KoKo
KoKo's JournalNegotiating the Whirlwind: Can Secretary of State John Kerry break through in Syria?
(David Remnick's "Insider Visit" with SOS John Kerry--seems a fitting post here on "Foreign Affairs" given the situation we find ourselves in with fighting ISIS/DAESH which has many worrying about WWIII.)
Its a long, wonky article...but, as it goes on, eventually gets into the issues we discuss here daily. Remnick is well respected, in some circles of power, and it is the kind of long journalistic article with interview/insight of those in power that we rarely see these days.
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Negotiating the Whirlwind Can Secretary of State John Kerry break through in Syria? -- New Yorker
Profiles December 21, 2015 Issue
Negotiating the Whirlwind
Can Secretary of State John Kerry break through in Syria?
By David Remnick
John Kerry, the sixty-eighth Secretary of State of the United States, was born to a temperament of wintry rectitude. He is descended from the Winthrops, who helped found the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and the Forbeses, a Brahmin clan that made its money in railways and in exporting tea, silver, and opium to China. His father was a diplomat. Kerry attended St. Paul’s and Yale (where he was in Skull and Bones) and, as a naval officer in Vietnam, earned three Purple Hearts, the Bronze Star, and the Silver Star. He dated Jacqueline Kennedy’s half-sister, sailed with J.F.K., and married twice into substantial fortunes. Despite the codes of his class, however, Kerry was never entirely subtle about his ambitions. When he was in prep school, his classmates used to play “Hail to the Chief” to him on the kazoo.
In 2004, when Kerry lost the Presidential race to George W. Bush, who is widely considered the worst President of the modern era, he refused to challenge the results, despite his suspicion that in certain states, particularly Ohio, where the Electoral College count hinged, proxies for Bush had rigged many voting machines. But he could not suffer the defeat in complete silence. He was outraged that Bush, who had won a stateside berth in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War, used campaign surrogates, the so-called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, to slime his military record. He was furious, too, at Robert Shrum, his chief strategist, and other campaign advisers who had restrained him from hitting back.
“For a long period, after 2004, every time he even half fell asleep all he saw was voting machines in the state of Ohio,” Mike Barnicle, a close friend of Kerry’s and a former columnist for the Boston Globe, told me. This summer, Barnicle spent time with Kerry on Nantucket, where Kerry and his wife, Teresa Heinz, have a house on the water and a seventy-six-foot, seven-million-dollar sailboat called Isabel. “We were sitting in the bow,” Barnicle recalled, “and we were talking about a bunch of different things—about Iran, about what the President of Iran was like—and I said, ‘Other than not being President, this is pretty good.’ There was a security boat sailing off to the side of us. Then he said, ‘Yeah, yeah, I realize how badly Shrum screwed me.’ ”
Continued at..........
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/12/21/negotiating-the-whirlwind?intcid=mod-most-popular
Fmr. Bush Official Reveals --The Pentagon/MIC More Important than Congress or The People!
Empire Files: Fmr. Bush Official says the Empire's Ship is Sinking
Published on Dec 11, 2015
Colin Powell's former Chief of Staff says Pentagon is the Problem and it Rules our Presidents more than Congress or the American People (Voters).
Abby Martin interviews retired U.S. Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former national security advisor to the Reagan administration, who spent years as an assistant to Secretary of State Colin Powell during both Bush administrations. Today, he is honest about the unfixable corruption inside the establishment and the corporate interests driving foreign policy.
Hear a rare insider's view of what interests are behind U.S. wars, the manipulation of intelligence, the intertwining of the military and corporate world, and why the U.S. Empire is doomed. http://multimedia.telesurtv.net/v/the...
Negotiating the Whirlwind: Can Secretary of State John Kerry break through in Syria? -- New Yorker
(Its a long, wonky article...but, as it goes on, eventually gets into the issues we discuss here daily. Remnick is well respected, in some circles of power, and it is the kind of long journalistic article with interview/insight of those in power that we rarely see these days.)
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Profiles December 21, 2015 Issue
Negotiating the Whirlwind
Can Secretary of State John Kerry break through in Syria?
By David Remnick
John Kerry, the sixty-eighth Secretary of State of the United States, was born to a temperament of wintry rectitude. He is descended from the Winthrops, who helped found the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and the Forbeses, a Brahmin clan that made its money in railways and in exporting tea, silver, and opium to China. His father was a diplomat. Kerry attended St. Paul’s and Yale (where he was in Skull and Bones) and, as a naval officer in Vietnam, earned three Purple Hearts, the Bronze Star, and the Silver Star. He dated Jacqueline Kennedy’s half-sister, sailed with J.F.K., and married twice into substantial fortunes. Despite the codes of his class, however, Kerry was never entirely subtle about his ambitions. When he was in prep school, his classmates used to play “Hail to the Chief” to him on the kazoo.
In 2004, when Kerry lost the Presidential race to George W. Bush, who is widely considered the worst President of the modern era, he refused to challenge the results, despite his suspicion that in certain states, particularly Ohio, where the Electoral College count hinged, proxies for Bush had rigged many voting machines. But he could not suffer the defeat in complete silence. He was outraged that Bush, who had won a stateside berth in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War, used campaign surrogates, the so-called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, to slime his military record. He was furious, too, at Robert Shrum, his chief strategist, and other campaign advisers who had restrained him from hitting back.
“For a long period, after 2004, every time he even half fell asleep all he saw was voting machines in the state of Ohio,” Mike Barnicle, a close friend of Kerry’s and a former columnist for the Boston Globe, told me. This summer, Barnicle spent time with Kerry on Nantucket, where Kerry and his wife, Teresa Heinz, have a house on the water and a seventy-six-foot, seven-million-dollar sailboat called Isabel. “We were sitting in the bow,” Barnicle recalled, “and we were talking about a bunch of different things—about Iran, about what the President of Iran was like—and I said, ‘Other than not being President, this is pretty good.’ There was a security boat sailing off to the side of us. Then he said, ‘Yeah, yeah, I realize how badly Shrum screwed me.’ ”
Continued at..........
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/12/21/negotiating-the-whirlwind?intcid=mod-most-popular
"What Stinks in Saudi Ain’t the Camel Dung"--William Engdahl
F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
December 11, 2015
In recent weeks one nation after another is falling over themselves, literally, to join the turkey shoot known, erroneously, as the war in Syria, ostensibly against the Islamic State or Daesh. The most wanted but most feared question is where will this war frenzy lead, and how can it be stopped short of dragging the entire planet into a world war of destruction?
On September 30, responding to a formal invitation or plea from the duly-elected President of the Syrian Arab Republic, the Russian Federation began what was an initially highly effective bombing campaign in support of the Syrian Government Army.
On 13 November following the terror attacks claimed by ISIS in Paris, the French President proclaimed France was “at war” and immediately sent her one and only aircraft carrier, the Charles de Gaulle, to Syria to join the battle. Then on December 4, the German Parliament approved sending 1,200 German soldiers and six Tornado jets to “help” France. Reports out of Germany say the Germans will not work with Russia or the Assad regime, but with CentCom command in Florida and coalition headquarters, not in Damascus, but in Kuwait. The same week the UK Parliament approved sending British planes and forces to “fight ISIS” in Syria. Again we can be sure it’s not to help Russia’s cause in cooperation with the Syrian Army of Assad to restore sovereignty to Syria.
Then Turkey’s hot-head President Recep Erdoğan, fresh from his criminal, premeditated downing of the Russian SU-24 in Syria, orders Turkish tanks into the oil-rich Mosul region of Iraq against the vehement protests of the Iraqi government. And added to this chaos, the United States claims that its planes have been surgically bombing ISIS sites for more than a year, yet the result has been only to expand the territories controlled by ISIS and other terror groups.
If we take a minute to step back and reflect, we can readily realize the world is literally going berzerk, with Syria as merely the ignition to a far uglier situation which has the potential to destroy our lovely, peaceful planet.
Something Major Missing
In recent weeks I have been increasingly unsatisfied by the general explanations about who is actually pulling the strings in the entire Middle East plot or, more precisely, plots, to the point of reexamining my earlier views on the role of Saudi Arabia. Since the June, 2015 surprise meeting in St Petersburg between Russian President Putin and Saudi Defense Minister Prince Salman, the Saudi monarchy gave a carefully cultivated impression of rapprochement with former arch-enemy Russia, even discussing purchase of up to $10 billion in Russian military equipment and nuclear plants, and possible “face time” for Putin with the Saudi King Salman.
The long procession of Arab leaders going to Moscow and Sochi in recent months to meet President Putin gave the impression of a modern version of the walk to Canossa in1077 of Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV to Pope Gregory VII at Canossa Castle, to beg revocation of Henry’s ex-communication. This time it looked like it was the Gulf Arab monarchs in the role of Henry IV, and Vladimir Putin in the role of the Pope. Or so it seemed. I at least believed that at the time. Like many global political events, that, too, was soaked in deception and lies.
What is now emerging, especially clear since the Turkish deliberate ambush of the Russian SU-24 jet inside Syrian airspace, is that Russia is not fighting a war against merely ISIS terrorists, nor against the ISIS backers in Turkey. Russia is taking on, perhaps unknowingly, a vastly more dangerous plot. Behind that plot is the hidden role of Saudi Arabia and its new monarch, King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, together with his son, the Defense Minister, Prince Salman.
Continued.........
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article43693.htm
"Syria: Ultimate Pipelineistan War"-- latest from Pepe Escobar
December 8, 2015
Syria: Ultimate Pipelineistan War
by Pepe Escobar
---snip
The «Assad must go» obsession in Washington is a multi-headed hydra. It includes breaking a Russia-Iran-Iraq-Syria alliance (now very much in effect as the «4+1» alliance, including Hezbollah, actively fighting all strands of Salafi Jihadism in Syria). But it also includes isolating energy coordination among them, to the benefit of the Gulf petrodollar clients/vassals linked to US energy giants.
Thus Washington’s strategy so far of injecting the proverbial Empire of Chaos logic into Syria; feeding the flames of internal chaos, a pre-planed op by the CIA, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, with the endgame being regime change in Damascus.
An Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline is unacceptable in the Beltway not only because US vassals lose, but most of all because in currency war terms it would bypass the petrodollar. Iranian gas from South Pars would be traded in an alternative basket of currencies.
Compound it with the warped notion, widely held in the Beltway, that this pipeline would mean Russia further controlling the gas flow from Iran, the Caspian Sea and Central Asia. Nonsense. Gazprom already said it would be interested in some aspects of the deal, but this is essentially an Iranian project. In fact, this pipeline would represent an alternative to Gazprom.
Still, the Obama administration’s position was always to «support» the Qatar pipeline «as a way to balance Iran» and at the same time «diversify Europe’s gas supplies away from Russia.» So both Iran and Russia were configured as «the enemy».
Turkey at crossroads
Continued at............
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/12/08/syria-ultimate-pipelineistan-war/
"Syria's Wheel of Fortune: A Spirited Discussion on Syrian Situation on Peter Lavelle's "Crosstalk":
Discussion deals with some of the issues posted here in "FP." Discussion we don't see here in MSM in the USA these days.
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Syria’s Wheel of Fortune
Dec 7, 2015 06:45
The Syrian Civil War is a place of cruel realities and western illusions. The only moderate force on the ground is the Syrian Arab Army – fighting for Syria’s sovereign survival. This is unacceptable to the Washington Consensus. For the sake of false pride, is Washington willing to destroy everything in its path?
CrossTalking with Jonathan Steele, Brian Becker and Yunus Soner.
VIDEO: Caution Low Band Width Users..it Buffers
https://www.rt.com/shows/crosstalk/324939-syrias-civil-war-us/
OR:
Scroll Down at the Link Above: For a better LISTEN to this from "Sound Cloud for Audio," for those with Low Bandwidth who Can't Deal with Buffering:
https://www.rt.com/shows/crosstalk/324939-syrias-civil-war-us/
Britons More Opposed to Syria Air Strikes Since Commons Vote
Monday 7 December 2015
More than half of Labour supporters now disapprove of the bombing campaign, compared to a quarter in November
Public support for air strikes in Syria is steadily dropping despite the Government's vote in favour of the measure, a poll has indicated.
Less than a week after MPs voted with a higher-than-expected majority to extend air strikes from Iraq into Syria, the YouGov survey showed public backing for the motion had dropped by 31 points.
Support had remained quite constant between mid September and 24 November, when around 58 to 60 per cent of the public were in favour of airborne raids on the war-torn country.
But by 3 December, only 44 per cent of Britons said they still agreed it was the right thing to do.
Labour supporters were most concerned about extending military action, with only 29 per cent in support of RAF air strikes the day after the Commons vote.
It is the sharpest drop among all the parties, with more than half of Labour supporters in favour when asked the same question earlier in November.
A total of 51 per cent of Labour voters said they now actively "disapproved", compared to a quarter who took that stance in November.
The results reflect party leader Jeremy Corbyn's staunch opposition to air strikes
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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/britons-more-opposed-to-syria-air-strikes-since-commons-vote-a6763321.html
America’s Reckless War Against Evil --Why It’s Self-Defeating and Has No End
America’s Reckless War Against Evil--Why It’s Self-Defeating and Has No End
By Ira Chernus--Dec. 8 TomGram
Oh, no! Not another American war against evil!
This time, it’s the Islamic State (IS). After the attacks in Paris, Barack Obama, spokesman-in-chief for the United States of America, called that crew “the face of evil.” Shades of George W. Bush. The “evildoers” are back. And from every mountaintop, it seems, America now rings with calls to ramp up its war machine.
By the way, George W., how did that last war against the “evildoers” work out for you? Not quite the way you expected, right? I bet you didn’t imagine that your Global War on Terror would plant the seeds of an Islamic State and turn significant stretches of Iraq (and Syria) into fertile soil in which IS would grow into a brand new, even more frightening enemy.
But that’s the way wars against evil always seem to work.
Pardon me if I vent my exasperation with all the Washington policymakers, past and present, surrounded by their so-called experts and those war-drum-beating pundits in the media. I know I shouldn’t be shocked anymore. I’ve seen it often enough as a historian studying wars against evil in the past -- ever since biblical times, in fact -- and as a citizen watching wars in my own lifetime, ever since the one that tore Vietnam (and, incidentally, America) apart.
Still, it drives me crazy to watch policymakers and experts making the same dumb mistakes time after time, several mistakes, actually, which synergistically add up to one self-defeating blunder after another.
What’s worse, the dominant trend in public opinion is so often on the side of just those mistakes. You’d think someone would learn something. And in that someone I include “we, the people,” the nation as a whole.
Yet now, facing the Islamic State, you guessed it: we’re doing it all over again.
Let me try to lay out our repetitive mistakes, all six of them, one by one, starting with...
Mistake Number One: Treating the enemy as absolute evil, not even human.
Barack Obama called the Paris tragedy “an attack on all of humanity,” which means that, even for the president, IS fighters stand outside that category. They are evidently some other species and merely appear to be human. And this was the mildest of descriptions in this overheated political season of ours. “The face of evil” sounds modest indeed compared to the vivid images offered by the Republicans vying to replace him. For Ben Carson, IS are a bunch of “rabid dogs”; for Ted Cruz, “scorpions.” Donald Trump calls them "insane," "animals."
All point to the same dangerous conclusion: Since we are human and they are not, we are their opposite in every way. If they are absolute evil, we must be the absolute opposite. It’s the old apocalyptic tale: God’s people versus Satan’s. It ensures that we never have to admit to any meaningful connection with the enemy. By this logic, it couldn’t be more obvious that the nation our leaders endlessly call “exceptional” and “indispensable,” the only nation capable of leading the rest of the world in the war against evil, bears no relationship to that evil.
That leads to...
CONTINUED AT:
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176078/tomgram%3A_ira_chernus%2C_six_mistakes_on_the_road_to_permanent_war/#more
Does Fear Lead to Fascism? A Culture of Fear and the Epigenetics of Terror
Does Fear Lead to Fascism? A Culture of Fear and the Epigenetics of Terror
By John W. Whitehead--The Rutherford Institute
December 08, 2015
The contagion being spread like wildfire is turning communities into battlegrounds and setting Americans one against the other.
Normally mild-mannered individuals caught up in the throes of this disease have been transformed into belligerent zealots, while others inclined to pacifism have taken to stockpiling weapons and practicing defensive drills.
This plague on our nation—one that has been spreading like wildfire—is a potent mix of fear coupled with unhealthy doses of paranoia and intolerance, tragic hallmarks of the post-9/11 America in which we live.
Everywhere you turn, those on both the left- and right-wing are fomenting distrust and division. You can’t escape it.
We’re being fed a constant diet of fear: fear of terrorists, fear of illegal immigrants, fear of people who are too religious, fear of people who are not religious enough, fear of Muslims, fear of extremists, fear of the government, fear of those who fear the government. The list goes on and on.
The strategy is simple yet effective: the best way to control a populace is through fear and discord.
Fear makes people stupid.
Confound them, distract them with mindless news chatter and entertainment, pit them against one another by turning minor disagreements into major skirmishes, and tie them up in knots over matters lacking in national significance.
Most importantly, divide the people into factions, persuade them to see each other as the enemy and keep them screaming at each other so that they drown out all other sounds. In this way, they will never reach consensus about anything and will be too distracted to notice the police state closing in on them until the final crushing curtain falls.
This is how free people enslave themselves and allow tyrants to prevail.
This Machiavellian scheme has so ensnared the nation that few Americans even realize they are being manipulated into adopting an “us” against “them” mindset. Instead, fueled with fear and loathing for phantom opponents, they agree to pour millions of dollars and resources into political elections, militarized police, spy technology and endless wars, hoping for a guarantee of safety that never comes.
All the while, those in power—bought and paid for by lobbyists and corporations—move their costly agendas forward, and “we the suckers” get saddled with the tax bills and subjected to pat downs, police raids and round-the-clock surveillance.
Turn on the TV or flip open the newspaper on any given day, and you will find yourself accosted by reports of government corruption, corporate malfeasance, militarized police and marauding SWAT teams.
America has already entered a new phase, one in which children are arrested in schools, military veterans are forcibly detained by government agents because of the content of their Facebook posts, and law-abiding Americans are having their movements tracked, their financial transactions documented and their communications monitored
These threats are not to be underestimated.
Yet even more dangerous than these violations of our basic rights is the language in which they are couched: the language of fear. It is a language spoken effectively by politicians on both sides of the aisle, shouted by media pundits from their cable TV pulpits, marketed by corporations, and codified into bureaucratic laws that do little to make our lives safer or more secure.
Fear, as history shows, is the method most often used by politicians to increase the power of government. Even while President Obama insists that “freedom is more powerful than fear,” the tactics of his administration continue to rely on fear of another terrorist attack in order to further advance the agenda of the military/security industrial complex.
An atmosphere of fear permeates modern America. However, with crime at a 40-year low, is such fear of terrorism rational?
Continued at.........
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article43642.htm
Italy rules out joining Syria airstrikes, Says Another Strategy Needed
Italy rules out joining Syria airstrikes, says another strategy needed
Written by Reuters, Monday, 07 December 2015
Italy has no intention of joining a U.S.-led coalition that is attacking Islamic State targets in Syria, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said on Sunday, warning that the air campaign would only add to chaos in the region.
Centre-right opponents have urged Renzi to follow in the footsteps of Britain, which last week agreed to take part in missions over Syria, but Renzi told Corriere della Sera newspaper that Italy would remain on the sidelines.
"If being a protagonist means playing at running after other people's bombardments, then I say 'no thank you'," Renzi was quoted as saying.
"Italy's position is clear and solid. We want to wipe out terrorists, not please the commentators. The one thing we don't need is to multiply on-the-spot reactions, without a strategic vision," he said.
He compared the Syria bombardment to NATO's 2011 air assault against Libya, which helped rebels topple Muammar Gaddafi and then ushered in more than four years of civil strife.
He said Italy had been pushed by the then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy to take part in the air strikes. "Four years of civil war in Libya show it was not a happy decision. Today there needs to be a different strategy."
He added: "The one thing we cannot allow ourselves is a repeat of Libya."
The United States and its allies have been bombing Islamic State in Iraq and Syria to try to drive the group from swaths of territory it controls in both countries.
http://www.defenceweb.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=41731
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