Open Thread 10-13-15

Good morning 99percenters!
Climate news dump and music by Doc Watson.

'Capitalism is Mother Earth's Cancer': World People's Summit Issues 12 Demands
The establishment of an independent climate tribunal to hold wealthy nations accountable emerged as a central goal of conference in Bolivia

Decrying capitalism as a "threat to life," an estimated 7,000 environmentalists, farmers, and Indigenous activists from 40 countries convened in the Bolivian town of Tiquipaya for this weekend's World People's Conference on Climate Change, aiming to elevate the demands of social movements and developing countries in the lead-up to upcoming United Nations-led climate talks.

"Capitalism is Mother Earth's cancer," Bolivian President Evo Morales told the crowd, which also heard over the course of the three-day conference from United Nations Secretary-General Ban ki-Moon as well as other Latin American leaders.

The people's summit, which concluded Monday afternoon, produced a 12-point declaration (Spanish) that will be presented during the COP21 climate negotiations taking place November 30-December 11 in Paris, France, during which 200 countries will attempt to cement an agreement to curb global warming. The COP21 agenda has been criticized for its sidestepping of issues like the role of capitalism in climate change and for the robust involvement of multinational corporations in the talks.

Climate Cash Flow to Poorer Nations Is Still Too Slow

LONDON—World leaders are not delivering fully on agreements made at successive climate negotiations to channel US$100 billion annually from rich countries to poor in order to tackle and adapt to climate change.

An analysis of cash flows by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)—which links the world’s wealthier countries—finds the target due to be reached by 2020 is still far from being met.

The OECD says that, at present, the rich countries are channelling on average about $57bn each year to help poorer nations limit carbon emissions and deal with extreme weather events and rising sea levels.

Global marine analysis suggests food chain collapse

A world-first global analysis of marine responses to climbing human CO2 emissions has painted a grim picture of future fisheries and ocean ecosystems.

Published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), marine ecologists from the University of Adelaide say the expected ocean acidification and warming is likely to produce a reduction in diversity and numbers of various key species that underpin marine ecosystems around the world.

"This 'simplification' of our oceans will have profound consequences for our current way of life, particularly for coastal populations and those that rely on oceans for food and trade," says Associate Professor Ivan Nagelkerken, Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellow with the University's Environment Institute.


A massive global coral bleaching event is currently underway

According to marine scientists, we're about to experience "a doozy of an event" in the world's oceans, thanks to a perfect storm of a warming climate and a strong El Niño.

Climate change and El Niño are driving a global bleaching event that is devastating coral reefs and killing the ocean's "canary in the coal mine," and putting the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people at risk.

Warming temperatures in the world's oceans are responsible for triggering massive 'coral bleaching' in reefs around the world, which could sound the death knell for large swaths of the marine ecosystem. When waters are too warm for corals to adapt to, they expel the algae that lives in their tissues, which causes the coral to become completely white, hence the name 'bleaching.' The bleached corals aren't necessarily dead, as some corals may survive the bleaching event, but the reefs are under more stress after it happens, and are more subject to dying without the algae, their major source of food.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the warming conditions in the ocean are creating "widespread coral bleaching" that is currently spreading across Hawaii, and expanding into the Caribbean, prompting the organization to declare that the "third global coral bleaching event ever on record" is underway.

SolarCity announces the most efficient rooftop solar panels yet

Today, SolarCity revealed its newest solar panel, which the company says is the most efficient rooftop solar panel in the world. The panel hit 22.04 percent efficiency according to third-party testing. The unit is the same size as standard efficiency models, but produces 30 to 40 percent more power. According to SolarCity, the new panel can produce more electricity per square foot than any other rooftop unit on the market.

While other solar technologies have hit higher efficiency levels, these units are not designed for residential rooftop applications. Residential rooftop panels usually have an efficiency between 11 and 17 percent.

The new panel may break another record as well, as the company plans to make it the highest-volume solar panel made in the U.S. SolarCity plans to build the majority of the units at their 1 GW factory in Buffalo, New York. The company projects it will be making 9,000 to 10,000 units per day, once that facility reaches capacity, and will be able to build the new units at the same cost as standard efficiency panels thanks to a new production process. Jonathan Bass, SolarCity’s Vice President of Communications, told TreeHugger that the facility is expected to be at capacity by 2017.

Doc Watson - Blue Railroad Train

Doc Watson - Mama Don't Allow No Music

Doc Watson - Tennesse Stud

Doc watson - Black Mountain Rag

Doc Watson - Crawdad Hole

Share
up
0 users have voted.

Comments

I have to work today but I'll try to swing by occasionally. Have a great one!

up
0 users have voted.
mimi's picture

... my German manners lack quite a bit of polish, I know. Always forget to say Good Morning, Good Evening and especially "Thank You". Belatedly now, thank you for getting this site running and jumping in whenever there is nobody else to write the OTs.

If I were a nice girl, da da dee, dadala doh... (I am even not a rich girl...) ... I would ... oh well, forgettaboutit.

up
0 users have voted.

Have a good day everyone.

up
0 users have voted.

"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

and the "this site does not exist on this server" messages from last night, that happened to me as well. Those messages are caused by our web host and not this site, so don't be overly concerned.

up
0 users have voted.
mimi's picture

to today's broadcast on Democracy Now about the book by David Talbott "The Devil's Chessbook" . For those of you who know a lot about that history of the CIA's Allan Dulles it might be of interest. I myself can't judge all of it, but have the feeling it's very well worth reading the book and listening to the whole interview Amy had this morning on Democracy NOW.

I think, if I have a sort of "hero-like" role model in the independent media outlets, it would be Amy.

Have all a great day. Trying to get stuff done. Smile

up
0 users have voted.
lotlizard's picture

In antiquity, creators of culture dedicated themselves to the ideals of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty (in that order).

Disney could do a lot to promote democracy if, in the minds of young girls who watch its programming, it would associate beauty, admiration, and desirability with the truth-telling qualities of an Amy Goodman or a Chelsea Manning.

up
0 users have voted.
mimi's picture

to exclude her. She was such a brave whistle blower and is so cruelly punished for it. It's remarkable that some times the bravest, most modest truth tellers sit right inside the devil's hellish fire pits, the MIC. I think there were some even in the German Wehrmacht, who tried their best back then too. Sigh. So much sadness in all those stories. Sad

Definitely want to read. Have a good day, all, and good health to you, lotlizard.

up
0 users have voted.
lotlizard's picture

Starting tomorrow I am scheduled to attend the Frankfurt Book Fair, assisting a friend who has a journalist pass.
So, I may not be posting here very much for the rest of the week.

up
0 users have voted.
mimi's picture

up
0 users have voted.
mimi's picture

I mean, what's the guy thinking? That his on again and off again and dumb playing "campaign distraction media manipulator serf" is going to do his reputation any good? Wow.

And Lawrence Lessig is thrown under the bus by CNN and the Democratic Party, or not? Can't participate in tonight's debate? WTF. Listen at 13:10 about what Salon's Bill Curry has to say about who can participate in the debate and why or why not.

I hope Sanders has the guts to screw the CNN media and the Democrats for fucking up any sort of democratic coverage of all the candidate's out there. I mean who would want to support the Democratic Party, if their rules and regulations are that undemocratic in their intentions?

Here is the video part for the Undemocratic Democratic Selection of Campaign Debate coverage:
An Undemocratic Party? Ahead of First Debate, Criticism Grows over DNC’s Move to Control Process

Here is the video part for Allen Dulles part of the broadcast:
The Rise of America’s Secret Government: The Deadly Legacy of Ex-CIA Director Allen Dulles

And whatever side you are on, Democracy Now's archives are a treasure. If you can spend a dime to support especially their archives, why not doing it? Smile

up
0 users have voted.
gulfgal98's picture

to do our dirty work of deporting refugees from Central America was shocking. I was unaware that not only are we employing mercenaries to fight our wars and waging proxy wars, but we are now employing mercenaries to abuse political refugees who wish to emigrate to the US. When taken with the Dulles segment, today's show was a very hard hitting expose of the dirty and bloody underside of US empire.

up
0 users have voted.

Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

snoopydawg's picture

In yesterday's EB.
It talks about private contractors building prisons for refugees fleeing from the violence we are responsible for.
It also talks about the evils of the Clinton foundation.

up
0 users have voted.

The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt

There was no link to the article you
referenced in last night's EB. You
wrote, "Here's the link" followed by
white space then your signature lines.

You might repost the link if you can
find it.

Thanks!

up
0 users have voted.

Only connect. - E.M. Forster

gulfgal98's picture

After waffling back and forth, I decided not to try to attend a local debate party. I may not be able to stay up that late anyway. I am definitely not a night person, but more of a lark instead of an owl.

Tomorrow our local Peace vigil group is going to do a Climate Change vigil from noon to one pm. I hope that we can get some conversation and interaction with the public on this issue.

JtC, thank you for posting this Open Thread today. Good

up
0 users have voted.

Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

WealthPyramid_1_0.png

up
0 users have voted.

link

U.S. counter-terror officials have asked Toyota, the world’s second largest auto maker, to help them determine how ISIS has managed to acquire the large number of Toyota pick-up trucks and SUVs seen prominently in the terror group’s propaganda videos in Iraq, Syria and Libya, ABC News has learned.

Toyota says it does not know how ISIS obtained the vehicles and is “supporting” the inquiry led by the Terror Financing unit of the Treasury Department -- part of a broad U.S. effort to prevent Western-made goods from ending up in the hands of the terror group.

“We briefed Treasury on Toyota’s supply chains in the Middle East and the procedures that Toyota has in place to protect supply chain integrity,” said Ed Lewis, Toyota’s Washington-based director of public policy and communications.

Ah, yes. It must be Toyota's fault.
Or maybe not

The fact is the Toyotas were supplied by the US government to the Al Nusra Front as ‘non-lethal aid’ then ‘acquired’ by ISIS.

Oh, yeah! We gave them to al-Qaeda, and then they sold them to ISIS. So let's blame Toyota.

up
0 users have voted.
gulfgal98's picture

The US has its bloody handprints on everything that is wrong over there and elsewhere in the world.

up
0 users have voted.

Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

lotlizard's picture

Kunduz hospital attack was no mistake: US Dispatched a Murderous AC-130 Airborne Gunship to Attack a Hospital

The facts are in danger of getting lost in a slew of mealy-mouthed pseudo apologies.

up
0 users have voted.

link

Cables leaked by U.S. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning reveal an apparent plot by the U.S. government to assassinate Bolivian President Evo Morales and overthrow his administration...
According to the cables, the plot to orchestrate a coup or carry out an assassination against Morales came after years of resistance by the Morales government to the United States’ Latin American agenda.

TeleSUR, a Latin American TV network, reported last week that the Bolivian government is continuing a formal investigation into the allegations, despite denials by U.S. government officials:

“In a strongly worded statement the U.S. Embassy in Bolivia said, ‘The government of the United States was not involved in any conspiracy, attempt to overthrow the government of Bolivia or assassinate President Morales. This kind of unfounded allegations does not contribute to improving bilateral relations.’”

These allegations of a U.S. plot mirror recent revelations that the DEA is targeting the Morales government with secret drug indictments after his administration kicked the U.S. agency out of Bolivia to pursue their own, locally-oriented and highly successful cocaine-reduction strategies.

Contrary to the official denials, the WikiLeaks cables show how the U.S. escalated attempts to put pressure on Morales and his government over several years. According to Main and Beeton’s analysis of the cables, pressure on Morales began soon after his 2005 election as part of a wave of left-leaning candidates winning elections in Latin America. But Morales resisted U.S. directives and continued with his plans to nationalize the fossil fuels industry and move away from dependence on foreign aid and international loans.

Manning and Snowden just screwed everything up for the Empire.

up
0 users have voted.
hecate's picture

that Clinton II admitted she is a mechanical object.

I'm really not even a human being. I was constructed in a garage in Palo Alto a very long time ago. A man whose name shall remain nameless created me in his garage.

Once I worked at a newsstand that was plagued by people we call out here "constitutionalists." They believe that if a courtroom-flag has a certain "fringe" around it, the court is not Real, and therefore nothing they do to you in there is legal. Also, if in the legal papers your name is rendered in capital letters, that is not you, and the documents thereby have on you no legal force. Also, the black helicopters are eating up all the UFOs.

One day they were excitedly talking about The Matrix. Because according to these people's Reality, there exists a protocol among The Overlords that holds that if they once reveal what it is they're about, then that makes it okay, whatever it is. And it's okay to reveal it in "fictional" form. The Matrix made these people all excited, because in their Reality, the film had been made by The Overlords, and was actually a documentary. That film was truthfully telling about how everyone lays in a drawer and has their brains sucked.

I thought of these people when I read Clinton II admitting she's a machine. According to their theory, it's now all acceptable. Because she's admitted it.

up
0 users have voted.

Irony challenged again

And yet, the RNC published this striking press release:

On the anniversary of Clinton’s Iraq war vote, a closer look at her record shows her failed judgment on a consequential foreign policy issue. […]

Throughout her career, Clinton has always been wrong on Iraq. Clinton voted to authorize the war in Iraq, which was devastating to her 2008 presidential bid.

The headline on the piece reads, “Wrong At Every Turn.”

If there’s an annual award for partisan chutzpah, I’d say the RNC has the honor all wrapped up....

The new Republican message, in effect, seems to be that Clinton made a dreadful mistake in 2002 because she agreed with Republicans. That argument is coherent coming from Bernie Sanders and Clinton’s more progressive critics, but it’s laughable coming from the RNC.

up
0 users have voted.
gulfgal98's picture

Or reality? It is hard to tell anymore. I feel sorry for the Onion. They can no longer make up stuff that beats the absurdity of reality in the United States.

up
0 users have voted.

Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

shaharazade's picture

has spoken out against US interventionist, nation building 'foreign policy'. It's another Onion material mind bender. After rambling on about ISIS, Irag, good guys and bad ones and sounding almost sane, Trump then says what he would do about the insanity of US bloody foreign policy in the ME

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/13/donald-trump-foreign-poli...

For policy decisions, he said, “I’d really call up Bibi [Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu], who is a friend of mine and I’d call up some people and be very dependent on what Israel wants. You know if they really want certain things and they are deserving of certain things.”

Surprisingly he get a lot of support from all sides of the political spectrum in the comment section. lol. Seems RW'ers and Tories are just as sick of the carnage in Syria as teh far lefties. People thought he made more sense then Obama, Clinton and even Bernie. When Trump starts making more sense then any pol Dem. or Repub. it just shows how surreal, unbelievable and obvious this insane illegal endless war on terra is. The story line is impossible to follow let alone believe in.

up
0 users have voted.

All is not well in Kurdistan

A fact-finding mission to northern Syria has uncovered a wave of forced displacement and home demolitions amounting to war crimes carried out by the Autonomous Administration led by the Syrian Kurdish political party Partiya Yekîtiya Demokrat (PYD) controlling the area, said Amnesty International in a report published today. The Autonomous Administration is a key ally, on the ground, of the US-led coalition fighting against the armed group calling itself the Islamic State (IS) in Syria.

‘We had nowhere else to go’: Forced displacement and demolitions in northern Syria reveals evidence of alarming abuses, including eyewitness accounts and satellite images, detailing the deliberate displacement of thousands of civilians and the razing of entire villages in areas under the control of the Autonomous Administration, often in retaliation for residents’ perceived sympathies with, or ties to, members of IS or other armed groups.

up
0 users have voted.

the US no longer gives a damn about
trying to conceal the illegality and
outright venality of its actions, whether
it's intentionally bombing the crap out
of a MSF hospital, openly arming al
Qaeda and ISIS, or allying itself with
other outlaws and war crminals.

It's like the over-armed, black-hat-
wearing badass and his buddies
have rode into town and are now
shooting up the place, grabbing the
women at the saloon, etc. - what are
you (we) gonna do about it?

What can we do about it? It's not like
black-hat-wearing Bad Guys are
democratic, law-abiding organizations.

up
0 users have voted.

Only connect. - E.M. Forster

enhydra lutris's picture

up
0 users have voted.

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

mimi's picture


Merkel Under Fire: German Conservatives Deeply Split over Refugees

She was the polar opposite of Seehofer, a political gambler whose overriding political principle appears to be that of always being at the center of controversy. He has never shied away from taking significant risks, but now that Merkel is the one out on a limb, Seehofer has busied himself with the search for a saw.

Indeed, it seems almost as though Merkel, after 10 years in power, has finally found herself. She was Germany's first female chancellor, but she never focused much on women's issues for fear of alienating male voters. (me: I doubt that's the reason, bs) Likewise, she speaks little of her upbringing in East Germany because she believes that West Germans wouldn't understand.(ne: if West Germans were so stupid to not understand it, they don't deserve better than to get a CSU Seehofer guy, idiits) She was always hounded by the fear of being seen as a political freak. (me: what? I want to see proof of that. Geez) But that now appears to be over.(me: aha, lol) "The people should know who their chancellor is," Merkel said on "Anne Will." Her tone was friendly and cheerful, like someone who finally had the courage to be herself. (me: whosever wrote this sentence is full of their own arrogance)

A few hours prior to going on television, Merkel had met behind closed doors with conservative European parliamentarians in Strasbourg, where she didn't just defend her refugee policies, she justified them by pointing to her East German biography. "I lived behind a fence for long enough. You can maybe delay things for a couple of years," she said. "Even the fine East German wall eventually fell. So Europe will not be transformed into a fortress. It simply won't work."(me: Don't bother Angela, West Germans supposedly don't get it, arrghh)
....
She pointed to Saudi Arabia, Syria and Turkey, all countries that she sees as variables in the global balance of power -- factors that must be considered if she wants to slow, or even stop, the flow of migrants into Europe.

Merkel's calculation, somewhat simplified, looks like this: First, Turkey must be helped so that conditions for the 2 million Syrians currently sheltered in refugee camps are improved such that they lose their desire to head for Europe. Then, she intends to do what she can to find a solution to the Syrian conflict. One prerequisite for that project is for the United States to finally show some respect to Russian President Vladimir Putin and to bring Saudi Arabia and Iran to the negotiating table.
...
At the end of February, Merkel visited Pope Francis in the Vatican, and brought back with her a question that has remained with her ever since: What if the Middle Eastern conflict between the Sunnis and the Shiites is the modern-day version of the Thirty Years' War, the battle between Catholics and Protestants that turned half of Europe into rubble in the 17th century?

To that question, Merkel has no answer. She has said that Germany will grant protection to those who need it. But if her plan to pacify the world doesn't work, it could be that so many people will come to Germany that Germans will no longer stand for it. Merkel is aware of that, which is why she doesn't want to become involved in a discussion about numbers. She doesn't want to name her own threshold of failure. (me: of course, that's what is behind it. WTF)
...
Thus far, her optimism has proven unshakable. Though at the very end of her appearance on "Anne Will" she said: "I have absolutely no doubt that we won't be successful." But she was probably just tired. ... (me: or a Freudian lapsus linguae)

oh well, those articles are written by five authors. I wonder if that is because nobody wants to take responsibility for what the article says. Cowards.

Strange article.

up
0 users have voted.
shaharazade's picture

It was an interesting article. I liked it it shed some light on German politics and Merkel's position in the mix. Five different authors are sure to produce a strange article.

up
0 users have voted.
mimi's picture

a bit too "hip". Merkel was very shy in front of the cameras in the beginning. She knows how she looks like and hasn't a bone of vanity in her. That doesn't mean that so to speak she lately had "found her true voice or somesuch". I can't stand the arrogance behind it. If I could "read" or "sense" Americans like I can Germans, I would be a very happy camper. The folks in the good 'ol USA just befuddle me to no end... Smile

up
0 users have voted.
hecate's picture

of the day:

How Ethel Kennedy Abandoned Son Bobby Jr. After He Spiked The Family's Milk With Laxative And Turned To JFK's Gay Best Friend To Become His Surrogate Father

Former ISIS Hostage Says 'Jihadi John' Beat Him, Forced Him To Dance Tango

Man Wakes Up To Black Bear Biting His Head

up
0 users have voted.
shaharazade's picture

this important headline

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/13/woman-sues-11-year-old-ne...

A Manhattan human resources manager is suing her 12-year-old nephew for leaping into her arms when he welcomed her to his eighth birthday party.....
Of the damage done, Connell testified that she did not complain at the time, but she said her life had been “very difficult” since the injury because of “how crowded it is in Manhattan”. “I was at a party recently, and it was difficult to hold my hors d’oeuvre plate,” she reportedly said.

Or this one.....

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/13/san-francisco-man-sues-pi...

A San Francisco man sues for $5m after giant pine cone falls on head navy veteran is suing after what his lawyer described as a 16lb pine cone fell and crushed his skull in San Francisco.
Mace’s attorney, Scott Johnson, said the veteran was relaxing under a non-native pine tree at the maritime park when the cone fell, causing an irreversible brain injury.
The park has already fenced off the grove and added signs warning “Danger: Giant seed pod falling from tree.

up
0 users have voted.
hecate's picture

I had seen the Navy battle-man bested by the pine cone. But that idjit New Yorker lashing into court her own nephew, with her unbelievable whining about her crippled ability to hold the hors d'oeuvre plate . . . well, she is why people are sometimes tempted to roll the tumbrils.

up
0 users have voted.
hecate's picture

the New York Daily News calls the Manhattan greedo "Auntie Christ." Apparently the leaping-nephew's mom died recently. Maybe he inherited money, and Auntie Christ decided she needed it for new hors d'oeuvre plates. So she claimed her arms had been so traumatized it was no longer safe for her to live in the city of pizza rats.

up
0 users have voted.

because the f'ers who started and
are running this global (world) war
know damn well they'll be facing
Nuremburg Trials II if they don't win.

In his speech to the UN, Putin called
today's terrorists (and their creators/
handlers) the 21st-century version of
Nazis - against whom law-abiding
countries of the world must unite to
defeat them.

Could anything be more clear?

up
0 users have voted.

Only connect. - E.M. Forster

lotlizard's picture

http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=767734

Even though it's not in the original article, I'm using the term 'guest worker' (from German Gastarbeiter) since obviously Israel is never going to let Chinese goyim settle, marry, raise families, and become permanent residents and/or naturalized Israeli citizens.

up
0 users have voted.

linnk

Rather than midwifing fundamental political and cultural change, the Pentagon was instead ordered to ramp up its already gargantuan efforts to create local militaries (and police forces) capable of maintaining order and national unity. President Bush provided a concise formulation of the new strategy: “As the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down.” Under Obama, after his own stab at a “surge,” the dictum applied to Afghanistan as well. Nation-building had flopped. Building armies and police forces able to keep a lid on things now became the prevailing definition of success.
The United States had, of course, attempted this approach once before, with unhappy results. This was in Vietnam. There, efforts to destroy North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces intent on unifying their divided country had exhausted both the US military and the patience of the American people. Responding to the logic of events, Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon had a tacitly agreed upon fallback position. As the prospects of American forces successfully eliminating threats to South Vietnamese security faded, the training and equipping of the South Vietnamese to defend themselves became priority number one.
Dubbed “Vietnamization,” this enterprise ended in abject failure with the fall of Saigon in 1975. Yet that failure raised important questions to which members of the national security elite might have attended: Given a weak state with dubious legitimacy, how feasible is it to expect outsiders to invest indigenous forces with genuine fighting power? How do differences in culture or history or religion affect the prospects for doing so? Can skill ever make up for a deficit of will? Can hardware replace cohesion? Above all, if tasked with giving some version of Vietnamization another go, what did US forces need to do differently to ensure a different result?
...
If Plan A had looked to US troops to vanquish their adversaries outright, Plan B focused on prepping besieged allies to take over the fight. Winning outright was no longer the aim—given the inability of US forces to do so, this was self-evidently not in the cards—but holding the enemy at bay was.

Although allied with the United States, only in the loosest sense did either Iraq or Afghanistan qualify as a nation-state. Only nominally and intermittently did governments in Baghdad and Kabul exercise a writ of authority commanding respect from the people known as Iraqis and Afghans. Yet in the Washington of George Bush and Barack Obama, a willing suspension of disbelief became the basis for policy. In distant lands where the concept of nationhood barely existed, the Pentagon set out to create a full-fledged national security apparatus capable of defending that aspiration as if it represented reality. From day one, this was a faith-based undertaking.

up
0 users have voted.
Shahryar's picture

as formulated by Debbie WhatKillList Schultz

for Secretary Clinton: Why are you so beloved by so many Democrats?

for you, what's your name, the rumpled guy: Why do you have such a massive problem among African-Americans?

for Secretary Clinton: You have taken the responsible middle ground on TPP, being both for and against it. What's wrong with everyone who doesn't see it your way?

for Secretary Clinton: You are the only Democrat who has a chance to beat the Republicans. Thank you.

That concludes tonight's debate

up
0 users have voted.
hecate's picture

from Sergeant Schultz:

—for Martin O'Malley: "Isn't it true you are responsible for all the dead Negroes in Baltimore?"

—for Secretary Clinton: "Tell us again how you freed the slaves."

—for Jim Webb: "Please read the passage from your book where the father sucks his son's penis. Then I need you to show us your Confederate flag undershirt."

—for Secretary Clinton: "Recount for us how you successfully prosecuted all the child molesters in New York. Then talk a little about how you were the one who provided the strategic and tactical advice that allowed Grant to defeat Lee."

—for Lincoln Chafee: "Isn't it bad enough, the Socialist over there? Why do you get to be here, the ex-Republican?"

—for Secretary Clinton: "Tell us how you have been a Democract all your life, and that it was actually your dead twin sister who was the Goldwater girl."

up
0 users have voted.
mimi's picture

group for pregnancy support services.

In my neighborhood the catholic church has a street sign posted outside so that all cars passing by can see it, telling us "to pray for end of abortion". Each day I drive by that sign I have the itch to make a sign and post it right aside of it, "pray for free anti-baby pills for all". Can't stand these hypocrites.

ok, have to get this out of my system. so awful. all of it.

up
0 users have voted.