Free Republic

I finally felt at peace

Enormous thanks to all the commenters in my open thread, who provided reports on containment conditions in their own countries. I haven’t been able to include every last report, but I’ve tried to select representative and interesting examples from across the world, organised by region:

Colin Kahl opposed sanctions on IRGC, condemned killing of Iranian terror chief Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee are meeting privately on Tuesday morning to discuss their growing policy concerns about Colin Kahl, President Joe Biden's nominee for undersecretary of defense for policy at the Pentagon, according to sources close to the committee. Kahl, a former Obama State Department official, was a key architect of the Iran deal and has been at the forefront of a number of controversial moves, including, reportedly, the decision to remove a statement affirming Jerusalem as Israel's capital from the 2012 Democratic National Convention...

Despite the “rise and fall of the unipolar concert,” China and Russia’s balancing strategies have backfired: they are not leading to multipolarity, but are actually reinforcing unipolarity. The reason is that China and Russia’s balancing strategies have focused on regional “revisionism,” which has provoked powerful responses in East Asia and Europe to contain them. Russia’s balancing strategy has to a large extent proven to be counter-productive. Instead of preventing the expansion of NATO through a “divide and conquer” strategy, or driving a diplomatic wedge between the United States and Europe, Russian revisionism has united NATO...Perhaps most illustrative of all, a...

Federal Register | Control of Communicable Diseases (CDC Quarantine rule changes) https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2016/08/15/2016-18103/control-of-communicable-diseases#h-10 The Federal Register The Daily Journal of the United States Government Proposed Rule Control of Communicable Diseases A Proposed Rule by the Health and Human Services Department on 08/15/2016 This document has a comment period that ends in 42 days (10/14/2016) Submit a formal comment Publication Date:     Monday, August 15, 2016 Agency:     Department of Health and Human Services Dates:     Written or electronic comments on the NPRM must be received by October 14, 2016. Action:     Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM). Shorter URL:     https://federalregister.gov/a/2016-18103 Related...

President Obama's assertion that the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has been contained is a "joke", says the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. "It's proven that ISIS is in 30 different countries... they've got a reach that goes throughout Europe and North America," said Richard Burr (R-N.C.) on the 'Fox News Sunday' program. "So to talk about containment is really a joke," he added. "We've got to stop talking about containment. We've got to talk about elimination of the terrorist threat." ISIS may be geographically contained in Syria and Iraq, but "their efforts around the world to...

"I don't think they're gaining strength," Obama said of ISIS. "What is true, from the start our goal has been first to contain and we have contained them. They have not gained ground in Iraq and in Syria they'll come in, they'll leave. But you don't see this systemic march by ISIL across the terrain." "What we have not yet been able to do is to completely decapitate their command and control structures. We've made some progress in trying to reduce the flow of foreign fighters and part of our goal has to be to recruit more effective Sunni partners...

The fight against ISIS will not be won with military action but by bringing an end to the civil war in Syria around the negotiating table, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said on Monday. "We stand before the dilemma that the battle against ISIS must be continued, but everyone also knows that in the end the battle against terrorism can't be won militarily," Steinmeier told journalists as he arrived at an EU foreign ministers' meeting in Brussels. "I personally remain convinced that... we will only move forward in the Middle East if, above all, we work energetically on those questions which...

Friday on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” President Barack Obama seemingly downplayed the threat of ISIS in an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that aired on Friday’s broadcast of “Good Morning America.” Stephanopoulos asked Obama if ISIS was gaining in strength, to which Obama denied they were. “I don’t think they’re gaining strength,” Obama responded. “What is true is that from the start, our goal has been first to contain and we have contained them. They have not gained ground in Iraq, and in Syria they’ll come in, they’ll leave, but you don’t see this systemic march by ISIL across the...

DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) — Texas Health Resources CEO Barclay Berdan had a letter published in both The Dallas Morning News and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram Sunday editions apologizing for some aspects of the response of Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital to the first U.S. case of the Ebola virus. While expressing gratitude to the caregivers for their “dedication, compassion and tireless work” in caring for Ebola patients Thomas Eric Duncan, and Texas Health Presbyterian nurses Nina Pham and Amber Vinson, who both contracted the virus at the hospital, Berdan acknowledges Texas Health Resources “made mistakes in handling this very difficult challenge.” Read...

Ebola clinics fill up as death toll hits 3,000: CDC issues dire predictions on Ebola: Doctors are in short supply and countries are scrambling to find more resources for the Ebola outbreak, as the death toll from the virus hit 3,000. According to a Wall Street Journal report Sunday, the World Health Organization said 3,091 people have died of confirmed, suspected or probable cases of Ebola. Even as countries try to marshal more resources, those needs threaten to become much greater, and possibly even insurmountable. "The situation on the ground is just disastrous," said Dr. Heinz Feldmann, chief of virology...

Samaritan's Purse VP Ken Isaacs in testimony before Congress regarding lack of containment for the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

There were silver linings on Election Day that should not be dismissed. It's time to disband the circular firing squad and focus on the superb opportunities conservatives face in the 2014 midterms and the 2016 general election. More

The Associated Press has obtained an image of an explosives containment chamber, used to test nuclear weapons, from Iran. An IAEA inspector has confirmed the image's authenticity. The image was provided to The Associated Press by an official of a country tracking Iran's nuclear program who said the drawing proves the structure exists, despite Tehran's refusal to acknowledge it. The official said he could not discuss the drawing's origins beyond that it was based on information from a person who had seen the chamber at the Parchin military site, adding that going into detail would endanger the life of that...

New Orleans - As oil continues to move further into Breton Sound, and closer to Lake Pontchartrain, BP continues moving forward with a new containment system. It is the latest containment system to be put in place by BP, and its installation appears to be showing promise. BP officials are about to install a system of flexible and rigid pipe from the bottom of the wellhead site to a floating oil processing ship called the Helix Producer, and Tulane's Eric Smith has been monitoring its progress. The new containment system could collect up to 25,000 more barrels per day, nearly...

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Sunday refused to address the notion of having to contain a nuclear armed Iran, saying US efforts were aimed at preventing it from acquiring atomic weapons. "I don't think we're prepared to even talk about containing a nuclear Iran. I think... our view still is we do not accept the idea of Iran having nuclear weapons," he said in an interview with Fox News Sunday. "And our policies and our efforts are all aimed at preventing that from happening," he said. Asked whether a military strike against Iran was preferable to it acquiring nuclear...

Quietly within the foreign-policy machinery of the Obama administration—and quite openly in foreign-policy circles outside it—the idea is taking root that a nuclear Iran is probably inevitable and that the United States and its allies must begin to shift their attention from forestalling the outcome to preparing for its aftermath. According to this line of argument, the failure of the administration’s engagement efforts in 2009, followed by the likely failure of any effective sanctions efforts this year, allows for no other option but the long-term containment and deterrence of Iran, along the lines of the West’s policy toward the Soviet...

On to Plan Z. Efforts to stop the massive oil leak beneath the Gulf of Mexico were stymied once again yesterday after the much-hoped-for "Top Kill" fix failed -- sending officials scrambling back to the drawing board. "This scares everybody, the fact that we can't make this well stop flowing," BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles said on the 40th day of the leak that has already spilled as much as 40 million gallons of oil into the Gulf. The combined "Top Kill" and "Junk Shot" effort -- which involved pumping heavy drilling mud and debris like golf balls and...

ON THE GULF OF MEXICO – A second, smaller oil containment box was lowered into the sea near the blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico. The box was being slowly submerged to the seabed Tuesday. But it won't be placed over the spewing well right away. BP spokesman Bill Salvin says engineers want to make sure everything is configured correctly and avoid the same buildup of ice crystals that stymied their first attempt at using a larger box that was about 100 tons. This box will be connected to a ship on the surface by a pipe-within-a-pipe when it's...

Even as momentum for Iran sanctions grows, containment seems only viable option,” reads a Washington Post headline from April 22. Leaving aside for the moment the dubious character of the first half of that assertion, is it really true that containment is now the “only” option? It is certainly true that nearly everyone in Washington — from administration officials to the permanent civil service to the foreign-policy establishment — believes that, and has believed it for at least a year, if not longer. The intellectual groundwork was laid long before President Obama came into office, in part as a way...