Wednesday, October 9, 2019

Checks And Imbalances

Unchecked,

Tom Luongo thinks/is-hopeful that Trumps tweets about getting out of Syria indicate that he has gained enough power within the security-state to take some actions of his choosing. Luongo also says that Trump appears to have nothing to lose by acting-as-president, with quasi-impeachment-hearings proceeding without a vote. All or nothing.

​ ​President Donald J. Trump spoke with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey by telephone. Turkey will soon be moving forward with its long-planned operation into Northern Syria. The United States Armed Forces will not support or be involved in the operation, and United States forces, having defeated the ISIS territorial “Caliphate,” will no longer be in the immediate area.
​ ​Turkey will now be responsible for all ISIS fighters in the area captured over the past two years in the wake of the defeat of the territorial “Caliphate” by the United States.
​ ​This actually is not a surprise. Trump had tried several times to remove the U.S. from Syria and was only held back by the borg. Last December then Secretary of Defense James Mattis resigned when Trump ordered the troops to leave Syria. I do not expect anything similar to happen now.
​ ​Turkey long wanted to move into the Syrian border area east of the Euphrates. It sees the YPG resistance group, with whom the U.S. allied to go after ISIS, as a threat to its country. That view is justified.
​ ​Erdogan wants to take a 30 kilometer deep strip including the M4 highway which runs west to east in that area.
​ ​But the border area Erdogan marked is quite populated with some 850,000 people living there. Most of them are Kurds.
​ ​Turkey wants to replace those Kurds with the Syrian mob that it armed and supported against the Syrian government troops. These people and their families currently live in Turkey. To move them into north Syria would be one of the largest ethnic cleansing operation the world has seen in recent times.
​ ​A saying goes "The Kurds have no friends but the mountains." But there are no mountains in Syria's north east. While the YPG might want to fight off a Turkish invasion they have little chance to succeed. The land is flat and the YPG forces only have light arms.
​ ​There is only one solution for them. They will have to call up the Syrian government and ask it to come back into the north east. That would remove the Turkish concerns and would likely prevent further Turkish moves.

​The Deep State walks Trump back again. "Just moving some of our guys out of Turkey's way".
A SENIOR ADMINISTRATION official on an organized call with reporters appeared to contradict President Donald Trump about Syria policy late Monday, refuting interpretations of his statements from earlier in the day that prompted broad outrage from supporters and opponents alike.  

​The illegal weapons rat-line into Syria, to arm the ISIS caliphate and assorted "good terrorists" is laid out again in detail. It is US and UK covert operations, as usual.
​ Arms Watch published emails exposing how British shell companies were used as cover for a US government program to arm militants in Syria, called in internal memos 'Task Force Smoking Gun'.
 Years after the height of the CIA billion dollar program 'Timber Sycamore', and after the US Department of Defense 'Train and Equip' program, more and more details of the nuts and bolts of covert aid to jihadists in the Levant are falling into place.

Is the second CIA "whistleblower" John Bolton?

Israeli politics has been jammed recently. This article has good detail on those political processes. Johnathan Cook
​ ​The reality is that there is strong unity in Israel – over shared, deeply ugly attitudes towards Palestinians, whether citizens or those under occupation. Paradoxically, the only obstacle to realising that unity is Netanyahu’s efforts to cling to power.  
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/10/03/why-israel-is-struggling-to-find-a-way-out-of-its-political-deadlock/  

A few days old, but useful information. Israel has been attacking Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, frustrated by the formation of a "Shia Crescent" of political solidarity from Iran to Syria.
 During the last five days there have been protest all over the south of Iraq where the majority of the people are Shia. The protest escalated within a few days into shootings with over a hundred killed. In several cities party and government offices were burned and various groups hustle to take a position in the "leaderless" movement.
 There are legitimate reasons for protests. The majority of the people in Iraq is younger than 20 years. The people have little chance of finding a job. The state is weak and many of its actors are corrupt. Services the state is supposed to provide don't get delivered. Electricity and water supply is often sparse.
 But those are not the reasons why the protests immediately escalated into violence:
Liz Sly @LizSly - 22:19 UTC · Oct 4, 2019
Many Iraqi protesters are complaining of unknown snipers targeting them from rooftops, and it's possible they are aiming at both the demonstrators & the security forces.
Quote: Reporting Iraq @TFPOI · Oct 4
Protestors are confirming the use of snipers from buildings, targeting protesters approaching Tahrir Square.
A young man was killed by the use of snipers.
Evidence in the form of a photo can be seen.
#iraq #baghdad #save_the_iraqi_people
During the 2014 U.S. coup in Ukraine the same method was used to inflame the country.
 
Turkey Joins Russia's Ruble-Based Alternative To SWIFT

​ ​Brexit talks have come to an abrupt halt in Brussels days after the British government demanded intensive negotiations on Boris Johnson’s proposals.
​ ​Sources on both sides confirmed that no meetings between the negotiating teams were scheduled. There are 22 days to go before the UK is due to leave the EU.
​ ​Discussions between EU and UK officials had been held almost daily since the prime minister and the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, met for lunch in Luxembourg in mid-September.


MPs will be called to Parliament for a special Saturday sitting in a decisive day for the future of Brexit.
​ ​Parliament will meet on 19 October after a crunch EU summit - seen as the last chance for the UK and EU to agree a deal ahead of 31 October deadline.
​ ​If a deal is agreed, Boris Johnson will ask MPs to approve it - but if not, a range of options could be presented.
​​The BBC's Laura Kuenssberg says these could include leaving without a deal, and halting Brexit altogether.


​Jim Kunstler:
​ The political disorder spooling out is the political expression of the long emergency that the nation faces as it finally encounters the limits to growth we were warned about decades ago. The techno-industrial phase of history is ending, and we are left only with inadequate fantasies for coming to terms with it and moving forward. The dynamic relationship between affordable energy supplies and the operations of money roils at the core of this predicament. They are undoing each other and the result will be a contraction of human activity. The big question we refuse to face is how to cope with  contraction.
https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/a-hard-rain/  

​Denying Reality​

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