Bombing Campaign against IS

I do not know where the idea that bombing never works comes from.

Of course, bombing campaigns sometimes work.  For example, it worked fabulously in Libya. What the US et al need is people on the ground to mark targets and for indigenous ground forces to press home the advantages created by a bombing campaign. Both those conditions were present in around Kurdistan and IS was pushed back there.

Now, however, badly lead the Iraqi army is, there is some reason to be believe the Iraqis could successfully drive IS back from Baghdad. The question is who to partner with in Syria. The US is pushing the Turks to fulfill that role, but I doubt Erdogan will bite. He has staked far too much on regime change in Syria. Indeed, according the Seymour Hersh, it was the Turks that supplied Syrian rebel groups with Chemical weapons in the hopes of goading the US into bombing the crap out of Sryia. You can read the article here. That said, there is hope that the US can put enough pressure on Turkey to prevent it from becoming to IS what Pakistan, the ISI in particular, has been to Taliban. Up to this point Turkey has been a jumping off point for Jihidi tourists, the primary destination for illegal oil transports and a major source of funding.


Kobani may be a game changer for a number of reasons.


1) If the city falls and IS does its worst, the Pesherma may reconsider its unwillingness to press beyond the Kurdistan.

 
2) In Turkey, both internal and external pressures will increase exponentially. Conservatively the number of ethnic Kurds in Turkey is around 10 million. 

3) There will be a great deal of pressure on the US to step up bombing. This in turn may prompt other rebel groups within Syria to A) distance themselves from IS to prevent from being targeted and B) offer to aid the US campaign for their own purposes. 

 
4) Although the Syrian regime helped spawn IS (see Hersh again), the regime is in many ways a natural partner in the fight against them. A massacre in Kobani may make cooperation, which has hitherto been unthinkable, possible - albeit on a convert level.

The Supreme Court gives away BC and the 5th Estate barely utters a word of protest

The 5th estate in Canada has a lot to answer for. A little more than two months ago the 9 idiots, then 8, laid the groundwork for all crown land in BC to be given away to single ethnic group. One immediate consequence is that the Feds, the province and the municipalities now lack the ability to sell, lease or develop Crown land -- at least not without paying substantial kickback to various native bands. The provincial government is now in shambles; one ethnic group has a veto over much of what it does and sanctions, what gets logged, where oil gets drilled for, what natural gas reserves are tapped, what damns get built, what roads are built, what electrical towers are built -- everything. Of course, all these problems could just be the tip of the iceberg. It would seem to follow from the Supreme Court idiotic decision that if much of province was not ceded to the crown, then virtually all private property in the province is ill gotten fruit.

It is time that 5th estate acknowledge the scope of this idiocy and call for the judges to be ousted. It is possible to oust them. If the government lowers the retirement age for Supreme Court justices to 65, then Canada would be rid of 7 of the 9. The government does not need a reason to carry out the needed purge, but there seems one in the offing if they did. The justices are showing signs of dementia.