May 14, 2016

Why is the US protecting Al Qaeda-linked rebels in Syria?

http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-mideast-crisis-syria-sanctions-idUKKCN0Y22F6

U.S., Britain, France block Russia bid to blacklist Syria rebels

Britain, the United States, France and Ukraine blocked a Russian proposal at the United Nations to blacklist Syrian rebel groups Jaish al-Islam and Ahrar al-Sham for links to Islamic State and al Qaeda militants, diplomats said on Wednesday.

Russia made the proposal late last month and the U.S. mission to the United Nations had signalled it would oppose the move, saying it would undermine attempts to get a sustained halt in the fighting in Syria.

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Jaish al-Islam (Islam Army) is a major armed rebel group in Syria and part of the High Negotiation Committee, which was set up in Riyadh last December to negotiate on behalf of opposition groups at U.N.-brokered peace talks with the government.

The High Negotiation Committee is backed by Western nations and key Arab states.

<snip>

Ahrar al-Sham is an ultra-orthodox Salafist group and has fought as part of a military alliance including the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front, which was not part of a cessation of hostilities agreement brokered in February. Ahrar al-Sham, whose late leader fought alongside Osama bin Laden, last year denied sharing al Qaeda's ideology or having organizational ties to the group.

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These guys are the soul brothers of ISIS and Al Qaeda.

May 12, 2016

"Survey shows Clinton supporters are more aggressive online than Sanders supporters"

http://www.dailydot.com/politics/online-incivility-study-bernie-bro/

For as long as there has been democracy, there have been allegations of incivility levied by one side of the political divide against the other.

A survey of 1,017 Americans over the age of 18 set out to quantify that rancor for the 2016 election cycle, and the results cast some doubt on a long-standing narrative of the Democratic presidential primary: That the supporters of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders have been significantly nastier online then the supporters of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

<snip>

What's more surprising is the perception on the Democratic side—nearly twice as many respondents viewed Clinton's supporters as very aggressive (30 percent) as said the same for Sanders supporters (16 percent). While women were more likely than men to see Trump supporters as aggressive, the opposite was true for both Clinton and Sanders.


Among respondents who point to Clinton as their first choice, 22 percent labeled Clinton supporters' online behavior as very aggressive. Within the Sanders camp, 14 percent of his supporters leveled the self-proclaimed democratic socialist's fan club as especially aggressive.

These results run contrary to the popular narrative of the so-called “Bernie bro,” passionate (typically male) Sanders supporters whose forceful push-back against anyone (typically female) saying nice things about Clinton was often viewed as harassment. The relative merits of the Bernie bro phenomenon were debated endlessly, but qualifying it has largely remained elusive.

“We didn't do a lot of follow up specifically about Bernie bros or anything like that, but the numbers certainly point to the fact that there's probably a little bit more attention going to the Bernie supporters who are taking a very hard stance compared to what seems to be happening out there,” Hankin explained. “I think there's a lot of discussion out there, but that discussion may be proportionally out of whack—at least according to the survey results that we see.”

To be fair, many Clinton supporters have felt like they're consistently and repeatedly harassed into not speaking out about their backing of Clinton online. In a series of interviews with the Daily Dot earlier this year, a number of Clinton supporters reported regularly feeling intimidated when talking politics online with friends, family members, and acquaintances who vocally and repeatedly backed Sanders.

It became enough of an issue that Sanders himself addressed it in a speech. “We don't want that crap,” Sanders said during an interview with CNN in February. “Look, anybody who is supporting me doing sexist things, we don't want them. I don't want them. That is not what this campaign is about.”

<snip>

Much, much more at the link, including a bunch about Trump supporters.