In which the pond begins the week with its usual craving for an Oreo ...

The reptiles were wildly excited this morning, in the tree killer edition, and also on the full to overflowing intertubes ... it was cradle to the grave all the way ...

The pond was in raptures. Of course they could have been talking about this kind of cradle to the grave ...

But the pond suspects it was rampant welfarism, Swedish socialism, possibly even Communism, and the return of the socialist, welfarist state to serve young bludging people who don't realise there's no such thing as a free lunch. As Colbert noted, instead of all this talk of young people getting free meals at school, they should be doing what six year olds in China do ... make ties for the Donald ...

Otherwise we'll start seeing headlines like this ...

Oh dear, so that's how far it's necessary to go to avoid doing anything about negative gearing ... which admittedly would cause some discomfort to a few of the pond's well-off friends and acquaintances making out like bandits negative gearing and looting the renters ...

Well socialist welfarism from the cradle to the grave seems the least of it, because this day everything is upturned, confused and chaotic.

Who could ever have guessed that the Oreo was a devoted RT viewer, a firm follower of Vlad the Impaler, a spurner of the Donald, and a supporter of the right to Assad to stay in power ... yet there she was, as usual, high in the reptile digital pecking order ...

Of course the pond should have guessed that the fascist mind-set would blink in the face of jihadists and turn for comfort to Vlad ... oh and the Iranians too ...

Now the pond happily waltzed past "evidentiary justification", despite the evidential justification for its evidential contention that the Oreo is barking mad ...

You see, the pond wanted to admire that following of the RT/Vlad line about striking a storage facility, and the po-faced solemnity of the following "If Assad is lying ..."

If? There's an if?

On Thursday, Syria’s foreign minister challenged accounts by witnesses, experts and world leaders that his government was involved. “I stress to you once again: The Syrian Army has not, did not and will not use this kind of weapons — not just against our own people, but even against the terrorists that attack our civilians with their mortar rounds,” the minister, Walid al-Moallem, said in Damascus. 
But the denial, as well as a Russian assertion that a bomb hit a chemical weapons depot controlled by the rebels, seemed perfunctory, almost without regard to the facts, which Western governments said pointed to a Syrian government hand. (NY Times)

Indeed, if one does a Greg Hunt on the use of chemical weapons in Syria, you'd have to be howling at the moon to think all the incidents were the work of rebels or stray strikes on storage facilities ...

What's even more revealing is Oreo using the old line that it's only vested interest theocratic Islamic fundies that see Assad as a ruthless dictator and war criminal. In fact the entire Oreo piece is right out of the Assad/Vlad song sheet.

In the old days, there used to be a bipartisan capacity to call out ruthless dictators and war criminals, whatever their stripe, communist or fascist, but how interesting that the Oreo should follow the Putinist line, and that she should trot it out when confronted by her first love, the Trumpists, having a go at Putin, Iran and Assad ...

Noting this isn't to imagine that the Donald has accomplished anything ... or that the Syrian situation is capable of a simple solution ... it was after all, the Donald's men saying that Syrians would have to sort out Syria that emboldened Assad yet again ...

Of course the biggest and best Oreo routine in all this is to blink in the face of jihadists and wring hands and have a nervous nelly fit, and say how it should all be left to Vlad to sort out ... because ... the jihadists!

What planet does she live on?

He can be removed just like that, and democratic elections called, and everything will be hunky dory and swell? In a trice and lickety-split?

Well no, your canny Vlad and Assad lover knows how to serve their needs, though it might be handy to read a Syrian writer on the democratic process in Syria, in Assad's Sham Election before rolling the jaffas down the aisle with the Oreo ...

And that's how the butchers, the dictators and war criminals get away with it. There's always some quisling, some panderer, some suck, willing to serve their needs, and aid them in their rhetoric ...

Who knows what actually triggered the change in US attitudes - from pandering to Vlad in the Oreo way to the bombing, but it came about remarkably quickly ...

After Mr. Trump came into office, proclaiming a wish to work with Russia and maybe even Mr. Assad against the Islamic State, expectations grew that the international community would accept relegitimizing Mr. Assad. And last week came the statements from Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson and the ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki R. Haley, indicating effectively that Washington could accept Mr. Assad remaining in power. 
On Monday, Western officials were gathering in Brussels to weigh billions of dollars in reconstruction aid to the Assad government, amid opposition fears that they would drop their demand for a political transition first. 
By Thursday, however, American military officials were discussing a possible military strike on Syria, and Mr. Tillerson was saying there was “no role” for Mr. Assad in Syria’s future. And then Thursday — before dawn on Friday in Syria — Mr. Trump ordered the attack on the Shayrat air base, from which, he said, the chemical attack was launched.

Indeed. Whatever happens hereafter, it would seem worthwhile noting that along with sundry crazed jihadists in Syria, there is a dictator and war criminal in charge of the government, and he has had vastly more resources and deployed them in unimaginably cruel ways, and with more of an eye on the moderate rebels than the crazed fundamentalists, whom he has covertly used for his own purposes ...

ISIS may be Assad’s putative enemy, but it has served his interests repeatedly, as Pulitzer Prize-winner Roy Gutman documented in a series of articles for The Daily Beast. Assad first tried to ingratiate himself with Western leaders by portraying the national uprising against him in 2011 as a terrorist-led revolt. When that failed, he released jailed Islamic extremists who’d fought against U.S. troops in Iraq, then staged phony attacks on government facilities, which he blamed on terrorists. Far from fighting ISIS, Assad looked the other way when it set up a state-within-a-state with its capital in Raqqa, and then left it to the U.S. and others to try to take the battle to the Islamic extremists. (here for the links).

Never mind, Syria is too much of a mess for the pond to sort out, and now in such a sorry state that the blundering Donald will likely do more harm than good. You don't say one thing one day, and then a couple of days later, wheel around and do exactly the opposite ...

But please, enough of the notion that Assad isn't a rat fink, double-dealing, brutal dictator and war criminal of the lowest and basest kind, and not just because he's in bed with Vlad and the Iranians ... but because he'll do anything to hold on to power, when if he had the slightest interest in his country or its citizens, he would have worked out a way to remove himself from the scene and lead a quiet life in loot-supported splendour in a pleasant part of Russia ...

There he might have been able to savour one of many western luxuries, not the least an endless supply of ...

    

... though the pond has more of a taste for Rowe, with a plentiful supply of Rowe here ...

Ah yes, we've been there before, and how amazing and wondrous that only a few weeks ago, the Oreo was heralding the arrival of the Donald as a breath of fresh air ...