World Politics

[Brullnux]

To steal a line from Blutto (sorry mate, had to!), 'file this under' interesting development!

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/south-korean-leader-apos-view-170230695.html


The Trumpster won't like this.

Well it's worth a shot. There's no point going in all guns blazing if there's a way to avoid it. It probably won't work considering Kim Jong is a bit crazy and seems to be doing all of this for little else than his own ego (like many US presidents) rather than from any ideological/monetary perspective.

 

[BullsFan22]

To steal a line from Blutto (sorry mate, had to!), 'file this under' interesting development!

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/south-korean-leader-apos-view-170230695.html


The Trumpster won't like this.

Well it's worth a shot. There's no point going in all guns blazing if there's a way to avoid it. It probably won't work considering Kim Jong is a bit crazy and seems to be doing all of this for little else than his own ego (like many US presidents) rather than from any ideological/monetary perspective.

I am a firm believer in the need for the two Koreas to be united. They never should have split in the first place, but the discussion would take too much bandwidth if we ventured in that direction.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

To steal a line from Blutto (sorry mate, had to!), 'file this under' interesting development!

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/south-korean-leader-apos-view-170230695.html


The Trumpster won't like this.

Well it's worth a shot. There's no point going in all guns blazing if there's a way to avoid it. It probably won't work considering Kim Jong is a bit crazy and seems to be doing all of this for little else than his own ego (like many US presidents) rather than from any ideological/monetary perspective.

I am a firm believer in the need for the two Koreas to be united. They never should have split in the first place, but the discussion would take too much bandwidth if we ventured in that direction.

Putin is not going to like this, especially after spending all that money to invade south korea.

 

[BullsFan22]

To steal a line from Blutto (sorry mate, had to!), 'file this under' interesting development!

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/south-korean-leader-apos-view-170230695.html


The Trumpster won't like this.

Well it's worth a shot. There's no point going in all guns blazing if there's a way to avoid it. It probably won't work considering Kim Jong is a bit crazy and seems to be doing all of this for little else than his own ego (like many US presidents) rather than from any ideological/monetary perspective.

I am a firm believer in the need for the two Koreas to be united. They never should have split in the first place, but the discussion would take too much bandwidth if we ventured in that direction.

Putin is not going to like this, especially after spending all that money to invade south korea.

Ah yes, but you see, Waters said "Korea," she didn't specify which one.

 

[python]

lavrov's press conference after meeting tillerson and trump is still going on. i am watching live...

since i followed the tillerson-lavrov meet in moscow some weeks ago, a few observations already are noteworthy:

1. the press-conference, unlike in moscow, was lacking tillerson, in fact, no one from the state dept nor the white house was on the screen. if true, that's a tad unusual. kind of a public downgrade from the us officials as if 'we dont care that much'
2. very clearly it is NOT the case, b/c otherwise trump would not have seen lavrov as he originally did not plan (he said)
3. lavrov had spoken in guarded optimistic tones. even complementing the trump business-like approach to details.
4. the gist of the many answers was that the biggest closeness in the positions was on...syria. sounds like the us will be taking a more active role in the astana talks that are lead by turkey, russia and iran.

said the 2 presidents will meet on the sidelines of the top-20 nations soon to take place in germany.

 

[Beech Mtn]

@Python,

Lavrov and the Russian Ambassador were in the Oval Office for photo op.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

Re:

@Python,

Lavrov and the Russian Ambassador were in the Oval Office for photo op.

Good stuff.

Im sure the "spooled up" folks here will enjoy this.

Did anyone catch the photos from the V day parades in Moscow? Man I'm joining the Russian Military because the women in their military... oh my. Just oh my.
I mean I was "dating" a russian stripper a few months back - but those ladies were very good looking with those uniforms on. hmmm

 

[python]

@beach
those are indeed cool pix but did you know that they were made by the lavrov personal photographer ? turns out, the white house refused to publish the pix of their own, so everyone including you and cnn etc, had been forced spreading the russian propaganda :twisted: once again, the smart-ass trump found the sneaky way to play along his bud vlad :lol:
if a bit more seriously, as i noted immediately after the lavrov briefing, it was a tad in variance with a common diplomatic practice for tillerson NOT to stand next to lavrov at a joint press-conference and the WH restricting the meets images...i sense a politically staged aloofness in front of a contentful talk so that dem mad dogs dont bark themselves deadg trump would then be accused of hating dogs...
Presence of Russian photographer in Oval Office raises alarms
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/presence-of-russian-photographer-in-oval-office-raises-alarms/ar-BBAYRJi
@semper
one of those speznaz ladies was called ivanka hence the mess america is undergoing :lol:

 

[blutto]

.....hmmm, seems the reporters in pajamas , the white helmeted folks and their good friends at various MSM outlets have missed a story or two for, uhhh, "some reason".....and missed some real opportunities to express "genuine" heartfelt moral outrage which is not only good for the soul but really helps the bottom-line....

The Silent Slaughter of the US Air War

The U.S. mainstream media voiced moral outrage when Russian warplanes killed civilians in Aleppo but has gone silent as U.S. warplanes slaughter innocents in Mosul and Raqqa, notes Nicolas J S Davies.

By Nicolas J S Davies

April 2017 was another month of mass slaughter and unimaginable terror for the people of Mosul in Iraq and the areas around Raqqa and Tabqa in Syria, as the heaviest, most sustained U.S.-led bombing campaign since the American War in Vietnam entered its 33rd month.


The Airwars monitoring group has compiled reports of 1,280 to 1,744 civilians killed by at least 2,237 bombs and missiles that rained down from U.S. and allied warplanes in April (1,609 on Iraq and 628 on Syria). The heaviest casualties were in and around Old Mosul and West Mosul, where 784 to 1,074 civilians were reported killed, but the area around Tabqa in Syria also suffered heavy civilian casualties.
In other war zones, as I have explained in previous articles (here and here), the kind of “passive” reports of civilian deaths compiled by Airwars have only ever captured between 5 percent and 20 percent of the actual civilian war deaths revealed by comprehensive mortality studies. Iraqbodycount, which used a similar methodology to Airwars, had only counted 8 percent of the deaths discovered by a mortality study in occupied Iraq in 2006.

Airwars appears to be collecting reports of civilian deaths more thoroughly than Iraqbodycount 11 years ago, but it classifies large numbers of them as “contested” or “weakly reported,” and is deliberately conservative in its counting. For instance, in some cases, it has counted local media reports of “many deaths” as a minimum of one death, with no maximum figure. This is not to fault Airwars’ methods, but to recognize its limitations in contributing to an actual estimate of civilian deaths.

Allowing for various interpretations of Airwars’ data, and assuming that, like such efforts in the past, it is capturing between 5 percent and 20 percent of actual deaths, a serious estimate of the number of civilians killed by the U.S.-led bombing campaign since 2014 would by now have to be somewhere between 25,000 and 190,000.

The Pentagon recently revised its own facetious estimate of the number of civilians it has killed in Iraq and Syria since 2014 to 352. That is less than a quarter of the 1,446 victims whom Airwars has positively identified by name.

....and....

Shock, Awe … and Silence

To put the 79,000 bombs and missiles with which the U.S. and its allies have bombarded Iraq and Syria since 2014 in perspective, it is worth reflecting back to the “more innocent” days of “Shock and Awe” in March 2003. As NPR reporter Sandy Tolan reported in 2003, one of the architects of that campaign predicted that dropping 29,200 bombs and missiles on Iraq would have, “the non-nuclear equivalent of the impact that the atomic weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had on Japan.”

When “Shock and Awe” was unleashed on Iraq in 2003, it dominated the news all over the world. But after eight years of “disguised, quiet, media-free” war under President Obama, the U.S. mass media don’t even treat the daily slaughter from this heavier, more sustained bombardment of Iraq and Syria as news. They cover single mass casualty events for a few days, but quickly resume normal “Trump Show” programming.

As in George Orwell’s 1984, the public knows that our military forces are at war with somebody somewhere, but the details are sketchy. “Is that still a thing?” “Isn’t North Korea the big issue now?”

There is almost no political debate in the U.S. over the rights and wrongs of the U.S. bombing campaign in Iraq and Syria. Never mind that bombing Syria without authorization from its internationally recognized government is a crime of aggression and a violation of the U.N. Charter. The freedom of the United States to violate the U.N. Charter at will has already been politically (not legally!) normalized by 17 years of serial aggression, from the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 to the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, to drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen

....and ....and especially the bolded where we have a poignant and justified speakin' of Hitler moment....

How many of the thousands of civilians the U.S. has killed in Mosul in the past few months played any such role in the September 11th terrorist attacks? Every person reading this knows the answer to that question: probably not one of them. If one of them was involved, it would be by sheer coincidence.

Any impartial judge would reject a claim that this legislation authorized 16 years of war in at least eight countries, the overthrow of governments that had nothing to do with 9/11, the killing of about 2 million people and the destabilization of country after country – just as surely as the judges at Nuremberg rejected the German defendants’ claims that they invaded Poland, Norway and the U.S.S.R. to prevent or “preempt” imminent attacks on Germany.

....and here a word from one of Busted's favourite sources....

As Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering admitted to American military psychologist Gustave Gilbert in his cell at Nuremberg, “Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.”

“There is one difference,” Gilbert insisted, “In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.”

Goering was unimpressed by Madison‘s and Hamilton’s cherished constitutional safeguards. “Oh, that is all well and good,” he replied, “but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them that they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”

Our commitment to peace and our abhorrence of war are too easily undermined by the simple but timeless techniques Goering described. In the U.S. today, they are enhanced by several other factors, most of which also had parallels in World War Two Germany:

–Mass media that suppress public awareness of the human costs of war, especially when U.S. policy or U.S. forces are responsible.

–A media blackout on voices of reason who advocate alternative policies based on peace, diplomacy or the rule of international law.

–In the ensuing silence regarding rational alternatives, politicians and media present “doing something,” meaning war, as the only alternative to the perennial straw man of “doing nothing.”

–The normalization of war by stealth and deception, especially by public figures otherwise seen as trustworthy, like President Obama.

–The dependence of progressive politicians and organizations on funding from labor unions that have become junior partners in the military industrial complex.

–The political framing of U.S. disputes with other countries as entirely the result of actions by the other side, and the demonization of foreign leaders to dramatize and popularize these false narratives.

–The pretense that the U.S. role in overseas wars and global military occupation stems from a well-meaning desire to help people, not from U.S. strategic ambitions and business interests.

Taken altogether, this amounts to a system of war propaganda, in which the heads of TV networks bear a share of responsibility for the resulting atrocities along with political and military leaders. Trotting out retired generals to bombard the home front with euphemistic jargon, without disclosing the hefty directors’ and consultants’ fees they collect from weapons manufacturers, is only one side of this coin.

The equally important flip-side is the media’s failure to even cover wars or the U.S. role in them, and their systematic marginalization of anyone who suggests there is anything morally or legally wrong with America’s wars.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/47021.htm

Cheers

 

[mcduff]

Nothing at all new in those concepts. The US are amateurs though. The real experts (we Brits) taught you Yankees how to co-opt the assuaged into doing our killing for us AND take the blame for it.

 

[python]

Many commentators, pepe being one of the vocal and funnily serious, consider the british foreign office no more than a lap doggy to the state dept...seems like the pepe notion has a solid root in the latest and well documented war adventurism where the lap doggy almost always behaved as told by a mastef...

Good to hear the lap doggy trained its master some time back. I`d actually agree - there is much evidence from the ww2 era. Perhaps the doggy feels like a big dog indulging in the sweet past...

 

[mcduff]

I think its pure pragmatism. (Oil)
With Brexit, it will only get more pronounced.

 

[Brullnux]

Many commentators, pepe being one of the vocal and funnily serious, consider the british foreign office no more than a lap doggy to the state dept...seems like the pepe notion has a solid root in the latest and well documented war adventurism where the lap doggy almost always behaved as told by a mastef...

Good to hear the lap doggy trained its master some time back. I`d actually agree - there is much evidence from the ww2 era. Perhaps the doggy feels like a big dog indulging in the sweet past...

Clearly this is wrong. BoJo is intelligent and capable enough by himself without any guidance from other countries - if anything it should be others to follow him. And there is no reason why Britain should cosy up to any country, considering the incredibly strong geopolitical situation it finds itself in currently.

 

[python]

le monde believes that the macron emails were hacked by the american neonazi group...

http://www.lemonde.fr/pixels/article/2017/05/11/macronleaks-compte-offshore-d-emmanuel-macron-l-ombre-des-neonazis-americains_5126389_4408996.html#meter_toaster
(french original)

euobserver in english
https://euobserver.com/foreign/137882

... the firm’s experts, Loic Guezo, told EUobserver this week that the 5-May dump of stolen Macron emails was more amateurish than the Russian state’s modus operandi.

 

[Beech Mtn]

http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Abbas-has-decided-to-sign-peace-deal-with-Israel-490530

and

http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Abbas-Moscow-essential-to-resolving-conflict-490533

 

[mcduff]

Re:

http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Abbas-has-decided-to-sign-peace-deal-with-Israel-490530

and

http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Abbas-Moscow-essential-to-resolving-conflict-490533

And in other news...

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/05/knesset-bill-portrays-racism-normal-170510112023518.html

Join the dots between your news and my news. Abbas, not unreasonably, is trying to call Netanyahu's bluff on his claims to want peace.

 

[blutto]

....meanwhile back in Greece were our future is going thru a kind of dry run, you know, to get the kinks out....and one btw that Obama was instrumental in getting rammed thru....

Sharmini Peries: The European Commission announced on May 2, that an agreement on Greek pension and income tax reforms would pave the way for further discussions on debt release for Greece. The European Commission described this as good news for Greece. The Greek government described the situation in similar terms. However, little attention has been given as to how the wider Greek population are experiencing the consequences of the policies of the Troika. On May Day thousands of Greeks marked International Workers Day with anti-austerity protests. One of the protester’s a 32-year-old lawyer perhaps summed the mood, the best when he said …


“The current Greek government, like all the ones before it, have implemented measures that has only one goal, the crushing of the workers, the working class and everyone who works themselves to the bone. We are fighting for the survival of the poorest who need help the most.”

Michael Hudson: I wouldn’t call it a negotiation. Greece is simply being dictated to. There is no negotiation at all. It’s been told that its economy has shrunk so far by 20%, but has to shrink another 5% making it even worse than the depression. Its wages have fallen and must be cut by another 10%. Its pensions have to be cut back. Probably 5 to 10% of its population of working age will have to immigrate.

The intention is to cut the domestic tax revenues (not raise them), because labor won’t be paying taxes and businesses are going out of business. So we have to assume that the deliberate intention is to lower the government’s revenues by so much that Greece will have to sell off even more of its public domain to foreign creditors. Basically it’s a smash and grab exercise, and the role of Tsipras is not to represent the Greeks because the Troika have said, “The election doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what the people vote for. Either you do what we say or we will smash your banking system.” Tsipras’s job is to say, “Yes I will do whatever you want. I want to stay in power rather than falling in election.”

...and when reading the following do remember who made the loan and what happened to the money ( during this period Greece inexplicably became one of highest per capita spenders on military goods...inexplicable cause they had no enemies or threats to deal with ) and who cooked the books to allow odious loans that should never been offered ( Goldman Sachs ) and who most benefits from the fire sale of infra-structure.....

Michael Hudson: The basic principle is indeed the same. If a creditor makes a loan to a country or a home buyer knowing that there’s no way in which the person can pay, who should bear the responsibility for this? Should the bad lender or irresponsible bondholder have to pay, or should the Greek people have to pay?

IMF economists said that Greece can’t pay, and under the IMF rules it is not allowed to make loans to countries that have no chance of repaying in the foreseeable future. The then-head of the IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, introduced a new rule – the “systemic problem” rule. It said that if Greece doesn’t repay, this will cause problems for the economic system – defined as the international bankers, bondholder’s and European Union budget – then the IMF can make the loan

.

This poses a question on international law. If the problem is systemic, not Greek, and if it’s the system that’s being rescued, why should Greek workers have to dismantle their economy? Why should Greece, a sovereign nation, have to dismantle its economy in order to rescue a banking system that is guaranteed to continue to cause more and more austerity, guaranteed to turn the Eurozone into a dead zone? Why should Greece be blamed for the bad malstructured European rules? That’s the moral principle that’s at stake in all this.

Explain to me why Greece is being held up as an example.

Michael Hudson: It’s being made an example for the same reason the United States went into Libya and bombed Syria: It’s to show that we can destroy you if you don’t do what we say. If Spain or Italy or Portugal seeks not to pay its debts, it will meet the same fate. Its banking system will be destroyed, and its currency system will be destroyed.

The basic principle at work is that finance is the new form of warfare. You can now destroy a country’s economy not merely by invading it. You don’t even have to bomb it, as you’ve done in the Near East. All you have to do is withdraw all credit to the banking system, isolate it economically from making payments to foreign countries so that you essentially put sanctions on it. You’ll treat Greece like they’ve treated Iran or other countries.

....sorta like a neutron bomb but much cleaner.....sorta like weaponizing the "miracle" of compound interest....

We have life and death power over you.” The demonstration effect is not only to stop Greece, but to stop countries from doing what Marine Le Pen is trying to do in France: withdraw from the Eurozone.

The class war is back in business – the class war of finance against labor, imposing austerity and shrinking living standards, lowering wages and cutting back social spending. It’s demonstrating who’s the winner in this economic warfare that’s taking place

.

....which explains how Macron magically appeared and won and from whence he came....sorta like Karzai in Afgahnistan...

....and a final note....

Note: Wikipedia defines Odious Debt: “In international law, odious debt, also known as illegitimate debt, is a legal doctrine that holds that the national debt incurred by a regime for purposes that do not serve the best interests of the nation, should not be enforceable.”

http://www.unz.com/mhudson/somebodys-going-to-suffer-greeces-new-austerity-measures/

Cheers

 

[BullsFan22]

How long until the Democrats push for a travel ban for Russians?

 

[blutto]

How long until the Democrats push for a travel ban for Russians?

....would be the appropriate thing to do wouldn't it....?.....

Cheers

 

[BullsFan22]

How long until the Democrats push for a travel ban for Russians?

....would be the appropriate thing to do wouldn't it....?.....

Cheers

Very much so.

 

[blutto]

How long until the Democrats push for a travel ban for Russians?

....would be the appropriate thing to do wouldn't it....?.....

Cheers

Very much so.

....do you think this may get the Democrats to reconsider their totally irrational response to the bigly greatest thing ever Wall Project....I mean it would really be solidifying a travel ban thingee, like really close the door in their evil Russkie faces eh....

Cheers

 

[Brullnux]

Just a question for the Portuguese members of the forum: how good is the current opposition? As in, on a scale of UK Labour to 10, where would you rank it?

 

[Jagartrott]

So, that uprising of populist right parties that was predicted all over Europe fizzled very quickly. Netherlands, Austria, France and soon also Germany with AfD imploding: all disappointments from the view of the Trumpistas, the Farrages. Is it the novelty of it all wearing off, or is it the realisation that things in the US and UK aren't exactly proceeding as they had envisaged. Whatever it is, I'm quite happy with it, and I think it can be a boost to implement some changes for the good in the workings of the EU.

 

[BullsFan22]

Re:

So, that uprising of populist right parties that was predicted all over Europe fizzled very quickly. Netherlands, Austria, France and soon also Germany with AfD imploding: all disappointments from the view of the Trumpistas, the Farrages. Is it the novelty of it all wearing off, or is it the realisation that things in the US and UK aren't exactly proceeding as they had envisaged. Whatever it is, I'm quite happy with it, and I think it can be a boost to implement some changes for the good in the workings of the EU.

Well, to be fair to them (maybe that's a poor choice of words), but most of the populist parties are fairly new. The AfD for example really only got going in 2013. Wilders' party isn't that old either. The FN is is by far the most established far right party in Europe, and they've been around, but as I said, most of them have manifested in the past 5-10 years. What about the SD in your country? They've been around for almost 30 years, they've made some headway in recent years as well. Austria is interesting because for the first since...in like forever...the main election didn't involve the two main parties-the OVP and SPO. It was the FPO and the Greens that were in the final election. Actually I think this is where Europe may be heading. People are tired of the status quo, so you'll see more minor parties getting votes and especially populist (both left and right). That said, in Germany Merkel's party, the CDU, has tightened the grip and the other parties are playing catch up. It really all depends how badly the technocrats keep screwing Europe.

 

[Brullnux]

The AfD was never going to do well in Germany, I feel. The SNP have got a bit closer but the CDU still seems strong.

The core FN support has risen 3-4% in 15 years. There are many more sympathetic to the FN nowadays, but not that many support it outright. Wilders went strong but out of all these politicians he is by far the one I dislike the most. He has a pure and utter contempt for the people, and have them the crappiest manifesto I think I have ever seen. 11 points spread out over half a page. And most of them were very minor issues. The SD is pretty strong, not quite SDP levels I think but challenging them. In Austria I'm pretty sure it wasn't the main election but the election of a mostly ceremonial president, but they haven't lost support since that at all. The Danish one is doing OK too.

In Italy the lega nord are having a bit of trouble on deciding whether they like the EU or not (like Le Pen did) and M5S is just extremely confused. But I agree that the future of the EU hinges on whether the technocrats pull the finger out of their arses and do something.