"Follow the money". Oil is still a glut on the market. In this case, follow the cruise missiles, which will be replaced. This is the easiest way, politically, for the Trump administration to get aggregate demand up, and fill up the coffers of its supporters. At the same time, it throws red meat to the base. It is working... This time.
Wow! Major Sjursen is a brave man. We must be prepared to resist if Commander-in-chief Bannon tries to muzzle him. This is as good as Ellsberg's writing on Viet Nam. One thing he doesn't mention, is that our unconditional support for Israel makes it absolutely impossible for us to muster any support for our "values" in the Middle East.
Likewise, killing Houthis, who have done us no harm, is both immoral and unsound. It plays into the hands of the most rabid in Teheran and Baghdad.
I, too, am surprised that Dr. Cole is so adamant that the hacking had no effect. There were hundreds of lies that hit social media just before the election that were echoed by websites set up a few weeks before. These echoing websites caused the search results to spike, so that anybody googling them got 3 pages of links to them, before seeing any rebuttal, from Snopes, for example. This was a sophisticated SEO operation that could well have swayed late deciders in the swing states.
In talking to friends from the Middle East, including Iran, Palestine, Iraq and Egypt, it seems to me that we should 1) decide which principles we have and 2) support those actors in the Middle East which hew to those principles. That means that we should support secular governments that aspire to be secular, democratic and non-racist. Which means we must immediately stop selling weapons to Saudi Arabia, Israel and Egypt (we already don't sell weapons to Iran), and we should stop trying to impose a solution. It is people of the Middle East who must decide what kind of government and where national borders shall run, not us. We can give diplomatic and economic help, but we cannot decide whether, for example, they shall have a caliphate or not. It's not really our business. Just as Viet Nam was not our business.
"It is quite possible, if Netanyahu and his cohorts are given a free hand for four more years, that this will be enough to close the historic opportunity for a two-state solution."
There has been no possiblity for a two-state solution since Netanyahu told his voters two elections ago that he would do everything he could to sabotage the Oslo Accords. The U.S., France and Germany made sure that the Security Council did not recognize Palestine, after Avigdor Lieberman lobbied the Serbs in Banja Luka to keep Bosnia from voting for it. So we should not continue to talk about a two-state solution as if it were a possiblity. That train has left the station.
There were Texas democrats who registered Republican to vote for Cruz because they couldn´t imagine him winning in the general election. If the Democratic party splits over Israel, the election could be thrown into the House of Rep., and any yahoo the Republicans nominate would be president. George Bush wasn´t an anomaly - he´s slightly under par.
Schanzer actually said how to do it: you let Palestinians have a decent life, by striking a deal with those on the West Bank that have recognized Israel in the Oslo Accords and committed themselves to a peaceful solution. Unfortunately, the nature of Israel has changed so drastically from the time that it was mostly survivors and refugees from the Holocaust that this option is politically impossible. Israeli politics are being driven by immigrants from the Soviet Union who are acting just like the Russians in the Ukraine. They think they don´t need a deal with Palestinians because they are so superior that they have nothing to fear from them. Shanzer on the other hand, loves Israel and but sees the handwriting on the wall.
There's another story here: Google and Yahoo are providing (i.e., selling) information to the government at 'prevailing rates'. It would be interesting to know how these rates are determined, and if they are similar to the rates Booze Hamilton are billing the NSA. From what we know about Snowden's salary, the margins are pretty good.
You might just as well say that Ghalioun's sucking up to Israel and the U.S. risks alienating his support among Muslims throughout the Middle East. I haven't seen any "Strident" support for Assad's regime. Just a careful neutrality.
Why do you say that most Pashtuns oppose the Taliban? If practically all the Hazaris and Tajiks oppose the Taliban and over half of the rest (Pashtuns), that must mean Taliban support is very small indeed. But the reports from the field (cf. Wikileaks) seem to indicate otherwise. Maybe our enemies aren't just the Taliban? Hekmatyar's Hezb-i Islami forces, maybe. Especially in Kunduz. But if it's true as poster Anan writes, that it is in Kunduz that ISAF can win, what's the point of winning if the result is something as bad as the Taliban? Should NATO take the side of one Muhajadeen against the other?
"Follow the money". Oil is still a glut on the market. In this case, follow the cruise missiles, which will be replaced. This is the easiest way, politically, for the Trump administration to get aggregate demand up, and fill up the coffers of its supporters. At the same time, it throws red meat to the base. It is working... This time.
Wow! Major Sjursen is a brave man. We must be prepared to resist if Commander-in-chief Bannon tries to muzzle him. This is as good as Ellsberg's writing on Viet Nam. One thing he doesn't mention, is that our unconditional support for Israel makes it absolutely impossible for us to muster any support for our "values" in the Middle East.
Likewise, killing Houthis, who have done us no harm, is both immoral and unsound. It plays into the hands of the most rabid in Teheran and Baghdad.
I, too, am surprised that Dr. Cole is so adamant that the hacking had no effect. There were hundreds of lies that hit social media just before the election that were echoed by websites set up a few weeks before. These echoing websites caused the search results to spike, so that anybody googling them got 3 pages of links to them, before seeing any rebuttal, from Snopes, for example. This was a sophisticated SEO operation that could well have swayed late deciders in the swing states.
In talking to friends from the Middle East, including Iran, Palestine, Iraq and Egypt, it seems to me that we should 1) decide which principles we have and 2) support those actors in the Middle East which hew to those principles. That means that we should support secular governments that aspire to be secular, democratic and non-racist. Which means we must immediately stop selling weapons to Saudi Arabia, Israel and Egypt (we already don't sell weapons to Iran), and we should stop trying to impose a solution. It is people of the Middle East who must decide what kind of government and where national borders shall run, not us. We can give diplomatic and economic help, but we cannot decide whether, for example, they shall have a caliphate or not. It's not really our business. Just as Viet Nam was not our business.
"It is quite possible, if Netanyahu and his cohorts are given a free hand for four more years, that this will be enough to close the historic opportunity for a two-state solution."
There has been no possiblity for a two-state solution since Netanyahu told his voters two elections ago that he would do everything he could to sabotage the Oslo Accords. The U.S., France and Germany made sure that the Security Council did not recognize Palestine, after Avigdor Lieberman lobbied the Serbs in Banja Luka to keep Bosnia from voting for it. So we should not continue to talk about a two-state solution as if it were a possiblity. That train has left the station.
There were Texas democrats who registered Republican to vote for Cruz because they couldn´t imagine him winning in the general election. If the Democratic party splits over Israel, the election could be thrown into the House of Rep., and any yahoo the Republicans nominate would be president. George Bush wasn´t an anomaly - he´s slightly under par.
Schanzer actually said how to do it: you let Palestinians have a decent life, by striking a deal with those on the West Bank that have recognized Israel in the Oslo Accords and committed themselves to a peaceful solution. Unfortunately, the nature of Israel has changed so drastically from the time that it was mostly survivors and refugees from the Holocaust that this option is politically impossible. Israeli politics are being driven by immigrants from the Soviet Union who are acting just like the Russians in the Ukraine. They think they don´t need a deal with Palestinians because they are so superior that they have nothing to fear from them. Shanzer on the other hand, loves Israel and but sees the handwriting on the wall.
It would have been interesting if Prof. Cole could comment/compare the case of Zimbabwe and maybe also Zambia and Tanzania to South Africa.
There's another story here: Google and Yahoo are providing (i.e., selling) information to the government at 'prevailing rates'. It would be interesting to know how these rates are determined, and if they are similar to the rates Booze Hamilton are billing the NSA. From what we know about Snowden's salary, the margins are pretty good.
You might just as well say that Ghalioun's sucking up to Israel and the U.S. risks alienating his support among Muslims throughout the Middle East. I haven't seen any "Strident" support for Assad's regime. Just a careful neutrality.
Why do you say that most Pashtuns oppose the Taliban? If practically all the Hazaris and Tajiks oppose the Taliban and over half of the rest (Pashtuns), that must mean Taliban support is very small indeed. But the reports from the field (cf. Wikileaks) seem to indicate otherwise. Maybe our enemies aren't just the Taliban? Hekmatyar's Hezb-i Islami forces, maybe. Especially in Kunduz. But if it's true as poster Anan writes, that it is in Kunduz that ISAF can win, what's the point of winning if the result is something as bad as the Taliban? Should NATO take the side of one Muhajadeen against the other?