Iran: The Big Sell | Foreign Policy Research Institute. Hat tip to JK.
Category Archives: Foreign Policy
Iran: The Big Sell | Foreign Policy Research Institute
Filed under Foreign Policy, General Interest, Military, Politics, Terrorism
Don’t forget to watch the sleight of hand
While all the oxygen has been sucked up by Donald Trump, the Hillary Clinton email server fell to the back pages. She and her minions are defying a federal judge’s orders:
So, while the press and we blabber on about Donald Trump, his friend, Hillary Clinton, and her girls club are stalling and doing the latest version of the Rose Law Firm billing records hokey-pokey dance. They’re particularly adept at the “shaking it all about” part – deflecting and obfuscating, hoping eventually those asking questions can be cast as the villains and Saint Hillary can boldly prance around proclaiming she’s been the victim of a vicious right-wing inquisition again.
The rule of law is for little people, not for Hillary Clinton.
Filed under Culture Wars, Foreign Policy, General Interest, Politics
A short Mugabe primer
Here is another link to read, ” Cecil the Lion and Robert Mugabe”, by Robin Wright at The New Yorker. Wright clarifies the situation:
“Mugabe’s autocratic rule has remained almost impossible to investigate or challenge. Opposition parties are officially permitted but unofficially not tolerated. “Human-rights abuses range from violent attacks, and sometimes murderous ones, on opposition figures to detentions and harassment,” Roth said. In June, the State Department accused Zimbabwe of not only curtailing freedoms of speech, press, assembly, association, and movement but also of abducting and torturing dissidents—with no recourse. “Corruption occurred at every level of the police force,” the annual U.S. human-rights report declared.
Last Friday, Zimbabwe demanded the extradition of Walter J. Palmer, the Minnesota trophy hunter who shot Cecil with an arrow and then, forty hours later, finished him off with a gun. The country’s environmental minister announced that the “foreign poacher” had to be held to account for his crime.”
Filed under Culture Wars, Foreign Policy, General Interest, Politics
Kurdistan?
Talk about serendipity, just after responding to Kinnison making the case for the Kurds, I read the latest article by G. Murphy Donovan at the New English Review, “Reform Islam? Recognize Kurdistan!” GMD writes:
“If the democratic West seeks to win the war of ideas with the theocratic East, it could do worse than support the national aspirations of a unique culture such as Kurdistan. Persians and Arabs have had their day, yet both are still yoked by religious repression. The time may have come to reward the kind of Muslim polity that the rest of the world can live with.
Recognizing Kurdistan sends a powerful message to Islam. Statehood for the Kurds could spark a reformation that enlightens the entire Muslim world. Indeed, Kurdistan would be, for example, a much more reliable Muslim “partner” in NATO than Turkish backsliders. A Kurdish state might not be the final answer, yet Kurds are surely a better bet than Turks or Palestinians – and a more enlightened addition to the community of tolerant, free nations.”
I think you guys are onto something and combine this idea with the ideas in a SSI paper from 2014 by Huba Wass de Czege, BG (ret.), that I mentioned in a May blog post, “A SSI Paper on defeating the Islamic State” and we might be on our way to a real strategy.
JK, yes, you’re right, the PKK does complicate matters and they are designated terrorists by both Turkey and the United States, but the Turks will use the latest terrorist attacks to crack down on Kurds, in general, if history is any guide.
Filed under Food for Thought, Foreign Policy, General Interest, History, Military, Politics
Some fresh ideas on “nation-building”
I like considering fresh ideas to approaching old problems and this article in the latest Strategic Studies Institute newsletter looks at fragile states in a new way. Instead of looking at fragile states remedies from a top down state-building approach, Dr. Robert D. Lamb states that outsiders, to include international state-building groups, can’t fix fragile states and he suggests a bottom up approach, recognizing that some subnational groups within fragile states manage to organize themselves and even govern themselves in some cases, despite the dysfunction at the national level. His ideas deserve consideration, in light of the dismal failure of “nation-building”:
“Strategic Insights: Fragile States Cannot Be Fixed With State-Building”
Filed under Foreign Policy, General Interest, Politics
Top Clinton aide accused of receiving overpayments at State Department – Washington Post
Filed under Foreign Policy, General Interest, Politics
Hillary Clinton emails: U.S. intelligence preparing for massive breach of classified data – Washington Times
Filed under Foreign Policy, General Interest, Politics
Clinton national security train ready to derail
“Data in Clinton’s ‘secret’ emails came from 5 intelligence agencies”
McClatchyDC ran the above linked story July 30, 2015, which belies the parsing and prevaricating proffered by the smartest woman in the world. This revelation comes after an examination of just 40 of the tens of thousands of emails Hillary Clinton’s lawyers turned over to the State Department. One can only wonder what the total number of breaches of sending classified information via an insecure private email serve will be.
Most assuredly the odds are that several countries’ foreign intelligence services knew of her private server and have preserved all of her emails for future use to embarrass and/or blackmail her. She and her simpering court jesters seem to be the only ones oblivious to the reality that she is already compromised and an unparalleled national security risk among all the other candidates for President (past or present).
Filed under Foreign Policy, General Interest, Politics
No sacred cows in America
In America many public figures attain sacred cow status, whereby the media turns a blind-eye to unpleasant facts that might challenge the mythological images they helped perpetuate. In our current state where the American public indolently chews its cud, neither questioning what news it is fed nor steadfastly demanding the truth from its elected officials, we, the American people, must begin to make cow tipping our sacred cows, especially the elected ones, a duty. I am not suggesting just digging for dirt for the sake of destroying people, but we’ve got liars, corrupt charlatans and even criminals running our country and when information emerges, rather than burying our heads in the sand, we should seek the truth.
I’ve written about John McCain numerous times and I’ve listened to him speak many, many times (hard to miss, since the media chose him as the “voice” of the GOP). He waxes on about needing a strategy to deal with the Islamic State, but for a supposed military expert, his strategic vision seems rather myopic, lacks depth perception and definitely suffers from limited peripheral vision. McCain deftly parlayed his “war hero” status into a political career, being conferred sacred cow status along the way. Beyond the media-generated circus with Donald Trump and the “war hero” flap, serious questions, that go to the heart of John McCain’s character should be answered:
http://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-when-tokyo-rose-ran-for-president/
There are lots of interesting links in this story worth reading, but make sure to read the 2010 Sydney Schanberg article at The American Conservative:
Filed under Foreign Policy, General Interest, History, Military, Politics
libertybelle diaries 