World Politics

[blutto]

....speaking of money and governments find below a dandy article on Europe's other major crisis, Greece...lots of exposing myths that have been used to define that crisis and then sell the solutions that were eventually "proffered"...

.. good bits...

"More than 18 other countries, including Brazil, Portugal, Ecuador, Greece and Spain, have done the same ?audit,?, and, in each case, found that increased public spending was not the cause of deficits. From 1978 to 2012, French public spending actually declined by two GDP points.

The main culprit in the debt crisis was a fall in tax revenues resulting from massive tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. According to Razmig Keucheyan, sociologist and author of ?The Left Hemisphere,? this ?neoliberal mantra? that was supposed to increase investment and employment did the opposite.

According to the study, the second major reason was the increase in interest rates that benefits creditors and speculators. Had interests rates remained stable during the 1990s, debt would be significantly lower."

...and...

"Virtually all of the “bailout”—89 percent—went to the banks that gambled in the 1999 to 2007 real estate casino. What the Greeks—as well as Spaniards, Portuguese, and Irish—got was misery." ( read, public money used to pay for corporate debt....something very popular these days...)

....from ...
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/03/02/europes-debt-lies-myths/

Cheers

 

[RetroActive]

Netanyahu?s False Narrative of Self-Defense
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/03/04/netanyahus-false-narrative-of-self-defense/


Censored Voices trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eh0Z1VfYPcE

I have faith that "the truth will out" and humanity will be ruled by a more reasonable discourse. Actually I don't believe that, I said that for rhub's benefit, but I do have faith that the All shall return to the All. hahaha

 

[python]

several ukrainian media sources have reported that the dutch investigation of the mh17 tragedy has confirmed the popularly believed in the west version.

turns out, it is not so:

?I can say for sure they are not correct,? Dutch Public Prosecution Service (OM) spokesman Wim de Bruin told RT. ?We are not yet ready to take any conclusion,? he added.

i tried to find an independent confirmation of the wim de bruin statement. none found. but given that his voice in the interview he gave rt is indeed his, the story veracity seems confirmed.

http://rt.com/news/237961-ukraine-media-mh17-dutch/

 

[movingtarget]

several ukrainian media sources have reported that the dutch investigation of the mh17 tragedy has confirmed the popularly believed in the west version.

turns out, it is not so:

?I can say for sure they are not correct,? Dutch Public Prosecution Service (OM) spokesman Wim de Bruin told RT. ?We are not yet ready to take any conclusion,? he added.

i tried to find an independent confirmation of the wim de bruin statement. none found. but given that his voice in the interview he gave rt is indeed his, the story veracity seems confirmed.

http://rt.com/news/237961-ukraine-media-mh17-dutch/

Malaysian Airlines decision to continue flying on that fight path was questionable. Other airlines were already diverting their planes around that area.

 

[python]

Malaysian Airlines decision to continue flying on that fight path was questionable. Other airlines were already diverting their planes around that area.

without a question, it was a risky decision...
but the malaysians were not risking unreasonably and were not the only ones taking the flight path or involved in the risky decision. specifically, as we later found from many reliable sources, there were at least 2 other international flights in the same corridor minutes before the tragedy.

more curious, iirc, was that ALL american (as in us) airlines were forbidden by the aviation board overflying there. i am 100% sure that the confirmation of the fact can be found in the thread earlier or via a google.

why the americans and some others rejected even the slightest risk whilst the malaysians (and perhaps the majority of airlines) continued to fly over a danger zone ? this was discussed here too. the answer is simple - the airspace where the airliner was hit (above 10,000 m) was cleared by ukraine which in turn was based on the guidelines of an international aviation agency.

in other words, there are many directions were a blaming finger can (and should) be pointed if an objective investigation was to be followed...the rebels, the russians, the ukrainian military, the aviation authorities etc etc

but what actually happened with the terrible tragedy was instant politicization.

the majority in the west blamed one side, while that side with equal intensity deflected and spun.

i continue to hold an opinion that it was an accident. most likely NOT a premeditated accident by whichever side.

 

[RetroActive]

STEPHEN F. COHEN - MH17
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZ8GrDRoLK0


The Ukraine Proxy & the New Cold War (w/ Prof. Stephen Cohen)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIt2k1R_hOk

Crazed Washington Drives the World to the Final War
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2015/03/05/crazed-washington-drives-world-final-war/

 

[Merckx index]

A few weeks ago, Graeme Wood published a widely-discussed article on ISIS in the Atlantic. Sam Harris, who has written extensively on Islam and the threat of jihadists, recently interviewed Wood at length. This could go on either this thread or the Religion thread, but since the original Wood link I think was posted here, I?ll post excerpts of the interview here. Fascinating and scary stuff.

Harris: It?s one thing for the president to deny the link between religious belief and jihadism in public?that?s a propaganda campaign that seems doomed to fail?but it?s another to learn that our military leaders are expressing confusion about this behind closed doors. I find that terrifying.

Wood: I?ve had people come to me after the piece appeared and ask me how I got this information, as if the information were difficult to find...
These fatwas and religious edicts are produced by a council of scholars. ISIS has learned men working on these issues and putting out judgments using texts within the discourse and traditions of Islam...They are using the language of Islam and drawing, indisputably, upon its traditions of religious discourse, especially the Qur?an and the hadīth (the sayings of the Prophet) and the lives of Muhammad?s first followers.

Harris: There?s simply no question that many different traditions have emphasized one reading or another. All I argue is that there are more or less plausible, more or less straightforward, more or less comprehensive readings of any scripture. And the most plausible, straightforward, and comprehensive readings tend to be the more literalistic, no matter how self-contradictory the text. So, for instance, when it says in the Qur?an (8:12), ?Smite the necks of the infidels,? some people may read that metaphorically, but it?s always tempting to read it literally...it seems even more natural to assume that the words of God apply for all time. So it?s no accident that the Islamic State has made a cottage industry of decapitation.

In my view, one really can?t blame the religious dogmatist for resorting to literalism once he has accepted the claim that a given book is the perfect word of the Creator of the universe, because nowhere in these books does God counsel a metaphorical or otherwise loose interpretation of His words. In fact, many scriptures contain passages that explicitly forbid that kind of reading.

...The psychological problem that secularists must overcome is the basic doubt that anyone believes in paradise. I?ve actually had anthropologists and other overeducated people look me in the eye and insist that no one believes in martyrdom and that even suicide bombers are merely concerned about politics, economics, and male bonding. Some experts on terrorism sincerely think that no one is ever motivated to act on the basis of religious ideas. I find this astonishing.

Harris: We see jihadis coming from free societies all over the world. There are many examples of educated, affluent young men joining organizations like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State who lack any discernible material or political grievances. They simply feel a tribal connection to Muslims everywhere...[/B]

Wood: And that?s really one of the things that social sciences have triumphed in doing: explaining that within certain boundaries, rationalities lie behind what at first looks like mere craziness or barbarity. Just calling behavior craziness is a trap that a lot of ISIS-watchers have fallen into. If you see members of the Islamic State as thrill-kill nihilists, then you?re not giving them enough credit.

It?s very difficult to sit across from one of these people and listen to his scholarly, often fascinating, view of history and then walk away thinking, ?Oh, that person is simply crazy. He needs to be in an asylum.? Such a person has specific premises, and his conclusions follow plausibly from them. I think we should pay him the compliment of acknowledging his underlying rationality.

Harris: I see no reason to think that most jihadis are psychologically abnormal. The truth is far more depressing: These are mostly normal people?fully capable of love, empathy, altruism, and so forth?who simply believe what they say they believe.

Wood: I absolutely guarantee there will be attacks in Europe, North America, and elsewhere perpetrated by returnees from the Islamic State. They will be horrific and will kill, I suspect, hundreds. But the orders of the caliphate are unequivocal: You should attack overseas only as an alternative to immigrating (what they call making hijrah) to the Islamic State. They are playing a long game...I think they?re consciously avoiding terrorist attacks on Western targets that would provoke too strong a response too soon. If they bombed the Super Bowl, they?d probably be looking at a ground invasion within weeks. They want the invasion, but on their own schedule.

Wood: I talked with Islamic State supporters who described certain kinds of acts that could be tactically or strategically useful for the survival of the state, but that would invalidate the rule of the caliph. For example, the Islamic State isn?t a member of the UN. Presumably, such recognition would be good from their point of view, but these supporters said that UN membership would invalidate the caliphate. In fact, it would not just invalidate it but compel them to fight against it. If al-Baghdadi were to meet his international counterparts in a Geneva conference room, shake hands, and be told, ?All right, your caliphate is recognized, and you can occupy this new seat at the United Nations,? these Islamic State ideologues say that he would not only cease to be caliph, but he might even cease to be a Muslim, and they would be obliged to wage war against him.

Harris: But consider their infatuation with apocalyptic prophecy, which you described in your article. Wouldn?t you be tempted to just align with it and draw them into the field at Dabiq??.It seems that they wouldn?t be able to resist the temptation to engage us there, especially if we told them that we intended to build a gay-porn palace on the site, or some other sacrilege. It seems that these guys are telling us with every breath how to wage psychological warfare against them...So why not act on this information? ...Imagine the effect this would have on true believers everywhere: They?ve created a new caliphate, and the new caliph is just swell. All the prophecies are coming to fruition, so an army of the purest jihadis to exist in a thousand years rides into this final battle and gets smashed by infidels. And God just sits on his hands.

Wood: here is my main reason for thinking that our appearing to conform to prophecy would be a bad idea: The point of all propaganda is to create narratives about the world. Their view?and the view of jihadis everywhere, really?is that Muslims are under attack by a Crusader West. So if we say, ?All right, we?ll take you up on that? and crush them in battle, that would confirm their narrative for other Muslims who are already inclined to believe that the West is at war with Islam. That?s not a view I would like to encourage.

Harris: you now seem to be saying that we must be very careful not to do anything that could give fodder to a ?clash of civilizations? narrative?almost any percentage of 1.6 billion people represents an intolerable number of aspiring martyrs. Even one tenth of one percent is a problem. Just imagine what would happen if there were 1.6 million active jihadis worldwide?people who were willing to put their lives on the line every day to destroy our open societies. That would be intolerable. .. In fact, the lowest percentage I?ve ever seen in support of suicide bombing against civilians in defense of Islam has been 3 percent (in Pak!stan). Most Muslim countries profess far greater approval than that. .. In the immediate aftermath of the 7/7 bombings in the London, for instance, nearly one in four British Muslims felt that the bombings were justified. So we are essentially in the position of merely praying that our polls are wrong by several orders of magnitude.

Harris: Many of these palace-caged scholars articulate a brand of Islam that is indistinguishable from what the Islamic State is implementing. It?s just that there?s some fine print in al-Baghdadi?s caliphate user agreement that they can?t sign off on. Nevertheless, what they say about jihad, martyrdom, infidels, apostates, and so forth would allow them to check every other box. And these aren?t obscure figures. Some of these people have tens of millions of Twitter followers. When you watch translated videos from The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), you see that these preachers appear to be everywhere. They preach more or less exactly what the Islamic State is doing. Perhaps they say in other contexts that they don?t support the Islamic State, for one reason or another, but their reasons can?t run very deep.

 

[movingtarget]

without a question, it was a risky decision...
but the malaysians were not risking unreasonably and were not the only ones taking the flight path or involved in the risky decision. specifically, as we later found from many reliable sources, there were at least 2 other international flights in the same corridor minutes before the tragedy.

more curious, iirc, was that ALL american (as in us) airlines were forbidden by the aviation board overflying there. i am 100% sure that the confirmation of the fact can be found in the thread earlier or via a google.

why the americans and some others rejected even the slightest risk whilst the malaysians (and perhaps the majority of airlines) continued to fly over a danger zone ? this was discussed here too. the answer is simple - the airspace where the airliner was hit (above 10,000 m) was cleared by ukraine which in turn was based on the guidelines of an international aviation agency.

in other words, there are many directions were a blaming finger can (and should) be pointed if an objective investigation was to be followed...the rebels, the russians, the ukrainian military, the aviation authorities etc etc

but what actually happened with the terrible tragedy was instant politicization.

the majority in the west blamed one side, while that side with equal intensity deflected and spun.

i continue to hold an opinion that it was an accident. most likely NOT a premeditated accident by whichever side.

I agree also because that missile system that was used requires some training that either side probably did not have. The fact that they targeted as you said a plane that was flying at such a high altitide would have indicated to an experienced person that the plane could only have been a civil aircraft.

 

[frenchfry]

The brutality of war is not an aliby for the brutality of its consequences. The one is a tragic consequence of the other, but others crimes do not excuse ones own.

I will refrain from speculating on the Dresden bombings, however, the narrative that says that if the US did not nuke Heroshima and Nagasaki, thousands of its own soldiers would have necessarily perished as a result is no longer taken for granted.

There is, consequently, an opposing viewpoint that argues the evidence does not completely back such a narrative and that as a result the decision to bomb the Japanese cities (with the hundreds of thousands of civilian lives this caused) could have been made with other considerations and calculations in mind. Either way the great historical and human burden of the horrific outcome cannot be exclusively placed on the shoulders of the Japanese regime, at least form the point of view of any serious and objective analysis.

Personally the very choice to nuke two cities, no matter what cause, implies a measure of criminal behavior, even from a purely legal "war crimes" perspective. Of course the US is never going to be tried for war crimes, but there is the moral imperative of non-justification for the future of civilization.

I don't know if the nuking was necessary, but this book is an eye-opening insight into how the Japanese approached war.

http://www.amazon.fr/gp/product/B003U9W3GM?redirect=true&ref_=kinw_myk_ro_title

 

[Merckx index]

i continue to hold an opinion that it was an accident. most likely NOT a premeditated accident by whichever side.

What is a premeditated accident? Accidents basically by definition are never premeditated.

I assume by accident you mean that whoever fired the missile was not aware that they were targeting a civil airline. Doesn?t that implicate the rebels more than anyone else? I would think any of the other protagonists would definitely be aware that it had to be a civilian airliner.

I agree also because that missile system that was used requires some training that either side probably did not have. The fact that they targeted as you said a plane that was flying at such a high altitide would have indicated to an experienced person that the plane could only have been a civil aircraft.

This sounds like circular reasoning to me. It must have been an accident, because if it wasn?t an accident, it would have been intentional. If only an experienced person was capable of using the missile system, and an experienced person would have known it was a civil airline, then maybe an experienced person intentionally fired the missile. The only way your argument seems to work is if there were no experienced people in the area. Then by definition anything involving missiles can be considered an accident. Even shooting down an enemy aircraft could be an accident, in that it would just be luck that they targeted it and not a civilian plane.

While I'd like to think it was an accident, I find it strange that someone with no training could bring down a plane at that altitude, but wouldn?t have a clue that a plane at that altitude was a civilian airliner. I?d think if they had any training at all, on any aspect of the battle, they at least would know what area of the sky to focus their efforts on, so that they wouldn?t waste valuable missiles on non-enemy aircraft.

 

[OffTheBackAdam]

IS doesn't want "recognition" from the UN. That would put the UN above Allah.
That is incompatable with the Q'ran. The wish to re-establish the Kaliphate, a society that runs with the laws laid down in the Q'ran.
This requires the abolition of any country, including any current muslim states.
Reckon the various rulers with go along with that?

 

[rhubroma]

A few weeks ago, Graeme Wood published a widely-discussed article on ISIS in the Atlantic. Sam Harris, who has written extensively on Islam and the threat of jihadists, recently interviewed Wood at length. This could go on either this thread or the Religion thread, but since the original Wood link I think was posted here, I?ll post excerpts of the interview here. Fascinating and scary stuff.

You know the idea of the Caliphate, when you think about it, is a pretty strong one, even if certainly not new. It gathers into itself people heaped together by the same religion and the same language and has the bonus (for those that gave rebirth to the concept and re-launched it) to want to knock down unnatural borders and invented and constructed States and/or ones sustained in relatively recent years by foreign powers estranged from this communal culture.

Everything, in addition, is further solidified by an ancient loathing of Christianity and Judaism, which is reciprocated by the colonial masters toward them. There's as much of that as you could ask for. Now then, if it is true that the de-ontological thesis creates an ontological one, that the need to exist is the seed to create existence; it doesn't seem to me that by arms alone (whether we like it or not), or even intelligence, can eradicate this problem. It is much more vast and profound.

Perhaps we will be able to combat the bestial and odious comportment with conventional warfare. But all the rest? Do we even have the faintest idea how to contrast and limit the consequences?

The battleground of ideas, which is much more complicated, is where the real war is to be won or lost. While the West certainly has its responsibility in the causes behind the destabilization of countries and cultures of the Islamic world; I think what we must realize is that what is really at stake here are two antithetical and mutually exclusive world views. The one is a secular vision (which doesn't mean atheist!), the other is a confessional vision (which doesn't mean religious!). Now I'm being reductive for a rhetorical purpose, as it is well known that even in the West secularization is incomplete, while in the Islamic world there exist tendencies toward lay ideas, however meek and sporatic. But let's use this thesis as a general model to not confuse the actual paradigm.

One flash point in this epochal and global conflict, for instance, is the female question. I don't think the West is as aware of this as it should be, whose sight and appetite is often more focused upon fuel and profit. It seems by now that women in the West, and in a decent part of Asia, have gotten dominion over their own bodies. Thus one battle will be whether she is her own, or whether she is the dominion of her father, or brother, or husband, as is furiously and desperately desired in the tribal, patriarchal and traditionalist Islam society. Surely there is this consciousness in the Maghreb (but also non-Islamic India), where women struggling to emerge are threatened by their horrible male-masters who imprison them, persecute them, rape them, murder them to prevent them from, tout court, belonging to themselves. Religious fundamentalism is thus the ultimate weapon against feminine liberty, but female liberty will probably be the ultimate weapon against religious fundamentalism.

 

[python]

several sources reported that 2 suspects alleged in killing the staunch vlad critic a week ago near the kremlin have been arrested.

no details except one source reports the names have been made public and they point to a north caucasus background/lineage. that is, chechens, dagestanis etc, iow the muslim regions still barely pacified.

curiously, if memory serves, the killers of a famous female journalist (the name alludes me) were chechens, just as the boston marathon bombers.

 

[RetroActive]

Imperial by Design - John Mearsheimer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKFHe0Y6c_0

 

[movingtarget]

What is a premeditated accident? Accidents basically by definition are never premeditated.

I assume by accident you mean that whoever fired the missile was not aware that they were targeting a civil airline. Doesn?t that implicate the rebels more than anyone else? I would think any of the other protagonists would definitely be aware that it had to be a civilian airliner.



This sounds like circular reasoning to me. It must have been an accident, because if it wasn?t an accident, it would have been intentional. If only an experienced person was capable of using the missile system, and an experienced person would have known it was a civil airline, then maybe an experienced person intentionally fired the missile. The only way your argument seems to work is if there were no experienced people in the area. Then by definition anything involving missiles can be considered an accident. Even shooting down an enemy aircraft could be an accident, in that it would just be luck that they targeted it and not a civilian plane.

While I'd like to think it was an accident, I find it strange that someone with no training could bring down a plane at that altitude, but wouldn?t have a clue that a plane at that altitude was a civilian airliner. I?d think if they had any training at all, on any aspect of the battle, they at least would know what area of the sky to focus their efforts on, so that they wouldn?t waste valuable missiles on non-enemy aircraft.

It is strange. Other airliners were getting through without a problem. Some airlines were diverting their planes. The rebels had been shooting down quite a few Ukrainian aircraft including helicopters, with the same weapon I'm not sure. Who deliberately shoots down airliners when they are identified as airliners ? I know it has happened in the past but the circumstances were different. Or it was some moron with a new toy, and I don't how the technology works exactly but you would think once the missile has locked on to the target, they usually do the job. The identification or mis-identification of the plane is another issue.

It seems that the facts regarding both Malaysian airliners are a long way off being verified. The Air France airliner that went down in the Atlantic was found after about 12 months searching and the last reported position was only 5 kms from the where the plane was actually found which shows what sort of job the searchers in the Indian Ocean have to contend with where the search zone is such a massive one.

 

[blutto]

....hmmmm...

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fact or Fiction?
Iraq Arrests ISIL's US, Israeli Military Advisors in Mosul

By FNA

March 07, 2015 "ICH" - "FNA" - TEHRAN (FNA)- Iraqi Special Forces said they have arrested several ISIL's foreign military advisors, including American, Israeli and Arab nationals in an operation in Mosul in the Northern parts of the country.


The Iraqi forces said they have retrieved four foreign passports, including those that belonged to American and Israeli nationals and one that belonged to the national of a Persian Gulf Cooperation Council (PGCC) member-state, from ISIL's military advisors.

The foreign advisors were arrested in a military operation in Tal Abta desert near Mosul city.

Last year, a senior aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Mossad of training ISIL terrorists operating in Iraq and Syria.

Alexander Prokhanov said that Mossad is also likely to have transferred some of its spying experiences to the ISIL leadership, adding that Israel?s military advisors could be assisting the Takfiri terrorists.

Prokhanov said ISIL is a byproduct of US policies in the Middle East.

ISIL is a tool at the hands of the United States. They tell the Europeans that if we (the Americans) do not intervene, ISIL will cause you harm,? he said, adding that Iran and Russia are the prime targets of the ISIL.

?They launched their first terror attack against us just a few days back in Chechnya,? he said, stressing that the ISIL ideology has got nothing to do with the Islam practiced in Iran and some other Muslim countries in the Middle East region.

Prokhanov said the United States and Israel are one and the same when it comes to supporting a terror organization like the ISIL.

See also -

http://www.shiitenews.org/index.php...advisors-arrested-in-iraq-s-offensive-on-isil

http://www.tasnimnews.com/english/Home/Single/677207

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/03/05/the-redirection

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Cheers

 

[Merckx index]

Latest word is that five suspects, I think all Chechen, have been taken into custody in the murder of Nemtsov, while a sixth committed suicide with a hand grenade. The Kremlin's theory that Nemtsov was killed in response to his criticism of the Hebdo killings, though it may be just a story to cast the blame elswhere, is interesting in that the Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov is a devout Muslim, and led protests against the Hebdo cartoons, yet has also gone along with Russian fighting againt Islamic militants.

You know the idea of the Caliphate, when you think about it, is a pretty strong one, even if certainly not new. It gathers into itself people heaped together by the same religion and the same language and has the bonus (for those that gave rebirth to the concept and re-launched it) to want to knock down unnatural borders and invented and constructed States and/or ones sustained in relatively recent years by foreign powers estranged from this communal culture.

More on that here:

French middle-class teenagers and medical students from atheist families are far from being immune to seduction by these jihadists groups. Bouzar?s story focuses on Ad?le, the fifteen-year-old daughter of a professional couple in Paris who joins Jabhat al-Nusra after an online conversion by her handler ?Brother Mustafa.? In a farewell note to her mother she leaves behind, Ad?le writes:

My own darling Mamaman (Mamaman ? moi)
?
Its because I love you that that I have gone.

When you read these lines I?ll be far away.

I will be in the Promised Land, the Sham, in safe hands.

Because its there that I have to die to go to Paradise.
?
I have been chosen and I have been guided.

And I know what you do not know: we?re all going to die,

punished by the wrath of God.

It?s the end of the world, Mamaman.

There is too much misery, too much injustice?

And everyone will end up in hell.

Except for those who have fought with the last Imam in the Sham,

Except for us.

Except at the very beginnings of Islam, and for a brief period in the High Middle Ages, the caliphate was not much of a functioning institution. But it did provide a powerful model of Islamic governance that, as Wael Hallaq, a leading authority on Islamic law who teaches at Columbia, argues, rested on ?moral, legal, political, social and metaphysical foundations that are dramatically different from those sustaining the modern state.? Historically, Hallaq explains, the Sharia?s moral imperatives were effected outside the domain of the state:

The political absolutism that Europe experienced, the merciless serfdom of feudalism, the abuses of the church, the inhuman realities of the Industrial Revolution, and all that which made revolutions necessary in Europe were not the lot of Muslims, who, comparatively speaking, lived for over a millennium in a far more egalitarian and merciful system and, most importantly for us, under a rule of law that modernity cannot fairly blemish with critical detraction.

 

[python]

Latest word is that five suspects, I think all Chechen, have been taken into custody in the murder of Nemtsov, while a sixth committed suicide with a hand grenade. The Kremlin's theory that Nemtsov was killed in response to his criticism of the Hebdo killings, though it may be just a story to cast the blame elswhere, is interesting in that the Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov is a devout Muslim, and led protests against the Hebdo cartoons, yet has also gone along with Russian fighting againt Islamic militants.



More on that here:

it is said the main suspect - the one who is thought to be a shooter - was at one time second in command of the elite police battalion stationed in chechnya. he was also given a special award for exceptional service. at the time of the crime he was retired. of the 5 arrested, the alleged shooter is said to have been the only one admitting his role. i find it an interesting twist...

if the whole crime was vlad's combination, having a former policeman, a devout fanatic muslim, caught so quickly and already cooperating look remarkably simplistic for a professional script...but perhaps i'm being too rational

when he's caught too quickly it is suspicious...
when they caught too slowly it would be suspicious...
when they cooperate...'masking the truth'... it is suspicious...
when they don't cooperate...'hiding the truth'...it is suspicious...

 

[Echoes]

I find it particularly interesting that when an "Islamist" terrorist attack occurs in Russia, Western suprematists wouldn't rule out the possibility of a false flag op, hatched by the Kremlin.


However when the same kind of attacks occurs in the West, the same Western suprematist would NEVER dispute the official version of the event. They take it on face value.

It's however for sure that DCRI/FBI/Mossad/MI6 are certainly as qualified for such operations as their Russian counterparts. To say the least.

 

[RetroActive]

it is said the main suspect - the one who is thought to be a shooter - was at one time second in command of the elite police battalion stationed in chechnya. he was also given a special award for exceptional service. at the time of the crime he was retired. of the 5 arrested, the alleged shooter is said to have been the only one admitting his role. i find it an interesting twist...

if the whole crime was vlad's combination, having a former policeman, a devout fanatic muslim, caught so quickly and already cooperating look remarkably simplistic for a professional script...but perhaps i'm being too rational

when he's caught too quickly it is suspicious...
when they caught too slowly it would be suspicious...
when they cooperate...'masking the truth'... it is suspicious...
when they don't cooperate...'hiding the truth'...it is suspicious...

Here's an interesting example that shows just how rational the debate over Putin is in the USA (the west more broadly). I'm aware that, despite touting themselves as an MSM alternative and rational progressives, the crew at this clownshow called TYT jumps onboard with the Putin bashing at every turn. They also love to make fun of conspiracy nuts. So Cenk is interviewing Stephen Cohen, Prof. of Russian Studies, who has been speaking out about this sort of hysteria and we can see the effect of both propaganda and the limits to reason in action.

Note the date is Dec. 2014 and the immediately relevant back and forth begins @ 41:00.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdCcR8pEm3g

Mar. 2015
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkFlsa_B3hY

Patriotic Heresy vs. the New Cold War
Fallacies of US policy may be leading to war with Russia.
http://www.thenation.com/article/181399/patriotic-heresy-vs-new-cold-war#

I turn now, in my capacity as a historian, to that orthodoxy. The late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said: ?Everyone is entitled to his own opinions, but not to his own facts.? The new Cold War orthodoxy rests almost entirely on fallacious opinions. Five of those fallacies are particularly important today.

Fallacy No. 1: Ever since the end of the Soviet Union in 1991, Washington has treated post-Communist Russia generously as a desired friend and partner, making every effort to help it become a democratic, prosperous member of the Western system of international security. Unwilling or unable, Russia rejected this American altruism, emphatically under Putin.

Fact: Beginning in the 1990s with the Clinton administration, every American president and Congress has treated post-Soviet Russia as a defeated nation with inferior legitimate rights at home and abroad. This triumphalist, winner-take-all approach has been spearheaded by the expansion of NATO?accompanied by non-reciprocal negotiations and now missile defense?into Russia?s traditional zones of national security, while in reality excluding it from Europe?s security system. Early on, Ukraine and, to a lesser extent, Georgia were the ultimate goals. As an influential Washington Post columnist explained in 2004: ?The West wants to finish the job begun with the fall of the Berlin Wall and continue Europe?s march to the east?. The great prize is Ukraine.? He was echoed in 2013, on the eve of the current crisis, by Carl Gershman, head of the federally funded National Endowment for Democracy: ?Ukraine is the biggest prize.?

 

[python]

... Stephen Cohen, Prof. of Russian Studies, ....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdCcR8pEm3g

Mar. 2015
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkFlsa_B3hY

Patriotic Heresy vs. the New Cold War
Fallacies of US policy may be leading to war with Russia.
http://www.thenation.com/article/181399/patriotic-heresy-vs-new-cold-war#

those are interesting links. thanks !

believe it or not, but i am one of those old-fashioned idiots who treat blagosphere with caution. moreover, i still believe that there is some value to be extracted from reading certain authors from a short list of the main street media and think tanks that still harbour what i consider thoughtful scholars (regardless of their political leanings). the long story short, at one point i confused stephen cohen with a bunch of other cohens that all write about eastern europe. that is, i confused him until the russo-georgian war of 2008 (when my interest in putin policies really started). then i saw him debating a neocon and was impressed by his recall of details, facts and, above all, his rare even among historians ability to speak of not isolated events but the event chains and why and how they were linked.

prof. stephen cohen is a true scholar and an erudite. even if a bit too passionate for my taste.

 

[RetroActive]

Breedlove's Bellicosity: Berlin Alarmed by Aggressive NATO Stance on Ukraine
http://www.spiegel.de/international...ressive-nato-stance-on-ukraine-a-1022193.html

German leaders in Berlin were stunned. They didn't understand what Breedlove was talking about. And it wasn't the first time. Once again, the German government, supported by intelligence gathered by the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Germany's foreign intelligence agency, did not share the view of NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR).

The pattern has become a familiar one. For months, Breedlove has been commenting on Russian activities in eastern Ukraine, speaking of troop advances on the border, the amassing of munitions and alleged columns of Russian tanks. Over and over again, Breedlove's numbers have been significantly higher than those in the possession of America's NATO allies in Europe. As such, he is playing directly into the hands of the hardliners in the US Congress and in NATO.

The German government is alarmed. Are the Americans trying to thwart European efforts at mediation led by Chancellor Angela Merkel? Sources in the Chancellery have referred to Breedlove's comments as "dangerous propaganda." Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier even found it necessary recently to bring up Breedlove's comments with NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg.

 

[RetroActive]

While the **** flinging carries on over in the US politics thread the real action is over here.

Global finance faces $9 trillion stress test as dollar soars
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/...s-9-trillion-stress-test-as-dollar-soars.html

So we?re at the point in the strategy game where the entire map has been infiltrated, there?s very few unknowns, everyone is exposed, and it?s time to collapse and consolidate. Economically the world is dominated, militarily too ? the Empire of chaos is wiping away borders, politically it?s doing it?s best to dominate everyone as well, of course. Anyone wishing to develop on their own terms is an enemy to full spectrum dominance. This is going to get really ugly. A uni-polar world is a really bad idea. There will be war.

 

[mikeNphilly]

Any news what is happening in Moscow? Putin has been missing meetings the last few days. Tanks and APCs are milling about outside the Kremlin, and a convoy of semi trucks pulled up there last night. I can't find much info on msm, in US. Just getting info from another website I go to.

 

[Merckx index]

Any news what is happening in Moscow? Putin has been missing meetings the last few days. Tanks and APCs are milling about outside the Kremlin, and a convoy of semi trucks pulled up there last night. I can't find much info on msm, in US. Just getting info from another website I go to.

Yeah, rumors that he's very sick or even dead are rife in Moscow. Apparently the leadership tried to get away with posting old photos, taken before his disappearance, which has just made the rumor mill even more ballistic.

Here's another long article discussing the question of whether ISIS is primarily motivated by Islam, and coming more or less to the opposite conclusion of Graeme Wood’s widely quoted Atlantic article (seems the new format doesn't allow the link to be inserted into text, so http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121286/how-islamic-islamic-state:

It was Ross who coined the phrase “fundamental attribution error”, which refers to the phenomenon in which we place excessive emphasis on internal motivations to explain the behaviour of others, in any given situation, rather than considering the relevant external factors.

Nowhere is the fundamental attribution error more prevalent, suggests the forensic psychiatrist Marc Sageman, than in our navel-gazing analysis of wannabe terrorists and what does or doesn’t motivate them. “You attribute other people’s behaviour to internal motivations but your own to circumstances. ‘They’re attacking us and therefore we have to attack them.’” Yet, he tells me, we rarely do the reverse.

ISIS members, he says, are using religion to advance a political vision, rather than using politics to advance a religious vision. “To give themselves a bit more legitimacy, they use Islam as their justification. It’s not about religion, it’s about identity . . . You identify with the victims, [with] the guys being killed by your enemies.”

Sageman’s viewpoint should not really surprise us. Writing in his 2011 book The Black Banners: the Inside Story of 9/11 and the War Against al-Qaeda, the Lebanese-American former FBI agent Ali H Soufan, who led the bureau’s pre-9/11 investigation into Al Qaeda, observed: “When I first began interrogating AL Qaeda members, I found that while they could quote Bin Laden’s sayings by heart, I knew far more of the Quran than they did—and in fact some barely knew classical Arabic, the language of both the hadithand the Quran. An understanding of their thought process and the limits of their knowledge enabled me and my colleagues to use their claimed piousness against them.”

Three years earlier, in 2008, a classified briefing note on radicalisation, prepared by MI5’s behavioural science unit, was obtained by the Guardian. It revealed: “Far from being religious zealots, a large number of those involved in terrorism do not practise their faith regularly. Many lack religious literacy and could . . . be regarded as religious novices.” The MI5 analysts noted the disproportionate number of converts and the high propensity for “drug-taking, drinking alcohol and visiting prostitutes”. The newspaper claimed they concluded, “A well-established religious identity actually protects against violent radicalisation.”

As I have pointed out on these pages before, Mohammed Ahmed and Yusuf Sarwar, the two young British Muslim men from Birmingham who were convicted on terrorism charges in 2014 after travelling to fight in Syria, bought copies of Islam for Dummies and The Koran for Dummies from Amazon prior to their departure. Religious novices, indeed.

This irreligious lust for power and money is a significant and often overlooked part of the ISIS equation. The group—often described as messianic and uncompromising—had no qualms about demanding a $200m ransom for the lives of two Japanese hostages in January; nor has it desisted from smuggling pornography into and out of Iraq, according to Louise Shelley, director of the Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Centre at George Mason University in Virginia. (Shelley has referred to Isis as a “diversified criminal operation”.)

If ISIS is the apocalyptic religious cult that Wood and others believe it is, why was Baghdadi’s deputy in Iraq Abu Muslim al-Afari al-Turkmani, a former senior special forces officer in Hussein’s army? Why is Baghdadi’s number two in Syria Abu Ali al-Anbari, a former major general under Hussein?

Contrary to a lazy conventional wisdom which suggests that a 1,400-year-old faith with more than a billion adherents has no hierarchy, “Islam has its leadership, its universities, its muftis and its academies, which unanimously repudiate ISIS,” Murad explains. For the likes of Haykel to claim that the ISIS interpretation of Islam has “just as much legitimacy” as the mainstream view, he adds, is “unscholarly,” “incendiary” and likely to “raise prejudice and comfort the far-right political formations”.

In September 2014, more than 120 Islamic scholars co-signed an 18-page open letter to Baghdadi, written in Arabic, containing what the Slate website’s Filipa Ioannou described as a “technical point-by-point criticism of ISIS' actions and ideology based on the Quran and classical religious texts.”

Yet buffoonish right-wingers such as the Fox News host Sean Hannity continue to refer to the alleged “silence of Muslims” over the actions of ISIS and ask, “Where are the Muslim leaders?” Meanwhile, academics who should know better, such as Princeton’s Bernard Haykel, insist that the leaders of ISIS “have just as much legitimacy as anyone else.”

The bald and bearded Shaikh, now aged 39 and an adviser to Canadian officials, tells me it is “preposterous” to claim that the killing of Christians and Yazidis by ISIS is rooted in Islamic scripture or doctrine. If it was, “Muslims would have been doing those sorts of things for the past 50-plus years. Yet we find no such thing.”

The 7 per cent of Muslims who sympathised with the attacks on the twin towers “defended this position entirely with secular political justifications or distorted concepts of ‘reciprocity’, as in: ‘They kill our civilians. We can kill theirs.’”