Group items tagged

let’s say by some miracle the Russians defeat ISIS. The only way to keep them defeated is by replacing them with moderate Sunnis. Which moderate Sunnis are going to align with Russia

But to get there we need to size our rhetoric with our interests in Syria as well. Our interests right now are to eliminate or contain the two biggest metastasizing threats: ISIS — whose growth can threaten the islands of decency in the region like Lebanon, the Kurds and Jordan — and the tragedy of Syrian refugees

If we want something better — multisectarian democracy in Syria soon — we would have to go in and build it ourselves. The notion that it would only take arming more Syrian moderates is insane.

Why do we have to search for moderates like a man with a dowsing rod looking for water, and then train them, while no one has to train the jihadists, who flock there? It’s because the jihadists are in the grip of ideals, albeit warped ones. There is no critical mass of Syrian moderates in the grip of ideals; they will fight for their own homes and families, but not for an abstract ideal like democracy. We try to make up for that with military “training,” but it never works.

Everyone wants an immaculate intervention in Syria, one where you look like you’re doing something, but without the political cost of putting troops on the ground or having to make unpleasant compromises with unsavory people. There is no such option.

Most of the top soccer squads weigh in at about 170-175 pounds a man—that’s the average for the Argentine team, German team, and even U.S. team this year. But a soccer team can embrace numerous body types

how can these athletes—especially the ones with great throwing arms and vertical leap—walk away from established American sports where they can make millions of dollars a year? MLS’s new contract with Fox/ESPN for $600 million over eight years is a step up, but it’s dwarfed by the TV deals with the NFL, NBA, and MLB

A GOP strategist argues along the same lines: “They sidelined the president,” Rob Collins, the Executive Director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) told reporters at a backslapping post-election briefing. Instead, Collins argued, Democrats shouldn’t have been scared off by Republican attempts to tie Obama to their candidates. Collins said NRSC polling had long identified the economy as the issues voters cared about most, and one where Democrats stood to gain. “We felt that that was their best message and they sidelined their best messenger,” he said. Collins added that in many states, Democratic candidates had positive stories to tell. “In Colorado, unemployment is 5.1 percent and they never talked about it,” he added. “They were so focused on independents that they forgot they had a base,” Collins said of Democratic Senate candidates. “They left their base behind. They became Republican-lite.”

Detectives from the sheriff's office and the Oregon State Police Arson and Explosives Section are investigating.

“And what we know about fascists,” he went on, “is that they need to be defeated.”

“the word ‘fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless.” So has it acquired any more useful meaning in the 70 years since? The latest

with a rather confused etymology, from armed gangs in Sicily called fasci, but also invoking “fasces,”

As the symbol of Mussolini’s regime, it was emblazoned on flags and military aircraft, although its recognizable silhouette

When the word was first coined, fascism was a rather incoherent ideology, a response to — though bred out of

Hitler called himself a National Socialist, and Mussolini had in fact been a socialist of the extreme left.

by 1945 the ideology lay shredded on the battlefield, apart from a few holdovers in Spain and Latin America.

ut is your fascism my fascism, or his or her fascism?

ome years ago he was writing with perplexity about the political situation he found in his native England, where “dyed-in-the-wool reactionaries” were warning against American hubris,

anti-fascist tradition.”

Since then we have been warned about “Islamofascism,” and Al Qaeda and ISIS are denounced by Western politicians and commentators as “fascists.”

but something pan-Islamic, entirely unlike the central European definition of fascism as ultranationalism.

from France to Poland and Hungary, where far-right governments tinged with xenophobia are already in power.

they only want Christian refugees, not Muslims.

But the whole Islamic world is in the throes of a vast crisis quite unlike anything Europe underwent in the past century.

American tradition of know-nothing bigotry and nativism that Mr. Trump adorns

Cruz was ready to attack Trump over the real estate mogul's assertion that Cruz's Canadian birth (to a U.S. citizen mother) makes him vulnerable to accusations he is ineligible for the presidency,

As Cruz rebutted Trump for raising the issue -- effectively winning the moment -- Trump essentially held his hands up and said he's not the one who's concerned.

And he succeeded in keeping the question alive -- a loss, in and of itself, for Cruz. Trump asked: "If you become the nominee, who the hell knows if you can even serve in office?"

Trump and Cruz were at the center of the night's most memorable exchanges, but Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie traded blows as well.

That Christie was even a target suggests he has a leg up on the two other governors in the race -- Ohio Gov.

Kasich, meanwhile, got the most engagement of the night from 89-year-old former Democratic Rep. John Dingell,

No, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul didn't change his mind and show up for Thursday's 6 p.m. undercard round. But skipping the debate worked for him.

"If you're designated as someone who is not in contention, that is very disruptive to a campaign that is about three weeks out,

The Muslim community is not reporting what’s going on. They should be reporting that their next-door neighbor is making pipe bombs and they’ve got them all over the place.

Scarborough said, “You gotta let us ask questions, you can’t just talk. No, you gotta let us actually ask questions.”

“No, no, Joe, I’m not just talking. Joe, I’m not just talking. I’m giving you the facts,” said Trump, as Scarborough attempted to get him to shut up: “Donald, Donald, Donald, Donald.”

“Go to break then, Joe. All I’m doing is giving you the facts and you don’t want to hear the facts.”

Pressed by Scarborough to identify the zones of Paris where police fear to tread, Trump responded: “I will get you the information.”

“Did the internment of the Japanese Americans violate your sense of American values? Yes or no?”

“the police refuse to go” because of radicalization.

Nobody called the police.”

They would say, ‘Are you Muslim?’ ” responded Trump, in what may be the scariest soundbite yet from the candidate.

“We love you, we want to work with you, we want you to turn in the bad ones. We all want to get along.”

Cuomo pounded the guy again and again, citing falsehood after falsehood.

“Do you have to impress anybody but yourself with these ideas?”

Good Morning America” also brought the accountability to Trump, who, again, didn’t seem to care about the implications of his proposal.

As he did in both the “Morning Joe” and CNN sessions, Trump talked about these no-go zones in Paris, whose existence has been denied by Parisians.

ad stuff, that. But what’s the alternative? Not challenge him on ideas that threaten the Constitution?

“They come to the house and take the children and accuse them of being spies,” stated another source. “If the mom cries and gets upset at them, they accuse of her [sic] being a spy too and take her to the jail and later kill her.”

However, the forces insisted the area is not 100% safe. They withdrew 635 residents to nearby Habbaniyah, but there are many areas that still contain terrorists. The officials arrested 12 alleged militants who attempted to escape by blending in with the civilians.

Terrorism expert Michael Pregent said it is normal for the Islamic State to execute fighters who lose valuable territories. They did the same thing when militants lost Tikrit.

“They continue to lose territory, we’ve seen a growing number of defections and a rise in the number of alleged internal spies – many of whom they have killed mercilessly without demonstrating significant evidence of internal espionage,” said Clint Watts, Fox fellow of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, adding: ISIS pattern of internal killings looks remarkably similar to al Shabaab’s decline in Somalia. As Shabaab lost ground and defectors increased, internal killings and harsher punishments were meted out across the terror group further accelerating the loss of local popular support.

whom Cruz said were detained for trying to help Iran with its nuclear program.

“They tried to kill us,” Cruz said Sunday.

The United States also removed any Interpol red notices and dismissed any charges against 14 Iranians previously sought but not in U.S. custody, as part of the deal.

“Praise God, Americans are coming home,” said Cruz, who is trailing front-running GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump but leading in Iowa, according to most polls. “But this deal is really problematic.”

While Gulf states cautiously welcomed last year's nuclear deal, they are deeply suspicious of Iran's activities, particularly on the Arabian Peninsula.

The foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates, Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, has taken to Twitter in recent days to criticize Iran and poke fun at his Iranian counterpart. "Don't torch, take over or ransack embassies and consulates. Don't take diplomats hostage. #DiploMaturity101," read one post.

an important constitutional amendment seems, to the men and women who are empowered to use it, too controversial to actually use.

The result: institutional and administrative chaos; our military chain of command is compromised; people around the elected president feel compelled to act above the law and remove papers from his desk. The mechanisms meant to protect the state from an incompetent or dictatorial president are not being used because people in power no longer believe in them, or are afraid to use them. Washington feels like the capital of a state where the legal order has collapsed because, in some ways, it is

This intolerable silence of the Republicans — through “Access Hollywood,” racist outbursts, diplomatic mayhem and endless scandal — is what allows Trump and his Fox News-viewing supporters to dock their spaceship in a parallel universe where truth isn’t truth. At Tuesday night’s rally in West Virginia, Trump’s irony-challenged audience could be heard chanting “Drain the Swamp!” and “Lock her up!” (Hillary Clinton, that is), just a few hours after Paul Manafort’s conviction and Cohen’s guilty plea.

there doesn’t have to be collusion, or even speculation, to recognize that something is terribly wrong. There is no good answer to the question Cohen lawyer Lanny Davis posed after his client said under oath that Trump directed him to pay off two women to influence the election: “If those payments were a crime for Michael Cohen, then why wouldn’t they be a crime for Donald Trump?”

Forty years of post-Thatcher individualism have done their work, so that protest is now not a matter of collective agency (in other words, “we can stop this”), but the kind of atomised conscience-salving I first glimpsed at the time of the Iraq war, with the appearance of that deathly slogan “Not in my name”

two missing actors in this drama: the Labour leadership – and, with one or two exceptions, big voices in what is left of the trade union movemen

Thirty years on, we face the final completion of a Tory project started back then, and the recasting of Britain – or, rather England – as a crabby, racist, inward-looking hole, and to what response? Jokes, mutterings, clicks, sporadic Twitterstorms, but nothing remotely comparable

in a world as over-mediated as ours, each day brings a different spectacle – a march, a parliamentary vote, some or other drama at the top – so simultaneously ubiquitous and short-lived that joining everything together and having any sense of clear meaning becomes all but impossible.

the same basic point applies: claims of treason and betrayal – let alone their ludicrous readings of history – must be contested.

there might be something in the example set by Rock Against Racism and the Anti-Nazi League, and a bold, popular, singularly un-English approach memorably summed up by one of its activists: “For a while we managed to create, in our noisy, messy, unconventional way, an emotional alternative to nationalism and patriotism, a celebration of a different kind of pride and solidarity.

one key mystery: that as the country drifts and the government falls apart, even the people involved in anti-Brexit protest and dissent seem confused, and far too quiet – and by the time our passions finally start stirring, it is likely to be far, far too late.