I see my leader headed off to china to have a talk with the big guns …”More than four decades after his father first began paving the way in the 1970s, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau arrived in China early Tuesday to begin his first official visit there, with both countries keen to forge ever-stronger economic ties.
Trudeau, travelling with wife Sophie Gregoire Trudeau and seven-year-old daughter Ella-Grace, said last week that he hopes the visit provides the opportunity to “reset” the relationship between the two countries”
“In his meetings with Xi and Li, Trudeau is expected to discuss a dispute over Chinese rule changes that could affect Canada’s multibillion-dollar canola exports.
He also plans to raise the issue of jailed Canadian Kevin Garratt, who was arrested in China two years ago for espionage. The prime minister has said there’s no evidence to support the allegations.
Talks with China always call for an especially delicate form of diplomacy. Ritz offered Trudeau some advice when broaching China’s less-than-stellar human rights record: don’t do it in public.
“They take the criticism and recognize the fact they’re a global entity and that social networks as well as newscasts and so on like that — there’s a lot more coverage of everything that happens,” he said.
“They have to realize at some point they have to change the way they handle their own population and the way they handle outsiders trying to invest in that economy.
“They do take that as constructive criticism. They may not like it.” be carful Justin I hear Russia is moving more to agriculture and may take up growing canola http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/justin-trudeau-leaves-on-china-trip-1.3740505

Posted by: Terry | Aug 30 2016 19:32 utc | 4

Turkish Incursion into Northern Syria Signals Turning Point in Anti-ISIS Fight.

Posted by: james | Aug 30 2016 19:49 utc | 6

try that link again here..

Posted by: james | Aug 30 2016 20:00 utc | 8

Erdogan has been building power move by move for some time now. Rather than erratic, he is unpredictable as he sees openings were others do not.
He now seems to have succesfully thrown off US control. Quite an achievement. Incirlik/NATO? – why throw away the carrot and the stick that can be used to both lead and beat the donkey with.
A few face saving statements by all parties involved in Turkey’s move into Syria and perhaps tense times in the Kremalin hoping they have enough leverage over Erdogan to hold him to his end of the deal.
Doing a deal with Erdogan is a risk, but pushing the US out of Syria is not going to happen without some risk. There can be no peace in Syria while the US is present.

Posted by: Peter AU | Aug 30 2016 20:29 utc | 10

To add on to my last post, I can’t see anything stopping Erdogan marching his Free Syrian Army all the way down the Euphrates, handing out Free Syrian Army uniforms along the way, booting out the US backed camp Bucca crowd and then turning his brand new army on the US backed Kurds? Why stop with some so called safe zone along the border?

Posted by: Peter AU | Aug 30 2016 20:44 utc | 12

Why Jill can beat Hillary … and Trump

Posted by: nmb | Aug 30 2016 21:14 utc | 14

suppose to be 13

Posted by: jo6pac | Aug 30 2016 22:05 utc | 16

NMB @ 14:
It would be possible for Jill Stein to beat the Klintonator and Trump if the US had direct elections. But in a system where the President is actually elected by an Electoral College, and the electors are chosen based on the results of the primaries, is it perhaps too late or impossible for Stein and the US Green Party or some other candidate/s to mount a serious challenge that would either change the make-up of the Electoral College or persuade or force the electors to break their pledges to vote for HRC or Trump?
I believe someone did bring up this issue about the US Electoral College in a recent comments forum here but can’t remember who did.

Posted by: Jen | Aug 30 2016 23:12 utc | 18

Nick 17. TTIP seems to be circling the drain but never underestimate the nefarious possibilities of a lame duck session. Meanwhile there’s a Canada-EU trade deal called CETA that also hasn’t received much mention in US media.
Brussels wants to bypass EU parliaments. (They say because the process might take four years. But even if so, why the rush?)
http://www.dw.com/en/eu-aims-to-sidestep-parliaments-on-ceta/a-19363101
It sounds like the Germans are starting to get a bad taste for the globalist crap forced on them.
http://www.dw.com/en/growing-protest-against-ttip-and-ceta-trade-agreements-in-germany/a-19496077

Posted by: Curtis | Aug 31 2016 0:21 utc | 20

@ jfl 19; @jen 18
Why are these very unusual announcements /articles now being offered?
Yesterday ZH:
Will The Election Be Hacked: FBI Finds “Foreigners” Breached Two State Election Databases
“FBI alert Election database hacked in 2 states-Illinois Arizona”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-08-29/will-election-be-hacked-fbi-finds-breaches-two-state-voter-systems
Today
WashExaminer:
“Homeland (DHS) eyes special declaration to take charge of elections”
Johnson also said that the big issue at hand is that there isn’t a central election system since the states run elections. “There’s no one federal election system. There are some 9,000 jurisdictions involved in the election process,” Johnson said.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/homeland-eyes-special-declaration-to-take-charge-of-elections/article/2600592
and,
USA News -“A Candidate’s Death Could Delay or Eliminate the Presidential Election”
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-08-30/candidate-death-could-delay-or-eliminate-presidential-election
~ ~ ~ ~
It’s Mr. Putin’s meddling.
Will there be an Election or
October Surprise – Hillary is deemed unfit?

Posted by: likklemore | Aug 31 2016 0:40 utc | 22

Re: Posted by: Petri Krohn | Aug 30, 2016 3:27:05 PM | 3
Reuniting West & East Banglas would most definitely be a good thing as it would strengthen the Bangladesh cricket team no end.
Cricket needs some more competitive nations, this would be a step in the right direction for a more vibrant international cricket scene.

Posted by: Julian | Aug 31 2016 1:05 utc | 24

Re: Posted by: jo6pac | Aug 30, 2016 6:04:48 PM | 15
The surfing at the Tokyo Olympics should be fun.
I wonder if we can finally get some of these so-called ‘superheroes’ to appear IRL.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Surfer

Posted by: Julian | Aug 31 2016 1:25 utc | 26

Re: Posted by: Jen | Aug 30, 2016 7:12:04 PM | 18
It’s not impossible for a 3rd party candidate to win. They need to target a few smaller states and hope it’s enough to split the electoral college – and still come 3rd in overall votes to reach the House of Reps ballot.
If Gary Johnson won New Mexico – a State he was Governor in, it could theoretically be enough to propel him to the White House.
Unlikely though, he’d probably need to win at least 5 or 6 States to force a split Electoral College which would seem all but impossible.

Posted by: Julian | Aug 31 2016 1:29 utc | 28

Btw India has just signed a logistics sharing deal with the US. I guess now everyone will realise that India is certainly on US’s payroll.

Posted by: Dieter | Aug 31 2016 2:12 utc | 30

Here is a link to an article listing the 6 things that the EU wants out of the G20 meetings
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2016-08/30/c_135646133.htm
Of course I like the one that states, ” building a resilient international monetary and financial system”.

Posted by: psychohistorian | Aug 31 2016 3:25 utc | 32

While surfing the web came across List of Top 10 Countries Fighting Against ISIS.
Guess the 10 countries……? CRAP!
http://www.thecountriesof.com/list-of-top-10-countries-fighting-against-isis/

Posted by: Jack Smith | Aug 31 2016 3:47 utc | 34

Jill Stein could win through time honored electoral corruption; the kind that the citizenry know and love. By her perfectly sane and decent offer to cancel student debt, she is effectively offering to buy 43 million votes at $30,000 per vote! Of course the 43 million debtors will shrink in horror; “I couldn’t possibly sell my precious vote! The offer is way too high! I wouldn’t feel right about myself; I’d rather settle for no cash but the chance to try to guess which of the two repugnant zombies is the “lesser evil”. Pathetic! So brainwashed, can’t even be bribed to do the right thing.

Posted by: nationofbloodthirstysheep | Aug 31 2016 4:14 utc | 36

Re: Posted by: Jack Smith | Aug 30, 2016 11:47:31 PM | 34
What astounds me most about that list is the lack of representation of Iraq & Syria!
I mean seriously!!

Posted by: Julian | Aug 31 2016 5:41 utc | 38

@ Jackrabbit | Aug 30, 2016 11:30:01 PM | 33
Fine piece of writing, still nothing more than a hopium pipe-dream. The only time a ‘third party’ ever won the presidency was 1860 when the Whig party had died and the Democratic party was fatally divided over slavery that the electoral college cast its votes for the nascent Republican party. That Republican party also carried with it in its election some significant number of delegates to Congress, enough to support their party’s administration.
Your third party does none of that, only a display of ‘political morality’. As desirable as that might be, it is completely naïve to think that would be sufficient to govern; but of such things hopium pipe-dreams are made, but nothing else outside some Disney-esque fantasy (as important as those may be). No contribution from either Libertarians or Greens are likely to have an effect on either the main parties, therefore a vote for either becomes an ineffective ballot cast. Stated earlier, effective ballots will be FOR either main party (voting motives described earlier) or NO ballot cast.

Posted by: Formerly T-Bear | Aug 31 2016 6:17 utc | 40

Here is a link to an article about the huge GERD dam being constructed on the Blue Nile in Ethiopia.
https://theconversation.com/the-most-important-dam-you-probably-havent-heard-of-58849
Here is the section I found most interesting
”
Ethiopian leaders have taken unusual steps to fund the GERD, which is projected to cost $4.8 billion. Typically such projects are financed through Western international organizations such as the World Bank. But most financing for the GERD has come from domestic sources, including taxes, sales of government bonds to Ethiopians at home and abroad, and a national lottery. Chinese banks reportedly are providing funding for the dam’s turbines and electrical equipment.
”
I might not agree with the project because of potential environmental impacts and better technology to produce energy in Ethiopia available now. That said, their funding it without being under control of private finance is, I am sure, a source of insult to the Gawds of Mammon…..and brings a smile to my face.
Another of my favorite topics, potable and irrigation water, is central to the article and its discussion. I don’t think it goes far enough because it doesn’t explore nascent technologies that could change the water equation significantly nor push for a comprehensive solution that would involve all the stakeholders of the Nile. Will humanity have wars over control of potable water or evolve a way to make it sustainably?…..rhetorical question except that it begs the issue of who should “own/profit” from that sort of technology……..just what is socialism? I laugh as I write this because of the American brainwashing that has its citizens refuse to see the successful socialistic realities in front of their noses…..case in point…go Google Tacoma Power. It is a socialist entity that has existed since 1893 providing electric power a a public utility…what a concept…. I grew up in Tacoma and my uncle was an engineer at Tacoma Power.

Posted by: psychohistorian | Aug 31 2016 7:32 utc | 42

Same for death of IS spokeman in Aleppo yesterday. Wasn’t it a place where the Russians and Syrians were bombing ‘our allies’ but where there was no IS. One could feel the msm’s unease

Posted by: Mina | Aug 31 2016 7:42 utc | 44

mauisurfer@39 – The truth of the matter is a bit more nuanced than David Mikkelson’s treatment of the issue in Snopes, mauisurfer. Mikkelson starts out with two very specific statements attributed to Giap: 1) We (the NVA) were ready to surrender after x, and 2) The NVA were ready to surrender but John Kerry’s Vietnam Veterans Against the War (or other anti-war efforts) convinced us to keep fighting.
The most glaringly false part of those statements is the surrender part. Americans often tried (and continue in other countries) to project western military/political thinking onto the North’s leadership at the time. ‘Surrender’ wasn’t even part of the North’s thinking, and this was (at the time) nearly impossible for American political and military leaders to understand. Giap often talked about being defeated in specific battles, but would never have opined about the North considering surrender – at any point. Western reporters often misinterpreted his references about not having the capability to continue specific military battles as surrender. Giap and his colleagues literally meant that their forces and military capability were nearly annihilated in specific instances and could no longer fight or resist, not that the NVA or the North were close to surrender.
So Mikkelson got that part right – Giap didn’t and wouldn’t say such things.
Giap and the rest of the leadership of the North did say many times that their aim was to make American troops leave at the behest of the U.S. government. Giap never said they would defeat them militarily nor drive them out by force.
From a NYT interview with Giap in 1990:

“…We were not strong enough to drive out a half-million American troops, but that wasn’t our aim,” he told me. ”Our intention was to break the will of the American Government to continue the war. Westmoreland was wrong to expect that his superior firepower would grind us down. If we had focused on the balance of forces, we would have been defeated in two hours. We were waging a people’s war…”

They were encouraged by the U.S. anti-war movement and stunts like Jane Fonda’s visit. That proved to them that there were cracks in the will of the U.S. to continue the war and U.S. leaders might relent and give up. They saw the disastrous effects of a war micromanaged by the White House and knew Westmoreland wasn’t running the show by any means. All they (the NVA) had to do was show up every day and fight, and give the U.S. enough time back home to decide to quit. The Taliban are doing the same thing in Afghanistan, and it will have the same result – but I digress…
Giap would not have made any statements about a U.S. military failure in Vietnam, in fact he has stated quite the opposite. The North Vietnamese made a lot of noise about ‘victory’ at the time of the U.S. pullout, but that didn’t imply any imagined military defeat of U.S. forces in the minds of the NVA. ‘Victory’ was waiting for the U.S. politicians to cave – that’s it. They outlasted a seige. Giap may exaggerate his contribution to ‘breaking the will of the American Government’ at times, but has always recognized that this was largely a American domestic issue.
Claim: Vietnamese general Vo Nguyen Giap’s memoirs pinned U.S. military failure in Vietnam on anti-war reporting in the American media.
Would have been better stated as Giap pinned the removal of U.S. troops on the lost will of the U.S. government, as he as stated many times. And Giap would have attributed that lost will both to the North’s tenacity and to the U.S public turning increasingly hostile to the war. The anti-war movement, the MSM, political ineptness and White House micro-mismanagement of the war all contributed to that eventuality.
However Giap phrased it any given time, he would have acknowledged that the anti-war reporting was important in the North’s ‘victory’ of having U.S. troops removed. Ever since then, a huge part of the Pentagon’s mission (if sent to war) became propaganda and psyops. They will make sure the will of the American people matches the mission they have been assigned: by censorship, by managing information, by deception or by outright lies. They are now part of the problem with America and will never again be part of any solution.
You can’t ever un-Borg the military. It’s a death-spiral 100% of the time. The leaders in the Pentagon today have no clue what’s happening as a result or the permanent damage they have done. Military flyers would call it target fixation – the Pentagon is flying the U.S. military straight into the side of a mountain without blinking. Years from now, people will be scratching their heads wondering what the hell they were thinking at the time.

Posted by: PavewayIV | Aug 31 2016 7:55 utc | 46

PavewayIV says:
They will make sure the will of the American people matches the mission they have been assigned
for sure a conscripted army is a more unruly army and this was certainly a factor behind the anti-war movement of the 60s, but sometimes lost in the nostalgia for those ‘dovish’ days is the fact that the anti-war sentiment was very unpopular with a large majority of Americans(gosh, imagine that!). the anti anti-war movie ‘The Green Berets’ with big John Wayne was a huge commercial success and, in fact, the war crime in Vietnam was sustained by Congress for some twenty years. there were many reasons for the ‘winding down’ of the Vietnam war, aside from the fact that we were basically losing it(can’t win a war from the air), but let’s face it, it was mostly because of ‘power brokerage’ intervention…”for the broader interests of US imperialism.”

Posted by: john | Aug 31 2016 9:56 utc | 48

PavewayIV | Aug 31, 2016 3:55:18 AM | 46
As an early resister to the U.S. war on Vietnam, and an early admirer of both Ho and Giap (I knew some history re: both); I heartily agree with your push-back to mauisurfer’s comment.
I for one do not believe either Ho Chi Minh, Giap, or the people of Vietnam would have ever surrendered to the U.S.. Hell, they never acquiesced in their 500 year battle against China.

Posted by: V. Arnold | Aug 31 2016 10:48 utc | 50

people like to reflect on how small they are relative to the scale of the universe because capitalism makes them feel powerless
https://mobile.twitter.com/VNGiapaganda/status/770811838263066629

Posted by: hejiminy cricket | Aug 31 2016 11:53 utc | 52

@22
https://www.databreaches.net/191-million-voters-personal-info-exposed-by-misconfigured-database/
In 2015 many databases of voter info were found searchable on the internet. But this was before the “Russian spy” war propaganda and after the last “China spy” war propaganda. So the stories are to create Russian war hysteria when the massive cheating, vote denial, computer vote “failures” happen as is usual in our elections.
Voter “caging” is practiced by many Secretaries of State to cleanse voter lists of the lower economic classes. They hire sloppy private IT companies to do this work. They do crap work and access voter databases by hook or by crook and leave traces all over. Also voter data is probably used to fill in ID theft databases so lots of criminals are using it for filing the millions of fraud tax return scams, etc. Most of the voter databases are for sale from the states for less than $100/copy.
So why more anti-Russia propaganda? War.

Posted by: Jo 6pak | Aug 31 2016 13:04 utc | 54

Another MSM whore………
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/08/12/middleeast/clarissa-ward-unsc-syria/

Posted by: notlurking | Aug 31 2016 13:15 utc | 56

Supreme Court Vacates Ex-Virginia Governor’s Graft Conviction
By ADAM LIPTAKJUNE 27, 2016, NYT
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday made it harder to prosecute public officials for corruption, unanimously overturning the conviction of Bob McDonnell, a former governor of Virginia.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the court, narrowed the definition of what sort of conduct can serve as the basis of a corruption prosecution. He said only formal and concrete government actions counted — filing a lawsuit, say, or making an administrative determination. Routine political courtesies like arranging meetings or urging underlings to consider a matter, he added, generally do not, even when the people seeking those favors give the public officials gifts or money.
=======
Clintons almost surely operated legally. The uranium business was particularly legal and elegant, and the only incriminating conclusion I can make is contrary to some appearances, HRC can rationally work with Russians. The current case against HRC seems to be that even though she is a homicidal maniac, “as we all like it”, her charity work is intolerable.

Posted by: Piotr Berman | Aug 31 2016 13:52 utc | 58

Great back and forth regarding General Giap and the surrender topic. I am in agreement with the no surrender side. Despite being occupied by China for a thousand years, surrender was not an option.
Afghanistan is a similar situation, fighting is in their dna evidently.

Posted by: Morongobill | Aug 31 2016 13:59 utc | 60

Seems that Justin bought a little time in the canola file with China .”Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says existing rules with China on canola exports have been extended beyond a Sept. 1 deadline as the two countries continue to negotiate a long-term solution.”
Another issue that came up was ….”Canada will also apply to join the China-backed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), the bank’s president Jin Liqun said on Wednesday, making it the latest ally of the United States to join the new international development bank.
The $100-billion US multilateral institution, seen as a rival to the Western-dominated World Bank and Asian Development Bank, was initially opposed by the United States but attracted many U.S. allies including Britain, Germany, Australia and South Korea as founding members.””
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/trudeau-canola-export-regime-china-1.3742341
Things are a changing and the west can’t dominate for much longer .China’s rise will only get stronger in tomorrows world and I think that is a good thing .

Posted by: Terry | Aug 31 2016 14:08 utc | 62

ALberto 23. The quote from Giap is interesting for two reasons.
1. It is used to subvert anti-war protests in the US and was used more recently against those who opposed the Iraq War as well as John Kerry supporters.
2. I am not a fan of snopes but occasionally they get it right which I guess makes them more of a limited hang out or judas goat. Having wrote that, Snopes debunks the Giap quote. Giap never considered surrender. They were always going to fight for their version of their country against outsiders. The website Urbanlegends runs the same thing.
The US anti-war efforts were important to the VietNamese and the Russians/ChiComs. One this point we agree: Our media is corrupt. But one has to wonder why it pushed the VN war so much only to switch and oppose it … unless that was part of the plan … to get the US to destroy and kill, to lose face, be weakened, and then pay the costs back home in blood and money.
Beware of quotes from the famous that seem to be confessions or tell it like it is. I used to subscribe to the Giap quote, too along with quotes from Woodrow Wilson, JFK, and Thomas Jefferson that turned out to not have backing, be incomplete, or be taken out of context.

Posted by: Curtis | Aug 31 2016 14:12 utc | 64

john@48 – “…but sometimes lost in the nostalgia for those ‘dovish’ days is the fact that the anti-war sentiment was very unpopular with a large majority of Americans(gosh, imagine that!)…”
Not lost on me. I was the product of a blue-collar, religious Midwest upbringing and in grade school in 1968. None of that anti-war hippie nonsense was tolerated in my home, neighborhood, school, work, etc. Nobody wanted to send their kids to war, but nobody squawked much when their kids came back home in aluminum boxes either. It was just their sad duty to obey the government if their number came up. In the estimation of far too many ‘little people’, soldiers had to go fight wars, no matter how weak or irrational the government’s reasons.
I didn’t understand the control mechanism – the self-reinforcing psychopathy and learned helplessness aspects – of such a horribly sick society until decades later. Then I got to witness the new and improved version of the same rolled out by the government/military for Iraq and – to my horror – it worked beautifully once again. Has anything really changed today? Hard to convince little people of how sick the state is when they rely on it so much. If you really want to enslave a population, forget the shackles – just use a flag.

Posted by: PavewayIV | Aug 31 2016 15:12 utc | 66

Snopes is such a trusted resource that anything it says is untrue in immediately rendered 100% false …
The legendary general had made headlines recently with his revelation last spring that the government of North Vietnam was literally days away from quitting the Vietnam War, even as its troops overran Saigon in 1975. He was interviewed by Duffel Blog in April 2013 at his private residence in Hanoi, on the anniversary of the Fall of Saigon.
“As our tanks were rolling into the presidential palace [in South Vietnam], if America had conducted just one more air strike we would have thrown in the towel,” Giap admitted. “And thank god they didn’t,” Giap added, “because, let me tell you, that tank was running on fumes.”
The general, who had previously given multiple interviews about the conduct of North Vietnam during the conflict, told reporters that he felt the time was right to set the record straight about “our long national nightmare.”
“We had actually been looking for a way to end this endless war or ‘quagmire,’ that we had found ourselves stuck in, ever since 1945,” Giap said. “Just when we thought we were done fighting the Japanese we found ourselves fighting the French and then the Americans.”
Giap also added, “We weren’t even supposed to win [the Vietnam War]. We were just trying to get rid of a group of political prisoners and create the face-saving conditions for us to sue for peace.”
source – http://www.duffelblog.com/2013/10/vietnam-war-winning/#ixzz4IvLQqCgt
Snopes as a resource? Please!

Posted by: ALberto | Aug 31 2016 15:28 utc | 68

from SyrPer
“For the past few days we have witnessed the Turkish-backed terrorists’ invasion of the Jaraabulus area under the pretext of attacking ISIS. But, in reality, very little fighting has happened between these two forces so far. ISIS is retreating quickly from the area. The real fight has been taking place between the invading force against the SDF. Amazingly, both forces enjoy US backing which makes the situation very weird, to say the least.
Read more at http://syrianperspective.com/2016/08/american-war-crimes-and-the-kurdish-revolt-in-al-hasaka-joe-bidens-rojava-and-his-turkish-allies-canthama-reports-the-news-today-saudi-arabia-desperate-hires-isis-to-figh.html#wMugAmbeUYwPAJyp.99“
i.e. same as in Libya where the Western coalition support at least 2 of the 3 sides in conflit (the 2 “legal” governements) (and of course the 3rd side too but unofficially).

Posted by: Mina | Aug 31 2016 15:46 utc | 70

@70 mina.. isis is the turkish pretext, but it isn’t the reason… stopping the kurds was the reason.. turkey might be wondering what to do about their paid headchopper cult friends, but they weren’t going after them.. that was obvious from the start..

Posted by: james | Aug 31 2016 16:16 utc | 72

“As our tanks were rolling into the presidential palace [in South Vietnam], if America had conducted just one more air strike we would have thrown in the towel,” Giap admitted. “And thank god they didn’t,” Giap added, “because, let me tell you, that tank was running on fumes.”
That has the smell of the Brooklyn Bridge offered at deep, deep discount. This is not how Communist leaders think and talk. Additionally, in the context of Tet Offensive it would be slightly plausible, but in the context of 1975 when “our tanks were rolling into the presidential palace in Saigon”, it was making no sense whatsoever. In a massive war, a tank (and the crew) is for short term use. Did China and Soviet Union experience a shortage of spare parts and new tanks? Or fuel shortage? Ammo shortage? And consider this alleged Giap’s sentence: “We were just trying to get rid of a group of political prisoners and …” WTF? Among all cares and worries, a Communist leader thinks about “political prisoners”? Number one, they do not use the term, they do not think in that way. “Traitors”, if anything. (For that matter, find a mainstream military figure in USA thinking that Manning is a political prisoner.) Number two, how could prisoners give North Vietnam any kind of trouble?
The idea that at the age of 92 and half a year before his death Giap gave an interview to Duffel Blog is in itself puzzling.

Posted by: Piotr Berman | Aug 31 2016 16:27 utc | 74

Piotr Berman@74 – Duffel Blog is a satire site, something like The Onion but directed at the military. There was no interview. They were playing off of the resurfacing of accounts (internet gossip) that Giap has actually said something like this at one time.
ALberto@68 posted the Duffel Blog to show how ridiculous the accounts of the Giap ‘surrender’ comments had become. What ALberto didn’t mention is that Mikkelson at Snopes was not responding directly to the Duffel Blog fake interview, but to a more widespread belief in the Giap comments circulating around – comments that originally prompted their satirical article.

Posted by: PavewayIV | Aug 31 2016 16:43 utc | 76

@ james, 5-7, others. One formulation of the nitty-gritty:
Against Rojava
— Turkey. Kurd state/autonomous R. on its borders, Kurd ascendancy, legitimacy, even if Turkey might thus expel some its ‘own’ Kurd independence is anathema. Syria of Assad. Iran. .. For ‘A unitary Syria under Assad or similar.’
On the fence
— USA ambivalent, fluctuating. (Aka no clear aim.) Support/ed Kurds YPG against IS, while the US itself supports IS, etc. It has thrown the Kurds under a bus, which they should be used to by now, but see Iraq .. not that Iraqi Kurd-land to deliberately use a non-conventional label, is a poster child, even for the Kurds themselves.
USA shows weak possibly false signs of accepting a ‘whole Syria’ in a tussle with Yinon-plan hype-stuff to break up Syria into powerless quarelling mini-fiefs, see internal US quarrels.
KSA (+ satellites) is in alliance with Turkey to ‘fight terrorism’ (rich! – link) + with the US of course principally to get rid of Assad / aka Syria as it was (though one should! question if the US was the main mover..), etc. Idk what KSA has stated if anything about the Turk ‘invasion’ into Syria.
For Rojava
The Kurds.
One attempt at summary, others are possible. The mother of all proxy wars it makes one’s head spin.
ME Eye April 2016

Posted by: Noirette | Aug 31 2016 17:19 utc | 78

There is nothing to fear about a Donald Trump presidency. Anti-Trump hysteria is a product of the elite-owned media. Trump opposes US foreign intervention and regime change, a profound step toward world peace. His one exception is the destruction of ISIS.
If you like Jill’s politics, let that wait 8 years. We need first and foremost to still be alive. Let Jill run after the Donald has created world peace and friendship with Russia. Pomeroy@77
Presidential hopeful Donald Trump has vowed to shoot down Russian jets approaching U.S. military assets should the Kremlin reject calls to stop. Newsweek, May 2016
There is a very reasonable suspicion that Trump is a cretin, his positions are a hodgepodge, and partially because of that, the hodgepodge contains few reasonable sentences, although in context that does not resemble anything like a “policy framework”. And the record high negative ratings of Trump are not a mere product of unfriendly media. I think it is more the clips of his making various statements.

Posted by: Piotr Berman | Aug 31 2016 18:56 utc | 80

@77 kp, ‘If Jill Stein steals anti-establishment voters away from Donald Trump, he could lose to Hillary Clinton’
The idea of erstwhile Trump supporters seeing the light and voting for Jill Stein seems absurd. For the libertarian, Johnson, maybe.
Much more likely that ‘liberals’ and/or ‘progressives’ who’d lined up for and got the Bern will vote for Jill rather than for mobbed-up Ma Clinton, IMHO. I agree that Trump is probably the lessor of two evils, but Jill Stein is not behind the bars of the menagerie, not even in the running in the elephant/jackass contest of evils. I am not personally a fan of libertarianism or of Johnson, but a vote outside the menagerie is a vote for change.
To change the system requires one to change one’s habits and to reject bogus old saws. No to Clinton, No to Trump. And make it your new habit to stay out of the menagerie, and so to keep your shoes clean of evil, greater or lessor. Our journey of 1000 miles begins with the first, dung-free step.
And pay no attention to the ‘polls’. Last I saw from the corporate MSM, the Russians were going to fix the election. I don’t know if that’s just the dead-cat-bounce from their absurd ‘The Russians are coming’ push, or if they’re afraid it’s neck-and-neck – or worse, that Ma’s losing – and are preparing to blame Trump’s victory on Putin. The thing to do is to boost the ‘other’ count … 3rd party/write-in, they’re all good: Americans for radicle change.

Posted by: jfl | Aug 31 2016 19:27 utc | 82

@83
Of course Israel is the other angle of the ‘new’ real politic triangle in the ME. Proceeding with the final solution to its Palestinian problem and holding the nuclear card close to its vest it to has slipped out of the back door of the whorehouse and is hooking on its own in the ME. It is still the silent partner of the Triad, but is now ‘leading from behind’ a la the inspiration of its erstwhile pimp? Speak, not softly – but not at all, and carry the nuclear schtick.

Posted by: jfl | Aug 31 2016 20:19 utc | 84

Piotr Berman@74 – Duffel Blog is a satire site,…
I am totally ashamed. Indeed, I started to notice that there is suspicious number of obviously preposterous elements in Duffel Blog entry, but as we know, “serious” sources are all to often preposterous as well. But frankly, I did not stop to think.
No to Clinton, No to Trump. (jul @82)
To repeat myself, this is not my personal sentiment, but this is the year for such sentiment. Neither of the major parties is able to produce a candidate without huge negatives, as you get a badge of a “serious Democrat” or a “serious Republican” precisely by having such negatives. IMHO, the case of GOP is more hopeless, Trump being no more obnoxious than other “serious candidates”, except for the refreshing moments that endeared him to some pacifists. “Deterministic game theory” suggests going for “lesser evil”, but if you think about the game of Establishment vs People, it leads to “minimally acceptable packages”. Which would be fine, except that “minimally acceptable” does not work anymore. The only way to send signal for change is strong third party vote. Somewhat disappointingly, this vote goes mostly to Johnson, so indeed, it would be good to have more of it going to Stein.
While Establishment has many very smart individuals, as a collective it behaves like amoeba or some other brainless organism that can sense the concentration of nutrients and move accordingly. Third party vote exceeding several times the winning margin will hopefully be perceived as a signal that the nutrients consumed so far are getting depleted. Microorganisms that survived eons of evolution can react with a radical metabolic shift, so I have high hopes that Democratic Party will, in time, rise to the level of baker’s yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae).

Posted by: Piotr Berman | Aug 31 2016 21:26 utc | 86

@86 pb
The micro-organic metaphor strikes me as well … but I take thye slime molds as my inspiration. They are not really molds, although I suppose it is their ‘fruiting bodies’ which so resemble mushrooms that gave them that name. But they are free living (atomic) individuals, like ourselves, that spontaneously gather together when times get tough to meet the challenge of continued existence, which is what we need to do. But seem incapable of. We need to follow the example of organisms more highly evolved than ourselves. At 1 or terrible 2 million years we are the terrible infants of creation, about to bring the house down upon us all. We ought not to do that. We ought to use our powers of reflection to observe others and appropriate their ways when our own have left us, literally, at a dead end. We need to devolve the centers of our social organization to levels not so easily suborned by those whom Paveway terms the psychopaths: the greediest and most ruthless among us all, the deaf, dumb, and blind who are leading us to perdition, we need to redistribute the power of social organization among ourselves.

Posted by: jfl | Sep 1 2016 0:06 utc | 88

Great video from a female artist I thought I’d share on the rail.
Lily”>https://youtu.be/lDlofPAOZy0″>Lily Allen – URL Badman (Official Video)

Posted by: Shadow Nine | Sep 1 2016 4:52 utc | 90

Here comes the G20 and here is a link about China’s opinion about what changes need to be made to “global economic governance architecture”.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2016-09/01/c_135651099.htm
Here are some core statements
”
Since the existing global economic governance architecture was designed by the United States, the world’s sole superpower, developing economies are traditionally underrepresented in global economic governance.
This year saw a crucial step forward for global economic governance reform, as IMF quota reform to give emerging markets a bigger say took effect after the United States cleared domestic legislative barriers.
The reform elevated China from sixth to third largest shareholder in the fund. Other emerging markets such as India, Russia and Brazil also gained more shares.
The change was hard won, given the obstinacy and tardiness of the U.S. Congress in responding to the evolving global environment. However, the current structure fails to mirror the global economic status. Reforms of major global multilateral agencies are far from complete.
The views and voices of developing nations should be heard more regularly. The voting shares of developing economies should be increased in proportion to their shares of global growth.
Allowing emerging economies bigger voices is indispensable for a fairer and more reasonable global governance system. More importantly, equal opportunities in global cooperation in terms of rights and rules will allow emerging markets to release more potential and boost their productivity.
”
The article goes on the say how the AIIB bank will provide another “restaurant” for countries and separately Canada has announced it will apply to join the AIIB.

Posted by: psychohistorian | Sep 1 2016 5:21 utc | 92

james yes, and the art. is old, it was just an illustration for part of the content..
I’m passing along the below about Syria because it attempts a fair *MSM* type job. It is a warning piece, challenging while not too strident in a wake-up-call kinda way. Geared to a US audience + W audience.
Useful, hopefully, for informing, jogging, ppl stuck on Assad is a monster but Oh my God Putin is evil incarnate – sources MSM and official etc. (No conspiracy whiffs.)
The 3 primary drivers of the war in Syria are listed as 1 Energy (which certainly plays a part), 2 The goal of IS in the Region, and rather clumsily: 3 Goal of the Adversial states to the Assad regime. Allrighty then.. IS figures implicitly as an original cause (with roots in Iraq, again, well…), as one can immediately detect in this quoted chart from CNN.
https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1200/1*cPxkFKs0mWJp7ZO3JNTx0g.png
There is also a chart of Russia and US arms exports, which I found of interest. The data / charts on Syrian deaths/refugees/displaced is probably the best one can do in small space. (This stuff I know..) I can’t judge the parts devoted to weapons (long.)
https://medium.com/deepconnections/prevailing-gray-swans-6-august-12-2016-329f8118a4b6#.8ouus1fvv

Posted by: Noirette | Sep 1 2016 14:51 utc | 94

jfl @88: Small parties have limited influence, particularly in the media-political system that we have in USA. Therefore to effect a major change you need to make a “take-over” of a major party. Movements that currently have sway over GOP were a minority phenomena a generation ago. To a lesser degree, this is also true about Democratic party, attention to gay rights is definitely a novelty, initially exploited by GOP as “cultural wedge issue”. So definitely Democratic party has a dinosaur core that is unfortunately represented by Senator Schumer. Schumer is currently slated to become a Senate Majority leader, would Democrats regain a majority, for which they seem to have 50% chance. If you read the words of the senior senator from the great state of New York, you can appreciate that this is the real, undiluted Establishment, HRC being a milder version. Schumer is so extreme that any attempt to run for President would be a laud bomb, yet he seems to have record approval in his native state. Particularly disturbing is his love life.
Sensible New Yorkers stick to opera and/or sexual obsessions which can be mocked, but to me, are well within norms of the humanity. Schumer loves Israel, and explained that this is the meaning of his surname. And Schumer loves companies. Now he feels the pain of poor, poor Apple that moved, on paper, to Ireland, to cut its corporate tax rate by half, and than arrange to avoid paying even that, which in EU rules constitutes “unfair advantage”. But there are also sign of more human sentiments in the party, say, Bernie Sanders, but also quite a few others.

Posted by: Piotr Berman | Sep 1 2016 15:20 utc | 96

Reply to Pyotr Berman: ON DONALD TRUMP
You say, “Presidential hopeful Donald Trump has vowed to shoot down Russian jets approaching U.S. military assets should the Kremlin reject calls to stop. Newsweek, May 2016.”
Newsweek is an unreliable Western mainstream media source. Trump’s comment has no doubt been quoted out of context. The GOP candidate has repeatedly expressed a desire for friendship with Russia, in stark contrast to anti-Russian warhawk Hillary Clinton.
You also quipped, “There is a very reasonable suspicion that Trump is a cretin, his positions are a hodgepodge, and partially because of that, the hodgepodge contains few reasonable sentences.” Don’t react to the man’s personality. Think about the future of the world. Donald Trump is in fact a brilliant executive with a consistent and well-thought-out foreign policy.
Trump said, in his April 27, 2016 Foreign Policy Speech: “Unfortunately, after the Cold War our foreign policy veered badly off course…. We went from mistakes in Iraq to Egypt to Libya, to President Obama’s line in the sand in Syria. Each of these actions have helped to throw the region into chaos and gave ISIS the space it needs to grow and prosper…. It all began with a dangerous idea that we could make western democracies out of countries that had no experience or interests in becoming a western democracy. We tore up what institutions they had and then were surprised at what we unleashed. Civil war, religious fanaticism, thousands of Americans just killed [and] lives, lives, lives wasted…. The vacuum was created that ISIS would fill….[T]he legacy of the Obama-Clinton interventions will be weakness, confusion and disarray, a mess. We’ve made the Middle East more unstable and chaotic than ever before…. Our actions in Iraq, Libya and Syria have helped unleash ISIS, and we’re in a war against radical Islam… We desire to live peacefully and in friendship with Russia and China.”
Full transcript:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/28/us/politics/transcript-trump-foreign-policy.html?_r=0

Posted by: Karl Pomeroy | Sep 1 2016 15:31 utc | 98

@93 noirette… thanks.. i like the first link which happens to also be a part of the larger 2nd linked article.. one problem i have with the 2nd article is how they are unwilling to point out how isis has been used by the usa to further it’s own regime change agenda… as b pointed out in a post a number of months ago, obama was caught in the lie openly… it is hard to go back to seeing the usa as the enemy of isis.. in fact, the whole ideology of the usa supporting ‘moderates’ is another huge conflict for me personally.. i asked this on another thread, but i will ask it again – if there was an armed group inside the usa trying to overthrow the usa gov’t, would they be viewed as ‘moderate’? the usa’s position is full of holes and doesn’t float…
now, i know you were only trying to show a more neutral msm article.. the first paragraph on energy goes into who is sunni, and who is shia! i read it like more propaganda to suggest this is some sort of religious war, lol..
i do agree weapon sales are an important part of understanding all this.. as debsisdead on the latest thread mentioned – if all the countries who have no business being in syria with their mercenary armies, would just leave, it would let the syrians work it out on their own…simplistic idea, but a lot of truth in it too.. instead many of these same meddling countries are okay with the mass exodus, or murder of innocent syrian people.. that is something the western msm will never let on about..

Posted by: james | Sep 1 2016 16:09 utc | 100