fahrenheit451:180

Nothing signifies the utter,crass stupidity of  the USA's  infantile,venal militaristic posturing than the current on going and seemingly escalating spat with the DPRK ( North Korea ).
The Byzantine convolutions and convulsions of Washington DC domestic politics aside, it would in theory have to take the US Congress to actually declare War,were it so inclined to do so over this latest hissy fit of theirs.
Not that the highly inconvenient constitutional necessity has ever impeded Neocon psychopaths from gerrymandering contentious and mainly bogus UN security council resolutions that allow the Pentagon a smoke and mirrors loophole to go ahead and wreak havoc on a historically unprecedented scale - Yugoslavia, Iraq (twice),Afghanistan,Libya,Syria.
President Trump's Hollywood-manque poorly scripted, sub-Churchillian rhetoric about fire and fury,yatta-ta-yatta is of itself not terribly enlightening other than it helps to highlight another facet of this entire useless,burdensome farrago of the US chucking the teddy out of its pram.The undiplomatic verbiage has even managed to upset John McCain, the terminally ill warmonger,neocon hawk supreme and soon to be ex-senator from Arizona.
The deep, deep state of CIA,career military and political thin tank neocons do crave for wanton carnage and global instability as long as it seems to favour US corporate interests long term. The spat with the DPRK doesn't accord with the preconceptions of their playbook and so it isn't welcome.
Which is worrying for them; ever since a Heritage Foundation report from 2013 concluded that the US ruling elites and their military-industrial complex are no longer capable of fighting a two front war.  Read and enjoy :-

http://www.heritage.org/defense/report/the-measure-superpower-two-major-regional-contingency-military-the-21st-century
Today’s military is too small to meet the two-MRC test credibly. Moreover, the qualitative advantage that the U.S. military has long enjoyed is eroding as advanced military capabilities proliferate around the world. The capabilities of U.S. forces are also deteriorating as platforms and systems age and as critical modernization programs are delayed or even cancelled.
Building a two-MRC force for the 21st century means increasing the size of the U.S. military, modernizing existing platforms and systems, and investing in advanced air, sea, and land capabilities. This will require resources above the levels proposed by the Obama Administration. Over the next decade, building a reasonable two-MRC force for the 21st century will cost roughly $70 billion more per year than the projected cost of the current defense program, which averages approximately $550 billion per year.

Section I: What It Takes to Be a Military Superpower

Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has measured the fundamental adequacy of its force posture in terms of the ability of U.S. forces, without national mobilization, to defeat two nation-state adversaries in geographically separate theaters nearly simultaneously. From the time it was first articulated in 1991, the two-theater-war standard has undergone repeated reviews and revisions. The fundamental reason that the two-theater-war standard still survives is because no credible alternative has ever been proposed. Senior decision makers across five Administrations, Republican and Democrat, have been unable to avoid the reality that, in a world of continuing globalization and growing political and military uncertainty, the U.S. needs a military that is large enough and has a sufficient range of capabilities to cover multiple major military contingencies in overlapping time frames.
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No-one will be bombing anyone anytime soon,unless,of course there are those too stupid to comprehend what really is at stake were they to act so precipitously.
The term  " Schadenfreude " seems appropriate at this juncture.

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?

fahrenheit451:153

The difficulty the rest of us have with a proverbial " elephant in the room " - that is the thing that never gets mentioned for fear of causing embarrassment - is that the elephant,or rather elephants, need to be dealt with.  The neocon / liberal interventionist double headed hydra of US foreign policy is a deranged stampeding herd of elephants. Arising from the US/NATO engineered imbroglio of a series of interlocking overseas military,quasi-imperialist adventures involving Yugoslavia,Afghanistan,Iraq and Libya; Syria is just the latest quagmire that is threatening to suck everyone and everything else into its fathomless depths.  The once generally acknowledged norms of global realpolitik diplomacy have long since become obsolescent, which leaves very little scope for efforts short of all out war to manage areas of irreconcilable differences. In spite of everything,the Assad government remains the sole  sovereign legitimate representative of the Syrian peoples and state at the U.N. The various and diverse forces from Russia,Iran ,Hezbollah and Iraqi militias on its territory have been invited there as allies in the conflict against the enemies of Syria. All other foreign states and covert military advisers and operations units of foreign armed forces such as Turkey,the US,UK France and lesser NATO satrapies and Israel are breaking International Law and are acting illegally.It is they who jointly or separately are arming,financing,training,advising as well as giving tactical and strategic military battlefield logistical  and combat support to at different times in different geographic locations on the territory of Syria - ISIS,Al Qaeda and other non state terrorist insurgent combatant groups.

The United States' military issued this statement a few hours ago 

@CJTFOIR: pro-Syria government forces near At Tanf hit for "advancing well inside an established de-confliction zone"; Russia tried helping

fahrenheit451:140

Did someone say something and would they mind repeating it so that we can all hear?

There's been some kind of a conclave of decrepit,corrupt and frankly historically obsolescent countries held in Tuscany a few days ago.They wagged their fingers and muttered their customary oaths, amazingly enough aimed at other countries that hadn't been invited to this Care in the Community Patients' Jamboree & Seance. 
The conclave had the rather catchy hashtag #G7 that appeals to the swathes of historically illiterate and vacuously trendy journalists-manque who swarm around great big important meetings like rabid hyenas around a carcass that's been out in the sun too long.
 Fortunately, or maybe just because the meds were administered in time to enough of the attendees, the #G7 Foreign Ministers decided not to risk further antagonising the hell out of Russia and all those who aren't implacably opposed to its existence and well being.
 This on the whole, despite fervently expressed opinions to the contrary by genuine neocon warmongers, was a pretty good outcome for all concerned. Such is the manner of the self-referencing cabal of western, industrialised democracies with the biggest GDPs,that a full Summit is scheduled for May 26/27 in Sicily.
 That's when the collective Heads of State get to wag their fingers and mutter oaths of one kind or another. No doubt Al Qaeda and DAESH and their Saudi/UAE/Turkey paymasters will be awaiting the outcome with their customary baited breath and meticulously observed reticence and commendable martial restraint. 
Just kidding,you know they won't and neither do the necromancers of Washington,London,Paris and Berlin.

fahrenheit451:122

In Astana,Kazakhstan Syrian  peace talks brokered by Moscow,Tehran and Ankara are under way. Not that the MSM ( MainStream Media ) here in the West seems too fussed about it. Nor do the dregs of  US neocon interventionism have much to say on the topic of Syria these days. The remnants of the british Labour Party -both Parliamentary and grassroots extra-parliamentary have decided to ease back on their vainglorious,hubristic posturing and issuing of implausibly dire warnings to Moscow on the subject. At least for now,the odd frisson of faux-anxiety about 3 Russian warships traversing international waters adjacent Britain not withstanding. And so it goes. There's still plenty of turmoil,scandals,strikes,sedition,corruption,terrorism and nascent bellicosity to go around all the continents.And yet the best that the aforementioned Labour Party can manage is to be the harbinger of antidemocratic sedition against the ineluctable verdict of the 23 June referendum. The monumentally idiosyncratic Supreme Court,having handed down an 8 to 3 majority decision forcing HMG to refer to Parliament before triggering Article 50,has in effect handed a box of matches to a two year old child sat next to a can of petrol. This all but ensures the Remainer Zombie apocalypse will engulf #brexit .The itinerant benchwarmers leading this horrorshow are the same ones waving their scrawny fists at Moscow and cosying  up even more intimately to the anti-russian sanctions imposing #EU. This will not end well.

fahrenheit451:115

Even as 2016 was drawing to its conclusion, there was one final footnote to be added to it by of all people, the outgoing president of the USA.In the wake of the joint announcement by the governments of Russia and Turkey on their joint initiative to bring about a cessation of hostilities in the Syrian crisis /civil war, Obama's response is to expel 35 Russian diplomats from the USA on the charge of involvement in cyberhacking. That's it.How utterly bizarre; probably more bizarre that Secretary of State Kerry's denunciation of Israel which made the headlines just the other day.  On the allegations of Russian involvement in the hacking of Clinton's emails and other parts of the Democratic Party's failed presidential campaign, the response of Russia's President Putin has been steadfastly rational and measured; there will be no anticipated tit for tat expulsions of US diplomats from Russia. Sidelined in Syria, made to look amateurish by Clinton's own ludicrously hostile anti Russian rhetoric in her failed White House bid and now a grandiose Cold war style diplomatic slap across another Country's face which yields precisely zilch by return. America isn't well is she? NATO has lost its venal strutting posture and the EU is sinking slowly slowly beneath the waves of history. I don't think the Yanks get Schadenfreude.If they did they'd be really upset.

fahrenheit451:111

Here we go, again! Or almost. An emergency Commons debate on the topic of , however you wish to describe it, Aleppo. Called by the Tory MP Andrew Mitchell, the debate attracted the attendance of 70 MPs.  And as usual the cries of something needs to be done, has to be done resounded to the echo. Deja Vu has seldom been so much in evidence in the Commons.They debated Aleppo fairly recently and the same faux-concerns of our metropolitan-domiciled political class were thoroughly rehearsed for the cameras. An odd symmetry of Tories clinging onto the last vestiges of a grasp of global Realpolitik on the one hand waylayed by the strident / bellicose utterances of born-again Blairites whose lack of practical military /logistics knowledge was woefully in evidence. Clowns in Chief Johnson and Osborne did some desultory limp moral shroud waving by asserting that had parliament in 2013 opted for a military intervention of some kind or another at that time, Aleppo would not now be an issue. Don't ask; it wasn't supposed to make any sense whatsoever even at the time. Unless, of course the real intent behind all and any calls for any intervention in the Syrian Civil War is to goad Russia into a premature globalised conflict aka WW3. Surely not?

Louis Kasatkin @louiskasatkin Dec 13Indeed something needs to be done! now! but in relation to what and where,then there's the how.Let's make a list of issues "Andrew Mitchell"

https://twitter.com/louiskasatkin/status/808685917724610560

fahrenheit451:096

A lot of people, especially the rabble of benchwarmers of all parties in the House of Commons chamber,have been getting rather upset these last few days about yet another issue they can do nothing about other than have a collective pseudo-moral hissy fit over.  To put the aforementioned's hissy fit in context; The US and its NATO satrapies have, one recalls this past quarter century, pretty much screwed things up royally in a whole host of formerly stable, sovereign nation states. Iraq,Yugoslavia, Afghanistan,Iraq a second time,Libya and Syria. I exclude the Ukraine from this inglorious litany for the simple reason that NATO hasn't actually bombed anyone or anything as yet in that particular theatre of operations. Back to Syria. Said H.o.C. benchwarmers in August 29.2013 REJECTED a government motion that Parliament authorise UK military intervention in Syria in response to the alleged use by the Syrian government of chemical weapons against civilians. Fast forward to December 2 2015 and this time said H.o.C. AUTHORISED UK military airstrikes in Syria directed exclusively against ISIS/DAESH. As the former Head of MI6 observed whilst appearing of BBC Radio4's " Today " program, you can't really fight against both sides at once in a conflict. He ought to have added especially in a three plus sided conflict at that. The much vaunted and lauded sanctioned airstrikes in 2015, with the involvement of 2 planes and no actual effective strikes have been just a waste of effort. All the planning and conspiratorial shenanigans of the EU and NATO in their various forums trying to cajole the myriad hornets' nests of " moderate " i.e. non-ISIS opposition forces in Syria including Al Qaeda to evolve into something that can be financed and supplied with weapons-that too hasn't really worked for the US and its grandiose designs on a post-Assad Syria. And so we come to the five years long siege of Aleppo. Only this time, the faux wrath and ire of the H.o.C. benchwarmers is directed at Russia because it has been lending military assistance to the constitutional government of Syria.  How odd it appears that in International Law, let alone accepted norms of global diplomacy and peacetime relationships between Sovereign states,that the parliamentary body of one state whose armed forces are operating in and across Syria openly and covertly WITHOUT the permission of Damascus, denounces the actions of another state who ARE operating  in Syria WITH the permission of Damascus. Odder still, that the legally legitimate actions of Russia in conjunction with Syria are deemed to constitute a war crime comparable with Nazi Germany's use of the Luftwaffe in Civil War Spain of the 1930's.  Such is the destitution of learning and paucity of historic fact checking within the House of Commons that they are ignorant of when the term War Crimes actually entered the lexicon. Germany's intervention in 1930's Spain was never characterised by contemporary sources as a " war crime ". Whilst at the time Britain and France observed a strict neutrality that included a refusal to render any assistance whatsoever to the besieged, legitimate Republican Spanish government. Foreign Secretary Johnson's wantonly provocative call for demonstrations in front of the Russian Embassy in London are the classic tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury, signifying nothing; as for Johnson himself, he is a poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more..

Footnote:-

see also this blog #081 on 25 August 2016

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.