#Putin and #Obama in Syria

Hola from Mexico!


It's not hard to penetrate Russian motives for Syria: support a cold war ally, to defeat Western allied proxies, maintain influence, and of course to stick a finger in the eye of American policy - with President Obama as the fulcrum taking the strain.

It was Obama's understandable dithering - reluctant to enter a spillover war - that made the free allied pro-Western rebels cause a waning proposition. Americans deserved a rest from the eternal struggle. Islam still hates them tomorrow. Those reason based groups would surely be consumed by true believers.

Obama called Syria a quagmire. He pronounced that Putin would be entrenched and losing troops for many years. He was right.

But notice that Orthodox Russia found a coalition of Shiite groups including Iran, Lebanon, and pro Iranian elements in Iraq to fight with Iraqi forces against ISIS.  Putin is campaigning in Syria like George Bush 41 did in Gulf War 1991.

The same media that bought George Bush 43's Mess o' potamia, and Obama's half-hearted narrative, these feckless fools did not have the corporate knowledge, the work ethic, the skepticism to recall what a successful campaign looked like just 20 years earlier when led by an American coalition of Arab nations and stalwart NATO allies into Kuwait.

No one can predict if Putin's campaign will succeed but it has all the right elements and common cause that it might succeed. 

Using Linux on chrome book

Once you install linux to get back there from reboot:

Once logged in, Ctrl-Alt-T brings up chrome shell crosh

Type: shell

Then type: sudo startxfce4 to start X server session. 

Trump just pulled off another end around Democrats

No the best persuasion Trump did was side with the victims and the public by declaring that Muslims needed to help turn in bad people and they know what's going on in mosques. Most people agree because if their neighbor is stealing cable, they turn them in because they don't like paying more while others steal.  They expect families to turn in criminals.

While Clinton labels Trump a racist, people know he really isn't because his actions speak of defending Americans in general first. So that's going to look calculating and backfire. People know Clinton is dishonest, despite how she evades the truth. They will remember.

The worst mistake was Obama lashing out at Trump and ignoring the plight of victims to justify his terror wording stance. Obama tied himself and Hillary to justifying for Islam, which equals saying American people are too stupid to understand why we need to measure our words about our enemy. That's a death knell for Clinton in the heartland. When should a president justify for a religion? Never!

Christopher Hitchens pointed out they hate us already and they use any soundbite they like for their narrative. So what?  It's not about appealing to Islam, it's about sympathizing with victims OF Islam. Trump gets what most Americans believe. Obama and Clinton are plutocrats they don't empathize with middle class. This proves it. 

Big mistake in a country that fought 3 wars in Islamic nations.

Trump can win using hidden agenda against Clinton

It may be a hard sell for #DonaldTrump to convince the American people that he wants the office of President just to help the people and not also for his vanity.

Yes. It's clear by now that Donald Trump wants to be president as much for demonstrating to everyone that he can be a good president than for actually making changes that transform the plight of Americans.  In his mind, he wants this for himself. Maybe he thinks he can be the next Reagan, maybe he thinks he can be an even better Reagan. It's not important what

But what's also clear about Donald Trump is that he does not intend to hold the office of president as a means to make others in the billionaire class rich. He's far too simple-minded to have a hidden agenda for outright graft invented by the situation.  That should be comforting to Americans, those that can stomach the very idea of his victory despite all the nastyness, nonsensical, and the absurd he has inflicted upon them for a year in the making.  He's exaggerated how successful he would be as part of his persuasion campaign, and I forecast there would be many buffoonish incidents were he to win, but he's not going to intentionally reach into the halls of power and grab all he can, either.



On the other hand, Hillary Clinton also wants the job for vanity.  She campaigns and in that campaigning plays the expected role for a politician as her contemporaries would expect. How Americans have come to understand a politician should act. She has diplomatic bearing and an uncanny habit of avoiding any real answers. On the face of it she seems to be a real candidate.

 But she has special interests, or what I call as others have a hidden agenda.  She puts on airs because political advancement requires lying to the rubes. It's ironic that Trump is accused of manipulating the rubes and yet when a politician does the same thing it's expected.  While she would govern with a more traditional and demeanoured style, she has also proven that she will exploit the office for personal gain; quid pro quo with influential and powerful people that she is in league with who are Americans and not. She has demonstrated it through her Clinton Foundation, her hidden email server - one that makes all her donor email requests sound official as they were coming from the actual Secretary of State at that time, her evasiveness on the transcripts of her speeches to Wall Street banks, and so on.  These are patterns of a congenital liar and ne’er-do-wells. She has a hidden agenda, she wants to help people. But in that she also wants to help her people.  As a lawyer, she knows the best way to avoid perjury is to hide all evidence and stick to her story. Without proof, it's all hearsay.

I've bet money that Trump will win, that's how confident I am he will prevail.

Right now, Donald Trump is framing Clinton as a woman, and voting for her is voting for a woman. Sooner or later he's going to drop that and move on to other persuasion tactics. Like a teenager struggling with a bra, he's very shrewd about flowing from one kind of persuasion to another.  Example:

Notice he is not holding a bible up any longer? He's passed the Jesus test.


Trump's woman card attacks won't work because it is framing himself as bigoted in the same way as Clinton is framing him.  So voters will see it as pure mean-spirited bluster.

But when Trump turns to Hillary's underhanded agenda of making sure she can influence and control government for herself, that is when his attacks move from self-blunting effort to the coup de grace.

If and when he comes back to Clinton's motives for getting the White House that will resonate best with the American people. That will be his winning ticket inside.

OPEC has folded - expect oil prices to skyrocket!

Saudi Arabia and the rest of the OPEC cartel stooges have given up trying to bankrupt American oil producers and defeat Iranian production. This was not a total defeat, as they did bankrupt 67 oil companies in the USA during 2015. But Qatar blinked first and the rest are hurting so bad their economies are almost wrecked.

Expect oil to shoot up in value at least at first. They were playing two long games and they lost because they don't have the economic might behind them that they once did as oil-only producers.

Turkey has a war trade with ISIS: old-time profiteering

If you want to win a war, you need to do the things that make victory possible. This is all the evidence you need Obama isn't trying to win or even contain ISIS / da'esh because he has no strategy against Turkey; against Turkey's actions, no threatened sanctions, no shaming them into picking our side or not.

Will Obama eat crow if Putin wins in Syria?

http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/07/middleeast/syria-aleppo-siege/index.html

 The fact is that Obama claimed Putin was entering a quagmire in Syria that would devour forces to no effect in a veil of tears. But Obama doesn't know the savagery that a real anti-revolutionary action can wreak. And Russia is not a European nation, it is an Asian one more familiar with unconventional warfare.
Wreaking havoc is a location hazard.

Putin is entirely capable of killing every man, woman, and child in rebel zones. He has enough intestinal fortitude to crush all enemies of Assad in order to win. In fact it was the Russians that cut off the illegal oil supply train to Turkey from IS territory days after launching into Syria. Why wasn't the US coalition cutting off the money supply?

 Putin is helping Assad consolidate the Western half of the nation before they turn their weapons on the rest of the insurgents.  So far, it's the only strategy working.


The US and Western allies are not. The pundits are now comparing Syria to Chechnya; where Islamists tried to take away a state from Russian influence and in return the Russians obliterated all Islamist areas in Grozny. Resistance no more.

The West is too civilized carry out savagery.  If Putin crushes the rebels in order to unite one side of Syria against IS, then will Obama be in a position to be wrong about his prediction. Will he eat crow if Putin does what he is capable of?

Ironically, Trump may be right to let Putin handle the Syrian

Saudi Arabia started the Oil War to neutralize Iran

 
As the expression goes, " all politics is local", and that truism might apply to many situations too long to describe here; in the case of the OPEC overproduction it is precisely why Saudi Arabia started this market move.

While American media is fixated on what happens to its companies, they have overlooked the wider more important reality of oil price and purchasing power. Of course the stated reason why OPEC increased production was to increase market share.

Saudi Arabia tried to stop the Iran nuclear deal. They even sounded like Israel in the hopes that Obama would relent. They didn't work. Obama wants a legacy and isn't responsible for protecting Saudi Arabia. Any longer. In fact, with all the illicit support of wahabism and radical Sunni terror, it's more likely this is Obama's payback of Saudi intransigence.

Iran gave up a nuclear program to sell more oil in the wider market which was known to the Saudis as the deal deadline approached.  They faced an 86-million population enemy (in comparison to their 26 million ) that could bring an enemy army right up to Saudi borders with the permission of Iraqi leadership and assault.  The rise of ISIS also gave Iranian hard-liners the justification to enter into Iraq in force should the battle go poorly.  And go poorly it did last summer when Saudi production stayed over demand and started the run on over supply.  ISIS came within 150 km of Baghdad which when you look at that in context of Saudi local politics is a big problem.

In fact, the slow nature of Iraqi counter-offensive against ISIS / da'esh - barely gained Ramadi by January- gives the Iranians more and more justification to pressure Baghdad to let them launch Revolutionary Guard divisions straight into Mosul. This is exactly why the Saudis are now changing their tune towards foreign army / coalitions in Iraq.  Now they are offering their army to go into Iraq not just to defeat ISIS but to make sure that they don't leave a way open for Iran to follow them back.

Better to fight them over there than in your home is also a truism. And Saudi would rather drawn down their wealth than risk arming Iran with more expensive modern weapons.

From an unconventional perspective, having IS operating in Sunni territory acted like a buffer zone to protect one flank from Shia invasion.  They were a resistance point against invasion. IS  united the local population there and neither party trusts Baghdad and would fight Iranian forces on sight.

This is why Saudi has been foot dragging on attacking fellow Sunnis they might need in a few months. Only when greater threats appear through inaction does the kingdom change it's strategy.

So yes, Saudi Arabia wanted to bankrupt shale oil explorers in the US with expensive production costs. The US media can bore you with the dull interpretation of average reporters and journalists trying to remain relevant but aren't willing to do the heavy lifting of assessing data in sum.

But in the local context take all the factors lying in front of you and presented poorly, and reconstruct them along the skeleton I have laid out - remember I was the first person to link the Russian jet bombing to ISIS before they even admitted it was payback to Russia for Syrian invasion.

About time....

It seems that adversity does make strange bedfellows... what should have been done in 2014.

How CNN helps the terrorists: exciting threats and hysteria feeds the fear

Terror operations work on the principle of targetted violence backed up by propaganda; that small violent act gets lucky sooner or later against a small number of targets; which then gets amplified by the spread of fear in the form of propaganda.  That leads to an over-reaction by the larger, numerically-superior force that spends inordinate resources and effort to placate the population. That drives the larger force to play the terrorists' game without defeating them.

It's like fuel, oxygen, and heat cause fire. The oxydation chain reaction needs a perpetual  presence of all three elements to succeed. Cut one off and the fire dies.

With terrorism, you need violent acts, the spread of propaganda, and then an over-reaction in a chain reaction over and over again.

But how can you do that when the terror attacks are 10 months apart? People lose interest and go back to their lives. They forget to be terrorized. They stop feeding into hysteria. If you let it recede and people move on and the terror objective fails. So how does it succeed? Simple: CNN helps the terrorists.



How does CNN fit in?  Unwittingly, or perhaps ignoring that reality for personal gain, CNN and other media continue to pass on unfiltered, unrealistic, and unhelpful information over and over from the terror group into the mainstream communication stream into the minds of the larger force. They take unrealistic information at face-value without doing the homework to measure it's actual value.  They feed sensationalism because it gets eyeballs for viewership and TV ratings. Not for public good. For advertising dollars. That's the most cynical reason to perpetuate terror propaganda. I wouldn't go so far as to say they are two sides of a conspiracy but they feed one into another in a way that is not helpful to defeat the objective of terrorism.

When CNN doesn't measure one terrorist amongst 2 million Syrian refugees as a largely successful operation that's tainting reality. When CNN passes on threats against Washington without any measure, do they realize the terrorists would find it easier to attack Boston or New York now that the government is fixating on the political action rather than considering threats rationally?

When CNN pumps propaganda, it harms the real process. Governments are forced to waste effort countering threats that may not be realistic but are bolstered by inaccurate and uncritically vetted journalism that regurgitate the fear and mass produce it unto hysteria. The more they spew sensational fear, the worse it gets for the people planning to guard against terror. Can we blame politicians for knee-jerk political posturing based on civilian fear?

But does the media consider this factor of liability as much as they do lawsuits from companies for slander? For product defect reports? Should they be this cavalier with human lives by obfuscating security forces from the real purpose?

Did daesh down Russian plane?

No technical reason Russian plane went down, no pilot warning, no emergency maneuvers...

Sounds suspiciously like revenge...

Update: the reason why daesh didn't claim responsibility is that they were hoping Russia would continue to attack the wrong groups in Syria and help daesh's objectives.

#Obama admits failure in Iraq and Afghanistan

#Obama's success metric when judging Putin propping up Syria's al-Assad:

"One of those players, Kroft points out, is Russia, which recently stepped up airstrikes and naval bombardments in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. President Putin "is challenging your leadership, Mr. President," Kroft says.

#Obama disagrees. "Steve, I've got to tell you, if you think that running your economy into the ground and having to send troops in in order to prop up your only ally, is leadership, then we've got a different definition of leadership," he says."

So by his own metrics: Afghanistan and Iraq are failed expeditions. For those that didn't catch his subtle flaw; let me elaborate.

He's propping up this president in Afghanistan. And before him it was Karzai.

And #Obama is propping up this president in Iraq.  And before him it was al-Maliki.

So by Obama's own standards, these are failures too. It was only when Steve Kroft pushed Obama that this truth came out.

Give the Kurds a homeland

If you want a natural counterbalance to the rise of Islamic extremism, then give Kurds what they want in northern Syria and Iraq.  Kurds want a homeland and they are willing to fight to keep extremist out.
There's the Wests' ground forces to exploit air power.

The Other Reason Putin is Attacking ISIS / Rebels

It's been reported by Western reporters the obvious reasons why Putin is on the march in Syria. Oil, European sanction lifting, his economy...

This one shows Putin took my advice and is trying to put a wedge between Europe and USA for his own benefit.  http://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/28/putins-moves-in-syria-may-be-linked-to-sanction-hopes.html

But the less reported reasons are perfectly plain if you look at Russian newspapers. In English.

They understand the power dynamic of Assad versus the other factions. But what they don't seem to see is that Arabs won't accept Assad.


First, Russians are just as horrified as the West about ISIS and it's brutality.
 The Russian people have not had 10 years of agony and war in the Middle East so their younger generation doesn't know what the USA is recovering from. Young people don't have memory. Russians don't like Islam and don't want to sit by while they gain strength.

What some people don't realize is that Putin is very much like Bush II, they both believe in the Wolfowitz Doctrine. 


Of course in Russia and Syria, they believe ISIS is a USA invention. 


But more importantly, Russia is afraid of attacks at home. 

According to Sotnikiv, terrorists may arrange terrorist attacks inside Russia as well.

"They could be terrorist attacks on train stations, or in any place, where they can find some kind of breach in security. They have a lot to choose from. Unfortunately, this is inevitable, because there are underground extremist groups in Russia too, and they will declare war on the Russian Federation under the pretext of helping brothers in Islam," the expert said.

"Terror attacks may occur in the near future - not only in the Caucasus, but also in Central Russia - anywhere in Russia," the expert told Pravda.Ru.

- See more at: http://english.pravda.ru/news/hotspots/02-10-2015/132226-russia_isis-0/#sthash.GpPjRAmn.dpuf

 "They will use any type of attacks, but this war has only just begun, and, like in any war, the enemy will fight back. There is definitely a serious threat to the Russian military. There will be attacks against Russia and then there will be more of them to follow," the expert told Pravda.Ru.

According to Sotnikiv, terrorists may arrange terrorist attacks inside Russia as well.

"They could be terrorist attacks on train stations, or in any place, where they can find some kind of breach in security. They have a lot to choose from. Unfortunately, this is inevitable, because there are underground extremist groups in Russia too, and they will declare war on the Russian Federation under the pretext of helping brothers in Islam," the expert said.

"Terror attacks may occur in the near future - not only in the Caucasus, but also in Central Russia - anywhere in Russia," the expert told Pravda.Ru.

"They will use any type of attacks, but this war has only just begun, and, like in any war, the enemy will fight back. There is definitely a serious threat to the Russian military. There will be attacks against Russia and then there will be more of them to follow," the expert told Pravda.Ru.

According to Sotnikiv, terrorists may arrange terrorist attacks inside Russia as well.

"They could be terrorist attacks on train stations, or in any place, where they can find some kind of breach in security. They have a lot to choose from. Unfortunately, this is inevitable, because there are underground extremist groups in Russia too, and they will declare war on the Russian Federation under the pretext of helping brothers in Islam," the expert said.

"Terror attacks may occur in the near future - not only in the Caucasus, but also in Central Russia - anywhere in Russia," the expert told Pravda.Ru.

- See more at: http://english.pravda.ru/news/hotspots/02-10-2015/132226-russia_isis-0/#sthash.GpPjRAmn.dpuf

 According to Sotnikiv, terrorists may arrange terrorist attacks inside Russia as well.

"They could be terrorist attacks on train stations, or in any place, where they can find some kind of breach in security. They have a lot to choose from. Unfortunately, this is inevitable, because there are underground extremist groups in Russia too, and they will declare war on the Russian Federation under the pretext of helping brothers in Islam," the expert said.

"Terror attacks may occur in the near future - not only in the Caucasus, but also in Central Russia - anywhere in Russia," the expert told Pravda.Ru.

- See more at: http://english.pravda.ru/news/hotspots/02-10-2015/132226-russia_isis-0/#sthash.GpPjRAmn.dpuf

http://english.pravda.ru/news/hotspots/02-10-2015/132226-russia_isis-0/

Putin's bumble presents an opportunity.

Putin went on record defending military intervention in Syria, and recommended that other nations consider assisting the Syrian regime in countering terrorism ISIS. He recommended coordinating with Assad to fight terror.

To defend propping up his ally is understandable, but recommending other nations, presumably European nations and America, to get involved directly was a strategic blunder.  While it is true it would be easier  assisting Assad, the West wants Assad out.  They would rather see him fall even if that means longer war against ISIS.

Putin's offer could be used to backfire on Assad. Perhaps he believes the west won't intervene directly. But what's to stop American and European forces to set up a base inside free Syrian army held territory near Aleppo?

What's to stop Western forces taking an airbase inside Syria and propping up pro western forces directly? One  could claim Putin just invited us.

The manager dilemma

One of the fundamental problems that arises from managers decisions is this paradox:

If I say I can solve a problem only if a manager gives me $1 million (for example) to build the solution and the manager refuses then who is right?

By default the problem can't be solved without that solution. So the manager is right. By default. Without making a solution one can't dispute this outcome.

But that doesn't mean the solution won't work. The solution might be workable. It might solve a problem no one or thing else can. It might change the world. It might revolutionize society.

But without support no one will know.

If no resources are spent there is no way to prove or disprove the proposition. Not all solutions will work. But they all can't fail either. There is inherent risk in all solutions but to hide behind no action is not management. It is abrogation of responsibility to hide from being wrong.

While no one funds the effort, the manager remains right and can remain right forever. There is no way to dispute the truth yet society can't move forward if all managers get to say no.  They get to keep their jobs their benefits and avoid hard decisions and tests to their status.

There must be a way to enforce progress despite the comfort of ignorance.

Where Obama has sold out: Iraq

There are many issues that Obama has staked a position that is pro-citizen and anti-cronyism.

http://im.ft-static.com/content/images/fffd6e71-3772-416e-a397-ce503b151c12.img

Iraq and Syria is not one of them.

The reason why the West is not winning in Iraq is in part due to the fact that Obama has sold out to special interests on strategy in Iraq against ISIS. He is allowing side objectives to get in the way.

What he told the American people about the objective in defeating ISIL :

"This resolution reflects our core objective to destroy ISIL."
http://www.ibtimes.com/full-text-obama-isis-war-speech-islamic-state-terrorists-are-going-lose-president-1813394

What he is not telling the American people is that his real objective is:

This resolution reflects our core objective to destroy ISIL AND maintain favorable interests in Iraq."

That means propping up the corrupt Iraqi leaders that caused this whole mess in the first place. They turned Anbar over to ISIS by not being inclusive to Sunni Arabs. Iraq has disintegrated as a result!

Obama can win or he can maintain the cronys in Iraq that are pro-USA. He can't do both.

If winning is the ultimate objective then all secondary objectives must disappear. If the only way to do that means arming and cooperating with Iranians to crush ISIS then that should be the strategy. If that means arming the Kurds to crush ISIS then that should be the strategy. If it means US ground troops in Syria then that should be the strategy. If it means nuking Raqqa then that should be the strategy.  There is no middle ground in war. There is no appeasing side interests on the way to victory.

The American people deserve to know the truth that Obama doesn't want Iraq on his CV and he is leaving the decisions to the vested interests that caused the mess in the first place. That is making defeat more likely, not less.

If I was Obama, I would tell Abadi he's got 30 days to start showing some victory or Abadi is out of the picture and the coalition will fight over top of what's left of Baghdad.

Saudi Arabia has a real problem.

The USA army are no longer the foot soldiers for the Saudi kingdom.

That presents a serious problem:  the Saudi army is soft and untested. They aren't ready for contact. They haven't suppressed Yemen and Yemeni militias consist of squabbling groups.

ISIS is not.

The Saudi army is on the defensive.

ISIS is not.

The Saudi army has torn allegiances amongst Sunni and Shia sympathies.

ISIS is not.

If the kingdom wants to survive, it should hire American veterans of Iraq to fight ahead of their own army. The people of Saudi are sympathetic to ISIS just as they were sympathetic to al Qaeda. They already live in a dictatorship, so they are just as likely to prefer a religious one.

Any Saudi defeat would trumpet the death knell of the kingdom.  Those ISIS vipers they have lain with are ready to move into Riyadh. Saudi Arabia cannot allow any more victory to ISIS.

I am sure some noble  American veterans would like nothing more than to treat ISIS to their own harsh treatment.

Effective Proposal Writing: Now Available on iTunes

Using the techniques I talk about in this book, Effective Proposal Writing which is now available on iTunes and iBookstore, I have gone on elance and written 4 proposals and gotten one client to accept my bid.  I have one underway that might be successful as well. 

That's perhaps a 50% success rate.  On 4 attempts, and my billable rate is far higher than the average.  So what that means is I work smarter not cheaper.

I'm happy I made it to Apple iTunes through Lulu.com. It's been a while but hey I can't complain.

Knowledge is hard won