fahrenheit451:198

The trouble with hornets' nests is that the more you kick them the angrier the hornets get and if you decide that the best option once you've agitated the hornets is to keep on kicking their nest even harder,well ..

The Barzani led Kurdish provincial regime in Iraq has held what they've  asserted to be a non-binding advisory referendum on the question of Kurdish secession.

This mendacious sectarian political manoeuvre has caused a great deal of apprehension in Iraq itself but also amongst neighbouring countries including,Turkey and Iran. Turkey in particular has endured a decades long  Kurdish PKK led campaign of terrorism against the Turkish state.

Were all that not enough, the Kurdistan Question/dynamic is enveloped inside and now inextricably bound up with a quasi-regional/global conflict surrounding  ISIS/DAESH and all of its implications and possible consequences.

It is worth reiterating that Russia ,Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah are assisting the legitimate,constitutional government of Syria at that government's request.

 The United States and its various NATO satrapies are in  gross violation of International Law by in effect invading Syria.

The anti-government ( largely Syrian-Kurd led ) SDF - heavily supplied and supported by the US - are in the throes of making a grab for Deir Ezzor city and province and are clashing with the Syrian Arab Army and its Russian allies amongst others.

 The recent targeted assassination in the field of Russian Lt.General Asapov and two of his Colonels has added yet another twist to an already volatile situation.

South Front  reported online:-

" Russia will not allow the United States as well as any other foreign power to limit an area of operations of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) in Syria’s Deir Ezzor province, Deputy Foreign Minister Oleg Syromolotov announced on  29 September

Syromolotov added that the Russian military has informed the United States about the area of the SAA operation against ISIS and will not tolerate US attempts to slow down the liquidation of terrorists in Syria.

The diplomat emphasized that the situation when some power that operates in Syria without any legitimate right attempts to limit government forces efforts to liberate their country from the terrorism is nonsense.

He also described the US-led coalition’s air campaign as questionable saying that it has led to a full-scale humanitarian crisis in Raqqah city. "

Raqqah , the former ISIS/Daesh capital  is currently in the throes being  " liberated " by the SDF.

Clearly the best resolution lies with Russia ,Turkey and Iran relinquishing their petty antagonisms and isolating the US western imperialist block from all substantive future  undertakings to bring the conflict to a close.

POSTSCRIPT ( Added 30 September )

Lo,and behold the hornets' nest just got another kicking..

South Front reports -

The Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) will declare an independence of Iraqi Kurdistan unilaterally, if the Iraqi Federal Government does not enter negotiations on the terms and condictions of this move, Vahal Ali, director of communications in the office of Kurdistan Region President Massoud Barzani said on September 29 https://southfront.org/iraqi-kurdistan-to-declare-independ…/

fahrenheit451:197

Good week, bad week.Just when things are turning out really badly, such as May's travesty in Florence and further hindrances get thrown into the path of Brexit, along comes a glimmer of hope, a scintilla of light in the encroaching darkness.
The Federal Republic of Germany concluded its Bundestag elections the other day and my word, things really have turned out for the better!
Merkel's governing CDU recorded it's lowest share of the Vote since 1949 at one-third of votes cast.Her  heretofore grand-coalition partners,the Social Democrats went even deeper into the electoral mire with an all time low of just one-fifth of votes cast.
The emergent, populist, right-of-centre AfD scored a magnificent tally of just over one-eighth of votes cast.
This remarkable expression of constitutional democratic praxis immediately ignited the contrived outpouring of venom,derision,abuse,slander and defamation that,alas accompanies any worthwhile showing by populist parties anywhere across the continent of europe.
A cursory examination of various nations across western europe, for example France, Holland,the Scandinavian countries, shows an endemic historic decline in the fortunes of mainstream Socialist / Social democratic/Labour parties .
The blight currently assailing the German SPD ( the oldest and most electorally successful of all so-called Socialist/Labour parties ) ,is of singular historic significance. The SPD more than any of its "comradely" sister parties with say the exception of the socialists in Sweden. has been the prominent bulwark of post-1945 social democracy.
Its decline is to be greatly welcomed.One can only anticipate the British Labour party finally meeting its nemesis at the ballot box some time soon.
None of the aforementioned has been acknowledged let alone accepted as even remotely legitimate by the indistinguishable agglomeration of neoliberal,globalist Hydra of parties that support,run and ideologically reinforce the EU Fascist Superstate.
Even the vaguely anti-EU parties of the Left and their extra parliamentary front organisations,have been found to be totally ineffectual and organisationally impotent in opposing the EU.
The British Labour Party was holding its annual conference in Brighton when the results from Germany came in.it was on the same day that their conference was subjected to an anti- brexit protest organised by the Greens, whose slogan for the day was " brexit is racist! ".
History has already passed the both of them by.They just don't know it yet.
Anyone for some Schadenfreude ?

fahrenheit451:196

On 22 September 2017, the UK's Bootlicker-in-Chief to the German EU Reich, Theresa May, made a speech in Florence on the topic of the UK's supposed previously assumed departure from the EU.

Little can be gained from recapitulating it in the same way that little would have been got from a similar exercise with the full text of Chamberlain's squalid,miserable foray at Munich.

Suffice for him that it all came down to a shred of paper being waved on some aeroplane steps. suffice therefore for his ideological progeny and inheritor May that it is all perfunctorily recalled as if any of it mattered other than as another shameless public incidence of treason against the British People.

A year ago on this day I published my blogpost on the then current state of play of #brexit. Worth recalling. As you will read,the metropolitan neoliberal elites and their political henchmen and footpads have in effect managed to take us all back in time to before a vote was cast in the EU Referendum.

" When it comes to sheer brass-necked impudence, the 200+ Labour Party parliamentary benchwarmers that constitute the official #LabourIn campaign, take first prize.

Unmitigated Petainist trash that they are,they had and still have, as their sole political objective the continued subjugation of the British people to the diktats and tyranny of the European Union.
 200+ Sediton preaching, street corner rabble rousing demagogues who tried in vain to persuade the British electorate that We somehow,were really  " Europeans ", and that the British have a european identity or values in common with say Poland or Latvia or whomever. They might've well as said that a dog shares a common identity and has values in common with the fleas that infest it.

 And #LabourIn ,the very heart and sinews of the campaign to maintain EU servile lackeydom, pre-planned and co-ordinated demonstrations with platform speakers such as that vile treasonable wretch Lammy inciting crowds of euro-zealots to attempt the overthrow of the UK's constitutional government.

At the time of posting, there are still quite significant legal challenges to the Referendum result in the offing.

And given what seems to be a significant highly motivated anti-democratic upper middle class and academically elitist bias in the ranks of the #Remain zealots' camp,no doubt we can expect further inordinately complex tactics and strategies to be launched by them against the implementation of the Will of the Sovereign British Electorate.

Though not all the news is bad for the Victorious #Brexit . Gleaned from the 19 September edition of Huffington Post :-

Labour needs to stop “sulking” about the EU referendum result and vow to end freedom of movement, one of the party’s northern heartland MPs has warned.
Jonathan Reynolds, who has represented the Greater Manchester seat of Stalybridge and Hyde since 2010, believes keeping the EU’s free movement rules in exchange for Single Market membership would be “unacceptable” to millions of Labour voters.
The Remain-campaigning Reynolds told HuffPost UK that people’s “genuine emotional concerns” about uncontrolled immigration cannot be dealt with just by pointing to reports and statistics which talk up the economic benefit of freedom of movement.
In a dig at colleagues such as Chuka Umunna who are calling for the Government to try and negotiate a compromise over freedom of movement in a Brexit deal, Reynolds said a “tweak” to the status quo “would not wash with people.”
UPDATE: Chuka Umunna: We Should Be Prepared To Sacrifice Single Market Membership To Axe Freedom Of Movement

The European Union and all  that it stands for and all of its works is merely the bacteria on the toilet seat of history. Time for some cleansing,don't you think?

And let that be a lesson to us all.

fahrenheit451:195

It is 21 September 2017 and democratically elected politicians have been arrested in Barcelona, their offices as well as other regional ministerial buildings raided and property seized on the orders of the Spanish central government.

Amongst items confiscated were,apparently 9.6 million official ballot forms prepared for the planned Catalan Referendum on Independence scheduled for 1 October.

The leading Spanish mass circulation El Pais reported on-line :-

" Spain’s Constitutional Court will study an appeal by the central government against the Catalan parliament’s recently passed law preparing the region’s transition into an independent republic.
The court’s decision to accept the case on Tuesday automatically puts the law on hold, although it is unclear whether Catalan authorities will heed the suspension.

Before this, the Constitutional Court had already put a freeze on another law passed by the Catalan parliament last week paving the way for an independence referendum on October 1.

In the meantime, state prosecutors in Catalonia have ordered top officials within the National Police, the Civil Guard and the regional Mossos d’Esquadra police force to seize any and all items meant to help prepare or hold the “illegal self-determination” referendum, including ballot boxes, printed material and computer equipment.

The judiciary police have been instructed to stop any acts by authorities, public employees or “individuals working in connivance with the former” to organise the referendum. "

Whether any of this can be construed, let alone accepted, by wider world public opinion as legitimate in any sense is yet to be established.

What is immediately disturbing and ought to be of pressing concern to neighbouring and allied states of Spain, is the authoritarian manner, more akin to Erdogan's Turkey, with which forces of the Spanish state have ridden roughshod ,without the slightest compunction, over the legitimacy and dignity of Catalonia.

Where are the messages of support for the People of Catalonia and their elected government ?
Where is the outrage against the actions of the Popular Party regime in Madrid ?

What have the European Union , the national parliaments across the continent ,the Trades Unions and social democratic and liberal parties far and wide to say on this hideous outrage?

Or are the metropolitan ruling elites and most of their political class more than a little afraid now of what an existential threat referendums pose to their ramshackle EU neoliberal order in the wake of the UK's 23 June 2016 magnificent decision to #brexit

fahrenheit451:194

Sabre-rattling and venal bellicose posturing are back in the spotlight at the UN.

Already confused and flummoxed over the internal affairs of  DPRK ,the failing US and its imperialist satrapies are getting sucked ever deeper into the Syrian imbroglio with little prospect of achieving even an insignificant percentile of their original war aims in that country.

The USA's imperialist satrapies  are in even worse military and socio-economic shape than their Washington domiciled neocon lords and masters,who clearly are expecting big things from their hirelings and footpads.

Al-Masdar News (AMN) reported the following online 19 September :-
DAMASCUS, SYRIA (12:00 PM) – British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has stated that the United Kingdom has no intention of supporting the rebuilding of Syria as long as Syrian president Bashar al-Assad remains in power.
The former mayor of London made the remarks during a meeting with nations that supported anti-Assad forces during the Syrian Civil War, in the fringe of a United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York on Monday.
Johnson even stated that not only would the UK refuse any development aid for the reconstruction of Syria after the end of the war, but so would any of the other states that sided with Syrian rebels in past. This would include the United States, France, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, all of whom had representatives in the meeting that Johnson spoke to.

“We believe that the only way forward is to get a political process going and to make it clear to the Iranians, Russians and Assad regime that we, the like-minded group, will not support the reconstruction of Syria until there is such a political process and that means, as Resolution 2254 says, to a transition away from Assad,” Johnson said.

 

Interestingly, the UN Resolution 2254 that was voted into effect in 2015, makes no mention whatsoever of the removal of Assad from power, contrary to what Boris Johnson seemed to imply.

Johnson’s statement seems to contradict earlier statements by representatives from other former anti-Assad states. US Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs David Satterfield earlier stated that “there has got to be a political process if there is to be any international participation in the reconstruction of Syria,” seemingly supporting the Russian mediated peace negotiations going on in Astana currently.

Boris Johnson.The world trembles at his every utterance.
If only.

fahrenheit451:193

Another day, another test missile fire from DPRK aka NorthKorea. The missile was again reported as flying over sovereign Japanese airspace.
US Secretary of State Tillerson has  " demanded " that both China and Russia take firm measures against DPRK.
This is what an international  diplomatic relations kind of Groundhog Day looks like in a world of supposedly independent sovereign nation states.
The UN security Council is due to convene later on today in order to discuss this latest North Korean missile incident.
It's only a few days ago that the security council passed a resolution imposing additional sanction against DPRK for its nuclear bomb tests.
Business Insider UK of 11 September applied lateral thinking to this seemingly intractable and worsening Korean imbroglio.
" When Jocko Willink‏, a former US Navy SEAL who is now an author and occasional Business Insider contributor, was asked on Twitter how he would handle the North Korean crisis, he gave an unexpected answer that one expert said just might work.
Willink's proposal didn't involve any covert special operation strikes or military moves of any kind. Instead of bombs, Willink suggested the US drop iPhones.
"Drop 25 million iPhones on them and put satellites over them with free wifi," Willink tweeted last week.
While the proposal itself is fantastical and far-fetched, Yun Sun, an expert on North Korea at the Stimson Center, says the core concept could work.
"Kim Jong Un understands that as soon as society is open and North Korean people realize what they're missing, Kim's regime is unsustainable, and it's going to be overthrown," Sun told Business Insider.
For this reason, North Korea's government would strongly oppose any measures that mirror Willink's suggestion.
Sun pointed out that when South Korea had previously flown balloons that dropped pamphlets and DVDs over North Korea, the Kim regime had responded militarily, sensing the frailty of its government relative to those of prosperous liberal democracies. "
The off the cuff proposal has the major advantage of not involving as a central feature of its implementation the thermonuclear annihilation of several million people.
China and Russia  have seemingly been placed in the onerous position of having to do a favour for their greatest adversary and most potent military threat aka the USA.
And its all China and Russia's fault if the USA has to resort to military action against DPRK if events don't work out as the neocon Washington establishment wants them to.
I'd go with the iphones strategem.

fahrenheit451:192

EU Withdrawal Bill : Battlefront Update

A motion brought by Commons leader Andrea Leadsom, allowing the Government to have a majority on crucial legislative committees that drive the Commons agenda was approved  late on Tuesday night, 12 September , by 320 votes to 301.

This in effect means that the government has now voted to give itself a majority on the little known Committee of Selection, which decides the make up of public bill committees that scrutinise legislation line by line.

With parliament needing to change, amend or import wholesale thousands of laws and regulation to prepare the UK for its exit from the European Union, the EU Withdrawal Bill has been designed to allow for new laws and regulations to be passed via controversial legislative device called a statutory instrument, which are debated in these standing committees.

Forza Brexit!  Hasta la Victoria Siem

fahrenheit451:191

Late last night on 11 September the House of Commons voted to continue with the EU Withdrawal Bill ( aka Repeal Bill aka The Great Repeal Bill ).

Essentially this will be an Act of Parliament that by and large will incorporate into domestic UK law all so-called EU laws that have been accepted and entered into the UK body politic these past four decades.
The Repeal Bill once passed will give government Ministers, what its detractors and opponents misrepresent and wilfully misconstrue ,as " Henry VIII " powers.

In practice such  " powers " are the necessary bureaucratic discretion whereby Parliament does not have to be consulted over minor and peripheral adjustments and tidying up of the preceding EU Laws that perhaps translate maladroitly into UK legal understanding and practice.

In the broader context of the UK's departure from the EU at the end of March 2019, this Bill has been " sexed up " by the reactionary anti - brexit metropolitan Labour Party.

Corbyn,Starmer et al have  misrepresented the actual facts of the Bill in the same sensationalist and hyperbolic manner adopted by Blair and the now notorious Iraqi WMD dossier. That dossier was predicated on lies, equally Labour's assertion of a governmental power grab from this Bill are also predicated on lies.

This what is what can be  gleaned from  Labour List  had to say on the late night Commons vote :-

Seven Labour MPs defied a three line party whip announced byJeremy Corbyn last night to back the Brexit bill.

Ronnie Campbell, Frank Field, Kelvin Hopkins, John Mann, Dennis Skinner, Graham Stringer and Kate Hoey. defied party orders and supported the Tories in voting for the EU Withdrawal Bill – which overturns the European Communities Act 1972 – by 326 votes to 290.

The so called Repeal bill, which had the adjective “Great” until it was dropped by the Tories, shifts the entirety of EU law on to the British statute books.

Shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer described it as a “deeply disappointing” night.

Immediately after the vote Starmer published a statement in which he repeated Labour’s claim that the Tories were trying to sideline parliament to seize greater powers for themselves.

“This is a deeply disappointing result. This Bill is an affront to parliamentary democracy and a naked power grab by government ministers. It leaves rights unprotected, it silences parliament on key decisions and undermines the devolution settlement,” he said.

“It will make the Brexit process more uncertain, and lead to division and chaos when we need unity and clarity.

“Labour will seek to amend and remove the worst aspects from the bill as it passes through parliament. But the flaws are so fundamental it’s hard to see how this Bill could ever be made fit for purpose”.

And so it goes. Corbyn and his erstwhile allies  have fully assimilated the #LabourIn position and rhetoric that hasn't changed one iota following the EU Referndum result in favour of Leave.

Metropolitan Labour Remoaner EU shills, of whom there are 200+MPs such as Wakefield's Mary Creagh, regurgitate the same otiose cant and utter the same vacuous platitudes that they've done all along.

According to Creagh , Labour " Recognises and respects the referendum result ". Note the ongoing absence of  the two most important signifiers, " accept " and " implement ".

This is Humpty Dumpty on a  heretofore megalomaniacal scale that even most Tories wouldn't dare to attempt.
Words mean precisely what the likes of Creagh say they mean,no more and no less. Recognise clearly means accept and respect means implement,obviously!

And that is why Corbyn,Starmer et al and their hobnailed acolytes and lackeys throughout the  broader labour and trades Union movement are officially calling for the UK to remain inside the Single market and The Customs Union after March 2019.

Because according to them that will recognise and respect the result of the EU Referendum when 52% voted to  "Leave " which of course also means stay.

And now you know why I do genuinely and most fervently hate loathe and despise the EU,  all of its works and everything it stands for and the same now goes for the Labour Party.

fahrenheit451:190

This time last year, David Lammy ,Labour MP for Tottenham was on stage at an anti -brexit rally in London doing his level best to incite sedition and its inevitable corollary of mob violence, against HM Government.

Today the social media tagged #lammyreview - a searing critique of the British legal system,judiciary,courts,prisons et al is broadcast far and wide across all media platforms,corporate and non-corporate. Lammy the seditionist-manque writes,

" When David Cameron asked me to conduct a review into the over-representation of black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) individuals in the criminal justice system, I thought I was being set up to fail. So many of the causes of, and answers to, the problem lie outside the criminal justice system: poverty, lone-parent families, school exclusions, and growing up in the care system. " He continues..

" Having looked at the evidence over the past 18 months,my judgment is that we have a significant problem in the criminal justice system itself, and that the treatment of BAME young people shows this problem is getting worse."

Lammy's report  further asserts that,
" Minority ethnic children make up a growing proportion of those offending for the first time, re-offending, and serving custodial sentences. Today 41% of under-18s in custody are from minority backgrounds, compared with 25% a decade ago."

" Young black people are now nine times more likely to be in youth custody than young white people. I expected to find the youth justice system laser-focused on this issue. Instead, I have seen large parts of the system indifferent to issues of race."

Identity politics, has it seems subsumed all other forms of political discourse here in the UK. In that sense the UK polity mirrors closer than ever before that of the USA.

And that is a tragedy of unimaginable proportions.

The political class,steered by politically correct metropolitan elites has totally neutralised and rendered ineffectual Class based political discourse and organisation.

Not even the Annual Costa Book Awards has so many innovative categories of fiction than the PC liberal, pretend-Tory,labour ,leftists have come up with. #HateCrime #Islamophobia #Homophobia #Racism.

And what is " over representation " ? or for that matter under representation by some fictitious pseudo category that has no more substance in History than a Will o' the wisp?

Houston,we appear to have a problem.

fahrenheit451:189

Here's a terrific quote :-

It is difficult to talk to people who confuse Austria and Australia. But there is nothing we can do about this; this is the level of political culture among part of the American establishment. As for the American people, America is truly a great nation if the Americans can put up with so many politically uncivilised people.

Vladimir Putin

As of Wednesday,September 5th. 11:00 ,the DPRK is still standing. That this fundamental existential state might alter at any given moment ought to be a cause for worry among most rational minds.

But if you look back at the introductory paragraph,the quote from Putin, it is precisely the absence of rational minds within the United States Leadership echelon that is the cause of our present predicament regarding the sovereign nation of North Korea aka DPRK and the development of its nuclear weapons capabilities.

Something seen as alarming by the US Ruling Elites and their NATO satrapies. Who not entirely incidentally have,on entirely falacious grounds unilaterally imposed, as a kneejerk reaction to some other imaginary impropriety committed against the US, a plethora of economic and financial sanctions against Russia and its government and various private citizens.

These self same western ruling elites are currently, as part of their supposed containment strategy against DPRK, trying to inveigle Russia into agreeing that sanctions be imposed against DPRK!

Russia and more so China ( and truth be known probably 90% of UN member states  besides ) are endeavouring on a heretofore heroically diplomatic scale, to de-escalate what is a one-sided escalation of tension between DPRK and an increasingly irrational and bellicose USA.

The fact that venal,posturing globally unimportant non entities such as  the UK Defence Secretary Fallon or the equally vapid Prime Minister May have waded into this imbroglio by shooting off vacuous platitudes and otiose cant in all directions does nothing to stabilise this faltering regional house of cards.

I'm not quite sure whether schadenfreude, a usual response to such a pantomime is necessarily apt in this instance.

fahrenheit451:188

It's always gratifying, albeit in a mostly superficial kind of way, to see the Guardian washing the Labour Party's dirty laundry in public.

The United Kingdom's metropolitan ruling elites' discredited irrational ideology of politically correct multiculturalism has spawned more categories of fiction than the Annual Costa Book Awards.

We've got in the major fiction categories, #HateCrime #islamophobia #racism and #homophobia ; alongside of which there's such a plethora of subsidiary categories of proscribed errant thought ,speech and behaviour that would have been the envy of Stalin's Cheka.

On Saturday 2 September  Guardian aka Islington Pravda published their comments on the following Times piece :-

The Rotherham MP has used an interview with the Times to highlight differences in attitudes between the capital and Labour’s northern heartlands.

Labour MP Sarah Champion has declared the “floppy left” is afraid of speaking out on issues such as sex grooming gangs for fear of being branded racist.

Champion last month quit as shadow equalities minister after a backlash for saying “Britain has a problem with British Pakistani men raping and exploiting white girls”.

She told the Times: “If I’m on the floppy left, to be accused of racism is probably the worst thing you can call me. That fear will motivate me to step away from a lot of topics I’d maybe tackle head on if I didn’t have that phobia.”

Her constituency was the scene of a grooming scandal and she said many Labour members and politicians based in London had “never been challenged by a reality that’s different” from their largely “tolerant, multicultural world”

Even a prominent worn out old hacks such as Trevor Phillips - whose entire career was built on the smoke and mirrors of multiculturalism and the promulgation of the cult of equality - has come to the end of his tether with all the decades long spouting of bullshit on this issue by the Labour Party in particular and you can add to that the Liberals,Greens and virtually the entire non-parliamentary Left.

And so it goes. Schadenfreude is in order,don't you think?