El avispero de oriente

[sincriterio]

Gracias ElTilti por pasar el enlace al blog en el que escribes, es muy interesante leer análisis de la realidad con puntos de vista distintos.

[Маркс]

Pero si sabes que el objetivo que persigo es el mismo .
La cuestion es que no puedes tener en cuenta unos factores cuando te interesan para llegar a él , y  obviarlos cuando no te van bien.
Si tienes bloqueos en el camino a la solución, no puedes sencillamente saltartelos .

Hombre, como poder puedo. Puedo tener un pie dentro y un pie fuera, e intentar llevar la vida acorde a mis principios e inquietudes.

Ya no confío en las instituciones, ni locales, ni nacionales, ni internacionales, ni sistémicas, pero no me puedo independizar de ellas de la noche a la mañana, por que desgraciadamente tengo las mismas necesidades humanas que todos mis congéneres 

Y dado que comparto destino con toda la sociedad, lo más coherente es hacer parresía para tratar de exponer mi punto de vista a la gente que como yo, debido al descontento, ya no cree en las "soluciones oficiales" para "salir de la crisis", ya que con esas soluciones no se saldrá NUNCA, y seguiremos entrampados hasta que nos vayamos a tomar por c**o

Como dice mpt, hay que estar al loro con los reclutamientos, y paso de seguir el juego a lo establecido, cuando se ríen en mi puta cara, y siguen anclados en un paradigma suicida.

Es que los que nos ofrecen soluciones oficiales son los mismos que los que nos metieron en los problemas..., exactamente los mismos.  Los mismos que nos ofrecieron los productos bancarios tóxicos extendiendo la especulación y la ruina en connivencia con los Standard & Poor (agencias esenciales e instrumentales del desastre), a todo el mundo, los mismos que diseñaron las políticas hacia la gran divergencia empobreciendo a la mayoría y a enriqueciendo todavía más a los más ricos, los mismos que nos han traído la insuficiencia del empleo, la disminución de los salarios, la baja calidad de los puestos de trabajo creados y la inseguridad laboral, los mismos que nos dicen que la solución pasa no ya por salarios chinos sino etíopes, los mismos que ponen de presidente del BCE a un ex-director ejecutivo del Banco Mundial y ex-Vicepresidente por Europa de Goldman Sachs entre 2002 y 2006, periodo en que se realizó el falseo en productos basura y fraude de hipotecas, es decir del desastre financiero vía EE.UU.

Todo esto, claro, amén de las políticas ramplonas e interesadas europeas con respecto al colonialismo norteamericano vía OTAN en una Europa que ni está unida ni sabe de su destino.., y lo que es peor, avocados al subdesarrollo con medidas que saben no son aliviadoras de nada por cuanto sí condenatorias.

Esas son sus credenciales.

Coño, pero si está muy fácil, además, ni siquiera la prensa del stablishment lo oculta. No puede ocultarlo. 

[saturno]

No es correcto hablar de grados de calidad democratica ?
Sólo de absolutos ideales ?
Mal vamos entonces .
Dicho esto ;
Denosta el cinismo y el sistema occidental por  superficial y banal , cuando en lo importante se dedica a intervenciones armadas por recursos ; y luego defiende una union euroasiatica por su idoneidad estrategica en recursos independientemente del sistema interno que exista en las partes ??
Contradiccion flagrante .

Sds .

Bah, lo que tenemos (tenéis) es  un conflicto de "falacias del nirvana" como dice ppcc.
Consiste en rechazar lo que hay, real y perfectible (Dogun), en función de una perfección imposible (Democracy who knows?).

Creo que en un foro interesa mucho más atenernos a los documentos o argumentos que la gente se trae
que son lo que hay, real, perfectible.
Los demás ya sabemos filtrar el "nirvana" ajeno.

El MP es un buen criterio:
-- Si no puedes decir lo que vas a decir por MP, entonces no lo digas en público
-- Sólo si lo que vas a decir pasaría por un MP, entonces vale la pena preguntarse si  interesa en el foro
-- Si no estás seguro, lo preguntas por MP a la persona con la que ya estás hablando por MP


¡Diviértanse!

[R.G.C.I.M.]

Sólo te hablaba de rusia y la union euroasiatica .
Puedes tener las ideas que desees , lo que no se nos permite es considerarlas correctas si estan basadas en contradicciones internas .

¿Ahora a quien te refieres? 

Yo  si veo una contradicción interna bastante importante;

a) Usar el argumento generacional correctamente en lo referente a la burbuja inmobiliaria (lo cual aplaudo y comparto)

b) Obviar el tema generacional en lo referente a la sostenibilidad del sistema de mercado, basado en el crecimiento económico perpetuo en un mundo finito, con recursos que no van a volver.
Condenando a las generaciones futuras a vivir mucho peor, por no querer cambiar un paradigma muerto hace ya unos años.

(Nos estamos alargando en un offtopic en un hilo que no toca, si quieres abrimos hilo sobre "Contradicciones internas", en tema tiene tela, ya que los principios que defienden algunos son pura contradicción, o en el mejor de los casos ceguera)

No me habras oido a mi defender el crecimiento eterno.

[R.G.C.I.M.]

No es correcto hablar de grados de calidad democratica ?
Sólo de absolutos ideales ?
Mal vamos entonces .
Dicho esto ;
Denosta el cinismo y el sistema occidental por  superficial y banal , cuando en lo importante se dedica a intervenciones armadas por recursos ; y luego defiende una union euroasiatica por su idoneidad estrategica en recursos independientemente del sistema interno que exista en las partes ??
Contradiccion flagrante .

Sds .

Bah, lo que tenemos (tenéis) es  un conflicto de "falacias del nirvana" como dice ppcc.
Consiste en rechazar lo que hay, real y perfectible (Dogun), en función de una perfección imposible (Democracy who knows?).

Creo que en un foro interesa mucho más atenernos a los documentos o argumentos que la gente se trae
que son lo que hay, real, perfectible.
Los demás ya sabemos filtrar el "nirvana" ajeno.

El MP es un buen criterio:
-- Si no puedes decir lo que vas a decir por MP, entonces no lo digas en público
-- Sólo si lo que vas a decir pasaría por un MP, entonces vale la pena preguntarse si  interesa en el foro
-- Si no estás seguro, lo preguntas por MP a la persona con la que ya estás hablando por MP


¡Diviértanse!

Sera lo que tienen. Yo no tengo esa falacia Saturno. No me meta.

[wanderer]

Sobre el rol contradictorio que juega Qatar en la escena internacional en general, y sobre el islamismo wahabita en general. Discutibles las conclusiones del artículo (Qatar es una potencia regional que debe ser domada), pero polémico y bastante interesante:

Guest Post: Qatar's Jihad

Authored by Brahma Chellaney via Stagecraft and Statecraft,

Qatar may be tiny, but it is having a major impact across the Arab world. By propping up violent jihadists in the Middle East, North Africa, and beyond, while supporting the United States in its fight against them, this gas-rich speck of a country – the world’s wealthiest in per capita terms – has transformed itself from a regional gadfly into an international rogue elephant.

Using its vast resources, and driven by unbridled ambition, Qatar has emerged as a hub for radical Islamist movements. The massive, chandeliered Grand Mosque in Doha – Qatar’s opulent capital – is a rallying point for militants heading to wage jihad in places as diverse as Yemen, Tunisia, and Syria. As a result, Qatar now rivals Saudi Arabia – another Wahhabi state with enormous resource wealth – in exporting Islamist extremism.

But there are important differences between Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Qatar’s Wahhabism is less severe than Saudi Arabia’s; for example, Qatari women are allowed to drive and to travel alone. In Qatar, there is no religious police enforcing morality, even if Qatari clerics openly raise funds for militant causes overseas.

Given this, it is perhaps unsurprising that, whereas Saudi Arabia’s sclerotic leadership pursues reactionary policies rooted in a puritanical understanding of Islam, Qatar’s younger royals have adopted a forward-thinking approach. Qatar is the home of the Al Jazeera satellite television channel and Education City, a district outside of Doha that accommodates schools, universities, and research centers.

Similar inconsistencies are reflected in Qatar’s foreign policy. Indeed, the country’s relationship with the United States directly contradicts its links with radical Islamist movements.

Qatar hosts Al Udeid air base – with its 8,000 American military personnel and 120 aircraft, including supertankers for in-flight refueling – from which the US directs its current airstrikes in Syria and Iraq. Camp As-Sayliyah – another facility for which Qatar charges no rent – serves as the US Central Command’s forward headquarters. In July, Qatar agreed to purchase $11 billion worth of US arms.

Moreover, Qatar has used its leverage over the Islamists that it funds to help secure the release of Western hostages. And it hosted secret talks between the US and the Pakistan-backed Afghan Taliban. To facilitate the negotiations, Qatar provided a home, with US support, to the Taliban’s de facto diplomatic mission – and to the five Afghan Taliban leaders released earlier this year from US detention at Guantánamo Bay.

In other words, Qatar is an important US ally, a supplier of weapons and funds to Islamists, and a peace broker all at the same time. Add to that its position as the world’s largest supplier of liquefied natural gas and the holder of one of its largest sovereign-wealth funds, and it becomes clear that Qatar has plenty of room to maneuver – as well as considerable international clout. Germany’s government found that out when it was forced to retract its development minister’s statement that Qatar played a central role in arming and financing the Islamic State.

Qatar’s growing influence has important implications for the balance of power in the Arab World, especially with regard to the country’s rivalry with Saudi Arabia. This competitive dynamic, which surfaced only recently, represents a shift from a long history of working in tandem to export Islamist extremism.

Both Qatar and Saudi Arabia generously supplied weapons and funds to Sunni extremists in Syria, opening the door for the emergence of the Islamic State. Both have bolstered the Afghan Taliban. And both contributed to Libya’s transformation into a failed state by aiding Islamist militias. During the 2011 NATO campaign to overthrow Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi, Qatar even deployed ground troops covertly inside Libya.

Today, however, Qatar and Saudi Arabia are on opposite sides. Qatar, along with Turkey, backs grassroots Islamist movements like the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoots in Gaza, Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, Iraq, and the Levant. That pits it against Saudi Arabia and countries like the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Jordan, whose rulers view such movements as an existential threat, with some, including the House of Saud, investing in propping up autocratic regimes like their own.

In this sense, Qatar’s tack has produced a rare schism within the Gulf Cooperation Council, whose members collectively possess nearly half of the world’s oil reserves. The proxy competition among rival monarchies, which led some of them to withdraw their ambassadors from Qatar in March, is intensifying violence and instability throughout the region. For example, the UAE, with Egyptian assistance, secretly carried out airstrikes in August to stop Qatari-aided Islamist militias from gaining control of the Libyan capital, Tripoli.

Qatar’s leaders are willing to challenge their neighbors for a simple reason: They believe that the grassroots Islamist movements they support – which, in their view, represent majority political aspirations – eventually will win. Anticipating that such groups will increasingly shape Arab politics, displacing strongman regimes, Qatar has set out to empower them.

In doing so, Qatar is destabilizing several countries and threatening the security of secular democracies far beyond the region. For the sake of regional and international security, this elephant must be tamed.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-10-12/guest-post-qatars-jihad

[Currobena]

Otro artículo sobre la última derrota de ISIS: la resistencia kurda en Kobane. Extraordinario.

A strange thing happened in Kobane, the Kurdish border town besieged by Islamic State: It didn’t fall. In fact, today the BBC reported that Islamic State, the supposedly invincible jihadis who have been besieging Kobane, is retreating from the city.
Nobody expected that. Well, nobody except me. I’ve been saying for a long time that IS(IS) was the most overhyped military force on the planet, and that IS has been attacking Kobane for fifteen months—fifteen damn months—without success, which might just sort of suggest it’s not the juggernaut it’s been made out to be, and that IS’s other supposedly scary advance toward Baghdad is no more than a sad attempt to recover some of the Sunni suburbs of the capital the Sunni controlled completely less than a decade ago.
But I learned a long time ago you don’t get rich being right in this business, so I wasn’t surprised to be all alone yelling “Paper Tiger!” at IS while all the Lexus-driving pundits went into hysterical Victorian-girl fits on TV. It comes with the territory, like the roaches in our Kuwaiti kitchen.
Of course, it was only the suckers in the punditry who were actually surprised to find out how weak IS really is. The guys in the Pentagon must have known better—at least I friggin’ hope so—but they were pushing the “Kobane delenda est” line as hard as any dumb-ass pundit—not because they really bought into the IS juggernaut meme but because they *wanted* Kobane to fall, and the sooner the better.
That may seem surprising at first. After all, the enemy this Kurdish militia was facing, IS(IS), has been selling captured women and girls into sex slavery—and you don’t have to take my word for it. These freaks actually published an article in their house magazine, Dabiq, boasting about the way they enslaved, sold, and raped all the women and girls they captured in Sinjar:
 <blockquote>“The Yazidi women and children were then divided according to the sharia amongst the fighters of the Islamic State . . . after one-fifth of the slaves were transferred to the Islamic State authority to be divided as khums,” or required payment of spoils of war to a caliph, the article says.
It continues, “The enslaved Yazidi families are then sold by the Islamic State soldiers.”</blockquote> With an enemy like that, you’d expect the freedom-luvin’ rulers of the U.S. to be fairly enthusiastic about helping the Kurds defend Kobane. But they’ve never been into it, inventing one excuse after another for leaving the Kurdish YPG militia to face these friggin’ monsters all by themselves. The Pentagon’s Press Secretary John Kirby even said it was the Kurds’ own fault:
 <blockquote>“We don’t have a willing, capable, effective partner on the ground inside Syria. It’s just a fact. I can’t change that.”</blockquote> That’s utter crap, of course. You’d be hard put to find better light infantry than the YPG anywhere in the world. But that was the scenario the Pentagon had worked out: Kobane would fall, Islamic State would move in, tsk-tsk, what a tragedy, and the sooner that tragedy happened, the better for everyone.
A non-stop grinner, Admiral Kirby kept “warning,” which is to say, “hoping and praying,” that Kobane was going to fall one of these days. Kirby was worse than an end-times preacher, just as eager for the disaster he was supposed to be preventing. Here’s Kirby, preaching Armageddon in a briefing on October 9:
 <blockquote>(CNN) — U.S. airstrikes “are not going to save” the key Syrian city of Kobani from being overtaken by ISIS, said Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby.
“I think we all should be steeling ourselves for that eventuality,” he told reporters in a daily briefing Wednesday.</blockquote> It’s unusual for a Pentagon flack to speak that plainly. They usually prefer the language of what “could” or “may” happen. But there was Kirby, a week ago, saying bluntly that Kobane, like a sinner rejected by Calvin’s God, was not going to be saved. And, if that wasn’t enough, he adds a little advice for the press: “…[W]e all should be steeling ourselves for that eventuality.”
Amen, Admiral! The end was nigh!
You’d think a pundit or two would have asked, “Why? Why must Kobane’s end be nigh?” Because there’s this little thing called “air-dropping supplies.” The USAF is pretty good at that—managed to keep the whole city of Berlin fed and fueled more than a half-century ago. All those transports, all that practice air-dropping expensive materiel to every worthless militia in the world…and we couldn’t drop a few TOWs, or just RPG rounds, to the defenders? Kobane’s defenders didn’t even have enough water, but you didn’t hear anything about the US water-bombing them.
Because, very simply, the US was waiting eagerly for the town to fall. There were all sorts of reasons for this, and none make any real sense. The two biggest are: (a) The hick Islamists running Turkey tilt toward IS and hate Kurds, all Kurds, with the same insane virulence that Turks hate all their neighbors, and especially any minority that dares to identify itself as non-Turkish; (b) The YPG militia defending Kobane is linked to the PKK movement, which is nominally “Socialist,” and American apparatchiks, no matter who’s officially in charge, have never un-learned the anti-Commie nonsense they learned at Georgetown; and (c) The “brave, doomed defenders of Kobane” were worth much more dead than alive, much more in defeat than in victory. If they lost, they’d be beheaded by the vicious loons in IS, and those severed-head videos would be great US agitprop, a great little way to put more pressure on Turkey over the theatre the US really cares about—Iraq.
So the message from DC was clear: “Die, Kurds! Die, and do it on-camera and soon!”
And in case anyone missed the point, John Kerry, who’s Secretary of State, or at least plays one on TV, made one of his stirring speeches—remember Kerry’s bold orations from 2004, when he managed to look like a wimp compared to a guy who spent the Vietnam war in Alabama? Kerry could convince a wolverine to give up and sob in despair, rather than fight. And he did his best to work his defeatist magic on Kobane, by making it very clear the U.S. wanted no part of the fight:
 <blockquote>“Kobane does not define the strategy for the coalition in respect to Daesh [ISIL in Arabic]. Kobane is one community and it is a tragedy what is happening there. And we do not diminish that,” Kerry said.</blockquote> If you can stay awake through Kerry’s Eeyore monotone, you get the idea: He’s saying, “Die, Kobane! Die! Fall, already!” As a general rule, when someone tells you, “It’s a tragedy, and we do not diminish that,” you should make your peace with God, because they’ve decided you’re expendable.
So the end was nigh for Kobane, according to the whole DC elite. Well, It’s now October 16, 2014, and Kobane has disappointed the Admiral just like the universe disappoints all the Armageddon preachers who’ve ever lived, doing the one thing they really won’t stand for: Not falling.
So the question has changed from “When will Kobane fall?” to “Why didn’t Kobane fall?”
There are three major reasons for the non-fall of Kobane. I’ll try to explain them quickly here.
1. Because Islamic State is a lousy, overrated fighting force.
Did I mention that I tole ya so? Yeah, well, I’m saying it again: I tole ya so. Islamic State is good at one thing: Hype. And I don’t say that entirely dismissively. Hype is a very important part of combat, whether it’s a schoolyard fight or a full-on war. Many battles—you might argue, most battles—are won on hype. But hype only works on weak opponents. So, when IS started its hick-krieg (thanks to Anibale for that term) over the plains of Iraq last June, the so-called Iraqi Army fled without firing a shot. That “army” was a corrupt ARVN-model mess of scared Shia boys, commanded by venal creeps, and they never even tried standing up to IS.
The Kurds are a whole different matter. They’ve never been scared of any Arab force. There’s not a lot of love lost between Kurds and Arabs—I knew a guy in Suli whose dad was a professor of Arabic, taught it to him from birth, but he refused to speak a word of it, in memory of the Anfal.
Kurdish irregulars held Saddam’s Sunni army back for years; the notion that they should fear a much lesser Sunni militia would be laughable to them.
So, when surrounded by this new, scary, Sunni militia called Islamic State, the Kurdish YPG militia in Kobane simply fought back, as a matter of course, with no fuss or panic—not even when the creeps in IS sawed off the heads of the women of the YPJ and photographed them like trophies, including this shot of a woman who looks worryingly like my best World Lit student in Sulimaniya. [Scroll down to bottom photo. Warning: Very Graphic.]
None of that scared the Kurds. And they soon revealed how badly IS fought against people who didn’t scare. Here’s a memorable—not to say hilarious—clip showing how badly IS fought in Kobane, wasting the expensive armor they took from the Iraqi Army:
An IS tank advances with no infantry support down a rubble-filled street in Kobane, not even using its machine guns to disperse the YPG men who stroll out into the street once it’s passed, not even bothering to hide. For those who’ve never heard of shoulder-fired anti-tank weapons, this is about as smart as rolling around the floor of a butcher shop, then jumping into the tiger enclosure at the zoo to preach the gospel to the big cats. Tanks without infantry support have been death-traps for generations, and the very worst place to send them is a narrow, rubble-filled street. Everybody knows that.
The Kurdish men and boys shadowing the tank know it. They’re all but laughing at this ridiculous contraption, waiting eagerly for what they know is going to happen.
The tank stops at an intersection, elevates its main gun, and fires down the street at an unseen target. The YPG men gesture expectantly, starting to flinch for the first time—not at this useless hulk of a tank but because their friends down that street are fitting the RPG round into the launcher, and they know there’s going to be a big dose of what the DoD calls “kinetic” where that tank is standing.
The tank fires again, and less than a second later, it explodes as that RPG round sends superheated molten metal spraying through it as droplets of the MBT armor now zip into the crew compartment at the speed of detonating TNT, as the blast knocks the turret half-off and turns anyone inside to instant bulgoki. Somebody’s little jihadi won’t be comin’ home to Hamburg or Tunis or Croydon, and it couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of filthy woman-selling, child-raping swine.

IS has supposedly lost at least 300 men in Kobane. And I do mean “men”; IS, unlike the YPG/J, does not allow women in combat. In fact, misogyny is about the biggest plank in their platform, and a huge part of this weird 21^st century iteration of “jihad.” I suspect the total is actually much higher, because IS, quite simply, are idiots. They did everything wrong, from advancing across the entire front—west, south, and east, and the only reason they didn’t come at Kobane from the north too is that the Turks own that border and didn’t want their secret friends in IS to be that overt about the alliance. Then they kept trying to gain land even when the US got serious about air strikes. Which brings us to reason number two:
2. The U.S. finally got so embarrassed by the Kurds’ heroic defense that it had to get serious.
The US and its joke of a “coalition” began bombing Syrian targets on September 22, 2014. But none of the first wave of strikes came near Kobane. The strikes hit Raqqah, Deir-az-Zour, Hassakah, and Aleppo—but not Kobane. And for two weeks, as IS threw all its Iraqi reinforcements and armor at the town, the US made only token strikes around Kobane. It was very odd, reading the stories at the time, because if there’s one thing the US does well, it’s air strikes on open desert terrain. I’m not one of those naïve believers in air support as the answer to all military problems, but FFS, this wasn’t the NVA in the Central Highlands, this was IS in Syria. They train on country that looks like this and facing a ground force that was too stupid to retreat under pressure, the USAF should have been able to wipe out the IS forces attacking Kobane.
But the kind of strikes they were using didn’t make any sense, just like their refusal to use air-drops for resupply didn’t make sense. Instead of A-10s and Predator drones orbiting the battle—the obvious way to keep air power on-station as needed—the USAF was sending fighters in for the classic, and classically ineffective, run-and-gun routine.
The Kurds were puzzled. They accepted that they wouldn’t be resupplied; Kurds have learned the hard way not to expect the US to back them up when it matters. But they did assume—naively enough—that the air strikes were supposed to be stopping IS. And they weren’t.
If you consider the possibility that the US wasn’t trying to stop IS, at least not until domestic pressure built up on Obama after the first week of October 2014, then this makes a cold sort of imperial sense. The goal wasn’t to stop IS from taking Kobane. In fact, IS was supposed to take it; that would make the Turks happy, and the resulting horror pictures of the massacre that would ensue would shut up any domestic opposition to bombing the Hell out of Iraq, the theater the US really worries about. The strikes were meant as a show of fake good will, so to speak—kinetic good will that would send a lot of desert flying into the air without dislodging IS, and bleed IS a little in the process.
That changed after October 7. For whatever reason, the strikes got serious, as you’ll see if you look at the graph at the end of this BBC story.
In the ten days since then, air support seems to have been effective. So, you might reasonably ask, what happened on October 7? Well, that happens to be the day that Leon Panetta, Obama’s own ex-Secretary of Defense and CIA head, went public calling the President a wimp who needed to put the proverbial boots on the literal ground in Syria.
Next day, suddenly USAF air strikes started lighting up the idiots marking their positions around Kobane with that familiar black IS flag. Probably not pure coincidence. DC people have thick hides when dealing with jibes from pundits or opposition senators, but when your own SecDef/CIA boss calls you out for ducking the enemy, you have to tell the USAF to start actually hitting people. Which it did, and because IS is too stupid to retreat quickly as the NVA would have done in this situation, they’ve been getting wonderfully zapped for more than a week.
Which was apparently enough even for these “fuckin’ amateurs,” to use Walter Sobchak’s crude but accurate characterization. They’re leaving the trenches around Kobane, which will be hard to spin as a victory even for IS, which is good at online agitprop (and nothing else).
So, when you stand back and squint at this whole amazing story, you’re left with a third, final, biggest reason Kobane didn’t fall:
3. Because the YPG/J wouldn’t let it.
If you only read one story about what happened in Kobane, read this battle-journal kept by Heysam Mislim, a Kurdish journalist who decided to stay in the town through the siege.
What he describes is just plain heroic, and it tallies with what I saw of the phlegmatic, stoic Kurdish people in Suli. They don’t make much of a fuss about things, which is unusual in this part of the world, which could be called “The Yelling Crescent.” They don’t yell, the Kurds–but they don’t panic, either. And they held on, expecting very little from their ostensible allies—and they weren’t disappointed in that expectation, either—and waiting until the ammunition ran out, or IS brought in another batch of Chechens, Tunisians, or Iraqis too numerous to be stopped. They knew very well what would become of them when that happened. But as often happens when a force like IS cultivates a rep for insane brutality, that meant that negotiation and surrender was impossible anyway. No one was gonna be spared. There was no choice. They just fought on.
And for all sorts of tangential reasons, from DC politics to jihadist incompetence, they won. It’s the kind of story that keeps me writing war stories. War is horrible, boring and mean and stupid; it’s that woman’s head, carried by an IS goblin grinning like an idiot. But sometimes—very rarely, actually—people who’ve been pushed into war against their will come out of it as something more than the rest of us. Kobane was just another dusty town when Syria blew up a few years ago. No one in Kobane was strutting around trying to be a hero, which is more than you can say about the Ali-Jihadis in IS. All the Kurds of Kobane were trying to do was keep their town alive. And, to everyone’s surprise—and most of the big players’ annoyance—they succeeded. It’s the rarest thing in the world, a truly heroic story. But that’s what this is, and you can’t do much but be awed by it.

Lo tiene todo: heroísmo, crueldad, hipocresía y gentes normales que buscan sobrevivir lo mejor posible.
http://pando.com/2014/10/16/the-war-nerd-nobody-could-have-predicted-islamic-states-retreat-from-kobane-except-me/

[saturno]

[saturno]

Geopolitica en v/FR
:
http://www.lesinrocks.com/2014/10/15/actualite/olivier-roy-kobane-turquie-agit-selon-interets-nationaux-on-sen-scandalise-cest-logique-11529677/

(Si buscas Kobane en google news, sólo saca a RFI  (Radio France Internacional - muy orientado a francofonia Africa ) y éste de Inrocks que es como el la revista RollingStones galo.
-- es para estar acojonado)

[saturno]

http://www.leparisien.fr/international/syrie-les-combats-se-poursuivent-rue-par-rue-a-kobane-19-10-2014-4225197.php

Después de la retirada de Daesh hacia el Este desde su posiciones del 14 pasado,
los Kurdos también han recuperado la colina de Tal Sheyre al Oeste y pasan armas a la ciudad.

[Currobena]

Otro artículo más sobre el origen estadounidense de ISIS y el estímulo que dan las guerras al terrorismo.

The U.S. Has Radicalized the Middle East ISIS Is Run By Former Iraqi Generals … Many Are Members Of Saddam Hussein’s Secular Baath Party Who Converted To Radical Islam In American Prisons U.S. Foreign Policy Created Many More Terrorists Than It Killed The New Yorker reports:
 <blockquote>ISIS is run by a council of former Iraqi generals, according to Hisham Alhashimi, an adviser to the Iraqi government and an expert on ISIS. Many are members of Saddam Hussein’s secular Baath Party who converted to radical Islam in American prisons.</blockquote> In other words, ISIS was created by not only the war in Iraq, but American terror-creating foreign policy.
As we’ve reported for years, U.S. foreign policy is creating many more terrorists than it’s killing.
 The U.S. Has Radicalized the Middle East Wittingly or unwittingly, the U.S. has radicalized the Middle East.
The U.S. carried out regime change in Iran in 1953 … which led to radicalization in the country. Specifically, the CIA admits that the U.S. overthrew the moderate, suit-and-tie-wearing, Democratically-elected prime minister of Iran in 1953. (He was overthrown because he had nationalized Iran’s oil, which had previously been controlled by BP and other Western oil companies). As part of that action, the CIA admits that it hired Iranians to pose as Communists and stage bombings in Iran in order to turn the country against its prime minister.   If the U.S. hadn’t overthrown the moderate Iranian government, the fundamentalist Mullahs would have never taken over. Iran has been known for thousands of years for tolerating Christians and other religious minorities.
America has long supported the fundamentalist Islamic radicals in Saudi Arabia, and funded their radical madrassa schools.  At the same time, we have attacked moderate Arabs … leading to a proliferation of the crazies.
 Our Wars In the Middle East Have Created More Terrorists Security experts – including both conservatives and liberals – agree that waging war in the Middle East weakens national security and increases terrorism. See this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this.
Ooops.
Killing innocent civilians is one of the main things which increases terrorism. As one of the top counter-terrorism experts (the former number 2 counter-terrorism expert at the State Department) told me, starting wars against states which do not pose an imminent threat to America’s national security increases the threat of terrorism because:
 <blockquote>One of the principal causes of terrorism is injuries to people and families.</blockquote> The Iraq war wasn’t even fought to combat terrorism. And Al Qaeda wasn’t even in Iraq until the U.S. invaded that country.
And top CIA officers say that drone strikes increase terrorism (and see this).
Furthermore, James K. Feldman – former professor of decision analysis and economics at the Air Force Institute of Technology and the School of Advanced Airpower Studies – and other experts say that foreign occupation is the main cause of terrorism
University of Chicago professor Robert A. Pape – who specializes in international security affairs – points out:
 <blockquote>Extensive research into the causes of suicide terrorism proves Islam isn’t to blame — the root of the problem is foreign military occupations.
***</blockquote> <blockquote>Each month, there are more suicide terrorists trying to kill Americans and their allies in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other Muslim countries than in all the years before 2001 combined.
***
New research provides strong evidence that suicide terrorism such as that of 9/11 is particularly sensitive to foreign military occupation, and not Islamic fundamentalism or any ideology independent of this crucial circumstance. Although this pattern began to emerge in the 1980s and 1990s, a wealth of new data presents a powerful picture.
More than 95 percent of all suicide attacks are in response to foreign occupation, according to extensive research [co-authored by James K. Feldman - former professor of decision analysis and economics at the Air Force Institute of Technology and the School of Advanced Airpower Studies] that we conducted at the University of Chicago’s Project on Security and Terrorism, where we examined every one of the over 2,200 suicide attacks across the world from 1980 to the present day. As the United States has occupied Afghanistan and Iraq, which have a combined population of about 60 million, total suicide attacks worldwide have risen dramatically — from about 300 from 1980 to 2003, to 1,800 from 2004 to 2009. Further, over 90 percent of suicide attacks worldwide are now anti-American. The vast majority of suicide terrorists hail from the local region threatened by foreign troops, which is why 90 percent of suicide attackers in Afghanistan are Afghans.
Israelis have their own narrative about terrorism, which holds that Arab fanatics seek to destroy the Jewish state because of what it is, not what it does. But since Israel withdrew its army from Lebanon in May 2000, there has not been a single Lebanese suicide attack. Similarly, since Israel withdrew from Gaza and large parts of the West Bank, Palestinian suicide attacks are down over 90 percent.
***
The first step is recognizing that occupations in the Muslim world don’t make Americans any safer — in fact, they are at the heart of the problem.</blockquote> Our Program of Torture Created Terrorists In addition, torture creates new terrorists:
 

• A top counter-terrorism expert says torture increases the risk of terrorism (and see this).

• One of the top military interrogators said that torture by Americans of innocent Iraqis is the main reason that foreign fighters started fighting against Americans in Iraq in the first place (and see this).

• Former counter-terrorism czar Richard A. Clarke says that America’s indefinite detention without trial and abuse of prisoners is a leading Al Qaeda recruiting tool

• A former FBI interrogator — who interrogated Al Qaeda suspects — says categorically that torture actually turns people into terrorists

• A 30-year veteran of CIA’s operations directorate who rose to the most senior managerial ranks, says:
   <blockquote>Torture creates more terrorists and fosters more acts of terror than it could possibly neutralize.</blockquote>

• A former US Air Force interrogator said that torture just creates more terrorists

• A former U.S. interrogator and counterintelligence agent, and Afghanistan veteran said, “Torture puts our troops in danger, torture makes our troops less safe, torture creates terrorists. It’s used so widely as a propaganda tool now in Afghanistan. All too often, detainees have pamphlets on them, depicting what happened at Guantanamo.”

• The Senate Armed Services Committee unanimously stated:

<blockquote> <blockquote>“The administration’s policies concerning [torture] and the resulting controversies … strengthened the hand of our enemies.”</blockquote> </blockquote>

• Two professors of political science have demonstrated that torture increases, rather than decreases, terrorism

• General Petraeus said that torture hurts our national security

• And the reporter who broke Iran-Contra and other stories says that torture actually helped Al Qaeda, by giving false leads to the U.S. which diverted its military, intelligence and economic resources into wild goose chases

Remember, the secular Iraqi generals who now lead ISIS converted to radical Islam in American prisons … where they were undoubtedly tortured.

www.ritholtz.com/blog/2014/10/blame-bush-admin-for-isis/

[Currobena]

[saturno]

Ya parece que lo consiguieron:

http://internacional.elpais.com/internacional/2014/10/28/actualidad/1414516085_040338.html

Los 'peshmerga' iraquíes se unen a la defensa de Kobane contra el EI
Decenas de kurdos de Irak cruzan Turquía tras el permiso de Ankara para que se unan a la lucha contra los yihadistas en la ciudad siria asediada

Conste que en menos de un quiquenio, Kurdistan se auto federa desde Siria (OK)  Irak (OK)  y Turquia (Niet).
Están armados, con petróleo, sociologicamente diferenciados (religions, usos sociales) con la simpatía de todas las oponiones mundiales, y sin nada que perder por intentar otra vez lo que llevan haciendo ya 200 años.

En menos de 10 años con un poco de maña, controlan el suministro de petroleo y gaz del Caspio, desde Iran hasta el meditárreno pasando por Siria.
Y más favor les hacen si EEUU le pone trabas a Rusia por el control de la zona.

En cuanto los Kurdos tengan geográficamente el control de las rutas de gas y petróleo de Iran y Norte de Irak, EEUU sacará al PKK de la lista de terroristas.


Con Turquia pillada entre la UE, la OTAN y el neoclerical que ahí tienen que sólo aguanta a base de azuzar el odio antikurdo, el único problema para que Turquia no emprenda un proceso de libre asociacion inteligente con Kurdistan, es la falta de modernizacion de las politicas turcas.
No hay salida: Modernizacion de Turquia implica Solucion al "problema" kurdo.


Y la verdad, cuando miras su historia, nadie con un poco de dignidad les puede negar a los Kurdos el derecho a la misma dignidad,

[wanderer]

No sé hasta qué punto esto es postureo, pero no deja de ser notable (impagable la foto):

Con visos de empeorar tras las legislativas estadounidenses
Las relaciones entre EEUU e Israel, en mínimos históricos
Kerry pide perdón a Netanyahu por los insultos de un funcionario de EEUU en un artículo de 'The Atlantic', donde le llama "cagón"
Las relaciones entre EEUU e Israel, en mínimos históricos



Las relaciones entre Estados Unidos e Israel atraviesan un punto crítico y tienen visos de empeorar después de las elecciones legislativas de la semana que viene en Estados Unidos, tras un artículo de 'The Atlantic' que ha generado un profundo enfado en el Gobierno israelí al recoger las palabras de un anónimo funcionario norteamericano que llama "cagón" al primer ministro israelí, Benjamin Netanyahu, lo que ha obligado al secretario de Estado de EEUU, John Kerry, a pedir disculpas en su nombre. El motivo principal del enfriamiento de las relaciones es la insistencia de Netanyahu --también descrito por fuentes anónimas de la Administración de EEUU como "miope", "reaccionario", "obtuso", "pomposo" y "Aspergeriano"-- de proseguir con su política de asentamientos en Cisjordania y Jerusalén Este, lo que ha arruinado todas las perspectivas de una solución de paz negociada con los palestinos.

“Lo que sucede con Bibi (el apodo de Netanyahu) es que es un cagón”, explicó este funcionario, del que solo se da a conocer que ostenta un alto cargo en la Administración Obama. “Lo bueno es que le da miedo iniciar una guerra, lo malo es que no tiene intención en absoluto de alcanzar un acuerdo ni con los palestinos ni con los estados árabes suníes”.

La valoración no puede ser más negativa, sobre todo en comparación con los precedentes en el cargo. “Ni es Isaac Rabin, ni es Ariel Sharon, ni desde luego es Menachem Begin. No tiene agallas”, según este funcionario, cuyas declaraciones son ratificadas por otro diplomático estadounidense, también bajo el anonimato.

La decepción del Gobierno estadounidense con Netanyahu no solo se aplica a la cuestión palestina, sino también al conflicto abierto con Irán por el programa nuclear de la república islámica. Desde hace años, Netanyahu, convencido de que Irán estaba desarrollando una bomba nuclear, lleva jugando con la idea de lanzar un ataque preventivo contra Irán. “Ahora”, han opinado estos diplomáticos, “se tiene la sensación de que Bibi se está marcando un farol, no como Begin en Osirak”, han declarado en relación al ataque ordenado por el entonces primer ministro contra un reactor nuclear en Irak en 1981.

Velada lucha de insultos

Durante los últimos meses, Estados Unidos e Israel se han enzarzado en una velada lucha de insultos, seguidos de inmediatas declaraciones de disculpas y matizaciones, rematadas con un elogio de la relación especial que desde hace décadas mantienen ambos países. Ello no quita, por ejemplo, que el ministro de Defensa israelí, Moshe Yaalon, calificara a Kerry de “obsesivo” y “mesiánico”, o criticara la “debilidad” de la política exterior estadounidense.

“Lo que nos resulta confuso”, respondió la portavoz del Departamento de Estado, Jen Psaki, “es por qué el ministro Yaalon sigue haciendo declaraciones que no representan con exactitud ni el alcance ni la profundidad de la relación entre Estados Unidos e Israel”.

Como sucediera anteriormente, la Casa Blanca ha reaccionado en esta última crisis repudiando cualquier tipo de lenguaje obsceno contra el Gobierno israelí. En el caso concreto del artículo de ‘The Atlantic’, el secretario de Estado, John Kerry, desmintió primero que fuera él quien realizó estas declaraciones, que tachó de “desgraciadas, inaceptables y dañinas”.

Los republicanos emplearon estos comentarios para descargar munición contra Obama, comenzando por el presidente de la Cámara de Representantes, John Boehner, quien condenó “la retórica de desprecio efectuada por la administración, cuyo tono lo marca el presidente Obama, que o aprueba esta clase de insultos o no, así que más vale que ponga su casa en orden”.

Los analistas israelíes coinciden

Y, sin embargo, analistas de los principales programas de televisión israelíes coinciden en que las relaciones entre las administraciones de EEUU e Israel son extremadamente malas

Un analista del canal 10 de la televisión israelí, por ejemplo, destacó el “asco sin precedentes” que domina el ambiente entre ambos Gobiernos. El ex embajador israelí en EEUU Itamar Rabinovich llegó a declarar al portal Walla! que las relaciones nunca habían pasado por un momento tan negativo. “No es que se hayan quitado los guantes, es que los han tirado a la basura”, ha declarado.

“Antes, las crisis entre nosotros y Estados Unidos partían de un único tema, cuando por ejemplo el presidente Eisenhower obligó a Ben-Gurion a retirarse del Sinaí en 1956, pero ahora se trata de una combinación de desacuerdos sobre prácticamente cualquier aspecto de la región, por no mencionar las horribles relaciones personales entre ambos líderes”, hizo saber Rabinovich, para quien esta situación “no tiene precedentes”

De la misma opinión se mostró el también ex embajador Danny Ayalon, particularmente en lo que se refiere a las fricciones de carácter entre Obama y Netanyahu. “Las relaciones entre primer ministro (de Israel) y presidente (de EEUU), algo que considero de importancia suma, jamás se han encontrado en un momento como este”.

“Lo que estamos viendo ahora mismo –asco personal, mofas, sórdidas filtraciones mutuas– son cosas que jamás han ocurrido en el pasado”, ha añadido Ayalon en comentarios recogidos por el medio hebreo ‘Arutz Sheva’.

Contragolpe de EEUU

El artículo de ‘The Atlantic’ culmina con un tono admonitorio: la posibilidad de que Estados Unidos comience en los próximos meses a criticar de forma más abierta la actual política israelí en Oriente Próximo, conforme la Autoridad Palestina acelere su programa para conseguir el reconocimiento internacional.

Y si bien nadie cree que Estados Unidos vaya a permitir que el Consejo de Seguridad –donde tiene derecho de veto– apruebe el reconocimiento total de Palestina, no se descarta que Washington presente un plan unilateral para alcanzar una solución de paz que comprenda dos estados, el israelí y el palestino, conviviendo de manera conjunta, lo que supondría un tremendo golpe a las aspiraciones diplomáticas de Israel, que solo ha defendido la negociación directa, sin la intervención de terceros, como único mecanismo de paz.

Las fronteras de este estado palestino, “para horror de Netanyahu”, apunta el artículo, estarían basadas en los límites de 1967 –lo que incluirían a actuales asentamientos israelíes en Cisjordania. Para Netanyahu se abre un periodo clave que comenzará tras las elecciones legislativas en EEUU de la semana próxima, que darán el pistoletazo de salida a la recta final del último mandato de Obama, quien podría aprovechar para cerrar su estancia en la Casa Blanca con un impulso definitivo y personal a la paz en Oriente Próximo, guste o no a los israelíes.

http://www.republica.com/2014/11/01/las-relaciones-entre-eeuu-e-israel-en-minimos-historicos_848267/

[Маркс]

Es lo que tiene la decadencia hegemónica.., que se resienten hasta las relaciones con tus aliados.

Y la niña bonita (Europa) cada vez menos bonita e interesante. Ahora resulta que Suecia se desmarca como primer país de la Unión Europea que da este paso...

Suecia reconoce a Palestina como Estado independiente

http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=191484&titular=suecia-reconoce-a-palestina-como-estado-independiente-

Noticia de poca impronta en los medios pero sintomática por varias razones:

1- Hostión que te crió al resto de UE (evidencia la falta de políticas comunes).
2- Otro síntoma más del declive norteamericano.
3- Y para mí la mejor; puñetazo político soberano de un Estado en contra de ese putrefacto nuevo orden mundial occidental que nos quieren vender.