Well I spent yesterday doing laundry and the Politics Plus Monthly Report so I pooped out before doing an Open Thread. Today, the end of the laundry! As I sit here, I can hear the fog horn blowing out in the inlet. Tomorrow is physio, teaching, and a doctor's appointment so it will be a long day.
Short Takes
Huffington Post — But 2016 Republican candidate Carly Fiorina dismissed Iran’s reaction to the death of the leading anti-government protester.
“I take the Iranian condemnation with a huge grain of salt,” Fiorina told CNN’s "State of the Union" on Sunday. “This is a regime that tortures citizens routinely, that thinks nothing of executions, that still holds four Americans in jail.” …
Retired neurosurgeon and presidential hopeful Ben Carson went further, suggesting that the nuclear deal struck last July between Iran, the U.S. and five world powers pushed Saudi Arabia to violently repress its Shiite population.
“The Saudis have been one of our strongest allies in the Middle East, and I think it’s unfortunate that we put them in the position we have by showing the support to Iran that we have with this foolish deal,” Carson told ABC’s “This Week."
These Republicans call Saudi Arabia an ally of the US yet Saudi Arabia, according to the Human Rights Watch World Report 2015. continues to "… try, convict, and imprison political dissidents and human rights activists solely on account of their peaceful activities. Systematic discrimination against women and religious minorities continued. … subjected hundreds of people to unfair trials and arbitrary detention. New anti-terrorism regulations that took effect in 2014 can be used to criminalize almost any form of peaceful criticism of the authorities as terrorism." In addition, Saudi Arabia is the world's #1 importer of arms as at 2014. What does it do with all these arms when it only has a standing armed forces of 239,000? The Saudi's have not assisted in the placement of refugees from anything I have heard, and in the past were thought to be supporting ISIS in various ways.
The US is seen as the "boogeyman" in the Middle East, contributing substantially to the instability in the region. But Saudi Arabia is destabilising force as well. By executing Shiite dissident cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, Saudi Arabia has upped the ante. The Iranian response has not helped either, but it is a direct response to Saudi Arabia's provocative action.
Count on Republicans to throw gasoline on a fire.
The Guardian — Speaking in Biloxi, Mississippi, the Republican presidential hopeful implied that the Obama administration should have heeded his call for the US to seize oil assets controlled by Isis but had instead allowed the terror group to prosper.
“I’ve predicted a lot of things, you have to say, including, ‘Get the oil, take the oil, keep the oil.’ Right? I’ve been saying that for three years, and everybody said, ‘Oh, I can’t do that. I mean, this is a sovereign country. There is no country!” Trump said.
“They’ve created Isis. Hillary Clinton created Isis with Obama,” Trump said.
As I understand, ISIS was "created" by Baby Bush and Cheney when they invaded Iraq for oil, toppled Sadam Hussein and left a vacuum in Iraq. Out of the sectarian violence came ISIS to fill the vacuum. And leave it to Trump not to acknowledge the role his inflamatory rhetoric has played in recruitment videos. He probably wants an OSCAR nomination for his work.
Alternet — "Fear," a great Jedi master named Yoda once said, "leads to anger," which leads to hate, which leads to suffering, which, of course, leads to the Dark Side. …
In other words, it went down exactly the way Republicans wanted it to go down. They've always used fear to win elections.
Whether it's fear of same-sex couples getting married, fear of the government taking away the people's guns or fear of Black men, they've always understood that fear works to motivate their white base.
IMO, Thom Hartmann is spot on. Time to get the progressive vote out and talk down the fear.
My Universe —
"Please sir, might I have more?"
7 Responses to “Squatch’s Open Thread 03/01/2016”
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Good to hear someone got their laundry done. I can wash, but I have no way to get it dry here. It's been raining for two days now, and that is a blessing in this drought stricken part of the country, so no complaints there, but the humidity must be in the 80%s and even if I'd keep my washing out of the rain, it would remain soggy. Even things I haven't washed are damp 😉 But no worries, the weathermen promised some dry weather in the next couple of days. Good luck with your busy day tomorrow, Lynn.
Huffington Post: Again Republicans are fanning a fire without having the slightest notion who started it and what is burning in it exactly. Good of Carly Fiorina to take Iran's reaction with a huge grain of salt, because the Saudis certainly didn't and started a new provocation by throwing all Iranian diplomats out of the country. These two countries have been fighting a power war, disguised as a religious war between Suniis and Shi'ites, for decades and all the West has done is make things worse, allowing Da'esh, armed and secretly supported by the Saudis, to come to power. The king and princes of Saudi Arabia since 1932 have favored Salafism aka Wahhabism, a fiercely puritanical strain of Sunni Islam and have subjected their people to this very restrictive religious way of life although it represents only about 23% of the population. So Ben Carson was talking out of the wring side of his digestive system again. He'd be wise to plug that with his head.
Until recently Yemen was the battleground where Saudi Arabia and Iran crossed swords behind the scene, but with hostilities flaring up as Iran is no longer the pariah of the Middle East for most countries after the Nuclear Deal , this could soon change and the West could get caught in the middle.
The Guardian: Trump has entered a new phase in the Hitler look-alike competition: that of outright warmongering. You are of course absolutely right, Lynn, by laying the blame for the existence of Da'esh where it belongs: with Dubya and his warmongering advisors. We here know that, just as any rational thinking American knows that, but that doesn't stop Trump from shifting the blame from Obama – where Republicans have put it these past years – to Hillary, the opponent he rightly fears the most. And while bellowing out the usual garbage about having said something all along, he is setting himself up for criminal charges for enticing the government to break international laws and (possibly) commit war crimes by stealing a country's resources: ‘Get the oil, take the oil, keep the oil.’ His stupidity is unbelievable, that of his voters is beyond that.
Alternet: We've been pointing this out for a while now, but the politics of fear doesn't seem to have reached its pinnacle yet. "Fear works because it appeals to our basic animal instinct to stay safe, and it makes the simplest, inane and most downright evil solutions sound smart." Especially to a base that isn't too smart to start with, I might add.
Down with fear! Make 2016 the year that rationality triumphed!
My Universe: Oh, what a dapper little Oliver Twist.
HuffPo:
Stop Supporting – and Start Punishing – Saudi Arabia
We call on the governments of the world to stop providing Saudi Arabia with weaponry, and to boycott, divest from, and implement sanctions against that country until the Saudi government ends its military aggression and abuse of human rights.
http://rootsaction.org/featured-actions/1023-stop-supporting–and-start-punishing–saudi-arabia
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MoveOn Petition:
Urge Pres. Obama & Congress to increase pressure on Saudi Arabia to end its support of sectarian violence & flagrant violations of human rights.
http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/washington-increase-peace?source=c.url&r_by=1135580
ADDITION:
Saudi Arabia Executes 47 People Including Shiite Cleric
JANUARY 04, 2016HEADLINES
Protests are erupting across the Middle East after Saudi Arabia executed prominent Shiite religious leader Nimr Baqr al-Nimr—along with 46 others—on Saturday. It was the country’s largest mass execution in decades. The Saudi government accused Sheikh Nimr of calling for the overthrow of the Saudi royal family.
Short Article:
http://www.democracynow.org/2016/1/4/headlines/saudi_arabia_executes_47_people_including_shiite_cleric
Video: http://publish.dvlabs.com/democracynow/360/dn2016-0104.mp4
Web Site: http://www.democracynow.org/
Short Article: As Saudi Arabia Executes Sheikh al-Nimr, Will U.S. Respond by Cutting $50 Billion in Weapons Sales?
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Dang! Laundry is horrid. I bet washing big socks makes it worse!
Spot on! And let's not forget that OBL and most of the 9/11 terrorists were Saudi's.
The Bush Reich also disbanded the Iraqi arma (mostly Sunni) and supported a Shiite government thazt excluded and oppressed Sunnis. So the Sunni soldiers joined the malitias that became the Daesh.
Amen Hartman!
I have more for the mouse… more digestive juices!
HuffPo – I doubt whether Carly Fiorina is smart enough to make the distinction between jail and prison, so I'll assume she was thinking prison. If she wants to badmouth the country that is holding the largest number of Americans in prison, she needs to badmouth the United States.
Guardian – Goebbels' playbook – and Orwell's (well, not Orwell's personally, but he outed it). Repeat the lie often enough and loud enough and it becomes truth.
Alternet – Yes, Thom Hartmann – and Yoda – are both spot on. Is anyone besides me having deja vu all over again about terrorists in far off places deliberately feeding American fears in order to influence American elections? Then, as now, the correct response is to vote the opposite of what fear would suggest, but it's tough to convince people of that whose minds, probably never too glowing to begin with, have been stunted by breathing airborne pesticide and herbicide and by drinking waterborne pesticide, herbicide, and fracking chemicals. And I don't doubt that scarier stunts still are yet to come.
Cartoon – Looks like a case of be careful what you ask for. Another bite? But who is doing the biting?
What!? There is no CNN debate about stopping the use of soda's in the U.S? Oh, did Mayor Bloomberg get torpedoed by the soda industry when he tried to get New Yorkers to act in a healthier way?
Is there no serios CNN debate about the absence of scientific proof for the myth of the connection between cholesterol and heart attacks, about the role of the triglycerides in this?
Is there no CNN debate about the "Great Prostate Hoax" (see the book of that name, written by te biologist who discovered the Prostate Specific Antigen) that has subjcted innumerable men, and their families to all kinds of travail, for the benefit of the bank accounts of the Urological industry?
What!? Is there no CNN debate about how the Bush family has been all but BFF's with the ruling Saudi family, for ages?
What!? Has there been no CNN debate about the amount of BS allowed in poltical pseudo-debates, and the like?
What!? Has there been no CNN debate about the corrosive bilogical effect of constant lying? Well, we might just get to see that, in Trumpster and Dr. Benny, who knows!?