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November 18, 2016
Open Thread (NOT U.S. Election) 2016-39
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Although it is hilarious to see the Hillary supporters throwing a massive tantrum about ‘fake news,’ it does make it clear just how powerful having direct access to information is in negating money, mainstream media capture and control, and government propaganda.
I don’t know how much the new Trump presidency will change the US intelligence agency culture. But one has to assume they are apoplectic over their failure in Syria. Billions of dollars and years wasted all because people have direct access to information unfiltered out of Syria.
It should have a completely unremarkable US regime change operation:
* Send in the NGOs to agitate locals
* Make promises of support for attacks on the government by the sole world superpower
* Get selectively edited footage of your collaborators on the ground being attacked by the government(after they attacked the government)
* Pump out mass amounts of propaganda based off that footage: “Simple farmers rising up to overthrow a brutal regime!”
* Wield the tremendous economic power of the US to ensure the vast majority of smaller countries are on board with military action sanctioned by the UN
* Flood the country with arms for anyone no matter how crazy to attack the government
* Fake chemical attacks, US intelligence agency compromised UN reports and inspectors, etc.
All of that derailed by nothing more than people having direct access to information uncensored out of Syria.
I think it is safe to assume the US intelligence agencies are actively working on ways to make it illegal or impossible for anyone to publish, share, or consume ‘unauthorized’ information from countries that are targets of regime change.
The easiest way would be to designate any source of information not actively working with or approved by the US intelligence agencies will be increasingly labeled as ‘terror propaganda’ and US social media and Internet providers will be required to censor or shutdown any such sources.
Posted by: Stevens | Nov 18 2016 19:16 utc | 2
Stevens @ 2: Great post, thanks.
This “regime change” U$A foreign policy, has been implemented around the globe for many many years now, all in the interests of big corporate profits, and global hegemony. The sad truth seems to be, there are no signs its about to change.
Posted by: ben | Nov 18 2016 19:34 utc | 3
I was watching a travelogue program on PBS. The trip was to Cuba. The narrator traveled by train across the country. A train line that was originally built in the 1870s by Spain to divide the country for defensive and control purposes. The locomotives pulling the passenger cars were 1950s USA manufactured vintage and date to a time when our Federal Government had good economic relations with the Batista Regiem.
When I think of the cruel and unusual economic punishment dished out to Cuba by our Federal Government all I can see is a bunch of financially poor peasants who bear the brunt of U.S. economic warfare. Just as in the Middle East and now Europe economic sanction wars hurt the farmer, the small business operator, the basic family unit, etc., while rich people get richer. Isn’t it about time to back off on the economic war against Cuba and the rest of the Planet? Our collective cruelty seems to know no bounds?
Just my opinion
Posted by: ALberto | Nov 18 2016 20:00 utc | 4
Bernhard, I should think most of us reading and commenting here have pretty much accepted the result of the US presidential elections and are glad that Killer Klinton’s ambitions have crashed and her future seems to be in a white house with steel bar columns and uniformed prison guards.
The focus is now on President-elect Donald Trump’s likely cabinet appointments, who are the most likely choices for critical positions like Defense Secretary and State Secretary, what the process is and how that is being carried out (or not carried out), and what that says about Trump’s leadership and decision-making style, how he plans on being President and whether his choices are the right choices for his agenda (if it is genuine) of reforming the political culture on Capitol Hill, or “draining the swamp”.
If indeed Trump is intent on bringing changes to Capitol Hill, then there’s a strong likelihood that the Soros-funded “Color Revolution” rioting around the US East and West Coasts will come to Washington and we’ll be seeing a re-enactment of the Kiev Maidan events there.
Posted by: Jen | Nov 18 2016 20:01 utc | 5
Does the Constitution of the United States require the president to have a specific number of executive departments? The answer is no. George Washington only had four departments in his administration as first President of the United States.
Perhaps if Mr. Trump can’t find suitable candidates for his cabinet when he “drains the swamp”, he could assume the role as interim department head until such time as qualified non-militarists emerge from the private sector to serve in his administration.
Posted by: PokeTheTruth | Nov 18 2016 20:04 utc | 6
@2 stevens..thanks for your comments. lets hope open access to information continues.. the signs of this happening don’t look great, but they remain open still.. thankfully, moa is one of many sites where sharing info is of great benefit and continues..
M K Bhadrakumar’s latest..
Posted by: james | Nov 18 2016 20:36 utc | 7
@5
If indeed Trump is intent on bringing changes to Capitol Hill, then there’s a strong likelihood that the Soros-funded “Color Revolution” rioting around the US East and West Coasts will come to Washington and we’ll be seeing a re-enactment of the Kiev Maidan events there.
No, you will not be seeing “Maidan”. Middle America white (and not only) working class men are extremely well armed and are really angry still. So, if this rioting will come to Washington, who says that good ole’ Ford Truck can not run over mountain bike of Tesla? Once the shooting starts (hopefully not) it will be a totally different game than Kiev “Maidan”. There is also a trend, call it a hunch–most of US combat veterans from US endless wars tend to lean towards people like Trump.
Posted by: SmoothieX12 | Nov 18 2016 20:49 utc | 8
2
The Right firmly believes in Onward Xtian Soldiers for the Judeo-Xtian Axis, remember the $150,000,000,000 that ‘Obama Paid As Hostage to Iran’ was just a setup by the Right, that was Iran’s sovereign national wealth held in overseas investments and illegally frozen by the Right as an *act of war*.
When Obama agreed to end those illegal sanctions and let Iran retrieve their investments (which they may have done today, if you look at the huge market selloff), the Right again illegally crossed into Iran territory with their Navy patrol boats to create a false ‘hostage’ narrative.
Those Navy boats know where they are by GPS withing 3.5 meters (10 feet), and Iran didn’t beat them or waterboard them like AbuGraib or Gitmo, instead, they traded them for their *interest losses* on their illegally frozen foreign investments.
With Huckabee as nee Ambassador to Israel, and neocon Pompeo as named CIA Director, and Jared Kushner getting top secret briefings to pass along to his Israeli blood-diamond partner Lev Leviev, you can bet the Xtian Soldiers will be pouring our blood and our treasure onto the radioactive sands of the Middle East, filling up the VA hospitals again for the Judeo-Xtian Axis of Greater Isreal.
If anyone else has a happier sitrep, we’d all like to hear it.
Posted by: chipnik | Nov 18 2016 21:22 utc | 9
#8 – I read somewhere the majority of the enlisted were voting Trump and the officer corp leaning Clinton. It would be interesting to see the breakdown of the military vote.
Anybody witness the duet between Obama and Merkel on youtube? Merkel talked first while Obama stood off to the side with a ridiculous smirk on his bobble head. It was so horrible I couldn’t watch.
Posted by: ruralito | Nov 18 2016 21:27 utc | 11
Jen | Nov 18, 2016 3:01:27 PM | 5 and SmoothieX12 | Nov 18, 2016 3:49:18 PM | 8
We have one month before the electoral college votes. I suspect that this is the venue that the neolibcons will use to try to steal the election from Trump. The “demonstrators” paid and organized by Soros et al help set the background and provide the rationale for the “need” to “accept the will of the people”.
If this should transpire, then you will see civil unrest. The red states will not go along with the theft of the election for Clinton.
Posted by: Perimetr | Nov 18 2016 21:28 utc | 12
@12
Soros “paid for” protesters is just more of b’s “fake news”. I have friends, middle class professionals, who’ve been participating in California and all they know about Soros is he made a ton of $$ on Brit Currency bets 2 decades ago.
The elector’s “switch” is not going to happen, just more hysteria.
If this should transpire, then you will see civil unrest. The red states will not go along with the theft of the election for Clinton.
Even the “blue” states have very large and populous “red” areas–mostly beyond large urban centers which long ago became a cloaca of depravity. My point is, that this possible (how probable–that is totally another discussion) civil unrest, once “red” states America gets involved seriously, will not last too long for a number of purely tactical, operational and logistical reasons. This is if to discount the possibility of law enforcement actually enforcing the law and order which may, under certain conditions, turn very violent against those who will try to undermine constitutional process. Blue states can not win for mostly cultural reasons since, as I already stated, “Red” states’ America is simply armed on several orders of magnitude better and is really angry. It is also tougher. Social and cultural composition of HRC’s electorate speaks volumes–it is, in Steve Sailer’s words (I think it was him), a “coalition of the fringes” and not very capable to start with.
Posted by: SmoothieX12 | Nov 18 2016 21:47 utc | 14
@10
It would be interesting to see the breakdown of the military vote.
I don’t hold my breath but, again–call it a hunch, I think that majority of US Armed Forces officer corps, especially officers “in the field” are Trump supporters.
Posted by: SmoothieX12 | Nov 18 2016 21:50 utc | 15
@13
WRT “fake news” and Soros paid rioters:
Paul Horner — the 38-year-old self-made titan of a fake news empire on Facebook — is claiming responsibility for pushing Donald Trump to the White House, and says he has no plans to stop publishing fake news.
In an interview with The Washington Post, Horner attributed his success to Trumps’ particular base of supporters. He is the man behind such viral headlines as “The Amish in America Commit their Vote to Donald Trump” and “President Obama Signs Executive Order Banning the National Anthem at all Sporting Events Nationwide” — neither of which were true.
“My sites were picked up by Trump supporters all the time. I think Trump is in the White House because of me. His followers don’t fact-check anything — they’ll post everything, believe anything. His campaign manager posted my story about a protester getting paid $3,500 as fact. Like, I made that up. I posted a fake ad on Craigslist,” he told The Washington Post.
The coming conflict is between globalism and nationalism. The basic problem is numbers. Rule by monopolistic global corporations, at best, supports 20% of the population in the short term. It enriches the ruling elite and their servants and improvises everyone else. In the long term, climate change or a nuclear war, brought on by the blind needs of greed, will end the world as we know it. Brexit and the Trump Presidency proved that globalism and democracy are incompatible. For globalism to proceed in the middle term, it will require a surveillance police state, total propaganda, reeducation camps and the shutdown of this bar.
Posted by: VietnamVet | Nov 18 2016 21:56 utc | 17
Who decides which news is fake? Sounds like an easy way to limit freedom of speech and of the press.
Why can’t people be allowed to decide for themselves which news is fake?
Posted by: lysias | Nov 18 2016 21:58 utc | 18
As a retired officer of the U.S. Navy, I would be very disappointed if a majority of the officer corps supported Hillary. It would be very disappointing if they put their increased chances of promotion in new wars over the good of the country. Disappointing, but not exactly surprising.
Posted by: lysias | Nov 18 2016 22:01 utc | 19
I find it interesting that this open thread was not suppose to be about the US election but darn near all of the comments are to one degree or another.
Posted by: psychohistorian | Nov 18 2016 22:12 utc | 20
It’s great that there’s some dialog between Trump and Putin. I think at least Western Syria will be cleansed of jihadis as a result.
But Trump might be a little more hard nosed in the future. After the tensions are dialed down and having the score at basically Russia 1, US 0, he’s not going to be so pliable. He sure as fuck isn’t going to throw Israel under a bus. He’s not going to roll over on all American commitments in the region.
Trump’s been getting a complete rundown on the big picture. It’s no secret that until recently he couldn’t have found Damascus on a map. Now he knows about the Shiite Crescent and how the arms can flow from Iran to Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon in volumes like never before and how upsetting that is for Israel.
Now there’s action towards taking Raqqa by the Kurds and who knows who else. The US and its posse will provide the air cover and logistics plus lots of special ops once it kicks in. I’m surprised the Kurds bit again after taking it up the arse from the US a couple of months ago They’re not going all in right now as things are ongoing in Mosul and will be for a while. But you don’t hear Assad and the Russians squawking much about it. It’s like they both know that parts of Eastern Syria are bye-bye.
Trump’s good will towards Russia certainly doesn’t extend to Iran. And no American will ever call Hezbollah anything bur a terrorist organization after the Marine barracks truck bombing in Beirut all those years ago. If Putin and Trump are going to come to a general understanding in the ME there’s going to have to be some give and take.
Putin’s done quite a turnaround in taking Russia from a pariah state a couple of years ago to the player on the world sage that it is now. It’s looking good for him to keep his man in power in Syria and to establish a permanent presence in the ME with Khmeimim and Tartus. Once Trump is fully up to speed on the totality of American interests in the region he is bound by his office not to walk away from them. There will have to be some serious deal-making.
Posted by: peter | Nov 18 2016 22:16 utc | 21
Putin’s done quite a turnaround in taking Russia from a pariah state a couple of years ago to the player on the world sage that it is now.
Your timeline is a bit off. The coming of Putin was a direct result of NATO’s 1999 aggression against Yugoslavia, while War of 08-08-08 was the start of Russia’s return into big league. So, it is not a “couple of years”. Results of War of 080808 actually stunned DC’s neocon interventionist cabal.
Posted by: SmoothieX12 | Nov 18 2016 22:28 utc | 22
Who decides which news is fake?
Buzzfeed did some analysis on Social media generated fake news during the election. An awful lot of it was simply false. You can look at some of those headlines and judge for yourself.
Ironically, Paul Horner (guy behind “fake news empire” I linked in prior post) said:
He said he didn’t do it for ideological reasons. “I hate Trump,” he told The Post. “I thought I was messing with the campaign, maybe I wasn’t messing them up as much as I wanted — but I never thought he’d actually get elected.”
Just happens 70% + of fake news this election cycle (according to Buzzfeed) was anti-Clinton.
….and how the arms can flow from Libya and Zio-Ukraine to ISIS in Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon in volumes like never before and how ‘upsetting'(sic) that is for Israel.
Yeah, ‘upsetting’ to the Israel Likud former-Soviet mafia which fully supports ISIS and maintains ‘Hezbullah’ straw dog, to keep UN forces out of Greater Israel and torpedo the Two-State Solution and the Right-of-Return agreements which Netanyahu freely boasted he lied about supporting.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/02/07/when-reagan-cut-and-run/
MoA isn’t another Likud psyop disinformation campaign for the new Trump-Israel First Regime. Remember it was your team’s counterfeit Yellow Cake Big Lie that assassinated the Baathists, and paved the way for Shi’ia’s defensive action against the Bush-Cheney IL Wahhabi’s usurpers and crusaders. You theory will do much better on Breitbart.
Posted by: chipnik | Nov 18 2016 22:52 utc | 24
@22
I was referring to his exclusion after annexing Crimea. The G8 turned into the G7 and he was shunned at the G20. It was decided by the US and its posse that world events would move along without any input from Russia. That changed when he entered Syria.
Posted by: peter | Nov 18 2016 23:45 utc | 25
And on the climate change or not front there are these articles:
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/11/the-arctic-is-freakishly-hot-right-now-36-degrees-above-normal/
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/11/here-is-what-the-world-will-look-like-after-1-5c-of-warming/
I moved 50 yards of material into my front yard of grass this summer and planted drought tolerant plants because I am a believer in climate change, man-made or otherwise.
YMMV
Posted by: psychohistorian | Nov 18 2016 23:46 utc | 26
jdmckay @ 13 & 16: Thanks for those snippets of reality.
Posted by: ben | Nov 18 2016 23:54 utc | 27
The Doubt Machine: Inside The Koch Brothers’ War on Climate Science
From TRNN:http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2930
Posted by: ben | Nov 19 2016 0:00 utc | 28
Ted Rall makes the important distinction that Trump’s fascism will continue and build upon Obama’s fascism, http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/11/18/trumps-fascism-picks-up-where-obamas-left-off/
Liberal Fascism is the hallmark of the Outlaw US Empire since its inception.
Posted by: karlof1 | Nov 19 2016 0:20 utc | 29
Obama says he will NOT pardon Snowden.
>
>
> ARD/SPIEGEL: Are you going to pardon Edward Snowden?
> Obama: I can’t pardon somebody who hasn’t gone before a court and presented themselves, so that’s not something that I would comment on at this point.
Professor Obama is wrong again, it’s been done many times
“A presidential pardon may be granted at any time, however, and as when Ford pardoned Nixon, the pardoned person need not yet have been convicted or even formally charged with a crime.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pardon#Federal_law
Also, Andrew Johnson pardoned thousands of confederate soldiers after the civil war, and Carter pardoned thousands of vietnam war draft dodgers
Hard to believe Obama does not know this.
Why is he so disingenuous? Just another politician blowing in the wind.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/spiegel-interview-with-us-president-barack-obama-a-1122008.html
Posted by: mauisurfer | Nov 19 2016 0:22 utc | 30
http://www.rferl.org/a/us-house-votes-renew-iran-sanctions-sanction-syrian-backers-iran-russia/28119954.html
Trump getting forced by Obama and deep state
Posted by: Brad | Nov 19 2016 0:39 utc | 31
@2 Stevens, ‘All of that derailed by nothing more than people having direct access to information uncensored out of Syria.’
The US/GCC/NATO were on track and heading in for the kill before Russia stepped in. Americans don’t care who is devastated and destroyed by ‘globalization’ … other than themselves. Bernie’s candidacy was proof of that: not a word on foreign policy. All the information in the world won’t change that. Americans don’t put people living outside the US in the same category as themselves. God put them all those others ‘out there’ to be killed by Americans … when they ‘need’ killin’.
Posted by: jfl | Nov 19 2016 0:45 utc | 32
Mauisurger @ 30
ARD/SPIEGEL: Are you going to pardon Edward Snowden?
➢ Obama: I can’t pardon somebody who hasn’t gone before a court and presented themselves, so that’s not something that I would comment on at this point.
➢
➢
➢ Professor Obama is wrong again, it’s been done many times
Constitution Law Professor Obama! Since he ‘can’t pardon somebody who hasn’t gone before the court’… Did he just nullify a pardon for Hillary? There are 5 investigations.
With an eye on AG – nominee Jeff Sessions just wait until he reverses and hands her a pardon.
Posted by: likklemore | Nov 19 2016 1:06 utc | 33
No weak ass identity politician such as Oblamblam is gonna pardon Snowden while beat up bullshit Swedish rape charges are hanging around Assange’s head, because the two have become conflated in much of the public’s mind but he will get pardoned once the Assange bullshit has been put to bed (sorry – had to say it). Trump will likely do it at some stage, as a sorta cover for not pursuing Jools.
I actually watched the Stone flick the other night, the one that MSM sledged mercilessly and called a docudrama copy of the Poitras movie – which it isn’t.
There is a couple of fairly good HD rips of Snowden on the torrent indexes and most of the movie is set in the lead up to his whistleblow explaining how a bloke who volunteered to be some sort of special forces para after 911 ended up realizing he had lowered himself into a pit of treasonous vipers.
Nobody in amerika watched that movie at the theatres but the dearth of watchable movies does mean a big mob will watch it online either legit or yarr and I suspect that will create a groundswell of opinion among more thinking ‘wingers to give Snowden a break.
On the other hand if Russia & amerika get truly buddy buddy maybe Snowden will get offered up as the sacrifice to seal the deal.
It is just the same old, same old – Snowden is a hairsbreadth away from hanging as long as sufficient amerikans believe the bullshit – if “Snowden” can turn that around sufficiently then he will get pardoned, but never by a worthless neolib asswipe like the Oblammer who loathes whistleblowers and their ability to sabotage the lies.
Posted by: Debsisdead | Nov 19 2016 1:21 utc | 34
@ Debsisdead who wrote “Nobody in amerika watched that movie at the theatres ….”
I watched Snowden at a local theatre. First movie I have seen in years. Glad to read you watched it and suggest others do as well.
Posted by: psychohistorian | Nov 19 2016 1:28 utc | 35
@4 Alberto, ‘Our collective cruelty seems to know no bounds?’
It doesn’t does it? The only humans on earth live in the USA, the rest of the earth’s ‘hominids’ are open to punishment and ‘collateral damage’ whenever it might suit ‘our’ purposes.
Posted by: jfl | Nov 19 2016 1:53 utc | 36
@35 psycho,
In case it’s not at a theater near you : Snowden (2016).
Posted by: jfl | Nov 19 2016 1:55 utc | 37
We are having problems denying space to our adversaries.
Destroying Libya doesn’t have the zip of a railway from Ethiopia to the Red Sea.
Posted by: Jay M | Nov 19 2016 2:06 utc | 38
@20 psycho, ‘this open thread was not supposed to be about the US election but darn near all of the comments are to one degree or another’
It’s like heroin to a junkie or booze to a drunk. I can quite anytime I want. Right.
Posted by: jfl | Nov 19 2016 2:09 utc | 39
Italian Referendum next up – Renzi on the way out?
In a sense it’s a bit of a pity because to me Renzi seems the least objectionable of the leaders of the EU Big 6 – Merkel, Hollande, May, Rajoy, Rutte & Renzi.
He actually looks good when compared to the rest of them!
The House Foreign Affairs Committee pushing for war. This is what Trump has to deal with….
“The bill also sets the stage for the implementation of so-called safe zones and a no-fly zone over Syria. It requires the administration to “submit to the appropriate congressional committee” a report that “assesses the potential effectiveness, risks and operational requirements of the establishment and maintenance of a no-fly zone over part of all of Syria.” Further, the bill calls for the administration to detail the “operational and legal requirements for US and coalition air power to establish a no-fly zone in Syria.”
https://www.thenation.com/article/the-dangerous-and-shortsighted-push-to-contain-iran/
Posted by: dh | Nov 19 2016 2:23 utc | 41
#psychhistorian It is always a bit of a crunch when a literalist runs up against a metaphorical communicator, but I’m a bit of a fan of allowing readers to have sufficient nous to work that out.
The movie died instantly at the box office and I’m perfectly happy to debate why that occurred (as long as the theories aren’t all tinfoil ‘n no objective consideration) but I see little purpose in debating exactly how few souls constitute “no one” I concede that some people may reckon that no one does indeed mean zero zilch the big goose egg, but I would offer that no one could mean no one who hadn’t already decided what they felt about Mr Snowden’s courage.
I’m not trying to start some sorta bullshit hand bags at 3 paces MoA feud. I read a your posts and appreciate many of ’em, but I have always attempted to communicate less formally when writing a post that is chiefly expressing an opinion & I believe those who choose to read my sporadic offerings mostly know that.
Trying to find an opening to hang a reply to a post off can be the most challenging part of joining in a discussion – I find it so anyway. I know posts from me here & elsewhere have foolishly attempted a friendly aside but come across as angry or pedantic when neither was intended.
anyway – a tip of the hat and a stroll away – cya.
Posted by: Debsisdead | Nov 19 2016 2:38 utc | 42
@42 ‘Snowden’ has taken in $21,000,000 so far. Somebody watched it.
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/daily/chart/
Posted by: dh | Nov 19 2016 3:06 utc | 44
@#44 you’d think that should be enough but it cost north of $40 mill to make and is already out on dvd/bluray/online so the movie cannot be regarded as successful. The other issue is, where were those $21 mill generated? For the purposes of affecting opinion sufficiently to cause a change in attitudes to get a pardon, amerikan audiences as all that matters.
Maybe that mojo site only measures amerikan receipts or maybe the figure includes ‘foreign’ ticket disk sales along with amerikan ones I dunno. I do know that the reviews I have seen put the movie down hard & now I’ve seen “Snowden”, totally unfairly, which is why the torrent availability is such a good thing.
Stone doesn’t seem to make money for his backers any more which would be sad if he made better more convincing movies than he does. “Snowden” was one of his better efforts but he has pushed out some unsubstantiated dross over the years.
Posted by: Debsisdead | Nov 19 2016 4:00 utc | 45
Canada’s Kurdish Allies Accused of War Crimes By Unlawfully Destroying Arab Homes as Islamic State Retreats
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/canadas-kurdish-allies-fighting-islamic-state-destroying-arab-buildings-human-rights-group-says/article32832007/
“Canada’s Kurdish allies in the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq are being accused of war crimes by destroying large numbers of Arab homes and sometimes entire villages, as they reclaim territory from the jihadi group…”
Kurdish PM Opposes Canada’s ‘Organized Migration’ of Yazidis
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/kurds-yazidis-opposition-1.3855910
“The Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq opposes the Canadian plan to bring what could be thousands of Yazidi refugees to Canada in the next four months…’How is it possible for the people of one country to decide for the people of another country that they’re going to come and take 10,000-15,000 people out?”
Posted by: John Gilberts | Nov 19 2016 4:18 utc | 46
@16
WRT “fake news” and Soros paid rioters:
Ironically, I was reading on the CBS site tonight about how “fake news” had swung the election to Trump (their source for this claim being the guy who made up and published the fake news to begin with) when I noticed in the sidebar that article you linked (the CBS article about how Trump requested security clearances for his kids.) But that has been debunked.
Fake news from CBS.
Posted by: dopple | Nov 19 2016 7:13 utc | 48
39
It’s really amazing the historic parallels between the ‘East and the West’, as they used to refer to the Soviets, before China became a player.
Breshnev and his Breshnev Doctrine and his failed war in Afghanistan are in every way a direct parallel to Bush and the Bush Doctrine and the failed war in Iraq!
Obama is in every way a parallel to the failed peristroka and glasnost phase of the pre-collapse Soviet Union under Gorbechev.
Rodham the Dancing Drunk was Yeltsin the Dancing Drunk, only a lot briefer, lol, and thank the gods above we skipped those ‘Yeltsin Years’.
Then the whole thing blew up into Russian mafia oligarchs and resource cartels, didn’t it? The Soviet military collapsed, they sold off their naval armaments to ship-breakers, and made the highly radioactive steel into German razor blades, (ha,ha,ha, a true story). Trump is now rapidly jaw-dropping even the most staid observers. Today, Steve Bannon, Breitbart Official Spox for Trump, announced that ‘Capitalism Will Come to the Inner City’. In other words, moar gentrification.
And here’s where two roads diverged in a woods, didn’t they? Unlike the Soviets, the Trump Israel Firsters have their private Fed bank to print all the Yankee Rubles that the Deep State will ever need for its Wehrmacht. They can privatize the Earth beneath a carpet of bombs and credit-debt.
There won’t be a Berlin Wall liberation, no reunification of West with East, no conjoining of Blue and Red in mutual brotherhood, and no McPutin to the rescue.
No, this time, the American People will sleep with the fishes (vicious?).
Posted by: TheRealDonald | Nov 19 2016 7:21 utc | 49
Check out this unmitigated gall from a Fed Reserve Governor Jerome Powell
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fed-powell-idUSKBN13E04F
The article title says it all
Fed’s Powell says Asian economies should boost domestic demand
This is utter BS to the Asian countries that have been raped by global private finance and now are holding lots of financial reserves as they grow their economies so they don’t get screwed again by the tools of private finance.
With the TPP dead in the water because of Trump the China-backed Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), a rival pact that excludes the United States, has become the front-runner for new free trade deals in the region…see link below
Americans are being thrown under the bus and we get to watch it happen in slow motion…..ARGH!!!
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-china-apec-idUSKBN13D0BI
Posted by: psychohistorian | Nov 19 2016 7:35 utc | 50
Following b’s suggestion that comments NOT have anything to do with the US election, and seconding the Psychohistorian that almost all of the above comments have to do with said election:
We finally had a freeze (ie, overnight temperature got below 32 degrees F) here on the Llano Estacado. Usually that first freeze comes in early October … with snow on the peak called Sierra Blanca and the Sangre de Cristo peaks that exist to the west and north of the Llano. My oak trees (called shinnery cf: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quercus_havardii) are finally dropping leaves and their acorns and the squirrels have something to eat though water is scarce. Cattle are being fed supplements in an effort to maintain some herds for the future, if it rains again and there is grass and flowers on the sand and sand hills. Drought means that grass (or range) fires are possible especially if some damned fool flicks a smoldering cigarette out of the window while flying down the road at 90mph.
Road kill, whether skunk, porcupine, deer, rabbit, or some other denizen of the desert are down … mostly because during a drought, water is scarce. When my families settled this area in the late 1800’s (called homesteaders) there were small year round lakes in the region. A town in Texass is named Shallowater is testimony to that long ago reality. And would you believe this was the home of what is called dryland farming?
Yeah, global warming is a myth … if you want to think that way. But those Sangre de Cristos to the north had 200 inches of snowpack as recently as 1970 … no longer. Lucky to get 24″ in the last decade plus!
Gee, I wonder what happened … and I wonder why I say we need a bloody damned revolution to put paid the current anthro-decimation of the planet! Come on Armageddon!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I guess it is too bad Killary and her ilk lost and WWIII won’t break out.
Damn
Posted by: rg the lg | Nov 19 2016 8:03 utc | 51
Whatever happened to that Kerry guy?
Ash Carter, the CIA and Pentagon cut off his balls. Lavrov finally realized that talking to him was a complete waste of time.
Posted by: ToivoS | Nov 19 2016 8:04 utc | 52
50
TOT, today Elon Musk, dealing with two cash-flow-bankrupt firms conjoined by stock swindles, a failing home battery business plan that had relied on taxpayer-funded green rebates to show profit, together with a ‘sabotaged’ Space-X rocket that (someone) needed an insurance bailout for, today Elon Musk announced to the world his new ‘solar shingle’ program, that he claims will, “be even cheaper than a regular roof!”
WOW!
This showcases Musk’s bankruptcy-induced craven depravity. It’s one thing to swindle gullible auto-lovers with a ‘Tesla-C’ deposit, a $10,000,000s fraud that Musk needed to float his buyout of Solar City, on a C-class car that may never be delivered. It’s another to double down on that with his ‘solar shingle’ spiel.
The Germans have more years of experience than anyone with their solar shingles in actual installations all across the country, and they are the first to admit, solar shingles are more expensive than solar panels, and far, far more expensive than regular 3-tab asphalt-fiberglass shingles used in America.
Unless Musk has some new electro-magic nano-nuclear shingle technology (and the installed pilot test independent certified test results to prove it), his claims will bleed out moar $10,000,000s from another cohort of eager first depositors.
Like Trump’s ‘Make America H8 Again’, and Obama’s ‘Like Your Doctor, Keep Your Doctor’, 21stC may go down in history as The Century of the Bunko Artist.
Posted by: TheRealDonald | Nov 19 2016 8:11 utc | 53
@45 If you see things in terms of profit then I guess ‘Snowden’ is a loser. I have no idea how effective it is. Stone got it made and got it out there, that’s a lot more than I’ve done.
Posted by: dh | Nov 19 2016 10:07 utc | 54
to “b”,
I have been reading here since shortly after you opened the place. I always liked your “take” on the Billmon posts more than the posts themselves, and I am glad you kept going with this blog long after the other place was shut down.
I have always liked the crowd you draw also. Comments here are always worth a read. (well other than the very few who are trying to disrupt)
I thought it about time I sent along my gratitude for the blog. Many thanks.
~ Mark Stoval
Posted by: Mark Stoval | Nov 19 2016 10:51 utc | 55
To all commenters discussing “Snowden”, I would like to say that the movie had a theatrical release in Australia and I watched it myself at a cinema in Newtown. As far as I know, that was the only cinema to have shown it (in a city of 3 to 4 million) and I had to travel at least 50 minutes on two trains from where I live in northern Sydney. The other people watching the film with me could be counted on the fingers of one hand.
I would say that a major part of the reason for low audience figures in Australia and elsewhere is the fact that the film got such a limited release and in cinemas that few people know and have problems getting to. If the film doesn’t get much publicity (because the corporate media won’t advertise it and pressures reviewers to give it bad reviews), then you can be assured it won’t make much money.
I will comment that Joseph Gordon-Levitt put in a brilliant performance impersonating Snowden and this role is sure to be one of the best roles of his career.
Posted by: Jen | Nov 19 2016 10:58 utc | 56
Posted by: Perimetr | Nov 18, 2016 4:28:35 PM | 12
No such thing will ever happen and Trump will start his presidency on 20th of January 2017.
A Trump presidency was a planned scenario by the super-elitist/globalists all along , as the forthcoming collapse of the USD MUST be blamed on the conservatives , which only can happen under a Trump presidency.
We have great thinkers and commentators here at MoA and I always enjoy being here and contributing my 2 cents , however in the infinite cosmos of the internet , we must have overlooked this thinker and I really encourage all of you to listen what this guy has to say , as he correctly predicted Brexit & the Trump presidency , among many other things.
This one was written on October 12 , 2016 :
http://www.alt-market.com/articles/3034-global-elites-are-getting-ready-to-blame-you-for-the-coming-financial-crash
and this one recently :
http://www.alt-market.com/articles/3061-world-suffers-from-trump-shell-shock-heres-what-will-happen-next
Posted by: Sufi | Nov 19 2016 13:08 utc | 57
Posted by: Jen | Nov 19, 2016 5:58:03 AM | 59
(re movie “Snowden”)
Glad you posted that comment. I tried to rent it from the local video store, 3 or 4 weeks ago, and was told by the apparently knowledgeable young lady in charge that it hasn’t been released in Oz yet and may not be here until early 2017.
She was under the impression that it hasn’t been released anywhere in the world. I queried that statement on the basis that I’ve been reading comments on the www by ppl who claim to have watched it. Her answer to that was that it has done the rounds of the Film Festivals and ppl would have seen it in that context.
Would you be so kind as to let me know…
– the date on which you saw it at Newtown, and
– whether the session was festival-ish in any way?
Thanks in anticipation…
Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Nov 19 2016 13:56 utc | 58
According to amazon.com, DVD and blu-ray of “Snowden” will be released on Dec. 27.
Posted by: lysias | Nov 19 2016 14:28 utc | 59
dopple @ 48
Actually, your link doesn’t “debunk” the CBS article at all: your link does not address anything the CBS article discussed. Maybe you didn’t read it.
rg the lg @ 51
Thanks for that.
I’ve been reading for maybe 7 (?) years: generations of large cattle ranchers in that area have sold off their herds because of lack of water AND alfalfa. The affects have percolated out in a number of ways.
There are large quantities of alfalfa grown north of here (Albuquerque). For many decades, their crop supplied much of New Mexico. Since the Texas drought began many of these NM farmers have been selling their late summer/fall crop to Texan cattle farmers because they get better price, forcing higher prices here and shortages.
And of course, the wide reaching Texas wildfires occurring (as in much of the west) with greater frequency, ferocity and devastation going back over 5 years now.
to KPAC: I don’t know why you feel the need to diss rg the lg. He/she is right about the snow on Sangre de Cristo mountains, assuming we mean the New Mexico incarnation. In my more footloose days, also in the 70’s, those mountains were Mecca for ski bums. Of course, in those days, one could still say “Mecca” …. anyway, snow started in October and there was still great skiing well into May. Lately, from what I hear, there is NO snow… You may scoff and say, well, self indulgent weanie skiers have
no call to whine.. but everything that drinks water is on the losing side.
Cheers
Posted by: norma lacy | Nov 19 2016 14:57 utc | 62
ALberto @47
“Whatever happened to that Kerry guy?”
I know he was in Wellington, New Zealand on Sunday . The earthquake hit at midnight, local time. 7.5 quake and 17 Wellington buildings severely damaged, with several needing demolition.
Your question is a good one.
Posted by: juliania | Nov 19 2016 15:24 utc | 63
I am curious about what will happen to Ash Carter, among other people.
Posted by: Shadyl | Nov 19 2016 15:27 utc | 64
rg the lg @ 51:
Better news for you on the Sangres. They are east of my location (Jemez west, Los Alamos north). Last I looked they had plenty of snow already due to a two day rain we had hereabouts. That should still be there as since then temperatures have steadily dropped. But yes, night before last was our first freeze and that is very late for us too.
One thing we have to remember about global warming. All that melting ice means more evaporation. Some areas are going to get more moisture, not less. We are still in dry conditions here, but not the critical drought we have been years past.
I would, however, put out a plea to the Forest Service if they are listening. Please discontinue that totally stupid practice of “prescribed burns”. We need all the trees we presently have, and we need to simply let nature take its course in our precious forests and with our air.
Stop it!
Posted by: juliania | Nov 19 2016 15:36 utc | 65
31
Trump Israel First ‘leading from behind’ with RNC and Deep State.
Forget the phony Make America Great Again marketing crap, and just read this:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-19/were-being-played
We’re freely stress-positioning and even water-boarding each other with the Red and Blue Koolaid, while the One Party of Mil.Gov.Fed readies a $12T debt (sic) increase to privatize public infrastructure using our life savings, taxed away, then their private Fed bank will ratchet up interest-only payments on that debt (sic)…forever…which funds will have to come out of Defense, or else out of SS/MC. Who do you bet on?
If you said Defense, then you’re not paying attention.
Posted by: chipnik | Nov 19 2016 16:33 utc | 66
@58 mark stoval.. nice comment.. thanks for enlightening the atmosphere here..
@67 norma lacy.. in response to your first comment – k pac, formerly known as (k)illary p a c is an ongoing nuisance to moa.. they keep on changing their name after they lose posting privileges.. it’s one of the parts to b’s site that would benefit from a different sign in/posting format…
Posted by: james | Nov 19 2016 16:52 utc | 67
http://www.antarcticglaciers.org/glaciers-and-climate/ice-cores/ice-core-basics/
Ice core basics
By Bethan Davies – Last updated 09/01/2015
Ice sheets have one particularly special property. They allow us to go back in time and to sample accumulation, air temperature and air chemistry from another time. Ice core records allow us to generate continuous reconstructions of past climate, going back at least 800,000 years[2]. By looking at past concentrations of greenhouse gasses in layers in ice cores, scientists can calculate how modern amounts of carbon dioxide and methane compare to those of the past, and, essentially, compare past concentrations of greenhouse gasses to temperature.
The most important property of ice cores is that they are a direct archive of past atmospheric gasses. Air is trapped at the base of the firn layer, and when the compacted snow turns to ice, the air is trapped in bubbles. This transition normally occurs 50-100 m below the surface[6]. The offset between the age of the air and the age of the ice is accounted for with well-understood models of firn densification and gas trapping. The air bubbles are extracted by melting, crushing or grating the ice in a vacuum.
This method provides detailed records of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide going back over 650,000 years[6]. Ice core records globally agree on these levels, and they match instrumented measurements from the 1950s onwards, confirming their reliability. Carbon dioxide measurements from older ice in Greenland is less reliable, as meltwater layers have elevated carbon dioxide (CO2 is highly soluble in water). Older records of carbon dioxide are therefore best taken from Antarctic ice cores.
https://www.bas.ac.uk/data/our-data/publication/ice-cores-and-climate-change/
Antarctic ice cores show us that the concentration of CO2 was stable over the last millennium until the early 19th century. It then started to rise, and its concentration is now nearly 40% higher than it was before the industrial revolution (see Fig. 2 overleaf). Other measurements (e.g. isotopic data) confirm that the increase must be due to emissions of CO2 from fossil fuel usage and deforestation. Measurements from older ice cores (discussed below) confirm that both the magnitude and rate of the recent increase are almost certainly unprecedented over the last 800,000 years. The fastest large natural increase measured in older ice cores is around 20ppmv (parts per million by volume) in 1,000 years (a rate seen during Earth’s emergence from the last ice age around 12,000 years ago). CO2 concentration increased by the same amount, 20ppmv, in the last 10 years! Methane (CH4), another important greenhouse gas, also shows a huge and unprecedented increase in concentration over the last two centuries. Its concentration is now much more than double its pre-industrial level. This is mainly due to the increase in emissions from sources such as rice fields, ruminant animals and landfills, that comes on top of natural emissions from wetlands and other sources.
Ice cores provide direct information about how greenhouse gas concentrations have changed in the past, and they also provide direct evidence that the climate can change abruptly under some circumstances. However, they provide no direct analogue for the future because the ice core era contains no periods with concentrations of CO2 comparable to those of the next century.
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/ice_core_co2.html
800,000-year Ice-Core Records of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide (CO2)
This page introduces Antarctic ice-core records of carbon dioxide (CO2) that now extend back 800,000 years at Dome C and over 400,000 years at the Vostok site. Links are also provided to shorter records from other Antarctic locations. The 2000-year record from Law Dome, Antarctica, has been merged with modern records and a spline function was fit to the result to provide a 2000-year time series extending to the present. http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/modern_co2.html
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ice-core-data-help-solve/
There is, however, still a degree of uncertainty about which came first—a spike in temperature or CO2. Until now, the most comprehensive records to date on a major change in Earth’s climate came from the EPICA Dome C ice core on the Antarctic Plateau. The data, covering the end of the last ice age, between 20,000 and 10,000 years ago, show that CO2 levels could have lagged behind rising global temperatures by as much as 1,400 years. “The idea that there was a lag of CO2 behind temperature is something climate change skeptics pick on,” says Edward Brook of Oregon State University’s College of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences. “They say, ‘How could CO2 levels affect global temperature when you are telling me the temperature changed first?’”
Frédéric Parrenin of the Laboratory of Glaciology and Geophysical Environment in France and a team of researchers may have found an answer to the question. His team compiled an extensive record of Antarctic temperatures and CO2 data from existing data and five ice cores drilled in the Antarctic interior over the last 30 years. Their results, published February 28 in Science, show CO2 lagged temperature by less than 200 years, drastically decreasing the amount of uncertainty in previous estimates.
Posted by: Perimetr | Nov 19 2016 16:55 utc | 68
Found this interview with Michael Flynn at Lemonde, translated with Google Translate:
Michael Flynn, 58, was a key foreign policy adviser to President-elect Donald Trump during his election campaign. The name of this retired general, who directed military intelligence from 2012 to 2014, is cited as possible defense secretary, director of the CIA or councilor for national security. As part of the shooting of a documentary on Bashar Al-Assad-Bashar, me or the chaos, soon to be released on France 3 -, the journalist Antoine Vitkine met him at length on 26 May in Washington.
You took the lead in military intelligence in 2012, before leaving office two years later, due to a disagreement with the Obama administration on support for the opposition in Syria. Why ?
It is not an armed rebellion, it is insurgents who try to lay hands not only on Syria and Iraq, but on the whole region. And they call it the “caliphate.” In Syria, we soon saw foreign jihadist fighters flocking from all over. When I observed this phenomenon, I thought that something was wrong.
I had spent a decade fighting these people in Iraq, Afghanistan, East Africa, North Africa … No one wanted to pay attention to this information, everyone was tired of the War and the idea prevailed that this fire would be extinguished by itself, or that Assad would crush it.
The Obama administration chose to ignore my warnings, which did not fit the story she wanted to tell. We were entering the electoral year, bin Laden was dead, Al-Qaeda defeated … The political leaders made decisions based on what they wanted to hear. A good leader has an interest in being on his guard; Obama was surrounded by people kissing his feet and telling him what he wanted to hear.
Does not Assad also have a great deal of responsibility in the current situation? He refrained from fighting the Islamic state and deliberately released prison jihadists …
Assad is a brutal dictator. He used chemical weapons against his own people, against women and children. This must be taken into consideration. He made all the possible mistakes. In 2011, instead of accepting reforms, he crushed the demonstrations, and by doing so, he began a civil war in his country. For their part, the insurgents were not people in flip-flops and in a dressing gown, they were cunning, with military skills, financial resources. When Assad made mistakes, they took advantage of it, and all the radicals began to flock to Syria, by the thousands every month.
We must understand the history of the region. The Ottoman Empire was dominated by a caliph, until the early twentieth century. It was not that long ago. Most Americans do not even know how to project themselves until the following Saturday, the Europeans either – I spent time in France. We think in the short term, we do not know why we are there. Now, a new Middle East is born, it has grown over the past few years and now it is there. There will be new frontiers, there will be more and more wars, it will impact us, it is already impacting our elections. In Europe, this situation causes massive problems: when I see that Mein Kampf is on the lists of bestsellers, something is wrong. These problems must be addressed collectively.
Arab leaders must also take responsibility. They can not hide their faces and say that it does not concern them, rejoice that jihadists go to Europe rather than stay at home. They should set up buffer zones, refugee camps. We have a major problem, which nobody wants to acknowledge, because of the politically correct: it is Islam. This religion is a problem, it poses a problem to your political systems, to you Europeans. I am not talking about the Muslim world, but about Islam. The Arab world must overcome the political ideology it calls Islam.”
http://www.lemonde.fr/elections-americaines/article/2016/11/15/ne-pas-intervenir-en-syrie-en-2013-a-ete-une-erreur-selon-un-conseiller-de-donald-trump_5031547_829254.html
You won’t find this kind of interview or discussion anywhere in the American – British media, which is not too surprising. Flynn’s views are nuanced and informed by a knowledge of history – nothing our media clowns want to get into. It’s well worth reading the rest of it; just cut and paste the French into Google Translate. Well worth the time.
Posted by: nonsensefactory | Nov 19 2016 17:14 utc | 69
juliania @ 72 says:
We need all the trees we presently have, and we need to simply let nature take its course in our precious forests and with our air
when i left the piñon-juniper dappled mesas of northern New Mexico in 2003 we were at the climax of a 90% die-off of the piñon trees due to bark beetle, due to drought and insufficiently long and cold winters. it was a bewildering sight…browned-out piñons as far as the eye could see.
Posted by: john | Nov 19 2016 17:18 utc | 70
Brief history of intensifying Texas drought conditions since 1990. A couple excerpts relevant to what I mentioned @ 66:
Extremely heavy rains in 2007 lifted Texas once again from drought and State Climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon told the AP, “we’ve gotten so much rain this year we’ve pretty much made up for the past few years’ drought conditions in several areas of the state.”
Then in 2008 Nielsen-Gammon said, “less than a year after rains finally brought an end to the 2005-2006 drought in Texas, many parts of the state are again suffering drought conditions.”
Drought intensified through 2009, putting the most Texas counties in the deepest stage of drought since 2000 and from September 2008 to September 2009 became the driest one-year period yet for Texas, costing the state’s cattle industry over $1 billion.
In January 2010, the New York Times reported an end to “the worst drought to strike Texas in the last 50 years,” but by May the State Climatologist said that “areas of Texas facing drought conditions again.” The drought that began in the fall of that year resulted in the single driest year in recorded Texas history and still hasn’t abated.
(…)
The drought has helped drain reservoirs, fuel wildfires, ruin crops, and put a real strain on the state’s electric grid.
Dry conditions fueled a series of wildfires across the state in early September 2011. The most devastating, the Bastrop Complex Fire in Bastrop County, scorched over 34,000 acres and destroyed more than 1,300 homes.
The situation reached a new level of urgency in late January of 2012 when wells in the town of Spicewood Beach, Texas officially ran out of water. Some 1,100 residents now depend on tanker trucks to deliver water to the town’s storage tank. The Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) owns the water system and is overseeing the emergency water operation. The agency is still trucking water into the town and will continue to do so until a surface water treatment plant can supply water from Lake Travis. The plant was scheduled to be finished in the summer of 2013, but Corix, the company that is building the plant, instead expects it to be finished in late February.
The low water levels in Central Texas took their toll on rice farmers near the coast. They rely heavily on water flowing out of the Highland Lakes on the Colorado River. In March, the combined lake levels remained below 850,000 acre feet, prompting the LCRA to cut off water supplies to farmers in Matagorda, Wharton and Colorado counties for the second year in a row. A third year of cutoffs for rice farmers is on the horizon. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is currently deciding whether or not to cut off water again.
The drought has also affected a wide range of industries in Texas. Economists estimate that the drought has cost farmers and ranchers upwards of $8 billion. Some farmers and ranchers have rented or leased parts of their properties to recreational hunters in an attempt to make up some of their lost profits.
The price of hay increased by 200 percent during the drought. Since the price of feeding cattle has skyrocketed, ranchers are culling their herds, selling off large numbers of cattle in auctions to out-of-state buyers. Crops also suffered, as corn outputs fell by 40% in 2011 and peanut production is down as well. The lack of crops has created conditions for severe dust storms across the western part of the state. Rains in 2013 improved the outlook somewhat for agriculture, but drought remained severe in much of the Texas Panhandle, an important agricultural region.
nonsensefactory @ 79
Actually that interview has been widely available here (US). It is insightful, and illuminates some of BO’s worst decisions (indifference?).
Also highlights some of Flynn’s misconceptions; blaming Assad for the chemical bombs (fake news), and “crushed demonstrations”… also false (b wrote about this in detail). Flynn’s also said a lot of damn inflammatory things about Islam/Muslims.
IMO the Pentagon is incapable of seeing these countries as societies, much less trying to understand them. Their entire view is exclusively a military paradigm… how to win and more times then not defeat enemies that don’t exist. We’ve been unable to reconcile the initial Iraq insurgency was borne as a region wide response to US desire to seize Iraq “strategic” territory/resources. Even the CIA concluded this, but it went unacknowledged in Bush/Pentagon official policy. Obviously, the “surge” was not a solution.
I fear Flynn will be more of the same… “try harder” doing the same things we’ve been doing in Iraq/Afghanistan for 15 years.
Now they’re claiming that all the hospitals have been destroyed.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/11/battle-aleppo-hospitals-destroyed-161119143126110.html
(It’s about time. According to the “sources” Russia and Syria have been bombing hospitals the whole time. /sarc)
According to who?
The White Helmets and the Aleppo Media Center.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/19/middleeast/syria-aleppo-airstrikes-hospitals/
As much as I hate the wars and the bombing of hospitals whoever does it (including US, Saudis), these sources are not credible.
Posted by: Curtis | Nov 19 2016 18:09 utc | 74
I stumbled on this interesting photo today. Satellite dishes on roofs in Aleppo.
http://www.yannarthusbertrand2.org/index.php?option=com_datsogallery&Itemid=27&func=detail&catid=109&id=2239&l=1920
(The photog has a bit of bias and claims success at info about the events taking place there getting out to the rest of the world but at least we know the truth. Biased info gets out while other atrocities do not see the light of day except in alt-media.)
Posted by: Curtis | Nov 19 2016 18:15 utc | 75
NY Slimes twists the story of war in the Middle East as an “Iran-Saudi Proxy War”
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/world/middleeast/iran-saudi-proxy-war.html?_r=0
That leaves a few actors and influences out of the story like the US, Qatar, Turkey, UK, etc.
Posted by: Curtis | Nov 19 2016 18:20 utc | 76
daily press briefing quotes from yesterday..
“QUESTION: Let me follow up on the issue of the hospitals. A spokesman for the Russian ministry of defense said that these hospitals – to quote him – “were only in your imagination.” Do you have a response to that? He said three days later, “We don’t know where these hospitals are. We don’t know what their location is.” And so on.
MR KIRBY: Yeah, look, I’ve seen the comments, and they don’t – they – they don’t even merit a response by me. As we’ve talked about the last couple of days, it isn’t John Kirby saying that hospitals are being hit.”
no, kirby is the non stop delivery person for the message, and he delivers it by repeating it non stop.. it is indeed kirby saying it, and when asked to provide some information on it, he immediately passes the buck on it.. that is called using your usa state press secretary position to offer up non stop propaganda on a daily basis and when challenged to say it isn’t you saying it!!! no kirby – you are full of shit to anyone paying attention to you, and by extension the usa foreign policy agenda.
Posted by: james | Nov 19 2016 18:46 utc | 78
@ nonsensefactory | 79
Other than few good insights about jihadis, Flynn is ignorant about Syria in general.
“Assad is a brutal dictator”, in reality he is vastly more benign and civilized than any leader in that region, and most of Western leaders as well,
starting with Obama, Killary, Bush, Sarkozy, Blair, etc.
“He used chemical weapons against his own people, against women and children.” Not only its fake accusation, its 100% stupid as well.
“he crushed the demonstrations” – yeah, no. Not one video is available of army crushing demonstrations, even though there were more journalists
than demonstrators participating. Forgot cameras and phones at home? If you want to see an army crushing demonstrators, look at the riots in US, or Turkey,
or Bahrain, etc. But since its “our guys”, its all good, but against “bad guys” these accusations will be shouted from the rooftops, even its 100% fake.
Posted by: Harry | Nov 19 2016 18:49 utc | 79
nonsensefactory
interested in the lemonde article you quote
but it will not open for me, only a brief first paragraph
so i cannot enter it into google translate
Posted by: mauisurfer | Nov 19 2016 19:25 utc | 80
@92 mauisurfer.. it looks like one has to pay a few euro for the article, and then translate it..
Posted by: james | Nov 19 2016 20:17 utc | 81
thanks james re lemonde article
i have been reading about gen michael flynn, just chosen by trump to be DNI
fascinating and sometimes so funny
> Why do we go through all the nonsense with security at our airport? It’s not because the Catholic Church is falling apart.
i appreciate is his awareness that radical terrorists are greater threat to russia than to usa, that usa should work with russia
my biggest problem with him is his view of iran as terrible terrorists, whereas i think it was usa that has terrorized iran
from the overthrow of its democratic govt in ’53 until today, as usa still has enormous sanctions against iran
and i think that saudi is far more terrorist nation than iran, and it is usa than enables saudi with weapons and ongoing battlefield
intelligence, advice, supervision, eg in yemen usa refuels saudi bombers!
Flynn was of course the lead killer for usa (JSOC) along with McChrystal
this interview in wapo is rather contentious, by interviewer
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2016/08/15/trump-adviser-michael-t-flynn-on-his-dinner-with-putin-and-why-russia-today-is-just-like-cnn/
another interview here, more perceptive perhaps
https://theintercept.com/2016/07/13/an-interview-with-lt-gen-michael-flynn/
this article he wrote supports erdogan and is strongly against fethullah gulen whom he regards as ruler of terrorist sleeper cells in usa/worldwide
not a peaceful sufi
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/foreign-policy/305021-our-ally-turkey-is-in-crisis-and-needs-our-support
another article about him
> Flynn warned that the United States was actually less safe from the threat of terrorism in 2014 than it was prior to the 9/11 attacks. In remarkably blunt comments for a general still in uniform, Flynn admitted to feeling like a lone voice inside an Obama administration that seemed to believe that the 2011 death of Osama bin Laden had signaled the end of radical Islamist terrorism as a seminal threat. Just months earlier, President Barack Obama had referred to the ascendant Islamic State group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, as a “JV,” or junior varsity, team of terror.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/10/how-mike-flynn-became-americas-angriest-general-214362
Posted by: mauisurfer | Nov 19 2016 20:52 utc | 82
@ jdmckay | Nov 18, 2016 4:52:36 PM | 16
Interesting.
Actually I was writing about how social media is more dangerous than traditional media because there is no fact-checking and no responsibility. The most sensational stuff gets the most shares and likes, who cares if it’s true…and if it isn’t, who do you blame?
Good thing to think about this *now*. /sarc
Posted by: grandson | Nov 19 2016 21:30 utc | 83
@ psychohistorian | Nov 19, 2016 2:35:33 AM | 50
Even better:
RCEP will turn into FTAAP today or tomorrow. With TPP dead, all former US allies are flocking to China to secure their place in the future Pacific trade arrangement. After being shelved for 5 years or more, at the APEC summit China is reopening the idea of a broader Asia-Pacific FTA. And since they did a lot of negotiations on RCEP already (I wonder if TPP members secretly participated?), expanding and rebranding it could be fairly swift…
China celebrates the CPC centenary in 2021. And it hopes to be the global hegemon by then.
(Russia has its centenary next year, guess they have enough to celebrate too.)
Posted by: smuks | Nov 19 2016 21:38 utc | 84
It seems that it is politically not correct to talk about Zionism on this site.
Is this true?
Posted by: Lochearn | Nov 19 2016 21:40 utc | 85
@ Lochearn
I admit to challenging those that focus on Zionism to focus instead on the institutions which exist that support all forms of human repression…..private finance and laws of unfettered inheritance.
That said, discussing the religious myths that inherently or through their current adherents support forms of human suppression/control seems like fair game to me.
Having lived long enough to witness the various players come and go I value the focus on changing the social institutions rather than individuals that may or may not be labeled/pigeon holed into one …ism or another.
Posted by: psychohistorian | Nov 19 2016 22:08 utc | 86
I am going to try and fill up # 100 so that future commenters can go back to reasonable formatting that was trolled by Guidoamm above
Posted by: psychohistorian | Nov 19 2016 22:10 utc | 87
It’s probably b.s sensitivities, being German, about the Nazi period when the reality is the Jews took the war to them.
Posted by: Lochearn | Nov 19 2016 22:51 utc | 88
I’m not a Christian, but I agree with the Pope on something he said in a sermon today. Pope Francis sermonized that people should reject “the virus of polarization and animosity” and reject the temptation to “demonize” those who are different. Francis said “our instinctive reaction” is to “discredit or curse” those who are in opposition to us, “often we try to ‘demonize’ them so as to have a ‘sacred’ justification for dismissing them.” And: “The virus of polarization and animosity permeates our way of thinking, feeling and acting…. How quickly those among us… take on the status of an enemy… because they think differently.” “In God’s heart there are no enemies. God has only sons and daughters.” Full speech at: http://www.ncregister.com/blog/edward-pentin/pope-francis-to-new-cardinals-love-your-enemies1
Michael Flynn, the newly appointed National Security Advisor for Trump, said on 19 May 2016 at time 9:10 in this video link: “This vicious barbaric enemy that we are facing that are raping young boys and girls, raping women, beheading, burning.” He was talking about ISIS. But ISIS is composed of truly principled religious people for whom raping young boys and girls is sinful, and there no conclusive evidence that ISIS people have raped anybody (including adult women, even though ISIS find religious support for slavery in the Koran). And if some few “bad apples” in ISIS have commited rape, it wouldn’t mean that ISIS as an organization allows the practice of rape, especially not raping young boys. The original disseminators of the rape allegations in Iraq are political opponents of ISIS who wished to besmear and demonize ISIS. Their testimonies are not creditworthy. I know well that ISIS must be fought and killed with guns & bombs; it is impossible to make a peace with ISIS that would be acceptable to both them and the majority of the population in Iraq and Syria. But this is no excuse for believing false or dubious claims about their behaviour.
As quoted at comment #79 above, Michael Flynn said on 28 May 2016: “Assad is a brutal dictator. He used chemical weapons against his own people, against women and children.” This is more of Michael Flynn’s instinctive spirit of credulity when it comes to demonization propaganda concerning people who don’t have Flynn’s cultural values and who Flynn thinks of as opponents and enemies. No doubt this schmuck Michael Flynn in 2011 thought Ghaddafi was wantonly killing peaceful civilians in Libya.
Posted by: Ghubar Shabih | Nov 19 2016 23:21 utc | 89
@94 mauisurfer.. this flynn guy is a pretty colourful character! someone ought to nick name him ‘errol’ .lol..
and @ 102 ghubar also catches him in some fairly outrageous quotes.. the thing of him writing a book with the jackass neo con michael ledeen is a bit disturbing.. seems to fit in with trump though in having the ability to say outrageous things.. i don’t watch tv and can’t say i have any kind of a read on the man.. not caring about being promoted is a good thing in some ways. turns out it seems to have worked for flynn..
unfortunately these political types will say whatever they feel they need to say to make brownie points.. maybe some of them just speak candidly and some of the time they are lying thru their teeth. it is hard to know. it is a bit bizarre his comments @102 about isis.. i guess the headchopping cult is down with god, lol… that’s a pretty dark, twisted god by my reckoning either way..
Posted by: james | Nov 20 2016 0:01 utc | 90
On Zionism …
American as the land of Zion and/or Israel as the land of Zion … both lead to the blessing of the Zionists, to setting them apart from mere mankind, to making the Zionists exceptional: god’s chosen. The corollary is that all the rest are the unchosen. It’s disastrous.
I also think that though private finance seems the most effective arrow in the quiver of those who seek all for themselves and none for the rest. That it’s that basic impulse to piracy, and piracy’s enshrinement wherever ruthless might is allowed to make right that is our curse … at this stage of humankind, if you believe in progress, or that will be our downfall if you don’t.
Zionism is just one of the apologies for piracy adopted through the ages.
Posted by: jfl | Nov 20 2016 0:16 utc | 91
Ghubar Shabih @ 102:
[Flynn said} “This vicious barbaric enemy that we are facing that are raping young boys and girls, raping women, beheading, burning.” He was talking about ISIS. But ISIS is composed of truly principled religious people for whom raping young boys and girls is sinful, and there no conclusive evidence that ISIS people have raped anybody ” [& if bad apples have done this it wouldn’t mean the organization condones it]
Ghubar, I agree w you that it is very difficult to find the truth when govt & media conspire against the truth. We do know that ISIS are mercenaries, but then everyone fighting there is being paid. We know that the Pentagon spent a lot on propaganda, videos of phoney beheadings and probably ISIS magazine. We resist the propaganda ascribing chemical weapons use to Syria partly because we have a previous attitude that is contradicted by such an allegation– but also because there is sufficient video footage that exposed the “event” as a hoax.
It is impossible for us to know what the ordinary ISIS fighter is like; we have no video footage except the phoney beheadings, and second and third-hand reports of ISIS cruelty. We are told that almost all are from outside the country, yet Syria continually grants rapprochement to this or that group of Syrians if they will lay down weapons, so there must be an element of civil war to the conflict. I remember that the results of an extensive poll of citizen attitudes that MoA printed (last year I think) were surprising. We have footage of ISIS destroying ancient statuary, buildings and ruins. Surely rather than principled this is fanatical. And since ISIS comes from outside of Syria to attack a fellow-Muslim country is this not immoral?
Most of us believe either what we WANT to believe or what the media tells us– even though we have limitless examples of their lying. Ghubar, just consider: Many Americans believe that ordinary American policemen can’t wait to shoot Black people. Some of us believe this only because it hasn’t occurred to us that these might be hoaxes to polarize the population. I was among them. Other people, even after it has been suggested that they review the citizen investigations of hoax refuse to do so, preferring the sense of moral superiority their mistaken outrage gives them.
You are right to remind us that we don’t know the motives of the ordinary ISIS fighter– but neither do you; you too may be believing what you WANT to believe.
Posted by: Penelope | Nov 20 2016 1:10 utc | 92
George Soros gave Vice President Al Gore’s environmental group millions of dollars over three years to create a “political space for aggressive U.S. action” on global warming, according to leaked documents. http://dailycaller.com/2016/08/17/soros-paid-al-gore-millions-to-push-aggressive-us-action-on-global-warming/#ixzz4PsHk8Lwf
https://cleantechnica.com/2009/10/14/george-soros-pledges-11-billion-to-fund-climate-change-initiatives/
Posted by: Penelope | Nov 20 2016 1:14 utc | 93
@ Lochearn at comment #101
One of the reasons that Hitler was taken out was because Hitler issued debt-free and interest-free money based on human labor instead of gold. That propelled Germany from depression to wold power in five years. Similarly Muammar Gaddafi was murdered because he challenged the world of private finance. My feelings toward Hillary Clinton are based on her reaction to his killing. She laughed and expressed delight with Gaddafi’s death, stating “We came. We saw. He died.”
While you want to connect the Jews to what happened to Hitler, which may be entirely defensible, it is the continued existence of private finance with usury as its root tool that is the institutional cancer that threatens our world/species.
I encourage you and others to read this paper about the history of usury prohibition which points to alternatives that we can look at to replace the utility of private finance.
http://www.alastairmcintosh.com/Articles/1998_usury.htm
We need to find a way out of our destructive relationship with private finance and the laws of inheritance that have given us a global cabal of families that are leading our species to extinction, IMO
Posted by: psychohistorian | Nov 20 2016 3:15 utc | 94
Here is a better link to examples of alternatives to private finance
http://www.ebhsoc.org/journal/index.php/journal/article/viewFile/6/6
Posted by: psychohistorian | Nov 20 2016 4:13 utc | 95
Wrt: Posted by: psychohistorian | Nov 19, 2016 11:13:59 PM | 108
Psycho, Your term “private finance” doesn’t readily connote “parallel currencies” or “complementary curriences” to some less acquainted with such monetary tools. As you are probably already aware, a former Central Banker, Bernard Lietaer, is a strong proponent of such “taboo” topics that are, alas, anathema to the (mainstream) status quo. Lietaer and his collaborators have a ton of great information (articles, websites, video presentations, etc.) readily available on the internet.
Few truly appreciate that such practices are a key crux to many untoward outcomes throughout millenia. Hardly surprising in retrospect.
Avid Lurker
Posted by: Avid Lurker | Nov 20 2016 4:42 utc | 96
Correction: Few truly appreciate that such practices are a key crux to MINIMIZING many untoward outcomes throughout millenia.
Posted by: Avid Lurker | Nov 20 2016 4:45 utc | 97
@ Avid Lurker who questions my use of the term Private Finance
To me “parallel currencies” or “complementary currencies” as my second link (comment #108) discusses are not my preferred solution but what has been tried before, with some success. I linked to a description of alternatives that have existed to show what has been done before and open peoples minds to thinking about other options.
I went to the Bernard Lietaer web site and did a search on the term usury and only came up with a reference to his glossary of terms but nothing specific to my argument. When I searched for the term “private finance” there were no results returned. I may look further but would appreciate you sharing where he and his cohorts have addressed these issues specifically.
I believe that many at MoA understand clearly the term private finance as contrasted with totally sovereign or public finance but am open to a better term or characterization of what I call private finance if you wish to provide such.
Posted by: psychohistorian | Nov 20 2016 5:24 utc | 98
@ Avid Lurker
Let me add that I consider the arguments in support of the “quasi-public/private” finance instantiated by the US Fed and the City of London total BS.
I liken such arrangements to a woman saying that she is just slightly pregnant……who owns The World Bank, IMF , BIS, etc.? Where is the international PUBLIC counter to these global institutions?
Posted by: psychohistorian | Nov 20 2016 5:32 utc | 99
For those interested in history; here a video of the history of the Mig-15 of Korean war fame;
http://www.fort-russ.com/2016/11/homage-to-mig-15-1-hour-8-minute-video.html
It’s very good with great aerial combat footage and interviews with the Russian pilots who flew the Migs.
Posted by: V. Arnold | Nov 20 2016 8:51 utc | 100