Month: June 2015

Even the Hawks in the US Congress Are Concerned about the Ukrainian Nazis

No Comments

The flag flown by the Azov Battalion


Actual iconography on Azov Battalion helmets

It appears that the behavior of the Ukraine’s far right militias that Congress has explicitly forbidden giving them funding:

It’s easy to see why Representative John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, would have a problem with the military unit commanded by Ukrainian legislator Andriy Biletsky: Conyers is a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus, Biletsky is a white supremacist.

The House of Representatives has unanimously approved an amendment to the U.S. military budget, proposed by Conyers and Florida Republican Ted Yoho, banning support and training for “the Ukrainian neo-Nazi paramilitary militia ‘Azov Battalion.'” Azov was set up in May 2014 to fight pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. Here’s how the group’s Facebook page describes the circumstances:

In the first weeks after the Putin invasion of Donbass began, the authorities and law enforcers were confused and demoralized. Nationalists had to take initiative. The Patriot of Ukraine organization and allied unofficial groups of right-wing youth rallied around Andriy Biletsky and challenged the separatists.

By now, though, the Azov Battalion has become a regiment of the Ukrainian National Guard and enjoys the enthusiastic support of Interior Minister Arsen Avakov.

Biletsky had run Patriot of Ukraine since 2005. In a 2010 interview he described the organization as nationalist “storm troops” with its biggest unit in Kharkov, Biletsky’s native city in eastern Ukraine. The group’s ideology was “social nationalism” — a term Biletsky, a historian, knew would deceive no one.

………

The war in the east gave Biletsky’s storm troopers a chance at a higher status than they could ever have hoped to achieve. They fought fiercely, and last fall, the 400-strong Azov Battalion became part of the National Guard, receiving permission to expand to 2,000 fighters and gaining access to heavy weaponry. So what if some of its members had Nazi symbols tattooed on their bodies and the unit’s banner bore the Wolfsangel, used widely by the Nazis during World War II? In an interview with Ukraine’s Focus magazine last September, Avakov, responsible for the National Guard, was protective of his heroes. He said of the Wolfsangel:

In many European cities it is part of the city emblem. Yes, most of the guys who assembled in Azov have a particular worldview. But who told you you could judge them? Don’t forget what the Azov Battalion did for the country. Remember the liberation of Mariupol, the fighting at Ilovaysk, the latest attacks near the Sea of Azov. May God allow anyone who criticizes them to do 10 percent of what they’ve done. And anyone who’s going to tell me that these guys preach Nazi views, wear the swastika and so on, are bare-faced liars and fools.


………

Now, Conyers and Yoho have almost succeeded in making Azov ineligible for any form of U.S. assistance. “These groups run counter to American values,” Conyers told Congress. “And once the fighting ends, they pose a significant threat to the Ukrainian government and the Ukrainian people. As we’ve seen many times, most notably within the Mujaheddin in Afghanistan, these groups will not lay down their arms once the conflict is over.”

As Robert Parry, who was given the Polk award for his work on Iran-Contra observed:


………

The conservative London Telegraph offered more details about the Azov battalion in an article by correspondent Tom Parfitt, who wrote: “Kiev’s use of volunteer paramilitaries to stamp out the Russian-backed Donetsk and Luhansk ‘people’s republics’… should send a shiver down Europe’s spine.

“Recently formed battalions such as Donbas, Dnipro and Azov, with several thousand men under their command, are officially under the control of the interior ministry but their financing is murky, their training inadequate and their ideology often alarming. The Azov men use the neo-Nazi Wolfsangel (Wolf’s Hook) symbol on their banner and members of the battalion are openly white supremacists, or anti-Semites.”

Based on interviews with militia members, the Telegraph reported that some of the fighters doubted the reality of the Holocaust, expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler and acknowledged that they are indeed Nazis.

Biletsky, the Azov commander, “is also head of an extremist Ukrainian group called the Social National Assembly,” according to the Telegraph article which quoted a commentary by Biletsky as declaring: “The historic mission of our nation in this critical moment is to lead the White Races of the world in a final crusade for their survival. A crusade against the Semite-led Untermenschen.”

In other words, for the first time since World War II, a government had dispatched Nazi storm troopers to attack a European population – and officials in Kiev knew what they were doing. The Telegraph questioned Ukrainian authorities in Kiev who acknowledged that they were aware of the extremist ideologies of some militias but insisted that the higher priority was having troops who were strongly motivated to fight. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Ignoring Ukraine’s Neo-Nazi Storm Troopers.”]

But a rebel counteroffensive led by ethnic Russians last August reversed many of Kiev’s gains and drove the Azov and other government forces back to the port city of Mariupol, where Foreign Policy’s reporter Alec Luhn also encountered the Nazis. He wrote:

“Blue and yellow Ukrainian flags fly over Mariupol’s burned-out city administration building and at military checkpoints around the city, but at a sport school near a huge metallurgical plant, another symbol is just as prominent: the wolfsangel (‘wolf trap’) symbol that was widely used in the Third Reich and has been adopted by neo-Nazi groups. …

“Pro-Russian forces have said they are fighting against Ukrainian nationalists and ‘fascists’ in the conflict, and in the case of Azov and other battalions, these claims are essentially true.”

You can find Conyers’ statement on his amendments banning any aid the Azov battallion, as well as prohibiting the transfer of shoulder launched SAMs (Manpads) to anyone in the Ukraine, here.

I think that the prohibition against the missiles is particularly significant, because it not just a measure of concern about neo-Nazi elements in the Ukrainian establishment, it is a vote of no-confidence in their entire military establishment, and arguably the entire government, with regard to securing portable SAMs.

Dick Waving like This Could Get All of Us Killed

No Comments

Because our coup in the Ukraine is not progressing well, the US is looking at forward deploying armor and troops along the Russian border:

In a significant move to deter possible Russian aggression in Europe, the Pentagon is poised to store battle tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and other heavy weapons for as many as 5,000 American troops in several Baltic and Eastern European countries, American and allied officials say.

The proposal, if approved, would represent the first time since the end of the Cold War that the United States has stationed heavy military equipment in the newer NATO member nations in Eastern Europe that had once been part of the Soviet sphere of influence. Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the war in eastern Ukraine have caused alarm and prompted new military planning in NATO capitals.

It would be the most prominent of a series of moves the United States and NATO have taken to bolster forces in the region and send a clear message of resolve to allies and to Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, that the United States would defend the alliance’s members closest to the Russian frontier.

To quote a line from the movie The Hunt for Red October, “This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we’ll be lucky to live through it.“

When we look at this sort of foreign adventurism, what is almost universal is that it comes back to bite the United States in the ass.

What IS universal is that the target of this sort of crap end up worse off than they were before.

But we keep on doing this, again, and again, and again, and again.

What Are the Limits of Political Activism by an Employee?

1 Comment

A few days ago, I wrote of a Texas elementary school teacher, who, in response to the police officer abusing black teens in McKinney, suggested that the reinstitution of segregation might be a good thing.

I just learned that this teacher, Karen Fitzgibbons, has been fired.

Good news everyone!


I invented a device that makes you read this in your head using my voice!

My first reaction is that the Professor Farnsworth quote, “Good News, Everyone.”

Certainly, I don’t want any children taught by an open racist, which Ms. Fitzgibbons post clearly indicates.

On the other hand, it is profoundly worrying when a public employee is fired for expressing their political views as a private citizen, no matter how abhorrent.

In this case, I think that the firing is justified, I think that she no longer had the credibility required to deal with students and their parents, and any decision made regarding minorities in her class would naturally be suspect.

I do hope that the school district is reviewing any disciplinary actions involving minorities.

Skepticism of her entire career as an educator is justified.

Finally, a Good Analogy for What Is Happening to Greece

1 Comment

What the Troika is actually trying to do is not to do the right thing, they are, as Nobel Prize winning economist Amartya Sen notes, trying to go Versailles on Greece:

On 5 June 1919, John Maynard Keynes wrote to the prime minister of Britain, David Lloyd George, “I ought to let you know that on Saturday I am slipping away from this scene of nightmare. I can do no more good here.” Thus ended Keynes’s role as the official representative of the British Treasury at the Paris Peace Conference. It liberated Keynes from complicity in the Treaty of Versailles (to be signed later that month), which he detested.

Why did Keynes dislike a treaty that ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers (surely a good thing)?

Keynes was not, of course, complaining about the end of the world war, nor about the need for a treaty to end it, but about the terms of the treaty – and in particular the suffering and the economic turmoil forced on the defeated enemy, the Germans, through imposed austerity. Austerity is a subject of much contemporary interest in Europe – I would like to add the word ­“unfortunately” somewhere in the sentence. Actually, the book that Keynes wrote attacking the treaty, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, was very substantially about the economic consequences of “imposed austerity”. Germany had lost the battle already, and the treaty was about what the defeated enemy would be required to do, including what it should have to pay to the victors. The terms of this Carthaginian peace, as Keynes saw it (recollecting the Roman treatment of the ­defeated Carthage following the Punic wars), included the imposition of an unrealistically huge burden of reparation on Germany – a task that Germany could not carry out without ruining its economy. As the terms also had the effect of fostering animosity between the victors and the vanquished and, in addition, would economically do no good to the rest of Europe, Keynes had nothing but contempt for the decision of the victorious four (Britain, France, Italy and the United States) to demand something from Germany that was hurtful for the vanquished and unhelpful for all.

The high-minded moral rhetoric in favour of the harsh imposition of austerity on Germany that Keynes complained about came particularly from Lord Cunliffe and Lord Sumner, representing Britain on the Reparation Commission, whom Keynes liked to call “the Heavenly Twins”. In his ­parting letter to Lloyd George, Keynes added, “I leave the Twins to gloat over the devastation of Europe.” Grand rhetoric on the necessity of imposing austerity, to remove economic and moral impropriety in Greece and elsewhere, may come more frequently these days from Berlin itself, with the changed role of Germany in today’s world. But the unfavourable consequences that Keynes feared would follow from severe – and in his judgement unreasoned – imposition of austerity remain relevant today (with an altered geography of the morally upright discipliner and the errant to be disciplined).

Aside from Keynes’s fear of economic ruin of a country, in this case Germany, through the merciless scheduling of demanded payments, he also analysed the bad consequences on other countries in Europe of the economic collapse of one of their partners. The thesis of economic interdependence, which Keynes would pursue more fully later (including in his most famous book, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, to be published in 1936), makes an early appearance in this book, in the context of his critique of the Versailles Treaty.

The purpose of the Versailles Treaty was to break Germany and German spirit, and 20 years later, Europe was at war again.

Now European powers, primarily Germany, are attempting to break Greece and Greek spirit.

This will not end well.

Obama Loses Trade Vote in House ……… and There Was Much Rejoicing

No Comments

It’s confusing, but basically the House of Representatives overwhelmingly rejected a key portion of the Fast Track process, and I am doing a happy dance.

Hours after President Obama made a dramatic, personal appeal for support, House Democrats on Friday thwarted his push to expand trade negotiating power — and quite likely his chance to secure a legacy-defining accord spanning the Pacific Ocean.

 In a remarkable blow to a president they have backed so resolutely, House Democrats voted to end assistance to workers displaced by global trade, a program their party created and has supported for four decades. That move effectively scuttled legislation granting the president trade promotion authority — the power to negotiate trade deals that cannot be amended or filibustered by Congress.

 “We want a better deal for America’s workers,” said Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House minority leader, who has guided the president’s agenda for two terms and was personally lobbied by Mr. Obama until the last minute.

 The vote that prevented the president from obtaining trade promotional authority now imperils the more sweeping Trans-Pacific Partnership, a proposed trade agreement with 11 other nations along the Pacific Ocean that affects 40 percent of the global economy on goods ranging from running shoes to computers.

 ………

 The Democratic revolt left Republican leaders trying to summon support from their own party for trade adjustment assistance, a program they have long derided as a waste of money and a concession to organized labor. Eighty-six Republicans voted for the program, more than double the 40 Democrats who supported it. But the trade adjustment assistance bill failed when 126 voted for it and 303 against.

 Republican leaders then passed, in a 219-to-211 vote, a stand-alone bill that would grant the president the trade negotiating authority he sought. But that measure cannot go to the president for his signature because the Senate version of the legislative package combined both trade adjustment and trade promotion.

 There is still a possibility that the House will pass the worker assistance bill early next week and send to Mr. Obama, but it would require dozens of Republicans or Democrats changing their votes, a prospect Republicans said was remote.

It’s kind of tough to understand what is going on here, but here is how this was supposed work:

  • In order to pass Trade Promotion Authority (aka TPA or Fast Track), Congress needs to pass displaced worker aid, which provides funds for transition and retraining, for people displaced as a result offshoring
  • Because the Republicans are insisting on offsets for this costs, this measure includes a minuscule cut to Medicare.
  • Fast Track is supposed to be passed.
  • Because Democrats are unwilling to cut Medicare, Democrats were promised a vote to reinstate the Medicare funding.  (but no guarantee that it would pass)

Here’s the kicker:  There were never more than 80 or so Republicans who were willing to support aid to displaced workers, which meant that something like ¾ of the Democratic Caucus need to vote for it, and it meant voting for a Medicare cut, which would have been used by Republicans in the 2016 campaign, just like they did in 2010 over Obamacare.

Additionally, as was observed by Gaius Publius, (the blogger, not the Roman Historian), “Supporting NAFTA Was the Kiss of Death for Democrats — Why Dems Should Think Twice About Voting for TPP.”

Much like Obamacare, Obama is shivving his own party in the hopes of his “legacy”, but this time, they get it, and unlike Obamacare, the TPP, TTIP, and TiSA actually make things worse ……… A lot worse.

They are designed to facilitate the privatization of government functions, encourage IP based rent seeking, and to promote the parasitic financialization of the involved countries.

I am tremendously happy that Obama has lost this, but I expect him to come back again to try and get fast track authority again.

Keep dialing your Congress critters.

Day 104

No Comments

I haz a sad.

I just watched the series finale of Phineas and Ferb, and I already miss the show.

Jeff “Swampy” Marsh and Dan Povenmire, the creators/show runners next project will be
Mikey Murphy’s Law,* and I, as well as the rest of my family, will wait for this with bated breath.

*The concept of this show is that it is the adventures of the great, great, great, great, great, great, grandchild of the creator of Murphy’s Law.†
†Technically, this is historically inaccurate, because the term Murphy’s Law has its origins in rocket sled tests at Edwards AFB in the early 1950s.

Cleveland Prosecutors and Police Just Got Served

No Comments

On Monday, I noted that communities in Cleveland had used a peculiarity in Ohio law to ask a judge to file charges against the two police involved in the shooting death of Tamir Rice.

Well, the judge has ruled that there is probable cause to file charges, but that he cannot actually file the charges:

A judge in Cleveland ruled Thursday that probable cause existed to charge two Cleveland police officers in the death of a 12-year-old boy, Tamir Rice, but the judge also said he did not have the power to order arrests without a complaint being filed by a prosecutor.

In his ruling, Judge Ronald B. Adrine, presiding judge of the Municipal Court, found probable cause to charge Officer Timothy Loehmann, who fired the fatal shot, with murder, involuntary manslaughter, reckless homicide and dereliction of duty. He also found probable cause to charge Officer Loehmann’s partner, Officer Frank Garmback, with negligent homicide and dereliction of duty.

“This court determines that complaints should be filed by the prosecutor of the City of Cleveland and/or the Cuyahoga County prosecutor,” Judge Adrine wrote.

The shooting of Tamir last Nov. 22 was one of a series of killings of unarmed black males by police officers around the country that have prompted widespread protests and calls for reform in race relations and the use of force by officers. The county prosecutor, Timothy J. McGinty, has been handling the case, and although Judge Adrine’s ruling is not binding, it puts added pressure on Mr. McGinty in a closely scrutinized case.

Mr. McGinty released a terse statement indicating that he would not be rushed into filing a criminal complaint.

………

This week, a group of activists and community leaders asked the court to have the officers arrested under an Ohio law that allows “a private citizen having knowledge of the facts” to start the process by filing an affidavit with a court. They argued that the widely seen video of an officer killing Tamir had given nearly everyone “knowledge of the facts.”

The Ohio law, in effect in various forms since 1960, is unusual and rarely invoked, and lawyers have disagreed about what might be achieved by using it.

………

The Cuyahoga County sheriff’s office conducted a five-month investigation and handed its findings to Mr. McGinty’s office early this month, but they have not been made public, and Mr. McGinty said his office still had investigating of its own to do. Eventually, his office said, prosecutors will take the case to a grand jury, which will decide whether to issue indictments. But no one could say how long that would take.

That, the petitioners said, was the problem; they argued that if the people involved had not been wearing uniforms, they would have been arrested long ago. Yet nearly seven months after Tamir died, no decision has been made.

“The video in question in this case is notorious and hard to watch,” Judge Adrine wrote in his order. “After viewing it several times, this court is still thunderstruck by how quickly this event turned deadly,” he wrote, adding that Officer Loehmann fired his gun before the car he was riding in had even come to a stop.

It’s been 7 months.

Prosecutors have not even interrogated Loehmann.

When prosecutor McGinty says that he will, “Not be rushed into filing a criminal complaint,” it means that he has no intention at all of prosecuting these officers unless he is absolutely forced to.

Unlike, Baltimore States Attorney Marilyn Mosby, and like St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCullogh and Richmond County District Attorney Dan Donovan, McGinty is trying his level best make this case go away, or, if this proves unavoidable, he is trying to deliberately lose.

Hopefully, this judge’s ruling will put his back to a wall, but I do not see how you get an indictment, much less a conviction, with a prosecutor who is trying to lose.

Whiny Bitch of the Day: France

No Comments

France has its panties in a bunch because Belgium has produced a €2.50 coin commemorating Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo:

Perhaps befitting a battle that ended French hegemony in Europe, Paris, it seems, has been outflanked once again.

 After it objected to a decision in March by Belgium to introduce a new 2 euro coin to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo, the Belgians retreated, scrapping 180,000 coins they had already minted.

 But victory for France is proving elusive.

 This week, Belgium decided to circumvent French resistance by invoking a little-known European Union rule that allows countries to issue euro coins of their choice, provided they are in an irregular denomination.

 That led to the unveiling of a €2.50 coin — a first in Belgium — and 70,000 of them have now been minted. The coins, which can only be spent inside Belgium, display a monument of a lion atop a cone-shaped hill on the site of France’s humiliation, as well as lines indicating where troops were positioned when forces led by Britain and Prussia defeated Napoleon in the countryside near Brussels.

 Johan Van Overtveldt, the Belgian finance minister, insisted on Monday that the new coins were not meant to provoke Gallic anger.

 “The goal is not to revive old quarrels in a modern Europe — and there are more important things to sort out,” he was quoted as saying by Agence France-Presse. “But there’s been no battle in recent history as important as Waterloo, or indeed one that captures the imagination in the same way.”

 ………

 In Britain, where the 19th-century poet laureate Robert Southey called the Battle of Waterloo “the greatest deliverance that civilized society has experienced” since Charles Martel repelled an Islamic conquest of Europe in 732, the new €2.50 coin aroused similar adulation.

 “Well done Belgium beat the French at their own game of finding ways around EU rules, the English should take note!!” Michael Dunn, from Stratford-upon-Avon, wrote on Twitter.

 Others were less impressed. On Facebook, Manuel Di Pietrantonio suggested that the value of the dispute was about €2.50.

I agree with Mr. Di Pietrantonio.  It’s a tempest in a teapot, and it is the French who are making it so.

Commemorating its 200th anniversary is completely appropriate.

Waterloo is a very big deal:  Not only did it end the career of Napoleon, but it was the triumph of the General Staff over the lone general, which served to transform war.

I so want to get one and try to spend it in Paris.

F%$# Them if They Can’t Take a Joke

No Comments

Sepp Blatter is still running FIFA, and he just fired FIFA’s public relations weasel for telling a very funny joke about the current scandal:

Fifa communications director Walter De Gregorio has been sacked after sealing his fate with a joke about the governing body on Swiss TV.

Gregorio told Swiss chat show Schawinski: “The Fifa president, secretary general and communications director are all travelling in a car. Who’s driving? The police.”

Fifa announced in a statement that De Gregorio had “relinquished his office”.

But the BBC understands he was asked to leave by president Sepp Blatter.

Sorry, but this is funny, and Sepp Blatter is such a delicate flower.

It’s amazing how sensitive corrupt bureaucrats are.

Can We Please Give Texas Back to Mexico? (Part XIII)

No Comments

Nope, no racism here.

In yet another outburst that reflects poorly on the culture of the Lone Star State, an an elementary school teacher calls for a return to segregation in response to the cop losing his sh%$ in McKinney:

A Frenship teacher said she apologized after writing a Facebook post saying she was “almost to the point” of wanting segregation regarding a racially charged police issue in McKinney.

Karen Fitzgibbons, a teacher at Bennett Elementary School, told A-J Media she deleted the post Wednesday evening — a day after writing the publicly viewable post on her Facebook page.

Asked about the post, a Frenship ISD spokesman said such matters are “taken very seriously.”

………

“I’m going to just go ahead and say it … the blacks are the ones causing the problems and this ‘racial tension.’ I guess that’s what happens when you flunk out of school and have no education. I’m sure their parents are just as guilty for not knowing what their kids were doing; or knew it and didn’t care. I’m almost to the point of wanting them all segregated on one side of town so they can hurt each other and leave the innocent people alone. Maybe the 50s and 60s were really on to something. Now, let the bashing of my true and honest opinion begin….GO! #imnotracist #imsickofthemcausingtrouble #itwasatagedcommunity,” the Facebook post stated.

Fitzgibbons insisted the post “was not directed at any one person or group.”

Not directed at any person or group?

I assume that unicorns fly out of your ass as well?

In a comment to the press, Fitzgibbons stated tha she had, “Apologized to the appropriate people,” but has declined to explain who the “appropriate people” are.

The only way that she can have apologized to the appropriate people is if she apologized to each and every one of the 7,321,243,458 on the planet earth, because she needs to apologize to the entire human race for that crap.

I have not gotten my apology yet.

The fact that she has a job to mold the young minds of the next generation does not bode well for our future.

Diane Rehm Will Keep Her Job, but She Shouldn’t

No Comments
As you may or not be aware, yesterday Diane Rehm asserted to Bernie Sanders that he had dual US/Israeli citizenship:

Diane Rehm: Senator, you have dual citizenship with Israel.

 Bernie Sanders: Well, no I do not have dual citizenship with Israel. I’m an American. I don’t know where that question came from. I am an American citizen, and I have visited Israel on a couple of occasions. No, I’m an American citizen, period.

 Rehm: I understand from a list we have gotten that you were on that list.

 Sanders: No.

 Rehm: Forgive me if that is—

 Sanders: That’s some of the nonsense that goes on in the internet. But that is absolutely not true.

 Rehm: Interesting. Are there members of Congress who do have dual citizenship or is that part of the fable?

 Sanders: I honestly don’t know but I have read that on the internet. You know, my dad came to this country from Poland at the age of 17 without a nickel in his pocket. He loved this country. I am, you know, I got offended a little bit by that comment, and I know it’s been on the internet. I am obviously an American citizen and I do not have any dual citizenship.

Later Rehm kinda-sorta apologized by claiming that she had gotten this question from a comment on her Facebook page:

On today’s show I made a mistake. Rather than asking Senator and Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders whether he had dual U.S./Israeli citizenship, as I had read in a comment on Facebook, I stated it as fact.

At least she isn’t blaming an intern, but it still shows, at a minimum, a recklessness with truth that is appalling.

Then again, it could be malice, and I’m inclined to believe that this was malice, because, as Josh Marshall so ably observes, it is inconceivable that she does not know the subtext that even asking the question would raise:

I don’t expect much more to come of this Diane Rehm/Sanders brouhaha, mainly because Rehm has such profound buy-in and goodwill from media and political figures in Washington; because Sanders himself isn’t making a big deal out of it; and because the people who usually bang the pans loudest about anti-Semitism themselves aren’t fully invested because they don’t share Sanders’ politics (though they’re certainly not ignoring it). But if you’re asking me, Diane Rehm’s explanation is a complete crock.

If you read Rehm’s explanation from her show this morning, a reader on Facebook gave her a ‘list’ and suggested she ask Sanders about it. Her mistake was stating it as a fact and asking him to respond to that fact rather than asking it as a question. Now, even though she mishandled the question, she’s glad she could help put the rumor to rest.

That’s bullsh%$.

………

If someone were totally oblivious to history, contemporary politics or anything about public affairs, I could see where maybe you read that and think, “Wow, that’s amazing. I had no idea.”

But as someone who has been running a very sophisticated and literate public affairs program for decades, that does not remotely apply to Rehm. Not even remotely close. There is simply no way you read one of these and do not know that at the very, very best you are asking a highly incendiary question that has a long history in anti-Semitic diatribes. I guess you could speculate, well, maybe despite all that, Sanders really does hold Israeli nationality? Let’s ask him. But coming from one of these ‘lists’ on the web? Again, it does not remotely hold up.

I think the only way you find yourself saying this is if you are totally oblivious to what you are saying and relying entirely on a researcher to feed you lines (the theory Sanders puts forward) or you have a worldview that makes these kind of anti-Semitic canards plausible.

Let’s hit the other point. It’s not just a matter of stating as a fact vs asking a question. If you’re interviewing President Obama and you ask him whether Osama bin Laden is his brother or whether he’s conspiring with Iran to destroy America, that’s not just a question. Why not ask an African-American congressman if he’s held up any 7-Elevens recently? People are going to say, rightly, WTF is your problem? It’s not a question, at least not phrased anything like that. You’re dignifying, laundering hate speech. And when you get a flat denial you’re not helping put the rumor to rest. That’s CYA after the fact.

(%$ mine)

I believe that what Rehm can only be ascribed to malice.  I am not suggesting that Rehm has an antisemitism problem, I am not a mind reader, but I am suggesting that this indicates a bias against Sanders.

One also has to remember that the VSPs inside the DC Beltway have a narrative in which Sanders is not electable, and sh%$ like this is the inevitable result.

Real-Life Special Forces, Heavy Metal God, Actor, Knight, Descendant of Holy Roman Emperor………

2 Comments

The many faces of Christopher Lee


And Fox f%$#s it up


I will never think about the song :The Little Drummer Boy” the same way again.

I am referring to the iconic British actor Christopher Lee, who died Monday at the age of 93:

Any actor who played a definitive Dracula and Saruman in “Lord of the Rings” would surely be welcomed in the realm of heavy metal fans. But Sir Christopher Lee, the estimable British actor who died Monday, is a particular hero to fans of heavy rock.

Lee, a lifelong musician, had dabbled in vocal performance and recorded a track for the score of his 1973 film “The Wicker Man.” But Lee’s foreboding baritone and arch screen presence turned out to lend itself perfectly to a heavy metal setting.

The actor, beloved for his turns in both classic and B-movie horror, cut his first metal album at the age of 90: “Charlemagne: By the Sword and the Cross.”

The album, an operatic concept piece recounting the life of the first Holy Roman Emperor, remains a cult favorite in metal, and earned him a “Spirit of Metal” award at the 2010 Metal Hammer Golden Gods award ceremony (presented by no less a figure than Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath).

Judas Priest guitarist Richie Faulkner, a fellow legend of British metal, told the site Loudwire that Lee was “a very metal guy, he embodies the whole spirit of metal.”

Lee followed it up with a 2013 sequel, “Charlemagne: The Omens of Death.” But Lee is perhaps most adored in metal for his exquisitely droll “A Heavy Metal Christmas” recordings, where he lent his gravitas to some magnificently silly holiday originals.

FYI, Lee was a direct descendant of Charlemagne.

As to the SAS bit, roll the Wiki:

Lee’s stepfather served as a captain in the Intelligence Corps, but it is unlikely he had any influence over Lee’s military career. Lee saw him for the last time on a bus in London in 1940, by then divorced from Lee’s mother, though Lee did not speak to him. Lee mentioned that during the war he was attached to the Special Operations Executive and the Long Range Desert Patrol, the precursor of the SAS, but always declined to go into details.

“ I was attached to the SAS from time to time but we are forbidden – former, present, or future – to discuss any specific operations. Let’s just say I was in Special Forces and leave it at that. People can read in to that what they like.

Here is a guy who lived an amazing life.

The Only Donald Worse than Trump

No Comments

Larry Wilmore, who I had neglected to put on my list of People I Do Not Want to Piss Off, (Since corrected) was rather put out by Donald Rumsfeld’s rewriting history on Iraq and claiming that he never suggested that he was bringing a stable democracy to Iraq.

Rumsfeld, 2003:

From the very beginning, we were convinced that we would succeed, and that means that that regime would end. And we were convinced that as we went from the end of that regime to something other than that regime, there would be a period of transition. And, you cannot do everything instantaneously; it’s never been done, everything instantaneously. We did, however, recognize that there was at least a chance of catastrophic success, if you will, to reverse the phrase, that you could in a given place or places have a victory that occurred well before reasonable people might have expected it, and that we needed to be ready for that; we needed to be ready with medicine, with food, with water. And, we have been.

Rumsfeld, 2015:

Over a decade after presiding over the invasion of Iraq, Donald Rumsfeld admitted that the country may not have been ready for a democracy.

In an interview with British newspaper the Times, the former Secretary of Defense reflected on America’s role in shaping the Middle East, and suggested expecting Iraq to seamlessly transition to a democracy was “unrealistic.”

“I’m not one who thinks that our particular template of democracy is appropriate for other countries at every moment of their histories,” Rumsfeld told the Times. “The idea that we could fashion a democracy in Iraq seemed to me unrealistic. I was concerned about it when I first heard those words.”

Larry Wilmore rightly said the Rumsfeld is, “The only Donald worse than Trump.”

And I am saying that Larry Willmore is a part of the sacred and hermetic order of People I Do Not Want to Piss Off.

Just When You Thought that Air Travel Couldn’t get any Crappier………

No Comments

The airline trade group, the The International Air Transport Association (IATA), has mooted a proposal to further shrink the size of carry-on luggage:

The International Air Transport Association has put out a recommendation that cabin bags be 21.5 x 13.5 x 7.5 inches to create more space for passengers to store luggage.

 Airlines set their own carry-on limits but the recommendation, if adopted, could lead them to trim bag sizes at most major carriers.

 No North American carriers have yet accepted the IATA guidance but Emirates, Lufthansa (DLAKF) and seven others have.

 Southwest Airlines (LUV) and American Airlines (AAL) said they don’t have any plans to change carry-on guidelines. Southwest passengers would be among the hardest hit if IATA’s recommendation becomes standard across the industry. They would lose about 40% in bag space.

Yes, the secret to the airlines is making the cargo customer experience crappier and crappier, until the consumer longs for the bliss of dealing with Comcast customer service.

I long for the invention of the Star Trek transporter system.

Obama Has Learned Nothing, and He Has Forgotten Nothing*

No Comments

And the escalation in Iraq continues:

President Obama has authorized the deployment of up to 450 more American troops to Iraq to train and assist the Iraqi forces battling the Islamic State, the White House announced on Wednesday, signaling a major shift of focus in the fight against the Sunni militant group.

 The United States forces will use Al Taqqadum, an Iraqi base near the town of Habbaniya in eastern Anbar Province, as their training hub, the White House said. Mr. Obama opted to send them at the request of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi of Iraq, and after consultation with Ashton B. Carter, the secretary of defense, and Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

 “These new advisers will work to build capacity of Iraqi forces, including local tribal fighters, to improve their ability to plan, lead and conduct operations against ISIL in eastern Anbar under the command of the prime minister,” Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said in a statement, referring to the Islamic State, which is also known as ISIS and ISIL. “This train, advise and assist mission builds on lessons learned during the past several months and is just one aspect of our commitment to support the Iraqi Security Forces.”

Al Taqqadum is near the front lines with ISIS in Iraq.

What could possibly go wrong?

“These new advisers will work to build capacity of Iraqi forces, including local tribal fighters, to improve their ability to plan, lead and conduct operations against ISIL in eastern Anbar under the command of the prime minister,” Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said in a statement, referring to the Islamic State, which is also known as ISIS and ISIL. “This train, advise and assist mission builds on lessons learned during the past several months and is just one aspect of our commitment to support the Iraqi Security Forces.”

 Mr. Obama will also speed up the delivery of weapons and equipment to Iraqi forces, including pesh merga and tribal fighters who are under Iraqi command.

So, we will somehow being improving the the Iraqi military, all while giving large quantities of weapons to the Iraqi military, which is where ISIS got many of its weapons from.

Shortly after entering office, Obama, and most of his cabinet, read the book Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam, which argued that the disaster in Vietnam was driven by a military that did not understand the war or the bigger picture, while around the same time, the Generals were reading A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam, which argues that we were winning the war in the 1970s, and would have won, if not for those meddling kids if the civilian leadership and the general public had not lost their nerve.

If you take advice on the making of war from a community that holds themselves blameless for our loss in Vietnam (i.e the military) and holds literally everyone else in the United States at fault, this is not a recipe for successful policy prescriptions.

After all, the US Military still promulgates the myth that it never lost a battle in Vietnam, (we lost at least 70 battles), and David Petraeus literally wrote this into his doctoral thesis.

Note that even after his guilty plea for giving classified information to his mistress and lying to law enforcement about this, he is still consulting with the White House on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

To not quote Talleyrand,† “It is worse than a crime, it is a mistake.”

*Ils n’ont rien appris, ni rien oublié. This generally ascribed to Talleyrand, referring to the general idiocy returned Bourbon monarchs after Napoleon’s final defeat. It is likely that the quote did not come from him.
†Again, this is probably not an actually a quote from Tallyrand. It was likely said by Joseph Fouché, but, “C’est pire qu’un crime, c’est une faute,” is all too frequently credited to Talleyrand.

Today’s Must Read on McKinney, and Bad Cops, and Good Cops

No Comments

Law Professor and former police officer Seth Stoughton makes the point that needs to be made about both the incident in McKinney, and in policing generally.

He observes that there are two cops on the film, and one gets people calmed down, and other one is Eric Casebolt:

An officer in McKinney, Texas, dashes down a sidewalk, losing his flashlight as he runs past a teenage videographer toward an emergency. Seconds later, the teen with the camera walks up to another officer, one who is standing with a group of kids. “I’m just saying,” the officer is saying in a calm, corrective tone that parents and school teachers everywhere will recognize. “Don’t take off running when the cops get here.”

He thanks the videographer for returning the flashlight, then listens for a few seconds as the kids around him try to explain who was and was not involved in a prior incident. “Okay, guys, I appreciate that,” the as-yet-unidentified officer says. He responds to their concerns—that the police had detained the wrong people—by saying, “Okay, that’s what I’m saying. They’re free to go.” While not casual, the officer is composed. His tone is friendly and professional as he engages with the kids.

Seconds later, another officer, Corporal Eric Casebolt, is shown interacting with some of the same kids. His angry tone and aggressive attitude stand in marked contrast to the first officer in the video. “Get on the ground,” he commands sharply while pulling on a young man’s wrist in a way that looks like he’s trying to force the man to the ground with a painful joint manipulation (technically a supinating wrist lock or, for martial arts enthusiasts, kote gaeshi).

When that proves ineffective, he grabs the back of the young man’s head and shoves him down. “I told you to stay,” he yells, pointing a large metal flashlight at someone off camera. “Get your asses down on the ground.” Like the first officer, he lectures some of the kids about running from the police, but he takes a very different approach. “Don’t make me fucking run around here with thirty pounds of god-damned gear on in the sun because you want to screw around out here.” He is anything but composed, calm or professional.

The two officers in this brief video represent two different policing styles, two different mindsets that officers use as they interact with civilians: the Guardian and the Warrior. As a former police officer and current policing scholar, I know that an officer’s mindset has tremendous impact on police/civilian encounters. I’ve described the Guardian and Warrior mindsets at some length here and here; for now, suffice to say that the right mindset can de-escalate tense situations, induce compliance, and increase community trust over the long-term. The kids interacting with the first officer were excited, but not upset; they remained cooperative. Had they gone home at that moment, they’d have a story for their friends and family, but it would be a story that happened to have the police in it rather than being a story about the police.

………

Officers should also look out for each other, protecting their colleagues not just from harm, but also from lashing out in anger or frustration. Policing can be intensely stressful, and officers should be trained and encouraged to help their peers deal with stressful situations. When an officer is losing his cool, another officer will often be able to intervene, giving the first a chance to collect himself. That type of peer support isn’t part of modern police culture—particularly not when the officer losing his temper is a supervisor and union official like Corporal Casebolt—but it should be.

A short video of officers in McKinney, Texas, shows us the avoidable results of an unnecessarily aggressive approach to policing. But in the same video, we can see a few seconds of policing the way the way it should be done.

Remember the old days, when people called members of the constabulary, “Peace Officer”?

A warrior cannot be a “Peace Officer”.  Their job is wage war against the enemy.

Peace Officers do not wage war against an enemy, the protect their fellow citizens.

In antiquity, when a “Warrior” took a town, he was supposed to take any male child that he found, and dash its brains out on the cobblestones.

This is not a proper model for policing.