Global Axis of Jihad may be the worst acronym ever. But it has done its job. It is now "out there". It is inside your brain and you won't get it back out.
You might as well thank me for the second worst acronym ever as well. And that is of course COLA . . . for Coalition of Lawful Authority.
Things go better with COLA. You won't forget that one either.
There doesn't have to be a bond villain with a white cat. There just has to be several governments committed to exporting wahhabi intolerance and domination, and others committed to supporting jihadista violence for whatever other destabilizing reasons they might have. And the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Qatar and Erdogist Turkey all want to destroy the secular dictatorship existing in Syria before the outbreak of proxy insurgency, and put in its place a Sunni Chauvinist Suprematist regime which will offer the minorities of Syria a number of bad deals, ranging from neo-dhimitude 2.0 all the way to expulsion or extermination. And these cannibal liver-eating scum have the strong backing of the DC FedRegime and the ideological neoconservatives and neoliberals infesting several Western governments. So . . . just as immediately pre-war Italy, Germany and Japan called themselves the Axis Powers then, I think we can call the several governments backing this jihadi outbreak in Syria now to be the Global Axis of Jihad. No Bond villain with a white cat is needed.
I think democracy is a good thing for democracies. It could be a good thing for non-democracies who desire to evolve their own version of it without any outside help or intrusion or influence. It is not a good thing when imposed at gunpoint or by subversion as part of a Western Prideful program of Forced Freedomization and Gunpoint Democrafication.
You are correct about economic disintegration being a first-opener-of-the door to this outbreak of Wahhabi ( and other Jihadist) imperialist and colonialist aggression against the secular dictatorship of Syria and those who prefer it. And there has been an ecological disintegration underneath that, which drives the economic disintegration farther. But what can correct that and then reverse it? More jihadi violence from the Global Axis of Jihad? Or the systematic extermination of every trace of violent rebellion from within the borders of Syria, so that the legitimate ( and recognized by the United Nations to BE the legitimate ) government of Syria can regain command and control of all the land within its borders. That government can then begin re-integrating the ecology and the economy, if its leader-thinkers care to think about how the ecology and economy disintegrated to begin with.
But first things first. And all decent civilized people supporting the R + 6 to exterminate every last trace of rebellion within Syria must come first.
It is good that China is getting involved on the side of legitimate authority. Hopefully the Jihadi Rebellion can be crushed so thoroughly by the time Clinton takes office that there is no effective stub of rebellion left for the Clintonites to build back out from. Hopefully this will be a total defeat for the Global Axis of Jihad and a total victory for the Coalition Of Lawful Authority.
I presume you mean the attack in-around Ghouta? Who actually planned, supplied, and and launched that attack? What did the forensic evidence actually say?
One wonders if the turbine blades could be fitted with bird-repellent reflectors and sound-makers to repel those birds who still might fly into the blades regardless.
And one wonders if the blades could be fitted with noisemakers to repel bats in the night-time also.
If BLM is defining "Occupation" as being the Israeli Occupation of West Bank/Gaza/East Jerusalem. . . . then is BLM saying that Blue-on-Black brutality did not exist before 1967? Or at the very least became measurably worse after 1967?
Or if BLM is being more expansive in its definition of Occupation and choosing to define the emergence in war of the State of Israel ever since 1948 as being an existential Occupation by Definition, then is BLM claiming that Blue-on-Black brutality did not exist before 1948? Or at the very least measurably increased AFter 1948 as against beFORE 1948?
If that is what BLM is claiming, does BLM have any evidence, statistics, etc. to present to illustrate that claim?
In your opinion, are the fossil-fuel interests buying up the transmission lines in order to shut the wind and solar projects down? Or in order to monopolize and profitize all-for-themselves the post-fossil future they see coming?
Your question deserves a serious reply. I will have more time "after work" to give it one. For now, let me just say that since plant-based photosynthesis is in itself solar powered, then any storage of plant-based biomass is in itself a storage of solar energy - - - the solar energy embodied in the chemical bonds within carbohydrates and fats and oils produced by the plant from the solar energy it net-net harvests and embodies in carbohydrate and fats'n'oils storage. Fossil fuels are themselves the fossilized remains of huge volumes of solar-power-produced plant-mass.
We can't grow the volumes of renewable plant mass equivalent to the volumes of fossil carbon we are burning . . . but we can grow and store some for best use at best times. For example, think of the example of a house which is solar-heated in Spring, Summer and Fall; and is firewood-heated in Winter. The firewood IS the stored solar energy.
The only reason this could spill over is because the war has been kept going for so long. And that is entirely the fault of some Western powers, including the DC FedRegime and regional backers of jihadi conquest. This DC/other Western/Erdogist/Qatari/Saudi support prevented the Syrian Arab Republic government from crushing and eliminating the rebellion fast and hard.
At this point it would require truly massive assistance from Syria's supporters to enable the SARgov to exterminate the rebellion before President Clinton (if that's what gets elected) ramps up DC FedRegime support for the Global Axis of Jihad all over again.
If Sanders tried to run third party at this point, he would do so poorly the Clintonites would just laugh. Whereas if umpteen million SanderVoters all wrote Sanders in on the Democratic line of the ballot (or whatever method exists), it "might" deny Clinton enough votes so as to get Trump elected. If that happened, the System could not pretend the SanderVoters did not exist.
The most effective vote against Clinton would be a vote for Trump. But Trump has problems of its own and I can't see many SanderVoters voting for Trump. Clinton would have to be so obviously screamingly worse than Trump that the average SanderVoter would become terrified of a President Clinton in order for Trump to get any SanderVoter votes.
Hillary supported TPP until the current campaign when she has pretended in her very lawyerly parsing way to have doubts about it "as written". If all her surrogates support TPP, that means she supports TPP as well, her two faced deceitful pretense to the contrary notwithstanding.
The US? Not entirely. There are some USAmericans who want to maintain peace with Russia. The two biggest voting blockloads of us that I can think of are the Sandernistas and the Stormtrumpers. (Unless the Stormtrumpers don't even know that Trump and Putin have expressed respect for eachother and eachother's country and interests/positions.)
The Clintonites and the Brand Name Republicans support causing a war with Russia.
And the uncommitted uninterested amorphous mass blob part of the public doesn't know and doesn't care, and has survival problems of its own . . . day to day and often hour to hour.
So does anyone have any ideas on how the peace with Russia group can derail the war with Russia group's plans?
If someone reading this blog post is able to contact personally the people in Ireland directly relevant to granting or denying Trump's request to build a seawall for his golf course; one hopes they would contact those authorities and inform them of Trump's "official" opinion about Global Warming being a hoax. One hopes further that anyone apprising the Irish Seawall Permitting Authorities of Trump's opinion on Global Warming being a hoax could suggest to those authorities that they deny Trump permission to build a seawall based on Trump's official opinion about Global Warming being a hoax.
1. If such data exist, they will be hyped by our "move along folks nothing to see here" press. I await the trumpeting of such data.
2. Is the underground economy big enough to make participants "more wealthy"? I mean the underground economy of the plumber insisting on getting paid in cash, not the underground economy of illegal drug sales.
3. Is there any reason freebees from the internet should be counted as anything? Is there any freebee from the internet that is genuine wealth in any sense? Perhaps some of them displace spending, which should count for just as much as the spending they displace. Is it enough to matter?
4. Aw contrair, mon frair. The building wave of type 2 diabetes is rising fastest among the low-money classes and is tied to consumption of those kinds of sh*t food which cost so little to produce that they can be sold for little money and still make a profit . . . things like fat, oil, shortening, sugar sugar sugar, sugargenic super-white flour, high fructose corn syrup, etc. Higher-class people can afford higher-nutrient less-diabetegenic shinola food and I almost betcha that the percent of new diabetes type 2 cases increases less the higher up the class and money ladder you go.
Well, Dieter Heymann, if you are one of those people who fall out of the middle class and join the fastest growing class in America today . . . which is the Nouveau Poor . . . it could be very bad for you.
(Technically I suppose you could be living in Germany, but the broader thrust of my comment still stands).
America has taken in at least 11 million economic refugees from mainly Mexico and Central America after that. Granted, those economic refugees were created by the DC FedRegime's servants of the International Free Trade Conspiracy to begin with . . . . passing their NAFTA and such things.
President Obama mainstreamed torture when he immunized and impunified practitioners of torture and order-givers for torture ( Cheney and bush) with his famous "look forward not back" policy.
Republican officeseekers running on more torture are merely building on the achievement of President Obama in normalizing torture and are merely walking through a door which Obama very carefully and deliberately left open for them.
Just in case perceived decline also refers to the perceived tarnishing and denting of America's patina of Exceptionalism . . . perhaps perceived decline could be seized on by people who are tired of the burdens of American Exceptionalism and would like to guide Exceptional America down a managed decline path towards an Ordinary America endpoint.
Perhaps it is time to think of American Exceptionalism as just another Middle Kingdom Complex ( like "guess-who's" Middle Kingdom Complex) and like Russia's "Third Rome" Complex. Time to think of being an American Okayness Ordinarian. America Okay! We're Number Whatever! etc.
Clinton is the nominee-wannabe who STILL favors toppling the legitimate government of Syria after all this time . . . . so that a pack of rebels and jihadists can take over the government there. That is more interventionist against Syria than anything Trump has said.
Trump has expressed recognition of Assad as the legitimate President of the legitimate government of Syria . . . which is less philosophically interventionist than the violent regime change which Clinton advocates against Syria.
I don't know any of the infrastructure engineering at Malheur Refuge. Can the water be cut off? Is the electricity delivered by line? Can it be cut off remotely? Can the Carpetbaggering Welfare Ranchers in the building be nonviolently frozen, starved, parched out of there? Can it be cut off so zero food/water/etc. is bringable-in by supporters?
I haven't paid close attention to Trumps's statements . . . certainly not close enough to be able to go back and cite any with referrences. So I can only say I dimly remember Trump saying something about Assad being the legitimate President of Syria. I remember Trump and Putin praising eachother and eachother's leadership skills. If I remember correctly, that is actually BETTER than Clinton's most-recent-yet-again promise to force a No Fly Zone against Syria in part for "leverage with Putin". When it comes to issues of War and Peace, Trump is actually BETTer than War Pig Clinton.
Since I am not a natural-born Stormtrumper, I will vote for Sanders in the D primaries if he is still running by Michigan. But if he is not, I will crash the R primary and vote for Trump.
If the election is Sanders vs. Trump, I'll vote for Sanders. If its Clinton vs. Trump, I may vote for Trump. If its Clinton vs. Mainstream Hideous Gargoyle, I'll vote for some hopeless third party. I will not vote for Clinton under any scenario.
Trump won't just get the White Grievance Nationalist vote. He will also get the "better an end with horror than horror without end" vote. He will also get the "burn this Mother down!" vote.
Hezbollah's use of the "terrorists using civilians as human shields" may be brazen, but it is also correct. It is the presence of the civilians there who prevent the Syrian Arab Army and its allies from using all appropriate violence to wipe out the rebels.
I haven't heard that the rebels are starving. Apparently they are still well fed enough to keep on fighting and not surrender. Where did/do they get their food? From their civilian human shields?
Peace will come to Syria when the R + 6 have been able to exterminate comprehensively and in detail every last rebel within the borders of Syria, and allow the Syrian Arab Republic's President al Assad to restore lawful authority over the country. One is either with Assad, or one is with the terrorists. That is the binary choice and the binary truth.
The fact that the terrorist rebels are holding the civilians as human shields only re-inforces the case for their ultimate extermination-in-detail.
One reason why it is harder to board a plane is because of a whole regime of Security Theater and Mass Public Obedience Training designed to get the flying masses to accept absurd and surreal conditions of "search" and "what you can take on a plane". ( By the way, rich people can buy their way out of all that with special passes and really rich people get flown around in their own private planes and don't undergo any security checks at all. Security checks are for us near-plebs who have to take the Subways in the Sky).
Obama's precious No Fly List is a political persecution and oppression list which Obama and the National Security State know very well. If another occupy movement gets going, or anti FreeTrade protesters want to fly to a FreeTrade conference, watch how fast they get put on the No Fly List. And Obama expects Congress to base gun access on such a thoroughly and purely political list? His expectation may be optimistic.
Sensible gun safety laws will be discussed by conservatives, we hope . . . some day. But anti-gun liberals have poisoned the "gun safety debate" well so thoroughly that every further attempt they make to push their version of gun safety will only result in more millions of guns being bought by pissed-off citizens.
Don't believe me? Lets see how much currently-legal gun sales go up in the several months after Obama's latest effort.
When I first heard reports of this judicial assassination, I heard reports claiming that Nimr al-Nimr was accused of "al Quaeda related activities." Did the Saudi authorities really phrase it that way? Really? Reeeeeeally? Is there quotable evidence that they said "al Qaeda" and "al-Nimr" in the same statement?
I too remember the endless hype about fusion. Intuiting by analogy, one could certainly feel that any discussion of fission reactors of a design other than Light Water reactors is also hype.
Since I am just a lay amateur science buff, I sometimes have to take scientists' word for things. I do my best to understand the science. Hansen is certainly not a nuclear engineer. Yet he has revealed himself to be a careful thinker who does not stray from the data. Would he offer a data-free opinion about Full Fast-Cycle FISSION Reactors? Should I automatically assume so?
On the other hand, I do remember having watched a PBS program about the "pebble bed" reactor research going on at Argonne National Lab, and its sudden shutdown. Is this "pebble bed" the same as Fast Cycle that Hansen describes?
Google is now so crappy a search engine that I can't find referrences to things on it that I remembered seeing on it years ago. All I could find was this article by an Earth First activist claiming that "new fission reactor" designs are also all hype. I don't know how to take it. Maybe Hansen has been fooled. But maybe this Earth First guy is some sort of special pleader for his own agenda. Here is the link. http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2577637/new_reactor_types_are_all_nuclear_pie_in_the_sky.html
Now, before accepting that "if it were profitable, Big Electro would have bought some", I would want to know if the electric utilities and the coal/gas/oil companies have interlocking directorate webworks and incestuous mega-share stock block cross ownership patterns. If they do, why would they permit adoption of a technology threatening to their fossil carbon assets? Why wouldn't they conspire against it the same way they are conspiring against solar/wind/etc today? Given the immoral nature of carbon corporate leaders, I wouldn't accept "if it were profitable they'd do it" as the last word on analysing their actions.
Hansen himself may have been advocating the Full Fast-Cycle Reactors as a baseload-supply transition on the way to something better. His feeling was we are carbon skydumping so fast we have to stop NOW and only Full Fast-Cycle Reactors can jump into the breach.
The sudden suppression of the Full Fast-Cycle Reactor research deprived the public of a chance to even hear about it ( beyond off little corners of the web, paragraphs in Hansen's book, etc.) When the public, including me, thinks of "reactors", we think of the fragile mega-polluting light water reactors such as at Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima. What public would want those? But if the public got its hands on information about Full Fast-Cycle Reactors, the public might do a re-think. The public might still reject the concept. But the public at least deserves the information to think with. Hansen must have been thinking that way when he put it in his book.
Interestingly enough, James Hansen says the same thing in his book Storms Of My Grandchildren. He says a different approach to nuclear power was researched, tried, and near prototype-perfected at Argonne National Lab and then was belligerently terminated for some vulgar political reason. Since I am not a nuclear engineer, I could only dimly understand what he was describing.
He writes about something called a "Full Fast Reactor" or something. The neutrons inside the fuel are moderated lightly enough that they can travel fast enough to destabilize and "fissionize" many other nucleii that they hit. These then fiss with the release of energy and neutrons and so on till 97% of the theoretically possible available fuel in the fuel sample is fissed all the way down to stable isotopes. The 3% remaining is supposedly species that have half lives of tens to hundreds of years rather than thousands of years or more. They supposedly release little enough energy when they fiss that they can be mixed into meltable glass-feedstock which is then cooled back into glass, and solidly storable that way. It is called vitrification.
The notion of "Fast" reactor may have been tainted by association with the "Fast Breeder Reactor" which isn't really fast. It is only half-fast. Its sole purpose was to serve as sneaky "nuclear power" cover for the production of plutonium, which was the real purpose of the "Fast Breeder Reactor".
So perhaps the Full Fast Reactor deserves a fresh look the way James Hansen says it does.
The real reason Obama wants to introduce special forces people into Iraq is to sneak them into Syria. Their mission will be to help the terrorists jihadi rebels fight against the legitimate Assad government of the Syrian Arab Republic.
Obama has overtly, avowedly and proudly come out in support of the terrorists. He is the Evil World Leader of the Axis of Jihad.
The Erdogists and Saudi Arabia want a Sunni Jihadi supremacist state ruling Syria. Iran and Russia want to prevent that from happening. What possible agreement could there possibly be among two sets of countries with such conflicting goals?
The only possible prospect for peace in Syria is if the R +6 can get every trace of rebellion crushed and exterminated from every corner of Syria so that the legitimate government of the Syrian Arab Republic can re-impose order and control over all parts of Syria. And they have to get the rebellion crushed before the Axis of Jihad ( US, EUrope, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, etc.) can still support and resupply their various pet rebels to keep fighting before the R + 6 can get the fighting stopped by crushing the rebels into abject submission or physical extinction.
The difference between ISIS and the Saudi-Qatari jihadis is a distinction not even worth making from the viewpoint of the Christians, Shias, Alawites, secular Sunnis, etc. who would be persecuted or ethnicleansed or exterminated under any possible rebel government.
It should be possible to suck down a lot of skycarbon and re-fix it into soil-stored biocarbon by re-fostering all the right kinds of plant growth. Multi-species pasture and range under livestock net-sequesters bio-carbon, for example.
Re-flooding and restoring all the world's drained wetlands would get them sucking down skycarbon and storing it as ever-thickening peat-beds under the surface of the swamp-water and marsh-water.
Some preliminary evidence hints that it may even be possible to re-raise carbon levels in fruit/veggie/grain cropland with the right kinds of management.
So phyto-draining the skycarbon can way shorten the residence time of all that carbon up in the sky.
If the rebels can be methodically and unemotionally exterminated down to the very last rebel, then it won't matter what the rebels "won't ever accept".
I agree with much of what you write here, but I must with some regret suggest that the Western powers have nothing of any value to offer to Syria and will never have anything of any value to offer to Syria. The West will never coalesce with Russia and others to neutralize IS, because such neutralization requires the prior neutralization of all the other alphabet jihadis first. The Syrian Arab Army cannot address ISIS while its country still faces danger from the rebels and jihadis in West and Central Syria. And as long as the West remains devoted to the sentimental goal of toppling Assad, the West will never assist any genuine action leading to the eventual elimination of IS. From a Syrian eye view, one might well refer to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, etc. as the "near jihadis" and to France, America, Britain, etc. as the "far jihadis".
One can only hope the R + 6 are able to exterminate every last trace of rebellion in Syria before the Axis of Jihad can figure out new ways to support its jihadi proxies in Syria against the legitimate Assad government.
If Hollande accepts Assad as the legitimate governator of Syria to the very same extent that Putin supports Assad as the legitimate governator of Syria . . . then Hollande and Putin can make an alliance. And if Putin and Hollande on that basis can get Obama to accept that Assad is the legitimate governator of Syria, then Obama can be part of that alliance.
Otherwise, not. Lavrov has already made Russia's position very clear on the non-existence of any meaningful difference between ISIS, Nusra, the so-called "FSA" ( which is deeply filled with jihadist elements) , etc. Russia wants them all defeated and rightly so.
If Hollande still harbors conceits of over-topplethrowing Assad, then Hollande will not get an alliance. Hollande, Obama and etc. still need to come to terms with the fact that they are either with Assad and Putin, or they are with the terrorists. That is the binary choice that real-world reality gives them. You are with Assad, or you are with the terrorists.
Such Rabinists and Lesser Israel Two-State Solutionists as still exist in Israel are like miners trapped in a cave-in. This European policy of separating out criminal settler enterprises for separate labelling could be a first step towards digging out and rescuing the Lesser Israel 2SS Rabinists from the Likud-Revisionist cave in they are buried under. If it were extended to economic product from the illegally-"annexed" Golan Heights, it could help to zero out the settler economic presence there too.
Making everything from Golan/West Bank into "stuffa non grata" could be a first step towards tilting the power-balance within Israel to the point where the Rabinists might have an outside chance at holding up their end of the ongoing civil war in that country . . . and conquering enough power over the State and the Armed Forces to be able to use that power to round up all the Outlaw Settlers and march them at gunpoint back into Israel Proper . . . killing any who resist along the way in order to encourage the rest to come along quietly.
That would be the sort of "confidence-building measure" which actually "builds confidence".
It is certainly more sincere and useful than anything the Axis of Jihad has to offer. ( The Axis of Jihad is composed of the DC FedRegime, the European Capitals, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, and all their little head-chopping cannibal liver-eating rebel mascots currently operating in Syria.
That Dvorak Intensity scale should be made open ended so it can measure hurricanes of whatever size.
Also the Category system should be open ended, allowing for Cat 6, Cat 7, etc.; if hurricanes get strong enough to need those numbered intervals. Leaving Cat 5 open ended will limit its usefulness as a measurement-expressing tool as hurricanes get stronger at the high end.
An anti-modern jihadi state which pursues expulsion or extermination of minorities will leave Syria even more anti-healed then a restored Assad and successors regime which will at least accept the principle of ethnic and confessional diversity as before in the Syria patchwork.
So there is no reason to feel bad about coming around to accepting the relative betterness of a total restoration of SAR power to all of Syria or at least all those parts of Syria which have any economic, cultural, and/or hydrological value at all. ( It may be that Syria/Russia/Iran/Iraq/etc. may wish to see the jihadis backed into the near worthless desert areas and then quarantined there and allowed to fester therein. Perhaps those Syrian refugess deemed to be jihadophile will be sent into the Cordon Sanitaired Jihadistan.)
As Yogi Berra once said, " When you come to Hobson's fork in the road, take it."
If all the anti-terrorist groups could win the war in Syria so fast and hard that the jihadists are all backed into a near-worthless/waterless desert area which can be physically quarantined, then perhaps jihadi volunteers could be allowed to go into that quarantined jihadistan. But only if the world could be guaranteed that every jihadi who went there would be killed there. Ideally the world would burn through its supply of people who want to go join a jihad.
"ISIS" isn't just composed of bunches of jihadists. In Iraq at least, it has been led and organized by some of Saddam's old Iraqi Army soldiers and officers and Baathist secret police. Fighting ISIS will require fighting them too. And the Shia Supremacist regime in Baghdad isn't up to the task and probably never will be.
If the Shia Supremacist regime in Baghdad wants to get some of the water flowing again, it will have to reduce some of its Shia Supremacism and offer a real and sincerely-meant fairness-and-equity deal to the Sunni Arab tribes. If they become convinced of the Shia regime's sincerity ( a tough achievement after al Maliki's doublecross of the Sons of Iraq), then enough of the Sunni Arab tribes might withdraw enough support from ISIS to make it possible to fight ISIS within Iraq itself. If the Shia supremacist regime in Baghdad refuses to do that, the Shia supremacist regime in Baghdad will continue to see the downriver Shia go thirstier and thirstier and thirstier.
Putin is more nearly right on Syria than Obama is. Obama still supports and encourages those who want Assad overthrown. Putin recognizes that the only way to bring peace to Syria is for one side to exterminate the fighting ability of every other side. Putin has decided that the Secularist Dictatorship side of Assad is a preferable victor to the jihadist side of ISIS, al Nusra, etc. And I agree.
The proper course was stated by a commenter above . . . give the Assad side such overwhelming support that it can compel all other sides to stop fighting or else exterminate all other sides' fighting forces and persons from physical existence.
By the way, it is a pro-rebel lie to say that Assad used sarin gas in that attack near Damascus. Elements of the rebels were the ones who used that kitchen-sarin in order to get Assad blamed for it. There has been abundant material written about that basic fact on Colonel Lang's blog Sic Semper Tyrannis and elsewhere.
Colonel Lang and others and commenters have been following Turkish affairs and offering a very interesting and fact-based analysis for some time now. In their view Erdogan has always been a crypto-Salafoid Islamist and is now dropping the mask. He and his Erdogists have been the principal logistical supporters and enablers of the various liver-eating cannibal head-chopping rebels in Syria, for instance.
And he is a firm supporter of ISIS, poorly staged posturing to the contrary notwithstanding.
Sometimes I wonder what would happen if . . . West Virginia changed its name to Appalachia. And changed its state motto to . . ." Welcome to Appalachia. America's Tibet." And in the far-distant much-longer-run, invited any and every mountain-minded bordering county in "other" states to leave the states they are part of and join the new and growing State of Appalachia.
Obama has worked very hard to immunise and impunify torture by governmental personell. That was the meaning and the purpose of his "look forward and not back". The Obama Administration is very much an extension and a routinization of the Bush Administration in terms of transforming bold experiments in UnConstitutional governance into standard operating procedure. People will look back in due time and refer to these 16 years as the BushCoBama Administration.
So, the Syrian rebels want the "Assad Regime" gone? Well FARC the Goal Dumb Syrian rebels. If they want the "Assad Regime" gone, let them gone it themselves with zero outside assistance.
Once again I say: the US should do a 180 and join Russia, China, Iran and Hezbollah in helping the Syrian Arab Republic and the Syrian Arab Army to crush, smash and exterminate the Saudi-Gulfie Sunni-Salafi Jihadista rebellion in a very conclusive manner. We should help the SAR kill as many people as it takes to stop the rebellion once and for all. Then the "Assad regime" will stop "killing civilians". They aren't doing it for fun. They are doing it for reasons of strictly bussiness. And as soon as the rebellion is exterminated, then the SAG can stop fighting and killing.
Lavrov's invitation to see sense and fight the right people
offers us a chance to stop supporting the wrong people.
The "Never Trump" Republicans and Neo-Conservatives are overtly supporting Clinton in this election.
That is something which I will remember . . . in November.
Global Axis of Jihad may be the worst acronym ever. But it has done its job. It is now "out there". It is inside your brain and you won't get it back out.
You might as well thank me for the second worst acronym ever as well. And that is of course COLA . . . for Coalition of Lawful Authority.
Things go better with COLA. You won't forget that one either.
There doesn't have to be a bond villain with a white cat. There just has to be several governments committed to exporting wahhabi intolerance and domination, and others committed to supporting jihadista violence for whatever other destabilizing reasons they might have. And the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Qatar and Erdogist Turkey all want to destroy the secular dictatorship existing in Syria before the outbreak of proxy insurgency, and put in its place a Sunni Chauvinist Suprematist regime which will offer the minorities of Syria a number of bad deals, ranging from neo-dhimitude 2.0 all the way to expulsion or extermination. And these cannibal liver-eating scum have the strong backing of the DC FedRegime and the ideological neoconservatives and neoliberals infesting several Western governments. So . . . just as immediately pre-war Italy, Germany and Japan called themselves the Axis Powers then, I think we can call the several governments backing this jihadi outbreak in Syria now to be the Global Axis of Jihad. No Bond villain with a white cat is needed.
I think democracy is a good thing for democracies. It could be a good thing for non-democracies who desire to evolve their own version of it without any outside help or intrusion or influence. It is not a good thing when imposed at gunpoint or by subversion as part of a Western Prideful program of Forced Freedomization and Gunpoint Democrafication.
You are correct about economic disintegration being a first-opener-of-the door to this outbreak of Wahhabi ( and other Jihadist) imperialist and colonialist aggression against the secular dictatorship of Syria and those who prefer it. And there has been an ecological disintegration underneath that, which drives the economic disintegration farther. But what can correct that and then reverse it? More jihadi violence from the Global Axis of Jihad? Or the systematic extermination of every trace of violent rebellion from within the borders of Syria, so that the legitimate ( and recognized by the United Nations to BE the legitimate ) government of Syria can regain command and control of all the land within its borders. That government can then begin re-integrating the ecology and the economy, if its leader-thinkers care to think about how the ecology and economy disintegrated to begin with.
But first things first. And all decent civilized people supporting the R + 6 to exterminate every last trace of rebellion within Syria must come first.
It is good that China is getting involved on the side of legitimate authority. Hopefully the Jihadi Rebellion can be crushed so thoroughly by the time Clinton takes office that there is no effective stub of rebellion left for the Clintonites to build back out from. Hopefully this will be a total defeat for the Global Axis of Jihad and a total victory for the Coalition Of Lawful Authority.
Things go better with COLA.
@An Observer,
I presume you mean the attack in-around Ghouta? Who actually planned, supplied, and and launched that attack? What did the forensic evidence actually say?
One wonders if the turbine blades could be fitted with bird-repellent reflectors and sound-makers to repel those birds who still might fly into the blades regardless.
And one wonders if the blades could be fitted with noisemakers to repel bats in the night-time also.
Really? BLM argues that?
If BLM is defining "Occupation" as being the Israeli Occupation of West Bank/Gaza/East Jerusalem. . . . then is BLM saying that Blue-on-Black brutality did not exist before 1967? Or at the very least became measurably worse after 1967?
Or if BLM is being more expansive in its definition of Occupation and choosing to define the emergence in war of the State of Israel ever since 1948 as being an existential Occupation by Definition, then is BLM claiming that Blue-on-Black brutality did not exist before 1948? Or at the very least measurably increased AFter 1948 as against beFORE 1948?
If that is what BLM is claiming, does BLM have any evidence, statistics, etc. to present to illustrate that claim?
In your opinion, are the fossil-fuel interests buying up the transmission lines in order to shut the wind and solar projects down? Or in order to monopolize and profitize all-for-themselves the post-fossil future they see coming?
John Wilson,
Your question deserves a serious reply. I will have more time "after work" to give it one. For now, let me just say that since plant-based photosynthesis is in itself solar powered, then any storage of plant-based biomass is in itself a storage of solar energy - - - the solar energy embodied in the chemical bonds within carbohydrates and fats and oils produced by the plant from the solar energy it net-net harvests and embodies in carbohydrate and fats'n'oils storage. Fossil fuels are themselves the fossilized remains of huge volumes of solar-power-produced plant-mass.
We can't grow the volumes of renewable plant mass equivalent to the volumes of fossil carbon we are burning . . . but we can grow and store some for best use at best times. For example, think of the example of a house which is solar-heated in Spring, Summer and Fall; and is firewood-heated in Winter. The firewood IS the stored solar energy.
I'll be as ridiculous as I damn please.
So Debbie Wasserman-Schitz has been elevated and honored by Hillary Clinton?
Well! Isn't that special.
The only reason this could spill over is because the war has been kept going for so long. And that is entirely the fault of some Western powers, including the DC FedRegime and regional backers of jihadi conquest. This DC/other Western/Erdogist/Qatari/Saudi support prevented the Syrian Arab Republic government from crushing and eliminating the rebellion fast and hard.
At this point it would require truly massive assistance from Syria's supporters to enable the SARgov to exterminate the rebellion before President Clinton (if that's what gets elected) ramps up DC FedRegime support for the Global Axis of Jihad all over again.
If Sanders tried to run third party at this point, he would do so poorly the Clintonites would just laugh. Whereas if umpteen million SanderVoters all wrote Sanders in on the Democratic line of the ballot (or whatever method exists), it "might" deny Clinton enough votes so as to get Trump elected. If that happened, the System could not pretend the SanderVoters did not exist.
The most effective vote against Clinton would be a vote for Trump. But Trump has problems of its own and I can't see many SanderVoters voting for Trump. Clinton would have to be so obviously screamingly worse than Trump that the average SanderVoter would become terrified of a President Clinton in order for Trump to get any SanderVoter votes.
Hillary supported TPP until the current campaign when she has pretended in her very lawyerly parsing way to have doubts about it "as written". If all her surrogates support TPP, that means she supports TPP as well, her two faced deceitful pretense to the contrary notwithstanding.
The US? Not entirely. There are some USAmericans who want to maintain peace with Russia. The two biggest voting blockloads of us that I can think of are the Sandernistas and the Stormtrumpers. (Unless the Stormtrumpers don't even know that Trump and Putin have expressed respect for eachother and eachother's country and interests/positions.)
The Clintonites and the Brand Name Republicans support causing a war with Russia.
And the uncommitted uninterested amorphous mass blob part of the public doesn't know and doesn't care, and has survival problems of its own . . . day to day and often hour to hour.
So does anyone have any ideas on how the peace with Russia group can derail the war with Russia group's plans?
If someone reading this blog post is able to contact personally the people in Ireland directly relevant to granting or denying Trump's request to build a seawall for his golf course; one hopes they would contact those authorities and inform them of Trump's "official" opinion about Global Warming being a hoax. One hopes further that anyone apprising the Irish Seawall Permitting Authorities of Trump's opinion on Global Warming being a hoax could suggest to those authorities that they deny Trump permission to build a seawall based on Trump's official opinion about Global Warming being a hoax.
Well, as J J Angleton once said . . . "there are many cells in the dungeon". Or something like that.
1. If such data exist, they will be hyped by our "move along folks nothing to see here" press. I await the trumpeting of such data.
2. Is the underground economy big enough to make participants "more wealthy"? I mean the underground economy of the plumber insisting on getting paid in cash, not the underground economy of illegal drug sales.
3. Is there any reason freebees from the internet should be counted as anything? Is there any freebee from the internet that is genuine wealth in any sense? Perhaps some of them displace spending, which should count for just as much as the spending they displace. Is it enough to matter?
4. Aw contrair, mon frair. The building wave of type 2 diabetes is rising fastest among the low-money classes and is tied to consumption of those kinds of sh*t food which cost so little to produce that they can be sold for little money and still make a profit . . . things like fat, oil, shortening, sugar sugar sugar, sugargenic super-white flour, high fructose corn syrup, etc. Higher-class people can afford higher-nutrient less-diabetegenic shinola food and I almost betcha that the percent of new diabetes type 2 cases increases less the higher up the class and money ladder you go.
Well, Dieter Heymann, if you are one of those people who fall out of the middle class and join the fastest growing class in America today . . . which is the Nouveau Poor . . . it could be very bad for you.
(Technically I suppose you could be living in Germany, but the broader thrust of my comment still stands).
@john wilson,
America has taken in at least 11 million economic refugees from mainly Mexico and Central America after that. Granted, those economic refugees were created by the DC FedRegime's servants of the International Free Trade Conspiracy to begin with . . . . passing their NAFTA and such things.
Still . . . . America took them in.
President Obama mainstreamed torture when he immunized and impunified practitioners of torture and order-givers for torture ( Cheney and bush) with his famous "look forward not back" policy.
Republican officeseekers running on more torture are merely building on the achievement of President Obama in normalizing torture and are merely walking through a door which Obama very carefully and deliberately left open for them.
Will the KSA reign in the Keepers of the Wahhabi Flame when Wahhabism is KSA's sole and only excuse for legitimacy?
No. No they will not.
Just in case perceived decline also refers to the perceived tarnishing and denting of America's patina of Exceptionalism . . . perhaps perceived decline could be seized on by people who are tired of the burdens of American Exceptionalism and would like to guide Exceptional America down a managed decline path towards an Ordinary America endpoint.
Perhaps it is time to think of American Exceptionalism as just another Middle Kingdom Complex ( like "guess-who's" Middle Kingdom Complex) and like Russia's "Third Rome" Complex. Time to think of being an American Okayness Ordinarian. America Okay! We're Number Whatever! etc.
Clinton is the nominee-wannabe who STILL favors toppling the legitimate government of Syria after all this time . . . . so that a pack of rebels and jihadists can take over the government there. That is more interventionist against Syria than anything Trump has said.
Trump has expressed recognition of Assad as the legitimate President of the legitimate government of Syria . . . which is less philosophically interventionist than the violent regime change which Clinton advocates against Syria.
I don't know any of the infrastructure engineering at Malheur Refuge. Can the water be cut off? Is the electricity delivered by line? Can it be cut off remotely? Can the Carpetbaggering Welfare Ranchers in the building be nonviolently frozen, starved, parched out of there? Can it be cut off so zero food/water/etc. is bringable-in by supporters?
If so, do it. And patiently wait them out.
I haven't paid close attention to Trumps's statements . . . certainly not close enough to be able to go back and cite any with referrences. So I can only say I dimly remember Trump saying something about Assad being the legitimate President of Syria. I remember Trump and Putin praising eachother and eachother's leadership skills. If I remember correctly, that is actually BETTER than Clinton's most-recent-yet-again promise to force a No Fly Zone against Syria in part for "leverage with Putin". When it comes to issues of War and Peace, Trump is actually BETTer than War Pig Clinton.
Since I am not a natural-born Stormtrumper, I will vote for Sanders in the D primaries if he is still running by Michigan. But if he is not, I will crash the R primary and vote for Trump.
If the election is Sanders vs. Trump, I'll vote for Sanders. If its Clinton vs. Trump, I may vote for Trump. If its Clinton vs. Mainstream Hideous Gargoyle, I'll vote for some hopeless third party. I will not vote for Clinton under any scenario.
Trump won't just get the White Grievance Nationalist vote. He will also get the "better an end with horror than horror without end" vote. He will also get the "burn this Mother down!" vote.
Hezbollah's use of the "terrorists using civilians as human shields" may be brazen, but it is also correct. It is the presence of the civilians there who prevent the Syrian Arab Army and its allies from using all appropriate violence to wipe out the rebels.
I haven't heard that the rebels are starving. Apparently they are still well fed enough to keep on fighting and not surrender. Where did/do they get their food? From their civilian human shields?
Peace will come to Syria when the R + 6 have been able to exterminate comprehensively and in detail every last rebel within the borders of Syria, and allow the Syrian Arab Republic's President al Assad to restore lawful authority over the country. One is either with Assad, or one is with the terrorists. That is the binary choice and the binary truth.
The fact that the terrorist rebels are holding the civilians as human shields only re-inforces the case for their ultimate extermination-in-detail.
One reason why it is harder to board a plane is because of a whole regime of Security Theater and Mass Public Obedience Training designed to get the flying masses to accept absurd and surreal conditions of "search" and "what you can take on a plane". ( By the way, rich people can buy their way out of all that with special passes and really rich people get flown around in their own private planes and don't undergo any security checks at all. Security checks are for us near-plebs who have to take the Subways in the Sky).
Obama's precious No Fly List is a political persecution and oppression list which Obama and the National Security State know very well. If another occupy movement gets going, or anti FreeTrade protesters want to fly to a FreeTrade conference, watch how fast they get put on the No Fly List. And Obama expects Congress to base gun access on such a thoroughly and purely political list? His expectation may be optimistic.
Sensible gun safety laws will be discussed by conservatives, we hope . . . some day. But anti-gun liberals have poisoned the "gun safety debate" well so thoroughly that every further attempt they make to push their version of gun safety will only result in more millions of guns being bought by pissed-off citizens.
Don't believe me? Lets see how much currently-legal gun sales go up in the several months after Obama's latest effort.
When I first heard reports of this judicial assassination, I heard reports claiming that Nimr al-Nimr was accused of "al Quaeda related activities." Did the Saudi authorities really phrase it that way? Really? Reeeeeeally? Is there quotable evidence that they said "al Qaeda" and "al-Nimr" in the same statement?
I too remember the endless hype about fusion. Intuiting by analogy, one could certainly feel that any discussion of fission reactors of a design other than Light Water reactors is also hype.
Since I am just a lay amateur science buff, I sometimes have to take scientists' word for things. I do my best to understand the science. Hansen is certainly not a nuclear engineer. Yet he has revealed himself to be a careful thinker who does not stray from the data. Would he offer a data-free opinion about Full Fast-Cycle FISSION Reactors? Should I automatically assume so?
On the other hand, I do remember having watched a PBS program about the "pebble bed" reactor research going on at Argonne National Lab, and its sudden shutdown. Is this "pebble bed" the same as Fast Cycle that Hansen describes?
Google is now so crappy a search engine that I can't find referrences to things on it that I remembered seeing on it years ago. All I could find was this article by an Earth First activist claiming that "new fission reactor" designs are also all hype. I don't know how to take it. Maybe Hansen has been fooled. But maybe this Earth First guy is some sort of special pleader for his own agenda. Here is the link.
http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2577637/new_reactor_types_are_all_nuclear_pie_in_the_sky.html
Now, before accepting that "if it were profitable, Big Electro would have bought some", I would want to know if the electric utilities and the coal/gas/oil companies have interlocking directorate webworks and incestuous mega-share stock block cross ownership patterns. If they do, why would they permit adoption of a technology threatening to their fossil carbon assets? Why wouldn't they conspire against it the same way they are conspiring against solar/wind/etc today? Given the immoral nature of carbon corporate leaders, I wouldn't accept "if it were profitable they'd do it" as the last word on analysing their actions.
Hansen himself may have been advocating the Full Fast-Cycle Reactors as a baseload-supply transition on the way to something better. His feeling was we are carbon skydumping so fast we have to stop NOW and only Full Fast-Cycle Reactors can jump into the breach.
The sudden suppression of the Full Fast-Cycle Reactor research deprived the public of a chance to even hear about it ( beyond off little corners of the web, paragraphs in Hansen's book, etc.) When the public, including me, thinks of "reactors", we think of the fragile mega-polluting light water reactors such as at Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima. What public would want those? But if the public got its hands on information about Full Fast-Cycle Reactors, the public might do a re-think. The public might still reject the concept. But the public at least deserves the information to think with. Hansen must have been thinking that way when he put it in his book.
Frank Messmann,
Interestingly enough, James Hansen says the same thing in his book Storms Of My Grandchildren. He says a different approach to nuclear power was researched, tried, and near prototype-perfected at Argonne National Lab and then was belligerently terminated for some vulgar political reason. Since I am not a nuclear engineer, I could only dimly understand what he was describing.
He writes about something called a "Full Fast Reactor" or something. The neutrons inside the fuel are moderated lightly enough that they can travel fast enough to destabilize and "fissionize" many other nucleii that they hit. These then fiss with the release of energy and neutrons and so on till 97% of the theoretically possible available fuel in the fuel sample is fissed all the way down to stable isotopes. The 3% remaining is supposedly species that have half lives of tens to hundreds of years rather than thousands of years or more. They supposedly release little enough energy when they fiss that they can be mixed into meltable glass-feedstock which is then cooled back into glass, and solidly storable that way. It is called vitrification.
The notion of "Fast" reactor may have been tainted by association with the "Fast Breeder Reactor" which isn't really fast. It is only half-fast. Its sole purpose was to serve as sneaky "nuclear power" cover for the production of plutonium, which was the real purpose of the "Fast Breeder Reactor".
So perhaps the Full Fast Reactor deserves a fresh look the way James Hansen says it does.
The real reason Obama wants to introduce special forces people into Iraq is to sneak them into Syria. Their mission will be to help the terrorists jihadi rebels fight against the legitimate Assad government of the Syrian Arab Republic.
Obama has overtly, avowedly and proudly come out in support of the terrorists. He is the Evil World Leader of the Axis of Jihad.
The Erdogists and Saudi Arabia want a Sunni Jihadi supremacist state ruling Syria. Iran and Russia want to prevent that from happening. What possible agreement could there possibly be among two sets of countries with such conflicting goals?
The only possible prospect for peace in Syria is if the R +6 can get every trace of rebellion crushed and exterminated from every corner of Syria so that the legitimate government of the Syrian Arab Republic can re-impose order and control over all parts of Syria. And they have to get the rebellion crushed before the Axis of Jihad ( US, EUrope, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, etc.) can still support and resupply their various pet rebels to keep fighting before the R + 6 can get the fighting stopped by crushing the rebels into abject submission or physical extinction.
The difference between ISIS and the Saudi-Qatari jihadis is a distinction not even worth making from the viewpoint of the Christians, Shias, Alawites, secular Sunnis, etc. who would be persecuted or ethnicleansed or exterminated under any possible rebel government.
It should be possible to suck down a lot of skycarbon and re-fix it into soil-stored biocarbon by re-fostering all the right kinds of plant growth. Multi-species pasture and range under livestock net-sequesters bio-carbon, for example.
Re-flooding and restoring all the world's drained wetlands would get them sucking down skycarbon and storing it as ever-thickening peat-beds under the surface of the swamp-water and marsh-water.
Some preliminary evidence hints that it may even be possible to re-raise carbon levels in fruit/veggie/grain cropland with the right kinds of management.
So phyto-draining the skycarbon can way shorten the residence time of all that carbon up in the sky.
If the rebels can be methodically and unemotionally exterminated down to the very last rebel, then it won't matter what the rebels "won't ever accept".
Farhang Jahranpour,
I agree with much of what you write here, but I must with some regret suggest that the Western powers have nothing of any value to offer to Syria and will never have anything of any value to offer to Syria. The West will never coalesce with Russia and others to neutralize IS, because such neutralization requires the prior neutralization of all the other alphabet jihadis first. The Syrian Arab Army cannot address ISIS while its country still faces danger from the rebels and jihadis in West and Central Syria. And as long as the West remains devoted to the sentimental goal of toppling Assad, the West will never assist any genuine action leading to the eventual elimination of IS. From a Syrian eye view, one might well refer to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, etc. as the "near jihadis" and to France, America, Britain, etc. as the "far jihadis".
One can only hope the R + 6 are able to exterminate every last trace of rebellion in Syria before the Axis of Jihad can figure out new ways to support its jihadi proxies in Syria against the legitimate Assad government.
If Hollande accepts Assad as the legitimate governator of Syria to the very same extent that Putin supports Assad as the legitimate governator of Syria . . . then Hollande and Putin can make an alliance. And if Putin and Hollande on that basis can get Obama to accept that Assad is the legitimate governator of Syria, then Obama can be part of that alliance.
Otherwise, not. Lavrov has already made Russia's position very clear on the non-existence of any meaningful difference between ISIS, Nusra, the so-called "FSA" ( which is deeply filled with jihadist elements) , etc. Russia wants them all defeated and rightly so.
If Hollande still harbors conceits of over-topplethrowing Assad, then Hollande will not get an alliance. Hollande, Obama and etc. still need to come to terms with the fact that they are either with Assad and Putin, or they are with the terrorists. That is the binary choice that real-world reality gives them. You are with Assad, or you are with the terrorists.
Such Rabinists and Lesser Israel Two-State Solutionists as still exist in Israel are like miners trapped in a cave-in. This European policy of separating out criminal settler enterprises for separate labelling could be a first step towards digging out and rescuing the Lesser Israel 2SS Rabinists from the Likud-Revisionist cave in they are buried under. If it were extended to economic product from the illegally-"annexed" Golan Heights, it could help to zero out the settler economic presence there too.
Making everything from Golan/West Bank into "stuffa non grata" could be a first step towards tilting the power-balance within Israel to the point where the Rabinists might have an outside chance at holding up their end of the ongoing civil war in that country . . . and conquering enough power over the State and the Armed Forces to be able to use that power to round up all the Outlaw Settlers and march them at gunpoint back into Israel Proper . . . killing any who resist along the way in order to encourage the rest to come along quietly.
That would be the sort of "confidence-building measure" which actually "builds confidence".
Is it "the meat"? Or is it the modern petrochemical synthetic chemicals IN "the meat"?
It is certainly more sincere and useful than anything the Axis of Jihad has to offer. ( The Axis of Jihad is composed of the DC FedRegime, the European Capitals, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, and all their little head-chopping cannibal liver-eating rebel mascots currently operating in Syria.
That Dvorak Intensity scale should be made open ended so it can measure hurricanes of whatever size.
Also the Category system should be open ended, allowing for Cat 6, Cat 7, etc.; if hurricanes get strong enough to need those numbered intervals. Leaving Cat 5 open ended will limit its usefulness as a measurement-expressing tool as hurricanes get stronger at the high end.
An anti-modern jihadi state which pursues expulsion or extermination of minorities will leave Syria even more anti-healed then a restored Assad and successors regime which will at least accept the principle of ethnic and confessional diversity as before in the Syria patchwork.
So there is no reason to feel bad about coming around to accepting the relative betterness of a total restoration of SAR power to all of Syria or at least all those parts of Syria which have any economic, cultural, and/or hydrological value at all. ( It may be that Syria/Russia/Iran/Iraq/etc. may wish to see the jihadis backed into the near worthless desert areas and then quarantined there and allowed to fester therein. Perhaps those Syrian refugess deemed to be jihadophile will be sent into the Cordon Sanitaired Jihadistan.)
As Yogi Berra once said, " When you come to Hobson's fork in the road, take it."
If all the anti-terrorist groups could win the war in Syria so fast and hard that the jihadists are all backed into a near-worthless/waterless desert area which can be physically quarantined, then perhaps jihadi volunteers could be allowed to go into that quarantined jihadistan. But only if the world could be guaranteed that every jihadi who went there would be killed there. Ideally the world would burn through its supply of people who want to go join a jihad.
"ISIS" isn't just composed of bunches of jihadists. In Iraq at least, it has been led and organized by some of Saddam's old Iraqi Army soldiers and officers and Baathist secret police. Fighting ISIS will require fighting them too. And the Shia Supremacist regime in Baghdad isn't up to the task and probably never will be.
If the Shia Supremacist regime in Baghdad wants to get some of the water flowing again, it will have to reduce some of its Shia Supremacism and offer a real and sincerely-meant fairness-and-equity deal to the Sunni Arab tribes. If they become convinced of the Shia regime's sincerity ( a tough achievement after al Maliki's doublecross of the Sons of Iraq), then enough of the Sunni Arab tribes might withdraw enough support from ISIS to make it possible to fight ISIS within Iraq itself. If the Shia supremacist regime in Baghdad refuses to do that, the Shia supremacist regime in Baghdad will continue to see the downriver Shia go thirstier and thirstier and thirstier.
Putin is more nearly right on Syria than Obama is. Obama still supports and encourages those who want Assad overthrown. Putin recognizes that the only way to bring peace to Syria is for one side to exterminate the fighting ability of every other side. Putin has decided that the Secularist Dictatorship side of Assad is a preferable victor to the jihadist side of ISIS, al Nusra, etc. And I agree.
The proper course was stated by a commenter above . . . give the Assad side such overwhelming support that it can compel all other sides to stop fighting or else exterminate all other sides' fighting forces and persons from physical existence.
By the way, it is a pro-rebel lie to say that Assad used sarin gas in that attack near Damascus. Elements of the rebels were the ones who used that kitchen-sarin in order to get Assad blamed for it. There has been abundant material written about that basic fact on Colonel Lang's blog Sic Semper Tyrannis and elsewhere.
Colonel Lang and others and commenters have been following Turkish affairs and offering a very interesting and fact-based analysis for some time now. In their view Erdogan has always been a crypto-Salafoid Islamist and is now dropping the mask. He and his Erdogists have been the principal logistical supporters and enablers of the various liver-eating cannibal head-chopping rebels in Syria, for instance.
And he is a firm supporter of ISIS, poorly staged posturing to the contrary notwithstanding.
Sometimes I wonder what would happen if . . . West Virginia changed its name to Appalachia. And changed its state motto to . . ." Welcome to Appalachia. America's Tibet." And in the far-distant much-longer-run, invited any and every mountain-minded bordering county in "other" states to leave the states they are part of and join the new and growing State of Appalachia.
Obama has worked very hard to immunise and impunify torture by governmental personell. That was the meaning and the purpose of his "look forward and not back". The Obama Administration is very much an extension and a routinization of the Bush Administration in terms of transforming bold experiments in UnConstitutional governance into standard operating procedure. People will look back in due time and refer to these 16 years as the BushCoBama Administration.
So, the Syrian rebels want the "Assad Regime" gone? Well FARC the Goal Dumb Syrian rebels. If they want the "Assad Regime" gone, let them gone it themselves with zero outside assistance.
Once again I say: the US should do a 180 and join Russia, China, Iran and Hezbollah in helping the Syrian Arab Republic and the Syrian Arab Army to crush, smash and exterminate the Saudi-Gulfie Sunni-Salafi Jihadista rebellion in a very conclusive manner. We should help the SAR kill as many people as it takes to stop the rebellion once and for all. Then the "Assad regime" will stop "killing civilians". They aren't doing it for fun. They are doing it for reasons of strictly bussiness. And as soon as the rebellion is exterminated, then the SAG can stop fighting and killing.
Lavrov's invitation to see sense and fight the right people
offers us a chance to stop supporting the wrong people.