wv wrote:

Any word at all yet on whether there is any evidence that Assad was responsible for the gas attack or whether there even was a gas attack?

Is it likely we will ever know who did what?

w
v

I’m no expert on the situation, of course, but I haven’t seen any evidence in this particular instance. But Assad is known to be a brutal dictator, so it’s not exactly counter to his MO. It could be anyone, though. A civil war like Syria’s produces more than a “fog of war” fubar. More like a hall of mirrors filled with fog, etc. So, who knows?

The various rebel groups hate each other, hate Assad, hate us. Our “allies” hate each other, Assad, in some cases, us. Some of our “enemies” are actually at least nominally on our side in this battle. Iran and Russia, for instance, are fighting against ISIS, according to most reports. Assad is supposedly fighting ISIS, and so on.

There really are no “good guys” in this situation, except, perhaps, for those leftist women in Rojava:

American Leftists Need to Pay More Attention to Rojava By Michelle Goldberg

Well, this is hopeful. Just checked the Washington Post and at least one writer gets it:

The media loved Trump’s show of military might. Are we really doing this again?

By Margaret Sullivan Media Columnist April 8 at 6:00 AM

The cruise missiles struck, and many in the mainstream media fawned.

“I think Donald Trump became president of the United States last night,” declared Fareed Zakaria on CNN, after firing of 59 missiles at a Syrian military airfield late Thursday night. (His words sounded familiar, since CNN’s Van Jones made a nearly identical pronouncement after Trump’s first address to Congress.)

“On Syria attack, Trump’s heart came first,” read a New York Times headline.
“President Trump has done the right thing and I salute him for it,” wrote the Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens — a frequent Trump critic and Pulitzer Prize-winning conservative columnist. He added: “Now destroy the Assad regime for good.”

Brian Williams, on MSNBC, seemed mesmerized by the images of the strikes provided by the Pentagon. He used the word “beautiful” three times and alluded to a Leonard Cohen lyric — “I am guided by the beauty of our weapons” — without apparent irony.

Quite the pivot, for some. Assessing Trump’s presidency a few weeks ago, Zakaria wrote that while the Romans recommended keeping people happy with bread and circuses, “so far, all we have gotten is the circus.” And the Times has been been so tough on Trump that the president rarely refers to the paper without “failing” or “fake” as a descriptor.
Trump comments on Syria, Xi visit
Play Video1:15
President Trump said aboard Air Force One on April 6 that “something should happen” with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in light of the chemical attack in Khan Sheikhoun. Trump did not offer specifics. (The Washington Post)

But after the strikes, praise flowed like wedding champagne — especially on cable news.

“Guest after guest is gushing. From MSNBC to CNN, Trump is receiving his best night of press so far,” wrote Sam Sacks, a Washington podcaster and journalist. “And all he had to do was start a war.”

Why do so many in the news media love a show of force?

“There is no faster way to bring public support than to pursue military action,” said Ken Paulson, head of the Newseum Institute’s First Amendment Center.

“It’s a pattern not only in American history, but in world history. We rally around the commander-in-chief — and that’s understandable.”

Paulson noted that the news media also “seem to get bored with their own narrative” about Trump’s failings, and they welcome a chance to switch it up.

But that’s not good enough, he said: “The watchdog has to have clear vision and not just a sporadic bark.”

Clara Jeffery, editor in chief of Mother Jones, offered a simple explanation: “It’s dramatic. It’s good for TV, reporters get caught up in the moment, or, worse, jingoism.”

She added: “Military action is viewed as inherently nonpartisan, opposition or skepticism as partisan. News organizations that are fearful of looking partisan can fall into the trap of failing to provide context.”

And so, empathy as the president’s clear motivation is accepted, she said — “with no mention of the refugee ban keeping those kids out, no mention of Islamophobia that has informed his campaign and administration. How can you write about motive and not explore that hypocrisy?”

Mocking “the instant elevation of Trump into a serious and respected war leader,” Glenn Greenwald in the Intercept recalled John Jay, one of the Federalist Papers authors, who wrote more than 200 years ago: “However disgraceful it may be to human nature . . . nations in general will make war whenever they have a prospect of getting anything by it.”

In fact, Jay wrote, “absolute monarchs will often make war when their nations are to get nothing by it” — except, of course, to scratch that eternal itch for military glory, revenge or self-aggrandizement.

Groupthink, and a lack of proper skepticism, is something that we’ve seen many times before as the American news media watches an administration step to the brink of war.

Most notoriously, perhaps, that was true in the run-up to the Iraq invasion in 2003, the start of a long disaster there.

Stephen Walt, Harvard professor of international affairs, thinks the press and the public should have learned some things by now.

“Syria remains a tragedy because there are no good options,” he wrote in Foreign Policy, and America’s interventions in the Middle East very seldom end well.

Walt later told me that the news media now must look forward and ask deeper questions.

“What is Trump’s overall strategy for Syria,” given that “the balance of power on the ground is unchanged and we are no closer to a political settlement.”

Missile strikes may seem thrilling, and retaliation righteous.

But journalists and commentators ought to remember the duller virtues, too, like skepticism, depth and context.

And keep their eyes fixed firmly there, not on the spectacular images in the sky.

For more by Margaret Sullivan visit wapo.st/sullivan

Very good article, but #6 isn’t logical. And the author’s argument itself should have told him that.

An extremely limited strike on an airport, which didn’t even stop it from being used yesterday after the strike, in no way proves that pre-election collusion didn’t happen. It makes zero sense to read that back into the past, based upon a sudden 180 from Trump, after several months of pro-Russian talk and walk, and Trump still won’t say anything bad about Russia.

Plus, I think the author built up a straw man to shoot down. The argument isn’t that Trump is an outright puppet of Putin’s, or that Putin controls him now. The argument is that Trump and/or his associates colluded with the Russians to win the GOP nomination and then the presidency, and that he owes Putin because of this. A rare break in an ongoing stream of pro-Russian words and deeds does nothing to alter that likelihood. In fact, it’s the smart thing to do. Blow shit up and make it look like Trump is truly “independent,” etc.

In reality, it’s no skin off of Putin’s teeth, one way or another. Where’s the harm to Russia in this strike? There isn’t any.

That said, the rest of the article is excellent. It’s sickening how going to war seems to elevate presidents in the minds of too many Americans and the media. It’s actually one of the ugliest aspects of this nation, and has been for generations.

What’s your take on the Syrian strike, WV?

waterfield wrote:

I have to admit I remain skeptical of “studies” and “analysis” unless I’ve researched the norms used in such a studies. Even so I know thee are many many different opinions along with “studies” on the engines that drive a Trump supporter. So I tend to look at what’s in front of me-meaning I form opinions normally based on what I see. Do I read studies-of course I do-part of that has been my profession-but I know for every study on a subject there is an equally valid one out there. Its like competing expert witnesses in a trial. For the most part they all sound credible-unless of course you are an expert in that field yourself.

So in my little world-most of my friends are what one would call “business people”. They are not necessarily wealthy country club people although some are. But they have been friends of mine since middle school and a few even earlier. When we gather the talk is about business and sports. Their political vent is normally about how they can benefit from any Republican including Trump more so than any democrat. For the length of time I’ve known them I cannot recall ever witnessing anything that would even be suspect of racism. At parties they talk of taxes, fair trade issue, the costs to them of healthcare, and of course sports. Now I have a neighbor who I’ve heard him use the N work more than once. I don’t need to know anything more. I consider him a racist and I do not see him as a “friend”. Just a neighbor. OTOH I know-because he has shown me-that he would do everything and anything to help you if you had a problem. But maybe not if I was black. Who knows.

We also live in a very eclectic area that has an enormous population of people from Mexico, including my neighbor across the street. We are close because we share a love for the Dodgers and have been to his home several times for various celebrations. What’s interesting is that at least half of his relatives-not including him-were Trump supporters-simply because he “talked tough”. These were Mexicans who obviously did not vote because of a fear of diversity. I don’t know -maybe the macho culture of Mexico and Latin American has something to do with that because to a person they respected Trump’s “machismo”.

I respect both Sanders (didn’t vote for him) and Warren( I would have voted for her) and I agree with their take on this. I also don’t think either one of them holds anything back as Zooey suggests.

In my opinion there is a multitude of reasons why people voted for the guy. Of course there were people who decided enough is enough when it comes to the darkening of the American face (i.e. a fear of diversity). But again I suspect there were as many who thought their own personal financial security would be better served with Trump. Then there were those who simply wanted someone more “tough” to lead the country. Then there were those who simply wanted anyone but Hillary.

I know there are those who so detest this guy-and I’m one of them-that they will attribute to his supporters the most evil characteristic they can-and that happens to be racism ! And if one group has an agenda they can do a study and come to a conclusion that supports their belief system. Which is why I tend to formulate my opinions on what I experience. Yes-I read studies and carefully look to see if they are truly evidence based but at bottom I go back to what my experience tells me. Sometimes studies support what I see and sometimes they don’t. I will always trust what I see because if I see a “study” that says I’m wrong or right I know right around the corner is another study.

I also recognize that I may very well be wrong on this particular issue and Trump supporters may well have supported him because of racism and diversity. That’s just not been I have experienced. Others have a different experience and even take-and that’s fine with me.

Something to keep in mind here, W. On a subject such as racial attitudes, if anything, people tend to understate their views. So all of those surveys of Trump voters are quite likely understating bigotry, racism, prejudice, etc. etc. It’s not like a study asking if you love puppies and rainbows. Who isn’t going to say yes? But questions regarding a person’s take on race? I find it hard to believe you’re going to get everyone being perfectly honest about that. So the fact that an overwhelming number of Trump supporters admit to attitudes about blacks, other minorities and women in the way they do . . . that they vocalize the (crazed) belief that white people are more mistreated than blacks and other minorities . . . . Um, well, we should take them at their word and then add a few percentage points.

But, as I mention above, it’s a terrible idea to suggest politicians should focus on this. It’s okay for laymen to. It’s okay for amateur observers like us to note these things. But if left of center parties/politicians actually want to win, or at least expand their reach, they really shouldn’t. They should focus instead on the conditions that led/lead to these pathologies, and those in power who create, enable, defend and expand them, etc.

wv wrote:

Just looking at the US PRIMARIES — most citizens voted for Rubio, Cruz, Hillary, Trump, etc — but what percentage out of all that, voted for Bernie? In the primaries.

Cause whatever number that is,
is the scorecard right now. Thats where were at.

w
v

I have no idea what that percentage is. But I do have this crazy faith that if Americans were actually exposed to true leftist thought, directly, not second or third hand . . . the numbers of people who voted for Sanders would be joined by millions of people who actually would like something even further to his left. He was, after all, pushing for FDR-like policies, updated for 2017, and not something truly “radical” at all. He wasn’t even going as far as “Social Democracy” a la Scandinavia, which involves a stronger support for the public sector than he espoused. Though, this may be because he didn’t think he could discuss it. Not sure. Perhaps he actually does want to go further, but was being careful about that.

Regardless, I think Americans would be open to getting a much better “deal” on things, and the only way that’s going to happen is if we increase the role of the public sector, add more non-profit public goods and services, rather than continuing the policy of privatization. The more things we privatize and turn over to “market forces”, the more people lose and the worse any “deal” becomes for the vast majority.

I think Sanders just started the conversation. We need to go beyond him. Next step, IMO, would be for America to get a good look at Tony Judt’s Ill Fares the Land. And we build from there.

To me, it’s primarily easy access to guns. No other factor really comes close, IMO. Another huge reason is we’ve glorified war and solving things via violence for decades and decades — movies, TV, computer games, etc. This, of course, just makes easy access to guns that much more lethal.

No other nation on earth has this combination to such a degree: the society-wide glorification of violence, revenge, vengeance, with the absurdly easy access to guns . . . and now, “open carry” laws which in many states don’t even require licenses, testing, training, etc.

A third reason may return, due to our eroding infrastructure and Trump’s accelerating deregulation: lead contamination. Some researchers believe the recent decline was at least partially due to a reduction in exposure to lead. This may well see a reversal.

Trump’s key demo was white males without college degrees. The vast majority of them do not own businesses — which is also the case with the vast majority of Americans, period.

So it actually doesn’t tell us that much to note that country-club Republicans supported him too, and may not hold such fears. They’re very small in number, even within his base, and a fraction of that number when it comes to the nation (as a percentage) in general.

Yes, resentment toward blacks, minorities, women and feriners was an essential component — THE essential component — when it comes to his key demo. The research makes this abundantly clear.

The thing is, what should be done with this knowledge? At the very least, parties that seek to win those votes must start out with this simple rule: Don’t punch down. Don’t trash the voters themselves — which Clinton did with her “basket of deplorables” comment. That was a very stupid, self-inflicted error. Instead, punch up. Go after political parties, corporations, etc. Go after the rich and powerful. Don’t attack the voters themselves who are just as powerless overall as the rest of us. Sanders understands this.

Next, you actually have to offer stark contrasts to the existing power structures, and be able to explain this with vigor, heart, passion, fire. Clinton couldn’t. At least in public, she has all the charisma of a wet blanket. She may be a completely different person in her private life, but in public, she’s absolutely the worst possible salesperson for any kind of political message.

That message also needs actual deeds and concrete actions to back it up. If it’s the beginning of a new party or movement, that’s going to be an obstacle to overcome, but it can be done. But, if a political party has a strong history of actually doing great things for those voters, and they can sell it, they win. The Dems haven’t had a great history since the 1960s, so it’s difficult for them. But they do have the New Deal legacy. They’re going to have to return to their heyday and go left from there, and they have to stop running from it. They have to break free of the right’s four-decade hold on them. They have to absolutely reject the conservative vision they’ve embraced, whether or not they even realize they’ve done this.

I bumped into a pretty good article on the subject, but there are many, and not all IT folks agree on this stuff.

How ISPs can sell your Web history—and how to stop them How the Senate’s vote to kill privacy rules affects you. Jon Brodkin – Mar 24, 2017 4:20 pm UTC

Excerpt:

VPNs, Tor, and HTTPS: Preserving your privacy

To protect your browsing history from your ISP, you need to encrypt your Internet traffic, and there are three primary methods of accomplishing that: VPN services, Tor, and HTTPS.

“That’s basically it,” Electronic Frontier Foundation Senior Staff Technologist Jeremy Gillula told Ars. “Those are the three ways you can encrypt [your browsing] so that the ISP can’t see it.”

Your ISP can see that you’re using a VPN or Tor, “but that’s all they’ll see,” Gillula said.

With a VPN, you’re paying a company to encrypt all of your Web traffic and prevent others from tracing your Web browsing back to your IP address. You’re trusting that the VPN company will not keep logs of your activities and that it will generally be more respectful of your privacy than your ISP.

Readers have been asking us for a definitive list of the best VPN services. But as we covered last year, this is really an impossible task. You can find out whether a VPN provider promises not to keep logs of your Internet activities, but there’s no way to verify whether the VPN provider actually keeps logs, Gillula said.

A VPN provider would see exactly what your ISP would see, but “in some cases, that may be better than trusting your ISP, because your ISP may just straight out say, ‘we’re going to be snooping through your browsing history,'” Gillula said.

For guidelines on what to expect and what not to expect from VPN services, read our feature from last year. We also discussed VPNs and other technologies in this beginner’s guide to boosting your privacy and security online.

While each VPN is operated by a single provider, Tor is a distributed network that tries to preserve anonymity by routing traffic through a series of relays.

“When you use the Tor software, your IP address remains hidden and it appears that your connection is coming from the IP address of a Tor exit relay, which can be anywhere in the world,” the EFF explains.

Tor is not without vulnerabilities. But generally speaking, while operators of Tor exit nodes “can see traffic going back and forth, they wouldn’t be able to trace it back to you,” Gillula said. They’d know that someone is going to the websites you’re visiting, but they “wouldn’t know that it originated from your home IP address.” Tor is thus “a little more privacy preserving than the VPN,” he said.
Further Reading
Ars announces HTTPS by default (finally)

VPNs have an advantage over Tor in ease of use if you want to configure your router to tunnel all of your traffic through the VPN, Gillula said.

“You can do that with Tor, but that takes a little more tech savvy than firing up the Tor browser bundle,” which only encrypts traffic in and out of the browser, rather than throughout your home, he said. But there are Tor-enabled routers, which we have reviewed in the past.

Finally, there is HTTPS, which if present in your URL bar indicates that your connection to a particular website is encrypted. As we discussed earlier, your ISP can’t see what you do on an HTTPS-enabled website. For example, the ISP knows when you visit https://arstechnica.com, but it doesn’t see which articles you’re reading.

The HTTPS Everywhere browser extension offered by EFF and The Tor Project provides greater protection on websites that offer only limited support for encryption via HTTPS. However, “it only upgrades your connection if the website supports [HTTPS], and then only if it’s in our list of websites that support HTTPS,” Gillula said. If the website doesn’t support HTTPS at all, you’re out of luck.

Turning on your Web browser’s private or incognito mode will not prevent ISPs from seeing your Internet activity. Google, for example, says that Chrome’s incognito mode prevents the Chrome browser itself from saving the sites that you visit, but does not stop ISPs and websites from seeing which websites you’ve visited.

A follow up on the Russian thing. The business-ties aspect was woefully under-reported during the campaign season, and may well have altered the outcome if it had been known. It’s yet one more case where Trump has been caught lying, and his connections with mobsters should unsettle everyone . . .

Trump’s business network reached alleged Russian mobsters Oren Dorell , USA TODAY Published 5:05 p.m. ET March 28, 2017 | Updated 12 hours ago

Excerpt:

To expand his real estate developments over the years, Donald Trump, his company and partners repeatedly turned to wealthy Russians and oligarchs from former Soviet republics — several allegedly connected to organized crime, according to a USA TODAY review of court cases, government and legal documents and an interview with a former federal prosecutor.

The president and his companies have been linked to at least 10 wealthy former Soviet businessmen with alleged ties to criminal organizations or money laundering.

Among them:

• A member of the firm that developed the Trump SoHo Hotel in New York is a twice-convicted felon who spent a year in prison for stabbing a man and later scouted for Trump investments in Russia.

• An investor in the SoHo project was accused by Belgian authorities in 2011 in a $55 million money-laundering scheme.

• Three owners of Trump condos in Florida and Manhattan were accused in federal indictments of belonging to a Russian-American organized crime group and working for a major international crime boss based in Russia.

• A former mayor from Kazakhstan was accused in a federal lawsuit filed in Los Angeles in 2014 of hiding millions of dollars looted from his city, some of which was spent on three Trump SoHo units.

• A Ukrainian owner of two Trump condos in Florida was indicted in a money-laundering scheme involving a former prime minister of Ukraine.

Trump’s Russian connections are of heightened interest because of an FBI investigation into possible collusion between Trump’s presidential campaign and Russian operatives to interfere in last fall’s election. What’s more, Trump and his companies have had business dealings with Russians that go back decades, raising questions about whether his policies would be influenced by business considerations.

Trump told reporters in February: “I have no dealings with Russia. I have no deals that could happen in Russia, because we’ve stayed away. And I have no loans with Russia. I have no loans with Russia at all.”

Yet in 2013, after Trump addressed potential investors in Moscow, he bragged to Real Estate Weekly about his access to Russia’s rich and powerful. “I have a great relationship with many Russians, and almost all of the oligarchs were in the room,” Trump said, referring to Russians who made fortunes when former Soviet state enterprises were sold to private investors.

Five years earlier, Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. told Russian media while in Moscow that “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross section of a lot of our assets” in places like Dubai and Trump SoHo and elsewhere in New York.

New York City real estate broker Dolly Lenz told USA TODAY she sold about 65 condos in Trump World at 845 U.N. Plaza in Manhattan to Russian investors, many of whom sought personal meetings with Trump for his business expertise.

“I had contacts in Moscow looking to invest in the United States,” Lenz said. “They all wanted to meet Donald. They became very friendly.” Many of those meetings happened in Trump’s office at Trump Tower or at sales events, Lenz said.

I agree with roughly 95% of what he said, but his comment on Trump and Russia just baffles me. It’s basically a non-sequitur when it comes to his own critique of Trump, and I find this same non-sequitur appearing with other lefties. Hard-right Russia continues to be their blind spot:

Very little that comes out of the White House would be expected from a US president. But another question comes to mind as well. What is this all about? When Obama was presenting himself to the public before the 2008 primaries, one of his proudest accomplishments — in fact, one of the very few of his senatorial career — was impassioned support for Israel’s murderous invasion of Lebanon. He even went so far as to cosponsor legislation calling for strong action against any country that might impede the assault. Has anyone on the Trump team been accused of similar support for Russian crimes? True, there have been some entirely improper acts, notably Michael Flynn’s failure to register as an agent of Turkey. But that is not the focus of the anger of the Democrats, whose primary concern in this affair seems to be to extinguish one of the few rays of light in the Trump performances, his indications of concern to reduce tensions with Russia that might well explode to terminal nuclear war. It’s perhaps of some interest that one may turn to the leading establishment journal, Foreign Affairs, to find an informed analysis of the fierce liberal opposition to such sensible moves and its background.

Russia’s annexation of Crimea isn’t at least as bad as Israel’s attack on Lebanon? Its record of killing its own political dissidents isn’t worthy of rebuke? Its tripling down on neoliberal capitalism, which has resulted in inequality levels that make ours look like an anarchist commune in comparison . . . That’s not worthy of rebuke? America leads the west in inequality, and Russia makes us look really good on that score. Hard-right Russia. I just don’t get this reluctance from some on the left to call them out.

And I see no attempt by Trump or his team to reduce tensions with Russia in order to forge peace around the world. They seem to want Russia to join in with us to go to war against the Middle East. Yeah, let’s break out those flowers and rainbows!!

We all have blind spots. This idea that Trump has the noblest of motives when it comes to Russia, while being rabidly bellicose in dozens of other cases? He’s calling for massive military buildup (which NC notes), rattling his saber repeatedly against Iran, China, North Korea and the Middle East in general . . . not to mention his viciousness toward the undocumented.

Seriously, some folks are trying to make 2+2=5.

Thanks, ZN. Good articles.

In reality, the American obsession, the addiction, the insistence on “free market” orthodoxy literally kills tens of thousands of Americans each year. This is not hyperbole.

There is almost no case, across all industries, wherein a private, for-profit entity can perform better for consumers than a non-profit, public entity. It’s virtually impossible. Overhead and the profit motive rule that out. Yet we’ve been fed a constant diet of lies about all of this, for generations now, and it’s a part of the woodwork. We’ve been brainwashed into believing that the public sector is necessarily inefficient and wasteful.

In reality, it’s the private sector at fault, and those who outsource and privatize public goods and services. Naturally, “government” is woefully inefficient if it privatizes anything. The fundamental problem with the ACA is that it outsourced to the private sector what should have remained all non-profit and public.

Never, ever put a “government” stamp on something the private sector controls. You’re guaranteed to get the blame.