Day: March 25, 2016

Europe Is Overwhelmed

The latest attacks in Brussels has started the regurgitation of crap all over again and since it is an election year it is as vile and ignorant as ever.

Of course there will be the fear mongering of all those bad guys walking down your street chopping off heads….or maybe it is all the terrorists that are hiding among the refugees….or that there are 1 million “jihadist” hiding just around the corner.

I am not saying that there is no problem…..only that the feeding of irrational fear is not a good technique to counter the despicable acts these guys are capable of doing.

Let’s go back to Belgium……the perps in the attacks were known to the Belgian authorities but they were still able to carry out their idiot plan….and some are asking how this could be….

“Denmark, the Netherlands, and Belgium all need to be concerned,” says one terrorism researcher.

Source: No One Knows Just How Big Europe’s Jihadi Problem Really Is | Mother Jones

This recent attack was a rude awakening for the authorities……Belgian and European authorities knew this day was coming and they couldn’t stop it. Beyond the loss of life, that is the most troubling aspect of today’s bombings.

Europe’s counterterrorism defenses have cracked because there are simply too many threats to track. An unnamed Belgian counterterrorism official made a similar point during a recent interview with BuzzFeed News. Citing this official, BuzzFeed reported that “virtually every police detective and military intelligence officer in [Belgium] was focused on international jihadi investigations.”

Funny that back in January of 2016 Europe set up a massive agency to cover the region with a counterterrorism machine…..

European Union member states are pooling together resources to fight terrorism in light of the threat posed by the terrorist group ISIS in a plan announced Monday by Europol, the EU’s law-enforcement agency.

The newly formed European Counter Terrorism Centre was created in response to the terrorist attacks in Paris in November.

Counterterrorism authorities in Europe faced criticism after the Paris attacks because those responsible were reportedly able to travel to Europe from Syria, where they received training from hardened jihadis. As the continent struggles to deal with a massive refugee crisis, border security within Europe has been called into question. Some of the attackers had known links to terrorism but were still able to move between borders in Europe.

The European Counter Terrorism Centre aims to improve information sharing between member countries.

“Our ambition is for the European Counter Terrorism Centre to become a central information hub in the fight against terrorism in the EU, providing analysis for ongoing investigations and contributing to a coordinated reaction in the event of major terrorist attacks,” Rob Wainwright, the director of Europol, said in a statement.

Apparently that idea was not the answer to trying to control terrorist attacks.

But did the Belgian authorities do everything they could to prevent these types of attacks?

A long list of blunders and missed opportunities by Belgian intelligence services in the run-up to the Brussels attacks has raised urgent questions across Europe about whether they could have prevented the carnage. The suicide bombers repeatedly slipped through the fingers of Belgian authorities — with one of them remaining free to attack despite having been deported by Turkey as a jihadist just months earlier.

Source: Belgian security forces under scrutiny after Brussels attacks – Yahoo News

The Belgian government is admitting their failures in this incident……

In the aftermath of the Brussels attack, top Belgian officials have admitted that they could have done more to prevent it—including paying attention when Turkey deported Ibrahim El Bakraoui to the European Union and warned that he was a dangerous militant. Authorities have now disclosed that his brother, Khalid El Bakraoui, was being sought in connection with last year’s Paris attack, reports the New York Times. Both brothers became suicide bombers on Tuesday, and the intelligence failures have prompted what the Guardian calls “soul searching” in Belgium, which has been criticized by some of its European allies for what one French minister called a “lack of will” in dealing with Islamic extremists.

Belgium’s justice and interior ministers have offered to resign over the intelligence failures, but Prime Minister Charles Michel has refused to accept the resignations. Sources tell Reuters that the brothers were on a US watch list, and it’s not clear whether American authorities shared information on them with their European Union counterparts. The Wall Street Journal reports that while Belgium has come under fire for failures, the EU as a whole has been struggling to implement intelligence-sharing plans, with an initiative to track potential terrorists traveling by air held up by European Parliament concerns about privacy. Six suspects were arrested in Brussels Thursday night, along with a man in France who was allegedly planning a fresh attack.

None of this will solve the problem…..a major re-write of the plan is needed and not just in Belgium.

The conviction of Radovan Karadzic

The “Butcher Of Bosnia” has finally received his just desserts.

With all the death that this man brought only illustrates the things that coukld happen in Syria as well as Bosnia……

Thursday saw the closure of a long and drawn out story for the victims of Bosnia’s bloody civil war as the guilty verdict was finally delivered in the trial of Radovan Karadzic. The former leader of the Bosnian Serbs presided over some of the worst atrocities committed during the four years of violence that tore apart the multi-ethnic Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

“His judgement is symbolically powerful – above all for the victims of the crimes committed during the wars in Bosnia-Herzegovina and across the former Yugoslavia, but also for victims across the world,” UN Human Rights chief Zeid Raad al-Hussein said in a statement, following the conviction and announcement of a 40-year jail sentence for Karadzic for genocide and war crimes.

Source: The conviction of Radovan Karadzic has lessons for Syria’s war | Middle East Eye

Time to take the TRASH out!

As always there are lessons to be learned from history….that is if one takes the time to see what is happening and why.  These days….that is a tall order.

The Myth of the Reagan Democrat

I am an old fart so I can remember the 1980 election when it was Carter versus Reagan……I also can recall some of the dirty tricks and some of the media slogans that accompanied the election……it was a vote for either a true statesman and a movie star hardliner that worked closely with HUAC to “uncover” Commies in Hollywood….

But the election was about Carter….all the events that took place under his guidance of the country…..the hostage thing was the most pronounced….but there were economics involved and of course the ever present energy crisis….back in those days the media had to explain the popularity of Reagan and his eventual win and in doing so they came up with the term “Reagan Democrats”…..

The easiest definition of a Reagan Democrat…….A media term referring to blue collar voters who are thought to vote for Democratic presidential candidates but who actually vote for Republicans due to their conservative social views.

The problem is that the media has never let the term die a natural death…..every election they attempt to resurrect the term to explain a candidates popularity…..but is the situation as simple as the MSM wants it to be?

Of course it is not as simple as the media would like it to be….and in most cases there is NO validity to the claim…….

Reagan Democrats originally described blue collar white men who left their traditional allegiance to the Democratic Party to back Reagan over Democrat Jimmy Carter in the 1980 election. The phenomenon was vastly overstated from the start, as many blue collar Democrats began voting Republican in presidential elections in 1968 when they backed Richard Nixon. These so-called Reagan Democrats supported Nixon again in 1972, and were Democrats in registration only by the time of Reagan’s 1980 election.

Source: The Myth of the Reagan Democrat – LA Progressive

Blue Dog Democrats were these same voters but since they voted for Bill Clinton a new term had to be found….it was Dems voting for Dems……and then in 2010 the Blue Dogs lost their butts in the mid-term and the media needed to find a way to explain it…..so re-enter the term “Reagan Democrats”……

The term is still in use today by the pundits in the MSM……

It is as silly now as it was in 1980……

Next time you are listening to the media analyze the vote….listen closely and you will find the “Reagan Democrats” are back……

Here’s another thought to keep in your mind……

Clinton’s the only candidate left who holds faith with the platform that’s guided the U.S. since WWII: classic liberal interventionism, more familiar as the globocop policy that fueled both Bush presidencies.

Source: Hillary Clinton Trumps the Republicans on Foreign Policy – Haaretz – Israeli News Source Haaretz.com

It seems that Clinton is the only Republican left in the election race of 2016……

US Intel Vets Warn Against Torture

Back in the days, few years back, when we were having the conversation about torture, I, as usual, had something to say……my post was short and sweet…..

“Try it, then we will talk”!

But once again the subject of torture has returned.  A few of the candidates think that it is thee answer to solving the problem of terrorism.

The veterans of the intel services have something to say about the subject……..

To those living “outside the Beltway” it may seem counterintuitive that those of us whose analysis has been correct on key issues that the U.S. government got criminally wrong – like the invasion of Iraq in 2003 – would be blacklisted from “mainstream” media and ostracized by the Smart People of the Establishment. But, alas, that’s the way it is.

Forget the continuing carnage in which hundreds of thousands have been killed and millions made refugees. Within the mainstream U.S. media and around Washington’s major policy circles, there is little serious dialogue, much less debate about what went so hideously wrong; and Americans still innocently wonder – regarding the people on the receiving end of the blunderbuss violence – “why they hate us.”

Source: US Intel Vets Warn Against Torture « Antiwar.com Blog

Sorry to say….but if you have not been tortured then you opinion is not valid…..again I say…..

“Try it, then we will talk”!

Searching For Pandora’s Box

I do a lot of research in the field of international relations most specifically in the field of conflict, causes and resolutions…..I have read many papers that deal with the transitional state of Iraq and Syria…..I have even covered some of it here on IST…….

With all the violence and destruction in the Middle east I have read some papers that talking about a transitional phase for the two countries….. There are always plans within plans….th…

Source: Is Iraq/Syria In Transition? – In Saner Thought

But the most prominent solution that is becoming ever more popular is the possibility of some sort of federal system for the countries…..the argument is that it would provide each of the “entities” within the birders some form autonomy and security….basically a similar plan as that of Iraq in the early days of the occupation….thus were quickly abandoned with the hope of saving Iraq as a whole nation not isolated city states of the Greek past.

At first I was down with the idea for Iraq……but after watching the events unfold I quickly let go of that delusion.

For five years a civil war, a bloody civil war, has been raging in Syria and now there seems to be a few academics that are liking the idea of a federal system for Syria as a way to stop all the violence…..

I will admit that anything to achieve peace for the people of Syria would be welcomed….but a federal system is not that solution……

I recently read an excellent piece written by Ramzy Baroud…….

It is safe to say that after five years of war in Syria, the conflict is entering a new phase. Not a political resolution, but a grand political game that could divide the country into several entities, along sectarian lines.

If that takes place, it will bode badly, not only for Syria, but also the whole region. Division would become the buzzword according to which all current conflicts could expect to be settled.

Source: Federalism is a Pandora’s Box; if Syria Succumbs to It, Others Will Follow – Politics for the People | Politics for the People

This will lead to a relative quiet time in the Middle East….but after that it will explode again and possibly worse than today……and yes that is possible.

There is an answer to this problem….but I do not believe that a federal system is that answer.

The self-emasculation of mainstream politics

Here in the Us we have ab election quickly approaching and while the candidates slug it out the rise of populism is barely noticed…..nationalistic fervor is on the rise…..not only in America but in Europe as well…..

The question could be asked with the rise of a form of populism is it doing damage to “mainstream” politics?

Candidates like trump and Sanders are energizing voters like they have not been so in the past…..I pressed an excellent article on this phenom….it is mostly about the EU but it can be applied to the USA as well…..

This triumph of populism is not solely a European problem. In the United States presidential elections often tempt fringe candidates to try their luck, but when the moment of truth comes, responsible people get the top job. For Europeans, similarly, it used to go without saying that though the EU might be confronted by severe threats, overcoming them always led to an even stronger union.

Source: The self-emasculation of mainstream politics | European Council on Foreign Relations