(The RFE/RL live blog) It’s all such predictable hyperbolic bellicosity, it’s hard to bring any of it, to say the truth. But I’ll bring a few bits that are just so self-serving, admit zero of the blame for what the Imperium in terms of ‘enemies’ has wrought on its own, and knows, but reuses to see. Because: endless war is so profitable to Wall Street and other Kleptocrats. So: Ramp Up the Rhetoric, Idiots! Note: I won’t bother with quotation marks.
‘Ship of Fools’, anthony freda
WARSAW — NATO leaders shifted the focus to conflict-plagued Afghanistan and Ukraine on Day Two of a summit that produced a plan to deploy military forces to member-states near the border of an increasingly assertive Russia.
The 28-nation Western alliance is set to extend its Resolute Support mission, which trains and advises Afghan security forces following the withdrawal of the bulk of foreign troops at the end of 2014.
NATO is also expected to continue financing Afghan forces with about $4 billion a year through 2020.
“We are committed to assisting the Afghan forces to secure their country and to ensure it never again becomes a safe haven for international terrorism,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said ahead of the July 8-9 summit in Warsaw.
U.S.-led forces entered Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks in 2001 and drove the Taliban, which had harbored Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, from power. But the insurgents have not been defeated and by some accounts now hold more territory than at any time since 2001.
Ever ask yourselves why the Imperium’s never-ending wars have created more terr’ists?
‘How it’s made’, anthony freda
NATO’s moves to bolster its defenses in the east have been prompted largely by concerns about the intentions of Russia, which seized the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in March 2014 and backs separatists whose war with Kyiv’s forces has killed more than 9,300 people in eastern Ukraine since that April.
(Ludicrous; who was killed by whom? How many dead were civilians and insurgents in the Donbass killed by Kiev’s neo-Nazis?)
Librul mouthpiece for the Imperium:
“Russia’s aggression against Ukraine threatens our vision of a Europe that is whole, free, and at peace,” Obama wrote in a commentary published on the Financial Times website on July 8. He said NATO must “reaffirm our determination — our duty…to defend every NATO ally.”
(or ‘under their 26 ‘partnering’ nations ‘umbrella’, at NATO’s whim)
Russia’s interference in Ukraine has increased concerns in Poland and the three Baltic states, which were under Moscow’s thumb until the collapse of communism and the disintegration of the Soviet Union a quarter-century ago. All are now NATO members.
In addition to military force, Western governments say that under President Vladimir Putin, Russia has used cyberattacks, propaganda, and other methods in an effort to destabilize European countries and undermine Western unity.
“We need to remember that Putin will be far less likely to engage in provocation if he sees a NATO that is unified, strong, and determined to push back against any aggressive move on his part,” Albright said at the experts’ forum.
I won’t bring any of Madeleine Aldark’s Tweets cuz her face seriously scares the horses, and of course…me.
@DamonMacWilson “At #WSEF16 @FedericaMog calls @madeleine a great model for all of us as foreign policy practitioners”
(ay.yi.yi; if that ain’t the crux of the problem, I dunno what is)
Get ready for some serious disconnect:
The Minority Report:
Konstantin Kosachyov, chairman of the foreign policy committee in the upper parliament house, likened them to “building a dam in the desert,” and Putin’s spokesman said on July 8 that it was “absurd to speak of a threat from Russia.”
“Russia was and is open to dialogue and interested in cooperation — but only on a mutually beneficial basis and taking into account mutual interests,” Dmitry Peskov said in a conference call with journalists on July 8.
Stoltenberg said that “NATO does not seek confrontation” and will “continue to seek meaningful and constructive dialogue” with Russia.
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze told RFE/RL in Warsaw that her country hopes bilateral talks with NATO members at the summit will provide it with lethal and non-lethal aid to combat Russian “escalation” of the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
‘British forces will be training 4,000 Ukrainian military troops until next March, the UK’s Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond has announced’, presstv.com
“We have a very active cooperation with Ukraine. The UK will train 4,000 Ukrainian servicemen until March 2017,” said Hammond on the sidelines of a NATO summit in the Polish capital of Warsaw on Friday.”
British Prime Minister David Cameron said that his country, while it may leave the EU, will not turn its back on European defense.
Signing the joint declaration, European Council President Donald Tusk said “the EU and NATO face the same threats.”
He said the the EU and NATO will deepen cooperation to counter both physical and hybrid attacks.
“Our critical infrastructure could be attacked, our banking system could be hacked, or our citizens could be exposed to disinformation campaigns,” Tusk warned.
https://twitter.com/haloefekti/status/744786211689005057
‘Warsaw: NATO’s Theater of the Absurd’, nationalinterest.org
“Time for another NATO Summit, this one in Warsaw, Poland. Each has a theme, several photo ops for the attending leaders, a terrific dinner, an official communique, four or five white papers for reference, and culminates with a renewed resolve for the common defense. The 2016 Warsaw Summit theme is a bit ironic as it focuses on fending off the Russian threat to former members of the Warsaw Pact who are now NATO members. But, as is usual since the end of the Cold War, the Summit is mostly NATO Theater of the Absurd.” [snip]
Re: the constant Nato push for ‘members to contribute 2% of their nations’ GDP:
“The fear is that alternative security arrangements, including those organized via the European Union, would be too appeasing or weak. NATO is the United States’ way to manage European security. The United States would do it for free, and the NATO nations know that and spend accordingly. The two percent goal is there to distract attention from this reality.” (the rest is here.)
‘‘Russia threat is bombast’: Brian Becker on NATO summit’, via RT (Becker is with the anti-war Answer coalition)
“Warsaw, Poland, is holding NATO’s largest summit since the Cold War. NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg confirmed the bloc will have a four-battalion rotational presence in Poland and the Baltics from 2017.
RT: NATO states aren’t all on the same page when it comes to determining threats. How significant is this divide between members?
Brian Becker: There is quite a big divide, in fact. You have the both houses of the French Parliament saying sanctions against Russia should be lifted. The French foreign minister, when he met with the Russian foreign minister last week, also said France wants the sanctions lifted. Italy, again, wants the sanctions lifted.
Donald Rumsfeld at the time of the Iraq war made the point that there were two Europes. There was the old Europe and the new Europe, because they couldn’t get the old Europe – meaning Germany and France to go along with the US criminal invasion of Iraq in 2003. We have the Chilcot report, and we can see what a disaster that was.
But he was talking also where we have new Europe. Who was new Europe? It was the former socialist bloc countries that have been incorporated step-by-step first into the EU and also into NATO. And we have irony of ironies: in Warsaw, Poland on the 25th anniversary of the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact countries, the formidable Soviet-led military alliance that took the same states in the confrontation with NATO starting the 1940’s – you have NATO meeting in Warsaw, Poland to say: “Yes, in fact the Cold War never really did end escalating. We’re sending four battalions to the Baltics and Poland.” But most importantly is this defies what President Obama said: “The US quadrupled its military budget for Eastern and Central Europe” and in its quadrennial report the Pentagon identifies Russia as the number one threat, not ISIS. Russia is the number one threat for the US.
RT: A supposed “Russian threat” is on the summit’s agenda. How justified is the use of that term?
BB: It is just bombast. It is provocative in and of itself.” (again, the rest is here.)
Not bombastic; not provocative. Stabilizing the world.
davidly
Greyson Smythe
LeMoyne
juliania2
ohiobarbarian
stephenadavis1
wendyedavis
café babylon 
The oil for war for oil vicious circle dissected.
http://www.juancole.com/2016/07/explain-without-mentioning.html
Oil was part of it but only as a means for more power in the quest for the New American Century and Greater Israel. So for me the war wasn’t about oil, it was about a much bigger agenda than that. Cole btw, lost me five years ago when he was an avid cheerleader for Clinton and Obama’s Libya war. Like with Libya, oil is involved, but Hillary’s emails clearly show the interest in gold and the African currency Gaddafi had planned.
i hear you on juan cole and libya. didn’t he say he had a gurlfriend there who needed rescuing or come such? but oh, my, did he ever drink the kool-aid. imo, the vast water infrastructure gadaffi had built in the desert was another ‘want’. i do remember the first thing the Red Queen did in libya was to open a central bank. where did all the gold go?
but cole didn’t write the piece; someone named bulent gokay did. he links to bacevich naming the carter doctrine as the start of the US hegemony over oil (pretty strong words carter had used over virtual ownership of ‘the persian gulf region). but i’ve had said it began with the joint cia/mi6/dulles bros overthrow of mossadegh in the early ’50s.
keeping oil cheap was part of the plan, as well, or cheap enough that sustainable renewables were pfffff. and it kept esp. USians buying cars, driving their little boxes on wheels one to a car, little spent in public transportation, and now even what highway systems and public conveyance was built are ‘crumbling infrastructures’. great system.
oh, and amerikan oil was (is) subsidized to beat the band, and none of the external costs were passed on to consumers…except at tax time. gotta love it.
Ya, same as with a certain administrator/writer at a certain orange blog. Same thing. I couldn’t understand how they could be so wrong. I remember it didn’t take me long to figure out what was going on with the Arab Spring in Libya, not like Wes Clark and Sy Hersh didn’t tell us flat out. I don’t know, sure oil is a big part of it. It’s like with Yemen which borders one of the 7 oil chokepoints on the planet, a big part of what’s happening there.
Gold, oil, water, minerals, to the victor go the spoils, to the Empire go the riches. Those riches, like oil, can then be used to maintain and strengthen control or hegemony over others, like Russia and China.
This is all getting real crazy and still no significant protest actions. The moderate left was neutered by Obama and now Bernie and there doesn’t appear to be any radical left leaders that can organize some real action. Everything I’ve seen is too tame. No guts no glory as they say. I don’t know what the problem is, we need to go for broke at some points. There are some protests and activities coming up in the fall in D.C. and other places, need to keep an eye out on that.
i just tithed a four-course dinner to our local natural food store owner who graciously allows us to buy cost+ a bit, and i yam a fatigued sweat ball. but for now, i reckon there must be two discrete
w. clarks, ones librul cheered (did he run for prez once? 2004?) and this er…dare i say
assholeneocon version?“Looking forward to hitting the campaign trail in Oklahoma for @HillaryClinton” #ImWithHer
on edit, and g’night: explain, please? “There are some protests and activities coming up in the fall in D.C. and other places, need to keep an eye out on that.”
ah, well; you get the drift. ;-) anyway, more tomorrow.
I caught that from an email from David Swanson. Here’s his site.
I’m not a big fan of these weekend deals in D.C. but better than nothing.
thanks, big al. or: is it okay to call you just ‘al’? ;-) yes, it’s a least a longer conversation with various apparent ‘luminaries’ speaking (not that i’ve heard of most of them. harvery wasserman??) i’d have to agree with a comment on the Speakers page, though, that no one will apparently speak on the psychology of war, violence,, which either personally or as sociopolitical group think is important, in the same way in which mass killers and the po-po mirror USians’ apparent allegiance to violence.
My litmus test, one of them, is if they say the word “imperialism”. I’m guessing they won’t. New World Order would be great too but we won’t hear that either. I’ve been told that imperialism is too complicated for most people to understand so I shouldn’t use it.
And ya, you can call me Al, just don’t call me late to dinner. :)
interesting litmus test, yes. dinnner gong! (and yes, we do have one on the front porch, small farm and all. dinner: greek salad w/ feta cheese, crusted tofu marinated in lemon and spices, lemon rice w/ dill (leftovers from the tithed dinner i catered last night.
but shucks; you may not have clicked the link i’d provided, and no one mentioned the fucking maddy allbright ‘scare the horses’ i’d provided, as in: frau blucher. ;-)
best and lol,
wd
p.s. i confess, i dunno what the new world order signifies, in truth, nor the odie cologne than you’d mentioned earlier..
yeah, michael moore 2003/4 belched up W. Clark as the perfect candidate. “god has given us a gift in Gen. Clark!” too bad Kerry “reported for duty.” Clark’s wiki page makes for fun reading. big fan of the school for the americas and the drug war in s. america. going behind the pentagon’s back to get his war on in Kosovo in 1999. bombing the chinese embassy.
& Clark’s order to attack the rooskies stationed at Pristina Int’l Airport. how many times have underlings refused to obey the boss & saved all our hides from ww3? British Capt. James Blount refused to obey Clark’s order, stating: “I’m not going to start World War 3 for you.”
He has some responsibility for the “shock & awe” “Powell doctrine” on the academic level (snort. the faster you kill people, the quicker you win?) i hate to say this kind of stuff, cuz life’s a mystery and all that, but it really seems too bad the vietnamese didn’t kill his sorry ass in ‘Nam. or his own soldiers do the noble deed.
michael moore’s candidate? will wonders never cease? lord luv a duck, thanks (i think) for those bits of history. but i do remember he had quite a following in the librul world. and good on james blount. on your last graph: i can hear ya; ‘one love, redemption’, all that…only stretches so far into one’s imagination, doesn’t it?
Russia is a major oil country not under US hegemony. Russia through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization is in alliance with China. The new Cold war is NATO-SCO, the perfect Orwellian war. Oceania is in conflict with Eurasia. Note where the oil reserves are. We might have passed peak oil, but the oil is not yet gone. Until it is, the military will claim bigger and bigger portions. And that puts the pressure on converting the civilian economy to renewables as quickly as possible. But that can only occur with government power checking the fossil fuel industry. No political party really believes in “small government”. It’s just small government for which interest.
When NATO cracks, as eventually it will, Europe will become a nasty situation again. For now, the US is holding on the reins tightly.
yes to your 1st paragraph. Russia is a giant *energy* exporter, incl. “natural” gas.
i don’t understand your 2nd. if NATO cracks, there’ll be no war w/Russia, so how is that bad for Europe, R. or the world? isn’t the US “holding the reins” in order to spur one of the 4 apocalyptic horses on to, uh, war w/R? It’s kind of shocking how quickly Europe’s leaders have jumped on board this insanity, to me it is anyway, but w/o NATO, Latvia might invade R, but seems pretty remote possibility.
no doubt US leaders are licking their chops at the outcome of another world war in Europe (the US perhaps being unaffected by bombs & such, emerging once again as king of the shit pile), but you’d think some of the Europeans might shoot that horse in head.
First, no alliance is forever.
Second, Europe released from US hegemony will behave like Iraq released from the authoritarian Saddam Hussein regime. There are class and ethnic issues in abundance that are barely being held together even with US power. Cyprus, Catalunya, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Basque Country, Serbia and its neighbors to start with.
No war with Russia is like the immediate post-Cold War period in the US. Political niceties necessary to preserve unity in the Cold War disappeared in the Gingrich revolution and have not returned.
Gorbachev archly told a reporter in the period before he left office that the Soviet Union had done one of the worst things for the United States: It had taken away the US’s enemy. So it has turned out in 25 years.
several things: one concerns india and pakistan recently joining the SCO is that a weird fit?
i can’t remember now if i noted how strongly the nato summit meeting verbiage was about ‘the eu/nato together: stronger than ever!’ stuff. (i just whacked whole foot-long sections outta the live-blog i’d grabbed.) but is that due to i) the fear natoo has that the EU will finally carry out its long plans to create its own military. or ii) because nato sees the probability that the EU is a failed experiment?
and how odd was it that ‘china’ wasn’t even mentioned there, as far as i remember?
China and the “pivot to Asia” are not at the moment in Europe’s interest, given the parallel agreements on the New Silk Road. China as a major trade partner offsets if not overwhelms concerns about China as a competitive military force, which is primarily a US anxiety.
If China can establish both Pakistan and India as tributaries, it can (if it is in its interest) broker a reconciliation. Being able to have India and Pakistan and their nuclear weapons under the sort of agreement that NATO has with the UK and France might have the effect of being stabilizing, but don’t look for that with Modi in India. But the SCO is yet another diplomatic forum for talk-talk.
The Brexit vote indeed raised the possibility of a redundant and competing EU military agreement without the UK. There are European governments that would like to shake off US hegemony and the imposition of US bases and the issues they bring. Others see US bases as a gravy train. Those tend toward an “Old Europe” – “New Europe” division. Lot of jockeying of diplomatic and military personal ambitions in these agreements.
that’s excellent reasoning, and must be why we pay you the big bucks. bryan macdonald’s parsed the current divisions some, as well, quoting the nato-loving FT. he brings the view from the old soviet bloc nations, and discusses ‘the need for a new big, bad, enemy’, and that only france’s and germany’s positions really matter (to O, only germany’s). he also notes that both merkel and holland might even be replaced next year, so their statements are really campaigning.
apparently merkel’s grand scheme to deploy troops to the balkans ain’t flyin’ with the populace, either. i hadn’t realized that hers is a coalition govt., and the helmut schmidt sbd, the latter being less enamored of US bossiness.
apparently tsipras did raise the issue of the benefit of ‘partnering w/ putin (migrants), but was slapped down by Obomba soundly. well, there’s a lot more food for thought in his piece, including why roosia, not isis as the big bad enemy. (MIC, etc.)
Other than Daesh/ISIS/ISIL is inching closer to having its pretension of a state being shut down. Syria (with Russian help) is slowly clearing out Aleppo; that effectively restores authority to the major cities of Syria. The US (and allies), the Kurds, and Iraq are preparing the siege on Mosul, having taken Fallujah. Raqqa has been under siege for a month. The analysts are betting that as a symbolic enemy, Daesh/ISIS/ISIL will be gone sometime during election season.
Even the Republicans are hedging. Gingrich was a prominent face at the MEK gala in Paris (but notice who else was there–Howard Dean) in preparation for selling Iran regime change. The march of folly ambles on.
Of course it Russia. Who has the second largest oil reserves? Where is China building pipelines to?
If peace broke out and all countries ended their military demand for oil, the oil industry would collapse. There is that much demand in the military sector. That really is the threat militaries are most afraid of–not being “needed”. An end to the warrior way of life.
i guess this surprises me, if true: ” The analysts are betting that as a symbolic enemy, Daesh/ISIS/ISIL will be gone sometime during election season.”
fiddlesticks, i had to duck-duck ‘MEK gala’. zounds and oy veh; such a party and guest list. are they insane or simply being expedient? (just rhetorical question)
not the same thing, but the selfies of the big party at the end of the nato summit were downright embarrassing to witness. oh, and NYC #noNato seems to have been a total fizzle. yeah, some folks in europe held smallish protests, a a few in warsaw a day ahead (because: security, i reckon).
but also russia because it’s an easy foe. people seem to lose their minds while vilifying the bear, something primal; maybe the nuclear bomb drills in school?
Just in, the Democratic party platform will include the term foreign policy and a pledge to end the New American Century in 2200, if we get that far.
yep. none of this stuff is in the US MSM, so why bring it up at either party’s national convention? candidate big hair is more likely to offer a mina (sp?) bird’s chirp about NATO v Russia: WW3 Edition than big ol’ chicken war hawk HRC.
in somewhat other news, certain Lindsay Graham types are foaming, or have been, seems to have quickly quieted down, about letting the wymunz carry big guns into combat like any ol’ dirty trailer park redneck has been able to do since Gawd founded the trailer park in Genesis 1. bet they don’t foam for long as they realize that the military in its force projection beyond a nation’s shores needs that nation to be non-racist, gay-friendly, transexual w/no glass ceiling. at least w/in the military itself. and so being “BLM” or “LGBTQ” friendly is now no longer anti-imperialist. Gwyn Ifill & Robert Smeagol, i mean Seagull, breathe a sigh of relief. (i know the reality at Ft. Bragg et al is probably a bit different than the JSOC self-promotion. as in the rest of society.) there’s more than a bit of Marx’s observation that it’s *capitalism*, not communism, that overthrows all the verities & prejudices of “traditional society.”
oops, i meant JCOS, JSOC. Joints Chiefs of Staff.
uh-oh; i’d assumed that big all was waxing satirical, a in: no more PNAC (neo-con secret cheney energy what.ev.er.)
the rest of your rant is excellent.
LURKERS: given that so many are now following this soul food and freedom music site, please speak up at will. we all will appreciate it.
this gayz/wymyn/etc. in the military, in combat, really is a trifecta: you get the rabid right in a tizzy “this country is sodom,” you get a self-congratulatory “left” preening about tolerance & progress, meanwhile there are more troops for empire to put in Basra or Baghram or Djibouti. Meanwhile, we are all of us being played for a bunch of suckers.
i’ll embarrass myself again by admitting that i hadn’t clicked into any headlines re: women in combat (didn’t that happen earlier?) and trans being okayed to serve openly (i take it?). the one ‘women with guns’ i’d seen i thought was about the british military. can you catch me up?
i may have seen a headline concerning women needing to register for selective service, or did i make that up? or was the headline simple click-bait?
yes, women must now reg for SS and can hold forward positions in combat roles. i bet they still only get paid 80 cents on the dollar though.
don’t know about the trans (gender that is, not vestites. though they all are so metrosexual in those uniforms.) i say we let only transgender into the military, no one else. be just enough personnel to have a few staff on the southern border and not one person more. we’ll call it, The Transgender Border Patrol. instead of Brothers, they’ll be Siblings in Arms. har har.
so…the House passed it as well? hard to believe. the comments like cruz controls were hilarious: ‘not my daughters!’ i guess i like it. the most clever thing that ever happened was ending the draft; now the all volunteer military is a jobs program. so if a draft becomes operable, opposition to war will be epic, no?
lol on your transgender border patrol, but yeppers, from slate june 12 or so: “The march toward equality for transgender individuals is having quite a week.
On Tuesday, two Democrats became the first transgender major-party contenders to win a primary election for federal office in U.S. history. And on Thursday, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter announced that the U.S. military is lifting its ban on openly transgender individuals joining and serving in the armed forces.”
ash carter: “I have decided that the transgendered are equal enough to have their nuts and/or nay-nays blown off in order to serve their countries. Now the Rand think tank will figure out what to do about the bathrooms.”
yeah, forgive me if i shudder at the tho’t of a transgender person showering w/the boys in ft. da hood or bragg, etc. don’t worry cruz, i’m sure b/n you & God “told me to be prezzie” you’ll figure out how to keep the girls out of martial harm’s way.
i don’t mean to get into the “essentialism” of gender binaries, not the point here, but rather the awfulness of militarized culture. supposedly, in the “gender blind” (and LGBTQ friendly) IDF, where the whole country practically is a soldier, rape, harrassment, “comfort women” among the enlisted, sexual slavery, is common. i wouldn’t want to test out how gay friendly the IDF is, neither. and i suspect the palestinians would not be surprised in the slightest at any awfulness w/in the IDF ranks. or could care less if it’s a woman behind the wheel in that tank or not.
i know; it’s hard not to satirize some of this w/o sounding like a bigot, but that’s what i’d imagined as well. i’d imagine that at the start, i’ll be rough as hell, and reporting abuses/assaults might not go that far up the chain, as female GIs being raped hasn’t.
but one might think that either coming out, or joining up as transgender might not be all that attractive to most. although why anyone would want to join any branch of the military is beyond me, women and trans who’ve joined the bleeping navy is beyond comprehension to me, given their record.
last comment on this cuz that’s not what this thread is on, but, on 2nd tho’t, i’d bet the IDF has a bit of the ol’ Sparta in ’em & are probably a model of the “gay-friendly” modern killing machine.
sorry, couldn’t resist. via angry arab
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4827240,00.html
future idf rabbi in chief has stated women are forbidden from “serving” and raping gentile women is great for soldier morale. of course idf spokespoodles backpeddle.
This is an excellent thread.
I can only add that the USA is providing an approximate 75% of all funds being utilized for the benefit of both NATO and the European Union.
Consequently, how our nation’s foreign policies and as “designed” by the European Union will consistently prevail. And with Brexit, the “problems” will only become more confusing when it comes to the “protection” of the North Atlantic Seas. Will there be more American monies spent in the offing?
Jaango
Will there be more monies spent for the narrative of “additional protection of the North Atlantic seas”? Most likely. Any story serves for military spending. And we do have to protect Greenland, Iceland, and the Azores. Not to mention the Svalbard seed repository.
it seems as though i’m being called to help sort out more of papa bear’s crises, so i’ll see what ‘duties’ i can perform w/o a power of attorney, well, never mind the rest. but h/t @cordeliers:
‘The secret accord’, frontline.in (India’s National Magazine from the Publishers of ‘the hindu’)
the gist of the very long piece is that behind the announced “foundation agreements” between Obama and modi in deecee in june, one being concluding a Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA) in the coming months’ that ash carter had been writing w/ the minister of defense. straightaway, the hindu’ had asked modi to explain what might have occurred behind closed doors, and had asked seven key questions about any ‘deal’’ they struck secretly.
the hindu’s DC correspondent subequently reported:
““According to a senior Obama administration official, a significant achievement of Mr Modi’s visit is the finalisation of a document on the shared strategy of both countries in Asia-Pacific. The official said this document—kept confidential— outlines a joint strategy to deal with specific situations that could emerge in the Asia-Pacific region in the future” (essentially a treaty of alliance that needs no senate ratification, ‘the important clause on the casus foederis is spelt out’)
““The mysterious road map: Aside from designating India as a major military partner, U.S. officials also said Obama and Modi had ‘completed a road map’ describing ‘what we will be doing together to achieve that leader’s vision’”
well, of course it’s aimed at china, and obama aims to build india’s defense capabilities to check ‘china’s unbridled’ control regionally in the asia-pacific, yada, yada. ah well, paul ryan and john mcCrankypants have weighed in, and it looks as though out new ‘great ally’ will join patrolling the sea, probably contributing troops for wars, and essentially vacating india’s long non-aligned status. the piece narrates that from nehru onward… but remember when modi had announced during his recent trip that if ya want to to be considered powerful, ‘go where the action is’ or close?
heh; there’s a longish section about a ‘Bharatiyas for trump’ PAC forming as well.
also, fwiw, small surprise: ‘Helping shape world order’: New military roadmap seeks greater German defense role’ (rt)
https://www.rt.com/news/350681-germany-defense-nato-eu/
the Hague just sided against China as well. see front page of NYT. is that any surprise? recognizing these “international courts” for what they are, “justice” as “the interest of the stronger,” china is of course refusing to recognize the ruling or the court’s jurisdiction, esp. given that the US is not a signatory to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
The conversation being a global one I maybe should enter with caution, but I will join Jason in saying this is an important and rivetting thread, with thanks to wendye for her, as usual, superlative coverage up top.
I just watched/listened to RT’s Crosstalk on the subject and whilst I will go back and through it again as it was extremely fast paced and covered a lot of linked subjects we have already looked at here, the fascination for me was the linkage being emphasized between NATO and the EU, its historical setting (they mention that first up, and I want to get myself straight on that point before discussing it) and the manner in which various EU folk are out of sync with the general ‘one for all and all for one’ theme.
https://www.rt.com/shows/crosstalk/350613-сhilcot-report-nato-warsaw/
Most of the NATO summit conversation occurs in the first segment, being returned to at the close of the second, but the linkages are important as well – they cover a lot of ground. And if anyone would prefer a shorter version (without the commercial break) I’m sure you would get it at the Saker site:
http://thesaker.is/
‘We are stronger together!!’, sayeth JunkYardDoggerel and stoltenberg.
did you mean you might give us anything edifying, juliania? not i on the video, but thanks. maybe others will…
ha; i didn’t get ‘ironman’ part of your link wasn’t a cartoon superhero. ;-)
Postscript: I did truly attempt to find linkage between my native land and the current NATO summit news – after trying all the news sites, I duck duck went and scrolled through to no avail. Perhaps fitting, though, is this very last link the duckies gave me:
http://www.ironman.com/triathlon/events/asiapac/ironman/new-zealand.aspx#/axzz4EDoptDYD
The event is at Taupo, and I particularly loved that most footage in the video is given to the final finalists, the last but not leasts. Good show, folk; bravo.
(This has nothing to do with NATO, or maybe it does – not a warship in sight.)
no more spaces left above, jason. yeppers, i’d seen a ‘softer’ version of that at the guardian. proving your point, of course.
i’m still waiting for a VA phone number and contact , but for now, let me say that chelsea manning’s attorneys went public with the fact that she did in fact try to commit suicide. he requested them to issue a statement since his jailers had already gone public with his very personal health information. goddam. cool on your good luck, miz clinton.
and how fine it is that bernie finally endorsed you last night.
i can’t remember what the phillipines/china kerfuffle was even about, to say the truth. but in okinawa, women are again protesting rape by GIs, most recently the rape and murder by one marine. close the damned base as you’d promised a decade ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spratly_Islands
“…greatly to find quarrel in a straw
When honour’s at the stake.” hamlet. they are fighting over nothing. don’t you worry philippines! America is your friend. China may have reason “to find quarrel in a straw,” but the philippines are being played for suckers by the US. (long article, but lots of history, but yes, these islands really are a bunch of nothing)
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/11/04/fishing-in-troubled-waters-the-u-s-pushback-against-chinas-claims-in-the-south-china-sea/
ay yi yi. might we conflate that (nothing) provocation/entreé with ukraine and yellow rice, then? ish, i did make it through half of it.
such heroes, though! i ♥ ashcan carter and winkin-blinken-and-nod! see, they know what honor’s all about…
oh, and for thd and anyone who’d following the debacle in libya, i saw this in the twittersphere, haven’t read it, but i do remember ‘haftar’.
‘Libya: Leaked tapes suggest West supports Haftar; Air traffic recordings indicate General Haftar receives Western support despite his opposition to Tripoli government.’
‘Revolution Undermined: On Bernie Sanders’s Endorsement of Hillary Clinton’, by Jill Stein
nice try on threading the needle, miz stein, but you offered to give him your Green ticket, meaning ‘the top spot’. bah. i’ll sit out that top line part of the ballot, thanks.
sorry, i’m depressed as all giddy-up at the state of the world, even more, the state of our(?) fambly.
You might be bemused that there might be some of the circus left to come.
So someone is setting expectations of inside maneuvering (even if it comes up short) in the convention in an attempt to keep Sanders delegates from bailing now. Or will there be a floor fight to liven things up?
a commenter pointed out on MoA that the media sharks & advertisers have to be fed. ergo, the conventions & way more importantly the national “race” must be kept “close” or “controversial” till election day.
nobody would show up to a fore-ordained HRC coronation. ergo Bern & Don?
bloody hell, ‘circus in their imaginations’, mebbe? is that op-ed anywhere near true? i can’t say. but i did go to c99%, as that place is almost all former kossacks, so i do check back from time to time on their continuing fervor levels. but the peoples’ revolution is still on! some snaders insider says (alternet) that the bern will make sure that his supporters support downticket candidates (or something). but i did just find this new link at politico being lauded, given that several of the c99 folks were interviewed.
it’s far too long for me to care to read, but it does give me a chance to ask: is this cofounder of c99% joeshikspak (sp), the same joe sixpack who comments so often at MoA?
as far as i’d seen, the money has been spent already, and rarely does the teevee carry but an hour or two of the convention (not sure about pbs, really). wonder if that’s changed?
superdelegate switching is the Big Hopium. will there be Obedium?
i didn’t mean the conventions themselves. what a snooooooze those are. i meant the faux drama of the society of the quadrennial election spectacle itself.
while i getcha n the larger meme of ‘(faux) democracy in action theatrics, and although i couldn’t spend the 48 minutes, i imb it. i’ve been composing a bit of an educational rant to the sibs. thank you. my other rant contra ‘a serious and acclaimed’ progressive blogger’ is in second place. O, what a world.
The revolution continues all right. The revolution to nowhere land. It’s interesting listening to some rail on others for the same things they do. The Bernie fanatics are no different than the Obama fanatics than the Hillary fanatics. It’s all the same but they don’t see it that way. They’re so convinced the Bernie is different, even when he “endorses” a de facto war criminal, a murderer, they still can’t recognize what the whole thing has been about. I think the owners are well intentioned but those that came over from the orange place have overrun it with orange place type mindlessness about the electoral process. The idea for the revolution now is to vote Green, try to get Stein 5% of the vote as a protest vote or as a warning to the Dems that they better shape up or they’ll do it again next time, unless there’s another Bernie or Obama or maybe Jesus himself. Said it many a time, that’s as detrimental to progress as anything the rethugs do because the masquerade prevents anything real from taking place.
yep, and i’m thinking zappa on ‘when the curtain finally comes down’ stuff. what it is is ‘gatekeeping’, this time Dem, but still anything to convince the rubes that they are about to ‘almost get there’. i headed dem campaigns galore in my time, and every time anyone remotely populist (can’t say about bernie, but the ‘berners’ thought so) the dlc made sure to tank them. or, too: they became Other People once elected, from school board to assholes like ben ‘cheyenne’ campbell. (no, i never worked for him, but am quite familiar how he sold out once elected even to the state legislature).
but i reckon what has baffled me the most is that ‘leftists’ sincerely believed he was ‘a socialist’, and ‘the peace candidate’ against all evidence, say like: his own words? yep, maybe an FDR minus the IWW, et.al., but..sure, he’d even said straight out that he was a dem sheepdog, didn’t he?
i will say that my experience at c99% was odd bodkins indeed. i’d kept hoping that those folks who’d pissed on my posts cuz ‘there are no class issues’ and such, and johnny not demurring on whether or not he’d called me out as a..something or other…might be worth it in the end. but it was hard wrangling two sites at once. with my mind in the condition it’s in now…it was all a bit much.
so. the revolution might be televised, but it won’t be in philly? green eggs and ham, to quote a fave author. in cleveland (cleveland??) , otoh… ;-)
There are some that want the Democratic Convention to operate as the historic sort of convention with multiple ballots and uncertain outcomes. That format drew a wide audience up until Nixon’s infomercial convention in 1968. After Chicago 1968, Democrats starting with Carter strove to have the nomination locked up before the convention and then to have the field cleared early in the primaries. Obama first bucked this trend but quickly negotiated with Clinton and cut a deal. Sanders has resisted negotiating until close to the end, seeking to get whatever leverage he could out his non-cooperation (not that different from his style in the House and Senate. We don’t know what he has agreed to and what not. But we know that there are Clinton folks still pissed that he hasn’t cleared the field, even after the endorsement. If nothing else, this is a course from Sanders in inside politics; this is the process that has been hidden for 48 years. How far Sanders can take it or wants to take it is unknown, but the Convention will be where it plays out and where Sanders decides to campaign. As Big Al says, this ain’t yer revolution.
So at the maximum, Sanders tries an FDR-style play (as reported in the above outline). If he succeeds, a Hobson’s choice moves from the Sanders voters to the Clinton voters. Are they going to sacrifice the country to Trump like the Democratic establishment sacrificed it to Nixon in 1972. (Which makes the Watergate break-in look really stupid.) This ain’t the revolution either, even if at maximum it results in a Sanders Presidency and a Democratic Congress. I believe all of us are clear about that.
Once again, the Greens are asking for votes without asking for enough votes to win. Just give us 5% so we can be on the ballot next time around in every state. That speaks of two things: a national organization without sufficient local base to deliver petitions for the ballot on a routine basis. Failure to build that organization between elections. Stein looks to have done more to address that than previous candidates (subsequent “party leader”). And this is to soak up the Sanders voters and scare the establishment Democrats. How more weak a value proposition for voting can one make? At least the lesser-of-two-evils has the possibility of winning and delivering policy. No revolution and not yet a strong-enough opposition party.
And the #NoHillary Sanders voters are fragmented in where they are going to place their votes. No revolution here either.
If there is a pre-collapse revolution, it requires both inside actions and outside actions. Dilma Rousseff’s fate is the current poster child of a reversed revolution. How do you know it was a revolution? It was reversed by the aspiring (or previous) powers-that-be. And they acted through control of the legislative branch. So the inside game needs to transform the control of the legislative branch; the GOP has now run aground, despite majorities trying to achieve that goal. As an inside game, it is very hard to do. Which is why the US powers-that-be turned to just buying it out. Not a revolution, neither a Sanders revolution nor a Gingrich revolution. Rousseff, Cameron, and Boehner ran up against entrenchment moves by the powers-that-be to ensure that the political system remained corrupt and responsive to their 1%s.
But at some point, inside actions get coupled with outside actions. Most often it ends with the inside controlling the outside. The promise of the Sanders campaign going inside the Democratic Party was to see whether there is a way to couple the outside movements in the street with the inside in a way that changes the inside. Because when a revolution happens, that happens either with the military or the civil service or with the legislature. And that permits a rapid (if conflicted) change in the way power is understood and applied in the party or government. That experiment will not be complete until Wednesday of the convention and the nomination of Vice President and President, which are only a foregone conclusion with the current written rules. Once in session, the convention can control its own agenda instead of necessarily following the planned inevitability. Even though highly improbable, it is possible that some dynamics of outside and inside politics could upset the expectations of the media and the powers that be. If that ever actually happens, how it rolls out across the country during the subsequent campaign season is another difficult strategy.
The other possibility is that something fundamental happens in the streets that mushrooms unexpectedly and requires a response from the inside convention. What that is would have to resemble how rapidly Occupy Wall Street went from 2000 people on September 17 to who knows how many in 300-something locations on October 15 (which apparently caused the police chiefs to crap in their blues). After two solid years of #blacklivesmatter, could the police chiefs now use PERF to coordinate a rapid takedown of pointedly non-violent but disruptive protesters?
Where possibilities exist going forward are state and local elections (inside game) and persistent local movements (outside game). And multicultural and diverse labor unions, even wildcat locals. Also not writing off any geographical part of the country. The labor organizing done in the 1930s provided the meeting venues for the civil rights movement in the 1950s in the South, as did the freedmen’s relief organizations established on the Sea Islands after the Civil War. One of the labor actions that was the bloodiest in the 1930s was the Southern textile workers strike, which lost ground because the labor movement was divided about whether to desegregate in organizing; having desegregated union meeting was immediately outside the law then. Having movements in the South again is required for any popular power. Interesting geography: some of the counties most active in the Southern textile workers strike are now the most behind Trump.
Trump’s not going to lead any revolution; he’s there to divert one with racist, xenophobic, and religious tropes. In this regard, look back at how the Mississippi plan of 1875 unfolded across the South before the election of 1876. That is when the planters re-entrenched themselves after the Civil War. Trump is about Southern workers enabling him in that entrenchment, knowing that there is middle class (what workers are called these days) restlessness.
Those who are holding out for revolution in 2016 better provide some idea of how it happens. And those who are comfortable with half-measures can help turn the Republicans out of the North Carolina, Michigan, and Wisconsin legislatures. If you have non-duopoly candidates for those bodies, have at it. The shock of getting a third-party candidate elected to a US legislature might surprise us.
So get ready for two shabby circuses. The elephants come to Cleveland next week with Andy Frain bathroom monitors checking delegate birth certificates. And the jackasses trundle into Philadelphia the next. At the moment neither looks boring. But likely the media consultants have ensure that America gets the Big Snooze.
Follow the bouncing red ball.
Great comment btw.
thank you for the fulsome list of possibilities, the analyses, and the history, much of which i hadn’t known. ballotopedia says the last dem brokered convention brought…adlai stevenson, such a flash from the past.
i’m not getting what ‘precollapse revolution’ might mean; some have wondered if another wall street melt-down might make things very interesting, though.
for me, it’s hard to think that any big street actions will come from bernistas, though i’d like to be surprised. unions? i can’t see it given the Bigs’ support for the annointed one. how pragmatic of them. i still see trumka at the prez’s ‘job council’ table next to dimon or some other kleptocratic kriminal.
but i love the hella outta your berating stein’s ask for 5%; wow; let’s take one whole giant baby step! how creepy it’s been that the green shadow government was entirely useless and almost never heard from.
for big al: how about follow the bouncing bernie? what a great graphic; RT had it.
?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Pre-collapse revolution: one of prior to harsh necessity in order to avoid the calamity of collapse. Not terribly likely based on historical experience, but there always can be a first time.
Thought for the day:
i gues i’m not grasping the definition, but i do like the quote. ;-)
sleep well: your national guard is awake.
i can’t express how far OT this will be, but hey; i need to say it. this year’s gardening has me in dismal land, as well. first it was the mice who chomped down the seedlings in the greenhouse, flat after flat of them….two plantings worth. in the end, mr. wd trapped 28 of them. figuring they’d peed on all the potting soil, i started with a new bag of the primo ‘black gold’. oof, some stuff sprouted, but these tiny gnat-like bugs were everywhere.
i used some of that ‘safer’ spray (though they don’t say ‘safer than what’. but all the seedlings i set out…were eaten by hordes of those flying gnats or whatever. chip and dale grew into three small squirrels somehow, and began chewing plants off at the ground, felling the big things like beavers fell trees. mr. wd did finally live-trap three of the dear little fellers (grrrr) but not before they’d eaten half of the edible plants, and lots of the flowers.
given how lame the gardens look, i went back to the greenhouse to transplant any live seedlings into bigger pots, doctor them with soil additives, etc. so i opened the bag of the famous potting soil, bent down to dish some out…and was swarmed with them dagnab flying eaters. ha! yep; the stuff must have been full of insect larvae, ergo: all the other.
but meanwhile, even the plants they didn’t eat are hardly growing since although it’s in the 90s everyday, the temp is 50 by morning. and lots of crops require warmer temps at night. shoot, it was so chilly with the wind this morning, i built small stick fire.
end of pity-party rant, except to say i’m sick of the sibs, and would drop outta the whole mess except for having pity on ‘the old man’..
frustrating about the critters doing what they do. i wouldn’t hesitate to put some bullets thru those squirrels. just remind yourself that their fleas can carry plague, and pull that trigger. squirrels are not yet running out of plots of land. as for the family…ugh.
actually, i might hesitate. if you trap & release them elsewhere, they won’t make a miraculous journey back to “home.” too bad you can’t trap & release certain…uh…people. but shooting a squirrel is not like shooting the last dodo. very american though: i’ve got a problem, so let’s fill it full of lead!
(who is the “you” in this song? no doubt the audience, but also his lover? some divine figure? both? i’m sure you know this, but still a classic).
some imagined perfect lover/soul mate? what is it about stipes’ voice that just matches so many of their songs? ooof: the one about cancer just gives me the shivers….
well, now, the meeces did die, but after having borrowed some tiny critter live traps, and them failing to work, mr wd. did mention his .22. ‘sure, dear’, you can sit out yonder forever, then take out a few more plants.’ juliania always says so graciously about the biggie rat in her fruit trees: ‘but i’m the interloper here’. but the critters are large enough now to take the bait, trip the trap, and he drives them up the east mancos river road, lets them out. another one was just on the greenhouse roof. i tell them to go into the little house, have some brekkie, and they’ll soon be reunited w/ their sibs.
now prairie dogs can carry plague, didn’t know that about squirrels:: rabies can be a concern, though. but as i’m working on a new police state diary, your words have given me pause, lol. the sibs? man, i could ship them off to abu dhabi; the MO is to spike (non) crisis, then ignore all the research i do…and do what they wanted to do in the first place. once i discovered that none of the agencies would give me info (no PoA), neither of them ‘had the time’, they’ll just pay med bills w/ the old man’s remaining money. stupid, but simple…until it’s gone, & we have to pay.
i did take the list of all the OtC stuff he ‘needs’, sent a big box from drugstore.com. i swear i’ll never put our chirren thru this. c’mon white owl! hoka hey; it’s a good day to die!
a kind of divinized lover?
as for fleas & squirrels, i think it was a park ranger, a sadistic park ranger, on the national mall who saw some out of towners ooohing & ahhhing over squirrels (!) & feeding them out of their hands who said that about the fleas. and yeah, rabies.
totes OT, and rant is def on, do you get these gawd-awful Amber Alerts? both on my phone & the radio the same one blared up twice in about 20 minutes. i haven’t figured out how to prevent them coming to my phone, but i turned the radio off ASAP. fear-mongering, terrorizing idiocy. snoop on your neighbors! for the sake of the children! just wth is anybody supposed to do about missing Scooter or Lulabelle? almost everyone getting this message is driving down the road (“look in the neighboring car windows!!!”) or sitting in their home or office. ?????? imagine the hysterics if someone ran off w/ twins or…the Duggar brood! “Josh, Jessa, Jill, Jinger, Jango, Jugger, Jugs, Jimbo, Jigger, Jimbob, Jack, Jackie, Jacqueline, JarJar, Jeff, Jeffrey, John, and Jackrabbit Duggar are all missing at this hour after their mother, Jaycee, was found at her local pharmacy’s family planning aisle. police are calling on fans of the Duggars reality TV show, Honey Boo Boo and Duck Dynasty to help w/ a national search for the 19 children.” ok, rant off.
it’s an hilarious rant, but no; i don’t play the radio, not many stations here worth hearing, and i have no smart phone. i do remember on the teevee when they’d come on; they were exactly like civil defense tests, long, loud beeps and the messages repeated over and over.
‘honey boo-boo and duck dynasty’; you really do it up right, amigo ;-) and thanks, i needed that. in fact, thanks for the additional rant. i may just put up a short one as a diary, since my police state one is turning (naturally) into a tome…