They sound A LOT like the Kurds of the early 1900s as George Gurdjieff wrote in his autobiography. The description here is "mystical". Gurdjieff claimed the Kurds he met at the turn of the 20th century believed in 'magic'. If you drew a circle around the person they were trapped and would go into convulsions if forcibly removed.
...the truth is we risked our lives to make that country better…regardless of the outcome at least we tried...
You realize how perverse that would sound to someone like Riverbend, the girl blogger of Baghdad?
"Looking back at the last ten years, what have our occupiers and their Iraqi governments given us in ten years? What have our puppets achieved in this last decade? What have we learned?
Sure it makes sense If you assume a rationale of keeping nations and societies dependent. Africa being a historically classic and quite current example.
After you peruse what Gadaffi was funding at the link above see "More Reasons The West Wants Muammar al-Gadffi Dead... Or Gone" for some seriously hi-rez maps of North Africa's petro-infrastructure ... including the refineries... Remember how Cheney's energy commission BFFs complained about Iraq's "antiquated" petro facilites? Libya made them quite happy. Now if they can only get the s̶l̶a̶v̶e̶s̶ p̶r̶o̶l̶e̶s̶ employees to work while the region (Libya no longer qualifies as one nation. Divide, conquer, loot) devolves and disintegrates.
The Teton dam, as seen at the end of part 1 of the PBS documentary - Cadillac Desert: Water and the Transformation of Nature (1997). Note the "radio chatter" about what to do about the people o were going to die downstream... such concern! (snigger)
But to the point... America IS *THE* water infrastructure destroyer...
In the Korean war... One of the main reasons North Koreans ARE STILL STARVING (unlike Vietnam, we DID bomb their agricultural dikes) to Libya where NATO destroyed Gadaffi's water works that made his desert bloom and supplied the desert dwelling Tuaregs and others with clean water
Even North America where in the 1960s the ag chemical contamination of the Colorado River was so bad the 'water' was literally killing Mexican crops, *WE ARE* the water resource destroyers who kill anyone in the way
The "joke" being they can joke about it because the US is going to war in Iraq again in THEIR interest.
Personally I think the renewed air strikes undo much of the premise of this post... It will solidify bonds between the Baathists, tribes, and ISIS/L and will have a further effect of isolating the Kurds from the Iraqi people, to whom their government no longer swears allegiance.
That IS germane to what the latest bit of US adventurism in Iraq IS all about in my humble estimation. The US is securing a "homeland" for the Kurds that is being threatened by what are, for the most part returning Iraqi jihadists and Iraqi Baathists.
"Just to remind you buddies," (you aren't my 'buddy' dude) that's what Israel claims:
"...The Palestinian Islamic Resistance movement, Hamas, has rejected the accusations of the UN and the US that it bears responsibility for the collapse of the humanitarian truce which started on Friday morning.
Hamas spokesman Dr Sami Abu-Zuhri said in a statement that blaming Hamas for the breakdown of the truce is "illogical." He added: "The UN [statement] has taken the side of Israel."
Abu-Zuhri said that a shootout took place inside the Gaza Strip after Israeli forces violated the truce and entered the territory. "The Palestinian resistance responded as an act of self-defence," he said.
The UN statement concentrated on the issue of the missing Israeli soldier. The Israeli occupation quickly used the issue to justify its attacks on civilians. Meanwhile, Abu-Zuhri said, the UN statement deliberately ignored the massacre.
Hamas also says thy don't know wtf happened to one IDF trooper, that he was likely part of the pile of body parts and pink/purple mush that was created by the firefight
"UNSC resolutions against the North Korean nuclear weapons program (a kind of military program Iran does not even have) imposed an arms embargo and even permitted other countries to board North Korean vessels at will on the high seas if they suspected that weapons were aboard– a severe attack on the country’s national sovereignty. "
Not when those ships transported weapons resupply from Russia to Ethiopia to be used in the west's proxy war on Somalia! Not even a whimper from the US... Which the NY Times noted had sponsored the sanctions.
Much like my town's laws that are selectively enforced against the poor displaced, and homeless, apparently UN sanctions are selectively enforced as well.
For Zionists, the 1st step is admitting you have a problem. Conflating Israel's survival with the survival of Jews IS the problem.
In my opinion the conflation is illegitimate AND INTENTIONAL and promulgated by people,who are often more socio-culturally affiliated with Christianity (and western consumer-culture) than Jewish historical philosophy and tradition.
I've also noted over the years that the entrapments seem to be specifically designed to test all the new police state laws and US code modifications made under the PATRIOT Act, FISA, et al.
In the bad ol' days they used to just 'set you up'. Now they set you up to create bodies of case law to refine their authoritarian grip on US citizen's throats
Not JUST tax deductions, a whole raft of favored trading incentive serving US businesses... Just in case you wonder how US supermarkets (locally Trader Joes, where margin IS the deciding factor in what gets stocked, as an example) have shelves full of Israeli food products... PRODUCE and other items, that somehow could be competitive with produce from your own state and locality.
But to answer the question "What has US aid really bought?
A front-line heavily armed client state in a regional extractive resource war.
My departed father, who smuggled guns to Israel in the late 40s and later the ADL regional coordinator for the southeast US until his death, undoubtedly did NOT expect that outcome. He was blinded, in my estimation, by loyalty to the religion, which he was NEVER a scholar of (when my mother found out he was lecturing at UNC-Asheville on Jewish Studies she laughed out loud and said: "Your father never had a religious bone in his body!), American Exceptionalism (the government supports it so it must be right), and crass consumerism of the products that ongoing-but-not-always-hot extractive resource war garnered for America, with no thought as to the long term consequences or moral/ethical implications of the methods used.
Imagine if the NSA sold or supplied it’s database ‘packages’ to US law enforcement agencies. The ACLU did that ‘imagineering’ a while back… Meet Jack. Jack’s Going To DUI Tonight.
It’s amazing what one can do with metadata, which BTW is EASY to connect names with despite hollow assurances from everyone in the US government that ‘there are no names attached’. A grad student used friend’s voluntarily submitted metadata to check that statement, and guess what? Your government IS LYING again.
Quote:
“With “marginal effort,” they matched more than 27 percent of the numbers using just Yelp, Google Places and Facebook … “Between Intelius, Google search and our three initial sources, we associated a name with 91 of the 100 numbers,” (source)
I remember canned food being provided to the Newark rioters by New York activist group with the provision that if they don't eat it they should (much like Palestinians have been reduced to, with rocks) at LEAST throw the canned food at the police.
Americans ARE Racist... A large number are at least the CLOSETED or RATIONALIZING variety... albeit to distinguish between that fault, arrogant narcissism, and exceptionalism, is beyond me. I think Racism is a nice summation of those and a number of emotional and psychological flaws combined.
Jeff [...]Add Honduras to the list, now showing in south Texas and in your local neighborhood...
...Except of course, that wasn’t Bush, it was Obama.[...]
Wait what? Who was responsible for NAFTA? I have an anecdote, living near the EX-produce cooling houses of Watsonville California and having seen it's effects on commercial agriculture. I worked as a professional sound technician for touring band in the early 1980s and we had a stop in the cowtown of El Paso Texas, right on the border with the Mexican city of Juarez. They were both sleepy little cow towns back then.
I ventured through again on my way back from my father's funeral in 2007. El Paso is HUGE, and Juarez? That's where all the Maquiladoras, AKA border Free Trade Zone sweatshops are. Juarez has a current population of 2.7 MILLION people (2013) and a cosmetics company ATTEMPTED to market a set of shades for women based on the overworked under-slept look of those slave laborers that make all the crap we consume. Women's groups worldwide shut THAT down with bad pr in every womans mag.
The children fleeing from Honduras? They MAY be looking for work, but the root of THAT migration is traceable to a US BACKED COUP in the country. Remember that? Forged resignation papers allegedly signed by the president and a quick trip out of the country courtesy of US Special Operators... AN "Aristide" as they're known in the biz (snigger).
Saf, I've heard it said that one of the geopolitical rationales for the US to be present in Afghanistan 'endlessly', and the purpose of building Afghanistan highway one ring road is to pull the sociocultural influences AWAY from Pakistan. Towards India. That is what I've heard. Further The New America Foundation (Twitter: @NewAmerica, Neoliberal) is promoting an author who says 14 years of destroying Afghanistan was a waste. We should be destroying Pakistan. Blogged a while back with a map of the ring road.
As much as I DESPISE George W. Bush (with every fiber in my being) DO NOT DO NOT DO NOT pin the blame for Gaza on him! Or Iraq, or Afghanistan.
The US government HAS ALWAYS SUPPORTED WHATEVER ISRAEL WANTED, and the socio-economic-political partitions that are now physically Gaza, the West Bank etc PRE-EXISTED George W. Bush's birth by decades.
US foreign policy in the Middle East since WWII is responsible for Gaza, the Baathist party's rise to power in Iraq (and later a rationale to take them down), along with so many other global travesties such as the CIA and NATO's consorting with Muj all over Central and South Asia with the able assistance of a mercenary recruiter commonly known as Osama bin-Laden.
Why don't we all simply admit Presidents are figureheads. They DO NOT make foreign policy nor do they even guide it anymore. Presidents are simply media-groomed administrators and GW Bush was the one we were supposed to look at, say "Jeez! He's dumb!",, as his cronies (actually higher on the corporatist food chain... Dick Cheney etc) did all the 'wet work' while we watched 'boy wonder' in dumbstruck horror.
Stop vilifying him now. It's ABSOLUTELY COUNTERPRODUCTIVE. The Obama administration is now responsible for MORE WAR CRIMES and ATROCITIES than GW was, and the NEXT president, no matter the party, will, in my estimation, surpass them all, with perhaps another world war waiting in the wings for us.
This is what happens when you allow law enforcement to 'practice social psychiatry'. I mean, doesn't ANYONE remember what happened to homeless schizophrenic Kelly Thomas a few years ago, and the acquittal of the government legitimized and uniformed Fullerton police department thugs who BEAT HIM TO DEATH for picking up cigarette butts from the gutter despite the fact that one of the "officers" had the utter MURDEROUS GALL to tell him: "See these fists? They're getting ready to F*ck you up."?
It MIGHT be noted that the police initially responded to a call from a local "hipster" bar employee who LIED to the police and said Thomas was 'car tampering'. Unlike what the police would do if you or I called them for a non-emergency, they DID NOT CONTACT the business caller in person first to ascertain the veracity of the call. Because, much like where I live in Santa Cruz, there's an ALL TOO COZY relationship between the business community and the police that often approaches the meaning of the words "Blackshirt", and "Corporatist government".
I don't mean to digress here, but I have 'skin in this game' being a 60 year old displaced worker, What happened to this woman at the hands of a CHP officer IS ALL TOO COMMON in the United States, and honestly, often supported covertly by 'concerned citizens' pandered in fear, and their business communities, just like Okies were routinely beaten by vigilantes at the California border going west during the depression. Does anyone care for a recitation of the fine upstanding Americans and their organizations that took part in those beatings? The American Legion was one of them.
This article at the New York Times goes a LONG WAY to explaining why the US government chose top̶e̶r̶s̶e̶c̶ … PROSECUTE… journalist James Risen.
In summation the top manager for Blackwater in Iraq threatened a State Department investigator’s life. So instead of IMMEDIATELY REVOKING THEIR CONTRACT your state department admonishing him and his associates for disrupting the 'embassy’s relationship with the security contractor and ordered them to leave the country'.
THEN your government had Blackwater/Xe/Academi PROTECT THE FBI AGENTS investigating the Nisoor massacre… leaving the agent’s survival dependent on the thugs they investigated.
(Which I duly noted at the time… along with Blackwater’s gun smuggling CPA Glocks to Turkey where they ended up being used in street crimes, and their “Dark Ops”... a US sponsored manhunt/assassination of an alleged al-Qaeda person in Germany)
I’m SURE the FBI guys got along just fine with their Blackwater security, but that's because the FBI's investigations of their own are on par with Blackwater's, as the New York Times noted after the legitimized FBI murder of Ibrahim Todashev, who VAGUELY knew one of the Boston Marathon bombers because they engaged in the same sport... Mixed Martial Arts, and came from the same country.
My analysis: Psychopaths self-select, criminally-acting governments pick criminals to actualize their plans, and woe unto those lower on the 'food chain' who get in the way.
A report in the Telegraph UK seems to indicate that the takeover of Mosul and Tikrit was engineered in collusion with Baathist elements. If true, this means
A> It's a resistance movement against the current US installed groomed government.
B> The Baathists, ALWAYS the moderate 'protestant-like' element in the middle east either is colluding with radical islamists now, or we're being handed a pack of lies again.
Corporal Muammer Naser, 35, told The Telegraph that his superiors had sympathised with remnants of the regime of Saddam Hussein, and that the generals essentially passed control of the city to them. Organised militias of Saddam sympathisers are said to have participated in the takeover of Mosul and Saddam's birthplace, Tikrit, this week.
An aside about government civility towards protests as an issue from Institute for Public Accuracy. Summarize this as the end result of illegitimate proxy government:
(Ross) Caputi just wrote the piece "Unthinkable Thoughts in the Debate About ISIS in Iraq," which states: "One year ago ISIS was concentrated in Syria, with almost no presence in Iraq. During this time, a nonviolent protest movement, which called itself the Iraqi Spring, was in full swing with widespread support in the Sunni provinces and significant support from the Shia provinces as well. This movement set up nonviolent protest camps in many cities throughout Iraq for nearly the entire year of 2013. They articulated a set of demands calling for an end to the marginalization of Sunnis within the new Iraqi democracy, reform of an anti-terrorism law that was being used label political dissent as terrorism, abolition of the death penalty, an end to corruption, and they positioned themselves against federalism and sectarianism too.
"Instead of making concessions to the protesters and defusing their rage, Prime Minister Maliki mocked their demands and chose to use military force to attack them on numerous occasions. Over the course of a year, the protesters were assaulted, murdered, and their leaders were assassinated, but they remained true to their adopted tactic of nonviolence. That is, until Prime Minister Maliki sent security forces to clear the protest camps in Fallujah and Ramadi in December of 2013. At that point the protestors lost hope in the tactic of nonviolence and turned to armed resistance instead.
"It is important to note that from the beginning it was the tribal militias who took the lead in the fight against the Iraqi government. ISIS arrived a day later to aid Fallujans in their fight, but also to piggy-back on the success of the tribal fighters in order to promote their own political goals. ...
"While publicly criticizing the Maliki government’s sectarian policies, the U.S. has been aiding and facilitating" the Maliki government. Caputi added: "The impunity of the Maliki government is never questioned in the debate raging within the U.S. It is simply unimaginable within the limits of this debate that Maliki might be held accountable for the war crimes his regime has committed against his own people.
I'm NOT seeing any humor in this at all. The US is about to Re-invade Iraq. Easy to do when your hand-picked (or should I say 'real opposition assassinated') Proxy "gubmint" requests it.
It won't be long before the Mahdi Army is killing US soldiers again despite the fact we handed over our CIA asset Saddam Hussein to them for extralegal execution, and, now that the Mosul armory among others has been looted, along with a WHOLE BUNCH OF MONEY (USD no doubt... still on pallets as delivered by Paul Bremer's buddies) it will not be long before the Iraqis can shoot down the most modern fighter planes the West can get up. B-1'carpet Bombing will follow that.
I just don't see that "Enter the Ayatollah" is a respectable, OR INTELLIGENT way to lede this tragedy. A "tragedy" that's been expected all along for the West, but MAYBE the REAL FIRST STEP in the liberation of Iraq FOR Iraqis (Because it will be much easier for the Iraqis to exterminate ISIS if they want than the US presence, which takes the form of B-1 bombers and drones in situations like this. Just ask a Yemeni.
They sound A LOT like the Kurds of the early 1900s as George Gurdjieff wrote in his autobiography. The description here is "mystical". Gurdjieff claimed the Kurds he met at the turn of the 20th century believed in 'magic'. If you drew a circle around the person they were trapped and would go into convulsions if forcibly removed.
...the truth is we risked our lives to make that country better…regardless of the outcome at least we tried...
You realize how perverse that would sound to someone like Riverbend, the girl blogger of Baghdad?
"Looking back at the last ten years, what have our occupiers and their Iraqi governments given us in ten years? What have our puppets achieved in this last decade? What have we learned?
We learned a lot.
.... ..
"...the spooks and sneaks continue to "migrate" arms and training..."
The conduit historically... USAID:
→ "US sends disaster relief teams to Iraq"
Note the phrase : "Much of the assistance will go to..."
Any guesses where the "not much" goes?
http://www.salon.com/2014/08/11/us_sends_disaster_relief_teams_to_iraq/
Sure it makes sense If you assume a rationale of keeping nations and societies dependent. Africa being a historically classic and quite current example.
In current history we kill Muammar al-Gadaffi who was funding BILLIONS OF DOLLARS worth of African Union development projects... ...leading, inexorably, by mayhem-driven economic coercion, to this weeks luvfest with African leaders in DC.
After you peruse what Gadaffi was funding at the link above see "More Reasons The West Wants Muammar al-Gadffi Dead... Or Gone" for some seriously hi-rez maps of North Africa's petro-infrastructure ... including the refineries... Remember how Cheney's energy commission BFFs complained about Iraq's "antiquated" petro facilites? Libya made them quite happy. Now if they can only get the s̶l̶a̶v̶e̶s̶ p̶r̶o̶l̶e̶s̶ employees to work while the region (Libya no longer qualifies as one nation. Divide, conquer, loot) devolves and disintegrates.
I think we need to get VERY clear on exactly what 'Humanitarian' and “nonlethal aid” mean… because it doesn’t mean much....
As I was saying... This morning's WaPo:
Fighters abandoning al-Qaeda affiliates to join Islamic State, U.S. officials say
Also notable, tagged #Hypocrisy:
This is what could happen if the Islamic State destroys the Mosul Dam
Want to see a dam break?
The Teton dam, as seen at the end of part 1 of the PBS documentary - Cadillac Desert: Water and the Transformation of Nature (1997). Note the "radio chatter" about what to do about the people o were going to die downstream... such concern! (snigger)
But to the point... America IS *THE* water infrastructure destroyer...
In the Korean war... One of the main reasons North Koreans ARE STILL STARVING (unlike Vietnam, we DID bomb their agricultural dikes) to Libya where NATO destroyed Gadaffi's water works that made his desert bloom and supplied the desert dwelling Tuaregs and others with clean water
Even North America where in the 1960s the ag chemical contamination of the Colorado River was so bad the 'water' was literally killing Mexican crops, *WE ARE* the water resource destroyers who kill anyone in the way
"So now in Kirkuk, locals joke,"
The "joke" being they can joke about it because the US is going to war in Iraq again in THEIR interest.
Personally I think the renewed air strikes undo much of the premise of this post... It will solidify bonds between the Baathists, tribes, and ISIS/L and will have a further effect of isolating the Kurds from the Iraqi people, to whom their government no longer swears allegiance.
That IS germane to what the latest bit of US adventurism in Iraq IS all about in my humble estimation. The US is securing a "homeland" for the Kurds that is being threatened by what are, for the most part returning Iraqi jihadists and Iraqi Baathists.
"Just to remind you buddies," (you aren't my 'buddy' dude) that's what Israel claims:
"...The Palestinian Islamic Resistance movement, Hamas, has rejected the accusations of the UN and the US that it bears responsibility for the collapse of the humanitarian truce which started on Friday morning.
Hamas spokesman Dr Sami Abu-Zuhri said in a statement that blaming Hamas for the breakdown of the truce is "illogical." He added: "The UN [statement] has taken the side of Israel."
Abu-Zuhri said that a shootout took place inside the Gaza Strip after Israeli forces violated the truce and entered the territory. "The Palestinian resistance responded as an act of self-defence," he said.
The UN statement concentrated on the issue of the missing Israeli soldier. The Israeli occupation quickly used the issue to justify its attacks on civilians. Meanwhile, Abu-Zuhri said, the UN statement deliberately ignored the massacre.
According to Palestinian officials, Israel violated the truce by targeting civilians who had returned to their destroyed houses in Rafah as soon as the truce went into effect.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/news/middle-east/13192-hamas-rejects-un-and-us-claims-that-it-broke-truce."
Hamas also says thy don't know wtf happened to one IDF trooper, that he was likely part of the pile of body parts and pink/purple mush that was created by the firefight
"UNSC resolutions against the North Korean nuclear weapons program (a kind of military program Iran does not even have) imposed an arms embargo and even permitted other countries to board North Korean vessels at will on the high seas if they suspected that weapons were aboard– a severe attack on the country’s national sovereignty. "
Not when those ships transported weapons resupply from Russia to Ethiopia to be used in the west's proxy war on Somalia! Not even a whimper from the US... Which the NY Times noted had sponsored the sanctions.
Much like my town's laws that are selectively enforced against the poor displaced, and homeless, apparently UN sanctions are selectively enforced as well.
For Zionists, the 1st step is admitting you have a problem. Conflating Israel's survival with the survival of Jews IS the problem.
In my opinion the conflation is illegitimate AND INTENTIONAL and promulgated by people,who are often more socio-culturally affiliated with Christianity (and western consumer-culture) than Jewish historical philosophy and tradition.
I've also noted over the years that the entrapments seem to be specifically designed to test all the new police state laws and US code modifications made under the PATRIOT Act, FISA, et al.
In the bad ol' days they used to just 'set you up'. Now they set you up to create bodies of case law to refine their authoritarian grip on US citizen's throats
I thought *I* was a cynic...
Not JUST tax deductions, a whole raft of favored trading incentive serving US businesses... Just in case you wonder how US supermarkets (locally Trader Joes, where margin IS the deciding factor in what gets stocked, as an example) have shelves full of Israeli food products... PRODUCE and other items, that somehow could be competitive with produce from your own state and locality.
But to answer the question "What has US aid really bought?
A front-line heavily armed client state in a regional extractive resource war.
My departed father, who smuggled guns to Israel in the late 40s and later the ADL regional coordinator for the southeast US until his death, undoubtedly did NOT expect that outcome. He was blinded, in my estimation, by loyalty to the religion, which he was NEVER a scholar of (when my mother found out he was lecturing at UNC-Asheville on Jewish Studies she laughed out loud and said: "Your father never had a religious bone in his body!), American Exceptionalism (the government supports it so it must be right), and crass consumerism of the products that ongoing-but-not-always-hot extractive resource war garnered for America, with no thought as to the long term consequences or moral/ethical implications of the methods used.
2nd try with all link tags 'closed'. 8<
Imagine if the NSA sold or supplied it’s database ‘packages’ to US law enforcement agencies. The ACLU did that ‘imagineering’ a while back… Meet Jack. Jack’s Going To DUI Tonight.
It’s amazing what one can do with metadata, which BTW is EASY to connect names with despite hollow assurances from everyone in the US government that ‘there are no names attached’. A grad student used friend’s voluntarily submitted metadata to check that statement, and guess what? Your government IS LYING again.
Quote:
“With “marginal effort,” they matched more than 27 percent of the numbers using just Yelp, Google Places and Facebook … “Between Intelius, Google search and our three initial sources, we associated a name with 91 of the 100 numbers,” (source)
I remember canned food being provided to the Newark rioters by New York activist group with the provision that if they don't eat it they should (much like Palestinians have been reduced to, with rocks) at LEAST throw the canned food at the police.
Americans ARE Racist... A large number are at least the CLOSETED or RATIONALIZING variety... albeit to distinguish between that fault, arrogant narcissism, and exceptionalism, is beyond me. I think Racism is a nice summation of those and a number of emotional and psychological flaws combined.
Jeff [...]Add Honduras to the list, now showing in south Texas and in your local neighborhood...
...Except of course, that wasn’t Bush, it was Obama.[...]
Wait what? Who was responsible for NAFTA? I have an anecdote, living near the EX-produce cooling houses of Watsonville California and having seen it's effects on commercial agriculture. I worked as a professional sound technician for touring band in the early 1980s and we had a stop in the cowtown of El Paso Texas, right on the border with the Mexican city of Juarez. They were both sleepy little cow towns back then.
I ventured through again on my way back from my father's funeral in 2007. El Paso is HUGE, and Juarez? That's where all the Maquiladoras, AKA border Free Trade Zone sweatshops are. Juarez has a current population of 2.7 MILLION people (2013) and a cosmetics company ATTEMPTED to market a set of shades for women based on the overworked under-slept look of those slave laborers that make all the crap we consume. Women's groups worldwide shut THAT down with bad pr in every womans mag.
The children fleeing from Honduras? They MAY be looking for work, but the root of THAT migration is traceable to a US BACKED COUP in the country. Remember that? Forged resignation papers allegedly signed by the president and a quick trip out of the country courtesy of US Special Operators... AN "Aristide" as they're known in the biz (snigger).
Saf, I've heard it said that one of the geopolitical rationales for the US to be present in Afghanistan 'endlessly', and the purpose of building Afghanistan highway one ring road is to pull the sociocultural influences AWAY from Pakistan. Towards India. That is what I've heard. Further The New America Foundation (Twitter: @NewAmerica, Neoliberal) is promoting an author who says 14 years of destroying Afghanistan was a waste. We should be destroying Pakistan. Blogged a while back with a map of the ring road.
As much as I DESPISE George W. Bush (with every fiber in my being) DO NOT DO NOT DO NOT pin the blame for Gaza on him! Or Iraq, or Afghanistan.
The US government HAS ALWAYS SUPPORTED WHATEVER ISRAEL WANTED, and the socio-economic-political partitions that are now physically Gaza, the West Bank etc PRE-EXISTED George W. Bush's birth by decades.
US foreign policy in the Middle East since WWII is responsible for Gaza, the Baathist party's rise to power in Iraq (and later a rationale to take them down), along with so many other global travesties such as the CIA and NATO's consorting with Muj all over Central and South Asia with the able assistance of a mercenary recruiter commonly known as Osama bin-Laden.
Why don't we all simply admit Presidents are figureheads. They DO NOT make foreign policy nor do they even guide it anymore. Presidents are simply media-groomed administrators and GW Bush was the one we were supposed to look at, say "Jeez! He's dumb!",, as his cronies (actually higher on the corporatist food chain... Dick Cheney etc) did all the 'wet work' while we watched 'boy wonder' in dumbstruck horror.
Stop vilifying him now. It's ABSOLUTELY COUNTERPRODUCTIVE. The Obama administration is now responsible for MORE WAR CRIMES and ATROCITIES than GW was, and the NEXT president, no matter the party, will, in my estimation, surpass them all, with perhaps another world war waiting in the wings for us.
This is what happens when you allow law enforcement to 'practice social psychiatry'. I mean, doesn't ANYONE remember what happened to homeless schizophrenic Kelly Thomas a few years ago, and the acquittal of the government legitimized and uniformed Fullerton police department thugs who BEAT HIM TO DEATH for picking up cigarette butts from the gutter despite the fact that one of the "officers" had the utter MURDEROUS GALL to tell him: "See these fists? They're getting ready to F*ck you up."?
It MIGHT be noted that the police initially responded to a call from a local "hipster" bar employee who LIED to the police and said Thomas was 'car tampering'. Unlike what the police would do if you or I called them for a non-emergency, they DID NOT CONTACT the business caller in person first to ascertain the veracity of the call. Because, much like where I live in Santa Cruz, there's an ALL TOO COZY relationship between the business community and the police that often approaches the meaning of the words "Blackshirt", and "Corporatist government".
I don't mean to digress here, but I have 'skin in this game' being a 60 year old displaced worker, What happened to this woman at the hands of a CHP officer IS ALL TOO COMMON in the United States, and honestly, often supported covertly by 'concerned citizens' pandered in fear, and their business communities, just like Okies were routinely beaten by vigilantes at the California border going west during the depression. Does anyone care for a recitation of the fine upstanding Americans and their organizations that took part in those beatings? The American Legion was one of them.
Direct Iranian involvement confirmed and admitted
Iranian pilot killed fighting in Iraq - IRNA via Your Middle East
This article at the New York Times goes a LONG WAY to explaining why the US government chose to
p̶e̶r̶s̶e̶c̶… PROSECUTE… journalist James Risen.In summation the top manager for Blackwater in Iraq threatened a State Department investigator’s life. So instead of IMMEDIATELY REVOKING THEIR CONTRACT your state department admonishing him and his associates for disrupting the 'embassy’s relationship with the security contractor and ordered them to leave the country'.
THEN your government had Blackwater/Xe/Academi PROTECT THE FBI AGENTS investigating the Nisoor massacre… leaving the agent’s survival dependent on the thugs they investigated.
(Which I duly noted at the time… along with Blackwater’s gun smuggling CPA Glocks to Turkey where they ended up being used in street crimes, and their “Dark Ops”... a US sponsored manhunt/assassination of an alleged al-Qaeda person in Germany)
I’m SURE the FBI guys got along just fine with their Blackwater security, but that's because the FBI's investigations of their own are on par with Blackwater's, as the New York Times noted after the legitimized FBI murder of Ibrahim Todashev, who VAGUELY knew one of the Boston Marathon bombers because they engaged in the same sport... Mixed Martial Arts, and came from the same country.
My analysis: Psychopaths self-select, criminally-acting governments pick criminals to actualize their plans, and woe unto those lower on the 'food chain' who get in the way.
A report in the Telegraph UK seems to indicate that the takeover of Mosul and Tikrit was engineered in collusion with Baathist elements. If true, this means
A> It's a resistance movement against the current US
installedgroomed government.B> The Baathists, ALWAYS the moderate 'protestant-like' element in the middle east either is colluding with radical islamists now, or we're being handed a pack of lies again.
My vote goes towards the latter.
The Telegraph article...
An aside about government civility towards protests as an issue from Institute for Public Accuracy. Summarize this as the end result of illegitimate proxy government:
(Ross) Caputi just wrote the piece "Unthinkable Thoughts in the Debate About ISIS in Iraq," which states: "One year ago ISIS was concentrated in Syria, with almost no presence in Iraq. During this time, a nonviolent protest movement, which called itself the Iraqi Spring, was in full swing with widespread support in the Sunni provinces and significant support from the Shia provinces as well. This movement set up nonviolent protest camps in many cities throughout Iraq for nearly the entire year of 2013. They articulated a set of demands calling for an end to the marginalization of Sunnis within the new Iraqi democracy, reform of an anti-terrorism law that was being used label political dissent as terrorism, abolition of the death penalty, an end to corruption, and they positioned themselves against federalism and sectarianism too.
"Instead of making concessions to the protesters and defusing their rage, Prime Minister Maliki mocked their demands and chose to use military force to attack them on numerous occasions. Over the course of a year, the protesters were assaulted, murdered, and their leaders were assassinated, but they remained true to their adopted tactic of nonviolence. That is, until Prime Minister Maliki sent security forces to clear the protest camps in Fallujah and Ramadi in December of 2013. At that point the protestors lost hope in the tactic of nonviolence and turned to armed resistance instead.
"It is important to note that from the beginning it was the tribal militias who took the lead in the fight against the Iraqi government. ISIS arrived a day later to aid Fallujans in their fight, but also to piggy-back on the success of the tribal fighters in order to promote their own political goals. ...
"While publicly criticizing the Maliki government’s sectarian policies, the U.S. has been aiding and facilitating" the Maliki government. Caputi added: "The impunity of the Maliki government is never questioned in the debate raging within the U.S. It is simply unimaginable within the limits of this debate that Maliki might be held accountable for the war crimes his regime has committed against his own people.
With links here
I'm NOT seeing any humor in this at all. The US is about to Re-invade Iraq. Easy to do when your hand-picked (or should I say 'real opposition assassinated') Proxy "gubmint" requests it.
It won't be long before the Mahdi Army is killing US soldiers again despite the fact we handed over our CIA asset Saddam Hussein to them for extralegal execution, and, now that the Mosul armory among others has been looted, along with a WHOLE BUNCH OF MONEY (USD no doubt... still on pallets as delivered by Paul Bremer's buddies) it will not be long before the Iraqis can shoot down the most modern fighter planes the West can get up. B-1'carpet Bombing will follow that.
I just don't see that "Enter the Ayatollah" is a respectable, OR INTELLIGENT way to lede this tragedy. A "tragedy" that's been expected all along for the West, but MAYBE the REAL FIRST STEP in the liberation of Iraq FOR Iraqis (Because it will be much easier for the Iraqis to exterminate ISIS if they want than the US presence, which takes the form of B-1 bombers and drones in situations like this. Just ask a Yemeni.