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Oct 11, 2017 | www.theatlantic.com
... Or, for that matter, whether the U.S. might go to war soon with either North Korea or Iran, as I wrote yesterday . On the North Korean front, the president has repeatedly made bellicose remarks for months, even as aides try to slow-walk the slide toward war, warning of the catastrophic destruction that would result, insisting that all options remain on the table, and trying to keep diplomatic channels open -- only to see Trump repeatedly undercut them. Even as the president seems eager for confrontation, more prudent members of the team have sought to redirect his anger.
Bargaining is another technique, as recent news about Iran shows. While many of Trump's aides had their gripes about the 2015 deal with Tehran to prevent nuclear proliferation, most of them seem to agree that keeping the deal in place is far preferable to eliminating it. But now the administration seems likely to punt the issue, decertifying the deal but leaving it to Congress to either let it stand or fall. (So much for Harry S. Truman's "the buck stops here.") Why take this halfway step? Part of it is that, just as on DACA, Trump wants to keep a campaign promise to end the deal without suffering the consequences, but another part is childish petulance: Olivier Knox reports Trump simply hates being confronted with the need to recertify the deal every 90 days.
And then, as every parent knows, sometimes you just have to give in -- let the kid have a victory on something less significant. Aides can try to prevent war with North Korea, and they can seek compromise on the Iran deal, and they can quietly kill the demand for more nukes, but they've got to let the president have his way on occasion. When Trump demands "goddamned steam" to power catapults on aircraft carriers, aides shrug and let it go.
Trump's childish behavior was worrying when it involved belittling his opponents, discussing his genitalia, or taking swipes at former Miss Universe Alicia Machado, but it takes on a new level of danger when it affects U.S. military policy, from Iran to North Korea to the nuclear arsenal.
There's a powerful, perhaps too powerful, urge to seek historical analogues for Trump , but seldom has there been a president whose own loyalists and insiders were so dismissive of his maturity, judgment, and prudence. So how does the presidency work when the president's aides treat him like a child? The immediate answer is, not very well. The longer-term answers are murkier and scarier.
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Sep 21, 2017 | turcopolier.typepad.com
That's essentially what Donald Trump did yesterday. He spoke from the gut without thinking through the consequences.
His threat to wipe out North Korea reminded me of Nikita Khrushchev banging his shoe on the podium at the UN. Great theater but makes one thing that the shoe banger is crazy. There is no acceptable military option in North Korea.
But Trump is not the only one spouting such madness. We've heard the same delusional threats from SecDef Mattis and National Security Advisor McMaster.
I learned a long time ago that you do not make threats you are not will to carry out. In fact, I'm a firm believer in the sucker punch. Why tell someone what you are going to do and how you are going to do it? That stuff only works in Hollywood.
Remember this clip from Billy Jack?
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NoldorElf , April 18, 2017 at 5:01 am GMTApr 18, 2017 | www.unz.com
DB Cooper , April 18, 2017 at 4:13 am GMT
100 Words This whole chemical weapon attack by Assad sounds fishy from the beginning. From what I read Assad is winning the civil war and things are turning for the better for him. What would he gain at this point to launch a chemical attack on the civilian populations? Things just doesn't add up. Check out this video:Carlton Meyer , Website April 18, 2017 at 4:21 am GMTAm I the only person who remembers news from a month ago? Trump ordered hundreds of regular American combat troops into Syria BEFORE this event, with no explanation. This was covered on all major networks, including CNN.http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/08/politics/marines-raqqa-assault-syria/
And why? They've been trying to overthrow Assad since 2005:
100 Words I am forced to conclude that the neoconservatives and indeed all of Washington DC are eager to go to war. They are just itching for any excuse to start yet another war in a nation of their choosing.
If there is no good reason, they will make one up. There is an eerie resemblance to what is happening now with Syria and what happened leading up to the 2003 Invasion of Iraq.
I think the paleoconservative community also needs to come to terms with the fact that Trump has sold them out and is increasingly acting like a Washington insider neocon. Trump did to the paleoconservatives what Obama did to the left.
It seems Trump will not put "America First" nor make any attempts to restore the American Middle Class nor American manufacturing to truly "Make American Great Again".
Tulsi Gabbard seems to be one of the few principled politicians in this case and for that she is marginalized for saying what few others have the moral courage to say. Many on the left are hoping she will run in 2020 for President.
Coming from the left, I'd say that the Sanders and Trump base have a lot more in common than we admit. We are both deeply unhappy with the way that Washington has handled things. They basically betrayed the American people and enriched themselves at public expense.
The real question is, can the US be saved for the people or will it continue on its path to terminal decline?
utu , April 18, 2017 at 6:16 am GMT100 Words Why'd there is no propaganda counter offensive coming from Putin and Assad? Where are their accounts of what happened there backed up by pictures and names of those who created this false flag? Don't they have their sources, intelligence and people on the ground? We are getting nothing. Instead Sputnik and RT is deferring to retired 71 old professor Postol who did his whole analysis based on single picture he found somewhere on social media. Do you think this will cause a dent in beliefs of people who are 24/7 being propagandized by Anglo-Zio media? Wizard of Oz , April 18, 2017 at 6:17 am GMT
100 Words What is your view of David Kilcullen, what he knows about, and what his views are worth? No doubt "modified" or " qualified" respect but it is the qualifications and the reasons for them that I am interested in. When I've got round tobfinishing his article saying Assad is desperate and losing I'll probably be back. Anon , April 18, 2017 at 6:34 am GMT
Get a load of this a ** hole who was responsible for disaster in Russia.
He thinks he has the right to judge the mental health of others.
But as long as super-rich globalists fund think-tanks and invite lunatics like him, he can posture as a 'voice of reason'.
And there is the other esteemed 'voice of reason', Thomas Friedman, who wants war in Syria to go on, even if ISIS kills more innocents.
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/04/15/thomas-friedmans-perverse-love-affair-isis
These academics are like mafia lawyers.
The mafia sent some of their guys to study law or even enter legit institutions(like police, church, government, etc) and then
had those guys serve the mafia. They had the sheen of respectability, dignity, and objective meritocracy, but their main loyalty
was to the mafia.
It's like Tom Hagen is an ace lawyer but serves the Mob.
And there were other famous Mob Lawyers, the real ones.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Ragano
So many of these journos and academics are really Mob Publicists and Mob Advocates.
They serve the globalist mafia. Glob is their Mob.
Sachs is a total shark. He's been a Glob Advocate forever. A real weasel.
Brabantian , Website April 18, 2017 at 8:34 am GMT600 Words Proof of the false-flag nature of the 'chemical attack' in Syria absurdly ascribed to Assad's forces -
Above all because of a very-censored explosive story – a distinguished group of Swedish doctors showed that the George Clooney & Western-backed 'White Helmets' in fact made a snuff film actually murdering children of this 'chemical attack' anyone can invite medical physicians they know to view this, to see the Swedish Doctors for Human Rights are absolutely correct in their accusations:
For an overview of the many wider points making clear the false flag, Aangirfan does an excellent job here as she very often does:
http://aanirfan.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/trump-at-war-with-assad-and-putin.html
(1) Anti-Assad "reporter" Feras Karam tweeted about the gas attack in Syria 24 hours before it happened – Tweet , "Tomorrow a media campaign will begin to cover intense air raids on the Hama countryside & use of chlorine against civilians"
(2) Gas masks were distributed 2 days before the attack
(3) Rescue workers are not wearing protective gear as they would if severely-toxic gas attack had occurred
(4) Pakistani British doctor promoting Syria gas attack story, "who at the time of attack was taking interview requests instead of helping injured flooding in" is Dr Shajul Islam, "used as source by US & UK media, despite facing terror charges for kidnapping & torturing two British journalists in Syria & being struck off the medical register"
(5) The USA & CIA were previously documented as having approved a "plan to launch chemical weapon attack on Syria & blame it on Assad's regime' A 2013 article on this is deleted from the UK Daily Mail website, but is saved at Web Archive, a screenshot at Aangirfan's page above
(6) Videos previously exposed as fraudulent are being recycled "A chemical weapons shipment run by Saudi mercenaries [is blown up] before it can be offloaded & used to attack the Syrian army in Hama [this story] has turned into Syrian aircraft dropping sarin gas on orphanages videos shot in Egypt with the smoke machines are dragged out again."
(7) Gas attack story is supported by known Soros-funded frauds 'White Helmets' who had previously celebrated alongside Israeli-Saudi backed 'Al Qaeda' extremists after seizing Idlib from Syrian Army forces. White Helmets "have been caught filming their fake videos in places like Egypt & Morocco, using actors, smoke machines & fake blood".
(8) The 2013 gas attack in Syria killing over 1000 people, was also proven to be an operation by USA & allies, with admissions to this effect by Turkish Members of Parliament The operation even involved the CIA's Google Inc monopoly search control internet domination tool, via their subsidiary Google Idea Groups & Jared Cohen:
In 2014, the later-murdered journalist Serena Shim "stumbled upon a safehouse run by Jared Cohen & Google Idea Groups, a short distance from a border crossing into Syria between Hatay, Turkey & Aleppo province in Syria. In the safehouse were three Ukrainian secret service who had just buried a load of sarin gas shells from the Republic of Georgia. Chemical weapons used in the Ghouta war crime were trucked through Turkey to Gaziantep then taken from there to Aleppo by NGOs, hidden in ambulances or in trucks supposedly carrying relief aid. After Shim broke this story on PressTV the clumsily-staged 'accident' leading to her death only a few days later."
By way of motive – Destruction of Syria & Assad serves the long-being-implemented 1980s Israeli Oded Yinon Plan to destroy & dismember all major countries surrounding mafia state Israel, in general service to the world oligarchs. Plus, there are major US-backed economics behind the campaign to destroy Syria – Assad's fall is sought for changing from the Russia-supported pipeline from Iran thru Iraq & Syria, to the USA-supported pipeline from Qatar thru Saudi Arabia, Jordan & Syria.
Vlad , April 18, 2017 at 9:45 am GMTWhat has happened is one of two things as far is Trump is concerned. Either he walked into a trap prepared for him by the Deep state, willingly or unwillingly. If willingly he knew he was set up and accepted it because he has no choice. He could not disobey the military. They have their own agenda in Syria which they had been pursuing for a while, that is carving out American zone of occupation in eastern Syria with the help of Sunny states.
Or Trump simply capitulated to the deep state as Obama did before him. If that is the case we know now how American
is governed, by the military industrial complex that dictates its policy. The sad part is that the Constitution is disregarded
once again, that the Liberals who used to be peaceniks, are now cheering for war, that the UN is marginalized, that Trump uses
it just as Bush did to justify an illegal war.
Sean , April 18, 2017 at 10:25 am GMTSounds like we've heard it all before, because we have, back in August 2013, and that turned out to be less than convincing. Skepticism is likewise mounting over current White House claims that Damascus used a chemical weapon against civilians in the village of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib province on April 4th.
Quite. They maybe faked before and know how to in there was a overwhelming need. However, one wonders why they did not use the gas gambit when they were set to lose Aleppo. Using it now only when they have lost their big gains, seems like bolting the stable door after the horse is gone . So the motives for the rebels faking a gas attack at this juncture are even more puzzling as for the Assad regime having ordered it .
Why Volatility Signals Stability, and Vice Versa
By Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Gregory F. TrevertonEven as protests spread across the Middle East in early 2011, the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria appeared immune from the upheaval. Assad had ruled comfortably for over a decade, having replaced his father, Hafez, who himself had held power for the previous three decades. Many pundits argued that Syria's sturdy police state, which exercised tight control over the country's people and economy, would survive the Arab Spring undisturbed. ]
But appearances were deceiving: today, Syria is in a shambles, with the regime fighting for its very survival, whereas Lebanon has withstood the influx of Syrian refugees and the other considerable pressures of the civil war next door. Surprising as it may seem, the per capita death rate from violence in Lebanon in 2013 was lower than that in Washington, D.C. That same year, the body count of the Syrian conflict surpassed 100,000.
Why has seemingly stable Syria turned out to be the fragile regime, whereas always-in-turmoil Lebanon has so far proved robust? The answer is that prior to its civil war, Syria was exhibiting only pseudo-stability, its calm façade concealing deep structural vulnerabilities. Lebanon's chaos, paradoxically, signaled strength. Fifteen years of civil war had served to decentralize the state and bring about a more balanced sectarian power-sharing structure. Along with Lebanon's small size as an administrative unit, these factors added to its durability. So did the country's free-market economy. In Syria, the ruling Baath Party sought to control economic variability, replacing the lively chaos of the ancestral souk with the top-down, Soviet-style structure of the office building. This rigidity made Syria (and the other Baathist state, Iraq) much more vulnerable to disruption than Lebanon.[...]
The divergent tales of Syria and Lebanon demonstrate that the best early warning signs of instability are found not in historical data but in underlying structural properties. Past experience can be extremely effective when it comes to detecting risks of cancer, crime, and earthquakes. But it is a bad bellwether of complex political and economic events, particularly so-called tail risks-events, such as coups and financial crises, that are highly unlikely but enormously consequential. For those, the evidence of risk comes too late to do anything about it, and a more sophisticated approach is required.
[...]
Simply put, fragility is aversion to disorder. Things that are fragile do not like variability, volatility, stress, chaos, and random events, which cause them to either gain little or suffer. A teacup, for example, will not benefit from any form of shock. It wants peace and predictability, something that is not possible in the long run, which is why time is an enemy to the fragile. What's more, things that are fragile respond to shock in a nonlinear fashion. With humans, for example, the harm from a ten-foot fall in no way equals ten times as much harm as from a one-foot fall. In political and economic terms, a $30 drop in the price of a barrel of oil is much more than twice as harmful to Saudi Arabia as a $15 drop.
THE CENTER CANNOT HOLD
The first marker of a fragile state is a concentrated decision-making system.funds, at the price of increasing systemic risks, such as disastrous national-level reforms.
This Administration has acted recklessly without care or consideration of the dire consequences of the United States attack on Syria
A Russian build military base being used to attack urban areas is not "Syria"
Assad and those around him hold concentrated centralised power and are already proven to be incredibly stupid, that is why he is in this position– he thought the people loved him, put up the price of basic commodities and the rebellion started. Assad perhaps believes the US is scared to get involved in Syria or to to cross the Russians . It seems silly but he and his advisors have a proven record of catastrophic misjudgements . Bringing in the Russians meant the US would be involved.
I dare say the US has more advanced facilities for gathering intelligence it lets on about and than Syria, Russia or US media know about. Providing "evidence" gives away the hole card one might come in handy if the nuclear balloon starts going goes well and truly up. Any price would be worth paying for knowing Russia's intent. If people doubt Trump over this (and he warned the Russian it was going to be done so he didn't seek confrontation) it is the unfortunate price of maintaining secret intelligence facilities.
The Trump Administration is threatening to do more to remove Bashar al-Assad and every American should accept that the inhabitant of the White House, when he is actually in residence, will discover like many before him that war is good business. He will continue to ride the wave of jingoism that has turned out to be his salvation, reversing to an extent the negative publicity that has dogged the new administration.
For a great power seeing its rival use military force to crush a rebellion it has expressed sympathy is quite definitely a real defeat . It's a zero sum game for America and Russia (yes Russia is Jingoistic, and I think it is more centralised in decision making ) . The Russians took advantage of US passivity under Obama, and they were exultant at the way the US stood and watched, while Russia made all the successful initiatives, but really they couldn't be allowed to have it their own way any longer, for what they would have done next can be assumed to have been frightening to Europe.
@Carlton Meyer Am I the only person who remembers news from a month ago? Trump ordered hundreds of regular American combat troops into Syria BEFORE this event, with no explanation. This was covered on all major networks, including CNN.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/08/politics/marines-raqqa-assault-syria/
And why? They've been trying to overthrow Assad since 2005:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pm8-vSo4Y4
Russia was having too much success, they needed to understand that the US is not going to stand by any longer and wait to see. Read More
AmericaFirstNow , Website April 18, 2017 at 11:19 am GMTJewish AIPAC Israel firster Jared Kushner and his fellow Jewish AIPAC Israel first friends (like Reed Cordish who worked for Israel Lobby lackey Dick Cheney as well) whom he brought into the White House more than likely influenced Trump to push the Israel Lobby agenda vs Syria for regime change to weaken Iran:
More on Kushner and his fellow AIPAC Israel firster at the White House obviously influencing Trump to push the Israel Lobby agenda like he did with Syria as I heard Netanyahu praised the Syriaattack and Pence personally telephoned to thank him:
Hunsdon , April 18, 2017 at 12:07 pm GMT@Sean Russia was having too much success, they needed to understand that the US is not going to stand by any longer and wait to see. INORITE! I mean look, Russia has expanded its military to the very borders of NATO.
Oh.
Wait.
anonymous , April 18, 2017 at 1:03 pm GMTIt certainly appears to have been a manufactured event. The media was ready and swung into action immediately with pictures and a noisy campaign that the usual war-hawk politicians joined in with. The timing was just too good and seems to have been coordinated. Syria was bombed without bothering to investigate based on Trump's claim that the evidence was ironclad.
Did people like McMaster think it was real and report it to Trump as such? Did Trump believe it? Or did they know it was fake but pretended otherwise? Were they in on it from the beginning or were they forced to play along?
Trump has quickly shifted into being an establishment politician whose rhetoric has been bellicose and reckless. Next up, N Korea and then Iran?
No matter how one votes they end up getting the same thing. It's very disheartening.
Quartermaster , April 18, 2017 at 1:08 pm GMT@Anon Get a load of this a**hole who was responsible for disaster in Russia.
He thinks he has the right to judge the mental health of others.
But as long as super-rich globalists fund think-tanks and invite lunatics like him, he can posture as a 'voice of reason'.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhyD-fPS0vs
And there is the other esteemed 'voice of reason', Thomas Friedman, who wants war in Syria to go on, even if ISIS kills more innocents.
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/04/15/thomas-friedmans-perverse-love-affair-isis
These academics are like mafia lawyers.
The mafia sent some of their guys to study law or even enter legit institutions(like police, church, government, etc) and then
had those guys serve the mafia. They had the sheen of respectability, dignity, and objective meritocracy, but their main loyalty
was to the mafia.
It's like Tom Hagen is an ace lawyer but serves the Mob.
And there were other famous Mob Lawyers, the real ones.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Ragano
So many of these journos and academics are really Mob Publicists and Mob Advocates.
They serve the globalist mafia. Glob is their Mob.
Sachs is a total shark. He's been a Glob Advocate forever. A real weasel. Putin is the real weasel, and problem in Russia. He's corrupt to his core and has his own vision for Russia which is quite destructive. His Soviet revanchism is a serious problem for Russia and has set the country up for a serious fall. Read More LOL: geokat62 Troll: L.K , Rurik
Quartermaster , April 18, 2017 at 1:11 pm GMT@Brabantian Proof of the false-flag nature of the 'chemical attack' in Syria absurdly ascribed to Assad's forces -
Above all because of a very-censored explosive story - a distinguished group of Swedish doctors showed that the George Clooney & Western-backed 'White Helmets' in fact made a snuff film actually murdering children of this 'chemical attack' ... anyone can invite medical physicians they know to view this, to see the Swedish Doctors for Human Rights are absolutely correct in their accusations:
For an overview of the many wider points making clear the false flag, Aangirfan does an excellent job here as she very often does:
http://aanirfan.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/trump-at-war-with-assad-and-putin.html
(1) Anti-Assad "reporter" Feras Karam tweeted about the gas attack in Syria 24 hours before it happened - Tweet , "Tomorrow a media campaign will begin to cover intense air raids on the Hama countryside & use of chlorine against civilians"
(2) Gas masks were distributed 2 days before the attack
(3) Rescue workers are not wearing protective gear as they would if severely-toxic gas attack had occurred
(4) Pakistani British doctor promoting Syria gas attack story, "who at the time of attack was taking interview requests instead of helping injured flooding in" is Dr Shajul Islam, "used as source by US & UK media, despite facing terror charges for kidnapping & torturing two British journalists in Syria & being struck off the medical register"
(5) The USA & CIA were previously documented as having approved a "plan to launch chemical weapon attack on Syria & blame it on Assad's regime' ... A 2013 article on this is deleted from the UK Daily Mail website, but is saved at Web Archive, a screenshot at Aangirfan's page above
(6) Videos previously exposed as fraudulent are being recycled "A chemical weapons shipment run by Saudi mercenaries [is blown up] before it can be offloaded & used to attack the Syrian army in Hama ... [this story] has turned into Syrian aircraft dropping sarin gas on orphanages ... videos shot in Egypt with the smoke machines are dragged out again."
(7) Gas attack story is supported by known Soros-funded frauds 'White Helmets' who had previously celebrated alongside Israeli-Saudi backed 'Al Qaeda' extremists after seizing Idlib from Syrian Army forces. White Helmets "have been caught filming their fake videos in places like Egypt & Morocco, using actors, smoke machines & fake blood".
(8) The 2013 gas attack in Syria killing over 1000 people, was also proven to be an operation by USA & allies, with admissions to this effect by Turkish Members of Parliament ... The operation even involved the CIA's Google Inc monopoly search control internet domination tool, via their subsidiary Google Idea Groups & Jared Cohen:
In 2014, the later-murdered journalist Serena Shim "stumbled upon a safehouse run by Jared Cohen & Google Idea Groups, a short distance from a border crossing into Syria between Hatay, Turkey & Aleppo province in Syria. In the safehouse were three Ukrainian secret service who had just buried a load of sarin gas shells from the Republic of Georgia. Chemical weapons used in the Ghouta war crime were trucked through Turkey to Gaziantep then taken from there to Aleppo by NGOs, hidden in ambulances or in trucks supposedly carrying relief aid. After Shim broke this story on PressTV ... the clumsily-staged 'accident' leading to her death only a few days later."
By way of motive - Destruction of Syria & Assad serves the long-being-implemented 1980s Israeli Oded Yinon Plan to destroy & dismember all major countries surrounding mafia state Israel, in general service to the world oligarchs. Plus, there are major US-backed economics behind the campaign to destroy Syria - Assad's fall is sought for changing from the Russia-supported pipeline from Iran thru Iraq & Syria, to the USA-supported pipeline from Qatar thru Saudi Arabia, Jordan & Syria. Sarin is a nerve agent and if that is what was used, gas masks are far less than what is needed to protect anyone.
I don't see any motivation on Assad's part to stage such an attack. It simply was not in his interest to do so. Trump's action
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April 07, 2017
Pentagon Trained Syria's Al Qaeda "Rebels" in the Use of Chemical Weapons
The Western media refutes their own lies.
Apr 9, 2017
Wizard of Oz , April 18, 2017 at 2:21 pm GMTNo More
Here is ths David Kilcullen article I have been referring to. On the face of it he is a respectable analyst and authority like Mr Girardi with no hidden agenda:
There is no reason to suppose that either DK or PG have special knowledge of what gas attack actually occurred and by whom. However there seems to be an even more important division over the security of the Syrian government under attack from the Al Qaeda affiliate by whatever name it is now called in Syria. Kilcullen points to Assad having superior hardware but desperately lacking manpower.
Does PG subscribe to the popular contrary view that Assad is so close to winning againt all rebels that he simply couldn't hsve hsd s motive to make the gss atttack?
Clark Westwood , April 18, 2017 at 2:22 pm GMTIs it possible that Trump and Putin cooked up this little show simply to give Trump more credibility in his approaching confrontation with North Korea? Z-man , April 18, 2017 at 2:53 pm GMT
@Anon Get a load of this a**hole who was responsible for disaster in Russia.
He thinks he has the right to judge the mental health of others.
But as long as super-rich globalists fund think-tanks and invite lunatics like him, he can posture as a 'voice of reason'.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhyD-fPS0vs
And there is the other esteemed 'voice of reason', Thomas Friedman, who wants war in Syria to go on, even if ISIS kills more innocents.
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/04/15/thomas-friedmans-perverse-love-affair-isis
These academics are like mafia lawyers.
The mafia sent some of their guys to study law or even enter legit institutions(like police, church, government, etc) and then
had those guys serve the mafia. They had the sheen of respectability, dignity, and objective meritocracy, but their main loyalty
was to the mafia.
It's like Tom Hagen is an ace lawyer but serves the Mob.
And there were other famous Mob Lawyers, the real ones.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Ragano
So many of these journos and academics are really Mob Publicists and Mob Advocates.
They serve the globalist mafia. Glob is their Mob.
Sachs is a total shark. He's been a Glob Advocate forever. A real weasel. What's the common denominator to these two ??????
Z-man , April 18, 2017 at 3:02 pm GMT"Democratic Party liberal interventionists have also joined with Senators John McCain, Lindsay Graham and Marco Rubio to celebrate the cruise missile strike and hardening rhetoric."
All owned by the likes of http://www.haaretz.com/polopoly_fs/1.631441.1418390491!/image/412181903.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_640/412181903.jpg Repulsive no?
Jeff Davis , April 18, 2017 at 3:15 pm GMT@utu Why'd there is no propaganda counter offensive coming from Putin and Assad? Where are their accounts of what happened there backed up by pictures and names of those who created this false flag? Don't they have their sources, intelligence and people on the ground? We are getting nothing. Instead Sputnik and RT is deferring to retired 71 old professor Postol who did his whole analysis based on single picture he found somewhere on social media. Do you think this will cause a dent in beliefs of people who are 24/7 being propagandized by Anglo-Zio media? " picture he found somewhere on social media."
If you check closely, I think you will find that Postol took that photo from the White House issued document presenting the "evidence"(not!) of Syrian responsibility(not!) for the sarin(?) gas attack. Thus that photo represents the on-the-record official story w/official "evidence".
Far from being some randomly acquired photo taken from social media and originating who knows where. And to take it one discrediting step further, it turns out the photo was provided by the al Qaeda terrorists - the CIA's client anti-Assad terrorists - who control that area.
Bottom line: From the first, this was an ***OBVIOUS*** false flag. The only question remaining is whether the CIA coordinated with al Qaeda in planning this event.
Sean , April 18, 2017 at 3:25 pm GMT@Hunsdon INORITE! I mean look, Russia has expanded its military to the very borders of NATO.
Oh.
Wait. Well they do not get to set the rules until they are the most powerful state in the world–like the US.
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100 Words Remember WMD and Saddam? What did the top papers say after Colin Powell's speech to the UN "proving" that Iraq had WMD?
New York Times: "[Powell's speech] may not have produced a 'smoking gun," but it left little question that Mr. Hussein had tried hard to conceal one."
Wall Street Journal: "The Powell evidence will be persuasive to anyone who is still persuadable. The only question remaining is whether the U.N. is going to have the courage of Mr. Powell's convictions."
Washington Post: "To continue to say that the Bush administration has not made its case, you must now believe that Colin Powell lied in the most serious statement he will ever make "
"Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play."
Joseph Goebbels Read More
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@Hunsdon INORITE! I mean look, Russia has expanded its military to the very borders of NATO.
Oh.
Wait. Not only that they recently illegally annexed a prized warm water port. Read More
alexander , April 18, 2017 at 4:13 pm GMT200 Words @Wizard of Oz Here is ths David Kilcullen article I have been referring to. On the face of it he is a respectable analyst and authority like Mr Girardi with no hidden agenda:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/in-depth/fighting-islamic-state/sarin-attack-shows-assad-is-desperate-as-jihadist-rebels-gain-ground/news-story/5265dee03a779671aefa32ef8d1a2fb3
Thete is mo reason to suppose that either DK or PG have special knowledge of what gas attack actually occurred and by whom. However there seems to be an even more important division over the security of the Syrian government under attack from the Al Qaeda afiliate by whatever name it is now called in Syria. Kilcullen points to Assad having superior hardware but desperately lacking manpower.
Does PG subscrtobe to the populsr contrary view that Assad is so close to winning againt all rebels that he simply couldn't hsve hsd s motive to make the gss atttack? Hi Wiz,
I think it is quite clear, that with the assistance of the Russian military, the Syrian army has mounted multiple strategic victories against ISIS over the past year and a half.
The entry of Russia into the fray, at the request of Syria, provided a very deep reservoir of enhanced military power which has shown to be highly effective in degraded both Al Qaeda and ISIS on multiple fronts.
It seems as absurd now , as it did in 2013, that Assad would do the ONE THING that would force the hand of the US military to enter the fray against him.
I also doubt the notion of the Syrian regimes "desperation" given the complete cooperation of Russia in providing any assistance the Syrian army might need , to achieve victory against ISIS.
One could argue, however ,that Assad is truly "bonehead" stupid.
You are certainly free to make that argument, Wiz , because, in this case, it seems to be the one that would make the most
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100 Words @Sean
Quite. They maybe faked before and know how to in there was a overwhelming need. However, one wonders why they did not use the gas gambit when they were set to lose Aleppo. Using it now only when they have lost their big gains, seems like bolting the stable door after the horse is gone . So the motives for the rebels faking a gas attack at this juncture are even more puzzling as for the Assad regime having ordered it .
Sounds like we've heard it all before, because we have, back in August 2013, and that turned out to be less than convincing. Skepticism is likewise mounting over current White House claims that Damascus used a chemical weapon against civilians in the village of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib province on April 4th.
Why Volatility Signals Stability, and Vice Versa
By Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Gregory F. Treverton
Purchase Article
Even as protests spread across the Middle East in early 2011, the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria appeared immune from the upheaval. Assad had ruled comfortably for over a decade, having replaced his father, Hafez, who himself had held power for the previous three decades. Many pundits argued that Syria's sturdy police state, which exercised tight control over the country's people and economy, would survive the Arab Spring undisturbed. ]...But appearances were deceiving: today, Syria is in a shambles, with the regime fighting for its very survival, whereas Lebanon has withstood the influx of Syrian refugees and the other considerable pressures of the civil war next door. Surprising as it may seem, the per capita death rate from violence in Lebanon in 2013 was lower than that in Washington, D.C. That same year, the body count of the Syrian conflict surpassed 100,000.
Why has seemingly stable Syria turned out to be the fragile regime, whereas always-in-turmoil Lebanon has so far proved robust? The answer is that prior to its civil war, Syria was exhibiting only pseudo-stability, its calm façade concealing deep structural vulnerabilities. Lebanon's chaos, paradoxically, signaled strength. Fifteen years of civil war had served to decentralize the state and bring about a more balanced sectarian power-sharing structure. Along with Lebanon's small size as an administrative unit, these factors added to its durability. So did the country's free-market economy. In Syria, the ruling Baath Party sought to control economic variability, replacing the lively chaos of the ancestral souk with the top-down, Soviet-style structure of the office building. This rigidity made Syria (and the other Baathist state, Iraq) much more vulnerable to disruption than Lebanon.[...]
The divergent tales of Syria and Lebanon demonstrate that the best early warning signs of instability are found not in historical data but in underlying structural properties. Past experience can be extremely effective when it comes to detecting risks of cancer, crime, and earthquakes. But it is a bad bellwether of complex political and economic events, particularly so-called tail risks-events, such as coups and financial crises, that are highly unlikely but enormously consequential. For those, the evidence of risk comes too late to do anything about it, and a more sophisticated approach is required.[...]
Simply put, fragility is aversion to disorder. Things that are fragile do not like variability, volatility, stress, chaos, and random events, which cause them to either gain little or suffer. A teacup, for example, will not benefit from any form of shock. It wants peace and predictability, something that is not possible in the long run, which is why time is an enemy to the fragile. What's more, things that are fragile respond to shock in a nonlinear fashion. With humans, for example, the harm from a ten-foot fall in no way equals ten times as much harm as from a one-foot fall. In political and economic terms, a $30 drop in the price of a barrel of oil is much more than twice as harmful to Saudi Arabia as a $15 drop.
THE CENTER CANNOT HOLD
The first marker of a fragile state is a concentrated decision-making system.funds, at the price of increasing systemic risks, such as disastrous national-level reforms.
A Russian build military base being used to attack urban areas is not "Syria"
This Administration has acted recklessly without care or consideration of the dire consequences of the United States attack on Syria
Assad and those around him hold concentrated centralised power and are already proven to be incredibly stupid, that is why he is in this position-- he thought the people loved him, put up the price of basic commodities and the rebellion started. Assad perhaps believes the US is scared to get involved in Syria or to to cross the Russians . It seems silly but he and his advisors have a proven record of catastrophic misjudgements . Bringing in the Russians meant the US would be involved.
I dare say the US has more advanced facilities for gathering intelligence it lets on about and than Syria, Russia or US media know about. Providing "evidence" gives away the hole card one might come in handy if the nuclear balloon starts going goes well and truly up. Any price would be worth paying for knowing Russia's intent. If people doubt Trump over this (and he warned the Russian it was going to be done so he didn't seek confrontation) it is the unfortunate price of maintaining secret intelligence facilities.
For a great power seeing its rival use military force to crush a rebellion it has expressed sympathy is quite definitely a real defeat . It's a zero sum game for America and Russia (yes Russia is Jingoistic, and I think it is more centralised in decision making ) . The Russians took advantage of US passivity under Obama, and they were exultant at the way the US stood and watched, while Russia made all the successful initiatives, but really they couldn't be allowed to have it their own way any longer, for what they would have done next can be assumed to have been frightening to Europe.
The Trump Administration is threatening to do more to remove Bashar al-Assad and every American should accept that the inhabitant of the White House, when he is actually in residence, will discover like many before him that war is good business. He will continue to ride the wave of jingoism that has turned out to be his salvation, reversing to an extent the negative publicity that has dogged the new administration.
"The Russians took advantage of US passivity under Obama, and they were exultant at the way the US stood and watched, while Russia made all the successful initiatives, but really they couldn't be allowed to have it their own way any longer, for what they would have done next can be assumed to have been frightening to Europe."
Wow, we must have been observing two different worlds, because Russian actions in several theatres (Syria, Ukraine, Korea, ROW) have been relatively restrained to non-existent despite clear threats to their national interests, while the US has ratcheted up it military intervention pretty much globally over the same period. Then again, I live outside the US and am not blanketed with the propaganda that spills out of its MSM house organs, so we have indeed observed two different worlds. Read More
Wally , April 18, 2017 at 4:45 pm GMT@Hunsdon INORITE! I mean look, Russia has expanded its military to the very borders of NATO.
Oh.
Wait. IOW, the Russians have their own military in their own county guarding their own borders.
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@iffen Not only that they recently illegally annexed a prized warm water port. "Illegal" not.
Russia was right to accept the legitimate Crimean vote.
The Crimean voters overwhelmingly approved returning to Russia.
Democracy personified, the will of the people.
Leftists hate that. Read More
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See the article by Gaius Publius at Naked Capitalism for a deeper dive.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/04/gaius-publius-new-evidence-syrian-gas-story-fabricated-white-house.html
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@utu Why'd there is no propaganda counter offensive coming from Putin and Assad? Where are their accounts of what happened there backed up by pictures and names of those who created this false flag? Don't they have their sources, intelligence and people on the ground? We are getting nothing. Instead Sputnik and RT is deferring to retired 71 old professor Postol who did his whole analysis based on single picture he found somewhere on social media. Do you think this will cause a dent in beliefs of people who are 24/7 being propagandized by Anglo-Zio media? You won't find it by looking at CNN / ZNN.
Try:
http://russia-insider.com/en
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100 Words NEW! @Wizard of Oz Here is ths David Kilcullen article I have been referring to. On the face of it he is a respectable analyst and authority like Mr Girardi with no hidden agenda:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/in-depth/fighting-islamic-state/sarin-attack-shows-assad-is-desperate-as-jihadist-rebels-gain-ground/news-story/5265dee03a779671aefa32ef8d1a2fb3
Thete is mo reason to suppose that either DK or PG have special knowledge of what gas attack actually occurred and by whom. However there seems to be an even more important division over the security of the Syrian government under attack from the Al Qaeda afiliate by whatever name it is now called in Syria. Kilcullen points to Assad having superior hardware but desperately lacking manpower.
Does PG subscrtobe to the populsr contrary view that Assad is so close to winning againt all rebels that he simply couldn't hsve hsd s motive to make the gss atttack? Kilcullen is well compensated by those who support the Establishment narrative on Syria and everywhere else in the Middle East so he does indeed have an agenda. Most intel and military types that I have spoken to agree that after the retaking of Aleppo al-Assad is winning and will eventually win. Did he nevertheless stage the chemical attack on Idbil? I don't know. Let's see the evidence. Somebody obviously knows that happened. Read More
Wally , April 18, 2017 at 5:01 pm GMT@Quartermaster Putin is the real weasel, and problem in Russia. He's corrupt to his core and has his own vision for Russia which is quite destructive. His Soviet revanchism is a serious problem for Russia and has set the country up for a serious fall. Putin is so bad for Russia that the Russians overwhelmingly support him.
I suggest you quit digging. Read More
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600 Words @Jeff Davis "...picture he found somewhere on social media."
If you check closely, I think you will find that Postol took that photo from the White House issued document presenting the "evidence"(not!) of Syrian responsibility(not!) for the sarin(?) gas attack. Thus that photo represents the on-the-record official story w/official "evidence".
Far from being some randomly acquired photo taken from social media and originating who knows where. And to take it one discrediting step further, it turns out the photo was provided by the al Qaeda terrorists -- the CIA's client anti-Assad terrorists -- who control that area.
Bottom line: From the first, this was an ***OBVIOUS*** false flag. The only question remaining is whether the CIA coordinated with al Qaeda in planning this event. On Apr 13, 2017, Center for Strategic and International Studies hosted Mike Pompeo for his first public speaking appearance as CIA director.
After Pompeo's prepared remarks, Juan Zarate queried the director on the Syria attack/s, starting his questions with comment
on the rapidity with which "assessments were made."
(Zarate is now at CSIS after proving his neoconservative bona fides as a charter member of Stuart Levey's Treasury Department
"guerrillas in grey suits" - the gang that deploys financial blackmail to coerce international banks and corporations to join
the US in constraining their commerce with states the USA does not like.)
Pompeo responded to Zarate's request for "behind the scenes" description of how the assessments were made:
"We were in short order able to deliver a high confidence assessment that it was the Syrian regime that had launched chemical attacks against its own people. Not me, Our Team, not just the CIA, the entire intelligence community was good and fast and we challenged ourselves. I can assure you we were challenged by the President and his team. We wanted to make sure we had it right. There's not much like when the president looks at you and says, Are you sure? When you know he's contemplating an action based on the analysis your organization has provided, and we got it right and I'm proud of the work that get to have the president have the opportunity to make a good decision about what he ought to do in the face of the atrocity that took place. "
Zarate did not register dissatisfaction with this non-response; instead, he accepted the assessment as conclusive. Then he escalated the discussion:
"What do you make of the Russian disputation of those conclusions? Bashar Al-Assad calling this a fabrication, the entire event. It's a battle of legitimacy and proof. How do you deal with that?"
To which Pompeo delivered the money-quote:
They're challenges. There are things we were able to use to form the basis of our conclusion that we cannot reveal. That is always tricky, but we've done our best and I think over time we can reveal a bit more. Everyone saw the open source photos, so we had reality on our side. "
So apparently Pompeo and the "entire intelligence community" used the same photos that Dr. Postol examined exhaustively, but reached a different conclusion; they believe that the photos reflect "reality" and support their interpretation of events as fingering the Syrian government as perpetrators of the "red-line" "atrocity."
Pompeo spent the next few minutes derogating Russia and Putin, stating that "Russia is on its sixth or seventh version of the story," and that "Putin is not a credible man . . . a man for whom veracity does not translate into English." (I think he meant "into Russian . . . .")
-
Recall that in 2013 Diane Feinstein also engaged the "rapid turnaround" efforts of the CIA to produce a video presentation
of gassed children, which she claimed implicated the Syrian government, in her bid to drive the Obama administration across the
"red line."
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/09/07/cia-authenticates-13-videos-showing-syrian-gas-attack-aftermath-official-says.html
and
Lawmakers shown 'horrendous' video of alleged chemical attack in Syria Sept 05, 2013
After extensive investigation by experts under the auspices of the United Nations, Ban Ki Moon declared that it was "indisputable" that a chemical attack had occurred, but those responsible for the attack were not conclusively identified. Samantha Power, however, insisted that "it must have been Assad." http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/un-report-confirms-use-of-chemical-weapons-in-syria-a-922746.html
Same lies, different liars. Read More
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The Theodor Postel report made it onto Yahoo News surprisinly, last night. JW Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter Display All Comments
100 Words @Sean
Quite. They maybe faked before and know how to in there was a overwhelming need. However, one wonders why they did not use the gas gambit when they were set to lose Aleppo. Using it now only when they have lost their big gains, seems like bolting the stable door after the horse is gone . So the motives for the rebels faking a gas attack at this juncture are even more puzzling as for the Assad regime having ordered it .
Sounds like we've heard it all before, because we have, back in August 2013, and that turned out to be less than convincing. Skepticism is likewise mounting over current White House claims that Damascus used a chemical weapon against civilians in the village of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib province on April 4th.
Why Volatility Signals Stability, and Vice Versa
By Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Gregory F. Treverton
Purchase Article
Even as protests spread across the Middle East in early 2011, the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria appeared immune from the upheaval. Assad had ruled comfortably for over a decade, having replaced his father, Hafez, who himself had held power for the previous three decades. Many pundits argued that Syria's sturdy police state, which exercised tight control over the country's people and economy, would survive the Arab Spring undisturbed. ]...But appearances were deceiving: today, Syria is in a shambles, with the regime fighting for its very survival, whereas Lebanon has withstood the influx of Syrian refugees and the other considerable pressures of the civil war next door. Surprising as it may seem, the per capita death rate from violence in Lebanon in 2013 was lower than that in Washington, D.C. That same year, the body count of the Syrian conflict surpassed 100,000.
Why has seemingly stable Syria turned out to be the fragile regime, whereas always-in-turmoil Lebanon has so far proved robust? The answer is that prior to its civil war, Syria was exhibiting only pseudo-stability, its calm façade concealing deep structural vulnerabilities. Lebanon's chaos, paradoxically, signaled strength. Fifteen years of civil war had served to decentralize the state and bring about a more balanced sectarian power-sharing structure. Along with Lebanon's small size as an administrative unit, these factors added to its durability. So did the country's free-market economy. In Syria, the ruling Baath Party sought to control economic variability, replacing the lively chaos of the ancestral souk with the top-down, Soviet-style structure of the office building. This rigidity made Syria (and the other Baathist state, Iraq) much more vulnerable to disruption than Lebanon.[...]
The divergent tales of Syria and Lebanon demonstrate that the best early warning signs of instability are found not in historical data but in underlying structural properties. Past experience can be extremely effective when it comes to detecting risks of cancer, crime, and earthquakes. But it is a bad bellwether of complex political and economic events, particularly so-called tail risks-events, such as coups and financial crises, that are highly unlikely but enormously consequential. For those, the evidence of risk comes too late to do anything about it, and a more sophisticated approach is required.[...]
Simply put, fragility is aversion to disorder. Things that are fragile do not like variability, volatility, stress, chaos, and random events, which cause them to either gain little or suffer. A teacup, for example, will not benefit from any form of shock. It wants peace and predictability, something that is not possible in the long run, which is why time is an enemy to the fragile. What's more, things that are fragile respond to shock in a nonlinear fashion. With humans, for example, the harm from a ten-foot fall in no way equals ten times as much harm as from a one-foot fall. In political and economic terms, a $30 drop in the price of a barrel of oil is much more than twice as harmful to Saudi Arabia as a $15 drop.
THE CENTER CANNOT HOLD
The first marker of a fragile state is a concentrated decision-making system.funds, at the price of increasing systemic risks, such as disastrous national-level reforms.
A Russian build military base being used to attack urban areas is not "Syria"
This Administration has acted recklessly without care or consideration of the dire consequences of the United States attack on Syria
Assad and those around him hold concentrated centralised power and are already proven to be incredibly stupid, that is why he is in this position-- he thought the people loved him, put up the price of basic commodities and the rebellion started. Assad perhaps believes the US is scared to get involved in Syria or to to cross the Russians . It seems silly but he and his advisors have a proven record of catastrophic misjudgements . Bringing in the Russians meant the US would be involved.
I dare say the US has more advanced facilities for gathering intelligence it lets on about and than Syria, Russia or US media know about. Providing "evidence" gives away the hole card one might come in handy if the nuclear balloon starts going goes well and truly up. Any price would be worth paying for knowing Russia's intent. If people doubt Trump over this (and he warned the Russian it was going to be done so he didn't seek confrontation) it is the unfortunate price of maintaining secret intelligence facilities.
For a great power seeing its rival use military force to crush a rebellion it has expressed sympathy is quite definitely a real defeat . It's a zero sum game for America and Russia (yes Russia is Jingoistic, and I think it is more centralised in decision making ) . The Russians took advantage of US passivity under Obama, and they were exultant at the way the US stood and watched, while Russia made all the successful initiatives, but really they couldn't be allowed to have it their own way any longer, for what they would have done next can be assumed to have been frightening to Europe. You have no idea what you're talking about. You don't source your quotes, and you're ideologically driven by a form of crypto anti-socialism revealed in you're basic premise that centralized planning created the vulnerability that brought down Saddam and now threatens Assad.
The Trump Administration is threatening to do more to remove Bashar al-Assad and every American should accept that the inhabitant of the White House, when he is actually in residence, will discover like many before him that war is good business. He will continue to ride the wave of jingoism that has turned out to be his salvation, reversing to an extent the negative publicity that has dogged the new administration.
Nonsense. What threatens all of the Mideast - what brought down Saddam, Gaddafi, and now threatens Assad - is US/Zionist covert and overt political and military violence. Dick Cheney turned the US Govt over to Israeli neocon subversion, resulting in Zionist control of US foreign policy and its conversion into a foreign policy in service to Israel: the implementation of the 7-country, Oded Yinon regime change program.
The US has been turned into Israel's bjtch, its treasury looted, the lives of US miltary personnel sacrificed to benefit the Zionist criminal project. And you, are either a fool or an Israeli propagandist. Read More Agree: Z-man
The Anti-Gnostic , Website April 18, 2017 at 6:20 pm GMT@utu Why'd there is no propaganda counter offensive coming from Putin and Assad? Where are their accounts of what happened there backed up by pictures and names of those who created this false flag? Don't they have their sources, intelligence and people on the ground? We are getting nothing. Instead Sputnik and RT is deferring to retired 71 old professor Postol who did his whole analysis based on single picture he found somewhere on social media. Do you think this will cause a dent in beliefs of people who are 24/7 being propagandized by Anglo-Zio media? How do we know it wasn't YOU? Prove it. I want pictures, names. Read More utu , April 18, 2017 at 6:43 pm GMT
200 Words @The Anti-Gnostic How do we know it wasn't YOU? Prove it. I want pictures, names. It's not about proving things. It is about narrative control. However you look at it Russia (and Assad) lost the narrative. One amateurish report by retired professor from MIT that bases his finding on just one picture won't change it. Still it is this report that Russia's media like RT and Sputnik are citing instead of coming up with their own genuine stuff. One would think they have means, right? After all there are FSB, GRU, Assad's intelligence, assets on the ground in Syria, intercepted communications between Al Qaeda and their handlers. And Russian media can't come up with a good story and relies on 71 years old former MIT professor report. So what's going on there? Don't they want to win? Are they being sabotaged by inept and indolent staff? Or is Russia's fight in the Middle East just a make belief? Hey, Our American Partners, how much will you pay us for playing bad guys? And for being stupid guys you pay extra, right? Read More Sean , April 18, 2017 at 6:49 pm GMT
100 Words @The Alarmist
Wow, we must have been observing two different worlds, because Russian actions in several theatres (Syria, Ukraine, Korea, ROW) have been relatively restrained to non-existent despite clear threats to their national interests, while the US has ratcheted up it military intervention pretty much globally over the same period. Then again, I live outside the US and am not blanketed with the propaganda that spills out of its MSM house organs, so we have indeed observed two different worlds. http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/08/politics/marines-raqqa-assault-syria/
"The Russians took advantage of US passivity under Obama, and they were exultant at the way the US stood and watched, while Russia made all the successful initiatives, but really they couldn't be allowed to have it their own way any longer, for what they would have done next can be assumed to have been frightening to Europe."
Trump didn't wait for the gas attack, he was already laying the ground for getting involved in Syria, which is not a vital
interest of Russia. Russians want to do stuff like support Assad and crush rebels the US has expressed sympathy for. they surely
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600 Words
Skepticism is likewise mounting over current White House claims that Damascus used a chemical weapon against civilians in the village of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib province on April 4th.
So far it's been a Big Media claim, too. To the point of at least one piece (in The Atlantic , IIRC) poo-pooing the idea that the Big Media Narrative could be wrong.
even though Damascus had no motive to stage such an attack
I'm tired of reading this and seeing no explanation. I'd like to see that assertion supported. I'd like it to come from you, Phil, because so far, in my experience, you seem to be the most reasonable US-skeptic writer at TUR.
It isn't self-explanatory. Chemical weapons have their uses, like clearing out heavily fortified urban areas that would be costly to clear the old fashioned way. Weighed against Trump's ostensible goal to stay out of Syria and drop the insane "Assad must go" rhetoric of the previous administration, it might've been tempting. Which is why I would like to know more about the target area and circumstances. But nobody seems to give a shit. I suppose it might have a lot to do with the fact that there are (or were, last I heard) no journalists in Syria. But if we simply don't know much about the target area, maybe we should stop assuming hitting it with chemical weapons had no utility.
Principled and eminently sensible Democratic Congressman Tulsi Gabbard
Those principles being "don't invade the world, invite the world," I presume?
There have been two central documents relating to the alleged Syrian chemical weapon incidents in 2013 and 2017, both of which read like press releases. Both refer to a consensus within the U.S. intelligence community (IC)and express "confidence" and even "high confidence" regarding their conclusions but neither is actually a product of the office of the Director of National Intelligence, which would be appropriate if the IC had actually come to a consensus. Neither the Director of National Intelligence nor the Director of CIA were present in a photo showing the White House team deliberating over what to do about Syria. Both documents supporting the U.S. cruise missile attack were, in fact, uncharacteristically put out by the White House, suggesting that the arguments were stitched together in haste to support a political decision to use force that had already been made.
The American Security Apparatus can shove their consensus up their asses anyway. Why should the American public take their word for anything?
Generally reliable journalist Robert Parry is reporting that the intelligence behind the White House claims comes largely from satellite surveillance, though nothing has been released to back-up the conclusion that the Syrian government was behind the attack, an odd omission as everyone knows about satellite capabilities and they are not generally considered to be a classified source or method.
And there are huge, consistent gaps in satellite coverage (and always have been, last I heard) that everyone and their mother knows about, meaning, it would be trivial for anyone to plan an attack when the satellites can't see. If Parry is right, then it sounds like the administration has jack shit. "Satellite surveillance" is the last source I'd find persuasive or conclusive in this context.
Parry also cites the fact that there are alternative theories on what took place and why, some of which appear to originate with the intelligence and national security community, which was in part concerned over the rush to judgment by the White House.
So this really is shaping up to all be a bunch of "Wag The Dog/I bombed Serbia to distract from my kosher blowjob scandal" bullshit. Great.
The al-Ansar terrorist group (affiliated with al-Qaeda) is in control of the area
Meaning, this "innocent civilians" mantra we've been hearing from Big Media is bullshit. Read More
bike-anarchist , April 18, 2017 at 7:04 pm GMT@utu It's not about proving things. It is about narrative control. However you look at it Russia (and Assad) lost the narrative. One amateurish report by retired professor from MIT that bases his finding on just one picture won't change it. Still it is this report that Russia's media like RT and Sputnik are citing instead of coming up with their own genuine stuff. One would think they have means, right? After all there are FSB, GRU, Assad's intelligence, assets on the ground in Syria, intercepted communications between Al Qaeda and their handlers. And Russian media can't come up with a good story and relies on 71 years old former MIT professor report. So what's going on there? Don't they want to win? Are they being sabotaged by inept and indolent staff? Or is Russia's fight in the Middle East just a make belief? Hey, Our American Partners, how much will you pay us for playing bad guys? And for being stupid guys you pay extra, right? Your comment reminds me of a conversation I had with a fence post. At least I found the the fence post truthful, unlike you. I can't imagine you to be able to make humanitarian decisions based on your impatience and impudence. Read More Z-man , April 18, 2017 at 7:12 pm GMT
100 Words @Jeff Davis You have no idea what you're talking about. You don't source your quotes, and you're ideologically driven by a form of crypto anti-socialism revealed in you're basic premise that centralized planning created the vulnerability that brought down Saddam and now threatens Assad.
Nonsense. What threatens all of the Mideast -- what brought down Saddam, Gaddafi, and now threatens Assad -- is US/Zionist covert and overt political and military violence. Dick Cheney turned the US Govt over to Israeli neocon subversion, resulting in Zionist control of US foreign policy and its conversion into a foreign policy in service to Israel: the implementation of the 7-country, Oded Yinon regime change program.
The US has been turned into Israel's bjtch, its treasury looted, the lives of US miltary personnel sacrificed to benefit the Zionist criminal project. And you,... are either a fool or an Israeli propagandist.
What threatens all of the Mideast - what brought down Saddam, Gaddafi, and now threatens Assad - is US/Zionist covert and overt political and military violence. Dick Cheney turned the US Govt over to Israeli neocon subversion, resulting in Zionist control of US foreign policy and its conversion into a foreign policy in service to Israel: the implementation of the 7-country, Oded Yinon regime change program.
The US has been turned into Israel's bjtch, its treasury looted, the lives of US miltary personnel sacrificed to benefit the Zionist criminal project.
Bares repeating. Read More
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@bike-anarchist Your comment reminds me of a conversation I had with a fence post. At least I found the the fence post truthful, unlike you. I can't imagine you to be able to make humanitarian decisions based on your impatience and impudence. You found it impudent for me calling Russian media and Russia's propaganda machine inept and indolent? You must be one of those who drank Putin's Kool-Aid and is now patiently awaiting his 2nd coming and saving us all from the grips of the NWO, right? Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments
400 Words I think the take-home point for anyone who does his own thinking is that Trump acted so quickly (36 hours) that the evidence should be overwhelming and incontrovertible. The evidence forthcoming has been shit. Ergo, it seems very clear that Trump had no valid reason to act as he did.
What would he gain at this point to launch a chemical attack on the civilian populations?
Either the area is full of innocent civilians, or it's an al-Qaeda stronghold.
Why'd there is no propaganda counter offensive coming from Putin and Assad? Where are their accounts of what happened there backed up by pictures and names of those who created this false flag? Don't they have their sources, intelligence and people on the ground? We are getting nothing. Instead Sputnik and RT is deferring to retired 71 old professor Postol who did his whole analysis based on single picture he found somewhere on social media. Do you think this will cause a dent in beliefs of people who are 24/7 being propagandized by Anglo-Zio media?
The Russians are going to need a lot more than counter-propaganda. I trust them even less than I trust western Big Media. Hard evidence or go home.
Agent76, nobody who will trust globalresearch.ca needs to have their link cited, they'll know about it already, being Konspiracy Kooks. Nobody else is gonna buy that junk.
Not only that they recently illegally annexed a prized warm water port.
Illegal, schmellegal. It's perfectly legit realpolitik. If Ukraine didn't want Russia taking back what was hers, she shouldn't have jumped into bed with hostile powers. Seriously, if you'd asked a Ukrainian on independence day what would happen in the current circumstances, they could have painted you an accurate picture.
"We were in short order able to deliver a high confidence assessment that it was the Syrian regime that had launched chemical attacks against its own people. Not me, Our Team, not just the CIA, the entire intelligence community was good and fast and we challenged ourselves. I can assure you we were challenged by the President and his team. We wanted to make sure we had it right. There's not much like when the president looks at you and says, Are you sure? When you know he's contemplating an action based on the analysis your organization has provided, and we got it right and I'm proud of the work that get to have the president have the opportunity to make a good decision about what he ought to do in the face of the atrocity that took place. "
"Trust me, I'm a professional liar." Read More
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400 Words Dear Mr. Giraldi,
Not withstanding our Presidents "rush to judgement" tomahawk strike against the Assad regime last week, there should be very strong indications to our main stream media, that they are being abandoned by tens of millions of Americans across our country who no longer accept the medias willingness to defraud us ,at nearly every turn.
I was an avid reader of the the NY Times, for over 25 years, and I watched the nightly news all the time.
When we were all told by these media outlets in the run up to the Iraq war, that Saddam had launched an anthrax attack against our news rooms and our capitol I believed it completely 100%..without any reason in my own mind why I shouldn't .
Once the war began, and the attribution to Saddam of the anthrax attack quickly collapsed , I felt defrauded by those who I had always trusted to be honest, most especially on issues of war and peace.
In 2013,when the Ghouta Sarin attack was attributed to Assad by these very same pundits, the memory of the phony Saddam anthrax attribution reared its ugly head, and with good reason.
If they were lying then why aren't they lying now ?
I think our media has proven itself, scores of times, over the last fifteen years, to be, at best, disingenuous and at worst complicit in acts of war fraud and terror fraud which have taken the lives of millions of innocent people and cost our country tens of trillions of dollars.
There is no reason why I , nor any American, should be happy about this.
Whats worse is they have displayed such enormous contempt for all the tens of millions of innocent families who have suffered on account of their deceits that they have lost an overwhelming amount of respect from me,as well as, I imagine, countless others.
Our Big Media can only cry "wolf" so many times before they are greeted by everyone with the middle finger.
This reality will not go away, but only get worse, until they start to shoot straight, and have proven to their viewers, that
they are not seeking to manipulate, or defraud us . into War. Read More
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@iffen Not only that they recently illegally annexed a prized warm water port. Thanks, Wally.
"iffen," the eff'n Israeli disinfo troll, is always trying to slip one in. Read More
Biff , April 18, 2017 at 7:27 pm GMTWith Trump's complete flip on foreign policy I'm starting to think(again) that U.S. Presidents are mere puppets for the real rulers of this world – who no doubt considered Obama to be just a corporate "house negro". Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter Display All Comments
100 Words President KUSHNER and his faithful toady Trump sure are busy these days. In between bites of chocolate cake, they are arming the terrorists and bombing Syrian civilians.
Over 50 Civilians Killed, Injured in US-Led Coalition Airstrikes in Eastern Syria
http://en.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13960129000960
US Continues to Airdrop More Aid Packages to ISIL Terrorists in Northwestern Iraq
http://en.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13960129000900
There's one reason the USA is stuck in endless ME wars, with no end in sight. American troops are fighting and dying for Apartheid Israel, and our wealth is being spent on the same.
When Syria is toast, the MSM will start attacking Iran, and they'll have plenty of friends who think the same way in the WH
and Congress. Read More
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@RobinG Thanks, Wally.
"iffen," the eff'n Israeli disinfo troll, is always trying to slip one in. always trying to slip one in
Thanks to you RobinG I get a White House propaganda blurb "slipped" into my email every day or so. The decent thing for you to have done would have been to warn me not to use my actual email address.
BTW. the commies have been trying to get a warm water port since the beginning of the Cold War. Read More
Svigor , April 18, 2017 at 7:40 pm GMT200 Words https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_weapons
Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter Display All CommentsThere are three basic configurations in which these agents are stored. The first are self-contained munitions like projectiles, cartridges, mines, and rockets; these can contain propellant and/or explosive components. The next form are aircraft-delivered munitions. This form never has an explosive component.[41] Together they comprise the two forms that have been weaponized and are ready for their intended use. The U.S. stockpile consisted of 39% of these weapon ready munitions. The final of the three forms are raw agent housed in one-ton containers. The remaining 61%[41] of the stockpile was in this form.[56] Whereas these chemicals exist in liquid form at normal room temperature,[41][57] the sulfur mustards H, and HD freeze in temperatures below 55 °F (12.8 °C). Mixing lewisite with distilled mustard lowers the freezing point to −13 °F (−25.0 °C).[48]
Higher temperatures are a bigger concern because the possibility of an explosion increases as the temperatures rise. A fire at one of these facilities would endanger the surrounding community as well as the personnel at the installations.[58] Perhaps more so for the community having much less access to protective equipment and specialized training.[59] The Oak Ridge National Laboratory conducted a study to assess capabilities and costs for protecting civilian populations during related emergencies,[60] and the effectiveness of expedient, in-place shelters.[61]
None of this would be an issue if the media did its job.
But it doesn't.
There is free media in the US, but Big Media is not free media. It is Bought Media and should be called as such. Read More
RobinG , April 18, 2017 at 7:45 pm GMT@Svigor
So far it's been a Big Media claim, too. To the point of at least one piece (in The Atlantic , IIRC) poo-pooing the idea that the Big Media Narrative could be wrong.
Skepticism is likewise mounting over current White House claims that Damascus used a chemical weapon against civilians in the village of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib province on April 4th.
I'm tired of reading this and seeing no explanation. I'd like to see that assertion supported. I'd like it to come from you, Phil, because so far, in my experience, you seem to be the most reasonable US-skeptic writer at TUR.
even though Damascus had no motive to stage such an attack
It isn't self-explanatory. Chemical weapons have their uses, like clearing out heavily fortified urban areas that would be costly to clear the old fashioned way. Weighed against Trump's ostensible goal to stay out of Syria and drop the insane "Assad must go" rhetoric of the previous administration, it might've been tempting. Which is why I would like to know more about the target area and circumstances. But nobody seems to give a shit. I suppose it might have a lot to do with the fact that there are (or were, last I heard) no journalists in Syria. But if we simply don't know much about the target area, maybe we should stop assuming hitting it with chemical weapons had no utility.
Those principles being "don't invade the world, invite the world," I presume?
Principled and eminently sensible Democratic Congressman Tulsi Gabbard
The American Security Apparatus can shove their consensus up their asses anyway. Why should the American public take their word for anything?
There have been two central documents relating to the alleged Syrian chemical weapon incidents in 2013 and 2017, both of which read like press releases. Both refer to a consensus within the U.S. intelligence community (IC)and express "confidence" and even "high confidence" regarding their conclusions but neither is actually a product of the office of the Director of National Intelligence, which would be appropriate if the IC had actually come to a consensus. Neither the Director of National Intelligence nor the Director of CIA were present in a photo showing the White House team deliberating over what to do about Syria. Both documents supporting the U.S. cruise missile attack were, in fact, uncharacteristically put out by the White House, suggesting that the arguments were stitched together in haste to support a political decision to use force that had already been made.
And there are huge, consistent gaps in satellite coverage (and always have been, last I heard) that everyone and their mother knows about, meaning, it would be trivial for anyone to plan an attack when the satellites can't see. If Parry is right, then it sounds like the administration has jack shit. "Satellite surveillance" is the last source I'd find persuasive or conclusive in this context.
Generally reliable journalist Robert Parry is reporting that the intelligence behind the White House claims comes largely from satellite surveillance, though nothing has been released to back-up the conclusion that the Syrian government was behind the attack, an odd omission as everyone knows about satellite capabilities and they are not generally considered to be a classified source or method.
So this really is shaping up to all be a bunch of "Wag The Dog/I bombed Serbia to distract from my kosher blowjob scandal" bullshit. Great.
Parry also cites the fact that there are alternative theories on what took place and why, some of which appear to originate with the intelligence and national security community, which was in part concerned over the rush to judgment by the White House.
Meaning, this "innocent civilians" mantra we've been hearing from Big Media is bullshit. " like clearing out heavily fortified urban areas.."
The al-Ansar terrorist group (affiliated with al-Qaeda) is in control of the area
Svigor, all parties seem to agree this was a small village and there were only civilian casualties. (Did I misread?) So, hardly
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100 Words @DB Cooper This whole chemical weapon attack by Assad sounds fishy from the beginning. From what I read Assad is winning the civil war and things are turning for the better for him. What would he gain at this point to launch a chemical attack on the civilian populations? Things just doesn't add up. Check out this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1VNQGsiP8M&t=22s It is established that the White Helmets delivered their film to Al Jazeera before 8am. on the 4th of April (the day of the Syrian Airstrike which occurred between 11.30am. and 12.30pm. It is simply impossible, given the elevation of the sun shown in the video, for that film to have been made before 8am. on the 4th. This is irrefutable evidence that the filming was done no later than the day before the Syrian Government forces attacked. Read More
RobinG , April 18, 2017 at 8:32 pm GMT200 Words @Anon None of this would be an issue if the media did its job.
But it doesn't.
There is free media in the US, but Big Media is not free media. It is Bought Media and should be called as such. Right you are! The Big, Bought and Biased Media must be RELENTLESSLY exposed and discredited.
Trump's airstrike was triggered by the latest Assad-Did-It-Again, "gassing his own people" story, that we first heard in 2013. Once again evidence is lacking, and worse, there is a total lack of interest in finding evidence, or in asking the obvious questions of motive, cui bono? In a replay of "Gulf of Tonkin," "WMDs in Iraq," and numerous other false provocations, the mainstream media has once again rushed to judgment with no penetrating questions asked.
Since 2011, U.S. corporate media has acted as advocate for militant factions. Rather than reporting events as they occurred,
our "journalists" have repeated stories selected by anti-Assad "sources" such as the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, i.e.
Rami Abdul Rahman. Yes, the SOHR is one guy, an ex-pat member of the so-called "Syrian opposition" who operates out of his house
in Coventry, England. Read More
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100 Words @anonymous It certainly appears to have been a manufactured event. The media was ready and swung into action immediately with pictures and a noisy campaign that the usual war-hawk politicians joined in with. The timing was just too good and seems to have been coordinated. Syria was bombed without bothering to investigate based on Trump's claim that the evidence was ironclad. Did people like McMaster think it was real and report it to Trump as such? Did Trump believe it? Or did they know it was fake but pretended otherwise? Were they in on it from the beginning or were they forced to play along? Trump has quickly shifted into being an establishment politician whose rhetoric has been bellicose and reckless. Next up, N Korea and then Iran?
Yeah, it looks like it.
I voted for Trump mainly for foreign policy reasons. I assumed–I hoped!–that Trump would be better than Our Lady of the Pantsuits, that Israel-controlled, neocon hack. Maybe the difference is this: With Clinton, the ICBMs would have been flying by now, but with Trump, it'll take a bit longer. . . . Read More
anon , April 18, 2017 at 8:59 pm GMT200 Words How does the lie work? It survives . It always survives . King is dead! Long live the king! It come back. People ignore when they find it out . Same propel tweak the margins and support the new version to build another lie.
That's why we hear that "Saddam did not have nukes but they found weapons they found this they found that they found gas chemical"
I tell them " that is none of your and this Gov's Freaking business"
Now these guys are busy saying "Assad sent refugees he doesn't want this or that or he poured chem s or make attack it possible"
Mu answer is usually this " The Gov can go to war tomorrow because r the sky was not blue above the desert of Iran proving
they are not compliant and is busy destroying the climate . You will accept that logic as well or shrug it off but will vote him
or his surrogate next time " Read More
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@Philip Giraldi Kilcullen is well compensated by those who support the Establishment narrative on Syria and everywhere else in the Middle East so he does indeed have an agenda. Most intel and military types that I have spoken to agree that after the retaking of Aleppo al-Assad is winning and will eventually win. Did he nevertheless stage the chemical attack on Idbil? I don't know. Let's see the evidence. Somebody obviously knows that happened. I assume that someone called "Wizard of Oz" might, like myself, be a resident of Australia.
100 Words @utu It's not about proving things. It is about narrative control. However you look at it Russia (and Assad) lost the narrative. One amateurish report by retired professor from MIT that bases his finding on just one picture won't change it. Still it is this report that Russia's media like RT and Sputnik are citing instead of coming up with their own genuine stuff. One would think they have means, right? After all there are FSB, GRU, Assad's intelligence, assets on the ground in Syria, intercepted communications between Al Qaeda and their handlers. And Russian media can't come up with a good story and relies on 71 years old former MIT professor report. So what's going on there? Don't they want to win? Are they being sabotaged by inept and indolent staff? Or is Russia's fight in the Middle East just a make belief? Hey, Our American Partners, how much will you pay us for playing bad guys? And for being stupid guys you pay extra, right?
One amateurish report by retired professor from MIT that bases his finding on just one picture won't change it. Still it is this report that Russia's media like RT and Sputnik are citing instead of coming up with their own genuine stuff.
According to newly minted director of CIA, that organization and the entire "intelligence community" relied on the "reality" of those photos, in addition to other things that "can't be revealed right now, maybe later."
Maybe it will be revealed after Assad is safely dead or in exile in Moscow what the CIA's can't be revealed methods were.
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NEW! @unseated I assume that someone called "Wizard of Oz" might, like myself, be a resident of Australia.
100 Words @Brewer It is established that the White Helmets delivered their film to Al Jazeera before 8am. on the 4th of April (the day of the Syrian Airstrike which occurred between 11.30am. and 12.30pm. It is simply impossible, given the elevation of the sun shown in the video, for that film to have been made before 8am. on the 4th. This is irrefutable evidence that the filming was done no later than the day before the Syrian Government forces attacked. Hi Brewer,
Is there a link to the video ?
Moreover, if what you are saying is true, then it would seem to indicate the White Helmets, as well as ISIS were leaked information as to the time of the Syrian strike so as to stage the chemical event well beforehand.
This means there is a big leak in the shared information between the White House and Moscow.
My understanding is Moscow shared advanced warning of the Syrian strike with D.C., as part of their non confrontation agreement.
Somebody leaked that information to ISIS and Al Qaeda .I wonder who ?
How else could ISIS obtain advanced knowledge about exactly when to plant their gas canister
and stage the gas attack ? Read More
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300 Words It should surprise none that Syria is simply a redux of Iraq 2002-03, minus Ahmed Chalabi or a reasonable facsimile. A "slam dunk." It worked then. The media loved it. All the players got to write memoirs and collect royalties on the same bogus narrative. OK, it was widened a bit to include how everyone, absolutely everyone had no doubt about the 'intelligence' and WMDs. Honest.
GW Bush even did a clever PowerPoint mime for the Radio & Television Correspondent's Association Dinner 24 March 2004 in which he said "Those weapons of mass destruction must be somewhere! Nope, no weapons over there! Maybe under here?" while pretending to look for WMD under his desk. Few (if any) objected. That's when it was pretty clear the soul of the press, if not the Republic, was dead.
The media loves it now. Easy stories – sensational, complete with dead infant/kiddy pics. Second only to porn. Better in a way, because you can inject moral indignation into the byline. Remember the Sabah's hawking 312 dead babies removed from incubators by Saddam in Kuwait in '90? Worked then too. No need to look further.
Our Administration(s) insists Assad 'must go' without considering what will follow. It champions 'moderate rebels', despite their kinship to the most extreme barbarism. If Iraq 2003 was bad, this is even worse. We don't even bother to suggest reasonable succession or a viable alternative future. Too much effort?
True corruption. There are no excuses.
Did it all start with Truman's National Security Act of '47, which codified the CIA and changed the "Department of War' to the 'Department of Defense'?. We've waged war (clandestine and overt) ever since. If only for honesty, it should be changed back to' Department of War.' Read More
utu , April 18, 2017 at 10:05 pm GMT100 Words @Brewer It is established that the White Helmets delivered their film to Al Jazeera before 8am. on the 4th of April (the day of the Syrian Airstrike which occurred between 11.30am. and 12.30pm. It is simply impossible, given the elevation of the sun shown in the video, for that film to have been made before 8am. on the 4th. This is irrefutable evidence that the filming was done no later than the day before the Syrian Government forces attacked.
It is established that the White Helmets delivered their film to Al Jazeera before 8am.
Why Russian media does not make the same point? Wouldn't it be nice if there was an article in Sputnik or even better, a video
on rt.com that would argue that the video was made one day before? Read More
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200 Words @Orville H. Larson " . . . Trump has quickly shifted into being an establishment politician whose rhetoric has been bellicose and reckless. . . ."
Yeah, it looks like it.
I voted for Trump mainly for foreign policy reasons. I assumed--I hoped!--that Trump would be better than Our Lady of the Pantsuits, that Israel-controlled, neocon hack. Maybe the difference is this: With Clinton, the ICBMs would have been flying by now, but with Trump, it'll take a bit longer. . . .
With Clinton, the ICBMs would have been flying by now, but with Trump, it'll take a bit longer. .
Israel has a well known deterrent referred to as the 'Samson option'.
I think it would be prudent, and I hope that the sane world has already made those in a position to force a major war between the zio-West vs. Russia (for instance)..
.. that the first place to get glassed will be that shitty little country- as a kind of reverse Samson option
I would like to hope that even now, all sane nations.. (Russia, China, India, Pakistan, et al) who have nukes, have them all trained at ground zero (T.A.) for the strife in the world.
and I suppose to be effective, they'd have to be aimed at some of the snake pits in the Western world as well- I really don't think Rothschild, (Soros, Kristol, etc..) would care too much if most of Israel proper were glowing, so long as they and the diaspora would be able to take control of what ever was left after the fallout dispersed.
the Fiend needs to know that he'd get it first, and there would be the peace
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn6Cf30HgNI
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100 Words @Incitatus It should surprise none that Syria is simply a redux of Iraq 2002-03, minus Ahmed Chalabi or a reasonable facsimile. A "slam dunk." It worked then. The media loved it. All the players got to write memoirs and collect royalties on the same bogus narrative. OK, it was widened a bit to include how everyone, absolutely everyone had no doubt about the 'intelligence' and WMDs. Honest.
GW Bush even did a clever PowerPoint mime for the Radio & Television Correspondent's Association Dinner 24 March 2004 in which he said "Those weapons of mass destruction must be somewhere!...Nope, no weapons over there!...Maybe under here?" while pretending to look for WMD under his desk. Few (if any) objected. That's when it was pretty clear the soul of the press, if not the Republic, was dead.
The media loves it now. Easy stories - sensational, complete with dead infant/kiddy pics. Second only to porn. Better in a way, because you can inject moral indignation into the byline. Remember the Sabah's hawking 312 dead babies removed from incubators by Saddam in Kuwait in '90? Worked then too. No need to look further.
Our Administration(s) insists Assad 'must go' without considering what will follow. It champions 'moderate rebels', despite their kinship to the most extreme barbarism. If Iraq 2003 was bad, this is even worse. We don't even bother to suggest reasonable succession or a viable alternative future. Too much effort?
True corruption. There are no excuses.
Did it all start with Truman's National Security Act of '47, which codified the CIA and changed the "Department of War' to the 'Department of Defense'?. We've waged war (clandestine and overt) ever since. If only for honesty, it should be changed back to' Department of War.'
Our Administration(s) insists Assad 'must go' without considering what will follow.
that's not specifically true. They've come right out and said they prefer Al Nursa and the cannibals and crucifying head slicers to a stable government with a viable middle class.
"We always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren't backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran,"
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-syria-crisis-israel-idUSBRE98G0DR20130917
Israel wants in Syria what it got in Iraq and Libya.. a complete dystopian hell on earth. Old Testament vengeance and unimaginable suffering. It is written.
They literally thrive on that shit
Did it all start with Truman's National Security Act of '47
nope
it started in earnest with the Balfour Declaration and Wilson's war. A hundred years ago exactly to the day from Trump's attack on Syria.
The attack on Syria on that notorious anniversary was sort of like a modern day Passover, when the kings of Europe slaughtered
the new born of Europa, and the chosen were blessed with a country of their own out of the smoking ashes of Christendom
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100 Words @iffen always trying to slip one in
Thanks to you RobinG I get a White House propaganda blurb "slipped" into my email every day or so. The decent thing for you to have done would have been to warn me not to use my actual email address.
BTW. the commies have been trying to get a warm water port since the beginning of the Cold War. Pretty sure the Commies had Sevastopol at the start of the Cold War and all the way through it. Sevastopol doesn't really count as a warm water port in the way you mean since you have to go through two straits controlled by NATO before you are in the real ocean.
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Apr 11, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
anne April 11, 2017 at 12:56 PMhttps://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/status/851872500484980736Tulsi Gabbard @TulsiGabbard We need to learn from Iraq and Libya-wars that were propagated as "humanitarian" but actually increased human suffering many times over.
12:00 PM - 11 Apr 2017
sanjait -> anne... , April 11, 2017 at 01:57 PM
Gabbard is right to be skeptical of the usefulness and righteousness of missile strikes, but deeply stupid to carry water for the denials by Assad and the Russian state media about complicity for the chemical weapons attacks.Peter K. -> sanjait... , April 11, 2017 at 02:05 PMAnne, real skepticism is when you question your own heroes and assumptions.
Which you never do.libezkova -> anne... , April 11, 2017 at 03:43 PMAnne,Tulsi is a really courageous woman. It is tough to fight against the neocon "swamp". Trump already folded. She is still standing.
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Dec 02, 2016 | www.unz.com
Man Motivated by 'Pizzagate' Conspiracy Theory Arrested in Washington Gunfire
Eric Lipton, The New York Times, December 5th, 2016Beginning in 1997, in an English town of more than 100,000 people, eight Pakistani men stood at the core of a group involving as many as three hundred suspects who abused, gang-raped, pimped and trafficked, by the most conservative estimate, well over a thousand of the town's young girls for years.
The police were eventually accused of not just turning a blind eye, but of participating in the abuse - even supplying the Pakistani gangs with drugs and tipping them off when they heard of colleagues searching for children they knew to be in the gangs' possession.
Others were afraid of investigating the gangs or calling attention to their behavior because it would have been politically incorrect to accuse the town's ethnic community of such a rampant and heinous crime - in the words of one English writer, " Fears of appearing racist trumped fears of more children being abused ."
But when this story first broke, guess where it appeared?
Here's how a blogger writing under the name Mehrdad Amanpour tells the story of how the story first started reaching people:
Some years ago, a friend sent me a shocking article. It said hundreds of British girls were being systematically gang-raped by Muslim gangs. It claimed this was being covered-up.
I've never had time for conspiracy theories, especially when they look as hateful as those in the article. So I checked the links and sources in the piece. I found an American racist-far-right website and from there, saw the original source was a similarly unpleasant website in the UK.
I did a brief search for corroboration from reputable mainstream sources. I found none. So I wrote a curt reply to my friend: "I'd appreciate it if you didn't send me made-up crap from neo–Nazi websites."
Some months later, I read the seminal exposé of the (mainly) ethnic-Pakistani grooming gang phenomenon by Andrew Norfolk in The Sunday Times .
I was stunned and horrified - not just that these vile crimes were indeed happening and endemic, but that they really were being ignored and "covered-up" by public authorities and the mainstream media.
The Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal first "broke" in the far-right blogosphere. The accusation they made was that these gangs were being allowed to operate undisturbed because everyone was too afraid of "appearing racist" to properly investigate them . . . and nobody listened to the far-right bloggers who were breaking this story because they were afraid of "appearing racist" if they gave any credibility to those far-right sources, too. Never mind that it seemed paranoid to rely on bloggers to report truths like these when the allegations were so wide-reaching, involving a literal conspiracy within the police force.
And yet, years after no one was willing to take them seriously, the far-right blogosphere turned out to be right.
Well over a thousand (mostly) white young girls were being abused by (mostly) Pakistani gangs.
And the authorities were covering it up.
We are now, once again, in the stage of an evolving scandal that Mehrdad Amanpour described his experience with above. Just to be clear, I'm not going to commit myself to the idea that this is going to be as huge as Rotherham was. We should be careful: we don't know what would or wouldn't be confirmed with a proper investigation. The question here is not whether we've gotten to the bottom of this online. The question is whether there is enough here to justify thinking there should be a proper investigation.
And the parallel with Rotherham is that the relatively small number of people asking for that are mostly the loathsome kinds of people who run "racist far-right websites." So, since the claims are inherently conspiratorial, and the mainstream doesn't want to be associated with those people who are talking about it, it is once again all too easy to just dismiss the claims out of hand as paranoia run wild.
Again, the evolution of the Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal was an extremely painful lesson that the mainstream can be wrong and the "paranoid racist far-right" can be right. And that lesson was far too expensive to simply let go to waste.
The name of this scandal is Pizzagate.
It gets the name for two reasons: first, because at the center of the scandal are high-level Washington insiders who own a handful of businesses in the DC area, including a couple pizzerias (Comet Ping Pong and Besta Pizza), who have fallen under suspicion for involvement in a child sex abuse ring. Second, because the first questions arose in peoples' minds as a result of some very bizarre emails revealed by Wikileaks in The Podesta Emails that, quite simply, just sound strange (and usually involve weird references to pizza). One of the strangest emails involves Joe Podesta being asked this question: "The realtor found a handkerchief (I think it has a map that seems pizza-related). Is it yours?"
The evidence is of wildly varying levels of quality, ranging from the pareidolia of "Jesus is appearing to me in my toast" to "wait, that's actually pretty damn creepy." The mountain of claims and observations and speculations being compiled in places like Voat and Steemit are too overwhelming for any one person to hope to wade through sorting wheat from chaff, and while I don't intend to try, I will summarize some just a little bit of it here.
While many of these claims are wild speculation over coincidences (though by no means all of them are), at some point I think a bunch of weird coincidences involving pedophilia and kids becomes sort of damning in and of itself. In one email , Podesta is among those being invited to a farm and the host says, "Bonnie will be Uber Service to transport Ruby, Emerson, and Maeve Luzzatto (11, 9, and almost 7) so you'll have some further entertainment, and they will be in [the] pool for sure ."
Could that have an innocent explanation? Sure, maybe. But inviting a group of adult men to a gathering and calling young children "further entertainment" while listing their ages is weird , whether it ends up having an explanation or not.
If I was getting messages that listed the ages of young children that would be in a pool
And it turned out that the logo for my business contained a symbol strikingly close to the "little boy lover" logo used by pedophiles to signify that their interest is in young boys rather than girls . . .
And the bands that showed up at my restaurant had albums called All the Children with images on the cover of a child putting phallic-shaped objects into his mouth . . .
. . . and were found making creepy jokes about pedophilia (in reference to Jared Fogle: " we all have our preferences . . . ") . . . and there were instagram photos coming out of kids ("jokingly?") taped to the tables in my restaurant . . .
. . . frankly, I would start asking questions about myself.
Here are just a few of the more "institutional" coincidences involved in the story: one of the men on the small list of people found "liking" photos like this one on these individuals' Instagram accounts is Arun Rao , the U.S. Attorney Chief, charged with prosecuting cases of child pornography.
Besta Pizza, the business whose logo so closely resembled the "little boy lover" logo, is owned by Andrew Kline , who was one of four attorneys in the Human Trafficking Prosecution Unit of the Department of Justice. Isn't it just a little unusual that someone that high up in a human trafficking division would fail to notice the symbolism?
For yet another coincidence, Lauren Silsby-Gayler is the former director of The New Life Children's Refuge in Haiti. It is a matter of public record that she was caught, prosecuted, and sent to jail while in that role for trying to abduct dozens of children, most of whom had homes and families. The main lawyer paid to represent Silsby-Gayler, "President of the Sephardic Jewish community in the Dominican Republic," was himself suspected of involvement in human trafficking.
When the Clintons gained influence in the region, one of their first acts was to work to get Silsby-Gayler off the hook . Among the Podesta Wikileaks are State Department emails discussing their case. Meanwhile, she now works on the executive board of AlertSense . . . which collaborates with IPAWS to send out nation-wide Amber Alerts.
While some of the supposed "codewords" people have claimed to have identified in Pizzagate appear to be made up, there is at least one unambiguous instance: here is an Instagrammed photo posted by James Alefantis, the owner of Comet Ping Pong that appears innocent enough: a man carrying a young child with a beaded necklace draped around both of their necks.
The disturbing bit is that the photo uses the tag "#chickenlovers," and "chicken lover" is in fact an established term to refer to a pedophile - someone who loves "chicken," which is also unambiguously an established term to refer to underage children (you can see this in the gay slang dictionary subset of the Online Dictionary of Playground Slang ).
Complain all you want about the "speculative" and "paranoid" online discussions of Pizzagate, but when you have clearer-cut cases like this one where James Alefantis absolutely, unquestionably did in fact post a photo of a man holding an infant and the one and only hashtag he used for the photo involved a term that unquestionably is a reference to pedophilia, in a context where it is clear that there is nothing else here that "chicken" could possibly have been referring to, the likelihood that more speculative claims might have truth to them is increased.
There is a 1994 documentary expose on NAMBLA (the North American Man/Boy Love Association) called Chicken Hawk . Here is yet another reference from a watchdog group from 2006, proving that this one existed well before Pizzagate surfaced. Another confirmed fact dug up by the paranoid right-wing conspiracy nuts on the Internet?
So here are a few more things we do know. We know that Bill Clinton has taken dozens of international flights on a plane colloquially known as the " Lolita Express " with Jeffrey Epstein, a man who spent 13 months in jail after being convicted of soliciting a 13-year-old prostitute . We know that Hillary Clinton's staff knew that Anthony Weiner was sexting underage girls all the way back in 2011 - and covered it up. Guess whose laptop revealed evidence that Hillary Clinton went on flights on Jeffrey Epstein's " Lolita Express " along with Bill? That's right: Anthony Weiner's.
Now do you understand why the mainstream media was so eager to spin these emails as just a "distraction" during the election?
The staff that ignored Weiner's sexting of young children included John Podesta himself, whose brother Tony is one of the very men at the center of Pizzagate. Tony Podesta has rather warped tastes in art. For instance, he owns a bronze statue of a decapitated man in a contorted position identical to a well-known photograph of one of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer's victims:
(See here for the disturbing photo of the real victim.)
The same news story that features the image above also mentions the fact that John Podesta's bedroom contains multiple images from a photographer "known for documentary-style pictures of naked teenagers in their parents' suburban homes.")
Furthermore, Tony Podesta's favorite artist is Biljana Djurdjevic, whose art heavily features images of children in BDSM-esque positions in large showers. Here's one with a row of young girls in a shower with their hands behind their backs in a position that suggests bondage:
Here's one with a young boy in a shower tied up in the air with his hands over his head:
In addition to Jeffrey Epstein, the Podesta brothers are also friends with convicted sex offender Clement Freud as well as convicted serial child molester Dennis Hastert .
We do know that the New York Times , which is now dismissing Pizzagate in its entirety as a hoax, is run by Mark Thompson - who was credibly accused a few years back of lying to help cover up a scandal involving another high-profile public figure involved in child sex abuse, Jimmy Savile , during his time as head of the BBC .
And we do know that this has happened before.
Lawrence King , the leader of the Black Republican Caucus, who sang the national anthem at the Republican convention in 1984, was accused by multiple claimed victims of trafficking and abusing boys out of the Boys Town charity for years. You can hear the chilling testimony from three people who claim to have been victimized by King in a documentary produced shortly after the events transpired.
You can hear the FBI, even after they received extensive testimony from victims, explain in their own words that they weren't going to prosecute King because if anything were wrong with him, he would have been prosecuted by a lower authority already. Eventually, King was found "O. J. guilty" of abusing Paul Bonacci - convicted in civil court, acquitted in criminal court.
The best written source for information about the depths of corruption and cover-up involved in this scandal is Nick Bryant's The Franklin Scandal: A Story of Powerbrokers, Child Abuse & Betrayal (if you can't find a free copy on your own, contact me through my website, www.zombiemeditations.com and I tell you where to find it).
Could all of this turn out to be nothing?
Of course it could.
But that's not the question here. The question is how we should respond to the possibility.
Do we take the possibility seriously? History clearly indicates that we should. Even if it did turn out to be nothing at all, I would still be more proud to belong to a community willing to take the possibility seriously and call for investigation than I would to belong to a community that dismissed the possibility far too hastily and luckily turned out to be right - even as it did this and turned out to be wrong in so many cases like Rotherham before.The real horror here would be to live in a society that responded as Reddit has - by shutting down the whole conversation entirely, banning r/pizzagate even while keeping subreddits like r/pedofriends, "a place for (non-offending) pedophiles and allies to make friends with each other!" alive.
Over on his blog, Scott Adams asks us to keep in mind cases where confirmation bias did lead to false allegations of institutional pedophilia, to caution against excessive confidence. (He hastens to add: "I want to be totally clear here that I'm not saying Pizzagate is false. I see the mountain of evidence too. And collectively it feels totally persuasive to me. It might even be true. I'm not debating the underlying truth of it. That part I don't know.")
But which is worse? If all the evidence coming out of Pizzagate is entirely false, what have we lost by spending time on it? On the other hand, if even five percent of the allegations that have been made surrounding the topic are true, what have we lost by ignoring them? Which is worse: spending too much time pursuing and thoroughly vetting false leads, or looking the other way while any amount of child abuse goes on?
According to the FBI's National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database, nearly 470,000 children disappear in the United States alone each year. This number is dubious for a number of reasons. It looks like some number of runaways end up in the NCIC count, and to make matters worse, repeat offenders can make it into the data multiple times. So that would suggest that the real number must be lower than this tally; but on the other hand, we also know that many missing children are never reported in the first place, so it's possible that that could boost the number back up. The bottom line, however, seems to be that there is no reliable way to determine how many total children are actually missing in the U.S.
Either way, though, even if correcting for these errors took out 90% of the disappearances in the NCIC database, and there were no unreported disappearances to account for at all, I think even the resulting 50,000 per year would still be enough to call the problem systematic and justify suspicion that these disappearances could well involve organized efforts-given that we already know of so many pedophile rings in so many powerful institutions.
In 2013, Canada busted a ring involving more than 300 adults , who had teachers, doctors, and nurses heavily represented among them. A pedophile ring has just been identified in the highest levels of UK football (Americans know the sport as soccer). Norwegian police also just uncovered a ring of 50 organized pedophiles mostly working in the tech sector , once again including elected officials, teachers, and lawyers. The Vatican scandals can practically go without mention - institutional involvement in child sex exploitation is nearly an a priori given.
And the children that are being raped and murdered in the photos passed around by these child porn rings are coming from somewhere . And when figures like politicians, teachers, and lawyers are involved in the rings, it's hardly inconceivable that they could be involved in disappearances.
Have we identified one here?
Only time will tell. But we deserve to be paid attention. We deserve to have the matter taken (Reprinted from Counter-Currents Publishing by permission of author or representative)
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Aug 06, 2011 | nytimes.com
When Barack Obama rose to the lectern on Inauguration Day, the nation was in tatters. Americans were scared and angry. The economy was spinning in reverse. Three-quarters of a million people lost their jobs that month. Many had lost their homes, and with them the only nest eggs they had. Even the usually impervious upper middle class had seen a decade of stagnant or declining investment, with the stock market dropping in value with no end in sight. Hope was as scarce as credit.
In that context, Americans needed their president to tell them a story that made sense of what they had just been through, what caused it, and how it was going to end. They needed to hear that he understood what they were feeling, that he would track down those responsible for their pain and suffering, and that he would restore order and safety. What they were waiting for, in broad strokes, was a story something like this:
"I know you're scared and angry. Many of you have lost your jobs, your homes, your hope. This was a disaster, but it was not a natural disaster. It was made by Wall Street gamblers who speculated with your lives and futures. It was made by conservative extremists who told us that if we just eliminated regulations and rewarded greed and recklessness, it would all work out. But it didn't work out. And it didn't work out 80 years ago, when the same people sold our grandparents the same bill of goods, with the same results. But we learned something from our grandparents about how to fix it, and we will draw on their wisdom. We will restore business confidence the old-fashioned way: by putting money back in the pockets of working Americans by putting them back to work, and by restoring integrity to our financial markets and demanding it of those who want to run them. I can't promise that we won't make mistakes along the way. But I can promise you that they will be honest mistakes, and that your government has your back again." A story isn't a policy. But that simple narrative - and the policies that would naturally have flowed from it - would have inoculated against much of what was to come in the intervening two and a half years of failed government, idled factories and idled hands. That story would have made clear that the president understood that the American people had given Democrats the presidency and majorities in both houses of Congress to fix the mess the Republicans and Wall Street had made of the country, and that this would not be a power-sharing arrangement. It would have made clear that the problem wasn't tax-and-spend liberalism or the deficit - a deficit that didn't exist until George W. Bush gave nearly $2 trillion in tax breaks largely to the wealthiest Americans and squandered $1 trillion in two wars.
And perhaps most important, it would have offered a clear, compelling alternative to the dominant narrative of the right, that our problem is not due to spending on things like the pensions of firefighters, but to the fact that those who can afford to buy influence are rewriting the rules so they can cut themselves progressively larger slices of the American pie while paying less of their fair share for it.
But there was no story - and there has been none since.
In similar circumstances, Franklin D. Roosevelt offered Americans a promise to use the power of his office to make their lives better and to keep trying until he got it right. Beginning in his first inaugural address, and in the fireside chats that followed, he explained how the crash had happened, and he minced no words about those who had caused it. He promised to do something no president had done before: to use the resources of the United States to put Americans directly to work, building the infrastructure we still rely on today. He swore to keep the people who had caused the crisis out of the halls of power, and he made good on that promise. In a 1936 speech at Madison Square Garden, he thundered, "Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me - and I welcome their hatred."
When Barack Obama stepped into the Oval Office, he stepped into a cycle of American history, best exemplified by F.D.R. and his distant cousin, Teddy. After a great technological revolution or a major economic transition, as when America changed from a nation of farmers to an urban industrial one, there is often a period of great concentration of wealth, and with it, a concentration of power in the wealthy. That's what we saw in 1928, and that's what we see today. At some point that power is exercised so injudiciously, and the lives of so many become so unbearable, that a period of reform ensues - and a charismatic reformer emerges to lead that renewal. In that sense, Teddy Roosevelt started the cycle of reform his cousin picked up 30 years later, as he began efforts to bust the trusts and regulate the railroads, exercise federal power over the banks and the nation's food supply, and protect America's land and wildlife, creating the modern environmental movement.
Those were the shoes - that was the historic role - that Americans elected Barack Obama to fill. The president is fond of referring to "the arc of history," paraphrasing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous statement that "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." But with his deep-seated aversion to conflict and his profound failure to understand bully dynamics - in which conciliation is always the wrong course of action, because bullies perceive it as weakness and just punch harder the next time - he has broken that arc and has likely bent it backward for at least a generation.
When Dr. King spoke of the great arc bending toward justice, he did not mean that we should wait for it to bend. He exhorted others to put their full weight behind it, and he gave his life speaking with a voice that cut through the blistering force of water cannons and the gnashing teeth of police dogs. He preached the gospel of nonviolence, but he knew that whether a bully hid behind a club or a poll tax, the only effective response was to face the bully down, and to make the bully show his true and repugnant face in public.
IN contrast, when faced with the greatest economic crisis, the greatest levels of economic inequality, and the greatest levels of corporate influence on politics since the Depression, Barack Obama stared into the eyes of history and chose to avert his gaze. Instead of indicting the people whose recklessness wrecked the economy, he put them in charge of it. He never explained that decision to the public - a failure in storytelling as extraordinary as the failure in judgment behind it. Had the president chosen to bend the arc of history, he would have told the public the story of the destruction wrought by the dismantling of the New Deal regulations that had protected them for more than half a century. He would have offered them a counternarrative of how to fix the problem other than the politics of appeasement, one that emphasized creating economic demand and consumer confidence by putting consumers back to work. He would have had to stare down those who had wrecked the economy, and he would have had to tolerate their hatred if not welcome it. But the arc of his temperament just didn't bend that far.
Michael August 7, 2011
Bill Levine August 7, 2011Eloquently expressed and horrifically accurate, this excellent analysis articulates the frustration that so many of us have felt watching Mr...
AnAverageAmerican August 7, 2011Very well put. I know that I have been going through Kübler-Ross's stages of grief ever since the foxes (a.k.a. Geithner and Summers) were...
cdearman Santa Fe, NM August 7, 2011"In that context, Americans needed their president to tell them a story that made sense of what they had just been through, what caused it,...
SP California August 7, 2011Unfortunately, the Democratic Congress of 2008-2010, did not have the will to make the economic and social program decisions that would have improved the economic situation for the middle-class; and it is becoming more obvious that President Obama does not have the temperament to publicly push for programs and policies that he wants the congress to enact.
The American people have a problem: we reelect Obama and hope for the best; or we elect a Republican and expect the worst. There is no question that the Health Care law that was just passed would be reversed; Medicare and Medicare would be gutted; and who knows what would happen to Social Security. You can be sure, though, that business taxes and regulation reforms would not be in the cards and those regulations that have been enacted would be reversed. We have traveled this road before and we should be wise enough not to travel it again!farospace san francisco August 7, 2011Brilliant analysis - and I suspect that a very large number of those who voted for President Obama will recognize in this the thoughts that they have been trying to ignore, or have been trying not to say out loud. Later historians can complete this analysis and attempt to explain exactly why Mr. Obama has turned out the way he has - but right now, it may be time to ask a more relevant and urgent question.
If it is not too late, will a challenger emerge in time before the 2012 elections, or will we be doomed to hold our noses and endure another four years of this?
Richard Katz American in Oxford, UK August 7, 2011Very eloquent and exactly to the point. Like many others, I was enthralled by the rhetoric of his story, making the leap of faith (or hope) that because he could tell his story so well, he could tell, as you put it, "the story the American people were waiting to hear."
Disappointment has darkened into disillusion, disillusion into a species of despair. Will I vote for Barack Obama again? What are the options?
An Ordinary American Prague August 7, 2011This is the most brilliant and tragic story I have read in a long time---in fact, precisely since I read when Ill Fares the Land by Tony Judt. When will a leader emerge with a true moral vision for the federal government and for our country? Someone who sees government as a balance to capitalism, and a means to achieve the social and economic justice that we (yes, we) believe in? Will that leadership arrive before parts of America come to look like the dystopia of Johannesburg?
We (yes, we) recognise that capitalism is the most efficient way to maximise overall prosperity and quality of life. But we also recognise that unfettered, it will ravage the environment, abuse labor, and expand income disparity until violence or tragedy (or both) ensues.
These are the lessons we've learned since the industrial revolution, and they're the ones that we should be drawing from the past decade. We recognise that we need a strong federal government to check these tendencies, and to strike a stable, sustainable balance between prosperity, community, opportunity, wealth, justice, freedom. We need a voice to fill the moral vacuum that has allowed the Koch/Tea/Fox Party to emerge and grab power.
Americans know this---including, of course, President Obama (see his April 13 speech at GW University). But as this article by Dr. Westen so effectively shows, Obama is incompetent to lead us back to America's traditional position on the global economic/political spectrum. He's brilliant and eloquent. He's achieved personal success that is inspirational. He's done some good things as president. But he is not competent to lead us back to a state of American morality, where government is the protector of those who work hard, and the provider of opportunity to all Americans.
Taxes, subsidies, entitlements, laws... these are the tools we have available to achieve our national moral vision. But the vision has been muddled (hijacked?) and that is our biggest problem. -->
martin Portland, Oregon August 7, 2011I voted for Obama. I thought then, and still think, he's a decent person, a smart person, a person who wants to do the best he can for others. When I voted for him, I was thinking he's a centrist who will find a way to unite our increasingly polarized and ugly politics in the USA. Or if not unite us, at least forge a way to get some important things done despite the ugly polarization.
And I must confess, I have been disappointed. Deeply so. He has not united us. He has not forged a way to accomplish what needs to be done. He has not been a leader.
I've heard him called a mediator, a conciliator, a compromiser, etc. Those terms indicate someone who is bringing divergent views together and moving us along. That's part of what a leader does, though not all. Yet I don't think he's even lived up to his reputation as a mediator.
Almost three years after I voted for Obama, I still don't know what he's doing other than trying to help the financial industry: the wealthy who benefit most from it and the technocrats who run it for them. But average working people, people like myself and my daughter and my grandson, have not been helped. We are worse off than before. And millions of unemployed and underemployed are even worse off than my family is.
So whatever else he is (and that still remains a mystery to me), President Obama is not the leader I thought I was voting for. Which leaves me feeling confused and close to apathetic about what to do as a voter in 2012. More of the same isn't worth voting for. Yet I don't see anyone out there who offers the possibility of doing better.
This was an extraordinarily well written, eloquent and comprehensive indictment of the failure of the Obama presidency.
If a credible primary challenger to Obama ever could arise, the positions and analysis in this column would be all he or she would need to justify the Democratic party's need to seek new leadership.
I knew that Obama was a charade early on when giving a speech about the banking failures to the nation, instead of giving the narrative Mr. Westen accurately recommended on the origins of the orgy of greed that just crippled our economy and caused suffering for millions of Americans, he said "we don't disparage wealth in America." I was dumbfounded.
He should have been condemning the craven, wanton, greed of nihilistic financial gangsters who hijacked our economy. Instead he seemed to be calling for all Americans not to hate rich people. That was not the point. Americans don't hate rich people, but they should hate rich people who acquire their wealth at the expense of the well being of an entire nation through irresponsible, avaricious, and in some instances illegal practices, and legally bribe politicians to enact laws which allow them to run amok over our economy without supervision or regulation.
I knew then that Obama was either a political lemon, in over his head, an extremely conflict averse neurotic individual with a compulsive need for some delusional ideal of neutrality in political and social relations, or a political phony beholden to the same forces that almost destroyed the country as Republicans are.
Perhaps all of these are true.
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Oct 21, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com
likbez -> Fred C. Dobbs... October 21, 2016 at 02:12 PM
Please note that Hillary's path to the top was marked by proved beyond reasonable doubt DNC fraud. With information contained in recent email leaks some DNC honchos probably might go to jail for violation of elections laws. So for them this is a death match and people usually fight well when they are against the wall. The same in true about Obama and his entourage.Jay : October 21, 2016 at 01:36 PM , 2016 at 01:36 PMAnd while this Nobel Peace Price winner managed to bomb just eight countries, Hillary might improve this peace effort, which was definitely insufficient from the point of view of many diplomats in State Department. Also the number of humanitarian bombs could be much greater. Here Hillary election can really help.
From the other point of view this might well be a sign of the crisis of legitimacy of the US ruling neoliberal elite (aka financial oligarchy).
After approximately 50 years in power the level of degeneration of the US neoliberal elite reached the level when the quality of candidates reminds me the quality of candidates from the USSR Politburo after Brezhnev death. Health-wise Hillary really bear some resemblance to Andropov and Chernenko. And inability of the elite to replace either of them with a more viable candidate speaks volumes.
The other factor that will not go away is that Obama effectively pardoned Hillary for emailgate (after gentle encouragement from Bill via Loretta Lynch). Otherwise instead of candidate to POTUS, she would be a viable candidate for orange suit too. Sure, the rule of law is not applicable to neoliberal elite, so why Hilary should be an exception? But some naive schmucks might think that this is highly improper. And be way too much upset with the fruits of neoliberal globalization. Not that Brexit is easily repeatable in the USA, but vote against neoliberal globalization (protest vote) might play a role.
Another interesting thing to observe is when (and if) the impeachment process starts, if she is elected. With some FBI materials in hands of the Congress Republicans she in on the hook. A simple majority of those present and voting is required for each article of impeachment, or the resolution as a whole, to pass.
All-in-all her win might well be a Pyrrhic victory. And the unknown neurological disease that she has (Parkinson?) makes her even more vulnerable after the election, then before. The role of POTUS involves a lot of stress and requires substantial physical stamina as POTUS is the center of intersection of all important government conflicts, conversations and communications. That's a killing environment for anyone with Parkinson. And remember she was not able to survive the pressure of the role of the Secretary of State when she was in much better health and has an earlier stage of the disease.
POTUS essentially does not belong to himself/herself for the term of the office (although Obama managed to slack in this role; was he on drugs the night of Benghazi killings ? http://www.redflagnews.com/headlines/plausible-theory-was-president-obama-high-on-coke-while-benghazi-burned-video)
Another interesting question, if the leaks continue after the election. That also can contribute to the level of stress. Just anticipation is highly stressful. I do not buy the theory about "evil Russians." This hypothesis does not survive Occam razor test. I think that there some anti-Hillary forces within the USA ruling elite, possibly within the NSA or some other three letter agency that has access to email boxes of major Web mail providers via NSA.
If this is a plausible hypothesis, that makes it more probable that the leaks continue. To say nothing about possible damaging revelations about Bill (especially related to Clinton Foundation), who really enjoyed his retirement way too much.
Those who vote for Hillary for the sake of stability need to be reminded that according to the Minsky Theory stability sometimes can be very destabilizing
When Krugman is appointed to a top government post by Hillary Clinton we will be able to FOIA his pay and attach a value to all the columns "electioneering" Krugman has written.likbez -> anne...Anne,"An intolerably destructive essay that should never have been posted, and I assume no such essay will be posted again on this blog. Shameful, shameful essay."
You mean that voting for the female warmonger with some psychopathic tendencies ("We came, we saw, he died") is not shameful ?
An interesting approach I would say.
I am not fun of Trump, but he, at least, does not have the blood of innocent women and children on his hands. And less likely to start WWIII unlike this completely out of control warmonger.
With the number of victims of wars of neoliberal empire expansion in Iraq, Libya and Syria, you should be ashamed of yourself as a women.
Please think about your current position Anne. You really should be ashamed.
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Oct 21, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com
point said...Krugman says:
"...Mrs. Clinton won the Democratic nomination fairly easily..."
which may be the story one wishes for. But if there were a spread to compare her win against, it was Bernie who massively beat the spread. I'll leave it as an exercise to others to determine if her unfair advantages were as large as the winning margin.
Peter K. -> kthomas... , October 21, 2016 at 11:46 AM
"Why do people like you pretend to love Sen Sanders so much!?"Why do you say he is pretending? What did he write to make you think that?
Are you just a dishonest troll centrist totebagger like PGL.
Peter K. -> to pgl...
kthomas -> anne... , October 21, 2016 at 10:59 AMWhat does that have to do with anything?
He makes a good point and you dismiss it. You bashed Bernie Sanders and "Bernie Bros" during the primary. Then you lie about it. That's why you're the worst. Dishonest as hell. Are most New Yorkers as dishonest as you, Trump, Guiliani, Christie, etc?
No. I am a fan of Sen Sanders, and not even he would believe your nonsense. History will not remember it that way. What it will remember is how Putin Comrade meddled. And there is a price for that.Peter K. -> kthomas... , October 21, 2016 at 11:48 AMSen Sanders wanted one, stated thing: to push the narrative to the left. He marginally accomplished this. What he did succeed in was providing an opportunity for false-lefties like you and Mr Putin who seem to think that America is the root of all evil.
Remember one thing anne, America is not a country. It is an idea. You cannot arrest it, murder it, or pretend it isn't there. We as a people are not perfect. But Mr Putin is stabbing directly at our democracy, not Hillary Clinton and not Paul Krugman. Time to be a little more objective, of which you are even more capable of than me.
I agree with Anne and completely disagree with those like you have drunk the Kool Aid. You're not objective at all.anne -> kthomas... , October 21, 2016 at 12:25 PMSen Sanders wanted one stated thing: to push the narrative to the left. He marginally accomplished this. What he did succeed in was providing an opportunity for false-lefties like --- and -- ----- who seem to think that America is the root of all evil....Julio -> kthomas... , -1[ Better to assume such an awful comment was never written, but the McCarthy-like tone to a particular campaign has been disturbing and could prove lasting. ]
"America is not a country. It is an idea. You cannot ...murder it..."likbez -> Julio ... , October 21, 2016 at 05:24 PM[You're trying, with your McCarthyist comments.]
Julio,cal -> anne... , October 21, 2016 at 11:28 AMIt is not exactly McCarthyism as stated (although kthomas with his previous Putin comments looks like a modern day McCarthyist). I think this is a pretty clear formulation of the credo of American Exceptionalism -- a flavor of nationalism adapted to the realities of the new continent.
BS, a remarkable.Peter K. -> cal... , -1
No, I am sure he will be remembered more than that.Bernard Sanders, last romantic politician to run his campaign on an average of $37 from 3,284,421 donations (or whatever Obama said at The Dinner). Remarkable but ineffectual. A good orator in empty houses means he was practicing, not performing.
Why does Obama succeed and Sanders fail? Axelrod and co.
He was written off by the like of Krugman, PGL, you, KThomas etc.pgl : , October 21, 2016 at 10:05 AMHe won what 13 million votes. Young people overwhelmingly voted for Sanders. He won New Hampshire, Colorado, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Washington, Oregon, etc. etc. etc. And now the "unromantic" complacent people have to lie about the campaign.
Josh Barro explains why he used to be a Republican but is now a Democrat:pgl -> pgl... , October 21, 2016 at 10:12 AMhttp://www.businessinsider.com/why-i-left-republican-party-register-democrat-2016-10
He seems to have had it with Paul Ryan and Rubio.
I was enjoying this until:likbez -> pgl..."I have voted Republican, for example, in each of the past three New York City mayoral races."
Joe Llota was racist Rudy Guiliani's minnie me. How on earth did Josh think he should be mayor of my city.
And Robert Kagan explained it earlier much better ... I wonder if Victoria Nuland and Dick Cheney vote for Hillary too.
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Oct 21, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com
likbez -> Fred C. Dobbs... October 21, 2016 at 02:12 PM
Please note that Hillary's path to the top was marked by proved beyond reasonable doubt DNC fraud. With information contained in recent email leaks some DNC honchos probably might go to jail for violation of elections laws. So for them this is a death match and people usually fight well when they are against the wall. The same in true about Obama and his entourage.Jay : October 21, 2016 at 01:36 PM , 2016 at 01:36 PMAnd while this Nobel Peace Price winner managed to bomb just eight countries, Hillary might improve this peace effort, which was definitely insufficient from the point of view of many diplomats in State Department. Also the number of humanitarian bombs could be much greater. Here Hillary election can really help.
From the other point of view this might well be a sign of the crisis of legitimacy of the US ruling neoliberal elite (aka financial oligarchy).
After approximately 50 years in power the level of degeneration of the US neoliberal elite reached the level when the quality of candidates reminds me the quality of candidates from the USSR Politburo after Brezhnev death. Health-wise Hillary really bear some resemblance to Andropov and Chernenko. And inability of the elite to replace either of them with a more viable candidate speaks volumes.
The other factor that will not go away is that Obama effectively pardoned Hillary for emailgate (after gentle encouragement from Bill via Loretta Lynch). Otherwise instead of candidate to POTUS, she would be a viable candidate for orange suit too. Sure, the rule of law is not applicable to neoliberal elite, so why Hilary should be an exception? But some naive schmucks might think that this is highly improper. And be way too much upset with the fruits of neoliberal globalization. Not that Brexit is easily repeatable in the USA, but vote against neoliberal globalization (protest vote) might play a role.
Another interesting thing to observe is when (and if) the impeachment process starts, if she is elected. With some FBI materials in hands of the Congress Republicans she in on the hook. A simple majority of those present and voting is required for each article of impeachment, or the resolution as a whole, to pass.
All-in-all her win might well be a Pyrrhic victory. And the unknown neurological disease that she has (Parkinson?) makes her even more vulnerable after the election, then before. The role of POTUS involves a lot of stress and requires substantial physical stamina as POTUS is the center of intersection of all important government conflicts, conversations and communications. That's a killing environment for anyone with Parkinson. And remember she was not able to survive the pressure of the role of the Secretary of State when she was in much better health and has an earlier stage of the disease.
POTUS essentially does not belong to himself/herself for the term of the office (although Obama managed to slack in this role; was he on drugs the night of Benghazi killings ? http://www.redflagnews.com/headlines/plausible-theory-was-president-obama-high-on-coke-while-benghazi-burned-video)
Another interesting question, if the leaks continue after the election. That also can contribute to the level of stress. Just anticipation is highly stressful. I do not buy the theory about "evil Russians." This hypothesis does not survive Occam razor test. I think that there some anti-Hillary forces within the USA ruling elite, possibly within the NSA or some other three letter agency that has access to email boxes of major Web mail providers via NSA.
If this is a plausible hypothesis, that makes it more probable that the leaks continue. To say nothing about possible damaging revelations about Bill (especially related to Clinton Foundation), who really enjoyed his retirement way too much.
Those who vote for Hillary for the sake of stability need to be reminded that according to the Minsky Theory stability sometimes can be very destabilizing
When Krugman is appointed to a top government post by Hillary Clinton we will be able to FOIA his pay and attach a value to all the columns "electioneering" Krugman has written.likbez -> anne...Anne,"An intolerably destructive essay that should never have been posted, and I assume no such essay will be posted again on this blog. Shameful, shameful essay."
You mean that voting for the female warmonger with some psychopathic tendencies ("We came, we saw, he died") is not shameful ?
An interesting approach I would say.
I am not fun of Trump, but he, at least, does not have the blood of innocent women and children on his hands. And less likely to start WWIII unlike this completely out of control warmonger.
With the number of victims of wars of neoliberal empire expansion in Iraq, Libya and Syria, you should be ashamed of yourself as a women.
Please think about your current position Anne. You really should be ashamed.
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Oct 21, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com
point said...Krugman says:
"...Mrs. Clinton won the Democratic nomination fairly easily..."
which may be the story one wishes for. But if there were a spread to compare her win against, it was Bernie who massively beat the spread. I'll leave it as an exercise to others to determine if her unfair advantages were as large as the winning margin.
Peter K. -> kthomas... , October 21, 2016 at 11:46 AM
"Why do people like you pretend to love Sen Sanders so much!?"Why do you say he is pretending? What did he write to make you think that?
Are you just a dishonest troll centrist totebagger like PGL.
Peter K. -> to pgl...
kthomas -> anne... , October 21, 2016 at 10:59 AMWhat does that have to do with anything?
He makes a good point and you dismiss it. You bashed Bernie Sanders and "Bernie Bros" during the primary. Then you lie about it. That's why you're the worst. Dishonest as hell. Are most New Yorkers as dishonest as you, Trump, Guiliani, Christie, etc?
No. I am a fan of Sen Sanders, and not even he would believe your nonsense. History will not remember it that way. What it will remember is how Putin Comrade meddled. And there is a price for that.Peter K. -> kthomas... , October 21, 2016 at 11:48 AMSen Sanders wanted one, stated thing: to push the narrative to the left. He marginally accomplished this. What he did succeed in was providing an opportunity for false-lefties like you and Mr Putin who seem to think that America is the root of all evil.
Remember one thing anne, America is not a country. It is an idea. You cannot arrest it, murder it, or pretend it isn't there. We as a people are not perfect. But Mr Putin is stabbing directly at our democracy, not Hillary Clinton and not Paul Krugman. Time to be a little more objective, of which you are even more capable of than me.
I agree with Anne and completely disagree with those like you have drunk the Kool Aid. You're not objective at all.anne -> kthomas... , October 21, 2016 at 12:25 PMSen Sanders wanted one stated thing: to push the narrative to the left. He marginally accomplished this. What he did succeed in was providing an opportunity for false-lefties like --- and -- ----- who seem to think that America is the root of all evil....Julio -> kthomas... , -1[ Better to assume such an awful comment was never written, but the McCarthy-like tone to a particular campaign has been disturbing and could prove lasting. ]
"America is not a country. It is an idea. You cannot ...murder it..."likbez -> Julio ... , October 21, 2016 at 05:24 PM[You're trying, with your McCarthyist comments.]
Julio,cal -> anne... , October 21, 2016 at 11:28 AMIt is not exactly McCarthyism as stated (although kthomas with his previous Putin comments looks like a modern day McCarthyist). I think this is a pretty clear formulation of the credo of American Exceptionalism -- a flavor of nationalism adapted to the realities of the new continent.
BS, a remarkable.Peter K. -> cal... , -1
No, I am sure he will be remembered more than that.Bernard Sanders, last romantic politician to run his campaign on an average of $37 from 3,284,421 donations (or whatever Obama said at The Dinner). Remarkable but ineffectual. A good orator in empty houses means he was practicing, not performing.
Why does Obama succeed and Sanders fail? Axelrod and co.
He was written off by the like of Krugman, PGL, you, KThomas etc.pgl : , October 21, 2016 at 10:05 AMHe won what 13 million votes. Young people overwhelmingly voted for Sanders. He won New Hampshire, Colorado, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Washington, Oregon, etc. etc. etc. And now the "unromantic" complacent people have to lie about the campaign.
Josh Barro explains why he used to be a Republican but is now a Democrat:pgl -> pgl... , October 21, 2016 at 10:12 AMhttp://www.businessinsider.com/why-i-left-republican-party-register-democrat-2016-10
He seems to have had it with Paul Ryan and Rubio.
I was enjoying this until:likbez -> pgl..."I have voted Republican, for example, in each of the past three New York City mayoral races."
Joe Llota was racist Rudy Guiliani's minnie me. How on earth did Josh think he should be mayor of my city.
And Robert Kagan explained it earlier much better ... I wonder if Victoria Nuland and Dick Cheney vote for Hillary too.
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crookedtimber.org
Rich Puchalsky 08.13.16 at 9:12 pm 800
BW: "People, who argue Trump might start a nuclear war out of personal pique because he insults people on teevee might want to examine Clinton's bellicose foreign policy record and positions on, say, Israel, Iran, Ukraine, NATO expansion or the South China Sea."Or, as Ian Welsh points out, her position on Syria. She seems to have advocated for a no-fly zone in Syria after Russia came in, which would presumably put us in the position of shooting down Russian warplanes or having a good chance of doing so. Maybe if she does take on Kissinger as an advisor he'll tell her that superpower conflicts have to be done through proxies or they're too dangerous.
For the larger question of whether these comment threads are a good place to campaign or advocate, I sort of come down in a different place than you do. If these comment threads were about good-faith argument, then sure this kind of advocacy might be bad, but I don't think that most people here are capable of good-faith argument even if they were attempting it (most of the time they aren't attempting it). In that case the comment threads serve an alternate purpose of seeing what kinds of beliefs are out there, at least among the limited group of people likely to comment on CT threads. Of course people can be kicked out if they habitually make the threads too difficult to moderate (or really, for whatever other reason an OP decides on), but the well has long since been poisoned and one more drop isn't really going to do much more damage.
stevenjohnson 08.14.16 at 6:13 am 833
Gen. Wesley Clark standing off against Russians at Belgrade and the missile attack on the Chinese embassy and the bombing of Bulgaria.Under Obama, support for fascists in Ukraine, near war over chemical weapons in Syria, gunboat diplomacy in South China Sea, shift to preemptive war plans against North Korea, ground troops in Libya and other parts of Africa, and last but not least, blind support for the psychotic Saudi attack on Yemen.
None of which was unilaterally determined by Clinton who was nothing but Secretary of State, who does not determine foreign policy anyhow, or took place after her tenure. Renovation of the nuclear weapons stockpile isn't her doing either.
Democrat or Republican, it is the US system of government which is militarist and adventurist. It will not change if either Clinton or Trump is elected, the delusions of Putin et al. notwithstanding. It wouldn't change if Bernie or the rational libertarian of the month was elected either because they do not, didn't and never will stand for real change. Criticizing Clinton and Trump from the right will make sure there is not even a chance of political realignment. At this point, the question is whether that's the point?
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crookedtimber.org
Rich Puchalsky 08.13.16 at 9:12 pm 800
BW: "People, who argue Trump might start a nuclear war out of personal pique because he insults people on teevee might want to examine Clinton's bellicose foreign policy record and positions on, say, Israel, Iran, Ukraine, NATO expansion or the South China Sea."Or, as Ian Welsh points out, her position on Syria. She seems to have advocated for a no-fly zone in Syria after Russia came in, which would presumably put us in the position of shooting down Russian warplanes or having a good chance of doing so. Maybe if she does take on Kissinger as an advisor he'll tell her that superpower conflicts have to be done through proxies or they're too dangerous.
For the larger question of whether these comment threads are a good place to campaign or advocate, I sort of come down in a different place than you do. If these comment threads were about good-faith argument, then sure this kind of advocacy might be bad, but I don't think that most people here are capable of good-faith argument even if they were attempting it (most of the time they aren't attempting it). In that case the comment threads serve an alternate purpose of seeing what kinds of beliefs are out there, at least among the limited group of people likely to comment on CT threads. Of course people can be kicked out if they habitually make the threads too difficult to moderate (or really, for whatever other reason an OP decides on), but the well has long since been poisoned and one more drop isn't really going to do much more damage.
stevenjohnson 08.14.16 at 6:13 am 833
Gen. Wesley Clark standing off against Russians at Belgrade and the missile attack on the Chinese embassy and the bombing of Bulgaria.Under Obama, support for fascists in Ukraine, near war over chemical weapons in Syria, gunboat diplomacy in South China Sea, shift to preemptive war plans against North Korea, ground troops in Libya and other parts of Africa, and last but not least, blind support for the psychotic Saudi attack on Yemen.
None of which was unilaterally determined by Clinton who was nothing but Secretary of State, who does not determine foreign policy anyhow, or took place after her tenure. Renovation of the nuclear weapons stockpile isn't her doing either.
Democrat or Republican, it is the US system of government which is militarist and adventurist. It will not change if either Clinton or Trump is elected, the delusions of Putin et al. notwithstanding. It wouldn't change if Bernie or the rational libertarian of the month was elected either because they do not, didn't and never will stand for real change. Criticizing Clinton and Trump from the right will make sure there is not even a chance of political realignment. At this point, the question is whether that's the point?
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economistsview.typepad.com
RGC, December 02, 2015 at 05:55 AM
Bernie's latest pitch:pgl -> RGC, December 02, 2015 at 05:58 AMWhen 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.
$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 AMTo be fair, don't you think we should count donations for this election cycle for Clinton?pgl -> EMichael,Y'know, she was the Senator from New York.
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.RGC -> EMichael,http://www.opensecrets.org/pres16/contrib.php?cycle=2016&id=N00000019
How is there no honesty whatsoever?EMichael -> RGC,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.I stand corrected, somewhat.reason said,Let me know how much comes from those organizations PACs.
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.
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economistsview.typepad.com
RGC, December 02, 2015 at 05:55 AM
Bernie's latest pitch:pgl -> RGC, December 02, 2015 at 05:58 AMWhen 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.
$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 AMTo be fair, don't you think we should count donations for this election cycle for Clinton?pgl -> EMichael,Y'know, she was the Senator from New York.
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.RGC -> EMichael,http://www.opensecrets.org/pres16/contrib.php?cycle=2016&id=N00000019
How is there no honesty whatsoever?EMichael -> RGC,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.I stand corrected, somewhat.reason said,Let me know how much comes from those organizations PACs.
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.
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