Two Years

Frightened enough yet ?

So, we're just one week into the Trump presidency, and any remaining doubt is gone (Forget punching Nazis, next arsehole to suggest we should give him a chance, gets it): America has elected an utterly insane, emotionally unstable narcissistic child & Fascist as President.  USA! USA! USA!

I tweeted out recently a prediction that the Congressional GOP would never impeach Trump, which might seem a tad premature for just days into his presidency, what with all the rumours swirling about GOP concerns for his mental health, and others predicting impeachment, whether within a six-month timeframe, immediately after the midterms, or whenever.

I can't predict the future, obviously.  No-one can.  But nonetheless, I feel compelled to give my best guess as to how things play out from here, based upon my read of Trump, Dem. & GOP politicians, and the American public.  And while I hope I'm wrong, I very much believe that we are drifting into a Turkish or Russian style pseudo-democratic Authoritarian state, a 'strong man'-led defacto dictatorship.

Right now, we still have a nominal semi-democratic republic in the United States.  We still have, in theory, rule of law, and a written constitution with guaranteed rights & protections for ordinary citizens & residents. In theory, even as Trump and some around him (Can you say 'emoluments' ?) may be in violation of certain provisions thereof already.

But I don't think this transitional period will last long, and given Trump's rhetoric & executive actions, given that dressing-down of the media by Spicer and thinly veiled threats by Bannon, I don't think it's long before the crackdown on the media & on dissent generally kicks into high gear.  It's going to be an aggressive push to dismantle the norms. and the protections of American democracy, and I don't think either the media or general public are remotely ready for what is coming.

Personally, I think it all plays out over the next two years...before the midterms.  If change is to come, in whatever form, be that impeachment by the Republicans, a mass popular uprising, military coup, some sort or foreign intervention, or hell, while we're clutching at straws, act of G-d, I feel it comes in the next two years or not at all.  My prediction (and by all means call me out if I'm wrong), is that, if Trump survives to the midterms, the only way he leaves the White House, is in a wooden box.

And no, I still don't think the Republicans will impeach him.  My read of the greedy cowards & bullies in Congress is that a) they are almost to a man, in awe of the greater bully in Trump, and constitutionally disinclined to take him on, and b) that they see allowing a crazy person to sit in the White House as the price they have to pay for maintaining power, and a price they are more than willing to pay.

The GOP stood on the precipice of being wiped out prior to the last election.  Ideologically, politically the country is becoming more & more progressive over time, as also demographically the population becomes less & less white, and their most loyal voters (the Fox News demographic of largely older white males) die off.  This election was characterised by many, and I'd say accurately, as the last stand of the conservative white male, and having not only held on to power, but expanded it, with control of all three branches of the federal government, and a majority of governorships & statehouses, why the hell would the GOP ever risk giving it up again...possibly forever ?

In two years time, perhaps the Democrats run on opposition to Trump, on impeachment even. Perhaps there is a groundswell of popular support for this.  Meanwhile, where will the tattered remnants of the Voting Rights Act be, under Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions & a hard-right dominated Supreme Court ?  What will have happened to (the, if any) investigation into Crosscheck, and the irregularities of the last election, into the widespread attempts at voter-suppression ?  What will have happened to the already heavily gerrymandered districts, to the easily manipulable electronic voting-machines dotting the country ?  Don't be surprised if that groundswell of public support for the Democrats somehow translates into the Republicans massively outperforming expectations.  And don't expect any other elections, or other than sham affairs after that.

I say you have two years, America/Americans.  Two years in which anything could happen.  What you do, what you could do in that time, I don't know.  Maybe you find a way to fight back against creeping fascism, maybe you just learn to adapt...maybe you leave.  But I think your window to avoid an Erdoğan- or Putin-style autocracy is much smaller than you think.  I give it two years.

Kremlin Apologist or Useful Idiot ? (or maybe I just don't want to die in a nuclear holocaust...)

Never did finish/post piece I intended on Russia & US Elections, but the Russian bear does still loom even larger than usual in Western political discourse, so I should probably say something, even as my suspicion that I may eventually end up regretting defending Russia grows...

I'll start thusly...As a Westerner I don't particularly fear Vladimir Putin...at all.  The man some want to paint as a Siberian candidate, soon to be POTUS Trump, a thin-skinned mentally deranged narcissist bully and confessed sexual predator OTOH...That sumbitch in control of not just the most powerful military of the planet, but also in possession of the codes to the US nuclear arsenal fucking terrifies me.  Why the difference ?  Because one, I judge on his past behaviour to be a rational actor, whilst the other...well, his words and actions rather speak for themselves.

I was vaguely hopeful up until the general election even that Trump, who prides himself on his unpredictability, might surprise us, that the incompetence & recklessness shown during the campaign might turn out to have been an act, but at this point, listening to commentators on the BBC mere days before inauguration still holding out promise that he can change, and insisting that we should give him a chance, give him the benefit of the doubt, I have do ask What are they smoking ?  Will the chattering classes still six months from now, eighteen months from now still be denying the obvious ?  That the man is exactly who he has shown himself to be, the last two years of the campaign...The last seven decades of his life ?  FFS !

Anyways...Putin...Russia...I've written here before on what I think about/how I feel about events in South Ossetia, in Ukraine & Crimea.  How I feel that Russia's geopolitical strategy is, certainly from their point of view, primarily defensive, and an attempt through fostering frozen conflicts, to establish buffer-zones between themselves, and what they see as Western encroachment/encirclement.  And it's a smart strategy.  Russia, despite what the USSR may or may not have been, and despite attempts at modernisation, is likely not as powerful militarily as they would have us believe, and even before falls in the price of oil & natural gas*, hardly an economic powerhouse.

What does it cost Russia to maintain frozen conflicts around Georgia & Ukraine ?  How many military assets does Russia need to sustain a minimal presence in South Ossetia or Abkhazia ?  How much does it cost to fund a simmering uprising in the East of Ukraine, to send over the occasional advisers or armaments ?  The cost of fortifying and rebuilding the infrastructure of Crimea I would imagine are substantial, but of the territories in question, this is the only one of true militarily strategic value to the Russians, so I'd be surprised if they didn't spend there, whether they have the money or not.  It's an investment in the future.

And so long as the unrest simmers in Eastern Ukraine, so long as Ukraine declines to relinquish its claim to Crimea, Ukraine is stuck/frozen.  No EU membership for Ukraine, no invitation to join the NATO umbrella.  Same for Georgia so long as it maintains its claims to Abkhazia & South Ossetia.  (Perhaps another non-European nation will be the first instead to take the EU out of the actual European subcontinent...if the European experiment even survives the next few years...) Cheap & effective.

Know what wouldn't be cheap ?  Rolling tanks into fucking Poland.  Or even Kiev.  This is the fear, right ?  Not that Russia might have slightly more influence in its own backyard, might maintain a buffer holding back western expansion, not even that Russia might have some influence in Europe, but that...the Russkies are coming any moment now to kill us all !

What would it cost the Russians to invade, conquer, and then occupy European countries...or any other hostile territories** ?  To destroy entire armies, to maintain infrastructure, to suppress likely ongoing violent resistance ?  And, in the event of attacking NATO nations (there's the rub in a bit...), risking outright nuclear war ?  For what ?  'Cos evil Vladimir Putin ('Vlad the Impaler' as Russophobic idiot Randi Rhodes has taken to calling him) wants to rebuild the Soviet Empire ?!!  I have no doubt that Putin does want to restore what he sees as Russian pride, as Russian honour, as respect for Russia.  As no doubt, do most ordinary Russians.  But where is the evidence for imperial ambitions ?

I could be wrong, of course, but when has Putin acted irrationally, when has he shown himself to be anything other than the cool calculating pragmatist, acting in what he rationally sees as the best interest of the Russian people ?  Empires are expensive.  (And even the most successful, even the mightiest eventually collapse under their own weight.)  If Putin truly is the psychopath some would make him out to be, maybe he doesn't care, but there's no evidence of this.  Russia, economically, is still largely in a state of  contraction.  Putin can puff his flabby chest out all he want, but Russia is no Rome, no industrial Britain.  Russia, large as it is, doesn't have the resource-constraints of an island Britain or a Japan to drive it on to overseas conquests.  And it doesn't have the ideological motivation of a Nazi Germany or its own predecessor the USSR for empire-building, nor even the putative motivation of US empire in 'spreading democracy.'  Why, unless Putin is a complete maniac, would Russia be so stupid as to roll out the tanks into Europe ?

I meant it, that I don't fear Vladimir Putin.  I don't like the bastard, I don't think he's 'a good person', I despise his treatment of the LGBT community, his record on civil liberties, his targeting of political enemies, and I don't trust him as such, but I do on the basis of his past action see him as a rational actor.  As he moves the various (likely to him, disposable) pieces around on the chessboard, Putin is a ruthless player, but not so far as I can tell, ever a reckless one.

---

Now, for the caveat: Donald Fucking Trump.

I don't know to what degree the Russians may have worked with his campaign, or whether they might have some hold over him via bribery or blackmail.***  The fact that they not so much wanted him as President per se, but far more obviously Did Not Want Fucking Russophobic Warmonger Hillary, I don't blame them for, and the idea that of all the factors in the election, from Hillary's own inappropriateness as a candidate to the GOP suppression of the vote, we would focus on supposed Russian hacking as responsible for Hillary's loss, I find laughable.  And ooh, CIA goons, shock horror, RT is involved in producing state-propaganda, that tends to favour Russian interests over the West ?...No Shit !  But...if only via Paul Manafort, there do seem to be ties between the Donald and the Kremlin; there is reason for suspicion.

And, I have to say this...Trump potentially changes everything.  Trump is the wildest of wild cards, and could destabilise the global order seven ways from Sunday with any given tweet, never mind access to nukes.  And Trump is on the record, questioning the relevance or necessity of NATO.  Personally, I'm not sure myself whether NATO should have continued post Cold War****, but all my past calculations regarding the actions of Russia & other possible hostile powers have been posited at least in part on an assumption that the shared military & nuclear deterrent of NATO would hold.  Disbanding or neutering the NATO deterrent at this point in time would seems to me incredibly reckless (more so or less so than massing NATO forces on Russia's border as idiot Obama & the EU currently doing debatable), let alone in concert w/encouraging nuclear proliferation in the Far East & Middle East, but...idiot Americans decided to elect maniac Trump, and such ill-thought-out policies does he bring.

I still don't particularly fear Putin, but then again, I don't live in Eastern Europe...  I couldn't blame them back in the (well, still technically in for a few more days) relatively safe era of Obama for being wary of Putin & the Kremlin at least.  Back when I assumed the NATO alliance would endure well into the foreseeable future.  If that alliance goes away, or is significantly weakened...if the immediate threat of Mutually Assured Destruction is removed ?...

Well, I still don't think it likely that even then Putin would be stupid enough to invade & occupy the Baltic states, never mind Poland...Germany...  Empire, as I said, is Expensive.  But...some more localised disturbance, on the pretext say of protecting Russian citizens, Russian speakers, some version of the strategy of frozen conflicts ?  Some interference in the political process, an attempt to install political figures friendly to Russian interests...?  If I lived in the Baltics right now, in the soon-to-be Trump era, yeah, I'd be at least a little worried.  Live nowhere near, and I'm fucking terrified, but again, in my case,...of Donald, not Vlad.

The point of all of this ?  Nothing more than to set out where I stand on these issues currently, how I see events possibly playing out.  And, even in the era of the Cheeto King Trump, advising caution, that we treat Putin and the Russians generally as respected adversaries, and as proven rational actors, rather than as cartoon-supervillains.  Putin's hold on power won't last; Nor will Trump's.  One way or another, the earth will dawn on a day neither of said authoritarian arseholes hold sway over their respected peoples.  I'd rather the reason therefor were not the nuclear annihilation of all human civilisation.



* And if you believe that there wasn't a coordinated effort between the US & Saudi in this regard...

** Hint, hint...South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Crimea...not only not hostile territory to Russia, but friendly.

*** If the CIA et al do have any further potentially damaging info. or rumours on Trump, I would suggest they release it post haste, to pre-empt any blackmail, and to let Trump deal with the embarrassment whilst he still lacks actual nukes at his disposal.

**** It could have been maintained as more of a Northern alliance, if we had pursued closer friendlier relations & possible alliance w/a certain large country of similar cultural origins, but neither here nor there now...

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.

Science Fiction

U.S. Transportation SecretaryAttorney General Anthony FoxxLoretta Lynch Announces Unmanned AircraftGun Registration Requirement

New Task Force to Develop Recommendations by November 20

WASHINGTON – U.S. Transportation SecretaryAttorney General Anthony FoxxLoretta Lynch and FAA AdministratorATF Director Michael HuertaTodd Jones today announced the creation of a task force to develop recommendations for a registration process for Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS)Guns.

The task force will be composed of 25 to 30 diverse representatives from the UAS and manned aviationfirearms industry, the federal government, and other stakeholders.  The group will advise the Department on which aircraft should be exempt from registration due to a low safety risk, including toys and certain other small UASto limit any exemptions, as all guns are dangerous.  The task force also will explore options for a streamlined system that would make registration less burdensome for commercial UAS operatorshunters in rural areas.

The task force may make additional safety recommendations as it deems appropriate.  Secretary FoxxAG Lynch directed the group to deliver its report by Nov. 20.

“Registering unmanned aircraftguns will help build a culture of accountability and responsibility, especially with new users who have no experience operating in the U.S. aviation systemfirearms safely and responsibly,” FoxxLynch said.  “It will help protect public safety in the air and on the groundthe public and at home.”

Every day, the FAAATF receives reports of potentially unsafe UAS operationshandling of guns.  PilotPolice sightings of UASopen-carry guns doubled between 2014 and 2015.  The reports ranged from incidents at major sporting eventsschools and flights near manned aircraftmovie theaters, to interference with wildfirepolice operations.

“These reports signal a troubling trend,” HuertaJones said.  “Registration will help make sure that operatorsgun owners know the rules and remain accountable to the public for flying their unmanned aircrafthandling and maintaining their guns responsibly.  When they don’t fly safely, they’ll know there will be consequences.” 

While the task force does its work, the FAAATF will continue its aggressive education and outreach efforts, including the “Know Before You Fly”“Know Before You Shoot” campaign and “No Drone Zone”“No Gun Zone” initiatives with the nation’s busiest airportsschools.  The agency also will continue to take strong enforcement action against egregious violators. At the same time, it will continue working with stakeholders to improve safety to ensure further integration and innovation in this promising segment of aviationin the United States.

Secretary FoxxAG Lynch was joined by representatives from the following stakeholder groups:

• The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems InternationalThe National Rifle Association 
• Academy of Model AircraftCoalition of Gun Owners against the NRA
• Air Line Pilots AssociationSensible Republicans
• American Association of Airport ExecutivesSensible Democrats 
• Helicopter Association InternationalSensible Independents
• PrecisionHawkParents 
• AirMap/ Small UAV CoalitionTeachers 
• Consumer Electronics AssociationOrdinary Americans

To read statements in support of today’s announcement, please click here. 

For non-media inquiries, please email UASRegistration@faa.govGunRegistration@atf.gov.

Monday, October 19, 2015

- See more at: https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/us-transportation-secretary-anthony-foxx-announces-unmanned-aircraft-registration#sthash.8Jpy9SFD.dpufhttps://www.atf.gov/briefing-room/us-attorney-general-loretta-lynch-announces-gun-registration#sthash.8Jpy9SFD.dpuf


Not everything lines up of course.  Original here, and yes I do approve of the idea.

For the record, I do support Americans' right to own guns in general.  But I don't support absolutist interpretations of the second amendment, and don't think a gun-registry is a unreasonable violation of that right, anymore than background-checks, limits on the type of weaponry available*, or limits on cartridge-capacities.  Oh, and a tax on bullets.



* I know, AR-15's are cool.  So, in their way, are surface-to-air missiles.  But do you really need one to defend yourself ?

Dave Brown on Xi Jinping's Visit to the UK*

* Sorry, make that the overseas province of the PRC formerly known as America's Bitch.  Sorry, The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

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.

Bors on Ben Carson & Mass Shootings

Link Dump (Columbus Day Edition*)

Jeremy Corbyn stripped of 'Right Honourable' title after his 'snub' of the Privy Council.  He's devastated, I'm sure.

Meanwhile, here's some less humorous 'news' from the Telegraph regarding Corbyn and the IRA.

SF Weekly: Local Journalist Could Face 25 Year Prison Sentence for Defacing LA Times Website.  'Cos in today's world, if you fuck with corporations, you're a 'terrorist', and we have to make an example of you.

Politifact: Were more preschoolers shot and killed in 2013 than police officers?  Do you really need to ask ?

Guardian: Facebook paid £4,327 corporation tax despite £35m staff bonuses.

EFF: The Final Leaked TPP Text is All That We Feared.  Basically, good news for multinational corporations, bad news for everyone else.  But, hey we dodged that 120-year copyright...

Huffington Post: New Blood Test Helps ER Docs Rule Out A Heart Attack.

Daily Mail: Megyn Kelly's bloody tampon, a 'sexy Ebola victim' and a marijuana suit for your BABY: Femail reveals the most offensive costumes set to give you the creeps this Halloween.  No costume involving Syrian migrants though ?  Really ?  Well, there is always this tastelessness...

Mindblowing...New York Times: 2 Outside Reviews Say Cleveland Officer Acted Reasonably in Shooting Tamir Rice, 12.  Zooming right up to the kid and shooting him dead two seconds later, yeah, that's reasonable alright...

Related ?  Raw Story: Perception of time slows down for some white people when viewing a black face, study finds.

Meanwhile...in Florida...Orlando Weekly: Florida could pay you $200,000 for shooting someone and claiming self-defense.  So, the prosecution would have the burden of proof that you weren't threatened if you murder someone, and if they can't do so, they may have to cough up on your behalf big time.  Who's betting this bill won't pass in the legislature ?

Politico: Gallup gives up the horse race.  Might be a tad obvious, but kudos for the headline regardless.

RT: Micro-satellite to inspect if Americans did land on Moon.  Want to answer the debate once and for all, apparently.**  Umm, they could've just asked Mitchell and Webb...

Speaking of conspiracy-theories...Politico: Yes, the CIA Director Was Part of the JFK Assassination Cover-Up.

The new Cold War marches on apace: Michael Fallon: UK to send troops to Baltic region.

Gizmodo: A Massive Bleaching Event is Threatening the World’s Coral Reefs.  World: <shrug>.

Of course we shrug off this much like we shrug off shooting-deaths in America, out of a sense of futility, of impotence.  Would that we'd known about climate-change earlier, huh ?

Oh, yeah: Exxon’s Own Scientists Confirmed Climate Change—In the 70s.  Nineteen-fuckin'-seventy-seven...

BBC: Manchester raids see more than a million cigarettes seized.  People buying and selling cigarettes illegally, huh ?

BBC: Tobacco tax increase urged by parliamentary group.  No comment.

The Dems' sure are having some fun with the Repubs' difficulty finding a Speaker to replace John Boehner:

New Scientist: Drug could kill harmful bacteria but leave benign ones untouched.  Genetically engineered phage viruses, specifically.

Scientific American: First Ancient African Genome Reveals Vast Eurasian Migration.

BBC: The creature with the key to immortality?  It's sea-anemones.


Oh yeah, and 'Spongebrain'*** Ben Carson said a whole bunch of stupid things regarding guns, victim-blaming, Popeyes, and the Holocaust.  Anything I link to here today will be outdone by whatever he says tomorrow.

Hell, let's end on a lighter note with a 'toon instead...So, here's humanity's future courtesy Arend van Dam:

* Or 'Indigenous Persons' Day', or what have you...

** As if any evidence would dissuade the conspiracy-theorists...

*** http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/ben-carson-sponge-brain.  Far as I'm concerned, that's his new nickname going forward.

SNL Nails It

Still have their moments after all these years

Pre-Hu Rant

Part of me avoids saying what I might about Nu-Who if only because its audience is largely that of millennials & younger, even if created by those my age and even older.  And fuck, they already outnumber us...

But, this 'Class' nonsense....MUST DIE !!!

DIE NOW !  IN A BURNING INFERNO !

Unless it has been thought up solely as a project with which to totally remove one S. Moffat's attention from Doctor Who (with a properly appointed successor in play) and/or it includes the involvement of one J. Whitehall and one M. Gomez.

And I Do Not Want to Hear that the several Coal-Hill-based eps. of the last dire series were in fact wilful pilots for this nonsense.  I hate Mister Moffat quite enough already thank ye much.  I need no reason to further despise the Barstard.  I was in fact trying to work my way into seeing a redemption in the latest series, till the bastard BBC dropped this latest turd on ev'ryone's head.  Fuck ev'ryone involved in this shit !

An even-worse companion than Clara ?

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.

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.

Same As It Ever Was

But tell us again why we can't deal with the monstrous Castro brothers.

Toles on National Geographic under Murdoch

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.

The White House on Dick Cheney & the Iran Deal

Missed this before now somehow.  The music sucks, and I kinda hate conceptually posting something from the White House itself, but the point still needs to be made apparently about the undead corpse of Darth Cheney, and other warmongering neo-con assholes like him, whether they be fellow Ford-admin. revanchists, radicals of the Newt Gingrich 'revolution' in the 'nineties, or latter-day hangers-on like Sarah Palin, that they have been consistently wrong on foreign policy, over and over and again, at the expense not just of the American pocket-book, and thousands of dead US soldiers, but at the expense of millions of civilian lives destroyed, damaged, or displaced, as one society after another is wrecked in their real-life game of Risk.*


* And no, the Obama administration is far, far from blameless, with say its similar reckless destabilisation in Libya & Syria.

TMW on the Recent Upheaval in the Glox Market

And to think, they told Tom Tomorrow that people would be put off by all the words in his cartoons.  This must come across as utter gibberish to first time readers.

Hmm, wonder if Invisible-Tentacle-of-the-Unhindered-Exchange Glox will ever show up in TMW in his its own right...The mind boggles.

No Surrender: Donald Trump Wants the Republicans to Go Fuck Themselves...Slowly

Never got to this earlier, and could save it for the inevitable link-dump, but I do quite love this picture of Donald Trump having signed one of the bullshit pledges to the RNC (was the extra copy in case he didn't like the way his signature looked on the first try ?).  The make-me-look-smarter reading-glasses à la Rick Perry...the appropriate distance down his nose...The green tint that may or may not be an accident of white-balance...The unreadable savage blur of a signature coinciding with the almost Comic Sans. of his 'print' writing...The insane, 'I'm-not-balding' dead-animal-on-my-head comb-forward...And then...that look...

This is not the look of capitulation, Rand.  (Here, I'll sign ya shitty little piece o' paper...if, it'll make y'feel better...)  This is the look of a privileged and pampered sixty-nine-year-old teahadist maniac getting to live out a childhood fantasy at the expense of probably the entire world as his aging brain melts.  And we, in the media, the blogosphere, and social media, celebrate this lunacy at the possible expense of the survival of our own species

<Checks name of this blog>  Oh yeah...we're all fucked anyway !  Go for it Donnie ! Wha'the'hell ?!!

Tony, Tony, Tony

Wait, Tony Blair actually admitted to being wrong about something ?  That can't be right, surely ?  That Tone ?  Our Tone ?  That lying corrupt egotistical pile of human excrement ?  Never.

Tony Blair has admitted his government made a "mistake" by failing to do enough to ensure that devolution of powers to Scotland did not undermine the United Kingdom's national identity.

The former Prime Minister insisted that he still believes he was right to create national assemblies in Edinburgh and Cardiff in 1999, arguing that resisting demands for the devolution of power would have stoked up demand for outright independence.

Bullshit !  There was more no urgency for devolution specifically in your time than there was for reform of the Lords, and your response to the one was as cack-handed as the other.  As always, you were looking more to your own legacy as the great reformer, seeking to re-make British 'democracy' in your own image than you were thinking through the long-term consequences of your actions.  In the case of the Lords, you could have left things as they were, could have engaged in a long-term review of the options available, could have respected the consistent will of the electorate for an elected House.  But no...Tony knew best as always, and so the great overcrowded House of Political Cronies was born.

If you wanted to a) deflate the movement for independence in Scotland*, and b) address the broader concern of lack of representation across the UK** (including in England) by the ever Home County-centred government in Westminster, you could have come up with a plan for more regional and citywide devolution.  Instead of which, you completely ignored the English question, which has led us today to this EVEL nonsense, whilst you established 'national' assemblies in Scotland and Wales based upon largely arbitrary borders dating back to Norman times.  And then what ?  At best, perhaps you could buy the unionists some time whilst you re-thought a broader strategy...

But, in a new book entitled British Labour Leaders, he acknowledged that he did not understand at the time the importance of maintaining cultural unity between the different parts of the UK.

You didn't have any strategy, whatsover, did you ?  You created 'national' assemblies, and what, you thought they would tire of power after a few years and beg Westminster to re-absorb their responsibilities ?  That the Scots & Welsh seeing functioning assemblies governing over their respective 'nations' wouldn't beg the obvious question, why not more powers ?  Why draw the line here and not there ?  Why be governed by an unresponsive body tucked away in the furthest regions of Southeastern England at all ?

His admission came after a new poll, published almost a year after the referendum, showed for the first time a majority of Scots would support independence if another vote was staged now.

Don't fuckin' blame 'em !  Especially after how they were treated not just by the increasingly fascistic 'Conservative' party, but also by members of yer so-called 'Labour' party in the last election.

...Mr Blair admitted in his 2010 memoirs that he was “never a passionate believer” in devolution and he always thought creating a Scottish Parliament was a dangerous path.

Yes, yes it was.  Arsehole.

...Mr Blair said: "I did feel that we made a mistake on devolution. We should have understood that, when you change the system of government so that more power is devolved, you need to have ways of culturally keeping England, Scotland and Wales very much in sync with each other.

“We needed to work even stronger for a sense of UK national identity. But I don't accept the idea that we should never have done devolution. If we had not devolved power, then there would have been a massive demand for separation – as there was back in the 60s and 70s."

Funnily enough, people who are part of the same country, with the same basic culture, speaking the same language, and with a strong shared history, including shared sacrifice in war, tend to develop a pretty decent shared identity...until nationalist radicals seek to divide them, and find their efforts enabled by incompetent overconfident ego-mad politicians.  Politicians have many ways of dividing people, but building up cultural identity artificially from your spindoctors' offices in London...not so easily done.

Aw, feck it !  I wish the eventual independent Republic of Scotland well.  And Wales too, if they go that way.  Blair, Brown, Cameron, and their ilk, on the other hand can go fuck themselves.


* Not that I believe for one moment you respected the absolute right of the Scots to independence if that be their choice.

** Nor that you ever gave a damn about that issue either, given your consistent anti-democratic decisions.