https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-concurrent-resolution/70/text?r=1&s=5
H.Con.Res.70 – Directing the President pursuant to section 5(c) of the War Powers Resolution to remove United States Armed Forces from hostilities in the Syrian Arab Republic that have not been authorized by Congress.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/44900af84eae2407040f676a439a8cd6376bf3b04486a5fe446ff933296bae39.jpg

Posted by: Igor Bundy | Nov 2 2019 19:11 utc | 204

Sasha # 189 # 191 #196
Sasha, I’m an expat who lives in Spain in the area known as Catalonia. I have tried to be impartial to what has been going on here and watched it’s tempo escalate since the street occupations of 2011. I don’t feel this will end in a good way, and the way it is being handled by Spain to date is distasteful to say the very least. You are right that Vox and others would happily see Catalans beaten to submission or worse, and nefarious forces move in the shadows on all sides. There has certainly been naivety on the part of the independentists inc. the jaw dropping foolishness that there was a belief that the EU would step in and assist somehow. (I do suspect some EU behind the scenes footwork in the push to remove Franco from the Valley of the Fallen mausoleum. -an uncomfortable veneration a step too far for modern Euro (pseudo) values).
https://www.elnacional.cat/es/politica/aquelarre-falangista-ateneo-madrid_436512_102.html
Barcelona has always been a city of arts, culture and philosophy. It has more recently become home to some global congress events, a haven for cruise ships, a booming IT SaaS venue and quite a few tourists. All of which will largely evaporate as the violence escalates. Relocation moves which Spain is more than happy to facilitate, raising the questions you suggest that violence instigators are be in the employment of Govt. agency:
https://twitter.com/Well086/status/1189434154536046592
So yes it would seem to indicate at least Police involvement in orchestrated infiltration into some nocturnal protest activity, exactly what cannot be seen in this clip, but clearly some steps have been taken to attempt to hide the State’s hand at work.
Some other worthwhile feeds are coming in to the twitter #SpainSitAndTalk tag.
However naive the independentists are in their actions the violence brought down on passive civilians has only strengthened the resolve to push harder for more freedoms, which likely they will get eventually but at a terrible cost to both them and to Spain for inward investment, and an embarrassment to Europe. If Spain had the foresight it would be leading the path to development in Morocco and African economic markets rather that sitting dumbly at the rear of the pack awaiting instruction from northern European neighbours while China builds railroads to extract African resource to ship home and fabricate into product and sell in growing trade disparity to European buyers (€ 185 billion in deficit in 2018). Instead Spain prefers to foolishly entertain the poorly educated segment of the electorate with how boldly they smashed Catalan protesters rather than making the efforts to seek bridges for a shared win-win future. The stupidity is superficially mindblowing, the quiet game being to move the industry out whilst maintaining tax burdens and negotiate later. Whatever the play its a small minded game.
Shell’s paper predicting 2050 outcomes gave an poor Option B ‘Scramble’of tooth & nail fight for global resources and devolvement into city states. Catalans seem fine with this outcome, the way things are going they won’t have to wait half that long.
search: 2008 shell-energy-scenarios2050.pdf

Posted by: dennis | Nov 2 2019 19:50 utc | 206

179# Nick,
thanks for the offering of another angle.
So the kind of rather warm support that Danish Premier Mette Frederikksen gave to German CDU leader and likely successor to Ms.Merkel Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer’s proposal to send 30 to 40000 German and other European troops to safeguard the Kurdish zone in Syria would be more of a clever move in regards to keeping cool relations with Germany than a case of routinely following USA Foreign Secretary’s demands?Because in spite of a classic “Cheers to this courageous proposal” campaign in many German news magazines this proposition was widely ignored if not booed,and at Brussel’s Nato gathering it was politely stored on a shelf.At least I hope so.
We’ll keep an eye on Mette though,who some months ago responded with restraint to the Greenland offer,tongue in cheek I believe.

Posted by: willie | Nov 2 2019 19:59 utc | 208

The latest fashion for color revolution.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EIYdO2tWsAEhtFH.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EH9uWn0XYAYRd0H.jpg
https://twitter.com/Truth_of_life7/status/1187881393222799360
https://twitter.com/BaghdadPostPlus/status/1188208330537353216
https://twitter.com/LastDef/status/1190377782955655175
Nice make up. https://twitter.com/33aFuu/media
amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/10/iraq-gruesome-string-of-fatalities
Grenade depicted in Iraq color revolution “Grenade 40mm x 46 SMOKE CS M99”
Grenade spec’s here http://balkannovoteh.co.rs/en/?page_id=944
Max range 400 meters. Weight 170 grams. Perhaps one of these could embed in an eye socket at point blank range, but none of the pics and video show point blank range. Most seem to be very much in the back areas and one video show a so called protestor hit in the back of the head a long distance from what appears to be a frontline.
More on the cartridge here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_40_mm_grenades#Less-lethal_and_riot-control_cartridges
CS (orthochlorobenzalmalononitrile) (tear gas)
https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/cs.htm

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Nov 2 2019 21:45 utc | 210

Others can ‘patrol the border of #Syria,’ US is ‘keeping the oil’ – #Trump
https://twitter.com/Ruptly/status/1190650286018355203

Posted by: Sasha | Nov 2 2019 22:19 utc | 212

karlof1 #213
Good to see Tulsi so absolutely on message. Building an unstoppable force of reform.
Thank you

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Nov 2 2019 22:35 utc | 214

Next stop for colour revolution? Pakistán…
Notice how all these protests have been unleashed against government who have shown a bit of independence from the US or have turned any bit to Russia and China…
‘Gorbachev of Pakistan must go!’ Radical opposition cleric gives ‘puppet’ PM Khan 2 days to resign amid massive protest (VIDEOS)

Posted by: Sasha | Nov 2 2019 22:43 utc | 216

Since discovery of oil in MidEast, many in region said: U.S. only here to steal our oil.
U.S. denied, claimed it’s about democracy, human rights, women etc.
Not sure if Americans realize but these pictures of U.S. troops in northeast Syria are HUGELY damaging to U.S. image.

https://twitter.com/jenanmoussa/status/1190625627038273536

Posted by: Sasha | Nov 2 2019 23:00 utc | 218

This Kurd24 piece pulls together all the bits and pieces of US movements we has seen reported.
Well worth a read.
https://www.kurdistan24.net/en/news/2d52e0d7-446f-4119-8e26-8ee59bddb3ad

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Nov 2 2019 23:14 utc | 220

More on Halima…the baby girl who lost all her family yesterday in Saada…

#Halima is a Yemeni baby girl from the province of #Saada
Her house was bombed yesterday by the #US – #Saudi aggression. Everyone in her family was martyred. Only Halima survived and was wounded.
Tell her story to the world.#SayHerName

https://twitter.com/Marwa__Osman/status/1190691367586082817

Posted by: Sasha | Nov 2 2019 23:17 utc | 222

To those complimenting Trump on saying its about the oil I would ask when has the US not fought for control of physical/human resources or hegemony over finance?….it has never been about freedom and democracy, IMO
To those saying Trump is the peace president I would say you have blinders on with regard to Venezuela, Iran, Afghanistan, Yemen, and the other 180 or so countries the US/empire has troops in….how come Trump has not brought them home? And Syria was a war lost by Obama and Trump is still fighting to hold onto some part of Syria, isn’t he?
To those that say war criminal Hillary “We came, we saw, he died” Clinton would have waged more wars than Trump I would respond that is not true because empire has had to and continues to have to hold off or back away from the Russia/China alliance around the world. The only viable arrows left in the empire quiver are finance ones and those are being wielded with vigor with more to come, like calling in all the global debt after a US bankruptcy to allow the elite to buy up physical resources on the cheap for an ongoing rentier society.
Trump is the Plan C president that is responding to the biggest challenge to those that own the Western world through global private finance that has ever occurred. Those elite are fighting to retain relevance/control and throwing America and other countries under the bus as fall guys for their perfidy…..its all about who controls the economic lifeblood of our species and the global private finance folk have been in control of that for centuries. And in case you haven’t noticed they have written history to obfuscate their involvement in all the Wars humanity has fought…..for freedom and democracy, right?
Wake up to the civilization war being fought about who controls the lifeblood of human economic interaction going forward from this watershed moment in our species existence!

Posted by: psychohistorian | Nov 3 2019 0:00 utc | 224

The control of oil that the US needs now is much different than in the past. US was the worlds largest importer of oil. Now China is the worlds largest oil importer. Dollar hegemony and the petro dollar are finished.
To block China’s oil supplies, US needs physical control of the oil, as it has done in Syria.
US strategy changed from unachievable full spectrum dominance to energy dominance with the election of Trump.
physical control (owner) over a good chunk of the worlds oil supply gives US a lot of leverage over all oil importing countries, plus the income.

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Nov 3 2019 0:32 utc | 226

karlof1, I take your points on the rampant corruption in both parties and historical inability to adhere to the edicts
of the Constitution, but I am at a loss when it comes to your statement that we need a new one. Don’t we just need
appropriate laws in place to make the old one function as it should?
I cannot see any possibility given the enormous task that had been when this was a much more primitive nation, but
having still ethical constraints given the history of a young country composed as it was of various individual
groups of refugee societies, not least among them the native tribes, but a new country building on the better qualities
of the old, having the ability to study other governments and make a better one.
Where is that ability today? Certainly the US government is a failure, but the Constitution didn’t fail – the politicians
failed it. Indeed, it purports to be consistent with international law, which is what Putin is presently following. And
so it should, because international law came out of the development of Constitutional principles.
Amend it, certainly. But I think it’s a fool’s errand to attempt to write a new one.
This is why I still have hope for the Department of Justice investigation. It was what I saw when Nixon was properly
subjected to impeachment. The American public got shown the different branches of government working to unravel the
elements of a breach of government protocol. People went to prison; it was serious stuff. Same for the Church Committee –
serious stuff. The public was served by it.
What is behind the DoJ investigation? It’s not just one party against another. It is members of the intelligence
community conspiring with the party which lost the election to unseat the elected president. Doesn’t matter he’s
an imperfect man – the whole system is destabilized by this. It means as b says that all restraints are gone.
Doesn’t matter who gets the votes; the loser can by hook or by crook unseat him or her.
So, that investigation to me is not about Trump at all. It’s about what people did that was not only illegal
but criminal.

Posted by: juliania | Nov 3 2019 0:53 utc | 228

juliania
I think you have pinpointed the problem any country faces. Written constitutions and laws are useless unless they are upheld by people. Changing the writing will not cause them to be upheld.
The biggest problem I see, and I don’t have an answer for is “Who controls the media. Who ensures the media provide accurate information.”
Robert Parry did a few articles on ‘Perception Management’ at Consortium News, based on the Reagan papers. Successor to mockingbird. They can be found at the Consortium News site by using ‘Perception Management’ as the search term.

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Nov 3 2019 1:15 utc | 230

Priceless Joe Biden
Watch the video. That is just priceless. I will open a beer and celebrate.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Nov 3 2019 1:40 utc | 232

The reaction on this blog has been “muted” to invisible regarding the theft of Syrian oil by the Pentagon.
How do the barflies see this untenable situation get resolved?

Posted by: augrr | Nov 3 2019 1:45 utc | 234

@ augrr… the reaction on this blog is similar to russias ‘reaction’.. keep on moving forward knowing that this play by the usa-west – can’t last… usually this answer isn’t good enough for those who want a quick response – war essentially… so, here we are 7 or more years later, or 4 or 5 years since russia entered this situation, and is the tide turning? i think it is, but some think it isn’t happening fast enough…
where is grieved lately??

Posted by: james | Nov 3 2019 1:53 utc | 236

latest article at sst from larry johnson…
Growing Indicators of Brennan’s CIA Trump Task Force

Posted by: james | Nov 3 2019 1:56 utc | 238

Why is that nobody has told us about this?
Trump flees from New York to avoid paying his taxes
He is the sole president of the USA in more than 40 years who refuses to reveal his tax situation.

Posted by: Sasha | Nov 3 2019 2:08 utc | 240

Confusion reigns over US plan to ‘secure the oil’ in Syria as commanders await orders

Posted by: Bemildred | Nov 3 2019 2:27 utc | 242

A little more on the tear gas rounds in Iraq.
Twitter acc of ‘Weapons Investigator on Amnesty International’s Crisis Team.’ Tis account has a bit on the two types of canister or projectile used in the current propaganda.
https://twitter.com/Brian_Castner
Forgot this one in my previous comment.
https://twitter.com/MostafaMe4/status/1187681140276125697
Amnesty International international has kicked off a new branch called Digital Verication Corps.
https://www.theengineroom.org/digital-verification-corps/
Training the new ‘corps’.
https://www.theengineroom.org/takeaways-from-the-digital-verification-corps-summit/
“Designing training for emerging methods
Building robust, cutting edge training for emerging methods is difficult. The DVC Summit had presentations from several superstar researchers and journalists (Bellingcat, Malachy Browne, and Bill Marczak, among others). Learning from the projects of superstars is an important and useful way to inspire amateur and student researchers”:

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Nov 3 2019 2:49 utc | 244

psychohistorian #235
I would love to see some renegade put together a 1 minute clip of blundering Biden and run it as a Bernie advertisement. Even a spoof.
Maybe b could run a sort of competition for best spoof 60 second advert. It could be based offsite with a post consisting of a link. It would likely be well supported with us barflies promoting it about. O might return with his famous chabad talking fedora.
I did that a few times for cartoonists in my intense activist days and we all had one hell of a good time. We staged opening nights and had judges from around the region and everyone loved the gig.
For a Trump video there is that gem that sasha linked to earlier as his justification for remaining in Syria:take the oil, take the oil, take the oil. Hoho.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Nov 3 2019 3:19 utc | 246

For those that dig Joe Rogan and his interviews. Kyle Kulinski publishes a youtube series ‘secular talk’.
Joe is interviewing Kyle Kulinski and they are having a deep and meaningful 2 hour session on USA politics. Sometime deep, sometimes skimming. But almost 1.2 million views to date since October 30.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Nov 3 2019 11:45 utc | 248

Posted by: Sasha | Nov 3 2019 13:29 utc | 249
Related, or, complementary…
No Time To Explain – Pentagon Needs Cash: DC Think Tank Ranks Russia Alongside Daesh as Key Threat

Moreover, although the North Atlantic Alliance is now spending over $1 trillion on defence, more than all of its potential adversaries combined, the think tank’s ‘report card’ on US military readiness gave the armed forces just barely a passing grade, and said that the military was desperately underequipped to fight a potential two front war.
The Heritage Foundation’s 2020 Index of US Military Strength, a 500+ page document on the US military and its key potential adversaries, lists Russia, China and Iran alongside Middle Eastern terrorism as “aggressive” threats to American interests around the globe.

Posted by: Sasha | Nov 3 2019 13:45 utc | 250

Sasha @ 250
” key potential adversaries, lists Russia, China and Iran alongside Middle Eastern terrorism as “aggressive” threats to American interests around the globe.”
They are a threat to American “INTERESTS”. They are no threat to most Americans however. EG; stealing Syria’s oil. A very small number of Americans will benefit from that so the BS phrase “American Interests” really means the 1% of Americans’ Interest.

Posted by: arby | Nov 3 2019 14:01 utc | 252

I hope I can get away with this on an open thread:
Dead Kennedys – Stars and Stripes of Corruption:
“Finally got to Washington in the middle of the night
I couldn’t wait, I headed straight for the Capitol Mall
My heart began to pound, yahoo, it really exists
The American International Pictures logo
I looked up at that Capitol building, couldn’t help but wonder why
I felt like saying “Hello, old friend”
Walked up the hill to touch it, then I unzipped my pants
And pissed on it when nobody was looking
Like a great eternal Klansman with his two flashing red eyes
Turn around, he’s always watching
The Washington Monument pricks the sky
Flags for pubic hair ringed ’round the bottom
The symbols of our heritage lit up proudly in the night
Somehow fits to see the homeless people passed out on the lawn
So this is where it happens, the power games and the bribes
All lobbying for a piece of ass of the stars and stripes of corruption
Makes me feel so ashamed to be an American
When we’re too stuck up to learn from our mistakes
Trying to start another Vietnam like fiddling while Rome burns at home
The boss says you’re laid off, blame the Japanese
America’s back, alright, at the game it plays the worst
Strip mining the world like a slave plantation
No wonder others hate us and the Hitlers we handpick
To bleed their people dry for our evil empire
The drug we’re fed to make us like it is God and country with a bang
People we know who should know better
Howl “America rules, let’s go to war!”
Business scams are what’s worth dying for
But are the Soviets our worst enemy? We’re destroying ourselves instead
Who cares about our civil rights as long as I get paid
The blind me-generation doesn’t care if life’s a lie
So easily used, so proud to enforce the stars and stripes of corruption
Let’s bring it all down
Let’s bring It all down
Let’s bring it all down
Down, down, down, down, down
Tell me who’s the real patriots, the Archie Bunker slobs waving flags
Or the people with the guts to work for some real change?
Rednecks and bombs don’t make us strong, we loot the world, yet we can’t even feed ourselves
Our real test of strength is caring, not the war toys we sell the world
Just carry on, thankful to be farmed like worms
Old glory for a blanket as you suck on your thumbs
Real freedom scares you cause it means responsibility
So you chicken out and threaten me
Saying, “Love it or leave it,” I’ll get beat up if I criticize it
You say you’ll fight to the death to save your useless flag
If you want a banana republic that bad
Why don’t you go move to one?
But what can just one of us do
Against all that money and power trying to crush us into roaches?
We won’t destroy society in a day
Until we change ourselves first from the inside out
We can start by not lying so much
And treating other people like dirt
It’s so easy not to base our lives on how much we can scam
And you know it feels good to lift that monkey off our back
I’m thankful I live in a place where I can say the things I do
Without being taken out and shot
So I’m on guard against the goons trying to take my rights away
We’ve got to rise above the need for cops and laws
Let kids learn communication instead of schools pushing competition
How about more art and theater instead of sports?
People will always do drugs, let’s legalize them, crime drops when the mob can’t price them
Budget’s in the red, let’s tax religion
No one will do it for us, we’ll just have to fix ourselves
Honesty ain’t all that hard
Just put Rambo back inside your pants
Causing trouble for the system is much more fun
Thank you for the toilet paper, but your flag is meaningless to me
Look around, we’re all people, who needs countries anyway?
Our land, I love it too, I think I love it more than you
I care enough to fight the stars and stripes of corruption
Let’s bring it all down
Let’s bring it all down, let’s bring it all down
If we don’t try, if we just lie
If we can’t find a way to do better than this, who will?”
That song, changed my world.
Regards.

Posted by: Jon_in_AU | Nov 3 2019 14:32 utc | 254

Posted by: S | Nov 2 2019 2:34 utc | 176
(Jupiter update, YouTube)
Thanks. It wasn’t off topic for me 🙂
I’m wondering how much longer we’ll have to wait for NASA to stop dancing around the increasingly obvious evidence (intense magnetic fields, 80%+ metallic Hydrogen composition, bands of chaotic atmosphere rotating at different velocities at different latitudes) that Jupiter & Saturn are non-viable/pygmy/ brown dwarf-ish stars?
“Popular” theory insists that the solar system ‘accreted’ from the debris remaining after a large star exploded. But no-one has been able to build a plausible ‘accretion’ computer model to explain the composition and graduated density distribution of the planets.
It’s much more likely that the debris condensed to form the Sun which then ejected the stuff which formed the planets – all orbiting in the same direction, and plane, as each other and the direction of rotation of the Sun. Too many coincidences to be random happenstance.
I can’t shake off the suspicion that cosmology is more about beating around the bush and obfuscation than about fact-finding – especially the more recent Dark Matter trope…

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Nov 3 2019 15:48 utc | 256

My last post was intended for Xaderp | Oct 31 2019 15:36 utc | 5

Posted by: foolisholdman | Nov 3 2019 20:20 utc | 258

karlof1 | Oct 31 2019 23:11 utc | 63
When I read speeches or articles by Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin or Bashir Assad I have the impression of a sober, rational, highly intelligent adult. What a contrast to the ravings of the US establishment figures!

Posted by: foolisholdman | Nov 3 2019 21:31 utc | 260