Rebel held Aleppo is currently entirely surrounded, and is about fourteen kilometers by four kilometers, meaning every inch of it is within mortar range of Assad’s troops. It will fall shortly unless there is a rescue mission from outside to relieve the siege. There have been rescue missions before, each of which ever more blatantly involves some new foreign power directly intervening in Syria ever more directly against the legitimate Syrian government. There may well be rescue missions again, but right now Aleppo is falling.
There is nothing wrong with Assad by middle eastern standards. In Assad controlled regions people of all religions and ethnicities are free to go about their business, whereas all the rebels except the Kurds want to kill or exile every religion and every ethnicity different from their own. (The Kurds just want to partition the Kurdish regions off into Kurdistan)
The problem with Assad is that during Arab Spring, the US, aka “the international community” capriciously and whimsically decided he should fall, and he did not fall, which is a slap in the face to “the international community”.
If regimes deemed problematic by “the international community” always fall, then it is a self fulfilling prophecy. If people believe a regime will fall, it will fall. So if Assad does not fall, then other regimes could potentially get away with being deemed problematic by “the international community”. This is Russia’s objective – to deny “the international community” the power and authority to overthrow any regime that displeases it.  Russia does not really give a damn about Syria in particular. While “the international community” weeps sad salty tears telling us what a horrid person Assad is for fighting back against people who want to kill him, kill every member of his family, and kill every member of his race and religion, and tells us that because of this horrid crime, it is utterly unacceptable that Assad continues to rule, Russia tells us they want to set a precedent, and Syria just happens to be the place to set it. The precedent that Russia wants to set is that legitimate regimes should not be overthrown by external forces.
And in fact, since Syria became a problem, the “international community” has quietly stopped deeming regimes problematic. Which is likely to lead to more and more regimes becoming problematic. That Assad remains has already led to a domino effect, and should Aleppo fall and “international community” give up, there will be a lot bigger domino effect.
If Aleppo falls, then Assad controls all the significant urban areas of Syria, in which case it is kind of obvious that “the international community” has been defeated and should just give up. It could escalate the war by putting US soldiers on the ground, but this would undermine the pretense that the “the international community” is just the spontaneous outrage of all right thinking people, and make it look too much like the US empire. Also putting US soldiers on the ground would be war with Russia.
Of course everyone except “the international community” knows that “the international community” is just the US empire, but the US empire does not want to know it.
Whereas Islam can coexist with Christianity by making Christians second class citizens, Liberalism cannot coexist with Christianity. Christians must cheer at gay weddings, demonize fathers, and enthusiastically celebrate single mums. The existence of Christianity anywhere in the world is an intolerable threat and insult to liberalism. In Russia, the Russian orthodox are allowed to be Russian orthodox, which generates ever increasing outrage and aggressive war talk among liberals.  We are moving towards internal civil war, or external nuclear war, and it is hard to say which will come first, though I expect civil war.
Russia does have genuine strategic interests in Syria aside from the geopolitics:
1. Stopping the pipeline from Qatar to Turkey and ensuring Russian dominance of the EU energy market.
2. Protecting their warm water port.
moist: “Russia does have genuine strategic interests in Syria aside from the geopolitics:
1. Stopping the pipeline from Qatar to Turkey and ensuring Russian dominance of the EU energy market.
2. Protecting their warm water port.”
Yes; this is correct. There are two more reasons:
3. A look at the map of the region will be suggestive of Russian concerns.
4. This is a war of wills with at least the US, and possibly the entire Globalist Project (though moist excepted geopolitics from his list himself).
As for long-term historical examples being used to try and understand Islamic geo-politics, these are of limited value. This isn’t the 19th Century Middle East:
1. Modern Israel was founded in 1948.
2. Petroleum as economic and political tool is a 20th c. development.
3. Post WWII American support of Islamic Fundamentalists (to thwart the Soviets) changed the religious topography (and political sensibilities) drastically.
Stupid post. Russia cares about Syria because it is allied with Shiites and views Sunnis as its enemy. Sunni Muslims make up 14% of Russia’s population (Shiite Muslims make up only 5% of all Russian Muslims) and they don’t integrate there any better than they integrate anywhere else. Terrorism, bombings, shootings, you name it. If Iran wins and Saudi Arabia Wahhabism and ISIS lose, Russia is in a much better position with its own citizens.
Islam can coexist with Christianity in the short or middle term by making Christians second class citizens, but in the long term Christians in Muslim lands all die out. Paying the Jizzya, getting raped and killed randomly, inability to build or renovate Churches, discrimination in jobs, it all adds up to the total destruction of Christian communities in Muslim lands over time.
I like your posts, Jim, but sometimes you display gross ignorance. This is one such time.
Russia does not care about the difference between Sunni and Shia any more than we do. When it demonstrated sufficient willingness and ability to win, it found Sunni allies by whom to keep Chechnya quiet.
Second class citizenship is a problem on a time scale of centuries, progressivism is a threat on a timescale of years.
In the long term, Christians die out in Muslim lands, but Islamic conversion is intended to be a more gradual process than progressive assimilation, and the big problem is that progressives don’t like Christians in any lands, not merely their own. The existence of any Christians any where frosts them. They say that Putin is a tyrant because he will not let feminists saw down other people’s crucifixes and desecrate other people’s altars.
“Islam can coexist with Christianity in the short or middle term by making Christians second class citizens, but in the long term Christians in Muslim lands all die out.”
Not what happened under the Ottoman empire. Economically successful Christians are a valuable source of taxes.
Indeed, many Muslim ruled Christian lands, such as Armenians, Greeks, and Serbs remain strongly Christian and relatively Muslim free to this day, although progressive liberalism is eroding that Christianity.
Armenians, you say? I say, 1915, death marches to the Syrian Desert, the transformation of Western Armenia to Northern Kurdistan, etc.!
Despite the mass murder of Armenians, Armenia remains a devoutly Christian country to this day. Barely 1% of Armenia is Muslim. Christianity has proven far more durable under Muslim rule than under Liberal rule
“Indeed, many Muslim ruled Christian lands, such as Armenians, Greeks, and Serbs remain strongly Christian and relatively Muslim free to this day”
This is true, but that was happening before the mid 20th century rise of Saudi Arabia and their propagandistic spread of Wahhabism and Salafrism.
Today I am not so sure it would work that way. Just look at the Copts – Yes, they are keeping their faith but are being discriminated against in horrible ways.
Why tax Christians when you can just pump oil? Free money.
In the past you have commented that an aristocracy of sorts would arise from the military, or at the very least that warriors would once again prevail over priests. Does this tie in with your 2026 prediction of war?
Is there anything to be gained from enlisted military service? Supposing Trump wins and is the man we hope him to be.
The connection between large corporations and Western democratic bureaucracy is astounding. When central banks pop their asset bubbles in Europe/USA/Japan, wealthy corporate oligarchs would form a large portion of any emergent power structure. Trump is not the first CEO-turned politician, nor will he be the last.
A noble needs an army.
Sometimes its leader becomes a noble.
My question is simple: is combat training and experience (some form of special ops) an asset or a liability to a man on the make? This question expands to three more questions:
Do modern conditions make it less likely for the skilled soldier to “ascend the ladder”, and are these conditions likely to change in the future?
What is the military likely to look like if it once again draws soldiers from classes other than the lower classes, and is this change likely to occur in the next fifteen years, or with the next war (Jim’s 2026?)?
Or in the coming two decades will it be better to be a fly on the wall without a permanent address?
Jim, a bit of jimtuition would be great. Instead of replying to stupid people, give me some advice.
Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.
That said, we are always ruled by priests or warriors, and at present priests have absolute and extreme ascendancy over warriors, to the point that it is radically damaging the capacity of our military to fight. Everyone is trying to be a priest, the market for priests is ridiculously over saturated, and very few high quality men are trying to be warriors. At best they are trying to be priests to the military, political commissars enforcing the correct attitudes to gays and women in the military – because right now, that is where the good jobs are. And because right now that is where the good jobs are there is a ridiculous amount of competition for even the least of those jobs.
It is generally a bad idea to buy into the market when it is obviously at its top and can go no higher, and in this sense, joining the priesthood is likely to be a bad idea, whereas the military has a very high topside. It has room to go a lot higher.
On the other hand, markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.
The priesthood is taking over the military, so that they can no longer fight, taking over corporations, so that they can no longer produce wealth. This is a very bad thing. Which does not mean it is going to come to an end. But if it does come to an end, there is a lot of upside in the military, whereas even if it goes on forever, there is not much upside in the priesthood.
I don’t think we have yet seen the top in the market for priests, but we are getting close to it. Not a lot of upside remaining, and the possibility of a very great deal of downside. Similarly, I don’t think we have yet seen the bottom in the market for warriors, but it cannot get much worse than it has.
Take my two cents for what it’s worth, but in my humble opnion you’d have more to gain becoming a cop (who can carry weapons off duty) than cannon fodder in Hillary’s army of liberation (who can’t).
(((International community)))
Also, (((Liberalism))) cannot coexist with Christianity.
Yes, Christian descended liberals are more tolerant of old type Christianity than (((conversos))) But, on the other hand, Hillary seems to be a big fan of war with Russia, primarily because Russia allows old type Russian Orthodoxy.
The difference between progressives and (((progressives))) really is not that large. We should not ignore the difference, but neither should we obsess over it. The JQ is a big question, but it is not the biggest question.
> The JQ is a big question, but it is not the biggest question.
If the Right moves against one of the biggest known parts of the whole, it will have made solid progress.
If the Right won’t move until it has 100% understanding of every single tiny wheel in the big machine, it will never move.
If you let the matador’s cape distract you from the matador, you are not going to gore the matador.
Let’s watch the matador fight the bull without a cape. You think he
will last long?
Jews were not a major factor in progressivism until fairly recently.
Yeah, history…. although, when trying to drive forward, it helps to take the eyes off the rearview mirror once in a while.
It doesn’t matter that someone once, back in the mists of history, built a little scale model of something that vaguely looked like a cathedral. It does matter who provides crucial support propping up the actual present day cathedral.
If the matador ever had the ability to survive a minor fight against a small bull without his cape, he lost it, because it’s easy to become utterly dependent on a good tool. History misleads. Take away his (((tool))) now and take it fast, he’ll have no choice but to run or die.
If the Right scares away Breitbart-Moldbug type Jewish allies, it is a sure lose. They are very very good at redpilling liberals. Without Jewish allies the Right so low status and so unapproachable to anyone with (liberal) status it is not even funny. Who can talk to college students, Pat Buchanan or Breitbart? It would make the Right a hopelessly populist “peasant” movement, that no one takes seriously.
I dont give ticks a free pass because fleas are bloodsuckers too, you get rid of whatever shows up, wherever it shows up.
My belief is that liberalism as it has become, ie extremely dominated by Jewish influence, is the main reason why the actual events we see around us, like Pussy Riot, show incompatibility with Christianity. But yes, in the long run, if Soros had not founded it, some progressive goy would have to have done so eventually, in order for progressivism to reign supreme.
Shifting the terminology from liberalism to progressivism is useful that way, for it shifts the blame to the Enlightenment idea of equality, a White idea if there ever was one, since Jews have only ever professed belief in equality among gentiles, not for themselves (it is this hypocrisy that, among all their negative traits, is the most infuriating). And, as you imply, they came late to that idea even for gentiles (also hypocritically, since I don’t believe Ashkenazim think for one minute of Blacks as equal to Whites, when they think of that at all).
How to square the scientific idea of progress, which is also part of the Enlightenment and is demonstrably true, with the political idea of progress, which extends ‘rights’ from men to serfs to women to gays to trannies to pedophiles to Labrador retrievers, is the great challenge of White morality.
…and Christianity cannot coexist with liberalism, as the world discovered between 300 and 1300. Sooner or later the Christians will discover that there are souls in liberal areas that it needs to be loudly proclaimed must be helped away from sin.
Granted Christianity sucks, but what is the alternative?
Maybe Lalit can help us, since he has more religions in his hip pocket than you can shake a stick at.
By the way Lalit, I have noticed that Hinduism is increasingly getting reinterpreted in ways that give it a striking resemblance to prog Christianity.
You are absolutely correct about Hinduism getting re-interpreted in ways that give it a striking resemblance to prog Christianity. This is exactly what the various Hindu reactionaries are railing and ranting against in their blog posts. The cultural Marxists are doing a more fantastic job of destroying Hindu traditions better than Genocidal Islam or Colonial Christianity ever did and in a far shorter time. The rapidity with with they are assimilating Hinduism is stunning. One of the reasons you are popular among Hindu reactionaries is because you are offering plausible explanations as to why this is happening.
The problem with Hinduism and indeed all Pagan religions (exception of Japanese Shinto) is that they suck when it comes to organizing large numbers of people. Since pagan traditions are deeply tied to the geography and topography of the land, at best they can unify and organize people living within a small geographical area that shares these topographical features. Why Islam and Christianity Triumphed over paganism is their ability to mobilize and organize people living far away from each other.
How the Japanese managed to dodge the ideological bullet that mortally wounded the Romans, Greeks, Saxons, Gauls, Egyptians, Lithuanians and present day Hindus is a story for another day. Admirable Bastards!
Hmm.
Could be imperial shinto – they somehow unified all regional cults into one pan-japanese religion: Merged Shintoism with nationalism.
I think you have the jist of it. If Spandrell happens to be lurking here, I’ll leave him to answer this questions. After all, he is our East Asia Liaision
Japan still seems to be struck with declining populations and mass irreligiousity, a hallmark of progressive societies. It does not seem to be immune to the disease of progressivism
Another weakness of pagan traditions is that they are seldom intolerant (hence their openess in accepting and worshipping many different dieties- many of which originated from foreign cultures). They cannot aggressively resist liberalism like Muslims or Christians can. Western Christianity has largely become Paganized and rests largely as cultural symbolism at this point, so it lost its intolerant zeal of the past.
Muslims are good at resisting liberalism because they are, wisely, intolerant. Muslims can resist the poisonous call of liberals to tolerate them in their society.
Progressivism might have seeped into Japan, that is true. But Japan is still far far away from the political correctness that Dogs the rest of the world.
Would any progressive country openly spy on all muslims in their country and say so?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/muslims-japan-government-surveillance-top-court-green-lit-islamaphobia-a7109761.html
They also accepted a grand total of 27 refugees last year. That is 27, not 27000.
https://www.rt.com/news/329926-japan-refugees-immigration-27/
That is how a Sane country behaves. Still very far away from the diseases. I suspect even those 27 were under the pressure from the Progressive Ulema from Harvard.
And with Abe at the Helm, Japan is moving away from Progressivism.
Hey Lalit,
Would you list a few of those blog’s please? I’m interested in whats happening over there.
Thanks
-B
https://manasataramgini.wordpress.com/
This is the most intellectually sophisticated Indian blog I’ve had the chance to read so far. The writer is allegedly a biologist of Indian origin in the US (no one knows for sure). Occasionally he ventures into other aspects of science like mathematics and physics.
But his most interesting posts are about politics and history. He gives an Indian perspective on world intellectual history, from the Greeks to the modern world.
It’s in English, but with a lot of diacritical marks and sanskrit terms flying around.
Some examples
https://manasataramgini.wordpress.com/2016/08/15/in-the-gray-zone/
https://manasataramgini.wordpress.com/2016/07/22/turning-of-the-turkic-wheel-unmattabhisa%E1%B9%83dhi-battles-won-battles-lost-and-march-of-marunmada/
https://manasataramgini.wordpress.com/2016/07/09/a-geopolitical-package-july-2016/
“secularized Abrahamism in occidental intellectual endeavor”
Christianity doesn’t suck. Christianity is complex, is deep. Many people taking only a cursory look at certain scriptures come to false conclusions. This is a potential problem with any system. Many people within Christianity are following doctrines which are detrimental to our way of life, but that doesn’t make the word of God wrong. There have been a great number (dare I say the majority) of Christians who have fought for the things that you want, for nationalism, for secure families, for tradition, who were they? I am a Christian, and I fight for those things, who am I? Yes, modern American Christianity lacks perspective, lacks scholars, lacks leadership, but the rock of ages stands strong as it ever has.
The very idea of souls is a problem because it biases people against appreciating evolution. The very idea of sin is a problem because it inappropriately imputes moral agency to women. The very idea of heaven is a problem because it is communism.
You state possible negatives, instead of certain positives. You may as well say “The very idea of having a dick biases people against working, and towards jacking off all day”.
Souls give us a sense of permanence, a sense of something that has higher value than just the flesh and bones that we inhabit. Souls make great and noble deeds possible. Without souls and the promise of an afterlife, men are animals in competition for mere animal existence. Christians believe that down syndrome people have souls, but we don’t believe that they are all going to heaven, or that they should fly airplanes.
Without the idea of a right way to act, and a wrong way to act (sin), we are less than animals. Women and children (and blacks) do have moral agency. Their moral agency is not equal to ours, but it exists.
Heaven is not communism any more than an extremely homogeneous ethno-state is communism. One could say that there is less hierarchy in heaven, but that is only because less hierarchy is needed in heaven, not because there is rebellion against it.
That every human has a soul and every animal does not implies that all humans are equally distant from animals.
Supposing this to be true, it implies nothing of the kind. As chimps need to be kept on leashes, some humans need to be kept on leashes.
why is it a good idea to have an idea of personal permanence when it is blatantly counterfactual and obscures the obvious duties to family and nation?
how do women have the kind of moral agency to support the idea of moral duty underlying the concept of sin?
what kind of job do you think you’ll have in heaven?
Assuming you’re replying to me, Jim…yes, yes it does.
If every human has a soul and every animal does not, there is a San Andreas fault line between humans and animals, on one side, humans, and on the other, animals. The distinguishing quality of humans is that they all have souls, whereas the distinguishing quality of not-humans is that they don’t have souls. Man, created in God’s image.
This is absurd, because we know that humans are mammals are bony fishes are protozoa are primordial soup, that humans are killer apes, and as some killer apes are more or less killer than others, some humans are more human than others, the more human humans resting at the pinnacle of this hierarchy, and the protozoa at the bottom, on a continuum of human-ness rather than an either-or basis.
Souls contradict this thesis, because souls are indivisible. You either have one, or you don’t—you are either human, or not-human. There is no gradient, there is no continuum, so all humans are rendered equally human, because _souls_ are the distinguishing feature of humanity, not culture or civilization or biology.
Thus, every human has a soul, and souls being indivisible, are equal in soul-ness, and souls being equal in soul-ness, humans are equal in human-ness.
Hence proto-Bolshevism.
@Cavalier: “Thus, every human has a soul, and souls being indivisible, are equal in soul-ness, and souls being equal in soul-ness, humans are equal in human-ness.”
There was/is a work-around for this problem that some Christians have experimented with: denying that Negroes have souls. In that stripe of Christianity, blacks are just “black devils”.
Muslims believe in souls, heaven, hell, and sin, but also does not ascribe much agency to women nor does it tend to communism.
I don’t see why Christianity should be different since we did see 1800 years of Christian patriarchy and feudalism
It is true, all people are equidistant from animals, but not all people are equal, this is very clear in the Bible.
All cars are not bicycles, and all cars have engines, but that doesn’t mean all cars are equal.
Christians are not hippies, we don’t just believe in some nebulous idea about far out souls man. Having a soul doesn’t eliminate duties to families and nations, and it doesn’t obscure it. We still have to abide by the commandments.
Women have enough agency to be held accountable when they sin. It is clear in the Bible that men and women are not equal and that men, especially fathers and husbands, have authority over their women.
I don’t know if I will have a job. The Bible is not super clear about the specifics of heaven. All I know is that I won’t be disappointed.
I highly recommend reading “The Abolition of Man”
Overall, the reinterpretation will not hurt Hinduism much. The violent masculine religion of the Aryans was significantly reinterpreted after the rise of Buddhism two thousand years ago to form the vegetarian pacifist Hinduism that has dominated India since then. It was reinterpreted again into Sikhism after contact with Islam. Now there’s a bunch of gurus who are reinterpreting into a variant of progressivism.
Unlike Christianity, which requires orthodoxy, Hinduism depends on orthopraxy. As long as Hindus retain a vague sense of genetic and geographical continuity with their past, continue to frequent temples across the country, and use Hindu marriage, birth and death rituals, the nitty gritty of their belief systems doesn’t matter. It’s similar to Judaism in that way.
There’s nothing in progressivism that wasn’t already present, in some form or the other, in Buddhism. So I’m not concerned about Hinduism’s ability to adapt to the latest fad coming out of Harvard. What could hurt Hinduism more in the long run are those aspects of European colonialism that aren’t explicitly religious, but strike at culture in a deeper sense. Star wars replacing the mahabharata as the common cultural touchstone, social climbers wanting to get married in white dresses and tuxedos to look “modern”, people giving their kIds European names, and a general disdain for rituals as just so much superstition.
Sikhism was in substantial part a return to Hinduism’s violent masculine roots, and made it possible for Hindus to push back against Islam. So I would say that this vegetarian pacifist stuff did hurt India pretty badly.
However the progs who are reinterpreting Hinduism into progressivism are abolishing Hinduism, unlike the vegetarian pacifists, since once a Hindu religion, or a Christian Church, has become fully prog, it has obsoleted itself, and the church becomes a lesbian feminist anarchist communal bookshop or something. When Christian churches go fully prog, the congregation just stops showing up, because the rituals of progressivism are the rituals of the progressive state. Showing up in church, even a fully prog church, is unprogressive. And showing up in the Hindu temple is unprogressive, even if it is a fully prog Hindu Temple.
Progressive Hinduism necessarily abolishes itself.
Interesting point about Sikhism being a return to the Hinduism of the rigveda. They did arise in almost the same geographical area, amongst perhaps the same genetic substrate.
On a related but different point, what exactly do you imagine the power of the international community is, in determining public opinion. Before the Turkey coup, I saw relentless chatter on sites as diverse as diverse as Reddit and the NYT about what a monster he was. After the coup failed, not a peep. I’m seeing similar stuff about duterte and aleppo, rejected relentless demonization on multiple outlets. But India’s modi, who is equally right wing, gets fawning treatment ever since he indicated his desire to strengthen the alliance with the US. American papers were relentless in proclaiming him as the second coming of hitler before he won the election, but now it’s all fluff pieces.
White traitors on my Facebook like Modi because he’s brown and making India great again. They don’t talk about Duterte because he’s making flips great again but doing things they must not admit work.
They invariably refer to Duerte’s “alleged” death squads. They are going easy on Modi, Duerte, Erdogan, the King of Thailand, Egypt, and Japan. It is a general retreat following the horrible failure of Arab Spring, not specific to any one country. Australia’s policy of not even one anchor baby has obvious implications for American politics, but though they are trying to change that policy, they are not going for regime change.
Around the world they are going easy except on the one regime where they tried violent regime change and embarrassingly failed. If they win on Syria, then they will start pushing on the next “unacceptable” regime – which will probably be Thailand or the Philippines. (India has nukes, and Australia has strong allies in the red empire and in the security agencies.
It is worth noting that Sikhism is heavily influenced by Islam, though Sikhs don’t appear to like acknowledging this fact. It was the influence of Islam that likely made it possible for Sikhism to “return to Hinduism’s violent masculine roots”.
“other regimes could potentially get away with being deemed problematic by ‘the international community'”
Duterte and China’s recent insults to Obama are only the beginning of this. Within Europe, the Visegrad Group is already problematic. The Progressive response on Duterte was to laugh him off as they do Kim Jong-un. Duterte’s comments were actually labeled “pleasantries” on CNN. But the response to China was pure silence. And MSM’s attempts to paint Orban as the new Putin (AKA, neo-Hitler) has largely failed. Putin on horseback sells like James Bond. Orban is a D-list villain who barely profits at the box office.
As MSM struggles to profit from political donors, it is more at the whims of the market, less in the control of Progressives. A 60-Minutes interview of Putin the super villain makes profit. But the interest is in the super villain, not the subliminal globalist messages. An r-selected population, turning increasingly K, hyped-up on identity politics is not a demographic that will demand globalism.
Progressives can supply, but increasing K-selection means less demand. As Progressive institutions lose business to their nationalist competition, Havel’s Greengrocer will replace his posters.
It’s unclear what exactly animates Duterte’s ranting. At first, I just thought he was a populist, but he genuinely seems to detest drug pushers and wants to kill them all. As far as I’m concerned, if he moves the Philippines out of USG orbit with his death squads, then good.
Orban has two things he must attend to. The first is the refugee referendum this Sunday. He must secure over 50% turnout otherwise be humiliated. I suspect he will. It’s worth writing in fake ballots to get the desired turnout result. The second is getting the far right into power in Austria. Austria could become a backer for the Visegrad bloc if Hofer wins the presidential re-run.
We are definitely looking at something of an authoritarian sea change across the world. AfD in Germany are promising as well. They are moving further to the right and winning seat after seat. Plus after years of infighting, Romania’s far right has come together to form ‘National Force’, strongly backed by France’s Le Pen and will compete in upcoming elections.
Trump may be the linchpin that triggers this cascade, and puts Liberalism on the run.
Duterte called Obama a son of a whore, which is flatly true, and says he wants to buy weapons from Russia. That’s independence.
I want to call Obama a son of a whore in public, and not pay tax money for diversities.
I speak Tagalog, and what he probably said was “putang ina mo.” That literally translates as “your whore mother,” but is used the way “fuck,” or “motherfucker” is used. As in, “motherfucker, let me tell you how it is.”
The Shadowed Knight
Duterte seems cut from the same cloth as Putin. Here Duterte says that if he ever goes to hell for the “sin” of exterminating Drug pushers, then he will kick out Satan and take over Hell
http://www.philstar.com/headlines/2016/08/04/1610106/duterte-kick-out-satan-if-he-goes-hell-over-extrajudicial-killings
That’s pretty Bad-ass, Huh?
He even seems to question the existence of God in a deeply Catholic country. This is borderline Blasphemy. And he still keeps going strong. Now that’s what I call charisma!
Quibble: the international community is blue, and the army is red; they can’t let the red team do a competent cleanup either.
>We are moving towards internal civil war, or external nuclear war, and it is hard to say which will come first, though I expect civil war.
Russia’s been prepping for a nuclear war with us since Hillary’s madness in Libya. Their shelters are built and they’re not exporting this year’s grain harvest. They certainly expect something quite bad shortly.
somebody needs to sit down with you boys and school Ya in Realpolitik and elementary geopolitics.
Peace in the Middle East is not the intent. The trick to containing moslem mudflap mayhem is to keep them fighting amongst themselves. You defend Assad by saying all the other monkeys want to kill him. Well of course they do- and he wants to kill ’em all right back! Let ’em go for it! Pass the popcorn!
What you don’t understand is that if they are left to duke it out, eventually one of those monkeys WILL kill or subdue the rest. Then you get a strong man like Saddam – who begins to amass power and arms and he slowly grows into a credible threat. Eventually he will be at our throat and in a position to do serious harm – to everyone. Small, scattered bush wars are best, with every monkey for himself, with no big players.
Rest assured we will have a little ooopsie with our own bunker busters at some point too – to the detriment of some unsavoury ethnics. Far as I’m concerned all is good here.the only problem I have are the filthy migrants.
But that’s a problem we brought on ourselves and it’s one that WILL be rectified at some point.
Do you get paid to suck cocks or are you a natural born cock sucker?
Paid.
Unlike you, I know the value of a wooden nickel.
Relax, Pimples. We are not going to war over a shit hole like Syria or the Ukraine. For you see, my simple friend – there’s simply no money in it. All wars are about money and power. Syria is a shit hole filled with low skill/low IQ shit skinned morons. As long as they kill each other I’m good with it. If some hapless members of the International Community insist on getting themselves killed there – whatever. Without money they’re just nobodies like you fellas here!
The Ukraine? There’s a bit of money there – but not enough to make an adventure worthwhile. To be honest, they would be as good for us as they were for the USSR – they would probably be more trouble than they’re worth.
Does that sort it out for ya?
Here’s a tip for ya, kid: next time you’re sucking cack – insist on real nickels. Don’t say I never did nothin’ for ya! Now get lost – yer buggin’ me!
😉
Nah. Wars are seldom directly about money and power. Rather, they represent attempts to change the rules – which will ultimately in the long run have huge effects on money and power, but in indirect ways that are difficult to fully foresee.
The Red Empire is trying to stop the Caliphate, because the Caliphate represents a huge long term threat. The Blue Empire is not worried about the Caliphate, since it thinks it can convert them all to progressivism by the power of persuasion. It is worried about Assad successfully defying “the Ãnternational Community”
Thus the Blue Empire is aiding the Caliphate in Syria with money and weapons in order to bring down Assad, and the Red Empire is attacking the Caliphate, thus in effect defending Assad.
Rule?
Please, don’t be naive.
Rules can be changed with a stroke of a politician’s pen, Jim. Most power brokers won’t even bother with that. They just do what they’re gonna do.
Rules are for peons like us and are to keep us in line, not them.
States have to abide by rules too, or they would constantly be at war with one another. They’re just not the same rules that states impose on us peons.
Moslems are constantly at war with us and each other. The only rules they have are in the Koran and vary from monkey to monkey depending on which one is reading or enforcing it.
Africans are at war with each other all the time and most of them can’t read!
All wars are about resources or power and very rarely – sex. WW2 was not about politics, it was about access to and control of markets. When the allies first heard about the concentration camps for Jews they just shrugged. Afterward only the losers were charged with war crimes.
Useful war criminals were given the royal treatment. Werner Von Braun and his team and their families became model Americans. That Jap that developed artificial blood plasma by staking American POWS out in the winter and watching them freeze to death? He won medals and humanitarian awards.
The human animal rolls on hypocrisy and double standards.
We are currently at peace with every major Muslim government, and every major Muslim government is at nominally at peace with all the others, and actually at peace with all the others except Syria. This reflects a world that is mostly rules based.
Naked ruthless and direct grabs for power, wealth, and women, are generally inadvisable. When things break down so far that they become advisable, you see very high levels of violence.
Really.
Take a walk down a street in Falleujah at night, Jim. Or go walk in the wrong part of Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Dirkadirkastan etc.
Your gubbimint might well be at peace but out in the street where it’s real? It simply isn’t so…
Muslims should obey Sharia, not international law. Some of them do. We call them “radical Muslims” and “terrorists” to pretend that Islam is compatible with progressivism, Muslim governments, however, generally obey, and enforce, international law, with, of course, the notable exception of Islamic State.
Wars are generally aimed at giving effect to a particular interpretation or variant of international law, rather than direct grabs for power, wealth, and women. Both sides have an arguable claim, or at least are willing to vociferously argue, that their actions are in accord with precedent and right conduct.
@ jim: “Wars are seldom directly about money and power. Rather, they represent attempts to change the rules”
I think you and Glen are trying to untangle a braid here- money and power will re-write the rules, on an ongoing basis- to solidify the flow of money and power in the “right” direction.
Attempts to usurp existing money and power flows will be met with rhetoric about rule-breaking, and on that principle, will be opposed.
» Eventually he will be at our throat and in a po$ition to do $erious harm – to everyone.
i remember the good old day$ when $ignaling against bu$h and the war$ that weren’t in anyone’s intere$t was the height of political activity… then the day$ when we $aid obummer was running for bu$h’s third term…
» The British Government has learned that $addam Hu$$ein recently $ought $ignificant quantities of uranium from Africa
Bush was a visionary.
The mudflaps will prove it shortly too.
When Bush left office in 2009, Iraq was a strategically-located American-occupied vassal state under a fig leaf of “democracy”, just like West Germany, Japan, and South Korea. This was not accomplished as easily as he had hoped, but was the end result really that bad? Even Obama and Biden bragged about what a great achievement Iraq was before they casually tossed it in the trash.
Calling Assad a monkey is just the kind of incisive geopolitical analysis we’ve been sorely missing here. I now only need a few corrections for accuracy from Corvinus and my Realpolitik education will be complete.
Some Muslims are better than others. The Alawites have been useful allies before. They will be so again.
“Peace in the Middle East is not the intent”
True. Which makes HRC’s proud claim of superior leadership experience difficult to defend in detail.
Everyone believes (or pretends to believe) that peace, popular rule, and progressive state-craft are the goals of American foreign policy.
By those standards, HRC was a disaster in her job.
Yet, she has to tell the US public she should be hired for her level headedness and shrewd diplomatic history.
Of course, Trump can point to ME and NA catastrophic failure- maybe he knows better privately. I don’t think he can say she deliberately sowed discord- because then he would have to admit she was a success in her role.
A kebab interviewed on publik radio today about Aleppo said people were beginning to speak of a “Syrian Holocaust.” Once again, we see certain pets escaping the compound. How dare they appropriate the special words of their masters?
The Syrians are basically the next Libyans, and the Donald might be their best hope for otherwise. He really didn’t like seeing Gaddafi go down under the barrel of his own golden gun, because TRUMP could see the same thing happening to his gold-plate loving self.
A.J.P.
I’m rather amused by Liberal warnings that Russia’s “war crimes” (lol) in Syria will cause terror attacks in Russia from Chechens. Not only is this a veiled threat to help such elements, but it is divorced from reality. Chechnya has been tamed by Kadyrov, who controls a pretty large paramilitary loyal to him. Now, this may become a problem for Putin later on, but for Kadyrov’s part, he has been chomping at the bit to be allowed to send his paramilitary goons to deal with ISIS, and especially any Chechens who joined them. Killing Syrian terrorists will not cause major problems in Chechnya.
And yes, it does seem that Assad will emerge victorious. He may have to let Kurdistan go, but that’s not a bad trade-off. The Kurds are sort of helping him behind the back of the US, and giving them their own state would put Assad’s enemies in Istanbul off-balance, allowing him time to re-solidify Alawite rule.
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“Russia does not really give a damn about Syria in particular.”
Err…. Syria has been a Russian client state since 1957. If you don’t know that, I’m not sure how seriously people should take geopolitical analysis from Jim’s Blog.
I don’t think Russia gives a damn about any one client state in particular, but if it allows the Cathedral to overthrow a client, other clients and potential clients are likely to go full Cathedral.
sure, but there are levels of not caring, between letting ISIS conquer half of Iraq, to failing to rig the election in the Phillipines, to helping MB take over Egypt
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