The Telegraph interviewed the Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak. The headline though is wrong: Israel says Iran has pulled back from the brink of nuclear weapon – for now

An immediate crisis was avoided in the summer when Iran quietly chose to use over a third of its medium-enriched uranium for civilian purposes, delaying the moment when it could have built a nuclear bomb.

…
Tehran has amassed 189kg of uranium enriched to 20 per cent purity, a vital step towards weapons-grade material. In August, the country’s experts took 38 per cent of this stockpile and converted it into fuel rods for a civilian research reactor, thus putting off the moment when they would be able to make uranium of sufficient purity for a nuclear bomb.

MoA, not Israel, was, as far as I can tell, the first to report that "pull back" on August 31: IAEA: Iranian "Nuclear Danger" Decreased

Iran has now 10% less "dangerous stuff" in the form of further easily enrichable 20% UF6 than it had in May 2012. Further enriched this stockpile would not be enough by half to create even one nuclear device. The "imminent danger" of a "nuclear Iran" has thereby decreased.

I shared those facts on an email list from which Gareth Porter picked it up to publish a piece on the issue through the IPS news agency. (Gareth is now writing a book on the history of the manufactured crisis of the Iranian nuclear scare and could use your help for that.) After Gareth (and my) piece were out some of the mainstream media also wrote about the Uranium conversion it but only as a side fact in other stories and without any analysis.

Cont. reading: The Iranian “Pull Back” And The Astonishing Effects Of Sanctions

There is, for some weeks, now a disruptive troll in the comments of this blog.

He has used the following names: ahem, Star69, unohu, Zio-Weiss?, SF, SufferingFools, hu bris, crazy_inventor. It is all the same person.

The guy is attacking regular longterm commentators and adds less than zero to the value of the discussions.

Attempts to block his IP address from commenting failed because the IP addresses he uses are changing every few comments and are jumping all over various quite diverse IP-address blocks. (I am interested to learn what tool is enabling this.)

To my regular commentators: Please do not, in any case or any form, respond to comments that you suspect to come from this troll. Do not feed him.

I have contacted the operators of the platform this blog is running on and they are looking into the problem.

If anyone has a good idea how we can get rid of that idiot please let me know.

Thanks

There is a bit of wind and some flooding coming up to the U.S. eastern shore. While the storm covers a huge area its wind speeds seem to be rather normal.

I have often visited and for some time lived in some of the east cost states. When I did several infrastructure issues let me shake my trained engineer head. The unburied local electricity lines were obvious prone to fall down and fail. Because of leaky supply lines tap water in some areas was chlorinated and unusable for consumption. Those plywood houses that were being build everywhere would hardly sustain natures regular wrath. In Manhattan I saw no flood protection at all. I wondered: "There is an ocean right out there. Don't they ever get storms?"

I was born in northern Germany and now live in Hamburg. We regularly have quite gusty storms and some flooding. Flood protection is always a high priority local political issue all along the North Sea coast. As the height of flooding is predicted to increase due to the changing climate dikes are constantly heightened to withstand the predicted higher waves. With few exceptions the local electricity lines are all buried. The tap water is drinkable and the houses are build with stones.

This seems to be a cultural issue. U.S. citizens are probably willing to live with more risk than old Europeans. But why then is there always this craze about terrorism? A negligible threat with hundreds of billions wasted on to prevent its occurrence.

Now here is an idea. Why doesn't someone smart declare Sandy and her relatives a foreign terrorist organization? Isn't she from somewhere in Central America? Hasn't she already breached several red lines and her international obligations?

Declaring bad weather a terrorist entity and the now running media craze of the imminent threat would allow politicians to move hundreds of billions of dollars towards fighting it and to work on mitigating its consequences.

Military intervention in foreign countries always leads to unintended consequences. These often occur in neighbor countries of the original target. One example is the Vietnam war which lead to the destabilization of and military intervention in Laos and Cambodia.

The U.S. is prone to correct such unintended consequences by further military intervention.
Algeria had warned of intervention in Libya and voted against the Arab League resolution calling for a no-fly zone in Libya:

In March [2011], Algeria voted against the Arab League’s resolution calling for a no-fly zone over Libya, fearing that it would lead to the intervention of foreign ground forces and stressing the need to preserve Libya's security and territorial integrity.

In April, Algerian Foreign Minister Mourad Medelci once again expressed Algeria's fear that some forces were aiming to split Libya and that terrorists could take advantage of the resulting instability, turning the country in a major regional black market for weapons.

…
The greatest concern for Algeria is that an unstable Libya could turn into a major safe haven and source of weapons for al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). […] A Libyan implosion could provide AQIM with greater opportunities to buy weapons from Libyan arsenals and to expand its activities to new territories. Algerian officials have strongly stressed this point since the very beginning of the conflict. Moreover, these concerns are shared by other regional countries such as Chad, Mali and Niger.

It is obvious that the Algerian and other African governments were right in their prediction. Tuareg who had served in Gaddhafi's army took their weapons with them and revolted against the government in Mali. They were supported by newly armed AQIM forces. These are now the new rulers of northern Mali with Timbuktu as their new center.

The military intervention led, as predicted by Algeria and others, to bad unintended consequences. This should, one might think, give those who intervened some second thoughts. Could it be that Algiers was right? Could it be that military intervention creates more problems? Could it be that we should listen to those people who actually know their area?

Cont. reading: Repeating The Libya Mistake in Mali

It seems that the Obama administration was fearing to be duped by the Turkish premier Erdogan into a NATO Article 5 case of common defense. Severe attacks from Syria onto Turkish soil could trigger such a case. Erdogan had already claimed that some artillery shells that killed five people in the border town of Akçakale were fired by the Syrian army.

To prevent that Erdogan pulls off some Gulf of Tonkin incident a U.S. general was send out to preempt him:

It is not clear who is shooting shells from Syria into Turkey, the commander of the U.S. Army Europe and Seventh Army, Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling has said, private television channel NTV yesterday.

"We are not sure if these shells are from the Syrian army, from rebels who want to get Turkey involved in the issue or from the PKK [Kurdish Workers’ Party]," he said.

Translation: "Dear Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, don't even think of using some fake artillery incident or some similar stunt to draw us further into your war on Syria. Signed: Obama (+ Romney)"

It is obvious that Erdogan's neo-ottoman plan to take over Syria is in deep trouble. Assad will not be overthrown and with no international help coming Turkey has run out of options. For Erdogan the about only thing he can still do to prevent more damage of Turkley's position is to stop all transfer of weapons and personal to Syria and to thereby let the rebels run out of ammunition and money. The war would then die down. Erdogan would need to blame someone for the huge mistake he made with supporting the overthrow of Assad. He will have to fire his foreign minister Dovatogu and blame him for the mess he created with all of Turkey's neighbors.

The killing of the Lebanese Brigadier General Wissam al-Hassan has likely shut down most of the organized weapon transfer from Lebanon to Syria. Little seems to come from Jordan. Whatever is coming from Iraq seems to be no more than the usual local smuggling. The only big pipeline of weapons, which was organized by the dead U.S. ambassador Stevens, came from east Libya via Turkey into Syria. When that transfer route is blocked the end of the war on Syria will be in sight.

The Post's three parts series about the "permanent war", the institutionalization of the assassinations by drones, currently especially in Yemen, is largely election propaganda for the Obama administration: "Look how tough we are."

But to me it expresses something different. The people described in it, especially White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennen, are amoral ruthless servants of an ideology of almightiness that strives for global hegemony.

While they claim that their killing program is somehow reducing the risks of attacks on the United States they must know, as it is obvious, that this is not the case:

[I]n many ways since the US started bombing there in December 2009, Yemen has been a laboratory for the US to try out different approaches in its war against al-Qaeda. But I'm not so sure the results are as positive as Brennan and many of the other anonymous officials quoted suggest.

To begin with, I'm not sure how Yemen can be viewed as a model – at least in the positive sense Brennan seems to indicate – when AQAP has tripled in size since the US started bombing.

…
Additionally, I would argue that events from this spring – when an undercover agent came away with AQAP's latest underwear bomb – shows a couple of things: 1. despite the US bombing campaign in Yemen, which has been partially designed to keep AQAP on its heels so that it can't plot attacks against the US, the organization is still actively plotting and attempting to launch new attacks. 2. The more recruit AQAP gains the bigger of a talent pool it has upon which to draw.

…
[W]hen the US has carried out at least 36 attacks this year in Yemen in an effort to kill 10-15 men something is wrong.

Mass assassinations by drones, as the U.S. practices in Pakistan and in Yemen, have in both countries increased antipathy towards the U.S. and the number of people willing to actively fight against it. Currently U.S. drones also create new enemies in east Libya:

Locals considered the drones they now hear buzzing overhead “a form of occupation,” he said, and Libyans would wage “jihad” to force them out.

Obama and Brennen must know of this effect of their assassination campaign.

There is another danger in this war by drones. They are complicated machines and the software they use, which will make drones increasingly autonomous, is faulty and will always be so. As someone who has worked developing and implementing information technology this doesn't surprise me at all:

In March 2011, a Predator parked at the camp started its engine without any human direction, even though the ignition had been turned off and the fuel lines closed. Technicians concluded that a software bug had infected the “brains” of the drone, but never pinpointed the problem.

Currently software is getting developed that automatically scans through drone reconnaissance videos to find the "signature" of "terrorist behavior". That guy is loading the trunk of his car? Now that might be a car bomb. The visual recognition software will pick that out and when further bits of circumstantial "evidence" gets added it may well recommend the assassination of that person in a "signature strike".

Aside from the incredible stupid believe in the existence of any "terrorist signature", how many bugs will such a software have? Would their users even be able to identify a software mistake? Would they find its cause? Of course not.

No one with any bit of moral left in them should argue for the "permanent war" the Obama administration is implementing here. What it really creates is a permanent growing number of enemies and certain blowbacks to come. Drone assassinations and harassing drone critics create more terrorism. They are a problem, not a solution. As the people in the White House are not all stupid the must know this and their motivation to wage a permanent war must be a different one than the one they claim.

The neoconned editorial board of the Washington Post, famous for always calling for more wars, endorse Barack Obama as president for another four years.

The first reason they give is Obama's plan to cut Social Security:

He did not end, as he promised he would, “our chronic avoidance of tough decisions” on fiscal matters. But Mr. Obama is committed to the only approach that can succeed: a balance of entitlement reform and revenue increases.

The second reasons are more wars.

Obama has not yet delivered all the wars the WaPo editors want, but he has waged enough, he introduced "kill lists" and a "disposition matrix" to eliminate whoever is though to be a "terrorist" including all the bystanders and he has shown no consciences. The editors hope for more of that.

While Mitt Romney has lots of neocon foreign policy advisers he himself is not one and there are concerns that he might actually turn out to be a realist:

The sad answer is there is no way to know what Mr. Romney really believes. [..] At times he has advocated a muscular, John McCain-style foreign policy, but in the final presidential debate he positioned himself as a dove.

Imagine that. A possible dove in the oval office. There is no way the WaPo editors would allow for that.

Sorry for not posting. I am busy with a deadline project plus some urgent family stuff. I hope to be back posting tomorrow.
Please behave.

Tonight the TV in the U.S. will have some competition show. Two guys will put out as many lies as possible without being outright caught on them. The prize is a blender.

You might want to talk about that or whatever …

… or to occupy Afghanistan.

John A. Nagl is der Führer of the COINdinistas and author of “Learning to Eat Soup With a Knife.” Nagl can not admit that the counterinsurgency campaigns he argued for failed both in Iraq and in Afghanistan to achieve their goals. While everyone acknowledges that war in Afghanistan is already lost and all politicians are looking for a faster way out of there he still claims that the “west” is Not losing in Afghanistan.
Nagl starts his OpEd with this false claim:

Americans haven’t lost a war in so long, we’ve forgotten what doing so looks like — and what it costs. The only war that we undeniably lost was the Vietnam War; thrown out of the country literally under fire, we abandoned our allies to a horrific fate and left behind a legacy of terror in the region, breaking our Army in the process.

Hmm – wasn’t there, beside Vietnam, this other war where Nagl promoted his ideas? Does he believe that Iraq war was not lost? Wasn’t the U.S. kicked out of that country? Doesn’t the terror there continue? Are the suicide numbers in the U.S. army not at a record height?

Cont. reading: Only Idiots Try To Eat Soup With A Knife …

Can anyone make sense of this State Department announcement of new entries in its reward for justice headhunter program?

The Department’s Rewards for Justice program is offering rewards for information on two key Iran-based facilitators and financiers of the al-Qaida terrorist organization.

The U.S. Department of State has authorized a reward of up to $7 million for information leading to the location of Iran-based senior facilitator and financier Muhsin al-Fadhli and up to $5 million for information leading to the location of his deputy, Adel Radi Saqr al-Wahabi al-Harbi.

So the State Department will pay a reward to locate these people. Thus it is obviously the department does not know where they are. Why then does it claim that these are "Iran-based" people?

Al-Fadhli and al-Harbi facilitate the movement of funds and operatives through Iran on behalf of the al-Qaida terrorist network.
…
Al-Qaida elements in Iran, led by al-Fadhli, are working to move fighters and money through Turkey to support al-Qaida-affiliated elements in Syria. Al-Fadhli also is leveraging his extensive network of Kuwaiti jihadist donors to send money to Syria via Turkey.

So these people sit in Iran and provide people and money to the fighters that try to overthrow the Iran allied Syrian government? Why would Iran allow for that?

Adel Radi Saqr al-Wahabi al-Harbi is an Iran-based al-Qaida facilitator and deputy to al-Fadhli. In this role, al-Harbi facilitates the travel of extremists to Afghanistan or Iraq via Iran on behalf of al­-Qaida and is believed to have sought funds to support al-Qaida attacks.

Again are we to believe that there is some organisation in Iran that lets Al Qaeda fighters travel to Iraq to fight the Iran allied Iraqi government?

Does anyone really believe that the Shia Iran government is supporting the activities of Wahabbi Sunni extremists against Shia governments it is allied with? That claim defies all logic. Why supposedly would Iran do that?

What we obviously have here is a false claim by the Obama administration that is similar to the false claims the Bush administrations made about Iraq. As was later admitted Saddam Hussein was never allied with Al Qaeda. He was indeed as staunch opponent of radical Sunni extremists.

Now another administration is making the same stupid Al-Qaeda claims about Iran.

The Obama administration also makes ominous claims that Iran wants weapon of mass destruction which Iran says it does not want and for which there is not even one bit of evidence. It arranges "devastating" sanctions on Iran just like former U.S. governments put such sanctions on Iraq.It threatens the use of force against Iran. Is there then any real difference between the Bush and Obama regime?

The Associated Press is whitewashing the intentional slow starving of the people in the Gaza strip due to Israel's economic blockade.

After a legal battle the Israeli government had to release a paper which it had used to calculate the nutrition need of the people in Gaza for the purpose to restrict imports into Gaza to a certain level.

As the AP writes it:

In the January 2008 document, Israel determined how to ensure that Gazans eat 2,279 calories of food each day, a figure in line with World Health Organization guidelines.

It broke down the calorie allocation by various food groups, and in minute details. It said that males aged 11 to 50 required 316.05 grams of meat per day, and women in the same age group needed 190.47 grams of flour. The analysis also included adjustments for locally grown farm products as well as an assessment of the kinds of food imports that would be needed to sustain the population.

…
Israel controls the only official cargo crossings into Gaza, and greatly limited the flow of goods into the territory following the Hamas takeover.

Here is the point that AP is missing. The Israelis calculated the minimum needs of the Gazans and then deliberately delivered less than what was needed. As Haaretz noticed in its report on the issue:

Altogether, therefore, COGAT concluded that Israel needed to allow 131 truckloads of food and other essential products into Gaza every day …

…
The point of the "red lines" document was to see if this number of trucks in fact met Gaza's needs. But according to Gisha, UN data shows that the number of trucks allowed into Gaza each day often fell below this level.

That is something the AP does not mentioned at all. Its readers will believe that Israel delivered what it calculated. It did not. Israel intentionally delivered less than the minimum quantity it had calculated the people in Gaza would need.

Instead AP gives us lots reminders that Hamas is a terrorist organization that fires home made rockets, but there is not a word in it about frequent Israeli bombing attacks on Gaza or of operation cast lead.

Then the AP inserts a serious lie:

Despite the shortages and hardship, at no point did observers identify a nutritional crisis developing in the territory, whose residents rely overwhelmingly on international food aid.

Even a cursory search for "Gaza malnutrition" gives these organizations which wrote reports about the nutritional crisis in Gaza and the related headlines:

• Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics in April 2007:
  Poll: 10% of Palestinian children have lasting malnutrition effects
• International Committee of the Red Cross November 2008:
  Chronic malnutrition in Gaza blamed on Israel
• UNHCR in 2009:
  Signs of worsening malnutrition among children [in Gaza]
• Palestinian Medical Relief Society in 2010:
  52% of Gaza children suffer from malnutrition

Many organization again and again pointed to rising malnutrition in Gaza. Even AP reported on their findings. How then can AP now declare that "at no point did observers identify a nutritional crisis"?

Tony Karon, who writes sane analyses for Time, points to piece about Man Portable Air Defense Missiles (MANPADs) in the hand of the foreign supported Syrian insurgents. He remarks:

MANPADS proliferate in Syria. Bad news for Assad forces. May also be bad news for civil aviation in the Levant…

My response:

Bad news for Turkey. Obvious MANPAD counterstrategy is giving them to Kurds.

It is simply an eye for an eye strategy.

Turkey has a very large tourist industry. If the PKK, which fights for Kurdish independence from Turkey, gets its hands on MANPADs, either obtained from the insurgents in Syria or from the Syrian government, the Turkish tourist industry is dead.

After it becomes known that the PKK has SA-7s, probably after they take down some Turkish helicopter and post the video on Youtube, would anyone still fly to Antalya without having fear of being shot down?

A few SA-7s in reliable PKK hands would also likely do wonders in changing Erdogan's stand towards arming the Syrian insurgents. I bet that right now some Syrian intelligence officer is giving this idea some deeper thoughts.

The U.S. can not attack Iran because the attack and any Iranian retaliation would increase the price of oil to new record levels. Even if Iran were not to react to any attack the expectation of a possible reaction would be enough to explode the insurance premiums for any ship entering the Strait of Hormuz. With record oil prices over more than a few weeks all major economies would experience serious damage. Poorer economies would experience high price increases for staple food with social upheavals, like the Arab spring, certain to follow.

The Iran hawks argue against this. They say that U.S. navy is capable of keeping the Strait of Hormuz open even if Iran intends to close it. Even if the Strait were temporarily closed the U.S. navy would be able to reopen it immediately. They are wrong:

A major international naval exercise last month in and around the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea, led by the U.S. Navy with more than 30 other nations participating, located fewer than half of the practice mines laid at sea.

This outcome of the highly publicized military drills — not publicly known until now — underscores how difficult it may be for the United States and its partners to detect and incapacitate waterborne explosive devices that Iran has threatened to plant if its nuclear facilities come under attack.

Out of the 29 simulated mines that were dropped in the water, “I don’t think a great many were found,” retired Navy Capt. Robert O’Donnell, a former mine warfare director for his service, told the NewsHour. “It was probably around half or less.”
…
“I just felt that they should have done better,” said O’Donnell, clearly disappointed with the outcome of this key measure of performance. “That’s the point of the exercise, to do mine-countermine [operations] in an area, and to find the mines.”

Now a consultant, O’Donnell was invited by the Navy to observe the September exercise firsthand as it unfolded.

The maneuver was disaster. But for people knowledgeable in the field it was also unsurprising. The U.S. Navy is traditionally incapable of serious mine clearing efforts. Even official documents (pdf) acknowledge this. The proposed solution to this disability is a combined effort by various navies under U.S. command:

The threat of mines presents a Unified Commander-in-Chief (CINC) with problems affecting the time-space-force aspects of his command. Further complicating this matter, is the U.S. Navy's inability to adequately address the mine threat problem unilaterally. History demonstrates that the U.S. Navy's inability to maintain a mine countermeasures (MCM) force sufficiently large enough and technologically advanced enough has been nominally off-set by the strengths of a combined MCM force.

The recent maneuver was a "combined" effort. Over 30 nations took part and even then only half of the dropped mines were found.

This was only a maneuver. A scripted training event without any threat from real mines or from other forces. Under the threat of fire from Iran's Silkworm derived anti-ship missiles fired from this or that cave or truck on the Iranian coast plus under the threat of real mines the clearing percentage would likely be worse.

What conclusion will those ship insurers in London draw from this? Right.

The U.S. navy has for some time tried to develop new mine hunting systems to be put on the new class of oversized unarmed speedboats Littoral Combat Ships. These efforts have so far failed. When they eventually succeed the capability of the new system will likely be much less than expected.

Unless there is technological leap in mine hunting and clearing coming up (unlikely), the threat and the capability of mining the Straits is likely enough to keep Iran safe from serious military aggressions.

Qatar funds major project to rebuild Gaza

Qatar on Tuesday launched a $254 million plan to rebuild and modernize Gaza, the biggest injection of reconstruction aid for the Palestinian enclave since parts of it were devastated in Operation Cast Lead nearly four years ago.

For first time, Palestinians in Gaza fire missile at IAF helicopter

A Strela (SA-7) anti-aircraft missile was fired at an Israeli helicopter over the Gaza Strip for the first time last week, the Israel Defense Forces has confirmed. Although the aircraft was not hit, the incident bears out intelligence assessments over the past few years that such missiles had reached the hands of terror groups in Gaza, principally Hamas.

Doha's Four Seasons Hotel Tea Lounge a painful exile for Syrians in Qatar

An assortment of opposition leaders and businessmen are passing through Doha, hoping to attract Qatar's arsenal of quickly-deployed cash and considerable diplomatic clout to their cause.
…
Qatar's prime minister, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani, has denied reports that his country is providing weapons to the opposition in Syria – but few here doubt that his country is providing financial backing and non-lethal aid.

Heat-Seeking Missiles in Syria: The SA-7 in Action with Rebels

Throughout this year, as fighting intensified in Syria and antigovernment fighters grew in numbers and in strength, it had seemed inevitable that they would acquire heat-seeking shoulder-fired missiles and turn them against the Syrian military aircraft.
…
Two videos recently posted on YouTube suggest that what had been expected is now occurring.

Pat Lang, the former head honcho of U.S. Defense Intelligence in the Middle East, commented at his blog that an attack of Turkey on Syria could lead to a "Guns of August" like process. The book "The Guns of August" describes the political and military maneuvering that eventual led to the, then rather unintended, start of the first world war.

Is Lang's comparison exaggerated? I don't think so. There is a lot of brush in the area and a small flame could easily become a big fire. One area where an open war over Syria could escalate is to the east of Turkey. That and a Turkish Armenian skirmish today is reason enough to take a deeper look into the various issues there.

bigger

Cont. reading: How A War On Syria Could Escalate

One would think that economic problems from simple minded austerity policies within Europe would at least lead to policies that increase exports to solvent customers. But no. The European Union, under pressure from the U.S. and Israel, just increased the sanctions on Iran thereby cutting off all exports to a good customer:

The Council prohibited all transactions between European and Iranian banks, unless they are explicitly authorised by national authorities under strict conditions.

There will be a ban on short-term export credits, guarantees and insurance. Medium- and long-term commitments are already banned.

Others are benefiting from this policy:

U.S. exports to Iran rose by nearly a third this year, chiefly because of grain sales, according to U.S. data released last week, despite the tightening of U.S. financial sanctions.

The jump to $199.5 million in the first eight months of 2012 from $150.8 million a year earlier, according to Census Bureau data, …

The U.S. wants to achieve regime change in Iran. It presses for Europe to adopt more sanctions and to cease all trade with Iran. At the same time it is using the loopholes in its own sanction regime to increasing its trade with Iran.

It is beyond my how and why those European politicians can fall for this scheme. Any ideas?

Jon Williams is foreign editor for the BBC. A few hours ago he tweeted:

Some NATO allies growing suspicious of #Turkey. Fear Istanbul provoking #Syria. One official says Damascus "v restrained" in circumstances!

Those NATO allies are not alone in growing suspicious. Abdullah Bozkurt is Bureau-in-Chief of the Turkish Today's Zaman newspaper. That paper is part of the Gülen movement and in general friendly with the current Turkish AKP government. Bozkurt also has extensive experience has Today's Zaman U.S. correspondent. His latest column is headlined: The pro-war lobby rallies in Turkey

It should be obvious by now that there is a pro-war lobby in the Turkish capital, one that is itching for a major confrontation with Syria and one that also has considerable influence over the government decision making process. This lobby is determined to drag Turkey into an adventurous conflict with Syria, one that is certain to escalate into region-wide hostilities with traditional backers of the Bashar al-Assad regime facing off with Turkey in the proxy of the Syrian swamp.
…
The relentless war lobby is after a “fait accompli” to commit the government and the country to a permanent war in Syria, but is afraid of the repercussions of presenting such a plan in the public.

Bozkurt does not give any names but points at certain other interests that might want to get a war going:

The last thing Obama wants at this point is a Syrian crisis spiraling out of control that would put him in a weak spot in regard to his Republican challenger. Maybe that is exactly what the war lobby in Ankara wants. Creating an outrageous incident in response to which Turkey would feel the need to invoke Article 5 of the NATO military alliance, the clause on collective defense, might force Obama into a corner on the eve of presidential elections and prompt an American intervention.

I can think of some blowhart in Tel Aviv who would like to have Obama defeated and who might have the capabilities to order up some event, a certain "Syrian provocation" that kills many Turks but which's origin would be rather mysterious, that would allow the Turkish pro-war lobby to achieve its "fait accompli".

But, as Bozkurt writes, a war over Syria would not be confined to Syria. It would have disastrous consequences. As the military Middle East expert Pat Lang remarked:

A "Guns of August' scenario is quite possible in which Syria, Hizbullah Russia and Iran line up against NATO, Israel and the US. The catastrophic implications of such an evolution are obvious.

Any serious event on the Turkish Syrian border could now be an October surprise to unleash a Guns of August like situation. It is not something anyone in this world should wish for.

The European Union was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. It is obvious that the Nobel award is a political price given by the committee to further this or that peculiar political interest. I personally do not regard it as much of an honor.

Still one has to admit that the European Union was from its very beginning a peace project especially between France and Germany. It was driven by European politicians who had lived through the terrible times of two huge wars and were eager to avoid more of those. Nearly 70 years of peace between the big European countries who had been fighting each other for centuries is certainly a notable success.

But getting a price for that leads to envy. Just see this official tweet by Ivo Daalder, the U.S. ambassador to NATO:

Congrats to #EU for that #Nobel. As for peace in #Europe, maybe #MarshalPlan, US troops, & #NATO had something to do w/ it as well

Yes Mr Daalder, the Marshall Plan helped a bit. (Even as it was solely driven by ideological U.S. self interest.) But the Nobel Price committee already recognized that back in 1953 and awarded Marshall the peace prize. But as Daalder can not even spell Marshall's name he likely did not known that. Is lack of historic knowledge a quality of U.S. ambassadors?

As for U.S. troops and NATO. No, they had (and have) little to do with peace in Europe. There was this thing called the cold war that has cost us Europeans a lot and would likely not have happened without them. That war planed to use my country as its nuclear battlefield and thereby for its total annihilation. Neither the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet army nor NATO and U.S. troops deserve a peace prize for that.

A report about the war on Libya by the Danish Air Force reveals that Denmark used Israeli bombs during that campaign:

The ammunition deficiency problem eventually forced the Danish Air Force to seek precision-bomb munitions parts from Israel, a highly controversial move given that the NATO mission in Libya was backed by the Arab League, consisting of many member states have less than amicable political relations with Israel.

There will be no repercussions over this for Denmark.

There is by now serious doubt about the Arab League’s “less than amicable political relations with Israel”. Indeed there seems to be a silent coalition of the Gulf Counterrevolution Club with Israel with the common enemy being Hizbullah, Syria, Iraq and Iran as the axis of resistance against Israel or, in the GCC terminology, the Shia crescent. That coalition is actively fostered by the U.S. and its western clients.

The coalition is sure to fall apart when the wave of change eventually reaches those monarchies and brings in governments that will have answer to their people. That point is likely less far away than today’s conventional wisdom anticipates.