Humanitarian Bombs by Anthony Freda
(h/t to Neil Clark, RT, for the Twit accounts) ‘Forced Frenemies at the UNGA: Putin and Obama’ is here.
(The link leads to FAIR’s ‘No ISIS Where Russia Is Bombing–Except Last Week, When ISIS Was Killing Gay Men There?’)
For your consideration:
‘A Useful Prep-Sheet on Syria for Media Propagandists’, by Gary Leupp
‘Heading Toward a Collision: Syria, Saudi Arabia and Regional Proxy Wars’, by Jennifer Loewenstein
‘Mid-East Coup: As Russia Pounds Militant Targets, Iran Readies Ground Invasions While Saudis Panic’, Zero Hedge
He finishes with:
“It would be difficult to overstate the significance of what appears to be going on here. This is nothing short of a Middle Eastern coup, as Iran looks to displace Saudi Arabia as the regional power broker and as Russia looks to supplant the US as the superpower puppet master.
Do not expect Saudi Arabia and Israel to remain on the sidelines here.
If Russia ends up bolstering Iran’s position in Syria (by expanding Hezbollah’s influence and capabilities) and if the Russian air force effectively takes control of Iraq thus allowing Iran to exert a greater influence over the government in Baghdad, the fragile balance of power that has existed in the region will be turned on its head and in the event this plays out, one should not expect Washington, Riyadh, Jerusalem, and London to simply go gentle into that good night.”
‘The Need to Oppose All Foreign Intervention in Syria’, by Joshua Frank, managing editor of CounterPunch
That is inarguable, even if one doesn’t agree with all his math is, but also consider War Writ Large:
And not a moment too soon for those who make war or support war for fun, profit, and hegemony:
davidly
Greyson Smythe
LeMoyne
juliania2
ohiobarbarian
stephenadavis1
wendyedavis
café babylon 
Joshua Frank: “backing Putin is a very slippery slope.” Yup, the dominion of optimal evil will harvest you any time you’re ripe..
it’s weird that frank’s link won’t lead directly to it, even after i took a second try at it. yep, and linking to cnn saying what putin had said about ‘organ eating terrorists’? in some small way, this makes a larger point, if framed so snidely and extremely, although i’m having a devil of a time trying to articulate it:
“It doesn’t matter where these rebels came from, what their motivations were for joining FSA or the fact they may have had revolutionary leanings at one point — if the U.S. is using them we may as well let the Russians kill ’em off.”
sure, putin has his own geopolitical reasons for doing what the coalition forces have been doing, and none of us wants more civilian deaths, which will occur. and while ‘the pseudo-left’ isn’t cheering on the bombing per se, some of are glad to see i) putin outplay the west, and ii) aid in what many believe is necessary to stop isil/daesh, then achieve some sort of diplomatic solutions to create states in syria and iraq that can handle some sort of power-sharing governments, rather than continue the global war on shi’ites. what the west is doing seems to be only making things worse, not better.
at least that’s the best i can say for now.
The “pseudo-left’ are shepherded by the “libertarian” right. Their anti-imperialism leads them to cheer the Russian David against the American Goliath. But to be anti-anti-imperialist or anti-libertarian is tricky (some do it so dubiously as to appear agents of obfuscation). So easy to be snared in the matted web of deceit.
The crapitalists are pleased to have us spectating and preoccupied flying the white, blue, and red against the home team’s red, white, and blue. I expect the coliseum to get more entertaining the healthier the state becomes (War is the health of the state.) Bourne recognized that “the State, a militaristic, repressive, belligerent, coercive instrument of the ruling class” cowed the people and most intellectuals and diverted their “gregarious impulse” into mutual destruction.
Those entertained by the contest of states are disarmed before the state arms them.
ha; if i have to read, much less understand, any of this to be able to interpret your comment, arrrrrgh! ;-)
The Radicalism of Randolph Bourne
“A hospital in the Afghan city of Kunduz has been hit and partially destroyed in an overnight “aerial attack” that killed at least nine Medecins Sans Frontieres staff. NATO has admitted a US airstrike may have caused accidental “collateral damage.”
“Now after the Poroshenko-Tyagnybok fallout, Western media paint the same party activists as dangerous criminals, who killed four law enforcement officers during the clashes in central Kiev on August 31, 2015.
No apologies and no punishment for delivering false, sometimes even immoral information. So the Western media are playing out The Society of the Spectacle [a book by Guy Debord, released in 1967], when they cover international events. They race to put on the hottest news, peddling very catchy (although untrue and almost certainly vulgar) headlines to the audience. Traditionally the villain, whose intentions the reader is supposed to figure out, is President Vladimir Putin.
Putin as a character
The Daily Telegraph (Australia) teases: ‘Russian President Vladimir Putin launches airstrikes in Syria, but what’s he really up to?’ Reuters, supposed to simply deliver news, advertises ‘its’ Putin as some villain from a county fair show – ‘Syria is the next arena on Vladimir Putin’s comeback tour’. Media business analyst William Dunkerley, author of Ukraine in the Crosshairs, notes Western media always search for some ‘hidden agenda’ in everything Putin does. They never take him at face value. Hence, the endless comparisons between Syria and Ukraine.”
The portions on a Newsweek ‘journalist’ Maidan activist writing of the deaths in the trade union building in odessa “smoked out” are gagging.
‘TV drama depicting Russian invasion premieres in Norway; Norwegian thriller Occupied has been condemned by Moscow and is likely to tap into fears in Scandinavian countries of Russian aggression
‘Russia in Syria: what damage will it do?; The risks and unintended consequences for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, will grow greatly as time passes’
More like a ϟ “Zot!” ϟ of Id;
but here’s a rational response:
https://www.thunderclap.it/projects/32363-enoughwar-nowar-kefayawar?locale=en
ooof; i remember that one well. ;-) thanks for the link; i’m almost positive i signed when david swanson put it up at my.fdl many moons ago. i read an interview with him from 2014 in a ‘debate’ over aerial bombing to make way for delivering food, medical supplies, etc. to the syrian people. but the mammoth changes (stop supplying weapons, etc.) were so unlikely not that ‘we’ shouldn’t demand it. but even if enough people around the world did, it would take rulers and weapons purveyors actually having working consciences, and there’s scarce evidence of that.
mr. wd said that he heard obama honking on about how hideous and unacceptable it was that so many students were killed in oregon this week (by yet another mass murderer). he went righteously crazy at that, given all the blood that’s on his own hands every single day. “It’s the fucking model, Mr. President!”
O’s posthumous response: “Mr. WD, getting enraged at my duplicity over and over again and expecting different results is the definition of insanity.”
To paraphrase WD, Even if we demanded conscientious change, the hegemonsters don’t have consciences, so what’s the point?
Maybe “pragmatism” is an engineered fatalism? But let’s go deeper. Do proles have consciences? If they did, it would be a prime directive of hegemonsters to frustrate and “dis-incentivize” them.
Hegemonsters aren’t for progress, comrades.
ah, but please consider that mr. wd was simply venting, as we all must do from time to time, no?
but then, there are many people who claim the Pope’s mini-rant against the purveyors of global weapons will cause them to see the light, and bawl, then repent…like john ‘boner’. ha!
but oh, me, oh, my: the sandernistas are out absolutely everywhere now, claiming that the bern don’t have no blood on his hands, oh no. and there’s a ‘blacks for bernie’ movement goin’ on. i sw’ar. i don’t have time to go fetch the link, but there seems to be a small global movement for reparations to blacks. it’s a trrn in the story about blacks inviting maduro to a (?) forum.
oh, and many proles may have consciences, but they’ve also been duly indoctrinated about…almost everything.
Exactly, prole conscientiousness has been reprogrammed to be about “individual” accumulation. But even the concept of conscience is programmed to deflect:
So Jamaica and it’s Caribbean cousins do lonesome appeal to the fuggin Prime Monkey of subsumed(?) hegemonster Britain. Can you smell the Sorosian monkey-shit? The “small global movement for reparations” is a color(ed) revolution.
Welcome to the Panglossian global mind-fuck, comrades.
and then there are the minions of our psychopathic leaders, police, clerics, soldiers, functionaries, on who surrender their consciences under the rubric of just doing their job. just following orders. executing the will of the psychopath. his arms and legs.
they are not psychopaths themselves. they’re zombies.
better yet, they’re like those that Dracula bites. they are completely under the vampire’s control.
– Gay Lord Keynes
But who are those economists slaves of, dear Gay Lord? Don’t economists pronounce, “Slaves cannot afford consciences!”
no surprise, but i’m not even sure what you’re responding to, or to whom.
It’s an interlecturer’s “limited confession” that Practical Men are slaves.
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA AH HAH HAH HAH HAH!
“weapons purveyors actually having working consciences,”
No they don’t have consciences, but they have facades (of decency) that must be maintained and protected. That, and not a conscience per se, is what has to be appealed to, attacked, charged and accused. That’s the new morality. Neo-morality. Quite appropriate For neo-liberals and Neoblacks.
here’s ‘military conscience’ (ass-covering style); i’ll enter one for ‘neo-black’ on my next break.
‘Doctors Without Borders airstrike: US alters story for fourth time in four days’
“Shifting the US account of the Saturday morning airstrike for the fourth time in as many days, Campbell reiterated that Afghan forces had requested US air cover after being engaged in a “tenacious fight” to retake the northern city of Kunduz from the Taliban. But, modifying the account he gave at a press conference on Monday, Campbell said those Afghan forces had not directly communicated with the US pilots of an AC-130 gunship overhead.
“Even though the Afghans request that support, it still has to go through a rigorous US procedure to enable fires to go on the ground. We had a special operations unit that was in close vicinity that was talking to the aircraft that delivered those fires,” Campbell told the Senate armed services committee on Tuesday morning.
…..
“Meanwhile, the defense secretary, Ashton Carter, said in a statement on Tuesday, that the Department of Defense “deeply regrets the loss of innocent lives that resulted from this tragic event”.
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/06/doctors-without-borders-airstrike-afghanistan-us-account-changes-again
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) put it this way:
“MSF is disgusted by the recent statements coming from some Afghanistan government authorities justifying the attack on its hospital in Kunduz. These statements imply that Afghan and US forces working together decided to raze to the ground a fully functioning hospital with more than 180 staff and patients inside because they claim that members of the Taliban were present.
“This amounts to an admission of a war crime. This utterly contradicts the initial attempts of the US government to minimize the attack as ‘collateral damage.’
ITS THE ADMISSION OF A WAR CRIME!!!
http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2015/10/06/u-s-bombing-of-a-doctors-without-borders-hospital-in-afghanistan-was-no-accident-it-was-the-target/#more-27913
it is, of course, a war crime. and apparently some MSM reporting is going with ‘if they were harboring taliban, they deserved to die’. i’d hate to go find that propaganda for links, though.
and now and aid to the ukrainian minister of defense is calling for isil to kill russians (i guess over syria?). nice company the USian power elite keep.
neo-black? especially if you consider how many blacks are in the NYC school district (or should i say: were?).
‘Badass Teachers Association Responds to Duncan Leaving USDOE’
“Today the White House confirmed that U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan would be stepping down. The Badass Teachers Association, an education activist organization with over 70,000 supporters nationwide, celebrate this decision. Sadly, at the same time we rejoice the resignation of a man who has done more destruction to public education than any other sitting Secretary, we are horrified that President Obama has chosen to replace him with John King. John King is the former Commissioner of Education in New York.
John King’s tenure in New York was one of controversy and with an established agenda of dismantling public education by using corporate education reform tactics. King was run out of New York in 2014 because of a staggering test opt out rate, because he ignored and dismissed parents at education forums, and because he refused to fix an education system that he himself destroyed. The state teachers union, NYSUT, had a unanimous vote of no confidence in him prior to his departure.
“John King did more destruction to the New York State education system than any sitting commissioner I have known in my tenure as an educator in New York State. He dismissed the parents, teachers, and students of New York State by calling us “special interest groups.” The fact that he has been elevated to the U.S. Secretary of Education is beyond appalling.” Marla Kilfoyle, New York BAT and Public Education Teacher in New York for 29 years.
here’s king’s photo.
i’d checked diane ravitch’s website the other day; she was so speechless that she simply announced it. the commentariat filled in the blanks for her.
Yeah. Obama reveals his agenda in his appointments. I don’t know how this guy passed the paper bag test. (Joking) But the Neo-Black does take up the role that the mulatto played in the antebellum: collaboration. Not all of course, but the class as a whole. Fredrick Douglas was a mulatto. Having studied this phenomenon when I was working on my diss, back in the 90s, I was shocked to see that our first black president and many of the blacks he appointed to office were people who would have been called mulatto in an earlier time. They vary in color nowadays but they have that same overriding socio political philosophy: collaboration. These Neo-Blacks. Like I say, the more things change the more they remain the same. Except now the manufactured Neo-blacks are actually running the show. Behold! The white man’s greatest creation!
i suppose there’s a greater point to his mulatto appointments, but this ‘education president™’s DoJ has been intent on dismantling public education from the start. it grieves me to no end…and pisses me purple.
oh, yes, king is an enabler of the most sordid kind. fuck him, by the way, and fuck arnie ‘basketball’ duncan, rahm, and the horses they rode in on.
on edit:
“Most of Louisiana’s charter schools are located in New Orleans. A study by the Network for Public Education found that the state’s charter schools performed significantly worse than conventional public schools. The gap between Louisiana charter schools – meaning, mainly, New Orleans – and public schools was the biggest in the country – which had a lot do with Louisiana overall scoring the fourth lowest in the nation. Even by Louisiana standards, New Orleans’ charter school system flunks – even after controlling for factors of race, class and qualifications for special education. And the entire nation’s education system will also flunk, if given over to the lying privatizers, like John B. King. But, don’t expect the Black Misleadership Class, masquerading as members of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, to save us. Leadership Conference CEO Wade Henderson had effusive praise for Arne Duncan, and for his Black and Puerto Rican protégé, who will undoubtedly become an even more effective educational evil than his outgoing boss, the obscene Mr. Duncan.”
For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to BlackAgendaReport.com.
in the ‘we knew it was ineniveitable’ category:
‘U.S.-backed Syrian rebels appeal for antiaircraft missiles‘
“BEIRUT — U.S.-backed rebels in Syria appealed to the Obama administration Friday for anti¬aircraft missiles to defend their positions against relentless Russian airstrikes that have so far mostly targeted the moderate opposition to President Bashar al-Assad’s rule.
A joint statement issued by the United States and other Western allies who have collectively aided moderate rebel units urged Russia to stop targeting moderate rebels and “to focus its efforts on fighting ISIL,” the acronym referring to the Islamic State.”
and the US and nato get to decide who the ‘moderate rebels’ are once again. Empire of Chaos, indeed.
Ah, love the resolute blue crested bird, comrade orange peel.
I Hate Karl Marx:
Do you see an angry capitalist or an angry communist? Consider it a Rorschach test. Do you believe yourself?
The US propaganda has been so disconnected from the reported on ground reality (cf. Col. Pat Lang, for example) that one suspects that the true target is Congress. Plus after the US airstrike on a hospital (illegal target) in Kunduz, all of the concern trolling of Russia in Syria suddenly lost its punch.
My most optimistic scenario is the US being dragged kicking and screaming into a Middle Eastern peace architected by Putin and Rouhani. That of course recognizes the issues with Putin and Rouhani, but that is the best optimism that I can muster.
Of course, I’ve been angling from a complete review of the National Security Act of 1947 and all of its implications for a few years now. Not sure that abject humiliation accomplishes that with so many neo-Confederates around.
Neo-Confederates: with enemies of the State like these, who needs friends?
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA.
i’ll blow by pat lang, if you don’t mind, as so many of you esteem him. i can’t remember exactly why i don’t, dagnabbit. and i did see the food fight on marcy’s post with wayoutwest, and used it on my ‘forced frenemies’ linked at the top, featuring dueling speeches, interviews, and tra la la..
dunno quite why you see it all as ‘for congress’, though, but you pay closer attention to hearings, etc., and *funding!* than i do. i guess i see all the anti-putin agitprop as ‘the Empire needs a hitler’, and the west (and bibi) are loth to stop all that nonsense. even if, an it’s a big ‘if’, putin and rouhani can broker some kind of plan, even some sort of secular federalization. the West will tank it by propaganda and even false flags, i reckon, as with minsk II. (what a mess.)
ah, it’s hard to get my head in the game. this weekend is another one of long days processing produce from the garden and the local farmer’s market. but otoh, it’s a good sort of worn out, as the freezer is almost stuffed to the gills w/ yummy healthy food for winter. (freeze might be comin’, which is why the hurry, but mr. wd did get all the apples picked so da bears didn’t ravage the trees this year.) :-)
more later…if i can. break’s over. dammit.
Toughest kid on the block meets toughest kid in the subdivision.
http://www.philosophers-stone.co.uk/?p=3839
EXCLUSIVE : Russia threatens to shoot down Israeli jets over Syria
Posted by:
Maybe Israhell wants some new jets. Marketing complies.
Vlad the Putin is no ones savior.
do you have reason to believe the source darkmoon.me, nomad?
this is the col. pat lang that THD had mentioned above. he has a post about it up, but i can’t say if he believes it or not, but there are lots of comments and links on the conversation thread.
good point. we’ll probably find out soon.
‘The dog ate my homework again, i swear, teacher!!!’
‘MSF Response to Pentagon Claim That Afghan Forces Called For Kunduz Airstrike’, October 05, 2015
lord love a duck.