Rolling MENA 2014 (Middle East)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-33750803?ns_mchannel=social&ns_campaign=bbc_breaking&ns_source=twitter&ns_linkname=news_central

Two Turkish soldiers killed and 31 injured in an apparent PKK suicide bombing.

this is just going to get worse & worse, isn’t it

There has been no comment from the PKK so far.

AFP news agency said it would be the first time the group was accused of deploying a suicide bomber during recent clashes.

hmm

i take turkish military's word for it, provisionally (especially since pkk took credit for earlier attack). but can’t help thinking that ultimately, cui bono = isis, & indirectly erdogan gov't itself (giving turkey more reason/justification to attack kurds)

in any case, according to patrick cockburn,
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/turkeykurdish-conflict-obamas-deal-with-ankara-is-a-betrayal-of-syrian-kurds-and-may-not-even-weaken-isis-10432524.html

The PKK has used suicide bombings fairly frequently in the past so it's not inherently suspicious. There are limited options for conducting attacks against police and military bases.

It was interesting to see Barazani ask them to leave Iraqi Kurdistan yesterday. There's a huge amount of self-protection there but it's also clear that there are complex relationships between the Kurdish groups.

*Barzani*

yes that was interesting
(& instructive, knew v little about their interrelations & variations in relations with turkey)
helpful schematic from yr linked bbc article (also encapsulates strangeness of situation)
http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/D8F6/production/_84524555_kurd_groups_turk_govt_624in.png

anyone have a better source for this than nypost?
http://nypost.com/2015/08/01/iran-publishes-book-on-how-to-outwit-us-and-destroy-israel/

according to saudi prince bandar,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/07/16/saudi-prince-bandar-says-iran-nuke-deal-worse-than-failed-north-korea-deal/

Mark Wallace from United Against Nuclear Iran is interviewed by vox and explains how a better deal could have been made: Threatening sanctions against countries like Germany if they didn't support American hardline strategy.

Iran never viewed China and Russia as key trading partners. I think European trade is the more relevant question. There was always seepage from China and Russia. The bigger question is Europe. Even at the height of sanctions, German companies engaged in significant business in Europe. Germany had about $3.6 billion worth of trade, Italy had some trade with Iran.

But the global financial system — for better or worse, but I think for better — flows through the United States, specifically New York. The lesson of 2008 was that if you are an international company and need to do business, you pretty much have to touch our financial system.

Meaning that you if you did business with the country that is a number-one sponsor of terror and engaging in mischief in the region in the world, then we can say, as not only a military superpower but as an economic superpower, "If you do business, we think you shouldn't be able to do business in the US and shouldn't be able to access US capital markets." That's a very powerful statement.

No compliance officer, no risk officer, no corporate official in any international conglomerate would have risked the reputational dangers and the risks to investments of going back into Iran if the US says we're not on board with this.

http://www.vox.com/2015/8/17/9164669/uani-iran-nuclear-deal

That is absolutely fucking insane.

Aiui he's saying the prohibition on trade would apply at a corporate level, not a national one. So if Daimler wanted to trade with Iran it could, but it couldn't trade with the U.S. It wouldn't apply uniformly to all German companies. He's probably right in saying it would lead to most companies pulling out of Iran. The reasons I can't work with Iranian companies predate the current EU sanctions and relate back to some of the kind of indirect banking and corporate governance pressure he's hinting at. It's a stupid, unworkable and possibly illegal policy but I'm not sure it wouldn't be beyond the realms of the imagination of some Republicans.

I for one welcome this brave new world where America threatens every nation state on the planet

This is what has become of the rule of law. Two sets of books. One for Us, and one to throw at Them. Apartheid.

http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/a-special-place-in-hell/.premium-1.671538

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/a9f4e40803924a8ab4c61cb65b2b2bb3/ap-exclusive-un-let-iran-inspect-alleged-nuke-work-site

whatever; politically (despite appearances) it's a done deal

https://twitter.com/wbenjaminson/status/634374928435970048

AP had apparently run out of the pixels required to report the story accurately.

http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/08/19/making-a-state-by-iron-and-blood-isis-iraq-syria/

Yeah, let's see how that one goes ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/syria-says-islamic-state-militants-beheaded-a-noted-archaeologist/2015/08/19/c0b1b664-4672-11e5-9f53-d1e3ddfd0cda_story.html?hpid=z4

ISIS have claimed responsibility for the bomb in Cairo that killed 29 today.

Looks like the PKK killed 8 Turkish soldiers in an attack in Siirt.

Wounded 29 rather than killed - thankfully.

I saw my boy Huckabee was paying respect to the Senator of America's 51st state recently

http://media.breitbart.com/media/2015/08/Huckabee-Netanyahu-640x480.jpg

fp article is v depressing
historical gist of it obv true (duh), yet sthing facile, glib about drawing of analogies & inferences therefrom; want to argue with it but not sure from what angle
anyway can’t deny so far isis seems effectively on its way to consolidating sthing like a state, and effort to counter it so far seems pathetically ineffective

wp article horrible & depressing too
this recent nytimes article is harrowing: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/14/world/middleeast/isis-enshrines-a-theology-of-rape.html

http://assets.bwbx.io/images/i7Iws5wJJLLs/v4/-1x-1.jpg

noah feldman on some effects of iran deal on regional & iraqi politics, abadi’s strategic game plan
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-08-19/iran-deal-is-shaping-the-iraq-war

There are moments in that report where a divided Iraq almost sounds like a good thing. As if the only thing keeping Iraq together as a unified state was US fear of Iran. Don't know if that's true. But how many in Iraq would be sad if the country was divided between Iran, Syria and a new Kurdistan state? I mean, in a (very hypothetical...) future where two of those countries aren't authoritarian/failed states.

Yeah, no, it would be like Yugoslavia, the ethnic cleansing would just intensify, wouldn't it? Sigh.

^my train of thought on the matter v much like yours

btw don’t see what relevant facts were omitted from original ap article?, other than emphasis/clarification that side deal is restricted to parchin (that was clear to me), politicians’ statements & officials’ assurances

in my not at all expert & thus worthless opinion, this seems not well negotiated deal (the way it was negotiated, as reflected in admin’s public pronouncements during the negotiation, to sell it domestically, never made sense to me, like failing negotiation 101)

that 'deal' is necessarily better than 'no deal' (& that it's inescapable choice between 'deal' or else 'war') is & has been v loaded way to frame argument for this particular deal

imo there’s been/ is def some bad demagoguery & sophistry from both sides, selling & opposing deal
(in fact much of my skepticism due to some arguments used to sell/defend it, & discredit critics out of hand, rather than arguments criticizing/opposing)

now that deal has been struck, harder to see alternative moving forward; and of course whole thing now mostly just political/partisan circus

historical deal to be judged by history, i guess (though of course, relative to what counterfactuals? alternative possibilities ultimately unknowable)

I hate linking to Vox and even more so to Max Fisher but this seems like a comprehensive outline of the issues with the original piece:

http://www.vox.com/2015/8/20/9182185/ap-iran-inspections-parchin

thx (ha i share yr feelings re vox)

There's been demagoguery and sophistry by both sides, of course there has, there always is, and I'm sure the pro-deal side has been peppered with anti-semism as well. But let's not kid ourselves that it has been equal, the anti-deal side has acted like the anti-obamacare side, it's been an endless flood of lies and dishonesty (and a sprinkling of islamophobia). This AP thing joins the lie about '24 Days', which Schumer even repeated, as one of the bigger ones. The anti-deal side has been so allied with the republican right, that it hasn't been able to escape the torrent of dishonesty that goes along with them.

Fadel Abdullah al-Hiyali, so bad they had to kill him twice:

December 2014

http://english.alarabiya.net/en/perspective/profiles/2014/12/19/Abu-Muslim-al-Turkmani-From-Iraqi-officer-to-slain-ISIS-deputy.html

August 2015

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11817711/Islamic-States-deputy-leader-killed-in-US-airstrike-White-House-says.html

sad lol

was he in the process of raping someone when he was droned to death? I hear ISIS is all about that shit.

frederik, agree there are some analogies to debate over aca, quality of claims & arguments made for & against (both in the abstract, and qua particular document with particular design), but fleshing out analogy wd lead too off topic

perhaps you’re right, but tbh the correctness of yr characterization of anti-deal side isn’t obv to me
& this style of ad hom argument (anti-deal critics are ‘allied’ with ‘republican right,’ who are lying liars, thus critics of deal are obv lying liars), i don’t find ultimately helps that much in making judgments about really difficult, genuinely controversial matters, like iran deal

if only it were so simple! if it were so simple, i cd just read vox & know exactly what to think
anyway i sure as hell don’t know (i don’t know); fortunately it’s not up to me; hope gamble proves to be wise one

anyway, here’s article/interview with retired saudi general eshki, discussing among other things apparent israel-saudi rapprochement in light of deal: http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-saudis-reply-to-irans-rising-danger-1440197120
(may require wsj subscription)

I honestly think the Iran deal is complex the way Global Warming is. Yeah, it's complex, but come on! The vast majority of experts in the field say that this is a good enough deal - though their arguments are indeed complex, and I'm not certain I understand it all - and a bunch of non-experts keep thinking up lies.

Stumbled upon this article from 2012:

Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi and Oskar Svadkovsky - Demography Is Destiny in Syria (yeah, I'm aware of some of American Spectator's biases)

The escalation in Syria took by surprise only the people who never bothered to examine Syria's population pyramid. It was no "out of the blue" to anybody even slightly familiar with the basic facts on demography and climate in the region. In the Middle East's long list of hopeless basket cases Yemen is surely beyond competition. However, for quite a while Syria has positioned herself as a formidable contender for respectable second place.
In some respects, the seeds of the current disaster were planted as far back as 1956, when Youssef Helbaoui -- head of economic analysis in Syria's Planning Department -- famously declared: "A birth control policy has no reason for being in this country. Malthus could not find any followers among us." Since then Syria has been living in a state of one uninterrupted demographic cataclysm. The regime was so obsessively pro-natalist that in the early 1970s, the trade and use of contraceptives in Syria were officially banned. By 1975, the birth rate reached 50 live births per 1,000 people, with Hafez al-Assad asserting that a "high population growth rate and internal migration" were responsible for stimulating "proper socio-economic improvements" within the development framework.
Even when other nations in the Middle East began to take measures to curb their population growth as the danger of demographic collapse started to loom over the region, the regime in Syria was struggling to make up its mind on the issue. Only in recent years has the regime introduced some measure of family planning, but by now the sheer amount of population momentum accumulated in previous decades has kept the population swelling to new highs.

the fertility rate doesn't seem so crazy https://www.google.co.uk/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&idim=country:SYR:IRQ:EGY&hl=en&dl=en#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=region&idim=country:SYR:IRQ:EGY:JOR&ifdim=region&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false

The problem now is the demographic "inertia" of the last part of the 1950-2000 baby boom coming of age (and finding no jobs and little food).

Before synthetic fertilizers and water mining, Syria had a population of just 2.4 million in 1937. That might not be too far from the carrying capacity without finite resource chemical inputs.

And, yes, Yemen's situation is much more severe, as they had fertility rates as higher than 8 from 1975-1993, and very little renewable water. The aquifers have been almost sucked dry to grow kat.

Seems like Assad has decided to address the demographic imbalance by killing hundreds and thousands of Syrians

I wish I understood better what's at stake in the Lebanon "you stink" protests

I think a really interesting question would be how the fertility rates differed between Alawites and Sunni Muslims in Syria (for which I can't find much data). As Alawites dominated the political elite and presumably were disproportionately represented in the economic elites and middle class, its reasonable that they went through the demographic transition to lower fertility rates decades before the Sunnis did. What might have been onerous oppression by 30% of the population became intolerable oppression by 11%. A similar progression has gone on in Bahrain.

x-post

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/lebanon-you-stink-protests-we-are-not-egypt-claims-activist-michel-elefteriades-1517010

The government's failure to solve a garbage disposal crisis, as well as chronic shortages of electricity and water, sparked the You Stink campaign in the capital Beirut after the Environment Ministry closed the controversial Naameh landfill on 17 July. Initially a non-political people's movement, the movement gathered supporters and expanded its demands beyond just the waste crisis, calling for the resignation of the entire government.

...."So, there are intellectuals and opinion leaders who are monitoring (the protests). We are there to oversee that there are no slips, nor any intruders taking the demonstrations in another direction. We denounce any slips immediately."

Demonstrations in Beirut are expected to resume on 27 August, after two days of what the activist described as "a warrior's rest".

hmmmm. Interesting

i think this is the best thread for this

https://www.nslj.org/a-message-to-our-readers/

spencer ackerman has a couple grabs:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CNgpz3SWoAE31I_.jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CNgtYY5XAAA1ui4.png

scott lemieux has a writeup

http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2015/08/today-in-campus-political-correctness-and-the-progressive-war-on-free-speech

funny shit

Spartanization of the West? Does this author have any clues how Spartan society was structured? It was built on a foundation of brutal slavery, where the military prowess of young Spartan gentlemen was honed by setting them loose to wage a war of terror on the very slaves whose labors fed them. Fucking fuck anyone who holds up Sparta as a model for emulation. They were ancient Nazis.

nice. West Point cadets are learning from that guy. great.

Meanwhile, US whack-a-mole drone strikes continue in the slow effort to contain and rollback ISIS...

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/defence/isis-top-hacking-expert-killed-in-us-drone-strike-report/articleshow/48696548.cms

There are countries with social infrastructure at breaking point because of the refugee crisis – but they aren’t in Europe. The most obvious example is Lebanon, which houses 1.2 million Syrian refugees within a total population of roughly 4.5 million. To put that in context, a country that is more than 100 times smaller than the EU has already taken in more than 50 times as many refugees as the EU will even consider resettling in the future. Lebanon has a refugee crisis. Europe – and, in particular, Britain – does not.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/aug/10/10-truths-about-europes-refugee-crisis

Greste et al given three years in jail. Killing independent news coverage clearly overrides degree to which locking up Aussie journalist for doing his job plays badly in West.

More on William Bradford, the piece of work West Point hired on 1 August. (Guardian)

My spidey sense is that he's not going to get tenure.

UN: Gaza could be ‘uninhabitable’ by 2020 if trends continue (WaPo)