-
-
Re: Trump to win?
Rant not cant. Leave the latter to Kunstler.
Even though Taibbi's rapping as he's tapping,
he's a journalist.
Meanwhile, Chesterton is rolling over in his Catholic grave.Comment
-
Re: Trump to win?
For someone with such a broad historical fetish in all things cloak and dagger you do yourself and your argument a considerable disservice with such shallow analysis that fails basic scrutiny.Originally posted by Woodsman View PostWhat's the emoticon for eye rolling. Yes, yes, we know. Everything Lake has is "fact." Woodsman, alls he's gots is his conspiracies. Yeah, for sure.
Anyway, weird how these Houthis are so good they can hit the Saudi and UAE shipping but their missiles "fall short" of ours, almost like they were never actually fired. Either they weren't fired because this is another false flag or because the Houthi commanders aren't stupid enough to try and sink an American vessel only to have the sun, moon and stars fall on their heads a few hours later, followed by a Marine amphibious division landing. Or for some other reason neither of us fathom.
Whatever the real story is, it seems we're now getting sucked in to fighting these Houthis directly, adding yet another war to the roster. Again, in a place where we are neither wanted nor have any interest beyond the garden variety freedom of navigation interests common to all.
Yet here we are again, seemingly at war with the entire Middle East, backing Saudi Barbaria in another proxy war, only now increasingly less proximate and more direct by the day. Here we go, imagining we can win a guerrilla war with high tech weapons. Once again driven reflexively and thoughtlessly by paranoiac fear of Sovi... Iranian influence, blindly walking in to another quagmire doomed to cost billions of dollars and thousands of lives.
And why was the Mason sailing where she was? As you imply, more or less the same reasons for the OPLAN 34Alpha strikes. More or less the same reason Maddox and Turner Joy were sailing where they were.
But we're 21st century now, so instead a big combined operation of Nasty boats and SOG troopers raising Hell on the coasts and multiple ships running DESOTO patrols listening in, one boat does all the shooting and all the rooting around collecting the subsequent signals.
And that's was my point in making the analogy. Lyndon Baines Clintoon can do a Tonkin gulf, i mean Baab el Mandab resolution in January assuming she manages to steal the election.
1)You went and picked possibly the only precision attack on the Houthi by the Saudi/UAE/GCC that can be easily defended as a legitimate military target. The casualty list was a "Who's Who of Houthi senior military", not he usual and always tragic photos/videos of women and children blown to pieces as collateral damage.
2)The unarmed and non ECM/Decoy equipped UAE ship Swift was a sitting duck when hit with a Chinese C-801 copy of an obsolete 40 year old French Exocet compared to the USS Mason, a state of the art destroyer specifically equipped with at least 6 systems to kinetically or non kinetically deter or destroy the missile.
An Israeli frigate got caught with its pants down by this same missile type fired by Hezbollah a few years back.
3)Your binary choice of "Why didn't all the missiles hit? Conspiracy!" or "we can't comprehend it" is playing silly buggers.
Maybe read up on, or better yet, meet and talk to folks who have served in surface warfare command. I have.
What's far simpler and far more likely?
Staging a complex false flag attack?
or
Simply having a surface combatant commander aggressively manoeuvre within range of jury rigged Houthi ASM coastal batteries in hopes of initiating an engagement?
Everything isn't a conspiracy.
Maybe the skipper of the Mason was ordered or encouraged to patrol very aggressively.
Maybe the skipper had the command latitude to patrol so aggressively(although I would doubt that in the current risk averse climate where senior military heads roll at the slightest political embarrassment).
The jury rigged Houthi ASM coastal batteries are a poor man's anti-access/area denial effort against Saudi/UAE/GCC maritime assets. The Houthi don't have much in the way of coastal surveillance radar and C3I. Houthi "eyesight" monitoring its coastline/littoral would be nearsighted with cataracts and glaucoma. So just shooting at blips really.
Literally the entire Yemen Air Force, Presidential Guard, Special Forces Command, and Missile Command all defected to the Houthi, along with most of the army and navy.
Yemen has considerable experience with ballistic missiles(seperate specialisation from anti ship missiles) used in combat stretching back to intra Yemen conflict in the 1990's.
Here is a list of SOME missile attacks(and interceptions, the Sausus spent millions) in Yemen:
http://static.businessinsider.com/im...4dcc/image.jpg
It oddly fails to include the two additional successful SS-21 Tochka attacks that the 4 combined resulted in VERY high numbers and high ranked Saudi/UAE/GCC casualties and equipment losses. They are finally dispersing(as they should have from the start) out of considerable fear of the few remaining Houthi SS-21s.
Several days ago, an enhanced Houthi ballistic missile struck a Saudi Air Base over 500km deep into Saudi from Yemen, and reportedly only 50km from Mecca.
Yes this is an asymmetric war, but it is also being fought with anti-ship missiles and long range ballistic missiles.
The destination is still likely the same(Yemen's asymmetric war is to Saudi as the D-Day Normandy invasion was to the Nazis...a clear indicator leading to eventual House of Saud downfall) but it doesn't have to require pit stops in conspiracy crazy town along the way.
Comment
-
Re: Trump to win?
Lake, it would be so nice if you could resist changing the thesis and putting words in my mouth each time we interact, but it seems you can't or won't help yourself. As endlessly fascinating as the Houthi order or battle might be, it's war porn, and is beside the point. Despite the impressive word and syllable counts in your post, none of it discounts anything I've written.
Obama has brought us into yet another war on behalf of the Saudis and we've been at it in Yemen since March 2015, providing intelligence and logistical support and even helping choose targets for airstrikes. Now there is a significant escalation but we're expected to believe it's in all "self-defense." Somehow it's expected to go without notice that the US has been deeply involved in making war against Yemen for a year and a half. The war has killed or wounded nearly 12,000 civilians and left over a million Yemenis in danger of starvation.
And for what? So the sclerotic Saudi Barbarian monarchy can sleep safe at night knowing their insouciant American allies will continue to do their bidding and install a government in Yemen amenable to their corrupt designs. What that has to do with the interests of the people of the United States, whose sons and daughters are yet again being put in harm's way for the benefit of oily Arab potentates, none can say.
Now that we are beginning to learn how deep the tentacles of Saudi intelligence go into the 9/11 attacks, I doubt very much you could find a dozen Americans who would shed a tear at Saudi Barbaria sinking into the ocean- barrings those whose livelihoods and fortunes (political and otherwise) depend dearly on their oily largess. Hillary Clinton is one such person, as is the regrettable George W. Bush, with little doubt the current president is banking on getting a bit of that greasy money himself once out of office. Add to that the reality that by supporting the Barbarian monarchy in its war against one of the poorest and most desolate countries in the world, we are giving aid and comfort (again) to Saudi Wahhabism and the terror is produces and finances.
The southern provinces of Yemen are bases for the radical al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and the Houthi Shiites hate al-Qaeda. But instead of seeking allies for the US against radical Islamic terrorists, we help create new terrorists abroad and at home. Instead of resisting the Wahhabi financiers of terrorism the Saudis are known to be, we let the Saudis defend AQAP and throw our weight against those whose enemies are also ours, leaving the US a party to Saudi war crimes and our homeland less secure again. The Saudis want to install a government in Sanaa that is in their back pocket, just as they tried to buy the Egyptian government and just as they are backing Salafist Jihadis in Syria. Saudi Barbaria is a small country of some 20 million citizens with a small army but a well-equipped air force stocked with the latest US and European warplanes and weapons, and we are trying our damnedest to help them punch above their weight as they seek to establish hegemony over the Middle East.
You think my Tonkin analogy is off, but it seems to me and many others that the historical rhyme sounds about right. Obama and his general staff would be wise to dissociate themselves from the Saudi war and to open its own lines of communication to the Houthis. But just as the Johnson Administration saw everything through the lens of paranoia of Soviet domination, the current bipartisan war party sees visions of Iranian domination as its manifestation of geopolitical paranoia. By failing to recognize that Wahhabi Islam and Saudi Barbaria is the proximate cause of the larger share of the problems we face, we make life worse for ourselves and for those in the region. I believe it rhymes quite consonantly with the shortsightedness we displayed in our self-inflicted struggle in Southeast Asia and I stand by the analogy.Last edited by Woodsman; October 16, 2016, 08:07 AM.
Comment
-
Re: Trump to win?
maybe i haven't been paying attention. could you elucidate this statement, perhaps provide some links? thanksOriginally posted by Woodsman View Post
fwiw, i too thought of tonkin when i heard of the tomahawks hitting the radar sites after the anti-ship missiles "perhaps fell short."Originally posted by woodsman
i think at some point johnson became more concerned about how any withdrawal would play in the arena of domestic politics. after all, it wasn't so long before that u.s. politicians were using "who lost china?" as a bludgeon against one another. especially as a liberal who passed medicare and the civil rights act, johnson felt vulnerable to charges of "appeasement."Originally posted by woodsman
although for johnson i think it was domestic politics, i agree that pulling back from the saudi's would in fact play well domestically. the choice of continuing support for the saudi's does indeed appear to be part of the global geo-political "great game." the 2 major middle eastern powers vying for regional dominance are the saudi's and the iranians. the iranians are being supported by the russians and the chinese.Originally posted by woodsman
the iranian conservatives, who hold power in spite of a wider population which [i read] is more favorably predisposed to the u.s., are not available for alliance with the u.s. so leaning more towards the houthis does not appear to be worthwhile as an effort to get the iranians to distance themselves more from russia and china. if we're going to play the game, that leaves us in our longstanding alliance with the saudis. i suppose that the iranian [conservative government's] deep hostility towards israel, along with the saudis tacit acceptance of israel, may well play a role in this as well.
it's hard to believe that there's anyone who thinks at all about global politics who hasn't noticed the role of wahhabism in fomenting sunni jihadist terrorism. apparently the calculation has been made in washington, perhaps first in langley, that that's a price the u.s. is willing to pay, at least for now, in its global schemes.Originally posted by woodsman
Comment
-
Re: Trump to win?
The latest is the "28 pages" of the 9/11 commission's report.Originally posted by jk View Post
http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-...ty-eight-pages
http://intelligence.house.gov/sites/...classpart4.pdf
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016...ded-by-men-wi/
http://www.commondreams.org/views/20...audi-911-trail
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/02/04...aeda.html?_r=0
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...ify-court.html
http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2...-911-pentagon/
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/...es-to-911.html
http://www.newsweek.com/saudi-arabia-911-cia-344693
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandar...h_presidencies
http://www.floridabulldog.org/2011/0...-kept-in-dark/
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-us...0GX1ZA20140902
http://www.heraldtribune.com/opinion...sotas-911-ties
http://nypost.com/2013/12/15/inside-...i-911-coverup/Comment
-
-
Re: Trump to win?
details of which i was unaware but nothing unexpected. i have long assumed that there were saudi elements supporting al-qaeda and other sunni jihadists/terrorists around the world, going back officially at least as far as their support for the mujahideen in afghanistan, and less officially since then. i thought of it as parallel to the role of pakistan's isi in supporting the taliban. the demarcation between the isi's policies and those of the pakistani gov't itself has always been hazy, i assume intentionally so. so it is no shock to learn that saudi officials supported the 9/11 terrorists. i doubt we will ever know how high that support went.Originally posted by Woodsman View Post
the link to the actual documents, btw, doesn't work. nor do similar links in a few of the articles you listed.Comment
-
Re: Trump to win?
Here in the UK we have been up late to watch the latest BBC Four Storyville
Moazzam Begg: Living the War on Terror
Gripping first-hand account by a former Guantanamo detainee that chronicles the rise of modern jihad, its descent into terror and the reaction of the west. Moazzam Begg, a Birmingham-raised British Pakistani, has experienced a generation of conflict. He has been a witness to the escalation of global radicalisation for the past two decades, from the Bosnian conflict to wars in Afghanistan and Syria.
The documentary captures his perspective on the escalation in tensions between the west and Islam - from his forced confession and testimony as a free man to his experience as a British Muslim and living the 'War on Terror'. Begg's story, intercut with news archive, raises important questions about how democracies respond to terrorism and how that response has impacted communities and individuals.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0803hst
His final remarks, based upon his being right at the centre of the whole program for so many years, make for a profound sense of accuracy; that all of our present troubles all point back to the unlawful antics of the CIA, MI5 et al.
I will try and find a way to get hold of the transcript.Comment
-
Re: Trump to win?
Thanks,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irup8L0w4uo
available on youtube...for how long?Comment
-
Re: Trump to win?
Hey Lek, Finally got the chance to watch the Frank video and respond. What he says sounds reasonable enough to me. FWIW, and given the title of the thread, I think Trump could have been something really interesting, and his candidacy almost was. If he had gone true populist--none of the cut the estate tax and top rates for millionaires crap--but true, full blown 'throw the elites out,' even including some more-than-rough-around-the-edges talk about immigration, this might have been a whole different game.
It might not be Trump this time, but Republicans showed they had more backbone to stand up to entrenched interests than Democrats this time around. And there are some fundamental truths...for instance I think it's obviously reasonable to have frank discussions about immigration policy, although, as with most things, one could do it with a bit more compassion and tact than the Donald, even without being fake.
It's still possible that a truly populist candidate will pop out of the Republican Party, flush all the self-serving bankers' economics, and lead a backlash that more independents and even good chunks of the left could get behind.
If I were to bet at this point, I'd say Hillary probably wins, but only one term. What Republicans need then, is just a standard bearer, someone who was smart enough to see what Trump pulled off, and who is willing to buck the establishment the same way, but with a much more populist platform, and a bit more of a boyscout background. The media will still try to tear whoever it is apart. But it'd be much harder. And the crossover appeal from backing off some of the most regressive economic policies I think would be worth any hit he would take with fundraisers or the party elite. Trump did pretty well with the working class, but he walked away from them on that one. Looking at demographics, he could afford to lose a few more college educated folk if he could snap up a wider base of the working class and be in a stronger position, especially in places like PA and OH. A conservative Republican candidate willing to publicly beat up on business moguls along with the political and media power elite would be quite a thing to see. Plus it would force the Democrats into the box of defending all the elite and status quo, which Trump almost did to Hillary, except for his tax plans, which she whacks him on every time she gets. He already took a softer position than her on foreign policy in some ways, so you can go back and forth on that. But proposing a $4 trillion tax cut for millionaires just isn't gonna tickle good chunks of the working folks...no matter how well it plays with the Heritage Foundation...
Comment
-
Re: Trump to win?
We’ll see dcarrigg. Sometimes though I think we all over think this thing and give too much credit or blame to the pols themselves.Originally posted by dcarrigg View Post
In every election cycle, there is messaging that goes too far. Donald Trump seemingly knows no bounds when it comes to messaging. He is outrageous and perhaps like the Dilbert author has said, sees some grand persuasive value in it.
As this campaign has progressed, personally anyway I have taken less not more of an interest in the grand persuasion theory. The reality that I stumble across pretty much daily (hardly a representative cross section of all those voting) is that people don’t need any persuading. Many will vote for Trump and in many of those cases it is even despite Trump being Trump. They want something new. They are sick and tired of the “status quo” and this feeling is the simple manifestation of self-interest.
They don’t much care that he tweeted at 3a.m. or that he frequently comes across as a creepy person. They want something new and it is in their self-interest to pursue the option that in their estimation may most probably provides it. They don’t care what is being talked about on CNN or FOX or Breitbart or by the Dilbert guy. They care that they want something new. They don’t much like Donald Trump as a person, that is until they compare him to option B, the champion of the status quo which brings them logically back to their self-interest, something new. Not personalities. There are only two options here and most voters I come across are plenty grounded enough to see people for what they are. They don’t need an endless barrage of polls and pundits to help them. By the way, this does not make them deplorable, despicable, incorrigible, ignorant, reactionary or irrational. It makes them normal and self-interested.
I think frankly most people pay only a glancing attention to the noise that seems to so consume so many in the political sphere. And this is not because they are “so busy trying to make a living” or “too consumed by corrupt interests, rage, or racism”. It is because they are more fundamentally driven. By what is and has been in front of their noses. And while a lot of them may say it stinks, my sense is even more would simply say, I think it could be better, and then calculate which of the candidates is more likely to deliver better.
As an intellectual debate, “status quo” vs. high risk/high reward Trump is an interesting one. Problem is though I don’t know how much is intellectual and how much is real.
Status quo has a nice and tidy, even convenient box around it. I imagine it has a bold lettered label on the side proclaiming the contents to be “Low Risk”. What is the status quo? Do we understand the mechanisms and effects of it, near term, medium term, and longer term? Is it clear, even to the brightest and most plugged in voters what factors and underlying dynamics exist within the status quo? If it is clear, are voters comfortable that another four years of status quo is low risk? Could it be that timing matters and more status quo is only temporarily low risk then becomes higher risk? Isn’t there a famous economist out there that said the biggest mistake in economics lies in believing that economies are static over time?
Also, I am not so sure the majority of voters deal in the level of intellectual thought necessary to engage in a debate about the theoretical ends of this theoretical spectrum. What is real is what people vote on, and at the level through which they experience, internalize, and understand it.
My assumption is that voters seeing the status quo as low risk, do so not due to their understanding of the inherent risks of the status quo but more that they appreciate the policy set outcomes to date and are for whatever reasons comfortable with it enough to vote for more of it, again and importantly at least when comparing it to the other option. Many others don’t and won’t.
If you are a voter in this election, why would status quo not be seen as equivalent to playing for a tie? Or if building a business, competing to lose only a little money but ensuring no upside. Or if running for office, promising only to do more of what so many voters already find unsatisfactory. OR if voting in an election like this one, akin to not pursuing one’s self interest, as in defying human nature.
The problem, if you care to term it as a problem, is the people, like the system itself, have a hard time with long term investments of their personal capital. They have been subject to the disappointments and disillusionment of the last several years and also to the ornery agency problems of wanting what they want and wanting it now, as opposed to later.
This is in my view the essence of the so called Trump movement. I don’t think it is really a Trump specific movement so much as it is a reflection of human nature. Improve my lot and do it now. This is not a revolution. It is not a sea change. It is not an endorsement or a rejection of one or the other personalities or even degrees of optimal populism displayed in this race. By and large and with some notable unfortunate exceptions on both sides, it is about changing circumstances and rational people voting rationally. I have no idea how much of this is being captured by the various polls, published seemingly by the hour.
The most interesting question to me is whether or not the majority or a sufficient number anyway of American voters feels inclined to vote for something new or not. We’ll see.Comment
-
Re: Trump to win?
duplicate.Comment
-
Re: Trump to win?
Michael Moore Made a Secret Donald Trump Documentary That Premieres Tonight. Bwahaha!Comment
-
Re: Trump to win?
I wonder if Angela Merkel reads iTulip?Originally posted by lakedaemonian View Post
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-1...ess-algorithmsComment
For a concise, readable summary of iTulip concepts developed over the past 16 years and a vision of a challenging next decade and how to navigate it, read Eric Janszen's book "Post Catastrophe Economy".
Join the discussion of today's events with a wide range of professionals with an interest in economics and finance. Register to join our 50,000 plus member registered community from 78 countries today.
Subscribe to iTulip Select for access to the longest running, deep, accurate, and unvarnished macro economic trends analysis and forecasting available, since 1998.
- If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.
Working...
Tweet
Comment