Central Perk: 10 aug. 2014

duminică, 10 august 2014

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

US Produces Evidence Rebels Shot Down MH17
Obama Calls Iraq "Long Term Project"; US Bombs Its Own Weapons; "These People Are Coming Here" Says Senator Graham
Weekend Entertainment: Dr. Strangelove vs. Mario Draghi

US Produces Evidence Rebels Shot Down MH17

Posted: 10 Aug 2014 11:36 PM PDT

At long last, the US produced evidence the rebels shot down MH17. Here is the damning proof.

Excuse me. I meant to say German TV Ridicules US "Evidence" In Ukraine

The tenacity of Western attempts to give the Ukrainian crisis an explicitly anti-Russian slant has been noted by a German political satire show, which ridiculed the apparent manner the United States presents its evidence.

The host of Extra 3, the comedy show, got the program going with a few pieces of 'evidence': a US-photographed satellite image that supposedly depicts Russian complicity in cross-border fire with Ukraine, then a picture that appeared to be drawn by a child with color crayons.

Christian Ehring pulled no punches when sharing his frank belief that the coverage of the Ukrainian crisis by the Western media has been full of holes since its start in February.

"Mr. President!" he said, impersonating a White House staffer rushing to bring evidence to President Obama – "I'm pleased to inform you that we finally have evidence! …I apologize, this is a picture my daughter drew… oh, here it is: I drew this one myself!" Ehring proclaimed.

"Really, that's their only proof? This picture? The American and the West have hundreds of agents in eastern Ukraine. What are they doing there? Keeping an eye on those who violate parking rules in the center of Donetsk?" he added.

Extra 3 Video Proof

Unless you can understand German, please forward to about the 1:20 mark then laugh.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Obama Calls Iraq "Long Term Project"; US Bombs Its Own Weapons; "These People Are Coming Here" Says Senator Graham

Posted: 10 Aug 2014 01:18 PM PDT

Total Failure

Senator McCain and others want to send more weapons to Iraq, as we bomb US weapons already there (but now in hands of Isis).

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton blames Obama for not sending weapons to Syrian moderates, even though we did train Syrian rebels in Jordan.

Intervention, past and present, has been a total failure.

US Bombs Its Own Weapons

Let's tie the above thoughts together starting with The US Bombing Its Own Guns Perfectly Sums Up America's Total failure in Iraq.

In the decade since the 2003 US-led Iraq invasion, the US has spent a fortune training and arming the Iraqi army in the hopes of readying it to secure the country once America left. That meant arming the Iraqi army with high-tech and extremely expensive American-made guns, tanks, jeeps, artillery, and more.

But the Iraqi army has been largely a failure. When ISIS invaded northern Iraq from Syria in June, the Iraqi forces deserted or retreated en masse. Many of them abandoned their American equipment. ISIS scooped it up themselves and are now using it to rampage across Iraq, seizing whole cities, terrorizing minorities, and finally pushing into even once-secure Kurdish territory. All with shiny American military equipment.

So the US air strikes against ISIS are in part to destroy US military equipment, such as the artillery ISIS has been using against Kurdish forces. The absurdity runs deep: America is using American military equipment to bomb other pieces of American military equipment halfway around the world.

The American weapons the US gave the Iraqi army totally failed at making Iraq secure and have become tools of terror used by an offshoot of al-Qaeda to terrorize the Iraqis that the US supposedly liberated a decade ago. And so now the US has to use American weaponry to destroy the American weaponry it gave Iraqis to make Iraqis safer, in order to make Iraqis safer.

It keeps going: the US is intervening on behalf of Iraqi Kurds, our ally, because their military has old Russian-made weapons, whereas ISIS, which is America's enemy, has higher-quality American weapons. "[Kurdish forces] are literally outgunned by an ISIS that is fighting with hundreds of millions of dollars of U.S. military equipment seized from the Iraqi Army who abandoned it," Ali Khedery, a former American official in Iraq, told the New York Times.

Hillary Blames Obama

Hillary Clinton is in a desperate attempt to distance herself from president Obama in 2016 presidential bid. Her strategy has been to side with McCain regarding Obama's failure to send more weapons to "moderates" in Syria attempting to overthrow Syrian president Bashar Hafez al-Assad.

The Financial Times reports Clinton Takes Swipe at Obama Over Syria

Washington's failure to arm the Syrian rebels contributed directly to the rapid rise of the Islamic militants now taking over large swaths of northern Iraq, according to Hillary Clinton, the former US secretary of state.

"I know that the failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who were the originators of the protests against (Syrian President Bashar al-Assad) – there were Islamists, there were secularists, there was everything in the middle – left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled," Mrs Clinton said.

Civil War Hypocrisy

Apparently it's OK for the US to get involved in a civil war half-way around the world but it's not OK for Russia to get involved in a civil war on it's own doorstep.

And contrary to stated opinion of Clinton, one can make a case we got too involved in Syria, with a secret training base in Jordan.

Syria Blowback

Please consider Blowback! U.S. trained Islamists who joined Isis

Syrian rebels who would later join the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or Isis, were trained in 2012 by U.S. instructors working at a secret base in Jordan, according to informed Jordanian officials.

The officials said dozens of future Isis members were trained at the time as part of covert aid to the insurgents targeting the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Syria. The officials said the training was not meant to be used for any future campaign in Iraq.

In February 2012, WND was first to report the U.S., Turkey and Jordan were running a training base for the Syrian rebels in the Jordanian town of Safawi in the country's northern desert region.

Last March, the German weekly Der Spiegel reported Americans were training Syrian rebels in Jordan.

According to Hillary (and senator McCain) things would have turned out better if only we trained more rebels and gave them more military equipment as well.

Don't worry, those weapons never would have gotten into Isis hands, even though it happened. These clowns claim to predict the future when they cannot even predict the past.

Long-Term Mission

Today president Obama said The strikes against militants will be a "long-term project."

The administration's actions drew stepped-up criticism from Republican lawmakers today, who on the Sunday network talk shows accused the president of doing too little, too late against a widening terrorist threat.

"Mr. President, if you don't adjust your strategy, these people are coming here," said Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican on the Armed Services Committee.

"If you don't hit them in Syria, you'll never solve the problem in Iraq," Graham said.

Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican, said the strikes are "clearly very, very ineffective to say the least," as Islamic State "continues to make gains everywhere." McCain urged airstrikes against Islamic State in Syria, sending aid to the Free Syrian Army, better training for the Kurds in Iraq and sending more military equipment to Erbil.

"This is turning into, as we had predicted for a long time, a regional conflict which does pose a threat to the security of the United States of America," McCain said on CNN's "State of the Union" program.

Regional Conflict

Note the irony in McCain's "prediction" about a regional crisis.

Yes it has, and McCain, Clinton, and all the idiots who supported the war in Iraq are to blame.

"These People Are Coming Here"

Senator Graham stepped up the warmonger plate and smashed a home run straight away center field with his comment "These people are coming here".

That's always a popular slogan to ignite fear and support for war. And it works every time too.

Goering at the Nuremberg Trials

Please recall what Reichsmarschall Hermann Wilhelm Göring (in English his name is also spelled as Hermann Goering) Nazi founder of the Gestapo, Head of the Luftwaffe, said at the Nuremberg Trials.

Here is a clip of the interview in Goering's cell in prison, after the war.

Göring: Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.

Gilbert: There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.

Göring: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.

Follow the Money

Raúl Ilargi says Follow The Money All The Way To The Next War

Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism had some pertinent comments in her reply Ilargi: Follow The Money All The Way To The Next War.

What is the evidence behind US claims of Russian responsibility for the downing of MH17? After Colin Powell's Iraq WMD canard, it's remarkable that anyone accepts "trust me" from American officials, but remarkably, that's where things stand.

One excuse offered for the failure of the US to support its claims is that the military apparatus does not want to expose its information-gathering capabilities. But there's another, more obvious reason. The officialdom does not want to establish the precedent of being required to deliver the goods in order to foment war. That would mean they'd be expected to do so in the future, and the failure to be forthcoming would be seen as a sign that the officialdom was making stuff up. Needing to establish the legitimacy of their case would constrain their game.

Who Needs Evidence?

Evidence? Who needs evidence when you have the "Bush Doctrine" of preemptive strikes.

The phrase "Bush Doctrine" was rarely used by members of the Bush administration. The expression was used at least once, though, by Vice President Dick Cheney, in a June 2003 speech in which he said, "If there is anyone in the world today who doubts the seriousness of the Bush Doctrine, I would urge that person to consider the fate of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq."

Yes, Dick Cheney, let's all consider the fate of Iraq and the effectiveness of the "Bush Doctrine" of using trumped up evidence, lies, deceit, and torture, and preemptive warfare resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, and the formation of Isis in the wake of that failure.

Prepare for War

Prepare for war. Possibly on multiple fronts. But don't worry, war is a "small price to pay".

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Weekend Entertainment: Dr. Strangelove vs. Mario Draghi

Posted: 10 Aug 2014 10:37 AM PDT

For those needing a weekend humorous reprieve, I offer this email from Noel in Vancouver Canada.

Hi Mish

Couldn't resist this. Look at Mario Draghi's picture and tell me Peter Sellers couldn't have made a comedy out of that!

"Doctor Strangelove, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bailout"

Keep up the great writing!

Noel
Vancouver, Canada

Peter Sellers vs. Mario Draghi

Slim Pickens Clip

If somehow you missed the movie, do yourself a favor and play this full video link or better yet, rent a copy.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Seth's Blog : Tribes and their perceived threats

Tribes and their perceived threats

Intermarriage has always been a problem, all the way back to Romeo and Juliet (and West Side Story, of course). Intermarriage de-demonizes the ‘other’, and the insecure tribe member sees this as an existential threat, the beginning of the end of tribal cohesion.

Gangs in LA view high school as a threat. A kid who graduates from high school has options, can see a way up, which decreases the power of the gang and its leaders. Public school is seen as a threat by some tribes, a secular indoctrination and an exposure to other cultures and points of view that might destabilize what has been built over generations. And digital audio is a threat to those in the vinyl tribe, because at some point, some members may decide they’ve had enough of the old school.

Lately, two significant threats seen by some tribes are the scientific method and the power of a government (secular, or worse, representing a majority tribe). One fear is that once someone understands the power of inquiry, theory, testing and informed criticism, they will be unwilling to embrace traditional top-down mythology. The other is that increased government power will enforce standards and rituals that undermine the otherness that makes each tribe distinct.

If a tribe requires its members to utter loyalty oaths to be welcomed [“the president is always right, carbon pollution is a myth, no ____ allowed (take your pick)”] they will bump into reality more and more often. I had a music teacher in elementary school who forbade students to listen to pop music, using a valiant but doomed-to-fail tactic of raising classical music lovers.

Tribes started as self-defending groups of wanderers. It didn't take long, though, for them to claim a special truth, for them to insulate themselves from an ever-changing world.

In a modern, connected era, successful tribes can’t thrive for long by cutting themselves off from the engines that drive our culture and economy. What they can do is engage with and attract members who aren’t there because the tribe is right and everyone else is wrong, but instead, the modern tribe quite simply says, “you are welcome here, we like you, people like us are part of a thing like this, we'll watch your back.” It turns out that this is enough.