G7, G-what?

By snubbing the most important imperial tool for governability (aside NATO but not really different from NATO), Donald Trump is throwing rocks at his own roof, because it's hard to see how would the USA project its power through the world without the G7. G7 is the backbone of NATO, all its members except Japan (the backbone of "Eastern NATO" on its own right) are major NATO powers and that's why the G7 exists and why it has been instrumental to establish US imperial hegemony over the world. Trump is destroying that, and I for one welcome it, even not without some vertigo, as all major changes should inspire. 

The pouting face of Merkel, the tears of British newspapers crying foul about Brexit and the non-existent "special relationship" (bootlicking vassallage I call it, because Britain gets nothing from its subservience to the USA) and then of course the stupid childish face of Trump himself, they are all very worth a sinking global system that was already sinking anyhow, so why to spare this old man the joys of laughing at this childish game of armchairs?

NATO was already cracking, notably because of the major difficulties that the Berlin-Washington relation undergoes as the USA and its most loyal puppets (France, Britain) have rampaged with no criterion across the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, against Libya, Syria and Russia. Remember how Italy and Germany rejected to join the adventurerist toppling of Muamar el Gaddafi, mostly because it was an attack on Italian interests in favor of French and British ones? Most people don't grasp this well: they tend to think in terms of unilateral imperialism but imperialism is always multilateral, multipolar, and it always leads to conflict and wars (even if nukes seem to prevent major global wars, smaller localized wars and the ever growing "cold war" tension is certainly there); in the case of Libya, it was Italy the main loser (after Libya itself, of course) and Germany was already upset enough to align themselves with Rome rather than with the big boss in Washington D.C.

That's because Germany, as manufacturer-exporter power, has a very long history of searching for all kinds of markets and one of them used to be Iran. And who have therefore harmed US/EU sanctions against Iran? Germany among others. And it is exactly the same with the anti-Russia sanctions but I'd dare to say that even much more severe. Germany has been a good dog anyhow and bowed to what master commanded, albeit reluctantly, but this was only or mostly because the other markets it had access to compensated. But now? With all this Trumptard "nationalism" in form of tariffs, what will keep Germany in line? The military occupation? Well, it does not seem enough: if Germany says "US and NATO bases out" it's hard to see how NATO will be able not to comply. They'd move just a few steps away to Poland but that's another story.

But of course Germany does not want that because NATO and EU are extremely imbricated with each other, and Germany needs EU, which is its primary market and a major pillar of its imperialist policy, what Varoufakis called the "postmodern IV Reich". So basically Trumptard Washington is playing with fire and putting Germany between a rock and a hard place: threatening to blow up Germany's most prized market and subservient sphere of influence (EU, which will blow up anyhow on its own contradictions, sooner than later: watch Italy, remember Brexit, ponder Spain about to blow up in pieces, look at the massive strikes and related street fights in France) if Germany does not behave as a bootlicking slave of the USA. 

And Germany does but there will be a point where it won't anymore. When and how is that? Probably not very far away in time. I already explained how Trump wants to destroy the EU and make sure Europe becomes a colony of the US empire, at least to a much larger degree it has been so far (because of the cold war cum class war of the mid 20th century, and also the transition from a Europe-centered world to a US-centered one), and it is clear that the EU will blow up in pieces soonish (something that the US wants but while keeping NATO as intact as possible, what may not be possible). 

Another crack in NATO is Turkey. Turkey is under Erdogan almost identical to Nazi Germany in its arrogant warmongering and incontrollability (and Erdogan makes no secret of his admiration for the German genocider). All major powers love (and secretly hate) Erdogan because of that: the USA wants Turkey to remain in NATO and keep aiding them to de-stabilize the Middle East, Russia wants Turkey to leave NATO and especially to be "independent" enough to act as their ally, including in the infamous "Pipelinistan", which is another facet of imperialism. But the most coveted asset of Turkey are the straits (Bosphorus-Marmara-Dardanelles) that join the Aegean and Black seas, of critical importance to Russia since times immemorial.

So we have the following cocktail of instability:

1. The USA wanting to reform the Empire in favor of the metropolis even at rist of destroying the Empire itself.
2. Germany wanting to get their way in both exploiting the EU as a semi-colony and being allowed to have unrestricted business with Russia, Iran, etc., this last against the will of the Imperial master, now asserting itself as "iron fist" madman in charge and reminding everybody else they are nothing but minions.
3. Turkey playing to be the Muslim version of Nazi Germany and being flirted by a despaired former lover (USA) and an aspiring new lover (Russia).
4. Latin Europe exploding at slow motion but in ways that seem impossible to stop. This happens in different ways in each state but it happens all across the region (except for Portugal, where social-democracy with a green touch has made the country gain stability).
5. Poland playing to be Mussolini's Italy in Eastern Europe, with full backing of the USA but directly in contradiction since long ago with the interests of Germany (and of course, those of Russia). 
6. Britain drifting aimlessly between the Brexiter despair, the Corbynist hope and the nearly total indifference by all its "allies", including the USA.

And then of course in the background is China, whose local expression in Europe typically comes by the name of Russia. Mind you that Russia would prefer a more balanced independent role but that the USA has cornered it against the all-embracing arms of China. Remember that no long ago the G7 used to be called the G8... but then Russia was kicked out.

Probably the most crucial element in all this is the weakness of Germany as power: it is an economic powerhouse that cannot assert itself against its master and overlord the USA. Or can it? And, if so, how? Nobody, as far as I know, defends in Germany a more belligerant and independent stand... yet. But, on the other side, it seems like there is no alternative for Germany than actually becoming more belligerant. However becoming more belligerant, asserting itself as power by means other than economic and diplomatic would not just break taboos but actually would initially cause its global market share to shrink dramatically. And those are the marked cards Trump is playing with: you may pout all you want, Angela, but if you dare to do anything, you won't sell a single Volkswagen or Siemens thing in the USA, and your darling EU house of cards may easily fall down with a single but determined blow.

The question is: can the USA survive that kind of upheaval of its own imperial structure? My bet is that it cannot and that it's actually only doing that out of desperation because it's already riddled with holes and problems it can hardly overcome.

DAESH is finished, what next?

The so-called Islamic State (DAESH by its Arab acronym) will be finished in a matter of weeks: Mosul is being liberated without almost any resistance, Kurdo-Arab forces have cut off Raqqa from Deir-el-Zor, Turkey marches on Al Bab along with their Al-Qaeda "moderate opposition" militias, while Syria is also force-marching to cut the Turkish advance on their sovereign territory, as well as against Palmyra. On top of that the USA has been mass-bombing Raqqa itself (and nope, nobody has cried about the "humanitarian situation" this time). There is no coalition but a general recognition that DAESH is the legitimate target, which each one is using for their own purposes. 

Military situation in Syria around February 12 per Wikimedia Commons (author: Ermanarich)

The expected end-game situation will be a partition of Syria in three areas: the main one under the legitimate Baath government, a very sizable chunk in the Northeast (plus a Kurdish enclave in the Northwest) under independent Kurdo-Arab control (Syrian Democratic Forces) and a strip of the rural Northwest under Turkish control and that of their allied militias who until recently flew the banner of Al Qaeda. 

DAESH will be then limited to dormant cells and a few guerrilla enclaves in Africa and Yemen, which may well turn their allegiance towards Al Qaeda/Turkey/Saudia/USA again or suffer the consequences. 

My big question is what next for Syria. I'm uncertain that Damascus and the YPG can get along once the common enemy has been smashed, although it will remain in the form of the FSA (Al Qaeda) and Turkey, they may both feel powerless to fight against the Turkish regional power and their NATO fallback line. Surely that won't dissuade the Kurds, who are in open war against Turkey (not by whim but because Erdogan imposed it) but I'm quite uncertain that Syria, which has not fought for the Golan Heights in many decades, was pushed out of Lebanon and has been struggling to win the "civil war" without support (Russian intervention proved decisive, no doubt) is ready to fight against the much stronger Islamo-Fascist Turkey of Erdogan. 

So my guess is that it will settle in some sort of unstable status quo, with Damascus demanding the pull back of Turkey with words rather than action, Turkey demanding "dialogue" (i.e. concesions to Islamo-Fascism and Turkmen tiny minorities) just to delay any retreat, Kurds growingly confronted with Turkey as leftover weapons and hardened warriors flow into the North of the country under Ankara's occupation, Turkey pressuring Syria to do something about it, Syria rebuilding while it looks at both sides between amused and concerned, etc. It's possible even that the Syrian Army and the SDF join forces to finally expel both "moderate" Islamo-Fascists and Turkish troops from Syrian territory but there will be no doubt a lot of distrust. 

Unless NATO collapses in the meantime (that would be very nice indeed but most unlikely), the Baghdad Railroad line (Turco-Syrian border) is a red line that Syrian forces will never cross, nor will Russian air forces if involved, only Kurds will because for them that border does not exist, just as they do not seem to exist as nation for the rest of the world. 

In any case the murderer, torturer, rapists and slavers DAESH will be gone for good. And that is indeed good. I can just hope that they arrest them as they flow back into Europe and other places, instead of letting them in as their Western protectors usually do, with the obvious intention of using them as pretext to implement every day more extremist dictatorial measures such as the permanent state of emergency in effect in France and to prop up the extremist Christo-Fascists and outright Nazis that seem to be groomed to replace the current constitutional regimes, once these are exhausted, as has happened in the USA with Trump, in Poland with Duda, etc.

Sadly enough hope alone won't do much.

Naval Empire, no functional Navy?

A few days ago I read that all of Britain's Trident class nuclear submarines are out of order (except one that is on trial). Granted that the info comes from The Sun but these days it's even possible that such a tabloid has better info than Prime Minister May. 

Alright, Britain has been decaying for a century or so, guess that it is a bit shocking but more or less within expectations. But today I read that more than half of US Navy aircraft and almost two thirds of the class F/A 18, which provide striking power to the famed or infamous US aircraft carriers, which allow the US Empire to extend its power projection to about all the planet, are out of service.

In this case the source is not a sensationalist newspaper but Defense News, a medium oriented to military personnel and contractors primarily. While it is normal that around 1/4 or even up to 1/3 of the aricraft are routinely undergoing maintenance at any moment, these figures are twice the normal and could severely hamper the operating capabilities of the feared US Navy. 

And this is what we get to know. How real is the power projection of the USA and its NATO-plus makeshift empire? Is The Empire a giant with feet of clay? 

Let's not forget that the power of the US dollar depends on its Navy and vice-versa: that the power of the US Armed Forces depend on the primacy of the green buck over all other currencies, because that's how they manage to export inflation and borrow infinitely from nowhere. This is no trivial matter at all.

NATO's Auditor General murdered while investigating finances of terrorism

Chandelon and NATO flag

Yves Chandelon probably step a bit to deep into the shadow government of NATO, loosely known as Gladio Network, never dismantled nor properly investigated and seemingly each day more aggressive and totalitarian.

The high accountant was found over 62 miles from Lens, the city where he lived — and nearly 87 miles from his place of work in Luxembourg. Chandelon also owned three registered firearms, but an unregistered weapon was discovered near his body, reports Global Research, echoing the Free Thought Project.

... more bizarrely it has been reported locally that the gun which killed him was found in the glovebox of the vehicle, says the Daily Express. 

It is a clear case of murder with a poor pretense for "suicide". 

Most likely the Auditor General found who was actually financing the terror attacks in Germany and France that have shattered Europe in the last months, and probably these were the very same "deep state" of NATO that finances DAESH and Al Qaeda terrorist networks in Syria and fascist criminals in Ukraine. And quite probably he was ready to report, to speak out, else he would have been spared (no need to call attention unless you must... or are a lousy criminal). 

Of course, these conclusions are provisional and speculative but we do have hints in strange circumstances surrounding the terrorist attacks on French soil particularly, and we also know for sure that it has been NATO and its satellites who have financed the terrorist in Syria and Iraq, as well as in Ukraine and the almost forgotten Yemen war. He might know too much about who ordered the murder of the Russian ambassador in Turkey this week, we can't be sure of what exactly he found but it's a clear case of destroying evidence, of silencing a potential whistleblower, as has happened way too often in the past, from Petra Kelly to Michael Hastings.

We live in a dictatorship with a pretense of "democracy", a pretense that is every day shallower and less credible, because the "deep state" is precisely pushing hard in favor of a police state at all levels, of monolithic mass media and of everything being subservient to the NATO-ist imperial project.

Erdogan continues with his nazification of Turkey

The Turkish admirer of Adolf Hitler continues with his rampage towards a fully totalitarian "neo-Ottoman" state in which he is to be the sole Sultan and dogmatic extremist versions of Islam would become the only law. Maybe like Iznogoud he wants to be Caliph, not instead of the Caliph (because the only self-appointed Caliphate, Erdogan's terrorist puppet, is collapsing as I write) but to occupy a long vacant throne. 

I was to put a link to Iznogoud's famously comical sentence, "I want to be Caliph instead of the Caliph", but I just realized that the English version was censored and the word Caliph replaced with that of Sultan, how lame! I guess that you can listen to this cool and provocative song in Spanish by Def Con Dos, which uses the sentence once and again. Anglosaxon cultural repression: lame, lame, lame!

Anyhow, let's focus: Erdogan has recently persecuted "pro-Kurdish" media, fired not less than 10.000 public officers (again) and even imprisoned journalists of the very popular Cumhurriyet newspaper, almost the only one that opposes him today and the oldest of the republic.

How many steps left until he becomes the Turkish Hitler in full? How much time?

It is just another reason to leave NATO, but a very good one: Erdogan sucks and we don't want to have anything to do with him, rather the opposite.

Turkey's coup: Erdogan is doing it right now.

Who was behind July 15th coup has become less important than what is going on after it in Turkey. For all we know, Erdogan himself may have staged or induced the failed military coup (whose structure is still unknown) in order to make a much hardest putsch from the government. About one third of all state officers at nearly all levels are being purged (either arrested, dismissed or ordered to resign), including not just military officers but police, judges, civil servants and lots of teachers. Right in the aftermath of the putsch, massive purge lists, obviously prepared long before, were issued so Erdogan and his islamo-fascists can take full control of the state, beginning by the judiciary. 

The fact that the military putsch failed to achieve anything of note, not capturing a single minister or taking any institution other than, briefly, a few media outlets, strongly suggests that the coup was staged or induced by the Machiavellian Hitler-loving Turkish President, although direct, definite, evidence of this has not yet surfaced. 

In any case, real or fake, the military uprising has led to another much more clear type of putsch, a self-coup by Erdogan himself against the last remnants of democracy and secularism in Turkey. The first stage, that of taking full control of the state apparatus is well under way, while a second stage is foreseeable and will begin with the illegalization of the multiethnic, left-wing federalist party HDP, which represents the spirit of the 2013 popular uprising against Erdogan's islamo-fascism. As happened with the rise of Hitler, openly admired by Erdogan, the social-democratic (and Kemalist) CHP, the largest opposition party, will be left in limbo, boiling in internal contradictions, until the final decree of dissolution is issued in due time. The secularist fascist MHP will be in turn forced into assimilation to the AKP, purging any dissidence. 

Alternatively a soft fascism will be implemented instead (as in Iran, Russia or Hungary), allowing token democracy and only illegalizing the HDP, whose legal fate is surely sealed. This option would allow for Turkey to remain in NATO without causing excessive scandal (not that outright dictatorships have been absent of NATO in the past but it seems harder to defend nowadays). In any case Erdogan's hold on power and the political islamization and fascistization of Turkey can be taken for granted. 

Whatever the case, it seems that Erdogan's islamo-fascism is becoming entrenched in the Turkish state and that this failed coup is serving his totalitarian pursuit as the Reichstag's fire served his admired precursor Adolf Hitler.

Let's not fall to the official deceit on Islamist terror, please

The DAESH attacks in Paris and Brussels should be a total political scandal, because it is obvious to those who dare to scratch the surface that they are under the command of those who rule NATO, EU and their member states. The exact details may be murky but overally it is clear that we are under attack by our own rulers. 

Sadly enough, almost nobody seems willing to hang the bell from the cat's neck but rather feel more comfortable ranting inside the official discourse, regardless of the exact details of their empty discourses. 

Let's get specific. For example, Toni Cartalucci explains at Global Research:

All of the suspects have been under the nose, on the radar, and in the prisons of Western security agencies on and off for years, yet were still able to carry out at least one high profile terrorist attack – possibly two, and with the vast majority of the suspects involved having traveled to Syria to fight alongside ISIS before inexplicably being allowed to re-enter Europe and rejoin society without consequence – as if inviting them to take their extremism to the next level.

Let's not forget that the supply lines of DAESH are controlled by NATO, specifically Turkey, whose Hitler-loving President Erdogan even dared to predict an attack in Brussels just a few days ago (astonishing "coincidence").

Even the official channels of DAESH in the Internet are apparently run by NATO and allies. Specifically the Twitter accounts of DAESH propaganda have been tracked via IP to the British Department of Work and Pensions. This ministry has rejected any responsibility claiming that they sold a large bloc of IP addresses to two Saudi firms, Saudi Telecom and Mobile Telecommunications Company, but it does not matter the least because Saudi Arabia is a very close ally of NATO (and of DAESH, Al Qaeda, etc.) and it is ridiculous to think that they would operate without Royal Saudi and NATO/Pentagon consent.

Another specific, already mentioned in this blog, is the implication of a French agent, former security chief of the fascist party National Front and akin to super-judge Marine Le Vert, Claude Hermant, in the sale of weapons to the DAESH cells that attacked Paris. Luckily for us Europeans, there are honest provincial judges who dare to investigate these matters, because all the anti-terrorist apparatus of Europe would not.

There are many more specifics but in many cases we would be going back to the origins of DAESH, a schism of Al Qaeda/Al Nusra, and its financing and even training by the USA and allies. But this is something they even dare to admit, as they do regarding the CIA training and equipment of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. They just pretend that the experiment went wrong at some point, that the Islamists have the tendency to bite the hand that feeds them. However nothing suggests, beyond mere words, that anything has changed at all. Obviously Turkey would not be supplying DAESH and buying their illegal oil if NATO was truly at war with DAESH, or, if they did, they would face the rage of the White House, which has the resources to put Turkey back in line easily. Nope. 

The reality is that DAESH, like Al Qaeda before, is nothing but a useful puppet, a convenient fake "enemy" under control in two ways: first, the direct operative control of the Western and allied secret services and, second, the effective control that prevents them from going rogue: that Islamism is a ghetto ideology that can never spread outside very specific cultural groups (unlike what may happen with Communism, a truly universal and genuinely antagonistic ideology) and that every single reactionary ideas recycled from the feudal period are expendable and can't last for long for intrinsic reasons of inviability. 

In fact this recycling of ideas from the Ancien Régime is typical of fascism and conservatism, but their practical function is only to serve as pretext to more practical goals: repression, imperialism and exploitation. In this case it is not even "Muslim" imperialism to what Islamism (at least the Sunni version of it, under tight Saudi control) serves to, it serves only to the imperialism of the West, largely against "Muslim" nations themselves. For example DAESH has been used to threaten key states like Indonesia or Nigeria against their drift towards more independent stances that may favor China and harm US/Western imperialism. 

But, beyond being a pretext for imperialist intervention or a tool in the Cold War II, islamo-fascist terrorism serves another key purpose inside the West: to sow fear that serves to justify repression and a drift towards a quasi-fascist political system, towards a totalitarian police state. Fortunately Europeans are showing to be less gullible in this aspect than their North American "friends" and attempts to enshrine a permanent state of emergency, as already happens in the USA, are being stopped. However that is the agenda of the NATO Empire and its key oligarchic shadow leaders: to consolidate itself as true formal and authoritarian empire, Roman style, and therefore it is likely that we will suffer more attacks until we either break free from NATO and Capitalism or we bow to the designs or the dark "masters of the universe", whose only real power is the control of token money (i.e. nothing too real, nothing that cannot be destroyed by democratic legislative action, because only law backs, or not, the dark magic of money).

I want to close this entry to an appeal to the real left: comrades, please, stop being so gullible and "good-ist", no real leftist, progressive, socialist alternative can be construed on the acceptation of the falsehoods of the official discourse. I know that it is not easy to challenge the mainstream discourse, built mostly by the bourgeois media at the service of their wealthy masters, but nothing is easy in the class war, so please, do your homework, document the many many inconsistencies in that official discourse and denounce them with all the loudspeaker power you can muster. What else?!

Islamist terror: nobody points to the culprits

First of all my condolences and solidarity with the victims of the Brussels attacks. Nobody surely deserves that but much less random civilians. 

But then I must say that, when Hollande and others talk of "war", they are not declaring "war" to the perpetrators but to the victims. Because the only victim of the police state is the common citizen, just as the victims of the terror attacks: the police state, the emergency laws are not any solution but exactly what the terrorist bosses intend. 

Even more bewildering is that nobody is declaring sanctions, war or whatever other punitive measure against those states who support DAESH. Turkey and Saudi Arabia are the most prominent and unrepentant ones, with lots of evidence pointing to them in spite of the discourse: the DAESH could not exist without them: Turkey controls its supplies routes but only feigns to "attack" DAESH as a pretext to murder Kurds, Saudi Arabia is not only the main human source of the terror group but also the principal financier and has been moving many of them between Syria/Iraq and Yemen, according to their priorities. Saudi Arabia has been in fact for four decades already behind Sunni Islamist terror worldwide, initially (1980s) in Afghanistan and Algeria primarily but then worldwide. Of course neither of these two could have ever done anything without the support of the United States and its local colony: Israel. While Israel has hidden better its own trail, the USA is well known to have created DAESH and equipped it. To this day it has done nothing to stop Turkey and Saudi Arabia from keeping the terrorist monster alive, on the contrary, it seems that "the problem" for them is only the legitimate governments of Damascus and Baghdad. 

So when are the sanctions and blockade against Saudi Arabia begin? When will Turkey be expelled from NATO and denied any kind of credence by the European Union? If you guys want to make "war" against DAESH terrorism, that's the way to go: attacking, not necessarily by military means, the states that support it, namely Turkey and Saudi Arabia (as well as others, but primarily these two rogue regimes). 

As far as anyone knows neither Iran, nor North Korea, nor Syria, nor Russia, nor any of the capricious victims of US-orchestrated imperialist sanctions supports the DAESH in any way, instead "our allies" do, "we" do. Why are "we" bombing ourselves? Should not we declare "war" on "us" (or should I capitalize "US")?

Let's get real: this is not a time for hystery nor for rallying the masses around those who support DAESH against a ghostly threat. The threat is within NATO, it controls state and even imperial level resources, and therefore the only possible "war" is internal within the imperial alliance against all those who feign outrage but actually allow or even promote this kind of senseless terror. We must wake up, this is just the burning of the Reichstag at another scale and, as soon as we scratch the surface, we can't but know it. 

The enemy is inside, the war, the only possible war, the only logical and fruitful one, is against those who control DAESH inside our very own states and imperial alliance.

Saudi road to nowhere: even the EP calls for isolating the theocracy

In an unprecedented resolution, the European Parliament has called for an arms embargo on Saudi Arabia in relation to its brutal military intervention in Yemen. Other issues such as the occupation of Bahrain, its horrible human rights record, the fact that it is a most cruel and totalitarian dictatorship or that it has been for decades behind Sunni Islamist terrorism everywhere, have not been included in the resolution, yet, considering the very conservative and imperialist policies that the EU institutions distill all the time, it is a remarkable vote and a sign that a growing amount of people in the West is getting most annoyed at the Islamist terror chaos unleashed in West Asia by NATO and its local allies: Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Israel primarily. 

As you may know the EP has, sadly enough, almost no power (only approving or not the EU budget and minor stuff like that) but it still exerts a moral influence on the EU, being the only democratic body of this sui-generis confederation. Therefore we should not undermine its importance. 

Forecast

Personally I feel that all what is happening will soon result in a dramatic socio-political crisis in Saudi Arabia: you can't rule a country of 30 million without other feedback than just police reports. Not for long in any case. The question of democracy is not merely a question of rights and freedoms but, from the rulers viewpoint, primarily one of feedback and cohesion. 

Anyhow, with such low oil prices, the money is running out and Saudia is just rushing forward to nowhere, risking even a World War with its threats of invading Syria. If this happens, the conflict in West Asia will run out of control in no time: Iran will no doubt intervene, backed by Russia and China, and that would be a major event. My opinion is that the West will doubt and finally not intervene directly, largely because there is such an exhaustion of the fictional narrative of "war on terror" and "clash of civilizations" that a lot of people even in key power positions will be tempted to let Iran do the moping instead of risking not just World War but also internal political stability to save a totally despicable regime such as the Saudi one. 

I can only imagine that, possibly, the Turkish intervention (which may be the key WW trigger) will be halted on its heels by a military coup and/or suspension of its NATO membership. 

But I'm trying to be rational-optimistic. It can also all degenerate in an uncontrolled WW-like conflict, whose result may well be the destruction of Humankind. Let's try to avoid this worst possible outcome by all means necessary. 

Turkey intervenes again inside Syria in support of Al Qaeda forces

RT reports that today is the third day of heavy shelling by Turkish (NATO) forces against YPG (Kurdish militias) trying to liberate the town of Azaz from the islamo-fascist terrorists. Turkish PM Davotuglu openly speaks of even greater intervention by the Turkish military if the attempts to liberate the strategical border town, a lifeline to terrorists, continue. Meanwhile the Russian Foreign Ministry denounced the attack as a breach of UN resolutions and called for Turkey to step out of Syria. Damascus also condemned Turkish actions as support of terrorism and has sent an official protest to the UN. Even France issued an ambiguous note rejecting the Turkish bombardment against Kurds.

A more detailed analysis by the independent site South Front shows that Turkey has also been transferring, through Turkish territory, Al Qaeda militants from the crumbling Latakia province front to the embattled town of Azaz.

Turkey embarrassment or battering ram of NATO?

The reckless attitude of Turkey in the Syrian (in-)civil war has brought a growing chorus of opinions (for example) claiming that Turkey should be expelled from NATO, because otherwise NATO members are formally obliged to defend Turkey against attacks, even if Turkey is the one provoking them, as they clearly are.

However these opinions remain low profile and as of now not a single government has formally asked the Islamist regime to be even temporarily suspended of membership in NATO or anything of the like. This has only one possible meaning: Turkey is acting within NATO directives and has more or less full backup from its NATO allies, notably Washington (which is the one calling the shots). 

It also means that we are very close to World War III. Too close: the tensions are there and growing and any miscalculation by either side can be the straw that breaks the camel's back.

Podemos and NATO

Maybe the most criticized program stand of Podemos is that it is not questioning NATO in the short term (they call for a European alliance to replace it but otherwise nothing), unlike for instance Jeremy Corbyn is doing in Britain. Yesterday the new leftist party (which came third in the December elections and may well come first in the upcoming ones that will take place in June if government formation fails, as looks most likely) made public a draft government plan in a last ditch attempt to lure the socialdemocrats into a coalition government. Again the issue of NATO is missing and that is a problem of growing relevance in an international situation like the one that is going on at the Turkish-Syrian border. The least thing that a party with intention of forming government today can do is to ignore the immediate threat of all out international war caused by the aggressive and terrorist stand of Turkey, conveniently protected under the skirt of NATO. This absence of international policy is a major flaw in Podemos' program and political praxis. I understand that there are other priorities but when WW3 comes in force, with nukes raining all over our heads for no good reason at all, all those other priorities will become irrelevant in comparison.

Therefore I argue that NATO must be questioned, for many reasons but right now very particularly for the sole reason that Erdogan's Turkey is a regime we do not want to get bogged into defending, rather the opposite.

Did France organize the terror attacks in its own soil?

I would not be surprised at all. In fact it has been my suspicion from day one considering what is DAESH, who arms, leads and equips it, the obligatory "cui bono?" question and the disproportionate reaction of declaring a permanent state of emergency in the Hexagon, just as happened in the USA after 9-11. 

But until now I had no evidence, just reasonable suspicion. Exiled French investigative journalist Thierry Meyssan shares now evidence, first published by the Croat newspaper Slobodna Dalmacija, that strongly supports the case.

The evidence is that the weapons used in the attack, and also the previous one against a controversial magazine and a Jewish supermarket, were bought in Croatia and moved to France through customs officers associated to the far-right National Front (FN) party, Claude Hermant. 

Hermant is a shadowy character involved in what seems to be the so-called Deep State (or Gladio Network, which operates through all NATO and beyond), specifically the security department of the National Front (DPS), a true autonomous mini-army with wide connections with the overall state and not just the FN and, in opinion of Meyssan, directly controlled by the Elysée rather than by the FN:

In summary, Mr. Hermant belonged to a structure which, under cover of the security unit for the Front National, was unofficially charged by the Élysée with secret missions overseas. Today he is paid for freelance work by the Customs and the Gendarmerie, still without any official status. According to Slobodna Dalmacija, he bought decommissioned weapons in Serbia and recommissioned them himself, and that these were the weapons used in the attacks of January and November.

One could naively expect that maybe the police and judiciary would eventually unveil all this but in fact it seems most unlikely when the whole apparatus of the state is involved. Certainly Hermant, who is the weak link, was imprisoned but only because an independent tribunal from Calais got involved and not by the super-judges of Paris on charge of the main investigation: Christophe Tessier, Nathalie Poux et Laurence Le Vert. Le Vert, who is sadly well known to Basques for her many repressive interventions, is incidentally (but surely not accidentally) sister of Gérard Le Vert, the former boss of Hermant in the DPS. 

Meyssan concludes:

In conclusion, either Mr. Hermant was working on infiltrating the terrorist cells who perpetrated the attacks, without their action having been prevented, or else – and this is less probable – his current superiors, probably in the Élysée, themselves participated in the organisation of the attacks. But it still has to be determined why, and in whose name, Claude Hernant’s superiors acted as they did.

Why would it be less probable, Mr. Meyssan? Isn't it apparent that the attacks serve the interest of the deep French state, primarily, against its own population and, secondarily, against the Syrian people and state? Isn't it obvious that the state of emergency, an effective dictatorship with few concessions for free expression and right to protest, is what the regime was looking for?

Another question would be why is France pursuing this totalitarianism right now, when it has no obvious threats (the social conflict arena has been pretty much idle since the general strike of 2010 and the Real Left is making no gains in elections)? My suspicion is that it is part of a wider pan-European plan but that somehow, at least by now, it has not been fully implemented, not yet, not in other states (although the Spanish "muzzle law" is pretty much the same thing, just that with no pretext at all). Why is France of all the European states leading the way to outright fascism?

Curfew imposed on Northern Kurdistan capital of Diyarbakir

Several districts of the effective capital of Northern Kurdistan, Diyarbakir (known as Amed to Kurds), have been put under total curfew by the occupant power, Turkey. People has been forced to leave the area, while those who remain can't go out even to recover the bodies of their dead children.

The situation of North Kurdistan is everyday more similar to that of Palestine: discrimination and genocide under massive military occupation.

Turkey: hands off Kurdistan now!

In related news, several Basque, Valencian and Castilian internationalists, as well as Kurdish exile, were arrested yesterday by Spanish police under the accusation of trying to join Kurdish forces fighting for democracy and socialism. Spain, as usual, joins forces with Turkey and the Islamists against the will of the peoples.

Update (Jan 30): Grand Inquisitor¹ Eloy Velasco has declared the small party Refundación Comunista (Communist Refoundation) illegal for the next year for allegedly aiding the PKK, forcibly closing their sees in Madrid and Valencia. Most of the arrested have been set free but two, including the Kurdish one, have been sent to prison, a bail of 10,000 and 6000 euros respectively are demanded.

¹ Naturally I mean judge of the political tribunal Audiencia Nacional, infamous for all kind of political persecutions and also for aiding the impunity of politicians.

Iraq: US providing air cover for DAESH

The US bombing that killed some 25 Iraqi soldiers and injured other 20 was no mistake, according to Iraqi military sources: they think that the USA is providing air cover for the Islamic State and preventing the liberation of Fallujah that way. 

Commander Hakim al-Zamili, speaking to RT, said: 

We don't believe it was a technical mistake. We constantly see that the United States are trying to provide air cover to Islamic State. They are preventing us from making an offensive. I think everyone is now convinced that the United States is not sincere in its fight against Islamic State. Maybe they have another agenda. The Pentagon, the CIA and other agencies in the US are trying to make a [rift] between Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq. They are trying to tear [apart] Iraq with the help of their allies like Turkey and the Gulf states.

I do not believe it either. The USA and allies are all the time operating in favor of the Islamic State, as well as other fundamentalist terrorist groups, in spite of their constant denials and of their use of the terror organization as pretext for unilateral intervention inside the territory of sovereign states, against international law, as well as for the establishment of perpetual emergency rule in Europe and North America.

Turkey giving sarin to DAESH and other ongoing stuff around the murderous Islamist farce

As you may know by now (or maybe not because Western media just does not report on most important matters), Turkish MP Eren Erden (CHP) presented evidence of Turkey providing the Islamic State (DAESH) with sarin ingredients. 

Instead of treating the matter as the outrageous scandal it is, the ruling AKP is treating it as a matter of "treason", much as the independent media is being persecuted for revealing other weaponry supply by Ankara to the terrorist organization. 

All non-surprising to some extent (the totalitarian tendencies of Erdogan and company are well known by now, as is their support to the DAESH) but still very worrisome and worth mentioning, particularly as  I am subject of a state that has pledged alliance via NATO to this terrorist regime, and that is also the case of many of my readers. 

Erdogan's maneuvers are unthinkable without the blessings of NATO and therefore we can only understand terror attacks such as the one of the Bataclan as self-attacks of NATO (against commoners, not strategic assets or members of the elite), as the bombs that Orwell's Oceania dropped on the proletarian suburbs of London in order to justify its militaristic and totalitarian regime, blaming them on the always elusive and distant enemy. 

Like Orwell's Oceania, NATO also needs its own regular season of hatemins. Yes, "1984" is a must-read, we may not have reached that far yet (check: no black helicopter hovering outside the window, not tonight at least) but we are dangerously close and every other day a step closer.

The Saudi coalition that is not

Another curious development in the neocolonial front of West Asia is the announcement by the worst dictatorship of Earth (alias: our best friends the Saudi monarchy), a regime historically even more deeply immersed in the development of Sunni fundamentalist terrorism than Turkey, who are total noobs in comparison, of a coalition of 32 states and several terrorist Syrian organizations in order to "fight DAESH" (read: fight secularism in Syria and elsewhere).

As soon as it was announced some of its main alleged members, Indonesia and Pakistan, rejected to be involved. Nobody had even asked them: the "coalition" seems to be a mere oriental fantasy that would be ridiculous if thousands of real people would not be on the crosshair of Saudi megalomania, nowadays affecting mainly Syria and Yemen but also extended through much of the World via Al Qaeda and DAESH. 

As Prof. Chossudovsky says, we must change the overall Western Imperial Regime in order to make the World a safer place. A place where there is no place for dictators like Erdogan or Ibn Saud, for genocidal regimes like Israel, and where we are not anymore afraid of a bunch of psychopaths with a religious pretext and an agenda of self-attacks dictated by the generals and spies of NATO.

Turkey invades Syria

Yesterday I had to report that Turkey had invaded parts of Iraq, today that it has done the same in Syria, almost simultaneously, occupying and fortifying a position across the border, not far from the Islamist capital, Raqqa, with the effect of splitting the Kurdish-controlled area in two and guaranteeing the oil, arms and zombie trade between th Caliphate and the Turkish state. 

Together with the "sneakers on the ground" (actual but hidden US military presence in Northern Iraq, that has been going on for some time) and the apparent Turkish confirmation of installing a military base near Mosul, with apparent complicity of the contested pro-Washington regime in Southern Kurdistan (Iraq), the NATO intervention in (and against) these two beleaguered states is fait accomplí. 

Erdogan: the new Mussolini!

Turkey invades Iraq

With the likely aim to aid their embattled Islamic State (DAESH) puppet allies and consolidate the (Washington and Tel Aviv promoted) "Hornets Nest", under threat of extermination by the joint Russian and Syrian offensive, Turkey has sent troops to Mosul District, an area under DAESH control but disputed by Kurdish militias. 

Iraq has demanded the immediate exit of the Turkish invader force but this request is likely to be ignored by Erdogan's unbearable cynicism.

Ankara claims that it is just "an incursion" and that they are there "to train Iraqi troops". What "Iraqi troops" might those be (if at all)? Only those of the Islamic State. 

The most obvious aim of the attack is probably to set a barrier between DAESH and Kurdish forces, which might otherwise take control of Mosul, the second largest city of Iraq and a key hub in the oil smuggling business of the DAESH and the Erdogan clan. 

This mafioso-terrorist association of the Ankara regime and the DAESH puppet of the Pentagon has been denounced for a long time in the alternative media but only recently, after Turkey downed a Russian jet in a calculated act of war, the usually reserved Moscow government has provided strong evidence of this association. Iraq has also denounced the illegal trade and I guess this is yet another reason for Erdogan pushing it within the frail Iraqi borders. 

What can happen? Well, Iraq has let clear that they do not want US "boots on the ground" within their borders no matter what, pretexting that Shia militias had threatened to kill them but actually because they do not trust Washington nor their semi-autonomous protectorates (Tel Aviv, Ankara, Riyadh) at all. This underlines the alignment of Iraq, a major oil producer (second only to Saudia before the troubles began), with Iran, Russia and China, something that surely is not taken lightly in Washington nor in Ankara. 

Russia had pondered to extend their air operations into Iraq, while China did openly offer its air forces to Baghdad last year in order to fight DAESH. Recently China also signed a military base agreement with Djibouti, located at the strategical Bab-el-Madeb strait, near Yemen, and which also holds a French naval base. So the whole region is each day resembling a mini World War scenario, in which the Western Empire (NATO-plus) is clearly not afraid of provoking its Eurasian rivals into greater intervention, nor these seemingly coy about replying with a "bring it, cowboy", sorta.

Nevertheless I think that a likely development will be the destabilization of Saudia and Turkey themselves, because the Eurasian allies must know that only playing a defensive "cold war" is not enough, that Washington and their satellites must feel the pain themselves, else they will never be brought to any sort of semi-good faith negotiation or understanding. As Sun Tzu said: in order to win the war, take what the enemy values most.

Forecast: Moscow's reaction?

Russia Today's latest poll:

After Turkey shot Russian jet over Syria Moscow will:

• respond to Ankara with economic sanctions
• intensify bombing campaign on Syria-Turkey border
• establish no-fly zone along Syria-Turkey border
• increase support to Kurdish fighters 

Most correct answer (in my humble opinion): all of the above. And probably something else that nobody has yet anticipated, not me either.

The relation between Russia and NATO has been degrading in the last years, beginning precisely in Syria:

1. 2011: NATO and allies (Saudia, Zionistan, Qatar) begin proxy military intervention in Syria
2. June 2011: China and Russia veto anti-Syrian UN Security Council resolution
3. 2012: China and Russia veto another anti-Syrian UN Security Council resolution
4. Winter 2013-14: NATO intervenes via proxy in Ukraina: Euromaidan putsch, largely manned by Neo-Nazi death squads
5. 2013-14: The so-called Islamic State (DAESH) expands to Iraq (Fallujah conquered in January 2014, Mosul conquered in June)
6. Late Winter 2014: Crimea democratically self-determinates in favor of annexation to Russia
7. 2014: NATO & allies initiate economic sanctions against Russia, Russia responds with counter-sanctions
8. 2014-15 Ucraine conflict stagnates, unsolved
9. Fall 2015: Russia intervenes in Syria in favor of the Damascus regime, putting the Islamists in a very difficult situation. Some Islamic State groups are flown to Ukraine and Yemen by their state allies
10. November 24: Turkey shoots down a Russian bomber in Syria, local Turcoman militias shoot and kill the pilot, the co-pilot is rescued. NATO blesses Turkey's attack: they claim that Turkey has "the right to defend itself" but Syria does not. 

What can happen now? On one side it is clear that Russia is deeply offended and has canceled all cooperation with NATO members regarding Syria. On the other extreme, all-out war, which would be nuclear war, is almost certainly a no-go zone, no matter what... or almost. Anything in  between can happen however. 

Russia has shown that they can lay back and wait for the best moment to counter-strike, they have also shown that they can respond very quickly and effectively against provocations, be it in Crimea or in South Ossetia.

Turkey clearly cowers under the skirt of NATO but that does not make the Erdogan regime invulnerable, not at all. Erdogan has in his megalomaniac and authoritarian rise offended many people, even inside the, once all-powerful, Turkish Military. Of course the Left, be it Kurdish or Turkish, hates Erdogan, but he also has enemies in the Right. 

Turkey's Achilles' heel is anyhow the very consolidated Kurdish guerrilla (PKK), which, after upholding a unilateral cease-fire for many years, was pushed into war again recently. Erdogan is known to have used the Islamic State as pretext to bomb Kurdish positions and even civilians in both Syrian and Iraqi territory. Violations of sovereign airspace by Turkey are just a matter of course in fact, and they are usually unmistakable acts of war. 

Even if Putin and co. probably hate it, their best chance at retaliation against Turkey is in fact arming the Kurdish rebels, just as Turkey and their allies (NATO or otherwise) have been arming groups in Syria and Iraq. Why do I say that they probably hate it: mostly because the PKK is a leftist revolutionary force and the Putin regime in Russia is a Right-wing bourgeois conservative force. They have almost nothing in common, except one thing: both have the same enemy: Erdogan and his Islamist regime. And the enemy or my enemy is my friend. But it cannot be an easy relation, no matter what, because the enemy of the PKK is Capitalism, while Putin is a guardian of Capitalism, who sympathizes with reactionary forces like Le Pen, the Lega Nord and the UKIP. But life makes strange allies, you know.

Erdogan tries to trigger World War III

Putin described the attack as "a stab in the back,
carried out against us by accomplices of terrorists".

Turkey has shot down a Russian airplane in Syria (source 2), apparently killing one of the pilots and getting the other to be captured by some militia allied of the Islamists.

Regardless of whether the airplane accidentally stepped or not into Turkish airspace (Russia says nope), the attack is a clear act of war. Terrorist Islamist Turkey feels backed by NATO (otherwise they would not have dared to) and is trying to bring Russia and NATO to start the feared World War III, which implies, almost certainly, total destruction of Humankind by nuclear suicide. 

Turkey is well known as the main direct backer of the Islamist terrorists who, among many other crimes, attacked Paris earlier this month. The very legitimacy of Erdogan's latest electoral "victory" is heavily under question as many observers consider that the polls were rigged, also the campaign was marred by repression against the media and state-organized terror attacks against the opposition campaign. 

The attitude of Erdogan is clearly one of provocation and we should all take this most seriously because, make no mistake, this is an act of war and Russia would be totally legitimate to respond with military means. However this could drag NATO into an all-out war, which would quickly escalate into nuclear war, with catastrophic consequences for all Humankind, probably extinction.


Update: mapping footage made available by Russia clearly indicates that the bomber never entered Turkish territory and that the attack took place inside Syria. In other words: the only air space violation was done by the Turkish fighter.

Russia has also announced the first counter-measures: all bombings will be escorted by fighter jets and air defense of the Syrian coastal strip will be reinforced by air-defense cruiser Moskva.

I expect more counter-measures however, notably economic sanctions but also probably (just my guess so far) that Russia will arm the Kurdish guerrilla in ways that will be able to effectively challenge the Turkish armed forces, much like Turkey arms the Islamists in Syria. Until now the Kurds had been mostly on their own, because their socialist ideals made them ineligible for aid by any power, all of which are bourgeois regimes but today's attack is a step too far by Ankara and I'm sure it will not go unanswered.

"Patriot Act" in France

The DAESH attacks in Paris are, I understand, controlled and authorized by NATO's "Deep State". Much like the 9/11 attacks in the USA 14 years ago, they have two objectives:

1. To provide a "Pearl Harbor" style justification for foreign military intervention, in this case clearly focused on Syria and ignoring the actual supporters of the DAESH, such as Saudi Arabia and its Gulf vassals, Turkey or the United States, among others (Putin recently mentioned 40 countries, several of which have seats in the G20). 
2. To induce a state of panic among the European population, French particularly, in order to push ahead with anti-democratic and repressive new legislation and de facto measures. This part can be split in three categories:
1. Anti-immigration (in spite of the fact that the authors of the attacks were French or Belgian and that they had been freely traveling in and out of the Schengen area without police ever interfering).
2. Against free transit of people in the European Union. This is about the only good thing we get from this confederacy: that the artificial borders are less apparent. 
3. Reinforcement of authoritarian tendencies and particularly of the police state, dismantling democracy and human rights for the sake of "security".

However the police state clearly failed to prevent the attacks, attacks that had been announced (for example the erratic Spanish political analyst J. Verstrynge considered a French 9/11 style attack certain and immediate in a debate two weeks ago, citing French government sources). The Schengen area was already suspended on the pretext of the Climate Summit and this was totally useless: the terrorists could travel between Paris and Brussels unhindered. Many increments of the police state (telecom spying without judicial authorization, among others) had already been approved after the Charlie Hebdo attacks and these were totally useless. The police state is useless, especially if it is the Deep State who organizes the attacks. Without purging our own hawks and secret services this kind of attacks can only happen once and again, if the shadow commanders think they are useful for their agenda of rallying the masses in favor of militarism, imperialism and repression. 

Anyway, what is happening now (source: Gara) is that President Hollande and PM Valls (what's up with France's hyper-successful police ministers: first Sarkozy, now Valls?) are promoting an increase of the police state. By the moment there is an extension of the state of emergency for three months, much more than the usual 12 days. But what they are proposing is a change of the constitution to the worse. In spite of the French nationality of the terrorists, their focus is xenophobic: allowing banning the entry in the Hexagon to double nationality citizens, speedy ways of expulsion of immigrants, and even the removal of the nationality for those indicted with "terrorism" charges (not for looting the public treasury like Sarkozy?). This last measure goes against the International Declaration of Human Rights which clearly states that people have the right to a nationality and not to be deprived of it. 

They will also forbid associations inciting to hate but it does not seem like the fascist National Front and their xenophobic discourse will be included.

Additionally more jobs will be created in the police apparatus: 5000 new gendarmes, 2800 new judiciary workers and 1000 new border officers. 

An interesting read is also Tierry Meyssan's article on the attacks. A bit clouted with lots of details but emphasizing that it is the Deep State who's running the show, largely the Pentagon directly (people like Petraeus, Clinton or Allen, and of course we can't forget the long menacing shadow of Sarkozy). Interestingly he mentions that the very day of November 13 the emergency services of Paris held a drill of reaction against multiple terrorist attacks. Coincidence? This kind of "coincidences" happen too often, so most certainly not.

Police let Bataclan attackers act for almost three hours

Update: it has surfaced (a witness trapped inside listening to the terrorists' conversations, which were all in perfect French, it seems) that the attackers were trying to negotiate and that the police may have managed it as a hostage crisis. This would explain the delay.

Three hours in which the attackers were murdering people!

Almost three hours after the carnage began, grenade blasts and automatic gunfire marked the moment police stormed the building to free those still trapped inside. (Herald Sun)

‘They are hiding in some kind of room in the dark and they text(ed) me, and they are very afraid, of course, and they are waiting for the police to intervene, but it’s been over two hours now and this is terrible.’ (journalist J. Pierce talking about some friends trapped inside, Euractive)

Watch also what WeAreChange informal news channel has to say:

Among other interesting things, they mention how Twitter and Facebook are tolerating DAESH recruitment through those social media and how the latter even is actively persecuting those who try to expose the terrorist recruiters.