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Showing posts with label ISIS. Show all posts

20171217

Happy New Year 2019

It's that time of the year, and for the 21st time*, I have no choice but to wish you a happy next year, considering what's going to happen in 2018:

January 2018:
Full mailbox for Donald Trump on the morning of the 20th: 1 letter congratulating him for his first year in office (From Russia With Love, signed by The Former Spy Who Still Loves You), 457 letters of resignation from White House staffers who completed the full year required for their résumés, 3,580 letters of candidacy from child molesters with the required KKK kredentials.

February 2018:
As announced, the US wait until the end of the Pyeongchang Olympics to launch preemptive strikes against North Korea. The new Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, 'apologizes' for not including the Paralympics: 'Our bad, but thanks to us, people with disabilities will have even more airtime'. If all targets are destroyed, they only represented a fraction of Kim Jong-un's arsenal, and Seoul is destroyed minutes after the first strike. By the end of the day, the whole peninsula is flattened. Hundreds of millions of Americans will only learn months later that, in retaliation, they've been poisoned by chemicals spread in their water systems by sleeping cells.

March 2018:

Science: the Russia Probe is successfully sent to Mars by the GOP Congress.

April 2018:
As asset bubbles keep popping, World Leaders convene in Moscow around a freshly reelected Vladimir Putin. Xi, Erdogan, Abe, Duterte, Modi, Trump, and their friends agree to focus on the reforms that should have remained their only priority: undermining their respective democracies.

May 2018:
Prince Harry marries Meghan Markle dressed as a Minion, the mildest set she could find in his collection of Nazi uniforms, Stormtrooper gears, and Britain First Party costumes.

June 2018:
Saudi women are allowed to drive, but only driverless cars that are fully covered with an opaque burqa.

July 2018:
Not a single goal scored during the whole FIFA World Cup in Russia... an unexpected consequence of net neutrality.

August 2018:
From al Qaeda to ISIS to Idiotheocracy: the latest terror franchise to rise from the ashes of the precedent one has further dumbed down the message of fundamentalism to the most basic grunts, facilitating the merger with extremists from other religions. Their propaganda videos soon go viral among hardcore Teletubbies fans.

September 2018:
The POTUS realizes that trying to cast away investigations against him didn't work: Robert Mueller (from Mars), and Trump's victims of sexual harassment (from Venus) manage to revive the threats of impeachment. Looking for new diversions, DJT reveals the plans of the future US Embassy in East Jerusalem, inaugurates statues of the Klan Founders in the Rose Garden, and starts WWIV against Iran.

October 2018:
As soon as Theresa May resigns, the British Pound spikes to 312,788 Bitcoin, that's to say one millionth of a zimbabwean dollar, or the equivalent of half a second of work in North Korean slave wages.

November 2018:
Landslide victory for Mainstream Republicans at the mid-term elections: 'Our top donors kindly rewarded us for the generous tax cuts we offered them', triumphes Mitch McConnell. 'We're also glad that the GOP managed to end in the third position - we need all the votes of the Gropers Offshore Party'. The former Democratic Party also failed to reunite, Progressives finishing a distant second, and the RNC fifth, far behind the Green Party, even after Hillary Clinton raised record funds for her Rhodam National Convention.

December 2018:
And the Nobel Peace Prize goes to... AlphaGo. The World's most powerful A.I. platform solved all conflicts, all famines, and all environmental and refugee crises by removing mankind.

blogules 2017
Since 2003, nonsensical posts about noncritical issues in nonenglish (get your blogules transfusion in French)
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20151208

"A word about what we should not do"

This from the Trump Campaign: "Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on."

This. Not just yet another abomination slipping from the Provocateur in Chief's mouthpiece, but a formal, written statement published on his official channel.

This. After the Paris and San Bernardino shootings, after Marine Le Pen's victory in French regional elections, after Obama's speech, after the rise of Ted Cruz in Iowa polls, after a call from Holocaust survivors to welcome refugees in the US...

This. Even in the US, people usually hide behind masks to make such hatemongering calls.

"What is going on" is that radicals once again set the agenda, and Donald Trump is playing their game.

"What is going on" is that France and the United States send the worst message to the world.

"What is going on" is that yes, the leaders of our democracies are weak.

Francois Hollande is weak. Unlike after the Charlie Hebdo shootings, he chose the nationalist / military only path to pose as a strong leader days ahead of elections poised to boost the extreme right, and of course it backfired.

Barack Obama is weak because there's not much he can do: his predecessor already weakened America and democracy worldwide, and he failed to keep a majority to support him at home. No wonder the first half of his address to the nation* fell flat.

But Barack Obama is not weak when he remains clear (NSA discrepancies notwithstanding) about what America should not do, and that was the second half of his speech. America will stop being America if it follows the wishes of her most radical extremists, which happen to be exactly what ISIS wants.

I'm not sure a majority of Americans got that part of the message.

What I'm sure of, is that ISIS needs friends like Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, or Donald Trump.
blogules 2015
Since 2003, nonsensical posts about noncritical issues in nonenglish (get your blogules transfusion in French)
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20151115

Fluctuat nec mergitur

Following Friday's attacks, I posted this image of Paris from my mobile phone:

That's a simple map of my hometown, with its motto in Latin.

'Fluctuat nec mergitur' means that even when tossed around in stormy waters, the city never sinks.

I considered using the official coat of arms, but it's too loaded in symbols, particularly with these protective walls, and the King's colors:

The last things I wanted were to celebrate warfare, to mention 'divine blood' in the middle of a carnage, or to bring monarchy into this new Republican challenge*.

I opted for a satellite image showing Paris as it is. Unfortunately, that crappy app cropped the map, severing even neighborhoods that had been struck by the terrorists, adding insult to death.

When I noticed that, I considered trying again, but somehow that failure made sense: you can't sum up the horror in one picture, and humanity as a whole had been assaulted anyway.

Humanity is not sinking.

But among humans who are sinking, a few are tempted to join extremism, which feeds upon our weaknesses, particularly when our democracies fail.

And from France, more is expected than just 'staying afloat' and surviving terror attacks. This democracy can't afford failing to honor its own motto, 'liberty, equality, fraternity'.

---ADDENDUM 20151118---
Thank you dear Annabel Park for your kind words to the French people:

(see also the French version on blogules V.F.: "Un message d'Annabel Park")

---

blogules 2015
Since 2003, nonsensical posts about noncritical issues in nonenglish (get your blogules transfusion in French)
NEW: join blogules on Facebook!!! and Twitter (@stephanemot, @blogules)

20140830

Thank you, Bibi, for shooting yourself in the foot

A great classic, the pounding of Gaza on a US election year*. But this time, Benjamin Netanyahu went too far too early, losing critical support at a critical moment.

Of course he didn't get rid of Hamas, because that's not what he wants, remember? Radicals need radicals at their doorsteps to play ping pong and justify their own stronghold. The idea was to surf on the ISIS panic wave, to weaken key entry/exit points for awhile, and by fueling fear in Israel and hatred in Palestine, to comfort both governments (the Hamas, Bibi) as the only ones legitimate to defend the land against bad guys (Bibi, the Hamas).

The problem is that US elections haven't really started, and that these are mid-term elections, not presidential ones. Big guns were not compelled to publicly pledge allegiance during the conflict. Worse: more candidates might seize the opportunity to emancipate themselves from a declining, hawkish AIPAC, and to support Israel via J Street**, which represents the moderate views of a growing majority of US Jews, and a much more sustainable path to peace.

If Bibi doesn't care about international outrage, he cares about support from the US. And because he went too far, at long last, the US internal political debate about Israel has suddenly become mainstream. Most recently and notably - and significantly location / media-wise:
- The Times refusing to publish a diatribe by Elie Wiesel comparing the Hamas to Nazis
- the ad run in The New York Times where 327 survivors of the Holocaust denounce "the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza" and calling for a complete boycott of Israel
- articles condemning the AIPAC, such as the recent "Friends of Israel" by Connie Bruck in The New Yorker

Now that bad guys are exposed on both sides, it's OK to publicly challenge the AIPAC and to mention J Street. It's soon going to be not only OK, but totally P.C. to support Israel by criticizing its government.

Yes, Barack Obama needs a strategy against ISIS, but showing progress between Israel and Palestine would send very strong messages across the World. The US can truly help Israel. If John F. Kerry can't do much, mainstream American moderates have the power to help moderates become mainstream in Israel.

blogules 2014
Since 2003, nonsensical posts about noncritical issues in nonenglish (get your blogules transfusion in French)
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* e.g. "Deja vu all over again", "Israel accepted as true the choice between its security and its ideals"
** more than ever, "J Street : It's Time"!

20140630

ISIS the end of Iraq?

Again, the end of Iraq was sealed in 2003 with the invasion led by the Theocon-Neocon duet Bush-Cheney (as usual, from my 7-year-old "Universal Declaration of Independence From Fundamentalism"):

"For fundamentalists from all religions, George W. Bush turned out to be the best person at the best place at the best moment.

His strategy should look like a total failure to whoever considers the Iraq quagmire, the Palestinian fiasco, or the worldwide surge in terror. But to the contrary, Bush's strategy proved a complete success.

Because George W. Bush didn't act as a President of The United States of America in the interest of his country.
And George W. Bush didn't even act as a Republican in the interest of his party.
George W. Bush acted as a fundamentalist in the interest of fundamentalism.

(...)

Bush did not wage a war on terror but in favor of it : instead of focusing on terrorist networks and reducing their ground (ie by fighting injustice and poverty, promoting peace in the region and especially between Israel and Palestine), he deliberately infuriated the Muslim world and helped fundamentalists recruit new flocks of followers. And he targeted a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 but everything to do with peace in the region.

A new playground for international terrorism, the end of Iraq as a united country, civil war here, the rise of a new form of fundamentalism in Iran when reformers were "threatening" the Khomeini generation, the failure of Fatah and the victory of Hamas... all this was not collateral damage but the very aim of his sick game."

If George W. Bush deliberately set the region on fire, Barack Obama proved a poor fireman. He got Bin Laden and pulled out the troops as promised, but couldn't fix the whole mess. Furthermore, his sincere goodwill was not really rewarded, like that lovely Nowruz speech: it did lead to an Iran Spring, but didn't come with any back-up when the regime crushed it. Spinned by the GOP ahead of the elections, the Benghazi fiasco deprived the POTUS from all hope of convincing the rest of Washington to act in Syria or anywhere else.

So for now, the new Bin Laden, self-proclaimed Caliph Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, is fearing much less Uncle Sam than Vladimir Putin or - who knows - Xi Jinping. Heck, even Francois Hollande looks scarier.

All al Baghdadi needs to make it perfect is a GOP victory this November.

blogules 2014
Since 2003, nonsensical posts about noncritical issues in nonenglish (get your blogules transfusion in French)
NEW: join blogules on Facebook!!! and Twitter (@stephanemot, @blogules)