COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Sunday, August 31, 2014

US in the air, Iraqis, Peshmerga and others on the ground, killing ISIS

52 comments:

  1. Ya gotta love it when a plan comes together. :)

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  2. I don't know about the "strategery," but this particular tactic seems to be working pretty well. :)

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  3. It'll get a lot more difficult when they get out into Anbar Province, though.

    That's why it's important to get some practice, and allow the Iraqis to develop a little confidence (and smarts) on the small targets, and where they have the Peshmerga to take the lead.

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  4. Btw, I read in one of the articles, yesterday, that the Iraqis were able to steer a couple of those old Russian planes onto a few targest south of Amerli.

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  5. Saudi Arabia is saved, thank Allah.

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  6. And thank Allah for President Obama.

    He had a plan all along.

    He was just spoofing us, and the enemy, when he said he had no strategy.

    The man is a genius.

    The entire Middle East is better off for him.

    And the Ukrainians too if only they could see it.

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  7. Sometimes, it's better to be lucky, than good.

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  8. The weakness all along was that the US never was able to do for the Iraqis what ISIS did for them: Convince the Iraqis that they had to do the heavy lifting themselves and use the US to assist them.

    Now, if the lesson learned is that a secular state composed of the sane part of society is more important to a functioning modern state than the insane religionists, this can be fixed.

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  9. ISIS has galvanized British voters behind Ukip:

    Ukip are set to win their first Commons seat with a landslide 64 per cent of the vote following the biggest swing in modern political history.

    Turncoat MP Douglas Carswell is set to humiliate David Cameron at the Clacton by-election sparked by his defection, a Survation poll for The Mail on Sunday has revealed.

    The figures – the first test of public opinion since the politician rocked Westminster by defecting to Nigel Farage’s party – predict a record 48 point swing towards Ukip.



    Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2738787/Cameron-faces-Ukip-election-bloodbath-Party-set-win-Commons-seat-shock-poll-reveals-Farages-staggering-44-point-lead-Tories.html#ixzz3C0lUR9YU
    Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

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  10. About 500 demonstrators marched through downtown Detroit this afternoon, chanting pro-Palestinian slogans and urging an end to U.S. aid to Israel.

    The march began on Washington Boulevard outside Cobo Center, where the Islamic Society of North America was hosting its annual convention. The marchers carried Palestinian flags and placards.

    Tensions between Israelis and Palestinians heightened this summer with both sides embroiled in battle. “We are out in support of the Palestinians in Gaza and to call for and end to the Israeli blockade of Gaza,” said Mohammad Salam, 57, of Livonia, who carried a Palestinian flag as he marched.

    Abbas Alwatan, 46, of Dearborn Heights, who came to the U.S. in 1994 as a refugee from Iraq, said: “We need peace for both sides.”

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  11. A UN backed construction authority has said rebuilding Gaza’s battered and neglected housing stock will take at least 20 years as thousands of houses were razed or suffered damage in Israel’s Protective Edge operation.

    Shelter Cluster, an international organization involved in assessing post-conflict reconstruction, which is co-chaired by the UN refugee agency and the Red Cross, says that 17,000 houses were destroyed or severely damaged during the seven week war between Israel and Hamas.

    An additional 5,000 homes still needed work after previous wars, while Gaza with its 1.8 million people squeezed into 5046/km2 of land has a housing deficit of 75,000 houses.

    Palestinian officials have put the cost of rebuilding Gaza at $6 billion, but any reconstruction efforts will be hampered by a blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt since Hamas seized power in Gaza in 2007.

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  12. Israel appropriates massive tract of West Bank land

    Takeover from five Palestinian villages is biggest West Bank land appropriation in 30 years, says Peace Now; settlers laud Netanyahu, Ya’alon, government.

    By Chaim Levinson and Jack Khoury

    Israel’s Civil Administration in the West Bank yesterday announced the takeover of 988 acres (3,799 dunams) belonging to five Palestinian villages between the Etzion settlement bloc and Jerusalem. The move clears the way for construction of a new settlement named Gvaot.

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  13. How bad is the new damage to Gaza?

    It's catastrophic. In its military confrontation with Hamas, Israel destroyed more than 10,000 homes, leveling entire neighborhoods, and displaced nearly a quarter of Gaza's 1.8 million residents. Nearly 1,900 Palestinians were killed, including more than 400 children. Electricity is on only a few hours a day, hospitals are overloaded, and bodies are still believed to be buried under the debris created by Israeli missile attacks. And Gaza was already a humanitarian disaster zone before the bombs started falling. Almost half the population relied on the U.N. for food aid. About 80 percent of the population was living in poverty, and 40 percent was unemployed. "Before the conflict began, the people of Gaza were close to breaking point," said Saleh Saeed, head of the British charity the Disaster Emergency Committee. "Now we are seeing a humanitarian emergency affecting virtually every man, woman, and child.''

    Why was the situation so dire?

    In 2007, two years after Israel ended its decades-long occupation, the militant group Hamas seized control of the territory from its moderate rival Fatah, in a brief but bloody civil war. Hamas doesn't recognize Israel's right to exist and is pledged to its destruction. So when it took power, it intensified the rocket attacks on Israeli towns and cities, and the Jewish state responded by imposing a blockade to keep missiles and other weapons out of Hamas' hands. The blockade banned the importation of everything from building materials to computers to basic foodstuffs. It also barred most exports, prohibited Gazan fishermen from going more than a few miles out to sea, and made it nearly impossible for Gazans to leave the territory. British Prime Minister David Cameron has famously called the strip an "open-air prison."

    Has the blockade worked?

    If the goal was to keep arms out of Hamas' hands, no. The blockage did destroy Gaza's economy: Exports are now at less than 3 percent of what they were pre-blockade. But Hamas built a network of tunnels beneath the Egyptian border and smuggled in food, goods, building materials, and weapons. Egypt initially turned a blind eye to Hamas' activities, but when the pro-Hamas Muslim Brotherhood was ousted from power in Cairo last year, the new military regime destroyed the vast majority of tunnels into Egypt. This severed Gaza's lifeline to the outside world: Food and fuel prices soared, and a shortage of building materials stopped work on 19 of the territory's 20 construction projects. Hamas now insists that any long-term peace deal is contingent on Israel's lifting its blockade.

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  14. Misery on the Gaza Strip It's been called an "open-air prison" housing 1.8 million people. How did Gaza become such a humanitarian disaster? By The Week Staff | August 16, 2014

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  15. Hell, Deuce, the main occupation of the Zionists, here at this blog, is to chide a contributor that barely ever posts.
    Twice in the past six months the "Rat" has made his presence known ....

    And look at how it drives the Israeli agents batty ....

    It is an indicator that they are lost.

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    Replies
    1. You can't remember your own name, rat.

      You are a joke.

      Delete
    2. Some days you are Jack, some days Farmer Rob, some days anonymous, other days something else.

      Are you a schizo?

      Delete
    3. Rat is a figment of your imaginationSun Aug 31, 08:33:00 PM EDT

      I have never used my name here.

      I never claimed to be supercilious.

      No, I am always the same, merely changing your perspective.
      The very fact that you are dancing about which avatar is posting an idea, makes my heart sing.

      Delete
  16. The US is trying to calm things down and bring stability to the ME and the shit birds in the Israeli Netanyahu regime decide to use some political napalm

    Israel confiscates nearly 1,000 acres of Palestinian land in the West Bank


    August 31, 2014 3:00PM ET
    by Renee Lewis

    Israel on Sunday confiscated nearly 1,000 acres of privately owned Palestinian land near an Israeli settlement south of Bethlehem in the West Bank — a move described by Israeli rights group Peace Now as “unprecedented in its scope since the 1980s."

    Settlements built on Palestinian land occupied by Israel, including East Jerusalem, are deemed illegal by the United Nations. Israel’s refusal to halt their construction and expansion has at times arrested the peace process and increased resentment and distrust among Palestinians.

    In a statement published on its website, Peace Now condemned the latest land confiscation and said it further damaged the chance of achieving a last peace between Israelis and Palestinians based on a two-state solution.

    “Peace Now views this declaration as proof that Prime Minister (Benjamin) Netanyahu does not aspire for a new ‘Diplomatic Horizon’ but rather, he continues to put obstacles to the two state vision and promote a one state solution,” the group said.

    Earlier this month, as Israel and Hamas exchanged blows in a deadly battle that devastated the Gaza Strip, Netanyahu expressed his hope that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas would take part in the “new diplomatic horizon” the prime minister said had dawned on the region.

    Israel-Gaza flashpoint

    Sunday's confiscation of Palestinian territory is the latest and largest in a series of land grabs near the Israeli settlement of Gvaot, said Peace Now.

    Palestinian landowners in the villages of Surif, Husan, Al-Jabaa, and the city of Bethlehem were given 45 days to submit formal objections to the announced confiscation in Israeli courts, Palestinian news website Maan reported. If the landowners do not contest the order, territories seized will be declared Israeli state-owned land.

    In the past, Palestinians have complained that their objections were largely ignored or denied by Israeli authorities that seek to create facts on the ground to bolster claims on Palestinian territories in a future peace settlement.

    "The intention of appropriating the land is to create territorial continuity between the Green Line and settlements of Beitar Illit, Kfar Etzion, and Gvaot," Haaretz reported. "The announcement is the latest in a series of plans designed to attach the Etzion settlement bloc to Jerusalem and its environs. Some (243 acres) in the area were declared state land last April."


    Israel has announced nearly 1,500 new settlement homes since mid-June, Maan reported, which could house more than 6,000 new settlers in the West Bank. Israeli settlement activity increased dramatically in April during the last round of failed peace negotiations.

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  17. Our strategic liability: It would be an improvement if we could raise their status to “worthless”

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    1. We should ally with Hamas, and ISIS.

      To get things done in this world you ally with the true killers.

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    2. Hamas has no correlation with ISIS, except through the Israeli propagandists.

      Delete
  18. From Juan Cole:

    The three immediate front lines in the struggle to push ISIL back out of Iraq are Diyala Province to the east, al-Anbar Province to the west, and Salahuddin province just north of Baghdad. Amerli is in southern Salahuddin.

    If the Iraqi forces had the victory they claim there, it appears to have been a result of a combination of forces. US air strikes softened up ISIL on Saturday. Kurdish Peshmerga joined the fight. Thousands of Badr Corps militiamen, originally trained by Iran and associated with the Shiite political party, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, joined in the fight. These are essentially Arabic-speaking counterparts of the Iranian revolutionary guards. Salaam Brigades of Muqtada al-Sadr are also said to have been involved.

    Amerli, though, may not tell us so much about the battles to come. It is a largely Shiite town, so the esprit de corps of the Iraqi Army and the Shiite militias was bucked up by the prospect of rescuing it. Apparently the same enthusiasm is not there for reducing a strongly Sunni town like nearby Tikrit, where the local population would be hostile to a Shiite-Kurdish-Baghdad Army conquest.

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  19. The Iranians are helpful to US interests, the Israelis less so.

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    Replies
    1. We should ally with Iran, who promises a world without Israel, and without the USA.

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  20. Here is what we really ought to do -

    Idaho BobSun Aug 31, 04:52:00 PM EDT

    What should the USA do in Iraq now? The President ought to get up there, and not at some presser and not in some tan suit and soft shoes off the golf course, and say "It is the policy of the United States of America to support an independent Kurdish State".

    Then invite the Kurds to request from us economic and military aid including troops as they see they may be needed.

    Then say "Goodnight, Fellow Americans".
    ...................

    My wife was downloading something called Open Office so I could write and print out letters and mucked up my brand new computer.

    She is wiping it clean and starting over as I type.

    Thus I am using this old crapper again for which I don't have a google account.

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  21. If we had a man with a brain in the White House we wouldn't be in this pickle.

    The moron took the troops out too soon.

    What an idiot.

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  22. Does anyone here but myself recall the days, quite some time ago now, when Israel was building some apartment complexes in Gaza for the Gazans?

    Those that support a group that is dedicated to genocide and says so in its Charter ought to be truly ashamed of themselves.

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    Replies
    1. This was in the pre-Hamas days.

      Delete
    2. Now "He's da ho Bob" has lost his pass word again?

      Or is he just another committee?

      Delete
    3. Bob, Google accounts are not set to computers.
      They are for people.

      Just sign-in, it does not make any difference what computer you are on.
      Get up to speed, please.

      Or go away.

      Delete
    4. Why are you such a silly nasty shit?

      Delete
  23. Ah, but it does make a difference what computer I am on. You see, my wife has been using this one, and she does not desire for me to put a google account on it.

    Someone asked, why are you such a silly nasty shit, and you did not answer, but only gave a silly nasty answer.

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    Replies
    1. Your ignorance is legend, Bob.

      So it remains

      Delete
    2. Your ignorance is legend, rat.

      So it remains.

      Plus, as anon said above, you are a silly nasty shit.

      By your own admission, too.

      "I am a professional asshole."

      quote from desert rat aka Jack Hawkins, aka Farmer Rob aka anonymous

      Cheers !

      Delete
    3. Got a reference for the quote, Bob?
      A date stamp?

      Delete
  24. She tells me she nearly has the new computer fixed up now.....

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  25. Question:

    WHY have the United States of America, Canada, and the European Union designated Hamas as a Terrorist Organization?

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    Replies
    1. What does it mean to be designated a Terrorist Organization?

      Delete
    2. How does an organization become so designated?

      Who decides, and how?

      What are the steps that are adhered to, before the designation is made?

      Delete
    3. What happens after the designation is made?

      Delete
    4. Tell us the answers Uncle Bob!

      Delete
    5. Come on Uncle Bob, don't be 'Da Ho', tell us the answers!

      Delete
  26. Saudi Arabia Remains on U.N. Human Rights Council despite 19 Beheadings, including One for “Sorcery”

    ... one nation that does a lot of beheadings is on the United Nations’ Human Rights Council. Lately, in fact, Saudi Arabia can’t seem to get enough beheadings. Its government has executed at least 19 people using this method since August 4, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW).

    Of the 19, eight were found guilty of non-violent offenses; seven for drug smuggling and one for committing sorcery.

    “Any execution is appalling, but executions for crimes such as drug smuggling or sorcery that result in no loss of life are particularly egregious,”

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  27. If gentleman were to peruse Wikileaks, why he'd discover that:
    Arab Allies Fund Terror Groups Like Al-Qaeda From Saudi Arabia Golden Chain of Financiers.

    Beyond that, a well read an of breading would know that the "Golden Chain" is a list of purported sponsors of Al Qaeda that was seized in March 2002. It was during a raid by Bosnian police of the premises of the Benevolence International Foundation in Sarajevo.

    The list includes at least 20 top Saudi and Gulf States financial sponsors including bankers, businessmen, and former ministers.

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  28. Which brings to the table the question of whether or not Saudi Arabia is on the "Terrorist Organization" list.

    This would be telling as to what qualifies to be a "Terrorist Organization"

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  29. Question:

    WHY have the United States of America, Canada, and the European Union designated Hamas as a Terrorist Organization?


    Ash?

    Deuce?

    Quirk?

    Rufus?



    WHY?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies

    1. What does it mean to be designated a Terrorist Organization?

      How does an organization become so designated?

      Who decides, and how?

      What are the steps that are adhered to, before the designation is made?

      What happens after the designation is made?

      Tell us the answers Uncle Bob!


      Come on Uncle Bob, don't be 'Da Ho', tell us the answers!

      Delete