The Evening Blues - 9-10-15
Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features slide guitarist, cousin of Elmore James, Homesick James. Enjoy!
Homesick James Williamson - Dust My Broom
“The secret of politics? Make a good treaty with Russia.”-- Otto von Bismarck
News and Opinion
Only a US-Russian agreement can spur a settlement in Syria
A couple of years ago, an Iraqi minister was speaking to a senior American general about the war in Syria and why President Bashar al-Assad was still in power when Muammar Gaddafi had been swiftly overthrown and killed by rebels in Libya in 2011. “The big difference between now and then is that Russia is back as a great power,” replied the general, recalling that, in Libya, Russia had assented to Nato military intervention to save Benghazi falling to Gaddafi’s tanks. Russian compliance opened the door to a determined and successful Nato campaign to give enough support to Libyan rebels to defeat the regime.
In Syria, by way of contrast, Russia has given the Assad government enough military and diplomatic support to avoid defeat. Russia is Syria’s main arms supplier and has prevented all-out Western intervention along the same lines as Libya. Vladimir Putin’s Russia is nowhere near as strong as the Soviet Union, but the US and Britain have also lost strength in the Middle East over the past decade because of the failure to achieve their ends in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Over the past year, the US has compounded this sense of weakness by failing to stem the advance of Isis despite a year of air strikes against its fighters. ...
There is something hypocritical about US criticism over the weekend of possible increased Russian military aid to Syria, though the Russians deny this is happening, because nobody would be more horrified than Washington if the Syrian army collapses and Isis and al-Qaeda become the dominant force in Syria. The US request to Greece to deny Russia permission for overflights by planes, likely to be carrying weapons to fight Isis, is a depressing sign that Obama has yet to come up with a sensible policy in Syria. ...
Without Russia joining with the US to press their allies inside and outside Syria towards a settlement, the war will go on and the only winner will be Isis and the al-Qaeda clones.
Al-Qaeda Seizes North Syria Airbase, Over 100 Troops Killed
Al-Qaeda forces overran the Abu Alduhur airbase in northern Syria today, with reports that over 100 Syrian military forces were killed in the battle, and 60 others were captured. Large caches of weapons at the base were also taken by the fighters. ...
The loss of the airbase puts the Syrian military even more on the defensive in the northwest, and gives al-Qaeda a more or less straight shot to the coast in Latakia. The military is similarly losing ground elsewhere in the country to ISIS, with less and less territory abroad.
ISIS still growing year after US ‘war’ began
In Syria, US Ditches Diplomacy to Maintain 'Absurd' Regime Change Policy
While Putin has made it clear that he believes Assad must be included in the necessary political negotiations to bring the fighting to an end, the U.S. continues to demand that the Syrian president should step aside. Even though both the U.S. and Assad share the same declared enemy in ISIS, the White House continues to frown on Russian efforts to bolster the Syrian army and has rebuffed diplomatic overtures that would include Assad.
"We would welcome constructive Russian contributions to the counter-[ISIS] effort," White House spokesman Eric Schultz told Reuters on Wednesday, "but we've been clear that it would be unconscionable for any party, including the Russians, to provide any support to the Assad regime."
That position, however, infuriates foreign policy experts who argue the U.S.-led military engagement in both Syria and Iraq—which includes a nearly year-long bombing campaign in both countries—is prolonging the war and creating more instability in the region, not less.
What is certainly clear, according to the Guardian's Seumas Milne, is that "the US-led bombing campaign against Isis in Iraq and Syria clearly isn’t working. Thousands of Isis fighters have reportedly been killed, along with hundreds of civilians. But a year after the raids began, the terror group has actually expanded the territory it controls." ...
And as Middle East expert Michael Lüders told German channel N24 this week, the ouster of Assad would likely make matters much worse, not better. "He still controls a third of the territory of Syria. If his regime falls, then the power in all likelihood will pass into the hands of Islamic state militants. That is, to try to overthrow Bashar al-Assad, without having any idea how to stop the advance of Islamic State sounds a bit absurd," he said.
Lüders further stated that the effort by Western powers and the Gulf monarchies to overthrow the regime is dangerous as Russia, Iran, and China come together in order to prevent such an outcome. These proxy battles, he warned, "means the growth of confrontation."
Russia Won't Comment on Whether its Troops Are Fighting in Syria
The Kremlin declined to comment on Thursday on whether Russian troops are in combat in Syria, after sources in Lebanon told Reuters that Russian forces had begun participating in military operations there.
Bashar al-Assad's opponents in the West and among Gulf Arab states fear a considerable Russian military buildup is taking place in Syria to support the country's president. Moscow says all its military assistance to the Syrian army is in line with international law.
"The threat coming from Islamic State is evident... The only force capable of resisting it is the Syrian armed forces," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, reiterating Russia's position that its long-time ally Assad should be part of international efforts to combat the ultra-hardline Islamists.
Peskov said Russian President Vladimir Putin would talk about Syria and Islamic State during his speech to the UN General Assembly in New York later this month.
We will gladly bomb your country for humanitarian purposes but you are unwelcome to come fleeing over here with your family.
— Murtaza Hussain (@MazMHussain) September 9, 2015
Global Leaders Using Refugee Plight to Push Military Escalation
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott on Wednesday became the latest elected leader to use the plight of refugees in building a rhetorical case for military escalation towards Syria, despite numerous calls for wealthy nations to extend refuge—not bombs—as the humanitarian crisis worsens.
Speaking in the Australian capital of Canberra on Wednesday, Abbott coupled an announcement that the country will admit an additional 12,000 people fleeing conflict in the Middle East with the declaration that the nation will extend its military actions beyond Iraq by joining in the bombing campaign in eastern Syria this week. The move comes despite questions over the Abbott administration's legal footing for the air strikes. ...
This week's chorus is not limited to Australia and Europe, however. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, whose government has been participating in air strikes within both Syria and Iraq, said earlier this week that the refugee crisis builds the case for further military action. His declaration was coupled with a call for more stringent screening of refugees. "We cannot open the floodgates and airlift tens of thousands of refugees out of a terrorist war zone without proper process. That is too great a risk for Canada."
"We Need to Step Up": Martin O’Malley Proposes Welcoming 65,000 Syrians & Passing Immigration Reform
Record number of refugees enter Hungary amid border crackdown fears
A record number of migrants and refugees crossed into Hungary on Wednesday, according to official figures, amid fears that Viktor Orbán’s government is preparing a sweeping border crackdown.
Hungarian police recorded 3,221 people entering the country over land from Serbia on Wednesday – the highest number since the crisis began. The figure is thought to be an underestimate, as hundreds of migrants were filmed breaking through police lines and crossing fields near Rözske, Hungary’s border town with Serbia.
Austria’s state railway operator said it has suspended rail links with Hungary at least for the rest of Thursday, because Austria cannot handle the volume of migrants crossing its border. “It would be irresponsible to simply let people keep streaming in and spend the night at train stations,” a spokesman said.
There is concern that Hungary’s hardline government is about to introduce a much tougher approach to border control when new legislation comes into force next week.
The Hungarian army started military exercises on Wednesday to prepare its soldiers for a role in guarding the southern border, state news reported.
Russia: No Secret We Have Military Advisers in Syria
Russia’s Foreign Ministry is confirming once again that they have a number of military advisers on the ground in Syria, saying they’ve had these troops in the country for a long time and that it’s never been any kind of secret.
The Russian Foreign Ministry defended the advisers, saying they are puzzled by the sudden “hysteria” and interest over deployments which they’ve had in Syria virtually throughout the civil war, insisting the deployments are fully consistent with international law.
There doesn’t seem to be any dispute that this is the case, and Russia’s advisory deployment appears much, much smaller than the US deployment in neighboring Iraq, both of them aiming to prop up their respective allies’ fight against ISIS.
Turkey’s Night of the Firebombs
Across Turkey, coordinated attacks took place on September 8 against offices of the HDP – the People’s Democratic Party.
The HDP is not, strictly speaking, a Kurdish party – although that is how it is often described in the media.
It was formed in 2012 when a group of left-leaning political organisations – all with firm pro-Kurdish views – decided to form an electoral coalition. The similarity with Greece’s Syriza would not be unkind.
The HDP holds fairly conventional leftist positions – against nuclear power, for LGBT rights, against discrimination of minorities, for women’s equality.
So why have its offices from Ankara and elsewhere been rampaged and firebombed? Who has decided to let slip the dogs of war against the HDP?
The obvious culprit – obvious, because they arrived with flags – were the Grey Wolves of the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). But they were not alone.
It is by now clear that other forces are lined up against the HDP, trying once more to link this capacious formation to the outlawed Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK).
As the Turkish government of Recip Tayyip Erdoğan has returned the country to war in July against the PKK, the HDP has taken the hit on its chin. It is not, therefore, merely the toxic Grey Wolves who have struck against the HDP. It is also the social forces that back President Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP). ...
Having by now neutered the military and removed all opposition, the AKP has greater ambitions. It wants perpetual rule. One might remember that when the AKP’s ancestor, the Refah Party, won the 1994 mayor’s race in Istanbul, their supporters chanted: “The Other Turkey Has Come to Power.”
How the Makers of “Zero Dark Thirty” Seduced the CIA with Fake Earrings
The plot behind the plot of Zero Dark Thirty just gets better and better. ...
Vice News has added to the spicy pile with a 5,000-word article by Jason Leopold and Ky Henderson that draws on more than 100 pages of internal CIA documents released through the Freedom of Information Act. According to the documents, at least 10 CIA officers met Bigelow and Boal at the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia, as well as at hotels and restaurants in Washington D.C. and Los Angeles. In addition, the CIA director at the time, Leon Panetta, met Bigelow at a dinner in Washington and, soon after that, shared a table with her and Boal at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner. It also turns out that Boal read his script over the phone to CIA public affairs officials on four separate days in the fall of 2011.
But the biggest takeaway from these documents is that even as the CIA turned Bigelow and Boal into its willing propagandists, the filmmakers were turning the CIA into star-gazing dupes; the seduction went both ways. Bigelow and Boal emerge in these documents as excellent co-opters of the nation’s toughest spies — and it didn’t take much for them to do that.
Seattle Teachers Launch First Strike in Three Decades
'Fighting for Incredible List of Educational Reforms,' Seattle Teachers Go on Historic Strike
For the first time in 30 years, Seattle teachers are hitting the picket lines on Wednesday after the teachers union and the school board failed to negotiate a tentative agreement.
The Tuesday decision to strike—made with what the union describes as "an unprecedented, thunderous unanimous vote," closes schools on what would have been the first day of school for roughly 50,000 students. ...
Voicing her support for the striking teachers is Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant, who called out the the difference between how teachers have not received the favorable treatment given to corporations.
"The educators demands are completely reasonable. In the face of skyrocketing rents and increasing costs for basic needs, the teachers have sacrificed for six years with no pay raises from Olympia," Sawant said in a statement.
"For too long the legislature has ignored the needs of the children and bent over backwards to give corporations handout after handout. Boeing executives got a special session. Where is the special session for education? Teachers are faced with stagnating salaries, overcrowded classrooms, too many standardized tests, and inadequate resources. It's high time the legislature did their job, stop ignoring the mandate by voters to lower class sizes and raise teachers' pay. Fully fund education now!" she added.
Police will not face charges in Pasco shooting death of Mexican man
Three police officers in Washington state who shot and killed a Mexican man earlier this year during a controversial encounter that was captured on cellphone video will not face criminal charges.
Franklin County prosecutor Shawn Sant decided Pasco police officers Ryan Flanagan, Adam Wright and Adrian Alaniz should not be prosecuted for the death of Antonio Zambrano-Montes on 10 February, attorneys for his parents told the Guardian.
Attorney Jose Baez said Zambrano-Montes’s family was “sorely disappointed” and “sharply disagrees” with the decision.
“This forces us to seek justice for Antonio and his family in a different forum, one of the family’s choosing, not in the police home court. Shortly, we will be filing a federal civil rights lawsuit on behalf of the proper plaintiffs,” Baez said in a statement.
Sant confirmed the decision at a press conference on Wednesday afternoon after considering the findings of a police investigation into the shooting for more than three months. He said Zambrano-Montes was fatally shot for turning towards police with a 2.8lb rock in his hand after repeatedly throwing other rocks at police and cars.
Northern Ireland government on brink of collapse
Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government is on the brink of collapse after the Democratic Unionists failed to win enough support to adjourn the Stormont assembly.
Unless the prime minister, David Cameron – who No 10 said was “gravely concerned” about the situation – exercises powers to adjourn the regional parliament, the DUP has said it will quit the coalition government.
Northern Ireland’s first minister and DUP leader, Peter Robinson, warned on Wednesday that only an adjournment – to allow emergency talks to take place over police claims that the IRA still exists – would stop him pulling his ministers out of the coalition in Belfast. ...
The Executive cannot function without the DUP, the region’s largest unionist party. However, if the party resigns its ministerial posts the institutions will not fall immediately, as the party will be given seven days to renominate ministers.
If no renominations materialise then the power-sharing Executive will collapse, prompting the prospect of snap elections or a lengthy spell of direct rule.
The Ulster Unionists have already resigned from the Executive, claiming trust in Sinn Fein has been destroyed, but unlike the DUP they did not have the electoral weight to bring the institutions down by leaving them.
"A Very Undemocratic Way to Run the Democratic Party": Martin O’Malley Slams DNC for Rigging Debates
Hillary Clinton Goes to Militaristic, Hawkish Think Tank, Gives Militaristic, Hawkish Speech
Leading Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton this morning delivered a foreign policy speech at the Brookings Institution in Washington. By itself, the choice of the venue was revealing. ...
Brookings is funded in part by one of the Democratic Party’s favorite billionaires, Haim Saban, who is a dual citizen of the U.S. and Israel and once said of himself: “I’m a one-issue guy, and my issue is Israel.” ... Saban became the Democratic Party’s largest fundraiser — even paying $7 million for the new DNC building — and is now a very substantial funder of Hillary Clinton’s campaign. In exchange, she’s written a personal letter to him publicly “expressing her strong and unequivocal support for Israel in the face of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction movement.”
So the hawkish Brookings is the prism through which Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy worldview can be best understood. The think tank is filled with former advisers to both Bill and Hillary Clinton, and would certainly provide numerous top-level foreign policy officials in any Hillary Clinton administration. As she put it today at the start: “There are a lot of long-time friends and colleagues who perch here at Brookings.” And she proceeded to deliver exactly the speech one would expect, reminding everyone of just how militaristic and hawkish she is.
The context for her speech was the Iran Deal, which Clinton supports. It would be virtually impossible for her not to do so — there is no way anyone could win the Democratic nomination while opposing a key foreign policy legacy of the sitting Democratic president — but, regardless of the motives, she has the right position on that. But that deal is vehemently opposed by AIPAC and of grave concern to the hawkish foreign policy circles on which she has long depended, and so the core purpose of the speech was to assure those nervous precincts that, despite the Iran Deal support, she’s still the same aggressive, war-threatening, obsessively Israel-devoted, bellicose hawk they’ve grown to know and love. ...
Just as was true in her book, she implicitly criticized Obama — who boasts that he has bombed seven predominantly Muslim countries — of being insufficiently militaristic, imperialistic, and violent. She said she wanted more involvement in Syria from the start (though did not call for the U.S. to accept any of its refugees). In a clear rebuke to the current president, she decreed that any criticisms U.S. officials may utter of Israel should be done only in private (“in private and behind, you know, closed doors”), not in public, lest “it open[] the door to everybody else to delegitimize Israel to, you know, pile on in ways that are not good for the — the strength and stability, not just of Israel.”
The recent surge of elite media interest in Joe Biden overlooks two crucial facts. The first is that he’s never had a national constituency, failing badly on both presidential runs. Second is that he’s clearly at odds with with the activist energy out there.
But there are more fundamental problems, buried in Biden’s past. If one looks back to his role in the Senate in the early ’90s, one finds him undercutting powerful black women—Anita Hill and Lani Guinier—for “smart” insider reasons that don’t look so good today.
In retrospect, we see a man who failed to grasp key social justice issues when brought before him, the issues of sexual harassment and institutionalized male power in the case of Anita Hill, and the issue of voting rights as a matter of inclusive representation in the case of Lani Guinier. ...
What Biden does have going for him is elite media fantasies. He’s their idea of what “the people” really want. He may have spent 30-some years representing credit-card companies in the U.S. Senate, but for the elite media, he’s a “regular Joe.” A more subtle way that Biden reflects D.C. insider fantasies of what the public wants is the way that he has moved significantly to the right over the years, without any in D.C. appearing to notice it. ...
Jamelle Bouie also wrote a particularly insightful piece recently on Slate, focusing on the damage a presidential run could do to Biden’s political legacy. As Bouie pointed out, Biden’s involvement in creating the drug war as we know it was substantial, involving a series of laws over a 10-year period.
Bernie Sanders takes the lead over Hillary Clinton in Iowa poll
Vermont senator Bernie Sanders has taken the lead from former secretary of state Hillary Clinton for the first time in a poll in the crucial early voting state of Iowa, as the self-declared socialist Democrat continues to tighten the race with the party establishment favorite.
A Quinnipiac University poll released on Thursday found that 41% of likely Democratic primary voters in Iowa said they would vote for Sanders, while 40% said they would vote for the former secretary of state. Though Sanders’ edge is within the margin of error of 3.4 percentage points, Clinton led Sanders by double digits in Iowa in July. Averages of all polling in the state show Clinton with a quickly eroding lead that nevertheless remains in the double-digits.
While Clinton remains on top in national polling and is still the party’s frontrunner, the surprising success of Sanders’ insurgent campaign has excited the Democratic primary the party once worried was going to be a coronation. Nonetheless, the shift is a marked one, recalling the 2008 race when Clinton, then the presumptive nominee, faltered and finished a disappointing third behind Barack Obama and John Edwards.
“[Sanders] is the candidate of the Democratic left, against his own party’s bosses and their prized presidential candidate, secretary Hillary Clinton,” said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University poll.
The Evening Greens
The Fight To Stop Canada's Annual Grizzly Bear Hunting Season
As hunters descend along the north and central coasts of British Columbia for the start of the fall grizzly bear hunting season, so too will members of the First Nations communities in the region who are doing everything in their power to stop them.
In 2012, The Coastal First Nations, a coalition of First Nations communities in British Columbia, announced their own ban against grizzly hunting on their territory, despite the fact that it's sanctioned by the provincial government, which continues to issue trophy-hunting permits.
Men and women with the Coastal Guardians Watchmen will patrol the land by foot and boat to help enforce the ban by telling the hunters to stop and make their prey harder to shoot by scaring them away.
"We're going to get out there and assert our authority," Doug Neasloss, resource director at the Guardian Watchmen and chief of the Kitasoo/Xai'xais Nation, told VICE News. "We've been brought up to have respect for these animals and it's really unfortunate when people just come here and shoot these animals for sport."
"We like business to come to our territory," he added. "But there's some industries that are not accepted and not welcome, and trophy hunting is one of them."
"Victory for People’s Uprising": Bill McKibben on U. of California Divesting from Coal and Tar Sands
Oil Industry Contributions Blamed for Standoff Over Climate Change Bill in California
A sweeping climate change bill in the California assembly that would reduce petroleum consumption by 50 percent in the gas-guzzling state is being held up by a group of Democrats unwilling to pledge their votes — and other Democrats and environmental activists accuse the holdouts of being bought by fossil fuel industry.
The bill, proposed by Senate leader Kevin de Leon, would mandate the reduction in gas consumption as well other measures, including an increase in renewable energy and fuel-efficient cars, but would leave it up to the California Air Resources Board to determine how exactly to accomplish those goals. De Leon said that he hopes the Democratic holdouts will shake off the influence of the oil industry and pass the bill before a Friday legislative deadline.
"I have every confidence that, once Big Oil's smokescreen clears, these Members will see that lives are at stake and choose the long-term physical and economic health of their constituents over the short-term profits of polluters. It is my hope they will side with working families and secure a clean energy future for our state and thereby the country," de León said in an email.
The Latino advocacy group Presente published a "Wanted" poster last week with photos of five of the Assembly members who have not yet come out in support of the bill, accusing them of betraying their constituents and the environment due to lucrative contributions from petroleum companies.
Here's Why Desalination Won't Help Drought-Stricken California
In drought-wracked California, some towns are looking to the sea for a solution to their water woes.
But turning salty seawater into something drinkable is a costly process that's not likely to help break the long dry spell by itself. ...
Desalination has been used successfully and fairly economically in taking the salt out of brackish groundwater. But seawater has 10 times the salt content of brackish water, and desalination consumes a significant amount of power — about 5 kilowatt-hours to desalinate a cubic meter (264 gallons) of water, Lund said. As a result, it ends up costing about twice as much as ordinary water.
"You've got to be pretty desperate to pay those costs," Lund said. The most successful projects have been in Israel and in the Persian Gulf states: "They have much less agriculture and they don't have any lawns," he said. The oil-rich Arab monarchies in particular "have lots of cheap energy, and no other supplies of water."
But California is home to a $43 billion agriculture industry that provides about half of America's fruits and vegetables. As much as 80 percent of the state's water consumption goes to farms far inland, and desalination plants won't have much effect on that, said Heather Cooley, the water program director at the Pacific Institute, an Oakland-based environmental think tank. ...
Desalination also leaves behind a concentrated brine that has to be pumped offshore or injected underground. Environmentalists warn that sucking in huge quantities of seawater and expelling much-saltier water will kill marine life, and that the power used releases more planet-warming carbon emissions.
Also of Interest
Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.
U.S. Special Forces Expand Training to Allies With Histories of Abuse
Western Double Standards on Deadly Cluster Bombs
Did 'Pro-Nuclear Fanatics' Get US Nuke Regulator to Cancel a Cancer Study?
A Fed Rate Hike Will Harm the Economy, Why Don’t the Candidates Seem to Care?
A Little Night Music
Homesick James Williamson - Shake Your Money Maker
Homesick James Williamson - Sweet Home Chicago
Homesick James - I Got To Move
Homesick James - Homesick's Blues
Homesick James Williamson - The Woman I Love
Homesick James - Set A Date
Homesick James - My Baby's Sweet
Homesick James & Snooky Pryor - After you there won't be nobody else
Homesick James - Careless Love
Homesick James - Lonesome Train
Homesick James - Crossroads
Homesick James - Homesick's original dust my broom
Homesick James - Workin' With Homesick
Homesick James - Can't Afford To Do It
Homesick James - Highway 51
Homesick Blues Again - Homesick James
Homesick James - So Mean To Me
Comments
Good afternoon (here) & evening (there), Joe.
CA must, must, must conserve water, but that article on de-sal is simply too wrong for words. That has been the spew for ages and it is wrong on two counts.
1) The sole complaint is that it is costly. When there are no viable options, that is not hugely relevant.
2) The idea that it is costly ignores the fact that solar is getting damn cheap these days and CA is prime solar territory. Cover the roof of every de-sal facility and and attached parking and other related infrastructure with photovoltaic and the cost is suddenly far more maneageable. Every roof in this damn state not devoted to a helipad, garden, rainwater collection trap or the like should be covered by PV panels - it ain't rocket surgery.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
evening el...
expense is relative to current market costs. after the bought-off government allows the ag industry to pump and drill the state dry, the cost may seem quite reasonable. i completely agree with you about the solar installations. the one thing that worries me about de-sal is the waste. fracking is already creating huge amounts of brine that they can't always figure out what to do with.
Joe. this is one of the reasons
why I am so glad to have you here. Your knowledge and your ability to focus us on the "what ifs" makes us think beyond just the easy responses.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
evening gg...
aw sheesh, i know, just say thank you.
i may be blushing though.
Honest assessment. (n/t)
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
Hey Joe, thank you for the news & blues
I read a lot of those pages of Boal & Bigelow bribing the CIA agents.
The rare "black pearl" Tahitian ear rings were painted and the evaluator
was insulted saying his evaluation was worth more than the fake pearl earrings.
I think Bigelow bought them unknowingly or had a assistant buy them.
She was just paying the CIA for writing the script for the movie after all.
To thine own self be true.
evening marilyn...
my favorite observation was about how easy it was for a couple of hollywood directors to turn hard-boiled torturers into a bunch of rubes ready to give up deeply-classified information.
I wonder if Obama will charge those CIA agents
With the espionage act? After all, they disclosed classified secrets just like Manning, Drake, John K did, right?
What's that? No, because the movie made the U.S. look good?
How about Petrayous? Nope, after he leaked classified Intel to his mistress who then wrote a book, he got probation and a fine.
Looking at the photo of that huge crowd of refugees is staggering. My god! Look at what the U.S. and its allies have done to so many innocent people. And for what goddamned reason? Seriously, what was the reason why their countries were bombed to hell?
And none of the countries that were involved in their misery give a damn about it.
After reading gjohn's diary where the professor doesn't give a damn about how many people are killed by collateral damage, I have no words to state my utter contempt for our government, the defense contractors and the people in our military that have been responsible for the carnage.
Jesus, and people ask why they would hate us enough to fly planes into buildings and kill 3,00 'innocent civilians'.
We aren't any less innocent than the millions our government has killed over decades of illegal invasions that they say are wars.
Wars are between countries that threaten the other.
What country has threatened the U.S. or attacked it since 1941?
The Great Satan is a fitting description.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
Voting is like driving with a toy steering wheel.
when you leak for propaganda purposes of the administration...
you don't go to jail.
Reminds me of a line from
War's "Why Can't We Be Friends?"
And speaking of which...
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DmYLrxR0Y8]
Just 'cause it's one of my faves
"Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about it."
-- John Lennon
Just to keep the Syria discussion real:
I think it is very important to always remain mindful of why the US engineered the overthrow Syria's Assad government in the first place. And it is why Hillary Clinton and Chris Stephens were running guns recycled from the fake Libya revolution, via Benghazi, through Turkey, in order to arm the al Qaeda employees of the US and Saudi Arabia. (I've posted this geopolitical reality for many years, but the origination of this absolute evil is constantly and deliberately buried in US propaganda noise. I was reminded again today):
The US proxy war in Syria was ALWAYS about competing pipelines — and nothing else.
Note the purple line which traces the proposed Qatar-Turkey natural gas pipeline and note that all of the
countries highlighted in red are part of a new coalition hastily put together after Turkey finally (in exchange for
NATO’s acquiescence on Erdogan’s politically-motivated war with the PKK) agreed to allow the US to fly combat
missions against ISIS targets from Incirlik. Now note which country along the purple line is not highlighted in red.
That’s because Bashar al-Assad didn’t support the pipeline and now we’re seeing what happens when you’re a Mid-East strongman and you decide not to support something the US and Saudi Arabia want to get done.
There is nothing at all complicated or complex about the fact that the US is directly responsible for the destruction of humanity across the Middle East.
The well-known psychopath, Hillary Clinton, is up to her murderous elbows in the blood of the Libyan and Syrian people. She is directly responsible for the suffering and the horrible deaths of all refugees trying to escape the horrors of her heinous acts against humanity.
::
Recent Wikileaks revelations of US State Department leaks that show plans to destabilize Syria and overthrow the Syrian government as early as 2006. The leaks reveal that these plans were given to the US directly from the Israeli government and would be formalized through instigating civil strife and sectarianism through partnership with nations like Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and even Egypt to break down the power structue in Syria to essentially to weaken Iran and Hezbolla. The leaks also reveal Israeli plans to use this crisis to expand its occupation of the Golan Heights for additional oil exploration and military expansion.
::
Let us not allow anyone on the Internet, or in real life, to forget this simple truth about Syria. It is not a side issue to the 2016 elections. Bookmark this comment and use it liberally, yourselves. It contains links to factual events. Using my predictive technologies, as of today, Hillary Clinton will still win the 2016 Presidential election. You can change that. (eMailghazzi is already a non-issue — and it's going to take more than Bernie to derail her. Even President Obama can't stand the sight of that Neocon harpie. Her global murder-spree will haunt him for the rest of his life.)
As Chris Hedges so correctly pointed out the other day:
::
Hi Joe! Nice to see Evening Blues here. You feature the most interesting new stories in existence every single day. I have no idea how you do that.
____________________
The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
I tend to disagree with the "all oil"
reasoning for the Iraq war, Syria war and the MENA in general. Pipelines and oil are the cornerstone of the project,
but there's another angle that most don't talk about and that's the Zionist quest for Greater Israel. Taking down
Assad and balkanizing Syria has long been on their list. There's also the imperialists plan for their New Middle East
which Syria falls into so they can control the oil which enables them to maintain world hegemony.
So rather than oil and pipelines, I think it's about world hegemony and Greater Israel with oil being a major facilitator.
The Iraq war was not about oil, directly.
Neither was the Libyan atrocity.
Those were both about the US PetroDollar. (It's dead, now. It died the day that the US toppled the Ukraine government and installed NeoNazis in its place in order to contain Russia via a proxy war.
The PetroDollar was the only thing keeping Israel alive. That country will not exit for a full century. It's over for them. It didn't have to be that way but it's what it is.
So, in a way, you are right.
I'm a strategy wonk, and my focus is on the tactical mechanisms of change, rather than the broad sweep of history and its overall meaning.
____________________
The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
I think you mean "exist"...
...instead of "exit" in "That country will not exit for a full century..."?
It's a mish mash
of geopolitics which goes way back. The Great Game is still alive and playing out with the US now pitching for the west. Substitute the oil and pipe lines for the silk road trade routes and it's the same game. Israel is a western fundamentalist Zionist outpost run amok from the get go and getting more extreme by the minute. The weaponry and manner of warfare has changed but dominion and profit for the East India Trading Co. updated to the transnational NWO. Then there is the masters of war who make a killing off the killing. We have always been at war with Eurasia. Fall in to the gap.
Here's the Zionist/neocon Brookings Institute's
latest blatantly calling for the balkanization and destruction of Syria and the removal of Assad. The Brookings Institute
also authored "Which Path to Persia" in 2009 which laid out the same basic plan for Syria. That's what's happening
and it's certainly not just for oil.
http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2015/06/23-syria-strategy-ohanl...
http://www.shoah.org.uk/2015/07/22/us-zionist-imperialists-plot-downfall...
evening pluto...
thanks for the observations. it's funny how these pipelines seem to be the bottom line of a lot of geopolitical strife. everybody seems to want to shove a pipeline up somebody else's country in order to get a rapidly-declining-in-value product to the people with money. i wonder whatever happened to afghanistan's pipeline.
China is currently building a pipeline
…between Iran and Pakistan. And, they're building a high speed rail spur to Afghanistan.
Pepe Escobar refers to the whole mishegas region as Pipelineistan, which sums it up, really.
Did you hear what Iran did today? They dropped the price of oil below the world spot price and sold futures to all of Asia.
____________________
The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
so what iran did...
if i am understanding this correctly is put down-pressure on the price of oil and reduced demand for the petrodollar since i would guess that the futures were denominated in non-dollar currencies?
No one in the region is using the Dollar
…anymore (if they can help it). They all have migrated from the SWIFT system to CIPS, China's alternative settlement bank. That's why the US was desperate for the Iran deal. No one will follow their sanctions anymore, and they don't want the world to find out they are now wearing granny underpants. geopolitically speaking. Everyone knows, of course. China is selling $100 billion of US Treasuries reserves monthly through Belgium and Switzerland, although that's a slow pace considering the size of their holdings. However, the world wants the Dollar to remain excessively strong in order to kill the remaining US export market, while enhancing their own. Cheap stuff is all the American Colonists can afford to live on, anyway.
Iran has an Oil Bourse, as you no doubt know. The US wants to be an oil exporter by poisoning its own environment with fracking. But, Iran is offering all oil importing nations a better deal. The only huge import market that the US has left is murder weapons, which is what the US does for a living and where most of the tax revenues are spent, while destroying the US infrastructure and starving the US peasants.
China, however, has just dealt a death blow to the most expensive US military killing cartel. They have effectively rendered the US Navy useless as a tool of empire — although the US hasn't figured that out yet. The entire point of the vast Eurasian New Silk Road Economic Belt, connecting the entire Eastern Hemisphere, from Africa to Siberia, is to put the US Navy out of business. No one cares if the US terrorizes the high seas anymore. Trade is going to be based on land and rail, which is much faster and more efficient than water.
In other fascinating news, the entire world met in Vladivostok last week. (You can see it from Sarah Palin's kitchen window.) That's why the tea baggers lost their shit over Chinese vessels near Alaska. The Chinese were partying there with the reast of the Eastern Hemisphere and South America. Anyway, Vladivostok is becoming the new Hong Kong, a vast, duty-free port where you can live and work even without a passport, if you want to. It will light up Alaska at night like the Aurora Borealis. Billions upon billions of dollars worth of business was done there, including China's high-speed rail networks that will make it the most exciting and important port in the world. Of course, the global Internet architecture is moving to the Eastern Hemisphere and unplugging from the US.
Did you hear that the Chinese President has decided to meet with Bill Gates and all the heavy hitters in the US tech universe in Seattle — BEFORE he shows up in DC for his official State Visit next week?
I do believe I covered most of this in my essay, America's Mein Kampf, earlier this year. It sure is unfolding fast, tho.
::: waves to Chris Hedges while being a true Leftist :::
____________________
The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
P'raps I'm wrong, but...
...I thought that got submerged in the Caspian Sea during the Yugo-Bosni-Hertzo-or some such wars.
During...
...The Clinton wars of the 1990s.
Joe Shikspack
Yea for Elmore James.
I`m already against the next war
hey, knucklehead!
great to see you commenting! looks like evidence that jtc got everything straightened out.
how are you? it's been forever.
Evening Joe...
I did nothing, Knuck figured it out his own self. Another great EB my friend, thanks.
Johnny The Conqueroo
I was just trying to work it out without bothering anybody else.
I did just see your message to me.
I do think I have it worked out, so I`ll be around more often than not.
You`ve all been warned.
I`ll post a few items about, "How I spent my summer".
I`m already against the next war
Howdy Knuck...
as scarce as you've been this summer it must have been some cool shit, can't wait to hear it.
Glad you worked it out
and welcome aboard. So glad you made it
They don't make em like that anymore.
What's up Knucklehead?!
Good to see you.
And just in case you don't...
get it "all worked out." we'll bug the H___ out of you, knucky darling!
Iranian troops join Russians in Syria
Iran takes sides
Probably need another source to confirm this, but I believe it.
Russia and Iran have a common enemy: ISIS
The US is useless in that regard. The US military monkey gods can't find their own asses with both hands and a volunteer holding a flashlight.
ISIS drank America's milkshake a long time ago, when the US first funded them. And the US is still picking up the tab.
____________________
The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
evening g...
that should make things interesting. i can't wait to hear what kerry has to say about this.
Speaking about things John Kerry says:
I think it's worth repeating what John Kerry said when he heard that Republicans were going to try to block the multilateral Iran agreement that was ratified by the UN Security Council:
He went there.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/08/11/us-iran-nuclear-kerry-idUSKCN0...
The moment I saw that, I knew that Kerry was a lot smarter than I thought. I had assumed he actually believed the US bullshit propaganda that the US was still some kind of influential super-power in the world.
But he revealed that the US is hanging by a thread. He knows it's game, set, match. He and the President clearly hope (like the Bush administration did before them) that the whole thing doesn't come crashing down before they leave office. They're walking on eggshells in the Potemkin White House.
I don't think they are going to make it, though. Not only is Europe peeling off from the disgraceful and self-destructive Russian sanctions, but we have another market-based Black Swan, incoming….
____________________
The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
Evening Joe...
the first three videos in tonight's selection look strikingly familiar. I think I may have been there, maybe.
Insider info: I recorded the first three videos at a music festival in northern Illinois back in '88.
If you did, I like the job, the third one I like best :-) /nt
The festival was run...
by a good friend of mine, I had permission to sit right up front and record as much as I liked. I have hours and hours of video of many different performers over several years.
After Homesick James finished playing that night I wandered behind the stage where there was a separate tent for the performers, Homesick was sitting there by himself in the dark finishing off a pint of gin, of course I helped him, got to speak with him for quite a while. It was pretty cool, he was pretty drunk, me too, heh.
I just listened to around 3/4 of Clinton's speech at the
Brookings Institute. It's a long time that I tried to listen to her speeches uninterrupted. I knew I didn't like her foreign policy ideas and past actions, but now I absolutely don't want her in that job position of being Commander in Chief. I can find words, but they are all unacceptable harsh to be posted. There is NO way I support her, NO way.
Just saying, I didn't know how horrible arrogant she is. She talks like a dictator in the making. If what she does is what she talks about, then ... good night.
Just saying. Too bad I listened to her. Now my night sleep is ruined. And btw it's terrible to listen to her, as she talks in such a monotone controlled voice, you just wished you could shake her up a little and become more natural and spontaneous. Jeez, how someone likes to be a politician is beyond me.
Ain't no such thing 'round these parts....
This here ain't the GOS.
And there are no words harsh enough for HRC -- or for any of 'em (and, yes, Bernie Sanders, that includes you until you come out full bore against the tar pit known as the MIC).
"Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about it."
-- John Lennon
now I heard Sanders on CNN about Iran deal interviewed by
Blitzer. [video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xrj5P6el5I#action=share]
I mean he sounds much better than Clinton, but I still have the question why people think they have to have the military option on the table ... just in case Iran gets a nuclear weapon. What about the fact that the US has tons of nuclear weapons and think it's ok to have them and pretend to never use them? Just it's better the US to have them to threaten everybody else with them, so that other people's nuclear weapons supposedly can be controlled from using them.
We had this for the last 40 years in Germany. MAD worked probably back then, I don't think it will ever work again. Mankind has become way more psycho-pathologically nuts and won't be contained anymore by that last threat over all other threats, dropping a nuclear bomb or shooting with nuclear missiles.
I just can't believe it anymore. Dummy me.
I don't understand when Iran has been the last time be really a threat to anyone? Help me out. I don't know the history. I feel that the talk about Iran being a threat is the actual more dangerous one than anything else.
And with regards to curse words, I have given up on those being of any help to release stress. I don't think I need that anymore.
They'are all liars when it comes to Iran.
Not a single politician is willing to tell the truth which is that this entire spectacle of a negotiation with Iran over it's ability and desire to develop nuclear weapons is false, based on neocon/Zionist lies. They're in effect all telling imperialist lies, Sanders is too regardless of his weak attempt to deflect it by saying he didn't vote for the Iraq war. He's protecting Israel as all the politicians do, not discussing the fact that Israel is the terror state in the Middle East that has hundreds of nuclear weapons while everyone seems to pretend they don't; not discussing the fact that the U.S. is the terror state on the planet that has thousands of nuclear weapons and has proven it will use them, and has implemented official first strike nuclear weapons plans within it's Full Spectrum Dominance approach to world hegemony.
It is simply not acceptable.
due to German induced Holocaust of the Jewish people
there is no chance that any of the major Western nations who participated in WWII will agree to not in defend and protect Israel. Even if the argument in today's current situation isn't convincing from a reasonable and logical pov. But with all trauma of victims and the burden of our father's sins, be it victims of former slavery, victims of native American genocide, victims of colonial exploitation, victims of marxist ideology based oppression of the Russian and Eastern European nations, you can't discard that those trauma are carried on from generation to generation and they are always used and finally abused as a political argument.
I have often asked myself how long is one willing to consider the victimization of people in their history as an argument for actual, current, local policy decisions. When is there a tipping point when people are not willing anymore to consider those?
I never could make up my mind about that. My own little anecdotal experience and observations are that I think it takes at least four generation til all the pains of your anchestors are put into the "history" box and just been pulled out as a matter of
a "debate among intellectually inclined people", who want to show their "intricate knowledge" of those historical events and are inclined to be "teachers of the young". They try to make the "abstract book knowledge" come alive emotionally with all the tricks and tools modern technology allows them to. So many are influenced by those orally and written and visualized arguments by very skilled and knowledgeable historians. The trauma of the past is artificially revived (unless people have still real memories of them through their families), most often with good intentions to arouse consciousness about the suffering their anchestors went through and the goal to instill a political morality for political activists of the current days. Mostly it's done with very noble and good intentions.
But then, somehow, that doesn't work always in the way it was intended, especially not on the long run. The younger people don't want to be reminded of those things (or never learned about them) and they reject it. I could observe it that many young African get more and more immune against anti-colonial and anti-imperial arguments of their grand-parents generation, as they concern their history. That of course excludes those arguments that show that current political situations are the same colonial or imperial situations just in another costumes. You can observe it among some Native Americans (those who think it's not necessary to fight against the Redskin label of the DC football team for example) and among Germans, who manage to stay quiet but might sometimes resent to always been reminded and pressured into certain political positions due to their past (for most of them it's still too close and not yet in the "history" box). The times were most stay "quiet" might be over pretty soon and we will have similar situations as in the past.
I agree with your judgment that the current approach of how to deal with the MIC and US foreign policies in the ME and elsewhere is an attempt to gain or retain world hegemony.
I just believe the arguments to be brought forward by the descendents of people, who were victimized in the past and transferred their traumata to the next generations, will always win over the plain conclusion that the powerful's argumentation is simply "not acceptable". They would argue it is "not acceptable" to not consider their inherited trauma of their parents, grandparents and anchestors. They will insist on it. You can't discard that they have a moral and very humane right to do so, even if this in the end will lead to the same conflicts and wars and exploitation you had generations before.
It's like a curse you can't escape from.
I've always found it disgustingly and horrifically ironic
that the ugly industrialized horror that was the Holocaust, a monstrous atrocity committed by White Christian Europeans, should have been punished by plopping a state down in the middle of a region that had fuck all to do with said atrocity, with the "bonus" of allowing the people upon whom the atrocity was committed to visit further atrocities (ethnic cleansing and brutal, vicious apartheid) on a people that, again, had fuck all to do with the horror committed by White Christian Europeans.
Israel doesn't merely get a pass for it's crimes against humanity, it is encouraged in its inhumanity, with any attempt to point out the ugly truth behind its routine racism and flagrant flouting of international law and human decency shouted down as "Antisemitism," its actions excused as "fighting against terrorism."
It should be a litmus test for any decent person wanting to call themselves a leftist/socialist: Support for Israel is at least a large strike against such people, if not an outright disqualifier.
"Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about it."
-- John Lennon