RugbyRebels

belgarion wrote:

rowan wrote:

Sandydragon wrote:
Claiming that the US was responsible for the Syrian uprising in the first place ignores a wealth of evidence to the contrary. Western interest occurred after the uprising commenced.

AS for asumptions, the lack of targeting is a symptom of the Russian military, as seen in Syria, Chechnya and Georgia. On the other hand, Ive seen the attempts to prevent unnecessary loss of life by the US and Western allies.

That atrocity was a mistake which was stopped as soon as it became known that a mistake had occurred. How many mistakes did Russian and Syria make whem bombing hospitals and other civilian targets in Aleppo?

Russia hasn't killed 20 million people since WWII, has never dropped an atomic bomb on another nation, and didn't drop 3 bombs an hour last year, or 26K per annum, nor violate a crucial ceasefire by bombing the military of a nation it was operating illegally in. & that atrocity went on for hours, allowing the terrorists to recapture vital territory and prolong the conflict - which Russia was then perversely blamed for.

Western interest actually had nothing to do with the Arab Spring protests. There is no connection, other than that it was used as a pretext for intervention. The students and feminists did not suddenly morph into machine gun-toting Jihadi terrorists, and neither were the machine-gun toting terrorists much interested in what the students and feminists were protesting for - which was definitely not regime change.

The US, Saudi and their allies have many reasons for wanting regime change - the rejection of the Qatar-Turkey pipeline project, for instance, Israel's territorial disputes (UN has ruled against Israel), Turkish concerns over Kurdish combatants operating from behind the Syrian border, and Saudi's wish to break the Shi'ite crescent connecting Iran to Lebanon and the Mediterranean (ironically established by America's prior regime change operation in Iraq).

There have been plenty of articles written and published along these lines, if you look beyond BBC and the Guardian for a change, and here it is, again, the truth you're attempting to dismiss, straight from the horse's mouth:




Of course, the UN General Assembly are allow brainwashed by western media as well. I'm sure you are awaiting the results of the UN investigation into war crimes with bated breath.


The same UN that gave Palestinian territory to Zionists from Europe, you mean? It's a puppet of Washington much of the time. Not all of the time, but much of it. But, yes, I'll certainly be interested in their findings.

I haveent even begun to discuss the use of force by Hezbollah and Iran, for which the Assad government again holds much of the responsibility having requested their assistance.


so let me guess, in your world Hezbollah and Iran evil, yes? One formed to fight Israeli aggression (after an horrific massacre of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon), the other the victim of an American orchestrated coup that extend the Shah's brutal dictatorship for 26 years while America continued to control the oil industry...

Are you on a commsion with YouTube for the number of time you can link that video into a post?
There is absolutley no need to keep posting it after the 1st one. Anyone interested will have watched it the
first time & those who are not will ignore it again (& again & again ad nauseum)

belgarion wrote:There is absolutley no need to keep posting

Sandydragon wrote:Referring back to this insane travel ban.

The inner working of the Trump administration take some believing. Apparently, the head of homeland security was unaware of the precise wording of the order until minutes before it was signed; it seems like this policy was developed by Trumps inner circle and never really discussed more widely.

Interestingly, a US Judge who heard a law suit against the ban asked officials how many people from the 6 countries affected had been prevented from travelling. It would appear that the officials didn't know.

At some point, this clown will need to deal with congress and I wonder how his famous lack of patience and willingness to use Twitter as a means of communication will fare when his proposals are subjected to more serious scrutiny.

morepork wrote:It's not politics. It's Benny Hill. What happens after the ban is lifted? We will see a host of deregulated financial practice and environmental checks removed as the same old crowd are unleashed to scorch the earth and make money off the public purse. So much for clearing out the "elite". This unbelievably amateurish immigration side show is just deflecting attention from that, and the media better fucking wake up to it soon. Trump is being played for a complete fool by corporate government.

Vengeful Glutton wrote: Ye'll often hear of China getting their balls busted for burning too many fossil fuels. Yep, they do just that, but guess who their biggest market is?

Digby wrote:

Vengeful Glutton wrote:
I'm guessing you want the answer to be the USA, though their biggest market is domestic. Depending on how one counts exports you could even argue their biggest export market is Hong Kong, though you have to keep at least one eye squint to really claim HK is a bigger export market than the USA, though it's closer than many might expect.

morepork wrote:And FFS....I know Clinton repeals Glass Stegal. It's common knowledge.

Also, blaming the consumer for speculative and fraudulent use of public money by big financial institutions is just getting old. Goldman Sachs don't get rich selling cell phones.

Vengeful Glutton wrote:

Digby wrote:

Vengeful Glutton wrote:
I'm guessing you want the answer to be the USA, though their biggest market is domestic. Depending on how one counts exports you could even argue their biggest export market is Hong Kong, though you have to keep at least one eye squint to really claim HK is a bigger export market than the USA, though it's closer than many might expect.

The US and EU are the their biggest export markets. Want to save the environment? Don't buy Chinese goods. Simples.

WaspInWales wrote:I'm aware this demonstrates democracy, but I'm finding the petition to block Trump's state visit a little amusing and perhaps a tad ironic.

Less than 2 years ago nearly half a million Brits signed a parliament petition to 'Stop all immigration and close the UK borders until ISIS is defeated'.

Vengeful Glutton wrote:

Sandydragon wrote:Referring back to this insane travel ban.

The inner working of the Trump administration take some believing. Apparently, the head of homeland security was unaware of the precise wording of the order until minutes before it was signed; it seems like this policy was developed by Trumps inner circle and never really discussed more widely.

Interestingly, a US Judge who heard a law suit against the ban asked officials how many people from the 6 countries affected had been prevented from travelling. It would appear that the officials didn't know.

At some point, this clown will need to deal with congress and I wonder how his famous lack of patience and willingness to use Twitter as a means of communication will fare when his proposals are subjected to more serious scrutiny.

It's not a travel ban. It's a restriction on immigrants entering America from countries linked with terrorist activities. As has been pointed out before (and you'll find it on d'internet), this list had already been compiled by the previous administration. The previous administration also deported many people. No outcry over that of course.

My objection to it would be that Saudi Arabia isn't on the list. A hotbed of Wahhabism, and Qutbism (a rather deranged interpretation of the latter), extreme jihadists are harboured, nurtured, and let loose to unleash death upon the world.

Obviously SA isn't on the list because, aside from providing a base for Wahhabists, it also contains USAF bases, purchases arms from the US, and holds billions of US debt.

Look, it's politics. There's a point when you have to put your personal feelings aside, and cast a cold eye on this.

It's instructive to point out that Jihadists in Syria were armed by.....yep....the Obama regime. One wonders if Industrialists and Oligarchs tied to that administration had been lobbying to get more cheap labour moving west.

Vengeful Glutton wrote:

Sandydragon wrote:
They have performed poorly - really? Is that based on operational experience from Iraq and Afghanistan by any chance? The cameras are normally very good (expecting perfection from anything is asking a but much and no weapons system operates as the manufacturer claims it will) and the ground attack systems are as precise as anything launched from a manned aircraft - which means that the vagaries of warfare can and do apply, often with unfortunate consequences. The identification of targets by personnel is often easier than when a pilot is trying to make his or her own judgement whilst flying the aircraft.

The Iranian capture of a drone is actually disputed (a possibility that a fake drone had been paraded in front of the cameras) and whilst the spoofing of GPS is possible, it is highly difficult to achieve in practice. It is possible that the drone malfunctioned and landed where it shouldn't. However, the same can happen with manned aircraft which are forced to land due to technical failures.

From my own experience in IRaq and Afghanistan (plus Northern IReland) ISTAR is well received and is often pretty damn good quality. Air support is often not immediately available but a mix of drones and manned aircraft has helped reduce response times in Afghanistan. Where there have been issues of blue on blue, I can find you plenty of examples of where the same has happened with manned aircraft. SO suggesting that their use is just to satisfy some corporate agenda is a bit wide of the mark.

I'm not so sure it is. I've heard it's like looking at the battle space through a straw. The A10 "Warthog" was developed specifically for ground support. It's canopy designed to give pilots a finger tip feel of the battle space. They've been decommissioned now in favour of the Global Hawk and video screens. No doubt you're aware that there was resistance to this, particularly from special forces, who testified to the Warthog's timely interventions. The global hawk, at $300 million a unit doesn't appear to be living up to expectations:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc ... on/277807/

Canceling the purchase of new Global Hawks and putting recently-built planes in long-term storage would save $2.5 billion over five years, the service projected. And the drone's military missions could be picked up by an Air Force stalwart, the U-2 spy plane, which had room for more sensors and could fly higher.

But what happened next was an object lesson in the power of a defense contractor to trump the Pentagon's own attempts to set the nation's military spending priorities amid a tough fiscal climate. A team of Northrop lobbyists, packed with former congressional staff and bolstered by hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions, persuaded Congress to demand the drone's continued production and operation.

Bear in mind that drones, originally were supposed to be cheap supplements to reconnaissance missions. BTW, orders were issued by JSOC to combat troops, particularly those who had expressed criticism of drones, and support of Warthogs, instructing them to remain silent on the issue.

William Perry outsourced defence contracts to civilian contractors a long time ago, so if there's a corporate "agenda" since then, it's been profit based; it's no different to different Corporations wanting civilians to buy the latest iphone. So like any corporation they're going to make out that their product, whether it be a fighter jet, drone, or whatever is better than the other guy's piece of kit.

As for the capture of the beast: sure, of course it's going to be disputed. The Americans aren't going to admit that their prized stealth capable UAV is a piece of crap. With the amount of bandwidth required to operate these turkeys, someones bound to be listening in. So it was only a matter of time before somebody figured out how the simple device of jamming its comms to put it into autopilot.

The whole stealth concept is nonsense as well. F-117s were escorted to Baghdad during Gulf I by fighters carrying radio jamming devices. Obviously the more famous example is of the antiquated Serb battery getting returns on one hawk, and taking it out by an SA-3.

rowan wrote:

Digby wrote:Why are drones inherently more evil than a phalanx, a trebuchet, an atomic bomb, fire, chlorine gas?

And yes the US does try to target their version of legitimate targets, though their failures are well documented and rightly so, but it's far more precise than the Russian use of barrel bombs or giving missiles to drunks to shoot down Dutch airliners, and both are more discriminate than the likes of ISIS.

Pointing the finger at others does not excuse the deaths of millions of people, sorry to disappoint you. What other country has killed 20 million people through invasions and warfare since WWII? & that figure doesn't include Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Come to think of it, what other nation has dropped atomic bombs on anoher? Was that Russia's fault as well.

There is no legitimate evidence the Russians shot down the Dutch airline. It might well have been the Ukranians themselves - and they have done this before. So you're also just exposing your own prejudices and hypocrsy here.

Yes, dropping bombs on people by pressing a button from some remote location, and acknowledging that it may well hit bystanders, or not hit the intended target at all, is as cowardly as it gets. & who the hell gave America the right to do this in the first place? You're following a 'Might is Right' rationality - which is pure insanity.

Donny osmond wrote:Do you own many horses, Rowan?

rowan wrote:

Donny osmond wrote:Do you own many horses, Rowan?

Er, no, Donny. I believe animal ownership is all wrong. I don't even have a fish.

[SMIRKING FACE]

There isn't such an option, Canta Brian.

Glenn Greenwald writes about Obama's drone war crimes in the Intercept:

IN 2010, President Obama directed the CIA to assassinate an American citizen in Yemen, Anwar al-Awlaki, despite the fact that he had never been charged with (let alone convicted of) any crime, and the agency successfully carried out that order a year later with a September, 2011 drone strike. While that assassination created widespread debate – the once-again-beloved ACLU sued Obama to restrain him from the assassination on the ground of due process and then, when that suit was dismissed, sued Obama again after the killing was carried out – another drone-killing carried out shortly thereafter was perhaps even more significant yet generated relatively little attention.


Two weeks after the killing of Awlaki, a separate CIA drone strike in Yemen killed his 16-year-old American-born son, Abdulrahman, along with the boy’s 17-year-old cousin and several other innocent Yemenis. The U.S. eventually claimed that the boy was not their target but merely “collateral damage.” Abdulrahman’s grief-stricken grandfather, Nasser al-Awlaki, urged the Washington Post “to visit a Facebook memorial page for Abdulrahman,” which explained: “Look at his pictures, his friends, and his hobbies His Facebook page shows a typical kid.”

Few events pulled the mask off Obama officials like this one. It highlighted how the Obama administration was ravaging Yemen, one of the world’s poorest countries: just weeks after he won the Nobel Prize, Obama used cluster bombs that killed 35 Yemeni women and children. Even Obama-supporting liberal comedians mocked the Obama DOJ’s arguments for why it had the right to execute Americans with no charges: “Due Process Just Means There’s A Process That You Do,” snarked Stephen Colbert. And a firestorm erupted when former Obama Press Secretary Robert Gibbs offered a sociopathic justification for killing the Colorado-born teenager, apparently blaming him for his own killing by saying he should have “had a more responsible father.”


The U.S. assault on Yemeni civilians not only continued but radically escalated over the next five years through the end of the Obama presidency, as the U.S. and the UK armed, supported and provide crucial assistance to their close ally Saudi Arabia as it devastated Yemen through a criminally reckless bombing campaign. Yemen now faces mass starvation, seemingly exacerbated, deliberately, by the US/UK-supported air attacks. Because of the west’s direct responsibility for these atrocities, they have received vanishingly little attention in the responsible countries.

In a hideous symbol of the bipartisan continuity of U.S. barbarism, Nasser al-Awlaki just lost another one of his young grandchildren to U.S. violence. On Sunday, the Navy’s SEAL Team 6, using armed Reaper drones for cover, carried out a commando raid on what it said was a compound harboring officials of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. A statement issued by President Trump lamented the death of an American service member and several others who were wounded, but made no mention of any civilian deaths. U.S. military officials initially denied any civilian deaths, and (therefore) the CNN report on the raid said nothing about any civilians being killed.

But reports from Yemen quickly surfaced that 30 people were killed, including 10 women and children. Among the dead: the 8-year-old granddaughter of Nasser al-Awlaki, Nawar, who was also the daughter of Anwar Awlaki.



This is the 8-year-old girl killed in US raid in Yemen

WaspInWales wrote:Haven't seen much with regards to Bannon's promotion to the security council, or the latest executive order on business regulations.

Is there any possible conflict with the latter and his business dealings?

Any thoughts?

morepork wrote:

WaspInWales wrote:Haven't seen much with regards to Bannon's promotion to the security council, or the latest executive order on business regulations.

Is there any possible conflict with the latter and his business dealings?

Any thoughts?

Yes. Representatives on both sides of the house are going at it. Bannon worked for Goldman Sachs, briefly, and has started a few boutique investment firms based on media and film. Basically, the more he runs his mouth, the greater the capital for a short term profit. He has studied "national security" at a postgraduate level, but I'm not sure what that qualifies as. His main area of expertise is in media manipulation. He is a perfect fit for Orange Reality TV. He is there to run interference and he will go all out to savage any semblance of accountability suggested by the media. We will really see how firm the checks and balances in American politics really are. Fuck me.