Kremlin Apologist or Useful Idiot ? (or maybe I just don't want to die in a nuclear holocaust...)

Never did finish/post piece I intended on Russia & US Elections, but the Russian bear does still loom even larger than usual in Western political discourse, so I should probably say something, even as my suspicion that I may eventually end up regretting defending Russia grows...

I'll start thusly...As a Westerner I don't particularly fear Vladimir Putin...at all.  The man some want to paint as a Siberian candidate, soon to be POTUS Trump, a thin-skinned mentally deranged narcissist bully and confessed sexual predator OTOH...That sumbitch in control of not just the most powerful military of the planet, but also in possession of the codes to the US nuclear arsenal fucking terrifies me.  Why the difference ?  Because one, I judge on his past behaviour to be a rational actor, whilst the other...well, his words and actions rather speak for themselves.

I was vaguely hopeful up until the general election even that Trump, who prides himself on his unpredictability, might surprise us, that the incompetence & recklessness shown during the campaign might turn out to have been an act, but at this point, listening to commentators on the BBC mere days before inauguration still holding out promise that he can change, and insisting that we should give him a chance, give him the benefit of the doubt, I have do ask What are they smoking ?  Will the chattering classes still six months from now, eighteen months from now still be denying the obvious ?  That the man is exactly who he has shown himself to be, the last two years of the campaign...The last seven decades of his life ?  FFS !

Anyways...Putin...Russia...I've written here before on what I think about/how I feel about events in South Ossetia, in Ukraine & Crimea.  How I feel that Russia's geopolitical strategy is, certainly from their point of view, primarily defensive, and an attempt through fostering frozen conflicts, to establish buffer-zones between themselves, and what they see as Western encroachment/encirclement.  And it's a smart strategy.  Russia, despite what the USSR may or may not have been, and despite attempts at modernisation, is likely not as powerful militarily as they would have us believe, and even before falls in the price of oil & natural gas*, hardly an economic powerhouse.

What does it cost Russia to maintain frozen conflicts around Georgia & Ukraine ?  How many military assets does Russia need to sustain a minimal presence in South Ossetia or Abkhazia ?  How much does it cost to fund a simmering uprising in the East of Ukraine, to send over the occasional advisers or armaments ?  The cost of fortifying and rebuilding the infrastructure of Crimea I would imagine are substantial, but of the territories in question, this is the only one of true militarily strategic value to the Russians, so I'd be surprised if they didn't spend there, whether they have the money or not.  It's an investment in the future.

And so long as the unrest simmers in Eastern Ukraine, so long as Ukraine declines to relinquish its claim to Crimea, Ukraine is stuck/frozen.  No EU membership for Ukraine, no invitation to join the NATO umbrella.  Same for Georgia so long as it maintains its claims to Abkhazia & South Ossetia.  (Perhaps another non-European nation will be the first instead to take the EU out of the actual European subcontinent...if the European experiment even survives the next few years...) Cheap & effective.

Know what wouldn't be cheap ?  Rolling tanks into fucking Poland.  Or even Kiev.  This is the fear, right ?  Not that Russia might have slightly more influence in its own backyard, might maintain a buffer holding back western expansion, not even that Russia might have some influence in Europe, but that...the Russkies are coming any moment now to kill us all !

What would it cost the Russians to invade, conquer, and then occupy European countries...or any other hostile territories** ?  To destroy entire armies, to maintain infrastructure, to suppress likely ongoing violent resistance ?  And, in the event of attacking NATO nations (there's the rub in a bit...), risking outright nuclear war ?  For what ?  'Cos evil Vladimir Putin ('Vlad the Impaler' as Russophobic idiot Randi Rhodes has taken to calling him) wants to rebuild the Soviet Empire ?!!  I have no doubt that Putin does want to restore what he sees as Russian pride, as Russian honour, as respect for Russia.  As no doubt, do most ordinary Russians.  But where is the evidence for imperial ambitions ?

I could be wrong, of course, but when has Putin acted irrationally, when has he shown himself to be anything other than the cool calculating pragmatist, acting in what he rationally sees as the best interest of the Russian people ?  Empires are expensive.  (And even the most successful, even the mightiest eventually collapse under their own weight.)  If Putin truly is the psychopath some would make him out to be, maybe he doesn't care, but there's no evidence of this.  Russia, economically, is still largely in a state of  contraction.  Putin can puff his flabby chest out all he want, but Russia is no Rome, no industrial Britain.  Russia, large as it is, doesn't have the resource-constraints of an island Britain or a Japan to drive it on to overseas conquests.  And it doesn't have the ideological motivation of a Nazi Germany or its own predecessor the USSR for empire-building, nor even the putative motivation of US empire in 'spreading democracy.'  Why, unless Putin is a complete maniac, would Russia be so stupid as to roll out the tanks into Europe ?

I meant it, that I don't fear Vladimir Putin.  I don't like the bastard, I don't think he's 'a good person', I despise his treatment of the LGBT community, his record on civil liberties, his targeting of political enemies, and I don't trust him as such, but I do on the basis of his past action see him as a rational actor.  As he moves the various (likely to him, disposable) pieces around on the chessboard, Putin is a ruthless player, but not so far as I can tell, ever a reckless one.

---

Now, for the caveat: Donald Fucking Trump.

I don't know to what degree the Russians may have worked with his campaign, or whether they might have some hold over him via bribery or blackmail.***  The fact that they not so much wanted him as President per se, but far more obviously Did Not Want Fucking Russophobic Warmonger Hillary, I don't blame them for, and the idea that of all the factors in the election, from Hillary's own inappropriateness as a candidate to the GOP suppression of the vote, we would focus on supposed Russian hacking as responsible for Hillary's loss, I find laughable.  And ooh, CIA goons, shock horror, RT is involved in producing state-propaganda, that tends to favour Russian interests over the West ?...No Shit !  But...if only via Paul Manafort, there do seem to be ties between the Donald and the Kremlin; there is reason for suspicion.

And, I have to say this...Trump potentially changes everything.  Trump is the wildest of wild cards, and could destabilise the global order seven ways from Sunday with any given tweet, never mind access to nukes.  And Trump is on the record, questioning the relevance or necessity of NATO.  Personally, I'm not sure myself whether NATO should have continued post Cold War****, but all my past calculations regarding the actions of Russia & other possible hostile powers have been posited at least in part on an assumption that the shared military & nuclear deterrent of NATO would hold.  Disbanding or neutering the NATO deterrent at this point in time would seems to me incredibly reckless (more so or less so than massing NATO forces on Russia's border as idiot Obama & the EU currently doing debatable), let alone in concert w/encouraging nuclear proliferation in the Far East & Middle East, but...idiot Americans decided to elect maniac Trump, and such ill-thought-out policies does he bring.

I still don't particularly fear Putin, but then again, I don't live in Eastern Europe...  I couldn't blame them back in the (well, still technically in for a few more days) relatively safe era of Obama for being wary of Putin & the Kremlin at least.  Back when I assumed the NATO alliance would endure well into the foreseeable future.  If that alliance goes away, or is significantly weakened...if the immediate threat of Mutually Assured Destruction is removed ?...

Well, I still don't think it likely that even then Putin would be stupid enough to invade & occupy the Baltic states, never mind Poland...Germany...  Empire, as I said, is Expensive.  But...some more localised disturbance, on the pretext say of protecting Russian citizens, Russian speakers, some version of the strategy of frozen conflicts ?  Some interference in the political process, an attempt to install political figures friendly to Russian interests...?  If I lived in the Baltics right now, in the soon-to-be Trump era, yeah, I'd be at least a little worried.  Live nowhere near, and I'm fucking terrified, but again, in my case,...of Donald, not Vlad.

The point of all of this ?  Nothing more than to set out where I stand on these issues currently, how I see events possibly playing out.  And, even in the era of the Cheeto King Trump, advising caution, that we treat Putin and the Russians generally as respected adversaries, and as proven rational actors, rather than as cartoon-supervillains.  Putin's hold on power won't last; Nor will Trump's.  One way or another, the earth will dawn on a day neither of said authoritarian arseholes hold sway over their respected peoples.  I'd rather the reason therefor were not the nuclear annihilation of all human civilisation.



* And if you believe that there wasn't a coordinated effort between the US & Saudi in this regard...

** Hint, hint...South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Crimea...not only not hostile territory to Russia, but friendly.

*** If the CIA et al do have any further potentially damaging info. or rumours on Trump, I would suggest they release it post haste, to pre-empt any blackmail, and to let Trump deal with the embarrassment whilst he still lacks actual nukes at his disposal.

**** It could have been maintained as more of a Northern alliance, if we had pursued closer friendlier relations & possible alliance w/a certain large country of similar cultural origins, but neither here nor there now...

The Sky is Falling !!!

Okay, so the 22 Minutes piece isn't exactly high art, but you get the point perhaps.  Just fourteen years ago, we watched terrorists crash jet-airliners into and bring down skyscrapers in Manhattan, with thousands dead.  Watched people throwing themselves from windows to escape the smoke & flames.  It hurt.  It shocked.  It scarred us.  And we reacted in panic, rushing through new security-powers, turning ourselves into cattle in our airports, starting two wars, one of which hasn't quite ended even today, and the other of which helped birth ISIS.

We endured those attacks, far greater and more traumatic than those in Paris, and some of us at least, had mind to later regret our initial hasty rush to act, our temptation to give in to the demands of politicians who promised to keep us safe.  Our stupid willingness to give the terrorists exactly what they fucking wanted.  To be terrified into undermining that which makes Western society great, and waging what they could easily portray as a war on the Muslim world.

And now here we are again, having seemingly learned nothing in the years since.  We have even worse politicians calling for more extreme action, demanding that we surrender what remains of our civil liberties in the name of security.  We have the same incessant drumbeat for MOAR WAR.  And we have an even more lunatic bunch of fanatical crazies trying to goad us into the clash of civilisations they so desperately desire.

We overreacted then, and we're on the verge of overreacting now.  Calm the fuck down people, for all our sakes.

Schrank: Justice Delayed

Salon: Putin might be right on Syria

Meant to have this up much earlier, but editing this b* down is not easy, which is a compliment.  The best option ended up being to simply lop off the latter part, which referred to the wisdom of Messrs. Gordon Adams & Stephen Walt on said crisis.  Maybe just read what they have to say and ignore anything below...

...

Very simply, we have one secular nation helping to defend what remains of another, by invitation, against a radical Islamist insurgency that, were it to succeed, would condemn those Syrians who cannot escape to a tyranny of disorder rooted in sectarian religious animosities. And we have the great power heretofore dominant in the region hoping that the insurgency prevails. Its policy across the region, indeed, appears to rest on leveraging these very animosities.

Now we can add the names back in.

In the past week Russia has further advanced its support of Bashar al-Assad with intensified bombing runs and cruise missiles launched from warships in the Caspian Sea. Not yet but possibly, Russian troops will deploy to back the Syrian army and its assorted allies on the ground. This has enabled government troops to begin an apparently spirited new offensive against the messy stew of Islamist militias arrayed against Damascus.

It was a big week for Washington, too. First it pulled the plug on its $500 million program to train a “moderate opposition” in Syria—admittedly a tough one given that Islamists with guns in their hands tend to be immoderate. Instantly it then begins to send weapons to the militias it failed to train, the CIA having “lightly vetted” them—as it did for a time in 2013, until that proved a self-defeating mistake.

The fiction that moderates lurk somewhere continues. Out of the blue, they are now called “the Syrian Arab Coalition,” a moniker that reeks of the corridors in Langley, Virginia, if you ask me.

In Turkey, meantime, the Pentagon’s new alliance with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan government starts to play out just as the Turkish prime minister intended. All the persuasive signs are that the government was responsible for bombs that killed more than 120 people in Ankara last weekend as they protested Erdoğan’s renewed violence against Turkey’s Kurdish minority. The Middle East’s crisis has just spread into another country.

*

Since Russia reinvigorated its decades-old support for Damascus last month, the vogue among the Washington story-spinners has been to question Putin’s motives. What does Putin—not “Russia” or even “Moscow,” but Putin—want? This was never an interesting question, since the answer seemed clear, but now we have one that truly does warrant consideration.

What does the U.S. want? Why, after four years of effort on the part of the world’s most powerful military and most extensive intelligence apparatus, is Syria a catastrophe beyond anything one could imagine when anti-Assad protests egan in the spring of 2011?

After four years of war—never truly civil and now on the way to proxy—Assad’s Syria is a mangled mess, almost certainly beyond retrieval in its current form. Everyone appears to agree on this point, including Putin and Sergei Lavrov, the Russian leader’s foreign minister. There is no putting this humpty-dumpty back on any wall: The Russians readily acknowledge this, acres of groundless journalism to the contrary notwithstanding.

In the meantime, certain realities are essential to recognize. The Assad government is a sovereign entity. Damascus has the beleaguered bones of a national administration, all the things one does not readily think of as wars unfold: a transport ministry, an education ministry, embassies around the world, a seat at the U.N. In these things are the makings of postwar Syria—which, by definition, means Syria after the threat of Islamic terror is eliminated.

Anyone who doubts this is Russia’s reasoning should consider the Putin-Lavrov proposal for a negotiated transition into a post-Assad national structure. They argue for a federation of autonomous regions representing Sunni, Kurdish and Alawite-Christian populations. Putin made this plain when he met President Obama at the U.N. last month, my sources in Moscow tell me. Lavrov has made it plain during his numerous exchanges with Secretary of State Kerry.

Why would Russia’s president and senior diplomat put this on the table if they were not serious? Their proposed design for post-Assad Syria, incidentally, is a close variant of what Russia and the Europeans favor in Ukraine. In both cases it has the virtue of addressing facts on the ground. These are nations whose internal distinctions and diversity must be accommodated—not denied, not erased, but also not exacerbated—if they are to become truly modern. Russians understand the complexities of becoming truly modern: This has been the Russian project since the 18th century.

In the past week Washington has effectively elected not to support Russia’s new effort to address the Syria crisis decisively. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter’s latest phrase of the moment is “fatally flawed.” If he said it once he said it a dozen times: The Russian strategy is fatally flawed. We heard you the third time, Ash.

As to Obama, he rejects any notion that Washington has effectively ceded leadership on the Syria question—with potentially wider implications—to Moscow. In his much-noted interview with 60 Minutes last weekend, he found Putin foolhardy for risking the lives of Russian soldiers and “spending money he doesn’t have.”

Say what?

Whose strategy in Syria is fatally flawed, Mr. Carter? I assume there is no need to do more than pose the question. (Memo to SecDef: Get a new scriptwriter, someone who allots you more than one assigned phrase a week.)

As to Obama’s remarks, one wishes he were joking. We are $5 trillion into the mess that began with the invasion of Iraq a dozen years ago, and we are counting the fatalities one side or the other of a million. There are roughly 4 million Syrian refugees by the latest count. And Putin’s at fault for risking lives and blowing money? Who puts a smart guy like you up to this, Mr. President?

...

I'm not at all convinced that the Russians really know what they are doing here, or what the endgame looks like, but as for the Americans...

T'would seem that the Obama administration inherited from Bush & Co. the rather naïve view that if various tyrannical despots in the Middle East could be removed with the support of  Western military-aid, that the populations would immediately and unhesitatingly embrace both the West, and secular democracy, despite the historical record, in which revolutions, even well-meaning ones as often as not, if not more often, create worse outcomes than that which went before.  And despite both the existence of relatively widespread animosity towards the United States and the West generally in many of these countries, and the lack of a democratic tradition (the latter a problem for post-Soviet Russia also as we have seen).

The Arab Spring seemed liked it might be going well for a while (as perhaps did the War in Iraq early on), and having seen Qadaffi & Mubarak fall, Western leaders (who had previously sucked up to the same), decided to turn on al Assad, only...he didn't fall right away, and decided to fight instead.  Fight to the death perhaps if it came to it.  Which left the West rooting for the downfall of Assad in a civil war that involved various occasionally overlapping anti-Assad elements, some of which were explicitly Islamist, some more secular, some more or less concerned with ethnic or nationalistic factions, lining up as much against one another as against Assad.

And then the West (by which of course I mean the US) chose the amorphous opposition, not knowing into what it might morph as its champion against Assad a) assuming incorrectly as it happened that Assad would fold quickly, and b) with no awareness of whether the forces arrayed against Assad would ultimately be dominated by more Western-leaning more secular forces, or by the likes of Al Qaeda or ISIS.  Not like we have the history of living memory to look back on or anything for advice...

And so the West bet against Assad, (the now much denounced but recent ally still of the US), and by proxy for an ever amporphous coalition of groups, some of which are no doubt secular and democratic, but others of which would very much like to establish an Islamic caliphate all the way to Spain thank you very much, and if they can do it with donated US weapons, thanks that very much more.

Some of the non-ISIS-aligned & non-al-Qaeda aligned elements may still exist in the coalition against which Russia is currently fighting alongside the 'regime-forces'* & Iranians, but whom would we ask ?  Where/who/what is the leader of the Free Syrian Army ?  Where are the five or six (by most ambitious official military estimates) of the tens of thousands of US-trained opposition-forces meant to be in place by now ?

The US' official position is that Russia's involvement is prolonging the conflict unnecessarily, as if the conflict hadn't already been going on for four years with the US' involvement, and no end in sight.  I read somewhere (some beltway hackery no doubt) some speculation that the Russian involvement might in fact unite the various anti-Assad faction against the foreign 'imperialist' forces, and hasten Assad's removal.  Doubt it much, but even if that were the case, who would put money on the current conflict ending without either a) Western ground-forces having to intervene (likely to no avail in the long term), b) Assad remaining in power for the foreseeable future at least, or c) a victory for Islamist extremists ?

For our more Russophobic friends, we've seen how even the most relatively peaceful transitions from authoritarian dictatorship, can simply replace one dictator with another.  How in the absence of a concerted committed long-term international coalition dedicated to long-term liberal democratic reform, any hopes for a more progressive future may be dashed, even in historically liberal societies... Anyone think the US is willing or able to commit to a Marshall plan for Syria ?

* As in the still legitimate government of Syria under international law

** PS Fuck you any one who is still this far into the twenty-first century defending the mind-blowing incompetence of Microsoft Inc.

*** I hate the very notion of WYSIWYG, at least at it's implemented by our (consistently proven)-not betters.

Inscrutable

As it should be.

So, We Support the Guys in Green, Right ?

Via an article on the Beeb re-assuring us on Obama's behalf that '"Assad must go" to ensure IS defeat'.  I might cry if I were still capable.

And we'll give them arms and train them, only for that materiel & those (very very) few personnel to end up on the other side fighting against us.  I can see now why the UN gave Obama a pre-emptive Nobel Peace Prize.

Our Allies and Enemies

From an article in the Graun. on the continuing disarray (never mind possible first step towards dissolution) of the European Union over the 'refugee crisis'.*

Merkel singled out Turkey as the key to a crisis management strategy and Juncker said the fund-raising would include a billion euros for Ankara.

But Tusk, just returned from Turkey, said money “is not the big problem. It is not as easy as expected.”

Ahmet Davutoğlu, the Turkish prime minister, wrote to the EU leaders on Wednesday demanding bold concessions from the Europeans as the price for Turkey’s possible cooperation. He proposed EU and US support for a buffer and no-fly zone in northern Syria by the Turkish border, measuring 80km by 40km.

This would stymy the Kurdish militias fighting Islamic State in northern Syria and would also enable Ankara to start repatriating some of the estimated 2 million Syrian refugees it is hosting. The militias are allied with the Kurdistan workers’ party (PKK) guerrillas at war with the Turkish state for most of the past 30 years. Ankara reignited the conflict in July after the ruling Justice and Development party (AKP) lost its parliamentary majority in a general election.

“There are many people who doubt the sincerity of their motives,” said a senior EU official. “They’re not offering too much.”

Ah, our good friends in Turkey.  Not ones they to let a crisis go to waste.  Why not use the situation with the refugees as an excuse to further their military-campaign against the Kurds, to date, one of our few effective allies in the fight against ISIS ?  It's not as if the warzone in question were the source of most of the refugees in the first place, after all...Not as if undermining the Kurds would strengthen ISIS and help prolong the fucking war.  And a chance to bully the members of the union they so desperately want to one day join themselves into the bargain ?  Genius.

Er, we did check with the Russians didn't we about where they are operating in the country ?**  Might be good to know before we start trying to enforce a no-fly zone.  Oh, that's right.  We're not talking with Russia...or Iran...or Assad.  'Cos we don't like them.  They not nice.

Fucking grow up already.  Okay, so we have to work with Turkey, because they're 'our ally'...supposedly...not that that should extend to militarily supporting their ongoing efforts to deny the Kurds an independent state.  But just how many countries and factions are fighting in Syria now ?  Just how much more complicated is this likely to become ?  And whilst we are flinging bombs back and forth with abandon, then feigning surprise when vast swaths of the country become depopulated, who are the players on the ground here ?

• Pro-government forces ('Our Enemy')
• ISIS & related jihadist groups ('Our Enemy')
• Iran ('Our Enemy')
• Russia ('Our Enemy')
• The Kurds (Would-be allies, except that we'll sell them out to Turkey)
• Some random rag-tag non-jihadi anti-govt. forces.

No-one see a problem here ?  Not even a little bit ?

Psst...Kerry & Co...So this strategy of yours of not talking to forces we don't like...I'm not sure it's working out so well.  I'm not sure in the context of the current conflict that it isn't in fact totally fucking insane.

Ask yourself these questions: Is getting rid of Assad more important than defeating ISIS ?  Is constraining Russian or Iranian influence more important than defeating ISIS ?  What are our priorities here amidst the rise of this incredibly radical violent group that wants to establish an Islamic Caliphate, and amidst the biggest refugee-crisis since the Second World War ?  And would you not acknowledge that an end to this bloody war in which somehow you a) Limit Iranian & Russian influence in the region, b) Forcibly remove Assad, and c) Defeat ISIS, whilst d) Avoiding US so-called 'boots on the ground' is ever so slightly un-fucking-likely ?

Never mind the inherent lunacy of having the US & Russia acting in the same theatre of war without the strictest cooperation, without clear shared goals.

Admit you fucked up already.  Then get over it...and get serious.  We need pragmatism here, not pride.

* Not to say that there isn't a refugee-crisis, just that what European countries refer to with that phrase, is more to do with the hundreds of thousands crossing European borders, as opposed to the overall crisis to which everyone simply turned a blind eye, so long as it was occurring somewhere else.

** Rhetorical question

*** Feel obligated to include an image of some kind, if only for the mobile version of Blogger.  And that 'toon is Rall at his edgiest best.

You Don't Say

John Kerry softened America’s demand yesterday that Syria’s dictator must step down, declaring that the timing of Bashar al-Assad’s departure was open to negotiation.

The US secretary of state retreated from the earlier US position that Assad’s removal must be the first step towards resolving Syria’s civil war.

He spoke as the regime carried out a series of air strikes near the ancient city of Palmyra, which has fallen into the hands of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil). The Syrian air force flew as many as 25 sorties, killing perhaps 26 people on the ground, including Isil fighters.

Assad has been emboldened by Russia’s decision to provide direct military support. In recent weeks, Russian tanks and troops have been deployed in Syria, along with a small number of advanced jet fighters.

Russia’s goal appears to be to prevent Assad from suffering more battlefield defeats while also complicating any escalation of America’s air campaign against Isil targets in Syria....

Just admit you fucked up already.  Overplayed your hand.  Turning against Assad so soon was a mistake.  And the notion of democracy easily sweeping the Middle East folly.  It's not too late.


And, while we're on the subject of your ineptitude, about Ukraine...

The White House on Dick Cheney & the Iran Deal

Missed this before now somehow.  The music sucks, and I kinda hate conceptually posting something from the White House itself, but the point still needs to be made apparently about the undead corpse of Darth Cheney, and other warmongering neo-con assholes like him, whether they be fellow Ford-admin. revanchists, radicals of the Newt Gingrich 'revolution' in the 'nineties, or latter-day hangers-on like Sarah Palin, that they have been consistently wrong on foreign policy, over and over and again, at the expense not just of the American pocket-book, and thousands of dead US soldiers, but at the expense of millions of civilian lives destroyed, damaged, or displaced, as one society after another is wrecked in their real-life game of Risk.*


* And no, the Obama administration is far, far from blameless, with say its similar reckless destabilisation in Libya & Syria.

Map o' the Day: Europe by Applications for Asylum

Read into this what you will I guess.  European countries mapped according to number of applications for asylum per million inhabitants.

Via Strange Maps, who have details & analysis in English.  Original Source in Dutch.

Fox 'News' on that 'Bad Deal'

So, I find myself wondering*, what does Fox News have to say about the deal the Obama administration has apparently reached with Iran ?  A measured 'let's wait and see, while we digest the details' perhaps ?  No, of course not.

Officials: Iran nuclear deal fuels Middle East arms race, boosts Russia’s influence

Those 'officials' being, apparently, professional neo-con lunatic and bomb-thrower John Bolton, perpetual (to the point that it almost seems like compensation for something) warmonger Lindsey Graham, an obscure first-term senator called Ben Sasse, and some unknown 'intelligence official'.

The newly announced Iran nuclear deal and the negotiations leading up to it already are fueling an all-but-declared nuclear arms race in the Middle East, according to current and former government officials who say the situation also creates an opening for Russia to exert more influence in the region. 

As opposed to the inevitable arms-race that would result in the absence of a deal, as Iran felt compelled to seek a deterrent against an attack by the United States or Israel, and the almost inevitable move of Iran closer into Russia's orbit.

"We have given Iran the path it has been seeking for almost 35 years. The other states in the region are not going to sit idly by, which is why in effect the nuclear arms race is already underway," former U.N. Ambassador and Fox News contributor John Bolton said, adding that Iran and other nations have used civilian nuclear energy programs as cover for covert enrichment programs. 

You've given Iran the path they've been seeking ?  Huh ?  Because, it is so much easier to develop nuclear weapons whilst under international monitoring and scrutiny, than to do so under a covert programme ?

"Every Sunni Arab nation is going to see [a nuclear Iran] as an inevitable outcome," Republican presidential candidate and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said. "The worst possible outcome of the deal would be to create a nuclear arms race in the Mideast where Sunni Arabs feel threatened." 

Why would they see that, unless they were getting their information from Fox News & Bibi ?  I certainly hope they have far better sources of intellligence than that.  A nuclear arms-race is the inevitable outcome of no deal, as Iran clearly sees a nuclear weapon as the only effective deterrent against an attack by the US and/or Israel (and the desire in the West for 'regime-change' in Tehran, at any cost, with or without the nuclear issue, is real and clear), as neither the US nor Israel is willing currently to wage an actual ground-war against Iran to prevent it obtaining a weapon, and as the completely hypothetical 'better deal' imagined by the Republicans & Likudniks seems to require the total capitulation of Iran to Western interests.  Short of the West being willing to threaten Tehran with an actual nuclear assault, there is nothing, no amount of bombings, no amount of sanctions that will ever bring that about, without massive expenditure and loss of lives by the West.

Your choices are as they ever were: war, nuclear war, or an attempt at least at diplomacy.  Here's hoping that the grownups retain control of the White House for the next couple of electoral cycles.


* Is there such a thing as a rhetorical lie ?

Just Madness Everywhere

2015, and we still seemingly have racially motivated attacks on historically black churches in the Southern United States. Wonder what the cooling-off-period is between a shooting and the inevitable right-wing response that it all could have been prevented if only everyone were armed.  Elementary Schools, Universities...why not Churches ?  Arm the congregation and clergy alike.

Elsewhere in the news, Hong Kong still seemingly hasn't come to terms with the consequences of returning to mainland-rule and the fact that the PRC never had any intention whatsoever of allowing actual democracy to prevail under its rule, even in its special administrative regions,...NATO is continuing its lunatic tit-for-tat escalation with Russia by acting out war-games off the coast of Kaliningrad,...and bankers Goldman Sachs are attempting to show how humane they are and how great their concern for their staffinterns desperate for any foothold on the jobs-ladder to pay off student-debt, by insisting that they only work a maximum seventeen-hour workday.

And then there's this:

The increasingly tense relationship between the United States and Russia might be about to face a new challenge: a Russian investigation into American moon landings.

In an op-ed published by Russian newspaper Izvestia, Vladimir Markin, a spokesman for the government's official Investigative Committee, argued that such an investigation could reveal new insights into the historical space journeys.

According to a translation by the Moscow Times, Markin would support an inquiry into the disappearance of original footage from the first moon landing in 1969 and the whereabouts of lunar rock, which was brought back to Earth during several missions.

“We are not contending that they did not fly [to the moon], and simply made a film about it. But all of these scientific — or perhaps cultural — artifacts are part of the legacy of humanity, and their disappearance without a trace is our common loss. An investigation will reveal what happened,” Markin wrote, according to the Moscow Times translation.

Er, what, why ?.

So, why is Investigative Committee member Markin speculating about conspiracy theories surrounding US moon landings that happened decades ago? In his op-ed, the Russian official also emphasized that “US authorities had crossed a line by launching a large-scale corruption probe targeting nine Fifa officials,” according to the Moscow Times.

We're descending to this level of pettiness in our new cold war already ?

Well, why ever not ?  The US hadn't even started its war in Iraq (you know the one I mean, don't quibble) before it was going after its own erstwhile allies with that 'freedom fries' & 'old Europe' nonsense.  This is how we do geopolitics in the twenty-first century apparently.  The grownups left the game long ago.

Nina Paley: This Land is Mine

Was looking for something else entirely, but this piece by Nina Paley is a classic, and arguably says something more universal about us humans, than the specific historical/spatial context might imply.


Sita Sings the Blues is worth checking out as well, if you like her style.

Madness

Well you lunatics in DC & the EU wanted a new Cold War, and now you have it.  Good news for the military-industrial complex.

MOSCOW — Russia's military will add over 40 new intercontinental ballistic missiles this year alone that are capable of piercing any missile defenses, President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday in a blunt reminder of the nation's nuclear might amid tensions with the West over Ukraine.

Putin spoke at the opening of an arms show at a shooting range in Alabino just west of Moscow, a huge display intended to showcase Russia's resurgent military.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg accused the Russians of "nuclear saber-rattling," and said that was one of the reasons the western military alliance has been beefing up its ability to defend its members.

So, something the Russians just announced in response to your recent promise of permanently placing more tanks and heavy artillery in Eastern Europe is the reason for you doing the same ?  What crazy circular logic is that ?  It's called tit-for-tat you fools.  And it's as stupid a game in which to participate as Russian roulette.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, briefing reporters via teleconference from Boston, where he is recovering from surgery on a broken leg, called Putin's announcement concerning.

"We're trying to move in the opposite direction," Kerry said. "We have had enormous cooperation from the 1990s forward with respect to the structure of nuclear weapons in the former territories of the Soviet Union. And no one wants to see us step backwards."

You lying sack of shit !  Sorry, but chutzpah doesn't describe it.  There just isn't a word sufficient for such shameless lying.  Not that our stenographer-media in the West will call him on it.

But now that the nasty Russians are building more missiles, you'll have to announce another escalation on your part, won't you ?  To which the Russians will respond, to which you will respond, and so on...

...Until mushroom-clouds grace the skylines of every major metropolis.  Whee !

What a Surprise

The Chilcot report has taken six years and cost £10m but is “unlikely to be published for another year at least”, according to sources close to the inquiry.

The Independent on Sunday understands the inquiry is still asking the Cabinet Office to declassify documents, suggesting that the report into the Iraq war is still being written.

David Cameron is now under pressure to scrap the inquiry.

...

It's never coming out, is it ?

Sir John was appointed by prime minister Gordon Brown to examine British involvement in Iraq, and “to identify lessons that can be learned” in July 2009, when British combat operations in Iraq ended.

Originally expected to report before the 2010 election, the inquiry found itself engaged in a huge task of surveying British foreign policy between 2001 and 2009. It took evidence from witnesses from November 2009 to July 2010, and then in a second round in January and February 2011. Although it has seen all the papers for which it has asked, it was drawn into long negotiations with Sir Gus O’Donnell and his successor as Cabinet Secretary, Sir Jeremy Heywood, over what documents it could publish. Agreement on editing letters and transcripts of conversations between Mr Blair and George W Bush was only reached less than a year ago.

By the end of this year, the inquiry will have been sitting for longer than British combat troops were deployed to Iraq.

Photo Op by kennardphillipps at Catalyst: Contemporary Art and War exhibition at IWM North Photograph: kennardphillipps/Reuters

Terrifying Numbers for NATO

And yes, they terrify me, critic as I may be of our general insanity towards Russia post-Cold War, and our specific insanity regarding the situation in Ukraine.

Public opinion in some European countries could be reluctant to support collective defence for fellow Nato members if they were to be attacked by Russia, according to a new international survey.

The report by the Pew Research Center - a non-partisan US think-tank based in Washington DC - surveyed attitudes in North America and across Europe as well as Ukraine and Russia to assess public attitudes towards the current Ukraine crisis.

...

Among Western allies, it includes Europe's six largest Nato members (France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and the UK) as well as the United States and Canada.

While some of its findings are in keeping with other recent surveys, it also throws up what may be noteworthy trends.

What is particularly striking is the reluctance among many of those surveyed in Europe to get drawn into a deeper military conflict with Russia - either in Ukraine, or elsewhere on European soil.

Perhaps the most interesting finding is in answer to the question: "If Russia got into a serious military conflict with one of its neighbouring countries which is a Nato ally, should our country use force to defend it?"

This relates to a core principle of Nato's founding treaty of 1949, the "Article Five" which states that: "An armed attack on one… shall be considered an attack against them all".

On average in Europe, only 48% of those polled - less than half - backed the idea of their country using force to come to the aid of another Nato country attacked by Russia.

Among the countries surveyed Germany is the most reluctant: 58% of those polled said they did not think their country should use military force to defend a Nato ally against Russia.

France too was unenthusiastic - 53% of those polled were opposed.

Even in Britain - often seen as a staunch Nato member - less than 50% supported the idea of using force to help another member of the alliance under attack.

Although maybe the complete disconnect between public attitudes towards Russia and support for military action helps explain why so many fail to understand how fundamentally dangerous the expansion of NATO is and was.

Just What the Hell Do You Idiots Think a Military Alliance is for, People ?  It's not a social club !

An Attack On One is an Attack On All.  Which is why we (should) very carefully consider membership.  There is no right to membership in a military alliance.  There is no fundamental obligation to extend membership in a military alliance.  This is Life & Death here.  Quite possibly the survival or not of the entire Human Fucking Race at stake if we get it wrong.

And lest we forget, the entanglement of military alliances is how we started the Great War (aka World War I) just over a century ago.  Will we ever learn ?...

War Is Peace, Freedom is Slavery

These two sentences piqued my interest in this piece about Jeb Bush.


Bush advisers say Poland is an economic success story, a home to outsourced labor of German manufacturers that's warily watching Russia's aggression toward former Eastern bloc states. 

&

"Both the United States and the European Union are confronted by legitimate security concerns and middle-class concerns, including lack of wage growth," said Kristen Silverberg, a Bush adviser and former ambassador to the European Union during President George W. Bush's second term. 


Yes, the United States and the European Union are very concerned about 'middle-class concerns' such as 'lack of wage growth.'  So much so that they consistently pursue policies that will inevitably keep wages low.

Such as new mass trade-deals.  Such as the United States looking the other way during the first decade of the new century, whilst millions and millions of illegal immigrants flooded across the southern border, providing cheap and compliant labour on the low-end of the labour-market (and whilst also using visas and outsourcing agreements on the higher end).  And such, as the European Union expanding ever further eastwards in the pursuit of amongst other things, cheap labour.

Those Polish workers can work for less than the Germans they displaced, in part because of a lower cost of living.  But inevitably they are going to want a higher standard of living, are going to be more choosy in what work they do and under what conditions.  And as their standard of living equalises with the likes of Deutschland, there's inevitably pressure for new frontiers in cheap labour.

And there, right to the east of Poland is Ukraine.  What is the Western interest in Ukraine ?  Well, four things really*:

1. Containment of Russia (all ridiculous claims to the contrary aside)
2. New markets for Western goods
3. Natural resources, and...
4. Cheap labour.

For the West, Ukraine must join the EU.  Turkey must join the EU.  Georgia, which doesn't even have a foothold on the European sub-continent, must join the EU.  Why ?  Because, profit.  Even more so than the desire to contain Russia, profit.  Always profit über alles.

And one of the biggest drags on profits is always those pesky workers with their whining about wanting living wages, whining about wanting time off because they had babies, then wanting time off to spend with their children, wanting healthcare for their families, education for their children, wanting to be able to one day retire without having to live in a freezing apartment in winter subsiding on catfood.  Damn greedy workers !

And so the European Union is seemingly willing to risk everything, even possibly nuclear war, over adding the largest possible prize in the subcontinent into its mix.  A union that was created in the aftermath of the Second World War explicitly as an attempt to prevent further war.  But...profit.


* You may note that there is no mention on this list of Ukrainian aspirations for freedom, for more democracy, for a better life.  That is because the West frankly does not give a shit.

A Perfect Circle: Counting Bodies Like Sheep to the Rhythm of the War Drums

This one could/should maybe be saved for the next insane war, but, at this point, 'the war' is...every day.  And the need for reminders is perpetual.  So, given that it came up in the mix, why the hell not ?

Replacing the face in the last frames of the video isn't that difficult whether you replace them with that of Barry or that of Sir Plasticface.  Ever and ever as it was.

Tariq Aziz

Not a fan, but thought this was worth remembering: That within recent living memory, one of the leading figures in a majority-Arab, majority-Muslim government in the Middle East was a Christian.  Today, the few remaining Christians in many countries in that part of the world are being murdered en masse.  Including and perhaps especially in Iraq...

RIP

We Are All Collectively Insane

U.S. might deploy missiles in Europe to counter Russia

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Obama administration is weighing a range of aggressive responses to Russia's alleged violation of a Cold War-era nuclear treaty, including deploying land-based missiles in Europe that could pre-emptively destroy the Russian weapons.

The Russians' violations of Cold War-agreements huh ?  You really want to go there ?  Really ?  No, no,...really...?

This "counterforce" option is among possibilities the administration is considering as it reviews its entire policy toward Russia in light of Moscow's military intervention in Ukraine, its annexation of Crimea and other actions the U.S. deems confrontational in Europe and beyond.

The options go so far as one implied - but not stated explicitly - that would improve the ability of U.S. nuclear weapons to destroy military targets on Russian territory.

Yippee !!!

Wait, what weapons exactly are we talking about here ?  That word, pre-emptive...I don't like that word.  It calls to mind another era, in a very very bad way.