Category: Foreign Relations

More Truth from a Congressional Republican

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Is someone putting Scopolamine in their drinking water?

Because we just had a 2nd Republican Congressman admit that the Benghazi investigation is entirely a political ploy:

A second House Republican has now conceded that the overarching purpose of the House Select Committee on Benghazi has been to attack former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

 In September, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) argued that one of House Republicans’ successes has been using the Benghazi Committee to drive down Clinton’s poll numbers. Though McCarthy tried to walk back his controversial comments, Rep. Richard Hanna (R-NY) argued on Wednesday that the Majority Leader had it right to begin with.

 “Sometimes the biggest sin you can commit in D.C. is to tell the truth,” Hanna said in an interview on Keeler in the Morning, a radio show in upstate New York. The third-term congressman paused for a moment, perhaps recognizing the importance of what he was about to say, before going on to agree with McCarthy’s original statement.

 “This may not be politically correct, but I think that there was a big part of this investigation that was designed to go after people and an individual, Hillary Clinton,” Hanna said.

 He explained further why he believes the Benghazi Committee’s purpose has been in part to attack Clinton. “After what Kevin McCarthy said, it’s difficult to accept at least a part of it was not,” Hanna said. “I think that’s the way Washington works. But you’d like to expect more from a committee that’s spent millions of dollars and tons of time.”

Dr. Peter Venkman: This city is headed for a disaster of biblical proportions.
Mayor: What do you mean, “biblical”?
Dr Ray Stantz: What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor, real wrath of God type stuff.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Exactly.
Dr Ray Stantz: Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling!
Dr. Egon Spengler: Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes…
Winston Zeddemore: The dead rising from the grave!
Dr. Peter Venkman: Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria!

Weird that we are having a sudden outbreak of truth ……… from Republicans.

This is clearly a sign of the apocalypse.

If this continues, things should get very interesting.

Good

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It appears that the Russian military deployment to Syria has put the kibosh on plans for establishing a no fly zone in Syria.

Considering what “No Fly Zones” are these days, the military overthrow of a sovereign nation, (see Libya) this is a good thing:

Russia’s bombing of anti-regime rebels in Syria has been described as a disaster for the US-led coalition’s efforts to destroy Isis, the Islamist militant group, but the Kremlin’s real challenge to Washington is in the skies above the war-torn country.

Alongside a modest Latakia-based contingent of two dozen Su-24 Fencer and Su-25 Frogfoot jets — planes designed to strike land targets — Moscow has deployed assets which render the prospect of no-fly zones enforced by the US or its allies over Syria impossible to enact.

Just weeks ago, after months of diplomacy, officials were close to an agreement on enforcing aerial safe-zones to end the Assad regime’s bombing of civilians in northern and southern Syria, according to diplomats and military officials in the US-led coalition. The agreement was based on Jordanian and Turkish plans presented earlier this year.

………

“The ultimate reason all this is happening is because of the renewed focus on Syria and the need for some sort of political solution there — something which we thought we could achieve by enforcing no-fly zones, safe zones,” said one senior European diplomat.

But any hopes of military co-ordination with Russia to achieve this, even in the wake of its disruptive deployment, are swiftly being dashed.

Nato’s supreme military commander in Europe, US General Phillip Breedlove warned last week that the alliance was “worried about another A2/AD bubble being created in the eastern Mediterranean.” A2/AD stands for anti-access, area denial.

Gen Breedlove’s fears have been realised in the past days as Russia’s small deployment of four Su-30 “flanker” jets, which are at Latakia’s Bassel al-Assad air base — highly manoeuvreable aircraft designed to shoot down other aircraft — has been augmented with a far more powerful arsenal.

Russia’s ministry of defence announced on Friday the deployment of its navy cruiser the Moskva to Latakia. The Moskva is armed with a complement of 64 S-300 ship-to-air missiles, Russia’s most powerful anti-aircraft weapon.

………

“The Russian forces now in place make it very, very obvious that any kind of no-fly zone on the Libyan model imposed by the US and allies is now impossible, unless the coalition is actually willing to shoot down Russian aircraft,” says Justin Bronk, research analyst at the Royal United Services Institute.

“The Russians are not playing ball at deconfliction — they are just saying, ‘keep out of our way’. The coalition’s operations in Syria will be vastly more complex from a risk assessment point of view and from a mission-planning point of view.”

Just to remind you, the Libyan model was for the air forces to provide close air support for the rebels while arming them to the teeth.

Libya is now a complete mess, of course, with no functioning central government, and ethnic cleansing of  their more darkly complected citizenry.

And this is the model that General Strangelove Breedlove wants to repeat.

You Arrogant Ass! You Killed Us!

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Somehow or other, they got an agreement on the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), so they win, and the rest of us lose:

The United States and 11 other Pacific Rim countries have agreed to wide-ranging trade pact that would eliminate duties on countless goods and establish uniform rules on intellectual property, labor rights and the environment.

The seven-year effort by the U.S., concluded Monday, was aimed at embedding an American-led vision of an economic and political order in Asia. If approved by Congress, the accord would be the biggest regional trade pact ever reached and one that the U.S. hopes will be a model for future agreements.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, trade deal is expected to help a few U.S. industries while hurting a handful of others. In general, the deal will benefit larger companies in several industries such as pharmaceuticals, entertainment and other services where the U.S. is a global leader. Businesses such as mom-and-pop car-part dealers and apparel makers will probably face more competition from foreign-made goods.

Basically, small businesses get the shaft, as do workers, union rights, environmental and safety protections.

This is a bad deal, and a bankrupt philosophy, and Obama pushed it because he wanted to check another box on his legacy ticket.

I will be calling my Representative and my Senators, and telling him that if they vote for the TPP, I will vote against them in the primary, and in the general.

I’m not just talking about a symbolic vote. I’ll vote for whoever is most likely to defeat them, even if this is a Republican.*

My Hope is that there are enough Republicans who will let their hysterical hatred of Obama to vote this down, even though their corporate masters want this.

*I just threw up in my mouth.

The Mask Slips

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The leading candidate to replace John Boehner as speaker, Kevin McCarthy just accidentally told the truth about the House’s Benghazi investigations:

So now we know: One of the principal reasons Republicans spent so much public money investigating the tragic Benghazi episode was to bring down Hillary Clinton’s poll numbers.

Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), the likely successor to House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), told Fox News’s Sean Hannity explicitly on Tuesday night that the Clinton investigation was part of a “strategy to fight and win.”

He explained: “Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she’s untrustable. But no one would have known any of that had happened, had we not fought.”

The Republican-led House hasn’t been particularly good at governing, but perhaps governing has never been the point. Why govern when there’s a future election to influence?

That the Benghazi investigation is a crock of sh%$ is not a surprise.

That a Republican party leader basically admitted that it was all a politically motivated freak show on a public program is a bit of a surprise.

What Happens When Your Intelligence Service Thinks Itself a Breed Apart………

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It turns out that the CIA’s unwillingness to play nicely with other US Agencies left a trail of bread crumbs that the KGB used to identify covert operatives:

As the Cold War drew to a close with the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, those at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, finally hoped to resolve many long-standing puzzles.

The most important of which was how officers in the field under diplomatic and deep cover stationed across the globe were readily identified by the KGB. As a consequence, covert operations had to be aborted as local agents were pinpointed and CIA personnel compromised or, indeed, had their lives thrown into jeopardy.

………How could these disasters have happened with such regularity if the agency had not been penetrated by Soviet moles?

The problem with this line of thought was that it did not so much overestimate CIA security as underestimate the brainpower of their Russian counterparts.

A name soon emerged from the KGB undergrowth: that of Yuri Totrov, a veritable legend who soon became known with grim humor as the shadow director of personnel at CIA.

The Cold War over, a senior and very experienced officer was dispatched to Japan to seek out Totrov and offer him a vast sum of money for his “memoirs.” Totrov’s retort was typically blunt. “Have you not read what is on my file at Langley? It says, ‘Not to be Pitched.’”

………

So how, exactly, did Totrov reconstitute CIA personnel listings without access to the files themselves or those who put them together?

………

What Totrov came up with were 26 unchanging indicators as a model for identifying U.S. intelligence officers overseas. Other indicators of a more trivial nature could be detected in the field by a vigilant foreign counterintelligence operative but not uniformly so: the fact that CIA officers replacing one another tended to take on the same post within the embassy hierarchy, drive the same make of vehicle, rent the same apartment and so on. Why? Because the personnel office in Langley shuffled and dealt overseas postings with as little effort as required.

The invariable indicators took further research, however, based on U.S. government practices long established as a result of the ambivalence with which the State Department treated its cousins in intelligence.

Thus one productive line of inquiry quickly yielded evidence: the differences in the way agency officers undercover as diplomats were treated from genuine foreign service officers (FSOs). The pay scale at entry was much higher for a CIA officer; after three to four years abroad a genuine FSO could return home, whereas an agency employee could not; real FSOs had to be recruited between the ages of 21 and 31, whereas this did not apply to an agency officer; only real FSOs had to attend the Institute of Foreign Service for three months before entering the service; naturalized Americans could not become FSOs for at least nine years but they could become agency employees; when agency officers returned home, they did not normally appear in State Department listings; should they appear they were classified as research and planning, research and intelligence, consular or chancery for security affairs; unlike FSOs, agency officers could change their place of work for no apparent reason; their published biographies contained obvious gaps; agency officers could be relocated within the country to which they were posted, FSOs were not; agency officers usually had more than one working foreign language; their cover was usually as a “political” or “consular” official (often vice-consul); internal embassy reorganizations usually left agency personnel untouched, whether their rank, their office space or their telephones; their offices were located in restricted zones within the embassy; they would appear on the streets during the working day using public telephone boxes; they would arrange meetings for the evening, out of town, usually around 7.30 p.m. or 8.00 p.m.; and whereas FSOs had to observe strict rules about attending dinner, agency officers could come and go as they pleased.

It is very interesting to see that many of the CIA’s failures during the cold war appear not to be the result of treason, or of individual incompetence.

They are the result of a toxic and dysfunctional organizational culture, and the events since then, torture, spying on congressional staffers investigating them, etc. has indicated that if anything, the problem has gotten worse.

This is a Truly Epic Rant

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In fact, this rant about US missteps on Syria is good enough that I forgive the blogger’s use of the Comic Sans font:

I have decided to voice my opinions on what the situations are in re the MENA area both abroad and in the US concerning Syria and Turkey. More tomorrow on Iraq. These are simply my opinions, feel free to disregard them and come up with your own:

– Petraeus wants John Allen’s wretched job? Give it him. As I understand what happened, Allen found it to be impossible to argue successfully with the WH’s collection of “those whose brains were destroyed in the process of obtaining a Ph.D in poly sci ” led by the country’s community organizer in chief. Let us see if Petraeus will do better. IMO Petraeus is a phony of the sort that David Hackworth used to describe as a “perfumed prince,” in my words, a Byzantine courtier type whose fame was generated in a largely self orchestrated media campaign. Let us see if this “Great Captain” can unravel this skein of wormlike threads that he helped create. Perhaps Broadway Joe Scarborough will turn and burn with him?

………

It goes on from there, and it is truly a thing of beauty.

I also think that it is an accurate assessment, and it shows why the President of the United States cannot blithely accept the counsel of  Council of Foreign Relations types, who subscribe to the “Green Lantern Theory of Geopolitics,” which states that so long as the US maintains it will, it can accomplish whatever it wants.

It didn’t work in the Bush administration, and it won’t work now.

Uruguay is Now My Favorite Latin American Nation

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Last year, they legalized Marijuana, and now they have regected the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) international trade deal:

Often referred to as the Switzerland of South America, Uruguay is long accustomed to doing things its own way. It was the first nation in Latin America to establish a welfare state. It also has an unusually large middle class for the region and unlike its giant neighbors to the north and west, Brazil and Argentina, is largely free of serious income inequality.

Two years ago, during José Mujica’s presidency, Uruguay became the first nation to legalize marijuana in Latin America, a continent that is being ripped apart by drug trafficking and its associated violence and corruption of state institutions.

Now Uruguay has done something that no other semi-aligned nation on this planet has dared to do: it has rejected the advances of the global corporatocracy.

………

Earlier this month Uruguay’s government decided to end its participation in the secret negotiations of the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA). After months of intense pressure led by unions and other grassroots movements that culminated in a national general strike on the issue – the first of its kind around the globe – the Uruguayan President Tabare Vazquez bowed to public opinion and left the US-led trade agreement.

………

TiSA involves more countries than TTIP and TPP combined: The United States and all 28 members of the European Union, Australia, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Hong Kong, Iceland, Israel, Japan, Liechtenstein, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, South Korea, Switzerland, Taiwan and Turkey.

Together, these 52 nations form the charmingly named “Really Good Friends of Services” group, which represents almost 70% of all trade in services worldwide. Until its government’s recent u-turn Uruguay was supposed to be the 53rd Good Friend of Services.

………
TiSA has spent the last two years taking shape behind the hermetically sealed doors of highly secure locations around the world. According to the agreement’s provisional text, the document is supposed to remain confidential and concealed from public view for at least five years after being signed. Even the World Trade Organization has been sidelined from negotiations.
But thanks to whistle blowing sites like WikiLeaks, the Associated Whistleblowing Press and Filtrala, crucial details have seeped to the surface. Here’s a brief outline of what is known to date (for more specifics click here, here and here):
1.TiSA would “lock in” the privatization of services – even in cases where private service delivery has failed – meaning governments can never return water, energy, health, education or other services to public hands.
2.TiSA would restrict signatory governments’ right to regulate stronger standards in the public’s interest. For example, it will affect environmental regulations, licensing of health facilities and laboratories, waste disposal centres, power plants, school and university accreditation and broadcast licenses.
3.TiSA would limit the ability of governments to regulate the financial services industry, at a time when the global economy is still struggling to recover from a crisis caused primarily by financial deregulation. More specifically, if signed the trade agreement would:

  • Restrict the ability of governments to place limits on the trading of derivative contracts — the largely unregulated weapons of mass financial destruction that helped trigger the 2007-08 Global Financial Crisis.
  • Bar new financial regulations that do not conform to deregulatory rules. Signatory governments will essentially agree not to apply new financial policy measures which in any way contradict the agreement’s emphasis on deregulatory measures.
  • Prohibit national governments from using capital controls to prevent or mitigate financial crises. The leaked texts prohibit restrictions on financial inflows – used to prevent rapid currency appreciation, asset bubbles and other macroeconomic problems – and financial outflows, used to prevent sudden capital flight in times of crisis.
  • Require acceptance of financial products not yet invented. Despite the pivotal role that new, complex financial products played in the Financial Crisis, TISA would require governments to allow all new financial products and services, including ones not yet invented, to be sold within their territories.

4. TiSA would ban any restrictions on cross-border information flows and localization requirements for ICT service providers. A provision proposed by US negotiators would rule out any conditions for the transfer of personal data to third countries that are currently in place in EU data protection law. In other words, multinational corporations will have carte blanche to pry into just about every facet of the working and personal lives of the inhabitants of roughly a quarter of the world’s 200-or-so nations.

As I wrote in LEAKED: Secret Negotiations to Let Big Brother Go Global, if TiSA is signed in its current form – and we will not know exactly what that form is until at least five years down the line – our personal data will be freely bought and sold on the open market place without our knowledge; companies and governments will be able to store it for as long as they desire and use it for just about any purpose.

Obviously, in the grand scheme of things, Uruguay doesn’t count for a whole lot, the whole country has a population is less than that of Los Angeles, but it is the first time that any country involved in the negotiations has pulled out, and should make it easier for another nation to take this step, which means that that standing up to the interests of the US, which are primarily to support data brokers, pharma, IP restrictions, and the banksters.

This is a good thing for the people of Uruguay, and if it leads to more countries pulling out of this agreement, it will be a good thing for the world.

This is Significant………

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It turns out that the aircraft that Russia is sending to Syria are not Su-27s or MiG-31s. They are top of the line Su-30SM multi-role fighters:

The Institute for the Study of War had spotted four Russian fighter jets at Al Assad International Airport in Damascus. The Kremlin may have sent air-to-air missiles to Syria along with the aircraft, the D.C.-based think tank added.

But Washington area consultant and War Is Boring contributor Chris Biggers pointed out on the blog Offiziere that ISW had misidentified the jets. As it turns out, Russia sent its maneuverable and deadly Su-30SM multi-role jets.

Recent satellite imagery acquired by Airbus of al-Assad International airport in Syria shows four Su-30SM aircraft, not four SU-27 Flanker as originally reported by the Institute for [the] Study of War. The aircraft are easily mistaken for the SU-27 due to the modern variant’s use of the same airframe. The only predominant identifier on satellite imagery separating these aircraft from the earlier model is the canards positioned forward on the fuselage which assist with the aircraft’s thrust vectoring capability.

Located on the north side of the runway at Latakia, the Su-30SM multi-role fighters are one of Russia’s more advanced 4+ generation aircraft, often compared to the U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle. This variant is equipped with a passive electronically scanned array (PESA) BARS radar, fly-by-wire flight controls, modern ECM as well as thrust vectoring, making this a highly maneuverable and capable fighter.

In March 2012, Russia hired the Irkut Corporation to build a total of 60 Su-30SM fighters. While the new model was the first for the Kremlin’s air arms to feature the small canard positioned behind the cockpit, Irkut had already sold similar MKI and MKM versions to India and Malaysia, respectively.

The reason that this is important is because of the whole “Multi Role” thing.

The Su-30SM is not as well suited for the interception role as the MiG-31, top speed and ceiling are lower, but it can carry a much wider range of munitions, including the KH-58 anti-radiation missile, which has the capability to attack surface to air missile installations at ranges greater than 200 km, which could suppress NATO SAMs in Turkey that have largely prevented the Syrian Air Force from operating in the north of the country.

Syria is a complete clusterf%$#, (When the Assad regime is the best alternative, you know that you have completely screwed the pooch) , and now we are seeing increased Russian involvement in the conflict.

It’s a mess, and it’s getting scary.

And yet Another Element of the US State Security Apparatus Goes Rogue

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It appears that the DEA specifically targeted the Evo Morales government in Bolivia in what appears to be something very close to an attempted coup:

The United States has secretly indicted top officials connected to the government of Bolivian President Evo Morales for their alleged involvement in a cocaine trafficking scheme. The indictments, secured in a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration sting called “Operation Naked King,” have not been previously reported.

Morales, a former leader of Bolivia’s coca growers union, has long been at loggerheads with the DEA. In 2008, Morales expelled the agency from the country and embarked on his own strategy of combatting drug trafficking, acknowledging the traditional uses of coca in Bolivian culture and working cooperatively with coca growers to regulate some legal activity and to promote alternative development elsewhere. Morales’ plan has been effective at reducing cultivation, according to the United Nations.

But that doesn’t mean the DEA accepted its eviction quietly. In fact, the agency went after members of Morales’ administration in an apparent effort to undermine his leadership.

The sealed indictments, revealed last week in a lawsuit filed by long-time DEA informant Carlos Toro, target Walter Álvarez, a top Bolivian air force official; the late Raul García, father of Vice President Álvaro García Linera; Faustino Giménez, an Argentine citizen and Bolivian resident who is said to be close to the vice president; and Katy Alcoreza, described as an intelligence agent for Morales. Toro said in the court document that he played an integral role in securing the indictments as part of the DEA’s undercover investigation into the alleged Bolivian cocaine trafficking ring, which the agency ran out of its office in Asuncion, Paraguay.

………

The U.S. government and the DEA made no secret of their displeasure when their longtime nemesis, Morales, was elected. “If radicals continue to hijack the indigenous movement, we could find ourselves faced with a narcostate that supports the uncontrolled cultivation of coca,” General James T. Hill, a U.S. army commander with the Southern Command, told the House Armed Services Committee in March 2004, referring to Morales’ movement.

“I don’t think there’s an attractive or viable future by becoming a narcostate,” John Walters, then the Bush administration’s drug czar, told The New York Times the next year, when it appeared Morales was on his way to victory.

Morales used the accusations to his political benefit. “They accuse me of everything,” Morales said at a campaign rally, according to the same Times article. “They say Evo is a drug trafficker, that Evo is a narcoterrorist. They don’t know how to defend their position, so they attack us.”

………

By 2014, the Times was writing about Bolivia’s renaissance:

Tucked away in the shadow of its more populous and more prosperous neighbors, tiny, impoverished Bolivia, once a perennial economic basket case, has suddenly become a different kind of exception — this time in a good way.

Its economy grew an estimated 6.5 percent last year, among the strongest rates in the region. Inflation has been kept in check. The budget is balanced, and once-crippling government debt has been slashed. And the country has a rainy-day fund of foreign reserves so large for its relatively small economy that it could be the envy of nearly every other country in the world. The Times article notes that extreme poverty under Morales has plummeted, despite — or, more likely, because of — his refusal to follow the path the U.S. has urged.

………

In the face of U.S. denunciations that Bolivia would become a narcostate under Morales, the country has instead managed to reduce coca leaf cultivation, especially over the past five years. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, total production of dried coca leaf fell 11 percent from 2013 to 2014, and has fallen by an average of nearly 10 percent each year since 2011. Interdiction efforts targeting coca cultivation have also dropped precipitously since the DEA’s dismissal in 2008, though confiscations of cocaine continued to rise until 2013, when they dropped off significantly. In 2014, confiscations of processed cocaine hydrochloride returned to previous levels, though interdiction of coca leaves and cocaine base remained low.

“[Drug trafficking] must be fought — we are convinced of that — and we are doing so more effectively and more wisely,” Morales told Al Jazeera in a 2014 interview. “When the United States was in control of counternarcotics, the US governments used drug trafficking for purely geopolitical purposes …. The US uses drug trafficking and terrorism for political control …. We have nationalised the fight against drug trafficking.”

In 2009, Hillary Clinton warned of Morales and the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s “fear mongering” in written testimony during her secretary of state confirmation hearings. Yet Morales’ fears, it turns out, weren’t rooted in mere paranoia. The DEA was, in fact, out to get him.

The revelation of Operation Naked King goes to show that Bolivian leaders’ paranoia was well justified, said Kathryn Ledebur, who runs the Andean Information Network based in Bolivia. “US authorities frequently dismiss Bolivian government denunciations about the DEA and US intervention as absurd speculation, but these revelations show what is common knowledge on the ground — there has long been an alarming lack of oversight of DEA operations in Latin America, including recurring mission creep and a violation of agreements with host countries,” she wrote in an email.

What is going on here is very simple: A coup attempt by the DEA, and they are trying to take this government down not because their policies are a failure, but because their policies are a success.

If other governments follow their example, bad things will happen:   the DEA will face a situation where their most important path to career advancement an visibility, f%$#ing around with other sovereign nations, will be curtailed.

At some point, lead to reductions in budget and manpower at the agency, so clearly Evo Morales must be overthrown, because, to quote Mel Brooks, “Holy underwear! Sheriff murdered! Innocent women and children blown to bits! We have to protect our phoney baloney jobs here, gentlemen! We must do something about this immediately! Immediately! Immediately! Harrumph! Harrumph! Harrumph!”

This is not surprising.  After all, one of the first major foreign initiatives of the Obama administration was to tacitly support a coup against Manuel Zelaya in Honduras.

Haven’t we f%$#ed up Latin America enough since 1823?

This Business Will Get out of Control. It Will Get out of Control and We’ll Be Lucky to Live through It.

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It appears that Russia may be building a military base in Syria:

The anonymous officials say Russia has set up an air traffic control tower and transported prefabricated housing units for up to 1,000 personnel to an airfield serving the Syrian port city of Latakia.

 Russia has also requested the rights to fly over neighbouring countries with military cargo aircraft during September, according to the reports.

 The claims, which will raise fears that Russia is planning to expand its role in the country’s civil war, will ratchet up tensions between Moscow and Washington over the future of Syria and its brutal ruler.

 Mr Obama on Friday met King Salman of Saudi Arabia to repeat their demand that any lasting settlement in Syria would require an end to the Assad regime.

 It leaves the US and Russia implacably opposed in their visions for Syria.

I would argue that the vision expressed by Obama is being driven by the House of Saud and the rest of the antediluvian absolute monarchies that dot the Persian Gulf.

 They supported radical Islamic opponents to the Assad regime, because they want to replace a secular Arab regime with Sunni dominated theocracy, because, I guess, it worked so well in Syria.

 ………

 “We are already giving Syria quite serious help with equipment and training soldiers, with our weapons,” he said during an economic forum in Vladivostok on Friday, according to the state-owned RIA Novosti news agency.

 Until now, Russia’s backing has included financial support, intelligence, advisers, weapons and spare parts. Mr Putin insisted it was “premature” to talk of a direct intervention.

………

 Last week the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth cited Western diplomatic sources saying that Russia was on the verge of deploying “thousands” of troops to Syria to establish an airbase from which the Russian air force would fly combat sorties against Isil.

 Those details appear to be backed by satellite images of a Russian base under construction near Latakia, according to anonymous intelligence officials quoted by several American newspapers.

 “If they’re moving people in to help the Syrian government fight their own fight, that’s one thing,” one told the Los Angeles Times. “But if they’re moving in ground forces and dropping bombs on populated areas, that’s an entirely different matter.”

 Moscow increasingly justifies its support for the Assad regime by pointing to the rise of violent jihadists in Syria.

………

 Syria is already home to Russia’s only base outside the former Soviet Union – a naval station in Tartus.

 The reported build-up of military activity, centred on Latakia and Idlib province, is in areas dominated by the Alawite sect, which counts President Assad among its number.

The House of Saud, the other petty tyrants of the Persian Gulf, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (the increasingly authoritarian, and increasingly unstable President of Turkey) have been actively supporting both the civil war and the most extreme religious fanatics in the region.

This did was a disaster in Libya, and it will be a disaster in Syria.

Getting rid of Assad in Syria would be a good thing, if the alternative were not immeasurably worse.

Of note, it appears that there are indications that the Russians might be sending Russian manned MiG-31s to Syria:

Rumours, comments and half-truths are very common in fluid environments such as this. Various news-outlets are offering different theories regarding a large-scale Russian operation about to start in Syria. With information and evidence being often sketchy at best, it is most likely that various players in and outside the region are trying to push their agenda, either vis-à-vis Syria or vis-à-vis Russia. Trusting partisan and biased information, i.e. MSM accounts quoting “official sources“, would obviously be a mistake. That is why this piece offers a totally different read on the reasons and goals of the Russian move, just for the sake of argument.

Preventing a another Libya

Before getting to the core of the scenario that could explain events on the ground, it may be useful to recall the Libyan precedent: a “no fly zone” implemented by NATO under a UN-resolution was hijacked – in the Russians’ view – to support the anti-Gaddafi insurgents and give them close air support for several months, until the Libyan dictator was finally ousted from power.

Ever since the start of the civil war in Syria, the Russians have always made it clear that they would not tolerate another version of the Libyan precedent. In 2013 already, Russian officials made numerous statements formally objecting to a “no fly zone“. A few very strongly worded declarations by President Putin himself didn’t leave any doubt as to the Russians’ willingness to actively oppose such a development.

………

Based on the developments mentioned above, but also taking into account some of the recurrent background noise and chatter that can be heard way outside the beltway – remember Petreaus’ suggestion about “Jabhat al Nusra reconcilables” or Anne-Marie Slaughter’s recent call for a “no fly zone” over Syria – it is pretty easy to figure out what some of the armchair strategists in DC had in mind.

Quite simple in its premises, their strategy is based on increasing the tempo of Coalition airstrikes against the Islamic State, particularly in Syria, thus winning over public opinion for such operations, and supporting Kurdish YPG militias all over the North. At the same time, efforts – quite unlucky and unsuccessful so far – to recruit and train parts of the FSA, and possibly the “reasonable fringe” of Jahbat al-Nusra, are continuing.

The aim is to arm these groups and turn them loose – officially – on the Islamic State, giving them the same air support YPG groups have been receiving, provided the main thrust is against ISIS held territory or disputed areas. Territory that is firmly in the Syrian government’s hands would be off limits in such a scenario, but given that these areas have become quite small in recent months, it is pretty safe to assume that about 75 % to 80 % of Syrian territory would be up for grabs.

In other words, the support of Kurdish peshmergas on the one hand, the help and training of “moderate” Syrian rebels on the other, would be combined with the benefits of a “no fly zone” or at least extensive air support. The official rationale for such a “no fly zone” would be solely the struggle against ISIS, of course, because that would be the easiest way – and actually the only one –to sell such a strategy to the US public.

………

Needless to say that if the Syrian air force was unable to support its ground troops not just in the North, but anywhere in Syria, the balance of power would inexorably shift towards the opposition groups and a de facto partition of Syria would be unavoidable. To the Russians, this is unacceptable. They may be willing to let Assad go, but not to abandon Syria as an ally and a Russian asset in the “grand game”.

Syria is still a sovereign country and there hasn’t been any UN-resolution that could bolster foreign intervention without the consent of the Syrian government. Furthermore, Syria has an extensive defense agreement with the Russian Federation and it would be perfectly within President Bashar al-Assad’s prerogatives to call in Russian military help in his fight against “terrorism” or foreign aggression.

………

What came out of these talks – or should we say negotiations ? – is only rumour, but this rumour has it that a deal was struck for the nomination of a new intelligence chief, if a ceasefire and transitional phase are indeed implemented. The man for that job is supposedly no other than General Mustafa Tlass, formerly a close associate of the al-Assad clan, who jumped ship in 2011 but never formally sided with the rebels. He has been living in France ever since he left Syria.

Now of course, such a settlement to which the US administration would not have been part to would have the potential to drive the Neo-Cons, R2Pers and other D.C. hawks absolutely mad. Not only would it mean that the Syrian regime would not be destroyed, but it would possibly keep a strong foothold in Syrian politics, even if the country was to be partitioned along areas of influence. The biggest downside to such a negotiated solution though would be, that fighting the Islamic State could not be used anymore as a pretence for supporting the actions of the anti-Assad rebels.

The Syrians – and the Russians – certainly realize that contingency plans are also a necessity for them, whether the alleged settlement initiative succeeds or fails. The recent announcement of a second and larger Russian base on the Syrian coast is certainly part of such contingency plans. Both a naval base and a logistics base, it could help stabilize the heartland of the Al-Assad clan and bolster the Alawi minority’s claim and dominance over these lands, cutting of any sea access to whatever Sunni/Jihadi political construct could be established further inland.

………

This is why the establishment of a “no fly zone” and increased operational tempo is so crucial to its most vocal proponents. Short of destroying the regime before any settlement is announced, Bashar al-Assad has to be weakened and his power base eroded to the point where even opposition groups currently willing to sign off on a negotiated peace might possibly change their mind.

This is the context in which Russian troop and equipment movements were recently spotted, allegedly. It all started on August 16th, when a Turkish News Agency (BGN) published a statement announcing that Russia had delivered 6 MIG-31s to Syria. Those planes’ specifications and weapons systems make them an unlikely candidate for close air support to Syrian ground forces, which makes the delivery all the more interesting.

Actually, the MIG-31s, possibly with a Russian crew aboard, are interceptors. They are designed to track, identify and destroy hostile aircraft. The fact they were stationed in Mezze airbase, with a large Russian security and logistics detail, implies the Russians meant business. What aircraft could these planes be possibly intercepting though ? Obviously, not the Coalition jets flying missions against the Islamic State. The Russians aren’t that mad … or dumb.

However, if a “no fly zone” was imposed over Syrian skies without any form of basis in international or UN-law, what would there be to prevent the Russians from answering a call for help from the sill legitimate Syrian government ? Now that would be a worrying development and it should be taken seriously ! However, should there be any truth to such a theoretical construct, the MIG-31s would probably target something totally different from Coalition fighter jets.

………

If you take Libya as the example of what the Russians want to avoid at all cost, it’s fairly easy to guess what their interceptors would be looking for. It’s not the Patriot missiles stationed in Turkey. They only have a limited reach, meaning they can destroy targets up to a distance of about 70 km, enough to interdict Syrian air force operations all along the border, but they are useless for any action deep in Syrian territory.

Furthermore, the Patriot’s radars don’t bring any added value when it comes to identifying enemy moves on the ground. The key component in both a “no fly zone” and in monitoring moves on and off the ground, all over Syrian territory, are AWACS warning and control aircraft.

The Coalition is currently using such aircraft. Several countries are equipped with such planes, notably the United States and Saudi Arabia, but also The United-Kingdom and France. As long as the areas of interest for possible coalition airstrikes are limited to territory close to an international border, AWACS planes can remain out of Syrian airspace.Their powerful radars can monitor anything that happens from a safe distance.

However, if the goal of the coalition was to extend “interdiction areas” or to create “safe areas” deep inside Syria, there would be only one way of doing this: AWACS planes would need to fly over Syrian territory, as any operation of that kind while remaining outside Syrian airspace would require a unreasonable number of planes to cover enough ground.

………

That is where the MIG-31s come in. Sending in these planes, their crews, as well as all the necessary logistics into Syria, could be a clear message intended at disrupting any idea the Coalition might have of establishing “safe zones”, “security perimeters” or “no fly zones”, whatever you want to call them, without actual backing from international law.

Based on current Syrian-Russian defence agreements, Russian – or Syrian – MIG31s would be fully justified in shooting down any aircraft deemed hostile over Syrian territory. The MIG-31s are well equipped for that kind of mission: they can take off and reach a flight altitude of over 30 000 feet in under three minutes, making them immune from any MANPADs the rebels might be armed with.

Coordinates of an AWACS plane – or any other aircraft for that matter – could be sent in from radar stations on the ground, and the signal could not be jammed nor intercepted. The MIG-31 is also equipped with multimode radar, allowing for onboard monitoring over long distances, and it is armed with BVR missiles that have a reach of up to 400 km. Due to the ballistic trajectory of these missiles, their interception also would be very difficult.

In other words, once they are in the air, the MIG-31s could fire their missiles and, at that point, nothing could stop them from reaching their target, whether that is an AWACS or possibly even a fighter jet preparing for close support mission of anti-government forces.

Now, of course, if an AWACS was shut down by a Russian jet, that could be the starting point to something like WW3. The Russians don’t want that, and neither do we. So what this means, is that their troop deployment is signalling us something: they know what we are up to and they are not willing to let go of it.

This aircraft, NATO Designation Foxhound, an update on the MiG-25 Foxbat is a single purpose aircraft designed as an interceptor.

It is designed to do one thing, get to high altitudes and high speeds quickly, and fire big missiles at long ranges to shoot down other aircraft, particularly large and highly visible aircraft, like AWACS,

We really need to tell the House of Saud that we will no longer support their moves for Sunni hegemony in the region, nor will we support the (over a thousand years old) “Great Game” between Sunni and Shia.

Doing the House of Saud’s bidding serves no one but the house of Saud.

While we are at it, perhaps it would be a good idea to drone the guy who founded ISIS, Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who as head of the Saudi intelligence services, was instrumental in getting the group up and running.

34

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34 Democrats have now said that they will oppose any Republican attempt to override the nuclear deal with Iran, which means that they cannot override a promised veto:

Just before the Senate left town for its August break, a dozen or so undecided Democrats met in the Capitol with senior diplomats from Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia who delivered a blunt, joint message: Their nuclear agreement with Iran was the best they could expect. The five world powers had no intention of returning to the negotiating table.

“They basically said unanimously this is as good a deal as you could get and we are moving ahead with it,” recalled Senator Chris Coons, the Delaware Democrat who lent crucial support to the deal this week despite some reservations. “They were clear and strong that we will not join you in re-imposing sanctions.”

For many if not most Democrats, it was that message that ultimately solidified their decisions, leading to President Obama on Wednesday securing enough votes to put the agreement in place over fierce and united Republican opposition. One after another, lawmakers pointed to the warnings from foreign leaders that their own sanctions against Iran would be lifted regardless of what the United States did.

It is the proverbial, “Big f%$#ing deal.”

The reality is that this is as good a deal as can be expected, and if it gets reversed, our allies will not return to the sanctions regime, so it is basically a done deal, but I still expect a Terri Schiavo type political clusterf%$# for the organization formally known as “The Party of Lincoln.”

Yep, We are Getting Sick of Erdoğan

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In addition to pulling Patriots out of Turkey, we now have our Secretary of Defense calling out the Turkish disinterest in fighting ISIS:

The Pentagon’s top official said Thursday that Turkey must “do more” to help in the fight against the Islamic State militant group, commonly known as ISIL or ISIS.

US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter called Turkey’s participation in anti-ISIL operations “overdue.” And while the decision by Turkey to help with the air campaign against the militant group is welcome, Carter specifically called out the need for Turkish forces to secure the border with Syria in order to stop the flow of supplies and ISIL operatives.

“We need them — also, as a neighbor to this conflict zone, as longtime NATO ally and a responsible member of the anti-ISIL coalition — to control the border, the long border that they have with both Syria and Iraq, more than it has been controlled over the last year,” Carter said. “It is a border over which logistics for ISIL and fighters cross, and so we’re looking for them to do more in that regard as well, and we’re in active discussions with them in that regard.”

For the last year, Turkey avoided large-scale engagement with the militant group. However, after an ISIS suicide bomber killed 32 people on a Turkish town bordering Syria on July 20, the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan decided to clear US airstrikes from inside its territory.

I think that the Turkish government’s priorities, basically promoting Sunni Islamism and bombing the crap out of the Kurds, are clearly not serving the interests of their NATO allies.

I’m wondering if we are going to engineer a coup to remove Erdoğan.

Certainly, military takeovers have been a regular feature of Turkish politics, so if there were a coup, it would not be unprecedented.

This is Interesting………

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The US and Germany have , apparently because Turkey has been using the operations against ISIS to bomb the crap out of the Kurds, in effect aiding ISIS:

The U.S. announced Sunday that Patriot anti-air and missile batteries and 400 troops deployed to Turkey will be withdrawn following a similar move by NATO ally Germany seen as a protest against Turkish airstrikes on the Kurds.

The Pentagon put out a joint statement by Washington and NATO ally Turkey saying that the Patriot batteries, which were sent to Turkey in 2013 to protect against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, would return to the U.S. by October.

Turkey asked for the deployment of the Patriots following the shoot down in 2012 of a Turkish fighter by Syrian air defenses.

………

The Turkish airstrikes have come under increasing criticism in Europe, where the agreement on use of Incirlik is seen by some as a move by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to gain cover for the airstrikes and bolster his support in maneuvering for new elections to regain a parliamentary majority.

Turkey has said that the airstrikes against the PKK were in response to terror attacks in Turkey that have killed civilians, police and troops.

………

The U.S. is concerned that Turkey also might move against the Kurdish YPG (People’s Protection Units), the military wing of the Kurdish PYD (Democratic Union Party), which is allied with the PKK.

YPG fighters have proven to be among the most effective of local forces in the fight against ISIS. The YPG earlier this year successfully defended the Syrian border town of Kobane against ISIS with the help of U.S. airstrikes. The YPG later took the border towns of Tal Abyad and Hasakah to the east while advancing to within 50 miles of Raqaa, considered the ISIS capital in Syria.

I think that maybe Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s policy of supporting Sunni Islamic extremists and rolling back civil rights has finally outweighed his support for Wall Street friendly economics.

I guess that actively supporting ISIS has kind of crossed the line.

TPP: the Fat Lady Ain’t Singing, but She Is Warming Up

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At the end of last month, the negotiations that were supposed to put the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) ended without an agreement.

What’s more, there wasn’t even a date set for a followup summit:

Trade negotiators from the United States and 11 other Pacific nations failed to reach final agreement on Friday, with difficult talks on the largest regional trade agreement ever deadlocking over protections for drug companies and access to agriculture markets on both sides of the Pacific.

Trade ministers, in a joint statement, said late Friday they had made “significant progress” and will return to their home countries to obtain high-level signoffs for a small number of final sticking points on the agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, with bilateral talks reconvening soon.

“There are an enormous number of issues that one works through at these talks, narrowing differences, finding landing zones,” said Michael B. Froman, the United States trade representative. “I am very impressed with the work that has been done. I am gratified by the progress that has been made.”

Still, the breakdown is a setback for the Obama administration, which had promoted the talks here as the final round ahead of an accord that would bind 40 percent of the world’s economy under a new set of rules for commerce.

This is a failure, and a big one.

In a normally unproductive summit, the Japanese would oblique.

When a Japanese diplomat says, “It would be difficult,” it should be read “No!” with the explanation point, and when a Japanese diplomat says that, “It would be very difficult, it’s the equivalent of “F%$# You White Man.”

This time, the Japanese Economy Minister, who is their lead on this deal, just explicitly stated that the US were too wimpy:

Japan has expressed concern about a loss of momentum in talks on a pan-Pacific trade pact after participants failed to agree to meet again this month to try to clinch a deal that would cover 40 percent of the global economy.

Ministers from the 12 nations negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which would stretch from Japan to Chile, fell short of a deal at talks last month on the Hawaiian island of Maui, despite early optimism.

Japanese Economy Minister Akira Amari, in a blog circulated on Tuesday, also questioned why the United States appeared to have lacked its usual “stubborn persistence” at those talks, despite a willingness of some countries to stay to try to reach an agreement.

If this were translated into standard American discourse, it would use language that would make George Carlin uncomfortable.

And from Australia, a country whose foreign policy is defined by a desperate need to be “In the Club”, the Trade Minister is saying that a deal is unlikely:

Australia’s trade minister, Andrew Robb, has appeared at the National Press Club in Canberra today, where he admitted that concluding the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal is looking increasingly unlikely.

According to AAP, Rob said that sugar and dairy access remained key sticking points, along with motor vehicle assess between Mexico, the US, Canada and Japan. He also noted that “the closer we get to a US presidential election, the more prospect (there is) of it falling over”.

There is also the upcoming Canadian elections later this year.

Seeing as how this deal sucks, it’s a good thing that it appears to be comatose.

An Outbreak of Sanity. Now Get the Drivers Some Anti-Psychotic Drugs………

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Boston has dropped their Olympic bid:

Deep skepticism here about whether taxpayers would be stuck footing the bill for the Olympics has doomed Boston’s bid to host the 2024 Summer Games and raised questions about whether any other major American city might be willing to take on the risk.

The United States Olympic Committee said Monday that it was withdrawing Boston as its proposed bid city because resistance among residents was too great to overcome in the short time that remained before the committee had to formally propose a bid city by Sept. 15.

“We have not been able to get a majority of the citizens of Boston to support hosting the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games,” Scott Blackmun, the chief executive of the U.S.O.C., said in a statement as he raised the white flag. “Therefore, the U.S.O.C. does not think that the level of support enjoyed by Boston’s bid would allow it to prevail over great bids from Paris, Rome, Hamburg, Budapest or Toronto.”

Here is the sticking point:

Voters told pollsters that they were most concerned about having to pay for cost overruns. But they were also dismayed by what they considered as Boston 2024’s lack of transparency and the sense that a small cabal of business leaders who stood to profit seemed to be running the show in secrecy. And they questioned whether much-need improvements in transportation, housing and education would get done if the city were so focused on the Olympics.

Mr. Wallechinsky, the historian, said that the U.S.O.C. should “take a good hard look at themselves” and conduct an investigation into “how they could have picked Boston in the first place.” He said one of the worst moments came when the U.S.O.C. watched as Boston 2024 said that its bid, which was not initially disclosed to the public, called for no public financing; the U.S.O.C. knew that was not true, he said, as the public found out later after news outlets obtained the bid.

So, they lied to the people of Boston, and the USOC wanted Boston to guarantee to cover the costs of any f%$#-ups that the looters, “Small cabal of business leaders who stood to profit,” managed to extract from the process.

They are now looking at LA, but the last time that LA hosted, they ignored the bling, and reused existing facilities, and that eliminates the possibilities for graft that drive the International Olympic Committee since Juan Antonio Samaranch (An actual card-carrying fascist, he served in the Franco regime in Spain) took over the presidency of the organization in 1980.

The 2024 Olympics will not be in the US.  Most likely, it will be in a totalitarian state, since the financially ruinous exercises in narcissistic self-aggrandizement seems to built into the DNA of that form of government.

My guess is that the 2024 Olympics will be held in Pyongyang. (Just kidding, but my last joke in this vein was Arisia)

An Interesting Perspective on No-Notice Inspections and Iran

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Over at The Intercept, they notice the oft ignored (at least on this side of the pond) fact that the United States used the Iraqi inspection regime in as a way to insert spies into the country:

Americans and Israelis who hate the new nuclear agreement with Iran are already focusing on one part in particular: It doesn’t authorize snap, no-notice inspections of all locations. Israel’s hard-right Education Minister Naftali Bennett claims the accord is a “farce” because “in order to go and make an inspection, you have to notify the Iranians 24 days in advance.”

 This is not exactly right, but close enough. (Iran’s declared nuclear sites will be under continuous monitoring. If the International Atomic Energy Agency wants to inspect a non-declared site and Iran refuses, Iran has 14 days to convince the IAEA it’s doing nothing wrong without providing access. If it can’t, the commission governing the agreement has seven days to vote on whether to force Iran to provide access, and if it does Iran has three more days to comply. The exact procedure is established in paragraphs 74-78 of the agreement text.)

 For people unfamiliar with the history of arms control generally and in the Middle East in particular, this might seem like a bad deal. If Iran doesn’t have anything to hide, why wouldn’t it allow the IAEA to go anywhere at anytime?

 The answer is twofold:

 First, all countries have things they legitimately want to hide, such as conventional military secrets and the security procedures of their leaders.

 Second, during the 1990s the U.S. demonstrated with Iraq that it would routinely abuse the weapons inspections process in order to uncover such legitimate secrets — and use them to target the Iraqi military and try to overthrow the Iraqi government.

 ………

 By the mid-1990s, Iraq claimed that the U.S. was using UNSCOM as cover for espionage aimed at things that had nothing to do with WMD, such as Saddam Hussein’s location. While the U.S. strenuously denied this for years, it turned out to be true. Moreover, former UNSCOM inspector Scott Ritter contends that the U.S. attempted to manipulate UNSCOM so that it could be used as a tool in an attempted coup against Saddam Hussein organized by the U.S. in 1996.

 Iraq acted at the time just as the U.S. would if the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons had been infiltrated with “inspectors” who wanted to assassinate Bill Clinton and then showed up at the White House. For instance, when Clinton bombed Iraq in Operation Desert Fox in 1998, one of the justifications he gave was that Iraq had “shut off [UNSCOM] access to the headquarters of its ruling party.” The CIA later discovered that Saddam had in fact been at the party headquarters when UNSCOM arrived, and had stopped UNSCOM from entering “to prevent the inspectors from knowing his whereabouts, not because he had something to hide.”

 Moreover, the U.S. made extensive use of UNSCOM to target Iraq for bombing campaigns. According to Ritter, toward the beginning of the UNSCOM process CIA agents who were part of the inspection team used GPS to record the precise location of sites used for Iraqi military manufacturing — sites that soon afterwards were struck by U.S. cruise missiles. And as the Washington Post reported and the U.S. Air Force later confirmed, the U.S. used UNSCOM’s data to choose targets for Operation Desert Fox, including many that had nothing to do with Iraq’s purported WMD programs. ………

 So while Iran’s recalcitrance may make the U.S. and Israel unhappy, it’s largely the fruit of our own poisoned tree. They will never accept the conditions we imposed on Iraq, and any neutral observer would agree they’d be fools to do so.

Shades of the alleged “vaccination” program that allegedly identified bin Laden’s hiding place, which has discredited vaccination programs throughout the Islamic world, leading to widespread assassinations of public health workers, particularly in Pakistan.

Cue the Wingnut Head Explosion

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We have a nuclear proliferation deal with Iran, let the right wing to freak out begin.

Binyaman Netanyahu, who is arguably the least honest man in Israeli politics,* is condemning this as well, but seeing as how Netanyahu is continuing to ignore the Mossad’s assessment of Iran’s nuclear capabilities, I’ll put this down to Bibi playing domestic politics.

World powers have reached a deal with Iran on limiting Iranian nuclear activity in return for the lifting of international economic sanctions.

US President Barack Obama said that with the deal, “every pathway to a nuclear weapon is cut off” for Iran.

And President Hassan Rouhani said the “historic” deal opened a “new chapter” in Iran’s relations with the world.

Negotiations between Iran and six world powers – the US, UK, France, China, Russia and Germany – began in 2006.

The so-called P5+1 want Iran to scale back its sensitive nuclear activities to ensure that it cannot build a nuclear weapon.

Iran, which wants crippling international sanctions lifted, has always insisted that its nuclear work is peaceful.

There has been stiff resistance to a deal from conservatives both in Iran and the US. The US Congress has 60 days in which to consider the deal, though Mr Obama said he would veto any attempt to block it.

The Republican Speaker of the US House of Representatives, John Boehner, said the deal would only only “embolden” Tehran.

“Instead of stopping the spread of nuclear weapons in the Middle East, this deal is likely to fuel a nuclear arms race around the world,” he added.

Israel’s government has also warned against an agreement.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it was a “stunning historic mistake” that would provide Iran with “hundreds of billions of dollars with which it can fuel its terror machine and its expansion and aggression throughout the Middle East and across the globe”.

He said he did not regard Israel as being bound by this agreement. “We will always defend ourselves,” he added.

The alternative to this deal would have Iran to actually go full bore for a nuclear weapon.

This is far better than that.

*Boy, the concept of , “the least honest man in Israeli politics,” is a truly an awesomely mind f%$#ing concept.

The Product of a Mentality of Lawlessness and Impunity

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Are we the baddies?

I do understand that, historically at least, the primary purpose of a military pistol is for officers to shoot deserters.

These days, in addition to marking a bag of rank, they do have uses for people like rear echelon troops and tankers.

They will never be a major force on the battlefield, but the fact that the blithe way in which the US Army is considering introducing Dumdum bullets in its new pistol:

The Army is considering the use of expanding and fragmenting ammunition, such as hollow point bullets, to increase its next-generation handgun’s ability to stop an enemy.

 This bit of news was revealed Tuesday, during the service’s fourth industry day for its Modular Handgun System.

 After a recent legal review within the Pentagon, the Army can consider adopting “special purpose ammunition,” said Richard Jackson, special assistant to the Army Judge Advocate General for Law of War, according to an Army news release. This marks a departure from battlefield practices over a century old.

 Jackson told Army Times that while this isn’t the first approved use of such bullets in the military, the stance represented “a significant re-interpretation of the legal standard” for ammunition. He also said a lot has changed since the initial movements against the round, especially with the increased prevalence of asymmetric warfare.

 “There’s a myth that [expanding/fragmenting bullets] are prohibited in international armed conflict, but that doesn’t make any sense now,” Jackson said.

 ………

 On the battlefield, the U.S. has generally observed the 1899 Hague Convention rule barring expanding and fragmenting rounds, despite the fact that it never has been signatory to that particular agreement, Russell said.

 The U.S. reserved the right to use different ammunition where it saw a need. For example, Criminal Investigations Command and military police use hollow points — as do law enforcement agencies around the country — in part to minimize collateral damage of bullets passing through the target. Special Forces also uses expanding/fragmenting rounds in counter-terrorism missions.

 “The use of this ammunition supports the international law principles of preventing excessive collateral effects and safeguarding civilian lives,” an Army statement said.

So, not only are they choosing to ignore a bit of international which has been observed by basically everyone since the early 1900s, but they are declaring that a direct violation of the convention is actually just fine, because. ……… Well, just because.

The US state security apparatus y did the same thing with the Geneva conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war, despite the fact that the Third Geneva Convention specifically requires that signatories apply the standards to non-signatories.

Even if one dismisses the humanitarian considerations,  the fact that this sort of breakdown in professional ethics frequently presages the end stage of a declining empire.

How the Germans Have Yet Again F%$#ed Up a Signature Foreign Policy Initiative

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First, the hash tag: #ThisIsACoup , which is trending on Twitter.

Rather unsurprising, given that now that Greece has capitulated to the insane and sadistic demands of the Troika, but there is still no deal because the so-called hawks still want another pound of flesh:

Greece’s final attempt to avoid being kicked out of the euro by securing a new three-year bailout worth up to €80bn ran into a wall of resistance from the eurozone’s fiscal hawks on Saturday.

Finland rejected any more funding for the country and Germany called for Greece to be turfed out of the currency bloc for at least five years.

All of this means that not only will Greece have to leave the Euro, but it means that there will be poverty, epidemics, and starvation that has not been seen on the European continent since the end of World War II.

It also means that Greece will be exiting the Euro Zone, because all of its banks will be shuttered in the next few days.

This could have turned out better, but it now appears that the current Greek government has made no plans at all for the eventuality of leaving the Euro:

Here are just a few of their concerns – focused in particular on the idea, put forward by the German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, that there perhaps could and should be a temporary exit of Greece from the euro.

So the first rather chilling thing I’ve learned, from well-placed bankers, is there have been no conversations between the Bank of Greece, the government or regulators and Greece’s commercial banks about the technicalities of leaving the euro and adopting a new currency.

(emphasis mine)

The “hawks”, in particular the Germans, and most particularly Wolfgang Schäuble, are eager to make an example of Greece, thinking that this will cow the other members of the Euro Zone will see what happens to the Greek people and fall into Germany’s hegemonic line.

I think that this is a gross miscalcculation.

Any nation in the Euro zone that is seeing what is being done to Greece has to be drawing contingency plans for a rapid flight from the monetary union.

The lesson of this disaster is that a plan be that can be implemented in a few days must be ready to go, and I expect  that plans are being drawn up in Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland.

If any of these countries has their ducks in a row, then in the event of a Euro exit, it means that this action will in fairly short order be followed by economic growth.

Once this happens, it is likely that the others will follow, seeing that an exit can be managed gracefully.

If either Italy or Spain leaves, the Euro would soar, because the effects of Germany’s predatory export state on the currency would be less diluted, which would likely make countries like France, the Netherlands, and Belgium (particularly with the possibility of an ethnic split between Flemish and Walloon) look for the exit as their exports become prohibitively expensive.

Assuming the gradual dissolution of the Euro, or as I like to think of it, the New Reichsmark, Germany sees its currency become much stronger, and its export driven economy looks a less successful.

I expect this to happen for two reasons:

First, because I do not see how the Euro can survive in the face of the German insistence on economics as a morality play.

Second, it is clear that the creation of the Euro, and its management over the past decade have been a major foreign policy initiative by the Germans, and all of the “bold” German foreign policy initiatives since reunification (there were none prior to reunification) have been a disaster, with Germany’s premature recognition of Slovenia, hastening the brakup of Yugoslavia, which prevented a negotiated separation, and guaranteed a bloody civil war being only the first of such disasters.

The Euro was structured by the Germans for the benefit of Germany, and the rest of the people of Europe are reaping a bitter harvest as a result.