Shady Ray

Kurdish analyst on Deutsche Welle radio program here in Germany saying just now that the word out of NE Syria is that SDF and SAA (Assad) have made a deal for SAA to come into Kobani and Manbij to secure both cities from Turkish incursion. Could happen within the next few hours. If true, Assad is about to take a huge step towards gaining back almost all of his territory.

41 years old, wife is 38. No kids. While we haven't explicitly ruled it out, time is not on our side and neither of us seem particularly keen on having one. We have been married for 13 years, we both have great jobs and we enjoy the free time we have together, but there just isn't a desire for kids in either one of us; and, as DINKs living in Munich, there isn't much social pressure on us given that we seem to be in the majority of couples here in Germany when it comes to having kids. I am at peace with it and she seems to be, as well. Literally the only reason I can think of to have one is out of my own fear of her being completely alone later in life if something happens to me (and this actually has been a concern in the back of my mind for some reason as of late). She has no siblings (or even any cousins) and if I checked out early, she would be pretty much entirely alone. But, I am honestly not sure if that reasoning alone justifies bringing a kid into the world when honestly I have no desire otherwise.

At the end of the day, unless the U.S. makes a decision to set up permanent shop in Northeastern Syria, the region will eventually be controlled again by Assad, or it is going to be controlled by Turkey. The U.S. media, with its unserious treatment of the true situation in the ME, likes to make it sound like the SDF has some chance to eventually hold this territory as a result of their military might combined with some brokered agreement between either the SDF and Turkey or the SDF and Assad. That idea is bullshit. The Kurds have no hand to play here. Yes, they are scrappy and resourceful fighters, but they are no match for Turkey and Turkey is not going to allow an independent Kurdish region to exist there. They have not been engaging in conflict with Assad's SAA for a reason...and that reason is because the two sides have been negotiating under the radar for years now. The Kurds were offered more autonomy than they had before by Assad back in 2016 or so,, but they insisted on de facto independence and would not budge on their demand to keep the SDF as an independent military force as a prerequisite for coming back into Assad's fold. That was a non-starter for Damascus, which if one looks at it objectively, is understandable (what legitimate state could tolerate a separate military operating within its borders) and now the Kurds will likely cut a deal again with Assad, but this time, without even the other provisions relating to autonomy that Assad had agreed to before. And if the situation presented itself to ally with the U.S. again in some mid-east conflict, the Kurds will just as quickly do it once again. This isn't about them wanting to die alongside us as allies because of shared beliefs or something...this is about choosing to work with the only "friend" they'll ever have with any influence (us) in the region to help achieve their intense desire for an independent Kurdish statelet. It's been going on forever and it will continue to go on. This isn't new. Hell, Kissinger said in 1975: "Promise them (the Kurds) anything, give them what they get, and fuck 'em if they can't take a joke." That doesn't make what our orange dumbfuck in the Oval Office did justifiable in any way. Rather this has basically been U.S. government policy for over 40 years and at some point, the Kurds/SDF needs to deal with the powers in the ME without some silly fantasy of them getting their own state. It just isn't going to happen and they need to negotiate with that in mind.

Yup, they should liquidate their ISIS stock asap. But the realpolitik of the situation is that the Kurds have no hand to play without the US protecting them. They can either receive the ass-whipping the Turkish Armed Forces are about to deliver - and it will be a severe one - or they can accept the inevitable offer of "national reconciliation" from Damascus and allow the SDF to be absorbed into the SAA. Those are the only options left for them. They'll take the latter. They have zero leverage.

Checking in here. My drinking has increased a lot over the past six months. I have tried to stop, or at least slow down, and I it isn't working. It is getting worse. I can point to a bunch of excuses, but none of them are valid reasons; I just want to get my life turned around. I am 40 and it is time. I haven't hit rock bottom, but I would like to avoid that, as it is an inevitability otherwise, so I am going to my first AA meeting after work ends in three hours. Thanks to all of you for posting here. If nothing else, you have encouraged me to take the first step.

It was actually a high school. But yeah, Barr's involvement is disturbing nevertheless. And, yeah, a guy who never graduated from college, gets hired by Barr's dad in '74, fired in '76 after gaining a reputation for partying with his students, then goes to Wall Street and becomes a billionaire. Nothing odd here.

LOL, Yep. I am sure Ghislaine is conveniently unable to be located. Great links. There were many overlaps between the KGB and Mossad, but the fact that John Major went on and on praising Maxwell for his insight into Soviet machinations during the time of the Soviet collapse and that his funeral was attended by a metric fuck-ton of Senior Mossad directors; and, of course, he was emotionally eulogized with great praise by sitting Israeli PM Yitzhak Shamir, is telling. Im gonna go ahead and say he never once double-crossed the Mossad during the times that the KGB and Mossad were in particularly averse positions.

And just to point this out, since God knows our "oh-so-diligent-and-perseverant" media sure as fuck won't, Ghislaine Maxwell's father, Robert, was the Mossad operative in the U.K. who conned and then sold out Mordechai Vanunu for whistle-blowing on Israel's illegal nuke program. Ghislaine should be made available to testify for her crimes involving young American girls...but let's cut the bullshit, we all know she won't.

Preposterous idea. I mean, there could never be an intelligence connection behind the younger brother of the future King of England being photographed in an inappropriate pose with a 17 year old "poor-as-fuck" American "towel girl" from South Florida in the high-dollar home of a known Mossad Agent with that known Mossad Agent's daughter/aka "Jeff Epstein's Madame" standing in the background. Or the fact that two of the big five names listed yesterday in Virginia Roberts' testimony represented the US as either special envoys for the Israeli-Palestinan peace process or to the U.N. But according to our betters, that would just be a bridge too far, of course. Totally implausible /s This Clinton vs. Trump bullshit is stupid. This was an intel op and the question should be "which intel agency's operation was it?" But we will bicker along partisan lines, because generally speaking, we are easily misled by shiny, let worthless, objects.

Hot as balls in Munich today with nary an AC unit in sight. 97 at Haus des Shady Ray. Heading to the biergarten, muthafuckas.

Surly International checking in on a warm day in Munich. Not gonna be the only one of these today...

This. Lots of great suggestions on this thread and you can't go wrong with almost any of the recs. For what it is worth, longtime resident of Munich with very Bavarian wife/in-laws here. This is where we go when we go out for Bavarian. Authentic as it gets and food is excellent. Paulaner im Tal just east of Marienplatz on Tal is another alternative (just walk towards the arch at the Altes Rathaus onto Tal and it's about two blocks down on your right). But I'd go with Spöckmeier if given the choice.

As an expat living half-time in Strasbourg, I can confirm that this is hitting the local populace much harder than Brexit ever did. This is awful.

Fucking truth right here. Here in Munich I play in an "over-40" weekly basketball game. We have essentially adopted a "you-ex-Yugoslavian-fuckers-gotta-play-on-the-same-team" rule...otherwise every game ends up somewhere between an argument and a race war. But all of those slavs on one team ends up in an ass-kicking for the rest of us. Fuckers can straight-up ball.

Yeah, it always surprises me how that whole "Ustaše situation" gets brushed under the rug. I don't know if was the unsavory involvement of the Vatican in the whole thing, or maybe just Tito's dedication to moving forward without large-scale tribunals involving those behind it, but those were some sick fucks.

Catalan opposition leader, Inés Arrimadas. All day, errrrday.

Ante Pavelić is the poster boy of underrated POS dictators. Even his Nazi allies thought he and his Ustaše in Croatia were gratuitously violent. Now THAT is saying something.

I think they have absolutely way too much power in DC. And it comes from their complete financial ownership of our political representatives - and that goes for both sides.

LOL. The Saudis only play second fiddle to Israel in DC. And fortunately for the Saudis, their interests NEVER diverge. So no one screaming at DC is going to make a shits worth of difference.

This.

Plus a pretty significant bit of more recent history, as well. And, given that there certainly weren't any "clean hands" on the EU or US side in that whole Ukraine clusterfuck, either, it wasn't a surprise that Obama (wisely) refrained from allowing shit to escalate to a military confrontation when the Russians went in. Sure, we pitched a loud and visible fit and threw some sanctions in, but the Russians had provided a lot of effective PR showing some shady bidness coming out of our state department and what went on at Maidan. And whether it was accurate or not, the average Western European was pretty well aware that it wasn't nearly as black and white as the US media was making it out to be. And to echo Hugo's point up-thread, the problem with NATO is the Article 5 mutual defense component. The alliance long abandoned any semblance of balance with respect to our obligations vs. actual benefits provided to us. After the Soviet Union collapsed, the priority shifted from being a rational, defensive alliance to simply being a commercial vehicle by which we could generate more weapons sales for our Defense contractors by forcing two-bit rump states to buy our shit. Look at how many billions of dollars in weapons systems and fighter jets we pushed onto the countries that made up the original post-USSR expansion. Hell, the first tranche of fighter jets alone was over $10B. We had them all join, after which they all gutted their shitty Soviet-era weapons in favor of shiny new fighter jet, and we never thought about the obligations we were taking on. We would be much better served to have calibrated NATO to be balanced with respect to potential Russian aggression and it's possible impact tor own Western interests. The fact is that Vlad knows we aren't going to die for a bunch of the countries we are on the hook to defend. It is a matter of time before that fact is exposed and we should try to refrain from being even dumber moving forward. But we won't, I fear.

This is absolute truth. If I head up to my local in Munich for a few pints and end up small talking with some random German, they are going to inevitably bring up Trump, and they aren't going to even going to try and determine where I fall on the political spectrum. They will talk about him incredulously and they really do take it as a given that any American they encounter in Europe is of the same mindset re Trump.

In my opinion, this is all just cynical kabuki theater designed to push more big $$ sales to his big Defense industry donors. Hell, he could just as easily reduce our NATO expenditures to mirror that of the Germans if he is so worked up over being "treated unfairly", but that wouldn't bring profits to the Raytheons, L-3s, Lockheeds, etc., so he won't. He'd never be able to pull us out on his own. And even if he was, he'd never give up such prime, strategically desirable real estate.

Yeah, wasn’t clear at all. German language article says YouGov conducted the poll on behalf of Deutsche Presse-Agentur.