Matthews, Maddow Spread Rubbish About Russians in Syria Today

MSNBC big league star Rachel Maddow has become a major disappointment in her coverage of news relating to the Middle East, doling out propaganda as if it's reporting. 

Today I heard Chris Matthews say about the first Russian bombing raids in Syria, "They're bombing the good guys." I listened to his program for a couple years in the afternoons when there wasn't anything interesting to me on C-Span, until I couldn't bear to hear his ignorance on "my" issues. Now he declares the Nusra Front, an Al-Qaida offshoot, allegiance sworn, and Ahrar-as-Shams are "good guys." How is that not support for terrorism?

I didn't expect the same from Ph.D. Rachel, but she's hopped on the bullshit bandwagon without a fare-thee-well in regards to Syria and Iran, for some time now. She sometimes issues corrections, but never about the obvious mistakes and preconceived narratives for Middle East matters. 

The Pentagon whispers in her ear and she puts it on the air. Often, as today, a diligent amount of research would have turned up some large holes in her so-called reporting.

Examples from tonight's program: the faux contempt that the U.S. military has been bombing terrorists in Syria for a year and the Russians are late to the party. Perhaps she was unaware that we and the others were not invited in but the Russians were. Minimally, she or her staff could have looked at the headlines in Google News. Perhaps if they'd clicked on a few articles, that simple fact would have become clear.

Perhaps it didn't occur to her that the U.S. doesn't get to choose targets for the Russians. 

Perhaps it didn't occur to her that the U.S. drones can see the convoys of terrorists moving towards Damascus, and saw them moving towards the ancient Palmyra, but somehow forget to send target data to our bombs.

 Does she really believe our lack of success is because the lousy Syrian dictator won't give up power? 

I watch her show, have done since the beginning and whilst she subbed for Keith Olbermann. I will continue to watch her show because she covers D.C. politics from a progressive POV and I'm interested in that, but I'm not just going to growl at the tube all the time when I hear rubbish. 

A Game Called Diplomacy

When I was in London at S.O.A.S. studying with Noel Coulson and others in the Law School, way back when, some of us would gather on the occasional weekend for a board game. My favorite was the game of Diplomacy. (It could more accurately have been called Diplomacy and War, but that would have discouraged the more peace-minded from playing.)

The fun, to me, was in the diplomacy conducted in half-hour segments wherein deception had a major role as the players moved amongst themselves, making and breaking alliances in order to advance specific goals to gain control of the board.

Once the timer clanged to inform us that the diplomacy segment had ended, all moves on the board were made simultaneously. Many feathers were ruffled, of course, and some egos did not easily bear the double and triple-dealing, but the great food and company kept most of our group together.

Over time, I found myself looking at seasonal goings-on in the Middle East as if it was a board game: winter and summer diplomacy, spring and fall moves. Now? War, war, war. Where's the jar, jar, jar? 

Why The Gulf Nations Don't Take Syrian Refugees

so ...

The lousy NYT ran a story a couple days ago about the fact that wealthy Persian Gulf nations -- whose state and private funds help support the Sunni terrorist groups in Syria and elsewhere -- are not taking in refugees fleeing from the war in Syria. It's highly likely that they're also not taking in victims of the Saudi's dastardly aggression in Yemen, either.

Nope, the Gulfies are good at importing Sunni mercenaries from all over the Arab world, to do the tough jobs which their own citizens cannot be trusted to do. For example, in Bahrain they fill out the ranks of the military, police and secret services. They're brought in to alter the demographic balance on the island as well as assure loyalty through financial and other benefits such as free housing and medical care, cheap loans, subsidized meat, bread, electricity and fuel. How else could those men and their families afford to live in the Gulf? They even pay the ultimate price for those jobs, dying in lands not their own and for a country not their own.

Well, if they're unskilled or day laborers, they can live in accommodation with multiple other such workers or in the lousy worker camps built for those who are doing the manual labor that has built the gleaming towers throughout the Gulf. There were eleven such men living in a one bedroom apartment in the block of flats where I lived in Adliya the last time I was there. I doubt that situation has changed since then.

If they're rich refugees, no problem. Welcome. 

Cowards. Rotten cowards, the whole lot of them. I read Marc Owen Jones's piece putting forth some cogent reason why their regimes don't take in refugees from the conflicts they support. He left out the obvious. They're a bunch of cowards.

Senator Maria Cantwell, Tool

When a long-serving, self-serving Democratic Party senator from the State of Washington withholds support from the intensely-negotiated Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with the "I'm still considering it" line of rubbish, one has to ask:  of whom or what are you a tool, Senator Cantwell?