Thanks so much Mark. Sometimes blogging makes a person fuzzy minded but of course I know Clapper was DNI. DNI oversees NSA among others, which what was probably on my mind.
There are actually three issues here, which you are running together:
How someone gets to power
Whether the leader has a national mandate
Whether the leader's techniques of rule are democratic.
Both Erdogan and Sisi became president through a deeply flawed electoral process in which press freedom was suppressed, opponents were coerced or jailed (ask HDP), and significant sections of the opposition were branded terrorist.
Both Erdogan and Sisi appear to be widely popular, though Sisi is probably more popular than Erdogan across the public.
Both Erdogan and Sisi have fired large numbers of civil servants on grounds of adherence to a 'terrorist' group. Both have governed in an illiberal and undemocratic way. Sisi had been until recently more illiberal and undemocratic, but Erdogan is catching up to him. Sisi has closed fewer universities and jailed or had fired fewer journalists and professors. Despite his military actions in Sinai, Sisi has also not displaced 350,000 of his own citizens.
Thanks for providing the opportunity to expand on the comparison, which is to Erdogan's disadvantage more than I originally thought.
Many people die because they don't have regular access to health care, and so they end up in the emergency room when it is too late. Doctor visits in pregnancy are also tied to lower infant and mother mortality.
it is nothing to do with voter intelligence. The GOP congressmen were elected by a fourth of their district and with money provided by big corporations. Gerrymandering and voter suppression laws and Tuesday workday voting hours ensured that millions were disenfranchised. It is de facto oligarchy, not democracy.
Hi, Kevin. Could I push back against the idea that taxpayers have jurisdiction over the speech of professors at public universities because they pay their salaries? I help pay the salary of Gov. Snyder, and my Texas counterparts pay the salary of Ted Cruz and yet we have no say in their public discourse, nor do I think we want any. Presumably taxpayers are paying for the students in their state to be educated, not to create a class of thousands of muzzled slaves.
As Informed Comment evolves into a magazine it inevitably syndicates a wide range of views. Publication of them is not an endorsement of the author but an invitation to think critically about the points made. That Russia has become an oligarchy of some sort is not controversial.
This isn't quite accurate, Mark. The French may have gotten some Alawite young men to join the army during the colonial period, but members of that sect weren't all that prominent in the 20s and 30s. The Baath was multi-confessional and in the 60s the Druze briefly dominated it. Hafez al-Assad only came to power, in a coup, in 1970.
Some officers and soldiers were Vichy loyalists and never did support the allies. Their 'country' was Nazi occupied, so is that what they were fighting for? And some of these officers and troops went on to genocide the Algerians. The FN has very, very smelly origins.
Roosevelt in 1940 was trying to avoid war; not a sign he liked Fascism. He sent troops soon thereafter to kill those Vichy troops in N. Africa who would not stand down.
After failing the day before to convince Spanish dictator Francisco Franco to bring his country into the war on the Axis side, Adolf Hitler met with 84-year-old Maréchal (Marshal) Philippe Pétain, respected military leader (“victor of Verdun”) and now head of state (chef de l’État Français), and Pierre Laval, deputy leader of Vichy France, on this date in 1940 in the relatively isolated town of Montoire-sur-le-Loir, about 80 miles south of Paris. The secret meeting between German and French leaders had been suggested two days earlier by Laval, an outspoken proponent of state collaboration with Nazi Germany, even pushing his view on Pétain that the Marshal formally enroll France in the Tripartite (Axis) Pact.
Hitler’s charm offensive took place in his private railcar just outside the town’s train station. For Pétain and Laval it was important to define a new political relationship with Germany, even if it was an unequal one. On Pétain’s agenda was a reduction in the war indemnity France was obliged to pay the victorious Germans. Pétain also wanted Hitler to release the 1-1/2 million French prisoners of war who were still in POW camps, held hostage to enforce German terms on France. Pétain and Laval were assured that France could expect concessions if an acceptable agreement on collaboration was negotiated.
The famous handshake between Hitler and Pétain was photographed, and Joseph Goebbels’ Nazi propaganda ministry made much use of the photo to gain support from French civilians. A week later, when Pétain publicized his meeting with Hitler, the Marshal made collaboration Vichy state policy, declaring on French radio: “I enter today on the path of collaboration” (“J’entre aujourd’hui dans la voie de la collaboration”), and inviting his countrymen to join him on the journey. Five years later, in 1945, Pétain was handed over to the provisional French government headed by his wartime nemesis, Gen. Charles de Gaulle."
US troops took heavy fire, and casualties, from loyalist Vichy French troops in North Africa. Admittedly, some of them went over to de Gaulle and laid down their arms. The children of those Vichy troops firing on American GIs in Morocco and Algeria formed Le Pen's National Front. I am shocked that some readers are resisting these obvious facts.
The Moroccan king pushed back against Vichy inquiries about surrendering his Jews to them, but he wasn't very powerful. There isn't any doubt that most Muslims were appalled at the idea.
The planes destroyed were destroyed because they had been grounded for repairs. The regime flew missions from it the next day. Not extensive damage and light years from being any sort of game changer.
You need to talk to some Syrian Allawites, Christians, secular Sunnis. They might have wavered in 2011-2012 but now they fear it is the regime or the Salafi Jihadis, who will kill them all.
You're missing something. International sanctions were all that kept Iran from developing LNG. Now Shell or Total or someone will, and they will ship it on the seas to Europe. Going from Iran with natural gas to Europe anyway can be done through Turkey. Iran does not border Syria, and volatile gas pipelines can't go through rabidly Salafi anti-Iranian provinces.
There is *no* gas pipeline explanation for the Syrian war. This is not about hydrocarbons.
there is no appreciable oil in Syria. Entrepreneurs are always looking for it but the really big fields in accessible places were long ago found. Since oil prospectors need big bucks to just look, there are lots of completely unrealistic prospectuses out there. Syria was doing 400k barrels a day before the war, which isn't worth mentioning, much less making war over.
There is almost no oil in Syria. With supertankers and Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG), hydrocarbons can be moved on supertankers efficiently and safely. So there is no reason to put a pipeline through Syria, and certainly not enough of a reason to go to war for it. Syria is about geopolitics.
Guerrilla groups only flourish if they have a base in the local population. The point of gassing Khan Shikhoun is to let people in Idlib know that they had better turn on al-Qaeda and its allies and deny them food, shelter, support or else they are all toast together. It is pour encourager les autres, to 'encourage the others' in the wicked French phrase.
It doesn't defy reason at all. Idlib is al-Qaeda central now and coming to the front burner for Damascus. That it is rural is irrelevant; that is where you find guerrilas. Al-Qaeda did not gas its own subjects.
There are no chem warehouses in that area and Idlib is owned by the Syrian Conquest Front; this was an attack by the regime on one of their safe houses.
The story that Carter gave a green light for Iraq to attack Iran is not supported by any documentary evidence and is flatly contradicted by Gary Sick, who was on the Iran desk at the National Security Council in that period. It also doesn't fit with what we know of Carter.
The Sargodha situation is murky and it is weird to say it is a matter of a cult. The keeper of a Sufi shrine seems to have gone bonkers and killed his own visitors. There is no reason to think the shrine congregants were a 'cult.' Some suggest that the shrine keeper went Taliban. We'll see.
attributing global warming to natural causes is denialism because it intends to deny that burning hydrocarbons is harmful. Russia is an oil state. There are no natural causes that would explain our 1.1 degree C. increase in the past century and a half; in fact, sunspots are low and if were were still in the holocene it should be cold.
Clinton's server was not unauthorized and was never the issue in the investigation. The question was if she had emailed out highly classified material from it. She did not.
Not every geographical area is rich in potential wind energy (likewise the US Southeast). There are transmission wires that will solve that problem. China is building thousands of miles of them to bring wind power down from Mongolia. But in any case wind is likely a temporary solution, and solar is the future, including solar technology that can get power on cloudy days.
V minor
Actually I wrote about Russia and Syrian Kurds for The Nation last week.
Thanks so much Mark. Sometimes blogging makes a person fuzzy minded but of course I know Clapper was DNI. DNI oversees NSA among others, which what was probably on my mind.
As I said, I was talking about foreign policy-- Climate change, European integration, etc.
As for the rest, two wrongs don't make a right.
They captured a lot of vehicles from the Iraqi Army depots in Mosul in 2014. And, I don't think air power is as all-seeing as you suggest.
Thanks for that, Alan! We needed it!
US has caused a lot of trouble in ME. Not true that Russia wd withdraw. Wants to suppress fundamentalism.
Yeah, I don't actually think the two situations are in any way similar.
There are actually three issues here, which you are running together:
How someone gets to power
Whether the leader has a national mandate
Whether the leader's techniques of rule are democratic.
Both Erdogan and Sisi became president through a deeply flawed electoral process in which press freedom was suppressed, opponents were coerced or jailed (ask HDP), and significant sections of the opposition were branded terrorist.
Both Erdogan and Sisi appear to be widely popular, though Sisi is probably more popular than Erdogan across the public.
Both Erdogan and Sisi have fired large numbers of civil servants on grounds of adherence to a 'terrorist' group. Both have governed in an illiberal and undemocratic way. Sisi had been until recently more illiberal and undemocratic, but Erdogan is catching up to him. Sisi has closed fewer universities and jailed or had fired fewer journalists and professors. Despite his military actions in Sinai, Sisi has also not displaced 350,000 of his own citizens.
Thanks for providing the opportunity to expand on the comparison, which is to Erdogan's disadvantage more than I originally thought.
Many people die because they don't have regular access to health care, and so they end up in the emergency room when it is too late. Doctor visits in pregnancy are also tied to lower infant and mother mortality.
Not to mention that Obamacare worked perfectly well in Massachusetts. It was in states where the GOP deliberately sabotaged it that it did not.
it is nothing to do with voter intelligence. The GOP congressmen were elected by a fourth of their district and with money provided by big corporations. Gerrymandering and voter suppression laws and Tuesday workday voting hours ensured that millions were disenfranchised. It is de facto oligarchy, not democracy.
Yes, India has excellent engineers and many people are handy. They can do this.
Paying tuition should result in your hearing things you didn't know, not in only hearing things you want to.
Hi, Kevin. Could I push back against the idea that taxpayers have jurisdiction over the speech of professors at public universities because they pay their salaries? I help pay the salary of Gov. Snyder, and my Texas counterparts pay the salary of Ted Cruz and yet we have no say in their public discourse, nor do I think we want any. Presumably taxpayers are paying for the students in their state to be educated, not to create a class of thousands of muzzled slaves.
As Informed Comment evolves into a magazine it inevitably syndicates a wide range of views. Publication of them is not an endorsement of the author but an invitation to think critically about the points made. That Russia has become an oligarchy of some sort is not controversial.
This isn't quite accurate, Mark. The French may have gotten some Alawite young men to join the army during the colonial period, but members of that sect weren't all that prominent in the 20s and 30s. The Baath was multi-confessional and in the 60s the Druze briefly dominated it. Hafez al-Assad only came to power, in a coup, in 1970.
Some officers and soldiers were Vichy loyalists and never did support the allies. Their 'country' was Nazi occupied, so is that what they were fighting for? And some of these officers and troops went on to genocide the Algerians. The FN has very, very smelly origins.
Roosevelt in 1940 was trying to avoid war; not a sign he liked Fascism. He sent troops soon thereafter to kill those Vichy troops in N. Africa who would not stand down.
link to ww2days.com
"Montoire, Occupied France • October 24, 1940
After failing the day before to convince Spanish dictator Francisco Franco to bring his country into the war on the Axis side, Adolf Hitler met with 84-year-old Maréchal (Marshal) Philippe Pétain, respected military leader (“victor of Verdun”) and now head of state (chef de l’État Français), and Pierre Laval, deputy leader of Vichy France, on this date in 1940 in the relatively isolated town of Montoire-sur-le-Loir, about 80 miles south of Paris. The secret meeting between German and French leaders had been suggested two days earlier by Laval, an outspoken proponent of state collaboration with Nazi Germany, even pushing his view on Pétain that the Marshal formally enroll France in the Tripartite (Axis) Pact.
Hitler’s charm offensive took place in his private railcar just outside the town’s train station. For Pétain and Laval it was important to define a new political relationship with Germany, even if it was an unequal one. On Pétain’s agenda was a reduction in the war indemnity France was obliged to pay the victorious Germans. Pétain also wanted Hitler to release the 1-1/2 million French prisoners of war who were still in POW camps, held hostage to enforce German terms on France. Pétain and Laval were assured that France could expect concessions if an acceptable agreement on collaboration was negotiated.
The famous handshake between Hitler and Pétain was photographed, and Joseph Goebbels’ Nazi propaganda ministry made much use of the photo to gain support from French civilians. A week later, when Pétain publicized his meeting with Hitler, the Marshal made collaboration Vichy state policy, declaring on French radio: “I enter today on the path of collaboration” (“J’entre aujourd’hui dans la voie de la collaboration”), and inviting his countrymen to join him on the journey. Five years later, in 1945, Pétain was handed over to the provisional French government headed by his wartime nemesis, Gen. Charles de Gaulle."
US troops took heavy fire, and casualties, from loyalist Vichy French troops in North Africa. Admittedly, some of them went over to de Gaulle and laid down their arms. The children of those Vichy troops firing on American GIs in Morocco and Algeria formed Le Pen's National Front. I am shocked that some readers are resisting these obvious facts.
Now that is an informed comment! Many thanks, Neil.
The Moroccan king pushed back against Vichy inquiries about surrendering his Jews to them, but he wasn't very powerful. There isn't any doubt that most Muslims were appalled at the idea.
Hi, Nicholas. I lived in Beirut under Syrian Baath occupation. I was personally censored under Baath rules. I know fascism when I see it.
Le Pen is a fascist. Racial hierarchy? Check. Ultra-Nationalism? Check. Xenophobia? Check. State-corporate hegemony? Check. Authoritarianism? Check. Militarism? Check.
Trump also has fascist tendencies.
Now that's an informed comment! Thx!
I like Alabama quite a lot. Don't judge the people there by Sessions et al
oh she let Trump have it on twitter
Alabamans are wonderful. Their political class has not served them well.
With all due respect, robotics can't solve the problem
Serif Mardin proposed center- periphery split as far back as '70s. All of the above.
If you're going to be in your house 10 years, you are losing money by not putting in solar panels now.
The planes destroyed were destroyed because they had been grounded for repairs. The regime flew missions from it the next day. Not extensive damage and light years from being any sort of game changer.
Sorry - was traveling, wifi was knocked out by storm - & just lacked time or resources to proofread that. Thx all for helpful corrections.
I meant 11 tons
You need to talk to some Syrian Allawites, Christians, secular Sunnis. They might have wavered in 2011-2012 but now they fear it is the regime or the Salafi Jihadis, who will kill them all.
You're missing something. International sanctions were all that kept Iran from developing LNG. Now Shell or Total or someone will, and they will ship it on the seas to Europe. Going from Iran with natural gas to Europe anyway can be done through Turkey. Iran does not border Syria, and volatile gas pipelines can't go through rabidly Salafi anti-Iranian provinces.
There is *no* gas pipeline explanation for the Syrian war. This is not about hydrocarbons.
Until they went into Syria seriously in late 2015, the Russians barely bothered with that little base at Tartous.
You don't know that. h was asked to leave by computer. He may have been mayled because of race.
The Alawi core around Bashar would never hand power to a relative outsider like Tlass!
there is no appreciable oil in Syria. Entrepreneurs are always looking for it but the really big fields in accessible places were long ago found. Since oil prospectors need big bucks to just look, there are lots of completely unrealistic prospectuses out there. Syria was doing 400k barrels a day before the war, which isn't worth mentioning, much less making war over.
There is almost no oil in Syria. With supertankers and Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG), hydrocarbons can be moved on supertankers efficiently and safely. So there is no reason to put a pipeline through Syria, and certainly not enough of a reason to go to war for it. Syria is about geopolitics.
Almost all is not the same as all.
Guerrilla groups only flourish if they have a base in the local population. The point of gassing Khan Shikhoun is to let people in Idlib know that they had better turn on al-Qaeda and its allies and deny them food, shelter, support or else they are all toast together. It is pour encourager les autres, to 'encourage the others' in the wicked French phrase.
It doesn't defy reason at all. Idlib is al-Qaeda central now and coming to the front burner for Damascus. That it is rural is irrelevant; that is where you find guerrilas. Al-Qaeda did not gas its own subjects.
There are no chem warehouses in that area and Idlib is owned by the Syrian Conquest Front; this was an attack by the regime on one of their safe houses.
The story that Carter gave a green light for Iraq to attack Iran is not supported by any documentary evidence and is flatly contradicted by Gary Sick, who was on the Iran desk at the National Security Council in that period. It also doesn't fit with what we know of Carter.
The Sargodha situation is murky and it is weird to say it is a matter of a cult. The keeper of a Sufi shrine seems to have gone bonkers and killed his own visitors. There is no reason to think the shrine congregants were a 'cult.' Some suggest that the shrine keeper went Taliban. We'll see.
attributing global warming to natural causes is denialism because it intends to deny that burning hydrocarbons is harmful. Russia is an oil state. There are no natural causes that would explain our 1.1 degree C. increase in the past century and a half; in fact, sunspots are low and if were were still in the holocene it should be cold.
Well I can't say how pleased I am to have seen this discussion here! Thanks, all!
It is so nice of you to share your expertise with us here!
Yes typo & thx
The opposition agreed to the referendum. 80% of the electorate voted for him. There was a constitutional process. Neither are Houthis legitimate.
I use a VPN and it doesn't slow down things at all. I recommend the practice to everyone, all the time.
Apparently this can be defeated by using a Virtual Private Network.
Yeah, Nicholas, with all due respect the Pentagon was attacked on 9/11, not just some pedestrians and tourists.
the Saudi royal family is not supporting Daesh! Daesh talks dirty about them and pledges to overthrow them.
Not only that, but the other judges ruled differently from Gorsuch. They were also interested in the meaning of the law.
Clinton's server was not unauthorized and was never the issue in the investigation. The question was if she had emailed out highly classified material from it. She did not.
Using a private server is not and was not against the law.
Not every geographical area is rich in potential wind energy (likewise the US Southeast). There are transmission wires that will solve that problem. China is building thousands of miles of them to bring wind power down from Mongolia. But in any case wind is likely a temporary solution, and solar is the future, including solar technology that can get power on cloudy days.