Initiatives
Initiates,
The battlefield initiative in suddenly-vacated Syria has been taken by Turkey, based on this report by Dima at Military Summary Channel, who seems to mostly get Russian intelligence, but does lots of homework. At 9:40, for about 4 minutes, he lays out that Turkey is claiming Syria as part of Turkey, as it was under the Ottoman Empire, until after WW-1. Turkey is saying that the fight against the Kurdish forces in Syria, who have functioned as an American proxy army, is essentially existential to Turkey, and will be prosecuted to Turkish satisfaction, which will happen to give Turkey control of Syria's oilfields and best farmland. Turkey is telling Israel to withdraw it's armed forces from recently taken Syrian territory. turkey has the largest military in the region, not counting Turkish proxy forces like HTS, which is claiming now to rule.
Times of India has a 3 minute news clip of this: 'Get Out From Syria Now': Turkey's Big Ultimatum Shocks U.S.; Turkey For Exit Of Kurd Fighters
12/15/24 Military summary says North Korean troops in Russia's Kursk region have begun another assault on Ukrainian positions there, and (from 16:35) that Russian troops in Syria have abandoned bases deep inside Syria to concentrate in Coastal bases and avoid increasing conflict between Turkish and US proxy forces. HTS head, Al Jolani says that Israeli forces consolidating in Syria have no reason to do so, because their enemies are no longer there, a gentle nudge to get out, though non-confrontational. North Korean Troops Have Begun Their Assault The Kurds Await The Turkish Offensive
Gilbert Doctorow points out a very important peace-initiative: Did Viktor Orban achieve anything during his mission to Mar-al-Lago this past week? We have all seen video images of Viktor Orban’s visit with Donald Trump on Monday, 9 December, which featured the two leaders smiling broadly and showing thumbs up to photo journalists. We know that during the same visit, Orban met with Elon Musk: and major media showed them in a friendly conversation during which Musk was carrying one of his children on his shoulders. These were all heart-warming images to Trump supporters, awful signs for dyed-in-the-wool Democrats of the prospective collaboration between what they believe to be hard right authoritarian leaders during the Trump years to come. Some reporting also carried mention of Trump’s designated national security adviser Mike Waltz as having been present for the talks.
On Wednesday, 11 December, Reuters and other U.S. media reported briefly that Orban had a one-hour telephone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin during which he evidently recounted what he learned in Mar-al-Lago and sought Putin’s agreement for a Christmas Day cease-fire and large-scale exchange of prisoners to be arranged with Kiev. We may assume that Putin gave his consent, but subsequently Vladimir Zelensky rejected Orban’s initiatives on both matters and roundly attacked the Hungarian Prime Minister for speaking to Putin at all. Some of our media did quote Orban as saying that this week was the most critical in the entire Ukraine war, meaning that the fate of the world was hanging in the balance. On this same Wednesday, we learned that Kiev had used six ATACMS missiles in a strike against the military airfield in Taganrog, a Russian port city on the Sea of Azov.
The week closed with Russia’s massive missile and drone attack Friday, 13 December, on Ukraine’s already shattered electricity generating infrastructure, which even compelled Kiev to shut down the nuclear plants which till now had been the mainstay of residual electricity supply to the country. One half of Ukraine was now said to be totally without electricity. Nearly 100 Russian hypersonic short range ballistic missiles and cruise missiles together with a still greater number of killer drones were deployed in what Moscow called a successful mission in retaliation for Kiev’s ATACMS strike on Taganrog... ..Orban’s mission to Mar-al-Lago and his subsequent debriefing for Putin had a strong influence on the way that the Kremlin chose to retaliate for the attack on Taganrog. Clearly, as I have said in my interviews this past week, there were options on the table that were sharply escalatory...
..It is clear to me that Orban was able to provide Putin with persuasive evidence from his talks with Trump, Musk and Waltz that it would be far better to show restraint, not to take the bait from the Biden administration to escalate and thereby not upset Trump’s likely plans to stop funding the war upon taking office. Accordingly, the Russians only ravaged what remains of Ukraine’s power supply and did not touch NATO assets inside or outside Ukraine.
For this, as I say, we all owe a great debt of gratitude to the Hungarian prime minister. https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2024/12/15/did-viktor-orban-achieve-anything-during-his-mission-to-mar-al-lago-this-past-week/
Simplicius: Pieces Begin Slowly Falling into Place in 'New Syria 'On one hand, many statements and videos testify to the HTS-controlled Syria becoming a kind of proxy of Israel, while a deluge of new evidence shows Turkey slowly fortifying its position as future hegemon of the region... ..As soon as Damascus fell, the director of the MIT—Turkey’s CIA equivalent—Ibrahim Kalin was spotted visiting Jolani, touring Damascus, as well as paying homage to the ancient Umayyad mosque.
Several videos showed Jolani acting as personal chauffeur to Kalin, driving him around Damascus with an armed escort. Photo of Jolani behind the wheel... Video with Kalin seen in the passenger seat as onlookers are shocked Jolani is chauffeuring him...
..Think about that: Jolani as personal driver to the head of Turkey’s top intelligence agency—that’s not to mention that Kalin was senior personal advisor to Erdogan and is member of his AK Party.
So, Erdogan’s personal henchman is already shadowing Jolani, whispering in his ear—what can that mean? And what does that say about rumors that HTS had long ago cut ties with Turkey, with the same going for SNA/FSA/TFSA?
12/13/2024 and already looking outdated, the multifaceted view from Inside Turkey: Erdoğan’s Syria? Turkish pro-government circles are euphoric – not only because an Islamist-led coalition toppled the dictator they detested, but also because they believe that their president orchestrated the whole operation... ..Islamist newspapers have hailed Erdoğan as the commander of the ‘Syrian Revolution’, ‘the Conqueror of Syria’ and ‘the greatest revolutionary of the 21st century’. While some on the Turkish right had begun to doubt the government’s Syria policy, holding it responsible for the refugee crisis, now the Erdoğanists seem vindicated. With Assad toppled, they are expecting both a domestic reconsolidation of power around the ruling AKP and a massive increase in Turkish influence across the region – with many announcing the effective end of Western control... ..Turkey controls several armed factions in northern Syria, which are organized under the coalition known as the Syrian National Army (SNA, formerly the Free Syrian Army). Turkey’s hope is that the SNA will wipe out the American-backed Syrian Democratic Forces and subordinate the Syrian Kurds to an Islamic government in Damascus… ..All this poses the question of what HTS really represents. With roots in the Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra, and a place on Washington’s official list of terrorist groups, it seems an unlikely darling of the West. Yet the US and EU have made relatively optimistic noises about its seizure of Damascus, which has further unravelled the ‘Axis of Resistance’, weakening Iran’s regional role. In Turkey, opinion about the group is divided. The opposition is adamant that HTS is a creation of the US and Israel, while Erdoğanists insist that Turkey has armed and trained them over the last several years. Another rumor is that HTS was trained by British intelligence. Some experts claim that the assault on Damascus couldn’t have been successful without the involvement of Western intelligence agencies; others argue that those agencies were tricked or outflanked by HTS... ..Whoever the exact sponsors of HTS might be, the group is clearly an expression of a long-term trend: the mainstreaming and partial taming of jihadi organizations, their infiltration or capture of institutions, and their popularization. These three dynamics sometimes undermine each other, but the latest twist in the Syrian drama has seen them combine in the form of HTS...The Turkish opposition, including the left, insists that this is an American-friendly Islamism. Yet the fluctuations of Erdoğanism itself over the years show that there are risks for the West when it plays with fire in this way... ..The main danger for Turkish imperialism would be the growing formalization of Kurdish power. Any stable peace will have to involve autonomy or independence for the Syrian Kurds, now officially recognized by Western states. For the Kurds themselves, the consequences of this formalization would be ambiguous. They would no longer be the heroes of the global left, but they would also break free from their isolation and become a ‘normal’ part of the decaying international state-system. Turkish Kurds would meanwhile be left to their fate, while also being emboldened by the process of normalization to their south... ..Now, the potential for investment – to rebuild from the ruins – has whet the appetite of entrepreneurs across the world. Back in 2018, when Turkey lost 56 soldiers in a military operation, one of Erdoğan’s chief advisors famously remarked that ‘We are giving martyrs, but Turkish contractors will get a bigger share of the pie.’ The markets seem to agree, with the stocks of construction-related businesses rising sharply over the last few days.
It is not clear whether this kind of infrastructural investment can really take off, however, given the uncertain trajectory of the military conflicts, especially in the north and south of the country. The US and its allies have been able to destroy many of their regional enemies, but they have not been able to build functional, long-lasting arrangements of their own. https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/erdogans-syria?pc=1647
We Are Not Looking For A Fight With Israel: HTS Leader Jolani https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/we-are-not-looking-fight-israel-hts-leader-jolani
Today's actions from Turkey may have overtaken the analysis of Alex Krainer, The big picture: Syria and Ukraine are two parts of the same war Time will tell, but here are a few dots that might make coherent sense if connected. First off, the conflict in Syria is part of the same conflict that's also being fought in Ukraine. On 29 November in Astana (two days after HTS launched their incursion into Syria), Vladimir Putin said the following with regards to war/peace in Ukraine:
"Let me underscore the key point - the essence of our proposal is not a temporary truce or ceasefire, as the West might prefer, to allow the Kiev regime to recover, rearm, and prepare for a new offensive. I repeat: we are not discussing freezing the conflict, but its definitive resolution."
And what is Putin's definitive resolution? It's nothing less than the creation of a new security architecture between the "heartland and the rimland" to use Halford Mackinder's terminology. In other words, Putin is determined to end British geopolitics once and for all... ..Today’s wars are driven by the Western imperial oligarchy as they struggle to maintain their dominance and to impose their “rules-based” global order. The central element of their agenda is an overarching imperative to preserve their hegemony over the Eurasian landmass. This long-held obsession draws roots from the British Empire. It was explicitly articulated at the turn of the last century by the British scholar and statesman Sir Halford Mackinder... ..Mackinder hypothesized that the long-term viability of states therefore critically depended on their space and location and concluded that optimum conditions of space and location were only to be found in the inner regions of Eurasia which he named the Pivot Area: a large expanse roughly encompassing Russia, the Caucasus region, Kazakhstan, Iran, and Afghanistan.
In Mackinder’s framework, the Pivot Area is surrounded by the Inner or Marginal Crescent which includes Europe, Northern Africa, Asia Minor, the Arabian Peninsula, India, China and Japan, while the lands of the Outer, or Insular Crescent included the rest of the world. For Mackinder and the British imperial cabal, the Pivot Area was strategic because it was capable of emerging as an independently viable economic power that could spawn a powerful rival empire... ..Russia was seen as the most likely nation to emerge as the pivot land power... British Empire considered this to be an existential threat which had to be neutralized and destroyed... In plain English, Mackinder suggested surrounding the Pivot Area with a crescent of crisis flashpoints and inducing nations like France, Italy, Egypt, India and Korea to bait the pivot power (Russia) into an unending series of exhausting, crippling quagmires. His suggestions were taken entirely seriously and have defined the foreign policy of the Western empire ever since... ..Today, Ukraine and Syria (and Israel) make part of the rimland, or the "arch of crises" which the empire arranged from the Mediterranean to the Koreas in order to keep Russia and its allied powers constantly at war. Weakening these pivot power and preventing the emergence of a rival empire on Eurasian continent is an absolute imperative for the Western oligarchy.
He has a left hand. Caitlin Johnstone has: Meditations On A Six Year-Old Amputee Crawling Through Gaza With The Help Of A Roller Skate
Meetings at The Hague reveal crisis and turmoil, as state representatives grapple with Israeli warrants
At a recent convening at The Hague, state representatives to the ICC agonized over the disastrous implications for the international rules-based order should Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant evade accountability for war crimes in Gaza. https://mondoweiss.net/2024/12/meetings-at-the-hague-reveal-crisis-and-turmoil-as-state-representatives-grapple-with-israeli-warrants/
South Korea - National Assembly Impeaches President Over Failed Putsch Attempt
On December 3 the President of South Korea Yoon Suk Yeol launched a coup against the opposition ruled National Assembly. He declared martial law and ordered military special forces and police units to block law makers from assembling. But the assembly members did win the race. https://www.moonofalabama.org/2024/12/south-korea-national-assembly-impeaches-president-over-failed-putsch-attempt.html
Surplus Energy Economics calls it: AT THE END OF TECHNOLOGICAL HUBRIS
There’s a fair chance that this might be the last article published here in 2024.
That being so, I’d like to start by thanking you for your interest and participation in our discussions during the year, and wishing you a very merry Festive Season and a happy and prosperous New Year.
Until quite recently, the idea that the global economy might reverse – my preferred term is inflect – from growth into contraction lived in the realm of radical and unwelcome theory. But this has been the year in which theory has been borne out by experience. https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2024/12/12/295-beans-on-tech/#like-43774
Celia Farber: Jaw Dropping Candace Owens Interview With USS Liberty Survivor Goes Viral, Truth Now Undeniable, But Not Many Caught The Significance Of The Name Mentioned As An Irgun Agent Who Cast Spells On LBJ Mathilde Krim Was Not Only Behind The Israel Agenda After JFK But Also The Murderous Money Laundering Machine And Terror Organization AMFAR. I Reported In 1992 How Krim INVENTED "Heterosexual AIDS"
They say nothing about assuming the expense of providing wholesome food to poor people. Tax Junk-Food To Lengthen Children's Lives, UK Chief Medical Officer Says https://www.zerohedge.com/political/tax-junk-food-lengthen-childrens-lives-uk-chief-medical-officer-says
Crush the little cockroach people! Florida mom arrested for saying ‘Delay Deny Depose’ on call with BlueCross BlueShield health insurer: ‘You people are next’ https://nypost.com/2024/12/12/us-news/florida-mom-arrested-for-saying-delay-deny-depose-on-call-with-bluecross-blueshield/
The U.S. Congress is The "Conspiracy Theorist" that spread the "medical misinformation" That Vaccines May Cause Autism
Wakefield did not launch the vaccine-autism inquiry in 1998, Congress did in 1986, after a German queried it in 1976, after Johns Hopkins gave us our first vaccine-autism case in 1943.
Don't expect an even-break: COVID-19 Self-Amplifying mRNA Injection Nears European Approval CHMP recommends authorization despite grave safety concerns; final regulatory approval now rests with the European Commission.
Caitlin Johnstone has: Some Thoughts On The Mystery Drones
Unknown UAVs actively monitor Ramstein air base and other strategic facilities in Germany https://en.topcor.ru/54592-neizvestnye-bpla-aktivno-nabljudajut-za-bazoj-ramshtajn-i-drugimi-strategicheskimi-obektami-v-frg.html
Fully Grounded (pictured with onion starts coming up and ripe peppers in foreground)
My personal opine is the Blinken Bidens want to start world war three , or already have, hoping hopping to expand to declare martial law and seize US. Then no change of office for president....Blinken Sullivan can give away the world to the very devil herself, possibly install ScKamala if Joe croaks
War / Huh / What is it good for? / Absolutely nothing / Say it again, y’all.