Podcast 3/20/2016: Syria and Brazil

On this episode, Vinny and I discuss American foreign policy as it relates to the Syrian civil war, the crisis stemming from the Petrobras scandal in Brazil, and of course, some tangents.

http://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-nzp8s-5dd1fe/download

Notes:

• Cities and towns of the Syrian Civil War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cities_and_towns_during_the_Syrian_Civil_War
• Global arms trade http://www.globalissues.org/article/74/the-arms-trade-is-big-business
• I mentioned being John McCain being photographed with members of al-Qaeda on a visit to Syria.  I fact-checked myself and the details were sketchy.  McCain was ostensibly meeting with members of the Free Syrian Army, but that has been disputed.  What's clear to me is I can't make that claim as if it is fact.  You win this round, McCain.
• On the drugging of a Kursk relative http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/894597.stm.
• A Vox article on Brazil and the Petrobras scandal http://www.vox.com/2016/3/18/11260924/petrobras-brazil
• 
• A little on the admission of California to the Union http://www.historytoday.com/richard-cavendish/california-becomes-state-union
• Shrinking cities in the United States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrinking_cities_in_the_United_States

NSFW

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Today in Moronic Memes #4

Gidon Yoel Eilat via Vermonters for Replacing Bernie Sanders (Facebook)

I'm becoming convinced that a significant part of our electorate inhabits an alternate universe where rules of logic don't apply.  The Iran nuclear deal seems to bring out nut-jobs, well the nuclear deal and nearly everything else Obama has done, but I digress. 

It's one thing to believe that this wasn't the best deal we could've gotten (a plausible albeit dubious conclusion), but it is quite another to call it treasonous.  This is how the the Constitution defines treason:

Today in Moronic Memes #3

 

The warmongers are all a fluster, as they won't get a chance (for at least today) to send someone else to fight an expensive and dangerous war on their behalf.  So now they must criticize substantive diplomacy because Iran=bad.  Ironically, the neo-conservative hawk's disdain for this deal is shared by the very people they are supposedly worried about:  The Mullahs in Iran.  They are kindred spirits of sorts, after-all if you've called someone evil for 36 years; it's awful hard politically to negotiate with them.  

Whitewashing History

Why would anyone trust these people?

One of the more troubling trends to come out the past 15 years is the complete re-writing of the reasons we got involved in the Iraq War.  The reasoning behind the war now falls primarily on bad intelligence.  Simply if our intelligence hadn't been so wrong about weapons of mass destruction then the Bush administration wouldn't have led us into war.  I can forgive someone who wasn't politically aware at the time for believing this, but having been politically aware at the time; I can say that this is complete bullshit.

Part of the chorus of apologists is NY Times columnist David Brooks whom recently wrote an editorial oddly titled "Learning From Mistakes":

...The first obvious lesson is that we should look at intelligence products with a more skeptical eye.  There’s a fable going around now that the intelligence about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction was all cooked by political pressure, that there was a big political conspiracy to lie us into war.

Should We Charge 47 Senators With a Violation of the Logan Act? No.

Sen. Tom Cotton

This trend of me defending people I find reprehensible is unsettling.  If I wanted to defend scumbags, I would have gone to law school.  I'm writing about the petition circulating right now asking that the justice department pursue charges against the 47 Senators who wrote a letter to Iranian leadership saying that any deal reached wouldn't be upheld after President Obama leaves office. The petition reads:

On March 9th, 2015, forty-seven United States Senators committed a treasonous offense when they decided to violate the Logan Act, a 1799 law which forbids unauthorized citizens from negotiating with foreign governments. Violation of the Logan Act is a felony, punishable under federal law with imprisonment of up to three years.
At a time when the United States government is attempting to reach a potential nuclear agreement with the Iranian government, 47 Senators saw fit to instead issue a condescending letter to the Iranian government stating that any agreement brokered by our President would not be upheld once the president leaves office.
This is a clear violation of federal law. In attempting to undermine our own nation, these 47 senators have committed treason.

Read This: All the Shah's Men

All the Shah's Men by Stephen Kinzer tells the true story of Operation Ajax, the CIA lead coup of democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh.  Democratically elected, secular, and moderate Mossadegh was a highly popular figure in Iranian politics.  In addition to the above qualities, Mossadegh was nationalistic and despised foreign influence which led to a feud with the exploitative Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (later British Petroleum) and the British Empire.