A U.S. official with knowledge of operations in Syria said that Trump’s interest in the oil provided an opportunity for the Pentagon, which was unhappy with the initial decision, to temper his insistence on a full withdrawal and allow counterterrorism operations and airspace control to continue.
“This is like feeding a baby its medicine in yogurt or applesauce,” said the official, one of several who spoke on the condition of anonymity about internal U.S. deliberations.
It was quite irritating how he was flattering Putin over and again and hardly mentioning the Kurds. I would not be surprised that it were the Kurds that had boots on the ground near al-Baghdadi and relayed information about his whereabouts.
I am not sure whether the Intelligence people are happy with the sometimes very detailed information he provided.
Russia MAY have killed Al Baghdadi already 28.May and are not 100% convinced about the American claim:
I often enjoy your posts but I wonder is there ANYTHING about the United States you like ( besides my book)?
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Nope. Humbug is a piece of work. He comes off as being rational until he finds an opening where he can put down the US and praise China. If there’s no opening, he’ll gladly create one. He’ll berate a poster for commenting about a country he hasn’t lived in but he will spew out a steady diet of gibberish about China vs the US, a country he likes to boast he’s never even set foot in.
He knows most Americans are proud of their country in spite of its faults. We are well aware of them, especially those on a mariner’s forum who travel abroad extensively. He gets a kick out of addressing us as if we were a bushel of county bumpkins knowing we’ll respond to the sting.
He’s shown from commenting on maritime subjects that he’s not stupid but with his feigned admiration for all things Chinese he’s playing a game he thinks he’s winning by dominating a section of the forum. His provocative BS draws responders into his web. The ensuing repartee must be filling a huge void in his life to bring him satisfaction. I will let mental health professionals determine why such a dishonest pastime brings him so much happiness.
@Ombugge Have you actually had business dealings with the Chinese? I very much doubt it.
In the 1990’s when HK was approaching the date when it would revert back to Chinese rule, residents wasted no time in distancing themselves from the ‘motherland’ . There was an exodus to Vancouver and Toronto.
At the time I owned a small construction business in BC and did well by loosely associating with other mom and pop businesses on larger projects.
I soon began to get calls from Chinese ex-pats who were buying real estate at what was for them bargain prices and took on some of their projects. After several instances of their breaching contracts on the basis of transparent subterfuges and habitually refusing to pay for services rendered based on absurd claims, I got fed up with their dishonesty and stopped doing business with them. These weren’t isolated incidents. I quickly found out that my business associates were having the same problems and it got to the point where upon hearing a Chinese voice when picking up the office phone, we all would simply hang up. Some of callers got wise and went so far as hiding behind proxies.
Their forays into real estate apart from building high rises consisted of buying expensive family homes in elegant well established neighborhoods, demolishing them and replacing them with McMansions using every square inch of legally available space on the large lots. The fact that they were changing the character of the city for worse, that they were rude and arrogant, yes, arrogant, and went out of their way to avoid contact with non Chinese residents did little to endear them to the local population.
Their real estate sins were bad enough to ignite a backlash. From teardownvancouver.com:
“The stucco box McMansion fell into decline in the mid-90′s because it was so ugly. On the west side McMansions were eyesore infills on streets largely lined with turn of the century Georgian, Edwardian, or Tudor style mansions. Residents of Shaughnessy and Kerrisdale initiated a revolt against the glaring style disconnect. This led to the development of the Shaughnessy Style Guidelines. These guidelines dictate that a new house must match the character, setbacks, roofline, color, and landscaping style of the houses already present on the street.”
Your professed love of all things Chinese is an affectation not based on reality and you know it.
Feel free to continue praising the ‘motherland’ with its Nazi overtones but be aware that your bleatings only serve to damage your credibility.
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McMansions, never heard of it but Googling helped. What a horrible, bombastic structures, totally out of tune with the environment.
Business dealings with the Chinese require strong nerves and quite some determination. I had a neighbor who sold Chinese food supplies to Chinese restaurants. Every time he came by they tried to make new, cheaper deals. For just literally one cent difference they switched suppliers a tactic which was often successful to bring the price down. In the end they didnot pay. Something was always stale, rotten or off, they never kept proof of that. As a last resort he required them to pay in advance, cash. He lost some customers but moneywise was better of. They were never friendly but often disrespectful and arrogant to suppliers.
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Oh I have, quite a few times. First time was 1962 and last time in 2009, with quite a few times in between.
But you are right I haven’t lived there. I turned down an offer of a job as Superintendent for West India Line back in the late 1970s, because it required me to move to West Palm Beach with my then young wife an three small kids.I couldn’t do that to them as it would have been a totally alien place, with no support net for my wife, while I would be travelling the world loading and discharging heavy lifts on ships like this:
Yes I have had business dealings with China many times, as I have had with HK companies, but what have that got to do with anything? I have also had a lot of business dealings with the US and with US companies outside the US, incl. in China, as I have had in many other places in the world.
I also have Chinese friends in Richmond, Vancouver, which is like a small HK, with Cantonese spoken as much as English. (At least when I visited last, some 10 years ago)
I believe you are very familiar with the Chinese in Richmond, by your lengthy complains
I don’t claim to" love all things Chinese", nor to be blind to the shortcomings, but I’m also not accepting the blind criticism of all things Chinese, just because it is “flavour of the day”.
To call China “fascist” is a new one. Usually it is “Communism” that gets the attention, although there is hardly any “communism” to be found there (or anywhere else in the world) anymore. The name of the ruling party may be Communist Party, and the slogan “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics.”, but it most of the last.
It is still “Confucianism”, which has been the guiding philosophy of the Chinese for over 2000 years, that govern.
Western ideas of democracy and the right of the individual over the good of society is fairly alien to most Chinese, bare a small intellectual elite.
Do I shear that philosophy? No I don’t, but I am realistic enough to know that that is the fact and I’m not going to be able to change that, any more then I can change the mindset of anybody here.
This one 's gone way off-topic, time to close.
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