Meanwhile back in reality...
Donald Trump's reaction to the horrible Orlando massacre was predictable.
The presumptive Republican nominee also appeared to suggest that President Barack Obama may sympathize with Islamic terrorists — a stunning statement about the current commander in chief.
‘‘He doesn’t get it or, or he gets it better than anybody understands,’’ Trump said on Fox News Channel’s ‘‘Fox and Friends.’’ ‘'It’s one or the other. And either one is unacceptable.’’
Not surprisingly, Trump calls for banning Muslim immigration and increased military response to ISIS.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Monday (June 13) said the United States needs to increase its military response against Islamic State in the wake of the Orlando nightclub shooting over the weekend, and faulted the Muslim community for not reporting people like the man who carried out the attack.
Hillary Clinton had a different response, that included banning assault weapons, but still had one thing in common with Trump.
Hillary Clinton on Monday said the "mind numbingly familiar" attack at an Orlando nightclub makes clear the U.S. "must defeat" ISIS and proposed beefing up intelligence gathering tools to help better identify lone wolf attackers.
Hillary has been calling for a military escalation against ISIS since last November.
Both candidates are responding to the perception that the ISIS threat is increasing, and that Trump is set to benefit from this perception.
The thing is that the perception has absolutely nothing to do with reality.
ISIS has been getting its butt kicked hard so far in 2016. In fact, it's about to take losses that it will simply not be able to recover from.
In Iraq, ISIS is beiing pushed out of Fallujah, the last ISIS stronghold in Anbar province.
In Libya, the town of Sirte is ready to fall to government forces.
In central Syria, government forces are advancing on Tabqa.
In northern Syria, the most important battle of this war is coming to a finish.
Manbij lies at the heart of the last stretch of ISIS-controlled territory along Turkey's border.
Its siege has severed a key supply route for ISIS fighters, money and weapons from the Turkish border to the group's de facto Syrian capital of Raqqa city.
ISIS is on the ropes!
Normally you might think that politicians would be doing a victory lap at this point, after all these are decisive military victories.
Instead there is not just a distinct lack of boasting, but it's almost as if politicians and the news media are going out of their way to avoid mentioning it.
It makes one wonder if victory was even the objective.
In the world of politics and news media pundits, it's a war of good against evil, right against wrong, light against dark.
All that is required is the strength to apply the maximum amount of military pressure in the correct locations, just like a video game.
The real world, on the other hand, looks completely different.
In the real world our allies are corrupt and ruthless murderers.
Shi’ite militiamen have been accused of arresting, torturing, and killing Sunnis fleeing Fallujah.
Anbar Province Governor Sohaib al-Rawi has said more than 640 men had gone missing between June 3-5 and "all the surviving detainees were subjected to severe and collective torture by various means."
In the real world, nothing will be solved by the defeat of ISIS.
the extremist group's peak in Syria is clearly past. The group's strength will diminish despite its nominal gains. Even so, the Islamic State and groups like it will never fade completely as long as Sunni grievances persist.
You can't fit this into a 30-second commercial, and the news media is too afraid of viewers changing the channel to bother with complex concepts that don't resemble car chases.
Instead, both politicians and the news media benefit from hyping fear, whether the justification for the fear is real or not.
And how knows? If we drop enough bombs, maybe we'll finally create an enemy that justifies that fear.
Comments
Of course, it isn't over...
Corporations haven't bought up any and all prime locations yet. Sheesh! What kind of capitalist are you??
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.--Aristotle
If there is no struggle there is no progress.--Frederick Douglass
Bought up???
What kind of capitalist are you?
I want my two dollars!
A very bad one, obviously. = )
My check book will testify to that.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.--Aristotle
If there is no struggle there is no progress.--Frederick Douglass
The MIC wants its war.
And the Rethugs and Democrats are lining up to kiss its jack boots.
We're already over there, but of course we need to send MORE stuff... which will exacerbate the situation, and make more people hate the US because our tactics are not to stop the war, but to bomb random people... Who will then Join ISIS...
Necessitating of course MORE intervention.
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
I don't walk around in constant fear from ISIS
I might be wiped out by a random meteorite to the head before. But we seem to be selling weapons to them directly or indirectly and bombing ME ordinary people, making the survivors distrust the US more, driving more to ISIS and eventually they will have the means to show us a few things. Thank dog for our MIC to build in fear with every product!
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
Sunnis and Shi'ites have been battling for centuries.
I suspect there's absolutely nothing the rest of the world can do to stop it.
Life is strong. I'm weak, but Life is strong.
Sunni and Shia
Are still pondering who was, or who was not a legitimate daughter of the Prophet.
Given the records of the 7th C., I'd say time to call a truce.
Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.
Actually there’s a lot of evidence that under the Ottoman Empire
Sunni-Shiite sectarianism was not the big source of contention it is now.
In the 21st century, the Saudis’ Wahhabism and rivalry with Iran, plus U.S.-Israeli plans of the “Project for the New American Century” type, have found it strategic and convenient to foment Sunni-Shiite bloodletting wherever possible.
http://www.chris-floyd.com/home/articles/word-games-false-premises-fuel-...
The precedent was set when Israel and the West took actions designed to prolong the Iraq-Iran war in the 1980s, such as keeping arms flowing to both sides and supplying Saddam with chemical weapons and satellite intelligence on Iranian troop movements. Leaders in some capitals could barely conceal their glee that two countries seen as enemies were bleeding each other.
Today there are Western politicians and geostrategists who likewise can barely conceal their satisfaction at the sight of Muslims fighting among themselves.
I've mentioned it before
Sunnis and Shia lived without sectarian violence in Iraq for 71 years.
What changed? We started bombing them.
Keep on eye on Fallujah.
We might be looking at the biggest war crime since the Occupation. I’m starting to see disturbing reports of Sunnis being massacred by Shia militias by the hundreds.
We likely can not put it out....
...and that framing pretends it is up to us to do it, but we could stop pouring gasoline on it.
Compensated Spokes Model for Big Poor.
I'm not afraid no matter how many people tell me
to be afraid.
If the US cared about terrorism, it would stop using terrorism
Like Samuel Huntington, American imperialist "intellectual" and pseudo-historian, Republicans & Democrats are convinced that the US must firmly preserve its "international primacy" for the well-being of the entire globe, since American national identity is defined by "a set of universal political and economic values," which are "liberty, democracy, equality, private property, and markets." In accepting this ideology as revealed truth, when it comes to assessing the veracity of official US commitment to human rights, Rep and Dem voters immediately reject evidence of the close correlation between US economic and military aid to developing nations and government use of extrajudicial killings and torture by those same nations, a pattern pretty much uninterrupted throughout history.
Maybe if we stopped invading, bombing, occupying and destroying Muslim nations that never attacked us we would reduce the number of innocent people who are murdered all over the world. But that will never happen, because important people have declared that it should be so.
It's
like ISIS is a disease that the Media can't hype enough.
Like Ebola, everyone who comes in contact with it,
is automatically suspect.
Shoot just mentioning the Name,
is enough to send the Media into a Fear-mode Frenzy.
Thanks for the reality-based counter-points, gjohnsit.
Well?
We had to call it something, didn't we? After all, Al Queda was already
vanquishedkilledbought-offneutralizedpick onetaken. Right?Don't even get me started about my reaction the first time I heard it. I thought of that 70s Saturday morning TV show and then started laughing at the absurdity.
Eh?
What show was that? My wee neurons are scattered and I can't think of a single show that fits.
The more people I meet, the more I love my cats.
HM,
not sure how old you are--it was actually called "ISIS" and I think it aired along with "Shazam!". This would have been the early 70s
Thanks again for excellent article. World Beyond War
Anything that can be cone to keep the budget is what matters. And have to have a monster to scare us.
David Swanson has been a peace advocate for a long time.
Here is the link to the conference
No War 2016: Real Security Without Terrorism
Here is David Swanson speech
David Swanson, War is a Lie, June 11, 2016
Gjohnsit: I linked one of your articles on TOP. Is that OK?
There is a safe zone in Bernie News Roundup
I linked a recent article of yours there with a note that articles like that used to be posted at TOP but now are elsewhere
I don't want to go back there and link it because I want as few clicks as possible there.
In case anyone here wonders, TOP continues to go down hill. Now that almost everything is about Hillary, the place has a certain kind of energy, the energy of a dying system (I hope it goes down soon)
People who post advocating a third party are run off the site
People who post an article that is too strong against Hillary are zapped and sometimes run off the site
They are running off a lot of new people, just like the democratic party that isn't following what Bernie did
I hang out at Bernie News Roundup and have a following for a diverse set of comments
There is so much bad stuff every day, day in and day out, and then I spend some time tracking down yet another Clinton mess and that takes time so that I make a reasonable comment
And that is the news from Lake Wobegone
That's fine
I've noticed that the number of comments on non-Hillary diaries at TOP is really dropping.
It's all just rah-rah blue team now.
I've finally broken the cycle
I won't even click on it.
I noticed a website directory has been added on the left-
-hand column at the bottom. They are clearly there to help c99 Members find popular websites where it is safe to discuss current events and enlightened development for mankind.
Perhaps JTC will add "Bernie News Roundup" as a place where Progressive Democrats can meet. As TOP dies, we need to spread out and map places where the light shines on a brilliant future for all humanity.
IMAGINE if you woke up the day after a US Presidential Election and headlines around the the world blared, "The Majority of Americans Refused to Vote in US Presidential Election! What Does this Mean?"
A safe zone! Finally
That's what we need. It reminds me of how the friendly Germans set up a 'Safe Zone' in Warsaw for jews, before they shipped them off to other, somewhat less safe zones.
This was not an act of Islamic terrorism
It was the act of an angry, mentally ill person, who acted out on the feelings and emotions which he had.
He was aided and abetted in doing so through lax weapons laws in his Florida.
His personal background may have played some role, of course, but there are plenty of individuals who do not like homosexuals and who are able to refrain from murdering them.
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are despicable individuals who will do or say anything to convince you that it is right for the United States to continue spreading death throughout the world in the name of battling "Islamic terrorism."
They are despicable. The whole narrative in the United States is despicable. Muslims are not the problem. Christians are not the problem.
The problem is fear. And the elites rule you with your own fear, it is the leash by which you are led.
The United States and Europe are the greatest terrorists in the modern world, our tax dollars at work, because we cannot figure out a better way to distribute resources so that everyone on the planet benefits with minimum downside (corruption, theft, etc.). Or we do not wish to figure this out, because there are too many who like smooth things, and like them all for themselves, they are the Therosaurs of our age.
The CIA and the Pentagon are self-fulfilling prophecies, as is the case with all the other military and spy organizations in all the other governments in the world.
We are completely unable to sit down with one another and negotiate in full trust because we do not overcome the brainwashing of belonging to a given ethnicity or national identity, or party, or religion, or neighborhood.
My business is dealing with the history of minorities in a certain region of the world.
If these minorities had access to the weaponry, they would be as aggressive and violent as the majority. Their institutions are calcified, their outlook inflexible. But that is their choice, I do not stop them.
It is my experience that human beings are tribal. We do not cope well with groups larger than around fifty people. Beyond that, we need some mental mechanism to discern which strangers we trust, and which we don't.
This website is itself a tribe, or rather a pseudo-tribe. I say pseudo because, no matter how well we get along here, unless we have to live in physical contact, we are not really connected. It is much easier this way.
Humanity will change when and only when we are able to look each other in the eye and recognize that everyone belongs to us and vice-versa.
Until then, you get CNN.
Peace and love be with you, reader.
tribes
I wholeheartedly agree that the tribal unit is the basic “hive” of mankind. The Clans of my Scott ancestors, American Indians, pre-20th century rural America coalesced around churches, etc. My knowledge of The Ottoman Empire is too rudimentary for even a basic hypothesis but nevertheless: Is it possible that they had such a long run, empire wise, because they didn't try to impose too much on tribal divisions? How can you expect people from a culture that was old when Romulus and Remus were still wolf-sucklings to feel loyalty and pride for some area of earth scribbled on a map by France and GB not a century ago. Put enough armed forces into Siria and Iraq to have a checkpoint at every marketplace and you won't defeat ISIS. They will still be around. They are not looking for a seat at the UN and don't give a shit if they don't get a McDonald's franchise this year. And the only thing they have in common with our home-grown terrorists is the chilling fact that they can kill without even the flimsy excuse that the suspect was armed and dangerous.
defaultcitizen
Follow The Money
Shortly after Dumbya's Divisions took Baghdad, I received an email inviting me to an Expo to be held in Baghdad that November. There would be o-so-many profitable opportunities available for the intrepid entrepreneur willing to locate in Iraq and take advantage of the human and mineral assets of this nation newly-converted to corporatism.
Funny how that Expo never happened.
Vowing To Oppose Everything Trump Attempts.