Very angry bride

Very angry bride



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Very angry bride

By: jironde on: 10:52 PM

Scared

Scared



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Scared

By: jironde on: 9:52 PM

PAKISTAN: More than 100 dead bodies from three mass graves were found in one district of Balochistan

January 27, 2014 he UN and international human rights organisations must send fact finding missions to probe the illegal disposal of Baloch people in mass graves he Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) expresses shock and deep concern over the discovery of mass graves in Balochistan; it is suspected that these graves are of Baloch missing persons who were arrested and subsequently extrajudicially killed. A large number of family members gathered around the places of Tootak village, district Khuzdar to inquire about their loved ones who have been missing for many years. However, the police and other security forces refused them permission to try and identify the bodies and baton charged the people to disperse them. On January 25, three mass graves were found after one of them was discovered by a shepherd who saw pieces of human bodies and bones. He informed the Levies, a private armed force organised by tribal leaders, and according to Assistant Commissioner, district Khuzdar, Mr. Afzal Supra, Balochistan, the grave was excavated and 15 bodies were found. As the news of the mass grave spread throughout the district people gathered there and started digging in the nearby area where they found two more mass graves. In total 103 bodies were recovered from the graves. The bodies were too decomposed to be identified. From the three mass graves 17, 8 and 78 bodies were found but the local people say that a total of 169 bodies have been found. People have witnessed more than 100 human bodies in Tootak while they were digging the area. However, Pakistani military forces stopped the local people from unearthing the mass graves and took control of the area. Now, no one is allowed access to the location except military personnel. According to the media, a security official who spoke on condition of anonymity said so far they have found around 56 unidentified graves and that there are many more. It is claimed that these bodies are those of Baloch missing persons . The confirmation by government officials that over one dozen bullet-riddled bodies have been dumped in unmarked graves - many of them considered to be mass graves - in Balochistan has exposed the gross human rights abuses perpetrated by the security forces over the years in a bid to suppress a popular uprising against the government. It is feared that more mass graves will be found in the coming days. However, the Pakistan Army, in order to hide its crimes, is not allowing any civilian or media outlets to visit the area. Anyone trying to gain access to the area comes under live fire by the Army. It is believed that the genocide of Balochis is one of the biggest mass killings of the 21st century. Nasrullah Baloch , the vice chairman of the Voice for Baloch Missing Persons (VBMP), fears that their relatives who disappeared following arrest by the security services in the restive province might be buried in those graves. Baloch says that his cousin and the son of Mama Qadeer, who is leading the historical long march for the recovery of missing persons, Jalil Reki and another, Sana Sangat were brought to Khuzdar after arrest and killed after some days. He believes that their bodies must be here with others. These mass graves were found very close to the residence of Mr. Shafique Mengal, who is a well known man of the security agencies and who is heading a militant organisation with the name of Nifaz-e-Amn. The organisation claims itself to be affiliated to the Pakistan security forces, working for the implementation of Islam and against Anti State elements. He has been provided with 30 armed vehicles. Whenever the security forces fail to conduct actions in tribal and mountainous areas they ask for Mengal's help. The Frontier Corp (FC) own this organisation as the true one working body for the protection of Balochistan. The FC and other forces, as claimed by Baloch nationalist groups, have helped him to make private jails and torture centers in Tootak where the missing persons are brought and tortured before being extrajudicially killed. There is no power supply in the area but interestingly, electricity lines were provided to his private jails and his 'fort' which is guarded by the law enforcement agencies. Human rights violations could soon escalate as the Pakistani government recently passed a new controversial law, the 'Pakistani Protection Ordinance'- PPO, which has legalised enforced disappearances. The government has made an amendment in the PPO, though it has yet to be approved by the parliament. In an effort to provide protection for the crimes of the security forces the government has given legal cover for enforced disappearances and allows the security agencies to keep any suspect for up to three months without presenting them before a court and in cases of suspected terrorism the person can be kept for six months in their custody. The crimes of the security agencies in Balochistan and the mass-scale disappearances and extrajudicial killings have now been exposed by the discoveries of these mass graves. The non-investigation of the enforced disappearance of thousands of persons in Balochistan can be likened to the concentration camps of the Nazi's who operated without any control or oversight; in a similar fashion as the armed forces and security agencies in Pakistan who answer to no one. The AHRC urges the government of Pakistan to immediately form a transparent high judicial inquiry to probe the cases of the mass graves and provide information relating to the possible identities of the deceased persons. It is a prime responsibility of the government to inform the nation of each and every development in the progress of the investigation. Otherwise it will be difficult to control the volatile situation in Balochistan which may well spread like wildfire throughout the entire country. The Supreme Court of Pakistan must take Sou Moto action on the discovery of the mass graves. The AHRC urges the United Nations to send a high powered fact finding mission to probe the presence of mass graves in Balochistan province, particularly in Khuzdar district. It must be pointed out that the people of Pakistan do not expect any proper and transparent investigation from their government and the security agencies as they themselves are involved in the killings and enforced disappearances and the concealment of such crimes, therefore, the importance of a UN report cannot be over emphasised.



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PAKISTAN: More than 100 dead bodies from three mass graves were found in one district of Balochistan

By: jironde on: 9:08 PM

BLUE 80LVL

BLUE 80LVL



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BLUE 80LVL

By: jironde on: 8:08 PM

Heavy Fighting Between The FSA And Syrian Army In Hama

Some heavy fighting in the green countryside of Hama, lots of incoming fire and you can see the guys from the FSA nearly kill each other especially around 4:00 the guy got so close to be killed by his buddies a couple times. 2:40 AK Gangster spray fail



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Heavy Fighting Between The FSA And Syrian Army In Hama

By: jironde on: 3:52 PM

mortar fail

mortar fired on al fallujah hospital in Iraq didn't explode . No enough information on who fired the mortar.



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mortar fail

By: jironde on: 3:34 PM

SAA tank crew run for their lives - Must See

The group jaysh al-Islam, under military commander of the islamic front Zahran Alloush engages an SAA tank, resulting in its malfunction. Subsequently, the tank crew caught in the midst of a firefight attempt to flee the scene. Jaysh al Islam primarily operates in Damascus and its suburbs



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SAA tank crew run for their lives - Must See

By: jironde on: 3:34 PM

Fan Installation Fail

Won't keep you as cool



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Fan Installation Fail

By: jironde on: 1:34 PM

How to Wheelie Fail...

Notice he grabs the front brake, pffft amateur! :)



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How to Wheelie Fail...

By: jironde on: 1:34 PM

Overtaking on snow fail

One idiot pushes the brake



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Overtaking on snow fail

By: jironde on: 9:34 AM

''Is This Snow?''

So this guy thinks that because melting snow with a lighter doesn't create water, that it's fake snow created from chemicals being sprayed into the atmosphere via aircraft.



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''Is This Snow?''

By: jironde on: 9:34 AM

Trolling about Rape? or Horrendous Fail of All Time

see titles;



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Trolling about Rape? or Horrendous Fail of All Time

By: jironde on: 5:53 AM

Riding Through The River With Crossbike = Fail

that laugh doe.



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Riding Through The River With Crossbike = Fail

By: jironde on: 3:08 AM

MUST READ Obama's Middle East Recessional

Obama's Middle East Recessional Part 1: What Instability Really Looks Like Self-proclaimed Middle East "experts" have long bemoaned the instability of the region. They didn't know the first thing about real instability. Imagine trying to follow a critical baseball or football game-a World Series finale or a Superbowl, say-without being able to see it in person or even on TV, without knowing which players are in the lineups at any given time, and without even having access to a real-time eyewitness play-by-play over the radio or the internet. All you have to go on is delayed second- and third-party accounts whose unbiased reliability cannot be firmly established, and, worse, whose motive to obfuscate or "spin" the facts has to be assumed. That's a little like what trying to follow U.S. foreign policy feels like right now, U.S. Mideast policy in particular. Things are happening even amid some internal debate and disagreement. Assessments and decisions are being made, and those judgments, large and small, are bearing consequences. But for those who aren't calling the pitches and flashing the signs to hitters and base-runners, and who can't even follow the game in real time, it's frustrating trying to figure out what's going on because what we do know of the decision-making process could conceivably fit into more than one explanatory template. The sports metaphor is obviously a limited one. U.S. foreign policy is not a game. No score can be expressed in numbers than makes any sense. There are more than two teams. Lineups are neither symmetrical nor fixed. Offense and defense are not sharply distinguished. The competition doesn't ever exactly end. The rules are diffuse. There are no umpires, aside, perhaps, from the unrelenting logic of strategic interaction. But you still get the basic idea: Important stuff is going down, but we on the outside can only infer what it is. And this is a "big game." Unprecedented instability in the Middle East, whatever else it's doing, is teeing up an unprecedented number of generative decision points for U.S. officials, creating path-dependent realities we'll be living with for decades. These are molten times, so the demands to "get it right" now reach incandescent levels of intensity (or they should). We know most of the discrete decision points: What to do about the Syrian civil war? How best to stop or limit the Iranian military-nuclear program? What to do about a re-fracturing Iraq? How to stop the contagion from Syria and Iraq from spreading into Jordan and Lebanon? How to handle the critical Turkish angle viz Syria and Iraq and the Kurds amid a new and potentially far-reaching Turkish political crisis? How far and in which ways and with what relative priority to push Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations? How to influence post-"Arab Spring" political developments in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Bahrain and elsewhere? How to think about the burgeoning sectarian cleavages in the region and relate it specific countries? How the counter-proliferation portfolio relates to the other challenges in the region? How to refashion the U.S counterterror intelligence footprint given the withdrawal of so many platforms and personnel from Iraq and, prospectively, Afghanistan? What is striking about these decision points is how many of them there are right now, and how diverse, difficult and intertwined they tend to be. This is not normal. That observation in turn leads to other questions: Does the Obama Administration have a strategic theory of the case as regards the region as a whole that can tie all of these discrete points together in some overarching logical framework? And is that theory of the Middle Eastern case, if it exists, consciously related to global strategic objectives of some sort? If it does and if it is, whose theory is it? The President's? The Secretary of State's? Someone else's? Are the principals agreed or not-on some of it, most of it, all of it? This is not a simple set of questions because different Presidents and principals have demonstrably different styles of relating strategic abstractions to policy behavior. Some do have explicit theories of the case and exert themselves consistently to match behavior to strategy. The Nixon-Kissinger tenure was the quintessence of such an approach, but, tutored by World War and disciplined by Cold War, the Eisenhower and Kennedy-Johnson Administrations approximated it. Some Administrations have had highly abstract, often thickly moralist theories of the case, but these theories have been too abstract to marshal consistent discipline in a policy process. They often leave subordinates to guess and argue over what the President wants. That circumstance typified both the Reagan and George W. Bush presidencies, and to some extent the Carter presidency as well. Some Presidents and their closest advisers have deeply practiced intuitions about policy, but are not so keen on formal strategy exercises or explicit strategies. The Bush-Scowcroft-Baker team exemplified this approach, as did the Truman-Acheson team. A President can have a disposition toward strategy without having a formal strategy as suchA President can have a disposition toward strategy without having a formal strategy as such, and in very fluid times that may be most he can have, or should want. This is possible because when discrete decisions come before the President, there are not a large number of choices he can make by the time they get there. His instincts can cause those decision points to cluster a certain way even if he cannot fully or consistently articulate why he has decided as he has in a fashion that would satisfy a Kissinger, a Brzezinski, an Acheson or even a Scowcroft. Some Presidents seem to have no use for strategy at all, are not adept or comfortable thinking in such terms, and so tend to deal with unavoidable foreign policy decision points on a case-by-case basis. The Clinton-Christopher period illustrates this approach. And Barack Obama? Is this Administration's foreign policy just distracted ad hocery , as many claim, as some evidence from the process side suggests? Or, agree with it or not, does it have, as others claim, an explicit strategic theory of the case that embraces the world and the Middle East as a part of it? Or, like the George H.W. Bush Administration, does the Obama Administration have highly intelligent (or highly misguided) instincts that fall short of explicit, formal strategy, but that are nevertheless driving policy in a particular direction over time? Which is it? How do we know? What counts as evidence? In the following several posts, I will attempt to answer these questions. But before an answer can make much sense we need first to understand more about the novelty of a thoroughly destabilized Middle East, and how it got that way. Then we will look briefly at some of the aforementioned discrete Middle Eastern decision points ( Syria , Iran and Iraq ) in hopes that a characteristic pattern of Obama Administration decision-making emerges from them. Then, maybe, we'll be able to accurately characterize the Obama Administration's approach , putting us in a position to make some judgments about how wise it is, and what it's likely to lead to. Onwards! Over the past seventy or so years a kind of intellectual tic developed among casual Western observers of the "Middle East" that has held the region to be "unstable." (I put Middle East in scare quotes to suggest that said casual observers have been casual, too, about defining the region they mean.) Well, like a lot of things, a region is stable or unstable only by comparison to some place else, or the same place at different times. Hence, how one defines the area one is talking about obviously affects comparisons. So, if said casual Western observers have meant by "Middle East" just the "Arab-Israeli" conflict zone alone (and they often have), then wars in 1948-49, 1956, 1967, 1970-71, 1973, 1982 and so on, "peacetime" periods speckled by acts of terrorism, reprisals, raiding, assassinations and the like, probably qualify that area as highly unstable compared to Europe, South America, and most of Asia during the Cold War. If observers meant the Levant or the Gulf or North Africa or more broadly the "Arab world", or even more broadly the "Muslim world", the instability label fit a lot less snugly. Yes, there were palace coups and assassinations and military interventions into politics and a few insurgencies, civil wars and other incidents of mass political violence within countries in all of these defined zones. But there was really only one bona fide interstate war that did not involve Israel, and none that pitted Arab states directly against one another. There were also some very long-lived, highly stable regimes: Qaddafi in Libya from September 1969 to October 2011; the Assads in Syria from November 1970 to date; Mubarak in Egypt from October 1981 to February 2012; the Ba'ath in Iraq, mostly under Saddam Hussein, from July 1968 until March 2003, and one could go on. Of course cemeteries are stable, too, so stability is not always a good thing, as most of us imagine, to healthy civil societies. But I am using "stability" in a descriptive, social science sense-no more, no less. You can get some idea of how relatively stable the Middle East has been for most of the past 60-70 years, dating to just before the end of 2010, by comparing it to what's going on now. Now the region as a whole-all of it, pretty much, however you define it-is unstable. Really unstable. It could get even worse and probably will, but this, folks, is what instability looks like-this is the real deal. This is an entire region engaged in the political equivalent of a demolition derbyThis is an entire region engaged in the political equivalent of a demolition derby, except that no one seems to be having any fun. Consider: There are no conventional cross-border wars going on right now, but we've got just about everything else wherewith to make an instability cocktail. Civil wars and active major insurgencies? Check: Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan and Somalia (the latter two if you include non-Arab countries). Political violence just short of institutionalized insurgencies? Check: Libya, Egypt, Bahrain, Lebanon and, arguably, Algeria. Merely frightened or weak governments to one degree or another? Check: Jordan, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Sudan and both Hamas in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Ordinarily well-institutionalized governments in political crisis, and not in control of their entire national territory? Check: Turkey. The only two major countries in the region (I'm excluding three Gulf families or collections of families with flags: Oman, Qatar and the UAE) that are in control of their national territory and are not in their own estimation teetering on the brink of some internal meltdown are Iran and Israel. And long before the rest of the region convalesces those two may go to war. Moreover, as many observers have pointed out, we're not looking just at some two dozen countries in trouble, we're looking at more than a few whose very existence as polities is in jeopardy. That certainly goes for Syria, and it probably goes for Iraq. The existence of an integral Libya, Lebanon, Yemen and Sudan very long into the future is no sure bet either. The prospect of regime upheaval (not government administration change but actual regime change, properly defined) against the monarchies in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Morocco is far from zero. The rise of pan-Kurdish nationalism has implications for the territorial configurations of Iran and Turkey as well as of Iraq and Syria. "Palestine", less than a polity but more than a figment of political imagination, has long been in limbo and, current negotiations notwithstanding, is likely to remain there for quite a while. So we're not just talking about the sum of individual country troubles, we're talking about an entire regional state subsystem undulating and disintegrating from the decay of some of its units and the growing weakness and unpredictability of other units. One good tic deserves another, I suppose. Just as casual Western observers used to be quick to disparage the Middle East's instability, they were and remain determined to blame someone for it. The American mainstream press operates biographically: who's up, who's down; who's screwed up and who hasn't (yet). This saves journalists and editors from having to actually understand issues, and, besides, they're probably right to think that most of their readers prefer it that way. High-brow gossip trumps actual analysis, in spades. The result of this habit is that, depending on their politics mostly, some blame President Obama for the Middle Eastern mess we behold today. He should, they archly declare, have intervened early in Syria. He should have supported the Iranian Green Revolution in 2009. He should have stood by Mubarak, even as Mubarak's own colleagues were throwing him over the side. And had he done all this and a nearly endless list of other things he should have done but did not do, or that he did do but should not have done, everything would be fine today. Others prefer to blame George W. Bush and the neocons. It was the Iraq War that caused all of this. I'm not kidding; there's a short essay called " What the War in Iraq Wrought " in the New Yorker , dated January 15, by a journalist named John Lee Anderson that blames everything wrong in the region, even by implication what's happening in Egypt, on the Iraq War because that's what supposedly created the sectarian demon loosed on the Middle East today. Some are more ecumenical in their revisionism: The United States caused all the trouble, all the administrations dating back as far as anyone can remember them. Or it's the British, or the French, or the generic West, or the Russians, or (of course, lest we forget) the Jews. It rarely seems to occur that the peoples of the region might just bear some responsibility for their own situation. And it virtually never occurs that looking for someone to blame is perhaps not the best way to go about understanding regional realities. It is especially annoying when people who really ought to know better do such things, doubly so when they do it in mea culpa mode. I was stunned when I heard President Bush say in 2003, "For 60 years, the United States pursued stability at the expense of democracy the Middle East, and we achieved neither", a statement that Condoleezza Rice repeated often while Secretary of State (which inclination, more than anything else, led me away from her service). In other words, the reason that Arab countries were not democracies, and hence produced terrorists, is not because of thousands of years of their own historical and cultural experiences, but because of U.S. foreign policy decisions over the previous six decades. This is the argument that leftwing critics of U.S. support for authoritarian regimes in a Cold War context used to make; for avowedly conservative Republicans to start making it was truly breathtaking, not least because, no matter who makes it, it is absurd. We did too achieve stability for those 60 years; by any reasonable measure, U.S. Cold War-era Middle East policy was a successU.S. Cold War-era Middle East policy was a success. Far more important and to the point, it was never in our power in any case to turn Arab states into democracies. This is something George W. Bush (I hope) has by now learned the hard way, and Dr. Rice too. It is astounding that even when we criticize ourselves we do it with a dollop of hubris larger than Mt. McKinley: It's always all about us. Except that it isn't. The United States is not and never has been the determining factor in everything that goes on in the Middle East, or anywhere else abroad for that matter (except maybe Panama for a time). We need to get over ourselves. That doesn't mean, of course, that what Presidents decide is totally without effect. For good or ill, the United States does matter some most of the time, and a lot at least some of the time. The Iraq War turned out to be ill-advised, certainly the way it was fought if not the decision itself. The way we decided to operate in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban regime amounted to another mistake, though it's taken more time for that mistake to become clear to most observers. Screwing up these two wars has amounted to a strategic defeat for the United States in the wider region, and every U.S. ally and partner has suffered from this defeat accordingly, just as all U.S. adversaries and competitors have gained to one degree or another. The Obama Administration inherited this defeat, decided to cut U.S. loses, and we'll see later if by doing so it has made things worse or not. Certainly the oscillation between crusading interventionism and the subsequent American recessional under Obama has had its own disorienting impact. As to the broader implications of recent U.S. policies, the Iraq War did stoke the coals of sectarian division into a fire, but it did not create them. The recrudescence of Sunni-Shi'a violence goes back proximately to 1973-74, the year that the quadrupling of oil prices both set the stage for the collapse of the Pahlavi regime in Iran and bankrolled Saudi wahhabism, setting up a collision to come between extremist Sunni and Shi'a clerics (not that sectarian conflict in Islam is exclusively theological in nature, anymore than the 16th century Wars of the Reformation were). Had the Obama Administration early on and effectively quashed the Syrian situation, it might have earned a delay in the region's sectarian clash-but probably no more than that, since the demon had already broken its chains earlier in Iraq and had already made deadly visitations as far away as Pakistan. Factors inherent to the region explain most of what is happening now. With few exceptions, the Arab states are weak relative to their tribal societies and sectarian identities. These weak states, most of which are heterogeneous ethnically or in sectarian terms, have been unable to devise effective loyalty formulae or achieve strong records of economic growth or social justice over the years. Many have been bitten hard by the resource curse. The strongly patriarchal, authoritarian bias of these societies has hindered adaptation to many aspects of modernity, not least their ability to create open market economies in place of the radical elite-rentier distortions that have characterized every single one of the Arab countries, republic and monarchy alike, from the beginning of the independence era. For all these deficiencies the Arab state elites have preferred to blame the West, the United States and especially Israel, and the only thing more bizarre than this is the credulity of so many Westerners in believing them. Sure, the artificiality of many of the territorial states created in the wake of World War I has not helped, but it's not been the only or the main impediment in most cases so many decades later, and it's certainly not something anyone can reasonably blame on President Bush, President Obama or the United States in general. Suffice it to say, messes like the ones we see today in the Middle East have lots of causes, some remote, some more proximate. They are hard to disentangle, and even harder to communicate to people who, frankly, don't care to know if it gets in the way of their blame game, which some pursue because it's politically useful and others pursue because they really just don't know any better. Look, you can lead a political partisan to knowledge but you can't make him think. Part 2: Syria Policy, Up Close and Ugly Published on January 21, 2014 Obama's Middle East Recessional Part 2: Syria Policy, Up Close and Ugly In the run-up to Geneva II, all of the Administration's policy failings are coalescing into a truly weird and tragic spectacle. Part of a longer essay. Read Part 1 here . Let's turn now to a few of the discrete decision points enumerated above , and try to make our way through the policy thickets. Despite the interconnectedness of much of the portfolio, we're going to take the topics one by one, and do our knitting as the need arises. First Syria . The best way to begin an understanding of U.S. policy toward Syria is to start with Libya. In March 2011, before the upheaval in Syria really amounted to anything, the President decided to throw in with Britain and France and start a war in Libya. Administration counsels were divided as the mayhem in Libya increased. Defense Secretary Bob Gates and all the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff opposed intervention. So did Vice President Biden and then-National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, who was "Biden's guy." So did lots of others outside the Administration, including the president of the Council on Foreign Relations and, for what little it's worth, me . The President seemed ambivalent, and so he laid down a series of strenuous conditions before he would countenance intervention-included Arab League support and a UNSC Article 7 resolution. But the President heeded the war party when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was won over to it, and, perhaps to his chagrin, all of his conditions were improbably met. While we'll have to await candid memoirs to know for sure, my guess is that the President soon regretted his decision in light of the many dour and unintended consequences of the Libya intervention. Thanks to the allies' failure, yet again, to plan for the post-combat phase of the war, some of these dour consequences have affected Libya (and led to the September 2012 Benghazi raid) while others have spread all the way to Mali, northern Nigeria and, arguably, Algeria. So when his aides divided again over Syria a few months later, this time President Obama was determined to stay out. How much partisan political considerations came into play as the 2012 election approached is hard to say, but I think they probably mattered a lot (and I said so at the time). In any event, even without election politics affecting his judgment, U.S. passivity with respect to Syria was over-determined. No doubt a good deal of analysis and spleen was laid before the President early on over Syria. My own view is that the ricochet of excessive caution from Libya was unfortunate. An early exercise of American leadership, in conjunction with Turkey and with NATO backing, could have staunched the violence before it metastasized, radicalized into sectarian camps and spread to other countries. U.S. boots on the ground and even early no-fly zones were not necessary to achieve this, and were not even desirable. There are means to exerting influence short of putting lots of U.S. troops in harm's way: that's why we have allies, intelligence operations, special forces and an array of dirty cyber-tricks. But the Administration discouraged the Turks, and the policy of passivity it adopted has turned out to be the most expensive policy of all. In all fairness, Syria was always a hard problemIn all fairness, Syria was always a hard problem. Unlike Libya, which is an island from a military point of view and a small country in population terms, Syria is larger, harder to get at militarily and was known to have chemical and perhaps biological weapons stocks. Stand-off weapons like cruise missiles are not very good at cratering airfields or working in close coordination with rebel ground forces, and JCS Chairman Martin Dempsey spoke volubly about the need for 700 sorties to take down Syria's air defense system before U.S. planes could operate overhead. That's a big number, and was made to sound like it. Unlike Libya, however, some serious stakes attended the Syrian case, most of them linked to Iran. That's what made it hard: the combination of real national interest stakes with no simple military options. By the time the Administration got around to serious consideration of arming the rebels (it started by helping to coordinate third-party deals, like one from Croatia, and by getting the CIA to move some weapons stocks from Libya to the Syrian rebels), radical Sunni jihadis started showing up in large numbers, coalescing into Jabat al-Nusra. That made what was hard to start with even harder. It was not foolish to be concerned about U.S. weapons ending up in the wrong hands, and so non-lethal assistance became the preferred currency of aid. But concern need not be paralyzing, unless one wants to be paralyzed and have some reason to justify it. Even the non-lethal aid was slow and small in coming, leading some observers to suspect that the Administration now wanted the Assad regime to survive (never mind that wayward "Assad must go" comment when it looked like it would happen anyway) as a counterbalance to Sunni jihadis. It has led some to claim further that passivity in Syria was a bargaining ploy meant for Iranian delectation. Maybe so. Now that we know the extent and the dates of secret contacts with Iran, run in part through Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman from his station at the UN in New York, it's plausible to imagine American body language, if not also literal language, saying to the Iranians, in effect: Look, do what you want in Syria; we Americans are not determined to interfere with your interests in your own neighborhood. We don't even have ambitions of regime change, and here the Administration's early "engagement" policy, one that led to a standoffish U.S. attitude toward the surge of Green opposition in 2009, could have been put forward as evidence of non-aggressive intentions. We will return to the Iran portfolio below, but it is important to understand that the Obama Administration, from the start, saw Syria as a lesser-included problem set within a policy focused on Iran. In this it was consistent with previous Administrations' policies. The United States has never really had a policy as such toward Syria. Syria has always been an adjunct to more important policies-Arab-Israeli, Iraq, Turkey, Lebanon, and so on. In the past, this tendency had some very unfortunate consequences, even allowing the Syrian regime to kill Americans and otherwise attack U.S. interests-as in Iraq, for example-and really pay no price for it. This time around, it made at least a little more sense. Of course, it can be argued that a more forceful U.S. policy toward the Assad regime would have gained more with respect to Iran, but that is not the approach the Obama Administration took. With Iraqi WMD programs no longer something the Iranians feared, a rather ironic turn of events given the President's attitude toward the Iraq War, I suspect that the Administration view was that if we no longer appear to be a mortal threat to the Iranian regime, we will change the calculations in Tehran as to the costs and benefits of acquiring nuclear weapons. With sanctions we will raise their costs, and with diplomacy we will reduce the benefits of so risky a course-and then maybe we can bank that new Iranian calculation in a formal agreement. But let's stick with Syria for now. As U.S. passivity amid the Syrian civil war became protracted, the tide of battle turned in favor of the regime. Clearly, one of the reasons for initial U.S. passivity was the sense, confirmed by intelligence assessments, that the rebels would win with or without U.S. help. High-profile Sunni defections from the regime, like that of Manaf Tlas and others, were seen as evidence of this verdict. But as has long, long been the case in Syria, the Sunnis could not agree among themselves, and could not effectively cooperate to move their successful early effort to the regime-kill phase. Meanwhile, the Russians poured in arms and advisers, including advisers experienced fighting in Chechnya, and the Iranians via Hizballah and the Al-Quds brigades began to provide crucial help to Assad. The tide turned, and still the Obama Administration did nothing-except now the policy focus moved to Syrian chemical arms, and the White House drew the first of two "red lines" against chemical use. My guess is that the President thought the first chemical weapons red line was a freebie-a way to look strong and engaged without actually risking anything. At that point no chemical weapons had been used in combat and there was no military reason to think they would be used. This was a fundamental misreading of the Alawi regime and its principals. The Administration should have paid more attention to how much skill the Syrians applied to humiliating Kofi Annan, and how much delight they took in doing it. Indeed, the Syrian regime might never have used chemicals had President Obama not warned them against it-in truth they did not really need to do so for strictly military reasons. Sensing Obama's timidity about military engagement, the Syrian regime did what it does bestSensing Obama's timidity about military engagement, the Syrian regime did what it does best: bullying, taunting, sparring psychologically with a less committed party. And by using chemicals without paying any price, they signaled to the rebels the highly credible taunt that the Americans will, in the end, leave you hung out to dry. Then came the second chemical weapons red line, and we all remember what happened next. The Syrians, having shown only a very little chemical ankle before, testing what the American response would be (there was none), now used chemicals in a big way and for all to see. Some credulous Americans (James Fallows prominent among them) were sure the opposition did this stealthily in order to tar the regime, but this only exposed their ignorance and bad judgment. The Russians leaned into that lie, too, but that was to be expected of them as Assad's lawyer. Amid all this noxious virtual gas, the Administration strained to ignore evidence of repeated chemical use, lest it be forced to act. This was too embarrassing to persist for long, as evidence mounted from far and wide, coming even from French and British intelligence sources. Then the Administration suddenly got its back up and prepared to act, going so far as to send six cruise-missile armed ships into the Mediterranean. But then, just as suddenly, following the withdrawal of British support thanks to an unanticipated defeat in Parliament, Obama decided to be no less democratic than Britain and go to Congress for approval. It's still unclear whether Obama thought he would get approval, or if he knew he would not and then be able to blame Congress for his not doing something he never really wanted to do in the first place. Whatever the case, the episode evoked Administration comments about an attack with stand-off weapons being "incredibly small"-Secretary Kerry's absurd and hurtful remark designed to appease Congressional skeptics worried about a slippery slope, and a remark the President felt obliged to contradict in public ("The U.S. military doesn't do pinpricks"). But the deed was done; the Secretarial tongue had flapped, robbing a prospective attack of most of its impact before anyone had so much as caressed a trigger. In the end, as we know, the President did a bait-and-switch on himself, wrong-footing most of his own aides in the process, forgoing the use of force for a charade of a chemical weapons deal under Russian aegis. There is nothing wrong with eliminating Syria's chemical weapons in the face of a possibly crumbling Syrian state, but the deal does not eliminate all of Syria's chemical weapons. It may end up eliminating only those the regime itself declared-and we have no reliable means of verifying the existence of what was not declared. Very likely, the most up-to-date and lethal munitions were not declared, leaving the so-called international community-mainly the United States, as it predictably turned out-to play the role of hazmat garbage collector , and to foot the bill to boot. Now, the process of watching the President go from red line to red line to congressional ploy to Russian diplomatic life-preserver (an idea that was not as impromptu as the Administration made it seem at the time) was painful in the extreme. The new NSC Advisor, Susan Rice, was shown to be essentially incompetent as she presided over, or tried to chase, the most embarrassing excuse for a foreign policy decision process I have ever seen. And what was the result? First, as many pointed out, the chemical weapons deal legitimated Assad and turned him into a partner for implementing the agreement-in direct contradiction to the "Assad must go" policy. The same contradiction also emerged in the delay in getting any of the chemicals out of the country. Why the delay? Well, Syria is a war zone, and the ground-transportation needed to be made safe before the chemicals could be brought to a port. Who made ground-transportation problematic? Our putative allies, the Free Syrian Army and its associates. So we were put in a position of complaining that our allies were causing a delay in implementing a deal we had made with their and our enemy. In other words, the side we wanted to win overall we now wanted to lose temporarily and locally so that a mostly decorative arms control agreement divorced entirely from the rest of the civil war could go forward. If that's not proof of incoherent fecklessness in a policy, I don't know what is. However this looked here in the United States, the FSA interpreted it as a betrayal, and so did the Saudis. The Syrian regime accelerated its military actions in the wake of the chemical weapons deal; now that Assad was certain the United States would not use force, he went for broke in trying to smash the opposition. He focused on the connective tissue linking the Damascus area to Latakia province (where the battle for Al-Qusayr was critical-just look at a map), and further north on retaking Aleppo. He has since done well in both areas. Why the hurry? Well, one reason is the Geneva II conference, slated back in May to begin tomorrow. In June 2012 nine nations met in Geneva, some of the nine to try to work out a transition away from the Assad regime. Ah, but two of the nine wanted just the reverse: no agreement on any such thing. The Action Group meeting, as it was called, represented the last-ditch, tail-end part of the Kofi Annan UN-sponsored effort to stop the war. Like all the rest of the Annan effort, it failed, as everyone with eyes to see knew it would. Russia and China blocked any language that called for Assad's ouster. The lowest-common-denominator agreed statement referred feebly to the need to create a transitional regime. It did not explicitly state that Assad could not be a part of that transitional regime. Indeed, it states that the transitional regime "could include members of the present government and the opposition and other groups and shall be formed on the basis of mutual consent." The rest of the communiqu'e was pie-in-the-sky nonsense for the most part about ceasefires that never were or could have been, about democracy in a place that had never in four thousand years known it, and so on. It was not without its unintentionally humorous aspects, however. As innocents by the thousands were being butchered by their own government in Syria, the UN drafters took time to include a demand that women be represented in all phases of the transition. That's nice. In the run-up to Geneva II these past few days the wheels have progressively threatened to come completely off the bus. Both the fecklessness and the incoherence of the policy have been revealed anew for all to seeBoth the fecklessness and the incoherence of the policy have been revealed anew for all to see. Against the background of vicious internecine violence among rebel groups, and that the regime has taken advantage of in the Aleppo area especially, the U.S. government has been trying to get the FSA coalition to attend the Geneva II meeting. But there are 144 groups in the coalition, and the recent fighting against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has riven the coalition even further. Most opposition groups do not want to go if the terms of the conference do not stipulate that Assad must go, and that is why Kerry in recent days has reiterated that this is the U.S. understanding of the terms of the conference. But if any opposition groups go even as many do not, the net effect will be to further divide and hence weaken the military coalition on the ground in Syria. How the State Department can read the June 30, 2012 communiqu'e this way I cannot understand. It is not the plain meaning of the text, and it is certainly not how the Syrian regime or the Russians read it. Kerry has lately accused the Syrians of "revisionism" in interpreting the June 30, 2012 document, but the accusation just as easily fits headed in the other direction. That is how UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon could at the last minute invite the Iranians, an invitation the U.S. government both opposed and sort of favored. After all, Kerry has been in recent weeks most solicitous of the Iranians being in the conference mix, but not as attendees since they supposedly did not endorse the U.S. understanding of the conditions for the conference. But the Iranians can endorse them as laid down on June 30, 2012 without prejudice in any way to Assad's future. Moon saw that-he can read, after all. Hence the invitation. This infuriated Kerry. No U.S. Secretary of State enjoys having his knees cut out from under him by the likes of any UN type, especially done without warning at a particularly sensitive moment. So the State Department demanded that Moon rescind his invitation to Iran, even though it was inviting U.S. body language toward Iran in the first place that probably convinced Moon to issue the invitation. Moon complied, quickly but grudgingly. Now some representation from the FSA might show up, and the rescinding saves the U.S. government from having to withdraw from its own sponsored conference, an event into which we have diligently stuffed so much futile, fake and frothy hope in recent weeks. But maybe that would have been best. Given the state of the battlefield and the unwillingness of the United States to do anything even remotely effectual about it, this conference cannot possibly achieve what the Administration hopes for it. The antagonists insist on a zero-sum attitude, and the conference sponsors do not agree on first principles as regards to purpose. That was clear already many weeks ago. U.S. failure will thus be seen throughout the region as a confirmation of U.S. impotence, and as a victory for Assad, the Iranians, the Russians and utterly ruthless brutality against civilian populations. Why we should ever have been willing to be an accomplice to that I swear I cannot understand. The plaint that this round of Geneva diplomacy doesn't stand a great chance of success, "but it's the only thing we have left to try"-and words to that effect have actually been uttered in public by U.S. officials-just shows once again that, yes, diplomacy can indeed be harmful if leaders fail to grasp that force and diplomacy are complements, not opposites. Bleatings that this is only the beginning of a long process, or that the conference will encourage defections from the regime, or that an alternative vision to war is itself useful amount to so much mental rubbish. You cannot stop a full-fledged civil war with strongly worded Hallmark cards and silly pablum about "getting to yes." All this conference has done, is doing and will do is end up getting more people killed as all sides jockey for battlefield advantage. Want another example of how harmless one-eyed diplomacy can be? In the run-up to Geneva II the United States has formally joined with Russia in trying to persuade both sides to declare pre-conference ceasefires as a means to ultimately end the war. But we have indisputable evidence from the ground that what the Syrian regime is offering are not local ceasefires, but terms of surrender. The regime is offering dribs and drabs of food and medicine to besieged civilians in return for allowing the Syria flag to fly over this or that neighborhood, but as soon as regime operatives get inside they are demanding information about rebel fighters' whereabouts, they are arresting some people, and they are simply shooting others who try to walk away. This is a Chechnya-style "ceasefire." Can John Kerry possibly not know this? If he does know it, how can he encourage it? Is he so cynical that knowingly betraying U.S. allies is a price he's eager to pay to end the war? However exactly it turns out, the spectacle of Geneva II is already a disgrace to the great tradition of U.S. statecraft. Would that its dark shadow remain confined to the Middle East, but one has to wonder what, say, Japanese decision-makers are thinking privately these days. As to Kerry, all he is saying, apparently, is give appeasement a chance. Part 3: Gambling With Iran as Iraq Disintegrates Published on January 21, 2014 Obama's Middle East Recessional Part 3: Gambling With Iran as Iraq Disintegrates Some intemperate statements to a journalist may reveal just how the Obama administration is approaching the thorny problems of Iran and Iraq. This is the third part of a longer essay, with part 1 here and part 2 here . Which brings us back to Iran . Since I last wrote on the Iran nuclear deal, on December 30 , the technical teams have reached agreement and the deal was supposed to begin implementation yesterday, January 20. This is good, tentatively, despite the fact that the agreement itself is flawed. The deal's short term (just six months) and the fact that the West gave in on the principle of uranium enrichment, seen together, makes an eventual Iranian bomb more likely, not less. As I have explained before, only the prospect of a change in the U.S.-Iranian relationship outside the four corners of any document may make those risks worth running. How likely is that? Not zero, but not very high. If, as explained in the previous post , the Iranians no longer fear U.S. efforts at regime change, and if they believe that this U.S. Administration, at least, is not obsessed by the bogeyman of Iranian regional hegemony, then maybe they will reason that they don't need a full-fledged nuclear weapons capability to deter us. Problem solved, at least for the next three years: There will be no Iranian nuclear breakout as long as this diplomatic engagement persists. If the United States needs to pay over and over again for it to persist, as seems quite possible, it's still a small price to pay-so the thinking may go-to avoid a war. And make no mistake: The Administration is still on record, as the result of a bruising and protracted but presumably ironclad ultimate Presidential decision, that the goal of the policy is and fully remains prevention, not deterrence. (Then again, we have Bob Gates's remark that "the word of this White House means nothing." You work out the sum.) Now, this sort of pay and pay and pay again as you go approach reminds me of a wonderful line from William Saroyan's My Name is Aram : "If you give to a thief then he can no longer steal from you, and he is therefore no longer a thief." I do not mean to imply that Obama Administration policy toward Iran is pure appeasement. That's one construction of its motive, but there is another way of looking at this. It requires, however, a creative mixing of levels of analysis. Maybe, as some have argued, the Obama Administration has a grand theory, an ambitious strategy, that sees an entente with Iran as the best way to protect the region and the world from the protracted threat of Sunni jihadi radicalism. Maybe the Administration wants generally to lean Shi'a as a means of counterbalancing the proliferation of al-Qaeda franchises in and beyond the region, and thinks the short-term price of doing so is worth it. The price would include a severe deterioration of relations with Saudi Arabia, which we've already seen but, supporters might say, so what? Where else can the Saudis go for protection? The price also includes a strain of ties with Israel, which we would have to ask to trust us to ultimately have its back if things go wrong. This makes the Israelis nervous, but as power politics go it's not an outlandish proposition-and of course the Israelis have to worry about Sunni jihadis as well as Iranian-inspired Shi'a enemies. The complement to this argument is that fears of Iranian hegemony are vastly overblown. Iran is not ten cubits tall. Its annual military budget falls short even of U.S. supplementals in recent war years. U.S. technical military superiority over Iran is so huge as to be nearly incalculable. Far more important, just what does Iranian regional hegemony actually mean? What are its likely and natural limits? A power that is Persian and Shi'i evokes natural antibodies in a region that is Arab and mostly SunniA power that is Persian and Shi'i evokes natural antibodies in a region that is Arab and mostly Sunni. Iranian influence could make a big difference in Bahrain, where a Sunni minority regime rules and oppresses a Shi'a majority, and it could make a difference, perhaps, in al-Hasa province in Saudi Arabia, which is where most of the country's Shi'a and oil are both located. We already know about Iraq-Iran can have a fair bit of influence in Baghdad as long as Shi'a are in power, but that doesn't mean it can dictate and control everything that happens there. Iran can mess around inconclusively in Lebanon, but Lebanese politics are structurally inconclusive-so there's not much lasting benefit in doing that. The Iranians can supply weapons to the Shi'a Houthis in Yemen, as they are in fact newly doing; but what vital interest does the United States have in Yemen short of preventing it from becoming an al-Qaeda breeding ground? And of course the Iranians can ally with Alawis in Syria, not that Twelver Shi'a and Alawis have anything in common except antipathy to Sunnis. In other words, the idea that somehow the Iranians could recreate thoroughgoing imperial territorial control on the order of the Achaemenid, Sassanid or Safavid empires in today's Middle East, even with the Arabs as dysfunctional as they are, is a fantasy. They can make trouble for selected locals, but without a robust nuclear order of battle, Iran cannot successfully attack or conquer Palestine or any other Levantine or Gulf real estate. In a century or two more than 280 million native Arabic speakers will still be native Arabic speakers, not Farsi speakers. So if U.S. policy can keep Iran below a robust nuclear order of battle, what real danger is there in letting Tehran enmesh itself in enervating conflicts unending with assorted Arabs and Sunnis? And if the Russians want to help them, it's their privilege to stomp around futilely in the sandbox as well. They'll probably live (and die) to regret it. Let's not wax too glib. There are clearly risks when the United States, which has supplied common security goods to the region for several decades, suddenly decides that it's "overinvested" in a region, to use Ben Rhodes's intemperately leaked language , that is increasingly harder to manage. Some associates begin to contemplate posterior-protecting deals, while others look to new forms of self-help. Saudi Arabia getting a nuclear bomb from Pakistan is not something we want to see happen. More problematic still, sectarian war tends to breed radicals and sideline (or extirpate) moderates, and that's not in our long-term security interests either. Tacitly siding with Assad and his Iranian sponsors, or just being seen to do so, can only feed Sunni radicalism in and beyond the region. So it's one thing to imagine that natural balances will bracket dangers in the Middle East if only we get out of the way and let them form, and quite another to survive the transition from one kind of security regime to another. I suspect that Administration principals understand all this reasonably well. I am skeptical that Obama and Kerry " surely dream of a 'Nixon to China' masterstroke " regarding Iran, and that they "undoubtedly see Iran and its Shiite allies as potential partners in the fight against Sunni jihadism." Those who sat in at the highest levels of first-term deliberations on such matters describe the President as very leery of ambitious ploys and very skeptical of Iranian motives. Words like "surely" and "undoubtedly" really do not belong in a discussion like this. When, more recently , Obama gave the nuclear deal no more than a 50-50 chance of working out in the end, he was speaking in similarly skeptical, reserved tones. So I don't think the President has any explicit strategic theory of the case on the Middle East. I don't hear any Kissingerian gears turning. His orientation to the region is more like that of George H.W. Bush: He has intuitions, instincts. And those instincts tell him that getting what we want in this part of the world is very hard, and getting harder as the one-stop-shopping opportunities we used to "enjoy" with stable authoritarian Arab allies are not what they used to be. I think Rhodes was for all practical purposes channeling POTUS when he wrote Jeffrey Goldberg as follows : The United States makes decisions about our foreign policy based on our interests. It's not in America's interests to have troops in the middle of every conflict in the Middle East, or to be permanently involved in open-ended wars in the Middle East. It is in our interests to spend significant diplomatic effort-and resources-seeking to resolve conflict and build the capacity of our partners, which is exactly what we are doing. This notion that there was a previous age when we dictated the internal affairs of countries in the Middle East is not borne out by reality. When we had well over a hundred thousand troops in Iraq, we weren't able to shape the political reality of that country, or to end sectarian hatred. Moreover, the notion that we are disengaged doesn't make sense when the United States is engaged across the region in ways that no other nation is-to reach an agreement over Iran's nuclear program, advance Israeli-Palestinian peace, destroy Syrian chemical weapons stockpiles, counter al-Qaeda and its affiliates, secure Israel and our Gulf partners, and support transitions to democracy from Yemen to Libya. Now, Rhodes was writing to a journalist, so there is spin here-especially toward the end. Our "engagement" is mostly for show, for the purpose of managing impressions, because, in the absence of a willingness to put and keep real skin in the game, that's all it can be. The Syria diplomacy is deeply problematic, the Arab-Israeli diplomacy will not bring peace, the Iran deal may or may not have a happy ending, there are not going to be democratic transitions in Libya or Yemen, and so on. So this is one of those many statements that is true as spoken but false as intended. It's intended to make passivity look like something other than it is, and to make it seem both wise and prudent at the same time. The truth is that we have a classic Goldilocks problem. We don't want to do too little, because that runs risks, and we don't want to do too much, because that runs risks, too. Finding the level and specific focus that's "just right" is hard, and even honest and well-informed people can disagree about it. Personally, I think the President underestimates the cumulative costs and risks of doing too little, which need not be limited to the Middle East. But I don't think it moves the ball to ascribe very ambitious and controversial goals to those who do not have them. Way too many presidential "doctrines" have been created by outside observers trying to impose more coherence on an Administration's views than really exists. Let's please not invent an Obama Doctrine out of mostly thin air. And of course, even if the Administration were pursuing some grand new regional balance with the mullahs as the Persian mean, the President has to know that there's no guarantee that some new regional order will be so appealing as to obviate a need for policy. The collapse of Syria and Iraq as states poses gray-zone problems for counter-terrorism; the same could be said, prospectively, about Libya and some other countries. Our being less intrusive in the region would not necessarily make us less popular targets. Indeed, our being seen to be in bed with Iran could make us more popular targets. Local balances will not solve all our present problems, and may even create some new ones. Which conveniently brings us to Iraq . Since I wrote on December 30 all hell has broken loose (again) in Iraq. Al-Qaeda, in the form of ISIS, is back, and it's still in control of Ramadi and Falluja. Efforts directed from Baghdad to get tribal leaders to persuade ISIS to leave the cities have not succeeded, and they may even have resulted in a new Sunni pact directed against Maliki in Baghdad. As of this writing, too, al-Qaeda has forced Baghdad into lockdown mode: The demons are getting closer. And everyone in Iraq still privately believes that one Sunni desert tribesman is worth a hundred cowardly Shi'a villagers in a fight. That's the lore, that's the perception and hence to some extent that's the reality. Could a Sunni vanguard force, whether Islamist or not, just ride roughshod over a much larger on-paper but disintegrating Shi'a army all the way to Baghdad?Could a Sunni vanguard force, whether Islamist or not, just ride roughshod over a much larger on-paper but disintegrating Shi'a army all the way to Baghdad? Damn right it could. Anyone who doubts that, after all these years, still doesn't know the first thing about Iraq. So, then, should the Obama Administration accede to Prime Minister Maliki's request for U.S. weapons and training? It's tempting. Having failed to get a SOFA agreement, we might now be able to guarantee that Iraq's order of battle remains American for many years, and we might be able to salvage something of the working relationship we envisaged having with Iraq some years ago. If we help him, we might be able to get him to shut down the air corridor from Iran to Syria (or do we really want that corridor shut down?). Most Americans who were invested in the war policy want to do this, and they say they can get some of the right stuff delivered fast. I understand the motive, and to some extent I credit it. Maliki needs us, so maybe we can help him in a way that persuades him to govern more inclusively. So far he's been a blundering sectarian ass. We have an interest in Iraq not disintegrating utterly, and a more fully national rather than sectarian-minded government in Baghdad is instrumental to that. But what if, no matter how many weapons we send or how many Iraqi officers we promise to train, the Sunnis cannot be kept at bay? What will the President decide, and when will he decide it? If he agrees that we are overinvested in the region, and if he doubts the capacity of outsiders to engage purposely in a place like Iraq, he might be tempted to ignore Maliki. If Iraq falls completely apart he can do what he does best: blame it all on George W. Bush. (What he should do if that happens is coordinate with Turkey to recognize the Kurdish Regional Government as an independent state, but he wouldn't.) On the other hand, the collapse of the Iraqi state is bad for us in its own right, and either collapse or a radical Sunni victory there will make things even worse in Syria, too. It's a tough decision, and no overarching theory of the case can make it much easier. In the end, my guess is that politics will prevail, as it usually does in this Administration. When the President anticipates the optic of U.S. weapons and U.S. soldiers returning to Iraq-even if just as trainers-he's got to cringe. I think he'll balk. I wonder if Secretaries Hagel and Kerry have a view about this, and I wonder if it's the same view. Oh to be a fly on the wall at a principals' committee meeting over this one. Part 4: Obama's Mental Map Published on January 21, 2014 Obama's Middle East Recessional Part 4: The President's Mental Map The conclusion to a four-part essay looking Obama's foreign policy in the Middle East. Read Part 1 , Part 2 , and Part 3 . Now, finally, if I'm right to argue that President Obama has instincts and intuitions, but no ambitious grand strategy for the Middle East, does he have anything more definite in mind that places the Middle East into a more expansive global framework? I promised you I'd answer this question, and so I will. The answer is the same: The President is not a man, I think, who trusts formal strategy exercises, but he's not a completely distracted case-by-case guy either. He probably believes that, indeed, the United States is overinvested in the Middle East and underinvested in Asia. Hence the pivot, and never mind the botching of the idea's presentation as an either/or proposition. For all I know he once asked himself what's the worst case in the Middle East? What if everything goes wrong? How would that really affect vital American interests? Not traditional commitments, not reputational capital, not obligations that flow from habit instead of fresh thought-but genuine vital interests? And for all I know, his answer was that, short of a WMD proliferation chain-reaction, not much. Again, I'm skeptical that Obama consciously deploys any explicit or formal strategic logic here, or accepts any academic theories of benign realism or natural balancing. But I think he senses that the world is a messier place generally after the relative stasis of the Cold War, and that the degree of control one can get over any major issue area through traditional state-to-state relations has declined as popular and populist mobilizations, aided by new cyber-technologies, have grown on both sub-state and trans-state levels. Certainly the Middle East is a lot messier, even if much of the rest of the world isn't (yet). In my estimation, this intuition has made President Obama generally more risk averse, and risk averse in an area where he is in any case short on experience and, privately, confidence. When his advisers are divided, he has been noticeably uneasy. Like a judge, he has tried to find the common ground among them, which is fine for community activist work but not necessarily for making foreign policy. When his advisers engage in groupthink, as they have done more and more with Gates and Donilon gone, or when no one strenuously objects to something (like Kerry's whimsical pursuit of Israeli-Palestinian peace), he's content to engage in image management-the twitterization of U.S. foreign policy, so to speak-because he knows he can't just ignore all these things. The President's sensitivity to limits also tends to make policy reactive and its real goals modest. So in the mess that is the Middle East today he wants Iraq to be governed more inclusively. He wants Syria and Libya to be governed, period. He wants Egypt to be stable, and he's not too picky about how. He wants Iran not to have nuclear weapons, and he's willing to bend a lot to prevent it via diplomacy because he probably thinks that Iranian leaders cannot exert their will beyond their borders with any more consistent success these days than we can. The one subject on which he seem to have a definite view and is willing to act preemptively has to do with preventing terrorist attacks that kill American civilians, especially on U.S. soil. That explains his affection for drone attacks, his toleration for GITMO, his refusal to emasculate NSA collection programs except at a small margin, and his unstinting support for quietly creating small but powerful special-forces bases far and wide. Taken together, this is neither appeasement nor isolationism. It's obviously not strategic maximalism either. It's something in between, and in that in-between space, suspended between expectations inherited from the past and hesitations generated by a fuzzy future, things sometimes get weird or uncomfortable in the face of an unprecedented avalanche of decision points. Weird like Geneva II.



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Snow Beast

There is a snow beast on the loose.



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Just A Normal Winter Day In Russia 2014

Russia a country where everything is possible...winter edition 2014 compilation watch: Russian Girls Compilation Sexy Dance Funny Crazy Fail 2013 2014 http://ift.tt/1kcHddR Just A Normal Summer Day In Russia 2013 http://ift.tt/1kcHbTj Just A Normal Summer Day In Russia 2013 Vol 2. http://ift.tt/1kcHbTl Go Home You Are Drunk Summer Compilation 2013 http://ift.tt/1npJmFJ THX for watching :)



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Bear 50 cent

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explosions

explosions



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this video is quite a legend in Turkish websites. footage is from 2006. Turkish Police Special Operations Team made an operation to the local drug dealers in the gypsy neighbourhood and had a little(!) trouble opening the door of the house. family members keeping the police busy by talking to them through the windows and meanwhile other family members destroying all the weed and cocain inside the house. @03:46 legendary.



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By: jironde on: 8:54 PM

Three Amusing Laws of Communication

Pi on "Wiio's Laws of Communication." (Length: 7:47) Wiio's law states that "Communication usually fails, except by accident". The full set of laws is as follows: 1. Communication usually fails, except by accident. a) If communication can fail, it will. b) If communication cannot fail, it still most usually fails. c) If communication seems to succeed in the intended way, there's a misunderstanding. d) If you are content with your message, communication certainly fails. 2. If a message can be interpreted in several ways, it will be interpreted in a manner that maximizes the damage. 3. There is always someone who knows better than you what you meant with your message. 4. The more we communicate, the worse communication succeeds. a) The more we communicate, the faster misunderstandings propagate. 5. In mass communication, the important thing is not how things are but how they seem to be. 6. The importance of a news item is inversely proportional to the square of the distance. 7. The more important the situation is, the more probably you forget an essential thing that you remembered a moment ago.



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Three Amusing Laws of Communication

By: jironde on: 6:07 PM

Train check Fail

how to properly check for a train, look left look right, and bamm



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Train check Fail

By: jironde on: 5:52 PM

Deadlocked Syrian Peace Talks, ... Article by Stephen Lendman

Deadlocked Syrian Peace Talks By Stephen Lendman Global Research, January 29, 2014 So-called Syrian National Coalition (SNC) officials are US stooges. They have no legitimacy whatever. They're self-serving. They represent Western interests. They're mindless of fundamental Syrian rights. It showed in Geneva II talks. It didn't take long. On Saturday they began face-to-face. On Monday they deadlocked. America bears full responsibility. SNC stooge delegates take orders from Washington. They act accordingly. On January 28, the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) headlined "Coalition delegation of so-called 'opposition' rejects statement by Syrian official delegation which rejects arming terrorist organizations in Syria." America has been arming extremist hired gun killers throughout three years of conflict. Congress secretly authorized supplying more weapons. It's unclear precisely when. It's believed to be in a classified FY 2014 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) provision. In December, Obama signed it into law. Doing so shows he wants war. He opposes peace. He demands regime change. He wants Syrians unable to decide their own future. He wants sole right to do it. Hegemons operate this way. SANA said SNC delegates aren't serious. They reject "any suggestion for supporting the articles of the Geneva conference." Doing so "thwarts efforts (for) success." They rejected Geneva I's measure to end armed conflict. They oppose peaceful Syrian guidelines and principles. They include a Syrian-led transition. It's for everyone in the country. It "include(s) members of the present government and the opposition." Syrians alone must "determine the future of their country." Outside interference is excluded. Syria's delegation "knows full well that the US armed and still arms terrorists in Syria..." Doing so shows Washington's real intentions. Peaceful conflict resolution is verboten. It's been this way throughout three years of fighting. It's no different now. Syria's official delegation issued the following "Statement from Geneva meeting," saying: "At the time when Geneva 2 was convened in response to the Russian - American initiative, which was based on Geneva 1, which stresses in its first item the need to stop violence and terrorism, the world is surprised to find one of the initiators of this conference, namely, the United States of America, and in a step that moves in the opposite direction to all political efforts exerted, and in contradiction to Geneva 1 in letter and spirit, the United States has made the decision to resume arming terrorist groups in Syria." "Such a provocative decision is a flagrant violation of SC Resolution 1373 (as cited as terrorists on the list of security council for individuals and entities sponsoring terrorism, such as ISIL, Al Nusra and the Islamic Front)." "The timing of this decision is truly surprising as it reflects negatively on the Geneva 2 conference." "This decision can only be understood as a direct attempt to obstruct any political solution in Syria through dialogue, and is in complete contradiction with the commitments of the United States according to Para 1 of the Geneva communique, on the basis of which Geneva 2 was convened, and under the umbrella of which we are all meeting here." "Those participating in the meeting condemn this American step and call upon the United States and other countries who are providing the terrorists with arms to immediately put an end to this irresponsible behavior which may well undermine the Geneva 2 conference and cause the failure of all the efforts exerted to ensure its success." On January 27, SANA headlined "Coalition delegation of so-called 'opposition' rejects a political communique containing principles submitted by official Syrian delegation." It affirms what conforms to fundamental international law. It includes "respecting Syria's sovereignty, restoring its usurped lands, preserving its establishments, and abandoning all forms of extremism, fanaticism and takfiri ideas." It "rejects all forms of interference or foreign dictation." It lets Syrians alone decide their future. It "assert(s) that it's not permissible to relinquish any part of Syria." It "stresses that the Syrian Arab Republic is a democratic country." Its based on "political pluralism, the rule of law, independence of the judiciary and citizenship, and protecting national unity and cultural diversity of the components of the Syrian society and protecting public freedom, and the Syrians are the ones who have have the right to choose their political system without compromising on any subject unacceptable to the Syrian people from any imposed formulae." It asks all countries to stop arming and training terrorists. Media incitement must end. "(S)tate establishments" must be preserved. They include "utilities, infrastructure, and public and private properties." Transitional governance includes its current one. Syrians alone will decide. Not according to SNC's chief negotiator Hadi al Bahra. He called the declaration "outside the framework of Geneva, which centers on creating a transitional governing body (aka regime change)." Geneva I included no demand for Assad to go. Claiming otherwise is false. Discussing it is off the table. It's not part of Geneva II talks. On January 22, John Kerry dismissed what Geneva I affirmed. "Bashar Assad will not be part of (Syria's) transition government," he asserted. Talks aren't about peace. Kerry wants unconditional surrender. He wants Syrian sovereignty destroyed. He wants US subservient governance replacing it. He wants what Syrians won't tolerate. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem responded forthrightly, eloquently and persuasively. He denounced efforts to deny Syrians their legitimate rights. SNC delegates aren't in Geneva for peace. They came to obstruct it. They came with demands no sovereign country would accept. Syria's delegation wants terrorism addressed. Peace depends on ending it. SNC delegates won't discuss it. Assad's political media advisor Bouthina Shaaban asked why SNC delegates rejected legitimate Syrian sovereign demands. "There is nothing to reject," she said. "What are you, Americans?" At the same time, she asked: "How do the Americans want to arm (terrorists and claim) they want a political process?" John Kerry and SNC delegates profess support for Syrians, she added. They do so while "supporting a decision to bring weapons into Syria to kill its people, and they defend the American decision which constitutes blatant interference in the Syrian people's affairs and sheds their blood." Talk about regime change aims primarily at destroying Syrian sovereignty and its people, she stressed. Opposition forces are damaging or demolishing everything Syrians hold dear. Hospitals, schools, mosques, towns, villages, and Syrian culture are targeted. SNC spokesman Monzer Akbik claimed Syria's declaration of principles have nothing to do with Geneva talks. "We respect the international community and its resolutions," he said. "If there is a breakdown in the talks, it will not be us." Washington bears full responsibility for deadlock. SNC delegates obey its diktats. Syria's Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad accused America of trying to wreck talks. "We will not let" that happen, he said. Syria believes "US policy has secret goals." Arming terrorists any time is unacceptable. Doing so during peace talks "is none other than an attempt to undermine the process of political settlement and an encouragement of violence." During an abbreviated Tuesday morning meeting with UN/Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, opposition delegates rejected Syria's position. An afternoon session was cancelled. SNC negotiator Ahmed Jakal said: "There is deep resistance by the regime to move the discussions onto the question of a transitional government (aka regime change)." Fars News said while SNC and Syrian government delegates meet in Geneva, US-backed terrorists showed a video of a decapitated Syrian soldier's head. It makes gruesome viewing. Syrian delegates are right. Ending terrorism is top priority. Peace depends on doing it. Washington's support shows what Syrians face. Weapons flow freely to foreign invader death squads. US and other Western special forces train them. Instruction includes chemical weapons use. So-called moderate opposition elements are inconsequential. Jihadist extremists constitute the main anti-Syrian opposition. State Department spokesman Edgar Vasquez lied saying: "Any notion that we support terrorists is ludicrous." It's key Washington strategy. US direct and proxy wars use them. Claiming otherwise rings hollow. Nothing so far was accomplished. Both sides vowed not to be the first to end talks. They're open-ended. They can last days or weeks. They'll achieve nothing as long as Washington demands regime change. Syrian delegates represent their people. SNC delegates represent Washington. They do so for their own self-interest. Syrian sovereignty isn't for sale. On Tuesday, talks were deadlocked. Resuming them won't cut the Gordian Knot. If deadlock persists going forward, perhaps Obama will invent another pretext for direct US intervention. Last August's Ghouta chemical weapons attack false flag failed. Deception is longstanding US policy. Numerous manufactured incidents reflect it. All wars are based on lies. Obama wants Assad ousted. He'll stop at nothing to remove him. Expect sham peace talks to fail. Expect conflict to continue. Expect direct US intervention if other efforts to remove Assad fail. Expect another false flag pretext to initiate it. Expect lots more slaughter and destruction. Perhaps Syria will be entirely ravaged and destroyed. What happens going forward remains to be seen. The entire region's security is up for grabs. Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net . His new book is titled "Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity." http://ift.tt/TTNY9C Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network. It airs Fridays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening. http://ift.tt/PqLxX4



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Deadlocked Syrian Peace Talks, ... Article by Stephen Lendman

By: jironde on: 5:08 PM

Zionists Fail to De-Nuclearize Pakistan after 13 years in Afghanistan

Delving into the history of Pak-US relations spread over six decades one finds that the US relationship was always transactional in nature. Friendship turned into coldness and at times hostility the moment its objectives were achieved. After betraying Pakistan in the 1965 and 1971 wars against India, it made friends with Pakistan in 1981 to help fight the proxy war against Soviet forces In Afghanistan. No sooner the objective was accomplished in 1989; Pakistan's sacrifices were forgotten, abandoned with indecent haste and put under tough sanctions. After 9/11, the US once again needed Pakistan and offered its hand of friendship. President Bush led team duped Gen Musharraf that it will make Pakistan its strategic partner and resolve all its economic problems if it agreed to become the frontline state in the war on terror. Pakistan was assured that this time the US would forge lasting relationship based on mutual trust and friendship and will not repeat past mistakes. Once Mush fell into the honey-layered trap, the US in conjunction with its actual strategic partners began to weave a web around Pakistan through well-planned covert operations. Parameters of the plan rested on destabilization, denuclearization, de-Islamization and balkanization of Pakistan. With India in the vanguard, Pakistan was to be politically destabilized, economically ruined, socially traumatized and militarily weakened to make it a failed state. Afghanistan was selected by CIA, RAW, MI-6, Mosad, BMD and RAAM as the base to launch covert war. FATA and Balochistan were chosen as initial targets to spread anarchy and later terrorism was to be exported to other parts of Pakistan. Covert operations were to be supplemented by focused propaganda war to defame Pakistan and discredit its prime institutions. To start with Mush was coerced to ditch friendly Taliban regime in Kabul and provide desired assistance to US led forces to occupy Afghanistan. India was then given a green signal to go ahead with its false flag operation in the form of an engineered terrorist attack on Indian Parliament on December 13, 2001 and blame Pakistan with a view to extract Kashmir related concessions. Once required concessions were acquired, it was then India's turn to hoodwink Mush by signing peace treaty and making him change Pakistan's age-old Kashmir policy. In the meanwhile, Mush was browbeaten by Washington to launch military operations in South Waziristan (SW) to flush out foreigners and nab their sympathizers failing which NATO troops would barge in. Once regular troops got engaged in fighting with tribesmen in Waziristan, CIA started structuring TTP and making it into a viable force strong enough to confront the Army and possibly defeat it or as a minimum tie it down. To put added pressure, Balochistan was heated up in 2004 with the help of Marri, Bugti and Mengal Sardars. Baloch insurgency was gradually transformed into separatist movement. In order to assist and guide the TTP and BLA, CIA network was established duly reinforced by Blackwater in 2007/08. All these harmful steps were taken to engulf whole of Pakistan in the flames of terrorism and expedite slumping socio-economic indicators and thus making Pakistan fully dependent upon foreign aid. In this timeframe, the US installed its dream team in Islamabad in March 2008 which enabled the US to tighten the noose around Pakistan's neck speedily. When Obama took over in January 2009, the first thing he did was to bracket Pakistan with Afghanistan making Af-Pak border region into single combat zone. He also appointed Richard Holbrooke as Special Envoy who behaved like a Viceroy. Drone war in FATA was intensified and so was psychological war. On one hand terrorism was deliberately stoked and on the other Pakistan was impertinently asked to do more. Pakistan's huge sacrifices were underplayed and its weaknesses owing to resource constraints overplayed so as to undermine Pak Army and ISI, the custodians of national security and strategic assets. The Indo-US-Israeli nexus knew that without weakening and discrediting these two institutions, their quest to steal nukes would remain unfulfilled. India militarily strengthened by USA and Israel itched to attack Pakistan but remained restrained owing to Pakistan's effective nuclear deterrence. Mumbai attacks were stage-managed on November 26, 2008 under a calculated plan but it misfired because of Pakistan military's aggressive response. Swat and SW were prepared as strategic ambush sites to sink bulk of Pak Army and thus create conducive conditions for Indian military to undertake its much hyped limited war under the framework of Cold Start doctrine. When the Army closely supported by PAF turned the tables upon the plotters, the US then applied full pressure on Pakistan to push Pak Army in the inferno of North Waziristan (NW) on the plea that insecurity in Afghanistan was a sequel to safe havens available to Haqqani network (HN) in NW. with 150,000 troops already deployed in the northwest, additional corps required for another major operation would have been at the cost of getting imbalanced on the eastern front. Having seen the jingoism of India in December 2001 and again in December 2008, it was surprising that the US kept insisting that India posed no threat to Pakistan and that it should shift all its troops from the eastern border towards western border. Other than the Indian factor, an operation in NW would have brought all pro and anti-Pakistan militant groups in FATA together with HN and banned terrorist groups on one platform to fight Pak security forces. When Gen Kayani resisted and expressed his security concerns and ISI initiated series of preventive actions in the wake of Raymond Davis incident in January 2011, the US decided to punish Pak military by undertaking a stealth attack in Abbottabad on May 2, 2011. Primary aim of the incursion was to tarnish the high image of Gen Kayani and Lt Gen Pasha and to force a change of military leadership. When the two survived and ISI continued with its efforts to dismantle CIA network, CIA-RAW sponsored terrorist attack on Mehran naval base was launched on May 22, 2011, destroying three PC-3 Orion aircraft. In addition western front was heated up with the help of absconder Fazlullah and his militants who were provided safe havens in Kunar and Nuristan. Pak-US Strategic dialogue was also suspended. In the wake of Taliban attacks on high profile targets in Kabul on September 13, 2011 and murder of Burhanuddin Rabbani on September 20, the then CJSC Admiral Mullen lost his sense of balance and in his fit of rage he dubbed HN as a 'veritable arm' of ISI. During her visit to Islamabad in October that year, Hillary Clinton warned Pakistan that US forces would step into NW to eliminate safe havens if Pakistan didn't pay heed to US demand. When Pakistan didn't oblige, attack on Salala border post was launched by NATO Apaches on November 26. Failure of US military to tender apology broke the last straw on the camel's back. Pakistan could take it no more and it rightly cut off military relations with Pentagon besides closing Shamsi airbase and NATO supply routes and sending back US-UK military trainers. As a consequence, for next seven months Pak-US relations hit rock bottom. This period however allowed the ISI to send home CIA spies operating under different guises. Pak-US relations have sailed past the roughest patch and have re-entered friendly waters. In September 2001, the US at its pinnacle of glory ordered Pakistan to facilitate its intrusion into Afghanistan. This time the US in dire strait is requesting Pakistan to facilitate its safe departure from Afghanistan. It also wants Pakistan to persuade the Taliban to talk and arrive at a negotiated political settlement. It wants to leave behind stable Afghanistan and friendly government. Under the changed environment there is noticeable change in the behavior of US officials. Rate of drone strikes has come down significantly and targets are chosen with care. The US has promised to fund Bhasha dam and to help in overcoming energy crisis. Indo-US charted Silk Route and TAPI pipeline are being advocated as more profitable options than the Kashgar-Gawadar Silk Route and Iran-Pakistan (IP) gas pipeline. John Kerry during his short visit to Islamabad on August 1 played the same old tunes of long-term friendship. He was all smiles, friendly, accommodative and conciliatory. He dangled the carrot of resumption of strategic dialogue in next six months. He extended an invitation on behalf of Obama to Nawaz Sharif to visit Washington. It will however be premature to conclude that all is now well. Such assuring words and promises had been uttered by Richard Armitage and others way back in 2001 but we know how the US treated Pakistan all these years. India and Afghanistan are still being used by the US to exert external pressure on Pakistan. TTP and BLA are used to mount pressure from within. Ongoing escalation of tension along the LoC together with tantrums of Karzai and Afghan senior officials and spate of terrorist acts in various parts of Pakistan are designed to put pressure on the new government to pick up cudgels against the militants in FATA rather than initiating peace talks. Acceleration of militancy in Balochistan is aimed at giving a message that establishment of nationalist government led by Dr Malik has not lessened the resolve of separatists seeking independence of Balochistan. Other objectives are to sabotage IP gas pipeline and Gawadar projects. Likewise, stepped up terrorist acts including DIK jailbreak in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa are aimed at undermining PTI government advocating peace talks with Taliban. Overall aim is to provoke Pakistan to launch the much delayed operation in NW which has become the safe haven of TTP. Apart from application of pressure tactics to keep Pakistan tamed, the US is bent upon making India a global power, a permanent member of UNSC, a counterweight to China and a dominant player in Afghanistan. To this end, the US has taken practical steps to strengthen India economically and militarily. It would like settlement of Kashmir issue but on Indian terms. It will not benefit Pakistan at the cost of annoying India. In other words, as a policy it would always prefer India over Pakistan and in case of Indo-Pak war it will stand behind India. In the backdrop of foreign policy framework of USA in which Pakistan doesn't figure out, we must be careful in jumping to wishful conclusions. We should tread our steps watchfully and remain vigilant not to again get deceived by sweet talk of US leaders asserting that they want to move to 'full partnership' with Pakistan. Rather, our leadership should be mentally prepared to get ditched once again after completion of ISAF's drawdown in December 2014.



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Zionists Fail to De-Nuclearize Pakistan after 13 years in Afghanistan

By: jironde on: 2:38 PM

The Real State of the Union

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, members of Congress, fellow citizens: This summer we will commemorate the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I. This senseless, destructive war was started and championed by politicians who cared nothing for the 9 million people who lost their lives. And in doing so, they began a century of warfare which continues to this day. Our military industrial complex is larger than ever. We have nearly 2 million troops and national guardsmen, plus 3.5 million civilians employed in the defense sector. With such awesome capabilities, we continue to resort to violence and death to exact political goals which benefit a tiny elite. All of this has created a police state in the Land of the Free that is a far cry from the country we all grew up in. Your government has spawned a culture of fear and intimidation. Nearly every federal agency, including the Fish and Wildlife Service, has its own gun-toting police force to pistol-whip citizens into submission. And we're stocking up. Your government has recently procured 1.6 BILLION rounds of hollow-point ammunition to supplement our existing supplies. But frankly, we don't need guns to harass citizens. Our tax authorities have become more threatening than mafia warlords. The plunder is so severe that record numbers of Americans are renouncing their citizenship and leaving the country. There are now dozens of federal, state, and local agencies and courts which have the power to confiscate your assets without any due process. In addition to your house, your business, and your savings, we also have the authority to take your children away from you as if they are property of the state. We are here to tell you what you can and cannot put in your own body, or whether you can collect rainwater that falls on own property. In fact, on any given business day, the federal government issues hundreds of pages of new 'rules', proposed regulations, draft bills, executive orders, and/or regulatory notices. And if you are not compliant with these rules, you may be committing a crime. Whether you know it or not. When this nation was founded, there were four federal crimes on the books. Today there are THOUSANDS. Plus we have millions of government employees at all levels to enforce the penalties. All of this, of course, is financed by you the tax slave. You (plus unborn generations) are the poor suckers charged with paying off the national debt we politicians have created. Officially the debt is just north of $17 trillion. But if you include Social Security and pension shortfalls, the figure is several times higher. You'll never know for sure because we have become masters of deceit regarding official statistics, whether inflation, unemployment, or our liabilities. But the situation is so dire that the Congressional Budget Office projects the Social Security Administration's disability insurance trust fund to RUN OUT by 2017. We get by year after year by increasing the debt. And at well over 100% of GDP, we have truly reached the point of no return. We are now in a position where we must default. Either we must default on our national debt, or we must default on our obligations to you the citizens. We may end up stealing your savings. Robbing your Social Security. Taxing you to death. Or simply inflating away the value of our debt. Naturally, we're going to screw you in the process somehow... so be prepared for that. Especially the inflationary tidal wave that's coming. Our central bank has expanded its balance sheet at an unprecedented pace, creating massive asset bubbles in its wake. These asset bubbles have disproportionately benefited the ultra-wealthy at the expense of everyone else. Such wanton money printing has also been tremendously destructive to our credibility. Other nations worry about our reckless irresponsibility. That's why we keep spying on them. Make no mistake: the consequences of our actions are here. And the days of the United States as the world's dominant superpower are finished. As the decline hastens, we will struggle to sell our debt to the world and to ship our dollars abroad. Fewer nations will be interested in our empty promises. And without the generosity of other nations loaning us money at record low interest rates that fail to keep pace with inflation, you will really be screwed. When this happens, you can absolutely count on us to clamp down even harder on the economy and control even more of your lives. For your own good, of course. No, this may not be the country that you all grew up in. But it is the state of our union... whatever remains of it. And so my fellow Americans, I urge you to grab your ankles and get ready for a little 'shared sacrifice'. But don't worry about me, or my senior staff. We will leave government with cushy pensions, $750,000 speaking fees, board seats on public companies, and top positions in the industries that we have accommodated at your expense. And of course I will be paid handsomely for the arrogant memoirs I will write in which I deny any responsibility for the shit I've gotten you all into. So when I say "shared sacrifice", I really mean "your sacrifice". Thank you. God bless you, and God bless these United States of America.



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The Real State of the Union

By: jironde on: 1:23 PM

Ultimate fails Compilation

Personally I haven't many of these clips, so i thought i would share. I would like to believe i have viewed quite a few of these, and always see the same clips over and over. There are a few older ones in here that I have seen. I had a few good chuckles.. 18 minutes of pure fucking fails ladies and gentlemen. Mostly world wide videos. i guess thanks? failarmy,whatever or who ever the fuck is. lol you belong to liveleak now bitch. Snowboarder's back to the hand rail, fuck me, looked bad.. Knife to a toaster.. reminds me of my child hood years.



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Ultimate fails Compilation

By: jironde on: 9:53 AM

News presenter microphone fail

He should of kept his eyes open while he was talking,he was a good sport though lol!



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News presenter microphone fail

By: jironde on: 7:48 AM