Terrorism

[techno900]

[real-human]

[MalibuGuru]

[real-human]

[nw30]

Pssssst, just between you and me, Dean ol' buddy, spending cash is untraceable,,,,,,,, but don't tell anybody.

[real-human]

[mac]

How said it must be to live in a world where your foreign policy position and understanding is no deeper than "gotcha."

Our relationship with Iran exists in a context, one that was fundamentally changed by the invasion of Iraq. Between 1980 and 1988 Iran and Iraq were at war. When Bush invaded Iraq, the balance of the entire Middle East was shifted, and now Iraq is more closely aligned with Iran than a rival. That has implications that no one with any sense can simply say Obama should have fixed. Prior to the invasion of Iraq, many of those familiar with Middle East politics considered Iran a much greater threat to the US's security.

Next the question of payments. Without any understanding of the magnitude of sanctions, the right wing, egged on by Ailes and hobbled by their lack of critical thinking, were sold the idea that the US paid ransom. Let's look briefly at the numbers. The sanctions against Iran cost $5 billion a month. That amounted to $120 billion by 2013. Those sanctions caused a shrinkage of the Iran economy of 5% in 2012 and made it very difficult for Iranian banks to function in the international financial system, Iran had advanced fairly far towards the necessary technology to build a nuclear weapon--while George W. Bush was president. And Bush rejected pleas by Cheney to attack Iran's nuclear facilities, realizing that knocking over a bigger and more powerful hornet's nest in the Middle East might not be a good idea, So we managed to find, in invading Iraq, a way to strengthen their influence in the Middle East.

(Lest we forget, the softened demand for oil made the economic situation in Iran much worse. And, despite what I expect to see here as false equivalency bleating from mrgybe and other oil stock holders, conservation and alternative energy played a role in that softened demand.)

Against this backdrop, easing $60 billion a year in sanctions, Fox news has revved up the uninformed about $400 million. I'll do the math for you--It's 2/3 of a percent of what the sanctions were costing Iran each year. Yup, 0.00667. So if the sanctions did the heavy lifting--and I think they did--$400 million is the change left over on the dresser. But if the sanctions didn't work, the fantasy held inside the Fox bubble, why would such small change matter?

The sad aspect of this is the once great GOP has no idea what to do in the Middle East, or with Iran in particular. The US has, without a doubt, the strongest military in the world. But it has failed to deliver political goals in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. In all three places it has been demonstrated that a popularly supported guerrilla war or insurgency can inflict a cost, human and economic, that the American public is unwilling to stomach. Obama tried a diplomatic approach that has moved Iran further from nuclear weapons than they were during the Bush administration, using diplomatic and economic tools. That just drives you chicken hawks, truly timid people that look at the world with fear rather than any level of hope, just wild.

[isobars]

Now we see why the State Dept admitted the $400M was ransom and Obama admitted to the $1.7B ransom (by a euphemism, of course) once it was outed: The latest figure is $33.6 BILLION in cash.

[MalibuGuru]

This is going to lead to terrorism.

Female aid workers have been found committing sex acts on children at a refugee centre.

Officials apparently knew for months that one worker at the Børnecenter Tullebølle children’s asylum centre in Denmark had engaged in sexual activity with underage residents, but they failed to do anything about it.

Some of the acts were photographed.

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One worker was videotaped performing oral sex on at least one refugee and full intercourse with one boy at the centre in Tranekær.

Two other female workers are said to have “violated” other boys at the centre.

Sisi Eibye, head of the asylum programme at Langeland Municipality in Denmark, has been fired as a result of the scandal. She is not one of the women involved in abusing the children.

Police are now investigating.

The Danish Immigration Service (DIS) has announced it will shut down the children’s centre because of the claims.

It houses about 40 boys.

In September Heat Street reported claims that British workers were travelling to the Calais Jungle to have sex with migrants. Sometimes they supposedly had multiple partners in one day.

Other aid workers complained of unscrupulous volunteers treating the now defunct camp like a ‘free for all festival’ and said some volunteers ‘find it difficult to keep it in their pants’.

The allegations emerged on a Facebook thread concerning the People to People Solidarity group. It has since been deleted.

It was claimed that female volunteers were more likely to have sex with male migrants than vice versa.

The UNHCR said it has a ‘zero tolerance’ policy concerning the sexual exploitation of refugees in such camps.

[mac]

Fox news, the election arm of the GOP. When they say jump, Golden Dawn asks not whether they are right, but how high?