Totally wrong. If Merkel was a product of Iron curtain, she'd know that the worldview of western elites is suicidal nonsense---look at Putti. She's a poor girl from "the wrong side of the tracks" who's just trying to fit among "her betters".
#3
So you're going to tell us she's really secetly Bavarian because it doesn't fit with your worldview that there's a link between the Soviets/Communists and the leftist elites here? While Gerhard Schroeder quits the premiership straight to a no-schedule job working for Putin and Gazprom and Merkel didn't even have him shot or arrested for it.
#8
Merkel grew up in a communist dictatorship. Her family was pro regime. That's a fact.
Does her upbringing inform her current insane decisions?
Barring additional information and applying Occam's Razor I think so. This is only a conjecture.
#10
Let me put it this way. Peoples of Eastern Europe had the disease, recovered, and are immune now. Peoples of Western Europe & North America are infected now---and the prognosis for recovery is not good.
[Hurriyet] The United States unveiled a new strategy last week in its war against ISIL. For the first time, American military advisors will be on the ground in Syria, existing advisors in Iraq will be moved closer to the front lines, and American special forces will be sent into direct combat in both locations.
These new moves increase the likelihood that more Americans will die in the fight, much as the nation saw two weeks ago with the death of Delta Force operator Joshua Wheeler in Iraq (others have been maimed.) The changes will also increase the monetary cost of the war against ISIL. The United States has spent more than $2.7 billion so far, with the average daily cost around $9 million.
It's easy to stop there, and think only in terms of the price the United States is paying in blood and treasure for the war against Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... . But the costs should also be measured in the chaos the war has spawned, and in the additional problems for American foreign policy it has created.
Syria is the locus of the chaos. At one point, the key American goal in Syria was to depose Bashir al-Assad, partly because he was bombing his own people. Those same people now suffer attacks from the air and the ground by the United States, Russia, Britannia, Jordan, The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... , La Belle France, Canada, Australia, Iran, a handful of Gulf nations, and ISILand its cohorts.
The result? Vast areas of Syria have been reduced to rubble, more than 240,000 people have died in the conflict, and nearly 12 million people -- half the country's population -- have been driven from their homes.
The many players in the conflict seem to be following the Vietnam War-era strategy of "destroying Syria in order to save it." The some-day reconstruction will be expensive, though it is unclear who will pay that bill.
In Iraq, the United States' fight against ISIL has meant an acceptance of Iranian leadership, special operators, and weapons inside same the nation Americans died "saving" only a few years ago. The growing Iranian influence is closely coupled with American acceptance of Shiite militias now in the field, after the Iraqi Army bravely ran away from Islamic State. The growing Iranian influence will be hard to contain throughout the region; the United States, for example, has had to invite Iran to join a new round of Syrian peace talks. That grants Iran a say in the outcome, and Iran supports Assad.
And there is Russia, who, under the loose cover of fighting Islamic State, quickly re-established itself as a military force in the heart of the Middle East. It is difficult to imagine them leaving. Until now, the United States has had a relatively free hand in the area as no one had the military power to seriously challenge an American move. Any significant change in Syria is now subject to a Putin veto, and with that Putin has some new diplomatic bargaining chips to spend elsewhere in the world.
Meanwhile, ...back at the buffalo wallow, Standing Buffalo drew a bead on his old enemy and squeezed the trigger... ISIL remains as strong as it has ever been, with American actions serving as its best recruitment tool.
"Defeating ISIL" is far too simplistic a regional strategy. Increasing American military engagement seems unlikely to lessen the chaos, or ameliorate the foreign policy challenges. It is an expensive escalation with little hope of a payoff. And who can really afford that?
Posted by: trailing wife ||
11/04/2015 00:00 ||
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Link ||
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Top|| File under: Islamic State
My head is buzzing with the latest polls, to which gentle readers have directed my attention; and one I found this morning on my own, while checking the BBC to catch up on terror strikes and other horrors. I don't think polls are useful, in the sense of practically good; but this does not mean I don't think polls are accurate. Rather, they feed into something called "democracy" -- an immensely destructive, de-civilizing force.
#2
Actually, polls are not what they appear. It's just another tool for the playing 'jump on the bandwagon' game of well over a century ago whether its used for politics or sales. At this stage of the game, it's just another propaganda tool to manipulate with. It's also a very lucrative tool to extract money from the treasuries amassed by warring power groups, and just as likely manipulated to keep that follow of gold going (tell them what they want to hear). Anyone paying attention has noticed how much even the polls between two contenders narrows dramatically as the real date of 'ritual' of ratification approaches. And this doesn't even start with the way questions are asked or in what connotation which is a contrived means to get results intended not found.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
