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General McChrystal lacks support from Senators who backed him earlier, after comments in a Rolling Stone article showed disdain for the Obama policy team and for Vice President Biden.

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Thomas Friedman sees the WikiLeaks information showing America paying the Pakistan army and intelligence services to be two-faced, to both fight with the Americans and at the same time support the insurgents fighting the Americans. He sees America being made the sucker in this game. And without the resources to change the region and transform it, America needs a better approach that does not waste its resources and energies.

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Thomas Friedman of the NYT sees a climate change as an area in which Trump has ignored the information of eminent scientists. He sees a weakness of the Trump administration in Trump's putting no importance to briefings by experts from climate change to national security briefings. Friedman sees Russia and hacking as a major issue facing the new Trump administration, including the new hearings in Congress from leading Republicans on the cyberattacks.

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Richard Cohen, Washington Post reporter, on the "no fly zone" option in Syria and how it could have prevented the loss of 300,000 lives, prevented millions of refugees, and moving politics in Europe in a direction that reverses the gains made in the post war period towards a more tolerant society.

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Interesting and quite useful from a sociological and psychological point of view, that people believe what they want to believe. Even today writes Slackman, the Arabs and Muslims from Dubai malls to people one meets in a park in Algiers, cafes in Riyadh, and in shops and places all over Cairo, say the USA organized 9/11 so that they could attack 2 Muslim states, Iraq and Afghanistan. If we changed it a bit and said Rumsfeld and Cheney got the perfect excuse to attack Afghanistan's Taliban government from 9/11. It created the kind of fears in the US public about terrorists, individual, or state sponsored terrorism like Iraq's against the Marsh Shiites after the Kuwait war (which was a personal affront to both Rumsfeld and Cheney as they let it happen right under their eyes), then one can extend that to say Rumsfeld and Cheney felt they now had the opportunity to get Saddam out. So once you have the US even for good moral reason eager to intervene, this eagerness may not require too much of a stretch to be seen as the US administration engineering this atmosphere by organizing 9/11, or by letting it happen. This is true for an Arab public that feels humiliated and sees a loss of respect from all the setbacks they have suffered, including in Egypt where a President has maintained himself in power for thirty long years and has American support. And most of these people haven't left their surroundings, so they haven't seen the world outside. What they beleieve is only what is possible from what they can see possible from their immediate surroundings. From a -sociological and psychological perspective this is certainly possible and even realistic. When Friedman in the New York Times says its shameless that the 2 Republican candidates can speak of being change agents when Republicans have been in power for 8 years, and still the Republican faithful and some independents believe this, they have not lost their wits but may see this in terms of their gut feel and in terms of their own personal experiences and surroundings. Even when Paul Gigot of the Wall Street Journal sees little hope from either candidate when it comes to lobbyists influencing them and proof of this from lobbyists for Fannie and Freddie as their senior advisors. Then its still possible for Republican faithful, however weird it may appear to an informed observer,to see McCain and Palin as agents of change. Same is true for Obama. ...

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The narcotics revenue source is only one of three sources, says Defense Sec Gates. The other two are funds generated locally from the Pashtun minority in Pakistan, and funds generated from outside sources like people in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. A 2006 World Bank report says the hawala system- an informal money transfer system using a network of money brokers with little oversight- "carries out the majority of the country's cash payments and transfers." Of the local sources, its only now that the Pakistan government is making a serious effort to freeze these bank accounts traced to the Taliban. The CIA says it has identified the charities and organizations that send money, but it is not clear if these sources have been suspended. The implications of this is that the war could be sustained by the Taliban even if the opium crop was destroyed, or smuggling routes and labs were destroyed. Gates points out that the very same external funding channels for sending money by wealthy Muslims that the US supported in the 1980's to help Muslim militants expel the Russians may still be open today. His comment that "it would't surprise me if some of those channels were still open today," suggests that even the Defense Dept does not know how these channels operate because of their extreme secrecy. In a way this shows how the war and the people that the US supported have come back to hurt the US, just as the people on the Pakistani side find that the people they supported in the Afghan and tribal areas and the Taliban organization they created is now coming back to hurt Pakistan. What makes it deeply disconcerting is that as Gates points out, there is so little time before the patience of the American public wears out with rising casualties. And on the Pakistani side there is so little time also because the war is spreading to Pakistani cities. See the link to The Taliban's war on the ill trained Pakistani police forces across the country in the WSJ May 28, 2009. ...

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Douthat offers insights into U.S. president Obama's thinking when he said at a National Prayer Breakfast, that Christians also had committed bad acts in the name of religion and reminded listener of the Jim Crow days when blacks were oppressed by church going Christians. The Crusades were a long battle against an advancing Islam over several centuries and many regions, says Douthat, and do not quite compare with the actions committed by an individual organization such as Islamic State in 2014-2015. The Jim Crow reference comes from personal experience during the fading days of racial discrimination. Yet says Douthat this reference to Christian culpability does little to bring the criticism back to self that the writer Niebuhr, Obama's role model, suggests, because it does not take the criticism back to self or political party to serve as useful introspection. It is almost like saying Christians are just as bad,(so why act?) without distinguishing from Christians and Muslims who respect tolerance and peaceful coexistence from those who do not. It also encourages one to remain a bystander in foreign and defense policy, leaving a younger generation with any future consequences. Ike does better by bringing self-criticism home to his own party and ideological wing by talking about the military-industrial complex and the problems it will create....

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Blake of the Washington Post says president Trump finds himself in the same situation as president Obama, who came into office wanting to scale down the effort in Afghanistan, and early in his presidency signed off on a troop surge under commander McChrystal. Trump in the election campaign expressed strong disapproval of interventionist policies. The deteriorating situation in Afghanistan makes it necessary to make an infustion of American troops- a policy being developed by Gen. Mattis. The change now is to insist vigorously on anti-corruption measures and good governance in return for aid. 

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  A new German party called BSW,  Bundnis (Association) Sarah Wagenknecht, means Germany nationally could see a smaller Social Democrats party in parliament making way for the socialists who want to keep out migrants. Across East Germany a new party is challenging the AfD from the socialist side getting the protest vote against pro-migrant policies.The socialist BSW party is taking votes from the SPD and DIe Linke Left, from Free Democrats and Greens in the state parliamentary elections in East German states of Thuringia, Saxony, Brandenburg. Nationally SPD may be 15-20%, BSW 10%, and CDU 30%, AfD 10-15%, FDP 10%, Greens 10% in a new shape for German parliamentary representation. The AfD and far right in Germany is challenged by the BSW with both parties opposing policies that led to large scale migrant flows into Germany of Angela Merkel.  BSW is the socialist party of Sarah Wagenknecht which is opposed to migrants entering the country as it distracts from tackling the problems of the working class in Germany and burdens public services when needs are greater among the local communities.  It sees the ruling Christian Democrats, Social Democrat and Free Demcorats, Greens, as out of touch with the problems of working class Germans struggling to make a living. BSW also opposes the wars in Ukraine and Gaza for the same reasons as it takes away resources that are better used to tackle problems at home. The AfD party also opposes migrants but is seen as feeding on the grievances of people of old east German communist state who feel left behind by the reunification of Germany. As a socialist party BSW is for addressing problems of inequality and poverty, childcare, cost of living action, housing, and many of the problems of the working class. Mette Frederiksen Danish prime minister has combined socialist ideas with anti-migrant position in Denmark. A similar position is being taken in the US by the Biden Harris administration in the US by closing the Border with Mexico.  Who is Sahra Wagenknecht and the BSW? Bundnis Sarah Wagenknecht or Association of Sarah Wagenknecht is a socialist party that grew out of Sarah Wagenknecht's own experience growing up in the socialist state of the German Democratic Republic during her formative years in East Berlin.  Born to a Iranian father who disappeared in Iran, and a German mother she was raised by her grandparents. She was active in the socialist parties Die Linke group in parliament since 2000. She received her bachelors degree in philosophy and New German Literature at East Berlin Humboldt University. Followed by MA at Groningen University in philosophy of Marx-Hegel and a doctoral degree from TU Chemnitz in Economics. She was member of parliament in the Bundestag and leader of the Die Linke group. The twin 2009 financial crisis by banks pursuing excessive leverage profits and unethical dealings, the euro crisis that followed of state actors misrepresenting their finances, the rent seeking attitudes of finance, pharma, tech monopolies and other industries has led her along with Italian economist Mazzucato to question the existing system. ...