Tag Archives: russia

The American Public Is Becoming Ever More Rabid for War Against ISIS

by MerissaCpo Posted on February 19, 2015

Mother Jones

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It sure isn’t hard to gin Americans into a war fever. President Obama isn’t even trying, but support for sending U.S. ground troops back into Iraq to fight ISIS continues to grow. According to a new CBS News poll, it now stands at 57 percent.

It’s not just conservatives, either. Democrats favor sending in ground troops by a margin of 50-43 percent. We’re only a few public beheadings away from two-thirds approval margins among all groups, which is something of a magic number. If we reach that point, President Obama and congressional Democrats might decide—reluctantly or otherwise—that they have to change course and send in a substantial ground force.

This would probably be a disaster. The most optimistic scenario is that Graeme Wood is right, and the ISIS folks are such nutters that they’d welcome a final, conventional showdown against the forces of the West:

The Islamic State has attached great importance to the Syrian city of Dabiq, near Aleppo….It is here, the Prophet reportedly said, that the armies of Rome will set up their camp. The armies of Islam will meet them, and Dabiq will be Rome’s Waterloo or its Antietam.

….Now that it has taken Dabiq, the Islamic State awaits the arrival of an enemy army there, whose defeat will initiate the countdown to the apocalypse….If the United States were to invade, the Islamic State’s obsession with battle at Dabiq suggests that it might send vast resources there, as if in a conventional battle. If the state musters at Dabiq in full force, only to be routed, it might never recover.

That’s a battle we could pretty easily win. But if it turns out the leadership of ISIS isn’t quite as daft and millenarian as Wood says, then the only way to defeat ISIS would be in grisly house-to-house fighting in Sunni strongholds like Mosul. We already know that U.S. troops can’t do that effectively, and neither can the predominantly Shia troops controlled by Iraq. It would be a long, grinding, disaster of a war.

But apparently the American public hasn’t quite internalized that yet. They’re becoming more and more enraged about ISIS, and they want to do something. That’s a bad combination.

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The American Public Is Becoming Ever More Rabid for War Against ISIS

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A Judge Just Blocked Obama’s Immigration Plans. Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Take His Ruling Seriously.

by Karin72Ssuvckt Posted on February 17, 2015

Mother Jones

A federal judge in Brownsville, Texas, has issued an injunction against President Obama’s recent immigration actions. I don’t take this even slightly seriously. To see why, all you have to do is read to the end of the New York Times account:

Judge Hanen, who was appointed in 2002 by President George W. Bush, has excoriated the Obama administration’s immigration policies in several unusually outspoken rulings….At a hearing on Jan. 15, Judge Hanen said Brownsville, which sits on the border with Mexico, was an appropriate venue for the suit because its residents see the impact of immigration every day. “Talking to anyone in Brownsville about immigration is like talking to Noah about the flood,” Judge Hanen said.

In a long and colorful opinion last August, Judge Hanen departed from the issue at hand to accuse the Obama administration of adopting a deportation policy that “endangers America” and was “an open invitation to the most dangerous criminals in society.”

The case involved a Salvadoran immigrant with a long criminal record whom Judge Hanen had earlier sent to prison for five years. Instead of deporting the man after he served his sentence, an immigration judge in Los Angeles ordered him released, a decision Judge Hanen found “incredible.” Citing no specific evidence, he surmised that the administration had adopted a broader policy of releasing such criminals.

While acknowledging that he had no jurisdiction to alter policy, Judge Hanen said he relied on his “firsthand, in-the-trenches knowledge of the border situation” and “at least a measurable level of common sense” to reach his conclusions about the case.

Judge Andrew Hanen so obviously hates both Obama and his immigration actions that no one is going to take his decision seriously. It’s a polemic, not a proper court ruling. The case will continue its dreary way through Hanen’s docket, but I imagine an appeals court will stay the injunction pretty quickly, and then overrule his inevitable final ruling in short order. The right-wing plaintiffs in this case may have thought they were being clever in venue shopping to get the case before Hanen, but it won’t do them any good. It might even backfire, given just how transparently political Hanen’s ruling is.

This story makes for a good headline, but it probably means little in real life. At most we’ll have a delay of a few weeks in implementing Obama’s immigration orders.

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A Judge Just Blocked Obama’s Immigration Plans. Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Take His Ruling Seriously.

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Friday Cat Blogging – 13 February 2015

by LindseyGleadow Posted on February 13, 2015

Mother Jones

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Chemotherapy may be over, but I still have to go in to the infusion center once a month for a bone-strengthening treatment. Unlike chemo, which was a pretty quick procedure, this actually takes a while, and this month it happens to be scheduled for mid-morning today. So that means I’m checking out early. Sorry about that. On the bright side you get early catblogging out of the deal. Here are the sibs posing for their dual royal portrait, Hopper on the left and Hilbert on the right. Have a good weekend, everyone.

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Friday Cat Blogging – 13 February 2015

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Republicans and Democrats Are Both in Favor of Approval to Fight ISIS

by HallieFrederick Posted on February 13, 2015

Mother Jones

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So what does the public think of President Obama’s request for an authorization to use military force against ISIS? According to a new NBC/Marist poll, they’re basically in favor:

Greg Sargent has a partisan breakdown, and approval of the AUMF is surprisingly bipartisan: 60 percent of Democrats approve and 52 percent of Republicans approve. So I imagine this is going to pass before long, probably without too many major changes.

The poll has some other responses that are a bit odd. Only 45 percent of the respondents have much confidence in President Obama’s strategy, but 66 percent think we’re going to be able to defeat ISIS anyway. Is this a triumph of partisanship over actual belief, or the other way around? Or just the usual incoherence you get in practically every poll about everything?

In any case, it will be interesting to see what line Fox News and the rest of the right-wing punditocracy take on this, and whether this affects future poll results. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a much bigger partisan split on this question a couple of weeks from now.

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Republicans and Democrats Are Both in Favor of Approval to Fight ISIS

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There’s a Labor Dispute at West Coast Ports, But No One Will Say What It’s About

by RoseannStrempel Posted on February 12, 2015

Mother Jones

West Coast port operators are shutting down for a few days because “they don’t want to pay overtime to workers who, they allege, have deliberately slowed operations to the point of causing a massive bottleneck.” This is part of an increasingly rancorous labor dispute, but as usual, we really have no idea what the dispute is about:

Dockworkers are among the best paid blue-collar workers in the country, earning between $26 and $41 an hour, depending on experience and skill.

Union spokesman Craig Merrilees has said the two sides are very close to a deal, but has declined to say what is tying up the talks….According to employers, a major hurdle is a union demand that both sides have the ability to unilaterally remove local arbitrators at the end of a labor contract….Employers say that if such a change is made, alleged union slowdown tactics would become constant, because the union could “fire judges who rule against them.”

The union said Wednesday that employers are “grossly” mischaracterizing its current bargaining position. “It seems to us that the employers are trying to sabotage negotiations,” union President McEllrath said.

This is pretty normal, and it’s one of the things that makes it hard to unilaterally support either side in labor disputes like this. We already know that dockworkers are very well paid, and that’s apparently not a bone of contention. But what’s the deal with the arbitrators? Who has the better of the argument? There’s no telling.

The public probably doesn’t care much about this unless it eventually gets nasty enough that it affects the ability of stores to keep stuff in stock. So maybe public opinion doesn’t matter. But to the extent it does, it sure seems like unions would have a better chance of getting public support if they were more forthcoming about exactly what it is they’re holding out for.

(Or maybe not. One of the big problems with the huge decline in union density over the past few decades is that the public no longer has much of a stake in supporting unions. In the past, there was some sense of solidarity. If one union negotiated a healthy raise, it increased the odds of everyone else getting a healthy raise too. But not anymore. If the dockworkers do well, they’re just the last of the lucky bastards with good union jobs. The rest of us get nothing from it except maybe higher prices for the goods and services we buy. It’s hard to see a way out of this dynamic.)

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There’s a Labor Dispute at West Coast Ports, But No One Will Say What It’s About

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Russia, Ukraine Reach Cease-Fire Deal—For a Few Days, Anyway

by Bridget60A Posted on February 12, 2015

Mother Jones

After a marathon session, we now have another cease-fire in the Russian war against Ukraine:

The cease-fire is scheduled to begin at midnight on Saturday, but the 13-point compact appeared fragile, with crucial issues like the truce line left unresolved. Over all, there seemed to be no guarantee that the problems that marred the cease-fire agreement reached here in September had been ironed out.

The very fact that it took more than 16 hours of intensive negotiations to reach an agreement, and that the leaders announced the accord in three separate news conferences, seemed to highlight a certain lack of unity.

….“Despite all the difficulties of the negotiating process, we managed to agree on the main things,” Mr. Putin said. Those issues included the withdrawal of heavy weaponry, a promise for constitutional change, and “special status” for the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, he said….The deal calls for heavy artillery to be withdrawn at least about 15 miles from each side, and the biggest missiles even farther. The withdrawal is scheduled to start two days after the cease-fire and to be completed within two weeks.

Needless to say, this doesn’t sound all that promising, especially that business about “special status” for Donetsk and Luhansk. However, the talks produced at least one concrete accomplishment:

The White House has said it will await the outcome of the cease-fire bid before making a decision on whether to send arms to Ukraine’s military — a move strongly opposed by Moscow.

Ukraine also got something out of the deal: the IMF announced a $17.5 billion loan to Ukraine, which will keep them from going bankrupt. The Guardian notes that the talks nearly broke down before Thursday’s announcement:

The negotiations appeared extremely tense and highly combustible with simmering hostility between Putin on the one hand and Merkel and Poroshenko on the other. At various points during the night, the talks looked close to collapse, with Poroshenko leaving the negotiating table and talking of being confronted with “unacceptable conditions”.

Overall, it looks to me like Russia got more out of this deal than either Ukraine or Europe. A lot depends on whether Russia really withdraws its heavy artillery and keeps it withdrawn. Like everyone else, I have my doubts. This seems more like a chance for Russia to regroup and set conditions on the ground than it does a real agreement. We’ll see.

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Russia, Ukraine Reach Cease-Fire Deal—For a Few Days, Anyway

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Today Is the 100th Anniversary of the WWI Christmas Truce

by WalkerB27aru Posted on December 25, 2014

Mother Jones

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This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

Go to war and every politician will thank you, and they’ll continue to do so—with monuments and statues, war museums and military cemeteries—long after you’re dead. But who thanks those who refused to fight, even in wars that most people later realized were tragic mistakes? Consider the 2003 invasion of Iraq, now widely recognized as igniting an ongoing disaster. America’s politicians still praise Iraq War veterans to the skies, but what senator has a kind word to say about the hundreds of thousands of protesters who marched and demonstrated before the invasion was even launched to try to stop our soldiers from risking their lives in the first place?

What brings all this to mind is an apparently heartening exception to the rule of celebrating war-makers and ignoring peacemakers. A European rather than an American example, it turns out to be not quite as simple as it first appears. Let me explain.

December 25th will be the 100th anniversary of the famous Christmas Truce of the First World War. You probably know the story: after five months of unparalleled industrial-scale slaughter, fighting on the Western Front came to a spontaneous halt. British and German soldiers stopped shooting at each other and emerged into the no-man’s-land between their muddy trenches in France and Belgium to exchange food and gifts.

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Today Is the 100th Anniversary of the WWI Christmas Truce

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No, There Really Isn’t Much We Can Do To Retaliate Against North Korea

by Ellie77Vgachfw Posted on December 21, 2014

Mother Jones

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A couple of days ago I wrote a post suggesting that there might not really be much we can do to retaliate against North Korea for the Sony hack. So I was curious to read “A Reply to Kim’s Cyberterrorism,” a Wall Street Journal editorial telling us what options we had. I figured that if anyone could make the best case for action, it was the Journal.

Unfortunately, they mostly just persuaded me that there really is very little we can do. After clearing their throats with a couple of suggestions that even they admit are mostly just symbolic, they get to the meat of things:

Earlier this year Rep. Ed Royce introduced the North Korea Sanctions Enforcement Act, which gives Treasury the power it needs to sanction banks facilitating North Korea’s finances. It passed the House easily in July but has since been locked up in Harry Reid’s Senate at the behest of the Obama Administration. Mr. Royce tells us he plans to reintroduce the bill as a first order of business in the new Congress. New Jersey Democrat Robert Menendez has introduced similar legislation in the Senate; a bill could be on Mr. Obama’s desk by the second week in January.

So….that’s it. And even this is weaker tea than the Journal suggests. For starters, the bill has a serious structural problem because it puts severe limits on the president’s power, which is why Obama hasn’t supported it in the past. It’s a bad idea in foreign relations for Congress to mandate sanctions that can then be lifted only by Congress. This makes it almost impossible for presidents to negotiate future agreements because they have no carrots to offer in return for good behavior.

But that could be fixed. What can’t be fixed is the fact that North Korea learned a lesson from our previous attempt at tightening economic sanctions in 2007, when we cut off the US links of Banco Delta Asia, a Macau-based bank suspected of doing business with North Korea. This in turn panicked other Macau banks into cutting off their relationships with North Korea, which severely restricted the regime’s access to dollars. As the Journal notes, this genuinely hurt North Korea, and the Bush administration agreed to resolve the BDA issue during the Six-Party nuclear talks later that year.

Unfortunately for us, sanctions like this would hurt North Korea a lot less now than they did back in 2007. Stephan Haggard explains:

Post-BDA, and since the ascent of Kim Jong-un in particular, North Korea has also sought to diversify its trade, investment and financial links. The KPA and its associates have developed relationships with financial entities that are not concerned with access to the U.S. market, both in China and outside it; Russia will be particularly interesting to watch in this regard but there is also the open field of the Middle East….While this legislation might raise the costs of proliferation activities if implemented, it is unlikely to staunch them completely and could simply forge new networks beyond the law’s reach.

Another question is whether the sanctions will have the broader strategic effect of moving the North Koreans toward serious negotiation of its nuclear program….The paradoxical feature of sanctions is that they rarely have the direct effect of forcing the target country to capitulate. The HR 1771 sanctions will have effect only when coupled with strong statements of a willingness to engage if North Korea showed signs of interest in doing so. The legislation provides plenty of sticks; the administration will have to continue to articulate the prospective carrots in a way that is credible. Strong sanctions legislation makes that difficult to do if the legislation places a series of binding constraints on the president’s discretion. Why negotiate with the U.S. if there is no return from doing so?

With changes, Royce’s sanctions bill might be an appropriate response to the Sony hack. However, it’s unlikely to have a severe effect on North Korea. Even worse, past history shows that a single-minded “get tough” attitude toward the DPRK can backfire badly, as it did on George Bush when his refusal to negotiate with Pyongyang in 2002 led in short order to the ejection of UN inspectors and the construction of plutonium bombs from a stockpile that had previously been kept under lock and key.

As the cliche goes, there are no good options here, just bad and less bad. I wouldn’t necessarily oppose a modified version of the sanctions bill, but it’s unlikely to have a major impact. It might even make things worse. If this is the best we can do, it’s pretty much an admission that there’s not really much we can do.

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No, There Really Isn’t Much We Can Do To Retaliate Against North Korea

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China Is Building a New Silk Road to Europe, And It’s Leaving America Behind

by CarmeloUBYX Posted on December 16, 2014

Mother Jones

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This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

November 18, 2014: it’s a day that should live forever in history. On that day, in the city of Yiwu in China’s Zhejiang province, 300 kilometers south of Shanghai, the first train carrying 82 containers of export goods weighing more than 1,000 tons left a massive warehouse complex heading for Madrid. It arrived on December 9th.

Welcome to the new trans-Eurasia choo-choo train. At over 13,000 kilometers, it will regularly traverse the longest freight train route in the world, 40% farther than the legendary Trans-Siberian Railway. Its cargo will cross China from East to West, then Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland, Germany, France, and finally Spain.

You may not have the faintest idea where Yiwu is, but businessmen plying their trades across Eurasia, especially from the Arab world, are already hooked on the city “where amazing happens!” We’re talking about the largest wholesale center for small-sized consumer goods—from clothes to toys—possibly anywhere on Earth.

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China Is Building a New Silk Road to Europe, And It’s Leaving America Behind

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Quote of the Day: Russian Central Bank Decides It Needs to Destroy the Economy In Order to Save It

by CaseyHSJTjrd Posted on December 16, 2014

Mother Jones

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From Neil Irwin, commenting on the huge interest rate jump announced by Russia’s central bank in the wee hours of the morning:

It may go without saying, but a 6.5 percentage point emergency interest rate increase announced in the middle of the night is not a sign of strength.

Roger that. Russian central bankers hope that this will be an incentive for people to keep their money in Russia, earning high interest, instead of shipping rubles out of the country at warp speed and squirreling them away in any safe haven that comes to hand. And maybe it will work. Alternatively, as Irwin suggests, it may be viewed as a sign of desperation, causing Russia’s oligarchs to pile on the dilithium crystals and ship out their money even faster. You never know what’s going to work when a currency crisis goes into panic mode.

In any case, even if it works, the price is going to be high. Here in America, we argue about whether the Fed will choke off recovery if it raises interest rates to 2 percent. Russia is now at 17 percent. Even if this puts a halt to currency flight, it’s going to kill their economy. In Russia tonight, there are no good options left.

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Quote of the Day: Russian Central Bank Decides It Needs to Destroy the Economy In Order to Save It

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