Came back from walking the dog to find that the adult was in the room and speaking clearly about events.
The link to the live feed is here.
From what I heard of the questions asked of him, it sounded like same stupid, Why Aren’t You Tougher questions.
Nate Dawg
We need to spend 1 trillion dollars, more ourselves in a 10 year quagmire, and sacrifice 5,000 American lives so that we “feel” tough. Ugh. History, repeating.
Nate Dawg
BTW, editing feature is not working on mobile Safari.
TaMara (BHF)
@Nate Dawg: But we’ll be greeted as Liberators!!
Ruviana
I just finished a class on the civil war in El Salvador in the 1980s. The more things change, etc., etc.
Iowa Old Lady
It was on car radio on my way home from the gym. Obama sounded so reassuring, though he speaks so slowly that I sometimes forget the start of the sentence by the time he gets to the end. But he had such detail and nuance. I only heard the first question which was something like have you underestimated ISIL. Sigh.
RSA
@TaMara (BHF):
Cake-walking liberators!
Mike in NC
Idiot “journalists” demanding that wimpy Obummer explain why we cannot deploy 5 million troops across the Middle East by noon tomorrow, to remain there forever. Fucking clowns.
different-church-lady
@RSA: Hey, did we ever get our candy and flowers from the last one?
mtiffany
@TaMara (BHF):
‘I’ll greet you however you want, please just stop pointing that gun at my face.’
MomSense
We are so screwed by our media.
TaMara (BHF)
@MomSense: I finally turned it off. As far as I’m concerned, the President should get an award just for deftly handling these idiots for 7+ years.
I do love how he comes across as a kindergarten teacher patiently answering for the 50th time the same damn question asked a different way. Seems the appropriate tone.
beltane
The media is whining that Obama is not all tough and bad ass like that French socialist Hollande.
I am beginning to realize that in the media’s mind, “keeping us safe” means “allowing an attack to occur on Nation X’s soil.”
vheidi
“shameful” to apply a religious test to refugees. He’s kicking a**
dedc79
DC is a mess today. The police are reporting that a mentally unstable woman fired off a gun late last night and then holed up in an office building downtown, which led the city to barricade off 12 square blocks for the past 10 hours or so causing a traffic mess the likes of which I have not seen in a long time.
Bank of America has closed all its locations b/c of apparent threats, and the Washington Post is serving as courier for ISIS propaganda/fear mongering.
gian
@Iowa Old Lady:
So you heard all the questions. I think the international press were not impressed with the US reporters questions.
Which seem to be some variation of why do you suck obummer
Geeno
@dedc79: This surprises you?
srv
Bonfire of the Cucknanities:
p.a.
Given the current climate in the US no politician can point out (among those smart enough to realize it) that Daesh is no threat to the United States. It is a threat to Americans as individuals, but not to the nation. This SHOULD matter a great deal re:our responses. But it can’t because any pol who points it out will be Neville Chamberlain-ed.
@Nate Dawg: or mobile chrome on the mobile site. It works on desktop chrome mobile.
Peale
@MomSense: Genocide is good for ratings.
BGinCHI
The purpose of terrorists is to amplify the little power they have by shocking a larger, more powerful force or nation in order to get that nation to overreact, begin making mistakes, and ultimately harm themselves.
Thus the real work of terrorism is to set in motion self-inflicted wounds.
Let’s watch now and see who does the work of Terror going forward.
Patricia Kayden
Boy oh boy is President Obama looking handsome in that photo. It’s so calming to have a sensible, rational man in the White House instead of someone looking to start a war.
the Conster
@BGinCHI:
ISIS is playing that instinct like a Stradivarius, and for every overreach, their recruiting propaganda becomes more and more attractive. It’s all so drearily predictable.
srv
Just morning and Michigan, W. Virginia, Alabama and Texas are moving to not accept Syrians.
Obama should have built those FEMA camps at Gitmo.
benw
@RSA: Look, I was told to go shopping, so I went fucking shopping. I’m a god damned hero!
dedc79
@Geeno: None of it surprises me. That doesn’t make it any less aggravating though.
Nate Dawg
Also, Obama has to not only keep the U.S. Safe, he has to keep every single nation in the world safe or else he isn’t a real murican tough guy. The bar for him is so much higher than Bush, it’s not even funny. Bush: lost 3,000 U.S. Lives on 9/11 but kept us safe. Obama: 120 people gunned down in Europe and he’s a total weakling. Just disgusting
Peale
Maybe the country we should invade is France. It may be cheaper. We may have natural allies who are interested enough in our protection that they won’t resist so much. I mean, there may be dozens of ISIS people there already. Best to fight them over there before they come over here. We’ll attract them like flies to miel.
the Conster
@srv:
This is exactly what ISIS wants – for the refugees to have no where to go. Isn’t it so convenient that a special refugee passport was found right near one of the suicide bombers? Almost like someone(s) is being played.
dedc79
@srv: That’s edifying. Whatever W. Virginia, Alabama and Texas are for, I’m typically against. Michigan is usually a tougher call, but their current governor is a dope.
Matt McIrvin
@Peale: Remember the warbloggers calling for war with France in 2003?
Chris
@p.a.:
Given the current climate in the US no politician can point out (among those smart enough to realize it) that Daesh is no threat to the United States. It is a threat to Americans as individuals, but not to the nation.
This.
beltane
@the Conster: Osama bin Ladin’s video releases were so influential on US policy and public opinion that he may has well been a member of Bush’s cabinet.
A guy
Well he had to put on a good show after declaring isis contained about 8 minutes before they were not
Matt McIrvin
@srv: We could write ARBEIT MACHT FREI over the door.
Botsplainer
@Mike in NC:
I was watching a documentary on Netflix last night about the final days in Saigon before the RVN fell. Even with the unfortunate hairstyles and lousy clothing, the journos did a much better job of asking smart questions of the ambassador and of Kissinger.
I don’t think they could do that now. It seemed that these guys were grounded in reality, had a better grasp of geopolitics and didn’t seem to care if asking a tough question would deprive them of future access.
Matt McIrvin
@p.a.: I don’t know, al Qaeda did an incredible amount of damage to the nation with a few boxcutters. Of course they did it by getting us to do it to ourselves.
the Conster
@beltane: Every terrorist needs a Bush, and vice versa.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@dedc79:
Linky?
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@the Conster:
This. The entire point of the attack seems to be to make it impossible for refugees to escape Daesh. And it looks like Daesh is going to get their way. Good job giving in to terrorist demands, idiots!
Mike in NC
Mrs. Greenspan on MSNBC once again doing her favorite critique of weak Western governments not being able to stand up to terrorists and their propaganda. Remind me why she is employed again?
different-church-lady
@dedc79:
If we could get them to make that permanent, then there’d be a silver lining to this mess.
FourTen
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
BobS
@Mike in NC: On the other hand, Obama is a lot more comfortable with questions from those idiots than from people like Robert Parry, Patrick Cockburn, & Pepe Escobar, i.e. people who have a deeper understanding of his culpability.
Chris
@Botsplainer:
I don’t think they could do that now. It seemed that these guys were grounded in reality, had a better grasp of geopolitics and didn’t seem to care if asking a tough question would deprive them of future access.
I think there may have been more respect for reality simply as a basic concept, as opposed to something you could wish away by simply unskewing the polls and going to your radio station. No right wing echo chamber back then, at least not at the same scale that there is now.
the Conster
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
…and of course, the chaos created by ISIS in Syria and Iraq is exactly what these poor refugee families are trying to escape. I know Obama understands this as does Kerry and a handful of others, but our discourse around this is hopeless, thanks to our FAIL media idiots and their inability to connect the dots back to Bush and Cheney prying open the maw of hell.
MomSense
@TaMara (BHF):
Can you imagine how he must laugh with his family in the residence at dinner about the dumb questions they ask him? And sometimes they ask such disrespectful questions. I don’t know how he keeps his composure.
dedc79
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: Hmm…the Daily Mail. So there may well be nothing to it. Apologies.
Chris
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
This. The entire point of the attack seems to be to make it impossible for refugees to escape Daesh. And it looks like Daesh is going to get their way. Good job giving in to terrorist demands, idiots!
You know the other thing I love? A few of these people may have been Syrian refugees, or have come in with them: therefore, we’re told, no more accepting Syrian refugees. A bunch more appear to have been either Belgian or residing in Belgian, the weapons acquired in Belgium, and a mastermind residing in Belgium. Anyone want to take a bet that Belgians need to be similarly concerned about being excluded from France?
(Spoiler alert: no, even in the worst case scenario of the Le Pens getting their way and pulling out of the EU, there still won’t be a blanket wall banning all movement into France from Belgium – which is what the far right and much of the “center” right are calling for in re Syrian refugees).
D58826
Oh god – Andrea Mitchelll – we don’t know what we don’t know. We don’t know if ISIL has anti-aircraft guns so we need a no fly zone. Bright idea give ISIL targets to use those anti-aircraft guns on. Why is Obama so ‘defensive’ just because he doesn’t have all the answers to every question. Why isn’t the US able read the minds of all the evil people in the world. According to Mitchell the policy of training local forces in Iraq and Syria has been a failure so we have to try something else. Which is what? Why will American soldiers solve the problem? Sure the 101st might take back Mosul but unless we plan on having them stationed there forever, at some point the Iraqi’s must be able to defend it them selves. Why are ISIL fighters so much more willing to die for the caliphate than the Iraqi army is for the state of Iraq.
According to Mitchell the state department has totally failed in the propaganda war with the terrorists. While it is probably true that ISIL have become masters of social media she oversimplifies the problem. It is easy for ISIL to play on the feelings of disenfranchisement that many young Muslims feel. It is easy to play on the emotions of people who are unemployed. Exactly what propaganda should the State Department use to convince the unemployed that this is the best or all possible worlds so just suck it up and live with it.
bemused
@Iowa Old Lady:
Isn’t using nuance forbidden in the GOP platform?
Stacy
Chuckles Todd was going on and on about how defensive he was and didn’t like his tone that he took. Yes he could understand that Obama was keeping his policies the same, but his tone was “odd.” I guess he wanted him to be just like the GOP candidates and make this into a Western society against the Islamic world a la Jeb! No recognition of how Obama said we should remember our American ideals. Ugh, if this kind of “journamalism” keeps up we’ll have President Trump/Rubio/Cruz/Jeb and 50,000 troops in Syria.
MomSense
@D58826:
Did she talk about whether the Republican Congress would ever agree to the funding of a propaganda war conducted by State? FFS we can’t even rely on Congress to reasonably and predictably fund the State Department so that they can respond to requests for increased security at our diplomatic outposts.
This is no fucking way to run a superpower. We have Republicans in Congress who have zero interest in governing responsibly. They are bellyaching about doing more in Syria but they voted against it when the President asked for authorization. When will they be held accountable for their BS?
the Conster
@D58826:
If Mitchell had any real interest in understanding ISIS, there’s some really good reporting on them. They’re recruiting most successfully from the intelligent and well off in the west. No one opining on my TV seems to have any fucking clue what they’re talking about.
I posted this earlier, but I”ll post it again, because it’s a thorough description of what we’re dealing with.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-wants/384980/
D58826
Jeb!, in addition to only accepting Christian Syrians, wants the US to help set up a safe heaven for Syrians somewhere. He doesn’t say where. There isn’t a lot of empty land in Europe or the Middle east to put these folks.
the Conster
What the hell is tripping moderation now? I didn’t use the known bad words, it must have been the unknown bad words. Or the unknown unknown other things.
If Mitchell had any real interest in understanding ISIS, there’s some really good reporting on them from people who haven’t been beheaded, but have talked to those that know. They’re recruiting most successfully from the intelligent and well off in the west. No one opining on my TV seems to have any fucking clue what they’re talking about.
Elizabelle
@Mike in NC: Because NBC is thinly veiled propaganda for defense contractors.
I can’t stand Mrs. Greenspan. Shame on MSNBC.
Frankensteinbeck
Bush Jr’s presidency showed us clearly who the national press are, and what they think about war.
Elizabelle
All of this is going to motivate me to work harder to elect a Democrat to the White House in 2016.
Wish we could keep President Obama there for another four years, but he may have other desires.
bystander
On Moanin’ Joe this morning, they were all moaning because terrorist-loving Mayor De Blasio did not want the city surveilling mosques. Who in their right mind, what American wants the NYPD conducting surveillance of international terrorists? Just because power-mad Guiliani wanted to act like Commander-in-Chief of his tiny army of peabrains? Instead of commending De Blasio for having some proportion, he’s portrayed by these peabrains as a commie symp.
Chris
@D58826:
Jeb!, in addition to only accepting Christian Syrians, wants the US to help set up a safe heaven for Syrians somewhere.
YAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We can call it “a land without a nation for a nation without land!”
beltane
@Frankensteinbeck: Part of the reason there are so many conspiracy theories swirling around 9/11 and other terrorist attacks is that the media is so obviously not credible. Many people who aren’t aware of all the non-shitty news sources out there turn to the crazy because what passes as “serious” is also crazy.
D58826
@MomSense: Petty details. If Obama and the state department would only get out the green lantern and shake some pixy dust all would be well everywhere. Some of the questions are legitimate but its easy to ask a question. It’s a lot harder to put a policy in place in a region of the world where there are more conflicting agendas than carter had liver pills. We rare back to re-litigating the SOFA agreement in Iraq. Why 10k troops in Iraq would have prevented Paris is never answered.
OH go, now its all Snowdens fault.
BobS
@Frankensteinbeck: It was actually clear to many of us well before Bush & Iraq.
beltane
Funny how when mass murder involves school shootings, we are told there is nothing we can do and that the slaughter of 1st graders is but a small prices to be paid for freedom.
rikyrah
How Paris ISIS Terrorists May Have Used PlayStation 4 To Discuss And Plan Attacks
NOV 14, 2015 @ 06:17 PM
Following Friday night’s terrorist attacks in Paris which killed at least 127 people and left more than 300 injured, authorities are discovering just how the massacre was planned. And it may involve the most popular gaming console in the world, Sony ’s PlayStation 4.
The hunt for those responsible (eight terrorists were killed Saturday night, but accomplices may still be at large) led to a number of raids in nearby Brussels. Evidence reportedly turned up included at least one PlayStation 4 console.
Belgian federal home affairs minister Jan Jambon said outright that the PS4 is used by ISIS agents to communicate, and was selected due to the fact that it’s notoriously hard to monitor. “PlayStation 4 is even more difficult to keep track of than WhatsApp,” he said.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2015/11/14/why-the-paris-isis-terrorists-used-ps4-to-plan-attacks/
scav
@Frankensteinbeck: more than the press, a lot of our neighbors apparently far a real “patriotic” tough-guy-movieland high from watching men in uniforms kill people, domestically and internationally. A body-count that high domestically would not be allowed to politicize gun control, although entirely enough to demonize refugees and an entire religion.
Peale
@Chris: We shall solve this problem with a no fly zone. Because if there’s one thing that we’ve learned so far, its that the ISIS air force can do incredible damage when it wants to.
Steeplejack
@srv:
Good to know Boehner didn’t leave behind his dickishness when he left Congress.
Frankensteinbeck
@scav:
Yes. The national press are just standard Republicans reacting to everything like standard Republicans do. Way too much of our population only understands the world in terms of bullying.
Patricia Kayden
@BobS: His culpability for what exactly? What are you talking about?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Did Mrs Greenspan, with her keen understanding of the importance of propaganda and an apparent belief that Daesh propaganda would be easy to counter if That One would just get his shit together, did herself have any thoughts about a major (sort of) presidential candidate, brother of the Great Liberator, calling for religious test for people fleeing a bloody civil war in which Daesh is only one actor? I wonder if that got any play in the Arab language internet, or the suburbs of Paris, and Brussels, and Lyon, and….
D58826
According to Gen. McCaffery we have to take the gloves off the military but then he goes on to say its a civil war between Sunni and Shia factions. SO exactly military role does the US have? Put troops in there and every one of the warring actions does a 180 and starts shooting at the US troops. The policy of building up local forces is a failure according to the general and the air campaign will not succeed without boots on the ground. He’s a bit vague about whose boots.
Why is it such a difficult idea that the only people who are going to solve the Syrian civil war are the Syrians. The only one who can solve the problem of ISIL in Iraq are the Iraqi’s. A white western Christian army will simply pour high octane gasoline of the already raging fire.
MomSense
@Peale:
The stupid it burns—-the whole world down.
Chris
@Frankensteinbeck:
Unfortunately, I suspect we’ll be finding out that the French population isn’t any different in that respect. I hope to be proven wrong.
BobS
@Patricia Kayden: Syria. Libya. Yemen.
max
@MomSense: Did she talk about whether the Republican Congress would ever agree to the funding of a propaganda war conducted by State? FFS we can’t even rely on Congress to reasonably and predictably fund the State Department so that they can respond to requests for increased security at our diplomatic outposts.
But they did fund a propaganda war. There was a big to-do in 2008 about revamping Voice of America to broadcast more pro-American messages. Chuckles Krauthammer even wrote a column about it. They passed a big propaganda bill and everything. (They specifically were directing VOA to avoid neutrality as had been the stance during the Cold War and shift to broadcasting ‘pro-American’ news.) Of course, this amounted to creating a wingnut welfare system for neo-con leave-behinds in the State Department.
(That was all part of the big neo-con exodus – some went to State, and a bunch went to Europe. Anne Applebaum went to Poland to head a ‘think tank’ there. That was part of a big push to get a war going with Russia in Europe. As with the Bush administration, that didn’t work out so hot, and the Poles rejected the neo-liberal expansionist winger party in favor of the old school nativism/racism + welfare state party. Of course, with Obama’s turn ending, they were all hot to get Jeb! in, but OOPS, foiled again, by the Dixiecrats. So now they’re eyeing a future Hillary administration as the best place to secure employment and funding for a bunch more wars. What with things in Europe not working out so hot for neo-liberal imperialist types.)
max
[‘Oh, the fun they had.’]
Steeplejack
@the Conster:
You can’t put in a “naked” hyperlink right now. You have to use the link-mo-tron gizmo to dress it up a bit, i.e.:
<a href="URL">TEXT</a>
beltane
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: You mean to say that Andrea Mitchell doesn’t have her bony fingers on the pulse of the disaffected Muslim youth who are drawn to Daesh propaganda? I am shocked. I just assumed this withered old mouthpiece for the plutocracy would be hip to this kind of thing.
Patricia Kayden
@Elizabelle: Too bad we’re not like Canada where Prime Ministers have no term limits. But yes, we have to work hard to ensure another Democrat gets into the White House.
Republicans are practicing their war cries and itching to send other people’s children to die in the Middle East in Iraq War Part Two. They learned nothing from what Bush put us through in the 2000s. Sigh.
gene108
@the Conster:
The dots would go from Bush and Cheney back to the FAIL media idiots.
At some point, we need to understand that they are being paid (very handsomely) to be what they are and do what they do.
In short, they know what side their bread is buttered and it ain’t our side.
Frankensteinbeck
@Chris:
These terrorists didn’t pick France because it’s vulnerable. They picked France because it has anti-Muslim bigotry issues that make America’s look tame.
@Patricia Kayden:
Actually, I think they learned that watching the president strut around in a giant codpiece and declare Mission Accomplished felt even better than they imagined.
EDIT – @gene108:
My only disagreement is that I don’t think they need encouragement. The national press isn’t what it’s paid to be, it’s what it wants to be. Let’s face it, rich old narcissistic white guys are the Republicans’ best demographic.
D58826
Finally someone making some sense. Malcom Nance, a Muslim and intelligence expert, is talking on MSNBC. He says that we have to find a way to help the greater Muslim world break the ISIL/AlQuada type ideology. Its an ideology that is not consistent with mainstream Islam and it is in fact an existential threat to Islam. It’s an ideology that views most Muslims as apostates and therefore can be murdered at will. He mentioned an incident with a senate staffer in which the staffer said that if the conversation was to about Islam then there is nothing more to say. WOW nothing sucesses like ignorancei
MomSense
@max:
I’m not arguing for a propaganda war, just pointing out how infuriating it is when pundits, candidates, and others call on the president to do more without any acknowledgement that we have a Republican Congress determined to prevent even the basic functioning of our government.
beltane
It’s pretty pathetic that the US media empowers assholes around the world to determine policy by releasing poorly produced Youtube videos. Thanks to these so-called gatekeepers we’ve reached a place that is a the meeting place of James Bond and Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. The breathlessness of cable news bobbleheads is the most potent form of Daesh propaganda there is. The neocons and terrorists both fap to the same pRon.
catclub
@beltane:
I wonder if years from now, Hollande will be celebrated for ‘He kept us safe’ by the French People.
Worked (kinda) for GWBush.
eric
The motto of the American of press: “Hard problems should have easy answers.”
Starfish
@the Conster: I think someone said that using a bare link will trip moderation now. Hit the link button and put some words in for the name of the link so it does not do that.
catclub
@Frankensteinbeck:
I am not sure, and am unwilling to read minds. I would guess that France’s war efforts in Syria and Libya
may also have had an effect.
catclub
@MomSense: The no fly zone seems to be centered – at the moment – in Sharm el Sheik, and appears to have been established by ISIS.
catclub
@D58826:
You say that like it’s a bad thing.
MomSense
@catclub:
Yup.
LWA
I wonder if the percentage of ISIS agents within the Syrian refugees is higher or lower than the percentage of Klan members within Militant Christianist churches.
One is representative of the whole, the other is a strange aberration.
Elie
It is so ridiculous to even consider having a large ground force in Syria. The threat of Isis is Middle east wide and woven into existing, marginalized and radicalized communities, not only there in the ME but around the world. This is not a typical terrorist organization standing for some revolution or change in a nation state. It is a world wide movement that though Islamic superficially, is deeper and weirder than that. The tools used against it would more likely resemble Anonymous and disrupting networks than the old fashioned seize territory and hold it approach — which as we already see (and the Russians I think are also waking up to) — has limited success because the nature of the enemy and what they want to do is not just to capture territory. Our media is not educating itself on the nature of what we face. There is nothing that ISIS or Daesh would love better than having a big land army sitting in one place.
Mandalay
@Elizabelle:
Nobody could have predicted that the share prices for Lockheed, Northrop Grumann, Raytheon and BAE would soar today.
McCain must be wanking himself senseless right now.
the Conster
@D58826:
This is exactly right – ISIS is SO extreme in their ideological purity, that Muslims are the biggest targets. ISIS’s agenda is to take and keep a limited amount of territory (including Turkey and Israel), and kill all those Muslims who don’t join them. In fact they’ve been sparing Christians who agree to subject themselves to their authority.
Davis X. Machina
@catclub: I am willing to read minds, and to propose that Libya and Syria are just the tip of an iceberg.
The casualties of Saturday are not, pace the media, ‘the worst one-day loss of life from terrorist action in France since WWII’. They’re only the worst one-day loss of life from terrorist action in France since the war not perpetrated by the French police.
Doesn’t hurt recruitment for any number of groups. Deraciné young men are voracious consumers of history.
D58826
Oh mercy, even Dianne Feinstein. – isil is on the march. They have pulled off 3 terrorist attacks in the past week. Maybe 100 or so people involved. Obviously this puts Napoleon’s grand army to shame in terms of size and military power. ISIL has access to encryption software that allows them to communicate in ways that we can’t read so we need more troops on the ground. According to Feinstein our passport system is broken, our immigration policy is broken. Well Congress is going to have to take a hand in fixing these things.
In spite of Vietnam, Reagan’s Lebanon misadventure, Iraq and Afghanistan and yet the dogs of war are already howling.
The scope and difficulty of the problem can be seen by something Pete Williams just said. The intelligence community is worried that the terrorists can use play station consoles and internet gaming to communicate in ways that we can’t intercept. Obviously troubling but how bombs and troops will solve this is not explained.
Patricia Kayden
@Elie: “There is nothing that ISIS or Daesh would love better than having a big land army sitting in one place.”
Can you imagine the uproar when ISIS or Daesh beheads/burns alive the first U.S. soldier? My only suggestion for fighting this type of terror group is to infiltrate it and disrupt it from the inside. You cannot defeat people who don’t care about their lives and commit suicide at will with conventional warfare.
catclub
@the Conster: At least equally interesting is the Speigel.de
article which outlines how ex-Saddam Hussein army and security service members are the brains of ISIS,
with a veneer of radical Islam.
H/T:
I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet says:
November 16, 2015 at 11:35 am
germy
Jim Kunstler is his usual self this morning:
Kunstler used to write interesting essays about New Urbanism. But for the past few years he’s been dripping spittle from his chin.
Sherparick
I actually go to the Guardian and Al Jazeera America for my news more and more. As Bob Somerby at the Daily Howler often points out our press media overlords of the Village are not very bright and are easily frighten. One piece of news I find at the Guardian is sticking U.S. ground forces back in Iraq and Syria is just what ISIS wants. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/15/terrorists-isis
Some of the writing in the article could be lifted right out of the “The True Believer” on the attraction of mass movements to the discontented and alienated young.
Also, in the Guardian, are the tragic pictures of the victims. A large amount being young immigrants or French children of immigrants from Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, including the cousin of one of the players on the French National Team. http://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2015/nov/16/paris-attack-victims-lives-cut-cruelly-short
Enhanced Voting Techinques
@Mandalay:
Fools and their money. The only contractors who got rich on Iraq were the beans and bullets types like Haliburton. They won’t need one trillion dollars worth of super carriers and F-22’s for what the Neo-Cons want in Syria. Just soldiers playing cops.
catclub
@Davis X. Machina: Good point. Europeans have absorbed (and remember) a lot of history – Serb Croat grievances going back 700 years, etc. Someone will probably bring up El Cid as a solution.
Elizabelle
Here’s C-Span footage of President Obama presser today. Would rather listen to it than have the Real Smart People tell me what he said. (Looking at you, Mrs. Greenspan.)
Elie
@Patricia Kayden:
“You cannot defeat people who don’t care about their lives and commit suicide at will with conventional warfare. ”
Plus the disseminated nature of it makes it very difficult to do some geographically based approach. They don’t mind tying you up on the ground for a while — but while your resources get anchored in one place, they are running their game in the disturbed and pliable minds to recruit their soldiers. I use soldiers loosely. Yes, they are trained to kill, but differently than the typical ground forces. I think that is why Obama sent Seals and other special ops to Afghanistan. The goal is to find out the best decentralized, melt into the environment approach AND also use high tech and other network disruption approaches. Above all, the horrible nation states such as Saudi Arabia and others that nurtured this cancer must themselves be disrupted and prevented from continuing to release this spawn into the world. I say lets get rid of a few members and friends of the House of Saud as a major part of disrupting one major source. Off course, there are plenty of other corrupt regimes in the ME but also worldwide, including Boko Haram in Africa and others in Asia. This is world wide. Our media is so — irresponsible!
Matt McIrvin
@Frankensteinbeck: France also has many more Muslims as a fraction of the population, so “eliminating the greyzone” by turning the rest of the population against French Muslims has a bigger potential bang for the buck.
Sherparick
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/15/architect-student-engineer-critic-among-identified-paris-attack-victims
I would prefer to keep the names of the perpetrators anonymous. It is in part for fame, even posthumous fame, that individuals do this kind of thing. Their victims should be remembered, but they should be thrown into oblivion.
Peale
@germy: It must be difficult to write from under a bed. I wonder, if there’s no dissolution of Portugal in the next few months, can we take that as a sign that the chains of global capitalism have won? Lost? Or are the Maoists still on the march either way?
Elie
@germy:
Please — horrible stuff. Just post the link next time. Reading all of that crazy is almost as bad as having Isis in your brain.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
They’ll pry that sword from his cold dead HAAANDS!
Oh, wait…
D58826
As I listen to the dogs of war, I’m just wondering if we are not sitting at December 6th 1941 with a battleship-centric strategy. The world has changed what with the internet and social media yet we seem to be basing all of the discussion on the battleship.
McCaffery is back on or maybe they just have his comments on a video loop.
Matt McIrvin
@germy: I’d known he had started going on about the PC menace, but the Putinist angle is a new one to me.
beltane
@D58826: They’ve had McCaffrey on nonstop or so it would seem.
Matt McIrvin
@D58826: Feinstein is just returning to form.
srv
@germy:
They’ll have to stand in line behind Putin. He’s got every motivation to cause some trouble for the KSA.
D58826
Hasn’t gotten much media in the US because Muslims are obviously blood thirsty monsters but a Muslim man in Paris threw himself on the second suicide bomber outside the stadium. Probably saved countless lives. If he had been an American soldier that would be a medal of honor action.
Hoodie
@beltane: Yes, his war on drugs was so effective, let’s ask him to opine on ME policy. My only comfort lies in having Obama in office for the next year, maybe things will calm down. You could sense his disgust with the warmongering at that press conference, especially after having been asked the same question five times.
Elie
I hope that our “leadership” is not listening to the old fart generals in designing our approach to combat this. This is not WWII. Even the last Iraqi war is not longer the right approach. New thinking and modernization of the concept of what we are trying to do is essential. Instead the public will get their heads filled with approaches from the stone age to fight the likes of time travelers. The study needed to support this will involve understanding social networks and mind/thought influence as well as getting down and dirty in the right data. Just figuring what the ‘right” data is will be a challenge.. We need 500,000 Snowdens — not 500,000 semi educated 18-20 year old Americans with lots of heavy guns.
p.a.
@D58826:
Find a way. Well that’s the issue in a nutshell. Is there much the secular/Christian West can do that doesn’t make matters worse? Certainly military aid to Muslim nations with the aim of attacking Daesh taints those nations. Is it arrogance to think we have the answers? Contain and let the fire consume itself? If it takes generations? And thousands of innocents are destroyed? If the terrorists already have and continue to seed themselves within the refugees?
Different time and different situation, but does anyone know what the US policy was with respect to screening refugees from the Iron Curtain? The concern wasn’t terrorists but spies, and the numbers don’t compare (except maybe between 1945-1949, including China).
Betty Cracker
@Frankensteinbeck:
France probably wore a short skirt too.
Mandalay
@D58826:
Did Feinstein actually say that, or are you putting words in her mouth?
D58826
@p.a.: His point was that ‘we’ mainly includes the Muslim world.The west has to help but it would be in a subsidiary role. The leadership has to come from mainstream Muslims.
p.a.
@germy: well his peak oil schtick has pretty much gone bye bye.
Elie
@Betty Cracker:
LOL about the short skirt.
I disagree with Frankensteinbeck. Yeah, what he says is true, but the target is to demonstrate their power to infiltrate a large modern city already on alert from previous attack. The US is a little harder to reach maybe? Who knows…
D58826
@Mandalay: That is the short version of what she said. That there are encryption algorithms that are unbreakable and ISIL is using them. Of course she didn’t bring up the point that most people do not want to perform financial transactions with their bank using easily breakable encryption. Silicon Valley didn’t develop these systems for ISIL. They developed them for the financial industry and I’l bet for NSA and the CIA
Frankensteinbeck
@Betty Cracker:
I am not even remotely implying that France deserved this, and if it came across that way I apologize. I am saying that, when asked if France would overreact the way the terrorists want, history suggests ‘yes’.
@Elie:
Our current commander in chief and next commander in chief have both said that the Middle East countries are going to have to fight this. We can cheer them on, but we can’t do it ourselves.
Mandalay
@Betty Cracker: OT => I think NPR must read your OPs!
It’s somewhat ironic that the fuckwits have chosen to do this immediately after Aung San Suu Kyi gained power (as a practical matter), and may be reverting the country’s name back to Burma.
p.a.
@catclub: El Cid allied with Iberian Muslim regimes when it suited his purposes.
Hoodie
@Betty Cracker: I imagine she didn’t even do that. France was probably the highest profile place they could manage to pull it off. I’m sure NY would be preferable, but they couldn’t rent a car without a credit card. Now a handful of guys with playstations, some AKs and a few nail bombs have turned into Hydra, with an ability to strike anywhere, anytime. Lee Harvey Oswald couldn’t graduate from high school, but he blew Jack Kennedy’s brains out.
germy
@Matt McIrvin: Everything is personal with Kunstler. He was an unsuccessful novelist most of his life. When he finally hit it big with his re-writing of Jane Jacobs, he started making real cash on the lecture circuit. Invested all his money. Lost it in the crash. Ever since then, he obsesses over the banking system. Doesn’t even bother with writing about new urbanism anymore. He can’t get over the fact he lost some money in the crash, so that’s his new subject.
He was recently challenged during one of his college speaking gigs, and so now he’s been going on and on about “campus maoists” and the PC culture.
The comments on his blog are full of vile neo-nazis and white supremacists. I think his doomsday talk attracted them. They all (including Kunstler) can’t wait for the whole system to come crashing down.
catclub
@Mandalay: One time pad is still unbreakable. Also, not very efficient.
Very expensive to spread over a large organization.
As far as we know AES is not breakable by the big governments. Everybody has access to it.
The real question is how practical. Osama did ‘practical’ by sending couriers with messages, nothing electronic. We generally cannot read those messages, unless we intercept the courier.
Elie
@Frankensteinbeck:
Agree with you there. We do have to disrupt their ability for successful attack on our communities while they try to figure it out. My concern is that could take not only years, but hundreds of years
My one exception is I hope we figure out how to help get the Saudis out of our favored nation status.
catclub
@p.a.: See what I mean about Europeans remembering history and treating it as still present and relevant.
D58826
@D58826: oops sorry misread the article. it was in Beirut on Thursday but still heroic.
oldgold
What is it these newscasters suggest we do? Nuke them? Put 100 thousand plus troops on the ground? Unleash the Rooshkies? What?
Pissing our pants and over reacting is just what ISIS wants.
scav
@p.a.: Isn’t there some evidence that El Cid actually was of Muslim heritage himself? I think I saw something where one of his descendents claimed that.
beltane
@Hoodie: There is also a lot of historical antipathy towards France left over from the Algerian war which is almost certainly exploited to the fullest by radical groups.
Elie
@Hoodie:
I wouldn’t interpret their use of nail bombs as reflective of their capabilities. They are clearly cunning and understand enough about the “creases” and interfaces of how we live and the technology to know where their actions will be hard to track or engage. That is pretty sophisticated knowledge and the ability to apply it. Just don’t mistake their many times low tech approaches with lack of sophistication or reach. Just sayin…
Mandalay
@D58826:
Maybe so, but “unbreakable” encryption software is freely and legally available to all of us as well.
It would have been astounding if ISIS were not communicating using encryption that our security services cannot break. If Feinstein is just playing dirty politics to justify boots on the ground then fair enough I suppose, but if the vice chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was genuinely surprised by that then ISIS is not our only major problem.
Hal
I have a friend flipping out on facebook non stop. 10,000 refugees in New Orleans! You can be sure Washington DC is going to be struck next!! I’m surprised she hasn’t built a bomb shelter in her basement yet.
D58826
@Elie: Without overstressing the analogy it took 100 bloody years for the reformation to sort itself out.
p.a.
@oldgold:
Yes it is. My wingnut relatives and their circle of friends (anecdote does not = data) basically say; genocide, yay!
They are inveterate degenerate cowards and would be proud to put on the Brownshirt.
D58826
@Mandalay: Based on some of the reporting the terrorists in Paris used an ancient and totally untraceable method of communication – they talked face to face. With a small cell certainly not hard esp. if they were family members.
p.a.
@scav: I read a bio/history long ago. He may have been. Things were pretty fluid on the peninsula then.
Elie
@D58826:
No shit.
And look at the ME now… one hollowed out country after another. Those that have some sort of government still functioning are corrupt past imagination. It might take longer than hundreds of years!
We can’t wait to get some handle on this threat that they cannot seem to do anything but to export to the west and elsewhere. We have to get creative and mighty fast…
scav
@p.a.: all the whole parting themselves on the back about being of the superior “peaceful” religion and insisting they need their guns in order to personally defend “their” nation from attack against others, including their own government.
Mandalay
@catclub:
Even if our intelligence services crack (or have already cracked) AES, we are never going to hear about it.
That would be a massive win for them, but would remain a secret to a privileged few (unless they have another Snowden in their midst).
Peale
@Mandalay: I thougt we needed more Edward Snowdens.
p.a.
@scav:
When I get holiday invites even if I don’t have other plans I lie and say I do just to avoid teh stoopid.
Mister Papercut
@dedc79:
Looks like this undated zombie article is actually from an incident from April 2002.
Betty Cracker
@Frankensteinbeck: I think you’re right about ISIS, like al Qaeda before it, wanting to provoke an overreaction in the West to embroil us in their apocalyptic religious fantasy world. I was just quibbling with the implied notion that they analyzed minority relationships in Western countries and zeroed in on France.
We’re talking about a psychotic death cult here. It was probably a crime of opportunity first, and if political calculation played a major role, a desire to trap the poor bastards who are desperate to escape ISIS’s evil clutches to imperfect but comparatively sane Western democracies.
@Mandalay: I’ll be darned. I swear I’ve never written them once on the issue! I have noticed a definitely drop-off in references to Burma very recently. Well, if they do change it back, I hope the media outlets will stop saying “formerly known as Myanmar” after a reasonable interval.
Ruckus
@Chris:
There is a chance that for a majority of French people you are wrong. Yesterday I saw a report on Guardian that some anti Muslim protesters came out, banners and all to protest refugees. The crowd, there in vigil for the shooting just peacefully herded them away. And resumed their peaceful vigil.
Mandalay
@Peale:
We do, and despite media attempts to portray him as a coward he has balls the size of grapefruit. People endowed with his courage are very rare.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Betty Cracker:
I think you missed the point — Daesh is trying to exploit a known fissure in French society. If the French government is able to not overreact and start cracking down on all Muslim citizens, then Daesh will fail. If they do overreact by, say, electing the National Front fascists, then Daesh wins.
MattF
Via MeFi, Westboro Baptist Christianity. And there’s worse out there, just not so aggressively obnoxious about it.
ETA: Try looking up Kevin Swanson.
Betty Cracker
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): I think they’re trying to exploit known fissures in every Western society — and the universal human urge to overreact. On the latter point, we agree.
Doug R
@bystander: He really doesn’t get the idea of confidential informants does he?
D58826
@Elie:
I agree but at the moment its not remotely happening. Case in point – Huckleberry issued a statement that if Paul Ryan doesn’t get on board with banning Syrian refugees then he should resign the speakership and let some one who will take over.
How this in any way keeps the US safe or addresses the challenge of ISIS is beyond me. I’m sure that the top leadership of ISIS is so terrified by this that they are buying the white flags of surrender. (sigh)
catclub
@D58826: Islam is about 1400 years old. Look at what Christianity was like at that age.
Peale
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Daesh also wins if the French don’t elect Fascists. Although I think we’ll know that they clearly think that they are winning if they feel strong enough to start bombing mosques of heretical Muslims in Paris. There’s a certain logic of winning and losing here that I’m not seeing.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Ruckus:
That’s reassuring. The big danger is that the actions of Daesh and other related assholes would freak people out so much that they would vote the National Front in at the next election. If people keep their heads, then Daesh’s calculation will fail.
Honestly, I trust French voters way more than American ones. We elected a slate of far-right Republicans because one (1) person died of Ebola.
D58826
@catclub:The track record of Christian nations in the 20th century is nothing to brag about.
SiubhanDuinne
@srv:
Indiana too, I think I saw.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Peale:
How does Daesh win if France does NOT elect fascists? Electing fascists is what they want France to do, because it means cutting off an escape route for refugees, plus the fascists creating even more disgruntled French Muslims who might be willing to join Daesh.
Not electing fascists means the status quo remains. I know Hollande is talking tough, but I doubt he would do the kind of anti-Muslim crackdown that a LePen type would do.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Betty Cracker:
Anti-Muslim prejudice in France is as real as anti-Black prejudice is in the US. It’s silly to pretend otherwise. A lot of Muslims in France have very good reason to be disgruntled, and Daesh and other groups are exploiting that.
SiubhanDuinne
Just heard George Pataki on whatever program in on MSNBC (didn’t even realize it was him until the interview was over). Holy jeebus, I don’t think I ever realized until now what a scared pants-wetting war-mongering little terrified wimp he is.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
an objective reporter who has carefully studied all the facts of this situation
Matt McIrvin
@Hoodie:
The techniques these guys used were not too different from those favored by our homegrown guys who shoot up movie theaters and schools. More people were killed just because they had more people in on it.
Some overseas terrorist organization like al Qaeda or IS wouldn’t even need to do much to organize something like that; it’d obviously be easier to get the weapons, because our own murderous idiots do it all the time. They’d just need a few sympathizers in the country who were willing to do the work, and some simple means of communication to get out the date and time. I suspect this happened in France mostly because there was a supply there of people who were willing and able.
I do wish we’d think of these guys as being basically a bigger-league version of, say, James Holmes and Elliot Rodger, or at least Tim McVeigh. It’d focus the mind properly.
Patricia Kayden
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yes, because it’s so dang easy to find and kill all of the bastards. If it was so damn easy, why do we still have any terrorists anyways? That’s the real question the MSM should be asking since they’re into asking silly questions.
Matt McIrvin
Just saw a thread on Facebook in which a bunch of Idahoans are calling for the governor of Idaho to keep Syrian refugees out. Because IDAHO IS NEXT!!!!
Peale
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Your worry about Fascism as a victory for ISIS reminds me quite a bit about Republican concerns that Democrats winning in 2004 means Osama wins a victory. Perhaps even a surrender to the forces of evil in the world.
In the end, it really didn’t matter, and I don’t think ISIS is really all that concerned that Hollande is on his way out the door.
Mandalay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I actually wouldn’t have a problem with this form of questioning if only they treated Republicans with the same level of confrontation and disrespect.
But they don’t. When CNN get an interview or phone call from Donald Trump the journalists get down on their knees and lick his balls. He lies and they ignore it. He talks madness and they nod approvingly. CNN is even worse than Fox.
Brachiator
@Peale:
I think you make a good point here.
ISIS is not concerned with the political situation in France, or even the political situation in the US. They do not want the US, France, or any other country interfering with them in the Middle East. And to the extent that anyone opposes them, terrorist activities will escalate.
Hoodie
@Matt McIrvin: That was basically the point I was trying to make. The thing I fear is people turning these guys into some invincible menace. They’re clever and sometimes they get lucky, but they’re not superhuman. Maybe they picked France because of some brilliant idea to exploit French social divisions, but my guess it was more because Paris is high profile and they could get enough local, French-fluent operators to pull it off. Non-native operators would have a much harder time and probably would have been caught trying to smuggle weapons, etc. They chose soft targets because there are no soldiers guarding them. Their one possible innovation is in recruiting, using the idea of a caliphate as a magnet for nutjobs willing to put on a suicide vest. Overestimating ISIS’ capabilities can lend credence to stupid people who want to do stupid things like invading Syria.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Peale:
More like my worry that Donald Trump will somehow manage to pull a victory out of his ass next November.
I’m getting a feeling you’re not familiar with the National Front or the LePen family. You might want to do a little reading up on them before you decide that having them win a majority would be no big deal. “Fascist” is not an insult, it’s the actual description of their nativist, right-wing platform.
henqiguai
@oldgold (#135):
That would be Sen. Lindsey Graham. Calling for that today, apparently.
Betty Cracker
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Who’s pretending otherwise? I’m just saying it’s a mug’s game to attribute rational motives to a psychotic death cult. You might as well say they beheaded James Foley because Andrea Mitchell sucks.
Phoneix Woman
@Patricia Kayden: If we told the Saudis and Kuwaitis to stop funding ISIS or else, that might work. Just simply refusing to do the House of Saud’s dirty work in Syria would be helpful. (If we stopped giving aid to Saudi-backed “moderate rebel” jihadists seeking to replace Assad with a Sunni theocracy and gave all that aid to the YPG/J instead, we’d all be a lot better off.)
Brachiator
@Matt McIrvin:
This does not make sense. This would be like saying that the IRA or Basque terrorists were just examples of individual nutcases. I don’t understand why you would try to dismiss or ignore the political aspect of ISIS terrorism, or detach it from an organized political movement.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Hoodie:
That’s what the point was of the discussion of the Muslim prejudice in France, though — there are enough disgruntled French and French-speaking Muslims in France that Daesh was able to work with them to coordinate this. The US does not have a similarly large population of disgruntled people who are willing to work together — even the white supremacists who raise their ugly heads end up having to act alone. The 9-11 hijackers were able to be successful by importing their entire team, but they didn’t get much support from people already inside the US.
Also, note that, as far as we can tell, several of the Daesh assholes were from Belgium, which gave them some familiarity with France without actually being located there.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Betty Cracker:
Daesh has political aims — they want to form their own ultra-right-wing Islamic state. Since at least some of the leadership came from Al-Qaeda, I’m pretty sure they have a general idea of who the major political parties are in the countries they want to hit. If someone said that Daesh’s aim was to cause so much chaos in the UK that David Cameron got recalled, would you think that was insane because of course no one outside of the UK would have any idea who the prime minister there is?
Hoodie
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Sure, but I think you’d have to be a bit more than disgruntled to do this, and simply being disgruntled does not supply the level of training needed to pull it off. In that sense, the political situation is mostly relevant to the degree that there is a large enough Muslim population in France and France is close enough to Syria to get enough nutty guys to go there and get trained and come back in large enough numbers that the security apparatus can’t track them all. Sure, some may be disgruntled, but people can be nutty whether they’re oppressed or not. The symbolism of attacking France is secondary. If there was some Christianist equivalent in, let’s say, Saudi Arabia, then you could probably find enough nutty Americans to go there because of the religious affiliation, even though Christians are not persecuted in the US.
catclub
@Matt McIrvin:
And the evidence so far is that people like that are EXTREMELY rare in the US.
Malvo and Muhammad model not adopted. Even though it takes so little. A rifle, $2000, and big beater sedan.
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
ISIS clearly has political motivations. They clearly have taken over territory and seek to expand their political influence. How is this a “psychotic death cult?” What does this even mean? ISIS is not like Jim Jones, about to pass out poison kool-aid to its adherents.
And people forget that the suicide vest was greatly expanded as a tactic of the Tamil Tigers, hardly a psychotic death cult. And the world has largely forgot about them because the Tamils lost their civil war, and the remnants are presently brutally suppressed by the victors in Sri Lanka. Out of sight, out of mind.
Soprano2
I just listened to the press conference, and I don’t know how he keeps from telling them to go fuck themselves. Seriously……..
Matt McIrvin
@Brachiator: I was speaking more in terms of scale-of-threat than causality. I’m seeing otherwise sensible people suddenly talking as if ISIS is a hostile superpower.
Betty Cracker
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Not going down the rabbit hole of dueling hypotheticals. It was suggested that ISIS targeted Paris because of anti-Muslim bigotry in France. I don’t think ISIS conducted an analysis of European anti-Muslim prejudice and targeted France because they’re the worst offender (a debatable point anyway) — that’s giving indiscriminate killers way too much credit. They had an opportunity to attack a Western nation involved in the coalition to bomb the shit out of them, and they took it. I’m sure they’d be just as glad if not more so to kill 100-plus people in a major US city; it’s just a bit harder to pull off.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Hoodie:
The training is a good point, though McVeigh was ex-Army and still couldn’t round up more than one guy to help him directly (though I still suspect he had more who helped him plan). People in the US who become murderously disgruntled seem to have a hard time getting organized, but I wouldn’t chalk all of it up to a lack of training.
But I do think that the fact that French Muslims are not well-integrated into French society is helping Daesh and other groups find recruits within France, and that European countries have to be careful not to play into Daesh’s hands by overreacting against their own Muslim populations or Syrian refugees.
Betty Cracker
@Brachiator: Political aims can and often do come into play in psychotic death cults (Jim Jones for one, before he resorted to the Kool-Aid). The key word here is “rational.” If you truly can’t fathom how the description “psychotic death cult” applies to ISIS, it would be pointless to try to explain it.
Elie
@Matt McIrvin:
“I do wish we’d think of these guys as being basically a bigger-league version of, say, James Holmes and Elliot Rodger, or at least Tim McVeigh. It’d focus the mind properly. ”
I am sure that personality wise, the actual soldiers may have similar traits. I am not however, thinking that their ability to network and exploit weaknesses in our culture and society and understanding where those weaknesses are and how to circumvent them, are bush league. They are pretty sophisticated (leadership), even if some of the soldiers and tools are not. Its the genius (yes, I use that term carefully) of how to cruise around in the modern day to day world while organizing, inspiring and preparing a very dispersed and decentralized “army” of soldiers able to improvise using minimalist tools — including the substance of their own bodies and some easily obtained explosives. How do you recruit and influence people to do that? Its psy-Ops. They know us, know our discarded people and know how to pull the right strings to damage ourselves with crazy auto-immune over-reaction. Again — not high tech, but pretty sophisticated nonetheless.
Brachiator
@Matt McIrvin:
A comparison of ISIS with James Holmes and Elliot Rodger is not a matter of scale of threat. It is a fundamental misstatement of the nature of the problem.
The IRA and Basque separatists did not have to be superpowers to be powerful and powerfully motivated belligerents.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Betty Cracker:
I think the suggestion was that may have been easier for Daesh to find willing collaborators in France because of their existing problems, not that those existing problems *caused* it to be picked. That’s my contention, anyway.
D58826
NBC is reporting that a couple of additional F15 squadrons, an A10 squadron and an AC 130 gunship are being added to the effort. Carly knows that we have not shared intelligence with Egypt. How doe she know that? Or not supplied weapons to the Kurds. Of course the Kurds live in nation states such as Itaq and Turkey. As such we have to work thru those governments in order to supply the weapons. The Turks, the Iraqi’s and the Syrians all have reasons to not arm the kurds. Turkey in fact is bombing our Kurdish allies.
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
Jim Jones never had any coherent political aims. ISIS occupies territory, and also gets weapons and support from political sponsors.
I hold that ISIS has rational political aims and has rationally gone about achieving territorial power. “Psychotic death cult” is your term. I think we all would appreciate reading how you think it applies to ISIS or other groups.
Elie
@Matt McIrvin:
You have to also remember that this is the third “event” in less than two weeks — each in a different location using slightly different approaches: Beirut — suicide killers in outdoor café with over 50 people, Russian plane explosion, killing over 120, Paris: suicide killers and assasins murdering over 120 and injuring hundreds. Pretty big network– probably operating at least somewhat independently but connected in ways we don’t yet know….
Elie
@Brachiator:
I agree that they are quite “rational” in their aims, even if their behavior is quite pathological. How else would you take on an opponent of such extreme economic and military superiority without extreme and non linear tactics? They know scaring the bejesus out of the civilian population is the ticket — not mixing it up in the military arena where they do not have profound tactical superiority. No. They want us to play on THEIR game board which employs the knowledge of our being accustomed to control of our everyday lives, plenty of choices of what we do and the wealth to get what we want when we want it. They know most of us have never seen even a cup of blood flung on a wall, much less our neighbors and friends converted to gallons of blood and gore. That is why staying cool is essential because the overreaction to the horror is an expected and desired outcome we must guard against…
Cervantes
@Ruviana:
That’s great!
Difficult content, needless to say, but I hope you feel it was a good use of your time.
Cervantes
@RSA:
Tag line.
Cervantes
@Mike in NC:
I knew someone once who went to clown college. She was a lot of fun.
Cervantes
@Nate Dawg:
Many of these people don’t mind looking like morons if it pleases their bankers.
Betty Cracker
@Brachiator:
You’re just wrong about that. Jones too espoused an ideology, collected money, gathered weapons and established a short-lived community. His political aims weren’t coherent, but then again, neither are those of ISIS, IMO.
ISIS is an apocalyptic religious cult. I don’t deny that some of its actions have an internal logic driven by its leaders’ conceit about their starring role in bringing about Judgement Day, but I do deny that it is rational.
Prometheus Shrugged
@Brachiator: Well, it’s pretty clear that Prabhakaran was an egomaniac nut job and that a very large majority of Tamils that would have been conscripted into the Tigers, if he were still alive, are not fanatics of any kind.
What’s your evidence of post-war “brutal suppression”? I am in Sri Lanka often enough to observe that mostly what’s happening is the rapid economic development of the former Tamil territories. I could see that the establishment of Kentucky Fried Chicken and Pizza Huts might fit one’s definition of “brutal suppression”…but seriously I don’t think it serves a good purpose to throw around that phrase without being specific. On the other hand, if your point is that we should think carefully about what are, exactly, the lessons to take away from that particular “military solution” to terrorism, then I agree.
Peale
@Prometheus Shrugged: I don’t know how much of the end of the Tamil Tigers is applicable for ISIS or the Taliban for that matter. For starters, I can’t see anyone actually sitting down with the leaders of ISIS for a peace accord and I can’t see anyone outside pressuring Iraq to do so. I’m afraid the end of the story is going to look the same, though. Just decide that everyone living in the territory where ISIS operates a supporter and then inflict as many casualties as possible on the population until most ISIS members are also killed.
Calouste
@Matt McIrvin:
It’s actually not that simple. (The following is cribbed from memory reading an article following the 2005 London bombings.) There are very few people willing to become a suicide bomber, they have to be talked in to it. Talking people into becoming a suicide bomber takes a fair amount of time, a few months on average IIRC, and someone with specialist skills and knowledge. These are the people you really want to get, they are the ones that recruit/convert new suicide bombers. Their skills are rare, and suicide bombers are of course expendable. However, these recruiters/indoctrinators, if they do their work well, can leave their recruits and the country they are in weeks before the attack happens, so they are very hard to find.
Prometheus Shrugged
@Peale: You’re right that the motivations of the Tiger leaders were totally different than ISIS. And the fanatical element among the rank and file wasn’t nearly as prominent. But I do think that there are definite parallels in the personalities of leaders.
This is purely my opinion, but the cease fire talks were mostly for the purpose of grift (the Norwegians who brokered them were and still are interested in oil, and Prabhakaran took advantage of that.). I am also of the opinion that no outsider actually knows what really happened in the final stages of the Sri Lankan conflict. The BBC made it out to be like a killing fields situation, similar to what you describe. But I have serious doubts, because I was in the country at the time and because I know people in the Sri Lankan military. Not to say that their accounts could not have been equally biased to that of the BBC, but of course they painted a much different picture of peaceable treatment of the substantial population of remaining Tamil civilians who never had any desire to take up the Tigers’ cause.
Anyway, my main takeaway from Sri Lanka is the power of money to influence the disaffected. We saw some of that with the Sunni Awakening, but I agree, that’s not likely to be as much of a factor going forward with ISIS.
AxelFoley
@Mandalay:
It’s sad that you actually believe this.
AxelFoley
@BobS:
Congrats, you know some geography. Now explain how Obama’s culpable, asswipe.
schrodinger's cat
@Brachiator: A suicide vest was used very effectively to assassinate Rajiv Gandhi at an election rally by an LTTE woman.