DUMB INSOLENCE #4

                                                       DUMB INSOLENCE #4

In the midst of an ongoing sniffles & coughing state of emergency, HMG of the UK (now independent) has found the elbow room to posture and strut their hour upon the world stage.

Giving Russia a ticking off would be under normal circumstances,seen as the trilling of a parrot who without realising it  has just told the listener to eff off.

But the UK Pandemic Hysteria Regime has gone one better,it has gotten itself embroiled in a toe to toe slanging match with The Peoples' Republic of China. 20x the UK'spopulation and No.2 soon to be No1 economic global superpower.

Its own entire historical narrative backstory of previous centuries aside for the moment, does the Westminster coven of chancers,footpads,embezzlers,hypocrites and liars have a tenuous claim to some ahistorical,over-arching inherent morality so lacking in the actions and behaviours of other sovereign nstion states and their foreign and domestic political agendas on whose own peoples' behalf they administer and govern with inalienable legitimacy?

The brief response is,of course,ineluctable,no.No,the Westminster Regime has no such basis,since no such basis has ever existed in time,space and history of this our World,ever.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (Wahabi Islamic zealots and funders of islamist terrorism) would not be capable in the slightest degree of waging a prolonged war of aggression and its corollary of genocidal war crimes in Yemen against the Houthi populace without the massive support and backing of the UK.

The UK's co-equal USNATO satrapy,Turkey is also allowed to lavishly indulge president/Sultan Erdogan's insatiable appetite for foreign invasion,occupation and ethnic cleansing inside Syria.To which, of course the UK is wholly in agreement.

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It's deja Vu all over again! as one footie commentator famously once said. It wasn't so long ago that Russia,Turkey and Iran had arrived at a realpolitik accommodation over the Syria imbroglio.

A workable modus vivendi that isolated the US and its militarily rapacious NATO satrapies from inflicting further chaos and carnage on an already near-cataclysmically volatile area.

It remains a matter of fact in international law that the Assad government ensconsed in Damascus is the internationally recognised legitimate government of Syria.The forces of Russia and Iran and its clients are assisting Assad to restore its territorial integrity and sovereignty.

All other countries and their armed forces (covert and otherwise ) on Syrian territory are in gross violation of all precepts norms and rules of International Law.They are de facto committing war crimes. That's the US and all its NATO allies even including Erdogan's Turkey who are on their own idiosyncratic mission from Allah.

Turkish armed forces blasting Syrian Arab Republic aircraft out of the skies over Idlib province in Syria is a war crime and wanton violation of one UN member state's territorial integrity by another UN member state,leaving said aggressor liable to punitive action by the UN Security Council and General Assembly.

Not that any of that's going to happen,with the Big NATO 3 on the security council.

Propped up by a plethora of World Bank ,IMF and EU ECB loans ,hobbled by impending national bankruptcy,massive structural unemployment ,the Turkish state is diving kamikaze headlong into an unimaginable maelstrom;

taking the rest of us with it. 

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BBC News Online reported :-

Turkey and Russia have agreed what they say is a "historic" deal aimed at keeping Kurdish forces away from Syria's border with Turkey.

It comes during a pause in Turkey's offensive to drive Kurdish forces out, creating a "safe zone" in the area. Under the deal, Syrian and Russian forces will immediately oversee a withdrawal of Kurdish forces. There is no word from the Kurdish fighters, whom Turkey regards as terrorists. The deal sets out plans for joint Turkish-Russian patrols along the border next week. The agreement was announced after six hours of talks on Tuesday between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Russian host, Vladimir Putin, in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.

And so it goes..

At last it appears the international Law -breaking USA and its western satrapies have satiated their vicarious bellicose cravings and it's left up to the grown-ups in the international diplomatic arena to assume the providential role of katechon and enforce the restoration of a sense of order and stability in what had up to only days previously been the most virulent and potentially cataclysmic of all regional imbroglios to have erupted in the Middle East.

Having systematically and cynically violated every heretofore accepted and recognised norm of international law on the conduct of armed hostilities, the US,UK,France,Germany and Canada achieved absolutely nothing of any effect or value by their wantonly irrational and manifestly dangerous behaviour of arming and funding Al Qaeda in its myriad forms  as well a ISIS and the various bandit formations constituting the Kurdish insurgency.

Israel and Iran, those two equally otiose, mentally disturbed dwarves of irrational arcane religiosity have also been put back into their proper historic context of virtual irrelevance. What kind of imbecile wants a faux- armageddon ?

The British House of Commons certainly was one of "them" that did when it debated,but providentially failed to approve, the bombing of Syria and in particular President Assad's forces as well as some tokenism around hitting ISIS- though their main target was always what they condescendingly referred to as the Damascus Regime's forces.

Let's not forget that the same assembly of 650 cretins has proven itself,over 4 long years, utterly incapable of voting in favour of exiting a continental tyranny of which the UK is but one of 28 vassals.

That aside, the deluded US liberal interventionist Clintonites and their conservative neocon war hawks have also both been equally frustrated in carrying out their own dystopian vision of wiping another heretofore stable and reasonably prosperous nationalist arab state off of the Middle eastern map.

Oh, and the disparate, far from heterogenous Kurds who were given carte blanche  by the illegal US invaders to create a mythical Kurdish statelet on the borders with Turkey ; they too are being put back in their box and back in the cupboard that's already teeming with lots of other skeletons.

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It's easy, often too easy to get caught up in the hyperbole and strident faux-rhetoric that accompanies what passes for war these days.

Routine, indiscriminate usage of emotive language and graphic imagery, in the end do not enhance a particular narrative, they overwhelm it.

The US / EUNATO engineered regional imbroglio emanating from what is still left of the sovereign,independent nation state of Syria underlines the old adage about chickens coming home to roost.

The ruling metropolitan elites sojourning in their western ivory towers do in fact have a low tolerance for when things get, shall we say, a tad more squeamish than they had anticipated let alone planned for.

They always invariably make the same miscalculation ,they always invariably end up shoving their collective heads up their own asses and hope that their specious pseudo-moralistic pronouncements and irritatingly middle class superficial hand wringing shows concern for the orphans,widows,the aged .etc. who are ineluctably maimed and butchered and eviscerated and become an endless stream of online content for the on-going pornographic installation art exhibition that is a world run by the failing ruling elites.

A Century on from the imposition by the triumphant Allies of the Sykes -Picot delineation of the defeated Ottoman Empire's vassal territories have a lot to answer for.Slicing and dicing previously coherent contiguous ethno-linguistic entities into a myriad of contradictory and confusing irrational new entities remains the very epitome of Western imperialist stupidity.

The insane / absurdist revival of Ottoman delusions of grandeur by Erdogan and his coterie of oligarchs and gangsters in the guise of a modern, developing Turkey,are a tragedy of immense historic importance that is hastening inexorably toward their self-created and realised demise.Sooner rather than later.Whether they cleanse all of Syria's north east of terrorist Kurds or not and if the buffer zone and relocation of 2 million Syrian war refugees eventuates or not.

The following gleaned from, Focus Economics tell you what you need to know about Turkey.

Turkey Economic Outlook

October 1, 2019

The economy shrank again in Q2, although less severely than in the first. A slump in fixed investment and a fall in private consumption, amid elevated unemployment, inflation and currency weakness, led the contraction. For its part, the external sector’s performance improved, although this was only largely due to weak domestic demand. Turning to the third quarter, the economy is expected to have shrunk once more: Industrial production fell again in July, although it did so at the softest pace in nearly a year. Moreover, August’s manufacturing PMI remained in contractionary territory, suggesting that the sector is not yet out of the woods. Similarly, retail sales contracted again in July, while private sector credit growth was negligible in the same month. More positively, the Central Bank’s second large rate cut in September ought to boost credit growth and support economic activity.

Turkey Economic Growth

The economy is expected to recover towards the end of this year and into next year on the back of looser monetary policy and a supportive base effect. However, geopolitical tensions and currency volatility remain downside risks, while still high unemployment is likely to weigh on household consumption. FocusEconomics Consensus Forecast panelists expect the economy to shrink 0.8% in 2019. Next year, however, our panel projects economic growth of 2.2%, which is down 0.1 percentage points from last month’s forecast.

Turkey Economy Data

	2013	2014	2015	2016	2017
Population (million)	76.7	77.7	78.7	79.8	80.8
GDP per capita (USD)	12,386	12,026	10,898	10,805	10,542
GDP (USD bn)	950	934	858	862	852

During the same period, the official exchange rate of the Turkish Lira to the USD rose from 2.15 to 1 to 3.79 to 1.
A national economy in recession paying practically double for its fuel & energy imports  (all denominated globally in USD) ,let alone all the other stuff Turkey itself uses but doesn't manufacture domestically.Tanks,Guns,Aircraft,Munitions of all kinds.

Turkey is probably in a more economically parlous state at the start of this Syrian misadventure than Japan was back in 1941 when it attacked Pearl Harbour.

Now, go figure.

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Sudetenland 2.0

Turkish President Erdogan has given the rest of the international community notice of his intention to order a full scale military incursion into North-eastern Syria in order to establish a buffer-zone contiguous with the Turkish border.

US forces currently in that area are due to vacate it leaving their erstwhile SDF /Kurdish allies on their own to face the imminent Turkish invasion.

Military invasions of countries with which the invaders are not at war is in breach of international law.Not that International Law counts for very much in the current derangement paradigm in which the world finds itself.

The very presence of US,UK,French,German,Australian ,Canadian and Turkish forces inside Syria is itself in breach of all diplomatic conventions, rules and international laws.
The much referenced Westphalian system whereby nations respect each others sovereignty and territorial integrity has long been a convenient diplomatic fiction for almost as long as The Treaty of Westphalia of 1648 itself has been in existence. That particular treaty brought to a close what  future historians would refer to as The Thirty Years War on the continent of Europe. Its foundational principles just so much existential pie in the sky.

The anti-Trump driven rhetoric over the US withdrawal from the region about to be invaded by Turkey is about as specious as it gets in Washington DC. The Kurds, everyone who hates President Trump says, have been thrown under the proverbial bus and that they'll be subjected genocide by the invading Turks.Even if it were remotely akin to the truth, frankly my dear, we shouldn't give a damn.

The really big and imminently globally catastrophic imbroglio in that region is no longer Syria ,it's the Yemen.Of course the two are intertwined at a strategic level, involving most of the same state actors in both theatres such as Saudi Arabia (your friendly neighbourhood financiers of Islamist terrorism) ,Iran ,the US and of course Israel who basically want to instigate their own arcane scriptural Armageddon asap.

And you thought Brexit was a sh**show.

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Brexit having sucked virtually all the political debating oxygen out of the UK polity these last few years, has as I’ve posted before, curbed my penchant and enthusiasm for blogging from a previous average of 8 or 9 blog posts per month down to a bare average of 5 such posts per month.

And even that has me rummaging around , often in previous years for the really substantive posts on Brexit.

Even the predominant themes and issues currently holding sway in the West has been reduced to some kind of near-paranoia concerning The Peoples’ Republic of China and its economic prowess.

The imbroglio in Syria gets little coverage across the corporate MSM in comparison to what it once did 4 or 5 years ago.Mainly because the Syrian government forces with Russian and Iranian assistance have in large part prevailed.The US and its deluded EUNATO satrapies have neither the will,appetite or logistics any more to seriously alter the ,now seemingly ineluctable outcome.Only quasi-bankrupt Turkey under the egotistical maniacal leadership of Erdogan is still in position to perpetuate the looming folly of a third world war by accident or miscalculation.

Trump meanwhile causes barely concealed sniggering in enquring after the availability of Greenland for purchase by the USA.

Yes, it was ,as it turns out being serious. Snark turned to faux- outrage,compounded by his unilateral cancelling of a state visit to Denmark after their Premier stated the blindingly obvious that its territory of Greenland was not up for sale.

And in conclusion, even the last chance saloon ,eleventh hour desperate gamble against overwhelming diplomatic odds to force through Brexit by Premier Johnson seems to be to enamoured of caution and overshadowed by the ghost of premiers past such as May rather than the putative future seemingly vouchedsafe to the Leave voters.

Postscript – The Amazon Rainforest is burning. Quite a lot it seems.Cue Saint Greta and more eco-millenarian hysteria from leading western politicians.

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The metropolitan globalist elites' hijacking and consequent betrayal of the Vote to Leave the EU on June 23 2016 aka " Brexit " ,has obliterated just about every other issue from serious consideration in public political discourse here in Britain since 2016.

Equally, the Trump administration's obsession with perceived imbalances and disadvantages in US trade relations vis a vis primarily China and continued paranoia - fuelled  Democrat accusations against Russia have likewise obscured and marginalised other pressing political and diplomatic issues within the wider political discourse.

Syria is still the intractable quagmire it was even before the US and its compliant EUNATO satrapies let their collective attentions wander to more seemingly urgent domestic political concerns.At least it has curbed,much against their liberal/interventionist instincts, the appetite to go around bombing the crap out of anywhere that gives their respective domiciled globalist elites concern for the future of their own hegemony.

And none have seen their belligerent nationalistic hubris quite so spectacularly implode and deflate as The Great Sultan Erdogan. Having clamped the iron jaws of Turkish military adventurism around a chunk of sovereign Syrian territory and bitten off more than he could chew ; Erdogan lacking any credible backing from erstwhile NATO partners,in particular Trump's America, has left him floundering in a bloody cesspit of his own maniacal butcher's art.

The Turkish stock market is tanking ,foreign currency reserves are depleted ,international credit agencies are downgrading Turkey's credit rating with all undue haste. And to cap it all Erdogan's ordered re-run of the Istanbul mayoral election - which his party's candidate narrowly lost originally, ended in spectacular failure and massive loss of face.

Politicians who demand that elections are re-run because they question the legitimacy of the original result, be warned,especially the EU funded seditionist Peoples Vote who've campaigned incessantly and unceasingly for the past 3 years non-stop to halt,reverse or annul Brexit and have a second referendum.

And waving the big stick at Iran after trying to instigate a second  Gulf of Tonkin incident in front of a highly sceptical international diplomatic community,is the surest sign of increasing irrelevance and terminal lack of vision and fortitude that the proponents of a multi-polar international order replacing American hegemony could have possibly wished for.And got handed to them on a silver platter.

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The trouble with triumphalism and its all too venal empty rhetoric is that rebuttals are swift and merciless,leaving the orator looking dumber than they were before.
ISIS/Daesh has been virtually eviscerated from the maps of Syria and Iraq.Its fighters and their baggage trains of women and children being herded into SDF/Kurdish holding camps or being shunted safely to less hostile environments via humanitarian corridors is how the world at large now sees ISIS/Daesh.
In the corporate MSM freakshow that's currently espousing the fate of one irrelevant individual ,Shamina Begum,every supine kowtowing Islamist shill and metropolitan multiculturalist apologist is buzzing like bluebottles around decaying meat,There are now a thousand and one " human interest" stories of westerners who traipsed off to volunteer for The Caliphate and now,of course,like the Germans in May 1945 express their regret at having chosen their sides so badly.
Please let "us" not be nasty or spiteful toward them.Please.Tens of thousands of battle-hardened,trained ideological fanatics,have been shepherded out of the Syrian / Iraqi conflict zones with Saudi,Turkish and Israeli assistance and in effect been given freedom to make their own way back to their various european and other western homelands.
Had the US and its cretinous,half-witted western NATO satrapies thought ahead and strategically,they would have mounted and executed a united front military strategy with Russia,Iran and the Syrian government to exterminate all islamic-terrorist forces and would have genuinely been 100% triumphant.
But the neocon warlords in D.C. and their foreign interventionist liberal go-fers prefer instead to fetishize America's arcane imaginary enmity with Russia. An OCD whose pathology can be traced directly back to Reagan,who had he not ordered Stinger shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles to be supplied to the islamic  Afghan mujhadeen back in 1980 we wouldn't be where we are now with ISIS/Daesh, AlQaeda et al. But,hey everyone makes mistakes which they don't acknowledge let alone ever do penance for.right?
An so we come to the present phase of the Endgame:-

Thursday, March 7, 2019

ISIS Re-Establishes Historical Sanctuary in Iraq

 

By: Brandon Wallace

 

Key Takeaway: ISIS’s post-Caliphate insurgency in Iraq is accelerating faster than efforts to prevent it by the U.S. Anti-ISIS Coalition. ISIS is re-establishing capable insurgent networks in multiple historical strongholds and linking them together, setting the conditions for future offensive operations against the Government of Iraq. The U.S. and its partners should not view the current relative security in Baghdad as confirmation of the defeat of ISIS. The U.S. Anti-ISIS Coalition’s strategy to enable Iraq to “independently manage” an insurgency through intelligence support and other building partner capacity efforts will likely fail to prevent ISIS from regaining momentum based on its current trajectory in Iraq. 

And the ineluctable tsunami of Islamic-terrorism to come from within dozens of western democratic societies already enfeebled and made dissolute in the face of this existential threat by their own globalist/neoliberal/multiculturalist ruling elites and political class.
Enjoy.

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Usually I post a blog every 3 to 4 days throughout the month. In a typical year I make about 100 annual posts.

December just ended was a pretty low aggregated total; why? because there was naff all to post anything new about.

Syria  - The Balkan Wars I & II for our Age continues to sink ever deeper into an already unfathomable sociopolitical /  geopolitical strategic imbroglio,even with Trump's announcement of a US withdrawal and Erdogan -led Turkey's continuing ceaseless impatient pawing of the ground like some slavering,psychotic dog of war raring to get at the Kurds.

In calmer climes, Brexit or rather what's left of it, is being slowly slowly shoved into a coffin that obviously is just a little too tight for comfort but nevertheless the metropolitan domiciled elites are wearying ever so slightly of their ludicrous pretend-antagonisms over a matter they all agree should never have been put before the People in a binding plebiscite in the first place.

Whether the Gilets jaunes  phenomenon effectively crosses La Manche and takes on uniquely british characteristics in response,partially, to the grand brexit betrayal is a matter of some considerable doubt and uncertainty at this point.Even though March 29 2019 is enshrined by an Act of Parliament and is therefore the Law.

But the Law,in most circumstances is there only for show ;just like International Law when it comes to the integrity of the territory of a sovereign nation state with whom another country isn't at war.

My prediction for 2019 ? Schadenfreude will probably be epic this year..

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A few days ago, POTUS Trump announced the withdrawal of the US forces ( The figure quoted was 2,000 personnel) currently illegally stationed in Syria.

This caused immediate consternation and hyperbolic over reaction from the Washington Beltway NeoCon establishment and their symbiotic liberal foreign interventionist partners aka the Democrats. DefSec Mattis resigned in the wake of the Commander-in-Chief’s welcome and somewhat unduly delayed strategic decision.

The western -backed ( funded,trained,equipped and armed ) disparate terrorist gangs ranging from AlQaeda to ISIS/Daesh have proven several veritable hornets’ nests too much for the meddling US and its equally delusional and inept NATO satrapies to deal with let alone forge any worthwhile conclusion from.

The Syria domiciled Kurds are the patsy in the middle getting lined up for another historically royal shafting from their supposed foreign friends and allies.Composing the bulk of the SDF fighting forces,the Kurdish fighters have done the proverbial ” heavy lifting ” on the ground in extirpating ISIS territorially.

Their undoubted and welcome efficacy and success in this matter has, from a Realpolitik perspective pushed Erdogan’s nose out of joint and thus led him to hurl the Turkish army into Syrian territory largely in a ethnic cleansing of all land along Turkey’s borders.

Apart from Russia ,Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah who have all been invited by the sovereign legitimate government of Syria to assist them in its fight primarily against ISIS, all other military ” state actors ” -The US,UK,France,Germany,Canada and especially the genocidal,slavering warmongering dogs of Turkey are all there in contravention of International Law.They are committing war crimes.

Still, having one less drunken,boorish,knuckle-dragging thug to deal with at an illegal rave is welcome.

Thank you President Trump.

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Very occasionally another commentator hidden among the swamps and jungle of the MSM and on-line media will put together a succinct exposition of a complex and pressing issue.

Which is great for me as I then don't have to spend any time whatsoever re-inventing the wheel.

Whilst the two major UK indigenous tribal parties continue their brutal exchanges of epithets and hyperbole which threatens to boil over into possibly something being done about it at some point in the not too distant future if at all; Syria remains the escalator of serious big power rivalry that is inexorably moving toward the end game and a resolution one way or the other.
And neither of them offers hope to a world watching helplessly on from the sidelines.
The city and province of Idlib is said to be the final redoubt of anything in the order of 10,000 head-chopping islamic terrorists ( ISIS/Daesh,Al Qaeda and all the theological factions in between .)
The governments of Russia and Turkey with Iran and last in the queue Syria attempting a grand compromise and Realpolitik interim solution from the Metternich/Talleyrand playbook on how to do grown up international diplomacy.
Herewith gleaned from IRIN -The inside story on emergencies-website this enlightening piece on just who the heck is who and why they're trying to kill everyone else in Idlib,Syria.

Aron Lund

( Freelance journalist and analyst specialising on Syria, and regular IRIN contributor )

As the Syrian government prepares for an offensive on the rebel-held province of Idlib, rebel factions are divided in their loyalties and outlooks. Here’s a look at who would be fighting President Bashar al-Assad’s forces in what could become the last major battle of Syria’s war.
While Turkey controls the rebels in nearby Afrin and al-Bab, the landscape in Idlib is more complex. Two major factions dominate – the National Liberation Front and Tahrir al-Sham – and they differ on their positioning towards Ankara.
Turkey’s favourite is the NLF, which is led by Fadlallah al-Hajji, a Muslim Brotherhood ally. The NLF includes Turkey-friendly Islamists like Ahrar al-Sham, the Noureddine al-Zengi Brigades, Failaq al-Sham, Jaish al-Ahrar, and groups that fought under the Free Syrian Army banner, like the Victory Army and the 2nd Coastal Division.
Big but brittle, the NLF is held together by Turkish sponsorship and shared enemies: al-Assad’s government, Syrian Kurdish groups, and hardline jihadists.
The NLF’s main rival in Idlib is Tahrir al-Sham, a jihadist group that controls the provincial capital, the Bab al-Hawa border crossing with Turkey, and other key areas in Idlib.

Led by Abu Mohammed al-Golani, Tahrir al-Sham grew out of what used to be the Nusra Front, Syria’s official al-Qaeda franchise. It is classified as a terrorist group by the UN as well as by the United States, Turkey, and many other nations. Moscow and Damascus typically point to the group’s presence when launching new military offensives.
Tahrir al-Sham has a murky relationship to Turkey. Al-Golani appears to engage pragmatically with Turkish intelligence but refuses to fully submit to Ankara’s diktat.
To his dismay, Turkey keeps pushing for control over the entire Idlib insurgency. Turkish officers tell rebels the only way to appease Russia and keep al-Assad out of Idlib is for Tahrir al-Sham to dissolve and let its members join the NLF.
Some Tahrir al-Sham members seem to agree. Syrian analysts, including Ahmed Aba-Zeid, a well-connected Syrian researcher who supports the non-jihadist opposition, told IRIN that Turkey now dominates one wing of the group.
Al-Golani is also under pressure from jihadist hardliners who portray him as a Turkish tool and a sellout.
“Al-Qaeda leaders in Syria tend to see Tahrir al-Sham, and Abu Mohammed al-Golani in particular, as unprincipled and treacherous,” Cole Bunzel, a research fellow in Islamic Law and Civilisation at Yale University, told IRIN. Bunzel said hardliners view Tahrir al-Sham as “having disobeyed the al-Qaeda emir [leader] in breaking off from the organisation, and since then persecuting al-Qaeda members in Syria.”
Some of al-Golani’s jihadist critics, many of whom are Jordanians and Palestinians, have gathered in a pro-al-Qaeda splinter faction known as Hurras al-Deen. The group is small, but its religious criticism stings and adds to al-Golani’s challenges. He must now simultaneously fend off further defections to Hurras al-Deen and prevent his other flank from being peeled off by Turkey, whose “good cop” attitude is backed up by the threat of a regime offensive.
A Tahrir al-Sham official again rejected calls for the group’s dissolution on 28 August, but added that it seeks “a salutary solution in the liberated north that spares our people the expected aggression.” Behind the scenes, the group appears to be negotiating with Turkey, while Turkey negotiates with Russia.
In Aba-Zeid’s view, how Tahrir al-Sham evolves in the future will depend on Ankara and Moscow.
“If Turkey reaches an understanding with Russia to let Turkey handle the jihadist file in Idlib, one can expect to see Tahrir al-Sham split” between members who join the Turkey-backed block and hardliners who draw closer to Hurras al-Deen, he said.

Minor factions and Chinese jihadists

Complicating the picture in Idlib are several second-tier rebel factions.
On the jihadist side, Hurras al-Deen is accompanied by a number of small foreign-led factions close to Tahrir al-Sham, including the Chechens of Junoud al-Sham. The so-called Islamic State also operates clandestine cells in the area, hunted by both the NLF and Tahrir al-Sham.
Jaish al-Ezzah, a Free Syrian Army-flagged faction based near Hama, has not joined the Turkish-backed NLF like many of its former comrades. Some see the group as a covert Tahrir al-Sham ally, while others say their base is simply too far from Turkey for joining the alliance to make sense, so they are surviving by ducking out of intra-rebel rivalries.
In the western part of the enclave, Jisr al-Shughour has emerged as a stronghold of the Turkestan Islamic Party, TIP, a group of Uyghur Chinese jihadists. The TIP’s presence in this strategic area (it’s near the border with Turkey and government-controlled Latakia) plus its links with both Tahrir al-Sham and Turkey could give this group a pivotal role in any upcoming battle.
TIP has worked closely with Syria’s jihadist factions in the past, but also seems well acquainted with Turkish intelligence. After staying out of intra-rebel clashes for years, the group shed its neutrality policy this spring to help Tahrir al-Sham beat back a surprise attack by Turkey-backed Islamists.
Aba-Zeid, who follows intra-rebel conflicts in Idlib closely, said TIP helped swing that battle in al-Golani’s favour. But, he still believes that “Turkey’s influence on TIP remains greater than the influence of their alliance” with Tahrir al-Sham.
If all of this sounds complicated, it is. But to the Syrian government, Idlib’s rebels are all terrorists pure and simple – and the Idlib fighters themselves also see al-Assad as their primary enemy, transcending factional divides. Aba-Zeid insisted that if Russia green-lights a Syrian government offensive on Idlib, no matter how the various groups view Turkey or each other, they would all “prioritise repelling the attack”.
Mustafa Sejari, a leader in the Ankara-backed Moutassem Brigade, agreed. “This is the last fortress of the Syrian opposition and preserving it is everyone’s obligation,” he said.

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The track record of the United States and its NATO satrapies' foreign military and political adventurism is as follows:-
Yugoslavia ,failed. Iraq (twice) failed.Afghanistan,failed.Libya,failed.Syria..failed.

Mad-dog Erdogan's imperialistic hubris and mismanaged economic policies have left Turkey facing the perfect storm of impending fiscal implosion and recession. Aircraft and bombs and boots on the ground in neighbouring Syria costs money,lots of it and in US Dollars, of which the Treasury in Ankara has less of with each passing day.

Idlib is the last redoubt of what remains of both ISIS and AlQaeda forces on the ground in Syria.The mutually antagonistic islamic terrorist organisations continue to knife each in other in the back with unrestrained alacrity and commendable homicidal fervour. Like rats tied up in a sack,it would be expedient and best all round just to leave then to go at it;the outcome being far fewer rats to deal with and in much poorer shape once you open the sack.

Many thousands  of "rats" have already scarpered,shaving off their pietistic facial bum-fluff and donning the burqa and niqab to give a semblance of femininity as they scuttle back ( with our own domestic security services standing idly by ) to the immigrant,unassimilated ghettoes of Brussels,Paris,Berlin,London and many other safe houses in dozens of major cities all across Europe.

The United States ( and to a lesser extent its major NATO bootlickers ) has been skilfully politically cozened by two diametrically opposed Religious regimes in the region- Israel and Saudi Arabia into conducting  a badly flawed and strategically inept campaign in Syria that has left the Syrian government and its allies within striking distance of a final victory on the battlefield.

The sideshows to the main event - western backed and orchestrated regime change in Syria - such as the Turkish campaign of ethnic cleansing of Kurdish populated ares bordering Turkey and the opportunity for localised revanchism among various tribes against other tribes ( pro and anti-Assad according to how the wind blows )  has only added to the incoherence and fragility of any putative outcome let alone meaningful resolution of the Syrian imbroglio as a whole.

The UK ,France and Germany ( with interlocking disputes and instability afflicting their own backyards ) are first among the shroud-wavers and virtue signallers raising the all too familiar cry of " humanitarian catastrophe " whilst the slavering bloodthirsty Vultures ,Israel and Saudi Arabia continue circling the carrion they hope to be feasting on.

Syria,Russia and Iran meanwhile have a job to finish.

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Erdogan,that erstwhile ravening Turkish warmonger looks as though he's about to hit the existential jackpot in Syria.

From funding,harbouring and arming ISIS/Daesh as well as Al Qaeda affiliates, and his subsequent de-facto annexation of sovereign Syrian territory through to building walls,watchtowers and entire military supply bases and depots inside Syria and deploying a commensurate invading Army,Erdogan has doubled down like the chronic high risk gambler and demagogic chancer that he is.

And its all begun dropping apart in spectacular fashion.All his so-called NATO friends are deserting him and his allies have set a trap underneath him. The Turkish military haven't somehow heroically liberated their ethnic kinfolk from the clutches,as they see it,of Assad,but have been sucked ever deeper into a bottomless quagmire with no prospect of withdrawal.

Credit in fair measure,for helping to bring out these dramatic changes in the circumstances on the ground in Syria must go to President Trump's administration for its forthright dealings in matters of trade and commerce with the perceived abuses perpetrated by a number of its major trading competitors. Amongst the many nations targeted by these harsher tariffs is the export to the US of Turkish steel and aluminum.

The US has also gotten itself into an intra-NATO row over the sale of aircraft and missile systems to Turkey or rather the withholding of such deals at this present moment in time.

Neither of which has improved Erdogan's innately obstreperous demeanour.

And to cap it all the value of the Turkish Lira has depreciated catastrophically vis a vis the US Dollar on international markets.At the start of 2018,it was trrading at 3.76 Lira to the US Dollar by the start of August the rate had increased to 5.49 to the dollar.National economies cannot withstand 50% depreciations of their currencies against the Dollar.

Technically currency depreciations would be great for exports,but in Turkey's case domestic inflation,massive economic displacement and increased unemployment all begin to add up to Erdogan cutting nobody else's throat but his own in Syria.

Afrin, Idlib, Manbij: the entire paranoid scenario vis a vis the Kurds and their militia groups costs Turkey more in fuel and munitions and all the other logistics that have to be paid for in US Dollars.Which in turn have to be borrowed on International money markets against the sale of Turkish government bonds that in turn become increasingly junk as the screws tighten.

Ain't Capitalism wonderful ?  Schadenfreude is trading well these days.

fahrenheit451:264

On Sunday June 24,Turkey goes to the polls. It is very likely that the incumbent President Erdogan will be returned to office.In the event that he is,the Turkish state will undergo a radical transformation and the office of president will assume vastly enhanced powers to the detriment of both the Turkish parliament and judiciary as presently constituted.

The Turkish armed forces are currently illegally inside Syrian territory and are conducting military operations against indigenous mainly Kurdish militias as well as occupying Syrian villages,towns and cities; most notably Afrin, Idlib and Manbij.

The US also has its armed forces illegally inside Syria and is conducting military operations and occupying Syrian territory.They have gone so far as to divide up mutually conquered Syrian territory with their Turkish co-aggressors.

Which in purely International Law terms is utterly outrageous and without precedent.Not that the two NATO partner states have even bothered with the flimsiest of excuses,plausible or remotely otherwise in any attempt to legitimise their wanton warmongering conduct.

Israel supports all of this and why wouldn't they? they are the warmongering pariah state nonpareil when it comes to flouting International Law.

But the bigger problem for the foreseeable future,barring a near miraculous reversal at the ballot box on Sunday, is and will remain Erdogan.

Oh and by the way Erdogan still aspires that Turkey become a member of the European Union.And that is no longer a UK problem.

Or is it?

fahrenheit451:253

Not being content with attacking Syrian military facilities a few days previously, Israel went and repeated its aggression this time against several Iranian bases that are on Syrian territory.Their excuse was that Iranian forces had fired at Israeli territory first.
if anyone had any lingering doubts as to whether or not any State really gave a genuine damn about International Law and the prevailing norms of diplomacy,then this latest Israeli outrage ought to put such jejeune notions finally to bed.
Whatever vestiges of pretend-authority any notional Internationally accepted and binding rule of law is meant to have has been firmly consigned to the naive daydreams and unattainable aspirations of those who pine after some kind of brotherhood of man. Otiose cant and vacuous platitudes based on their respective DNA to western liberal democratic values,which themselves are of course the surviving chimera of such truly awful events of human history as the American and French revolutions.
Bismarckian Realpolitik is back in vogue. All well and good.Assuming of course that the dimwits, especially those in Washington's State Department and their institutional rivals at The Pentagon actually are able to discern and implement such a cunning strategy.
The Israeli MSM platform Haaretz reports on the construction by the US with French collaboration of a military base near Manbij in Syria and the threats made to the US for doing so by Erdogan's Turkey.I don't recall this potboiler of what is a growing classic Mexican standoff ever being referred to or taken notice of at the UN,either at Security Council or General Assembly level.
So,having planned,nurtured,financed,trained,armed & logistically supported the hydra-headed Arab Spring popular uprisings and having watched as they went  "south" one by inexorable one, the US administration rears up on its hindlegs and accuses Iran of being the source of instability in the region! This Punch & Judy show suits Israel's atavistic urges that underpin and motivate Netanyahu's faux-demagougery and pathetic bellicose antics.
Erdogan's Turkey - and let us hope that he might be defeated in the forthcoming Turkish general election- is a Treaty bound member of NATO and aspires to become a member of the European Union.Clearly reality is on the blink,on both counts.
And the legitimate Syrian government fights on with the invaluable assistance of its allies- Russia,Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah and elements of the Palestinian diaspora in Syria.The Kurds though,right in the middle of all this are,no surprise getting royally shafted by all and sundry.That was inevitable.
As is Schadenfreude.

fahrenheit451:251

Israeli Premier Netanyahu is trying to light a few extra fuses in the Syrian imbroglio and investing an extraordinary amount of diplomatic demagoguery toward that objective.The trigger,he hopes, will be the revocation of what is commonly termed the Iran Nuclear Deal.A Heath-Robinson affair where the 5 permanent members of the UN security Council plus Germany exercise vigilance and constraints on Iran's ambition to create a nuclear arsenal.

The saving grace, if indeed there is to be any in this prelude to WW3, is that,the current US President Trump's predilection for diplomatic anarchy may not on this occasion be allowed free rein.China,France,Russia and the UK,oh,and Germany,all have an intense desire to maintain the present Iran Nuclear Deal.A position and outlook that enjoys a broad spectrum of support amongst the various experts,analysts and ad-hoc international bodies who between them have a good idea as to the degree and veracity of Iran's adherence to the deal itself.

Netanyahu, au contraire just wants to get the US and its increasingly deluded NATO satrapies to bomb Iran on any old pretext.To this end,the reprobate who is facing indictment on multiple corruption charges,delivered a mise en scene before the world's media with apparently 50,000 documents proving Iranian perfidy.

Fortunately sanity and reason are momentarily back in vogue among the western powers and so this byzantine Israeli-conspiracy theory was found to be short of legs. So Iran isn't going to get bombed any time soon.

However this all comes in the wake of what were a series of missile strikes against what were reported as Iranian bases inside Syria.And so the World sinks a little deeper in the quagmire and Israel is doing the pushing down.

The Zionist statelet celebrated its' 70th year of existence recently and  no-one does mass shroud-waving and emotionally vacuous hyperbole better than Israel. Demagoguery.
Then again, who knows what the Washington beltway  neocon deep state establishment might yet get Trump to do.

And therein lies the danger.

fahrenheit451:248

For the record it should be stated that:-
Robert Fisk is an English writer and journalist. He has been Middle East correspondent intermittently since 1976 for various media; since 1989 he has been correspondent for The Independent.
He is  widely respected ,hence his report a couple of days ago of his visit to Douma-where a chemical weapons attack against civilians was allegedly perpetrated-has caused such widespread alarm and despondency across  the Corporate MSM and social media platforms.
This is not what,for instance, the 630 itinerant Westminster benchwarmers were expecting to be so graphically revealed to them in the wake of their pathetic,mewling faux-debate - post fact of the UK's involvement in the incident of international lawbreaking ( i.e. criminality ) where the US ,UK and France launched a massive air and missile attack against various  government establishments inside Syria.These establishments having been " identified " as critical infrastructure in the Syrian government's alleged chemical and biological  weapons program.
In the absolute realm of historic Realpolitik it is for the strongest to govern.And powerful nation states as a matter of praxis in the end do actually do whatever the hell they want to whenever and wherever. That in itself isn't problematic;what is problematic is the faux-insistence that everyone maintain a polite fiction that nation states are somehow accountable to another polite fiction which they refer to as " International Law".
Once a generalised consensus and modus vivendi arises around such a priori notions as International Law,then by and large it behoves the sponsors and beneficiaries of this to acknowledge and adhere to the bloody thing.Which of course the US and its EUNATO lackeys singularly fail to do whenever somebody cries " wolf ! " as they did In Yugoslavia,Afganistan,Iraq and Libya to name a few.
it is always the other side,those who contest the US global hegemony,who are the ones needing to adhere to International Law or are the ones circumventing International Law or in breach of it. This is in fact deeply Freudian.
Law and Order presumes generally matters such as :- due process, evidence,verifiable witness statements and the archaic concept habeas corpus . The alternative is vigilantism.Which of course is what the US and its band of outlaws are all about.
Otiose pseudo-moralistic cant,vacuous platitudes,egregious rhetoric and non sequiturs dreamed up by p.r . and marketing gurus that pass themselves off as philosophical/ideological expressions of some gravitas.One needs only ,if one has the intestinal fortitude,to listen again to the blather issuing itself from May's facial orifice as she  " justified " ordering the bombardment of the territory of another sovereign nation state with which the UK is not at war nor has ever been existentially threatened by.
And then along came Robert Fisk and his frontline report from Douma.Which the itinerant Westminster benchwarmers then chose not to refer to at all.
And meanwhile in Idlib,the Mad Dog Erdogan Turkish invaders' backed Free Syrian army is engaged in a brutal no holds barred turf war with the Al Qaeda rebranded Al Nusra Front rebranded HTS.Which is causing unnecessary widespread humanitarian suffering which could be alleviated and or prevented by timely intervetion;say by a series of airstrikes for example?

Only no-one in the West has cried "Wolf! ".

fahrenheit451:247

The Western powers aka the United States and its kowtowing,toadying satrapies with the UK to the fore,insist that other nations,for example the likes of North Korea,Iran ,China and Russia,et al abide by what they assert are the generally accepted precepts of the so-called international rules based order,or " Westphalian System ".
Rules based. International order.Supposedly brought into being by the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia that brought to a close what has since be called  " The Thirty Years War ",it established the legal fiction of territorial integrity and the sovereignty of individual nation states.
Hasn't actually ever really bloody worked out in practice,but it's a convenient comfort blanket.
This rules -based Order presumably applies to its most vociferous proponents; the likes of the US,UK and France for example,no? Just to be entirely consistent and thereby avoiding the charge of outright hypocrisy.
Here's what Oona Hathaway, Professor of International Law at Yale Law School reiterated in a as part of a recent article for the Just Security website.
2. The coming air strike will violate international law. The United Nations Charter prohibits “the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.” This most important of international laws has three exceptions, none of which are implicated here: First, Syria has not consented to the strikes; second, the U.N. Security Council has not authorized the strikes; and third, the United States is not acting in self-defense.
And that is as unequivocal as it gets.
There might or might not have been a breach of an international prohibition on the use of chemical weapons in the Syrian city of Douma.
Even in the wake of President Trump's bull in a china shop tweet about Russia having to get ready for a massive missile strike from the US against targets in Syria, Defence Sec. Mattis restated the all too obvious, " We don't have any hard evidence ".
Evidence or not, hard or otherwise, the US and its miscreant lackeys in London and Paris shall be breaking the Rules based International Law by carrying out any military actions whatsoever against Syria.

I rest my case, m'lud.

fahrenheit451:246

Marking the occasion of the anniversary of Trump's ordered missile strike on Syrian airbases in 2017,Israeli aircraft launched their own missile strike against a Syrian airbase. As per their protocols for such incidents,the Israeli high command refused to confirm or deny any such event.But it was Israel.
There are several previous recorded and verified incidents of Israeli airstrikes against Syrian airbases,their excuse being that they were targeting Iranian military facilities at those bases.Well,that makes it all hunky dory then.A country that is officially not at war with another country can pop across the border and do a bit of bombing,run off back home and thumb their noses at International Law.
The world just took once huge irrevocable step toward triggering a Nuclear 1914.Apparently the Israeli regime was incentivised ( or thought it was jolly good idea ) to strike at Syria prior to the US doing so because it seems that Herr Trump is once again hugely aggrieved at reports emerging from the imbroglio that is the foreign-engineered Syrian civil war,of poison gas being used against civilians.
Erdogan's blitzkrieg and the meticulous ethnic cleansing of Kurdish populated regions bordering Turkey are not so much of a concern to the pseudo-moralistic posturing on Syria by the US and its NATO satrapies with,of course dutiful bootlicking lackey Tory UK austerity regime to the fore with its otiose cant.
Turkey is a NATO member,Erdogan's original wheeze of a scenario was to try and persuade the US that the Kurdish Syrian militias-part of the US backed SDF anti-Assad coalition- were themselves posing an outside existential threat to the Turkish state,which if it were actually true would oblige all NATO members to come to Turkey's ( Erdogan's ) immediate aid and declare all out war on the Kurds. Who,darn it from Ankara'a point of view are not a state actor;which is why NATO legally can't act.
And on and on.The Saudis and Qatar continue to ply Syrian based Al Qaeda affiliates,who've undergone dozens of changes in nomenclature to try and fool the CIA ( not all that difficult) with vast amounts of money,arms and intel support.This Wahabi ultra extremist strategy marries up nicely with the super scale atrocities the KSA is perpetrating in Yemen even as NATO member states including the UK has military advisors on the ground witnessing and sanctioning this unspeakable barbarism being carried out with a knowing nod and wink from Washington.

Head for the hills,is I fear no longer a viable survival strategy.

fahrenheit451:244

There is no recognised,valid international agreement that has magically granted authorisation nor any shred of legal legitimacy to the activities of the US.UK,Turkey or France whose forces are currently ensconced on the territory of the sovereign state of Syria. The only foreign forces who are incontestably legally,legitimately assisting the Syrian government are those of Russia,Iran and the forces of Hezbollah.
That the corporate MSM in the UK choose to announce the death of a British forces soldier in Syria whilst serving with US Special forces does nothing to alter or mitigate the brazen violation of all manner of International Law and norms governing the relationship between sovereign states who are at peace with one another.
Mad dog Erdogan's instigated  blitzkrieg against predominantly indigenous Kurdish dominated provinces bordering Turkey are a major case in point.Turkey's NATO membership further deepens an already insoluble imbroglio. The Kurds under attack were until a few weeks ago a strategic ally of the US ( and France and Germany ) in the hydra-headed Syrian civil war scenario.
Now it seems that France has declared its renewed support of the Kurds much to the consternation of Erdogan whose vainglorious territorial ambitions remain unabated by this latest complication.
And given the diplomatic spat initiated by the UK's beleaguered,ailing,minority Tory regime against Russia over an as yet unresolved attempted assassination of a former Russia traitor on British soil,the  climate of international relations has entered a period of deep depression.
The Washington Deep State continues to remorselessly tighten its grip on what remains of Trump's avowed non-interventionist stance that helped him get into the Oval Office.
The various jihadist factions are engaged in a variety of interconnected blood feuds that have come back to life after their collective failure to achieve anything more lasting than their own infamy.And two ISIS butchers- bizarrely nicknamed  "The Beatles"- because of their british accents, whose UK citizenship was revoked are in the hands of the mainly Kurdish SDF anti-Assad forces who don't seem capable of simply giving these two the coup-de-grace.
And so it goes.Turkey is appointing its own governors to administer the territory it has annexed in its avowedly racist,anti-Kurdish blitzkrieg,which if nothing else has spooked the US and UK into an embarrassing omerta,all their supposed international diplomatic muscle rendered useless,except of course in their lunatic,hybrid warfare out-of-theatre assault on Russia.
As someone else has already opined, we could indeed be heading into a Nuclear 1914 scenario.
Duck and cover ain't going to help.