fahrenheit451:371

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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As the major Western powers continue their slide into irrelevance and become increasingly mired in the imbroglios of their own metropolitan ruling elites'making; bigger problems and more pressing issues of international import continue to spiral out of control even as the main western actors distance themselves from the realms of global, diplomatic Realpolitik.

The Trump administration's largely contrived trade contretemps with the PRC and the UK's almost sublimely surreal implementation / revocation of the EURef2016 decision to Leave the EU still hold centre-stage.

And meanwhile Syria and its peoples burn. This update on the atavistic urges of Turkish President Erdogan's drive to re-invent an ottoman empire,gleaned from SMM Syria  :

"  As Turkey and the United States achieved an agreement on the fate of Northern Syria, the legal government of Syrian Arab Republic has strongly condemned it claiming that this achievement constitutes a flagrant aggression against Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

While the sides of talks call the results of negotiations as “good start”, international community continues to keep silence and prefer not to comment why two independent states shape the destiny of the third one. Neither UN representatives nor Arab League countries pay its attention on the talks and are still unmoved by Northern Syria.

Nowadays Turkey is the state which tries to play a double game in Syria but falls between two stools. On the one hand the United States of America – Turkey’s NATO ally –  consider Syrian Kurds as the closest partner in Syrian conflict. That’s the main reason why Turkey presidents’ threats are still on the “threat” level.

We’ve asked political commentator and Middle East researcher Marwa Osman her opinion on this issue. According to Marwa Osman the main goal which stands behind the talks between Turkey and the United States is the annexation of Northern Syria.

“What Turkey and the US are trying to do is to fight over who shall annex northern Syria first. They will both fail. The US is not capable of doing so militarily and Turkey will doom itself out of any future resolution if it continues to illegally occupy Syrian land. Turkey needs to remember that occupation creates resistance. Turkey won’t be able to handle the resistance…or at least for now since Erdogan is not doing so good politically in Turkey to begin with”, – Osman said.

“Northern Syria is Syrian. Kurds in Syria are Syrians even if they still support the American occupation of eastern Syria. This war will not end until all illegal foreign presence is removed. If you are a state not invited by the sovereign Syrian government then you will have to leave or face the consequences”, – Osman added.

On the other hand Hayat Tahrir al Sham militant group, which is partly funded by Turkish officials, looses its positions in Idlib province. Despite the agreement which was reached by the states of Astana format, Turkey continues to ignore its obligations regarding the de-escalation zone. It results in sufferings of civilians who lives in HTS-held areas. "


There you have it,two foreign powers both having violated Syria's territorial integrity and engaged in military action contrary to International Law.

In Erdogan's case,he instigated a reckless foreign military adventure designed to shore up his rapidly depleting domestic political stranglehold on the levers of power.The Turkish Lira is perpetually under siege on foreign currency markets,his country's credit rating is shot to hell and gone and domestic inflation and increasing unemployment are all heaping up social & economic powder kegs waiting for a match.

In Trump's case,he is utterly under the direction and influence of born again Washington neocon hawks who having gorged themselves on the spoils of militarism during the Bush and Clinton years are back for second helpings on a drastically curtailed foreign policy menu offering only charred remnants and slim pickings from what they had originally planned as a universal Arab Spring and a swathe of " colour " revolutions across the former USSR's landscape.

And so it goes...

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Occasionally,very occasionally  a leading world statesman articulates a point of view so cogently as to encompass one 's own outlook on an issue that it makes sense just to copy & paste verbatim. A couple of days ago The President of Russia launched a swingeing critique of prevailing  western metropolitan elitist values. To wit-

 

Vladimir Putin has trumpeted the growth of national populist movements in Europe and America, crowing that liberalism is spent as an ideological force. In an FT interview in the Kremlin on the eve of the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan, the Russian president said “the liberal idea” had “outlived its purpose” as the public turned against immigration, open borders and multiculturalism. Mr Putin’s evisceration of liberalism — the dominant western ideology since the end of the second world war in 1945 — chimes with anti-establishment leaders from US president Donald Trump to Hungary’s Viktor Orban, Matteo Salvini in Italy, and the Brexit insurgency in the UK.

 

 “[Liberals] cannot simply dictate anything to anyone just like they have been attempting to do over the recent decades,” he said. Mr Putin branded Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to admit more than 1m refugees to Germany, mainly from war-ravaged Syria, as a “cardinal mistake”. But he praised Donald Trump for trying to stop the flow of migrants and drugs from Mexico.

 

 “This liberal idea presupposes that nothing needs to be done. That migrants can kill, plunder and rape with impunity because their rights as migrants have to be protected.” Recommended The Big Read Putin: friendship with China, ‘Donald’ and the end of liberal ideas He added: “Every crime must have its punishment. The liberal idea has become obsolete. It has come into conflict with the interests of the overwhelming majority of the population.”

 

 Donald Tusk, the European Council president, said he “strongly disagreed” with Mr Putin. “What I find really obsolete is authoritarianism, personality cults and the rule of oligarchs,” he said.

 As the de facto ruler of Russia for almost two decades, Mr Putin, 66, has been regularly accused of covertly supporting populist movements through financial aid and social media, notably in the 2016 US presidential election, the Brexit referendum and the recent European Parliament elections.

 

 Mr Putin emphatically denied this. He dismissed the conclusion by special counsel Robert Mueller that Russia had systemically interfered in the 2016 US presidential election as “mythical interference”.

 

 Turning to the US-China trade war and geopolitical tensions in the Gulf between the US and Iran, Mr Putin said the situation had become “explosive”. The problem, he said, stemmed from American unilateralism and the lack of rules underpinning world order. Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin talking to FT editor Lionel Barber and Moscow bureau chief Henry Foy © Press office of the President of Russia He expressed concern about the threat of a renewed nuclear arms race between the US and Russia. “The cold war was a bad thing . . . but there were at least some rules that all participants in international communication more or less adhered to or tried to follow. Now, it seems that there are no rules at all,” he said.

 

 On a positive note, Mr Putin said there were tentative signs of a thaw in Anglo-Russian relations ahead of his meeting in Osaka with Theresa May, her farewell summit as UK prime minister. “I think Russia and UK are both interested in fully restoring our relations, at least I hope a few preliminary steps will be made.” Relations between London and Moscow have been frozen after the attempted assassination of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, England. Treason is the gravest crime possible and traitors must be punished. I am not saying that the Salisbury incident is the way to do it . . . but traitors must be punished The UK government blames the Russian government for the nerve agent attack, but Mr Putin said there was no evidence to support this. Mr Skripal had served a sentence in Russia before being released in a spy swap with the UK, he noted. Mr Putin made clear, however, that he had zero tolerance for spies who betrayed their country. “Treason is the gravest crime possible and traitors must be punished. I am not saying that the Salisbury incident is the way to do it . . . but traitors must be punished.”

 

Echoing nationalist populists such as Mr Salvini and France’s Marine Le Pen, Mr Putin said liberal governments had not acted to reassure citizens. Instead they had pursued a mindless multiculturalism embracing, among other things, sexual diversity. “I am not trying to insult anyone because we have been condemned for our alleged homophobia. But we have no problem with LGBT persons. God forbid, let them live as they wish,” he said. “But some things do appear excessive to us. They claim now that children can play five or six gender roles.” “Let everyone be happy, we have no problem with that,” he added. “But this must not be allowed to overshadow the culture, traditions and traditional family values of millions of people making up the core population.”

 

 

 

P.S.

My deepest schadenfreude goes to,amongst others :-

#PeoplesVote #MeToo #Bame The pro-death Abortion Lobby #ExtinctionRebellion

 

 

 

fahrenheit451:301

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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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.

fahrenheit451:265

Supreme court rules in favour of anti-abortion clinics in free speech case

Judges rule faith-based ‘crisis pregnancy centers’ are not obliged to tell women that free or low-cost abortions may be available elsewhere.

So reported the Guardian online on the June 26 announcement from the SCOTUS latest rulings. Other notable on the day rulings included the upholding of President Trump's targeted travel ban on citizens from a number of predominantly muslim countries to the USA.

Matters then generally seem to have improved a great deal in the wake of those SCOTUS decisions.The world is a sunnier place and liberal snowflakes get to bleed their consciences over the rest of us some more.

Those once towering bastions of corporate globalist MSM,such as New York Times and Washington Post, have gone so far as to concede defeat on the upholding of Trump's travel ban and acknowledge the importance to the Trump presidency of the SCOTUS decision.

And that's how it's meant to be in the US. Somebody challenges someone else's ruling /law in the Courts,there's an appeal,the original ruling /law is upheld or otherwise and then with both sides committed to their cause and the lower court rulings having implications for the Constitution it winds up in front of SCOTUS.

Liberals have for decades defecated all over the Constitution with their political appointees /careerist judicial cronies on SCOTUS approving.i..e rendering constitutional ,acceptable  and normalising egregious outrages such as abortion on demand ( Roe v.Wade 1973 ) ,sodomy and same- gender marriage. Liberals were only too happy,in those instances to extol the virtues of their wonderful tripartite separation of powers.

But not now. Everything is terrible,Trump is a maniac and America has morphed into some kind of quasi-fascist dystopia. Clearly it doesn't take much to upset the PC multiculturalist,globalist snowflake opinion formers and corporatist agitators of the Democratic Party and lesser ,vertebrae-free denizens amongst the Republicans.

And long may that state of fear and self-loathing continue; Schadenfreude is now in vogue!

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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?

fahrenheit451:256

Back in 1982,in the middle of the ColdWar ,British commercial TV aired a mordantly witty six-part black comedy, "Whoops Apocalypse " -a tale about events in the week leading up to WW3.
This extract from Wikipedia,captures the tone :-  The naive and highly unpopular Republican U.S. President Johnny Cyclops (an obvious Ronald Reagan parody, played by Barry Morse) is advised by an insane right-wing fundamentalist security advisor,

And here we all are in 2018 and life is imitating art to the full, a real  President Johnny Cyclops is being advised by the likes of John Bolton and Secretary of State Pompeo.

There was,what was commonly referred to as the Iran nuclear deal - the US unilaterally tore that one up.There was a summit arranged for June in Singapore between DPRK-North Korea and the US.The US has unilaterally cancelled it.

In a recent scathing denunciation of the Iranian government,in the wake of the US abrogation of the nuclear deal, Pompeo tore into Iran threatening the imposition of the harshest sanctions in history if Iran did not swear to forego nuclear technology development.

Washington DC's resident neocon psychopath-in-chief Trump's national security advisor- John Bolton gave a graphic warning that the DPRK would be heading the same way as Libya were they not to in effect do exactly what the US demanded of them at the forthcoming summit in Singapore.

The natural,indeed inevitable corollary of those twin egregious US propaganda assaults is that Iran and DPRK,as sovereign nation states and members of the UN, have reacted with their own barely restrained responses.

In one co-ordinated fell swoop,the world has gone from a functional and functioning nuclear restraining order on Iran involving  the UN Security Council permanent 5 plus Germany (representing the EU ) and a North Korea on a path of genuine reconciliation & de-escalation vis a vis South Korea,to a twin tsunami of belligerent hyperbole and outporing of crazed paranoia spewing forth from the neocon orifices of Washington that has eviscerated any semblance of balance ,order and sanity in international relations.

The World is not in a good place right now.

Obviously the US fancies its chances in simultaneous multi-regionalise confrontations.

For the time being its european NATO satrapies,even inveterate kowtowing bootlickers such as the UK aren't as certain as their Lords and Masters in the Washington Eyrie.

Schadenfreude awaits.

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.

fahrenheit451:229

The following was gleaned from @TheRegionOrg , an open letter from a retinue of leading academics headed by the venerable Noam Chomsky  wrote -

" We, the undersigned academics and human rights activists, insist that the leaders of Russia, Iran, and the U.S. ensure that the sovereignty of Syrian borders is not breached by Turkey and that the people of Afrin in Syria, be allowed to live in peace.

Afrin, whose population is predominantly Kurdish, is one of the most stable and secure regions in Syria. With very little international aid, Afrin has taken in so many Syrian refugees in the last five years that its population has doubled to 400,000. Afrin is now surrounded by enemies: Turkish-supported jihadi groups, al Qaeda, and Turkey.

Turkish president Erdogan has threatened to attack the U.S. military’s Kurdish partners – the Kurdish YPG or People’s Protection Units – with which the US has been allied against ISIS. Turkey accuses the YPG of being “terrorists”..."

And there you have it;the cri-de-coeur of petty bourgeois,metropolitan elitist intellectuals down the ages whenever some serious shit starts hitting the fan. Their response is a predetermined litany of otiose cant and impotent,vacuous platitudes.

Thousands  upon thousands of " innocent " civilians as well as culpable combatants will die,mostly needlessly, in so far as their deaths will not significantly impact the tides of war,nor any future,putative resolution of the present Syrian imbroglio.

Having opened the proverbial Pandora's Box ,the US neocon foreign policy /military hawks and their european NATO lickspittle,toadying satrapies are now making a show of wringing their hands,gnashing their teeth and rending their garments at the unfolding of  the entirely forseeable,predictable consequences of their own actions.

Who is bombing who in Syria /Iraq and more importantly, to what purpose? Answers on a postcard please to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue ,closing date for entries is anytime this century,if we're lucky.

Having brutally raped Syria's sovereign territorial integrity, the US together with its troupe of loathsome,sloping-forehead enforcers, established military bases,funded,armed,trained,directed and assisted ISIS,Al Qaeda,Uncle Tom Cobbley and all, in their various and contradictory terrorist insurgenices to overthrow the constitutional government of Syria.

However Erdogan's maverick populist Turkey,has gone one better and has provided an unexpected twist in the Pentagon/State Department plot scenario which brings us to the edge of the current and immediate precipice.

The oft-garlanded,heroic/noble/virtuous Kurds whom the US cozened into carrying out the Neocons' strategic foreign policy objectives ,find themselves facing the pent up ire of the Turkish state on their own.

And this has provided the pseudo-moral motivation of the Liberal ( foreign interventionist but only in a good way and for humanitarian ends) outrage.

Will all this end badly for all concerned?

It already has.

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.

fahrenheit451:170

The other day in Warsaw,as a precursor to the scheduled G-20 summit being held in Hamburg the following day, President Trump made a speech. Whilst it was heralded in some quarters with varying degrees of anticipation, the symbolism was as cumbersome and telegraphed as any denouement in  third rate murder novel. Quite what Trump was trying to get across that was unique,remarkable or unexpected remains at best a mystery; then again perhaps he really wasn't trying to do any of the aforementioned at all. Heavily underlined were the rather otiose notions of western values and civilisation and the will of the people. His actual audience on the spot in  the EU-subsidised satrapy were cohorts bussed in from the countryside by the ruling Law & Justice Party ( PIS  being there Polish acronym). And Trump's speech writers really did seem to be taking the proverbial P,I,S. Russia was officially admonished for its support of the governments of Syria and Iran,as well as its own dealings and involvement in The Crimea and The Ukraine.None of which please the dominant NeoCons of Washington.Russia really is being most unhelpful. And that was about it, all to the sound of synchronised cheering. The allusions didn't work; the hoped for referencing of Trump in Warsaw with Kennedy in Berlin,June 26 1963 let alone Reagan in Berlin 12 June 1987- was never going to happen either. the world isn't actually holding its breath.Syria/Iraq.ISIS/Yemen/Qatar/Kurdistan/Libya/North Korea/Afghanistan will simply be allowed carry on. Anti-climax!!

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.

fahrenheit451:154

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.

fahrenheit451:139

Well, things certainly went unexpectedly and spectacularly south the other day. Two US warships launched a total of 59 cruise missiles at a Syrian airforce base; thereby continuing Washington's historic foreign policy strategy in the Middle East and elsewhere, of Blowing Shit Up. MSM and a the hydra-headed social media went into an orgiastic frenzy of hyperbole and speculation and faux-analyses. The quixotic concept of American global moral leadership seems to be gaining favour again, quite how it has managed to do so remains I think a bit of moot point at this stage,but it is certainly metastasising. The usual suspects of cronies,shills, amoral ideological whores,cranks, venal opportunists, satrapies and congenital bootlickers came out on cue to deliver their verbal and verbose faux-oaths and declarations of support for each and every one of those cruise missiles fired in direct contravention of International Law, the governments of UK,Australia,Japan,Israel,Turkey amongst them. One sovereign state- The USA-launching armed aggression against another sovereign state- Syria - with which it- The USA- is not at war and from whom it- The USA is not under imminent and direct threat of attack, is breaking International Law. The neocon American warmongers and imperialists-manque propagate a dangerously delusional attitude reminiscent of megalomania when they espouse ambitions of moral leadership as highlighted by this footnote to the events themselves:-

BBC Radio 4, today Saturday 8 April had a live on-air interview with General John Allen ( who supported HRC for President ) who lectured the listeners on America's goals and America's responsibilities,blah ,blah ,blah ad infinitum. For more on this General, google :- http://www.militarycorruption.com/genallen3.htm

fahrenheit451:123

Before we begin, it's worth for perspective's sake bearing in mind the following :-

Romans 3:10-18King James Version (KJV)

¹⁰ As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:

¹¹ There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.

¹² They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.

                                      *          *          *         *          *

The media reported that President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Friday banning all immigrants and visa holders from seven majority-Muslim nations from entering the United States for 90 days. The executive order, titled “Protecting the Nation From Terrorist Attacks by Foreign Nationals,” applies to visitors from Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, Libya, and Iran, including dual citizens. It bans all refugees for 120 days and Syrian refugees indefinitely. For two days, the ban also applied green card holders. (Now green card holders are being admitted entry on a case-by-case basis.)

It is the inalienable right of sovereign nation states to determine their own citizenry. Poland's foreign minister in supporting the USA's initiative reaffirmed that " every sovereign country has the right to decide its own immigration policy ". No-one is asserting that they are somehow,in some theological/philosophical/moral sense innately superior to any other contending or wholly antithetical political point -of-view.  

The howling mobs of placard-wavers who took to the streets in  metropolitan USA and for instance in Britain in London and several other university towns would have it otherwise. A cacophonous broadside of vacuous platitudes and incoherent rants labelled the US temporary visa restrictions as racist,islamophobic and smeared the measures and President Trump with plentiful disingenuous non sequiturs mostly alluding to Hitler and the NSDAP Government of 1930's Germany. The same core of faux-left/liberal ,anti-democratic PC multicultural apologists swapped slogans on the placards they've waved in seeking to annul #brexit and hey presto they became the  " sea " of protestors calling for no borders,open borders and welcome to muslim refugees.

They're attempting to re-write the old adage that you can't fool all the people all the time. Slogans With Placards are certainly trying for fooling most people all of the time.

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.

fahrenheit451:103

A Presidential election is held in line with the nation's Constitution and a verdict is delivered by the Electorate in accordance with the provisions of electoral rules. So, what do " activists ", ideological agitators and hostile media commentators ( all who supported the losing candidate ) do in response ? Organise street protests that escalate into full blown rioting. Oh, and this from the likes of Daily Kos on social media :-

" Donald Trump has won the presidency after narrowly carrying a few states to put him above 270 electoral votes.

But according to the latest numbers, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. The game is rigged.

In other words, we have a similar situation as in 2000—where the candidate who more voters picked did not become president. It is unfair, undemocratic & we must eliminate the Electoral College.

Eliminating the Electoral College does not even require a constitutional amendment."

Undermine, subvert and seek to overthrow those processes and procedures that have heretofore been universally accepted as legitimate. Isn't that fascist? Aren't those carrying out all of this fascists?

The similarities between the events across many cities in the USA and the reactions in the UK to the EU Referendum verdict in favour of #Brexit are all too striking. Violent rioting aside for the moment, the political intent behind seeking to de-legitimise the Electorate's verdict on both sides of the Atlantic spring from the same intolerant,totalitarian ideological mindset. The stench of antidemocratic sedition is apparent for all to smell.

fahrenheit451:102

On Thursday 23rd. June I went to bed fully persuaded that,much as I wanted it to, #Brexit wasn't going to happen and that on waking up on the morning of Friday 24th. I'd be assailed by the smug triumphalist tones of Remainers on Radio 4. Waking much earlier than usual,I turned the radio on and.. History had happened.  Pretty much the same routine occurred last night. I woke up around 02:00 GMT Wednesday 9th. November was dawning with self-confident,self-satisfied Democrat Party notables and appartchiks foretelling the inevitability of a Clinton coronation. Getting back to sleep with an oh well,never mind,World War 3's on its way then, I looked forward to carrying on with the quotidian when I got up nearer my regular time. And then, History happened,again.  June 24 gave me an epiphany and that was repeated around 06.30 this very morning. The US establishment elites and the incumbent political class and the Commentariat and all the experts just got hammered into the ground,again just as their counterparts were on June 23 in Great Britain. Joy unspeakable, or nearly so! Not that our indigenous antidemocratic,anti working class seditionist law breaking scum such as #LabourIn and their Remain Axis partners wasted any time at all on BBC Radio 4 in slandering and heaping opprobrium onto the newly elected President Trump and all those who voted for him. C'est la guerre. Hubris is bad enough, but with the failed multiculturalist,open borders, EU supremacist,pro-sodomite,unborn child murdering,PC labour/liberal metropolitan elites hubris is endemic. All their toys from all of their prams have been launched,yet again at a World and a Historic sea change from which they have been excluded. The World is ours now. #BrexitBritain #PresidentTrump and let's make it schadenfreude all the way. LePen in 2017!!