fahrenheit451:363

We do indeed live in interesting times.

And that's cold bloody comfort for the 99.999% of human society who are at best mere spectators of the events unfolding in the Middle Eastern imbroglio aka Iran /Iraq /Syria.

Having brazenly violated recognised tenets of International Law as well as long held diplomatic norms and conventions, POTUS Trump as Commander-in-Chief threatened in the most egregiously graphic terms to annihilate Iranian cultural sites should the government in Tehran consider some sort of retaliatory action against the US for its assassination of General Soleimani.

Even the most reliably docile and compliant lickspittle NATO lackeys of the US were moved to point out that Trump's apocalyptic threat,if enacted,would constitute a war crime.

Trump and his coterie of war-mongering Neocon hawks -Pompeo et al blithely acknowledged this a couple of days later and muttered something about of course the'll be obeying international law on this matter.

Meanwhile, elements within the Iranian leadership ordered the firing of some ballistic missiles at targets inside Iraq being used as airbases for US led coalition forces.

Trump's tweeted response to this Iranian violation of International Law etc. was "All is Well"...

The UK government's posture on any of this is utterly and entirely superfluous and irrelevant and has no bearing on the situation.

Bluff,bluster and a vainglorious recapitulation that Britain used to be something 100 years ago are simply the ill rehearsed soliloquy repeated by idiots; full of sound and fury and signifying nothing.

Footnote: Book of Romans 3:10-12

fahrenheit451:362

There is no need for a disquisition on this matter.Brevity will suffice.

On the third day of the beginning of a new decade,POTUS Donald Trump ordered the assassination of Iran's leading military Commander General Soleimani. The drone strike took place at Baghdad International airport in Iraq.

You could argue that several ,what are considered inviolable,tenets of International Law were violated.

One head of state ordering the killing of a prominent general of another state whilst they are not at war with one another, on the territory of a third state is indisputably gangsterism.

Then again, the conservative Republican neocon faction and their liberal Democrat overseas interventionist counterparts in Washington DC are the very bedrock of US imperialist foreign and military policies.They are both the authors of chaos and the harbingers of cataclysm.

The Rubicon has been crossed.

The only scenario left to ponder is,when it will be deemed expedient to eliminate a Chinese or Russian general in such a similar fashion.

fahrenheit451:203

The Great War of 1914-18 didn't end with the Armistice of 1918.
Neither did it end after  WW2, (the 1939-45 resumption of the Great War) was itself concluded.
All the subsequent divisions and animosities remain as unresolved today as they were post-1918 and 1945.
And that applies equally to " lesser " localised / regional conflicts that were tributaries to the main show.

At present,the main military conflict involving ISIS/Daesh appears to be hobbling toward some semblance of a cessation on the battlefields and in areas of civilian habitation across Iraq and Syria.
This is now appears to be the least of the existential dilemmas facing the region.

Iran ,Iraq and Turkey have reacted to the burgeoning unrest incited by the Kurdish regional regime's referendum on Kurdish independence by ways and means of a military response and diplomacy couched in terms of threats of economic sanctions.

Not that those three sovereign nation states are somehow necessarily acting in an unjust or reckless manner but rather in a timely and prudent manner in order to head off an even greater existential calamity withing the region.

The reckless, venal posturing of the US and its NATO /EU satrapies has provided the accelerant to this conflagration and will continue to provide it for all the conflicts yet to arise out of the present one unfolding today.

The post-Cold War era of the unipolar global hegemony of the US is over, it's just that the Washington neocons haven't come to terms with it yet.Perhaps they never will.

Ascribing some ephemeral,inherent moral virtue or superiority unique to one side among all the many sides, adds only another drop of accelerant to the impending conflagration.

Russia,Iran,Turkey and China all seem able to grasp this irrefutable aspect of Realpolitik and so go
about dealing with ultimately intractable problems in a reasonable and realistic manner.

On the other hand the US and its deluded liberal satrapies endlessly conjecture and habitually resort to megalomaniacal levels of violence and intimidation against all those nation states who disagree with washington's globalist worldview.

Kurdistan or rather its contemporary facsimile is the tumbleweed that's now getting blown about by the winds of change.Ancient genealogies and arcane vendettas are asserting their malign influence on a historic process that could,if all major parties were so minded be resolved- for however long  or short a span of time - a la Berlin 1884 or Vienna 1815.

Let's not hold our breath.

fahrenheit451:169

Well,we're all still here and breathing. WW3 has not begun yet.And that despite the very best unrelenting efforts to instigate the global conflagration by Washington's neocon imperialist warmongers.

There's a book,I re-read recently , " Europe's Last Summer " by David Fromkin,that brought to mind some uncomfortable parallels between today's intertwined crises and those that eventually culminated in the commencement of the Great War in 1914. For instance; an ultimatum whereby a smaller nation had to comply with a series of increasingly unacceptable demands made by a much larger regional neighbour or face the consequences. Saudi Arabia and its regional lackeys have threatened the continued existence of Qatar with just such a list,one that echoes the Austro-Hungarian Empire's behaviour toward Serbia in the wake of the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo.

All the much larger Powers themselves are trapped in a myriad paradoxical stand offs amongst themselves,one of which has Turkey and Russia wanting to effectively de-escalate the Saudi's belligerence,whilst Israel welcomes the KSA pointing the finger of blame at Iran whom the KSA see as an Iranian shi'ite proxy,a situation acknowledged in part by the US but one wholly dependent on which day of the week and which Washington spokesman is making the pronouncements of the day.

The Arabian Gulf imbroglio centres on but is not exclusively about the Western backed KSA driven annihilation of the Yemen.That in turn is tangentially associated with the Iraq/Syria/ISIS/Shia/Sunni hydra headed slow motion epic conflagration.Wherein the US and its NATO lackeys are in clear breach of accepted International Law by even being inside Syria let alone arming,advising and lending air support to one of the participating combatant coalition of anti-Assad groups.

Turkey is conducting its own existential narrative vis a vis the Kurds,most of whom but not all are linked to the Ottoman nemesis the PKK,and who variously ally themselves with whichever Great Power,-the US,Russia and Germany happen to have weapons and munitions on special offer at the time.

And meanwhile, the EU and the US have separately renewed both their sets of economic sanctions against Russia.Again in violation of heretofore accepted international diplomatic and legal norms.

Here endeth the update.

fahrenheit451:163

We don't have to worry about when WW3 might start or not. It has already started. A couple of weeks ago one of the myriad groups embroiled in the Syrian conflict, the so-called US-led Coalition consisting of the anti-Assad Syrian Free Army et al, bombed and destroyed  a convoy of those fighters directly allied to the Syrian government.That in itself violated quite few international legal norms.This US-led Coalition has since that incident gone on to carry out two further attacks of a similar nature. Subsequently the US has directly reinforced its illegal front operating base that houses those SFA elements with additional US personnel and upgraded heavy field artillery. This is to counter the success of President Assad's allies in reaching the Iraq border that has hemmed in the US' allies advance northward. To say nothing of Turkey's equally unlawful partial occupation of sovereign Syrian territory and its partisan support of yet more various and diverse factions who in their turn are at odds with not only the Syrian government and its allies,but also the various elements of the FSA as well. And so on and so forth ad nauseum.  The other,supposedly main conflict against ISIS/Daesh against which all the other 3 rivals are supposed to be directing the majority of their ire and wrath continues apace not only inside Syria but over in Iraq where the balance of contending forces are somewhat different but nevertheless contain an equally combustible array of ethnic/national/international and confessional factions.The Republican neocons in Washington and their liberal interventionist Democratic co-conspirators are not up for even trying to contemplate a grand strategic/diplomatic bargain with the other major players in this conflict. Rather the imbeciles in and around the Capitol continue to pursue and enforce sanctions against Russia and Iran for a whole host of specious,contradictory and bellicose reasons. Throw in the Saudi led intervention in the Yemeni civil war,the new Qatar imbroglio,the developing cataclysm in Libya,unrest in Morocco and Egypt and Israel's duplicitous and underhand role in virtually all of them and you know that none of this bodes well for the rest of us. The government in Tehran let it be known that the illegal US forward base in Syria is now within their missiles range. And of course nobody is going to back down anytime soon. Epic schadenfreude?

fahrenheit451:154

Today is not a good day here in Great Britain.We have suffered yet another Islamic terrorist outrage.Yet more innocent civilian lives have been lost. And there are bound to be another thousand and one blog posts along discouragingly similar lines that have yet to be written at some point in the not too distant future. The usual PC, multiculti #PrayFor #StandTogether hashtags have been enlisted to the cause of appeasement and acceptance. The usual vacuous,sanctimonious platitudes and calls for tolerance and good neighbourliness are out in force. Our enemies are digging our graves for us and our political Class,our metropolitan elites and their commentariat are lining up to ( do what they always do at times like these ),piss on the graves of our own fallen.Because that's the way Western Christian civilisation is supposed to react. Any expression other than a group hug with the adherents of the desert sands death cult is in effect treated and recorded as a " hate crime ". Pathetic. Perhaps the stupid neocons and dimwit Trump might've considered expending 59 missiles against ISIS/DAESH and AlQaeda instead of those who are fighting them. And so it goes...It's not been a terribly good day here in appeasement,Petainist Britain.

fahrenheit451:107

A couple of days ago,worldwide mainstream media platforms were alive with the " news " that the European Union's " Parliament "  called for the suspension of EU membership talks with Turkey. 479 in favor, 37 against, 107 abstentions. Scary.

The parliament is the most moribund and redundant of all the multi-headed EU Hydra's appendages.  The Hydra that constitutes that monumental obscenity of international politics, the European Union. Kleptocracy, nepotism,corruption and incompetence are its true four fundamental characteristics. Quite what business its dysfunctional castrato chamber of deputies manque has in censuring the sovereign,democratic nation state of Turkey - or anywhere else for that matter - is beyond the intellectual capacity of most sentient and rational beings on this planet to comprehend. EP ( european parliament ) has pretensions way beyond its capacities ever to realise them.It may as a body, scrutinise and debate and recommend but it does so void of any institutional power and authority. The one thing EP does do with remarkable alacrity, devoid of any grasp or understanding of global Realpolitik, is pass Motions declaring this,that and t'other. The failing,western pluralist democratic consensus around neoliberalism, neoCon military intervention and dishing out economic sanctions is at the very heart of EP. Sovereign nation states such as Turkey are deemed to be " out of order " for acting in the defence of  their own legitimate interests. Arresting newspaper editors, closing oppositional TV stations ,restricting the rights of communities openly colluding with terrorist insurgents might all be " unacceptable " to the political classes and Commentariat in Sweden or Germany, but what exactly the hell else do they expect from a government headed by President Erdogan?  the only mystery here is why does the leadership in Turkey persist with an essentially delusional policy of wishing to join and integrate with the european union? An orientation toward the nascent Shanghai Cooperation Organisaton of China,Russia and four former central Asian soviet republics would make far more sense. There you go. Oh and since the USA and its EUNATO satrapies extirpated Saddam Hussain's Iraq and Qadaffi's Libya and just about did the same to Assad's Syria, the only bulwark against totally catastrophic unrestricted mass migration into continental europe is now to all practical intents and purposes, Erdogan's Turkey. Game on European Parliament!

fahrenheit451:081

NATO is when all's said and done, merely a convenient instrument by which the United States carries out its foreign policy objectives. These imperial policy goals are enacted through a flexible combination of of political sophistry, economic intimidation and military acts of aggression. Yugoslavia, Afghanistan,Iraq,Libya,Syria,Iran,Ukraine are amongst the most recent targets. Each " intervention " with or without any additional  legitimising UN authorisation, has brought about far wider and longer lasting  geopolitical ructions than perhaps even the most hawkish Washington neocon warmonger could possibly have contemplated. A direct Turkish military invasion of Syria was, most likely, not on the neocons list of what could possibly go wrong list when they set about engineering the destruction of what is now disparagingly in the West called , " The Assad Regime ". Likewise Russia being granted operational capabilities on Iranian airfields was another scenario Washington couldn't see coming. The emergence of ISIS/Daesh, the rise of ethnic Kurdish militias inside Syria. Flashpoint upon flashpoint until what the underlying neocon policy objectives were to begin with are now enmeshed in an ungovernable vortex. Despite all its proselytising Commentators and Experts intellectual /quasi-philosophical pretensions about " order " and predictability, the capitalist system is itself predicated on continuing chaos and greater or lesser degrees of innate instability. The Ruling Elites and their fervent, obedient acolytes of the political class believe as an article of faith, in the efficacy of " market forces ". Profit and loss. Thaumaturgy for the 21st,century.The neocon global military strategists and thinkers are there to formulate policies that are intended to reinforce the economic doctrines and practices of neoliberalism. Which in essence equate precisely with the defined policy objectives of the western industrialised liberal democracies under the hegemony of the  United States.  It's a good thing therefore that this depraved and dysfunctional nostalgia for a western dominated unipolar world is being successfully,albeit incrementally challenged by the likes of China; of whom it was widely reported the other week:-

China’s official Xinhua news agency said in a commentary that recent visit by Guan Youfei, the Chinese military official charged with overseeing international cooperation, signaled Beijing’s willingness to boost military cooperation with the Damascus government.

And I bet that wasn't on the US State Department's Top 10 list of what could possibly go wrong in Syria either.

fahrenheit451:075

As the ISIS/DAESH contagion has spread, so too has the deployment of NATO forces. And in the last few days, the number of official announcements as to the " success " of aircraft and " special forces " of various NATO member states has also increased. Libya and Iraq seem to be front and centre of Washington and its satrapies' current round of bellicose media pronouncements as to the much vaunted efficacy and impact of  US imperialism's aggression. Not Syria though, where the hydra-headed multiplicity of identities which are in effect Al-Qaeda in disguise, are maintaining their brand of psychotically deranged carnage against an encircled and besieged civilian population long since dissuaded of any romantic notions of  domestic political reform, let alone liberation from any such arrangements driven by moronic jihadi nihilists. Even the, newly awaiting-Brexit, lost sovereignty in remission, UK has managed to wade in with its two Tornado strike aircraft. Those self same two Tornadoes lionised by that idiotic, now former shadow foreign secretary Son of Benn, during his stupefyingly crass and verbose parliamentary petomainage that legitimised the UK's volte-face in assisting  the US to bomb Syria.  Ho-hum, such are the quotidian concerns of everyday Imperialism, the footpads to Global Corporate Capitalism's Ruling Elite Moriarty - the Napoleon of Crime.