Wild Turkey: Syria’s Blindside

Wild Turkey: Syria’s Blindside
Jim Kavanagh

The sudden jihadi offensive in Syria is a disaster. It is, first of all, a disaster for the Syrian people. It's also a disaster for the Palestinian people, Hezbollah, Iran, and the entire axis of anti-Zionist resistance. And it's a disaster for Russia (and China) and the project of replacing unipolar American hegemony with multipolarity based on a new BRICS-based global political economy.

It's a disaster that challenges all the parties involved to recognize that what they might have more comfortably treated as parallel but separate conflicts are elements of one big, unavoidable war that is going to require new strategies from each and from all of them together—strategies that reconcile the interests of each with the interests of all. If that is possible.

It does no good to downplay the disaster-in-progress in Syria. In short order—what can aptly be called a blitzkrieg—jihadi forces have taken control of Aleppo, a city of over 2 million people and one of the oldest continuously habited cities in the world, and Hama, a city of a million people, with—and this is the crucial point—no significant resistance from the Syrian Arab Army (SAA).

We can comfort ourselves by saying it’s a tactical retreat and the Russian, Iranian, Hezbollah, and the Iraqi PMU cavalries are on the way. These are potentially formidable forces, and we all saw how Russia and Hezbollah helped the SAA defeat what seemed an unstoppable jihadi offensive from 2011 to 2019.

But, a) “Helped” is the operative word.  The SAA fought like hell during that time, resisting every assault from a panoply of forces supported by the U.S., Israel, NATO, and Gulf monarchies, until Russia and Hezbollah came in and turned the tide. This time, the SAA melted away from two major Syrian cities in a week, despite knowing that the Idlib jihadis were arming up for an offensive. As I write, the jihadis are threatening Homs and have the momentum. There may not be enough time for Russian, and/or Iranian, and/or Iraqi forces to assemble and organize an effective defense, let alone counteroffensive, before Damascus is breached. Something has gone seriously wrong with the SAA, whether complacence, incompetence, and/or corruption (per Alexander Mercouris, who reports that the SAA Aleppo contingent simply defected), and foreign forces cannot replace what was a disciplined, dedicated SAA. If Assad needs an extended commitment of masses of foreign troops (which Russia never supplied) to stop the jihadis, Assad is toast. Russia and Iran can help Syria; turning it into a protectorate of Russia or Iran is another thing entirely.

Out of Touch: The Empire Has Lost Its Mind

 Out of Touch: The Empire Has Lost Its Mind

Jim Kavanagh

I've been trying to figure out something to say that captures the insanity of the present conjuncture, and a friend steered me to an article in the Washington Post about American strategy towards China that epitomizes the delusional and dangerous thinking that underlies American policy around the world.

In the piece, titled “Preparing for a China war, the Marines are retooling how they’ll fight,” WaPo National Security Reporter, Ellen Nakashima explains the U.S. “military’s latest concept for fighting adversaries like China from remote, strategic islands in the western Pacific…striving to adapt to a maritime fight that could play out across thousands of miles of islands and coastline in Asia.”

The strategy, dubbed “Force Design” involves the “forward deployment” of “smaller, lighter, more mobile” Marine units called Littoral Combat Teams throughout the  First Island Chain, “a crucial stretch of territory sweeping from Japan to Indonesia.” These smaller, lighter Teams will be “as invisible as possible to radar and other electronic detection,” and will “gather intelligence and target data… as well as occasionally sink ships with medium-range missiles”— thus “enabl[ing] the larger joint force to deploy its collective might.”

Of course, there is no other “adversary like” China, and this is the “latest concept” for nothing else but winning a war against the People’s Republic of China (PRC), blocking any attempt by the PRC to forcibly reunify its Taiwan province with the mainland. What’s remarkable is that, in carefully describing how this innovative war-fighting strategy might work (“The reality of the mission is daunting”), Nakashima makes painfully clear how utterly ridiculous it actually is.

Arresting Development: The ICC Arrest Warrant for Putin is A Weapon of War

 Arresting Development: The ICC Arrest Warrant for Putin is A Weapon of War

 Jim Kavanagh

Ann Telnaes/The Washington Post

The accumulation of ludicrous moves by the United States and its pawns over the past few months has reached a stage that would be risible if it were not so dangerous. The danger is exacerbated by the insistence of American media on, first, ignoring the most provocative and reckless moves, then proposing explanations for them that can't withstand three minutes of critical thought. The object is to keep the American public ignorant, make it stupid, and maintain the national-security state’s prerogative to do anything it wants.

 

High on the list, of course, is the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline and the various attempts to divert attention away from the obvious culprit. The US and its poodles’ initial story—that Russia blew up its own pipeline—was put forward under the correct assumption that compliant media would report it as implied fact and then forget about it.

 

Seymour Hersh's detailed and plausible account of a Biden-ordered sabotage operation, combined with the public statements of Biden and other administration officials announcing their intention to destroy the pipeline and celebrating its destruction, made it necessary to say something seemingly apposite. The result—a tale of five guys and a gal (fans of Ukraine but totally freelance) in a sailing yacht, which happened to appear in U.S. and German newspapers right after a hurried meeting between Biden and Scholz—elevates the diversion(ary discourse) from the ridiculous to the comic.

 

Garland Nixon suggests that this story—which I doubt a single sentient adult in the world believes—must have been concocted by deep-state dissidents and masters of irony, who wanted to undermine the Biden administration and the media by having them tell it. I can’t—and as a fan of irony, don’t want to—rule that out. But I tend to see it more like Dan Ackroyd’s classic, precognizant, SNL spoof ad for the three-bladed razor: “Because you’ll believe anything.” The tragedy is that Western—certainly U.S.—media do pretend to believe it, search engine algorithms will be adjusted to promote it, and the U.S. government, ostensibly non-governmental Western media, and impartial international organizations will refuse to investigate it. You are meant to believe it, whether anyone thinks it’s true or not.

 

But the epitome of delusional and dangerous gestures was reached with the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin.

Will There Be A Nuclear War?

Will There Be A Nuclear War? 

Jim Kavanagh

At this point, I put the chances at 50-50.

Read on, and see why.

On February 22, the day after Russia recognized the independence of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, I said a situation had now been created in which the second most likely reaction by the US/NATO would be to “Launch a military effort to take back LPR, DPR, and Crimea—using Ukrainians as cannon fodder, or, if they dare, bringing in US/NATO troops directly,” and that would result in a “loss for US/NATO, before or after a devastating, probably nuclear, world war.”

Ten days later, on March 3rd, right after the Russian army entered Ukraine, I wrote: “WWIII is not a remote possibility. We are already in it. The only question is: How much worse will it get?

At that time, I would have put the chances of nuclear war at more than 0 but less than 30%.

By mid-April, I noted that it was now clear that Ukraine was an entirely dependent ward of the US/NATO, which is the principal in this fight, and whose weapons, as well as military and intelligence officers—in Washington, Brussels, and personally in Kiev—are effectively waging this war. I also insisted that the notion that some shrewd, mutually face-saving compromise can be negotiated to end this conflict is wishful thinking, and that the decisive question in this battle between Russia and the US/NATO is not “What compromise can they negotiate?” but “Who is going to accept defeat?” 

Since then, things have gotten much worse. It is now clear that US/NATO personnel are heavily involved in every aspect of the fighting in Ukraine. The Intercept reports of “a broad program” of:

clandestine American operations inside Ukraine are now far more extensive than they were early in the war…There is a much larger presence of both CIA and U.S. special operations personnel and resources in Ukraine than there were at the time of the Russian invasion in February….Secret U.S. operations inside Ukraine are being conducted under a presidential covert action finding…[T]he president has quietly notified certain congressional leaders.

Stop Believing: Be Skeptical of the Civilian-casualty Narrative

Stop Believing:
Be skeptical of the civilian-casualty narrative

 Jim Kavanagh

Moscow Times/TASS / CTK Photo / Vladimir Prycek

As I’ve said before, in a full-scale war, no one gets out with clean hands. In any war, both sides are going to kill some innocent civilians and each side is going to downplay its own excesses and highlight the enemy’s. Though we’d like to, we cannot avoid what we all know is the terrible answer to this question: When has any side in any war stopped fighting because of civilian casualties?

In such a context, by no means should anyone believe either the report or denial of an atrocity on the basis of statements from the warring parties and their interested allies alone. To decide what version of events one thinks is true, it is necessary to critically analyze the versions of the interested parties and seek information from as many independent sources as possible who have demonstrated their honesty, fairness, and reliability in such situations.

We’ve had decades of “aggression and atrocity” lies to justify the U.S. going to war—Vietnam’s attack on U.S. ships in the Tonkin Gulf, Iraqi soldiers dumping babies from incubators in Kuwait, WMDs in Iraq, Viagra-pumped Ghaddafi rapist soldiers in Libya, Syrian government poison gas attacks on their own citizens in Syria, etc. In this very conflict, within the space of ten days, we’ve had a number of blatant lies loudly promoted and then demurely retracted—the ghost fighter pilot of Kiev, the heroic Snake Island martyrs who fought to their death, the vicious Russian tank driver who crushed a car, the non-existent then “dangerous” biological research labs, etc. So, I think it’s imperative that Americans not believe, on first hearing, the atrocity reports coming from the media that peddled and memory-holed all those lies.

The U.S. and Western media have demonstrated that they are interested parties, allies and voices of the Kiev government (ward of the U.S. government), who accept and transmit as true any of that government’s accounts of Russian crimes. Without any further proof, they will maintain the truth of those accounts, until and unless someone else (they will never look) provides irrefutable counter-evidence they cannot ignore. Their attitude, which they have successfully inculcated in most of their American audience, is that what Kiev says can must be taken as true and what Russia says must be taken as false. It is the most dangerous attitude in the world.

The Battle of Ukraine and the War It’s Part Of

The Battle of Ukraine and the War It’s Part Of

Jim Kavanagh

All-in

Last week,  I wrote that Russia was “on the offensive and impatient” and would “act very soon.” It did, but in a way that far exceeded my expectations. I thought Russia would make a direct military intervention to secure the Lugansk and Donetsk Republics (LDPR) it had newly recognized, and maybe help them to capture the large portion of their claimed territory still controlled by Ukrainian forces—a more offensive and riskier move that, I warned, would make it easier to create a political narrative detrimental to Russia. Unlikely, I thought, that Russia would engage in a military offensive west of Donbass, let alone aimed at Kiev.

Well, as I was writing that, Russia moved in a way that blew through all my—and just about everyone’s—oh-so-shrewd calculations of how oh-so-shrewd Russia’s strategic thinking would be. Russia mounted a broad, full-scale offensive—destroying military facilities throughout Ukraine, seeking to encircle and capture major cities, and moving on the capital itself. This is nothing less than an attempt to achieve major policy changes in Ukraine by military force.

Russia is insisting that Ukraine recognize Crimea as Russian territory, abide by the Minsk agreement (oops, too late) recognize the LDPR, officially renounce joining NATO and remove any extant NATO infrastructure, adopt a neutral stance, and eliminate the fascist political influence (“de-Nazify”).

It is the Battle of Ukraine. This is a demand for a definitive redefinition of the Ukrainian polity that has emerged since 2014. “Regime change,” if you wish, in a substantive sense. The Kiev government and its patron, the US, will not agree, and never would have agreed, to any of it, except by force.

Path to War

Here’s the unfinished post I was composing when I heard the news about Russian "military action" in Ukraine. 

In my previous post on the subject, I said that Russian actions in recognizing the Lugansk and Donetsk People’s Republics (LDNR) had placed the U.S./NATO bloc in a lose-lose situation. I maintain that, but I also realize that the United States has developed quite a propensity to lose in a way that destroys everybody’s chance of “winning” any positive outcome. Think Libya, Syria, Iraq, etc. Further details that have emerged about the Russian-LDNR position indicate how their way forward can be turned into a path toward war and generalized destruction.

In a brief press conference last night, Vladimir Putin clarified the Russian position. First, and of most immediate significance, he confirmed that Russia is recognizing the LDNR republics within their administrative borders, as defined before the conflict broke out in 2014. This includes territory now controlled by Kiev forces, including the port city of Mariupol. He also stated that Ukraine should recognize Crimea as Russian territory, should explicitly renounce any intention of joining NATO, and should “demilitarize”—that is, give up “advanced weaponry.”

While he put no timetable on achieving these goals (“It is impossible to predict the scenario that will unfold”), he also, when asked, did not abjure the use of force (“good should be able to defend itself”). The Russian posture now is on the offensive and impatient. As he keeps saying, Putin feels that Russia has been strung along on Ukraine for eight years, it has amassed the necessary forces, and is in no mood to stand down without definitively resolving the major issues.

The question of LDNR territory poses a significant political quandary for Russia. Russia recognizing and intervening to “protect” the LDNR republics in the territory under they currently control, in order to defend them from the Kiev siege has different political valence than Russia intervening to support an LDNR offensive to capture more territory.

Whether Russia and LDNR are right or wrong in their construal of the new legal status of the republics and their territory, and no matter that it actually fixes limits of military advance, such specifically offensive action will be more easily turned to the political benefit of Kiev/US/NATO.  US/NATO would, of course, pour weapons into the defense of the Kiev lines, and, if it were capable (which it’s not), Kiev could help itself by immediately making the people in those areas the most pampered of its subjects.

And there will be pressure from LDNR militias and from Russian military and political circles to take that offensive action. It’s the logical result of the recognition, and there will never be a better time to do it. If this territorial issue is not resolved, and those limits set, now, for how long will it fester? Precisely, why allow any time for US/NATO weaponry and Kiev social seduction to come in?

My sense is that Russia/LDNR will act very soon. Russia cares a lot more about resolving the situation than avoiding somewhat more of a political attack that it will get anyway. This means an offensive, initiated by them against Kiev forces. This will result in tremendous pressure for US/NATO to join in the defense of Kiev, and if they do—even in the guise of undeclared, not-really-there special forces or stand-off missile attacks—that will result in European and/or American casualties and attacks on any launching platforms, anywhere. If necessary, in such a fight, Russia will strike behind the lines, including at Kiev itself—not to take over the country, but to disrupt the leadership and create a crisis that forces withdrawal from the LDNR territories. If it doesn’t force direct US/NATO attack on Russian territory. The danger of war is real and imminent, and no one can be sure how bad it will get.

This is only in relation to the territorial issue. The other issues—renouncing NATO membership, restricting advanced weaponry, etc.—are at least as imperative for Russia, and can easily lead down the same path to war.

Russia knows very well the hurt it will suffer. The Europeans should. The Americans do not.

It is important for Americans to realize that Russia is not bluffing, and will not back down. The card of escalation dominance that the United States has played for decades no longer intimidates Russia, which, certainly in this theater, has a better version of it in its own hand. There will be peace when there is a political resolution that satisfies Russia’s concerns—before or after a deadly military conflict.

—-interrupted by news of Russian military action in Ukraine—

Related articles: The Battle of Ukraine and the War It’s Part Of,  New World Order. The US Lost.  From 2014: Charge of the Right Brigade: Ukraine and the Dynamics of Capitalist Insurrection, Good for the Gander: Ukraine's Demise Accelerates. From 2018: The Warm War: Russiamania At The Boiling Point.

New World Order. The U.S. Lost.

https://twitter.com/RealPepeEscobar/status/1495856808832950281?s=20&t=LUsE89mgfjLNmfsf8xEdLQ

Let’s realize how profoundly the game has changed. Russia’s recognition of, and immediate activation of military support for, the Donetsk and Luagansk People’s Republics (DPR/LDR) has created a situation in which the United States (and its cat’s paw, NATO) can do nothing but lose. Indeed, it has already lost. The present situation, as of yesterday, created by Russian action, demonstrates that the US/NATO unipolar control of the world is over. It has nothing but threats that are ignored, the hollow bluffs of a bully who is losing control of the schoolyard and can do nothing that won’t hurt him more than anyone he threatens. 

Something enormous just ended. Let’s go to the videotape to see what that is.

Press TV Discussion of Worsening EU-Russia Relaitions (6/16/2021)

 EU believes relations with Russia will get even worse

[Related article: The Warm War: Russiamania At The Boiling Point]

Week in Review Discussion on The Critical Hour (6/14/19)

Assange Extradition Trial Scheduled For February, Will Justice Be Served?

A London court will decide in February whether WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will be extradited to the US to face 18 criminal charges in connection with the leak of thousands of classified documents relating to US military activity in Iraq and Afghanistan. Assange appeared at the Westminster Magistrates’ Court Friday by video link from Belmarsh Prison, where he is currently serving a 50-week sentence for skipping bail and fleeing to the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in 2012. It’s interesting to me that Assange told the London court he had not seen the latest indictment containing 18 US allegations against him.
[My related articles: Avoiding Assange and Swedish Sex Pistol Aimed at Assange]

Loud & Clear Discussion Day Before Mueller Report Release (4/17/2019)

Anticipation builds a day of Mueller report release

A redacted version of the Mueller report will be released tomorrow, but Democrats and their media allies already are downplaying the event. House Democrats announced that they will seek an unredacted version of the report on Friday. Meanwhile, CIA Director Gina Haspel apparently told the President that British intelligence officials told her that two children were injured and several ducks were killed in last year’s Novichok attack against a Russian dissident in the UK. There is no evidence, however, that this ever happened. Jim Kavanagh, the editor of thepolemicist.net, whose latest article on both Counterpunch and The Polemicist is "Investigation Nation: Mueller, Russiagate, and Fake Politics," joins the show.

Listen to "Anticipation builds a day of Mueller report release" on Spreaker.

Loud & Clear is a daily program of news, commentary, and political analysis on Radio Sputnik, hosted by Brian Becker and John Kiriakou, featuring independent experts, activists, and political writers. (Introduction above is theirs, with related articles of mine referenced in brackets.)

The Warm War: Russiamania At The Boiling Point

Is it war yet?

Yes, in too many respects.

It’s a relentless economic, diplomatic, and ideological war, spiced with (so far) just a dash of military war, and the strong scent of more to come.

I mean war with Russia, of course, although Russia is the point target for a constellation of emerging adversaries the US is desperate to entame before any one or combination of them becomes too strong to defeat.  These include countries like Iran and China, which are developing forces capable of resisting American military aggression against their own territory and on a regional level, and have shown quite too much uppitiness about staying in their previously-assigned geopolitical cages.

But Russia is the only country that has put its military forces in the way of a U.S. program of regime change—indirectly in Ukraine, where Russia would not get out of the way, and directly in Syria, where Russia actively got in the way. So Russia is the focus of attack, the prime target for an exemplary comeuppance.

Is it, then, a new Cold War, even more dangerous than the old one, as Stephen F. Cohen says?

That terminology was apt even a few months ago, but the speed, ferocity, and coordination of the West/NATO’s reaction to the alleged nerve-agent poisoning of the Skripals, as well as the formation of a War Cabinet in Washington, indicates to me that we’ve moved to another level of aggression.

It’s beyond Cold. Call it the Warm War. And the temperature’s rising.

Fast and Furious: Now They’re Really Gunning for Trump

Here’s what I saw unfold in the media during the 24 hours from Monday to Tuesday afternoon (May 15-16).

On Monday, I saw blaring headlines throughout the day on Twitter about how Trump had betrayed some “highly-classified” intelligence secrets to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov during their meeting last week. I was busy and paid little attention to this news, but I figured Trump must have committed one of his hallmark impetuous faux-pas involving some massive security breach, given the hysterical tone of the coverage.

I awoke Tuesday to read the stories in the New York Times (NYT), and the Washington Post (WaPo), sourced to anonymous “current and former government officials,” recounting that Trump had told the Russians a big secret—the NYT did not specify what, but WaPo identified it as an “Islamic State terrorist threat related to the use of laptop computers on aircraft.” As both papers acknowledge—though WaPo makes the irrelevant point that it would be illegal “for almost anyone in government”—Trump, as president, did nothing illegal in telling the Russians this, and, according to the NYT’s own sources, and to National Security advisor Lt. Gen. McMaster and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson—the only people cited who were actually in the room—Trump “discussed the contents of the intelligence, but not the sources and methods used to collect it.”

Per McMaster: “The president and the foreign minister reviewed common threats from terrorist organizations to include threats to aviation. At no time were any intelligence sources or methods discussed, and no military operations were disclosed that were not already known publicly.” Neither of the articles, and no one cited in them, disputed this. Per WaPo: “He did not reveal the specific intelligence-gathering method, but he described how the Islamic State was pursuing elements of a specific plot and how much harm such an attack could cause under varying circumstances.”

So far, I was seeing nothing to break a sweat over. Is there some problem with notifying Russia—or anyone else, for that matter—of an Islamic State threat to blow up civilian aircraft with laptop bombs? Is the idea that we’re supposed to sit back and let it happen? What sane person wouldn’t be glad this warning was given to Russia, and wouldn’t want Russia to give it to us if the circumstances were reversed? Is this not a routine exchange of threat information in a closed principals’ meeting?

No Apology: Syria, Interrupted (Part 2)

In a previous essay, I stated that Russian military help to the Syrian State was a response to a direct threat from the United States to attack Syrian armed forces, that I understood the Syrian uprising since 2011 as an instance of the ongoing program of regime change via jhiadi forces driven by the United States and its allies, and that, as a result, the Syria-Russia alliance was a necessary, legal, and legitimate defense of state sovereignty and independence that averted an impending victory of those foreign-sponsored jihadi forces. I found this interruption of imperialist chaos state destruction to be a net positive for the world, and a result I welcomed as a leftist.  I’ll call this the “anti-imperialist” position.

I also said that I recognized there are leftists out there committed to democracy, social justice, and anti-imperialism (excluding here obvious partisans of American exceptionalism, Zionism, and Euro-American capitalist globalism) who can disagree with my position as a matter of political analysis and judgement, but that—as I would explain in a later post—I disagreed vigorously with some of the spurious rhetorical tactics used to attack positions like mine and defend the alternative. Here’s that explanation.

Syria, Interrupted Game Change

CBC News

The recapture of Aleppo by the Syrian Arab Army and its allies marks a turning point not only in the conflict in Syria, but also in the dynamic of international conflict. For the first time since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the rolling imperial engine of regime change via American-led military intervention has been stopped in its tracks. To be sure, it’s certainly not out of service, even in Syria, and it will seek and find new paths for devastating disobedient countries, but its assumed endgame for subjugating Syria has been rudely interrupted. And in our historical context, Syria interrupted is imperialism interrupted.

Let’s remember where things stood in Syria seventeen months ago. After a four-year campaign, directed by the United States, thousands of jihadis in various groups backed by the US/NATO, the Gulf monarchies, Turkey and Israel, were on the offensive. ISIS occupied Palmyra, Raqqa, and swaths of territory, and was systematically raping, beheading, and torturing Syrian citizens and looting and destroying the country’s cultural treasures. Al-Qeada/al-Nusra had triumphantly poured into the eastern part of Aleppo, Syria’s largest city (and one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world), were beheading and crucifying their newly-subjugated Syrian captives, and were beginning their siege of the larger and more populous part of that city. Turkey had commenced military operations on Syrian territory against Kurdish forces (who had won significant victories against ISIS), and was enabling the transit of foreign jihadis into Syria and convoys of ISIS oil through its territory. Against these dispersed offensives, the Syrian Arab Army was undermanned and overstretched.

As John Kerry himself later admitted, in a meeting with Syrian opposition, the Obama administration saw the ISIS advance as a positive development: “[W]e know that this was growing, we were watching, we saw that DAESH [ ISIS] was growing in strength, and we thought Assad was threatened. [We] thought, however, we could probably manage that. Assad might then negotiate.”(By “negotiate,” Kerry meant “capitulate”—negotiate the terms of his abdication.) For the Serious People in Washington, this—the impending takeover of Syria by ISIS and Al-Qaeda jihadis—meant things were going swimmingly. (Al-Nusra was at the time—and still is, less officially—the affiliate of Al-Qaeda in Syria.) As Daniel Lazare pointed out: “After years of hemming and hawing, the Obama administration has finally come clean about its goals in Syria.  In the battle to overthrow Bashar al-Assad, it is siding with Al Qaeda…[R]ather than protesting what is in fact a joint U.S.-Al Qaeda assault, the Beltway crowd is either maintaining a discreet silence or boldy hailing Al Nusra’s impending victory as ‘the best thing that could happen in a Middle East in crisis.’”

You read that right. As one al-Nusra commander said: "We are one part of al-Qaeda…The Americans are on our side.”

Turkey Invades Syria. America Spins The Bottle.

  Tom Janssen | CagleCartoons.com

So within the space of a few days, the United States has, first, commanded the government of Syria to keep its air force away from part of its own sovereign territory, Hasakah, occupied by American soldiers and their Kurdish “partners”; it then, with applause from other NATO countries, provided air support for a Turkish invasion of Syria and seizure of the Syrian town of Jarablus from those “partners.” These are unambiguous acts of war, and Orwellian acts of doublethink aggression.

Note that Hasakah, where the incident with the Syrian Air Force took place, is not in an area controlled by ISIS. So whatever American troops were doing there, they were not fighting ISIS. Note also that Turkey’s announced reason for seizing Jarablus—in order to seal the border and prevent ISIS in Syria from receiving recruits and supplies—is a flimsy excuse that, as the New York Times (NYT) reports, the Turks don’t even try to maintain: “Turkish officials made little secret that the main purpose of the operation was to ensure that Kurdish militias did not consolidate control over an area west of the Euphrates River.”’

As Al-Qaeda cleric Al-Muhaysin has assured would-be recruits: “The truth is that the Turks don't prevent anyone from entering Syria.” If the Turks wanted to close the Syrian border, across which they’ve been trafficking ISIS soldiers, arms, and oil for years, they could just close it, on their side. No need to invade Syria. In fact, ISIS was informed of the attack, and left Jarablus before the brave Turks and their Syrian rebel partners arrived. The Washington Post said: “The rebels encountered almost no resistance from Islamic State fighters, who fled ahead of the advancing force.” The blogger Moon of Alabama (MoA) made the point more sharply: “There was no resistance to the move. The Islamic State, which had been informed of the attack, had evacuated all fighters and their families out of Jarablus. … As one commentator remarked: They even left mints on the pillows. The toleration of ISIS by Turkey, which includes some not so secret support, will likely continue.”

Democrats Promote Lies and War To Attack Trump

Newsweek.com

With his outrageous response to Khizr and Ghazala Khan, whose son, Capt. Humayun Khan, was killed in Iraq, Donald Trump has demonstrated once again that he is one of the nastiest and most narcissistic assholes in the known universe. His penchant for saying the perfectly offensive thing, on cue, does make one wonder if he hasn’t been put up to this whole thing by his friends, the Clintons, to split the Republicans and ensure Hillary’s victory. Then again, as a New Yorker familiar with his bloviant personality, I’m fairly certain his journey into historical ignominy is self-propelled.

But, like the proverbial clock, Donald’s unstoppable tongue is right twice a month or so. And egged on by the Clinton campaign, a lot of people are reinforcing various packs of dangerous lies in order to up the ante in trashing Trump. None of these is worse than the warmongering narrative about Russia and Ukraine that’s been reinforced by the bipartisan liberal-conservative commentariat after Trump’s recent interview with George Stephanopoulos. ThinkProgress, run by Hillary’s campaign manager John Podesta, put up a story by Aaron Rupar on this that is being passed around the internet, with the title, “Trump Appears To Be Ignorant Of A Major International Conflict.” Translation: “Trump Goes Off-Script On Ukraine. Must Be Punished.”

Charge of the Right Brigade:Ukraine and the Dynamics of Capitalist Insurrection

A treatise on the upheaval in Ukraine, in eight takes.

The money shot:

As tensions rose on the streets of the Russian-speaking eastern portion of Ukraine, the response of the new government in the capital on Sunday was not to send troops, but to send rich people. 

The interim government, worried about Russian efforts to destabilize or seize regions in eastern Ukraine after effectively taking control of the Crimean peninsula in the south, is recruiting the country’s wealthy businessmen, known as the oligarchs, to serve as governors of the eastern provinces. 

The strategy, which Ukrainian news media are attributing to Yulia V. Tymoshenko, a former prime minister and party leader, is recognition that the oligarchs represent the country’s industrial and business elite, and exercise great influence over thousands of workers in the east, which is largely ethnically Russian.

The office of President Oleksandr V. Turchynov announced on Sunday the appointments of two billionaires — Sergei Taruta in Donetsk and Ihor Kolomoysky in Dnipropetrovsk — and more were reportedly under consideration for positions in the eastern regions….

The ultra-wealthy industrialists wield such power in Ukraine that they form what amounts to a shadow government, with empires of steel and coal, telecoms and media, and armies of workers. Persuading some to serve as governors in the east was a small victory for the new government in Kiev.¹

Has there ever been a more pathetic postscript to a putative “revolution”? This act by Ukraine’s new-old rulers encapsulates everything that’s wrong with the phony “democracy promotion” advanced by American “regime changers,” everything that’s wrong with the recent history of the post-Soviet republics, and everything that was wrong with Soviet Stalinism.  It’s a sorry symptom of the sad state of politics and ideology in Ukraine, and in the whole wide neo-liberal world.  More on that later.

Let’s take a careful look at what has happened in Ukraine.