Meanwhile Back in the Sandbox...

[Milton Kuo]

Re: The Empire Strikes . . . ?

i'm entertained by a cartoonist being more accurate in his predictions [so far] than all the pundits who thought trump would be gone by now. it remains to be seen whether his longer term prediction comes to pass.

The pundits are not expressing any sort of expert opinion so much as they are expressing their wishes. Very much like how financial news is reported.

[shiny!]

Re: The Empire Strikes . . . ?

The pundits are not expressing any sort of expert opinion so much as they are expressing their wishes. Very much like how financial news is reported.

Nailed it.

[touchring]

Re: The Empire Strikes . . . ?

i don't support him, but i'm not sure i agree with your analysis either.

it looks like we're in a replay of the 1930's, kind of 1930's-lite. the great recession instead of the great depression. sluggish recovery. international tensions over systems and borders in europe, regional proxy wars [the spanish civil war back then], ethnic/religious tensions [not just sunni/shia, also e.g. the turkmen enclave in syria being treated like the sudetenland], the rise of right wing nationalists/populists [marine le pen's national front, nigel farage's ukip, whatever-the-guy's-name-is in hungary].

and don't forget deflation and beggar thy neighbor currency devaluations.

you know, the first time as tragedy, and the second time as farce.

+ a possible replay of the 12th century middle age Europe, but with a slight difference, it now includes North America.

I've always said that the fate Europe will affect the U.S. eventually.

[santafe2]

Re: The Empire Strikes . . . ?

i'm envious of your ability to see the future.

We mere humans do this all the time... It's how we find our way to the market. It is how we arrive about the right time for public transportation, (unless one lives in DC which apparently operates more in the non-predictive world). It is the reason we don't build a fire in the middle of our living room to keep warm. It is how we understand our relationships with other human beings. Getting back our very own neo-Mussolini, without a great existential event, we should not be expecting a great shift in the mood of the American electorate. The wild card may be the billion-or-so dollars the Koch brothers will give to Trump if he gets the Republican nomination.

The Onion had something to say about the brothers this morning:

[jk]

Re: The Empire Strikes . . . ?

there's something very american about our man on horseback being a billionaire real estate developer and casino owner.

[GRG55]

Re: Meanwhile Back in the Sandbox...

Wonder if they had to ask for a lift from the BIL to the polls.

Saudi Arabia's women vote in election for first time

12 December 2015

Women in Saudi Arabia have cast their first votes in the country's history, in municipal elections.

Women were also standing as candidates, another first, despite the conservative kingdom being the only nation where women are not allowed to drive.

A total of 978 women have registered as candidates, alongside 5,938 men.

Female candidates have had to speak behind a partition while campaigning or be represented by a man. Turnout was high, state media reported.

About 130,000 women registered to vote, officials said. That figure still falls well short of male voter registration, which stands at 1.35 million.

Elections themselves are a rare thing in the Saudi kingdom - Saturday will be only the third time in history that Saudis have gone to the polls...

[jk]

Re: Meanwhile Back in the Sandbox...

Wonder if they had to ask for a lift from the BIL to the polls.

Saudi Arabia's women vote in election for first time

12 December 2015

Women in Saudi Arabia have cast their first votes in the country's history, in municipal elections.

Women were also standing as candidates, another first, despite the conservative kingdom being the only nation where women are not allowed to drive.

A total of 978 women have registered as candidates, alongside 5,938 men.

Female candidates have had to speak behind a partition while campaigning or be represented by a man. Turnout was high, state media reported.

About 130,000 women registered to vote, officials said. That figure still falls well short of male voter registration, which stands at 1.35 million.

Elections themselves are a rare thing in the Saudi kingdom - Saturday will be only the third time in history that Saudis have gone to the polls...

democracy and equal rights on the march there. btw, what is "BIL"?

[GRG55]

Re: Meanwhile Back in the Sandbox...

democracy and equal rights on the march there. btw, what is "BIL"?

Perhaps. But appearances count for a great deal in the Middle East, so maybe best to continue to observe to see how meaningful all this turns out to be. Saudi Arabia is the land of "progress without change".

"Brother-in-law"

[vt]

Re: Meanwhile Back in the Sandbox...

US-Iranian-Russian-Iraqi offensive launched to recover Ramadi from ISIS
DEBKAfile Special Report December 22, 2015, 9:05 PM (IDT)


Ramadi, the capital of the vast Anbar Province, was the second major Iraqi city to fall to the Islamic State after the devastating loss of Mosul. The importance of the offensive launched Tuesday, Dec. 22 for its recapture from ISIS lies chiefly in the makeup of the assault force, which is unique in contemporary Syrian and Iraqi conflicts.

debkafile’s military sources name its partners as US and Russian army and air force elements, two varieties of Iraqi militia – Shiites under Iranian command and Sunnis, as well as the regular Iraqi army.
The Iraqi army is depicted as leading the assault. But this is only a sop to its lost honor for letting this Sunni city fall in the first place. The real command is in the hands of US Special Operations officers alongside Iraqi troops, and the Russian officers posted at the operational command center they established last month in Baghdad.
This Russian war room is in communication with US military headquarters in the Iraqi capital. It is from the Russian war room that the top commanders of the pro-Iranian militias send their orders. The most prominent is Abu Mahadi al-Muhandis, who heads the largest Iraqi Shiite militia known as the Popular Mobilization Committee.

Noting another first, our military sources disclose that Iranian officers liaise between the Americans and Russians on the front against ISIS. If this combination works for Ramadi, it will not doubt be transposed to the Syrian front and eventually, perhaps next summer, serve as the format for the general offensive the Americans are planning for wresting Mosul from the Islamic State.
When US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter was in Baghdad last week to review the final preparations for the Ramadi operation, US officials were still insisting that the Iraqi army was fit for the heavy lifting after being trained by American instructors.
By Tuesday, US sources were admitting that pro-Iranian militias were also part of the operation.
debkafile’s military sources report on the division of tasks as follows:

Iraqi army forces are attacking the Ramadi city center from the north; Shiite militias from the south. The US air force is pounding ISIS targets inside the town in order to cripple its ability to fight off the oncoming forces. The Russian air force is standing by, ready to destroy any ISIS reinforcements attempting to cross in from Syria to aid their comrades in beleaguered Ramadi.
Experts keeping track of the offensive have no doubt that it will end in success. The jihadists holding Ramadi are few in number – 400-500 fighters at most. However, cleansing the town after victory will presents a daunting difficulty. In Tikrit and the refinery town of Baiji, ISIS split its defense structure into two levels - one on the surface and the second hidden underground.

The top level was thinly manned by fighting strength, but crawling with mines, booby-trapped trucks and IEDs detonated by remote control.
The lower level, consisting of deeply-dug interconnected tunnel systems, was where ISIS fighters hid out and jump out at night for attacks. According to the experience gained in other Iraqi battle arenas against ISIS, neither the Iraqi army nor local Shiite militias have been able to plumb and destroy these tunnel systems. And so they could never really purge the Islamic State from “liberated” towns.

Ramadi will face the same quandary.

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Meanwhile Back in the Sandbox...

DEBKA kind of lost all credibility when it published reports of Saddam keeping his WMDs in underground mobilebunkers that could move around under the sand.

Coordination or at the very least deconfliction between US and Iranian forces isn't exactly new, it's happened as long ago as late 2001 with the coordinated seizure of Herat.

[vt]

Re: Meanwhile Back in the Sandbox...

Yes the U.S. has worked with Iran, but not with Russia too in the middle east like this.

(maybe in WW2 a little but I know of no instance)

Update on the battle:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/iraqi-le...ity-1450869531

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Meanwhile Back in the Sandbox...

Yes the U.S. has worked with Iran, but not with Russia too in the middle east like this.

(maybe in WW2 a little but I know of no instance)

Directly from folks who were on the ground for most of 2015 in Iraq, I've heard some things that leave me thinking this is possibly the most confusing, nebulous, complex/complicated deployment I've ever heard of.

There's a lot of conflicting factions with non-aligned agendas.

But in having said that, even in "clear cut" cases such as France in 1944 a BIG part of Allied efforts with Resistance groups was de-confliction of various factions too busy fighting each other for what would happen to France AFTER kicking out the Germans, before they actually kicked out the Germans.

Same happened in Afghanistan during the Soviet era, still seen today with the Hekmatyar group. One of the most powerful non state actors in AFPAK since the Soviet invasion up through today. A group world class in jockeying for post conflict positioning, often at the expense of it's alliance of convenience colleagues who it expended more resources fighting than fighting the Soviets or Soviet backed Afghan government of the day.

In the 7 step Unconventional Warfare model used by US Special Forces, #7 is demobilization, which is an often overlooked process to mitigate post conflict armed/kinetic power struggles.

The hardest part, in my amateur opinion, is not fighting directly, but the challenge of aligning the interests of clashing groups with conflicting agendas.

France 1944(and the years building up to it), were very hard, but very simple.

This is not only very hard, but very, very, very complicated/complex.

I'm a big fan of WWII era folks like Fitzroy MacLean(UK) and William Eddy(US) who both played outsized roles in solving similar(albeit simpler) problems of the day.

Hopefully we can find a few folks today who can achieve similar influence outcomes.

[touchring]

Re: Meanwhile Back in the Sandbox...

Yes the U.S. has worked with Iran, but not with Russia too in the middle east like this.

(maybe in WW2 a little but I know of no instance)

Update on the battle:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/iraqi-le...ity-1450869531

Islamic caliphate like groups like ISIS and the Taleban thrive in chaos. It's a product of chaos. The more chaos and gore, the more people will want to join ISIS and the Taleban.

Directly from folks who were on the ground for most of 2015 in Iraq, I've heard some things that leave me thinking this is possibly the most confusing, nebulous, complex/complicated deployment I've ever heard of.

It's obvious by now that the new form of government in the Iraq don't work in the 21st century. Maybe it will work a hundred years from now, after 80% of the people in the Middle East have been wiped out by a hundred years of wars, oil has run out and the Arabs have gone back riding camels in the desert.

[vt]

Re: Meanwhile Back in the Sandbox...

How serious is this new Sunni-Shia violence?

https://www.rt.com/news/327755-saudi...-iran-protest/

[GRG55]

Temperature's Rising. As is the Pressure

It sounds like 2015 is already a banner year for public executions in Saudi Arabia.

Highest number since 1995, 20 year high I believe.

And that's before the unofficially official noises coming out in the last few days of a possible 50+ mass execution.

...

As I have posted before, in all my years following Middle East politics starting with the 1973 oil embargo, I have not seen a time when the threat of deposition of the Saudi (and other) Gulf monarchies was higher.

And if the unthinkable happens the resulting exodus will make the current refugee migration look like a warm up exercise.

Commentators sometimes try to examine where was "the start" of the current difficulties. What is happening today is simply the latest manifestation on a very long continuum.

Let's count 'em. First Saddam, then Tunisia's Zine el Abidine Ben Ali (who remains living in exile in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia), Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, Libya's Muammar al-Qaddafi and Yemen's Ali Abdullah Saleh. Syria's Bashar Hafez al-Assad in the midst of a full blown civil war. Mission Accomplished??

That covers a good swath of Arab North Africa, the Levant and the south tip of the Arabian peninsula. All that remains is the Gulf States.

And that situation continues to build steadily. The focal point remains the Kingdom of Bahrain. Bahrain, which is connected to the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia via the 25 kilometer long King Fahd Causeway (you can see one side from the other, except during the dust storms), has always been the "pressure relief valve" for what everyone knows is a completely unsustainable system of governing people in Saudi Arabia. Both Bahrain and the Eastern Province are majority Shia.




The sectarian schism showed up immediately during the "Arab Spring" five years ago (I have a rubber "bullet" and shell casings from the "morning after" at the Pearl Roundabout):

http://www.itulip.com/forums/showthr...on-in-progress

And continued to percolate. A link to an article in The Atlantic from a year ago with some excellent descriptions:

http://www.theatlantic.com/photo/201...-later/384702/

The Shia women in Bahrain continue to play a more prominent role than either the western or Arab media generally represent:





Young Bahraini women mourn during the funeral of Sayed Mahmud Sayed Mohsin in the village of Sitra, south of the capital Manama, on May 24, 2014. Mohsin, 15, was reportedly shot dead by security forces during an opposition protest three days earlier.


And the temperature continues to rise, combined with the "fourth law of thermodynamics"...Things Get Worse Under Pressure.

Nimr al-Nimr execution will topple Saudi Govt: ex Iraq PM

3rd Jan 2016 10:44 AM

THE former prime minister of Iraq, Nuri al-Maliki, has said that the execution of the prominent Shi'ite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr by Saudi Arabia will be the downfall of the Gulf kingdom's government.

Mr al-Maliki, who was prime minister of Iraq between 2006 and 2014, said in a statement that his countrymen "strongly condemn these detestable sectarian practices and affirm that the crime of executing Sheikh al-Nimr will topple the Saudi regime as the crime of executing the martyr al-Sadr did to Saddam," referencing the death of another prominent cleric in Iraq in 1980.

Hundreds of armoured vehicles were sent to Qatif in Saudi Arabia to contain protests in response to the execution, while demonstrators in Bahrain have been tear-gassed.

Several protests have taken place in majority Shia Qatif and in Bahrain, following the execution of Sheikh al-Nimr and 46 others for 'terrorism offences'...

...It is feared that the death of the outspoken cleric will exacerbate tensions in the region, with activists calling for further protests in Bahrain, and several demonstrations breaking out in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province.

Armoured vehicles have been seen entering Qatif, with resistance groups in the area calling for people to join the protests against the execution of Sheikh al-Nimr, who had much popular support in the Shia community.

Security forces in other Shia-populated areas are also said to be on high alert, while many police stations and security posts have been closed following al-Nimr's execution in case of repercussions from Saudi Arabia's Shia community.

However, al-Nimr's brother Mohammed al-Nimr has asked that any reaction to the execution be peaceful.

He told Reuters: "Sheikh Nimr enjoyed high esteem in his community and within Muslim society in general and no doubt there will be reaction.

"We hope that any reactions would be confined to a peaceful framework. No one should have any reaction outside this peaceful framework. Enough bloodshed."



Saudis Draw Criticism After Executing Prominent Shiite Cleric Nemer al-Nemer

Jan. 2, 2016


A Bahraini woman takes part in a protest in the village of Jidhafs, west of Manama, against the execution of prominent Shiite Muslim cleric Nemer al-Nemer by Saudi authorities Saturday.

Saudi Arabia on Saturday executed influential Shiite cleric Nemer al-Nemer as part of its largest mass execution in decades, sparking protests in the country’s restive east and drawing a wave of condemnation from around the region.

He and 46 others were executed across the country after being convicted of terrorism, the Saudi Interior Ministry said.

Mr. al-Nemer played an important role in antigovernment protests during the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings in Saudi Arabia’s east. He gained prominence in the Shiite community for his vocal support for Shiite protesters demanding equal rights and his fierce criticism of Saudi Arabia’s Sunni rulers.

Mr. al-Nemer’s execution drew strong criticism from Shiites across the Middle East. Iran’s state news agency quoted a Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying it “proves nothing but the depth of irrationality and irresponsibility of the Saudi officials.” Having previously warned that carrying out a death sentence against Mr. al-Nemer “would cost Saudi Arabia dearly,” Iran also summoned the Saudi charge d’affairs in Tehran to protest the execution...

...Mr. al-Nemer was sentenced to death in October 2014 and charged with crimes including disobeying the ruler, inciting sectarian strife and bearing arms against security forces.

Mr. al-Nemer wasn’t widely known outside Qatif before 2011, when he emerged as a leading voice behind Shiite protests that rocked the oil-rich eastern part of Saudi Arabia for two years.

He was arrested after a car chase near his family’s farm in their hometown of Awwamiya in July 2012. Authorities said he opened fire at security forces. His family has denied this and said he was unarmed.

“We condemn a deplore this unjust killing and consider it an example of killing wisdom and moderation,” Mr. al-Nemer’s family said in a statement.

Saudi Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz Al al-Sheikh appeared on state television shortly after the announcement to express his support for the executions.

“These are just sentences,” he said, adding that it was “the duty of the rulers to protect security and stability.”