Wow! Dallas Morning News wrote an editorial yeaterday: “Trump Is No Republican.”
Today’s headline: “Clinton Is No Democrat.” Just look at the list of Republican endorsement she has gathered, some of the most robust sponsors of agression in the Middle East! Death squads, torture, impunity, disregard for International law …
○ Morrell and Negroponte Endorse HRC for President
○ Happy Day for HRC – Gains Support from Neocons
An interactive tool created by Google was designed to encourage Syrian rebels and help bring down the Assad regime, Hillary Clinton’s leaked emails have reportedly revealed.
By tracking and mapping defections within the Syrian leadership, it was reportedly designed to encourage more people to defect and ‘give confidence’ to the rebel opposition.
It was allegedly described as a “pretty cool idea” by senior Clinton adviser Jake Sullivan, and Google said it had enlisted the help of Al Jazeera to broadcast the tool in Syria.
From: Hillary Clinton
To: Monica Hanley
Date: 2012-08-03 06:51
Subject: SYRIAUNCLASSIFIED U.S. Department of State Case No. F-2014-20439 Doc No. C05795577
Date: 01/07/2016
RELEASE IN PART B6From: H <hrod17@clintonemail.com>
Sent: Saturday, August 4, 2012 1:51 PM
To: ‘monica.hanley
Subject: Fw: SyriaAttachments: Defection Tracker.pdf
Pis print.
From: Sullivan, Jacob J [mailto:SullivanJJ©state.gov ]
Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2012 06:20 PM
To: H
Subject: FVV: SyriaFYI — this is a pretty cool idea.
From: Jared Cohen [mailto
Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2012 1:21 PM
To: Burns, William J; Sullivan, Jacob J; alec.rossSubject: Syria
Deputy Secretary Burns, Jake, Alec,
Please keep close hold, but my team is planning to launch a tool on Sunday that will publicly track and map the defections in Syria and which parts of the government they are coming from.
Our logic behind this is that while many people are tracking the atrocities, nobody is visually representing and mapping the defections, which we believe are important in encouraging more to defect and giving confidence to the opposition.
Given how hard it is to get information into Syria right now, we are partnering with Al-Jazeera who will take primary ownership over the tool we have built, track the data, verify it, and broadcast it back into Syria.
I’ve attached a few visuals that show what the tool will look like.
Please keep this very close hold and let me know if there is anything eke you think we need to account for or think about before we launch. We believe this can have an important impact.
Thanks, Jared
Jared Cohen I Director of r’t “: *Tel
[Source: WikiLeaks publication]
- ○ Middle-East Events Turned Sour After 2006
○ Iran: Is it Really the Next War? by Steven D - Jan. 16, 2007
○ Failure of Morsi and Muslim Brothers
Trump earns endorsement of 88 retired generals, admirals
Continued below the fold …
Israel partners with Al Nusra on Golan Heights to fight Iran’s backed Syria
Israel is focused not on ISIS and Sunni groups, but on the Shia groups in Syria. Israel’s airstrikes have hit Assad’s Shia-backed regime and Hezbollah, not ISIS or al-Nusra. Correspondence between the then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and political advisor Jacob Sullivan about Israel’s aims in the region tried to rationalise why Israel ignores ISIS.
In 2012 at the start of the conflict, Sullivan said that there was “a positive side to the civil war in Syria.” This so-called `positive side’ to a war that has cost some 400,000 lives was that, “if the Assad regime topples, Iran would lose its only ally in the Middle East and would be isolated.” This would please Israel, which under the Netanyahu government has fixated on the perceived Iranian threat. A war which destabilizes Iran’s ally, Assad, would benefit Israeli interests.
- ○ Social Network Analysis and Mapping | VanDerBilt Institute |
○ HRC Implementing Neocon Policy
○ Jake Sullivan Leaving Washington, but It May Not Be for Long | NY Times – June 2014 |
○ Deputy Secretary of State William J. Burns Presented with ADL [!!] Distinguished Statesman Award
[Retired as diplomat in October 2014 - before the Iran Nuclear deal was succesfully achieved - Oui]
Trump earns endorsement of 88 retired generals, admirals | politico |
Donald Trump earned the endorsement of 88 retired generals and admirals in an open letter released Tuesday, as the Republican nominee looks to solidify support in the military community against Hillary Clinton in November.
The Republican nominee’s campaign unveiled the letter, organized by Major Gen. Sidney Shachnow, a 40-year Army veteran and Holocaust survivor, and Rear Admiral Charles Williams, ahead of a speech on veterans affairs in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
Shachnow declared that Trump “has the temperament to commander-in-chief,” while Williams called the Republican nominee “more trusted” than Clinton.
In the letter, the retired military leaders warned of the “potentially extremely perilous” combination of budget cuts and policy choices will “emboldened” enemies of the country as a result of those actions.
Sidney Shachnow is one of 88 retired generals endorsing Trump for president to keep America safe! Shachnov is a Holocaust survivor and a respected Green Beret warrior from the Vietnam War, fighting the communists and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. He retired as a general from the US Army in 1992. As a child he was rescued from a Nazi death camp near his birth place in Lithuania by the Communist forces from the East. Remarkable how the opportunity to survive in life by the Americans in the military changed his perspective to endorse Donald Trump above a “Democrat” Hillary Clinton.
○ Kovno (Lithuania) concentration camp – part 1/2
- PROLOGUE:
In the history literature of the German occupation regime in the Soviet Union, the Lithuanian city of Kaunas (Russian Kovno, German Kauen) is mostly mentioned if it comes to the transition to the genocide of the Jews. With the German arrival came in late June 1941 pogroms and mass shootings. From Kaunas with the death squads stationed there, commenced the killing of Jews from mid-August 1941, regardless of age and gender, and with the rapid ghettoising it refers to the momentous transformation of the ‘Nazi Jewish policy’ (NS-Judenpolitik) to simply exterminate the Jews. By the end of 1941 the Security Police (Sipo) and Security Service (SD), considered the ‘Jewish question’ in Lithuania after the murder of close to 140,000 Jewish men, women and children as ‘solved’.
…
About two weeks after the start of the German attack on the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941 in the reported ‘Event Messages USSR’ (Ereignismeldungen) the leaders of Sipo and SD of the Task Force (EK) 3, group A, showed plans to: Re-vamp the uncoordinated pogroms in Kaunas, and stated that SS-Standartenführer (Colonel) Karl Jäger will establish a ‘Jewish concentration camp’ in Fort VII (which was part of a chain of defence systems around the city centre). In this camp Jewish men, women and children would be housed separately and mass executions were to be carried out. Another ‘Jewish concentration camp’ was planned in the Ninth Fort. By the time the ‘Event Message’ appeared in Berlin, Jäger had already completed his projects. Up to this point primarily Lithuania’s with the endorsement or initiative of German authorities had violently assaulted their Jewish neighbours. The first large combined ‘Action’ took place on 6 July 1941 in Kaunas, headed by the EK, which cost the lives of more than 2,500 mostly male Jews .
…
DEATH KNELL OF A RACE
Although there was little social integration between the Jewish and Lithuanian populations of pre-war Kaunas, outbreaks of explicit anti-Semitism were rare. However, the arrival of German troops on June 23, 1941 unleashed an unexpectedly ferocious wave of popular violence. On June 25, Lithuanian gangs ran riot in Viliampole killing an estimated 1,000 civilians and decapitating chief rabbi Zalman Ossovsky. Two days later in central Kaunas, a group of over fifty Jews was driven onto the forecourt of the Lietükis garage and clubbed to death by the locals, with German soldiers looking on. Gruesome footage of the incident has subsequently been used in several Holocaust documentaries. On July 10, all the city’s Jews were herded into the newly established Ghetto in Viliampole (Viljampo). Many were relieved by the move, thinking this would protect them from violence of the Lithuanian hooligans. However, regular ‘actions’, in which arbitrary chosen groups of Jews were rounded up and shot by the Germans, and became commonplace as the autumn of 1941 wore on. The enthusiasm of the local Lithuanian population for ant-Semitic excesses continued to astound even the Germans. Colonel Jäger of Einsatzgruppe A, the organisation charged with implementing mass killings throughout north-eastern Europe, notoriously reported that Kaunas, ‘where trained Lithuanian volunteers are available in sufficient numbers, it is comparatively speaking a shooting paradise’
.
○ Estonia Celebrates Annual Waffen SS Division Heroes
○ Kiev, Ukraine in 2016: OUN Heroes, ‘The Jews Had It Coming’
please stick to facts.
>>Today’s headline: “Clinton Is No Democrat.”
They did NOT say that. Those are your words. Those words do not occur in the DMN headline or in the editorial.
The best case scenario (and the most unlikely) for this election is the disintegration of the Republican Party with many current Republicans switching to the Democratic Party.
And a left-of-Clinton/Democratic opposition party getting legitimacy with a restoration of policy-focused (instead of ideological) politics.
BTW, the smallest government the US ever had comprised in the executive the Department of War, Department of State, Department of the Treasury (which included the US Post Office). Because of the US Post Office, the Department of Treasury was the largest department with the local postmaster the likely only federal employee that people ever had contact with.
That was in the era in which plantation-owning Democratic Republicans were opposing canals and construction of post roads. But the US Post Office subsidized a network of stage coaches and boat contractors to deliver the mail.
The real debate is over what infrastructure to have, not the size of government. Trump would be satisfied to have a gargantuan military establishment and no interstate highways. Certainly no schools or healthcare.
A giant center-right party that all experienced politicians belong to and a tiny left party run by amateurs? Not my best scenario.
That presumes that the left cannot increase their popularity among voters. If that is the case, the left might do some rethinking about what they expect to get from politics. Being a perpetual gadfly has its political uses, but it rarely changes policy because it never comes to power.
Which means that that rethinking has to do with what the left understands as legitimate uses of and operation of power. Imagining the left is going to remain small assumes never having to grapple with that issue.
FDR Congresses maintained their crushing advantages because they gave voters something to vote FOR, not lesser of two evils.
And that’s why we had the massive Southern textile workers strike and the automobile industry strikes in FDR’s second term.
I think this “having something to vote FOR” is overstated when the Democratic one-party government was putting up people like Cotton Ed Smith and Theodore Bilbo. Even the primaries, if there was a challenge were definitely LOTE votes and amounted to differences in personal networks of supporters.
Only some FDR Congresses were crushing, and some Republicans did cross the aisle on many votes.
All Democrats in the South in the FDR years …
White citizens of the U. S. South expect a Republican President, for political reasons, to treat Negroes as near-equals. That is a prime reason why they have almost always voted solidly Democratic since Reconstruction.* On the other hand, Southern voters expect a Democratic President to cooperate in keeping Negroes firmly in their social place.
○ Former 3-term Gov. Talmadge investigated in 1946 lynchings
Plenty of labor organizers killed in the North, too, you know. For profits. You saying that FDR did not enforce Wagner Act of 1935 in the South?
Interesting piece on how blacks and women fared under FDR’s administrations.
http://millercenter.org/president/biography/fdroosevelt-the-american-franchise
“Roosevelt’s performance, then was deeply flawed, but blacks rendered their own verdict when in 1936 they abandoned their historic allegiance to the Republicans, the party of Abe Lincoln, and moved in large numbers over to the Democrats, the party of FDR, where they have been ever since.” (from that link)
No mills anymore. Just sweatshops and firetraps in Bangladesh.
An continuation of the Sanders movement can increase the number of Democrats who are voting FOR something within the Democratic Party or it can do the same as an more lefty party outside the Democratic Party.
So what are lefties FOR that would attract 175,000 votes per Congressional District?
Yeah, peace and prosperity, but how?
We have done this exercise before. What attracted Sanders voters that was not character driven? My #1 would be BACK TO PUBLIC NEIGHBORHOOD SCHOOLS AND OUT WITH PRIVATE ONES TAKING PUBLIC FUNDS. But that is just me.
You seen this?
http://berniecrats.net/
Having a prominent Texas newspaper endorse HRC because she is not hostile to conservatism should make you reconsider calling this blog “A Progressive Community”. Progressives don’t endorse Conservatives nor crow about right wingers endorsing their candidate. You really need to re-evaluate your stance and if you are now a conservative, re-brand your blog. People do change their political philosophy as they grow older.
My browser erroneously brought me to your diary instead of the front page, so I thought this was a front page post by Booman. I retract my wrongful criticism of him.
I must say, however, that I am very very surprised at you, Oui.
The Dallas newspaper has been on the wrong side of endorsements for many presidential elections in it’s 75 years history! Texas voted blue from 1872 through the 1976 election with exceptions in 1928, 1952, 1956 and 1972. Texas turned red in 1980 until the present day.
Even in 1964, the Dallas newspaper withheld it’s endorsement for Republican Barry Goldwater, but refused to endorse native son Lyndon Johnson because of his interest in social issues for the Lone Star state of Texas.
○ Texas since World War II
Therefore an easy conclusion, the editorial board chose the candidate which better represented the Republican core conservative values, homeland security issues and tough foreign policy to kick ass to our adversaries. Especially after its editorial: “Trump Is No Republican.”
As a Democrat, I don’t care less what Dallas thinks of US politics and the choice for President. LMAO for its endorsement of HRC … I wouldn’t wear that endorsement as a badge of honor fot progressives.
FWIW – blame your browser, not me for guiding you to my diary.
Oh I do! And it’s my mistake to9 think you were touting HRC, since you weren’t. Or am I wrong again?
To explain further. I don’t always agree with you (maybe 75%), but I’m used to you being on my Left, not my Right.
Quick hit comments aren’t always well-thought out or well articulated and sometimes either misrepresent someone’s position or someone is deviating from a more common left position in this particular instance. I would hope that all lefties on occasion have thought and weighed all aspects of some matters that it leads them to deviate from the crowd. I’ve been consistent rather vocal in deviating from almost everyone on the “Kelo” decision and agreeing with John Paul Stevens and Ginsburg. I also had to reluctantly conclude that Merrick Garland is an acceptable SCOTUS nominee to replace Scalia. (My opinion on that wouldn’t be the same if he were named as a replacement for Ginsburg or Breyer and probably not for Kennedy either.)
I do think it’s important when someone shifts to a different position on a specific issue or about a specific candidate that she/he explains her/himself to avoid conflict with those that have a need to put others into a black box. For example, it’s understandable that opponents of libertarian politics/politicians would read many of AG’s comments as endorsing libertarians. And can’t say that I’m always clear myself that he isn’t, but I take him at his word that he uses extreme hyperbole because he thinks that is the best way to wake others up. I disagree with him on that, but have stopped challenging that because he’s not going to change.
I don’t know how old AG is, but I’m quite sure that you and I are too old to fundamentally change. But I hope that we are still capable of learning. But the core, that was set in stone long ago and I won’t criticize your core views, and I will concede that mine aren’t always logical. Mr. Spock, I’m not.
I had to learn to challenge what felt like core beliefs a long time ago — and work them until they either were in accordance with core principles or formed into core principles. I still do that along with challenging many of my impulses that were laid down in my brain before I was an adult by home, church, school, and prevailing cultural/social norms and are wrong or at odds with my fully considered principles and how resistant to change those impulses are. I’ve long felt fortunate that racism wasn’t imposed on me at an early age, but it doesn’t mean I’ve had some immunity to prevailing low-level cultural racism; only that I can recognize it quickly and resist it.
— heh — I was a bit of a girly girl when I was young, but it didn’t occur to me not to compete with boys unless size or physical strength put me too far down (in softball, etc., not in physically aggressive or violent interactions and even my big mouth knew when to close if words started to get ugly).
That’s 75% agreement. Not bad odds for your work.
That’s okay — nothing progressive about a blog that was all in with HRC (albeit not a full throated “all in,” but as the least bad option) from the beginning of 2016 primary.
Thanks
Curious, does the campaign sent out bullet points to blogger and such drawing their attention to carefully crafted viewpoint of an incident they wish to use?
You mean formally like the RNC was once known to do? Doubtful because it quickly became too obvious. Many ways to skin a cat and the more subtle the better.
There are “clubs” and those in them share stuff and pass it along when it serves their purposes and interests. There’s also informal and subtle pressure to get on the “right side.” Asch’s famous experiment. Not many totally independent and objective bloggers or twitter users with a following that have no need for funding. Billmon and Duncan (Eschaton) on the left may be it. Greenwald doesn’t seem to censor himself, and Omdiyar appears to have been hands off, but not sure anyone can say that he doesn’t have an agenda or what it is. So far my respect for Scahill is what limits my skepticism about The Intercept.
What was it that Bernie Sanders said when HRC was touting Kissinger’s praise of her performance? Here it is
Right in line with FDR’s demonstration of leadership
Politicians that rack up and praise endorsements from those they previously claimed were their enemies are only displaying their entry into “the club.” And therefore, are no better than those “the club” previously endorsed.
Just following developments on a story that makes many here at the pond uncomfortable (because they followed their kneejerk, fake patriotic, emotional impulse (a primary reason why war sells so easily in this country)) :
USUncut — The entire Seattle Seahawks team will protest the national anthem at opening game
Andrew Jerell Jones:
Billmon:
I’m thinking there has been very little criticism of Colin Kaepernick on this website. Was there even a front page post on the subject? It seems to me that you’re applying ideas and sentiments to commenters that don’t actually exist.
Please do link to any comments that provide evidence as to kneejerk, fake patriotic, emotional impulses regarding protests of the national anthem.
Dogs that don’t bark are often telling. Not on the FP, and one comment in my diary on Kaepernik met what I said in my comment and the diary was ignored by those that generally are uncomfortable with non-popular principled stances. An advantage of being older is having seen situations like this again and again in real time. And how often after the tide has shifted that so many deny (or forget) that they were on the other side or silently didn’t stand with those taking the heat for doing the right thing.
I think I’m being fair here in saying you shouldn’t use age to justify prejudging people on a particular issue because you may have disagreements with them on other issues.
I believe I commented in a diary for the first time just this week. I didn’t think your take was wrong or particularly principled. It just seemed obvious.
Not wrong. Not principled. Only obvious.
Shouldn’t what’s obvious to one generation, but not to older generations be subjected to scrutiny to confirm that it’s right and principled? And if it passes that test is silence appropriate while older people are railing about what isn’t obvious to them?
Plenty of things that are obvious to each generation are neither right nor principled. Making no effort to learn from those who came before and come after us limits our experience and humanity to our peers and that’s what leads people to becoming old, rigid, and dated.
A propensity to conform to prevailing cultural/social norms and ignore lessons that should have been learned fairly recently is stronger than I once thought it was. While not quite as intense, the public response to Kaepernik is closer to what confronted Muhammad Ali, Tommie Smith, and John Carlos than I would have expected given the public acceptance of the talents, skills, and decency of those men a bit later. I was even more shocked in 1991 and 2002 when Americans jumped on the Bush war bandwagons and the same garbage was thrown at those that objected to those wars as what anti-Vietnam war resisters were subjected to. I also remain shocked and dismayed that so many men continue to subject women to gross sexual harassment and so many women keep quiet for such a long period of time when thirty odd years ago that was nearly extinguished and men had learned very quickly that it wouldn’t be tolerated.
While respectful of the individual experiences of older generations, I’m more encouraged by younger folks who seem increasingly skeptical and willing to challenge.
It does seem that we’ve gone backwards in some respects, though. Digital/social media harassment is something that concerns me.
Exactly Marie!
I’m in full agreement as it parallels my own experience. Lost the closest friends as I questioned the increased war effort in Vietnam and I concluded McNamara and his generals took us for fools with their propaganda. Lasted a few years until our high school buddies returned in body bags. Crucial year was of course 1968 after the Tet offensive and astounding US military setback. The protests followed in that election year and Johnson made the correct decision not to run for president and focus on ending the war at the negotiation table in Geneva. Until a$$hole Kissinger interfered on behalve of the Republicans and Tricky Dick. Quite a career Henry build for himself on a pile of dead bodies in Vietnam.
Sadness of the two assassinations!
Obama, HRC and advisors keep on lauding Kissinger, the worst of war criminals. US will never ever reach a moral equivalent to its military capability as global economic power while white-washing its war crimes of Latin America and the Middle East. With George Bush sinking to deepest trough of darkness, void of courage and morals.
Case in point – The Guardian
Did you see this today an NK?
Japan Isn’t Playing Neoliberalism’s Word Games
(Having those games so clearly exhibited on this very blog is instructive. The approach here should be internalized. Don’t play their games.)
“It’s no surprise that we in western democracies succumb to self-censorship if we’re told that there’s something base, unsophisticated or downright rude about making a populist appeal. And yet free-market clichés abound. How many times have you heard people talk about or read in print arguments as “the nation’s credit card”, “business being strangled by red tape” or “free trade” all of which come straight out of neoliberalism’s stash of banalities?
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/09/japan-isnt-playing-neoliberalisms-word-games.html
One seemingly insurmountable problem is that, because neoliberalism is a construction made entirely out of western capitalism, we almost instinctively find it difficult to critique it overtly. To do so would be somewhat akin to self-flagellation. So we need to cushion the blow a little by turning it into an abstract, theoretical concept and then we can feel safer picking over the minutia of that rather than staring directly at the ugliness of the culture which created it in the first place.
[…]
What they (the Japanese) are most definitely not doing is getting bogged down in discussing the merits, or otherwise, of the theories of capitalism, trade, economics or finance. The contrast between how the Japanese are opposing the TPP and how, typically, free trade agreements are opposed in the west is stark.”