This article should get the Russia-bashers going … but I think The Saker has a fairly good analysis of the SITREP … enjoy:
http://thesaker.is/russia-reacts-to-turkeys-attack-sitrep-november-29-2015-by-scott/

Posted by: Rg an LG | Nov 29 2015 18:13 utc | 4

The NYT is now concerned about the Daesh Libyan franchise’s capital city, Surt. Gosh, how did that happen? Hillary? Madam Secretary? Anyone?

Posted by: chuckvw | Nov 29 2015 19:16 utc | 6

via Sic Semper Tyrannis
Col. Pat Lang has a new piece:
Sultan Tayyip’s triumph
http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2015/11/httpwwwnytimescomaponline20151129worldeuropeap-eu-europe-migrants-the-latest-html.html
“Leaders of the European Union and Turkey were set to sign an agreement on Sunday offering Ankara cash and closer ties in return for help in stemming the flow of migrants to Europe, draft conclusions of their summit showed.
Aware of a sense of desperation in Europe for a solution to a crisis that has called into question the future of its passport-free travel zone, Ankara has been driving a hard bargain.
Diplomats said the 28 EU governments had struggled through Saturday to agree a final offer.
The draft deal seen by Reuters made clear the nature of the trade-off, involving Turkish help in handling the flow of migrants to the EU, expected to reach 1.5 million people this year alone, and the EU offering cash and restarting talks on EU accession.
“Both sides will … with immediate effect, step up their active cooperation on migrants…, preventing travel to Turkey and the EU, ensuring … readmission provisions and swiftly returning migrants who are not in need of international protection to their countries of origin,” the draft said.” NY Times
—————
more at link

Posted by: crone | Nov 29 2015 19:39 utc | 8

Former UK Ambassador to Syria: Cameron was criminally deceitful about ‘moderate’ rebels in his speech/appeal to the UK parliament for a Syrian intervention.
http://investmentwatchblog.com/former-uk-ambassador-to-syria-cameron-was-criminally-deceitful-about-moderate-rebels-in-his-speechappeal-to-the-uk-parliament-for-a-syrian-intervention/

Posted by: harry law | Nov 29 2015 19:41 utc | 10

Fascism is returning in France and America. The world is going to hell.

Posted by: Huffman Aviation | Nov 29 2015 19:43 utc | 12

AtaBrit @ 10
Said: “dont buy this NATO behind the attack on the Russian jet simply because it was ao sloppily carriwd out”
It seems that this logic is all wrong. Putin has just reacted to this aerial tragedy in a very positive way that benefits his side. That does not mean that he is the one that did this killing of a pilot and let his plane be shot down.
It is hard to imagine that Putin was able to get those Turkish F-16C planes in just the right place/time, organize the friendly “Alan’s Snack-bar types” on the ground to film, kill, and capture the pilots. I mean I admire Putin for his abilities, but even I do not think that he can order divine intervention – at least not at this scale.
You have me confused. Maybe you need to better explain your thinking.

Posted by: Peter B | Nov 29 2015 20:02 utc | 14

@11
this world is hell, it has always been hell and it will always be hell

Posted by: karlitozulu | Nov 29 2015 20:09 utc | 16

Obama accepted $1.3mn in gifts from Saudis in 2014: Report

On January 14, 2014, King Abdullah, who died earlier this year at the age of 90, gave Obama’s wife a “diamond and emerald jewelry set including necklace, earrings, ring and bracelet,” costing $560,000.
The first lady received another exquisite set of the same gifts which was worth a tad higher at around $570,000.
King Abdullah did not forget Obama’s daughters, sending them a “diamond and emerald jewelry set including earrings, necklace, ring, brooch, and wristwatch,” along with a “Diamond and ruby jewelry set including earrings, necklace, ring, brooch, and wristwatch,” priced $80,000.
The report also hints at expensive gifts given to Obama’s aides by Saudi officials, including a $5,370 “white gold wristwatch with link bracelet” for National Security Adviser Susan Rice and several $8,170 wristwatches for her male colleagues.
US law stipulates that the president must turn over everything he gets from another world leader to the National Archives or other institutions for the purposes of storage or display. However, if he wants to keep anything, he has to pay the fair market value for it and take it with him when he leaves office.

Bribery. Up front, in public. Another innovation of the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate slash made-man of the KSA … 418 days till payday. Full support for the Saudi massacre of the poorest people in Arabia.

Posted by: jfl | Nov 29 2015 20:11 utc | 18

@16
Russia has stopped coal shipments to Ukraine and may well stop gas flowing as well, the Ukraine is on a prepay basis and is not prepaying.
The Crimea will be connected to the Russian grid by mid-December, the Ukraine’s troubles as a result of their terrorism will begin becoming apparent at the same time as the Crimea begins to recover from said Ukrainian terror.
If Russia does stop gas flowing to/through Ukraine, the Europeans will begin to feel the results of the terror they’ve fostered in Ukraine as well.

Posted by: jfl | Nov 29 2015 20:26 utc | 20

@PeterB
I dont know either. But the RF has been pushing at Turkeys boundaries, entering its airspace uninvited etc. then Putin openly starts attacking Turkish – my boy done good – oil convoys attacking Turkeys precious Turkmen jihadists and the real psychogical mind fuck of planning the hearing/ passing of a law to criminalise denial of the Armenian genocide etc. To a hot headed emotional and riding on his recent election victory, seemingly invincible Erdogan, these are red flags to a bull. This level of provocation could be read as trying to antagonise Turkey into some reaction. Of course, its unlikely that Putin knew what reaction, how or when, but it would not surprise me that he had been expecting something along these lines. Turkey shot down a Syrian jet under very similar circumstances. Actually, Turkey stated clearly that they would not tolerate further incursions after they shot down the drone.
While it is pure conjecture, Putin has made massive strides as a result. He has the excuse he needs to attack turkey when he wants meaning that unless the US steps in, the no fly zone and other land grabs are dead in the water, he has pulled the kurds on board in one fell swoop because turkey will no longer attack them abroad in Iraq and Syria – iraq immediately started statinopenly that Ankara must stop incursions into Iraqi airspace! – he has the sympathy of a large part of the west who have long known about turkeys duplicitous politics, he has strengthened his position in Iraq and Syria, he has started to ‘edit’ the list of ‘moderate’ terrorists to be compiled during the peqce talks and he even has the excuses he needs to start reorienting to trade with Iran instead of Turkey … Not a bad achievement for the victim of the attack. Who else has gained anything?
The NATO line just doesn’t ring true. If it had been planned by them Davutoglu would NOT have gone running to them so very quickly. that simple.
Anyway. Sure that is still clear as mud!
🙂

Posted by: AtaBrit | Nov 29 2015 20:40 utc | 22

@17
He took the job, He could have said, “No, thanks, I’m not up to it.” He didn’t say that. He took the job and has been jumping through their hoops since day one.
He sits in the POTUS’ office. He could end the terror in Syria and Ukraine in an instant. Stand down in Afghanistan. End the drone assassinations. He could replace the neocons in his government … Brennan, Ash, the Harpies. He could tell the American people and the world he’s going to give peace a chance, then follow through.
No reason to make excuses for Barack Obama. He’s the President of the United States. He should be on the front lines of the fight against ‘the entrenched power of war mongering oligarchy’, but he’s not. He’s their enabler in chief instead.
This line of he’s powerless is part of the siren song of acquiescence. We’re all powerless. Give it up. Resistance is futile. TINA.
Hey, hey, Obama-fay! How many kids have you killed today?

Posted by: jfl | Nov 29 2015 20:44 utc | 24

@21 ‘While it is pure conjecture …’
I agree.

Posted by: jfl | Nov 29 2015 20:49 utc | 26

To add to 19
It has been reported on Sputnik that no inhabited region of the Crimea is without electricity as of this weekend as they have received generators from mainland.
Come the 1st January 2016 Ukraine will be subject to the same sanctions and tariffs as the EU.
We will see a harder approach now to ukraine as Russia needed to buy time to time put infrastructure in place for Crimea.
Ukraine will default on the 3 billion. Yatsenyuk is quoted as stating as such so unless the EU and US bail them out they are in for hard times.
Biden vists next week December : I dont know much about him politically but usually after a visit by an American the war starts up again; maybe this time because of the crisis in Europe it won’t happen.
however reading posts from Donbas they expect the war to start up again and have prepared.

Posted by: James lake | Nov 29 2015 20:50 utc | 28

@21
but no more or less than all other conjecture on the topic!
and I am really saying little more than Putin must have considered that Turkey would burst a blood vessel at some point.

Posted by: AtaBrit | Nov 29 2015 20:58 utc | 30

I suspect that the “moderate rebels” in Syria are in fact individual’s we e have done business with before, in Iraq, during the “sunni awakening” … ie they’s are buy-a-able Sunnis we know by name, have history with, and STILL insist on believing their claims about their “phantom armies” — because we never learn.
I’m curious how many are — and have always been — on the KSA payroll as well … going back to 2004-5… It’s like old school chums, their phone calls get answered, the door is open and a seat is made ready for them whenever they demand an audience … because to do otherwise would be uncivilized.
Salon has a book review/excerpt detailing the non-religious — It’s just business — history of the rise of ISIS (link included for cite the Salon: The rise of al-Baghdadi and the Islamic State
The rise of Baghdadi corresponds to the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (February 2004) … did the Saudis begin directly funding ISIS as a start-up in 2004 after Zarqari’s death (he was an abject failure as leader, if head of a devastating car bomb campaign) …
Have the Saudi’s been following the American model of regime change going back to 2004 … and “we” persist in believing in the “moderate rebels” in Syria because we “own” them?

Posted by: Susan Sunflower | Nov 29 2015 21:05 utc | 32

buy mercenaries.. hope the citizens of your own country are too stupid to see it for what it is… claim you are supporting moderates, when in fact you want to take down a leader and destroy a country for geo-political reasons… same characters and same bad actors. some things don’t change even if the hopey changey guy is yer pretzel.. keep on working on starting ww3… see if anyone is foolish enough to take the bait..

Posted by: james | Nov 29 2015 21:12 utc | 34

bad link @33:
We just learned that Israel is a buyer and seller of ISIS oil.

Posted by: Jackrabbit | Nov 29 2015 21:18 utc | 36

The Greek air defense people are happy to report that: since the shootdown of the Su24 in Syria, there has been no more air space violations by Turkey.

Posted by: Sun Tzu | Nov 29 2015 21:44 utc | 38

Atabrit @10: ” … Why is no one considering the possibility that Putin sacrificed a pawn to remove Turkey from the game? …”
If Putin sacrificed a pawn as you say, why then did the Russians go to so much trouble to rescue the navigator? One person in the rescue mission died when helicopters sent out to find the man were attacked. In the end, the Russians, the Iranians and Hezbollah cooperated to rescue the navigator, Iranian General Soleimani coordinating the rescue effort and the Russians providing air cover for Hezbollah and Iranian soldiers to physically retrieve the man. This time the rescue effort was successful and no-one apart from the navigator was injured.
A further reason that the attack on the Su-24 was sloppy might be that it was close to (and even part of) Russian attacks on oil tankers transporting ISIS-stolen Syrian and Iraqi oil elsewhere. Some of these oil tankers apparently belonged to Bilal Erdogan (the President’s son).
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-11-28/isis-oil-trade-full-frontal-raqqas-rockefellers-bilal-erdogan-krg-crude-and-israel-c

Posted by: Jen | Nov 29 2015 22:05 utc | 40

I do not refer to comments by typing (I’m using an above comment above just as an example):
@35
No! For some very odd reason the comment numbering can “move” to lower, and even higher numbers. The “time stamp” of the comment can always be easily searched for from the browser. So I would put in a reference like so:
wrt: chuckvw | Nov 29, 2015 4:18:33 PM | 35

Posted by: blues | Nov 29 2015 22:08 utc | 42

@29 jfl
“Not the UN, Trans-National Corporations. The TPP | TTIP | TiSA are the constitution of the New World Order. No more troublesome governments, direct corporate rule. Disintermediation.”
What you describe has been my view of the world also. I try to explain the same things to anybody who’ll listen.
The blog I mentioned takes the position that the TPP/TTIP “NWO” is a kind of “decoy NWO”, meant to scare us to death, rather than to actually succeed. He thinks the idea is that we’ll all be so relieved when the “bad NWO” is defeated by the “good East”, perhaps after we’ve come very close to nuclear war, that we’ll be willing to accept a watered-down, UN-fronted world government. Presumably that UN-fronted NWO will appear to represent the “rule of law, not the law of the jungle” (to quote from a George H W Bush speech), but in actuality, will allow the existing oligarchy to extend their rule over the entire world. That’s the idea anyway.
I keep the conventional-unconventional (lol) world view in the forefront of my mind, while looking for evidence that might support the other world view. I worried about bringing the subject up here, because if it’s all bilge, then I’m doing everyone a disservice by muddying the waters. I decided that it’s better to share the idea, just in case there’s any truth to it. Ideas can easily be knocked down if clearly bullshit.
It occurs to me that the PTB are unlikely to have been blindsided by the free exchange of information, made possible by the internet. Isn’t it possible that they drew up plans to hold onto power, knowing that the internet would begin shining a light onto their machinations? I don’t know. Perhaps it’s far too vast a conspiracy, but I do think it’s worth keeping in the back of our minds, just in case.
By the way, are you aware of what Golitsyn said about the Soviet Union’s collapse? I was thinking about that when I mentioned strategic deceptions. There are so many possibilities, such as the East going along with the Western version of the NWO, only to betray the West at a late stage (or vice-versa).

Posted by: Victori-ana | Nov 29 2015 22:27 utc | 44

@Plenue
LOL, I didn’t just “dismiss someone as a ‘troll'”, I liked to an example that shows WHY he is a troll and speculated on WHY he posted early in the thread.
Did you click-thru and read the link that I provided?

Posted by: Jackrabbit | Nov 29 2015 22:48 utc | 46

Re: Posted by: crone | Nov 29, 2015 2:39:44 PM | 7
Particularly in France this cozying up to Turkey should be called out for what it is. A disgrace.
Erdogan and his family are basically a mafia running the country now. What do the likes of Le Pen & Sarkozy have to say about this sort of grovelling to the Turks (who of course themselves coddle ISIS)?

Posted by: Julian | Nov 29 2015 23:02 utc | 48

AtaBrit @21
Thanks for that. I see your point now: that Russia has been playing with Turkey to “egg them on” so to say. It does look as if Putin has starting to “walk away with the prize” from all of this misadventure: S-400 on the ground, more hardware, broad military escalation, putting a leash on Turkey, and maybe even his own “no-fly zone”.
Cheers

Posted by: Peter B | Nov 29 2015 23:13 utc | 50

I dropped this effort into some lame duck thread a couple of weeks ago, but wanted to get it out again because it struck me as such an interesting image of how American think tanks distort history. They’re essentially doing what the CIA did with Mockingbird – producing “scholarly works” without scholarship. We’re not dealing with historians – we’re dealing with PR, organizations which concoct history not because they’re trying to get at the truth, but because they have political, ideological, or sometimes even economic interests at stake. Sorry for the retread, I don’t think too many people caught it anyway:

I was watching author Stephen Kotkin discuss his newest bio of Stalin (“Stalin”). There was so much interesting about it – so much.
Kotkin is a Hoover Institute fellow: We shouldn’t forget that Herbert Hoover was one of the major figures in the US efforts to overthrow the Bolshevik Revolution by invading Russia in 1919. Now, why did Hoover want to do this? After all, Bolshevism barely had a grasp on power at that point – the civil war was raging. The answer is surely in the fact that he personally had over $1 Billion worth of interests in Russian oil companies. In fact, these interests were worth so much, that Hoover would have been the richest man in America – richer than Rockefeller. And the Bolshevik Revolution snatched that all away from him.The US invasion of Russia in 1919 wasn’t a crusade for freedom or something so high minded as that – in fact, the ideological attacks on Bolshevism where barely worked out at that point so this excuse wasn’t in play. This was Hoover’s personal monetary interests at stake – fantastic sums.
Kotkin discussed how General Kornilov actually lived on the grounds of the Hoover Institute after fleeing Russia: I won’t go into the history of who the General is, but he was the last best hope of defeating the Bolsheviks and reestablishing Czarist rule (and saving Hoover’s Billion). When he lost his campaign during the Russian Civil War, he escaped to the US where he lived for an extended period at the Hoover Institute and wrote his memoirs there! So think about this – its an uninterrupted line of supporting the anti-Communist line, all right there in Stanford. 95 years ago, you had Kornilov supported to write his anti-Communist memoirs, and practically in the same room, we have Kotkin doing his work – an anti-Communist biography of Stalin.
Killing people is never necessary: Kotkin has a few ridiculous statements. He describes collectivization as Stalin “enslaving 100 million people” which is a bizarre way of putting it. He accused Stalin of “killing 10 million people”, numbers even Timothy Snyder won’t use. But he has one line he uses in his talks about Stalin which is very, very important and revealing. He says: “It’s never necessary to kill millions of people”. In a couple of talks I watched of him, he used this line to take on the idea that collectivization was a required reform in a country where agriculture was continuously under-performing. Notice that phrase “never necessary”. I found it interesting because later in his talk, under the questioning of the moderator, he stated flatly that “The Cold War was necessary”. Now, the link is clear – he even uses that same word, so there’s no confusion – “Kiling millions of people is never necessary” but “the Cold War was necessary”? With that single sentence, Kotkin lays his hypocrisy – and the hypocrisy we see all the time from anti-Communists – out bare. After all, what was the Wold War except for US helping to kill millions of people? Vietnam, Indonesia, Latin America – these were episodes of wholesale murder on par with even the inflated numbers Kotkin writes about. But it was “necessary” because it was killing in an effort to further American interests…. amazing display of moral clarity, Mr. Kotkin.
That’s what you get from the long history of Hoover institute: Greed and hypocrisy bookended by intellectual excuses for both.

Posted by: guest77 | Nov 29 2015 23:25 utc | 52

g77 at 45 —
A blip. A hot story for a day or two, it does little to discredit the Russians, so dropped, back to obsessing about refugees. It will likely be recycled in the future as part of a litany of Russian “outrages.”

Posted by: rufus magister | Nov 29 2015 23:37 utc | 54

@49, @48 guest
I’m wondering about Hoover’s “billion” … ok, maybe he had some dealing with the czar, but a billion, in 19teen?
It ain’t the one who offered the bribes … its the guy who took ’em. In this case. Giving bribes is the stock in trade of autocrat-thieves like the Saudis, and turning them down – at least not letting the bastards tell you to bend down so they can drape them around your neck, like the Queen of England donning a knight – ought to be the stock in trade of any servant of the people in a democracy. If it’s a ‘sincere’ autocrat-thief, handing it off to an attendent from the public’s presidential bribe museum and saying something like, ‘On behalf of the American people I accept this token of your esteem, your autocratic-thiefiness’ … or something ‘diplomatic’ like that.
They’re going to be undervalued, a ‘patron’ will pony up the dough, and Obama and family are going to waddle off with the Saudi bribes. The real payment’s been paid in Yemeni lives.

Posted by: jfl | Nov 30 2015 0:00 utc | 56

The European Union will introduce a visa-free regime with Turkey in autumn 2016
Aren’t they at the same time disassembling the visa-free zone in Europe proper? What on earth would make them open their borders to the home of Da’esh? The threat of more refugees? They’ve ponied up another 3 billion euros to arm more Daesh as well, I understand.

Posted by: jfl | Nov 30 2015 0:26 utc | 58

@55 jackrabbit.. all that might be true and i concur with your last statement, but you might have to let go of trying to shut down conversation with them as they seem reasonable enough on the surface on most topics, excluding a few topics particularly dear to their ideology.

Posted by: james | Nov 30 2015 0:38 utc | 60

jfl, g77 — on Hoover and his institution.
This biography says he was worth USD4 mil. as an independent mining consultant and entrepreneur, with investments in silver, lead, and zinc mines in New South Wales, Burma, and Russia.
According to the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, inspired by the bio of diplomat and Cornell historian Andrew White, Hoover began to collect documents on his times while aiding refugees in The Great War.

Posted by: rufus magister | Nov 30 2015 0:48 utc | 62

more from the headchopper cult that likes to consider itself a ”’moderate”’ country.. the amazing thing is how the west goes along with it..

Posted by: james | Nov 30 2015 1:02 utc | 64

@29 elaborating on the thought in the last paragraph, Willam Blum’s America’s deadliest export, pp. 304-5:

What a primitive underbelly there is to this rational society. The US is the most patriotic, as well as the most religious, country of the so-called developed world.
The entire American patriotism thing may be best understood as the biggest case of mass hysteria in history, whereby the crowd adores its own power as troopers of the world’s only superpower, a substitute for the lack of power in the rest of their lives.
Patriotism, like religion, meets people’s need for something greater to which their individual lives can be anchored.

… whereby our crowd adores its own power as troopers of the world’s only superpower, a substitute for the lack of power in the rest of our lives … aint it the truth.

Posted by: jfl | Nov 30 2015 1:13 utc | 66

@57 Anunnaki.. here’s another story in today’s fars news raising the same issue..

Posted by: james | Nov 30 2015 1:24 utc | 68

Va @ 23: Thoughtful post, and no subjects here are taboo, especially on open threads.
jfl at 29 said: “Not the UN, Trans-National Corporations. The TPP | TTIP | TiSA are the constitution of the New World Order. No more troublesome governments, direct corporate rule. Disintermediation.”
This above quote, says it all. Rule by elites, through corporate dominance, the REAL NWO. Bend over, workers.
Or, as said many times, ” It’s just business, get over it”.

Posted by: ben | Nov 30 2015 1:33 utc | 70

@Victori-ana@23
If this subject is beyond the scope of this website, I’ll shut up about it. I don’t mean to confuse or distract. I’m actually hoping that somebody can provide me with ironclad evidence, or arguments, proving that the East-West conflict is real, all the way to the top levels of decision-making.
No subject, except porno and pedophilia, is beyond the scope of MoA’s Open Thread, it just happens that we have been loaded of late with conspiracy theorists and we have one too many. The UN-centered world government, NWO, illuminati, 9/11, Kennedy assassination, Putin a tool of the masters of the universe, etc., etc., etc., that’s old stuff, we are dealing with posters here alleging the bombing of the Russian plane over Sinai was a false-flag.
I mean, you have a lot to catch up if you want to perform as a conspiracy theorist at MoA. I would suggest you start reading three or four threads back, get yourself up to speed with the current conspirative trends, and then choose one you like: the Russian plane leaving no traces in the dessert, thousands of extras performing during IS attack in Paris, Putin placing the SU-24 on site to be shot at, etc.
There are plenty more, suit yourself. You can then comeback for the next Open Thread, start posting on your favorite conspiracy theory, I assure you you will have no lack of posters extrapolating your conspiracy theories to new dimensions. I should warn you the in-house conspiracy theorist posts about 10 long comments in 5 minutes, if you think you can beat that, be my guest.

Posted by: Lone Wolf | Nov 30 2015 1:44 utc | 72

I think it’s time to put aside the mincing of words and start calling a spade a spade. Terrorists are not terrorists but mercenaries. If stopping them is the goal, follow the money. Who pays them? Who supports them with arms and all the necessities of life? If “they” can tell me what I purchased in my local market last week, the same “they” could easily answer those questions.
Easily said and easily done, but is not said and will not be done

Posted by: Hal Duell | Nov 30 2015 2:13 utc | 74

9/11 is a subject many will skirt mostly because of all the venomous attacks from fools who have no concept of physics and who are too close minded/brainwashed for any resemblance of critical thinking.
To call those who question the collapse of WTC7 retards when the official explanation is “structural damage due to fire” just goes to show the stupidit involved by some. For those who build these kinds of building for a livelihood it stands out as a huge red flag that no detailed investigation of the collapse was done. If there is a flaw in design they need to know. Hence the “Archiects for 911 Truth” movement came about.
Most people who understand the geoplitical play that has been going on for over 100 years, see 9/11 for what it is. A political catalyst orchestrated to enhance AngloZionist powerplay.
Considering the amount of evidence already collected to support the fact of the 3 buildings being taken down with pre-placed explosives/cutters, i dont really see how the russians can add much to uncover the conspiracy. The facts are in the open but people are unwilling or uncaring to accept them. I really doubt they have verifiable documents of communications with the involved actors/perpetrators (Cheney/Mossad/CIA).

Posted by: Norwegian Bob | Nov 30 2015 2:29 utc | 76

HD @ 70 said: “If stopping them is the goal, follow the money.”
Agreed, but, maybe, stopping them ISN’T the goal, at least for the elites of the world. Manipulating the sheep of the world for fun, and, most of all, PROFIT, seems to be the order of the day.

Posted by: ben | Nov 30 2015 2:59 utc | 78

@72 NB
I certainly agree with you on the physics – optics I might say – but your post represents a score for Enuelp @42 and perhaps for Victoriana @23 as well. And Penelope.
The idea is to get an interminable ‘discussion’ about the unresolvable going.
Let it drop. You’re not going to convince anyone here to believe their lyin’ eyes. Not anyone who doesn’t already.
I think that’s due to something along the lines of the last paragraph above @29. And that’s the reason I’d not use a word like ‘stupid’ to describe those who refuse to see the obvious … fearful, maybe.
They do not want to ‘know’ – even though they do know. But if it’s not in the ambient societal narrative it didn’t happen; if it didn’t happen it needn’t be acknowledged; if it’s not acknowledged we can just keep on keepin’ on. No change required.
Everything’s fine, always has been, and if not it’s the fault of some external devils, and so if problems appear – kill ’em all.

Posted by: jfl | Nov 30 2015 3:07 utc | 80

@71 jfl.. thanks for that link which i had looked at previously, but not completely.. my problem with that link is the rambling nature of it and how it doesn’t really bring any clarity on the dynamics in turkey, so much as more confusion as to the players and the intent.. when i go to the guys site/A> , he shares a very anti-putin orientation.. i don’t mind reading alternative viewpoints. i think it is healthy actually! read his article from nov 29th -today- to get an idea.. the picture of the internal politics with the leadership and military remains muddled to me at this point..

Posted by: james | Nov 30 2015 5:23 utc | 82

rufus mocking and gloating:

Our funny little “biases” — not “opinions,” “views,” or even “ravings.” We have our peculiar beliefs…

Oh my! have I unjustly judged rufus? This bloviating blowhard couldn’t possibly harbor any ‘BIAS’! His steadfast defense of Israel is simply a set of ‘peculiar beliefs’ – whose factual basis(?), he readily offers:

… like the Israelis are not quite as bad as the Nazis. And our fastidious insistence that non-state actors can commit atrocities, too.

Here rufus re-words what he has previously said. That Israel is justified in killing Arab innocents because both the Nazi’s in the 1940’s and non-State terr0rists of today have killed more innocents than Israel.
Hey everyone, its open season on innocents! Its the new rage – everyone’s doing it.

<> = <> = <> = <> = <> = <> = <>

And what’s up with the royal “we”. I guess he feels that he rules here now that he is beyond rebuke.

Posted by: Jackrabbit | Nov 30 2015 5:32 utc | 84

@79 james
Yeah, I noticed his predisposition for Erdogan, but his background on Turkey is very interesting … not necessarily his interpretation of history but just the history itself. I can believe he’s got the names and the sequence of events right. My ignorance of Turkish history is right up there with my ignorance of that of the all the -stans in central asia. I know a little of Turkey’s ancient history, but that’s before there were was an Ottoman empire or a Turkey.
Reading your second link … his sympathy for Turkey’s and Saudi Arabia’s actions is pretty repulsive, but he certainly hits the nail on the head when he says,
“Meanwhile, whichever way it goes, the Middle-Eastern peoples keep getting trampled on by empires.”
That is the fault of the KSA/USA, in my view. They’re the ones who started it, thirty-five years ago, and they’ve only made it progressively worse since. They were responsible for the “Afghans” and now the “Chechans”. Their ‘original sin’ is the ease with which they objectify all humans other than themselves.
When the source of your wealth is WW’s I and II, and all your treasure is invested in your Wehrmacht, all you do is identify new enemies and make new wars. The US just cannot resist identifying ‘potential’ rivals and attempting to ‘take them out’ early.
That’s the US corporate class : too rich, lazy, dimwitted, and greedy to identify a decent way to make a living rather than a killing.
They’ve lined up the whole economy – what’s left of it – like ducklings, stretched out in a line behind them. And then there’re the financiers … the US is just what it’s made in its image in the Middle East : a dead man walking.

Posted by: jfl | Nov 30 2015 6:30 utc | 86

AtaBrit @ 10,
Rufus Magister @ 4,
Rufus & AtaBrit, it begins to seem more probable to me that the consequences of the shootdown were intended as pressure on Turkey (after all, the consequences were predictable). The consequences of killing the President of the Turkish Bar it seems to me are also a way to pressure Turkey. (It’s quite impossible that Erdogan can have chosen to publicly execute him on-camera by CNN.) If it’s real somebody other than Erdogan did it to pressure him, but what is it US or Israel want him to do? And if it’s NOT real; if it’s the HOAX it rather looks like, same question. Oh-oh, I’ve used that word again. I think it’s a definite false flag to be blamed on Erdogan– and quite possibly a HOAX. Or could they really want civil war in Turkey– incalculable chaos.

Posted by: Penelope | Nov 30 2015 6:44 utc | 88

Norwegian Bob @ 72,
It IS incredible to believe that anyone can entertain the official explanation of 9-11, isn’t it? Pentagon is almost worse; the original hole was MUCH too small to accommodate a plane. Not to mention that it’s impossible for a large jet to fly at those speeds at a low altitude. (Too much air resistance; air’s actually thicker)

Posted by: Penelope | Nov 30 2015 6:50 utc | 90

Here is a link I think might be significant
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2015-11/30/c_134868487.htm
The title
Interview: BRICS media should collaborate to break Western hegemony in news reporting
The BRICS are holding a media summit in Beijing in early December
Nice to see a spade being called a spade.

Posted by: psychohistorian | Nov 30 2015 7:05 utc | 92

To me, conspiracy theorists are so annoying, not that some may not be true, rather there is so much real hypocrisy and double dealing going on, which can be proved with irrefutable evidence that needs to be concentrated on. It is playing into the hands of the powers that be, when all they need to say to the general public is “Oh they are nutcases who espouse any lunatic theory, take no notice of them” to ordinary members of the general public that works.

Posted by: harry law | Nov 30 2015 9:12 utc | 94

@86 p
I am not running down people “who know less than ourselves”. I don’t believe in classes of people, in an ‘intelligencia’. I despise the term ‘lumpen proletariat’ almost as much as I despise the people who mouth it. I am noting the common, human anxiety that, given our atomized existence in ‘modern society’ – all of us stripped of power to varying degrees over our own lives – are prey to.
Even if we’re ‘well-off’, in fact especially if we are eating high on the corporate/academic hog, there’re places we cannot go without putting our own, special ‘good thing’ in jeopardy. As we look around ourselves and see increasingly more people in desperate straits we cleave that much more tightly to our own, personal ‘good thing’ – if we’re lucky enough ever to have had one – reduced as it now may have become. So we cling to convention, and value too highly the appreciation of our fellows for doing so.
That’s what I see and so try to communicate. A better man than I said, ‘While there is a lower class, I am in it, while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.’ Though debs is dead, yet his spirit lives. All of us can stand to live more freely, I know I can. And I’ve found that – whenever I’ve encountered it – the truth does make you free.

Posted by: jfl | Nov 30 2015 10:00 utc | 96

77
So tell MoA about the ‘physics’ (or in your case, the optics) of a fully loaded fully fueled commercial airplane full of 100s of passengers (they claim) performing a 270-degree spiralling dive at near mach speeds and with multiple g’s, at far, far above known and tested airframe capability for flight speed at sealevel altitude:density, coming in at 500knots and only 50, then 25 feet above the deck, which neither any commercial pilot nor any fighter pilot for that matter says they could achieve, before slamming into 12-feet thick blast-resistant solid concrete Pentagon, at exactly the location of the Congressional DoD looting records, and blowing a gynormous hole almost completely through the ring but without any burning fuel, without any wings sheared off, without two massive engines smoking in the rubble, without a giant tail section on the lawn, and magically, all the passengers and all their luggage ‘vaporized’ the zDHS told US … when we’ve just been treated to two recent high-velocity plane crashes into ordinary earth, leaving wings, fuselage, tail section, engines, a flat burntout crater filled with bodies and baggage.
You can’t have it both ways. Only a high-velocity explosive warhead could have done that damage to the Pentagon, …and don’t forget Y2K, everything in those DoD looting records was stored in many duplicate digital copy files in some New Jersey warehouse,…which subsequently reported the data was ‘lost’ on the harddrives,…when the FBI has just retrieved Hillary’s emails that had been professionally wiped.
Rumsfeld was forced to admit the PNACs had looted taxpayers for $2.3 TRILLION on the eve of 9/11, and 24 hours later, all those records were destroyed, and shortly thereafter, the investigators killed off or in hiding. The French knew what to do with Collaborators like you: shave your heads and make you wear rags, picking for rotten potatoes through the garbage of a New World Order that you’ve reduced US to.

Posted by: Chipnik | Nov 30 2015 10:27 utc | 98

Interesting report from 2004. Eleven years ago. Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Strategic Communication pp. 39-41

American direct intervention in the Muslim World has paradoxically elevated the stature of and support for radical Islamists, while diminishing support for the United States to single-digits in some Arab societies.
• Muslims do not “hate our freedom,” but rather, they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the longstanding, even increasing support for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, and the Gulf states.
• Thus when American public diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to Islamic societies, this is seen as no more than self-serving hypocrisy. Moreover, saying that “freedom is the future of the Middle East” is seen as patronizing, suggesting that Arabs are like the enslaved peoples of the old Communist World — but Muslims do not feel this way: they feel oppressed, but not enslaved.
• Furthermore, in the eyes of Muslims, American occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq has not led to democracy there, but only more chaos and suffering. U.S. actions appear in contrast to be motivated by ulterior motives, and deliberately controlled in order to best serve American national interests at the expense of truly Muslim self- determination.
• Therefore, the dramatic narrative since 9/11 has essentially borne out the entire radical Islamist bill of particulars. American actions and the flow of events have elevated the authority of the Jihadi insurgents and tended to ratify their legitimacy among Muslims. Fighting groups portray themselves as the true defenders of an Ummah (the entire Muslim community) invaded and under attack — to broad public support.
• What was a marginal network is now an Ummah-wide movement of fighting groups. Not only has there been a proliferation of “terrorist” groups: the unifying context of a shared cause creates a sense of affiliation across the many cultural and sectarian boundaries that divide Islam.
• Finally, Muslims see Americans as strangely narcissistic — namely, that the war is all about us. As the Muslims see it, everything about the war is — for Americans — really no more than an extension of American domestic politics and its great game. This perception is of course necessarily heightened by election-year atmospherics, but nonetheless sustains their impression that when Americans talk to Muslims they are really just talking to themselves.
Thus the critical problem in American public diplomacy directed toward the Muslim World is not one of “dissemination of information,” or even one of crafting and delivering the “right” message. Rather, it is a fundamental problem of credibility. Simply, there is none.

None at home either. At least there should not have been. Yet here we are eleven years later. Haven’t moved an inch.
Well, not really true … we’ve run out of money, and so we have found that it’s cheaper to, in the words of Jay Gould, “hire one half of the [Muslim] working class to kill the other half”.

Posted by: jfl | Nov 30 2015 11:43 utc | 100