Diplomacy must reflect reality and not be mere attempts at trickery.

"The Syrian army looked poised on Saturday to advance into the Islamic State-held province of Raqqa for the first time since 2014, apparently to pre-empt any move by Saudi Arabia to send ground forces into Syria to fight the jihadist insurgents.'  Reuters

http://www.firstpost.com/world/lavrov-says-syria-ceasefire-more-likely-to-fail-than-succeed-reuters-2625304.html

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"If its forces retake Aleppo and seal the Turkish border, Damascus would deal a crushing blow to the insurgents who were on the march until Russia intervened, shoring up Assad's rule and paving the way to the current reversal of rebel fortunes.

Russia has said it will keep bombing Islamic State and the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front, which in many areas of western Syria fights government forces in close proximity to insurgents deemed moderates by Western states. " Reuters

 http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-idUSKCN0VM09G

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"... advances continued Friday with Russian warplanes striking multiple locations across Syria, including in the northern countryside of Aleppo in support of a 10-day-old offensive aimed at laying siege to the rebel-held portion of the city of Aleppo.

Residents of the areas of northern Aleppo that have borne the brunt of the bombing campaign expressed dismay that the cease-fire would not come into effect for a week.

“Within a week everything will have been destroyed,” said Mohammed Najjar, a resident of the town of Marae. On Friday, he joined an accelerating exodus of tens of thousands of civilians toward the Turkish border, where they have been blocked by Turkish authorities from entering the country."  Washpost 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/skepticism-greets-syria-truce-deal-on-worries-over-russian-bombing/2016/02/12/74219ec7-389a-4102-a179-aeffb21cd76f_story.html?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-main_syria-915am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

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“We will turn Iraq into a “graveyard” for Saudi forces if they dare attack the country,” Ahmad al-Assadi said.  South Front

http://southfront.org/iraq-will-be-a-graveyard-for-saudi-forces-ipmu/

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 I seem to recall that IPMU is the largest grouping of Iraqi Shia militia.  So, pilgrims, al-asadi believes the Saudi led juggernaut of Egyptians/Pakistanis/UAE folks (South American and African mercenaries mostly) and other assorted cats and dogs, would motor march up the long roads from NE SA (KKMC?) through altogether Shia inhabited Iraq to assembly areas west and north of Baghdad whence they would sally forth to to eliminate the "murtadoon" (apostates- according to Hojjat al-Islam Kerry).  Well, sayyid al-asadi, don't do anything to discourage the attempt.  I want to see how this would go down.

CNN aired another Frederick Pleitgen segment from Aleppo today.  He was visiting the front line with Syrian Army people.  It was quiet.  They said they thought the war would be over in a few months.  The anchor blondie who introduced the Pleitgen piece said he was reporting from rebel held Aleppo.  {{!!!!}}  The orthographic device {{----}} is hereby adopted to indicate irony.

Finally, the Great Diplomatic Dream Machine is clearly trying to persuade the Syrians/Iranians/Russians/Hizbullah to give up a winning hand through media BS.  Good luck on that!  pl

 

Comments

[LondonBob]

Slightly OT.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-sachs/hillary-clinton-and-the-s_b_9231190.html?utm_hp_ref=yahoo&ir=Yahoo

Very surprising article by Jeffrey Sachs on HRC, the CIA and Syria.

I think Trump signaled in his clashes with Jeb over Iraq that should it be Clinton Trump in the Presidential, that Iraq will be a big theme for him, with attacks on her role in Syria and Libya/Benghazi thrown in for good measure. Apparently Trump's message on bringing the troops home and using the money to rebuild America is the single highest polling line recorded in the US. I expect it will bury her as it did when she lost to Obama.

[pj]

Only half-rhetorical. Even knowing the bias of the MSM, I am surprised that I can find no reports of civilian casualties from any credible source.

[kooshy]

Babak

This, like all wars for Syria, for eastern Mediterranean sea, for what Brzezinski calls Eroasia, is nothing new, is as old as history. From the time of easterner Persian fighting with the westerner Greeks, continued through Persian Sassanid waring with westerner Romans and on to Muslim east in war with western Christian crusaders, ottomans and European fighting over the eastern Europe and western Asia, up to today
American/West vs Persian/Russian/Chinese is all the same. After almost 3000 years we are in same place, and on same planes, is the easterners, the silk roaders who are fighting for Halab at the end of the ever most important trade road in men’civilization. Is again the Iranians with the help from eastern European Russians and the trade of goods from China that is at stake here. All accesses to entire Mediterranean sea, the most important body of water that connects 3 continents, 2 oceans and at least 5 seas that is at stake again. Bab al Mandab, Suez, Gibraltar, Dardanelle, north African shores including east up to Haifa, entire southern European shores, entire eastern European shores of Mediterranean sea from Turkey to Croatia, both sides of read sea, is all access controlled by US and the west. That is why the only fight is left, is the fight for the only access that is still available for the east to reach the eastern shores of the Mediterranean sea, which is Syria and Lebanon. I don’t see how east including Iran can concede on this, to the west. Iranians, they understand denial of access well, they know and have seen that done by the ottomans, Romans, crusaders and more recently by the Americans. Post-soviet Russians were slow and too optimistic, now they are beginning to learn what the denial of access means and is. This war is still a proxy war, since the only conventional ranked ground forces who are fighting on and in land is the SAA, everybody else in this war are gorillas, militias, or rebels, who in one way or other are all proxies(bitches) of somebody who is not willing/Risking to show his face. IMO this war will continue to be a proxy war on SAA, the only ranked conventional army that is defending her home.

[Amir]

Belgium does what you describe: the government has 110% BNP debt but almost entirely to it's own population.

[Amir]

What I forgot to add, they spend the money in education, social projects, research, healthcare ...and get the return. The nominal tax burden is high but then again everyone is a champion in tax dudging.

[Hood Canal Gardner]

Bob..as for the 'as is' end Feb election candidates it's still a puzzle ie the 'pieces' have a lot more moves to make.

Someone out there must be willing to bell the US-SA cat. I wish the intel was better. All I seem able to see is diplomatic/military tourism.

[pj]

"Hillary Clinton and the Syrian Bloodbath" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-sachs/hillary-clinton-and-the-s_b_9231190.html?utm_hp_ref=yahoo&ir=Yahoo

[Babak Makkinejad]

Thank you for your comments.

The empires of yore that you have mentioned were all from a pre-industrial era which depended on extraction of wealth from human (and animal) labor. Plunder and rapine was a way of life with them since none other existed.

EU states, the Russian Federation, the United States, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran, Qatar are not fighting in Syria or for Syria for material gains.

The access (or rather denial of access) that NATO states enjoy is real but I think the Suez Canal cannot accommodate the larger container ships already and I am not sure all of this denial of access is as important as it used to be - or will be in the future with the developments of the land and maritime routes to the Orient.

And I think that calling the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, whose general officers, officers, and rank-and-file dead are being buried every day in Iran or those of Hezbollah "irregular soldiers" is accurate. They certainly are not "bitches", in my opinion, and nor are the Russian pilots.

I suppose you are saying that unless a conventional army is defending its homeland, it is otherwise a proxy force? Red Army fighting in Germany? US in Anzio? The English in Burma?

And what about the Great King @ Apadana: "The Persian man has fought far from home..." to create the present perfect state.

[cynic]

Issuing nicely coloured pieces of paper in ever greater quantities in exchange for items of value is a great idea which lots of people have found works well until quite suddenly - it doesn't.

[cynic]

Government financing it's expenditure by borrowing works in stable circumstances, but who will want to make dollar denominated loans in hyper-inflationary circumstances? Then deficits have to be financed by plunder. The advantage of being a Reserve Currency diminishes as international trade diminishes. Foreigners will have less need of dollars, and they will seek to make more use of their own and other currencies as they see the dollar is no longer a store of value. Overseas expenditure by the American government would become much more difficult.

This would not be the first American experience of hyper inflation. Wasn't the first currency issued by the revolutionary government called a 'Continental', and didn't the depreciation of its value by over issue to meet war expenses give rise to the expression, 'not worth a Continental'?

[cynic]

The 'guy' is not stupid. He looks more like an absent-minded professor type. He may be wrong. He may have got hold of something but hasn't managed to fully elucidate it or to make full use of his understanding of it. No stupid person could come up with such a strange idea as that monitoring temporary shifts in linguistic usage on unrelated topics could be used to predict events, or be able to work out what events and when and where they will happen. He claims a record somewhat better than chance, although he admits to being optimistic on timing and that sometimes the outcome is unexpected.

Actually stupid people believe what politicians say, and that things will continue indefinitely as they are now.