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luni, 16 iunie 2014

Watch: President Obama Addresses UC Irvine Graduates

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Watch: President Obama Addresses UC Irvine Graduates

On Saturday afternoon, President Obama addressed the University of California, Irvine's 2014 graduating class and challenged them to get involved in one of our planet's most pressing issues: the growing threat of a rapidly changing climate.

The President encouraged this generation of graduates to speak out on this important issue, and look beyond the cynicism and climate deniers.

It's a powerful call to action -- watch President Obama's full commencement address here.

IPv6, C-Blocks, and How They Affect SEO

Posted: 15 Jun 2014 05:14 PM PDT

Posted by Tom-Anthony

You have probably heard about IPv6, but you might remain a bit confused about the details of what it is, how it works, and what it means for the future of the Internet. This post gives a quick introduction to IPv6, and discusses the SEO implications that could follow from the IPv6 roll-out (touching specifically on the concept of C-Blocks). A quick caveat: This stuff is hard, so let me know if you spot any missteps!

A very brief intro to IP addresses (v4) & c-blocks

You're likely familiar with IP addresses; they are usually written in the following format:

Example IP address (IPv4).

This format of an IP address is the common format in use everywhere, and is called IPv4. There are four bytes in an IP address like this, with each byte separated by a period (meaning 32 bits in total, for the geeks). Every (sub)-domain resolves to at least one such IP address (it might be several, but lets ignore that for now). Nice and simple.

Now a main SEO concept that comes out of that is the idea of C-Blocks (this shouldn't be confused with Class C IPs; a different thing people often confuse for C-Blocks), which is a concept that has been around in the SEO space for a decade or more. Very simply, the idea is that if the first 3 bytes of the IP address are identical, then we consider the two IP address to be in the same C-Block:

Two example IP addresses in the same C-Block (blue).

So why is this interesting to us? Why is this important to SEO? The old-school logic is that if you have two IPs that are in the same C-Block, then the sites are quite likely related and thus the links between these sites (on average) should not count as strongly in terms of PageRank. My personal opinion is that nowadays there are many many other signals available to Google to make these same sorts of connections and so the C-Block issue is far less important than it once was.

So, as it turns out (surprise!) the two IP addresses above are indeed related:

Disney and ABC have a near identical IP address, both in the same C-Block.

Sure enough they are both companies in the Disney family. It makes some sense that links between these two domains probably shouldn't indicate as much trust as links from similarly large, but unrelated, sites.

Introducing IPv6

So, there is a problem with IP addresses in the format above (IPv4); there are "only" 4 billion of them, and we have essentially exhausted the supply. We have so many connected devices nowadays, and the creators for IPv4 never envisioned the vastness of the Internet 30 years from when it was released. Luckily enough, they saw the problem early on andstarted working on a successor, IPv6 (IPv5 was used for another unreleased protocol).

IPv6 address format:

IPv6 addresses are much longer than IPv4 addresses, the format looks thus:

An example IPv6 address.

Things just got serious! There are now 8 blocks rather than 4, and rather than each block being 1 byte (which were represented as a number from 0-255), each block is instead 2 bytes represented by 4 hexadecimal characters. There are 128 bits in an IPv6 address, meaning instead of a measly 4,000,000,000 like IPv4, IPv6 has around 340,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 addresses.

In the next few years we'll be entering a world where hundreds of devices in homes will all be capable of networking and needing an IP address and IPv6 will help make that a reality. However, we are also going to see websites starting to use IPv6 addresses more and more commonly, and a few years from now we'll start to see website that only have an IPv6 address.

CIDR Notation

Before we go any further, it is important to introduce an important concept for understanding IP addresses, which is called CIDR notation.

IPv6 exclusively uses CIDR notation (e.g. /24), so the SEO community will need to understand this concept. It is really simple, but normally really badly explained.

As we mentioned, IPv4 IP addresses are 32 bits long, so if we were sick and twisted we could look at the IP address as binary:

Example IPv4 IP address shown in dot decimal format and as binary.

Colloquially, CIDR notation could be described as a format to describe a group of closely related IP addresses, in a similar fashion to how a C-Block works. It is represented by a number after a slash appended to a partial IP address (e.g. 199.181.132/24) which states how many of the initial bits (binary digits) are the identical. CIDR is flexible and we could use it to describe a C-Block would be /24 because the first 24 bits (3 groups of 8 bits) of the address are the same:

Two IP addresses in the same C-Block. The first 24 bits (3 blocks of 8 bits) are identical.

This can be represented in this case as 199.181.132/24.

Now CIDR notation is more refined and more accurate than the concept of C-Block; in the example above the two IP addresses are not just in the same C-Block they are even more closely related as 6 bits in the last block are also identical. In CIDR notation we could say both these IP addresses are in the 199.181.132/30 block to indicate that the 30 leading bits are identical.

Notice that with CIDR the smaller the number after the slash, the more IP addresses in that block (because we're saying fewer leading bits must be identical).

IPv6 & C-Blocks?

Now CIDR /24 is not exactly catchy and so someone made up the name "C-Block" to make this easier to talk about, but it doesn't extend so easily to IPv6. So, the question is, can we generalise something similar?

The point of a C-Block from Google's perspective and the perspective of our SEO is solely to identify whether links are originating on the same ISP network. So that should obviously remain the focus. So my best guess would be to focus on how these IPs are allocated to ISPs (ISPs normally get large continuous blocks of IP addresses they can then use for their customers' websites).

In IPv4 ISPs would own bunches of C-Blocks, and so if you could see multiple links originating from the same C-Block it implied the sites were hosted together, and there was a far greater chance they were somehow related.

Illustration of an "ISP Block" (/32); the blue part of the address is stable and

indicates the ISP. The red part can change and represents addresses at that ISP.

With IPv6, I believe that ISPs will be given /32 blocks (the leading 32 bits will be the same, leaving 96 bits to create addresses for their customers), which they will then assign to their users in /64 blocks (I asked a few people, this tends to be what is happening, but I have read that this might sometimes be /48 blocks instead). Notice that ISPs now have an order of magnitude more IP addresses (each) than the whole internet had before!

This also means each end user will get more IP addresses for their own network than there are in total IPv4 IP addresses. Welcome to the Internet of things!

These ISPs may be serving home users so each house gets a block of IPv6 addresses (for the techies: IPv6 does away with NAT for the most part, I believe - all the devices in your house will get a 'real' IP) for their devices. In the other scenario the ISP is for servers, and here the servers get assigned a /64 block; this is the case we are interested in.

Illustration of a "Customer Block" (/64); the blue part indicates a particular customer.

The red part can change and represents addresses belonging to that customer.

So, I think the equivalent of a C-Block in IPv6 land would be a /32 block because that is what an ISP will usually be assigned (and allows them to then carve that up into 4 billion /64 blocks for their users!).

Furthermore, in IPv6 the minimum allocation is /32 so a single /32 block cannot run across multiple ISPs as I understand it, so there is no way two IPs in the same /32 could belong to two different ISPs. If our goal is to continue to examine whether sites are more likely related than two random sites, then knowing they are on the same ISP (which is what C-Blocks do) is our goal.

Also, if you chose /64 then each ISP has 4 billion of these blocks to give away, and that is way too sparse to identify associations between sites in different blocks.

However, there is a counter argument here. Note that a single server having a /64 block of IPs means that every website should have a different IPv6 address (even if it shares an IPv4 address).

Geek side note: indeed, the "host" http header accepts an IPv6 address to distinguish which site on the server you want.

So now a single server with multiple sites will have a separate IP for each of those sites (it is also possible that the server has multiple IPv6 blocks assigned, one for each different customer - I think this is actually the intention and hopefully becomes the reality).

So, if I am running a network of websites I'm interlinking with one another then it is quite likely that if I just have a single hosting account that all these are in the same /64 block of IPv6 addresses. That should be a very strong signal that that sites are linked closely. However, I'm fairly sure that those trying to be manipulative will try to avoid this scenario and end up trying to get in another block of addresses for each site. But if they are with the same ISP then they'll still be in the same /32 block.

My recommendation on an IPv6 C-Block

So, if you followed all that then I'd suggest:

Sites in the same /32 block as before would be equivalent to the same C-Block as previously.
Sites in the same /64 block either are on the exact same server, or belong to the same customer, so are even closer related than C-Block level.

These need easier more accessible names, how about:

"ISP Block" for /32 blocks.
"Customer Block" for /64 blocks.

Then we would be able to say things like:

In IPv6 IP addresses in the same ISP Blocks most closely resemble the relationship of IPs in the same C-Block in IPv4.
In IPv6 IP addresses in the same User Block are likely very closely related, and probably belong to the same person/organisation.

What should I take away from all this?

As I mentioned further up, I'm not convinced that IPv4 C-Blocks are as important from Google's perspective as they once were, as they can likely access multiple other signals to tie sites together. Whilst still useful as a substitute for those signals for SEOs, who don't have all Google's resources, they aren't something that should guide your decision making. If you are running legitimate sites, you shouldn't be concerned about hosting them on the same C-Block. In fact, I'd advise against that as it could look manipulative to Google (who will likely work it out anyway).

With IPv6, I think the "Customer Blocks" could be a very important SEO feature, as it is an even closer relationship than C-Blocks were, and this is something that Google will likely make use of. It is still going to take a while until IPv6 becomes prevalent enough that all of this is important, so for the moment this is just something to have on your radar as it will begin to increase in importance over the next couple of years.

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Seth's Blog : The panda and the bicycle

The panda and the bicycle

Many tribes gain in power and connection by finding their opposite, by identifying the choices that members won't make.

"People like us don't do things like that."

So the vegan tribe obviously chooses to not eat meat. And during the key formative years, the Apple tribe wouldn't deign to buy Microsoft products. The Amish build solidarity and define themselves by the machines they choose not to use, and for a long time, many professional photographers wouldn't use digital cameras.

The smart choice is to understand that tribal identity is based on choices, not on facts, based on allegiances, not the intentional disregard of the rest of the world. Some sects of the motorcycle tribe don't wear helments... not because they believe it's safer (and thus denying the obvious) but because it's a choice they want to make.

Shortly after Copernicus rocked the world by proving that the Earth goes around the Sun (and not vice versa), many religions condemned this insight, "people like us don't believe things like that."

The problem is this: science is not the opposite of a tribe, just like the panda is not the opposite of the bicycle and the avocado isn't the opposite of the semicolon. Facts are different than choices. The scientific method is a process, a series of questions and iterations that is distinct from what any particular observer chooses to believe. So yes, professional scientists have a culture and belong to various tribes, but no, that culture is not the same as the scientific method. And yes, scientists are often wrong, but scientists following the method correct their mistakes.

The same thing is true about accounting. When your balance sheet or your direct mail numbers don't add up, don't blame the process that counted them.

Tribes thrive when they connect and coordinate and synchronize. They work when they create a cultural connection. But they can't thrive when they merely embrace (or deny) the reality of the world around them.

You can choose not to ride a bicycle, but it makes no sense to deny that bicycles exist, regardless of how important your tribe thinks the panda bear is... unrelated ideas, ideas that don't benefit from being put in opposition to one another.

As you organize and lead your tribe, then, the opportunity is to be crystal clear about what you stand for, but to give the alert observers within your clan the ability to stick with you and what they believe without having to pretend that the world outside doesn't actually exist.

• Email to a friend •

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Time Lapse Image of Growing US Political Polarization; Root Cause of the Shrinking Middle Class
Ukraine Gas Talks Break Down; Don't Worry Until September
Tony Blair's Disingenuous, Self-Serving Analysis of Iraq

Time Lapse Image of Growing US Political Polarization; Root Cause of the Shrinking Middle Class

Posted: 15 Jun 2014 10:59 PM PDT

The above graph is part of a PEW research study on Political Polarization in the American Public.

In 2004, only about one-in-ten Americans were uniformly liberal or conservative across most values. Today, the share who are ideologically consistent has doubled: 21% express either consistently liberal or conservative opinions across a range of issues – the size and scope of government, the environment, foreign policy and many others. Looking at 10 political values questions tracked since 1994, more Democrats now give uniformly liberal responses, and more Republicans give uniformly conservative responses than at any point in the last 20 years.

To be sure, those with across-the-board liberal or conservative views remain in the minority; most Americans continue to express at least some mix of liberal and conservative attitudes. Yet those who express ideologically consistent views have disproportionate influence on the political process: They are more likely than those with mixed views to vote regularly and far more likely to donate to political campaigns and contact elected officials.

As Partisans Move Further Apart, the Middle Shrinks

In 2012, the Pew Research Center updated its 25-year study of the public's political values, finding that the partisan gap in opinions on more than 40 separate political values had nearly doubled over the previous quarter century. The new study investigates whether there is greater ideological consistency than in the past; that is, whether more people now have straight-line liberal or conservative attitudes across a range of issues, from homosexuality and immigration to foreign policy, the environment, economic policy and the role of government.

Is Polarization Asymmetrical?

The ideological consolidation nationwide has happened on both the left and the right of the political spectrum, but the long - term shift among Democrats stands out as particularly noteworthy. The share of Democrats who are liberal on all or most value dimensions has nearly doubled from just 30% in 1994 to 56% today. The share who are consistently liberal has quadrupled from just 5% to 23% over the past 20 years. In absolute terms, the ideological shift among Republicans has been more modest, in 1994, 45% of Republicans were right-of-center, with 13% consistently conservative. Those figures are up to 53% and 20% today.

Polarization Among Elected Officials

As many congressional scholars have documented, Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill are now further apart from one another than at any point in modern history, and that rising polarization among elected officials is asymmetrical, with much of the widening gap between the two parties attributable to a rightward shift among Republicans. As a result, using a widely accepted metric of ideological positioning, there is now no overlap between the two parties; in the last full session of Congress (the 112th Congress, which ran from 2011-12), every Republican senator and representative was more conservative than the most conservative Democrat (or, putting it another way, every Democrat was more liberal than the most liberal Republican).

But this was not always the case. Forty years ago, in the 93rd Congress (1973-74), fully 240 representatives and 29 senators were in between the most liberal Republican and most conservative Democrat in their respective chambers. Twenty years ago (the 103rd Congress from 1993-94) had nine representatives and three senators in between the most liberal Republican and most conservative Democrat in their respective chambers. Today, there is no overlap.

There is much more in the 121 page PDF including discussion of attitudes regarding Gun Control, the NSA, Health Care, and Social Security.

Shrinking Middle Class

Rick Newman writing for the Daily Ticker says Empty Wallets Explain New Levels of Partisan Hatred.

A new study by Pew Research verifies much we already know about political extremism in America: It's getting worse and interfering with social and economic progress. The big question is: Why?

Pew doesn't address that question, but here's a plausible answer: Voters are becoming angrier because living standards are falling and the middle class is shriveling. Prosperity breeds comity, but when it gets harder to get ahead, the natural inclination is for the losers to look for somebody to blame and the winners to feel more threatened. That's been going on for nearly 30 years.

Income inequality began to worsen in the United States starting around the early 1980s.

Many voters don't need to be told that the middle class is under stress, yet it's increasingly apparent that political policies may have little to do with it. A recent study by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas found that middle-class jobs are, in fact, disappearing, as many workers can attest. Yet the primary cause, they found, was technological change, with computers, robots and other gizmos increasingly replacing human workers in a lot of routine jobs that can be done by machines. The offshoring of jobs to lower-cost countries was also a factor, but not as big a one as some people may think.

Role of Political Parties

Newman states "it's increasingly apparent that political policies may have little to do with [middle class stress]." I say that's nonsense.

We wasted $2 trillion in Iraq and more in Afghanistan fighting wars that did not need to be fought. That was for the direct benefit of those associated with the war machine.

Politicians caved into public labor unions hand over fist, time and time again. Wage and benefit disparity between private sector workers and public workers has never been wider than it is now.

Student loan programs made debt slave out of kids while dramatically increasing the cost of education.

Countless "affordable home" programs and subsidies drove up the price of homes.

Democrats and republicans alike passed programs to bail out Wall Street at the expense of Main Street.

Role of the Fed

The self-serving Fed report Middle-Skill Jobs Lost in U.S. Labor Market Polarization blames technology and robots.

While technology changes and creative destruction are a part of the lost jobs picture, the Fed has had a major role in income disparity and polarization.

The Fed fostered bubble after bubble, with increasing amplitude each time, then pressed for bank bailouts when the banks got into trouble.

Artificially low interest rates benefit those with first access to money (the banks and the already wealthy), at the expense of savers and those on fixed income.

The Fed wants to force up prices but wages did not keep up. Is that the Fed's fault or the fault of corporations? I suggest the former. After all, it's not how much one makes that matters most, it's how far the money goes.

Moreover, the Fed's dollar debasement policy and artificially low interest rates makes it easy for corporations to invest in hardware and software robots to replace labor.

Politically, Obamacare gave businesses further reasons to replace workers where they could.

Closing the Gold Window

The roots of this crisis go back to Nixon Shock, "a series of economic measures taken by United States President Richard Nixon in 1971 including unilaterally canceling the direct convertibility of the United States dollar to gold. It helped end the existing Bretton Woods system of international financial exchange, ushering in the era of freely floating currencies that remains to the present day."

Please read the Nixon Shock link for the full story.

The short version is that the end of gold convertibility let countries run trade deficits and fiscal deficits as big as they wanted. Closing gold convertibility also let central banks print as much money as they wanted.

Fractional reserve lending, loose monetary policy, increasingly large budget deficits over time, and Congressional support for numerous wars without having to raise taxes to pay for them all go hand in hand.

Is it any wonder that deficits soared, asset bubbles formed, and income disparity rose?

Instead of addressing the real cause of the fiscal crisis and the shrinking middle class, liberals blame corporations and the Fed blames robots.

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

Ukraine Gas Talks Break Down; Don't Worry Until September

Posted: 15 Jun 2014 07:37 PM PDT

Ukraine gets half of the natural gas it uses from Russia. However, it's not an evenly distributed half. Ukraine needs far more gas in winter, and far less in Summer. Ukraine has enough gas now to last until September.

Politics being politics, resolution of the dispute could be another two months away before anyone panics. Thus, it should be no surprise that Russian Gas Payment Talks Fail.

Ukraine risks the cutoff of natural-gas supplies from Russia after overnight talks to resolve a pricing dispute between the two countries ended without a deal less than eight hours before a payment deadline.

Ukraine must pay $1.95 billion to partially settle its debt to the Russian-owned natural gas exporter OAO Gazprom for past deliveries by 10 a.m. Moscow time today, said Sergei Kupriyanov, a company spokesman, by phone. He said the deadline won't be waived.

"The Russian side has stated that if there will be no upfront payment, it will start limiting gas," said Ukraine Energy Minister Yuri Prodan.

Russian negotiators rejected a compromise proposal by the European Union, according to EU Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger, who has been involved in the trilateral talks since they started in May.

The EU, dependent on Russian gas piped through Ukraine for about 15 percent of its supplies, is trying to broker a deal to maintain shipments amid the fuel payments conflict. In Ukraine, government forces and rebels claiming allegiance to Russia continue to clash in the east of the country.

"For the moment our Russian partners didn't accept my proposal," Oettinger said. "We have no common understanding."

Ukraine was ready to accept the EU proposal of a price range between $300 and $385 per 1,000 cubic meters, still above the $286.5 that the country paid in the first quarter, Kobolyev said today. Gazprom's final offer was $385, the company said last week.

Ukraine, which relies on Gazprom (GAZP) for about half its gas, is able to survive without Russian fuel until the middle of September as its current gas consumption almost matches domestic output due to low seasonal demand and the stalling of production at its chemical plants in the east, according to a Concorde Capital, a Kiev, Ukraine-based investment company.

The last paragraph above explains all you need to know. The setup in Ukraine is quite like debt ceiling negotiations in the US, typically solved at the last moment with huffing and puffing and overblown reporting of consequences if a deal is not reached.

Given that Russia needs the income and Ukraine and Europe needs the gas, the odds of a deal "in due time" are at least 95%.

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

Tony Blair's Disingenuous, Self-Serving Analysis of Iraq

Posted: 15 Jun 2014 04:16 PM PDT

When I mentioned names of those who played a role in the current mess in Iraq (see Assessing the Blame for Iraq: Bush, Obama, McCain, Others; Iraq Sunken Costs), I left out one key name, former UK prime minister Tony Blair.

Blair is now out to revise history in an attempt to absolve himself of guilt.

Blair Defends Iraq Invasion

CTV News reports Former British PM Blair defends 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair says the West's failure to intervene in Syria is to blame for the violent insurgency in neighbouring Iraq -- not the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

In an essay issued Sunday, Blair called for Western countries to intervene in Syria, though he did not specify how. He wrote that extremists "have to be countered hard" wherever they are fighting.

Blair led Britain to join the U.S.-led intervention in 2003, and is now a Middle East peace envoy. He rejected as "simply not credible" arguments by critics who claim Iraq would be stable today had the invasion not happened.

Former U.K. ambassador Christopher Meyer said Blair was wrong, and that the campaign against Saddam was a significant reason for the sectarian violence in Iraq.

Blair's Disingenuous, Self-Serving Analysis

On his blog yesterday, Blair went to comical lengths to defend the mission and blame scapegoats.

Please consider Iraq, Syria and the Middle East, an essay by Tony Blair.

Blair: It is inevitable that events in Mosul have led to a re-run of the arguments over the decision to remove Saddam Hussein in 2003. The key question obviously is what to do now. But because some of the commentary has gone immediately to claim that but for that decision, Iraq would not be facing this challenge; or even more extraordinary, implying that but for the decision, the Middle East would be at peace right now; it is necessary that certain points are made forcefully before putting forward a solution to what is happening now.

Mish: That paragraph is the first of many lies by Blair. No one suggests the Mideast would be at peace now had we not invaded Iraq in 2003. We do suggest Iraq would be a better place.

Blair: 3/4 years ago Al Qaida in Iraq was a beaten force. The country had massive challenges but had a prospect, at least, of overcoming them. It did not pose a threat to its neighbours. Indeed, since the removal of Saddam, and despite the bloodshed, Iraq had contained its own instability mostly within its own borders.

Mish: Al Qaeda did not exist in Iraq to any significant degree before the invasion. A US regime imposed upon Iraq coupled with massive infrastructure damage fostered an environment for Al Qaeda to gather strength.

Blair: Though the challenge of terrorism was and is very real, the sectarianism of the Maliki Government snuffed out what was a genuine opportunity to build a cohesive Iraq.

Mish: Building a "cohesive" Iraq was difficult at best even before the 2003 invasion. Following WWI, the UK took three distinct cultures, molded them together and called the result Iraq. It was an early exercise in the stupidity of nation building with no regards to culture or history.

Blair: However there is also no doubt that a major proximate cause of the takeover of Mosul by ISIS is the situation in Syria. To argue otherwise is wilful. The operation in Mosul was planned and organised from Raqqa across the Syria border.

Mish: No doubt. And who were the fools who supported giving weapons to Syrian terrorists fighting Assad?

Blair: As for how these events reflect on the original decision to remove Saddam, if we want to have this debate, we have to do something that is rarely done: put the counterfactual i.e. suppose in 2003, Saddam had been left running Iraq.

Now take each of the arguments against the decision in turn. The first is there was no WMD risk from Saddam and therefore the casus belli was wrong.

Mish: That is the second major lie. The biggest holders and users of weapons of mass destruction are the US and UK. We bombed Iraq to smithereens using bunker-busting bombs and white phosphorous, a banned substance. The chemical weapons Hussein one had, came from the US.

Blair: What we now know from Syria is that Assad, without any detection from the West, was manufacturing chemical weapons. We only discovered this when he used them.

Mish: That is lie number three. I wrote about this in September of 2013, in U.S. Going to Kill Syrians to Show Syria that Killing Syrians is Wrong.

Quote of the day goes to Abby Martin who says "We're killing Syrians to Show Syria that Killing Syrians is Wrong. I just cannot wrap my head around that".

George Galloway responded along the lines of "The next time you see President Obama happy clapping in a Christian church, tell him that Al Qaeda slaughtered the Christian people of Syria literally, their necks and throats cut, heads sawed off, the Christian churches on fire at the hands of Al Qaeda, paid for and armed by the United States of America."

Galloway was discussing this: Village 'liberated' by rebels... who then forced Christians to convert to Islam

Yes, the US is literally funding Al Qaeda rebels to fight an insane war on trumped up evidence that Assad used chemical weapons on Syrians.

The evidence is in dispute and if chemicals were used, it is equally likely the rebels used them to goad the US into action: Syrians In Ghouta Claim Saudi-Supplied Rebels Behind Chemical Attack

Still More Hypocrisy

To top off the hypocrisy, the US is the biggest user of chemical weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, in the entire world.

Please read about the use of White Phosphorus by the US military in violation of the convention on chemical weapons.

Blair: We also know, from the final weapons inspectors reports, that though it is true that Saddam got rid of the physical weapons, he retained the expertise and capability to manufacture them.

Mish: Blair admits Hussein did not have weapons. Thus the US wasted $2 trillion dollars on trumped up charges Hussein had weapons. How much did the UK waste? As for expertise, it's like baking cookies or riding a bike. Once you do something you retain the expertise to do it again.

Blair: Is it likely that, knowing what we now know about Assad, Saddam, who had used chemical weapons against both the Iranians in the 1980s war that resulted in over 1m casualties and against his own people, would have refrained from returning to his old ways?

Mish: Knowing what we know about Assad, means we know something about Hussein? Really? Mixed in with that absurd notion, Blair states Hussein caused "1m casualties and against his own people."

That statement is at best debatable, and most likely a proven lie. See Did Saddam Hussein Gas His Own People?

Here is a key line: "The former CIA official revealed that immediately after the battle the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency investigated and produced a classified report that said it was Iranian gas that killed the Kurds."

Blair: The second argument is that but for the invasion of 2003, Iraq would be a stable country today. Leave aside the treatment Saddam meted out to the majority of his people whether Kurds, Shia or marsh Arabs, whose position of 'stability' was that of appalling oppression.

Mish: It would be nearly impossible for Iraq to be less stable than it is today. Under Hussein there was religious freedom. Women and Catholics were not openly oppressed. Today there is no religious freedom, no political freedom, no cultural freedom, mass beheadings, and no stability of any kind. Only an idiot (or self-serving politician) would use the argument Blair just made.

Blair: Is it seriously being said that the revolution sweeping the Arab world would have hit Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Syria, to say nothing of the smaller upheavals all over the region, but miraculously Iraq, under the most brutal and tyrannical of all the regimes, would have been an oasis of calm?

Mish: Who precisely said "oasis of calm?" Did anyone say that or is Blair making up a strawman that does not even exist? Regardless, it is indeed likely that Iraq would have been far more stable than those other countries for the simple reason it had more oil revenues than those countries.

Blair: Easily the most likely scenario is that Iraq would have been engulfed by precisely the same convulsion.

Mish: Once again, Blair jumps to extremely self-serving conclusions based on faulty analysis. The amusing thing is that even if some of Blair's assumptions are correct, Iraq would be better off under Hussein than it is now.

Blair's lies, distortions and self-serving analysis goes on and on.

At one point in his self-serving rant, Blair stated "At its simplest, the jihadist groups are never going to leave us alone. 9/11 happened for a reason."

Yes Tony! 911 happened for a reason. The US meddled in the region, and the CIA overthrew Iran's Prime Minister Mossadegh because he was going to nationalize Iran's oil, in 1953. The US put in a government friendly to US oil interests and it backfired, just like countless other US meddling operations backfired.

Osama Bin Laden's stated reasons for 911 was the US had troops on sacred Arab soil. That does not condone Bin Laden's actions, but the simple fact of the matter is US meddling led to 911.

In the wake of 911, 90% of Pakistanis were sympathetic to the US. Now it is something like 15%.

What happened? The US drone policy killed so many innocent civilian men, women, and children they despise the US.

And who can blame them? And how many of them are sympathetic to Al Qaeda now?

So what did Blair learn from history? The answer is nothing.

And having learned nothing from failure, Blair devotes at least 22 concluding paragraphs making the case for more war and more intervention.

Tony Blair, you are pathetic.

Addendum

Reader Brindu writes: "Fascinating recap. Puzzling that so many of the commentators defend Bush et. al despite history. In the UK, the Chilcot commission basically nailed it saying Blair lied and the UK participation was illegal. Please check out Informed Comment article Blair-Bush & Iraq: It's not just the quagmire but the Lawbreaking & Deception."

I did. Here are a couple snips ...

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair is complaining that he is unfairly blamed for causing the current mess in Iraq and that if Saddam had still been in power it would be just as unstable.

He is, perhaps deliberately, missing the point. His invasion of Iraq was illegal and based on deception and propaganda. That was what was wrong with it. A quagmire that is the fruit of illegality and fraud is the worst.

The UN Charter allows of only two legitimate grounds for war. One is self-defense. Blair was not defending Britain from Iraq when he invaded and captured Basra.

Blair gave the opposite impression to the public. He delivered a bizarre speech in which he said that Saddam Hussein could deploy weapons of mass destruction against Europe in as little as 45 minutes. It is not even clear what that assertion could possibly have meant. Iraq had no delivery system for getting chemical weapons to Europe.

The other grounds for war is a resolution of the UN Security Council designating a regime a threat to world peace. The UNSC declined to so vote with regard to Iraq.

Some argue that a third grounds for war should be added, prevention of an obvious genocide. This principle can be debated, but there was no genocide going on in Iraq in 2002, and the Bush-Blair invasion and occupation significantly increased mortality rates. The Saddam Hussein regime did kill people. But many of those died in the Iran-Iraq War, in which Reagan and Thatcher backed Iraq, the clear aggressor. To then use the casualties of that war as a basis for invading Iraq in 2003 is Orwellian.

Blair denied that petroleum was a motivation in the war. But we now know that BP vigorously lobbied him in fall 2002 to make sure it got oil bids after Saddam was gotten rid of, afraid that two Texas oil men in the White House would cut them out of the deal.

One may be able to nitpick over some details in that article. However, one cannot dispute the simple truth that the WOMD case was an outright lie and the invasion was based on deception and propaganda. Eventually the lies convinced Democrats like Hillary Clinton (assuming they needed any convincing). To Hillary's extreme discredit, she never admitted her mistake.

I believe her arrogance cost her the Democratic nomination. Hopefully it sends her down in flames in 2016. Finally, I suggest that anyone who supported the war in 2003 is unqualified to lead this country. That rules out a lot of candidates.

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