Backed by Russian air-support Syrian government forces have continued their offensive on the borders between Latakia, Aleppo, Homs and Hama provinces.
Building on Friday's (9/10/15) liberation of the village of Al-Basha - around 16km (9.5 miles) north of the City of Homs and around 36km (22 miles) south of the City of Hama - they have also liberated the villages of Jub-al-Ahmar and Kafr-Dulbah which sit around 3km (1.8 miles) and 10km (6 miles) respectively to the west of Al-Basha.
Further to the north the Syrian government have also liberated the town of Khan Sheikhun which sits on the M5 motorway around 35km (21 miles) north of the City of Hama and around 60km (36 miles) south of the City of Idlib. They have also captured the village of Kafr Nabuda which sits around 15km (10 miles) to the west of Khan Sheikhun. This gives the Syrian government control of the strategically important Sahl al-Ghab plain.
Both of these areas were previously held by the Army of Conquest/Jaish al-Fatah (JAF) coalition which is led by Al Qaeda's Syrian affiliate Al Nusra Front (ANF) and the Islamic Movement of the Freemen of the Levant/Harakat Ahrar ash-Sham al-Islamiyya (FML/Ahrar
ash-Sham).
Saudi Arabia in particular seems very committed to halting this latest advance by the Syrian government. Reports have begun to emerge that in the 6 days since the operation began some 500 US made Tube-launched, Optically-tracked, Wire-guided (TOW) anti-tank weapons have been delivered to JAF from the Saudi stock-pile of some 13,000 such weapons. Numerous videos have also begun to appear on the Internet of these weapons being used by JAF against Syrian government forces.
Although I don't have the documents in front of me I strongly suspect that this transfer of TOW's to JAF violates the terms of the export license granted to Saudi Arabia that states that Saudi Arabia must be the end user of the weapons.
Around 56km (34 miles) to the north-east of Idlib city the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) continue to battle both the ANF and FML sections of the JAF coalition in the City of Aleppo. Although there have been no reported clashes in the two days since my last post on the subject the YPG have intensified checkpoints and patrols within Aleppo city to deter JAF attacks.
Around 105km (62 miles) to the north-east of Aleppo the YPG have continued to strengthen the 33,000km^2 (20,000mile^2) buffer-zone that stretches from the town of Sarrin on the banks of the Euphrates River all the way to Iraq's border with Iran. The main focus has been on increasing check-points and patrols to deter infiltration by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) alongside mine clearing operations around the village of Ain Issa which sits just 50km (30 miles) north of ISIL de facto capital in Syria Raqqa.
The big development from the YPG controlled north-east is Sunday's (11/10/15) formation of a new coalition known as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Alongside the YPG this includes the Euphrates Volcano/Burkan al-Furat and Revolutionary Army/Jaish al-Thuwar fragments of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and the Syriac Military Council (MFS) - a primarily Syriac Christian militia along with two local tribes. In total this new force has around 60,000 men/women at arms.
Over Sunday (11/10/15) night/Monday (12/10/15) morning the US air-dropped some 45 tonnes of small arms ammunition and grenades to the SDF. Officially this weaponry was only for the use by the Burkan al-Furat and Jaish al-Thuwar parts of the SDF coalition but with them making up just 7% of the SDF while the YPG makes up 80% it seems unlikely that the US can guarantee that some of these weapons won't fall into the YPG's hands.
As such these seems to be a further indication that the US is leaning towards arming the YPG directly. However it is US President Barack Obama's pathological fear of confrontation with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that is preventing it from doing so.
This could become a serious problem because there seems to be a desire on the part of the FSA forces to lead the YPG into a full-scale attempt to liberate Raqqa itself. You only need to look at the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) efforts to liberates cities such as Tikrit, Ramadi and Fallujah to see that the YPG is in no-way equipped for such a task.
Therefore such an effort would be a suicide mission intended to destroy the YPG so they can be replaced by a Turkish invasion force. The US air-drop could also be viewed as an attempt to make this a reality by strengthening FSA voices within the SDF coalition.
I will come back tomorrow to offer a more in depth assessment of the wider situation. Unfortunately right now I lack the mental wherewithal to do that properly and this is one of those situations where a half-assed job simply won't do.
17:20 on 13/10/15 (UK date).
Tuesday, 13 October 2015
MH17 Final Report: Prima Facie.
Today (13/10/15) the Dutch Safety Board (DSB) released it's final report into the the crash of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine on July 17th 2014 (17/7/14). As always with this type of report the purpose is not to apportion blame but to determine the exact circumstances of the crash.
As with the European refugee crisis I think that my time is better spent dealing with the root cause of the problem rather then rushing around after each of its consequences. Therefore I have not read the 279 page report and it is unlikely that I ever will.
However the main finding of the report laid out in sections 4 & 5 is that despite there being 14 aircraft shot down in the area in the month prior to the crash of MH17, there being 28 Notice To Air Men (NOTAM) issued for the region and one formal letter of warning from the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) the Ukrainian government in Kiev refused to declare the area a combat zone and shut down the air-space to civilian traffic.
This failure placed the Ukrainian government in Kiev in violation of it's obligation to "ensure the safety [...]of international civilian aviation" as laid out in the 1947 Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation.
This failure created a situation whereby MH17 was struck by a Surface to Air Missile (SAM) fired from a BUK-style launcher. However the report was not able to determine if the specific missile was a 9M38M1 which is only available to the Kiev forces or the 9M314M which is only available to Russian forces. Both missiles use the same type of warhead.
The Kiev controlled Air Traffic Control (ATC) in Ukraine at the time operates with a clear chain of command running from the President down to front-line ATC operators. Within this structure there are named individuals who have specific responsibilities to ensure that the air-space is being operated in accordance with the Chicago Convention - essentially a duty of care to the civilian airline passengers.
As such it is clear that the next step of the Dutch criminal investigation which is running parallel to the DSB investigation is to arrest those named individuals on 298 counts of murder.
They can then be interviewed to determine whether their failure to close air-space over the crash site was the result of criminal negligence or the result of political pressure. Perhaps pressure intended to engineer just this type of tragedy.
Take a wild guess a which section of the report the western media are choosing to focus on though.
15:40 on 13/10/15 (UK date).
As with the European refugee crisis I think that my time is better spent dealing with the root cause of the problem rather then rushing around after each of its consequences. Therefore I have not read the 279 page report and it is unlikely that I ever will.
However the main finding of the report laid out in sections 4 & 5 is that despite there being 14 aircraft shot down in the area in the month prior to the crash of MH17, there being 28 Notice To Air Men (NOTAM) issued for the region and one formal letter of warning from the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) the Ukrainian government in Kiev refused to declare the area a combat zone and shut down the air-space to civilian traffic.
This failure placed the Ukrainian government in Kiev in violation of it's obligation to "ensure the safety [...]of international civilian aviation" as laid out in the 1947 Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation.
This failure created a situation whereby MH17 was struck by a Surface to Air Missile (SAM) fired from a BUK-style launcher. However the report was not able to determine if the specific missile was a 9M38M1 which is only available to the Kiev forces or the 9M314M which is only available to Russian forces. Both missiles use the same type of warhead.
The Kiev controlled Air Traffic Control (ATC) in Ukraine at the time operates with a clear chain of command running from the President down to front-line ATC operators. Within this structure there are named individuals who have specific responsibilities to ensure that the air-space is being operated in accordance with the Chicago Convention - essentially a duty of care to the civilian airline passengers.
As such it is clear that the next step of the Dutch criminal investigation which is running parallel to the DSB investigation is to arrest those named individuals on 298 counts of murder.
They can then be interviewed to determine whether their failure to close air-space over the crash site was the result of criminal negligence or the result of political pressure. Perhaps pressure intended to engineer just this type of tragedy.
Take a wild guess a which section of the report the western media are choosing to focus on though.
15:40 on 13/10/15 (UK date).
Monday, 12 October 2015
Something About Rugby.
This past Saturday (10/10/15) and Sunday (11/10/15) has seen the final pool/group games in the 2015 Rugby Union World Cup. These obviously decided who would play whom in the quarter finals and who would go home.
The build-up began on Friday (9/10/15) with the news that the UK Crown would not be holding a Coroners Inquest into the death of Anni Dewani (nee; Hindocha). This was the latest instalment in a long running saga that began in Cape Town, South Africa in November 2010.
Essentially massive homosexual Shrien Dewani was pressured into marrying Anni Dewani. On their honeymoon in South Africa in November 2010 he paid hitmen to kill Anni Dewani freeing him from the marriage and allowing to live as a socially acceptable widower rather then a suspiciously single man who seemed to have no interest in women.
Although I think this was just a private citizen acting as a private citizen it happened just before the start of the COP16 climate change meeting in Cancun, Mexico. By that point we already knew that the next year's COP17 Summit would be held in Durban, South Africa. The Durban platform that was devised at COP17 is the basis for the new climate change agreement that is set to be signed in just 49 days at COP21 in Paris, France.
Both in terms of the security plan for COP17 and for the sake of their tourism industry generally the South Africans were initially very keen to bring Shrien Dewani to justice to send the message that South Africa isn't a country you can visit to murder people and get away with it.
Unfortunately the story was too much of an opportunity for the UK to resist. For example the Dewani family are based in Bristol, UK. Although I think I only visited the place once I have quite strong ties to Bristol.
Also while the Dewanis are British citizens and the Hindochas are Swedish citizens they are both ethnically Indian and have strong ties to that nation which is very important in climate change negotiations. Added to that South Africa actually has a large ethnically Indian population and barely a week seems to go by when the ruling African National Congress (ANC) party aren't embroiled in some corruption scandal or other involving wealthy Indian families.
As a result the UK stepped in to protect Shrien Dewani from justice. Following a 4 year extradition process South Africa finally bowed to pressure from the UK and dropped the case in November 2014. The request for a Coroners Inquest was the Hindocha family attempting to re-open the case.
If the England rugby had gone on to meet the South Africa rugby team in the quarter-finals the timing of the decision would have been excellent preparation as we were left speculating over whether the UK was protecting South Africa for the decision it imposed on them or criticising them for the decision they imposed on them.
As it turns out England didn't qualify so the story was left to be recycled as the British Crown backing South Africa in its quarter final against Wales who defeated England knocking them out of the competition.
Unfortunately Ireland decided to get in on the action with the deaths of 10 people in a fire at the Carrickmines gypsy/traveller site in County Dublin. Back in 2011 the UK got in a lot of trouble - including with the United Nations (UN) - over the eviction of the Dale Farm gypsy/traveller site in Essex. Also in my younger, wilder days I have lived on the fringes of that secretive world.
What Ireland was looking for was help defeating France to avoid New Zealand in the quarter finals. Watching Sunday's (12/10/15) game you could see why Ireland felt they needed help because they're clearly trying to focus on the skilled aspects of the game rather then brute force. However by the sheer volume of handling errors it's clear that Ireland's skills aren't strong enough to defeat New Zealand who can also do brute force.
I don't think Ireland needed to bother because ever since they were billeted in Croydon - Asylum Seeker Central - it's clear that France are in for a rough time at this tournament as punishment for the Calais refugee crisis.
Despite winning the game fairly and avoiding New Zealand in the quarter finals afterwards Ireland popped up again with the shooting of a police officer in domestic incident in Omeath, County Louth which right on the border with Northern Ireland.
The fact that the suspect has been identified as a dissident Republican brings in all the current arguments over Northern Ireland's power sharing assembly. Louth is also the constituency of Republican Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams.
Also at the time Turkey started it's bombing of Kurdish targets in Iraq which was accompanied by the Shoreham Air Crash I commented that Turkey bombing Kurdish targets in Iraq in response to the Suruc bombing made about as much sense as the UK bombing County Meath in Ireland response to the Shoreham Air Crash.
I chose County Meath to make this point because County Louth sits between it and Northern Ireland.
I may be back later to add some stuff about the purely technical aspects of the game of rugby. However at this point I've not even checked my messages.
11:10 on 12/10/15 (UK date).
Edited at around 15:50 on 12/10/15 (UK date) to add;
Shortly after the Ireland v France game ended I got re-Tweeted that day's summary of the US-led coalition - Combined Joint Task Force: Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTFOIR) - air-strikes
Unfortunately at the time my phone didn't tell me that it was a re-Tweet making me think that CJTFOIR were no longer blocking me. As I was working out if and how I should acknowledge this development my phone was being really difficult running slowly, failing to connect to the Internet and eventually just switching itself off.
The final game of the day was between Japan and the USA. Unlike the vast majority of the traditional rugby playing nations neither of these two countries are part of the UK Commonwealth. They are though two powerful, technologically advanced nations that have been working together on the US "Pivot Towards the Pacific" and the associated Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal.
As a result the game felt to me like the UK putting pressure on both nations to reveal what they knew. For example rather then being played at a big stadium like Twickenham they were forced to play at a tiny rugby club in Gloucester which really underlined their lower status in the game.
To make matters worse to watch that game I had to record the season premiere of "Homeland" on my Chinese made DVR bringing in a whole extra level of technology.
So basically it was events conspiring late on to spoil an otherwise rather enjoyable day.
Due events in Turkey I was unable to watch England's final game against Uruguay on Saturday (10/10/15). This was annoying because after the England v Australia game I pointed out that England conceded a lot of penalties for collapsing the scrum by failing to drive straight.
I then realised that if you didn't automatically know what that sentence meant I had no way of explaining it. A couple of days later I thought one up;
Take the fingers of both your hands and wiggle them about. Then interlock them so the index finger of your left hand goes between the index and middle fingers on your right hand and so on. Once you've got your fingers interlocked force your knuckles together as hard as you can.
That is pretty much what a scrum is with the tips of your fingers being the legs of the players all trying to hook the ball back to there side of the scrum. The force of the knuckles is what is known as; "the drive."
Although the main objective of the scrum is to get the ball back to your own players teams can try and gain a territory advantage either by pushing the other team back or wheeling the scrum around. This involves rotating the scrum so the opposition's defensive line is left facing in the opposite direction leaving the attacking free to go on and score.
When wheeling a scrum it's important that the players keep driving forward while the movement comes from the gradual edging of the players feet sideways. What England have a tendency to do is to push harder on one side of the scrum then the other in an effort to move it around that way. During the Wales game they weren't picked up on it while in the Australia game they were.
While I'm here I should also try and explain the passage of play that many people blame for England losing to Wales;
Around the 75th minute England won a penalty five yards/metres away from the Welsh try-line/end-zone. They could have used this to kick a goal scoring 3 points and levelling the game at 28-28.
Alternatively they could have put the ball into touch and used that to set up what is called a "Rolling Maul." This basically is when the attacking side tries push the player holding the ball through the opposition defensive line. If that was successful England would have scored a 5 point try and then possibly a 2 point conversion allowing them to win the game 32-28.
The angle for the kick was really tight so England instead went for the rolling maul. As a result the last 5 minutes of the game was one group of really big men trying with all their might to force their way past a group of equally large men who were trying just as hard to stop them.
It was actually a very masculine version of how the 2015 Superbowl ended. However where the Patriots were able to force their way over to score England weren't.
The thing that annoyed me about Wales' performance against Australia was that around the 60 minute mark Australia had two players sent to the sin bin meaning that for 10 minutes the game was played with 15 Welsh players against 13 Australian players.
Wales then sort of got fixated on using this weight advantage to force a rolling maul across the Australian try-line giving them a 13-12 lead. All the while their supporters were just willing them to pass the ball out wide and simply run though the gap in the Australia defence.
They didn't and after scoring a late 3 point penalty Australia went on to win 15-6 in a game without a single try.
16:35 on 12/10/15 (UK date).
The build-up began on Friday (9/10/15) with the news that the UK Crown would not be holding a Coroners Inquest into the death of Anni Dewani (nee; Hindocha). This was the latest instalment in a long running saga that began in Cape Town, South Africa in November 2010.
Essentially massive homosexual Shrien Dewani was pressured into marrying Anni Dewani. On their honeymoon in South Africa in November 2010 he paid hitmen to kill Anni Dewani freeing him from the marriage and allowing to live as a socially acceptable widower rather then a suspiciously single man who seemed to have no interest in women.
Although I think this was just a private citizen acting as a private citizen it happened just before the start of the COP16 climate change meeting in Cancun, Mexico. By that point we already knew that the next year's COP17 Summit would be held in Durban, South Africa. The Durban platform that was devised at COP17 is the basis for the new climate change agreement that is set to be signed in just 49 days at COP21 in Paris, France.
Both in terms of the security plan for COP17 and for the sake of their tourism industry generally the South Africans were initially very keen to bring Shrien Dewani to justice to send the message that South Africa isn't a country you can visit to murder people and get away with it.
Unfortunately the story was too much of an opportunity for the UK to resist. For example the Dewani family are based in Bristol, UK. Although I think I only visited the place once I have quite strong ties to Bristol.
Also while the Dewanis are British citizens and the Hindochas are Swedish citizens they are both ethnically Indian and have strong ties to that nation which is very important in climate change negotiations. Added to that South Africa actually has a large ethnically Indian population and barely a week seems to go by when the ruling African National Congress (ANC) party aren't embroiled in some corruption scandal or other involving wealthy Indian families.
As a result the UK stepped in to protect Shrien Dewani from justice. Following a 4 year extradition process South Africa finally bowed to pressure from the UK and dropped the case in November 2014. The request for a Coroners Inquest was the Hindocha family attempting to re-open the case.
If the England rugby had gone on to meet the South Africa rugby team in the quarter-finals the timing of the decision would have been excellent preparation as we were left speculating over whether the UK was protecting South Africa for the decision it imposed on them or criticising them for the decision they imposed on them.
As it turns out England didn't qualify so the story was left to be recycled as the British Crown backing South Africa in its quarter final against Wales who defeated England knocking them out of the competition.
Unfortunately Ireland decided to get in on the action with the deaths of 10 people in a fire at the Carrickmines gypsy/traveller site in County Dublin. Back in 2011 the UK got in a lot of trouble - including with the United Nations (UN) - over the eviction of the Dale Farm gypsy/traveller site in Essex. Also in my younger, wilder days I have lived on the fringes of that secretive world.
What Ireland was looking for was help defeating France to avoid New Zealand in the quarter finals. Watching Sunday's (12/10/15) game you could see why Ireland felt they needed help because they're clearly trying to focus on the skilled aspects of the game rather then brute force. However by the sheer volume of handling errors it's clear that Ireland's skills aren't strong enough to defeat New Zealand who can also do brute force.
I don't think Ireland needed to bother because ever since they were billeted in Croydon - Asylum Seeker Central - it's clear that France are in for a rough time at this tournament as punishment for the Calais refugee crisis.
Despite winning the game fairly and avoiding New Zealand in the quarter finals afterwards Ireland popped up again with the shooting of a police officer in domestic incident in Omeath, County Louth which right on the border with Northern Ireland.
The fact that the suspect has been identified as a dissident Republican brings in all the current arguments over Northern Ireland's power sharing assembly. Louth is also the constituency of Republican Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams.
Also at the time Turkey started it's bombing of Kurdish targets in Iraq which was accompanied by the Shoreham Air Crash I commented that Turkey bombing Kurdish targets in Iraq in response to the Suruc bombing made about as much sense as the UK bombing County Meath in Ireland response to the Shoreham Air Crash.
I chose County Meath to make this point because County Louth sits between it and Northern Ireland.
I may be back later to add some stuff about the purely technical aspects of the game of rugby. However at this point I've not even checked my messages.
11:10 on 12/10/15 (UK date).
Edited at around 15:50 on 12/10/15 (UK date) to add;
Shortly after the Ireland v France game ended I got re-Tweeted that day's summary of the US-led coalition - Combined Joint Task Force: Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTFOIR) - air-strikes
Unfortunately at the time my phone didn't tell me that it was a re-Tweet making me think that CJTFOIR were no longer blocking me. As I was working out if and how I should acknowledge this development my phone was being really difficult running slowly, failing to connect to the Internet and eventually just switching itself off.
The final game of the day was between Japan and the USA. Unlike the vast majority of the traditional rugby playing nations neither of these two countries are part of the UK Commonwealth. They are though two powerful, technologically advanced nations that have been working together on the US "Pivot Towards the Pacific" and the associated Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal.
As a result the game felt to me like the UK putting pressure on both nations to reveal what they knew. For example rather then being played at a big stadium like Twickenham they were forced to play at a tiny rugby club in Gloucester which really underlined their lower status in the game.
To make matters worse to watch that game I had to record the season premiere of "Homeland" on my Chinese made DVR bringing in a whole extra level of technology.
So basically it was events conspiring late on to spoil an otherwise rather enjoyable day.
Due events in Turkey I was unable to watch England's final game against Uruguay on Saturday (10/10/15). This was annoying because after the England v Australia game I pointed out that England conceded a lot of penalties for collapsing the scrum by failing to drive straight.
I then realised that if you didn't automatically know what that sentence meant I had no way of explaining it. A couple of days later I thought one up;
Take the fingers of both your hands and wiggle them about. Then interlock them so the index finger of your left hand goes between the index and middle fingers on your right hand and so on. Once you've got your fingers interlocked force your knuckles together as hard as you can.
That is pretty much what a scrum is with the tips of your fingers being the legs of the players all trying to hook the ball back to there side of the scrum. The force of the knuckles is what is known as; "the drive."
Although the main objective of the scrum is to get the ball back to your own players teams can try and gain a territory advantage either by pushing the other team back or wheeling the scrum around. This involves rotating the scrum so the opposition's defensive line is left facing in the opposite direction leaving the attacking free to go on and score.
When wheeling a scrum it's important that the players keep driving forward while the movement comes from the gradual edging of the players feet sideways. What England have a tendency to do is to push harder on one side of the scrum then the other in an effort to move it around that way. During the Wales game they weren't picked up on it while in the Australia game they were.
While I'm here I should also try and explain the passage of play that many people blame for England losing to Wales;
Around the 75th minute England won a penalty five yards/metres away from the Welsh try-line/end-zone. They could have used this to kick a goal scoring 3 points and levelling the game at 28-28.
Alternatively they could have put the ball into touch and used that to set up what is called a "Rolling Maul." This basically is when the attacking side tries push the player holding the ball through the opposition defensive line. If that was successful England would have scored a 5 point try and then possibly a 2 point conversion allowing them to win the game 32-28.
The angle for the kick was really tight so England instead went for the rolling maul. As a result the last 5 minutes of the game was one group of really big men trying with all their might to force their way past a group of equally large men who were trying just as hard to stop them.
It was actually a very masculine version of how the 2015 Superbowl ended. However where the Patriots were able to force their way over to score England weren't.
The thing that annoyed me about Wales' performance against Australia was that around the 60 minute mark Australia had two players sent to the sin bin meaning that for 10 minutes the game was played with 15 Welsh players against 13 Australian players.
Wales then sort of got fixated on using this weight advantage to force a rolling maul across the Australian try-line giving them a 13-12 lead. All the while their supporters were just willing them to pass the ball out wide and simply run though the gap in the Australia defence.
They didn't and after scoring a late 3 point penalty Australia went on to win 15-6 in a game without a single try.
16:35 on 12/10/15 (UK date).
Saturday, 10 October 2015
Operation Featherweight: Month 15, Week 2, Day 7.
On September 30th (30/9/15) Russia began offensive military operations in Syria during the opening of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). Although this was entirely predictable its effect was similar to an earthquake shaking the diplomatic world to its core.
So dramatic was the response that last Friday (2/10/15) evening I started to feel as though I was losing my mind. Much worse then that I kind of got the impression that everybody else was to.
Since then Russia has made clear that the purpose of its operation is to provide air support to the Syrian government. They did this by providing air support to a Syrian government offensive on Tuesday (6/10/15). Also on Tuesday Russia made clear that it will be using cruise-type missiles in its operation by using cruise-type missiles in the operation.
The inevitable Turkish protest and attempts to get NATO to go to war with Russia to protect the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) were of course dealt with and put out of the way on Monday (5/10/15).
Although there is an old adage that no plan survives battle we now seem to be at the point where everybody has re-calibrated their expectations and the fight against ISIL is establishing a new rhythm.
For example just last night (9/10/15) the US-led coalition - Combined Joint Task Force: Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTFOIR) - finally agreed to what are termed "De-Confliction Meetings" with Russia to make sure that the two operations over Syria do not lead to a wider confrontation. Those meetings have already taken place today (10/10/15).
This hasn't come a moment too soon because on Thursday (8/10/15) the US announced that it had to divert an aircraft to avoid a "near-miss" with a Russian aircraft.
What they perhaps made less clear is that for military operations over Syria the melodramatic definition of "near-miss" that the US is using is; "within 32km (20 miles)." The internationally used civilian definition of "near-miss" is; "within 1km (0.6 miles)."
However due to the current state of flux there isn't really a single, over-riding narrative to this update such much as a series of unrelated events that need to be dealt with.
To the west of Syria the Syrian government's operation on the border between Latakia, Idlib, Hama and Homs provinces has already started to make progress.
Yesterday (9/10/15) they liberated the village of Al-Bahsa which sits about 16km (9.5 miles) north of the City of Homs and around 36km (22 miles) south of the City of Hama. The village had previously been under the occupation of the Army of Conquest/Jaish al-Fatah (JAF) coalition - specifically the Al Qaeda affiliated Al Nusra Front (ANF).
Upon entering Al-Bahsa Syrian government forces uncovered dozens of decomposing bodies all of whom had their hands tied and had been shot in an apparent massacre.
The Syrian government operation has suffered something of a set-back in Aleppo province with ISIL today seizing several villages on the northern out-skirts of the City of Aleppo putting them within 1.2 (0.75 miles) of Syrian government positions in the city. As part of this battle on Friday (9/10/15) Brig. Gen. Hossein Hamedani of Iran's Revolutionary Guard was killed.
I suspect that the US would have liked to celebrate the death of Brig, Gen. Hamedani more loudly. However in order to do so the US would have been forced to admit not only that the Syrian government is still in control of sections of Aleppo but also that far from being their ally it is fighting ISIL on a daily basis and has been for many years.
In different section of Aleppo City - the Sheikh Maqsood and Bustan al-Pasha neighbourhoods - the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) are engaged in daily battles with JAF.
For the most part this has been the JAF - specifically ANF - launching probing attacks on YPG positions in Sheikh Maqsood which are repelled by the YPG.
However over recent days the YPG have also been able to conduct a series of commando-style raids against JAF positions in Bustan al-Pasha killing two JAF fighters on Wednesday (7/10/15) and a further 3 JAF fighters along with their vehicle of Friday (9/10/15).
Further to the north-east the YPG continues to be harassed by ISIL on the borders of the buffer-zone it has established.
On Friday (9/10/15) the YPG launched a pre-emptive raid that disrupted an ISIL attack on the village of Sarrin which marks the western border of the buffer-zone on the Euphrates River.
On Wednesday (7/10/15) and Thursday (8/10/15) the YPG repelled repeated attacks on the village of Ain Issa which sits on the southern border of the buzzer-zone just 50km (30 miles) north of ISIL de facto capital in Syria Raqqa.
On Tuesday (6/10/15) the YPG repelled an ISIL attack on the town of Tel Abyad (Gire Spi) which sits on the buffer-zone's northern border mid-way between Serekanyie and Kobane City.
This attack was particularly worrying because Tel Abyad sits around 40km (25 miles) behind the nearest front-line with ISIL. Therefore while there are not a lot of details available the suspicion is that this attack originated to the north of Tel Abyad from within Turkey.
Unfortunately as they are continuing to block me on Twitter I cannot tell if CJTFOIR provided the YPG with air-support to repel these ISIL attacks or whether CJTFOIR is continuing to operate it's protective dome over ISIL positions in the area.
Elsewhere in the YPG controlled section of the 33,000km^2 (20,000mile^2) buffer-zone things remain relatively quiet. The main work seems to be centred around rebuilding homes and schools and assisting the return of refugees to their homes.
The main development of the last couple of days came yesterday (9/10/15) with the announcement that just 8 days after US President Barack Obama signed an order renewing it the US is suspending it's "Train & Equip" program for what is termed the "The Syrian-Arab Opposition."
Obviously it would be hugely politically embarrassing for President Obama to admit that his strategy to fight ISIL has been a complete failure and after 14 months he's been forced to abandon it under pressure from both the US military and the US' coalition partners within CJTFOIR.
So instead on a visit to London, UK US Secretary of Defence Ash Carter announced that the program is to be "paused" while it is "refined and adjusted."
In terms of what those refinements and adjustments will be the US has only spoken in general terms about providing ammunition and "manouvering advice" to moderate Free Syrian Army (FSA) forces in northern Syria. These are to be provided at a much smaller centre in Turkey while the existing, larger centres in Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia are to be closed.
By some estimates there are 7,000 different insurgent groups currently operating in Syria excluding the YPG and militias allied to the Syrian government such as Lebanon's Hezbollah. Although it might not make that much sense to the average man on the street these different groups are best thought of as inner-city crime gangs such as you get in places such as Los Angeles, US.
Essentially this means that they all fight for their own little neighbourhoods and there is very little co-ordination or shared leadership amid shifting allegiances. It is this type of group we talk about when we refer to the FSA which is actually a spectacularly unhelpful term in trying to explain the situation in Syria.
Many of the little gangs that make up the FSA coalition are just as evil as ISIL. Across the north-west and south-west of Syria the FSA are an active part of the JAF coalition alongside ANF and the Islamic Movement of the Freemen of the Levant/Harakat Ahrar ash-Sham al-Islamiyya (FML/Ahrar ash-Sham).
For example the FSA happily participated in JAF's north-western offensive that captured Jisr al-Shughur while at the same time the FSA were happily massacring Druze civilians in villages in the Syrian Golan Heights.
However up in Syria's north there are more moderate groups of the FSA. For example there's the Euphrates Volcano/Burkan al-Furat which works hand-in-hand with the YPG and is so close to them in the fight against ISIL I often forget to give them the credit they are due by simply referring to the YPG in an effort to save time. It is this type of group that the US seems to be adjusting Train & Equip towards.
I personally think that the US should have handled this announcement in the same way that you would rip off a Band-Aid. That is to say the US should have announced that it will be throwing its full support behind the YPG. Turkey could then either end its support for ISIL including demands for a safe-zone and that CJTFOIR provide them with this protective dome or face the consequences.
Unfortunately President Obama has done his usual indecisive thing of leading Turkish President/Prime Minister/Emperor Recep Tayyip Erdogan to believe that things can still be negotiated and he can continue to train and equip what he considers to be the 'moderate' opposition. This is likely to lead to indecisive negotiations all the way until Turkey's November 1st (1/11/15) General Election and beyond.
Today we saw the first round of these discussions with twin suicide bombings striking a peace rally organised by the People's Democrat Party (HDP) that killed 97 Kurds and wounded 400 more in the Turkish capital of Ankara.
This is Turkey very clearly sending the message to the US that if it supports Kurdish forces such as the YPG in the fight against ISIL then Turkey will simply attack the Kurds.
At the domestic level though it is also an attempt by Erdogan's Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) - and probably at this point supporters of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) - to improve their chances at the November 1st election.
You may remember that Turkey's first General Election of 2015 was held on June 7th (7/6/15). Here AKP's objective was to secure more then 60% of the vote to allow them to change the constitution to grant Erdogan executive power as President without a public referendum. Failing that they wanted to win a simple majority to allow them to present the constitutional changes to a public vote.
The people of Turkey saw things differently and AKP failed to even secure a simple majority effectively ending Erdogan's grip on the country. This led to a hung Parliament and without AKP ministers to tell them otherwise Turkey's security services began a crackdown on ISIL.
On July 20th (20/7/15) ISIL bombed the meeting of a youth group in the predominately Kurdish town of Suruc in plea for attention and mercy. With the assistance of President Obama Erdogan rapidly answered this plea and announced he was starting a war on terror against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Since then Erdogan has been using tanks, artillery and warplanes to attack Kurdish areas in Turkey, Syria and Iraq.
Erdogan's first objective here was to take the pressure off ISIL by convincing the people of Turkey that the Kurds were the bigger threat then ISIL. It also allowed Erdogan to tempt MHP with the prospect of an AKP/MHP coalition provided they could both chip enough support away from the HDP.
Most importantly though it allowed Erdogan to wrap himself in the flag and portray himself as the protector of the Turkish people who face being utterly destroyed without his AKP.
Amongst AKP supporters the ISIL bombing in Suruc is viewed as the first act in their war against terrorism - meaning Kurdish terrorism. So although no-one says it explicitly the implication has long been that the Suruc bombing wasn't an ISIL bombing but the Kurds attacking themselves. Obviously the hope is that today's Ankara bombing will be viewed in the same way by the Turkish electorate.
One thing that will strengthen the conspiracy theory of Kurds attacking Kurds are events across the border in Iraq's autonomous region. At around the same time that the Turkish air-strikes began the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) was plunged into chaos amid arguments over whether to extend President Barzani's term or try and hold elections while large sections of Kurdish territory are under ISIL occupation.
As within Libya and Egypt the general consensus to allow Barzani to stay on is being spoilt by the mildly Islamist Goran (Change) Party who are blocking an agreement and trying to force an election. As part of this campaign Goran have been organising mass protests which have occasionally turned violent.
Today's protests in Sulaymaniyah have been particularly violent with four deaths being reported included 2 MP's belonging to the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP). It must be said though that today's protests only turned violent after the Ankara bombing meaning that they were likely a response to the bombing rather then the bombing being part of the violence.
Turkey is obviously spinning another angle by putting around rumours that it recently stopped suicide bombers from an un-named Iraqi Kurdish Party travelling into Turkey to attack their rivals.
As such I must say that I have been wondering for a while if Nawshirwan Mustafa who started Goran as an AKP-style vehicle for himself has perhaps allowed his head to get turned in his thirst for power.
Going back to Turkey itself it was announced on Thursday (8/10/15) that the PKK are to today (10/10/15) begin a unilateral ceasefire in the run-up to the November 1st election.
The hope seems to have been that today's Ankara bombing would make that impossible meaning that this attack on the HDP would be drowned out in the minds of the Turkish electorate by wave after wave of PKK attacks helping sweep AKP back into power.
Fortunately as far as I can tell the PKK have decided to move ahead with their ceasefire anyway.
21:25 on 10/10/15 (UK date).
So dramatic was the response that last Friday (2/10/15) evening I started to feel as though I was losing my mind. Much worse then that I kind of got the impression that everybody else was to.
Since then Russia has made clear that the purpose of its operation is to provide air support to the Syrian government. They did this by providing air support to a Syrian government offensive on Tuesday (6/10/15). Also on Tuesday Russia made clear that it will be using cruise-type missiles in its operation by using cruise-type missiles in the operation.
The inevitable Turkish protest and attempts to get NATO to go to war with Russia to protect the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) were of course dealt with and put out of the way on Monday (5/10/15).
Although there is an old adage that no plan survives battle we now seem to be at the point where everybody has re-calibrated their expectations and the fight against ISIL is establishing a new rhythm.
For example just last night (9/10/15) the US-led coalition - Combined Joint Task Force: Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTFOIR) - finally agreed to what are termed "De-Confliction Meetings" with Russia to make sure that the two operations over Syria do not lead to a wider confrontation. Those meetings have already taken place today (10/10/15).
This hasn't come a moment too soon because on Thursday (8/10/15) the US announced that it had to divert an aircraft to avoid a "near-miss" with a Russian aircraft.
What they perhaps made less clear is that for military operations over Syria the melodramatic definition of "near-miss" that the US is using is; "within 32km (20 miles)." The internationally used civilian definition of "near-miss" is; "within 1km (0.6 miles)."
However due to the current state of flux there isn't really a single, over-riding narrative to this update such much as a series of unrelated events that need to be dealt with.
To the west of Syria the Syrian government's operation on the border between Latakia, Idlib, Hama and Homs provinces has already started to make progress.
Yesterday (9/10/15) they liberated the village of Al-Bahsa which sits about 16km (9.5 miles) north of the City of Homs and around 36km (22 miles) south of the City of Hama. The village had previously been under the occupation of the Army of Conquest/Jaish al-Fatah (JAF) coalition - specifically the Al Qaeda affiliated Al Nusra Front (ANF).
Upon entering Al-Bahsa Syrian government forces uncovered dozens of decomposing bodies all of whom had their hands tied and had been shot in an apparent massacre.
The Syrian government operation has suffered something of a set-back in Aleppo province with ISIL today seizing several villages on the northern out-skirts of the City of Aleppo putting them within 1.2 (0.75 miles) of Syrian government positions in the city. As part of this battle on Friday (9/10/15) Brig. Gen. Hossein Hamedani of Iran's Revolutionary Guard was killed.
I suspect that the US would have liked to celebrate the death of Brig, Gen. Hamedani more loudly. However in order to do so the US would have been forced to admit not only that the Syrian government is still in control of sections of Aleppo but also that far from being their ally it is fighting ISIL on a daily basis and has been for many years.
In different section of Aleppo City - the Sheikh Maqsood and Bustan al-Pasha neighbourhoods - the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) are engaged in daily battles with JAF.
For the most part this has been the JAF - specifically ANF - launching probing attacks on YPG positions in Sheikh Maqsood which are repelled by the YPG.
However over recent days the YPG have also been able to conduct a series of commando-style raids against JAF positions in Bustan al-Pasha killing two JAF fighters on Wednesday (7/10/15) and a further 3 JAF fighters along with their vehicle of Friday (9/10/15).
Further to the north-east the YPG continues to be harassed by ISIL on the borders of the buffer-zone it has established.
On Friday (9/10/15) the YPG launched a pre-emptive raid that disrupted an ISIL attack on the village of Sarrin which marks the western border of the buffer-zone on the Euphrates River.
On Wednesday (7/10/15) and Thursday (8/10/15) the YPG repelled repeated attacks on the village of Ain Issa which sits on the southern border of the buzzer-zone just 50km (30 miles) north of ISIL de facto capital in Syria Raqqa.
On Tuesday (6/10/15) the YPG repelled an ISIL attack on the town of Tel Abyad (Gire Spi) which sits on the buffer-zone's northern border mid-way between Serekanyie and Kobane City.
This attack was particularly worrying because Tel Abyad sits around 40km (25 miles) behind the nearest front-line with ISIL. Therefore while there are not a lot of details available the suspicion is that this attack originated to the north of Tel Abyad from within Turkey.
Unfortunately as they are continuing to block me on Twitter I cannot tell if CJTFOIR provided the YPG with air-support to repel these ISIL attacks or whether CJTFOIR is continuing to operate it's protective dome over ISIL positions in the area.
Elsewhere in the YPG controlled section of the 33,000km^2 (20,000mile^2) buffer-zone things remain relatively quiet. The main work seems to be centred around rebuilding homes and schools and assisting the return of refugees to their homes.
The main development of the last couple of days came yesterday (9/10/15) with the announcement that just 8 days after US President Barack Obama signed an order renewing it the US is suspending it's "Train & Equip" program for what is termed the "The Syrian-Arab Opposition."
Obviously it would be hugely politically embarrassing for President Obama to admit that his strategy to fight ISIL has been a complete failure and after 14 months he's been forced to abandon it under pressure from both the US military and the US' coalition partners within CJTFOIR.
So instead on a visit to London, UK US Secretary of Defence Ash Carter announced that the program is to be "paused" while it is "refined and adjusted."
In terms of what those refinements and adjustments will be the US has only spoken in general terms about providing ammunition and "manouvering advice" to moderate Free Syrian Army (FSA) forces in northern Syria. These are to be provided at a much smaller centre in Turkey while the existing, larger centres in Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia are to be closed.
By some estimates there are 7,000 different insurgent groups currently operating in Syria excluding the YPG and militias allied to the Syrian government such as Lebanon's Hezbollah. Although it might not make that much sense to the average man on the street these different groups are best thought of as inner-city crime gangs such as you get in places such as Los Angeles, US.
Essentially this means that they all fight for their own little neighbourhoods and there is very little co-ordination or shared leadership amid shifting allegiances. It is this type of group we talk about when we refer to the FSA which is actually a spectacularly unhelpful term in trying to explain the situation in Syria.
Many of the little gangs that make up the FSA coalition are just as evil as ISIL. Across the north-west and south-west of Syria the FSA are an active part of the JAF coalition alongside ANF and the Islamic Movement of the Freemen of the Levant/Harakat Ahrar ash-Sham al-Islamiyya (FML/Ahrar ash-Sham).
For example the FSA happily participated in JAF's north-western offensive that captured Jisr al-Shughur while at the same time the FSA were happily massacring Druze civilians in villages in the Syrian Golan Heights.
However up in Syria's north there are more moderate groups of the FSA. For example there's the Euphrates Volcano/Burkan al-Furat which works hand-in-hand with the YPG and is so close to them in the fight against ISIL I often forget to give them the credit they are due by simply referring to the YPG in an effort to save time. It is this type of group that the US seems to be adjusting Train & Equip towards.
I personally think that the US should have handled this announcement in the same way that you would rip off a Band-Aid. That is to say the US should have announced that it will be throwing its full support behind the YPG. Turkey could then either end its support for ISIL including demands for a safe-zone and that CJTFOIR provide them with this protective dome or face the consequences.
Unfortunately President Obama has done his usual indecisive thing of leading Turkish President/Prime Minister/Emperor Recep Tayyip Erdogan to believe that things can still be negotiated and he can continue to train and equip what he considers to be the 'moderate' opposition. This is likely to lead to indecisive negotiations all the way until Turkey's November 1st (1/11/15) General Election and beyond.
Today we saw the first round of these discussions with twin suicide bombings striking a peace rally organised by the People's Democrat Party (HDP) that killed 97 Kurds and wounded 400 more in the Turkish capital of Ankara.
This is Turkey very clearly sending the message to the US that if it supports Kurdish forces such as the YPG in the fight against ISIL then Turkey will simply attack the Kurds.
At the domestic level though it is also an attempt by Erdogan's Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) - and probably at this point supporters of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) - to improve their chances at the November 1st election.
You may remember that Turkey's first General Election of 2015 was held on June 7th (7/6/15). Here AKP's objective was to secure more then 60% of the vote to allow them to change the constitution to grant Erdogan executive power as President without a public referendum. Failing that they wanted to win a simple majority to allow them to present the constitutional changes to a public vote.
The people of Turkey saw things differently and AKP failed to even secure a simple majority effectively ending Erdogan's grip on the country. This led to a hung Parliament and without AKP ministers to tell them otherwise Turkey's security services began a crackdown on ISIL.
On July 20th (20/7/15) ISIL bombed the meeting of a youth group in the predominately Kurdish town of Suruc in plea for attention and mercy. With the assistance of President Obama Erdogan rapidly answered this plea and announced he was starting a war on terror against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Since then Erdogan has been using tanks, artillery and warplanes to attack Kurdish areas in Turkey, Syria and Iraq.
Erdogan's first objective here was to take the pressure off ISIL by convincing the people of Turkey that the Kurds were the bigger threat then ISIL. It also allowed Erdogan to tempt MHP with the prospect of an AKP/MHP coalition provided they could both chip enough support away from the HDP.
Most importantly though it allowed Erdogan to wrap himself in the flag and portray himself as the protector of the Turkish people who face being utterly destroyed without his AKP.
Amongst AKP supporters the ISIL bombing in Suruc is viewed as the first act in their war against terrorism - meaning Kurdish terrorism. So although no-one says it explicitly the implication has long been that the Suruc bombing wasn't an ISIL bombing but the Kurds attacking themselves. Obviously the hope is that today's Ankara bombing will be viewed in the same way by the Turkish electorate.
One thing that will strengthen the conspiracy theory of Kurds attacking Kurds are events across the border in Iraq's autonomous region. At around the same time that the Turkish air-strikes began the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) was plunged into chaos amid arguments over whether to extend President Barzani's term or try and hold elections while large sections of Kurdish territory are under ISIL occupation.
As within Libya and Egypt the general consensus to allow Barzani to stay on is being spoilt by the mildly Islamist Goran (Change) Party who are blocking an agreement and trying to force an election. As part of this campaign Goran have been organising mass protests which have occasionally turned violent.
Today's protests in Sulaymaniyah have been particularly violent with four deaths being reported included 2 MP's belonging to the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP). It must be said though that today's protests only turned violent after the Ankara bombing meaning that they were likely a response to the bombing rather then the bombing being part of the violence.
Turkey is obviously spinning another angle by putting around rumours that it recently stopped suicide bombers from an un-named Iraqi Kurdish Party travelling into Turkey to attack their rivals.
As such I must say that I have been wondering for a while if Nawshirwan Mustafa who started Goran as an AKP-style vehicle for himself has perhaps allowed his head to get turned in his thirst for power.
Going back to Turkey itself it was announced on Thursday (8/10/15) that the PKK are to today (10/10/15) begin a unilateral ceasefire in the run-up to the November 1st election.
The hope seems to have been that today's Ankara bombing would make that impossible meaning that this attack on the HDP would be drowned out in the minds of the Turkish electorate by wave after wave of PKK attacks helping sweep AKP back into power.
Fortunately as far as I can tell the PKK have decided to move ahead with their ceasefire anyway.
21:25 on 10/10/15 (UK date).
Wednesday, 7 October 2015
Operation Featherweight: Month 15, Week 2, Day 4.
Today (7/10/15) Syrian government and Russian forces launched a combined ground and air operation along the front-line between Latakia and Homs provinces.
As I've said before it is not my place to explain the tactics of those fighting them to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Hopefully that is something ISIL will only discover when it is already too late. However I am OK to discuss things in more general terms.
When the US-led operations in Syria began some 14 months ago ISIL were limited to roughly the north-east of Syria around the Euphrates River. Although there was some fighting in the north-western Aleppo province and in small pockets around the capital Damascus the Syrian government held the upper-hand keeping ISIL controlled in that area.
In fact a large part of the reason why ISIL attacked into Iraq was to capture money, weapons and other equipment to prevent them being wiped out by the Syrian government.
Therefore while the US wasn't prepared to work with the Syrian government directly it did have the option of using Syrian government forces as a sort of anvil that ISIL could be hammered against as it was being driven out of Iraq.
The mistake that US President Obama made was to confuse ISIL with an ally that could be used to put pressure on Iraq's neighbour Iran during the negotiations over Iran's nuclear program. The fact that he decided to impose those sanctions on Iran in the first place was a complete schoolboy error on Obama's point but that's really an issue for another day.
As a result rather then working with the Iraqis to push ISIL back into Syria Obama tried to protect ISIL in Iraq in the hope of creating massive instability along Iraq's 1,500km (900 mile) border with Iran.
After more then a year of the US operations in Iraq ISIL have only been dislodged from around 25% of the territory they hold. I cannot think of a single operation to make this progress that was not blocked or disrupted by the US in some way
For example in February 2015 the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) and the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga were putting pressure on the US-led coalition - Combined Joint Task Force: Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTFOIR) - to help them liberate Mosul which is ISIL's de facto capital in Iraq. The US responded to this by publicly releasing all the plans the Mosul operation.
With ISIL being told exactly what to expect by the US the ISF and the Peshmerga had to shelve the operation or face being cut to bits by a well prepared opponent.
In March 2015 the ISF launched an operation to liberate Tikrit from ISIL. The US - not the entire CJTFOIR coalition - not only refused to participate in this operation but actively briefed against it labelling it some sort of Iranian conspiracy to take to control of Iraq.
While this was going on the US has been demanding that Iraq sets up a regional National Guard force. This seems intended to maximise the divisions between Iraq's majority Shia-Arab population, the Sunni-Arab population centred around Anbar province and the Kurds in the north who are a mix of Shia, Sunnis, Christians and Yezidi.
These increased tensions prompted the ISF to launch a perhaps overly ambitious operation to liberate all of Anbar province before the Tikrit operation had been fully completed. On this occasion rather then giving the ISF the benefit of it's experience and working to defuse tensions the US encouraged the ISF to press ahead.
Now that operation has stalled the US is trying to dump all the blame on the Iraqis and use it as a further excuse why the ISF can't conduct any other anti-ISIL operations.
At the same time in Syria the US has been constantly refusing to work with the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) who have proved themselves to be a very effective anti-ISIL force.
Instead the US has been conducting it's "Train & Equip" program providing training and equipment including weapons to what it terms "Moderate Sunni-Arab Forces."
On it's own the US Train & Equip program has been a joke. Over the course of a year it has only managed to train around 150 fighters who have all either immediately been killed or defected.
However the US program has allowed Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar - ISIL's main backers - to run their own program which has trained, equipped and deployed a much larger number of fighters to Syria.
These fighters have joined up with existing Sunni-Arab groups such as the Free Syrian Army (FSA), the Islamic Movement of the Freemen of the Levant/Harakat Ahrar ash-Sham al-Islamiyya (FML/Ahrar ash-Sham) and Al Qaeda's Syria affiliate Al Nusra Front (ANF). Together these groups have formed the Army of Conquest/Jaish al-Fatah (JAF).
Despite all the foreign support JAF have shown absolutely no interest in fighting ISIL. In fact in places like Palmyra, Marea and the Yarmouk refugee camp close to Damascus JAF have openly collaborated with ISIL.
JAF's main aim has been to attack Syrian government forces in Aleppo, Idlib and Homs provinces with a view to over-running Latakia province where the roughly 75% of Syria's population that support the Syrian government live.
So after 14 and a half months of the US supposedly fighting ISIL the groups effective control of Syria has massively increased.
What Russia is aiming to do is - starting from the front-line at Latakia - push JAF and ISIL back into the positions there were all those months ago.
In short Russia is moving the conflict back to it's starting positions and giving Obama a do-over in the hope he won't make the same mistakes again.
However Obama will really need to pick up the pace because the Iraqis are now really frustrated with his nonsense. They've already started asking the Russia for it's support. If the US doesn't sort itself out there's only so long Russia can refuse that request and in the process bring to an end the US' relationship with Iraq.
As part of it's continuing operations in Syria Russia today also launched 26 Kalibr-Nk missiles on 11 targets in Syria from ships in the Caspian sea some 1,500km (900 miles) away. I have to say that I really see this as a non-issue.
Remarkably similar to the US Cruise missile the Kalibr-Nk is a very accurate missile system that can be guided by Radar, GPS or laser to deliver a large warhead to a target over great distances. Therefore if you are trying to destroy a training camp or weapons store in the desert - or even within a built-up area - this type of missile is the safest way to do it.
This is something US Bill Clinton did in Iraq in 1993 and again in 1998 in Afghanistan and Sudan in response the the Al Qaeda bombings of US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Following the September 11th 2001 (11/9/01) terror attacks the main criticism of Clinton's Afghan and Sudan strikes - Operation Infinite Reach - is that he didn't go far enough.
Following the September 11th attacks the US of course invaded Iraq in 2003. On the first day of that operation alone the US fired 544 Cruise missiles against targets in Iraq.
Therefore the fact that people are surprised that Russia has been using Cruise-type missiles only really highlights just how little effort CJTFOIR have been putting into defeating ISIL.
The Russian missiles were fired from the Caspian Sea because it's just easier for the ships to be re-supplied for their base in Astrakhan some 1000km (600 miles) away rather then sailing all the way across the Black Sea into the Mediterranean Sea.
Plus does anyone seriously think that US President Obama has the chops to tell Turkish President/Prime Minister/Emperor Recep Tayyip Erdogan "No" should Erdogan close the Bosporus Strait or otherwise interfere with Russian shipping and effort to stop the strikes against ISIL.
Also in response to today's combined Syrian and Russian operations some people have expressed surprise at a new alliance forming between Russia, Syria and Iran. That's just ridiculous because Russia, Syria and Iran have been allies since the Iranian revolution in 1979. The relationship between Russia and Syria goes back even further.
In fact it is this alliance which is why the Neo-Conservatives in the big bad CIA started trying to overthrow the Syrian government in the first place. It is simply an extension of the 2003 invasion of Iraq which was intended to put a barrier in the form of Iraq between Iran and Syria.
That obviously failed so next the Neo-Cons tried overthrowing the Iranian government with the 2009 "Green Revolution." When that failed they simply moved on to trying to overthrow the Syrian government.
20:20 on 7/10/15 (UK date).
As I've said before it is not my place to explain the tactics of those fighting them to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Hopefully that is something ISIL will only discover when it is already too late. However I am OK to discuss things in more general terms.
When the US-led operations in Syria began some 14 months ago ISIL were limited to roughly the north-east of Syria around the Euphrates River. Although there was some fighting in the north-western Aleppo province and in small pockets around the capital Damascus the Syrian government held the upper-hand keeping ISIL controlled in that area.
In fact a large part of the reason why ISIL attacked into Iraq was to capture money, weapons and other equipment to prevent them being wiped out by the Syrian government.
Therefore while the US wasn't prepared to work with the Syrian government directly it did have the option of using Syrian government forces as a sort of anvil that ISIL could be hammered against as it was being driven out of Iraq.
The mistake that US President Obama made was to confuse ISIL with an ally that could be used to put pressure on Iraq's neighbour Iran during the negotiations over Iran's nuclear program. The fact that he decided to impose those sanctions on Iran in the first place was a complete schoolboy error on Obama's point but that's really an issue for another day.
As a result rather then working with the Iraqis to push ISIL back into Syria Obama tried to protect ISIL in Iraq in the hope of creating massive instability along Iraq's 1,500km (900 mile) border with Iran.
After more then a year of the US operations in Iraq ISIL have only been dislodged from around 25% of the territory they hold. I cannot think of a single operation to make this progress that was not blocked or disrupted by the US in some way
For example in February 2015 the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) and the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga were putting pressure on the US-led coalition - Combined Joint Task Force: Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTFOIR) - to help them liberate Mosul which is ISIL's de facto capital in Iraq. The US responded to this by publicly releasing all the plans the Mosul operation.
With ISIL being told exactly what to expect by the US the ISF and the Peshmerga had to shelve the operation or face being cut to bits by a well prepared opponent.
In March 2015 the ISF launched an operation to liberate Tikrit from ISIL. The US - not the entire CJTFOIR coalition - not only refused to participate in this operation but actively briefed against it labelling it some sort of Iranian conspiracy to take to control of Iraq.
While this was going on the US has been demanding that Iraq sets up a regional National Guard force. This seems intended to maximise the divisions between Iraq's majority Shia-Arab population, the Sunni-Arab population centred around Anbar province and the Kurds in the north who are a mix of Shia, Sunnis, Christians and Yezidi.
These increased tensions prompted the ISF to launch a perhaps overly ambitious operation to liberate all of Anbar province before the Tikrit operation had been fully completed. On this occasion rather then giving the ISF the benefit of it's experience and working to defuse tensions the US encouraged the ISF to press ahead.
Now that operation has stalled the US is trying to dump all the blame on the Iraqis and use it as a further excuse why the ISF can't conduct any other anti-ISIL operations.
At the same time in Syria the US has been constantly refusing to work with the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) who have proved themselves to be a very effective anti-ISIL force.
Instead the US has been conducting it's "Train & Equip" program providing training and equipment including weapons to what it terms "Moderate Sunni-Arab Forces."
On it's own the US Train & Equip program has been a joke. Over the course of a year it has only managed to train around 150 fighters who have all either immediately been killed or defected.
However the US program has allowed Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar - ISIL's main backers - to run their own program which has trained, equipped and deployed a much larger number of fighters to Syria.
These fighters have joined up with existing Sunni-Arab groups such as the Free Syrian Army (FSA), the Islamic Movement of the Freemen of the Levant/Harakat Ahrar ash-Sham al-Islamiyya (FML/Ahrar ash-Sham) and Al Qaeda's Syria affiliate Al Nusra Front (ANF). Together these groups have formed the Army of Conquest/Jaish al-Fatah (JAF).
Despite all the foreign support JAF have shown absolutely no interest in fighting ISIL. In fact in places like Palmyra, Marea and the Yarmouk refugee camp close to Damascus JAF have openly collaborated with ISIL.
JAF's main aim has been to attack Syrian government forces in Aleppo, Idlib and Homs provinces with a view to over-running Latakia province where the roughly 75% of Syria's population that support the Syrian government live.
So after 14 and a half months of the US supposedly fighting ISIL the groups effective control of Syria has massively increased.
What Russia is aiming to do is - starting from the front-line at Latakia - push JAF and ISIL back into the positions there were all those months ago.
In short Russia is moving the conflict back to it's starting positions and giving Obama a do-over in the hope he won't make the same mistakes again.
However Obama will really need to pick up the pace because the Iraqis are now really frustrated with his nonsense. They've already started asking the Russia for it's support. If the US doesn't sort itself out there's only so long Russia can refuse that request and in the process bring to an end the US' relationship with Iraq.
As part of it's continuing operations in Syria Russia today also launched 26 Kalibr-Nk missiles on 11 targets in Syria from ships in the Caspian sea some 1,500km (900 miles) away. I have to say that I really see this as a non-issue.
Remarkably similar to the US Cruise missile the Kalibr-Nk is a very accurate missile system that can be guided by Radar, GPS or laser to deliver a large warhead to a target over great distances. Therefore if you are trying to destroy a training camp or weapons store in the desert - or even within a built-up area - this type of missile is the safest way to do it.
This is something US Bill Clinton did in Iraq in 1993 and again in 1998 in Afghanistan and Sudan in response the the Al Qaeda bombings of US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Following the September 11th 2001 (11/9/01) terror attacks the main criticism of Clinton's Afghan and Sudan strikes - Operation Infinite Reach - is that he didn't go far enough.
Following the September 11th attacks the US of course invaded Iraq in 2003. On the first day of that operation alone the US fired 544 Cruise missiles against targets in Iraq.
Therefore the fact that people are surprised that Russia has been using Cruise-type missiles only really highlights just how little effort CJTFOIR have been putting into defeating ISIL.
The Russian missiles were fired from the Caspian Sea because it's just easier for the ships to be re-supplied for their base in Astrakhan some 1000km (600 miles) away rather then sailing all the way across the Black Sea into the Mediterranean Sea.
Plus does anyone seriously think that US President Obama has the chops to tell Turkish President/Prime Minister/Emperor Recep Tayyip Erdogan "No" should Erdogan close the Bosporus Strait or otherwise interfere with Russian shipping and effort to stop the strikes against ISIL.
Also in response to today's combined Syrian and Russian operations some people have expressed surprise at a new alliance forming between Russia, Syria and Iran. That's just ridiculous because Russia, Syria and Iran have been allies since the Iranian revolution in 1979. The relationship between Russia and Syria goes back even further.
In fact it is this alliance which is why the Neo-Conservatives in the big bad CIA started trying to overthrow the Syrian government in the first place. It is simply an extension of the 2003 invasion of Iraq which was intended to put a barrier in the form of Iraq between Iran and Syria.
That obviously failed so next the Neo-Cons tried overthrowing the Iranian government with the 2009 "Green Revolution." When that failed they simply moved on to trying to overthrow the Syrian government.
20:20 on 7/10/15 (UK date).
Tuesday, 6 October 2015
Operation Featherweight: Month 15, Week 2, Day 3.
Yesterday the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) destroyed the 2000
year old Arch of Triumph in the Syrian city of Palmyra which sits on the M20
motorway roughly 150km (90 miles) east of the disputed city of Homs and 200km
(120 miles) south-west of the ISIL controlled city of Deir-er-Zour.
As with most of the ancient structures in Palmyra the Arch of Triumph has absolutely no religious or spiritual significance. Instead it was built by the Romans as a way for them to celebrate military victory as part of their Triumph ceremony.
As I've mentioned numerous times before ISIL are ideological nihilists. So as with the Nazi Germany of Adolf Hitler they have this constant need to be destroying something or someone in order to validate their existence. Therefore it is all too easy to read too much into ISIL's decision to destroy something.
However I've noticed that since they ran out of western hostages to kill and since the western media has taken a deep interest in Palmyra ISIL have been using it almost as a bargaining chip. This has often involved issuing a threat to destroy something in Palmyra, starting rumours that something has been destroyed before finally destroying it and releasing a video as proof.
Therefore I can't help but think the destruction of the Arc of Triumph is ISIL's response to the recent start of Russian air-strikes against them.
The message seems to simply to be that ISIL does not fear Russia and is ready to deny them any military victory or triumph.
I'll leave you to speculate as to why ISIL felt the need to reassure their supporters of this in such a loud and forceful way.
Palmyra is a particularly poor choice of places for ISIL to use to send messages to the world. Throughout this conflict ISIL supporters such as Turkish President/Prime Minister/Emperor Recep Tayyip Erdogan have claimed that ISIL is allied with the Syrian government.
Worryingly this has been reportedly widely as fact by western news agencies and even US President Barack Obama has hinted at this mythical alliance.
However this claim that ISIL and the Syrian government are allies is so utterly contradicted by all the evidence on the ground the only word I can think of to describe it is; "Bullsh*t."
Palmyra is a prime example of this;
Prior to May 2015 Palmyra was completely under the control of the Syrian government.
However in April 2015 the Army of Conquest/Jaish al-Fatah (JAF) - made up the Al Qaeda affiliated Al Nusra Front (ANF) and the Islamic Movement of the Freemen of the Levant/Harakat Ahrar ash-Sham al-Islamiyya (FML/Ahrar ash-Sham) alongside the Free Syrian Army (FSA) - launched their north-western offensive which eventually captured the town of Jisr al-Shughur.
This left the Syria government with a choice; It could either deploy it's forces in an attempt to defend the strategically important town of of Jisr al-Shughur that controls the main communication routes in the region or it could use its forces to defend what is essentially a tourist attraction.
Taking advantage of - some would say "in co-ordination with" - the JAF offensive ISIL attacked Palmyra succeeding in taking control of the city on May 26th (26/5/15). Some 200 Syrian government troops were killed in the failed defence of Palmyra.
In early July 2015 the Syrian government launched an offensive to re-capture Palmyra which largely ground to a halt in late August. In mid-September the Syrian government attempted to reinforce this offensive by conducting air-strikes against ISIL positions around Palmyra. As usual this was reported in the western media as; "Assad brutally attacks civilians."
It was at this point the US-led coalition - Combined Joint Task Force: Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTFOIR) - suddenly became very interested in Palmyra and start flying missions over the city making the occasional air-strike. This would fit with new CJTFOIR member, Turkey's desire to establish "No-fly/Safe Zones" where the Syrian government would be unable to carry out air-strikes.
We've actually seen something similar along the Euphrates River where Turkey's involvement has led to a dramatic drop-off in the frequency in CJTFOIR air-strikes in ISIL's heartland around Raqqa creating something of a protective dome to be established over ISIL.
Although they are still blocking me on Sunday (4/10/15) CJTFOIR carried out another air-strike in Palmyra with what are being described as "inconclusive" results. This seems to be a euphemism for "We bombed an empty field." On Monday (5/10/15) Russia carried out an undisclosed number of air-strikes against ISIL positions in and around Palmyra. These seem to have produced far more conclusive results.
Similarly I could talk about the ISIL offensive in the city of Hasakah which ran throughout May and June. Here ISIL attacked Syrian government positions within the city only for the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) to come in and dislodge ISIL from the positions they had just captured from the Syrian government.
On Thursday (1/10/15) Russia knocked on the door of CJTFOIR's protective dome attacking ISIL positions close to Deir-er-Zour which sits around 130km (80 miles) south-east of Raqqa along the Euphrates. ISIL responded to this by immediately launching an attack on Syria government positions to the area south of the city which is usually described by the western media as; "Under complete ISIL control."
In fact you could almost go so far as to say that the only group in Syria that has shown absolutely no desire to fight ISIL are JAF - The people CJTFOIR are supplying with training, weapons and equipment to fight ISIL.
It has today emerged that amid all the diplomatic sound and fury of Thursday (1/10/15) US President Obama signed an order re-authorising the supply of US training, weapons and equipment to the YPG and what is being termed "The Syrian-Arab Opposition."
This could mean that Obama intends to make good on the threat he issued in his Friday (2/10/15) press conference to turn Syria into a quagmire for Russian forces by massively increasing US support for JAF and ISIL.
Alternatively it could mean that the US is now, finally going to support the YPG in their fight against ISIL.
This can't come a moment to soon because it will require a massive build up of troops and equipment for the YPG to even contemplate attacking ISIL in Raqqa. In fact I would even go so far as to say that such a thing can't even be contemplated until ISIL have been pushed entirely out of Iraq - something that Obama has been trying hard to avoid over the past 14 months.
An attempt to move too soon could even be viewed as an attempt to have the YPG slaughtered in the hope the ensuing panic provides Turkey with an excuse to invade northern Syria re-establishing ISIL's supply lines.
So I strongly suspect that once the dust has settled a bit Obama will be asked to clarify exactly what he means by that order before it is acted upon.
On Monday (5/10/15) Turkey convened an emergency meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) alliance demanding action over what it claims was violation of Turkish airspace by a Russia jet on Saturday (3/10/15). This seemed to be the first step in Turkey trying to invoke NATO's Article 4 clause taking the alliance to war with Russia.
The problem is that Turkey freely admits that at no point did this Russian jet enter Turkish airspace. Instead it remained 8km (5 miles) within Syria airspace where it had full permission to operate.
The confusion seems to stem from the fact that Turkey seems to believe that is has the right to extend it's military operations into Syrian territory in preparation for the establishment of a safe-zone.
No-one has authorised this and no-one except the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) has the authority to authorise this.
I will agree though that Obama could have made that a little clearer to Erdogan.
Sadly this is not the first time that Turkey has tried this stunt. On June 22nd 2012 (22/6/12) Turkey demanded another emergency NATO meeting after claiming that one of it's jets had been shot down in Turkish airspace by the Syrians.
However it quite quickly emerged that the aircraft in question - an F4 Phantom - had been intentionally flown into Syrian territory at high speed and low altitude to avoid detection. It was radioed and warned to leave. When it refused it was placed under radar/missile lock which sets off dozens of cockpit alarms and again asked to leave. Once it again refused so was shot down.
More then three years on I can't remember if Turkey even got a NATO meeting or whether it was deterred by all other NATO members trying to avoid making eye-contact with the Turkish delegation. The intention being to remind Turkey that Article 4 is a mutual defence clause that doesn't apply when a NATO member decides to attack another nation state.
On this occasion NATO were much more receptive to Turkey's outburst. Not only was a meeting called but it issued a very strongly worded statement condemning "Russia's violation of Turkish airspace" and issuing the veiled threat that Russia would be held "responsible for any undesired incident that may occur.”
NATO has indicated that it is supportive of further Turkish accusations of 'Russian violations.' However these further violations only refer to radar locks on Turkish aircraft that can be carried out over distances of hundreds of kilometres.
We actually had great fun with radar locks during the south-east Asian leg of Rihanna's Diamonds World Tour and the search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 that followed.
What seems to have changed NATO's position between 2012 and now is the civil war in Ukraine.
As I think is well established Russia has opposed illegal attempts to bring about regime change in Syria since they began back in 2011. This made the nations supporting those efforts furious.
So furious in fact that in the summer of 2012 the head of Saudi Arabia's intelligence service openly threatened to launch terror attacks against the 2013 Winter Olympics being held in Sochi, Russia if Russia did not drop its support for international law.
With a series of Islamist terrorist bombings the Sochi regional transport hub of Volgograd in the weeks running up to the Winter Olympics it seemed that Saudi Arabia was following through on its threat.
However at the last moment the US (and most other intelligence agencies) intervened to protect Saudi Arabia from the inevitable backlash this would cause. For example Israel spent 20 years hunting down and killing all those involved in the terrorist attack on the 1972 Munich Olympics. I gather Saudi Arabia has now changed the head of its intelligence service.
Rather then simply intervening the US also felt the need to provide Saudi Arabia with an alternative. They did this by supporting violent extremists such as the Right Sector and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UIA) in overthrowing the democratically elected government of Ukraine.
I say frequently that ISIL are a lot like the Nazis of Hitler's Germany. Right Sector and the UIA take great pride in the fact that their parents and grandparents fought for Nazi Germany as the 1st Galician/14th Grenadier Division of the Waffen SS.
To the surprise of absolutely no-one immediately after seizing power in Ukraine these extremists picked up right where they'd left off and set about trying toexterminate Ukraine's ethnically Russian minority. This triggered a refugee crisis amd forced that minority to take up arms to defend themselves triggering the civil war that goes on to this day.
This civil war provided the international community with an excuse to blame Russia and impose economic sanctions against Russia for its opposition to ISIL without the international community being forced to admit that it was supporting ISIL.
As part of this effort the US and others like Sweden have whipped some of NATO's newer, less-experienced members such as the Baltic states and Poland into such an immense anti-Russia frenzy that they're just looking for any excuse for war.
Therefore I've found Russia's response to these Turkish accusations extremely interesting;
However at around 17:40 on 6/10/15 (UK date) that will have to wait until after dinner.
Edited at around 18:55 on 6/10/15 (UK date) to have a bit of a tidy up and add;
The first thing Russia did was chose not to invoke the entirely reasonable defence that its aircraft was in Syrian airspace rather then Turkish airspace.
Throughout Ukraine's bloody civil war US President Obama's oft repeated mantra has been; "In the 21st century you cannot change the borders of Europe through force!"
This of course neatly ignores the fact that following the overthrow of the Ukrainian government the people of Crimea used the ballot box rather then the bullet to hold a referendum that voted to re-join Russia. Much to Russia's annoyance.
Beyond that though it is the type of carefully nuanced position you would expect from a legal scholar. For example by limiting it to "The 21st Century" Russia is unable to respond by pointing out that NATO saw absolutely no problem whatsoever with using military force to re-draw Serbia's borders in 1999 - right at the end of the 20th Century.
Likewise by limiting in geographic scope to "Europe" it still gives the US and NATO the freedom to use force to re-draw national borders everywhere else in the World. Along with the South China Seas Syria and Iraq spring immediately to mind.
So by refusing to challenge Turkey's re-drawing of Syria's border Russia has got NATO to admit that they see the re-drawing of national borders through military force as perfectly acceptable.
Instead Russia has declared the incident to be the result of a "Navigational Error." This strikes me as a highly intelligent and deeply sarcastic way of going; "Oh, I thought Turkey's border was over there last month. I guess I must have been mistaken(!)"
Russia has also blamed the 'navigational error' on the weather and supported this with a TV weather forecast that gave a precise break-down of how great weather conditions over Syria are for aerial bombing are at the moment.
This seems to be a reference to the timing of Russia's decision to commence operations in Syria during the opening of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA).
As they did with the overthrow of the Ukrainian government the talking heads on US TV - particularly the Republicans of Fox News - have been falling over themselves to explain it away as an aggressive power play by Russian President Vladimir Putin. They then proceed to get all twitchy in the brain as they try to explain the details of this grand conspiracy theory.
I must say though that I found the timing of Russia's move to be extremely irritating. You may remember that just before the start of the UNGA I posed a series of questions about how the peer review process for a new deal to combat climate change would work.
Last Monday (28/9/15) I was on the brink of being able to post my answers to those questions. I would very much have liked to be able to do that while the Heads of Government/State (HOG/S) of all the World nations were gathered together for a UNGA where this climate change deal was the second main issue. Just behind this war in Syria.
Obviously that has now not happened. However sticking to their schedule the almighty Secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) have produced a whole new version of the negotiating text.
I should point out though that over the past month I have found myself trying to write an update on the war against ISIL without mentioning the build up or Russia forces or mentioning the aerial dome CJTFOIR have established to protect ISIL.
If I had to use a weather related metaphor to describe this situation I would have talked about the oppressive humidity building causing you to almost pray that the storm would finally break.
Blocked at around 20:10 on 6/10/15 (UK date).
A prime example of this has been the villages of Fuaa and Kafraya on the Idlib/Latakia front-line. On September 24th (24/9/15) the United Nations (UN) brokered a cease-fire that would see the FML part of the JAF coalition withdraw from the town and release the roughly 10,000 Syrian civilians they had been holding hostage.
Unfortunately the day before the International Commission of the Red Cross/Crescent (ICRC) went into evacuate the refugees (25/9/15) an un-named White House official made the wild claim that Russia was moving to prop-up a Syrian government that could collapse at any day. Sadly FML took this at face value and emboldened reneged on the ceasefire the next day (26/9/15). The civilians remain hostage.
As for the weather itself if you look at South Carolina at the moment it seems to be invoking the metaphor of a dam breaking and the water behind rushing towards us all.
After a delay of nearl 90 minutes and - I assume - the permission of Edward Snowden I am now hopefull free to publish.
22:05 on 6/10/15 (UK date).
As with most of the ancient structures in Palmyra the Arch of Triumph has absolutely no religious or spiritual significance. Instead it was built by the Romans as a way for them to celebrate military victory as part of their Triumph ceremony.
As I've mentioned numerous times before ISIL are ideological nihilists. So as with the Nazi Germany of Adolf Hitler they have this constant need to be destroying something or someone in order to validate their existence. Therefore it is all too easy to read too much into ISIL's decision to destroy something.
However I've noticed that since they ran out of western hostages to kill and since the western media has taken a deep interest in Palmyra ISIL have been using it almost as a bargaining chip. This has often involved issuing a threat to destroy something in Palmyra, starting rumours that something has been destroyed before finally destroying it and releasing a video as proof.
Therefore I can't help but think the destruction of the Arc of Triumph is ISIL's response to the recent start of Russian air-strikes against them.
The message seems to simply to be that ISIL does not fear Russia and is ready to deny them any military victory or triumph.
I'll leave you to speculate as to why ISIL felt the need to reassure their supporters of this in such a loud and forceful way.
Palmyra is a particularly poor choice of places for ISIL to use to send messages to the world. Throughout this conflict ISIL supporters such as Turkish President/Prime Minister/Emperor Recep Tayyip Erdogan have claimed that ISIL is allied with the Syrian government.
Worryingly this has been reportedly widely as fact by western news agencies and even US President Barack Obama has hinted at this mythical alliance.
However this claim that ISIL and the Syrian government are allies is so utterly contradicted by all the evidence on the ground the only word I can think of to describe it is; "Bullsh*t."
Palmyra is a prime example of this;
Prior to May 2015 Palmyra was completely under the control of the Syrian government.
However in April 2015 the Army of Conquest/Jaish al-Fatah (JAF) - made up the Al Qaeda affiliated Al Nusra Front (ANF) and the Islamic Movement of the Freemen of the Levant/Harakat Ahrar ash-Sham al-Islamiyya (FML/Ahrar ash-Sham) alongside the Free Syrian Army (FSA) - launched their north-western offensive which eventually captured the town of Jisr al-Shughur.
This left the Syria government with a choice; It could either deploy it's forces in an attempt to defend the strategically important town of of Jisr al-Shughur that controls the main communication routes in the region or it could use its forces to defend what is essentially a tourist attraction.
Taking advantage of - some would say "in co-ordination with" - the JAF offensive ISIL attacked Palmyra succeeding in taking control of the city on May 26th (26/5/15). Some 200 Syrian government troops were killed in the failed defence of Palmyra.
In early July 2015 the Syrian government launched an offensive to re-capture Palmyra which largely ground to a halt in late August. In mid-September the Syrian government attempted to reinforce this offensive by conducting air-strikes against ISIL positions around Palmyra. As usual this was reported in the western media as; "Assad brutally attacks civilians."
It was at this point the US-led coalition - Combined Joint Task Force: Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTFOIR) - suddenly became very interested in Palmyra and start flying missions over the city making the occasional air-strike. This would fit with new CJTFOIR member, Turkey's desire to establish "No-fly/Safe Zones" where the Syrian government would be unable to carry out air-strikes.
We've actually seen something similar along the Euphrates River where Turkey's involvement has led to a dramatic drop-off in the frequency in CJTFOIR air-strikes in ISIL's heartland around Raqqa creating something of a protective dome to be established over ISIL.
Although they are still blocking me on Sunday (4/10/15) CJTFOIR carried out another air-strike in Palmyra with what are being described as "inconclusive" results. This seems to be a euphemism for "We bombed an empty field." On Monday (5/10/15) Russia carried out an undisclosed number of air-strikes against ISIL positions in and around Palmyra. These seem to have produced far more conclusive results.
Similarly I could talk about the ISIL offensive in the city of Hasakah which ran throughout May and June. Here ISIL attacked Syrian government positions within the city only for the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) to come in and dislodge ISIL from the positions they had just captured from the Syrian government.
On Thursday (1/10/15) Russia knocked on the door of CJTFOIR's protective dome attacking ISIL positions close to Deir-er-Zour which sits around 130km (80 miles) south-east of Raqqa along the Euphrates. ISIL responded to this by immediately launching an attack on Syria government positions to the area south of the city which is usually described by the western media as; "Under complete ISIL control."
In fact you could almost go so far as to say that the only group in Syria that has shown absolutely no desire to fight ISIL are JAF - The people CJTFOIR are supplying with training, weapons and equipment to fight ISIL.
It has today emerged that amid all the diplomatic sound and fury of Thursday (1/10/15) US President Obama signed an order re-authorising the supply of US training, weapons and equipment to the YPG and what is being termed "The Syrian-Arab Opposition."
This could mean that Obama intends to make good on the threat he issued in his Friday (2/10/15) press conference to turn Syria into a quagmire for Russian forces by massively increasing US support for JAF and ISIL.
Alternatively it could mean that the US is now, finally going to support the YPG in their fight against ISIL.
This can't come a moment to soon because it will require a massive build up of troops and equipment for the YPG to even contemplate attacking ISIL in Raqqa. In fact I would even go so far as to say that such a thing can't even be contemplated until ISIL have been pushed entirely out of Iraq - something that Obama has been trying hard to avoid over the past 14 months.
An attempt to move too soon could even be viewed as an attempt to have the YPG slaughtered in the hope the ensuing panic provides Turkey with an excuse to invade northern Syria re-establishing ISIL's supply lines.
So I strongly suspect that once the dust has settled a bit Obama will be asked to clarify exactly what he means by that order before it is acted upon.
On Monday (5/10/15) Turkey convened an emergency meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) alliance demanding action over what it claims was violation of Turkish airspace by a Russia jet on Saturday (3/10/15). This seemed to be the first step in Turkey trying to invoke NATO's Article 4 clause taking the alliance to war with Russia.
The problem is that Turkey freely admits that at no point did this Russian jet enter Turkish airspace. Instead it remained 8km (5 miles) within Syria airspace where it had full permission to operate.
The confusion seems to stem from the fact that Turkey seems to believe that is has the right to extend it's military operations into Syrian territory in preparation for the establishment of a safe-zone.
No-one has authorised this and no-one except the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) has the authority to authorise this.
I will agree though that Obama could have made that a little clearer to Erdogan.
Sadly this is not the first time that Turkey has tried this stunt. On June 22nd 2012 (22/6/12) Turkey demanded another emergency NATO meeting after claiming that one of it's jets had been shot down in Turkish airspace by the Syrians.
However it quite quickly emerged that the aircraft in question - an F4 Phantom - had been intentionally flown into Syrian territory at high speed and low altitude to avoid detection. It was radioed and warned to leave. When it refused it was placed under radar/missile lock which sets off dozens of cockpit alarms and again asked to leave. Once it again refused so was shot down.
More then three years on I can't remember if Turkey even got a NATO meeting or whether it was deterred by all other NATO members trying to avoid making eye-contact with the Turkish delegation. The intention being to remind Turkey that Article 4 is a mutual defence clause that doesn't apply when a NATO member decides to attack another nation state.
On this occasion NATO were much more receptive to Turkey's outburst. Not only was a meeting called but it issued a very strongly worded statement condemning "Russia's violation of Turkish airspace" and issuing the veiled threat that Russia would be held "responsible for any undesired incident that may occur.”
NATO has indicated that it is supportive of further Turkish accusations of 'Russian violations.' However these further violations only refer to radar locks on Turkish aircraft that can be carried out over distances of hundreds of kilometres.
We actually had great fun with radar locks during the south-east Asian leg of Rihanna's Diamonds World Tour and the search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 that followed.
What seems to have changed NATO's position between 2012 and now is the civil war in Ukraine.
As I think is well established Russia has opposed illegal attempts to bring about regime change in Syria since they began back in 2011. This made the nations supporting those efforts furious.
So furious in fact that in the summer of 2012 the head of Saudi Arabia's intelligence service openly threatened to launch terror attacks against the 2013 Winter Olympics being held in Sochi, Russia if Russia did not drop its support for international law.
With a series of Islamist terrorist bombings the Sochi regional transport hub of Volgograd in the weeks running up to the Winter Olympics it seemed that Saudi Arabia was following through on its threat.
However at the last moment the US (and most other intelligence agencies) intervened to protect Saudi Arabia from the inevitable backlash this would cause. For example Israel spent 20 years hunting down and killing all those involved in the terrorist attack on the 1972 Munich Olympics. I gather Saudi Arabia has now changed the head of its intelligence service.
Rather then simply intervening the US also felt the need to provide Saudi Arabia with an alternative. They did this by supporting violent extremists such as the Right Sector and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UIA) in overthrowing the democratically elected government of Ukraine.
I say frequently that ISIL are a lot like the Nazis of Hitler's Germany. Right Sector and the UIA take great pride in the fact that their parents and grandparents fought for Nazi Germany as the 1st Galician/14th Grenadier Division of the Waffen SS.
To the surprise of absolutely no-one immediately after seizing power in Ukraine these extremists picked up right where they'd left off and set about trying toexterminate Ukraine's ethnically Russian minority. This triggered a refugee crisis amd forced that minority to take up arms to defend themselves triggering the civil war that goes on to this day.
This civil war provided the international community with an excuse to blame Russia and impose economic sanctions against Russia for its opposition to ISIL without the international community being forced to admit that it was supporting ISIL.
As part of this effort the US and others like Sweden have whipped some of NATO's newer, less-experienced members such as the Baltic states and Poland into such an immense anti-Russia frenzy that they're just looking for any excuse for war.
Therefore I've found Russia's response to these Turkish accusations extremely interesting;
However at around 17:40 on 6/10/15 (UK date) that will have to wait until after dinner.
Edited at around 18:55 on 6/10/15 (UK date) to have a bit of a tidy up and add;
The first thing Russia did was chose not to invoke the entirely reasonable defence that its aircraft was in Syrian airspace rather then Turkish airspace.
Throughout Ukraine's bloody civil war US President Obama's oft repeated mantra has been; "In the 21st century you cannot change the borders of Europe through force!"
This of course neatly ignores the fact that following the overthrow of the Ukrainian government the people of Crimea used the ballot box rather then the bullet to hold a referendum that voted to re-join Russia. Much to Russia's annoyance.
Beyond that though it is the type of carefully nuanced position you would expect from a legal scholar. For example by limiting it to "The 21st Century" Russia is unable to respond by pointing out that NATO saw absolutely no problem whatsoever with using military force to re-draw Serbia's borders in 1999 - right at the end of the 20th Century.
Likewise by limiting in geographic scope to "Europe" it still gives the US and NATO the freedom to use force to re-draw national borders everywhere else in the World. Along with the South China Seas Syria and Iraq spring immediately to mind.
So by refusing to challenge Turkey's re-drawing of Syria's border Russia has got NATO to admit that they see the re-drawing of national borders through military force as perfectly acceptable.
Instead Russia has declared the incident to be the result of a "Navigational Error." This strikes me as a highly intelligent and deeply sarcastic way of going; "Oh, I thought Turkey's border was over there last month. I guess I must have been mistaken(!)"
Russia has also blamed the 'navigational error' on the weather and supported this with a TV weather forecast that gave a precise break-down of how great weather conditions over Syria are for aerial bombing are at the moment.
This seems to be a reference to the timing of Russia's decision to commence operations in Syria during the opening of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA).
As they did with the overthrow of the Ukrainian government the talking heads on US TV - particularly the Republicans of Fox News - have been falling over themselves to explain it away as an aggressive power play by Russian President Vladimir Putin. They then proceed to get all twitchy in the brain as they try to explain the details of this grand conspiracy theory.
I must say though that I found the timing of Russia's move to be extremely irritating. You may remember that just before the start of the UNGA I posed a series of questions about how the peer review process for a new deal to combat climate change would work.
Last Monday (28/9/15) I was on the brink of being able to post my answers to those questions. I would very much have liked to be able to do that while the Heads of Government/State (HOG/S) of all the World nations were gathered together for a UNGA where this climate change deal was the second main issue. Just behind this war in Syria.
Obviously that has now not happened. However sticking to their schedule the almighty Secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) have produced a whole new version of the negotiating text.
I should point out though that over the past month I have found myself trying to write an update on the war against ISIL without mentioning the build up or Russia forces or mentioning the aerial dome CJTFOIR have established to protect ISIL.
If I had to use a weather related metaphor to describe this situation I would have talked about the oppressive humidity building causing you to almost pray that the storm would finally break.
Blocked at around 20:10 on 6/10/15 (UK date).
A prime example of this has been the villages of Fuaa and Kafraya on the Idlib/Latakia front-line. On September 24th (24/9/15) the United Nations (UN) brokered a cease-fire that would see the FML part of the JAF coalition withdraw from the town and release the roughly 10,000 Syrian civilians they had been holding hostage.
Unfortunately the day before the International Commission of the Red Cross/Crescent (ICRC) went into evacuate the refugees (25/9/15) an un-named White House official made the wild claim that Russia was moving to prop-up a Syrian government that could collapse at any day. Sadly FML took this at face value and emboldened reneged on the ceasefire the next day (26/9/15). The civilians remain hostage.
As for the weather itself if you look at South Carolina at the moment it seems to be invoking the metaphor of a dam breaking and the water behind rushing towards us all.
After a delay of nearl 90 minutes and - I assume - the permission of Edward Snowden I am now hopefull free to publish.
22:05 on 6/10/15 (UK date).
Saturday, 3 October 2015
Operation Humongous Joy and Resounding Glory!
In 2013 the US staked it's entire foreign policy on the popstar Rihanna and her Diamonds World Tour. Although I have made a point of not commenting on it recently in the hope that it will die out as a political issue the US are continuing to press ahead with it.
For example on Tuesday (29/9/15) - the the midst of the opening of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) - Rihanna performed a concert in Santiago, Chile. Apart from taking a closer look at the Atacama border dispute this was intended to pose the question of whether Rihanna has slumped from being a global superstar to a regional also ran.
Immediately afterwards Rihanna flew to COP21 host city Paris, France. Officially this was for fashion week but on Friday (2/10/15) Rihanna very nearly bumped into the leaders of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine who were meeting in their "Normandy Four" format to discuss Ukraine's ongoing civil war. However I suspect the issue of Syria also came up.
The main effort of the operation though has been to resurrect Chris Brown's career. After all the big bad CIA might be able to keep him out of prison for beating Rihanna and others but they can't force people to buy his records.
A large part of this has involved getting other singers to feature Chris Brown on their records. That way Chris Brown gets back onto radio and TV playlists but is only in the background so you sort of forget he's there. Now that he's off the blacklist the hope is that eventually he'll be able to move out of the shadows and into the spotlight.
As it was with the original plan the UK is very supportive of these attempts to resurrect Chris Brown. Their main effort has been to donate UK popstar Rita Ora to the cause with Brown and Ora recently releasing the duet "Body On Me."
Rita Ora is a reasonably successfully and heavily backed popstar - I hesitate to use either the words; "Singer" or "Artist" - within the UK. As a result it is quite difficult for UK radio and TV stations who are much more resistant to Chris Brown then their US counterparts to refuse to play a Rita Ora record even if it does feature Chris Brown.
Although I'm not sure if anyone has said it to either of their faces before but there is a long running and rather sick joke that Rita Ora is simply a cheap Rihanna clone that the record company are keeping reserve for when Chris Brown finally beats Rihanna to death.
Throughout 2013 and beyond the US has tried to present Rihanna as a talking point about immigration reform. If you were to go down that route you would describe Rihanna as the type of highly-skilled migrant that the US should been trying to attract through reform to their greencard lottery rather then the type of low-skilled, Hispanic ballot stuffers that Obama is trying to throw America's borders open to in time for the 2016 Presidential Election.
In mean that in the sense that the record company couldn't one day tell Robyn Fenty that she's been made redundant and they've employed an American born citizen to replace her as "Rihanna The Popstar!" The presence of Rita Ora casts doubt on that assertion.
Really driving home this narrative of Rihanna meeting her replacement it's recently been announced that Rihanna will be make guest appearances on the US version of "The Voice." As it is in many other countries The Voice is really the premier singing competition of it's type in America.
However in the UK it's considered a joke and is routinely smashed in both the ratings and the sales charts by the "X-Factor." Last year Rita Ora was a judge on The Voice in the UK but this year has been promoted to being a judge on X-Factor.
Therefore to a UK audience the news that Rihanna is joining The Voice while Rita Ora is joining X-Factor sounds a lot like Rita Ora is moving up in the world while Rihanna is sinking down.
Rita Ora of course should be use to all this because her entire career has just been one overly long Eurovision Song Contest entry. For example she claims to be Kosovan but rather then accepting she is a Serbian citizen born it's southern Kosovo province she keeps talking about her Albanian roots.
The cause of her confusion seems to stem from the 1998/9 scandal over the failed impeachment of US President Bill Clinton over allegations that he lied about having sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky rather then his wife - 2016 Democrat Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
In order to distract from this scandal Bill Clinton decided to launch a 'humanitarian intervention' which saw the US lead a NATO invasion of Serbia which led to the southern province of Kosovo being snapped off from Serbia and effectively handed to Albania.
16 years later this remains a hugely controversial issue not least because it represents a complete violation of the United Nations (UN) Charter which was supposed to ensure Serbia's sovereignty and territorial integrity. To this day many UN members and even European Union (EU) nations refuse to acknowledge Kosovo as anything other then a Serbian province.
In light of the Syrian refugee crisis it has recently become even more controversial because the Greater Albania movement was not sated by the Kosovo intervention. They are currently trying to gobble up other Serbian provinces and provinces in their other neighbour Macedonia.
This already unstable situation is being unsettled further by the influx of predominately Muslim refugees into Macedonia and Serbia. The problem is that to the man in the street in those countries "Muslim" means "Albanian" and Albanian means "Thief." A massive flood of these 'thieves' into those countries could well lead to a situation like the one we've seen in the Central African Republic (CAR) since, well, 2013 and the Diamonds World Tour.
As a result there are probably many people in the EU thinking it would have been a lot easier if Bill Clinton had been prepared to take the hit.
Although the UK seems desperate to bring Chris Brown from the dead Australia - that rebellious member of the UK Commonwealth Realm - seems much less keen on the idea.
After a fortnight of speculation last Sunday (27/9/15) the Australian government served notice on Chris Brown that due to his domestic violence conviction - against Rihanna - he has been declared Persona Non Grata and is therefore banned from ever entering the country. There are still 21 days left for Brown to appeal but it looks like his career in Australia is now over.
As a result lots of people suddenly became extremely interested in tonight's match between England and Australia in the Rugby Union World Cup.
From the moment it was awarded this contest has been rigged not only to ensure that England do really well but also their obnoxious fans are the centre of attention throughout. For example Wales were forced to play their third game on Thursday (1/10/15) giving England two more days recovery time. In a sport as physical as rugby that really matters.
Therefore there was suspicion that Australia - a rugby mad nation - would be punished for it's insolence during the game. Initially we thought it would just be points shaving to deny a Australia a landslide victory but after Wales beat England last Saturday (26/9/15) there was speculation that Australia would be forced to throw the match in order to allow England to continue in the competition.
On Friday (2/10/15) Australia's Commonwealth Realm neighbour and vicious rugby rival New Zealand piped up and announced that they would be more then happy to invite Chris Brown into their country. This was seen as New Zealand throwing it's full support behind the UK's support for Chris Brown in the hope Australia would be absolutely smashed as punishment.
In Rugby Union the question isn't so much who is the favourite as; "Is there anyone out there who think of any reason they might be able to beat New Zealand's dominate team The All Blacks?!"
On Friday evening (technically Saturday morning in New Zealand) the All Blacks were playing Georgia who if England are a second tier team then Georgia are a third tier team.
In 2008 Georgia's pro-American President Mikheil Saakashvili launched a military assault on Georgia's ethnically Russian minority prompting Russia to intervene to protect them. Saakashvili's hope was that NATO would use this as an excuse to go to war with Russia and bite out a chunk of Russia territory to be handed to Georgia as happened to Serbia in 1999.
In short Saakashvili did what the US has been trying to do in Ukraine since late 2013. In fact Saakashvili is currently the Mayor of the Ukrainian province of Odessa despite being wanted in several countries for war crimes.
In Georgia Saakashvili got his calculation very badly wrong and the nation has been in international isolation ever since. However amid the anti-Russian fervour there have been moves recently to bring Georgia in from the diplomatic cold. Part of this has been there inclusion in the very soft Pool C at the Rugby World Cup.
As such New Zealand seemed to be requesting an utter punishment of Australia in return for making Georgia look good. Although they went on to win 43-10 in the first half that I watched the All Blacks were being extremely charitable.
At the UNGA the US hosted a Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) Summit. As part of this the UK and Australia set up a bit of a case study involving 15 year old boy who was convicted on Friday (2/10/15) of plotting an Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) terror attack on the ANZAC day celebrations back in April 2015. The questions of what motivated the Umpqua community college shooter also touch on this topic
However amid the Russia air-strikes against ISIL in Syria and all this rugby talk the Americans completely lost their sh*t. So during New Zealand v Georgia match the US got the US registered corporations such as McDonalds, Coca-Cola and Visa who sponsor the football World Cup to demand that FIFA President Sepp Blatter resigns.
The reason for the US campaign against FIFA is not because they want to clean up the sport - in fact most of the evidence suggests that it's US officials who've been trying to corrupt the sport.
Instead it's because the US doesn't understand the sport and therefore is unable to control its agenda which tends to be a sporting rather then politic one.
If Americans are baffled by football then Rugby Union completely overwhelms them. A large part of the reason for this is the all powerful National Football League (NFL) cartel which forces Americans to consume American Football as their national sport. So powerful is the NFL that if a game is not sold out the NFL can prevent US broadcasters from covering that game in any way, shape or form - the so-called "Blackout Rule."
As a result even sports journalists on US news networks whose job it is to understand rugby - including ones that may have been born in rugby mad nations such as South Africa and Australia - have to pretend they know absolutely nothing about this strange game that is definitely not completely superior to American Football in every way.
Somewhere underneath all of this there was actually a Rugby match between England and Australia tonight. Personally I thought Australia could have tried harder but then this match was far less important to them then it was to England. However generally I thought it was a fair game.
For example I am now obligated to use the phrase; "Mike Brown was shocked to discover that the laws (of the game) also applied to him."
In fact around 35 minutes in Australia's #7 Hooper got away with a right smash on him that certainly bordered yellow card territory. Mind you Brown's reaction didn't exactly inspire sympathy. But then on 70 minutes England's #23 got away with a wicked high-tackle/body-check on Hooper. However there was no other option then to show England's Farrell the yellow card for an off the ball body check that happened at the same time.
The big thing that annoyed me about the refereeing in the England v Wales game is that England have this tactic of collapsing the scrum by not driving forward (Google it). As with spear-tackles collapsing the scrum is a great way of turning profession rugby players into quadriplegics so I was always told that it was one of the worst sins you could commit on the rugby field.
However the referee in the Wales game disagreed and let England get away with it time and time again. The referee in this game didn't and it cost England a lot of penalty points.
In the end Australia beat England by 33-13. As a result England become the first host nation in the history of the rugby world cup to be knocked out at the group stage and won't progress to the knock-out stage.
I'm sure you'll agree that there is absolutely nothing funny about this.
Nor is it completely hilarious that they've still got to play one more game in front of a prime time audience.
23:00 on 3/10/15 (UK date).
For example on Tuesday (29/9/15) - the the midst of the opening of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) - Rihanna performed a concert in Santiago, Chile. Apart from taking a closer look at the Atacama border dispute this was intended to pose the question of whether Rihanna has slumped from being a global superstar to a regional also ran.
Immediately afterwards Rihanna flew to COP21 host city Paris, France. Officially this was for fashion week but on Friday (2/10/15) Rihanna very nearly bumped into the leaders of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine who were meeting in their "Normandy Four" format to discuss Ukraine's ongoing civil war. However I suspect the issue of Syria also came up.
The main effort of the operation though has been to resurrect Chris Brown's career. After all the big bad CIA might be able to keep him out of prison for beating Rihanna and others but they can't force people to buy his records.
A large part of this has involved getting other singers to feature Chris Brown on their records. That way Chris Brown gets back onto radio and TV playlists but is only in the background so you sort of forget he's there. Now that he's off the blacklist the hope is that eventually he'll be able to move out of the shadows and into the spotlight.
As it was with the original plan the UK is very supportive of these attempts to resurrect Chris Brown. Their main effort has been to donate UK popstar Rita Ora to the cause with Brown and Ora recently releasing the duet "Body On Me."
Rita Ora is a reasonably successfully and heavily backed popstar - I hesitate to use either the words; "Singer" or "Artist" - within the UK. As a result it is quite difficult for UK radio and TV stations who are much more resistant to Chris Brown then their US counterparts to refuse to play a Rita Ora record even if it does feature Chris Brown.
Although I'm not sure if anyone has said it to either of their faces before but there is a long running and rather sick joke that Rita Ora is simply a cheap Rihanna clone that the record company are keeping reserve for when Chris Brown finally beats Rihanna to death.
Throughout 2013 and beyond the US has tried to present Rihanna as a talking point about immigration reform. If you were to go down that route you would describe Rihanna as the type of highly-skilled migrant that the US should been trying to attract through reform to their greencard lottery rather then the type of low-skilled, Hispanic ballot stuffers that Obama is trying to throw America's borders open to in time for the 2016 Presidential Election.
In mean that in the sense that the record company couldn't one day tell Robyn Fenty that she's been made redundant and they've employed an American born citizen to replace her as "Rihanna The Popstar!" The presence of Rita Ora casts doubt on that assertion.
Really driving home this narrative of Rihanna meeting her replacement it's recently been announced that Rihanna will be make guest appearances on the US version of "The Voice." As it is in many other countries The Voice is really the premier singing competition of it's type in America.
However in the UK it's considered a joke and is routinely smashed in both the ratings and the sales charts by the "X-Factor." Last year Rita Ora was a judge on The Voice in the UK but this year has been promoted to being a judge on X-Factor.
Therefore to a UK audience the news that Rihanna is joining The Voice while Rita Ora is joining X-Factor sounds a lot like Rita Ora is moving up in the world while Rihanna is sinking down.
Rita Ora of course should be use to all this because her entire career has just been one overly long Eurovision Song Contest entry. For example she claims to be Kosovan but rather then accepting she is a Serbian citizen born it's southern Kosovo province she keeps talking about her Albanian roots.
The cause of her confusion seems to stem from the 1998/9 scandal over the failed impeachment of US President Bill Clinton over allegations that he lied about having sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky rather then his wife - 2016 Democrat Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
In order to distract from this scandal Bill Clinton decided to launch a 'humanitarian intervention' which saw the US lead a NATO invasion of Serbia which led to the southern province of Kosovo being snapped off from Serbia and effectively handed to Albania.
16 years later this remains a hugely controversial issue not least because it represents a complete violation of the United Nations (UN) Charter which was supposed to ensure Serbia's sovereignty and territorial integrity. To this day many UN members and even European Union (EU) nations refuse to acknowledge Kosovo as anything other then a Serbian province.
In light of the Syrian refugee crisis it has recently become even more controversial because the Greater Albania movement was not sated by the Kosovo intervention. They are currently trying to gobble up other Serbian provinces and provinces in their other neighbour Macedonia.
This already unstable situation is being unsettled further by the influx of predominately Muslim refugees into Macedonia and Serbia. The problem is that to the man in the street in those countries "Muslim" means "Albanian" and Albanian means "Thief." A massive flood of these 'thieves' into those countries could well lead to a situation like the one we've seen in the Central African Republic (CAR) since, well, 2013 and the Diamonds World Tour.
As a result there are probably many people in the EU thinking it would have been a lot easier if Bill Clinton had been prepared to take the hit.
Although the UK seems desperate to bring Chris Brown from the dead Australia - that rebellious member of the UK Commonwealth Realm - seems much less keen on the idea.
After a fortnight of speculation last Sunday (27/9/15) the Australian government served notice on Chris Brown that due to his domestic violence conviction - against Rihanna - he has been declared Persona Non Grata and is therefore banned from ever entering the country. There are still 21 days left for Brown to appeal but it looks like his career in Australia is now over.
As a result lots of people suddenly became extremely interested in tonight's match between England and Australia in the Rugby Union World Cup.
From the moment it was awarded this contest has been rigged not only to ensure that England do really well but also their obnoxious fans are the centre of attention throughout. For example Wales were forced to play their third game on Thursday (1/10/15) giving England two more days recovery time. In a sport as physical as rugby that really matters.
Therefore there was suspicion that Australia - a rugby mad nation - would be punished for it's insolence during the game. Initially we thought it would just be points shaving to deny a Australia a landslide victory but after Wales beat England last Saturday (26/9/15) there was speculation that Australia would be forced to throw the match in order to allow England to continue in the competition.
On Friday (2/10/15) Australia's Commonwealth Realm neighbour and vicious rugby rival New Zealand piped up and announced that they would be more then happy to invite Chris Brown into their country. This was seen as New Zealand throwing it's full support behind the UK's support for Chris Brown in the hope Australia would be absolutely smashed as punishment.
In Rugby Union the question isn't so much who is the favourite as; "Is there anyone out there who think of any reason they might be able to beat New Zealand's dominate team The All Blacks?!"
On Friday evening (technically Saturday morning in New Zealand) the All Blacks were playing Georgia who if England are a second tier team then Georgia are a third tier team.
In 2008 Georgia's pro-American President Mikheil Saakashvili launched a military assault on Georgia's ethnically Russian minority prompting Russia to intervene to protect them. Saakashvili's hope was that NATO would use this as an excuse to go to war with Russia and bite out a chunk of Russia territory to be handed to Georgia as happened to Serbia in 1999.
In short Saakashvili did what the US has been trying to do in Ukraine since late 2013. In fact Saakashvili is currently the Mayor of the Ukrainian province of Odessa despite being wanted in several countries for war crimes.
In Georgia Saakashvili got his calculation very badly wrong and the nation has been in international isolation ever since. However amid the anti-Russian fervour there have been moves recently to bring Georgia in from the diplomatic cold. Part of this has been there inclusion in the very soft Pool C at the Rugby World Cup.
As such New Zealand seemed to be requesting an utter punishment of Australia in return for making Georgia look good. Although they went on to win 43-10 in the first half that I watched the All Blacks were being extremely charitable.
At the UNGA the US hosted a Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) Summit. As part of this the UK and Australia set up a bit of a case study involving 15 year old boy who was convicted on Friday (2/10/15) of plotting an Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) terror attack on the ANZAC day celebrations back in April 2015. The questions of what motivated the Umpqua community college shooter also touch on this topic
However amid the Russia air-strikes against ISIL in Syria and all this rugby talk the Americans completely lost their sh*t. So during New Zealand v Georgia match the US got the US registered corporations such as McDonalds, Coca-Cola and Visa who sponsor the football World Cup to demand that FIFA President Sepp Blatter resigns.
The reason for the US campaign against FIFA is not because they want to clean up the sport - in fact most of the evidence suggests that it's US officials who've been trying to corrupt the sport.
Instead it's because the US doesn't understand the sport and therefore is unable to control its agenda which tends to be a sporting rather then politic one.
If Americans are baffled by football then Rugby Union completely overwhelms them. A large part of the reason for this is the all powerful National Football League (NFL) cartel which forces Americans to consume American Football as their national sport. So powerful is the NFL that if a game is not sold out the NFL can prevent US broadcasters from covering that game in any way, shape or form - the so-called "Blackout Rule."
As a result even sports journalists on US news networks whose job it is to understand rugby - including ones that may have been born in rugby mad nations such as South Africa and Australia - have to pretend they know absolutely nothing about this strange game that is definitely not completely superior to American Football in every way.
Somewhere underneath all of this there was actually a Rugby match between England and Australia tonight. Personally I thought Australia could have tried harder but then this match was far less important to them then it was to England. However generally I thought it was a fair game.
For example I am now obligated to use the phrase; "Mike Brown was shocked to discover that the laws (of the game) also applied to him."
In fact around 35 minutes in Australia's #7 Hooper got away with a right smash on him that certainly bordered yellow card territory. Mind you Brown's reaction didn't exactly inspire sympathy. But then on 70 minutes England's #23 got away with a wicked high-tackle/body-check on Hooper. However there was no other option then to show England's Farrell the yellow card for an off the ball body check that happened at the same time.
The big thing that annoyed me about the refereeing in the England v Wales game is that England have this tactic of collapsing the scrum by not driving forward (Google it). As with spear-tackles collapsing the scrum is a great way of turning profession rugby players into quadriplegics so I was always told that it was one of the worst sins you could commit on the rugby field.
However the referee in the Wales game disagreed and let England get away with it time and time again. The referee in this game didn't and it cost England a lot of penalty points.
In the end Australia beat England by 33-13. As a result England become the first host nation in the history of the rugby world cup to be knocked out at the group stage and won't progress to the knock-out stage.
I'm sure you'll agree that there is absolutely nothing funny about this.
Nor is it completely hilarious that they've still got to play one more game in front of a prime time audience.
23:00 on 3/10/15 (UK date).
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