Ted Rall: Nuke 'Em All!

It is so very depressing watching Americans especially, but Westerners generally collectively freak-out over ISIS & the infinitesimal chance that they might be killed in a terrorist-attack.  Many of whom were around on the 11th September 2001, did see how we rushed then to surrender our hard-fought freedoms and abandon our liberal values, should have learned from that awful experience.

Last time I held out any smidgen of hope that we had learned, and that the post-9/11 madness had finally subsided, was with the election to the US presidency of one Barack Hussein Obama.  I was quickly disabused of that quaint notion.  And almost eight years later, we've still learned...nothing.

Well I say, we.  Donald J Trump learned.   Our political leaders learned.  Learned how easy it is to cow the masses with the simple suggestion of fear.  Be afraid.  Be VERY AFRAID !!!

The Sky is Falling !!!

Okay, so the 22 Minutes piece isn't exactly high art, but you get the point perhaps.  Just fourteen years ago, we watched terrorists crash jet-airliners into and bring down skyscrapers in Manhattan, with thousands dead.  Watched people throwing themselves from windows to escape the smoke & flames.  It hurt.  It shocked.  It scarred us.  And we reacted in panic, rushing through new security-powers, turning ourselves into cattle in our airports, starting two wars, one of which hasn't quite ended even today, and the other of which helped birth ISIS.

We endured those attacks, far greater and more traumatic than those in Paris, and some of us at least, had mind to later regret our initial hasty rush to act, our temptation to give in to the demands of politicians who promised to keep us safe.  Our stupid willingness to give the terrorists exactly what they fucking wanted.  To be terrified into undermining that which makes Western society great, and waging what they could easily portray as a war on the Muslim world.

And now here we are again, having seemingly learned nothing in the years since.  We have even worse politicians calling for more extreme action, demanding that we surrender what remains of our civil liberties in the name of security.  We have the same incessant drumbeat for MOAR WAR.  And we have an even more lunatic bunch of fanatical crazies trying to goad us into the clash of civilisations they so desperately desire.

We overreacted then, and we're on the verge of overreacting now.  Calm the fuck down people, for all our sakes.

22 Minutes: Fear Everything

Rowson on ISIS and...

...and I don't know where CiF is currently, but the more mystery the better figuring this shit out.  Love Rowson.

Salon: Putin might be right on Syria

Meant to have this up much earlier, but editing this b* down is not easy, which is a compliment.  The best option ended up being to simply lop off the latter part, which referred to the wisdom of Messrs. Gordon Adams & Stephen Walt on said crisis.  Maybe just read what they have to say and ignore anything below...

...

Very simply, we have one secular nation helping to defend what remains of another, by invitation, against a radical Islamist insurgency that, were it to succeed, would condemn those Syrians who cannot escape to a tyranny of disorder rooted in sectarian religious animosities. And we have the great power heretofore dominant in the region hoping that the insurgency prevails. Its policy across the region, indeed, appears to rest on leveraging these very animosities.

Now we can add the names back in.

In the past week Russia has further advanced its support of Bashar al-Assad with intensified bombing runs and cruise missiles launched from warships in the Caspian Sea. Not yet but possibly, Russian troops will deploy to back the Syrian army and its assorted allies on the ground. This has enabled government troops to begin an apparently spirited new offensive against the messy stew of Islamist militias arrayed against Damascus.

It was a big week for Washington, too. First it pulled the plug on its $500 million program to train a “moderate opposition” in Syria—admittedly a tough one given that Islamists with guns in their hands tend to be immoderate. Instantly it then begins to send weapons to the militias it failed to train, the CIA having “lightly vetted” them—as it did for a time in 2013, until that proved a self-defeating mistake.

The fiction that moderates lurk somewhere continues. Out of the blue, they are now called “the Syrian Arab Coalition,” a moniker that reeks of the corridors in Langley, Virginia, if you ask me.

In Turkey, meantime, the Pentagon’s new alliance with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan government starts to play out just as the Turkish prime minister intended. All the persuasive signs are that the government was responsible for bombs that killed more than 120 people in Ankara last weekend as they protested Erdoğan’s renewed violence against Turkey’s Kurdish minority. The Middle East’s crisis has just spread into another country.

*

Since Russia reinvigorated its decades-old support for Damascus last month, the vogue among the Washington story-spinners has been to question Putin’s motives. What does Putin—not “Russia” or even “Moscow,” but Putin—want? This was never an interesting question, since the answer seemed clear, but now we have one that truly does warrant consideration.

What does the U.S. want? Why, after four years of effort on the part of the world’s most powerful military and most extensive intelligence apparatus, is Syria a catastrophe beyond anything one could imagine when anti-Assad protests egan in the spring of 2011?

After four years of war—never truly civil and now on the way to proxy—Assad’s Syria is a mangled mess, almost certainly beyond retrieval in its current form. Everyone appears to agree on this point, including Putin and Sergei Lavrov, the Russian leader’s foreign minister. There is no putting this humpty-dumpty back on any wall: The Russians readily acknowledge this, acres of groundless journalism to the contrary notwithstanding.

In the meantime, certain realities are essential to recognize. The Assad government is a sovereign entity. Damascus has the beleaguered bones of a national administration, all the things one does not readily think of as wars unfold: a transport ministry, an education ministry, embassies around the world, a seat at the U.N. In these things are the makings of postwar Syria—which, by definition, means Syria after the threat of Islamic terror is eliminated.

Anyone who doubts this is Russia’s reasoning should consider the Putin-Lavrov proposal for a negotiated transition into a post-Assad national structure. They argue for a federation of autonomous regions representing Sunni, Kurdish and Alawite-Christian populations. Putin made this plain when he met President Obama at the U.N. last month, my sources in Moscow tell me. Lavrov has made it plain during his numerous exchanges with Secretary of State Kerry.

Why would Russia’s president and senior diplomat put this on the table if they were not serious? Their proposed design for post-Assad Syria, incidentally, is a close variant of what Russia and the Europeans favor in Ukraine. In both cases it has the virtue of addressing facts on the ground. These are nations whose internal distinctions and diversity must be accommodated—not denied, not erased, but also not exacerbated—if they are to become truly modern. Russians understand the complexities of becoming truly modern: This has been the Russian project since the 18th century.

In the past week Washington has effectively elected not to support Russia’s new effort to address the Syria crisis decisively. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter’s latest phrase of the moment is “fatally flawed.” If he said it once he said it a dozen times: The Russian strategy is fatally flawed. We heard you the third time, Ash.

As to Obama, he rejects any notion that Washington has effectively ceded leadership on the Syria question—with potentially wider implications—to Moscow. In his much-noted interview with 60 Minutes last weekend, he found Putin foolhardy for risking the lives of Russian soldiers and “spending money he doesn’t have.”

Say what?

Whose strategy in Syria is fatally flawed, Mr. Carter? I assume there is no need to do more than pose the question. (Memo to SecDef: Get a new scriptwriter, someone who allots you more than one assigned phrase a week.)

As to Obama’s remarks, one wishes he were joking. We are $5 trillion into the mess that began with the invasion of Iraq a dozen years ago, and we are counting the fatalities one side or the other of a million. There are roughly 4 million Syrian refugees by the latest count. And Putin’s at fault for risking lives and blowing money? Who puts a smart guy like you up to this, Mr. President?

...

I'm not at all convinced that the Russians really know what they are doing here, or what the endgame looks like, but as for the Americans...

T'would seem that the Obama administration inherited from Bush & Co. the rather naïve view that if various tyrannical despots in the Middle East could be removed with the support of  Western military-aid, that the populations would immediately and unhesitatingly embrace both the West, and secular democracy, despite the historical record, in which revolutions, even well-meaning ones as often as not, if not more often, create worse outcomes than that which went before.  And despite both the existence of relatively widespread animosity towards the United States and the West generally in many of these countries, and the lack of a democratic tradition (the latter a problem for post-Soviet Russia also as we have seen).

The Arab Spring seemed liked it might be going well for a while (as perhaps did the War in Iraq early on), and having seen Qadaffi & Mubarak fall, Western leaders (who had previously sucked up to the same), decided to turn on al Assad, only...he didn't fall right away, and decided to fight instead.  Fight to the death perhaps if it came to it.  Which left the West rooting for the downfall of Assad in a civil war that involved various occasionally overlapping anti-Assad elements, some of which were explicitly Islamist, some more secular, some more or less concerned with ethnic or nationalistic factions, lining up as much against one another as against Assad.

And then the West (by which of course I mean the US) chose the amorphous opposition, not knowing into what it might morph as its champion against Assad a) assuming incorrectly as it happened that Assad would fold quickly, and b) with no awareness of whether the forces arrayed against Assad would ultimately be dominated by more Western-leaning more secular forces, or by the likes of Al Qaeda or ISIS.  Not like we have the history of living memory to look back on or anything for advice...

And so the West bet against Assad, (the now much denounced but recent ally still of the US), and by proxy for an ever amporphous coalition of groups, some of which are no doubt secular and democratic, but others of which would very much like to establish an Islamic caliphate all the way to Spain thank you very much, and if they can do it with donated US weapons, thanks that very much more.

Some of the non-ISIS-aligned & non-al-Qaeda aligned elements may still exist in the coalition against which Russia is currently fighting alongside the 'regime-forces'* & Iranians, but whom would we ask ?  Where/who/what is the leader of the Free Syrian Army ?  Where are the five or six (by most ambitious official military estimates) of the tens of thousands of US-trained opposition-forces meant to be in place by now ?

The US' official position is that Russia's involvement is prolonging the conflict unnecessarily, as if the conflict hadn't already been going on for four years with the US' involvement, and no end in sight.  I read somewhere (some beltway hackery no doubt) some speculation that the Russian involvement might in fact unite the various anti-Assad faction against the foreign 'imperialist' forces, and hasten Assad's removal.  Doubt it much, but even if that were the case, who would put money on the current conflict ending without either a) Western ground-forces having to intervene (likely to no avail in the long term), b) Assad remaining in power for the foreseeable future at least, or c) a victory for Islamist extremists ?

For our more Russophobic friends, we've seen how even the most relatively peaceful transitions from authoritarian dictatorship, can simply replace one dictator with another.  How in the absence of a concerted committed long-term international coalition dedicated to long-term liberal democratic reform, any hopes for a more progressive future may be dashed, even in historically liberal societies... Anyone think the US is willing or able to commit to a Marshall plan for Syria ?

* As in the still legitimate government of Syria under international law

** PS Fuck you any one who is still this far into the twenty-first century defending the mind-blowing incompetence of Microsoft Inc.

*** I hate the very notion of WYSIWYG, at least at it's implemented by our (consistently proven)-not betters.

So, We Support the Guys in Green, Right ?

Via an article on the Beeb re-assuring us on Obama's behalf that '"Assad must go" to ensure IS defeat'.  I might cry if I were still capable.

And we'll give them arms and train them, only for that materiel & those (very very) few personnel to end up on the other side fighting against us.  I can see now why the UN gave Obama a pre-emptive Nobel Peace Prize.

Because We Need to Laugh at ISIS

Organisers of an art exhibition celebrating freedom of expression have found themselves removing one of the exhibits after police raised concerns it was "inflammatory" and warned it would cost an extra £36,000 to secure the event.

The artwork in question was a series of tableaux entitled 'Isis Threaten Sylvania' that used children's Sylvanian Families dolls to satirise the Isis terrorist group.

In the work Sylvanian Families dolls are seen enjoying a picnic or a day on the beach, while other black-clad dolls, some of them armed, one carrying a black flag, gather on the sidelines.

In each piece an otherwise tranquil scene appears set to turn violent.

This needs a GoFundMe ASAP.  How can the world continue to be denied such brilliance over £36,000 security-costs ?  Satire is power peeps.

Some more background on the artist & her intent from the Guardian:

Mimsy said she had adopted a pseudonym because, as the daughter of a Syrian father whose Jewish family had to go into exile in Lebanon when he was a child, she was acutely aware of the potential risk of speaking out.

“I love my freedom,” she said. “I’m aware of the very real threat to that freedom from Islamic fascism and I’m not going to pander to them or justify it like many people on the left are doing.”

She added that the idea of using Sylvanian Families “just popped into my head” as a way of demonstrating that fanaticism was not a question of race. Though the jihadis in the work are called “MICE-IS”, some are clearly cats or koalas and others have rabbits’ ears popping out of their masks. “I’m sick and tired of people calling criticism of fanatical Islam racist, because racism is about your skin colour and radical Islam is nothing to do with that. There are millions of Muslims who are shocked by it too,” said Mimsy.

She added that she had made the tableaux between December 2014 and May 2015 and had looked on in horror as, one by one, her imagined scenarios came true. In one scene, jihadis lurk outside a schoolroom, while a class of girls sit at their desks; in another, gunmen bristle on the horizon as holidaymakers sunbathe on a beach. “It was creepy, because each time I imagined a scene it happened in reality. I made the beach scene before the Tunisian massacre and the schoolroom scene before Boko Haram abducted the schoolgirls in Nigeria,” she said.

We need this.

Our Allies and Enemies

From an article in the Graun. on the continuing disarray (never mind possible first step towards dissolution) of the European Union over the 'refugee crisis'.*

Merkel singled out Turkey as the key to a crisis management strategy and Juncker said the fund-raising would include a billion euros for Ankara.

But Tusk, just returned from Turkey, said money “is not the big problem. It is not as easy as expected.”

Ahmet Davutoğlu, the Turkish prime minister, wrote to the EU leaders on Wednesday demanding bold concessions from the Europeans as the price for Turkey’s possible cooperation. He proposed EU and US support for a buffer and no-fly zone in northern Syria by the Turkish border, measuring 80km by 40km.

This would stymy the Kurdish militias fighting Islamic State in northern Syria and would also enable Ankara to start repatriating some of the estimated 2 million Syrian refugees it is hosting. The militias are allied with the Kurdistan workers’ party (PKK) guerrillas at war with the Turkish state for most of the past 30 years. Ankara reignited the conflict in July after the ruling Justice and Development party (AKP) lost its parliamentary majority in a general election.

“There are many people who doubt the sincerity of their motives,” said a senior EU official. “They’re not offering too much.”

Ah, our good friends in Turkey.  Not ones they to let a crisis go to waste.  Why not use the situation with the refugees as an excuse to further their military-campaign against the Kurds, to date, one of our few effective allies in the fight against ISIS ?  It's not as if the warzone in question were the source of most of the refugees in the first place, after all...Not as if undermining the Kurds would strengthen ISIS and help prolong the fucking war.  And a chance to bully the members of the union they so desperately want to one day join themselves into the bargain ?  Genius.

Er, we did check with the Russians didn't we about where they are operating in the country ?**  Might be good to know before we start trying to enforce a no-fly zone.  Oh, that's right.  We're not talking with Russia...or Iran...or Assad.  'Cos we don't like them.  They not nice.

Fucking grow up already.  Okay, so we have to work with Turkey, because they're 'our ally'...supposedly...not that that should extend to militarily supporting their ongoing efforts to deny the Kurds an independent state.  But just how many countries and factions are fighting in Syria now ?  Just how much more complicated is this likely to become ?  And whilst we are flinging bombs back and forth with abandon, then feigning surprise when vast swaths of the country become depopulated, who are the players on the ground here ?

• Pro-government forces ('Our Enemy')
• ISIS & related jihadist groups ('Our Enemy')
• Iran ('Our Enemy')
• Russia ('Our Enemy')
• The Kurds (Would-be allies, except that we'll sell them out to Turkey)
• Some random rag-tag non-jihadi anti-govt. forces.

No-one see a problem here ?  Not even a little bit ?

Psst...Kerry & Co...So this strategy of yours of not talking to forces we don't like...I'm not sure it's working out so well.  I'm not sure in the context of the current conflict that it isn't in fact totally fucking insane.

Ask yourself these questions: Is getting rid of Assad more important than defeating ISIS ?  Is constraining Russian or Iranian influence more important than defeating ISIS ?  What are our priorities here amidst the rise of this incredibly radical violent group that wants to establish an Islamic Caliphate, and amidst the biggest refugee-crisis since the Second World War ?  And would you not acknowledge that an end to this bloody war in which somehow you a) Limit Iranian & Russian influence in the region, b) Forcibly remove Assad, and c) Defeat ISIS, whilst d) Avoiding US so-called 'boots on the ground' is ever so slightly un-fucking-likely ?

Never mind the inherent lunacy of having the US & Russia acting in the same theatre of war without the strictest cooperation, without clear shared goals.

Admit you fucked up already.  Then get over it...and get serious.  We need pragmatism here, not pride.

* Not to say that there isn't a refugee-crisis, just that what European countries refer to with that phrase, is more to do with the hundreds of thousands crossing European borders, as opposed to the overall crisis to which everyone simply turned a blind eye, so long as it was occurring somewhere else.

** Rhetorical question

*** Feel obligated to include an image of some kind, if only for the mobile version of Blogger.  And that 'toon is Rall at his edgiest best.

You Don't Say

John Kerry softened America’s demand yesterday that Syria’s dictator must step down, declaring that the timing of Bashar al-Assad’s departure was open to negotiation.

The US secretary of state retreated from the earlier US position that Assad’s removal must be the first step towards resolving Syria’s civil war.

He spoke as the regime carried out a series of air strikes near the ancient city of Palmyra, which has fallen into the hands of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil). The Syrian air force flew as many as 25 sorties, killing perhaps 26 people on the ground, including Isil fighters.

Assad has been emboldened by Russia’s decision to provide direct military support. In recent weeks, Russian tanks and troops have been deployed in Syria, along with a small number of advanced jet fighters.

Russia’s goal appears to be to prevent Assad from suffering more battlefield defeats while also complicating any escalation of America’s air campaign against Isil targets in Syria....

Just admit you fucked up already.  Overplayed your hand.  Turning against Assad so soon was a mistake.  And the notion of democracy easily sweeping the Middle East folly.  It's not too late.


And, while we're on the subject of your ineptitude, about Ukraine...

9/12

So, another '9/11' has passed us by with no major drama, that I noticed anyway, and no major terrorist-attacks, bar of course those that are now routine across parts of the Islamic world thanks in large part to the destabilising efforts and warmongering of lunatic politicians in the West.  Whatever.

I've always held that the twelfth of September, not the eleventh, should be a national day of mourning and remembrance for the United States.  Not so much for the day itself, or any specific events thereof, but as a general symbolic signifier of all the insanity that proceeded from America's reaction to the traumatic events of the day before.  The Patriot Act.  The War in Iraq.  Extraordinary Rendition.  Illegal (for some of which retroactive amnesty was had to be later granted) spying on Americans.  Secret intelligence-deals with European countries.  The constant fearmongering.  The indefinite detainment in Guantanamo Bay of civilians without trial, often on the basis of mere hearsay; of individuals, many of whom were later found to be completely innocent.  The torture of inmates in prisons in Iraq.  The extrajudicial executions by drone.  The 'Axis of Evil' rhetoric and subsequent toxification of what had been thawing relations with Iran.  'Homeland Security.'  'Enemy Combatants.'  'With us or against us.'  'Old Europe.'  'Freedom Fries.'  The trillions of dollars wasted.  The Dead.  The Displaced.  The countries utterly demolished.  The encouragement and inspiration given to a whole new generation of would-be jihadis and extremists.  The rise of ISIS.

I was as horrified as anyone to see those towers fall.  To see the smoke rising from the Pentagon.  To think of the last moments of Flight 93.  To imagine what it would be like to be driven to jump from the windows of a fucking skyscraper, out of desperation to avoid the smoke and the flames.  Bodies falling from the sky on live television.

Today, I feel almost nothing when I think of '9/11.'  A numbness perhaps.  A cold emptiness ?  But mostly, nothing.  It happened.  It was horrible.  What came after, what was done in the name of that tragedy, that outrage, was infinitely worse.  And is with us still.  And in the name of the so-called 'War on Terror' that by definition can never end, perhaps with us always.

We need a name for the day perhaps.  Something to match the Orwellian monstrosity of naming the 11th 'Patriot Day.'  Something to memorialise the moment that the United States collectively lost its shit.  Abandoned perhaps forever the values that had made it the greatest beacon of liberal values in the world for over two-hundred years.  Shit, something, if nothing else, to remind us that there was a time when we weren't always at war.  When we didn't routinely give away our liberties without question and without protest in the name of 'security.'

We have a whole generation coming into voting-age who have never known anything else.  For whom the police-state and the endless war of the post-9/11 era is 'normal.'  Well, for my own part, fuck that.  No, it will never be normal.  It will never be right.

Our Friends in the Near East

In fight against Islamic State, Turkey's Erdogan sees chance to battle Kurds

ISTANBUL, July 27 (Reuters) - Forced into battle against Islamic State as it presses on Turkey's borders, President Tayyip Erdogan is seizing the chance to keep another foe in check, bombing Kurdish militants he sees as a threat to the integrity of the Turkish state.

Casting the operations as a war on terrorist groups "without distinction", Turkey launched air strikes against Islamic State in Syria for the first time last week and granted the U.S.-led coalition access to its air bases after years of reluctance.

It also bombed camps in northern Iraq belonging to the militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) for the first time in at least three years. Hundreds of suspected Islamic State and PKK members have been rounded up in raids across Turkey.

Launching wars on two fronts is a high-risk strategy for the NATO member, leaving it dangerously exposed to the threat of reprisals by jihadists and at risk of reigniting a Kurdish insurgency that has cost 40,000 lives over three decades.

Turkey has been a conduit for foreign jihadists, with thousands thought to have crossed its borders to join Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, many concealed among the millions of tourists who flock to Turkey's shores each year.

They have often been aided by Turkish smugglers linked to the Islamist insurgents; a network Turkey has been trying to dismantle but which could retain capacity to launch attacks on Turkish soil after the fashion of last week's suicide bombing, blamed by Ankara on the militants, that killed 32 people.

Western diplomats have long feared that Istanbul, one of the world's most visited cities, or Turkey's Aegean or Mediterranean coastal resorts could be soft targets. Attacks that killed dozens of foreign tourists in Tunisia earlier this year served only as a reminder of the risks.

"Ankara's recent adoption of aggressive policies towards both the PKK and the Islamic State has considerably raised the risk of terrorist attacks and sustained civil unrest inside the country," Wolfango Piccoli of risk research firm Teneo Intelligence said in a note.

Yet on both fronts, Erdogan looks to be hoping to seize opportunity out of crisis. He is reviving Turkey's international standing with the more robust stance on Islamic State, but also undermining the pro-Kurdish opposition and bolstering nationalist support at home with the attacks on the PKK.

I'm so glad Turkey is finally joining the fight against ISIS (ISIL, IS, Daesh, whatever).  The last year or so, others in the West (I suppose we sorta consider Turkey the West these days, rather than the Near East as was) have been fighting a potential existential threat to Turkey and the entire region south of Turkey's border, whilst Turkey let fighters, weapons, and money cross the border, seemingly with impunity.

And now, Turkey generously agrees to join in the fight, so long as they get to also bomb the Kurds, the only remotely stable or militarily proven ally we have on the ground, because they're so terrified of the possibility that 'their own' Kurds might not continue to be denied the statehood that the Turks have bloodily denied them for generations.

Our great ally in NATO, Turkey.  Our would-be future member of the EU.  The same Turkey that has been exploiting the economic frailty of neighbour and member of both the EU & NATO, Greece, by testing their sovereign airspace, to the point of inviting dogfights between the two countries' airforces.

The country that used to be the very model of secular western Islam, but is currently run by Islamist strongman Tayyip Erdoğan, he of Ak Saray-fame, who felt it necessary to squander vast quantities of the people's money on a massive new palatial complex for himself, one of the very largest in the world, on what was previously protected forest-land, so large in order presumably to be able to hold his incredible ego.

The West, in particular the Europeans, seem to have assumed that Turkey made the choice between the values of the liberal west, and the values of mediaeval Arabia long ago*.  But clearly, that choice is still very much up in the air.

The UK, which, still within my lifetime, was facing the bloody aftermath of the Irish partition, just last year, allowed the people of Scotland, home of the UK's sole nuclear deterrent (and now sole shipbuilder -- Thanks DC !) and North Sea oil-fields, a peaceful democratic vote on independence.  It's not surprising that such a similar opportunity would be inconceivable for the Kurds in Iran, in Iraq, in Syria.  But then there's also western-allied NATO-member and future EU-candidate Turkey, which had seemingly made a sort of peace with the PKK, but can't wait to start bombing the Kurds again, the moment it gets the chance, even when they're key allies in a fight that threatens Turkey itself.

Here's Turkey's chance and Tayyip Erdoğan's to define themselves, and what they truly stand for.  Hopefully they're aware of the significance of the moment, and, hopefully those fools in the EU are paying attention, either way.


* We made a similar assumption, multiple times as it happens, about Russia.

So Many Stupid Flag Stories

Walmart Apologizes for Making ISIS Cake for Man Denied Confederate Flag Design

Jun 29, 2015, 1:23 PM ET
By SUSANNA KIM

A man in Louisiana is asking for an explanation from Walmart after his request for a Confederate flag cake at one of its bakeries was rejected, but a design with the ISIS flag was accepted.

Chuck Netzhammer said he ordered the image of the Confederate flag on a cake with the words, "Heritage Not Hate," on Thursday at a Walmart in Slidell, Louisiana. But the bakery denied his request, he said. At some point later, he ordered the image of the ISIS flag that represents the terrorist group.

"I went back yesterday and managed to get an ISIS battleflag printed. ISIS happens to be somebody who we're fighting against right now who are killing our men and boys overseas and are beheading Christians," Netzhammer said. 

A spokesman for Walmart told ABC News, "An associate in a local store did not know what the design meant* and made a mistake. The cake should not have been made and we apologize."

What are they apologising for exactly ?  Other than letting themselves be made fools of.

Let's just ban everything.  All visual expressions that might conceivably offend someone somewhere somehow.  Although maybe we could add a tiny exemption for repeating geometrical patterns and verses of the...


* 'Did not know what the design meant' ?  You're shitting me, surely ?

Tyranny !

So...how is the Republican-led 114th Congress currently fighting back against the evil tyranny of the Muslim Marxist Kenyan Dictator-in-chief, that libtard Demoncrat Barack Hussein Obama ?  Oh that's right, by not doing their job.

Never mind the usual bullshit of obstructing or holding up Obama's executive nominees, such as with current nominee to be Attorney General, Loretta Lynch whose confirmation has been held up for five months now as Republicans try to tie the confirmation into a variety of completely unrelated issues.

No, I'm talking about things like exercising their constitutionally established powers 'to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations' or 'to declare War.'  With the former, we have TPP, an agreement that would (probably unconstitutionally) restrict the government's ability to regulate international trade and commerce, and for which Barack Obama requested 'fast-track authorization' in which Congress would have no ability to make any changes or amendments to said deal.  And for the latter, we have the ongoing war against ISIS, one of many undeclared and likely illegal wars in which the United States is currently engaged.  A war for which Barack Obama has previously claimed he doesn't need any new authorisation, and yet for which he was eventually cowed into requesting authorisation from Congress.  So, how are we doing ?

What say you Congress on preventing the evil dictator from wresting trade-making decisions away from you ?

Why, no problem at all Mister Obama.  Please take that onerous burden from our hands.

WASHINGTON — Key congressional leaders agreed on Thursday on legislation to give President Obama special authority to finish negotiating one of the world’s largest trade accords, opening a rare battle that aligns the president with Republicans against a broad coalition of Democrats.

In what is sure to be one of the toughest fights of Mr. Obama’s last 19 months in office, the “fast track” bill allowing the White House to pursue its planned Pacific trade deal also heralds a divisive fight within the Democratic Party, one that could spill into the 2016 presidential campaign.

... 

It would give Congress the power to vote on the more encompassing 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership once it is completed, but would deny lawmakers the chance to amend what would be the largest trade deal since the North American Free Trade Agreement of 1994, which President Bill Clinton pushed through Congress despite opposition from labor and other Democratic constituencies.

What about war then ?  After all the stink the Republicans in Congress made about the proposed deal with Iran, you'd think there's no chance at all they wouldn't take advantage of Obama handing them on a silver platter a chance to have their say officially on the war with ISIS.

Ah, who gives a shit ?  What's one more undeclared war ?

But remember, Obama is a TYRANT !  And it is imperative that you vote Republican in the next elections so that we can TAKE OUR COUNTRY BACK !

What a fucking joke.

Melys: Achilles Heel

So in recent news, people's perception of colour varies (and many people's monitors are incorrectly calibrated), and some llamas escaped.  Oh, and the Federal Communications Commission had some trivial ruling or other.  Oh and those naughty naughty tricksters ISIS engaged in an act of minor vandalism in Iraq.  Oh, and surprisingly Russia still has an opposition, given that an opposition leader was gunned down near the Kremlin.  But don't worry, the Russian government has assured us that Vladimir Putin (the er, chief suspect in most people's mind) is going to personally head the investigation, after a few months of which some Chechen separatist or Ukrainian fascist will presumbably be charged with the crime (and die in custody days or weeks later), unless relations with the West deteriorate even further in which case, it will turn out to be a plot by SIS or the CIA.

American Theocracy Now

Exhibits A & B for those who may think fears of the US of A turning into a theocracy are overstated:

Via little green footballs, 57% of Republicans support establishing Christianity as the national religion.

Via Jon Green of AmericaBlog: Unelectable Atheists: U.S. States That Prohibit Godless Americans From Holding Public Office

I'm not surprised...at all...at the sentiment, but maybe...at little...that the fundamentalist bastards in so many states tried to write this shit into law.

So what, requiring belief in a god or Supreme Being, is not a religious test ?  Depending on one's definition of religion, maybe.

Bankrupt the US just a little bit more and the Tea Party can take over as a parallel ISIS.