The global stability of every country is facing challenges as never before, I would expect the USA Congress to hold responsible activities and not inflammatory grandstanding.

Congress needs to end their political priorities in bizarre Congressional votes and committee hearings.

This is simply outrageous. The extremes have no place in the world today.

The Republican venom is more inviting for violent resolve than ever before.

September 20, 2015
By Amber Phillips

...Here are the five most contentious moments from Richards's appearance on Capitol Hill.

1. How much money Richards makes (click here)

In his opening statement, committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) said he doesn't think Planned Parenthood needs federal subsidies; just look at Richards's salary, he said.
"I could be here a long time listing out fairly exorbitant salaries," he said.
When it was time to ask Richards questions, Chaffetz hammered the Planned Parenthood president on her salary. Here's an excerpt:

CHAFFETZ: Your compensation in 2009 was $353,000. Is that correct?
RICHARDS: I don't have the figures with me. But …
CHAFFETZ: It was. Congratulations. In 2013, your compensation went up some $240,000. Your compensation, we're showing based on tax returns, is $590,000, correct?
RICHARDS: That's not my annual compensation. I — actually, my annual compensation is $520,000 a year. I believe there was a program that the board sort of put together for a three-year — I'm happy — again, I think we have been extremely forthcoming with all of our documents.

The exchange seriously upset Democrats in the room.
When it was her turn to speak, Rep. Carol Maloney (D-N.Y.) said, "In my entire time I've been in Congress, I've never seen a witness beaten up and questioned about their salary" — and especially a woman, she said. "I find it totally inappropriate and discriminatory."...

This is what happens when Congress embarks on a witch hunt for no reason at all. The venom needs to end and the public hearings have to end.

November 27. 2015
Colorado Springs, Colo. - Police arrested (click here) a gunman who stormed a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in Colorado Springs on Friday and opened fire with a rifle in an attack that left three people dead and nine others injured, authorities said.
The dead included one police officer and two civilians, Colorado Springs Police Chief Peter Carey told reporters about an hour after the suspect had been captured.
All nine surviving victims - five police officers and four civilians - were listed in good condition at area hospitals, Carney said....


This is what happens when Congress turns committee chambers over to McCarthyism.

I do not want to hear one more word in public about Planned Parenthood. If Congress has reason to seek charges then turn it over to the federal Attorney General.

NOT ONE MORE WORD IN PUBLIC. If it occurs I expect ethics charges in addition than those that should already be in the works from the September 20th committee display of politics.

I am still traveling.

Until later.

Troops out of Afghanistan now.

Daesh is the officers once serving Saddam Hussein. One of the first things the USA military should have done in Iraq was find and capture or kill the Iraqi military. They only wanted Saddam because the is what George W. Bush wanted. These Ba'athists should have been tried for war crimes along with Saddam a long time ago.

How could have the USA military missed this? Maybe they were too busy fighting a street war that could not be contained. There is no sense to putting troops in the middle of that again. Every sovereign country needs to secure their country, keep citizens safe while the coalition of Air Force continues to destroy the hiding places of the Ba'athists in Syria, that is if they aren't in Turkey by now.

8 August 2015
By Tom Wyke

...While attending (click here) the Iraqi army's artillery school nearly 20 years ago, Ali Omran remembers one major well. An Islamic hard-liner, he once chided Omran for wearing an Iraqi flag pin into the bathroom because it included the words 'God is great.'

'It is forbidden by religion to bring the name of the Almighty into a defiled place like this,' Omran recalled being told by Maj. Taha Taher al-Ani.

Omran didn't see al-Ani again until years later, in 2003. The Americans had invaded Iraq and were storming toward Baghdad. Saddam Hussein's fall was imminent.

At a sprawling military base north of the capital, al-Ani was directing the loading of weapons, ammunition and ordnance into trucks to spirit away. He took those weapons with him when he joined Tawhid wa'l-Jihad, a forerunner of al-Qaida's branch in Iraq.

Now al-Ani is a commander in the Islamic State group, said Omran, who rose to become a major general in the Iraqi army and now commands its 5th Division fighting IS.

He kept track of his former comrade through Iraq's tribal networks and intelligence gathered by the government's main counter terrorism service, of which he is a member....

The suicide bomber are treating The West no different than those in the very same neighborhood where they live.

November 27, 2015
By Aminu Abubakar

At least 21 people were killed on Friday when a suicide bomber blew himself up in the crowds at a Shia Muslim procession near the north Nigerian city of Kano, in the latest violence to hit the troubled region.

The attack happened in the village of Dakasoye, some 20 kilometres (13 miles) south of the city, during a march by followers of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria....

More than 100 French Transit workers have been to Syria for training, huh? Daesh has big plans. Disable a western civilization and then take over the country as brutally as Daesh treats everyone else.

Baghdad is awash with US troops not Baath party revellers this year (click here)

Daesh are old Saddam Ba'athists. That means the old Iraqi military is still intact and taken a different name. Saddam had generals and intelligence and now all that capacity including developed strategies begun in France is in play.

I will be traveling for a few days and I doubt I will be back online. If there is a chance to be online I'll be posting that here.

Until later.

It was a good meeting and clarity was stated about the purpose of the visit by President Hollande. There are now hopes for a political solution in Syria. That means there will be leadership to step in when Daesh has been defeated.

This is a historical time in the world. A global coalition has never happened before. I look forward to President Hollande's visit to Russia and a strong world alliance to settle Syria into a stable land.

I wish all well.

Vive la France!

I demand Brian Williams to be fired.

He has major control issues that is built around the USA military. He is an idiot.

He is calling this world alliance a Third World War. He is about a much an idiot as one that can be found!

This is global alliance to end the violence and influence of Daesh in their societies. This is NOT A WORLD WAR.

You know MSNBC can complain about Donald Trump overstating reality, but, this? This is pure idiocy on a news network!

NATO should be grateful Russia and China have leaders with a steady hand on their military. I am quite certain Russia and China are grateful for President Hollande, Prime Minister David Cameron and President Obama. 

There have been other incidence along borders recently. These destabilizing issues have to be brought into focus. The countries fighting Daesh cannot afford a war between themselves.

The USA wants to have contingencies within Iraq to lead simpletons and win back the ground Iraq and Syria lost to Daesh. 

The USA has to have a contingency to lead Turkey. This is going to happen over and over simply because Turkey is in an "OMG the border! stupidity.

I apologize to Russia. This is outrageous. There is absolutely no reason for this, but, then all the activities by the Turkish military and political leaders have been bizarre since Syria became incredibly unstable. There needs to be a contingency from the USA AND RUSSIA to direct Turkey's activities at the border.

Russia is a valuable partner in this struggle. Russia is an ally with Assad and Iran. We can't do this without them.

Station USA and Russia jets in Turkey along side of Turkish jets. It is the only way Turkish commanders will understand this. The hatred of Kurdistan is no different than the hate Israel has for Palestine. Turkey sees an opportunity to advance it's push against the Kurds and anything other than that will be a chronic problem. Puts jets of coalition members, including Russia, on the tamarac of a Turkey military instillation. 

Everything Turkey has done to damage the stability of Syria during this entire time is opportunistic. It has nothing to do with the priorities of NATO or the USA's interventions in the region. 

Amazing.  

Turkey is wrong. There was no danger from Russia jets.

Turkey stepped outside of NATO's status in the region. I stated this was a potential if there was a No Fly Zone over Syria. Turkey has been on its own's standard for the entire time. It never secured the border with Syria. NATO has to meet with Russia to resolve tensions. If Turkey is fighting its own war then NATO needs to take steps to take over the Turkey border to end this type of issue. The war with Daesh CANNOT be compromised and lead to another war. 

This is Turkey. They have their own reality and now this. 

After a long struggle to secure their lands, Kurds were killed at Turkey's border when all of a sudden Turkey looked south and decided the Kurds were disposable to it's own priorities and politics. This is not the first bizarre strike Turkey has committed in recent weeks. 

27 October 2015

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu (click here) has confirmed that the Turkish military has attacked Kurdish fighters in northern Syria.

The Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) said Turkey shot at its forces in the town of Tal Abyad on Sunday.
The YPG has been a key ally of the US in fighting the so-called Islamic State (IS) group in Syria.
Turkey fears advances by the YPG near its Syrian border could fuel separatist sentiments amongst Kurds in Turkey.
The attacks come amid increasing tensions in Turkey ahead of elections.
"We said the [YPG-aligned Democratic Union Party] PYD will not go west of the Euphrates and that we would hit it the moment it did," Mr Davutoglu told Turkish ATV television late Monday.
He gave no further details....

Turkey is fighting a far different war than any other country in the region trying to stabilize Syria. 

November 19, 2015
By Uzay Bulut

In 1990s, (click here) the Turkish military used to burn down Kurdish villages; today they burn down Kurdish towns.
This month, three neighborhoods in the Kurdish town of Silvan in Diyarbakir Province -- Tekel, Konak and Mescit -- were put under military curfew and then attacked from November 3 to November 14. Telephone lines, water, and electricity were cut.
The neighborhoods, besieged by armored police vehicles, were then bombarded by tanks and artillery shooting from the hills. Many houses were hit by bullets and bombs; some houses were burned. [1]
Representatives of the governor's office in Diyarbakir claimed that the military operations aimed to "remove the ditches and barricades" set up by some Kurdish youths, but reports coming from the town showed that the operation actually seemed to aim at ethnically cleansing the town from its indigenous population of more than two thousand years, the Kurds. [2]
"We cannot get information from those neighborhoods in any way." Firat Anli, the co-mayor of Diyarbakir, told Firat News Agency (ANF). "We cannot send in any food or humanitarian aid. Dialysis patients, children, the elderly... We have no information about their situation. They have been disconnected from the rest of the world."...

Russia needs to meet with Turkey and resolve these hostilities. There is going to be issues with jet incursions and the Turkish borders. Where was Turkey when countries asked it to secure it's border with Syria?

DAESH has no jets!!!
  
THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I STATED BEFORE ON THIS BLOG WHEN THERE WERE DREAMSCAPES ABOUT A NO FLY ZONE. Turkey is not in the same universe as everyone else, yet alone on the same program. Turkey has and continues to compromise every effort to end the Daesh militia. Turkey is more of a problem than anyone wants to believe.

Simpletons.  

Assad is not going anywhere. E.J. Dionne is absolutely correct.

The Middle East is less about countries and more about nations of people. That is something The West can't get it's head around.

Now, if The West, as "W" thought is going to end claims on land by nations of people that have lived there for millennium they are fools. 

There is ONLY ONE enemy of The West in the middle east and that the Ba'athists from Iraq. It is the only enemy in the Middle East. The Saddam Ba'athists have formed a militia called The Islamic State. The Islamic State is fictitious, but, it is a great selling point for men too scared to die to fight the USA military when in Iraq. 

The reason the war in Syria and Iraq is so vicious and over the top by any estimate is because the Ba'athists have no place else to go. They have lost everything they once called home including Saddam's home city. 

The Shia Crescent is a fact. It has been established for millennium. There is never going to be a change in the way the HISTORIC Middle East exists. That reality is why Israel has been opposed by many countries in this region. It wasn't until the Six Day War that Israel was accepted even though there was no diplomacy yet. The diplomacy would be coming.

Syria occupies the largest slice of the Shia Crescent with an enormous variety of ethnicities and faiths. There will always be a power sharing arrangement in Syria and it is a matter of time before the peace is returned to Syria. Then the water sources have to be reestablished and rebuilding of the country has to begin. The people when they return will remember the beauty of their lives and will rebuild the temples and mosques and farmers will farm and the lives of Syrians will return to normal.

Pay attention to this. IF THERE WAS A POWER SHARING GOVERNMENT IN SYRIA, rather than just President Assad, there would have been a civil war anyway simply because of the devastation of the land caused by drought.

The Middle East is not about ownership and less about sovereignty of borders and more about the ability of nations of people to live among each other. As long as people have food in their bellies and they can go the market and purchase rugs and antiquities and wonderful beads and baubles and celebrate their long history in pilgrimages, there will be peace.

Restoring the land will restore the people and the people will restore the culture. The restoration of Syria will have to come from the generosity of the world because we value all human life and disdain genocide. 

I believe Hillary Clinton has a clear understanding of the region and it's dynamics and how to resolve the civil war after the Ba'athists of Daesh are defeated. I believe she knows if The West were to enter the civil war, it would only serve to increase the violence. It would not only increase the violence and the attraction of Islamists into Syria, it would destroy any progress the Iraqi military and the Kurdish Army has made.

Hillary Clinton knows what she is talking about.

2 degree centigrade has always been the standard and there is every reason to believe that is too generous.

I don't care what the PLEDGES are to stem the climate crisis. It has to be better than the graph below because that graph will destroy the planet. No doubt in my mind.

I posted the temperatures in Australia. And Australia is in the southern oceans near to Antarctica. I post those NOTATIONS for a very real reason. BECAUSE THEY ARE REAL. Earth's physics is not up for debate.

I am not promoting politics here, but, Hillary Clinton has promised to turn the USA into an alternative energy land. She is correct. The USA has contributed far more greenhouse gases to the troposphere than any other country on Earth. The next one is Great Britain. The USA has a responsibility to carry out the strategy to turn the corner on the climate crisis. There is no other country that can.

The climate science is completely clear. The USA has to turn this trend around. If temperatures continue to rise this planet will become parched and dead. Why do you think scientists were bringing this before the country in the 1960s? It takes time to turn it around. Hillary Clinton takes this dead seriously. Every leader in the world regardless of party has a profound mission to lead their countries to a benevolent place to live.

There is nothing else to say. The science is clear AND the challenges to maintaining sovereignty is completely obvious. If people don't have water to drink, food to eat and their farmland is rendered dead of any potential the sovereignty of a country is over. Syria is probably the most obvious example. This is NOT strange science or national security assessment. It is real and everyone needs to realize that.   

The graph below is from the New York Times. (click here) 

Ice melt, sea level rise and Superstorms: evidence from paleoclimate data, climate modeling, and modern observations that 2 degree C global warming is highly dangerous (click here)

J. Hansen¹, M. Sato¹, P. Hearty², R. Ruedy^3,4, M. Kelley^3,4, V. Masson-Delmotte⁵, G. Russell⁴, G. Tselioudis⁴, J. Cao⁶, E. Rignot^7,8, I. Velicogna^7,8, E. Kandiano⁹, K. von Schuckmann¹⁰, P. Kharecha^1,4, A. N. Legrande⁴, M. Bauer¹¹, and K.-W. Lo^3,4
 
1Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions, Columbia University Earth Institute, New York, NY 10115, USA
²Department of Environmental Studies, University of North Carolina at Wilmington, North Carolina 28403, USA
³Trinnovium LLC, New York, NY 10025, USA
⁴NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, 2880 Broadway, New York, NY 10025, USA
⁵Institut Pierre Simon Laplace, Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement (CEA-CNRS-UVSQ), Gif-sur-Yvette, France
⁶Key Lab of Aerosol Chemistry & Physics, Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi'an 710075, China
⁷Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, 91109, USA
⁸Department of Earth System Science, University of California, Irvine, California, 92697, USA
⁹GEOMAR, Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research, Wischhofstrasse 1–3, Kiel 24148, Germany
¹⁰Mediterranean Institute of Oceanography, University of Toulon, La Garde, France
¹¹Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics, Columbia University, New York, NY, 10027, USA

There are eleven highly esteem and VALID climate scientists AND their organizations stating with centuries of experience when their careers are added altogether stating 2 degree celcius is the absolute limit.

continued.... 

I know Gowdy is guilty. I could not believe he and the Republicans were getting away with what they have gotten away with.

This so called Congress has used their power for political purposes and not governing. Gowdy thinks he is ENTITLED to prosecute OUR employees with impunity. This isn't Kansas or where ever is from.
 November 28, 2015
By Jean Ann Esselink
 
Major Bradley Podliska, (click here) the Air Force Reserve Officer who blew the whistle on the political aims of the House Benghazi Select Committee, has filed a federal lawsuit against the committee and its chairman, South Carolina Republican Trey Gowdy, claiming Gowdy broke the law when he told NBC news that Major Podliska mishandled classified information. The lawsuit alleges:

"Chairman Gowdy, personally and through his agents, tied these defamatory statements to Podliska’s firing to damage Podliska’s reputation and his ability to seek or secure employment in his chosen field, depriving Podliska of his rights under the Constitution of the United States.”

"This has become a partisan investigation," Major Podliska told CNN's Jake Tapper. "I knew that we needed to get the truth to the victims' families. And the victims' families, they deserve the truth whether or not Hillary Clinton was involved... The victims' families are not going to get the truth and that's the most unfortunate thing about this."...

The Republican Congress is lined with inexperience at the federal governing level. Their bluster and hubris might get them elected back home, but, doesn't and shouldn't play well to the country.

The purpose of the Republican Congress was to use the House and Senate floor for political purposes. That isn't ethical. Attempting to pass bills 50 times or more is waste of taxpayers' money.

The Benghazi Committees have soaked up millions of dollars and came with nothing. Gowdy has a lot riding on this committee he chairs. He has to come through for the party and any government employee, including military personnel, were going to BE MADE to deliver what no other Benghazi Committee could. The entire process used to establish these committees is completely outrageous. 

It is about time someone came forward to face down the hideousness of this Republican Congress. It stands to reason it would someone from our military. I congratulate Mayor Podliska. 

This sort of activity is nothing short of McCarthyism. We know where that went. Repeated bills on the floor of Congress and repeated committees to find damnable evidence regardless how long and how often it took is extremism and it fly in the face of our democracy and Constitution.