His party won a resounding victory in the polls. His actions against various social media have nothing to do with that one way or the other. The Turkish electorate demonstrated in the clearest way possible that they want more of what he and his party are offering. I may, in fact I do, deplore his increasing authoritarianism and vengefulness but I also recognise that it is his authoritarian style that many in the electorate admire and vote for.
I'm in the same boat as Jeff Mills above - I started reading and then for various reasons fell further and further behind. I've just downloaded it and am looking forward to catching up now that I'm no longer swamped.
This seems to be the nub of your argument. If I'm traducing you my apologies.
I don't agree with you, at present it seems to me that the Ba'athist government headed by Assad is winning. Nobody who is as convinced as I am that Barbara Tuchmann wrote in The March of Folly was right would rule out not so much stupidity as folly on the part of the Ba'ath. But this would be folly of gigantic proportions and I just don't see the evidence for it.
Targeting civilians or recklessly targeting an area in which they are present is a war crime irrespective of which means is used. Certain types of weapons such as chemical weapons are so indiscriminate in their application and so horrible in their effect that they have been declared to be unlawful. The guilt or otherwise the USA in other conflicts is irrelevant. What is relevant is:
1: Have such weapons been used in this conflict?
2: If so, by whom where they used, where, and when?
Your somewhat trite reference to the Queensbury rules is a red herring.
Gas is an indiscriminate weapon so if it's been used then by definition it won't 'spare the families' as you put it. Nor will it spare any animals in the vicinity.
All of your other points are true except for the one about the Ba'athist government being stupid. You don't survive long in a civil war by being stupid. Vicious and depraved yes, stupid and desperate no.
Assuming that what is shown in those videos is the aftermath of a chemical weapons attack – and that's a very big assumption, it's entirely possible that the Ba'athist government used a chemical weapon but it's not very probable because they're neither stupid nor desperate. It's also entirely possible – again making the very big assumption that what is shown is the aftermath of a gas attack that some element of the rebel forces did it. In fact it's not only possible it's somewhat more probable they're just as vicious and depraved as the Ba'ath if not more so. Furthermore at present they're losing or to put it another way they are are desperate. Finally elements of the rebel forces have a prior record of using chemical weapons.
2: The timing of this accusation against the Syrian government by rebel forces is so convenient as to be very very suspicious.
3: A reminder that the U.N. investigative team are there to determine whether such an attack was made and that is all. They are not empowered to ascribe blame.
4: Finally these are new allegations centred on alleged attacks at locations outside the list of investigation sites agreed between the Syrian government and the U.N. — Sellstrom and his superiors will need to seek permission to investigate.
The man is a reverse ace in everything he does. To acquire 'ace' in the USAF you need to shoot down 5 enemy aircraft. McCain has the distinction of having crashed five of the aircraft he flew, count 'em, one, two, three, four, five aircraft that could have been flown by a competent pilot.
Perhaps it's just as well he only managed to clock up twenty hours of actual ... you know ... combat.
Think of how comprehensively, how catastrophically the US would have been defeated had McCain managed to get his hands on more aircraft.
Perhaps his abject failure as a pilot and his failed political career rankle. Perhaps that's why this failure-at-every-career-he's-ever-tried has such an affinity with the al-Qaeda backed faction he visited recently. They're a pack of vicious and blood thirsty losers too.
They already are a 'legitimate political player' as you put it. They have freely elected members in the Lebanese parliament, they have ministers in the Lebanese cabinet helping to run the country. Their armed wing is recognised as a legally constituted component of the Lebanese defense forces against external aggressors. Amongst those aggressors are the USA whose Marines they drove out of Lebanon by bombing them and the Israelis who have been forced to run away every time that Israel has invaded Lebanon by the ferocity and effectiveness of the resistance mounted by the Hizb.
Hizballah are and always have been an integral part of Lebanon. Get used to it.
Can the Boston Bombings increase our Sympathy for Iraq and Syria, for all such Victims?
On the basis of past performance "No". A far more likely outcome is that an increasingly craven American public will allow the US Government to restrict their liberties further in the interests of "security".
Also on the basis of past performance the American public will support any revenge attacks made by the US Government.
Iran is not proved to have a nuclear weapons aspiration or program. It has almost nothing to do with North Korea. Only in the fevered imagination of Washington and New York media conglomerates and policy-making think tanks is there a connection.
Although his work was flawed Talcott Parsons' concept of structural functionalism is helpful here. The Washington and New York media conglomerates and policy-making think tanks function in this context is to engage in war-mongering.
Their structural function is to provide a fig-leaf of intellectual and demagogic respectability to the American ruling class' determination to demonise and ultimately crush any country that dares step even a millimeter outside of the American establishment defined idea of what constitutes acceptable behaviour by a foreign country.
Or are they cafeteria Catholics, parading only the values that accord with their Ayn Rand heresy?
This is a trick question right? - The word "Catholic" as I'm sure you know means "universal". This all-inclusiveness means that self-righteous, self-satisfied, morally, intellectually, and ethically, flaccid buffoons such as Rudy Giuliani, Peter King, Robert Spencer, Sean Hannity, and Paul Ryan are also included. Then there's the self-righteous, self-satisfied, morally, intellectually, and ethically, flaccid buffoons who vote for them, buy their books, watch their programmes etc.
To know what Christianity's founder thought of such sh*t*hawkery and those who engage in it I refer you to Jesus' remarks anent whited sepulchres.
The US constitution guarantees all prisoners the right to a speedy trial, and the phony fascist idea that non-US citizens in US custody don’t get constitutional rights is contrary to the Declaration of Independence, which says these rights belong to “all men.”
In my experience the American starting point when it comes to foreigners in general, Muslims in general, and Muslims from MENA and South Asia in particular is viciously racist.
It never seems to occur to them that a regime that will behave in the way the American government does to foreigners will eventually bring that behaviour home and use it against its own citizens.
It was always a pack of self-congratulatory lies that America was a 'shining city on a hill' but I am deeply saddened to see it become a filth encrusted pigsty in a swamp.
Keep on posting and writing please Professor Cole, I often disagree with what you say but Americans need to exercise their free speech and engaged in reasoned debate far more than they do lest those too perish from what was once a republic but is now a demagogic oligarchy.
Like MRD above I initially thought this posting was satire. The Obama administration has continued the Bush administration policies in so many key areas that they are well-nigh indistinguishable from them. As I say my initial reaction to this posting was that it was satire, then to my horror I realised it wasn't. I'll leave the last word with an American:
Then there's the escalating hostility between Israel and Turkey:
A Turkish court has launched the trial in absentia of four former Israeli military commanders over the deaths of nine Turkish activists on board a ship bound for Gaza in 2010. Israel denounced the move as a "show trial".
The court hearing, in which almost 500 people are expected to give evidence, will further strain relations between the two former allies which suffered a serious breach following the deadly assault on the Mavi Marmara.
Tensions will be exacerbated if Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, follows through on his intention announced last week to make an official visit to Gaza in the near future. Such a move would give a significant political boost to Hamas, the Islamist faction that controls the impoverished coastal strip.
and the continuing disaster of Israel's Bantustans:
Israel says it is pushing forward with the construction of more than 1,200 new homes in Jewish settlements, in an apparent warning to the Palestinians to rethink their plan to ask the United Nations to recognise an independent state of Palestine.
The Israeli government announced late on Monday that it was accepting bids from contractors to build the homes in two Jewish enclaves in East Jerusalem, Ramot and Pisgat Zeev. The homes are among 1,200 whose construction Israel ordered to be fast-tracked in November 2011 after a key UN body granted full membership to Palestine.
While construction would take months to begin, officials indicated that the timing of the tenders was meant to signal to the Palestinians that they should consider the possible consequences of their plan to ask the UN general assembly later this month to upgrade their status to non-member observer state.
"Naive in the extreme" is putting it very mildly deliberately engaging in self-deception is more like it. The Syrian Ba'ath are a pack of thugs in the same way that the Iraki Ba'ath were a pack of thugs. The problem is that what comes after them is likely to be worse.
the Libyans were able to defeat him militarily with a little help from the West.
You're being more than a little disingenuous are you not? Suppression of air defenses, no-fly zones, missile bombardments, and close air support don't come under the heading of "a little help" they were what won the war for the rebels.
There are many Iranians who would welcome a progressive and modern government.
Since when do you get to decide what constitutes a progressive and modern government? Come back and talk to us about it when you have a health system that covers all your citizens, an educational system that produces pupils who can read and write, it's be nice if American kids could do basic arithmetic do you think your progressive and modern government could arrange that? While you're at it America could surely use a justice system that is no longer institutionally weighted against blacks - perhaps you could ask your progressive and modern government to try to accomplish that.
Another thing you might want from your progressive and modern government would be for it to refrain from launching illegal and barbaric wars of aggression in the Middle East on the basis of a pack of lies.
The trick will be to coordinate our support with the Iranians who are willing to risk it all to make a stand against their idiot fundamentalists.
An even better trick would be to realise that your country's revolting behaviour throughout the Middle East has made you toxic in the region. Reformers and human rights activists regard being associated with America and Americans as being downright detrimental to their efforts to say nothing of increasing the very real risks they run.
The Iranians I have met are some of the nicest people I have known. They are certainly not my enemies.
Awwwwwwwww isn't that just heartwarming? Mind you with friends like you they surely don't need more enemies.
Your first amendment is utterly irrelevant outside of the USA. The American constitution and American laws lose all legal force outside of the USA and its territories, it is long past time you Americans got used to that fact.
Moreover provoking public outrage by engaging in a scatological parody of the liturgy in front of the main (high) altar in any Cathedral is at the very least behaviour likely to cause a breach of the peace. To do so in a Cathedral demolished by the Soviets and only rebuilt following the collapse of the Soviet Union is neither art nor legitimate political or social protest - it's hooliganism.
A reminder that the journalist Dave Neiwert did ground-breaking work on the violent right in America his writing on this topic is very good and can be found on his "Orcinus" blog which you can find here:
Likudniks by definition are incapable of feeling shame, in that as in so many things they closely resemble members of the Boere Weerstandsbeweging (scroll down a bit for photos) and indeed the shameless Ms. Geller's shameless racist Swedish buddies in the SD.
The problem is not that “America Does not Go Abroad in Search of Monsters to Destroy” the problem is that it behaves monstrously abroad (and increasingly at home).
A little time googling would have told you that it is not inaccurate and Cole is correct.
One American official after another up to and including the Secretary of Defence has stated publicly that the refusal of the Iraki government to countenance American immunity from the jurisdiction of their courts was the sticking point. Having seen how American troops behaved there I'm not even slightly surprised that their commanders they don't want them hauled up to answer for their behaviour in a court of law.
"So what the US had interpreted is a sign of a revived weapons laboratory was no such thing."
Didn't matter what it was - they were determined to get their war so and to get it they pretended to believe that Irak was busily engaged in producing everything from biological weapons to Starwars deathstars.
I hate to say it but I have to agree with your reader Oliver T who wrote the following comment on your:
"Iraq, Iran and the Nuclear Phantasm: We’ve Seen this Picture" posting:
Perhaps a better option would be for the US to withdraw to the Western Hemisphere where it lives, and leave the rest of us to get on with our lives where we live.
In other words mind your own business and get out of our faces and we’ll mind our business and keep out of your way.
Perhaps when you’ve learnt some humility & grace and to act like a responsible adult rather than steroid hyped hubris filled bully we can renew the acquaintance
Of course we have - it's standard operating procedure. From the sinking of the Maine to the Gulf of Tonkin to the Bush Administration's pack of lies.* To this latest pack of evasions, insinuations, and downright lies anent Iran.
Hell, why not go the whole hog and get Colin to go to the UN to wave a test tube full of what looks like piss in the air and spout a pack of lies about weapons of mass destruction. If you pay him enough .... ohhhhh let's see about 5 cents should buy him he'll do it gladly and will even throw in crocodile tears later as a bonus.
I'd love to think that the American political elite, their extremist partners in Israel and the supine American public won't clamour for and get war with Iran but experience teaches us otherwise. America is a VERY warlike nation - and always has been. Expanding settler states and Empires are like that ....
markfromireland
* The American government had help with that one as they were aided and abetted by Bush's British lapdog* and his "sexed up" dossier. The said mendacious pooch is now masquerading as a peace envoy to the Middle East which tells you all you need to know about how seriously the quartet take any aspirations for peace in the Middle East.
© 2025 All Rights Reserved
What's with the:
His party won a resounding victory in the polls. His actions against various social media have nothing to do with that one way or the other. The Turkish electorate demonstrated in the clearest way possible that they want more of what he and his party are offering. I may, in fact I do, deplore his increasing authoritarianism and vengefulness but I also recognise that it is his authoritarian style that many in the electorate admire and vote for.
mfi
I'm in the same boat as Jeff Mills above - I started reading and then for various reasons fell further and further behind. I've just downloaded it and am looking forward to catching up now that I'm no longer swamped.
mfi
Please provide evidence for this assertion and no your unsupported word is not evidence.
Also something is either precisely the same or very similar but not precisely similar (sic).
mfi
This seems to be the nub of your argument. If I'm traducing you my apologies.
I don't agree with you, at present it seems to me that the Ba'athist government headed by Assad is winning. Nobody who is as convinced as I am that Barbara Tuchmann wrote in The March of Folly was right would rule out not so much stupidity as folly on the part of the Ba'ath. But this would be folly of gigantic proportions and I just don't see the evidence for it.
mfi
Targeting civilians or recklessly targeting an area in which they are present is a war crime irrespective of which means is used. Certain types of weapons such as chemical weapons are so indiscriminate in their application and so horrible in their effect that they have been declared to be unlawful. The guilt or otherwise the USA in other conflicts is irrelevant. What is relevant is:
1: Have such weapons been used in this conflict?
2: If so, by whom where they used, where, and when?
Your somewhat trite reference to the Queensbury rules is a red herring.
mfi
Gas is an indiscriminate weapon so if it's been used then by definition it won't 'spare the families' as you put it. Nor will it spare any animals in the vicinity.
All of your other points are true except for the one about the Ba'athist government being stupid. You don't survive long in a civil war by being stupid. Vicious and depraved yes, stupid and desperate no.
Assuming that what is shown in those videos is the aftermath of a chemical weapons attack – and that's a very big assumption, it's entirely possible that the Ba'athist government used a chemical weapon but it's not very probable because they're neither stupid nor desperate. It's also entirely possible – again making the very big assumption that what is shown is the aftermath of a gas attack that some element of the rebel forces did it. In fact it's not only possible it's somewhat more probable they're just as vicious and depraved as the Ba'ath if not more so. Furthermore at present they're losing or to put it another way they are are desperate. Finally elements of the rebel forces have a prior record of using chemical weapons.
mfi
1: Where are the dead animals?
2: The timing of this accusation against the Syrian government by rebel forces is so convenient as to be very very suspicious.
3: A reminder that the U.N. investigative team are there to determine whether such an attack was made and that is all. They are not empowered to ascribe blame.
4: Finally these are new allegations centred on alleged attacks at locations outside the list of investigation sites agreed between the Syrian government and the U.N. — Sellstrom and his superiors will need to seek permission to investigate.
mfi
There's an interesting commentary piece in al-Watan here:
link to alwatan.com.sa
I thought the writers comment that the tragedy for the Muslim Brotherhood is that it's now hated in its country of origin was very astute.
He also compared the situation in Egypt to the fall of Communism saying that when Communism ended in Russia it also fell in its 'dependencies'.
Any thoughts on that Juan?
mfi
The man is a reverse ace in everything he does. To acquire 'ace' in the USAF you need to shoot down 5 enemy aircraft. McCain has the distinction of having crashed five of the aircraft he flew, count 'em, one, two, three, four, five aircraft that could have been flown by a competent pilot.
Perhaps it's just as well he only managed to clock up twenty hours of actual ... you know ... combat.
Think of how comprehensively, how catastrophically the US would have been defeated had McCain managed to get his hands on more aircraft.
Perhaps his abject failure as a pilot and his failed political career rankle. Perhaps that's why this failure-at-every-career-he's-ever-tried has such an affinity with the al-Qaeda backed faction he visited recently. They're a pack of vicious and blood thirsty losers too.
mfi
They already are a 'legitimate political player' as you put it. They have freely elected members in the Lebanese parliament, they have ministers in the Lebanese cabinet helping to run the country. Their armed wing is recognised as a legally constituted component of the Lebanese defense forces against external aggressors. Amongst those aggressors are the USA whose Marines they drove out of Lebanon by bombing them and the Israelis who have been forced to run away every time that Israel has invaded Lebanon by the ferocity and effectiveness of the resistance mounted by the Hizb.
Hizballah are and always have been an integral part of Lebanon. Get used to it.
mfi
Please provide some evidence to support this assertion.
mfi
Ain't that truth 🙂 thanks for posting this.
mfi
Just call in Tony Blair to make up a pack of lies in one of his 'sexed up' dossiers for you, that'll do the trick.
mfi
Provide evidence for this extraordinary assertion.
mfi
On the basis of past performance "No". A far more likely outcome is that an increasingly craven American public will allow the US Government to restrict their liberties further in the interests of "security".
Also on the basis of past performance the American public will support any revenge attacks made by the US Government.
mfi
Shame on you Juan for forgetting that the word 'Irony' means 'Consisting or tasting of iron'. Tsk tsk.
mfi
Although his work was flawed Talcott Parsons' concept of structural functionalism is helpful here. The Washington and New York media conglomerates and policy-making think tanks function in this context is to engage in war-mongering.
Their structural function is to provide a fig-leaf of intellectual and demagogic respectability to the American ruling class' determination to demonise and ultimately crush any country that dares step even a millimeter outside of the American establishment defined idea of what constitutes acceptable behaviour by a foreign country.
mfi
This is a trick question right? - The word "Catholic" as I'm sure you know means "universal". This all-inclusiveness means that self-righteous, self-satisfied, morally, intellectually, and ethically, flaccid buffoons such as Rudy Giuliani, Peter King, Robert Spencer, Sean Hannity, and Paul Ryan are also included. Then there's the self-righteous, self-satisfied, morally, intellectually, and ethically, flaccid buffoons who vote for them, buy their books, watch their programmes etc.
To know what Christianity's founder thought of such sh*t*hawkery and those who engage in it I refer you to Jesus' remarks anent whited sepulchres.
Happy Easter.
mfi
In my experience the American starting point when it comes to foreigners in general, Muslims in general, and Muslims from MENA and South Asia in particular is viciously racist.
It never seems to occur to them that a regime that will behave in the way the American government does to foreigners will eventually bring that behaviour home and use it against its own citizens.
It was always a pack of self-congratulatory lies that America was a 'shining city on a hill' but I am deeply saddened to see it become a filth encrusted pigsty in a swamp.
Keep on posting and writing please Professor Cole, I often disagree with what you say but Americans need to exercise their free speech and engaged in reasoned debate far more than they do lest those too perish from what was once a republic but is now a demagogic oligarchy.
mfi
If you are not ordained then you are not a Catholic priest and to say that you are is the act of a charlatan.
mfi
Like MRD above I initially thought this posting was satire. The Obama administration has continued the Bush administration policies in so many key areas that they are well-nigh indistinguishable from them. As I say my initial reaction to this posting was that it was satire, then to my horror I realised it wasn't. I'll leave the last word with an American:
link to youtube.com
mfi
Then there's the escalating hostility between Israel and Turkey:
Read in full: Turkey prosecutes Israeli commanders for Gaza flotilla deaths | World news | guardian.co.uk
and the continuing disaster of Israel's Bantustans:
Read in full: Israel pushes forward with 1,200 homes in East Jerusalem settlements | World news | guardian.co.uk
"Naive in the extreme" is putting it very mildly deliberately engaging in self-deception is more like it. The Syrian Ba'ath are a pack of thugs in the same way that the Iraki Ba'ath were a pack of thugs. The problem is that what comes after them is likely to be worse.
mfi
Since when has carefully cultivated ignorance been an excuse?
mfi
You're being more than a little disingenuous are you not? Suppression of air defenses, no-fly zones, missile bombardments, and close air support don't come under the heading of "a little help" they were what won the war for the rebels.
mfi
Amen!
mfi
Since when do you get to decide what constitutes a progressive and modern government? Come back and talk to us about it when you have a health system that covers all your citizens, an educational system that produces pupils who can read and write, it's be nice if American kids could do basic arithmetic do you think your progressive and modern government could arrange that? While you're at it America could surely use a justice system that is no longer institutionally weighted against blacks - perhaps you could ask your progressive and modern government to try to accomplish that.
Another thing you might want from your progressive and modern government would be for it to refrain from launching illegal and barbaric wars of aggression in the Middle East on the basis of a pack of lies.
An even better trick would be to realise that your country's revolting behaviour throughout the Middle East has made you toxic in the region. Reformers and human rights activists regard being associated with America and Americans as being downright detrimental to their efforts to say nothing of increasing the very real risks they run.
Awwwwwwwww isn't that just heartwarming? Mind you with friends like you they surely don't need more enemies.
mfi
Your first amendment is utterly irrelevant outside of the USA. The American constitution and American laws lose all legal force outside of the USA and its territories, it is long past time you Americans got used to that fact.
Moreover provoking public outrage by engaging in a scatological parody of the liturgy in front of the main (high) altar in any Cathedral is at the very least behaviour likely to cause a breach of the peace. To do so in a Cathedral demolished by the Soviets and only rebuilt following the collapse of the Soviet Union is neither art nor legitimate political or social protest - it's hooliganism.
mfi
A reminder that the journalist Dave Neiwert did ground-breaking work on the violent right in America his writing on this topic is very good and can be found on his "Orcinus" blog which you can find here:
Orcinus
mfi
Likudniks by definition are incapable of feeling shame, in that as in so many things they closely resemble members of the Boere Weerstandsbeweging (scroll down a bit for photos) and indeed the shameless Ms. Geller's shameless racist Swedish buddies in the SD.
mfi
The problem is not that “America Does not Go Abroad in Search of Monsters to Destroy” the problem is that it behaves monstrously abroad (and increasingly at home).
When you're a rogue nation you see everything and everybody as a threat.
@ Alex R.11/16/2011 at 2:15 am
A little time googling would have told you that it is not inaccurate and Cole is correct.
One American official after another up to and including the Secretary of Defence has stated publicly that the refusal of the Iraki government to countenance American immunity from the jurisdiction of their courts was the sticking point. Having seen how American troops behaved there I'm not even slightly surprised that their commanders they don't want them hauled up to answer for their behaviour in a court of law.
"So what the US had interpreted is a sign of a revived weapons laboratory was no such thing."
Didn't matter what it was - they were determined to get their war so and to get it they pretended to believe that Irak was busily engaged in producing everything from biological weapons to Starwars deathstars.
I hate to say it but I have to agree with your reader Oliver T who wrote the following comment on your:
"Iraq, Iran and the Nuclear Phantasm: We’ve Seen this Picture" posting:
(Source: Comment made 11/11/2011 at 12:28 am)
"We’ve seen this picture before."
Of course we have - it's standard operating procedure. From the sinking of the Maine to the Gulf of Tonkin to the Bush Administration's pack of lies.* To this latest pack of evasions, insinuations, and downright lies anent Iran.
Hell, why not go the whole hog and get Colin to go to the UN to wave a test tube full of what looks like piss in the air and spout a pack of lies about weapons of mass destruction. If you pay him enough .... ohhhhh let's see about 5 cents should buy him he'll do it gladly and will even throw in crocodile tears later as a bonus.
I'd love to think that the American political elite, their extremist partners in Israel and the supine American public won't clamour for and get war with Iran but experience teaches us otherwise. America is a VERY warlike nation - and always has been. Expanding settler states and Empires are like that ....
markfromireland
* The American government had help with that one as they were aided and abetted by Bush's British lapdog* and his "sexed up" dossier. The said mendacious pooch is now masquerading as a peace envoy to the Middle East which tells you all you need to know about how seriously the quartet take any aspirations for peace in the Middle East.