Putin & Trump and Journalists

[ish mailian]

I wouldn't have invaded Iraq...but that's blood under broken bridges
now. Diplomacy too has its pitfalls, but a  diplomatic settlement is
the best option, and in the end, the only way.  First all suppliers of
arms must agree to stop supplying arms to all sides and alternative
suppliers must be stopped. The destruction of the country and the loss
of life must end. Humanitarian aid, on a huge scale must flow in
unimpeded and wherever Syrians are working to build and preserve the
country they must be protected and supported. It's gonna take a lotta
love and a lotta money. And time. Turn the tide of jihadis, not by
signing executive orders or joining in Putin's "success", but by
diplomatically working to settle the issues, heal the wounds, end the
sufferings that motivate the jihadis. Of course, many of the causes
can't be reversed (like the invasion of Iraq), but we can learn from
the mistakes and we can invest in the future and we can restore hope
in young people. When the US acts as it does, on immigration for
example, it has a direct impact on young people who would love to hope
for a better world, a world of peace, a world that is safe and that
respects them, but that idealism can be harnessed for war as well as
peace and we must promote peace, beginning at home and, because we
have the resources, and because we can repair our reputation abroad,
in the world too. We have to stop bombing, stop threatening, stop
talking about people in the world as if they were rats that must be
exterminated.  We need to invest in our kids and in our neighborhoods,
in much the same way, to solve the root problems of poverty and
neglect. we need to re-train our police and we need to listen to
people who are concerned that their lives don't matter, and these live
are white working class men in gutted factory towns in Ohio and these
are black lives in Newark NJ, and these are our children and they need
saving too. We have so much to do, but we have entirely the wrong
people in charge, so we need to figure out a way to get the right
people elected. So David and Thomas want the same things, I'm sure,
but there is now do much despair because there are no ears to listen
to the voices of peace and diplomacy in Washington.

How Putin Started Winning Big in Syria and Got Europe to Embrace Him

It shouldn’t need to be said, but I want to underline that the above
is analysis, not advocacy.  Be that as it may, in the past 4 months,
Putin has begun winning in Syria, which means so has al-Assad. And the
spillover effects on Russian diplomacy are huge.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/top_5_ways_putin_has_won_big_syria_and_why_europe_embracing_him_20160126


On Sun, Jan 29, 2017 at 1:33 AM, Thomas Eckhardt
<thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de> wrote:
>
>> How would you have played this out, Thomas?  I would really like to know
>> how this mess would have been improved were you the US President instead
>> of Obama.
>
>
> I would not have imposed sanctions on Syria. I would not have permitted the
> CIA and the Pentagon to provide weapons and/or training to the insurgents. I
> would have told my open-minded and democratic "friends" from Qatar and
> Saudi-Arabia as well as my "partners" in Europe to stop providing weapons
> and training to the insurgents. I would never have said "Assad must go!" And
> so on and so forth.
>
> Of course, I would have tried to find a diplomatic solution.
>
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l