U.S. Politics

[blandy]

4 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

Trump will help US arms manufacturers make profits,

He's not started off along those lines. He's been twitting about cutting prices for all kinds of kit, from AirForce 1, to JSF.

[OutByEaster?]

In that case, he's as good as dead! :

[blandy]

25 minutes ago, Awol said:

I'm not suggesting for a moment that the US wants its tech transferred, only that the Israelis are duplicitous barstewards who screw the Americans regularly...

I know. I think it was OBE who I perceived as implying they did want it to happen.

Quote

Israel takes the money then gives it to US Arms firms firms. Israel sells some of those arms to countries the US isn't allowed to, the US Arms industry gives a little of that money back to helpful Senators. It's an established and efficient path...

 

[blandy]

8 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

He's the product of an election system and a government system that relies almost entirely on corporate input.

I suppose so, if you mean he's the product of people being hacked of with that system. I think you're spot on.

[OutByEaster?]

7 minutes ago, blandy said:

I suppose so, if you mean he's the product of people being hacked of with that system. I think you're spot on.

I think being hacked off is being used against them. Another banker painting himself as man-of-the-people. 

"I'm not like them. I'm not a politician" they shout, and people vote for them without wondering what it is they really are. The reason people don't trust their politicians tends to be because their politicians don't really represent them, they've been bought off by bankers and oligarchs - somehow those banks and oligarchs have persuaded people to remove the pesky politician line from the equation altogether.

 

 

 

[blandy]

7 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

somehow those banks and oligarchs have persuaded people to remove the pesky politician line from the equation altogether.

I agree with the first bit, but not the bit quoted. I don't think Trump is the result of banks and oligarchs persuading, I think he's a total wild card.

The banks etc. would have wanted someone sort of Hillary Clintony, basically. Trump's wild card erratic nature is not at all good for things, in their world. I'm sure they'll look after themselves regardless, but more despite than because of....

[chrisp65]

I think you see the confusion of the Iran Contra / Oliver North affair 30 or so years ago and it's fairly easy to believe that similar deals are rolling around today.

Hezbollah had hostages, Iran could influence their release, so Israel were to sell them U.S. arms 'indirectly' with any reduction in the Israeli stockpile being directly and 'legitimately' replaced by the U.S. This was also hopefully going to stop Russia selling arms to Iran. Plus, any 'profit' or monies returning to the U.S. could then be diverted to indirectly helping insurgents across south America topple the Sandanista government.

Good ol' white cowboy hat Reaganomics. What could possibly go wrong.

That's a desperately abbreviated and simplified version, but it's one of my fave little political / historical events to delve in to every now and again.

[peterms]

1 hour ago, blandy said:

Except she doesn't confirm it. She says nothing of the sort.

She says, as the video shows, what we know to be the case. That after the Russians invaded Afghanistan, the US funded and supported the Mujahedin resistance and helped people from Saudi and Pakistan, and the Pakistan ISI (intelligence services) and others opposed to the Russian invasion.

That is categorically not the same as "setting up" Al Quaida.

Osama Bin Laden "set up" AQ without US assistance or help.

The US were funding and training the Mujahaddin even before the Russian invasion.  This is a translation of an interview with Brzezinski which discusses it and which also mentions an ex-director of the CIA saying so.

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Question: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs that the American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahiddin in Afghanistan six months before the Soviet intervention. Is this period, you were the national security advisor to President Carter. You therefore played a key role in this affair. Is this correct?

Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahiddin began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan on December 24, 1979. But the reality, closely guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention [emphasis added throughout].

Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into the war and looked for a way to provoke it?

B: It wasn’t quite like that. We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.

Q : When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against secret US involvement in Afghanistan , nobody believed them . However, there was an element of truth in this. You don’t regret any of this today?

B: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, essentially: “We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war." Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war that was unsustainable for the regime , a conflict that bought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

Q: And neither do you regret having supported Islamic fundamentalism, which has given arms and advice to future terrorists?

B : What is more important in world history? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some agitated Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?

Q : “Some agitated Moslems”? But it has been said and repeated: Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today...

B: Nonsense! It is said that the West has a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid: There isn’t a global Islam. Look at Islam in a rational manner, without demagoguery or emotionalism. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers. But what is there in common among fundamentalist Saudi Arabia , moderate Morocco, militarist Pakistan, pro-Western Egypt, or secularist Central Asia? Nothing more than what unites the Christian countries...

The US, with Saudi, and working through Pakistan, played a very big role in recruiting, funding, training, supplying the network of fighters that came to Afghanistan and out of which AQ would later emerge.

I don't imagine they thought their intervention would lead to a group that would turn against the US itself; and perhaps they wouldn't have turned against the US if it weren't for the Gulf War and the US coming into Saudi.  Yes, bin Laden formed the group called AQ; the US is largely responsible for bringing together the larger group from which it was formed.

As the BBC put it over a decade ago,

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During the anti-Soviet jihad Bin Laden and his fighters received American and Saudi funding. Some analysts believe Bin Laden himself had security training from the CIA.

And they're still at it, funding "moderate rebels" who turn out to be something a little different, and not as biddable as imagined.

[blandy]

2 minutes ago, peterms said:

The US, with Saudi, and working through Pakistan, played a very big role in recruiting, funding, training, supplying the network of fighters that came to Afghanistan and out of which AQ would later emerge.

Yes. Absolutely.

That's not "setting up AQ" though is it? or ISIS.

[peterms]

AQ would not have existed without bin Laden.  It could not have existed without the US, which created all the conditions which allowed it to emerge.  I don't think they intended that particular franchise to come about, but they very clearly did intend to create a network of terrorists, and they did so very successfully.  As Brzezinski says, they considered it worth the trouble.  The US created the wider pool of terrorists, and bin Laden created a sub-group within that.

[blandy]

Quote

 

Bin Laden was born to the family of billionaire Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden in Saudi Arabia. He studied at university in the country until 1979, when he joined Mujahideen forces in Pakistan fighting against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. He helped to fund the Mujahideen by funneling arms, money and fighters from the Arab world into Afghanistan, and gained popularity among many Arabs.

After leaving college in 1979, bin Laden went to Pakistan, joined Abdullah Azzam and used money and machinery from his own construction company to help the Mujahideen resistance in the Soviet war in Afghanistan.^[87] He later told a journalist: "I felt outraged that an injustice had been committed against the people of Afghanistan."^[88] Under CIA's Operation Cyclonefrom 1979 to 1989, the United States and Saudi Arabia provided $40 billion worth of financial aid and weapons to almost 100,000 Mujahideen and "Afghan Arabs" from forty Muslim countries through Pakistan's ISI.^[89] Bin Laden met and built relations with Hamid Gul, who was a three-star general in the Pakistani army and head of the ISI agency. Although the United States provided the money and weapons, the training of militant groups was entirely done by the Pakistani Armed Forces and the ISI.

Formation and structuring of al-Qaeda

Main article: Al-Qaeda

By 1988, bin Laden had split from Maktab al-Khidamat. While Azzam acted as support for Afghan fighters, bin Laden wanted a more military role. One of the main points leading to the split and the creation of al-Qaeda was Azzam's insistence that Arab fighters be integrated among the Afghan fighting groups instead of forming a separate fighting force.^[92] Notes of a meeting of bin Laden and others on August 20, 1988 indicate that al-Qaeda was a formal group by that time: "Basically an organized Islamic faction, its goal is to lift the word of God, to make his religion victorious." A list of requirements for membership itemized the following: listening ability, good manners, obedience, and making a pledge (bayat) to follow one's superiors.^[93]

According to Wright, the group's real name was not used in public pronouncements because "its existence was still a closely held secret".^[94] His research suggests that al-Qaeda was formed at an August 11, 1988, meeting between "several senior leaders" of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Abdullah Azzam, and bin Laden, where it was agreed to join bin Laden's money with the expertise of the Islamic Jihad organization and take up the jihadist cause elsewhere after the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan

I know wiki is easy to find, but it does a decent job in detailing OBL and AQ and where the US was an wasn't involved. AQ was  set up by Bin Laden, and in al llikelhood would have happened regardless father US support for Mujahedin etc.

 

[peterms]

1 hour ago, blandy said:

He's not started off along those lines. He's been twitting about cutting prices for all kinds of kit, from AirForce 1, to JSF.

And yet the Lockheed share price is still about 15% higher than at the start of the year.  Higher than it's ever been, apart from two spells earlier this year, in fact.  It seems his tweet isn't being taken as a portent of less profits to be made by arms firms.

[blandy]

3 minutes ago, peterms said:

And yet the Lockheed share price is still about 15% higher than at the start of the year.  Higher than it's ever been, apart from two spells earlier this year, in fact.  It seems his tweet isn't being taken as a portent of less profits to be made by arms firms.

True, most shares are up over the same period the LSE and US markets rocketed as soon as Trumper was elected and have risen since. It's not a defence industry thing.

 The LM shares dropped after his tweet.

[snowychap]

US expels Russian diplomats over cyber attacks

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The US has expelled 35 Russian diplomats as punishment for alleged interference into the presidential election.

It will also close two Russian compounds used for intelligence-gathering, in Maryland and New York, part of a raft of retaliatory measures.

President Barack Obama had vowed action against Russia amid US accusations it hacked the Democratic party and Hillary Clinton's campaign.

Russia has denied any involvement.

 

[maqroll]

11 hours ago, snowychap said:

US expels Russian diplomats over cyber attacks

 

They and their families all have "72 hours" to GTFO...this marks a real low point, at least since I was a kid in the 70's...but have no fear, Trump is coming and we'll all be friends again.

[MakemineVanilla]

Race, culture and immigration:

 

[villakram]

Strategically AQ and all their associated ills/offshoots don't don't matter a jot to the US. The fundamental overarching geo-strategic goal of US foreign policy is (and has been since at least WWII) to prevent any type of hegemon (either a singular entity or a quasi-united via treaty structure type, e.g., SCO+EU) developing that would oppose their supremacy. Islamic extremism makes a mess on the Euroasian landmass. This is a net win for the US.

Yes, this is how the US Zbig et al. types think, and they are in charge of US foreign policy.

[villakram]

15 hours ago, maqroll said:

They and their families all have "72 hours" to GTFO...this marks a real low point, at least since I was a kid in the 70's...but have no fear, Trump is coming and we'll all be friends again.

and Putin takes the "moral" high ground. 

[StefanAVFC]

Siding with Russia over the current president.

THIS IS NOT NORMAL.

[tonyh29]

Patching up relationships with an influential  world leader ... terrible way for a future president to behave