US suspends bilateral contact with Russia over Syria
Washington has “suspended” bilateral contacts with Moscow over the Syrian crisis, the US State Department said. Russian Foreign Ministry said it was “disappointed” by the decision and accused the US of seeking to shift blame for its own failure in Syria.
US officials had threatened for a week to withdraw from the Syrian peace process, after the latest ceasefire negotiated by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Secretary of State John Kerry collapsed amid bloody fighting
« click for more info
Statement by Rear Adm. John Kirby for the U.S. State DepartmentThe Joint Implementation Center (JIC) would have been located in Geneva, Switzerland, with the purpose to coordinate military cooperation and intelligence-sharing between Russia and the US-led coalition fighting Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) in Iraq and Syria.
Washington has dragged its feet on setting up the JIC, however, with State Department spokesman John Kirby telling reporters on September 16 that its establishment was contingent on humanitarian aid reaching Aleppo, while the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford, told lawmakers the US had “no intention of having an intelligence-sharing agreement with the Russians.”
On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin suspended Moscow’s participation in a program for disposing of plutonium from decommissioned nuclear warheads, citing “the radical change in the environment, a threat to strategic stability posed by the hostile actions of the US against Russia, and the inability of the US to deliver on the obligation to dispose of excessive weapons plutonium under international treaties.”
- ○ Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby called ‘idiot’ by Sen. John McCain | WaPo – Oct. 22, 2014 |
○ Rory Stewart: global order out of control as Russia ‘swaggers’ | The Guardian |
Moscow to send more warplanes into Syria as Aleppo fighting rages | Deutsche Welle |
Russia’s “Izvestia” newspaper has reported that a group of Su-24 and Su-34 warplanes – armored twin-engine jets battle-tested during the Soviet war in Afghanistan in the 1980s – have arrived at Syria’s Hmeymim base. They can be used to strafe targets on the ground or as a bomber, the paper reported.
…
The World Health Organization (WHO) has repeated its urgent demand on the warring sides to allow the evacuation of sick and wounded people from eastern Aleppo. An estimated 300,000 people in the city are under siege by government forces, and residents report declining supplies of basic goods, including food, electricity and medicine.The Kremlin said there was no timeframe for its military operation in Syria. The main result of Russian airstrikes over the past year is that “neither Islamic State, nor al-Qaeda nor the Nusra Front are now sitting in Damascus,” Peskov told Reporters.
See my diaries a few days ago …
○ Wagging the Dog Before the November Elections
○ Americans Living In a Parallel Reality on Iraq and Syria
The Boston Globe let the Washington Consensus on Syria have it with both barrels today. Lying liars.
Be real curious to watch them ignore our siege of Mosul coming up.
Is this the tipping point?
There was a report about the WH meeting several weeks ago on whether to move for negotiations or bomb away. Difficult to say which position Kerry sided with because he’s said both, but Obama’s decision was negotiate. Ash Carter and Pentagon guys disagreed — At the end of the meeting Ash Carter stood and said, “We’ll see if we’re going to implement it.” In a few decades we might learn what Carter’s gang did to scuttle the cease fire. But by then it probably won’t matter.
Putin choosing to tie the nuclear decommissioning to this is NOT helpful.
What would have been helpful? Walk away from an ally and let US destroy Syria to the point where the government falls? Then we could get on with destroying another Russian ally?
I don’t think Putin and Russians are at all comfortable with all our saber rattling against them during the past few years and that’s been ratcheted way up this year. I sure wouldn’t be comfortable with a country as fully armed as the US and had a recent record of destroying other countries doing that to us.
Interesting if I’m reading this right:
Megatons to Megawatts:
Every aspect of our current policy would lead one to conclude that we do NOT want the Syrian government to fall. The US destroy Syria? I’m pretty sure Assad and Putin, along with Saudi funding, is doing that well enough on his own as they purposefully shell hospitals.
huh? Guess you missed all the “Assad must go” rhetoric out of DC and must be consuming gobs of propaganda on Syria. How many times as the “last pediatric hospital in X” been claimed to have been destroy by Syrian government forces? (How many MSF facilities has the US destroyed? — I do trust MSF to accurately report on the destruction of their facilities, but not the USG on much of anything, particularly baby hospitals because they’ve used that before and know that Americans love babies and hospitals when combined sign off on as much bombing as the USG wants.)
What happened to you?
USAID busy catapulting the propagand through those “White Helmets”. http://www.alternet.org/world/inside-shadowy-pr-firm-thats-driving-western-opinion-towards-regime-ch
ange-syria
Among The Syria Campaign’s most prominent vehicles for promoting military intervention is a self-proclaimed “unarmed and impartial” civil defense group known as the White Helmets. Footage of the White Helmets saving civilians trapped in the rubble of buildings bombed by the Syrian government and its Russian ally has become ubiquitous in coverage of the crisis. Having claimed to have saved tens of thousands of lives, the group has become a leading resource for journalists and human rights groups seeking information inside the war theater, from casualty figures to details on the kind of bombs that are falling.
But like The Syria Campaign, the White Helmets are anything but impartial. Indeed, the group was founded in collaboration with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)’s Office of Transitional Initiatives, an explicitly political wing of the agency that has funded efforts at political subversion in Cuba and Venezuela. USAID is the White Helmets’ principal funder, committing at least $23 million to the group since 2013. This money was part of $339.6 million budgeted by USAID for “supporting activities that pursue a peaceful transition to a democratic and stable Syria” — or establishing a parallel governing structure that could fill the power vacuum once Bashar Al-Assad was removed.
Me: Saudi is prepared to ratf*ck any peace prospects until the last Syrian is dead. Turkey appears to have made a side deal with Russia for now.
It’s as if the ability to see through war propaganda can’t be taught and only can be learned by the direct experience of each generation sometime after reaching the age of eighteen. The number that learn seems to be related to how close all the negative consequences and few/none of the goodies reach them. Thus, it was larger in the late sixties/early seventies but nowhere close to a majority. Still they have been more prevalent among those that object to the Bush and Obama wars.
It stunned me at how quickly GHWB got to a 90% approval rating for his stupid wars. Perceived correctly as a sham a year later, but then a decade after that all ready to do it again. Guess they’re now itching to for Hillary bombs.
Urban warfare is brutal. Waitng to read upcoming reports from OUR team’s methods in Mosul. We are already ignoring worse from Saudis in Yemen. And supplying them to do it.
Stick around, mino. Within 8 years…maybe sooner…you’ll be able to see how brutal urban war really is. Up close and personal, right here in the good ol’ U.S. of A. Militarized police systems are now already upon us. Only the black communities seem to fully understand this to the point of resistance. Of course..they’ve borne the brunt of the movement towards police militarization for longer than has any other group, so it stands to reason that they would see what is happening sooner than would other groups.
But like I said…stick around.
Evrey time a cop gets away with unjustified violence of any kind whatsoever, we are one step closer to
undeclared war on the U. S. citizenry in general.I mean, military people aren’t generally held accountable for violence during wars, right? Not unless they lose the war, of course. Then only the victors are held unaccountable.
Nor are they held accountable for extra surveillance during time of war. Instead they are usually congratulated and rewarded for successfully spreading disinformation during wartime.
Right?
Kinda like this:
Is Clapper in prison?
Of course not!!!
He was only prevaricating in time of war.
But…which war?
If the entire population of the U.S. is under at least semi-legal surveillance by the government (Supra legal? Somewhere in there.), then where is the war really being fought?
Yup.
You’ve got it.
Right here.
So far…besides the ever more frequent bombings and shooting…only in your cell phone.
In your internet.
They are the new Nazi/Communist regime-style informers. No need for a family member or neighbor to rat you out anymore. Now you can do it yourself!!!
A thousand thousand thousand incidents so far.
And counting.
One block at a time.
Here is how one block in my heretofore fairly peaceful Bronx neighborhood now looks, one week after a supposed “marijuana growhouse” blew up from what is now being described as a deviated gas line.
This image doesn’t even half cover the militarization going on in that area. To be truthful, I thought better of taking any photos myself because I do not want to have my phone confiscated by some paranoid cop or other military functionary in that area. They are everywhere. In uniform and…doubtless…not in uniform.
Why?
I don’t know.
More going on than is making the papers?
Maybe.
Just another chance to provide evidence that the police need more manpower?
Doubtless.
Good press and all…
Whatever.
Get used to it, mino.
After all…in time of war?
All’s fair.
Right?
Riiiiiight…
AG
The only propagandists on Syria right now (in my neck of the woods; neocons are always going to neocon) is the bullshit I’m seeing from “lefts” swallowing every line from the Syrian regime and its allies. The US is murdering civilians in Syria in its targeting of ISIS; almost 1000 civilians. Syria and Russia are purposefully targeting hospitals.
Seeing Max Blumenthal smear first responders is truly a new low. I can’t even read a lot of people who I used to think of as allies on this issue anymore. It’s truly disgusting.
What do you mean by “neocons are always going to neocon?”
Where you getting your factual and accurate information? WaPo, NYTimes? Do you not get it that neocons are bipartisan; they just use somewhat different language but the agenda is the same — regime change and US dominance. Surprised that you aren’t able to punch through that bubble.
The “left” isn’t swallowing anything — we understand the difficulty of cutting through the BS and how limited the sources are. But we can also add two and two correctly — because some of us have been doing it for decades and have always gotten pretty damn close to the truth that the USG and MSM didn’t want known. Max is a pretty good guy — but will see how well he continues doing real reporting and accurate observations and assessments. I’m not paying attention to Goodman on Syria — she has her blind spots and it’s always a good practice to note the blind spots of generally very good reporters.
Neocons are always going to want regime change. It is what separates them from what traditional US policy has been, which is to install and/or prop up dictators and strongmen.
I get my news from people I know in the region, The Intercept, Democracy Now. Indeed, it’s what is really pissing me off because neoliberals from Brookings such as Shadi Hamid are some of the few who present an accurate picture without propagandizing a “left anti-imperial” world view. And I’m putting that in quotes because it’s pure “anti-US” as opposed to against imperial powers meddling and fomenting war and carnage. We should be pressuring the US to stop its assistance in Yemen, and to pressure Saudi Arabia to gtfo Syria and funding the rebels. Russia, similarly, needs to stop Iran from doing the same. Instead what we have is a siege and bombing of hospitals while “leftists” smear first responders.
What happened to me? No.
Which isn’t to say I AGREE with Hamids solutions are worldview. Quite the opposite.
Neocons are always going to want regime change. It is what separates them from what traditional US policy has been, which is to install and/or prop up dictators and strongmen.
Suggestion — an easy read and solid on the facts — check out Stephen Kinzer’s Overthrow. You seem not to have a good grasp of “traditional” US foreign policy. As Libya was most definitely about regime change, do you have Obama and HRC in the neocon column? I suppose one could view neocons as having no truck with any jaw-jaw or covert operations before unleashing a military solution and may advocate maximum use of force once unleashed, but it’s a distinction without much difference as the agenda of regime change is taken as a US right.
Assad is still the legal government of Syria and has the right to request the assistance of his allies.
What is OUR legal justification? R2P, fgs? Right. Full blown, financed civil wars never kill more people and flatten more infrastructure than Assad ever managed.
Where is our justification for ignoring the invasion of Turkey into Syrian territory–not a peep? Why are we the tools in a Saudis religious/tribal war? Pipelines, fgs?
Where do they get their information from? The anti-Assad factions, no? Have they not been passing around unsubstantiated narratives to journos? Tell me they never speak to press and I will think it is a smear.
They are fully entitled to their biases, you know. I just like to know about them.
○ US Air Force hour long bombardment of MSF hospital in Kunduz – 2015
○ Saudi Air Force hit hospital in Yemen, many civilian casualties
Abhorrent crimes from ALL parties involved in warfare!
The pod people are picking them off one by one. The few of us left can’t afford to go to sleep.
For decades: NOT helpful!
○ Israel not adhering to International Law: building more settlements not helpful.
During the period of cessation of hostilities, the Al Nusra Front fighters were resupplied with more and better GRAD rocket launchers in northeastern Syria in Aleppo governate. The Syrian and Russian military registered 300 attacks by rebel groups. The ceasefire ended when parties failed to agree on a continuation. The UN Security Council sessions were used for abuse and more accusations instead of an effort to continue diplomacy.
○ Spewing Lies As US Planes Cause Massive Collateral Damage – Sept. 20
○ US Creating a Sunni Principality in Syria – Sept. 20
○ NATO Stoltenberg Silent on Aid Convoy Attack Near Aleppo – Sept. 22
US DOD – 10/3/16
Mark Seibel – reaction tweet
Greenwald response
Is Hillary responsible for this revolt of the Generals against Obama in Syria? Does he need to fire another one? Can he?
“We are hoping that your President’s Daily Brief tomorrow will give appropriate attention to Saturday’s warning by Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova: “If the US launches a direct aggression against Damascus and the Syrian Army, it would cause a terrible, tectonic shift not only in the country, but in the entire region.”
Speaking on Russian TV, she warned of those whose “logic is `why do we need diplomacy’ … when there is power … and methods of resolving a problem by power. We already know this logic; there is nothing new about it. It usually ends with one thing – full-scale war.”
We are also hoping that this is not the first you have heard of this – no doubt officially approved – statement. If on Sundays you rely on the “mainstream” press, you may well have missed it. In the Washington Post, an abridged report of Zakharova’s remarks (nothing about “full-scale war”) was buried in the last paragraph of an 11-paragraph article titled “Hospital in Aleppo is hit again by bombs.” Sunday’s New York Times totally ignored the Foreign Ministry spokesperson’s statements.”
The date is April, but internal text makes it current.
http://www.defenddemocracy.press/obama-warned-to-defuse-tensions-with-russia/
Yup.
We are back in the U.S.S.R.
Once again.
Same tactics, different continent and year.
Been there at least since the unanimously media-supported build-up the Bush II’s Irag invasion.
Bet on it.
Maybe since the JFK assassination coup.
Hung by our ears.
Bet on that as well.
AG
Bet on that as well.
AG
AG
Not helpful!
U.S. military strikes against the Assad regime will be back on the table Wednesday at the White House, when top national security officials in the Obama administration are set to discuss options for the way forward in Syria.
Options under consideration include bombing Syrian air force runways using cruise missiles. One proposed way to get around the White House’s long-standing objection to striking the Assad regime without a U.N. Security Council resolution would be to carry out the strikes covertly and without public acknowledgment, the official said.
“There’s an increased mood in support of kinetic actions against the regime,” one senior administration official said. “The CIA and the Joint Staff have said that the fall of Aleppo would undermine America’s counterterrorism goals in Syria.”
https:/www.washingtonpost.com/news/josh-rogin/wp/2016/10/04/obama-administration-considering-strike
s-on-assad-again?postshare=971475601330523&tid=ss_tw
(Kinda explains that bombing incident in Aleppo, don’t it?
UN stipulates sovereignty of a nation, that’s why China never votes for regime change or military intervention through the United Nations. Using Kosovo “massacre” by Serbs as a lame excuse during the Clinton administration, the US and NATO bombed Serbia into submission. There was no legal basis in accordance with UN resolutions and International Law.
There were legal experts who argued the R2P principle would be sufficient for a limited intervention to prevent genocide.
After a number of years, the Democratic war hawks used this argument to “save” civilians in Sirte and Benghazi during the Libyan uprising of 2011. Russian president Medvedev signed off on the UN Resolution 1973 only to be fooled by US allies, NATO and the Arab states who aimed for the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi and regime change. HRC was the strong voice along with Susan Rice and Samantha Powers who advocated the R2P principle.
PS I listened to the audio when broadcast by CNN in the program of Amanpour. The audio quality [filtered] was excellent, quite clear.
Wonder if Kerry is aware of all the double-speak in his comment?
I am never certain if Kerry is aware of anything other than the tasks given to him by his controllers or whether he’s got the greatest dumb act in the history of U.S. covert politics.
Probably the former…
Clomp clomp clomp.
OOOPS!!!
My bad…
AG
Should we note that Hourout Ekmanian’s voice is now nowhere to be found in western media?
Or when it is, is highly edited to remove the bits not fit for American readers.
○ ‘1st victim of war is truth’: Syrian-born journalist slams MSM for Aleppo bias | Russia Today |
OpEd has been saved on Internet Archive
From your link …
I didn’t cite the RT article or post a link to it because I didn’t want to attract a couple of trolls that seem to appear and trash me and media sources they claim are GOP or Russian propaganda sites.
RT has some great reports and interviews with American congressmen. The news items are state propaganda as has been witnessed with Al Jazeera since 2011. AJ still has some nice reports and documentaries. AJ has been blocked on the channels of European satellites. So I read less and must refer to the Internet.
So some bloggers @BooMan act as children, not as adults. It’s still a great place at the pond, however the presidential election battle reminds me of the dKos era … horrible.
In general, I’d call them decent, not great, reports and interviews, but it is interesting to compare what it picks up with what appears or doesn’t appear in other sources. But much of what RT publishes are from news feeds; so on those it doesn’t matter if lifted from RT or any MSM source.
dKos began attracting what appeared to be paid shills as early as mid-2003. Not that any admitted to that and only one was sufficiently outed. After the primary battles were over in 2004 and 2008, the place seemed to settle down (excluding the PUMAS in ’08). Excessive enthusiasm that Kerry would win and excessive fretting that Obama would lose, but I don’t recall delusions as to who and what Kerry and Obama were. But I tend not to read what those in love with a political candidate write; so, I could have missed that there.
Don’t really get why anyone feels compelled to write “support/get on board with A because of X, Y, and Z” when X, Y, and Z are objectively not true or a huge stretch on what can be known. And why such writers deny verifiable evidence that A has never supported or worked for something the writer claims is important. They don’t even seem to get that vision or the lack of vision isn’t that hard to read from a candidate’s record. For example, if one supported LBGT equal rights, one doesn’t support/vote for DOMA in the ’90s, doesn’t make Senate floor speeches about the “sacred bond of marriage between a man and a woman in the naughts, and only comes around to same-sex marriage after the SC rules that prohibitions are unconstitutional.
A few days ago I stumbled on a couple of things from 1958 that I didn’t know. 1) Stevenson and party insiders were considering a third run for him in 1960. Doubt they had any recognition that it was a crazy idea. 2) A southerner couldn’t get the Democratic nomination and if by some miracle he could, he’d lose the general election. That meme was changed a mere two decades later to “only a southern Democratic nominee can win the general election.”
Sky News:
Greewald tweets
○ Turkish-backed Syrian rebels close in on IS-held Dabiq | Deutsche Welle |
○ Dabiq: Why is Syrian town so important for IS? | BBC News |
○ Syrian Rebels Armed by CIA Fight Those Armed by the Pentagon In Aleppo District
Wth?
“In a press event yesterday, before talks with the French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault about a new UN resolution, he (Kerry) said (vid @1:00) about Syria:
Last night, the regime attacked yet another hospital, and 20 people were killed and 100 people were wounded. And Russia and the regime owe the world more than an explanation about why they keep hitting hospitals and medical facilities and children and women. These are acts that beg for an appropriate investigation of war crimes. And those who commit these would and should be held accountable for these actions.
No opposition group has claimed that such an extremely grave event happened. None. No press agency has a record of it. The MI-6 disinformation outlet SOHR in Britain, which quite reliably notes every claimed casualty and is frequently cited in “western” media”, has not said anything about such an event anywhere in Syria.
The grave incident Kerry claimed did not happen. Kerry made it up. (Was it supposed to happen, got canceled and Kerry missed the memo?) Kerry used the lie to call for war crime investigations and punishment. This in front of cameras, at an official event with a foreign guest in the context of a United Nations Security Council resolution.
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2016/10/a-desperate-obama-administration-resorts-to-lying-and-maybe-mor
e-.html#comments