When the US spotted signs of a Russian buildup on the Ukraine border, the Obama administration decided not to share the information with Kiev. Rep. Michael Turner, the Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee's subcommittee confessed himself nonplussed. "This is not an issue of means and methods and techniques. This is straight up, almost Google Earth-type analysis. Even giving Ukraine (intelligence) about how best to utilize its forces against Russia would be beneficial." I believe I linked the Daily Beast article here yesterday.
It wouldn't be the first time someone decided it was best for others not to know. "Senate insiders say that senior Treasury Department officials have been lying for years about their backroom efforts to oppose and dismantle Iran sanctions legislation that ultimately forced Tehran to the bargaining table over its illicit nuclear program." Because if they admitted the goal was to surrender to the Ayatollahs then how could they pretend they were containing them?
Bad news has a way of forcing politicians to face up to it. In order to avoid this problem the solution is to shoot the messenger. Foreign Affairs notes that Russia is probably cheating on arms controls agreements. If this knowledge became general, then it would undermine the goal of reaching more such beneficial agreements.
At the moment, Russia's march on Crimea tops the United States' list of issues with its onetime foe. But it is hardly the whole list. Rather, as The New York Times reported in January, Washington apparently believes that Moscow has also been busy violating the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, a pact between the two banning the use of both nuclear and conventionally armed ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles within a certain range. This is no minor matter. When the treaty was signed in 1987, it was taken as a signal that the Cold War was finally thawing and, since then, it has been a been a defining element in U.S.-Russian relations, the United States and NATO's deterrent posture, and the broader architecture of global arms control.
Wouldn't it be better to lie for the sake up peace? Admitting Russia is dishonest would also make it politically difficult to cut defense spending. So the pretense agreements are in effect continues, so that at least half of the parties can live up to them, because admit it, a partial disarmament is better than none at all. "The Pentagon will shrink the number of its nuclear weapon-carrying bomber aircraft and reduce the number of submarine ballistic missile launch tubes as it modifies its force posture to meet the limits of the New START treaty with Russia, the US Defense Department announced Tuesday."
The Air Force will convert 30 B-52 bombers to a conventional-only role, meaning they could not deploy nuclear weapons, a senior defense official said. That will leave the service with 66 nuclear-capable B-52 and B-2 bombers, 60 of which will be in deployed status.
There are 336 ballistic missile tubes on the Navy's 14 Ohio-class submarines. Four tubes on each of the Navy's 14 submarines will be converted "so that they cannot be used to launch missiles," the senior official said. The submarine-launched ballistic missile tube limits under New START are 240 deployed and 40 in non-deployed status.
DoD plans to remove warheads from 50 of its 450 ICBM launch silos, the senior official said. The cuts will be distributed across the Air Force's three ICBM bases in Wyoming, North Dakota and Montana.
A lot of problems can be solved by simply ignoring them. As the Washington Post's Fred Hiatt notes, the best way to respond to the return of tyranny in Hong Kong is to say 'what tyranny?' "In the global war of ideology that President Obama says is not happening, Hong Kong is on the front lines."
democracy's hold has grown more precarious -- "I'm quite frankly surprised at the rate of deterioration," she said during a visit to The Post -- and she is hoping the United States will speak out.
Will it? Obama recently told an audience in Brussels that, though the future belongs to those who support freedom and democracy, "those rules are not self-executing" and "the contest of ideas continues for your generation."
Yet he also insisted that there is no new Cold War. "After all," he said, "unlike the Soviet Union, Russia leads no bloc of nations, no global ideology."
There's a whole separate layer of lies there. It implies that in 1978 the Soviet Union was some sort of Communist Proletariat Paradise working for an ideology instead of doing what empires have always done and preyed upon the weak. People weren't scared of Stalin, or Brezhnev, or Mao, because they were going to show up with a tank division and make Those Asshole Bosses at McDonalds pay the burger-flippers a livable wage. Any more than Maduro the Non-Soviet-Client (yeah, right) is really making things any better for the working people in his country by selling Venezuelan oil to Red Mafia member China at a loss. But I digress.
Perhaps a better way of phrasing it: the Soviet Union and other Red Mafia countries and the New Classes that controlled them didn't really believe in any global ideology then any more than today, the main difference is we believe they're different. And since they don't micromanage their core areas (although the remaining colonies and the new colonies aren't so lucky) they're more efficient and have more money now. And since the neo-Mandarins in the West do micromanage, we don't.
If the coda of the Clinton years was there was "no controlling legal authority" the Obama administration equivalent might well be "those rules are not self-executing". That means that just because the administration says something doesn't mean they have to do anything about it. I notice that ideas like 'no controlling legal authority' doesn't stop them from doing things they really want to do, like Fast and Furious.
Making an effort is so much trouble. Why not just issue a press release and forget about it? Instead it is far easier to do nothing and to simply pretend things are other than they are. Why not? If the press will let you get away with it then go for it. Recently the Obama administration demonstrated an obscene eagerness to say anything -- anything at all -- in order to paper over the problems in Egypt over and get back to business as usual. The Washington Post writes:
Secretary of State John F. Kerry has made clear that he is eager to certify that the Egyptian regime of Gen. Abdel Fatah al-Sissi is "taking steps to govern democratically," as Mr. Kerry is required to do by law before military aid to Egypt can be fully resumed. But Mr. Kerry conceded a few weeks ago that the generals "need to help us help them . . . by implementing some of the reforms that we've been talking to them about with respect to inclusivity, journalists, some of the arrests and so forth."
The administration could of course, embrace the current authoritarian regime in Cairo, having embraced the previous authoritarian regimes in Cairo. But that would be too forthright, and too direct an admission to fly. What would happen to their reputation for being Lightbringers to the Middle East? So it's a lot better to simply pretend that the Egyptian junta is not a junta and ask Congress for aid money to bribe said junta into not becoming a junta. At least not openly. This is exactly what John Kerry, without a shred irony, is asking for. Who cares if it's doesn't fool anyone. So long as we fool ourselves that will be sufficient. So in short they really don't like the Junta, but if it'll help them burn a little bit more of our seed corn they'll throw more money at them.
And I've decided for purposes of brevity to not talk about just how many people John F. Kerry has sold to the Red Mafia in the past. Maybe tonight; I have a late programming assignment.
If there is any shortcoming at all to current political process, it stems from the persistently bad habit of critics to pull aside the curtain. Our unwillingness to credit the administration with intelligence or competence makes it hard for them to sustain the illusion. And illusion's a valuable thing when it is considered a substitute for reality.
The Weekly Standard notes that "in his Senate Foreign Relations Committee testimony last week, Secretary of State John Kerry blamed Israel for the breakdown in peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians." The negotiations were dead to begin with. The failure of the talks to return from the dead is likened by the Standard to the Tinkerbelle scene in Peter Pan. If you believe in its possibility hard enough you can always blame the doubters.
The argument seems to be that peace is possible because Kerry has relationships with leaders, Kerry is trusted, Kerry was in the Senate for 30 years, Kerry chaired the Foreign Relations Committee, and Kerry was on the White House lawn when Rabin shook hands with Arafat. So our job is to have faith in him, and if we believe that peace is possible, it will come.
But I think this is wrong. Perhaps neither Kerry nor Obama believe in a thing they say. It's only an act. They only hope the audience believes it, because "those rules are not self-executing" is another way of saying the action on stage ain't real.
Recently the Washington Times observed that the next Iranian ambassador to the United Nations once took hostages from the US embassy in Teheran. "Asked if the U.S. is aware that Mr. Aboutalebi was a member of the militant group, State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf declined to comment." If they commented they might have to do something about it. And they don't do action, so Silence is Golden.
Asking embarassing questions is like inquiring into whether Russia is cheating on nukes, or massing troops at the Ukrainian border, or reigniting the Cold War or whether the "peace process" has failed, or asking whether the Iranian UN diplomat once kidnapped diplomats would be OK. It's like asking whether the stage king's crown is real gold or just gold-painted. Asking puts the public in a position where it must question their faith in Obama.
If pressed the administration may even admit that the UN ambassador was in fact a once hostage taker, but now nothing can be done since he is protected by diplomatic immunity. A Radio Free Europe story And this reminds me, didn't Zero just cut a lot of funding for Radio Free Europe?
demonstrates that such logical somersaults are not only conceivable but normal today. Recently a NATO official said "the alliance does not expect the use of Russian territory to transport supplies used by Western forces in Afghanistan to be affected by NATO's suspension of cooperation with Moscow." Of course not.
And so one doesn't see the buildup on the border of Ukraine because it may -- you know -- affect the supply lines that won't be affected by spotting Russian troops massing on the border of Ukraine.
The administration is now in complete contempt of the facts. Falsum in omnibus is Latin for "trust me."
Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain ||
04/12/2014 13:43 ||
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#1
Thanks TFSM. I thought it also a bit strange that the Russians were able to tow old scrap ships and sink them in Donuzlav Lake to blockade the Ukrainian Navy. This event had to have been observed via non-air breathers [satellites], but was evidently not reported to Kiev in order for their navy put to sea and avoid the blockade.
#2
Well, also, keep in mind that an ally of Putin's was running the whole country (including the Navy) until about half a week or so before Putin's actions. Ukraine's in as bad a shape as we are in this regard: yeah, they kicked the guy out, but they're right next to Russia.
[DAWN] THE Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistain has never hesitated to own, in fact flaunt, the terror campaign it has been waging for years. Now suddenly, the banned outfit has staged a somersault, terming the killings of civilians un-Islamic and 'haram'. In a statement issued on Wednesday, TTP front man Shahidullah Shahid said that killing civilians was illegal and claimed that a hidden hand was behind the recent atrocities in Islamabad and Sibi. Two questions come to mind: if we are to accept the absurd notion that killings are to be categorised as Islamic and un-Islamic, who is going to judge? Two, must it take the slaughter of 50,000 people, an overwhelming majority of whom were civilians, for the TTP to wake up, express a bit of remorse and try to find a scapegoat in the two recent acts of terror in Sibi and Islamabad?
Ever since it began its killing campaign, the TTP never wavered from its rigid two-pronged policy about acts of terror: it either had no shame in claiming responsibility for acts of mass murder, or at best chose to keep quiet. The Taliban's victims have included children in school vans, the faithful at prayer, patients in hospitals, mourners at funerals, peacemakers at jirgas, pilgrims in buses, devotees at shrines, civilians in religious processions, political activists at rallies and media persons on duty. Those murdered or maimed for life have included men and women of all age, and Paks of all professions -- doctors tending patients and judges administering justice. They have not spared the Learned Elders of Islam: Maulana Fazlur Rahman survived two attempts on his life, and they succeeded in killing Mufti Naeemi of Lahore because he dared to condemn their criminality behind the facade of jihad.
The list of the bully boys' acts is too long to be mentioned, but some cold-blooded acts of carnage need to be recalled. For instance, to kill the then interior minister, Aftab Sherpao, a jacket wallahwent kaboom! at an Eid congregation in Charsadda, on Dec 21, 2007, killing 56 people. Again, on Dec 4, 2009, to kill a major general, bully boyz attacked a mosque in Rawalpindi murdering 40 people, including 16 children, and they had no qualms when they fire-bombed the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad on Sept 20, 2008, killing 40 people at iftar time. They also need to be reminded that the beheading of captured soldiers was a barbaric act in violation of Islamic laws. The TTP's now saying that the murder of civilians is un-Islamic is hypocrisy of the highest order. Nevertheless, this is not the end of the story, and the people will watch how the TTP behaves in the future and whether the sentiments expressed by its front man signal a change of heart or words uttered out of expediency.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/12/2014 00:00 ||
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[Ynet] Israel could have gotten rid of Hezbollah leader quite easily, but at the end of the day -- it's better the devil you know.
It's amazing how time flies: The Lebanese Hezbollah organization is almost 30 years old, and Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah has been in his position for 12 years now, almost 10 of them in hiding.
Occasionally, he gathers some courage and pops up for operations aimed at lifting his supporters' spirits, and so two years ago we saw him come out suddenly from behind a sealed screen on which his televised speech was being aired. He provided the bad smile, two-three minutes in front of the cameras, until the nervous bodyguards pushed him into the bunker, so that their secretary-general would not be eliminated.
The fact that Israel is not investing any efforts in his liquidation is a badge of shame for Nasrallah. As far as we know, they once tried to poison him, but Iranian doctors saved his life at the last minute. Nasrallah invited the recorders to air an unconvincing denial. They say eyes chase him everywhere, that he should know he is transparent. There were opportunities, Mr. Nasrallah. They could have gotten rid of you quite easily. They even know who your replacement is. At the end of the day, however, it turns out that it's better the devil you know.
A long time has gone by and Nasrallah is no longer in charge of the big issues. In his hiding place, he is busy reading newspapers obsessively. He reads us, he has politicians and commentators whose translations he makes sure to receive, and he likes to make headlines with us. He scans the Lebanese media, spots enemies, prepares notes for his next speech and invites a television crew. Not everything that is recorded will necessarily make it to the big screens.
It's fascinating to discover every time just how much our experts have learned to read his mind, how exposed he is even underground. And it seems as if Nasrallah experts can almost always guess what the secretary-general sees as the most pressing issue, what list of notes he has prepared for himself, what spin he'll start rolling and what the Iranians have written for him in the EEI (essential elements of information).
In general, Nasrallah is not interesting. It's advisable not to be alarmed by his attempts to terrify, and to expose -- if there even is a reason to expose -- the place he is seeking for himself within the Shiite camp, and the respect he wants to gain for the fighters he sends to Syria at Tehran's orders.
We should pay attention that he is in trouble with the Lebanese government, with mothers demanding a convincing explanation for the urgency of making young boys do the Syrian army's job. He is also in trouble with the villagers in southern Leb, who prefer to make a living off agriculture rather than see their lands being seized and their storehouses being confiscated.
Last May, Nasrallah dropped a bomb when he exposed the big secret about hundreds of Hezbollah men sent to fight in Syria. Apparently, he had no choice. It was impossible to cover one's tracks when coffins return hundreds of bodies of organization members who suddenly disappeared.
Two weeks ago, in a speech broadcast on a large screen in southern Leb, Nasrallah decided to insist that "we entered Syria too late" -- a sort of apology to his managers in Tehran. From that same screen he also conveyed a stammering message to us, that he is not interested in entering a conflict, that he won't be the one to start it.
He will continue, together with Hezbollah's operations commanders, to harass us with attempts to plant bombs. If he gets the chance, he will gladly kidnap an Israeli soldier. But in the sealed room he is learning to come to terms with a new state of affairs: When Iran is negotiating with the American administration, and Obama promises in Soddy Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face... not to make a bad deal, and the Saudis still see Leb as a protégé, Nasrallah will be careful not to get involved in an activity which will lead to a strong Israeli response.
Heartbleed is a truly awful flaw in OpenSSL, a key industry product used to secure communications (e.g. online bank transactions, credit cards, passwords) between your browser and servers on the internet.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
04/12/2014 12:44 Comments ||
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#2
Indeed. I didn't realize we got off cheap with Sibelius. She only cost us 77% of what a male secretary of HHS would have cost to screw up health care.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/12/2014 13:32 Comments ||
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The reason I've posted it is the very first thought.
#3
It's not about cattle, it's not about turtles, or states rights. Its about the most powerful member of the Senate selling federal land to the CHINESE.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
04/12/2014 11:57 Comments ||
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#4
How does a man who spends all his life in public service (and family members) amass over a million dollars?
#5
you'll know it's gonna hit the fan when the MSM minions start calling the guy's house a "Compound"
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/12/2014 14:21 Comments ||
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#6
This is one of those Karma moments. Usually the Donks and cronies can keep stuff like this out of the news. However, when the word 'militia' came up the media went all mad dog over one of their favorite groups to demonize and just couldn't resist the urge to let this one get out.
#8
Mr. Bundy needs to "get right" with his withheld payments to Clark County if that is his story. He should have a cashier's check ready for them Monday morning, even if the Clark County assholes refuse it. Take a camera crew in and witness them refusing. Would do wonders to fight the Feds in the Public Arena
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/12/2014 19:23 Comments ||
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#9
Word has been that the grazing fees are in a state controlled escrow account, the county hasn't been taking them and Bundy keeps putting it in there. I'd consider this partly unconfirmed though.
If they do plan to take the land, they should be forced to reimburse him for all the roads and other improvements he's done to the land. Things he did with full approval.
#12
Mom left the WiFi open while she's entertaining "gentleman callers with cash". Eh?
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/12/2014 22:03 Comments ||
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#13
I bet Father's Day is confusing, no? So many possibilities, the likeliest too stupid to even remember their names. Perhaps DNA on that left-behind sock?
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/12/2014 22:05 Comments ||
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#14
Jerky smudged his wan face with some charcoal
And crept off toward the 'Burg from his foxhole,
Peering over the fence,
Then a screech, very tense:
"Help! My 'Killa' is stuck in this knothole!"
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.
[DAWN] THE Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistain has never hesitated to own, in fact flaunt, the terror campaign it has been waging for years. Now suddenly, the banned outfit has staged a somersault, terming the killings of civilians un-Islamic and 'haram'. In a statement issued on Wednesday, TTP 
Heartbleed is a truly awful flaw in OpenSSL, a key industry product used to secure communications (e.g. online bank transactions, credit cards, passwords) between your browser and servers on the internet. 
