Posted by seumasach on October 13, 2015
M.K.Bhadrakumar
10th October, 2015
The Pentagon virtually announced on Friday that the US is pulling out of the civil war in Syria – recruiting and training rebel groups to overthrow the government of President Bashar al-Assad – and will instead concentrate its energy and resources on the fight against the Islamic State. The Pentagon announcement,here, followed a decision taken by President Barack Obama himself.
Posted in Syria | Tagged: East-West alliance against ISIL, Obama's realist turn, retreat from empire, Russian diplomacy | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on October 12, 2015
Cailean Bochanan
12th October, 2015
The long awaited coup against Jeremy Corbyn has finally materialized. Up to fifty Labour MPs are reported to be prepared to vote for military action in Syria were it to be put to a vote. What possessed them to put forward this woefully mistimed move is anyone’s guess. Perhaps they had been reading Socialist Worker and been inflamed by its reports of “some 10,000” barrel boms “dropped in the first six months of this year” and how Russia “wants to shore up Bashar al-Assad’s regime, which is crumbling, so it is attacking all forms of opposition.” In any case, they have decided that the time has come for another UK intervention to protect civilians by creating safe havens for them. That would involve, as Labour MP John Woodcock put it, “greater involvement from air forces to sustain a no-fly zone and will certainly require an end to the hand-wringing over President Putin’s disgraceful deceit in bombing anti-Assad rebels rather than Daesh [Isis].”
Posted in Syria | Tagged: corbyn leadership, End of empire, Russian diplomacy | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on October 10, 2015
This is a timely moment to recall Putin’s statement to the Arab League back in March
29th March, 2015
Vladimir Putin has said Russia will fight for an independent Palestinian state, and called for the issues of the Middle East to be resolved through peaceful means.
Posted in Global peace process, Palestine | Tagged: Russian diplomacy | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on October 7, 2015
The operative word here is “still”: we still, despite the fact that Syrian airspace is under the control of the Russians with de facto US collaboration, are considering airstrikes against ISIL,
“But Cameron has also said he would only take the vote to parliament if he had a convincing plan for Syria after the bloody four-year civil war.’
So he won’t be taking it to a vote then! The people with a convincing plan are the Russians.
Yet, still, we hear the faint and forlorn cry of regime change:
“We need to demonstrate that we have a vision and a plan for what Syria should look like and I’m clear that means a government not led by Bashar Assad but led by someone who can bring the country together. You need a Syrian government that can appeal not just to the Alawites but to the Sunnis, the Kurds and Christians.”
Still, I agree with the last sentence, but that Syrian government is none other than that of Bashar-al-Assad!
The British government is in total disarray.
7th October, 2015
Britain is still seeking to conduct airstrikes in Syria even though Russia’s military action there is making the country extremely dangerous, Michael Fallon, the defence secretary, has said.
Posted in Syria | Tagged: End of empire | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on October 7, 2015
M.K.Bhadrakumar
6th October, 2015
Turkey has voiced strong opposition to the Russian military intervention in Syria. How far will Turkey take this campaign?
Posted in Global peace process, Multipolar world, Syria | Tagged: East-West alliance against ISIL, Obama's realist turn, Russian diplomacy | 1 Comment »
Posted by seumasach on October 7, 2015
See also: New Cold War or War on Terror
“I have, for some time, been talking up a strategic alliance between Washington and Moscow as the great paradigm shift in global geo-politics. It was, admittedly, difficult to see how such a shift could come about. Indeed, the failure of Obama’s reset was just another amongst a litany of seeming failures. But if that remains a strategic goal of Obama, and I believe that it must, then War on TerrorII would be the key to its realization.”
7th October, 2015
Baku – APA. The Russian Defense Ministry and the Pentagon are working on an agreement to coordinate military flights in Syria, according to Russia’s Defense Ministry, RT reported.
Posted in Global peace process, Multipolar world, Syria | Tagged: East-West alliance against ISIL, End of empire, Obama's realist turn, retreat from empire, Russian diplomacy | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on October 6, 2015
M.K.Bhadrakumar
6th October, 2015
The two incidents involving Turkey and the Russian aircraft operating in northern Syria on successive days in the weekend throw into bold relief the single most crucial template of the Syrian conflict in the coming months. Turkey happens to be the only regional power that could actually create a ‘quagmire’ for Russia in Syria – similar to the role Pakistan performed in the eighties vis-à-vis the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan.
Posted in Syria | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on October 6, 2015
Iraqi Shiite Militia Chief Says Russia, Unlike US, Is ‘Very Serious’ About Fighting ISIS
Days after Iraq’s Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani spoke out in favor of the idea of Russia conducting airstrikes on targets of the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS, in Iraq, one of the country’s most powerful Shiite groups also lent support to the possibility of Russian warplanescarrying out targeted operations.
Read more
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Posted by seumasach on October 5, 2015
Thierry Meyssan
5th October, 2015
While the Atlantist media seem to be falling sick, infected by a sudden attack of the anti-Russian fever, Thierry Meyssan interprets Moscow’s military action in Syria as the first step towards a complete revision of international relations. In his opinion, the important question is not so much whether Russia will save the Syrian Arab Republic from the jihadists, but whether Russia’s army could partially replace the US army in the region in order to guarantee security. Basing his interpretation on an internal document from the Security Council, he affirms that Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama are acting together against the US liberal hawks and neo-conservatives.
Posted in Global peace process, Syria | Tagged: Obama's realist turn, retreat from empire, Russian diplomacy | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on October 4, 2015
Cailean Bochanan
4th October, 2015
I had the impression that Osborne’s recent and startling announcement of various deals with China, including the integration of our financial markets, no less, had been met by a stunned silence. But John McDonnell, the new Shadow Chancellor made this reference to them in his speech to the Labour Party Conference:
“I found the Conservatives’ rant against Jeremy’s proposal to bring rail back into public ownership ironic when George Osborne was touring China selling off to the Chinese state bank any British asset he could lay his hands on.”
“Ironic” is putting it mildly: The Chancellor has essentially admitted the failure of the Thatcher revolution and called in the state to rescue Britain. Only it’s not the British state, which no longer knows how to run anything unless it’s into the ground. You might have thought the left would be enjoying this “irony” a bit more than they appear to be. More, for example, than William Keegan writing in the Guardian who is dismayed that Osborne is “kowtowing to a communist Chinese government” and denounces his “cloying approach to a regime notorious for its abuse of human rights”. Keegan is something of a soft left neo-keynesian and , therefore, those criticisms could be largely expected. What about the hard left?
In an article in Socialist Worker Alex Callinicos gives us the line. He is, of course, scrupulously politically correct:
“The problem here isn’t that the companies are foreign-owned.”
Why shouldn’t foreign companies take the place over? Don’t they have rights too? The problem lies elsewhere. Callinicos points out that Chinese companies are “still subject to considerable state control” and that capital “is still not allowed to flow freely in and out of the country” However, Callinicos insinuates this is changing and China is embracing the free movement of capital.
So we have two major threads in this leftist discourse: on the one hand, dealing with China is wrong because China is communist and , on the other , it is wrong because China is no longer communist.
Callinicos goes on to denounce the fact that Chinese investment will be centered on the the City of London at the expense of the “national base of companies operating in Britain.” Callinicos’ thinking in all this is particularly fuzzy. Capital exported from China can still be and is controlled by the Chinese leadership for all their rhetoric about free markets. This is particularly true of the banks. As Dend Xaoping himself used to say:”Whatever you do keep control of the financial system!” In addition, I don’t believe the behavior of Chinese banks will merely replicate that of our own: riding high on bubbles and carry trades, manipulating rates and prices and laundering funds of dubious origin. If they did China certainly wouldn’t be in the position it is today. Anyway, as Osborne announced, there is already large scale Chinese investment in the real economy, largely in infrastructure and housing. There is every reason to believe that this would increase with funding available from Chinese banks operating in the City. The principles of Chinese finance contradict completely those the City of London. We are, therefore, looking at systemic change in the British financial system.
The British left desperately need to get to grips with this issue and quickly. This is because they have essentially abandoned their neo-Keynesian perspectives and accepted the need to balance budgets. But how can they reconcile this with their claim to be anti-austerity. Balanced budgets imply genocidal austerity unless there is some countervailing tendency. That tendency is incoming investment something which, seemingly unbeknown to the left, we have been beneficiaries of for decades. All that is happening,as Osborne’s policy shows, is that the form this investment takes is changing.
For a long time China was obliged to accept fiat pounds to cover its massive trade surplus with Britain and reinvest these pounds in UK government bonds. This was win/win for Britain and largely explains the surprising prosperity of post-Thatcherite Britain. The bankruptcy of the City and its subsequent bailout changed all that. China ceased to buy new UK government bonds (note that, in addition to its massive trade deficit, Britain no longer has a current account surplus not including trade) although they agreed not to divest from existing bonds, sinking sterling. Instead, they wanted to reinvest the surplus funds in the UK. So, on the one hand, we can no longer fund our deficit with Chinese bond purchases and on the other we have the prospect of hundreds of billions worth of inward investment. So balanced budgets and Osborne’s policy are two sides of the same coin. It would be truly reckless to embrace balanced budgets without wholeheartedly welcoming the incoming investment which will render the outcome far less austere. The left are caught in a dilemma which they must resolve if they don’t want to be outflanked by the Tories.
Posted in British economy | Tagged: bankrupt Britain, China-UK comprehensive strategic partnership, Chinese soft power, End of empire | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on October 1, 2015
30th September, 2015
This article originally appeared on the website of BüSo. Translated by Thomas Trautzsch for Russia Insider.
Russia’s actions in Syria and the effects of the refugee crisis in Europe have lead to a significant rethinking in Europe. The recognition that a peaceful solution to the bloody civil war in Syria can only be achieved together with the Assad Government and the involvement of important powers of the region gaining ever more grounds.
Posted in Battle for Europe, Syria | Tagged: Russian diplomacy | Leave a Comment »
In These New Times 