankly, I have no wish to live in that one either.

Bits of chapter 4 from: Why America Filed: The Roots of Imperial Decline

TarheelDem, October 28, 2015 at 7:57 pm

The important point. The United States of America (Lincoln) did not want to fight. The abolitionists were a minority. The Southern media (newspaper editors) freaked out like to media shock jocks did over the election of Barack Obama. Unlike this time around, at least so far, the Southern states were stampeded by their elites into seceding; the state legislatures and governors were part of those elites. In the midst of the tension Edmund Ruffin, a pro-secessionist rabble-rouser from Virginia went to Charleston SC, and with the help of military school Citadel and Arsenal cadets, and SC militia, conducted a coast artillery attack on the closest military installation – Fort Sumter. And reactions escalated, very much like the diplomatic environment after the the 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. And they escalated because the Southern hotheads wanted war.

The area between the two capitals Washington and Richmond was the cockpit of the war. The first movement was offensive, towards Washington. The Southern planters wanted Lincoln out of there.

JohnnyGL, October 28, 2015 at 3:34 pm

Regarding the coffle, it seems this is early capitalism's answer to the "Trail of Tears" and the famous "Bataan Death March". Then again, maybe it's not "early" capitalism at all….I'm thinking of Malaysia and the TPP.

Anarcissie, October 28, 2015 at 4:24 pm

Many years ago I visited a small slavery museum out in the cotton fields somewhere around Memphis - I forget which side of the river it was on. It was in an old house that might be found anywhere, but more likely in a suburb than far out in the cotton fields, with no other house in view. Even the nearest line of trees was hundreds of yards away. In the largest room they had a lot of chains with large, heavy links, bigger than you would think would be necessary to hold even a very active human being.

The largest chain had been arranged in a spiral on the floor with the collars around it, and there was a picture on the wall showing a coffle, the use to which such chains would have been put. The links of the big chain had a rough, pitted surface, and were a sort of rusty reddish-black. The elderly White woman in charge told me it had been taken from a long-gone barn or shed not far away exactly as it was, where it had probably rested since slavery days. In other words, unless the wind and the rain had washed them off, you could still find the blood and sweat of slaves on the links. There was some other agricultural gear about, like the hand tools the slaves would have used.

There was not a lot of signage and no glossy brochures. Pictures on the walls depicted a plantation house and outbuildings none of which remained, with the exception of the one the museum was in. I wondered who had put the museum together. When I asked how it had come to be, the woman only said, 'It's our history. We think people should know about it.'

Felix47, October 28, 2015 at 9:27 pm

Slavery in the US was rather tame and short lived in comparison to the slavery practiced by the Muslims and Africans themselves. The Somalians enslaved the Bantus etc. etc. The Arabs enslaved everyone and I recall seeing slaves even in 1991 in Saudi Arabia…..doing the labor since descendents of Mohammed avoid physical labor if they can since they see it as demeaning. The big difference was that the Arabs did not seem to see breeding slaves as a business…..they had them castrated in Africa often before they were imported. It was not until 1960 that slavery was outlawed in Saudi Arabia although it may well continue to this day. To really understand large scale slavery we need to go back to the origins of the Muslim movement.

Liz, October 29, 2015 at 6:33 pm

Hi Lambert, the book that first put the scope of the slave trading and breeding industries into context for me was The World That Made New Orleans by Ned Sublette. It's a fascinating and terrible account and if I recall correctly, describes some of the slave breeding operations carried out by Thomas Jefferson.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on these titles.

[Oct 31, 2015] Congresswoman Calls US Effort To Oust Assad Illegal, Accuses CIA Of Backing Terroists

Neocon Wolf Blitzer against Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard

Notable quotes:

"... This is one incredible person, she stands in a league of her own. The only pol Ive heard in a decade that makes a bit of sense. I now despise only 534 members of CONgress. ..."

"... Former CIA director Allen Dulles ordered JFKs assassination because he was a threat to national security, a new book has claimed. ..."

"... Allen Dulles most certainly was involved with the murder of JFK, and ensuing coverup. Dulles was central in the Warren Commission whitewash as well ..."

"... Elected in 2012, she is the first American Samoan[3] and the first Hindu member of the United States Congress,[4] and, along with Tammy Duckworth, one of its first female combat veterans.[5] ..."

"... She has a lot of guts unlike the shitty little vile NeoCons like McCain and Lindsay Graham and the Neo-Zio-Libs like Feinstein and Schumer who are dual shit-i-zens. ..."

"... fighting against Islamic extremists. ..."

"... What the CIA, et alia, ..."

"... Islamic extremist groups, ..."

"... terrorism, ..."

"... uccessfulness ..."

"... insanities. ..."

"... AFGHAN OPIUM PRODUCTION INCREASES 35-FOLD SINCE U.S. INVASION ..."

"... http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/02/10/afghan-opium-produ... ..."

"... "Hoisted on their own petard" is an apt aphorism. ..."

"... Petard action happens at 6 minutes in, when Tulsi explains how if the U.S. repeats the same action as Iraq and Libya, the results will equal. ..."

"... That seed was already planted ..."

"... not a good interview for zio Wolfe ... ..."

Oct 31, 2015 | Zero Hedge

One point we've been particularly keen on driving home since the beginning of Russian airstrikes in Syria is that The Kremlin's move to step in on behalf of Bashar al-Assad along with Vladimir Putin's open "invitation" to Washington with regard to joining forces in the fight against terrorism effectively let the cat out of the proverbial bag.

That is, it simply wasn't possible for the US to explain why the Pentagon refused to partner with the Russians without admitting that i) the government views Assad, Russia, and Iran as a greater threat than ISIS, and ii) Washington and its regional allies don't necessarily want to see Sunni extremism wiped out in Syria and Iraq.

Admitting either one of those points would be devastating from a PR perspective. No amount of Russophobic propaganda and/or looped video clips of the Ayatollah ranting against the US would be enough to convince the public that Moscow and Tehran are a greater threat than the black flag-waving jihadists beheading Westerners and burning Jordanian pilots alive in Hollywood-esque video clips, and so, The White House has been forced to scramble around in a desperate attempt to salvage the narrative.

Well, it hasn't worked.

With each passing week, more and more people are beginning to ask the kinds of questions the Pentagon and CIA most assuredly do not want to answer and now, US Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard is out calling Washington's effort to oust Assad both "counterproductive" and "illegal." In the following priceless video clip, Gabbard accuses the CIA of arming the very same terrorists who The White House insists are "our sworn enemy" and all but tells the American public that the government is lying to them and may end up inadvertently starting "World War III."

Enjoy:

https://youtu.be/IHkher6ceaA

For more on how Russia and Iran's efforts in Syria have cornered the US from a foreign policy perspective, see "ISIS In 'Retreat' As Russia Destroys 32 Targets While Putin Trolls Obama As 'Weak With No Strategy'"

aint no fortunate son's

This is one incredible person, she stands in a league of her own. The only pol I've heard in a decade that makes a bit of sense. I now despise only 534 members of CONgress.

Paveway IV

"...Gabbard accuses the CIA of arming the very same terrorists who The White House insists are "our sworn enemy" and all but tells the American public that the government is lying to them and may end up inadvertently starting "World War III."..."

Oh, then you're saying that that's future PRESIDENT Gabbard...

Sergeiab

Damn, you might be right. Look: see the public opinion is totally shifting (Easy when you have access to all the comments of all medias, including the moderated ones). Find someone among the democrats who voice it. Give her/him "random" media exposure (she was on Bill Maher few days ago) "Sudden rise of an outsider". She's a soldier/veteran/surfer 32yo. "Incredible American story". And at some point, she says she's transgender. Instant POTUS. That fits. That fits the "change/let's do something wild for once" that everybody's craving for (Trump). And it can't be random that a dissident voice is given media exposure. And she's beyond democrat/gop... That's a lot.

Is there a closing date for the primaries?

If not, she/he might well be the 45th president.

Sergeiab

Actually she's gonna be 35 in 2016...

And she did it again:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSnXtapv9oQ

G.O.O.D

Accuses CIA Of Backing Terroists.

She left out Mossad, mI6, Saudis, Turkey and how many other zionist controlled CUNTries.

Dick Buttkiss

"Accuses CIA Of Backing Terroists."

Backing terrorist? How about being terrorists?

dot_bust

I agree. Good point.

I'd like to add that President John F. Kennedy issued an NSAM forbidding the CIA from conducting an further paramilitary operations and turned those operations over to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

President Truman only intended the CIA to analyze data from the other U.S. intelligence agencies, not to engage in any field operations. Here's his original op-ed piece about that very subject: http://www.maebrussell.com/Prouty/Harry%20Truman's%20CIA%20article.html

In the op-ed, Truman said that the CIA had begun making policy instead of simply analyzing data. He also emphasized his discomfort with the idea of the Agency participating in cloak-and-dagger operations.

SWRichmond

Thanks for the link. Truman says:

I well knew the first temporary director of the CIA, Adm. Souers, and the later permanent directors of the CIA, Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg and Allen Dulles. These were men of the highest character, patriotism and integrity-and I assume this is true of all those who continue in charge.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3271482/Did-CIA-Director-Allen-D...

Former CIA director Allen Dulles ordered JFK's assassination because he was a 'threat to national security', a new book has claimed.

Bay of Pigs

Allen Dulles most certainly was involved with the murder of JFK, and ensuing coverup. Dulles was central in the Warren Commission whitewash as well. People forget he was dumped after the Bay of Pigs fiasco with JFK saying at the time that he would "splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds".

Author David Talbot interviewed by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anYqrPRvhgo

km4

Lookout because Tulsi Gabbard has some impressive credentials

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsi_Gabbard

Elected in 2012, she is the first American Samoan[3] and the first Hindu member of the United States Congress,[4] and, along with Tammy Duckworth, one of its first female combat veterans.[5]

Military service (2004–present)

https://www.votetulsi.com/tulsi-gabbard

In 2004, when Tulsi's fellow soldiers from the 29th Brigade were called to war in Iraq, Tulsi volunteered to join them. She didn't need to put her life on the line. She could have stayed in the State House of Representatives, but in her heart, she felt it was more important to stand in solidarity with her fellow soldiers than to climb the political ladder.

Her two deployments to the war-torn and dangerous Middle East revealed both Tulsi's natural inclination to self-less service and her ability to perform well in situations demanding confidence, courage, and the ability to perform well as a member of a team. The same maturity and character that served Tulsi well in the Middle East makes her exceptionally effective in the political world.

Freddie

These banksters wars like all wars are total shit but I like her.

She is half Samoan and was a Catholic but became a Hindu.

She has a lot of guts unlike the shitty little vile NeoCons like McCain and Lindsay Graham and the Neo-Zio-Libs like Feinstein and Schumer who are dual shit-i-zens.

SWRichmond

Graham is the quintessential chickenhawk.

Radical Marijuana

While I agreed with your overview, WTFRLY, at the 1:25 mark I think she is seriously mistaken about the priority being fighting against Islamic extremists. The real enemy of the American People has been the international bankers, who have almost totally captured control over the government of the USA, through POLITICAL FUNDING ENFORCING FRAUDS.

Her basic opinion regarding 9/11 deliberately ignores that 9/11 was an inside job, false flag attack, which was aided and abetted by the Deep State Shadow Government. Everything that the USA has been doing has been actually carrying out the international bankers' agenda. The countries targeted for regime change were obstacles to the consolidation of the globalized hegemony of the international bankers, who are the best organized gangsters, the banksters, that have already captured control over all NATO governments, as is painfully obvious to anyone who thinks critically about how and why those governments ENFORCE FRAUDS by privately controlled banks.

What the CIA, et alia, having been doing, since the overthrow of the government of Iran back in 1953, has been creating "Islamic extremist groups," as the responses of the various Islamic countries having been controlled by the European invasions, and later American invasions, which were always directed at capturing control over the development of the natural resources, through maintaining the control over the monetary systems through which that was done.

The whole of human history has been the exponential growth of social pyramid systems based upon being able to back up lies with violence, becoming more sophisticated and integrated systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, which have become globalized systems of electronic money frauds, backed by the threat of force from atomic bombs. There is indeed a serious risk of NATO countries, already almost totally controlled by the international bankers, getting into conflicts with the national interests of various countries which no longer are so easy for the banksters to continue to control.

The banksters have been pushing through their agenda of wars based on deceits, in order to back up their debt slavery systems, and those were primarily the reasons for the series of regime changes, which appear to have stalled with respect to Syria. That Russia has decided that it is geopolitically able, along with the propaganda cover of fighting "terrorism," to step in with significant military support of the Syrian regime is indeed in severe conflict with the agenda of the international banksters, who are collectively a group of trillionaire mass murderers.

Human history has become the excessive successfulness of the application of the methods of organized crime to control governments, through the vicious spirals of POLITICAL FUNDING ENFORCING FRAUDS, to develop to the point of runaway criminal insanities. While the Congresswoman above provided more penetrating analysis than one is used to be presented on the mainstream mass media, and she did that fairly well, she still is presenting the political problems only on very superficial levels ...

JLee2027

When a Hindu women who rides a surfboard starts making more sense than the President, and the entire Democratic Party I become speechless.

scrappy

She is an example of integrity standing up for what is right. I see many people of heart doing the same as this unfolds. We are supposed to support the "Underdog" Remember?

UNDERDOG Cartoon Intro

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHej4ZqZDwo&html5=1

WTFRLY

White House, Media Silent One Year After Murder of US Reporter Who Exposed Western Links to ISIS October 20, 2015

JustObserving

Heroin production up only 3500% since US invaded:

AFGHAN OPIUM PRODUCTION INCREASES 35-FOLD SINCE U.S. INVASION

http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/02/10/afghan-opium-produ...

MEFOBILLS

"Hoisted on their own petard" is an apt aphorism.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hoist_by_one%27s_own_petard

To be hurt or destroyed by one's own plot or device intended for another; to be "blown up by one's own bomb"

The beautiful Tulsi Gabbard excerpt from Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsi_Gabbard

Her father is of Samoan/European heritage and is a practicing Catholic who is a lector at his church, but also enjoys practicing mantra meditation, including kirtan.[7] Her mother is of Euro-American descent and a practicing Hindu.[7] Tulsi fully embracedHinduism as a teenage

At 5 minutes in to video, Wolf B. mentions that Tulsi is a combat veteran. She is also on Senate Arms services committee.

The not so beautiful Wolf Blitzer:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Blitzer

Blitzer was born in Augsburg, Germany] the son of Cesia Blitzer (née Zylberfuden), a homemaker, and David Blitzer, a home builder. His parents were Jewish refugees from O?wi?cim, Poland, and Holocaust survivors… While at Johns Hopkins, Blitzer studied abroad at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he learned Hebrew.

Petard action happens at 6 minutes in, when Tulsi explains how if the U.S. repeats the same action as Iraq and Libya, the results will equal.

"Things that are being said right now about Assad, were said about Ghadaffi.., they were said about Saddam Hussein, by those who were advocating for the U.S. to intervene, to go overthrow those regimes and dictators. The fact is, if that happens here in Syria,….far worse situation, persecution of religious minorities and Christians."

Who advocated to start ME wars? Wolf then puts words in her mouth, suggesting that Hezbollah and Russians are doing the U.S. a favor.

To give Wolf full credit, he doesn't explode when Tulsi mentions persecution of the Christians, as said Christians MUST be his enemy and color Wolf's wordview, given his parents refugee history. Oh the web we weave, when we intend to deceive.

rejected

Well, she managed to get in the meme "We were attacked by Al Qaeda on 9/11". They push that meme every chance they get.

The spooks at the CIA know how to push propaganda. She will get all kinds of credibility appearing to oppose the spooks and very few will notice the 9/11 comment but the seed will be fertilized and grow stronger.

ebear

"....very few will notice the 9/11 comment but the seed will be fertilized and grow stronger."

I beg to differ. That seed was already planted. Why are we supporting the people who attacked us? - keeps it nice and simple. Turns the entire narrative against them.

One dragon at a time.

Omega_Man

not a good interview for zio Wolfe ...

I didn't like this girl before, but starting to like her.

She needs a security team... to protect her from the US Gov... no joke

[Oct 30, 2015] Russia Takes Over The Mid-East Moscow Gets Green Light For Strikes In Iraq, Sets Up Alliance With Jordan

A lot of wishful thinking. The USA still remain world only superpower and (in somewhat diminished way) as well as a technological leader. And the USA is still the most powerful (neoliberal) empire (that does not contradict dismal state of the USA infrastructure; that's typical for empire on late stage of development). It just overextended itself due to neocon dominance in the US politics.

And remember that Russia is neoliberal state too. And it was Putin who got Russia into WTO. Putin is a unique leader, but his rule is not eternal. An there is nobody after him to continue defiant course. actually Russia will face crisis of leadership after he is gone. So in a way TINA (or PAX Americana) still hold.

Notable quotes:

"... Zero fucking accountability. Greenspan and Bernanke didnt get it for blowing the Mother of All Bubbles. Clinton didnt get it for NAFTA and tearing down Glass-Steagal. Bush didnt get it for being asleep at the switch for 9/11 and then the wonderful Iraq and Afghan wars. Hilary didnt get it for creating all-terror zones in Libya. And Obama wont get it for destroying health care and doubling the national debt. ..."

"... think some of you are missing the big picture. Say that US Plan-B failed-take over Syria after Iraq. Isis are Sunnis. US have always supported Sunnis. So, Isis controls Iraq, with US and Saudi support (Plan-C). Now, say that in a couple years US, Saudi, and Israel manage a Coup D'état in Syria. ..."

"... As difficult as it is for most westerners to wrap their heads around... we are on the wrong side. Our side is really and truly the dark side. The side that is ruled by the banking cabal and who is hell bent on causing war after war after war in the name of expanding their hold on the entire planet. ..."

"... This is an unending war, if the US and the west pulls out of it and now Russia owns the mess. Russias economy is rather fucked at the moment and they are in no position to be fighting endless wars. ..."

"... ---Thanks to the fact that the Western media has held up ISIS as the devil incarnate........... ..."

"... ......... ..."

"... For now, however, expect ISIS to gradually disappear from the mainstream medias front pages. ..."

"... youve got a whole pentagon full of neocons whose heads are about to pop off; the urge in that building to intervene, er help, and blow shit up has to be extreme; if i was prezzy purple dank, id be maybe a little nervous of the suicide bug if you get it. ..."

"... The US and the House of Saud created, by accident or design, all the gangs of Muslim mass murderers currently terrorizing the planet. You want order restored and something done about Muslim mass murderers in your region, you bring in the Russians. ..."

"... With dirty Saudi oil money removed from the politics of Western nations, maybe something will finally be done to reverse Islamisation in the West. ..."

"... I agree with most of your comment, but Israel has never shown any interest in peace. If anything, they want the same kind of peace the US gave to the Native Americans (in this case, the Palestinians). ..."

"... Jordan? HAHAHA! Will they have their anti-ISIS intelligence center three blocks away from their USA sponsored ISIS training centers, or would that be taboo? What shameless whores those people must be. Its astonishing how quickly the wind can change direction. ..."

"... The US-led rules, which enforces verification of targets, regularly give IS militants time to save their supplies, equipment and fighters, they said. I dont see any similar constraint by US forces when it comes to bombing hospitals and wedding parties... ..."

"... Dont forget ISISs tanker trucks providing both income to ISIS and a increased oil supply to the market to keep prices down and ruin Russia economically. ..."

"... I suppose yesterday you noticed the US Syrian dwarfs came out out of the woodwork to tell the western MSM how many hospitals the Russians had bombed. ..."

"... You really have to hand it to the idiots (neocons) running DC. They totally blew it with the orchestration and training of ISIS to overthrow Assad, all the while having the MSM demonize ISIS as the bogeyman of the Middle East. Personally, I think the Ruskies are a bit slow on the uptake here. Why they didnt pull this off a year ago is beyond me. Maybe they have more patience than I do. ..."

"... Jordan has no choice but to join the Syrian/Russian/Iraq/Iran coalition. ISIS supply lines to and from Turkey will be cut. While the coalition nulifies US backed Anti-Assad moderate opposition , ISIS will be pushed southeast into eastern Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Jordan cant protect itself from US backed ISIS and sees Russia as its only savior. ..."

"... I agree that the Saudis will never ally with Iran, but we should clarify that the conflict you are describing is not Sunni vs Shia. but Wahhabi cultists versus mainstream Sunni and Shia. The Syrian army is 60% Sunni ..."

"... Egypt is also traditional Sunni and will likely move toward Russia and abandon the Saudis. ..."

"... Yes, the sectarian civil war nonsense was created to hide and counter the guerrilla war in Iraq. Iraq never had a civil war before, and there hadnt been a sectarian civil war anywhere. That the heavily intermarried anti-occupation Arabs needed to be fragmented into ghettos (just like the Palestinians naturally) ..."

"... Obama vowed to wage an unrelenting war on ISIL/ISIS. He said it would be a long haul, but terrorists would never hide from the USA. Fast forward to a full year of ISIL advances on the ground backed by a flood of US supplied TOW Anti Tank Guided Missiles, in use by Al-Qaeda and ISIL both. So Russia steps in to the fight. Obama demands they stop their sir strikes, stop arming Assad, and go home. ..."

"... Thats the best part about solving a problem that youve created. The severity of the problem will conveniently wax and wane to suit your needs. Need to scare the sheeple and keep foreign vassals loyal? Step #1 Create a pet bogeyman. Step #2: Defeat the pet bogeyman. Repeat as often as needed to maintain hegemony. ..."

"... I admire Putin for his steadfast defense of his country in the face of covert terrorism from the west. I fear the ME might be a quagmire although surely he better understands it than I do. As for the neocunts, everyone of you should die for the destruction youve sewn ..."

"... List of GCC countries, Gulf countries *Great Data Site-- Note: It is the NGOs belonging to the UAE Qatar that fund the jihadist throughout the *muslim-sunni world... with Saudi Arabia at the helm. The geographic landscape is telling...[Qatar and Bahrain have gargantuan R R military base outpost for USSA military brass] while most jihadist are recruited throughout the worlds muslim-sunni communities and trained in Jordan, and Pakistan etel! ..."

"... It should not be surprising that Putin, who has an excellent grasp of foreign affairs and intellectually far above most, if not all US policy makers, will exploit this situation. Further, ISIS can easily create major problems in Jordan, (where do they go once they are driven out of Syria?) something the King of Jordan, is no doubt well aware. Bottom line- the 2003 US invasion and occupation of Iraq may well go down as the biggest military and economic disaster in world history. ..."

"... And just when are Germans, Italians, French and the Eastern European wanna-bes going to demand that NATO be dissolved and the American MIC permanently removed from their landscape(s) after 70 years of hovering ?... ..."

"... Lay the blame at the feet of those most responsible for this crisis who were coerced, bribed and threatened if they didnt do with impunity what the American IC and military demanded them to do and not the innocent begging for refuge while your government(s) assisted in the looting operation of their sovereign Countries! ..."

Oct 24, 2015 | Zero Hedge

OpenThePodBayDoorHAL

Zero fucking accountability. Greenspan and Bernanke didn't get it for blowing the Mother of All Bubbles. Clinton didn't get it for NAFTA and tearing down Glass-Steagal. Bush didn't get it for being asleep at the switch for 9/11 and then the wonderful Iraq and Afghan wars. Hilary didn't get it for creating all-terror zones in Libya. And Obama won't get it for destroying health care and doubling the national debt.

WTF are you gonna do. The United States of Amnesia.

BTW Turkey is the next Syria, you heard it here first.

jeff montanye

Bush was not asleep at the switch on 9-11. he just played one on teevee.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsoY3AIRUGA
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YW6mJOqRDI4
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhROd7Jt3-w
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgM6hjNedE0
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rj_AL4OlmHc
• http://www.luogocomune.net/site/modules/sections/index.php
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVHstSrC1CQ
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gORu-68SHpE

Escrava Isaura

I think some of you are missing the big picture. Say that US Plan-B failed-take over Syria after Iraq. Isis are Sunnis. US have always supported Sunnis. So, Isis controls Iraq, with US and Saudi support (Plan-C). Now, say that in a couple years US, Saudi, and Israel manage a Coup D'état in Syria.

... ... ...

Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived(s).......

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1781680795?refRID=B3QFWNTPC57XETC7CW56&ref_=pd_ybh_a_1

... ... ...

1033eruth

The writer of this comment is really stupid, ignorant and moronic. The middle east isn't ours. Its not our toy. Russia didn't steal our toy. Its not the taxpayers job to fund a global playground for the US military to "exert our will".

Everything in the above article was PURE PROPAGANDA designed to promote some type of kneejerk response to Russia stealing our "toy".

Leave it alone. The middle east is like a big turd pile. We've got to learn to stop playing in it. Apparently readers of ZH think that playing King of the Turd Pile is exactly what taxpayers are supposed to finance.

Pure Evil

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov's saying about selling the capitalists the rope to hang themselves seems almost apropos in this situation.

After 9-11 the Russians allowed the former Soviet Republics to open up forward operating bases for the US to supply its foray into Afghanistan. When we went a bridge to far they then applied the pressure to deny access to these former airfields and our only supply route is now through Pakistan. And, undoubtedly the Pakistanis would more than be willing to sell us out to the Chinese and Russians.

With Iraq they sat back and watched us waste not only men and war fighting material but bleed the US Treasury dry.

They also stood down as we stoked the Arab Spring from Tunisia to Libya to Syria. Now Europe suffers from their own Arab Spring as millions of Sunni with no place to live invade Europe.

We overturn Saddam only to replace him with Shia leaders in control and we can only sit back and wonder why the Iranians control the Iraqi army.

We've spent trillions upon trillions of dollars only to hand over Syria and Iraq on a silver platter to Russia and Iran.

... ... ...

The neocons who consider themselves the best and brightest have totally botched everything and they're about to finish the take down of the US via amnesty, Obamacare, TPP, gun control, more and even higher immigration, and Wall Street corruption.

Can America afford anymore of their hubris?

Albertarocks

I think most of the world can see what's going to happen once Putin is finished putting the pieces all back together again. Peace is going to break out. And that's something that the US admin. just can't comprehend. [And I don't mean 'the American people'. It's the admin. acting as the puppet for the global banking mafia.] Can they accept peace in the Middle East? Hard to say, but when there is peace in the world, the US military industrial complex, the bankers, the fascist corporations, the dark side in general can't rule and make obscene amounts of money robbing the rest of the world.

As difficult as it is for most westerners to wrap their heads around... we are on the wrong side. Our 'side' is really and truly the dark side. The side that is ruled by the banking cabal and who is hell bent on causing war after war after war in the name of expanding their hold on the entire planet.

It's also considered a mortal sin in the west to cheer for the enemy. And maybe that's the proper and loyal stance to have, but cheering for Putin's success is not cheering for the enemy. The dark side, 'our side', is the world's enemy. Your children's enemy. Your grand children's enemy. The enemy of all of humanity and what is 'right'. Then enemy of this entire once-beautiful planet.

So ya, I want to see Putin be left alone to reassemble the god damned mess the bankers have caused. And then I want to see westerners turn our furious gaze inward... at the real cause of all the world's trouble. Our governments' day of reckoning is what westerners should be focusing on.

Paveway IV

"...It's also considered a mortal sin in the west to cheer for the enemy..."

Critical thinking ability is also a mortal sin in the West. Which would quickly lead one to surmise that the term 'enemy' is a neurolinguistic trick used by psychopaths to make you do something against your will, morals or better judgement. Replace 'enemy' with a more succinct term: 'evil'. Is Russia evil? No. Would you cheer for evil? Of course not. See how easy it is to untwist the psychopath's perverted logic?

California Nightmares

Some great comments, here. I'm afraid to thunbs up some of these. Microsoft and Google are probably capturing my every mouse click.

I offer only one thought: were the Russians (God bless 'em) to attain control of most of the Middle East's oil, we zeros in the USA would find ourselves living back in 1850.

ThroxxOfVron

"I think most of the world can see what's going to happen once Putin is finished putting the pieces all back together again. Peace is going to break out. And that's something that the US admin. just can't comprehend. "

I don't think that the War Profiteers are going to just shrug, stop taking our money from us, and find useful productive activities with which to earn honest livings so easily...

It's right about next year that South America should start to disintegrate.

Argentina., Venezuela, Brazil, Mexico: are ALL in serious trouble due to excessive/corrosive mismanagement and corruption, narco trade and human trafficing dynamics, commodities cycle collaps/reversions, resource depletions, etc..

Texas will have it's 'Hungarian' border moment soon enough as large populations finally give up any hope for political order and economic stability in their homelands and migrate north to the relative political stability and economic health ( and the generous social/welfare benefits! ) offered by the political ideologues in the US and Canada...

I expect that the usual political/policy factions the US will each welcome a wave of several millions of migrants, and launch military incursions into convulsing failed or failing South American states, albeit for differently stated reasons or ideological affinities...

IF the South American situation is not a large enough crisis to merit interventions and migrations it will be aggravated/enhanced to the point where it is worth of interventions by the Warfare/Welfare State nexus.

trulz4lulz

This is amazing!! Murikistan totally has lost control of their petrodollar superiority in 5 WEEKS! The rest will just be formalities of setting up the re republics of Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, and Afghanistan for russia and iran to reside over. This is the best cock-up in the history of the modern era!

Masterclass geopolitical strategy, Russia and Iran. Not like it wasn't handed to you on a silver platter or anything by obombya and his nerry band of mentally retarded sycophants, but still. Well played.

P.S. Murikistan doesn't survive this. Im hoping the great lakes region goes to the canadians though.

chunga

I've been thinking for a while that for USSA to maintain the petro-dollar reserve status it needs it's military to have at least an aura of invinciblity. Without that it would be tough to keep doing tricks like QE. And without the QE financial tricks it would be tough to pay for the giant military so catch-22.

Since USSA has fucked with just about everybody over there, their list of allies is pretty bad mainly just cutthroat Saudi Arabia and Israel. With the Russians giving Uncle Scam the finger it might embolden others to do the same. That's why I fear 'Murika might fly off the handle over this and really escalate the shooting because it has no choice. They've burned up all their goodwill internationally so only tool they have is a hammer.

Albertarocks -> chunga

I couldn't possibly agree with you more. You nailed it. Sam is in such a pickle. The bankers have led the US down the garden path, using it as it's 'bully branch', and this is more or less what I meant by our government being held to account. 90% of Congress should be charged with treason, given a fair trial and be made to suffer the consequences. If any one of them are found 'not guilty', then the judge should be charged with treason as well since it is already 100% obvious that when any one of them who signs bills, unread, at midnight, they have just committed an act of treason in that irresponsible act alone. I mean it's just incredible how evil the admin. has become. It's time to shake that house apart and bring 'rule of law' back into the forefront where it belongs. And then the oversight agencies like the SEC and the FDA... it's time to tear those demonic agencies to shreds and deal with their leaders accordingly. Those are the people who should probably pay the ultimate penalty first.

Freddie

the speed - 5 weeks - makes me think this has all been planned out. The installation of See Eye Aye NWO shit like Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obola makes me wonder. All four are See Eye Aye Moles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTuuPx0hFYM

All four are related. See video above. The USSA is a joke filled with idiots brainwashed by TV and Zollywood.

Omen IV

So the usa circles Russia and China with most of the 700 bases it operates and Iran in motion with Russia's help to circle Saudi Arabia with its own sphere of operation - pushing ISIS / ISIL / Daesh / Free Syrian Army / Al Nusra et al = Sunni's - to recognize the big prize that SA represents to ALL Sunni

The Princes right now have Mecca ???

laomei

I'm failing to see the downside to any of this. The US gets bitched at no matter what it does now. It's always wrong in some way or another, so fuck it I guess. Russia, which is MUCH CLOSER than the US is to this mess now gets to stick their dick into this bee hive and see what comes of it. This is an unending war, if the US and the west pulls out of it and now Russia owns the mess. Russia's economy is rather fucked at the moment and they are in no position to be fighting endless wars.

monk27

Russia's economy is much less fucked than America's economy. Printing USD with abandon (with and without issuing corresponding debt), and stuffing them into your own banks, hardly qualifies as "economy". By any measure you choose, US is in worse shape than Russia, corruption included...

At this point, probably the best thing US could hope for would be to clean up it's act internally (filling the jails with financial crooks would help), and do nothing as foreign policy, at least for a while. Detoxification is essential for survival...

Usurious

Tyler Durden----''Thanks to the fact that the Western media has held up ISIS as the devil incarnate''...........

can somebody make a youtube video montage of the talking heads, retired generals, republican debate freak show contestants, PNAC ZIO-CONs telling us how evil ISIS is/are ..........because ISIS has disappearded from the MSM headlines as Tyler predicted 2 weeks ago.....

Tyler Durden--''For now, however, expect ISIS to gradually disappear from the mainstream media's front pages.''

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-10-11/end-isis-iraq-air-force-claims-...

pliny the longer -> laomei

re laomei: allow me to take a stab at 'splaining this: the reason it matters is because you've got a whole pentagon full of neocons whose heads are about to pop off; the urge in that building to intervene, er help, and blow shit up has to be extreme; if i was prezzy purple dank, i'd be maybe a little nervous of the suicide bug if you get it.

also, for how long does anyone think israel is going to stand by and let this shit show build? they're playing it cool for now. but so did Putin until about 60 days ago . . .

this all of course is just a guess; WTF do i know, i'm just a dumb sum bitch that pays my bills and half of everyone else's;

Niall Of The Nine Hostages

It's not a "foolproof cover story." It's the truth. The US and the House of Saud created, by accident or design, all the gangs of Muslim mass murderers currently terrorizing the planet. You want order restored and something done about Muslim mass murderers in your region, you bring in the Russians.

On to Riyadh, Doha and Dubai. After the House of Saud and Thani are driven from power and liquidated, you won't hear another word about the war on terror. With dirty Saudi oil money removed from the politics of Western nations, maybe something will finally be done to reverse Islamisation in the West.

And there will be peace in Israel for forty years.

grekko -> Niall Of The Nine Hostages

You really have to eliminate Bibi first, and his whole neocon cadre. He incites the other side to be stupid, so he can reap the votes of the stupid. Then there will be peace.

Caleb Abell

I agree with most of your comment, but Israel has never shown any interest in peace. If anything, they want the same kind of peace the US gave to the Native Americans (in this case, the Palestinians).

Jack's Raging Bile Duct

Jordan? HAHAHA! Will they have their anti-ISIS intelligence center three blocks away from their USA sponsored ISIS training centers, or would that be taboo? What shameless whores those people must be. It's astonishing how quickly the wind can change direction.

smacker

[copied over from previous article]

This looks like it's one of the tactics used by US forces in Syria/Iraq to minimise any bombing damage to its ISIS terrorist friends:

from that article at http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/iraq-authorises-russia-strike-islamic-...

" "They [the US-led coalition] refuse to strike private cars, mosques, bridges, schools despite the fact Daesh militants are mainly using these places as headquarters," a senior military officer [...] told MEE."

"The US-led rules, which enforces verification of targets, regularly give IS militants time to save their supplies, equipment and fighters, they said." I don't see any similar constraint by US forces when it comes to bombing hospitals and wedding parties...

bid the soldier

Don't forget ISIS's tanker trucks providing both income to ISIS and a increased oil supply to the market to keep prices down and ruin Russia economically.

smacker

Yep, it'll be good if Putin's bombers locate a few ISIS oil convoys and deal with them. That won't please the Turkish middle-men.

bid the soldier... -> smacker

I suppose yesterday you noticed the US Syrian dwarfs came out out of the woodwork to tell the western MSM how many hospitals the Russians had bombed.

Apparently unnewsworthy until the US bombed the MSF hospital in Afghanistan.

Its hard to say which is more pathetic: the US military or US propaganda.

Lea

"Iraq allows Russia to strike ISIL" is nowhere but on this Turkish site. I call BS. The whole of the Russian media would make this headlines. There is zilch, nada on Sputnik, RT or TASS.

grekko

You really have to hand it to the idiots (neocons) running DC. They totally blew it with the orchestration and training of ISIS to overthrow Assad, all the while having the MSM demonize ISIS as the bogeyman of the Middle East. Personally, I think the Ruskies are a bit slow on the uptake here. Why they didn't pull this off a year ago is beyond me. Maybe they have more patience than I do.

dustyfin

There's a time for everything.

A year ago Russia had other concerns, its military was a year less well prepared and a year ago, I think that Putin and his government still thought that some form of rapprochement could be made with The West.

Also, to get this far has required a whole heap of planning, negotiating, horse trading and arm twisting. Think of this as being the 'overnight success' that took a decade to achieve!

sudzee

Jordan has no choice but to join the Syrian/Russian/Iraq/Iran coalition. ISIS supply lines to and from Turkey will be cut. While the coalition nulifies US backed Anti-Assad "moderate opposition", ISIS will be pushed southeast into eastern Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Jordan can't protect itself from US backed ISIS and sees Russia as its only savior.

Saudi Arabia will have no choice soon but to join the coalition as well.

Get ready to price oil in Rubles or gold as the US is completely forced out of the entire middle east.

PrimalScream

I will differ with you on that one. The Saudis will never join Russia and Iran - that would be a union between Sunnis and Shiites. It is not going to happen. This new power struggle pits Sunni nations directly against the Shiites. It will be big and it will be bloody.

Rhett72

I agree that the Saudis will never ally with Iran, but we should clarify that the conflict you are describing is not Sunni vs Shia. but Wahhabi cultists versus mainstream Sunni and Shia. The Syrian army is 60% Sunni, and the Jordanian Hashemites are traditional Sunnis descended from Prophet Muhammad who were expelled from Mecca by the Saudis. Egypt is also traditional Sunni and will likely move toward Russia and abandon the Saudis.

Zadig

Yes, the sectarian civil war nonsense was created to hide and counter the guerrilla war in Iraq. Iraq never had a civil war before, and there hadn't been a 'sectarian civil war' anywhere. That the heavily intermarried anti-occupation Arabs needed to be fragmented into ghettos (just like the Palestinians naturally), but the pro-occupation Kurds didn't should have made things obvious to everyone.

Jack Burton

Obama vowed to wage an unrelenting war on ISIL/ISIS. He said it would be a long haul, but terrorists would never hide from the USA. Fast forward to a full year of ISIL advances on the ground backed by a flood of US supplied TOW Anti Tank Guided Missiles, in use by Al-Qaeda and ISIL both. So Russia steps in to the fight. Obama demands they stop their sir strikes, stop arming Assad, and go home.

Wanna see what Russia at war looks like? Want to see how they answer ISIL chopping heads off, eating organs etc. Watch the FULL video below of the Syrian Arab Army employ their new Russian supplied TOS-1 thermobaric weapon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SrKZd5tpNo

Zadig

That's the best part about solving a problem that you've created. The severity of the problem will conveniently wax and wane to suit your needs. Need to scare the sheeple and keep foreign vassals loyal? Step #1 Create a pet bogeyman. Step #2: Defeat the pet bogeyman. Repeat as often as needed to maintain hegemony.

Russia jumping in at Step #2 to reap the plaudits (and weapon sales!), is probably what Mordor hates the most about all this.

taopraxis

People who think Russia and China and the USA are enemies probably think Republicans and Democrats are enemies. Step back and it seems fairly obvious that someone behind the scene is moving these pieces around on the global chess board and the political puppets are merely implementing the new policies.

Obama looks like a Marketing Prez. Putin acts more like a COO. Abe is CFO, apparently, a frightening thought. Not sure what the Chinese and Saudi top dogs are all about...real players, maybe. All just conjecture, but the way the USA pulled out and the Russians moved in looked too well coordinated to be anything other than that...coordinated.

rejected

Hopefully President Putin doesn't put too much on his plate. The ussa is setting up fresh arms deliveries to the terrorists as we ponder.

It's going to be tough going for the Russian Federation to clean up the mess the ussa has made of the ME over the last 25 years. The whole damn place is a complete disaster with Arabs killing each other and Israel killing as many Palestinians as they can.

It's astonishing the Arabs, like the Ukrainians, can't seem to understand the ussa modus operandi that is,,, start a bunch of crap then back off and watch the fun. Sort of like the bar fight scenes in movies where the perp that starts the brawl exits once everyone is fighting.

Berspankme

I admire Putin for his steadfast defense of his country in the face of covert terrorism from the west. I fear the ME might be a quagmire although surely he better understands it than I do. As for the neocunts, everyone of you should die for the destruction you've sewn

earleflorida

Why waste valuable resources dividing and conquering in a medieval world, when religion can do the trick without unsheathing a sword? All but[t] for,... only the might being in the hands of the dual-mine'd pen'heads[?], is all one needs as a metaphoric representation of a classical 'Damocles Dilemma' victory? Why tell your right hand what your doing when the left will do it for you in a asymmetric 'syncreticism'!

"Sunni - Shia Split the Mideast new great divide" http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2013/09/06/sunnishia_split_the_mideasts_new_great_divide.html

"List of GCC countries, Gulf countries' *Great Data Site-- Note: It is the 'NGOs' belonging to the UAE & Qatar that fund the jihadist throughout the *muslim-sunni world... with Saudi Arabia at the helm. The geographic landscape is telling...[Qatar and Bahrain have gargantuan R&R military base outpost for USSA military brass] while most jihadist are recruited throughout the worlds muslim-sunni communities and trained in Jordan, and Pakistan etel!

http://www.dubaifaqs.com/list-of-gcc-countries.php

"Sunnis and Shia in the Middle`East" http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-25434060

Lastly, a read-between-the-lines of myopic misinformation atavistic Machiavellian protean...[?] "Obams Regime's Support of Al Qaeda and ISIS" http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article39005.htm

Sandmann

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2015/10/21/breaking-story-israeli-general-c...

"There is a strong cooperation between MOSSAD and ISIS top military commanders...Israeli advisors helping the Organization on laying out strategic and military plans, and guiding them in the battlefield"

The terrorist organization also has military consultants from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates and Jordan. Saudi Arabia has so far provided ISIS with 30,000 vehicles, while Jordan rendered 4500 vehicles. Qatar and United Arab Emirates delivered funds for covering ISIS overall expenditure.

The planes belonging to the aforesaid countries are still landing in the Mosel airport, carrying military aid and fighters, especially via the Jordanian borders.

Phillyguy

Key events in US Iraq campaign

1. Judy Miller and Michael Gordon publish their piece in the paper of record (NYT) about Sadam Hussein's attempts to obtain parts for nuclear weapons in 2002 (later shown to be nonsense).
2. Colin Powell uses above "intelligence" in his UN speech, effectively creating a casus belli for Bush II invasion/occupation of Iraq.
3. Don Rumsfeld claims the Iraq war will cost circa $ 70 billion, paid for with Iraqi oil revenue. Reality check- the Iraq campaign will end up costing US taxpayers $4-6 trillion.
4. Immediately following the US invasion, US military disbands the Iraqi armed forces, many of whom later join ISIS/ISIL/Daesh.

The arrogance, dishonesty and outright incompetence of this campaign is breathtaking. Despite spending significant lives and treasure, the US failed to obtain any imperial rent (oil concessions, etc) from this war.

It should not be surprising that Putin, who has an excellent grasp of foreign affairs and intellectually far above most, if not all US policy makers, will exploit this situation. Further, ISIS can easily create major problems in Jordan, (where do they go once they are driven out of Syria?) something the King of Jordan, is no doubt well aware. Bottom line- the 2003 US invasion and occupation of Iraq may well go down as the biggest military and economic disaster in world history.

Son of Captain Nemo

Regardless of your stance on whether the EU should be receptive to the millions of asylum seekers fleeing the war-torn Mid-East, the simple fact is that if you remain in Syria, you are risking your life on a daily basis, caught in the crossfire between a bewildering array of state actors, rebel groups, and proxy armies, all with competing agendas.

And just when are Germans, Italians, French and the Eastern European wanna-bes going to demand that NATO be dissolved and the American MIC permanently removed from their landscape(s) after 70 years of "hovering"?...

Lay the blame at the feet of those most responsible for this crisis who were coerced, bribed and threatened if they didn't do with impunity what the American IC and military demanded them to do and not the innocent begging for refuge while your government(s) assisted in the looting operation of their sovereign Countries!

P.S.

If PIGIDA were ever to wage that kind of a campaign and align themselves with the "left" that is already anti-American the U.S. will be finished!

[Oct 29, 2015] Sheldon Wolin's the reason I began drinking coffee

Sheldon Wolin RIP -- Wolin's Politics and Vision, which remains to this day the single best book on Western political theory

Notable quotes:

"... In classic totalitarianism, thinking here now about the Nazis and the fascists, and also even about the communists, the economy is viewed as a tool which the powers that be manipulate and utilize in accordance with what they conceive to be the political requirements of ruling. ..."

"... Now, in inverted totalitarianism, the imagery is that of a populace which is enshrined as the leadership group but which in fact doesn't rule, but which is turned upside down in the sense that the people are enshrined at the top but don't rule. ..."

"... democracy, I think, from the beginning never quite managed to make the kind of case for an economic order that would sustain and help to develop democracy rather than being a kind of constant threat to the egalitarianism and popular rule that democracy stands for. ..."

"... Capitalism is destructive because it has to eliminate the kind of custom, mores, political values, even institutions that present any kind of credible threat to the autonomy of the economy. And it's that–that's where the battle lies. Capitalism wants an autonomous economy. They want a political order subservient to the needs of the economy. ..."

Oct 28, 2015 | coreyrobin.com

Sheldon Wolin's the reason I began drinking coffee.

I was a freshman at Princeton. It was the fall of 1985. I signed up to take a course called "Modern Political Theory." It was scheduled for Mondays and Wednesdays at 9 am. I had no idea what I was doing. I stumbled into class, and there was a man with white hair and a trim white beard, lecturing on Machiavelli. I was transfixed.

There was just one problem: I was-still am-most definitely not a morning person. Even though the lectures were riveting, I had to fight my tendency to fall asleep. Even worse, I had to fight my tendency to sleep in.

So I started-- drinking coffee. I'd show up for class fully caffeinated. And proceeded to work my way through the canon-Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, along with some texts you don't often get in intro theory courses (the Putney Debates, Montesquieu's Persian Letters, and for a last hurrah: Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations)-under the guidance of one of the great readers of the twentieth century.

More than anything else, that's what Sheldon Wolin was: a reader of texts. He approached The Prince as if it were a novel, identifying its narrative voice, analyzing the literary construction of the characters who populated the text (new prince, customary prince, centaur, the people), examining the structural tensions in the narrative (How does a Machiavellian adviser advise a non-Machiavellian prince?), and so on. It was exhilarating.

And then after class I'd head straight for Firestone Library; read whatever we were reading that week in class; follow along, chapter by chapter, with Wolin's Politics and Vision, which remains to this day the single best book on Western political theory that I know of (even though lots of the texts we were talking about in class don't appear there, or appear there with very different interpretations from the ones Wolin was offering in class: the man never stood still, intellectually); and get my second cup of coffee.

This is all a long wind-up to the fact that this morning, my friend Antonio Vazquez-Arroyo, sent me a two-part interview that Chris Hedges conducted with Wolin, who's living out in Salem, Oregon now. From his Wikipedia page, I gather that Wolin's 92. He looks exactly the same as he did in 1985. And sounds the same. Though it seems from the video as if he may now be losing his sight. Which is devastating when I think about the opening passages of Politics and Vision, about how vision is so critical to the political theorist and the practice of theoria.

Anyway, here he is, talking to Hedges about his thesis of "inverted totalitarianism":

In classic totalitarianism, thinking here now about the Nazis and the fascists, and also even about the communists, the economy is viewed as a tool which the powers that be manipulate and utilize in accordance with what they conceive to be the political requirements of ruling. And they will take whatever steps are needed in the economy in order to ensure the long-run sustainability of the political order. In other words, the sort of arrows of political power flow from top to bottom.

Now, in inverted totalitarianism, the imagery is that of a populace which is enshrined as the leadership group but which in fact doesn't rule, but which is turned upside down in the sense that the people are enshrined at the top but don't rule. And minority rule is usually treated as something to be abhorred but is in fact what we have. And it's the problem has to do, I think, with the historical relationship between political orders and economic orders. And democracy, I think, from the beginning never quite managed to make the kind of case for an economic order that would sustain and help to develop democracy rather than being a kind of constant threat to the egalitarianism and popular rule that democracy stands for.

… ... ...

Capitalism is destructive because it has to eliminate the kind of custom, mores, political values, even institutions that present any kind of credible threat to the autonomy of the economy. And it's that–that's where the battle lies. Capitalism wants an autonomous economy. They want a political order subservient to the needs of the economy. And their notion of an economy, while it's broadly based in the sense of a capitalism in which there can be relatively free entrance and property is relatively widely dispersed it's also a capitalism which, in the last analysis, is [as] elitist as any aristocratic system ever was.

Have a listen and a watch. Part 1 and then Part 2.

Pt 1-8 Hedges & Wolin Can Capitalism and Democracy Coexist

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ij-Pa0pemSM
• Transcript

Pt 2:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CA3jpAewy7I

see also

• Sheldon Wolin: Can Capitalism and Democracy Coexist? Parts 2-3, interviewed by Chris Hedges
• Sheldon Wolin: Can Capitalism and Democracy Coexist? Part 4, interviewed by Chris Hedges (transcript in naked capitalism)
• Sheldon Wolin: Can Capitalism and Democracy Coexist? Part 5, interviewed by Chris Hedges
• Sheldon Wolin: Can Capitalism and Democracy Coexist? Part 6, interviewed by Chris Hedges
• Sheldon Wolin: Can Capitalism and Democracy Coexist? Part 7, interviewed by Chris Hedges
• Sheldon Wolin: Can Capitalism and Democracy Coexist? Part 8, interviewed by Chris Hedges
• Chris Hedges: The Disease of Imperialism + Transcript
• Chris Hedges, Cornel West, Richard D. Wolff Respond to Thomas Paine's Question: What Is To Be Done? by Jill Dalton
• "Inverted Totalitarianism" by Guadamour

[Oct 28, 2015] US Ground Troops In Syria Is Illegal, Big Mistake, Russia Warns Obama Of Unpredictable Consequences

Zero Hedge

Newbie lurker

"He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother."

Manthong

..this should be Lit 101

TheReplacement

More like Modern American History 101.

Escrava Isaura

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

2015 - IT IS 3 MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT

http://thebulletin.org/clock/2015

Reg Morrison: "The human brain remains a piece of stone-age machinery, however you look at it, and no amount of culture can make it otherwise. Genetically speaking we are a finished product, not a prototype. What you see is what you get-there will be no bright utopian future."- The Spirit in the Gene, page 247.

Haus-Targaryen

So we have Russian soldiers on the ground fighting ISIS & the "moderate" rebels alongside Iran & Syria -- while Russia blows said head choppers to smithereens. While the US will have soldiers on the ground fighting Assad & Hezbollah blowing them up from the air.

What happens when Russia troops take on American troops, thinking they are ISIS and the Americans thinking they are Hezbollah. What happens then? (Then they call air strikes on one another and everyone figures out shit just went real wrong really quickly).

HowdyDoody

"What happens when Russia troops take on American troops, thinking they are ISIS and the Americans thinking they are Hezbollah" That's a feature, not a bug. And that is why the Russians are calling out on it beforehand.

ZippyDooDah

Russia is providing air cover to Iran and Hezbollah in Syria, so that the USAF can't bomb the Shiite ground troops. America is providing ground troops in Syria to embed with "rebels," so that Russia can't bomb the Sunni ground troops. Proxy war at its most insane, cause it just went beyond proxies.

The Sunni-Shiite divide is centuries old, and not a fight we should ever have gotten involved with. Dumbassery at its most insane.

You might think the U.S. military might someday rebel against this kind of wanton waste of its resources. But no, I guess we are just going to grind ourselves away to nothing in the Middle East meat chopper.

TheReplacement

Wikileaks Ukraine has leaked a conversation regarding planning false flag shoot downs that involved a certain sitting US Senator who happens to have met with the Nazis in Ukraine and the terrorists in Syria. I believe the plan is to shoot down a US/NATO jet and then a Russian.

lakecity55

Russia needs to state the legal case before the UN Security Council and force the USG to veto the Resolution, thus making Vichy DC even more in the wrong internationally!

Paveway IV

Russia was already holding the UN's feet to the fire. Things just got a whole lot worse in the last two days.

The Golan Heights is not Israeli territory according to the UN - ever since 1949. They recognize Israel is occupying it, but under international law (such as it were) the Golan Heights are still Syrian soverign territory. Technically, Syria and Israel are still at war. They are only maintaining a cease-fire/truce along a UNDOF neutral zone (= safe zone = no-fly zone) established in 1974. The 1974 truce didnt' 'give' Israel the Golan land. It was simply an agreement that Israel and Syria would stop attacking eachother and stay out of a neutral zone between each country's armies.

Herein lies the problem: Israel has been directly supporting al Nusra and ISIS forces hiding inside that neutral zone. The place is so over-run with head-choppers that the 1300 UN observers LEFT their own camps in that zone and have relocated to the Israeli side of the cease-fire line. They openly acknowledge that they can't do anything about defending the zone because Nusra/ISIS are not parties to the ceasefire, and Israel is covertly supplying them so there's no proof that they are violating the cease-fire.

Israel has repeatedly bombed SAA troops chasing al Nusra/ISIS into the neutral zone. This is a direct violation of the 1974 truce. Russia has always been pissed about that, but on Monday they bitch-slapped Israel without anything but a ridiculous cover story spewed by the MSM (the paraglider thing). Nobody seems to understand the profound implications of RUSSIA flying combat missions IN THE UNDOF ZONE to bomb Israeli's little al Nusra buddies. They just did this in al Qunaitra, which juts out into the occupied Golan Heights in such a way that it would be difficult to bomb anything there without overflying the neurtral zone into the Israeli side. Israel loves to use the word 'border' to suggest some kind of international recognition, but there is none. There is (was) only a UNDOF-maintained cease-fire zone arranged well into Syrian territory in 1974. Israel never left Syrian land and simply claim it as theirs.

Russia keeps reiterating how it is adhering to international law. Something tells me that this is in preparation for chasing any al Nusra/ISIS head-choppers into the Golan Heights as far as they need to. They are not 'violating' Israeli airspace or soverign lands because it is - by international recognition - still Syrian territory.

Everyone is waiting for a false flag, and it's been brewing right under our noses. Al Nusra and ISIS will retreat into the Golan Heights because they think it will offer them immunity from Russian air attacks. Russia recognizes (as does the world) that Syria STILL LEGALLY extends to the Jordan river - the Golan Heights IS SYRIAN SOVERIGN TERRITORY. Russia is not 'provoking' Israel - Israel shouldn't be there according to international law and UN recognition.

I think Russia is going to drive al Nusra and ISIS INTO the Golan Heights to force this issue - an issue that Israel has already LOST in the eyes of the international community. Would the U.S. go nuclear to 'defend' Israel's land-theft? Answer: Who cares. Dick Cheney's oil company just found a huge deposit there - of course the U.S. would go nuclear to protect his money. That's what the U.S. does.

cowdiddly

What's even funnier is Iraq has already said "NO THANKS" to ground troops in Iraq. They have seen enough of your so called help.

Also the little hero raid the other day was a complete farce. The Pershmerga was supposed to lead the raid and do all the dirty work while US troops come in behind. Of the casualties, The one US soldier that got wacked got a little to rambunctious and got out in front.

Yea hero, lead from behind and you Kurds charge the hill and we look like we did the raid and take the credit. WHATEVER.

The US is trying real hard to look relevent here. Just like the single ship to China crap. OOOOHHHHHH SCARY, No one is Intimidated, it makes you look weak ,and they just think your insane.

GO big or GO HOME. But mostly GO HOME WITH SOME DIGNITY LEFT. You can't afford to Play and you look sad and no one wants your help.

palmereldritch

http://sputniknews.com/middleeast/20151028/1029209074/golan-heights-oil-...

We've found an oil stratum 350 meters thick in the southern Golan Heights. On average worldwide, strata are 20 to 30 meters thick, and this is 10 times as large as that, so we are talking about significant quantities," Afek Oil & Gas chief geologist Yuval Bartov claimed in an interview to a local broadcaster as quoted by Engdahl.

"The Netanyahu government [is now] more determined than ever to sow chaos and disorder in Damascus and use that to de facto create an Israeli irreversible occupation of Golan and its oil," the expert stressed.

"Now an apparent discovery of huge volumes of oil by a New Jersey oil company whose board includes Iraq war architect, Dick Cheney, neo-con ex-CIA head James Woolsey, and Jacob Lord Rothschild… brings the stakes of the Russian intervention on behalf of Syria's Assad against ISIS [ISIL], al-Qaeda and other CIA-backed 'moderate terrorists' to a new geopolitical dimension," Engdahl underscored.

Raymond_K._Hessel

Do the Iraqis have a say in this matter?

• Many Iraqis Think They Know Who's Behind ISIS: Uncle Sam
  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/25/united-states-fight-isis-_n_693...
• Accusations Emerge That the U.S. Is Aiding ISIS – The Latest "Conspiracy Theory" Circulating in Iraq
  http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/03/accusations-emerge-u-s-aiding-isi...
• America Admittedly Behind ISIS "Surge"
  http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2015/05/america-admittedly-behind-isis...

NOTE: Alphahammer and Yomatti wants everyone to spend a half hour doing some research into the origins of ISIS: http://bfy.tw/2VnO

Raymond_K._Hessel

Iraq to Washington: We Don't Want Your Troops

What a difference a day makes. Just 24 hours ago US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter was telling the Senate Armed Services Committee all about the Obama Administration's new military strategy for the Middle East. The headline grabber from his testimony was the revelation that the US military would begin "direct action on the ground" in Iraq and Syria.

"We won't hold back from supporting capable partners in opportunistic attacks against ISIL (ISIS)," he told the Committee. The new strategy would consist of "three R's," he said: more US action, including on the ground, with Syrian opposition partners to take the ISIS stronghold in Raqqa, Syria; more intense cooperation with the Iraqi army including with US-embedded soldiers to retake Ramadi from ISIS in Iraq; and the beginning of US military raids, "whether by strikes from the air or direct action on the ground."

That was news to the Iraqis, it turns out. And it wasn't very good news at that. Today Sa'ad al-Hadithi, spokesman for Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, said "thanks but no thanks" to a third US invasion of his country. "We have enough soldiers on the ground," he said.

This raises the question of whether the US administration intends to insert US soldiers into Iraq against the wishes of its elected government, as it has done and promises to continue to do in Syria. In that case, the US would be shooting at ISIS and the Iraqi government, as well as the Iran-backed Shi'ite militias who are coming to increasingly control large parts of the Iraqi military. Presumably all these forces would be shooting back at US troops on the ground as well. The US would likely be partnering in this task with the anti-ISIS Sunni fighters highlighted in Defense Secretary Carter's testimony yesterday. In other words, the US would be backing forces closer to those of Saddam Hussein, who they overthrew twelve years ago.

The Iraqi government had requested Russian assistance against ISIS earlier this month, after Russian strikes in Syria appear to have made a significant impact on the battlefield. But Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford told the Iraqis if they accept Russian assistance they can forget about any more US aid.

It appears the US threat was not enough to put the Iraqis off asking for Russian help, as earlier this week the Iraqi parliament approved Russian airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq.

So the big roll-out of the new US Middle East military strategy seems to have fizzled, as none of the intended beneficiaries of US assistance seem all that enthused about the partnership. For the moment, the US finds itself backing Iranian militias in Iraq while fighting them next door in Syria, while planning to place US troops in with "moderate" anti-Assad rebels in the path of falling Russian bombs. All the while, of course, the US is aiding the Kurds in Syria and Iraq which are currently being bombed by NATO ally Turkey.

What else could possibly go wrong?

http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/peace-and-prosperity/2015/octob...

Crocodile

Since ISIS, ISIL, IS or the word of the day is a Pentagon formed, trained & funded operation, then the Pentagon is using the US Military, a Pentagon organization, against another Pentagon organization.

Only proves the insanity of it all and the devaluing of life of the ordinary person.

Then again Satan attacks the ordinances of God given to man for the good of all which is not limited to, marriage, family and the sanctity of life and unfortunately most people agree as shown by their personal behaviors.

[Oct 28, 2015] Guest Post Inequality Undermines Democracy

There is a strong evidence to suggest that representative democracy is not compatible with deep economic inequality. As a recent study found, "politicians in OECD countries maximize the happiness of the economic elite." However, it was not always that way: In the past, left parties represented the poor, the center and the middle class. Now all the parties benefit the richest 1& of earners. As FDR warned, "Government by organized money is just as dangerous as government by organized mob."

Notable quotes:

"... politicians in OECD countries maximize the happiness of the economic elite ..."

"... In the past, left parties represented the poor, the center and the middle class. Now all the parties benefit the richest 1 percent of earners, Jimenez reports. ..."

"... politician's bias toward the rich has reduced real social spending per capita by 28 percent on average ..."

"... the rich are more likely to oppose spending increases, support budget cuts and reject promoting the welfare state - the idea that the government should ensure a decent standard of living. ..."

"... What f*cking democracy in the land of the free? Its a fascist, police state run by a troika of the MIC, Wall Street and Spooks. ..."

"... The secret collaboration of the military, the intelligence and national security agencies, and gigantic corporations in the systematic and illegal surveillance of the American people reveals the true wielders of power in the United States. ..."

"... The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media. -- William Colby, former CIA Director ..."

"... Paul Craig Roberts had a great take on this a while back. He pointed out that unions used to have significant political influence because of their financial resources. Democrats by and large sought their backing, and had to toe the line. Now, not so much. So, he observed, both parties began seeking out contributions from the same oligarchs. Even if you hate unions, it is a valid observation. ..."

Zero Hedge

Guest Post: Inequality Undermines Democracy

Authored by Sean McElwee, originallyu posted at AlJazeera.com,

In recent years, several academic researchers have argued that rising inequality erodes democracy. But the lack of international data has made it difficult to show whether inequality in fact exacerbates the apparent lack of political responsiveness to popular sentiment. Even scholars concerned about economic inequality, such as sociologist Lane Kenworthy, often hesitate to argue that economic inequality might bleed into the political sphere. New cross-national research, however, suggests that higher inequality does indeed limit political representation.

In a 2014 study on political representation, political scientists Jan Rosset, Nathalie Giger and Julian Bernauer concluded, "In economically more unequal societies, the party system represents the preferences of relatively poor citizens worse than in more equal societies." Similarly, political scientists Michael Donnelly and Zoe Lefkofridi found in a working paper that in Europe, "Changes in overall attitudes toward redistribution have very little effect on redistributive policies. Changes in socio-cultural policies are driven largely by change in the attitudes of the affluent, and only weakly (if at all) by the middle class or poor." They find that when the people get what they want, it's typically because their views correspond with the affluent, rather than policymakers directly responding to their concerns.

In another study of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, researcher Pablo Torija Jimenez looked at data in 24 countries over 30 years. He examined how different governmental structures influence happiness across income groups and found that today "politicians in OECD countries maximize the happiness of the economic elite." However, it was not always that way: In the past, left parties represented the poor, the center and the middle class. Now all the parties benefit the richest 1 percent of earners, Jimenez reports.

In a recent working paper, political scientist Larry Bartels finds the effect of politician's bias toward the rich has reduced real social spending per capita by 28 percent on average. Studying 23 OECD countries, Bartels finds that the rich are more likely to oppose spending increases, support budget cuts and reject promoting the welfare state - the idea that the government should ensure a decent standard of living.

JustObserving

What f*cking democracy in the land of the free? It's a fascist, police state run by a troika of the MIC, Wall Street and Spooks.

JustObserving

Who rules America?

The secret collaboration of the military, the intelligence and national security agencies, and gigantic corporations in the systematic and illegal surveillance of the American people reveals the true wielders of power in the United States. Telecommunications giants such as AT&T, Verizon and Sprint, and Internet companies such as Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Twitter, provide the military and the FBI and CIA with access to data on hundreds of millions of people that these state agencies have no legal right to possess.

Congress and both of the major political parties serve as rubber stamps for the confluence of the military, the intelligence apparatus and Wall Street that really runs the country. The so-called "Fourth Estate"-the mass media-functions shamelessly as an arm of this ruling troika.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/06/10/pers-j10.html

Snowden's documents revealed that the NSA spies on everyone:

The most extraordinary passage in the memo requires that the Israeli spooks "destroy upon recognition" any communication provided by the NSA "that is either to or from an official of the US government."

It goes on to spell out that this includes "officials of the Executive Branch (including the White House, Cabinet Departments, and independent agencies); the US House of Representatives and Senate (members and staff); and the US Federal Court System (including, but not limited to, the Supreme Court)."

The stunning implication of this passage is that NSA spying targets not only ordinary American citizens, but also Supreme Court justices, members of Congress and the White House itself. One could hardly ask for a more naked exposure of a police state.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/09/13/surv-s13.html

"The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media." -- William Colby, former CIA Director

LetThemEatRand

Paul Craig Roberts had a great take on this a while back. He pointed out that unions used to have significant political influence because of their financial resources. Democrats by and large sought their backing, and had to toe the line. Now, not so much. So, he observed, both parties began seeking out contributions from the same oligarchs. Even if you hate unions, it is a valid observation.

LetThemEatRand

I get your point and I'm not your downvote, but in my view the MSM has hijacked the issue of "inequality." The real issue is the oligarch class that has more wealth than half the country. We were a successful, functioning society when we had a middle class. There were rich people, poor people, and a whole lot in between. And it's the whole lot in between that matters. The minimum wage is a distraction. The two big issues are loss of manufacturing base and offshoring in general, and financialization of the economy (in large part due to Fed policy).

LetThemEatRand

...A big part of the "inequality" discussion is equal application of law. I recall when TARP was floated during the W administration, the public of all persuasions was against it. Congress passed it anyway, because of Too Big to Fail. TBTF should not be a liberal or conservative issue. Likewise, the idea that no bankers went to jail is an issue of "inequality." The laws do not apply equally to bankers. And the same with Lois Lerner. She intentionally sent the IRS to harass political groups based upon ideology. She got off scott free. Inequality again.

MASTER OF UNIVERSE

Inequality does not undermine democracy because democracy does not really exist. Faux democracy is actually Totalitarianism under the guise of 'democracy'. In brief, democracy is just a word that has been neutered, and bastardized too many times to count as anything real, or imagined.

They should name a new ice cream DEMOCRACY just for FUN.

[Oct 28, 2015] How the U.S. Wrecked the Middle East

Notable quotes:

"... Whatever world order the U.S. may be fighting for in the Middle East, it seems at least an empire or two out of date. Washington refuses to admit to itself that [as a preverse reaction on neoliberalism] the ideas of Islamic fundamentalism resonate with vast numbers of people. ..."

"... No one is predicting a world war or a nuclear war from the mess in Syria. However, like those final days before the Great War, one finds a lot of pieces in play inside a tinderbox. ..."

"... Peter Van Buren blew the whistle on State Department waste and mismanagement during the Iraqi reconstruction in ..."

"... regular he writes about current events at ..."

"... We Meant Well ..."

"... . His latest book is ..."

"... . His next work will be a novel, ..."

October 22, 2015 | The American Conservative

A once stable region descends into chaos thanks to continuing repercussions from the 2003 Iraq invasion. (via TomDispatch)

Whatever world order the U.S. may be fighting for in the Middle East, it seems at least an empire or two out of date. Washington refuses to admit to itself that [as a preverse reaction on neoliberalism] the ideas of Islamic fundamentalism resonate with vast numbers of people. At this point, even as U.S. TOW missiles are becoming as ubiquitous as iPads in the region, American military power can only delay changes, not stop them. Unless a rebalancing of power that would likely favor some version of Islamic fundamentalism takes hold and creates some measure of stability in the Middle East, count on one thing: the U.S. will be fighting the sons of ISIS years from now.

... No one is predicting a world war or a nuclear war from the mess in Syria. However, like those final days before the Great War, one finds a lot of pieces in play inside a tinderbox.

Now, all together: What could possibly go wrong?

Peter Van Buren blew the whistle on State Department waste and mismanagement during the Iraqi reconstruction in We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People. A TomDispatch regular he writes about current events at We Meant Well. His latest book is Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the #99Percent. His next work will be a novel, Hooper's War.

[Oct 28, 2015] The Senate, ignorant on cybersecurity, just passed a bill about it anyway

Notable quotes:

"... a spying bill that essentially carves a giant hole in all our privacy laws and allows tech and telecom companies to hand over all sorts of private information to intelligence agencies without any court process whatsoever. ..."

"... Make no mistake: Congress has passed a surveillance bill in disguise, with no evidence it'll help our security. ..."

"... They were counting on nobody paying much attention. Didnt you hear somebody got killed on Walking Dead? Whos got time to talk about boring nonsense like a Congressional bill? ..."

"... Inverse totalitarianism. Read Sheldon Wolin. Were sliding down the slippery slope. ..."

"... On Tuesday afternoon, the Senate voted 74 to 21 to pass a version of CISA that roughly mirrors legislation passed in the House earlier this year, paving the way for some combined version of the security bill to become law. ..."

www.theguardian.com

This is the state of such legislation in this country, where lawmakers wanted to do something but, by passing Cisa, just decided to cede more power to the NSA

Under the vague guise of "cybersecurity", the Senate voted on Tuesday to pass the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (Cisa), a spying bill that essentially carves a giant hole in all our privacy laws and allows tech and telecom companies to hand over all sorts of private information to intelligence agencies without any court process whatsoever.

Make no mistake: Congress has passed a surveillance bill in disguise, with no evidence it'll help our security.

eminijunkie 28 Oct 2015 17:34

Being competent requires work. Actual work.

You can't honestly say you expected them to do actual work, now can you?

david wright 28 Oct 2015 13:44

'The Senate, ignorant on cybersecurity, just passed a bill about it anyway '

The newsworthy event would be the Senate's passage of anything, on the basis of knowledge or serious reflection, rather than $-funded ignorance. The country this pas few decades has been long on policy-based evidence as a basis for law, rather than evidence-based policy. Get what our funders require, shall be the whole of the law.

Kyllein -> MacKellerann 28 Oct 2015 16:49

Come ON! You are expecting COMPETENCE from Congress?
Wake up and smell the bacon; these people work on policy, not intelligence.

VWFeature -> lostinbago 28 Oct 2015 13:37

Bravo!

"...There is no nation on earth powerful enough to accomplish our overthrow. ... Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence, I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become the instruments of their own undoing." -- Daniel Webster, June 1, 1837

"If once [the people] become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions." -- Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, 1787

lostinbago -> KhepryQuixote 28 Oct 2015 12:09

We became the enemy when the people started attacking the Military Industrial Corporate complex and trying to regain our republic from the oligarchs.

lostinbago 28 Oct 2015 12:07

Congress: Where Catch 22 melds with Alice in Wonderland

Phil429 28 Oct 2015 11:44

we now have another law on the books that carves a hole in our privacy laws, contains vague language that can be interpreted any which way, and that has provisions inserted into it specifically to prevent us from finding out how they're using it.

They were counting on nobody paying much attention. Didn't you hear somebody got killed on Walking Dead? Who's got time to talk about boring nonsense like a Congressional bill?

guardianfan2000 28 Oct 2015 08:53

This vote just showed the true colors of the U. S. Government,...that being a total disregard for all individuals' privacy rights.

newbieveryday 28 Oct 2015 02:11

Inverse totalitarianism. Read Sheldon Wolin. We're sliding down the slippery slope. Who's going to be der erster Fuehrer? David Koch?

Triumphant George -> alastriona 27 Oct 2015 18:55

From elsewhere:

On Tuesday afternoon, the Senate voted 74 to 21 to pass a version of CISA that roughly mirrors legislation passed in the House earlier this year, paving the way for some combined version of the security bill to become law.

CISA still faces some hurdles to becoming law. Congressional leaders will need to resolve remaining differences between the bills passed in the Senate and the House.

President Obama could also still veto CISA, though that's unlikely: The White House endorsed the bill in August, an about-face from an earlier attempt at cybersecurity information sharing legislation known as CISPA that the White House shut down with a veto threat in 2013.

--"CISA Security Bill Passes Senate With Privacy Flaws Unfixed", Wired

[Oct 24, 2015] The best lesson China could teach Europe: how to play the long game

Notable quotes:

"... There is a lot that is positive about China's transformation. However, it is quite telling that many of China's new rich cant get their money out of the country quickly enough. ..."

"... It isn't so much a case of whether the UK will become a province, I suspect the whole world will. China is close to the GDP of the USA and will overtake it in about 18 months, with GDP per head only about $8k. If Chinese GDP per head even doubles, it's economy will at least double, and that isn't taking into account population growth. China's economy has already grown by about 1000% since 2002. ..."

"... China is a very fascinating place with a very fascinating history... But this misguided sinophilia is exasperating. Half the time the Chinese government doesn't even know what it's doing. ..."

"... If you talk to Chinese people in private most of them take a pretty dim view of the invasion of Iraq and western interventionist foreign policy in general. Their government, however, don't put out grand press releases about it because that's not the way the Chinese do foreign diplomacy. ..."

"... Gunboat diplomacy, opium wars, putting down mutinies in India and elsewhere, black hole of Calcutta,thrashing the native language out of the Maori and Aborigines-forcing them to speak English, World War One and World War Two, suez, the Falklands. ..."

"... They will have to reject US inspired economic voodoo if they are to ever prosper again. There is little to no chance of a federal state. The cultural, language and political differences are insurmountable. ..."

"... Stopped reading at that point, author is obviously a neoliberal rent-a-mouth. If it's rights against interests there's nothing to balance, to suggest otherwise is agenda setting. ..."

"... The public opinion in France should remember about Frances' real place in the world, and mind its own business avoiding poking its long nose in other peoples' affaires. ..."

"... Bonapartism is an old French mental disorder. ..."

"... I didn't say the US completely controlled Europe, I just said that the US can bend Europe to its will in certain circumstances. For example it currently forces European banks to disclose customer information to the US Treasury and it is trying to get European countries to agree to allow US border control in European airports, so that the US can question UK citizens in London. ..."

"... i want to see a chinese century, at least the chinese wont invade other countries with the excuse of democracy or human rights ..."

"... LOL European democracy was born in Greece which is now under the full control of ECB and IMF The EU is a silly clown at the US court What are you talking about? ..."

"... To be fair to the Chinese, at least they're not evangelical about spreading their 'Authoritarianism with Chinese Characteristics' now are they? In fact, it's quite the opposite with their non-interference mantra. ..."

"... The rise of China is largely a good thing for Europe. The US will not hesitate to use its power to bend Europe to its will where necessary (and who can blame it, all countries do this when they can) and the cultural and political diversity of Europe means the EU is unlikely to rival the US or China anytime soon. But the rise of China allows Europe to play one great power off against the other to resist bullying and extract concessions from one or both. ..."

"... You can have democracy with a long memory see periods before 1970's (neoliberalisation requires a small memory). ..."

"... If Europe continues to have a long term strategy the 'long-term' has not started yet. It is currently in the process of internal devaluation and the morons in charge happily attack labor conditions which weakens spending which further degrades potential GDP increases hidden unemployment and stagnation. Germany did this first and now continues to leverage the small head start it got during the 90's for doing so. ..."

"... It has nothing to do with that reasoning. It was always predicted the West will self destruct. Inventing Globalisation and then closed down places of work for its citizen and export them la, la lands benefiting very few people, the beneficiaries who end up sending their monies to tax havens un-taxed and sponsoring some selected people to power to do their biding was always self defeating. ..."

"... We gave China our jobs and cheap technologies that have taken us centuries to develop in of getting cheap goods. As a result China did not have to pass through the phases we passed through in our early industrial age when Machines were more expensive than humans before the reverse. ..."

"... Who speaks for Europe? No-one is the answer. It is the single largest economy on the plant. Biggest exporter on the planet. Arguably the richest middle class on the planet; combined, possibly the biggest defense budget on the planet, and all this with a central government driving foreign policy, defense, economic strategy, monetary policy, nor any of the other institutions of a Federal State. China knows this, the Americans know this; and Europe keeps getting treated as the "child" on the international scene. It's too bad, because Europe, as a whole, has many wonderful positives to contribute to the world. ..."

Oct 23, 2015 | The Guardian

SystemD -> paddyd2009 23 Oct 2015 23:13

The problem is how do you define civilization? The urban centres were in the Middle East, and long pre-date China. 6,000 years ago, the world's largest towns and cities were in the Balkans - the Tripolye-Cucuteni culture. Because of the conventions of nomenclature, they don't count as a civilization. This raises the question, when does a culture become a civilization? There are certainly well attested archaeological cultures in China going back a long way, but there are equally ancient cultures in Europe. Should we then say that Europe has 4,000 or 5,000 or more years of civilization?

Good records for Chinese history go back about 3,000 years. Anything before that becomes archaeological rather than historical, based on artifacts rather than records. References to different dynasties don't help - there are no records comparable to Near Eastern king lists, or the Sumerian or Hittite royal archives. China set up the Three Kingdoms Project to try to find the 'missing' 2,000 years of Chinese history - i.e. the history that they claim to have, but have no direct evidence. They didn't find it.

Adetheshades 23 Oct 2015 22:52

There is a lot that is positive about China's transformation. However, it is quite telling that many of China's new rich cant get their money out of the country quickly enough.

They obviously know more than the average Guardian reader, and apparently don't feel their cash is safe. This causes problems of its own, when they start splashing this cash in the UK property market, causing further price escalation if any were needed.

There isn't much we can do about the size and wealth of China.

It isn't so much a case of whether the UK will become a province, I suspect the whole world will. China is close to the GDP of the USA and will overtake it in about 18 months, with GDP per head only about $8k. If Chinese GDP per head even doubles, it's economy will at least double, and that isn't taking into account population growth. China's economy has already grown by about 1000% since 2002.

At what point will we drop French from the school curriculum in favour of Mandarin is the question.

To say Beijings influence is growing is a lovely little piece of understatement.

Adamnuisance 23 Oct 2015 21:22

China is a very fascinating place with a very fascinating history... But this misguided sinophilia is exasperating. Half the time the Chinese government doesn't even know what it's doing. Being passive aggressive and claiming to be 'unique' are their real specialties. I have little doubt that China will become even more powerful with time... I just hope their backwards politics improves with their economy.

Thruns 23 Oct 2015 20:44

The first long game was Mao's coup.
The second long game was the great leap forward.
The third long game was the cultural revolution.
The fourth long game was to adopt the west's capitalism and sell the west its own technology.
At last the "communist" Chinese seem to have found a winner.

tufsoft Maharaja -> Brovinda Singh 23 Oct 2015 20:30

If you talk to Chinese people in private most of them take a pretty dim view of the invasion of Iraq and western interventionist foreign policy in general. Their government, however, don't put out grand press releases about it because that's not the way the Chinese do foreign diplomacy.

nothell -> Laurence Johnson 23 Oct 2015 20:16

Your comment about the British Empire must be tongue in cheek.

Gunboat diplomacy, opium wars, putting down mutinies in India and elsewhere, black hole of Calcutta,thrashing the native language out of the Maori and Aborigines-forcing them to speak English, World War One and World War Two, suez, the Falklands.

Anything but peaceful and anything but fair. Europe had the past, let Asia have the future.

slightlynumb -> theoldmanfromusa 23 Oct 2015 20:10

They will have to reject US inspired economic voodoo if they are to ever prosper again. There is little to no chance of a federal state. The cultural, language and political differences are insurmountable.

Rasengruen 23 Oct 2015 20:05

All of this presents well-known dilemmas for Europeans, such as how to balance human rights and economic interests.

Stopped reading at that point, author is obviously a neoliberal rent-a-mouth. If it's rights against interests there's nothing to balance, to suggest otherwise is agenda setting.

philby87 23 Oct 2015 18:50

public opinion in France, which had been shocked by an outbreak of violent repression in Tibet

The public opinion in France should remember about Frances' real place in the world, and mind its own business avoiding poking its long nose in other peoples' affaires. A good example is Japan which is twice larger than France, but never lectures its neighbors about what they should and shouldn't do. Bonapartism is an old French mental disorder.

skepticaleye -> midaregami 23 Oct 2015 18:04

The Yue state was populated mostly by the members of the Yue people who were not Han. The South China wasn't completely sinicized well into the second millennium CE. Yunnan wasn't incorporated into China until the Mongols conquered Dali in the 13th century, and the Ming dynasty eradicated the Mongols' resistance there in the 14th century.

PeterBederell -> Daniel S 23 Oct 2015 17:54

I didn't say the US completely controlled Europe, I just said that the US can bend Europe to its will in certain circumstances. For example it currently forces European banks to disclose customer information to the US Treasury and it is trying to get European countries to agree to allow US border control in European airports, so that the US can question UK citizens in London.

Europe often has to agree to these indignities because it needs access to the US market and to keep the US sweet. But with a strong China, it can use the threat of following China in some way the US doesn't like as a bargaining chip, like joining China's Development Bank, which put the US in a huff recently.

Chriswr -> AdamStrange 23 Oct 2015 17:54

What we in the West call human rights are creations of the Enlightenment and only about 300 years old. As a modern Westerner I am, of course, a big supporter of them. But let's not pretend they are part of some age-old tradition.

sor2007 -> impartial12 23 Oct 2015 17:48

i want to see a chinese century, at least the chinese wont invade other countries with the excuse of democracy or human rights

ApfelD 23 Oct 2015 17:42

China can rightly point out that it was already a civilisation 4,000 years ago – well ahead of Europe – and it uses that historical depth to indicate it will never take lessons on democracy.

LOL European democracy was born in Greece which is now under the full control of ECB and IMF The EU is a silly clown at the US court What are you talking about?

HoolyK BabylonianSheDevil03 23 Oct 2015 17:34

To be fair to the Chinese, at least they're not evangelical about spreading their 'Authoritarianism with Chinese Characteristics' now are they? In fact, it's quite the opposite with their non-interference mantra. When the Chinese see the following:

1. the West preaches democracy and human rights
2. is evangelical about it and spreads it by hook or crook into the Middle East
3. this causes regimes to be changed and instability to spread
4. the chaos causes a massive refugee crisis, washing these poor huddled masses onto the shores of Europe
5. the human rights preached by the West demands that the the refugees receive help
6. the native population is slowly being displaced
7. native population is further screwed, with austerity, financial crisis and now said Syrian refugees
8. Fascist and Nazis parties are elected into office, civil strife ensues

Now, what do you think the Chinese, who ABHOR chaos, think about democracy and human rights ??

PeterBederell 23 Oct 2015 16:47

The rise of China is largely a good thing for Europe. The US will not hesitate to use its power to bend Europe to its will where necessary (and who can blame it, all countries do this when they can) and the cultural and political diversity of Europe means the EU is unlikely to rival the US or China anytime soon. But the rise of China allows Europe to play one great power off against the other to resist bullying and extract concessions from one or both.

HoolyK -> AdamStrange 23 Oct 2015 16:30

Anatolia is inhabited by Turks from Central Asia who settled in the 11th century, Iraq/Syria was overrun by Muslims in the 7th century. China is still Han Chinese, as it was 5000 years ago.

'human rights' really? then do you support the human rights of tens of thousands of refugees from Syria to settle in Britain and Europe then? I ask this awkward question only because I know the Chinese will ask ....

dev_null 23 Oct 2015 16:23

China deploys a long-term strategy in part because it has a very long memory, and in part because its ruling elite needn't bother too much about electoral constraints.

The two are not mutially exclusive. You can have democracy with a long memory see periods before 1970's (neoliberalisation requires a small memory).

China's longest 'strategy' was to leverage its currency artificially lower than it should be in order to net export so many manufactured goods. Nothing else.

If Europe continues to have a long term strategy the 'long-term' has not started yet. It is currently in the process of internal devaluation and the morons in charge happily attack labor conditions which weakens spending which further degrades potential GDP increases hidden unemployment and stagnation. Germany did this first and now continues to leverage the small head start it got during the 90's for doing so.
Eurozone = Dystopia

China can rightly point out that it was already a civilisation 4,000 years ago – well ahead of Europe

No sorry europe contained many advanced cultures going back just as far. This is incompetent journalism. China was not 'china' it was many kingdoms and cultures 4000 years ago, as was Europe at the time. Fallacy of decomposition.

MeandYou -> weka69 23 Oct 2015 16:11

It has nothing to do with that reasoning. It was always predicted the West will self destruct. Inventing Globalisation and then closed down places of work for its citizen and export them la, la lands benefiting very few people, the beneficiaries who end up sending their monies to tax havens un-taxed and sponsoring some selected people to power to do their biding was always self defeating.

We gave China our jobs and cheap technologies that have taken us centuries to develop in of getting cheap goods. As a result China did not have to pass through the phases we passed through in our early industrial age when Machines were more expensive than humans before the reverse. We gave China all in a plate hence the speed neck speed China has risen. The Consumerism society the political class created they were stupid enough to forget people still need money to buy cheap goods. Consumerism does not run on empty purse.

wintpu 23 Oct 2015 15:57

You are preaching a China Containment strategy:
[1] This is racist viciousness, colonial mentality, or white supremacist conspiracy, believing that containment is your moral right. You seem to be wallowing still in the stiff upper lipped notions that you are the betters versus the east. Colonialism is over and still you cling to the notion that the EU should get together and try to destroy China's social system because it is different from yours. Your records on human rights, governance and effectiveness are all droopy examples to be object lessons rather than role models for emulation by developing countries. Your opium war denials [simply by not mentioning it] give you very little high ground to hector China and the Chinese people.

[2] Recent Behavior. Putting aside your opium war robbery, your behavior in the run up to 1997 Hong Kong hand back shows your greedy sneakiness. Chris Patten infamously tried to throw a monkey wrench into an agreed-upon process by trying to steal the Hong Kong treasury, then planting the seeds of British wannabees. You passed a special law to deny the 1.36 million Hong Kong residents who had become British Citizens was one of the most shameful racist acts of your colonial record. Cameron is now bending over backwards post haste in order to side-step the long long memory of the Chinese people.

[3] Crying about getting other EU nations to do aiding and abetting of your vendetta against a rising China? Trying to reduce and contain China does you no good. So it is a simple case of mendacity. But you forget that the Germans have already gone to China honestly and co-operated since the time of Helmut Kohl and the CPC has not forgotten their loyal friends. Today most CPC leaders drive Audis. There is no turning Germany away from their key position in Chinatrade to become enemies of China because of your self-serving wishes. Even now, France has jumped in on the nuclear niche to present you with a package you cannot refuse.

samohio 23 Oct 2015 15:51

Who speaks for Europe? No-one is the answer. It is the single largest economy on the plant. Biggest exporter on the planet. Arguably the richest middle class on the planet; combined, possibly the biggest defense budget on the planet, and all this with a central government driving foreign policy, defense, economic strategy, monetary policy, nor any of the other institutions of a Federal State. China knows this, the Americans know this; and Europe keeps getting treated as the "child" on the international scene. It's too bad, because Europe, as a whole, has many wonderful positives to contribute to the world.

[Oct 24, 2015] Turkish Parliament Members Turkey Provided Chemical Weapons for Syrian Terrorist Attack

Notable quotes:

"... The purpose was to create the perception that, according to speaker, "Assad killed his people with sarin and that requires a US military intervention in Syria." ..."

"... Turkish government ..."

"... 'We knew there were some in the Turkish government,' a former senior US intelligence official, who has access to current intelligence, told me, 'who believed they could get Assad's nuts in a vice by dabbling with a sarin attack inside Syria – and forcing Obama to make good on his red line threat.' ..."

"... And as recently as yesterday a State Department flac was stil asserting that Assad was responsible for the Sarin attack. Those boys and girls no longer remember how to tell the truth, even to save their own skins. ..."

"... The following examples show the extent of Turkish involvement in the war on Syria: ..."

"... –Turkey hosts the Political and Military Headquarters of the armed opposition. Most of the political leaders are former Syrians who have not lived there for decades. ..."

"... –Turkey provides home base for armed opposition leaders. As quoted in the Vice News video "Syria: Wolves of the Valley": "Most of the commanders actually live in Turkey and commute in to the fighting when necessary." ..."

"... –Turkey's intelligence agency MIT has provided its own trucks for shipping huge quantities of weapons and ammunition to Syrian armed opposition groups. According to court testimony, they made at least 2,000 trips to Syria. ..."

"... – Turkey is suspected of supplying the chemical weapons used in Ghouta in August 2013 as reported by Seymour Hersh here . In May 2013, Nusra fighters were arrested in possession of sarin but quickly and quietly released by Turkish authorities. ..."

"... – Turkey's foreign minister, top spy chief and senior military official were secretly recorded plotting an incident to justify Turkish military strikes against Syria . A sensational recording of the meeting was publicized, exposing the plot in advance and likely preventing it from proceeding. ..."

"... –Turkey has provided direct aid and support to attacking insurgents. When insurgents attacked Kassab Syria on the border in spring 2014, Turkey provided backup military support and ambulances for injured fighters. Turkey shot down a Syrian jet fighter that was attacking the invading insurgents. The plane landed 7 kilometers inside Syrian territory, suggesting that Turkish claims it was in Turkish air space are likely untrue. ..."

"... – Turkey has recently increased its coordination with Saudi Arabia and Qatar . ..."

"... "We were some of the first people on the ground –if not the first people – to get that story of…militants going in through the Turkish border…I've got images of them in World Food Organization trucks. It was very apparent that they were militants by their beards, by the clothes they wore, and they were going in there with NGO trucks," ..."

Oct 24, 2015 | Zero Hedge

Two members of the Turkish parliament gave a press conference this week saying that they have wiretapped recordings and other evidence showing that Turkey supplied the sarin used in Syria. As reported by Turkey's largest newspapers, Today's Zaman:

CHP deputies Eren Erdem and Ali ?eker held a press conference in Istanbul on Wednesday in which they claimed the investigation into allegations regarding Turkey's involvement in the procurement of sarin gas which was used in the chemical attack on a civil population and delivered to the terrorist Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) to enable the attack was derailed.

Taking the floor first, Erdem stated that the Adana Chief Prosecutor's Office launched an investigation into allegations that sarin was sent to Syria from Turkey via several businessmen. An indictment followed regarding the accusations targeting the government.

"The MKE [Turkish Mechanical and Chemical Industry Corporation] is also an actor that is mentioned in the investigation file. Here is the indictment. All the details about how sarin was procured in Turkey and delivered to the terrorists, along with audio recordings, are inside the file," Erdem said while waving the file.

Erdem also noted that the prosecutor's office conducted detailed technical surveillance and found that an al-Qaeda militant, Hayyam Kasap, acquired sarin, adding: "Wiretapped phone conversations reveal the process of procuring the gas at specific addresses as well as the process of procuring the rockets that would fire the capsules containing the toxic gas. However, despite such solid evidence there has been no arrest in the case. Thirteen individuals were arrested during the first stage of the investigation but were later released, refuting government claims that it is fighting terrorism," Erdem noted.

Over 1,300 people were killed in the sarin gas attack in Ghouta and several other neighborhoods near the Syrian capital of Damascus, with the West quickly blaming the regime of Bashar al-Assad and Russia claiming it was a "false flag" operation aimed at making US military intervention in Syria possible.

Suburbs near Damascus were struck by rockets containing the toxic sarin gas in August 2013.

The purpose of the attack was allegedly to provoke a US military operation in Syria which would topple the Assad regime in line with the political agenda of then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his government.

CHP deputy speaker spoke after Erdem, pointing out that the government misled the public on the issue by asserting that sarin was provided by Russia. The purpose was to create the perception that, according to speaker, "Assad killed his people with sarin and that requires a US military intervention in Syria."

He also underlined that all of the files and evidence from the investigation show a war crime was committed within the borders of the Turkish Republic.

"The investigation clearly indicates that those people who smuggled the chemicals required to procure sarin faced no difficulties, proving that Turkish intelligence was aware of their activities.

Pulitzer-prize winning investigative reporter Seymour Hersh – who uncovered the Iraq prison torture scandal and the Mai Lai massacre in Vietnam – previously reported that high-level American sources tell him that the Turkish government carried out the chemical weapons attacks blamed on the Syrian government.

As Hersh noted:

'We knew there were some in the Turkish government,' a former senior US intelligence official, who has access to current intelligence, told me, 'who believed they could get Assad's nuts in a vice by dabbling with a sarin attack inside Syria – and forcing Obama to make good on his red line threat.'

Indeed, it's long been known that sarin was coming through Turkey. And a tape recording of top Turkish officials planning a false flag attack to be blamed on Syria as a causus belli was leaked … and confirmed by Turkey as being authentic. Turkey is a member of NATO. There are previous instances where Turkish government officials have admitted to carrying out false flag attacks. For example:

• The Turkish Prime Minister admitted that the Turkish government carried out the 1955 bombing on a Turkish consulate in Greece – also damaging the nearby birthplace of the founder of modern Turkey – and blamed it on Greece, for the purpose of inciting and justifying anti-Greek violence.

• Terror attacks in Turkey (1971)

• Shootings in Istanbul, Turkey (1977)

Turkey has also been busted massively supporting ISIS. And see this.

And other NATO members have also admitted to carrying out false flag terror to stir up war.

Reaper

Cui bono from the sarin attack in Syria? Not Assad. The educational training for American sheeple is to emote first, think way later, maybe.

jeff montanye

once more with feeling:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyQ1RoEotPk

"they don't want a population capable of critical thinking" george carlin

Macon Richardson

And as recently as yesterday a State Department flac was stil asserting that Assad was responsible for the Sarin attack. Those boys and girls no longer remember how to tell the truth, even to save their own skins.

JustObserving

Turkey has been at war with Syria for years now.

The following examples show the extent of Turkish involvement in the war on Syria:

–Turkey hosts the Political and Military Headquarters of the armed opposition. Most of the political leaders are former Syrians who have not lived there for decades.

–Turkey provides home base for armed opposition leaders. As quoted in the Vice News video "Syria: Wolves of the Valley": "Most of the commanders actually live in Turkey and commute in to the fighting when necessary."

–Turkey's intelligence agency MIT has provided its own trucks for shipping huge quantities of weapons and ammunition to Syrian armed opposition groups. According to court testimony, they made at least 2,000 trips to Syria.

–Turkey is suspected of supplying the chemical weapons used in Ghouta in August 2013 as reported by Seymour Hersh here. In May 2013, Nusra fighters were arrested in possession of sarin but quickly and quietly released by Turkish authorities.

–Turkey's foreign minister, top spy chief and senior military official were secretly recorded plotting an incident to justify Turkish military strikes against Syria. A sensational recording of the meeting was publicized, exposing the plot in advance and likely preventing it from proceeding.

–Turkey has provided direct aid and support to attacking insurgents. When insurgents attacked Kassab Syria on the border in spring 2014, Turkey provided backup military support and ambulances for injured fighters. Turkey shot down a Syrian jet fighter that was attacking the invading insurgents. The plane landed 7 kilometers inside Syrian territory, suggesting that Turkish claims it was in Turkish air space are likely untrue.

–Turkey has recently increased its coordination with Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

more at:

https://consortiumnews.com/2015/06/25/turkeys-troubling-war-on-syria/

Parrotile

Rest assured Russia is fully aware of all the clandestine goings-on.

Interesting that Turkey is keen on snuggling up close with those bastions of civil rights - SA and Qatar, just at the same time as they are making very loud noises re the involvement of what is Hezbollah in the Syrian conflict . . . .

Easy to see which side Turkey's desperately backing.

conscious being

Serena Shim, Shim had been reporting that IS militants had crossed the border from Turkey into Syria in trucks apparently affiliated with NGOs, some of which allegedly bore World Food Organization symbols. She claimed that she had received images from Islamic militants crossing the Turkish border and was one of the few reporters focusing on the matter.

"We were some of the first people on the ground –if not the first people – to get that story of…militants going in through the Turkish border…I've got images of them in World Food Organization trucks. It was very apparent that they were militants by their beards, by the clothes they wore, and they were going in there with NGO trucks," she said.

lakecity55

I also remember the Terrorists taking over a pool supply/industrial supply house of Chlorine gas. They may have manufactured the chlorine at the same facility, so there was no shortage of ways for them to get ahold of poison gas.

The ideation that Assad would gas his own people is absurd. He throws some dissidents inot jail, but so does the USSA.

George Washington

Whistleblower: Powerful Congressman Hastert's Corruption Goes FAR Beyond Sex With a Student

Ms. Edmonds also told me that Hastert and other high-ranking officials helped funnel money for Gladio B false flag operations.

[Oct 24, 2015] Snowden NSA, GCHQ Using Your Phone to Spy on Others (and You)

that's pretty superficial coverage. Capabilities of smartphone mike are pretty limited and by design it is try to suppress external noise. If your phone is in the case microphone will not pick up much. Same for camera. Only your GPS location is available. If phone is switched off then even this is not reality available. I think the whole ability to listen from the pocket is overblown. There is too much noice to make this practical on the current level of development of technology. At the same time I think just metadata are enough to feel that you are the constant surveillance.

Notable quotes:

"... the most part intelligence agencies are not really looking to monitor your private phone communications per se. They are actually taking over full control of the phone to take photos or record ongoing conversations within earshot. ..."

"... According to Snowden, the UK's spy agency, the Government Communications Headquarters, uses NSA technology to develop software tools to control almost anyone's smartphone. He notes that all it takes is sending an encrypted text message to get into virtually any smartphone. Moreover, the message will not be seen by the user, making it almost impossible to stop the attack. ..."

"... Reprinted with permission from WeMeantWell.com . ..."

Oct 15, 2015 | The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity

You are a tool of the state, according to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The NSA in the U.S., and its equivalent in the UK, GCHQ, are taking control of your phone not just to spy on you as needed, but also to use your device as a way to spy on others around you. You are a walking microphone, camera and GPS for spies.

Snowden, in a BBC interview, explained that for the most part intelligence agencies are not really looking to monitor your private phone communications per se. They are actually taking over full control of the phone to take photos or record ongoing conversations within earshot.

According to Snowden, the UK's spy agency, the Government Communications Headquarters, uses NSA technology to develop software tools to control almost anyone's smartphone. He notes that all it takes is sending an encrypted text message to get into virtually any smartphone. Moreover, the message will not be seen by the user, making it almost impossible to stop the attack.

GCHQ calls these smartphone hacking tools the "Smurf Suite." The suite includes:

• "Dreamy Smurf" is the power management tool that turns your phone on and off with you knowing.
• "Nosey Smurf" is the hot mic tool. "For example," Snowden said, "if the phone is in your pocket, NSA/GCHQ can turn the microphone on and listen to everything that's going on around you, even if your phone is switched off because they've got the other tools for turning it on.
• "Tracker Smurf" is a geolocation tool which allows spies to follow you with a greater precision than you would get from the typical triangulation of cellphone towers.
• "Paranoid Smurf" is a defensive mechanism designed to make the other tools installed on the phone undetectable.

Snowden said the NSA has spent close to $1 billion to develop these smartphone hacking programs.

Reprinted with permission from WeMeantWell.com.

[Oct 23, 2015] Middle Class Shrinks Further as More Fall Out Instead of Climbing Up

Notable quotes:

"... In the late 1960s, more than half of the households in the United States were squarely in the middle, earning, in today's dollars, $35,000 to $100,000 a year. ..."

"... But since 2000, the middle-class share of households has continued to narrow, the main reason being that more people have fallen to the bottom. At the same time, fewer of those in this group fit the traditional image of a married couple with children at home, a gap increasingly filled by the elderly. ..."

"... regardless of their income, most Americans identify as middle class. The term itself is so amorphous that politicians often cite the group in introducing proposals to engender wide appeal. ..."

"... The definition here starts at $35,000 - which is about 50 percent higher than the official poverty level for a family of four - and ends at the six-figure mark. Although many Americans in households making more than $100,000 consider themselves middle class, particularly those living in expensive regions like the Northeast and Pacific Coast, they have substantially more money than most people. ..."

"... "I would consider middle class to be people who can live comfortably on what they earn, can pay their bills, can set aside something to save for retirement and for kids in college and can have vacations and entertainment," said Christine L. Owens, executive director of the National Employment Law Project, a left-leaning research and advocacy group. ..."

JAN. 25, 2015 | The New York Times

The middle class that President Obama identified in his State of the Union speech last week as the foundation of the American economy has been shrinking for almost half a century.

In the late 1960s, more than half of the households in the United States were squarely in the middle, earning, in today's dollars, $35,000 to $100,000 a year. Few people noticed or cared as the size of that group began to fall, because the shift was primarily caused by more Americans climbing the economic ladder into upper-income brackets.

But since 2000, the middle-class share of households has continued to narrow, the main reason being that more people have fallen to the bottom. At the same time, fewer of those in this group fit the traditional image of a married couple with children at home, a gap increasingly filled by the elderly.

This social upheaval helps explain why the president focused on reviving the middle class, offering a raft of proposals squarely aimed at concerns like paying for a college education, taking parental leave, affording child care and buying a home.

"Middle-class economics means helping working families feel more secure in a world of constant change," Mr. Obama told Congress and the public on Tuesday.

Still, regardless of their income, most Americans identify as middle class. The term itself is so amorphous that politicians often cite the group in introducing proposals to engender wide appeal.

The definition here starts at $35,000 - which is about 50 percent higher than the official poverty level for a family of four - and ends at the six-figure mark. Although many Americans in households making more than $100,000 consider themselves middle class, particularly those living in expensive regions like the Northeast and Pacific Coast, they have substantially more money than most people.

"I would consider middle class to be people who can live comfortably on what they earn, can pay their bills, can set aside something to save for retirement and for kids in college and can have vacations and entertainment," said Christine L. Owens, executive director of the National Employment Law Project, a left-leaning research and advocacy group.

... ... ...

In recent years, the fastest-growing component of the new middle class has been households headed by people 65 and older. Today's seniors have better retirement benefits than previous generations. Also, older Americans are increasingly working past traditional retirement age. More than eight million, or 19 percent, were in the labor force in 2013, nearly twice as many as in 2000.

As a result, while median household income, on average, has fallen 9 percent since the turn of the century, it has jumped 14 percent among households headed by older adults.

[Oct 23, 2015] The Devils Chessboard Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of Americas Secret Government

Notable quotes:

"... Talbot focusses extensively on James Jesus Angleton, the shadowy counterintelligence figure at the heart of the domestic assassinations of the 1960s, and examines the inner-workings of Dulles' ambitious (and dastardly) plot to consolidate and control global political power. "The Devil's Chessboard" is a startling and revelatory masterwork. In terms of easy-to-access assassination research, this book is second only to James Douglass' "JFK and the Unspeakable." In terms of biographies of Dulles and Angleton, two of history's most infamous figures, this work is second to none. ..."

"... A heretofore unanswered question about the JFK assassination is what was Allen Dulles was doing between the time he was fired by JFK as Director of the CIA in 1961 until the moment of the assassination on November 22, 1963. A related question is how was it conceivable for Dulles to have been appointed to the Warren Commission that eventually produced the conclusions that are still accepted by mainstream historians and the media? Talbot's intensive research helps to shed on light on those questions by tracing the arc of development of the career of Allen Dulles as a high-powered attorney at the center of the elitist East Coast establishment, his shocking collaboration with the Nazis while working in the OSS, and his career in clandestine activities at the CIA ..."

"... Talbots research probes not merely the activities of Dulles as Director of the CIA, but explores the broader context of his function over three decades as a power broker, whose efforts were directed not against hostile governments but against his own. ..."

"... the more recent book on Dulles covers the broader scope of how the American government was transformed into the national security state in the years following World War II. Talbots goal in preparing this book is to demonstrate the urgency of coming to terms with our past and how it is essential that we continue to fight for the right to own our history. (p. xii) An excellent place to begin that quest is to own this book. ..."

Amazon

J. Roth on October 14, 2015

A Groundbreaking Resource, Second Only to "JFK and the Unspeakable"

A tremendous resource of breathtaking depth and clarity. Talbot builds on the now decades-old body of research - initiated by investigative reporters Tom Mangold ("Cold Warrior") and David Wise ("Molehunt"), and largely developed by assassination researchers James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease ("The Assassinations") - and adds groundbreaking new information.

Talbot focusses extensively on James Jesus Angleton, the shadowy counterintelligence figure at the heart of the domestic assassinations of the 1960s, and examines the inner-workings of Dulles' ambitious (and dastardly) plot to consolidate and control global political power. "The Devil's Chessboard" is a startling and revelatory masterwork. In terms of easy-to-access assassination research, this book is second only to James Douglass' "JFK and the Unspeakable." In terms of biographies of Dulles and Angleton, two of history's most infamous figures, this work is second to none.

Note: Be wary of one-star reviews for this book. Some trace back to commissioned-review services, the same services that give five-star reviews to shady/suspicious health and beauty products. Go figure.

James Norwood on October 14, 2015

The Shadow Government of Allen Dulles: Organized Irresponsibility

To read this magnificent book by David Talbot is to understand how the JFK assassination occurred and how the truth was concealed by officialdom in the Warren Report. Unlike his brother, John Foster Dulles, the younger Allen Welsh Dulles rarely makes it into American history textbooks. In this extremely detailed study, the singular importance of Allen Dulles is demonstrated as being central to a watershed period in the American Century.

First and foremost, "The Devil's Chessboard" is a beautifully written and meticulously researched volume. Talbot drew upon archives at Princeton University, where the Allen Dulles papers are housed. He also conducted research in other archives across the country. The documentary work is buttressed and amplified by interviews with the surviving daughter of Dulles, as well as interviews with the children of Dulles' colleagues and over 150 officials from the Kennedy administration. Nearly forty pages of notes serve to document the author's sources.

One of the most revealing moments about Allen Dulles was when he was ten years old and spending time at the family's lake home in upstate New York. After his five-year-old sister fell into the lake and was drifting away from him, Allen stood stock still, "strangely impassive. The boy just stood on the dock and watched as his little sister drifted away." (p. 19) Fortunately, the child was rescued by the mother. The behavior of young Allen is representative of a lifelong predilection for observing the imponderables of life as an insider while looking to others to "risk their skins." For this little boy, the world was already forming into a chessboard with pawns to manipulate for his self-serving needs. Talbot describes Dulles' rogue actions in allowing Nazi war criminals to avoid prosecution at the Nuremberg Trials in these chilling words: "Even in the life-and-death throes of wartime espionage, Dulles seemed untouched by the intense human drama swirling around him." (p. 120)

In one of the most riveting moments of the book, Talbot describes an interchange between Dulles and researcher David Lifton at a colloquium on the JFK assassination at the campus of UCLA in 1965. Lifton came prepared to challenge Dulles on major deficiencies of the Warren Report. By the end of the evening, the students attending the session were more interested in Lifton's findings than Dulles' unsuccessful attempts to deflect the tough questions. In retrospect, Lifton apparently claimed that he "was in the presence of 'evil' that night." (p. 591)

A heretofore unanswered question about the JFK assassination is what was Allen Dulles was doing between the time he was fired by JFK as Director of the CIA in 1961 until the moment of the assassination on November 22, 1963. A related question is how was it conceivable for Dulles to have been appointed to the Warren Commission that eventually produced the conclusions that are still accepted by mainstream historians and the media? Talbot's intensive research helps to shed on light on those questions by tracing the arc of development of the career of Allen Dulles as a high-powered attorney at the center of the elitist East Coast establishment, his shocking collaboration with the Nazis while working in the OSS, and his career in clandestine activities at the CIA

Talbot's research probes not merely the activities of Dulles as Director of the CIA, but explores the broader context of his function over three decades as a power broker, whose "efforts were directed not against hostile governments but against his own." (p. 3) Talbot cites revelations from the Columbia University sociology professor C. Wright Mills about the secret government of Allen Dulles, which was comprised of a "power elite" and based on the anti-Constitutional premise of "organized irresponsibility."

In many ways, "The Devil's Chessboard" is a companion volume to Talbot's essential study "Brothers," which focuses on the relationship of John and Robert Kennedy, the assassination of JFK, and the aftereffects on RFK. But the more recent book on Dulles covers the broader scope of how the American government was transformed into the national security state in the years following World War II. Talbot's goal in preparing this book is to demonstrate the urgency of coming to terms with our past and how "it is essential that we continue to fight for the right to own our history." (p. xii) An excellent place to begin that quest is to own this book.

[Oct 23, 2015] Putin Just Warned Global War Is Increasingly More Likely Heres Why

Notable quotes:

"... "Why play with words dividing terrorists into moderate and not moderate. Whats the difference?," Putin asked, adding that "success in fighting terrorists cannot be reached if using some of them as a battering ram to overthrow disliked regimes [because] its just an illusion that they can be dealt with [later], removed from power and somehow negotiated with." ..."

"... hypothetical nuclear threat from Iran is a myth. The US was just trying to destroy the strategical balance, [and] not to just dominate, but be able to dictate its will to everyone – not only geopolitical opponents, but also allies. ..."

"... We had the right to expect that work on development of US missile defense system would stop. But nothing like it happened, and it continues. This is a very dangerous scenario, harmful for all, including the United States itself. The deterrent of nuclear weapons has started to lose its value, and some have even got the illusion that a real victory of one of the sides can be achieved in a global conflict, without irreversible consequences for the winner itself – if there is a winner at all." ..."

"... the US believes it not only has the capacity to win a war against the nations Washington habitually places on its various lists of bad guys (i.e. Russia, Iran, and China), but that Washington believes America can win without incurring consequences that are commensurate with the damage the US inflicts on its enemies. That, Putin believes, is a dangerous miscalculation and one that could end up endangering US citizens. ..."

"... They did this after the White House ... ... decided to move patriot batteries to E. Europe then blew him off and claimed they were pointed at Iran. Remember the Interview where Putin bust out laughing at the reporter who suggested this? ..."

www.zerohedge.com

Zero Hedge

... ... ...

... Washington, Riyadh, Ankara, and Doha are left to look on helplessly as their Sunni extremist proxy armies are devastated by the Russian air force. The Kremlin knows there's little chance that the West and its allies will step in to directly support the rebels - the optics around that would quickly turn into a PR nightmare.

... ... ...

Speaking today at the International Valdai Discussion Club's 12th annual meeting in Sochi, Putin delivered a sweeping critique of military strategy and foreign policy touching on everything from the erroneous labeling of some extremists as "moderates" to the futility of nuclear war.

"Why play with words dividing terrorists into moderate and not moderate. What's the difference?," Putin asked, adding that "success in fighting terrorists cannot be reached if using some of them as a battering ram to overthrow disliked regimes [because] it's just an illusion that they can be dealt with [later], removed from power and somehow negotiated with."

"I'd like to stress once again that [Russia's operation in Syria] is completely legitimate, and its only aim is to aid in establishing peace," Putin said of Moscow's Mid-East strategy. And while he's probably telling the truth there, it's only by default. That is, peace in Syria likely means the restoration of Assad (it's difficult to imagine how else the country can be stabilized in the short-term), and because that aligns with Russia's interests, The Kremlin is seeking to promote peace - it's more a tautology than it is a comment on Putin's desire for goodwill towards men.

And then there's Iran and its nascent nuclear program. Putin accused the US of illegitimately seeking to play nuclear police officer, a point on which he is unquestionably correct: The "hypothetical nuclear threat from Iran is a myth. The US was just trying to destroy the strategical balance, [and] not to just dominate, but be able to dictate its will to everyone – not only geopolitical opponents, but also allies."

Speaking of nukes, Putin also warned that some nuclear powers seem to believe that there's a way to take the "mutually" out of "mutually assured destruction."

That is, Putin warned against the dangers of thinking it's possible to "win" a nuclear war. Commenting on US anti-missile shields in Europe and on the idea of MAD, Putin said the following:

"We had the right to expect that work on development of US missile defense system would stop. But nothing like it happened, and it continues. This is a very dangerous scenario, harmful for all, including the United States itself. The deterrent of nuclear weapons has started to lose its value, and some have even got the illusion that a real victory of one of the sides can be achieved in a global conflict, without irreversible consequences for the winner itself – if there is a winner at all."

In short, Putin is suggesting that the world may have gone crazy. The implication is that the US believes it not only has the capacity to win a war against the nations Washington habitually places on its various lists of "bad guys" (i.e. Russia, Iran, and China), but that Washington believes America can win without incurring consequences that are commensurate with the damage the US inflicts on its enemies. That, Putin believes, is a dangerous miscalculation and one that could end up endangering US citizens.

... ... ...

ZerOhead

Putin is really pushing the "nuclear war" angle hard. I guess his good friend Henry Kissinger must have told him that power is the only thing that NeoCon fucknuts like himself understand...

El Vaquero

For any who want to read it, here is some detailed information on what the USSR's nuclear strategy was during the Cold War:

http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb285/

While some things will have changed due to changes in technology, what kinds of targets the Russians would pick is likely much the same as it was when it was part of the USSR. If you live near a target, this might be helpful:

http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/

sushi

The people of the Falklands voted to remain associated with the UK. The citizens of Quebec, Canada nearly voted themselves out of Canada, the citizens of Scotland nearly voted themselves out of the the UK, Self Determination is respected by the UN as being a fundamental right of all peoples, so of course when the the citizens of Crimea undertake exactly the same process and vote to join Russia it is a Russian imperialist land grab.

Watch more MSM. They will explain it all to you.

Occident Mortal

Russian ICBM's can't be shot down with air defense missiles.

Russian ICBM's constantly recalculate their trajectory following a continually regenerated 'random path' through 3D space all the way to their target. The downside is that the missles need 20% more fuel.

All air defense systems work by tracking a missle and projecting it's trajectory then triangulating an intercept location and launching an interceptor to that location.

But by the time the interceptor reaches the intercept location the Russian ICBM will have changed course several times and is likely to be thousands of meters away.

In order to intercept a Russian ICBM the interceptor needs to travel at over 35,000mph. Good luck with that.

George Bush decided he wanted a Star Wars missle defense system and after spending a boat load of cash.. the Kremlin called in the US amabasador and told them all Russian missle had just received a software upgrade that would render Star Wars obsolete before it was even built. The Star Wars program was scrapped within a month.

Anasteus

A shockingly open Putin's summary of the current situation that every American should hear

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQuceU3x2Ww

Mr.BlingBling

They'd be practically useless on this continent because of the decoys accompanying the 'physics packages.' The sine qua non of an effective ABM system is the ability to destroy the missiles during the boost phase. The importance of eastern Ukraine is its proximity to Russian ICBM bases, which is why 'our' government spent $5 billion to foment the coup.

cowdiddly

Oh dont worry it is Carl. That little Caspian missile shoot off the shrimp boats has caused these morons to realize there may be a few gaping ass holes in the curtain has them scrambling. I present you their panic contract to "protect the homeland" just issued to..........Yep. Lockheed Martin. purveyors of the fine F35 aircraft.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/21/lockheed-radar-missile-defense...

I feel safer already

Speaking of military contracts, Last year Russia upgraded and refurbished over 5000 underground atomic bomb shelters built in the old Soviet days that are located in every province of Russia for their people. He knows what kind of nimcompoops he is dealing with. They did this after the White House ... ... decided to move patriot batteries to E. Europe then blew him off and claimed they were pointed at Iran. Remember the Interview where Putin bust out laughing at the reporter who suggested this?

Now ask yourself how many underground shelters has your government provided for us, other than the huge complex in Utah for the President and politicians to move safely too? I certainly don't know where one is in my state unless I was to dig it myself. The only thing I know of that they did to prepare for disaster is Fema built millions of plastic coffin like things that are being stored around everywhere.

They are only worried about protecting themselves and don't give a rats ass about you other than taxes. Their only concern for you is you might lay around to long stinking up the place.

[Oct 22, 2015] Why the U.S. Is Selling Saudi Arabia $13 Billion Worth of New Weapons

finance.yahoo.com

Seeking to bolster its Persian Gulf allies in the wake of the nuclear deal with Iran, the Obama administration this week notified Congress that it plans to sell up to $11.25 billion in warships and related equipment to Saudi Arabia.

[Oct 22, 2015] The Vineyard of the Saker Putin's speech at the Valdai Club - full transcript

Notable quotes:

"... Pardon the analogy, but this is the way nouveaux riches behave when they suddenly end up with a great fortune, in this case, in the shape of world leadership and domination. Instead of managing their wealth wisely, for their own benefit too of course, I think they have committed many follies. ..."

"... International law has been forced to retreat over and over by the onslaught of legal nihilism. Objectivity and justice have been sacrificed on the altar of political expediency. Arbitrary interpretations and biased assessments have replaced legal norms. At the same time, total control of the global mass media has made it possible when desired to portray white as black and black as white. ..."

"... In a situation where you had domination by one country and its allies, or its satellites rather, the search for global solutions often turned into an attempt to impose their own universal recipes. This group's ambitions grew so big that they started presenting the policies they put together in their corridors of power as the view of the entire international community. But this is not the case. ..."

"... The measures taken against those who refuse to submit are well-known and have been tried and tested many times. They include use of force, economic and propaganda pressure, meddling in domestic affairs, and appeals to a kind of 'supra-legal' legitimacy when they need to justify illegal intervention in this or that conflict or toppling inconvenient regimes. Of late, we have increasing evidence too that outright blackmail has been used with regard to a number of leaders. It is not for nothing that 'big brother' is spending billions of dollars on keeping the whole world, including its own closest allies, under surveillance. ..."

"... They once sponsored Islamic extremist movements to fight the Soviet Union. Those groups got their battle experience in Afghanistan and later gave birth to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. The West if not supported, at least closed its eyes, and, I would say, gave information, political and financial support to international terrorists' invasion of Russia (we have not forgotten this) and the Central Asian region's countries. Only after horrific terrorist attacks were committed on US soil itself did the United States wake up to the common threat of terrorism. Let me remind you that we were the first country to support the American people back then, the first to react as friends and partners to the terrible tragedy of September 11. ..."

"... As for financing sources, today, the money is coming not just from drugs, production of which has increased not just by a few percentage points but many-fold, since the international coalition forces have been present in Afghanistan. You are aware of this. The terrorists are getting money from selling oil too. Oil is produced in territory controlled by the terrorists, who sell it at dumping prices, produce it and transport it. But someone buys this oil, resells it, and makes a profit from it, not thinking about the fact that they are thus financing terrorists who could come sooner or later to their own soil and sow destruction in their own countries. ..."

"... What was the result? Tens of thousands of soldiers, officers and former Baath Party activists were turned out into the streets and today have joined the rebels' ranks. Perhaps this is what explains why the Islamic State group has turned out so effective? In military terms, it is acting very effectively and has some very professional people. Russia warned repeatedly about the dangers of unilateral military actions, intervening in sovereign states' affairs, and flirting with extremists and radicals. We insisted on having the groups fighting the central Syrian government, above all the Islamic State, included on the lists of terrorist organisations. But did we see any results? We appealed in vain. ..."

"... Essentially, the unipolar world is simply a means of justifying dictatorship over people and countries. The unipolar world turned out too uncomfortable, heavy and unmanageable a burden even for the self-proclaimed leader. Comments along this line were made here just before and I fully agree with this. This is why we see attempts at this new historic stage to recreate a semblance of a quasi-bipolar world as a convenient model for perpetuating American leadership. It does not matter who takes the place of the centre of evil in American propaganda, the USSR's old place as the main adversary. It could be Iran, as a country seeking to acquire nuclear technology, China, as the world's biggest economy, or Russia, as a nuclear superpower. ..."

"... Sanctions are already undermining the foundations of world trade, the WTO rules and the principle of inviolability of private property. They are dealing a blow to liberal model of globalisation based on markets, freedom and competition, which, let me note, is a model that has primarily benefited precisely the Western countries. And now they risk losing trust as the leaders of globalisation. We have to ask ourselves, why was this necessary? After all, the United States' prosperity rests in large part on the trust of investors and foreign holders of dollars and US securities. This trust is clearly being undermined and signs of disappointment in the fruits of globalisation are visible now in many countries. ..."

"... Of course the sanctions are a hindrance. They are trying to hurt us through these sanctions, block our development and push us into political, economic and cultural isolation, force us into backwardness in other words. But let me say yet again that the world is a very different place today. We have no intention of shutting ourselves off from anyone and choosing some kind of closed development road, trying to live in autarky. We are always open to dialogue, including on normalising our economic and political relations. We are counting here on the pragmatic approach and position of business communities in the leading countries. ..."

"... Ukraine, which I'm sure was discussed at length and which we will discuss some more, is one of the example of such sorts of conflicts that affect international power balance, and I think it will certainly not be the last. From here emanates the next real threat of destroying the current system of arms control agreements. And this dangerous process was launched by the United States of America when it unilaterally withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002, and then set about and continues today to actively pursue the creation of its global missile defence system. ..."

"... Once again, we are sliding into the times when, instead of the balance of interests and mutual guarantees, it is fear and the balance of mutual destruction that prevent nations from engaging in direct conflict. ..."

"... Today, many types of high-precision weaponry are already close to mass-destruction weapons in terms of their capabilities, and in the event of full renunciation of nuclear weapons or radical reduction of nuclear potential, nations that are leaders in creating and producing high-precision systems will have a clear military advantage. Strategic parity will be disrupted, and this is likely to bring destabilization. The use of a so-called first global pre-emptive strike may become tempting. In short, the risks do not decrease, but intensify. ..."

vineyardsaker.blogspot.com

... ... ...

What we needed to do was to carry out a rational reconstruction and adapt it the new realities in the system of international relations.

But the United States, having declared itself the winner of the Cold War, saw no need for this. Instead of establishing a new balance of power, essential for maintaining order and stability, they took steps that threw the system into sharp and deep imbalance.

The Cold War ended, but it did not end with the signing of a peace treaty with clear and transparent agreements on respecting existing rules or creating new rules and standards. This created the impression that the so-called 'victors' in the Cold War had decided to pressure events and reshape the world to suit their own needs and interests. If the existing system of international relations, international law and the checks and balances in place got in the way of these aims, this system was declared worthless, outdated and in need of immediate demolition.

Pardon the analogy, but this is the way nouveaux riches behave when they suddenly end up with a great fortune, in this case, in the shape of world leadership and domination. Instead of managing their wealth wisely, for their own benefit too of course, I think they have committed many follies.

We have entered a period of differing interpretations and deliberate silences in world politics. International law has been forced to retreat over and over by the onslaught of legal nihilism. Objectivity and justice have been sacrificed on the altar of political expediency. Arbitrary interpretations and biased assessments have replaced legal norms. At the same time, total control of the global mass media has made it possible when desired to portray white as black and black as white.

In a situation where you had domination by one country and its allies, or its satellites rather, the search for global solutions often turned into an attempt to impose their own universal recipes. This group's ambitions grew so big that they started presenting the policies they put together in their corridors of power as the view of the entire international community. But this is not the case.

The very notion of 'national sovereignty' became a relative value for most countries. In essence, what was being proposed was the formula: the greater the loyalty towards the world's sole power centre, the greater this or that ruling regime's legitimacy.

We will have a free discussion afterwards and I will be happy to answer your questions and would also like to use my right to ask you questions. Let someone try to disprove the arguments that I just set out during the upcoming discussion.

The measures taken against those who refuse to submit are well-known and have been tried and tested many times. They include use of force, economic and propaganda pressure, meddling in domestic affairs, and appeals to a kind of 'supra-legal' legitimacy when they need to justify illegal intervention in this or that conflict or toppling inconvenient regimes. Of late, we have increasing evidence too that outright blackmail has been used with regard to a number of leaders. It is not for nothing that 'big brother' is spending billions of dollars on keeping the whole world, including its own closest allies, under surveillance.

Let's ask ourselves, how comfortable are we with this, how safe are we, how happy living in this world, and how fair and rational has it become? Maybe, we have no real reasons to worry, argue and ask awkward questions? Maybe the United States' exceptional position and the way they are carrying out their leadership really is a blessing for us all, and their meddling in events all around the world is bringing peace, prosperity, progress, growth and democracy, and we should maybe just relax and enjoy it all?

Let me say that this is not the case, absolutely not the case.

A unilateral diktat and imposing one's own models produces the opposite result. Instead of settling conflicts it leads to their escalation, instead of sovereign and stable states we see the growing spread of chaos, and instead of democracy there is support for a very dubious public ranging from open neo-fascists to Islamic radicals.

Why do they support such people? They do this because they decide to use them as instruments along the way in achieving their goals but then burn their fingers and recoil. I never cease to be amazed by the way that our partners just keep stepping on the same rake, as we say here in Russia, that is to say, make the same mistake over and over.

They once sponsored Islamic extremist movements to fight the Soviet Union. Those groups got their battle experience in Afghanistan and later gave birth to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. The West if not supported, at least closed its eyes, and, I would say, gave information, political and financial support to international terrorists' invasion of Russia (we have not forgotten this) and the Central Asian region's countries. Only after horrific terrorist attacks were committed on US soil itself did the United States wake up to the common threat of terrorism. Let me remind you that we were the first country to support the American people back then, the first to react as friends and partners to the terrible tragedy of September 11.

During my conversations with American and European leaders, I always spoke of the need to fight terrorism together, as a challenge on a global scale. We cannot resign ourselves to and accept this threat, cannot cut it into separate pieces using double standards. Our partners expressed agreement, but a little time passed and we ended up back where we started. First there was the military operation in Iraq, then in Libya, which got pushed to the brink of falling apart. Why was Libya pushed into this situation? Today it is a country in danger of breaking apart and has become a training ground for terrorists.

Only the current Egyptian leadership's determination and wisdom saved this key Arab country from chaos and having extremists run rampant. In Syria, as in the past, the United States and its allies started directly financing and arming rebels and allowing them to fill their ranks with mercenaries from various countries. Let me ask where do these rebels get their money, arms and military specialists? Where does all this come from? How did the notorious ISIL manage to become such a powerful group, essentially a real armed force?

As for financing sources, today, the money is coming not just from drugs, production of which has increased not just by a few percentage points but many-fold, since the international coalition forces have been present in Afghanistan. You are aware of this. The terrorists are getting money from selling oil too. Oil is produced in territory controlled by the terrorists, who sell it at dumping prices, produce it and transport it. But someone buys this oil, resells it, and makes a profit from it, not thinking about the fact that they are thus financing terrorists who could come sooner or later to their own soil and sow destruction in their own countries.

Where do they get new recruits? In Iraq, after Saddam Hussein was toppled, the state's institutions, including the army, were left in ruins. We said back then, be very, very careful. You are driving people out into the street, and what will they do there? Don't forget (rightfully or not) that they were in the leadership of a large regional power, and what are you now turning them into?

What was the result? Tens of thousands of soldiers, officers and former Baath Party activists were turned out into the streets and today have joined the rebels' ranks. Perhaps this is what explains why the Islamic State group has turned out so effective? In military terms, it is acting very effectively and has some very professional people. Russia warned repeatedly about the dangers of unilateral military actions, intervening in sovereign states' affairs, and flirting with extremists and radicals. We insisted on having the groups fighting the central Syrian government, above all the Islamic State, included on the lists of terrorist organisations. But did we see any results? We appealed in vain.

We sometimes get the impression that our colleagues and friends are constantly fighting the consequences of their own policies, throw all their effort into addressing the risks they themselves have created, and pay an ever-greater price.

Colleagues, this period of unipolar domination has convincingly demonstrated that having only one power centre does not make global processes more manageable. On the contrary, this kind of unstable construction has shown its inability to fight the real threats such as regional conflicts, terrorism, drug trafficking, religious fanaticism, chauvinism and neo-Nazism. At the same time, it has opened the road wide for inflated national pride, manipulating public opinion and letting the strong bully and suppress the weak.

Essentially, the unipolar world is simply a means of justifying dictatorship over people and countries. The unipolar world turned out too uncomfortable, heavy and unmanageable a burden even for the self-proclaimed leader. Comments along this line were made here just before and I fully agree with this. This is why we see attempts at this new historic stage to recreate a semblance of a quasi-bipolar world as a convenient model for perpetuating American leadership. It does not matter who takes the place of the centre of evil in American propaganda, the USSR's old place as the main adversary. It could be Iran, as a country seeking to acquire nuclear technology, China, as the world's biggest economy, or Russia, as a nuclear superpower.

Today, we are seeing new efforts to fragment the world, draw new dividing lines, put together coalitions not built for something but directed against someone, anyone, create the image of an enemy as was the case during the Cold War years, and obtain the right to this leadership, or diktat if you wish. The situation was presented this way during the Cold War. We all understand this and know this. The United States always told its allies: "We have a common enemy, a terrible foe, the centre of evil, and we are defending you, our allies, from this foe, and so we have the right to order you around, force you to sacrifice your political and economic interests and pay your share of the costs for this collective defence, but we will be the ones in charge of it all of course." In short, we see today attempts in a new and changing world to reproduce the familiar models of global management, and all this so as to guarantee their [the US'] exceptional position and reap political and economic dividends.

But these attempts are increasingly divorced from reality and are in contradiction with the world's diversity. Steps of this kind inevitably create confrontation and countermeasures and have the opposite effect to the hoped-for goals. We see what happens when politics rashly starts meddling in the economy and the logic of rational decisions gives way to the logic of confrontation that only hurt one's own economic positions and interests, including national business interests.

Joint economic projects and mutual investment objectively bring countries closer together and help to smooth out current problems in relations between states. But today, the global business community faces unprecedented pressure from Western governments. What business, economic expediency and pragmatism can we speak of when we hear slogans such as "the homeland is in danger", "the free world is under threat", and "democracy is in jeopardy"? And so everyone needs to mobilise. That is what a real mobilisation policy looks like.

Sanctions are already undermining the foundations of world trade, the WTO rules and the principle of inviolability of private property. They are dealing a blow to liberal model of globalisation based on markets, freedom and competition, which, let me note, is a model that has primarily benefited precisely the Western countries. And now they risk losing trust as the leaders of globalisation. We have to ask ourselves, why was this necessary? After all, the United States' prosperity rests in large part on the trust of investors and foreign holders of dollars and US securities. This trust is clearly being undermined and signs of disappointment in the fruits of globalisation are visible now in many countries.

The well-known Cyprus precedent and the politically motivated sanctions have only strengthened the trend towards seeking to bolster economic and financial sovereignty and countries' or their regional groups' desire to find ways of protecting themselves from the risks of outside pressure. We already see that more and more countries are looking for ways to become less dependent on the dollar and are setting up alternative financial and payments systems and reserve currencies. I think that our American friends are quite simply cutting the branch they are sitting on. You cannot mix politics and the economy, but this is what is happening now. I have always thought and still think today that politically motivated sanctions were a mistake that will harm everyone, but I am sure that we will come back to this subject later.

We know how these decisions were taken and who was applying the pressure. But let me stress that Russia is not going to get all worked up, get offended or come begging at anyone's door. Russia is a self-sufficient country. We will work within the foreign economic environment that has taken shape, develop domestic production and technology and act more decisively to carry out transformation. Pressure from outside, as has been the case on past occasions, will only consolidate our society, keep us alert and make us concentrate on our main development goals.

Of course the sanctions are a hindrance. They are trying to hurt us through these sanctions, block our development and push us into political, economic and cultural isolation, force us into backwardness in other words. But let me say yet again that the world is a very different place today. We have no intention of shutting ourselves off from anyone and choosing some kind of closed development road, trying to live in autarky. We are always open to dialogue, including on normalising our economic and political relations. We are counting here on the pragmatic approach and position of business communities in the leading countries.

Some are saying today that Russia is supposedly turning its back on Europe - such words were probably spoken already here too during the discussions - and is looking for new business partners, above all in Asia. Let me say that this is absolutely not the case. Our active policy in the Asian-Pacific region began not just yesterday and not in response to sanctions, but is a policy that we have been following for a good many years now. Like many other countries, including Western countries, we saw that Asia is playing an ever greater role in the world, in the economy and in politics, and there is simply no way we can afford to overlook these developments.

Let me say again that everyone is doing this, and we will do so to, all the more so as a large part of our country is geographically in Asia. Why should we not make use of our competitive advantages in this area? It would be extremely shortsighted not to do so.

Developing economic ties with these countries and carrying out joint integration projects also creates big incentives for our domestic development. Today's demographic, economic and cultural trends all suggest that dependence on a sole superpower will objectively decrease. This is something that European and American experts have been talking and writing about too.

Perhaps developments in global politics will mirror the developments we are seeing in the global economy, namely, intensive competition for specific niches and frequent change of leaders in specific areas. This is entirely possible.

There is no doubt that humanitarian factors such as education, science, healthcare and culture are playing a greater role in global competition. This also has a big impact on international relations, including because this 'soft power' resource will depend to a great extent on real achievements in developing human capital rather than on sophisticated propaganda tricks.

At the same time, the formation of a so-called polycentric world (I would also like to draw attention to this, colleagues) in and of itself does not improve stability; in fact, it is more likely to be the opposite. The goal of reaching global equilibrium is turning into a fairly difficult puzzle, an equation with many unknowns.

So, what is in store for us if we choose not to live by the rules – even if they may be strict and inconvenient – but rather live without any rules at all? And that scenario is entirely possible; we cannot rule it out, given the tensions in the global situation. Many predictions can already be made, taking into account current trends, and unfortunately, they are not optimistic. If we do not create a clear system of mutual commitments and agreements, if we do not build the mechanisms for managing and resolving crisis situations, the symptoms of global anarchy will inevitably grow.

Today, we already see a sharp increase in the likelihood of a whole set of violent conflicts with either direct or indirect participation by the world's major powers. And the risk factors include not just traditional multinational conflicts, but also the internal instability in separate states, especially when we talk about nations located at the intersections of major states' geopolitical interests, or on the border of cultural, historical, and economic civilizational continents.

Ukraine, which I'm sure was discussed at length and which we will discuss some more, is one of the example of such sorts of conflicts that affect international power balance, and I think it will certainly not be the last. From here emanates the next real threat of destroying the current system of arms control agreements. And this dangerous process was launched by the United States of America when it unilaterally withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002, and then set about and continues today to actively pursue the creation of its global missile defence system.

Colleagues, friends,

I want to point out that we did not start this. Once again, we are sliding into the times when, instead of the balance of interests and mutual guarantees, it is fear and the balance of mutual destruction that prevent nations from engaging in direct conflict. In absence of legal and political instruments, arms are once again becoming the focal point of the global agenda; they are used wherever and however, without any UN Security Council sanctions. And if the Security Council refuses to produce such decisions, then it is immediately declared to be an outdated and ineffective instrument.

Many states do not see any other ways of ensuring their sovereignty but to obtain their own bombs. This is extremely dangerous. We insist on continuing talks; we are not only in favour of talks, but insist on continuing talks to reduce nuclear arsenals. The less nuclear weapons we have in the world, the better. And we are ready for the most serious, concrete discussions on nuclear disarmament – but only serious discussions without any double standards.

What do I mean? Today, many types of high-precision weaponry are already close to mass-destruction weapons in terms of their capabilities, and in the event of full renunciation of nuclear weapons or radical reduction of nuclear potential, nations that are leaders in creating and producing high-precision systems will have a clear military advantage. Strategic parity will be disrupted, and this is likely to bring destabilization. The use of a so-called first global pre-emptive strike may become tempting. In short, the risks do not decrease, but intensify.

The next obvious threat is the further escalation of ethnic, religious, and social conflicts. Such conflicts are dangerous not only as such, but also because they create zones of anarchy, lawlessness, and chaos around them, places that are comfortable for terrorists and criminals, where piracy, human trafficking, and drug trafficking flourish.

Incidentally, at the time, our colleagues tried to somehow manage these processes, use regional conflicts and design 'colour revolutions' to suit their interests, but the genie escaped the bottle. It looks like the controlled chaos theory fathers themselves do not know what to do with it; there is disarray in their ranks.

We closely follow the discussions by both the ruling elite and the expert community. It is enough to look at the headlines of the Western press over the last year. The same people are called fighters for democracy, and then Islamists; first they write about revolutions and then call them riots and upheavals. The result is obvious: the further expansion of global chaos.

Colleagues, given the global situation, it is time to start agreeing on fundamental things. This is incredibly important and necessary; this is much better than going back to our own corners. The more we all face common problems, the more we find ourselves in the same boat, so to speak. And the logical way out is in cooperation between nations, societies, in finding collective answers to increasing challenges, and in joint risk management. Granted, some of our partners, for some reason, remember this only when it suits their interests.

Practical experience shows that joint answers to challenges are not always a panacea; and we need to understand this. Moreover, in most cases, they are hard to reach; it is not easy to overcome the differences in national interests, the subjectivity of different approaches, particularly when it comes to nations with different cultural and historical traditions. But nevertheless, we have examples when, having common goals and acting based on the same criteria, together we achieved real success.

Let me remind you about solving the problem of chemical weapons in Syria, and the substantive dialogue on the Iranian nuclear programme, as well as our work on North Korean issues, which also has some positive results. Why can't we use this experience in the future to solve local and global challenges?

What could be the legal, political, and economic basis for a new world order that would allow for stability and security, while encouraging healthy competition, not allowing the formation of new monopolies that hinder development? It is unlikely that someone could provide absolutely exhaustive, ready-made solutions right now. We will need extensive work with participation by a wide range of governments, global businesses, civil society, and such expert platforms as ours.

However, it is obvious that success and real results are only possible if key participants in international affairs can agree on harmonising basic interests, on reasonable self-restraint, and set the example of positive and responsible leadership. We must clearly identify where unilateral actions end and we need to apply multilateral mechanisms, and as part of improving the effectiveness of international law, we must resolve the dilemma between the actions by international community to ensure security and human rights and the principle of national sovereignty and non-interference in the internal affairs of any state.

Those very collisions increasingly lead to arbitrary external interference in complex internal processes, and time and again, they provoke dangerous conflicts between leading global players. The issue of maintaining sovereignty becomes almost paramount in maintaining and strengthening global stability.

Clearly, discussing the criteria for the use of external force is extremely difficult; it is practically impossible to separate it from the interests of particular nations. However, it is far more dangerous when there are no agreements that are clear to everyone, when no clear conditions are set for necessary and legal interference.

I will add that international relations must be based on international law, which itself should rest on moral principles such as justice, equality and truth. Perhaps most important is respect for one's partners and their interests. This is an obvious formula, but simply following it could radically change the global situation.

I am certain that if there is a will, we can restore the effectiveness of the international and regional institutions system. We do not even need to build anything anew, from the scratch; this is not a "greenfield," especially since the institutions created after World War II are quite universal and can be given modern substance, adequate to manage the current situation.

This is true of improving the work of the UN, whose central role is irreplaceable, as well as the OSCE, which, over the course of 40 years, has proven to be a necessary mechanism for ensuring security and cooperation in the Euro-Atlantic region. I must say that even now, in trying to resolve the crisis in southeast Ukraine, the OSCE is playing a very positive role.

In light of the fundamental changes in the international environment, the increase in uncontrollability and various threats, we need a new global consensus of responsible forces. It's not about some local deals or a division of spheres of influence in the spirit of classic diplomacy, or somebody's complete global domination. I think that we need a new version of interdependence. We should not be afraid of it. On the contrary, this is a good instrument for harmonising positions.

This is particularly relevant given the strengthening and growth of certain regions on the planet, which process objectively requires institutionalisation of such new poles, creating powerful regional organisations and developing rules for their interaction. Cooperation between these centres would seriously add to the stability of global security, policy and economy. But in order to establish such a dialogue, we need to proceed from the assumption that all regional centres and integration projects forming around them need to have equal rights to development, so that they can complement each other and nobody can force them into conflict or opposition artificially. Such destructive actions would break down ties between states, and the states themselves would be subjected to extreme hardship, or perhaps even total destruction.

I would like to remind you of the last year's events. We have told our American and European partners that hasty backstage decisions, for example, on Ukraine's association with the EU, are fraught with serious risks to the economy. We didn't even say anything about politics; we spoke only about the economy, saying that such steps, made without any prior arrangements, touch on the interests of many other nations, including Russia as Ukraine's main trade partner, and that a wide discussion of the issues is necessary. Incidentally, in this regard, I will remind you that, for example, the talks on Russia's accession to the WTO lasted 19 years. This was very difficult work, and a certain consensus was reached.

Why am I bringing this up? Because in implementing Ukraine's association project, our partners would come to us with their goods and services through the back gate, so to speak, and we did not agree to this, nobody asked us about this. We had discussions on all topics related to Ukraine's association with the EU, persistent discussions, but I want to stress that this was done in an entirely civilised manner, indicating possible problems, showing the obvious reasoning and arguments. Nobody wanted to listen to us and nobody wanted to talk. They simply told us: this is none of your business, point, end of discussion. Instead of a comprehensive but – I stress – civilised dialogue, it all came down to a government overthrow; they plunged the country into chaos, into economic and social collapse, into a civil war with enormous casualties.

Why? When I ask my colleagues why, they no longer have an answer; nobody says anything. That's it. Everyone's at a loss, saying it just turned out that way. Those actions should not have been encouraged – it wouldn't have worked. After all (I already spoke about this), former Ukrainian President Yanukovych signed everything, agreed with everything. Why do it? What was the point? What is this, a civilised way of solving problems? Apparently, those who constantly throw together new 'colour revolutions' consider themselves 'brilliant artists' and simply cannot stop.

I am certain that the work of integrated associations, the cooperation of regional structures, should be built on a transparent, clear basis; the Eurasian Economic Union's formation process is a good example of such transparency. The states that are parties to this project informed their partners of their plans in advance, specifying the parameters of our association, the principles of its work, which fully correspond with the World Trade Organisation rules.

I will add that we would also have welcomed the start of a concrete dialogue between the Eurasian and European Union. Incidentally, they have almost completely refused us this as well, and it is also unclear why – what is so scary about it?

And, of course, with such joint work, we would think that we need to engage in dialogue (I spoke about this many times and heard agreement from many of our western partners, at least in Europe) on the need to create a common space for economic and humanitarian cooperation stretching all the way from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.

Colleagues, Russia made its choice. Our priorities are further improving our democratic and open economy institutions, accelerated internal development, taking into account all the positive modern trends in the world, and consolidating society based on traditional values and patriotism.

We have an integration-oriented, positive, peaceful agenda; we are working actively with our colleagues in the Eurasian Economic Union, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, BRICS and other partners. This agenda is aimed at developing ties between governments, not dissociating. We are not planning to cobble together any blocs or get involved in an exchange of blows.

The allegations and statements that Russia is trying to establish some sort of empire, encroaching on the sovereignty of its neighbours, are groundless. Russia does not need any kind of special, exclusive place in the world – I want to emphasise this. While respecting the interests of others, we simply want for our own interests to be taken into account and for our position to be respected.

We are well aware that the world has entered an era of changes and global transformations, when we all need a particular degree of caution, the ability to avoid thoughtless steps. In the years after the Cold War, participants in global politics lost these qualities somewhat. Now, we need to remember them. Otherwise, hopes for a peaceful, stable development will be a dangerous illusion, while today's turmoil will simply serve as a prelude to the collapse of world order.

Yes, of course, I have already said that building a more stable world order is a difficult task. We are talking about long and hard work. We were able to develop rules for interaction after World War II, and we were able to reach an agreement in Helsinki in the 1970s. Our common duty is to resolve this fundamental challenge at this new stage of development.

[Oct 22, 2015] Energy Crash - 97% of Fracking Now Operating at a Loss at Current Oil Prices

This is an old article (from Jan 2015), but most observations look quite current...

Notable quotes:

"... Some will point out correctly that oil sales from production is sold months or years ahead of time, so a temporary drop, no matter how steep, doesnt have an immediate effect. That statement is true, but it comes with two big caveats. First of all, there is no way of knowing when those oil futures were agreed to. They could expire tomorrow, or three years from now. The other caveat is specific to the geology of fracking. Unlike traditional oil drilling, shale oil taps out very quickly . That is simple geology. ..."

"... the average decline of the worlds conventional oil fields is about 5 percent per year. By comparison, the average decline of oil wells in North Dakotas booming Bakken shale oil field is 44 percent per year. Individual wells can see production declines of 70 percent or more in the first year. ..."

"... The IEA states that the shale oil business needs to bring 2,500 new wells into production every year just to sustain production, and these shale fields will increasingly become more expensive to drill , a rising percentage of supplies…require a higher breakeven price. ..."

"... With the current price of oil, almost none of the frackers will be sinking new wells. So if oil prices stay down, most of the frackers will simply be out of business in a year because they will have stopped producing enough oil for their business model. This is a big reason why the Saudis, with their conventional oil production can wait out the frackers. ..."

"... Of course, there is another factor that needs to be considered when it comes to the fracking industry, and that is high-yield debt . ..."

January 6, 2015 | Alternet

The majority of Texas energy production is still by conventional means. North Dakota, on the other hand, relies heavily on fracking, so they are looking at hard times. Already oil rigs are being shut down at the fastest pace in six years.

"At $50 oil, half the U.S. rig count is at risk," R.T. Dukes, an upstream analyst at Wood Mackenzie Ltd., said by telephone from Houston. "What happened in the last quarter foreshadows what's going to be a tough year for operators. It's looking worse and worse by the day."

Employment in the support services for oil and gas operations has risen 70% since mid-2009. Employment in oil and gas extraction has risen 34% over the same time period. The thing to remember is that most job creation in the fracking industry comes up-front, so job losses will hit long before production falls.

The most labor-intensive aspect of the oil-field industry is the construction and completion process for new wells, which requires the bulk of investment and provides the most income to the local economy.
He predicts ramifications of the oil slide to show up in three to six months, because companies will complete works in progress according to contract.

The price began crashing a couple months ago so the layoffs notices will really pick up on the oil patches any day. The Dallas Federal Reserve projects Texas will lose 125,000 jobs by the middle of this year. This slowdown is already projected to effect the state budgets of Texas, Wyoming, Louisiana, Oklahoma, North Dakota and Alaska.

Some will point out correctly that oil sales from production is sold months or years ahead of time, so a temporary drop, no matter how steep, doesn't have an immediate effect. That statement is true, but it comes with two big caveats. First of all, there is no way of knowing when those oil futures were agreed to. They could expire tomorrow, or three years from now. The other caveat is specific to the geology of fracking. Unlike traditional oil drilling, shale oil taps out very quickly. That is simple geology.

the average decline of the world's conventional oil fields is about 5 percent per year. By comparison, the average decline of oil wells in North Dakota's booming Bakken shale oil field is 44 percent per year. Individual wells can see production declines of 70 percent or more in the first year.

Shale gas wells face similarly swift depletion rates, so drillers need to keep plumbing new wells to make up for the shortfall at those that have gone anemic.

The IEA states that the shale oil business needs to bring 2,500 new wells into production every year just to sustain production, and these shale fields will increasingly become more expensive to drill, "a rising percentage of supplies…require a higher breakeven price."

With the current price of oil, almost none of the frackers will be sinking new wells. So if oil prices stay down, most of the frackers will simply be out of business in a year because they will have stopped producing enough oil for their business model. This is a big reason why the Saudis, with their conventional oil production can wait out the frackers.

Of course, there is another factor that needs to be considered when it comes to the fracking industry, and that is high-yield debt.

[Oct 21, 2015] The New Cold War and the Death of the Discourse by Justin Raimondo

Notable quotes:

"... So the Ukrainian government is admitting that their previous narrative is false – and that the ultra-rghtist Svoboda and Right Sector, who were the military arm of the Maidan protesters, provoked the incident that led to Yanukovich's overthrow. ..."

"... are opposed to the Minsk agreement, brokered by the EU, which makes concessions to the east Ukrainians. ..."

Oct 19, 2015 | Antiwar.com

Russophobia compromises the media and academia

The truth is often ignored, at first, and when that becomes impossible, truth-tellers are often punished. As two incidents starkly reveal, this is certainly the case when it comes to the civil war in Ukraine and Washington's unfolding cold war with Russia.

The first illustration of our truth-telling principle occurred after the "Maidan revolution" had already captured the imagination of the Western media, which was busy promulgating the official view as given expression by US government officials. According to this narrative, the "protesters" were heroes, the government of "Russian-backed' Viktor Yanukovich was a coven of devils, and the catalyzing incident that led to Yanukovich's ouster, the shooting of protesters in the Maidan, was the work of the Berkut, the Ukrainian government's militarized police.

There's just one problem with this story: it isn't true. A leaked phone call between Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet and European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs Catherine Ashton, revealed that the protesters were shot by their own leaders – the radical nationalists who had military control of the Maiden.

... ... ...

Ashton's main concern seemed to be that this would get out and discredit the new government "from the very beginning."

Oh, but not to worry: it didn't get out, at least not in the United States. There were oblique mentions of the recording in the mainstream media, but only weeks afterward and then without any specifics: two months after the fact, the Los Angeles Times referred to it in the vaguest terms, only to dismiss it as a "conspiracy theory." The New York Times didn't cover it: neither did the War Street Journal, Time magazine, or any of the other usual suspects. The Daily Beast, typically, served as a mouthpiece for the official Washington-Kiev account, citing Dr. Bogomolets as claiming her conversation with Paet was a "misunderstanding." Yet Paet didn't cite her as his sole source: he said "all the evidence." No doubt the Estonians have their own sources in the country, and it's improbable the Foreign Minister would have made such an assertion based on a single person's testimony.

In any case, the story was pretty much buried here in the US, with the exception of this space and a few other alternative news sources.

But in Europe, it was a different story: the German public television station ARD carried a report which threw the identity of the Maidan shooters into serious question. And more recently the BBC produced a documentary, "The Untold Story of the Maidan Massacre," in which eyewitnesses assert that the Berkut were fired on from positions controlled by the ultra-nationalist Svoboda Party, which, along with the neo-Nazi "Right Sector" organization, ran Maidan security.

Still, the story was ignored in the US, but that may not be possible much longer, and the reason springs from an unlikely source: the current Ukrainian government of President Petro Poroshenko.

Last week Ukrainian police raided the homes of Svoboda Party leaders Oleksandr Sych, who served as Deputy Prime Minister in the post-Maidan government, and Ole Pankevich, whose 2013 appearance at a neo-Nazi memorial event provoked the ire of the World Jewish Congress. The Ukrainian prosecutor's office confirmed that the raid was conducted as part of an investigation into the Maidan shootings:

"The court warrant for the raid on the apartment of Pankevich, a former MP and the ex-head of Lviv regional council, explicitly referred to a BBC documentary on the subject, according to a copy of the warrant In the documentary, journalist Gabriel Gatehouse spoke to an opposition nationalist rifleman who had acknowledged having fired on riot police in the morning of February 20."

The warrant, posted online,

"[A]lso refers to video footage that showed a rifleman firing out of the Hotel Ukraina, situated on Maidan. The room from which he fired was occupied at the time by Pankevich, according to the court warrant.

"Police also raided the apartment of Sich, vice-prime minister in the immediate post-Maidan government in 2014, also in connection with shots fired from the same hotel, where he was also staying on February 20.

"An assistant to Ukraine's prosecutor general, Vladislav Kutsenko, confirmed to the Ukrainian TV channel 112 that searches of the Svoboda leaders' apartments were linked to an investigation of the February 20 events."

So the Ukrainian government is admitting that their previous narrative is false – and that the ultra-rghtist Svoboda and Right Sector, who were the military arm of the Maidan protesters, provoked the incident that led to Yanukovich's overthrow.

Why this stunning turnaround?

Both Svoboda and Right Sector have declared war on the Poroshenko regime and are calling for a "national revolution" – one that would install them in power. The ultra-nationalists are opposed to the Minsk agreement, brokered by the EU, which makes concessions to the east Ukrainians.

The far right is accusing Poroshenko of "betraying the revolution." They scoff at the ceasefire as a "sellout" because they want the civil war to continue: and as Poroshenko makes draconian cuts in the government budget in order to mollify Ukraine's creditors, and to ensure the flow of Western funding, the rightists are gaining ground politically. And they are getting increasingly violent, staging a riot in front of the parliament building in which three officers were killed by a grenade hurled at policemen: 130 cops were injured. The rightists were protesting the decision by the parliament to grant the eastern rebels some small degree of autonomy. This incident followed a series of shoot-outs with the armed rightist gang known as Right Sector, which played a key role in the Maidan protest movement.

That the Poroshenko government, which had previously stonewalled any serious effort to investigate the shooting deaths that sent Yanukovich packing, is playing this card now is an indication of the regime's desperation in the face of a challenge from the ultra-right. For to upend the official narrative – one that is fully supported by their Western sponsors, and their amen corner in the media – is to subvert the very foundations of the post-Maidan order. If the truth comes out, the ultra-nationalists may be finished – but so may the government that exposes their murderous role.

... ... ...

NOTES IN THE MARGIN

You can check out my Twitter feed by going here. But please note that my tweets are sometimes deliberately provocative, often made in jest, and largely consist of me thinking out loud. I've written a couple of books, which you might want to peruse. Here is the link for buying the second edition of my 1993 book, Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement, with an Introduction by Prof. George W. Carey, a Foreword by Patrick J. Buchanan, and critical essays by Scott Richert and ISI Books, 2008). You can buy An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (Prometheus Books, 2000), my biography of the great libertarian thinker, here.

[Oct 21, 2015] An invitation to Putin regarding Ukraine Do the maths

Notable quotes:

"... Ukraine has given Russia a deadline of October 29 to accept the restructuring offer made to private sector investors; assuming it continues to refuse, Russia is threatening legal action if it is not repaid in full on December 20. So all of this is really coming to a head. It will all end up in the British courts - perhaps offering London it's own pari passu-type saga - unless something like the Lerrick compromise is adopted. ..."

"... Funny , but I have read the notorious IEA energy overview of Ukraine published a few years ago. It promised to add value (collapse the economy) by adding costs..........funny enough but it has. Not a fan of People the Great style centralized capitalism but the objectives of finance capitalism are far from pretty either. ..."

"... Im still not sure how a country can do a deal over bond restructuring with a country that it is at war with when the war is partly causing the need for bond restructuring. ..."

"... This loan assumed that there wouldnt be a coup and that Ukraine would pay its way under Russian subsidies as it had done in the past. Then the Western encouraged coup, and the collapse. And then an IMF loan of a lot more. Go figure... A fine lesson in how instability destroys an economy. I wish the West would not encourage this. Its here they should have to pay. They managed not to do so, so far in Libya. They are paying in Iraq, but in arms not in development which the Iraqis deserve. I wish the West would support stability - things in the world change slowly if it is to be for the benefit of all... ..."

Oct 21, 2015 | FT Alphaville

Martin Wolf was fuming about Russia on Wednesday - incensed specifically about its stance towards Ukraine's attempted debt restructuring. He really doesn't like the fact that Russia's refusal to join August's $18bn deal with private bond holders will block Ukraine's access to IMF money, promising to collapse the country's economy.

Along the way, Wolf notes that there's a solution on the table here, albeit one that Russia is unlikely to accept. It comes from Adam Lerrick of the American Enterprise Institute - a man with some form in coming up with elegant solutions amid sovereign debt crises. (See Iceland, Greece and also Argentina.)

Here's Lerrick's detail on Ukraine, along with a table for Putin and pals…

Ukraine has given Russia a deadline of October 29 to accept the restructuring offer made to private sector investors; assuming it continues to refuse, Russia is threatening legal action if it is not repaid in full on December 20. So all of this is really coming to a head. It will all end up in the British courts - perhaps offering London it's own pari passu-type saga - unless something like the Lerrick compromise is adopted.

The American academic's approach actually accepts a core Russian claim - that the concessional terms of Russia's original loan put it on a different footing from private creditors in that Ukraine signed up to pay a coupon of 5 per cent, at a time when regular bond market investors would have demanded 12 per cent or more. But Lerrick then suggests that Russia be compensated for this concession (in the form of higher interest rates on newly issued replacement bonds), before then accepting the private creditor restructuring terms.

You can read the two options in full below. They look fair to all involved, which probably means there's no chance of Russia accepting the idea at all!

The Dork of Cork.

Funny , but I have read the notorious IEA energy overview of Ukraine published a few years ago. It promised to "add value" (collapse the economy) by adding costs..........funny enough but it has. Not a fan of People the Great style centralized capitalism but the objectives of finance capitalism are far from pretty either.

Upaswellasdown

What exactly will Russia do if it is not repaid? invade?

Pseudonym

I'm still not sure how a country can do a deal over bond restructuring with a country that it is at war with when the war is partly causing the need for bond restructuring.

ukrainewatcher

Really angers me, as this was political loan to finance last dying days of Yanukovich's regime. Probably used to pay towards the violence of the following months and to the cash that was taken out of the country in trucks. Russia consequently cost Ukraine's economy billions of dollars, through invasion of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine against very explicit guarantees provided by most superpowers (including US, Russia and UK) provided in return for dismantling world's third largest nuclear arsenal. Obligations that are in my books pretty much worthless, yet Ukraine continues to fulfil today (still destroying long term missiles as we speak)

And Ukraine still needs to deal with them as though they are normal creditors?

Something very wrong with the world of you ask me.

violet17

It was a political loan...correct! And it is a sovereign loan. And that is what the fuss is about!! This loan assumed that there wouldn't be a coup and that Ukraine would pay its way under Russian subsidies as it had done in the past. Then the Western encouraged coup, and the collapse. And then an IMF loan of a lot more. Go figure... A fine lesson in how instability destroys an economy. I wish the West would not encourage this. Its here they should have to pay. They managed not to do so, so far in Libya. They are paying in Iraq, but in arms not in development which the Iraqis deserve. I wish the West would support stability - things in the world change slowly if it is to be for the benefit of all...

FearTheTree

@ukrainewatcher Isn't the same true of Argentina. How much of its 80B in contested debt was used to support Menem and his cronies, thinking that the dollar-peso peg would hold indefinitely?

[Oct 21, 2015] Andrew Bacevich A Decade of War

May 15, 2012 | YouTube

Qeis Kamran 1 year ago

I just love Prof. Bacevic. Nobody has more credit then him on the subject. Not only for his unmatched scholarship and laser sharp words, but moreover for the unimaginable personal loss. He is my hero!!!!

Boogie Knight 1 year ago

How many sons did the NeoCon-Gang sacrifice in their instigated Wars in foreign lands....? Not one. Bacevich lost his son who was fighting in Iraq in 2007 - for what?!

Yet the NeoCon warcriminals Billy Cristol, Wolfowitz and/or Elliott Abrams are all still highly respected people that the US media/political elite loves to consult - in 2014!

[Oct 21, 2015] The End of American Exceptionalism with Andrew J. Bacevich - November 7, 2013

An excellent explanation of the key postulates of Neoconservatism.

Notable quotes:

"... We need to reexamine what it means to be free. A moral reorientation of the country as Carter suggested in 1979. Bacevich says it isnt ever going to happen. ..."

Nov 7, 2003 | YouTube

Phil Anderson

Excellent as always. Lecture by Bacevich starts around 13:42.

Wendell Fitzgerald

We need to reexamine what it means to be free. A moral reorientation of the country as Carter suggested in 1979. Bacevich says it isn't ever going to happen.

[Oct 21, 2015] CIA chief's emails exposed Key things we learned from WikiLeaks' Brennan dump

Notable quotes:

"... A 2007 draft position paper on the role of the intelligence community in the wake of the 9/11 attacks shows that Brennan was already aware that numerous federal agencies – the FBI, CIA, NSA, Defense Department and Homeland Security – "are all engaged in intelligence activities on US soil." He said these activities "must be consistent with our laws and reflect the democratic principles and values of our Nation." ..."

"... Brennan added that the president and Congress need "clear mandates" and "firm criteria" to determine what limits need to be placed on domestic intelligence operations. When it comes to situations beyond US borders, Brennan said sometimes action must be taken overseas "to address real and emerging threats to our interests," and that they may need to be done "under the cover of secrecy." He argued that many covert CIA actions have resulted in "major contributions" to US policy goals. ..."

"... "enhanced interrogation" ..."

"... Some of the techniques Bond suggested that Congress ban included: forcing the detainee to be naked; forcing them to perform sexual acts; waterboarding; inducing hypothermia; conducting mock executions; and depriving detainees of food, water, or medical care. ..."

"... "Limitations on Interrogation Techniques Act of 2008." ..."

"... The bill prohibited the use of many of the same techniques listed in the previous document, though it was not passed. Ultimately, President Obama issued an executive order banning officials from using techniques not in the Army Field Manual. ..."

Oct 21, 2015 | RT USA

US government 'engaged' in spying activities on US soil

• A 2007 draft position paper on the role of the intelligence community in the wake of the 9/11 attacks shows that Brennan was already aware that numerous federal agencies – the FBI, CIA, NSA, Defense Department and Homeland Security – "are all engaged in intelligence activities on US soil." He said these activities "must be consistent with our laws and reflect the democratic principles and values of our Nation."
• Brennan added that the president and Congress need "clear mandates" and "firm criteria" to determine what limits need to be placed on domestic intelligence operations.
• When it comes to situations beyond US borders, Brennan said sometimes action must be taken overseas "to address real and emerging threats to our interests," and that they may need to be done "under the cover of secrecy." He argued that many covert CIA actions have resulted in "major contributions" to US policy goals.

Debate over torture restrictions

• WikiLeaks published two documents related to the CIA's use of so-called "enhanced interrogation" techniques, though notably neither was written by Brennan.

• One was written by then-Senator Kit Bond (R-Missouri), vice chairman on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which outlined a proposal to limit the CIA's torture techniques without restricting the development of new techniques complying with the law.

• The document suggests listing the types of techniques that the CIA is barred from using instead of restricting the agency to only those explicitly listed in the Army Field Manual.

• Some of the techniques Bond suggested that Congress ban included: forcing the detainee to be naked; forcing them to perform sexual acts; waterboarding; inducing hypothermia; conducting mock executions; and depriving detainees of food, water, or medical care.

Bond's suggestions get a bill

• The final document appears to show Bond's suggestions making their way into a legislative proposal titled "Limitations on Interrogation Techniques Act of 2008."

• The bill prohibited the use of many of the same techniques listed in the previous document, though it was not passed. Ultimately, President Obama issued an executive order banning officials from using techniques not in the Army Field Manual.

[Oct 21, 2015] The CIA director was hacked by a 13-year-old, but he still wants your data

Notable quotes:

"... With a properly run service provider, neither the helpdesk drones nor the admin staff should be able to see any user's password, which should be safely stored in an encrypted form. ..."

"... This is a turf war between bureaucrats who are born incompetent. The NSA has been increasing its share of budgetary largesse while the CIA and other security units have each been fighting to keep up. Politicians, being bureaucrats themselves, engage in the turf war. To them its all great fun. ..."

"... Lets be clear: it is very hard to see how blanket surveillance of American citizens is beneficial to American citizens. It tips over the power balance between government and citizen - it is undemocratic. It is unAmerican. ..."

"... It would be funny if it wasnt for the fact that the kid will most likely regret this for the rest of his life and nothing will change for Government or Brennan. ..."

"... Ive said it before and Ill say it again: incompetence is the main bulwark against tyranny. So let us be grateful for John Brennan. ..."

www.theguardian.com

Paul C. Dickie 20 Oct 2015 12:32

With a properly run service provider, neither the helpdesk drones nor the admin staff should be able to see any user's password, which should be safely stored in an encrypted form.

AmyInNH -> NigelSafeton 21 Oct 2015 11:59

You seriously underestimate the technical incompetence of the federal government. They buy on basis of quantity of big blue arrows, shown on marketing slideware.

Laudig 21 Oct 2015 05:31

This is great. This man is a serial perjurer to Congress. Which does eff-all about being lied to [they lie to everyone and so don't take offense at being lied to] and now he's hacked by a 13 year-old who, until a few weeks ago was protected by the The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998.
Well done, CIA or whatever you are.

So your well constructed career gets collapsed by someone who is still in short pants. The Age of Secrets is over now.

Stieve 21 Oct 2015 02:54

Er, why has no-one mentioned, why has there been no press coverage, why has not a single presidential candidate been asked to comment on the fact that The USA has been the victim of a military coup?

All pretence of government oversight has been dropped. The NSA, CIA and most likely every other arm of the "intelligence service" have simply taken over the elected government, ripped up The Constitution and transformed The US into a police state. Seven thousand people disappeared in Chigaco? Exactly why have there not been massive arrests of these Stasi? Or riots on the streets? Exactly why has there not been an emergency session of The Senate or Congress to find out why Chicago is being run like an Eastern Bloc dictatorship? Exactly why are police departments been given military hardware designed to be used by an occupying army?
I'll tell you exactly why.

Because The US actually has been taken over

Glenn J. Hill 21 Oct 2015 01:28

LOL, the Head of the CIA put sensitive info on an personal AOL ACCOUNT !!!!! What an total idiot. Just proves the " Peter Principle", that one gets promoted to one`s point of incompetent!

Can he be fired ? Locked up for gross stupidity ?? Will he come hunting for me, to take me out for pointing out his asinine stupidity ??

Fnert Pleeble -> Robert Lewis 20 Oct 2015 23:42

Congressmen are self motivating. They want the gravy train to continue. The carrot is plenty big, no need for the stick.

Buckworm 20 Oct 2015 21:51

Those old, tired, incompetent, ignorant, trolls are asking for more and more access to citizens data based on the assumption that they can catch a terrorist or another type of psycho before they act out on something. Don't they realize that so far, after 15 years of violating the citizen's constitutional rights, they HAVE NEVER CAUGHT not even ONE single person under their illegal surveillance.

This is the problem: they think that terrorists are as stupid as they are, and that they will be sending tons of un-encrypted information online- and that sooner or later they will intercept that data and prevent a crime. How many times have they done so? Z E RO . They haven't realized that terrorists and hackers are waaaaayyy ahead of them and their ways of communicating are already beyond the old-fashioned government-hacked internet. I mean, only a terrorist as stupid as a government employee would think of ever sending something sensitive through electronic communications of any kind - but the government trolls still believe that they do or that sooner or later they will!! How super-beyond-stupid is that? Congress??

Don't even talk about that putrid grotesque political farce - completely manipulated by the super-rich and heated up by the typical white-trash delusional trailer park troll aka as the "tea party". We've had many killing in the homeland after 9/11 - not even one of them stopped by the "mega-surveillance" - and thousands committed by irresponsible and crooked cops - and this will continue until America Unites and fight for their constitutional rights. That will happen as soon as their priority is not getting the latest iPhone with minimal improvement, spends endless hours playing candy crush,stand in long lines to buy pot, get drunk every evening and weekends, and cancel their subscription to home-delivered heroin and cocaine. So don't hold your breath on that one.

Wait until one of those 13-yr old gets a hold of nuclear codes, electric grid codes, water supply or other important service code - the old government farts will scream and denounce that they could have prevented that if they had had more surveillance tools - but that is as false as the $3 dollar bills they claim to have in their wallets. They cannot see any further from their incompetence and ignorance.

Robert Lewis -> Giants1925 20 Oct 2015 18:38

Did the FSB cook data so the US would invade Iraq and kill 1,000,000 civilians?

yusowong 20 Oct 2015 18:20

This is a turf war between bureaucrats who are born incompetent. The NSA has been increasing its share of budgetary largesse while the CIA and other security units have each been fighting to keep up. Politicians, being bureaucrats themselves, engage in the turf war. To them it's all great fun.

Triumphant -> George Giants1925 20 Oct 2015 14:41

Are you saying that because you aren't in a concentration camp, everything's pretty good? That's a pretty low bar to set.

Most people probably didn't vote for your current leader. To compare, in the UK, only 37% of the popular vote went for the current government. And once you leader is voted in, they pretty much do as they please. Fortunately, there are checks and balances which are supposed to prevent things getting out of control. Unfortunately, bills like the cybersecurity bill are intend to circumvent these things.

Let's be clear: it is very hard to see how blanket surveillance of American citizens is beneficial to American citizens. It tips over the power balance between government and citizen - it is undemocratic. It is unAmerican.

Red Ryder -> daniel1948 20 Oct 2015 14:16

The whole freakin government is totally incompetent when it comes to computers and the hacking going on around this planet. Hillary needs to answer for this email scandal but currently she is making jokes about it as if nothing happened. She has no clue when she tried to delete her emails. Doesn't the government know that this stuff is backed up on many computers and then stored it a tape vault somewhere. Hiding emails is a joke today.

mancfrank 20 Oct 2015 13:27

It would be funny if it wasn't for the fact that the kid will most likely regret this for the rest of his life and nothing will change for Government or Brennan.

Giants1925 20 Oct 2015 12:53

I still don't understand why Russia is allowed to have the FSB but the US is forbidden from having the CIA Who makes these rules again? Because frankly I'm tired of the world being run by popular opinion.

bcarey 20 Oct 2015 12:33

The bill is so bad that the major tech companies like Google and Amazon all came out against it last week, despite the fact that it would give them broad immunity for sharing this information with the government.

The usual show... "We're totally against it, but it's okay."

Donald Mintz 20 Oct 2015 12:02

I've said it before and I'll say it again: incompetence is the main bulwark against tyranny. So let us be grateful for John Brennan.

[Oct 21, 2015] Son of two Australian MH17 victims says Ukraine should have closed airspace

Oct 13, 2015 | The Guardian

www.theguardian.com

The report, even in its highly-politized form, gives the families of the victims the right to file lawsuits against Ukraine for its criminal negligence in complying with flight safety rules. These suits can cost Ukraine billions of dollars.

idance 14 Oct 2015 12:51

Partly repeating my comment to another article here I must admit this POV agrees with today's (but not yesterday's) US standards.

The US has just refused to accept the UNSC statement condemning the shelling of the Russian Embassy in Damascus. They said the responsibility for the security of diplomatic missions lies on the receiving party, that is on Damascus.

Applying this standard it doesn't matter who shot down MH17. The responsibility lies on Ukraine cause it was Ukraine who should have ensured security of the flight.
Yeah! How do you like it!

SHappens 14 Oct 2015 03:31

"Russia's got a role and they haven't been very helpful," he said. "So I blame Russia partially but not completely. There are many other players that are also to blame."

Some people see through. Rightly, as highlighted by the report, Ukraine failed to its obligations, by not closing its airspace, rerouting a flight which casually got shot. They bear the main responsibility in this disaster.

DeConstruct -> Putzik 13 Oct 2015 23:05

You are 100% on the money in relation to shorter route length and air navigation fees. The penny should have dropped when it became obvious from the altitudes of previous military shoot downs that medium range (up to 70,000' +) weapons were being employed and not just low altitude MANPADS.

summaluvva -> Putzik 13 Oct 2015 22:35

Quoting Guardian's article, "Many of the world's best-known airlines – including British Airways, Qantas and Cathay Pacific – had been avoiding Ukrainian airspace due to safety fears for months before the downing of flight MH17.".

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/18/airlines-avoid-ukraine-airspace-mh17

[Oct 19, 2015] The Banksters and American Foreign Policy by Justin Raimondo

Notable quotes:

"... But bankers are inherently inclined toward statism. ..."

"... , engaged as they are in unsound fractional reserve credit, are, in the free market, always teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Hence they are always reaching for government aid and bailout. ..."

"... Both sets of bankers, then, tend to be tied in with government policy, and try to influence and control government actions in domestic and foreign affairs. ..."

"... Wall Street, Banks, and American Foreign Policy ..."

"... The great turning point of American foreign policy came in the early 1890s, during the second Cleveland Administration. It was then that the U.S. turned sharply and permanently from a foreign policy of peace and non-intervention to an aggressive program of economic and political expansion abroad. At the heart of the new policy were America's leading bankers, eager to use the country's growing economic strength to subsidize and force-feed export markets and investment outlets that they would finance, as well as to guarantee Third World government bonds. The major focus of aggressive expansion in the 1890s was Latin America, and the principal Enemy to be dislodged was Great Britain, which had dominated foreign investments in that vast region. ..."

"... In a notable series of articles in 1894, ..."

"... set the agenda for the remainder of the decade. Its conclusion: if 'we could wrest the South American markets from Germany and England and permanently hold them, this would be indeed a conquest worth perhaps a heavy sacrifice.' ..."

"... Long-time Morgan associate Richard Olney heeded the call, as Secretary of State from 1895 to 1897, setting the U.S. on the road to Empire. After leaving the State Department, he publicly summarized the policy he had pursued. The old isolationism heralded by George Washington's Farewell Address is over, he thundered. The time has now arrived, Olney declared, when 'it behooves us to accept the commanding position… among the Power of the earth.' And, 'the present crying need of our commercial interests,' he added, 'is more markets and larger markets' for American products, especially in Latin America.' ..."

July 15, 2011 | Antiwar.com

In a free economy, the banks that invested trillions in risky mortgages and other fool's gold would have taken the hit. Instead, however, what happened is that the American taxpayers took the hit, paid the bill, and cleaned up their mess – and were condemned to suffer record unemployment, massive foreclosures, and the kind of despair that kills the soul.

How did this happen? There are two versions of this little immorality tale, one coming from the "left" and the other from the "right" (the scare-quotes are there for a reason, which I'll get to in a moment or two).

The "left" version goes something like this:

The evil capitalists, in league with their bought-and-paid for cronies in government, destroyed and looted the economy until there was nothing left to steal. Then, when their grasping hands had reached the very bottom of the treasure chest, they dialed 911 and the emergency team (otherwise known as the US Congress) came to their rescue, doling out trillions to the looters and leaving the rest of America to pay the bill.

The "right" version goes something like the following:

Politically connected Wall Streeters, in league with their bought-and-paid-for cronies in government, destroyed and looted the economy until there was nothing left to steal. Then, when their grasping hands had reached the very bottom of the treasure chest, they dialed BIG-GOV-HELP and the feds showed up with the cash.

The first thing one notices about these two analyses, taken side by side, is their similarity: yes, the "left" blames the free market, and the "right" blames Big Government, but when you get past the blame game their descriptions of what actually happened look like veritable twins. And as much as I agree with the "right" about their proposed solution – a radical cut in government spending – it is the "left" that has the most accurate analysis of who's to blame.

It is, of course, the big banks – the recipients of bailout loot, the ones who profited (and continue to profit) from the economic catastrophe that has befallen us.

During the 1930s, the so-called Red Decade, no leftist agitprop was complete without a cartoon rendering of the top-hatted capitalist with his foot planted firmly on the throat of the proletariat (usually depicted as a muscular-but-passive male in chains). That imagery, while crude, is largely correct – an astonishing statement, I know, coming from an avowed libertarian and "reactionary," no less. Yet my leftist pals, and others with a superficial knowledge of libertarianism, will be even more surprised that the founder of the modern libertarian movement, also an avowed (and proud) "reactionary," agreed with me (or, rather, I with him):

"Businessmen or manufacturers can either be genuine free enterprisers or statists; they can either make their way on the free market or seek special government favors and privileges. They choose according to their individual preferences and values. But bankers are inherently inclined toward statism.

"Commercial bankers, engaged as they are in unsound fractional reserve credit, are, in the free market, always teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Hence they are always reaching for government aid and bailout.

"Investment bankers do much of their business underwriting government bonds, in the United States and abroad. Therefore, they have a vested interest in promoting deficits and in forcing taxpayers to redeem government debt. Both sets of bankers, then, tend to be tied in with government policy, and try to influence and control government actions in domestic and foreign affairs."

That's Murray N. Rothbard, the great libertarian theorist and economist, in his classic monograph Wall Street, Banks, and American Foreign Policy. If you want a lesson in the real motivations behind our foreign policy of global intervention, starting at the very dawn of the American empire, you have only to read this fascinating treatise. The essence of it is this: the very rich have stayed very rich in what would otherwise be a dynamic and ever-changing economic free-for-all by securing government favors, enjoying state-granted monopolies, and using the US military as their private security guards. Conservatives who read Rothbard's short book will never look at the Panama Canal issue in the same light again. Lefties will come away from it marveling at how closely the libertarian Rothbard comes to echoing the old Marxist aphorism that the government is the "executive committee of the capitalist class."

Rothbard's account of the course of American foreign policy as the history of contention between the Morgan interests, the Rockefellers, and the various banking "families," who dealt primarily in buying and selling government bonds, is fascinating stuff, and it illuminates a theme common to both left and right commentators: that the elites are manipulating the policy levers to ensure their own economic interests unto eternity.

In normal times, political movements are centered around elaborate ideologies, complex narratives that purport to explain what is wrong and how to fix it. They have their heroes, and their villains, their creation myths and their dystopian visions of a dark future in store if we don't heed their call to revolution (or restoration, depending on whether they're hailing from the "left" or the "right").

You may have noticed, however, that these are not normal times: we're in a crisis of epic proportions, not only an economic crisis but also a cultural meltdown in which our social institutions are collapsing, and with them longstanding social norms. In such times, ideological categories tend to break down, and we've seen this especially in the foreign policy realm, where both the "extreme" right and the "extreme" left are calling for what the elites deride as "isolationism." On the domestic front, too, the "right" and "left" views of what's wrong with the country are remarkably alike, as demonstrated above. Conservatives and lefties may have different solutions, but they have, I would argue, a common enemy: the banksters.

This characterization of the banking industry as the moral equivalent of gangsters has its proponents on both sides of the political spectrum, and today that ideological convergence is all but complete, with only "centrists" and self-described pragmatists dissenting. What rightists and leftists have in common, in short, is a very powerful enemy – and that's all a mass political movement needs to get going.

In normal times, this wouldn't be enough: but, as I said above, these most assuredly aren't normal times. The crisis lends urgency to a process that has been developing – unfolding, if you will – for quite some time, and that is the evolution of a political movement that openly disdains the "left" and "right" labels, and homes in on the main danger to liberty and peace on earth: the state-privileged banking system that is now foreclosing on America.

This issue is not an abstraction: we see it being played out on the battlefield of the debt ceiling debate. Because, after all, who will lose and who will win if the debt ceiling isn't raised? The losers will be the bankers who buy and sell government bonds, i.e. those who finance the War Machine that is today devastating much of the world. My leftie friends might protest that these bonds also finance Social Security payments, and I would answer that they need to grow a spine: President Obama's threat that Social Security checks may not go out after the August deadline is, like everything out that comes out of his mouth, a lie. The government has the money to pay on those checks: this is just his way of playing havoc with the lives of American citizens, a less violent but nonetheless just as evil version of the havoc he plays with the lives of Afghans, Pakistanis, and Libyans every day.

This isn't about Social Security checks: it's about an attempt to reinflate the bubble of American empire, which has been sagging of late, and keep the government printing presses rolling. For the US government, unlike a private entity, can print its way out of debt – or, these days, by simply adding a few zeroes to the figures on a computer screen. A central bank, owned by "private" individuals, controls this process: it is called the Federal Reserve. And the Fed has been the instrument of the banksters from its very inception [.pdf], at the turn of the 19th century – not coincidentally, roughly the time America embarked on its course of overseas empire.

There is a price to be paid, however, for this orgy of money-printing: the degradation, or cheapening, of the dollar. Most of us suffer on account of this policy: the only beneficiaries are those who receive those dollars first, before it trickles down to the rest of us. The very first to receive them are, of course, the bankers, but there's another class of business types who benefit, and those are the exporters, whose products are suddenly competitive with cheaper foreign goods. This has been a major driving force behind US foreign policy, as Rothbard points out:

"The great turning point of American foreign policy came in the early 1890s, during the second Cleveland Administration. It was then that the U.S. turned sharply and permanently from a foreign policy of peace and non-intervention to an aggressive program of economic and political expansion abroad. At the heart of the new policy were America's leading bankers, eager to use the country's growing economic strength to subsidize and force-feed export markets and investment outlets that they would finance, as well as to guarantee Third World government bonds. The major focus of aggressive expansion in the 1890s was Latin America, and the principal Enemy to be dislodged was Great Britain, which had dominated foreign investments in that vast region.

"In a notable series of articles in 1894, Bankers' Magazine set the agenda for the remainder of the decade. Its conclusion: if 'we could wrest the South American markets from Germany and England and permanently hold them, this would be indeed a conquest worth perhaps a heavy sacrifice.'

"Long-time Morgan associate Richard Olney heeded the call, as Secretary of State from 1895 to 1897, setting the U.S. on the road to Empire. After leaving the State Department, he publicly summarized the policy he had pursued. The old isolationism heralded by George Washington's Farewell Address is over, he thundered. The time has now arrived, Olney declared, when 'it behooves us to accept the commanding position… among the Power of the earth.' And, 'the present crying need of our commercial interests,' he added, 'is more markets and larger markets' for American products, especially in Latin America.'"

The face of the Enemy has long since changed, and Britain is our partner in a vast mercantilist enterprise, but the mechanics and motivation behind US foreign policy remain very much the same. You'll note that the Libyan "rebels," for example, set up a Central Bank right off the bat, even before ensuring their military victory over Gadhafi – and who do you think is going to be selling (and buying) those Libyan "government" bonds? It sure as heck won't be Joe Sixpack: it's the same Wall Streeters who issued an ultimatum to the Tea Party, via Moody's, that they'll either vote to raise the debt ceiling or face the consequences.

But what are those consequences – and who will feel their impact the most?

It's the bankers who will take the biggest hit if US bonds are downgraded: the investment bankers, who invested in such a dodgy enterprise as the US government, whose "full faith and credit" isn't worth the paper it's printed on. In a free market, these losers would pay the full price of their bad business decisions – in our crony-capitalist system, however, they win.

They win because they have the US government behind them - and because their strategy of degrading the dollar will reap mega-profits from American exporters, whose overseas operations they are funding. The "China market," and the rest of the vast undeveloped stretches of the earth that have yet to develop a taste for iPads and Lady Gaga, all this and more will be open to them as long as the dollar continues to fall.

That this will cripple the buying power of the average American, and raise the specter of hyper-inflation, matters not one whit of difference to the corporate and political elites that control our destiny: for with the realization of their vision of a World Central Bank, in which a new global currency controlled by them can be printed to suit their needs, they will be set free from all earthly constraints, or so they believe.

With America as the world policeman and the world banker – in alliance with our European satellites – the Washington elite can extend their rule over the entire earth. It's true we won't have much to show for it, here in America: with the dollar destroyed, we'll lose our economic primacy, and be subsumed into what George Herbert Walker Bush called the "New World Order." Burdened with defending the corporate profits of the big banks and exporters abroad, and also with bailing them out on the home front when their self-created bubbles burst, the American people will see a dramatic drop in their standard of living – our sacrifice to the gods of "internationalism." That's what they mean when they praise the new "globalized" economy.

Yet the American people don't want to be sacrificed, either to corporate gods or some desiccated idol of internationalism, and they are getting increasingly angry – and increasing savvy when it comes to identifying the source of their troubles.

This brings us to the prospects for a left-right alliance, both short term and in the long run. In the immediate future, the US budget crisis could be considerably alleviated if we would simply end the wars started by George W. Bush and vigorously pursued by his successor. Aside from that, how many troops do we still have in Europe – more than half a century after World War II? How many in Korea – long after the Korean war? Getting rid of all this would no doubt provide enough savings to ensure that those Social Security checks go out – but that's a bargain Obama will never make.

All those dollars, shipped overseas, enrich the military-industrial complex and their friends, the exporters – and drain the very life blood out of the rest of us. Opposition to this policy ought to be the basis of a left-right alliance, a movement to bring America home and put America first.

In the long term, there is the basis for a more comprehensive alliance: the de-privileging of the banking sector, which cemented its rule with the establishment of the Federal Reserve. That, however, is a topic too complex to be adequately covered in a single column, and so I'll just leave open the intriguing possibility.

"Left" and "right" mean nothing in the current context: the real division is between government-privileged plutocrats and the rest of us. What you have to ask yourself is this: which side are you on?

[Oct 19, 2015] An alliance of Russian liberasts Western pundits and putinslivsiks

Notable quotes:

"... It was predictable that by going to Syria Russia will make itself more of a target for terrorist attacks than before, as Russia now has a lot more enemies than it did before. ..."

"... They fail to understand one simple fact – Russia already was a target of these groups. ..."

"... I would also add, that Russian does NOT have more enemies than before. Russia has the same number of enemies, in the exact same quantity and quality as before. The only difference is that Russia was warned in advance this time, by one of Americas poodles. Remember Gerashchenkos warning, on Mirotvorec ? ..."

"... On Wednesday A. Piontkovskiy, D. Bykov and I shall represent Russia at a meeting in Kiev entitled Slavs Against the Moscow terror . It will be a live transmission. ..."

"... – I was sitting in a cafe last night, right across the Montparnasse station. Suddenly I saw, from the side of the hall came out a lot of elderly Jews speaking in Russian. Im interested in, stopped one of them and asked what was it … And it turns out, there was a meeting of young Russian poets. ..."

marknesop.wordpress.com

Lyttenburgh, October 12, 2015 at 3:23 am

It was predictable that by going to Syria Russia will make itself more of a target for terrorist attacks than before, as Russia now has a lot more enemies than it did before.

Indeed it was Nostradamized from the day 1 by the unlikely common opinion alliance of:

1) Russian liberasts.
2) Western pundits.
3) "Russian" patriotic putinslivsiks

They fail to understand one simple fact – Russia already was a target of these groups. And the fact that terract was prevented is a reason not for concern but for a sense of pride of one's Security Services doing their job. For Russia "not to have any enemies" means to curl up and give up on any foreign policy, allowing "the adults" to run their freak show of "Here comes the Freedom and 'Mocracy. bitches!".

yalensis, October 12, 2015 at 7:35 am

I would also add, that Russian does NOT have more enemies than before. Russia has the same number of enemies, in the exact same quantity and quality as before. The only difference is that Russia was "warned" in advance this time, by one of America's poodles. Remember Gerashchenko's warning, on "Mirotvorec" ?

Patient Observer, October 12, 2015 at 10:50 am

Yes, the only difference now is that the masks are slipping revealing the truly hideous face of the Western empire. Other than that, business as usual.

Moscow Exile, October 12, 2015 at 2:26 am

Guardian accused of passing off terrorist "hell cannon" as "barrel bombs"

Please share this as widely as possible and feel free to write your own emails or letters to the Guardian if you feel it is appropriate.

So iIhave done.

Warren, October 12, 2015 at 3:50 am

Published on 10 Oct 2015
Article here – http://ukrainewarlog.blogspot.com/p/b…

Warren, October 12, 2015 at 3:51 am

British Citizen Exposed as a Tool of Russia's FSB

http://ukrainewarlog.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/british-citizen-exposed-as-tool-of.html

Moscow Exile, October 12, 2015 at 4:05 am

"Exposed" and then there follows a string of allegations.

"Russia's FSB and GRU (military intelligence) are mostly likely assigning Phillips 'mini-ops' to attack western organizations, journalists, reporters and researchers who debunk the Kremlin's propaganda narrative."

Case proven, m'lud?

marknesop, October 12, 2015 at 7:17 pm

Sad. So young – I'm assuming – and his mind already gone. Only in such an oxygen-deficient atmosphere could the FSB deliberately recruit somebody because they are "bumbling and incompetent" and speak Russian at the third-grade level or less. Lots of good press for Graham, though.

Pavlo Svolochenko, October 12, 2015 at 7:53 pm

It's even funnier because if the Ukrainians weren't the Goddamned barbarians they are, Philips would almost certainly have ended up on their side.

Moscow Exile, October 12, 2015 at 4:39 am

Remember this kreakl?

Dmitry Bykov.

Know this bloke?

He's Andrei Piontkovskiy, former member of that very short-lived Coordinating Council of the Russian Opposition, you know – Navalny's parliament in waiting that met a couple of times in kreakl cafés: even Udaltsov (remember him?) called its members a "committee of wankers".

Well lookeee here:

On Wednesday A. Piontkovskiy, D. Bykov and I shall represent Russia at a meeting in Kiev entitled "Slavs Against the Moscow terror". It will be a live transmission.

The Tweet is off a certain Sasha Sotnik of Sotnik TV.

Sotnik TV is not a typical Russian television channel: It is only available on the web, not on television screens. It has no live broadcasts. And it is run primarily by just two people: husband and wife Sasha Sotnik, the reporter, and Mariya Orlovskaya, the camera operator (both pictured above).

But what's most different about Sotnik TV is its outspoken criticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin, which has led to Sotnik and Orlovskaya being arrested briefly and accused of possessing explosives.

Strong views

Sasha Sotnik is a believer in the liberal "European values" that Putin has forcefully rejected in recent months, and does not flinch from expressing strong views in his videos, which are mainly distributed through the couple's YouTube channel.

Bet they love Sasha at Auntie BBC.

If he likes liberal "European values" so much, then why doesn't he stay in Banderastan?

After all, the Ukraine is Europe, is it not?

Moscow Exile, October 12, 2015 at 4:53 am

Do you think Sotnik and Piontkovskiy and Bykov will be shot dead in the street when they return to Mordor, thereby becoming yet more tragic statistics attributed to the Dark Lord's reign of terror?

After all, Lord Putin's ever watchful eye not only knows what everyone is thinking, but also of what they are going to think and plan and usually punishes his enemies before they even think of doing something that he will not like, such is his awesome power and majesty that holds this once mighty nation in sway ….

These brave opposition souls must live a life of perfectly abject terror and despair.

I mean, look at Bykov: he looks like a really worried man – doesn't he?

I believe he's lost pounds since Putin seized control of the state, such has been his worry and concern over what has been going on here since 2000.

marknesop, October 12, 2015 at 7:26 pm

Too late, probably. Their personal addresses and the names of family members are probably all over whatyoucallem, that Russian squealer database that encourages people to inform on other people for anti-government views. There was a name for it…separatist! That's it, separatists who harbor anti-government attitudes!! I read all about it a while ago, but I forget the name of it. You could go there and rat out people for their personal views and then some wet-man from Putin's personal kill squad would go round to his house, make some excuse to get him outside and then cap him right there in the street. Poor Sotnik and Bykov and Piontkovskiy: they're as good as done for, like that murdered martyr Yulia Latynina.

Lyttenburgh, October 12, 2015 at 4:56 am

"On Wednesday A. Piontkovskiy, D. Bykov and I shall represent Russia at a meeting in Kiev entitled "Slavs Against the Moscow terror". It will be a live transmission."

During her emigration in Paris, famous pre-Revolutionary satirical writer Nadezhda Teffi (nee Lokhvitskaya, in marriage – Buchinskaya) once became a witness to such a scene:

"- Сижу я вчера вечером в кафе, против монпарнасского вокзала. Вдруг вижу, из бокового зала выходят много пожилых евреев, говорят по-русски. Я заинтересовалась, остановила одного и спрашиваю, что это было такое… А это, оказывается, было собрание молодых русских поэтов"."

– I was sitting in a cafe last night, right across the Montparnasse station. Suddenly I saw, from the side of the hall came out a lot of elderly Jews speaking in Russian. I'm interested in, stopped one of them and asked what was it … And it turns out, there was a meeting of young Russian poets. "

[Oct 19, 2015] John Helmer US Strategy In The Middle East Is Dying, Along With Its Authors, Carter And Brzezinski; Putin, Al-Assad Get To Dan

Notable quotes:

"... This. The most infuriating part about Obomba is the smug "smarter-than-you" certainty he has. He was a community organizer and one-term state Senator but somehow he started sniffing all the farts the sycophants were wafting his way about just how clever he really was. Then he installed a bunch of also-smart groupthinker Berkeley-ites from the "duty to protect" and "humanitarian bombing" crowd, Chanel-suited exceptionalist egomaniacs who thought they were Kissinger (Samantha Powers, Hilary, Susan Rice et al.) ..."

"... BHO thought he could triangulate and "out-clever" everyone on everything, from health care, where he managed the worst of all worlds that fattened Big Insurance AND screwed up the cost of care…to Wall St where he fattened TBTF AND screwed up Dodd-Frank. In the ME he thought he could cleverly play all sides off against each other, the Turks, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Israelis, the Saudis... and stunningly also al-Qaeda themselves were just another co-optable pawn. ..."

"... But as Warren Buffet says "when the tide goes out you can see who's swimming naked". Tide's heading out…and as far as I can see the Russia/Iran/Iraq/Israel/Syria/Kurd team, with Brother China, fed-up Pakistan and resurgent India backing things up, is looking pretty good. Sclero-Europe has long ago ceded their sovereignty and relevance, LatAm as usual is absent from consideration…what am I missing? ..."

"... Interesting things are happening with Russian involvement in Syria. Are we seeing the global balance of power tip before our eyes? The U.S. is losing it's sole hegemony status and that could be a good thing if Washington can realize this and accept that and adopt diplomacy and cooperation to maintain what position it still has instead of denial followed by escalating aggression. ..."

"... The FSA = al Nusrah = al Qaeda in Syria. The re-labeling was invoked so that BHO could send weapons to al Nusrah… the player that currently has snapped up EVERY weapon the President sent into the fight. Most recently that's meant TOW missiles. ..."

"... Good lord. Stratfor is well-known as politicized propaganda machine that works in concert with large multinational corporations to further their interests in foreign countries. It's not a secret. ..."

"... Stratfor is Neocon central, I should think. They stock gasbags in quantity. ..."

"... The question I must ask: what happens to all these Islamic fighters after they are run out of Syria and Iraq? Only safe territory for them – away from the Russian air force – will be US allies, like Jordan and Arabia. ..."

"... Israel, with its excuse of no peace partners, may end up with enemies from hell. ..."

"... Suppose that Obama just decides to flood Syria with weapons? Anti-tank, anti-air, medium-range missiles with cluster bombs that can hit the Russian bases… America may not have any sense of long-range strategy but we are very good at breaking things, and our leaders throw fits and take it personally when their plans go awry… ..."

"... Of course giving all sorts of advanced weapons to the mostly jihadist Syrian 'rebels' would in the long run certainly cause a lot of blowback to the United States, but that's never stopped us before… ..."

"... U.S. air superiority is based on air superiority, not anti-aircraft weaponry. Afghanistan and Syria are radically different much like Vietnam and Iraq were different. It's much easier for the Russians to supply their bases than in Afghanistan where they had to rely on helicopters flying around mountain valleys. ..."

"... Advanced weaponry will be seen by Russian eyes in the sky and can be hit by missiles from the Caspian apparently. I hate to break it to you, but the U.S. R D budget has been wasted on projects like F-35 and contracting fraud. ..."

"... Why does my Spidy Sense tell me that the foundation of the Saudi oil ministry policy of continuing to flood a depressed market with low cost oil was a secret agreement between Obomber and the Saudi ruling family? The plan was to bankrupt Russia by a two-pronged attack- the fraudulent US sponsored sanctions based upon manufactured reality events in Ukraine and the Saudi capacity to control the marginal price of oil. The carrot offered by the US was a piece of the action in the trans Syrian gas pipeline- and continued protection against internal opposition. ..."

"... Saudi Arabia wants Putin to suffer - as he's the patron of Assad - of whom they hate the most. Low crude pricing has pounded the Russian ruble. Putin's crew is also going insolvent. The flight capital out of Russia is relentless. ..."

"... Contracting fraud, where the real money is made. It was never about oil, just contracts and egos. Oil has to be sold at an honest price for a variety of reasons, but I can't judge a cruise missile's price behind a veil of secrecy. ..."

"... Then there is the natural failing of leaders domestically who search for scapegoats. Half of the foreign policy pronouncements are full of whispered hisses of "China." Don't pay attention to me. It's those red Chinese and their currency manipulation. ..."

"... The Russian expeditionary force in Syria is indeed highly vulnerable, but only if the Western Bloc wants to risk a major war. Now the Western Bloc can prevail against Russia, at any level of escalation, albeit at mounting risk. Nobody should expect today's Russia to be able to match the might of the Western Bloc. ..."

"... I expect the Western Bloc will presume that they can prevail through politico-economic attrition against Russia. They probably can. However, the longer this complex regional war in the Middle East continues, the more likely things are to veer off unpredictably. ..."

"... "In my read, Russia and Iran have just popped open the door to a solution in Syria. All the pieces are in place but one: Washington's capacity to acknowledge the strategic failure now so evident and to see beyond the narrowest definition of where its interests lie. This brings us to the paradox embedded in those questions Putin and Zarif and a few others now pose: American primacy is no longer in America's interest. Get your mind around this and you have arrived in the 21st century." ..."

"... The CIA began a covert operation in 2013 to arm, fund and train a moderate opposition to Assad. Over that time, the CIA has trained an estimated 10,000 fighters, although the number still fighting with so-called moderate forces is unclear. ..."

"... No kidding -- Both involved CIA proxy armies that had no operational security to speak of. Both were authorized by the Oval Office. And we know how much BHO admires JFK. ..."

"... It is important to get Russian viewpoint especially since most Americans are monolingual. Also, it is hard for us not to root for the home team. Still Syria is a gigantic SNAFU. It is so far beyond incompetence it has to be purposeful. This is the ultimate expression of the Shock Doctrine. Collapse Russia and gain control its energy resources ..."

"... There are 1.6 billion Sunni Muslims. Want-to-be Jihadists will flock to Syria to fight the Russian Crusaders. Barrack Obama has already warned Vladimir Putin of a quagmire. His continued arming the Sunnis is a purposeful act to ensure this. World War III starts when Russia shoots down an American aircraft on a combat mission over Syria. ..."

"... Give the Russians some credit for finesse. All they need do is shoot down an Israeli jet attacking a Syrian government position in support of some Syrian "Moderates" near Damascus. I'll be watching for a Russian campaign to rid the Syrian skies of 'Western' drones. That would be a sign of serious intentions on the part of Russia. ..."

www.nakedcapitalism.com

Russia has established a no-fly zone on every one of Syria's frontiers, and will make an Alawite fortress along the coastal plain. As for what happens in the northern and western deserts, that's up to the Shiite armies of Iran and Iraq to decide, with or without Russian air cover, but with the assurance of no American, NATO, Turkish, Saudi, Jordanian or Emirati air cover.

Gennady Nechaev, a military analyst at Vzglyad in Moscow, explains: "There is airspace, but either it is controlled by the US or by our Air Force. But today there is no issue of control of air space. We are talking about control of ground space. There operations can be of two types: direct destruction from the air and from insulation of the area of operations by air in order to avoid movements of the enemy and incoming reserves. In this case, the task is hardly feasible, as there is an open border with Iraq on the side of Turkey. The boundaries are not controlled. The problem could be solved [by Russia] if a blow can be dealt along the entire depth of the space under the control of ISIS. At the moment there is an operation against the infrastructure of ISIS. Infrastructure is a fairly loose concept, because they don't have civilian infrastructure. There are military links and connexions which must [operate] to supply weapons. For these purposes Russia is now applying its strokes."

... ... ...

What if the Saudis shift their forces from bombing southward and eastward in the Yemen towards the west, and they invite US forces to defend their sorties from Saudi airfields or from carriers in the Persian Gulf? An Egyptian military source comments: "The king [Salman] has Alzheimer's, and his son [Mohammad bin Salman], the real ruler of the kingdom, is too young; too insecure in the royal succession; and too vulnerable domestically. If either of them makes so much as a nervous twitch towards the Syrian frontier, the oil price will return to the level Russia wants, and needs. There will be no support for the Saudis against the Russians from their only real Arab guarantor, [Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-] Sisi. And long ago, when Obama installed the Moslem Brotherhood in Cairo, [Sisi] realized the American strategy, Obama's promises, are the gravest threat to Egyptian and Arab security there is. That's because he can't control the Washington Amazons who run his warmaking machine, or the jihadists he employs to fight. Without air cover, supply lines, and dollars, they are doomed. The Saudi sheikhs won't risk trying to save them."

For more on Putin's management of the Saudi relationship, read this.

London sources familiar with Israeli politics add that Russian strategy has the tacit backing of Israel. "This is because [President Vladimir] Putin has told [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu that Israel can count on a no-threat zone running from Damascus south and east to the Golan. No threat means no Syrian Army, no jihadists. Russia and Israel will now have what [Israeli Prime Minister David] Ben-Gurion once explained was Israel's long-term objective – the breakup of the large, potentially powerful secular Arab states into small sectarian territories too weak to do anything but threaten each other."

blert October 10, 2015 at 5:38 am

Dr. Zbig. must be totally off his medication.

There is not the slightest chance that BHO has any interest in squaring off with Putin.

What the President has been doing is to support al Qaeda fronts - most particularly al Nusrah.

Both al Nusrah and IS are joined at the hip and do not fight each other - much. Dr. Zawahiri is their mutal mediator, with plenty of correspondence to his credit.

ISIS // ISIL // IS wouldn't be a serious factor if it was not for the UK, US, and Jordan. These three patron powers trained the core block of al Baghdadi's boys - in the northern Jordanian desert - just a few years back - remember ?

It was all over the news - particularly in the Arab Middle East.

They graduated - and promptly went rogue - taking out Mosul - probably by simply phoning ahead. For the US had given them first class communications gear - that they were supposed to be using in Syria. It, however, worked its magic even better - intercepting Iraqi cell phone frequencies - so that al Baghdadi could threaten the generals and their families quite directly.

In this, they were entirely aping the USAF's gambit in Libya. Remember Commando Solo ? It was exactly such phone calls to Libyan generals that broke up Kaddafy's entire army. We admitted that we'd called just about everyone in the dictator's immediate family, to boot.

Well, the fanatics in Libya couldn't miss any of that.

And our Pentagon gave them the same tools// toys that the big boys have.

Without this communications gear, ISIS would never have been able to roll fast, roll large, and co-ordinate everything - pretty much without a hitch.

The FSA is a fictive fig leaf dreamed up by the spin smiths at the White House. There never has been a Free Syrian Army. There are NO secular fighters in the field. This is a flat out religious war. One has to be deliberately dense to repress that reality.

Every single item ever given to the so called FSA has been deeded over to the fanatics - probaly with kisses, too.

All of the above is idiot obvious. The only place that reality has no traction is in the West.

When it can't be denied, the public will come to know that BHO has treasonously enabled al Qaeda in war time.

That both of these fronts have direct AQ connections is out on the open record. Both are still in communication with Dr. Zawahiri. The only split is that al Baghdadi wants to be the caliph and run the ever expanding caliphate… a Napoleon, a Hitler for our time.

BHO has been vectoring weapons to al Nusrah - by the flimsy pretext that they were intended for moderate rebels. That lie won't hold water.

The TOW missiles that al Nusrah has received were entirely responsible for the massive reverses that Assad suffered of late. Go to YouTube to see the jihadi footage. It's a pretty good bet that the Russians have targeted the ammo dumps most likely to have these missiles. The Russians have put their hits up on YouTube, too.

The only player that's going to be backing down: BHO. That's who.

BTW, at any time Putin can pull the President's card house flat. I suspect Putin is going for maximum embarrassment. His treasonous support of AQ could finally lead to impeachment and conviction… throwing Biden into the Oval Office. Such a travail would be triggered indirectly - so that Putin's fingerprints would not be at all obvious.

In the meantime, Putin likes the fool right where he sits.

TedWa, October 10, 2015 at 11:58 am

I must say, nice lay out of the facts. There's so many things O should be impeached and jailed for and if you think this one has him dead to rights, well…. cumbaya bro

James Levy, October 10, 2015 at 12:28 pm

I would bet the farm that the leadership in the House and Senate are, at this moment, unindicted co-conspirators and Obama can prove it. There will be no impeachment over any of this. It would bring down the whole system.

ohmyheck, October 10, 2015 at 2:13 pm

Not necessarily…

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Putin-s-Endgame-in-Syria-by-Mike-Whitney-Assad_Isis_NATO_Obama-151009-339.html

"Turkish officials claimed a third incident on Monday, when an unidentified MiG-29 fighter jet locked its radar for four and a half minutes on eight Turkish F-16 jets that were on patrol on their side of the border, in apparent preparation to open fire."…

This is a wake-up call. Moscow is indicating that there's a new sheriff in town and that Turkey had better behave itself or there's going to be trouble. There's not going to be any US-Turkey no-fly zone over North Syria, there's not going to be any aerial attacks on Syrian sites from the Turkish side of the border, and there certainly is not going to be any ground invasion of Turkish troops into Syria. The Russian Aerospace Defence Forces now control the skies over Syria and they are determined to defend Syria's sovereign borders. That's the message. Period."

My guess is the Russian Air Force has a few more "messages" up its sleeve…

OIFVet, October 10, 2015 at 2:20 pm

There are no Russian Mig-29s in Syria.

blert, October 10, 2015 at 2:33 pm

The 'mistaken' Russian penetrations into Turkish air space are designed to 'brush back' the Turks. ( Baseball term: a pitch is thrown very close by the batter to get him to inch away from the plate. )

And it has suceeded. While not given much publicity in the Western press Erdogan has been injecting his air force directly over Syria - about 30 kilometers - give or take.

He has also deployed SAMs rather foreward, too.

The net effect has been to drive Assad's air force out of the skies all along the border.

But, much further south, Syria is a total desert with but one river running through it, the Euphrates.

So Erdogan's play has been effectively shielding ISIS from Assad's pitiful air force. ( All downed pilots are assassinated via torture by the fanatics.

Putin is terminating Erdogan's gambit.

Putin is simultaneously protecting the Kurds - as Erdogan can't beat them up any more with his air force. One can reasonably expect that 'somehow' the Kurds will experience a shift in fortunes - as Putin becomes their devious patron. He'll want to arm them in such a manner that Iran and Iraq don't 'kick.'

That should now be easy. He can over fly ISIS turf from the Caspian sea - spitting weapons out the back window like Zardoz, when over Kurdish positions. (1974, Sean Connery)

Jesper, October 10, 2015 at 8:29 am

The US has stopped doing strategy so while short term victories can be had the long-term is only obtained by chance…. The ones in US with strategies are the ones who are pursuing personal strategies, those strategies sometimes happen to align with US interests.

& to be seen as a reliable ally (and therefore an ally wished for) then a country needs to back up their allies even(!) when times get tough. Russia is doing that in Syria. France is doing that in Mali:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-13881978

UK & the US has been doing the same numerous times throughout history, Maybe even the backing of the current regimes in Afghanistan & Iraq would fall into the category of backing up an ally, or maybe those are more 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend'.

blert, October 10, 2015 at 2:50 pm

Both Obama and Clinton are big into 'triangulation.'

Meaning that they are too clever by half - and ALWAYS mistake domestic political tactics and tricks for viable gambits in international affairs.

With Bill Clinton you had a president that spun on a dime, famously flip-flopping four times in a single day on this or that domestic issue.

With Obama you have a president that just CAN'T accept and adopt - straight out - ANY recommended policy suite proferred by his own professionals. Instead, he runs it by Axelrod and the other spin smiths - gauging it for domestic and media impact.

He really thinks that he's the smartest man in Washington, and that his 'play' has been brilliant. He is a bit perturbed that the rest of the world is not following his scripts.

His 'clever' scheme to use the CIA (et. al.) to sustain a proxy anti-Assad army has blown up like a Roadrunner gag.

The jibes from Putin and others are particularly irritating.

No-one now is kissing his Islamic ring.

( Yes, his marriage ring is ornately inscribed with Islamic iconography. Google around for it. He's worn it since Harvard, long before Michelle.)

binky Bear, October 10, 2015 at 3:45 pm

Not only deeply informed but a telepath to boot. How fortunate to be near-omniscient, and to support so deeply such complex arguments with provable facts.

blert, October 10, 2015 at 6:01 pm

Where have you been ?

Clinton's 'triangulation' was a term of art brought up largely by himself.

As for the proxy army… Now even the AP is willing to 'fess up.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/dfe1547ba36f4f968deee227d467dc08/officials-russian-bombs-cia-rebels-had-syrian-gains

The big error in the AP article is dating it to 2013. The project was started even earlier.

Telepath ?

Reading their local press did the trick. You will find Indian and Pakistani English language publications hitting right on target - realities that 'elude' the NY Times.

OpenThePodBayDoorsHAL October 10, 2015 at 6:14 pm

This. The most infuriating part about Obomba is the smug "smarter-than-you" certainty he has. He was a community organizer and one-term state Senator but somehow he started sniffing all the farts the sycophants were wafting his way about just how clever he really was. Then he installed a bunch of also-smart groupthinker Berkeley-ites from the "duty to protect" and "humanitarian bombing" crowd, Chanel-suited exceptionalist egomaniacs who thought they were Kissinger (Samantha Powers, Hilary, Susan Rice et al.)

BHO thought he could triangulate and "out-clever" everyone on everything, from health care, where he managed the worst of all worlds that fattened Big Insurance AND screwed up the cost of care…to Wall St where he fattened TBTF AND screwed up Dodd-Frank. In the ME he thought he could cleverly play all sides off against each other, the Turks, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Israelis, the Saudis... and stunningly also al-Qaeda themselves were just another co-optable pawn.

But as Warren Buffet says "when the tide goes out you can see who's swimming naked". Tide's heading out…and as far as I can see the Russia/Iran/Iraq/Israel/Syria/Kurd team, with Brother China, fed-up Pakistan and resurgent India backing things up, is looking pretty good. Sclero-Europe has long ago ceded their sovereignty and relevance, LatAm as usual is absent from consideration…what am I missing?

Unfortunately after the Hilary coronation we'll have another serial "third way" triangulator in charge who never saw a war, arms program, or covert adventure she didn't like. Except when she didn't like it, which was right after she did like it, and right before the previous time she didn't like it.

Jim McKay October 10, 2015 at 8:53 am

Good article… gives (from all I've read elsewhere) good, accurate context to what's going on now, and why (IMO) Putin's actions make sense. That is, if "solutions" (eg. ending blood shed, restore sustainable stability) in Syria is the objective.

I'm also struck by some retrospective considerations, beyond what author (with limited space) hits very generally (eg: Brzezinski/Carter). In particular, all the secret prisons and indiscriminate detentions by BushCo (torture), much of it seemingly continued by BO. And, the "unintended" consequences of that.

Reading Wikipedia's bio on al-Baghdadi this morning, seems he was a very well educated cleric (doctorate in both Islamic Studies and Education) even well after Bush's Iraq adventure began. He was non-descript, low key… seems little evidence he had violtent inclinations:

"I was with Baghdadi at the Islamic University. We studied the same course, but he wasn't a friend. He was quiet, and retiring. He spent time alone. Later, when he helped found the Islamic Army, Mr Dabash fought alongside militia leaders who were committing some of the worst excesses in violence and would later form al-Qaeda… [but] Baghdadi was not one of them, I used to know all the leaders (of the insurgency) personally. Zarqawi (the former leader of al-Qaeda) was closer than a brother to me… But I didn't know Baghdadi. He was insignificant. He used to lead prayer in a mosque near my area. No one really noticed him."

This bio also says this (which I didn't know):

Bakr al-Baghdadi was arrested by US Forces-Iraq on 2 February 2004 near Fallujah and detained at Camp Bucca detention center under his name Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim al-Badry[22] as a "civilian internee" until December 2004, when he was recommended for release by a Combined Review and Release Board.[24][29][30] In December 2004, he was released as a "low level prisoner".[22]

A number of newspapers and cable news channels have instead stated that al-Baghdadi was interned from 2005 to 2009. These reports originate from an interview with the former commander of Camp Bucca, Colonel Kenneth King, and are not substantiated by Department of Defense records.[31][32][33] Al-Baghdadi was imprisoned at Camp Bucca along with other future leaders of ISIL. (emphasis added)

Would be hugely informative to have a means of cross checking records (if they exist?) of U.S. detainees as "illegal combatants", their violent "proclivities" prior to incarceration, and how many of them became Jihadists after release. The utter injustice of this, in the face of nothing more then an invasion and occupation of Iraq… this cause & affect is ignored and unacknowledged by leadership/policy makers on our shores. And making "exception" for these policies guarantees the continued disastrous results, ad infinitum.

Global conventions against torture have stood for a long time, with a strong moral grounding… based on understanding, that abrogating them WILL produce the kinds of results we've seen, expanding like dominoes.

Somehow, someway… if U.S. is ever to get on a course other then collapsing from within, this stuff needs to be examined thoroughly and cut out of public and official "acceptance" like the cancer that it is.

blert October 10, 2015 at 2:59 pm

The problem with any bio on al Baghdadi is that the CIA// Pentagon has re-used that name// title over and over. This is topped off by the fact that the Muslims use that nome-de-guerre over and over, too.

So one is always left puzzling over whether this or that reference is getting crossed over with yet another al Baghdadi. The Pentagon, itself, admits that they have made that exact error many, many, times. They've 'killed' al Baghdadi numerous times - only for another elusive al Baghdadi to pop up.

Some analysts contend that the name is really more towards a title - just like Caesar. After he died, all of his successors were so labeled. The only folks that seem to have the slightest clue about what's up are the desert Arabs. (Jordan, KSA, Kuwait - and the Awakening Movement in Iraq.)

Everyone else is 'stupid' - counter-informed - like Dr. Zbig. What a gas bag. Dangerous, too.

Procopius October 10, 2015 at 8:07 pm

I don't think it's useful to refer to "al Baghdadi" as a "nom de guerre." It's a nickname, "the guy from Baghdad," in a culture where names are rather indeterminate. OK, I'm not an Arabic linguist, but I know that a guy may be known by some of his friends as "Son of X," by others of his friends as "Father of Y," and by others as "Abdu al [insert attribute of Allah]." I think this makes it problematic for many Americans, who are not known for language ability.

blert October 11, 2015 at 8:08 pm

Actually, adopting a 'nom de guerre' is extremely popular for the fanatics.

1) Like all super heros, they don't want blow back upon their non-combatant family members. This is especially evident with their infamous executioners. But the tic is not at all limited.

2) The fake persona permits the jihadist easy travel when outside the war zone. Many of the fanatics are claiming to flit to and fro - from America to Syria - with grace and ease. This ease of travel was confirmed by an elderly German journalist, (75) who visited ISIS. They scared the Hell out of him. It also terrified him that he could, himself, flit from Germany to Syria, with little to inconvenience him. (!) It was all too easy. Yikes !

In his opinion, the fanatics are shuttling all over the place. Current border controls are wholly ineffective with these players. If a slow moving retiree can make the transit, that's telling.

timbers October 10, 2015 at 8:58 am

Interesting things are happening with Russian involvement in Syria. Are we seeing the global balance of power tip before our eyes? The U.S. is losing it's sole hegemony status and that could be a good thing if Washington can realize this and accept that and adopt diplomacy and cooperation to maintain what position it still has instead of denial followed by escalating aggression.

A reborn Russia/Iran/Iraq/Syria alliance could check the brutality of the current U.S./Israel/Saudi Arabia/Turkey axis. Have seen articles that Iraq is impressed with Russian effectiveness against U.S. funded ISIS that is creating chaos in Iraq, and they may ask Putin to do the same thing there he is doing in Syria. Wonder if O's ego can handle that?

Even signs that some in Europe see Russia is helping them by intervening in Syria and connecting the dots, as in "WTF are we doing hurting ourselves pissing off Russia in service of U.S.?"

With all that going on, I was dumbfounded seeing headlines that the U.S. is preparing a major naval challenge to China's islands, as if we don't have enough conflict on our hands already.

Steve H. October 10, 2015 at 9:08 am

"If either of them makes so much as a nervous twitch towards the Syrian frontier, the oil price will return to the level Russia wants, and needs."

""This is because [President Vladimir] Putin has told [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu that Israel can count on a no-threat zone running from Damascus south and east to the Golan."

Those are a couple of very interesting points that look win-win for Russia. Especially with the Saudi and Turkish regimes having internal problems as well.

Here's an analysis from the other side of the aisle:

stratfor.com/analysis/syria-loyalist-offensive-begins

The bone I'll pick with it is that the 'far' position taken is "negotiated settlement". The U.S. and Saudis appear over-extended and thus under-committed. Russia has advanced a Knight, and S-400's and cruise missiles are discomforting if NATO tries to advance the Queen of overwhelming air power (see the Stratfor map of U.S. vs Russian air strikes). When the BATNA is a win-win, all negotiations are just plays for time.

blert October 10, 2015 at 3:05 pm

Stratfor totally lost me with their fantasy Free Syrian Army schtick. It does not exist.

That scribe is pipe dreaming. Absolutely no-one in the field identifies with the FSA. Not. A. One.

The FSA = al Nusrah = al Qaeda in Syria. The re-labeling was invoked so that BHO could send weapons to al Nusrah… the player that currently has snapped up EVERY weapon the President sent into the fight. Most recently that's meant TOW missiles.

Go to YouTube to see countless jihadi videos uploaded showing how al Nusrah has been driving Assad into retreat.

The rest of the article is pure jibberish… counter-factual… aka lies.

ltr October 10, 2015 at 10:19 am

This is an especially important post, as it is all but impossible to gain a balance in analysis or reporting from the press in the United States on the Russian initiative and engagement in Syria.

Mel Fish October 10, 2015 at 10:56 am

Stratfor is great reading…polished and confident, always written with a hint of being' in the know' , and yet is less useful as a forecasting tool than a dart board (without any darts). Also amusing is to wonder about the irony of the president's Nobel peace prize and what effect the fear of the resurfacing of the irony/hypocrisy each time the president engages the country in yet another "conflict". If you imagine the president being issued a certain number of conflict cards at the beginning of terms, well, they must be used judiciously….especially when one has that damned prize to think about. Wonder if that's another reason the Russians got to go Russian in Syria first.

sd October 10, 2015 at 4:09 pm

Good lord. Stratfor is well-known as politicized propaganda machine that works in concert with large multinational corporations to further their interests in foreign countries. It's not a secret.

Lambert Strether October 11, 2015 at 1:12 am

I don't see how that contradicts Fish's comment. We expect the elites to be polished and confident, do we not?

blert October 11, 2015 at 8:12 pm

Stratfor is Neocon central, I should think. They stock gasbags in quantity.

EoinW October 10, 2015 at 1:01 pm

Russian operations in Syria began right before Bibi was due to visit Moscow. Now it's a nice, neat package to assume Russia made Israel an offer it couldn't refuse, however Putin can't make deals with everyone. After all, he's not Donald Trump.

My guess would be that Hizbollah will be rewarded for their support and be able to keep the arms they get from Russia. Israel will simply have to stay out of southern Lebanon for good. That's going to be a tough one for the Jewish Taliban, with their Greater Israel project, to swallow. Ben-Gurion may have wanted peaceful borders but it is the last thing modern Israel wants. The Assads kept the peace on the Golan border for 40 years – fat lot of good that did them. Peaceful borders means no excuse for Israel to avoid making peace with the Palestinians.

The question I must ask: what happens to all these Islamic fighters after they are run out of Syria and Iraq? Only safe territory for them – away from the Russian air force – will be US allies, like Jordan and Arabia. Hamas is not as extreme as ISIS, however the Palestinian situation becomes more extreme every day. Could ISIS end up working with the Palestinians? Israel, with its excuse of no peace partners, may end up with enemies from hell. Even if ISIS doesn't take up the Palestinian cause, it still has to go somewhere. Seems the chickens will come home to roost.

OIFVet October 10, 2015 at 1:10 pm

Russian operations in Syria began right before Bibi was due to visit Moscow. Wrong, Bibi visited on September 20th.

blert October 10, 2015 at 3:09 pm

Bibi and al Sisi romanced Putin once Obama showed his colors. The President intended to take America down a peg… okay… many pegs. Instead, the down-pegging has occurred to himself.

He's now totally ineffective in foreign affairs. He is scorned and ridiculed… universally.

TG October 10, 2015 at 2:09 pm

Interesting. But I wouldn't hand Putin the victory cup just yet.

Suppose that Obama just decides to flood Syria with weapons? Anti-tank, anti-air, medium-range missiles with cluster bombs that can hit the Russian bases… America may not have any sense of long-range strategy but we are very good at breaking things, and our leaders throw fits and take it personally when their plans go awry…

Of course giving all sorts of advanced weapons to the mostly jihadist Syrian 'rebels' would in the long run certainly cause a lot of blowback to the United States, but that's never stopped us before…

OIFVet October 10, 2015 at 2:18 pm

I suspect that the Kurds and Houthis, as well as the Shia in KSA's oil producing regions will suddenly find excellent source of weapons, plunging Turkey, KSA, and the emirates in quite the chaos.

NotTimothyGeithner October 10, 2015 at 3:13 pm

The issue is moving the weapons. Jordan's border is open desert. Iraq is warming to the Russians with an active war zone along the border. Israel doesn't want weapons running through their territory without control. The water is locked up, and Lebanon is full of Hezbollah.

After today's events, who knows where Turkey is?

Where is the money coming from? Americans aren't brining up Syria on the campaign trail except to note they were opposed to intervention. The Saudis are suffering from low oil prices and their own quagmire.

U.S. air superiority is based on air superiority, not anti-aircraft weaponry. Afghanistan and Syria are radically different much like Vietnam and Iraq were different. It's much easier for the Russians to supply their bases than in Afghanistan where they had to rely on helicopters flying around mountain valleys.

Advanced weaponry will be seen by Russian eyes in the sky and can be hit by missiles from the Caspian apparently. I hate to break it to you, but the U.S. R&D budget has been wasted on projects like F-35 and contracting fraud.

OIFVet October 10, 2015 at 3:28 pm

It's Time for the United States to Start Worrying About a Saudi Collapse. I thought the plunge in oil prices would bring down the Ruskies?

Besides the shale operations, the overextended KSA is now in trouble, particularly with rising domestic oil consumption and internal Al-Saud family dissent growing.

Then there is the appalling poverty that may no longer be alleviated with oil revenue subsidies. In the 1980s the Saudis matched CIA spending for the mujaheddin 1:1, which really made a huge difference. If the US wants to launch a proxy war on Russia in Syria, and wants the Saudis to help pay for it, it may find itself with a disintegrating KSA, one where the oil fields are in predominantly Shia areas. Blowback might be putting it quite mildly.

NotTimothyGeithner October 10, 2015 at 4:09 pm

There are only 10,000 non-wealthy Saudi men and only half are of fighting age. The House of Saud doesn't have a great faction to stand for the regime if anything were to go to South. I'm sure the Hajj stampede and crane collapse aren't sitting well with the king in the hospital. From the rumors, King Fahd's party are trying get to retake power. Fahd was pals with the old man Assad.

The Royal Guard is roughly the size of the national army, so there are two separate armies in Saudi Arabia with separate Com and structures which demonstrates the lack of faith in the army. Costs aside, I wonder if the real aim is to keep much of the Saudi military as possible occupied I stead of at home where they can cause trouble. With only 30,000 or so members, the House of Saud can be replaced at any old time.

Crazy Horse October 10, 2015 at 10:56 pm

Why does my Spidy Sense tell me that the foundation of the Saudi oil ministry policy of continuing to flood a depressed market with low cost oil was a secret agreement between Obomber and the Saudi ruling family? The plan was to bankrupt Russia by a two-pronged attack- the fraudulent US sponsored sanctions based upon manufactured reality events in Ukraine and the Saudi capacity to control the marginal price of oil. The carrot offered by the US was a piece of the action in the trans Syrian gas pipeline- and continued protection against internal opposition.

Worked about as well as most US foreign policy "initiatives". Wouldn't it be ironic if the end game was the overthrow of the decadent Saudi ruling family and a post revolutionary Saudi Arabia in the Russian/Chinese axis?

OIFVet October 10, 2015 at 11:06 pm

It is amusing to contemplate, up to a point. I am not sure that potential Saud family collapse is necessarily good for peace.

ambrit October 11, 2015 at 8:37 am

What I fear from all this is a 'Caliphate' extending from Mosul down around Basra (got to give those Sixers credit,) and on into The (Former) Kingdom. Ben-Gurions' Arab 'splintered' states could come back to bite his successors as one big confederation of "The Faithful."

blert October 11, 2015 at 8:30 pm

The Saudi royal house is furious with Obama.

It's the Iran deal. After that, nothing else really matters to the Saudis.

The low oil price was never co-ordinated with anybody.

It's targets are - in no particular order:

Assad
Iran
Russia
American frackers

The Saudis have been disrupting Iranian oil exports to Asia - by under cutting them on price and quality.

Until Obama released the Shah's old deposits ( my how they have compounded into real money ) Iran was going insolvent.

Saudi Arabia wants Putin to suffer - as he's the patron of Assad - of whom they hate the most. Low crude pricing has pounded the Russian ruble. Putin's crew is also going insolvent. The flight capital out of Russia is relentless.

American frackers represent a dire strategic threat to the Saudi clan. Such methods have every prospect of making Saudi oil an insignificant resource.

For, on the math, fracking ( like flotation cells a century ago ) figure to increase the resource base – – crude recoveries - by a factor of one-hundred.

That last figure may astonish, but it's true. All this time drillers have discovered vast oil deposits - that were too thin to work - with vertical bore holes. Some of these thin deposits don't actually need fracking, per se. They just need the super accurate aimable drilling tips America now produces.

The kicker - on the economics - is that such thin deposits are extensive. So if you punch down - you are sure to hit the strata - to strike oil - about 100% of the time. Your only risk is if this or that effort is not quite what you hoped for.

Such resource economics are entirely upside down from conventional drilling. They strongly resemble the economics of coal mining. Everybody is uniformly 'lucky.'

The total amount of 'thin strata' oil in the ground is staggeringly larger than all conventional deposits. The Saudi royals know this. The general public does not.

It's against the economic interests of any of the players to level with the press or the public. Everybody is lying about everything to everybody else. This behavior is classic - typical of mining everywhere. When was the last time you heard a gold miner telling all where he'd found a massive strike ?

Heh.

Medon October 10, 2015 at 3:15 pm

Why does the US need to be in the Middle East at all. We can just buy oil from the lowest cost supplier and have it shipped over. What am I missing here?

NotTimothyGeithner October 10, 2015 at 3:32 pm

Contracting fraud, where the real money is made. It was never about oil, just contracts and egos. Oil has to be sold at an honest price for a variety of reasons, but I can't judge a cruise missile's price behind a veil of secrecy.

cwaltz October 10, 2015 at 3:53 pm

http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/house-votes-to-lift-oil-export-ban/ar-AAfhPdk

Heck if we wanted to we wouldn't even have to ship it over. What's the fun in that though? Yay, capitalism where no one ever gets to lift the stupid veil!

NotTimothyGeithner October 10, 2015 at 4:21 pm

Then there is the natural failing of leaders domestically who search for scapegoats. Half of the foreign policy pronouncements are full of whispered hisses of "China." Don't pay attention to me. It's those red Chinese and their currency manipulation.

It's not that much different than medieval kings who blamed jews for the ills of society. Oh sure, we have tablets and Facebook, but we are still the same people after all these years.

cwaltz October 10, 2015 at 4:43 pm

The currency manipulation thing always makes me laugh. Good Lord, what do they think the Fed does when it lowers and increases interest rates and what QE did to the dollar?

People WANT a scapegoat though. They want to believe that it's someone else's fault. Our domestic leaders are giving the people what they want, a culpable body, when playing the blame game.

optimader October 10, 2015 at 5:28 pm

Why does the US need to be in the Middle East at all
It doesn't
What am I missing here?
stock in http://www.bga-aeroweb.com/Top-100-Defense-Contractors-2014.html
ill admit, the relative positions of 11-13 surprised me, but then not.

Roland October 10, 2015 at 4:28 pm

The Russian expeditionary force in Syria is indeed highly vulnerable, but only if the Western Bloc wants to risk a major war. Now the Western Bloc can prevail against Russia, at any level of escalation, albeit at mounting risk. Nobody should expect today's Russia to be able to match the might of the Western Bloc.

But the Russian government indicates that they are willing to go to war, even if they know in advance that they will lose that war. Willingness to lose means willingness to fight, and the willingness to fight is a crucial element in deterrence.

In both Georgia and Ukraine, the Russians have physically demonstrated their willingness to go to war wherever NATO tries to expand into any more of the former Soviet republics. There is no question of Russian credibility as far as NATO expansion into former SR's is concerned. That means war, period.

Syria's importance to Russia lies in the fact that it's Russia's only ally that is not territorially contiguous to Russia. If Russia is to retain any real sovereign capacity to make or preserve meaningful alliances abroad, then they must support the Syrian government, even if a military deployment there is precarious.

Russia was very slow to engage in direct intervention in Syria. For years, Russia confined its efforts to political support, technical advice, and resupply of the existing Syrian arsenal. Russia even disarmed Syria of its chemical weapons, in a failed effort to mediate the conflict.

However, Russia's long reluctance also means that their current action is long-considered. A government that is slow to go to war is usually a government that will fight hard in that war.

I expect the Western Bloc will presume that they can prevail through politico-economic attrition against Russia. They probably can. However, the longer this complex regional war in the Middle East continues, the more likely things are to veer off unpredictably. The real God of war is neither Athena nor Mars. It's Tyche.

Chauncey Gardiner October 10, 2015 at 4:28 pm

Patrick Smith wrote an interesting article that was published in Salon on October 6th, I recommend it as worthwhile reading and food for thought. An extract:

… "In my read, Russia and Iran have just popped open the door to a solution in Syria. All the pieces are in place but one: Washington's capacity to acknowledge the strategic failure now so evident and to see beyond the narrowest definition of where its interests lie. This brings us to the paradox embedded in those questions Putin and Zarif and a few others now pose: American primacy is no longer in America's interest. Get your mind around this and you have arrived in the 21st century."

http://www.salon.com/2015/10/06/thomas_friedman_read_your_chomsky_the_new_york_times_gets_putinobama_all_wrong_again/

Hmmm… A multi-polar world?

blert October 10, 2015 at 5:49 pm

"The CIA began a covert operation in 2013 to arm, fund and train a moderate opposition to Assad. Over that time, the CIA has trained an estimated 10,000 fighters, although the number still fighting with so-called moderate forces is unclear.

The effort was separate from the one run by the military, which trained militants willing to promise to take on IS exclusively. That program was widely considered a failure, and on Friday, the Defense Department announced it was abandoning the goal of a U.S.-trained Syrian force, instead opting to equip established groups to fight IS."

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/dfe1547ba36f4f968deee227d467dc08/officials-russian-bombs-cia-rebels-had-syrian-gains

Even this AP story is largely inaccurate. The CIA had been active even before 2013. It's original proxy army went rogue and is the cadre for al Baghdadi's ISIS horror show. ONLY NOW is the MSM breaking the story that is idiot obvious across the Middle East. ZeroHedge is comparing this to Bay of Pigs II.

No kidding -- Both involved CIA proxy armies that had no operational security to speak of. Both were authorized by the Oval Office. And we know how much BHO admires JFK.

Stefan October 10, 2015 at 6:31 pm

This article's quotes from various foreign quarters are informative, but its characterization of American strategy is a bit "breathless."

The US maintained a fairly hands off approach to Syria over the past few years on the advice of Israel. In essence, the US didn't have a dog in that fight, and the general intention was to allow the regime and its enemies to weaken each other interminably.

Obama's empty threats about chemical weapons were a mistake, of course. But the Russians helped him out of that one. And in some way, they are helping him out again. The blitzkrieg success of Sunni/ISIS took observers by surprise, and all those gruesome beheadings seem to call for something. But again where is the real strategic value of Syria? Every sensible Syrian who can is on his way to a new life in Europe.

While the article's author seems to wish to ridicule him, Brzezinski is right. The US has stupendous firepower, more than the rest of the world combined. But as we have seen, that does not guarantee success in every situation, and is hardly effective if half-hearted.

By the way, the Israelis could "take out" Assad any time they wish to. They could as well probably cripple the Russian force in Syria in a day, if they chose. But they do not prefer the consequences.

VietnamVet October 10, 2015 at 9:58 pm

It is important to get Russian viewpoint especially since most Americans are monolingual. Also, it is hard for us not to root for the home team. Still Syria is a gigantic SNAFU. It is so far beyond incompetence it has to be purposeful. This is the ultimate expression of the Shock Doctrine. Collapse Russia and gain control its energy resources at the risk of exterminating Homo sapiens. Russia will do well for a while carving out enclaves for the minority Shiites, Christians and Alawites then they will in a tough slog of fighting Sunni Arabs in a regional Holy War.

There are 1.6 billion Sunni Muslims. Want-to-be Jihadists will flock to Syria to fight the Russian Crusaders. Barrack Obama has already warned Vladimir Putin of a quagmire. His continued arming the Sunnis is a purposeful act to ensure this. World War III starts when Russia shoots down an American aircraft on a combat mission over Syria.

ambrit October 11, 2015 at 8:48 am

Give the Russians some credit for finesse. All they need do is shoot down an Israeli jet attacking a Syrian government position in support of some Syrian "Moderates" near Damascus. I'll be watching for a Russian campaign to rid the Syrian skies of 'Western' drones. That would be a sign of serious intentions on the part of Russia.

Another possibility is a peaceful change of leadership within Assad's Syrian government. Does anyone know if there is a suitable successor to Assad Jr. in the 'family?' Such an event would remove even the fig leaf presently being waved in front of the West's attempted rape of Syria.

Russell Scott Day/Transcendia October 11, 2015 at 1:02 am

So I was hoping that the Russians would go in there and kill ISIS and then they turn around and start killing the rebels trying to kill Assad, who ISIS wouldn't mind killing as well. So much for wishful thinking which last I noted hasn't worked well in war except when called dumb luck, which is fortunate weather events never anticipated by anyone.

Well it sort of makes sense that if you have an enemy with an army and they threaten you, enough, you kill them. Unfortunately for allies of the US, it doesn't really matter that much for the US long as the Petrodollar, the gift of Nixon and Kissinger is the reserve currency. If all the Syrian draft dodgers go to Germany, well that will serve Volkswagen right, not to mention make Greece and Hungary thinking so while any minute I'll look good telling the Netherlands to go for it with my Insurodollar.

Well it sure did work out well about that Euro. And things would be great if it was actually oil coming from the 3,900 drill rigs, if it was oil instead of leaky ass methane wrecking the climate even more than oil getting burned things would be better. A 4,000 dollar CNG gas tank that takes up the trunk makes batteries look good.
But who knows what all since piddling around has halfway or a third worked out, so far.

It's not how many nukes you have, but who uses them first, if you have them see. They didn't really have them till the end of the second world war, which was a war, still, and why I call what's in store next for us an apocalyptic riot.

If only capitalism was working and Russia was just offered a land transit corridor for a price to Sevastopol? So what if they get to access more better in the Black Sea, It's Black right?

Remember the Zaporizia! Remember that Hunter Biden! Remember Antares! Remember Christophe de Margerie and the drunk that got there just in time for a plane that never crashes except for the other one that was shot down! And remember thinking too much, since what you know is lots of lies, and the rest is cowardly, or stupid.

[Oct 19, 2015] Syrian Gambit: US at Pains to Create 'Another Afghanistan' for Russia

This is a very dangerous gambit for Russia. The USA and allies represents overwhelmingly stronger alliance economically, politically and technologically.

Notable quotes:

"... And finally, overall tribalism and chaos in the region helps the US, and particularly Israel gain strength in the region by weakening neighbors, ..."

"... We will see fewer conventional offensives in the future, and far more localized attacks, the Pentagon will try and create another Afghanistan ..."

"... While US military doctrine these days is set to avoid direct confrontation, on the other hand America and citizens in the West have been primed for it. Consider that most Americans, have been brainwashed substantially to believe Vladimir Putin has already invaded half a dozen countries. As crazy as this sounds, pretend you live in small American town and you listen to CNN or Fox before bed every night. This potential, to be dragged into a wide conflagration set up by Washington, is why you see Vladimir Putin making very conservative and precise moves on the stage, he told Sputnik. ..."

"... given all we have seen since 9/11, it would take a fairly major incident to excuse such a confrontation ..."

Oct 18, 2015 | sputniknews.com

In September 2014, Kenneth M. Pollack, a former CIA intelligence analyst, proposed a plan entitled "An Army to Defeat Assad." The CIA analyst envisaged the creation of a US Syrian proxy army that would take over the Syrian government forces (and deal a blow to Islamic State). However, the toppling of Bashar al-Assad was marked by Pollack as the overriding priority.

"Once the new army gained ground, the opposition's leaders could formally declare themselves to represent a new provisional government. The United States and its allies could then extend diplomatic recognition to the movement, allowing the US Department of Defense to take over the tasks of training and advising the new force – which would now be the official military arm of Syria's legitimate new rulers," Pollack elaborated.

In January 2015, the Pentagon announced that it kicked off a plan aimed at training Assad's opposition fighters, strikingly similar to that offered by Pollack in September 2014. So, nothing hinted at any trouble until September 30, when Russia suddenly threw a wrench in Washington's ingenious plan.

"To get to the root of the current crisis in Syria and the Middle East overall, we must look at US policy overall," Germany-based American political analyst Phil Butler explained in an exclusive interview to Sputnik.

"The current divisions within Syria and Northern Iraq are to a degree fabricated. Secular, religious, and even tribal differences in this region have been leveraged for centuries to divide Syria, as well as other nations in the region. You've mentioned Ken Pollack, and appropriately, I might add. Pollack, who's held many official positions within the Washington policy making establishment, is actually one of the authors of chaos in this region. Discussing such "bred" academics is a deep well, but suffice it to say the division of Yugoslavia, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Arab Spring overall, the Georgia war, and the current Ukraine mess are all facets of the same flawed gem of US hegemony," the analyst told Sputnik.

According to Butler, the current mission in Syria is not intended to be a splintering as we saw with Kosovo, in the Balkans.

"As for the 'plan' in Syria, I believe there were 'contingencies' mapped out. As amoral as these schemes may be, they are not concocted by idiots. Contingency 1, in my view, was the literal overthrow of Assad. Vladimir Putin's moves, Russia's, have thwarted this potential at every turn. Contingency number two obviously involves another Yugoslavia in the making. And finally, overall tribalism and chaos in the region helps the US, and particularly Israel gain strength in the region by weakening neighbors," the political analyst stressed.

Meanwhile, Western reputable media sources have reported of an upcoming offensive on Raqqa, ISIL's "capital," the Pentagon is preparing to launch along with its Arab and Kurdish military allies.

However, Middle East Eye reported on October 14 that there is no sign of such preparations on the ground: "The US-led anti-IS coalition dropped 50 tons of weapons to the newly created Syrian Arab Coalition on Monday in the Hasakah province, in order to avoid angering Turkey. But so far, no US weapons can be seen on the frontlines close to Raqqa, nor any sign of rebel troop preparations."

"The reason we have not seen these latest weapons shipments being used, is the complexity of strategy on the ground has changed. No standing force, Al-Nusra, ISIL, or other jihadists put together, could withstand Russian air power. I believe we are about to see Assad's opposition morph their strategy to full guerrilla warfare as was the case in Afghanistan. We will see fewer conventional "offensives" in the future, and far more localized attacks, the Pentagon will try and create another Afghanistan," Butler explained commenting on the issue.

However, in contrast to the US' covert war against the USSR in Afghanistan, there were no US jet fighters in the region and thus far, no threat of a direct confrontation between the two global powers.

Today, there are many military "actors" in the skies of Syria and Iraq. Does it mean the Pentagon's Afghani strategy may unexpectedly transform into a direct confrontation between US/NATO and Russia?

"As for the threat of direct confrontation between the US and Russia in Syria, the possibility does exist. In this case however, I believe such a confrontation is actually another contingency for Washington," the American political analyst underscored.

"While US military doctrine these days is set to avoid direct confrontation, on the other hand America and citizens in the "West" have been primed for it. Consider that most Americans, have been brainwashed substantially to believe Vladimir Putin has already invaded half a dozen countries. As crazy as this sounds, pretend you live in small American town and you listen to CNN or Fox before bed every night. This potential, to be dragged into a wide conflagration set up by Washington, is why you see Vladimir Putin making very conservative and precise moves on the stage," he told Sputnik.

"Having said this, given all we have seen since 9/11, it would take a fairly major incident to excuse such a confrontation," Phil Butler concluded.

[Oct 19, 2015] After failing to set new Afghanistan for Russia in Ukraine

After failing to set new Afghanistan for Russia in Ukraine, it looks like Syria is on the mind of Washington strategists as a suitable replacement. The problem is that ground forces are not Russian.

"... From one fiasco to another: Washington has failed to change the regime in Syria, failed to effectively fight ISIS, and now wants Russia to fail. At the same time, Obama appears to be willing to arm any anti-regime fighter who can carry a gun. What could possibly go wrong with that? ..."

marknesop.wordpress.com

Warren, October 18, 2015 at 12:27 pm

Published on 16 Oct 2015

From one fiasco to another: Washington has failed to change the regime in Syria, failed to effectively fight ISIS, and now wants Russia to fail. At the same time, Obama appears to be willing to arm any anti-regime fighter who can carry a gun. What could possibly go wrong with that?

CrossTalking with Philippe Assouline, Marcus Papadopoulos, and Roshan Muhammed Salih.

[Oct 18, 2015] US and Russia Should Form Coordinated Coalition in Syria – Stephen Cohen

Notable quotes:

"... The professor noted that some analysts are convinced that Vladimir Putin is about to sell out Donbass, eastern Ukraine, in return for Syria. According to Cohen, it is naïve to believe that Moscow would give up ethnic Russians suffering from Kiev's hostilities in return for protecting Assad ..."

"... [Ukrainian authorities are worried] that Washington may kind of forget Ukraine or lessen its commitment to the Kiev government. So, I would not be surprised if Kiev stages a provocation to inflame the crisis which is at a very low level at the moment in Ukraine, ..."

"... if Washington continues to indulge the neocons' plan to arm Ukraine and encourage Kiev's warmongering against Russia, the United States will finally face an equivalent of the Cuban Missile Crisis in Eastern Europe. ..."

sputniknews.com

"My hope is that [US President] Obama and [Russian President] Putin will rise above themselves and form a substantial coalition in Iraq and in Syria. But let's be realistic… There are enormous obstacles," Professor Cohen noted in an interview with US progressive political commentator Thomas Carl "Thom" Hartmann.

The professor noted that some analysts are convinced that Vladimir Putin is about to sell out Donbass, eastern Ukraine, in return for Syria. According to Cohen, it is naïve to believe that Moscow would give up ethnic Russians suffering from Kiev's hostilities in return for protecting Assad. "That won't happen," the professor underscored.

... ... ...

"It [the Ukrainian crisis] could flare up at any moment in a way that could disrupt any fragile agreement between Putin and Obama," the professor stressed.

According to Cohen, the US-backed regime in Kiev is sweating bullets about the possibility of close cooperation between Moscow and Washington in the Middle East.

"[Ukrainian authorities are worried] that Washington may kind of forget Ukraine or lessen its commitment to the Kiev government. So, I would not be surprised if Kiev stages a provocation to inflame the crisis which is at a very low level at the moment in Ukraine," Cohen warned.

Meanwhile, the grim specter of World War III is prowling across Europe and the Middle East. Professor Cohen has repeatedly stressed that if Washington continues to indulge the neocons' plan to arm Ukraine and encourage Kiev's warmongering against Russia, the United States will finally face an equivalent of the Cuban Missile Crisis in Eastern Europe.

Read more: http://sputniknews.com/politics/20151003/1027976725/us-russia-syria-coalition-cohen.html#ixzz3oz03EHB3

[Oct 18, 2015] Irrational Unrequited Love of Ukrainians for the West

This is how neocolonialism works: "global village' wants to move to "global town", while global town mercilessly exploits it.

Notable quotes:

"... There is also an important factor: several million Ukrainians work in Russia and in Europe. Comparing, they see that life in the European Union is more comfortable. And this also affects their geopolitical preferences . Finally, most of the residents of Ukraine, especially in the center and the west of the country perceived the reunion of the Crimea with the Russian Federation as an occupation of part of their country. And in relation to the events in Donbass the propaganda has convinced many people that it was not a rebellion against the new regime in Kiev, but Russia's aggression. Unfortunately, revanchist sentiments towards our country in Ukraine can last for a long time. I would even say that it is impossible to exclude the possibility of war between Russia and Ukraine. At least today it is bigger than zero. And even 2 years ago this assumption might seem an absurd fantasy. ..."

"... Yes, there are still strong illusions of average Ukrainians in relation to Europe. Many people think that joining the EU and NATO would quickly help Ukraine improve the living standards of the population, to solve social problems and so on. Others, more realistically minded Ukrainians, think like this: yes, we know that Europe will not solve our problems, but we have no other choice. Now, Russia, if not an enemy, is at least an unfriendly state. And they do not believe in the economic prospects of the alliance with us. ..."

"... public consciousness in Ukraine is largely irrational. Ive already talked about the persisting illusions of Ukrainian men from the street. It seems to him that only the West is able to protect Ukraine from the Russian aggression . This explains such a persistent and irrational focus on Europe. ..."

"... it seems to me that the real percentage of Ukrainians who are in favor of strengthening cooperation with Russia on the territories controlled by Kiev is not much higher than what was revealed by the survey. ..."

Oct 15, 2015 | Fort Russ

Most citizens of "independent" Ukraine are disappointed with Maidan, but they still believe in Europe

The public consciousness in Ukraine continues to amaze with its irrationality. This is confirmed by the poll conducted by the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES).

Despite the fact that the majority of Ukrainians acknowledge that Euromaidan did not meet their expectations, a dominant sentiment in Ukraine is in favor of the pro-Western geopolitical course.

49% of respondents are of the opinion that Ukraine should better strive to deepen relations with Europe, while the percentage of those who prefer a closer relationship with Russia is only 8%.

At the same time 56% of Ukrainians believe that the country is moving in the wrong direction, and only 20% hold the opposite opinion. The notion that the country is moving in the wrong direction is spread across the country and is shared by the majority of citizens in each region.

The survey was conducted on the territory of Ukraine, controlled by the Kiev government, without regard to the views of some four million people living in the LPR and the DPR.

It would seem that in the last eighteen months Europe has demonstrated that it is in no hurry to recognize Ukraine as its "own". Western aid is given precisely in those volumes that prevent the final collapse of Ukraine's statehood. At the same time, due to the influx of Western goods and severance of economic ties with Russia hundreds of Ukrainian enterprises are closed. The latest news in this regard: in Ukraine it has become unprofitable to produce even sugar leading to the closing of 15 sugar mills.

The situation in the post-Maidan economy of Ukraine is much worse, however it has not affected the unrequited love of Ukrainians to the West. Why is this the case and what will be the outcome?

- We must understand that the process of Ukraine's reorientation to the West began long before the Maidan, - says the Head of the Center for Political Research of the Institute of Economics, Head of the Department of International Relations of the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Federation Boris Shmelev. - For a quarter century that has passed since the collapse of the Soviet Union, more than one generation of Ukrainians has grown who are convinced that it is necessary not to be friends with Russia, but with Europe. That only this friendship with the West will ensure the prosperity of Ukraine.

There is also an important factor: several million Ukrainians work in Russia and in Europe. Comparing, they see that life in the European Union is more comfortable. And this also affects their "geopolitical preferences". Finally, most of the residents of Ukraine, especially in the center and the west of the country perceived the reunion of the Crimea with the Russian Federation as an occupation of part of their country. And in relation to the events in Donbass the propaganda has convinced many people that it was not a rebellion against the new regime in Kiev, but Russia's aggression. Unfortunately, revanchist sentiments towards our country in Ukraine can last for a long time. I would even say that it is impossible to exclude the possibility of war between Russia and Ukraine. At least today it is bigger than zero. And even 2 years ago this assumption might seem an absurd fantasy.

"SP": - Why a year and a half since the "February coup" have not convinced Ukrainians that the EU is not going to make Ukraine a member state and that the West is helping Kiev only to the extent that the pro-Western regime does not collapse?

- Yes, there are still strong illusions of average Ukrainians in relation to Europe. Many people think that joining the EU and NATO would quickly help Ukraine improve the living standards of the population, to solve social problems and so on. Others, more realistically minded Ukrainians, think like this: yes, we know that Europe will not solve our problems, but we have no other choice. Now, Russia, if not an enemy, is at least an unfriendly state. And they do not believe in the economic prospects of the alliance with us.

"SP": - But it is impossible to escape the logic: as long as Ukraine maintained relatively good relations with Russia, the situation in the Ukrainian economy was more or less tolerable. And as soon as Kiev finally turned towards the West, the economy began to crumble ...

- All this is true. But public consciousness in Ukraine is largely irrational. I've already talked about the persisting illusions of Ukrainian men from the street. It seems to him that only the West is able to protect Ukraine from the "Russian aggression". This explains such a persistent and irrational focus on Europe.

"SP": - And can we explain such a low percentage of Russian sympathizers by the fact that some respondents, especially in the South-East of Ukraine are afraid to openly express their opinions?

- Yes, it is possible. Although, it seems to me that the real percentage of Ukrainians who are in favor of strengthening cooperation with Russia on the territories controlled by Kiev is not much higher than what was revealed by the survey.

[Oct 18, 2015] A Strong Press is the Best Defense Against Crony Capitalism

Oct 18, 2015 | Economist's View

Second Best, Sunday, October 18, 2015 at 12:28 PM

a strong press is the best offense in support of crony capitalism since there is no good guy with a press to defend against a bad guy with a press

Ignacio, Sunday, October 18, 2015 at 12:46 PM

"When the media outlets in any country fail to challenge power, not only are they not part of the solution, they become part of the problem."

That is the conclusion, unfortunately correct. Most media are part of the problem. Mary R marked another problem with media: Who are their clients? The advertisers or the readers/viewers?

Dan Kervick, Sunday, October 18, 2015 at 01:58 PM

"It is a corrupt form, in which incumbents and special-interest groups shape the rules of the game to their advantage, at the expense of everybody else: it is crony capitalism."

Well, maybe. But the alternative, idealized non-corrupt form has probably never existed in the actual world - ever.

Even if it did exist for a little while, it wouldn't last. You know what happens when people compete? Some people *win the competition*. And the winners acquire the power to make the rules, since there is no way of separating wealth from power. The tendency toward oligopoly, monopoly and the concentration of power is inherent in the normal functioning of capitalism. The ideal of maintaining some regulated perfect competition economy in which the playing field is perfectly level and none of the competitors has an institutional power advantage, is like trying to create a Monopoly game perpetually frozen in place at the first roll of the dice.

Even if we had a perfect, perpetual balanced competition economy, it wouldn't be great, because life is about more than the struggle for victory and domination. The laissez faire nostalgists are still working to fit a 18th and 19th century mentality and reality into a 21st century world. A society based on free-wheeling entrepreneurial innovation, competition and exploitation might have made sense in a world of a few hundred million people moving out into the open spaces to exploit a planet filled with resources that earlier technology had been unable to acquire or use. But in our tight, crowded and environmentally stressed world, that no longer makes sense. We're going to have to get more organized and less competitive.

Most intelligent people in the 20th century had gotten this. Then we in the US had a bit of a neoliberal holiday from history when we offshored industry elsewhere (along with its organized labor), and had a brief turbo period of high octane capitalism driven by financial games and services. But that era ended in 2008, and we're back to dealing with the inexorable crunch of history on a finite globe.

likbez said in reply to Dan Kervick, Sunday, October 18, 2015 at 02:56 PM

Great observation: "the alternative, idealized non-corrupt form has probably never existed in the actual world - ever."

In a way free press is an ideal which can temporary exists when there are two countervailing forces of equal political power. So in a way free press can exist temporary in a very unstable society. So some level of suppression of "free press" is a norm. That does not mean that it this suppression should not be challenged. But the political stability of society probably requires a certain level of brainwashing and thus "unfree press".

But existence of nation states with conflicting interests presuppose existence of some semblance, surrogate of "free press" coverage across the borders. like in court the testimony of each side should be given equal attention, for most people it can provide some minimal level of "alternative coverage" of major events.

I noticed that despite GB being a vassal of the USA, British press provides much better, more realistic picture of major problems in the USA society and even better, more realistic coverage of both foreign and some, less connected with GB geopolitical interests, internal events such as presidential elections. If you add to your menu the press from "less friendly" states such as Iran, China and Russia you probably can be dig out some real information about events despite for of disinformation of MSM. Coverage of MH17 tragedy is the most recent example were relying of the USA MSM coverage would be totally unwise. Even The Guardian is a better deal.

In the USSR Voice of America and BBC were great sources of information despite the fact people understand that they are government propaganda outlets. But since agenda of the USA and British government were different they still were valuable source of information about internal events and developments in the USSR.

And I would dare to say the level of propaganda in coverage of foreign events today that we see in the USA MSM would let Pravda propagandists blush.

Julio said in reply to likbez...

Good observations. My own experience is that coverage in other countries often has a different perspective, and I feel more informed after viewing it. Even CNN in Spanish often provides somewhat different viewpoints!

My favorite example is the runup to the Iraq war. To my surprise, the most balanced and informed articles I could find were in English versions of Iranian newspapers.

pgl said...

The ideal:

"Inquisitive, daring and influential media outlets willing to take a strong stand against economic power are essential in a competitive capitalist society. They are our defense against crony capitalism."

Our sad current situation:

"When the media outlets in any country fail to challenge power, not only are they not part of the solution, they become part of the problem."

Yes - many of the current media outlets are bought and paid for by the elites. That was his point!

cm said in reply to pgl, Sunday, October 18, 2015 at 05:27 PM

I suspect reliance on advertising revenue is the larger factor (and it is also a large factor in consolidation). Advertisers (and the corporate/business clients they represent) want to reach audiences likely to be convinced to buy the advertised products and services. This will work to suppress any "content" that is incompatible with ad placement or the ad's target audience, or not palatable to the ad client.

Even "progressive" outlets are subject to this and have to at least tone down the controversy, i.e. self-censorship.

Larry, Sunday, October 18, 2015 at 03:27 PM

A strong, independent press would be a fine thing. Looking at the huge crowd of journalists who are so far in the tank for Clinton, it isn't obvious to me that corporatism is that big an issue. Did you see that Cheryl Mills was working at State while negotiating a deal for NYU with Abu Dhabi?

Where is the press scrutiny/outrage over that? Journalism yawns!

anne said in reply to Larry... Sunday, October 18, 2015 at 04:34 PM

Do set down references:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/while-at-state-clinton-chief-of-staff-held-job-negotiating-with-abu-dhabi/2015/10/12/e847b3be-6863-11e5-8325-a42b5a459b1e_story.html

October 12, 2015

While at State, Clinton chief of staff held job negotiating with Abu Dhabi
By Rosalind S. Helderman

likbez

The first victim of war is truth. Similarly the first victim of neoliberalism (aka casino capitalism aka crony capitalism) is press.

This nice dream of "free press" is incompatible with reality of neoliberal society which, is its core is a flavor of corporatism. Under corporatism free press exists only for people who own it.

btg said... October 18, 2015 at 08:04 PM

The problem is the the media is no longer a variety of owners with integrity but an oligopoly of Wall Street conglomerates or mega-media corporations run by ideologues pushing the agenda (Murdock, talk radio, etc.) - so we get coverage that is either gutless because it tries to give equal time to patently absurd right wing ideas, is rabidly pro-business or actively pushing for the right.

Ben Groves said...

All capitalism is crony. From the beginning through the 400 years of dialectics since 1630's Amsterdam when the Iberian Sephardic Immigrants brought it there.

DeDude said... October 19, 2015 at 07:08 AM

A strong press, in contrast to a corporate press, can indeed be a critical part of the defense of our democracy. But it can also be an enemy of democracy and a tool for the plutocrats - try to turn on Fox if you need an example.

reason said...

There is a crucial word missing - independent.

[Oct 18, 2015] MH17 downed by outdated BUK missile fired from Kiev-controlled area – Defense system manufacturer

Notable quotes:

"... if you can explain any single interest of Russia to destroy civilian plane and kill 300 innocent people to gain public support from world, then I am curious to know it; sure, in totally crazy scenario, somebody can orchestrate it all and motivate somebody to target 777 by mistake or there can be some special services for false flag, but I am sure that this is absolutely risky business with the same bad PR as first case; far more, I can imagine, that somebody stupid tried to modulate it upon MH370 case media wave while escalating warfare and hate of somebody else; truth will be known, soon or later, be sure ..."

Oct 13, 2015 | RT News

In October, the BUK manufacturer conducted a second full-scale experiment using the missile and a decommissioned Ilyushin Il-86 passenger airliner. The simulation of the attack on the Boeing "unequivocally proved that if the plane was brought down by a BUK system, it was done with an outdated 9M38 missile from the village of Zaroshchenskoye," in Ukrainian military-controlled territory.

The company also said that the last missile of this type was produced in the Soviet Union in 1986, that its life span is 25 years including all prolongations, and that all missiles of this type were decommissioned from the Russian Army in 2011.

According to Almaz-Antey experts, the Dutch side does not explain why the investigation insists that the possible launch of the surface-to-air missile was executed from the settlement of Snezhnoye, controlled by rebel forces.

A missile launched from Snezhnoye could not have inflicted damage to Boeing's left side and not a single element would have hit the aircraft's left wing and engine, insist the Almaz-Antey experts.

... ... ...

The main proof that the aircraft was shot down from the direction of Snezhnoye was [the Dutch commission's] modeling of that process and interpretation of the damage to the fuselage. It does provide a quite visual imagery of how a missile on a head-on course could damage certain areas, yet this kind of modeling does not explain at all the real-incidence angles of striking elements [hitting the aircraft]," Novikov said.

Analysis of the photos of MH17 debris led the company's experts to believe that the blast of the warhead damaged not only the cockpit of the Boeing 777 that crashed in Ukraine, but also the left wing and stabilizer.

The detonation of the missile occurred at a distance of more than 20 meters from the left-wing engine and most of the strike elements were moving along the fuselage of the aircraft.

... ... ...

The left wing and stabilizer also bear traces of damage, the size of which provides an opportunity to define them as inflicted by the strike elements of a BUK missile complex," adviser of the general constructor of Almaz-Antey, Mikhail Malyshevsky, said.

The Almaz-Antey experts paid special attention to the fact that some of the damage registered on the MH17 debris was caused by disruption of the aircraft's structural components and not by the striking elements of the missile.

The experts of Almaz-Antey also said that Ukraine possesses 9M38 missiles, but fell short of accusing either the Kiev authorities or the rebels in the east of Ukraine of causing the catastrophe.

... ... ...

Simultaneously with the investigation of the Dutch Safety Board, the Dutch prosecutor's office is conducting a separate criminal investigation of its own aimed at establishing the perpetrators of the attack on passenger aircraft.

A Malaysia Airlines Boeing-777 flight MH17 passenger aircraft left from Amsterdam to the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur on July 17, 2014. The airliner was shot down and fell to Earth over the Donetsk Region in eastern Ukraine. All 298 people, 283 passengers and 15 crew, on board were killed. There were 80 children among the passengers. Most, 193 people, were Dutch nationals; altogether the airliner was carrying citizens from 10 countries.

djajakondomis 4 days ago 06:12

As I said. Just read the report and supplements! The specified area consists mainly out of Rebel area...

Almaz-Antei director Yan Novikov was involved during the investigation. There were even three main/big meetings, and every meeting took three days!
At the second meeting Almaz-Antei director Yan Novikov even presented the 9N314M warhead himself. The investigation team was even happy that there was consensus. On the third meeting Yan Novikov suddenly said; well, it was only an example we presented.

However, based for instance on the butterfly shape, the whole research team (of all countries) were convinced it was a 9N314M warhead, except suddenly the Russian delegation.

This investigation was based on the parts found within the bodies!! Not something found on the ground or whatsoever...
Read the report!

Sergio Teixeira 4 days ago 02:05

hanspy

Show me the video from the blast and ad a speed of let us say 2000 kmh from the rocket(probably

higher speed) plus 700 kmh from the plane and tell me than again how it looks. A blast with zero kmh speed looks totally different than a blast patron with 2700kmh or more. You Russians know exactly who did it and with what rocket and from where. So stop playing around and start to be real journalists and not some propaganda machine from Putin or Almaz-Antey .

next they will say Sadam did it.

Sergio Teixeira 4 days ago 02:04

Af Veth
Whatever, anyway Russian Forces downed MH17. Thats was it counting.
not Russian but CIA to justify they needs.

Sergio Teixeira 4 days ago 02:03

Message deleted

EU is slave from USA

vladffff 4 days ago 01:03

Took these rats 1 year to find this out?

alrobigglesworth 5 days ago 21:01

"[Almaz-Antey] added that among the materials received and examined by their experts were heavy fraction sub munitions, which only the older 9M38M1 missile modification is equipped with."

That's a direct quote from the RT article from June 2015 regarding Almaz-Antey's first test.

alrobigglesworth 5 days ago 20:32

After their first "experiment" in June, Almaz-Antey said that "If a surface-to-air missile system was used [to hit the plane], it could only have been a 9M38M1 missile of the BUK-M1 system." Why is he changing his story, especially now that the Dutch Safety Board reached the same conclusion? Seems fishy.

Petr Antoš 5 days ago 17:45

hanspy

Show me the video from the blast and ad a speed of let us say 2000 kmh from the rocket(probablymore...

ummm, ok, they even offered to buy old 777 a let it be downed while flying on AP over military area to proof their analysis; if you can explain any single interest of Russia to destroy civilian plane and kill 300 innocent people to gain public support from world, then I am curious to know it; sure, in totally crazy scenario, somebody can orchestrate it all and motivate somebody to target 777 by mistake or there can be some special services for false flag, but I am sure that this is absolutelly risky business with the same bad PR as first case; far more, I can imagine, that somebody stupid tried to modulate it upon MH370 case media wave while escalating warfare and hate of somebody else; truth will be known, soon or later, be sure

hanspy 5 days ago 17:28

Show me the video from the blast and ad a speed of let us say 2000 kmh from the rocket(probably higher speed) plus 700 kmh from the plane and tell me than again how it looks. A blast with zero kmh speed looks totally different than a blast patron with 2700kmh or more. You Russians know exactly who did it and with what rocket and from where. So stop playing around and start to be real journalists and not some propaganda machine from Putin or Almaz-Antey .

Norma Brown 5 days ago 15:04

this is a good result for Russia, as the only government involved that can be sued for criminal stupidity is Kiev, for allowing the flight into a war zone.

[Oct 18, 2015] Zaroshchenske vs Snizhne as a launch point: early controversy

After MH17 was shot done all intelligence services of NATO (with a lot of high tech) as well as Ukrainian SBU (with a lot of people on the ground; enough to monitor all major roads) were on alert. So the hypothesis that they were unable to locate the launch platform is a very weak hypothesis. It was next to impossible for rebels to move it from Snizhne to, say, Russia. This is a serious problem with version that it was BUK, unless it was a Ukrainian BUK.

Looks like Snizhne was pushed as a smoke screen to deflect attention from Ukrainians.

Notable quotes:

"... The US release of this illustration (below) of the area lacks resolution and scale, so no launcher can be seen. The firing location and the green line of trajectory are unverified guesswork. The US has not presented evidence that on July 17 a Buk-M1 battery was in Snizhne. ..."

"... the Russian evidence for a Ukrainian military launcher at Zaroshchenske puts the distance between this pre-firing location and the purported Snizhne launch position at less than 25 kilometres. ..."

July 23, 2014 | Dances With Bears

Russian generals Andrei Kartapolov (Army) and Igor Makushev (Air Force) have presented satellite pictures showing that on or before July 17 the Ukrainian military moved at least three Buk-M1 missile batteries – comprising a tracked launcher and a target acquisition radar van – out of their depot north of Donetsk, and into positions, all of which were within 30 kilometres of the Boeing's flight path; the SA-11's range is 30 kilometres. One unit in particular was photographed at the village of Zaroshchenske, south of the bigger settlement of Shakhtarsk, and south of the main road H21. This position is about 15 kilometres from the M17 flight path and from the impact site.

The Russian location evidence can be seen on this Google map:

Click for wider view of locations: https://www.google.co.uk/

The US release of this illustration (below) of the area lacks resolution and scale, so no launcher can be seen. The firing location and the green line of trajectory are unverified guesswork. The US has not presented evidence that on July 17 a Buk-M1 battery was in Snizhne. But the Russian evidence for a Ukrainian military launcher at Zaroshchenske puts the distance between this pre-firing location and the purported Snizhne launch position at less than 25 kilometres. There is also a gap of several hours between the time of the Russian photograph and the confirmed firing time at 1720. Between the two locations, highway H21 would allow a mobile launcher unit and radar van to redeploy within 45 to 60 minutes.

The Russian radar tracks identify the presence of a small Ukrainian aircraft with Su-25 identifiers on the Boeing flight path, and within range of the ground missile launcher within minutes of the shoot-down. The US intelligence briefing neither confirms nor denies the presence in the air of the Su-25; no US satellite or radar records have been released to corroborate the point. Instead, the US briefing denies the Su-25 fired rockets at the Boeing.

Responding to the Russian radar presentation, President Petro Poroshenko told CNN the presentation was the "irresponsible and false statement of the Russian [defense] minister". Poroshenko appeared not to be familiar with the Russian radar evidence. He said: "When the Russian [Defense] ministry makes such a statement, it must provide proof. The sky over Ukraine is monitored by many satellites and air defense systems. Everyone knows that all Ukrainian planes were on the ground several hundred kilometres away [from the crash site]

[Oct 17, 2015] Assad thinks that an independent state working for the interests of people is better then the state working for the interests of the West

"... The Syrian government maintains a commitment to a strong welfare state, for example ensuring universal access to healthcare (in which area its performance has been impressive) and providing free education at all levels. It has a long-established policy of secularism and multiculturalism, protecting and celebrating its religious and ethnic diversity and refusing to tolerate sectarian hatred …" ..."

"... Yes, Walter Cronkite remarked in his autobiography on the harmonious secularism of Syria from an actual visit, in which he said he noted various religious denominations living in one another's neighbourhoods with no apparent religious acrimony or intolerance at all. ..."

"... The USA is determined to get control of the gas supply to Europe because it perceives that Russia has too much influence there because of said supply, as well as the popular trope that Russia has nothing but oil and gas and if the USA could capture their markets, they'd be paupers in a year. ..."

"... 12 headline stories listed. None about the Ukraine, MH17 and Syria. ..."

"... Parubiy, who founded the Social National Party of Ukraine together with Oleh Tyahnybok (the current leader of the far-right Svoboda party), will be speaking at RUSI whilst visiting London. ..."

"... I remain convinced that the army of humanitarian interventionists fetishise 'democracy promotion' abroad largely to avoid looking at how it's playing out at home. ..."

marknesop.wordpress.com

Jen, October 15, 2015 at 9:54 pm

BTW for anyone who is interested, here is a June 2015 article by Jay Tharappel on political reforms made in Syria in 2012 and the new constitution that was approved by the Syrian public via referendum in that year:
https://ingaza.wordpress.com/2015/06/04/tharappel-how-has-syrias-political-system-changed-over-the-course-of-the-war/#_blank

What Tharappel says:

" … The new constitution introduced a multi-party political system in the sense that the eligibility of political parties to participate isn't based on the discretionary permission of the Baath party or on reservations rather on a constitutional criteria.

As such, the new constitution forbids political parties that are based on religion, sect or ethnicity, or which are inherently discriminatory towards one's gender or race (2012: Art.8) – this means the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood is still banned.

What hasn't changed is the constitutional requirement that half the People's Council be comprised of 'workers and peasants' (1973: Art.53 | 2012: Art.60), which in practice means that the ballot paper contains two lists, one with candidates who qualify as 'workers and peasants', and another one with other candidates …

… The Baath party no longer enjoys constitutional privilege. Presidential elections are contested between multiple candidates, and are no longer referendums seeking the electorate's binary (yes or no) approval for the Baath party's internally nominated candidate.

The participation of political parties is based on an objective constitutional criteria [sic], not on the arbitrary powers of the executive to permit or exclude them.

Finally, the Supreme Constitutional Court is significantly more independent."

Another interesting article on Syria, this one by Carlos Martinez in 2013:

http://www.invent-the-future.org/2013/09/decriminalising-bashar/#_blank

" … In the words of its president, Syria is "an independent state working for the interests of its people, rather than making the Syrian people work for the interests of the West." For over half a century, it has stubbornly refused to play by the rules of imperialism and neoliberalism … [In] spite of some limited market reforms of recent years, "the Ba'athist state has always exercised considerable influence over the Syrian economy, through ownership of enterprises, subsidies to privately-owned domestic firms, limits on foreign investment, and restrictions on imports. These are the necessary economic tools of a post-colonial state trying to wrest its economic life from the grips of former colonial powers and to chart a course of development free from the domination of foreign interests."

The Syrian government maintains a commitment to a strong welfare state, for example ensuring universal access to healthcare (in which area its performance has been impressive) and providing free education at all levels. It has a long-established policy of secularism and multiculturalism, protecting and celebrating its religious and ethnic diversity and refusing to tolerate sectarian hatred …"

So in other words, there is now no longer any justification for the US-led overthrow of Bashar al Assad because he is a "dictator".

marknesop , October 16, 2015 at 7:35 am

Yes, Walter Cronkite remarked in his autobiography on the harmonious secularism of Syria from an actual visit, in which he said he noted various religious denominations living in one another's neighbourhoods with no apparent religious acrimony or intolerance at all.

I have suggested before that Assad doomed himself when he refused Qatar's offer to run a gas pipeline across Syria and so to Turkey and Europe, for the expressed reason that he would not stab Russia in the back, and double-doomed himself when he accepted a similar offer from Iran, with whom Russia has no issues because it is not under American control.

The USA is determined to get control of the gas supply to Europe because it perceives that Russia has too much influence there because of said supply, as well as the popular trope that Russia has nothing but oil and gas and if the USA could capture their markets, they'd be paupers in a year.

Moscow Exile , October 16, 2015 at 4:35 am

An alleged experiment in cutting off Russia from the Internet as part of "preparations for an information blackout in the event of a domestic political crisis". http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/11934411/Russia-tried-to-cut-off-World-Wide-Web.html

A domestic political crisis?

In your wet dreams, arseholes!

Unbeknown to Western know-nothings about matters Russian, very many Russians are well aware of the lies spewed out by the Western mass media: the same cannot be said of Westerners and their knowledge of what Russians read in their media.

See: inoСМИ.Ru

I notice that in the British lying rags, the Ukraine has been pushed off the front page, as has the MH17 story and now Syria is being shunted to the sidelines.

Nothing to see here! Move along now!

In today's Telegraph, a German big-game hunter's shooting of a massive bull elephant overrides a Syria story on the front online page. MH17 and the Ukraine gets no mention at all.

Today's headlines:

Scenes of devastation as huge mudslide strikes California leaving thousands stranded
Hatton Garden raider 'shows police where he hid jewels'
'Half empty' private jets carry failed asylum seekers home
SNP accused of 'happy clappy smothering' of second Scottish independence referendum debate
Pc Dave Phillips murder: two women and a man charged with assisting offender

12 headline stories listed. None about the Ukraine, MH17 and Syria.

Jeremn, October 16, 2015 at 7:57 am

Parubiy, who founded the Social National Party of Ukraine together with Oleh Tyahnybok (the current leader of the far-right Svoboda party), will be speaking at RUSI whilst visiting London.

https://www.rusi.org/events/ref:E5617D97483FB3/

Moscow Exile , October 16, 2015 at 11:12 am

How the number of Ukrainians in Russia has grown:

Всего в период с 1 апреля 2014 г. на территорию Российской Федерации въехало и не убыло по состоянию на указанную дату 1 089 618 граждан юго-востока Украины.

Just in the period starting 1 April 2014, into the territory of the Russian Federation have entered and not left as of a specified date 1,089,618 citizens of South-East Ukraine.

Fern , October 16, 2015 at 7:39 pm

I remain convinced that the army of humanitarian interventionists fetishise 'democracy promotion' abroad largely to avoid looking at how it's playing out at home.

[Oct 17, 2015] Russia's 'Import Substitution' Isn't Working

Mark Adomanis became a turncoat and defected to the "dark side". Some problems for Russia are given. Still it is pretty valiant attempt in view of the dominance of the USA in world economy and, especially, finance. Also this is form of economic attack of EU: some European firms lost Russian market "forever". So far American firms are fared better but Coca-cola, Pepsi, chicken producers, and McDonalds might suffer.

Oct 15, 2015 | http://www.forbes.com/sites/markadomanis/2015/10/15/russias-import-substitution-isnt-working/

Some very intelligent people saw this coming a long way off, accurately predicting that heightened tensions with America and the European Union would empower precisely those areas of the Russian economy that the West wants to see weakened

... ... ...

From the second quarter of 2014 through the second quarter of 2015, the ruble value of Russia's imports decreased by almost 30% (the ruble value of exports, meanwhile, actually increased). That's actually not terribly surprising. When a currency depreciates as much as the ruble has over the past year you would expect imports to take a significant hit.

But what has happened to domestic manufacturing? Has Russian business stepped into the space vacated by Western goods that are no longer affordable to many Russian consumers?

So far, at least, the answer is a definite no. Official Rosstat data show that through the first half of 2015, Russian manufacturing actually shrunk by about 2.8%. The only sectors of the economy to show any growth were agriculture (up 2.4%), natural resource extraction (up 2.4%), and public administration (up 0.7%). The areas of the Russian economy where private business predominates, particularly consumer retail, have been absolutely walloped, with the overall retail sector shrinking by almost 9% over the past six months.

... ... ...

Victor Lar 2 days ago

Russian Cheese Production Surges 30% After Ban on Western Imports: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/business/article/russian-cheese-production-surges-30-after-ban-on-western-imports/521891.html

[Oct 16, 2015] Just three pieces of shrapnel supposedly points to BUK by John Helmer

For some reason they investigate only version of surface to air missile. Possibility of air to air missile was not investigated. Dutch reps could attend Almaz-Antey experiments and collect shrapnel from them. They did not do this. Also they demonstrated provable negligence in collecting evidence (Ukraine at this point was EU vassal state and one phone call from Brussel would exclude any shelling of the area). The question why the plane was brought to the particular area was answered "to avoid thunderstorms". I doubt that at this altitude they can affect the plane. All this points to a cover up of Ukrainian false flag operation.

"... According to the DSB, "no unalloyed steel fragments were found in the remains of the passengers". ..."

"... 20 were found on analysis to include layers of aluminium or glass. The DSB's explanation is that the external explosion of a missile warhead had propelled these fragments through the cockpit windows and aluminium panels of the fuselage, fusing with the glass and aluminium before striking the three crew members in the cockpit at the time. ..."

"... The DSB conclusion is that these fragments came from a missile warhead, but not conclusively from a Buk missile warhead type 9N314M. The evidence for this Buk warhead comes, the DSB reports, from 4 – repeat four – fragments. ..."

"... Because Buk shrapnel is understood to have such cubic and bow-tie shapes, there are just four fragments to substantiate it. If the autopsy evidence is regarded as the only source that could not have been contaminated on the ground, or in the interval between the crash and the forensic testing in The Netherlands, there are just three fragments which fit the Buk bill. ..."

"... By failing to identify the location of these parts, the finders, or the dates on which they were sent to Holland, the DSB does not rule out that this evidence may have been fabricated. ..."

johnhelmer.net

AUTOPSY OF THE MH17 CRASH - DUTCH SAFETY BOARD REVEALS 3 POSSIBLE PIECES OF BUK SHRAPNEL IN THE BODIES OF THE COCKPIT CREW, AND CHEMICAL EVIDENCE IT CANNOT SUBSTANTIATE - AUSTRALIAN FEDERAL POLICE ISSUE PUBLIC REJECTION OF AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT ALLEGATIONS

Eight pages of the DSB report – pages 88 to 95 - focus on the metal fragments. The number of these starts at "over 500 recovered from the wreckage of the aeroplane, the remains of the crew members and passengers." Many, apparently most, of these fragments turned out to be "personal belongings, aeroplane parts or objects that originated from the ground after impact." According to the DSB, "many were metal fragments that were suspected to be high-energy objects." Of these just 72 were investigated further because they were "similar in size, mass and shape." 43 of this 72 were "found to be made of unalloyed steel". The term "shrapnel" may be a synonym for "unalloyed steel fragments", but the word doesn't appear at all in the DSB report. According to the DSB, "no unalloyed steel fragments were found in the remains of the passengers".

Of the 43 steel fragments investigated thoroughly - all of them recovered from the bodies of the cockpit crew or in the wreckage of the cockpit - 20 were found on analysis to include layers of aluminium or glass. The DSB's explanation is that the external explosion of a missile warhead had propelled these fragments through the cockpit windows and aluminium panels of the fuselage, fusing with the glass and aluminium before striking the three crew members in the cockpit at the time.

The DSB conclusion is that these fragments came from a missile warhead, but not conclusively from a Buk missile warhead type 9N314M. The evidence for this Buk warhead comes, the DSB reports, from 4 – repeat four – fragments. These, "although heavily deformed and damaged, had distinctive shapes; cubic and in the form of a bow-tie". The DSB's exact count is two cubic shapes, two bow-ties. One bow-tie was recovered from the cockpit wreckage; one from the body of a cockpit crew member. Both cubic fragments were found in the bodies of the crew members.

Because Buk shrapnel is understood to have such cubic and bow-tie shapes, there are just four fragments to substantiate it. If the autopsy evidence is regarded as the only source that could not have been contaminated on the ground, or in the interval between the crash and the forensic testing in The Netherlands, there are just three fragments which fit the Buk bill.

Source: http://cdn.onderzoeksraad.nl/documents/report-mh17-crash-en.pdf -- page 92

In addition, the DSB says it has examined chemical residues of the warhead explosive, and paint particles from the surface of missile parts reportedly recovered from the ground. Exactly where, when, and by whom the purported missile parts were found the DSB does not identify. In Section 2:12:2:8 of the report, the DSB says that "during the recovery of the wreckage, a number of parts that did not originate from the aeroplane and its content were found in the wreckage area. The parts found appeared to be connected with a surface-to-air missile. The parts that were suspected to be related to a surface-to-air missile were transported to the Gilze-Rijen Air Force Base [in The Netherlands; also reported as the Hilversum Army Base] in the same way as the aeroplane wreckage was. On arrival the parts underwent the same examination as the pieces of aeroplane wreckage." By failing to identify the location of these parts, the finders, or the dates on which they were sent to Holland, the DSB does not rule out that this evidence may have been fabricated. At page 53 the DSB admits that "many pieces of the wreckage" were either not examined physically "until four months after the crash", or not recovered for examination for up to nine months after the July 17, 2014, downing.

Source: http://cdn.onderzoeksraad.nl/documents/report-mh17-crash-en.pdf -- page 81

[Oct 16, 2015] "Almaz-Antey" have accused the Netherlands of falsifying the map of where the Boeing crashed

"... Even though "Almaz-Antey" had informed the Netherlands board in advance that the "Buk" SAM could have only been launched at the Boeing from the area of the village of Zaroshchenskoe (which at the time was under the control of the Ukrainian military) and that this had been confirmed by field tests, the Dutch coloured the launch area of the missile in a very different place on the map. (see map). ..."

www.kp.ru

Moscow Exile, October 15, 2015 at 9:37 pm

"Almaz-Antey" have accused the Netherlands of falsifying the map of where the Boeing crashed

This time the Netherlands Commission of Inquiry has been caught lying red-handed about the Russian concern "Almaz-Antey", which developed the "Buk" anti-aircraft missile systems. "Almaz-Antey" has announced that a map covering the 320 square kilometer area from where a missile targeted against the Boeing could have been launched is not only erroneous but also that the Dutch in their report had indicated that their data were supposedly consistent with "Almaz-Antey"calculations. That is, they covered up their concoctions with the authoritative report of the Russian company.

Even though "Almaz-Antey" had informed the Netherlands board in advance that the "Buk" SAM could have only been launched at the Boeing from the area of the village of Zaroshchenskoe (which at the time was under the control of the Ukrainian military) and that this had been confirmed by field tests, the Dutch coloured the launch area of the missile in a very different place on the map. (see map).

[Oct 16, 2015] Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 'most likely' it was shot down from ground Discussion

The US key strategy is the same as British -- to cut Europe from Russia. This time it again work brilliantly... The fact the USA are withholding evidence implicates Kiev.

"... Because it was supposed to clearly show that rebels did it . No need to rely on social media and other unreliable sources. Plus it was classified before ut was mentioned about. So you fake democrat and liberal really wasn't to live in the world where you will be prosecuted on sure information that is so secret that nobody can know about it ;) ..."

"... How guys like you can pretend to love Orwell so much? Don't you realize today the joke is on you? ..."

"... Do you understand that this is not a regular crash incident? Based on the unsupported assumptions there are already economic sanctions imposed and the world is gearing up for the WW3. How dumb can you be not to notice the difference? ..."

"... Ukies shot the plane down stupidly hoping the blame will fall on Russia and NATO will declare war on Putin amidst worldwide uproar and indignation. They now may realize they had committed murder most foul for nothing. This kinda reminds of the play 'Macbeth'. What's done cannot be undone. ..."

"... Almost all the damage concentrated in cockpit/front fuselage. Now how does that tie to the BUK scenario exactly? how does the damage from High energy objects conform to sharpnel from BUK especially as there are both entry and exit holes? ..."

"... "The specific area where the fatal missile was fired is not in fact under control of the "pro-Russia rebels". It is run by a neo-nazi private mercenary army, raised by Ukrainian billionaire Ihor Kolomoisky. ..."

"... Kolomoisky stinks of being an asset of the US and Israeli intelligence services, at minimum. ..."

"... Dutch Prime Minister Rutte had to acknowledge on TV on September 12th that the Netherlands had refused to even communicate with the Separatist. This extreme partisan position of the Dutch government disqualifies it from leading the investigation and has obviously hampered the investigation up till now. ..."

"... This extreme partisan position of the Dutch government also clarifies why the role of UkSATSE isn't questioned. ..."

"... the question 'who launched a missile' is actually less relevant than 'who created the situation by allowing MH17 to fly there'. ..."

"... UkSATSE failed to close that airspace after july 14 whena AN-24 was downed from 6500m and only restricted up to 10km. 6500m is beyond the man portable system range. ..."

"... The report section 2.4.3 issued by the investigation simply stated that MH17 complied to the restrictions issued by UkSATSE. By ignoring the most obvious question the investigation was now under serious doubt but the extreme partisan positioning as revealed by the Dutch minister put that report in the 'beyond doubt partisan category'. ..."

"... On the other hand, if Kiev can shoot down the airliner and blame the separatists, or even better, Russia, then they would be backed by the west. Who has the most to gain? ..."

"... Then we have an investigation where all members have to agree with the report or a single member can veto the release, which is why they are not allowed to assign blame, and why they have not been allowed to state anything more than they have. ..."

"... I doubt any hard evidence will ever come out, and we will have to settle for innuendo and finger pointing, allowing the west to isolate Russia even further till the missile shield network sits right on their borders. ..."

"... What I find a bit troubling is that the obvious conclusion -- that the plane was hit by a ground fired missile -- isn't backed up by any intelligence. Its reasonable to think that the US's NRO is watching the Ukraine closely so they should have been able to get almost real time confirmation of the launcher's position and use. ..."

"... Nobody willingly takes down an airliner unless there's serious propaganda to be made from it. So its either a serious screwup by the rebels or something rather more evil by the blackops types. (I'd regard the latter as a tinfoil helmet theory except that we've found out time and again that these people are capable of doing anything provided it achieves their goal.) ..."

"... Yes indeed, US satellite data is highly secret unless it backs up the US Government's claims. I don't suppose you're old enough to remember the Cuban missile crisis and the release of all sort of reconnaissance on the matter. ..."

"... Some suggest that an air to air missile might then be the cause of the fragmentation...but this also is problematic, most AA missiles are not powerful enough to take out a large civil aircraft. Many instances of smaller less well built passenger planes surviving AA strikes have been recorded...But 2 or 3 might do it..but the pilots would surely called Mayday.. They didn't, suggesting they had no idea what hit them, ..."

"... Conclusion: Still no closer to knowing which side brought it down, whether it was just a cock up, or a black flag. Plenty of propaganda, accusations, denials, but any real evidence so far is very thin on the ground. ..."

"... It's funny how the press are falling over themselves to say it was definitely Russians, the EU are desperate for it to be Russians, the Americans are desperate for it to be Russians - so when something factual comes out that doesn't toe the expectant line they have to drop in the odd implication and suggested line. ..."

"... the heavy coat of varnish that's clearly been applied to the Dutch Safety Board (DSB) report. ..."

"... It's clear that Kiev benefited the most from the event, and the US exploited is to the fullest to impose sanctions on Russia before any investigation was even initiated. The reluctance of both Kiev and the US to provide evidence required for the investigation is bound to raise questions. ..."

"... This horrible tragedy has been and no doubt will be exploited for petty political gains. I am sorry to see even the Dutch entering this shameful game by signing that non-disclosure agreement with one of the suspects, the Kiev government. ..."

"... Sadly this 100-year old British company has been compromised being taken over by a Canadian company belonging to zionists. Canadian PM Harper is a blind follower of Israeli extremists. So V Putin is enemy number one and you can't use Reuters as an unbiased source once more. Russia has had to up its game recently in the Arctic purely because Harper has become aggressive to please the US. ..."

"... Kiev Russian-speaking soldiers disguised as Donbass security forces ( rebels ) could have driven a Buk into the Donbass, fired the missile and then driven back, making sure to be seen by foreign journalists ( Ukraine is a huge country, how come the journalists were on the same spot at the right moment to see the Buk driving around ? very convenient..) ..."

"... The US and Israel both have motives to shoot the plane down. They had been convicted of war crimes in KL last year and their cases sent to the ICC in Holland. MH17 was also full of Dutch passengers - right ..."

"... Plus, the ukraine airforce is in a bad state due to lack of funds. So the US and Israelis were providing assistance, also Poland and Lithuania, of pilots and equipment. No-one knows who was piloting the two Su-25s detected by Russian radar. ..."

"... I did not speculate on why the pilot did not want to climb. It make no difference. By refusing the order the pilot assumed responsibility for the fate of the plane. Civil aviation pilots have no right to refuse orders of competent ground authorities and still enjoy the protections granted by international treaties to civil aviation. ..."

"... I don't understand your statement about the report says there was no abnormal communication . Are you contesting my claim that the pilot refused an order to climb up just minutes before being hit? I'm basing my claim on what I read in previous articles in the Guardian on this. It could be wrong. I wasn't there personally. ..."

"... Since the Ukraine has veto power over publication of the findings, this whole investigation is a whitewash. Why isn't Russia part of the investigation with veto power? Giving one of the suspects in a crime the ability to block publication of the findings is ludicrous. ..."

"... I am quite sure that bullets are high energy objects but the Western media seems to ignore that possibility, as it would implicate Ukraine, which has veto power over any publication of findings. ..."

"... Just a little tip. Don't ever use anything that comes out of the Kiev offices. It is all 100% unbelievable. All of it. ..."

"... All of this is just speculation. Question 1: where are the Satellite images of that area at that exact time? Question 2: where are the audio transmissions between the crew and the flight towers? Question 3: why did the BBC remove its own segment that was done shortly afterwards where they had people on record stating that they had seen a jet flying behind if? Question 4: who ordered the BBC remove its own segment? Question 5: If the pilots where shot at by a 'jet' as is believed by many - what about the autopsies of the pilots? Were any done? What did they find. Question 6: if a BUK missile had taken it down how come there was not a trail from the missile? These missiles do leave a rather distinctive trial behind them that is seen for kilometers. Question 7: who ordered the plane to fly lower than was deemed safe for that area? So many questions and so little facts… Perhaps they questions do not fit the narrative? ..."

"... The mere fact that the United States MSM has dropped this topic like a hot potato (compare CNN coverage of MH17 with the endless coverage of MH370) and the complete lack of verified NATO or US or CIA satellite data implies that the Russians were not at fault here. ..."

Oct 16, 2015 | The Guardian

Antidyatel -> DELewes 15 Sep 2014 06:41

Because it was supposed to "clearly show that rebels did it". No need to rely on social media and other unreliable sources. Plus it was classified before ut was mentioned about. So you fake democrat and liberal really wasn't to live in the world where you will be prosecuted on sure information that is so secret that nobody can know about it ;)

How guys like you can pretend to love Orwell so much? Don't you realize today the joke is on you?

Shaneo -> DELewes 15 Sep 2014 04:55

Ok, but John Kerry claimed to have seen the imagery of the launch, so you don't need to say 'likely' launch site.

Ask to see this imagery and we will know where the launch site is.

Will you do this?

And does it not make you suspicious that this imagery is being withheld?

Antidyatel -> ShermanPotter 15 Sep 2014 03:46

Do you understand that this is not a regular crash incident? Based on the unsupported assumptions there are already economic sanctions imposed and the world is gearing up for the WW3. How dumb can you be not to notice the difference?

I will give you a better example. The PRELIMINARY report by FEMA on 9/11 was released in May 2002 - that was very heavy in terms of pages and released in May 2002 (8 months after the event). It was heavy in terms of pages and contained data not only about 4 planes and 3 buildings. It was quite detailed in terms of TECHNICAL data.

There is absolutely no reason to withheld the factual data for public analysis. Particularly in this situation. The facts about the event will not change. Or should I stress on it - the already available facts SHOULD not change no matter how commission will later interpret them.

Antidyatel 2meters 15 Sep 2014 03:19

Calm down with Su-25 theory. Even if Russian MoD was implying possible culpability of that plane, they didn't make the direct accusation. The whole mentioning was less than a minute out of the whole 30 min presentation, in which the main focus was on 4 Ukrainian BUKs in the area. Just from this proportion one can asses the priority of the versions that Russian MoD was considering.

So stop fighting windmills, my Don Quixote!

Antidyatel 2meters 15 Sep 2014 03:12

First of all, where did you get the data about 55 km?

Even the latest modification of BUK-M2. While everyone is talking about BUK-M1. More to this, it is mainly claimed that a stand alone 9A310 unit was witnessed. It has FIRE DOME radar with max engagement range of 35 km (some sources limit it to 32 km)

So your convinced part goes down the drain!

Second, do you understand that the maximum radar range represents a radius of a 3D sphere? For the target flying at 10 km the relevant projection on the 2D map will be 33.5 km.

Let's stop at this for now.

2meters Antidyatel 15 Sep 2014 02:19

And NO. And SU-25 fighter jet cannot "gain an altitude of 10km" as the Russian Defense Ministry asserted on July 21.

According to its specification its altitude ceiling is 7 km, even though someone working Kremlin servers changed that to 10 km on Russian Wikipedia, hours after the Russian Defense Ministry's press conference.

http://gawker.com/did-russian-officials-edit-wikipedia-to-back-up-a-bogus-1609071757

2meters Antidyatel 15 Sep 2014 02:03

No it is not what they were telling.

What I put in quotes is EXACTLY what the Russian Defense Ministry was telling us.

MoD didn't accuse that the plane was involved.

You are not getting this, are you ?
Let me spell it out :

That SU-25 DID NOT EXIST !

Radar would have shown it, and it did not.
Even General Peter Deinekin states that probably what the Russian Defence Ministry showed on their radar image was probably a part of MH-17 breaking off.

If the Russian Defense Ministry would have actually shown the radar timelap (video) of when and where that dot on their radar actually appeared, then we could have all seen that for ourselves.

But they did not, since it was no SU-25. It was a part of MH-17 breaking off.

Instead they used the radar images of the PIECES of a civilian airliner that killed 298 innocent people to create a SU-25 conspiracy and point the finger at Ukraine.

Despicable.

Antidyatel -> jimbuluk 15 Sep 2014 01:30

Is there any original source that explains the meaning behind "transponder data became unreliable at 13:18Z"?
Where did the Aviation Herald got this data from?

2meters -> Antidyatel 15 Sep 2014 01:27

Antidytel, yes, MH-17 was probably about 35 km away from the BUK launch site south of Snizhne when the crew pressed the launch button.

The radar range of a single BUK TELAR is at least 55 km.

At 250 m/sec, MH 17 will thus have been on the BUK search radar something like 80 sec before they launched the missile.

Even with conservative estimates of missile flight time and path, the Snizhne BUK launch crew had about a minute to lock on their radar, and wait for the 'target' to come into range.

Convinced now ?

Antidyatel -> ShermanPotter 14 Sep 2014 23:59

I have to disagree with you. Even preliminary technical report should contain the technical data already available. There is no justifiable reason for withholding any information. The next report can just add new information.

So the preliminary report should have provided:

1) Civil and military radar data from Ukraine. It is very unprofessional for them not to at least request it from Ukraine side. If Ukraine refused to provide it, it should have been clearly stated

2) ATC communications along the whole route of MH17

3) full transcript from voice recorder. You can't possible believe that pilots were flying in total silence

4) Technical data from the second black box on plane parameters. Particularly the data from gyroscope that would give the most precise data on the plane actual route

5) other critical parameters.

Seriously it is not a herculean task for a 2 months of job. They have a whole team to do it. How unprofessional can they be to fail with such simple task?

The purpose of the preliminary report is not to give the abridged/filtered version of the data. The purpose should be tor provide the available data but to make only PRELIMINARY conclusions. Only in this sense it can be called preliminary.

The current report can only be described by words SELECTIVE, EDITED, FILTERED and BIASED!!!

Antidyatel -> notherLex21 14 Sep 2014 22:36

4 different BUKs in the vicinity of the crash site were detected by Russians based on these BUKs' outgoing radar signal.

Let's consider your points:
1) BUK system captured by rebels in Luhansk region, was incomplete so the maximum radar range was 22 km. But we can first consider the improbable scenario that Russians first sneaked in and then sneaked our the complete set for the BUK system. Ok we can exclude the loader. So let's just say 2 units (actual launcher and radar unit), hence temporally I can agree on 35 km.
2) If you go to google maps and estimate the distance from Snizhne (proposed location for rebel BUK) to Krasiy Luch (FDR point) it is approximately 24 km. (version of incomplete BUK system can already be discarded). BUK max missile speed 850 m/s. 24 km it will travel in 28 sec. BUK requires minimum 15 sec to lock on target. So even if we assume that "best" scenario, Boeing was traveling for minimum 43 sec before it's first appearance on BUK radar and rocket hitting it. Cruise speed of Boeing 777 ~ 900 km/h. So we get roughly 11 km. Just nice 35 km. But this is minimum. For example, the rocket doesn't reach 850 m/sec immediately.
The point is that it would have been an extremely "lucky" coincidence for this scenario to work. And again I repeat, it will require the full set of BUK units, not just the launcher. The so named "proofs" of Russians sneaking in and out such a system are so laughable that I can't understand how people can talk seriously about it.
4) The reference to the territory held by rebels is also laughable. The total number of rebels on that moment was ~5000. But even if we take 10,000, you will get a fraction of a rebel per square kilometre, if we assume that they are distributed equally. In reality majority of them were concentrated in fixed positions around Lughansk, Donetsk and Saur Mogila. also large portion of them was involved is annihilating surrounded UA units. If UA wanted to bring in BUKs into so named rebel controlled area there would be no problem with it.

SirDeadpool 14 Sep 2014 22:31

Ukies shot the plane down stupidly hoping the blame will fall on Russia and NATO will declare war on Putin amidst worldwide uproar and indignation. They now may realize they had committed murder most foul for nothing. This kinda reminds of the play 'Macbeth'. What's done cannot be undone.

bobby_fisher ShermanPotter 14 Sep 2014 18:14

ShermanPotter -- Antidyatel
14 Sep 2014 16:09
The key is in the title it's a preliminary report...

So you basically agree that presented data is incomplete....I also hope your level of English language comprehension will allow you to distinguish black box recordings and conversations between civilian ATC and military command that is not in the report, and according to Ukrainian reports was confiscated from civilian controllers.

notherLex21 jimbuluk 14 Sep 2014 16:46

when the transponder data became unreliable at 13:18Z (position N48.28 E38.08)"

The DSB rapport-mh-17-en-interactief.pdf shows the transcript (page 15) where MH17 pilots last reply is at 13:19:56.
Sorry, but the Aviation Herald is inaccurate.

jimbuluk 2meters 14 Sep 2014 11:51

I said "The Aviation Herald says problems with MH-17 started over N48.28 E38.08" Just read from avherald.com http://avherald.com/h?article=47770f9d&opt=0

"was enroute at FL330 about 20nm northeast of Donetsk (Ukraine) when the transponder data became unreliable at 13:18Z (position N48.28 E38.08)"

Transponder data can't become unreliable without reason. And that reason led to the crash within two minutes. The distance between the point the transponder data became unreliable and Snizhne is approx 65 km, that's way beyond the range of BUK's missile, not to say about it's radar, - less than 9 km.

ShermanPotter -> Antidyatel 14 Sep 2014 11:09

The key is in the title it's a preliminary report, that examines the technical reasons for the crash of MH-17. In tandem is a criminal investigation.

The Preliminary report, has established that MH-17 was shot down and that immediately before that event was operating normally with normal crew communications with ATC. The rest of what you are talking about is for the criminal investigative team to examine and report to the Court.

Antidyatel -> 2meters 14 Sep 2014 09:46

No it is not what they were telling.

MoD didn't accuse that the plane was involved. They only stated yhe facts that there was a potential for it to be involved. That is why additional data was requested from Ukraine to clarify. Stark difference to blanket accusations based on tea leaves in a cup that were loaded by the list of discredited a-holes in the beginning of your post

Antidyatel -> ShermanPotter 14 Sep 2014 08:27

For example, the missing part is the primary surveillance radar recordings. It would be expected that if Ukraine wanted to help with investigation. it would supply not only civilian traffic data but also the data of all military radars on that day. Not such a hard task. Report doesn't stress on it but clearly indicates that even civil traffic data was not submitted. They could easily reveal that data in the first few days after the incident or after the Russian MoD report and clarify the issue with military planes in the air at that time. What prevents them from doing it after 2 months?

Out of the whole page of those recordings only 3 lines are with MH17. Nothing of an essence. There was absolutely no reason why not to provide the data from the moment MH17 entered Ukrainian airspace or even from start of the flight. It would take 2-3 hours max to compile the communication with ground control along the whole route. And they didn't need to wait even for black boxes to do it. How unprofessional your professionals can be?

Most of the communication, that was revealed is related to communication between Dnepropetrovsk and Rostov. No point withholding that information as Russians have the same transcript, I guess. For MH17 the only portion of interest is 11 seconds before the disaster. This is bogus. And still there is absolutely no excuse not to release the whole transcript of the black box, in the situation which potentially can bring the world to the WW3. You don't joke with such things.

ShermanPotter -> Antidyatel 14 Sep 2014 05:22

So what information are you claiming is missing?

As well as that you list Page 14 also describes that Ukrainian ATC supplied radio and telephone recordings and transcripts relating to MH-17.

The transcript in the preliminary report is just of the last few minutes of its flight before being shot down, what more do you expect from a Preliminary report?

Antidyatel -> ShermanPotter 14 Sep 2014 04:18

Actually if you look strictly at the report specifies only 3 sources of ATC data:
1. Primary surveillance radar recorded by the Russian surveillance aids
2. Secondary surveillance radar
3. Automatic Dependant Surveillance

The explanation of the last 2 are given at the end of page 14 of the report. Which shows that primary data from Ukrainian radars is still withheld.

The transcript provided is appearing to be incomplete. It is not like they were afraid of the page limit. Why not to give the whole transcript? Also this transcript is strangely different from the one given in BBC web-site

snowdogchampion snowdogchampion 14 Sep 2014 03:47

Without speculating on who did it, here figures from the markets & background info. Key term: foreknowledge.
The Malaysian Airlines MH17 Crash: Financial Warfare against Russia, Multibillion Dollar Bonanza for Wall Street

2meters -> notherLex21 14 Sep 2014 03:07

Isn't that exactly what western media and blogger and US intelligence had been telling us all along ?

Interesting how this works with Kremlin war propaganda.

For starters, please note that General Peter Deinekin with his statement directly contradicts the head of the Main Operations Directorate of the HQ of Russia's military forces, Lieutenant-General Andrey Kartopolov, who started this whole SU-25 conspiracy theory on July 21 :

The Russian military detected a Ukrainian SU-25 fighter jet gaining height towards the MH17 Boeing on the day of the catastrophe. Kiev must explain why the military jet was tracking the passenger airplane, the Russian Defense Ministry said.

and

"The SU-25 fighter jet can gain an altitude of 10km, according to its specification," he added. "It's equipped with air-to-air R-60 missiles that can hit a target at a distance up to 12km, up to 5km for sure."

Which opened up the floodgates for SU-25 conspiracy theorists and their accompanied anti-Ukraine comments here in the Guardian comment sections and around the MSM.

While in fact there was no Ukrainian or any other fighter jet around.

Now, of course, the pro-Russian trolls will drop the SU-25 conspiracy theory and switch to the next one : that Ukrainians fired that SA-11 missile.

Forgetting to look at the big picture : If the Russia or the Russian military had nothing to do with this BUK, then why the heck were they lying through their teeth on July 21 ?

jimbuluk 14 Sep 2014 02:29

US says BUK was launched at Snizhne
https://www.facebook.com/usdos.ukraine/photos/a.431664811935.225869.43732151935/10152288664556936/?type=1

The Aviation Herald says problems with MH-17 started over N48.28 E38.08
http://avherald.com/h?article=47770f9d&opt=0

The distance between these two points is approx 65 km. Book's missile could reach 30 km. The Book's radar reaches even less - under 9 km, That's it.

Antidyatel notherLex21 14 Sep 2014 02:25

Probably true. Which narrows down to the simple choice: was it one of the 4 Ukrainian BUKs that were known to be in the area or an imaginary rebel's BUK.

If we go strictly and watch the 30 min presentation by Russian MoD, they never accused Su-25 to be responsible for downing the plane. They only stated the fact that the plane was detected at that time and at that place. If they really wanted to falsely accuse ukie plane they would not state that it was Su-25.

ShanghaiGuy -> Dunscore 13 Sep 2014 22:11

Crap, 30mm cannon fire would require a sustained burst to cause catastrophic structural failure, audible on recorders. 30mm cannon is not typical air to air ordance, ground attack on slower aircraft , taken some chase at high altitude. Sorry your apologists bs is a fairy story.

Ground launched AAM destroyed the airliner.

Antidyatel Hektor Uranga 13 Sep 2014 22:02

My dear Huylo Hector, immediately after the crush every theory was plausible. Each of them had to be eliminated based on facts. The fairy tail about rebels downing MH17 had an upper habd in first week because Kerry promised satellite images that clearly prove rebels' s culpability.

After such images didn't materialise, the statement by Kerry became discredited. He had to be responsible for his words.

So after that any other theory gets the same footing. The assertion that UA downed the plane became more probable after the data presented by Russian MoD. The quality difference to USA/EUROPE/Ukraine garbage comes from first presenting all the known fact and then letting everyone else to make a conclusion. Instead of giving a theory first and then ask to just believe. This stupid idol-worshiping by westerners will never stop amusing me.

notherLex21 13 Sep 2014 17:17

This Russian expects it was a BUK.

Former Air Force Commander of the USSR and the Russian Army General Peter Deinekin:

"Assault can not hit the plane with their weapons, he is a slow, low-altitude. Besides his actions could be seen on radar. And striking effect aircraft missiles are not as powerful as in" Buck "

Shoot down the plane could altitude fighter MiG-29 or Su-27, but it at the time in that area was not, said the expert.

http://ria.ru/mh17/20140910/1023539819.html

google translated:

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fria.ru%2Fmh17%2F20140910%2F1023539819.html&edit-text=

merlin2 Karl Brandt 13 Sep 2014 16:47

karl - entrusted with propagating the disinformation campaign?

based on facts alone, there is not a single shred of evidence typing BUK launced by supposed "rebels" to the downing of MH17. There are, OTOH< quite a few pieces pf evidence pointing to cannon fire from an aircraft. Funny how the disinformation agents never want to draw attention to evidence that in any way points away from their favorite scenarios.

Example: Almost all the damage concentrated in cockpit/front fuselage. Now how does that tie to the BUK scenario exactly? how does the damage from High energy objects conform to sharpnel from BUK especially as there are both entry and exit holes?

And what of the US intelligence evidence showing people on the ground manning a BUK and wearing UK uniforms?

I am not suggesting that it's air-to-air or surface to air only. what we know so far may well conform both were in action. As sedman above mentions.

As for this preliminary report it is quite a piece on work in how hard it strives NOT to point out some pretty obvious facts.

bobby_fisher ShermanPotter 13 Sep 2014 16:42

Not so fast, you do not need records to be provided that are recorded by the black boxes
It is conversations between civilian and military ATC's that are of interest and there is no mention of that in your link.

Secr3t krislej 13 Sep 2014 16:34

Are you still trying to convince people of this idea that an SU-25 shot down MH-17.

Maybe the Former head of the Russian Airforce and Army can convince you then?

He states quite clearly that the idea that MH-17 was shot down by an SU-25 as completely untenable, he goes on to state that it is possible an SU-27 or Mig-29 would be capable but none were in the area.

He also says that MH-17 broke apart in the air as a result of multiple sharpnel strikes and that it was likely from a BUK.

And before you cry western conspiracy he stated this in Russian media.

http://ria.ru/mh17/20140910/1023539819.html

MrHMSH MoneyCircus 13 Sep 2014 16:03

Firing a cannon from the side (the holes show entry from the side) would not get the spread of damage that you see, and it's unlikely that you could get that many hits in at all given how quickly you are closing.

A SAM burst (from the kind of missile under suspicion) close to the front left side of the aircraft would yield a somewhat evenly spaced pattern of holes, as the fragments originate from one point and spread outwards.

The gun fires 50 rounds per second, at the closing speed, the pilot would have had perhaps 2 seconds to fire, and he got around 30% of them hitting a target moving across him at 500mph? This theory belongs in Hollywood.

Mrg Billman 13 Sep 2014 14:19

If the Kiev regime can fire and destroy their own APC column like we seen at the begining of the conflict I have no doubts that they are capable of somehow orchestrating a downing of a civilian airliner.

Realworldview ShanghaiGuy 13 Sep 2014 14:10

ShanghaiGuy you need to keep up with the evidence, its not my opinion that it was shot down by a military aircraft, but that of US Intelligence analysts, as reported in US analysts conclude MH17 downed by aircraft .

The conclusion was that it was damaged by an air to air missile that shreds its target with flechettes, and then finished off with 30mm cannon fire that was responsible for the circular holes in fragments of the airframe, as these extracts show:

KUALA LUMPUR: INTELLIGENCE analysts in the United States had already concluded that Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down by an air-to-air missile, and that the Ukrainian government had had something to do with it.

This corroborates an emerging theory postulated by local investigators that the Boeing 777-200 was crippled by an air-to-air missile and finished off with cannon fire from a fighter that had been shadowing it as it plummeted to earth.

In a damning report dated Aug 3, headlined "Flight 17 Shoot-Down Scenario Shifts", Associated Press reporter Robert Parry said "some US intelligence sources had concluded that the rebels and Russia were likely not at fault and that it appears Ukrainian government forces were to blame".

Yesterday, the New Straits Times quoted experts who had said that photographs of the blast fragmentation patterns on the fuselage of the airliner showed two distinct shapes - the shredding pattern associated with a warhead packed with "flechettes", and the more uniform, round-type penetration holes consistent with that of cannon rounds.

Parry's conclusion also stemmed from the fact that despite assertions from the Obama administration, there has not been a shred of tangible evidence to support the conclusion that Russia supplied the rebels with the BUK-M1 anti-aircraft missile system that would be needed to hit a civilian jetliner flying at 33,000 feet.

bobby_fisher Asimpleguest 13 Sep 2014 12:32

The plane was directed in to the war zone, specifically in to the small area, where 13 aircraft were already blown out of the sky in just a few weeks.
It could not have happened without some interaction between civilian and military ATC's.....and these records are completely missing, in fact confiscated by SBU"

http://www.nst.com.my/node/21260

https://twitter.com/wavetossed/status/491468216909053952

snowdogchampion snowdogchampion 13 Sep 2014 08:15

isn't shooting down a civilian plane & blaming Putin for it a wonderful way for justifying sanctions against Russia? venturing far into speculations (quoted journalists have done, so I follow even if everyone here calls me an idiot).. what if someone decided to bring down a civilian plane, to make people very angry, cause everything (the West presents) points his way? then the result arre sanctions, and yuppie, USA can soon replace Russia as the main natural gas providor.. it's been all over the news.. and in the end, it's always about profits for the big multinationals

snowdogchampion 13 Sep 2014 08:01

So who did shoot the plane down? if you lost a relative on MH17, pls read
http://journal-neo.org/2014/08/19/another-journalist-exposes-mh17-false-flag/

"The specific area where the fatal missile was fired is not in fact under control of the "pro-Russia rebels". It is run by a neo-nazi private mercenary army, raised by Ukrainian billionaire Ihor Kolomoisky.

"Kolomoisky stinks of being an asset of the US and Israeli intelligence services, at minimum. He holds both Ukrainian and Israeli passports and runs his business empire from Switzerland, not Kiev, despite being Governor of Dnipropetrovsk oblast in eastern Ukraine. His mercenary army does possess the BUK missiles allegedly used in the shootdown of MH-17, and he has threatened terrorist attacks on Russian-speaking officials in his oblast, and even assassinations.

"Estimated to be the second-richest person in Ukraine, Kolomoisky also has strong connections inside Kiev's Borispol International Airport, whose air traffic control tower Ukrainian Interior Ministry troops reportedly stormed shortly before MH-17 was shot down. New Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, formerly wanted by Interpol for fraud, was the man who first designated the east Ukraine rebels as "terrorists," which ostensibly allows him to commit any atrocity against innocent civilians very much as Israel is doing in Gaza today.

"Furthermore, in a personal interview with the Veterans Today Tbilisi Georgia bureau chief Jeffrey Silverman pointed shared with Engdahl the possible complicity of the Inmarsat Company in the MH17. Inmarsat, which lists the Pentagon and US Government as major clients, controls most international air traffic control communications systems. According to Silverman, during the earlier disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 the flight was "lost" due to Inmarsat turning off their signals, and it still refuses today to release the data it has about this flight.

one more article http://en.ria.ru/analysis/20140909/192783966/Journalist-MH17-Preliminary-Report-Says-Nothing-Leaves-Questions.html

MoneyCircus -> nemossister 13 Sep 2014 06:26

Look what The Guardian left out of its report - just found a more complete report of what the Dutch chief investigator said:

ROTTERDAM: Dutch prosecutors said today they need to know where a missile that may have shot down flight MH17 was fired from in eastern Ukraine before criminal charges could be laid.

"When we know from where it was fired, then we can find out who controlled that area," and possibly prosecute, Dutch chief investigator Fred Westerbeke told journalists in Rotterdam.

Westerbeke said that they had not yet obtained US satellite photos of areas from which a missile might have been launched.

"We will get them," Westerbeke said, adding that it was a "long process."

errovi 13 Sep 2014 03:07

Dutch Prime Minister Rutte had to acknowledge on TV on September 12th that the Netherlands had refused to even communicate with the Separatist. This extreme partisan position of the Dutch government disqualifies it from leading the investigation and has obviously hampered the investigation up till now.

This extreme partisan position of the Dutch government also clarifies why the role of UkSATSE isn't questioned. In the chain of events leading to the downing of the aircraft still assuming it was a mistake the question 'who launched a missile' is actually less relevant than 'who created the situation by allowing MH17 to fly there'.

UkSATSE failed to close that airspace after july 14 whena AN-24 was downed from 6500m and only restricted up to 10km. 6500m is beyond the man portable system range. So why didn't UkSATSE did not close that air space and waited till after the downing of MH17. The report section 2.4.3 issued by the investigation simply stated that MH17 complied to the restrictions issued by UkSATSE. By ignoring the most obvious question the investigation was now under serious doubt but the extreme partisan positioning as revealed by the Dutch minister put that report in the 'beyond doubt partisan category'.

Antidyatel -> Karl Brandt 13 Sep 2014 05:39

The same AP journalist claimed to see the BUK himself and even the treads inn asphalt tgat this heavy system had left. But surprisingly he forgot to rake a photo not only of BUK but also of treads that ge has described so vividly. Spanish traffic controller story actually less contradictory.

Shaneo -> ShiresofEngland 13 Sep 2014 03:06

Immediately after, John Kerry claimed that the US witnessed the rocket launch on 'imagery'.

So let's see it then.

sedman -> ruffsoft 13 Sep 2014 01:15

The BUK system is designed to deliver the payload from above, yes it avoids the target to get above it, then comes down and explodes above where the cockpit would be... This doesn't explain videos of MH17 descending intact with its right engine ablaze.

sedman 13 Sep 2014 00:52

Ukraine fighter shoots MH17 with air-to-air missile, takes out right engine. MH17 does not break up, but heads for a forced landing. Ukraine fighter finishes it off MH17 on its way down.

But, we are lead to believe that the separatists were operating a BUK system made up of 5 separate mobile installations, 3 radar, 1 launcher and 1 control vehicle, which is capable of identifying B777 aircraft accurately (two transponders), then decided it would be in their interests to take out a civilian airliner, which would, even in an idiots assessment, bring the wrath of the world opon it. They are not terrorists, they are rebels, they are not using IEDs to blow up civilians, they just dont want to have Kiev taking their taxes and telling them what to do.

On the other hand, if Kiev can shoot down the airliner and blame the separatists, or even better, Russia, then they would be backed by the west. Who has the most to gain?

Then we have an investigation where all members have to agree with the report or a single member can veto the release, which is why they are not allowed to assign blame, and why they have not been allowed to state anything more than they have. The facts that are being released in this report is evidence enough that the investigation is being manipulated and directed to ensure that conclusions can not be drawn from facts, all we can rely on is speculation from the press and comments. I doubt any hard evidence will ever come out, and we will have to settle for innuendo and finger pointing, allowing the west to isolate Russia even further till the missile shield network sits right on their borders.

martinusher 12 Sep 2014 23:35

What I find a bit troubling is that the obvious conclusion -- that the plane was hit by a ground fired missile -- isn't backed up by any intelligence. Its reasonable to think that the US's NRO is watching the Ukraine closely so they should have been able to get almost real time confirmation of the launcher's position and use.

Nobody willingly takes down an airliner unless there's serious propaganda to be made from it. So its either a serious screwup by the rebels or something rather more evil by the blackops types. (I'd regard the latter as a tinfoil helmet theory except that we've found out time and again that these people are capable of doing anything provided it achieves their goal.)

ThreeCents JCDavis 12 Sep 2014 20:56

"Everything coming from the UK and US governments is a lie at one level or another and should be carefully investigated."

I agree very strongly. And I think the key word here is "investigation".

Ah, but who is going to do the investigating?

Well, I would favor an "Investigation Party" -- which would push hard on investigating all manner of corruption and conspiracy, and which would campaign on that basis.

And I would favor an "Investigation Branch" of government, on the same level as the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches of government. It would be dedicated to making everything in government NOT secret! Secrecy = Tyranny. Truth = Liberty. Click here for more.

UncleSam404 Karl Brandt 12 Sep 2014 20:48

Whatever happened to Carlos anyway lol? I guess they couldn't locate this guy.

tanyushka 12 Sep 2014 20:12

why isn't the International Civil Aviation Organization in charge of the investigation as is custommay in these cases?

why isn't in charge an international comission as the UN demanded unanimously?

now, if we talk about chances... the Ukranian army had six BUK systems operative at the time of the incident while the DPR forces deny having a single one but... let's accept Kiev's claims that there was one, the chances are 6 to 1 that the Ukraninas shot...

on the other hand, Russia claims that there was an Ukranian jet fighter close to the plane & it isn't even mentionedin the investigation

BMWAlbert 12 Sep 2014 18:01

This seems the most likely possibility, but I wonder at the release without any backing detail, it sounds like intended innuendo also.

William J Rood EnviroCapitalist 12 Sep 2014 17:55

Yes indeed, US satellite data is highly secret unless it backs up the US Government's claims. I don't suppose you're old enough to remember the Cuban missile crisis and the release of all sort of reconnaissance on the matter.

If the US government had any real evidence whatsoever, you'd have seen that rather than all the photo-shopped social media stuff that's been going around. Lack of evidence is why CIA analysts have refused to support the State Department's lies. They learned their lesson from the Iraq War. Did you?

Rob711 12 Sep 2014 17:35

The shooting down scenario. Obviously they haven't picked up on some of the perfectly round holes in some of the debris. Never mind the question of why the unfortunate plane and it's passengers were flying over an area where 5 planes had been downed in the preceding two weeks

ShiresofEngland 12 Sep 2014 17:22

http://www.just-international.org/articles/flight-mh17-what-youre-not-being-told/

More propaganda, but something which hasn't been answered to my satisfaction.

So let's tread carefully and just ask a few more questions that these so-called journalists in the mainstream media are neglecting to ask. For example: Why hasn't the US government released its satellite pictures of the area right after the event?

Obviously the USA would have satellites watching, and did expect after it happened that the White House would do some sort of presentation after a few days to prove who shot down MH17. They were quick to accuse and had hoped they had the evidence which would be damning, but they haven't.

ShiresofEngland Robert Looren de Jong 12 Sep 2014 16:43

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-21/russia-says-has-photos-ukraine-deploying-buk-missiles-east-rader-proof-warplanes-mh1

Yes, and that is disputed. Each side keeps coming up with propaganda where not one of us knows the truth.

ps the the poster below. It isn't 'lazy self indulgence'. Saying that I do not know who done it is a valid position, and more honest than most on here. Like everyone with any compassion I believe that the relatives of the victims of MH17 deserve the truth, something they have thus far not got.

Luminaire ruffsoft 12 Sep 2014 16:33

That would mean a Ukrainian jet yes? Which the russian's showed radar data proving? Just before MH17 vanishes you can see a second trace, which the RU MOD say is a fighter jet.

Except it doesn't. The MH17 trace splits in two, because one part is the 'supposed' location (based on the flightplan and predicted path), and the supposed SU-25 is actually MH17 as it breaks up.

The reason this is obvious to anyone who actually does any research is that 'MH17' becomes a square, and the 'SU-25' is a circle. In that software the circle represents a 'real' radar contact, and the square is a predicted path - as squares always are.

If there was a jet as well there would be 2 circles and a square, because MH17 did just VANISH so there would have been 2 'real' radar contacts.

So there was no SU-25 - but hey dont let that stop you literally making stuff up and being 'quite sure' about it.

Nicole Bresht -> krislej 12 Sep 2014 16:13

A ground missile would have caused the MG17 to explode in a fireball... seems as if the cockpit had been shot out with an airborne cannon... not sure an SU fighter could reach needed speed/ height to pull this off.. more likely a MIG

ide000 -> ShermanPotter 12 Sep 2014 16:05

So far today we've had the SU25 shot down MH-17, and now this. You seem to be absolutely desperate to hang this onto anybody other than Russia. Even coming up with ridiculous scenarios to try and prove your case.

Lets be precise, Russian ministry of defense didn't reliably identify plain (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKhA50erngk at 14:04). They claim the plain was supposed to be SU-25.

Actually I expected of Dutch experts at least to clarify whether they confirm or do not confirm presence of military jet in vicinity of MH17.

Brian Beuken LeWillow 12 Sep 2014 15:50

I very much doubt it was a deliberate act, possibly incompetence on the part of the BUK operators...

But it was a BUK, the problem is while we can all spot the smoking gun we can't find enough of the "bullet" to silence the doubters...so lets lay out some facts and let them make up their own minds.

Fragmentation patterns can contain a large number of holes that appear to look like "bullet" holes, but they are simply penetration holes

However there are a lot of holes in a small area in the MH17 pics, this is highly indicative of a fragmentation warhead which can also explain some of the more isolated holes in other parts of the fuselage, the fragments can spread out from the nose to the tail but the concentration will be where the missile was closest where it exploded

Also the holes are fairly small, bullet size some may say.. But modern warplanes do not fire bullets, they fire 30mm shells...quite devastating weapons which when fired from a moving target at a moving target leave a very clear trail, and a normally short burst of fire.

Its logistically highly improbably that a ground attack aircraft, without a pressurised cockpit and not designed to take out air targets, with a max ceiling of 23k ft (unloaded) could get to a 33K ft airliner at cruising speed which is faster than the Su25's top speed..... But that's what some want us to believe...but if it did... it has a 30mm cannon...not itty bitty machine guns....and it would be one hell of a pilot who could get of dozens of shots in the same basic area... (lets also not ignore the fact that the pilot would know he was attacking a civil aircraft...pilots are generally pretty clever people, and know when they are committing war crimes)

It could have been another aircraft, Ukraine and Russia both operate high speed interceptors...but again there's the problem with the gun.....they use cannons, not shotguns or itty bitty machine guns.

Some suggest that an air to air missile might then be the cause of the fragmentation...but this also is problematic, most AA missiles are not powerful enough to take out a large civil aircraft. Many instances of smaller less well built passenger planes surviving AA strikes have been recorded...But 2 or 3 might do it..but the pilots would surely called Mayday.. They didn't, suggesting they had no idea what hit them,

Of course, there's always the lucky shot..but I doubt that...

Iron has been recovered, many SAM's use Iron, some use steel bearings some use both....but shells are depleted uranium....so no shells....no bullets...(bullets are not iron).

So these are facts....
Make of them what you wish...but I'm struggling to see anything other than a large SAM....I don't know from who, or why, that's a different question...

ShiresofEngland 12 Sep 2014 15:47

The plane went down over territory held by pro-Russia rebels, killing all 298 passengers and crew on board.

Oh I get it so the implication is........
Actually nothing as the launch site isn't known, and could just as easily been fired from Ukrainian or rebel held territory.

A rebel officer told AP after the disaster that the plane was shot down by a mixed team of rebels and Russian military personnel who believed they were targeting a Ukrainian military plane. Intercepted phone conversations between the rebels released by the Ukrainian government support that version of events.

Which might be true, but there again might not and hasn't been verified. Might be propaganda and the source is hardly impartial.
So what do we know? Highly probable that it was a BUK which brought down MH17. Ukraine has these weapon systems, the rebels may have captured one but how serviceable is questionable, and the Russians may have lent one with a crew but that hasn't been definitely verified. All of them could have been in the area, or maybe not.

Conclusion: Still no closer to knowing which side brought it down, whether it was just a cock up, or a black flag. Plenty of propaganda, accusations, denials, but any real evidence so far is very thin on the ground.

madjens1 12 Sep 2014 15:28

It's funny how the press are falling over themselves to say it was definitely Russians, the EU are desperate for it to be Russians, the Americans are desperate for it to be Russians - so when something factual comes out that doesn't toe the expectant line they have to drop in the odd implication and suggested line.

Then the idiots who read the guardian (who otherwise reject foreign countries being bismirched) swallow it all up

KeloCote Mrg Billman 12 Sep 2014 14:54

That would be true had the Ukrainians not warned the plane to stay away. In fact, ground control ordered the plane to climb to a higher altitude, and the pilot disobeyed.
During its recent war on Gaza, Israel kept insisting that it's perfectly safe for civil aviation to continue landing in its airport near Tel Aviv. Nothing could be further from the truth. Rockets were flying near the whole path that a plane would take to land - at a time of Hamas's choosing. Israel was firing even more dangerous missiles at those rockets. Any claim that it's safe for civilian airlines to fly under such conditions is fundamentally dishonest. But Israel does not want to admit they've lost control over their 'sovereign' airspace. Similarly, Ukraine did not want to admit they're lost control over their 'sovereign' airspace, because there's a war going on. However, in this particular instance, ground control warned the pilot to divert to a higher altitude using a false pretext. Regardless of the false pretext, the pilot should have diverted - and by not doing so - is responsible.

Realworldview 12 Sep 2014 14:36

Malaysia Airlines flight MH17: 'most likely' it was shot down from ground

Since when did a ground to air anti-aircraft missile use 30mm cannon shells to destroy its target. The evidence strongly points to it being a military aircraft that downed MH17 as Dutch Safety Board (DSB) Report: Malaysian MH17 was Brought Down by "A Large Number of High Energy Objects", Contradicts US Claims that it Was Shot Down by a "Russian Missile" argues, despite the heavy coat of varnish that's clearly been applied to the Dutch Safety Board (DSB) report.

EugeneGur Dunscore 12 Sep 2014 14:18

This scenario is just as unproved and likely unprovable as all the others. It's clear that Kiev benefited the most from the event, and the US exploited is to the fullest to impose sanctions on Russia before any investigation was even initiated. The reluctance of both Kiev and the US to provide evidence required for the investigation is bound to raise questions.

One would think given how fiercely the US accused Russia they'd be happy to provide evidence against Russia if they had any. Could that be that the evidence they have point the other way? And, of course, that non-disclosure agreement, which looks like an attempt at a coverup. Otherwise, why?

This horrible tragedy has been and no doubt will be exploited for petty political gains. I am sorry to see even the Dutch entering this shameful game by signing that non-disclosure agreement with one of the suspects, the Kiev government.

DownSouth77 Rudeboy1 12 Sep 2014 13:32

Your maximum altitude is generally restricted by 2 factors. The first being that the maximum altitude is reached when all power produced by the engines is going into maintaining the altitude. Thus no more power is left available for the aircraft to climb any further. The second factor is pressurization. Thus the max psi differential between the atmosphere and cabin. When the airframe can't withstand the differential value between the cabin and the atmosphere the consequences can and will probably be very bad. This should not be a factor on the SU-25...as its more applicable to airliners (which in turn can reach roughly 40,000' before this becomes a factor)

Thus back to the maximum altitude and the power produced by the engines. Thats btw also the reason why when they strip armament from an aircraft they reduce the weight etc and in turn can reach a heigher altitude with the same engines. Now the first problem here is that everybody assumes the stock version of the SU-25 (which has a max operating altitude of 7km) is the SU-25 the ukrainians used. Thus its impossible for it to reach an altitude of 10km etc.

However...lets look at the SU-39...which is in fact a SU-25 which is upgraded...the max altitude for this aircraft is 10km. Furthermore...the Sukhoi lists its export model the SU-25K as having a max altitiude of 7km...that specific variant. We dont know for sure that Ukraine has any SU-25 variant that are upgraded enough to reach an altitiude of 10km. However we do know it is definitely possible for a SU-25 (depending on engines etc) to reach 10km. In short...its useless to quote the wiki or generic version of the SU-25 max altitiude as reference in saying its impossible to reach 10km.

In the late 90's Sukhoi 25''s could already reach altitiudes in excess of 8.5km's.

Hope all this makes sense :)

Dunscore Robert Looren de Jong 12 Sep 2014 13:29

Thanks for the information !

1) Reuters. Sadly this 100-year old British company has been compromised being taken over by a Canadian company belonging to zionists. Canadian PM Harper is a blind follower of Israeli extremists. So V Putin is enemy number one and you can't use Reuters as an unbiased source once more. Russia has had to up its game recently in the Arctic purely because Harper has become aggressive to please the US.

2) Obviously the incidents are in Crimea etc are orchestrated by Kiev.
Any other explanation is nonsense. The nazi volunteers are the usual suspects. Let's hope that Mr Nuizmieks is given a chance to see the truth. We should prepare for the McCain trolls to try to blame any social problems on V Putin.

Dunscore EugeneGur 12 Sep 2014 13:16

I agree with all your thoughts.

Kiev Russian-speaking soldiers disguised as Donbass security forces ("rebels") could have driven a Buk into the Donbass, fired the missile and then driven back, making sure to be seen by foreign journalists ( Ukraine is a huge country, how come the journalists were on the same spot at the right moment to see the Buk driving around ? very convenient..)

The US and Israel both have motives to shoot the plane down. They had been convicted of war crimes in KL last year and their cases sent to the ICC in Holland. MH17 was also full of Dutch passengers - right
www.criminisewar.org

Plus, the ukraine airforce is in a bad state due to lack of funds. So the US and Israelis were providing assistance, also Poland and Lithuania, of pilots and equipment. No-one knows who was piloting the two Su-25s detected by Russian radar.

Russia asked Ukraine 12 crucial questions a month ago - still no answer.

US produced absolutely no professional evidence for the enquiry, nothing except boasting trolls.

Retired veteran CIA secret data analysts wrote a group letter to Obama and Merkel to condemn US for bringing their profession into disrepute.

Russia provided comprehensive data and evidence to the investigation.

KeloCote Robert Looren de Jong 12 Sep 2014 13:15

I did not speculate on why the pilot did not want to climb. It make no difference. By refusing the order the pilot assumed responsibility for the fate of the plane. Civil aviation pilots have no "right" to refuse orders of competent ground authorities and still enjoy the protections granted by international treaties to civil aviation.

I don't understand your statement about the "report says there was no abnormal communication". Are you contesting my claim that the pilot refused an order to climb up just minutes before being hit? I'm basing my claim on what I read in previous articles in the Guardian on this. It could be wrong. I wasn't there personally.

Rudeboy1 DownSouth77 12 Sep 2014 12:32

The SA-11 has a proximity fused warhead. The missile detonates when it senses it is close to the target (proximity fuses then called Variable Time Fuses were used as far back as WW2 by the US and UK) . Fragmentation at the front end of the aircraft would indicate that the warhead detonated at the front of the aircraft. Damage from the warhead would be localised. Most SAM's (except the most modern) rely on prox fuses as the massive speeds they work at mean a direct impact isn't always possible (particularly on a manoeuvering target).

But you're wrong on the SU-25. There is no way an SU-25 can intercept an airliner at 30,000 travelling at >500kn when that is above the height and speed that the SU-25 can operate at. If you know why it could please let us all know why.

fragglerokk 12 Sep 2014 12:19

of course he says that, the Dutch people would go nuts if they knew that Shell have signed a $10 billion fracking deal with the Ukraines who shot down a load of their citizens, it would be really bad for business especially since they have already started fracking Slavyansk after the Ukie artillery bombed it out of existence and created 1000s of refugees. The truth will out, the problem is they are all in it together, money, oil, gas, failed coups, up to their necks in it. The non disclosure agreement signed by the Dutch, the belgians, the Ukraines and Australians says it all, no facts, no figures and no details.. total fit up.

Malkatrinho -> LeWillow 12 Sep 2014 12:19

As the bookmaker William Hill once said "Believe nothing of what you hear, and believe only 5% of what you see, and be very suspicious of that 5%."

That's got to be one of the most random quotes I've read.

EugeneGur 12 Sep 2014 12:13

Typical Guardian, impartial and objective as ever. Do these conclusions point to the hand that launched these "high energy objects"? No, they do not. Even if it is proven beyond any doubt that the airplane was shot down by ground-to-air missile or even specifically by Buk, does it prove who did the shooting? No, it does not.
However, pro-Russian rebels are mentioned more than once, so there is no chance to forget who is supposed to be blamed.

It is possible that Donbass fighters shot down that plane by mistake thinking that was Kiev's plane coming to bomb their cities. Kiev could've done that as well, in its case likely deliberately. For some reason, they did have Buks in that area, although separatists do not have airplanes. Proving which scenario is correct would be difficult. Connecting Russia to this would be even harder if not impossible. Nobody would bother, though. If "Russia" is repeated often enough, some dirt will stick no matter what. It's been done already quite successfully.

maico ruffsoft 12 Sep 2014 12:13

The report says there was no shrapnel damage bellow the cockpit floor. This means we can discount an air to air missile which is heat seeking and would hit the engine. The engine is of course well bellow the cockpit level.

The shrapnel holes are various sizes and shapes pointing strongly to a proximity air-burst from a radar guided SAM. Obviously once most of the wreckage is recovered and reassembled in a hanger a definitive answer can be given. Shell casing and powder burn evidence may still be recoverable although I expect Russian security services have tampered with the wreckage.

Robert Looren de Jong -> Trabecula 12 Sep 2014 12:12

http://www.nst.com.my/node/21682

BERA: Defence Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein today denied reports in the social media that Malaysia Airlines (MAS) flight MH17 was shot down by fighter jets.
He said intelligence and evidence gathered from the fragments of the ill-fated aircraft clearly showed it was shot down by missiles that were launched to the air from the ground.
"Based on military intelligence and evidence from a portion of fragments found, it is not likely the bullets were used from air to air but from surface to air. "Whether these were owned by Ukraine or the rebels who supplied by Russia. the bullets must have come from BUK System and this matter cannot be denied by Europe, Nato or Russia," he told reporters after officiating the Bera Umno's Wanita, Youth and Puteri wing division meeting here today. still trying to recycle that old debunked and proven wrong narrative?

KeloCote 12 Sep 2014 12:10

The pilot is responsible. He was ordered by Ukrainian air-traffic control to fly to higher altitude, and refused the order. Formally they told him it's because of other planes in the area, but more likely they knew it was unsafe to fly it being a war zone - and simply didn't want to admit they don't have control over territory they claim as their own. By refusing the order to fly higher - the pilot assumed responsibility for flying in a dangerous path. Since the pilot is dead - the airline is responsible.

Trabecula Robert Looren de Jong 12 Sep 2014 12:05

Also, the next day the extremely competent and knowledgable Malay minister said:

"Hishammuddin said he was personally confident that flight MH17 was shot with a BUK missile based on his experience and knowledge as a defence minister. Hence, he advised the people not to be easily influenced by speculation and rumours being spread in the media social."

I would like to put the emphasis on "personally confident" as well as on the title: "unlikely shot down by jet fighter".
It's probably jut another "hunch" he had, like the one of MH370 having crashed in the Southern Indian Ocean... Or in Bangladesh... Or having landed in Pakistan... Or maybe a few miles closer to Australia. Well done Sir!

Trabecula Robert Looren de Jong 12 Sep 2014 11:58

Is this Russian, Malay or US propaganda:

NST 7th August:

"KUALA LUMPUR: INTELLIGENCE analysts in the United States had already concluded that Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down by an air-to-air missile, and that the Ukrainian government had had something to do with it"

http://www.nst.com.my/node/20925

Do you really expect anyone sane and humane to believe any news coming from Israeli media?! Gosh...

SHappens 12 Sep 2014 11:27

What a timely article and what an empty statement. Most likely, probably, it seems, could be, looks like.

Conclusion: "It is going to be a long investigation," he said, while remaining cautious about what results the international investigation might achieve.

Trabecula 12 Sep 2014 11:25

De Jong and his mates: you should read the news straight from NST, not any other "repost" or reference, be it RT.com or ET.mars. Go back to early August news (4th or 7th, if not mistaken) and check out their official opinion on the subject. I've been in Malaysia for 2 weeks last month and though they're pretty careful with what they say - because of they western counterparts - and they truly blame both sides (this is subject is overhelming there), they have little doubt that it was shot down by a jet fighter. And this is supported by german and american experts so be careful with what you are being "fed".

Western media never reported this though western countries only needed a few hours to "choose" who to blame for this tragic war crime.

DownSouth77 Rudeboy1 12 Sep 2014 11:08

Firstly a Su-25 could have shot it down...no doubt about that. Its just a matter of if it happened that way.

I have a question...something I haven't seen mentioned really. while I know aviation (work in the industry) I have very little knowledge of the BUK missle system...therfore the question.

Why is the cockpit riddled with holes...yet other pieces of the aircraft as almost no holes in it. Wouldn't it be that if a BUK did it that the COMPLETE body of aircraft would have had similar amount of damage caused by projectiles? Yet I haven't seen one other piece of the wreckage that had near the type of projectile damage than the cockpit section. Why is that...for those saying it was a BUK missile that caused that damage to the cockpit section?

Robert Looren de Jong 12 Sep 2014 11:06

http://www.haaretz.com/news/world/1.615512?

REUTERS - The United States announced more sanctions against Russia on Friday, affecting oil and defense industries and further limiting the access of major Russian banks to U.S. debt and equity markets to punish Russia for its intervention in Ukraine.

The sanctions, which for the first time targeted Russia's Sberbank, were timed to coincide with new European Union economic penalties that included restrictions on financing for some Russian state-owned companies and asset freezes on leading Russian politicians.

The sanctions could be rolled back if Moscow withdrew its forces from Ukraine and established a buffer zone along the border among other conditions, a senior U.S. official said.

SocialistPig 12 Sep 2014 11:00

retired Russian army Colonel Mikhail Khodarenok believes the fact that international investigators have thus far failed to provide conclusive evidence suggests that they have something to hide.

"You can find out what kind of missile was used against a downed plane one day after it was crashed," the retired colonel told The Moscow Times. During his career, Khodarenok operated S-75 and S-200 air defense systems.

"Each missile type has its own shrapnel imprint. The shrapnel should have been preserved in the elements of the aircraft itself as well as in the bodies of the victims," he said.

zelazny fintan 12 Sep 2014 10:54

The Malaysian government disagrees with you and has reported that its experts say a fighter jet brought the plane down by first hitting it with a missile and then firing 30mm bullets into both sides of the fuselage.

Photos of the fuselage contain unmistakable bullet holes. Anti-Putin people can deny the evidence and ignore the opinions of the Malaysian experts, but the fact remains that bullets can't travel 30,000 feet into the air and they must have come from a fighter jet.

The USA certainly has known this fact from day 1, as have all of the Nato governments. They just can't figure out any positive spin, so they have decided to delay the release of the report for a year or so in the hope the public will forget.

I wonder how much it will cost to make the family members of the dead forget?

Jiri 12 Sep 2014 10:54

If there was any evidence that the Russians or the East Ukrainians were responsible for the downing of MH17 it would have been made widely available and the maximum political mileage extracted from it.

Standupwoman -> daveydor 12 Sep 2014 10:53

On this scale, and with so few voices to speak against it - yes. This is the first time I'm aware of where the US has effectively dictated the script for the entire western msm without even the Guardian offering a dissenting view.

Since you find my massive 2.26 posts a day so disconcerting, I assume you'd like to drive all dissent from the comments too.

zelazny -> RoyalBludger 12 Sep 2014 10:50

Those look like large caliber bullet holes to me, and I have seen a lot of bullet holes in sheet metal.

And I don't know of any rifle in the world, large caliber or small, that can shoot 30,000 feet or more. None can fire accurately even with the most skilled shooter at more than 2475 meters, the longest confirmed sniper kill.

So if bullets hit the plane, they must have come from a fighter jet's 30mm cannon.

The Malaysian government thinks this happened, but of course their opinion has no role in the Nato cover up.

zelazny -> EnviroCapitalist 12 Sep 2014 10:44

Obama has Guantanamo? What equivalent does Putin have?

Obama tortures people and doesn't allow them to have a trial at all in most cases, and if they get one, they get a secret, military tribunal, in violation of the US constitution.

In his 6 years in office, Obama has pardoned 52 people, despite the fact that US prisons hold over 2 million.

Putin has pardoned thousands, including his billionaire political opponent Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

The comments threads on western sites show the massive love of war and mass murder among ordinary citizens like you, deceived by a life time of high tech propaganda. Western citizens like to compare those they fear to Hitler, not realizing that the victors in WWII deliberately slaughtered German and Japanese civilians by the millions. War criminals fought WWII, and some lost and some won.

But all decent people lost in WWII, because since then the US and Nato have turned the world into a charnel house of war.

flyingdutchman Rudeboy1 12 Sep 2014 10:43

More usually SU25's carry armour piercing or APHE rounds. These will explode on impact even with a soft structure. Even allowing a slight delay after encountering an aircraft's skin these will then detonate leaving a much larger hole.

Simple armor piercing rounds will not explode. APHE rounds will, but with a delay of around one millisecond or slightly less. Since the round travels at several thousand feet per second (and won't be slowed down significantly by anything in the aircraft's structure since the rounds are designed to punch through half an inch of hardened steel with ease) the explosion will only take place a few feet beyond the aircraft's skin. Also, fragments from the explosion will tend to be projected forward.

Although aluminium isn't massively strong, it is stressed on an airliner. It's also not usually followed by empty air.

Beneath the aircraft's skin there are structural parts (stringers and frames) with insulation in between. The structure is all aluminum, except for very few parts at the front that are reinforced with titanium in order to better resist bird strikes. Anyway, nothing compared to the stuff the average 30mm projectile is designed to deal with.

OpiumAddict Rudeboy1 12 Sep 2014 10:41

no evidence the rebels ever had a working Buk or anyone trained to use it.

definite proof that Ukraine had several working Buks in the area with crews.

dion13 zelazny 12 Sep 2014 10:37

On 13 August, Pravda published a highly plausible version of the tragedy:

"Boeing-777 was downed by Ukrainian MiG-29, expert says"

http://english.pravda.ru/world/ussr/13-08-2014/128268-boeing_crash_ukraine-0/

Just one excerpt:

[...] the Romanian expert believes that it was not a Ukrainian Su-25, as the plane could not reach the altitude of 10,300 meters and strike the Boeing due to the poor level of training of Ukrainian flight personnel and technical imperfection of old Su-25. Vasilescu indicates that radars show Su-25 identically to MiG-29 fighter jet, as the planes have identical reflective surface area [...] The fleet of the Ukrainian Air Force has fighter aircraft MiG-29 that are capable of intercepting Boeing-777. The fighters are based near Kiev and in Ivano-Frankivsk.

ruffsoft 12 Sep 2014 10:23

An exploding missile would hit the bottom of the plane as it approached and would scatter shrapnel over the entire plane. The fact is that only the cockpit is heavily penetrated, and from the sides, both sides (entrance and exit holes are not hard to distinguish), which points to an air assault targeting the cockpit to disable the pilots.

Since the Ukraine has veto power over publication of the findings, this whole investigation is a whitewash. Why isn't Russia part of the investigation with veto power? Giving one of the suspects in a crime the ability to block publication of the findings is ludicrous.

Can someone explain how a missile from the ground would produce both exit and entrance punctures in the cockpit on the sides? That seems impossible.

This is just a phony investigation, with the lead suspect having veto power.

High resolution photos from the following link show clearly holes which are pushed out and in. I am not forensic expert but I can tell in from out.

A missile with exploding shrapnel would not produce in and out holes; the only way to get that result is to shoot from both sides. And a missile exploding would effect the bottom of the plane, in a random pattern; the holes in the plane are in the cockpit from the sides, both sides.

http://www.abeldanger.net/2014/08/the-israeli-photo-of-mh17-who-is-yaron.html

Take a look: holes punched out, holes pushed in: draw your own conclusions because the investigation will never reveal this fact, since Ukraine has veto power over the findings being published.

The photos provided show the pilots were targeted, something an ground to air missile could not do. Also the holes across one of the wings are in a line, such as a machine gun would produce, not a random explosion. The theory of a missile from the ground cannot explain the photographic/physical evidence.

Only an assault from the air makes sense once you examine the evidence provided by the photos Please take a look, especially at the closeup at
http://www.anderweltonline.com/fileadmin/user_upload/PDF/Cockpit-MH017.pdf
which shows holes with raised edges (exit) and holes with pushed in edges (entrance).

ruffsoft 12 Sep 2014 10:04

The nations investigating have signed an agreement not to publish results unless all parties reach a consensus. If the parties found evidence of Ukrainian responsibility, Ukraine would veto and it would not be published. This form of censorship makes an independent investigation impossible, as well as its publication if it were.

I am quite sure that bullets are "high energy objects" but the Western media seems to ignore that possibility, as it would implicate Ukraine, which has veto power over any publication of findings.

For me, the clincher is that only the front part (cockpit) of the plane was penetrated----a missile that exploded would not target the cockpit---and that the holes in the cockpit show both exit and entrance punctures---something compatible only with being fired on from both sides. A missile would only penetrate from one side. It is not hard to distinguish an entrance and an exit hole, as one is push in, the other out.

This investigation is, by agreement, not independent or impartial, since the Ukraine can block publication of any findings it does not like.

It's just one more piece of the propaganda effort to demonize Russia and thus cover up the crimes of the Kiev regime

Dunscore -> Robert Looren de Jong 12 Sep 2014 10:02

However, Russian mass media information proved to be a fake. On September 9, the Dutch Safety Board published the report, the paragraph 2.5.4 of which says that Ukrainian State Air Traffic Services Enterprise provided the recording and a transcript of the radio and telephone communications regarding flight MH17

Just a little tip. Don't ever use anything that comes out of the Kiev offices. It is all 100% unbelievable. All of it. There are so many different agendas by so many groups fighting each other like cats and dogs, all in the same buildings, that it is no wonder that so much confusion reigns there.

dhammaguy 12 Sep 2014 09:57

Shocking Analysis of the 'Shooting Down' of Malaysian MH17 http://www.anderweltonline.com/wissenschaft-und-technik/luftfahrt-2014/shocking-analysis-of-the-shooting-down-of-malaysian-mh17/

Dunscore -> Robert Looren de Jong 12 Sep 2014 09:44

John McCain has taught you well.
You and he are obviously students of the "Shout it loud and shout it again and again" Goebbels doctrine -- If you are so desperate to put your case, go and join the police investigative team. You're such a cut and paste expert with carefully selected bits from wikipedia, they will find you useful somewhere.

There's a flood of misinformation this morning. Much more than normal.
You're louder than you normally are.

Usually McCain orders the whole team out when the yanks have got something that they particularly want to distract from the public gaze.

Most of your team is talking about the Buk again, sticking to the same old story, so obviously you are worried that the Dutch will latch onto the truth. Well they have nine months to find it, so you and your team of parrots will have to work very hard to keep them distracted. Best of luck !

Given the fact that the steady level flight (in kilometers) above the ceiling is impossible,
How do you KNOW that is true? Do you know every single situation where it might not be true. Are you an expert ? I don't mean a cut and paste expert..

Keep writing, keep writing... you and your mates have got to keep the dutch police distracted. !

Keep writing Keep writing !

Bye...

medievil -> Yatvyag 12 Sep 2014 09:38

shot down over the Persian Gulf in 1988 by the SM-2 surface-to-air missile launched from the USS Vincennes. As a result of the Iranian Flight 655 catastrophe 290 passengers were killed including 60 children. The author emphasizes that after the incident American top officials not only dismissed all the accusations but blamed the Iranian pilot. However, nearly seven weeks after the tragedy the Pentagon had to recognize that all the "facts" the American top officials were referring to in order to shift the burden of responsibility on the Iranians were wrong. Strangely enough, the Pentagon's 53-page report on the incident "still concluded that the captain and all the other Vincennes officers acted properly."

Although Fred Kaplan, the defense correspondent of the Boston Globe at that time, pointed repeatedly to the numerous embarrassing discrepancies in the Pentagon's narrative, the US senior officers qualified them as inessential. The most shocking fact, revealed in 1992 was that the USS Vincennes was in the Iranian waters when it shot down the Iranian Flight 655, not in international as the Pentagon reported in 1988.

"Vice President George H.W. Bush, who was running to succeed Ronald Reagan as president, said on the campaign trail, "I will never apologize for the United States - I don't care what the facts are," cites Fred Kaplan and adds bitterly, "Not until eight years later did the US government compensate the victims' families, and even then expressed "deep regret," not an apology." Medals awarded While issuing notes of regret over the loss of human life, the U.S. government has, to date, neither admitted any wrongdoing or responsibility in this tragedy, nor apologized, but continues to blame Iranian hostile actions for the incident. The men of the Vincennes were all awarded combat-action ribbons. Commander Lustig, the air-warfare coordinator, even won the navy's Commendation Medal for "heroic achievement", his "ability to maintain his poise and confidence under fire" having enabled him to "quickly and precisely complete the firing procedure." According to a 23 April 1990 article printed in The Washington Post, the Legion of Merit was presented to Captain Rogers and Lieutenant Commander Lustig for their performance in the Persian Gulf on 3 July 1988. The citations did not mention the downing of the Iran Air flight at all.

Денис Панкратов -> fintan 12 Sep 2014 09:31

If you're interested, I would say. And in Washington and in the Netherlands have long known who shot down the "Boeing". But will hide the truth to the end. Because this really does not fit into the ongoing today geopolitics.

Geopolitics, as a rule, the subject is extremely pragmatic and cynical. For it not only 200 dead, for her and 200 thousand dead - empty words ...

Dunscore 12 Sep 2014 09:26

A rebel officer told AP after the disaster that the plane was shot down by a mixed team of rebels and Russian military personnel who believed they were targeting a Ukrainian military plane.

This is the ENTIRE source for the western case that a Buk shot MH17 down. It is a complete lie. The officer was never named, the story was never verified. The officer does not exist. Evidence please, if you disagree?

Canonman -> Rudeboy1 12 Sep 2014 09:17

That area has been under satellite surveillance for a long time by various US, NATO and Russian satellites - after all it is a war zone. Rest assured that there will be coverage of that area by various satellites.

Perhaps you should lay off the personal insults? Or do you get off on being rude or a dick - 'Rudeboy-1'?

Hansueli LeWillow 12 Sep 2014 09:16

Well, before engaging in wild speculation, why not start from a simple possibility, like a simple fuck-up by the guys on the trigger? Seems far more likely than any hypothetical planned shoot down by CIA or anybody else, including Russia.

Dunscore Rudeboy1 12 Sep 2014 09:16

Of course the utter idiots that gave a highly advanced surface to air missile system to a bunch of idiots are not responsible at all.....it was just a mistake. I'm sure the relatives will understand.

Your master McCain taught his baby trolls well -- But why do we always get the uneducated ones.

Where is all your written evidence for your silly story ? Let's see something on paper and not just oral bullshit...

JCDavis mraak 12 Sep 2014 09:09

Since it hit the cockpit and not the tail, it had to be fired from the direction where the plane was headed.

Not true. If it was fired from an aircraft well below the 777, the impact could have had the same signature. And depending on the guidance system, it could have hit the same area no matter where it was fired from--

Electro-optical seekers can be programmed to target vital area of an aircraft, such as the cockpit.

Dunscore Robert Looren de Jong 12 Sep 2014 09:08

nd as such it is consitant with a buk missile

If you can't even spell consistent, why should we pay any attention to wha you say ?

Everyone is suddenly an expert on missile ballistics.
Tell your audience please the source of all your qualifications.
A PhD from Ronald McDonald's University ?

Two german military pilots saw all the wreckage on the crash site and with 30 years experience, they made a careful detailed explanation over several A4 sides explaining why it was NOT a Buk. Have you read that ? Why do you contradict that ? Come on, let's have your knowledge on the table --
McCain would be proud of you, you follow his script so well.

What will you do when your master loses his job at the next US election?

Canonman 12 Sep 2014 08:31

All of this is just speculation.
Question 1: where are the Satellite images of that area at that exact time?
Question 2: where are the audio transmissions between the crew and the flight towers?
Question 3: why did the BBC remove its own segment that was done shortly afterwards where they had people on record stating that they had seen a jet flying behind if?
Question 4: who ordered the BBC remove its own segment?
Question 5: If the pilots where shot at by a 'jet' as is believed by many - what about the autopsies of the pilots? Were any done? What did they find.
Question 6: if a BUK missile had taken it down how come there was not a trail from the missile? These missiles do leave a rather distinctive trial behind them that is seen for kilometers.
Question 7: who ordered the plane to fly lower than was deemed safe for that area?
So many questions and so little facts… Perhaps they questions do not fit the narrative?

michaelantony 12 Sep 2014 08:19

This investigation is a colossal waste of time and money and European taxpayers should demand an end to it. We all know what happened to the plane: it was shot down by accident while flying over a war zone where surface to air missiles were in constant use over previous days. None of the belligerents had an interest in shooting in down: whoever did it mistook it for a military craft belonging to the enemy. To try to find out which group to pin the blame on serves no purpose whatever except to further the warmongering agenda of NATO, which is trying to provoke the 3rd World War with Russia or justify even more crushing sanctions to grind Russia's population into further poverty. The real culprits for this horrible accident were Malaysia Airlines for flying over a war zone to save money and the aviation authorities for allowing them to do so. Those are the heads that should roll.

LeWillow -> psygone 12 Sep 2014 08:07

But you have to ask the question 'why would Putin shoot down a Malaysian passenger plane?
It make no sense and would be completely stupid, and I don't think Putin is stupid somehow.
The CIA on the other hand (and US Govt) would have a lot to gain from shooting down a plane and blaming it on Putin. They also have previous form when it comes to blowing planes out of the air.

Standupwoman -> daveydor 12 Sep 2014 08:05

Correct. I joined in 2012 to participate in the Bradley Manning conversation. I have an abhorrence of evil, and the silence of mass media regarding its victims.

What world do you inhabit where such an attitude makes a person 'unreal'?

LeWillow -> daveydor 12 Sep 2014 08:02

"Actually what I find shocking is the bizarre pretence of you people to be real."

By being 'real' do you mean believing everything the Western media tell us and everything the US Government. Is that what being 'real' involves?
If it is, then you can keep it for yourself.

jdanforth -> Martin Adams 12 Sep 2014 08:01

Apparently it was an entire year before Libya was blamed -first it was Iran. Al Megrahi's alleged accomplice was found not guilty, and when al Megrahi was granted a chance to appeal his case in court, he was abruptly released instead.

In the case of Lockerbie, satellite imagery was immediately provided by both France and the US, and that was in the 1980s!

ChristopherMyers 12 Sep 2014 08:01

They are sooo hoping it was East Ukrainian fighters supplied by Russia, sounding more like a witch hunt all the time. I wouldn't rule out the Azov Battalion, they were in the area, they have Russian accents, and BUK's, they murder civilians because they are Russian, like in Odessa. They still don't know if it was a missile, or if it was an air to air or surface to air, or bullets from a Ukrainian fighter jet (which would be intent on targeting the cockpit). Forensics though, will reveal what struck it, then place the blame. Why not wait until then to burn the witch?

Carl Jones 12 Sep 2014 08:00

The preliminary report suggests MH17 was hit by multiple impacts. There are pictures on the alternative media that shows a section of the plane near the cockpit that was strafed by machine gun fire after it had been hit by an air to air rocket[s]. The preliminary finding are inconsistent with a ground to air rocket and their is no evidence to this effect.

Quite simply, this is a cover up.

SaoPaulo 12 Sep 2014 07:56

The mere fact that the United States MSM has dropped this topic like a hot potato (compare CNN coverage of MH17 with the endless coverage of MH370) and the complete lack of verified NATO or US or CIA satellite data implies that the Russians were not at fault here.

JCDavis -> palindrome 12 Sep 2014 07:55

Everything coming from the UK and US governments is a lie at one level or another and should be carefully investigated. But of course there is no one to do that as the press is almost totally subverted.

palindrome 12 Sep 2014 07:50

he drew comparisons with the investigation into the Lockerbie bombing that took years to identify suspects.

Excellent comparison, the Lockerbie investigation is a great example of how investigators dismissed obvious clues as to the true perpetrators and used circumstantial evidence to "prove" that the Bond villains of the day (Libya) were the culprits.

John Ashton's book lays the evidence for all to see of how everything can

JCDavis JCDavis 12 Sep 2014 07:44

Herbert E. Meyer, Special Assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence under the Reagan administration--

"If Putin is too stubborn to acknowledge that his career is over, and the only way to get him out of the Kremlin is feet-first, with a bullet hole in the back of his head - that would also be okay with us."

krislej Daniel Brown 12 Sep 2014 07:35

You're clearly someone who doesn't have a clue:

SU-25's carry the R-60 air to air missile with a range of 5 miles, they also have a 30mm auto-cannon. The wreckage of MH17 is strewn with what are more than likely 30mm shell holes, perfectly rounded and highly unlikely to be fragmentation from a rocket.
SU-25's can also climb to the height of MH17 and stay there for a short period of time before having to descend.

Martin Adams 12 Sep 2014 07:33

The Lockerbie investigation was subverted for political reasons and the enemy of convenience was then Libya. Abdelbasset al Megrahi who served 8 years in prison had nothing to do with Lockerbie and they know it.

GoodmansParadox 12 Sep 2014 07:23

...he drew comparisons with the investigation into the Lockerbie bombing that took years to identify suspects.

An interesting analogy, considering the suspects identified were fabricated in order to frame Libya. Considering the case against the two Libyan suspects required they work together, it was even more notable that only one of them was convicted. So a fabricated prosecution was delivered a perverse verdict, yet the media still lapped it up and ran with the lie.
Funny how, with the toppling of Gaddafi, we were supposed to be provided with the evidence of Libyan involvement. Three years and counting...

And now, the same cheerleaders for blaming Gaddafi are blaming Putin. Plus ca change.

kaptenemo 12 Sep 2014 07:20

Could investigators and journalists please also consider the possibility that the Kiev troops did it? Right now, they should be investigating all leads, not only those pointing to the Eastern Ukrainians. After all, the Ukrainian military did shoot down a commercial plane in 2001, so another mistake cannot be excluded out of hand.

fintan -> DrHandley 12 Sep 2014 07:18

The Dutch are under orders to ensure that all the data and any media release places blame of the Rebels

The Dutch "under orders"? From whom? Have some respect for a democratic, sovereign state that has lost nearly 200 of its citizens to a murderous attack by vicious terrorists and, I have no doubt, very much wants to find the truth about how and why it happened.

Standupwoman 12 Sep 2014 07:14

What's possibly most shocking about this is the reiteration of discredited information - the supposed 'confession' of a rebel (taken massively out of context and heavily denied by the speaker) and the ludicrous fake audio of the rebel conversation which turned out to have been uploaded the day before the crash, then taken down again for editing.

I wouldn't be surprised by this promulgation of lies if I found it on social media, but this is the Associated Press and I'm reading this in a once respected British newspaper. How in the name of any kind of decency did we come to sink as low as this?

DrHandley 12 Sep 2014 07:12

The Dutch are under orders to ensure that all the data and any media release places blame of the Rebels. We may talk about conspiracy theories - but in this case it smells like a cover up. The explosive residue left of the surface of the aircraft would surely indicate the type of weapon used as most explosives have a set 'signature'.

Standupwoman 12 Sep 2014 07:06

There's no surprise in the fact the solution 'getting most attention' is the one most likely to discredit the rebels. I'd be more interested to know if they were giving any attention to anything else.

[Oct 16, 2015] ISIS on verge of defeat as Russian jets cut off arms supplies

World News Daily Express

Earlier this week Putin accused US official of having "mush for brains" after they refused hand over intelligence about ISIS targets.

He said: "We asked on the military level to give us the targets which they consider to be the terrorist ones for sure, 100 per cent. But the answer was: 'No, we are not ready to do that'.

"Then we thought and asked another question: 'Then could you tell us where we should not hit?' Again, no answer. So, what should we do?"

Washington and its allies have suggested Russia is seeking to prop up Bashar al-Assad's regime rather than defeat ISIS.

But Putin hit back, saying his country wants to "contribute to the fight against terrorism" which threatens "the whole world".

[Oct 16, 2015] MH17 field Experiment done by Almaz-Antey

"... The Spanish ATC guy's posts were real, but he said the trailing fighters left shortly before MH17 vanished. Presumably they'd been told to get clear. ..."

"... So… the official Ukrainian ministry of the interior had released via their own web site a fake video-audio product, pretending the downing was done by separatists and it was an after-the-event conversation… but the Interior Ministry had produced the video file the day before the downing. ..."

"... The Spanish ATC guy's real-time tweets are consistent with this story. He said ordinary military arrived at ATC first, but then Interior Ministry guys arrived and took over, removing all evidence tapes. ..."

"... The Kiev government absolutely and provably self-incriminated. ..."

"... All Western and Kiev claims (official, leaked and 'expert comments') to the contrary since, have been orchestrated to bury and obfuscate that key evidence. ..."

"... MH17 was downed by a BUK fired by Kiev government forces, intending to down MH17 and claim the Russians were responsible. US fingers in this scheme can be seen in the selection of an Air Malaysia plane. ..."

"... Other points: – right after the event, Russian sources reported their military signals intelligence in the E-Ukraine conflict area had detected a BUK systems targeting radar activation at the time of the downing. That would be rather unlikely to admit, if they fired it. ..."

"... Many other points all indicate Ukie government responsibility for this war crime. And the nature of the Western 'investigation' also shouts of high level awareness of Western guilt. ..."

"... and what about the testimony of a Ukrainian army soldier that he'd seen a pilot return on the day and time of the downing of MH17, confirming that the boeing had been shot by a Ukrainian fighter plane? ..."

"... the fact that russia is now conceding that the MH17 was hit by a BUK missile completely changes the equation for me. we've either been lied to with the expert opinion and the eye witness account, or the BUK story is a fake. ..."

"... Please note that this Almaz-Antey MH17 field Experiment was done to support their commercial interests in a court battle to recover damages for reputation and sanctions. It does not necessarily reflect Russian government position (although it could hardly counter it either). ..."

"... It is a well timed PR 'Buk' at the corrupt and cynical 15-month Dutch insult to their own MH17 dead citizens and the wider global traveling public. ..."

"... I suspect a lot is calibrated end with the fall of Ukraine's nazi Poreshenko regime. One long cold winter (on a month-by-month pre-payment plan) coming up! ..."

"... Who is conceding? All I have heard in the Almaz-Antey press conference was based on an "if", without any definite "it was". So, if it was a BUK, then it was an old one, out of use in the Russian army already 2011. If it was a BUK, it started in the region of Zaroshenskoje, not near Snezhnoje. ..."

The Vineyard of the Saker

TerraHertz, October 15, 2015

"We all know" – Speak for yourself. As soon as I saw the high-res image of that cockpit side panel, I knew it had been a missile. There's clear results of a shock wave loaded with fine (down to dust size) particles. Also those holes were not bullet holes, and they all came from the left side of the plane. Metal edges bent outwards are due to the shockwave gases arriving just after the larger penetrators, forcing between the skin layers, and blowing the outer layer outwards around holes.

The Spanish ATC guy's posts were real, but he said the trailing fighters left shortly before MH17 vanished. Presumably they'd been told to get clear.

All the "fighter planes shot up and/or fired an air to air missile at it" rubbish has been disinformation, designed to bury that one damning and war-crimes trial worthy proof the Kiev Junta (and US puppetmasters) preplanned the event. That was the video released on the Kiev Ministry of Interior's official web site right after MH17's downing. The video was the 2nd released from the same source, in a common style. It purported to be an intercepted communication between separatists and a Russian general, in which they discussed having downed the plane with a missile fired by separatists.

Analysis of the video's audio (the alleged 'conversation') revealed it was an collage edited together using short word sequences. A fake. But also a massive mistake – it was reported that analysis also found the video still contained timestamps from the editing process. It had been constructed the DAY BEFORE the downing.

So… the official Ukrainian ministry of the interior had released via their own web site a fake video-audio product, pretending the downing was done by separatists and it was an after-the-event conversation… but the Interior Ministry had produced the video file the day before the downing. Proof of prior knowledge of an 'accident' (or act supposedly by someone else) is proof of planning it.

The Spanish ATC guy's real-time tweets are consistent with this story. He said ordinary military arrived at ATC first, but then Interior Ministry guys arrived and took over, removing all evidence tapes.

This is real, but it has been flushed down the memory hole. The Kiev government absolutely and provably self-incriminated. And by extension, their masters in the US government were certainly involved in planning too.

All Western and Kiev claims (official, leaked and 'expert comments') to the contrary since, have been orchestrated to bury and obfuscate that key evidence.

MH17 was downed by a BUK fired by Kiev government forces, intending to down MH17 and claim the Russians were responsible. US fingers in this scheme can be seen in the selection of an Air Malaysia plane. More payback to Malaysia for their Trial of Israel for war crimes, and also trying to ship that stolen US military drone control system to China, on MH370.

TerraHertz

eimar, October 15, 2015

@Terrahertz

Of course there is no unanimity about how MH-17 was brought down.

But 'none' is not just speaking for him/herself.

Check out this RT doc at 12.40: a local witness to a jet directly approaching the plane from below, followed by a blue flash:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2W3Ai0nUxKE&feature=youtube_gdata_player

This does not exclude the BUK hypothesis. The pilot may have been instructed to obscure the real cause, or told to deliver a payload too. Or simply act as a lure to divert the plane into the missile path.

Or it was a coincidental presence.

But a Ukrainian fighter jet was on the scene.

TerraHertz, October 15, 2015

@eimar That's an interesting documentary, however you should exercise a little more discernment. These witnesses are not credible, or are speaking of unrelated events. MH17 was flying at 33,000 feet. At that height an airliner is little more than a dot, and a fighter plane may not be visible at all. No chance of telling which one is 'below' the other if they are near each other. How about that guy who says he "ran outside to see" then claims he saw the entire sequence? Yeah, so what made him run outside? As for the lack of sightings of a BUK smoke trail, I'd put that down to the rainy, cloudy weather. And what was the cloud height anyway? Lower than 33K feet seems likely. Also the site the Russians claim the missile was launched from is unpopulated fields. Could easily be no witnesses, especially since the Ukraine military would want to make sure no one saw them (or lived to speak of it.)

Other points: – right after the event, Russian sources reported their military signals intelligence in the E-Ukraine conflict area had detected a BUK systems targeting radar activation at the time of the downing. That would be rather unlikely to admit, if they fired it.

Plus, MH17 flight path would have put it over Russian territory in a few more minutes, and Russian ATC expected it. Why on earth shoot it down over Ukraine, if they wanted it down? From the Russian side there's no conceivable practical motive. The Separatists would have no motive either, since at that altitude MH17 couldn't possibly be mistaken for a Ukie military flight.

Many other points all indicate Ukie government responsibility for this war crime. And the nature of the Western 'investigation' also shouts of high level awareness of Western guilt.

Just for reference, my collected chronology of media reports here: http://everist.org/archives/links/__Flight_MH17_shootdown_info.txt
(and lots more in the same folder.)

SunLion, October 14, 2015 · at 10:22 pm UTC

What a fantastic summary. Chapeau to Russia. The level of expertise and competence of the Russian team is incredible. And this video is so well made…

I knew from the beginning that the UkroNazi were behind this false flag. The purpose was to accuse Russia and support the sanctions. In fact, some of the "evidence" was made-up prior to the "accident". I also believe that the US was part of it. They may plead "Plausible deniability" but their game is well known and for one I am not fooled. If it look like a duck…

If the US wants to fight the Russians, I have bad news for the psychopaths.

mbotta on October 15, 2015 · at 4:32 am UTC

guys, so what happened to the expert opinion that the way the boeing was damaged
1) could in no way be done by a BUK missile, and
2) indicated that it had been shot at by a fighter plane?

and what about the testimony of a Ukrainian army soldier that he'd seen a pilot return on the day and time of the downing of MH17, confirming that the boeing had been shot by a Ukrainian fighter plane?

the fact that russia is now conceding that the MH17 was hit by a BUK missile completely changes the equation for me. we've either been lied to with the expert opinion and the eye witness account, or the BUK story is a fake.

Anonymous on October 15, 2015 · at 9:29 am UTC

Re: "… the fact that russia is now conceding that the MH17 was hit by a BUK missile completely changes the equation for me."

Please note that this Almaz-Antey MH17 field Experiment was done to support their commercial interests in a court battle to recover damages for reputation and sanctions. It does not necessarily reflect Russian government position (although it could hardly counter it either).

It is a well timed PR 'Buk' at the corrupt and cynical 15-month Dutch insult to their own MH17 dead citizens and the wider global traveling public.

Where the MH17 project goes from here is anyone's guess - but in the reputation and credibility stakes Russian share value is rising and EU/Nato is dropping fast. What is clear, is, any 'win' by the usual suspects will be slow and at a very high cost.

I suspect a lot is calibrated end with the fall of Ukraine's nazi Poreshenko regime. One long cold winter (on a month-by-month pre-payment plan) coming up!

Max on October 15, 2015 · at 11:21 am UTC

Who is conceding? All I have heard in the Almaz-Antey press conference was based on an "if", without any definite "it was". So, if it was a BUK, then it was an old one, out of use in the Russian army already 2011. If it was a BUK, it started in the region of Zaroshenskoje, not near Snezhnoje.

[Oct 14, 2015] I do not take my mandate from the European people

Notable quotes:

"... when I asked the trade commissioner how she could continue her persistent promotion of the deal in the face of such massive public opposition, her response came back icy cold: "I do not take my mandate from the European people." ..."

Oct 13, 2013 | naked capitalism

"I didn't think TTIP could get any scarier, but then I spoke to the EU official in charge of it" [Independent].

When put to her, Malmström acknowledged that a trade deal has never inspired such passionate and widespread opposition. Yet when I asked the trade commissioner how she could continue her persistent promotion of the deal in the face of such massive public opposition, her response came back icy cold: "I do not take my mandate from the European people."

Those honest, blunt Brussels bureaucrats! So different from our own political class!

[Oct 14, 2015] Security farce at Datto Inc that held Hillary Clintons emails revealed by Louise Boyle & Daniel Bates

Notable quotes:

"... But its building in Bern Township, Pennsylvania, doesn't have a perimeter fence or security checkpoints and has two reception areas ..."

"... Dumpsters at the site were left open and unguarded, and loading bays have no security presence ..."

"... It has also been reported that hackers tried to gain access to her personal email address by sending her emails disguised parking violations which were designed to gain access to her computer. ..."

"... a former senior executive at Datto was allegedly able to steal sensitive information from the company's systems after she was fired. ..."

Oct 13, 2015 | Daily Mail Online

Datto Inc has been revealed to have stored Hillary Clinton's emails - which contained national secrets - when it backed up her private server

• It claims it runs 'data fortresses' monitored by security 24 hours a day, where only a retinal or palm scan allows access to its facilities
• But its building in Bern Township, Pennsylvania, doesn't have a perimeter fence or security checkpoints and has two reception areas
• Dumpsters at the site were left open and unguarded, and loading bays have no security presence
• Clinton faces first Democratic debate tonight amid falling poll numbers and growing questions

The congressional committee is focusing on what happened to the server after she left office in a controversy that is dogging her presidential run and harming her trust with voters.

In the latest developments it emerged that hackers in China, South Korea and Germany tried to gain access to the server after she left office. It has also been reported that hackers tried to gain access to her personal email address by sending her emails disguised parking violations which were designed to gain access to her computer.

Daily Mail Online has previously revealed how a former senior executive at Datto was allegedly able to steal sensitive information from the company's systems after she was fired.

Hackers also managed to completely take over a Datto storage device, allowing them to steal whatever data they wanted.

Employees at the company, which is based in Norwalk, Connecticut, have a maverick attitude and see themselves as 'disrupters' of a staid industry.

On their Facebook page they have posed for pictures wearing ugly sweaters and in fancy dress including stereotypes of Mexicans.

Its founder, Austin McChord, has been called the 'Steve Jobs' of data storage and who likes to play in his offices with Nerf guns and crazy costumes.

Nobody from Datto was available for comment.

[Oct 14, 2015] The JIT report could catalyze an official response from Russia

Notable quotes:

"... A 9M38M1 uses what is called proportional navigation. Basically it means it does not tail chase the target but constantly calculates the future route of the target. By doing so the missile is able to cut corners and approach the target using the shortest route and thus saving as much fuel as possible. ..."

"... I'm looking forward to the release of the JIT report and I think it will catalyze an official response from Russia. Comparing the different versions of events should be indicative of who is swimming naked. ..."

Oct 10, 2015 | nakedcapitalism.com/

John Helmer US Strategy In The Middle East Is Dying, Along With Its Authors, Carter And Brzezinski

optimader, October 10, 2015 at 6:20 pm

Blert,
And BUKs use heat seeking missiles. refers to you post yesterday regarding engine heat of a B-777

BUK missile are radar guided.. period.

You can go find the link..
Target detection

The TELAR radar automatically categorizes targets by 3 types: aerodynamics;

• aircraft with moving engines with an airspeed of over 100 m / s
• ballistic missiles
• helicopters

The info is needed for calculation of the trajectory of the missile. The commander can recognize the unique footprint of a target and when agreed with that this is the target he presses a button for launch. The onboard computer will do the calculations for guiding the missile.

This article in Russian language has a lot of detailed information on target recognition.

The missile guiding

Once the missile has been launched it is guided by the radar to the target using radar signals. The radar illuminates the target. The radar return is picked up by the missile. The missile receives control guidance from the ground using radio signals. This system is called a semi active homing radar.

Buk, Buk-M1 and earlier versions of Buk-M1-2 and Buk-M2 missile systems uses an Argon-15 type of the onboard computer. The Argon-15 is able to detect target radar signal (shape, length, reverberations, envelope and videosignal). Argon-15 does not give to the crew the ability to change target. The commander must choose target on stage Search, then Argon-15 calculate algorithm Meet Zone, then indicate Target in zone, commander open fire it all. More information on the Argon-15 here.

When close to the target the seeker head (radar in the missile) will take over from the guidance of the TELAR and will continue its route towards the target.

The missile has a proximity fuse. This is fed by the radar. When the missile is within range the proximity fuse will detonate the explosive in the warhead. That will be around 17 meters from the target.

Proportional navigation

A 9M38M1 uses what is called proportional navigation. Basically it means it does not tail chase the target but constantly calculates the future route of the target. By doing so the missile is able to cut corners and approach the target using the shortest route and thus saving as much fuel as possible.

To intercept high-speed targets like aircraft and missiles, a semi active homing missile must follow a lead (collision) course. The intercept point is at the intersection of the missile and target flight paths. The best collision or lead course happens when the missile heading keeps a constant angle with the line of sight to the target. This course requires missile accelerations to be only as great as target accelerations. Specifically, if the target flies a straight-line, constant-velocity course, the missile can also follow a straight-line collision course if its velocity does not change. But in practice, this ideal situation does not exist. Missile velocity seldom stays constant. Irregular sustainer propellant burning changes thrust, and therefore affects speed…

low_integer, October 11, 2015 at 2:40 am

I'm looking forward to the release of the JIT report and I think it will catalyze an official response from Russia. Comparing the different versions of events should be indicative of who is swimming naked.

[Oct 14, 2015] In Australia the news the Dutch investigation last night was immediately followed with coverage of the Russian points refuting some of Dutch claims

"... which are a mix of bow-tie shaped pieces and diamond shaped pieces, indicate that it is an older type of BUK missile that their military has not used for a long time ..."

"... Russia has also claimed that the Ukraine military did possess the older type of BUK missile that corresponds to the fragments found. ..."

"... here in Australia, the news coverage I saw (SBS channel) of the Dutch (JIT) investigation last night was immediately followed with coverage of the Russian points noted above, with the manufacturer of the BUK missiles refuting some of the JITs claims after apparently having done some tests. It was fairly brief however I was surprised to see both sides get airtime. ..."

Jun 16, 2003 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

low_integer October 13, 2015 at 10:50 pm

It is not just whether or not it was a BUK missile, it is also what type of BUK missile it was, if it was in fact a BUK that brought the plane down. Russia's contention is that the shape of the fragments found, which are a mix of bow-tie shaped pieces and diamond shaped pieces, indicate that it is an older type of BUK missile that their military has not used for a long time. I'm assuming the new type they use also has a distinctive fragmentation pattern, and I'm not sure how long it has been since they have phased out use of the old type, or if that information has been made available.

Russia has also claimed that the Ukraine military did possess the older type of BUK missile that corresponds to the fragments found.

Interestingly, here in Australia, the news coverage I saw (SBS channel) of the Dutch (JIT) investigation last night was immediately followed with coverage of the Russian points noted above, with the manufacturer of the BUK missiles refuting some of the JIT's claims after apparently having done some tests. It was fairly brief however I was surprised to see both sides get airtime.

I have also been hearing that it was reported that passengers may have remained conscious for up to 90 seconds.

Still very unclear who is responsible, imo.

[Oct 14, 2015] Russia states that their military no longer use older type of BUK missile which supposly hit MH17

"... Why divert that MH-17 to that routes, while previous planes before MH-17, directed to other southern routes? ..."

"... Where is the traffic conversations records between the ATC and the MH17? ..."

"... Where is the radar plot of the MH17? ..."

"... Where is the sworn testimonies from the ATC guy in charge of taking care the MH17? ..."

"... The Buk left some nice t-shaped holes in the test fusilage. None of those were witnessed on MH-17 wreckage and the holes were primarily round. The missile that hit was closer than the suspended Buk they were testing and was likely an air to air weapon. You can see the burn marks on MH-17 wreckage... ..."

"... The news today was a joke. Ukraine ordered the plane to fly the course , altitude and speed. And yet no transcripts from the Ukraine Aviation authority ? why ? ..."

"... and what happened to Carlos the air traffic controller who sent word about military interference at ATC? ..."

Oct 13, 2015 | Zero Hedge

kaboomnomic

About that MH-17. Here's the manufacturer version.
https://www.rt.com/news/318531-mh17-experiment-almaz-antey/

Here's the video of the experiment.
https://youtu.be/EU-weRmf29c

The MH-17 shot down by BUK-M1. Almaz-Antey have long discontinued this model. Russian troops use BUK-M2. It is a known fact. Even in the western military site.
http://www.army-technology.com/projects/buk-m2e-air-defence-missile-system/

Russian troops use this new BUK-M2 back in 2008. You can check this if you have the DU (depleted uraniums) fragmented casing, and test them with isotopes methodes. Which for some reasons, the dutch teams refused to do.

- - -

Again. Russian haters fails to mentioned this.

As of the questions of:

1. Why the ATC not closing the route?

2. Why divert that MH-17 to that routes, while previous planes before MH-17, directed to other southern routes?

3. Where is the traffic conversations records between the ATC and the MH17?

4. Where is the radar plot of the MH17?

5. Where is the sworn testimonies from the ATC guy in charge of taking care the MH17?

There are alot of questions unanswered. And yet the dutch investigation still release the report.

Why??

The Indelicate ...

The New York Times' clumsiness as to its pro-Israel/anti-Russian {and for that matter anti-constitutionalist and anti-libertarian} propaganda is stunning.

They're either that stupid or that brazen - knowing that Americans are too stupid to parse misleading rhetoric.

Of course, that's older Americans.

Had I time and inclination, before absurd TPP copyright laws prevent it {from what I gather}

a great web site would be unmoderated, space limited comments on ny times stories.

Because imagine what doesnt get through...

PrimalScream

good questions. why the report? - So companies and citizens can claim financial damages. you seem to be implying that the BUK-M1 could have been sold on the black market, or provided by clandestine means. By who? To who? Those are questions that a lot of people hoped would be answered.

ZerOhead

The Buk left some nice t-shaped holes in the test fusilage.

None of those were witnessed on MH-17 wreckage and the holes were primarily round. The missile that hit was closer than the suspended Buk they were testing and was likely an air to air weapon. You can see the burn marks on MH-17 wreckage...

eurogold

The news today was a joke. Ukraine ordered the plane to fly the course , altitude and speed. And yet no transcripts from the Ukraine Aviation authority ? why ?

FixItAgainTony

and what happened to Carlos the air traffic controller who sent word about military interference at ATC?
http://sherriequestioningall.blogspot.com/2014/07/carlos-spanish-kiev-ai...

[Oct 14, 2015] Putin Calls US and Allies Oatmeal Heads On Syria

Oct 13, 2015 | Zero Hedge

To be sure, there are a lot of absurd things about what Washington has done and is currently doing in Syria.

There's the support for Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for instance, who has used ISIS as an excuse to wage war on his own people. Then there are the various efforts to arm and train a hodgepodge of different anti-regime rebel groups (with more embarrassing results each and every time). And just yesterday we learned that the best idea the Pentagon can come up with now is to literally paradrop "50 tons" of ammo on pallets into the middle of the desert and hope the "right" people pick it up.

Of course when it comes to absurd outcomes in Syria, it's difficult to top the fact that at some point - and you don't have to go full-conspiracy theory to believe this anymore - either the West or else Qatar and Saudi Arabia provided some type of assistance to ISIS, which then proceeded to metamorphose into white basketball shoe-wearing, black flag-waving, sword-wielding desert bandits hell bent on establishing a medieval caliphate.

Having said all of that, things took an even more surreal turn late last month when, after Russia stormed in via Latakia and started bombing anti-regime targets, Washington was forced to claim that somehow, Moscow's efforts would be detrimental to the war on terror.

To be sure, there really wasn't much else the US could say. After all, you can't simply come out and say "well, we need to keep ISIS around actually and we'd much rather them then Putin and Assad, so no, we're not going to help the Russians fight terror." The only possible spin to avoid blowing the whole charade up was to claim that somehow, The Kremlin is helping terrorists by killing them (and not in the whole 72 virgins kind of way).

Now as we've said before, Putin is there (along with Iran) to shore up Assad. There's no question about that and Moscow hasn't been shy about saying it. But at the end of the day, when you are trying to wipe out your friend's enemies and some of those enemies are terrorists, well then, you are fighting a war on terror by default and that's not good for terrorists by definition. By denying this, the US is effectively arguing against a tautology which is never a good idea, and we're running out of ways to describe the ridiculousness of it.

Fortunately, Vladimir Putin is not running out of colorful descriptors.

Here's Bloomberg with some amusing excerpts from a speech he gave at an annual conference organized by VTB Capital in Moscow on Tuesday:

Some of Russia's international partners have "oatmeal in their heads" because they don't understand clearly that its military campaign in Syria seeks to help the fight against terrorism, President Vladimir Putin said.

Russia notified the U.S. and the European Union in advance "out of respect" that it intended to begin airstrikes against Islamic State and other militants in Syria, Putin said at an annual conference organized by VTB Capital in Moscow on Tuesday. This showed Russia's ready to cooperate on Syria, while nobody ever warned the authorities in Moscow about their operations, he said.

Putin's colorful phrase, normally used to describe someone as confused, to characterize relations with the U.S. and its allies on Syria comes amid deep tensions over the Russian bombing campaign and cruise-missile strikes that began Sept. 30. The EU demanded on Monday that Russia stop targeting moderate groups opposed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter warned that Russia's actions "will have consequences" and the bombing "will only inflame" Syria's four-year civil war.

Russia "received no answer" when it asked its international partners to provide information on terrorist targets in Syria, or to say at least where its planes shouldn't bomb, Putin said. "It's not a joke, I'm not making any of this up," he said.

And while the US insists on says things like this (out just hours ago):

EARNEST: SOME RUSSIAN STRIKES IN SYRIA ARE HELPING ISLAMIC STATE

Put makes a more logical argument. Namely that when one drops 50 tons of ammo from the sky into the most dangerous place on earth, there's absolutely no way to know for sure where it will ultimately end up:

U.S. air drops of weapons and ammunition intended for the Syrian Free Army, which is fighting Assad's regime, could end up in the hands of Islamic State instead, Putin said.

Yes, they might "end up in the hands of Islamic State" which we're sure wasn't what Washington had in mind. Oh ... wait...

Silky Johnson

That's kind of shit that happens when you lie to everyone and pretend to be all chivalrous an shit, but you're really a cuntface that arms monsters.

CClarity

In Ruski it means "mush for brains?

NoDebt

Yeah, I'm guessing it makes more sense in Russian. Where's Boris when we need him for translation?

KungFuMaster

I am not Boris, but the second best thing. This is what Putin said:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3b8CGyFM2Q4

So this an idiom which should be translated: They have mess/chaos in their head. Oatmeal is typical Russian food, but in this case the main characteristic is that oatmeal looks all the same and this implies that subject cannot differentiate and separate concepts, has a fuzzy filling in his head when he does not know what he is talking about.

tc06rtw

… I think we must realize politics influenced Mr. Putin's statements; He must be forgiven for his overly charitable description of the US and its allies.

BALANDAS

Here is my reliable information --- Putin fears that US arms terrorists in Syria.

10/13/2015 14:12:30

Moscow. October 13. Interfax-AVN - Moscow fear that the weapons and uniforms, which the United States supplied "Free Syrian Army" could fall into the hands of terrorists, said Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"Who said that the aircraft" Free Syrian Army "deliver ammunition and ammunition. Where is the" Free Syrian Army "? Do not fall if it all again as it was in the training of personnel in the hands LIH? Where is the guarantee?" - Putin said at an investment forum "Russia Calling".

"It is only that all this was done, only that it happened just in the United States recognized that action failed, and now just somewhere to throw ammunition and ammunition. This? This is not a rhetorical question," - concluded the president.

Paveway IV

The U.S. oatmeal head's psychopathic plan is, was, and always will be to overthrow Assad.

• Failure #1: To convince enough Syrians to die for the replacement U.S.- and Israeli-puppet Syria. Solution: outsource.
• Failure #2: Rebrand unemployed al Qaeda head-choppers under the al Nusra banner from Iraq. Qatar and Saudi Arabia provided the funding, and Turkey and Jordan the training and staging points. Expect obedience.
• Failure #3: Expecting said head-choppers to share your vision of a free, democratic U.S./Israeli puppet Syria. The head-choppers didn't give a damn about the U.S. plans because they were just going to keep Syria for themselves. But, hey - if the nut-jobs in the U.S. wanted to set them up with training and weapons, why not? Uh... 'moderate' rebels? Yeeaaaahh... that's right. We're 'moderate'. Free, democratic Syria? ...yeah, whatever.
• Failure #4: Give the FSA TOW-2As for their unwinnable war. Al Nusra reaction: how about some TOW-2As for US? No? OK... I guess we'll just convince the FSA that have them that they really need to be in our 'joint opeations room' with the rest of our alliance (or lose their fucking heads). So, yeah... just keep giving TOWs to THEM.
• Failure #5: Expecting the demoralized, crumbling, corrupt FSA left-overs (now effectively Shanghai'd by al Nusra and various other takfiri head-choppers) to make military progress with their criminal amphetamine-crazed, civilian-looting head-chopper buddies. At the same time, even more fanatical head-choppers ISIS evolves and secures a lot of the previous al Nusra funding and arms, pissing off THEM.
• Failure #6: Coming up with the clownishly-stupid plan of USING ISIS to fight Assad since the FSA and al Nusra plan fell to shit. You would simple bomb ISIS if they attacked a non-approved target (al Nusra or the FSA) and steer them to desirec targets (Assad and Syrian infrastructure and oil wells) with ammo, equipment drops and intel. It actually worked for a few months, but ISIS knew what was going on all along. They've grown tired of the game and have plenty of weapons and ammo now (between U.S. airdrops and all the shit they seized whenever they roll over another Syrian army position).
• Failure #7: Keeping ISIS financially strong enough to serve as your third army against Assad: Bomb the shit out of Assad's forces guarding oil and gas installations, then airdrop arms, ammo and equipment to ISIS so they can take them over and sustain their operations through black-market means. At least not as blatant as Iraq, where you transfer several hundred tons of gold to your new central bank in Mosul - days before ISIS simply walks in and takes it without a shot (almost like it was a planned gold transfer to ISIS).
• Failure #8: Failing to anticipate that Putin would do the same thing for now: steer ISIS towards your FSA/head-chopper forces to kill them FOR you. He's done this north of Aleppo and decimated Jabha Shamiya, who is now scurrying back to more al Nusra-safe turf. Putin and Solemani have no plans to enable ISIS long term - just use them for a little short-term al Nusra meat-grinding until they, themselves are annihilated by Syria and allies.
• Failure #9: Failing to understand how quickly the supply lines to Aleppo could be interdicted by a Russian air campaign. It turns out the resolve of both the Aleppo FSA (for a U.S. democratized and freedomized Syria) and the Aleppo head-choppers (for their caliphate) are directly dependent on a continuous supply of amphetamines, USD, weapons and ammo. Interferene with that opposition Wal*Mart drug and explosives logistics network has created quite a bit of consternation in Aleppo. The second in command of the opposition coalition there just quit, head-choppers are leaving for paying jobs and the few FSA left there are heading for Turkey. Aleppo might fall in a matter of weeks, maybe days - without much opposition at all.

More to come. Waaayyy more to come.

ZerOhead

That's a lot of failures even for a completely inept Obama Administration. Too many failures perhaps?

Paveway IV

Not NEARLY enough. The next step of the Oded-Yinon (or whatever the clownfuckery is called) plan calls for a civil war in Turkey (Turks vs. Kurds), partitioning it and splitting off of a corrupt and psychopathic U.S./Israeli-puppet-led unified Kurdish nation. ZATO has hijacked Kurdish nationalism to force an artificial Kurdistan well before it's time.

The purpose isn't to unify Kurds, it's to create a weak and corrupt Kurdish corridor from the Mediterranean to Iran. Guess why? Hint: Israel's U.S.-staffed war with Iran, discount stolen Iraqi oil from Kurdish Iraq for Israel, and the alternative northern route for Qatari gas lines (avoiding Syria altogether).

See how that all works out? Russian soldiers die in Syria to clean up the U.S./Israeli mess they created there. At the same time, the Kurds will lose their long sought-after Kurdish nation to a Ukraine-like Jewish oligarch controlled, chaotic and eternally-squabbling hell-hole of a country (probably eternally at war with the Turkish partition next to them) kept barely alive by stolen Iraqi oil (who will also be trying to kill them).

Psychopathy 101: Manufactured death and destruction is like a welcome mat to come in and fuck over the victims even more.

Poundsand

The hypocrisy is staggering and the entire world knows it. Assad has to go because of what? They say bombing his own people. Yet across the border Erdogan is actually bombing his own people and no one says boo. But I guess duly elected minority representation in a democratic country doesn't really count if you're Kurdish.

The US is losing it's standing in the world and has become a corrupt sheriff in town and don't think that everyone except those here in America don't know it. As our military and moral authority wane, it will be picked up by someone else. It always is because there is nothing new under the sun.

Son of Loki

Neither the Law nor Morality stand in the way of The POTUS!

SofaPapa

Increasingly, even those here in America know it. The US government has minimal popular support for their actions of the past 15 years in the international stage. They are playing with fire both at home and abroad.

McMolotov

The establishment wants Hitlery but is quickly realizing she is likely unelectable. Bernie is a wildcard and uncontrollable, so they need to swing the electorate over to the GOP. Piling on Obama will accomplish just that. After they find a way to torpedo Trump, look for someone like Rubio to become the front-runner.

Elections are nothing more than selections by the power elite at this point, but there still has to be a thin veneer of plausibility to the whole charade.

Squid-puppets a-go-go

lol very good mcmolotov - i think now it is a fulsome measure of the decay and corruption of the american republic that they need such monumental lengths to provide that thin veneer of plausibility to any of the available candidates.

Raging Debate

Obama is a disposable puppet. He reminds me of Ensign Benson, that black extra in Star Trek they send down to that scary, uknown planet. Kirk and Spock go down there afterward.

WillyGroper

PCR's take is O has come to his senses on neoCON fail from that interview.

REALLY? Eye don't think so.

bunnyswanson

USA/Israel having been bombing Syria for years. Why continue now when Russia is on it? Especially since ISIS is Israel stealing land again, gas more specfically. Like O said, why bankrupt your nation for one ally.

Yttrium Gold Nitrogen

By "oatmeal" he (Putin) probably meant Russian "kasha", which when used figuratively means something like "unordered mess", when things are so intermixed as to be indistinguishable from each other. It also can be used to describe a messy, unclear, volatile situation. I believe that correct translation would be "muddleheaded", someone who is unable to think with clarity or act intelligently.

gregga777

For more than two decades the politicians and bureaucrats, holding elected and appointed offices, in Washington have uniformly despised military service and wouldn't be caught dead wearing a real uniform in the U. S. Armed Forces. [They had "better" things to do for their lives than serving in the military, to quote one former V. P.]. They uniformly lack the personal military experience, to create the necessary context needed for understanding, to judge the desirability of diplomacy where the use of military force is the last resort, not the first resort.

kaboomnomic

Don't trust bloomberg words? Use this YT video.

https://youtu.be/OWBbyZ_sjHo

Putin speech in 2011 about ASSMEEREEEKKAAAA intention. And what Russian would do.

https://youtu.be/932K6tZ5Ea4

Putin laugh when idiot german's reporter saying assmeerrreeekkaaa ABM missiles placed in EU are for intercepting Iran's missiles.

https://youtu.be/Lewkw6-d-Wc

Haha.. Hahaha.. Hahahahahahaha...

spyware-free

For those that doubt Qatari gas is not a component (if not the primary reason) for removing Assad we have this from Erdogan...
"Assad, refusing the transit of Qatari gas and becoming a potential competitor in the European market, would have to be be eliminated."

http://fortruss.blogspot.com/2015/10/erdogan-sheds-light-on-syria-blue-f...

That doesn't dismiss Isreal's goals of weakening a regional enemy and grabbing more land as a catalyst as well.

The Indelicate -> spyware-free

Bullshit Bullshit Bullshit.

You don't build a pipeline through a war zone. You certainly don't spend billions in lieu of working around [look at a map]. And the US and Israel are not helping fucking Qatar send gas to Europe. That's Israel's job.

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_gas_field
• http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-10-10/carpe-chaos-isis-israel-iraq-sy...

spyware-free -> The Indelicate

Each regional player has their own motivations behind attacking Assad. Turkey & KSA could care less about Isreal's intentions but the removal of Assad serves all their needs.

The Indelicate ...

"The great danger of faking your ability to do something in the public square is that someone with an actual desire to the job you are pretending to do might come along and show you up." This is what has just happened to the US in Syria with the entrance of Russia into the fight against ISIL. And as is generally the case with posers caught with their pants down, the US policy elites are not happy about it.

You see, the US strategic goal in Syria is not as your faithful mainstream media servants (led by that redoubtable channeler of Neo-Con smokescreens at the NYT Michael Gordon) might have you believe to save the Syrian people from the ravages of the long-standing Assad dictatorship, but rather to heighten the level of internecine conflict in that country to the point where it will not be able to serve as a regional bulwark against Israeli regional hegemony for at least another generation.

How do we know? Because important protagonists in the Israelo-American policy planning elite have advertised the fact with a surprising degree of clarity in documents and public statements issued over the last several decades.

The key here is learning to listen to what our cultural training has not prepared us to hear.

In 1982, as the Likud Party (which is to say, the institutional incarnation of the Revisionist Zionist belief, first articulated by Jabotinsky in the "Iron Wall" that the only way to deal with "the Arabs" in and around Israel was through unrelenting force and the inducement of cultural fragmentation) was consolidating its hold on the foreign policy establishment of Israel, a journalist named Oded Yinon, who had formerly worked at the Israeli Foreign Ministry, published an article in which he outlined the strategic approach his country needed to take in the coming years.

What follows are some excerpts from Israel Shahak's English translation of that text:

"Lebanon's total dissolution into five provinces serves as a precedent for the entire Arab world including Egypt, Syria, Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula and is already following that track. The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unique areas such as in Lebanon, is Israel's primary target on the Eastern front in the long run, while the dissolution of the military power of those states serves as the primary short term target. Syria will fall apart, in accordance with its ethnic and religious structure, into several states such as in present day Lebanon…."

{continues}

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/10/10/us-russia-syria-problem-fak...

IndianaJohn

Indelicate, -- that's really quite a load of indelicate deceit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFE0qAiofMQ

justdues

Indelicate, look at his youtube , no need for sarc you,re on the same page

jtg

"Oatmeal in their heads", an apt description of the 'indispensable and exceptional' lunatics in the West. Why is it that to find a clear thinking leader I have to listen to Putin? Why is it that the West is now the axis of evil?

The Indelicate ...

he didn't literally say oatmeal - he basically said 'mush for brains'. Of course, he's calling them stupid, but he knows they are deliberately evil. But it is easier to fool people about America the white knight than it is to convince them they've been fooled. No matter how much evidence there is that this war was planned long ago.

• http://www.globalresearch.ca/we-re-going-to-take-out-7-countries-in-5-ye...
• http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=western_support_for_islam...
• http://www.hangthebankers.com/world-war-3-why-russia-and-syria-are-being...

css1971

Actually you often find that evil people are also stupid. Psychopaths are not generally noted for their intelligence. They're often charming, manipulative and great liars with enormous egos, but intelligent is not a requirement. Which is a problem where you have an electoral and corporate governance systems which consistently puts people who are narcissists and socialized psychopaths into positions of power. They don't have the real intellectual horsepower to do the job, though of course they think they do, and often their sycophants do also.

The Indelicate ...

'Psychopaths are not generally noted for their intelligence.'

But serial killers are.

http://allnewspipeline.com/Putin_Rips_Obama_NATO_West.php

[Oct 13, 2015] Hillary Clintons private server was open to low-skilled-hackers

Notable quotes:

"... " That's total amateur hour. Real enterprise-class security, with teams dedicated to these things, would not do this" -- ..."

"... The government and security firms have published warnings about allowing this kind of remote access to Clinton's server. The same software was targeted by an infectious Internet worm, known as Morta, which exploited weak passwords to break into servers. The software also was known to be vulnerable to brute-force attacks that tried password combinations until hackers broke in, and in some cases it could be tricked into revealing sensitive details about a server to help hackers formulate attacks. ..."

"... Also in 2012, the State Department had outlawed use of remote-access software for its technology officials to maintain unclassified servers without a waiver. It had banned all instances of remotely connecting to classified servers or servers located overseas. ..."

"... The findings suggest Clinton's server 'violates the most basic network-perimeter security tenets: Don't expose insecure services to the Internet,' said Justin Harvey, the chief security officer for Fidelis Cybersecurity. ..."

"... The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology, the federal government's guiding agency on computer technology, warned in 2008 that exposed server ports were security risks. It said remote-control programs should only be used in conjunction with encryption tunnels, such as secure VPN connections. ..."

Daily Mail Online

Investigation by the Associated Press reveals that the clintonemail.com server lacked basic protections

• Microsoft remote desktop service she used was not intended for use without additional safety features - but had none
• Government and computer industry had warned at the time that such set-ups could be hacked - but nothing was done to make server safer
• President this weekend denied national security had been put at risk by his secretary of state but FBI probe is still under way

... ... ...

Clinton's server, which handled her personal and State Department correspondence, appeared to allow users to connect openly over the Internet to control it remotely, according to detailed records compiled in 2012.

Experts said the Microsoft remote desktop service wasn't intended for such use without additional protective measures, and was the subject of U.S. government and industry warnings at the time over attacks from even low-skilled intruders.

.... ... ...

Records show that Clinton additionally operated two more devices on her home network in Chappaqua, New York, that also were directly accessible from the Internet.

" That's total amateur hour. Real enterprise-class security, with teams dedicated to these things, would not do this" -- Marc Maiffret, cyber security expert

• One contained similar remote-control software that also has suffered from security vulnerabilities, known as Virtual Network Computing, and the other appeared to be configured to run websites.
• The new details provide the first clues about how Clinton's computer, running Microsoft's server software, was set up and protected when she used it exclusively over four years as secretary of state for all work messages.
• Clinton's privately paid technology adviser, Bryan Pagliano, has declined to answer questions about his work from congressional investigators, citing the U.S. Constitution's Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination.
• Some emails on Clinton's server were later deemed top secret, and scores of others included confidential or sensitive information.
• Clinton has said that her server featured 'numerous safeguards,' but she has yet to explain how well her system was secured and whether, or how frequently, security updates were applied.

'That's total amateur hour,' said Marc Maiffret, who has founded two cyber security companies. He said permitting remote-access connections directly over the Internet would be the result of someone choosing convenience over security or failing to understand the risks. 'Real enterprise-class security, with teams dedicated to these things, would not do this,' he said.

The government and security firms have published warnings about allowing this kind of remote access to Clinton's server. The same software was targeted by an infectious Internet worm, known as Morta, which exploited weak passwords to break into servers. The software also was known to be vulnerable to brute-force attacks that tried password combinations until hackers broke in, and in some cases it could be tricked into revealing sensitive details about a server to help hackers formulate attacks.

'An attacker with a low skill level would be able to exploit this vulnerability,' said the Homeland Security Department's U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team in 2012, the same year Clinton's server was scanned.

Also in 2012, the State Department had outlawed use of remote-access software for its technology officials to maintain unclassified servers without a waiver. It had banned all instances of remotely connecting to classified servers or servers located overseas.

The findings suggest Clinton's server 'violates the most basic network-perimeter security tenets: Don't expose insecure services to the Internet,' said Justin Harvey, the chief security officer for Fidelis Cybersecurity.

Clinton's email server at one point also was operating software necessary to publish websites, although it was not believed to have been used for this purpose.

Traditional security practices dictate shutting off all a server's unnecessary functions to prevent hackers from exploiting design flaws in them.

In Clinton's case, Internet addresses the AP traced to her home in Chappaqua revealed open ports on three devices, including her email system.

Each numbered port is commonly, but not always uniquely, associated with specific features or functions. The AP in March was first to discover Clinton's use of a private email server and trace it to her home.

Mikko Hypponen, the chief research officer at F-Secure, a top global computer security firm, said it was unclear how Clinton's server was configured, but an out-of-the-box installation of remote desktop would have been vulnerable.

Those risks - such as giving hackers a chance to run malicious software on her machine - were 'clearly serious' and could have allowed snoops to deploy so-called 'back doors.'

The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology, the federal government's guiding agency on computer technology, warned in 2008 that exposed server ports were security risks.

It said remote-control programs should only be used in conjunction with encryption tunnels, such as secure VPN connections.

[Oct 13, 2015] MH17 Report Reveals Shocking Details of Jet's Last Moments

Notable quotes:

"... Investigators estimated it took the center and rear parts of the airplane 60 to 90 seconds to reach the ground after the blast. Other, lighter parts would have taken longer, the report said. ..."

Oct 13, 2015 | www.nbcnews.com

The warhead - launched 33,000 feet below in the Ukrainian countryside - exploded less than one yard from the aircraft's cockpit, the Dutch report said.

A split-second later, hundreds of "high-energy" fragments pierced the fuselage and the shrapnel instantly killed the two pilots and one crew member inside.

There was no mayday call or attempt to maneuver, the report noted. The cockpit voice recorder stopped abruptly at the point of impact.

Image: Dutch Safety Board Issue Their Findings On The MH17 Air Disaster

The explosion also caused the cockpit to instantly separate from the rest of the aircraft. After that "instantaneous separation," the rest of the plane continued to fly for more than five miles before breaking into further pieces, according to the report.

The center part of the airliner traveled beyond the rear section and came to rest upside down after hitting the ground. "Parts of the wreckage caught fire," the report added.

Investigators estimated it took the center and rear parts of the airplane 60 to 90 seconds to reach the ground after the blast. "Other, lighter parts would have taken longer," the report said.

The debris field was more than 20 square miles.

... ... ...

Investigators used paint to trace the missile

Ukraine and its Western allies have long alleged that pro-Russian rebels fighting in eastern Ukraine brought down MH17 using a Russian-made missile system - a claim Moscow staunchly denies. While Tuesday's report apportioned no blame, it was the first confirmation that the airliner was shot down using the BUK missile launcher - a Russian-made system.

Investigators came to this conclusion by analyzing a number of minute details.

A 2.3-millisecond noise was recorded on the cockpit's voice recorders before the system stopped working. By triangulating the signal, experts were able to show that it originated outside the aircraft.

Their conclusion was also based on "bow-tie"-shaped fragments found inside the bodies of the flight's crew members that were consistent with a 9N314M missile launched as part of the BUK system.

The Dutch team that compiled the report also based this conclusion on "explosive residues and paint" that were found on some of the fragments

[Oct 13, 2015] What's a Buk What to Know About the Cold War Missile That Downed MH17

Oct 13, 2015 ] NBC News

The Dutch board's Tuesday announcement followed a report by Buk's Russian manufacturer, Almaz-Antey, that contradicted the findings. The company said the damage patterns on MH17 did not match those it found in its own blast tests, Reuters reported.

A Critique of Crisis Theory

Germany and the U.S. Empire (Pt. 1)

The Volkswagen scandal

... ... ...

Above all, it is quite in accordance with the nature of competition between capitalist nation-states. An important function of a capitalist nation-state is to put its own capitalists in the best possible position relative to rivals headquartered in rival nation-states. A little less than 70 years ago-within the lifetime of many people still living-the efforts of the U.S. to curb Germany's competitive threat to U.S. industry took the form of open shooting warfare that ended with the U.S. invasion and occupation of Germany. That occupation has never really ended.

... ... ...

This is confirmed in an article by Associated Press writer Michael Biesecker on Sept. 29, who reveals that Volkswagen's crime is actually a rather common practice in the automobile industry: "Almost since the passage of the Clean Air Act in 1970, major manufacturers of cars, trucks and heavy equipment have been busted for using what regulators call 'defeat devices'-typically programing a vehicle's on-board computer to boost horsepower or fuel mileage by belching out dirtier exhaust than allowed."

Biesecker reports further, "Complying with clean air regulations can add thousands of dollars to a vehicle's sticker price while diminishing the driving performance that customers demand." He quotes Donald Stedman, a University of Denver chemistry professor who specializes in testing the real-world emissions of cars and trucks: "Every car company has an incentive to do this. Some of them get caught."

In the light of these facts, as well as the continuing stubborn "secular stagnation" afflicting the world economy and Germany's remarkable growth in exports, there is more than a little reason to suspect that the EPA's exposure of Volkswagen emissions cheating and the accompanying press campaign is motivated by something other than concern about the environment. At the very least, we should demand that the source code of the software of all automobile manufacturers be made public immediately!

How Germany is exporting depression conditions to its competitors

In his blog dated July 17, 2015, our fellow economic blogger-and former chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System-Ben Bernanke complained that Germany has been in effect exporting mass unemployment and depression. Now, the chairperson of the Board of Governors is one of the most powerful positions in the world. Nobody who is not closely connected to and enjoys the confidence of the most powerful U.S. capitalists is seriously considered for the job. So we can assume that Bernanke's blog posts reflect the views of a considerable section of the U.S. capitalist class.

In a piece entitled "Europe and Greece: Is Europe holding up its end of the bargain?" Bernanke takes note of the "unevenness in economic outcomes among countries within the euro zone." (2) "What is a problem, however," Bernanke explains, is not simply the unevenness of economic outcomes but that "Germany has effectively chosen to rely on foreign rather than domestic demand to ensure full employment at home, as shown in its extraordinarily large and persistent trade surplus, currently almost 7.5 percent of the country's GDP."

Translating from the language of the professional economist, Germany is exporting itself out of the depression that surrounds it. Instead of generating demand at home, Bernanke complains, Germany is taking markets away from the capitalists of other countries. "Within a fixed-exchange-rate system like the euro currency area," Bernanke writes, "such persistent imbalances are unhealthy, reducing demand and growth in trading partners and generating potentially destabilizing financial flows."

In fact, this is true whether exchange rates are fixed or floating, or as in this case trade is within a common currency area where there are no exchange rates at all. As we saw last month, global demand is at any given point in time fixed, which means that the larger the share of the world market of one capitalist nation the smaller the share of other nations. Only if the market is so robust that all countries can sell their entire potential product at least at the price of production will this not be the case.(3) Under the capitalist mode of production, this rarely happens and it is certainly not the case today.

In addition, for relations between them to be non-antagonistic, participants in the world market would have to be guaranteed to grow in step with the rising productive capacities of the nations engaged in capitalist production so they could continue to sell their rising output at their production prices. Though professional economists, relying on such theories as Say's law, the quantity theory of money and the so-called law of comparative advantage, claim this to be true, as I have explained throughout this blog this is not and cannot be the case under the capitalist mode of production.

According to Bernanke-if you leave Germany out-the unemployment rate in Europe taken as a whole exceeds 13 percent, based on the usual methods of capitalist governments, which greatly understate the problem. Therefore, Europe as a whole, excluding Germany, remains bogged down in a chronic depression and accompanying mass unemployment crisis that shows no signs of ending.

In Germany, however, the official rate of unemployment is below 5 percent. That is even lower than the "low" unemployment rate reported for the U.S. economy. The point is not that there is really "full employment" in Germany, but that unemployment is considerably lower there than in most of the rest of Europe. This is confirmed by the current refugee crisis caused by a combination of U.S.-incited wars and grim economic conditions throughout North Africa and the Middle East, now further aggravated by the low price of oil.

... ... ...

Bernanke's complaint against the German industrial capitalists is an old one for Germany's competitors. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Germany was doing exactly the same thing. Pre-World War I recessions were relatively brief and mild in Germany because Germany was able to export itself out of them at the expense of its capitalist competitors. Indeed, from the 1880s until the coming of the "Great War" in August 1914, Germany experienced no major economic crises.

The rapid growth of German industry fueled the growth of the classic German Social Democracy and made possible the financing of Germany's pioneering "welfare state." This convinced many of the German Social Democratic and trade union leaders that prosperity, at least for Germany, was permanent. Therefore, they reasoned, German capitalism would gradually evolve into something that could be called a socialist society without any major disruptions, not to speak of revolutions. What they didn't reckon with was the fact that Germany's competitors, which were coming up second best in the economic competition, were not going to stand idly by while the German capitalists stripped them of more and more of their markets.

Britain, which had been the strongest industrial power since the industrial revolution of the late 18th century, was particularly alarmed by Germany's growing industrial power. It responded by forming alliances with France and czarist Russia in an attempt to contain Germany. The result was the Great War and the horrors that flowed directly from it, which included the Great Depression of the 1930s and the rise to power of fascism in Germany. Now it seems that history is beginning to repeat itself, at least on the economic plane.

"Nobody," Bernanke writes, "is suggesting that the well-known efficiency and quality of German production are anything other than good things, or that German firms should not strive to compete in export markets." But you can almost hear Bernanke mumble, but why do the Germans have to be so much better at producing such high-quality products more cheaply than anybody else, and who won the last two world wars anyway.

... ... ...

­Zetsche's remarks tell us a lot about the relationship of forces in today's imperialist-dominated world. First, it shows that despite the tremendous progress China has made since the victory of its great people's revolution of 1949, it remains very much an exploited nation. Foxconn is owned by Chinese capitalists based not on the mainland ruled by the People's Republic of China-though they carry out their production there-but rather in Taiwan, a part of China still effectively controlled by the United States. (4)

This shows that even in the political sense the liberation of China from imperialist dismemberment is incomplete and won't be complete until Taiwan, and Hong Kong as well, are fully integrated into the People's Republic of China. The nature of the political social, and economic institutions of the future fully united China is the business of the Chinese people themselves and not of the imperialists, or for that matter well-meaning Western leftists who believe they "know" what is best for the Chinese people. Zetsche's observations should also put to rest claims that today's China is the new imperialist superpower ready to impose its rule over our planet.

The main theme of this blog is crisis theory, but a secondary theme has been the rise and development of the U.S. world empire, whose realm-or "reich" in German-has spread throughout the world. This is the real reich we have to deal with today and not an imaginary reich where Germany won World War II and the swastika flag flies over the White House. (5)

As we have explained in earlier posts, the American empire has an inner and outer core. The realm-or reich-of the dollar is the globe. No country, not even Cuba or North Korea, can escape the dollar's reich. When the Open Market Committee of the U.S. Federal Reserve System meets, all countries hold their breath. There is also the smaller empire of NATO and its allied institutions such as the U.S.-Japan Security Agreement and the "special relationship" with Israel.

The U.S. empire is increasingly moving to merge these auxiliary alliances into the structure of NATO. When I say NATO, I mean unless otherwise noted NATO plus these auxiliary alliances. All NATO countries, as defined here, are under the effective military control of the United States. While the governments of these countries are more than puppet governments, they are unable to take major decisions involving peace and war without the approval of the government of the United States.

A recent example is the decision of the U.S. government to gradually lift the economic blockade of Iran in exchange for Iran reaffirming its decision not to produce nuclear weapons, accepting restrictions on its civilian nuclear energy program, and agreeing to inspections. Despite Israel's strong objections to this agreement, and Netanyahu's direct appeal to the U.S. Congress, the agreement is going ahead.

Another example is the decision of the U.S. to impose sanctions on Russia over the Ukrainian crisis. Though it is obvious the governments of most of the West European countries, especially the German government, are not enthusiastic about these sanctions, which hurt their own capitalists, they cannot override Washington's decision. Within "the NATO reich," these subordinate countries have what amounts to consultative votes while Washington alone has a decisive vote.

The civilian governments of the NATO countries-again broadly defined-lack full control over their armed forces and face ouster if they defy the will of the Empire in any matter that the U.S. government considers vital. This situation has long been the case with many Latin American countries, even before the rise of the modern NATO. Latin American countries have a long history of military coups that have ousted many a government that has defied the will of Washington. In more recent years, Washington has used the coup weapon more sparingly in the face of growing mass resistance to U.S. domination, but many a Latin American government knows very well that a pro-U.S. military is looking over their shoulders. This fact limits how far these governments can go in following policies that Washington does not approve of.

This situation, largely limited to Latin American counties before World War II, now includes all the NATO countries of both Western and Eastern Europe, Japan, some former Soviet republics, and not least Germany. The former Soviet Republic of Georgia-Stalin's homeland-and now the Ukraine are de facto members, though not formally members of NATO. However, NATO does not include Russia, the largest of the former Soviet Republics, nor does it include the government of the former Soviet republic of Belarus.

... ... ...

For now, however, the U.S. keeps tight control over the military forces of the other NATO countries, especially those of Japan and Germany. It is no accident that the main opponents of the U.S. in World War II are thoroughly networked with U.S. military bases. In addition, thanks to the bravery of Edward Snowden, we know that Germany is under intense NSA surveillance, including the mobile phone of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Despite their alleged "friendship" and alliance, there is no trust and no true friendship and there never can be between rival imperialist robber states. However, as long as the military spending of Germany and other European countries, as well as Japan, remains low relative to U.S. spending, their capitalists can convert more of their profits into new productive capital than the U.S capitalists can. This puts the U.S. industrial capitalists at a disadvantage in the struggle for the scarce consumer dollar.

The U.S., therefore, wants the other imperialist countries-especially Germany and Japan-to convert some their profits instead into means of destruction. To the extent this happens, the capitalist development of such dangerous economic competitors as Germany and Japan is slowed down allowing U.S. corporations to convert more of their profits into means of production, thus improving their competitive position relative to the Germans and Japanese while the U.S. remains in overall control of the Empire's military forces. It has the further advantage for the U.S. government that it faces less domestic opposition to colonial wars to the extent German and Japanese solders do more of the fighting.

The government of Japan has just agreed to revise its U.S.-imposed "peace constitution" to enable the Japanese government not to fight wars in its own interest against the U.S. but rather fight wars beside the United States, much like German forces fought under the command of the U.S.-dominated reich against Yugoslavia in the 1990s and more recently in Afghanistan.

This is a very dangerous development, especially in light of moves by the U.S. to encircle China, which are all too reminiscent of Britain's attempts to encircle Germany before 1914. We all know how that turned out.

After World War II, the United States was determined to bring all the imperialist countries under its military control-first the defeated Axis powers of Germany, Japan and Italy and then increasingly its "victorious allies," Britain and France, through the NATO alliance.

NATO proper increasingly includes not only the imperialist countries but oppressed countries. The first such country to be granted formal membership was Turkey, which has special importance because of its control of the Dardanelles, linking the Black Sea with the Mediterranean Sea. The Empire's control of the Mediterranean would be seriously undermined if Turkey were to escape clutches of NATO.

Israel, today's "white colony" of the U.S. and an unofficial NATO member also plays an important role in the Empire's control of the Mediterranean.

At the end of the Cold War, the newly capitalist oppressed countries of Eastern Europe were signed up as formal NATO members, violating the meaningless assurances that George H.W. Bush gave to Gorbachev that NATO would not expand eastward. In fact, NATO has been expanding ever deeper into what was the Soviet Union. NATO's most recent addition, though so far unofficially, is the grain and natural gas-rich Ukraine-minus Crimea and so far the Peoples Republics of largely Russian-speaking Donetsk and Lugansk. This fact is important because Washington and its NATO satellites are not obliged by treaty obligations to automatically defend the Kiev junta under the doctrine that an attack on one NATO member is an attack on all NATO members.

If, however, Ukraine becomes an official NATO member, this would not be the case. Fortunately, there is still time to fight the Kiev's junta's attempt to become an official member of NATO. If Kiev does achieve this goal, the chances of a shooting war at some point between the United States and its NATO satellites (including Germany) and Russia would rise considerably.

How NATO works

NATO formally came into existence in 1949, but its real origins can be traced back to the D-Day of the invasion by the United States and Britain of Nazi Germany-dominated Europe on June 6, 1944. As the U.S.-British forces advanced eastward across France and into Germany, all of Europe west of the advancing Soviet army fell under the domination of proto-NATO. However, the growing proto-NATO empire came to a halt on a line drawn by the Soviet army, which was advancing on Berlin from the east.

As NATO was formalized after World War II, its members were given a voice in its decision-making, but it is the U.S. government that ultimately decides. An example of this came in 1990 as the wave of counterrevolutions swept Eastern Europe and what was soon to be the former Soviet Union. The Socialist Unity Party (SED) government that had ruled the German Democratic Republic-East Germany-had been overthrown with the direct assistance of the Gorbachev regime. No realistic observer at the time had any doubt that the overthrow of the SED would mean the restoration of capitalism in the GDR. But the question remained, would the German Democratic Republic continue to exist as a third German state alongside the Federal Republic of Germany-West Germany-and Austria, or would it be merged with the Federal Republic of Germany in a united Germany-excluding Austria?

France was opposed to the merger of the GDR and the Federal Republic of Germany. It wanted to keep Germany as weak as possible, both as an economic competitor and a potential military enemy. But the final decision was Washington's. It decided to give the green light to the merger of the GDR with the Federal Republic of Germany.

But the U.S. insisted that the new united Germany would have to be a member of NATO. The Warsaw Pact, the answer of the European socialist countries to NATO, was to be dissolved as NATO was extended. France had no alternative but to agree-unless it wanted to go to war with Germany and the United States and with the other NATO countries. And that, of course, was out of the question.

When Washington agreed to the Federal Republic swallowing the German Democratic Republic, Washington insisted that the Federal Republic in exchange had to drop its demands for the return of its lost eastern territories, mostly in Poland, that had been part of Germany before World War II.

Indeed, if you look at the map of present-day Germany, you find that its capital, Berlin, is not more or less in the center of the country like it was before 1914 but in the far east of Germany almost tucked up against the Polish border. But Poland, just like Germany and France, is now part of NATO. As long as NATO lasts, this means that if Germany wants to get back the territories it lost to Poland, it would have to either get Washington's permission or go to war not only with Poland but with NATO as a whole, including the United States. This, at least, given the current balance of forces is not feasible. Washington as the master of NATO therefore emerges as Poland's protector from an economically resurgent but NATO-constrained Germany.

Farther east, a similar situation is emerging. In 1939, as part of the short-lived non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, the non-Polish territories that Poland had taken from the Ukraine and Belorussians as a result of the Versailles Treaty and the Soviet-Polish war of 1920 were to become part of the Ukrainian and Belorussian republics, then part of the Soviet Union. Today, Warsaw is looking eastward, and we can assume some in Poland would like to get back Poland's lost territories in Ukraine and Belarus. But as Ukraine is now being integrated into NATO, Poland will not be able to get these territories unless Washington agrees or Poland is prepared to go to war with the U.S. and NATO. Just like Poland enjoys Washington's protection from its fellow NATO member Germany, the Ukraine as a de facto member of NATO in turn "enjoys" Washington's protection from NATO member Poland

... ... ...

The countries that remain outside of NATO's grasp, including the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China, are forced to participate in such Washington-controlled organizations as the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund. Recently, the non-NATO countries led by the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) have created parallel organizations to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. However, so far there are no moves to create parallels to the the U.S. dollar, and above all, there is no move to create a parallel military alliance that could stand up to NATO. As a result, the BRICS countries are obliged to remain members of the WTO.

All WTO members have to give up key elements of their sovereignty such as what tariff policy they can follow and, very importantly, their control over patents and copyrights, including software copyrights. This allows U.S. corporations to sue companies in other countries on the ground that they are violating intellectual property rights. For example, Apple recently sued the South Korean-based Samsung, claiming that Samsung smart-phones violated Apple's patents. Not surprisingly, the U.S. federal jury found in favor of Apple's claims.

When such lawsuits are filed, a U.S. jury-an organ of the state-decides whether or not a foreign company can or cannot produce a given commodity and how much money the foreign company is obliged to pay the U.S. company if it is found to be in violation of the U.S. company's "intellectual property."

... ... ...

Countries outside of NATO and its unofficial extensions have considerably more room to resist the control of their industrial production by the U.S. state. For example, South Korea is very much a U.S. neo-colony notwithstanding its considerable degree of industrialization. It is in no position to seriously resist U.S. government control of their production in the profit interests of U.S. corporations. They are largely forced to defend their interests in U.S. courts, where they are at a considerable disadvantage.

The People's Republic of China, in contrast, stands outside of NATO. The U.S. press periodically runs articles complaining that Chinese companies are "counterfeiting" Apple's iPhones and other iThings. As we know, Apple's "legal products" are also assembled in China, but it seems that this does not give Chinese capitalists the right to compete with Apple in the spirit of free competition.

These reporters have apparently forgotten their Adam Smith. The great classical Scottish economist explained that all that keeps the individual capitalist honest and prices anywhere near their "natural price"-price of production-is the ability of other competing capitalists to manufacture and sell competing products. This is why Smith advised the government to stay out of the business of telling individual capitalists what commodities they are not allowed to produce and sell.

What would the old Scottish economist have thought of the concept of "counterfeit products"? He no doubt would have explained that there is quite a difference between the economic effects of counterfeiting currency and freely producing commodities of a given use value! If a commodity is "counterfeited" as a result of free competition, he would have explained, its "value in use" is in no way impaired. Instead, the profit rates of the capitalists engaged in producing it are reduced to more or less the average rate. He further explained that this was a very good thing. If paper currency, in contrast, is freely counterfeited, its "value in use"-to represent money in circulation-is destroyed. That, of course, is a very bad thing.

Adam Smith's principles are far more respected in the People's Republic China these days than in the U.S. This shows that capitalism is not yet as outlived in China as it is in the U.S. The U.S. and the U.S. media take for granted not only the fact that the government can tell the capitalists what they are and are not allowed to produce and sell but that the U.S. state-and its organs like U.S. juries-can tell the capitalists of any other country in the world what they are allowed and not allowed to produce.

In this way, the principle of the national sovereignty of other countries is violated as well as the basic principles of "perfect liberty," as Adam Smith called free competition. However, even China as far I know would not allow any of its industrial capitalists to produce and sell a Hackintosh, not even for domestic consumption on the home market and certainly not for export. The U.S. government-dominated WTO will not allow Adam Smith-style free enterprise to be fully practiced in the People's Republic of China-or anywhere else. Free enterprise is the American Way, but super-profits are what the game is all about.

The unique evils of the Third Reich

More than 70 years have passed since Adolf Hitler committed suicide in a Berlin bunker to avoid capture by the Soviet forces fighting their way into central Berlin, or what was left of it. Two generations of imperialist propaganda have mystified the reality of the Third Reich. Nowadays, the policy of Hitler's government of killing every Jewish man, women and child has been emphasized at the expense of all the other features of the Third Reich. Worse, it is done in a way to justify the establishment of apartheid Israel.

As a result, younger people who are finding out that the imperialists lie about practically everything may suspect that they are lying about Nazi Germany to justify Israel's crimes against the Palestinian people. There is, however, no doubt whatsoever that Hitler's policy of killing every Jewish man, women, child, and baby is a crime unique in history-"Jewish" defined in terms of race and not religious belief. Atheist and Christian "Jews" were defined as "racial" Jews by the laws of the Third Reich. This crime must never be forgotten or trivialized by making false analogies.

The U.S. government and media are guilty of constantly trivializing the crimes of the Third Reich-which included not only those against Jewish people-whenever U.S. imperialism attacks an independent country and its leader is equated to Hitler. Young people who are taught relatively little about European history and are learning to distrust with good reason the history they are taught are encouraged to draw the conclusion that perhaps Adolf Hitler was not really that bad. Perhaps, they think, Hitler's only real crime was that he opposed the drive to world domination by the United States in the interest of his country, much like was the case with Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, or Syrian President Bashar al-Assad today.

Particularly outrageous is the growing tendency of Anglo-American professors of history to group Hitler with China's Mao Zedong as examples of the most evil dictators in world history. (9) These professors, "historians," and journalists should be called to order by all who care about the truth of what really happened in the 20th century. Such comparisons are, of course, deeply offensive to the people of China. You would think the leaders of Jewish organizations would feel the same way. But unfortunately the official leaders of the Jewish world are so committed to Zionism and defending the crimes of the state of Israel against the Palestinian people that they allow these outrageous comparisons between Mao and Hitler to pass as though it was the most natural thing in the world.

Bad as were the crimes of the Third Reich against the Jewish people, the Roma people-the so-called "gypsies"-homosexuals, and people with disabilities, they form only a part of its crimes. A central feature of fascism in general and German fascism-so-called National Socialism-in particular-is its hostility to all forms of organization of the working class. The Nazis were determined to destroy all forms of "Marxism." In Nazi terminology, this referred to both Social Democrats and "Bolshevism"-the Communist movement. They even abolished the anti-Marxist Catholic trade union movement.

It is easy to see why this aspect of the Third Reich is played down or more often ignored altogether nowadays. Unlike the case during the Cold War, the media largely ignores the trade union movement today. And when they do mention it, they treat it as a marginal remnant of the past with no future. Yet those who have studied the real history of the Third Reich know that before Jews were being thrown into concentration camps, not to speak of death camps, Communists to be followed by Social Democrats and trade union leaders were. Only after the workers' movement was smashed in Germany were the Jews and other victims rounded up and murdered in the death camps.

For this reason, I will examine the Third Reich and the circumstances both economic and political that led to its rise and fall. In what ways did Hitler's German empire resemble the other imperialist empires of Britain, France, Belgium and the present U.S. global empire and in what ways was it truly unique?

Of special interest is the role the Third Reich played in the rise of the present-day reich-the U.S. world empire.

_______

1 Volkswagen was founded in Nazi Germany by the Nazis in 1937. In a future post that will examine the nature of Nazi Germany, I will examine how and why this company came into being. The main problem with Volkswagen today, however, is not that it was founded by Nazis who are now long dead, but rather that it is a profit-driven corporation whose aim is to make a super-profit above and beyond the average rate of profit, just as all the other capitalist automobile companies are. (back)

2 Lenin stressed in his pamphlet "Imperialism" that uneven development is one of the most important characteristics of capitalism. It is interesting to see the former chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve System-and our fellow blogger, the Republican Ben Bernanke-confirming Lenin on this point. (back)

3 The price of production, or production price for short, is the price that enables capitalists to realize the average rate of profit on their-or its, in the case of a corporation-total advanced capital. (back)

4 Taiwan was a part of China for centuries but was seized by Japan in 1895. The population of the island is overwhelmingly Han Chinese. It was returned to China in 1945 as a result of Japan's defeat in World War II. In 1949, the KMT-founded as a bourgeois nationalist party by China's first president, Sun Yat-sen-and headed by Chiang Kai-shek after Sun's death-were driven off the mainland and withdrew to Taiwan. There they continued to rule under U.S. protection as the "Republic of China."

During the Cold War, the U.S. media referred to the Chiang regime as "free China" or "nationalist China," while the People's Republic of China was referred to as "Red China." Chiang's regime continued to "represent" China in the U.N. until 1971. In the early 1970s, as the first steps toward normalized relations between the People's Republic of China and the United States were underway, the U.S. media dropped the term "Red China" and began to refer to China by its proper name the "People's Republic of China" or simply "mainland China"-or when they want to induce a feeling of hostility to China as "Communist China." The term "Red China" is no longer used.

The term "free China" or "nationalist China" has also disappeared from the U.S. media to be replaced by "Taiwan," which is treated as a separate country, though the government on Taiwan still calls itself the "Republic of China." The U.S. has encouraged the growth of a "pro-independence" party on Taiwan that claims that Taiwan is a separate country. The People's Republic of China insists that Taiwan is very much a part of China-a position also supported by the KMT.

The People's Republic of China hopes that peaceful reunification will occur in the future. However, it reserves the right to use force if peaceful means to bring about the reunification of China fail. Beijing's policy has since the days of Mao Zedong been to wait until China's rising military power obliges the U.S. to recognize in practice that Taiwan is indeed a part of China. At that point, Beijing hopes that a peaceful reunification of Taiwan with the rest of China will occur.

The U.S. for its part does not actually say it will and is not obliged by any treaty to defend Taiwan's "independence" in the event of armed conflict with the People's Republic of China. But it has hinted it might go to war to defend the "independence" of Taiwan. This is a brazen violation of China's right to self-determination and is one of the ways, though not the only one, that a shooting war could erupt between China and the U.S. (back)

5 Would a victory by Nazi Germany have resulted in the swastika flag of the Third Reich flying over the White House? A victory by the Nazis might well have occurred if bourgeois forces socially and politically analogous to those represented by Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin had taken over the USSR not in the 1980s, as occurred in real history, but rather in the 1930s and 1940s. I will examine this interesting question in the coming post that will examine the economics and politics of the Third Reich. (back)

6 An example of the growing instability of the dollar system is the current global economic slowdown-including the failure of U.S. industrial production to increase this year for the first time since the end of the Great Recession, despite strong auto sales and a recovering residential housing market. The immediate cause of this slowdown is the U.S. Federal Reserve Board's decision to end "quantitative easing." The Federal Reserve knows that if it resumes the quantitative easing policy, sooner or later a run on the dollar will occur that would put into question the continued rule of the "dollar reich" over the international monetary system and with it the "NATO reich" that the dollar reich finances. (back)

7 The danger that a local war can be transformed into a general war through alliances is illustrated by the events of 1914. The war began as a local war between Austria and Serbia. Germany came to the aid of its ally Austria. Russia then declared war on Germany and invaded Germany-with disastrous results for Russia-in an attempt to help its ally Serbia. Republican France then declared war on Germany in a move to protect its ally czarist Russia. And Britain then declared war on Germany in order to defend its allies Belgium, France and Russia. (back)

8 U.S. liberals-not to be confused with economic liberals-distinguish themselves from conservatives by advocating a larger role for government in the economy. U.S. conservatives, in contrast, are supposed to want to hold government intervention in the economy to a minimum.

But not all government intervention in a capitalist economy is progressive. Outlawing Hackintosh's in the interest of preserving Apple's super-profits is an example of a thoroughly reactionary form of state intervention. State intervention under capitalism can be progressive if it enables the productive forces to develop or at least be sustained. Similarly, state intervention that limits the workday, for example, is also progressive. But it can't be said that intervention by government is good in and of itself anymore than it can be said that it is always bad in and of itself. It all depends on the concrete circumstances. (back)

9 Just to name one these differences, Hitler fought a war of conquest against most of the other European nations, leading to the death of tens of millions of people. Mao fought a war for the liberation and unification of China. Perhaps only a professor who is a resident of a country whose territory has not been invaded by a foreign power for centuries can overlook this "tiny" difference between Hitler and Mao. There are many other differences as well, but this is not the place to list them since if I did I would have to write a large volume and not a footnote.

[Oct 13, 2015] MH17 Downed by Missile Fired from Kiev-Controlled Territory – BUK Manufacturer

If those two statement "missile exploded 20 meters above portside area of engine" and "explosion was on portside not starboard side of plane, as Dutch probe claims" are true, then it looks like Dutch report is more of the result of political pressure ( justification of Russian sanctions) then an independent investigation.

Moscow Exile, October 13, 2015 at 3:56 am

BREAKING NEWS: MH17 Downed by Missile Fired from Kiev-Controlled Territory – BUK Manufacturer

Contradictory findings to the Dutch probe

• – MH17 was downed by a missile fired from Kiev-controlled territory
• – missile exploded 20 meters above portside area of engine
• – explosion was on portside not starboard side of plane, as Dutch probe claims
• – missile was an older version than previously thought because of the shape of the shrapnel holes found in the fuselage
• – Dutch probe shows two types of strike elements, but there were three
• – BUK is ready to give their probe's conclusion to European courts

Dutch probe findings will be released within the next few hours, stay tuned.

Moscow Exile , October 13, 2015 at 4:10 am

Выводы экспертизы "Алмаз-Антей": "Боинг" под Донбассом был сбит ракетой, которой нет на вооружении России

Full video of Almaz-Antei experiment:

watch-v=VREtudlZeHs

[Oct 13, 2015] What happened to Carlos the air traffic controller who sent word about military interference at ATC

"... and what happened to Carlos the air traffic controller who sent word about military interference at ATC? ..."

Jun 16, 2003 | Zero Hedge

FixItAgainTony

and what happened to Carlos the air traffic controller who sent word about military interference at ATC?
http://sherriequestioningall.blogspot.com/2014/07/carlos-spanish-kiev-ai...

[Oct 13, 2015] Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 Most Likely Hit by Russian-Made Missile, Inquiry Says

Looks like Dutch report is a cover up of the state US position on the incident... After all it's from a vassal state.

The New York Times

... ... ...

"Flight MH17 crashed as a result of the detonation of a warhead outside the airplane above the left-hand side of the cockpit," said Tjibbe Joustra, chairman of the Dutch Safety Board, using a common reference to the flight number. The explosion tore off the forward part of the plane, which broke up in the air. The crash killed all 298 people aboard; the investigation found that many died instantly, while others quickly lost consciousness. "It is likely that the occupants were barely able to comprehend their situation," the board found.

... ... ...

The report is unlikely to produce consensus. Based on the impact pattern, the impact angle and other data, the Dutch board concluded that the missile originated in an area of about 320 square kilometers (about 123 square miles) in eastern Ukraine. But Russian experts say the area must be smaller, and Ukrainian experts say it was smaller still.

The team of investigators was led by the Netherlands but included members from four other countries heavily affected by the crash: Australia, Belgium, Malaysia and Ukraine.

... ... ...

From the outset, the Russian government has tried to offer alternative versions of what caused the plane to break up over eastern Ukraine.

Initially, the Defense Ministry presented what generals said was radar data indicating that a Ukrainian fighter jet had flown nearby, possibly shooting down the Malaysia Airlines flight. This year, officials with Almaz-Antey, the state corporation that manufactures the Buk antiaircraft missiles, held a news conference in Moscow to say that they believed one of their missiles had shot down the plane, but that an analysis of the angle of impact showed it must have been fired from territory controlled by the Ukrainian Army.

Then, this month, after a Ukrainian security official had suggested in an interview with the Dutch news media that shrapnel removed from the bodies of the victims proved a Buk was to blame, Tass, the Russian state news agency, quoted an independent expert objecting that it was too early to conclude such a missile brought down the plane.

Tass quoted the expert, Ivan P. Konovalov, the director of a Moscow research center, the Center for Strategic Trends, as saying that if the Dutch Safety Board indeed "reaches a firm conclusion that the Boeing was struck by a Buk antiaircraft rocket, then it should be taken into consideration that at that time only the armed services of Ukraine had these complexes and the People's Republics of Donbas had no such complex systems then or now." He was referring to pro-Russian separatist governments set up in the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine.

In Moscow, officials at Almaz-Antey staged a dueling presentation on Tuesday with a dazzling element: the company blew up a civilian airline fuselage with one of its missiles, and showed the blast on video.

The experiment that shredded the cockpit section of a decommissioned Il-86 airliner, company officials said, indicated the Ukrainian military fired the missile that brought down the Boeing, without elaborating on why.

In the sky over Ukraine, the Russian officials said, the shrapnel struck the plane from an angle indicating the missile was launched from Ukrainian-held territory. Also, they said, Buk missiles in the Russian arsenal explode in a cloud of shrapnel that has jagged edges, described as having a "double-T" form. These, they said, leave a characteristic "butterfly"-shaped hole in airplane fuselages. The Russians insisted that no such holes were found in the wreckage; the Dutch report suggests otherwise.

In any case, Yan V. Novikov, the director of Almaz-Antey, said the Ukrainian government bore responsibility for allowing the flight over a war zone. "I cannot say they are guilty, or not guilty, but the obligations of the country where a military conflict is underway is to inform aviation companies, or close its airspace," he said.

... ... ...

[Oct 13, 2015] Flight MH17 downed by Russian-built missile, Dutch investigators say

It was BUK -- Video contains important finding that fragment of missile paint and elements from the missile warhead in pilot bodies. It is mainly non technical watch-v=KDiLEyT9spI and does not cover conflicting evidence. So at last we know that there was a BUK missile the downs the airliner. I doubt that Dutch investigators make a mistake on this aspect of cause of the tragedy (that does not explains accurate round holes is the part of cockpit wreckage though). Still the set of old questions remains. But it we assume this was BUK, why nobody saw the dense smoke trail of the rocket in daylight and perfect weather. The dense smoke trail that should still be visible at the moment when the plane was hit and when several thousand eyes were watching the area in notably absent.

The Guardian

A Buk surface-to-air missile downed flight MH17, Dutch investigators have said as they unveiled a reconstruction of the plane that showed huge shrapnel damage to the cockpit and front section.

Tjibbe Joustra, the chairman of the Dutch safety board, said the Malaysia Airlines plane was hit by a 9N314M warhead on 17 July 2014, as it flew at 33,000ft (10,000 metres) above eastern Ukraine. The warhead was fitted to a "9M28 missile" fired from a Russian-built Buk missile system, he confirmed.

Related: MH17 crash report: Dutch investigators confirm Buk missile hit plane - live updates

Speaking in front of the reconstructed plane – pieced together from parts of recovered debris, fitted around a metal skeleton – Joustra said all other scenarios to explain the disaster, which killed all 298 people on board, had been ruled out.

An animated video was shown to journalists at the Gilze-Rijen airbase in the Netherlands, where the plane was part reassembled over three months. It showed the Buk missile exploding on the left-hand side of the cockpit. Thousands of metal objects were ejected, with hundreds then penetrating the plane with tremendous force, Joustra said.

The impact and ensuing pressure drop killed the three pilots instantly, he said. On-board microphones captured the moment of impact – "a sound ping". This allowed investigators to determine the devastating blast occurred on the upper-left hand side of the cockpit.

The damage was starkly visible. The front section of the Boeing 777 below the pilot's port window was perforated with large shrapnel holes. Other parts were relatively unscathed. Five windows in the business class section were visible, together with a door where the passengers entered. The pilot's seats had been remounted in the cockpit – a haunting sight.

The plane's nose was missing, together with much of its upper front half. The colours of Malaysia Airlines – a red, blue stripe – were still visible. Exit holes left by shrapnel could be seen on the other right side; exploding fragments had ripped through the fuselage.

Animation shows Russian Buk missile hit Malaysia Airlines MH17

According to Joustra, the passenger plane broke up mid-air. The cockpit and the floor of the business class tore away almost instantly from the main body and crashed. The rest of the plane continued flying for about five miles in an easterly direction, hitting the ground about a minute to a minuter and a half later. Debris was scattered over 50 sq km.

In a briefing on Tuesday morning to relatives of the victims, which took place in The Hague, Joustra said the passengers on board – two-thirds of whom were Dutch nationals – would have been unconscious within seconds.

The board had previously made clear its findings would not deal with blame and liability; a criminal investigation by the Dutch prosecutor's office is scheduled to conclude in early 2016.

The flightpath of MH17

Joustra said the Buk had been fired from a 320 sq km area of eastern Ukraine, the scene of a conflict between pro-Russia separatists backed by Moscow and Ukrainian government forces. He said "further forensic investigation" would be needed to determine the exact launch site.

The Netherlands, Ukraine and Russia had all carried out their own simulations into the missile's probable trajectory. Russia was the only one of seven countries involved in the report's preparation that dissented from its central conclusions, Joustra said, adding that Moscow believed "it was impossible to determine the type of missile or warhead with any certainty".

It is widely assumed that Russia-backed separatists were responsible for bringing down MH17, but the US has stopped short of blaming Moscow directly. The Kremlin has blamed Kiev – variously suggesting that a Ukrainian military jet shot down the Boeing 777, or that a missile was launched from a government-held area.

The Russian simulation includes areas under Ukrainian government control. The other simulations suggest the Buk was fired from separatist areas. An open source investigation by the website Bellingcat, published last week, tracks the Buk from a Russian military base in Kursk. It was then smuggled across the Ukrainian border.

In Moscow, the makers of Buk missile systems, Almaz-Antey, gave a press conference on Tuesday morning, apparently to distract attention from the Dutch report.

The manufacturer said it had performed two experiments it says prove one of its missiles could not have been launched from areas under pro-Russia separatist control.

The Dutch safety board report, published in English and Dutch, concedes that family members had to wait "an unnecessarily long period of time" for formal confirmation that their loved ones were dead. The Dutch authorities "lacked management and coordination", he said.

The victims came from nine countries, including Malaysia and Australia, and with 10 victims from the UK.

Joustra also said there was a simple, "dispiriting" answer to the question: why was MH17 allowed to fly above eastern Ukraine? It had not occurred to anybody that the airspace was unsafe for civilian jets at cruising altitude, he said. This was despite 60 Ukrainian aircraft and helicopters had been downed since the start of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in spring 2014.

About 160 civilian planes flew over the area on the day of the disaster. Three were in "close proximity" when the Buk was fired, he said. Ukraine should have closed its airspace to civilian traffic, he added.

[Oct 12, 2015] MH17 What we know on eve of Dutch Safety Board report

Notable quotes:

"... At the same time Russias Defense Ministry made public satellite images of the area, taken several days prior to the crash. The satellite pictures showed Ukrainian army positions on three days before the crash, and a BUK missile launcher could be spotted there. But on the day of the crash, it had moved somewhere else. The question is why – and where it had gone? ..."

"... In June 2015, Russian arms manufacturer Almaz-Antey presented the results of its own probe into the causes of the MH17 crash. Looking into the option of a surface-to-air missile downing the Boing-777, experts stressed that it could only have been caused by one of the missiles from an older modification of the BUK missile system, namely the Buk-M1 - the type of the weapon the Ukrainian army is equipped with. The Russian army uses modern and later BUK missile systems. ..."

"... "the Sukhoi jet brought down the civilian plane and ours brought down the fighter jet." ..."

"... "They decided to do it this way, to look like we have brought down the plane." ..."

"... a documentary crew making a film about the MH17 catastrophe has actually proven them wrong, staging an experiment and taking an Su-25 to a height of 11,880 meters – with a pilot wearing an oxygen mask. ..."

Oct 12, 2015 | RT News

• Theory #1: 'Russian BUK Missile'

  The Dutch Safety Board delivered a preliminary report about a year ago, concluding that flight MH17 broke up in mid-air and came down after being hit by a large number of high-energy objects that penetrated the plane from the outside and ruptured the fuselage. The report did not mention where those high-energy objects came from.

  The first theory maintains that the MH17 flight was downed by a surface-to-air anti-aircraft missile. It is considered by many as the most likely theory and one that's been widely cited in the media. The only question is who did it.

  The West and Ukraine claim the rebels shot the plane with a Russian BUK missile. In the framework of this theory, a YouTube video of a BUK weapons system with one rocket missing being transported somewhere in Ukraine just hours after the crash was presented as a smoking gun, claiming that the missile system was sneakily cleared out of Ukraine into Russia.

  But some local bloggers identified the location as the Ukrainian town of Krasnoarmeysk, which was under control of the Kiev forces at the time.

  The fact that the video emerged online suspiciously quickly, was followed by lots of so-called social media evidence, and is almost impossible to authenticate, only fueled suspicions.
  

• Theory #2: 'Ukrainian BUK missile'

  At the same time Russia's Defense Ministry made public satellite images of the area, taken several days prior to the crash. The satellite pictures showed Ukrainian army positions on three days before the crash, and a BUK missile launcher could be spotted there. But on the day of the crash, it had moved somewhere else. The question is why – and where it had gone?

  In June 2015, Russian arms manufacturer Almaz-Antey presented the results of its own probe into the causes of the MH17 crash. Looking into the option of a surface-to-air missile downing the Boing-777, experts stressed that it could only have been caused by one of the missiles from an older modification of the BUK missile system, namely the Buk-M1 - the type of the weapon the Ukrainian army is equipped with. The Russian army uses modern and later BUK missile systems.

• Theory #3: 'Air-to-Air Missile'

  Another theory is that Flight MH17 may have been shot down from the air.

  Russia's Investigative Committee (IC) has been conducting its own investigation into the crash. On June 3, the Committee identified the key witness to the MH17 crash as Evgeny Agapov, an aviation armaments mechanic in the Ukrainian Air Force. Agapov testified that on July 17, 2014 a Ukrainian Sukhoi SU-25 jet aircraft piloted by Captain Voloshin "set out for a military task" and returned without ammunition. Agapov implied that an air-to-air missile was missing and claimed he overheard Voloshin say to his colleagues that some plane was "in the wrong place at the wrong time."

  Also, in a video shot by Ukraine's anti-government militia when they arrived at the crash site immediately after the catastrophe and released by an Australian broadcaster almost a year after the tragedy, one important part was largely ignored.

  The video, shown by News Corp Australia, is a short, 5-minute clip made from an original video 17 minutes long, but the channel published online a full transcript of the original version.

  The transcript cited the rebel commander as saying "the Sukhoi jet brought down the civilian plane and ours brought down the fighter jet."

  Later, the same person says once again that there were two planes shot down, and another voice in the background says, "They decided to do it this way, to look like we have brought down the plane."

  Those who oppose the theory say the Sukhoi Su-25 close support fighter jet spotted in the skies at the time of the incident cannot reach a height of 10,000 meters, where the Malaysian airliner was at cruising altitude. But a documentary crew making a film about the MH17 catastrophe has actually proven them wrong, staging an experiment and taking an Su-25 to a height of 11,880 meters – with a pilot wearing an oxygen mask.

  The report coming out Tuesday will be technical in nature. Its goal is to specify how the plane was brought down, not to place blame on any side. This is the responsibility of the criminal probe, which is still ongoing.

  READ MORE:

  • Bogus photos of 'Russian' air-defense systems in Ukraine debunked by bloggers
  • MH17 likely downed by air-to-air missile, not Russian made – Investigative Committee
  • Could SU-25 fighter jet down a Boeing? Former pilots speak out on MH17 claims

[Oct 11, 2015] What Ambulance-Chasing Lawyers Reveal About the MH17 Shoot-Down

Insufficient evidence for prosecution to declare shooting of MH17 a terrorist act..

Notable quotes:

"... The refusal of the Australian officials to make the statutory declaration that they have the evidence under Australian law to declare a terrorist act suggests they don't have the evidence at all. Until now, none has noticed the convergence of the Australian autopsy evidence in the Coroners Court in Melbourne, and the revelation in the Brisbane court that the government is refusing to declare a terrorist act. ..."

"... Dutch media report Australian lawyers for kin of victims have filed a complaint with the ICC in the Hague seeking to indict several Dutch government ministers as well as Eurocontrol and others for 'gross negligence'. ..."

"... If I'm right, the Russians have the evidence that proves whodunnit. They're just waiting until the Dutch put out their report. Shot from the sky by military (whose is a guess) planes, not BUK missiles. If they had one atom from a BUK, we'd know about it. ..."

"... It now appears that the likelihood 'on balance' is that it was the Ukrainian government that shot down the plane. Establishing the case on a balance of probabilities would be good enough in a civil jurisdiction. ..."

"... Obviously we westerners cannot tolerate that result otherwise everything we have said about the accident will be thought to be intentionally misleading. It would be far far better to obfuscate the investigative results and say it was inconclusive. Then our newspapers can say those crafty Russians got away with it. ..."

"... Fingers crossed. Its not impossible that the truth will out. ..."

www.nakedcapitalism.com

Fifteen weeks later, by the time Abbott spoke in November, he had been briefed on the evidence gathered by Australian pathologists and the Victorian State Coroner from the bodies of MH17 victims. No evidence of shrapnel from a Buk missile warhead had been found. For that story, read on.

... ... ...

The refusal of the Australian officials to make the statutory declaration that they have the evidence under Australian law to declare a terrorist act suggests they don't have the evidence at all. Until now, none has noticed the convergence of the Australian autopsy evidence in the Coroners Court in Melbourne, and the revelation in the Brisbane court that the government is refusing to declare a terrorist act.

... ... ...

For the Dutch Government's compilation of its official statements on the MH17 crash, open this file. According to van der Goen, none of the investigating countries has legitimate authority to prosecute, "if only because the Netherlands and the other countries mentioned are possible suspects themselves - and they refuse to see this. So the case will be endlessly shelved. Eventually, it will be adopted at a parliamentary inquiry that mistakes were made, but then noone will still be awake. Excellent solution."

Ilargi, October 8, 2015 at 1:53 am

Dutch media report Australian lawyers for kin of victims have filed a complaint with the ICC in the Hague seeking to indict several Dutch government ministers as well as Eurocontrol and others for 'gross negligence'.

Chris Williams, October 8, 2015 at 2:35 am

I don't know how our clever governments (US, Australia, Netherlands, UK etc) are going to get out of this one. Perhaps, as JH suggests, they will continue to defer and prevaricate, keeping their 'evidence'… until know one cares.

If I'm right, the Russians have the evidence that proves whodunnit. They're just waiting until the Dutch put out their report. Shot from the sky by military (whose is a guess) planes, not BUK missiles. If they had one atom from a BUK, we'd know about it.

JTMcPhee, October 8, 2015 at 9:09 pm

For a different and more complete view, one might read here:

America's Flight 17: The time the United States blew up a passenger plane-and tried to cover it up. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2014/07/the_vincennes_downing_of_iran_air_flight_655_the_united_states_tried_to.html

And here: Sea of Lies, http://alt-f4.org/img/seaoflies.html

Not some "itchy radar operator," it would seem. But the Narrative must be protected…

low_integer, October 9, 2015 at 6:22 am

So the damage to the body would come from the exploding engine. It's so big, spinning so fast, that the energy released is far, far, greater than the warheads. !!!

So, you can't tell either way based on the plane's body. You'd have to have microscopic analysis of the engine components - which would be very challenging and take just about forever.

Obfuscation. The parts in a passenger aircraft's jet engine that are moving, the turbine blades, are made of nickel-based superalloys and I believe they are single 'grain' components, which means they have consistent strength throughout and would be very unlikely to fracture. Also, damage to the fuselage of a passenger jet from turbine blades would be easily identifiable due to their shape and position as the energy of the turbine blades would be dispersed at right angles to the direction of thrust. Lastly, the casing around these blades would, at the very least, absorb a significant amount of this energy.

Are you the guy who replied to one of my posts that Cthulu caused 9/11?

RBHoughton, October 8, 2015 at 9:17 pm

It now appears that the likelihood 'on balance' is that it was the Ukrainian government that shot down the plane. Establishing the case on a balance of probabilities would be good enough in a civil jurisdiction.

Obviously we westerners cannot tolerate that result otherwise everything we have said about the accident will be thought to be intentionally misleading. It would be far far better to obfuscate the investigative results and say it was inconclusive. Then our newspapers can say those crafty Russians got away with it.

If not, eastern Ukraine and Russia will score a huge win and we will have even more egg on our faces than usual. Its bad enough that fewer people believe us but its far worse that they begin to prefer Putin's version.

The hopeful thing here is the lawyers. Older readers will recall people used to study law because they respected the concept of a law-based society. It was not just about the money. Some of these vocational lawyers can still be found and it is my hope that they get fully involved in this case. Fingers crossed. Its not impossible that the truth will out.

Thanks again Naked Capitalism for reporting important news that is neglected by others.

[Oct 11, 2015] Russia's Move In Syria Threatens Energy Deals With Turkey

In 2014, Gazprom delivered 27.3 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas to Turkey via its Blue Stream and Trans-Balkan pipelines. Gas exports from Russia are up some 34 percent since 2010, and Turkey – now Russia's second largest market after Germany – is only getting hungrier. By 2030, gas demand in Turkey is expected to expand 30 percent, reaching 70 bcm per year.

... ... ...

With European demand projected to grow by just over 1 bcm per year in the same period, Russia's South Stream pipeline proposal was as misguided as it was non-compliant with the EU's Third Energy Package. Routed through Turkey however, Russia's newest pipeline, TurkStream, promised to add greater utility. Turkey gets its gas and partly fulfills its transit aspirations; Russia bypasses Ukraine while opening windows to Europe and the Middle East; and Europe, if it wants it, will have gas on demand.

It sounds good – okay, at least – but as so often happens in Russia, the tale has taken a turn for the worse. TurkStream has stumbled out of the gates and larger happenings in Syria look to significantly damage Russia-Turkey relations.

Originally intended as a four-pipe 63-bcm project, TurkStream will now top out at 32 bcm, if it gets off the ground at all. As it stands, the parties have agreed to draft the text of an intergovernmental agreement, with a targeted signing date of early next year, following Turkey's general election. And that's it.

[Oct 10, 2015] Obama Launches A Proxy War On Russia

Notable quotes:

"... Russia bombed some of the CIAS trained, armed and paid groups. It had earlier asked the U.S. to tell it who not to bomb but didnt receive an answer. As the CIA mercenaries are fighting against the Syrian government and are practically not distinguishable from al-Qaeda, ISI or other terrorists they are a legitimate targets. But not in the eyes of the CIA which nevertheless finds Russian attacks on them useful: ..."

"... Erdogans AK-Party and his government have supported the Islamic State and al-Qaeda in Syria. It sees the HDP party and the Kurds in general as its enemies. As one Turkish non-AKP politician said today, the bloody incident in Ankara was either a total Turkish intelligence failure or a Turkish intelligence operation. ..."

"... Today the Russian President Putin will meet the Saudi young leader deputy crown-prince Mohammed Salman-un. Can Putin read him the riot act and tell him to stop being a proxy in the U.S. war on Syria? One hopes so. ..."

www.moonofalabama.org

But instead of building on that agreement and of further working with the Russians, the U.S. is now slipping into a full war by proxy against the Russian Federation and especially with its contingent in Syria. Obama had claimed that he would not get drawn into a proxy war with Russia in Syria but his administration, the Pentagon and the CIA, is now doing all it can to create one. The Russian support for Syria is not limited. With the U.S. administration now moving into a position where war on Russia in Syria becomes the priority the fighting in and around Syria will continue for a long time.

The official Pentagon program to train Syrian insurgents will cease to vet, train, arm and support those mercenaries. But the program will not end. The Pentagon will simply shorten the process. It skips the vetting and training part and will arm and support anyone who proclaims to want to "fight ISIS":

The move marks an expansion of U.S. involvement in Syria's protracted ground war and could expose the Obama administration to greater risks if weapons provided to a wider array of rebel units go astray, or if U.S.-backed fighters come under attack from forces loyal to Assad and his allies.
...
Under the new plan, leaders of groups already battling the Islamic State undergo vetting and receive a crash course in human rights and combat communications. Many of them have already received that training outside Syria, officials said.

Eventually the Pentagon plans to provide ammunition and basic weapons to those leaders' fighters and would carry out airstrikes on targets identified by those units.

We know how well things go when some rogue proxies identify targets they want the U.S. air force to hit. The destroyed MSF hospital in Kunduz and the 50 something killed in the U.S. attack on it, on request of Afghan special forces, tell the story.

Significant military aid to those fighters, in an area where Islamist extremist groups are mixed with and often fighting beside moderate opposition rebels, would mark a departure from previous U.S. policy. A senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter, declined to give specifics on any new aid that might arrive in northwest Syria. But the official said that "these supplies will be delivered to anti-ISIL forces whose leaders were appropriately vetted," and described them as "groups with diverse membership."

That would be these diverse groups which all include al-Nusra/al-Qaeda, Ahrar al Shams and other Jihadis. Even if not directly given to them the fact that al-Qaeda demands a "toll" of 1/3 of all weapons going through its controls, and sometimes takes all, shows that this program is effectively a direct, though unacknowledged, armament program for al-Qaeda.

The new program is separate from a CIA-led effort to aid rebel factions in Syria. It was not immediately clear how Friday's announcement might affect the CIA program.

The CIA runs a similar but much bigger program since 2012. Weapons are handed out to everyone who wants to take down the Syrian government. Most of those weapons have landed in the hands of the Islamic State or al-Qaeda.

Indeed it is the CIA, under its torture justifying chief Brennan, which has pushed the Obama administration away from Kerry's conceding statement and into a full blown proxy war with Russia.

Russia bombed some of the CIA'S trained, armed and paid groups. It had earlier asked the U.S. to tell it who not to bomb but didn't receive an answer. As the CIA mercenaries are fighting against the Syrian government and are practically not distinguishable from al-Qaeda, ISI or other terrorists they are a legitimate targets. But not in the eyes of the CIA which nevertheless finds Russian attacks on them useful:

Reports indicate that CIA-trained groups have sustained a small number of casualties and have been urged to avoid moves that would expose them to Russian aircraft. One U.S. official who is familiar with the CIA program - and who like other officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters - said the attacks have galvanized some of the agency-equipped units. "Now they get to fight the Russians," the official said. "This improves morale."
...

Brennan departed for the Middle East last week as the Russian strikes intensified. U.S. officials said that the trip was previously planned and not related to the bombings but acknowledged that his discussions centered on Syria.

...
The decision to dismantle the Pentagon's training program - whose small teams of fighters were often quickly captured or surrendered their weapons to rival rebel groups in Syria - may force Obama to weigh ramping up support to the CIA-backed groups.

U.S. officials said those involved in the agency program are already exploring options that include sending in rocket systems and other weapons that could enable rebels to strike Russian bases without sending in surface-to-air missiles that terrorist groups could use to target civilian aircraft.

The person who told the Saudis to deliver 500 TOW missiles to Syria ASAP was likely CIA chief Brennan. He also ordered to plan for attacks on the Russian base.

So instead of a calming down and cooperation with Russia to fight the Islamic State the Pentagon was told to shorten its program and to hand out weapons to everyone who asks. The CIA is feeding more weapons to its mercenaries via its Gulf proxies and is planning for direct attacks on Russians.

The war on Syria, and now also on Russia, is unlikely to end in the near future. With the U.S. throwing more oil into the fire the war will burn not only in Syria but in every other country around it.

Two suicide bombers blew themselves up today at a rally of the Kurd friendly HDP party in Ankara. Some 90 people were killed and some 200 wounded. This is the biggest terrorist attack modern Turkey has ever seen. The Turkish government disconnected the country from Twitter and forbid any reporting about the terror attack. The HDP party is leftist and supports a peaceful struggle for Kurdish autonomy. The militant Kurdish PKK in Turkey is currently fighting skirmishes with Turkish security forces in the east of the country. It has now announced that it will stop all attacks unless when it is attacked first. The sister organization of the PKK in Syria, the YPK, is currently fighting against the Islamic State. Erdogan's AK-Party and his government have supported the Islamic State and al-Qaeda in Syria. It sees the HDP party and the Kurds in general as its enemies. As one Turkish non-AKP politician said today, the bloody incident in Ankara was either a total Turkish intelligence failure or a Turkish intelligence operation.

Whatever else it was, the bombing, very likely by Islamic State suicide bombers, is a sign of an ongoing destabilization of Turkey. The instability will increase further until there is a major policy change and a complete crackdown on any support for the Jihadis in Syria as well as a complete closure of the Turkish-Syrian border.

Today the Russian President Putin will meet the Saudi "young leader" deputy crown-prince Mohammed Salman-un. Can Putin read him the riot act and tell him to stop being a proxy in the U.S. war on Syria? One hopes so.

[Oct 10, 2015] Three main reasons for which NATO is not attacking Russia right now

Notable quotes:

"... The second reason, is that NATO is facing problems, the alliance is weakening and its credibility has been damaged a lot. Essentially, the members which are fully aligned behind US imperialism right now are the Baltic countries, the former eastern bloc countries and the traditional US ally, United Kingdom. ..."

"... One of the 3 reasons it gives for US not attacking Russia is that Russia is needed to clean up the US mess in Syria. ..."

"... Did you know that CIA has NO Congressional oversight now? With no threat of hearings, theyre running free. ..."

"... It seems that most of the military/foreign policy establishment is actively pushing the neocon unipolarist adventurism. More like those who are active in trying to dilute its actions are the rogue element. Obama, I am convinced, is trying even while covering himself w a milder version of neocon rhetoric. I never thought I wd approve anything about such a liar. ..."

"... Its a real study to read the articles from the NYT and other big media outlets here on the subject of Syria and particularly the rebels . The concoction of terms that have been used over the past couple of years and especially since ~ June is mind boggling. At one point I had started collecting them. Moderate rebels morphed into relatively moderate insurgents and all kinds of other permutations. ..."

"... McCain, Lindsey, Rubio, Cotton and other unstable personalities decide grand total of nothing in US foreign policy. They are encouraged to talk tough only insofar as it softens up the foreign interlocutors for the responsible players like Obama and Kerry. The responsibles can always point to the lunatics and extract concessions from frightened opposite side. ..."

"... On another note, Erdogan is setting himself up for a landslide defeat at the polls or a military coup detat, hes made so many enemies in the Turkish army and body politic, that combined with his erratic personal behavior and foreign/internal policies, and his delusions of grandeur, are not a good omen for his future. If Turkey still had any illusions re: membership in the EU, Erdogan and the recent suicide bombings just kill them for time to come, and la Merkel now has more ammunition to throw at Turkeys EU aspirations. ..."

"... Russians are far more cautious than Americans, because they have had more 1000 years to hone their diplomacy, and are acutely aware that blowback is an inevitable consequence of any poorly though-out action and/or overreach. Americans are still learning the a , b and c of the craft, and maybe even regressing since the end of the Cold War. ..."

"... The US plan (export ISIS and Al Qaida to balkanize) is extremely defective because it also threatens the stability and even existence of traditional US stooges like Pakistan, Jordan, Egypt, etc, and it also inflicts massive economic pain and an immigration crisis upon Europe. ..."

"... Saudi, Qatar, and UAE have exported terrorism with complete impunity for decades now. Russia, Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, etc need to do something rather direct about that or it will continue. The American people should do something as well but were brainwashed idiots. ..."

"... We have become a Propaganda Wonderland. ..."

"... Believing John Kerry in saying that he agrees to a secular stable Syria was bullshit from the first breath that came out of his mouth. ..."

"... The Empire is scrambling for answers and actions due to Russias surprise intervention in Syria and its a simple as that. Read my post from yesterday. Once they decide on a course of despicable action, it will become much clearer in the next few weeks or months. ..."

"... Weeks ago I mentioned that this Russian in intervention is not a riskless, easy program thats so many Putin-bots were desperate for. One can either describe reality, or be a biased self-credibility eviserator. The evil US Empire is super pissed and they are going to double down instead of retreat. ..."

"... The empire will not cede an inch of their unipolar delusion, and will fight to defeat Russia/China/Iran aspirations for a multipolar world. ..."

"... excellent article up at zerohedge... http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-10-10/carpe-chaos-isis-israel-iraq-syria-its-all-part-plan ..."

the unbalanced evolution of homo sapiens

by system failure

The first, and probably most important reason for which NATO is not attacking Russia for the moment, is the upgraded Russian nuclear arsenal. As in the Cold War 1.0 era, the nuclear strength of both superpowers, capable to destroy the planet many times, was a key preventing factor against a direct conflict between the USA and the former Soviet Union.

Moreover, the US indirect aggression against China lately, a stupid strategy coming from the neocon agenda, brought China closer to Russia, building an even stronger alliance between them. They are both now in a race of developing further their nuclear arsenals and this is a key deterrent which prevents NATO to confront them openly.

The second reason, is that NATO is facing problems, the alliance is weakening and its credibility has been damaged a lot. Essentially, the members which are fully aligned behind US imperialism right now are the Baltic countries, the former eastern bloc countries and the traditional US ally, United Kingdom.

The relations between the United States and other major countries inside the alliance appear to be in a quite bad shape, especially those with Germany and Turkey. The recent Volkswagen emission scandal confirmed that, indeed, there is an underground fierce economic war between the United States and Germany. Besides that, the relations between the two countries started to worse rapidly after the known revelations of the NSA interceptions.

Concerning Turkey, it is known that the US promote the creation of a Kurdish state because it serves better their interests. This is totally unacceptable for Erdoğan,who is occupied by the illusion of the Turkish expansionism. Washington is not very happy seeing ISIS being used by Turkey to fight Kurds, instead of operating in full force against Assad regime.

Other key allies like France, are not very happy with the sanctions, imposed by the US, against Russia. The economic damage is not insignificant. The most characteristic example concerning France, is the cancellation of the deal concerning the Mistral warships, by Russia.

The third reason, is that the US need Russia and even Iran to clean up the mess in Middle East. A mess which was created by the US and their allies in Middle East when they started to arm anti-Assad forces to confront the Assad regime. Now, ISIS is out of control.

However, the Americans had enough troubles with the attrition wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They wouldn't risk further mess by bringing 'boots on the ground' to confront ISIS. The recent deal with Iran, concerning its nuclear program, is not accidental. Besides, Pentagon announced that will stop training new militant forces in Syria, which is actually an admission of failure of its so far strategy.

shadylady | Oct 10, 2015 1:05:32 PM | 9

Beware bloggers:

Cold War II to McCarthyism II, June 8, 2015

Exclusive: With Cold War II in full swing, the New York Times is dusting off what might be called McCarthyism II, the suggestion that anyone who doesn't get in line with U.S. propaganda must be working for Moscow, reports Robert Parry.

snip

Perhaps it's no surprise that the U.S. government's plunge into Cold War II would bring back the one-sided propaganda themes that dominated Cold War I, but it's still unsettling to see how quickly the major U.S. news media has returned to the old ways, especially the New York Times, which has emerged as Official Washington's propaganda vehicle of choice.

What has been most striking in the behavior of the Times and most other U.S. mainstream media outlets is their utter lack of self-awareness, for instance, accusing Russia of engaging in propaganda and alliance-building that are a pale shadow of what the U.S. government routinely does. Yet, the Times and the rest of the MSM act as if these actions are unique to Moscow.

BIG SNIP

USAID, working with billionaire George Soros's Open Society, also funds the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, which engages in "investigative journalism" that usually goes after governments that have fallen into disfavor with the United States and then are singled out for accusations of corruption. The USAID-funded OCCRP also collaborates with Bellingcat, an online investigative website founded by blogger Eliot Higgins.

https://consortiumnews.com/2015/06/08/cold-war-ii-to-mccarthyism-ii/

Soros is coming to get us. :) Look for uptick in trolls. Hope Operation Summer Rains trolls have retired.

Lysander | Oct 10, 2015 1:16:14 PM | 14

Best defense for Russia is the ability to retaliate in kind. Yemen against KSA and PKK against Turkey. It doesn't mean they won't arm the terrorists, but it does mean it will be costly for them. And the Russians can always play the "gee it looks like your manpads fell into the wrong hands and they went and shot down an Aapache in Iraq."

james | Oct 10, 2015 1:26:51 PM | 18

what is the disconnect between the us admin and the cia? is this some sort of good guy, bad guy routine that they like to have going? are they supposed to make out like the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing too? looks like the cia is calling the shots... so much for that friggin' democracy joke under the nobel peace prizer's command..

actually i think skipping the vetting and training of those working for the usa administration and the cia is a huge problem.. they can do that when they want to put weapons in isis's hands to overthrow assad, but they need to stop doing it to their own country as it's doing to blow up in their face..on 2nd thought maybe they are hoping for regime change in the usa! that's one way to get an amerikkkan regime change in your own country - destroy it..

i am sorry to hear of the horrible event in ankara.. i can't imagine sultan erdogan being happy about it either..who advises this dipstick? or, is that an example of how things will go better with isis?

Virgile | Oct 10, 2015 1:45:51 PM | 19

This is where Iran comes in...

It is clear that if the USA starts a proxy war in Syria against Russia, Iran will retaliate by hitting the USA ally, Saudi Arabia, in Yemen.

In parallel to Saudi Arabia arming Syrian rebels, we will see Iran (and Russia) arming the Houthis in Yemen. I expect heavy military escalation on the Saudi Yemeni border soon

MMARR | Oct 10, 2015 1:51:14 PM | 21

@17 shadylady
Impotence is an unfamiliar feeling in DC, so they are all "pissed" right now. Generals, politicos, arms merchants, lobbyists, think tankers, all of them. They are scrambling for a response, but can't find a single one that wouldn't lead to a worsening of their position.
We are witnessing the last gasp of American hegemony, and the process is natural and irreversible.

Penelope | Oct 10, 2015 2:00:19 PM | 22

nmb @2, Thanks for the link. One of the 3 reasons it gives for US not attacking Russia is that Russia is needed to clean up the US mess in Syria. I agree and evidently some faction in the US with Obama as its point-man agrees. However this faction is so weak that it cannot even seem to speak out forthrightly, but relies on undermining the neocon strategy, which remains the same. The unipolarists are still determined upon absolute rule generally-- and destruction of Syria and its govt specifically.

shadylady | Oct 10, 2015 2:04:53 PM | 23

@ MMARR @ BOG @ James, I love reading Pepe Escorbar and M.K. Bhadrakumar

NATO all dressed up, nowhere to go in Syria

Neither Erdogan nor Russian President Vladimir Putin is spoiling for a fight. By the way, what actually happened over the weekend on the Turkish-Syrian border too is shrouded in mystery and increasingly it seems Ankara and Moscow are in some foreplay over new ground rules for the non-existent Turkish-Syrian border.

From Erdogan's latest remarks, he seems to be tapping down tensions.

snip
The European Union's proposal to 'assist' Turkey in handling the refugee flow from Syria is a case in point. The EU offers to subsidize Turkey financially provided Ankara kept custody of the Syrian refugees. Ankara has an open mind – everything depends on how generous the EU funding will be. Clearly, $1.5 billion is 'peanuts'.

Turkey does not want foreign troops to come and defend it. Its preference is that the US and Germany would change their mind and allowed the Patriot batteries to remain in Turkey. (Alas, they are not agreeable.)
snip

A broad Turkish-Russian understanding over Syria may even emerge out of it. Erdogan will most certainly expect Putin not to arm the Syrian Kurds.

MORE: http://atimes.com/2015/10/nato-all-dressed-up-nowhere-to-go-in-syria/

Always love Escobar, waiting for his next article:
http://atimes.com/category/empire-of-chaos/

Penelope | Oct 10, 2015 2:16:15 PM | 25

Shady Lady @3, "Do we have a rogue CIA now?"

Did you know that CIA has NO Congressional oversight now? With no threat of hearings, they're running free.

It seems that most of the military/foreign policy establishment is actively pushing the neocon unipolarist adventurism. More like those who are active in trying to dilute its actions are the rogue element. Obama, I am convinced, is trying even while covering himself w a milder version of neocon rhetoric. I never thought I wd approve anything about such a liar.

He weakened the Pentagon's program to send in fighters, but I don't think there's anything he can do against the CIA I guess he still appoints the director, but making that change wd be an awfully dangerous move.

Does anyone know if there are elements in the military who resist the military adventurism for whom McCain and the neocons are the point-men?

gemini33 | Oct 10, 2015 2:35:41 PM | 30

@11 Penelope

It's a real study to read the articles from the NYT and other big media outlets here on the subject of Syria and particularly the "rebels". The concoction of terms that have been used over the past couple of years and especially since ~ June is mind boggling. At one point I had started collecting them. "Moderate rebels" morphed into "relatively moderate insurgents" and all kinds of other permutations.

It's also interesting to note the way they refer to their numerous anonymous sources. We have become a Propaganda Wonderland.

MMARR | Oct 10, 2015 2:42:38 PM | 33

@25 Penelope

McCain, Lindsey, Rubio, Cotton and other "unstable" personalities decide grand total of nothing in US foreign policy. They are encouraged to talk tough only insofar as it softens up the foreign interlocutors for the "responsible" players like Obama and Kerry. The "responsibles" can always point to the "lunatics" and extract concessions from frightened opposite side.

People who take their bluster seriously are making a mistake, because that's exactly their goal. Yet it's simply a bluster, a theater, and nothing more.
Therefore, nobody in the US military "resists their adventurism", because they are all part of the same team, only with different roles.

Lone Wolf | Oct 10, 2015 2:49:58 PM | 35

Proxy wars were how the Cold War 1.0 was fought, and after a brief hiatus, that's how the new Cold War 2.0 will be fought, what has changed is the weaponry and the type of warfare, mainly from guerrilla wars of liberation in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, to hybrid and asymmetrical warfare. The empire will not cede an inch of their unipolar delusion, and will fight to defeat Russia/China/Iran aspirations for a multipolar world.

On another note, Erdogan is setting himself up for a landslide defeat at the polls or a military coup d'etat, he's made so many enemies in the Turkish army and body politic, that combined with his erratic personal behavior and foreign/internal policies, and his delusions of grandeur, are not a good omen for his future. If Turkey still had any illusions re: membership in the EU, Erdogan and the recent suicide bombings just kill them for time to come, and la Merkel now has more ammunition to throw at Turkey's EU aspirations.

Welcome to the, now official, Cold War 2.0!

MMARR | Oct 10, 2015 3:11:58 PM | 39

@27 Penelope

Russians are far more cautious than Americans, because they have had more 1000 years to hone their diplomacy, and are acutely aware that blowback is an inevitable consequence of any poorly though-out action and/or overreach. Americans are still learning the "a","b" and "c" of the craft, and maybe even regressing since the end of the Cold War.

So, Moscow will definitely refrain from any preemptive action with regard to undermining Saudis or Turks. They usually prefer to sit and watch, to talk and to calculate the odds, and only then move a figure on a chessboard. Americans move first and think later, believing they can always kill the opponent, if the game develops not to their liking.

As for Russia not supplying Syria or Iran with S-300, I think that was done mostly in order not to alarm and antagonize the West prematurely, while Russia's military was moving swiftly on the path of wholesale reorganization and modernization. In Putin's world, it seems, everything has its own time and its own place.

ToivoS | Oct 10, 2015 3:34:37 PM | 42

The Russians must have had a very clear understanding that when they attacked those "al Nusra" and other "moderate" targets in Northern Syria that they that these forces were being supplied and encouraged by the CIA Russia knowingly attacked US backed forces. Perhaps Obama and Kerry are too stupid to realize what that means. What it means is that there are very powerful forces inside the US government and military that will see this as an attack on the United States of America and that we must respond to that aggression. I hope that Obama is starting to understand what he is up against. He should be trying to bring those agencies under control. Any tiny efforts to neutralize those War Party forces with compromise will only make matters worse. It is time exert executive control over these groups and execute top level purges if they resist. Somehow this seems unlikely.

I hope Putin and Lavrov thought this through before they acted. The outcome could be very dangerous indeed. I was terribly worried last week when the Russian attack began that it would produce a strong reaction inside the US government among all of those war monger plants inside State, the military and intelligence agencies that have been slowly gaining power for the last decade. All of that cheering we have been hearing over the last week here at MOA has been serious -- representatives of the US hegemon do not like to be ridiculed.

Penelope | Oct 10, 2015 3:36:53 PM | 43

BOG @ 13, I don't think it's a divide between the executive & military. I think the majority of each is committed to an aggressive foreign policy. Obama I think is resisting it and only giving rhetorical agreement. I'm not sure who else is in the resistors' faction.

Thanks for posting about the withdrawal of the USS Theodore Roosevelt "just one day after Russian missile strikes from the Caspian. Didn't make sense to me, cuz Russians aren't threatening ships.

In fact, departure was well telegraphed in advance: In April, June & July. Announcement was that for first time since 2007 there wd be a two month gap in the Fall w/o an aircraft carrier in the Gulf. Replacement in December. Reason: Only 10 active now, stead of 11 & ideal maintenace schedule is 7 months deployment; as it is we're deploying for 8 months. Oct 5 announced imminent departure, day before Rusian missiles.

This was potentially important; thanks for posting it. The links are boring. Don't bother; I only posted them for completeness.
http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/assessing-the-u.s.-aircraft-carrier-gap-in-the-gulfTh Oct 5, announcing imminent departure
http://breakingdefense.com/2015/06/carrier-gap-in-gulf-is-a-symptom-not-a-crisis/
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/07/30/navy-admiral-confirms-us-pulling-aircraft-carrier-from-persian-gulf-this-fall/

GoraDiva | Oct 10, 2015 3:51:04 PM | 46

A good update on the Syrian ops - http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/10/john-helmer-us-strategy-in-the-middle-east-is-dying-along-with-its-authors-carter-and-brzezinski-putin-al-assad-get-to-dance-on-their-graves-david-ben-gurion-too.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29

alaric | Oct 10, 2015 4:04:07 PM | 50

The Russians surely anticipated such a move from the US so i assume Putin has a counter move for the US. China's participation would certainly supply that but there are lots of things Putin can do, many are mentioned above.

The US plan (export ISIS and Al Qaida to balkanize) is extremely defective because it also threatens the stability and even existence of traditional US stooges like Pakistan, Jordan, Egypt, etc, and it also inflicts massive economic pain and an immigration crisis upon Europe.

I doubt US allies will be able to endure this US push to implement Brzezinki's nefarious plot and Israel's similar plan for the ME. I expect some major defections from the US camp.

Saudi, Qatar, and UAE have exported terrorism with complete impunity for decades now. Russia, Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, etc need to do something rather direct about that or it will continue. The American people should do something as well but we're brainwashed idiots.

zedz | Oct 10, 2015 4:06:51 PM | 51

IMO the lack of western reaction is due to two things - 1) Russians have some toys that the west can't neutralize and 2) Europe wants to survive and wants no war anyway

I think the arab statements are pure posturing, they'll basically trade Syria for Yemen in the end.

Erdogan played both east and west and betrayed both. He has no future, this way or the other. The current chaos there could come from both sides just as well.

Vintage Red | Oct 10, 2015 4:12:00 PM | 53

gemini33 @30:

"We have become a Propaganda Wonderland."

The US has become Humpty-Dumpty, claiming "words mean what I want them to mean." We all know what happened to Humpty-Dumpty...

tom | Oct 10, 2015 5:30:31 PM | 59

Please don't hate me because I was right, once again.

Believing John Kerry in saying that he agrees to a secular stable Syria was bullshit from the first breath that came out of his mouth.

Like I said weeks ago when b and others here gave Kerry the benefit of the doubt, which was never deserved. How could Kerry be a proven unreliable liar in regards to Ukraine, but he's capable of telling the truth in Syria ?! it makes no sense. Desperate, wishful thinking.

The Empire is scrambling for answers and actions due to Russia's surprise intervention in Syria and it's a simple as that. Read my post from yesterday. Once they decide on a course of despicable action, it will become much clearer in the next few weeks or months.

And when Russia inevitably becomes Iraqs foreign helpful power, replacing the US there, then expect far more US support for jihadi terrorists. If the US is left out of the loop in Iraq, they will counter that with more jihadis and more weapons. It's why they are the evil empire and the Great Satan.

Oh, and that time frame of the Russian involvement in Syria will be only four months, like I said was bullshit yesterday, guess what, it's time to hate tom again, because I was spot on there too.

Weeks ago I mentioned that this Russian in intervention is not a riskless, easy program that's so many Putin-bots were desperate for. One can either describe reality, or be a biased self-credibility eviserator. The evil US Empire is super pissed and they are going to double down instead of retreat.

MMARR | Oct 10, 2015 5:50:11 PM | 62

@57 Penelope

In geopolitics the words of intent almost always hide the real intent. They are meaningless.

All of this verbal saber-rattling is nothing more than psy-ops, the lowest cost form of warfare. People are simply trying no nudge the Russians to engage in talks, as well as enhance their own position at the negotiating table. US government also has to calm down the viewers of FOX News. Moscow understands that.

My prediction - neither the West nor the Gulf Arabs (who operate some of the world's biggest and fines airlines) will supply high-tech anti-aircraft weapons to head choppers. Russians produce the best such toys in the world, and the blowback for this "act of war" could be vicious.

harry law | Oct 10, 2015 6:06:25 PM | 66

"On Friday, Russian air power "destroyed two command centres of the militants, an ammunition depot in the Hama Province, 29 field camps, 23 fortified stations and positions with ammunition and equipment."

Radio intercepts revealed ISIS now faces a shortage of fuel, weapons, ammunition and increasingly the will to fight in the face of an onslaught against which they're defenseless.
Thousands "are demoralized and are actively leaving the battle zone, moving in eastern and northeastern directions," Konashenkov explained.

Areas targeted in the last 24 hours included Raqqa (the main ISIS stronghold), Hama, Idlib, the Damascus countryside and Aleppo." http://sjlendman.blogspot.co.uk/ Not bad for a start, won't do McCains health any good.

Satellite images located a hidden Idlib province command center. "After analysis of pictures from space and after air reconnaissance by drones," Russian air strikes destroyed it.

Wayoutwest | Oct 10, 2015 7:33:26 PM | 73

HL@66

The Russians are certainly good at self-promotion and propaganda bombing. Reading this detailed report you would think they face a conventional army in the Islamic State who sit in buildings waiting for orders while the bombs fall.

The IS is a nonconventional force an Urban Guerilla force dispersed across the country in small groups and if there was a command center it was evacuated and empty when bombed just as the training facilities/ school yards were empty.

The IS fighters were running during this bombing spree but they were running to capture new territory from other rebel groups that the Russians softened up for them.

ben | Oct 10, 2015 7:56:14 PM | 77

LoneWolf @35 said: " The empire will not cede an inch of their unipolar delusion, and will fight to defeat Russia/China/Iran aspirations for a multipolar world."

Yep, and as long as the dollar reins, they'll create all they need to meet their goals.

nmb @ 38 said: "I'm afraid things can get worse with the 2016 US elections. Any GOP will certainly promote the neocon agenda, but also Hillary will adopt such policies. I doubt that the US deep state will let any chance for Sanders."

Agreed. It's the money people, til' that changes, nothing changes. Go BRICS, go!

Lone Wolf | Oct 10, 2015 11:21:16 PM | 83

@Wayoutwest@73

The Russians are certainly good at self-promotion and propaganda bombing.

I don't think the takfiris you so much defend would have the same opinion. They are being blown to bits, and that according to your buddy-buddy at the Syrian "Observatory for Human Rights" (sic!).

Islamic State loses 132 members, 70 villages and farmlands in the northeast of Syria

Reading this detailed report you would think they face a conventional army in the Islamic State who sit in buildings waiting for orders while the bombs fall. The IS is a nonconventional force an Urban Guerilla force dispersed across the country in small groups and if there was a command center it was evacuated and empty when bombed just as the training facilities/ school yards were empty.

Wrong again. IS performs and behaves like a conventional army, with entire regions, cities and territory under their control, some of them for years now, with a functioning economy, bureaucracy, the entire infrastructure of a state. They are not a rag-tag guerrilla group, they have ties to the infrastructure they have stolen, gas and oil fields to defend, training grounds, C&C centers, etc. IS might use non-conventional, guerrilla tactics in their fighting, as many armies do, that doesn't turn them into a non-conventional force. A guerrilla moves to fight another day, does not engage in attrition tactics.

The IS fighters were running during this bombing spree but they were running to capture new territory from other rebel groups that the Russians softened up for them.

You pretend to be so well informed. How would you know those details? Your takfiri rats are running all over because their time for reckoning is up, now they have to pay for their crimes, and are being sent to hell in bits and pieces so their master can use them for fuel.

crone | Oct 10, 2015 11:47:30 PM | 86

excellent article up at zerohedge... http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-10-10/carpe-chaos-isis-israel-iraq-syria-its-all-part-plan

comment section informative also

[Oct 10, 2015] Forums and bulleting board users are watched by GCHQ

Oct 10, 2015 | marknesop.wordpress.com

Warren , September 25, 2015 at 2:25 pm

et Al , September 26, 2015 at 4:23 am

A top-secret GCHQ document from March 2009 reveals the agency has targeted a range of popular websites as part of an effort to covertly collect cookies on a massive scale. It shows a sample search in which the agency was extracting data from cookies containing information about people's visits to the adult website YouPorn, search engines Yahoo and Google, and the Reuters news website.

Other websites listed as "sources" of cookies in the 2009 document (see below) are Hotmail, YouTube, Facebook, Reddit, WordPress, Amazon, and sites operated by the broadcasters CNN, BBC, and the U.K.'s Channel 4.

…A top-secret GCHQ document from March 2009 reveals the agency has targeted a range of popular websites as part of an effort to covertly collect cookies on a massive scale. It shows a sample search in which the agency was extracting data from cookies containing information about people's visits to the adult website YouPorn, search engines Yahoo and Google, and the Reuters news website.

Other websites listed as "sources" of cookies in the 2009 document (see below) are Hotmail, YouTube, Facebook, Reddit, WordPress, Amazon, and sites operated by the broadcasters CNN, BBC, and the U.K.'s Channel 4…
###

And I bet the Guardian too as it is 'the world's most widely read new site'. They probably keep automatic tabs on this site considering how it has grown over the last couple of years.

I do wonder though, with all those stories about those thousands of Kremlin controlled Russian trolls on British news websites, whether some of this comes from carefully massaged data from GCHQ through third parties to the Pork Pie News Networks via 'unnamed sources', i.e. the usual bollox.

May I suggest to fellow commenters here, if at any point you loose your smart phone (etc.) just call GCHQ and they'll tell you where you left it. I wonder if they provide a data back up service?!

et Al, September 26, 2015 at 4:48 am

…The agency operates a bewildering array of other eavesdropping systems, each serving its own specific purpose and designated a unique code name, such as: …and INFINITE MONKEYS, which analyzes data about the usage of online bulletin boards and forums…

…Authorization is "not needed for individuals in the U.K.," another GCHQ document explains, because metadata has been judged "less intrusive than communications content." All the spies are required to do to mine the metadata troves is write a short "justification" or "reason" for each search they conduct and then click a button on their computer screen…

…When compared to surveillance rules in place in the U.S., GCHQ notes in one document that the U.K. has "a light oversight regime."

The more lax British spying regulations are reflected in secret internal rules that highlight greater restrictions on how NSA databases can be accessed. The NSA's troves can be searched for data on British citizens, one document states, but they cannot be mined for information about Americans or other citizens from countries in the Five Eyes alliance….
#####

It's just what is expected from the junior in the US/UK relationship. For the UK to retain privileged access to the US' global spy network, it needs to give the US what it wants, a way to circumvent the US' own laws. Dial back to when Gary Powers & his U-2 were shot down over the Soviet Union. All subsequent overflights by US manned and operated aircraft were prohibited, so, the US used British pilots and Canberras.

Once you understand the relationship and the goals that they have, you can work backwards and make fairly good conclusions about what tools would be required and used to get to those conclusions and try not think whether they are legal or not. What people can do to protect themselves is a) don't change most of your digital habits (as this would raise a flag); b) just don't do or say obvious things that you wouldn't do in real life in your digital life; c) use encryption such as PGP for email and products using perfect forward secrecy for chat/etc.; d) don't write about what not to do on the Internet as I have just done! ;)

The most disturbing thing about it all is that it puts us one step away from a totalitarian system. All that is required is a political decision. All the tools are in place and depending on how much information they have actually kept they can dip in to it at any time throughout your life as a rich source of blackmail, probably via third parties. It's not exactly threatening to send you to a concentration camp (or disappeared to one of Britain's (and others) many small overseas territories, but it is total control.

If the European economy completely crashes and mass instability ensues (or whatever), then the politicians will be told, or even ask, "What tools do we have to control this?".
Forget about 'checks and balances' – they're the first thing to be thrown out of the window in an emergency. Arbeit macht frei!

et Al , September 26, 2015 at 9:52 am

This should be a massive story as the parliamentary security committee gave the intelligence services a 'clean bill of health' not so long ago.

Since then, they've lost intelligence 'yes man' Malcolm Rifkind to an expenses scandal so the make up of the committee has changed a bit.

What it does show is that we cannot even trust the gatekeepers (above) who are give very limited info from the security services.

And let us not forget the dates that this occurred under a Labor administration and continued under a Conservative-Liberal Democrat and now a Conservative one.

It will be interesting to see if this story gains any traction, though I suspect that it will be much bigger outside of the UK, at least initially,

The cat is, again, out of the bag!

marknesop , September 26, 2015 at 2:38 pm

GCHQ and the CIA are in bed with one another, and have been for years. This might be a timely occasion to mention once again that both are capable of hacking into smartphones by all leading manufacturers; in the case of the IPhone the CIA uses a program application called Dropout Jeep.

We can thank Edward Snowden for that; the NSA spying scandal revealed a great deal more than just the information the CIA is snooping on your phone calls and collecting information on everyone. As the second reference relates, the CIA also diverted laptops ordered online so that government spyware could be installed on them. Intelligence agencies are determined that citizens shall have no privacy whatsoever. You might as well assume they are watching everything you do and listening to everything you say. Give the window the finger at random times just in case, and slip embarrassing revelations on the sexual proclivities of intelligence agents into your telephone conversations.

Canada's Blackberry was once safe, but GCHQ broke that. So now there is no smartphone that is private, except maybe for Russia's YotaPhone. Probably not that either, though, since it is sold in the USA, and if they couldn't break into the phone they would just hack the carrier. And the Canadian government bought all of its Secure Telephone Units (STU) from the NSA, so say no more about the "security" of those.

A few companies, like Silent Circle, pitch a privacy phone like the Blackphone, but it originates in the USA and everyone's paranoia has become so acute that the instant suspicion is they are telling you it is more private just because it is wired straight to the NSA. You can't believe anyone any more.

[Oct 10, 2015] Three main reasons for which NATO is not attacking Russia right now

Notable quotes:

"... The second reason, is that NATO is facing problems, the alliance is weakening and its credibility has been damaged a lot. Essentially, the members which are fully aligned behind US imperialism right now are the Baltic countries, the former eastern bloc countries and the traditional US ally, United Kingdom. ..."

"... One of the 3 reasons it gives for US not attacking Russia is that Russia is needed to clean up the US mess in Syria. ..."

"... Did you know that CIA has NO Congressional oversight now? With no threat of hearings, theyre running free. ..."

"... It seems that most of the military/foreign policy establishment is actively pushing the neocon unipolarist adventurism. More like those who are active in trying to dilute its actions are the rogue element. Obama, I am convinced, is trying even while covering himself w a milder version of neocon rhetoric. I never thought I wd approve anything about such a liar. ..."

"... Its a real study to read the articles from the NYT and other big media outlets here on the subject of Syria and particularly the rebels . The concoction of terms that have been used over the past couple of years and especially since ~ June is mind boggling. At one point I had started collecting them. Moderate rebels morphed into relatively moderate insurgents and all kinds of other permutations. ..."

"... McCain, Lindsey, Rubio, Cotton and other unstable personalities decide grand total of nothing in US foreign policy. They are encouraged to talk tough only insofar as it softens up the foreign interlocutors for the responsible players like Obama and Kerry. The responsibles can always point to the lunatics and extract concessions from frightened opposite side. ..."

"... On another note, Erdogan is setting himself up for a landslide defeat at the polls or a military coup detat, hes made so many enemies in the Turkish army and body politic, that combined with his erratic personal behavior and foreign/internal policies, and his delusions of grandeur, are not a good omen for his future. If Turkey still had any illusions re: membership in the EU, Erdogan and the recent suicide bombings just kill them for time to come, and la Merkel now has more ammunition to throw at Turkeys EU aspirations. ..."

"... Russians are far more cautious than Americans, because they have had more 1000 years to hone their diplomacy, and are acutely aware that blowback is an inevitable consequence of any poorly though-out action and/or overreach. Americans are still learning the a , b and c of the craft, and maybe even regressing since the end of the Cold War. ..."

"... The US plan (export ISIS and Al Qaida to balkanize) is extremely defective because it also threatens the stability and even existence of traditional US stooges like Pakistan, Jordan, Egypt, etc, and it also inflicts massive economic pain and an immigration crisis upon Europe. ..."

"... Saudi, Qatar, and UAE have exported terrorism with complete impunity for decades now. Russia, Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, etc need to do something rather direct about that or it will continue. The American people should do something as well but were brainwashed idiots. ..."

"... We have become a Propaganda Wonderland. ..."

"... Believing John Kerry in saying that he agrees to a secular stable Syria was bullshit from the first breath that came out of his mouth. ..."

"... The Empire is scrambling for answers and actions due to Russias surprise intervention in Syria and its a simple as that. Read my post from yesterday. Once they decide on a course of despicable action, it will become much clearer in the next few weeks or months. ..."

"... Weeks ago I mentioned that this Russian in intervention is not a riskless, easy program thats so many Putin-bots were desperate for. One can either describe reality, or be a biased self-credibility eviserator. The evil US Empire is super pissed and they are going to double down instead of retreat. ..."

"... The empire will not cede an inch of their unipolar delusion, and will fight to defeat Russia/China/Iran aspirations for a multipolar world. ..."

"... excellent article up at zerohedge... http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-10-10/carpe-chaos-isis-israel-iraq-syria-its-all-part-plan ..."

the unbalanced evolution of homo sapiens

by system failure

The first, and probably most important reason for which NATO is not attacking Russia for the moment, is the upgraded Russian nuclear arsenal. As in the Cold War 1.0 era, the nuclear strength of both superpowers, capable to destroy the planet many times, was a key preventing factor against a direct conflict between the USA and the former Soviet Union.

Moreover, the US indirect aggression against China lately, a stupid strategy coming from the neocon agenda, brought China closer to Russia, building an even stronger alliance between them. They are both now in a race of developing further their nuclear arsenals and this is a key deterrent which prevents NATO to confront them openly.

The second reason, is that NATO is facing problems, the alliance is weakening and its credibility has been damaged a lot. Essentially, the members which are fully aligned behind US imperialism right now are the Baltic countries, the former eastern bloc countries and the traditional US ally, United Kingdom.

The relations between the United States and other major countries inside the alliance appear to be in a quite bad shape, especially those with Germany and Turkey. The recent Volkswagen emission scandal confirmed that, indeed, there is an underground fierce economic war between the United States and Germany. Besides that, the relations between the two countries started to worse rapidly after the known revelations of the NSA interceptions.

Concerning Turkey, it is known that the US promote the creation of a Kurdish state because it serves better their interests. This is totally unacceptable for Erdoğan,who is occupied by the illusion of the Turkish expansionism. Washington is not very happy seeing ISIS being used by Turkey to fight Kurds, instead of operating in full force against Assad regime.

Other key allies like France, are not very happy with the sanctions, imposed by the US, against Russia. The economic damage is not insignificant. The most characteristic example concerning France, is the cancellation of the deal concerning the Mistral warships, by Russia.

The third reason, is that the US need Russia and even Iran to clean up the mess in Middle East. A mess which was created by the US and their allies in Middle East when they started to arm anti-Assad forces to confront the Assad regime. Now, ISIS is out of control.

However, the Americans had enough troubles with the attrition wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They wouldn't risk further mess by bringing 'boots on the ground' to confront ISIS. The recent deal with Iran, concerning its nuclear program, is not accidental. Besides, Pentagon announced that will stop training new militant forces in Syria, which is actually an admission of failure of its so far strategy.

shadylady | Oct 10, 2015 1:05:32 PM | 9

Beware bloggers:

Cold War II to McCarthyism II, June 8, 2015

Exclusive: With Cold War II in full swing, the New York Times is dusting off what might be called McCarthyism II, the suggestion that anyone who doesn't get in line with U.S. propaganda must be working for Moscow, reports Robert Parry.

snip

Perhaps it's no surprise that the U.S. government's plunge into Cold War II would bring back the one-sided propaganda themes that dominated Cold War I, but it's still unsettling to see how quickly the major U.S. news media has returned to the old ways, especially the New York Times, which has emerged as Official Washington's propaganda vehicle of choice.

What has been most striking in the behavior of the Times and most other U.S. mainstream media outlets is their utter lack of self-awareness, for instance, accusing Russia of engaging in propaganda and alliance-building that are a pale shadow of what the U.S. government routinely does. Yet, the Times and the rest of the MSM act as if these actions are unique to Moscow.

BIG SNIP

USAID, working with billionaire George Soros's Open Society, also funds the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, which engages in "investigative journalism" that usually goes after governments that have fallen into disfavor with the United States and then are singled out for accusations of corruption. The USAID-funded OCCRP also collaborates with Bellingcat, an online investigative website founded by blogger Eliot Higgins.

https://consortiumnews.com/2015/06/08/cold-war-ii-to-mccarthyism-ii/

Soros is coming to get us. :) Look for uptick in trolls. Hope Operation Summer Rains trolls have retired.

Lysander | Oct 10, 2015 1:16:14 PM | 14

Best defense for Russia is the ability to retaliate in kind. Yemen against KSA and PKK against Turkey. It doesn't mean they won't arm the terrorists, but it does mean it will be costly for them. And the Russians can always play the "gee it looks like your manpads fell into the wrong hands and they went and shot down an Aapache in Iraq."

james | Oct 10, 2015 1:26:51 PM | 18

what is the disconnect between the us admin and the cia? is this some sort of good guy, bad guy routine that they like to have going? are they supposed to make out like the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing too? looks like the cia is calling the shots... so much for that friggin' democracy joke under the nobel peace prizer's command..

actually i think skipping the vetting and training of those working for the usa administration and the cia is a huge problem.. they can do that when they want to put weapons in isis's hands to overthrow assad, but they need to stop doing it to their own country as it's doing to blow up in their face..on 2nd thought maybe they are hoping for regime change in the usa! that's one way to get an amerikkkan regime change in your own country - destroy it..

i am sorry to hear of the horrible event in ankara.. i can't imagine sultan erdogan being happy about it either..who advises this dipstick? or, is that an example of how things will go better with isis?

Virgile | Oct 10, 2015 1:45:51 PM | 19

This is where Iran comes in...

It is clear that if the USA starts a proxy war in Syria against Russia, Iran will retaliate by hitting the USA ally, Saudi Arabia, in Yemen.

In parallel to Saudi Arabia arming Syrian rebels, we will see Iran (and Russia) arming the Houthis in Yemen. I expect heavy military escalation on the Saudi Yemeni border soon

MMARR | Oct 10, 2015 1:51:14 PM | 21

@17 shadylady
Impotence is an unfamiliar feeling in DC, so they are all "pissed" right now. Generals, politicos, arms merchants, lobbyists, think tankers, all of them. They are scrambling for a response, but can't find a single one that wouldn't lead to a worsening of their position.
We are witnessing the last gasp of American hegemony, and the process is natural and irreversible.

Penelope | Oct 10, 2015 2:00:19 PM | 22

nmb @2, Thanks for the link. One of the 3 reasons it gives for US not attacking Russia is that Russia is needed to clean up the US mess in Syria. I agree and evidently some faction in the US with Obama as its point-man agrees. However this faction is so weak that it cannot even seem to speak out forthrightly, but relies on undermining the neocon strategy, which remains the same. The unipolarists are still determined upon absolute rule generally-- and destruction of Syria and its govt specifically.

shadylady | Oct 10, 2015 2:04:53 PM | 23

@ MMARR @ BOG @ James, I love reading Pepe Escorbar and M.K. Bhadrakumar

NATO all dressed up, nowhere to go in Syria

Neither Erdogan nor Russian President Vladimir Putin is spoiling for a fight. By the way, what actually happened over the weekend on the Turkish-Syrian border too is shrouded in mystery and increasingly it seems Ankara and Moscow are in some foreplay over new ground rules for the non-existent Turkish-Syrian border.

From Erdogan's latest remarks, he seems to be tapping down tensions.

snip
The European Union's proposal to 'assist' Turkey in handling the refugee flow from Syria is a case in point. The EU offers to subsidize Turkey financially provided Ankara kept custody of the Syrian refugees. Ankara has an open mind – everything depends on how generous the EU funding will be. Clearly, $1.5 billion is 'peanuts'.

Turkey does not want foreign troops to come and defend it. Its preference is that the US and Germany would change their mind and allowed the Patriot batteries to remain in Turkey. (Alas, they are not agreeable.)
snip

A broad Turkish-Russian understanding over Syria may even emerge out of it. Erdogan will most certainly expect Putin not to arm the Syrian Kurds.

MORE: http://atimes.com/2015/10/nato-all-dressed-up-nowhere-to-go-in-syria/

Always love Escobar, waiting for his next article:
http://atimes.com/category/empire-of-chaos/

Penelope | Oct 10, 2015 2:16:15 PM | 25

Shady Lady @3, "Do we have a rogue CIA now?"

Did you know that CIA has NO Congressional oversight now? With no threat of hearings, they're running free.

It seems that most of the military/foreign policy establishment is actively pushing the neocon unipolarist adventurism. More like those who are active in trying to dilute its actions are the rogue element. Obama, I am convinced, is trying even while covering himself w a milder version of neocon rhetoric. I never thought I wd approve anything about such a liar.

He weakened the Pentagon's program to send in fighters, but I don't think there's anything he can do against the CIA I guess he still appoints the director, but making that change wd be an awfully dangerous move.

Does anyone know if there are elements in the military who resist the military adventurism for whom McCain and the neocons are the point-men?

gemini33 | Oct 10, 2015 2:35:41 PM | 30

@11 Penelope

It's a real study to read the articles from the NYT and other big media outlets here on the subject of Syria and particularly the "rebels". The concoction of terms that have been used over the past couple of years and especially since ~ June is mind boggling. At one point I had started collecting them. "Moderate rebels" morphed into "relatively moderate insurgents" and all kinds of other permutations.

It's also interesting to note the way they refer to their numerous anonymous sources. We have become a Propaganda Wonderland.

MMARR | Oct 10, 2015 2:42:38 PM | 33

@25 Penelope

McCain, Lindsey, Rubio, Cotton and other "unstable" personalities decide grand total of nothing in US foreign policy. They are encouraged to talk tough only insofar as it softens up the foreign interlocutors for the "responsible" players like Obama and Kerry. The "responsibles" can always point to the "lunatics" and extract concessions from frightened opposite side.

People who take their bluster seriously are making a mistake, because that's exactly their goal. Yet it's simply a bluster, a theater, and nothing more.
Therefore, nobody in the US military "resists their adventurism", because they are all part of the same team, only with different roles.

Lone Wolf | Oct 10, 2015 2:49:58 PM | 35

Proxy wars were how the Cold War 1.0 was fought, and after a brief hiatus, that's how the new Cold War 2.0 will be fought, what has changed is the weaponry and the type of warfare, mainly from guerrilla wars of liberation in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, to hybrid and asymmetrical warfare. The empire will not cede an inch of their unipolar delusion, and will fight to defeat Russia/China/Iran aspirations for a multipolar world.

On another note, Erdogan is setting himself up for a landslide defeat at the polls or a military coup d'etat, he's made so many enemies in the Turkish army and body politic, that combined with his erratic personal behavior and foreign/internal policies, and his delusions of grandeur, are not a good omen for his future. If Turkey still had any illusions re: membership in the EU, Erdogan and the recent suicide bombings just kill them for time to come, and la Merkel now has more ammunition to throw at Turkey's EU aspirations.

Welcome to the, now official, Cold War 2.0!

MMARR | Oct 10, 2015 3:11:58 PM | 39

@27 Penelope

Russians are far more cautious than Americans, because they have had more 1000 years to hone their diplomacy, and are acutely aware that blowback is an inevitable consequence of any poorly though-out action and/or overreach. Americans are still learning the "a","b" and "c" of the craft, and maybe even regressing since the end of the Cold War.

So, Moscow will definitely refrain from any preemptive action with regard to undermining Saudis or Turks. They usually prefer to sit and watch, to talk and to calculate the odds, and only then move a figure on a chessboard. Americans move first and think later, believing they can always kill the opponent, if the game develops not to their liking.

As for Russia not supplying Syria or Iran with S-300, I think that was done mostly in order not to alarm and antagonize the West prematurely, while Russia's military was moving swiftly on the path of wholesale reorganization and modernization. In Putin's world, it seems, everything has its own time and its own place.

ToivoS | Oct 10, 2015 3:34:37 PM | 42

The Russians must have had a very clear understanding that when they attacked those "al Nusra" and other "moderate" targets in Northern Syria that they that these forces were being supplied and encouraged by the CIA Russia knowingly attacked US backed forces. Perhaps Obama and Kerry are too stupid to realize what that means. What it means is that there are very powerful forces inside the US government and military that will see this as an attack on the United States of America and that we must respond to that aggression. I hope that Obama is starting to understand what he is up against. He should be trying to bring those agencies under control. Any tiny efforts to neutralize those War Party forces with compromise will only make matters worse. It is time exert executive control over these groups and execute top level purges if they resist. Somehow this seems unlikely.

I hope Putin and Lavrov thought this through before they acted. The outcome could be very dangerous indeed. I was terribly worried last week when the Russian attack began that it would produce a strong reaction inside the US government among all of those war monger plants inside State, the military and intelligence agencies that have been slowly gaining power for the last decade. All of that cheering we have been hearing over the last week here at MOA has been serious -- representatives of the US hegemon do not like to be ridiculed.

Penelope | Oct 10, 2015 3:36:53 PM | 43

BOG @ 13, I don't think it's a divide between the executive & military. I think the majority of each is committed to an aggressive foreign policy. Obama I think is resisting it and only giving rhetorical agreement. I'm not sure who else is in the resistors' faction.

Thanks for posting about the withdrawal of the USS Theodore Roosevelt "just one day after Russian missile strikes from the Caspian. Didn't make sense to me, cuz Russians aren't threatening ships.

In fact, departure was well telegraphed in advance: In April, June & July. Announcement was that for first time since 2007 there wd be a two month gap in the Fall w/o an aircraft carrier in the Gulf. Replacement in December. Reason: Only 10 active now, stead of 11 & ideal maintenace schedule is 7 months deployment; as it is we're deploying for 8 months. Oct 5 announced imminent departure, day before Rusian missiles.

This was potentially important; thanks for posting it. The links are boring. Don't bother; I only posted them for completeness.
http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/assessing-the-u.s.-aircraft-carrier-gap-in-the-gulfTh Oct 5, announcing imminent departure
http://breakingdefense.com/2015/06/carrier-gap-in-gulf-is-a-symptom-not-a-crisis/
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/07/30/navy-admiral-confirms-us-pulling-aircraft-carrier-from-persian-gulf-this-fall/

GoraDiva | Oct 10, 2015 3:51:04 PM | 46

A good update on the Syrian ops - http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/10/john-helmer-us-strategy-in-the-middle-east-is-dying-along-with-its-authors-carter-and-brzezinski-putin-al-assad-get-to-dance-on-their-graves-david-ben-gurion-too.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29

alaric | Oct 10, 2015 4:04:07 PM | 50

The Russians surely anticipated such a move from the US so i assume Putin has a counter move for the US. China's participation would certainly supply that but there are lots of things Putin can do, many are mentioned above.

The US plan (export ISIS and Al Qaida to balkanize) is extremely defective because it also threatens the stability and even existence of traditional US stooges like Pakistan, Jordan, Egypt, etc, and it also inflicts massive economic pain and an immigration crisis upon Europe.

I doubt US allies will be able to endure this US push to implement Brzezinki's nefarious plot and Israel's similar plan for the ME. I expect some major defections from the US camp.

Saudi, Qatar, and UAE have exported terrorism with complete impunity for decades now. Russia, Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, etc need to do something rather direct about that or it will continue. The American people should do something as well but we're brainwashed idiots.

zedz | Oct 10, 2015 4:06:51 PM | 51

IMO the lack of western reaction is due to two things - 1) Russians have some toys that the west can't neutralize and 2) Europe wants to survive and wants no war anyway

I think the arab statements are pure posturing, they'll basically trade Syria for Yemen in the end.

Erdogan played both east and west and betrayed both. He has no future, this way or the other. The current chaos there could come from both sides just as well.

Vintage Red | Oct 10, 2015 4:12:00 PM | 53

gemini33 @30:

"We have become a Propaganda Wonderland."

The US has become Humpty-Dumpty, claiming "words mean what I want them to mean." We all know what happened to Humpty-Dumpty...

tom | Oct 10, 2015 5:30:31 PM | 59

Please don't hate me because I was right, once again.

Believing John Kerry in saying that he agrees to a secular stable Syria was bullshit from the first breath that came out of his mouth.

Like I said weeks ago when b and others here gave Kerry the benefit of the doubt, which was never deserved. How could Kerry be a proven unreliable liar in regards to Ukraine, but he's capable of telling the truth in Syria ?! it makes no sense. Desperate, wishful thinking.

The Empire is scrambling for answers and actions due to Russia's surprise intervention in Syria and it's a simple as that. Read my post from yesterday. Once they decide on a course of despicable action, it will become much clearer in the next few weeks or months.

And when Russia inevitably becomes Iraqs foreign helpful power, replacing the US there, then expect far more US support for jihadi terrorists. If the US is left out of the loop in Iraq, they will counter that with more jihadis and more weapons. It's why they are the evil empire and the Great Satan.

Oh, and that time frame of the Russian involvement in Syria will be only four months, like I said was bullshit yesterday, guess what, it's time to hate tom again, because I was spot on there too.

Weeks ago I mentioned that this Russian in intervention is not a riskless, easy program that's so many Putin-bots were desperate for. One can either describe reality, or be a biased self-credibility eviserator. The evil US Empire is super pissed and they are going to double down instead of retreat.

MMARR | Oct 10, 2015 5:50:11 PM | 62

@57 Penelope

In geopolitics the words of intent almost always hide the real intent. They are meaningless.

All of this verbal saber-rattling is nothing more than psy-ops, the lowest cost form of warfare. People are simply trying no nudge the Russians to engage in talks, as well as enhance their own position at the negotiating table. US government also has to calm down the viewers of FOX News. Moscow understands that.

My prediction - neither the West nor the Gulf Arabs (who operate some of the world's biggest and fines airlines) will supply high-tech anti-aircraft weapons to head choppers. Russians produce the best such toys in the world, and the blowback for this "act of war" could be vicious.

harry law | Oct 10, 2015 6:06:25 PM | 66

"On Friday, Russian air power "destroyed two command centres of the militants, an ammunition depot in the Hama Province, 29 field camps, 23 fortified stations and positions with ammunition and equipment."

Radio intercepts revealed ISIS now faces a shortage of fuel, weapons, ammunition and increasingly the will to fight in the face of an onslaught against which they're defenseless.
Thousands "are demoralized and are actively leaving the battle zone, moving in eastern and northeastern directions," Konashenkov explained.

Areas targeted in the last 24 hours included Raqqa (the main ISIS stronghold), Hama, Idlib, the Damascus countryside and Aleppo." http://sjlendman.blogspot.co.uk/ Not bad for a start, won't do McCains health any good.

Satellite images located a hidden Idlib province command center. "After analysis of pictures from space and after air reconnaissance by drones," Russian air strikes destroyed it.

Wayoutwest | Oct 10, 2015 7:33:26 PM | 73

HL@66

The Russians are certainly good at self-promotion and propaganda bombing. Reading this detailed report you would think they face a conventional army in the Islamic State who sit in buildings waiting for orders while the bombs fall.

The IS is a nonconventional force an Urban Guerilla force dispersed across the country in small groups and if there was a command center it was evacuated and empty when bombed just as the training facilities/ school yards were empty.

The IS fighters were running during this bombing spree but they were running to capture new territory from other rebel groups that the Russians softened up for them.

ben | Oct 10, 2015 7:56:14 PM | 77

LoneWolf @35 said: " The empire will not cede an inch of their unipolar delusion, and will fight to defeat Russia/China/Iran aspirations for a multipolar world."

Yep, and as long as the dollar reins, they'll create all they need to meet their goals.

nmb @ 38 said: "I'm afraid things can get worse with the 2016 US elections. Any GOP will certainly promote the neocon agenda, but also Hillary will adopt such policies. I doubt that the US deep state will let any chance for Sanders."

Agreed. It's the money people, til' that changes, nothing changes. Go BRICS, go!

Lone Wolf | Oct 10, 2015 11:21:16 PM | 83

@Wayoutwest@73

The Russians are certainly good at self-promotion and propaganda bombing.

I don't think the takfiris you so much defend would have the same opinion. They are being blown to bits, and that according to your buddy-buddy at the Syrian "Observatory for Human Rights" (sic!).

Islamic State loses 132 members, 70 villages and farmlands in the northeast of Syria

Reading this detailed report you would think they face a conventional army in the Islamic State who sit in buildings waiting for orders while the bombs fall. The IS is a nonconventional force an Urban Guerilla force dispersed across the country in small groups and if there was a command center it was evacuated and empty when bombed just as the training facilities/ school yards were empty.

Wrong again. IS performs and behaves like a conventional army, with entire regions, cities and territory under their control, some of them for years now, with a functioning economy, bureaucracy, the entire infrastructure of a state. They are not a rag-tag guerrilla group, they have ties to the infrastructure they have stolen, gas and oil fields to defend, training grounds, C&C centers, etc. IS might use non-conventional, guerrilla tactics in their fighting, as many armies do, that doesn't turn them into a non-conventional force. A guerrilla moves to fight another day, does not engage in attrition tactics.

The IS fighters were running during this bombing spree but they were running to capture new territory from other rebel groups that the Russians softened up for them.

You pretend to be so well informed. How would you know those details? Your takfiri rats are running all over because their time for reckoning is up, now they have to pay for their crimes, and are being sent to hell in bits and pieces so their master can use them for fuel.

crone | Oct 10, 2015 11:47:30 PM | 86

excellent article up at zerohedge... http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-10-10/carpe-chaos-isis-israel-iraq-syria-its-all-part-plan

comment section informative also

[Oct 09, 2015] Dutch media sue govt, demand it release full info on MH17 crash

Notable quotes:

"... "frustrated" ..."

"... "black marker policy." ..."

"... "It seems to me that [such actions] are unworthy of an open, democratic society," ..."

"... "some countries and international organizations," ..."

"... "some persons." ..."

"... "Given the social impact of the MH17 plane crash as well as many questions raised by the relatives [of the victims of the catastrophe], it is vital that the government's actions and efforts in the aftermath of this disaster should be transparent," ..."

"... For journalists, this openness is essential for monitoring the activities of the government, ..."

"... "It is not just about the families of the victims but also about the actions of the Dutch government and the political situation in Europe." ..."

"... "Finding out the causes [of the MH17 crash] and bringing the perpetrators of the attack on the plane to justice is a top priority," ..."

"... "However, it is also important that the actions of politicians and government officials in the aftermath of the catastrophe could be accurately reconstructed," ..."

Oct 09, 2015 | RT News

Three Dutch media companies have filed a joint lawsuit against the country's Security and Justice Ministry, demanding that it disclose more documents relating to the MH17 catastrophe investigation after the ministry's refusal to release the information.

The Netherlands Broadcasting Foundation (NOS); the Dutch subsidiary of the European TV, radio and production company RTL Group; and the Dutch daily Volkskrant have joined forces to appeal the Netherlands Security and Justice Ministry's refusal to make public "many documents" concerning the Malaysian Airlines MH17 crash in Eastern Ukraine last year, NOS said in a press release.

The three media companies had previously appealed to the ministry separately, asking it to disclose MH17 investigation data based on the Freedom of Information Law (WOB). The aim of the companies was to bring to light the details of the tragedy, as well as to reconstruct the actions of Dutch officials after the catastrophe.

READ MORE: E. Ukrainian self-defense hands over MH17 debris to Dutch investigators, following RT documentary

The three media companies asked for the reports of ministerial and other official committees that were involved in the MH17 investigation to be released. In response to the media outlets' request, the ministry reportedly released about 575 documents related to the MH17 case, including the correspondence of the members of the national crisis group that was formed immediately after the tragedy.

... ... ...

Peter Klein, deputy senior editor of Dutch RTL News, said he was "frustrated" with the government's attempts to blur over the truth with the "black marker policy."

"It seems to me that [such actions] are unworthy of an open, democratic society," he said in the RTL press release.

The Netherlands National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism, Dick Schoof, who released the documents after the request of the media companies, said that the disclosure of the documents that had not been made public could lead to deterioration of relations with "some countries and international organizations," as well as damage the reputation of "some persons."

Even the objection procedure launched by the media outlets has changed nothing in the ministry's decision. NOS, RTL and Volkskrant have now undertaken joint legal action, asking the Utrecht District Court to launch an appeal for all of them within a single lawsuit, according to NOS press release.

READ MORE: MH17 investigators to RT: No proof east Ukraine fragments from 'Russian' Buk missile

The three companies have launched the joint appeal procedure as they claim they want to emphasize that transparency is of crucial importance in the MH17 case.

"Given the social impact of the MH17 plane crash as well as many questions raised by the relatives [of the victims of the catastrophe], it is vital that the government's actions and efforts in the aftermath of this disaster should be transparent," Philippe Remarque, editor-in-chief of De Volkskrant, said in the company's press release.

"For journalists, this openness is essential for monitoring the activities of the government," he said.

READ MORE: MH17 probe not truly independent and intl tribunal aimed at hiding its ineffectiveness – Lavrov

Marcel Gelauff, editor-in-chief at NOS, said the wider public interest would be served by the publication of the documents: "It is not just about the families of the victims but also about the actions of the Dutch government and the political situation in Europe."

"Finding out the causes [of the MH17 crash] and bringing the perpetrators of the attack on the plane to justice is a top priority," Peter Klein said in the RTL press release.

"However, it is also important that the actions of politicians and government officials in the aftermath of the catastrophe could be accurately reconstructed," he added.

William Rollinson 10.10 11:01

OO Billy
USA hasnt released any of their satellite imagery or the AWACs radar tapes... I wonder why? Maybe they only havemore...
No but they could get a nice clear image of Russian planes on the ground in Syria?
When it suits them they release information, when it suits them, they with-hold information.

William Rollinson 10.10 10:58

Yuri Ivanovich
The government is still waiting for the US to find a way to blame it on Russia. So far,more...
"Russia would've been blamed right after the downing."

It was, about 95 minutes after, if memory serves me well. The US couldn't wait to blame Russia, just as they blamed her for 'civilian' deaths in Syria, before their planes had even left the ground?

Then when Russia fire missiles from the Caspian Sea, the US say one fell short on Iran and killed people, wouldn't we expect Iran to inform of this?
The fact that the US and their Oligarch media owners completely own western media, what the people read or see is controlled!

Yorky 09.10 07:06

Unfortunately the outcome of this enquiry is a foregone conclusion. There is no way the US will allow the investigating countries prove the US wrong. The pressure on the investigating countries will be enormous. Kerry will never be forced to say he was wrong. All the sanctions that were imposed by US and EU because of MH17 would have to be questioned. That will not be allowed to happen

Derek Maher 09.10 06:40

Judgeing by the actions of Kiev and the shambles of the on the ground crash site inspections,Plus the secretcy and long delay by the Dutch one would assume the findings will produce some very shady results.The victims families have not been served well in this tragic case.

Patricia Histed 09.10 03:57

The truth would make it impossible for EU national leaders to support Kiev. Wonder if they have developed a scapegoat plan to dump all the blame on someone in Kiev? After all, it will not do to show how multiple EU leaders were in on the lies and attempted resource grab. If the Dutch media outlets can make this happen it could be a game changer and prevent escalation in the Ukraine just when America plans to draft a bill that seeks to pour fuel on the weakening fires in the Ukraine. Supplying neo-Nazis with millions in arms does the trick. The poor US-Saudi petrol dollar...it needs war...it needs to destabilise the EU and Russia and wipe out all non-OPEC oil nations as well as any that threaten Saudi control of the region. The EU would be wise to side with Russia. America is not its friend. The sweet talking American politicians can say all they want but the refugee crisis speaks volumes. Russia's decisive actions could mean Syrians could return home and rebuild but what does America want to do...send more arms into the area...create more refugees. Whether this is a side effect or a desired effect is irrelevant. It is destabilising the EU's economy. Personally, I think it is a desired side effect. If the US can take the EU dollar down the US-Saudi petrol dollar is the last man standing and will be what people flee to propping it up as it gasps for breath.

[Oct 09, 2015] Russias Syria gambit could be a game changer – but only if it hastens transition

Everything that has happened recently is down to this geopolitical struggle the Arab Spring, Crimea, Sochi, MH17, OPEC glut, insane monetary policy... It's all a battle between the New York-London Bretton Woods world order and Putin's vision of a Eurasian Economic Union controlled by a Beijing-Moscow axis. ..."

Oct 05, 2015 | The Guardian

aLLaguz 1 Oct 2015 20:27

It is not that Russia will or wont persuade Assad to step down... western nations don't want to negotiate ... they want Assad out... anything else is NO.
Russia will persuade not Assad.... but western nations to sit and negotiate...

The moment is the best ever for Russia and Assad. The flood of refugees put presure in EU and US to stop the war.... which means that now, the negotiation table is in balance....

ISIS will be wipe out.

Rebels will acquire an important status and drop down weapons with anmesty... maybe a political party ... who knows

Assad will be in power after the war...

New elections will be made ... in time ... democratically, and new rules for minorities...

Russia will maintain its base and its political influence will be greater...

Money for reconstruction will be from China and Russia... Iran also ... which leads to a new Syria allied more tightly to them ... the block will be stronger than ever ..
what else? who knows ....

GoloManner -> makz 1 Oct 2015 17:55

And you know this how, exactly? I mean, do you see no reason why anyone other than an Islamist would oppose Assad?

Initially certainly

But any secular or democratic opposition forces have been annihilated or swallowed up by Islamists as this conflict has descended into sectarian civil war. I wish it weren't the case., I wish the opposition was made up of plucky liberal democrats too but that's just wishful thinking

It is not only my opinion, it is the opinion of experts such as Patrick Cockburn who answered the question of who the moderate rebels were, thus

Well, they aren't is the answer to that. They scarcely exist on the ground. That's one of the extraordinary things about the plan that was announced this week to combat ISIS, the Islamic State, is that in Syria the main opponent of the Islamic State is to be the Syrian armed moderates. But nobody can find them on the map.

The main military force in Syria is the Syrian army, the Syrian government. The main opposition force is ISIS. Then there are a series of other jihadi groups. Like, there's one called Jabhat al-Nusra. It's pretty powerful. It's also the Syrian affiliate of bin Laden's al-Qaeda. So the jihadis dominate that.

So it's kind of saying that everything will depend on these moderates who are to be vetted and trained in Saudi Arabia, and then these poor guys are going to fight not only ISIS, the most ferocious guerrilla group in the world, but the Syrian army. So this is really not a policy. It's kind of make-believe.

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=12373

makz -> threehunglow 1 Oct 2015 15:35

Whilst I am well aware that the Assad government is fascistic in nature, and am familiar with events such as the Hama massacre, I must say that when I was working in Syria, not even a year before all the trouble kicked off, it certainly did not feel like such a dreadful place. I spent a lot of time in Damascus, Hama and Masyaf, and they were all pretty lively places full of people who certainly seemed happy enough. I can't imagine that many people would not happily return to those days, given the reality of the present.

Lillianne -> robertthebruce2014 1 Oct 2015 13:55

Because America wants a new cold war to rebuild its stockpile. America is terrified of world peace - its economy would simply collapse. It doesn't support AlQaeda as such but it's insistent on prodding the Russian bear.

robertthebruce2014 1 Oct 2015 13:29

Why is the West supporting Al Qaida? I thought Al Qaida was responsible for 9/11!?!

Peter Cini 1 Oct 2015 13:21

Hear this and hear this now: The Putin Doctrine has put an end to Anglo-American Regime Change rampages, especially in the Middle East. The days of Washington and London deciding which government will be allowed to survive are over. Farewell to Pox Americana.

Patriotic Americans and Brits will welcome the emergence of Putin the Peacemaker. So will Western Europe unless they want to see the whole region empty out on their doorsteps.

Maybe this is what Obama wants too...

Sergei Konyushenko 1 Oct 2015 12:49

Islamic Holocaust: Western wars have killed AT LEAST 4 million Muslims since 1990

http://www.sott.net/article/303020-Islamic-Holocaust-Western-wars-have-killed-AT-LEAST-4-million-Muslims-since-1990

Vermithrax -> chuckding 1 Oct 2015 12:17

The media that have been using ISIS as the bogeyman to justify western boots on the ground. Lot of effort being made there if it doesn't matter. Obama clearly wanted to bomb Assad so the pipeline through Syria came from Saudi not Iran. Now if he wants to do the Suadi's dirty work for them he'll have to start WW3.

Vermithrax rooster29 1 Oct 2015 12:13

Because they can't attack Assad directly and because their deliberately rubbish campaign against ISIS will be exposed for what it is. I said that in my original post. Pay attention.

Indianrook 1 Oct 2015 11:53

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/01/russia-launches-fresh-airstrikes-on-syria-targets The title of the above news is
"US-backed Syrian rebels say they have been hit by Russian airstrikes." Can The Guardian would explain whom we could call rebels and whom we could call terrorist? By the way The Guardian has not opened the comment option for the above news.

Dean Griffiths 1 Oct 2015 11:20

Though it pains me to say it perhaps the best thing is for the West to back away from Syria and leave it to Putin to sort out. It's been a brave fight by the FSA but the conflict has been raging now for over 4 and a half years with no sign of a decisive military victory. since the war began 1 out of every 100 Syrians has died and 1 in 3 have been displaced and 1 in 4 have fled the country. Now Putin has flexed his Military muscle you would think that it will only be a matter of time until the FSA are defeated, as the West will only back them so far.

I have absolutely no liking for Assad and his regime but it appears to me that it is the only one that may be able to bring some stability to the country and I believe a majority of Syrians do still support him. The west instigated regime change in Iraq & Lybia to get rid of similar dictators and just created instability and a power vacuum which has lead has lead to the grow of ISIS.

If Assad did move aside there is no suggest that Syria would fair any better than Iraq or Lybia. The opposition in the West of the country is fragmented and the Jihadists (who would be left in control of much of the eastern part of the country) would exploit this and there are the Kurds in the north who would be demanding independence. If Assad was to defeat the opposition forces in the West it would only be a matter of time before he turned on the Jihadists in the East. That would in theory at least, allow the West to do more about getting rid of ISIS in Iraq.

lesterburnham15 -> TarquinFintimlin 1 Oct 2015 11:09

Afghanistan does not fall into the middle east geo-political arena lies to the east of Iran, my notion of the middle east encompasses turkey to iran down to yemen. like the Caucasus is southern russia, armenia, azerbaijan and georgia. The great game involve russia v britain control of India, Afghanistan, more central asia.

but what you go on about is lies like your a classic head banger.

TarquinFintimlin -> lesterburnham15 1 Oct 2015 11:00

Really? I seem to remember a certain conflict called Afghanistan. That wasn't that long ago. Russia has also a long history of military bases in Syria. And let's not even start on the Great Game, Russia's involvement in the Caucasus Mountains and the long rivalry between Turkey and Russia in the region. All of that still has a MASSIVE impact on the modern Middle East. And that was LONG before the US was ever involved.

AlexisWolf -> JethrowToumme 1 Oct 2015 10:34

Yeah right. If you think you have to be a Kremlin stooge to see the folly of Western warmongering then you are unable to learn why Iraq/Libya/Afghanistan etc have been such a disastrous criminal failure that risks the safety of us all.

AlexisWolf -> Riaz Danish 1 Oct 2015 10:28

Apx 70% of the Syrian armed forces are Sunni. How does that fit into your ignorant rant?

AlexisWolf -> Roguing 1 Oct 2015 10:25

They're in Syria but they're not Syrian, they come from dozens of countries, that makes them all armed invaders. What would any other country do if it was them being invaded??

Exodus20 1 Oct 2015 10:19

It is all a big game of deception and lie from Iraq, to Libya, to Syria. US is bombing the factions of ISIS which it doesn't control to help the faction which were started by funding from "our friends and allies (ref General Wesley Clark)" and may still control. Russia is bombing the factions which are oppose to Assad which include the factions the West and Saudi are still supporting.

diddoit -> ubipromaya 1 Oct 2015 10:18

The approach seems to have been 'the enemy of my enemy...' to date. Strange how IS seemed to have got stronger and immune to bombing. The Saudis are now furious Russia is bombing , why do you think that is?

Massimo D'Ulisse -> CordTrousers 1 Oct 2015 10:12

Obama is an inept dreamer, and he's preventing an effective solution by demanding Assad removed before anything else on ground of his atrocities. Now, in the worst case, Assad might have killed hundreds, maybe thousands of opposers - but that's 1/100 of the victims of this horrible civil war. So Obama prefers to see this war going on, and an entire populace displaced and moving to Europe, instead of accepting reality - an unhappy one, but still reality.

We must remember that under Mr Saddam Hussein, the number of people dying in Iraq every year was much, much less than the victims of the after-war period.

Sheeba Sunil -> Riaz Danish 1 Oct 2015 10:10

I would say over 70% of Syrian people - including Sunnis, Alawites, Christians, Druze & Shias - support Assad. They all support not for their love towards Assad, instead for their hate towards western funded opposition rebels. Syrian people are largely liberal and moderate. They don't want their country to be ruled by Sharia loving blood thirsty jihadis.

Quite unsurprisingly, western/arab intervention in Syrian war made Assad more popular than ever.

JohnSouttar Riaz Danish 1 Oct 2015 09:52

Assad was swept to power again in elections because of what he represented to the whole country. Peace and prosperity. Christians, Shiites, Sunnis and other ethnicities getting on with each other. Women allowed to vote and stand in elections. A secular state. Most people and families want that but in neighbouring countries would be imprisoned for expressing that view openly. Goodness me most of our best political leaders were from some sort of minority - perhaps even aristocracy. That is the true definition for an inclusive government. Now why did some Arab countries not like that? Do you really think the Syrians want a Chechen emir running their town? Or the Saudis to dictate that they have Sharia law? A world like that we are selling Afghanis out to now run by the Taliban after so many collaborated with us, women who dared to get education and will soon die for it. Given the choice most Muslims are not at all fanatical and that is why so many have come to countries like Britain and Germany.

irgun777 1 Oct 2015 09:51

" Russian aircraft had launched 30 fresh airstrikes against Jaysh al-Fateh, a powerful rebel coalition that includes Ahrar al-Sham and the al-Qaida affiliated al-Nusra Front. "

Guardian today. It looks like the Russian are doing a good job !

hugodegauche 1 Oct 2015 09:50

Imposing failing western systems on Syria will not work. It has not worked in Iraq nor Libya nor anywhere else in the Arab world. Assad is not great but clearly better than those who oppose him (I say better in the purely Hobbesian sense of providing a minimum of governance)

The sensible possible is for Assad to be supported with some tinkering on internal reforms to save everyone's face. Israel needs to remain strong and alert whoever is in power in Damascus or in fact Syria implodes entirely.

stuart255 1 Oct 2015 09:39

This is now beyond ridiculous where the Western media protests Russia bombing "moderate rebels" such as the AL QAEDA affiliated Al Nusra.

Pray tell, who are all of our drones bombing in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan??
Isn't it Al Qaeda affiliated groups?

Putin has trapped us on the wrong side of history, Russia is acting within international law under permission of the sovereign government of Syria and the West is now the deer-in-the-headlights as Russia takes on the role of Global Policeman.

This is a foreign policy disaster. Putin is going to be the power that gets to redraw the Sykes-Picot line and Europe is going to be beholden to Russian gas for the next half century.

In 2012 Putin was elected with the promise of bringing a Eurasian Economic Union to reality and Hillary Clinton whilst Secretary of State publically said that the US sees this as Soviet Union 2.0 and will do everything to stop or slow the progress of Putin's Eurasian Union which would by default be that largest economic zone on the planet by some margin. Thus driving a horse and cart over the Wolfowitz Doctrine.

Everything that has happened recently is down to this geopolitical struggle the Arab Spring, Crimea, Sochi, MH17, OPEC glut, insane monetary policy... It's all a battle between the New York-London Bretton Woods world order and Putin's vision of a Eurasian Economic Union controlled by a Beijing-Moscow axis.

This is the greater context of our time.

JohnSouttar 1 Oct 2015 09:30

You can imagine how humiliating and embarrassing it is to appear on TV complaining about Russia bombing Al Qaida, blaming Assad for the rebel sarin gas attack and 'butchering' his own people and suggesting that the moderate opposition are the answer when in fact they are mostly Libyan and Chechen mercenary killers. One can also see the military advisors tearing their hair out at the political pressure put on them to carry on this charade especially now Russian planes are there. Also how poorly paid the script writers must be. It is not for the benefit of the population, just to pretend to the donors and Congressional lobbies that they are trying. Not very hard I would think.

tiagoTIMAO 1 Oct 2015 09:28

"they make no distinction between different armed groups, Islamist, jihadi or democratic"
kkkkkkkkkkk, show me this democratic groups. The democratic IS, or democratic FSA, or Al-Nursa. You're kidding

Zagradotryad 1 Oct 2015 09:21

The simple fact is there is no 'moderate' Syrian opposition. They all want to wade knee deep in the blood of Alawite children.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sectarianism_and_minorities_in_the_Syrian_Civil_War#Alawites

rooster29 -> Danny885500 1 Oct 2015 09:19

The reason the free market neo-con Tories are attacking the BBC is a matter of ideology. Apart from the distaste of any organisation being run by the state (apart from when it's necessary) they know that any privately owned media such as Sky and ITV will be biased towards and support right-wing governments anyway, making the tax-paid BBC an anachronism. The Tory's plan for the BBC is most definitely eventual privatisation. Demonization by the government and right-wing media is always a first step to the real objective.

rooster29 -> GenoDutch 1 Oct 2015 09:13

BBC the best journalism? You're having a laugh aren't you?

How about this from Sarah Montague, one of their top R4 stars - when she was interviewing Israeli defence minister Moshe Ya'alon she might just as well have given him a soapbox and let him get on with it. After a flood of complaints, BBC head of editorial complaints, Fraser Steel, wrote: "Mr Ya'alon was allowed to make several controversial statements on those matters (conflict with Palestinians) without any meaningful challenge and the programme makers have accepted that the interviewer ought to have interrupted him and questioned him on his assertions."

This is a clear-cut case of deliberate bias on Montague's part (it can hardly be explained by inexperience) I know the vast majority of politicians in the UK are scared stiff to make any Kind of criticism of Israeli policy vis-à-vis the Palestinians, but it's depressing to see one of the top BBC interviewers being cowed into submission as well.

snickid 1 Oct 2015 09:12

Russia's Syria gambit could be a game changer – but only if it hastens transition

The Guardian continues to live in fantasy land over Syria. The grotesque and awful truth is that there are only two sides in the Syrian civil war: Assad and the extreme Islamic fundamentalists:

1. Putin supports Assad.

2. Obama in practice supports the extreme Islamic fundamentalists (apart from ISIS), such as Jaish El-Fateh, who are the only credible armed opposition to Assad.
______________________________________________________________________________________

Putin is bad, for actively supporting a brutal and corrupt regime in Syria. But Obama is mad as well as bad (worse, in fact, than Putin) for supporting the same fundamentalists whom the US has supposedly been fighting since 2001 in its 'war on terror', and who will commit genocide against all non-Sunnis (and quite a lot of the Sunnis as well), if they ever succeed in defeating Assad.

nearfieldpro -> rooster29 1 Oct 2015 09:11

The BBC is to the British state what Pravda was to the soviet Union

So true, so very true.

Fuel -> erica999 1 Oct 2015 09:08

They're taking out groups that would be pro-Turkish in their interests. Turkey wants a natural gas pipeline to run through Syria and over its land. Russia would then have competition for its natural gas supplies to Europe and the Russian's don't want that.

The pipelines would run from Saudi and Qatar which support ISIS. However, the lure of cheaper gas and breaking the Russian monopoly means Saudi and Qatar have grudging support from the US and Europe, although Europe/US supports the Syrian rebels, i.e. the al Nusra groups because the FSA is wishful thinking. Hence Turkey being happy about ISIS hurting pro-Assad forces and Kurds, while simultaneously providing support to the al Nusra/rebel groups that would be favourable to their regime. ISIS wouldn't, it wants to rule Turkey too.

As Turkey supports al Nusra/Syrian rebels, etc. Russia will take out those groups first and reduce and/or negate European and US interests (cos we won't want ISIS there) and Turkey's influence, which explains the initial bombing patterns. After the al Nusra/rebels/etc. are defeated, Russia will go after ISIS. Russia will have the backing of China and Iran to do this as ISIS has already produced maps that lay claim to territory in Western China and all of Iran.

Basically it's a three-sided stand-off with lots of business and geo-political vested interests at stake. Russia knows Western countries won't risk an escalation by entering and not when lots of people in the West are happy that at least one country is taking on ISIS/al Nusra/etc.

Is this how you do conspiracy theories and troll?

MichelleSegato 1 Oct 2015 09:00

What is the Guardian's definition of moderate opposition? A group is moderate opposition because de US is funding them? Or, because it doesn't perform any beheadings?

What would Obama call a group of Americans armed to their teeth, roaming the US and killing American soldiers? What would Obozo do? What if those Americans were armed by Russia? Would they be moderate for that reason?

GoloManner -> GoloManner 1 Oct 2015 08:58

Oh and in case that's not enough. The group openly pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda in 2013

The al-Nusra Front's pledge of allegiance to al-Qaeda has ended speculation over the suspected ties between the Syrian jihadist group and the Islamist militant network. The announcement came just days after al-Qaeda's leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, called on jihadis to do everything possible to bring about an Islamic state in Syria.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-18048033

rooster29 -> demdike 1 Oct 2015 08:38

"If Iran and Hizbollah involved, it's time for Israel to attack Hizb., in Lebanon."

Maybe you were on holiday dike, but fyi the last time Israel tried to take on Hezbolla they were soundly thrashed, as they were the time before.
If it wasn't for Hezbolla, there would most certainly be hundreds of Israeli settlements scattered all around southern Lebanon by now, in exactly the same way they dominate the Palestinian West Bank, and the Syrian Golan heights. In the absence of an effective Lebanese army to defend southern Lebanon Hezbolla have no choice but to do it themselves. Hezbolla didn't exist before the Israeli invasion of 1982, just like the French Resistance didn't exist before the Germans invaded their country.

Chris East -> MentalToo 1 Oct 2015 08:38

These rebels were put there and paid to create trouble. How do you know that it was Assad's people who attacked them. It was more likely CIA snipers.

lids 1 Oct 2015 08:35

Absolute must listen interviews on today's R4 World at One with MArtha Carney.

1. Patrick Cockburn acknowledged expert stating clearly that there are no moderates in Nort West Syria, Homs etc

2. Chair of Defence Committee stating clearly that any vote in UK Parliament leading to UK bombing Syria would only be a military "gesture"
Any idea that moderates were about to come to the centre stage and lead Syria was childish politics to the extreme.

3 (And Bestof all) Woeful absolutely woeful interview with US Ambassador to UK who, when asked who was representing the moderate view in SYria and could sit round and negotiate Syria's future was unable to name a single person.

Surprised Marta is still in a job after all that. Brilliant journalism from BBC.

GoloManner 1 Oct 2015 08:33

Air strikes against anti-Assad forces – not just Isis

Who cares. They are all Islamists anyway

Let's put this myth to bed once and for all. THERE ARE NO LONGER ANY MODERATE FORCES IN SYRIA. They have long since been destroyed or coopted by Islamist groups.

Moderate forces is a myth that exists only in the head's of US and UK policy makers.

The US recently trained a group of "moderate rebels" and sent them into Syria where they immediately defected to Al Nusra with their weapons. Al Nusra, armed by Saudi Arabia are the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda.

So if Russia wants to bomb them, good. We should sit back and watch the show. I hope they blow them to hell.

irishinrussia -> erica999 1 Oct 2015 08:31

Yes and no. They can not operate without a secure base - Russia lacks the power projection tools (primarily aircraft carriers, bases in friendly neighbouring countries, allied airspace) to operate without that Tartus zone. So their first objective is securing that zone. Furthermore I would be very surprised if they care more for Assad than their own national interests.

However, to help Assad, they must first have a secure base. Furthermore, ignored by the Western media, Assad's forces can not fight IS if their supply and communications lines are not secure and there are other rebels in the way. They also can't leave areas exposed to rebel attack because forces have been diverted to attack IS. Assad's forces must consolidate their hold on a secure rear before they can attack IS strongholds. This is not complicated strategic thinking.

rooster29 -> Vermithrax 1 Oct 2015 08:27

"Once again Putin outplays Obama. "

No he hasn't. Putin has been trying to organise co-ordination with the US towards a solution in Syria for at least three years. The Americans don't want to have anything to do with the Russians, and they certainly don't want a solution in Syria. They want to keep the Middle East and Afghanistan in a perpetual state of destabilisation, and they are succeeding, which isn't difficult considering their military is bigger than the rest of the world combined.

Rudeboy1 astoirin 1 Oct 2015 08:15

The best the Russian airforce can deliver is some form of close air support to the SAA. Unfortunately, for them, the SAA has not shown the inclination or ability to press home attacks regardless of support. The recent actions in Idlib and the Ghab plain being cases in point. After 5 years the SAA are still hopeless and just never seem to learn.

easterbeilbs 1 Oct 2015 08:13

In another article U.S. Defence Chief Carter is quoted as saying "Russia risks escalating the civil the war".

How much worse can it get? It's been going on for 4 1/2 years, up to 250,000 have been killed and millions displaced. What is he talking about?

The answer is. He doesn't know.

This article suggests the west supports the Syrian Opposition Forces. But it does not.

The west is playing a very light hand because the Syrian Opposition Forces, established during the Arab Spring quickly became a fighting branch of the 'Muslim Brotherhood in Syria' who seek to set up an Islamic State.

The other forces, as indicated being bombed by the Russians, include the al-Qeada affiliated al-Nusra.

So the Russians, perhaps rightly, are not limiting themselves to ISIS targets, rather those who are at the front line against Assad.

The west needs to end its oil drip fed obsession with the Saudi led gulf nations as it's the 'Islamic Revival' from these regions that have spawned al-Qeada, the Taliban, ISIS, and a whole heap of other extremist groups.

BalanceIt MentalToo 1 Oct 2015 08:06

If you compare Independent coverage on the Middle East to coverage from the mainstream you'll start to see a significant divergence.

An independent examination of the financial motivations behind why the US (and UK) behaves as they do would be a start but you'll never see that from Fleet Street. Secondly a contrast between the attempted Syrian overthrow and past overthrows like Libya and Iraq and Afghanistan. Why do Fleet Street insist on assuming it will be alright if the UK would just start bombing the country. It's wilful blindness because there is an agenda to take over any country which hasn't yielded its financial infrastructure to the US financial hegemony.

It's a reason to watch China and Russia building up their competing financial infrastructure. That's the real conflict between Russia and the US. Again not covered by Fleet Street because they have, in essence, been told not to.

It's certainly subtler than being told not to run a story. It would be indicated to them what areas need coverage and what must be avoided. Russia must be evil. The US must be sincere although can be considered naive or partially foolish but not too much. As the BRICS bank comes online and as they actively compete with US domination watch more stories come up about how China is so evil.

The US has no right to attempt to overthrow a Government of another land.

rooster29 1 Oct 2015 08:00

After the UK media being long-time silent on indiscriminate civilian deaths (used to be called 'collateral', but they don't call it anything now) resulting from US-led bombing of Syria, they are now going bananas over civilian deaths (allegedly) after just one sortie by Russia, which the Daily Hatemail calls 'carpet bombing'.

At this rate Russia will surely be accused of genocide before the week is out. It would be funny if it wasn't for the fact that people actually believe this shit, as well as all the other lies, like Russia only giving the Americans 'one-hour's notice'. What do they think Putin was doing at the recent summit at the UN for God's sake? Israel and Russia agreed eleven days ago in Moscow to coordinate military actions over Syria in order to avoid accidentally trading fire, and the US didn't know about this??? Of course they did.

The Guardian doesn't come out of this well, being as they joined the rest of the pack, leading with this 'one-hour notice' bullshit. Have they got no one paying attention? Or do they just copy what others are making up? makes me wonder, I tell you.

JohnSouttar 1 Oct 2015 07:59

If I use a shotgun on a gang of armed men breaking into my house I will go to prison. They will sue me. If the police shoot an unarmed man not much happens at all. Gadaffi and Assad shoot armed protestors and they must get killed, replaced and go to court. Ukraine protestors throw petrol bombs, fire at police and deserve our support. Protestors and police shot with same gun means that elected government must go. We do something illegal like invade Iraq - all ok. Russia do something legal like support the Syrian government at their request then dare to bomb an Al Qaida outfit ………. Does Putinbot mean someone who has opened their eyes and noticed the elite are scantily clad today?

paulcrawfish 1 Oct 2015 07:50

Russia's goals are discussed by BBC journalist, Jonathan Marcus, on their online site today and I couldn't agree more with the sense behind their objectives.

"It wants to see the so-called Islamic State defeated and some order restored in Syria, where it has long maintained a strategic interest. It believes Western policy in the region has been self-serving and wildly naive. Existing regimes have been toppled leaving little more than chaos in their wake."

We need to join forces with Russia and stop the ridiculous pro-Gulf position of replacing Assad with Al Nusra and its affiliates. Islamic fundamentalism is the biggest evil in the world currently. This is whether the fundamentalist agrees with violent means or just propagates their tribalist religion to others who then are so inspired that they adopt violent means.

raykaram01 1 Oct 2015 07:43

"game change" about time.

Four and a half years left to the USA and the West and what have we seen? More misery for the Syrian people. Even those in Turkey had enough. Why? Nobody cared for them to have a descent life or have any hope of return.

Otherwise, the article tells us that they rely on reports from the region. Unless I see it personally with my own naked eyes, I do NOT believe any one.

Russia might force the West and Turkey to stop playing politics and start doing the right thing by the Syrian people. Otherwise, all of the glory may go to the Russians.
But, most of all, where is true journalism? Has Al Jazeera converted all of them.

Rob Rob 1 Oct 2015 07:35

Assad has been looking tired in recent months, which is hardly a surprise really. I first really began to notice him from his January 2013 Damascus speech, which made obvious to me his high intellect and absolute loyalty to his people. Assad is in realty no dictator, and to be dealt the hand the West has played over and over again has prolonged and deepened the agony of his people.No matter how fast he clears the invaders they are rapidly reinforced with Western Arms and money. Why so? He has been forced to clear and smash to rubble every area over and over again. Cameron did a great job of pretending to look thoughtful when presented with Washington's intelligence ,upset as they were to have not been informed of the plan.

But who in their right mind would trust the Administration of 2015? It's a great shame to have this unspoken trust so vexed and bend out of shape to the point of total dismay!

America is not the Angel it once was,they seem to have gotten rid of all the good ones and replaced them all with total madmen....The insanity is in Washington and coming to your very own street all too soon. Thanks for nothing, Yanks! GO home! Everything to touch turns to crap right now..:( What you all need to do is worry about Fukushima and the endless unfolding of death it is bringing to your people and this Planet.

paulcrawfish 1 Oct 2015 07:21

Regime change is a mad policy. The West's policy is bizarre and will just end up with Al Nusra and its affiliates in power. They are promoted by Qatar and Saudi Arabia and to keep them happy we've ridiculously decided that they are the realpolitik choice because better than Islamic State. However, clearly Assad is actually a better choice than Al Nusra if you're a minority, so I support Russia taking out all Islamic groups. Keep Syria secular!

retsdon JohnSouttar 1 Oct 2015 07:15

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/a-sense-of-despair-is-sweeping-through-iraq-this-email-from-my-driver-in-baghdad-proves-it-10509799.html

Good piece in case you missed it.

brokedog 1 Oct 2015 07:12

I love how the US likes to blame Russia for things America is doing. There is fuck all anti Assad forces besides Isis affiliated ones. America is still basically arming Isis against Assad

ustas6873 1 Oct 2015 07:10

Even if a bombs exploded in an empty desert the US would still have accused Russia of all sins. The United States has no purpose to fight with the ISIS, it is necessary to destroy the al-Assad. And they will achieve this by any means, including the support of supposedly moderate opposition and generally ISIS.

Massimo D'Ulisse 1 Oct 2015 07:07

The US have no credibility.

Whatever they say about Mr. Putin, it will be easy for him to dismiss it saying "who provided that information? the same intelligence that reported that Iraq had mass destruction weapons to justify the second Gulf Ware?"

And if the Russians make more mess, Mr Putin will have an easy game saying "you did mess up the whole region, so what do you want to teach us?"
Reality is that the US really cocked up everything in Middle East, and now if we really want to get rid of ISIS, realistically we have to side with Mr Putin and the despicable Mr Assad.

Realworldview

Direct Russian military action in the Middle east is certainly a new development, in this case Syria, but given many other nations including the UK have been engaged in military action in this area for decades, so why should anyone be surprised Russia has finally decided to have a go at supporting its own geopolitical interests.

The virtually immediate mainstream media reaction to the first Russian airstrikes typified by headlines like "US accuses Russia of 'throwing gasoline on fire' of Syrian civil war" in the Guardian and similar headlines in many other media sources, demonstrates just how one sided the "information" or better "propaganda" war is. To provide some balance, these two article published on Zero Hedge are worth reading - Propaganda War Begins: Russia's Syria Strikes Targeted US-Backed "Moderate" Rebels and This Is How Russia Handles Terrorists: Moscow Releases Video Of Syria Strikes that ends with this this statement, which should give one food for thought, but probably won't, and certainly not by US, UK and European political and military elites:

The bottom line going forward is that the US and its regional and European allies are going to have to decide whether they want to be on the right side of history here or not, and as we've been careful to explain, no one is arguing that Bashar al-Assad is the most benevolent leader in the history of statecraft but it has now gotten to the point where Western media outlets are describing al-Qaeda as "moderate" in a last ditch effort to explain away Washington's unwillingness to join Russia in stabilizing Syria.

This is a foreign policy mistake of epic proportions on the part of the US and the sooner the West concedes that and moves to correct it by admitting that none of the groups the CIA, the Pentagon, and Washington's Mid-East allies have trained and supported represent a viable alternative to the Assad regime, the sooner Syria will cease to be the chessboard du jour for a global proxy war that's left hundreds of thousands of innocent people dead.

undersinged 1 Oct 2015 07:01

Editorials like this dismay me. "Transition"? Why? Assad may represent a minority, but that's a good thing. Because the Alawites are a minority, they tolerate the religious and ethnic diversity that exists in the country. If he were to go, whoever replaced him, whether Shia or Sunni, would probably try to impose an absolutism on the country, suppressing all other sects, with possible outcomes including multiple decades of war and/or tyranny, possibly including genocide.

The West's attempt to encourage democratic revolutions in that part of the world was catastrophically misguided. A stable, reasonably competent government is best left alone, even if you don't think it's as democratic as it should be, or if you don't agree with some of its ideology. Destabilizing states tends to open Pandora's box.

MahalaM -> Samuelepicurus 1 Oct 2015 06:59

Your missing the bit where the US had been working with the Syrian 'opposition' prior to 2011 and used legitimate protest as cover to send in their extremists. Assad has operated an amnesty for combatants prepared to come back and fight for the Syrian army. You think he set loose ISIS?

Al Nusra came from Al Qaeda in Iraq and ISIS are a branch of that. Assad has lost 60% of his territory to ISIS - he took care of the "FSA" back in 2012 - it makes no sense that he would be supporting the US armed Jihadis just on the offchance the West were going to come in and take them out for him. I'm sure he saw the videos of how Western intervention worked out for Gaddafi and Hussein

inequitable -> B5610661066 1 Oct 2015 06:37

Indeed. Over 100 killed at a recent wedding. Saudi Arabia is indiscriminately devastating one of the poorest Countries in the ME with US support using banned cluster bombs supplied by the US firm Textron and funded by HSBC and other leading banks.

rentierDEATHcult 1 Oct 2015 06:24

In 2012, Defence Sec Leon Panetta said this: "I think it's impor­tant when Assad leaves - and he will leave - to try to pre­serve sta­bil­ity in that coun­try. And the best way to pre­serve that kind of sta­bil­ity is to main­tain as much of the mil­i­tary, the police, as you can, along with the secu­rity forces, and hope that they will tran­si­tion to a demo­c­ra­tic form of gov­ern­ment. That's a key"
http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2012/07/30/panetta-says-when-not-if-al-assad-falls-syrian-military-should-remain-intact/

So the priority for Washington (& other EU NATO members) is to preserve the current regime - the military apparatus, police state, and the secular architecture of Syria - but dispose of the House of Assad as part of a political agreement.

Russia, despite its loyalty to the current regime (which goes back decades), will sacrifice Bashar al Assad if it can continue benefitting from the lucrative arms trade and maintain its naval and military installations in the country.

Trouble is, this cosy international arrangement has overlooked something, quite, important. The vast majority of the Syrian people!

Has somebody stopped to consider that they may want to take full advantage of this (historic) opportunity to opt for some (real) change - instead of window dressing?!

And America's record of supporting/promoting real change is a dubious one, to say the least.

I'm sure a lot of Egyptians are, still, seething at the moral gymnastics performed by Washington during the Arab Spring before seeing Pax Americana repose back into its (default) setting of supporting the military junta in Cairo.

Any 'change' overseen by the international powers is guaranteed to be NO CHANGE AT ALL. Sure, the Assad family will, probably, go into exile but the regime will continue - blessed by the very same forces that have sponsored the bloodletting of the current regime in Damascus.

WalterCronkiteBot 1 Oct 2015 06:05

We keep hearing about this transition process involving the credible opposition. The credible opposition are the SNC and FSA apparently.

How the SNC are (or at least were) really a group of non Syrians including Bilderberg attendees and people from Kissinger backed think tanks. Supported by Human Rights reports from a man working from his home in Coventry.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jul/12/syrian-opposition-doing-the-talking

Two UN reports detailing FSA war crimes, and explaining that they enforce Sharia law. Of course Assad's crimes are covered too.
http://daccess-ods.un.org/access.nsf/Get?Open&DS=A/HRC/19/69&Lang=E
http://daccess-ods.un.org/access.nsf/Get?Open&DS=A/HRC/19/69&Lang=E

These are the moderates that represent Syrian people... who are funded by the US, aren't Syrian, and have their military wing running Sharia courts. They are about as credible as Peter Andre. I dare say he would do a better job.

LeftOrRightSameShite -> LordDespencer 1 Oct 2015 06:03

given that it is Assad's "governmentalism" that led to the chaos on Syria.

Certainly contributed to it. There is also evidence that the US as of 2006 was looking to seize upon an opportunity to oust Assad. Events in 2011 provided just that.
This US cable released by Wikileaks provides more details.

There is also evidence the US had mercenaries operating in Syria (and Libya) in 2011/12. Against Assad of course.

Tony Blair in a 2006 speech to the World Affairs Council in LA proclaimed:

"we need to make clear to Syria and Iran that there is a choice: come in to the international community and play by the same rules as the rest of us; or be confronted"

Bit rich isn't it? What did he mean by "confronted" do you think? What's the agenda then? Again, Tony provides enlightenment:

"For me, a victory for the moderates means an Islam that is open: open to globalisation"

hmm
I've got a whole archive of links such as the above. If they prove one thing, it's that this whole episode is rotten and we are being fed stories that often distract from real intention.

seamuspadraig -> LafayetteInFrance 1 Oct 2015 05:29

The Saudis know full well that only a ground force can finally eradicate ISIS.

ISIS is Saudi Arabia's ground force in Syria.

kimorris 1 Oct 2015 05:26

In the 1980's film Threads the similarity with the unfolding Syria story is chilling. In the film Iran is the country of conflict, after an exchange of conventional weaponry the USA detonate a single battlefield nuke. Escalation ensues until all out global thermonuclear war continues to it's conclusion, destruction of most of the planet. It should be remembered the USA is the only nation to have used nuclear weapons in war.

AXWE08 1 Oct 2015 05:19

The narrative from Washington is more and more divorced from reality. The hope was that ISIS and/or Al Nusra would ultimately deplete Syria's limited military resources and remove Assad and the Baathist government that had held Syria together for decades - regardless of the resulting consequences to the Christian, Jewish and Alawite population in that part of Syria. The Neoconservative strategy has now been frustrated by Russia and the bluster from Washington is that the Russian targets were not 'legitimate' - as if one type of terrorist is officially approved by Washington and others not. It has been a commonplace that the US/Saudis are behind ISIS and Al Nusra and this response gives the game away. What is this grip the NeoCons have on American thinking? Putin has his shortcomings, but he towers above Obama and his horrid crew of western leaders.

ThomasPaine2 1 Oct 2015 04:56

The Americans don't really make good foreign policy decisions. I'm struggling to think of any single foreign adventure they haven't fucked up totally.

Why they think they are good at it beats me.

Assad, like him or loathe him, is a relatively stable, sane, locally popular and established leader. I suspect that the reason for all of this chaos in the ME is to keep Israel's enemies divided. The death and destruction it causes, matters not.

For America to accuse Russia of pouring fuel on the fire is like David Cameron calling for the humane treatment of pigs.

BalanceIt -> MentalToo 1 Oct 2015 04:42

The US has forced violent regime change in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. How are those countries doing? Terribly is the answer. In Syria the US, through its proxies Suadi Qatar Turkey, have been attempting a violent overthrow of ANOTHER regime leading to yet another humanitarian catastrophe. None of these moves by the US and Russia are about democracy, to claim they are is lunacy.

And no The Guardian is not independent, everyone in the industry knows big newspapers run these types of stories past the security state before publishing.

SHA2014 1 Oct 2015 04:39

Sometimes it is worth reading the Telegraph:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/11140860/Qatar-and-Saudi-Arabia-have-ignited-time-bomb-by-funding-global-spread-of-radical-Islam.html

SHA2014 -> huffingtonboy 1 Oct 2015 04:10

Fixation on barrel bombs seems to be the code word for delegitimization. Let us start talking of daisy cutters, phosphorus bombs cluster bombs and the like, used by US and allies in recent attacks on civilian areas.

[Oct 09, 2015] A proxy cold war in Syria

Oct 07, 2015 | Peak Prosperity

President Obama recently assured that we're not engaging in a proxy war in Syria. Well this latest news doesn't help sell his story. Boy, the players are getting me nervous. Let's hope things don't escalate and false flags are raised even higher.

Russian Airstrikes In Syria Hit CIA-Trained Rebel Weapons Depot

"Russian airstrikes late Tuesday have destroyed the central weapons depot of a U.S.-trained rebel group, according to its commander. The Liwa Suqour al-Jabalpur rebel group, which opposes Syria President Bashar Assad's authoritarian regime, was trained by the CIA at training camps in Saudi Arabia and Qatar."

sand_puppy

NATO Threatens to send ground troups to Syria

NATO Threatens To Send In Troops After Russia Stations Ground "Battalion" In Syria

Thanks to the fact that the West selected Islamic militants (ISIS) as its anti-Assad weapon of choice, Putin gets to pitch his efforts to defend Assad as a "war on terror."

ZH predicted:

..."the Pentagon will use the gambit of a Russian ground campaign, credible or not, to get permission from Congress to send a 'small', at first, then bigger ground force of US troops in Syria to, you guessed it, 'fight ISIS'....

A commenter after the ZH article notes:

A recently released classified document obtained by WikiLeaks establishes that active US planning for regime-change predated the outbreak of the Syrian civil war by at least five years.

From another article:

The question today is merely one of timing. .... How long before Israeli planes come into contact with Russian or Iranian fighters? How long before U.S. troops come into contact with Russian troops? How long before Israel or Saudi Arabia strike Iran? And if the U.S. backs out completely, how long before the entire dynamic of the Middle East is flipped and America loses petro-status for the dollar? With the speed of events forming a fiscal-political riptide, it is hard to imagine we will be waiting very long to find out.

[Oct 07, 2015] US Ruling Circles Split On Use of Jihadists in Syria

"... Well, the United States and its allies are speaking gobbledygook, and Russia is speaking straight up plain international law truth. Theyve come to the aid of the recognized government of Syria, which is being attacked by proxies of other countries, the U.S., the Saudis, other Gulf states, and Turkey, in violation of international law. ..."

"... They are defending principles of international law. And the U.S. and its allies are violating international law, and the U.S. and its allies cannot draw some kind of red line around ISIS, the wayward jihadists that dont want to take orders, and expect the Russians to only discipline their little bad boys and leave the other jihadists alone. That only makes sense to idiots like the New York Times and CNN and the rest. ..."

"... in a way the Russian military intervention against the jihadists in Syria has given the Obama administration another chance to back off of that decades-long policy of using Islamic jihadists as footsoldiers for imperialism in the Muslim world. ..."

"... there was a growing split in the U.S. government in ruling circles, in the intelligence agencies, even three years ago. And there was a fear that the jihadists would have, were developing their own kind of agenda. And theres nothing that U.S. imperialists dislike more than people who have their own agenda. And we know now that in August of 2012, we know this because of a memo that came to light this year, that analysts for the Defense and Intelligence Agency were warning that the jihadists, the people who would become the Islamic State, were likely to declare their own caliphate. And that would mean that they would have their own policies and they would fight their own war, not the war that the United States wanted them to fight. ..."

"... And although that warning didnt cause the U.S. to reverse its long policy of supporting jihadists, it did I think make Obama much more cautious, and I think thats why he backed off from bombing Syria that same year. The same Defense Intelligence Agency analysts are now screaming that the top Pentagon brass are lying about the kinds of reports that theyve been given, reports about the growing strength of ISIS. And that argument in itself is signs of a real split in the intelligence agencies, a split in the U.S. military, a split in the Obama administration itself. A split that was evident when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state. ..."

Oct 07, 2015 | therealnews.com

BALL: So what is going on here? It almost sounds like a neo-Cold War indirect conflict of superpowers vying for colonial control over their property, or a fight over whose anti-Assad allies should be supported. What is going on?

FORD: Well, the United States and its allies are speaking gobbledygook, and Russia is speaking straight up plain international law truth. They've come to the aid of the recognized government of Syria, which is being attacked by proxies of other countries, the U.S., the Saudis, other Gulf states, and Turkey, in violation of international law. And the Russians say that they are not just defending the government that they have had relations with for decades. They are defending principles of international law. And the U.S. and its allies are violating international law, and the U.S. and its allies cannot draw some kind of red line around ISIS, the wayward jihadists that don't want to take orders, and expect the Russians to only discipline their little bad boys and leave the other jihadists alone. That only makes sense to idiots like the New York Times and CNN and the rest.

BALL: But again, for those of us who have varying understandings of what's happening here, it would seem like the U.S. would not have a problem with Assad's territory being bombed, given that the U.S. and Obama's administration in particular is no fan of Bashar al-Assad and his leadership there in Syria. Why then are they having a problem with what Russia's doing, and to what extent are the problems that are claimed to be addressed there actually caused in their origin by the United States and its policies?

FORD: Well, the United States has, and Obama knows the United States has, problems that go beyond the Russian intervention. They have problems with their own policy, which has brought them to this state of affairs. And in a way the Russian military intervention against the jihadists in Syria has given the Obama administration another chance to back off of that decades-long policy of using Islamic jihadists as footsoldiers for imperialism in the Muslim world.

And the reason that I say another chance is because it was the Russians back in 2012 who gave President Obama a similar opportunity to re-think that jihadist 35-year-old policy when they proposed that the international community supervise the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons. That was back in 2012. And that allowed President Obama to back off from his threat to attack Syria, to bomb the Syrian government. I think that President Obama backed off on that threat not because of domestic or international opposition. The United States acts unilaterally all the time, I think he could have gotten away with it. I think that Obama was genuinely afraid of what would happen if the Syrian government collapsed. And make no mistake about it, if the United States had attacked the Syrian government directly the dynamic of the situation would have compelled the United States to keep on attacking until that government was totally destroyed, just like they did to Col. Gaddafi's government in Libya only one year before.

But it is very clear, now quite clear in hindsight but I think it was visible back then, that there was a growing split in the U.S. government in ruling circles, in the intelligence agencies, even three years ago. And there was a fear that the jihadists would have, were developing their own kind of agenda. And there's nothing that U.S. imperialists dislike more than people who have their own agenda. And we know now that in August of 2012, we know this because of a memo that came to light this year, that analysts for the Defense and Intelligence Agency were warning that the jihadists, the people who would become the Islamic State, were likely to declare their own caliphate. And that would mean that they would have their own policies and they would fight their own war, not the war that the United States wanted them to fight.

And although that warning didn't cause the U.S. to reverse its long policy of supporting jihadists, it did I think make Obama much more cautious, and I think that's why he backed off from bombing Syria that same year. The same Defense Intelligence Agency analysts are now screaming that the top Pentagon brass are lying about the kinds of reports that they've been given, reports about the growing strength of ISIS. And that argument in itself is signs of a real split in the intelligence agencies, a split in the U.S. military, a split in the Obama administration itself. A split that was evident when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state.

So the Russian intervention is now forcing Obama's hand. He's going to have to decide if he's going to continue this policy with the jihadists, or if he's going to go for some kind of containment or stabilization of the battle lines in Syria. We know it's quite obvious that Turkey and Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states wanted an all-out offensive to take out the Assad government once and for all, but that has been checked definitively by the Russians. And that gives Obama another chance to cooperate with the people in the region, with Syria and with Iran, and with the government of Iraq, as well as with the Russians. He has that chance again, if he takes it.

[Oct 07, 2015] Russia Claims ISIS Now On The Ropes As Fighters Desert After 60 Airstrikes In 72 Hours

The rebels in Syria are mixture of Islamic fundamentalists and Sunni liberation movement. So preserving Assad in power while better then chaos like in Libya, still does not solve the country problems, problems which probably are connected with population growth while resources are dwindling and growth of sectarian divisions within the country. The same mechanism as in Ukraine... Poverty breeds nationalists and religious fundamentalists. As both the USA and Israel are trying to use those grievances for forming fifth column and toppling of the government, meddling in the country affairs will not go away. And Russians took a huge risk here. Religious fundamentalists are good, highly motivated fighters. Afghans in mountain terrain manages to hold their against Russian air force for years (with substantial military support from the USA, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia). USA supplied Stringer missiles that destroyed many Russians attach helicopters. Not it is more difficult to do as ISIS is the force the USA would be embarrassed openly to cooperate with, but covert channels remain.

Oct 07, 2015 | Zero Hedge

One question that's been asked repeatedly over the past thirteen months is why Washington has been unable to achieve the Pentagon's stated goal of "degrading and defeating" ISIS despite the fact that the "battle" pits the most advanced air force on the planet against what amounts to a ragtag band of militants running around the desert in basketball shoes.

Those of a skeptical persuasion have been inclined to suggest that perhaps the US isn't fully committed to the fight. Explanations for that suggestion range from the mainstream (the White House is loathe to get the US into another Mid-East war) to the "conspiratorial" (the CIA created ISIS and thus doesn't want to destroy the group due to its value as a strategic asset).

The implication in all of this is that a modern army that was truly determined to destroy the group could likely do so in a matter of months if not weeks and so once Russia began flying sorties from Latakia, the world was anxious to see just how long the various rebel groups operating in Syria could hold up under bombardment by the Russian air force.

The answer, apparently, is "less than a week."

On Saturday, the Russian Ministry of Defense said it has conducted 60 bombing runs in 72 hours, hitting more than 50 ISIS targets.

According to the ministry (Facebook page is here), Islamic State fighters are in a state of "panic" and more than 600 have deserted.

... ... ...

... ... ...

the phantom

I guess this means no more 2 mile long ISIS, toyota truck convoys flying black flags? Still a ways to go... need to see the Syrian/Iranian ground troops start moping up, then it's for real. Once that happens, the panic will really hit ISIS and the rest of the terrorists. That's when those dogs go back to their masters, the Saudi's, and ask some real tough questions. I would not want to be a member of the royal family when that happens.

[Oct 07, 2015] Syria SITREP October 07th 2015 by John Rambo

Nice antidote to Guardian propaganda ;-). this is actually a huge risk for Russia as ISIS is serious, tenacious opponet that has some resources in Russian part of Caucasus.

"... Islamists are now being struck by US jets in Iraq but by Russian jets in Syria, leaving only Jordan and Turkey as the only safe havens left. ..."

"... For Russia this is a gamble. Many hawkish individuals are screaming that this will be a second Afghanistan. Undoubtedly Wahhabi Islamists within the Caucuses are fuming at the Russian involvement in the Middle East, and unlike the United States, Russia is within reach of these domestic jihadists. It's safe to assume Russia probably stepped up domestic surveillance and security in potential hotspot areas within its territory. [Source] After all it wasn't that long ago when Prince Bandar was talking about how he can "turn-on and turn-off" the Chechen Jihadists. Who knows how much truth that holds… if any… but better to play it safe. [Source] ..."

"... ISIL is not a stupid player in this conflict. The Islamic State has been able to fool the US into providing weapons and training for the jihad for quite some time. ISIL has also endured a year of strikes from the US and its Arab partners, sometimes averaging to a dozen strikes a day. There have been more bombs dropped on ISIL in the past year than the 5 years in Afghanistan. [SOURCE] But now there is a sense of despair in the air. The difference is the effectiveness of the Russian strikes. Thanks to the human intelligence assets infiltrated inside opposition groups by Syrian intelligence the Russians have been able to get very accurate information on rallying points, command posts, storage areas, and even locations of leadership personnel of these terrorists. Human intelligence provides more accurate data than drones, flybys, signal interception, or game theory analysis. Human intelligence is right there, right now. ..."

"... Also the hysteria will run deeper now if any special forcers advisors were in those IS command bunkers… ..."

October 07, 2015 | The Vineyard of the Saker

It's been a week since the Russian airstrikes began in Syria.

From the Syrian military standpoint this was perfect timing. Morale has been an all-time low amongst the Syrian Arab Army and Hezbollah forces deployed in Syria. Heavy intermixed regular and irregular fighting for a better part of four and a half years is draining to any military, let alone a small country such as Syria. [Source]

Syria is a destroyed country. It is nothing but a husk of its former self. Ancient historical sites that once drew in the tourists have been pillaged and demolished by the Islamic State. Infrastructure such as roads, power lines, and water systems has been set back forty years. Major segments of its population are refugees displaced internally and abroad. Syria truly will never be the same again. [Source]

So one can safely say the Russian air strikes (and potential increased involvement) has been a blessing to the Pro-Assad forces on the ground. Syria has been restricted to fighting one military front at a time due to manpower shortages, giving opponents the ability to take advantage of lightly reinforced government-held areas and outskirt outposts. These Russian air strikes will not only strengthen SAA ground offensives but also support defending forces at the fringes of government control. For the Syrian draft dodgers the Russian air strikes are taken as a form of hope; finally there are other countries besides Iran that want to see a stabilized Syria. Islamists are now being struck by US jets in Iraq but by Russian jets in Syria, leaving only Jordan and Turkey as the only safe havens left.

As for Russia, it has decided to step up and do what the Americans can't (or won't) do and that is to try to put the Islamic extremism genie back in the lamp, in Syria anyway. For Russia this is a gamble. Many hawkish individuals are screaming that this will be a second Afghanistan. Undoubtedly Wahhabi Islamists within the Caucuses are fuming at the Russian involvement in the Middle East, and unlike the United States, Russia is within reach of these domestic jihadists. It's safe to assume Russia probably stepped up domestic surveillance and security in potential hotspot areas within its territory. [Source] After all it wasn't that long ago when Prince Bandar was talking about how he can "turn-on and turn-off" the Chechen Jihadists. Who knows how much truth that holds… if any… but better to play it safe. [Source]

For Russia has a lot to lose in this intervention. A downed and captured pilot may be a domestic political nightmare. Even though the Russian airbase is heavily guarded and patrolled 24 hours of the day, the potential for material loss of fighter jets in a surprise suicide attack is still there. Let's not forget how resourceful Islamists can be. It seems over the years even the most blockheaded of mujahids can surprise you in today's 21st century of warfare. Take a look at the Taliban's successful attack on Camp Bastion in Afghanistan in 2012 where they successfully destroyed six harrier jets (and severely damaging two more), a C-130 plane, and killed 2 marines while trying to gun for Prince Harry himself (who was stationed at the base as part of his military service). [Source]

The government of Syria formally requested aid from Russia and Russia replied in the form of airstrikes. Why Russia chose now to help Assad and not earlier is still a puzzle. Of course Russian gains a few things from this expedition. For one, it's better to these Wahhabis, especially the Chechens who were imported to the area thanks to Saudi Arabia, in Syria than to have to fight them in Russia.

Secondly this is a perfect chance to test out some military hardware. Not only is this an opportunity to see how well these aerial weapon systems work in conjunction with coordinated ground operations in real life combat scenarios (with a ground force comprised of ex-Soviet and Russian equipment) but also test out the electronic warfare systems against the regional players. Turkey, Israel and Jordan all have electronic warfare units. Air warfare and electronic warfare go hand-in-hand. There is no such thing as a modern air operation without electronic warfare being involved.

And finally to keep Assad afloat, an ally and for some reason one that has had a long history of support from Russia (and once USSR). In the past providing advanced weaponry of all forms, from anti-tank missiles to anti-air weapon systems, tanks to fighter jets, etc. etc. Of course in keeping the Assad government alive so too are the Russian naval base in Syria.

Still one must wonder. Russia must gain something more than that. Especially with the risk it is undertaking.

ISIL is not a stupid player in this conflict. The Islamic State has been able to fool the US into providing weapons and training for the jihad for quite some time. ISIL has also endured a year of strikes from the US and its Arab partners, sometimes averaging to a dozen strikes a day. There have been more bombs dropped on ISIL in the past year than the 5 years in Afghanistan. [SOURCE] But now there is a sense of despair in the air. The difference is the effectiveness of the Russian strikes. Thanks to the human intelligence assets infiltrated inside opposition groups by Syrian intelligence the Russians have been able to get very accurate information on rallying points, command posts, storage areas, and even locations of leadership personnel of these terrorists. Human intelligence provides more accurate data than drones, flybys, signal interception, or game theory analysis. Human intelligence is right there, right now.

So let's take a look at the actions, potential actions, and events of each actor in this theater of war:

Russia:

• Expanded an airbase and reinforced it with ground security forces which include round-the-clock helicopter gunship patrols.
• Advanced electronic warfare platforms spotted at Latakia [Source]
• Has created a Joint Information Center (co-ordination) with the organizations that have units on the ground such as Syria, Iran and Iraq. [Source]
• Plans to cull the number of renegade Chechens in Syria instead of waiting for them to come home and cause trouble in Russia
• The opportunity to test out the latest variants or upgrade kits on fighter jets in combat situations for realistic performance data (Su-24M, Su-25SM, and Su-30SM are upgraded variants of their original make design for a modern electronic warfare-laden battlefield).
• Consistently attacking ALL opposition positions, starting with those threatening the Syrian regime first and moving up to ISIL; perhaps in tangent with an Iraqi ground op.
• Mulling expanding its mission into Iraq if requested by the Iraqi military.
• Big international prestige and PR campaign…. If successful.
• The Russian deployment is somewhat an assurance against Israeli air strikes on IRGC and Hezbollah forces.
• Russia has the option to punish Turkey for its support in allowing ISIL to use its borders by discretely (or overtly) aiding the Kurds; as the Kurds have been a US ally since the Iraq invasion in 2003 the US can't overtly denounce the aid.
• This entire air operation might be a way to bridge the gap between the US and Assad. The US is unwilling to work with Assad and Iranian forces on the ground, but Russia has no scruples in doing so. The US, with its considerably larger air force in the region, can strike while Iran and Syria provide the intel alongside Russia. The US can save face, Russia can save an ally, and Syria and Iraq are literally just saved. (Wishful thinking).

Syria:

• Syria right now is taking cover to recoup and to play some propaganda cards to try to get as many people on the regimes side as possible.
• Draft dodgers may be incentivized to commit to their conscription due to the positive foreign intervention from a superpower (finally, a nation with high-tech equipment actually bombing the terrorists for once).
• Syrian military morale, which was low due to the never ending flow of foreign fighters, has slightly increased because of the Russian air strikes.
• The Syrian military has been restructured twice times throughout the conflict. First from its old Soviet-modelled format to a hybrid military incorporating conventional and irregular forces to a garrison-style force adjusting for a protracted conflict. [Source]
• Syrian Air Force is freed up to provide direct air support to Syrian Arab Army units while Russian Air Force maintains pressure on the "rear" of the opposition with surgical strikes on command centers, training sites, and storage areas.
• There are some heavy urban battles to come for the Syrian Arab Army which is projecting a lot of causalities (some even suggesting the Russians will provide the SAA infantry-based thermobaric weaponry to help clear our urban city centers).

Iran, Hezbollah:

• News everywhere of amassing ground forces. It seems that Iran and Hezbollah are going to commit larger forces in ground offensives orchestrated along Russian air strikes.
• Iran, under the cover of Russian air strikes, has managed to transfer mores weapons that were too hard to do with the threat of Israeli air strikes. This includes advanced anti-air missiles and converted SCUDs for anti-ship roles. [Source]
• Iran might be committing IRGC battalions in Syria and may be mulling the deployment of greater assets.
• Hezbollah counter-intelligence (or Syrian secret police) units may attempt to assassinate opposition rebel leadership being harbored in Jordan or Turkey. In the past an FSA commander was found murdered, Jordanian government claimed it was criminal and not politically motivated. Others claim it was an assassination. [Source]

Iraq:

• The US currently has a significant number of advisers in Iraq and specifically Baghdad. This includes AH-64 Apache gunships which turned back ISIL when it was about to descend on the capital. [Source]
• Iraq has consistently provided fuel and diesel to Syria as part of its struggle against ISIL. Both Iraq and Syria are plagued by ISIL and other dissident factions.
• Iraq may petition Russia to envelop Iraq in its air operation should events in Syria turn for the better. [Source]
• US support for Iraq is extend

Islamic State:

• Right now ISIL is reinforcing towns and cities under its control by constructing tunnels, reinforced foxholes, and other bunkers to ride out the Russian air strikes; much like the tactics used by Hezbollah in the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah. This is to preserve the manpower for any ground assaults. Expect multi-month sieges.
• Probably planning for some type of attack inside Russia proper as retaliation like those seen in Europe. Perhaps targeted on ambassadors or other dignitaries.
• Some forces have retreated to Turkey and Jordan until the situation dissipates.
• Might commit to a PR stunt such as bombing internationally protected civilian facilities like schools or hospitals and blame it on Russian air strikes. Remember the Chlorine gas attack which was immediately pinned on the Assad government, but both the UN and Russia proved was committed by the rebels in hopes of drawing foreign intervention. [Source]
• Convince Turkey to provide high-tech anti-air weaponry (Turkey has been proven to have direct talks to the leadership of ISIL) [Source]
• Human shields can possibly be used in some PR stunt.
• It seems that ISIL has been taken by surprise by the Russian air strikes. This means that the US has been purposely leaving them alone in certain areas.
• The current interim operating procedure for ISIL is to spot when Russian fighters take off from their base and begin warning units. So far it may involve "moving munitions 15 meters underground", "moving tanks, cars, and cannons daily never leaving them in one spot", "keeping your engines on at all times", "be prepared to move at a moment's notice", "destroy sim cards of all 'senior' commanders", "stay away from villages" [Source]

GCC-Supported Opposition ARMY OF CONQUEST (FSA & remnants of Al-Qaeda in Syria; Al-Nusra Front):

• These groups are seen as terrorists in the eyes of Russia and have been struck.
• A number of FSA fighters have already surrendered to the government and a larger number has already fled to Jordan thanks to the psychological impact of the Russian strikes.
• Fresh reinforcements, most likely thanks to Saudi Arabia and Qatari money, has arrived from the North Caucasus including Ukrainian specialists and experts (suggesting some new type of weapon system may be soon given to the opposition forces or targeted against the Russian forces in Syria). [Source]
• Right now the Army of Conquest is a conglomeration of forces which include various Islamist factions including Al-Nusra Front, and mercenary forces hired, trained, or supplied by the CIA, Turkey, GCC, or other Western-affiliated actors. They "fight alongside" the FSA. It fights against the Islamic State, Hezbollah, and the Syrian government. [Source]
• The FSA is rumored to be gone, just a media myth. The majority defecting to ISIL. There are only Islamists of varying shades. [Source]
• The Army of Conquest is being coordinated by commanders stationed in operation rooms sponsored by Saudi Arabia and Qatar and hosted in Jordan and Turkey, safe from Russian air strikes (for now….) [Source]

Arab Nations (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Jordan):

• Saudi Arabia right now is being bogged down with its operations in Yemen. Iran may have tipped the scales by offering some sort of material support to the Shia-Houthis now engaged in fighting the Yemen government and its Saudi backers.
• Saudi Arabia is also trying to confront Iran in other proxy wars, including Iraq, Lebanon and potentially Bahrain.
• If the US doesn't act in time Saudi Arabia will take it upon itself to finance some sort of attack on Russia either in Syria or somewhere. If this doesn't materialize then Saudi Arabian capabilities are beyond incompetence.
• Qatar will be fronting the majority of the financing for the opposition forces. Qatar has always been the hotbed of international terrorist financing [Source]
• Jordan has been playing both sides. It assisted the US in training a proxy force which would cross from Jordan into Syria, but has also tipped off Syrian intelligence of these forces so they may be arrested or destroyed before doing harm. It has been trying to shift back to neutral. [Source]

Israel:

• Israel has been informed of the Russian air operation.
• Israel will not risk an air confrontation with Russia. After the 2006 Hezbollah-Israel war, secretary-general of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah was giving a speech in Beirut right after the ceasefire as a show of solidarity with the people. Israel was denied the ability to launch an air strike assassination against this very important target due to the deployment of French Air Force fighter jets during his speech [Source]
• Israel has committed mock air attacks on UNIFIL before to trigger a response. It may commit the same action against Russian or Assad forces in a hope to draw out a reaction. [Source]
• A weakened Syrian state, now without large stockpiles of chemical weapons, may be forced to accept the Israeli annexation of the Golan Heights.
• Israel will continue to provide medical aid to rebel and Islamist fighters in the Golan Height [Source]
• Israel claims it can overcome the S-300 and deal a marketing blow to Russia if it needs to strike targets inside Syria, such as weapon shipments to Hezbollah. [Source]

Turkey:

• Probably the biggest loser of the entire debacle. Not only is Assad going to remain standing but it looks like the Kurds will be in a better position to resist Turkey thanks to their quasi-state-like Kurdistan that intersects through Syria, Turkey, Iraq and Iran.
• Wants a NATO or US-sponsored no-fly zone on its border with Syria to allow operations against the Kurds to remain unimpeded.
• Turkey, being denied further escalation against Syria, has used the Syrian refugee crisis as means to attack the EU by letting them pass through into EU proper.
• Turkey has had to deal with jihadis seeping over the border, with car bombs and other terrorist acts occurring throughout the country. If jihadis flee back into Turkey this could be more trouble.
• A ground invasion of Northern Syria to create a buffer zone for the opposition seems unlikely.
• Russia has accidentally strayed into Turkish air space for a few seconds, creating some chest-thumping by NATO [Source]
• US Patriot missiles mandate expires on October. Are they still in Turkey? [Source]
• The EU is currently working on a crisis plan with Turkey to stem the flow of refugees. [Source]

United States of America:

• The US currently has limited options to the Russian air strikes.
• The US still has a significantly larger air fleet in the region and has committed a ludicrous amount of airstrikes, drone strikes, missile strikes, and other strikes.
• It will suffer an international PR fiasco if Russia can restore some order in Syria within a few months. [Source]
• US along with its allies (perhaps Turkey and/or France) may attempt a ground operation in the North-East part of the country; perhaps to divide the country in some spring 1945 Berlin situation.
• The US can actively arm opposition forces with heavier weapons, risking their proliferation, to deny any Russian gains.
• The Ukrainian operation may be ramped up again.
• The US may be looking to accept any face-saving measure to get out of the Syrian mess seeing the red line the Russians have drawn in regards to Assad. Avoiding major conflicts with Russia as more important than pleasing the Saudis and their secret war against Iran.
• Currently the US and Russia are just starting to work on an agreement to coordinate air operations in Syria. [Source]
• Air strikes are still being commenced in Iraq against ISIL and Afghanistan against the Taliban.

• Chances are both the US and Russia are monitoring each other's electronic emissions.

on October 07, 2015 · at 3:07 pm UTC

article from Counterpunch on humanitarian hypocrisy:

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/07/the-double-speak-of-american-civilian-humanitarianism/

Penelope on October 07, 2015 · at 3:12 pm UTC

Four Russian Navy warships have fired a total of 26 missiles at the position of the terrorist group Islamic State in Syria, Russia's Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu announced. The missiles were fired from the Caspian Sea.
"Four missile ships launched 26 cruise missiles at 11 targets. According to objective control data, all the targets were destroyed. No civilian objects sustained damage," Shoigu said.

The missiles flew some 1,500 km before reaching their targets, probing their efficiency.

The missile attacks came from Russia's fleet in the Caspian Sea, which borders Russia, Iran and three other littoral countries. The precision weapons hit all intended targets.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-10-07/russian-warships-launch-missile-attack-syrian-targets-clearing-way-iran-ground-invas

Anonymous on October 07, 2015 · at 3:47 pm UTC

One of the unintended consequences of Russia's military action is exposing how stupid Kiev was claiming every five minutes they were fighting the Russian army and airforce. Also exposing the absurd attempts of msm journalists. I think many will see what has happened and grasp the fact that that if the Russians had entered it would have been over and out very quickly for the kiev junta. The west and nato is seething at this flexing of military muscle knowing that they have lost the plot/narrative big time here. Cruise missiles flying through iran and Iraq and hitting their terrorist targets, conveniently passing turkey, poetry in motion!

Anonymous on October 07, 2015 · at 4:02 pm UTC

Yes, been the buzz for a few hours (everywhere except here in sleepy Sakerland) - basically a 26-missile birthday salute for Putin using equipment only 'lawful' if not launched on land from the only sea/lake that the US/Nato cannot have a boat in. Brilliant!

A couple more weeks then on into Iraq (by invitation) and Obama's pivot out of the Middle east will be all but completed - with Putin's boot-prints embossed on his backside to boot.

The degenerate Saudi regime are squealing all the way to market and it's not hard to see why. Egypt's SiSi and military are on side with the Russians, Yemen is a war-crimes mess and UN Human Rights a joke - and cracks in the US/Nato un-affordable facade are occurring with high ranking suggestions that the Obama Administration are funding ISIS.

"Do you realise, now, what you have done, Mr Obama?"

Game, set, match, dip-shit!

mmiriww on October 07, 2015 · at 4:11 pm UTC

What is not mentioned here is they took out some IS command bunkers with their advisors without any warning. The US just admitted that they have special forces observing IS.. So does the SAS of UK and Australia, all dressed up as IS.. Russia already gave warning so they could leave and I bet a lot of them have seeing the hysteria and the terrorists running for the hills after their commanders left for safer zones..

But I bet no one expected to get hit with millions dollar cruise missiles deep in IS held territory. Also the hysteria will run deeper now if any special forcers advisors were in those IS command bunkers…

Anonymous on October 07, 2015 · at 4:31 pm UTC

Article is a good reason why when it comes to geopol news/events, I can barely stomach reading ZH for its time-wasting infotainment content, delivered smarmy smug style.
I see the root story of many of his articles on other websites between 2 & 10 days before it appears there.

Notice his inexcusable disgraceful slam against the SAA, as if they don't exist & haven't for eons?
In all that time, while they've been worked over from the air by the murderous 'coalition', almost a
quarter million dead & up to 1/3 of Syria's civilians living as refugees.

Sickening.

Solon on October 07, 2015 · at 3:16 pm UTC

Important article on Matt Drudge, the media, politics, social control and the corporate takeover of American culture and the citizens' minds.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2015/10/07/matt-drudge-blisters-corporate-media-hillary-clinton-and-sick-americans-in-rare-interview/

He knows. He understands.

This is the key analysis in a nutshell. Understand what he is saying you understand America and why it is a danger to itself and the world.

teranam13 on October 07, 2015 · at 3:27 pm UTC

Keep your eye on Erdogan: He has royally p-ssed off the Kurds within Turkey and now the jihadis will flee back over into Turkey to cause mayhem there. He is up for power renewal Nov 1st so he may try to play the US like the Saudis do in which case things will get very nasty .

The "we have good relationship with Russia" is a diplomatic deception like Hitler had good relationship with Stalin: he is playing a very dangerous double game but he thinks he is up to it because he is blinded by his arrogance. Hubris follows arrogance like winter follows Fall.

Martin from Soviet East-Berlin on October 07, 2015 · at 3:57 pm UTC

Thank you John for this excellent work!

From me for now only some links that some may find interesting:

Russian Warships Launch Missile Attack On Syrian Targets, Clearing Way For Iran Ground Invasion
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-10-07/russian-warships-launch-missile-attack-syrian-targets-clearing-way-iran-ground-invas

And here is a nice and live video from the Russian Ministry of Defence of this missiles leaving Caspian Sea for the "any target within Saudi Arabia and Qatar" range
Массированный удар высокоточным оружием по объектам ИГИЛ в Сирии из акватории Каспийского моря
(Massive attack of precision weapons targetting ISIS in Syria, shot from the Caspian Sea some 1500 kilometers away)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMasnaAf_H4

Russia Sends The USA A HUGE Message From The Caspian Sea
http://themillenniumreport.com/2015/10/russian-missiles-hit-is-in-syria-from-caspian/

Putin: Who created ISIS?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbZDyr2LkdI&app=desktop

Here some readers' comment found on above ZH link:

A)
"""""Eisenhorn
Eisenhorn's picture

This situation just highlights the stupidity of the western game plan.

This has always been about natural gas lines through Syria into the southern EU.

The west needed to distract Russia with the debacle in the Ukraine to prevent her from being able to respond in Syria adequately.

That effort failed abysmally.

Syria is a Russian vassal state. From the beginning of this effort the endgame was ALWAYS you must be prepared to fight the Russians in Syria to achieve your goal. If you are not prepared for that eventuality, then your plan was doomed from the start.

Russian CANNOT allow Middle East natural gas to flow into the EU. The only thing keeping the Russians relevant geo-politically are their a) Nukes and b) EU reliance on Russian natural gas.

So since the Ukraine "force Russia to fight on two fronts" plan just crashed and burned, you now have to either fight them directly in Syria or tuck your tail and go home leaving the Middle East to the Russians.

We obviously will not abandon our gulf allies in the region, so at this point it is only a matter of time before we start shooting Russians and Iranians.

Grab your popcorn, it's about to get very ugly.

The psychopaths are truly running the asylum."""""

B/C/D …)

Wed, 10/07/2015 – 09:01 | 6639068 agent default
agent default's picture

The US will cut and run but there is one thing that I have no answer for. If Russia settles in the ME, Saudi Arabia and Qatar will have to play nice since it will become obvious that the US cannot and will not help them. So two things happen. Either they drop the dollar, or regime change and then they drop the dollar. Either way the petrodollar is finished. What does the US intend to do about this and how far are they willing to go? I honestly don't have any sort of answer for this situation.

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Wed, 10/07/2015 – 09:29 | 6639200 flapdoodle
flapdoodle's picture

The *really* big problem with the US Deep State is the following:

1) The US Dollar as World Reserve Currency is based on, well, the fact that it is the WRC. The "faith" the rest of the world invests in the Dollar is only backed by momentum – and the perceived preeminence of the US armed forces.

2) Just as the first Iraqi war was seminal in the fall of the Soviet Union IMHO when the world (and particularly the Soviet military analysts) were able to see the overwhelming technical superiority of the US smart weapons and the ease with with the US disposed of Saddam's huge standing army (breaking the illusion that the Soviet Union was a superpower on the par with the US), the move into Syria by Russia by the invitation of the legal government of Syria is in my opinion just as historic and seminal, the bell weather for a major sea-change in the the power structure of the world.

3) Russia in Syria has, at least in its first appearances, greatly neutralized ISIS, which was touted as a huge almost invincible juggernaut, putting on a clinic of technical prowess and coordination almost comparable to the US effort in Iraq 1.

4) The paradigm of the all powerful US military has taken a big hit, if not by its lack of technical superiority (the F35 fiasco does not inspire confidence in US technical capability), but by its intentions, will, and compentence. the MSF hospital in Kunduz fiasco in juxaposition with the well planned Russian strikes against ISIS (which the US supposedly has been attacking for 13 months), raises the question: if you needed someone to protect you, do you trust the Russian military or the US military?

5) The above question is a fatal doubt intruding into the all powerful US paradigm – if the Saudis and other important players (Germany!) start to question US power and cozy up to the Russians, the US petrodollar is done for, and with it US dollar as WRC – the US as a nation will start an inevitable slide into third world status if that occurs. Imagine what happens for example if the US has to pay its military budget from actual assets or savings rather than just print dollars it needs to buy the hugely expensive F35 or send billions to Israel…

6) What gives pause are what the US might do about what has just happened in Syria. The most rabid neocons may push the US into a poorly thought out confrontation, and get us all killed in the worst case.

7) Whatever response the US tries will not change the death of the US Dollar as WRC. The only question is how soon it will be cast aside (and my gut tells me it will be relatively soon, regardless of how "oversubscribed" dollar denominated debt is to the actual number of dollars in circulation)

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Wed, 10/07/2015 – 09:30 | 6639250 agent default
agent default's picture

The dollar is the reserve currency because that's what OPEC demands in exchange for oil. The moment this changes, the only momentum behind the dollar will be the containers full of dollars flung back to the US.

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Wed, 10/07/2015 – 09:50 | 6639379 conscious being
conscious being's picture

Right snd OPEC demands $'s because they don't want to get bombed, etc. It's military force, or death controls as Radical would say, enforcing dollar acceptance. When the threat is no longer believable, countries will be free to dump the dollar and stop paying the imperial tax.

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Wed, 10/07/2015 – 10:31 | 6639568 Urban Redneck
Urban Redneck's picture

No. The dollar is the WRC and maintains that status because BANKERS structure and denominate financial markets around USD hegemony and complementary (arbitrageable) currencies. If the 6 largest oil traders in Geneva changed the preferred denomination of their PAPER oil contracts to EUR, CNY, or basket tomorrow, the impact on WRC would be orders of magnitude larger than ANYTHING that OPEC ministers could ever do.

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Wed, 10/07/2015 – 10:05 | 6639457 Omen IV
Omen IV's picture

you give no value to Iran in your analysis –

the Russian weapons and tactics coupled in a few weeks with Iran on the ground with Soleimani leading will tell SA – its over – from Iran to Libya will potentially be at peace – if the SA fuck around they will be taken out – The Princes want Mansions in London / Paris / LA with binders full of women and Ferrari's – they are lovers not warriors

we will have Iraq firmly under Iran control with the Kurds with their own land driving Erdogan crazy and the USA Fucking the world somewhere else

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Wed, 10/07/2015 – 10:17 | 6639513 BarkingCat
BarkingCat's picture

We don't want to see Russia become dominant and US collapse.
What we want is at least one more equal power to keep the children in check.
That is exactly what those psychopaths in government are – children. They sure behave like it."""""

Carmel by the Sea on October 07, 2015 · at 4:12 pm UTC

Russian Navy Fires 26 Cruise Missiles into Central Syria: ISIS Positions Targeted
http://www.almasdarnews.com/article/russian-navy-fires-26-cruise-missiles-into-central-syria-isis-positions-targeted/

Russia would Consider Extending Air Strikes to Iraq if Requested
http://www.almasdarnews.com/article/russia-would-consider-extending-air-strikes-to-iraq-if-requested/

ISIS Suffers Heavy Losses After Another Failed Offensive in Deir Ezzor: Terrorists Blame Russia
http://www.almasdarnews.com/article/isis-suffers-heavy-losses-after-another-failed-offensive-in-deir-ezzor-terrorists-blame-russia/

Anonymous on October 07, 2015 · at 4:47 pm UTC

Hmmmm….maybe this is why Nutty was in such a tizzy these past 2 weeks.

Maybe when Putin told him he'd clean up Syria in record time, he meant or inferred the Golan, too?

I always figured Nutty would be the prima donna candidate to accelerate this crisis further & faster along to its appointed conclusion ca NOV 30, so watch out for another Wile E. Coyote moment from him sooon.

http://www.almasdarnews.com/article/syrian-army-and-popular-committees-launch-counter-attack-in-the-golan-heights/

The Syrian Arab Army's 90th Brigade – in coordination with Fouj Al-Joulan (Golan Regiment) and Liwaa Suqour Al-Quneitra (Al-Quneitra Hawks Brigade) of the National Defense Forces (NDF) – have launched a counter-attack in the Golan Heights after the Islamist rebels of Jabhat Al-Nusra (Syrian Al-Qaeda) and the Free Syrian Army (FSA) took control of the strategic hilltop of Tal Al-Ahmar.

Daniel on October 07, 2015 · at 4:56 pm UTC

The Syrian oxymoron "explained"

Let me se if I can get this right? We have country A which officially claims that it is "fighting" a war against terrorists (which by the way it has created it self in the first place) but doesn't want to bomb because of the following logic "yes they are bad but Assad is worse" and then we have country B which states it will fight terrorism and is actually doing what it says ,on the very invitation of the host country (whit in the boundaries of international law) which is plagued by the same terrorists threat, that country A is both supporting and "fighting" against simultaneously!? (now how this is possible I really don't know?)

Country A is opposed to the idea that country B is willing to help in the fight against the terrorists in a mutually beneficial joint venture. Country A is against this very same joint effort whit country B, because country B wants to fight even the terrorists that country A considers to be the "good terrorists" depending on whom they are fighting against? Now if you didn't understand a word of what I just said, that is perfectly all right, because I didn't understand it my self either? But this is about the closest that I could interpret Washington's policy stance on Syria these days.

TooLegit2Quit on October 07, 2015 · at 4:57 pm UTC

Some Russian humor here for you guys. The drawing is pure, unadulterated genius (does anybody know the cartoonist?) Oh, and the best punch line ever; these are leaflets dropped on ISIS =)

Article here [propaganda puke alert]: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3261603/Don-t-make-worse-Helicopters-drop-leaflets-ISIS-rebel-fighters-warning-ahead-huge-Russian-backed-ground-offensive.html

You can skip to the picture here: http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/10/06/08/2D218BDB00000578-0-image-a-1_1444118222619.jpg

–

PS; if you do click on the article and scroll down to the comments you will see that public opinion overwhelmingly supports Russia, this is happening in most news papers comment sections that I monitored so far, even the Guardian.

-TL2Q

[Oct 06, 2015] Turkey cannot endure Russian violation of airspace, president says

That's how guardian handlers want turkey to react... Those US and GB dances about Kosher islamists vs. non-Kosher islamists are disgusting.

"... Presumably the first step is to force coalition members to work with the government on airstrikes, rather than intruding daily into Syrian airspace. The tactics chosen seem to have the goal of harassing away the Turkish air force from Syrian airspace. ..."

"... OH!!! The sky is falling! Turkey, that violates (using armed fighter jets) Greece's airspace over the Aegean DAILY, condemns the violation of its airspace. After having continuously violated the Syrian and Iraqi airspace (and bombed) for months. Oh the hypocrisy....! ..."

"... they have exposed the West and NATO's complicity in keeping the Syrian war going, with the aim of removing Assad. It's quite brilliant geo-politicking. ..."

"... Well, after only ONE DAY of military intervention Russia scared the s*** out of ISIS in their very capital. One has to wonder what exactly have the coalition of hypocrites been striking for more than a year!!! - because it surely does not seem like they were actually attacking ISIS. ..."

"... We have had a nuclear deal with Iran and although most westerners consider Iranians, Turks and Kurds to be Arabs they are not. The alliances and interests are far more complex that just a Sunni/Shia divide. This is on the border of Europe, Israel and NATO. ..."

"... Are you misinformed due to blatant western propaganda, or are you a misinforming propagandist? Minsk I and Minsk II were both initiated by Russia with EU states Germany and France; the US and UK were intentionally bypassed and left out (probably because we both supported Ukraine's war against the east). ..."

"... Russia conducted Moscow I and Moscow II negotiations with internal Syrian rebel groups. The "rebel" groups that refused to participate were the likes of jabhat al Nusra and Army of Conquest and other extremist groups (most of which are manned by foreign jihadists); of which the truth has been revealed in the past week or so that such groups are proxy armies funded and armed by the US, GCC states and Turkey, among others. ..."

Oct 06, 2015 | www.theguardian.com

brews12 6 Oct 2015 19:29

The west is not sure what to do now there plot to topple Assad has failed. The West thought Assad would fall easily but no. Then they tried arming the jihadis (sorry moderate forces) that didn't work. Then they set up Islamic state isil or whatever it's called now (funny how the name changes) they must be seen as the worst terrorists ever so the west has an excuse to fly aircraft over Iraq and then syria supposedly to destroy Islamic state but in reality to aid toppling the Assad regime (my apologies the butcher Assad regime)
I always find it unusual that the west was getting much more friendly towards Libya and syria just before the Arab spring more than likely so blame would not fall there way when supposed civil war started.

Arab spring conviently starts just as troops start pulling out or Iraq and Afghanistan.

Some other questions we must now ask.

1. 9/11 conspiracy theories now more plausible.
2. Obama as president was this done as a smokescreen.
3. Cameron elected UK pm way behind in polls and if not elected unlikely to get permission to bomb in syria heavily supported by sun newspaper.
4. Turkey in nato why or perhaps we can see why now.

TomFullery -> Richard Alan 6 Oct 2015 19:29

You obviously don't know how bad things are now. USD 3'000 is just a pipedream these days and Ukraine is bankrupt (but the West doesn't like to admit it).

I hear clowns on CIF daily talking about how the Ruble is in freefall but look at the Hryvnia. Every time I visit Kiev I get more UAH for my Euros, I get better service in restaurants both because the staff are desperate not to lose their jobs and also because as likely as not I, along with the ubiquitous loudmouthed, fatarsed Yanks, am the only customer.

Ironic that I have profited from US aggression and empire building.

TomFullery -> Marcedward 6 Oct 2015 19:24

An apt description of the US as it thrashes around snapping and biting everywhere these days trying to remain world hegemon. But Russia has finally become assertive (Georgia and Ukraine tweeked the bear's tail one too often).

China is playing the chess game which may last just a few decades or may last as long as the US has existed.

kconroy869 6 Oct 2015 19:04

In a strange way, the more I see and hear about Putin, the more I admire his principles. That is not to say that I think he is right with some actions, but there is a strong logic to his views and responses. He is undoubtedly a leader. Obama, Cameron and many others are more interested in sound bites and media control than actually doing the right thing.

Shad O 6 Oct 2015 18:52

The "bad Turkey", "bad Russia" post miss the point. The question is: why? Going through the facts:

1. With with only 4 dedicated air-air fighters in Syria, Russia cannot be intentionally risking their their aircraft or challenging Turkey in their own airspace.

2. The actions of of Syrian MiGs seems too timely to be coincidental.

3. All incidents seem to involve Turkey. No other state, including those bombing Syria seems to be targeted.

4. While the Russians were somewhat apologetic, another incident happened on the following day.

Now, if we remember, the timing of the Russian operation coincided with the start of the calls for "safe zones", effectively pre-empting any further action in this direction. "Safe zones" were one of creeping escalation plans, which would eventually lead to strikes on government forces directly. Russia's plan is the opposite: they want to restore the government's control all over the country. For that they need to have the "anti-IS" coalition deal with the Syrian government.

Presumably the first step is to force coalition members to work with the government on airstrikes, rather than intruding daily into Syrian airspace. The tactics chosen seem to have the goal of harassing away the Turkish air force from Syrian airspace. Turkey is the logical first target: with their muddy record of bombing kurds and armed incursions into Iraq (again, after Kurds), they know full well their position is very shaky, and that they are protected by NATO agreements only if the state comes under attack, not if their aircraft in Syrian airspace gets shot down.

Russia's apparent apologetic response, followed by more incidents is unsurprising. Their current modus operandi is big on the "speak softly" approach. It allows them to follow up with whatever they want and seem consistent with their earlier statements. While at the same time, they can keep doing what they plan to do if negotiations do not give the desired outcome.

Vocalista Metronome151 6 Oct 2015 18:50

RT is just as useful in weighing up what is really happening in the World as any other media outlet.

Let the reader decide eh...?

log1c4l 6 Oct 2015 18:40

Poor old Recep. He was about to get his safe zone for Nusra and then Putin deployed Su-30s, Su-34s and the Moskva with its S300s.

Now he's crying into his beer with Breedlove and the rest of the Islamist/Ziocons.

Rinoul 6 Oct 2015 18:40

If I understand correctly, it is Turkey today the main sponsor of the ISIS and that is Turkey on the verge of revolution. And it is in this country population is largely adheres of radical views where the United States held nuclear weapons. And it is this country is supported by NATO. Am I right?

Cydonian1 6 Oct 2015 18:34

OH!!! The sky is falling! Turkey, that violates (using armed fighter jets) Greece's airspace over the Aegean DAILY, condemns the violation of its airspace. After having continuously violated the Syrian and Iraqi airspace (and bombed) for months. Oh the hypocrisy....!

vampire76 6 Oct 2015 18:31

People where prepared to turn a blind eye to NATO's illegal invasion of Syria if it meant getting rid of these terrorists, now that the Russians came along and highlighted how it should be done and not by arming the guys your supposed to be attacking, NATO should just get out of the way and let Russia do the job properly.

Budovski -> Ximples 6 Oct 2015 18:27

Turkey can endure spending 5 years of state support for terror networks and ensuring Jihadis can cross across its borders, and retreat back to recoup, but it can't endure an accidental 10 sec airspace incursion? Turkey has violated Syria's borders, bombing Kurds, violates Syria's airspace and also violates Greece and Iraq's airspace. When is this rogue state getting kicked out of NATO?

Vocalista foolisholdman 6 Oct 2015 18:23

All wars are bankers wars:

LINK

objectivereporting 6 Oct 2015 18:19

NATO is laughable at best. Please shut the hell up and let the Russkies get rid of the evil named ISIS. You (NATO) had one full year and the Islamic State actually expanded under your air strikes. Few days and ISIS is already running away with families to Iraq and Jordan from Russian sorties. Only thing we need now is for Iraq to make a request for Russian assistance so we can finally "degrade and destroy" ISIS along with ground ops from the Syrian army. OK Obama? All legal according to international law as opposed to the bullying the US-led coalition used to interfere with Syria's sovereignty.

Amying 6 Oct 2015 18:16

NATO have no jurisdiction over Syria and the interfering in the country by Turkey, US, etc is illegal.

Russia's presence was requested by the legitimate government. Only Russia has the authority to bomb targets in Syria.

Turkey is not going to be backed by other NATO members if they taker action against Russian jets.

Vocalista HouseholdCarvery 6 Oct 2015 18:12

"The people/govts etc do have agency for their own actions y'know."

Rubbish - the American people and the British people have no control of their governments as witnessed by Blair and Bush attacking Iraq after millions of people marched in both countries in protest.

A recent vote for Syrian action was undermined in the British Parliament so the bombing is done by the back door without media coverage and also using drones...

DavidEG 6 Oct 2015 18:06

They, their masters and their NATO stooges Will endure a complete demise of CIA-trained "moderate al-qaeda" in a matter of week. Jihadis, moderate and hardline, are fleeing Syria in droves

http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/609680/Islamic-State-ISIS-Russian-bombing-terror-Syria-Caliphate-defeat

sutjeska -> Chiselbeard 6 Oct 2015 18:01

The ones in Ukraine don't want to hack people's heads off for being not quite Muslim enough. They don't sell children as sex slaves, or dynamite cultural heritage sites. Also, they don't get training and weapons from the Americans.

Kholrabi 6 Oct 2015 18:01

Come on Cameron, you worm, repeat after me with all your fusty, clueless Tory parasite mates, soon to go the dodo way: Get Hague and the one with the snout to stand in line too.

"Erdogan must go, we can't have peace in Syria and the Middle East unless Erdogan goes"

"The Saudi Pillock must go, the whole gang of those murdering backwards must go, for peace in the Middle East."

Send a pot belly to your best mate and equally useless worm, Obama.

Say something decent while you still have the time; you will not make it to twenty twenty, or anywhere near that date.

TomFullery -> Chiselbeard 6 Oct 2015 18:00

You missed the US-instigated Nazi putsch there Dude. Things were ticking over quite nicely for years in Ukraine until the US tried a takeover.

Russia checkmated and got a huge chunk of real estate in addition.

Mmirra -> Hippokl 6 Oct 2015 17:47

What do you think, would ISIS gentleman who wrap children in bombs and send them to suicide missions ever use civilians as shileds or would they try to protect them? There will be innocent people dying until the war is over.

fotorabia23 -> TomFullery 6 Oct 2015 17:44

Its ok..all the fascists are coming out in force...they can squeal Putin this that and the other..but we know what their true agenda is.Their group masturbation of Western -Israeli-Saudi imperial hegemony is coming to an end..and they cant handle it.

Sarah7 -> johhnybgood 6 Oct 2015 17:42

Don't forget Operation Ajax -- because the Iranians certainly haven't forgotten.

Mohammad Mosaddegh was the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran from 1951 until 1953, when his government was overthrown in a covert coup d'état orchestrated by the CIA and the British Secret Intelligence Service.

Prime Minister Mosaddegh's most notable policy was the nationalisation of the Iranian oil industry, which had been under British control since 1913 through the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC/AIOC).

The 1953 coup was followed by the installation of the brutal and autocratic Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, aka the Shah of Iran -- whose vicious secret police, the Savak, remain the stuff of legend -- and the Iranian oil industry was immediately re-privatised and returned to British Petroleum (BP). Mission accomplished!

Mosaddegh was imprisoned for three years, and then put under house arrest until his death in 1967.

The direct causal relationship between Mosaddegh's decision to nationalise Iran's oil sector and the covert U.S. and British orchestrated coup resulting in his ouster could not be more obvious.

Many Iranians continue to regard Mosaddegh as the leading champion of secular democracy and resistance to foreign domination in Iran's modern history.

Alas, one can only imagine what Iranian society might be like today had Prime Minister Mosaddegh's popular brand of secular, tolerant, democratic socialism been allowed to develop and flourish.

The phenomenon of regime change orchestrated and driven by outside influences produces terrible results -- in Iran those results produced the repressive Shah, who was followed in turn by the even more repressive Ayatollah Khomeini and the strict, reactionary, Islamic republic that still governs Iran today.

See the 'Arab Spring' -- in particular, Egypt, Libya, Syria, and Yemen -- for further evidence of U.S. orchestrated regime change gone horribly wrong.

fotorabia23 Don9000 6 Oct 2015 17:23

Bollox..'most Western nations'..the pious..the proud..the elite..the righteous..they started the war by arming proxy terrorists...creating a third entity in this filthy war..

so 'the boots on the ground' are not English -French speaking and doesn't look like an embarrassing invasion...unless it its CIA-Mi6 trainers ..who hid in Jordan..providing training and logistics. Fact. Stop being such a shill.

gossy Roguing 6 Oct 2015 17:22

The Afghan Mujahideen were never just the peasants they were presented as - now were they? They had Stinger missiles and anti tank weapons supplied by the CIA The CIA's current crop of Islamic Jihadis in Syria have the same but what they don't have is any real support among the populations they terrorize. The Russians are seen as liberators.

Simpleguest Roguing 6 Oct 2015 17:21

I'd like to remind you that US, together with NATO, also failed to defeat the Afgans under far more favorable (for US/NATO) conditions (lack of outside powers supporting and supplying the Afgans), which makes them (US/NATO) all the more silly.

murnau 6 Oct 2015 17:20

Turkey 'cannot endure' Russian violation of airspace, president says

Is this the same Turkey that ranges over parts of Syria and Iraq with its aircraft bombing the PKK who are fighting ISIS who are allies of Erdogan. Turkey shot down a Syrian plane which was fighting ISIS 18 months ago saying it had strayed into Turkish airspace but the plane came down in Syria. Didn't Erdogan ban youtube for a while when they had evidence of a false flag operation he was concocting to be used as an excuse to attack Syria. When the Kurds were fighting ISIS in Kobani Erdogan stood by and watched.

As for the Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg isn't Nato violating Syrian airspace with its half hearted attacks on the Islamic State over the last year. The US state department laughingly report that cement mixers and excavators have been hit on the bombing runs along with Toyota pickup trucks that the US sent over.

ISIS terrorists were leading cavalry charges across Iraq and Syria mounted on Toyota Hilux trucks provided to them by the U.S.

http://www.abeldanger.net/2014/10/non-lethal-aid-toyota-hilux-trucks-isis.html

Turkish war planes continued their airstrikes on Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) rebels group in northern Iraq and Syria - See more at:

http://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/news/2015/8/3/turkish-warplanes-attack-kurdistan-pkk-rebels#sthash.65CYhO5R.dpuf

TomFullery Hippokl 6 Oct 2015 17:12

Which innocents?

How many?

Which is your source?

How do you feel about the 500'000 innocent Iraqi kids who starved to death as a result of US sanctions and which Madeleine Albright described as "a price worth paying"

How do you feel about the US war against Vietnam which resulted in 3 million Vietnamese deaths?

kenalexruss -> TarquinFintimlin 6 Oct 2015 16:47

I don't know if you're an idiot savant or not, but you sure act like you can read my mind. How dare you suggest that because I question Obama policy, that I must therefore be in support of Russia? Only pathetic morons can come up with such illogical drivel. If you are indeed a realist, you must accept the fact that the US is in support of extreme terrorism and that's fcuked up, much like your moronic mentality. Pathetic.

A realist sees things as they are and calls them accordingly.

Abiesalba -> Hippokl 6 Oct 2015 16:42

Make no mistake, the destruction of ISIS is not Putin's primary objective.

Oh, is that so?

With respect to Syria / ISIS, Russia has direct interests in defeating ISIS because ISIS is already operating (!!!) inside the Russian Federation - in the North Caucasus region.
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See for example:

ISIS Declares Governorate in Russia's North Caucasus Region (June 2015)

Note that southern Russia is also on the map released by ISIS in 2014 depicting the regions that ISIS aim to rule over within the next five years:

map of ISIS (original in Arabic) and map of ISIS (showing current borders with state names in German).

So Putin not only has the request from Syria's government (Assad) for military help which the 'coalition' striking Syria lacks. Putin / Russia also has direct interests in defeating ISIS. Apart from ISIS spreading to Russia via the Caucasus, Russia is also worried about ISIS spreading its influence into the Central Asian (Muslim) countries hence bringing ISIS to Russia's borders there too. In addition, Russia has a military base in Syria which is strategically very important to Russia (the only Russian base in the Mediterranean / warm seas).

Russia is also VERY close to Syria and Iraq.

So it seems to me that Russia has much more legitimate reasons for strikes in Syria than the 'coalition' and Russia also knows what it wants to achieve.

And of course Russia has tried to get allies for intervention in Syria some years ago, when the situation was less complex and ISIS has no risen to power yet. It seems to me that Putin judged the situation correctly yet again.

BG Davis Karl Gerhardt Hohenstauffen 6 Oct 2015 16:38

What's odd is the number of up votes for this verbal and conceptual tossed salad.
Turkey bombs Kurds because they are Kurds. Nasty, but not odd.
Saudi Arabia bombs Houthis because they are Shiite. Nasty, but not odd.
US weapons end up in ISIS hands because they were captured. Not odd.
ISIS sells oil. Good business, not odd.
It's awfully hard to build a conspiracy theory from unrelated obvious facts.

The solution is Putin bringing Assad to the negotiating table.

Now please explain what justifies CIA / the US training and arming 'rebels' in Syria? What the hell are the US and CIA doing there anyway?

Abiesalba -> Vatslav Rente 6 Oct 2015 16:35

It may be better to create an efficient army to throw out from the continent all American bases and to maintain neutrality in the dispute United States-Russia.

Agree.

Yesterday there was a comment here in Slovenia under an article about NATO condemning Russia over Turkey's airspace: Time for us [Slovenia] to exit NATO asap. It had already been too late yesterday. --- 91 thumbs up, 15 thumbs down

Note that Slovenia was in Yugoslavia during the Cold War. And Yugoslavia was a leading member of the Non-Aligned movement which was in effect a buffer between the two blocs. So we were friends with both the west and the east and the third world. The Non-Aligned movement also gave shelter and support to all those colonies emerging in that period from the devastating colonial rule by the glorious west.

Tito's funeral in 1980 was the greatest state funeral in history by the number of high delegations from countries around the world (larger than Mandela's). It was during the freezing Cold War, but representatives of both the Nato and the Warsaw states (including the UK), as well as China and many Non-Aligned former colonies attended.

At that time, the democrat Jimmy Carter was the US president, and he was attacked in the US press and by the republican (!) George Bush because he did not attend the funeral personally, but rather 'only' sent the US vice-president. I think that this (a republican slamming the US president for not attending a 'commie' funeral) illustrates quite nicely what Yugoslavia's position was in the world.
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But I think that in the present situation the EU should get closer to Russia. This really is in strategic and economic interests of both sides. Russia is also historically and culturally a part of Europe. It would be stupid to chase Russia away and make it get closer to China.

The escalation of the Ukraine crisis was a bad mistake of the EU which then so stupidly followed the US/UK hysteria and imposed economic sanctions on Russia which are hurting both sides (but not the cheerleaders US/UK).

And this constant vilification of Russia with respect to Syria by NATO and US/UK is revolting too.

And anyway it is now clear that the EU has to consolidate its foreign policy and also establish some joint police/defence forces/border guards.

And the UK will soon vote itself out of the EU too, which will make things in the EU much simpler. Because the UK as an US poodle is the one who endangered the people of all other EU members and made us all targets of terrorists. Remember how strongly Germany and France opposed the Iraq war.

So it is now a good time for the EU members to get out of NATO, let the UK float off into oblivion and to consolidate our foreign and defence policy and seek actively to get close to Russia again (I do not think this would be difficult to do once the glorious US/UK duo is out of the picture). This would also make the situation of Ukraine much easier to sort out. And Russia would be pleased to be the 'big power' in this alliance.

I would be really good for Europe to unite now (including Russia) rather than put another Iron Curtain between us and Russia (which would happen if the EU claimed 'neutrality').

BG Davis 6 Oct 2015 16:31

"Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Russian government was not involved in efforts by volunteers to travel to Syria to aid the Assad regime"
Exactly what they said and continue to say about Ukraine.

John Kayoss -> PrinceEdward 6 Oct 2015 16:31

Not only does Russia have no law against Homosexuality, but it is illegal to discriminate against anyone for sexual orientation or gender identity for employment purposes, thus it has better protections than the majority of US states.

MangawhaiJo 6 Oct 2015 16:24

In response to a question covering 1) The Bombing of the Afghanistan Hospital by US Forces and 2) The incursion into Turkey Airspace by Russian Aircraft, Nato's secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg response was (in summary):

1) The Hospital bombing will be subject to a full investigation before comment should be made

and

2) The Russians should be condemned for a clear violation and serious breach of sovereign airspace.

In terms of seriousness - these acts are hardly comparable ('War Crime' v airspace incursion), the lopsided answer by the NATO secretary general does nothing for their credibility.

RobertLlDavies -> Manolo Torres 6 Oct 2015 16:21

If you keep on diverting us with facts, it's only a matter of time before you're exposed as a "Putinbot". The only true sign of an independent mind is that you parrot US and NATO foreign policy.

PrinceEdward -> impartial12 6 Oct 2015 16:21

Religious Freedom exists in Russia, and there is no law against Homosexuality. Besides, the West's attitude about Homosexuality was the same 5 minutes ago. What do the "Moderate Jihadis" (not to be confused with Moderate Serial Killers, or Moderate SS Troops) believe about Homosexuality? When does the US/UK start the sanctions against Saudi Arabia?

vr13vr -> SwissArmy1984 6 Oct 2015 16:17

In other words, move the Syrians out of their own country and let ISIS have it. Which is exactly what ISIS wants.

vr13vr -> Trumbledon 6 Oct 2015 16:16

You are jumping to conclusions. First, it is the US government that declared them all civilians, which might not be accurate at all and is subject to how good the US intelligence is, which is questionable, judging the number of US errors. Secondly, it is also a matter of definition. By default, all the terrorists are civilians. So if it is opposition that the US supports, it will be "civilians" and "opposition." If it is opposition that someone else supports, it is called "terrorists." You also start with the assumption that somehow Russia cares less about civilians than any other country and I'm not sure where that assumption came from. The "weather forecast bit" was not a response to any official report. it was a weathergirl bit that very briefly mentioned the basic weather averages in the region as a curious bit of information.

But before any discussion could be made, remember that the attack on the civilians has not been proven. It came from the Pentagon as some sort of assumption and in the age of propaganda war it is hardly a reliable information.

coughined MeandYou 6 Oct 2015 15:51

The Russians have outsmarted the West in Ukraine, where the West sponsored regime change, and now they have exposed the West and NATO's complicity in keeping the Syrian war going, with the aim of removing Assad. It's quite brilliant geo-politicking.

Unfortunately, I think the yanks are going to get pretty pissed off; especially when the House of Saud is on the blower demanding they do something about Russian involvement.

coughined -> PixieFrouFrou 6 Oct 2015 15:47

They've been wasting millions of dollars of ordnance on a few soft targets. Why do you think 'all 41' anti-Assad 'insurgent' groups (they some how cease to be terrorists now the Russians are involved) have apparently united to fight the Russians? probably because the Russians are hitting real targets.

You can imagine the terrorists/insurgents:

"Fuck me, these bastards are actually trying to kill us!"
"Yeah, nobody mentioned this when we picked up our dollars last week."
"I'm off home to Saudi/Jordan/Pakistan/Portsmouth. This isn't fun any more."

Rinoul 6 Oct 2015 15:47

The initial strategy of the Turkish war against Syria was invented by former French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe (Alain Juppé) in 2011. Later, France withdrew from the cases.

Juppe inclined oscillating Erdogan to support the attack on the traditional ally of Turkey - Syria - in exchange for the French support Turkey's accession with EU.

Today, Turkey is a key sponsor of ISIS. It has betrayed its ally and plundered Syria. Turkey deserve better fate. Famous foreign policy Ahmet Davutoglu "There are no problems with neighbors" has turned out into a huge problems with all its neighbors, thanks to the foolish ambition of Erdogan and his gang.

Abiesalba -> gimmeshoes 6 Oct 2015 15:45

At the moment Russia is bombing everybody but Daesh.

Re Russia allegedly not attacking ISIS - see for example here:
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Syria conflict: Russia air strikes stepped up

BBC, 2 October 2015
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The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Russian air strikes had hit a training camp and a camouflaged command post near the IS "capital" of Raqqa, and that 12 IS fighters were killed in the attack.

Activists and residents of the city said IS had cancelled Friday prayers and emptied mosques, amid fears of further Russian air strikes.
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Well, after only ONE DAY of military intervention Russia scared the s*** out of ISIS in their very capital. One has to wonder what exactly have the coalition of hypocrites been striking for more than a year!!! - because it surely does not seem like they were actually attacking ISIS.

Go Russia!

gossy 6 Oct 2015 15:31

Turkey should be more worried that the Russians are looking for ISIS training camps and supply bases in Turkey that the Turks provide on their behalf. These supply lines will need cutting and of course if any Turkish hospitals get bombed in the process, well, they can hardly object now can they? as this has become the approved method of dealing with hospitals.

Bosula 6 Oct 2015 15:30

Turkey, US, Australia and NATO backed France violate Syrian airspace everyday they undertake another bombing and drone attack. These countries are all in breach of international law. NATO should comment on this.

Only Russia has Syrian approval to fly in their airspace.

Manolo Torres xpeters 6 Oct 2015 15:29

Much more people goes to Russia than to the UK.

http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/russia-the-worlds-second-largest-immigration-haven-11053

Rinoul 6 Oct 2015 15:27

According to the French political analyst Thierry Meyssan, it is exactly Erdogan "organized looting of Syria, dismantled all the factories in Aleppo, taken out equipment." Similarly, he organized the theft of archaeological treasures and created an international market.

Vatslav Rente -> Abiesalba 6 Oct 2015 15:21

Thank You, very interesting opinion.

It is quite natural that Russia and the USA defends its interests. But I don't understand the desire completely economically independent of Europe, to make ourselves a nuclear target. Why? To obtain from USA questionable security guarantees against the "Russian threat" or to participate in its military adventures of the U.S. state Department around the world?

It may be better to create an efficient army to throw out from the continent all American bases and to maintain neutrality in the dispute United States-Russia. I am sure it will bring the world more stability in the short-term... (but in the future Europe will participate in the redistribution of markets and resources on an equal footing, with the addition of China will bring more imbalance and is likely to lead the world to a new World War).

SHA2014 -> truthbetold13 6 Oct 2015 15:09

The Shia Sunni modern political divide unfortunately has been artificially created in a typical divide and rule fashion by the neo-imperialists. Most muslim countries or at least most individuals in muslim countries did not give a damn about this sort of thing. However certain powers that be thought that this is a useful way of causing trouble and maybe this has worked to a certain extend. It certainly fits the roles of the different regional powers Iran vs KSA and Turkey. I think the man in the street is really not bothered about this. Certainly if you want to believe that this is the root of the problem you also have to concede that the west's role in this is to support and use the sunni extremist in causing upheaval in the region under the guidance of KSA.

RobertLlDavies Roguing 6 Oct 2015 15:03

They had been fighting the pro-Communist (PDPA) government of Afghanistan for years before the Soviet intervention in 1979, planting bombs in cinemas and civilian airplanes, assassinating schoolteachers etc., backed by the USA and Pakistan. These were the wonderful "freedom fighters" we were supporting ...

elder berry TarquinFintimlin 6 Oct 2015 15:01

United States support for Iraq during the Iran–Iraq War, against post-revolutionary Iran, included several billion dollars' worth of economic aid, the sale of dual-use technology, non-U.S. origin weaponry, military intelligence, Special Operations training, and direct involvement in warfare against Iran

from Wikipedia,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Iraq_during_the_Iran%E2%80%93Iraq_war

Rinoul 6 Oct 2015 14:58

In October 2014, US Vice President Joe Biden said that Erdogan's regime supported ISIS by "hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of tons of weapons. There are rumors that the main source of funds to support ISIS today is the sale of Iraqi oil from the oil fields in the region of Mosul, where they are carefully protected. Apparently, Erdogan's son is the one who provides the export of oil controlled ISIS. Bilal Erdogan (Bilal Erdoğan) owns several shipping companies. According to unconfirmed information, he signed a contract with the European mining companies to transport the stolen oil to Asian markets. Apart from the fact that his son Bilal leads illegal trade brings big profit to ISIS, Syumeye Erdogan (Sümeyye Erdoğan), the daughter of the president of Turkey, has the secret hospital, located in Turkey, near the Syrian border. Every day the Turkish army trucks to bring dozens of wounded jihadists where they receive medical treatment and sent back to conduct a bloody jihad in Syria. Moreover, it is persistently Erdogan kills Kurds - the most efficient army to defeat the ISIS.

johhnybgood 6 Oct 2015 14:51

The West has instigated regime change to any sovereign nation that refuses to follow its demands. These are normally - accept Central Bank loans, accept the dollar for trade, and ensure that leaders do as they are told. They have got away with this since 1945.

Iraq, Libya, Syria, Vietnam, and a host of African and South American countries have been exploited and worse since then. Since 911, the US went into overdrive with the War on Terror, and has been responsible for millions of deaths during several interventions. Now with Syria going the same way, Russia, together with other countries who are not prepared to see the world destroyed by crazy western imperialism, have intervened to put a stop to it. More power to them. The head of the snake must be cut off, and I do not mean ISIS, before the world can return to sanity.

Abiesalba 6 Oct 2015 14:47

"this does not look like an accident, and we have seen two of them," Stoltenberg was quoted as saying by Reuters.

Two? Really? What a total scandal.

Thinking about it, the US has been serially involved for a very long time in all sorts of wars, military coups and 'interventions' in other countries which involved "non-accidental" breaching of sovereignty of other states – including serial breaching of Syria's airspace for more than a year now. Some comment about that, Mr Stoltenberg?

To refresh your memory, see this list of the US military interventions:
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FROM WOUNDED KNEE TO SYRIA: A CENTURY OF U.S. MILITARY INTERVENTIONS

by Dr. Zoltan Grossman

lids 6 Oct 2015 14:36

Wait a minute: The nation that inherits the chair for human-rights at the UN (Saudi Arabia), is calling for Jihad against another sovereign member of the same council?

Did they draft a fitting resolution for the committee to make it sound?

Abiesalba 6 Oct 2015 14:36

Breaking news:

The US has its nuclear weapons illegally positioned all over Europe and in Turkey!
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Well, decades old news, but very true.

The US have their at best semi-legal (in reality illegal) nuclear weapons positioned in five European NATO members: Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey.

Germany (the powerful Merkel's government!!!) has been trying to get rid of the US nukes for years - to no avail. In fact, the US is now (under the orders of the Nobel laureate Obama) upgrading its illegal nukes in Europe.

I am from Slovenia, and a few years ago we found out that the US has nukes in Italy quite close to our border. Well, the US nukes have been on two sites in northern Italy for decades (one site in the metropolitan area of Milano), but the Italians did NOT know about them.

Ironically in the meantime, during the last decades, Italians have repeatedly convincingly rejected use of nuclear power in Italy in several referenda - even if this means higher electricity bills for them. Only to find out that they have been sitting on nuclear weapons all along. Surely Italians have protested - eh, the US is upgrading these nukes now.

Oh, and how about the best friend of the US ever, Israel. It is NOT a nuclear power according to international treaties. But the Israel nukes - finally Pentagon admitted a few months ago:
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It's Official: The Pentagon Finally Admitted That Israel Has Nuclear Weapons, Too

March 2015
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After five decades of pretending otherwise, the Pentagon has reluctantly confirmed that Israel does indeed possess nuclear bombs, as well as awesome weapons technology similar to America's.
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The US is really a totally dangerous country. Lying, killing, serially illegally overthrowing governments in other countries, serially waging illegal wars, serially committing massive crimes against humanity, serially training and arming all sorts of dangerous militant groups, serially breaching all sorts of international conventions that they did sign while refusing to even sign some other ones etc. etc. etc.

Time to say NO to the US. Indeed, the cards of world power have quite substantially reshuffled recently - but the Americans have not noticed this yet.

Now let us go back to vilifying Russia…

Wareenan Kongsai 6 Oct 2015 14:30

Isis are a nasty bunch why would anyone support them? I thought at least Elton John woul have said something about their erosion of gay rights.The church seems quite quiet over the genocidal destruction of Christian communities too. All of this seems a long way from the teachings of Jesus Christ, time to check the moral compass and find our way.

Sarah7 Bosula 6 Oct 2015 14:25

Indeed, it looks like Stoltenberg must have stumbled upon bellicose pipsqueak Anders Fogh Rasmussen's old Viagra supply and decided to double down.

I couldn't imagine how anyone could be worse than 'Fog of War' Rasmussen, but Stoltenberg has exceeded my worst expectations and then some.

Of course, NATO is a wholly-owned and operated subsidiary of the U.S., and it is the U.S. president, the Pentagon, and the CIA who set the tone for the outdated warmongers who participate in this international criminal enterprise.

The time to pull the plug on NATO is long past due.

Vatslav Rente 6 Oct 2015 14:25

Clowns... ha ha ha:)
Broke the space Turkey? What? This is normal when inexperienced pilots bombing Syria or departing from the Crimea (new Russia) violate the country's airspace with the interests of which could not have been deemed. What's next? The Turks will refuse the Russian gas, or 20-25 % of Russian tourists? The vassal of the USA shouts about sovereignty? WOW:) IN reality, no one here brandishing weapons, the capabilities of air force and air defense of Turkey are well known Russia. NATO understands this, every year American planes violate air borders of alliance countries and countries of the third world without warning. And that? - NOTHING.

Abiesalba 6 Oct 2015 14:24

Can somebody please explain what the US strategy is here?

It seems to be this:

While Assad's forces and CIA 'moderate rebels' fight each other (because this is democratic), they will at the same time fight together to wipe out together ISIS and those 41 or so 'insurgent' groups.

Or is it that the the CIA boys will defeat everyone and rule Syria happily ever after as long as Russia keeps out.

Back in the real world, Putin is the only one with a plan and he is right too: Assad is a part of the solution.

When this devastating war ends, the only chance that Syria has is to have some rather 'firm fist' rule it for some time (and it can be Assad with some elements of opposition if they actually seriously exist as Syrians and not CIA boys). Then when the wounds heal a little, the regime can be gradually relaxed.

It is not possible to go from massacring each other to loving democracy in one step. Building democracy is a process. Democracy / a fair society Middle-Eastern-style whatever it is cannot materialise just like that via a decree.

Bosula -> Roguing 6 Oct 2015 14:23

At least Russia is bombing so called moderate Al Quaida factions which the US and Turkey support. What sort of democratic regime would US backed Al Quaida lead to in Syria?

Worth asking yourself this question and then you might support Russia bombing Al Quaida as well.

Anette Mor 6 Oct 2015 14:19

Western type of mess up. In war - no clarity who is your enemy, who is your friend and why. In peace - strong solidarity in whom to bully by not inviting to a dinner or placing in the corner talking over them Low life cheap approach. All gone down hill since they started eating on streets (and over own keyboards) and drinking from these horrendous paper cups.

Bosula -> Reia Hriso 6 Oct 2015 14:18

Turkey, Australia, US, NATO and their Saudi mates are supporting the Al Qaeda in Syria which is seen in some Orwellian way as moderate. The US and the Saudis are supplying Al Quaida with arms.

Russia just sees Al Qaeda as another terrorist group and is bombing the shit out of them.

truthbetold13 -> MahsaKaerra 6 Oct 2015 14:18

But that is not true is it? There are more than that on the list i have helpfully attached below - and that is not counting covert operations:Guatemala (1920), Turkey (1922), China (1922-1927, Mexico (1923), Honduras (1924-25), Panama (1925), El Salvador (1932), Iran (1946), Uruguay (1947), Greece (1947-1949), Philippines (1948-54), Puerto Rico (1950), Korea (1951-1953), Iran (1953), Vietnam ( 1954), Guatemala (1954), Egypt (1956), Lebanon (1958), Vietnam (1960 - 1975), Cuba (1961), Laos (1962), Iraq (1963), Panama (1964), Indonesia (1965), Guatemala (166-67), Cambodia (1969-75), Oman (1970), Laos (1971-73), Chile (1973), Libya (1981), El Salvador ( 1981-1992), Nicaragua (1981-1990), Lebanon (1982-84), Grenada (1983-84), Libya (1986), Iraq (1990-91), Somalia (1992-94), Yugoslavia (1992-1994), Liberia (1997), Yugoslavia (1999), Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (2003), Libya (2011)

Sources: "Instances of Use of United States Forces Abroad, 1798-1993" by Ellen C. Collier of the Library of Congress Congressional Research Service, and Ellsberg in Protest & Survive, "180 Landings by the U.S. Marine Corp History Division, Ege & Makhijani in Counterspy (July-Aug, 1982)"

Zaurora 6 Oct 2015 14:15

Under normal circumstances, this could be the routine*. A NATO-ally country and bordering Russian presence. However, Erdogan and minions are determined to make Turkey the battle field for WW3.

What I wonder is, how come NATO is still capable of trusting Erdogan's government after all that happened since the Syrian war started? Does anyone not remember who tried to go on a full scale war on Syria with NATO's backing up? It was always known that most of the groups in Syria which Turkey supported were terrorists, not? At a point, some western governments supported them through Turkey too, not? And lately, reports of this fatal mistake started pouring down, not? Wasn't it 3 weeks ago when nearly all of the NATO members but Turkey decided on moving on with Assad for at least a while longer?

Say, conflict of interest with Russia is understandable. Abandoning principles, not.

*http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/03/military-aircraft-interventions-have-surged-top-gun-but-for-real

Abiesalba 6 Oct 2015 14:12

Here is something about those great allies of the coalition of hypocrites whom Putin is NOT 'allowed' to bomb:
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Turkey and Saudi Arabia alarm the West by backing Islamist extremists the Americans had bombed in Syria

Independent, May 2015
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Turkey and Saudi Arabia are actively supporting a hardline coalition of Islamist rebels against Bashar al-Assad's regime that includes al-Qaeda's affiliate in Syria, in a move that has alarmed Western governments.

The two countries are focusing their backing for the Syrian rebels on the combined Jaish al-Fatah, or the Army of Conquest, a command structure for jihadist groups in Syria that includes Jabhat al-Nusra, an extremist rival to Isis which shares many of its aspirations for a fundamentalist caliphate.

The decision by the two leading allies of the West to back a group in which al-Nusra plays a leading role has alarmed Western governments and is at odds with the US, which is firmly opposed to arming and funding jihadist extremists in Syria's long-running civil war.

dadykool1979 -> deSales 6 Oct 2015 14:12

Turkey is intrinsically unstable. Atatürk's post-Ottoman modern 'secular' Turkey was built on excessive suppression of ethnic and religious groups. Around 25% of Turkish citizens are long-violated ethnic Kurds speaking a Persian-related language, many of whom dream of uniting with neighbouring Kurds in Iraq, Iran and Syria, to form a geographically-contiguous Kurdistan. Another roughly 25% of Turks in the country's middle, follow the Alevi sect of Islam, a Shia-Sufi tradition very different from the dominant Sunnis; Alevis have been persecuted for centuries.

And the remaining half of Turkey is divided along a spectrum from the secular Kemalist followers of Atatürk with their support in the military, to somewhat or highly religious Sunnis ... the Sunnis now fragmented in this huge CIA-funded standoff, with some Sunnis going with Prime Minister Erdogan, while others are under Erdogan's new biggest enemy, that CIA-funded 'spiritual leader' Gülen. Turkey in 3 or more fragments may be the result of all this.

PaulWal -> Stretch23khan 6 Oct 2015 14:05

Good question. It's all corporate. The media organisations have huge interests in the states. The U.S. Govt is a very vindictive, spiteful lot. One wrong report, and the fcc will come calling.

It's quite funny that piddly little rt has been compared to these media behemoths that have had free rein for decades, with no censure and disaster ensuing.

MisterPastry 6 Oct 2015 14:04

Why do we 'endure' Turkey's support for ISIS? Why are we constantly being lied to about the nature of this Western-inspired series of regime changes in the Middle East? Since when has any violent terrorist group been 'moderate'? Why has the UN not condemned US, UK, Israeli and French airstrikes on Syria? (The Syrian government - the one recognised by the UN, regards them as war crimes.) Our leaders never answer these questions; worse still, our MSM never asks them!

stevekeenan1 6 Oct 2015 14:03

It is good news to have the Russian Government backing the Assad regime, otherwise the situation would be alot worse. The long time Syrian ally Russia has being flying sorties against ISIS and Al NUSRA(AL QAEDA in Syria), and they won't be as soft on those human heart eaters as their NATO counterparts have been. If ISIS had attacked NATO in Afghanistan, the US would have decimated their ranks within 24 hours. It is unbelievable that they cannot stop them while they use the 2500 Humvees the Yanks handed over to them.

JohnSouttar 6 Oct 2015 14:03

If any remember the complicated Iran-Contra affair in 1985 it involved handing over missiles to "moderate elements" in Iran in exchange for help with the release of US hostages in Lebanon. There was more to it but no one really knows who in the administrations knew what. That may well be true now. We have had a nuclear deal with Iran and although most westerners consider Iranians, Turks and Kurds to be Arabs they are not. The alliances and interests are far more complex that just a Sunni/Shia divide. This is on the border of Europe, Israel and NATO. Most of it smacks of a charade. Turkey looks out across the deep Black Sea at Russia.

MonotonousLanguor Metronome151 6 Oct 2015 14:01

According to GWB it was Mission Accomplished. Thankfully, we have a vibrant, prosperous Iraq in place now. Ever since GWB convinced the Saudi Royal Family to hold elections, we have witnessed a real flowering of Democracy in Saudi Arabia. Those elections Saudi Arabia could be real close. The Woman's Freedom Party in Saudi Arabia (WFPSA) could hold the key. Hillary has been a long time supporter of them and recently spoke to them in Mecca.

jmNZ Metronome151 6 Oct 2015 14:00

The chemical warfare blamed on Assad was perpetrated by one of the rebel groups funded by Arabia - and trained by the West.

kenalexruss 6 Oct 2015 13:59

Not a fan of Russia at all, but I am ashamed of my government for bombing a hospital in Afghanistan and denying it and especially about lying to the world about ISIS in Syria and Iraq. Those atrocities and lies don't serve me. They don't serve the American people! They are an injustice to all! These people would bomb America itself if it furthered their interests!

Saudi Arabia et.al. created ISIS and the US stands behind and supports Saudi Arabia. The ties between the US and Al Qaeda just got a bit closer. All those wacky conspiracy theories just made a little more sense regarding 9-11...

duncandunnit 6 Oct 2015 13:57

turkey is been very childish, it is russia that is cleaning up all the shit that both the usa and the uk cause while creating and arming isis. Over the last few months the usa has proved yet again it can cause big issues that both it cannot sort out and that costs the eu a fortune.

Abiesalba 6 Oct 2015 13:50

We have Stoltenberg in the news here in Slovenia too. So here are some posts from the comments section of SLOVENIA's national broadcaster in relation to Russia breaching Turkish airspace (my rough translation from Slovene to English):

The Turks are bombing the Kurds who are fighting against ISIS and are among the few in Syria who are doing the West a favour (nobody wants extremists in Europe).

And the Turks have been bombing the Kurds for several months now, hence supporting Islamic expansionism.

Considering these circumstances, I support Russians shooting down every Turkish plane entering Syria's airspace.

I suspect that the Americans sold the Turks some junk planes at a high price anyway, so the Russians should not have many problems with them.

--- 195 thumbs up, 19 thumbs down

[Note that people have to be registered posters to be able to recommend comments. And recommends over 100 are a huge number for this website - we are only 2 million people speaking the Slovene language.]
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What? Is this [Russia breaching Turkish airspace] supposed to be newsworthy? Well, if the media reported every time that the Americans breach the airspace of other sovereign countries, they could just as well start sending out tweets – every second.

--- 81 up, 8 down
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In the news: "The general secretary of NATO Jens Stoltenberg has already declared Russia's breaching of Turkish airspace to be unacceptable. He also summoned an emergency session of the NATO ambassadors where this topic will be discussed."

Well, I expected an emergency NATO meeting to condemn the terrorist attack of their own forces on a hospital, murdering doctors and patients.

--- 59 up, 1 down
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It seems this is the end of the line for NATO's bombarding of the Kurds. Wait for NATO to go totally bezerk when the oil smuggling route from ISIS to Turkey is cut off.

--- 48 up, 7 down
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Oh, so the Russians have disturbed the coalition's routine and plans. Expect for news about many more such "incidents" to come in the near future. However I think that the Russians have thick enough skin not to be too upset about such propaganda sound bites.

--- 71 up, 8 down
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Well, we can declare this breaching of airspace to be 'collateral damage' of the war on terror too. Now can the NATO members (including my own country) explain which 'collateral damage' is worse – flying into someone else's airspace where nothing happens or murdering 20 doctors and patients. Frankly, they should go and stick their drivel about airspace somewhere.

--- 112 up, 9 down
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ATL: "NATO condemned the incursion into airspace of the NATO member Turkey and called on Russia to stop attacking the Syrian opposition and civilians and that it should align its fight against ISIS with the international community."

Ha ha ha. The "international community" has been ASLEEP for two years, and now the Russians poked them a little. It seems that Russia is keeping the international community awake at night. GO GO RUSSIA.

--- 128 up, 13down
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The Russians breach airspace for a few seconds. The Americans bomb a hospital. And the Russians are supposed to be the 'bad guys' here?

--- 81 up, 8 down
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How are incursions into Yemen's airspace by the Saudi criminals going these days?

--- 69 up, 8 down

TomFullery -> EightEyedSpy 6 Oct 2015 13:45

Which planes were they taking out?

B52s, F5s, F105s, F111s, Hughies, Jolly Green Giants - basically every model the US military had deployed (around 4'000 in total).

Anyway, General John W. Vogt, commander, Seventh Air Force (PACAF) can explain it better than me:

"By July 1972, in the middle of the Linebacker operations, for the first time in the history of the United States Air Force, the loss-to-victory ratio swung in favor of the enemy. We were losing more airplanes than we were shooting down. This had never happened before anywhere in the world. Our losses were due, as I said, to our going blind into a heavily netted threat radar environment, confronting the best MiGs that the Soviets had available for export, flown by highly trained North Vietnamese pilots"

SHA2014 -> Botswana61 6 Oct 2015 13:44

THis is different now. Talking about learning from mistakes, the West certainly hasn't from the catalogue of disasters: Afghanistan, Somalia, Syria. Libya, Ukraine. Oh I forgot Vietnam. Not a comprehensive list by the way.

Anette Mor -> SayNoToEvil 6 Oct 2015 13:36

Russia count all nationalities in census. 180 last time I checked. About hundred of local origin with own land. All, even smallest got own autonomy in one of several forms available. All speak own language, tv, schools, court, official papers. State parliament low chamber got one nation-one voice representation so 80m Russians got as much power as some 100k nation. What independence you think they want? Freedom to hate and kill each other? Anybody wanting that (on American money) would face half of own nation who are not into hating neibours. You already brought your own vision to Libya Iraq and Syria - hate and violence. That is not independence. Independence is ability to chose for yourself.

Johnnyw1 6 Oct 2015 13:32

NATO is a relic of the Cold War. It lost its entire reason for being when peace finally broke out between USSR and the West, and it should have been laid quietly to rest. But that would never do, would it... the industrial/military/political complex keeps itself fat and rich by keeping us afraid, inventing enemies by the dozen, quietly looting our taxes the while. https://youtu.be/Jib1B2cyWpE

Anette Mor -> DrDrug 6 Oct 2015 13:29

There was a fight on Holand hight reported in Russian press between apparently former rebels who took Assad side and ISIS. The leader of these former rebels said he swapped sides after rebels group leaders were all invited to Israel for training. He thought it got too far and refused to go with the lot. They then attacked him and he took Assad side.

TomFullery -> MTavernier 6 Oct 2015 13:28

Russia didn't want a Nazi putsch in Kiev engineered in Washington.

Russia didn't like the way the putschists were immediately talking about reneging on the Sevastopol lease when they seized power

Russia didn't like the way the putschists started talking about banning the Russian language.

Russia didn't like the attacks in eastern Ukraine by the Ukraine military.

You reap what you sow.

truthbetold13 -> jezzam 6 Oct 2015 13:27

Odd comment when it was the US that deliberately caused the whole civil war, Assad has governed his country well for decades, and Putin has only just intervened at the request of the Syrian government. Think i know who the genocidal lunatics are here - but then i, unlike you, have a functioning brain.

NewsCorpse 6 Oct 2015 13:20

A year ago Putin was telling it like it was and still is. Russia has been incredibly patient and steady.

<24 Oct 2014 Putin at Valdai (Extract Q&A)
"I never said that I view the US as a threat to our national security." - "President Obama views Russia as threat, but I don't feel the same way about the US." - "The politics of those in the circle of power in the US is erroneous." - "I consider this absolutely unprofessional politics." - "It is not grounded on facts, in the real world." - "Can they not think a step ahead?" - "We don't stand for this kind of politics of the US. We consider it to be wrong." - "Look at Libya and what you did there, that got your Ambassador murdered." - "Was it us that did this? Who's fault is it? It is your fault." - "You must stop acting out of imperialistic ambitions and politics."
https://youtu.be/Ykb5sxTl1Rw (7 mins)

World Order: New Rules or a Game without Rules (FULL VIDEO)
Its been called the most important speech Vladimir Putin has EVER delivered. Putin targets American exceptionalism, revolution building and asks if it is the US that has abandoned the global rule book? Putin was addressing a plenary session of the Valdai International Discussion Club, Sochi, Oct 2014, a forum for leading intl analysts focused on Russia. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9F9pQcqPdKo

Compare Putin's clear headed commnets in 2014 with that of Karl Rove when GW Bush was President: "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality."

snickid Reia Hriso 6 Oct 2015 13:19

If a NATO was to fly a military over Russia airspace it would be shot down, without warning.

Nonsense.

US spy planes, for example, regularly overfly Russia with impunity, e.g:

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/5-most-lethal-us-warplanes-the-planet-13364

Anette Mor Middlengland 6 Oct 2015 13:17

Voting matters very little. British arms supplied to "rebels" are already in Syria to kill Russians and British instructors are already in Ukraine to train Ukranians to kill ethnic Russians in Donbass. You do not know Britain is at war wirh Russia, but Russians do, as they are at receiving end. They know since Chechen terrorists, wanted by peaceful Chechen people for crimes against humanity, were given asym in the UK just as Russian oligarch stolen tons of money from the state and stake holders. 20 years on Britain is at war with Russia and you worry some vottibg going to maje it worse or may be hope some Corbyn coming to power may change it. Too little too late. Russians lost all patients and blown off, you still fail to notice how much you hurt them.

StevenJ19 6 Oct 2015 13:13

Turkey has a shameful record of double-dealing in this Syrian crisis, so its complaints should be treated with the contempt they deserve.

adognow -> Jack Seaton 6 Oct 2015 13:05

A war between NATO and Russia is certain to result in nuclear annihilation of most of the planet.

Which is why Erdrogan is going to be tiptoeing around this issue carefully before he arms any Islamic crazy left and right. But that of course, assumes that Erdrogan is a rational player and is arming Islamists because of some neo-Ottoman delusions rather than the fact that he believes in the end times, apocalyptic bullshit that ISIS, al-Nursa and the other Islamist terrorists believe in.

But nonetheless, the idea of NATO and Russia going to blows over Turkey is ridiculous and is political suicide for any NATO leader to suggest, especially if because Turkey started an incident by arming terrorists. I don't know about you, but I sure as fuck object to having myself irradiated over Erdrogan.

Matt G

Haider al-Abadi - "Council of Ministers considers Turkish airstrikes on Iraqi territory a dangerous escalation and a violation of Iraq's sovereignty"

Apparently a few seconds violation of Turkish airspace is of top concern however the repeated violation and bombing of Northern Iraq by the Turkish air-force is apparently expectable. However, these violation go back a long time all the way to 2012.

"The Iraqi government condemns these violations to Iraq's airspace and sovereignty, warns Turkey against any violations of Iraq's airspace and territory," government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said in a statement following a cabinet meeting.

"Our country is exposed to external interventions. Every day we hear of aircraft from neighboring countries violating our airspace. The national sovereignty of Iraq is being violated deliberately or non-deliberately. We do not approve of that, and we cannot remain silent in the face of it. Others should question themselves on Iraq's sovereignty, security, airspace and territorial waters," said Maliki.

On top of their Iraqi incursions they've also been bombing the PKK inside of Syria http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/turkeys-bombing-campaign-in-syria-and-iraq-is-the-last-thing-we-need-in-the-fight-against-isis-10422167.html

and shelling Syrian Kurdish villages http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/07/turkey-denies-targeting-kurdish-forces-syria-150727133342474.html

and http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/08/01/us-kurds-turkey-idUSKCN0Q632X20150801.

However, that's only the half of it when you take into account Turkey has been buying and actively involved in the smuggling of Syrian and Iraqi oil from ISIS controlled areas and Turkey intelligence has been accused of involvement in arms smuggling http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2015/02/isis-detainee-turkish-intelligence-forces-helped-smuggle-weapons-to-jihadists-in-syria/. It seems somewhat hypocritical that NATO has overlooked this for several years.

On the other hand:

"I will not speculate on the motives … but this does not look like an accident, and we have seen two of them," Stoltenberg was quoted as saying by Reuters.

As far as I'm aware there has only been one airspace violation. This second incident the accusation seems to be that the Russian Mig had locked it's radar onto the jet's.

Separately, the armed forces said a Mig fighter plane had harassed a Turkish squadron of F-16s patrolling the border with Syria, locking its radar on the Turkish warplanes.

However, nothing has been mentioned what side of the border the jets were flying Turkish or Syrian. However, considering the Russian Mig locked it's radar on to the Jets and the vagueness of the report, it's a good assumption that those F16's were flying in Syrian airspace and it was a warning.

BMWAlbert , 6 Oct 2015 12:59

Well, at least the Russians are popular with the kyrgyzstan Turks (boo-hoo):

http://atimes.com/2015/10/kyrgyzstan-set-for-closer-ties-with-russia-after-polls/

Looks like Kyrgyzstan didn't get enough cookies.

haphazardly ,6 Oct 2015 12:59

The United States should threaten to retaliate if Russia does not stop attacking U.S. assets in Syria, former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote in a Financial Times op-ed published Sunday, urging "strategic boldness," with American credibility in the Middle East and the region itself at stake.

How stupid can Americans get... they still do not realize that the great and powerful US only attacks underdeveloped defenseless countries and not countries that are able to fight back. Russia can fight back and they're allied with China, so threats against Russia is unthinkable. Are they looking for WWIII or what? :/

Krishnamoorthi 6 Oct 2015 12:52

All the bastards who condemn the Russian flights straying for a few seconds or minutes in to Turkey have to remember that these are the same people who invaded Iraq and still continue to enter the Syrian airspace without permission from the Syrian government or a mandate from the UN!

RetiredMD -> centerline 6 Oct 2015 12:51

The US is sowing as many bad seeds in your mind about Russia as it can. At some time in the future they will need to make an excuse for hitting Russia either with ordinance or with more sanctions. The US is trying to slowly brainwash the rest of us in the world so we'll be quite happy when they make their despicable moves in the future. Not on my watch!

butitisnotthisday 6 Oct 2015 12:51

I presume the 5 mile exclusion zone "imposed" by Turkey is there to make sure ISIS and their friends, including the good terrorists are protected...apparently Russia does not give a shit about what the Turks say or want.

peterpierce24 -> Mr_HanMan 6 Oct 2015 12:50

I would not overestimate significance of polite gestures in politics. About two years ago Putin once remarked that 'Turkey yet has to decide where it is in Syrian conflict'
in spite on the fact that Turkey wanted Assad to go. I think Putin just keeps his options vacant in relations with neighbours and blurring mutual disagreements.

Lyigushka -> AboycalledBeaye 6 Oct 2015 12:47

'Three army groups, including more than three million German soldiers, supported by 650,000 troops from Germany's allies (Finland and Romania), and later augmented by units from Italy, Croatia, Slovakia and Hungary, attacked the Soviet Union across a broad front, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south. SS units from the Baltic states were involved in rounding up Jews and Communists'
Hint
It's called Google...

Middlengland 6 Oct 2015 12:45

It is quite correct that Russia cannot violate Turkish airspace as a matter of International Law.

However, the same critics of Russia are violating Syrian airspace without the authority of the Syrian Government.

Having been asked to provide assistance by the Syrian Government, it would also be perfectly lawful for Russia to shoot down drones and aircraft which violate Syrian airspace.

I suspect that this is the point they are making - UK be warned before we vote on yet more military action. You are not only violating International Law (again) but you are now playing a very dangerous game indeed.

Mr_HanMan 6 Oct 2015 12:44

Turkey and Russia have excellent relations, Putin and Erdogan are good friends because they are pretty much alike. Russia is building Turkey's first nuclear reactor a $20billion deal and theres the pipeline project to. Relations are so good that Turkey didn't say anything on the Crimean matter when it has its own interests in the crimea. Putin even wished Erdogan good luck in the upcoming elections and said he hoped Erdogan's AKP won when the 2 were in Moscow opening Moscow's grand mosque just 2 weeks ago. So none of this makes sense, I don't know why Russia would want to strain relations with Turkey.

haphazardly -> Indianrook 6 Oct 2015 12:44

I knew it was propaganda as soon as the MSM said that 41 Islamic terrorist groups are going to "unite"... They probably fight against one another on which social media to use for recruiting terrorists... Twitter, Facebook or Instagram.

salthouse 6 Oct 2015 12:42

It's a fair bet this incursion was planned (an accident on purpose) between the Presidents of Turkey and Russia, at their recent meeting, in order to boulster the image of the Turkish President as the great defender and wise leader of the Turkish nation under dire threat from a myriad of hostile and potentially invading powers, and thereby enhance and promote the chances of Erdogan's party, AKP, winning the November election in Turkey with a majority sufficient to enthrone the President, by a new constitution, as one close to absolute power and rule. All the fall out, the apparent outrage and counter threats, is probably false bluster.

OlegB07 -> Bruce Alan Scapecchi 6 Oct 2015 12:40

All countries of the West and USA are eagerly awaiting this moment ... And everybody knows the reason: ISIS is your friend and partner.
And Russia destroys your partners in Syria. Of course it is a tragedy for you.

JiminNH -> Indigo Rebel 6 Oct 2015 12:39

Diplomacy is a delicate thing and Russia has been fixing for a war, clearly.

Are you misinformed due to blatant western propaganda, or are you a misinforming propagandist? Minsk I and Minsk II were both initiated by Russia with EU states Germany and France; the US and UK were intentionally bypassed and left out (probably because we both supported Ukraine's war against the east).

Russia conducted Moscow I and Moscow II negotiations with internal Syrian rebel groups. The "rebel" groups that refused to participate were the likes of jabhat al Nusra and Army of Conquest and other extremist groups (most of which are manned by foreign jihadists); of which the truth has been revealed in the past week or so that such groups are proxy armies funded and armed by the US, GCC states and Turkey, among others.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/04/moscow-talks-syria-point-plan-150409094410056.html

Of course, the late reporter Serena Shim proved that Turkey even armed ISIS in its fight against the Kurds; no wonder why Turkey violates Syrian airspace to bomb the Kurds but not ISIS.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2799924/mystery-american-journalist-killed-car-crash-turkey-just-days-claimed-intelligence-services-threatened-coverage-siege-kobane.html

Empirical evidence clearly shows that Russia has been critically involved in diplomatic efforts to stop the war in Ukraine and attempt to stop the war in Syria.
The US has been nothing but a bystander in diplomatic efforts to end the wars in those two nations.

So which is it? Are you a victim of propaganda, or a propagator thereof?

BMWAlbert 6 Oct 2015 12:37

Is the Turkish President speaking of the actual Turkish airspace or that airspace plus the 5 mile. With supply routes to ISIS and the other 41 gangs in the less-extreme terrorist alphabet soup getting weapons largely from Turkey, I imagine taht teh extra five miles would secure the crossings (a problem if the Russians do not recognize the arbitrary five mile zone)...this stpry makes me think that rumor's of the President's son being involved in the oil dumping trade with the Mosul refineries in N. Iraq may be true...he seems to be getting very emotional about a five second transgression in a grey zone.

In other news, it appears that General Breedlove has been playing Dungeons and Dragons, calling the recently imposed RU de-facto no-fly-zone a "Sphere of Negation", sounds like something that might have been made in the golden days of Gondor. Obviously though, the RU airstrikes have been more effective due to better intelligence, must be one of the seven seeing stones.

Foracivilizedworld -> PeterHG 6 Oct 2015 12:36

And not just the Turks.. The US, UK, Franc, Israel.. and others...

What I don't understand is that how politicians talk about respecting borders with a straight face....

TomFullery -> Botswana61 6 Oct 2015 12:36

P.S. Please, remind us what's happened to mighty invincible Soviet Union?

A lesson possibly that no empires last forever.

The US imperium is in terminal decline but as empires go its rise was remarkably fast and now it is declining before our very eyes.

The US - the biggest premature ejaculation in history.

hfakos -> truk10 6 Oct 2015 12:29

Where did you get those numbers? We don't do body counts -general Tommy Franks. I guess that guy running the "Syrian" Observatory for Human Rights out of his Coventry garage is a reliable source to you.

RudolphS 6 Oct 2015 12:29

And while the U.S. is complaining about Russian intervention in Syria are the yanks knee-deep involved in another tragic civil war in the middle-east. Read Trevor Timm's article for the Guardian here: nullhttp://www.http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/05/america-yemen-crisis-is-partly-our-fault

The Western hypocrisy is deafening.

TomFullery -> Bluebird8 6 Oct 2015 12:29

It was 5 billion.

And the neocons' useful idiots conveniently ignore the fact that the conflict in Ukraine kicked off only after the US-instigated Nazi putsch in Kiev.

Interesting how the economics and finance ministers of Ukraine are Lithuanian and Polish (not sure in which order) - both countries being staunch US stooges. They were given Ukrainian citizenship on the day they took up their posts.

US Vice President Joe Biden's son was appointed to the board of directors of Ukraine's largest energy company, also shortly after the Nazi putsch.

The governor of Odessa is Mikhael Saakashvili, US stooge, architect of the war against Russia and now fugitive from Georgian justice.

brianboru1014 -> NeuLabour 6 Oct 2015 12:26

Agreed.
ISIS are Saudi Arabia's Frankenstein and we in the West pretend to hate them but we love Saudi cheaper oil more than anything else. We really did not try to bomb them seriously, but the Russians know what's up and they are in the process of eradicating them from strategic areas in Syria

fotorabia23 -> truk10 6 Oct 2015 12:25

The Lancet reported that 567000 children died through sanctions after 1991.A later study, published in 2011, estimated that approximately 500,000 Iraqis had died as a result of the conflict since the 2nd invasion. Counts of deaths reported in newspapers collated by projects like the Iraq Body Count project found 174,000 Iraqis reported killed between 2003 and 2013, with between 112,000-123,000 of those killed being civilian noncombatants.Your wrong.

[Oct 05, 2015] An Up Close And Personal Look At The Russian Firepower Deployed In Syria

"... command and control centers, ammunition and explosives warehouses, communication centers, mini-factories for the production of weapons of suicide bombings and militant training camps ..."

"... finally ..."

"... The Entire Mainstream Western Media Is a Troll Army http://russia-insider.com/en/entire-western-media-troll-army/5918. Good title, and, for the most part, seemingly true. ..."

"... LOL , What makes you think the US was trying to defeat ISIS? Mainstrem fucking News Media???? Just go back to watching Dancing with the Stars or some shit. ..."

Oct 05, 2015 | Zero Hedge

greenskeeper -> carl

this post misses the point. The point isn't russia's hardware, which isn't any more impressive than anything we have. The point is the russians are actually TRYING to get rid of 'ISIS', and are therefore able to do so. While the JSF is overpriced junk, Americans hardware has consistenly beaten russian hardware in every conflict they have faced each other. This isn't a hoo-rah, 'murika post at all. the reason US weapons and air power havent decisively defeated ISIS is becasue that is not what the US govt wants to do, it wants them to succeed and get rid of assad. Any modern nation can destroy ISIS from the air, the russians are just actually trying to do where the US was more interested in another misguided attempt at regime change.

Latina Lover

Technologically, most American Hardware may be ahead of the Russian equivalents, but lag when it comes maintaining it during extended battle conditions. Russian tech is designed to be very tough, versatile and fixable under battle conditions. In the Ukraine, for example, 50 and 60 year old artillery pieces still function despite heavy continuous use.

Poundsand

Actually, our hardware is a lot better, as our the boys who deliver it both on the ground and in the air. But you're right, we have a bunch of politicians who pick targets, play for PR points, avoid PR problems at all costs. How long did Barry wait to send in the boys to get Osama? (heck, 8 months just to get his facsimile shows you how bad it's gotten).

Turn 'em loose and then you would see some shock and awe!

My only concern is supplies. Back in '93 we are down to how many Tomahawks? Remember they destroyed the tooling to make them before they had the next one ready to roll out. Reliance on high tech weaponry is fine and dandy, until you need 100x more than you thought you would. Then it's back to mass production of whatever you can get to shake off the wing.

MrPalladium

"Actually, our hardware is a lot better,"

It is certainly a great deal more expensive. The problem is that the defense contractors and the military officers monitoring them control the narrative on how good our weapons might be. You really have no clue until you encounter another capable opponent and run the equipment in the fog of actual war.

So much of our defense budget is spent maintaining clearly obsolete equipment and base structure (shades of General Pershing's horse cavalry at the outbreak of WWII - my father was there at the time) including all surface naval vessels which would be destroyed in a few days in any war against China or Russia. Also, half the military bases in the U.S. are really nothing more than glorified jobs programs. And most of the many foreign U.S. bases are nothing more than U.S. soldiers as goats tethered to the stake as bait to provoke attack and obtain an excuse for war with the nations they surround. I know, I was in that position many years ago in Berlin and nothing has changed.

We are thus the empire of the unready, shackled by the past and lead by fools.

Mentaliusanything

The USA is lagging (sadly) in the electronic protection feild.

Currently the Russians have a capability (proven) to block F22 raptor short and long distance missiles, They have another more frightening tool which scares the hell out of the Pentagon

http://www.voltairenet.org/article185860.html

oh and something comes to mind about lead pencils continuing to work well because of simplicity - well that again is mandated in all Russian weaponary.....

Buck Johnson

Actually no, US military goods aren't better than Russian. Both have limits and draws. What the US is afraid of is the fact that Russia has the capability one to negate their advantages and two of course nukes. Remember during the second gulf war we went nuts when Russia was giving Saddam Hussein devices that scrambled cruise missiles guidance systems and others using GPS. Also Russia has advanced anti-tank weaponry that can destroy and at least disable our M1 tanks. And many of their stuff that they sell or use is old or was developed back in the 80's or 90's. Same with the US.

cowdiddly

To be frank Russia is still using some of its older stuff like the Su25s and su24 nice heavy fighter/bomber but which is being replaced by those awesome duckbill su34s but some of that old stuff still proved pretty effective in Ukraine.

I mean who we kidding, if Russia wanted to they could level the whole place in 3 months with those Tupolev 22s and T95s and some moabs and thats still conventional. God help us all is one of those SATAN missiles was ever used, the deadliest fastest nuke of all. I even hate the sound of that wicked weapons name. Moscow to Ny in 25min, not enough time to find a good rock to crawl under. None would survive the response which makes this whole endeavor of poking the sleeping bear even more insane.

This article came by my screen today and they supposedly moved two of these bad boys in place. An interesting piece to say the least. with a range of 300km I think from what I seen in Ukraine these might have been turned on for a second or two behind the border in Russia to give some of those battles a little bump but who knows, I dont think anyone can prove.

I think its things like this that they are bitching about and shitting bricks because most of the ground troops look to be to protect an airbase that is operating 25km from hostile forces. Lets see the US do that. Impressive feat in itself

And why use Russians when you have plenty of Hezbollah, Iranian, and Syrians willing to do the dirty work. It would be stupid.

Jamming the Jihad. can permanently fry electronics and take out low orbit satellites.

http://sputniknews.com/world/20151005/1028033057/syria-russia-electronic...

Son of Captain Nemo

We have Obama.

Scares the hell out of me.?...

What exactly scares you the most? The part about starting unilateral wars for the last 14 years that got us into this mess?... Or the fact that somebody else like Russia's military is going to take charge to clean up that mess and in the end show us just how bad we really are along with the crisis we made "refugees" and otherwise!

Ode to the American clandestine establishment that thought John McCain, "Fairy" Graham and Retired General Vallely were the worst of your problems!...

Son of Captain Nemo

Adding to that part about how bad "we" the U.S. really is...

This certainly caught my attention....

Russians will be targeting "command and control centers, ammunition and explosives warehouses, communication centers, mini-factories for the production of weapons of suicide bombings and militant training camps". ...

Just think how Syrians and Iraqis will think of the Russians when suicide bombers and IED stop going off in those places that have already killed upwards of 10,000 to 15,000 Iraqis in the past 8 months alone and who knows how many of the 240,000 Syrians that have perished in the last 3 years alone to them?...

Like I said. I sure hope there are no Blackwater/Xi/ Academi types wandering about the ground right about now in either of those countries doing this on a weekly basis and finally getting caught?!! at it!

It will be just like the roundups by Ukrainian rebels they suffered at the end of 2014 where many of them were shot in the back of the head and put into an open pit with no headstone or marker to claim them again!

Johnny_Dangerously

The Entire Mainstream Western Media Is a Troll Army http://russia-insider.com/en/entire-western-media-troll-army/5918. Good title, and, for the most part, seemingly true.

Drink!

stant

Nobody here is really a Vlad fan it just comes out that way we post on the facts

Lostinfortwalton

You hate to be pragmatic but there probably aren't a whole lot of "moderate" rebels left. That leaves the 'chop your head off, blow your head off with explosive chord' ISIS. If the Russian Air Force can go for it and put an end to those savages, why not? Apparently the USAF and USN dropping one bomb a day isn't doing a whole lot.

sgt_doom

Brother lostinfortwalton, us sane people are with you all the way!

Boomberg

Those savages never really existed. Just a bunch of thug mercenaries given guns and license to pillage and rape all the women with impunity by the US and allies. They are disappearing rapidly now and going back home to be good little Muslims now that the party is over.

viator

Don't forget the Sukhoi SU 30SM advanced fighter which has very little use in Syria unless you want to shoot down somebody else's advanced fighter aircraft. Then it is very useful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0S4Vrnmz7k

bruno_the

this puppy can fly too. Just saying:

https://youtu.be/b-VNSJMiNt0?t=27

Smegley Wanxalot

Look everyone, people somewhere gotta die so that the US MIC can thrive. Guess those people are just the eggs obama said you gotta break to make an omelette.

johmack2

If IRAN is successful with iraq and syria, they should move to setup a Middle Eastern Economic Union that will eventually be joined in the AIIB and partnered with the Russian EURASIAN bloc. The "MEEU" bloc of countries should also act as a defensive ring(an ME NATO equivalent) with RUSSIAN and CHINESE BASES installed( TWO TO FOUR JOINT MILITARY BASES IN THE ME WONT KILL RUSSIA OR CHINA) as well as an economic engine capable of becoming an regional economic power house for the region. IRAN should also give RUSSIA an fighter jet operating BASE near the coast of IRAN for rapid deployment. IF you guys think the americans dont have something up their sleeves you are sorely mistaken, the first rule of war is never underestimate your enemy.

BustainMovealota

"..watch Russia do in a matter of weeks what the US has failed to accomplish in 13 months"

LOL , What makes you think the US was trying to defeat ISIS? Mainstrem fucking News Media???? Just go back to watching Dancing with the Stars or some shit.

AlfredNeumann

Russia/Syria are the righteous ones here. Not the USA funded ISIS and Al-Qaeda terrorists.

There is no such thing as a moderate terrorist (Lavrov said). He is Right. Act accordingly Vlad.

spyware-free

For those curious about Russian radar and air defense capabilities you might be interested in this;

Top US and NATO Commanders Admit They Cannot Oppose Russian No-Fly Zone

http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/top-us-and-nato-commanders-admit-t...

"American military expert, a former Colonel of the U.S. army Jack Jacobs said that the United States can't interfere with Russians in Syria, as Russia de facto set up a no-fly zone, cutting off access to any aircraft with the help of air defense systems deployed on land and on ships of the Russian navy in the Mediterranean."

"The Russians have indicated that they can see everything, and getting closer is not worth it, otherwise it will be shot down", - said the American military.

"Frankly we were surprised by the air defense system of Russia, most likely there are the latest systems S-400. I have no other ideas," - said Colonel Jack Jacobs.

[Oct 05, 2015] Major Interview (38 questions!) of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to the Iranian Khabar TV channel

Oct 05, 2015 | The Vineyard of the Sake

At the same time, the lies they propagated at the beginning of the events in Syria, in order to promote their positions to their audiences, have started to unravel. You cannot continue to lie to your people for years. You might do that for a limited period of time. Today, as a result of technological advances in the field of information, every citizen in every part of the world could know part of the truth. These parts have started to come together in the minds of their people, and they have found out that their governments have been lying to them concerning what has happened in Syria. They have also paid the price either through terrorist operations, the terrorism that started to affect those countries or through the waves of migrants coming to their countries, not only from Syria, but from different countries in the Middle East. All these factors started to effect a change, but I would like to stress once more that we cannot trust Western positions regardless of whether they were positive or negative.

Question 2: Mr. President, some countries, like France, used to have good relations with you, between 2008 and 2010. You enjoyed good relations with President Sarkozy. Why have such people moved to the enemies' side and started calling for overthrowing the Syrian regime?

President Assad: Because Sarkozy was charged by George Bush's administration to build contacts with Syria. Those contacts had a number of objectives which aimed in general at changing the political line of Syria. But there was an essential objective that the Americans wanted Sarkozy to achieve. At that time there was talk about how the 5+1 group should deal with Iran's nuclear file, specifically how to deal with nuclear materials or the radioactive materials which were enriched in your reactors in Iran. I was required to persuade Iranian officials to send these materials to Western countries to be enriched and returned to Iran, without any guarantees of course. That was impossible. It did not convince us, and the Iranian officials were not convinced.

When the West was unable to change Syrian policies, they found an opportunity at the beginning of the events of what is called the "Arab Spring", an opportunity to attack the states whose political line they didn't like. That is why the period you are talking about was concerned with appearances. In other words, the West opened up to Syria, but in fact that period was replete with pressure and blackmail. They haven't offered one single thing to Syria, neither politically, or economically, or in any other field.

Question 3: What you said was about France. How do you read the positions of other countries, like the UK and the USA?

President Assad: Their positions today?

Intervention: I mean that France wanted to intervene through the relationship that connects you with Iran. How did other countries, like the UK and the USA get involved in dialogue with you at that time?

President Assad: Yes. When we talk about these states, we are taking about an integrated system. We use the term "Western countries", but these Western countries have one master, which is the United States. All these countries behave in accordance with the dictates of the American maestro. Now, the statements of all these countries are similar. They say the same thing, and when they attack Syria, they use the same language. That is why when the United States gives the signal, these countries move in a certain direction, but there is usually a distribution of roles. At that time France was asked to play that role, considering the relatively good historical relations between France and Syria since independence. There is a big Syrian community in France, and there are economic, even military, and of course political relations. That is why the best option for them was to ask France, and not any other country. But ultimately, Western officials follow the orders of the American administration. This is a fact.

Question 4: Does that mean that you know specifically what the West wants from Syria?

President Assad: They want to change the state. They want to weaken Syria and create a number of weak statelets which can get busy solving their daily problems and internal disputes with no time for development or extending support to national causes, particularly the cause of Palestine, and at the same time ensuring Israel's security. These objectives are not new. They have always been there, but the instruments of dealing with them differ from time to time.

Question 5: It seems that some of these countries, working on behalf of the United States, have very close ties with the terrorists, and their policies are identical with those of the terrorist groups. What is the damage that such countries, like Turkey and Saudi Arabia, can inflict on regional security and stability?

President Assad: There are, of course, different kinds of terrorism in our region, but they are all overshadowed by what is called Islamic terrorism because these terrorist groups or organizations have adopted Islam without having anything to do with Islam in reality. But this is the term being used now. These groups are promoting sedition among the different components in the region in general. This means that the greatest damage is the disintegration of societies in time. Now, fortunately, there is a great awareness in our society about the danger of sectarian sedition, and the necessity of uniting ranks, particularly as far as the Muslims are concerned. But with time, and with the continuation of sectarian incitement, creating gaps between the different components of society and producing a young generation brought up on the wrong ideas, that will be a very serious danger. This disintegration will become one day a de facto situation, and will lead to confrontations, conflicts and civil wars. This is very dangerous, and it is not exaggerated. It is a fact.

Question 6: Now, it has become common in international forums for states to announce that the Syrian crisis cannot be resolved except through a political solution. But Saudi Arabia and the Saud clan insist that you should step down from your position. What is your response to that?

President Assad: What I said a short while ago: any talk about the political system or the officials in this county is an internal Syrian affair. But if they are talking about democracy, the question begs itself: are the states you mentioned, especially Saudi Arabia, models of democracy, human rights or public participation? In fact, they are the worst and the most backward worldwide; and consequently they have no right to talk about this. As to Erdogan, he is responsible for creating chasms inside his own society, inside Turkey itself. Turkey was stable for many years, but with his divisive language, and his talk about sedition and discrimination between its different components, neither he nor Davutoglu are entitled to give advice to any country or any people in the world. This is the truth, simply and clearly.

[Oct 04, 2015] Wake-up call on Syrian army weakness prompted Russian intervention

Notable quotes:

"... If the USA has not intervened covertly, Russia would not have intervened overtly. ..."

"... The basic rational always seems to be that US targets, including the bombing targets and civilian deaths, are legitimate, while Russia involvement is nefarious a priori. Russian reporting is usually termed ' Russian propaganda', while US reporting, which is as unified and unanimous in its judgement, just reversed, is seen as telling the truth. ..."

"... "......British soldiers have been caught posing as Arabs and shooting Iraqis in the occupied city of Basra in southern Iraq. A group of them was caught yesterday by Iraqi police. They were driving an Iraqi car, wearing Arab clothing, and carrying weapons and explosives........police and civilians have been targeted and killed by "terrorists" or "insurgents. .........But this is the first time that any of those responsible have been caught in the act, and it is now clear that at least some of them are working directly for the occupying forces ..."

"... USA is wining by sophisticate wide 'divide and rule' policy; so it remains very strong at influencing, manipulating and weakening its competitors. ..."

"... It was America and its proxies which turned Syria from a relatively secular, functioning State into the mess we have there today by supporting those opposed to the government. ..."

"... It's hard not to conclude that the US would rather have countries unstable and in ruins that under control of a leader that isn't one of their puppets. ..."

"... The petulant warmongers in USA and NATO are now coordinating a major disinformation campaign. According to the President of the Russian Federation the lies about civilian deaths were even reported BEFORE the Russian airstrikes were launched. ..."

"... Step down and - then what? What the hell's wrong with you people? How about the Russians are simply sickened to fuck by the spectacle of the psychos you propagandize for playing their little games? Dirty, dirty, weasly words. ..."

"... whether its goal is to strike at Islamic State or, more likely, to take on any rebel force fighting Bashar al-Assad in order to prevent the final and complete descent of Syria into the pit of total bloody anarchy and slavery at the hands of a myriad lunatic death cults. ..."

"... the root cause of terrorism is the original arming of ISIS by your US bosses (to fight Assad) and of AlQaida and the Taliban ( to fight the Russians), in addition to the prolific funds provided by the gulf monarchist dictatorships allied to the USA. ..."

"... The US coalition is limited to preventing the Caliphate from spreading into forbidden territory but leaving it free to act in Syria. The columns of trucks and pick-up of Daesh which took Palmyra on May 21st circulated uncovered in the desert without being worried by the US Air Force. ..."

"... The US strategy, the long term strategic vision, was to bring down Assad under the blows of ISIS. And when the thugs will be in Damascus and attack the Russians in Tartus, the americans will support them until the Russians will withdraw, finally the US will bomb and destroy in half a day all the Califat's army which they contributed to create (the good guys). ..."

Oct 01, 2015 | The Guardian

Normin 2 Oct 2015 13:16

Russia had to step in and bring attention to the proxy groups operating in Syria under US support. After years of lies the divide and conquer, regime change to puppet government plan has been exposed.

The US support of these groups against Assad coincides with Israeli security concerns which deem a destabilized Middle East a boost to Israel's security. This unprecedented foreign state influence starts in Washington with Congress, various advisers, think tanks, lobby groups, and full media support.

It's interesting to see how Russia acts to pursue state interests without being hobbled by the concerns and questionable influence of another country that does not have similar foreign policy interests as the USA. Time for a change in US policy, it's long overdue.

mgeary 2 Oct 2015 12:56

Sadly, as always in war the truth is amongst the first victims.

This conflict is another product of the old "divide and conquer" tactic, adapted to the current reality. When you do not like a nation`s leadership, you find a group of dissidents, train them, arm them and let them loose.

The civilians, women and children killed, the lives ruined and the homes lost are just collateral damage.

The situation in Syria is by the making of the powers involved, so complicated, with so many factions involved, that we should be very careful when we pass judgement.
Several of the people commenting here and some reporters have already done so with bias, according to their interests.

Thomas Hood -> eelolondon 2 Oct 2015 12:44

If the USA has not intervened covertly, Russia would not have intervened overtly.

Glauber Brito 2 Oct 2015 11:25

It is difficult to criticize Russian involvement in the Syria, when considering that it has been the US invasion and occupation in Iraq, which incidentally claimed well over 100,000 civilian lives, that sent the entire Middle East into turmoil.

The basic rational always seems to be that US targets, including the bombing targets and civilian deaths, are legitimate, while Russia involvement is nefarious a priori. Russian reporting is usually termed ' Russian propaganda', while US reporting, which is as unified and unanimous in its judgement, just reversed, is seen as telling the truth.

Which is exactly what the Russians are telling their viewers and listeners. It would be utterly refreshing, if the media would start demonstrating the same critical bias towards the government and the use of language, as they do of the Russians.

Madranon LaterNow 2 Oct 2015 09:16

I suspect that this is all about the House of Saud's internal war manifesting in proxy wars destabilising the region in some sick power struggle between the royal families.
Besides, the only real victims in this are the non Sunnis, the groups that Saudi Arabia has long persecuted within its own borders for decades. The aim, i believe is a totally Sunni middle east with all other sects and religions driven out or exterminated. With the help of western weapons, Britain likes to make a few bob out of any civil war and regional horror.

WhetherbyPond -> diddoit 2 Oct 2015 03:13

"the term Ziocons is offensive."

I meant to give offence. Being violently nationalistic, expansionist, racist and corrupt is offensive. If the apartheid state of Israel was any other country the west would be up in arms and calling for sanctions and regime change; however, because of the vile actions of the Nazi's and others, and the fact that the west did very little to help the poor souls who were being persecuted and murdered, the Ziocons use the guilt that is rightly felt in the west as a shield to cover their actions and silence their critics.

SHappens 123dcp 2 Oct 2015 02:16

US journalist Nir Rosen wrote in 2012, "every day the opposition gives a death toll, usually without explanation ... Many of those reported killed are in fact dead opposition fighters ... but described in reports as innocent civilians killed by the security forces ."
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/08/21/the-douma-market-attack-a-fabricated-pretext-for-intervention/

The figures about casualties comes from The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH) is an agency close to the rebels financed by Arab monarchies and Western states and headquartered in London. It publishes its toll of months of war Syria. These macabre figures reveal surprising dishonesty of traditional media and contradict the pro-interventionist propaganda. Note that Reuters was not allowed to check their figures.

The OSDH announced that there would have been 220,271 deaths.

Nearly half of the victims of war are soldiers and loyalist militiamen.

The number of "Bashar soldiers" killed is higher than the number of civilians killed. On the other hand, the Syrian Arab army is essentially composed of conscripts, that is to say citizens who defend their country, their institutions and their government, we can say that the army is inseparable from the Syrian people.

Therefore, it is also dishonest to hold Assad responsible for the deaths of more than 220,000 Syrians as do the media and provocative militants since the first victim of the war in Syria is the army, so the people in uniform, so the "people pro-Assad".

Let us turn now to the number of civilian casualties. The OSDH counted 104,629 killed.

This figure does not distinguish the Syrians that could be broadly described as "pro-government" or "pro-rebellion".

The number of civilians, including women and children, which can be in the pro-Assad camp of anti-rebel or neutral is probably extremely high especially if one takes into account the mass killings which occurred by terrorist groups in the Kurdish areas of the north of the country, in neighborhoods and Shiite villages and Christian and among the Sunni patriots all over the country.

The anti-government armed groups have also claimed hundreds of executions of civilians including children, suspected of sympathy with the Syrian regime.

As for victims of the armed opposition, the OSDH recorded 37,336 killed, twice less than killed Syrian soldiers (90,000) and one fifth of the total number of victims of war (220,271).

These armed groups are themselves engaged in wars that cause the death of many pro-rebel fighters and their families. Thus among the 104,629 civilian victims of the Syrian confit, it should take into account hundreds of rebels killed by pro-rebel civilians.

On reading the tragic toll of the OSDH, the Syrian situation shows that this is not Bashar, but the rebellion that is killing the Syrian people. Therefore, the Syrian state is right to fight against terrorism to restore peace in the country like any other state in the world

Which leads us to defend the non-interference and peace in Syria, with Assad.
http://www.syriahr.com/en/2015/04/310000-people-killed-since-the-beginning-of-the-syrian-revolution/

GERALD710 -> eelolondon 2 Oct 2015 00:47

I agree and disagree.
The protests began in Daraa. Where the protesters did an idiotic thing. The region was suffering from a severe drought. Now instead of protesting for relief aid, they were protesting for the downfall of the regime?????

There was nothing at all peaceful in the protests of Hama and Homs in 2011 where protestors deliberately murdered policemen and women and the Muslim Botherhood was busy already chanting 'Alawites in Coffins and Christians to Beirut'. A very dangerous chant in the two cities where minorities made up more than a third of the population.

I am sorry, if a bunch of Islammist nutjobs start talking of putting my people in coffins and deporting my allies to Beirut, I would have leveled them to the Ground. Have you seen the Old City of Homs? That would have been anyone's reaction.

Sparingpartner 1 Oct 2015 20:45

If you can't own the economy, fuck the place up! Great policy in the so called propagation of democratic freedoms... and while you are at it, explain to me once gain why Australia needs to not only be involved in this inglorious cluster-fuck but want to urge the Americans to step it up - like they're not doing enough?

Sweet Jesus in heaven save me from the do-gooders in this world!

buildabridge -> Clark8934 1 Oct 2015 20:34

Or a deliberate cunning foreign policy to divide and create chaos?

Back in 2005 Bashra under occupation by British forces:

"......British soldiers have been caught posing as Arabs and shooting Iraqis in the occupied city of Basra in southern Iraq. A group of them was caught yesterday by Iraqi police. They were driving an Iraqi car, wearing Arab clothing, and carrying weapons and explosives........police and civilians have been targeted and killed by "terrorists" or "insurgents. .........But this is the first time that any of those responsible have been caught in the act, and it is now clear that at least some of them are working directly for the occupying forces"

http://www.theinsider.org/news/article.asp?id=1556

buildabridge -> ComradeFunk 1 Oct 2015 20:15

Not so sure. USA is still the strongest military power with the furthest reach by miles. It has the smartest and best funded Foreign Offices and Spy Networks, human and electronic. This chaos in the Middle East, any slowly further North, is US foreign policy firing on all cylinders, to create chaos in Eurasia to prevent Eurasia from settling down and trading peacefully with each other, and so USA becoming sidelined. USA is succeeding and winning with minimal loss, far away from Eurasia. USA remains strong and Eurasia becomes weaker fighting with itself, just like WW1 and WW2.

USA is wining by sophisticate wide 'divide and rule' policy; so it remains very strong at influencing, manipulating and weakening its competitors.

mandzorp -> eelolondon 1 Oct 2015 18:06

Russia are bombing in support of the government of Syria. It was America and its proxies which turned Syria from a relatively secular, functioning State into the mess we have there today by supporting those opposed to the government.

cherryredguitar -> tubes99 1 Oct 2015 17:47

Just making the point that the US/UK are on the same side as Islamic nutters who eat dead people's internal organs.

TheChillZone -> LoveisEternal 1 Oct 2015 17:26

Yeah, whereas the West's nation building in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya etc has gone soon well. Russia can't do any worse than us....and at least hey are doing something to fight isis and the legions of terrorsst groups that are lining up to take control of Syria. It's hard not to conclude that the US would rather have countries unstable and in ruins that under control of a leader that isn't one of their puppets.

KriticalThinkingUK 1 Oct 2015 15:07

As a matter of fact the Russian intervention at Syria's invitation was necessary because of the failure of the US to halt ISIS. Yes, the same ISIS that the USA originally armed ( to fight Assad). Syrian Government forces currently control territory that holds 80% of the Syrian population and you can be sure that ISIS are now doomed by the coalition of Syria, Russia, Iran, Iraq and others, with or without the support of the outmaneuvered (again) USA.

The petulant warmongers in USA and NATO are now coordinating a major disinformation campaign. According to the President of the Russian Federation the lies about civilian deaths were even reported BEFORE the Russian airstrikes were launched.

Politicians across Europe are welcoming Russia's intervention as the only long term solution to the refugee crisis and literally hundreds of millions of Europeans are supporting Russia's attack on ISIS, whatever lies you may read from the old cold warriors and their oligarch's press in the US and UK.

retsdon 1 Oct 2015 17:20

whether its goal is to strike at Islamic State or, more likely, to take on any rebel force fighting Bashar al-Assad in order to shore up his position and stave off demands that he step down.

Step down and - then what? What the hell's wrong with you people? How about the Russians are simply sickened to fuck by the spectacle of the psychos you propagandize for playing their little games? Dirty, dirty, weasly words.

Here, try the truth.

whether its goal is to strike at Islamic State or, more likely, to take on any rebel force fighting Bashar al-Assad in order to prevent the final and complete descent of Syria into the pit of total bloody anarchy and slavery at the hands of a myriad lunatic death cults.

You just can't bring yourselves to admit that your neo-liberal masters have cocked their little adventure up completely this time, can you? Eh?

Realworldview 1 Oct 2015 17:04

Wake-up call on Syrian army weakness prompted Russian intervention

Very true, the collapse of the Syrian army was looking increasingly likely. This interesting article on the Saker website adds further clarity, by discussing what will not happen, what will happen, what has already happened, and what might happen. Finally some clarity about the Russian plans about Syria that ends with this paragraph, which raises the prospect of some "interesting times" in Syria and the wider Middle East:

Of course, I am under no illusions about any real change of heart in the imperial "deep state". What we see now is just a tactical adaptation to a situation which the US could not control, not a deep strategic shift. The rabid Russophobes in the West are still out there (albeit some have left in disgust ) and they will now have the chance to blame Russia for anything and everything in Syria, especially if something goes really wrong. Yes, Putin has just won another major victory against the Empire (where are those who claimed that Russia had "sold out" Syria?!), but now Russia will have to manage this potentially "dangerous victory".

If nothing else, it explains the wall to wall media propaganda blitz that started with the first Russian air strikes.

KriticalThinkingUK -> psygone 1 Oct 2015 16:45

Wake up psygoon...

the root cause of terrorism is the original arming of ISIS by your US bosses (to fight Assad) and of AlQaida and the Taliban ( to fight the Russians), in addition to the prolific funds provided by the gulf monarchist dictatorships allied to the USA. Its a fact whether you like it or not...the US propaganda offensive to try and cover up their stupidity will go nowhere. The truth will out and the terrorists will be destroyed by the coalition of Syria, Russia, Iran and Iraq etc, with or without the support of the USA. The Russian intervention against ISIS has massive support in Europe, who can take no more refugees. Europe, the whole of the middle east, Russia and above all the Syrian people (especially the Kurd and Christian minority communities) all need a stable government in Syria, not another failed state like Libya and Iraq.

Abiesalba -> Jack Seaton 1 Oct 2015 16:02

As for ISIS being a threat to Russia, does anyone seriously believe that ISIS are going to get anywhere near those maps you linked to?

Yes. The media in the European countries which are on the ISIS map reported about this map with concern already when it was published a year ago. (One of the links to ISIS maps in my previous post goes to Slovenia's national broadcaster, the other to an Austrian newspaper - both Slovenia and Austria are on the ISIS map).

Because unlike you, we understand that ISIS does not have to physically occupy all these countries. Its strategy is to first have groups pledging allegiance to ISIS in these countries. And in this respect, ISIS is VERY successful and has in only one year spread its influence into rather many countries. Besides, it has also claimed incredibly much territory in Syria and Iraq, while the US-led coalition (comprising very mighty armies) claim they are fighting against them!

And ISIS is already in the Russian Federation!!!! See for example:
-
-
8 ISIS supporters killed in N. Caucasus special op

(2 August 2015)

Russian security forces have foiled a terrorist group that recently pledged allegiance to ISIS in Ingushetia, in the Northern Caucasus, according to the National Anti-Terror Committee (NAC). Security forces seized explosives, weapons and over 2,000 rounds of ammunition.
-
-
How Russian Militants Declared A New ISIS 'State' In Russia's North Caucasus

(26 June 2015)

The Islamic State group announced the creation of its northernmost province this week, after accepting a formal pledge of allegiance from former al Qaeda militants in the North Caucasus region of Russia.

Clark8934 1 Oct 2015 16:01

The west is physiologically defunct. Fact. Their fragile idealistic bits-and-pieces approach to having a belief system, full of irrational claptrap is being so painfully allowing the Syrian conflict to run and run.

However terrifying the reality becomes the west withdraws into a sort of elitist denial and always seem to have international law on their side however many times they break it!

It seems a long time ago now that anyone in the West thought and articulated with such clarity, realism, and sense as the Russians. The political correct bigots in the West created this situation , one where no-one dare talk sense for fear of ridicule. Long live Putin.

AgeingAlbion 1 Oct 2015 15:30

Putin at least has been consistent throughout. He has backed Assad from day one.

The west first thought it was going to be another wonderful Arab Spring, then thought they could manage to back the "right" rebels as opposed to Isis, then said chemical weapons were a "red line" them failed to do anything when the red line was crossed then said Assad must go before negotiations and now meekly accept he might have to be part of the solution.

How much has that dithering achieved and how many lives has it cost? If Russia moves in directly and uses the Red Army to destroy Isis will it really be worse than our messing around?

SHappens 1 Oct 2015 15:26

Good summary. As an add on from Dr Bachar al-Jaafari, permanent syrian UN delegate 16/09/2015

- In the North, there are outlawed groups of called armed terrorists " Armed with the conquest " [Jaïch al-Fath], financed by Qatar and Turkey, that sends every day thousands of shells on Aleppo, killing hundreds and mutilating thousands of our citizens, preventing them from meeting their elementary needs on a daily basis.

In the South, rages another terrorist army financed by Saudi Arabia and Jordan, member state of this organization, country brother and neighbor of Syria. An army which proceeds in the same way by despicable terrorist acts against our citizens in this region.

In the suburbs of Damascus(damask), rages another army from the city of the Duma, a group of terrorists financed by Saudi Arabia, called up " Armed with the Islam " [Aich al Islam].

There are three terrorists groups who are armed, the first under the command of Turkey, the second in command of the Jordan, the third under the command of Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Backed up by the US, UK and France.

The US coalition is limited to preventing the Caliphate from spreading into forbidden territory but leaving it free to act in Syria. The columns of trucks and pick-up of Daesh which took Palmyra on May 21st circulated uncovered in the desert without being worried by the US Air Force.

The US coalition's airstrikes look like at best a gesture, at worst a smokescreen for future bombing campaign against Syria. The war prevented on September 2013 would be triggered under a new guise. But Russia took the ground. The priority is the fight against jihadism, associated with integrating the power of the political opposition, elections and a regional peace conference.

The US strategy, the long term strategic vision, was to bring down Assad under the blows of ISIS. And when the thugs will be in Damascus and attack the Russians in Tartus, the americans will support them until the Russians will withdraw, finally the US will bomb and destroy in half a day all the Califat's army which they contributed to create (the good guys).

Russia is about to put an end to this circus, hopefully with little collateral damage (thus beware of western propaganda on civilians toll) having high weapons tech to select targets accurately as mentioned in this article.

Abiesalba -> KriticalThinkingUK 1 Oct 2015 15:22

Politicians across Europe are welcoming Russia's intervention as the only long term solution to the refugee crisis and literally hundreds of millions of Europeans are supporting Russia's attack on ISIS, whatever lies you may read from the old cold warriors and their oligarch's press in the US and UK.

Very true. Here is Slovenia, the public opinion seems to be very strongly siding with Russia and against the insane US (judging from comments on forums).

And the US/UK media are truly an amazing brainwashing propaganda machine, straight from Orwell's 1984.

Jan Burton 1 Oct 2015 14:47

Russia isn't dumb or dishonest enough to make the meaningless distinctions between ISIS and other Islamist groups that the west insists on making. They're all out for the same thing and only differ on the details.

Putin in merely doing what needs to be done.

cherryredguitar 1 Oct 2015 14:48

Given that the so-called moderate rebels have a leader who videoed himself cutting a dead person's body open and eating one of the guys internal organs, the Russians are right not to differentiate between them and Isis.

Destroy all the extremists, even the ones that the Americans and Saudis like.

Abiesalba -> RobertNeville 1 Oct 2015 14:46

the Russians are allowed to fly the skies of Syria and the US is not.

Yes. Because the Syrian government asked Russia for a military intervention, whereas the US apparently have some superior right to illegally breach international borders as they wish and bomb whomever they like (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Pakistan).

By the way, the very fact that Iraqi government asked for a military intervention is used by the US-led coalition to justify their strikes in Iraq.

jvillain -> Mr Russian 1 Oct 2015 14:44

The US, France and finally to a slightly lesser degree the UK want Assad gone more than they want ISIS, Al Quaida or the Army of God gone. If Assad falls all his weapons will belong to ISIS and crew as well as having total control of a state. The so called rebels are only 5% or so of the people fighting. All the other opposition groups have either merged with ISIS or been eliminated.

If Assad falls there will no longer be a choice but to put western boots on the ground in Syria in a big way.

WhetherbyPond 1 Oct 2015 14:43

The Ziocons in the US are very upset that their geopolitical game is being thwarted by Russia.

Abiesalba -> Mr Russian 1 Oct 2015 14:41

It surely is interesting how the Anglo-American media today went all hysterical about the alleged civilian casualties in Russian air strikes.

Well, how about some hysteria about this then:
-
-
About 3000 people, including 162 civilians, killed in US- coalition airstrikes on areas in Syria

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, June 2015
-
SOHR documented the death of 2896 people at least since the beginning of the U.S led coalition air strikes on Syria in 23/Sep until this morning, while hundreds others were wounded, vast majority IS extremists.

The number of civilians who were killed in the coalition airstrikes on oil areas, where there are oil refineries, oil wells, building and vehicles, in the provinces of al- Hasakah, Deir Ezzor, al- Raqqa, Aleppo and Idlib has risen to 162, including 51 children and 35 women.

Among the deaths, there are a family of a man, his wife and their 5 children killed due in US- led coalition airstrikes on the village of Dali Hasan in east of the town of Serrin in northeast of Aleppo and 64 civilians killed by a massacre committed by the U.S led coalition warplanes on Friday's night in 04/30/2015 when they targeted Bir Mahli village near the town of Serrin in Aleppo with several air strikes, and the death toll of this massacre includes:

– 31 children under the age of 16 including ( 16 females and 15 males ).
– 19 women above the age of 18.
– 13 men above the age of 18.
– A 18 years old boy.
-
-
For more about civilian casualties due to the US-led coalition strikes in Syria and Iraq, see the Airwars website:

584 – 1,720 civilians killed:

To date, the international coalition has only conceded two "likely" deaths, from an event in early November 2014. It is also presently investigating seven further incidents of concern; is carrying out credibility assessments on a further 13; and has concluded three more investigations – having found no 'preponderance of evidence' to support civilian casualty claims.

[Oct 04, 2015] Saudis Mull Launch Of Regional War As Russia Pounds Targets In Syria For Fourth Day

Notable quotes:

"... Yes it is more about water rights than oil. ..."

"... Overthrowing Assad cuts Hezbollahs supply lines, which is THE point of the excercise. ..."

"... Now WATER and Israel. You are barking up the right tree. Much of all of this is about Greater Israel. If you were old like me, you would remember back when secular Arab states actually possed a real threat to Israel. All those state are now torn to pieces by US policy. So, see the connection? ..."

"... I maintain most of this is Israeli based. With the US doing Israeli bidding. ..."

"... You know most Americans are clueless as all they get is overwhelming propaganda from cradle to grave. It is the US policy makers that know they can use the American people's labor to continue with their nefarious plans. ..."

"... The neocons love death and killing, and it will come home. Ask Imperial Rome. The hubris is absolutely breathtaking." ..."

"... And once again we see who is driving American foreign policy in the Middle East -- our good friends the Royal family of Saudi Arabia. Putin really made a brilliant play on this one. Most Americans are cheering for him as he destroys the CIA created boggie man ISIS, and the CIA controlled US media doesn't know what the fuck to say about it because they've already convinced the public that ISIS is the real reason we're screwing around in Syria. Check mate unless the US decides to go full retard and start bombing the Russians based upon some false flag like the Russians bombing a hospital or something -- oops, can't really do that now either. ..."

"... The US has launched 6700 airstrikes on ISIS while the Russians have apparently degraded ISIS in just 60 airstrikes. ..."

"... The US and its allies have carried out 6700 airstrikes at an expense of nearly $4 billion in the year since President Barack Obama ordered a campaign against Islamic State. Yet the terror group shows no sign of defeat and has even expanded its reach. ..."

"... Sure a lot of ISIS fighters are probably true believers but those are the ones who will stand, fight, and be killed (blind pawns). However, seeing this is as much a covert operation as an overt operation then one has to think that the brains of the operation is made up of state operatives or mercenaries. These will not stand, fight, and die but run, re-arm, and redeploy elsewhere (Afghanistan->Stans->Russia or Afghanistan->China?). ..."

"... McCain is implicitly-and sections of the media are explicitly-pointing to a change in the Pentagon's rules of engagement in Syria announced by the Obama administration last spring that allows US forces to combat Syrian government forces or any other group or country that attacks US-backed "rebels." This is meant to put pressure on the White House to initiate attacks not only against Damascus, but also against Moscow. ..."

"... America's elites are as Trump says : a nation of neo-con elites whose mantra breeds --as incarnated by the NRA lobby --psychopathic mad shooters who have the genius of the devil. ..."

"... For some reason, nobody in the US-Saudi-Turkish-Israeli nexus thought Russia would actually intervene. I don't know why. Russia went to the mat over Syria a few years back when Obama, fresh off the triumph of turning Libya into a dumpster fire, shipped the same mercenaries who did the Gadhafi hit-job to Syria, freshly re-armed. Remember, those guys' presence was the real reason for the Benghazi fiasco; a fact HRC and the Obama Administration can't speak out loud and the GOP knows full well, making Benghazi the perfect political football. ..."

"... The US strategy of sparking and fueling a Sunni vs. Shi'a world sectarian war has taken a brutal hit. The Shi'a are in the extreme minority of Islam, but not in the Middle East, between Iran and the Mediterranean. ..."

"... But I'm keeping an eye on the Uighurs in China's Xinjiang Province, and the various -Stan nations. It will take a little while, but I'm guessing there will be "Mysterious", "Spontaneous" uprisings of extremist Sunni violence there. And "Mysterious" newcomers with beards and Saudi accents. ..."

"... Brilliantly, the Russians have stolen the "War on Terror" narrative. The US psychotics, psychopaths and megalomaniacs have proven incredibly stupid. Russia asks the US to join them in fighting the war on terror. Hilarious. ..."

Oct 04, 2015 | www.zerohedge.com

Looney

Lemme get it straight… Saudi Arabia and Qatar can't handle the Houtis in Yemen, but they think they can take on Russia? Oh, boy! I need a bigger popcorn bucket! ;-)

strannick

Like the US, these vile medieval "regional allies" try to frame their propaganda to show that this is about removing the dictator Assad, who actually is one of the most benign in that demented region. Its not.

They want him out because he opposed their pipeline, favoring instead the Iraqi Iran Shiite pipeline, which all three nations agreed to create. So much for national self determination. Otherwise they wouldnt give a shit what deranged lunatic ran Syria, or if Syria was ruled by some king as demented and tyranical and genocidal as they, -the Saudis and Qataris- are themselves.

Winston Churchill

Its not about an indefencible gas pipline at all.

By deception we wage war.

Its about potable water in south Lebanon.

Without that Israel is a failed desert state within ten years.

Go do the research yourself, all the data has been out there for nearly fifty years.

Hidden in plain sight.

swmnguy

Israel has to have the Litani river from source to outlet.

The pipeline from Qatar is a real project too, though.

Captain Debtcrash

Saudis' won't mess with Russia because they know the US probably wouldn't intervene on their behalf, we don't want to mess with Russia either and vice versa. It was already agreed we would let them do what they want and talk a good game in opposition.

That said, if I'm wrong, I don't think we will have to worry about low oil prices any more.

Oracle of Kypseli

Desal water is much more expensive than oil.

And... Yes it is more about water rights than oil. The Jordan river is now a small slow moving creek.

Winston Churchill

The Litani is part of the headwaters of the river Jordan.

The Golan overlooks the Jordan.Whick looks like a stream in comparison to what is was fifty ago, and a dried up mud hole relative to 150yrs ago. I wish I could post a photo from the 1860's I have of the Jordan, its a glass plate negative taken by my great grandfather.

Overthrowing Assad cuts Hezbollahs supply lines, which is THE point of the excercise.

If, as reported yesterday, Putin is going to supply Hezbollah direct with armaments, Putin will have a Israels balls in a vice, no wonder Nutjob is going apeshit..

Jack Burton

Good point Winston. I have always been dubious about the Pipeline argument. As you say, even if built, this pipeline would run through very hostile places, sure to be hit over and over again.

Now WATER and Israel. You are barking up the right tree. Much of all of this is about Greater Israel. If you were old like me, you would remember back when secular Arab states actually possed a real threat to Israel. All those state are now torn to pieces by US policy. So, see the connection?

Israel must, with in a decade take and hold souther Lebanon of perish. The only water left is there, Israel must have it. So they will take it, to hold it, they need Syria dead and Lebanon a failed stated.

I maintain most of this is Israeli based. With the US doing Israeli bidding.

The Indelicate ...

the Qatar pipeline argument never made any sense because:

1] you don't build a pipeline through chaos which will last years, which is precisely what Israel, most of all wants - a bloodletting that destroys another regional economic, and to an extent military rival.

2] Cost/benefit wise it doesn't make sense to spend this sort of money and time to go through Syria - look at a map.

3] Israel's Leviathan find, it's plans to ethnically cleanse the remainder of Palestine, and find/create pretexts to attack and invade more of Lebanon, Syria, and Sinai. It's plans to steal the gas that, if international law applied to the Jewish State, Gaza, Syria, and Lebanon.

Early Zionist Interest In Lebanon - Laura Zittrain Eisenberg
http://www.bintjbeil.com/E/history/zionism.html

Israel Wants The Litani River Desperately
http://northerntruthseeker.blogspot.com/2010/08/israel-wants-litani-rive...

HOORAY FOR HEZBOLLAH!
http://www.tomatobubble.com/id775.html

flysofree

This is a load of crap. I lived in the Caribbean and our source of water was desalinization plant. It wasn't as expansive as you say, even the poorest locals could easily afford it. The problem with desalinization plants was that intake valves would clog up with seaweed during storms!

There is no evidence whatsoever that Israel is planning any aggression towards its neighbors. It's also no secret that ALL of Israel air strikes into Syria involved intercepts of weapons shipments from Iran; that's clearly stated in mainstream media reporting!

You must be a deluded old twig, if you even attempt to compare Nazi Germany Lebensraum policies of total liquidation of local populations to modern Israeli politics of settler land grab in the West Bank.

Winston Churchill

I'm old like you Jack, but travelled extensively throughout the MENA, a family tradition you could say, my great grandfather and grandfather were involved in opening up tourism/biz to a lot of the area.Long before oil was discovered. Have some 'wrong side of the blanket' relatives who I keep in contact with as well.

SWRichmond

Lemme get it straight… Saudi Arabia and Qatar can't handle the Houtis in Yemen, but they think they can take on Russia? Oh, boy! I need a bigger popcorn bucket! ;-)

Putin is confident in his backing at home. Russian people are, for lack of a better way to put it, accustomed to "doing without" while supporting the motherland. Saudi, on the other hand, has completely spoilt their home population with their temporary wealth (now in doubt), paying them just to live, making them soft and expectant, petulant, self indulgent (sound familiar?). Putin is quite obviously "going for it", pressing his position, because he believes he will prevail. The gloves are off. USA is broke, and Putin knows it. Petrodollar is on its death bed, and he knows it, and he is willing to overtly hasten its death.

Final question, for bonus points: how do nations traditionally finance wars?

Answer: BY DEBASING THEIR CURRENCIES.

PacOps

Didn't someone pull some kind of shit like that on the Soviet Union a few decades back? ;-)

Sun, 10/04/2015 - 11:48 | 6628206 swmnguy

The Russian people can feed themselves. Not lavishly; cabbage and "cole" vegetables; potatoes; a little meat, fish and poultry; cold-weather grains; but they can feed themselves. Not so much for the Saudis and Qataris etc. Also, the Russians make their own stuff. They don't have to import slaves who outnumber them.

Yes, if the luxury is suddenly removed from their lives, the Russian people wouldn't notice, never having had much in the first place. But the Saudis and Qataris can't survive in their current arrangements.

kananga

"So, millions of Saudi refugees invading Europe?"
More like, 100 Saudi Royals invading Monaco.

lincolnsteffens

You know most Americans are clueless as all they get is overwhelming propaganda from cradle to grave. It is the US policy makers that know they can use the American people's labor to continue with their nefarious plans.

Sir Edge

Yes...

Plus One Kabillion SWR... Perfectly Said...

"USA is preparing to rip itself apart. For some reason Americans believe they can foist death, destruction, mayhem and hopelessness upon the entire rest of the planet, while somehow remaining immune from it themselves. The neocons love death and killing, and it will come home. Ask Imperial Rome. The hubris is absolutely breathtaking."

strannick

Exactly.

How dare Russia and Iran tinker with America and Suadis bombed out, fucked up Shangrala that is their legacy in the Middle East.

researchfix

They know what´s coming. Iran and Russia will chase ISIS to the Saudi border. And then they stop the chase. And then the next chapter enfolds.

cosmyccowboy

Stick with the small bucket, I do not believe that the Saudi little boy lovers and women beaters sill last long against the Russians, Syrians and Iranians. Their mercenaries will flee from a real fighting force!

HowdyDoody

Saudi are being setup as Zion's stooges. If they win - ZIon gets lebensraum to the north of Israel, if they lose - lebensraum to the south. The inevitable public reason for the land grab - poor defenseless little Israel needs a buffer zone between it and the Muslims.

LetThemEatRand

And once again we see who is driving American foreign policy in the Middle East -- our good friends the Royal family of Saudi Arabia. Putin really made a brilliant play on this one. Most Americans are cheering for him as he destroys the CIA created boggie man ISIS, and the CIA controlled US media doesn't know what the fuck to say about it because they've already convinced the public that ISIS is the real reason we're screwing around in Syria. Check mate unless the US decides to go full retard and start bombing the Russians based upon some false flag like the Russians bombing a hospital or something -- oops, can't really do that now either.

Bendromeda Strain

And once again we see who is driving American foreign policy in the Middle East -- our good friends the Royal family of Saudi Arabia.

Do not fail to miss the "go to" interview with the demon worshipper at The European Council of Foreign Relations. Saudi Arabia's interest just happens to *currently* align with the globalists. Convenient for them - for now.

TheReplacement

I disagree. I think the drivers are unnamed and the royals of KSA are both a faction and a pawn. They would look at themselves and see a faction. When looked down upon by TPTB they are pawns (like 99.999999% of humanity).

I also do not see most Americans cheering for Putin. I see most Americans are absolutely ignorant and clueless as per usual. Some think they are informed and think evil Putin grasping at empire. I cannot speak to Putin's motives and I do hold suspicion of anybody who has maintained power like his as long as that man. Still, I have to ask them what exactly Putin has done.

"Invaded Ukraine."

Really? Show me pictures and video that isn't years old and taken from a completely different country while I show you pictures and video of the US State Department funding and fomenting a violent uprising by neo nazis against a constitutionally elected government (this is not to say that I disagree in any way with Ukrainians taking action of their own volition but that isn't what happened).

"Well, he shot down that jetliner."

Proof? The west has all the evidence and we have no proof. You do realize the official report only confirmed that the jet was in fact shotdown. They have presented no evidence that either confirms nor denies any particular faction did in fact shoot it down.

"He's invading Syria."

Putin was invited by the Syrian government because ISIS and their allies were starting to win the war despite our forces supposedly bombing them all year. If we were bombing and droning them, in addition to the fighting by the Iraqis, Syrians, and Kurds, then why were they still winning? If Russia, Syria, and Iran all want to defeat ISIS then who is it that wants ISIS to win - who is supporting the bad guys in black if all the other bad guys are trying to kill them?

"I don't know. You wanna watch the Redsox?"

JustObserving

The corrupt, criminal, cruel cabal that rules Saudi Arabia should have collapsed years ago. So let them start another war and collapse now. Karma is a bitch. Hope ISIS are pushed into Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

The US has launched 6700 airstrikes on ISIS while the Russians have apparently degraded ISIS in just 60 airstrikes. Was the US dropping care packages and videos made in Langley?

The US and its allies have carried out 6700 airstrikes at an expense of nearly $4 billion in the year since President Barack Obama ordered a campaign against Islamic State. Yet the terror group shows no sign of defeat and has even expanded its reach.

http://www.rt.com/news/314885-isis-usa-anniversary-campaign/

TheReplacement

I question that narrative. Sure a lot of ISIS fighters are probably true believers but those are the ones who will stand, fight, and be killed (blind pawns). However, seeing this is as much a covert operation as an overt operation then one has to think that the brains of the operation is made up of state operatives or mercenaries. These will not stand, fight, and die but run, re-arm, and redeploy elsewhere (Afghanistan->Stans->Russia or Afghanistan->China?).

JustObserving

Does the Doomsday clock have a seconds hand ?

Does it have a nanosecond hand?

Threat of wider war mounts as Russia continues airstrikes in Syria

More prominent are voices calling for an even more reckless US policy of escalation against both Assad and Putin. They speak for powerful sections of the foreign policy and military-intelligence establishment that are implacably hostile to the nuclear deal with Iran and bent on war with Russia and China.

John McCain, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, spoke for this faction Wednesday. He declared from the Senate floor, "Into the wreckage of this administration's Middle East policy has now stepped Putin. As in Ukraine and elsewhere, he perceives the administration's inaction and caution as weakness, and he is taking advantage."

On Thursday, McCain told CNN that he could "absolutely confirm" that the initial Russian strikes were "against our Free Syrian Army or groups that have been armed and trained by the CIA…"

McCain is implicitly-and sections of the media are explicitly-pointing to a change in the Pentagon's rules of engagement in Syria announced by the Obama administration last spring that allows US forces to combat Syrian government forces or any other group or country that attacks US-backed "rebels." This is meant to put pressure on the White House to initiate attacks not only against Damascus, but also against Moscow.

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/10/02/syri-o02.html

falak pema

That the Sunni clans find the Russian Iran entente a threat to their creationist minded ideology is understandable--to the extent that Turkey has reverted to obscurantist logic and effaced Ataturk's legacy from its current political inclination-- and that Saud and Qatar, as inheritors of the Pax Americana Oil protected legacy, have reverted to the same ideological stance in a regressional spiral that shocks the word-- is one thing ; that the West adheres to this same logic is another. The history of the wahhabist arabs monarchies is diametrically opposed to that of the West in terms of political priorities.

The latter trend, of regression to neo-feudal ideology, is a betrayal of western values that are the bedrocks of our society.

There is no excuse for this regression, now brought out to the open by a Shia theocracy aligned with a autocratic Russia, which make the so called democratic West look like the new Evil Empire.

We are now in a spiral in West that will bring down democracy and replace it by a neo-feudal autocracy that will have nothing to envy the most evil traits of the Spanish Inquisition.

America's elites are as Trump says : a nation of neo-con elites whose mantra breeds --as incarnated by the NRA lobby --psychopathic mad shooters who have the genius of the devil.

Even Putin and Khameini look like moderates!

ThroxxOfVron

Russia is not allied with Iran.

That both Russia and Iran perceive that it is in their individual interestes to intervene in Syria does not make them allies.

The only reason that Russia and Iran welcome the others intervention is that it temporarily relieves each of them of the full weight of the financing costs of their respective interventions which would be higher if undertaken alone, and relieves both of some amount of the international political pressures being manifest by the US/Zio powers opposed to their interventions.

Russia and Iran do not share the same goals and will not employ the same methods.

Any appearance of mutual support is tangenital and temporary. It will dissipate rapidly when their true divergent interests become apparent in due course and as their opportunities in the Trans-Syrian theater evolves.

Likely the two will immediately become opponents in Syria as other forces are ejected from the theater in much the same manner as Russia and the British/US did in Germany when Berlin fell at the end of the WW2.

What I do not think is being spoken of publicly is the fact that Iraq is effectively being carved up while the focus is on Syria.

I do not think Iraq will exist, or certainly will not exist with the same territorial boundaries, when the Trans-Syrian ( Great Sunni/Shia ) War is concluded.

swmnguy

I would guess Kurdish leaders are doing everything they can to get an audience in the Kremlin about now. This is their best chance ever at an independent Kurdistan, protected by Iran and Russia. There won't ever be a better moment for them. The US has been using them as we used the Hmong in Laos in the Vietnam War. Time for the Kurds to get out of the firing line and into an arrangement with local regional powers who will actually pay them in the coin of their choosing in return for their services.

swmnguy

I don't think Saudi Arabia can do anything more than transfer some ancient handheld anti-arcraft missiles to their Syrian proxies, through third-parties. I can't imagine the Saudis openly attacking the Russians. I doubt they'd ship anything directly traceable back to them.

For some reason, nobody in the US-Saudi-Turkish-Israeli nexus thought Russia would actually intervene. I don't know why. Russia went to the mat over Syria a few years back when Obama, fresh off the triumph of turning Libya into a dumpster fire, shipped the same mercenaries who did the Gadhafi hit-job to Syria, freshly re-armed. Remember, those guys' presence was the real reason for the Benghazi fiasco; a fact HRC and the Obama Administration can't speak out loud and the GOP knows full well, making Benghazi the perfect political football.

But if you look at the atlas, and at Russian behavior since the 1970s, it's pretty obvious why they aren't going to tolerate radical insane Sunni mercenary armies running around in their backyard. In Syria, different from Ukraine, the local recognized government can invite them in. Now it looks like the local recognized government in Iraq has invited them in, too.

The US strategy of sparking and fueling a Sunni vs. Shi'a world sectarian war has taken a brutal hit. The Shi'a are in the extreme minority of Islam, but not in the Middle East, between Iran and the Mediterranean.

The Saudis will whine and cry, but not do much. Israel is going to get real quiet. I'd guess the US will cut bait on their proxies. But I'm keeping an eye on the Uighurs in China's Xinjiang Province, and the various -Stan nations. It will take a little while, but I'm guessing there will be "Mysterious", "Spontaneous" uprisings of extremist Sunni violence there. And "Mysterious" newcomers with beards and Saudi accents.

45North1

All this crap really ramped up about the time Libya was destroyed by NATO. Civilian deaths certainly have soared from 2011 to now.

Not saying there is a coincidence with respect to Libya being destroyed , but I can't help but think there is some link between liberated Libyan weapon staches and the accelerated actions of the various iterations of Syrian Rebels and re-labeled Terrorists in Syria. Syrian People have subsequently suffered. Infrastructure has been destroyed, Syria risks a future as a failed state (ala Libya) if overrun. I am sure Syria can take some comfort in knowiing that Libya got a new Central Bank as NATO munitions were still landing.)

Hopefully Policies of other players in the Syrian mess don't adopt the in for a penny , in for a pound approach to this debacle.... but I have my doubts.

Islam needs to get itself together if there is ever to be peace in the Middle East.

Pigs will probably fly first.

Atticus Finch

Brilliantly, the Russians have stolen the "War on Terror" narrative. The US psychotics, psychopaths and megalomaniacs have proven incredibly stupid. Russia asks the US to join them in fighting the war on terror. Hilarious.

Paracelsus

Correct. Gaddafi would have had tons of munitions.These were transported with US help thru Turkey into Syria.With the Iraq war destabilizing the entire region,

The Kurds were able to establish there own mini-state with the bonus of oil in the ground. Turkey has always been the weak man in the area politically, and has always opposed an
independent Kurdish nation.

I am waiting for the first Russian warplane to be brought down and the pilot roasted in a cage (on video). I can't see where the Russkies would be very happy with the CIA/Mercs who provided the ManPads for this event. The Russkies are very good at the airpower thing. The Iranians are tough on the ground. The Russkies seem to want to get this over in months or less.

Funny how they don't seem to worry about any UN Security Council condemnation. Chinese Veto?

Well, death of the PetroDollar system. History in front of our eyes.. The only wildcard is the Israelis threat to use nukes if they don't get their way. Aside from the PetroDollar collapse, there exists a strong threat of China and others dumping Treasuries on the finance markets (if they are unhappy with US foreign policy).

"May you live in interesting times".....

Truly Inspiration

You really raise serious questions about just how "intelligent" US intelligence actually is??

Why shall US target their own people when the ISIS top commander is an AMERICAN! You don't believe it?

Nada a 19 year old woman just escaped from hell,

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3253107/Is-ISIS-commander-AMERIC...

sudzee

SA worried that the "coalition of the good and honest" Russia/Syria/Iran and Iraq will corner ISIS and force them south thru western Iraq/eastern Jordan into Saudi Arabia itself. The Royal Family, beheaders in chief, will receive the goes around.

AlfredNeumann

Hillary Clinton : We created Al-Qaeda
Hillary Clinton : We created Al-Qaeda
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dqn0bm4E9yw

Gregor Samsa

This cartoon says it best: http://sputniknews.com/cartoons/20151002/1027919479/us-russia-syria-cart...

forgotten in th...

Here some social media statements by members of the "moderate islamic opposition" that Barack Obama and his two piece of shit (Cameron and Hollande) are supporting.

From wikipedia

In response to reports of Russian intervention, the Army of Conquest's Liwa al-Haqq commander Abu Abdullah Taftanaz posted a tweet addressing the "infidel Russians", inviting them to send troops to Syria and saying that "we have thousands like Khattab" who would "slaughter your pigs".^[76][77] Abu Abdullah Taftanaz also tweeted Russian military terms for Syrian rebels to familiarize themselves with if they intercepted Russian radio chatter.^{[78][79][80][81][82]} Reportedly Chechen and Caucasian foreign fighters have begun flocking to the coastal regions of Syria where the Russians are based in order to seek them out.^[83]

Ahmad Eissa al-Sheikh, a commander in Turkish/Saudi-backed Ahrar ash-Sham,^[84] threatened to bring upon "Russian hell in a Levantine flavor" if they encountered the Russians.^[85][86] Harakat Fajr ash-Sham al-Islamiya leader Abu Abdullah ash-Shami tweeted about the "globalization" of the "Levantine Jihad".^[87][88] He also tweeted that on the Russians and said that "The Levant will become their graveyard, with the permission of Allah".^[89] The Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Nusra Front^[90] has set a reward for the seizure of Russian soldiers of 2,500,000 Syrian pounds (approximately US$13,000).^[91][92]

The Syria based, Al-Qaeda linked Saudi cleric Abdallah Muhammad Al-Muhaysini threatened that Syria would be a "tomb for its invaders" or "graveyard for invaders" in response to the Russian intervention and brought up the Soviet war in Afghanistan.^[93][94][95]

AlfredNeumann

Syria Update# Air Duel between the Sukhoi Su - 30 Russian SM and Israeli F-15 Tags:
Six Russian fighter jets type Multirole Sukhoi SU - 30 SM have intercepted 4 Israeli McDonnell Douglas F-15's fighter bombers attempting to infiltrate the Syrian coast.The Israeli F 15 warplanes have been flying over Syrian airspace for months and in particular the coast of Latakia, which is now the bridgehead of the Russian forces in Syria.

The Israeli jets would generally follow a fairly complex flight plan and approach Latakia from the sea

On the night of 1 October 02, 2015, six Sukhoi SU-30 Russian SM fighters took off from the Syrian Hmimim airbase in the direction of Cyprus, before changing course and intercepting the four Israeli F-15 fighters off the coast of Syria, that were flying in attack formation.

Surprised by a situation as unexpected and probably not prepared for a dogfight with one of the best Russian multipurpose fighters, Israeli pilots have quickly turned back South at high speed over the Lebanon.

The mighty Israeli military doesn't do so well against opponents who can actually fight back! They'll probably bomb Gaza again so they can feel butch about themselves!

Read more: WHAT REALLY HAPPENED | The History The US Government HOPES You Never Learn! http://whatreallyhappened.com/#ixzz3ncnOMUxV

Amun

"on November 2, 1917, British imperialism in Palestine began when Lord Balfour, the then British foreign secretary and former prime minister, sent a letter to Baron Rothschild, one of the leaders of the Zionist movement. This letter became known as the "Balfour Declaration".

In that letter, Balfour promised British support for the Zionist programme of establishing a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine. This pledge of support was made without consulting the indigenous Christian and Muslim inhabitants of Palestine, the Palestinian people. And it was made before British troops had even conquered the land.

Balfour, on behalf of Britain, promised Palestine – over which Britain had no legal right – to a people who did not even live there (of the very small community of Palestinian Jews in Palestine in 1917, very few were Zionists). And he did so with the worst of intentions: to discourage Jewish immigration to Britain. No wonder Lord Montagu, the only Jewish member of the Cabinet, opposed the declaration.

And yet, just two years earlier, Britain had committed herself to assisting the Arab nations in achieving their independence from the Ottoman Empire. Arab fighters all over the region, including thousands of Palestinians, fought for their freedom, allowing Britain to establish her mandate in Palestine. "

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/palestinianauthority/9645925/Britain-must-atone-for-its-sins-in-Palestine.html

Abiesalba 1 Oct 2015 14:29

With respect to the total mess in Syria, to my knowledge there has been only one recent poll conducted across Syria (see below). The pollsters say that the poll is representative of the people of Syria. A similar poll was also conducted in Iraq. Both polls were conducted in June-July 2015:
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82% of Syrians agree that ISIS was foreign-created by the US (17% disagree).

85% of Iraqis agree that ISIS was foreign-created by the US (10% disagree).
-
-
Among the warring sides in Syria, Assad has the highest (!) support – 47% of Syrians think he has a POSITIVE influence (50% negative) .

Compare to the groups which the US 'coalition' and the Anglo-Americans media claim we should all support:

Free Syrian Army – 35% positive, 63% negative

Syrian Opposition Coalition – 26% positive, 72% negative
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Considering the polling results, anyone claiming that Assad should be removed is working AGAINST half of the Syrians. Putin is right – Assad has to be included in any solution to the war. Else, there will immediately a rebellion of half of Syrians against FOREIGN powers toppling Assad.

Assad will not come to the negotiating table without Putin.

Besides, it is clear that for Syrians (and Iraqis), the truly BAD guys are the Americans.
-
-
PUBLIC OPINION IN SYRIA
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Fieldwork: June 10 to July 2

Respondents: 1,365 Syrians from all 14 governorates of the country
-
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Thinking about the persons and the groups which are working now in Syria, Generally, do you think that their influence is negative or positive on the matters in Syria
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Positive … Negative
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47% … 50% … Bashar al-Asad
43% … 55% … Iran
37% … 55% … Arab Gulf Countries
35% … 63% … Nusra Front
35% … 63% … Free Syrian Army
26% … 72% … Syrian Opposition Coalition
21% … 76% … Islamic State
-
-
There are many reasons around to explain the presence of ISIL in Iraq/Syria, please tell me if strongly agree, somewhat agree, somewhat disagree, or a strongly disagree for the reason that explains the presence of ISIL?
-
Agree … Disagree
-
82% … 17% … ISIL is foreign made by the US

59% … 40% … As a result of widespread sectarian politics in the Arab countries and in Turkey

55% … 44% …ISIL is made by some Arab regimes

50% … 48% … ISIL is created by foreign countries to find a balance with Iran

44% … 55% … Wrong policies pursued by the Syrian government

42% … 56% … Syrian regime made ISIL for marking the opposition to terrorism

39% … 57% … Iran is supporting this organization to weaken Iraq and take it under its control

22% … 76% … Sectarian congestion that has arisen in Syria
-
-
Do you support or oppose the international coalition airstrikes in Syria?
-
Support … Oppose

47% … 50%
-
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According to your view, which of the following represent the best solution for the crisis which Syria is in today?
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51% … Political solution
37% … Military solution
-
-
Note: The poll has a margin of error of +/-3 percentage points.

Sources:

Polls Show Syrians Overwhelmingly Blame U.S. for ISIS (16 September 2015)

Full polling reports by the British ORB International (affiliate of WIN/Gallup International):

* Syria http://www.opinion.co.uk/perch/resources/syriadata.pdf

* Iraq http://www.opinion.co.uk/perch/resources/iraqdata.pdf

[Oct 04, 2015] Gulf states plan military response as Putin raises the stakes in Syria

Notable quotes:

"... The Russian intervention is a massive setback for those states backing the opposition, particularly within the region – Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey – and is likely to elicit a strong response in terms of a counter-escalation ..."

"... Saudi Arabia and Qatar are already embroiled in an expensive and bloody war in Yemen that may limit both their military and financial resources. ..."

Oct 04, 2015 | The Guardian

Regional powers have quietly, but effectively, channelled funds, weapons and other support to rebel groups making the biggest inroads against the forces from Damascus. In doing so, they are investing heavily in a conflict which they see as part of a wider regional struggle for influence with bitter rival Iran.

In a week when Russia made dozens of bombing raids, those countries have made it clear that they remain at least as committed to removing Assad as Moscow is to preserving him.

"There is no future for Assad in Syria," Saudi foreign minister Adel Al-Jubeir warned, a few hours before the first Russian bombing sorties began. If that was not blunt enough, he spelled out that if the president did not step down as part of a political transition, his country would embrace a military option, "which also would end with the removal of Bashar al-Assad from power".

... ... ...

"The Russian intervention is a massive setback for those states backing the opposition, particularly within the region – Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey – and is likely to elicit a strong response in terms of a counter-escalation," said Julien Barnes-Dacey, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

... ... ...

Saudi Arabia and Qatar are already embroiled in an expensive and bloody war in Yemen that may limit both their military and financial resources.

[Oct 04, 2015] Syria and the Danger of Moral Imperialism

Oct 02, 2015 | The American Conservative

A dozen years after George W. Bush invaded Iraq, ISIS occupies its second city, Mosul, controls its largest province, Anbar, and holds Anbar's capital, Ramadi, as Baghdad turns away from us-to Tehran. The cost to Iraqis of their "liberation"? A hundred thousand dead, half a million widows and fatherless children, millions gone from the country and, still, unending war.

How has Libya fared since we "liberated" that land? A failed state, it is torn apart by a civil war between an Islamist "Libya Dawn" in Tripoli and a Tobruk regime backed by Egypt's dictator.

Then there is Yemen. Since March, when Houthi rebels chased a Saudi sock puppet from power, Riyadh, backed by U.S. ordinance and intel, has been bombing that poorest of nations in the Arab world. Five thousand are dead and 25,000 wounded since March. And as the 25 million Yemeni depend on imports for food, which have been largely cut off, what is happening is described by one U.N. official as a "humanitarian catastrophe."

... ... ...

What Putin seems to be saying to us is this:

If America's elites continue to assert their right to intervene in the internal affairs of nations, to make them conform to a U.S. ideal of what is a good society and legitimate government, then we are headed for endless conflict. And, one day, this will inevitably result in war, as more and more nations resist America's moral imperialism.

Nations have a right to be themselves, Putin is saying. They have the right to reflect in their institutions their own histories, beliefs, values and traditions, even if that results in what Americans regard as illiberal democracies or authoritarian capitalism or even Muslim theocracies.

There was a time, not so long ago, when Americans had no problem with this, when Americans accepted a diversity of regimes abroad. Indeed, a belief in nonintervention abroad was once the very cornerstone of American foreign policy.

[Oct 04, 2015] Finally some clarity about the Russian plans about Syria

Oct 04, 2015 | The Vineyard of the Saker

Evaluation:

In purely military terms this is a rather minor development. Yes, the Syrian Air Force badly needs some modernization (the fact that they are using helicopter-dropped 500kg barrel bombs is a proof that they don't have enough aircraft to deliver guided or even unguided 500kg aerial bombs) and the Russians will be bringing some very capable aircraft (SU-24s and SU-25s for sure, and in some specific cases they could even use Tu-22M3s and SU-34s). But this will not be a game changer. Politically, however, this marks yet another triumph for Vladimir Putin who has forced the US Empire to renounce its plans to overthrow Assad. Because, and make no mistake here, the Russians are now there to stay: a limited Russian military presence will now turn into a major Russian political commitment. Furthermore, not only will Tartus continue to serve a fairly limited but not irrelevant role for the Russian Navy, the airbase in Latakia will become a hub of Russian military operations and, in effect, a forward operating base for the Black Sea Fleet.

Conclusion: a game changer after all?

Yes. But not because of some Russian military move. Consider this: for the United States the main purpose of Daesh was to overthrow Assad. Now that the US is declaring that they "don't plan to arm the Syrian rebels at the moment" and that Assad will not be overthrown, the utility of Daesh to the AngloZionist Empire has just taken a major hit. If the Empire decides that Daesh has outlived its utility and that it has now turned into a liability, then the days of Daesh are counted.

Of course, I am under no illusions about any real change of heart in the imperial "deep state". What we see now is just a tactical adaptation to a situation which the US could not control, not a deep strategic shift. The rabid russophobes in the West are still out there (albeit some have left in disgust ) and they will now have the chance to blame Russia for anything and everything in Syria, especially if something goes really wrong. Yes, Putin has just won another major victory against the Empire (where are those who claimed that Russia had "sold out" Syria?!), but now Russia will have to manage this potentially "dangerous victory".

[Oct 04, 2015] Syria and the Danger of Moral Imperialism

Oct 02, 2015 | The American Conservative

A dozen years after George W. Bush invaded Iraq, ISIS occupies its second city, Mosul, controls its largest province, Anbar, and holds Anbar's capital, Ramadi, as Baghdad turns away from us-to Tehran. The cost to Iraqis of their "liberation"? A hundred thousand dead, half a million widows and fatherless children, millions gone from the country and, still, unending war.

How has Libya fared since we "liberated" that land? A failed state, it is torn apart by a civil war between an Islamist "Libya Dawn" in Tripoli and a Tobruk regime backed by Egypt's dictator.

Then there is Yemen. Since March, when Houthi rebels chased a Saudi sock puppet from power, Riyadh, backed by U.S. ordinance and intel, has been bombing that poorest of nations in the Arab world. Five thousand are dead and 25,000 wounded since March. And as the 25 million Yemeni depend on imports for food, which have been largely cut off, what is happening is described by one U.N. official as a "humanitarian catastrophe."

... ... ...

What Putin seems to be saying to us is this:

If America's elites continue to assert their right to intervene in the internal affairs of nations, to make them conform to a U.S. ideal of what is a good society and legitimate government, then we are headed for endless conflict. And, one day, this will inevitably result in war, as more and more nations resist America's moral imperialism.

Nations have a right to be themselves, Putin is saying. They have the right to reflect in their institutions their own histories, beliefs, values and traditions, even if that results in what Americans regard as illiberal democracies or authoritarian capitalism or even Muslim theocracies.

There was a time, not so long ago, when Americans had no problem with this, when Americans accepted a diversity of regimes abroad. Indeed, a belief in nonintervention abroad was once the very cornerstone of American foreign policy.

[Oct 03, 2015] Moscow and Kiev in positive mood over talks to end east Ukraine conflict

Notable quotes:

"... The EU cannot do anything about Ukraine Right Sector radicals and its other nutters in the Mafia. ..."

"... But the Donbas situation is more mixed, however, even before the trouble in 2014, what I DID encounter in Kiev in particular (not so much Galycnya) was a regard of the SE UA citizens as second-class citizens, as well as attitudes that could be accurately be described as quasi-facist, ..."

"... I wonder why you call Western airstrikes "tactical". The coalition launched >7,000 military aircraft sorties in over a year, apparently carefully "missing" ISIS targets, killing on average ~0.4 terrorist per sortie and freeing up as much as 15 square kilometers of territory from ISIS. As you can easily imagine, a lot of people made huge amounts of money in the process. So we should call this a resounding success, on par with $10 billion no-bid Halliburton contract in Iraq. Wouldn't you agree? ..."

"... Does it really matter if they have ? We know the West has been involved so it would be pretty much par for the course if Russia was involved. The main thing is Ukraine becomes a peaceful nation for the benefit of its citizens, not for the benefit of either the West or Russia. ..."

Oct 02, 2015 | The Guardian

Елена Соловьева -> BMWAlbert 3 Oct 2015 20:37

Dear, you refer to "one blonde said!". On some vague feelings, assumptions... Enough speculation about Crimea, please! Let's stick to facts! Crimea 80% of the population - Russian. Not only Pro-Russian, and ethnic Russians. Russia does not need were the little green men of Crimea! But for drunk and scared of the Ukrainian military in the Crimea, for the Wahhabis, who through the streets went to the cars with black flags for Ukrainian neo-Nazis, importing explosives and suitable for shooting on the streets, probably Yes. Crimea was similar to the Autonomous Republic, until authonomy has destroyed by abandoning the Constitution. It was abolished by the President! Crimea held a referendum for secession from Ukraine long before the coup in Ukrainein 2014 .

Note that the Americans tried to seize Crimea under the guise of NATO exercises! Was absolutely illegal attempt to build an American military base in Crimea for the U.S. Navy landed the Marines on may 26, 2006, of which the citizens of Crimea dishonorably discharged. And during the state coup in Ukraine in the Black Sea suddenly a us warship.

In Debaltsevo the Ukrainian neo-Nazis fought with men that were deprived of the government, the President, sovereignty, language, external management is introduced, destroyed the economy. Take away the right to life. Whose wives, parents and children every day are killed by shells from anti-aircraft weapons in schools, hospitals, shops, bus stops, fill up with planes of white phosphorus, the water is shut off and the light stopped issuing wages and pensions, imposed humanitarian blockade.

To fight with desperate men, defending their home, or engage in rape and looting among the civilian population, where the majority of the elderly, women, children - different things.

Sarah7 -> Sarah7 3 Oct 2015 19:58

One more thing:

Actually, the first photograph accompanying this piece by Shaun Walker shows Poroshenko looking particularly angry and miserable -- if looks could kill, Merkel would be in big trouble!

That said, in the same photo, Putin appears calm, sanguine, and in a very 'positive mood' compared to his counterparts. Go figure.

Sarah7 3 Oct 2015 19:49

Moscow and Kiev in 'positive mood' over talks to end east Ukraine conflict

If you look at the photographs that accompany the following piece, Poroshenko does not appear to be in a 'positive mood' over the recent meeting of the Normandy Four, and Merkel looks like she is going to spit nails. Perhaps this explains their dour faces:

Checkmate!

3 October 2015

Finally the Penny Drops: Merkel Admits Crimea is Part of Russia
http://sputniknews.com/politics/20151003/1027980523/merkel-admits-crimea-is-part-of-russia.html

German Chancellor Angela Merkel for the first time publically accepted the fact that Crimea doesn't belong to Ukraine and that the peninsula will stay as part of Russia, Alexei Pushkov, head of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Russian Duma, said on his Twitter account, according to Gazeta.ru. (Emphasis added)

"Important: After a meeting in Paris, Merkel for the first time admitted that Crimea won't return to Ukraine. That means the crisis is only about the east of the country," Pushkov wrote. (Emphasis added)

The Normandy Four talks on Ukraine reconciliation concluded in Paris on Friday.

The leaders of the Normandy Quartet countries managed to agree on the procedure of the withdrawal of heavy weapons in eastern Ukraine, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Friday.

"We were able to agree on the withdrawal of heavy weapons," Merkel said following the Normandy Four talks in Paris. "There is hope for progress. We are moving toward each other."

On the whole, the results of Friday's Normandy Four talks in Paris set a positive tone, Angela Merkel said, adding that she was satisfied with what the participants achieved during the meeting.

The Normandy Four are planning to meet for a followup in November, presumably to keep Poroshenko in compliance and moving head with the implementation of Minsk II.

PS -- It was the evil Putin wot done it!

HollyOldDog -> Laurence Johnson 3 Oct 2015 18:55

The EU cannot do anything about Ukraine Right Sector radicals and its other nutters in the Mafia. This mess is for Ukraine alone to sort out and Mikheil Saakashvilli is not the man for the job - his corruption runs far to deep for any action that is more than cosmetic.

BMWAlbert -> Елена Соловьева 3 Oct 2015 18:38

IDK the number of Russian nationals in the Donbas forces, something between 1-10K as a rough guess, these are not formal formations (some are organized at the battalion level as all-Russian units, just an observation from the Russian language news coverage of the closing of Debaltsevo earlier this year, e.g. so called "Khan" battalion, this is just televised news, but there must be more than one such unit, hence the estimate-there are enough weapons captures from UAF in the earlier battles also to arm a small army in Donbas, but this does not rule-out direct supplies (I would imagine something low-key and NOT the big white convoys), this would be the natural minimal level of support I would infer/expect in this case and seems a fair inference. I am not replicating mindless statements from ATO leaders, and remember that Rada twice tried

Crimea was an autonomous region in UA and with rights to hold a referendum under the early 2014 UA Constitution and an earlier legal attempt in 1993 was surprised, also that RU had large forces already legally stationed in Crimea/Krim according to the Kharkov treaty and that in some cases, civic authority, Sebastopol by the RU naval command being a case in point-a continuation of old practices. My sense from personal friends is that among the young, and old generally, the pro-RU sentiment in Krim is strong (incl. one girl with whom I have lost contact, who works there in what is now RU, due to current conditions).

But the Donbas situation is more mixed, however, even before the trouble in 2014, what I DID encounter in Kiev in particular (not so much Galycnya) was a regard of the SE UA citizens as second-class citizens, as well as attitudes that could be accurately be described as quasi-facist, this includes well-educated people, ibcl. in one case (a blonde) the desire to 'exterminate' the Russians-but I would not count the opinions in Donbas as only those enduring the bombardments, there are also many refugees, many in RU itself of course, whose opinions vary from those expressed sometimes here with all due respect, so yes it is complicated.

HollyOldDog -> William Snowden 3 Oct 2015 18:13

Putin wants Ukraine to succeed but the only way it can do this is for the Ukrainian citizens to take over its government and boot out the Self-serving Oligarchs. The Oligarchs have their place in Ukraine but that is to stay out from forming Government decisions and confine their endeavors to modernizing and improving the infrastructure of Ukraine Industrial base which would improve the finance and conditions for all of Ukrainian citizens. It's going to be a difficult road but Russia and the EU can help, though clinging on to the influences of the USA would surely be a retrograde step.

Елена Соловьева -> BMWAlbert 3 Oct 2015 18:07

What's so complicated? The war is real or not! Evidence of finding the 200 000 Russian soldiers in Lugansk and Donbass, or have or not! Crimea after the collapse of the USSR was a disputed territory, which Ukraine annexed unilaterally, without considering the opinion of the Russian Federation and, more IMPORTANTLY, against the wishes of the citizens of the Crimean Republic, which, actually, was constitutional and presidential, while Ukraine did not destroy this status! It is Ukraine annexed the Crimean Republic, and the Russian city Sevastopol, which is in the Republic even geographically not part of, Mr. specialist on Ukraine! Demarcation implies the absence of territorial disputes. And, by the way! Another monstrous stupidity of your media! Poor Ukraine after the coup d'état, followed by the external management of the country by the EU and the US are terrorized by the evil Russian, because it is weak and has no nuclear weapons because of the Treaty of non-aggression from the Russian Federation? Really? Ukraine did not pay its portion of external debt of the USSR and the Russian Empire, therefore, is not the successor,and cannot claim to nuclear power status! Ukraine is a priori not have a right to this weapon, because it was not the owner initially, as the successor! The coup in Kiev was held under the slogan "Cut all Russians!", which in Ukraine 2 years ago, it was a few million, and that is what they are doing throughout the Ukraine, especially in Eastern Ukraine and was planning to do in Crimea. The burning of people in Odessa - a vivid example.

Beckow -> Bart Looren de Jong 3 Oct 2015 17:11

You cannot survey people in the middle of a civil conflict on how much they like or dislike what is described as the "enemy". It simply cannot be done, the numbers are meaningless.

Look at Ukraine's economy and you will see the future of this conflict. The living standards are down so low that all else will become meaningless - people actually care about their incomes and living standard.

Your slogans about "illegal", "privileged sphere" are not what any of this is about, they are not what people in Ukraine think about or what matters to them. But if you insist on slogans, there is one simple answer: Kosovo. West bombed Serbia, killing about a thousand civilians, to force Albanian separation in Kosovo. All talk about "international law" is kind of meaningless after that.

Informed17 -> Laurence Johnson 3 Oct 2015 15:53

I wonder why you call Western airstrikes "tactical". The coalition launched >7,000 military aircraft sorties in over a year, apparently carefully "missing" ISIS targets, killing on average ~0.4 terrorist per sortie and freeing up as much as 15 square kilometers of territory from ISIS. As you can easily imagine, a lot of people made huge amounts of money in the process. So we should call this a resounding success, on par with $10 billion no-bid Halliburton contract in Iraq. Wouldn't you agree?

Manolo Torres -> Bart Looren de Jong 3 Oct 2015 15:49

I have condemned the actions of the Russian government in chechnya many times, if you are going to speak about anyones hypocrisy, you should at least know with whom are you talking.

Manolo Torres
9 Sep 2014 09:42
0 Recommend
Look, I already replied, I wasn´t careful with my question. Of course the Russians have committed many abuses, namely the war in Chechnya. I also explained the differences between that war and the wars by US/NATO that have simply no justification on grounds of self defense.

My concern with human life was shown by my condemnation of every violent act: the massacre in Odessa, the airstrikes and shelling that killed thousands in Ukraine, the war in Iraq and Syria, the war in Chechnya or the neo-nazi movement inside Russia (as we were discussing yesterday before you started shouting and got overwhelmed by the numbers I showed you).

As for the Ukrainians I don´t you are as stupid as to blame Putin for the Ukrainian governments shelling of residential areas. And perhaps you know that there is an investigation for MH17.

i am not like you Rob, I am not a fanatic and I only make judgements when I think I know the facts. You are just shouting and looking every time more ridiculous.

A good start for you would be to say that you stand corrected for the Amnesty report. Do it, I have done it, feels good.

Can I do anything else for you?

Laurence Johnson -> gimmeshoes 3 Oct 2015 14:15

Poroshenko is in a bit of a legal quagmire as his government has not at any stage controlled the entire nation and its borders at any time. His current claim on Eastern Ukraine in legal terms is more a wish list than a legal document of fact.

His only path is partition to legalise his government to govern what they have today, or to negotiate the handing over of East Ukraine to his governments control in order that he can legitimately govern the entire nation and its borders. An invasion of East Ukraine is probably not going to work legally, or on a more practical basis.

Informed17 -> Worried9876 3 Oct 2015 14:10

This is too categorical. Chocolate man wants anything that allows him to keep cashing in on his "president" title. The only thing that's unacceptable to him is if his masters try to prevent his thievery. Then he is likely to become angry and unpredictable. Might even remember about Ukraine, although that's highly unlikely.

elias_ 3 Oct 2015 14:04

Looks to me like Putin wins. Crimea in the bag, the eastern regions stay in Ukraine with enough clout to prevent nato membership and keep the nazis at bay. And stupid EU and US get to pay the bill for reconstruction. The sanctions hurt all sides but are forcing much needed reforms in his country, he may even become a net exporter of food products instead of importing from the eu. He gets a refund for the Mistrals and makes the poodle French look untrustworthy. Oh well, serves the sneaky bastards right (you know who i mean "fuxx the eu").

Laurence Johnson -> Alexzero 3 Oct 2015 14:03

Does it really matter if they have ? We know the West has been involved so it would be pretty much par for the course if Russia was involved. The main thing is Ukraine becomes a peaceful nation for the benefit of its citizens, not for the benefit of either the West or Russia.

[Oct 03, 2015] Fascism and Neoconservative Republicans

"... A Fascist is one who believes in a corporatist society. In other words, it is a political philosophy embodying very strong central government, with the authority to move in decisive steps to accomplish goals. It would be characterized by a unity of purpose, with more or less all the levels of the hierarchy in unison, starting at the top and working down. It is a top-down government involving an alliance of industry, military, media and a political party. ..."

"... It is interesting to note that at least two of the three Parties had origins as Socialist and morphed into strong, Right Wing, authoritarian rules as a result largely of expediency. ..."

"... As soon as they took power, which they did partially through gangs and mobs, intimidation and demonstrations and-in Mussolini's case an outright coup - they allied themselves with the biggest corporations and the military general staff. In addition, even before taking complete power, they began to wrest control of the media away from other political parties, and to use it for their own propaganda. ..."

"... Hitler's "Big Lie" basically blamed rampant inflation and lack of jobs on the Jews. He blamed all their economic ills on the restraint of Germany by other nations and the presumed taking over of German lands (which they themselves had only won through aggressive wars.) ..."

"... In a fascist system, the whole idea is to have an efficient method of getting things done. If you want to build an "autobahn" you simply tell the transportation minister to get started. You control everything at every level. It will go faster because it is for the good of all the people, so no one will have the right to object or interfere. It is, Fascists would say, about efficiency, getting things done for the people. ..."

"... You attack other countries so that they cannot attack you. You start wars (Iraq) to prevent dangerous men from attacking you. It makes sense. Military efficiency in a Fascist state means that if the top guy (President or Dictator) wants to be absolutely certain that no other country is superior, he can build up the military industry and the military at any pace or at any cost. ..."

"... Everyone salutes and follows the lead from the top down ..."

"... In a Fascist state, policy is largely being written through a cooperative effort with the industries involved, in this case the health care industry. The slow, ragged, messy and Democratic process involved with our current health care reform process would never happen under a Fascist government. Whatever the decision, there would be no appeal. If a million or fifty million were left out, because, let's say, that the President needed more money for war machines that would be the decision- with no question or appeal. ..."

"... Republicans, remember, have the complete support of Fox News, the Fox television Network, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and any number of television stations around the country, plus somewhere between 600 and 1600 radio stations ..."

"... The Neocons are out of power, but they are unrelenting in their efforts to control as much of the political discourse as possible, no matter how damaging to society. They bring mobs and riff-raff out, some with guns, trying to scare the average citizen. They send messages out over radio with lunatic commentators, some who are not even allowed to visit other countries because of their hate speech…yet we tolerate it. ..."

March 25, 2010 | Populist Daily

The word "Fascist" as with the terms "Socialist" and "Communist" are thrown around a lot by people who have no idea what they mean. If you want to know what those terms really mean, find someone who was in some branch of military counterintelligence, the CIA, the security section of the State Department, Defense Intelligence, or in the FBI.

In all those areas, the first day of basic training involves comparative forms of government. You can't spot a Communist if you don't know what a Communist is. You can't tell the difference between a Communist and a Fascist unless you know the difference in the two systems. It is Intelligence, and more specifically, Counterintelligence 101.

So, let's go right to Fascism. A Fascist is one who believes in a corporatist society. In other words, it is a political philosophy embodying very strong central government, with the authority to move in decisive steps to accomplish goals. It would be characterized by a unity of purpose, with more or less all the levels of the hierarchy in unison, starting at the top and working down. It is a top-down government involving an alliance of industry, military, media and a political party.

Because Fascism has been associated with the 1930s German Nazis, the Italian Fascists under Mussolini and the Falangists, under the Spanish Dictator, Francisco Franco, the term "Fascist" has taken on a sinister meaning. Not fewer than 10 million direct deaths resulting from the rule of these three may have something to do with it. On the other hand, philosophies don't kill people; people kill people.

It is interesting to note that at least two of the three Parties had origins as Socialist and morphed into strong, Right Wing, authoritarian rules as a result largely of expediency. It is also interesting to note that all three were not only intimately connected to the largest industrial corporations, but as soon as possible with the military leadership. While Fascism as a political philosophy is not innately evil, given the results, it is worth noting how things turned out.

Both the German and the Italian Fascist parties were also both revolutionary and conservative at the same time. Both Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini were aggressive, anarchic leaders. Both served time in jail. Both served in the enlisted ranks with the military in war. Both used that experience to organize mobs of thugs to agitate against an established government, not for a more democratic regime, but for a more authoritarian one. You can begin to see some similarities with contemporary political activities.

As soon as they took power, which they did partially through gangs and mobs, intimidation and demonstrations and-in Mussolini's case an outright coup - they allied themselves with the biggest corporations and the military general staff. In addition, even before taking complete power, they began to wrest control of the media away from other political parties, and to use it for their own propaganda.

Once they had control of the radio and newspapers, which were then the prominent sources of information, they could begin to broadcast their messages. Hitler's "Big Lie" basically blamed rampant inflation and lack of jobs on the Jews. He blamed all their economic ills on the restraint of Germany by other nations and the presumed taking over of German lands (which they themselves had only won through aggressive wars.)

But let's for a minute assume that we know nothing about Fascism except that it exists. We have a group, here in America that believes in a corporatist political philosophy. What would that look like? If it were a true Fascist organization, they would ally themselves with big corporations, like the health care industry, oil and mining, pharmaceuticals, media corporations and the military-industrial complex.

They would try to control the message, particularly in radio and television. They would become as closely allied with the top military brass as possible, offering them a seat at the table in the running of the economy. Retired Generals would be assured of positions involved with military hardware and strategic planning.

And what about the people? In a fascist system, the whole idea is to have an efficient method of getting things done. If you want to build an "autobahn" you simply tell the transportation minister to get started. You control everything at every level. It will go faster because it is for the good of all the people, so no one will have the right to object or interfere. It is, Fascists would say, about efficiency, getting things done for the people.

Defense is about protecting the people. You attack other countries so that they cannot attack you. You start wars (Iraq) to prevent dangerous men from attacking you. It makes sense. Military efficiency in a Fascist state means that if the top guy (President or Dictator) wants to be absolutely certain that no other country is superior, he can build up the military industry and the military at any pace or at any cost.

In a Fascist state the idea is to have one set of rules, coming from the top down. No one votes as an individual, only as a part of the group that is assigned a task. It is corporate, total-totalitarian. So, if you decide that a national health care program is not right for the country, you all vote against it in a totally militaristic way. Everyone salutes and follows the lead from the top down. The only problem is when you do not have a strong leader.

The Democrats, for example, want to farm decisions out to others, let the opposition have their input. It slows the process. A Fascist health care program would be one decided upon by the President, discussed and worked out with the corporations, mandated to his staffs and enacted without any discussion or public debate in a matter of a few months.

In a Fascist state, policy is largely being written through a cooperative effort with the industries involved, in this case the health care industry. The slow, ragged, messy and Democratic process involved with our current health care reform process would never happen under a Fascist government. Whatever the decision, there would be no appeal. If a million or fifty million were left out, because, let's say, that the President needed more money for war machines that would be the decision- with no question or appeal.

So, if you want efficiency, you not only should you look to the Republicans, but you may have no choice. The Republicans, remember, have the complete support of Fox News, the Fox television Network, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and any number of television stations around the country, plus somewhere between 600 and 1600 radio stations on which literally 9 out of 10 commentators are paid by those network owners to be Conservative (Neoconservative Republican.) They have expanded to very large numbers of web site bases, delivering whatever type of information they want, truth, lies, anything in between… accusations without proof…Socialist, Communist, government takeover of this or that…no need to be truthful. It is all propaganda.

Just as Herr Goebbels and Mussolini did in the 1930s-and except in the Communist counties and a few Latin American dictatorships there hasn't been anything to speak of similar to this in the Western advanced societies since then-the unchallenged message of the Right Wing goes out. The radio commentators today get their message from the top, from the Republican Party. Fox News Channel internal memos have shown that they literally decide what policies the Republican Party wished to champion, and then they attack rather than merely delivering the news.

So do we need to be civil about it-about these lies? Is it important to challenge people, like these Right Wing commentators who tell you that your current health care is sufficient? It is good for corporations, for health care insurance companies. But is it good for you not to be sure you can get health insurance? So if they tell you that something is a government takeover and it is not, so you vote against health care or you respond to a poll in a way that is against your own best interests…do you need to be civil about being lied to? You shouldn't be lied to by media. You need the truth, the facts, to make decisions.

It is a pretty simple answer. Should you be civil to people who lie to you and urge you to buy something that turns out to hurt you, or your family, or cause you to lose your job, or kill your sister, brother, neighbor? If I lie to you and say it is safe to swim across the channel and you are attacked by sharks that I knew were there…should you not care? This is what is happening, right now…today. In the consumer products market, we call that fraud and companies can be criminally liable.

So let's describe what a Fascist government or a political party attempting to introduce a Fascist government would look like and see if either or any of our political parties fits that description:

• Allies with big corporations, planning strategy together, interchangeable.
• Works to have control of the political process at all levels, starting with the top down.
• Does not cooperate with and actually tries to undermine other political parties.
• Uses mobs and demonstrations, and attempts to make individuals working in other parties afraid of violent reactions.
• Advocates ownership of weapons as a fear factor to intimidate others. (Wayne La Pierre…"the people with the guns make the rules.")
• Decides what is best for all citizens based on what corporations want.
• Uses "big lie" propaganda technique, of top-down distributed propaganda message for each issue.
• Allies with military on most issues, with ultra-aggressive military posture.
• Total control of the political process is the ultimate goal.

If any of this seems familiar to you, then you see something "Fascist" in the current political process. Of course, one thing that wasn't mentioned. Fascists always need someone to stigmatize. In Germany, it was the Jews. In Italy it was the Socialists. In Spain it was the Communists. It seems clear that, in this country it is the Democrats.

The Neocons are out of power, but they are unrelenting in their efforts to control as much of the political discourse as possible, no matter how damaging to society. They bring mobs and riff-raff out, some with guns, trying to scare the average citizen. They send messages out over radio with lunatic commentators, some who are not even allowed to visit other countries because of their hate speech…yet we tolerate it.

We even allow asininely preposterous lies from a possibly psychotic television commentator…to be used to stoke the race-hatred of many tea party members, and thugs against a distinguished African-American President who won 54% of the vote, the largest since Ronald Reagan and who also won the Nobel Peace Prize.

The case is pretty clear. The Neoconservative Republicans are headed for Fascism if they are not there already. The latest round of insults, threats, lies, window breakings all contribute to the evidence. Sooner or later this totalitarian attitude will either be denounced or will have serious responses. One thing is sure, with the problems facing our country, we cannot afford the kind of anarchist attacks as were exhibited in the bombing of a Federal building in Oklahoma City or the flying of an aircraft into a building housing an IRS office.

This radical, violent, arrogant Fascist attitude has to stop. The first step in preventing this kind of political outcome is to identify and react to Fascism when it appears. Neoconservative Republicanism is Fascism. Republicans must return to sanity or be treated as a very dangerous and radical political party.

Mike // Mar 30, 2010 at 12:01 pm

I agree with everything you say, except for the statement that the fascists have chosen the Democrats as a focus for hate. They have chosen everyone who is not a fascist republican, and esp. the 'middle to the left', which they label 'liberal'.

It is frightening to see the second party of a two party system turn fascist in the United States. Anyone who says it isn't so, isn't paying attention. What is even more frightening is the level of ignorance that must exist for people to believe those fascists. When you watch that certain mentally mal-adjusted on Fox and see him ramble on incoherently for an hour while he spews lies and distortions, any thinking individual has to ask him/her self "What moron would fall for this drivel?" But they do.

It is truly frightening, and it is easy to see how people like Hitler manage to rise to power, when people wilfully shut off any reasoning skills they ever had.

[Oct 03, 2015] Lawrence Wilkerson The Empire is in Deep, Deep Trouble

Oct 03, 2015 | naked capitalism

This is a must-watch video. Wilkerson describes the path of empires in decline and shows how the US is following the classic trajectory. He contends that the US needs to make a transition to being one of many powers and focus more on strategies of international cooperation.

The video is full of rich historical detail and terrific, if sobering, nuggets, such as:

History tells us we're probably finished.

The rest of of the world is awakening to the fact that the United States is 1) strategically inept and 2) not the power it used to be. And that the trend is to increase that.

Wilkerson includes in his talk not just the way that the US projects power abroad, but internal symptoms of decline, such as concentration of wealth and power, corruption and the disproportionate role of financial interests.

Wilkerson also says the odds of rapid collapse of the US as an empire is much greater is generally recognized. He also includes the issues of climate change and resource constraints, and points out how perverse it is that the Department of Defense is the agency that is taking climate change most seriously. He says that the worst cases scenario projected by scientists is that the world will have enough arable land to support 400 million people (no typo).

Be sure to listen to the Q&A as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckjY-FW7-dc

Published on Sep 24, 2015

The speech covered National Security, Climate Change, Interminable War, Debt, Immigration, Inequality, racism, and much more. The speech is striking in its honesty. It is likely poignant to Republicans who have bought into rationalization of the intransigence of the Republican Party.

Foy, October 3, 2015 at 7:26 am

Thanks for the link Yves, that's a first class speech. Great to hear one that is 'off the cuff' with no notes etc. Hits it out of the park on each point he makes. So many great lines in it.

"Empires at the end concentrate on military force as the be all and end all of power… at the end they use more mercenary based forces than citizen based forces"

"Empires at the end…go ethically and morally bankrupt… they end up with bankers and financiers running the empire, sound familiar?"

"So they [empires] will go out for example, when an attack occurs on them by barbarians that kills 3000 of their citizens, mostly because of their negligence, they will go out and kill 300,000 people and spend 3 trillion dollars in order to counter that threat to the status quo. They will then proceed throughout the world to exacerbate that threat by their own actions, sound familiar?…This is what they [empires] do particularly when they are getting ready to collapse"

"This is what empires in decline do, they can't even in govern themselves"

Quoting a Chinese man who was a democrat, then a communist (under Mao) then, when he became disenchanted, a poet and writer…

"You can sit around a table and talk about politics, about social issues, about anything and you can have a reasonable discussion with a reasonable person. But start talking about the mal-distribution of wealth and you better get your gun" …."that's where we are, in Europe and the United States".

And all from a retired republican colonel…

Norb, October 3, 2015 at 8:17 am

How many chances can "Rich and Powerful Men" be given to determine the direction of civilization? It seems that those in power believe that if they are part of the 400 million class that survives the current crisis, all is well in the world. The powerless will die in their millions, and the wealthy move along to the next phase in the human drama.

We are facing a crisis of accountability. We as citizens of this country have to find ways of holding those in power accountable for their actions. Wilkerson seems to have a conscience, but it is troubling to hear some of his "solutions" to the crisis we face. He is part of the military industrial complex we were warned about and still people seek out his advice. He spends his time advising how to relocate military bases due to sea level rise- WTF.

If our energy, resources, and political thought don't center around ending poverty, bringing social justice to all of humanity, and limiting war- the future for humanity will be bleak.

Llewelyn Moss, October 3, 2015 at 8:31 am

Who could have known that Perpetual Carpet Bombing Of The World… would SOLVE NOTHING and destroy the US financially and morally. Who could have known… except anyone with half a brain.

If Wilkerson is a true MIC Lacky, I'm much less interested in hearing his solution.

Radu Andrei

Here's what i do not understand: if "your party" is so extremist that it no longer represents any of your beliefs and political/social/fiscal positions, why the hell is it still "your party" ? I do hope it's just the attachment to the word "republican" and when it comes to voting you do it with your head.

On a side note, i like this person. A true republican, NOT the ultra-religious, warmongering, xenophobic, bigoted, anti science, anti environment, oblivious to facts, obtuse, disingenuous, backstabbing, hypocritical and hateful breed that's surfacing lately.

Sabine Ziya

I agree with you Radu. It's scary to watch the Republican party right now. They are so full of hate. They claim to walk the way of their Jesus Christ, but I wonder if Jesus would call them Pharisees, blasphemous, and hypocritical.

[Oct 03, 2015] The Athens Affair shows why we need encryption without backdoors

"... after the 2004 Olympics, the Greek government discovered that an unknown attacker had hacked into Vodafone's "lawful intercept" system, the phone company's mechanism of wiretapping phone calls. The attacker spied on phone calls of the president, other Greek politicians and journalists before it was discovered. ..."

"... all this happened after the US spy agency cooperated with Greek law enforcement to keep an eye on potential terrorist attacks for the Olympics. Instead of packing up their surveillance gear, they covertly pointed it towards the Greek government and its people. But that's not all: according to Snowden documents that Bamford cited, this is a common tactic of the NSA. They often attack the "lawful intercept" systems in other countries to spy on government and citizens without their knowledge: ..."

"... It's the exact nightmare scenario security experts have warned about when it comes to backdoors: they are not only available to those that operate them "legally", but also to those who can hack into them to spy without anyone's knowledge. If the NSA can do it, so can China, Russia and a host of other malicious actors. ..."

Sep 30. 2015 | The Guardian

Revelations about the hack that allowed Greek politicians to be spied on in 2004 come at a time when the White House is set to announce its encryption policy

Just as it seems the White House is close to finally announcing its policy on encryption - the FBI has been pushing for tech companies like Apple and Google to insert backdoors into their phones so the US government can always access users' data -= new Snowden revelations and an investigation by a legendary journalist show exactly why the FBI's plans are so dangerous.

One of the biggest arguments against mandating backdoors in encryption is the fact that, even if you trust the United States government never to abuse that power (and who does?), other criminal hackers and foreign governments will be able to exploit the backdoor to use it themselves. A backdoor is an inherent vulnerability that other actors will attempt to find and try to use it for their own nefarious purposes as soon as they know it exists, putting all of our cybersecurity at risk.

In a meticulous investigation, longtime NSA reporter James Bamford reported at the Intercept Tuesday that the NSA was behind the notorious "Athens Affair". In surveillance circles, the Athens Affair is stuff of legend: after the 2004 Olympics, the Greek government discovered that an unknown attacker had hacked into Vodafone's "lawful intercept" system, the phone company's mechanism of wiretapping phone calls. The attacker spied on phone calls of the president, other Greek politicians and journalists before it was discovered.

According to Bamford's story, all this happened after the US spy agency cooperated with Greek law enforcement to keep an eye on potential terrorist attacks for the Olympics. Instead of packing up their surveillance gear, they covertly pointed it towards the Greek government and its people. But that's not all: according to Snowden documents that Bamford cited, this is a common tactic of the NSA. They often attack the "lawful intercept" systems in other countries to spy on government and citizens without their knowledge:

Exploiting the weaknesses associated with lawful intercept programs was a common trick for NSA. According to a previously unreleased top-secret PowerPoint presentation from 2012, titled "Exploiting Foreign Lawful Intercept Roundtable", the agency's "countries of interest" for this work included, at that time, Mexico, Indonesia, Egypt and others. The presentation also notes that NSA had about 60 "Fingerprints" - ways to identify data - from telecom companies and industry groups that develop lawful intercept systems, including Ericsson, as well as Motorola, Nokia and Siemens.

It's the exact nightmare scenario security experts have warned about when it comes to backdoors: they are not only available to those that operate them "legally", but also to those who can hack into them to spy without anyone's knowledge. If the NSA can do it, so can China, Russia and a host of other malicious actors.

... ... ...

Disclosure: Trevor Timm works for Freedom of the Press Foundation, which is one of the many civil liberties organizations to have called on the White House to support strong encryption.

TDM MCL -> LePloumesCleau 30 Sep 2015 21:21

You are getting very warm near the real reasons why the government does not want your to have full privacy....encryption (of a certain type, not your usual off the shelf type mind you), is the threat that all power greedy controlling tyrant governments phreak out about....they tell you it's about national security...

if you don't find the contradiction in that line of thinking...you are not thinking carefully.

which is precisely what the elites desire..you ! no thinking...do what you are told..get in line..work hard...don't ask questions...

this is the world powers at work...and the minions of narrow minded geeks that support them in exchange for unbelievable amounts of money, influence and true freedom...it's ironic, really..that the world's smartest people have to steal your power from you, in order to have any themselves.

but it is what makes the current regimes' clock ticking.

TDM MCL -> Ehsan Tabari 30 Sep 2015 21:16

only by the most self favored moralistic nationalist bigotry can one assume that a "certain" kind of government can pull off mass surveillance "responsibly"!

and apparently, the USA would have you believe there is some significant difference in how well they perform the freedom robbing than their comrades..

I call them both tyrants..how bout them apples?!

TDM MCL -> ACJB 30 Sep 2015 21:12

what makes you believe that ALL NON-TRIVIAL communications are not being surveilled in real time at this moment, now?

If any entity of any significance is communicating, it is surely being tracked... this isn't some conspiratorial thinking either...

The vast reach and capacity for surveillance infrastructure is many time more then necessary to capture all real time communications. The most important significant communications are in fact the target...

Mom sending her sister a recipe on her aol account never registers....the "machine"...listens specifically.. it is far more intelligent and directed than most people understand.

But it also has the capacity to target just about anything..and that is the danger... What happens to the newsie or the everyday fella that takes note of something very disturbing...illegal even..or morally objectionable?

Remember why the tor network was designed for...mostly to allow people that could not talk freely to do so..in warzones..or where their discussions would bring grave danger to them and others....

Tor was hacked and it a dead animal to privacy for over 6 years now...don't use it, unless you want to the information to be used against you...

There are very few private venues anymore...the world has gone to shit

TDM MCL -> Crashman55 30 Sep 2015 20:58

It happens more often than most people understand.

If you want to get a reality test of this, here is how you too can verify that the spy agencies are very prevalent in every day communications.

btw: this simple type of test, is best applies using several of the off the shelf encryption programs ...in this way, you get verification of what snowden and many others have acknowledged for quite some time.

a. create a secure email ...join a secure vpn..use encrypted off the shelf s/w for your message.

b. send "someone" that you know ..that you call first ...that wants to play along...and within the email message...write some off the wall content about terrorism...bombs...etc..use all the sorted "key words"..it's easy to locate a list...google is your friend. Just make sure they understand that the purpose of the test to to verify that security exists..you will find..it doesn't...

c. it is best that your "friend" be localed outside of the us...middle east ...or russia...or china...ukraine...gernamny.,.,..etc..you get the idea.

d. repeat, rinse and wash using all the garden variety of the shelf security...PGP...GPG...CRYPTZONE...SYMANTEC...HPSECURE...ETC..ETC...DO ANY AND ALL OF THEM THAT YOU LIKE TO TEST. Fire them out like a shotgun...if you can enlist the help of hundreds to chain the mail along, even better.

When the agencies contact you...and they will depending on how authentic you have decided to mask your traffic and how authentic they consider your email content exchange merited inspection...you will discover what anyone who has actually used encyption in a real world way has come to understand...

if you are using typical commercially available encryption..there is NO privacy.

meaning it is not simple possible to crack..but easily...

Zhubajie1284 GoldMoney 30 Sep 2015 20:29

Facebook and Twitter were banned in China after someone posted a bunch of gruesome photos from some rioting in Xinjiang. It looked to me, as an outsider, that someone was trying to provoke anti-Muslim rioting elsewhere in China. It would be reasonable for Chinese security people to suspect the CIA or some other US agency famous for destabilizing foreign governments. The US had already announced it's strategic pivot towards Asia, which can easily be interpreted as a declaration of Cold War on China.

I don't know the whole truth of the incident, but people in PR China have good reason to be suspicious.

now, what is the risk...you may be harassed..but unless I am missing some new law, none of this type of testing is unlawful...

for real world security that works...similar kinds of penetration tests are used as above....

hey you can even honey pot a public network if you wanted to....you know just to prove to yourself there is no such thing as secrecy achieved by using a public library or a "shared" computer.

note: one of the first indications that you are being surveilled, is that there will a subtle but noted performance hit on your machine..if you attach a security gateway with logging, even better...or a high end hardware firewall-gateway, that sniffs...

watch also for some very interesting emails to hit all of your "other" accounts.

if you do this, I can predict at least the following:

your machine will take a hit...
you will get notified most likely by the FBI, via your isp.
if you do this on your smartphone and that is linked to other accounts..you can guarantee to have spread malware abundantly to all other accounts linked.
if the FBI asks that you reveal the content of emails...ask them to show you first...and grin very large when you say that...if it's a low end non-tech....force them to gain a warrant...and contact your lawyer...

is it a waste of time for law enforcement to show their hand in how intimately they have backended encyption..? or is worth it to you to understand that it is common..and secret..and very broad...

that time when making things better is waning...and narrowing..if you aren't willing to take a stand and object and posit your own resistance to overreaching spying..then the awful dreadful future that awaits you, is just as much your own fault.

that is where I land on the issue.

for the issue, now...not later!

take a stand!

TDM MCL martinusher 30 Sep 2015 20:27

the real issue with the "legal tacK' wrt to halting the fed from building backdoors or mandating them, is the reality that most of the high level secret business of spy agencies DEFY any law. As is the case with most software and hardware corporations..there is massive financial and intelligence capitol that depends on building backdoors in secret..sharing them with the government simply provides "cover"...

the real threat of all of this of course is the very reason why the constitution was written and preoccupied with protecting freedom and liberty...eventually, abuses from a tyranny government or fascist state comes into power.

some say we have already passes that threshold...given the broad "known" abuses of the 300+ secret spy agencies and the secret laws that not only authorize them but threaten companies who do not comply...you really can't deny the fact that the target is you and me. And sometimes, although, seemingly unproven, some existential external terror organization.

I've long since held that a formal security arrangement can implemented by ISP's where ALL internet traffic is routed...and where the most inteligent and efficient means to shut down malware and other activities that are unlawful and harmful...

I has never been seriously considered or even suggested by the government .....you have to serious be suspicious why that has never been considered...

perhaps too much intelligent security programs, would put all of the security industry and fear agencies out of business...What else would they do with their time...

I have zero faith in the US government to do the right thing anymore..they have been vacant at their core responsibility to protect its citizens. They have built a wall of mistrust by their abuses.

to the technologically talented, what this all means is that the US government has created a niche market that is growing ever larger...and that is to establish highly secure networks for end users. It also happens to make them appear to be criminals.

Imagine that...a software engineer who is actually doing the business of protecting a persons right to privacy...immediately falls into the long list of persons of interest!

the government has parted company with its responsibilities..and has created a adversarial rife with the people of its own country...I give it less than 10 years before the people perform their own arab spring...it really is going to get very bad in this country.

beelzebob 30 Sep 2015 17:34

This is all very interesting from a certain standpoint. 21 CFR Part 11 requires all drug companies, and other companies doing business before the FDA to take reasonable steps to ensure the security of all of their data to guarantee that the data are not tampered with. If the FBI and CIA are inserting backdoors into electronic communications devices, defined broadly to include everything from telephones to the Internet, there is no reasonable way to ensure that unauthorized parties can not use these devices to alter drug company data. Thus, it appears that drug companies, and their employees, contractors and suppliers, can not use the internet or anything connected to the internet as part of their FDA regulated operations.

kenalexruss 30 Sep 2015 14:02

Data is big business and ironically, only serves big business. The US government couldn't tell it's head from its ass regarding the stuff, but the data is critical for corporations. Since corporations are people and dictate government policy and are also the primary government interest, there will be back doors. Apple, google, microsoft, et.al. are ALL big business and they don't want you knowing how they really feel about it, so they feign objections. It's all about money, as usual.

martinusher 30 Sep 2015 13:23

There was an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times yesterday that suggested that adding backdoors or otherwise hacking into people's computers was a violation of the 3rd Amendment.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-gatto-surveillance-3rd-amendment-20150929-story.html

Quite apart from that never making it past the Roberts court (although it might be worth trying) I daresay proponents of universal surveillance will argue that businesses aren't covered by this so hacking into servers &tc. is OK.

Government agencies do appear to be out of control. Its not the snooping so much as their general ineffectiveness when it comes to crime and the Internet -- you can get your identity stolen, your back account hacked and so on and they shrug as if to say "What's this got to do with us?". The seem to be only interested in a very narrow range of political activities.

Phil429 30 Sep 2015 12:14

Coming out strongly against such a mandate [to eliminate everyone's security] would be huge on multiple fronts for the Obama administration: it would send a strong message for human rights around the world, it would make it much harder for other governments to demand backdoors from US tech companies and it would also strengthen the US economy.

Only if you assume some connection between the administration's stated policies and its actions.

GoldMoney -> RoughSleeper 30 Sep 2015 12:05

I don't care about mass surveillance, because I have nothing to hide! I have nothing to hide, so I have nothing to fear, those that are trying to hide private lives, must have something to fear"....Signed GCHQ/MI5/Police/Council troll

haha - I loved that post, so true!

GoldMoney -> koichan 30 Sep 2015 11:49

The TSA travel locks for use in air travel have a backdoor and now can be opened by pretty much anyone in the world now. Now imagine the same thing applying to bank transactions, credit/debit card payments and so on...

Very good point.

By having backdoors you compromise the entire security of the system and make it vulnerable to attackers in general.

Snowden deserves the Nobel peace prize if you ask me....

While we are on the topic - lets take back the prize from Obama....

GoldMoney -> LePloumesCleau 30 Sep 2015 11:39

If people don't trust the security of encryption then there is no point in using it.

Exactly right.

I think the internet as we know it will break down in the future as countries will not trust foreign technology companies colluding with their home intelligence agencies.

Its already happening in China - most western technology companies like FB, Twitter, etc. are banned there for fear they could be used by the US to spy on Chinese citizens or to orchestrate a "Chinese Spring" there....

Crashman55 30 Sep 2015 11:13

You can go online and get the source codes off of several excellent encryption websites, and then develop your own. My brother and I did this, and we were sending our weekly NFL football picks back and forth each week. We stopped after the FBI came to my brother's place of business, after a couple months, and questioned him. When my brother asked how they able to even look at our emails, they said they had a computer program in place that kicked out encrypted emails. After being threatened with arrest at his job in front of everyone, he showed them the unencrypted versions.

They said that our silliness had wasted valuable FBI time and resources. If you don't think Big Brother is watching...

Peter Dragonas -> Ehsan Tabari 30 Sep 2015 10:25

Why do you think the anti-American Muslim Community and others, call us TERRORISTS? OUR COMPASS is as faulty as ????????. The world situation is a mirror of Grandiose Individuals who look down on reality. Reality is an obstruction to their neediness for attracting attention and control.

Peter Dragonas 30 Sep 2015 10:19

Another major "foundation section" removed from our Country's integrity. Sick, paranoia, similar to the "J. EDGAR HOOVER ERA & CONTINUATION THROUGH HIS LEGACY FUNDS TO THIS DAY". Could this be true, I could think the "The Athens Affair" predates the elements that brought down Greece, in favor of pushing Turkey to becoming the American doorway into Asia & the Middle East. Just a theory. Yet, where there is smoke, something is cooking, which requires political FIRE.

RoughSleeper 30 Sep 2015 08:50

I don't care about mass surveillance, because I have nothing to hide! I have nothing to hide, so I have nothing to fear, those that are trying to hide private lives, must have something to fear"....Signed GCHQ/MI5/Police/Council troll

I don't care about State cameras recording everyone out, because I don't go out. I don't care about those that do.

I don't care about State cameras recording wives, girlfriends, children, because I don't have any. I don't care about those that do.

I don't care about the right to privacy because I have nothing of any value to hide. I don't care about those that have.

I don't care about freedom of speech because I have nothing of any value to say. I don't care about those that have.

I don't care about freedom of the press because I have nothing of any value to write. I don't care about those that have.

I don't care about freedom of thought, because I have no thoughts of any value. I don't care about those that have.

I don't care about the right to privacy of intellectual property, because I have no intelligence of any value. I don't care about those that have.

I don't care about the right to privacy of bank details, because I have nothing of any value in my bank account. I don't care about those that have.

I don't care about the right to privacy of love letters, because I have no love of any value. I don't care about those that have.

I don't care about the rights of HR activists, because I don't contribute anything to HRs. I don't care about those that do.

I don't care about society, community, future, because I don't contribute anything to them. I don't care about those that do.

I don't care about the right to privacy of my vote, because we have no democracy of any value anyway. I don't care about countries that have.

I don't care about Gypsies, Blacks, Jews, Invalids, Unions, socialists, Untermensch, because I am not one. I don't care about those that are.

I only care about me, here & now! It's look after number one, as the Tories tell us.

koichan 30 Sep 2015 08:39

For the less technically minded, heres another example of whats wrong with government backdoors:

http://boingboing.net/2015/09/17/3d-print-your-own-tsa-travel-s.html

The TSA travel locks for use in air travel have a backdoor and now can be opened by pretty much anyone in the world now. Now imagine the same thing applying to bank transactions, credit/debit card payments and so on...

LePloumesCleau 30 Sep 2015 08:10

I would only ever trust open source encryption software. I don't trust the "encryption" built into Windows or Apple software at all.

If people don't trust the security of encryption then there is no point in using it.

[Oct 03, 2015] Fascism and Neoconservative Republicans

"... A Fascist is one who believes in a corporatist society. In other words, it is a political philosophy embodying very strong central government, with the authority to move in decisive steps to accomplish goals. It would be characterized by a unity of purpose, with more or less all the levels of the hierarchy in unison, starting at the top and working down. It is a top-down government involving an alliance of industry, military, media and a political party. ..."

"... It is interesting to note that at least two of the three Parties had origins as Socialist and morphed into strong, Right Wing, authoritarian rules as a result largely of expediency. ..."

"... As soon as they took power, which they did partially through gangs and mobs, intimidation and demonstrations and-in Mussolini's case an outright coup - they allied themselves with the biggest corporations and the military general staff. In addition, even before taking complete power, they began to wrest control of the media away from other political parties, and to use it for their own propaganda. ..."

"... Hitler's "Big Lie" basically blamed rampant inflation and lack of jobs on the Jews. He blamed all their economic ills on the restraint of Germany by other nations and the presumed taking over of German lands (which they themselves had only won through aggressive wars.) ..."

"... In a fascist system, the whole idea is to have an efficient method of getting things done. If you want to build an "autobahn" you simply tell the transportation minister to get started. You control everything at every level. It will go faster because it is for the good of all the people, so no one will have the right to object or interfere. It is, Fascists would say, about efficiency, getting things done for the people. ..."

"... You attack other countries so that they cannot attack you. You start wars (Iraq) to prevent dangerous men from attacking you. It makes sense. Military efficiency in a Fascist state means that if the top guy (President or Dictator) wants to be absolutely certain that no other country is superior, he can build up the military industry and the military at any pace or at any cost. ..."

"... Everyone salutes and follows the lead from the top down ..."

"... In a Fascist state, policy is largely being written through a cooperative effort with the industries involved, in this case the health care industry. The slow, ragged, messy and Democratic process involved with our current health care reform process would never happen under a Fascist government. Whatever the decision, there would be no appeal. If a million or fifty million were left out, because, let's say, that the President needed more money for war machines that would be the decision- with no question or appeal. ..."

"... Republicans, remember, have the complete support of Fox News, the Fox television Network, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and any number of television stations around the country, plus somewhere between 600 and 1600 radio stations ..."

"... The Neocons are out of power, but they are unrelenting in their efforts to control as much of the political discourse as possible, no matter how damaging to society. They bring mobs and riff-raff out, some with guns, trying to scare the average citizen. They send messages out over radio with lunatic commentators, some who are not even allowed to visit other countries because of their hate speech…yet we tolerate it. ..."

March 25, 2010 | Populist Daily

The word "Fascist" as with the terms "Socialist" and "Communist" are thrown around a lot by people who have no idea what they mean. If you want to know what those terms really mean, find someone who was in some branch of military counterintelligence, the CIA, the security section of the State Department, Defense Intelligence, or in the FBI.

In all those areas, the first day of basic training involves comparative forms of government. You can't spot a Communist if you don't know what a Communist is. You can't tell the difference between a Communist and a Fascist unless you know the difference in the two systems. It is Intelligence, and more specifically, Counterintelligence 101.

So, let's go right to Fascism. A Fascist is one who believes in a corporatist society. In other words, it is a political philosophy embodying very strong central government, with the authority to move in decisive steps to accomplish goals. It would be characterized by a unity of purpose, with more or less all the levels of the hierarchy in unison, starting at the top and working down. It is a top-down government involving an alliance of industry, military, media and a political party.

Because Fascism has been associated with the 1930s German Nazis, the Italian Fascists under Mussolini and the Falangists, under the Spanish Dictator, Francisco Franco, the term "Fascist" has taken on a sinister meaning. Not fewer than 10 million direct deaths resulting from the rule of these three may have something to do with it. On the other hand, philosophies don't kill people; people kill people.

It is interesting to note that at least two of the three Parties had origins as Socialist and morphed into strong, Right Wing, authoritarian rules as a result largely of expediency. It is also interesting to note that all three were not only intimately connected to the largest industrial corporations, but as soon as possible with the military leadership. While Fascism as a political philosophy is not innately evil, given the results, it is worth noting how things turned out.

Both the German and the Italian Fascist parties were also both revolutionary and conservative at the same time. Both Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini were aggressive, anarchic leaders. Both served time in jail. Both served in the enlisted ranks with the military in war. Both used that experience to organize mobs of thugs to agitate against an established government, not for a more democratic regime, but for a more authoritarian one. You can begin to see some similarities with contemporary political activities.

As soon as they took power, which they did partially through gangs and mobs, intimidation and demonstrations and-in Mussolini's case an outright coup - they allied themselves with the biggest corporations and the military general staff. In addition, even before taking complete power, they began to wrest control of the media away from other political parties, and to use it for their own propaganda.

Once they had control of the radio and newspapers, which were then the prominent sources of information, they could begin to broadcast their messages. Hitler's "Big Lie" basically blamed rampant inflation and lack of jobs on the Jews. He blamed all their economic ills on the restraint of Germany by other nations and the presumed taking over of German lands (which they themselves had only won through aggressive wars.)

But let's for a minute assume that we know nothing about Fascism except that it exists. We have a group, here in America that believes in a corporatist political philosophy. What would that look like? If it were a true Fascist organization, they would ally themselves with big corporations, like the health care industry, oil and mining, pharmaceuticals, media corporations and the military-industrial complex.

They would try to control the message, particularly in radio and television. They would become as closely allied with the top military brass as possible, offering them a seat at the table in the running of the economy. Retired Generals would be assured of positions involved with military hardware and strategic planning.

And what about the people? In a fascist system, the whole idea is to have an efficient method of getting things done. If you want to build an "autobahn" you simply tell the transportation minister to get started. You control everything at every level. It will go faster because it is for the good of all the people, so no one will have the right to object or interfere. It is, Fascists would say, about efficiency, getting things done for the people.

Defense is about protecting the people. You attack other countries so that they cannot attack you. You start wars (Iraq) to prevent dangerous men from attacking you. It makes sense. Military efficiency in a Fascist state means that if the top guy (President or Dictator) wants to be absolutely certain that no other country is superior, he can build up the military industry and the military at any pace or at any cost.

In a Fascist state the idea is to have one set of rules, coming from the top down. No one votes as an individual, only as a part of the group that is assigned a task. It is corporate, total-totalitarian. So, if you decide that a national health care program is not right for the country, you all vote against it in a totally militaristic way. Everyone salutes and follows the lead from the top down. The only problem is when you do not have a strong leader.

The Democrats, for example, want to farm decisions out to others, let the opposition have their input. It slows the process. A Fascist health care program would be one decided upon by the President, discussed and worked out with the corporations, mandated to his staffs and enacted without any discussion or public debate in a matter of a few months.

In a Fascist state, policy is largely being written through a cooperative effort with the industries involved, in this case the health care industry. The slow, ragged, messy and Democratic process involved with our current health care reform process would never happen under a Fascist government. Whatever the decision, there would be no appeal. If a million or fifty million were left out, because, let's say, that the President needed more money for war machines that would be the decision- with no question or appeal.

So, if you want efficiency, you not only should you look to the Republicans, but you may have no choice. The Republicans, remember, have the complete support of Fox News, the Fox television Network, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and any number of television stations around the country, plus somewhere between 600 and 1600 radio stations on which literally 9 out of 10 commentators are paid by those network owners to be Conservative (Neoconservative Republican.) They have expanded to very large numbers of web site bases, delivering whatever type of information they want, truth, lies, anything in between… accusations without proof…Socialist, Communist, government takeover of this or that…no need to be truthful. It is all propaganda.

Just as Herr Goebbels and Mussolini did in the 1930s-and except in the Communist counties and a few Latin American dictatorships there hasn't been anything to speak of similar to this in the Western advanced societies since then-the unchallenged message of the Right Wing goes out. The radio commentators today get their message from the top, from the Republican Party. Fox News Channel internal memos have shown that they literally decide what policies the Republican Party wished to champion, and then they attack rather than merely delivering the news.

So do we need to be civil about it-about these lies? Is it important to challenge people, like these Right Wing commentators who tell you that your current health care is sufficient? It is good for corporations, for health care insurance companies. But is it good for you not to be sure you can get health insurance? So if they tell you that something is a government takeover and it is not, so you vote against health care or you respond to a poll in a way that is against your own best interests…do you need to be civil about being lied to? You shouldn't be lied to by media. You need the truth, the facts, to make decisions.

It is a pretty simple answer. Should you be civil to people who lie to you and urge you to buy something that turns out to hurt you, or your family, or cause you to lose your job, or kill your sister, brother, neighbor? If I lie to you and say it is safe to swim across the channel and you are attacked by sharks that I knew were there…should you not care? This is what is happening, right now…today. In the consumer products market, we call that fraud and companies can be criminally liable.

So let's describe what a Fascist government or a political party attempting to introduce a Fascist government would look like and see if either or any of our political parties fits that description:

• Allies with big corporations, planning strategy together, interchangeable.
• Works to have control of the political process at all levels, starting with the top down.
• Does not cooperate with and actually tries to undermine other political parties.
• Uses mobs and demonstrations, and attempts to make individuals working in other parties afraid of violent reactions.
• Advocates ownership of weapons as a fear factor to intimidate others. (Wayne La Pierre…"the people with the guns make the rules.")
• Decides what is best for all citizens based on what corporations want.
• Uses "big lie" propaganda technique, of top-down distributed propaganda message for each issue.
• Allies with military on most issues, with ultra-aggressive military posture.
• Total control of the political process is the ultimate goal.

If any of this seems familiar to you, then you see something "Fascist" in the current political process. Of course, one thing that wasn't mentioned. Fascists always need someone to stigmatize. In Germany, it was the Jews. In Italy it was the Socialists. In Spain it was the Communists. It seems clear that, in this country it is the Democrats.

The Neocons are out of power, but they are unrelenting in their efforts to control as much of the political discourse as possible, no matter how damaging to society. They bring mobs and riff-raff out, some with guns, trying to scare the average citizen. They send messages out over radio with lunatic commentators, some who are not even allowed to visit other countries because of their hate speech…yet we tolerate it.

We even allow asininely preposterous lies from a possibly psychotic television commentator…to be used to stoke the race-hatred of many tea party members, and thugs against a distinguished African-American President who won 54% of the vote, the largest since Ronald Reagan and who also won the Nobel Peace Prize.

The case is pretty clear. The Neoconservative Republicans are headed for Fascism if they are not there already. The latest round of insults, threats, lies, window breakings all contribute to the evidence. Sooner or later this totalitarian attitude will either be denounced or will have serious responses. One thing is sure, with the problems facing our country, we cannot afford the kind of anarchist attacks as were exhibited in the bombing of a Federal building in Oklahoma City or the flying of an aircraft into a building housing an IRS office.

This radical, violent, arrogant Fascist attitude has to stop. The first step in preventing this kind of political outcome is to identify and react to Fascism when it appears. Neoconservative Republicanism is Fascism. Republicans must return to sanity or be treated as a very dangerous and radical political party.

Mike // Mar 30, 2010 at 12:01 pm

I agree with everything you say, except for the statement that the fascists have chosen the Democrats as a focus for hate. They have chosen everyone who is not a fascist republican, and esp. the 'middle to the left', which they label 'liberal'.

It is frightening to see the second party of a two party system turn fascist in the United States. Anyone who says it isn't so, isn't paying attention. What is even more frightening is the level of ignorance that must exist for people to believe those fascists. When you watch that certain mentally mal-adjusted on Fox and see him ramble on incoherently for an hour while he spews lies and distortions, any thinking individual has to ask him/her self "What moron would fall for this drivel?" But they do.

It is truly frightening, and it is easy to see how people like Hitler manage to rise to power, when people wilfully shut off any reasoning skills they ever had.

[Oct 03, 2015] Obama says Russian strategy in Syria is 'recipe for disaster'

That's Shaun Walker, nut the point of view he expresses are point of view of the US government.

Oct 03, 2015 | www.theguardian.com

Russia's failure to distinguish between Islamic State fighters and moderate opposition forces battling against Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad, is a "recipe for disaster," Barack Obama has said, as more evidence emerged that Moscow is targeting anti-regime rebels and not just Isis.

The US president said his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, "doesn't distinguish between Isil [Isis] and a moderate Sunni opposition that wants to see Mr Assad go. From their perspective, they're all terrorists. And that's a recipe for disaster."

... ... ...

Moscow's strategy appears to be to mainly attack central and north-western Syria, areas that form the gateway to Damascus and the coast. But Russian planes also bombed targets west of Raqqa, the capital of Isis's self-proclaimed caliphate – apparently the first time likely Isis positions have been hit.

Alexei Pushkov, a top Russian foreign affairs official, told French radio he believed the air campaign could last about three to four months. He also hit out at western criticism, tweeting: "The US is criticizing Russia for 'lack of selectivity in our targets' in Syria. So what stopped them from picking the right targets over a whole year, rather than just pointlessly bombing the desert?!"

[Oct 03, 2015] Lawrence Wilkerson The Empire is in Deep, Deep Trouble

Oct 03, 2015 | naked capitalism

This is a must-watch video. Wilkerson describes the path of empires in decline and shows how the US is following the classic trajectory. He contends that the US needs to make a transition to being one of many powers and focus more on strategies of international cooperation.

The video is full of rich historical detail and terrific, if sobering, nuggets, such as:

History tells us we're probably finished.

The rest of of the world is awakening to the fact that the United States is 1) strategically inept and 2) not the power it used to be. And that the trend is to increase that.

Wilkerson includes in his talk not just the way that the US projects power abroad, but internal symptoms of decline, such as concentration of wealth and power, corruption and the disproportionate role of financial interests.

Wilkerson also says the odds of rapid collapse of the US as an empire is much greater is generally recognized. He also includes the issues of climate change and resource constraints, and points out how perverse it is that the Department of Defense is the agency that is taking climate change most seriously. He says that the worst cases scenario projected by scientists is that the world will have enough arable land to support 400 million people (no typo).

Be sure to listen to the Q&A as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckjY-FW7-dc

Published on Sep 24, 2015

The speech covered National Security, Climate Change, Interminable War, Debt, Immigration, Inequality, racism, and much more. The speech is striking in its honesty. It is likely poignant to Republicans who have bought into rationalization of the intransigence of the Republican Party.

Foy, October 3, 2015 at 7:26 am

Thanks for the link Yves, that's a first class speech. Great to hear one that is 'off the cuff' with no notes etc. Hits it out of the park on each point he makes. So many great lines in it.

"Empires at the end concentrate on military force as the be all and end all of power… at the end they use more mercenary based forces than citizen based forces"

"Empires at the end…go ethically and morally bankrupt… they end up with bankers and financiers running the empire, sound familiar?"

"So they [empires] will go out for example, when an attack occurs on them by barbarians that kills 3000 of their citizens, mostly because of their negligence, they will go out and kill 300,000 people and spend 3 trillion dollars in order to counter that threat to the status quo. They will then proceed throughout the world to exacerbate that threat by their own actions, sound familiar?…This is what they [empires] do particularly when they are getting ready to collapse"

"This is what empires in decline do, they can't even in govern themselves"

Quoting a Chinese man who was a democrat, then a communist (under Mao) then, when he became disenchanted, a poet and writer…

"You can sit around a table and talk about politics, about social issues, about anything and you can have a reasonable discussion with a reasonable person. But start talking about the mal-distribution of wealth and you better get your gun" …."that's where we are, in Europe and the United States".

And all from a retired republican colonel…

Norb, October 3, 2015 at 8:17 am

How many chances can "Rich and Powerful Men" be given to determine the direction of civilization? It seems that those in power believe that if they are part of the 400 million class that survives the current crisis, all is well in the world. The powerless will die in their millions, and the wealthy move along to the next phase in the human drama.

We are facing a crisis of accountability. We as citizens of this country have to find ways of holding those in power accountable for their actions. Wilkerson seems to have a conscience, but it is troubling to hear some of his "solutions" to the crisis we face. He is part of the military industrial complex we were warned about and still people seek out his advice. He spends his time advising how to relocate military bases due to sea level rise- WTF.

If our energy, resources, and political thought don't center around ending poverty, bringing social justice to all of humanity, and limiting war- the future for humanity will be bleak.

Llewelyn Moss, October 3, 2015 at 8:31 am

Who could have known that Perpetual Carpet Bombing Of The World… would SOLVE NOTHING and destroy the US financially and morally. Who could have known… except anyone with half a brain.

If Wilkerson is a true MIC Lacky, I'm much less interested in hearing his solution.

Radu Andrei

Here's what i do not understand: if "your party" is so extremist that it no longer represents any of your beliefs and political/social/fiscal positions, why the hell is it still "your party" ? I do hope it's just the attachment to the word "republican" and when it comes to voting you do it with your head.

On a side note, i like this person. A true republican, NOT the ultra-religious, warmongering, xenophobic, bigoted, anti science, anti environment, oblivious to facts, obtuse, disingenuous, backstabbing, hypocritical and hateful breed that's surfacing lately.

Sabine Ziya

I agree with you Radu. It's scary to watch the Republican party right now. They are so full of hate. They claim to walk the way of their Jesus Christ, but I wonder if Jesus would call them Pharisees, blasphemous, and hypocritical.

[Oct 03, 2015] Putin Checkmates Obama On New World Order WWIII

"... Currently the movers and shakers in charge of US policy are as evil as they come, and EVERYBODY knows it. ..."

Oct 03, 2015 | YouTube

wiz987

You are missing one of the main issues, the whole region is unstable because of the power struggle between Sunni and Shiatt muslims.

Sebastin Otis 15 hours ago

+wiz987 that's correct but who created this situation? USA of course. By killing saddam hussein and muammar el gaddafi, because they didn't want to trade oil in US dollars and because of US power hungry mentality. What US governments over the past few decades did and still been doing deserves sanctions needing to be imposed on the USA for number of decades. Thanks to them the world is more unstable than ever before over the past few hundred years.

Joe Habid

And who started that mess? Before operation Iraqi freedom or whatever you want to call it, you know the one that was supposed to find W.M.D. in Iraq , did you ever hear of sectarian violence ? C 'mon. Let's call it what it is.

facereplacer

It's fantastic. How can the west say "don't get ISIS!"

They can't. They've been scaring the crap out of everyone with phony beheadings and other nonsense. Obama and the west have done nothing. I mean, this is chess and it makes me laugh.

StopTheMorons

It appears that Putin gave a very straightforward interview on 60 minutes. If there is one thing honest about him it's that he doesn't pretend to be someone he's not unlike those in the US government and the media who have been working hard to vilify him.

BITARTEN

bombing and killing terrorists beheading people is not only correct but good

samuski36

I bet Obama might have thought at one point, "I could school Putin on the basketball court...maybe."
Seriously though, great video! Many thanks for bringing us actual news and insightful comment on it. And most of all, watch your six! Telling the truth is fatally dangerous these day's!

Mike Paoli

Americans are VERY EASY to deceive. They DEMAND LIES as TRUTHS are NOT as entertaining. They WORSHIP actors(IMPOSTORS). This is above all the scariest aspect of the entire state of affairs. Think about it! They PREFER an IMPOSTOR pretending to be somebody as opposed to the REAL person. Even though there is a ton of film with the REAL person they PREFER an IMPOSTOR and a STUPID movie.

666sigma

Obama is a putz. He backed ISIS in Syria. Those are his so called moderates. Putin called him out.

The sad thing is that Putin told the truth and our government lied. This is unbelievable. Fucking Russia is telling the truth and our government is lying. Putin is telling the truth and our community organizer is no different than a neocon?

I don't see how our douche bag in chief can save face.

Barry N

First point...Obama is not a World Leader. Russia and China have had enough of the US back CIA criminal actions.
I as a American applaud Putin in showing Obama what a idiot he is. The world does not need the CIA and all its corruption.

Goat Culler

Right on Luke! the media here in New Zealand is feeding Kiwis fake! American crap demonising Russia.This move is a must to save Syria and its People. Nice! Move Russia and co ;-)

robert alexander ho 13 hours ago

Bravo.....the story of 9/11 or XIIX has to be reopened to put all these murderous criminals in jail. The NWO is essentially the wish to return to the Old world of imperialist domination of the same greedy players of the western alliances. The western alliances economies are in shambles and bankrupt , the societies are morally bankrupt and totally inept!

hal "huh" us

israel is controlling isis to destabilise the middle east, because israel wants to expand its borders into iraq, palestine, syria, etc.

R Lionheart

Thank you for helping us understand. Why is there such a western obsession with Assad? He is no more of a despot than King Salman or Porky Pigshanko or Obama. It is OK for Israel to commit genocide against the Palestinian, its OK for Porky Pig to murder Ukrainian children, its OK for Salman to murder wedding goers in Yemen - but oh my oh my it is not OK for Assad to defend his own government from rebels Assad must go - if Assad must go then Porky pig, Salman, O-bomb-a, Netanyahu, and all the other murdering pigs must also go!

ArcesitorGmail

I wish more Americans would understand that those in our governments who control the military industrial complex, Central Banking Systems and Multinational Corporations, to name a few, are no longer interested in representing of the PEOPLE of America. The game now and for the last 60 to 100 years has been "What political regime can we install?" "What government can we overthrow?" "What internal rebellion can we fund and arm?" to force those leaders of a sovereign nation that does not wish to buy our goods, drill our oil, borrow our money, distribute our corporate law to its population at the expense of its population.

While at the same time, convincing us at home, with the help of our muzzled, biased corporately owned media that this is all being done in the name of "National Security" or "The Interests of our Nation and Its Allies".

Horrific things are being done in our name. For power, money, commodity and ego. Please, everyone. Push the conversation.

John Mastroligulano

I know what you are saying but you do realize that they are part of the same exact Worldwide Oligarchy they only pretend to be at odds to thin the herd. If they didn't pretend to be enemies then how else would they be able to manipulate enough of the people into attacking one another for what they set in motion or sit back & allow to happen while controlling the mechanism's of check/balance.

rockslyde1776

Love Putin or hate him, it's interesting to watch the process of someone who knows what they're doing. In contrast to Berrie.

Ryan Richard

Migrant Crisis & Syria War Fueled By Competing Gas Pipelines (Link 1) http://www.mintpressnews.com/migrant-crisis-syria-war-fueled-by-competing-gas-pipelines/209294/ [Wikileaks revelations of US State Department leaks that show plans to destabilize Syria and overthrow the Syrian government as early as 2006. The leaks reveal that these plans were given to the US directly from the Israeli government and would be formalized through instigating civil strife and sectarianism through partnership with nations like Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and even Egypt to break down the power structure in Syria to weaken Iran and Hezbolla] (Link 2) Assange on 'US Empire,' Assad govt overthrow plans & new book 'The WikiLeaks Files' (EXCLUSIVE) http://www.rt.com/news/314852-assange-wikileaks-us-syria/ Assange: "...That plan was to use a number of different factors to create paranoia within the Syrian government; to push it to overreact, to make it fear there's a coup...so in theory it says 'We have a problem with Islamic extremists crossing over the border with Iraq, and we're taking actions against them to take this information and make the Syrian government look weak, the fact that it is dealing with Islamic extremists at all.'"

sgdeluxedoc

OK nobody is calling Putin a saint. But lately Russia has been , morally, on the right side every time. Of course they've made mistakes. So did the US in WW2.

Currently the movers and shakers in charge of US policy are as evil as they come, and EVERYBODY knows it. Ain't nothin anybody can do about it.

And I don't think Putin considered his checkmate on B.H.O. such a coup, considering how stupid his opposition is.. Lastly, ain't no way, nohow, that the zionists are wagging Putin's tail. Russia has a long history of not letting them (the ultra-zionists) play them.

[Oct 03, 2015] The Athens Affair shows why we need encryption without backdoors

"... after the 2004 Olympics, the Greek government discovered that an unknown attacker had hacked into Vodafone's "lawful intercept" system, the phone company's mechanism of wiretapping phone calls. The attacker spied on phone calls of the president, other Greek politicians and journalists before it was discovered. ..."

"... all this happened after the US spy agency cooperated with Greek law enforcement to keep an eye on potential terrorist attacks for the Olympics. Instead of packing up their surveillance gear, they covertly pointed it towards the Greek government and its people. But that's not all: according to Snowden documents that Bamford cited, this is a common tactic of the NSA. They often attack the "lawful intercept" systems in other countries to spy on government and citizens without their knowledge: ..."

"... It's the exact nightmare scenario security experts have warned about when it comes to backdoors: they are not only available to those that operate them "legally", but also to those who can hack into them to spy without anyone's knowledge. If the NSA can do it, so can China, Russia and a host of other malicious actors. ..."

Sep 30. 2015 | The Guardian

Revelations about the hack that allowed Greek politicians to be spied on in 2004 come at a time when the White House is set to announce its encryption policy

Just as it seems the White House is close to finally announcing its policy on encryption - the FBI has been pushing for tech companies like Apple and Google to insert backdoors into their phones so the US government can always access users' data -= new Snowden revelations and an investigation by a legendary journalist show exactly why the FBI's plans are so dangerous.

One of the biggest arguments against mandating backdoors in encryption is the fact that, even if you trust the United States government never to abuse that power (and who does?), other criminal hackers and foreign governments will be able to exploit the backdoor to use it themselves. A backdoor is an inherent vulnerability that other actors will attempt to find and try to use it for their own nefarious purposes as soon as they know it exists, putting all of our cybersecurity at risk.

In a meticulous investigation, longtime NSA reporter James Bamford reported at the Intercept Tuesday that the NSA was behind the notorious "Athens Affair". In surveillance circles, the Athens Affair is stuff of legend: after the 2004 Olympics, the Greek government discovered that an unknown attacker had hacked into Vodafone's "lawful intercept" system, the phone company's mechanism of wiretapping phone calls. The attacker spied on phone calls of the president, other Greek politicians and journalists before it was discovered.

According to Bamford's story, all this happened after the US spy agency cooperated with Greek law enforcement to keep an eye on potential terrorist attacks for the Olympics. Instead of packing up their surveillance gear, they covertly pointed it towards the Greek government and its people. But that's not all: according to Snowden documents that Bamford cited, this is a common tactic of the NSA. They often attack the "lawful intercept" systems in other countries to spy on government and citizens without their knowledge:

Exploiting the weaknesses associated with lawful intercept programs was a common trick for NSA. According to a previously unreleased top-secret PowerPoint presentation from 2012, titled "Exploiting Foreign Lawful Intercept Roundtable", the agency's "countries of interest" for this work included, at that time, Mexico, Indonesia, Egypt and others. The presentation also notes that NSA had about 60 "Fingerprints" - ways to identify data - from telecom companies and industry groups that develop lawful intercept systems, including Ericsson, as well as Motorola, Nokia and Siemens.

It's the exact nightmare scenario security experts have warned about when it comes to backdoors: they are not only available to those that operate them "legally", but also to those who can hack into them to spy without anyone's knowledge. If the NSA can do it, so can China, Russia and a host of other malicious actors.

... ... ...

Disclosure: Trevor Timm works for Freedom of the Press Foundation, which is one of the many civil liberties organizations to have called on the White House to support strong encryption.

TDM MCL -> LePloumesCleau 30 Sep 2015 21:21

You are getting very warm near the real reasons why the government does not want your to have full privacy....encryption (of a certain type, not your usual off the shelf type mind you), is the threat that all power greedy controlling tyrant governments phreak out about....they tell you it's about national security...

if you don't find the contradiction in that line of thinking...you are not thinking carefully.

which is precisely what the elites desire..you ! no thinking...do what you are told..get in line..work hard...don't ask questions...

this is the world powers at work...and the minions of narrow minded geeks that support them in exchange for unbelievable amounts of money, influence and true freedom...it's ironic, really..that the world's smartest people have to steal your power from you, in order to have any themselves.

but it is what makes the current regimes' clock ticking.

TDM MCL -> Ehsan Tabari 30 Sep 2015 21:16

only by the most self favored moralistic nationalist bigotry can one assume that a "certain" kind of government can pull off mass surveillance "responsibly"!

and apparently, the USA would have you believe there is some significant difference in how well they perform the freedom robbing than their comrades..

I call them both tyrants..how bout them apples?!

TDM MCL -> ACJB 30 Sep 2015 21:12

what makes you believe that ALL NON-TRIVIAL communications are not being surveilled in real time at this moment, now?

If any entity of any significance is communicating, it is surely being tracked... this isn't some conspiratorial thinking either...

The vast reach and capacity for surveillance infrastructure is many time more then necessary to capture all real time communications. The most important significant communications are in fact the target...

Mom sending her sister a recipe on her aol account never registers....the "machine"...listens specifically.. it is far more intelligent and directed than most people understand.

But it also has the capacity to target just about anything..and that is the danger... What happens to the newsie or the everyday fella that takes note of something very disturbing...illegal even..or morally objectionable?

Remember why the tor network was designed for...mostly to allow people that could not talk freely to do so..in warzones..or where their discussions would bring grave danger to them and others....

Tor was hacked and it a dead animal to privacy for over 6 years now...don't use it, unless you want to the information to be used against you...

There are very few private venues anymore...the world has gone to shit

TDM MCL -> Crashman55 30 Sep 2015 20:58

It happens more often than most people understand.

If you want to get a reality test of this, here is how you too can verify that the spy agencies are very prevalent in every day communications.

btw: this simple type of test, is best applies using several of the off the shelf encryption programs ...in this way, you get verification of what snowden and many others have acknowledged for quite some time.

a. create a secure email ...join a secure vpn..use encrypted off the shelf s/w for your message.

b. send "someone" that you know ..that you call first ...that wants to play along...and within the email message...write some off the wall content about terrorism...bombs...etc..use all the sorted "key words"..it's easy to locate a list...google is your friend. Just make sure they understand that the purpose of the test to to verify that security exists..you will find..it doesn't...

c. it is best that your "friend" be localed outside of the us...middle east ...or russia...or china...ukraine...gernamny.,.,..etc..you get the idea.

d. repeat, rinse and wash using all the garden variety of the shelf security...PGP...GPG...CRYPTZONE...SYMANTEC...HPSECURE...ETC..ETC...DO ANY AND ALL OF THEM THAT YOU LIKE TO TEST. Fire them out like a shotgun...if you can enlist the help of hundreds to chain the mail along, even better.

When the agencies contact you...and they will depending on how authentic you have decided to mask your traffic and how authentic they consider your email content exchange merited inspection...you will discover what anyone who has actually used encyption in a real world way has come to understand...

if you are using typical commercially available encryption..there is NO privacy.

meaning it is not simple possible to crack..but easily...

Zhubajie1284 GoldMoney 30 Sep 2015 20:29

Facebook and Twitter were banned in China after someone posted a bunch of gruesome photos from some rioting in Xinjiang. It looked to me, as an outsider, that someone was trying to provoke anti-Muslim rioting elsewhere in China. It would be reasonable for Chinese security people to suspect the CIA or some other US agency famous for destabilizing foreign governments. The US had already announced it's strategic pivot towards Asia, which can easily be interpreted as a declaration of Cold War on China.

I don't know the whole truth of the incident, but people in PR China have good reason to be suspicious.

now, what is the risk...you may be harassed..but unless I am missing some new law, none of this type of testing is unlawful...

for real world security that works...similar kinds of penetration tests are used as above....

hey you can even honey pot a public network if you wanted to....you know just to prove to yourself there is no such thing as secrecy achieved by using a public library or a "shared" computer.

note: one of the first indications that you are being surveilled, is that there will a subtle but noted performance hit on your machine..if you attach a security gateway with logging, even better...or a high end hardware firewall-gateway, that sniffs...

watch also for some very interesting emails to hit all of your "other" accounts.

if you do this, I can predict at least the following:

your machine will take a hit...
you will get notified most likely by the FBI, via your isp.
if you do this on your smartphone and that is linked to other accounts..you can guarantee to have spread malware abundantly to all other accounts linked.
if the FBI asks that you reveal the content of emails...ask them to show you first...and grin very large when you say that...if it's a low end non-tech....force them to gain a warrant...and contact your lawyer...

is it a waste of time for law enforcement to show their hand in how intimately they have backended encyption..? or is worth it to you to understand that it is common..and secret..and very broad...

that time when making things better is waning...and narrowing..if you aren't willing to take a stand and object and posit your own resistance to overreaching spying..then the awful dreadful future that awaits you, is just as much your own fault.

that is where I land on the issue.

for the issue, now...not later!

take a stand!

TDM MCL martinusher 30 Sep 2015 20:27

the real issue with the "legal tacK' wrt to halting the fed from building backdoors or mandating them, is the reality that most of the high level secret business of spy agencies DEFY any law. As is the case with most software and hardware corporations..there is massive financial and intelligence capitol that depends on building backdoors in secret..sharing them with the government simply provides "cover"...

the real threat of all of this of course is the very reason why the constitution was written and preoccupied with protecting freedom and liberty...eventually, abuses from a tyranny government or fascist state comes into power.

some say we have already passes that threshold...given the broad "known" abuses of the 300+ secret spy agencies and the secret laws that not only authorize them but threaten companies who do not comply...you really can't deny the fact that the target is you and me. And sometimes, although, seemingly unproven, some existential external terror organization.

I've long since held that a formal security arrangement can implemented by ISP's where ALL internet traffic is routed...and where the most inteligent and efficient means to shut down malware and other activities that are unlawful and harmful...

I has never been seriously considered or even suggested by the government .....you have to serious be suspicious why that has never been considered...

perhaps too much intelligent security programs, would put all of the security industry and fear agencies out of business...What else would they do with their time...

I have zero faith in the US government to do the right thing anymore..they have been vacant at their core responsibility to protect its citizens. They have built a wall of mistrust by their abuses.

to the technologically talented, what this all means is that the US government has created a niche market that is growing ever larger...and that is to establish highly secure networks for end users. It also happens to make them appear to be criminals.

Imagine that...a software engineer who is actually doing the business of protecting a persons right to privacy...immediately falls into the long list of persons of interest!

the government has parted company with its responsibilities..and has created a adversarial rife with the people of its own country...I give it less than 10 years before the people perform their own arab spring...it really is going to get very bad in this country.

beelzebob 30 Sep 2015 17:34

This is all very interesting from a certain standpoint. 21 CFR Part 11 requires all drug companies, and other companies doing business before the FDA to take reasonable steps to ensure the security of all of their data to guarantee that the data are not tampered with. If the FBI and CIA are inserting backdoors into electronic communications devices, defined broadly to include everything from telephones to the Internet, there is no reasonable way to ensure that unauthorized parties can not use these devices to alter drug company data. Thus, it appears that drug companies, and their employees, contractors and suppliers, can not use the internet or anything connected to the internet as part of their FDA regulated operations.

kenalexruss 30 Sep 2015 14:02

Data is big business and ironically, only serves big business. The US government couldn't tell it's head from its ass regarding the stuff, but the data is critical for corporations. Since corporations are people and dictate government policy and are also the primary government interest, there will be back doors. Apple, google, microsoft, et.al. are ALL big business and they don't want you knowing how they really feel about it, so they feign objections. It's all about money, as usual.

martinusher 30 Sep 2015 13:23

There was an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times yesterday that suggested that adding backdoors or otherwise hacking into people's computers was a violation of the 3rd Amendment.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-gatto-surveillance-3rd-amendment-20150929-story.html

Quite apart from that never making it past the Roberts court (although it might be worth trying) I daresay proponents of universal surveillance will argue that businesses aren't covered by this so hacking into servers &tc. is OK.

Government agencies do appear to be out of control. Its not the snooping so much as their general ineffectiveness when it comes to crime and the Internet -- you can get your identity stolen, your back account hacked and so on and they shrug as if to say "What's this got to do with us?". The seem to be only interested in a very narrow range of political activities.

Phil429 30 Sep 2015 12:14

Coming out strongly against such a mandate [to eliminate everyone's security] would be huge on multiple fronts for the Obama administration: it would send a strong message for human rights around the world, it would make it much harder for other governments to demand backdoors from US tech companies and it would also strengthen the US economy.

Only if you assume some connection between the administration's stated policies and its actions.

GoldMoney -> RoughSleeper 30 Sep 2015 12:05

I don't care about mass surveillance, because I have nothing to hide! I have nothing to hide, so I have nothing to fear, those that are trying to hide private lives, must have something to fear"....Signed GCHQ/MI5/Police/Council troll

haha - I loved that post, so true!

GoldMoney -> koichan 30 Sep 2015 11:49

The TSA travel locks for use in air travel have a backdoor and now can be opened by pretty much anyone in the world now. Now imagine the same thing applying to bank transactions, credit/debit card payments and so on...

Very good point.

By having backdoors you compromise the entire security of the system and make it vulnerable to attackers in general.

Snowden deserves the Nobel peace prize if you ask me....

While we are on the topic - lets take back the prize from Obama....

GoldMoney -> LePloumesCleau 30 Sep 2015 11:39

If people don't trust the security of encryption then there is no point in using it.

Exactly right.

I think the internet as we know it will break down in the future as countries will not trust foreign technology companies colluding with their home intelligence agencies.

Its already happening in China - most western technology companies like FB, Twitter, etc. are banned there for fear they could be used by the US to spy on Chinese citizens or to orchestrate a "Chinese Spring" there....

Crashman55 30 Sep 2015 11:13

You can go online and get the source codes off of several excellent encryption websites, and then develop your own. My brother and I did this, and we were sending our weekly NFL football picks back and forth each week. We stopped after the FBI came to my brother's place of business, after a couple months, and questioned him. When my brother asked how they able to even look at our emails, they said they had a computer program in place that kicked out encrypted emails. After being threatened with arrest at his job in front of everyone, he showed them the unencrypted versions.

They said that our silliness had wasted valuable FBI time and resources. If you don't think Big Brother is watching...

Peter Dragonas -> Ehsan Tabari 30 Sep 2015 10:25

Why do you think the anti-American Muslim Community and others, call us TERRORISTS? OUR COMPASS is as faulty as ????????. The world situation is a mirror of Grandiose Individuals who look down on reality. Reality is an obstruction to their neediness for attracting attention and control.

Peter Dragonas 30 Sep 2015 10:19

Another major "foundation section" removed from our Country's integrity. Sick, paranoia, similar to the "J. EDGAR HOOVER ERA & CONTINUATION THROUGH HIS LEGACY FUNDS TO THIS DAY". Could this be true, I could think the "The Athens Affair" predates the elements that brought down Greece, in favor of pushing Turkey to becoming the American doorway into Asia & the Middle East. Just a theory. Yet, where there is smoke, something is cooking, which requires political FIRE.

RoughSleeper 30 Sep 2015 08:50

I don't care about mass surveillance, because I have nothing to hide! I have nothing to hide, so I have nothing to fear, those that are trying to hide private lives, must have something to fear"....Signed GCHQ/MI5/Police/Council troll

I don't care about State cameras recording everyone out, because I don't go out. I don't care about those that do.

I don't care about State cameras recording wives, girlfriends, children, because I don't have any. I don't care about those that do.

I don't care about the right to privacy because I have nothing of any value to hide. I don't care about those that have.

I don't care about freedom of speech because I have nothing of any value to say. I don't care about those that have.

I don't care about freedom of the press because I have nothing of any value to write. I don't care about those that have.

I don't care about freedom of thought, because I have no thoughts of any value. I don't care about those that have.

I don't care about the right to privacy of intellectual property, because I have no intelligence of any value. I don't care about those that have.

I don't care about the right to privacy of bank details, because I have nothing of any value in my bank account. I don't care about those that have.

I don't care about the right to privacy of love letters, because I have no love of any value. I don't care about those that have.

I don't care about the rights of HR activists, because I don't contribute anything to HRs. I don't care about those that do.

I don't care about society, community, future, because I don't contribute anything to them. I don't care about those that do.

I don't care about the right to privacy of my vote, because we have no democracy of any value anyway. I don't care about countries that have.

I don't care about Gypsies, Blacks, Jews, Invalids, Unions, socialists, Untermensch, because I am not one. I don't care about those that are.

I only care about me, here & now! It's look after number one, as the Tories tell us.

koichan 30 Sep 2015 08:39

For the less technically minded, heres another example of whats wrong with government backdoors:

http://boingboing.net/2015/09/17/3d-print-your-own-tsa-travel-s.html

The TSA travel locks for use in air travel have a backdoor and now can be opened by pretty much anyone in the world now. Now imagine the same thing applying to bank transactions, credit/debit card payments and so on...

LePloumesCleau 30 Sep 2015 08:10

I would only ever trust open source encryption software. I don't trust the "encryption" built into Windows or Apple software at all.

If people don't trust the security of encryption then there is no point in using it.

[Oct 02, 2015] The pretense that it was a Russian invasion in Donetsk is exactly that, a pretense.

At fist I thought that Twaddleradar, member since Aug 9, 2015A is a new NATObot. It it looks like he is a regular Russophob... Still amazingly prolific spamming the whole discussion. It's definitly not enough for him to state his point of view and voice objection. Such commenting incontinence is very disruptive in Web forums.

Notable quotes:

"... WHERE IS THE EVIDENCE!?!? After 2 weeks in syria you have loads of satellite pictures of the Russian base/troops, but after a year + in Ukraine all your evidence is taken from social media posts? Good thing more and more people are refusing to swallow your daily dose of bullshit. ..."

"... The pretense that this was a Russian invasion is exactly that, a pretense. ..."

"... Something tells that it's easy to say but hard to implement. Far right powers in Ukraine would resist such a law very much. ..."

Oct 02, 2015 | The Guardian

ID075732 2 Oct 2015 22:51

Russia has denied military involvement in the conflict despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

This old chestnut again... Evidence please of this sweeping claim?

No mention of Putin drafting the Minsk agreement, this is what happened. Then presenting it as a road map for a resolution to the Ukrainian Civil war? As I recall it was Merkell and Holland who rushed to Moscow in February to meet with Putin and thrash out a solution which was then presented to Poroshenko.

As the USA is now in an election cycle and with the Syrian War on Isis takes centre stage with Russian involvement, it looks like the their sock puppet, Petro Poroshenko has been hung out to dry. Finally being told to get back in his box... for now, probably as no more funds via the IMF will be directed into this proxi-conflict if it continues (well they were breaking their own rules giving Ukraine money when it's at war with itself).

Finally, this made me smile...

It has been a busy diplomatic week for Putin, who has not been a frequent guest in western capitals over the past year

Actually Putin has had a very busy diplomatic year building international partnerships across Asia and the BRIC's, Trade agreements with China and Saudi Arabian investment into Russia. The Silk Route project and much more. It seems to me some of the Graun's journalists should get out more, like Putin has been doing!

PrinceEdward -> Twaddleradar 2 Oct 2015 21:12

Meanwhile every Ukrainian male is so full of patriotism, there is no need for a 5 draft rounds in Ukraine because they're flooding with so many volunteers, they turn them away. Stories of parents paying $1000 to get their kids out of the draft, or countless thousands of 20-something Ukrainians running away to Russia and Poland to get student visas, is just propaganda.

MrJohnsonJr 2 Oct 2015 21:07

Ukraine has a fucking nerve to require a diplomatic effort to have it explained to them what a murderous losers the turned out to be and that another of their "revolutions" brought nothing but a major waste of human life and EU and Russian taxpayer money.

KriticalThinkingUK 2 Oct 2015 20:39

Its great isnt it what can be achieved when Russia, Germany, France and Ukraine get together for serious negotiations. Just like in Minsk 1 and 2 when the same group first established peace in Ukraine, behind the backs of the USA and UK who were pointedly not invited to those talks either.

What is the key to this progress? Simple. Dont invite the rightwing cold war loonies to attend. Keep them out at all costs. That is to say exclude from all talks USA, UK, NATO, Poland and the rest of the crazy warmongers who have worked so hard to encourage conflict.

If these negotiations are successful expect further progress over the next decade in other spheres between Germany and Russia. In fact objectively by all measures it is in the long term interests, both economic and political, for these two major European powers to co-operate as natural trading partners....the US warmongers worst nightmare!

Interesting times................

Mazuka 2 Oct 2015 20:35

" Russia has denied military involvement in the conflict despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary."

WHERE IS THE EVIDENCE!?!? After 2 weeks in syria you have loads of satellite pictures of the Russian base/troops, but after a year + in Ukraine all your evidence is taken from social media posts? Good thing more and more people are refusing to swallow your daily dose of bullshit.

NotYetGivenUp -> HHeLiBe 2 Oct 2015 19:18

You confuse Crimea, which voted for secession after Russian forces ensured Kiev military didn't engae in anti-secessionist reprisals (as stated by Putin), with East Ukraine, in which Kiev generals admitted they were fighting Donbass forces, not Russian forces.

The pretense that this was a Russian invasion is exactly that, a pretense. But any honest appraisal of the facts on the ground, through observation of events as they happened, show that the rejection of the Kievan coup was by the people of Donbass, and is a popular rejection, not the nonsense Russian invasion peddled by the media in the west.

Mr Russian 2 Oct 2015 19:13

The compromise plan would involve the Ukrainian parliament passing a law stating these elections were indeed legal, but they would be organised by the rebels.

Something tells that it's easy to say but hard to implement. Far right powers in Ukraine would resist such a law very much.

[Oct 02, 2015] This is a War – pure and simple. The Global Informational War.

Lyttenburgh, October 2, 2015 at 12:19 pm

The fact that Mark Adomanis have completely devolved into shit (there is no other words to describe the last couple of his articles for his newest haunt – the "Russia! Magazine") had been the last straw for me. I realized once and for all that all those journos, op-ed authors, analytics and – most of all – legions of opinionated and well informed commenters (read – edgy teens and/or ignorant self-absorbed ignorant morons). I'm talking about the Western segment of the Net – knew that EuroUkrs and Russian Liberasts active in the Net are a lost cause and evolutionary dead-end long time ago. It's the citizens of the supposedly "Free World" sprouting lies, repeating them and then eagerly believing them – 'cause that's what they want to hear to confirm their long established biases – who were re-evaluated by me.

There is hardly any dialog possible or even exchange of opinions – not to mention this absolutely teeny-weeny and unimportant thing like actually listening to your opponents arguments and facts.

This is a War – pure and simple. The Global Informational War.

Reading some comments and articles made me realize (deep-deep inside) that Stalin's methods while dealing with the Enemies were way too humane and ineffective. Oh, no-no! Nope! Only Ivan Grozny – only hardcore! I still find morbidly amusing how Ivan IV executed either some monks or the dyak of the Posolskiy prikaz's who've screwed up big time by ordering them to be tied up to a powder keg and then blown up. And let's not forget that czar Ivan was most prolific writer of letters and perfected the now much valued art of trolling, dissing and flaming his opponents nearly 450 years ago!

I won't wax for a long time about any of such articles – I'll just comment on one of them which represent a true quintessence of the "Modern Western Journalism" ™.

Russian Airstrikes in Syria Could Last Four Months, Officials Say

Yes – this is The Vice News, a №1 choice for any opinionated and conscientious edgy teens, hipsters, San-Franciscan barefooters and Hikkies around the world when they want to learn about the world at large. For me – I think that the name is aptly chosen for this disgusting excuse for the "Modern Journalism". They do embody one of the Mortal Sins nearly perfectly, namely – the Sloth.

Article immediately plunges us into the convoluted and weed-brownies destroyed mind of the average VICE NEWS 'author':

"Russia's airstrikes in Syria could continue for three to four months, according to the head of the lower house of the Russian parliament's foreign affairs committee, as controversy continues over what Moscow's attacks are actually targeting."

Wow! What you say – "controversial", huh? Well, I'm a silly foreigner Not From the West, and English is not my first language. So I'm gonna to recheck what this "controversial" word means. Let's try Merriam-Webster, shall we?

"relating to or causing much discussion, disagreement, or argument: likely to produce controversy"

Oh, that! Well – there is no "controversy" about airstrikes in Russia. Soviet Federaciy voted unanimously for that. Russians (with the exception of delegated to the very Oblivion of a small bunch of the radical "patriots", chronic "putinslivshiks" and liberasts) are totally in favor of that. Who's disagreeing the most are the Western governments and the Free and Independent Western Media ™. But in that case the word "controversial" can (and should) be applied just to about everything. Honest and free-spirited journos are refraining from doing that when it doesn't suit theig agenda.

"Officials announced on Friday that airstrikes had been carried out for a third day in row and " that these hit 12 Islamic State (IS) targets."

I will just leave this sentence hanging here for a while – but I will return to it soon!

"Yet the US, which is leading its own air campaign against IS, says Moscow has been using its campaign as a pretext to hit other groups opposed to Russia's ally, President Bashar al-Assad.

Some of the groups that have been hit are supported by countries which oppose both Assad and IS, including at least one group that received training from the CIA"

Well, thank you VICE NEWS for this frankness and honesty! Oh, those vily Ruskies! Bombing poor and innocent "rebels", who are as pure as baby's tear!

"Russia's air campaign in a country already being bombed by a US-led coalition of Western and Arab countries means that the Cold War superpower foes Moscow and Washington are now flying combat missions over the same country for the first time since World War II.

Well, this is not quite true. In fact last time both Washington and Moscow flew combat missions over the same country was in… Vietnam, I think. Everybody remembers brave North Vietnamese ace Li Si Tzeen, right? ;)

"Russian Su-34, Su-24M, and Su-25 warplanes flew 18 sorties, hitting a command post and a communications center in the province of Aleppo as well as a militant field camp in Idlib, a Defense Ministry statement said. A command post in the province of Hama was also completely destroyed, it added."

Once again – I will just leave it here. And now this:

"The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict with a network of sources on the ground, said IS had no presence in the western and northern areas that were struck."

AH, YIISSSSS! Nary an article about Syria by the VICE now goes without referencing this august body of the first hand and reliable reporting of the Sacred Truth! Surely, we must trust it completely, folks! They are UK-based, after all!

But I will still ask this nagging ugly question – what the hell is this "Syrian Observatory for the Human Rights" which VICEers are so often quote (without providing links to the actual statements, naturally)?

Oh, you gonna love this! According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung article of 2012 this "SOHR" was the primarily source about the situation "on the ground" for all major Western propaganda outlets. The fact is… there is no such thing as "Syrian Observatory for the Human Rights". There is only one guy actually- some Osama Suleyman, living in Coventry, who have adopted the nom de plume Rami-Abdul-Rahman (http://www.timesofisrael.com/topic/rami-abdul-rahman/). According to his own words, Suleyman had been jailed 3 times in Syria for the "opposition activism" and then emigrated to Britain in 2000. In Coventry he and his wife own a clothing shop and now both of them are British naturalized citizens.

In short – the sort of people who absolutely 100500% can keep their arms on the pulse of the current events taking place in Syria and report with absolute accuracy only the Truth. Yay!

Well, as for the other claims, about "poor kids bombed by Ruskies", I'll just leave this picture here:

Also, as you have probably noticed by now, when the VICEers had to quote despicable Russian sources they all too often use such terms as "they claimed", "they stated" and "according to them". So we know from the starters – we should not trust them! They Russians! But is the source is some brave (and, doubtlessly, pro Western/Democracy/Moderate Islamist) they are to be trusted – they "say" and "tell". Charming fellows. Why should they lie?

And no – As Everybody Knows ™, the West doesn't employ propaganda. True story!

[Sep 30, 2015] Obama Snubbed as Xi, Putin Stay at Chinese Owned Waldorf

Sep 30, 2015 | Zero Hedge

J Mahoney

Nothing too significant about this...just a minor bitch slap cause the US started the fiasco concerning the Waldorff. After the Chinese bought it last year, the STATE DEPT announced they would no longer have meetings there or house guests there because of the fear of eavesdropping. How ironic the STATE DEPT didn't show the same level of precaution about Hillbillies private email server.

Flying Wombat

Great read:

"Chinese-Russian Relations and the Empire: Analysis w/ The Saker"

http://thenewsdoctors.com/?p=513952

luna_man

"Snubbed"?...This is known as self preservation!

bad enough being in the U.S.A. for these two...especially after J.F.K. and 911!

CRIMINALS TURF

Able Ape

I wouldn't step in the Whitehouse even if it was pressure-washed with high-pressure steam hoses, then copiously sprayed with hydrogen peroxide, and finally liberally doused with concentrated bleach and they then offered me a Level 4 biohazard suit. Some places you just need to stay OUT of!...

NoWayJose

The Chinese owned Waldorf is probably the only place they can stay without having to worry about the NSA listening in. You can bet that there are special floors and rooms that are constructed to isolate any electronic leakage, and are swept several times each day.

BarkingCat

Unless the hotel has floors that are never rented, any spy agency can get surveillance equipment planted.

ebear

"1 year ago they bought the Waldorf for two billion US dollars."

Yeah, but do they know how to make a Waldorf salad?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDE3mVLNdRA

[Sep 28, 2015] The Only Two Things That Matter: Why I'm Supporting Larry Lessig

Notable quotes:

"... We need smart, motivated, knowledgeable voters. And we need a political system in which all people have an equal say. Without those ingredients, no amount of well-meaning, reasoned, fact-based argument is going to do much good. ..."

"... The presumption behind Lessig's gimmick is that democracy is a good form of government, so that closer adherence to democratic ideals will produce better political results. But democracy is arguably a terrible form of government, as the authors of the Federalist Papers were aware. What we need is intelligent, substantive, inspiring leadership. Mr. Lessig is not offering anything of the sort, so I would discourage anyone from wasting his or her vote on an empty gimmick. ..."

Sep 28, 2015 | baselinescenario.com

We have lots of problems: Expensive yet mediocre health care. Lack of retirement security. Out-of-control megabanks. Inequality of opportunity. And, of course, climate change.

At the end of the day, though, there are only two things that matter: early childhood education and electoral reform.

We need smart, motivated, knowledgeable voters. And we need a political system in which all people have an equal say. Without those ingredients, no amount of well-meaning, reasoned, fact-based argument is going to do much good.

michaelhendrickson | September 26, 2015 at 9:47 pm

The presumption behind Lessig's gimmick is that democracy is a good form of government, so that closer adherence to democratic ideals will produce better political results. But democracy is arguably a terrible form of government, as the authors of the Federalist Papers were aware. What we need is intelligent, substantive, inspiring leadership. Mr. Lessig is not offering anything of the sort, so I would discourage anyone from wasting his or her vote on an empty gimmick.

[Sep 28, 2015] Obama America Has Few4 Economic Interests In Ukraine... And This Very Big One

Sep 28, 2015 | Zero Hedge

As part of his UN speech seeking to restore a crumbling Pax Americana, president Obama, eager to cover up US involvement in the Ukraine presidential coup of early 2014 (who can forget Victoria Nuland "strategy" interception in which she laid out the post-coup lay of the land, while saying to "fuck the EU"), just said that "America has few economic interest in Ukraine."

Herdee

Where and what did they do with Ukraine's gold bullion reserves and who is in possession of them right now and why is it such a big secret to everyone that overthrew the Government there?

directaction

Who cares? The Ukraine gold and all the rest of their resources are legitimate wartime plunder, booty, if you will. If the Ukrainians are stupid enough to happily allow the USA to barge in and take everything of value from them why should we weep?

viator

"George Soros has long called for the West to pump billions into Ukraine. Now he says he's ready to walk the talk.
The veteran hedge fund investor told an Austrian newspaper he was prepared to invest $1 billion in the collapsing war-ravaged economy under certain circumstances.

"There are concrete investment ideas, for example in agriculture and infrastructure projects. I would put in $1 billion," he told Der Standard. "This must generate a profit. My foundation would benefit from this, not me personally."

The Hungarian-born billionaire said Europe and the U.S. must show strong political leadership over Ukraine -- that would make it more attractive to private investors. The West could provide finance at European interest rates close to zero, for example.

A spokesman for Soros said his investment would depend on the West doing "whatever it takes" to rescue Ukraine."

http://money.cnn.com/2015/03/30/investing/ukraine-soros-billion-russia/

The Indelicate ...

What do you figure, LL - is the "New Khazaria" theory in any way legit, or is it bullshit?

Israel's Secret Plan for a "Second Israel" in Ukraine
http://m.strategic-culture.org/news/2014/12/03/israel-secret-plan-for-se...

Notwithstanding the heavy presence of dual citizens yadda yadda, I kinda think the "secret report" was tongue-in-cheek and that this is basically bullshit. But in this messed up crazy world... stranger things....

I don't see Crimea going back to Ukraine though.

Latina Lover

Since the discussion is now academic (Crimea is not leaving Russia unless Russia itself is destroyed), I will be brief.

Kolomoysky is the president of a European Jewish Group, and active in Chabad. He was promoting Crimea as an alternate Jewish homeland until Crimea rejoined Russia. Kolomoysky then lost his real estate holdings, and Chabad the ability to dominate the Crimea.

If you are interested in further background, check out the following link:

http://www.inss.org.il/uploadImages/systemFiles/The%20Jewish.pdf

[Sep 28, 2015] What Oil Investors 4Can Learn From Gold By Michael McDonald

I think the oil is not gold. And the mechanism of over-producing oil despite low prices is based on the fact that most companies and oil producing countries are in debt, sometimes crushing debt like in case of shale companies, Venezuela, etc. Gold is used in industry but mainly serves as the store of wealth. Oil is lifeblood of the modern civilization. If we assume that 'oli glut" is the problem most new projects are being suspended or cancelled while assets are also sold off. Capital spending is shrinking. Debt is rising. International oil companies are now are under threat in countries were they operate. Business climate could be darkening. Casino capitalism can't manipulate price of resources such as oil for long.

OilPrice.com

The worldwide printing of virtual money through quantitative easing was supposed to keep inflating gold's price. Even after the commodity collapsed in value, numerous commentators and groups predicted that it was temporary, and many said that, with the fall in price, demand would surge leading to a sharp rebound within a few months. There was even talk about various industry organizations failing to properly report supply and demand numbers thus keeping the markets misinformed and prices low. Now though, more than two years on from that drop, nothing close to those predictions has materialized, and investors are still licking their wounds.

This is not a story about gold though. It's a story about oil. The truth of the matter is that gold is largely an irrelevant commodity compared with oil. Oil is the basis for dozens of countries' economies around the world and for thousands of major companies' existence. None of that matters though. The other truth, and the less pleasant one, is that there are stark parallels between what happened to gold a few years ago and what is happening to oil today.

... ... ...

In the cases of both gold and oil, frothy price levels led to large increases in production over the course of a decade and unorthodox sources of supply started to be exploited. Despite the rising supply and only slow growth in demand, prices continued to rise. After a while, both gold and oil stabilized and spent time consolidating and then, just as gold fell, oil too collapsed in price.

Now roughly a year after the first big shocks started to hit the oil market, suppliers have responded in earnest. But just as with gold, simply cutting supplies a bit and having a few weak producers go bankrupt will not lead to a rapid price rebound. Instead it is increasingly beginning to look like oil prices will remain subdued at well less than a $100 a barrel for years to come.

Perhaps oil prices will come back and the parallels with gold will end here, but that's probably too optimistic. Most of the same basic economic forces that impact gold are equally valid with oil. Investors need to be prepared for the reality that it may take a decade or more for oil to return to $100 a barrel. That does not mean that oil companies will all go out of business or that investing in energy stocks cannot be profitable.

[Sep 28, 2015] Kunstler Rages Perhaps America Has Gotten What It Deserves

Sep 28, 2015 | Zero Hedge

Did Charlie Rose look like a fucking idiot last night on 60-Minutes, or what, asking Vladimir Putin how he could know for sure that the US was behind the 2014 Ukraine coup against President Viktor Yanukovych? Maybe the idiots are the 60-Minutes producers and fluffers who are supposed to prep Charlie's questions. Putin seemed startled and amused by this one on Ukraine: how could he know for sure?

Well, gosh, because Ukraine was virtually a province of Russia in one form or another for hundreds of years, and Russia has a potent intelligence service (formerly called the KGB) that had assets and connections threaded through Ukrainian society like the rhizomorphs of the fungus Armillaria solidipes through a conifer forest. Gosh, Charlie, it's like asking Obama whether the NSA might know what's going on in Texas.

And so there is Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer, having to spell it out for the American clodhopper super-journalist. "We have thousands of contacts with them. We know who and where, and when they met with someone, and who worked with those who ousted Yanukovych, how they were supported, how much they were paid, how they were trained, where, in which country, and who those instructors were. We know everything."

The only thing Vlad left out of course was the now-world-famous panicked yelp by Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland crying, "Fuck the EU," when events in Kiev started getting out of hand for US stage-managers. But he probably heard about that, too.

Charlie then voice-overed the following statement: "For the record, the US has denied any involvement in the removal of the Ukrainian leader." Right. And your call is important us. And your check is in the mail. And they hate us for our freedom.

This bit on Ukraine was only a little more appalling than Charlie's earlier segment on Syria. Was Putin trying to rescue the Assad government? Charlie asked, in the context of President Obama's statement years ago that "Assad has to go."

Putin answered as if he were explaining something that should have been self-evident to a not-very-bright high school freshman: "To remove the legitimate government would create a situation which you can witness in other countries of the region, for instance Libya, where all the state institutions have disintegrated. We see a similar situation in Iraq. There's no other solution to the Syrian crisis than strengthening the government structure."

I guess Charlie and the 60-Minutes production crew hadn't noticed what had gone on around the Middle East the past fifteen years with America's program of toppling dictators into the maw of anarchy. Not such great outcomes.

Charlie persisted though, following his script: Was Putin trying to rescue Assad? Vlad had to lay it out for him as if he were introducing Charlie to the game of Animal Lotto: "What do you think about those who support the terrorist organizations only to oust Assad without thinking about what happens to the country after all the state institutions have been demolished…? Look at those who are in control of 60 percent of the territory of Syria."

Meaning ISIS. Al Nusra (formerly al Qaeda in Syria), i.e., groups internationally recognized as terrorist organizations.

Charlie Rose, 60-Minutes - and perhaps by extension US government agencies with an interest in propagandizing - seem to want to put over the story that Russia has involved itself in Syria only to aggrandize its role on in world affairs.

Forgive me for being so blunt, but what sort of stupid fucking idea is this? And are there any non-lobotomized adults left in the USA who can't see straight through it? The truth is that American policy in Syria (plus Iraq, Libya, Ukraine, Somalia, Afghanistan) is an impressive record of failure in terms of the one basic aim that most rational people might agree upon: stabilizing the region in a way that does not leave Islamic jihadi maniacs in charge.

Okay, so now the Russians will do what they can to try to stabilize Syria. They've had their failures, too (famously, Afghanistan). But Russian territory adjoins the Islamic lands and they clearly have stake in containing the virus of Islamic extremism near their borders. Is that not obvious?

Charlie made one other extremely dumb statement - he seems to prefer making assertions to asking straight-up questions - to the effect that Russia was misbehaving by deploying troops on its border with Ukraine.

Putin again seemed astonished by this credulous idiocy. The US had troops and nuclear weapons all over Europe, he answered. Did Charlie think that meant the US was attempting to occupy the nations of Europe now? Was it "a crime" for Russia to defend its own border with a neighboring state (formerly a province) that, he implied, the US had deliberately destabilized?

The Putin segment was followed by an sickening session with Donald Trump, a man who now - after a month or so of public exposure - proves incapable of uttering a coherent idea. I wonder what Vladimir Putin makes of this incomparable buffoon. Perhaps that America has gotten what it deserves.

[Sep 27, 2015] US On The Ropes China To Join Russian Military In Syria While Iraq Strikes Intel Deal With Moscow, Tehran

Sep 27, 2015 | Zero Hedge

What appears to have happened here is this: Vladimir Putin has exploited both the fight against ISIS and Iran's need to preserve the regional balance of power on the way to enhancing Russia's influence over Mid-East affairs which in turn helps to ensure that Gazprom's interests are protected going forward.

Thanks to the awkward position the US has gotten itself in by covertly allying itself with various Sunni extremist groups, Washington is for all intents and purposes powerless to stop Putin lest the public should suddenly get wise to the fact that combating Russia's resurgence and preventing Iran from expanding its interests are more important than fighting terror.

In short, Washington gambled on a dangerous game of geopolitical chess, lost, and now faces two rather terrifyingly disastrous outcomes: 1) China establishing a presence in the Mid-East in concert with Russia and Iran, and 2) seeing Iraq effectively ceded to the Quds Force and ultimately, to the Russian army.

[Sep 27, 2015] Since st least 2009 GCHQ has targeted a range of popular websites as part of an effort to covertly collect cookies on a massive scale

BBC used by GCHQ to spy on Internet users https://theintercept.com/2015/09/25/gchq-radio-porn-spies-track-web-users-online-identities/

"... I do wonder though, with all those stories about those thousands of Kremlin controlled Russian trolls on British news websites, whether some of this comes from carefully massaged data from GCHQ through third parties to the Pork Pie News Networks via 'unnamed sources', i.e. the usual bollox. ..."

"... …The agency operates a bewildering array of other eavesdropping systems, each serving its own specific purpose and designated a unique code name, such as: …and INFINITE MONKEYS, which analyzes data about the usage of online bulletin boards and forums… ..."

"... Once you understand the relationship and the goals that they have, you can work backwards and make fairly good conclusions about what tools would be required and used to get to those conclusions and try not think whether they are legal or not. ..."

"... The most disturbing thing about it all is that it puts us one step away from a totalitarian system. All that is required is a political decision. ..."

"... Forget about 'checks and balances' – they're the first thing to be thrown out of the window in an emergency. Arbeit macht frei! ..."

"... GCHQ and the CIA are in bed with one another, and have been for years. This might be a timely occasion to mention once again that both are capable of hacking into smartphones by all leading manufacturers; in the case of the IPhone the CIA uses a program application called Dropout Jeep. ..."

"... the CIA also diverted laptops ordered online so that government spyware could be installed on them. ..."

"... You can't believe anyone any more. ..."

Sep 27, 2015 | marknesop.wordpress.com

Warren, September 25, 2015 at 2:25 pm

https://theintercept.com/2015/09/25/gchq-radio-porn-spies-track-web-users-online-identities/

et Al, September 26, 2015 at 4:23 am

A top-secret GCHQ document from March 2009 reveals the agency has targeted a range of popular websites as part of an effort to covertly collect cookies on a massive scale. It shows a sample search in which the agency was extracting data from cookies containing information about people's visits to the adult website YouPorn, search engines Yahoo and Google, and the Reuters news website.

Other websites listed as "sources" of cookies in the 2009 document (see below) are Hotmail, YouTube, Facebook, Reddit, WordPress, Amazon, and sites operated by the broadcasters CNN, BBC, and the U.K.'s Channel 4.

…A top-secret GCHQ document from March 2009 reveals the agency has targeted a range of popular websites as part of an effort to covertly collect cookies on a massive scale. It shows a sample search in which the agency was extracting data from cookies containing information about people's visits to the adult website YouPorn, search engines Yahoo and Google, and the Reuters news website.

Other websites listed as "sources" of cookies in the 2009 document (see below) are Hotmail, YouTube, Facebook, Reddit, WordPress, Amazon, and sites operated by the broadcasters CNN, BBC, and the U.K.'s Channel 4…
###

And I bet the Guardian too as it is 'the world's most widely read new site'. They probably keep automatic tabs on this site considering how it has grown over the last couple of years.

I do wonder though, with all those stories about those thousands of Kremlin controlled Russian trolls on British news websites, whether some of this comes from carefully massaged data from GCHQ through third parties to the Pork Pie News Networks via 'unnamed sources', i.e. the usual bollox.

May I suggest to fellow commenters here, if at any point you loose your smart phone (etc.) just call GCHQ and they'll tell you where you left it. I wonder if they provide a data back up service?!

et Al, September 26, 2015 at 4:48 am

…The agency operates a bewildering array of other eavesdropping systems, each serving its own specific purpose and designated a unique code name, such as: …and INFINITE MONKEYS, which analyzes data about the usage of online bulletin boards and forums…

…Authorization is "not needed for individuals in the U.K.," another GCHQ document explains, because metadata has been judged "less intrusive than communications content." All the spies are required to do to mine the metadata troves is write a short "justification" or "reason" for each search they conduct and then click a button on their computer screen…

…When compared to surveillance rules in place in the U.S., GCHQ notes in one document that the U.K. has "a light oversight regime."

The more lax British spying regulations are reflected in secret internal rules that highlight greater restrictions on how NSA databases can be accessed. The NSA's troves can be searched for data on British citizens, one document states, but they cannot be mined for information about Americans or other citizens from countries in the Five Eyes alliance….
#####

It's just what is expected from the junior in the US/UK relationship. For the UK to retain privileged access to the US' global spy network, it needs to give the US what it wants, a way to circumvent the US' own laws. Dial back to when Gary Powers & his U-2 were shot down over the Soviet Union. All subsequent overflights by US manned and operated aircraft were prohibited, so, the US used British pilots and Canberras.

Once you understand the relationship and the goals that they have, you can work backwards and make fairly good conclusions about what tools would be required and used to get to those conclusions and try not think whether they are legal or not.

What people can do to protect themselves is

1. don't change most of your digital habits (as this would raise a flag);
2. just don't do or say obvious things that you wouldn't do in real life in your digital life;
3. use encryption such as PGP for email and products using perfect forward secrecy for chat/etc.;
4. don't write about what not to do on the Internet as I have just done! ;)

The most disturbing thing about it all is that it puts us one step away from a totalitarian system. All that is required is a political decision. All the tools are in place and depending on how much information they have actually kept they can dip in to it at any time throughout your life as a rich source of blackmail, probably via third parties. It's not exactly threatening to send you to a concentration camp (or disappeared to one of Britain's (and others) many small overseas territories, but it is total control.

If the European economy completely crashes and mass instability ensues (or whatever), then the politicians will be told, or even ask, "What tools do we have to control this?".

Forget about 'checks and balances' – they're the first thing to be thrown out of the window in an emergency. Arbeit macht frei!

et Al, September 26, 2015 at 9:52 am

This should be a massive story as the parliamentary security committee gave the intelligence services a 'clean bill of health' not so long ago. Since then, they've lost intelligence 'yes man' Malcolm Rifkind to an expenses scandal so the make up of the committee has changed a bit.

What it does show is that we cannot even trust the gatekeepers (above) who are give very limited info from the security services. And let us not forget the dates that this occurred under a Labor administration and continued under a Conservative-Liberal Democrat and now a Conservative one.

It will be interesting to see if this story gains any traction, though I suspect that it will be much bigger outside of the UK, at least initially. The cat is, again, out of the bag!

marknesop, September 26, 2015 at 2:38 pm

GCHQ and the CIA are in bed with one another, and have been for years. This might be a timely occasion to mention once again that both are capable of hacking into smartphones by all leading manufacturers; in the case of the IPhone the CIA uses a program application called Dropout Jeep.

We can thank Edward Snowden for that; the NSA spying scandal revealed a great deal more than just the information the CIA is snooping on your phone calls and collecting information on everyone. As the second reference relates, the CIA also diverted laptops ordered online so that government spyware could be installed on them. Intelligence agencies are determined that citizens shall have no privacy whatsoever. You might as well assume they are watching everything you do and listening to everything you say. Give the window the finger at random times just in case, and slip embarrassing revelations on the sexual proclivities of intelligence agents into your telephone conversations.

Canada's Blackberry was once safe, but GCHQ broke that. So now there is no smartphone that is private, except maybe for Russia's YotaPhone. Probably not that either, though, since it is sold in the USA, and if they couldn't break into the phone they would just hack the carrier. And the Canadian government bought all of its Secure Telephone Units (STU) from the NSA, so say no more about the "security" of those.

A few companies, like Silent Circle, pitch a privacy phone like the Blackphone, but it originates in the USA and everyone's paranoia has become so acute that the instant suspicion is they are telling you it is more private just because it is wired straight to the NSA.

You can't believe anyone any more.

[Sep 27, 2015] The moral universe of the corporate killers

Sep 27, 2015 | www.samefacts.com

Stuart_Levine

Mark--The passage "As Paul Krugman points out" links not to PK, but to a Brad Plummer Vox article. I assume that you wanted to link to PK's column in this AM's NYT.

BTW, you may want to point to this Jeb! Tweet: http://bit.ly/1gVFixr I think that he may have set a record for the total number of horribly bad policy positions that one can advocate in 140 characters or less.

liberalhistorian

Couple of side bar comments:

...and apparently the buzz in the automotive world is that "everyone" was doing it...

Anybody who thinks Mr. Cook and Apple can't disrupt the automobile industry clearly isn't paying attention to the automobile industry. It seems designed more by cads than CAD. Smart elegant design? The auto industry is retrogressive: low hanging fruit. The whole damn kit: from CEOs to Dealers to Mechanics you can't trust. It's a moral atrocity.

Apple can and will seize the wheel and make a ton of money doing so...

As Paul Krugman points out, the scandal makes a nice counterpoint with Jeb Bush's latest "anti-regulation" rant.

Another nice counterpoint: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27867-cod-...

Of course there are many others. And of course there are also many cases of over-regulation. But you don't win an argument for smart regulation unless you have plenty of examples to draw from. I suspect Mrs. Clinton will be well-armed that way come the big time debates with Jeb!

Brett

Fisher's reaction is so typical for many economic libertarians that I've met. They can't really dismiss environmental problems altogether, so instead they diminish and minimize - "Oh, it's just some marginal emissions/a small amount of forest land/a little pollution into the river! What's the harm? And do you really want to hurt an important company that employs thousands over it over a little bit of dirty air?"

Jarndyce

Mark is too easy on both VW and GM in this paragraph:

"That's not as bad as an ordinary murder, where the killer picks out a specific victim, because being personally singled out to be killed is somehow worse than being a random victim. But in both the GM case and the VW case, people wound up dead (or injured, or sick) through the choice of someone else. In the GM case, the company's culpability was mostly passive: it made a design or manufacturing mistake and then didn't disclose it or act promptly or adequately to fix it. What VW did was much worse: the 'defeat software' wasn't a defect, but a deliberate decision to break the law with the predictable consequence of killing hundreds of people, at least twice as many as died of GM's malfeasance. I don't think you need to live in Marin County to find that objectionable."

The pertinent question is whether VW or GM knew that people would die as a result of their actions. If they did, then they are as culpable as an ordinary murderer, despite not having picked out a specific victim or having acted "passively" in deciding not to disclose their mistake. They are comparable to a person who randomly fires a machine gun in a crowd.

David T

One of the ICCT engineers who uncovered this seems to be telling every news shop that will listen that people should be checking other automakers for the same problem. VW's behavior is so appalling and frankly stupid (destroy a company to sell a few diesels? It's not even their biggest product line) that it's hard to understand what they could have possibly been thinking. The general amorality of corporate culture may be part of it. But I wonder if there was a bit of "everybody else is doing it" going on here too. (BMW must be pretty happy that their car passed.)

Keith_Humphreys

Perfect movie reference(The Third Man, 1949). The sociopathic black marketeer Harry Lime is played by Orson Welles and his moral American friend Holly Martins by Joseph Cotten. As they ride in a Ferris wheel far above the people of Vienna, this exchange occurs:

Martins: Have you ever seen any of your victims?

Harry: You know, I never feel comfortable on these sort of things. Victims? Don't be melodramatic. [gestures to people far below] Tell me. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money, or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare? Free of income tax, old man. Free of income tax - the only way you can save money nowadays.

Clip: https://vimeo.com/76843899

egorelick

Ok. This may be an extremely stupid question, but how do we know that this was illegal? Many regulations of this type in the electronics/telecommunications field are overspecified and everybody knows the tests (and they cheat in similar fashions if not so explicitly and in such wholesale fashion). If the regulation was written to state that an engine will pass the following test then that's what would be built. Unless there was an explicit prohibition in switching modes or a requirement that the test mode be comparable to driving mode then the engineers may have just seen it as a game. So I'm not defending the amorality of this, but the question of conspiracy is harder to prove if it may not be illegal except under the EPA's theory. And if it wasn't obviously illegal, then what is the moral obligation of the worker to trade-off their livelihood for exposing the fraud.

[Sep 27, 2015] How America built its empire The real history of American foreign policy that the media won't tell you

Sep 27, 2015 | www.salon.com

Salon.com

The book tries to do two things. One is to cover the history of American foreign policy, from around 1900 to the present, tracing the gradual construction of a global empire. This first really came into view as a prospect during the Second World War and is today a reality across all five continents, as a glance at the skein of its military bases makes clear. The Cold War was a central episode within this trajectory, but the book doesn't treat just the U.S. record vis-á-vis the USSR or China. It tries to deal equally with American relations with the Europe and Japan, and also with the Third World, treated not as a homogenous entity but as four or five zones that required different policy combinations.

The second part of the book is a survey of American grand strategy-that is, the different ways leading counselors of state interpret the current position of the United States on the world stage and their recommendations for what Washington should do about it.

The "big think" set, in other words-Kissinger, of course, Brzezinski, Walter Russell Mead, Robert Kagan. And then people such as Francis Fukuyama, whom I consider a ridiculous figure but whose thinking you judged worth some scrutiny. How did you choose these?

From the range of in-and-outers-thinkers moving between government and the academy or think-tanks-who have sought to guide U.S. foreign policy since 2000, with some intellectual originality. Kissinger isn't among these. His ideas belong to a previous epoch, his later offerings are boilerplate. Fukuyama, who sensed what the effects of office on thought could be, and got out of state service quite early, is a mind of a different order. The figures selected cover the span of options within what has always been a bipartisan establishment.

You make a distinction between American exceptionalism, which is much in the air, and American universalism, which few of us understand as a separate matter. The first holds America to be singular (exceptional), and the second that the world is destined to follow us, that the trails we've blazed are the future of humanity. You call this a "potentially unstable compound." Could you elaborate on this distinction, and explain why you think it's unstable?

It's unstable because the first can exist without the second. There is, of course, a famous ideological linkage between the two in the religious idea, specific to the United States, of Providence-that is, divine Providence. In your own book "Time No Longer" you cite an astounding expression of this notion: "However one comes to the debate, there can be little question that the hand of Providence has been on a nation which finds a Washington, a Lincoln, or a Roosevelt when it needs him." That pronouncement was delivered in the mid-1990s-not by some television preacher, but by Seymour Martin Lipset: chairs at Harvard and Stanford, president of both the American Sociological and the American Political Science Associations, a one-time social democrat.

What is the force of this idea? A belief that God has singled out America as a chosen nation for exceptional blessings, a notion which then easily becomes a conviction of its mission to bring the benefits of the Lord to the world. President after president, from Truman through to Kennedy, the younger Bush to Obama, reiterate the same tropes: "God has given us this, God has given us that," and with the unique freedom and prosperity he has conferred on us comes a universal calling to spread these benefits to the rest of the world. What is the title of the most ambitious contemporary account of the underlying structures of American foreign policy? "Special Providence," by Walter Russell Mead. Year of publication: 2001.

But while a messianic universalism follows easily from providential exceptionalism, it is not an ineluctable consequence of it. You mount a powerful attack on the idea of exceptionalism in "Time No Longer," but-we may differ on this-if we ask what is the more dangerous element in the unstable compound of the nation's image of itself, I would say exceptionalism is the less dangerous. That may seem paradoxical. But historically the idea of exceptionalism allowed for an alternative, more modest deduction: that the country was different from all others, and so should not be meddling with them-the argument of Washington's Farewell Address [in 1796].

A century later, this position became known as isolationism, and as the American empire took shape, it was all but invariably castigated as narrow-minded, short-sighted and selfish. But it could often be connected with a sense that the republic was in danger at home, with domestic ills that needed to be addressed, which vast ambitions abroad would only compound. Mead terms this strand in American sensibility Jeffersonian, which isn't an accurate description of Jefferson's own empire-building outlook, but he otherwise captures it quite well.

We don't ordinarily apply the term "exceptionalist" in the same breath to America and to Japan, though if there is any nation that claims to be completely unique, it is Japan. But the claim produced a drastic isolationism as a national impulse, both in the Tokugawa period [1603-1868, a period of severely enforced seclusion] and after the war. Does that support the point you're making?

Exactly. Historically, exceptionalism could generate a self-limiting, self-enclosing logic as well as the gigantic expansionist vanities of the Co-Prosperity Sphere and the "Free World" [narrative]. In the American case, the two strands of exceptionalism and universalism remained distinct, respectively as isolationist and interventionist impulses, sometimes converging but often diverging, down to the Second World War. Then they fused. The thinker who wrote best about this was Franz Schurmann, whose " Logic of World Power" came out during the Vietnam War. He argued that each had a distinct political-regional base: the social constituency for isolationism was small business and farming communities in the Midwest, for interventionism it was the banking and manufacturing elites of the East Coast, with often sharp conflicts between the two up through the end of thirties. But in the course of the Second World War they came together in a synthesis he attributed-somewhat prematurely-to FDR, and they have remained essentially interwoven ever since. The emblematic figure of this change was [Arthur H.] Vandenberg, the Republican Senator from Michigan [1928-51], who remained an isolationist critic of interventionism even for a time after Pearl Harbor, but by the end of the war had become a pillar of the new imperial consensus.

Mainstream debate today seems to have constructed two very stark alternatives: There is either engagement or isolation. In this construction, engagement means military engagement; if we are not going to be militarily engaged we are isolationists. I find that absolutely wrong. There are multiple ways of being engaged with the world that have nothing to do with military assertion.

True, but engagement in that usage doesn't mean just military engagement, but power projection more generally. One of the thinkers I discuss toward the end of my book is Robert Art, a lucid theorist of military power and its political importance to America, who argues for what he calls selective-expressly, not universal-engagement. What is unusual about him is that in seeking to discriminate among engagements the U.S. should and should not select, he starts considering in a serious, non-dismissive way what would typically be construed as isolationist alternatives, even if ending with a fairly conventional position.

How far do you view the contemporary American crisis-if you accept that we are living through one-as, at least in part, one of consciousness? As an American, I tend to think that no significant departure from where find ourselves today can be achieved until we alter our deepest notions of ourselves and our place among others. I pose this question with some trepidation, since a change in consciousness is a generational project, if not more. Our leadership is not remotely close even to thinking about this. I'm suggesting a psychological dimension to our predicament, and you may think I put too much weight on that.

You ask at the outset whether I accept that Americans are living through a crisis. My reply would be: not anything like the order of crisis that would bring about the sort of change in consciousness for which you might hope. You describe that as a generational project, and there, yes, one can say that among the youngest cohorts of the U.S. population, the ideologies of the status quo are less deeply embedded, and in certain layers even greatly weakened. That is an important change, but it's generational, rather than society-wide, and it's not irreversible.

At the level of the great majority, including, naturally, the upper middle class, the image you use to describe the purpose of your last book applies: you write that it aims "to sound the tense strings wound between the pegs of myth and history during the hundred years and a few that I take to be the American century. It is this high, piercing tone that Americans now have a chance to render, hear, and recognize all at once. We have neither sounded nor heard it yet." That's all too true, unfortunately. The most one can say is that, among a newer generation, the strings are fraying a bit.

I tend to distinguish between strong nations and the merely powerful, the former being supple and responsive to events, the later being brittle and unstable. Is this a useful way to judge America in the early 21st century-monumentally powerful but of dubious strength? If so, doesn't it imply some change in the American cast of mind, as the difference between the two sinks in?

That depends on the degree of instability you sense in the country. In general, a major change in consciousness occurs when there is a major alteration in material conditions of life. For example, if a deep economic depression or dire ecological disaster strikes a society, all bets are off. Then, suddenly, thoughts and actions that were previously inconceivable become possible and natural. That isn't the situation so far in America.

Can you discuss the new accord with Iran in this context? I don't see any question it's other than a breakthrough, a new direction. What do you think were the forces propelling the Obama administration to pursue this pact? And let's set aside the desire for a "legacy" every president cultivates late in his time.

The agreement with Iran is an American victory but not a departure in U.S. foreign policy. Economic pressure on Iran dates back to Carter's time, when the U.S. froze the country's overseas assets after the ousting of the Shah, and the full range of ongoing U.S. sanctions was imposed by the Clinton administration in 1996. The Bush administration escalated the pressure by securing U.N. generalization of sanctions in 2006, and the Obama administration has harvested the effect.

Over the past decade, the objective has always been the same: to protect Israel's nuclear monopoly in the region without risking an Israeli blitz on Iran to preserve it-that might set off too great a wave of popular anger in the Middle East. It was always likely, as I point out in "American Policy and its Thinkers," that the clerical regime in Tehran would buckle under a sustained blockade, if that was the price of its survival. The agreement includes a time-out clause to save its face, but the reality is an Iranian surrender.

You can see how little it means any alteration in imperial operations in the region by looking at what the Obama administration is doing in Yemen, assisting Saudi Arabia's wholesale destruction of civilian life there in the interest of thwarting imaginary Iranian schemes.

This next question vexes many people, me included. On the one hand, the drives underlying the American imperium are material: the expansion of capital and the projection of power by its political representatives. The American mythologies are shrouds around these. On the other hand, the issue of security has a long history among Americans. It is authentically an obsession independent of capital-American paranoia dates back at least to the 18th century. I don't take these two accountings to be mutually exclusive, but I'd be interested to know how you reconcile these different threads in American foreign policy.

Yes, there has been a longstanding-you could say aboriginal-obsession with security in the United States. This can be traced as an independent strand running through the history of American dealings with the outside world. What happened, of course, from the Cold War through to the "war on terror" was a ruthless instrumentalization of this anxiety for purposes of expansion rather than defense. At the start of the Cold War you had the National Security Act and the creation of the National Security Council, and today we have the National Security Agency. Security became a euphemistic cloak for aggrandizement.

The United States occupies the better part of a continent separated by two immense oceans, which nobody in modern history has had any serious chance of invading, unlike any other major state in the world, all of which have contiguous land-borders with rival powers, or are separated from them only by narrow seas. The U.S. is protected by a unique geographical privilege. But if its expansion overseas cannot be attributed to imperatives of security, what has driven it?

A gifted and important group of historians, the Wisconsin school [which included the late William Appleman Williams, among others], has argued that the secret of American expansion has from the beginning lain in the quest by native capital for continuously larger markets, which first produced pressure on the internal frontier and the march across the continent to the Pacific, and when the West Coast was reached, a drive beyond into Asia and Latin America, and ultimately the rest of the world, under the ideology of the Open Door.

A couple of good scholars, Melvyn Leffler and Wilson Miscamble, one a liberal and the other a conservative, have identified my position with this tradition, taxing me with a belief that American foreign policy is essentially just an outgrowth of American business. This is a mistake. My argument is rather that because of the enormous size and self-sufficiency of the American economy, the material power at the disposal of the American state exceeded anything that American capital could directly make use of or require.

If you look at the First World War, you can see this very clearly. East Coast bankers and munitions manufacturers did well out of supplying the Entente powers, but there was no meaningful economic rationale for American entry into the war itself. The U.S. could tip the scales in favor of the British and French variants of imperialism against the German and Austrian variants without much cost to itself, but also much to gain.

The same gap between the reach of American business and the power of the American state explains the later hegemony of the United States within the advanced capitalist world after the Second World War. Standard histories wax lyrical in admiration of the disinterested U.S. generosity that revived Germany and Japan with the Marshall and Dodge Plans [reconstruction programs after 1945], and it is indeed the case that policies crafted at the State and Defense Departments did not coincide with the desiderata of the Commerce Department. The key requirement was to rebuild these former enemies as stable capitalist bulwarks against communism, even if this meant there could be no simple Open Door into them for U.S. capital.

For strategic political reasons, the Japanese were allowed to re-create a highly protected economy, and American capital was by and large barred entry. The priority was to defend the general integrity of capitalism as a global system against the threat of socialism, not particular returns to U.S. business. The importance of those were never, of course, ignored. But they had to bide their time. Today's Trans-Pacific Partnership will finally pry open Japanese financial, retail and other markets that have remained closed for so long.

Comments form marknesop.wordpress.com

Oddlots, September 26, 2015 at 9:38 am

This is full of insight to my mind:

http://www.salon.com/2015/09/23/how_america_built_its_empire_the_real_history_of_american_foreign_policy_that_the_media_wont_tell_you/

et Al, September 26, 2015 at 10:32 am

This stood out for me:

I'd like to turn to the origins of the Cold War, since I believe we are never going to get anywhere until these are honestly confronted. You give a forceful account of Stalin's reasons for avoiding confrontation after 1945 and Washington's reasons for not doing so. But should we attribute the outbreak of the Cold War to the U.S. without too much in the way of qualification?

We can look at the onset of the Cold War on two levels. One is that of punctual events. There, you are certainly right to pick out the ideological starting gun as Truman's speech on Greece in 1947, designed the "scare hell" out of voters to win acceptance for military aid to the Greek monarchy. In policy terms, however, the critical act that set the stage for confrontation with Moscow was the flat American refusal to allow any serious reparations for the staggering level of destruction Russia suffered from the German attack on it. The most developed third of the country was laid waste, its industry and its cities wrecked, while Americans suffered not a fly on the wrist at home-basking, on the contrary, in a massive economic boom. There was no issue Stalin spoke more insistently about than reparations in negotiations among the Allies. But once the fighting was over, the U.S. reneged on wartime promises and vetoed reparations from the larger part of Germany-far the richest and most developed, and occupied by the West - because it did not want to strengthen the Soviet Union and did want to rebuild the Ruhr as an industrial base under Western control, with a view to creating what would subsequently become the Federal Republic.

Oddlots, September 26, 2015 at 11:05 am

Agreed. I also think he helpfully callobrates the loss of European independence…

[Speaking of the era of De Gaulle, Adenauer and Eden] "Since then, there has been nobody like this. If we ask why, I think the answer is that all these people were formed before the First and Second World Wars broke out, in a period in which major European states had as much weight as the United States on the international checkerboard, if not more. They were not brought up in a world where American hegemony was taken for granted. All of them were involved in the two World Wars, and in the Second De Gaulle had good reason to be distrustful of the U.S., since Roosevelt was long pro-Vichy and wanted to oust him as leader of the Free French.

We could add, incidentally, a couple of later politicians, who fought in the second conflict. One was the English Tory prime minister, Edward Heath, the only postwar ruler of Britain who never made the trip to simper on the White House lawn, receiving an audience and paying tribute, that would become a virtual ceremony of investiture for any new ruler around the world. The other was Helmut Schmidt, a veteran of Operation Barbarossa [the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941] who scarcely concealed his disdain for Carter. These were latecomers from the past. Their successors have grown up under U.S. paramountcy and take it for granted. This is America's world. It is second nature for them to defer to it."

He also exposes that the crop that followed made a show of independence but toed the line:

"During the countdown to the war in Iraq, there were large street demonstrations in not a few countries, which Dominique Strauss-Kahn - no less - described as a European Declaration of Independence. Schröder [Gerhard, the German chancellor from 1998-2005] announced that Germany could not accept the war, and Chirac [Jacques, the French president, 1995-2007] blocked a U.N. resolution endorsing it. Were these bold acts of independence? Far from it. The French envoy in Washington told Bush in advance: You already have one U.N. resolution saying Saddam must comply with inspections, which is suitably vague. Don't embarrass us by trying to get another resolution that is more specific, which we'll have to oppose. Just use that one and go in. No sooner, indeed, was the attack launched than Chirac opened French skies to U.S. operations against Iraq. Can you imagine De Gaulle meekly helping a war he had said he opposed? As for Schröder, it was soon revealed that German intelligence agents in Baghdad had signaled ground targets for "Shock and Awe." These were politicians who knew the war was very unpopular in domestic opinion, and so made a show of opposing it while actually collaborating. Their independence was a comedy."

This last part was news to me.

[Sep 27, 2015] Ukraine was downgraded to default

"... the inept idiots in Kiev borrowed from whomever they wanted, including a group that helped push Argentina into near bankruptcy. ..."

"... "If Aurelius also refuses to take part, the bonds it holds will remain in default, potentially allowing the hedge fund to chase Ukraine in courts in London and elsewhere. "That bond will remain out there like some of the Argentine debt. Ukraine will remain in default," Nomura strategist Tim Ash said, although he noted that Ukraine had fewer assets than Argentina for hedge funds to seize." ..."

"... the judges in the US ruled in favor of the hedge fund over Argentina, so there's clear precedent ..."

Sep 27, 2015 | marknesop.wordpress.com

ucgsblog, September 26, 2015 at 12:55 pm

Time for Financial News. As a result of the Gas/Oil Wars, Russia pulled ahead, because Putin used the money intended for recapitalization of the gas/oil industry, to recapitalize the gas/oil industry. Some in the West are shocked at that, firmly believing that he was supposed to steal the money. Ah yes, the power of believing in your own propaganda.

In other news, Ukraine was downgraded to default: https://www.rt.com/business/316521-standardpoors-ukraine-selective-default/

Why you ask? Because the inept idiots in Kiev borrowed from whomever they wanted, including a group that helped push Argentina into near bankruptcy. And now they're about to do the same to Ukraine: http://www.buenosairesherald.com/article/199119/%E2%80%98vulture%E2%80%99-fund-aurelius-targets-ukraine-debt

"If Aurelius also refuses to take part, the bonds it holds will remain in default, potentially allowing the hedge fund to chase Ukraine in courts in London and elsewhere. "That bond will remain out there like some of the Argentine debt. Ukraine will remain in default," Nomura strategist Tim Ash said, although he noted that Ukraine had fewer assets than Argentina for hedge funds to seize."

Oh yeah, the judges in the US ruled in favor of the hedge fund over Argentina, so there's clear precedent. Whoopsie. The reason this looks really bad, is that there are no good solutions out of this. If Ukraine defaults, it'll be stuck permanently on the teat of the US/EU, as I predicted in June: https://ucgsblog.wordpress.com/2014/06/09/the-box-not-seen/

If the judges flip flop, Argentina will have a clear cut case against the hedge funds, pushing Obama into a battle with the hedge funds, when they have the Republicans on their side. If Obama pays this hedge fund, Franklin-Templeton will demand the same exact treatment, adding to Obama's sentiment as the Debt King of the United States. Not to mention that Congress wouldn't authorize that big a sum. There are no good options of out this, for either Poroshenko or Obama. To quote Gordon: "da, cheburashke ne vezet"

[Sep 27, 2015] Argentina vs vulture funds

"... The Argentine government managed to restructure about 93% of that debt through heavily discounted bond exchanges in 2005 and 2010. But a small group of investors refused to tender their defaulted bonds for new securities, and they have hounded Argentina in courts across the globe for close to a decade seeking full repayment. ..."

Sep 27, 2015 | marknesop.wordpress.com

et Al, September 26, 2015 at 1:44 pm

http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/06/30/argentina-vs-bondholders-the-epic-saga/

The Argentine government managed to restructure about 93% of that debt through heavily discounted bond exchanges in 2005 and 2010. But a small group of investors refused to tender their defaulted bonds for new securities, and they have hounded Argentina in courts across the globe for close to a decade seeking full repayment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentine_debt_restructuring

As part of the restructuring process, Argentina drafted agreements in which repayments would be handled through a New York corporation and governed by United States law. The holdout bondholders found themselves unable to seize Argentine sovereign assets in settlement, but realized that Argentina had omitted to provide for holdout situations and had instead deemed all bonds repayable on pari passu (equal) terms that prevented preferential treatment among bondholders. The holdout bondholders therefore sought, and won, an injunction in 2014 that prohibited Argentina from repaying the 93% of bonds that had been renegotiated, unless they simultaneously paid the 7% holdouts their full amount due as well. Together with the agreement's Rights Upon Future Offers ("RUFO") clause, this created a deadlock in which the 93% of renegotiated bondholders could not be paid without paying the 7% holdouts, but any payment to the holdouts would potentially (according to Argentina) trigger the 93% being due repayment at full value too; a sum of around $100 billion which Argentina could not afford.[6] The courts ruled that as Argentina had itself drafted the agreement, and chosen the terms it wished to propose, it could not now claim the terms were unreasonable or unfair, and that this could not be worked around by asserting sovereign status since the injunction did not affect sovereign assets, but simply ruled that Argentina must not give preferential treatment of any group of bondholders over any other group when making repayments.

…NML Capital Limited, a Cayman Islands-based offshore unit of Paul Singer's Elliott Management Corporation, purchased many holdings in 2008, paying an estimated USD49 million for one series of bonds whose face value was over USD220 million;[22] with the subsequent boom in Argentine bond values, this face value grew to USD832 million by 2014.[26] They in turn established the American Task Force Argentina lobbying group against Argentine bond restructuring efforts,[19] and sued to enjoin Argentina's ongoing payments to the bondholders who had participated in the earlier restructurings.[2]
####

Nothing can stop red blooded capitalists! I suspect that death is but a minor inconvenience.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhw9qvoxKMM

https://youtu.be/IXKEKQ8vU28

ucgsblog, September 26, 2015 at 1:55 pm

And this is what awaits Ukraine. Welcome to Capitalism Kiev, please read the small font. Oh, you don't read? Wonderful! We shall have a good time doing business together! How much for Dnepropetrovsk?

Warren, September 26, 2015 at 2:24 pm

These hold-out creditors aren't called fondo buitre for nothing!!!!!

[Sep 27, 2015] Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for Russian Foreign Ministry, grades Nuland's paper

September 16, 2015 | Fort Russ/Komsomolskaya Pravda

It is impossible to deal with cockroaches in one room while at the same time laying out little plates of bread crumbs on the other side of the wall.

Translated from Russian by Tom Winter

Translator's note: this press account is based on a post on Maria Zakharova's facebook page, and I have changed this account slightly in alignment with Zakharova's original text. It was not clear in KP what was Zakharova and what was KP. I think it is in this translation...

Head of the Information Department of the Russian Foreign Ministry wrote a "critical review" on the "Yalta speech" of the assistant US Secretary of State.

In Kiev, there was a conference "Yalta European Strategy". Already amazing. Yalta is in the Russian Crimea, and the "Yalta" conference was held in the Ukrainian capital. Well and good -- you couldn't miss that one!. But at this Yalta conference came the assistant US Secretary of State Victoria Nuland. Yes, the same one that passed out the cookies. But now, considered a shadow ruler of Ukraine, she points out to the Kiev authorities what to do. This time, Nuland said in a public speech:

- There should be no tolerance for those oligarchs who do not pay taxes. There must be zero tolerance for bribery and corruption, to those who would use violence for political ends.

And these words of the grande dame of the State Department could not be overlooked. Just think, Americans don't like it when their loans to Ukraine get stolen. And anti-oligarchic Maidan brought the very oligarchs to power, and corruption in the country has become even greater. Some of us have grown weary of this talk. But, let Nuland drone on ...

But then Russian Foreign Ministry official spokesman Maria Zakharova replied. So much so that not a stone was left on stone in the American's "Yalta speech":

"All this a little bit, just a little, looks like a lecture to the fox about how bad it is to steal chickens, but actually it surprised in other ways. As soon as Russian authorities began exposing the tax evasion, bribery, or corruption of the oligarchs, Victoria Nuland's office hastened to call zero tolerance "political repression" - Zakharova wrote on her facebook page.

It would be great to see the Department of State "show that same zero tolerance and inquire a bit about how the initial capital of the Russian (and Ukrainian would not hurt) oligarchs got started, those oligarchs who have been accused of corruption at home, but who, once in London, feel protected by the authorities, enjoying all the benefits of membership in the Club of Victims of Political Persecution" - continued Zakharova.

"It is impossible to deal with cockroaches in one room while at the same time laying out little plates of bread crumbs on the other side of the wall. Giving the green light to the dirty money from Russia and the former Soviet Union, the Western world is only boosting the zeal with which the domestic thieves shove their loot in foreign bins."

"Though perhaps," wonders the Foreign Minstiry spokesman "this is the actual purpose of the imaginary zero tolerance?"

"Why do people on Interpol's lists, by the decision of the Russian courts, prove their financial immorality, as they thrive in the Western capitals, and no alarm bells go off in the State Department?"

It turns out to be an interesting story: Taking fetid streams of notes, the West has just one requirement at the border crossing. Scream "victim of the regime." That's it! and you're in spades!

This calls to mind the old Soviet bribery password translated into modern American:

- In Soviet times, it was common phrase, revealing corrupt intent to proceed with plans insidious in varying degrees: "I'm from Ivan Ivanovich." Today the corresponding "Open Sesame" that opens the doors "in Europe and the best houses in Philadelphia," is the phrase "I'm running away from Vladimir".

Victoria, if you're going to start cleaning out the cockroaches, stop feeding them on your side.

[Sep 27, 2015] Putin Russia Supports Legitimate Governments, Unlike US

Sep 27, 2015 | www.newsmax.com

Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a "60 Minutes" interview aired Sunday that his country supports legitimately elected governments and accused the United States of doing the opposite in places such as Ukraine and Syria.

Correspondent Charlie Rose asked Putin specifically about his support for Syrian President Bashar Assad, whom the United States opposes.

"It's my deep belief that any actions to the contrary in order to destroy the legitimate government will create a situation which you can witness now in the other countries of the region or in other regions, for instance in Libya where all the state institutions are disintegrated," Putin said. "We see a similar situation in Iraq."

Rose said that the United States sees Assad as someone who kills his own people, but Putin argued that the United States backs terrorists in the battled because they want to overthrow Assad. The United States backs the Free Syrian Army in the three-way war between the Assad regime, the Islamic State (ISIS) and the FSA.

Putin also accused the United States of backing the overthrow of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who was friendly to Moscow.

Putin will address the United Nations on Monday, and denied he wants Russia to play a larger role in the world as a goal in itself.

"But you are in part a major power because of the nuclear weapons you have. You are a force to be reckoned with," Rose said.

"I hope so. I definitely hope so," Putin replied, laughing. "Otherwise why do we have nuclear weapons at all?"

Putin denied the belief in America that he is a czar-type figure or evil autocrat. He said he simply wants to see Russians who were split from their families be able to see each other again. Those bonds were split overnight when the old Soviet Union collapsed in the 1980s, he said.

Putin said he and President Barack Obama listen to each other after a fashion, "especially when it comes to something that doesn't go counter to our own ideas about what we should and should not do."

Rose noted that GOP presidential candidate Marco Rubio has described Putin as a gangster.

"How can I be a gangster if I worked for the KGB?" Putin asked. "Come on. That does not correspond to reality."

[Sep 27, 2015] 60 Minutes of Putin Quotes From Charlie Rose Interview

Brilliant instant reply on provocative question: "Once, somebody from the CIA told me that the training you have is important, that you learn to be liked as well. Because you have to charm people, you have to seduce them," Charlie Rose said. "Well, if the CIA told you so, then it must be true. They are experts on that," laughed the president.

I do not see full interview on YouTube. Large chunk can be found at Vladimir Putin 60 Minutes interview FULL 9-27-15 Vladimir Putin 60 minutes Interview Charlie Rose - YouTube

"... Reprinted in accordance with Sputnik reprint policy. ..."

Sep 27, 2015 | www.sputniknews.com

His love and pride for Russia, his pain over what is going on in Ukraine, his past as an intelligence officer and his attitude towards being called a czar – these are some of the issues brought up in Russian President Vladimir Putin's interview with American talk show host and journalist Charlie Rose.

Ahead of his much anticipated address at the 70th Session of the UN General Assembly in New York, Russian President Vladimir Putin sat down with American talk show host and journalist Charlie Rose to share his opinion on the today's hottest news topics.putin 60 minutes - 2

Putin on Ukraine:

'It is absolutely unacceptable to address issues, including controversial ones, as well as domestic issues of the former Soviet Republics through the so-called color revolutions, through coups and unconstitutional means of toppling the current government'.

Of course, Russia's closest neighbor, Ukraine, is part of the daily news agenda.

President Putin cast some light on why the Ukraine issue is such a huge problem for Russia.

"Ukraine is the closest country to us. We have always said that Ukraine is our sister country and it is true. It is not just a Slavic people, it is the closest people to Russia: we have similar languages, culture, common history, religion etc."

He also revealed what he believes is completely unacceptable for Russia.

"Addressing issues, including controversial ones, as well as domestic issues of the former Soviet Republics through the so-called colored revolutions, through coups and unconstitutional means of toppling the current government. That is absolutely unacceptable. Our partners in the United States are not trying to hide the fact that they supported those opposed to President Yanukovych."

Asked whether he believed the United States had something to do with the ousting of Yanukovych, causing him to flee to Russia, the president replied that he, in fact, knew this for sure, at the same time describing his sources.

"It is very simple. We have thousands of contacts and thousands of connections with people who live in Ukraine. And we know who had meetings and worked with people who overthrew Viktor Yanukovych, as well as when and where they did it."

"We know the ways the assistance was provided, we know how much they paid them, we know which territories and countries hosted training and how it was done, we know who the instructors were."

"We know everything. Well, actually, our US partners are not keeping it a secret."

Putin on the sovereignty of Ukraine: 'At no time in the past, now or in the future has or will Russia take any part in actions aimed at overthrowing the legitimate government.'

The Russian leader also stressed that Russia respects the sovereignty of Ukraine and Russia had not and would not take any part in any activities aimed at overthrowing the legitimate government of any country. He added that Russia would never resort to the use of the military force in such a case.

However, the president called on other countries to respect the sovereignty of other states, including Ukraine.

"Respecting the sovereignty means preventing coups, unconstitutional actions and illegitimate overthrowing of the legitimate government."

Putin on Russia's military presence in Ukraine: 'If we keep our troops on our territory on the border with some state, it is not a crime.'

The issue of Russia's military presence in Ukraine has long had the Western media in a flurry. But the Russian president explained it using the example of the US' military presence in Europe.

"US tactical nuclear weapons are in Europe, let us not forget this. Does it mean that the US has occupied Germany or that the US never stopped the occupation after World War II and only transformed the occupation troops into NATO forces?"

"And if we keep our troops on our territory on the border with some state, you see it is a crime?"

Putin on his rating and popularity: 'There is something that unites me and other citizens of Russia. It is love for our Motherland.'

The sufferings and hardships of the Second World War remain the unifying factor of the Russian nation.

"Yes, my family and my relatives as a whole suffered heavy losses during the Second World War. That is true. In my father's family there were five brothers and four of them were killed, I believe. On my mother's side the situation is much the same."

"In general, Russia suffered heavily. No doubt, we cannot forget that and we must not forget, not to accuse anyone but to ensure that nothing of the kind ever happens again."

Putin on democracy: 'There can be no democracy without observing the law and everyone must observe it – that is the most basic and important thing that we all should remember.'

The president explained that the most important thing in the country's domestic policy is to continue improving the political system so that every citizen feels that they can influence the life of the state and society, they can influence the authorities, and so that the authorities will be aware of their responsibility before those people who gave their confidence to the representatives of the authorities in the elections.

As for those tragic incidents where lives are lost, including those of journalists, unfortunately, it happens in all countries around the world, he said.

But if it occurs in Russia, the president stressed, the authorities take every step possible to ensure that the perpetrators are found, identified and punished.

There were a number of questions that made the president smile and answer light-heartedly.

Putin on the disintegration of the Soviet Union and recreation of the Soviet empire: 'The Russians have turned out to be the largest divided nation in the world nowadays.

The host's question on the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the possible recreation of a sphere of influence, which President Putin might think Russia deserves, made him smile.

"Your questions make me happy," he responded. "Somebody is always suspecting Russia of having some ambitions, there are always those who are trying to misinterpret us or keep something back."

"I did say that I see the collapse of the Soviet Union as a great tragedy of the 20th century. Do you know why? First of all, because 25 million Russian people suddenly turned out to be outside the borders of the Russian Federation."

"They used to live in one state; the Soviet Union has traditionally been called Russia, the Soviet Russia, and it was the great Russia. They used to live in one country and suddenly found themselves abroad. Can you imagine how many problems came about?"

"First, there were everyday issues, the separation of families, economic and social problems. The list is endless."

"Do you think it is normal that 25 million people, Russian people, suddenly found themselves abroad?"

"The Russians have turned out to be the largest divided nation in the world nowadays. Is that not a problem? It is not a problem for you as it is for me."

And then there were some personal questions, such as how he feels being called a czar.

The president light-heartedly answered that the title does not fit him, though he is used to being called many different things. In fact, it does not matter to him what people call him.

He also talked about his past as an intelligence officer, admitting that every stage of one's life has an impact on the person.

"Whatever we do, all the knowledge, the experience, it stays with us, we carry it, use it in one way or another. In this sense, yes, you are right - there is no such thing as a former KGB man. Once a KGB man, always a KGB man."

But then laughed while answering the host's question:

"Once, somebody from the CIA told me that the training you have is important, that you learn to be liked as well. Because you have to charm people, you have to seduce them," Charlie Rose said.

"Well, if the CIA told you so, then it must be true. They are experts on that," laughed the president.

President Putin refused to assess the President of the United States, saying he is not entitled to do that. This is up to the American people.

Finally he revealed what is most important to him.

"What is important is what you think you must do in the interests of the country, which put you in such position, such a position as the Head of the Russian State."

See also:

• 2 Reasons Why US Does Not Want to Win Wars It Instigates Worldwide
• The President's Speech: Best Quotes of Vladimir Putin Ahead of UN General Assembly Address
• Charlie Rose's Vladimir Putin Interview Takeaway - YouTube
• Answer to a question at St Petersburg International Economic Forum session - YouTube
• Assange on 'US Empire', Assad govt overthrow plans & new book 'The WikiLeaks Files' (EXCLUSIVE) - YouTube

Reprinted in accordance with Sputnik reprint policy.

[Sep 27, 2015] Since st least 2009 GCHQ has targeted a range of popular websites as part of an effort to covertly collect cookies on a massive scale

BBC used by GCHQ to spy on Internet users https://theintercept.com/2015/09/25/gchq-radio-porn-spies-track-web-users-online-identities/

"... I do wonder though, with all those stories about those thousands of Kremlin controlled Russian trolls on British news websites, whether some of this comes from carefully massaged data from GCHQ through third parties to the Pork Pie News Networks via 'unnamed sources', i.e. the usual bollox. ..."

"... …The agency operates a bewildering array of other eavesdropping systems, each serving its own specific purpose and designated a unique code name, such as: …and INFINITE MONKEYS, which analyzes data about the usage of online bulletin boards and forums… ..."

"... Once you understand the relationship and the goals that they have, you can work backwards and make fairly good conclusions about what tools would be required and used to get to those conclusions and try not think whether they are legal or not. ..."

"... The most disturbing thing about it all is that it puts us one step away from a totalitarian system. All that is required is a political decision. ..."

"... Forget about 'checks and balances' – they're the first thing to be thrown out of the window in an emergency. Arbeit macht frei! ..."

"... GCHQ and the CIA are in bed with one another, and have been for years. This might be a timely occasion to mention once again that both are capable of hacking into smartphones by all leading manufacturers; in the case of the IPhone the CIA uses a program application called Dropout Jeep. ..."

"... the CIA also diverted laptops ordered online so that government spyware could be installed on them. ..."

"... You can't believe anyone any more. ..."

Sep 27, 2015 | marknesop.wordpress.com

Warren, September 25, 2015 at 2:25 pm

https://theintercept.com/2015/09/25/gchq-radio-porn-spies-track-web-users-online-identities/

et Al, September 26, 2015 at 4:23 am

A top-secret GCHQ document from March 2009 reveals the agency has targeted a range of popular websites as part of an effort to covertly collect cookies on a massive scale. It shows a sample search in which the agency was extracting data from cookies containing information about people's visits to the adult website YouPorn, search engines Yahoo and Google, and the Reuters news website.

Other websites listed as "sources" of cookies in the 2009 document (see below) are Hotmail, YouTube, Facebook, Reddit, WordPress, Amazon, and sites operated by the broadcasters CNN, BBC, and the U.K.'s Channel 4.

…A top-secret GCHQ document from March 2009 reveals the agency has targeted a range of popular websites as part of an effort to covertly collect cookies on a massive scale. It shows a sample search in which the agency was extracting data from cookies containing information about people's visits to the adult website YouPorn, search engines Yahoo and Google, and the Reuters news website.

Other websites listed as "sources" of cookies in the 2009 document (see below) are Hotmail, YouTube, Facebook, Reddit, WordPress, Amazon, and sites operated by the broadcasters CNN, BBC, and the U.K.'s Channel 4…
###

And I bet the Guardian too as it is 'the world's most widely read new site'. They probably keep automatic tabs on this site considering how it has grown over the last couple of years.

I do wonder though, with all those stories about those thousands of Kremlin controlled Russian trolls on British news websites, whether some of this comes from carefully massaged data from GCHQ through third parties to the Pork Pie News Networks via 'unnamed sources', i.e. the usual bollox.

May I suggest to fellow commenters here, if at any point you loose your smart phone (etc.) just call GCHQ and they'll tell you where you left it. I wonder if they provide a data back up service?!

et Al, September 26, 2015 at 4:48 am

…The agency operates a bewildering array of other eavesdropping systems, each serving its own specific purpose and designated a unique code name, such as: …and INFINITE MONKEYS, which analyzes data about the usage of online bulletin boards and forums…

…Authorization is "not needed for individuals in the U.K.," another GCHQ document explains, because metadata has been judged "less intrusive than communications content." All the spies are required to do to mine the metadata troves is write a short "justification" or "reason" for each search they conduct and then click a button on their computer screen…

…When compared to surveillance rules in place in the U.S., GCHQ notes in one document that the U.K. has "a light oversight regime."

The more lax British spying regulations are reflected in secret internal rules that highlight greater restrictions on how NSA databases can be accessed. The NSA's troves can be searched for data on British citizens, one document states, but they cannot be mined for information about Americans or other citizens from countries in the Five Eyes alliance….
#####

It's just what is expected from the junior in the US/UK relationship. For the UK to retain privileged access to the US' global spy network, it needs to give the US what it wants, a way to circumvent the US' own laws. Dial back to when Gary Powers & his U-2 were shot down over the Soviet Union. All subsequent overflights by US manned and operated aircraft were prohibited, so, the US used British pilots and Canberras.

Once you understand the relationship and the goals that they have, you can work backwards and make fairly good conclusions about what tools would be required and used to get to those conclusions and try not think whether they are legal or not.

What people can do to protect themselves is

1. don't change most of your digital habits (as this would raise a flag);
2. just don't do or say obvious things that you wouldn't do in real life in your digital life;
3. use encryption such as PGP for email and products using perfect forward secrecy for chat/etc.;
4. don't write about what not to do on the Internet as I have just done! ;)

The most disturbing thing about it all is that it puts us one step away from a totalitarian system. All that is required is a political decision. All the tools are in place and depending on how much information they have actually kept they can dip in to it at any time throughout your life as a rich source of blackmail, probably via third parties. It's not exactly threatening to send you to a concentration camp (or disappeared to one of Britain's (and others) many small overseas territories, but it is total control.

If the European economy completely crashes and mass instability ensues (or whatever), then the politicians will be told, or even ask, "What tools do we have to control this?".

Forget about 'checks and balances' – they're the first thing to be thrown out of the window in an emergency. Arbeit macht frei!

et Al, September 26, 2015 at 9:52 am

This should be a massive story as the parliamentary security committee gave the intelligence services a 'clean bill of health' not so long ago. Since then, they've lost intelligence 'yes man' Malcolm Rifkind to an expenses scandal so the make up of the committee has changed a bit.

What it does show is that we cannot even trust the gatekeepers (above) who are give very limited info from the security services. And let us not forget the dates that this occurred under a Labor administration and continued under a Conservative-Liberal Democrat and now a Conservative one.

It will be interesting to see if this story gains any traction, though I suspect that it will be much bigger outside of the UK, at least initially. The cat is, again, out of the bag!

marknesop, September 26, 2015 at 2:38 pm

GCHQ and the CIA are in bed with one another, and have been for years. This might be a timely occasion to mention once again that both are capable of hacking into smartphones by all leading manufacturers; in the case of the IPhone the CIA uses a program application called Dropout Jeep.

We can thank Edward Snowden for that; the NSA spying scandal revealed a great deal more than just the information the CIA is snooping on your phone calls and collecting information on everyone. As the second reference relates, the CIA also diverted laptops ordered online so that government spyware could be installed on them. Intelligence agencies are determined that citizens shall have no privacy whatsoever. You might as well assume they are watching everything you do and listening to everything you say. Give the window the finger at random times just in case, and slip embarrassing revelations on the sexual proclivities of intelligence agents into your telephone conversations.

Canada's Blackberry was once safe, but GCHQ broke that. So now there is no smartphone that is private, except maybe for Russia's YotaPhone. Probably not that either, though, since it is sold in the USA, and if they couldn't break into the phone they would just hack the carrier. And the Canadian government bought all of its Secure Telephone Units (STU) from the NSA, so say no more about the "security" of those.

A few companies, like Silent Circle, pitch a privacy phone like the Blackphone, but it originates in the USA and everyone's paranoia has become so acute that the instant suspicion is they are telling you it is more private just because it is wired straight to the NSA.

You can't believe anyone any more.

[Sep 27, 2015] If Putin wants to dest4ruct Ukraine he got a lot of competition from the EU, US and NATO

Sep 27, 2015 | marknesop.wordpress.com

Oddlots, September 25, 2015 at 5:04 pm

This is kind of interesting as Mearshimer comes to conclusions I'm sure most here would agree with but also some opinions that would seem ludicrous. According to him Putin's strategy is to wreck Ukraine… If that's the case he's got a lot of competition from the EU, U.S. and NATO and would be wasting his efforts as the former seem entirely capable of achieving the goal without any further assistance:

http://scotthorton.org/interviews/2014/08/21/082114-john-j-mearsheimer/

[Sep 27, 2015] ClubOrlov Americas Latest Foreign Policy Fiascos, Part I

"... It caused Russia's "nonsystemic opposition" - so called because it can never garner enough votes to win any election anywhere - which has been financed by American NGOs and transnational oligarchs like Soros, Khodorkovsky and others, to pretty much fade from the Russian political scene altogether ..."

"... It has increased the popularity of Russia's government, and Vladimir Putin personally while making the average Russian greatly dislike the US in particular, and mistrust the West in general ..."

"... It has provided Russia with a bonanza in the form of 1.5 million additional Russians, in the form of refugees from the economically collapsed, war-torn Ukraine. ..."

"... America has no foreign policy; it just has a military with the sole intent of using it... As the old saw goes; when all one has is a hammer, everything looks like a nail ..."

"... One advantage the West has derived from this fiasco is that the Ukraine is now another debt slave nation a la Greece without the benefit(?) of being a member of the EU or the Eurozone. ..."

"... In any case, Roberts makes it clear the the neo-conservatives (Nuland and her husband Robert Kagan, etc.) are still dictating much of Washington's foreign policy, and it doesn't seem to matter that the neo-conservatives have done nothing but ruin everything they've touched. They stay in power anyway. Maybe that's their goal, to destroy foreign nations whose resources they (and their clients, certain large corporations) covet, particularly in North Africa, the Middle East and maybe even the Ukraine. ..."

Sep 27, 2015 | cluborlov.blogspot.ca

Some 15 months ago I published a piece on American Foreign Policy Fiascos, in which I summarized the significant negative progress that has been achieved through American involvement in Afghanistan, Iraq and Georgia, among others, and then went on to boldly predict that the Ukraine is likewise going to turn out to be another American foreign policy fiasco. Since then it certainly has turned into one.

US meddling in the Ukraine has produced none of the results it was intended to produce:

• It didn't isolate Russia internationally
  
• It didn't destroy Russia's economy
  
• It didn't pull Russia into a futile, unpopular, bloody conflict
  
• It didn't produce regime change within Russia

Just the opposite:

• It prompted Russia, China and several other countries to opt for closer economic and security ties
  
• It motivated Russia to think seriously about import replacement, giving its domestic economy a big boost
  
• It made the US and NATO part to a bloody conflict in Eastern Ukraine while Russia has steadfastly stood on the sidelines providing humanitarian aid
  
• It caused Russia's "nonsystemic opposition" - so called because it can never garner enough votes to win any election anywhere - which has been financed by American NGOs and transnational oligarchs like Soros, Khodorkovsky and others, to pretty much fade from the Russian political scene altogether, all the while complaining bitterly about the horrible Russian people who don't understand them and the lack of imported French cheeses, not to mention the pâtés; please, don't get them started on the pâtés-that would be simply too cruel.

And then here are some bonus points:

• It has increased the popularity of Russia's government, and Vladimir Putin personally while making the average Russian greatly dislike the US in particular, and mistrust the West in general
  
• It has driven a political wedge between the US and the EU, with EU member-states now starting to dimly discern for the first time that US policies are undermining rather than enhancing their security
  
• It has provided Russia with a bonanza in the form of 1.5 million additional Russians, in the form of refugees from the economically collapsed, war-torn Ukraine.
  
• It has put Russia in a position where it can just sit back and let the US, NATO and their puppets in the Ukraine twist in the wind, or soak in a cesspool of their own creation, or sit back and watch as a dunce's cap is lowered onto their collective head while circus music plays-or your own hyperbolic metaphor-but their level of embarrassment is already high and getting higher.

The last two points warrant some further discussion.

V. Arnold said...

I would say that's a fair assessment of the "situation" in Ukraine. President Putin has played the hand dealt to him masterfully.

Syria? Once again Pres. Putin has shown his resolve and tactical expertise.

America has no foreign policy; it just has a military with the sole intent of using it... As the old saw goes; when all one has is a hammer, everything looks like a nail

B. Green said...

One advantage the West has derived from this fiasco is that the Ukraine is now another debt slave nation a la Greece without the benefit(?) of being a member of the EU or the Eurozone. They are becoming another Troika puppet selling off assets at fire sale prices, cutting pensions, etc., etc. And let us not forget the Disaster Capitalists who will swoop in to profit from any war damage or infrastructure collapse.

Marc L Bernstein said...

Some articles by Paul Craig Roberts and Steve Lendman:

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2015/09/23/russias-false-hopes-paul-craig-roberts/

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2015/09/us-cooperation-with-russia-on-syria.html

Roberts says:

"Russia can end the Ukraine crisis by simply accepting the requests of the former Russian territories to reunite with Russia. Once the breakaway republics are again part of Russia, the crisis is over. Ukraine is not going to attack Russia."

It can't be quite as simple as Roberts portrays. Maybe this will eventually happen but only after Ukraine is on the verge of collapse as a sovereign nation.

In any case, Roberts makes it clear the the neo-conservatives (Nuland and her husband Robert Kagan, etc.) are still dictating much of Washington's foreign policy, and it doesn't seem to matter that the neo-conservatives have done nothing but ruin everything they've touched. They stay in power anyway. Maybe that's their goal, to destroy foreign nations whose resources they (and their clients, certain large corporations) covet, particularly in North Africa, the Middle East and maybe even the Ukraine.

It's a lot easier to destroy things than it is to repair them.

[Sep 27, 2015] On the curious bigotry and racism of #Russias pro-Western liberals

Sep 27, 2015 | www.facebook.com

Sep 24, 2015

Mark Sleboda

On the curious bigotry and racism of #Russia's pro-Western "liberals":

Scratch a Russian "liberal" who fetishes the West and below the surface nearly every time you will find bigoted ethnic nationalism & racism.

Russian liberals as a rule have nothing but contempt & loathing for Russia's 188+ ethnic minorities and other Eurasian peoples....

Russia's liberals see the Eurasian minorities & immigrants as a weight holding Russia, and themselves personally, back from their longed-for Western aspirations & assimilation. They despise them for this. Russia's inner-Orient provoking a self-loathing Orientalism. They see the West as "Civilization" (singular, capital "C" ) and Russia's Eurasian peoples as the barbarian "Other".

Ex. The near universal reaction of Russia's liberals I personally know to the building of the Cathedral Mosque in Moscow was a very visceral horror & outrage - directed against Putin.

This curious phenomenon is at its most obvious in the liberals adoration of the neoliberal-ultranationalist Alexei Navalny and their seething hatred of Ramzan Kadyrov.

See More

Petri Krohn

The driving force of all forms of "Euro integration" and Color Revolution is a racist belief in the racial superiority of West European whites. "Liberals" believe that by "democratization" and "integration" they can make themselves more European, more white. What they most yearn for is acceptance as "equals" by White Anglo-Saxons and their ecclesiastical class in Hollywood.

Aaron Thomas

Its only going to get worse as the world cup approaches. There actually is a problem with racism in russian soccer. But you know they'll use it to describe russia as a whole.

Mark Sleboda

Find me a European country without racism among football fans. Completely turned me off from the soccer I grew up playing

Constantine Goh Curious.

The situation is similar with Chinese liberals.

Michal Mazur

Russia's liberals - sounds like beginning of a joke smile emoticon But bear in mind that somewhere in between Russia and West, things are little bit different. For instance, Poland & Lithuania (actually Lithuania / Belarus) were able to successfully integrate their Tatar muslim minorities even before 17th century. Russia is still 'work in progress' since Caucasus region tends to be a little bit more troublesome sometimes, and this progress has to be appreciated.

Зоран Радишић

Similar with Serbian "liberals" too. I think that these are not necessarily "ideological liberals", as much as they are often simply suffering from an inferiority complex and consider all things Western as superior not only to central Asians or Middle Easterners, but to their own culture and race as well. In the 1930s & '40s the likes of these were nazi and fascist sympathizers and enthusiastic collaborators when the opportunity rose, because it was the Western crap of the day. Now they are "liberals", tomorrow they will follow the next political monstrosity, etc.

[Sep 27, 2015] BBC anti-russian propaganda -- WWII German women rape story

"... During the Balkan wars of the 1990's both the Croatians and the Bosnian muslims, but not the Serbs, hired US public relations firms to 'manage' public perceptions of their activities. A guy who was a head honchos one of these PR firms was asked what aspects of the media campaigns he was most proud of and he replied that it was getting the influential Jewish lobby onside in the demonisation of the Serbs. ..."

"... I see the constant identification of Soviet soldiers with rape and other atrocities as part of this perception management culture. ..."

"... The reality is that rape, like other lawlessness, is an inevitable consequence of war and that all soldiers, Americans, British, French, German, Russians, committed these crimes. ..."

"... That is quite right. It is all about smear. But the claim of 2 million rapes is a gross exaggeration that has not a shred of evidence to back it up. The true figure is not even 10 time less, it is likely to be around 100 times less and in the same range as the western allies. ..."

"... Given the mass murder of civilians perpetrated by the Nazis, not collateral damage but actual rounding up and shooting or burning villagers in their own homes, why were the Soviet soldiers only worried about rape? If they were seeking revenge they would have been burning Germans alive. I have not heard of a single such instance. So the rape story is utter BS. ..."

Sep 27, 2015 | marknesop.wordpress.com

Warren, September 25, 2015 at 2:26 pm

http://www.rt.com/news/316518-bbc-wwii-rapist-monument/

Pavlo Svolochenko, September 25, 2015 at 2:49 pm

The BBC really should be treated as a terrorist organisation – or at least accorded the legal status of a paedophile ring.

Warren, September 25, 2015 at 3:04 pm

The BBC serves the British state, its mission is to disseminate propaganda that serves interests of the British state – it is a state broadcaster after all!

kirill, September 25, 2015 at 4:33 pm

So we are back to the tired rape trope. Where are the German abortion and murder records to prove that there 2 million rapes? I can claim the moon is made of green cheese but without any actual evidence it means nothing.

Fern, September 25, 2015 at 7:22 pm

During the Balkan wars of the 1990's both the Croatians and the Bosnian muslims, but not the Serbs, hired US public relations firms to 'manage' public perceptions of their activities. A guy who was a head honchos one of these PR firms was asked what aspects of the media campaigns he was most proud of and he replied that it was getting the influential Jewish lobby onside in the demonisation of the Serbs.

Things have moved on a little since then and there are now three important lobbies any public perception manager needs to get onboard. Firstly, there's still the Jewish lobby attested to by the great effort undertaken to pin a gas attack on Bashar al-Assad. Any such attack, of course, is Auschwitz redux and guarantees a compulsion to act by the 'international community'. Secondly, there's the women's movement hence the enormous effort that been put into establishing that Public Enemies (Serbs, Gaddafi etc) use rape systemically, as a weapon of war. And thirdly, there's the LGBT lobby which is a comparatively new kid on the block but did sterling service in Sochi.

I see the constant identification of Soviet soldiers with rape and other atrocities as part of this perception management culture. It reinforces a meme that is becoming increasingly common – the conflation of Nazism and Communism – the Nazi war machine and those who destroyed it are as bad as one another. And if the Soviets are exclusively identified with rape, they become uniquely bad in modern eyes. And if the Soviets are bad, well, the Russians are too.

The reality is that rape, like other lawlessness, is an inevitable consequence of war and that all soldiers, Americans, British, French, German, Russians, committed these crimes. It's why the Nuremburg judgements call the waging of aggressive war the supreme international crime that contains within it all the other lesser crimes – like rape – that invariably follow. Angelina Jolie is probably a sincere woman but if she wants to stop rape in war, she needs to stop war.

kirill, September 25, 2015 at 8:02 pm

That is quite right. It is all about smear. But the claim of 2 million rapes is a gross exaggeration that has not a shred of evidence to back it up. The true figure is not even 10 time less, it is likely to be around 100 times less and in the same range as the western allies.

Given the mass murder of civilians perpetrated by the Nazis, not collateral damage but actual rounding up and shooting or burning villagers in their own homes, why were the Soviet soldiers only worried about rape? If they were seeking revenge they would have been burning Germans alive. I have not heard of a single such instance. So the rape story is utter BS.

Patient Observer, September 25, 2015 at 8:34 pm

That is a good point that I have not heard before.

et Al, September 26, 2015 at 3:58 am

During the Balkan wars of the 1990's both the Croatians and the Bosnian muslims, but not the Serbs, hired US public relations firms to 'manage' public perceptions of their activities.
####

The Serbs did hire a PR firm, but it was squeezed and ultimately forced to drop the account. The name of the firm escapes me…

For bosnia, look up James Harff and Ruder-Finn & Knowlton bosnia or look here:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=James_Harff

The UK peer Dame Anne Warburton (Warburton II report)* lead an 'investigation' in to Bosnian war rapes in 1992 that had to speculate the actual number of war rapes to date but found very little evidence to back up the numbers claimed by the media.

http://www.nytimes.com/1993/01/09/world/european-inquiry-says-serbs-forces-have-raped-20000.html

This letter to the editor is quite succinct (goes straight to pdf):
http://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1813&context=ree

http://www.womenaid.org/press/info/humanrights/warburtonfull.htm
* "…However, on the basis of its investigations, the Mission accepts that it is possible to speak in terms of many thousands. Estimates vary widely, ranging from 10,000 to as many as 60,000. The most reasoned estimates suggested to the Mission place the number of victims at around 20,000."

marknesop, September 26, 2015 at 9:41 am

Hill & Knowlton is also the PR Firm that managed the Iraq War for Kuwait, and coached the fake "Kuwaiti nurse" (actually the Kuwaiti Ambassador's daughter) in her "Saddam's animals ripped babies out of incubators" story. Worked like a charm. No truth to it at all, though. To me, that stands exemplary of the modern western spin-management technique – sit down as a team and figure out what it would take to get the public on your side. Then invent a situation where that happened.

[Sep 27, 2015] Damage inflicted on the Soviet Union by delay of the invasion of France

A delay characterized by General Eisenhower as an act of betrayal

"... Most Americans have the delusion that the US is pure benevolence, an honorable country that is a moral example to the world. Gag me with a spoon. ..."

Sep 27, 2015 | marknesop.wordpress.com

Patient Observer, September 26, 2015 at 5:02 pm

Many would argue that active planning began for the Cold War by the West after a Soviet victory was certain (circa early 1943). The initial phase may have been to maximize damage to the Soviet Union by delay of the invasion of France (a delay characterized by General Eisenhower as an act of betrayal) among other things. Another major indicator that the Cold War was in full bloom prior to the end of hostilities was the nuclear attack on Japan which was intended to evaluate the effects of nuclear explosions on civilian cities for a future attacks (i.e. Soviet cities) and a warning to the Soviet Union that the US will commit mass murder against defenseless civilians.

The denial of reparations was yet another example that the West had nothing but hostility for the Soviets. Speaking of denials and breaking of promises, Vietnam was apparently promised reparations by the US but later reneged. Per Wikipedia:

"Following the war, Hanoi pursued the establishment of diplomatic relations with the United States, initially in order to obtain US$3.3 billion in reconstruction aid, which President Richard M. Nixon had secretly promised after the Paris Agreement was signed in 1973. … Barely two months after Hanoi's victory in 1975, Premier Pham Van Dong, speaking to the National Assembly, invited the United States to normalize relations with Vietnam and to honor its commitment to provide reconstruction funds. Representatives of two American banks-the Bank of America and First National City Bank-were invited to discuss trade possibilities, and American oil companies were informed that they were welcome to apply for concessions to search for oil in offshore Vietnamese waters.

Washington neglected Dong's call for normal relations, however, because it was predicated on reparations, and the Washington political climate in the wake of the war precluded the pursuit of such an outcome."

Most Americans have the delusion that the US is pure benevolence, an honorable country that is a moral example to the world. Gag me with a spoon.

[Sep 27, 2015] Meet The Man Who Prevented World War III

Sep 27, 2015 | Zero Hedge

Submitted by Erico Matias Tavares via Sinclair & Co.,

You may have never heard of Vasili Arkhipov. And yet life as we know it on this planet could have ended if it were not for his crucial intervention during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Born in 1926, Arkhipov saw action as a minesweeper during the Soviet-Japanese war in August 1945. Two years later he graduated from the Caspian Higher Naval School, serving in the Black Sea and Baltic submarine fleets – just in time for the start of the Cold War, which would stay with him for the rest of his service.

... ... ...

Arkhipov was second-in-command in the nuclear-armed Foxtrot-class submarine B-59, part of a flotilla of four submarines protecting Soviet ships on their way to Cuba. On October 27, as they approached the US imposed quarantine line, US Navy ships in pursuit started dropping depth charges to force the B-59 to surface for identification – completely unaware that it was carrying nuclear weapons.

The explosions rocked the submarine which went dark except for emergency lights. With the air-conditioning down, temperature and carbon dioxide levels rose sharply. The crew was hardly able to breathe.

Unable to contact Moscow and under pressure from the Americans for several hours, Captain Valentin Savitsky finally lost his nerve. He assumed that war had broken out between the two countries and decided to launch a nuclear torpedo. He would not go down without a fight.

However, unlike the other submarines in the flotilla, the three officers onboard the B-59 had to agree unanimously to launch the nuclear torpedo. As the other officer sided with Savitsky, only Arkhipov stood in the way of launching World War III.

An argument broke out between the three, but Arkhipov was able to convince the Captain not to launch the torpedo. How was he able to prevail under such stressful conditions? He was actually in charge of the entire flotilla and as such was equal in rank to Savitsky. But the reputation he had gained during the K-19 incident may have been the decisive factor in convincing the other officers to abort the launch. That detail may have made all the difference.

The submarine eventually surfaced and awaited orders from Moscow, averting what would have been a nuclear holocaust. The Cuban Missile Crisis ended a few days later.

This crucial episode of the Cold War only became known to the West after the collapse of the Soviet Union many years later.

Arkhipov continued to serve in the Soviet Navy, commanding submarines and later submarine squadrons. He was promoted to rear admiral in 1975 and became head of the Kirov Naval Academy. In 1981, he was promoted to vice admiral, retiring a few years later. The radiation he was exposed to in the K-19 incident contributed to his death in 1998, at age 72.

It is frightening to ponder how closely the civilized world came to the brink of extinction. It was only a click away, with two out of three in favor.

It may not have been the only time either. Who knows how many more Soviet and American personnel played a decisive role in averting nuclear annihilation? One person can indeed change the fate of the world.

We should never let their stories be forgotten.

[Sep 27, 2015] The moral universe of the corporate killers

Sep 27, 2015 | www.samefacts.com

Stuart_Levine

Mark--The passage "As Paul Krugman points out" links not to PK, but to a Brad Plummer Vox article. I assume that you wanted to link to PK's column in this AM's NYT.

BTW, you may want to point to this Jeb! Tweet: http://bit.ly/1gVFixr I think that he may have set a record for the total number of horribly bad policy positions that one can advocate in 140 characters or less.

liberalhistorian

Couple of side bar comments:

...and apparently the buzz in the automotive world is that "everyone" was doing it...

Anybody who thinks Mr. Cook and Apple can't disrupt the automobile industry clearly isn't paying attention to the automobile industry. It seems designed more by cads than CAD. Smart elegant design? The auto industry is retrogressive: low hanging fruit. The whole damn kit: from CEOs to Dealers to Mechanics you can't trust. It's a moral atrocity.

Apple can and will seize the wheel and make a ton of money doing so...

As Paul Krugman points out, the scandal makes a nice counterpoint with Jeb Bush's latest "anti-regulation" rant.

Another nice counterpoint: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27867-cod-...

Of course there are many others. And of course there are also many cases of over-regulation. But you don't win an argument for smart regulation unless you have plenty of examples to draw from. I suspect Mrs. Clinton will be well-armed that way come the big time debates with Jeb!

Brett

Fisher's reaction is so typical for many economic libertarians that I've met. They can't really dismiss environmental problems altogether, so instead they diminish and minimize - "Oh, it's just some marginal emissions/a small amount of forest land/a little pollution into the river! What's the harm? And do you really want to hurt an important company that employs thousands over it over a little bit of dirty air?"

Jarndyce

Mark is too easy on both VW and GM in this paragraph:

"That's not as bad as an ordinary murder, where the killer picks out a specific victim, because being personally singled out to be killed is somehow worse than being a random victim. But in both the GM case and the VW case, people wound up dead (or injured, or sick) through the choice of someone else. In the GM case, the company's culpability was mostly passive: it made a design or manufacturing mistake and then didn't disclose it or act promptly or adequately to fix it. What VW did was much worse: the 'defeat software' wasn't a defect, but a deliberate decision to break the law with the predictable consequence of killing hundreds of people, at least twice as many as died of GM's malfeasance. I don't think you need to live in Marin County to find that objectionable."

The pertinent question is whether VW or GM knew that people would die as a result of their actions. If they did, then they are as culpable as an ordinary murderer, despite not having picked out a specific victim or having acted "passively" in deciding not to disclose their mistake. They are comparable to a person who randomly fires a machine gun in a crowd.

David T

One of the ICCT engineers who uncovered this seems to be telling every news shop that will listen that people should be checking other automakers for the same problem. VW's behavior is so appalling and frankly stupid (destroy a company to sell a few diesels? It's not even their biggest product line) that it's hard to understand what they could have possibly been thinking. The general amorality of corporate culture may be part of it. But I wonder if there was a bit of "everybody else is doing it" going on here too. (BMW must be pretty happy that their car passed.)

Keith_Humphreys

Perfect movie reference(The Third Man, 1949). The sociopathic black marketeer Harry Lime is played by Orson Welles and his moral American friend Holly Martins by Joseph Cotten. As they ride in a Ferris wheel far above the people of Vienna, this exchange occurs:

Martins: Have you ever seen any of your victims?

Harry: You know, I never feel comfortable on these sort of things. Victims? Don't be melodramatic. [gestures to people far below] Tell me. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money, or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare? Free of income tax, old man. Free of income tax - the only way you can save money nowadays.

Clip: https://vimeo.com/76843899

egorelick

Ok. This may be an extremely stupid question, but how do we know that this was illegal? Many regulations of this type in the electronics/telecommunications field are overspecified and everybody knows the tests (and they cheat in similar fashions if not so explicitly and in such wholesale fashion). If the regulation was written to state that an engine will pass the following test then that's what would be built. Unless there was an explicit prohibition in switching modes or a requirement that the test mode be comparable to driving mode then the engineers may have just seen it as a game. So I'm not defending the amorality of this, but the question of conspiracy is harder to prove if it may not be illegal except under the EPA's theory. And if it wasn't obviously illegal, then what is the moral obligation of the worker to trade-off their livelihood for exposing the fraud.

[Sep 27, 2015] How America built its empire The real history of American foreign policy that the media won't tell you

Sep 27, 2015 | www.salon.com

Salon.com

The book tries to do two things. One is to cover the history of American foreign policy, from around 1900 to the present, tracing the gradual construction of a global empire. This first really came into view as a prospect during the Second World War and is today a reality across all five continents, as a glance at the skein of its military bases makes clear. The Cold War was a central episode within this trajectory, but the book doesn't treat just the U.S. record vis-á-vis the USSR or China. It tries to deal equally with American relations with the Europe and Japan, and also with the Third World, treated not as a homogenous entity but as four or five zones that required different policy combinations.

The second part of the book is a survey of American grand strategy-that is, the different ways leading counselors of state interpret the current position of the United States on the world stage and their recommendations for what Washington should do about it.

The "big think" set, in other words-Kissinger, of course, Brzezinski, Walter Russell Mead, Robert Kagan. And then people such as Francis Fukuyama, whom I consider a ridiculous figure but whose thinking you judged worth some scrutiny. How did you choose these?

From the range of in-and-outers-thinkers moving between government and the academy or think-tanks-who have sought to guide U.S. foreign policy since 2000, with some intellectual originality. Kissinger isn't among these. His ideas belong to a previous epoch, his later offerings are boilerplate. Fukuyama, who sensed what the effects of office on thought could be, and got out of state service quite early, is a mind of a different order. The figures selected cover the span of options within what has always been a bipartisan establishment.

You make a distinction between American exceptionalism, which is much in the air, and American universalism, which few of us understand as a separate matter. The first holds America to be singular (exceptional), and the second that the world is destined to follow us, that the trails we've blazed are the future of humanity. You call this a "potentially unstable compound." Could you elaborate on this distinction, and explain why you think it's unstable?

It's unstable because the first can exist without the second. There is, of course, a famous ideological linkage between the two in the religious idea, specific to the United States, of Providence-that is, divine Providence. In your own book "Time No Longer" you cite an astounding expression of this notion: "However one comes to the debate, there can be little question that the hand of Providence has been on a nation which finds a Washington, a Lincoln, or a Roosevelt when it needs him." That pronouncement was delivered in the mid-1990s-not by some television preacher, but by Seymour Martin Lipset: chairs at Harvard and Stanford, president of both the American Sociological and the American Political Science Associations, a one-time social democrat.

What is the force of this idea? A belief that God has singled out America as a chosen nation for exceptional blessings, a notion which then easily becomes a conviction of its mission to bring the benefits of the Lord to the world. President after president, from Truman through to Kennedy, the younger Bush to Obama, reiterate the same tropes: "God has given us this, God has given us that," and with the unique freedom and prosperity he has conferred on us comes a universal calling to spread these benefits to the rest of the world. What is the title of the most ambitious contemporary account of the underlying structures of American foreign policy? "Special Providence," by Walter Russell Mead. Year of publication: 2001.

But while a messianic universalism follows easily from providential exceptionalism, it is not an ineluctable consequence of it. You mount a powerful attack on the idea of exceptionalism in "Time No Longer," but-we may differ on this-if we ask what is the more dangerous element in the unstable compound of the nation's image of itself, I would say exceptionalism is the less dangerous. That may seem paradoxical. But historically the idea of exceptionalism allowed for an alternative, more modest deduction: that the country was different from all others, and so should not be meddling with them-the argument of Washington's Farewell Address [in 1796].

A century later, this position became known as isolationism, and as the American empire took shape, it was all but invariably castigated as narrow-minded, short-sighted and selfish. But it could often be connected with a sense that the republic was in danger at home, with domestic ills that needed to be addressed, which vast ambitions abroad would only compound. Mead terms this strand in American sensibility Jeffersonian, which isn't an accurate description of Jefferson's own empire-building outlook, but he otherwise captures it quite well.

We don't ordinarily apply the term "exceptionalist" in the same breath to America and to Japan, though if there is any nation that claims to be completely unique, it is Japan. But the claim produced a drastic isolationism as a national impulse, both in the Tokugawa period [1603-1868, a period of severely enforced seclusion] and after the war. Does that support the point you're making?

Exactly. Historically, exceptionalism could generate a self-limiting, self-enclosing logic as well as the gigantic expansionist vanities of the Co-Prosperity Sphere and the "Free World" [narrative]. In the American case, the two strands of exceptionalism and universalism remained distinct, respectively as isolationist and interventionist impulses, sometimes converging but often diverging, down to the Second World War. Then they fused. The thinker who wrote best about this was Franz Schurmann, whose " Logic of World Power" came out during the Vietnam War. He argued that each had a distinct political-regional base: the social constituency for isolationism was small business and farming communities in the Midwest, for interventionism it was the banking and manufacturing elites of the East Coast, with often sharp conflicts between the two up through the end of thirties. But in the course of the Second World War they came together in a synthesis he attributed-somewhat prematurely-to FDR, and they have remained essentially interwoven ever since. The emblematic figure of this change was [Arthur H.] Vandenberg, the Republican Senator from Michigan [1928-51], who remained an isolationist critic of interventionism even for a time after Pearl Harbor, but by the end of the war had become a pillar of the new imperial consensus.

Mainstream debate today seems to have constructed two very stark alternatives: There is either engagement or isolation. In this construction, engagement means military engagement; if we are not going to be militarily engaged we are isolationists. I find that absolutely wrong. There are multiple ways of being engaged with the world that have nothing to do with military assertion.

True, but engagement in that usage doesn't mean just military engagement, but power projection more generally. One of the thinkers I discuss toward the end of my book is Robert Art, a lucid theorist of military power and its political importance to America, who argues for what he calls selective-expressly, not universal-engagement. What is unusual about him is that in seeking to discriminate among engagements the U.S. should and should not select, he starts considering in a serious, non-dismissive way what would typically be construed as isolationist alternatives, even if ending with a fairly conventional position.

How far do you view the contemporary American crisis-if you accept that we are living through one-as, at least in part, one of consciousness? As an American, I tend to think that no significant departure from where find ourselves today can be achieved until we alter our deepest notions of ourselves and our place among others. I pose this question with some trepidation, since a change in consciousness is a generational project, if not more. Our leadership is not remotely close even to thinking about this. I'm suggesting a psychological dimension to our predicament, and you may think I put too much weight on that.

You ask at the outset whether I accept that Americans are living through a crisis. My reply would be: not anything like the order of crisis that would bring about the sort of change in consciousness for which you might hope. You describe that as a generational project, and there, yes, one can say that among the youngest cohorts of the U.S. population, the ideologies of the status quo are less deeply embedded, and in certain layers even greatly weakened. That is an important change, but it's generational, rather than society-wide, and it's not irreversible.

At the level of the great majority, including, naturally, the upper middle class, the image you use to describe the purpose of your last book applies: you write that it aims "to sound the tense strings wound between the pegs of myth and history during the hundred years and a few that I take to be the American century. It is this high, piercing tone that Americans now have a chance to render, hear, and recognize all at once. We have neither sounded nor heard it yet." That's all too true, unfortunately. The most one can say is that, among a newer generation, the strings are fraying a bit.

I tend to distinguish between strong nations and the merely powerful, the former being supple and responsive to events, the later being brittle and unstable. Is this a useful way to judge America in the early 21st century-monumentally powerful but of dubious strength? If so, doesn't it imply some change in the American cast of mind, as the difference between the two sinks in?

That depends on the degree of instability you sense in the country. In general, a major change in consciousness occurs when there is a major alteration in material conditions of life. For example, if a deep economic depression or dire ecological disaster strikes a society, all bets are off. Then, suddenly, thoughts and actions that were previously inconceivable become possible and natural. That isn't the situation so far in America.

Can you discuss the new accord with Iran in this context? I don't see any question it's other than a breakthrough, a new direction. What do you think were the forces propelling the Obama administration to pursue this pact? And let's set aside the desire for a "legacy" every president cultivates late in his time.

The agreement with Iran is an American victory but not a departure in U.S. foreign policy. Economic pressure on Iran dates back to Carter's time, when the U.S. froze the country's overseas assets after the ousting of the Shah, and the full range of ongoing U.S. sanctions was imposed by the Clinton administration in 1996. The Bush administration escalated the pressure by securing U.N. generalization of sanctions in 2006, and the Obama administration has harvested the effect.

Over the past decade, the objective has always been the same: to protect Israel's nuclear monopoly in the region without risking an Israeli blitz on Iran to preserve it-that might set off too great a wave of popular anger in the Middle East. It was always likely, as I point out in "American Policy and its Thinkers," that the clerical regime in Tehran would buckle under a sustained blockade, if that was the price of its survival. The agreement includes a time-out clause to save its face, but the reality is an Iranian surrender.

You can see how little it means any alteration in imperial operations in the region by looking at what the Obama administration is doing in Yemen, assisting Saudi Arabia's wholesale destruction of civilian life there in the interest of thwarting imaginary Iranian schemes.

This next question vexes many people, me included. On the one hand, the drives underlying the American imperium are material: the expansion of capital and the projection of power by its political representatives. The American mythologies are shrouds around these. On the other hand, the issue of security has a long history among Americans. It is authentically an obsession independent of capital-American paranoia dates back at least to the 18th century. I don't take these two accountings to be mutually exclusive, but I'd be interested to know how you reconcile these different threads in American foreign policy.

Yes, there has been a longstanding-you could say aboriginal-obsession with security in the United States. This can be traced as an independent strand running through the history of American dealings with the outside world. What happened, of course, from the Cold War through to the "war on terror" was a ruthless instrumentalization of this anxiety for purposes of expansion rather than defense. At the start of the Cold War you had the National Security Act and the creation of the National Security Council, and today we have the National Security Agency. Security became a euphemistic cloak for aggrandizement.

The United States occupies the better part of a continent separated by two immense oceans, which nobody in modern history has had any serious chance of invading, unlike any other major state in the world, all of which have contiguous land-borders with rival powers, or are separated from them only by narrow seas. The U.S. is protected by a unique geographical privilege. But if its expansion overseas cannot be attributed to imperatives of security, what has driven it?

A gifted and important group of historians, the Wisconsin school [which included the late William Appleman Williams, among others], has argued that the secret of American expansion has from the beginning lain in the quest by native capital for continuously larger markets, which first produced pressure on the internal frontier and the march across the continent to the Pacific, and when the West Coast was reached, a drive beyond into Asia and Latin America, and ultimately the rest of the world, under the ideology of the Open Door.

A couple of good scholars, Melvyn Leffler and Wilson Miscamble, one a liberal and the other a conservative, have identified my position with this tradition, taxing me with a belief that American foreign policy is essentially just an outgrowth of American business. This is a mistake. My argument is rather that because of the enormous size and self-sufficiency of the American economy, the material power at the disposal of the American state exceeded anything that American capital could directly make use of or require.

If you look at the First World War, you can see this very clearly. East Coast bankers and munitions manufacturers did well out of supplying the Entente powers, but there was no meaningful economic rationale for American entry into the war itself. The U.S. could tip the scales in favor of the British and French variants of imperialism against the German and Austrian variants without much cost to itself, but also much to gain.

The same gap between the reach of American business and the power of the American state explains the later hegemony of the United States within the advanced capitalist world after the Second World War. Standard histories wax lyrical in admiration of the disinterested U.S. generosity that revived Germany and Japan with the Marshall and Dodge Plans [reconstruction programs after 1945], and it is indeed the case that policies crafted at the State and Defense Departments did not coincide with the desiderata of the Commerce Department. The key requirement was to rebuild these former enemies as stable capitalist bulwarks against communism, even if this meant there could be no simple Open Door into them for U.S. capital.

For strategic political reasons, the Japanese were allowed to re-create a highly protected economy, and American capital was by and large barred entry. The priority was to defend the general integrity of capitalism as a global system against the threat of socialism, not particular returns to U.S. business. The importance of those were never, of course, ignored. But they had to bide their time. Today's Trans-Pacific Partnership will finally pry open Japanese financial, retail and other markets that have remained closed for so long.

Comments form marknesop.wordpress.com

Oddlots, September 26, 2015 at 9:38 am

This is full of insight to my mind:

http://www.salon.com/2015/09/23/how_america_built_its_empire_the_real_history_of_american_foreign_policy_that_the_media_wont_tell_you/

et Al, September 26, 2015 at 10:32 am

This stood out for me:

I'd like to turn to the origins of the Cold War, since I believe we are never going to get anywhere until these are honestly confronted. You give a forceful account of Stalin's reasons for avoiding confrontation after 1945 and Washington's reasons for not doing so. But should we attribute the outbreak of the Cold War to the U.S. without too much in the way of qualification?

We can look at the onset of the Cold War on two levels. One is that of punctual events. There, you are certainly right to pick out the ideological starting gun as Truman's speech on Greece in 1947, designed the "scare hell" out of voters to win acceptance for military aid to the Greek monarchy. In policy terms, however, the critical act that set the stage for confrontation with Moscow was the flat American refusal to allow any serious reparations for the staggering level of destruction Russia suffered from the German attack on it. The most developed third of the country was laid waste, its industry and its cities wrecked, while Americans suffered not a fly on the wrist at home-basking, on the contrary, in a massive economic boom. There was no issue Stalin spoke more insistently about than reparations in negotiations among the Allies. But once the fighting was over, the U.S. reneged on wartime promises and vetoed reparations from the larger part of Germany-far the richest and most developed, and occupied by the West - because it did not want to strengthen the Soviet Union and did want to rebuild the Ruhr as an industrial base under Western control, with a view to creating what would subsequently become the Federal Republic.

Oddlots, September 26, 2015 at 11:05 am

Agreed. I also think he helpfully callobrates the loss of European independence…

[Speaking of the era of De Gaulle, Adenauer and Eden] "Since then, there has been nobody like this. If we ask why, I think the answer is that all these people were formed before the First and Second World Wars broke out, in a period in which major European states had as much weight as the United States on the international checkerboard, if not more. They were not brought up in a world where American hegemony was taken for granted. All of them were involved in the two World Wars, and in the Second De Gaulle had good reason to be distrustful of the U.S., since Roosevelt was long pro-Vichy and wanted to oust him as leader of the Free French.

We could add, incidentally, a couple of later politicians, who fought in the second conflict. One was the English Tory prime minister, Edward Heath, the only postwar ruler of Britain who never made the trip to simper on the White House lawn, receiving an audience and paying tribute, that would become a virtual ceremony of investiture for any new ruler around the world. The other was Helmut Schmidt, a veteran of Operation Barbarossa [the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941] who scarcely concealed his disdain for Carter. These were latecomers from the past. Their successors have grown up under U.S. paramountcy and take it for granted. This is America's world. It is second nature for them to defer to it."

He also exposes that the crop that followed made a show of independence but toed the line:

"During the countdown to the war in Iraq, there were large street demonstrations in not a few countries, which Dominique Strauss-Kahn - no less - described as a European Declaration of Independence. Schröder [Gerhard, the German chancellor from 1998-2005] announced that Germany could not accept the war, and Chirac [Jacques, the French president, 1995-2007] blocked a U.N. resolution endorsing it. Were these bold acts of independence? Far from it. The French envoy in Washington told Bush in advance: You already have one U.N. resolution saying Saddam must comply with inspections, which is suitably vague. Don't embarrass us by trying to get another resolution that is more specific, which we'll have to oppose. Just use that one and go in. No sooner, indeed, was the attack launched than Chirac opened French skies to U.S. operations against Iraq. Can you imagine De Gaulle meekly helping a war he had said he opposed? As for Schröder, it was soon revealed that German intelligence agents in Baghdad had signaled ground targets for "Shock and Awe." These were politicians who knew the war was very unpopular in domestic opinion, and so made a show of opposing it while actually collaborating. Their independence was a comedy."

This last part was news to me.

[Sep 27, 2015] Ukraine was downgraded to default

"... the inept idiots in Kiev borrowed from whomever they wanted, including a group that helped push Argentina into near bankruptcy. ..."

"... "If Aurelius also refuses to take part, the bonds it holds will remain in default, potentially allowing the hedge fund to chase Ukraine in courts in London and elsewhere. "That bond will remain out there like some of the Argentine debt. Ukraine will remain in default," Nomura strategist Tim Ash said, although he noted that Ukraine had fewer assets than Argentina for hedge funds to seize." ..."

"... the judges in the US ruled in favor of the hedge fund over Argentina, so there's clear precedent ..."

Sep 27, 2015 | marknesop.wordpress.com

ucgsblog, September 26, 2015 at 12:55 pm

Time for Financial News. As a result of the Gas/Oil Wars, Russia pulled ahead, because Putin used the money intended for recapitalization of the gas/oil industry, to recapitalize the gas/oil industry. Some in the West are shocked at that, firmly believing that he was supposed to steal the money. Ah yes, the power of believing in your own propaganda.

In other news, Ukraine was downgraded to default: https://www.rt.com/business/316521-standardpoors-ukraine-selective-default/

Why you ask? Because the inept idiots in Kiev borrowed from whomever they wanted, including a group that helped push Argentina into near bankruptcy. And now they're about to do the same to Ukraine: http://www.buenosairesherald.com/article/199119/%E2%80%98vulture%E2%80%99-fund-aurelius-targets-ukraine-debt

"If Aurelius also refuses to take part, the bonds it holds will remain in default, potentially allowing the hedge fund to chase Ukraine in courts in London and elsewhere. "That bond will remain out there like some of the Argentine debt. Ukraine will remain in default," Nomura strategist Tim Ash said, although he noted that Ukraine had fewer assets than Argentina for hedge funds to seize."

Oh yeah, the judges in the US ruled in favor of the hedge fund over Argentina, so there's clear precedent. Whoopsie. The reason this looks really bad, is that there are no good solutions out of this. If Ukraine defaults, it'll be stuck permanently on the teat of the US/EU, as I predicted in June: https://ucgsblog.wordpress.com/2014/06/09/the-box-not-seen/

If the judges flip flop, Argentina will have a clear cut case against the hedge funds, pushing Obama into a battle with the hedge funds, when they have the Republicans on their side. If Obama pays this hedge fund, Franklin-Templeton will demand the same exact treatment, adding to Obama's sentiment as the Debt King of the United States. Not to mention that Congress wouldn't authorize that big a sum. There are no good options of out this, for either Poroshenko or Obama. To quote Gordon: "da, cheburashke ne vezet"

[Sep 27, 2015] Argentina vs vulture funds

"... The Argentine government managed to restructure about 93% of that debt through heavily discounted bond exchanges in 2005 and 2010. But a small group of investors refused to tender their defaulted bonds for new securities, and they have hounded Argentina in courts across the globe for close to a decade seeking full repayment. ..."

Sep 27, 2015 | marknesop.wordpress.com

et Al, September 26, 2015 at 1:44 pm

http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/06/30/argentina-vs-bondholders-the-epic-saga/

The Argentine government managed to restructure about 93% of that debt through heavily discounted bond exchanges in 2005 and 2010. But a small group of investors refused to tender their defaulted bonds for new securities, and they have hounded Argentina in courts across the globe for close to a decade seeking full repayment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentine_debt_restructuring

As part of the restructuring process, Argentina drafted agreements in which repayments would be handled through a New York corporation and governed by United States law. The holdout bondholders found themselves unable to seize Argentine sovereign assets in settlement, but realized that Argentina had omitted to provide for holdout situations and had instead deemed all bonds repayable on pari passu (equal) terms that prevented preferential treatment among bondholders. The holdout bondholders therefore sought, and won, an injunction in 2014 that prohibited Argentina from repaying the 93% of bonds that had been renegotiated, unless they simultaneously paid the 7% holdouts their full amount due as well. Together with the agreement's Rights Upon Future Offers ("RUFO") clause, this created a deadlock in which the 93% of renegotiated bondholders could not be paid without paying the 7% holdouts, but any payment to the holdouts would potentially (according to Argentina) trigger the 93% being due repayment at full value too; a sum of around $100 billion which Argentina could not afford.[6] The courts ruled that as Argentina had itself drafted the agreement, and chosen the terms it wished to propose, it could not now claim the terms were unreasonable or unfair, and that this could not be worked around by asserting sovereign status since the injunction did not affect sovereign assets, but simply ruled that Argentina must not give preferential treatment of any group of bondholders over any other group when making repayments.

…NML Capital Limited, a Cayman Islands-based offshore unit of Paul Singer's Elliott Management Corporation, purchased many holdings in 2008, paying an estimated USD49 million for one series of bonds whose face value was over USD220 million;[22] with the subsequent boom in Argentine bond values, this face value grew to USD832 million by 2014.[26] They in turn established the American Task Force Argentina lobbying group against Argentine bond restructuring efforts,[19] and sued to enjoin Argentina's ongoing payments to the bondholders who had participated in the earlier restructurings.[2]
####

Nothing can stop red blooded capitalists! I suspect that death is but a minor inconvenience.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhw9qvoxKMM

https://youtu.be/IXKEKQ8vU28

ucgsblog, September 26, 2015 at 1:55 pm

And this is what awaits Ukraine. Welcome to Capitalism Kiev, please read the small font. Oh, you don't read? Wonderful! We shall have a good time doing business together! How much for Dnepropetrovsk?

Warren, September 26, 2015 at 2:24 pm

These hold-out creditors aren't called fondo buitre for nothing!!!!!

[Sep 27, 2015] Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for Russian Foreign Ministry, grades Nuland's paper

September 16, 2015 | Fort Russ/Komsomolskaya Pravda

It is impossible to deal with cockroaches in one room while at the same time laying out little plates of bread crumbs on the other side of the wall.

Translated from Russian by Tom Winter

Translator's note: this press account is based on a post on Maria Zakharova's facebook page, and I have changed this account slightly in alignment with Zakharova's original text. It was not clear in KP what was Zakharova and what was KP. I think it is in this translation...

Head of the Information Department of the Russian Foreign Ministry wrote a "critical review" on the "Yalta speech" of the assistant US Secretary of State.

In Kiev, there was a conference "Yalta European Strategy". Already amazing. Yalta is in the Russian Crimea, and the "Yalta" conference was held in the Ukrainian capital. Well and good -- you couldn't miss that one!. But at this Yalta conference came the assistant US Secretary of State Victoria Nuland. Yes, the same one that passed out the cookies. But now, considered a shadow ruler of Ukraine, she points out to the Kiev authorities what to do. This time, Nuland said in a public speech:

- There should be no tolerance for those oligarchs who do not pay taxes. There must be zero tolerance for bribery and corruption, to those who would use violence for political ends.

And these words of the grande dame of the State Department could not be overlooked. Just think, Americans don't like it when their loans to Ukraine get stolen. And anti-oligarchic Maidan brought the very oligarchs to power, and corruption in the country has become even greater. Some of us have grown weary of this talk. But, let Nuland drone on ...

But then Russian Foreign Ministry official spokesman Maria Zakharova replied. So much so that not a stone was left on stone in the American's "Yalta speech":

"All this a little bit, just a little, looks like a lecture to the fox about how bad it is to steal chickens, but actually it surprised in other ways. As soon as Russian authorities began exposing the tax evasion, bribery, or corruption of the oligarchs, Victoria Nuland's office hastened to call zero tolerance "political repression" - Zakharova wrote on her facebook page.

It would be great to see the Department of State "show that same zero tolerance and inquire a bit about how the initial capital of the Russian (and Ukrainian would not hurt) oligarchs got started, those oligarchs who have been accused of corruption at home, but who, once in London, feel protected by the authorities, enjoying all the benefits of membership in the Club of Victims of Political Persecution" - continued Zakharova.

"It is impossible to deal with cockroaches in one room while at the same time laying out little plates of bread crumbs on the other side of the wall. Giving the green light to the dirty money from Russia and the former Soviet Union, the Western world is only boosting the zeal with which the domestic thieves shove their loot in foreign bins."

"Though perhaps," wonders the Foreign Minstiry spokesman "this is the actual purpose of the imaginary zero tolerance?"

"Why do people on Interpol's lists, by the decision of the Russian courts, prove their financial immorality, as they thrive in the Western capitals, and no alarm bells go off in the State Department?"

It turns out to be an interesting story: Taking fetid streams of notes, the West has just one requirement at the border crossing. Scream "victim of the regime." That's it! and you're in spades!

This calls to mind the old Soviet bribery password translated into modern American:

- In Soviet times, it was common phrase, revealing corrupt intent to proceed with plans insidious in varying degrees: "I'm from Ivan Ivanovich." Today the corresponding "Open Sesame" that opens the doors "in Europe and the best houses in Philadelphia," is the phrase "I'm running away from Vladimir".

Victoria, if you're going to start cleaning out the cockroaches, stop feeding them on your side.

[Sep 26, 2015] Full text of Pope Francis speech before Congress

Notable quotes:

"... A political society endures when it seeks, as a vocation, to satisfy common needs by stimulating the growth of all its members, especially those in situations of greater vulnerability or risk. ..."

"... All of us are quite aware of, and deeply worried by, the disturbing social and political situation of the world today. Our world is increasingly a place of violent conflict, hatred and brutal atrocities, committed even in the name of God and of religion. ..."

"... We are asked to summon the courage and the intelligence to resolve today's many geopolitical and economic crises. Even in the developed world, the effects of unjust structures and actions are all too apparent. ..."

"... If politics must truly be at the service of the human person, it follows that it cannot be a slave to the economy and finance. ..."

"... At the risk of oversimplifying, we might say that we live in a culture which pressures young people not to start a family, because they lack possibilities for the future. Yet this same culture presents others with so many options that they too are dissuaded from starting a family ..."

Sep 26, 2015 | UPI.com

... ... ...

Each son or daughter of a given country has a mission, a personal and social responsibility. Your own responsibility as members of Congress is to enable this country, by your legislative activity, to grow as a nation. You are the face of its people, their representatives. You are called to defend and preserve the dignity of your fellow citizens in the tireless and demanding pursuit of the common good, for this is the chief aim of all politics. A political society endures when it seeks, as a vocation, to satisfy common needs by stimulating the growth of all its members, especially those in situations of greater vulnerability or risk. Legislative activity is always based on care for the people. To this you have been invited, called and convened by those who elected you.

... ... ...

All of us are quite aware of, and deeply worried by, the disturbing social and political situation of the world today. Our world is increasingly a place of violent conflict, hatred and brutal atrocities, committed even in the name of God and of religion. We know that no religion is immune from forms of individual delusion or ideological extremism. This means that we must be especially attentive to every type of fundamentalism, whether religious or of any other kind. A delicate balance is required to combat violence perpetrated in the name of a religion, an ideology or an economic system, while also safeguarding religious freedom, intellectual freedom and individual freedoms. But there is another temptation which we must especially guard against: the simplistic reductionism which sees only good or evil; or, if you will, the righteous and sinners. The contemporary world, with its open wounds which affect so many of our brothers and sisters, demands that we confront every form of polarization which would divide it into these two camps. We know that in the attempt to be freed of the enemy without, we can be tempted to feed the enemy within. To imitate the hatred and violence of tyrants and murderers is the best way to take their place. That is something which you, as a people, reject.

...We are asked to summon the courage and the intelligence to resolve today's many geopolitical and economic crises. Even in the developed world, the effects of unjust structures and actions are all too apparent. Our efforts must aim at restoring hope, righting wrongs, maintaining commitments and thus promoting the well-being of individuals and of peoples. We must move forward together, as one, in a renewed spirit of fraternity and solidarity, cooperating generously for the common good.

The challenges facing us today call for a renewal of that spirit of cooperation, which has accomplished so much good throughout the history of the United States. The complexity, the gravity and the urgency of these challenges demand that we pool our resources and talents, and resolve to support one another, with respect for our differences and our convictions of conscience.

In this land, the various religious denominations have greatly contributed to building and strengthening society. It is important that today, as in the past, the voice of faith continue to be heard, for it is a voice of fraternity and love, which tries to bring out the best in each person and in each society. Such cooperation is a powerful resource in the battle to eliminate new global forms of slavery, born of grave injustices which can be overcome only through new policies and new forms of social consensus.

...If politics must truly be at the service of the human person, it follows that it cannot be a slave to the economy and finance. Politics is, instead, an expression of our compelling need to live as one, in order to build as one the greatest common good: that of a community which sacrifices particular interests in order to share, in justice and peace, its goods, its interests, its social life. I do not underestimate the difficulty that this involves, but I encourage you in this effort.

... ... ...

The fight against poverty and hunger must be fought constantly and on many fronts, especially in its causes. I know that many Americans today, as in the past, are working to deal with this problem.

It goes without saying that part of this great effort is the creation and distribution of wealth. The right use of natural resources, the proper application of technology and the harnessing of the spirit of enterprise are essential elements of an economy which seeks to be modern, inclusive and sustainable. "Business is a noble vocation, directed to producing wealth and improving the world. It can be a fruitful source of prosperity for the area in which it operates, especially if it sees the creation of jobs as an essential part of its service to the common good" (Laudato Si', 129). This common good also includes the earth, a central theme of the encyclical which I recently wrote in order to "enter into dialogue with all people about our common home" (ibid., 3). "We need a conversation which includes everyone, since the environmental challenge we are undergoing, and its human roots, concern and affect us all" (ibid., 14).

In Laudato Si', I call for a courageous and responsible effort to "redirect our steps" (ibid., 61), and to avert the most serious effects of the environmental deterioration caused by human activity. I am convinced that we can make a difference and I have no doubt that the United States – and this Congress – have an important role to play. Now is the time for courageous actions and strategies, aimed at implementing a "culture of care" (ibid., 231) and "an integrated approach to combating poverty, restoring dignity to the excluded, and at the same time protecting nature" (ibid., 139). "We have the freedom needed to limit and direct technology" (ibid., 112); "to devise intelligent ways of . . . developing and limiting our power" (ibid., 78); and to put technology "at the service of another type of progress, one which is healthier, more human, more social, more integral" (ibid., 112). In this regard, I am confident that America's outstanding academic and research institutions can make a vital contribution in the years ahead.

... ... ...

...At the risk of oversimplifying, we might say that we live in a culture which pressures young people not to start a family, because they lack possibilities for the future. Yet this same culture presents others with so many options that they too are dissuaded from starting a family.

... ... ...

[Sep 26, 2015] U.S. Billionaires Political Power Index

Notable quotes:

"... Billionaires: Reflections on the Upper Crust ..."

"... Billionaires: Reflections of the Upper Crust ..."

Sep 26, 2015 | Brookings Institution

In September 2014, Darrell West published a Billionaire Political Power Index based on his Brookings Institution Press book, Billionaires: Reflections on the Upper Crust. It examined the political influence individuals of great wealth, ranking their power based on a number of factors including campaign expenditures, activism through nonprofit organizations and foundations, holding public office, media ownership, policy thought leadership, and behind-the-scenes influence.

He has updated this index to account for billionaires' more recent election activism, campaign donations, and influence leading up to the 2014 midterms. There are several individuals who have moved up the list: Peter Thiel, Bob Mercer, Joe Ricketts, Paul Singer, Jim Simons, and David Geffen.

Others have seen their rankings drop: Penny Pritzker, Warren Buffett, Peter Peterson, Donald Trump, and Alice Walton.

Find out more about Billionaires: Reflections of the Upper Crust "

Hover Over a Billionaire's Photo to See More Details

#	Names
1	Charles & David Koch
2	Michael Bloomberg
3	Tom Steyer
4	Sheldon Adelson
5	Rupert Murdoch
6	John "Joe" Ricketts
7	Robert "Bob" Mercer
8	Paul Singer
9	Peter Thiel
10	George and Jonathan Soros
11	John and Laura Arnold
12	Bill and Melinda Gates
13	Family of the late Peter Lewis
14	Mark and Priscilla Zuckerberg
15	Warren Buffett
16	Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos
17	Pierre and Pamela Omidyar
18	James "Jim" Simons
19	David Geffen
20	Penny Pritzker
21	Marc Andreessen
22	Peter Peterson
23	Donald Trump
24	Alice Walton

[Sep 26, 2015] John Boehner left because Republicans true faith is incompatible with governing

Notable quotes:

"... If you genuinely believe the idiotic Reagan slogan that government is the problem, then shutting it down is not a tactic, it is the objective. ..."

"... The Tea Party mysteriously appeared about 10 minutes after Obama's first inauguration. They purported to be a grassroots movement sprung from righteous anger but were in fact a carefully orchestrated anti-liberal, anti-black, anti-Obama initiative funded by Dick Armey's Koch-financed Freedomworks organization. ..."

"... The US paranoia when it comes to government is disturbing. In Europe a government is something they elect to run the country and make sure all the services run smoothly. In the US it seems like it's viewed as a foreign power occupied the country and it has to be fought at all cost. ..."

"... Fronting for a party that's desperately trying to dismantle the government totally to give free reign to robber barons must be frustrating. If they succeed the US will see an inequality that makes the current situation look like Scandinavia. ..."

"... There is no process to call early elections or remove the House. It is a hole in the Constitution. Nobody imagined this one. ..."

"... Wrong! When a woman is forced to carry something inside her body she does wish to, whether by accident, rape, incest, or however, that takes away HER right to pursuit of happiness and more. You damn G.O.PIGS just want a child born but then forget about the nurturing and support it needs after birth. You cut every damn program that exists to help them. No wonder you're an "EX"-chief. ..."

"... Hence, GOP = American Taliban, or worse. And CCarrier is just a blatant demonstration of how single-minded (if minded at all) they have become. ..."

Sep 25, 2015 | theguardian.com

skeptikos, 26 Sep 2015 01:05

If you genuinely believe the idiotic Reagan slogan that government is the problem, then shutting it down is not a tactic, it is the objective.

Zepp -> swanstep 26 Sep 2015 00:46

That's already the case. They lost the popular vote overall for the House last year, 52-47, but maintain a fairly large majority of thirty or so seats. Case in point: Pennsylvania, where they lost the overall vote by eight points and won 13 of the 18 seats.

A large and engaged voter turnout could stop this, but that would be asking Americans to get up off their asses and save themselves, and too many of them are convinced that they don't need saving from this sort of thing, because this is America, and it's exceptional!

BaldwinP -> MarkThomason 26 Sep 2015 00:31

Excellent analysis.

To which I would add the Tea Party believe very firmly in government in one situation - when they want it to enforce their religious beliefs on everyone else by outlawing abortion and homosexuality.

MelFrontier -> USfan 26 Sep 2015 00:23

The Tea Party mysteriously appeared about 10 minutes after Obama's first inauguration. They purported to be a grassroots movement sprung from righteous anger but were in fact a carefully orchestrated anti-liberal, anti-black, anti-Obama initiative funded by Dick Armey's Koch-financed Freedomworks organization.

greven -> hillbillyzombie 25 Sep 2015 22:57

The US paranoia when it comes to government is disturbing. In Europe a government is something they elect to run the country and make sure all the services run smoothly. In the US it seems like it's viewed as a foreign power occupied the country and it has to be fought at all cost.

greven -> dudemanguy 25 Sep 2015 22:53

The Koch brothers started the Tea Party as a means to dismantle the state, black lives matter is more borne from desperation.

greven 25 Sep 2015 22:48

Fronting for a party that's desperately trying to dismantle the government totally to give free reign to robber barons must be frustrating. If they succeed the US will see an inequality that makes the current situation look like Scandinavia. Expect 300 million desperately poor people living from hand to mouth with nothing and the number of billionaires double at least.

MarkThomason 25 Sep 2015 22:34

What are we going to do if we now discover the House of Representatives is truly broken?

We can and have removed a President. We can and have removed judges.

There is no process to call early elections or remove the House. It is a hole in the Constitution. Nobody imagined this one.

They should have. English history had its share of dysfunctional Houses which had to go:

"You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately ... Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!"

We have no way to do that.

I do hope the two parties can set aside the Hastert Rule and govern without the extreme. If they won't, we are in trouble.

We don't have any good options except to trust them, and they have already betrayed that trust.

Timothy Everton -> Exchief 25 Sep 2015 22:28

Wrong! When a woman is forced to carry something inside her body she does wish to, whether by accident, rape, incest, or however, that takes away HER right to pursuit of happiness and more. You damn G.O.PIGS just want a child born but then forget about the nurturing and support it needs after birth. You cut every damn program that exists to help them. No wonder you're an "EX"-chief.

Timothy Everton -> PamelaKatz 25 Sep 2015 22:20

Hence, GOP = American Taliban, or worse. And CCarrier is just a blatant demonstration of how single-minded (if minded at all) they have become. Mr. Speaker saw this and knew, in good conscience, that he could not satisfy these hoodlums and govern as was meant to be. Someone quick! Round up the Teabaggers and their ilk and take no prisoners - IF We, The People, want our government to survive.

dudemanguy 25 Sep 2015 22:01

I thought the Bush presidency had finished the GOP off, but they were reborn with a phoney wall street funded grass roots movement, the tea party, and are more dangerous and destructive than ever.

The democrats have their own problems as well. The so called blacklivesmatter movement has breathed new life into the Republican party by managing to drive away both democratic moderates tired of being screamed at, bullied and called a racist, and some African Americans whove have been convinced that the only issue that matters is the media driven notion that there is an epidemic of racist killer cops looking for any excuse to kill black people, and every democratic politician that doesn't bow down to a movement that has been responsible for two years of rioting violence and racial strife, is somehow racist. I'm still not convinced the 1% hasnt been fomenting this movement in order to harm the democrats. Is it a coincidence BLM's biggest target has been Bernie Sanders?

In the end the 1% win and the rest of America loses.

[Sep 26, 2015] Phone Passwords Protected By 5th Amendment, Says Federal Court

Sep 26, 2015 | yro.slashdot.org

September 24, 2015

imothy

Ars Technica reports that a Federal court in Pennsylvania ruled Wednesday that the Fifth Amendment protects from compelled disclosure the passwords that two insider-trading suspects used on their mobile phones. In this case, the SEC is investigating two former Capital One data analysts who allegedly used insider information associated with their jobs to trade stocks-in this case, a $150,000 investment allegedly turned into $2.8 million. Regulators suspect the mobile devices are holding evidence of insider trading and demanded that the two turn over their passcodes.However, ruled the court , "Since the passcodes to Defendants' work-issued smartphones are not corporate records, the act of producing their personal passcodes is testimonial in nature and Defendants properly invoke their fifth Amendment privilege. A"

[Sep 26, 2015] NSA Director Admits that Sharing Encryption Keys With the Government Leaves Us Vulnerable to Bad Guys

"... Writing your own encryption is a recipe for disaster. Only peer-reviewed algorithms and implementations should ever be used. They must also use reliable random number generators. ..."

Sep 26, 2015 | www.zerohedge.com

Sep 26, 2015 | Zero H4edge

GreatUncle

Drop the random number generator method that is already venerable now.

Go for an encryption key of length > data length instead so each data bit is uniquely encrypted by a unique key bit.

Break one bit has no bearing on breaking any other bit.

For the NSA comes the headache under such an encryption method a 10 letter statement can be any other 10 letter statement from different keys.

Now it gets interesting "I love you" is from one encryption key whilst another key says "I hate you".

Now each message generated if asked for the key you provide one of an infinite number of keys where the the key you give is for the message you wish them to see provided it makes sense any evidence used through a prosecution on this is only ever circumstantial evidence and quite easily refuted questioning only the key being used.

Kind of like it myself.

SgtShaftoe

Bullshit. Encryption works. Even if the NSA had some back-door in a particular encryption algorithm, or weakened a random number generator (Microsoft, cough), the NSA does not have the processing power to decrypt everything.

Snowden has stated as much, I've seen the same thing in .mil circles during my time there. Using decent encryption works. It's far easier to attack the people directly with social engineering than crack decent encryption.

logicalman

The world has gone totally batshit crazy.

NSA want to watch everyone and also have the ability to plant damaging or malicious files on targeted computers.

What a fucking trick!

On a good day you can trust yourself.

John_Coltrane

What type of encryption is being discussed? I've notice very few actually understand how encryption works. When public/private key encyption is used only the public key is ever available to the counterparty and can be freely published. The secret key is kept on your machine only and never shared. Both parties/computers use the others public key to encrypt the plaintext and only the person with the unique secret key on both ends can read it. Authentication is also facile: You simply sign using the secret key. Only your public key can decrypt the signature so anyone intercepting and attempting to change your message cannot do so (spoofing impossible). Unbreakable and requires no secure key exchange like like two way keys such as AES, for example. This is what happens on https sites where key pairs are generated by both parties and the secret keys are never exchanged or shared-new key pairs are generated each visit. Intercepting the encrypted message is useless since the secret key remains physically in your possesion. That's why the NSA and any government hates this algorithm. Make the key at least 2048 bits long and you'll need more time than the age of universe to crack it by brute force with the entire computing power of every machine on earth. Even 256 bits is sufficient to protect against anyone before they die.

blindman

information is power and access to information is big business. the taxpayer pays the bills for the gathering, hell, the individual "user" of the technology pays for the surveillance and data collection themselves. we are paying to have our privacy sold to corporations. get that, it is freakin' brilliant! and the "officials" sell the access for personal gain. the corporations love to eat it all up and reward the loyal local success story dupes, pimps and prestitutes. everyone is on stage 24/7 and no one is the wiser in the field of cultural normalcy bias, mind control and entertaining with the Jones's. soft control moving into hard up confiscation, then incarceration. wonderfully yokel deterioration impersonating culture and civilization, what many call government, but i take exception to every term and wonder wtf.

q99x2

The NSA works for corporations and they need to break into peoples stuff to steal from them as well as to steal from other corporations. There is a war going on but it is much larger than a war on nations or citizens of bankster occupied nations.

Gaius Frakkin' ...

With one-time pad, the software is trivial.

There are two big challenges though:

1) Building a hardware random number generator which is truly random, or as close as possible.

2) Getting the keys to your counter-party, securely. It has to be down physically ahead of time.

HenryHall

E.R.N.I.E. - the electronic random number indicator equipment was used with British Premium Bonds in the 1950s. A chip based on digital counting of thermal noise must be easy to make. Getting the keys to thye other party just involves handing over a chip. 16Gigabytes or so miniSD should be good for enough emails to wear out a thousand or more keyboards.

It just needs to be made into a product and sold for cash.

Open source encryption software may or may not be trivial, but it sure isn't easy to use for folks who aren't experts in encryption.

Lookout Mountain

The NSA decided that offense was better than defense. Suckers.

ah-ooog-ah

Write your own encryption. Use AES - freely available. Exchange keys verbally, face to face, or use One Time Pads (once only!!). If you didn't write, don't trust it.

SgtShaftoe

Writing your own encryption is a recipe for disaster. Only peer-reviewed algorithms and implementations should ever be used. They must also use reliable random number generators.

If you don't know what you're doing and are very very careful and exacting in running a OTP system (One time pad) you will be fucked. That's why they aren't typically used except in very small use cases. They're hard to run properly.

Anyone claiming to have an encryption product for a computer based on a one time pad is full of shit. Cough, Unseen.is, cough. It's a glorified Cesar cypher and the NSA will have your shit in 2.5 seconds or less.

Good encryption works. Snowden stated that fact. Don't use shitty encryption, unless you want everyone to know what you're doing.

There's plenty of open source projects out there based on good encryption, twofish, serpent, AES, or ideally a combination of multiple algorithms. Truecrypt is still alive and has been forked with a project based in Switzerland. I think that's still a good option.

I wouldn't use MS bitlocker or PGP unless you trust symantec or microsoft with your life. Personally I wouldn't trust those companies with a pack of cigarettes, and I don't even smoke.

Nels

Writing your own encryption is a recipe for disaster. Only peer-reviewed algorithms and implementations should ever be used. They must also use reliable random number generators.

I read the original note to mean you use a peer reviewed algorithm, but write the code yourself. Or, at least review it well. Some open source code tends to be a bit tangled. Checkout Sendmail and its support for X.400 and other old mail protocols, as well as a convoluted configuration setup. At some point, with code with that much historical baggage and convoluted setup becomes impossible to really check all possible configurations for sanity or safety.

If you believe that the simpler the code the safer it is, code it yourself.

. . . _ _ _ . . .

Power grab by the NSA (deep state) basically saying that they don't trust the hand that feeds it. So why should we? What level of classification would this entail? Are we then supposed to trust the NSA? Civil War 2.0.???

Sorry for all the questions, but... WTF?

S.N.A.F.U.

SgtShaftoe

It really starts with asymmetry of power. If some agency or person has a asymmetric level of power against you and lack of accountability, you should be concerned about them.

That's a much easier test case vs enemy/friend and far more reliable.

Urban Roman

Long self-published certificates, Novena and Tails.

[Sep 26, 2015] Standing Before Congress, Pope Francis Calls Out the Industry of Death

Sep 26, 2015 | original.antiwar.com

Sep 26, 2015 | Antiwar.com

Pope Francis' address to Congress was almost certainly not what John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, and other congressional leaders had in mind when they invited the pope to speak.

It probably wasn't what they were all thinking about during the last standing ovations. But here was Pope Francis, revered as the People's Pope, calling out war profiteers and demanding an end to the arms trade. Just as simple and as powerful as that.

... ... ...

"Being at the service of dialogue and peace also means being truly determined to minimize and, in the long term, to end the many armed conflicts throughout our world," the pope said. Then he asked the critical question: "Why are deadly weapons being sold to those who plan to inflict untold suffering on individuals and society?"

He answered it himself: "Sadly, the answer, as we all know, is simply for money: money that is drenched in blood, often innocent blood. In the face of this shameful and culpable silence, it is our duty to confront the problem and to stop the arms trade."

Stop the arms trade. What a simple, clear call.

That means the ending things like the $60 billion arms deal the US made a few years back with Saudi Arabia, where those weapons are, in the pope's words, "inflicting untold suffering on individuals and society," especially in Syria and Yemen. It means ending things like the $45 billion in new military aid – mostly in the form of advanced new weapons – the Israeli government has requested from Washington between now and 2028. It means ending the provision of new arms to scores of unaccountable militias in Syria, where even the White House admits a nonmilitary solution is needed. And it means ending things like the $1.1 billion in arms sales the United States has made to Mexico this year alone.

And, of course, it means no longer diverting at least 54 cents of every discretionary taxpayer dollar in the federal budget to the US military.

Actually, members of Congress – so many of whom rely on huge campaign donations from arms manufacturers, and so many of whom refuse to vote against military procurement because often just a few dozen jobs connected to it might be in their district – really should have expected the pope to say exactly what he did.

It was only last May, after all, that Pope Francis told a group of schoolchildren visiting the Vatican that the arms trade is the "industry of death." When a kid asked why so many powerful people don't want peace, the pope answered simply, "because they live off wars!" Francis explained how people become rich by producing and selling weapons. "And this is why so many people do not want peace. They make more money with the war!"

The pope's speech to Congress was quite extraordinary on a number of fronts.

... ... ...

Phyllis Bennis is a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and author of the forthcoming Understanding ISIS and the New Global War on Terror: A Primer. Manuel Perez-Rocha is an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. Reprinted with permission from Foreign Policy In Focus.

[Sep 26, 2015] US and China back off internet arms race but Obama leaves sanctions on the table

"... How can the U.S. say cyber hacking must stop when we know very well that they have been cyber spying and hacking for years, Snowden spilt the beans on that issue, big brother raising his head again. ..."

"...
..."

"... I see a contradiction here that you critcize for not warring with Xi/China and then bemoaning the obviously damaging costs of what looks like perpetual wars. ..."

"... In the main, Obama has not slipped out of his arrogant school master's tone and role, but we keep hearing he does it to please the American electorate. If the NSA in Germany (Bad Aibling) is allowed to sniff out commercial secrets on German computers (an issue for over 10 years, it's only the spinlessness of the elites that keep allowing that) then surely it's all 'open platform'. I only read German and English well enough to ascertain what's what in the spying game, so I can only refer to Germany. Maybe we get some Spanish, Italian, French etc reading people to tell us if sniffing out Germany's company secrets is unique, probably not. ..."

"... Nice little bit of spin here. It gives the impression that the US is telling the PRC what to do when the reality is this is part of the previous and current five year plan. ..."

"... This looks a bit odd to me. Is he saying that Snowden forged the ten thousand records detailing US cyber spying on fifty countries or is he asking for Chinas assurance that the CCP are not sponsoring the attacks. In any case...I Obamas full of shit. ..."

"... the US has offered no proof that China hacked American records, while the world knows that the worse hacker on the planet is the US as shown via the Snowden documents - we even hack our allies. You know, there is a saying about glass houses and throwing stones. ..."

"... Its a fallacy that you can separate business spying and state secrets spying. If there is going to be war, it will be all out, no sacred cows. Don't expect an agreement to leave space satellites out for example. People are still living in this utopia that a war can happen somewhere else and life will go on as normal. For China, the war will be for its own existence and there will be no holds barred. Look at the Vietnam war for example and you will see how much the Vietnamese sacrificed for that ultimate victory. So I believe that a more comprehensive framework is required for the assured future for both nations. ..."

"... Every year the same blame the Chinese happens. US agencies will always fabricate foreign threat so annual budgets can be increased $$$. The fiscal year ends in Sept. "My dept. needs more taxpayer funding, the Chinese and Russians are attacking!" ..."

"... In the name of "National Security" anything goes (except sabotage in peace time), so long as it is not used for "competitive advantage". Nice to have a mutually approved set of labels to continue doing what both sides have always been doing. ..."

Sep 25, 2015 | The Guardian

JoeCorr -> Erazmo 25 Sep 2015 23:57

The US has no class...

They call it 'American directness'. In fact it's gross bad manners but thats how the Empire of the Exceptionals sees itself.

A John Wayne mindset and a Lex Luthor worldview. Being dismantled with astonishing ease by the PRC.

Eugenios -> SuperBBird 25 Sep 2015 23:58

The Chinese Communists are humanists itself compared to the brutality of the US.

Just compare prison populations, for examine. The US has more people in prison both proportionately and absolutely than all of China.

HollyOldDog -> TheEqlaowaizer 25 Sep 2015 21:30

Looks like the wise words of the Pope has not penetrated the 'brains' American State Department or its President, if all that Obama can say is to threaten sanctions against another country. Is the BRICS alternative bank such a worry to the Americans as their first thoughts are bullying tactics.

ID240947 25 Sep 2015 21:22

How can the U.S. say cyber hacking must stop when we know very well that they have been cyber spying and hacking for years, Snowden spilt the beans on that issue, big brother raising his head again.

JoeCorr -> goatrider 25 Sep 2015 21:08

Take all that cheap junk

Cheap junk? Its 2015 can you even just try to keep up. We're buying Chinese flat screens the size of billboards and China leads the world in home appliances. BYD and Shanghai Auto sales are expanding at warp speed. I could go on but thats enough.

The US and Europe made the same stupid jibes at Japan before they decimated our electrics, shipbuilding, auto manufacturing and every single electronics company outside military patronage.

Its not China whos at fault here. It's people like you with your head so deeply wedged in the sand your shitting pebbles.

JoeCorr 25 Sep 2015 21:01

My daughter drew speech balloons on this photo and mages it to the fridge.

Obama is saying. " Sanctions are still on the table". Xi is saying. " Poor thing. Allah will look after you"

Which I thought kinda perceptive for a 13 year old.

HauptmannGurski -> Sam3456 25 Sep 2015 20:46

I see a contradiction here that you critcize for not warring with Xi/China and then bemoaning the obviously damaging costs of what looks like perpetual wars. Never mind, we all get emotional in these troubled times and find ourselves in contraction with ourselves.

In the main, Obama has not slipped out of his arrogant school master's tone and role, but we keep hearing he does it to please the American electorate. If the NSA in Germany (Bad Aibling) is allowed to sniff out commercial secrets on German computers (an issue for over 10 years, it's only the spinlessness of the elites that keep allowing that) then surely it's all 'open platform'. I only read German and English well enough to ascertain what's what in the spying game, so I can only refer to Germany. Maybe we get some Spanish, Italian, French etc reading people to tell us if sniffing out Germany's company secrets is unique, probably not.

(PS: if we think that the perpetual wars are too costly, in the sense that the populations miss out more and more, then we ought to keep an eye on the US job figures. There's a view out there that it's been US arms sales under Obama which underpin the 'recovery'. The Nobel Peace prize committee would take the prize back now, I gues, but that's not in the rules.)

goatrider 25 Sep 2015 20:37

How is America going to sanction a country that produces a majority of the items sold in America? Take all that cheap junk off the shelves of box stores and the American people will revolt----they are addicted consumers of cheap junk and fast food.

JoeCorr -> vr13vr 25 Sep 2015 20:15

Whom exactly did we fire, prosecute or whatever else after all those NSA revelations?

Bradley Manning. Aaron Swartz driven to Suicide having never broken a single law. Snowden driven to exile. There are many others.

JoeCorr 25 Sep 2015 20:00

News of this deal, first revealed on Thursday, was followed up before...

Nice little bit of spin here. It gives the impression that the US is telling the PRC what to do when the reality is this is part of the previous and current five year plan.

The 'sanctions' are another interesting bit of spin. How would you enforce sanctions against almost a quarter of the worlds population when they are your most reliable customer and literally thousands of American companies have invested and relocated there.

what I am hoping that President Xi will show me is that we are not sponsoring these activities and that … we take it seriously and will cooperate to enforce the law."

This looks a bit odd to me. Is he saying that Snowden forged the ten thousand records detailing US cyber spying on fifty countries or is he asking for Chinas assurance that the CCP are not sponsoring the attacks. In any case...I Obamas full of shit.

Erazmo 25 Sep 2015 19:12

The US has no class and is a paper tiger. First, no one in the administration met President Xi when arrived on American soil. This is an insult to the Chinese and shows no class on the part of the Obama administration. Sure, the Pope was here at the same time but I don't understand why some schedules couldn't have been changed a little to accommodate the visit the leader of the world's most populous country. Second, the US continues to accuse and scold China as if they were a kid. Yet, the US has offered no proof that China hacked American records, while the world knows that the worse hacker on the planet is the US as shown via the Snowden documents - we even hack our allies. You know, there is a saying about glass houses and throwing stones.

Chin Koon Siang 25 Sep 2015 19:05

Its a fallacy that you can separate business spying and state secrets spying. If there is going to be war, it will be all out, no sacred cows. Don't expect an agreement to leave space satellites out for example. People are still living in this utopia that a war can happen somewhere else and life will go on as normal. For China, the war will be for its own existence and there will be no holds barred. Look at the Vietnam war for example and you will see how much the Vietnamese sacrificed for that ultimate victory. So I believe that a more comprehensive framework is required for the assured future for both nations.

vr13vr -> CitizenCarrier 25 Sep 2015 18:42

Whom exactly did we fire, prosecute or whatever else after all those NSA revelations?

vr13vr 25 Sep 2015 18:40

Obama never stops surprising with his manners. Or actually a lack of such. He just made an agreement with a leader of another country, a large and powerful country mind you. And right away he publicly expresses a doubt whether the other party intends to carry the agreements. Basically calling his counterpart a liar for no good reason. And as a cheap bully, inserts more threats of more sanctions. Sure, the president of the other country had more class, he stayed there and smiled friendly, but with such arrogant display of disrespect and bullying, nobody would ever take Obama serious. And nobody should.

shawshank -> CitizenCarrier 25 Sep 2015 18:24

Grasping at straws? Xi is not Hitler. Also, Snowden already exposed that the US was spying on China.

Book_of_Life -> CitizenCarrier 25 Sep 2015 18:10

"Acts of war"
USA are worlds biggest warmongers instigators including false flags and regime changes covert activity black ops

you better check yourself before you wreck yourself
cause i'm bad for your health, i come real stealth
droppin bombs on ya moms
So chikity-check yo self before you wreck yo self
Come on and check yo self before you wrikity-wreck yourself

Lrgjohnson -> canbeanybody 25 Sep 2015 18:00

Every year the same blame the Chinese happens. US agencies will always fabricate foreign threat so annual budgets can be increased $$$. The fiscal year ends in Sept. "My dept. needs more taxpayer funding, the Chinese and Russians are attacking!"

Book_of_Life CitizenCarrier 25 Sep 2015 17:22

American Hypocrisy "fuck off"
say countries spied on
http://time.com/2945037/nsa-surveillance-193-countries/

canbeanybody 25 Sep 2015 15:59

It is plain silly and ridiculous to pin blame of the so-called theft of finger prints of American 5.6 millions employees.

Those rubbish finger prints have zero value to anyone other than those who are at position to manipulate, modify or even fabricate them.

In any case why should a technological so advanced American system need to keep the finger prints of their own employees? Is it impossible for American government to keep the finger prints of own employees safe?

peternh 25 Sep 2015 15:57

"President Xi indicated to me that with 1.3 billion people he can't guarantee the behaviour of every single person on Chinese soil."

Although that is, in fact, what his government is entirely dedicated to attempting to do, by controlling all education, all media, what may and may not be said publicly, and controlling everything that happens on the Internet inside the Great Firewall.

Utter hypocrisy.

bujinin 25 Sep 2015 15:24

Analysis:

In the name of "National Security" anything goes (except sabotage in peace time), so long as it is not used for "competitive advantage". Nice to have a mutually approved set of labels to continue doing what both sides have always been doing.

Sam3456 25 Sep 2015 15:24

Another useless summit with a lame duck President who achieved the Nobel Peace Prize for being an ineffectual player on the world stage and propagating constant war for the profit of his corporate puppet masters.

[Sep 26, 2015] Phone Passwords Protected By 5th Amendment, Says Federal Court

Sep 26, 2015 | yro.slashdot.org

September 24, 2015

imothy

Ars Technica reports that a Federal court in Pennsylvania ruled Wednesday that the Fifth Amendment protects from compelled disclosure the passwords that two insider-trading suspects used on their mobile phones. In this case, the SEC is investigating two former Capital One data analysts who allegedly used insider information associated with their jobs to trade stocks-in this case, a $150,000 investment allegedly turned into $2.8 million. Regulators suspect the mobile devices are holding evidence of insider trading and demanded that the two turn over their passcodes.However, ruled the court , "Since the passcodes to Defendants' work-issued smartphones are not corporate records, the act of producing their personal passcodes is testimonial in nature and Defendants properly invoke their fifth Amendment privilege. A"

[Sep 26, 2015] NSA Director Admits that Sharing Encryption Keys With the Government Leaves Us Vulnerable to Bad Guys

"... Writing your own encryption is a recipe for disaster. Only peer-reviewed algorithms and implementations should ever be used. They must also use reliable random number generators. ..."

Sep 26, 2015 | www.zerohedge.com

Sep 26, 2015 | Zero H4edge

GreatUncle

Drop the random number generator method that is already venerable now.

Go for an encryption key of length > data length instead so each data bit is uniquely encrypted by a unique key bit.

Break one bit has no bearing on breaking any other bit.

For the NSA comes the headache under such an encryption method a 10 letter statement can be any other 10 letter statement from different keys.

Now it gets interesting "I love you" is from one encryption key whilst another key says "I hate you".

Now each message generated if asked for the key you provide one of an infinite number of keys where the the key you give is for the message you wish them to see provided it makes sense any evidence used through a prosecution on this is only ever circumstantial evidence and quite easily refuted questioning only the key being used.

Kind of like it myself.

SgtShaftoe

Bullshit. Encryption works. Even if the NSA had some back-door in a particular encryption algorithm, or weakened a random number generator (Microsoft, cough), the NSA does not have the processing power to decrypt everything.

Snowden has stated as much, I've seen the same thing in .mil circles during my time there. Using decent encryption works. It's far easier to attack the people directly with social engineering than crack decent encryption.

logicalman

The world has gone totally batshit crazy.

NSA want to watch everyone and also have the ability to plant damaging or malicious files on targeted computers.

What a fucking trick!

On a good day you can trust yourself.

John_Coltrane

What type of encryption is being discussed? I've notice very few actually understand how encryption works. When public/private key encyption is used only the public key is ever available to the counterparty and can be freely published. The secret key is kept on your machine only and never shared. Both parties/computers use the others public key to encrypt the plaintext and only the person with the unique secret key on both ends can read it. Authentication is also facile: You simply sign using the secret key. Only your public key can decrypt the signature so anyone intercepting and attempting to change your message cannot do so (spoofing impossible). Unbreakable and requires no secure key exchange like like two way keys such as AES, for example. This is what happens on https sites where key pairs are generated by both parties and the secret keys are never exchanged or shared-new key pairs are generated each visit. Intercepting the encrypted message is useless since the secret key remains physically in your possesion. That's why the NSA and any government hates this algorithm. Make the key at least 2048 bits long and you'll need more time than the age of universe to crack it by brute force with the entire computing power of every machine on earth. Even 256 bits is sufficient to protect against anyone before they die.

blindman

information is power and access to information is big business. the taxpayer pays the bills for the gathering, hell, the individual "user" of the technology pays for the surveillance and data collection themselves. we are paying to have our privacy sold to corporations. get that, it is freakin' brilliant! and the "officials" sell the access for personal gain. the corporations love to eat it all up and reward the loyal local success story dupes, pimps and prestitutes. everyone is on stage 24/7 and no one is the wiser in the field of cultural normalcy bias, mind control and entertaining with the Jones's. soft control moving into hard up confiscation, then incarceration. wonderfully yokel deterioration impersonating culture and civilization, what many call government, but i take exception to every term and wonder wtf.

q99x2

The NSA works for corporations and they need to break into peoples stuff to steal from them as well as to steal from other corporations. There is a war going on but it is much larger than a war on nations or citizens of bankster occupied nations.

Gaius Frakkin' ...

With one-time pad, the software is trivial.

There are two big challenges though:

1) Building a hardware random number generator which is truly random, or as close as possible.

2) Getting the keys to your counter-party, securely. It has to be down physically ahead of time.

HenryHall

E.R.N.I.E. - the electronic random number indicator equipment was used with British Premium Bonds in the 1950s. A chip based on digital counting of thermal noise must be easy to make. Getting the keys to thye other party just involves handing over a chip. 16Gigabytes or so miniSD should be good for enough emails to wear out a thousand or more keyboards.

It just needs to be made into a product and sold for cash.

Open source encryption software may or may not be trivial, but it sure isn't easy to use for folks who aren't experts in encryption.

Lookout Mountain

The NSA decided that offense was better than defense. Suckers.

ah-ooog-ah

Write your own encryption. Use AES - freely available. Exchange keys verbally, face to face, or use One Time Pads (once only!!). If you didn't write, don't trust it.

SgtShaftoe

Writing your own encryption is a recipe for disaster. Only peer-reviewed algorithms and implementations should ever be used. They must also use reliable random number generators.

If you don't know what you're doing and are very very careful and exacting in running a OTP system (One time pad) you will be fucked. That's why they aren't typically used except in very small use cases. They're hard to run properly.

Anyone claiming to have an encryption product for a computer based on a one time pad is full of shit. Cough, Unseen.is, cough. It's a glorified Cesar cypher and the NSA will have your shit in 2.5 seconds or less.

Good encryption works. Snowden stated that fact. Don't use shitty encryption, unless you want everyone to know what you're doing.

There's plenty of open source projects out there based on good encryption, twofish, serpent, AES, or ideally a combination of multiple algorithms. Truecrypt is still alive an